privately printed for The Johnsonians & The Samuel Johnson Society of the West
Johnson in Defense of Henry Thrale: The Aftermath of the Massacre in St. George's Fields
The Enlightenment by Night: Essays on After-Dark Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century
Night in the North Sea and the Feasibility of Samuel Johnson's London
Adventure: An Eighteenth-Century Idiom: Essays on the Daring and the Bold as a Pre-Modern Medium
Boswell's Big Adventures: London, Scotland, London
Boswell and the Extraordinary Adventures of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the Hebrides
Printed by H. Baldwin & Son, for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry
The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons: and various original pieces of his composition, never before published: the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great-Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished
The third London edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. appeared on 18 May 1799 in four octavo volumes, the first posthumous publication following Boswell's May 1795 death. Malone, one of Boswell's literary executors, oversaw the preparation, dating his Advertisement 8 April 1799. Malone later supervised the subsequent 1804, 1807, and 1811 editions. This 1799 issue corrected the second edition's disorder by integrating previously separated corrections and additions, like Johnson's argument for the slave Knight, into their proper chronological places. Malone ensured the text faithfully preserved Boswell's late revisions and marginal notes. The edition also incorporated minor notes from various contributors, including Burney and Blakeway. Priced at £1. 8s. in boards, the third edition successfully launched a series of consistently edited issues and served as the textual basis for the eventual standard Hill–Powell edition. Malone remained modest, allowing only his Advertisement, not his name, to appear on the title page.
The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell: Research Edition: Correspondence
Edinburgh University Press & Yale University Press
The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766–1769
The editors chart Boswell's life after his Grand Tour, detailing his initiation into law practice and his focus on literary fame. This period marked his publication of Account of Corsica (1768), a major success. Johnson wrote to Boswell in 1768, prompted by the book, establishing a connection absent since 1766. The letters document Boswell's activities, including his vigorous legal work in the Douglas Cause and his attempt to gain political attention from Chatham. Volume 2 finds Boswell writing to over 120 correspondents, providing varied voices that enrich the understanding of the Anglo-Scottish milieu. The documentation, supported by extensive annotation, sheds light on the history of this crucial phase, complementing the narrative of his journals. This resource provides valuable source material for biographical study and political analysis.
Cochrane entry 124. Provides 365 brief biographical essays on the various individuals who appear in the 'Life of Johnson'.
Reprinted by Russell & Russell in 1970.
Literary Form in Factual Narrative: The Example of Boswell's Johnson
Rader argues that the "Life of Johnson" transcends the factual narrative genre to become literature by representing its subject as a "concrete, self-intelligible cause of emotion." Rader disputes the "tape recorder" myth, asserting that Boswell used a "single dynamic image" of Johnson as a selective and controlling principle to vivify "innumerable detached particulars." He characterizes the work as an emotive narrative rather than an explanatory one, where Boswell’s dramatic talent creates "epiphanies" of character independent of literal memory. Rader analyzes the Wilkes episode as a "comic action" where Boswell adjusts the facts to ensure Johnson’s triumph of sophistication over "surly virtue." The abstract image of Johnson’s "majestic frame" serves as the functional core of the work, allowing Boswell to "order experience concretely and memorably." Rader concludes that the biography's permanent value lies in displaying Johnson as a "concrete universal" that frees the reader from "conventional impotence" through imaginative sympathy.
Cochrane entry 208.
The Suppressed Agenda of Boswell's Tour
The Social Symbolism of Contractions and Colloquialisms in Contemporary Accounts of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Bozzy, Piozzi, and the Authority of Intimacy
Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics
Boswell's Johnson: A Preface to the 'Life'
Schwartz challenges the long-standing status of the Life of Johnson as a model of objective biography by analyzing the tension between Boswell's quasi-scientific gathering of facts and his subjective artistic shaping. Schwartz argues that Boswell’s methodology mimics seventeenth-century scientific empiricism, yet fails to provide a sophisticated image of Johnson due to Boswell’s reliance on superficial categories and personal prejudices. By comparing the Life to Johnson's own biographical theories and self-portraits, Schwartz demonstrates that Boswell often imposes a Boswellian setting—marked by romantic conservatism and social London—onto his subject, thereby falsifying Johnson’s actual religious, political, and intellectual complexities. Schwartz disputes the notion that Boswell followed the Johnsonian formula, noting that Johnson prioritized empathy and domestic instruction while Boswell focused on the accumulation of authentic specimens. The study identifies the Life as primarily an autobiographical achievement rather than a definitive biography, suggesting that its primary value lies in recording Johnson’s impact on a single, self-absorbed individual. Schwartz encourages readers to use Johnson's own works to recover a more accurate image of the subject, characterized by the Christian paradox of pride and humility as seen in the parable of the talents. Schwartz concludes that the book requires searching criticism to discourage improper uses and to promote a balanced view of both the author and the subject. Chapter 1, "The Life-Writer's Task," contrasts the artistic and scientific requirements of biography, arguing that late-modern theories better elucidate Boswell’s methodology than the empathic, hortatory principles articulated by his contemporaries or Johnson himself. Chapter 2, "The Scientific Analogy," posits that the biography mimics eighteenth-century scientific methodology, prioritizing a rigorous, data-driven accumulation of specimens over a sophisticated, systematic shaping of the biographical subject’s overarching image. Chapter 3, "Artifice and Reality," examines the epistemological blurring of objective fact and literary artifice, asserting that the biographer’s loss of narrative control often results in the subjective falsification of his subject. Chapter 4, "The Question of Setting," critiques the imposition of a romanticized, "Boswellized" London onto the subject, which obscures the authentic political, religious, and intellectual contexts of the historical figure. Chapter 5, "Johnson's Johnson," explores the subject’s self-portraits, emphasizing a complex, Christian interplay between pride and humility that remains largely uncaptured by the biographer’s external observations. Chapter 6, "The Uses of the Life," concludes that while the work fails as an objective biography, its enduring value lies in its profound autobiographical revelation of the biographer's own psychological landscape. Reviews are overwhelmingly negative, with reviewers consistently rejecting the monograph's polemical dismissal of a masterpiece as flawed autobiography. Bell, in MLQ, praises the reconstruction of the subject from his own religious writings but argues the critic merely recapitulates stale attacks without engaging modern scholarship. Brady, in South Atlantic Quarterly, notes the irony of damning the biographer's character while simultaneously using his narrative as a quarry of information. In ECS, Lustig challenges the attempt to diminish creative achievement, defending the focus on conversation as capturing the essential man against a preference for an official persona. Folkenflik, in the Yearbook of English Studies, compares the text's cautionary stance to a warning on a cigarette packet, arguing it imposes perverse scientific criteria on an eighteenth-century lawyer. Halsband, in JEGP, dismisses the thesis as questionable and defended at all costs through unhistorical modern biographical theory. Kelley, in PQ, and Rothstein, in SEL, similarly object to holding the work to modern scientific standards, with Rothstein calling the autobiography label blandly insulting. Rogers, in RES, scathingly describes the book as a simplistic reduction displaying staggering complacence that fails to diminish the humanity captured by the biographer. Middendorf, in JNL, notes that while the demolition of the biography will face traditionalist scrutiny, it serves to encourage a better understanding of the subject's own texts. Finally, Siebenschuh, in Modern Philology, credits the polemic with forcing new thinking about fictional techniques in biography despite overstatement and a lack of manuscript evidence.
Cochrane entry 246.
Boswell's Hebridean Journal and the Ordeal of Dr. Johnson
Because Boswell allowed Johnson to read most of his Hebridean Journal as it was being written, the form of this biography, unlike the Life, reflects the growth in their relationship. It also constitutes a secondary form of discourse between them, the resulting subtleties of which make it a unique contribution to the history of biography.
Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
Cochrane entry 323.
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Cultures of Print
Romanticism, Rousseau, Switzerland: New Prospects
James Boswell and Rousseau in Môtiers: Re-inscribing Childhood and Its (Auto)biographical Prospects
Thinking on Thresholds: The Poetics of Transitive Spaces
Dancing and Romancing: The Obstacle of the Beach and the Threshold of the Past
On the challenge of historical truth in ethnography, focusing on the metaphorical "beach" where cultures meet. Johnson was contemptuous of South Seas travel accounts and told Boswell that savages could offer no knowledge of the past or invisible. He rejected the idea of a "state of pure nature" as conjectural. However, Johnson's own Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland encounters a similar "conundrum" to Pacific ethnographers, ultimately accepting local testimony and "second sight," suggesting he began to "dance and romance."
Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Malone: Great Shakespeareans
Johnston examines Johnson’s deep engagement with Shakespeare, specifically during his tour of Scotland and his final illness. The text details Johnson reciting Macbeth on "classic ground" near Fores, a recitation Reynolds described as "grand and affecting." Johnston analyzes how Shakespearean language provided Johnson with a "sweet oblivious antidote" to the "rooted sorrow" of his "mind diseas'd." The text highlights Johnson’s "parody of the All-hail of the witches" addressed to Boswell, illustrating the "condescension" and humor present in their relationship. Johnston argues that Shakespeare remained a vital presence for Johnson, offering a means to "cleanse the stuff'd bosom" while acknowledging that the "patient must minister to himself."
New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of 'The Life of Johnson'
The Originality of Boswell's Version of Johnson's Quarrel with Lord Chesterfield
Burke analyzes Boswell's celebrated account of Johnson’s quarrel with Lord Chesterfield, arguing for its "originality" as a constructed narrative. The essay demonstrates that Boswell did not merely report the facts of the famous letter but artfully staged the confrontation to heroize Johnson. By carefully selecting, editing, and framing the evidence, Boswell transformed the episode into a powerful, symbolic drama about literary independence triumphing over aristocratic patronage. Burke uses manuscript evidence from the Yale collection to illustrate Boswell's deliberate authorial choices and his skill in biographical representation.
Bullard investigates the intersection of Johnson’s physical domesticity and his literary labor. The chapter focuses on 17 Gough Square, analyzing how its architectural features, specifically the "Dictionary Garret," facilitated the collaborative efforts of Johnson and his amanuenses. Bullard contrasts the urban, scholarly "hive" of Gough Square with the opulent, conversational milieu of the Thrales’ residence at Streatham Park. The author argues that Johnson’s houses were not merely shelters but active participants in his "way of life," shaping his social identity and the anecdotal traditions recorded by James Boswell and Hester Lynch Piozzi. Finally, Bullard addresses the nineteenth-century preservation movement, which transformed these domestic sites into secular shrines for Johnsonian enthusiasts.
Boswell and the Text of Johnson's Logia
Burke challenges Donald Greene's arguments that Boswell fabricated or altered many of Johnson’s famous sayings, or logia, to present a flawed portrait. Burke counters the assertion that the Life of Johnson is unreliable, arguing that Greene's skepticism—inspired by biblical studies on the historicity of Jesus's words—is overly aggressive and often draws unwarranted conclusions from minor inconsistencies. Burke maintains that in cases of discrepancy between Boswell's journal and the Life (such as the Lady Diana Spencer remark), alternative explanations like a "second crop of memory" are more plausible than fraud. Burke concludes that the oral nature of Johnson's talk means an act of faith, supported by contemporary testimony, is necessary to believe in the record's authenticity.
'Old Plutarch at Auchinleck': Boswell's Muse of Corsica
On Boswell's profound debt to Plutarch in An Account of Corsica and his portrait of Pascal Paoli. The Corsican adventure, framed by Boswell's personal preoccupation with liberty and the conflicting influences of Rousseau and Johnson, served as a Plutarchan "revelation." Boswell used Plutarch's structural patterns and ideals, particularly political arete, to depict Paoli as a synthesis of Rousseauistic (liberty) and Johnsonian (virtue/law) qualities, fulfilling Boswell's ambition to create a contemporary Plutarchan hero.
Cochrane entry 340.
Boswell's Notes toward a Supreme Fiction: From London Journal to Life of Johnson
Bell contrasts Boswell's autobiographical London Journal with his Life of Johnson, arguing that the former reveals a "Humean" self engaged in a futile search for a consistent identity. The Journal's narrator is unreliable, trapped in a histrionic, unreflective posture, as seen in the Louisa episode, and lacks the necessary aesthetic distance to analyze his experiences fully. Conversely, the Life achieves coherence and mastery by subordinating Boswell's "wretched changefulness" and using his "double consciousness" to magnify Johnson's monumental stability and "philosophick heroism." The mature Boswell successfully transformed his personal conflicts into a symbolic vision for the biography.
Cochrane entry 631.
Bell explores Boswell as both a "Prince of Biographers" and "court jester." The article examines how Boswell uses "strategic separation" and folly to display Johnson’s wit. Bell notes Boswell "Boswellizes" Johnson to defend himself, often placing the "Johnsonian ridiculous next to the Johnsonian sublime." He concludes that Boswell’s "amazing temerity" and vanity enable the unique achievement of the Life.
A French Provincial City and Three English Writers: Montpellier as Seen in the 1760s by Sterne, Smollett, and Boswell
Cochrane entry 402. Uses comments from Boswell's journal, alongside those of Sterne and Smollett, to offer a glimpse into 18th-century urban life in Montpellier, France.
Adams describes a recently acquired first edition of Boswell’s biography of Johnson featuring two uncanceled leaves from the second volume. These rare leaves reveal drastic revisions regarding James Grainger and Johnson’s views on marital fidelity. In the original text, Boswell included a critical account of Grainger’s failed medical practice and personal life, which he later replaced with a brief reference at the likely request of Thomas Percy. The second uncanceled leaf contains Johnson’s candid, indiscreet remarks on conjugal infidelity, which Boswell ultimately condensed and softened with an apologetic footnote to ensure Johnson did not appear to encourage irregular conduct.
CGV entry 4:156.
Cites Life: 3:406
Cochrane entry 168.
Defining the Johnsonian Canon: Authority, Intuition, and the Uses of Evidence
Addresses the challenges of defining Johnson's canon, arguing that its assessment must break free from the primacy of Boswell's biographical caricature. Since Johnson died without a complete list of his writings, scholars must rely on a combination of three methodologies, initially articulated by Boswell: Authority, Intuition (stylistic evidence), and External Evidence. Abbott acknowledges that intuition, rooted in recognizing a distinct "Johnsonian composition," is subjective and risky but persists in modern scholarship like Allen Hazen's. Abbott insists that a strong paradigm of attribution requires the corroboration of all three methodologies to assign texts to Johnson with confidence, exemplified by combining stylistic analysis of Saunders Welch’s pamphlet with Royal Society records showing Johnson’s committee work with Welch.
Boswell's Reference to Erasmus on His Fear of Death
Walker solves an annotative mystery from Paul Tankard's edition of Boswell's journalism, Facts and Inventions. In Boswell's "Sentimental Essay on Death," he refers to a letter where Erasmus confesses to an early fear of death. Walker identifies the passage in a 1518 letter from Erasmus to Beatus Rhenanus. The relevant quote, "When I was a young man, I remember how I used to tremble even at the mere name of death," appears in the letter. Walker suggests Boswell may have encountered this passage in an eighteenth-century English biography of Erasmus by Samuel Knight, which was in his father's library and contains the quote in both Latin and English.
A Note on Boswell's Life of Johnson
Powell requests the identity of the scholar referred to as "Mr. Sympson of Gainsborough," who served as a co-editor for the ten-volume 1750 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher’s works. While biographical details for the other editors, Theobald and Seward, are well-documented, Sympson’s history remains obscure. Powell notes that Sympson oversaw the printing of volumes five through eight and a portion of volume nine, seeking to clarify his background and connection to the Johnsonian literary circle.
Boswell's Mistaken Saint: A Note to Hypochondriack No. 47
Walker addresses Boswell's error in Hypochondriack 47 (1781) where he attributes the legend of a saint creating a woman of snow to combat temptation to Saint Anthony of Egypt. The legend actually belongs to Saint Francis of Assisi, who is said to have made snow figures of a wife and family. This St. Francis legend was commonly found in eighteenth-century texts, such as Misson's New Voyage to Italy and Butler's Hudibras. Boswell's misattribution to Anthony, combined with the context of the desert, misled his early editor. Walker suggests Boswell was likely confused but notes that the century's literary figures often treated such allusions loosely.
Powell clarifies the identity and genealogy of Charles Feilding, referenced in Boswell's narrative. Powell identifies Feilding as the second son of the sixth Earl of Denbigh and a contributor to Lady Miller’s 1775 collection of poetry at the age of eleven. The entry corrects biographical details regarding Feilding’s parentage and notes his unmarried status, while highlighting a lack of recorded information concerning his date of death in standard reference works.
Powell provides biographical clarifications for several minor figures in Boswell’s narrative. The entry establishes genealogical and death data for Lady Sydney Beauclerk and explores the identity of James Bennet, the nominal editor of Ascham’s works actually edited by Johnson. Powell questions Bennet’s clerical status and academic credentials. Further notes identify the Reverend Beresford, the Reverend Edmund Bettesworth, the Irish politician Richard Bettesworth, and Charles Blackstone, confirming their relationships to Johnson’s circle or scholarly editions.
A New Johnson Self-Quotation in the Dictionary
In 1948, William and Margaret Wimsatt added sixteen examples of Samuel Johnson quoting from his own works in the Dictionary to the thirty-three previously identified. Less than a decade later, William Keast supplied three more entries, bringing to a total fifty-two self-quotations of this kind. Recently, while searching the Dictionary for quite different purposes, I detected another one, one that enlarges the list to fifty-three items.
Noted by Steven Scherwatzky in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 52
On the identity of Backwell, a 1764 dinner host in Northampton, and the marital history of Frances Bagnall, whom Boswell considered as a potential spouse in 1791. Additionally, Powell seeks to confirm the genealogical connection of Letitia Barnston, met by Boswell in 1779, to the Barnston family of Crewe Hill.
Boswell's Life of Johnson: Translations
Pottle surveys the incomplete translation history of Boswell's biography, noting the absence of a full foreign-language version. He identifies three partial attempts: Liebeskind’s 1797 German abridgement, Druzhinin’s 1851 Russian essay-translation, and Heyman’s 1926–1930 Swedish edition. Pottle highlights the scholarly value of Heyman’s heavily annotated but financially truncated four-volume set. He refers readers to his own Literary Career of James Boswell for a more exhaustive bibliographical analysis of these international receptions.
Cochrane entry 136.
A brief query: "Into how many foreign languages has Boswell's 'Johnson' been translated? I should be glad to learn names of translators, and dates of publication of the earliest, the latest and the most esteemed in any language. Has the book, or any part of it, been rendered into any Oriental language?"
Cochrane entry 133.
Boswell's "Life of Johnson," First edition
Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': New Questions, New Answers
Clayton evaluates this collection of twelve essays as a coherent debate concerning the biographical accuracy and literary merit of Boswell's narrative. Vance and Schwartz frame "The Boswell Problem," while Siebenschuh applies cognitive theory to Boswell's memory. Woods and Vance argue that Boswell’s insensitivity to humor skewed his portraits of Goldsmith and Johnson. The volume features a central confrontation between Greene and Pottle regarding the historical Johnson versus Boswell’s construct. Clayton notes the absence of draft revision studies but praises the book for balancing "anti-Boswellian" critiques with appreciation for Boswell’s artistry.
Nokes offers a detailed biography of Johnson, guided by Johnson’s own maxim in 'Rambler' 60 that the biographer should 'lead the thoughts into domestick privacies' rather than focus on 'vulgar greatness'. The text traces Johnson's trajectory from his 'wretched' Lichfield origins—marked by scrofula, poverty, and a 'fierce attachment to independence'—through his aborted Oxford education to his eventual status as London's preeminent literary figure. Nokes explores Johnson's psychological struggles, particularly his 'obsessive fears of insanity' and 'morbid melancholy', viewing his relentless conversational and literary output as a means to 'escape from himself'. Central to the narrative are Johnson's complex personal relationships, including his 'singular' marriage to Elizabeth 'Tetty' Porter, his 'rapturous' attachment to Molly Aston, and his long-term intimacy with Hester Thrale at Streatham Park. Nokes provides scholarly accounts of Johnson's professional milestones, such as the 'Dictionary', 'The Rambler', his edition of Shakespeare, and 'The Lives of the Poets', while also highlighting his 'constitutional indolence' and his household of dependants, most notably his manservant and principal legatee, Francis Barber. The biography addresses the 'distinction between Johnson fact and Johnson the biographer's fancy', critically examining the legacies of Boswell, Piozzi, and Hawkins. Nokes concludes with a narrative of Johnson’s physical decline and his 'perfect resignation' in death, presenting a man whose 'unfailing benevolence' and 'majestic intelligence' were inseparable from his physical infirmities and private anxieties. Chapter 1, 'Lichfield,' addresses the foundational influence of Samuel Johnson’s early environment, examining how physical infirmities like scrofula and a discordant home life with his socially ambitious but financially unstable father, Michael, forged his complex and melancholy temperament. Chapter 2, 'Oxford,' chronicles Johnson’s brief and poverty-stricken tenure at Pembroke College, where his intellectual arrogance and rebellious attitude toward his tutors underscored a desperate search for academic validation that was ultimately thwarted by his family's insolvency. Chapter 3, 'Marriage,' explores Johnson’s unlikely and controversial union with the older, wealthy widow Elizabeth 'Tetty' Porter, arguing that this partnership provided the necessary capital for his failed school at Edial and served as a catalyst for his move to London. Chapter 4, 'London,' examines Johnson’s initial years in the capital as a literary hack, highlighting his formative association with Richard Savage and his struggle to establish a reputation through works like the poem London. Chapter 5, 'Love,' analyzes the emotional complexities of Johnson’s middle years, specifically his intellectual infatuation with Molly Aston and how these external attachments often conflicted with his domestic responsibilities to Tetty. Chapter 6, 'A Harmless Drudge,' delineates the arduous process of compiling the Dictionary of the English Language, a task Johnson undertook to achieve financial security and literary authority despite his own constitutional indolence. Chapter 7, 'Frank Barber,' addresses the introduction of the young Jamaican former slave into Johnson’s household, illustrating Johnson’s deep sense of paternal responsibility and practical commitment to charity. Chapter 8, 'The Dictionary,' addresses the definitive publication of his lexicographical masterwork and his celebrated rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s belated patronage as a landmark assertion of literary independence. Chapter 9, 'Nothing Is Concluded,' examines the period of creative and emotional inertia following the Dictionary, marked by his work on The Rambler and the profound grief of his mother’s death, which culminated in the writing of Rasselas. Chapter 10, 'The Pensioner,' addresses the transformative impact of the royal pension granted in 1762, which relieved his material distress but invited public scrutiny and necessitated a recalibration of his social identity. Chapter 11, 'Enter Boswell,' recounts the pivotal first meeting between Johnson and James Boswell in 1763, establishing the groundwork for the most significant biographical partnership in English letters. Chapter 12, 'Shakespeare,' details the long-delayed publication of Johnson’s edition of the plays, arguing that his critical insights sought to reconcile Shakespeare’s genius with contemporary standards of morality and nature. Chapter 13, 'Club and Country,' explores Johnson’s social integration into 'The Club' and his growing intimacy with Henry and Hester Thrale, which provided him with essential domestic stability. Chapter 14, 'Strawberries and Fetters,' addresses the darker psychological dimensions of Johnson’s later life, including his obsessive fears of insanity and the complex, arguably masochistic, dynamic of his relationship with Hester Thrale. Chapter 15, 'A Wide Sail,' documents the 1773 tour of the Hebrides, analyzing how the rigors of travel and the encounter with Scottish culture challenged Johnson’s English prejudices while providing material for his Journey to the Western Islands. Chapter 16, 'Biographer of the Poets,' addresses the production of the Lives of the Poets, a work that combined Johnson’s formidable literary history with his own mature reflections on human character. Chapter 17, 'The Town Is My Element,' addresses the decline of Johnson’s physical health and the emotional rupture caused by Hester Thrale’s remarriage, leading to his final, solitary preparation for death. Chapter 18, 'Epilogue,' concludes by detailing Johnson’s death and burial in Westminster Abbey, emphasizing his decision to leave his residual estate to Frank Barber as a final, defiant act of benevolence. Critical reception of Nokes’s biography is generally favorable, with reviewers praising its humanizing focus on Johnson’s private vulnerabilities, though specialized scholars express deeper reservations regarding its interpretive speculation. Among prominent general publications, Bloom in the New York Times offers warm praise, highlighting the insightful treatment of Johnson’s spiritual complexity and internal struggles. Carey, in the Sunday Times, commends Nokes for successfully portraying a generous, wholly good man despite his psychological flaws, while Power in the TLS lauds the elegant, compassionate narrative for restoring Johnson to a domestic setting. But Bate in the Sunday Telegraph presents a dissenting popular view, calling the biography a dutiful but uncharacterful account that leaves the life dead on the page. In scholarly and specialized venues, the reception is similarly divided. DeMaria’s review in JNL balances its criticism by calling it the best of the tercentenary biographies and praising Nokes’s ultimate realization of Johnson’s deep nobility. However, Venturo in AJ sharply attacks the volume for pedestrian prose, factual inconsistencies, and an overemphasis on physical ailments that neglects Johnson’s intellectual achievements. Deutsch, in the London Review of Books, commends the novelistic use of free indirect discourse but faults Nokes’s cynical portrayal of Johnson’s marriage as a loveless matter of financial interest. Finally, Cook in the Cambridge Quarterly offers a mixed but appreciative assessment, particularly praising the sensitive depiction of Tetty’s painful decline.
Reviews: Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph (London), October 18, 2009; Harold Bloom, NYT, November 8, 2009; John Carey, Sunday Times (London), September 13, 2009; Contemporary Review 292, no. 1697 (2010): 264; Daniel Cook, CQ 39, no. 2 (2010): 186–95; Robert DeMaria Jr., JNL 61, no. 1 (2010): 73–77; Helen Deutsch, LRB 34, no. 3 (2012): 31–33; George Eaton, New Statesman, October 12, 2009; Mary Foster, Associated Press, November 9, 2009; Carol Gladstein, Library Journal 134, no. 16 (2009): 77; Christopher Hirst, The Independent, August 5, 2010; Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph (London), September 19, 2009; Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian, October 3, 2009; Kirkus Reviews (September 1, 2009); Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News, December 6, 2009; Peter Lewis, Daily Mail (London), September 18, 2009; Nicholas Lezard, Evening Standard (London), September 17, 2009; Northern Echo (December 5, 2009); Eliza O’Brien, YWES 90, no. 1 (2011): 556–57; Ray Olson, Booklist 106, no. 6 (2009): 9; Ian Pindar, The Guardian, July 24, 2010; Henry Power, TLS, nos. 5568, 5569 (December 2009): 18; Publishers Weekly (September 28, 2009); Trevor Royle, The Herald (Glasgow), September 12, 2009; Edward Short, Weekly Standard, November 9, 2009; Ian Thomson, Irish Times, October 10, 2009; Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, September 11, 2009; David F. Venturo, AJ 21 (2011): 364.
The Philosophical Biographer: Doubt and Dialectic in Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets'
Maner challenges the traditional view of Johnson as a dogmatic generalizer, presenting him instead as a "philosophical biographer" whose work is rooted in the transition from deductive certainty to inductive probability. Linking Johnson’s "bisociative" habits of mind to the "constructive skepticism" of seventeenth-century Anglican apologists and Lockean empiricism, Maner contends that Johnson employs a "rhetoric of doubt" to keep his inferential procedures visible. The study examines how Johnson’s "characterological style"—marked by the tensions of obsessive-compulsive scrupulosity—manifests in his prose through syntactical antitheses and "epistemological doublets" that force the reader to weigh opposing interpretations. Through close readings of the Life of Savage, the Life of Swift, and the Life of Pope, Maner demonstrates how Johnson manipulates audience expectations and emotional responses to cultivate a "constantly active process of judgment." The author highlights Johnson's reliance on Pierre Bayle's critical model to "extirpate errors" and refine the biographical genre into a tool for moral training. Maner positions Johnson as an "Enlightenment" figure whose mastery of "situational irony" and "creative distrust" allows him to mediate between the "fecundity of experience" and the necessity of universal patterns of meaning. Chapter 1, "Introduction," links Johnson’s dialectical methods to seventeenth-century epistemological shifts from deductive certainty toward inductive probability, establishing biography as a primary medium for exercising moral judgment. Chapter 2, "The 'Doubtfulness' of Johnson's Lives," explores the characterological roots of Johnson’s scrupulosity, suggesting that his pathological obsession with doubt was creatively transformed into a rigorous, argumentative biographical style. Chapter 3, "Johnson, Skepticism, and Biography," examines how constructive skepticism and Lockean criteria for evaluating testimony shaped a biographical persona that forces readers to weigh evidence and suspend judgment. Chapter 4, "Satire and Sympathy in the Life of Savage," demonstrates the use of an emotional dialectic that oscillates between pathetic identification and satiric detachment to manipulate reader expectations. Chapter 5, "Johnson's Redaction of Hawkesworth's Swift," analyzes how Johnson’s resistant engagement with his source material produced a lively, albeit prejudiced, portrait through ironic condensation. Chapter 6, "The Probable and the Marvelous in the Life of Milton," investigates the tension between Aristotelian and empirical truth criteria, showing how Johnson reduces biographical wonders to common probabilities. Chapter 7, "Judgment and the Art of Contrast in the Life of Pope," highlights the perfection of contrastive rhetoric as an instrument for discerning truth between appearance and reality. Chapter 8, "Conclusion," positions Johnson within the Enlightenment's critical spirit, where doubt functions as a necessary catalyst for meaningful choice and action. The consensus on this study is that it provides an admirably lucid and rhetorically-based discussion of how empiricism and doubt function as creative instruments in life-writing. Reviewers describe the book as a sensitive examination of the intersection between Enlightenment philosophy and biographical inquiry, particularly through the lens of Locke and Newton. Middendorf praises the study for its lack of jargon, while Ingram values the rewarding insights into prose syntax and imagery. But Fix argues that the work lacks critical purposefulness and relies too heavily on established scholarship. Although Scholtz notes the focus on inquiry and education, specialized scholars like Fix find the analysis curiously inattentive to long-standing critical premises.
Samuel Johnson after Deconstruction: Rhetoric and 'The Rambler'
Lynn argues that the 208 essays of the Rambler form a coherent whole governed by Johnson's evangelistic aim to promote piety and salvation. By situating Johnson after deconstruction, Lynn demonstrates how the writer anticipates and instructively differs from poststructuralist thought. The study uses Harold Bloom's theory of influence to examine Johnson's strategic misreading of the Spectator, revealing how he creates authorial space by both imitating and negating his predecessors. Lynn disputes the common perception of the essays as hasty or unsystematic, instead presenting them as a sophisticated rhetorical instrument. He explores Johnson's philosophy of language and time, noting a pervasive sense of life's vacuity that leads the reader toward the necessity of faith. The analysis includes close readings of individual essays and sequences, such as the correspondence of Hymenaeus and Tranquilla, to show how Johnson uses unstable binary oppositions and controlled rambling to position the reader on the edge of belief. Ultimately, Lynn contends that Johnson's religious purpose explains the series' diversions and structural complexities, transforming a collection of apparent fragments into a unified symphony of moral exhortation. Chapter 1, 'Introduction: Johnson upon His Bedside, after Deconstruction,' argues that The Rambler is a coherent rhetorical instrument designed to promote piety by exposing the world's inherent vacuity. Chapter 2, '(Mis)Reading The Spectator: The Rambler in Bloom,' uses Harold Bloom’s "anxiety of influence" to analyze how the series establishes its own priority by strategically misreading and displacing its famous precursor. Chapter 3, 'A Difference in Nothing: Johnson and Derrida,' examines how Johnson’s systematic philosophy of language and "cycle of desire" parallels deconstructive skepticism while ultimately grounding a willed turn toward faith. Chapter 4, '"The Order in Which They Stand": (Re)Writing Johnson (Re)Writing,' analyzes individual essay structures to demonstrate a sophisticated rhetorical dispositio that uses empirical testing to lead readers toward religious convictions. Chapter 5, 'Conclusion: "The Only Proper and Adequate Relief",' summarizes the series' evangelistic aim, asserting that deconstruction serves as a tool to reveal faith as the only rational response to universal uncertainty. Critics are generally favorable, praising the provocative effort to integrate deconstructive techniques with theological and rhetorical traditions. Basker, in AJ, considers the monograph prescient and timely, highlighting the ingenious pairing of linguistic skepticism and moral vacuity, though remaining skeptical of deconstruction's broader utility for the period. Preston's review in ECCB praises the astonishing analysis for exposing a systematic network of cross-referencing beneath apparent digression and showing that the prose rejects platitudes in favor of a negative theology. In Choice, Scholtz commends the revisionistic interpretation of craftsmanship, noting that the argument successfully links Derridean techniques with an evangelical purpose. Staves (SEL) observes that the methodology treats the periodical essays as timeless wisdom literature, though arguing it reduces the text to a single-minded document that casts the writer as a lay preacher. Tomarken (South Atlantic Review) offers a more critical evaluation, challenging the novelty of the religious conclusions and disputing the logical necessity of combining faith with deconstructive frameworks. Regarding separate centenary assessments, O'Brien's review in YWES provides a positive notice of a multi-author collection that brings the subject into dialogue with modern political, cultural, and philosophical theory, noting compelling accounts of moral philosophy and life writing.
The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson
Lynch examines the ideological and scholarly processes by which eighteenth-century writers, led by Johnson, institutionalized the Elizabethan era as a canonical period of English literary history. Lynch argues that Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) solidified this periodization by establishing Elizabethan authors—specifically Shakespeare, Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon—as the primary authorities for "pure" English. The study analyzes how Johnson used the sixteenth century to ground his prescriptive linguistics and to provide a stable cultural pedigree during a time of national expansion and linguistic flux. Lynch explores the tension in Johnson’s work between acknowledging historical change and seeking a "fixed" linguistic standard derived from the writers of the "Great Age." Furthermore, the monograph details how other scholars, including Thomas Warton and Richard Hurd, contributed to this "invention" of the Elizabethan past through the rise of literary history and antiquarianism. By focusing on Johnson’s Preface to the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare, Lynch demonstrates that the "Age of Johnson" was profoundly shaped by its dialectical relationship with a mythologized sixteenth century. Chapter 1, "Struggling to emerge from barbarity: historiography and the idea of the classic," addresses the eighteenth-century adoption of the Renaissance's own "privative" and "corruptive" metaphors for the Middle Ages, arguing that these historiographical models were essential to the creation of a modern canon of English vernacular classics. Chapter 2, "Learning's triumph: historicism and the spirit of the age," explores the pervasive use of the individual ontogeny metaphor to evaluate the "adolescent" culture of the sixteenth century, contending that historicist criticism emerged as a necessary tool to justify the "childish" superstitions and preternatural elements found in the national poet, Shakespeare. Chapter 3, "Call Britannia's glories back to view: Tudor history and Hanoverian historians," considers the eighteenth-century rise of the "Tudor myth," arguing that the idealized stability and successful foreign policy of Elizabeth's reign provided a critical moral standard against which to measure the perceived decadence of the Hanoverian present. Chapter 4, "The rage of Reformation: religious controversy and political stability," identifies the age of Elizabeth and the works of Richard Hooker as foundational models for the Church of England, asserting that the proper handling of religious adiaphora was viewed as the primary means of securing civil peace against radical sectarian threats. Chapter 5, "The ground-work of stile: language and national identity," examines the quest for a standard English, arguing that the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were established as a linguistic golden age whose "undefiled" Teutonic character served as a bulwark against modern French-influenced "false refinement." Chapter 6, "Studied barbarity: Jonson, Spenser, and the idea of progress," addresses the complicated eighteenth-century reception of Edmund Spenser, whose seemingly "Gothic" designs challenged the era's positivist assumptions about literary progress while simultaneously offering a bridge to the timeless generality of allegory. Chapter 7, "The last age: Renaissance lost," concludes by arguing that the recognition of the Renaissance as a distinct "last age" first emerged through the eighteenth century's profound sense of distance from the sublime, masculine vigor of Milton and Shakespeare, which the moderns felt they could no longer replicate. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the work's broad scope, insightful arguments, and analysis of how eighteenth-century thinkers used the Elizabethan past to form a modern British cultural identity. Critical interest centers on the evaluation of historical periodization, canon-formation, and the central role assigned to a pivotal literary figure. Cummings, in TLS, praises the value to the history of the Renaissance idea but finds the argument about the origin of modernity inconsistent. Budge, writing in YWES, provides a positive outline, highlighting the account of historical methods emerging in early criticism. In AJ, Stock commends the clarity and useful tracing of intellectual developments. Budra, in Renaissance Quarterly, offers an approving review, noting the book demonstrates how a cultural identity was fashioned for the preceding age. Olsen, writing in JNL, finds the arguments convincing, specifically praising the final chapter on Milton. White, in N&Q, calls the account of the Renaissance canon fascinating and professional, though noting a structural omission. Kalter, writing in Modern Philology, appreciates the study of historiographical self-constitution but questions the justification for the heavy emphasis on one central figure. Brownley, in Albion, praises the impressive scope and accurate reflection of the broad topic. Finally, Jenkins, in Choice, delivers an enthusiastic review, highlighting the persuasive demonstration of how Augustan thinkers reinterpreted the sixteenth century to define national character.
Reviews: Martine Watson Brownley, Albion 36, no. 1 (2004): 140–41; Gavin Budge, YWES 84, no. 1 (2005): 551–98; Paul Budra, Renaissance Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2004): 726–27; Brian Cummings, TLS, no. 5237 (August 2003): 23; Rudolf Freiburg, Anglia 123, no. 4 (2005): 742–45; Sayre N. Greenfield, ECI 3 (September 2003): 50–52; E. J. Jenkins, Choice 41, no. 1 (2003): 0531; Barrett Kalter, MP 102, no. 2 (2004): 279–82; Bernice W. Kliman, Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 18 (2005): 220–22; Thomas G. Olsen, JNL 54, no. 1 (2003): 58–72; Christine Rees, NR, Series E, no. 6 (2002): 76–78; Hannah Smith, Royal Stuart Review, 2006, 20–23; R. D. Stock, AJ 15 (2004): 393–97; R. S. White, N&Q 51, no. 2 (2004): 196–98.
A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1986–1998
Lynch provides an exhaustive survey of late twentieth-century scholarship, documenting a significant expansion in the field. The work organizes entries alphabetically by author rather than the traditional topical taxonomy, reflecting modern interdisciplinary shifts toward cultural studies, gender, and postcolonial theory. Lynch includes previously neglected formats such as doctoral dissertations, book reviews, and electronic resources. The preface by Korshin highlights the 'paradoxical' flourishing of Johnsonian studies amidst a contraction in the broader academic profession. Notable trends identified include the impact of the Short-Title Catalogue, the emergence of The Age of Johnson annual, and a burgeoning interest in Johnson’s relationships with women and his attitudes toward race. Lynch effectively maps the 'Great Cham’s' transition into the twenty-first century, recording a 'staggering' volume of scholia that confirms the subject's enduring relevance.
Lipking traces the evolution of Johnson's professional identity, arguing that he transitioned from a "retired and uncourtly scholar" and anonymous journeyman into a "national man of letters" through a series of deliberate authorial choices. Rather than a standard biography of the man, Lipking examines the "life that he put in his work," beginning with early compositions like "On a Daffodill" and culminating in the "Life of Savage" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes". The narrative highlights the pivotal role of the "Dictionary of the English Language" in forging a new authorial role: a representative of the British people who "holds the language in trust". Lipking analyzes Johnson’s complex relationship with precursors like Joseph Addison and contemporaries like James Boswell and Hester Lynch Piozzi, noting how these associations helped create the "folk-image" of "Dr. Johnson". The text examines Johnson’s transition from private struggle to public "literary dictator," exploring how his work on Shakespeare and the "Lives of the English Poets" institutionalized a unified poetic commonwealth. Lipking concludes that Johnson's authority rests on a "diffusion of responsibility" across vast texts, appealing to the "common sense" of the "common reader" to validate his lasting legacy. Chapter 1, 'The Birth of the Author: The Letter to Chesterfield,' addresses the foundational moment of modern authorship through an analysis of the rhetorical strategies and historical significance of the 1755 missive, arguing that the document represents a revolutionary declaration of independence from aristocratic patronage. Chapter 2, 'First Flowers: Johnson's Beginnings,' examines early juvenile works to reveal a recurring tension between intense ambition and preemptive dejection, a psychological and literary pattern that would inform the development of a unique authorial project designed to provide English prose with a new weight and moral energy. Chapter 3, 'Becoming an Author: London; Life of Savage,' explores the transformation from anonymous hack to professional man of letters, asserting that the apprenticeship on Grub Street and the study of Richard Savage’s tragicomic career provided the necessary crucible for refining an ideal of authorship based on service, learning, and the pursuit of objective truth. Chapter 4, 'Preferment's Gate: The Vanity of Human Wishes,' addresses the pedagogical shift in tone and the mastery of poetic precision, arguing that the poem serves as a strategic intervention against transient cultural trends by focusing on universal human disappointments and the necessity of religious submission. Chapter 5, 'Man of Letters: A Dictionary of the English Language,' addresses the transition from a solitary scholar to a national cultural authority, contending that the lexicographical project served to create a new authorial identity—the "national man of letters"—who holds the language in trust for the collective nation. Chapter 6, 'The Living World: The Rambler,' addresses the renegotiation of the contract between author and audience through the periodical essay, arguing that the series uses the internal monologue of the authorial persona to involve the reader in a shared moral journey through a world of universal discontent. Chapter 7, 'Reclaiming Imagination: Rasselas,' argues that the narrative deliberately frustrates traditional expectations of fictional resolution to force the reader into a more authentic engagement with the instability of life and the "dangerous prevalence" of the imagination. Chapter 8, 'The Theater of Mind: The Plays of William Shakespeare,' addresses the critical methodology of the 1765 edition, asserting that the literal-minded focus on particular beauties rather than Romantic unity actually stems from a surplus of imagination that prioritizes moral truth over theatrical illusion. Chapter 9, 'Journeying Westward: Political Writings; A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,' addresses the late-career anxieties regarding a changing reading public, arguing that the political pamphlets reveal a defensive reaction against a newly literate "rabble" while seeking to preserve a community of values rooted in tradition and faith. Chapter 10, 'Touching the Shore: The Lives of the English Poets,' addresses the construction of a national poetic canon, contending that the work successfully merges biographical narrative with critical judgment to create a unified poetic commonwealth that reflects the common sense of the "common reader". Chapter 11, 'The Life to Come: Johnson's Endings,' addresses the enduring authority and legacy of the authorial persona, concluding that the core principles of intellectual freedom and moral concern for the "troubles of mind" ensure a continued afterlife for the work in the eyes of future generations. Critical reaction is mixed. Scholarly journals offer highly favorable assessments, while newspaper and mainstream reviewers express stark disagreement. In Modern Philology, DeMaria commends the narrative as a necessary corrective to mechanical views of print culture, praising its readable, coherent portrait of authorial development. Fix, in Biography, finds the study a sophisticated, essential reference that illuminates a professional identity of literary service. Writing in AJ, Kaminski praises the elegant, imaginative contextualization of text and moral seriousness, though he questions the reliance on psychological interpretations. Lamb, in SEL, views the work positively for gracefully connecting a personal predicament of professionalization with market conditions. In RES, Redford describes the volume as a cogent, poised study that reanimates the author's relationship with readers, despite minor lapses into arch commentary. But public reviews diverge sharply. Murphy, in the Globe and Mail, delivers a scathing critique, disputing the book's critical competence and rejecting its psychological speculations. O'Hagan, in the London Review of Books, dismisses the text as dreary, overly academic, and failed in capturing the subject's spirit. In the TLS, Suarez attacks the narrative for circularity, determinism, and significant factual lapses regarding collaborators and sources. Langan, in the Buffalo News, provides a mixed assessment, disputing the significance attached to career transitions but praising individual poem analyses. Finally, Schwartz, writing in Albion, condemns the text as a bloodless academic meditation that lacks a fresh thesis and fails to capture the subject's humanity.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, Review 23 (2001): 175–86; Michael Bundock, NR, Series E, no. 1 (1997): 75–76; Robert DeMaria Jr., MP 98, no. 3 (2001): 495–99; First Things 89 (1999): 63; Stephen Fix, Biography 22, no. 4 (1999): 614–18; Derek Jarrett, NYRB 46, no. 5 (1999): 39–42; Thomas Kaminski, AJ 11 (2000): 333–40; Jonathan Lamb, SEL 41, no. 3 (2001): 646–47; Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News, November 22, 1998; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 47 [245], no. 1 (2000): 131–32; Jack Lynch, Choice 36, no. 7 (1999): 1267; Alan T. McKenzie, ECS 34, no. 3 (2001): 466–70; John Mullan, The Guardian, March 6, 1999; Rex Murphy, Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 12, 1998; Andrew O’Hagan, LRB 22, no. 19 (2000): 7–8; William H. Pritchard, Hudson Review 52, no. 1 (1999): 133–40; Claude Rawson, New Criterion 17, no. 10 (1999): 74–78; Bruce Redford, RES, n.s., 51, no. 201 (2000): 137–38; Christopher Ricks, Boston Globe, November 8, 1998; Richard B. Schwartz, Albion 31, no. 3 (1999): 490–41; Richard B. Schwartz, Biography 23, no. 3 (2000): 604; Michael Shinagel, Harvard Review 16 (1999): 165–66; Clifford Siskin, SEL 39, no. 3 (1999): 630–31; Gerald H. Strauss, Magill’s Literary Annual 2 (1999): 835–39; Michael F. Suarez, TLS, no. 5027 (1999): 8; Virginia Quarterly Review 75, no. 2 (1999): A57; YWES 79, no. 1 (1998): 381–410.
Lynch provides a comprehensive reference work that situates Johnson within the cultural, intellectual, and social landscapes of the eighteenth century. Forty-seven chapters by leading experts explore the diverse contexts of Johnson's career, ranging from his domestic life and personal correspondence to broader themes of empire, science, and the law. The volume opens with a detailed chronology and investigations into his life and publication history, highlighting how "by necessity an author" Johnson established himself as the era's preeminent man of letters. Contributors examine his critical fortunes, documenting the reception of his works from his own time to the present and analyzing the visual representations that shaped his popular image. The collection emphasizes recent shifts in scholarship that move subjects once considered peripheral, such as slavery and women writers, to the center of Johnsonian studies. Chapters investigate his "pragmatic piety" within Anglicanism and his complex, often hostile, relationship with America and the concept of empire. Lynch presents this work as a vade mecum for understanding how Johnson's "uniquely encyclopedic mind somehow stands for his entire world."
Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle
Lee and his contributors examine Johnson’s social and literary networks, divided into two sections: "Personal Relationships: Letters and Conversation" and "Literary Relationships: Major Texts and Topics." Part I contextualizes Johnson's correspondence with "young dogs" Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell (John Radner); traces his thirty-year, often argumentative contact with language reformer James Elphinston (Christine Jackson-Holzberg); and uses fresh evidence to analyze the "Hottentot" conversational dispute between Boswell and Reverend John Dun (James J. Caudle). Part II analyzes literary influence and collaboration: James E. May investigates Oliver Goldsmith’s extensive self-revisions to The Traveller; Marilyn Francus explores the conflicting politics of literary celebrity between Johnson and Frances Burney; and Lance Wilcox identifies four distinct narrative personae in the Life of Savage. Further essays address Arthur Murphy’s poetic response to Johnson’s "exalted merit" (Anthony W. Lee); the intersection of Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Boswell within the slavery debate (Elizabeth Lambert); the generational divide over "sensibility" in Johnson’s relationship with Anna Seward (Claudia Thomas Kairoff); and a comparison of Johnson and Thomas Warton’s disparate negotiations with the "popular reader" (Christopher Catanese). Lee concludes that these "parliament of explorations" clarify Johnson's profound cultural influence and his transition from Augustan values to those of sentiment. Critical reception of this collection characterizes it as a high-level scholarly excavation of the "rich community of friendships and antagonisms" surrounding its central subject. Lynch and Walker note that the ten new perspectives effectively transition from archival "minutiae" to major themes such as "literary celebrity" and the "politics of slavery," successfully reminding readers that authorship is rarely a solitary endeavor. Boyd and Saxton praise the exploration of relational dynamics, specifically citing Radner’s analysis of the shift from "defensive" early correspondence to the "intimate" bond formed during the Highland tour. While Burke and Reddick appreciate the focus on the subject's "paternal role" toward younger protégés like Langton and Chambers, they also highlight the volume's necessary attention to female contemporaries; for instance, Boyd and Walker examine the "proto-Romantic" contrasts with Seward and the resistance to "public intimacy" displayed by Burney. Despite the focus on "volatile moments" and "tensions" noted by Saxton and Burke, Reddick and Lynch conclude that the expertise of the various contributors makes this a "valuable resource" that generates a fuller knowledge of both well-known and "little-known" figures within the circle.
Publisher's blurb: "Lee and his contributors challenge traditional stereotypes of Johnson as a nostalgic reactionary, instead positioning him as a representative of modernity whose work resonates with the themes and techniques of High Modernism. The volume traces Johnson's influence on and affinities with major figures such as T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jorge Luis Borges. Individual chapters examine diverse topics: Melvyn New analyzes urban Christianity in Johnson and Eliot; Anthony W. Lee compares Johnson’s and Woolf’s biographical and critical methodologies; Joe Moffett explores Pound’s ambivalent "anxiety of influence" regarding Johnson’s verse; Clement Hawes investigates anti-colonialist "antinomies of progress" across Johnson, Conrad, and Joyce; Jack Lynch discusses Johnson’s role as a cultural touchstone during the Great War; Thomas M. Curley links Johnson’s and Beckett’s shared focus on life’s limitations; Carrie D. Shanafelt delineates aesthetic resistance to empiricism in Nabokov and Johnson; Greg Clingham reflects on Borges’s view of Johnson as the quintessential English writer; and Robert G. Walker triangulates Johnson with the German modernist Ernest Borneman. The collection demonstrates that Johnson’s "empirical temper" and "moral earnestness" align him with Modernism's habit of looking back at tradition while navigating an alienated, technological, and urbanized world." Critics are generally favorable, praising the collection's examination of the subject's impact on the twentieth-century imagination. Kraft's enthusiastic review in Choice commends the volume for reshaping perceptions of literary history, particularly highlighting investigations into urban life, science, and the Great War. Writing in ECL, Boyd emphasizes the insightful connections made between the subject's Christian faith and modernist figures, noting the shared urban pessimism and psychic depression identified in comparative readings of poetry. Sitter (1650–1850) values the dialogue established with early twentieth-century writers, explaining how a shared skepticism toward imperial progress and urbanity connects the subject to figures like Conrad, Joyce, and Woolf, while his psychological anxieties fascinated Beckett. Wilcox, in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, offers a more tempered assessment, disputing the editorial attempt to fashion a quasi-modernist persona and arguing that the scholarly value resides instead in the subject's resistance to modern assumptions. While Wilcox finds that the chapters on Eliot, Woolf, and Beckett provide genuine historical and thematic ties, he notes that other entries circle out with diminishing returns. Hitchens, in The Lamp, adds a favorable notice that focuses on the deep intertextual engagements and shared generic practices with Woolf.
Dead Masters: Mentoring and Intertextuality in Samuel Johnson
Lee explores the "darker subtext" of mentoring and intertextuality in Johnson's career, focusing on how "dead masters" such as Dryden, Pope, and Addison shaped his literary identity. Using a "mentoring paradigm," Lee analyzes the "agonistic break" between master and protégé, where the later author seeks to "defy or elide the mentor's authority" to establish independent creative space. The text examines "An Epitaph on Claudy Phillips" as a "minor masterpiece" born from the "agonistic fire" of Johnson's competitive relationship with his pupil Garrick. Lee demonstrates that Johnson's "intertextual" sensibility informs his critical project, noting that "all texts are revisionary rewritings of previous texts." The study investigates Johnson's "mentoring imperative" to instruct others, visible in his fictional characters Dick Minim and Imlac, while also tracing his "darkly agonistic flashes" regarding the "anxiety of influence." Lee argues that Boswell "assimilated and subtly exhibited" this Johnsonian perspective, eventually using the master's lessons to "turn the tables upon him" in the Life. Chapter 1, "Johnson's Symbolic Mentors: Addison, Dryden, and Rambler 86," addresses the psychological and textual influence of literary precursors, specifically examining how agonizing competition with these "dead masters" informed the authorial identity and output. Chapter 2, "The Poetics of Gloom: Samuel Johnson as Intertextual Critic," argues that a pervasive, agonistic intertextuality defines this critical methodology, illustrating how literary "theft" and imitation are deployed as strategic survival mechanisms. Chapter 3, "Between Texts: Intertextual Brackets in Johnson’s Shakespeare and Milton," explores the stabilizing presence of Renaissance masters, analyzing intertextual collations that facilitated a reconciliation with mortality and personal professional legacies.
Essays from a conference in 1984 marking the bicentennial of Johnson’s death. It addresses the prevailing paradox: Johnson’s literary standing depends more upon Boswell’s narrative than appreciation of his compositions. The papers diminish this effect through revaluation of Johnson’s life and production. They assert biography need not depend solely on Boswell. The collection groups studies on Johnson’s life, his intellectual growth, and interpretations of his writings. It explores Johnson’s lesser works (letters, reviews, essays) showing they guide his intellectual achievement. Essays include analysis of Johnson’s final days (Korshin), biography (Savage, Epstein), lexicography (DeMaria), law (Curley), and epistolary technique (Grundy). The research encourages focus on Johnson’s works within the context of his age’s literary production. Johnson’s reputation holds a unique position, known through both his works and the biographical narrative. Critics call this book a substantial yet methodologically traditional resource that serves as a testament to the flourishing state of modern scholarship. Kolb and Woodruff find the fourteen essays unusually enlightening, providing genuine intellectual pleasure through high-quality biographical and historical investigation. Kay highlights the volume’s success in diminishing ignorance regarding the subject’s unique reputation, specifically praising the new information revealed about historiography and French linguistic skills. Pittock suggests the collection successfully encourages a new valuation of the subject’s complete writings, effectively moving the critical focus away from a purely Boswellian biographical lens. But the reception is not without sharp dissent regarding the book’s cohesion and rigor. Womersley dismisses the collection as a "random" assortment of "low-pressure essays" and "dropsical footnotes" that resemble common-room conversation rather than serious investigation. Similarly, Baron observes that within the "consensus of clubbability," certain arguments may pass uncriticized, while Bonnell questions the lack of an index and the total absence of work on the subject's poetry. Although Carnochan characterizes the approach as "methodologically traditional," the general consensus remains that the contributions by scholars such as Brady, Grundy, and Seary exemplify the best of the field.
'A Neutral Being between the Sexes': Samuel Johnson's Sexual Politics
Within the context of Johnson's central preoccupation with human happiness, this study examines his attitudes toward women and important issues such as happiness in marriage, domestic violence, prostitution, and education. In particular, it focuses on Irene, The Rambler, and Rasselas. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics dividing over whether the text relies on unconvincing special pleading or provides an insightful recovery of progressive gender arguments rooted in religious dogma. At stake in the reviews is whether the close textual focus successfully reconfigures a major writer's sexual politics or ignores vital biographical and historical contexts. Basney, in Sewanee Review, praises the clear prose and grasp of how progressive views on male and female equality were derived from the Christian dogma of human equality before God, highlighting the strong reading of the drama and the female self-expression in the periodical essays. In BJECS, Rounce commends the challenge to misogynistic myths, presenting the subject as an open-minded mediator and highlighting the rewarding analysis of the play's power metaphors alongside a successful description of complex sexual politics. Conversely, Lynch's review in Choice identifies significant reservations, dismissing several arguments regarding psychological androgyny as unconvincing special pleading and criticizing the narrow focus that limits itself to a few select texts while ignoring real-life associations and extensive correspondence.
Reviews: Lionel Basney, Sewanee Review 107, no. 4 (1999): 110–12; Catherine Dille, NR, Series E, no. 1 (1997): 73–74; Jack Lynch, Choice 36, no. 6 (1999): 1065; Adam Rounce, BJECS 22, no. 2 (1999): 228.
A Biographer at Work: Samuel Johnson's Notes for the 'Life of Pope'
Kirkley provides a comprehensive edition and interpretation of Johnson’s handwritten notes for the 'Life of Pope', primarily focusing on British Library Add. MS. 5994 and the Dyce MS notes. She disputes the traditional view of Johnson as a cursory, unsystematic reader, arguing instead that his 'economical' reading was characterized by disciplined care and a strong sense of essential detail. The study documents Johnson’s immersive engagement with William Warburton’s 1751 edition of Pope’s 'Works' and Owen Ruffhead’s 1769 biography, while highlighting the importance of the Newcastle MS of Spence’s 'Anecdotes' and interviews with the Earl of Marchmont. Kirkley explains Johnson’s complex system of notation—including horizontal cancellations for reading errors, red diagonal cancels for composed text, and red underlining for intermediate thinking—as evidence of an ongoing, cumulative, and inferential process of 'revolving thoughts'. She argues that Johnson’s most original contributions, such as the history of the publication of Pope’s letters and the analysis of the 1743 'Dunciad', arose from his active effort to fill 'lacunae' in the existing hagiographic tradition. By treating the letters as both personal documents and 'prose epistles', Johnson constructed a 'biographical discordia concors' that interpreted Pope’s life as a series of shifting 'performances'. Kirkley concludes that the notes demonstrate a 'Baconian' model of knowledge generation, where Johnson yoked the roles of editor, critic, and biographer to produce an 'indelible sense of the pain that it was to be Pope'. Chapter 1, 'Description,' addresses the physical characteristics and organizational structure of the handwritten notes found in British Library Add. MS 5994, identifying them as working documents that reflect distinct stages of reading, gathering material, and textual production. Chapter 2, 'Dating the Notes and Manuscript: A Problematic,' explores the chronological evolution of these notes within the broader context of the preparation for the Life of Pope, situating their creation between October 1780 and May 1781. Chapter 3, 'Johnson's Source Texts and Methods of Noting,' identifies the primary printed and oral sources utilized, including Warburton’s 1751 edition of Pope's Works and Spence’s Anecdotes, while analyzing the specific shorthand and functional notation systems employed to facilitate composition. Chapter 4, 'Editorial Principles,' delineates the methodology for providing a typographical facsimile of the manuscript, emphasizing the preservation of abbreviations and ambiguous markings to maintain the directness of the original working mind. Chapter 5, 'Legend, Text, Annotations,' presents the transcribed text of the notes alongside detailed scholarly commentary that links specific jottings to their likely origins in Pope’s correspondence or early biographies. Chapter 6, 'Johnson as Reader: Linearity,' argues that the notes reveal a highly disciplined and systematic linear reading process that contradicts common scholarly assumptions of cursory reading habits. Chapter 7, 'The Problem of Pope's Letters,' examines how the careful study of Pope’s published correspondence served as a primary interpretive matrix for reconstructing the poet’s character and public performances. Chapter 8, 'Toward a New Biography of Pope,' addresses the substantive additions and original research incorporated into the biography, such as detailed accounts of the Homeric translations and the publishing history of the Dunciad, which filled gaps in the existing biographical tradition. Chapter 9, 'Constructing Pope's Character,' analyzes the qualitative leap from raw data to character interpretation, illustrating how the accumulation of inferences and details results in a stable yet dynamic composite portrait of the poet. Critics are generally favorable toward this examination of manuscript notes, praising its technical transcription but expressing reservations regarding its presentation and editing. An unsigned review in JNL evaluates the typographical facsimile as an essential resource that reveals an economical, cryptic notation system and expands the record of compositional processes. McLaverty (RES) finds the transcription excellent and the discussion enlightening, yet notes that the edition suffers from flawed annotation, textual errors, and the omission of manuscript photographs. In AJ, Tankard praises the exhaustive scholarship tracing sources through to the final biography, though he finds the presentation format awkward and critiques the lack of broader conclusions. Lurcock's review in N&Q commends the insights into the methods of accretion and combination, noting the text reconstructs a progress from linear reading to topical organization, even if it provides few major surprises for biographers. Lynch, in Choice, describes the study as a clear yet dense and demanding analysis of compositional methods, recommending it for specialists despite inadequate copyediting. Clarke (Biography) calls it an engrossing study that rises above mere usefulness by defending the subject against charges of carelessness and demonstrating a resistant, systematic mode of reading. Finally, an unsigned notice in Reference and Research Book News highlights how the explication of the complicated system of notation provides clear insight into the editorial process.
Kaminski provides the first systematic investigation of Johnson’s years of obscurity, challenging traditional narratives by analyzing his role as a professional "writer-for-hire." The study focuses on Johnson’s multifaceted relationship with Edward Cave and the 'Gentleman’s Magazine', where Johnson progressed from an occasional contributor to an "actual editor." Kaminski meticulously reconstructs Johnson’s editorial tasks, including the revision of William Guthrie’s Parliamentary debates, the adjudication of poetry prizes, and the orchestration of periodical "wars" against rivals like 'Common Sense'. A central finding is that Johnson’s primary commitment during 1738–1739 was not to the magazine itself but to two massive, ultimately failed scholarly translations: Sarpi’s 'History of the Council of Trent' and Crousaz’s 'Commentary on Pope’s Essay on Man'. Kaminski argues that Johnson’s tenure as editor was a "Sisyphean labor" that "found the magazine amateur and left it professional," introducing biography, economic commentary, and foreign scholarship to raise its intellectual caliber. The author identifies 1741–1743 as an "annus mirabilis" where Johnson authored over 260 pages of copy annually, primarily through the 'Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia'. These debates are interpreted not as realistic reporting but as "consciously artistic" rhetorical exercises based on classical models. Kaminski further explores the ethical and political impact of Johnson's relationship with Richard Savage, interpreting the 1739 political pamphlets as fundamentally conservative attacks on the "new order" of Whig corruption rather than expressions of radical Whiggism. Chapter 1, 'The Road to St. John's Gate', explores the initial period of professional uncertainty following the author's arrival in London, during which repeated failures in teaching and traditional scholarship compelled a reluctant shift toward periodical writing. It argues that the successful publication of London and the tactical submission of "Ad Urbanum" to Edward Cave established a commercial foundation that prioritized immediate literary breakthroughs over long-term creative projects. Chapter 2, 'The World of the Gentleman's Magazine', examines the mid-eighteenth-century literary milieu and the revolutionary role of the Gentleman's Magazine as a provincial compendium of metropolitan intellectual life. It addresses the professional relationships formed at St. John's Gate, identifying how interactions with figures like Elizabeth Carter and William Guthrie influenced a movement toward paying for original copy and elevating the magazine's amateur status. Chapter 3, 'A Miner in Literature', addresses the author’s transition from occasional contributor to "actual editor" and the various rhetorical ruses employed to circumvent parliamentary restrictions on reporting debates. It contends that while editorial duties were often perceived as drudgery, the introduction of abridged biographies and critical observations systematically improved the periodical's intellectual character. Chapter 4, 'Translating for Booksellers', argues that the author’s early subsistence was primarily derived from massive, often ill-fated scholarly translations for Edward Cave rather than magazine editing. The chapter analyzes how the failure of projects like the Sarpi translation, despite extensive labor, reflected a strategic but frustrating attempt to establish a scholarly reputation within a precarious book trade hierarchy. Chapter 5, 'Savage, Poverty, and Politics', re-evaluates the author's legendary relationship with Richard Savage, suggesting that their nighttime rambles were driven more by intellectual fellowship than by absolute homelessness. It contends that this association provided the political focus for two acid pamphlets, Marmor Norfolciense and the Compleat Vindication, marking a temporary incursion into opposition politics and Jacobite sentiment. Chapter 6, 'Resisting Fate', addresses the author's return to London following a failed attempt to secure a schoolmaster's position, leading to a renewed but more professionalized commitment to the Gentleman's Magazine. It analyzes a series of biographies, such as those of Blake and Drake, that leveraged public interest in contemporary naval warfare to provide sophisticated moral and speculation-heavy journalism. Chapter 7, 'The Parliamentary Debates', argues that the author’s versions of senate speeches were less failed reportage and more a conscious exercise in classical rhetorical art. It addresses the preservation of an essential "truth" through the techne of a rhetorician, emphasizing the sophisticated testing of political ideas over the realistic differentiation of individual speakers. Chapter 8, 'The Editor', examines the peak of the author’s involvement with the magazine between 1741 and 1742, during which he dominated content through "Foreign Histories," economic commentaries, and book reviews. The chapter maintains that this sustained labor transformed the magazine into a professional literary monthly, breaking its earlier insular and amateur boundaries. Chapter 9, 'In Search of Reputation', explores the author’s pursuit of various extramural projects, including the Harleian catalogue and a premature edition of Shakespeare, as desperate attempts to escape anonymity. It concludes that the ultimate decision to compile a dictionary represented a resilient shift toward a daunting, practical enterprise that would finally vindicate his genius and secure a lasting reputation. Reviews are universally favorable, with critics praising the work's rigorous historical scholarship, scrupulous objectivity, and successful demythologization of a major writer's obscure early London years. Carnochan, in TLS, commends the volume for correcting fictionalized accounts of extreme penury and personal friendships, while Pierce, writing in ECS, appreciates how re-creating contemporary journalistic practices makes the familiar new, even if the analysis leaves open the question of the subject's subsequent transformation into an eloquent moralist. In AJ, Curley highlights the scrupulous interpretation of early journalism and bibliographical chores, though he disputes a needlessly cool estimate of the subject's politics. Folkenflik's review in SEL applauds the careful scholarly detective work that teases significant findings from payment records, and Hume, also in SEL, celebrates the strikingly original focus on the commercial realities of Grub Street over conventional biography. Writing in RES, Womersley lauds the volume as a serious historical investigation that moves past speculative essays, while Middendorf, in JNL, commends the consistent analysis of the shifting book trade. Lurcock, in N&Q, finds the meticulous reconstruction of professional relationships a significant contribution, but questions the reliance on stylistic signatures for text attributions. In ECCB, Redford delivers an enthusiastic assessment, concluding that the thoroughly researched monograph offers careful adjustments to commonly held positions and remains of solid value to researchers. There is no divergence between popular and scholarly reception.
Reviews: Janet Barron, THES, no. 770 (1987): 19; W. B. Carnochan, TLS, no. 4420 (December 1987): 1396; Choice 25 (1987): 475; Thomas M. Curley, AJ 2 (1989): 483–86; Robert Folkenflik, SEL 27, no. 3 (1987): 533–34; Isobel Grundy, London Journal 13, no. 2 (1987): 164; Robert D. Hume, SEL 28, no. 3 (1988): 521–22; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 36, no. 1 (1989): 113–14; John H. Middendorf, JNL 46, no. 2 (1986): 2; Charles E. Pierce, ECS 22, no. 1 (1988): 102–5; Bruce Redford, ECCB 13 (1987): 457; David Womersley, RES, n.s., 40, no. 158 (1989): 274–75; YWES 68, no. 1 (1990): 362.
This volume re-evaluates Johnson's life and works by challenging William Hazlitt's characterization of his prose as a mechanical 'pendulum' lacking 'latitude and compromise.' Johnston and Mugglestone argue that eighteenth-century contexts, including Johnson's Dictionary, reveal the pendulum as an image of 'movement, variation, and mutability' rather than rigid oscillation. Individual contributors examine Johnson's 'ability to embrace rival impulses' across his career, from his early biographical work for Cave to the Lives of the Poets. Smallwood explores Johnson's 'moving, and often grief-inducing relationship' to time, while DeMaria identifies a stylistic shift toward 'colloquial ease' in his late biographies. Richetti analyzes the 'moral irresolution' of the essays, which use 'assertions and concessions' to dramatize the search for truthfulness. Further chapters address Johnson's 'powerfully realized personifications,' his use of habit in character formation, and the Dictionary's limited inclusion of female-authored sources. By focusing on 'uses and enjoyments of inconsistency,' the collection disputes the notion of Johnson as a 'complete balance-master' in favor of a more 'dynamic, interactive' figure whose work reflects the 'self-divided human mind' and the 'contradictions and mutability of daily experience.'
Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England
Hudson argues that Johnson was not merely a passive symbol of English national identity, a role he largely acquired after his death, but was an active and essential agent in its very creation. The book's central thesis is that Johnson’s personal career, his celebrated ascent from provincial obscurity to becoming the moral and literary dictator of London, directly parallels and intersects with England's own transformation into the world's dominant cultural and political force during the eighteenth century. Hudson’s primary method is to move beyond traditional biographical approaches to apply the lenses of modern cultural criticism to Johnson’s complete body of work. He examines Johnson's writings, conversation, and public persona through what he terms "scarcely explored directions," analyzing his engagement with the politics of social class and subordination, his complex and often surprisingly progressive views on women and feminism, his evolving relationship with party politics (moving from a "patriot" outsider to an establishment defender), his foundational role in shaping the modern "public sphere," and his deeply conflicted attitudes toward English nationalism and the burgeoning British empire. Hudson aims to do more than just illuminate Johnson; it seeks to understand "the nature of English nationhood" itself, using Johnson as its central case study. By exploring the deep relations between Johnson's career and the development of England's modern identity, the book offers new and provocative arguments about his literary achievement. For example, the Dictionary is re-framed not just as a work of lexicography but as a monumental act of cultural nationalism, an attempt to fix and elevate the language of a new imperial power. His Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland is read as a complex negotiation with the "other" within Britain, and his political tracts like Taxation No Tyranny are presented as serious engagements with the core principles of sovereignty and colonial order. Johnson emerges from this analysis not as a simple, reactionary Tory caricature, but as a profoundly influential and representative figure who, in the very act of defining his own literary authority, helped to articulate and construct the cultural and moral identity of modern England. Chapter 1, 'From "Rank" to "Class": The Changing Structures of Social Hierarchy,' addresses the transition from hereditary status to wealth-based order, identifying a crucial role in defining middle-class values through scholarship and linguistic standards. Chapter 2, 'Constructing the Middle-Class Woman,' argues that female roles became more public and educated to facilitate middle-rank social advancement, while simultaneously maintaining gender distinctions through a new domestic ideology. Chapter 3, 'From "Broad-Bottom" to "Party": The Rise of Modern English Politics,' addresses the evolution of a "new" Toryism founded on constitutional principles rather than Jacobite loyalties, mirroring the emergence of principled party politics. Chapter 4, '"The Voice of the Nation": The Evolution of the "Public",' argues that public order relies on law rather than "public spirit," while acknowledging the press's populist role and the common reader's authority in literature. Chapter 5, 'The Construction of English Nationhood,' addresses the shift from a fractured historical past toward a modern identity centered on progress, civilizing missions, and a burgeoning romantic interest in national antiquities. Chapter 6, 'The Material and Ideological Development of the British Empire,' argues that early mercantile expansion transitioned into a providential, moral imperialism, emphasizing a civilizing duty that would eventually define the Victorian era's global outlook. Critical reception of Nicholas Hudson’s Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England is generally favorable toward its historicist repositioning of the author within his contemporary social context, though reviewers frequently contest its specific conclusions regarding British imperialism. Folkenflik’s robust review in TLS praises the analysis of Johnson’s role in constructing the middle-class woman but strongly disputes the claim that he was a proto-imperialist, arguing instead that such a reading ignores the satiric intent of The Vanity of Human Wishes. DeMaria in JNL questions some of the evidence but applauds the intellectual challenge, calling the work a valuable contribution that reopens basic questions by reading Rasselas through economic and gender ideology. In AJ, Reddick commends the perceptive analysis of transforming concepts like class and nation but finds the overarching thesis speculative and occasionally overstated. Redford's review in RES characterizes the contextual approach as a useful corrective to other interpretations, but notes that it fails to offer fresh or incisive readings of Johnson's work and never fully realizes the promised union of author and age. Nokes's review in Times Higher Education Supplement approves of the bold argument linking a nascent English imperial mentality to Johnson's poetry, while Monod in Albion finds the book excellent and convincing, despite dismissing the treatment of Johnson's Jacobitism as a red herring. Finally, Scherwatzky in Eighteenth-Century Fiction judges the historicist approach well-informed but remains unconvinced by Hudson's arguments for Johnson's support of empire.
A Monument More Durable Than Brass: The Donald & Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson: An Exhibition
Publisher's blurb: "To commemorate the tercentenary of the birth of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), whose influence on his time was as monumental as his legacy is enduring, Harvard University's Houghton Library presents this exhibition catalogue of items drawn from the Donald & Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, bequeathed to the library in 2004 by Mary Hyde Eccles. This copiously illustrated catalogue documents sixty years of assiduous and painstaking effort on the part of Lady Eccles, initially in collaboration with her first husband, Donald F. Hyde, and later with the encouragement and support of her second husband, David, Viscount Eccles, to assemble one of the world's finest collections of eighteenth-century English literature. The catalogue, including essays on Johnson's literary durability and on Donald and Mary Hyde's life as collectors, pays tribute to a great literary icon and to a remarkably generous woman who devoted her life to collecting an astonishing array of books, manuscripts, prints, and other rare artifacts relating to his life and times."
Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library
Johnson After Three Centuries: New Light on Texts and Contexts
Publisher's blurb: "Johnson After Three Centuries: New Light on Texts and Contexts examines several aspects of Johnson's career through fresh perspectives and original interpretations by some of the best-known and widely-respected scholars of our time. Included are essays by James Basker, James Engell, Nicholas Hudson, Jack Lynch, and Allen Reddick."
First published as a special issue of Harvard Library Bulletin 20, nos. 3-4 (Sept. 2009).
Hinnant argues that the unifying impulse across Samuel Johnson's diverse and seemingly fragmented literary career is his profound and lifelong preoccupation with the theme of human limitation. The book seeks to provide an overall account of Johnson’s achievement by identifying this "central thread," moving beyond previous critical approaches that Hinnant finds reductive, whether they focus on a single aspect of Johnson’s personality, his psychology, or his mastery of genre. He contends that this vision of limitation is not a simple, pessimistic doctrine but a complex "problem" that Johnson confronts, re-examines, and redefines in each of his major works, adapting its expression to the specific formal constraints of the genre in which he is writing. Proceeding chronologically, Hinnant demonstrates how this central theme provides a coherent framework for understanding Johnson's entire output. Early works establish the theme, while *The Vanity of Human Wishes* and *Irene* explore the tragic limitations of human ambition and choice. In *The Rambler*, Johnson analyzes the psychological and moral limitations that govern everyday life, while *Rasselas* transforms this analysis into a philosophical fable about the futility of seeking perfect happiness in a world of constrained possibilities. The study shows how even Johnson's seemingly non-thematic works are shaped by this concern: the massive *Dictionary of the English Language* becomes an exploration of the inherent limits and instability of language itself, and the edition of Shakespeare is an engagement with a genius who best represents the heights and bounds of human creativity. The political tracts and the *Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland* are interpreted as inquiries into the limitations of social order and civilization. The culmination of this lifelong inquiry is found in the *Lives of the Poets*, which Hinnant presents as Johnson's final, ironic meditation on the vanity of literary wishes and the inescapable limitations of the authorial career. By tracing this persistent theme, Hinnant portrays Johnson's career not as a series of disconnected projects but as a sustained and heroic intellectual struggle, a constant dialectic that tests the boundaries of human existence while consistently affirming the dignity of the struggle itself. Chapter 1, 'Johnson and Newton: Dismantling the Plenum,' identifies a post-Newtonian ontology in which an interstitial vacuum replaces the traditional plenum, establishing the foundation for a career-long preoccupation with ontological vacuity. Chapter 2, 'Vacuity, Time and Happiness in Johnson's Moral Psychology,' applies this Newtonian critique to human consciousness, arguing that mental life is defined by discrete successions and compensatory supplements rather than stable, continuous plenitude. Chapter 3, 'Desire, Emulation and the Dialectic of Domination and Servitude in Irene,' analyzes the play as an unstable dialectic where heroic aspiration is consistently subverted by a creaturely dependency on the recognition of others. Chapter 4, 'The Decline of the Heroic: From London to The Vanity of Human Wishes,' traces a thematic shift from the binary oppositions of "country ideology" to a universalizing, farcical syntax of servile human wishing. Chapter 5, ''The Maze of Variation': Johnson's Philosophy of Language in the Plan and Preface to the Dictionary,' examines a linguistic theory defined by radical instability, where the signifier's caprice and the signified's superabundance render totalization and permanence impossible. Chapter 6, 'The Choice of Life: Art and Nature in Rasselas,' interprets the quest for happiness as a shifting ground of undecidability where the cultivation of any artificial choice is invariably undermined by its natural opposite. Chapter 7, 'The Anthropology of Natural Scarcity in A Journey to the Western Islands,' evaluates the text as an early anthropological investigation that replaces myths of plenitude with a vision of cultural fragmentation and natural penury. Chapter 8, 'Conclusion,' synthesizes these analyses, asserting that a professional scholar must view the major works as a rigorous, uncertain movement shuttling between the poles of pure negation and pure presence. The critical reception of this monograph identifies it as a "weighty and demanding" study that offers an "original and exciting" thesis linking the subject’s moral psychology to Newtonian physics. Middendorf and Wagoner commend the author for illustrating how the subject’s rejection of the "great chain of being" and "principles of plenitude" is rooted in Newton’s repudiation of the plenum, leading to a "conception of life as a vast emptiness needing to be filled up." Grundy and Lipking highlight the "originality" of applying this deconstructive approach—rooted in "ontological insecurity"—to a broad range of works, from the "exhilarating" analysis of Irene to the Lives of the Poets. However, critics also note significant drawbacks; Grundy finds the prose "dense" and disputes the reading of "binary oppositions" in Rasselas, while Lipking observes that the deconstructive focus creates a "distance from the practical, ethical concerns" the subject valued most. The most severe critique comes from Wharton, who, despite acknowledging the "provocative" nature of the "void" theory, labels the work "very shoddy" due to "numerous and gross" textual violations, including over sixty errors in several pages of verse analysis. Ultimately, while Grundy concludes the work is "incisive" and Wagoner predicts it will be "seminal," the study remains a "complex" and controversial contribution that places the subject’s skepticism in direct conversation with both "modern literary theory" and "contemporary natural philosophy."
The second edition differs from the first (1960) in the addition of a highly polemical Introduction to the Second Edition. The original assessments and methodology of the 1960 volume are retained, with Greene standing by his original positions and correcting only a few minor facts and typographical errors. The volume also substitutes the original list of works cited with a Selected Bibliography, which lists works of literary criticism and biography up to 1989, though the political history section remained reliant on the Namierite political history models of the 1950s. The extensive Introduction (pages ix-lxv) was characterized by scholars as spirited and was deemed significant enough to be considered "worth the price of the book." In this new Introduction, Greene forcefully reasserts his view of Johnson as an empirical, skeptical political thinker. The Introduction serves as the opening salvo in a major scholarly controversy, as Greene attacked the recently revived argument that Johnson was a Jacobite and Nonjuror. Greene branded J. C. D. Clark's identification of Johnson as a "Nonjuror" as "nonsense" and the "height of absurdity," and he "savaged" or "shredded" the interpretations advanced by Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill. This direct confrontation within the Introduction launched a prolonged and acrimonious scholarly exchange that continued for decades. Chapter 1, ‘Introduction,’ addresses the historiographical misconceptions of the “Whig interpretation,” arguing that the conventional view of a binary, ideological struggle between Whigs and Tories misrepresents the fluid, personal nature of eighteenth-century politics. Chapter 2, ‘The Midlands Background,’ addresses the formative influence of the Civil War’s local legacy and the complex political landscape of Staffordshire, which provided an education in practical power rather than abstract dogma. Chapter 3, ‘The Young Johnson (1709–1737),’ argues that his early domestic life and religious influences, particularly the burgeoning Evangelical movement, instilled a profound humanitarianism and individual moral responsibility that fundamentally shaped his subsequent political orientation. Chapter 4, ‘London and Walpole (1737–1739),’ addresses his early radicalism and involvement with the “patriot” opposition, asserting that his aggressive anti-Walpolian pamphlets were rooted in a Lockean defense of free inquiry. Chapter 5, ‘The Parliamentary Debates (1740–1743),’ addresses his career as a legislative reporter, arguing that this work revealed a maturing skepticism toward political cant and a nuanced appreciation for the complexities of governance. Chapter 6, ‘The Secondary Legislator (1744–1760),’ argues that his writings during the Seven Years' War reflect a consistent anti-imperialist stance and a conviction that individual happiness remains largely independent of administrative success. Chapter 7, ‘The Reign of George III (1760–1784),’ addresses his eventual support for the monarchy, contending that this was not a lapse into reaction but a principled preference for a popular sovereign over a plutocratic Whig oligarchy. Chapter 8, ‘A Recapitulation and Some Reflections,’ argues that his political identity was defined by an empirical, independent skepticism that resisted partisan labels and prioritized the moral character of individuals over institutional forms.
Samuel Johnson and the Scale of Greatness
Grundy examines Johnson's career-long preoccupation with the relative nature of human achievement and the moral implications of "worldly greatness." While Christian moralists traditionally advocate for the renunciation of fame, Johnson identifies greatness as a primary driver of human action and maintains that "nothing can be great which is not right." Grundy argues that Johnson uses various "scales of measurement"—physical, moral, and intellectual—to challenge his readers' perceptions of what is important. The monograph traces this theme through his early "Lilliputian" parliamentary reports, his biographical tributes to both unsuccessful and triumphant individuals, and major works such as The Vanity of Human Wishes and The Lives of the Poets. Grundy explores how Johnson balances a "vindication of littleness" in daily life with a stubborn loyalty to a "heroic ideal" that acknowledges human limitation. By analyzing his frequent use of optical metaphors like the telescope and microscope, Grundy demonstrates how Johnson requires readers to observe the "general concatenation of society" where the "great and the mean" remain inextricably linked. Ultimately, Johnson's thought emphasizes that while the search for excellence is laudable, achieved greatness remains "beyond the grasp of humanity" and subject to the "doom of man." Chapter 1, 'Comparison,' addresses the foundational role of comparative judgment in human intellect, asserting that excellence and significance are inherently relative rather than absolute. Chapter 2, 'Scale,' explores the historical obsession with measurement, highlighting the psychological impact of microscopic and telescopic perspectives on the perception of human importance. Chapter 3, 'Swift and the Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia,' examines the early use of Lilliputian satire to diminish political figures, demonstrating how shifts in scale expose the underlying pettiness of public affairs. Chapter 4, 'Vindication of Littleness,' argues for the inherent moral dignity found in domestic detail and the daily lives of unremarkable individuals. Chapter 5, 'Criticism of Pettiness,' analyzes the intellectual failure of overvaluing trivial minutiae in literature and life, contrasting it with a true human standard. Chapter 6, 'Competition,' addresses the pervasive, often destructive nature of human rivalry and the inescapable struggle for superiority among peers. Chapter 7, 'Community,' identifies the ideal of social concatenation and mutual assistance as the necessary antidote to the isolation of competitive ambition. Chapter 8, 'Malignity,' investigates the sinister manifestations of malice, particularly those rooted in the pleasure of witnessing another's suffering without hope of reward. Chapter 9, 'Superior Observers,' examines the disturbing figure of the detached watcher, whose height and distance preclude the possibility of genuine human sympathy. Chapter 10, 'Greatness and Heroism,' contrasts early idealized biographies with a later skepticism that subjects the "great man" to the realities of common humanity. Chapter 11, 'Greatness and Ourselves,' relates the pursuit of excellence to the universal human condition, emphasizing that real greatness requires a voluntary recognition of one's own littleness. Critical reaction is mixed, though scholarly reviews lean toward the favorable. Folkenflik, in SEL, labels the monograph a fresh account that balances antithetical pairs to structure a convincing picture of intellectual scale. In AJ, Alkon commends the original appreciation of relativistic, Christian-grounded standards, highlighting the explication of tone manipulation through heroic allusions. Damrosch, in MLR, finds the work a patient exploration of familiar ambiguities that treats ambivalence as an interpretive virtue. Writing in ECS, Lipking defines the central concept as a good exploration of a flexible intelligence, though he warns that some readings are tendentious. Gold's review in the bibliography for the period praises the illuminating investigation of central modes of thought, specifically noting the treatment of the lower-keyed elegy. Boulton, in N&Q, finds the argument regarding the interplay between the petty and the great convincing, particularly the focus on competition and community. But Clingham, in RES, offers a mixed assessment; he praises the instructive focus on moral flexibility but asserts that the final chapters on Shakespeare are the least satisfactory because a stark juxtaposition overlooks the continuity between a poet's life and work. Burke, in South Atlantic Review, also provides a mixed review, disputing the climactic placement of individual elegies and criticizing the thematic arrangement for lacking a logical plan of development. Finally, Trickett's review in New Rambler describes it as a confused book that arbitrarily imposes a limited thesis.
Samuel Johnson as Book Reviewer: A Duty to Examine the Labors of the Learned
Hanley examines Johnson’s neglected output as a journalist and reviewer, identifying forty-seven reviews contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine, the Literary Magazine, and the Critical Review. The study argues that Johnson used the review format not merely for hackwork but as a platform for moral, political, and scientific inquiry. Hanley identifies a consistent reviewing technique characterized by a refusal to make dogmatic pronouncements, a focus on authorial intent, and the artful use of extracts to transform reviews into independent essays. Johnson prioritizes authors demonstrating a beneficent impulse and routinely provides a sympathetic hearing to those facing marketplace hostility. The monograph contextualizes Johnson’s practices against rivals like the Monthly Review and Critical Review, asserting that Johnson viewed reviewing as a modern form of literary patronage designed to support meritorious authors. Hanley explores Johnson’s evaluations across diverse fields, including historical, literary, philosophical, and scientific titles, while addressing authenticity issues within the Johnsonian canon. Salient analysis highlights Johnson’s "telltale restraint" and his conviction that a writer's primary duty is "to make the world better." Hanley demonstrates that these "ephemerae of learning" illustrate the vastness of Johnson’s learning and his deep concern with the mid-eighteenth-century literary marketplace. Chapter 1, 'Samuel Johnson and the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Literary World,' establishes the historical context of a disordered literary marketplace and examines how periodical essays formulated a framework for professional authorial integrity. Chapter 2, 'Johnson as a Reviewer of Historical, Literary, and Philosophical Titles in the Literary Magazine,' analyzes twelve evaluations of humanities texts, emphasizing a cautious critical approach that prioritizes authorial intent over dogmatic judgment. Chapter 3, 'Johnson as a Reviewer of Journalistic Publications, Fugitive Pieces, and Books on Public Affairs in the Literary Magazine,' explores seventeen reviews where book analysis served as a medium for intervening in contemporary political and social controversies. Chapter 4, 'Johnson as a Reviewer of Works in the Physical, Practical, and Natural Sciences in the Literary Magazine,' investigates eleven reviews of scientific treatises, highlighting a commitment to making abstruse, specialized knowledge accessible to a general readership. Chapter 5, 'Johnson as an Occasional Reviewer in the Gentleman's Magazine and the Critical Review,' examines seven later reviews characterized by increased critical assertiveness and strong support for literary friends. Chapter 6, 'Book Reviewing in the Moral Essays: Johnson's Commentary on Recently Published Books in the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler,' details how allusive commentary in moral essays functioned as a form of literary evaluation against contemporary trends.
This Invisible Riot of the Mind: Samuel Johnson's Psychological Theory
Gross employs a psychoanalytic framework to analyze Johnson’s pervasive anxiety and his "wretched state" of mental distress. Gross argues that Johnson’s fear of madness was not merely a private obsession but a central theme that animated his moral and creative work, particularly his critique of the dangerous prevalence of imagination. The study examines Johnson’s relationship with his mother and his early experiences of failure and poverty as foundational to his psychological development. Gross analyzes the "invisible riot" in texts such as the Rambler, the Idler, and Rasselas, interpreting the Astronomer’s insanity and Imlac’s observations on the "uncertainty of our condition" as reflections of Johnson’s own psychological volatility. Additionally, Gross explores Johnson’s interactions with his domestic circle, including the Thrales and the varied dependents in his household, as attempts to manage his internal chaos through social structures and aggressive conversation. By situating Johnson within the eighteenth-century context of medical and moral theories of madness, the monograph demonstrates how his literature functions as a therapeutic struggle to achieve self-mastery over a rebellious mind. Chapter 1, "'Make Your Boy Tell You His Dreams': The Intrapsychic Life," addresses the foundational influence of Samuel Johnson’s early childhood and his strained parental relations, arguing that his recurring depression and "vile melancholy" were motivated by complex intrapsychic events and primitive, repressed images of his parents. Chapter 2, "Medical Psychology in the Eighteenth Century," explores Johnson’s engagement with contemporary psychiatric thought, contending that he moved beyond the era’s "moral management" and repressive regimes of rationality to adopt a pioneering, psychodynamic understanding of mental illness based on Lockean empiricism. Chapter 3, "'A Child is Being Beaten': The Early Career," examines Johnson’s early professional struggles and his "Life of Savage," arguing that these works reflect a masochistic identification with failure and a profound psychological reckoning with self-created calamity. Chapter 4, "The Physician of the Soul," addresses the integration of religious faith and psychological restoration, asserting that Johnson’s moral writings use the paradigm of a "physic of the soul" to analyze how human desire is mediated by the internal agencies of conscience and the superego. Chapter 5, "'Wrecked by Success': Approaching Fame and Fortune," explores the psychological paradoxes of Johnson’s middle years, arguing that his periodical essays analyze the "voluntary delusion" and hidden conflicts that cause individuals to sabotage their own worldly achievements through unconscious guilt. Chapter 6, "The Uses of Enchantment," addresses Johnson’s investigation into the "dangerous prevalence of imagination," identifying how he used the allegorical and narrative structures of Rasselas to map the mind’s addictive cravings and its "invisible riot" of internal consciousness. Chapter 7, "Character and Culture," examines the absolute antagonism between human instinct and social regulation, arguing that Johnson viewed civilization and law as necessary cultural coercions designed to secure private happiness against the eruptive force of "private malignity." The final chapter considers Johnson as a unique pioneer in the science of the mind, concluding that his scrupulous introspection and commitment to empirical truth forged a developmental theory of the psyche that significantly anticipated modern Freudian psychoanalysis. Critical reaction is mixed. Porter, in Medical History, praises the monograph as well-organized and powerfully written, celebrating how it positions the subject as an exceptionally acute analyst of dark, irrational impulses akin to a Freudian unconscious. Brack's review in Rocky Mountain Review similarly credits the chronological analysis for situating the writer effectively within eighteenth-century psychological debates. But Booth, in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, delivers a scathing critique, faulting the study for bad writing, clumsy thinking, extensive factual errors, and a superficial translation of religious struggles into Oedipal terms. Grundy, in ECS, also rejects the classical psychoanalytic methodology, criticizing its pervasive sensationalism, stylistic excess, and failure to account for specific historical contexts. In AJ, Parke notes the text positions the writer as a pioneer of modern psychology who favored compassionate treatment of mental illness over physical restraint. Staves's review in SEL observes that the study treats the essays as timeless wisdom literature anticipating Freud. However, Weinsheimer, in JEGP, challenges the central thesis that the subject was a precursor to modern scientific psychology, arguing instead that the true value lies in a sensitive rendition of his literary insights. Brooks, in Isis, offers a mixed assessment, praising the prose but disputing the whiggish historiography that neglects the Scottish School. Finally, Lurcock, in N&Q, and Wiltshire, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, both question the dynamic unconscious reinterpretation, with Wiltshire arguing that the dynamic psycho-dynamic argument conflates conflict with scientific theory.
This collection of nine essays reappraises Johnson on the bicentenary of his death, emphasizing his intellectual range and contemporary relevance. Grundy introduces the volume by examining Johnson’s use of maxims and his reliance on shared human wisdom rather than unique insight. Folkenflik discusses Johnson's extraordinary scope across nineteen genres and his role as a literary dictator. Korshin relates Johnson’s scholarly methods to Renaissance polymaths, while Kinkead-Weekes explores his complex, often critical responses to the rise of the novel and the works of Fielding and Richardson. Giddings and Erskine-Hill analyze Johnson's political character, focusing on his parliamentary reporting for the Gentleman's Magazine and potential Jacobite dimensions in his poetry. Cunningham studies the passions and the human condition in the Rambler, and Woodruff identifies Rasselas as part of the Menippean satire tradition. Lascelles concludes by examining Johnson’s commemorative writing and the transmutation of personal experience into literature. The volume presents Johnson as a figure who resists simplification, whose mind remains a beckoning region for ongoing discovery. Critics are generally favorable, praising the collection of nine essays for its revisionary focus on unfamiliar aspects of the author's intellectual range and contemporary interest. Lipking, in ECS, calls it a lively, genial volume that charts the measurement of greatness against the petty, though he notes the thesis is occasionally pushed too hard. In AJ, Vance evaluates the collection as uneven but notes its best pieces provide fresh perspectives on the author's beckoning mind, particularly lauding the generic classification of his prose fiction as Menippean satire while disputing the originality of the essay on parliamentary reporting. Korshin, in SEL, provides a positive assessment, favoring the publication of these new pieces over the common practice of reprinting older, traditional essays. Lurcock's review in Notes and Queries commends the volume for liberating the author's works from historical misrepresentations and showcasing an exploratory, flexible, and undogmatic thinker. Similarly, Tomarken, in The Eighteenth Century, outlines the volume as an able, satisfying, and provocative celebration that successfully tests accepted maxims. Gray, writing in Dalhousie Review, finds the scholarship mixed in quality and inconsistent in editorial focus but agrees that it effectively demonstrates a magnificently stocked mind. Nokes, in the TLS, highlights the scrutiny of the author's aphoristic style and political impartiality, while Pailler's review in Études Anglaises praises the valuable treatments of the novel, humanism, and politics. Finally, Wheeler, in British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, notes that the commemorative collection successfully grapples with genre classifications and essential Tory sympathies.
English Literary Studies, University of Victoria
A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1970–1985
Greene and Vance present a systematic bibliography of scholarship concerning Johnson, covering the period from 1970 to 1985. The work acts as a continuation of the earlier Johnsonian Studies, 1887-1965, and its 1970 supplement. Entries are organized into twenty-five thematic categories, including "Bibliography and Canon," "Biographical Studies," "Political and Social Views," and specific sections for major works such as the Dictionary, Rasselas, and The Lives of the Poets. The editors provide a detailed introduction discussing the "Johnson Industry" and trends in late twentieth-century criticism. The volume includes an index of authors and subject cross-references to facilitate navigation of the 1,832 listed items.
Cochrane entry 45. A bibliography listing nearly one hundred editions, books, and articles related to Johnsonian studies that were published between 1968 and 1986.
This collection of essays, published on the bicentennial of Johnson's death, examines the preeminence of Johnson within the metamorphic and highly varied literary culture of the later eighteenth century. Engell defines the period as one marked by great changes in literary form and a shift from classical authority toward individualistic myths and a new rhetoric of sensibility. Contributions address Johnson's moral philosophy and his multiplicity of powerful consciousness, alongside the roles of Boswell and Piozzi, who bring the age to life through immediate and dramatic textures. Individual studies analyze Johnson's life and thought, his literary criticism, and his relations with contemporaries, including his fraternal kindness and his status as the great Cham of literature. The volume explores how Johnson and his circle engaged with the social and individual life of the time, treating literature as a direct engagement in aesthetic and ethical problems. Critics call this book a significant contribution to modern scholarship that successfully bypasses Boswellian definitions to explore the canon. Abbott and W. H. praise Bond for dismantling images of intolerance by documenting associations with Thomas Hollis. Mary Hyde receives accolades for her absorbing account of American collectors, which Rogers labels the volume’s chief delight. But the critical consensus remains mixed. Rogers and Grundy find the opening sections on the primary subject less rewarding, noting that some scholars perform below their best. Rogers specifically critiques the blunt psychobabble in Page’s analysis of Austen and rejects Riely’s Freudian dismissal of sexual elements in the Piozzi relationship.
Includes bibliographical references.
Oxford Bibliographical Society & Bodleian Library
A Preliminary Handlist of Copies of Books Associated with Dr. Samuel Johnson
Fleeman limits his coverage to copies of books associated directly with Samuel Johnson or, in a few specific instances, his immediate family, rather than mere Johnsoniana. He details 285 primary entries, encompassing volumes bearing Johnson's autograph in the form of signatures, signed inscriptions, textual emendations, marginal references to other books, corrections of arithmetic or paginatory errors, or calculations. The text also includes a separate list of forty-four items designated as "Doubtful, Erroneous, and Implausible Associations." By recording provenance (when known) and lamenting the exclusion of fascinating items—such as Lord Chesterfield’s copy of the Dictionary—and noting unlocated items, the Handlist provides critical resources for studying Johnson's reading habits and intellectual endeavors, especially when used in conjunction with the Sale Catalogue of Samuel Johnson’s Library and Donald Greene’s annotated guide.
Deutsch argues that Samuel Johnson's life and work are best understood through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, specifically focusing on his profound fear of death as the central organizing principle of his personality and creativity. The book presents Johnson not merely as a literary figure but as a complex psychological case study, whose "vile melancholy," tics, obsessive rituals, and intense anxieties stemmed from deep-seated, unresolved psychic conflicts, particularly an overwhelming fear of annihilation. Deutsch contends that Johnson's immense literary output, his moral pronouncements, his religious fervor, and even his famous conversational dominance were all elaborate defense mechanisms constructed to ward off this fundamental terror. His insistence on rationality, order, and moral certainty is interpreted as a bulwark against the chaos of his inner world. The Dictionary becomes an attempt to impose order on language, Rasselas an exploration of the futility of escaping psychic pain, and the Lives of the Poets a final reckoning with mortality through the examination of others' lives. By applying psychoanalytic concepts like repression, sublimation, and transference (especially in relation to figures like his mother and Mrs. Thrale), Deutsch aims to reveal the hidden emotional dynamics beneath Johnson's formidable public persona, ultimately portraying his life as a heroic, lifelong struggle to master his internal demons and find meaning in the face of existential dread. The introduction, “The Beginning, in Which Nothing Is Found,” addresses the author’s "autoptic" desire to account for the enduring, divided legacy of Samuel Johnson as both a clubbable public icon and a private, tortured soul. Chapter 1, “Johnsonian Romance,” argues that the 1784 autopsy of Johnson serves as the foundational event for a secular "author love," creating an imaginative community of medical and literary devotees who seek to reanimate the dead author through his collected physical and anecdotal parts. Chapter 2, “Style’s Body: The Case of Dr. Johnson,” addresses the historical link between Johnson’s monstrous physical tics and his monumental literary style, arguing that both represent an eighteenth-century struggle to make ineffable interiority legible on the aberrant body of the author. Chapter 3, “‘Look, my Lord, it comes’: Uncritical Reading and Johnsonian Communion,” identifies the desire for Johnsonian commemoration as a form of "uncritical" or religious communion, wherein devotees disavow the text in favor of an unmediated encounter with the author’s spirit. Chapter 4, “The Ephesian Matron and Johnson’s Corpse,” examines Thomas Tyers’s use of Petronius’s "Ephesian Matron" to justify Johnson's autopsy, arguing that this romance of infidelity challenges the idea of a fixed, irreplaceable monument and instead points toward a repetitive, erring literary afterlife. Chapter 5, “Coda: Anecdotal Errancy, Three Authors,” addresses the Johnsonian legacy in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vladimir Nabokov, and Samuel Beckett, arguing that these authors transform the anecdotal record of Johnson’s mortality into a modern, metamorphic conversation that transcends the original Boswellian icon. Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers evaluating a dense, unconventional study of authorial afterlife and the secular religion of literary devotion. At stake is whether a highly personal, theoretical methodology successfully illuminates cultural memory or descends into uninformative, uncohesive gossip that neglects actual writing. Kermode, in NYRB, identifies a fundamental divide between textual scholars and amateur lovers of myth, praising the examination of critical style and historical legacy. Jackson's review in TLS describes the work as a New Historicist investigation of literary cults and the relationship between affection and literature. In Modern Philology, Vermeule praises the navigation between traditional poetics and feminist or Marxist criticism, calling it an original, spectacle-level homage. Looser, writing in SEL, deems the study a singular, powerful contribution that illustrates how medical artifacts helped construct national consciousness. In AJ, Scanlan finds the volume scholarly yet highly personal but critiques its lack of cohesion and jarring stylistic shifts. Major, writing in MLR, finds the book intellectually rigorous and emotionally engaged, though less subtle on gender and form. Conversely, Tankard's review in Biography claims the approach is uninformative, using modern semi-metaphorical terminology to neglect the primary contributions to civil discourse. Tankard, writing in JNL, adds that the procedure relies on idiosyncratic analogies and homologies, though he appreciates the handsome celebration of particularity. Finally, Ennis, in the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, welcomes the innovative use of anecdote but finds the structural homology arguments strain credulity.
Reviews: Daniel Ennis, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7, no. 2 (2007): 109–12; H. J. Jackson, TLS, no. 5353 (November 2005): 3–4; Frank Kermode, NYRB 53, no. 11 (2006): 28–31; Anthony W. Lee, MP 104, no. 4 (2007): 529–59; Devoney Looser, SEL 51, no. 3 (2011); Jack Lynch, Choice 43, no. 11 (2006): 1992; Emma Major, MLR 102, no. 4 (2007): 1142–1142; J. T. Scanlan, AJ 17 (2006): 419–23; Paul Tankard, Biography 30, no. 2 (2007): 220–24; Paul Tankard, JNL 58, no. 1 (2007): 49, 51–54; Blakey Vermeule, MP 105, no. 2 (2007): 377–81.
Language and Logos in Boswell's 'Life of Johnson'
Dowling argues that Boswell's Life of Johnson challenges and ultimately dismantles conventional models of narrative structure. Rejecting the idea of the Life as a continuous story told by a single mediating narrator, Dowling presents it as a radically discontinuous text composed of multiple, separate "worlds"—including Boswell's narration, Johnson's letters, the dramatic conversation scenes, and the gloomy Prayers and Meditations. Drawing on deconstruction, his central thesis is that these different orders of discourse exist in an "antithetical" relationship, constantly undermining and subverting one another's claims to reality. The stable, unified figure of Samuel Johnson is not a "presence" to be discovered behind the text, but an "absence" at its center. The various idealized or critical portraits of Johnson are merely "fictions of coherence" constructed by the characters and the reader to impose order on the radical discontinuities of Johnson's speech and behavior. The great conversation scenes are analyzed as the primary model for this structure, exposing a world where language itself (logos), not a personality behind it, is the ultimate reality. Therefore, Dowling concludes that the true subject of the Life is not Johnson, but rather the "impossibility of the biographical enterprise" and the text's profound exploration of the relationship between language and reality. Chapter 1, "World and Antiworld," addresses the epistemological challenge posed by the radical discontinuities of the Life, arguing that the work is best understood not as a continuous narrative but as a "galaxy" of autonomous, often antagonistic, orders of discourse that function as separate worlds. Chapter 2, "Structure and Structurality," examines the narrative's internal logic of subversion, contending that Boswell’s anxiety over biographical form reveals a text that continuously undermines its own panegyric norms through the juxtaposition of competing realities. Chapter 3, "Structure and Absence," explores the ontological tension between the idealized, disembodied presence of the moralist in the writings and the "uncouth" figure of the biographical subject, arguing that the Life ultimately reveals a vacuum or "absence" at its center where a stable presence is traditionally posited. Chapter 4, "The World as Speech," argues that the conversation scenes do not merely record dialogue but enact a vision of the logos in which discourse itself becomes the primary reality, transcending the individual identities of the speakers to reveal mind as language. Chapter 5, "Audience as Antithesis," addresses the role of the imaginary reader, arguing that Boswell’s narrative strategy creates a moral topography that draws the audience into an "inner sphere" of veneration to combat the spiritual disintegration and skepticism of the age. The Epilogue concludes by arguing that the Life remains a vital work of the literary imagination whose greatness lies in its direct confrontation with the impossibility of the biographical enterprise to reach through language to a world beyond itself. The book was met with sharply divergent reviews, ranging from praise for its original biographical theory to deep frustration with its "clotted" prose and "doomed" philosophical reconciliations. Buttigieg and Pailler highlight the study’s effort to address narrative heterogeneity by positing a "plurality of worlds" and simultaneous, antithetical discourses, a move Nussbaum describes as ingenious for liberating the text from traditional generic constraints. Dussinger finds the argument for multiple structures a useful corrective and considers the author a modern guide through Boswell’s rhetorical strategies. But a large segment of the critical community remains highly skeptical of the book's deconstructionist credentials. Dussinger asserts the work only "superficially" resembles deconstruction and remains closer to Aristotle than poststructuralism, while Burke views the author's intellectual journey with suspicion, noting a serene comfort with the very logocentrism Derrida attacked. Merrett finds the treatment highly reductive, accusing the author of "resistance to objective criticism" and of ignoring Johnson’s dialectical sense of moral truth by focusing solely on the nature of conversation. Gold expresses further irritation with the "confusing" and "idiosyncratic" readings, criticizing the assertion of arbitrary "centers" in the text without sufficient evidence. Mell adds that while the interpretation is brilliant as theory, it minimally illuminates specific biographical art, suggesting the theoretical ends outweigh the literary analysis. Burke further disputes the central drama of the text as a "heroic" combat with Enlightenment figures, but Hagstrum offers a more sympathetic view, identifying a "philosophical coincidence" between Johnson’s own respect for linguistic flux and modern deconstructive thought.
Cochrane entry 255.
In Mind of Johnson: A Study of Johnson the Rambler
Davis provides an imaginative study of Johnson's inner life as manifested in his writings, particularly The Rambler and Rasselas. The book seeks to recover the "meaning of the man" by defending "interestedness and personality" as humanizing forces in literature against more clinical or impersonal critical fashions. Davis explores the relationship between Johnson's public authorial voice and his private anxieties, convulsive mannerisms, and religious fears. By examining Johnson alongside figures like Sir Joshua Reynolds, Matthew Arnold, and contemporary novelists, Davis portrays Johnson as a writer who brings "utmost seriousness" to ordinary life. The text argues that Johnson's general style functions as a form of "reminding," bridging his own memory and the reader's experience to provide practical advice on the conduct of existence. Chapter 1, 'The Life of the Author and His Writings', addresses the intricate nexus between personal experience and literary production . It rejects contemporary critical tendencies toward impersonalization, arguing that prose serves as a conduit for practical living . Chapter 2, '“You Tossed and Gored Several Persons”', addresses the tension between eighteenth-century stoic decorum and the aggressive vitality of personal conviction . It posits that such social 'roughness' functions as a defensive maneuver to maintain sanity and principled survival against existential despair. Chapter 3, 'On the Strength of Limitation (1): Johnson’s Realism', addresses the human condition as an 'in-between' state of existence. It argues that recognizing inherent limitations—physical, intellectual, and moral—is the foundational prerequisite for establishing normative conduct and achieving realistic psychological stability . Chapter 4, 'On the Strength of Limitation (2): Johnson’s Practical Art', addresses the role of 'practical thinking' as a temporal response to life's uncertainties. It argues that discursive prose and moral narratives provide essential, habit-forming structures for navigating a fundamentally under-determined world. Chapter 5, 'An Anglican Saint?', addresses the theological underpinnings of personal resilience and the 'middle way' of Anglicanism. It argues that faith is not a transcendental escape but an incarnate practice deeply embedded in ordinary, flawed existence. Chapter 6, '“In Which Nothing Is Concluded”?', addresses the enduring relevance of Johnsonian thought in the modern, post-religious era. It argues that his commitment to the ordinary provides a critical, sustaining bridge between normal consciousness and religious meaning.
The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
Damrosch chronicles the intertwined lives of eighteenth-century London's greatest intellectual figures, centering on the celebrated literary society founded by Johnson and Reynolds in 1764. The Club, initially conceived as a therapeutic measure to counter Johnson’s episodes of immobilizing melancholy and guilt, quickly evolved into a powerful social magnet and an engine of intellectual competition. Membership required both professional distinction and conversational prowess, drawing a constellation of self-made men, including the critic Johnson, the biographer Boswell, the orator Burke, the historian Gibbon, and the economist Smith. Johnson's complex personality—a paradoxical blend of physical awkwardness, profound erudition, and moral heroism—forms the book's psychological anchor. His early life was a struggle against poverty and illness, culminating in success as a lexicographer and essayist. His acceptance of a royal pension in 1762 liberated him from Grub Street but exposed him to charges of hypocrisy. His deepest struggles, including lifelong debilitating depression and compulsive physical tics, are framed as a fierce interior battle, a concept Boswell immortalized in his description of Johnson’s judgment as a gladiator combating wild beasts. Boswell emerges as the devoted, yet turbulent, chronicler of the age, transforming conversation into art. His youth was marked by rebellion against his father and a mercurial temperament later recognized as bipolar disorder. His celebrated journal, begun in London, became the raw material for his masterpiece, demonstrating his unique talent for capturing personality, dialogue, and idiosyncratic detail. The friendship between the two men, despite their generational and temperamental gulf, provided Boswell the emotional anchor and intellectual challenge he sought, even as he simultaneously indulged in sexual indiscretions and political fantasies. The study situates The Club within the era's rapidly changing social and political landscape. It highlights the supportive "Shadow Club" of the Thrale household, where Hester provided Johnson with domestic comfort and crucial emotional support. The careers of other members illustrate the transformation of Britain: Garrick revolutionized theater by introducing naturalistic acting and professional direction; Reynolds elevated portraiture from mere craft to a liberal art, establishing the Royal Academy; Burke became the preeminent political philosopher, dissecting crises of empire in Ireland, America, and India. Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire became foundational works in their respective fields, yet the authors remained distant, reserved figures in the Club's social theater. The narrative emphasizes that intellectual achievement was inseparable from personal circumstance. The great "Infidels" (Hume, Gibbon) faced skepticism regarding their secular inquiries, while Johnson clung to his "terror-stricken orthodoxy," constantly haunted by fears of damnation. The book concludes by detailing the members’ decline and death, noting Johnson's final struggle against illness while composing Lives of the Poets, and Boswell's ultimate personal collapse despite the towering success of his biography. The Club, though evolving beyond the influence of its founders, had secured the enduring legacy of the entire age. The Prologue addresses the profound cultural influence exerted by the members of "the Club," a select group of eighteenth-century London intellectuals whose weekly tavern meetings fostered the cross-disciplinary ideas that shaped the age. Chapter 1, 'Johnson before Boswell: The Years of Struggle,' examines the early life of Samuel Johnson, tracing his ascent from an impoverished, disease-afflicted provincial youth to a determined Grub Street author contending with severe psychological and physical handicaps. Chapter 2, 'Johnson before Boswell: Fame at Last,' details the decade in which Johnson achieved literary eminence through the publication of major works like his Dictionary and moral essays, while also recording his defiant rejection of aristocratic patronage. Chapter 3, 'Boswell before Johnson: Setting Out for the Wide World,' explores James Boswell’s rebellious youth in Scotland and his initial immersion into the glamorous, chaotic social landscape of London as he sought to escape his father's rigid authority. Chapter 7, 'The Club Is Born,' recounts the 1764 founding of the group by Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson as a therapeutic social outlet, describing the diverse characters and convivial atmosphere of their meetings at the Turk's Head Tavern. Chapter 10, 'David Garrick,' chronicles the meteoric rise of the century's greatest actor, who revolutionized theatrical performance through naturalism and ensemble direction while navigating a complex lifelong friendship with Johnson. Chapter 15, 'The Widening River,' describes the Club's expansion and the subsequent dilution of its original intimacy during a period when its most famous members produced their defining intellectual monuments. Chapter 17, 'Adam Smith,' analyzes the reserved academic career and the groundbreaking economic theories of the author of "The Wealth of Nations," noting his intellectual friction with Johnson despite their shared membership. Chapter 21, 'Boswell on the Downhill Slope,' documents the moral and professional decline of James Boswell following Johnson's death, as he struggled with alcoholism, debt, and failing health while laboring over his immortal biography. Most reviews are positive, praising the lively, accessible evocation of eighteenth-century London intellectual life, though specialized scholars express reservations about original content and technical precision. Gordon, in the NYTBR, describes the book as a brilliantly animated work that captures the nature of creative stimulus and individual character through deep research. Writing in the NYRB, Uglow finds it an infectious and astute guide to a world where conversation served as a catalyst for intellectual life and a remedy for deep depression. Dirda's review in the Washington Post calls the text an exceptionally entertaining group portrait that seamlessly mixes learned exposition with striking observations. In the WSJ, Epstein commends the scholarly yet lucid style, focusing on the outsize intellectual brilliance and complex personalities within the literary circle. Scholarly reaction is more qualified. Keymer, in the LRB, acknowledges the adroitly written sketches and excellent eye for anecdote but observes obstacles in substantiating the central claim of collaborative thinking due to a scarcity of actual conversational details. Darcy (TLS) notes that the volume aims for accessibility with snappy psychological diagnoses but minimizes the roles of certain secondary figures and circles. In the JNL, DeMaria praises the delightful quality of the well-selected anthology, defending its old-fashioned, graceful style despite a lack of modern criticism. Redford's severe review in ECS labels the work deficient for both scholars and common readers, citing a lack of a compelling central argument. Finally, Boyd (ECL) challenges the reliance on outdated psychological frameworks and notes factual errors, but he finds the trade biography a valuable introduction.
Reviews: Brooke Allen, Hudson Review 72, no. 1 (2019): 115–21; Aram Bakshian, National Interest, no. 161 (2019): 88–96; Aram Bakshian Jr., Washington Times, May 28, 2019; Bradford Q. Boyd, ECL 47, no. 1 (2023): 102–25; Philip Carter, Journal of Modern History 92, no. 4 (2020): 935–36; Alex Colville, The Spectator, April 27, 2019; Jane Darcy, TLS, no. 6056 (April 2019): 26; Robert DeMaria Jr., JNL 70, no. 2 (2019): 59–62; Michael Dirda, Washington Post, April 17, 2019; Elizabeth Eger, Journal of British Studies 59, no. 1 (2020): 177–78; Joseph Epstein, WSJ, March 22, 2019; Lyndall Gordon, NYTBR, May 12, 2019; Edward Hardiman, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 3 (2024): 336–37; Jacob Heilbrunn, Modern Age 61, no. 2 (2019): 56–58; Henry Hitchings, The Times (London), April 20, 2019; Malcolm Jack, 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 26 (2021): 266–69; Emily Jones, Financial Times, May 4, 2019; Thomas Keymer, LRB 41, no. 19 (2019): 17; Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2019; Elizabeth Lambert, ECI 33, no. 1 (2019): 39–45; Andrew Lambirth, Country Life 213, no. 19 (2019): 120; Anthony W. Lee, Choice 57, no. 1 (2019): 49; Anthony W. Lee, Scriblerian 53, no. 2 (2021): 186–88; Jeffrey Meyers, THES, no. 2404 (April 2019); John J. Miller, National Review 71, no. 8 (2019): 46; Peter Moore, History Today 69, no. 6 (2019): 102–3; Publishers Weekly, February 11, 2019; Bruce Redford, ECS 53, no. 2 (2020): 321–23; Penny Richards, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 33, no. 1/2 (2021): 151–52; Pat Rogers, New Criterion 37, no. 9 (2019): 16–20; Paul T. Ruxin, JNL 63, no. 2 (2012): 11–22; Teresa Saxton, ECF 34, no. 1 (2021): 110–13; Terry I. Seymour, Eighteenth-Century Scotland 34 (2020): 32–33; Marty Smith, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 2020, 84–86; Jenny Uglow, NYRB 66, no. 9 (2019): 26; Frances Wilson, Sunday Times (London), April 21, 2019; David Womersley, SEL 60, no. 3 (2020): 638.
Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson
Damrosch examines the intellectual transition from a providential worldview to a world defined by human perception and linguistic constructs, centering the study on the divergent responses of Johnson and Hume. The text argues that while Hume embraced a radical skepticism that reduced the self and causality to "fictions" of the imagination, Johnson countered with a "strenuous" empiricism that used social and religious fictions to stabilize moral reality. Damrosch analyzes Johnson's Rasselas and Dictionary as attempts to map the boundaries of human knowledge against the "vacuity of life," suggesting that Johnson viewed the imagination as both a dangerous source of delusion and a necessary tool for enduring existence. By situating these figures against the broader literary landscape of the novel and biography, Damrosch demonstrates how the period's preoccupation with "mimesis" reflects a profound uncertainty regarding the objective status of reality.
Publisher's blurb: "To mark the tercentenary of Samuel Johnson's birth in 2009, the specially-commissioned essays contained here review his scholarly reputation. An international team of experts reflects authoritatively on the various dimensions of literary, historical, critical and ethical life touched by Johnson's extraordinary achievement. The volume distinctively casts its net widely and combines consistently innovative thinking on Johnson's historical role with a fresh sense of present criticism. Chapters cover subjects as diverse as Johnson's moral philosophy, his legal thought, his influence on Jane Austen, and the question of the Johnson canon. The contributors examine the larger theoretical and scholarly contexts in which it is now possible to situate his work, and from which it may often be necessary to differentiate it. All the contributors have a distinguished record of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, Johnson scholarship, and cultural history and theory."
Clark and Erskine-Hill assemble eleven essays that re-evaluate Johnson as a figure deeply engaged with the Jacobite and Nonjuring traditions of his era. The volume is structured into three parts: "The Local Setting," "The Public Realm," and "The Cultural Allegiance." Contributors including Paul Monod and Richard Sharp explore Johnson's "Staffordshire background" and the "High Church character" of his London parish, St. Clement Danes, providing a micro-historical context for his religious and political development. Central to the collection is Clark's extensive analysis of Johnson's refusal to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, which the editor argues placed Johnson in a state of "internal exile" throughout his career. Other chapters examine Johnson's "neo-Latin tradition," his complex relationship with Scotland, and "Stuart sympathies" found in his critical notes on Shakespeare's Richard II. Niall MacKenzie provides evidence for a "Jacobite undertone" in The Vanity of Human Wishes by drawing parallels between the "Swedish Charles" and the contemporary "Prince Edward Affair." The editors conclude that Johnson's authority as a moral critic is inseparable from his "austere position" regarding the de jure rights of the House of Stuart. This revisionist approach rejects the "Namierite" view of a pragmatically progressive Johnson, presenting him instead as a "troubled observer" of a society riven by dynastic instability and "oath-bound" religious obligations. Critical reception of this collection of essays is starkly divided, characterized by a fundamental dispute over the editors' "Neo-Jacobite" methodology. Baines and Mullan dismiss the work as "tendentious" and "polemical," arguing that it focuses narrowly on political identities to the exclusion of a broader historical interpretation. This sentiment is echoed by Lynch and Turner, who criticize the volume for presenting a disputed portrait of the subject as a scholarly consensus while relying on "historical overstatement." Weinbrot offers the most severe critique, rejecting the use of "subjunctive certitudes" and "deterministic" ideological paradigms that he claims reduce complex literary works to "agitprop." Conversely, Mayhew praises the collection as a "non-partisan success" that offers "creative synergy," particularly valuing Kaminski’s analysis of Latinate diction and the recovery of "alien qualities" of the period. Caudle finds the volume "provocative" and praises the "innovative chronological balance," specifically highlighting Monod’s contribution regarding provincial life. While Johnston appreciates how the local investigations "flesh out" historical sense, she warns that the approach may fail to do justice to the subject's own beliefs regarding the limited power of kings. Ultimately, the work is recognized for its sound scholarship in specific contributions—notably those by Kaminski and Money—but remains heavily scrutinized for imposing a "reductive" political allegory on a complex literary legacy.
A collection of scholarly essays, especially on Johnson’s politics. His putative Jacobitism is discussed in many of the contributions.
This collective biography and critical study explores the conditions of female authorship in mid-eighteenth-century England by examining the relationships between Johnson and a circle of prominent women writers. Clarke uses a 1784 dinner party at Eva Garrick’s—attended by Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, and Fanny Burney—as a framework to investigate how these individuals achieved professional success despite social constraints. The text analyzes the careers and literary contributions of Carter, whose scholarship in Greek rivaled Johnson’s; Charlotte Lennox, whom Johnson termed superior to her contemporaries; and Hester Thrale Piozzi, whose complex role as Johnson’s provider and rival biographer Clarke details. Further chapters examine Elizabeth Montagu’s leadership of the Bluestocking assemblies and the emerging professional identities of More and Burney. Clarke argues that these women were not merely peripheral figures but active participants in a mixed-gender literary establishment. The study highlights the tension between the ideology of female deference and the drive for intellectual autonomy, noting how patronage, collaboration, and competitive rivalries shaped the period's cultural authority. Chapter 1, "At Mrs Garrick's," establishes the central premise of collective biography by examining Samuel Johnson's high regard for female contemporaries like Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, and Fanny Burney, while simultaneously critiquing James Boswell’s systemic erasure of these intellectual women from his foundational account of the 18th-century literary establishment. Chapter 2, "Elizabeth Carter," addresses the career of the era's preeminent female scholar, arguing that her comprehensive mastery of ancient Greek and Stoic philosophy allowed her to forge an independent path of "darling independence" that balanced professional prestige with domestic and personal autonomy. Chapter 3, "Charlotte Lennox," identifies the professional struggles and intellectual contributions of a writer Johnson deemed superior to all others, examining how she navigated the volatile patronage system and used satire to critique the gendered social expectations of her time. Chapter 4, "Hester Thrale and Elizabeth Montagu," examines the complex dynamics of literary patronage and rivalry between these two powerful hostesses, arguing that their respective relationships with Johnson were defined by a continuous negotiation between their own intellectual ambitions and the restrictive "saintly" codes of wifely and social conduct. Chapter 5, "Hannah More," explores the transition from theatrical success to moral activism, arguing that her role as a "good daughter" to David Garrick and her subsequent management of the milkwoman poet Ann Yearsley illustrate the intricate class and gender hierarchies that shaped female authorship. Chapter 6, "Fanny Burney," addresses the "market value of meekness," arguing that Burney used a performative self-effacement and secret authorship to achieve unprecedented celebrity while navigating the professional advice of various paternal figures. Chapter 7, "Women and Writing," concludes by arguing that for 18th-century women, the act of authorship was a strategic pursuit of "consideration in the world" that necessitated sophisticated negotiations of anonymity, patronage, and public reputation. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews, with newspaper reviewers offering enthusiastic praise for an erudite entertainment, but academic specialists dividing over whether the study relies on a misleading title and lacks a rigorous inquiry into material conditions. At stake is whether a collective biography format successfully recovers female professional agency, or merely simplifies historical complexities for a general audience. Todd, in TLS, describes the volume as a friendly run through the literary milieu, but notes it lacks a deep discussion regarding publishing fees and patronage. Benedict's review in SEL commends the exploration of vibrant intellectual networks, showing that women did not face crippling social restrictions. In MLR, Hawley finds the collective biography highly readable and full in its depiction of literary lives, though noting the argument confuses structural advantages and disadvantages. Morrissey, writing in YWES, provides a lively review, praising the attentive focus on class, social status, and literary opportunities. But Johnston, writing in the Cambridge Quarterly, delivers a harsh assessment, arguing the title has nothing new to say about the central male figure, contains errors of detail, and fails to take account of recent scholarship on sexual politics. Finally, Lynch's review in Choice characterizes the group portrait as a readable introduction for undergraduate audiences, but dismisses its value for specialists due to a simplified approach.
Reviews: Barbara Benedict, SEL 42, no. 3 (2002): 627; Kate Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph, January 14, 2001; Judith Hawley, MLR 97, no. 4 (2002): 934–36; Christopher Hawtree, The Independent, February 5, 2001; Kathryn Hughes, Daily Telegraph, January 13, 2001; F. Johnston, CQ 30, no. 4 (2001): 366–73; Jack Lynch, Choice 39, no. 10 (2001): 771; Sarah R. Morrison, Biography 26, no. 1 (2003): 160–65; Lee Morrissey, YWES 81, no. 1 (2000): 536; John Mullan, The Guardian, June 9, 2001; Margaret Sankey, History Teacher 35, no. 2 (2002): 275–76; Adam Sisman, Evening Standard, January 22, 2001; Janet Todd, TLS, no. 5115 (2001): 33; Lance E. Wilcox, History 65, no. 3 (2003): 751–52; Jodi L. Wyett, Sixteenth Century Journal 33, no. 3 (2002): 860–61.
Wits & Wives: Dr. Johnson in the Company of Women
Chisholm reassesses Johnson by investigating his interactions with women, ranging from domestic figures like his mother, Sarah, and wife, Tetty, to intellectual peers and protégées such as Hester Thrale, Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, and Hannah More. Chisholm argues that the "heart of the man" is best understood through these "close, generous, equal" relationships rather than isolated, often misconstrued aphorisms. The text documents Johnson's practical efforts to aid marginalized women, including the prostitute Poll Carmichael and the blind poet Anna Williams, while also illustrating his role as a "neutral being" between the sexes who championed female education. By contrasting Boswell's male-centric biography with accounts from figures like Frances Reynolds, Chisholm depicts a Johnson who was frequently the "solitary male among a group of clever, witty women." The narrative explores how these women navigated the contradictions of being "wives, wits and writers" and the compromises necessitated by eighteenth-century gender roles. Chisholm concludes that Johnson's character was fundamentally shaped by his domestic experiences and his admiration for "Amazons of the pen," ultimately positioning him as a supportive, if sometimes overbearing, mentor and friend who valued female "wit" as a "capacity of mind and flexibility of thought." Chapter 1, 'Intimations,' addresses Samuel Johnson’s empathetic engagement with women's social plights and intellectual potential, highlighting his desire for gender neutrality and his significant influence on Mary Wollstonecraft's later radical thought. Chapter 2, 'Here's a Brave Mother,' argues that Sarah Johnson provided the essential emotional and intellectual foundation for her son’s genius despite their long physical separation and the domestic discord of his youth. Chapter 3, 'Love and Death,' examines Johnson’s complex marriage to Elizabeth Porter, suggesting that she offered vital stability and belief in his talent during his difficult professional rise. Chapter 4, 'An Equal Mind,' analyzes Elizabeth Carter’s career, detailing how she successfully navigated scholarly writing while maintaining domestic respectability through strategic withdrawal to her hometown. Chapter 5, 'Miss Sainthill and the Female Quixote,' discusses the contrasting lives of Charlotte Lennox and Hill Boothby, detailing Johnson’s paternal support for Lennox and his spiritual dependence on Boothby. Chapter 6, 'A Stifled Sigh,' addresses the intimate and ultimately fractured relationship between Johnson and Hester Thrale, focusing on her resilience through domestic tragedy and her final, controversial quest for autonomy. Chapter 7, '“Renny Dear”,' focuses on Frances Reynolds’s artistic career and her unpublished recollections, which offer a psychologically nuanced, empathetic portrait of Johnson that differs significantly from contemporary male-authored biographies. Chapter 8, 'The Taming of a Female Wit,' examines Hannah More’s transition from a successful London playwright to a conservative educator, illustrating the pressures women faced to reconcile fame with Christian duty. Chapter 9, 'Resolutions?,' concludes by synthesizing the intellectual connections between Johnson and later radical thinkers like Wollstonecraft, emphasizing his legacy in advocating for women’s mental cultivation. Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers praising the illumination of supportive, mentor-like relationships with female literary aspirants but dividing over whether the text breaks new scholarly ground. What is at stake in the reviews is whether a biographical focus on the female coterie successfully addresses unresolved private moral contradictions or merely repeats well-established narratives. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews, as mainstream newspapers celebrate a lively, corrective portrait of practical advocacy, but academic specialists note a heavy reliance on existing scholarship. Wilson, in TLS, offers a mixed assessment, arguing the narratives cover familiar territory and concluding that the volume's primary interest lies in the wracked figure of the central subject rather than his female companions. Glendinning's review in The Spectator highlights the humanizing effect of the domestic history, while Field, in the Daily Telegraph, commends the empathy fostered for neglected figures but notes the study fails to resolve personal hypocrisies. Hitchings, writing in the London Standard, commends the useful correction of misogynistic myths. Kanter, in JNL, values the fuller portrait of family dynamics, particularly the insightful view of maternal influence, but criticizes the lack of a dedicated chapter on prominent novelists. Finally, Lewis, in the Daily Mail, delivers an enthusiastic review, emphasizing the subject's enlightened views on institutional gender barriers and his surprising romantic successes.
Reviews: Ophelia Field, Daily Telegraph (London), December 13, 2011; Victoria Glendinning, The Spectator 317, no. 9560 (2011): 34; Henry Hitchings, London Standard, November 24, 2011; Peter Kanter, JNL 65, no. 2 (2014): 57–61; Roger Lewis, Daily Mail (London), January 20, 2012; Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph (London), January 16, 2012; Frances Wilson, TLS, no. 5684 (2012): 10.
The Migration of the Round Robin, 1776–1887
The Runaway and the Apothecary: Francis Barber, Edward Ferrand, and the Life of Johnson
Discusses the authors' research about Edward Ferrand, an apothecary in the Cheapside neighborhood of London in the mid-1700s. Ferrand was referred to in James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson," but not by name; his exact identity was only recently discovered. Also discusses what life was like for apothecaries in 18th century England, and expands on Ferrand's relationship with Francis Barber - who spent most of his working life as a servant to Samuel Johnson, except for a brief period when Barber worked for Ferrand (in 1756-1758).
Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England
This study reassesses Johnson’s political thought by situating his life and writings within the shifting historical contexts of Hanoverian England. Cannon argues that Johnson was not the "antediluvian eccentric" or extreme Tory depicted by Macaulay, but rather a moderate conservative whose principles anticipated Burke. Cannon examines Johnson’s engagement with religion, emphasizing his secular justification for a powerful established Church as essential for social order. Cannon analyzes the persistent charges of Jacobitism, concluding that while Johnson held Stuart sympathies, they functioned as sentimental attachments rather than revolutionary commitments. The monograph explores Johnson’s "patriot" phase in the 1730s, his disillusionment with opposition factions, and his eventual support for George III’s administration. Detailed chapters scrutinize Johnson’s four major political pamphlets—The False Alarm, Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falkland’s Islands, The Patriot, and Taxation No Tyranny—presenting them as conventional defenses of parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional balance. Cannon concludes that Johnson’s Toryism reflected a principled commitment to stability and subordination intended to preserve a "civilized society" against the perceived threats of radical innovation and egalitarianism. The Introduction addresses the historiographical recovery of Samuel Johnson’s political reputation, arguing that he was a moderate thinker whose mainstream conservative views anticipated the intellectual framework of Edmund Burke. Chapter 1, "Johnson and Religion," examines Johnson’s secular defense of the Church of England, arguing that he viewed a powerful religious establishment as the essential guarantor of social stability and public order. Chapter 2, "Johnson and Jacobitism," addresses the persistent charges of Stuart loyalty, contending that while Johnson harbored sentimental sympathies for the exiled dynasty, he ultimately accepted the Hanoverian succession as a settled legal reality. Chapter 3, "Johnson and the Politicians," explores Johnson’s practical engagement with the era's shifting party ideologies, identifying how his early "patriot" opposition evolved into a nuanced support for parliamentary authority during the crises of the 1770s. Chapter 4, "Johnson and the Constitution," addresses Johnson's rejection of both divine right and social contract theories in favor of a robust pragmatism that prioritized the effectiveness of government over abstract constitutional forms. Chapter 5, "Johnson and the Enlightenment," argues that Johnson was a characteristic figure of the English Enlightenment who used empirical inquiry to promote moral discipline and humanitarian reform. Chapter 6, "Johnson and the Law," examines Johnson’s collaboration on the Vinerian lectures, identifying his foundational commitment to legal order as a prerequisite for individual liberty and civil progress. Chapter 7, "Johnson and America," addresses the controversial rhetoric of Taxation No Tyranny, arguing that Johnson’s defense of British sovereignty was rooted in a consistent, non-partisan theory of absolute legislative supremacy. The Conclusion argues that Johnson’s political legacy is defined by a compassionate yet disciplined conservatism that sought to balance the necessary authority of the state with the preservation of traditional social values. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics dividing over the secularization of the subject and the dismissal of his radical political leanings. Most reviewers praise the deep historical learning and balanced perspective, though multiple scholars question whether the interpretation oversimplifies the subject's complex spiritual life and political alignment. Colley, in TLS, highlights how the work uses the subject's life to explore the contradictions of the era, showcasing his complex and varied political views. In ECS, Folkenflik finds the characterization of the subject as a moderate anti-Whig thoroughly accurate. Sitter's review in SEL calls the study vastly informative, noting it functions effectively as a broader political history of the era. Writing in AJ, Hudson describes the monograph as a judicious assessment but challenges the effort to place the subject within the Enlightenment, arguing his works aimed to stabilize rather than innovate. In PQ, Kaminski argues that the historical approach produces an overly secularized portrait by neglecting the profound influence of religion on the subject's thought. Conversely, Thomas, in the English Historical Review, praises the volume for placing the subject in the vanguard of a British Enlightenment. Dickinson, in BJECS, finds the arguments persuasive, offering an assessment that runs counter to radical interpretations. In Choice, Lynch commends the volume as a balanced and learned discussion that provides a moderate voice of reason. Wood, writing in YWES, offers a more critical perspective, finding the central thesis somewhat commonplace and arguing that the conclusion overlooks how contemporary conservatives distrusted the subject.
Reviews: Jeremy Black, N&Q 42, no. 4 (1995): 499–500; O. M. Brack Jr., Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 49, no. 2 (1995): 169–74; Linda Colley, TLS, no. 4818 (1995): 6; H. T. Dickinson, BJECS 19, no. 2 (1996): 220; M. Fitzpatrick, History Today 46, no. 5 (1996): 60; Robert Folkenflik, ECS 33, no. 2 (2000): 289–99; Eliga H. Gould, Journal of Modern History 69, no. 4 (1997): 828–29; Donald J. Greene, Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 1 (1996): 105–23; Donald J. Greene, Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 1 (1997): 105–23; Nicholas Hudson, AJ 9 (1998): 337–47; Thomas Kaminski, PQ 76, no. 1 (1997): 101–4; G. Lamoine, Études Anglaises 49, no. 1 (1996): 90–91; Jack Lynch, Choice 33, no. 1 (1995): 110; Judith Moore, ECCB, n.s., 20 (1994): 503; J. Phillips, Albion 28, no. 1 (1996): 109–11; Murray G. H. Pittock, JEGP 95, no. 4 (1996): 558–60; Christopher Reid, NR, Series D, no. 11 (1995): 62–63; James J. Sack, American Historical Review 101, no. 3 (1996): 847–48; John Sitter, SEL 35, no. 3 (1995): 599–639; Peter D. G. Thomas, English Historical Review 112, no. 447 (1997): 778; John Wiltshire, English Language Notes 34, no. 1 (1996): 98–104; Nigel Wood, YWES 76, no. 1 (1996): 350–51.
Prose in the Age of Poets: Romanticism and Biographical Narrative from Johnson to De Quincey
Cafarelli challenges the traditional periodization that separates eighteenth-century prose from Romantic poetry, arguing that Samuel Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' served as the foundational model for Romantic biographical narrative. The study demonstrates how Romantic writers rejected the exhaustive 'compilation' method of Boswell in favor of Johnson's 'composed' collective biography, which emphasized subjectivity, anecdotal economy, and the exegetical reading of a life as a literary text. By examining the works of Hazlitt, De Quincey, Scott, and others, Cafarelli reveals an underlying 'Johnsonian subtext' in Romanticism characterized by a shared interest in the 'common condition of humanity' and the inherent instability of biographical documentation. The text positions the Romantic 'age of personality' not as a departure from Johnson, but as a systematic expansion of his generic innovations in collective biography and critical life-writing.
Reconsidering Biography: Contexts, Controversies, and Sir John Hawkins's 'Life of Johnson'
Publisher's blurb: "As part of the Samuel Johnson tercentenary commemoration, the University of Georgia Press published the first full scholarly edition of Sir John Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787). From its inception, Hawkins's work, arising from a close relationship with Johnson that spanned over forty-five years, challenged certain adulatory views of Johnson and has continued to raise interesting critical questions about both Johnsonian biography and the genre of biography generally. Reconsidering Biography collects new essays that explore Hawkins's biography of Johnson within its historical, political, legal, and personal contexts. More particularly, this volume considers how Hawkins's approach to recording the Life of Johnson opens up broader questions about early modern biography and its relationship with eighteenth-century trends in aesthetics, politics, and historiography. These sophisticated and informed essays on a curious and often vexed friendship, and its literary offspring, supply a colorful and expansive view of the role of life-writing in the eighteenth-century literary imagination."
This anthology provides primary source material documenting Johnson’s literary reputation and critical reception, covering critical commentary on Johnson from the eighteenth century through the Victorian period, including influential essays like Macaulay’s famous attack on Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life. The organization is chronological, assembling contemporary reviews, literary criticism, and biographical assessments of Johnson and his works. Boulton highlights the detraction Johnson faced from critics like Macaulay, who often focused on "Boswell’s Johnson" the eccentric personality. The editorial policy was to gather these primary historical materials, allowing readers to trace the development of Johnson’s reputation in criticism and biography since 1784. Critics call this book a representative and well-edited compilation that illuminates the development of a complex literary reputation from 1738 through 1832. Morgan and Coleman praise the volume for capturing the essential flavor of contemporary reception, specifically the lively documentation of controversies involving figures like Kenrick and Chesterfield. The collection serves as a valuable resource for students by assembling rare material and providing scholarly introductions. But some reviewers identify significant gaps. Bloom notes the posthumous section is meager, while Cosgrave critiques an antithetical editorial bias and the remarkable omission of Parr. Philological Quarterly further questions the inclusion of easily accessible texts by the subject and his primary biographer.
CGV entry 10/5:16. A collection of 81 pieces dating from 1738 to 1833.
Samuel Johnson, Literary Giant of the Eighteenth Century: An Exhibition at the Huntington Library, May 23–September 21, 2009
Brack and Rothschild provide a detailed record of the 2009 Huntington Library exhibition celebrating the tercentenary of Johnson's birth. The text features a biographical essay by Brack titled "Slow Rises Worth, by Poverty Deprest," which emphasizes Johnson's struggle as a "writer-for-hire" for booksellers. The catalog is organized into eleven thematic cases, tracing Johnson's life from his Lichfield origins and failed Edial Hall school to his "Grub Street" toil for Cave's Gentleman's Magazine and the nine-year compilation of the Dictionary. Notable items described include the "Blinking Sam" portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the manuscript of Thraliana, a rare diary fragment from Johnson's time at Streatham, and first editions of works like London, Rasselas, and The Lives of the Poets. The authors highlight Johnson's transition from anonymous hack work, such as the fictionalized Parliamentary Debates, to his established authority as "Dictionary Johnson" and a recipient of a royal pension. The catalog also examines Johnson's relationships with his "circle," including Boswell, Piozzi, and Reynolds, and documents the production of his landmark edition of Shakespeare. The volume concludes with an account of Johnson's final illness, his posthumous fame through contemporary biographies, and a select bibliography of Johnsonian scholarship.
Samuel Johnson, Literary Giant of the Eighteenth Century
A study of Johnson's work in relation to contemporary anxieties over language and genre.
Collecting and Recollecting James Boswell, 1740–1795
"This catalogue accompanies an exhibition held at the Grolier Club from Tuesday, September 12, 1995 to Friday, November 17, 1995. Curators: William Zachs and Mary Eccles."
Hyde reconstructs the intricate history of the Thrale family through an annotated presentation of the complete text of Hester Thrale's previously lost 'Family Book.' This private nursery journal, kept between 1766 and 1779, traces the domestic life, education, and medical tragedies of the twelve Thrale children, of whom only four survived to maturity. The narrative frames this text within a wider biographical arc, detailing the initial friction between Hester's parents, her compliance in marrying Henry Thrale, and the family's intense intimacy with Johnson, who lived as a virtual member of the household at Streatham Park and Deadman's Place. Hyde explores how Johnson encouraged this diary keeping, served as a primary counselor in business and domestic affairs, and directly intervened in the educational examinations of the young prodigy Hester Maria Thrale. The monograph meticulously traces the family's deep domestic anxieties, Henry Thrale's near-bankruptcy and physical decline, the widow's controversial second marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, and the subsequent alienation of her surviving daughters. This scholarly compilation combines the full nursery record with meticulous contemporary research, letters, and financial logs to offer an unvarnished window into the actual social and intellectual worlds of the era. Chapter 1, 'Hester Lynch Salusbury and Henry Thrale,' addresses the complex familial negotiations, financial dependencies, and personal animosities culminating in the 1763 marriage between an intellectually precocious woman and a wealthy Southwark brewer. Chapter 2, 'The Family Book,' addresses the domestic sphere of the Streatham Park household, detailing the rigorous academic instruction of the children and the devastating infant mortality that plagued the family nursery. Chapter 3, 'The Death of Thrale and Remarriage of His Widow,' outlines the economic and emotional transformations within the household following the patriarch's demise, focusing on the widow's controversial, socially disruptive union with an Italian musician. Chapter 4, 'The Thrale Daughters and Their Children,' tracks the long-term historical trajectory of the surviving daughters, documenting their legal conflicts over inheritance, architectural endeavors, and their absolute alienation from their maternal parent. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Beddow, in the Washington Post, praises the work for examining the intellectual hub of the household and characterizing its famous houseguest as a fabulous monster. In PQ, McIntosh commends the extensive, analytic detail of the published journal, while Nussbaum's review in PQ highlights the effective editorial method that provides an essential personal history of an intelligent woman facing frequent bereavement. Rawson (Sewanee Review) labels the book a triumph of the biographer's art, commending the humane, scrupulously detailed narrative and its moving account of vulnerable isolation. In JNL, Clifford and Middendorf describe the text as an enthralling, remarkable family history built on new evidence. An unsigned review in Publishers Weekly emphasizes the unique record of maternity and the intimate portraits of the intellectual circle. Rousseau's review in SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 characterizes the labor as a vivid, dramatic success that contributes significantly to the knowledge of medicine and domestic life. Hartley (South Atlantic Quarterly) praises the impressive inside view and the illuminating account of subsequent isolation, while King's review in JAMA notes the book's exceptional value to medical historians. Jefferson (Transactions of the Johnson Society) commends the clinical evaluations and wealth of unfamiliar visual portraits, and an unsigned review in the New Rambler highlights the vivid, dramatic story that offers insights rarely seen firsthand.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Publisher's blurb: "'Lily & Hodge & Dr. Johnson' is the successor to Yvonne Skargon's best selling 'The Importance of being Oscar.' Like its precursor it portrays with wit and affection characteristics, antics and attitudes that will be immediately recognized by the large constituency of the human-kind whose lives are immoderately governed by that "domestic animal that catches mice." The engravings are accompanied by quotations from Dr. Johnson - himself an eminent devotee of the feline race - which, it is hoped, will add greatly to a record which otherwise illustrates a more insouciant attitude to life."
Wood engravings by Yvonne Skargon, with text by Samuel Johnson.
Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life
Piozzi’s Anecdotes (1786) is a biographical memoir, not a comprehensive biography, that provides a personalized account of Johnson's sayings, private life, and character, drawing largely on Hester Lynch Piozzi’s memory and her six-vol. journal, Thraliana. Piozzi had known Johnson from 1765 and was his hostess, friend, and nurse for two decades. The Anecdotes focuses on Johnson's final twenty years, offering a "mere candlelight picture of his latter days." Piozzi was encouraged by Johnson himself to record his sayings. The work was composed quickly and published in haste while Piozzi was in Italy after hearing of Johnson's death. It was published in London by T. Cadell in the Strand in 1786. The first edition appeared in March 1786, preceding Hawkins's Life (1787) and Boswell’s Life (1791). The first edition sold quickly; Cadell reportedly did not have a copy when the King requested one at night. Piozzi received £300 for the work, a sum "unexampled in those days for so small a vol." The London second and third editions were also published in 1786, the third being a reissue of the second. The London fourth edition was published the same year, 1786. A Dublin octavo edition also appeared promptly in 1786. Boswell heard of the publication in March 1786 while travelling the Northern circuit. The Anecdotes achieved immediate success because of its intimate details, contributing to the burgeoning "Johnson market." Its scandalous success stemmed from presenting "raw" data about Johnson, leading to the journalistic joke of rhyming "Bozzy and Piozzi." The Anecdotes were abstracted in the French Journal encyclopédique in 1786 and reviewed in the French Censeur universel in 1785. The review noted Johnson’s rudeness and severe manners in conversation, quoting Piozzi that everything he said was "hard." Piozzi’s work contains Johnson’s early correspondence and impromptu verses for the first time. Later, in 1788, Piozzi published Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., acknowledging the favorable reception of the Anecdotes. The Anecdotes contained stories of Johnson's childhood, later corroborated by Johnson’s autobiographical fragment discovered in 1805. No major authorial revisions occurred in the editions after the initial 1786 publication. The Anecdotes has consistently been valued and reprinted. It was frequently included in larger collections of Johnsoniana. George Birkbeck Hill included the complete text of the Anecdotes in Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 1 (1897), which Hill's contemporaries often regarded as an edition designed to diminish her reputation relative to Boswell. Modern scholarly editions often bind Anecdotes with other early lives, such as Arthur Sherbo's edition (1974), which pairs it with William Shaw’s Memoirs. Richard Ingrams published an edition titled Dr. Johnson by Mrs Thrale: The 'Anecdotes' of Mrs Piozzi in Their Original Form in 1984. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the volume's editorial judgment, stylistic flaws, and severe presentation of its subject's social behavior. Burney, in Monthly Review, challenges the compiler's editorial discretion, arguing that the text suppresses the provocations behind the recorded harsh outbursts and accusing the compiler of ingratitude to justify a domestic separation, though he praises the inclusion of remarks on piety and education. An unsigned review in English Review offers a highly approving assessment, ranking the volume as the finest biography yet published due to its intimate eighteen-year domestic perspective, but interprets the narrative as evidence of the subject's domineering insolence, vulgarity of mind, and conversational brutality. In Critical Review, an unsigned commentary defends the volume as a revealing characteristic sketch that provides authoritative insights into the subject's fear of death, social harshness, and capricious demands on the household. Three unsigned assessments in London Chronicle champion the entertaining miscellany for its genuine, unembellished private disclosures regarding childhood scrofula, Oxford insolence, political Toryism, and conversational shades, concluding that these traits correct extravagant beliefs in the subject's perfection. An unsigned piece in Universal Magazine highlights the value of these private observations, focusing on disclosures regarding psychological struggles, self-monitoring, and the fear of mental disorder. Finally, an unsigned notice in Town and Country Magazine commends the pleasant style and delicate poetical effusions, but notes that the anecdotes are deformed by colloquial barbarisms.
Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D
Reviews: Charles Burney, Monthly Review 74 (May 1786): 373–83; Critical Review 61 (March 1786): 273–78; English Review 6 (April 1786): 254–59; London Chronicle, March 28, 1786; London Chronicle, April 1, 1786; London Chronicle, April 13, 1786; Town and Country Magazine 18 (June 1786): 288; Universal Magazine 78, no. 545 (1786): 246–49.
Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (later Mrs. Piozzi), 1776–1809
James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740–1769
Pottle reconstructs the formative years of James Boswell, from his 1740 birth to his November 1769 marriage to Margaret Montgomerie. This definitive first volume of a two-volume biography supersedes Tinker’s Young Boswell (1922) by using the recovered Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House archives. Pottle argues for Boswell’s artistic creativity and significance independent of Johnson, expanding on a thesis first advanced in The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq. (1929). The narrative details Boswell's education in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Utrecht, his "melancholy temperament," and a "passion for notoriety." Key episodes include a temporary conversion to Roman Catholicism, a failed attempt to join the Foot Guards, and his Grand Tour encounters with Voltaire and Rousseau. Pottle emphasizes Boswell’s role as a publicist following his unauthorized meeting with Pasquale Paoli in Corsica. Pottle highlights the 1763 introduction to Johnson, whom Boswell respected for his dictionary and sermons. Pottle demonstrates how Boswell used "circumstantial accuracy" and "characteristic conversation" to document Johnson while exploring his own mind through journals. The biography covers Boswell’s legal career, including the Douglas Cause and tensions with his father, Lord Auchinleck. Over one-fifth of the volume focuses on the years 1757–1763. It includes a prologue and an autobiographical sketch written for Rousseau in 1764. Pottle presents Boswell not as a buffoon, but as a talented lawyer and ambitious writer who captured 18th-century society by "writing to the moment." Chapter 1, "Sketch of the Early Life of James Boswell, Written by Himself for Jean Jacques Rousseau, 5 December 1764," presents an autobiographical account tracing the subject's childhood terrors, his "melancholy temperament," and the perceived failures of his early education. Chapter 2, untitled but addressing family history, establishes the subject’s identity as a "Scot of family," detailing the lineage of the lairds of Auchinleck and the stern, judicial character of his father, Lord Auchinleck. Chapter 3, also untitled, chronicles the subject's education at Mundell’s school and the University of Edinburgh, highlighting his early legal studies and the formative influence of tutors like John Dun. Chapter 4 explores the emotional volatility of the subject's late teens, including a brief "frenzy" to join the army, his struggles with religious "Necessity," and his conversion to a "Pythagorean" vegetarianism. Chapter 5 details the subject's initial flight to London in 1760, his clandestine conversion to Roman Catholicism, and his subsequent "rescue" by the Earl of Eglinton, who introduced him to a life of libertinism. Chapter 6, "1756–1762 (Juvenilia)," examines the subject’s early literary output, arguing that his voluminous and often derivative youthful poetry was essential to his development as a professional author. Chapter 7, "October 1761–November 1762," documents the subject's listless legal study in Edinburgh, his myriad sexual intrigues, and the eventual negotiation with his father that allowed his return to London. Chapter 8, "November 1762–August 1763," analyzes the subject’s meticulously planned London existence, his pursuit of an army commission, and the emergence of his journal as a sophisticated tool for self-analysis. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics celebrating the volume as an essential, definitive study that successfully rehabilitates a major literary reputation against historical caricatures of foolishness. In TLS, Mutter calls the biography a masterly feat that captures the subject's genius and professional strengths while navigating a gross private record. Wain's review in the NYRB praises the narrative for avoiding suffocating minutiae and illuminating the psychological interplay between emerging Romantic singularity and established general nature. Writing in JNL, Clifford commends the successful portrayal of an irredeemable aliveness and energy, though Littlejohn, in the Reporter, delivers a more mixed assessment, praising the psychological insights but finding the biographer's intrusive presence and constant defensiveness against historical detractors disturbing. In the Hudson Review, Cruttwell evaluates the work as an essential study that demonstrates a major genius in the art of writing, while Furbank, in the Listener, applauds the masterly technical organization of an extensive manuscript archive. Daiches, writing in the New York Times, commends the scrupulously low-pitched selection but finds the subject's treatment of women selfish and cruel, and Edel, in the Saturday Review, objects to claims regarding an imaginative power on par with major novelists. Muggeridge, writing in the Observer, delivers a more skeptical appraisal, criticizing the academic solemnity and flowery style that he argues detracts from the underlying comicality. There is no divergence between popular and scholarly reception.
CGV entry 4:200.
Cochrane entry 28.
Reviews: Ralph Bergamo, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, May 22, 1966; Perry Carroll, University of Toronto Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1967): 198–202; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 26, no. 2 (1966): 2–3; George Core, Sewanee Review 76, no. 4 (1968): 686–90; Patrick Cruttwell, Hudson Review 19, no. 4 (1966): 683–88; David Daiches, New York Times, June 19, 1966; William G. DeLana, Hartford Courant, May 22, 1966; Leon Edel, Saturday Review, April 30, 1966; Alexander Eulenberg, American Bar Association Journal 53, no. 4 (1967): 359; P. N. Furbank, The Listener 76, no. 1953 (1966): 325; Nancy Griffin, San Francisco Examiner, May 22, 1966; Matthew Hodgart, New Statesman, July 1, 1966; Robert R. Kirsch, LA Times, July 11, 1966; Gwin J. Kolb, Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1966; Louis Kronenberger, Book Week, May 22, 1966, 1; Thomas Lask, NYTBR, May 24, 1966; Leicester Daily Mercury, August 10, 1966; David Littlejohn, Reporter 35 (November 1966): 47–48; Roger Lonsdale, Yale Review 55 (1966): 117–19; Thomas Mahoney, Boston Globe, June 13, 1966; Raymond Mortimer, Sunday Times, August 7, 1966; Malcolm Muggeridge, The Observer, August 7, 1966; R. P. C. Mutter, TLS, no. 3385 (January 1967): 25; Newsweek, May 23, 1966; Iain Ross, Studies in Scottish Literature 5 (1967): 60–67; Roland Sawyer, Christian Science Monitor, July 18, 1966; The Economist, November 12, 1966; Time, July 1, 1966; John Wain, NYRB 6, no. 10 (1966): 3; Garry Wills, National Review 18, no. 32 (1966): 790–91.
James Boswell: As His Contemporaries Saw Him
Publisher's blurb: "This book draws upon letters, diaries, memoirs, book reviews, and newspaper articles to present a picture of James Boswell from the vantage point of those who knew him best. We hear what family, friends, rivals, critics, and satirists thought of the man who produced such notable works as An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, and The Life of Samuel Johnson. Few major authors have generated such wildly fluctuating estimates over the years as Boswell. Both as a writer and as a man, he has stirred debate for more than two centuries. Scholars and critics have long differed, for instance, as to whether his Life of Johnson, published in 1791, is the finest biography in English or just "a pretty book" of questionable accuracy. One commentator recently maintained that his published journals are ‘the greatest English autobiographical epic,' while another has dismissed them as the ‘diary of a nobody.' Boswell has been acclaimed the greatest of modern biographers, but also attacked as a mere sycophant and fool. James Boswell: As His Contemporaries Saw Him reveals how contemporaries responded to the mans multifaceted talents and personality, and it reveals how estimates of James Boswell fluctuated just as wildly in his day as in ours." Critics are generally favorable, praising the work as a valuable chronological anthology of historical commentary. Kramnick, in SEL, welcomes the documentary compendium for tracing controversies back to the eighteenth century through accounts from friends and strangers, capturing a biography recorded in palimpsest. Looser’s review in SEL notes the text highlights the subject's enduring capacity to inspire intense fandom or enmity within the field. Lynch, in Choice, commends the assembly of several hundred selections from diverse sources, including obscure rare books and anonymous self-reviews, though he notes sparse endnotes and a need for more careful proofreading. Caudle, writing in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, observes that the compilation performs a valuable service by remediating a lack of organized biographical data, though he questions the inclusion of autobiographical writings and identifies technical errors. O’Brien, in the Year’s Work in English Studies, characterizes the anthology as a cheerful volume, highlighting the chronological lifecycle sections and the helpful biographical notes appended for the quoted contemporary authors. Finally, an unsigned review in Reference and Research Book News concludes that the collection successfully provides a multifaceted view proving modern debates over talent and personality originated during the subject's lifetime.
Hundreds of short snippets on Boswell, from the 1760s until after his death, from contemporary writings. Inevitably includes many little-known comments on Johnson from periodicals, diaries, and letters.
Johnson and Boswell in Scotland: A Journey to the Hebrides
This scholarly edition presents Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in an integrated, parallel format. Rogers provides a comprehensive introduction describing the 1773 expedition as a "Grand Detour" that reversed the traditional southward trajectory of the Grand Tour. The volume includes a glossary of names, a detailed publishing history, and a note on the editorial policy of regularizing spelling while maintaining the distinct voices of both authors. Rogers incorporates Johnson's letters to Hester Thrale alongside the main narrative to offer a "stereoscopic" view of the journey. The front matter contextualizes the distinct motives of the travelers, noting that Johnson focused on the Scottish environment while Boswell focused on Johnson's character. Annotations and sectional divisions facilitate a "binaural" reading of their conversations. The edition includes contemporary illustrations and maps that document the travelers' passage through locations such as St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Skye, and Mull. Rogers's editorial framework emphasizes the human realism and psychological insight that Boswell's candid biographical approach introduced to the genre of life-writing. Critical reaction is mixed. Scholarly journals offer divergent views on the experimental parallel-text layout, while general reviews range from enthusiastic to hostile. Hammond and O'Brien, in separate reviews for RES, praise the volume as a fit monument that delivers a rewarding binaural experience, blending sociological enquiry with meticulous chronicling. Brack, in Rocky Mountain Review, and Johnsen's review (Field) both find the side-by-side presentation and inclusion of correspondence highly commendable for allowing direct comparisons of eighteenth-century perceptions. Merians, in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, enthusiastically recommends the volume for undergraduates, despite noting text deletions. But severe objections emerge regarding editorial execution. Fleeman, in Notes and Queries, delivers a scathing review that disputes the feasibility of combining these disproportionate works, citing clumsy textual mangling, numerous transcription errors, and pervasive index inaccuracies. Wood, in Year’s Work in English Studies, similarly argues that the interleaved format fails to illuminate either text, discourages detailed consultation, and complicates reading. Wendorf's review in SEL expresses skepticism about whether readers will actually read or cite this expensive, disruptive conflated text. Finally, Carey, in the Sunday Times, dismisses the narrative as dull, arguing that the underlying culture rendered the traveler blind to natural beauty and contemptuous of Gaelic tradition.
First appeared in Cairo Studies in English in 1964 (1966), containing nearly 700 items. It was subsequently "thoroughly revised and expanded" and reissued in hard cover as the Second Edition (1972). The final, definitive Third Edition (1991/1992), published by Edinburgh University Press, incorporated over a thousand new items, particularly press commentary from Boswell’s own era (1760-1795). The work’s strength lies in documenting the initial reception of Boswell’s works. However, the lengthy "General Studies" section of the later edition, which mixed "Victorian chat" with specialized modern scholarship without sufficient sub-categorization, drew criticism for its limited organizational utility. Despite structural critiques, Brown’s bibliography remains a valuable guide.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Publisher's blurb: "In Samuel Johnson's classic philosophical tale, the prince and princess of Abissinia escape their confinement in the Happy Valley and conduct an ultimately unsuccessful search for a choice of life that leads to happiness. Johnson uses the conventions of the Oriental tale to depict a universal restlessness of desire. The excesses of Orientalism — its superfluous splendours, its despotic tyrannies, its riotous pleasures — cannot satisfy us. His tale challenges us by showing the problem of finding happiness to be insoluble while still dignifying our quest for fulfillment. The appendices to this Broadview edition include reviews and biographies, selections from the sequel Dinarbas (1790), and the complete text of Elizabeth Pope Whately's The Second Part of the History of Rasselas (1835). Selections from Johnson's translation of the travel narrative A Voyage to Abyssinia, as well as his Oriental tales in the Rambler, are also included, along with another popular tale, Joseph Addison's "The Vision of Mirzah," and selections from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters."
A Broadview Edition, containing the full text of Rasselas along with selections from Johnson’s other writings (Lobo’s Voyage, Vanity, and Ramblers 4, 204, and 205), contemporary responses, and other examples of eighteenth-century Orientalism.
printed for A. Strahan; & T. Cadell, in the Strand
Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: To Which Are Added Some Poems Never Before Printed. Published from the Original Mss. in Her Possession, by Hester Lynch Piozzi. In Two Volumes
A biographical memoir presenting the first substantial published collection of Johnson's correspondence, primarily with Piozzi and her family, detailing the final two decades of his life. Johnson frequently told Piozzi that his letters were her "best possessions." The work also includes some poems never before printed, specifically Johnson’s Latin verses to Dr. Lawrence, Piozzi’s translation of them, and Johnson’s translations from Boethius. Published in haste, the Letters appeared in London on March 8, 1788, in two octavo vols., published by A. Strahan and T. Cadell. A Dublin octavo edition also appeared in 1788. The book achieved commercial success. Piozzi received criticism for the work, notably a virulent attack from Giuseppe Baretti in the European Magazine. Boswell, who learned of the collection before publication, felt Piozzi’s publication made using the same letters discreditable for him. For the collection, Piozzi revised the text, thoroughly editing Johnson’s letters and inserting 28 of her own letters, nearly all of which were newly composed for the purpose and never sent to him. She omitted 92 known letters, including an angry one concerning her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The collection was later superseded by scholarly compilations, beginning with George Birkbeck Hill's two-vol. edition in 1892, which consciously avoided reprinting letters already published by Boswell. R. W. Chapman published a three-vol. edition (1952), including Piozzi’s own genuine letters to Johnson for the first time. Bruce Redford's Hyde Edition (1992–94) provides the most comprehensive collection in 5 vols., including 52 previously unpublished Johnson letters. An unsigned review in Critical Review initiates a positive appraisal, asserting that the compilation enhances the central subject's credit by exposing a labyrinth of the human heart, radical wretchedness, and infantine affection for children. An unsigned piece in English Review supports this favorable view, comparing the correspondence to Swift's writings and defending the editor against censure, while celebrating the final letters upon her marriage as pathetic and beautiful. Two unsigned assessments in General Magazine and Impartial Review champion the volume against malignant cavillers, praising the unaffected effusions of wisdom, the editor's delicate humor, and the rejection of reports concerning a foolish quarrel. Conversely, an unsigned commentary in Literary Magazine and British Review is severe, suggesting vanity and avarice motivated the text and questioning the value of printing private records detailing when the subject ate salmon or took medicine. Baretti, in European Magazine, launches a scathing attack that accuses the editor of mere avarice and a betrayal of the confidence of friendship, specifically disputing her honesty regarding medical interventions. Finally, an unsigned notice in Town and Country Magazine offers a brief commendation of the pleasing picture of the subject's mind and the compiler's literature, while Universal Magazine reproduces selections focusing on the stationary point of the human intellect.
CGV entry 23:1.
Reviews: Joseph Baretti, European Magazine, and London Review 13 (May 1788): 314–15; Critical Review 65 (April 1788): 258–64; English Review 11 (May 1788): 352–60; General Magazine and Impartial Review 2 (March 1788); General Magazine and Impartial Review 2 (March 1788): 143–45; Literary Magazine and British Review 1, no. 1 (1788): 51–54; Town and Country Magazine 20 (May 1788): 236; Universal Magazine 82, no. 571 (1788): 143.
Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers
Pottle details the "publishing odyssey" of the private papers of James Boswell, challenging the long-held nineteenth-century belief that the archives had been "immediately destroyed" by Boswell's executors. The narrative traces the papers' descent through the Boswell family at Auchinleck and their subsequent transfer to Malahide Castle in Ireland and Fettercairn House in Scotland. Pottle attributes the suppression of the papers to a combination of "pride" among Boswell's descendants—who feared the "scandal and shame" of his "whoring, drinking bouts, and occasional sycophancy"—and the "negligence" of literary executors Sir William Forbes and Edmond Malone. The text explains the pivotal roles of scholar-collectors Chauncey Brewster Tinker and Ralph Isham in locating the "great trove" in unlikely storage sites, such as a croquet box and a stable loft. Pottle meticulously documents the labyrinthine legal battles, specifically the "Fettercairn Cause," which delayed the unification of the collection. He describes his own transition from assistant to Geoffrey Scott to lead editor of the Private Papers of James Boswell following Scott's premature death in 1929. The work concludes by chronicling the final negotiations managed by Donald Hyde and Herman Liebert that led to Yale University’s 1949 purchase of the papers, thereby making them accessible for modern historical and literary scholarship. Chapter 1, 'Puzzles at the Outset', explores James Boswell’s complex motivations for creating his vast archive and details the ambiguous legal provisions in his will that complicated the papers' early descent. Chapter 2, 'Johnson's Portrait Leaves Auchinleck', examines the papers’ return to the family estate and the subsequent legacy of censorship and neglect fueled by descendants’ embarrassment over Boswell’s reputation. Chapter 3, '“To that request the editor has never received any answer”', details the Victorian-era silence regarding the papers, specifically highlighting Sir James Boswell’s refusal to assist early scholars and the tragic end of Boswell’s daughter, Euphemia. Chapter 4, '“It is believed the whole were immediately destroyed”', traces the persistent 19th-century myth that the archives had been burned, a belief reinforced by family secretiveness and the lack of scholarly access. Chapter 5, 'Tinker Goes to Malahide', recounts the 20th-century rediscovery of the papers by Chauncey Brewster Tinker at Malahide Castle, marking the transition from family archive to a significant scholarly treasure. Chapter 6, 'Isham Goes to Malahide', addresses Ralph Isham’s persistent efforts to acquire the collection and the complex negotiations required to overcome the Boswell descendants’ resistance to public disclosure. Chapter 7, 'Geoffrey Scott Gets Off to a Brilliant Start', describes the initial scholarly editing of the papers under Geoffrey Scott, whose work established the literary and historical significance of Boswell’s unexpurgated journals. Chapter 8, 'The Croquet-Box', examines the discovery of a significant cache of rotted papers in a croquet box, illustrating the physical fragility and haphazard storage of the Boswell archive. Chapter 9, '“Times 9 March announces discovery Scotland many missing Boswell Papers”', explores the shocking discovery of a separate, massive hoard of Boswell’s papers at Fettercairn House, drastically expanding the known collection. Chapter 10, '“Operation Hush”', details the secretive efforts of scholars and publishers to manage the Fettercairn discovery while avoiding legal complications that might have derailed the entire publication project. Chapter 11, 'The Fettercairn Cause', addresses the protracted legal battle in the Scots courts to determine the rightful ownership of the Fettercairn papers among various competing heirs and claimants. Chapter 12, 'The Stable-Loft', describes Ralph Isham’s final major acquisition of papers found in a stable loft at Malahide, which nearly completed his quest to reunite Boswell’s scattered archives. Chapter 13, 'The Advent of Donald Hyde', examines the critical role of Donald Hyde in stabilizing the project’s finances and facilitating the eventual transfer of the papers to an institutional home. Chapter 14, 'Yale Buys the Boswell Papers', concludes the narrative with Yale University’s historic acquisition of the complete Isham collection, ensuring the papers’ permanent preservation and continued scholarly publication. The general verdict on this monograph is that it serves as an indispensable and dramatic detective story, meticulously untangling the convoluted century-long journey of manuscripts from obscurity to the Yale collection. Reviewers describe the book as a thorough documentation of the shrill passions of bibliophiles, with Banks and Beddow highlighting the first-class mystery involving missing heirs, ebony chests, and manuscripts found in croquet boxes. Altick and Middendorf praise the work for supplementing previous narratives with fresh perspectives on Scottish jurisprudence and inheritance issues, though Altick finds the opening chapters on legal history somewhat heavy going. But the core of the critical reception focuses on the social history of the archive, specifically the embarrassment felt by descendants over the author's drinking and whoring. Taylor and Rawson emphasize how this pride led to centuries of concealment and the mutilation of texts with black paint. Despite the excessive detail noted by some, critics find the narrative of Ralph Isham’s dogged pursuit of the papers to be a brisk and essential contribution to eighteenth-century biography.
Cochrane entry 61.
The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the 'Life of Johnson
This edition—expanded to include the text of letters unavailable at the time of the volume’s first publication in 1969—records James Boswell’s quest over a period of more than twenty years to amplify his knowledge of his major biographical subject, Samuel Johnson, through a detailed correspondence with a wide network of friends, informants, and other authorities. The volume, with revised and updated annotation, shows Boswell’s struggles through his personal distresses to gather material for his Life of Johnson. It notes many of his revisions of his sources, changes made in manuscript and proof, and revisions of the first and second editions. It also presents letters that illuminate the contemporary reception of his powerfully innovative, controversial, and influential biography (which appeared first in 1791), taking the story as far as exchanges in 1808 between Boswell’s friend and editor, Edmond Malone, and his son, James Boswell the younger, about corrections for the sixth edition of 1811. Throughout, the annotation brings to life an extensive range of eighteenth-century figures, issues and topics. This corrected and enlarged version (the first edition had been out of print for two decades) serves as a valuable supplement and companion to the Yale manuscript edition of the Life of Johnson, upon which all future editions of Boswell’s biography will need to draw.
The Essential Boswell: Selections from the Writings of James Boswell
Martin’s anthology presents a selection of Boswell’s journals, letters, and published works to demonstrate a literary talent extending beyond being Johnson’s amanuensis. Martin provides an introductory biographical narrative and connective links that contextualize Boswell’s lifelong struggle with hypochondria, his search for paternal substitutes, and his paradoxical nature as both a disciplined writer and a dissolute man of pleasure. The volume includes the 1762–1763 London journal, accounts of continental travels, and selections from the major published biographies and essays. Martin explains that editorial policy aligns spelling and punctuation with modern practice, while notes identify people and events not clarified in the text. The contents include the first meeting with Johnson, interviews with Rousseau and Voltaire, the journey to Corsica to meet Paoli, and the agonizing composition of the biography of Johnson following the death of Boswell’s wife, Margaret Montgomerie. Martin identifies the collection as a harvest of discovered manuscripts that overhauled Boswell's status as an artist and individual. Boswell’s own introspection serves as a “transparency” or “mirror” for his restless thoughts, showing that he was a “composition of an infinite variety of ingredients.”
The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell
The ninth volume in The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell trade edition series, covering 24 September 1774 to 12 June 1776. The contents document a period viewed by the author as "ominous," featuring interactions with Samuel Johnson and the London literary scene. Events chronicled include conversations with Johnson in spring 1775 (covering his Taxation No Tyranny controversy with Macpherson), a March 1776 trip with Johnson to Oxford and the Midlands, and the famous May 1776 dinner with Johnson and John Wilkes. The edition adheres to the trade series policy of modern spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, relying on a meticulous assembly of primary documents, including Journal notebooks (e.g., from Edinburgh and London), Notes and Memoranda, and over 160 letters. Pages torn out by the author when writing The Life of Johnson were recovered in 1940 and printed here for the first time as originally written. The Wilkes dinner account is taken from the Life of Johnson manuscript. Supplementary material includes an Introduction by Ryskamp, three appendices (including one on Scottish Courts), and genealogical tables. Critics are generally favorable, praising the psychological depth and rigorous scholarship of the volume. Kirsch, in the LA Times, considers the discovery and publication of the papers the most significant literary scholarship of the early twentieth century, predicting the subject's reputation will eventually overshadow Johnson's. In NYTBR, Halsband defends the subject against priggish detractors, arguing the text illuminates human thought without requiring forgiveness, while his review in Studies in English Literature commends the expert editorial work allowing direct comparison between raw entries and final biographical adaptations. Clifford, in JNL, calls it one of the finest popular editions, highlighting the inclusion of original manuscript accounts of the Wilkes dinner. Abbott, in The Listener, notes the subject's integrity in self-portrayal but suggests "decisive" rather than "ominous" would better characterize these years. But Pearson, in the Saturday Review, critiques the title by arguing the subject's destructive behavioral patterns were predictable rather than ominous. In the TLS, Mutter emphasizes the subject's deep dependence on Johnson alongside recurring personal vices, praising the lively, thorough annotation. Raymond, in the Sunday Times, focuses on the psychological development of a man who triumphed by abandoning himself to curiosity. Trevor-Roper, in the New Statesman, explores the subject's oscillations between his feudal identity as a bored Edinburgh lawyer and his London persona as a literary flibbertigibbet, while Wills, in the National Review, commends the rigorous scholarship documenting a period of dissatisfaction and dissipation.
Reed and Pottle present a continuous narrative of Boswell's journals from May 1778 to September 1782, representing the most complete four-year stretch in the Boswellian record. The text details Boswell's "middle of life's journey" as a forty-year-old advocate in Edinburgh, characterized by a persistent "welter of themes" including his professional stagnation, recurring struggles with "morbid melancholy," and a complex, often antagonistic relationship with his father. The editors describe the journal's "organic" shape, highlighting major incidents such as the 1778 Carlisle Assizes, the 1779 anti-Catholic riots in Edinburgh, and Boswell's regular jaunts to London to "languish" for metropolitan society. Central to the volume is the death of Lord Auchinleck in August 1782; Boswell records the "shocking" hardness of his stepmother during the final illness and his own "giddy state" of grief and nervousness following the loss. Scholarly apparatus includes a detailed introduction exploring Boswell's "fantasy" of practicing at the English bar and his "ancestral piety" regarding the Auchinleck estate. The edition conflates multiple manuscript sources, including loose notes and bound notebooks, while providing extensive annotation on contemporary Scottish legal causes such as Crosse against Marshall. Appendices offer genealogical instructions Boswell provided to his son Sandy and a "Family Oath" sworn by his brother David, emphasizing Boswell's commitment to "aggrandize the family" of Auchinleck. Critics are generally favorable, praising the compelling adult portrait and meticulous editing, though a sharp divergence exists regarding the literary artistry of the unstructured text. Phillipson, in TLS, considers the volume the most important installment since the initial London records, praising the seamless presentation of a monumentally chaotic diary. Harris’s review in the New York Times welcomes the preservation of this quixotic self-portrait, while Kirsch, in the LA Times, lauds the complete evocation of a life lived. In the New Yorker, Updike offers a largely positive assessment, arguing that the diarist's plain honesty establishes the ethical genius of the journalism, even while questioning if the massive academic resources of the editorial factory are entirely justified for a secondary figure. Scholarly evaluations echo this enthusiasm; Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, find fascination in watching the frantic search for identity, while Rousseau, in SEL, maintains the work is highly significant for delineating a complex psychological landscape structured around parental and marital relationships. Sher, in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, additionally praises the compelling readability of the mature struggles. But Rawson, in the Sewanee Review, provides a starkly negative dissent, disputing editorial claims concerning deliberate artistic design and dismissing the text as a trivializing, undisciplined welter of informal jottings driven by vast self-absorption.
Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 1782–1785
Lustig and Pottle present Boswell's journals from his succession as ninth Laird of Auchinleck through the publication of his Hebridean tour. The editors document Boswell's initial 'extraordinary metamorphosis' into a model agriculturalist and paternalistic landlord. They trace his recurring depression in Edinburgh and his 'irresistible pull southwards' to London. The text records Boswell's final interactions with Johnson, including their shared trip to Oxford and the 'Extraordinary Johnsoniana-Tacenda' regarding Johnson's sexual morality. It details Boswell's political failures, specifically his Letter to the People of Scotland, and his transition to the English bar. The volume culminates in the 'triumph' of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, prepared with Malone's assistance. Lustig emphasizes Boswell's 'will-power, emerging as tenacity and inventiveness' in fixing his experiences verbally to stave off metaphysical terrors and the 'nothingness of all things.' Critics are generally favorable, praising the high standard of the editorial work while examining the darker, more somber depiction of the subject during middle age. Broyard, in the New York Times, offers a more negative perspective, labeling the work sad and arguing that neither primary figure appears at his best, while dismissing newly revealed information about Johnsonian sexuality as an unnecessary fuss. But Amory, in the Sunday Times, commends the perfection of the editing by Lustig and Pottle, focusing on the intensely human failings and creative gloom of the subject, though Amory disputes the claim that the subject possessed a strong visual sense. Burgess, in the Observer, approves of the sophisticated narrative technique and candor regarding marital relations, noting that the absence of Johnson in the foreground makes him appear more real. In JNL, Middendorf highlights the transition where obsessive self-absorption eclipses earlier engagement with the world, while an unsigned review in JNL commends the high quality, thorough annotation, and historical context provided by the editors. Ferguson, in South Atlantic Quarterly, praises the vivid detail and the dramatic inclusion of previously unpublished materials concerning Johnson's amorous inclinations. Montrose, in the New Statesman, enthusiastically notes that the volume demonstrates tireless tracking and collection of material despite contemporary critics expecting a self-effacing memoir. Finally, Novak, in Studies in English Literature, characterizes the edition as maintaining high standards, successfully preserving the integrity of the collection despite a lack of clear demarcation between distinct textual sections.
Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785–1789
Boswell chronicles the pivotal and most painful period of his mid-life career transition from an Edinburgh advocate to an English barrister. Motivated by a perennial need for agitation and social elevation in London, Boswell faces significant obstacles, including ignorance of English common law and a lack of professional connections. His English experiment yields little legal success, leading to a growing sense of failure and financial encumbrance. In desperation, he accepts the patronage of the ruthless James Lowther, first Earl of Lonsdale, serving as Counsel to the Mayor of Carlisle and eventually as Recorder of Carlisle. This association involves the loss of personal independence and the destructive fantasy of a shortcut to eminence. Concurrently, Boswell manages the publication of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and begins drafting the Life of Johnson, supported by the Gang—Malone, Reynolds, and Courtenay. The journals record his insatiable need for attention alongside the domestic tragedy of his wife Margaret’s fatal consumption, which he largely neglects in pursuit of pleasure and ambition. Boswell experiences the relentless drive of forces as he balances legal aspirations, political maneuvering for a parliamentary seat, and his enduring commitment to do honour to Johnson's memory. Critics are generally favorable, praising the admirable editing by Lustig and Pottle while tracking the dark narrative of professional failure and personal grief. In the NYT, Gross emphasizes the painful mood of the work, noting the subject's self-revelation, gloom, and anxiety during a miserable dependence on Lord Lonsdale. Fuller, in the WSJ, highlights a volatile reaction against Johnson's memory and the crucial role of Malone in driving the biography forward. In the LA Times, Hillier offers a highly favorable assessment, praising the editors' tracking of obscure quotations and contrasting the subject's personal flaws with an unrockable honesty and commitment to research. Parris, writing in the Sunday Times, describes this phase as wretched, focusing on the agonizing neglect of a dying wife and a craven hunger for esteem. In the TLS, Walker notes the rash move to London, driven by a loathing of Scotland, which dissolved into heavy drinking and few legal briefs. Clayton's review in N&Q warns that the scholarly apparatus imposes an illusory narrative structure on what was a confusing miscellany of living experience. Eastwood, in the English Historical Review, finds the editing wholly admirable for using letters to bridge manuscript gaps, though the text provides little illumination on the actual composition of the biography. Cook, in the Liverpool Daily Post, highlights the remarkable patience of Margaret Boswell amidst her husband's naive social maneuvering, while McKellar, in the Toronto Star, argues the text reveals a silly man in a mid-life crisis, unaware of his true vocation.
Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica and France, 1765–1766
This fifth volume in the trade edition series of The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell covers 1 January 1765 to 23 February 1766. The contents, previously published in the limited Isham collection (1928–1930), chronologically detail the author's Grand Tour through Italy, Corsica, and France. Key events include crossing the Alps, sojourns in Turin, Milan, Naples (consorting with John Wilkes), Rome, Venice, Florence, and Siena (with Girolama Piccolomini), and an unauthorized trip to Corsica to visit revolutionary leader Pasquale Paoli (October-November 1765). The journey concluded with a hurried return following his mother's death in Paris (January 1766). The text is a reconstruction drawing on the main journal texts (e.g., Journal in Switzerland and Italy), highly condensed Memoranda and Notes (90 octavo leaves, 1 Jan–11 Oct 1765), Ten-Lines-a-Day Verses (9 quarto leaves), and over 210 letters. The text is in modern spelling with English translations of French/Italian passages. It includes The Journal of a Tour to Corsica from the third edition (1769) of An Account of Corsica. Supplemental materials include an unsent letter to Rousseau (3 October 1765) and the complete correspondence with Girolama Piccolomini (1766–1769). Critics are generally favorable, praising the vivid presentation of historical encounters and the editors' skillful synthesis of fragmentary source materials, though a few prominent reviewers express strong reservations about the protagonist’s character and textual redundancy. Gregory, in the New York Times, celebrates the work as the output of one of the greatest diarists of all time, emphasizing the bold candor of the continental travels. In the New York Herald Tribune, Krutch designates this installment as the spiciest of the papers, highlighting the uninhibited pursuit of self-identity and suppressed amatory details. Abbott, writing in The Listener, commends the editors for their masterful marshalling of diverse memoranda, letters, and notes into a cohesive exploration of moral and intellectual development. Kolb's review (Virginia Quarterly Review) similarly praises the clear, vivid narrative layout. However, a sharp divergence appears in the TLS, which labels the collection small beer and waste-paper basket material, arguing it lacks the inherent vitality of earlier installments. Mortimer, in the Sunday Times, explores the underlying psychological inconsistency of the text, highlighting a callous indifference toward women and animals, while a mixed assessment by R. in the Birmingham Post suggests the once engaging freshness has become tarnished by repetition. Finally, Ames, in the Chicago Daily Tribune, maintains that the briskly paced, superbly edited volume remains a fascinating study in human character despite these distressing personal revelations.
Also published by William Heinemann, London, 1956 (limited and trade).
This sixth volume in the trade edition series of The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell covers 1766 through 1769, chronologically detailing the author's search for a wife, culminating in his November 1769 marriage to Margaret Montgomerie. The general-audience volume follows his return to Scotland from Europe, chronicles his "zigzag course" between candidates like Girolama Piccolomini and Catherine Blair, and his affair with Mrs. Dodds ("Circe"). Major events include his legal practice as an advocate, prominent involvement in the Douglas Cause, composition and publication of the successful An Account of Corsica (1768), two visits to London (with conversations with Johnson), and his celebrated appearance as a Corsican Chief at Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee. The text, which omits material cuts from fully written journal sections, is presented in modern spelling and draws on a mass of documents, including Journal in Scotland, Notes for Journal in London, and correspondence. Supplemental materials include an Introduction by Frank Brady, genealogical tables, and an Index. Critical reaction is mixed, shifting between praise for the vivid historical tapestry and revulsion at the subject's personal behavior. Clifford, in NYTBR and JNL, welcomes the absorbing assembly of disparate documents, noting that the manuscript versions of key conversations offer valuable variations for specialists. In the LA Times, Merlin celebrates the shameless, fascinating exposure of human egotism, while Bloom, in Saturday Review, highlights the effective reconstruction of a paradoxical nature. But Fulford, in the Manchester Guardian, delivers a scathing review, calling the volume a tedious mish-mash that parades unpleasantness under the guise of scholarship. Nicolson’s review in The Observer is similarly hostile, dismissing the protagonist as a lecherous, histrionic drunkard. Pacing and editorial decisions also draw criticism; Ferguson, in the American Scholar, warns that general readers will be overawed by the bulk, while Fifer, in PQ, notes that the normalized text prioritizes laymen over specialists. Despite these reservations, major British publications offer strong defense. The Times commends the text for documenting a period of professional success and maturity, while the London Economist rejects traditional caricatures of vulgarity, praising the skillful montage. Pritchett, in the New Statesman, finds a redeeming, profound seriousness in the writing, and Morley, in TLS, despite finding the correspondence occasionally dull, notes the abiding tribute found in the genuine affection of contemporaries.
Also published by William Heinemann, London, 1957 (limited and trade).
CGV entry 4:21. The London edition was published in 1957.
The 'Hyde Edition' (in honor of Donald and Mary Hyde) comprises five volumes devoted to the author's correspondence. The collection aims to supersede the previous three-volume edition by R. W. Chapman. It provides materials for a fresh assessment of the author as a man of letters. The edition offers new letters, more accurate texts, and updated annotation. The contents present the author's letters in chronological order, spanning from 1731 to 1784. The correspondence covers fifty-three years and ranges widely in audience, addressed to noblemen, children, merchants, scholars, Scotsmen, and printers; the letters vary in tone from courtly and intimate to formal and hastened, sometimes expressing profound sadness or positive glee. Letters composed for others and public dissertations presented as letters are excluded from the main text. The collection includes an additional fifty-two previously unknown letters or parts of letters discovered since the earlier three-volume edition. Notable new letters include twelve to Charlotte Lennox, and a letter of consolation to Mary Cholmondeley dated 6 May 1777. A central focus of the edition is textual accuracy, returning to original manuscripts wherever possible, enabling the transcription of scores of texts for the first time from original documents. This approach provided forty-two letters to Hester Thrale, previously known only through the "corrupt text" of the 1788 edition, to be transcribed from holographs. It also allowed transcription of Johnson's letter of thanks to Lord Bute (20 July 1762) from the holograph. Moreover, dozens of other letters, formerly known only through inferior printed texts or copies, are printed here from original documents. The reliance on holographs permitted the restoration of Johnson's original orthography, punctuation, and language. The edition applies an editorial policy that models annotation and transcription on the style sheet for the Yale Research Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell. The textual apparatus maintains a "tactful minimum" through principles of normalization. These silent changes produce a clean, readable text. The text preserves period features that express meaning, such as spelling, capitalization, and paragraphing. The editorial apparatus includes a record of substantive deletions visible in the manuscripts, offering glimpses into Johnson's composition process and mental state. For example, a note on a letter written just after Johnson’s paralytic stroke in June 1783 observes the difficulty in distinguishing "slips of the pen from considered alterations in phrasing." The editor also supplies a record of Johnson's corrections and substantive deletions from the manuscripts. The edition is more complete than Chapman's (1952), incorporating letters that resurfaced in the decades following Chapman's publication. It also excludes four letters contained in the earlier edition, two having doubtful authenticity, one written for Henry Thrale, and one incorrectly attributed to this author. Unlike Chapman, Redford omits Mrs. Thrale's letters to Johnson. The apparatus of notes is more finished than in the previous edition, presenting a more closed system of notes and references, with fewer loose ends. Unlike the preceding major editions by Hill and Chapman, this edition identifies every person named in the letters, enhancing clarity and explanatory power. The new approach also provides less detail about the previous publication history of each letter, in contrast to Chapman's extensive listings of previous printings. The new edition does not continue Chapman's numbering system (which was inherited from Hill). The old numbers were abandoned because the discovery of so many new letters since the 1892 edition rendered them confusing, and new numbers might imply incorrectly that no further letters would be discovered. Chapman's commentary often discussed the editorial process and offered his judgment on variants, creating an "open invitation into the editorial process," whereas the new edition's annotations are concise syntheses with a sense of objectivity. Supplemental materials include extensive notes that are praised for their encyclopedic breadth and detail. These notes draw on primary sources not cited by predecessors. The notes clarify details of persons and historical incidents, and cross-references link letters discussing the same subject. Complete translations of Johnson's letters originally composed in Latin are included in volume 5. This volume also gathers together evidence for letters whose texts have not been recovered and includes undated letters in Appendix 1, ordered alphabetically by correspondent. A comprehensive index is included. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the impeccable transcription accuracy, handsome presentation, and the integration of newly discovered materials. In TLS, Nokes commends the collection for capturing an intimate, non-literary side that places friendship above fine phrases, though Doody, in LRB, criticizes the sparse annotations regarding key contemporary figures. Folkenflik, writing in ECS, appreciates the beautiful typography but finds the brevity of the introductory overview disappointing. In SEL, Wendorf enthusiastically celebrates the edition for establishing a fresh standard that masterfully traces an evolution toward a familiar epistolary style. Wood's review in YWES highlights the value of the newly integrated fragments in illuminating the darker, more poignant areas of personal relations, while Woodman, in BJECS, characterizes the final volumes as examples of meticulous scholarship that provide a superb reading experience. Writing in JNL, Craddock hails the publication as a special grace that surpasses old editions by providing superior accuracy and manuscript documentation. McDermott, in RES, reinforces this assessment, praising the comprehensive thematic indexing for avoiding previous structural awkwardness. In AJ, Grundy applauds the scrupulous accuracy and the inclusion of contextual correspondence, noting the material enriches the biographical portrait of a man of exquisite feeling. Stein's review in Wilson Quarterly adds confirmation that the later letters achieve a directness of feeling absent from earlier business-related stopgaps. Individual skeptics exist; Burke, writing in South Atlantic Review, delivers a mixed assessment, disputing the overwhelming necessity of the volume and arguing that the annotations fail to resolve significant textual mysteries.
Reviews: Peter Ackroyd, The Times (London), February 22, 1992; Alan Bell, The Spectator 268, no. 8549 (1992): 30; Bloomsbury Review 13 (1993); Asa Briggs, Washington Times, February 16, 1992; Asa Briggs, Washington Times, March 27, 1994; John J. Burke Jr., South Atlantic Review 60, no. 2 (1995): 153–60; Greg Clingham, Essays in Criticism 43, no. 3 (1993): 253–57; Patricia Craddock, JNL 52, no. 1 (1992): 3–5; Anthony Curtis, Financial Times, March 21, 1992; Catherine Dille, New Rambler, Series D, no. 10 (1994-95): 66–68; Margaret Anne Doody, LRB 14, no. 21 (1992): 10–12; Robert Folkenflik, ECS 33, no. 2 (2000): 289–99; N. Fruman, Choice 29, nos. 11–12 (1992): 1677; N. Fruman, Choice 32, no. 1 (1994): 106; James Gray, Dalhousie Review 73, no. 1 (1993): 113–16; James Gray, Dalhousie Review 73, no. 3 (1993): 420–23; John Gross, Sunday Telegraph (London), March 13, 1994; Isobel Grundy, AJ 8 (1997): 415–20; Isobel Grundy, ECS 27, no. 1 (1993): 170–75; Lichfield Mercury, March 31, 1994; Lawrence Lipking, New Republic 207, no. 19 (1992): 36–40; Anne McDermott, RES, n.s., vol. 45, no. 179 (1994): 426–29; Anne McDermott, RES, n.s., vol. 46, no. 184 (1995): 614; Carey McIntosh, AJ 5 (1992): 421–33; Wendy Jones Nakanishi, English Studies 77, no. 6 (1996): 592–94; David Nokes, TLS, no. 4650 (May 1992): 24; David Nokes, TLS, no. 4742 (March 1994): 11; Patrick O’Brian, Daily Telegraph (London), April 22, 1992; J. Enoch Powell, Sunday Times (London), March 1, 1992; Claude Rawson, LRB 9, no. 9 (1987): 18; Christopher Ricks, New Criterion 11, no. 1 (1992): 38–41; Joseph Rosenblum, Library Journal 116, no. 18 (1991): 99; Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor, April 1, 1992; Toru Sasaki, Studies in English Literature 82 (2006): 171–77; Michael Seidel, Newsday, February 2, 1992; Michael Seidel, Newsday, March 6, 1994; Giles Smith, The Independent, February 23, 1992; The Economist, May 9, 1992; The Spectator 273, no. 8672 (1994): 34–35; Ann Thomson, XVII–XVIII 25 (1993): 527; Village Voice Literary Supplement, February 1995; Richard Wendorf, SEL 34, no. 3 (1994): 652–53; A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard (London), February 27, 1992; Wilson Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1992): 118; John Wiltshire, CQ 23, no. 4 (1994): 358–68; Nigel Wood, YWES 75, no. 1 (1994): 343; Thomas M. Woodman, BJECS 19, no. 1 (1996): 113–14; David Yerkes, Text 7 (1994): 478–87; Robert Ziegler, Papers on Language & Literature 28, no. 4 (1992): 457–75.
Wimsatt and Pottle edit the journals covering Boswell's early married life and his maturation as a 'Benedict' and 'Scots advocate.' The text follows Boswell from his 'extraordinary serenity' as a young husband to the return of 'radical impulses of extravagance.' Major events include Boswell's 1772 and 1773 London trips, his admission to the Literary Club, and the 1773 tour to the Hebrides with Johnson. Wimsatt focuses on Boswell's role as a 'self-appointed public defender' for common criminals, climaxing in the 'macabre and poignant' seven-week struggle for the life of John Reid. The journals provide 'rich materials' for the Life of Johnson, including conversations with Goldsmith and Garrick. The editors highlight Boswell's 'realistic' verbal art and his 'capacity to entertain the jostling opposites' of morality and dissipation. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with critics praising the compelling psychological depth, the revelation of humanitarian impulses, and the meticulous construction of the composite text. Reviewers emphasize the compelling contrast between professional obligations in Edinburgh and restorative literary interactions in London. Halsband, in NYTBR, commends the accurate management of the complicated editorial task, noting the text reinforces a genius for particular history. Morley's review in TLS recognizes the heights of descriptive power forced by the central capital trial, though arguing the author relies on fascinating companions to command the attention of posterity. Kirsch, writing in the LA Times, praises the terrible honesty and reflective intensity that define the autobiographical writing despite the emerging private distress. In the New Statesman, Pritchett values the fluid personality and phenomenal will displayed, celebrating the author as a superb artist who captured his own unstable, extreme emotions. Kolb's review in the Virginia Quarterly Review analyzes the transition into a busy advocate, though questioning whether the massive scale of the editorial project might ask the text to carry more than it can bear. Abbott, in The Listener, commends the composite editorial approach for providing a comprehensive view of professional and domestic complexities. An unsigned review in The Economist confirms the status of the premier English diarist, highlighting the psychologically realistic observations of criminal defense alongside the production of a superb travel journal.
Also published by William Heinemann, London, 1960.
CGV entry 4:21.
Reviews: Claude Colleer Abbott, The Listener 64 (October 1960): 647; Richard D. Altick, New York Herald Tribune, December 27, 1959; Guy Bervin, The Gazette (Montreal), December 10, 1960; Hal Burton, Newsday, December 5, 1959; Jacques Chauvin, Études Anglaises 15 (1962): 80–81; Raymond Fletcher, The Tribune (Blackpool), October 14, 1960; George Fraser, Aberdeen Evening Express, October 12, 1960; John Gore, The Sphere 243, no. 3154 (1960): 281; Robert Halsband, NYTBR, December 13, 1959; Benjamin Kaplan, Harvard Law Review 73, no. 7 (1960): 1428–32; Robert R. Kirsch, LA Times, February 9, 1960; Gwin J. Kolb, Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1959; Gwin J. Kolb, Virginia Quarterly Review 36, no. 2 (1960): 307–10; Edward A. Laycock, Daily Boston Globe, December 13, 1959; Doris Lessing, The Spectator 205, no. 6904 (1960): 609; J. R. Lindley, Mercury, October 21, 1960; J. R. Lindley, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 1960, 44–46; H. A. Morgan, NR (January 1961): 23–24; F. V. Morley, TLS, no. 3059 (October 1960): 663; New York Herald Tribune, December 7, 1959; V. S. Pritchett, New Statesman, October 29, 1960; Sydney Roberts, Sunday Times (London), October 9, 1960; Marjory Rutherford, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 13, 1959; Stuart Shaw, Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 31, 1960; The Economist, November 19, 1960; The Gazette (Montreal), January 30, 1960; Clarence Tracy, Queen’s Quarterly 67 (1960): 487–88.
Part of the Yale Trade Edition. Covers Boswell’s journals from 1776 through 1778, documenting Boswell’s life and continued association with Johnson. The editorial policy for the trade edition is to present the text of Boswell’s private papers with annotation primarily "turned inwards towards the text," in contrast to the Research Edition’s outward-facing annotation. The organization is strictly chronological, drawing on Boswell's original manuscript material discovered in the 1930s. Critics are generally favorable toward this edition. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, praise the volume for providing crucial, newly discovered documents that allow scholars to compare the raw notes directly against the final biographical prose. Coley's review in SEL highlights the historical and psychological value of the text, emphasizing the accounts of London visits and political discussions. In the Sunday Times, Connolly focuses on the dramatic presentation of human frailty alongside the lucid recording of conversation. Disagreements arise regarding the editorial choices for different audiences; Crossman, in the New Statesman, argues that the publication lacks necessary features for general readers, such as glossaries, and objects to the psychological explanations provided by the editors. But Wolff's review in Newsweek praises the light annotation style aimed at the general public, noting that the text offers exceptional vibrancy. Cruttwell, in the Washington Post, and Trevor-Roper, in The Listener, both emphasize the compelling depiction of severe emotional volatility and political engagement. Halsband, in the Saturday Review, commends the editorial arrangement and commentary. Walker, in the TLS, values the learned annotations as essential for navigating the complex text and notes how the volume reveals the conscious shaping of the final biography. Tracy, in Queen's Quarterly, offers a mixed assessment, praising the urbane editorial notes but concluding that the repetitive patterns of behavior make much of the volume difficult reading.
Greene presents a comprehensive selection from Johnson’s canon, aiming to shift focus from his "personality" to his achievement as a writer. The volume includes major works such as Rasselas, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the prefaces to the Dictionary and Shakespeare, alongside substantial samplings of less familiar political, legal, and theological prose. Greene provides a detailed biographical and critical introduction, a chronology of Johnson’s life, and extensive explanatory notes. The editorial policy prioritizes "the best texts available," with Greene drawing from first editions and Johnson’s later revisions. Texts are modernized in spelling and punctuation to facilitate readability, though Johnson’s specific capitalizations in diaries and letters are preserved. Facsimiles of the Dictionary and Shakespeare edition are included to illustrate Johnson’s methodology. Greene highlights the "verbal artistry" and "wide-ranging curiosity" evident throughout the collection, asserting that Johnson remains one of the most knowledgeable and insightful writers in English literature. Critics are generally favorable, praising the anthology for its inclusive nature and its deliberate emphasis on the written output over biographical caricature. Robson, in TLS, describes the volume as admirably done, praising the informative and lucid introduction, though suggesting a companion volume of conversational extracts would help satisfy general readers. In RES, Mezciems calls the collection a best buy that serves as a superior introduction for students, though noting that the poetry remains under-represented. Middendorf's review in JNL commends the presentation of the subject's wide-ranging mind, defending the focus on the written word against critics who miss the conversational persona. Writing in N&Q, Lurcock identifies the anthology as the most significant publication of the bicentennial year, celebrating the scholarly rigor and the potential to shift critical focus away from personality. In BJECS, the unsigned review affirms its status as the standard selected works due to solid textual decisions and copious notes. Pailler (Études Anglaises) finds unbeatable value in the dense historical contextualization, a sentiment shared by D'Evelyn in the Christian Science Monitor, who emphasizes the modern relevance of the moral and journalistic writings. Clingham, however, offers a dissenting perspective in the Cambridge Quarterly, arguing that the volume is unbalanced, relies on a reductive view of the subject's thought, and introduces flawed biographical fragmentations.
CGV entry 2:44. An 840-page collection, part of the series with general editor Frank Kermode.
Publisher's blurb: "This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, the edition enables students to study Johnson's work in the order in which it was written, and, wherever possible, using the text of the first published version. The volume presents a selection of Johnson's most important writings, drawn from all periods of his life. It reflects almost completely the range of literary forms in which Johnson wrote, including poetic translation, biographical sketches, literary criticism, and letters. It includes a broad selection from The Rambler (1750–1752) and The Idler (1758–1760), along with the travel narrative A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), and a selection from The Lives of the Poets (1781). David Womersley's introduction explores how Johnson's mastery of style enabled him to adopt various personae, sometimes simultaneously, in order to communicate through many different genres and registers. Johnson is shown to be an active participant in the philosophical and social currents of his time. This selection reveals an author driven by deeply held principles, concerned with how the ethical, political, and affective dimensions of language go beyond vocabulary and reach into the lives of its users. Explanatory notes and commentary are included to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the Life of Johnson, and a Chronology."
Essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler
This edition presents seventy-nine selected essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, sixty-nine of which appear in their entirety. Bate draws the text from the Yale Edition of Johnson, volumes II through V, while removing heavy textual apparatus to facilitate student access. The collection emphasizes Johnson's role as a moralist and critic, covering approximately one-third literary criticism and two-thirds moral discourse. Bate identifies the historical lineage of these works not merely in the tradition of Addison and Steele but in Renaissance humanism and seventeenth-century religious prose. The introduction characterizes the essays as "satire manqué," where Johnson’s unillusioned view of human nature is tempered by "sadness and a final charity." Editorial policies include maintaining the parent edition's text, expanding explanatory notes, and inserting identifications for mottoes and quotations. Bate notes the varied circumstances of composition, from the "extemporaneous" haste of the Rambler to the "lighter vein" of the Idler, which Johnson wrote with less commitment and fewer revisions. The volume aims to provide the "heart of Johnson" by focusing on universal themes of self-delusion, the "hunger of imagination," and the practical application of truth to human life.
CGV entry 16:14. Contains 79 essays, 69 of them complete, from Volumes 3-5 of the Yale Edition of Johnson's Works.
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language
This selection from the first edition of the 1755 lexicon preserves the original uncut entries, including etymologies, definitions, and usage notes, while implementing conservative typographical updates. Lynch replaces the "long-s" with the short "s," regularizes italics, and converts entry words from all-caps to mixed-case with stressed accents. The text also shifts from eighteenth-century alphabetization, which conflated "I/J" and "U/V," to a modern alphabetical sequence. Although the derivative "Grammar" and "History of the Language" are omitted, the volume includes the full "Preface" and "Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language." Lynch selects entries based on their enduring literary significance, interesting shifts in meaning, or their role as "self-quotations" by Johnson. Lynch notes that Johnson moved from a prescriptive to a descriptive theory of lexicography, famously determining that "general agreement" among authors—rather than a "lexicographer's fancy"—regulates the language. This edition serves as a record of a "rapidly changing world" at the dawn of the industrial revolution. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the volume as an intelligent, entertaining, and accessible curation of a literary masterpiece. Carey, in the Sunday Times, calls the beautifully produced volume a perfect complement to biographical monographs, noting that the selection of low words highlights the democratic nature of the lexicographical project. Kirsch's review in Slate highlights the subjective, literary nature of the methodology, praising the salient choices that showcase classical prose, industry, and genius. In the LA Times, Ulin characterizes the abridgment as a window to one man's soul reflecting a singular labor, arguing the colorful insults serve as a necessary corrective to modern linguistic imprecision. Burke, writing in the WSJ, examines the selections to reflect on the immense toil of the original enterprise. An unsigned review in JNL praises the intelligent design aimed at the common reader, noting that preserving complete entries successfully maintains the original organization of the semantic field. Svitavsky, in Choice, commends the abridgment for its extensive scope compared to earlier selections, appealing directly to those who enjoy the work as literature in its own right. Billen, in The Times, celebrates the selection for chronicling personal struggles with melancholy, while Devan, in the Straits Times, argues the curation preserves an instructive, witty personality. Finally, Pearce, in The Herald, commends the editor's curation as an essential guide to a linguistic labyrinth, and Potemra, in the National Review, highlights the text as a highly entertaining sampling of historical vocabulary.
Republished: New York: Walker & Co., 2003; London: Atlantic, 2004.
Reviews: Andrew Billen, The Times (London), December 4, 2004; Michael Bundock, NR, Series E, no. 5 (2001): 76–77; Jeffrey Burke, WSJ, October 10, 2003; John Carey, Sunday Times (London), March 27, 2005; Quentin De la Bédoyère, Catholic Herald, June 3, 2005; Janadas Devan, Straits Times (Singapore), June 6, 2004; Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, December 7, 2003; Jayne Howarth, Birmingham Post, November 20, 2004; Christopher Howse, The Spectator, no. 4848 (November 2004); John Izzard, Quadrant, June 2005, 85–87; JNL 54, no. 1 (2003): 73–74; James J. Kilpatrick, Chicago Sun-Times, July 21, 2002; Adam Kirsch, Slate, September 17, 2003; Sam McManis, News Tribune (Tacoma), May 8, 2005; Harry Mead, Northern Echo, March 1, 2005; Edward Pearce, The Herald (Glasgow), November 27, 2004; Michael Potemra, National Review 55, no. 19 (2003): 58; Reference and Research Book News 19, no. 1 (2004); Michael Rogers, Library Journal 128, no. 18 (2003): 129; Jonathan Sale, Financial Times Weekend Magazine, November 20, 2004; David Self, Times Educational Supplement, October 29, 2004, 17; Jesse Sheidlower, BookForum 12, no. 3 (2005): 5–7; Jeff Simon, Buffalo News, August 24, 2003; Southern Johnsonian 11, no. 4 (2004): 2; Sharon Stockdale, Madera Tribune, February 12, 2004; Sunday Herald (Glasgow), October 24, 2004; W. L. Svitavsky, Choice 41, no. 3 (2003): 1888; Paul Tankard, The Age (Melbourne), September 28, 2002; David L. Ulin, LA Times, September 9, 2003.
The Thirtieth of January Sermon: Swift, Johnson, Sterne, and the Evolution of Culture: The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies James L. Clifford Lecture, 2008
Weinbrot analyzes the evolution of sermons commemorating the execution of Charles I, focusing on Swift, Johnson, and Sterne. While early sermons are High Church and outraged, they gradually become rhetorically indifferent. Johnson's contribution for his friend John Taylor avoids traditional theories of causation. Instead of Puritan hostility, Johnson identifies the broader human emotion of envy that leads to strife, using the text "Where envying and strife is, there is confusion." Johnson transmutes the particular into the general, arguing that human misery arising from inequality is "incurable." Although Johnson thought James II was properly deposed, he later argued that the thirtieth of January memorial should end. He tells Boswell in 1772 that he wished it "had been a temporary act" that expired with the century. Johnson rejects regicide in favor of legal resistance to "such oppression as may be lawfully resisted."
Moral Travel and Narrative Form in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Wanzer examines the philosophic ideas of empirical morality that direct Johnson’s performance as a traveler in his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland." The study explores how Johnson's focus on "men and manners" reflects eighteenth-century beliefs about perception and experience. Johnson reasons from human behavior to the moral causes informing it, using a "circumstantial method" to judge achievements within unique settings. Wanzer highlights Johnson's insistence on accurate measurement and his use of travel to "enlarge knowledge and rectify opinions." The dissertation also analyzes Tobias Smollett’s "Humphry Clinker," tracing how its narrators evolve from self-absorbed observers to more objective travelers. Wanzer demonstrates that both works are grounded in the Lockean conviction that man’s primary duty is to know himself through the study of human conduct in various environments.
Johnson's frequent criticism of the "want of trees" in Scotland, a prevalent theme in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), stems from more than ethnic prejudice. Johnson was participating in a Western humanistic tradition, dating back to Cicero, where the planting of trees was considered a sign of a concern for posterity and an implicit belief in immortality. To Johnson, the failure of long-range cultivation in Scotland indicated a profound philosophical and sociological crisis, signifying a break between the present and future generations.
James Boswell and Scotland in An Account of Corsica
Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century
'Generous Attachment': The Politics of Biography in the Tour to the Hebrides
Travels into the Unknown: Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Tomarken presents a comparative analysis of Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, arguing that both works employ a similar "educational procedure" by juxtaposing opposing viewpoints. He describes the Journey as "historical autobiography," where the narrator’s personal growth and "honestly admitted limitations" provide insight into the "historical dilemma" of the Hebrides. Tomarken notes that while Rasselas points toward the "everyday world of private decisions," the Journey evokes the "realm of public events" and history. He finds the concluding paragraph of the Journey—where a man in his sixties doubts his "ability to instruct"—to be a "startling" example of the "unknown Samuel Johnson." The article concludes that Johnson skilfully concludes the Journey by "placing himself within history," creating a "self-corrective" narrative that transcends simple personalized history.
A Historico-Literary Text: Samuel Johnson in Scotland
Two Perceptions of One Trip: Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Ogu systematically compares the disparate accounts of the 1773 Scotland tour by Johnson and Boswell, exploring the philosophical and literary reasons for their differences. The study focuses on how divergences in genre, purpose for publication, and mode of presentation shape the authors' perceptions of reality. It demonstrates that differences in character and literary goals—Johnson's rationalist, public survey versus Boswell's romanticist, biographical journal—result in two distinct, yet complementary, narratives of the same events, serving as an exemplum of Locke's theory of individual, unique perception. The analysis contrasts their selectivity of detail and their portrayals of themselves and each other.
Cochrane entry 318.
Informational Biography and the Lives of the Poets
Nunnery argues that Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, moved beyond traditional exemplary biography towards "informational biography." This approach treats lives as data fields from which readers induce provisional patterns about achieving happiness, rather than as illustrations of universal truths. Using the Life of Pope as a key example, Nunnery contends Johnson presents complex, contingent characters and invites readers into an inductive, interpretive process alongside him as a mentor, acknowledging life's irreducibility to formulae and emphasizing the reader's epistemological needs in navigating uncertainty and pursuing temporal happiness.
Fresh Reflections on Samuel Johnson: Essays in Criticism
'Rotation of Interests': Johnson's Concept of Social and Historical Encounter and Change
Novak explores Johnson's complex philosophy of history, moving beyond his noted skepticism about traditional historical narratives focused on monarchs and battles. Johnson valued history for moral reflection and understanding human nature, preferring accounts revealing the "progress of the human mind." Novak highlights Johnson's concept of the "rotation of interests," introduced in his life of Blake, which explains social and historical change as resulting from the dynamic, often conflicting, interplay of group self-interests, creating an unintentional societal balance and cyclical pattern distinct from Enlightenment notions of linear progress.
Improvement and Enlightenment: Proceedings of the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar, University of Strathclyde 1987–88
Noble analyzes Boswell as a stylish and formally innovative genius marginalized by a Scottish literary tradition often ashamed of his restless, rootless life. Noble argues Boswell sought "imaginative succour" in London because Edinburgh's "prissy cultural capital" was creatively stifling. Caught in a "Freudian nightmare" involving his authoritarian father, Boswell's psychological instability fueled a compulsive need to transcribe experience into text. While Noble admits Boswell displayed "all the vices of upper-class Scots on the make," he maintains that Boswell achieved a unique "creative synthesis of two literary traditions." Johnson, recognizing this talent, viewed the journals as a "great treasure." Noble highlights Boswell's documentary fidelity in his travels, noting he avoided the "sentimental exploitation" of the Highlands found in Walter Scott's later "formulaic propaganda." Ultimately, Noble positions Boswell as an "embracer of problematic reality" whose "Mozartian capacity" to address deep questions through light discourse warrants his repatriation into the Scottish canon.
Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words
Mugglestone analyzes the complex networks of spatial, maritime, and political metaphors that Samuel Johnson employed to conceptualize his role as lexicographer during the multi-decade compilation and revision of his Dictionary of the English Language. Moving beyond conventional biographical tropes that portray Johnson either as an autocratic linguistic dictator or as a passive, submissive drudge bound to the track of the alphabet, Mugglestone argues that his shifting self-representations reflect a deep anxiety regarding the limits of prescriptivism and the irrepressible fluidity of a living tongue. By tracing the evolutionary arc between the optimistic projections of his 1747 Plan and the defensive, realistic resignation of his 1755 Preface, the study explores how Johnson adjusted his linguistic governance. Mugglestone challenges traditional views of the text as an inert depository of static, didactic definitions, demonstrating instead how its inclusion of extensive literary quotations creates an internally conflicted, multivocal critical discourse where authoritative prescription continually battles empirical observation. Chapter 1, "Journeys into Words," introduces the central metaphor of the lexicographer’s "voyage round the literary world," contrasting the image of the "harmless drudge" following a linear path with that of the adventurous explorer navigating a vast sea of words. Chapter 2, "Writing the Dictionary: Departures and Destinations," traces the early history of the work through its various iterations—the 1746 "Scheme," the 1747 "Plan," and the 1755 "Preface"—revealing a shift from initial prescriptive ambitions to a pragmatic recognition of linguistic mutability. Chapter 3, "'Excursions into Books': Documenting the New World of Words," examines the empirical process of collecting over 116,000 illustrative quotations, detailing how the perusal of both canonical and non-canonical authors served to ground definitions in actual usage. Chapter 4, "The Ordered State: Power, Authority, and the Written Word," analyzes the tensions between the political modeling of lexicographical control and the democratic reality of "common law" in language, highlighting a resistance to autocratic reform. Chapter 5, "Meaning, Governance, and the Colours of Words," explores the complexities of definition and the role of the lexicographer as a judge, arguing that the work functions less as a rigid set of edicts and more as a calibrated analysis of style and register. Chapter 6, "Defending the Citadel, Patrolling the Borders," addresses the boundaries of the English language, specifically the treatment of loanwords and the transition from a desire for linguistic "purity" to a defense of the "natives" against foreign incursion. Chapter 7, "History and the Flux of Time," discusses the interconnectedness of time and change, emphasizing that because language is a human product, unchangeable stability is an impossible "phantom." Chapter 8, "The Praise of Perfection," concludes by reviewing the legacy of the work and the inevitable imperfections of any human endeavor to "fix" a living, breathing tongue. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with critics praising the eloquent exploration of lexicographical metaphors and the effective dismantling of the myth of a rigid, dogmatic prescriptivist. Central to the critical reception is the evaluation of how the dictionary-making process is framed as a dynamic, flexible journey navigating between descriptive pragmatism and linguistic regulation. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews, as academic reviewers identify significant philological defects despite endorsing the book for general audiences. Wild, in TLS, praises the demonstration of how rigid regulation was rejected in favor of flexible, pragmatic description, though finding the diction sometimes ponderous. In RES, Reddick applauds the expertise in historical linguistics and the recovery of groundbreaking inclusions of female authorities, but notes a genial tone that obscures comparisons with past scholarship and points out errors regarding the later revisions. Reddick's review in the International Journal of Lexicography further highlights the effective challenge to popular mythography while reiterating concerns over hasty errors regarding amanuenses. Haggerty, writing in SEL, offers a positive assessment, praising the fascinating perspective that successfully reopens areas of investigation previously perceived as closed. In JNL, Iamartino commends the novel approach connecting the methodology to earlier practitioners and framing the complex dual identity of the lexicographer. Considine, in Dictionaries, values the attractive, witty style and rich contextual engagement, but identifies numerous severe linguistic and historical errors, particularly regarding Latin etymologies and source misrepresentations. Finally, Lee, in Choice, enthusiastically labels the volume an accessible compendium and an informative, entertaining guide.
Reviews: Joan C. Beal, Journal of English Linguistics 45, no. 1 (2017): 95–98; Anthony W. Lee, Choice 53, no. 12 (2016): 1780; Willy Maley, THES, no. 2,222 (September 2015): 42; John Considine, Dictionaries 38, no. 1 (2017): 123–31; George Haggerty, SEL 57, no. 3 (2017): 659; Nicholas Hudson, NR, Series F, no. 18 (2014): 88–89; Giovanni Iamartino, JNL 67, no. 2 (2016): 57–61; Phil Jones, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 2018, 77–79; Allen Reddick, International Journal of Lexicography 30, no. 3 (2017): 382–87; Allen Reddick, RES, n.s., 67, no. 281 (2016): 807–9; Min Wild, TLS, no. 5889 (February 2016): 26.
All Before Them: Attitudes to Abroad in English Literature, 1660–1780
'Extensive View': Johnson and Boswell as Travelers and Observers
'Occasional' Observance and the Quiet Mind: Meditative Theory and Practice in Samuel Johnson's Prayers and Meditations (1785)
Kickel examines Johnson's Prayers and Meditations as a practical model for achieving a "quiet mind," tracing his evolving meditative theory. Kickel identifies three phases: an early (1738–60) reliance on the formal Anglican collect; a middle period (1760s–70s) shifting toward "occasional" or "extemporall" Protestant meditative forms, characterized by extemporaneous colloquies and intimate diurnal entries; and a late phase (1770s–84) using a consolatory and hortatory strategy that mimics the rhetorical structure of his familiar letters. Kickel argues this progression illustrates both Johnson's personal spiritual journey and a broader Enlightenment movement toward individualized religious practice.
Publisher's blurb: "The Life of Mr Richard Savage was the first important book by an unknown Grub Street hack, Samuel Johnson, who would later become the most celebrated British writer of the late 1700s. Richard Savage (1697–1743) was a poet, playwright, and satirist who claimed to be the illegitimate son of a late earl and to have been denied his inheritance and viciously persecuted by his mother. He was urbane, charming, a brilliant conversationalist, but also irresponsible and impulsive. His role in a tavern brawl almost led him to the gallows, though his life was saved by an eleventh-hour pardon by the King. Over time he attracted many supporters, practically all of whom he managed to alienate by the time of his death in a debtors" prison in Bristol. Johnson, who had been friends with Savage for a little over a year, drew on published documents and his own memories of Savage to produce one of the first great English biographies. The edition is supplemented by other writings by Johnson, a selection of Savage's prose and verse, contemporary and posthumous responses to Savage and to Johnson's biography, and selections by Johnson's first two major biographers, John Hawkins and James Boswell. A discussion of factual errors in Johnson's account help the reader place the Life and the supplementary texts in their historical and intellectual contexts."
To the Hebrides: Samuel Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland' and James Boswell's 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'
Publisher's blurb: "Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides are widely regarded as among the best pieces of travel writing ever produced. Johnson and Boswell spent the autumn of 1773 touring Scotland as far west as the islands of Skye, Raasay, Coll, Mull, Ulva, Inchkenneth and Iona. Highly readable, often profound, and at times very funny, their accounts of the ‘jaunt’ are above all a valuable record of a society undergoing rapid change. In this pioneering new edition, Ronald Black brings together the two men’s starkly contrasting accounts of each of the thirteen stages of the journey. He also restores to Boswell’s text 20,000 words from his journal which were denied entry to his book because they were intimate, defamatory, or about the islands rather than Johnson. The endnotes incorporate Boswell’s footnotes, translations of Latin passages, a clear summary of pre-existing information on the two texts, and a fresh focus on what the two men actually found on their trip. To the Hebrides also includes contemporary prints by Thomas Rowlandson, seventeen new maps and a comprehensive index."
'And I Travelled After Him': Johnson and Pennant in Scotland
Jenkins examines the competitive relationship between Johnson and Thomas Pennant regarding their respective Scottish travels. Johnson admired Pennant as the "best traveller I ever read" but wrote his own "Journey to the Western Islands" to compete for public attention. Jenkins argues that Pennant's focus on "topography, zoology, industry, and husbandry" was more accurate, while Johnson's work offered superior "style or depth of thought." The article notes that Boswell often appeared "envious of Pennant's vitality" and recorded Johnson's "capital Oratio pro Pennantio" defending the traveler against charges of superficiality. Johnson's travel narrative was directly influenced by Pennant’s earlier tours, specifically in the choice of topics and the "tactics in composing the Journey." The study concludes that Pennant's reporting "shewing that it might be visited with safety" likely prompted Johnson to finally accept Boswell's long-standing invitation.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language
Thomas Pennant's Scottish Tours and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Jemielity disputes the claim that Thomas Pennant's popular accounts of his Scottish tours significantly shaped Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Jemielity argues Johnson's choice of focus (Highland society over Lowland description), his emphasis on general reflections and philosophical observation ("notions than facts"), and his specific points of disagreement arose from his own long-held interests and preparatory research, not primarily from a need to differentiate his work from Pennant's. The broader context of travel literature further diminishes Pennant's singular influence.
The Vision at Slains: Boswell's Supernatural Encounters
Ingram argues that Boswell’s fascination with executions and ghosts reflects a deep-seated anxiety regarding "annihilation" and the nature of the afterlife. The narrative traces Boswell’s "horrible imaginings" from his childhood Presbyterian upbringing to his travels with Johnson in the Hebrides, where he sought empirical confirmation of the "mysterious" and the "second sight." The text contrasts Johnson’s cautious "willingness to believe" with Boswell’s debilitating "gloomy seasons of dejection" triggered by spectral settings like Slains Castle. Significant focus is placed on Boswell’s 1776 deathbed interview with David Hume, which Ingram frames as a traumatic encounter between Boswell’s religious yearning and Hume’s resolute "infidelity" and acceptance of non-existence. Ingram concludes that Boswell used writing as a primary defense against these "dreary ideas," attempting to reconcile his chronic "Hypochondria" through literary documentation.
Johnson's Insular Mind and the Analogy of Travel: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Analyzes Johnson's political and philosophical thought through the lens of insular space, arguing this is a core element of his ideology visible in both his political tracts and A Journey to the Western Islands. Johnson consistently uses an "insular lexicon" (e.g., "concentration," "enclosure," "secluded") to express his belief in a self-sufficient, concentrated England, as opposed to the "boundless" and vulnerable nature of empire and colonization, such as America. The journey through the Hebrides becomes a psychological one where Johnson evaluates landscapes based on their safety and insularity, using them as analogies to argue for a domestic, contained policy that protects the mother country from foreign dilution and the drain of emigrating people.
'I May Perhaps Have Said This': Samuel Johnson and Newhailes Library
The library of Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, at Newhailes House is regularly associated with an unsubstantiated quote from Samuel Johnson who supposedly described it as 'the most learned drawing-room in Europe'. Though the veracity of the association is never likely to be proven, this essay considers: the development of the library; Lord Hailes's interactions with his peers; and contemporary references to his collection. How Johnson may have interpreted Lord Hailes's character is also considered in order to judge whether there is at least a reasonable basis for the association.
Betteridge investigates the origin of the unsubstantiated but famous quotation in which Samuel Johnson supposedly called the library at Newhailes "the most learned drawing-room in Europe." He traces the history of the apocryphal remark and notes that while it cannot be proven, there is a reasonable basis for the association, giving it the "ring of truth." The essay establishes that by the time of Johnson's visit in 1773, the library room had evolved into a grand social space, fitting the "drawing-room" description. Furthermore, its owner, Lord Hailes, was a respected scholar and classicist whom Johnson admired, and the library itself was a well-regarded working collection strong in classics and history, which would have appealed to Johnson. The author concludes that although Boswell's silence on the matter is telling, the combination of the learned host, the quality collection, and the magnificent room makes the attribution plausible, especially given Johnson's own admission to sometimes speaking "laxly."
La représentation du voyageur dans le récit de voyage britannique (1754–1788)
Entre 1760 et 1780, le récit de voyage britannique a évolué vers une expression plus assumée de la subjectivité du voyageur. Une typologie en trois points prenant appui sur l'étude détaillée de six récits produits à cette période par des écrivains en voyage (Samuel Johnson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, James Boswell et William Beckford) permet de préciser ce changement et d'en observer les manifestations concrètes : les récits didactiques inspirés des préceptes de la "New Science " ainsi que les satires destinées à soutenir l'effort de définition nationale britannique laissent tout d'abord entrevoir une subjectivité "masquée." Un contexte politique plus serein et une meilleure compréhension des mécanismes mentaux donnant accès à la connaissance ont contribué à mettre la subjectivité en question, et à placer le voyageur au centre du récit de voyage : l'expression de son intimité et de son imaginaire propres ont ainsi pu acquérir une plus grande légitimité.
Pascal Paoli en Angleterre: trente-trois années d'exil et d'engagement
Publisher's blurb: "La période d'activité politique de Pascal Paoli concernant son gouvernement de la Corse face à la domination génoise (1755-1769) est bien étudiée et documentée, par les historiens et les biographes du chef corse, ainsi que le rôle qu'il a joué pendant la période révolutionnaire, et sous le régime du royaume anglo-corse (1790-1795). En revanche, les deux séjours que Paoli a effectués en Angleterre, de 1769 à 1790, et de 1795 jusqu'à sa mort survenue en 1807, sont longtemps restés dans l'ombre. On en comprend aisément la raison: à ces moments-là, Paoli n'est plus en position de peser sur les événements, et les États pour qui la Corse pourrait représenter un enjeu ne s'intéressent pas au général en exil. On se propose dans le présent ouvrage de mieux éclairer la "période anglaise" de Paoli en s'appuyant sur sa correspondance, toujours en cours de publication, sur la monumentale édition des "papiers" de James Boswell dirigée par l'Université de Yale, et sur un manuscrit dactylographié inédit d'une historienne anglaise, Mrs Frances Vivian. On voit que Pascal Paoli était reçu parmi l'élite de la nation anglaise, dans un pays où le roi George III et certains cercles littéraires et aristocratiques lui prodiguèrent un accueil respectueux et généreux; dans un pays où, en définitive, il passa près de la moitié de sa vie."
Anthropological Particulars: Johnson's Ambivalent Pastoral Dream
Wascana Review of Contemporary Poetry and Short Fiction
James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations
Mushroom Votes and 'Staged' Subjects: Linking Boswell's Simulations of Consciousness to the Novel and Eighteenth-Century Voting Practices
A Dish of Tea with Dr. Johnson: From James Boswell's 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' and 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'
Barr, Redford, and Stafford-Clark present a theatrical adaptation based on the biographical writings of James Boswell, centering on the authoritative and complex personality of Johnson. The play uses dialogue drawn from historical accounts to depict Johnson's interactions with a diverse cast, including Boswell, Hester Thrale, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and King George III. Significant thematic focus is placed on Johnson's "seemingly endless capacity for talk" and his internal struggles with "melancholy" and the "horror of annihilation." The text recreates famous episodes such as the tour of the Hebrides, the meeting with John Wilkes, and Johnson's domestic life with the blind Anna Williams and his cat, Hodge. This edition includes a foreword by Peter Martin and an essay by Stephanie Chapman regarding Johnson's household "charity," emphasizing his role as a "human and emotionally complex man" whose character is revealed through "little things." The script balances "boisterous rudeness" with "poignant" intimacy, particularly in the unfolding relationship between Johnson and Boswell.
'Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors': Unexpected Essays in the History of Lexicography
Legendary Lexicography: Joseph Bosworth's Debt to Henry J. Todd's Edition of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language
'Putting a Book out of Place': Johnson, Ossian and the Highland Tour
Traveling to the Lighthouse with Woolf and Johnson
Scepticism and Literature: An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson
In this enthusiastic review, Lynch describes Fred Parker’s study as an "important book" exploring the literary consequences of eighteenth-century philosophical skepticism. Lynch notes that Parker surveys skeptical epistemology through Montaigne and Locke before providing case studies of Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson. The review highlights Parker’s argument that the instability of human reason grants British literature a "characteristic intellectual confidence tempered by irony," especially within Rasselas. Lynch finds the argument convincing and the close readings illuminating, noting the work complements James Noggle’s scholarship. Despite praising the major scholarship, Lynch censures the "terrible production values," specifically citing transparent paper and miserable typesetting.
Walker's enthusiastic review of Brack's edition asserts that Hawkins remains a vital source because he knew Johnson longer than Boswell and provides unique perspectives on Johnson's early years and final days. The review highlights Hawkins's defense of his own digressions as necessary literary history and addresses contemporary objections to his asperity toward Johnson, noting that his perceived harshness stems from his own character and his critique of Johnson's indiscriminate charity. Walker finds the detailed, uncomfortably familiar narrative of Johnson's final days particularly compelling, increasing the biographer's credibility as a unique witness. While Hawkins lacked Boswell's narrative flair, Walker maintains that his proximity to Johnson's daily life and his duties as an executor lend the work significant credibility. The edition is further praised for its 756 concise endnotes and sixteen illustrations, offering a candid, less hagiographical account from a contemporary who offers a unique, albeit less polished, vantage point.
Notes on Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782
Walker provides scholarly annotations for several brief, sometimes cryptic, allusions found in Boswell's journal from 1778–1782. By identifying and contextualizing references to sermons by John Tillotson and Robert Rollock, poetry by Edward Young ("Love of Fame"), and medical tables by Stephen Hales, Walker illuminates Boswell's reading habits, preoccupations (like fear of damnation and old age), and compositional techniques. These detailed notes enrich the understanding of specific journal entries and shed light on Boswell’s broader intellectual world and his methods of recording and recalling information.
Swiftly Sterneward: essays on Laurence Sterne and his times in honor of Melvyn New
Johnson and Moral Argument: 'We Talked of the Casuistical Question ...'
Walker disputes the prevailing scholarly assumption that Johnson's view of casuistry was primarily pejorative. While acknowledging Johnson's occasional criticisms of casuistical "niceties" that perplex the mind, Walker argues that Johnson fundamentally identifies as a "good casuist" who uses the tradition to resolve complex cases of conscience. The discussion focuses on Johnson's application of casuistical tools—such as mental reservation, equivocation, and the "rule of safety"—to moral dilemmas involving lying, unacknowledged authorship, and social obligations. Boswell often appears as a foil, representing a "more modern" and less nuanced understanding of these moral complexities. Johnson uses casuistry to navigate the "compulsion" of social interrogation and to protect the "right of the questioner" while maintaining personal integrity.
La historia de Rasselas, principe de Abisinia
Johnson's Dictionary and the Language of Learning
DeMaria classifies the world knowledge contained within Johnson's 1755 Dictionary, identifying it as a "disguised encyclopedia" that serves as a "chronicle of English civilization." Using a computerized index of 23,000 records, DeMaria demonstrates that Johnson's selection of illustrative quotations follows a deliberate pedagogical program centered on "knowledge and ignorance, truth and probability, learning and education, language, religion and morality." The monograph argues that Johnson views the dictionary as a "quintessential book of books" designed for both entertainment and instruction, placing it within a seventeenth-century humanistic tradition that subordinates human reason to divine revelation. DeMaria highlights Johnson’s specific focus on "the superiority of virtue to knowledge" and his use of authors like Locke, Bacon, and various divines to provide a "moral and religious" curriculum. Though the work addresses Boswell’s role in perpetuating myths about Johnson’s lack of historical interest, the focus remains on Johnson’s own "educational responsibilities" and his "powers of reading" as evidenced by the Dictionary's contents. Chapter 1, "Introduction: The Dictionary as Literature," addresses Samuel Johnson’s conception of his work as an encyclopedic "book of books," arguing that it functions as a comprehensive history of learning and a moral-pedagogical tool rather than a mere philological reference. Chapter 2, "Knowledge," explores the Dictionary's epistemological framework, contending that Johnson presents knowledge as a fragmented, piece-meal acquisition of particulars that points toward an unattainable divine unity. Chapter 3, "Ignorance," examines the pervasive Lactantian theme of human fallibility and the "huge abyss of ignorance," arguing that Johnson uses reminders of cognitive limitations to enforce religious humility and dependency on God. Chapter 4, "Truth," addresses the rhetoric of truth as a substantial, ineluctable reality and explores the scales of conviction—ranging from demonstrative certainty to belief and faith—within a world dominated by appearance and probability. Chapter 5, "Education," explores the pedagogical traditions of the Forum Romanum, arguing that Johnson’s bibliographic choices were designed to instill "practick wisdom" and moral discipline in a student audience. Chapter 6, "Language," examines the Dictionary's internal tension between the ennobling power of words as "the dress of thought" and their potential as "empty, vain things" that can cloud original Edenic clarity. Chapter 7, "The Arts of Writing, Reading, and Speaking," addresses the curriculum of communication, arguing that Johnson promotes an ideal of stylistic plainness and focus where language serves as a transparent vehicle for meaning. Chapter 8, "Arts and Sciences," identifies Johnson's critical engagement with professional disciplines like poetry, divinity, law, and medicine, contending that he subjects these "learned" fields to satirical scrutiny while asserting their fundamental subservience to morality. Chapter 9, "Fundamentals," explores the foundational concepts of faith, providence, and human freedom, arguing that the Dictionary establishes these as the essential boundaries of the human spirit against the encroachments of fatalism. Chapter 10, "Happiness," concludes by examining the Dictionary’s portrayal of human life and labor, arguing that Johnson represents the pursuit of happiness not as an attainable worldly state but as a moral discipline defined by work and the subdual of vain wishes. Reviews are generally favorable, with commentators dividing over whether grouping illustrative quotations topically reveals a coherent encyclopedic anatomy of moral wisdom or merely imposes an artificial thematic unity on a discontinuous text. Rogers, in the LRB, calls it triumphant, original, and energetic, praising the spry prose for successfully laying bare a classical and pious mind. In the TLS, Walker delivers an enthusiastic notice, arguing that the monograph provides an essential index of the mind by moving beyond purely linguistic concerns to explore philosophy and religion. Womersley's review in RES describes it as an elegant, restrained, and learned book, highlighting how computer-aided sorting demonstrates a unity of purpose with other major writings. Basney, in ECS, commends the craftsmanlike study for making coherent sense of an array of learning by restoring the original didactic intention. In JNL, Middendorf approves of the analysis situating the text within a lexicographical tradition of pansophia and Menippean satire. Writing in SEL, Folkenflik offers a mixed assessment, labeling it an interesting reference guide but suggesting the underlying analysis remains largely unsurprising. Burke, in ECCB, also provides a mixed review, balancing praise for the focus on citations with sharp criticism of a methodology that reproduces a familiar conservative caricature and misjudges hostility toward historical contemporaries. Finally, Reddick, in Modern Philology, delivers a skeptical critique, arguing that treating the lexicon as a unified literary work remains untenable because extractive readings fail to account for alphabetical structure and instead reflect the bias of the software.
Reviews: Lionel Basney, ECS 21, no. 1 (1987): 113–17; N. F. Blake, Lore and Language 7, no. 1 (1988): 113–14; John J. Burke Jr., ECCB, n.s., 12 (1986): 467–68; Jean Ducrocq, XVII–XVIII 19 (1987): 520; Robert Folkenflik, SEL 27, no. 3 (1987): 532–33; Philip Mahone Griffith, AJ 3 (1990): 453–55; Isobel Grundy, Yearbook of English Studies 18 (1988): 324–26; Elizabeth Hedrick, Annals of Scholarship 7 (1990): 91–101; James McLaverty, N&Q 35 [233], no. 2 (1988): 239–41; John H. Middendorf, JNL 46, no. 2 (1986): 3; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 40, no. 2 (1987): 216–17; Murray G. H. Pittock, BJECS 12, no. 1 (1989): 111–12; Publishers Weekly, August 29, 1986; Allen Reddick, MP 86, no. 3 (1989): 312–16; Pat Rogers, LRB 9, no. 1 (1987): 13–14; Robert Stack, THES, no. 731 (1986): 15; Times Literary Supplement, no. 4374 (1987): 123; Wilson Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1987): 158–59; David Womersley, RES, n.s., 39, no. 153 (1988): 113–14.
Last Words: The Biographemes of Shakespeare
The biography of Shakespeare is a paradox. Is he the pre-eminent author precisely because we know so little about him and his life remains a mystery? At once a figure of cultural saturation and an indefinable enigma, Shakespeare's life history has created as many problems as it has solved. Biography as a genre in any case long postdates Shakespeare's natural life and is readily seen as an anachronistic intrusion into understanding his work. This essay reflects on the elusive attempts to capture the life of writing since Nicholas Rowe and Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. It suggests that the conception of life writing in Johnson as anecdotal and fragmentary is more appropriate than the search for a seamless narrative from cradle to grave. The term biographemes, used by Roland Barthes, is reclaimed as an index of the problem of modern literary biography. However, it is also argued that the assumption that biography is necessary to a historical evaluation of Shakespeare is misplaced. On the contrary, historicism, criticism, and even the study of authorship are enriched by a more skeptical and open-minded approach to the idea of a writer's biography.
In this comedic dark fantasy adventure, young Samuel Johnson and his loyal dachshund, Boswell, are unexpectedly abducted and pulled into Hell. The Great Arch-Fiend plots to sacrifice Samuel as a display of power to stabilize his fracturing control over the underworld's rebellious factions, which are rife with administrative bickering and corporate-style bureaucracy. Stranded in an unfamiliar terrain, Samuel is pursued by a variety of bizarre threats, including ice demons and an elaborate mechanical carriage. With the assistance of a couple of eccentric local scientists and Nurd, a clumsy demon who has unexpectedly become his protector, Samuel must navigate the political chaos of the underworld and outmaneuver the demonic hierarchy to find a way back home to Biddlecombe.
Boswell and Mason, Johnson and Gray: An Encounter
Clarke provides an account of a 1785 meeting between Boswell and the Reverend William Mason, using records from both men. The encounter highlights the deep hostility between Johnson and Mason's circle, which included Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole. Mason criticized Johnson's "arrogance" and faith, claiming Johnson’s animosity stemmed from Mason's refusal to contribute to the Rambler. Clarke notes the encounter reveals Boswell’s own tension between his loyalty to Johnson and his youthful admiration for Gray. Mason's corresponding letter confirms the exchange but also reveals his anxiety about his own literary legacy and exclusion from Boswell's Tour.
'O Rare Sam Jonson': James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to Hawthornden Castle with Samuel Johnson and Ben Jonson, 1773
Caudle analyzes Boswell's account of visiting Hawthornden Castle with Johnson, focusing on Boswell’s explicit parallel between this visit and Ben Jonson's earlier stay with William Drummond. This comparison served Boswell’s Plutarchan biographical aims, positioning himself as a modern Drummond recording Johnson's conversation. The essay explores the cultural significance of the Jonson-Drummond legend for Scottish identity, Boswell's deep interest in Drummond and Scottish Renaissance history, and how the Hawthornden episode connects to Boswell's defense of his own anecdote-collecting methodology as a vital means of preserving genius against decay and oblivion.
James Boswell (1740–1795) and His Design for a Dictionary of the Scot[t]ish Language, 1764–1825
Caudle examines Boswell’s uncompleted project to compile a dictionary of the Scottish language, intended to emulate Johnson’s 1755 English Dictionary. Inspired by his 1763 meeting with Johnson, Boswell sought to "must forsooth a very Johnson be" and create a "national Work" for Scotland. The article describes the rediscovery of a manuscript draft containing thirty-eight specimen entries and lists of approximately eight hundred words. Caudle explains that while Johnson thought the Scots dialect was on its way to extinction, Boswell intended his dictionary for the "preservation, for scholars rather than vernacular speakers," of a "once-dominant elite and courtly language." The study details Boswell’s "fierce feudal pride" and his belief that "the words were [his] children." Caudle concludes that this project reveals Boswell’s deep interest in "Scottish national identity" and his desire to do for Scotland what his mentor had done for England.
Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America
'Fact' or 'Invention'?: James Boswell and the Legend of a Boswell–Sterne Meeting
The Shandean: An Annual Devoted to Laurence Sterne and His Works
The Club was a London dining club founded in February 1764 by the artist Joshua Reynolds and essayist Samuel Johnson. This is the 250th anniversary of the dining club.
This is Stuart Campbell's humorous account of his journey through Scotland in the guise of a modern James Boswell accompanied by a succession of portly Johnsons.
Spectators, Ramblers and Idlers: The Conflicted Nature of Indolence and the 18th-Century Tradition of Idling
Fludernik challenges the simple narrative that 18th-century views of idleness merely shifted from negative Puritan denunciation to positive Romantic appreciation. By comparing the Spectator with the essays of Johnson in the Rambler and the Idler, Fludernik demonstrates that attitudes toward leisure remained deeply conflicted. The Spectator offers a more positive model by integrating artistic appreciation and conversation into free time, whereas Johnson presents a more critical view inflected by personal anxieties over procrastination. Johnson equates extreme indolence with a dangerous, vegetative state of physical and mental decay. He outlines a golden mean of ease between pain and pleasure, but recognizes this state as highly unstable due to the human psychological desire for constant variety.
Sharp Minds/Twisted Bodies: Intellect, Disability, and Female Education in Frances Burney's Camilla
This essay examines Frances Burney's novel Camilla (1796) in terms of its portrayal of the relationship between "deformity" (physical disability) and female education. It argues that in Camilla, Burney applies the 'monster'-as-genius trope (typically a male phenomenon in the eighteenth century) to Eugenia Tyrold, whose bodily abnormalities enable her to develop into a Classical scholar. Eugenia's 'masculine' education, in turn, allows her to pen a critique of patriarchy and the male gaze. By exploring Eugenia's character alongside other prominent eighteenth-century historical and literary figures, such as Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, William Hay, Aesop, and Mrs. Smith from Jane Austen's Persuasion, this essay posits that Camilla contributes to a Georgian-era discourse of disability in which bodily impairments facilitate intellectual development.
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
L'Art de la biographie dans 'Vies imaginaires' de Marcel Schwob
Publisher's blurb: "Vies imaginaires (1896) de Marcel Schwob a longtemps souffert de l'image de conteur érudit accolée au nom de l'auteur et de l'absence d'originalité qui lui fut reprochée. Cette étude montre l'importance de ce livre dans l'histoire de la biographie, en le confrontant à ses modèles et aux oeuvres des devanciers de l'écrivain. En rupture avec la biographie référentielle et scientifique, Vies imaginaires s'inscrit dans une filiation d'oeuvres anglaises qui ont conduit l'auteur à renoncer à l'exemplarité et à l'exigence de vérité propres au paradigme classique du genre. La plupart des textes exploités par l'écrivain pour réinventer la vie de ses protagonistes sont des oeuvres littéraires, des biographies ou des traductions en langue anglaise. L'inventaire du matériau intertextuel et l;étude de sa réécriture révèlent une appropriation multiple de ces écrits par Schwob et met en lumière la créativité de l'écrivain. Le retraitement de biographies préexistantes et la réinterprétation de personnages empruntés à l’Histoire aboutissent à l’élaboration d’un livre radicalement nouveau, dont la genèse, les principes d’écriture, la composition et l’imaginaire manifestent une création originale et personnelle qui ouvre la voie aux fictions biographiques du XXe siècle."
Johnson, the Moral Essay, and the Moral Life of Women: The Spectator, the Female Spectator, and the Rambler
Eadie contrasts Johnson's treatment of women's morality in the Rambler with that in Addison and Steele's Spectator and Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator. While the Spectator primarily links female virtue to securing marriage and the Female Spectator focuses on navigating social constraints, often instrumentally, Eadie contends Johnson uniquely separates social expectations from genuine moral development. Johnson acknowledges societal limitations but addresses women as complex moral beings capable of intellectual and spiritual aspiration beyond prescribed domestic roles, urging integrity and self-reliance over mere conformity.
Theorizing Orality and Performance in Literary Anecdote and History: Boswell's Diaries
Analyzes Boswell's Life as a textual archive of oral performance. It investigates how Boswell's journals and published work capture not just the words, but the embodied, social, and immediate nature of his talk. By "theorizing orality," the article explores Boswell's process of transforming fleeting conversation into a "speaking picture," preserving the physical presence and performative energy of the spoken moment.
Boswell's Changing Conceptions of His Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Goyette analyzes cancellanda in the Tour to trace Boswell's shifting editorial conception and disagrees with Pottle on the evolution of the text. Originally drafting a topographical supplement to Johnson's Journey in 1775, Boswell reconfigured the work after Johnson's death as a rhetorical "Prelude" to the Life. Assisted by Malone, Boswell reorganized materials chronologically to emphasize intimacy and conversational authenticity. The cancellation of a note admitting the journal was "imperfectly kept" served to reinforce the narrative of scrupulous accuracy and Johnson's explicit approval of the manuscript.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America
Cochrane entry 319.
What Did James MacPherson Really Leave on Display at His Publisher's Shop in 1762?
Disability Studies and the British Long Eighteenth Century
Disability studies approaches the British eighteenth century as a period in transition, with the conception of disability as spiritual sign of wonder or warning giving way to an understanding of it as pathology and abnormality. Period-appropriate terms for disability are "deformity,"defect," and 'monster," which were used for exotic bodily configurations and gender and racial differences: women and non–Europeans were perceived as defective. John Milton, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Inchbald, and William Hay have generated interest on account of their disabilities, while Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Mary Wortley Montagu, Sarah Scott, Sarah Fielding, Henry Fielding, John Cleland, Francis Burney, and William Godwin have received attention for disability thematics. Topics of concern include disability and old age, physiognomy in characterization, joke book humor and sensibility, ugliness as aesthetic category, defect in tropes of national identity, deafness and sign language, intellectual disability and Lockean epistemology, the exotic deformed, disfigurement from smallpox as well as political rhetoric associated with the disease, and femininity as monstrosity.
Samuel Johnson agreed with the booksellers to write prefaces to the work of England's poets "from Chaucer to the present time." Long before the first installment came out in 1775, the undertaking had both shrunk to more practicable limits and expanded hugely, becoming a biographical and critical survey of English poetry. The ongoing Yale edition of the complete works devotes three volumes to the Lives of the Poets (2010). Having completed work on the first four volumes, Johnson hoped (he told his diary) they were written "in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety." Fraser critiques Johnson's book.
On Samuel Johnson Who Wrote against Scotland
Boswell's Account of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Boswell's lengthy "Authentick Account" of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides is a deliberate rhetorical component, not a digression. Boswell uses the extractable account, which emphasizes "authenticity" and "domestick privacies," to advertise his general biographical skill. The positioning of this narrative reinforces the Tour's function as a prelude to the Life of Johnson, demonstrating Boswell's unique qualification to write both the intimate biography of Johnson and a history of the 1745 rebellion.
Cochrane entry 321.
The World in Thirty-Eight Chapters; or, Dr. Johnson's Guide to Life
Hitchings presents a chronological biographical narrative that doubles as a thematic exploration of Johnson's relevance to modern existence. The volume surveys Johnson's life from his "vile melancholy" and physical ailments to his literary triumphs, including the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets. Hitchings emphasizes Johnson’s psychological depth and "vibrant candour," presenting him as a flawed but heroic thinker whose insights into friendship, grief, and the "business of life" remain vital. The account highlights Johnson’s capacity for "comparing minds" and his belief that "faults are part of our magic." Boswell appears as the tireless, sometimes tactless, chronicler who "doctored" Johnson’s image while preserving his colloquial prowess. Piozzi, formerly Hester Thrale, is depicted as a "foisonous fund of anecdote" who shared a "little paradise" with Johnson at Streatham and later published an intimate, controversial account of their relationship that revealed Johnson "in his undress." Hitchings disputes simplistic views of Johnson as a mere pedant, instead documenting a man of "strenuous thought" whose life provides "patterns of virtue" and lessons in resilience. Chapter 1, ‘An Inscription over the Door, to Show What Kind of a Book This Is,’ establishes a paradigm for historical understanding through a meditation on Iona, arguing that intellectual transcendence of local circumstances dignifies human existence. Chapter 2, ‘Of Personal Oddity, Which Is No Obstacle to Personal Authority,’ examines the dialectic between physical infirmity and moral weight, suggesting that visible imperfections can deepen clinical insights into human nature. Chapter 3, ‘The Community of Pains and Pleasure – Our Subject’s Origins and Upbringing, with Some Speculations on What We May Learn from Them,’ explores the formative influence of early hardship and complicated familial dynamics on the development of a resilient, creative response to mortality. Chapter 4, ‘The Description of a Young Man’s Disappointment, with Some Sidelights Courtesy of a Certain Switzer, Dr. Jung,’ analyzes the paralysis of failed institutional identity, framing it as a transformative ‘creative illness’ essential for psychological maturation. Chapter 5, ‘A Philosophical Meditation upon the Nature and Rewards of Accident, in Which Are Used the Strange Words “Galilean Serendipity”,’ posits that intellectual breakthroughs frequently derive from the sagacious embrace of chance rather than purely linear, systematic planning. Chapter 6, ‘In Which Samuel Johnson, Being Entrusted with a Mission of Love, Proceeds to Execute It; with What Success Will Hereinafter Appear,’ scrutinizes the complexities of matrimonial choice, advocating for a balanced union characterized by dynamic tension and reciprocal integrity. Chapter 7, ‘The Mournful Truth of London Life: Or, an Author Embarks upon the Sea of Literature (with but a Smattering of Wormy Cliché),’ details the hazardous transition into the professional literary marketplace, where poverty and systemic corruption frequently stifle individual merit. Chapter 8, ‘In Which We Observe the Peculiarities of Friendship, Manifest in Samuel Johnson’s Association with the Notorious Mr Richard Savage,’ explores the paradoxical nature of companionate bonds, asserting that shared vulnerabilities and differences can significantly enlarge the moral self. Chapter 9, ‘A Resting-Place – Where the Reader May Take Refreshment, and Where Vexed Matters Are Resolved,’ evaluates the symbolic and practical inexhaustibility of urban life while clarifying common linguistic and conceptual misunderstandings regarding patriotism and gendered experience. Chapter 10, ‘Of Genius, with Sundry Other Scenes from the Farce of Life,’ deconstructs the Romantic cult of godlike inspiration, arguing instead for a definition of genius grounded in rigorous execution and the skillful use of intellectual tools. Chapter 11, ‘In Which the Craft of Literary Biography Is Expounded,’ addresses the evolution of the biographical genre as a humane act of rescue that reanimates the specificities of individual character and conversation. Chapter 12, ‘An Excursion to the Theatre, with Some Brief Diversions into Other Arts,’ critiques the limitations of theatrical performance while analyzing the moral imperative for literature to provide just representations of general human nature. Chapter 13, ‘In Which We Ponder the Making of a Dictionary – with Thoughts on the True Meaning of Lexicography and the Particular Flavours of Its Solitude,’ investigates the transition from linguistic prescriptivism to descriptive documentation amidst the profound psychological isolation of monumental scholarship. Chapter 14, ‘A Chapter about Grief (for One Word Must Serve Where in Truth No Assemblage of Words Will Be Sufficient),’ portrays bereavement as a dark, disorienting presence that must be transcended through purposeful intellectual activity and social obligation. Chapter 15, ‘Containing Some Essential Points of Information on the Life of Reading, Whereamong Are the Most Fugacious Mentions of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu and Even Mr Stephen King,’ champions reading as a persistent, multifaceted engagement with intellectual history that enables profound self-scrutiny. Chapter 16, ‘A Chapter That Reflects on the Uses of Sickness, and of Patrons,’ investigates the psychological 'let-down effect' following major achievements and examines how long-term infirmity offers unique opportunities to contemplate the union of soul and body. Chapter 17, ‘An Essay, or “Loose Sally of the Mind”, upon the Methods of a Moralist, in Which Are Considered Prose Style and Its Higher Functions,’ redefines the moralist's role as one of practical virtue and ethical action rather than abstract dogma. Chapter 18, ‘Some Further Thoughts on the Rambler and the Intricacies of Ordinary Life,’ explores the significance of domestic happiness and the transient nature of 'insect vexations' that dominate daily attention. Chapter 19, ‘A Short Musing, upon Exemption from Oblivion (or What Is Otherwise Called Memory),’ analyzes the faculty of memory as an unreliable yet essential anchor for personal identity and moral continuity. Chapter 20, ‘Containing Much to Exercise the Reader’s Thoughts upon the Questions of Fear and Sanity,’ examines the nature of irrational anxiety and the rigorous mental discipline required to maintain psychological equilibrium against intrusive dread. Chapter 21, ‘A Chapter One Might, in a More Facetious Spirit, Have Chosen to Label “Shakespeare Matters”,’ evaluates the editorial challenges of canonization and the enduring moral utility of literature that accurately mirrors universal human experience. Chapter 22, ‘In Which Samuel Johnson Idles, to Some Avail, Not Least by Enquiring into the Soul of Advertisement and Our Artificial Passions,’ scrutinizes the deceptive mechanisms of commercial persuasion and the cultivation of unnecessary desires in a consumerist society. Chapter 23, ‘Of Tea and Abyssinia – a Chapter about Choices, in Which We Have Chosen to Include the Word “Lumbersome”,’ discusses the paralyzing complexity of human choice and the limitations of rational planning in the pursuit of fulfillment. Chapter 24, ‘In Which the Definition of Network Provides an Opportunity to Appraise Certain Marvels of the Twenty-First Century, Not Least the Inventions of Mr Mark Zuckerberg,’ draws parallels between eighteenth-century social structures and modern digital connectivity to assess the stability of human nature across technological shifts. Chapter 25, ‘On the Business of a Club,’ explores the vital role of structured sociability in fostering intellectual growth and tempering the corrosive effects of individual isolation. Chapter 26, ‘A Chapter upon Samuel Johnson’s Lawyerly Inclinations,’ examines the intersection of legal reasoning and moral judgment, emphasizing the importance of objective evidence over speculative philosophy. Chapter 27, ‘In Which at Last We Attend to the Life and Loves of Hester Thrale,’ analyzes the complexities of intellectual intimacy and the social repercussions of unconventional companionate bonds. Chapter 28, ‘Some Ruminations upon Scepticism,’ distinguishes between productive intellectual doubt and the paralyzing effects of radical skepticism on moral action. Chapter 29, ‘A Short Chapter on Politics and Public Life,’ critiques the performative nature of political radicalism and the frequent disconnect between public rhetoric and private integrity. Chapter 30, ‘Containing a Sketch of Dr. Johnson’s Visit to the Caledonian Regions,’ contrasts empirical observation with cultural prejudice, arguing that travel should serve as a rigorous study of human diversity. Chapter 31, ‘On the Fleeting Nature of Pleasure and the State of Felicity,’ deconstructs the 'industry of happiness,' positing that genuine flourishing is a byproduct of meaningful engagement rather than a direct object of pursuit. Chapter 32, ‘In Which Thought Is Applied to an Awkward Question: Whether Dr Johnson Subscribed to the Doctrines of S****ism,’ addresses the struggle to subdue tyrannical bad habits through disciplined perseverance and mental combat. Chapter 33, ‘Upon Charity – Whether It Be Cold, and How It Is Performed,’ identifies provision for the poor as the true test of civilization and argues for a benevolence that transcends moral judgment of the recipient. Chapter 34, ‘A Chapter about Boredom,’ reframes boredom as a natural 'vacuity of being' that serves as a necessary spur toward intellectual activity and self-reform. Chapter 35, ‘Of Johnson Among the Bluestockings,’ evaluates the role of intellectual women in eighteenth-century society and the imperative to foster inclusive spaces for diverse mental excellence. Chapter 36, ‘One of Our Longer Chapters, Directed with No Little Incongruity to the Matter of Life’s Brevity,’ meditates on human impermanence, suggesting that the awareness of death should intensify the commitment to purposeful living. Chapter 37, ‘Some Thoughts upon the Business of Cultural Legislation,’ discusses the moral responsibility of those who shape public taste and the enduring weight of cultural influence. Chapter 38, ‘In Which This Account of the Great Johnson Is Concluded,’ synthesizes the complexities of an inconsistent, contradictory life into a final argument for the necessity of intellectual humility and tolerance. Critics are generally favorable, praising the work for its engaging, accessible blend of biography and thematic ethical reflection. In prominent trade and news publications, Darcy, in TLS, praises the fresh re-evaluation of aphorisms as deep personal distillations, highlighting nuanced accounts of politics and marriage while questioning certain psychological interpretations. Freeman’s review in The Times describes the volume as occupying a space between biography and self-help, commending its scholarship but noting occasional modern ramblings. Wilson, in Spectator, offers a mixed assessment, critiquing the self-help framing and contemporary digital comparisons but celebrating the scholarly depth and portrayal of an intricate intellectual legacy. Brown, in Mail on Sunday, frames the subject as a heroic thinker, praising the exploration of robust sympathy and benign influence. In the Daily Mail, Lewis enthusiastically calls the volume a jolly tribute to an enduringly relevant professional man of letters. Rennison, in Sunday Times, deems the work witty and engaging, emphasizing how the subject's personal struggles produced a profound sympathy for human fallibility. In scholarly circles, Jack, in 1650–1850, finds the essays lively and compassionate, noting how they successfully connect early financial and mental struggles to a philosophy of basic human equality. Finally, Winterton's review in Transactions of the Johnson Society praises the structural integration of chronology and ethics, concluding that the concise summaries effectively make specialized research accessible to general audiences without breaking new academic ground.
Reviews: Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday, June 10, 2018; Jane Darcy, TLS, no. 6015 (July 2018): 25; Laura Freeman, The Times (London), June 9, 2018; Malcolm Jack, 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 25 (2020): 278–80; Roger Lewis, Daily Mail (London), June 22, 2018; Nick Rennison, Sunday Times (London), June 10, 2018; Frances Wilson, The Spectator, June 16, 2018; John Winterton, Transactions of the Johnson Society, 2019, 102–4.
Johnson's Quest for 'the Fictions of Romantic Chivalry' in Scotland
Johnson’s 1773 journey to the Hebrides was a "Quixotic adventurer's" quest for surviving feudal manners. His early "immoderate fondness" for romance literature shaped his expectations of Highland life. He identified clan leaders with "knight errants" and viewed ruined cathedrals like St. Andrews as "mournful memorials" of ancient sanctity. While Boswell provided a "conventionally romantic response," Johnson maintained a critical understanding, contrasting "barbarous grandeur" with the need for justice. He sought "wild objects" and "precipices" over "artificial solitude." Johnson’s self-identification with clan heroes culminated in his visit to Flora Macdonald, which Boswell called a "wonderful romantic scene." He ultimately viewed the Islands through a literary lens, finding "the patriarchal life" he had long feigned in his imagination.
Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism
Hayes uses subscription lists to identify two significant works in Allan Melvill’s library, expanding the known literary influences on his son, Herman Melville. The first, William Pelham’s System of Notation (1808), contained the full text of Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, suggesting Melville encountered Johnson's "Happy Valley" concept much earlier than the 1869 date previously recorded. Hayes argues this early exposure informed the "Happy Valley" imagery in Typee and the character Donjalolo in Mardi. Additionally, Allan Melvill’s subscription to Eleazar Lord’s 1825 edition of Lemprière’s Universal Biography provided the young Melville with a laudatory account of his grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort.
Jonson to 'kokugo' jiten no tanjō: jūhasseiki kyojin no meigen, kingen
Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands: History as Art
Hart argues that Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands is a highly wrought work of art, possessing a complex organization distinct from Boswell's anecdotal account. Hart identifies three major, interwoven themes: the tragic destruction of pre-Reformation Christian culture, the analogous destruction of Highland culture, and the rise of a middle-class, progressive society towards which Johnson maintains an ambivalent attitude. The tragic vision, seen in the ruins of St. Andrews and the devastation of Iona, is juxtaposed with the necessity of daily life and the limited good of enlightened humanitarianism at the book's close.
Johnson as Philosophic Traveler: The Perfecting of an Idea
Journey to the Western Islands should be read not just as a travelogue of Scotland, but as a depiction of the "philosophic traveler"—a central Enlightenment preoccupation. The book's core is the traveler's own intellectual activity: the perfection of ideas through meticulous, skeptical observation, resisting the "fallacies of imagination," inaccuracy of report, and memory's propensity to blur details into "one gross and general idea." Johnson's lifelong practice of "the art of attention," involving strict veracity, precise descriptive language, and even "computation," shapes the Journey's structure and style. The published Journey revisions demonstrate this process, transforming initial "journal-letters" into "perfected idea[s]" that represent a personal triumph of the methodised mind over disorder and the limitations of human perception.
Writing Cross-Country: Landscapes, Palimpsests and the Problems of Scottish Literary Tourism
MacKenzie analyzes the metaphor of the landscape as a palimpsest, considering how various representations found in literary travel accounts add layers to the meanings of places. The analysis then discusses issues in representing Scotland’s landscapes, specifically focusing on Boswell's and Johnson's books about their Hebridean journey. MacKenzie next examines Jules Verne’s response to Walter Scott's descriptions of Loch Lomond in 'Backwards to Britain,' suggesting this response demonstrates the cultural construction of tourist representations of the loch. Finally, MacKenzie situates Louis MacNeice's Hebridean alienation in 'I Crossed the Minch' alongside Kevin MacNeil’s anti-pastoral The Stornoway Way, concluding by considering how postmodern fiction offers opportunities to complicate standard tourist narratives.
Anniversary Essays on Johnson's 'Dictionary'
Lynch and McDermott assemble international scholars to challenge long-standing myths and explore "unfamiliar" aspects of the Dictionary through the lenses of bibliography, corpus linguistics, and historical lexicography. Korshin opens the collection by demythologizing the "legendary Johnson," disputing pervasive anecdotes of the "procrastinating genius" and the "Hercules-like" bully. Subsequent essays by Lancashire, Weinbrot, and Hudson re-examine the book’s political and social dimensions, specifically questioning the simplistic Tory labeling of the text and analyzing Johnson’s complex rejection of Lord Chesterfield's patronage. Technical investigations include Barnbrook and McDermott’s opposing assessments of Johnson’s prescriptivism, Osselton’s study of hyphenated compounds, and Luna’s analysis of typographic innovation. DeMaria and Reddick provide insight into Johnson’s working methods, emphasizing the "spontaneous, extempore quality" of his History and Grammar and the limits of collaboration with his amanuenses. Finally, Dille, Hailey, and Lynch investigate the Dictionary’s afterlife, focusing on popular abridgments and "hidden" editions that sustained the Johnson "brand name" into the nineteenth century. The collection highlights scholarly disagreements to encourage future research into the historical formation of the English language. Critical reaction to this anniversary collection is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising its multi-disciplinarity, comprehensive scope, and effective dismantling of long-standing biographical and lexicographical myths. Reviewers focus primarily on the political contexts of the text, the tension between prescriptive and descriptive methodologies, and the recovery of neglected architectural elements. Jackson, in TLS, commends the volume for challenging conventional wisdom by demonstrating how political differences were actively censored to minimize conflict. In MP, Lee enthusiastically calls the collection an essential survey that successfully realizes its goal of disturbing received ideas. Writing in N&Q, Mugglestone praises the diverse perspectives that effectively contest the image of the bigoted lexicographer. Pearce, in AJ, commends the comprehensive scope and commitment to critical evidence over myth, highlighting essays that employ broad data analysis to reveal unfamiliar aspects of the text. In ECTI, Rivero approves of the re-examination of the work as a historically alive cultural artifact, noting the useful exploration of consensual political ideology and immethodical methods. Baker, writing in YWES, provides a positive assessment, praising the valuable insights into mid-eighteenth-century print culture. Finally, Hedrick, in JNL, highlights the models of scholarship and marks the collection as an important multi-disciplinary contribution that cohere around central debates regarding structure and editorial authority.
Reviews: William Baker, YWES 86, no. 1 (2007): 1122; Contemporary Review (October 2005); Elizabeth Hedrick, JNL 57, no. 1 (2006): 51–55; Werner Hüllen, Historiographia Linguistica 33, no. 3 (2006): 426–30; H. J. Jackson, TLS, no. 5353 (November 2005): 3–4; Frank Kermode, NYRB 53, no. 11 (2006): 28–31; Anthony W. Lee, MP 104, no. 4 (2007): 529–59; Anthony W. Lee, Choice 43, no. 7 (2006): 3876; Lynda Mugglestone, N&Q 53, no. 4 (2006): 560–63; David Nokes, THES, no. 1739 (April 2006): 22; Chris P. Pearce, AJ 17 (2006): 341–62; Albert J. Rivero, ECTI 49, no. 3 (2008): 265–72.
The Manuscript as Biography: Boswell's Letter to the People of Scotland 1785
Lustig examines the manuscript of JB's Second Letter to the People of Scotland (1785), using the combined draft and printer's copy to map the author's psychological state. The complex pattern of cancellations and restorations, particularly regarding attacks on Dundas and Fergusson, reveals a deliberate struggle between political ambition and personal resentment. Challenging the view of the pamphlet as a drunken effusion, the study demonstrates JB's calculated, if romantic, strategy to leverage Scottish nationalism for electoral success.
Cochrane entry 474.
Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries & the Diaries She Read
James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Lounsberry examines Woolf's engagement with Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides during a pivotal summer of family crisis and artistic self-definition. Reading Boswell’s "sketchbook" at age twenty-one, Woolf discovered a fellow diarist who successfully captured "a whole chunk of the earth & air" and presented life "all alive". The text highlights how Boswell and Johnson's contrast of the country with "great cities" mirrored Woolf's own 1903 diary themes of London culture versus rural nature. Lounsberry argues that Boswell’s work "fired" Woolf to read extensively on Johnson, leading to her first mature literary criticism that anticipated her later Common Reader essays. The chapter details Woolf's affinity for Johnson’s "constitutional melancholy" and "formidable mind," noting that both writers viewed the mind as a "mill" for processing subjects. Additionally, Lounsberry discusses Woolf’s 1909 review, "The Genius of Boswell," where she praised his "insatiable curiosity" and ability to make emotions "tell". By choosing the "outsider role" alongside Boswell, Woolf used the Hebrides tour as a model for her own structural experiments and "scene-making," ultimately repurposing Boswellian traits to forge her modernist voice.
Nostalgic Correspondence and James Boswell's Scottish Malady
Author's abstract: "The essay examines James Boswell's correspondence with his friend, John Johnston of Grange, most of which dates from the 1760s; the essay emphasizes the correspondence that transmitted Boswell's London Journal. The essay argues that these letters invoke a form of social melancholy that surrounds a mythical and absent Scottish past, and that this mythos is closely connected to midcentury rhetorics of spontaneity and sentiment. The mythos of Scotland involves a particular sort of masculinity- spontaneous, sentimental, and unproduced-which Boswell and Grange understand to be no longer available in eighteenth-century Britain, where hegemonic forms of masculinity are understood to be polished, refined, and calculated."
SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900
Samuel Johnson, from early boyhood, lived with the knowledge that his homely face, large and ungainly body, loud voice, and odd mannerisms put people off. He later confessed that he had never made an effort to please others until past thirty, "considering the matter as hopeless." Yet he managed to gather about him as friends, especially during the last quarter of his life, some of the most fascinating and accomplished people of the day. These friendships were not always smooth, and some did not last, but Johnson valued the individuals nonetheless. Actor, painter, playwright, novelist, Greek scholar, miscellaneous writer, biographer, leading bluestocking, wealthy man-of-fashion: they represented a wide range of talents and personalities. Johnson brought them together as a group, and all testified that in knowing him they became far better persons than they otherwise would have been. This book focuses on ten key figures, aside from Johnson himself, of the so-called Johnson circle. It explores their characters, their contributions to society, their relationships with one another, and their indebtedness to Samuel Johnson.
James Boswell's National Stereotypes: Ethnic Folk Humor in the Eighteenth Century
Cochrane entry 649. Describes Boswell's use of national stereotypes in his writing and personal life, from playing the part of a prejudiced Englishman to dressing up as a brave Corsican for the Shakespeare Jubilee.
Beckett, Samuel Johnson, and the 'Vacuity of Life'
A Restoration? 25 Years of Jacobite Studies
The past quarter-century has seen an efflorescence of studies of Jacobitism, within both political and cultural history. The scope and impact of these studies are considered in the present article, which ranges across the major fields of research that are now associated with Jacobite Studies. They include plots and conspiracies; rebellions and uprisings; Irish Jacobitism, particularly as it was embodied in poetic works; the Jacobite diaspora to the European continent; the Stuart courts in exile; and Jacobite culture, including literature. The significance of Jacobitism for English literary history is examined, and major controversies, including the debate over Samuel Johnson, are discussed.
Meier critiques Sherbo’s attempt to refute Hart’s three major themes in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands. Meier argues that Sherbo’s biographical and genre-focused approach, which concludes Johnson enjoyed the tour, is irrelevant to the themes of the book. He asserts that the Journey itself presents a bleak representation of Scotland, with Johnson's expressions of pleasure overwhelmed by relations of Highland difficulties and desolation, thus confirming Hart's depiction of a culture in ruins rather than Sherbo's lighthearted view. Meier accepts Kaul's modification that the decay of Highland culture was due to the failure to develop commerce.
The Haphazard Journey of a Mind: Experience and Reflection in Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
McKendry argues that Johnson's ambivalent attitude toward the socioeconomic transformation of the Highlands in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland stems not from psychological development but from generic conventions. Johnson’s analysis shifts with his immediate experiences. When reflecting broadly on the "nation," he favors the traditional clan system and critiques the "palaces" of commerce. However, when confronted with the particular "facts" and personal inconveniences of precommercial life—such as setting his foot in mire or lacking ink—his perspective contracts. These specific, negative experiences induce him to appreciate the practical benefits of the emerging market economy.
Travel Writing and Ideas of Race in Highland Scotland: James Macpherson's Ossian Poems (1760–65) and Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)
Comparing the work of James Macpherson and Samuel Johnson, this article considers how travel writing on Highland Scotland responded to notions of the Gaelic Scots as a distinct "race" on the island of Britain. In particular it examines the role of clan chiefdom in the construction of Highland race, and how the patterns of hereditary elitism influenced notions of genealogical otherness at that time. The article first considers how clan society was approached in the field of human variety theory, before going on to examine James Macpherson's "Ossianic" vision of Highland society, and its relationship with Samuel Johnson's famous travel account, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775).
Études anglaises: Grande-Bretagne, États-Unis
The 'Political Knight Errant' at Bath: Charles Lucas's Attack on the Spa Medical Establishment in An Essay on Waters (1756)
This article examines Charles Lucas's Essay on Waters (1756) as a polemic that illuminates the Bath waters as a subject enmeshed as much in politics as in medicine. It shows how Lucas styled himself a "political knight errant" in his treatise to portray the local medical fraternity at the spa as a corrupt oligarchy intent on monopolising and stifling research into the famous mineral springs out of commercial self-interest and greed. It further considers the critical response to the treatise by Tobias Smollett and Samuel Johnson, who were both forced to address the author's libertarian concerns.
'Mrs. Thrale' in the 'Tour': A Boswellian Puzzle
Boswell stated that "two or three hundred copies" of the first edition of his Tour to the Hebrides were published without the name of his literary rival, Mrs. Thrale, on page 299 (U6 recto). In all copies reported to date, however, her name is present. The relevant historical and biographical evidence concerning this crucial passage is examined in an effort to account for the absence of a single copy lacking her name. The known facts indicate that Boswell's statement was grossly inaccurate, as very few copies (or, possibly, none) could have been printed with U6 recto in the alleged "first state."
Cochrane entry 314. Investigates a bibliographical puzzle concerning whether Boswell actually removed and then restored Mrs. Thrale's name in a passage, hypothesizing that no copies were ever printed with her name removed.
The Significance of Johnson's Changing Views of the Hebrides
Radner examines the "dynamic" evolution of Johnson’s thoughts during his 1773 tour of Scotland as reflected in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. He focuses on Johnson's shifting commentary on "treelessness" to illustrate how initial "satiric anger" transformed into a "radically sympathetic" understanding of the Scots’ historical dilemma. Radner argues that Johnson’s Journey serves as a model for "proper reflection" on complex human situations, as the author moves from hasty censure to a recognition of the "shortness of life" that discourages long-term planting. The article highlights Johnson's "divided sympathies" regarding the breakdown of feudal clan systems and his insistence that "Life must be seen, before it can be known." Radner concludes that the book documents Johnson’s "effort to reach a final understanding" by viewing issues from every relevant perspective.
Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist
Publisher's blurb: "The enthralling biography of the womanwriter who helped end the slave trade, changed Britain's upper classes, and taught a nation how to read. The history-changing reforms of Hannah More affected every level of 18th-Century British society through her keen intellect, literary achievements,collaborative spirit, strong Christian principles, and colorful personality. A woman without connections or status, More took the world of British letters by storm when she arrived in London from Bristol, becoming a best-selling author and acclaimed playwright and quickly befriending the author Samuel Johnson, the politician Horace Walpole, and the actor David Garrick. Yet she was also aleader in the Evangelical movement, using her cultural position and her pen to support the growth of education for the poor, the reform of morals and manners,and the abolition of Britain's slave trade; Fierce Convictions weaves together world and personal history into a stirring story of life that intersected with Wesley and Whitefield's GreatAwakening, the rise and influence of Evangelicalism, and convulsive effects ofthe French Revolution. A woman of exceptional intellectual gifts and literarytalent, Hannah More was above all a person whose faith compelled her both to engageher culture and to transform it."
Homeric Allusion in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Johnson's sociological analysis of the Highlands and Hebrides in his Journey simultaneously exhorts them to cultural development. For Johnson, however, cultural development is associated with the question of 'barbarous' and 'civilized' states of life as viewed from the Homeric perspective on heroic Greece and the traditional interpretation of that perspective. Johnson's conjectural image of culture in the feudal Highlands reflects the standard Augustan image of culture in heroic Greece and suggests that the Highlands, through cultural development, can repeat the history of Grecian culture. A complex of Odyssian allusions, recalling Homer's epic and the figure of Ulysses, enforces Johnson's further argument that such cultural development will occur in the Highlands when the rulers, the lairds, like Ulysses, display the necessary qualities of leadership.
Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)
Hayward presents the "Autobiographical Memoirs" as a central component of the text, alongside "Thraliana," the diary kept by Piozzi between 1776 and 1809. The editor characterizes these materials as providing a "most interesting and durably popular" account of a woman who was a "child prodigy" and later a prominent figure in 18th-century literary society. The autobiography chronicles her early education, her "unsuitable marriage" to Henry Thrale, and her life as the "Mistress of Streatham." Hayward notes the "endless speculation" regarding her sixteen-year intimacy with Samuel Johnson, describing her as his "sparring partner" and "confidante." The text details the societal "scandal" following her second marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which Hayward defends as "morally irreproachable." Significant portions of the work include letters primarily addressed to Sir James Fellowes and marginalia from Piozzi’s personal copies of Boswell's Life of Johnson and Wraxall's Memoirs. These annotations offer "new anecdotes" and corrections to contemporary accounts, particularly regarding Johnson’s domestic habits and the Streatham circle. The literary remains also comprise fugitive pieces in verse and prose, such as "The Three Warnings" and her translations of Boethius. Hayward asserts that Piozzi’s writings reflect a "vivacity" and "intellectual independence" that elevate her reputation beyond her role as a Johnsonian satellite, framing her as an astute observer of Georgian "politics and business." Reviews are generally favorable, with commentators dividing over the impartiality of the editorial defense and the historical accuracy of the biographical tradition. An unsigned review in the Edinburgh Review provides a mixed analysis, arguing the volumes successfully augment the reputation of the writer's talents but noting that the editor acts more as an eager advocate than an impartial scholar. Three unsigned assessments in Littell's Living Age champion the edition, praising the inclusion of previously unpublished correspondence to refute past unmerited severity, heal apparent incongruities of character, and signally discomfit the unfairness of rival biographers. Two unsigned commentaries in the Times explore the candid and magnanimous nature of the papers, disputing common captious criticisms regarding the widowhood period and reclamation of literary skill. In the Saturday Review, an unsigned piece notes that the new materials effectively challenge exaggerated accounts of the famous domestic estrangement by highlighting decades of vital emotional support. An unsigned piece in the Examiner commends the trustworthy collection for providing a far more favorable portrait that illuminates a hidden domestic heroism during family financial crises. An unsigned notice in N&Q highlights the value of the second edition's rewritten sections and its incorporation of private diary entries. Finally, an unsigned review in the Spectator views the collection as a necessary corrective to a harsh biographical tradition, while an unsigned notice in the Atlas concludes that the recovered letters prove the ultimate success of the controversial marriage despite contemporary scurrilous epigrams.
CGV entry 5:64.
Reviews: Athenæum, no. 1777 (1861): 650–51; Atlas, May 11, 1861; Edinburgh Review 113, no. 230 (1861): 501–23; Littell’s Living Age, March 23, 1861; Littell’s Living Age, April 13, 1861; Littell’s Living Age, May 4, 1861; New Monthly Magazine, no. 121 (1861): 440–54; N&Q 12, no. 307 (1861): 406–7; Saturday Review, January 26, 1861; The Examiner, February 16, 1861; The Spectator 34, no. 1701 (1861): 111; The Times, April 5, 1861; The Times, April 6, 1861; Westmorland Gazette, April 13, 1861.
Second edition adds 50 pages of Thraliana quotations and expanded correspondence
Bozzy and Piozzi; or, The British Biographers: A Town Eclogue
Pindar’s satirical poem, written in the form of a town eclogue, lampoons the biographical competition between Boswell and Piozzi following the death of Johnson. The narrative depicts the two biographers appealing to John Hawkins to judge their respective merits through a series of alternating anecdotal quotations. Pindar ridicules the triviality of their observations, citing accounts of Johnson's jumping over stools, his method of eating pork, and his affection for his cat, Hodge. The satire characterizes Boswell as a gudgeon and a thirsty leach of anecdote, while Piozzi is exhorted to prioritize housewifery over writing. Pindar further mocks Hawkins, portraying him as a pompous judge who eventually falls asleep during the recitation. The poem concludes with the rivals continuing their efforts to kill the mangled Rambler o'er again through further publication. The work reflects the contemporary Johnso-mania and the public's fascination with the moralist's private weaknesses and bear-like growl. This edition includes a congratulatory epistle to Boswell regarding his tour to the Hebrides.
CGV entry 9:40. Published under the pseudonym "Peter Pindar." With a plate by Thomas Rowlandson.
Petty Caviller or 'Formidable Assailant'? Johnson Reads Dennis
Given John Dennis's prominence as a Dunciad dunce courtesy of the satire of Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson in his own critical work gave a surprisingly generous quantity of attention to Dennis's literary criticism. Dennis was notorious in the eighteenth century as "The Critic," and this essay suggests that Johnson's lively critical reaction to Dennis was more complicated than we might expect. For all the pettiness and irrepressible ill-temper of his predecessor, Johnson recognised, albeit with undisguised reservations, that Dennis sometimes had much of formidable good sense to say — on Shakespeare, on Addison and particularly on Pope.
Critical Occasions: Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and the History of Criticism
Publisher's blurb: "Examines the relations between selected critical texts of Dryden, Pope, and Johnson, and the theoretical problems that arise in writing the history of the critical past. It is a book about three great Augustan critics and about the theory and philosophy of history in its application to criticism."
Johnson's Intent in the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Sherbo argues Hart’s thesis on Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland incorrectly focuses on selected parts and disregards the established traditions of the travel genre. Sherbo cites Johnson’s known requirements for travel literature: veracity, reflection on human life, and avoidance of barren enumeration. He emphasizes that Johnson intended his Journey as a philosophical traveler’s disquisition on men and manners, not a tragic vision of fallen cultures. Sherbo contends Johnson's repetitive jokes about the lack of trees in Scotland indicate his humorous tone, contrasting Hart's tragic interpretation.
Johnson, Biography and the Novel: The Fictional Afterlife of Richard Savage
This article analyses three novels based on Richard Savage, the scapegrace eighteenth-century poet immortalized in Samuel Johnson's first major biography. Charles Whitehead's Richard Savage: A Romance of Real Life (1841-42), Stanley V. Makower's Richard Savage: A Mystery in Biography (1909), and Gwyn Jones's Richard Savage (1935) each engage with ethical and formal problems posed by Johnson: how to complicate moral treatment of character and incident in narrative; how to handle the admixture of fact and fiction produced by an account of Savage's chequered but charming life, full as it is with vagaries and vagueness. These novels use quite different formal strategies in response to the social imperatives and formal expectations of their times. The article contends that the fictional afterlives of Savage - the adaptations and appropriations of Johnson's Life of Savage (1744) into works of fiction - indicate Johnson's enduring influence on the novel, as well as biography.
Picturesque Beauties of Boswell ... Designed and Etched by Two Capital Artists
A series of satirical prints engraved by Rowlandson based on sketches by Collings, illustrating Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The work satirizes Boswell by portraying him as "The Journalist," carrying documents for Johnson's Life. It is a visual satire that mocks Boswell and biographers in general. One print shows a paunchy Boswell "Walking up the High Street," gazing up at Johnson, providing a caricature that amused contemporaries.
CGV entry 8:8. Twenty caricatures of Johnson and Boswell on the journey to the Hebrides, etched by Rowlandson from designs by Collings.
The Difficulties of Quantifying Taste: Blackmore and Poetric Reception in the Eighteenth Century
On the difficulty of fully understanding poetic reception in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, using the contested reputation of Blackmore as a case study. The author notes that contemptuous remarks from figures like Rochester and Oldham disturbed Pordage's reception. The study highlights Johnson’s observation that contempt "corrupts all the rest by degrees," which Johnson originally applied to Blackmore. Johnson later championed Blackmore's Creation in The Lives of the Poets, a move necessitated by Blackmore's considerable decline in reputation by the 1770s. The author argues that raw database citations must be nuanced, as Johnson’s intervention holds more critical consequence than incidental allusions.
Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries
Doctor Strong and Doctor Johnson Revisited
Rosenblum evaluates the hypothesis that Johnson served as the model for Dickens's character Doctor Strong in David Copperfield. He reviews parallels previously identified by Albert Wetherill, such as the fact that Johnson "once kept a school in a cathedral town" and compiled a dictionary. Resemblances extend to "attire, gait, near-sightedness, benevolence, ignorance of card games," and a specific "cogitating manner." Rosenblum notes that Doctor Strong is sixty-two when first introduced, close to the age of sixty-four when Boswell introduces Johnson in his narrative of their tour to the Hebrides. He provides further evidence for the link by citing Dickens's ownership of Boswell’s work. He also compares Dickens’s description of Strong’s "shuffling" gait and "rusty" clothes to the "rusty brown" suit and "convulsive" movements described in Boswell’s biographical account of Johnson.
Samuel Johnson: Standardizer of English, Preserver of Gaelic
Strabone explores the apparent paradox between Johnson's project to standardize the English language and his concurrent efforts to preserve Scottish Gaelic. While standardizers generally shared the belief that "English needed to be protected and preserved from corruption," Johnson targeted Scottish dialects of English for elimination as "odious distinctions" and "barbarous" corruptions of Saxon origin. However, the study highlights how Johnson repeatedly supported the preservation of Gaelic. Strabone argues that Johnson's un-derlying concept of language, influenced by John Locke's ideas of sociability, viewed linguistic uniformity as a means to strengthen the Union. Johnson's Dictionary functioned to "preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom" by excluding provincial diction. This article details how Johnson positioned himself as a "conqueror and lawgiver" to civilize his own countrymen through linguistic regulation while remaining more complex in his treatment of non-English tongues.
James Boswell and the National Church of Scotland
Stewart analyzes Boswell's involvement with the National Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian and representative government. The essay details the organization and the two main factions: the Moderate (Court) Party, which favored patronage and moderation, and the Evangelical (Popular) Party, which opposed patronage and advocated strict adherence to Presbyterian discipline. Boswell's grandfather and mother were aligned with the Evangelicals. Though Boswell practiced law before the General Assembly, he disliked the "low and coarse" employment and opposed the Moderates' strict enforcement of patronage, consistent with his pro-liberty politics (e.g., his support for Paoli and the American colonies).
Cochrane entry 665.
Fantasies of Choosing in Rasselas
Stern argues that Rasselas critiques the fantasy of a singular, self-determining "choice of life" as a mode of deferral and idleness. Rasselas's quest for an ultimate, permanent happiness postpones responsibility, replacing action with "visionary bustle" and "imagined heroics" (as noted in Idler). The overwhelming nature of this one ultimate choice paradoxically makes him passive. Citing Murdoch, Stern argues that freedom is a "small piecemeal business"—a continuous, ongoing "work of attention" and moral exertion of the inner life—which Rasselas's all-or-nothing approach fails to recognize, leading to waste and delusion.
Infinity and Beyond = L'infini et au-delà: Actes du colloque international in memoriam Paul-Gabriel Boucé, 25–26 juin 2014, universitè du Havre
Samuel Johnson's and James Boswell's Grasp of the Infinite Being and the Great Beyond
'A More Exact Purity': Legal Authority and Conspicuous Amalgamation in Early Modern English Law Guides and the Oxford Law Lectures of Sir Robert Chambers and Samuel Johnson
This paper finds that early modern and later texts explaining legal vocabulary and history to non-professionals bring into focus two vying conceptions of enforcing narrative and terminological purity (a notion inextricably bound up with the authority to produce legal narratives): decontamination, according to one perspective, and enrichment to strengthen an essence, according to another view. The lexicons generally promote a notion of "purity" that does not connote the removal of contaminants or foreign matter but rather depends on adulteration and heterogeneous additions. This paper argues that legal guide writers believed that cultivating impressions, and even illusions, of corporate authorship was key to attracting readers, who (the writers expected) perceived conspicuous reliance on numerous, diverse (foreign as well as domestic) sources as a mark of legitimacy.
British Masculinity in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1731 to 1815
Launched in 1731, the monthly Gentleman's Magazine was the dominant periodical of the eighteenth century, drawing its large readership from across the literate population of Great Britain and the English-speaking world. Its readers were highly responsive. By the 1740s their letters, poems and family announcements, especially obituaries, filled at least half its pages, sitting alongside articles by a circle that included Samuel Johnson. It was a Georgian social network as readers engaged in a continuous dialogue with each other, but not all these readers were as comfortably established as gentlemen as the title implied. This study traces how, from launch to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the magazine developed as a vehicle for the creation and national dissemination of a new middling-sort masculine gentlemanliness in a Britain that was increasingly commercial, fluid and open. It was an accessible gentlemanliness based on an ideology of merit through occupational success allied to personal probity. From the close of the Seven Year's War in 1763 the magazine used the merit of the self-made man to challenge the aristocratic ruling class. It was therefore a major contributor to the development of Victorian middle-class identity. Indeed, the meritorious self-made man remains one of the bulwarks of Conservative thought today.
Soden presents a speculative biography of the ginger cat immortalized in Smart's poem Jubilate Agno. The narrative traces the animal’s life from its 1750 birth in Mother Douglas’s Covent Garden bordello to its final days in Devon in 1773. Soden uses the feline perspective to provide a ground-level view of eighteenth-century London social history, including the 1750 earthquakes and the 1755 Drury Lane riots. The work details the cat’s relationship with Smart during their shared incarceration in a private asylum between 1759 and 1763. Soden chronicles various interactions with members of the literary and theatrical milieu, noting that the cat distinguishes between visitors by the shape of their lower legs. The biography depicts Johnson visiting the asylum, where his bulging calves and hobbling feet identify him. Johnson dangles an enormous hand to stroke the cat before Smart pulls him to his knees to pray. Soden also dramatizes a 1763 encounter in the Strand between the subject and Hodge. The narrative follows this with a scene in Fleet Street where Hodge jumps onto the chest of Johnson, who describes him as a very fine cat indeed. Soden incorporates accounts from Boswell and Burney to document Johnson's defense of Smart's eccentricities, including his public prayers and his lack of passion for clean linen. The biography concludes by tracing the afterlife of the Smart manuscript through its 1930s discovery and its influence on twentieth-century figures such as Britten and Eliot.
printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order; a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published: The Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain, for Near Half a Century, During Which He Flourished
The second edition, published on July 17, 1793, appeared in three octavo vols. priced at £1 8s., described as "corrected and considerably enlarged by additional letters and interesting anecdotes." Boswell included extensive new material—such as 13 letters to Langton and 2 to Lord Bute—but since these arrived late, they were inserted out of chronological sequence, resulting in a somewhat disorganized text. Boswell acknowledged his substantial debt to Edmond Malone, who supervised revisions. Malone subsequently edited the third edition (1799), which properly integrated these additions into the narrative. Boswell issued a separate pamphlet, Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson (1793), which was distributed free to owners of the first edition and later incorporated into the text.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Croker was the first editor to attempt to comprehensively annotate Boswell's Life. he integrated the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides as part of the main Life narrative, a practice followed by later editors. He actively followed contemporary biographical trends by inserting material from other biographies, such as those by Piozzi and Hawkins, and adding selections from Johnson's own writings to fill gaps in Boswell's account, sometimes relegating other parts to appendices. Croker's work became the subject of Thomas Babington Macaulay's famously savage 1831 review in the Edinburgh Review. This critique solidified the image of Boswell in the Victorian imagination as a "buffoon and sot" who wrote a great book despite his limitations. Critical reaction is mixed, splitting along sharp methodological and political lines regarding the editorial execution of the volumes. In the Quarterly Review, Lockhart praises the editor’s piercing understanding and persevering diligence in identifying obscure historical details, arguing that the subject's immense national influence justifies such minute biographical scrutiny. But Macaulay's influential review reprinted in the Atheneum from the Edinburgh Review offers a severe counterpoint, providing a graphic sketch of the subject's tempestuous rage and low prejudices while noting the persistent obscurity of his early London years. The Westminster Review characterizes the work as a grand collection of memorabilia, commending the industry required to sift facts and refute forgeries, though the reviewer disputes the editor's morbid view of human nature. An anonymous critic in Spectator asserts that the editorial intrusions and the interpolation of external anecdotes mutilate the text and destroy the structural unity of the original design, though the review strongly defends the primary biographer's spirit of inquiry. Several prominent periodicals evaluated the later multi-volume expansions. A review in the Gentleman’s Magazine praises the text but questions the integration of diverse biographical narratives, offering a detailed analysis of the stately, heavily amplified prose style, while an earlier notice in the same magazine focuses enthusiastically on new anecdotes regarding the subject's domestic life and conversational wit. In The Athenaeum, an early reviewer labels the editor a merciless opponent with a nettle temperament but admits his meticulous arrangement doubles the worth of the raw materials, while subsequent notices in the journal praise the wealth of supplemental anecdotes supplied by Walter Scott. The Examiner proclaims the expanded presentation by far the best edition available, specifically praising the decision to leave the unrivaled primary text unbroken. Dabney (Christian Examiner) provides a mixed evaluation of the American reprint, admitting the chronological corrections are mostly just but censuring the editor for discarding original notes and diminishing the narrative's inherent vivacity. The Knickerbocker values the preservation of careless table-talk over a systematically vicious prose style, while the New York Mirror praises the important additions but warns against the immoral tendency of several intellectual maxims. In the regional press, the Scotsman approves of the inclusion of the northern tour for bringing mental peculiarities into free play, the Kent Herald lauds the minute fidelity of the record, and the unique structural presentation is commended by Jerdan in the Literary Gazette for showing the subject in his habit as he lived.
New ed., with numerous additions and notes
CGV entry 4:14. This edition was revised by John Wright in 10 volumes (1835, 1848).
Reviews: Atheneum 2, no. 1 (1831): 542–47; J. P. Dabney, Christian Examiner 14, no. 2 (1833): 154–63; Edinburgh Literary Journal (July 1831): 31–32; Gentleman’s Magazine 101 (1831): 237–39; Inverness Courier (July 27, 1831); Knickerbocker 1, no. 5 (1833): 273–75; Literary Gazette (July 2, 1831); Literary Gazette (July 9, 1831); Literary Gazette (July 23, 1831); Literary Gazette (July 30, 1831); John Gibson Lockhart, Quarterly Review 46, no. 111 (1831): 1–46; Thomas Babington Macaulay, Edinburgh Review 54, no. 107 (1831): 1–38; Metropolitan 2, no. 7 (1831): 77–79; Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction 18, no. 514 (1831): 281–83; Monthly Magazine 12, no. 68 (1831): 141–43; Monthly Review, 4th ser., 2, no. 3 (1831): 452–64; Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art 19, no. 112 (1831): 449–52; Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art 19, no. 114 (1831): 676; New York Mirror (September 14, 1833); Philadelphia Album and Ladies’ Literary Portfolio 6, no. 4 (1832): 30; Star (London) (August 5, 1831); The Albion 10, no. 13 (1831): 99–100; The Athenaeum (London) (June 25, 1831); The Athenaeum (London) (July 2, 1831); The Athenaeum (London) (July 9, 1831); The New-York Mirror (September 14, 1833); The Spectator 4, no. 167 (1831): 876–77; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail (July 16, 1831); Westminster Review 15, no. 30 (1831): 374–99.
Printed for T. Cadell & W. Davies, in the Strand
The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: comprehending an account of his studies and numerous works in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons: and various original pieces of his composition never before published ...
Often cited as the final edition edited and superintended by Edmond Malone. Malone continued to insert new material, including additional letters from Johnson and new information about Johnson’s friends. He drew attention to the fact that the Reverend James Compton, a friend of Johnson whom Boswell had overlooked, was still alive and possessed letters and anecdotes. James Boswell, Jr. contributed notes to this edition. He also corrected a detail regarding Izaak Walton's Life of Dr. Donne, noting in the sixth edition that the vision Johnson speaks of was not in the original 1640 publication but was introduced into the fourth edition in 1675. Malone gratefully relied on the younger Boswell's collaboration, referring to him in the Advertisement as having "read over the whole." The sixth edition text (1811) frequently served as the copy text for reprints throughout the early nineteenth century.
Bought on eBay 8 March 2022 from AntquiesJolie1 for $266.56.
The journal of a tour to the Hebrides: with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By James Boswell, Esq. Containing Some Poetical Pieces by Dr. Johnson, relative to the Tour, and never before published; A Series of his Conversation, Literary Anecdotes, and Opinion of Men and Books: with an authentick Account of The Distresses and Escape of the Grandson of King James II. in the Year 1746. The Third Edition, revised and corrected
This edition, appearing within a year of the first, incorporated Boswell's final revisions and additions and stabilized the published text. Malone supervised the text, ensuring that it addressed contemporary criticisms—including those regarding "a petty national resentment" unworthy of Boswell’s countrymen—and provided further context, setting the foundation for the text used in the Hill–Powell scholarly edition. This edition included a Map to Illustrate the Tour, which was later reproduced for its associations, despite its known geographical inaccuracies.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides: With Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By James Boswell, Esq. Containing Some Poetical Pieces by Dr. Johnson, Relative to the Tour, and Never Before Published; A Series of His Conversation, Literary Anecdotes, and Opinions of Men and Books: With an Authentick Account of The Distresses and Escape of the Grandson of King James II. in the Year 1746
Boswell’s core text began as rough notes (August 14–17, 1773), evolving into a fully written journal spanning August 21 to October 22, 1773. During the trip, Johnson read the manuscript (the "ur- journal") and praised it as "a very exact picture of his life." Boswell completed the journal post-facto for the end stages (October 22–26) in 1779–1782. Johnson, having published his own Journey to the Western Islands in January 1775, advised Boswell to delay publishing his account. Boswell finally published the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides on October 1, 1785, less than a year after Johnson’s death, using it as a prelude to the eventual Life. For the first edition, Boswell heavily revised the MS with Edmond Malone’s assistance, sometimes working with speed and deftness. Revisions involved extensive cuts of personal reflections (autobiography), deletion of much topographical detail (as Johnson had published a gazetteer), and refinement of syntax, removing Scotticisms. Although Boswell claimed the published work was the "very journal which Dr. Johnson read," the text was substantially altered. The 1,500 copies of the first edition sold quickly, necessitating a second edition, published in London on December 22, 1785, which incorporated further corrections and removed indiscreet material under Malone's supervision. A Dublin edition appeared promptly on November 13, 1785. The third edition (1786) was the final one revised by Boswell and included an Advertisement addressing critiques rooted in "petty national resentment." Unauthorized editions included pirated Dublin reprints, and abridged translations into German (1797) and Russian (1851) appeared shortly after. Complete translations later appeared in Italian, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, and Japanese. The Tour was subsequently incorporated as vol. 5 of the six-vol. Hill–Powell edition of the Life of Johnson (1934–64). The original MS journal, rediscovered later, was first published as the literal text in 1936, differing materially from the 1785 text. This MS version was later reissued in 1961 (revised edition) as vol. 9 of the Yale Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Trade Edition. Modern editions often print the Tour alongside Johnson’s Journey.
CGV entry 4:12. The first edition appeared in two printings in 1785, followed by a third edition in 1786 and a sixth edition in 1813.
James Boswell's Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript
A scholarly undertaking within the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, dedicated to transcribing the complex primary text, which spanned 1,046 pages and supplementary documents. The project, referred to as "The Jewel in the Crown," proceeds chronologically across four volumes, with Waingrow editing Volume 1 (1994), Redford with Goldring editing Volume 2 (1998), and Bonnell editing Volumes 3 (2012) and 4 (2019). The transcription employs Waingrow's sigla system to manage the "wondrous tangle" of revisions and insertions, illuminating the composition process and typesetting. This allows close scrutiny of Boswell's artistic and editorial choices, demonstrating the complexity of turning raw data into the published masterpiece and refuting the idea of Boswell as a simple stenographer. The manuscript reveals Boswell's strategies, showing he exercised caution with Johnson's sensitive political views, such as mollifying "hannoverian" to "Brunswick." It also clarifies that highly dramatic dialogues were often imaginative reconstructions developed from fragmentary notes, enhanced for dramatic effect. Furthermore, the manuscript documents Boswell's conscious aesthetic and ethical choices, including softening crude language, such as changing "genitals" to "amorous propensities," to present a more dignified Johnson.
The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson
Clingham edits a volume of seventeen essays that examine Johnson as a central figure in eighteenth-century literary culture, focusing on his "extraordinary humane intelligence". The collection is divided into thematic sections covering Johnson's life, his major works—including the Dictionary, The Rambler, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets—and his engagement with broader cultural topics such as politics, religion, and gender. Contributors like Pat Rogers and Paul J. Korshin explore Johnson's "intellectual life" and critical reception, while other chapters analyze his "experience of women" and his views on "imperialism" and "travel". The editor identifies the volume's "keynote" as the integration of Johnson's writing with his personal conduct, making his "challenging and wide-ranging" works newly relevant to a modern scholarly audience. The text includes essential reference features such as a detailed "chronology" of Johnson's life and a "guide to further reading" categorized by major critical themes. This companion serves as a unique introduction to Johnson's roles as a "biographer", "critic", and "engaging conversationalist," providing a stimulating range of international approaches to his legacy. Most reviews are positive, with reviewers praising the collection as an accessible and reliable introduction that prioritizes the author’s written corpus over historical caricature. Landry and Maclean, in SEL, enthusiastically commend the masterful editing and the diverse array of perspectives on the subject's life and legacy. In Albion, Lustig notes the collection is comprehensive, lucid, and deliberately conservative, though she expresses concern over a gender imbalance among the contributors. Kolb's review in Modern Philology approves of the focus on shifting literary opinions but notes minor factual errors, while Barry, in English, warns that avoiding theoretical disputation leaves the collection lacking in impact. In AJ, Ribeiro acknowledges the jargon-free introduction for general readers but sharply criticizes slapdash editing and inaccurate citations. Lamoine, in Études Anglaises, declares the volume a success that effectively renews the writer's image for modern scholars. In N&Q, Lurcock describes the fifteen essays as a coherent redefinition that establishes relevance to modern human concerns. Lynn, in the Year’s Work in English Studies, praises individual defenses against misogyny and race-based domination, concluding that novices and scholars will find considerable pleasure in the text. In Essays in Criticism, Lynch emphasizes how the contributions counter long-standing mythical characterizations, while his review in Choice highlights specific analyses of Christian thought and epistolary writing. Finally, Walker, in the Yearbook of English Studies, concludes that the volume successfully introduces students to the essence of a diverse writer.
Reviews: Peter Barry, English 47, no. 187 (1998): 81–87; Contemporary Review 272, no. 1584 (1998): 54; Matthew M. Davis, NR, Series D, no. 12 (1996): 56–57; Robert Devens, BJECS 21, no. 2 (1998): 233–34; Robert Folkenflik, ECS 33, no. 2 (2000): 289–99; Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer, ECI 13, no. 2 (1999): 19–21; Gwin J. Kolb, MP 98, no. 4 (2001): 679–82; G. Lamoine, Études Anglaises 51, no. 3 (1998): 347–48; Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean, SEL 38, no. 3 (1998): 579; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 46, no. 1 (1999): 135–136; Irma S. Lustig, Albion 31, no. 3 (1999): 493–94; Jack Lynch, Choice 35, nos. 11–12 (1998): 6080; Jack Lynch, Essays in Criticism 49, no. 1 (1999): 75–81; Steven Lynn, YWES 78, no. 1 (1998): 451–53; Reference Reviews 11, no. 8 (1997): 26–27; Alvaro Ribeiro, S. J., AJ 10 (1999): 292–302; Keith Walker, Yearbook of English Studies 30 (2000): 312–14.
Eighteenth-Century Studies in Honor of Donald F. Hyde
A Festschrift dedicated to the celebrated collector of Johnsoniana, reflecting the pivotal status of the Hyde Collection for research on Samuel Johnson and his circle. The volume gathers essays of high scholarly distinction, presenting important discoveries and critical re-examinations. Johnsonian and Boswellian content is extensive, featuring James L. Clifford’s essay on "Johnson's Trip to Devon in 1762," Paul J. Korshin's article regarding "Johnson and the Earl of Orrery," and Robert F. Metzdorf’s study involving M'Nicol, Macpherson, and Rasselas. E. A. and L. D. Bloom contribute an analysis of Johnson’s early poem in "Johnson's 'Mournful Narrative': The Rhetoric of London," while Louis A. Landa discusses Johnson's satirical prose in "Johnson’s Feathered Man: ‘A Dissertation on the Art of Flying’ Considered."
CGV entry 10/6:347. Eleven essays on Johnson are listed separately in the bibliography.
Arts Council of Great Britain & The Herbert Press
Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784: A Bicentenary Exhibition
CGV entry 1/4:65. Preface by Sir William Rees-Mogg; introduction and catalogue by Kai Kin Yung.
Woodman examines Johnson as a transitional figure who reconciled Renaissance literary tenets with the emerging demands of a commercial "Age of Print." Adopting an anti-heroic perspective, Woodman argues that Johnson’s moral authority derives from a "strenuous moral struggle" to achieve objectivity over subjective psychological conflicts. The text explores Johnson’s "Christian humanism," noting how he used empirical observation and the "new psychology" originating with Hobbes to defend traditional moral absolutes against Enlightenment complacency and sentimentalism. Woodman analyzes Johnson’s role as a "culture hero" who championed the bookseller-patron system, thereby securing authorial dignity within the marketplace. Furthermore, Woodman assesses Johnson's contributions to lexicography and Shakespearian scholarship, suggesting that Johnson palliated linguistic "degeneration" by recording usage while asserting the "grandeur of generality." The study concludes that Johnson’s work constitutes a "treatise on the art of human happiness," advocating for a "choice of eternity" to mitigate the "vanity of human wishes" inherent in earthly pursuits. Chapter 1, 'Samuel Johnson, the Man and His Life,' traces the subject's development from a physically impaired provincial youth to the authoritative "Great Cham of Literature." It emphasizes his lifelong struggle against psychological distress and poverty, framing his literary output—from early hackwork to the seminal Dictionary and late biographies—as a courageous moral effort to surmount existential obstacles. Chapter 2, 'The Intellectual Background,' positions the subject as a Christian humanist mediating between traditional moral absolutes and the emerging empirical rigor of the Enlightenment. It argues that his characteristic skepticism toward progress and his analytical moral psychology stem from a profound awareness of human fallibility and the pervasive reality of evil. Chapter 3, 'Religion,' examines the subject’s devout Anglicanism, identifying it as the foundational source of his hope and social order. It characterizes his faith as a rational, anti-enthusiastic commitment that underscores the necessity of institutional stability and personal discipline in a fallen world. Chapter 4, 'Politics,' contends that the subject’s political writings reflect a complex, anti-authoritarian Toryism rooted in a desire for social subordination as a palliative for human misery. It highlights his identification with the underdog and his late-career defense of parliamentary sovereignty against what he perceived as the dangerous volatility of popular agitation. Chapter 5, 'Commerce,' addresses the subject’s pragmatic response to Britain’s financial transformation, balancing traditional critiques of luxury with an appreciation for the social mobility and industriousness fostered by trade. It suggests he accepted commercial society primarily for its potential to alleviate poverty through economic diligence. Chapter 6, 'Johnson and the Art of Human Happiness: A Recapitulation,' synthesizes the preceding themes, arguing that the subject’s realism regarding human limitations provides a practical framework for achieving relative contentment. It portrays his worldview as a rejection of utopian panaceas in favor of active engagement with life’s "little things." Chapter 7, 'The Literary Background,' surveys the subject’s role as the "culture hero" of the age of print, who used the marketplace to preserve and disseminate neoclassical standards. It evaluates his critical legacy, particularly his editorial work on Shakespeare, as a groundbreaking reconciliation of historical scholarship and universal moral truth. Chapter 8, 'Language,' explores the subject’s linguistic philosophy through the creation of his Dictionary, framing it as a heroic but ultimately tragic attempt to stabilize a living tongue. It concludes that he viewed lexicography as a necessary struggle against the inevitable degeneration of language over time.
Wilson Smith traces the life of Johnson from his 1709 birth in Lichfield through his 1784 death, emphasizing his struggle against physical disability, poverty, and melancholia. The narrative follows his incomplete education at Oxford and early failures as a teacher before moving to London in 1737 to pursue journalism under Edward Cave. Wilson Smith details the creation of the Dictionary of the English Language, noting Johnson’s idiosyncratic definitions and his rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s belated patronage. The text examines major literary contributions, including the poem "London," the biography of Richard Savage, the philosophical tale Rasselas, and his definitive edition of Shakespeare. It highlights the stabilization of Johnson’s later life through a royal pension and his deep friendships with Boswell, Reynolds, and the Thrales. The biography underscores Johnson’s "moral earnestness" and humanitarian sympathies, particularly his loathing of slavery and his support for the marginalized. Wilson Smith concludes by discussing the immediate post-mortem battle between biographers Boswell, Hawkins, and Piozzi to define Johnson's legacy. Chapter 1, 'A Young Provincial Scholar (1709-1737),' examines the formative physical, familial, and intellectual struggles of Samuel Johnson, documenting his early education in Lichfield and his abortive residence at Oxford. The narrative explores his eventual marriage to Elizabeth Porter and his initial professional failures as a provincial teacher, which necessitated his departure for London. Chapter 2, 'A Critic Comes to London (1737-1745),' chronicles his arrival in the capital and his survival through relentless literary labor for Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine. It details his significant early works, such as "London" and the Life of Savage, while highlighting his immersion in the precarious world of Grub Street. Chapter 3, 'The Making of Dictionary Johnson (1745-1755),' focuses on the arduous nine-year development of A Dictionary of the English Language, which secured his lasting academic reputation. The section also addresses the production of the Rambler essays and the profound personal transition marked by the death of his wife. Chapter 4, 'The Discontents of Rasselas (1755-1760),' surveys a period of continued financial instability and personal loss, culminating in the rapid composition of Rasselas to defray his mother's funeral expenses. It describes his growing social circle of "satellites" and his evolving role as a prominent public moralist despite personal depression. Chapter 5, 'A Change of Life (1760-1765),' addresses the transformative impact of the royal pension granted by George III, which afforded him financial security and the leisure for extensive conversation. This chapter details his initial meeting with James Boswell and the established importance of the Literary Club in his social life. Chapter 6, 'At Streatham and in the Club (1765-1773),' explores the stabilization of his domestic life through the patronage of the Thrale family and the long-delayed completion of his edition of Shakespeare. The narrative documents his central position in London's intellectual elite and his complex emotional dependence on Hester Thrale. Chapter 7, 'The Delights of Travel (1773-1777),' documents his late-life geographical and political excursions, notably his tour of Scotland with Boswell. It analyzes his emergence as a political pamphleteer and his humanitarian efforts on behalf of French prisoners and the condemned Dr. Dodd. Chapter 8, 'Among the Poets (1777-1784),' details the production of his final masterwork, The Lives of the Poets, providing a definitive record of his literary judgments. The volume concludes with a portrayal of his final years, marked by the loss of close friends and his ultimate confrontation with death.
Samuel Johnson in the Medical World: The Doctor and the Patient
Wiltshire situates Johnson within the eighteenth-century medical world, tracing his relationships with physicians and examining his medical theory and practice. The study argues that medical themes of suffering and its alleviation form the core of Johnson's thought and writing. Wiltshire analyzes Johnson's varied ailments—including childhood scrofula, "morbid melancholy," and chronic respiratory distress—alongside his amateur medical expertise acquired from associates like James and Lawrence. The text explores the "therapeutic friendship" between Johnson and Thrale, characterized by a regime of "moral management" that anticipated later psychiatric care. Wiltshire also examines Johnson's role as a counselor to Boswell, suggesting that Johnson's works provided "bark and steel for the mind" to help Boswell achieve "manly firmness." Through an investigation of Johnson's "medical journalism" and personal correspondence, the study demonstrates how Johnson's identity as a "spectacular patient" was inextricably linked to his cultural authority as a healer of mind and body. Wiltshire details Johnson's final battle with "the dropsy," highlighting his insistence on "vigorous remedy" and his frequent disputes with doctors over phlebotomy and experimental drugs like digitalis. By reconstructing the system of beliefs behind Johnson's medical advice, Wiltshire shows that Johnson used his own experience of illness to offer emotional therapy to his circle. The book concludes that Johnson's suffering was not an aberration but the essential ground of his life and work, informing his deep concern for charity and his "tenderness" toward human weakness. Through this lens, the "Doctor" emerges as a sage whose authority is underwritten by his status as a patient. Chapter 1, 'Johnson's Medical History: Facts and Mysteries,' chronicles the extensive physical and psychological ailments that plagued the subject, evaluating contemporary and modern diagnoses of his scrofula, respiratory distress, and movement disorders. Chapter 2, 'The Practice of Physic,' reconstructs the subject’s informal medical education and his adherence to iatromechanist theory, which informed his vigorous self-treatment and his firm defense of bloodletting as a rational therapeutic intervention. Chapter 3, 'Transactions of the Medical World,' situates the subject within the burgeoning eighteenth-century medical marketplace, examining his contributions to medical journalism and his critical engagement with the rise of charity hospitals. Chapter 4, 'Medicine as Metaphor,' analyzes the subject’s translation of clinical concepts into moral essays, arguing that his preoccupation with pain and human frailty serves as the foundation for his ethical thought. Chapter 5, 'The History of a Man of Learning,' examines the depiction of the astronomer in Rasselas as a sophisticated contribution to the early understanding of insanity and therapeutic management. Chapter 6, 'Dr Robert Levet,' interprets the commemorative elegy for an unlicensed practitioner as a celebration of medical charity and a rejection of professional vanity. Chapter 7, 'Therapeutic Friendship,' explores the subject's complex relationships with his own physicians and the clinical, quasi-medical advice he offered to friends, culminating in an analysis of his final struggle with illness. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Enright, in the LRB, praises the detailed analysis and the use of medicine as an interpretive lens, though he critiques one reading as over-ingenious. Middendorf (ECS) commends the responsible reconstruction of the environment, but he disputes an overemphasis on illness within a key personal relationship. Writing for MLR, Probyn describes the work as a rich, energetic, and multi-dimensional narrative, noting only the absence of a closing account of death. Sherbo’s review in RES acknowledges that the extensive research will ensure the volume is not soon superseded, yet he severely criticizes the scholarly apparatus and identifies omissions in the bibliography. In AJ, Gross acknowledges the meticulous descriptive detail but critiques the weak reading of medical metaphors and the lack of a broader conceptual framework. Redford (JNL) views the work as a careful compendium that functions as a valuable chart for specialists, though he notes it offers little genuine novelty. In specialized scientific publications, Bracegirdle (Endeavour) praises the expertise and closely argued text, recommending its dual literary and scientific insights, while Schwartz’s mixed assessment in American Scientist argues that the thematic structure fails to present new information to experts.
The Making of Dr. Johnson: Icon of Modern Culture
Bad Behavior: Samuel Johnson and Modern Cultural Authority
Wechselblatt explores Johnson's professional identity as a "double self-construction" alternating between the "Augustan sage" and the "Grub Street hack". using critical theory, particularly the insights of Horkheimer and Adorno, Wechselblatt argues that this duality reflects the broader transition to mass-market publishing and the "epistemological closure" of modernity. The text investigates the "critical reduction of Johnson’s discourse to its maxims" and compares the modern scholarly identification with Johnson to the "identification felt by fans toward celebrities". Wechselblatt identifies a fundamental tension in Johnsonian authority between stable, "delegated knowledge" linked to the patronage system and the "mere succession of authorities" found in the commercial marketplace. By examining Johnson's writings alongside the anecdotes of Hester Thrale and James Boswell, Wechselblatt demonstrates how Johnsonian exemplarity operates through a conflict between "theory and practice" and "maxim and experience". The study further explores how Johnson managed historical "otherness" by recuperating it as loss through genres like the epitaph, ultimately positioning Johnson as a pivotal figure who "grounds his discourse in the tropes of its failures" to navigate modern cultural authority. Chapter 1, 'Nullius in Verba,' argues that modern cultural authority emerges from a structural oscillation between the traditional "sage" and the commercial "hack," a binary tension enacted through Johnson's self-construction. Chapter 2, 'Style and the Man,' investigates how the critical reduction of discourse to aphoristic maxims provides modern readers with a compensatory formal stability for cognitive instability. Chapter 3, 'The "Trials" of Authorship,' contends that the discontinuities of the literary marketplace enable fantasies of writerly freedom by uncoupling authorial intention from the arbitrary contingencies of public reception. Chapter 4, 'Johnson as Man of Letters,' explores how the public intellectual manages cultural inheritance by troping historical disjunctions and radical loss as the very conditions for modern specialized knowledge. The Conclusion uses the Life of Swift to summarize how publication integrates material and epistemological dimensions, establishing the modern author-function through a recursive reference to prior authority. Critics call this book a dense and often frustrating exercise in High Deconstruction that explores the indeterminacy between the roles of sage and hack. Reviewers such as Hudson and Rounce acknowledge the "theoretical sophistication" and "adroit" readings, yet they argue the study imposes rigid binary oppositions that ignore the subject's unsystematic engagement with historical reality. But while Radner finds the analyses "rewarding" and "energetic," most contributors, including DeMaria and Lynch, lambast the "addiction to theory" and difficult argument structure. The consensus suggests the work serves as a vehicle for "paradoxology" rather than a focused historical study.
Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century
This wide-ranging volume examines the theoretical and scholarly contexts of Johnson's work as a lexicographer, moralist, poet, political commentator, sermon writer, periodical essayist, biographer, literary critic, and theorist. In addition to Johnson's more familiar works, the contributors address his poetry, political writings, sermons, and personal correspondence. Critics say this monograph represents an essential classic of deep-level scholarship that brilliantly expands the traditionally tested range of the subject's studies. Reviewers describe the book as a handsome and outstanding collection that revisits familiar texts while addressing unexplored regions of the subject’s thought, politics, and religion. Pedreira and Clarke celebrate the groundbreaking nature of the seventeen incisive essays, particularly praising Sherman’s meditation on the moralistic conception of time and Fairer’s analysis of the subject's agile mind. Lee and Smallwood find the work's scholarly rigor and lovely aesthetics to be touchstones of the volume, noting that the diverse literary approaches link minute textual details to broader historical contexts without the excessive control of a single thesis. The collection also receives accolades for its treatment of the subject's editorial craft; Walsh’s study of the Shakespeare edition and DeMaria’s authoritative survey of textual editions are cited as highlights. Smallwood commends the shift away from mid-twentieth-century fixations, though he finds Engell’s analysis of the subject and Walter Scott to be over-leisurely in its pace. Carter highlights the complexity of the debates surrounding the subject's churchmanship, identifying Gibson’s survey of High Church and Latitudinarian views as a helpful contribution. While the volume traces paradoxical relationships with figures like Swift and Byron, Walker notes the success of researchers like Folkenflik in enlivening the subject's historical surroundings through specific biographical research. The work provides a revealing and distinguished portrait of a remarkable presence whose intellectual influence remains unmatched.
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare: The Discipline of Criticism
Since the first appearance of Samuel Johnson's edition of Shakespeare's drama in 1765, its Preface has often been published separately, while the Notes have been treated as miscellaneous and fragmentary. As a result, few modern readers realize that the Notes in fact contain coherent interpretations of most of the plays and that many portions of the Preface are generalizations related to those readings. Scholars who have examined the Notes carefully have almost always used them in studies of larger issues, such as Johnson's morality or rhetoric. In this book, Edward Tomarken provides the first full-length study of the Notes to Shakespeare, showing how they raise issues of direct concern to modern critics and theoreticians. While referring to Johnson's notes on all the Shakespearean dramas, Tomarken focuses on eight plays — Henry IV, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, The Tempest, Hamlet, and Macbeth — to demonstrate the range of Johnson's editorial and critical abilities. Each chapter, devoted to a single play, moves from the particular to the general-from specific remarks about the play in the Notes, to related theoretical statements in the Preface, and finally to an axiom of literary theory. Ranging from a formulation concerning ideology in criticism to a reconsideration of aesthetic empathy, these axioms are, Tomarken contends, essential to literary criticism as a discipline and manifest Johnson's relevance to modernity.
Samuel Johnson and Three Infidels: Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot
Temmer reevaluates the intellectual relationships between Johnson and the prominent figures of the French Enlightenment by juxtaposing representative works and biography. The first section contrasts the parallel lives of Johnson and Rousseau, interpreting their existence as "ontological masterpieces" and finding a shared pietism despite opposing doctrines. Temmer rejects traditional Johnsonian dismissals of Rousseau as a mere "infidel," identifying affinities in their warmth of imagination and their common struggle with the "hard task of Christianity." The second section provides a comparative reading of Candide and Rasselas, situating both 1759 tales within the history of ideas. Temmer argues that both authors use their narratives to challenge the "plenum formarum" of Leibnizian optimism, asserting that "much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed." The final section traces typological concordances between the Life of Savage and Le Neveu de Rameau, suggesting that Diderot's masterpiece may have been influenced by Johnson's earlier biography. Temmer concludes that Johnson's innovative role in biography relates his work to a tradition leading to Hegel and Dostoevsky. Chapter 1, 'Johnson and Rousseau: Parallel Lives That Never Intersected,' explores the ontological masterpieces created through their disparate biographical and autobiographical records. It argues that despite doctrinal oppositions, both men shared profound pietism and obsessive psychological struggles with guilt and solitude. Chapter 2, 'Candide and Rasselas Revisited,' addresses the 1759 publication of these two philosophical tales, contrasting Voltaire’s "sportive victory" over religion with the religious intent to direct human hopes toward eternity. It argues that both works function as Bildungsromane that challenge Leibnizian optimism through distinct aesthetic and intellectual energies. Chapter 3, 'Speculations on Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage and Diderot's Neveu de Rameau,' addresses the generic kinship between these works as critical biographies of parasitic failures. It argues that Diderot’s portrayal of the amoral artist may have been influenced by Johnson's somber account of Richard Savage. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the structural validity of the cross-channel comparisons, the lack of a rigorous methodology, and the highly speculative nature of the text. Hume, in SEL, offers a mixed assessment of the comparative intellectual history, noting that despite methodological risks and the absence of a central thesis, the speculative approach produces a sharpened sense of late eighteenth-century style and structure. Middendorf, writing in JNL, delivers an ingratiating review, praising the imaginative play of mind that successfully discovers shared intellectual resemblances beneath stark ideological oppositions. In AJ, Parke commends how the volume situates the subject within a broader European framework rather than a purely English context, demonstrating a deep engagement with Continental thought. Conversely, Niklaus, in BJECS, provides an approving evaluation, validating the comparison of allegorical choices and the connection between parasitic biographical profiles. But other critics are far more skeptical. Basney, writing in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, criticizes the lack of a clear method, arguing that the analysis relies too heavily on flights of fancy rather than closely argued support. Cope, in South Atlantic Review, delivers a mixed judgment, lambasting the methodological irresolution and silly terminology, though praising the chapters on specific literary pairings as brilliant. Neubauer, in Comparative Literature Studies, questions the causal link postulated between the biographical narratives, while James, in Transactions of the Johnson Society, remains highly critical, comparing the juxtaposed principles to chalk and cheese and concluding the overarching exercise offers very little analytical utility for serious scholars.
Reviews: Lionel Basney, ECF 1, no. 2 (1989): 156–58; Kevin L. Cope, South Atlantic Review 54, no. 1 (1989): 116–19; Robert D. Hume, SEL 28, no. 3 (1988): 521–22; Ralph James, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 1988, 26–27; Frederick M. Keener, Diderot Studies 24 (1991): 205–7; Haydn Mason, French Studies 44, no. 1 (1990): 69; Gita May, Comparative Literature 43, no. 2 (1991): 195–96; John H. Middendorf, JNL 48, nos. 1–2 (1988): 2; Alain Morvan, Revue de littérature comparée 64, no. 1 (1990): 142–44; John Neubauer, Comparative Literature Studies 29, no. 1 (1992): 94–96; Robert Niklaus, BJECS 13, no. 2 (1990): 253–54; Catherine Neal Parke, AJ 3 (1990): 473–77; M. S. Wagoner, Choice 25 (1988): 1559; Renee Waldinger, Philosophy and Literature 13, no. 1 (1989): 188–90.
Samuel Johnson and Neoclassical Dramatic Theory: The Intellectual Context of the Preface to Shakespeare
Stock analyzes the intellectual context of Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare, focusing on neoclassical dramatic theory and related critical issues spanning from 1730 to 1770 while disputing the view that Johnson acts as a revolutionary critic who single-handedly destroyed neoclassical dogmas. By situating Johnson within a tradition of "empirical and psychological" criticism, Stock demonstrates that many of his seemingly radical positions—such as the rejection of the unities of time and place—had significant precedents in earlier eighteenth-century thought. The study clarifies Johnson’s critical judgments by measuring them against contemporaries, with a goal of establishing context rather than originality, and analyzes Johnson’s debt to and departure from critics like Rymer, Dryden, Pope, and Kames. Stock argues that Johnson maintains a reflective position, avoiding the extremes of sentimentalist subjectivism and rationalist precision, adhering instead to empirically supported "right reason" and using "common sense" and a focus on "general nature" to evaluate dramatic probability. The core achievement of the Preface is located in its empirically based search for fundamental principles, and Stock argues that Johnson’s greatness lies not in the novelty of his ideas but in the "unexampled weight and clarity" with which he synthesized existing trends to defend Shakespeare’s realism. The book details Johnson’s views on nature, the unities, moral instruction, poetic justice, and decorum, exploring the tension between Johnson’s moral requirements for art and his commitment to representing "the real state of sublunary nature," where good and evil are mingled. Stock identifies Johnson's defense of tragicomedy and his unique use of the concept of general nature as critical highlights, including extensive discussion of French criticism and the contemporary reception of Johnson’s theories. The study concludes that the Preface served as a definitive summation of neoclassical dramatic inquiry and is a "final development" in Shakespearean criticism. Chapter 1, 'The Principles of Literary Criticism: Length of Duration and Continuance of Esteem,' addresses the "test of time" as the fundamental criterion for literary excellence. It argues that artistic merit is established through a long succession of comparative judgments by the collective wisdom of mankind, rather than through scientific demonstration or subjective, fluctuating standards of taste. Chapter 2, 'The Poet of Nature,' examines the justification of characters as species representing universal human passions. It argues that while these figures are individualized, they transcend local manners and artificial decorum to mirror the essential, sublunary nature of common humanity. Chapter 3, 'Aut Prodesse aut Delectare,' addresses the interrelated functions of pleasing and instructing in drama. It argues that the rejection of rigid unities and the acceptance of dramatic illusion are necessary to facilitate pleasure, while emphasizing that the poet's highest duty remains the preservation of moral truth. Chapter 4, 'Faults Sufficient,' addresses various stylistic and structural deficiencies identified in the provided text. It argues that despite these imperfections, the poet’s vigorous invention and psychological depth ensure his continued status as a classic. Chapter 5, 'Shakespeare and His Age,' addresses the influence of Elizabethan culture on poetic development. It argues that the poet's genius was not a product of unlearned inspiration but of a mind capable of storing and combining images acquired through experience and existing translations. Chapter 6, 'Johnson and His Age,' addresses the contemporary critical reception and the work's place within its milieu. It argues that the Preface preserves traditional humanistic values while engaging with newer aesthetic trends, serving as a definitive statement of conservative neoclassicism. Critics are generally favorable, praising the reconstruction of the intellectual context and the placement of the subject within a mediating humanistic tradition. Weinbrot, in PQ, acknowledges the effective placement within a mediating role between traditional and innovative criticism, though he criticizes the reliance on rigid terminology and the reduction of evaluative judgments. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, praise the analysis for successfully demonstrating a view of criticism as an art rather than a sentiment rooted in empirical observation. In Shakespeare Quarterly, Shaw praises the assessment for promoting dramatic understanding through traditional values, noting the successful demonstration of an appeal to general nature over formal rules. Damrosch (JEGP) calls the volume learned and valuable, praising the method of tracing convoluted ideas to establish context rather than searching for direct influence. Edinger, in Modern Philology, finds the book largely successful but argues that the use of crude categories distorts subtle, synthetic thought. Hnatko's review in Criticism commends the scrupulous and exhaustive examination of the critical milieu, while Sherwood (Comparative Literature) emphasizes the alignment with normative reason and the consensus gentium despite inherent contradictions in the doctrine of imitation. Dircks, in Studies in Burke and His Time, offers a more skeptical evaluation, faulting the dual interpretive objectives and concluding that the work fails to engage with central issues or respond to provocative modern scholarship.
Samuel Johnson and Neoclassical Dramatic Theory
Johnson's Critical Presence: Image, History, Judgment
Publisher's blurb: "Samuel Johnson remains one of the most frequently discussed and cited of the eighteenth-century critics; but historians of criticism have invariably interpreted his work within conventions that have allowed for little evaluative commerce between the needs of the critical present and the voices of the critical past. Smallwood's argument is that Johnson's alienation from the modern critical scene stems in part from historians' tendency to tell the story of criticism as a narrative of improvement. The image of Johnson conceived by his antagonists in the eighteenth century has been perpetuated by romanticism, by nineteenth-century representational routines and mediated to the present day, most recently, by varieties of ‘radical theory'. In Johnson's Critical Presence Smallwood offers a new account of Johnson's major critical writings conceived according to a different kind of historical potential. He suggests that the historicization of eighteenth-century criticism can best be understood in the light of the ‘dialogic' and ‘translational' historiographies of Collingwood, Gadamer and Ricoeur, and that the explanatory contexts of Johnson's criticism must include poetry in addition to theory; in this his study seeks to displace both the history of ideas as the leading paradigm for the history of criticism and to question the developmental narrative on which it relies. By in-depth analysis of Johnson's response to Shakespeare's plays and to the poetry of Abraham Cowley, Smallwood constructs a non-reductive context of emotional experience for Johnson's criticism. This embraces the dynamic satirical caricatures by James Gillray of Johnson as critic, the irony of Johnson's critical affinities with the major romantics, and is set against twentieth-century responses to the literary ‘canon'. Smallwood argues that not only Johnson;s emotional sensitivities, but also the ironic voices within the critical text itself, must be fully appreciated before Johnson's current relevance, or even his historical value, can be grasped."
Johnson Re-Visioned: Looking Before and After
Smallwood edits a revisionist volume that seeks to move beyond the "venerated" image of Johnson to explore his continuing relevance to contemporary literary theory. The collection features contributors such as Greg Clingham, Martin Wechselblatt, and James G. Basker, who address topics including Johnson’s engagement with "Bardic Nationalism," his refutation of Bishop Berkeley, and his complex views on race and slavery. Significant attention is paid to Johnson's "Black London" context, specifically his relationship with his servant Francis Barber. The essays analyze major works including The Vanity of Human Wishes and Lives of the Poets, particularly the "Life of Gray," while also considering Johnson’s impact on later writers like Jane Austen. Smallwood identifies the volume's central tension as the "looking before and after"—reconciling Johnson's roots in classical criticism with modern concerns regarding gender, coverture, and cultural authority. The text includes scholarly features such as a comprehensive index and detailed bibliographical references. By challenging "Bardolatry" and "Namierite" historical models, the collection presents Johnson as a "dynamic presence" in the history of criticism whose "humane intelligence" remains a vital subject for eighteen-century studies. Critics are generally favorable, praising the collection's examination of contemporary relevance and its engagement with modern theoretical frameworks. Hitchings, in TLS, notes the argument for the subject's enduring relevance to contemporary critical consciousness through the application of modern methodologies to race, gender, and cosmopolitan thought. Looser's positive review in SEL describes the volume as a strong collection that works cooperatively with theoretical change, highlighting chapters on cosmopolitan nationalism, female friendship, and critical reception. Lynch (Choice) calls the volume a productive examination that clarifies the scholarly image through a uniform focus and accessible writing, recommending it for academic libraries. Budge, in YWES, provides a positive assessment, noting how contributors confront professionalized interpretive procedures and dismantle traditional stereotypes. Baines, in MLR, acknowledges the attempt to restore new perspectives by cultivating resistances to modern critical paradigms, though noting that the essays often ignore complexities, such as conservative qualifications on women or specific rhetorical motivations regarding slavery. Tomarken's review in AJ finds the volume mixed in success, arguing that most essays prioritize present concerns over the subject's own perspective, fail to offer innovative solutions to known problems, and lack methodological depth.
Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson
Sisman examines the seven-year composition of the biography of Johnson, focusing on the transition from Boswell as a companion to an ambitious biographer. The narrative traces Boswell’s psychological dependence on Johnson as a mentor and moral pinnacle, a need originating in Boswell’s turbulent relationship with his own father. Sisman details the innovative biographical techniques Boswell employed, such as the use of "portable soup" memoranda to reconstruct conversations and the interweaving of Johnson’s letters and diverse writings to allow the subject to speak for himself. The account highlights the collaborative role of Malone in refining the manuscript and Boswell’s exhaustive efforts to verify minute details, which established new scholarly standards for the genre. Sisman also explores the rivalry between Boswell and Piozzi, noting how their competing memoirs and personal friction shaped the public's perception of Johnson. The text explains that Boswell used these rivalries and personal anecdotes to craft a "life in scenes" that provided an extraordinarily vivid and physical presence of his subject. Boswell and Johnson created each other for posterity, with the biographer resuscitating his friend in print while simultaneously immortalizing himself. Despite Boswell's personal chaos, including debt and failing health, he persisted in his task to create a work that redefined biography as a literary form. Sisman shows how the discovery of Boswell's private papers in the twentieth century further transformed scholarly understanding of his skill as a writer and his complex relationship with Johnson. Chapter 1, "Immaturity," traces the subject's early life in Scotland, focusing on his aristocratic lineage, his initial struggles with "hypochondria," and the formative, often contentious, relationship with his stern father. Chapter 2, "Forwardness," details his first meeting with Samuel Johnson and the subsequent development of their friendship, alongside his Continental Grand Tour and the publicity surrounding his visit to Corsica. Chapter 3, "Subordination," examines the years of his legal practice in Edinburgh, his marriage, and the pivotal 1773 tour of the Hebrides, illustrating his growing emotional and intellectual dependence on Johnson as a mentor. Chapter 4, "Independence," describes the immediate aftermath of Johnson’s death in 1784, the emergence of rival biographers, and the decision to publish the Hebridean journal as a precursor to the major biography. Chapter 5, "Collaboration," documents the intensive editorial partnership with Edmond Malone in London to refine the journal for publication while the author balanced a chaotic social life and political ambitions. Chapter 6, "Anger," analyzes the public and critical reception of the published journal, including the controversies and personal feuds ignited by its unprecedented level of intimate, candid detail. Chapter 7, "Discretion," explores the challenges of selecting and framing material for the "Great Life," as the author navigated the ethical boundaries of biography and his own social reputation. Chapter 8, "Application," focuses on the arduous process of collecting, verifying, and chronological arranging the vast trove of Johnsonian materials into a coherent narrative draft. Chapter 9, "Rivalry," recounts the pressure exerted by the publication of competing works by Sir John Hawkins and Hester Piozzi, which served to both discourage and sharpen the subject’s biographical focus. Chapter 10, "Bereavement," depicts a period of profound personal crisis, marked by the declining health and eventual death of his wife, Margaret, which haunted the final stages of his writing. Chapter 11, "Humiliation," examines the subject’s degrading subservience to the Earl of Lonsdale in a failed pursuit of political office, an ordeal that delayed the biography and deeply wounded his pride. Chapter 12, "Struggle," details the final, exhausting efforts to complete the manuscript and oversee the printing process while battling severe depression and financial instability. Chapter 13, "Despair," describes the subject’s melancholic state leading up to the 1791 publication and his fading hopes for a significant legal or political career in London. Chapter 14, "Posterity," concludes by tracing the posthumous reputation of the biography, from early nineteenth-century disparagement to the mid-twentieth-century discovery of the subject’s private papers, which established him as a master of modern life-writing. Most reviews are positive, praising the focused chronicle of the composition process and the affirmation of deliberate literary artistry. Bathurst, in TLS, provides a favorable account, characterizing the study as a literate and entertaining companion that deconstructs the author's methodology, accurate recall, and sharp ear for dialogue. Writing in the WSJ, Barnes notes that the book effectively charts the shifting perception of the subject's talents and successfully details the seven-year writing process, establishing the biographer as a great prose innovator. McGrath's review in NYTBR labels it a smart and very readable biography of a biography, observing that the text disputes the image of a slavish copyist. In the Hudson Review, Allen finds the narrative intellectually stimulating, focused, and insightful, though he notes its limited scope compared to more conventional, comprehensive biographies. Scholarly reaction, however, is more cautious. Hart, writing a severe review in AJ, disputes the scholarly value of the biography, noting that it contains no original research or ideas, downplays the permanence of the subject's literary output, and serves primarily as an empirical popularization suitable for undergraduates rather than specialists. Danziger, in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, similarly praises the lively narrative but notes a distinct lack of fresh primary material, contesting the claim of originality by observing that the stories are already familiar to specialists. Finally, Kanter (JNL) commends the compassionate portrayal of personal foibles and the detailed account of how the twentieth-century discovery of private papers debunked the stenographer myth.
Originally published: London : Penguin, 2000
Reviews: Brooke Allen, Hudson Review 54, no. 3 (2001): 489–97; Steve Barnes, WSJ, August 24, 2001; Bella Bathurst, TLS, no. 5092 (November 2000): 36; Mark Bostridge, The Independent, October 29, 2000; Allan Brown, Sunday Times (London), September 16, 2001; James Buchan, Evening Standard (London), October 23, 2000; James Buchan, Sunday Herald, November 26, 2000; James Buchan, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, November 30, 2000; D. L. C., Dublin Historical Record 54, no. 1 (2001): 111; Angus Calder, Scotland on Sunday, November 5, 2000; Richard J. Cox, American Archivist 65, no. 1 (2002): 138–42; Anthony Cronin, Sunday Independent (Dublin), October 7, 2001; Marlies K. Danziger, Eighteenth-Century Scotland 17 (2003): 24; John Derbyshire, New Criterion 19, no. 7 (2001): 61; Michael Dirda, Washington Post, August 19, 2001; Gerry Dukes, Irish Independent, December 9, 2000; Richard Eder, NYT, August 2, 2001; Victoria Glendinning, Irish Times, November 18, 2000; Elizabeth Goldring, NR, Series E, no. 4 (2000): 91–93; A. C. Grayling, Financial Times, December 9, 2000; Kevin Hart, AJ 14 (2003): 416–20; Christopher Hawtree, The Independent, November 6, 2000; Philip Hensher, The Spectator 285, no. 8987 (2000): 46–47; Richard Holmes, NYRB 48, no. 14 (2001): 28–32; Roger Hutchinson, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 4, 2000; Christopher D. Johnson, South Atlantic Review 67, no. 1 (2002): 162–64; Greg Johnson, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, September 2, 2001; Robert Jones, Library Journal 126, no. 11 (2001): 82; Peter Kanter, JNL 54, no. 1 (2003): 66–69; Arnold Kemp, The Guardian, November 5, 2000; Arnold Kemp, The Observer (London), November 5, 2000; Kirkus Reviews (April 15, 2001); Adam Kirsch, Newsday, August 26, 2001; Vince Kohler, The Oregonian, October 28, 2001; Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News, August 12, 2001; Ross Leckie, The Times (London), September 22, 2001; London Standard (October 23, 2000); Jack Lynch, Choice 39, no. 5 (2002): 884; C. Marowitz, American Book Review 23, no. 4 (2002): 21–21; Charles McGrath, NYTBR, August 19, 2001; Ian McIntyre, The Times (London), November 15, 2000; Frank McLynn, The Herald (Glasgow), November 4, 2000; Roger K. Miller, Boston Herald, September 2, 2001; Roger K. Miller, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 26, 2001; John Mullan, O Estado de S. Paolo, January 14, 2001; John Mullan, The Guardian, November 11, 2000; Rex Murphy, Globe and Mail (Toronto), August 18, 2001; Andrew O’Hagan, LRB 22, no. 19 (2000): 7–8; Ray Olson, Booklist 97, no. 21 (2001): 1971; Publishers Weekly (2001); Anthony Quinn, Sunday Times (London), October 29, 2000; Felicity Riddy, The Spectator 285, no. 8975 (2000): 34; Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday, December 31, 2000; Miranda Seymour, Atlantic Monthly (2001); Miranda Seymour, Atlantic Monthly (September 2001); Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times (London), November 26, 2000; Paul Tankard, Southern Johnsonian 3 (September 2001): 6–7; The Economist (October 28, 2000); Ted Waitt, Book (2001): 74; Colin Walters, Washington Times, August 26, 2001, B6; Philip Weiss, The Observer (London), September 17, 2001; Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Daily Mail (London), December 22, 2000.
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson; Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life
Sherbo presents a combined edition of early biographical accounts of Johnson, featuring William Shaw’s 1785 Memoirs and Hester Lynch Piozzi’s 1786 Anecdotes. The volume provides a comprehensive introduction and extensive annotations that reconcile these primary accounts with later scholarship, particularly the works of Boswell and modern editors. Sherbo’s editorial apparatus identifies individuals mentioned in the texts, clarifies historical allusions, and tracks the textual history of both works. The edition highlights Shaw’s defense of Johnson’s character against contemporary detractors and provides a curated look at the domestic and personal details recorded by Piozzi during her twenty-year association with Johnson. Sherbo’s notes frequently contrast Piozzi’s recollections with those of James Boswell, offering a balanced view of Johnson’s conversational style and private habits. The text serves as a scholarly resource for examining the "biography wars" of the 1780s and the development of Johnsonian mythography.
Regulating Confusion: Samuel Johnson and the Crowd
Reinert argues Johnson's work enacts a fundamental moral skepticism stemming from the disjunction between individual experience and the massive, impersonal force of the crowd. This urban reality—a phenomenon of unbounded multiplicity—destabilizes moral judgment by fracturing the traditional linkage between general moral maxims and particular human actions. Johnson's career, marked by the tasks of ordering words (the Dictionary) and chronicling lives, reflects a consistent, strenuous attempt to "regulate confusion" through rhetorical, figurative, or probabilistic means when true empirical or ethical certainty is unavailable. The book posits that Johnson's skepticism is not passive but an active struggle against the dissolution of self and meaning. Introduction: Johnson's moral thought, focused on personal judgment, confronts the urban crowd, which destabilizes his principles, forcing him to use figurative language to impose order on "boundless variety." Chapter 1, The Desire for Fame: Social theory's distinction between small and large societies informs Johnson's view of the crowd as an amoral force that simplifies character and renders the pursuit of fame futile. Chapter 2, Periodical Moralizing: Johnson converts the constraints of periodic writing into a moral strategy, using repetition and ritual to find consolation and dignity against helplessness where practical resolution is absent. Chapter 3, The Vanity of Human Wishes: The poem demonstrates the failure of particular life stories (exemplars) to connect materially to universal truth, functioning instead as arbitrary rhetorical supplements to inevitable human suffering. Chapter 4, Exemplary Self-Sacrifice: Savage's self-destructive life exposes the hollowness of sentimental rhetoric in the face of the crowd's impersonality, suggesting true virtue requires non-representable self-effacement (Levet). Conclusion: Johnson's political conservatism is a rhetorical defense mechanism that transfers the essential complexity of political problems onto the "rabble" to be suppressed, rather than a genuine outcome of his skepticism. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the theoretical abstractions, lack of historical context, and omission of religious frameworks. Critics are split regarding the persuasiveness of the core argument, though several praise the elegant close readings. Deutsch, in Modern Philology, calls the effort original and suggestive, praising the elegant close readings but noting the central social concept remains abstract. Folkenflik's review in ECS finds the study limited in appeal, arguing it treats the subject as an allegory for contemporary dilemmas rather than grounding it historically. Landry and Maclean, in SEL, describe the work as an extended meditation on critical perplexity, highlighting the defense of the subject's skepticism and resignation. Lynn, writing in YWES, challenges the omission of religious and practical terms, observing that such exclusions leave the subject as a mere spectacle. Patey, in Choice, commends the sensitive, graceful readings and the postmodern approach to moral wisdom, dismissing the neglect of Christianity as a minor flaw. Devens, in BJECS, observes a deep sympathy for the subject's navigation of culture despite the challenge to humanist methods. Scanlan's review in Albion criticizes the lack of archival research and historical detail, concluding that the argument strains unconvincingly to make the subject a contemporary figure. Lamoine, writing in Études Anglaises, suggests that the constant reliance on other theorists detracts from the overall interest of the work.
Rogers provides a concise introduction to the life and thought of Samuel Johnson, situating him as a definitive "Past Master" of mid-Hanoverian culture. The monograph argues that Johnson’s persona as a sage and master conversationalist often obscures the technical brilliance and methodical clarity of his literary achievement. Rogers surveys Johnson's major works, including the Dictionary, the edition of Shakespeare, and the Lives of the Poets, while examining his religious faith and moral philosophy. The narrative follows Johnson from his early struggles with poverty and health to his eventual dominance of the English literary scene. Rogers characterizes Johnson as an energetic combatant against despair and lethargy, emphasizing his humane attitude toward women and his active support for charities. The text concludes by examining Johnson's enduring influence and his role as a "faithful mirror" of his age. Chapter 1, 'Introduction,' situates the subject as a central symbol of mid-Hanoverian culture who codified English literature through a systematic, Enlightenment-driven approach to language and history. Chapter 2, 'Events,' outlines a life marked by early academic frustration and professional struggle in Grub Street, eventually culminating in recognized literary preeminence and a celebrated social circle. Chapter 3, 'A World of Books,' explores a deep immersion in the book trade, framing the authorial career as a commercial and professional engagement with the emerging market economy of letters. Chapter 4, 'Ideas and Beliefs,' examines a core of orthodox Christianity and a moral philosophy of gradualism that prioritizes common experience over speculative paradox. Chapter 5, 'Politics and Society,' analyzes a complex Tory identity rooted in institutional loyalty and a fierce humanitarianism toward the disadvantaged and suffering. Chapter 6, 'Language and Literature,' evaluates the monumental lexicographical achievement and a critical methodology that champions nature, truth, and the universal applicability of great poetry. Chapter 7, 'Time and Place,' discusses a significant Hebridean journey as a searching encounter with an alien culture that tested historical and social theories against reality. Chapter 8, 'Conclusion,' defines the ultimate legacy as a principled resolution to confront the human condition with indomitable spirit and analytical veracity.
This reference work provides a systematic guide to the life, works, and social circle of Samuel Johnson. Rogers includes over 650 topical, biographical, and geographical entries, ranging from substantial essays on the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets to brief notices of minor acquaintances and household pets. The encyclopedia uses standard scholarly editions, including the Yale Edition of Johnson's Works and the Hill–Powell edition of Boswell's Life, to offer detailed facts on publication dates, earnings, and critical reception. Biographical entries cover well-known figures like Boswell and Hester Thrale alongside obscure contacts and historical antagonists. Rogers presents information on Johnson's medical history, religious beliefs, and political views while mapping his domestic and social world in London. The front matter includes a chronology of Johnson's life and a guide to forms of reference used throughout the volume.
A wide-ranging reference work on Johnson’s life, works, and associates.
Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia
This study examines the Hebridean tour of Johnson and Boswell as a response to the external forces of their age rather than merely a private psychological event. Rogers posits that Johnson used the trip as a "rite de passage" into old age, purposefully seeking a "chilly midnight" terrain that inverted the classical norms of a traditional grand tour. The book frames the expedition as a displaced voyage of discovery, drawing parallels between Johnson’s "transit" over Scotland and the Pacific explorations of Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks. Rogers analyzes how Johnson tested Enlightenment theories of primitivism through empirical fieldwork, contrasting his discursive methods with the pure analysis of Edinburgh theorists. Additionally, the text explores Boswell’s motive to re-enact the flight of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, suggesting Boswell used Johnson as a surrogate for the missing prince to indulge "emotional Jacobitism." By comparing Johnson’s "Journey" with Boswell’s "Journal," Rogers demonstrates how both men engaged with themes of emigration, oral culture, and national identity in the aftermath of Culloden, ultimately placing their literary achievement within a wider global and historical context. The Introduction establishes the journey as a significant cultural "transit" where the visitors encountered a Scotland in rapid transition following the Jacobite risings and the onset of the Scottish Enlightenment. Chapter 1, "The Map of Caledonia," explores the geographical and cartographic preparation for the tour, detailing how contemporary mapping reflected both a military desire for control and a scholarly quest for topographical accuracy. Chapter 2, "Jacobitism and the Aftermath," investigates the persistent legacy of the Stuart cause in the Highlands, analyzing how the travelers navigated a landscape still haunted by the 1745 rebellion and the subsequent dismantling of the clan system. Chapter 3, "The Scottish Enlightenment," considers the intellectual backdrop of the journey, situating the observations of the two men within the sociological and philosophical debates led by figures like Adam Smith and Lord Kames. Chapter 4, "Highland Manners and Custom," focuses on the ethnographic dimension of the narratives, documenting the visitors' fascination with primitive social structures, domestic habits, and the oral traditions of the Gaelic people. Chapter 5, "The Ossian Controversy," recounts the inevitable confrontation with James Macpherson’s alleged epics, detailing how the quest for authentic ancient poetry became a central, contentious theme of the expedition. Chapter 6, "Economic Transformation," analyzes the shifting agricultural and industrial landscape of Scotland, from the introduction of sheep farming to the burgeoning kelp industry and the social consequences of mass emigration. Chapter 7, "Religion and the Kirk," examines the ecclesiastical state of the islands, contrasting the travelers' own religious convictions with the varied practices of Presbyterianism and residual Catholicism they encountered. Chapter 8, "The Literary Landscape," evaluates the formal qualities of the two resultant books, arguing that their differing styles—one a philosophical meditation and the other a dramatic journal—together create a definitive portrait of a vanishing world. Reviewers describe the book as a clever, witty, and deeply learned investigation into the 1773 Scottish tour, placing the expedition within the broader intellectual context of eighteenth-century voyages and Enlightenment sociology. Boyd identifies the work as a source of genuine gratification that enlightens the reader through the expertise of a real expert. Several critics, including Dunn and Hartveit, laud the creative framing of the journey as an anti-grand tour and a counter-culture gesture. These reviewers find the argument regarding the subject’s personal anxiety during his grand climacteric convincing, as it illuminates the physical challenge as a rite of passage. Colley and Danziger further praise the astute analysis of the younger traveler’s complex motives, specifically his desire to re-enact the Pretender’s flight and reaffirm a Scottish identity against a censorious father. But the study was not met with universal acclaim. Folkenflik characterizes the project as a disappointment, noting that while the opening chapters succeed, the comparisons involving figures like Omai are less than convincing. Folkenflik also observes that the text suffers from repetitiveness. Carnochan adds that the eight central theses vary in their evidentiary standards, particularly concerning the conscious intent of the travelers. Although Danziger reveals revealing comparisons between private letters and published accounts, she notes a loose conclusion regarding other thinkers of the era. The general consensus, however, favors the work's ability to clarify historical and literary nuances, with Hartveit and Dunn agreeing that it successfully transforms the voyage of discovery genre into a crucial document of Anglo-Scottish relations.
This study explores the complex literary relationship between Johnson and Milton, arguing that Johnson's engagement with his predecessor was productive rather than purely antipathetic. Rees analyzes how Johnson used Miltonic allusion in his periodical essays and poetry to address themes of truth, authority, and human suffering. The text examines Johnson's critical assessment of "Paradise Lost" and the shorter poems, highlighting his scrutiny of Miltonic prosody and his struggle with the epic's religious subject. Rees also discusses Johnson's biographical construction of Milton in the "Lives of the Poets," where he attempted to reconcile Milton's "acrimonious" political identity with his poetic genius. By tracing these interactions, Rees demonstrates that Milton served as an inescapable authority figure who profoundly shaped Johnson's critical thought and creative practice. The work situates both writers within the context of historical continuity and the shared tradition of Christian humanism. Chapter 1, "Milton and the Allegory of Truth," examines how the younger scholar used Miltonic paradigms of trial and error to structure his early periodical essays, arguing that his imaginative engagement with the poet began not with a life but through a creative appropriation of Milton’s quest for truth. Chapter 2, "Milton in the 1740s and 1750s," investigates the poet's presence in the Dictionary and the Rambler, tracing a tension between the lexicographer’s linguistic reliance on Milton’s vocabulary and the moralist’s skeptical critique of his predecessor’s republicanism. Chapter 3, "Johnson’s Miltonic Contexts: The Politics of Biography," analyzes the 1779 Life of Milton as a site of ideological conflict, suggesting that the biographer’s perceived hostility toward the man was a deliberate strategy to separate Milton’s flawed political character from his poetic genius. Chapter 4, "Paradise Lost: The Form of Moral Instruction," evaluates the critic’s defense of the epic genre, asserting that he ultimately confirmed Milton’s supreme status because the poem successfully fulfilled the primary literary purpose of making the reader better through the representation of universal truths. Chapter 5, "Milton’s Style and the Blank Verse Debate," explores the technical analysis of Miltonic versification, concluding that while the critic remained fundamentally opposed to blank verse as a medium, he nonetheless recognized Milton’s unique ability to bend the English language to his own sublime purposes. Chapter 6, "Samson Agonistes and the Limits of Tragedy," focuses on the famous critique of the play’s lack of a "middle," arguing that this judgment reflects a broader commitment to Aristotelian probability and the belief that even the greatest art must adhere to structural logic. Chapter 7, "Milton and the Later Eighteenth Century," considers the enduring legacy of this literary relationship, showing how the critic’s construction of Milton shaped the subsequent reception of the poet during the Romantic era and beyond.
The Making of Johnson's 'Dictionary,' 1746–1773
A revised edition of the book published in 1990.
Comparative Excellence: New Essays on Shakespeare and Johnson
Publisher's blurb: "Presents a collection of essays, in which internationally-recognized Shakespearean scholars and equally eminent Johnsonians consider the relationship of these two central figures of the English canon - examining not just Shakespeare's influence on Dr. Johnson, but also Johnson's influence on Shakespeare."
A collection of ten original essays on Johnson and Shakespeare, from a conference in April 2005 in Reno and Lake Tahoe.
This study analyzes the psychological and theological origins of Johnson's faith, positing that his religious commitment emerged as a response to existential anxiety. Pierce explores the conflict between Johnson's rational skepticism and his need for spiritual certitude, particularly regarding salvation and divine judgment. The narrative examines how Johnson used religious devotion, including frequent prayer and the study of divinity, to manage fears of death, insanity, and a misspent life. Pierce identifies a central "crisis of faith" during the 1760s, characterized by a nervous breakdown and debilitating "scruples" of doubt. Drawing on the "Prayers and Meditations," Pierce argues that Johnson's faith never provided the "spiritual happiness" he sought until a transformative period in his final months. This concluding phase involved a shift in Johnson's view of the atonement from a "legalistic" model to one emphasizing "divine mercy," leading to a state of reconciliation before death. Throughout, Pierce situates Johnson within the tradition of rational Anglicanism while highlighting the "tragic irony" of a life spent "forged on the anvil of anxiety." Chapter 1, "The Problem of Johnson’s Religion," identifies the central difficulty in assessing Johnson's faith as the conflict between his public role as a robust defender of Anglican orthodoxy and his private experience of intense spiritual anxiety and "scrupulosity." Chapter 2, "The Growth of a Religious Mind," traces the development of Johnson's beliefs from his childhood "lapsarian" state and early indifference through the pivotal influence of William Law’s Serious Call, which transformed his religion into a lifelong, earnest pursuit. Chapter 3, "The Sources of Anxiety," argues that Johnson's religious dread was fueled by a terrifyingly literal view of divine judgment and a constant, agonizing sense of personal inadequacy regarding his "indolence" and unfulfilled resolutions. Chapter 4, "The Anglican Context," situates Johnson within the specific theological traditions of the eighteenth-century Church of England, highlighting his devotion to liturgical order and his intellectual commitment to "reasonable" faith despite his emotional turbulence. Chapter 5, "The Practice of Piety," examines the practical manifestation of his faith through his meticulously recorded prayers, fasts, and charitable acts, viewing these as essential tools he used to combat despair and structure his moral life. Finally, Chapter 6, "The Final Struggle," recounts Johnson's last days, noting how his lifelong fear of death was eventually supplanted by a "serene" confidence in the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, providing a definitive resolution to his spiritual journey. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers divided over the value of the work's psychological approach to spiritual anxiety. Chesley's review (Religion & Literature) commends the dynamic interpretation of belief, finding the comparison to Kierkegaard valuable, while Paulson, in SEL, terms it a careful scholarly accounting of known information. Digby, in Library Journal, notes it effectively links psychological breakdowns to a central spiritual struggle. But severe objections emerge from prominent scholars. Brack, in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, attacks the study for a lack of precision, weak psychological analysis, and a reliance on Boswell that reduces the subject to a wooden character. Hudson, in N&Q, dismisses the thesis as unoriginal, trite, and marred by textual inaccuracies, censuring the anachronistic application of existentialist terminology. Holtz, in ECS, offers a coolly distanced appraisal, finding the text responsibly researched but disappointingly detached, while disputing the ease of the subject's final triumph of faith. Rogers, in the LRB, notes the study minimizes doctrinal implications to prioritize psychological roots, though he questions its reliance on contested biographical facts. Finally, Middendorf, in JNL, notes that the thesis positions faith as a defense against existential fears but raises theoretical questions about monolithic views of humanity, and Boyd, in America, praises the scholarly balance while noting a lack of depth regarding actual transforming theology.
Parker investigates the underlying conceptual coherence of Samuel Johnson's literary criticism in his 1965 edition and Preface to Shakespeare, defending his classicist tenets against subsequent romantic and modernist dismissals. Parker argues that Johnson's key criteria of "just representations of general nature" and "sublunary nature" do not imply a preference for naturalistic realism, abstract idealization, or simplistic didacticism. Instead, they reflect a deep, principled moral skepticism regarding the human mind's chronic tendency to escape into romanticized illusions, heroic grandiosity, or self-absorbed aestheticism. By conducting an intensive comparative dialogue between Johnson and romantic critics like August Wilhelm Schlegel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt, Parker demonstrates how Johnson values Shakespeare precisely for his anti-heroic focus on common humanity, emotional transparency, and cross-class solidarity. The final sections confront the limits of Johnson's critical outlook, noting his visceral, self-protective aversion to the shocking, unendurable, and "unnatural" extremes of Shakespeare's major tragedies. Chapter 1, 'Taking Johnson Seriously,' addresses Samuel Johnson's critical legacy, arguing that his seemingly obtuse strictures on Shakespeare should be understood as a coherent, polemical challenge to imaginative and romantic modes of reading. Chapter 2, 'Just Representations of General Nature,' addresses Johnson's concept of generality, arguing that it represents a non-abstract, empirical truth that captures the vast, sublunary chaos of human life by bypassing individual self-consciousness. Chapter 3, 'The Mind against the World,' addresses the shift toward romantic criticism, arguing that the idealist focus on creative imagination and organic unity creates a dualism that values spiritual detachment over natural participation. Chapter 4, 'Johnson and Tragedy,' addresses the limits of Johnson's anti-heroic priorities, arguing that the harrowing, unendurable moments of Shakespeare's tragedies expose a crucifying tension between heroic striving and common humanity. Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers dividing over the reinterpretation of neoclassical aesthetic principles and the validity of tracing Romantic critical intuition. Hapgood, in TLS, highlights the analysis of rival aesthetics, clarifying how the central concept of general nature preserves the general in the particular. In SEL, Richetti commends the learned, unpedantic discussion for successfully rehabilitating the subject as a serious critic equal to later writers. Rawson, writing in LRB, calls it a fresh, vivid study written with intelligent fervor. In AJ, Johnston values the sensible assessment of annotation but warns that the interpretation of a tragic hero risks falling into conjecture. Gondris, in JNL, favors the astuteness of the volume for recognizing critical radicality and unendurable tragic responses. Gray, writing in Modern Philology, praises the cogent defense of dramatic illusion and witty skepticism, though noting occasional excessive vehemence. In N&Q, Lim finds the rejuvenating strategy helpful for seeing text through older critical perspectives. Conversely, McLaverty, in Essays in Criticism, finds the distinguished argument muffled, asserting it overstates a single, nebulous idea of common humanity. Kaminski, writing in JEGP, offers a sharp critique, disputing the core assertions as specious and unfounded while concluding that the comparison fails to alter the established understanding of the critical framework.
Reviews: R. G. Brown, Choice 27, no. 4 (1989): 634; Joanna Gondris, JNL 52, no. 1 (1992): 5–7; James Gray, MP 89, no. 1 (1991): 127–31; Robert Hapgood, TLS, no. 4508 (1989): 927–28; David Hopkins, RES, n.s., vol. 42 (1991): 271–72; Shirley White Johnston, AJ 4 (1991): 408–13; Thomas Kaminski, JEGP 90, no. 4 (1991): 559–61; Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1991): 107–9; C. S. Lim, N&Q 37 [235], no. 4 (1990): 475–76; James McLaverty, Essays in Criticism 40, no. 2 (1990): 164–70; Akio Nakahara, Studies in English Literature 68, no. 1 (1991): 146–53; Claude Rawson, LRB 13, no. 15 (1991): 15–17; John Richetti, SEL 30, no. 3 (1990): 517–54; Willem Schrickx, English Studies 71, no. 3 (1990): 280–83; R. S. White, Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft-West, Jahrbuch, 1990, 283; R. S. White, Shakespeare Survey Annual 43 (1990): 219–35; Robert Ziegler, Papers on Language & Literature 28, no. 4 (1992): 457–75.
Samuel Johnson and Biographical Thinking
Parke argues that the unifying thread of Johnson's diverse literary career is his constant and profound engagement with "biographical thinking"—a mode of inquiry that uses the writing of lives as its primary method for philosophical and moral exploration. Johnson did not simply write biographies; he used the "biographical" as a way to investigate the fundamental problems of human existence, such as the formation of the self, the nature of choice, and the search for meaning in the past. This process, Parke contends, is not limited to his formal works in the genre, like the Life of Savage or the Lives of the Poets. Rather, she traces this mode of thought through his entire body of work, arguing that his periodical essays, his philosophical tale Rasselas, and his critical prefaces are all different forms of this same biographical investigation, where general truths are tested against the specific, concrete details of individual experience. The book portrays Johnson as a writer who saw criticism as biographical and biography as an "ethical activity." For Johnson, writing was ultimately "a name for one of the ways in which we engage with life," and by inviting readers to understand the lives of others, he mediates an "acquaintance" with our own. Chapter 1, "The Choice of Life," addresses the epistemological foundations of biographical thinking, arguing that for the subject, biography was not merely a literary genre but a fundamental mode of inquiry and a "method of work" used to investigate the relationship between individual experience and general truth. Chapter 2, "The Social Geometry of Thinking," explores the collaborative and conversational nature of the subject’s thought, contending that his intellectual activity was essentially dramatic and required the presence of another mind to achieve its full moral and critical clarity. Chapter 3, "Autobiographical Thinking," examines the subject’s diaries and personal records, identifying a disciplined attempt to convert the chaotic "flux of life" into a coherent moral narrative through the rigorous application of religious and empirical self-scrutiny. Chapter 4, "Biographical Thinking," addresses the subject's mastery of the life-writing form, arguing that his innovations in the Lives of the Poets transformed the genre into a sophisticated laboratory for testing the limits of human agency and the endurance of literary reputation. Chapter 5, "Biographical Thinking as a Choice of Life," explores the subject's engagement with the lives of others as a therapeutic and ethical exercise, arguing that his biographical practice served as a necessary defense against the vacuum of boredom and the dangerous prevalence of the imagination. Chapter 6, "Conclusion," argues that the subject’s enduring legacy lies in his unique ability to integrate the roles of biographer, critic, and moralist into a unified "biographical thinking" that remains a vital model for understanding the human condition through the study of particular lives. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the precision of the central definition, the attention to historical context, and the structural cohesion of the argument. Critics are split regarding whether the core concept reveals a flexible habit of mind or merely relies on muddled abstractions. In RES, Lurcock commends the study for demonstrating how a distinctive habit of mind functions as a primary method for understanding the world, praising the straightforward chapters on major prose pieces. Conversely, Sherman, writing in JEGP, delivers a severe critique, challenging the work for a lack of precision, muddled abstractions, and systemic eclipsings of primary material. In ECS, Pettit finds the terminology confusing and notes a tendency toward subject-worship, but values the convincing reading of specific prose. Danziger's review in Biography terms the analysis mixed, acknowledging that detailed readings highlight a creative mindset but warning that the approach risks forcing material into a preselected complex of ideas. In YWES, Lynn offers a positive assessment, praising the impressive larger frame and astute comparative treatment. Gray, writing in Dalhousie Review, finds the book disappointing, critiquing it for unskillfully forcing an anachronistic meeting of minds with modern figures. Maner, in South Atlantic Review, notes a lack of necessary rigor and shaky logic, concluding that academic gobbledygook destroys meaning. Finally, Fleeman, writing in New Rambler, disputes the uniqueness of the biographical thesis, asserting the text lacks firm control and clear guidance for the reader.
Reviews: Marlies K. Danziger, Biography 16, no. 2 (1993): 175–76; J. D. Fleeman, NR, n.s., no. 7 (1991): 39–40; James Gray, Dalhousie Review 71, no. 4 (1991): 502–7; A. F. T. Lurcock, RES, n.s., 45, no. 179 (1994): 424–25; Steven Lynn, YWES 77, no. 1 (1997): 405; Martin Maner, South Atlantic Review 57, no. 3 (1992): 128–31; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 46, no. 1 (1993): 86; Alexander Pettit, ECS 26, no. 1 (1992): 121–26; Gregory Scholtz, Choice 29, no. 7 (1992): 1079; Stuart Sherman, JEGP 93, no. 4 (1994): 585–88; Edward Tomarken, ECF 5, no. 1 (1992): 79–80; David Wheeler, South Central Review 9, no. 4 (1992): 83–84.
Page uses a strictly chronological framework to document the "flood of Johnsoniana" that followed the subject's birth in 1709 and death in 1784. The text traces Johnson's trajectory from his early days in Lichfield and his abbreviated education at Oxford to his emergence as the "Great Moralist" of London. Key biographical milestones are highlighted, including the 1755 publication of the Dictionary, the formation of the "Literary Club," and the 1763 meeting with James Boswell. Page details the domestic stability provided by the Thrales and the subsequent emotional "stupor" experienced by his circle upon his decline. The chronology concludes by recording the immediate posthumous efforts of biographers, noting that by 1785, six individuals had already undertaken to write his life. This scholarly tool functions to "fix and retain" the evanescent data of Johnson's daily existence, providing a factual foundation for analyzing his "long-continued" struggle for intellectual eminence.
Meyers depicts Johnson as a "mass of contradictions"—aggressive yet tender, indolent yet industrious—whose formidable intellect allowed him to overcome significant obstacles, including childhood scrofula, deafness, and a failed education at Oxford. The narrative traces Johnson's early struggles as a "Grub Street" hack writer and unsuccessful schoolmaster, culminating in the monumental success of the Dictionary of the English Language and the Lives of the Poets. Meyers pays particular attention to Johnson's intimate relationships, exploring his "preposterous union" with the older Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter and his deep emotional dependence on Hester Thrale. The author offers new interpretations of Johnson's "secret life," specifically his interest in "padlocks, chains and whips," arguing that these masochistic tendencies make his character more "complex and tormented" rather than detracting from his greatness. James Boswell is presented as a "surrogate son" and "leading acolyte" who, despite his own "insatiable" fornication and "mental instability," immortalized Johnson through his meticulous recording of the older man's conversation. Meyers also examines Johnson’s progressive social views, noting his fierce opposition to "Negro slavery," debtors' prisons, and the "indiscriminate use of capital punishment." The volume concludes by assessing Johnson’s enduring influence on later literary figures like Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov, positioning him as a "literary hero" whose struggle to "conquer difficulties" remains a model of human felicity. Chapter 1, 'Lichfield Lad, 1709–1728', details the early life and education of the subject in a Midlands cathedral town, emphasizing the physical infirmities, familial discord, and intellectual precocity that forged his combative character. Chapter 2, 'Vile Melancholy, 1728–1730', examines the brief, poverty-stricken tenure at Oxford University, identifying this period as the catalyst for a lifelong struggle with clinical depression and religious anxiety. Chapter 3, 'Preposterous Union, 1730–1736', explores a series of professional failures in teaching and the controversial marriage to a much older widow, which provided the emotional and financial support necessary to begin a literary career. Chapter 4, 'Benevolent Giant, 1737', analyzes the physical eccentricities, social manners, and psychological palliatives—including food, conversation, and chemical experiments—that defined his adulthood. Chapter 5, 'Grub Street, 1737', describes the initial immersion into the hazardous world of professional hack writing in London, focusing on early editorial work and the development of a compassionate social conscience. Chapter 6, 'London Observed, 1737–1739', addresses the paradox of a prolific output achieved despite chronic writer's block and underscores the influence of deadline pressure and financial necessity on the creative process. Chapter 7, 'Politics and Passion, 1739–1744', recounts the formation of crucial friendships and the production of a diverse range of early works, from political satires to the biographical study of a dissolute companion. Chapter 8, 'Doom of Man, 1745–1749', evaluates the monumental labor involved in compiling the English dictionary and the publication of a major philosophical poem and a tragic play. Chapter 9, 'Greatest Genius, 1750–1752', focuses on the biweekly production of moral and critical essays that established a reputation as a preeminent national authority. Chapter 10, 'Intellectual Entertainments, 1752–1754', considers the social dynamics of late-night literary circles and the practical assistance provided to contemporary writers in distress. Chapter 11, 'Sluggish Resolution, 1755–1758', chronicles the publication of the definitive dictionary, the subsequent rejection of aristocratic patronage, and a principled opposition to imperialistic warfare. Chapter 12, 'Dangerous Imagination, 1759–1762', describes the writing of a major Oriental fable under financial duress and the life-changing receipt of a government pension. Chapter 13, 'Society of the Afflicted, 1762–1763', looks at the charitable support of an impoverished household and the significant first meeting with a future biographer. Chapter 14, 'Contagion of Desire, 1763–1764', discusses the impact of social wit and the recurring bouts of mental illness that necessitated periods of total abstinence. Chapter 15, 'Bandying Civilities, 1765–1772', analyzes the critical methods applied in a major edition of Shakespeare and the engagement in contemporary political controversies. Chapter 16, 'Domestick Pleasures, 1765–1772', portrays the daily life and domestic arrangements within a surrogate family and the continued battle against idleness. Chapter 17, 'Mind Diseased, 1765–1772', investigates a darker psychological secret involving masochistic penance used to alleviate intense guilt and fear of insanity. Chapter 18, 'Savage Clans, 1772–1777', documents travels to Scotland, Wales, and France, emphasizing a quest for knowledge and the regulation of imagination through reality. Chapter 19, 'Enchain the Heart, 1778–1781', evaluates the final literary masterpiece—a series of biographical and critical prefaces for the English poets. Chapter 20, 'Lacerated Friendship, 1781–1783', examines the emotional fallout from the loss of key companions and the resulting state of social and spiritual isolation. Chapter 21, 'The Night Cometh, 1783–1784', provides a clinical and poignant account of the final physical decline, characterized by a courageous refusal to surrender and a meticulous ordering of final affairs. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over whether a trade biography's focus on modern psychological categories and salacious sexual speculation enriches or obscures intellectual achievements. Popular reception was generally enthusiastic, but scholarly reviews were highly skeptical. Rutten, in the LA Times, praises the wonderfully accessible synthesis of traditional sources and balanced psychological insights, celebrating the empathetic treatment of internal turmoil. Conversely, O'Hagan, writing in the NYRB, notes a more salacious focus on alleged sexual eccentricities, contrasting it with competing tercentenary volumes. Price, in the New York Times, finds a convincing psychological study of a writer whose work was inextricably linked to his social life, highlighting the contrast between competing interpretations of a central female friendship. In the Washington Post, Sims notes a sharp methodological disagreement regarding private revelations, where this account finds intriguing evidence of masochism but a concurrent biography dismisses such claims as wild. DeMaria’s review in JNL critiques the reduction of the subject to modern psychological categories, calling it an unintellectual picture that relies on minimal evidence, though he acknowledges its potential to introduce new readers. Folkenflik, in AJ, delivers a scathing assessment, identifying numerous factual errors, chronological inaccuracies, and exploded myths, concluding that the claims are too often original rather than accurate. Finally, Wilcox, in ECCB, disputes the spectacularly implausible depth psychology, arguing that the volume provides a better account of pathology than of the man himself, while offering little new material for specialists.
Reviews: Brooke Allen, Wilson Quarterly 33, no. 1 (2009): 92–95; Robert DeMaria Jr., JNL 60, no. 1 (2009): 57–61; John Derbyshire, National Review 60, no. 21 (2008): 60–61; Robert Folkenflik, AJ 20 (2010): 319–31; Alan Helms, Boston Globe, November 30, 2008; Lewis Jones, Financial Times, January 10, 2009; Pam Kingsbury, Library Journal 133, no. 19 (2008): 72; Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2008; Elizabeth Lambert, ECI 24, no. 1 (2010): 22–26; Michael D. Langan, Buffalo News, January 4, 2009; Sam Leith, Daily Mail (London), March 6, 2009; Joseph Losos, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 4, 2009; Jack Lynch, Choice 47, no. 2 (2009): 305; Brian McCrea, Christianity and Literature 59, no. 4 (2010): 720–24; Rex Murphy, Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 21, 2009; David Nokes, Times Higher Education, no. 1881 (January 2009): 52; Andrew O’Hagan, NYRB 66, no. 15 (2009): 6–8, 10; Ray Olson, Booklist 14, no. 1 (2008): 14; Leah Price, NYT, February 1, 2009; Leah Price, International Herald Tribune, January 31, 2009; Publishers Weekly, September 22, 2008; Reference and Research Book News 25, no. 1 (2010); Pat Rogers, New Criterion 27, no. 10 (2009): 16–22; Tim Rutten, Atlanta Constitution, January 4, 2009; Tim Rutten, LA Times, December 20, 2008; Michael Sims, Washington Post, December 21, 2008; Michael Sims, Houston Chronicle, January 11, 2009; James Srodes, Washington Times, January 25, 2006; Lance Wilcox, Historian 73, no. 1 (2011): 196–17; Myron D. Yeager, ANQ 23, no. 1 (2010): 61–67.
The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works
A magisterial four-volume scholarly edition, often called the "best edition of any text of Johnson's, ever." Its chief distinction is its exhaustive, discursive commentary (877 pages in reduced print), placed at the rear of the volumes, offering a comprehensive literary history and extensive contextualization of the poets. Publisher's blurb: "Johnson himself wrote in 1782: "I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets." Always recognized as a major biographical and critical achievement, Samuel Johnson's last literary project is also one of his most readable and entertaining, written with characteristic eloquence and conviction, and at times with combative trenchancy. Johnson's fifty-two biographies constitute a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to his own time, with extended discussions of Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, Addison, Prior, Swift, Pope, and Gray. The Lives also include Johnson's memorable biography of the enigmatic Richard Savage (1744), the friend of his own early years in London. Roger Lonsdale's Introduction describes the origins, composition, and textual history of the Lives, and assesses Johnson's assumptions and aims as biographer and critic. The commentary provides a detailed literary and historical context, investigating Johnson's sources, relating the Lives to his own earlier writings and conversation, and to the critical opinions of his contemporaries, as well as illustrating their early reception. This is the first scholarly edition since George Birkbeck Hill's three-volume Oxford edition (1905)." Critics are almost uniformly enthusiastic, praising the work's monumental scholarly achievement and extensive contextual annotations. At stake in the reviews is whether the collection provides an accurate historical record of eighteenth-century publishing traditions and editorial practices that replaces outdated standards. Folkenflik, in AJ, calls it the finest example of humane editorial scholarship, highlighting the monograph-length introduction and meticulous archival research. In NYRB, Kermode praises the monumental performance and analyzes the contentious critical style regarding national pride and political allegiance. Smallwood, writing in ECL, describes the four-volume set as a landmark in reception history, commends the masterful introduction tracking the financial aspects of the project, and notes the substantial running commentary. In ECS, Rawson calls the edition vivid and learned, observing that the splendid headnotes and informative commentary far surpass historical versions. Jackson, in TLS, praises the huge enterprise very ably executed for meeting modern standards, though criticizing the inconvenient relocation of footnotes to the back of each volume. Writing in SEL, Lynch praises the magisterial quality and notes the significant insight offered into composition, revision, and source material. In RES, Clingham celebrates the standard-setting commentary but expresses regret that the introduction lacks modern critical engagement and ignores recent scholarship. DeMaria, in JNL, highly recommends the set to all specialists, highlighting the detailed notes on intellectual history. Finally, Brack, writing in YWES, provides a positive assessment, establishing the scope within editorial traditions.
Reviews: O. M. Brack Jr., YWES 88, no. 1 (2009): 1229; O. M. Brack Jr., ECI 21, no. 2 (2007): 27–33; Greg Clingham, YWES 88, no. 1 (2009): 611–71; Greg Clingham, Essays in Criticism 57, no. 2 (2007): 186–94; Robert DeMaria Jr., JNL 58, no. 1 (2007): 41–45; James Fenton, The Guardian, April 1, 2006; Robert Folkenflik, AJ 19 (2009): 273–83; Robert Folkenflik, YWES 90, no. 1 (2011): 553; H. J. Jackson, TLS, no. 5378 (April 2006): 33; Frank Kermode, NYRB 53, no. 11 (2006): 28–31; Anthony W. Lee, MP 104, no. 4 (2007): 529–59; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 54, no. 2 (2007): 194–97; Deidre Lynch, SEL 47, no. 3 (2007): 756–57; Jack Lynch, Choice 44, no. 3 (2006): 1390; Steven Lynn, YWES 87, no. 1 (2008): 3–4, 40–41; James McLaverty, CQ 35, no. 4 (2006): 383–87; William H. Pritchard, Hudson Review 60, no. 1 (2007): 25–35; Claude Rawson, ECS 40, no. 1 (2006): 109–15; Hermann Josef Real, Anglia 126, no. 3 (2008): 557–63; Allen Reddick, Huntington Library Quarterly 71, no. 3 (2008): 539–52; Willis G. Regier, Prairie Schooner 81, no. 4 (2007): 179; Philip Smallwood, ECL 31, no. 3 (2007): 76–84; H. R. Woudhuysen, NR, Series E, no. 9 (2005): 69–78.
The Past as Present: Selected Thoughts & Essays
A collection of essays and talks by Paul T. Ruxin, a dedicated collector and scholar focusing on the Johnson–Boswell era and the nature of literary clubs and book collecting. Ruxin analyzes key moments in the lives of Johnson and Boswell, including a detailed exploration of Boswell's propaganda efforts for the Douglas Cause and the famous dinner orchestrated to bring Johnson and John Wilkes together. Ruxin also offers insightful readings of association copies, such as Lord Auchinleck's annotated Fingal, and discusses Johnson's philanthropic efforts toward the poor and his anonymous defense of the convicted forger William Dodd, showcasing Johnson's "soft-hearted" humanity. Collectively, these pieces articulate the intellectual pleasures of engaging directly with books as cultural artifacts and the unique social community fostered by shared literary pursuits.
Andrews identifies the probable location of Bennet’s school as Burford House in Hoddesdon. He notes that Hoole, the biographer of Scott and a friend of Johnson, attended the institution. Andrews traces the building’s history from its tenure as a long-standing school under various headmasters, including Haslewood, to its eventual conversion into a gymnastic apparatus factory. The identification establishes the geographic context for Bennet, the schoolmaster and editor associated with Johnson.
Cochrane entry 143. A response to L.F. Powell's query.
Respess examines Johnson’s Dictionary claim that the letter "H" seldom begins any but the first syllable of English words. Despite Wilkes’s refutation in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Respess notes Johnson provided his own counter-example in the word "perhaps" within the claim itself. Analysis of subsequent revisions suggests Johnson was initially unaware of this contradiction, as he later removed the phrase and added "blockhead" as a counter-example without citing "perhaps." The text also includes queries regarding Icelandic patriarchal lists, the missing catalogue of Laurence Eusden’s library, the correspondence of Francis Atterbury, and the origins of several French and English literary quotations.
Philoscotus examines the Greek inscription used by Johnson on his watch-dial and later by Walter Scott on a sundial at Abbotsford. The author analyzes grammatical errors made by both men, noting Johnson’s use of "for" and Scott’s incorrect placement of the particle. The text details the provenance of Johnson's dial-plate, which was discarded as pedantic or ostentatious, and Scott's lifelong regret over his insufficient grounding in Greek.
CGV entry 17:89. On a sundial at Abbotsford.
Johnson's Juvenal: 'London' and 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'
Rudd provides texts, prose translations, and manuscript drafts of Johnson's two major imitations. Rudd adopts Johnson’s 1748 and 1755 revisions as basic texts, though Woodruff critiques the inconsistent modernization of capitalization. The edition introduces new material on classical allusions and grammatical relationships. Woodruff regrets Rudd’s omission of Johnson’s original footnotes which invited direct comparison to Juvenal.
CGV entry 14:15. Review by James Woodruff of the book edited by Niall Rudd.
Brown seeks biographical information regarding Twamley, whom Johnson cited to check Boswell’s boasting. Twamley earned the epithet "the Great" for inventing a box-iron for smoothing linen. Brown questions the identification of the inventor with a Josiah Twamley listed in the British Museum catalogue as the author of treatises on dairying. While Hill identifies the inventor as a bankrupt ironmonger from Warwick, Brown notes the absence of Twamley’s name from the Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions and requests clarification on whether the ironmonger and dairyman were the same individual.
CGV entry 5:274. Regarding 'Life', volume 4, page 193.
Ruhe examines the 1738 controversy between Johnson and a rival translator of Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent. Newspaper evidence from the Daily Advertiser reveals that the rival, long confused with Samuel Johnson of St. Martin's, was actually Rev. John Johnson. Ruhe highlights a letter from Cave, possibly ghost-written by Johnson, defending the priority of their project against John Johnson's claims. The style and syntax suggest Johnson’s mature hand. Ruhe concludes that the competition, coupled with Johnson’s habitual tardiness, likely led both men to abandon the work early.
CGV entry 25:64. On translations of Sarpi's 'History of the Council of Trent'.
James Boswell and John Trail (1700–1774)
Turnball talks about James Boswell and John Trail. James Boswell's journal in London for the period 21 April to 16 May 1768 is described in the Yale editors' Catalogue as "Rough notes in general highly condensed." He later made a short cramped interlinear addition, after the word "Afternoon" and before the word "quite." This addition has twice been transcribed by twentieth-century Boswell editors as "old John Frail a little."
Addenda to the Documentation of Facts and Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell
Walker offers supplemental documentation for Paul Tankard's scholarly edition of Boswell's journalism. The first addendum confirms the survival and title of the broadside "A farther intelligence anent the new camp on Arthur's seat," to which Boswell referred in a 1778 letter about a Highland Regiment mutiny. The second note provides evidence for the involvement of Colonel James Francis Erskine in securing a reprieve for the boy George Olive in 1785, citing letters in the National Archives, and identifies an anonymous public appeal for Olive in the Morning Chronicle. These findings help fill documented gaps acknowledged in Tankard's original edition.
Selections from James Bostcell's Life of Samuel Johnson
Pottle attributes the anonymous 1772 pamphlet to Boswell, citing its inclusion in the 1893 Auchinleck Library sale catalogue and internal stylistic evidence. Parallelisms with Boswell’s known works include a preoccupation with the "levelling" spirit, specific references to Goldsmith and Hamilton of Bangour, and shared anecdotes regarding Spartan intoxication. Pottle emphasizes Boswell’s erroneous designation of Francis Osborne as "Sir Francis" in both this text and The Hypochondriack as definitive proof of authorship. A formal collation of the Edinburgh octavo edition is provided.
Cochrane entry 499.
Warnock reconstructs the 1765 interactions between Boswell and the Reverend Mr. Trail, later Bishop of Down and Connor, during their time in Florence. Drawing from Boswell’s unpublished journal notes, the account details their extensive discussions on theology, Toryism, and Scottish traditions. Trail, though criticized by John Wilkes for his "dull" preaching, provided Boswell with derivations for his Scots dictionary and presented him with a flute before Boswell’s departure for Corsica. The correspondence reproduced was made available by Edward Ralph Pickmere, a descendant of the family with whom Boswell had initiated contact.
Cochrane entry 350.
Pottle requests assistance in deciphering ten obscure passages from Boswell’s manuscript journals for 1776, written in Boswell's abbreviated "shorthand" style. The queries involve identifying historical figures such as "John Mur" and "Thorpe," clarifying cryptic references to Horace Walpole's histories, and explaining anecdotes regarding Maria Theresa and the "cutting off of thumbs." Pottle also seeks to identify cultural and local references, including the air "Gramachree," the "Gold key" seen at the Neapolitan Chapel, and the significance of the "Dun cow" in notes regarding Edmund Burke and Bristol.
Soame Jenyns's “Epitaph on Dr. Samuel Johnson”
Bronson examines the intellectual and psychological complexities of Johnson and Boswell through three distinct inquiries. The first essay addresses the tensions between Johnson's prose and his representation in Boswellian biography. A second study uses the Malahide Castle papers to analyze Boswell’s character, rejecting previous diagnoses of congenital insanity in favor of an appreciation for Boswell’s genius in self-portrayal and reporting. Bronson avoids minimizing Boswell's absurdities while maintaining biographical objectivity. The final essay analyzes the tragedy Irene, noting Johnson’s departure from historical sources like Knolles to focus on the moral failure of apostasy. Bronson identifies the character Aspasia as a reflection of Johnson’s wife and links the drama’s religious themes to Johnson’s personal spiritual struggles.
CGV entry 10/6:254. An anonymous review of the book by Bertrand H. Bronson.
Boswell and Young's Night-Thoughts
Pettit identifies a likely error in the Hill–Powell edition regarding Boswell’s references to Edward Young. While editors suggest Boswell referred to the death of Narcissa, Pettit argues that Boswell actually alluded to the gradual death of Lucia in Night the Sixth. The author suggests this passage resonated more deeply with Boswell because it mirrored the prolonged consumption of his own wife, Margaret. Pettit also notes a parallel verbal echo between Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes and Swift’s poetry.
Cochrane entry 197.
Johnsonian Attributions by Alexander Chalmers
Greene recovers nineteenth-century attributions made by Chalmers regarding Johnson’s contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine and Literary Magazine. Referencing a manuscript intended for Malone’s revision of Boswell’s Life, Greene notes that Chalmers identified several journalistic pieces based on internal evidence, including reviews of Keysler’s Travels and Parkin’s account of the Norman invasion. Greene observes that while some ascriptions appeared in early editions by Malone and Croker, many fell into obsolescence. He validates Chalmers's editorial acumen by noting that modern scholars, including Sherbo and Greene himself, independently reached identical conclusions regarding these anonymous texts.
Garton traces Boswell’s use of Horace’s description of Lucilius’s journals. Boswell first cited these lines in the Hypochondriack to justify personal record-keeping, though he struggled with Bentley’s Latin philology. He later placed the quotation on the title page of the Life. Garton reveals that Melmoth previously used the same motto for his translation of Cicero’s letters. Boswell likely adopted Melmoth’s more grammatically complete version for the Life, ensuring the Horatian tag served as an elegant and memorable justification for his biographical method.
Cochrane entry 579. Points out that Boswell used the same quotation from Horace, about keeping a written record of one's life, as a motto for both an essay in 'The Hypochondriack' and for the title page of the 'Life'.
An extensive reply to a previous query regarding Macaulay's comments on Boswell's impertinence toward the Duchess of Argyle. The author recounts Boswell's version of the incident from his Tour to the Hebrides, detailing his previous disgrace with the Duchess over the Douglas case, her public snubbing of him at Inverary, and his retaliatory action of drinking her health at dinner. The author concludes that both Boswell and the Duchess exhibited poor breeding and that the Duchess's behavior lacked "true dignity," contrary to Macaulay's description.
Proper investigates Boswell’s 1763–1764 residency in Utrecht, noting his absence from the Album Studiosorum. Research in local archives identifies Boswell’s lodgings at "’t Kysershof" (the Court of the Emperor) on Achter den Dom, a coffee-house managed by Andries Bart. Proper discusses Boswell’s social circles, specifically his relationship with Isabella van Serooskerken (Belle de Zuylen). The article details their discussions on marriage and Boswell’s refusal to allow her to abridge his Account of Corsica for translation, leading her to abandon the project.
The Founding of Dr. Johnson's Literary Club
Fifer establishes 16 April 1764 as the probable date of the first meeting of the Literary Club. Although Boswell followed Langton in vaguely placing the founding in the spring of 1764, he neglected to consult Reynolds. Reynolds's engagement book records a dinner at the Turk’s Head on this specific Monday. This precise dating corrects the approximations of earlier biographers such as Hawkins, Malone, Murphy, and Piozzi.
Cochrane entry 574.
Dircks examines Johnson’s extensive engagement with Irish history, linguistics, and politics through his friendships with Burke, Goldsmith, and O’Connor. Despite expressing intemperate verbal "prejudices" recorded by Campbell, Johnson consistently defended Irish natural rights against English commercial and legislative iniquity. The study highlights Johnson’s scholarly interest in the Gaelic language and his role in encouraging Irish historiography, concluding that his personal ties to Irish intellectuals mitigated his theoretical political biases.
Pottle debunks the legend that Boswell engaged in a scandalous liaison or provincial tour with Margaret Caroline Rudd. Investigation reveals that the primary evidence, a manuscript memorandum signed "H. W. R.," is likely a forgery, as the associated poem is not in Boswell's hand. Pottle demonstrates that chronological constraints and Lord Auchinleck’s 1776 entailment of the family estate contradict claims of paternal disinheritance. Furthermore, Boswell’s transparent correspondence with Temple and his wife regarding his single, curiosity-driven meeting with Rudd suggests the relationship was purely casual.
Cochrane entry 498.
Chapman provides a comprehensive chronology of the correspondence between Johnson and Boswell from 1763 to 1784. The list details letters sent and received, cross-referencing Boswell’s Life, his Journals, and Tinker’s edition. Chapman identifies which letters were abridged for publication and notes significant discrepancies in dating. The chronology accounts for papers found at Fettercairn and Malahide, offering a precise roadmap for students tracking the frequency and location of their written exchanges.
CGV entry 23:84. In two parts: volume 185 (July 17, 1943), pages 32-39; and volume 186 (January 15, 1944), pages 45-47.
Cochrane entry 428. Provides a detailed chronology of the correspondence between Johnson and Boswell, with cross-references to scholarly editions.
From the Sale Catalogue of the Library of James Boswell, the Younger (1778–1822): Did Boswell Play the Pianoforte?
Sherbo examines the library sale catalogue of the younger Boswell to investigate his musical interests and financial status. Numerous musical titles and piano scores suggest Boswell was a musically inclined opera buff and potential singer. Sherbo disputes the Dictionary of National Biography’s claim of Boswell’s "embarrassed circumstances," citing extensive book-buying and high-priced acquisitions, such as a Shakespeare first folio, shortly before death.
Brownell convincingly refutes Johnson's reputation as an artistic philistine. However, evidence supporting Johnson's familiarity with music and painting is "unconvincing" and "very fine." The most valuable section concerns landscape, which presents Johnson as a discriminating observer with a consistent aesthetic.
Boswell and the Graunt–Petty Authorship Controversy
Walker investigates Boswell's puzzling description of Sir William Petty as the "plain sensi-Citizen of London" in Rampager 19. He argues that this epithet, particularly "Citizen of London," is more aptly applied to John Graunt, the established author of Natural and Political Observations made Upon Bills of Mortality (1662), a work often misattributed to Petty. The title page of Graunt's second edition identifies him as a "Citizen of London," and scholarly descriptions highlight his sagacity. Boswell's use of Petty's name was likely to create an imaginative link to Petty's descendant, Lord Shelburne, who was the subject of the essay, while the description itself derives from Graunt's work and reputation.
Lord Hailes's Notes on Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Carnie introduces a previously unpublished manuscript containing approximately seventy corrections and observations by Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, regarding Johnson's Lives of the Poets. The article traces the scholarly relationship between Johnson and Hailes, facilitated largely through the mediation of Boswell. Carnie notes that while Johnson revised proof sheets for Hailes's Annals of Scotland, he primarily focused on style and Scotticisms rather than historical facts. Boswell actively solicited contributions from Hailes for the Lives, including biographical anecdotes concerning James Thomson and inquiries into Prior’s French sources. Although Boswell received the final manuscript of remarks in 1782, Carnie disputes whether Johnson ever used them for his 1783 revision, suggesting any overlapping corrections were likely coincidental. The text characterizes Hailes as an acute, modest critic whose personal connections to major literary figures provided unique historical insights. Carnie identifies the manuscript as a valuable contemporary critical document that illuminates the "friendly, but still distant" connection between the English Tory and the Scottish Whig judge.
CGV entry 22:117. Published in parts: February, pages 73-75; March, pages 106–108; April, pages 174-176; August, pages 343-346; and November, pages 486-489.
printed by W. Strahan, for J. & P. Knapton; T. and T. Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley
A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers: To Which Are Prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar
Johnson began work in 1746, receiving £1,575 from a consortium of booksellers. He published The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language in August 1747, dedicated to Lord Chesterfield. The final product, in two large folio volumes, appeared April 15, 1755, priced at £4 10s., published by J. and P. Knapton, T. and T. Longman, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, A. Millar, and R. and J. Dodsley. The first folio printing had 2,000 copies. Johnson received an honorary Master of Arts degree in February 1755, which appeared on the title page. The original Dictionary comprised the word list, the famous Preface, "The History of the English Language," and "A Grammar of the English Tongue." The subsequent second folio edition began serialization in weekly numbers on June 14, 1755. The third folio edition appeared in 1765, printed in a run of 1,024 copies. These second and third editions were essentially reprints of the first with few changes. Johnson's first major revision was incorporated into the fourth folio edition, published in 1773. This revision involved an extensive program of changes, estimated at over 15,000. For this revision, Johnson used interleaved copies of earlier editions, notably the Sneyd-Gimbel copy of the first edition (now at Yale's Beinecke Library, MS Vault Johnson), and a British Library copy (A to JAILOR) partly from the first and partly from the third edition. The revisions to the letter B in the 1773 edition were largely conducted by George Steevens after Johnson lost his original B notes. The fourth edition included Johnson’s "Advertisement to this Edition." Meanwhile, Johnson published an abridged octavo edition, removing the illustrative quotations, in January 1756. This abstracted edition was published "for the common reader" and circulated far more widely than the folio, with approximately 35,000 copies printed during the copyright period compared to 5,000 folios. It went through seven London editions in Johnson's lifetime. The Dublin booksellers George and Alexander Ewing produced a one-volume edition of the abstracted Dictionary in 1758, and an unauthorized Dublin octavo abridgment appeared in 1768. A Dublin quarto edition of the unabridged Dictionary appeared in 1775. The fifth folio edition was published in 1784. Posthumous publication began in late 1785 with the sixth edition, the first authorized quarto, and the seventh edition, a one-volume folio. Both posthumous editions claimed to incorporate Johnson's final manuscript revisions found in the copy he bequeathed to Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Dictionary supplied the word list for bilingual dictionaries, including French, German, Italian, and Bengali. German translations appeared, notably J. C. Adelung's Neues grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Englischen Sprache, based on the fourth edition, in 2 volumes (1783–1796). Giuseppe Baretti's Dictionary of the English and Italian Languages (1760) also drew substantially on Johnson's work. The first American edition appeared in Philadelphia in 1818 (also cited as 1819). In 1818, H. J. Todd published a revised and enlarged edition in 4 quarto volumes, subsequently forming the basis for R. G. Latham's revision (1866–1870). The widespread proliferation continued, including miniature or "pocket" editions from the 1790s. The Dictionary remained a standard reference until superseded by the Oxford English Dictionary (1884–1928), which incorporated many of Johnson's features and definitions. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson contains the Plan (1747), Preface (1755), History, Grammar, the Preface to the 1756 abridgment, and the Advertisement to the 1773 revision.
Bought from DeWolfe & Wood, June 2022, for $6,000. Rebacked. Boards suffering from red rot. Displayed at the Grolier Club, 1 May-27 July 2024, as part of Hardly Harmless Drudgery.
CGV entry 17:1.
A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson: Treating His Published Works from the Beginnings to 1984
This scholarly undertaking, presented in two volumes encompassing nearly 2,000 pages, is recognized as a monumental achievement, treating works written by the author, those he translated, pieces to which he contributed, and those he revised. The purpose of the resource is to provide a comprehensive record of the author's published writings, spanning from 1731 to 1984. This immense compilation inventories nearly 3,000 items. The organizational structure presents the contents as the annals of a literary career, adhering strictly to the chronological order of first publication for major works. It includes a chronological list of publications for tracking later forms of works. First and early editions receive full bibliographical descriptions. Each entry begins with an item number derived from the year, a mnemonic code, and a sequential number. The resource includes categories often overlooked in scholarly work, such as selection volumes and miniature dictionaries (over 300 entries), noting that the latter illustrate the author’s popular reputation as a lexicographer. The collection also provides records of copies commonly dismissed as inconsequential. Supplemental sections include a voluminous Acknowledgements section, charts of type names and sizes, and an Index of Persons and Places valuable for tracking provenance and publishers. Annotation in the "Notes" section is comprehensive, covering bibliographical and structural features, history of composition, production, and distribution, and cross-references. A technical apparatus records press-figures and catchwords for major works, facilitating investigation of variant impressions and proof revisions. The methodology involves returning to original manuscripts when possible, and provides textual descriptions of volumes previously known only through inferior printed texts. The collection details the textual descent of works, clarifies ghost editions, and includes works attributed to Johnson, often rejecting claims unsupported by external evidence, applying a stricter standard than other bibliographers. The comprehensiveness allows the popularity of specific works to be measured; for example, Rasselas occupies 205 pages, listing 527 main forms and 56 French translations. The work is widely considered a highly authoritative and indispensable guide for biographers and scholars. It received the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers Bibliography Prize. The completion of the publication, prepared by James McLaverty and Christine Ferdinand, was hailed as a necessary and worthy scholarly achievement. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the monumental, multi-volume compilation as a supreme bibliographic achievement that establishes an essential infrastructure for printing history and literary study. At stake in the reviews is the valuation of an exhaustive, chronological cataloging of a writer's complete output across hundreds of editions, translations, and complex periodical attributions. Reddick, in RES, ranks the staggering volumes with the greatest scholarly achievements, noting they will materially affect the study of the book trade and praising the heroic posthumous editing. Vander Meulen's review in AJ identifies the compilation as perhaps the most significant work of scholarship in its field, providing a detailed technical assessment of the descriptive methods, collation formulas, and physical features, though noting occasional imprecisions that create minor perplexity for users. In YWES, Baker and Scholtes laud the definitive assembly as a remarkable accomplishment and an essential resource for scholars, highlighting the useful integration of alphabetical and chronological publication lists. Lynch, writing in Choice, enthusiastically describes the compilation as an indispensable catalog that definitively supersedes all previous scholarship by expanding massive detail across thousands of pages. Finally, Rogers, writing in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, evaluates the monument as an essential reference for the canon that provides exhaustive press-figure data and publishing histories, despite the complexity of the notation system.
A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson
Reviews: William Baker and Joann Scholtes, YWES 81, no. 1 (2002): 1083–84; Robert DeMaria Jr., JEGP 101, no. 1 (2002): 142–45; Donald D. Eddy and Robert J. Barry, The Library 2, no. 2 (2001): 161–78; Isobel Grundy, NR, Series E, no. 3 (1999): 49–50; Jack Lynch, Choice 38, no. 5 (2001): 2478; Allen Reddick, RES, n.s., 52, no. 208 (2001): 588–90; Reference and Research Book News 15, no. 3 (2000); Shef Rogers, PBSA 97, no. 1 (2003): 93–98; Paul Tankard, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin 25, no. 3 (2001): 121–27; Paul Tankard, Southern Johnsonian 7, no. 4 (2000): 6; David Vander Meulen, AJ 13 (2002): 389–435.
Boswell in 1790–91: Two Unpublished Comments
Horne challenges F. A. Pottle’s theory that Boswell’s separate registration of Johnson’s letter to Chesterfield and his conversation with George III was a promotional trap for newspapers. Citing a previously unnoted paragraph in the Public Advertiser (1791), Horne argues Boswell acted primarily to protect his copyright against piracy. The timely publication of this warning suggests a genuine legal defense rather than a disingenuous publicity stunt, though Boswell later permitted reprints once the Life of Johnson achieved commercial success.
Cochrane entry 558.
Collins challenges Croker’s influential but inaccurate calculation of the total days Boswell and Johnson spent together. using the Boswell Papers and other primary sources, Collins identifies 390 certain meeting days and estimates a total of approximately 425. This revision refutes claims of Boswell’s negligence, demonstrating he met Johnson on roughly 40-50% of available days after 1772. The analysis includes a chronological list of meetings omitted or undated in the Life, providing a more precise empirical foundation for their personal relationship.
CGV entry 4:160.
Cochrane entry 571.
Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789–1795
The book covers Boswell's final years leading up to the publication of The Life of Johnson, the culmination of his literary career. Despite this success, Boswell was tormented by failures in law, political ambition, and lairdship, resulting in morose self-expression and self-censorship in his diaries. His melancholy was primarily caused by his inability to adjust to the changed circumstances following his wife's death and the loss of close friends like Reynolds and Paoli. The volume provides ample evidence of Boswell's "selfless, humanitarian aspect," such as working to acquire pardons for convicts, which helps to undermine the Macaulayan caricature of him. The reviewer expresses disappointment that this "trade edition" concludes without offering a complete text of the journals, noting omissions.
Clayton reviews the penultimate trade volume of Boswell’s journals, covering his failed attempt to practice law in London and his demeaning pursuit of preferment from Lonsdale. The journal captures the suspense of living experience and the sombre decline of Margaret Boswell. Clayton warns that the scholarly apparatus creates a narrative structure of development that is largely illusory, as Boswell lacked the foresight to distinguish salient moments from a confusing miscellany. Notably, the volume records the 1786 beginning of the composition of Johnson’s Life, even as Boswell remains a frustratingly visceral and enigmatic figure.
Braham corrects several bibliographic errors regarding Johnson’s edition of Ascham. Although James Bennet’s name appears on the title page, Braham cites a letter from Thomas Davies to prove Johnson performed the editorial work and provided the memoir to benefit Bennet. The study further clarifies that the edition was published in 1761, not 1763 or 1771 as incorrectly reported in the Encyclopedia Britannica and by Carlisle. Braham attributes the dating confusion to Boswell’s placement of the work under the year 1763 in the Life.
Thompson examines a 1790 anonymous poetic epistle addressed to Boswell regarding his forthcoming biography of Johnson. Noting the work’s 'Pindaric' style and its harsh treatment of Johnson's rivals, Hawkins and Thrale, Thompson suggests the piece mimics Boswell’s own literary opinions. Despite a lack of external evidence, Thompson posits that Boswell likely authored the epistle as a self-promotional device to stimulate public interest in the Life of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 467.
Sherbo examines suppressed or altered material from Boswell's Notebook—the primary source for Johnson's early life—contrasting it with the finalized Life of Johnson. Notable omissions include Johnson’s preference for oatmeal porridge, his specific insult to Dean Barnard regarding age, and his role in helping Barnard answer Gibbon. Sherbo highlights Boswell's bowdlerization of Topham Beauclerk’s anecdotes and corrects the assumption that Johnson was confined in a "sponging-house," noting the Notebook only specifies an "arrest." The study further reveals Boswell’s accuracy-driven deletions, such as an unauthenticated tutoring post and the specific influence of Chambers’s twenty-line Proposal on Johnson’s prose style.
Cochrane entry 171.
An undetected error in Boswell's Life regarding the date of Johnson's residence at Staple Inn. Boswell's list of residences incorrectly dates the move to "Staple Inn, 1758." The correct date is confirmed by a letter from Johnson to Lucy Porter, dated March 23, 1759: "I have this day moved my things, and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn."
CGV entry 7:9. Concerns the dates of Johnson's residence in Staple Inn.
Powell continues a biographical census of figures associated with Boswell and Johnson. Entries provide historical data on Charles Bouchier, Governor of Madras, who dined with the pair in 1781, and Joseph Bouquet, the bookseller involved in the 1751 copyright assignment of the duodecimo Rambler. Additionally, Powell traces the military career of John Breuse, the engineer who escorted Boswell and Johnson through Fort George, noting his final appearance in the 1786 Army List.
This notice promotes the serial publication of Croker’s edition of Boswell, issued in monthly parts. It emphasizes the affordability and production quality of the Murray edition. The text highlights the inclusion of Croker’s copyright notes as a primary scholarly asset. It advocates for the wide circulation of the biography to all libraries.
Algar provides biographical details concerning Bourchier, a former Governor of Madras mentioned in connection with Boswell’s biography. Citing the European Magazine, Algar records Bourchier’s death in 1810 at age eighty-two. He identifies Bourchier’s wife as Barbara Richardson, noting their 1773 marriage and her subsequent death at sea in 1784. The author refers readers to Burke’s Landed Gentry and the Gentleman’s Magazine for further genealogical and obituary data.
Cochrane entry 142. Responds to a query from L.F. Powell.
Powell provides biographical annotations for Robert Blackmore and George Bodens. The entry identifies Blackmore, father of Sir Richard Blackmore, as a gentleman of Corsham, noting Johnson’s reliance on Cibber for the claim that Blackmore served as an attorney. Powell further details the military career of Colonel George Bodens, an associate of Thrale, tracing his service in the Coldstream Guards from 1739 to 1763. The inquiry uses Piozzi’s Thraliana to establish Bodens’s reputation and suggests his death occurred between 1784 and 1787.
Cochrane entry 145. This is a multi-part series of queries in volumes 182–184 seeking information on various people mentioned in the 'Life'.
Two Errors in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Bernard disputes Boswell’s claims regarding Johnson’s stylistic avoidance of parentheses and the distributives "the former" and "the latter." Contrary to Boswell’s assertion that fewer than six parentheses exist in the entire canon, Bernard identifies numerous instances within the Life and correspondence, estimating the actual total to be nearly 200. Furthermore, Bernard demonstrates through Rasselas, the Rambler, and parliamentary debates that Johnson frequently employed "the former" and "the latter" to maintain clarity rather than avoid obscurity.
CGV entry 12:38. On usage Johnson disapproved of.
Cochrane entry 176. Corrects two of Boswell's factual claims about Johnson's writing habits, specifically regarding his use of parentheses and certain common phrases.
Powell continues a series of biographical identifications for minor figures mentioned in Boswell’s narrative. The entry seeks the death date of Mrs. Grainger, widow of the author of The Sugar Cane, and requests information regarding the death of Colonel Edward Gwyn, husband of Mary Horneck. Additionally, Powell queries whether the Dr. Hallifax who testified to Baretti’s character in 1769 is Samuel Hallifax, later Bishop of Gloucester, noting his contemporary academic standing at Cambridge.
Boswell, Burke, and the Life of Johnson
Horne analyzes newly identified newspaper paragraphs from May 1791 to establish the immediate commercial success of Boswell’s biography. He argues that Boswell likely authored these advertisements to self-promote by measuring his sales against Burke’s recent work on the French Revolution. This comparison served Boswell’s vanity, allowing him to feel intellectually equal to Burke in Johnson’s posthumous regard. The text notes Burke’s subsequent high praise for the biography.
CGV entry 4:147. Compares the sale of the 'Life' to that of Burke's 'Reflections on the French Revolution'.
Cochrane entry 161. Points to a newspaper notice, likely planted by Boswell himself, that trumpeted the superior sales of the 'Life' over Edmund Burke's popular 'Reflections'.
The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq., being the bibliographical Materials for a Life of Boswell
Waterhouse identifies the source of a classical quotation used by James Boswell in An Account of Corsica (1768) to compare General Paoli to the Numidian general Syphax: "Syphax inter duos canes stans, Scipionem appellavit." Boswell attributes the quote to Joseph Warton's notes on Virgil's Aeneid but notes he could not find it in Livy, the historian Warton cited. Waterhouse confirms the passage is not in Livy. He reveals the actual source is the ancient Virgilian commentary by Servius, whose note on Aeneid 8.461-62 quotes the sentence about Syphax and attributes it to an unspecified "Roman history." Waterhouse concludes that Warton likely misread or misremembered the Servius commentary as a reference to Livy, a common historian of Rome.
The Sale Catalogue of Mrs. Piozzi's Library: A Biographical Tool
Donald D. Eddy, editor of the sale catalogue of the library of Hester Lynch Piozzi, once wrote that it was impossible to read the catalogues without one's mind being filled with a rich variety of literary and bibliophilic associations. From this statement, Sherbo aims to demonstrate that the catalogues not only fill one's mind with bibliophic associations but also with biographical associations. The author adds several biographical associations to the literary and bibliophilic elements of the sale catalogue of the library of Mrs. Piozzi. He discusses the notes and comments made by Mrs. Piozzi's in the volumes that she handled every day.
The Longmans Milton and the 1778 Johnson–Steevens Variorum
Professor Hyder E. Rollins, editor of the New Variorum ‘Sonnets' and ‘Poems', list Malone's 1780 ‘Supplement' to the 1778 ‘Shakespeare' and Malone's 1790 Shakespeare, and also the 1821 Boswell–Malone edition. He does not, however, lists the 1778 Johnson–Stevens edition, and as a result, misses a small body of notes by Malone and others, which might have enriched his commentary.
Samuel Johnson: A Portrait in OED-Antedatings
Johnson's life and works are a rich source of words whose earliest recorded usage substantially antedates those in the Oxford English Dictionary. Terms such as "atrabiliousness," "dogmatism," and "grandiosity" appear in descriptions of Johnson written decades before the OED's first citations. Phrases like "ox in a china-shop" (a variant of "bull in a china shop") and "general knowledge" were also first applied in connection with him. This pattern suggests many terms may have been coined specifically to describe Johnson's strong personality or literary style.
Fleeman’s scathing review of Pat Rogers’s parallel-text edition of Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides disputes the feasibility of combining these disproportionate works. Fleeman notes that Johnson focuses on mental reflection while Boswell emphasizes dramatic human interaction, making a "stereoscopic" reading disconcerting. The review highlights severe editorial failures, including the extensive and clumsy mangling of Boswell’s text to force correspondence with Johnson. Fleeman identifies numerous transcription errors, modernized spellings that alter meaning, and an index he describes as an extraordinary production of inaccuracy regarding Highland genealogy and topography. While Rogers includes Johnson’s letters to Piozzi, Fleeman challenges the "rough correspondence" of the intercalated material. Fleeman concludes that the volume lacks the scholarly rigor expected of a Yale University Press publication and serves coffee tables better than study shelves.
Aspects of Samuel Johnson: Essays on His Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics
Box reviews Aspects of Samuel Johnson: Essays on His Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics by Howard D. Weinbrot.
The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson
A multi-volume scholarly and trade edition of Boswell's papers. The original editorial committee included Edward Aswell, F. W. Hilles, Herman W. Liebert, and F. A. Pottle. The volumes are abstracted individually.
CGV entries 2:8 and 4:21.
Stewart outlines Boswell's lifelong religious turmoil, demonstrating that his faith was marked by profound revolutions and constant turmoil. He struggled to accept Calvinist theology, which was rigorously instilled in him as a child, because of its doctrines of predestination and eternal damnation, which he found incompatible with his belief in a benevolent God and man's free will. Boswell's denominational dilemma was compounded by the austere services of the National Church of Scotland, contrasting with the elevating rituals of Anglican and Roman Catholic worship, though he ultimately attended the former out of loyalty to his country and deference to his father.
PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
Cochrane entry 662.
'A Specter Viewed by a Specter': Autobiography in Biography
Mark Harris makes explicit the hidden relationship between biographer and subject in Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck by calling attention to the process of researching and writing a biography. Boswell and Johnson are in the background as Harris draws on conventions usually associated with autobiography (its dramatized narrator and self-accounting form) to suggest the possibilities for evoking a ‘life' in the 20th century.
John Wolcot and 'The Anecdotic Itch': Peter Pindar, Biography, and Historiography in the 1780s
Moore examines John Wolcot's satirical response to the late eighteenth-century obsession with anecdotal biography, focusing on his treatment of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. Through the persona of Peter Pindar, Wolcot critiques the "Johnso-mania" that followed Johnson's death, particularly in the poems addressing Boswell and Piozzi. Moore argues that Wolcot diagnoses a cultural malaise where significant achievement is reduced to "scurrilous detail and base indignity" for a mass print audience. The satirical vignettes in Bozzy and Piozzi depict the biographers as "pigmy planets" competing for scraps of Johnson's fame. Moore suggests these poems identify a mismatch between traditional language of greatness and a polite, commercial age that thrives on "the anecdotic itch." Wolcot's satire underscores the inherent fallacy of biographical attempts to capture the "messy complexity" of their subjects.
'The Dreams of Avarice': Samuel Johnson and Edward Moore
Johnson's famous phrase, "rich beyond the dreams of avarice," spoken during the sale of Thrale's brewery, is not his original creation, but an appropriation. The line appears in Edward Moore's 1753 tragedy, The Gamester, where the heroine uses it to express domestic contentment amidst ruin. Johnson's use, however, is a witty reversal of Moore's sentimentality, applying the phrase to the pragmatic, mercantile reality of potential financial gain. This borrowing, and Johnson's numerous citations of Moore in the Dictionary, suggest a previously neglected literary relationship between the two writers.
Johnsonian and Boswellian Strains in Early Nineteenth-Century English Biography
Cochrane entry 260. Differentiates between Johnson's moral, interpretive approach to biography and Boswell's scientific, inductive method, tracing the latter's influence on biographers like Lockhart.
On the critical principles underlying Johnson's judgments of pastoral poetry, arguing that his condemnation of Milton's Lycidas stems from a consistent set of criteria, not mere prejudice. Johnson’s principles emphasize experience and reality, believing poetry should reflect general nature and appeal to reason rather than escapist fancy. He praises Virgil's pastorals grounded in real events and criticizes works lacking sincerity, or those polluted by mythological fictions or a narrow scope. Johnson's ideal pastoral imitates nature, avoids the simplistic conventions associated with the genre, and offers moral instruction and originality, transforming him from a prejudiced figure to one with "noble, if narrow" premises.
CGV entry 10/1:98.
Boswell and the Romantics: A Chapter in the History of Biographical Theory
On Boswell's polarizing influence on biographical theory during the Romantic period, characterized as an "age of personality." The Life of Johnson prompted a paradoxical appreciation for the memoirist's "naive" or "omnivorous triviality," where lack of discrimination was valued for guaranteeing "authenticity." However, Johnson's own artistry inadvertently fostered scepticism toward talk and letters as reliable evidence, leading to a professional preference for "impressionism" over literal report. Boswell's work symbolized the central biographical relationship, making "personality" and the biographer's subjective experience the guarantor of historical truth.
Cochrane entry 181..
Boswell was an alcoholic, despite the arguments of biographers who minimize the significance of his heavy drinking. Gilmore applies modern diagnostic criteria, noting Boswell's repeated attempts to stop, the complaints of friends (including Johnson) and family, and the interference with his work on the Life of Johnson and his legal career. Boswell's journal entries confirm symptoms like strong craving, blackouts, and a distinct, often violent, personality change when drunk. The author posits Boswell's pervasive self-awareness of his problem and his rejection of moralistic or social explanations make him the earliest well-documented alcoholic of Western history.
Samuel Johnson was an "amateur economist," in the best sense of the term. Though he did not formulate any system of economics, as did Adam Smith, numerous ideas of economic significance can be found scattered in his writings, and in Boswell's Life and his Tour to the Hebrides. These ideas relate to a wide range of topics, including wealth, poverty, money, employment, colonies, agriculture, self-interest, advertising, and consumption. Frequently the ideas are intertwined with political opinions and moral dicta. Though Johnson was influenced by the philosophy of the Mercantilists, as other writers have pointed out, not a few of his ideas bear a striking resemblance to those of his acquaintance and anti-Mercantilist contemporary, Adam Smith. Most of Johnson's ideas, however, were expressed before 1776, the year in which The Wealth of Nations was published.
Johnson and Women in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Bundock disputes the scholarly consensus that Boswell's Life of Johnson presents a distorted, misogynistic portrait of Johnson. Challenging the arguments of Cafarelli, Geller, and others, Bundock uses primary journals and contemporary accounts to demonstrate that Boswell often suppressed Johnson's crude or "lewd" remarks rather than inventing them. He defends the authenticity of the "walking dog" anecdote concerning woman's preaching, citing independent Quaker records that confirm Margaret Bell preached on the day Boswell recorded the comment. Bundock argues that Boswell’s inclusion of derogatory remarks—such as the description of Lady Diana Beauclerk as a "whore"—accurately reflects Johnson’s rigid adherence to the sexual "double standard" and his concern for "confusion of progeny." Furthermore, Bundock explains significant omissions, such as Johnson’s meeting with Mary Wollstonecraft, as resulting from a lack of available information rather than a deliberate program to discredit intellectual women. The article concludes that Boswell’s portrait, while centered on male friendship, remains a balanced and valuable record that actively preserved the reputations of women writers like Lennox, Carter, and Burney.
'I Am Lost without My Boswell': Samuel Johnson and Sherlock Holmes
Berglund explores the acknowledged influence of the Johnson–Boswell relationship on Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Doyle adapted not only the dynamic between the great intellect and his chronicler but also specific aspects of Johnson's perceived character (memory, intellect, eccentricities) and Boswell's biographical methods (recording conversations, capturing personality nuances, navigating the subject's collaboration/resistance). The essay analyzes how the Holmes-Watson friendship, particularly in "A Scandal in Bohemia," serves as a fictional analogy, examining the complexities of observation, representation, and the interplay between biographical subject and recorder inherent in Boswell's Life.
Johnson as Despot: Anna Seward's Rejected Contribution to Boswell's Life
Woolley investigates and reconstructs the history of a "polished narrative" and detailed account Seward sent to Boswell in 1785 concerning a 1778 dispute between Johnson and Mary Knowles over the Quaker conversion of Jane Harry. Seward’s narrative portrays Johnson as an "imperious and gloomy Intolerant" and a "despot" exhibiting "ferocious, reasonless, and unchristian violence" toward the young convert. Although Boswell requested the minutes, Woolley notes he used "practically no use" of them in the Life of Johnson, challenging Boswell's claim of "biographic fidelity." Woolley argues that Boswell intentionally suppressed the "dark shades" of the account for rhetorical reasons, as Seward’s depiction of Johnson’s "reasonless rancor" clashed with Boswell's artistic goal of presenting a man worthy of universal "admiration and reverence." Identifying five extant versions of the manuscript, Woolley establishes that the version published in the Friend in 1828 most accurately represents the unrevised, most authentic text sent to Boswell.
Cochrane entry 229.
Boswell and Johnson at Blithedale: A Source for Hawthorne's Romance
Zarobila identifies a specific scene in The Blithedale Romance modeled after conversations in the Life of Johnson. Zarobila argues that the exchange between Miles Coverdale and Hollingsworth concerning the philosopher Fourier echoes the formal elements and tone of Boswell's accounts of Johnson's antipathy toward Hume and Rousseau. The article highlights how Hollingsworth adopts a "Johnsonian role" characterized by "one-eyed clear-sightedness" and dogmatic invective. Zarobila notes that Hawthorne developed a "sort of intimacy" with Johnson's character during childhood and consciously integrated Boswell's "sturdy English character" into his fiction to check radical excess through a "pattern of conservatism."
See also the “Corrections” in the next issue.
The Male Body in Medicine and Literature
Syphilis and Sociability: The Impolite Bodies of Two Gentlemen, James Boswell (1740–1795) and Sylas Neville (1741–1840)
Wetherall-Dickson explores the intersection of venereal disease and eighteenth-century politeness through the journals of Boswell and Sylas Neville. Boswell employs his diary as a spectator of the self, attempting to reconcile a composed genteel character with the loathsome distemper that threatened his social standing. Unlike Neville’s secretive and suspicious recording of infection, Boswell treats his calamities as opportunities for philosophical reflection and self-improvement, even while enduring indolent confinement. The text argues that Boswell’s sociability remained paramount; he curated his public persona to remain a socially recognised entity, using politeness to mask the aberration of his physical corruption. Wetherall-Dickson highlights Boswell’s dual role as both actor and spectator in the Theatre of the world.
Compares Boswell's imaginative and scrupulously factual portrayal of Johnson with those of other more pedestrian biographers, particularly Piozzi and Burney, to highlight the superiority of Boswell's biographical artistry. While Piozzi and Burney, despite their intimacy with Johnson, often produced disjointed anecdotes or caricatures focusing on his "roughness" and eccentricities, Boswell created a coherent, "monumental" figure that authentically captured his complexity and "Titanic vigour," establishing the definitive image for posterity.
CGV entry 3:241.
Cochrane entry 236.
Great Burke and Poor Boswell: Carlyle and the Historian's Task
'My Journal Goes Charmingly On': Boswell Reedited [review of London Journal, 1762–1763, by Gordon Turnbull]
Tankard’s review essay describes Gordon Turnbull’s 2010 Penguin Classics edition of the London Journal, noting that this version, unlike Pottle’s regularized 1950 edition, prints the text as closely as possible to the original manuscript by retaining Boswell’s spelling, minimal punctuation, and inconsistencies. The volume is transformed from a simple literary classic into a serious historical document and a "virtual encyclopedia" of eighteenth-century London people, places, and events, featuring a scholarly apparatus that includes fifty-eight pages of preliminaries, 1,375 notes, and a comprehensive sixty-page index. Tankard highlights the inclusion of Boswell’s previously unpublished daily memoranda, which are interspersed with the journal entries, and emphasizes the educational value of the annotations covering subjects ranging from condoms to the Seven Years’ War. The review concludes that this new, highly detailed format firmly establishes the journal as a work of reference and a significant text for scholarly study.
Boswell and Sympathy: The Trial and Execution of John Reid
Turnbull examines Boswell's deep emotional and professional involvement in the trial and execution of his client, John Reid, a sheep-stealer. This essay explores Boswell's profound "sympathy" for Reid as a case study in his complex character, highlighting the tension between his duties as an advocate within the rigid legal system and his intense personal identification with the condemned man. Turnbull analyzes how this episode reveals Boswell's struggles with melancholy, justice, and social order, demonstrating a capacity for empathy that contrasts sharply with his reputation for self-absorption.
A Metacritical Perspective: Accuracy and Ideology
A Bibliographical Note: Henry James's Markings in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Tintner records the pencil markings Henry James made in his set of George Birkbeck Hill's six-volume edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. These markings preserve James's interests in Johnson and the eighteenth century, as the books' current location is unknown. James marked passages, primarily with a vertical line, related to Johnson's conversational value, comments on poetry, literary style, and personal opinions on topics like women's preaching, marriage, and ghost belief. The markings decrease in later volumes, demonstrating that James was primarily interested in Boswell's Life.
Dead Man Talking: James Boswell, Ghostwriting, and the Dying Speech of John Reid
This essay examines lawyer and biographer James Boswell's anonymously published broadside,The Mournful Case of Poor Misfortunate and Unhappy John Reid(1774). Drawing on and subverting the generic conventions of the "dying speech," Boswell's unauthorized account of Reid presents his condemned client as a living ghost. Anticipating his treatment of Samuel Johnson in theLife(1791), Boswell's deployment of this supernatural conceit ameliorates the inconsistencies of Reid's character by configuring the otherwise morally questionable and "unfeeling" criminal as an idealized and sympathetic biographical subject. The broadside was not only an attempt to redeem Reid's character and concomitantly Boswell's own role in defending Reid for posterity, but also reveals the limitations and complacencies of eighteenth-century criminal literature and its connection with legal practice.
Siebenschuh defends Boswell's portrait of Johnson in the Life against modern scholarly attacks on its factual validity. Siebenschuh argues that Boswell's achievement is not his facts, but his "vision of Johnson" which allows for an "imaginative possession" of the subject. While acknowledging that Boswell had "blind spots" regarding Johnson's mental health and relationship with the Thrales, Siebenschuh maintains that Boswell's use of fictional methods is valid biographical practice. Boswell made Johnson's "personal greatness accessible" by presenting him dramatically rather than analytically. Siebenschuh challenges the notion that these dramatizations are mere distortions, asserting they symbolize the truth about Johnson's character.
Cochrane entry 257.
Boswell in Search of Boswell: A Quest for Self-Definition
Publications of the Mississippi Philological Association
Boswell for the Defence/Boswell's London Journal
Scottish Divines and Legal Lairds: Boswell's Scots Presbyterian Identity
Sher argues that Boswell’s complex identity was deeply shaped by his status as a Scots Presbyterian laird, positioning him against the dominant "Moderate literati" like Robertson and Blair. This "Popular party" identity was forged by his tutor, John Dun, who blended polite learning with anti-patronage politics, and by fellow advocates Andrew Crosbie and John Maclaurin. This circle of radical, literary, "clubbable" lairds nurtured Boswell's "country" ideology and opposition to the Moderate establishment. Sher reinterprets Boswell’s anonymous attacks on Robertson in the London Magazine as a direct expression of this often-overlooked, class-conscious Presbyterian identity.
Indian Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Samuel Johnson and the Art of Social Comfort
Modern Undergraduates and the Accessibility of The Life of Johnson
Cochrane entry 249. Discusses the challenges and rewards of teaching the 'Life' to undergraduates, recommending pairing it with Boswell's 'London Journal' to make the biographical art more accessible.
Dr. Johnson and Hodge the Cat: Small Moments and Great Pleasures in the Life
Siebenschuh argues that the imaginative power and enduring appeal of Boswell's Life of Johnson stem significantly from its inclusion of seemingly minor, unheroic anecdotes depicting Johnson's humanity, fallibility, and endearing eccentricities—such as the famous episode with his cat, Hodge. These "small moments," Siebenschuh contends, balance Johnson's heroic intellectual and moral stature with relatable vulnerabilities. This juxtaposition makes Johnson emotionally accessible, fostering affection alongside admiration, creating a uniquely powerful and attractive biographical portrait that transcends mere hero-worship.
Cognitive Processes and Autobiographical Acts
In an autobiography or any text heavily dependent upon its author's memory, the normal operation of the common cognitive processes of memory and perception may be the cause of literary effects we are used to attributing to "artistic choice" or an author's intention. Use of selected knowledge from the cognitive sciences may significantly enhance our ability to explain and interpret autobiographical texts and may even provide new insight into the creative process.
Boswell and Hume: The Deathbed Interview
Schwartz provides a close reading of Boswell's famous "deathbed interview" with David Hume. This essay analyzes the dramatic encounter as a confrontation between Boswell's profound religious anxiety and Hume's unwavering philosophical skepticism. Schwartz explores Boswell's motives: part journalistic "scoop," part desperate search for reassurance about the afterlife from the Enlightenment's most prominent infidel. The analysis highlights the theological and personal drama of the scene, contrasting Hume’s tranquil acceptance of annihilation with Boswell's deep-seated "philosophical melancholy" and fear of death.
Greene Centennial Studies: Essays Presented to Donald Greene in the Centennial Year of the University of Southern California
The Biographer as Advocate: Boswell and the 'Supper of Larks' Case
Riely examines Boswell’s targeted "animadversions" against Piozzi in the final portion of the Life of Johnson, identifying Boswell’s strategy as that of a professional advocate rather than an impartial judge. By scrutinizing the "supper of larks" anecdote—where Johnson allegedly rebukes Piozzi’s grief over a deceased cousin—Riely demonstrates how Boswell uses testimony from Baretti to recontextualize the event as a critique of Piozzi’s perceived "canting" and insensibility. Riely establishes the historical identity of the deceased cousin as Richard Cotton, a captain killed during the Battle of Camden in 1780. The analysis highlights Boswell’s aggressive use of minute particulars to undermine Piozzi’s authority and protect Johnson’s character from charges of incivility.
CGV entry 4:273. Discusses conflicting accounts of a remark Johnson made to Hester Thrale.
Cochrane entry 266.
Lady Knight's Role in the Boswell–Piozzi Rivalry
Riely clarifies a dispute regarding Lady Knight's marginalia in her copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Lady Knight claimed she persuaded Hester Piozzi to remove a "grosest abuse" against Boswell from her Anecdotes of Johnson during a meeting in Naples (December 1785–February 1786). However, the Anecdotes manuscript had already been sent to press in September 1785. The actual abusive passage, which likened Boswell to Aaron the Moor, was eventually canceled in the proofs by Samuel Lysons, not Piozzi herself, after the initial manuscript submission.
Cochrane entry 620. Corrects a long-standing anecdote, showing that a passage abusive to Boswell was deleted from Piozzi's 'Anecdotes' by an editor without her knowledge, not at the suggestion of Lady Knight.
The relationship between Johnson and Boswell was characterized by Johnson's genuine welcome and need for Boswell's company, countering the notion that Boswell imposed himself. Johnson, newly free from the necessity of hack-work, valued Boswell's social genius, patience, and ability to encourage talk, all while Boswell sought a father-figure to replace his critical father. Although the relationship was complicated by Boswell’s moral failures and Johnson’s disappointment in him as a pupil, the emotional bond, rooted in a quasi-familial love, remained unaltered and deeply affectionate until Johnson's death.
Cochrane entry 575. Argues against the idea that Johnson merely tolerated Boswell, showing instead that he deeply valued Boswell's friendship, found him a "superb companion," and filled the role of a surrogate father.
The same in Reid's The Long Boy, and Others, pp. 1-30. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969.
Boswell's Johnson, the Hero Made by a Committee
Reichard argues that the life of the "majestic protagonist" in Boswell’s biography is largely "decided by others." The article proposes that Johnson’s associates "start him, route him, and keep him going" to overcome his "constitutional indolence." Reichard demonstrates that Johnson’s friends "generate most of his conversation" and "extract most of his writing." Salient examples include the "committee" of publishers that "goaded" him to finish the Dictionary and the friends who "assisted" in obtaining his royal pension. The narrative describes how Piozzi and Hawkins contributed to the "Johnsonian gospel" while Boswell "staged" encounters to elicit famous responses. Reichard characterizes Johnson as a "community project" whose trips, such as those with the Thrales to Brighton or Boswell to the Hebrides, were entirely "supervised." The article concludes that Johnson's "attack is reaction," as he habitually used polyptoton to "catch a term dropped or thrown by someone" and alter its implications.
Cochrane entry 254.
Redford conducts a "literary archaeology" of the manuscript for Boswell's Life of Johnson to uncover an "untamed" or "Savage Johnson" that the biographer deliberately modified for publication. Through close examination of the draft, Redford reveals that Boswell "tamed" Johnson in areas like his ferocious temper, religious anxieties, and confrontational physicality by deleting, softening, or substituting aggressive phrases and anecdotes. The final published Life achieves a portrait of the sage "in deep meditation" by suppressing material that emphasized Johnson's more volatile and sexually explicit nature, thus controlling the interpretation of his complex character.
Literary Imagination: The Review of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
Eighteenth-Century Contexts: Historical Inquiries in Honor of Phillip Harth
Talk into Text: The Shaping of Conversation in Boswell's Life of Johnson
'A Very Exact Picture of His Life': Johnson's Role in Writing the Life of Johnson
Radner argues that Samuel Johnson played a complex and active role in the creation of Boswell’s Life after discovering Boswell's biographical intentions in 1772. Focusing on the 1773 Hebrides tour, Radner shows that while Johnson delighted in reading Boswell’s detailed journal, he also resisted being contained by it, creating rival narratives in his letters to Hester Thrale and later in his published Journey. Throughout the last twelve years of his life, Johnson continued this pattern: he cooperated by providing anecdotes and correcting information, ensuring his version of events was on record, but also withheld information and resisted Boswell's attempts to stage "scenes" for the biography. Radner speculates that Boswell’s project was a constant reminder of death and divine judgment, transforming Boswell into a kind of earthly judge and causing Johnson considerable anxiety.
Cochrane entry 546. Examines Boswell's paradoxical reputation in light of his private papers, arguing that the journals reveal him to be an imaginative artist and a far more complex man, and that he should be treated as the great literary figure he is.
The Dark Hints of Sir John Hawkins and Boswell
Pottle examines evidence regarding Johnson’s alleged sexual irregularities. He traces Boswell’s guarded statements in the Life back to a 1785 conversation with Hawkins, who claimed to have read incriminating entries in Johnson’s diaries. Pottle analyzes a 1786 meeting between Boswell, Hawkins, and Langton, suggesting that Boswell decided the facts were credible despite personal reservations. He concludes that while the specific diary volumes were likely destroyed by Johnson, the consistency of these "dark hints" suggests a factual basis rather than mere calumny.
CGV entry 3:172.
The Biblical Context of Johnson's Rasselas
In the 'Life of Johnson', Boswell suggests that 'Rasselas' echoes the 'vanitas vanitatum' theme of Ecclesiastes. Boswell's suggestion is quite discerning, for 'Rasselas' is, in fact, designed to recall both the Preacher's futile quest for perfect happiness and the meaning of that quest as interpreted by a post-Reformation school of commentators on Ecclesiastes. This school includes Bishop Simon Patrick, whose scriptural writings, in conjunction with those of William Lowth, made up the 'standard' Augustan commentary on the Old Testament. 'Rasselas' is informed with a complex of images, sentiments, and ideas drawn from Bishop Patrick's paraphrase of and annotations to the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the thematic structure of the apologue follows the thematic structure that the post-Reformation school attributed to Ecclesiastes.
Boswell's 'Romantic Imagination' in the London Journal
The sensibility Boswell develops in the London Journal (1762-63) is a hitherto unremarked link between Boswell the biographer, eighteenth-century esthetics, and "English Romanticism." Boswell describes the workings of his mind in the Journal as it fantasizes, associates, remembers, and recreates what he perceives in ways very like those processes reflected most typically by Wordsworth. While Boswell is neither a "pre-Romantic" nor the "first Romantic," his views in the London Journal on imagination demonstrate that Boswell-like most writers in the English tradition-fits neatly into neither category. By the time he had completed the Life of Johnson Boswell had modified much that was "romantic" in his earlier sensibility. The London Journal and the Life of Johnson are different kinds of works and thus call for different responses from readers who must understand certain developments in Boswell's career and make distinctions accordingly. To overlook distinctions in the interest of "consistency" is to force Boswell into a historical niche of little value.
Cochrane entry 396. Finds a Wordsworth-like sensibility in the 'London Journal', arguing Boswell celebrated his own creative imagination but later came to distrust it under Johnson's influence.
Time, Form, and Style in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson
Cochrane entry 207.
Boswell's Treatment of Johnson's Temper: 'A Warm West-Indian Climate'
In the +Life of Johnson= Boswell reconciles apparent inconsistencies in Johnson's personality without violating truth. Boswell exercises care to counteract the force of Johnson's violent temper by emphasizing his more endearing qualities. Manuscript revisions show Boswell's pattern of softening Johnson's conversational roughness and making his ferocity less offensive throughout the +Life.= Especially in shaping the journal account of a dinner at Dilly's, 15 April 1778, Boswell thoroughly rearranged the order of topics discussed in order to disclose how Johnson's alternating anger and kindness resembled an unpredictable tropical climate. Close study of the sources for the making of the +Life= and the manuscript revisions reveals that Boswell's structural changes provide an authentic pattern of balances.
Cochrane entry 234. Argues that Boswell's handling of Johnson's temper is both authentic and artistic; he honestly depicts the flaw but carefully revises and contextualizes outbursts to maintain an overall portrait of a great and good man.
Boswell's Life of Johnson as Literary History
CGV entry 4:206.
Cochrane entry 203. Argues that while Boswell employed many techniques common to literary history, the 'Life' itself does not formally belong to that genre in the way that, for example, the works of Thomas Warton do.
Pittock re-evaluates Boswell as a critic, arguing that his amateur, journalistic approach anticipates modern theoretical concerns. While Johnson upheld a Christian-humanist tradition seeking "true judgement," Boswell mastered "strategies of questioning," self-publicity, and role-playing, aligning with the "London Geniuses" like Wilkes and Churchill. Pittock contends that Boswell’s critical instincts, heavily influenced by Sterne, focused on theatricality, reader response, and the "endless re-invention of character." His defense of mediocrity and his highly developed "consciousness of self" diverge from Johnson’s moral canon, prefiguring modern interests in discourse, alienation, and the "pleasures... of the text."
An Annotated Life of Johnson: Dr. William Cadogan on 'Bozzy' and His Bear
'Untoward Genius': A Psychoanalytic Study of the Life and Early Writings of James Boswell, Esq.
The fact that James Boswell is difficult if not impossible to understand without recourse to psychological explanations makes him a particularly appropriate subject for an interpretation that draws on modern theories of psychoanalysis. Modern psychological theory, in particular the epigenetic developmental theory of Erik Erikson and modern theories of narcissism, are especially useful in a work on Boswell for yet another reason. These particular theories provide good accounts of what the interaction between the baby Boswell, his parents, and his culture should have been if he were to have grown into a happily productive, responsible member of his society. This study advances a theory about how Boswell's early childhood produced the psychic forces the prevented him from becoming a serious poet but transformed him into a genius with prose. Erikson provides the overarching theory for the author's interpretation of Boswell's psychological development, or lack thereof.
The Death Scene and the Art of Suspense in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Newman argues Boswell crafts Johnson's death scene into an effective climax using suspense, despite his physical absence. He identifies a two-part structure: Boswell's focused narrative on Johnson's spiritual struggle, followed by collected accounts. Throughout the Life, Boswell builds tension around Johnson's fear of death and religious doubts, delaying resolution. The climax arrives when Johnson directly confronts his mortality by asking Dr. Brocklesby for the unvarnished truth. Johnson’s subsequent calm acceptance provides a surprising, powerful resolution to his long internal conflict. This demonstrates Boswell’s artistry in shaping even second-hand material to achieve biographical and thematic significance.
Cochrane entry 273.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Parody in Pale Fire: A Re-Reading of Boswell's Life of Johnson
Morris explores Vladimir Nabokov's parody of Boswell's Life. He argues that Nabokov employs parodic references to establish authorial identity and to encourage readers to return to original sources with new insights. Morris examines affinities between Boswell and Charles Kinbote, noting their shared obsessions with homelands, sexual adventures, and religious duty. The dissertation highlights how Kinbote's commentary parodies Boswell’s biographical practices, including the tendency to suppress information and shape narratives for personal or political agendas. Morris further draws parallels between Johnson and John Shade, observing their mutual disdain for cruelty and their complex, often contradictory, aesthetic philosophies. Through this analysis, the study suggests that Nabokov’s work provides a "literary re-reading" that illuminates the inherent subjectivity and artistic undercurrents in Boswell's purportedly objective biographical text.
Moss explores the literary and geographical connections between the Sherlock Holmes canon and the Scottish travels of Johnson and Boswell. Building on theories by Jay Finley Christ and Richard Altick, the article argues that the "Island of Uffa" mentioned by Watson is a portmanteau of Ulva and Staffa, islands in the Hebrides. Moss contends that Watson was a "thoroughly familiar" student of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and likely modeled his own role as a biographer on Boswell. The narrative suggests that Watson persuaded Holmes to retrace the 1773 itinerary of Johnson and Boswell to the Western Isles as a restorative vacation in 1887. The author details the historical context of Ulva, noting that Johnson and Boswell stayed there as guests of the MacQuarrie clan just before the chieftain was forced to sell the island. Moss connects the "singular adventures of the Grice Patersons" to the late nineteenth-century Highland Clearances on Ulva, imagining a case where Holmes and Watson rectify Johnson’s failure to land on Staffa by successfully visiting Fingal’s Cave.
Baker Street Journal: An Irregular Quarterly of Sherlockiana
Boswell's Account of the Johnson–Wilkes Meeting
Molin analyzes Boswell's account of the Johnson–Wilkes dinner as a meticulously structured High Comedy of Manners in prose. Boswell employs a dramatic structure—prologue, five acts, and epilogue—to move the situation from opposition to assimilation, culminating in the principals' shared humor over Scotland. Acting as chorus, manager, and narrator, Boswell uses dialogue, monologue, and vivid description to highlight his theme of social reconciliation and to reveal Johnson's character. The scene epitomizes Boswell's dramatic imagination and his skill in vivifying history into art.
Cochrane entry 191.
Confession in the Life and Writing of James Boswell
Cochrane entry 633. Proposes that Boswell used his writing, both private and public, as a form of confession to purge his guilt over the conflict between his moral aspirations and his physical indulgences.
'This Philosophical Melancholy': Style and Self in Boswell and Hume
Manning undertakes a comparative analysis of Boswell and Hume, focusing on their shared experience of "philosophical melancholy." The essay explores how this profound affliction shaped the literary styles and construction of self for both writers. Manning argues that, despite their starkly different conclusions on religion, both Boswell and Hume used their melancholy as a lens through which to examine identity, skepticism, and the human condition. The analysis contrasts Hume’s philosophical sublimation of his "distemper" with Boswell’s restless, theatrical presentation of his moods in his journals.
On the Making of Boswell's London Journal and Boswell for the Defence
Fact into Art: James Boswell's Notes, Journals, and the Life of Johnson
{Lustig explores the creative process behind Boswell’s Life of Johnson, using the extensive archive of private papers at Yale to demonstrate how Boswell transformed raw "fact into art." The essay disputes the caricature of Boswell as a mere stenographer, showing instead how he expanded brief, impromptu notes into fully realized journal entries and eventually into a "sophisticated dramatic encounter." Lustig analyzes specific examples, such as the account of the first night of the play Irene and the famous meeting at Tom Davies's parlor, to highlight Boswell's use of literary allusion, selective editing, and imaginative reconstruction. The narrative emphasizes that Boswell sought to "reanimate" Johnson by interweaving private thoughts and conversations into a "richly textured" Flemish-style portrait. Lustig concludes that Boswell's departures from literal truth, such as omitting repulsive physical descriptions found in his original journals, served to achieve a higher "truth of feeling" and a consistent image of his subject's essential greatness.
Cochrane entry 252.
'Donaus,' Donaides, and David Malloch: A Reply to Dr. Johnson
On the episode where Johnson asked Boswell to find out about "Donaus" in relation to the poem Donaides by Malloch (later Mallet). Boswell's omission of Johnson's query in The Life suggests he never found the answer. Lustig reveals that Donaides is a Latin poem written by Professor Ker, whose subject is the Aberdonian Muses, or "daughters of the Don" (Dona), making "Donaus" nonexistent. The article uses this biographical detail to illuminate Johnson's classically oriented habits of thought, explore Ker and Malloch's strained literary relationship, and examine Malloch's revisions of his poem to eliminate political matter and criticism of the Reformation.
Cochrane entry 636. Explains the meaning of an obscure literary reference that stumped Samuel Johnson, which Boswell was unable to answer.
The History and Significance of the Relationship of Edmund Burke and James Boswell
Cochrane entry 651. Traces the friendship between Boswell and Edmund Burke, whom Boswell saw as a model of success, and considers how their eventual falling out influenced Burke's depiction in the 'Life'.
To overcome the lack of material on Johnson’s early life, Boswell used Lives of the Poets as a resource and a formal model, incorporating its narrative conventions and biographical theory. Boswell adapted Johnson's technique of using personal documents, like letters, but qualified them with an interpretive, contextual framework, contrasting with Mason’s method. This strategy allowed Boswell to portray Johnson as both an "infant Hercules" and a complete human, culminating the history of the professional poet that Johnson himself had described, and transcending the limitations of earlier biographical work.
Cochrane entry 248.
Kernan examines the transformation of letters in an age of print technology, identifying Johnson as a professional writer who legitimized literature through his personality and will. He contrasts Boswell’s Johnson—a desperate individual struggling to write for money—with Wordsworth’s dedicated visionary. Kernan argues that Johnson capitalized on print terms, such as copyright and linguistic authority, to fix meaning in a fragmenting world. The text highlights how Boswell established Johnson as the "great cham of literature" and a culture hero of the Gutenberg era.
Cochrane entry 272.
The Presentation of Oliver Goldsmith in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Cochrane entry 218. Argues against the traditional view that Boswell's portrait of Goldsmith is hostile, contending that it is actually a "remarkably balanced portrayal" that acknowledges both his genius and his flaws.
Boswell's Suppression of a Paragraph in Rambler 60
Hamilton identifies a silent suppression by Boswell in his Life of Johnson, where he omitted a paragraph from Johnson’s Rambler 60 while quoting it in sequence. The suppressed passage criticized biographers for recording trivial details, specifically naming Tickell and Racan. Hamilton argues Boswell likely omitted the passage to avoid highlighting Johnson's critique of Racan, whose biographical methods closely anticipated Boswell's own use of private conversation. Boswell subsequently used two sentences to refute the ideas in the omitted text without admitting the deletion.
Cochrane entry 182.
''Tis a Pretty Book, Mr. Boswell, But …'
Greene assesses Boswell's Life against modern biographical standards, judging it severely inadequate. He argues it lacks completeness, continuity, proportion, and rigorous evaluation of evidence, often relying on anecdotes. Greene characterizes the work primarily as edited diary excerpts covering limited periods, deficient in narrating Johnson's full life and intellectual development. The resulting portrait, he contends, is a distorted, simplified "personality" that hinders true appreciation of Johnson's complexity. Greene concludes that while valuable as "Memoirs" or "Table Talk" for the conversations, the Life fails as comprehensive biography by contemporary criteria, necessitating reliance on other sources and modern scholarship.
CGV entry 4:247. Reprinted from Georgia Review (1978).
Greene Waingrow’s edition of Boswell’s correspondence and papers relating to the composition and revision of the Life of Johnson. Greene asserts that the volume provides a major addition of new biographical material, including previously unpublished or deleted anecdotes, that challenges existing scholarly consensus on Johnson’s character and life. The review praises Waingrow’s meticulous editing and notes, but it contests the notion that Boswell’s final, "doctored" published version of the Life should be prioritized over the newly recovered, "undoctored" evidence. Greene contends that new data inevitably supersedes Boswell’s artistic construct for the serious historical scholar.
CGV entry 4:212.
Cochrane entry 220.
Greene disputes the cherished myth of quaint old "Doctor Sam Johnson" as a "successful hatchet job" by James Boswell. This article challenges the historical accuracy of Boswell's Life, noting that Johnson and Boswell only spent 425 days together over twenty-two years. Greene disputes the image of Johnson as a "literary dictator," noting Johnson was often reluctant to begin discourse and helped friends like Thomas Percy secretly. Johnson's "real attitude toward second marriages" was suppressed by Boswell to maintain an image of undying devotion. Greene describes his ongoing project to provide a "sober and unexciting" connected narrative of Johnson's later years based on non-Boswellian sources like Hester Thrale Piozzi and Fanny Burney. Greene argues Johnson's chief claim to immortality remains his status as a "great highbrow" writer and pioneering lexicographer whose "most artful fiction must give way to truth."
Cochrane entry 271.
Mrs. Macaulay's Footman: The Life and Afterlife of an Anecdote
In the early 1760s, the republican historian Catharine Macaulay hosted a visit by the famed Samuel Johnson. Their conversation was initially cordial yet soon became a passionate discussion upon the merits of political equality and subordination, with Macaulay arguing for the former against Johnson's stubborn advocacy for the latter. Johnson sought to prove his point and embarrass Macaulay by inviting her footman to sit alongside them at their table, in front of their assorted company. Greentree seeks to use this debate and the long consensus that followed to examine its implications for the literary reputation of Macaulay. She also traces the history of Macaulay's most famous footman anecdotes.
CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History
Greene rebuts Pottle's defense, reaffirming criticisms of the Life's biographical flaws, including factual inaccuracies and distorted reporting (citing specific examples). He dismisses "literary biography" as a justification for sacrificing truth to artistry, contrasting Boswell unfavorably with rigorous modern biographers like Ellmann. Greene contends that Boswell demonstrably altered or fabricated material attributed to Johnson, undermining the work's reliability. While acknowledging the value of the recorded conversations (Tischreden), he insists that for accurate biographical understanding, scholars must prioritize Boswell's earlier journal versions and other evidence over the artistically shaped but factually compromised Life.
Cochrane entry 270.
'Beyond Probability': A Boswellian Act of Faith
Greene challenges John J. Burke, Jr.'s defense of Boswell's accuracy in recording Samuel Johnson's sayings (logia). Greene argues that Burke's "willingness to believe" Boswell constitutes an unscholarly "act of faith" that ignores probability and evidence. He reiterates his skepticism regarding the authenticity of many famous Johnsonian remarks reported by Boswell, citing inconsistencies, parallels with older jests, and Boswell's known tendency to embellish or reshape material. Greene contends that unquestioning acceptance of Boswell's record perpetuates a caricature of Johnson, obscuring Johnson the writer, and defends rigorous critical scrutiny of biographical sources against charges of cynicism or bad faith.
Do We Need a Biography of Johnson's 'Boswell' Years?
Greene argues for a comprehensive biography covering Johnson's life from 1763 to 1784, often considered adequately covered by Boswell's Life. Boswell's Life is actually a work of Ana or Table-Talk, not a systematic biography, as the two men met on only about 250 days out of 7,783 days in that period. Greene plans to write this third volume, having secured a fellowship, with the task being to uncover what happened to Johnson on the remaining approximately 7,500 days. This is possible because, unlike his earlier years, a wealth of non-Boswellian materials exists, such as letters, diaries, and memoirs from others like Thrale and Hawkins. His goal is to write a biography where Boswell occupies only his mathematically correct 4.5% proportion of space.
Cochrane entry 247.
New Essays on Samuel Johnson: Revaluation
Considering Johnson's 'Nose of the Mind' and Mind's Nose: Olfaction Deployed and Suppressed in the 'Age of Johnson'
Friedman investigates the "osmology," or scent connotations, within Johnson's work. She notes that Johnson’s own definition of "sagacity" included both mental and olfactory components. The essay examines how Johnson used and suppressed olfactory data in his own writing, as well as in the works of contemporaries like Boswell and Burney, within a century that only dimly understood the process of smelling.
Players on Unbroken Spinets: Thomas Wolfe and James Boswell
The 'Minute Particular' in Life-Writing and the Novel
Davidson analyzes the use of specific detail in eighteenth-century biography and fiction, focusing on Johnson’s practice of life-writing. The article examines the controversy surrounding Johnson’s inclusion of paltry circumstances and domestic infirmities in the Lives of the Poets. Davidson argues that Johnson served as an evangelist for the particular detail, advocating for the utility of invisible circumstances in revealing real character. The study traces how Boswell adopted and modified these techniques in his biography of Johnson, incorporating novelistic detail to create vivid portraits. Davidson suggests that Johnson’s personal knowledge of Richard Savage produced a profoundly novelistic narrative. The exploration highlights the tension between neoclassical generalities and the increasingly dominant aesthetic preference for specificity in representing historical figures.
Macaulay and Croker: The Review of Croker's Boswell
Investigates the accusation that Macaulay's 1831 review of Croker's edition of Boswell's Life was an act of revenge for political humiliations suffered in Parliament. De Beer notes that while Macaulay indeed despised Croker—writing that he detested him "more than cold boiled veal"—the claim that the review was motivated by parliamentary defeats is without foundation. Macaulay began writing the review before a significant clash and continued it even as he exposed Croker's "monstrous blunders." De Beer argues Macaulay's central goal was to condemn the edition's defects—including inaccurate notes and the interpolation of material from other sources into Boswell's text, which disfigured a masterpiece. Later editors generally agreed with Macaulay's charges, and the review's notoriety contributed to the edition being withdrawn.
Cochrane entry 178.
The Lexicographer as Hero: Samuel Johnson and Henri Estienne
Johnson's portrayal of himself as a "lexicographer as hero" in works like his Dictionary was directly influenced by the rhetorical self-presentation of the philologist Estienne, particularly in the preface to the Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (1572). Johnson's famous definition of a lexicographer as a "harmless drudge" is interpreted as an "arrogant irony," a confident assertion of heroic labor, which mirrors Estienne's use of the "Herculean labor" trope to describe his own demanding work. Estienne's preface intimately conjoins lexicography with personal struggle, including melancholy and financial distress, a conjunction that Johnson adopts in his own prefaces. This contrasts with earlier anonymous lexicographers and places Johnson firmly within a European scholarly tradition.
Boswell's Liberty-Loving Account of Corsica and the Art of Travel Literature
Curley analyzes Boswell's An Account of Corsica as a significant contribution to eighteenth-century travel literature, arguing that its primary organizing principle is the theme of liberty. The essay explores how Boswell structures his travelogue not just as a geographical or social report, but as a political tract championing General Paoli and the Corsican independence movement. Curley positions the work as a key text in Boswell's development, where he first merges his journalistic talents with his philosophical and political ideals, particularly his "country" radicalism and his desire to shape public opinion.
Double Writing: The Erotics of Narrative in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque
'Borrowing Gargantua's Mouth': Biography, Bakhtin and Grotesque Discourse — James Boswell, Thomas Carlyle and Leslie Stephen on Samuel Johnson
Amigoni explores the transmission of "grotesque discourses" from Boswell’s Life of Johnson to Victorian critics, focusing on the tension between Johnson’s "Classical" intellect and his "Gargantuan" body. Boswell fashions an image that "reconciled the contradiction" between a diseased exterior and inwardly generated eloquence, using physiognomy to read Johnson’s tics as markers of a "melancholic mind." Carlyle and Stephen later appropriate this "Romantic-grotesque" image, with Stephen pathologizing Johnson’s "contorted" prose as a mechanical "spasmodic action." The text argues that this "grotesque realism" allows Stephen to publicly negotiate his own "dogged conservatism" and gender anxieties, borrowing Johnson's "unreason" to challenge radical solutions while maintaining a "thoroughly masculine" view of the world.
Spectacle, Sex, and Property in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Stabilizing Reason with Sensibility: Boswell and Johnson's Pursuit of a Genuine Definition of Masculinity
Lord Byron's Poetical Works, Murray's Complete Edition/Boswell's Life of Johnson
Boswell's Literary Criticism in The Life of Johnson
Despite Boswell's self-effacing biographical technique, The Life of Johnson reveals him to be an intelligent and modern literary critic. Though he often suppressed his opinions to keep Johnson in the spotlight, his editorial comments, letters, and questions demonstrate a professional grasp of his craft. Boswell shared Johnson's moral premise for literature but exhibited an independent and modern taste, defending the realism of Fielding and the pathetic appeal of contemporary works like Young's Night Thoughts, which Johnson found too delicate. His analysis of Johnson's style was insightful and enduring, correctly identifying its force, clarity, and limitations as an organic expression of Johnson's towering intellect.
Cochrane entry 200. Argues for the value of Boswell's own literary judgments in the 'Life', suggesting they show a "competence and modernity" often overlooked, particularly in his appreciation for authors like Swift and Fielding.
'Look, My Lord, It Comes': Ghostly Silences in the Boswell/Johnson Archive
Lee talks about the archive of Boswell and Johnson. In the account of his and Johnson's tour of Scotland, Boswell records the following exchange: "Having taken the liberty, this evening, to remark to Dr. Johnson, that he very often sat quite silent for a long time, even when in company with only a single friend, which I myself had sometimes sadly experienced, he smiled and said, It is true, sir. Tom Tyers, Tom Tyers described me the best. He once said to me, "Sir, you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to.""
The Contributions of John Nichols to Boswell's Life of Johnson
On Nichols's contributions to Boswell's Life. Nichols, a printer and friend to both men, supplied Boswell with various "little Johnsonian particulars," primarily in the form of anecdotes and letters previously published in The Gentleman's Magazine, including letters from Johnson to Edward Cave, an anecdote about William Budworth, Johnson's "Scheme for the classes of a Grammar School," and several anecdotes of Johnson's final days. Nichols also gave Boswell advice on the printing and publication of the Life and later helped correct factual errors. Boswell often acknowledged Nichols's reliability as a source, incorporating the anecdotes, which have since become part of the Life's main text, adding authenticity to the biography.
CGV entry 4:150. See also Arthur Sherbo, Philological Quarterly, volume 32 (July 1953), pages 260–261.
Cochrane entry 165.
Biographer, Hero, and Audience in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Dowling analyzes the triangulated relationship between Boswell (the biographer), Johnson (the hero), and the intended audience in *The Life of Johnson*. The essay examines Boswell's self-conscious strategies for managing his own presence in the narrative, portraying Johnson's complexity, and shaping reader reception. Dowling explores how Boswell constructs Johnson's character through dialogue and anecdote, arguing that the *Life* functions as a deliberate performance engaging the reader in a complex act of judgment and identification. The study highlights Boswell’s artistry and his innovative contributions to the biographical genre.
Cochrane entry 251.
Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship
Radner provides a chronological examination of the relationship between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell from their initial meeting in 1763 to the publication of the Life of Samuel Johnson in 1791. Radner argues that the friendship was an evolving, multifaceted collaboration characterized by regular renegotiations of authority and independence. While Boswell used the relationship to define and assess himself, Radner disputes the continuity often perceived in Boswell's own texts, instead highlighting periods of intense conflict, volatile emotional shifts, and sustained silences. The text analyzes how Boswell's biographical project fundamentally reconfigured their connection, granting Boswell a form of 'narrative authority' that persisted even after Johnson's death. Radner explores the 'archetypal, almost mythic quality' of their bond—the mentor-mentee dynamic—while grounding it in the specific psychological needs of both men, including their shared struggles with 'constitutional melancholy.' By scrutinizing letters, journals, and published works, Radner describes a relationship where 'deepened affection and admiration could coexist with intensified aggression and anger.' The monograph identifies the 1773 Hebrides tour as a transformative 'co-partnery' that intensified their collaboration as writers while increasing competition for narrative control. The Introduction provides a foundational overview of the serendipitous first meeting and the rapid emotional bonding between the two subjects in 1763. Chapter 1, 'Taking Charge of Boswell (1763),' analyzes the initial twelve-week period of their acquaintance, detailing how Johnson assumed a paternalistic role as mentor to the insecure, seeking young Scot. Chapter 2, '"Perpetual Friendship"? (1764–1767),' examines the strain of long absences and silences during Boswell’s European travels and his subsequent attempts to secure an "eternal attachment" through letters and his publication on Corsica. Chapter 3, 'Jostling for Control (1768–1771),' investigates the increasing contentiousness and power struggles that emerged as Boswell grew more assertive and Johnson became more prone to verbal aggression. Chapter 4, 'New Collaborations (1772),' explores a shift toward intellectual partnership as the two worked together on legal briefs and Johnson began preparing Boswell for his future role as biographer. Chapter 5, 'Embracing the Biographer (1772–1773),' details the formalization of the biographical project and the shared religious and social experiences that solidified their unique intimacy. Chapter 6, 'Cooperation and Rivalry in Scotland (14 August to 22 November 1773),' chronicles the texture of their constant contact during the Hebrides tour, highlighting the zany fantasies and mutual discoveries of the trip. Chapter 7, 'Negotiating and Competing for Narrative Control (14 August to 22 November 1773),' analyzes how the act of shared journaling during their travels became a site of both collaboration and friction. Chapter 8, 'Collaboration Manqué (November 1773 to May 1775),' assesses the period following the tour where Johnson worked on his Journey while Boswell struggled with professional languor and the frustration of delayed publication for his own journal. Chapter 9, 'Renegotiating the Friendship, Part 1 (1775–1777): Depression, Defiance, and Dependency,' examines a volatile phase marked by Boswell’s severe depression and his secret anger toward Johnson's perceived slights. Chapter 10, 'Renegotiating the Friendship, Part 2 (1777–1778): Confrontation, Collaboration, and Celebration,' describes a breakthrough in their relationship following a heated dispute at Ashbourne that led to greater parity and mutual respect. Chapter 11, '"Strangers to Each Other" (May 1778 to March 1781),' addresses a period of secondary status for Boswell as Johnson prioritized other commitments and health issues. Chapter 12, 'The Lives of the Poets and Johnson’s (Auto)biography (1777–1781),' evaluates Johnson’s final literary masterpiece and the autobiographical revelations it contained for his biographer. Chapter 13, 'Reconnecting (1781–1783),' portrays their sporadic but significant meetings as Johnson faced declining health and Boswell faced the death of his father. Chapter 14, '"Some Time Together before We Are Parted" (March 1783 to May 1784),' details Johnson’s radical need for diversion during illness and Boswell's final efforts to assist his dying friend. Chapter 15, '"Love Me as Well as You Can" (1784),' focuses on the final attempts to organize a health-seeking trip to Italy and Boswell's burgeoning psychological insights into Johnson’s anger. Chapter 16, 'Rewriting the Hebrides Trip (1785),' explores how Boswell, aided by Edmond Malone, posthumously revised his journal to present a more poised version of himself and his friendship. Chapter 17, 'Boswell Claiming His Inheritance (1786–1791),' chronicles the monumental and often troubled process of drafting and revising the Life of Samuel Johnson. Chapter 18, 'Winning Johnson’s Blessing,' argues that the biography served as Boswell’s ultimate homage and a plea for the forgiveness he felt he missed during Johnson’s final weeks. Critics are generally favorable, praising the work for its original, exhaustive chronicle of a complex literary partnership. In prominent trade and news publications, Johnston, in TLS, highlights the mutual distrust of happiness shared by the subjects, detailing the paradoxical biographical methods and behavioral extremes that marked their attachment. Maley’s review in Times Higher Education approves of the examination of this volatile, multifaceted collaboration, noting how shared struggles with depression and the ethics of representation informed their personal and literary dependencies. In scholarly periodicals, Bonnell, in Historian, calls the study engrossing and a must-read, arguing it successfully erases the notion of a static relationship by charting an evolving collaboration. Carter, in Journal of Modern History, praises the meticulous, month-by-month reconstruction of the contentious friendship, though he characterizes the volume as a specialist's monograph due to its exhaustive plotting. Ferguson, in SEL, appreciates how the text tracks emotional ties and anxieties without trying to correct the idealizations of the famous pair. Lynch, in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, describes the work as an unprecedented chronicle that rejects traditional views of sycophancy to present a full partnership, though he notes the narrative occasionally flags under unprocessed facts. Smallwood, in Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, identifies the book as a splendid achievement and a scholarly touchstone that provides a deep-level understanding of the relationship's rudiments. Finally, Tankard, in JNL, finds that the study convincingly depicts the two men working on friendship as a project, though he critiques the pervasive tone of uncertainty.
Boswell's Life of Johnson, IV, 420–421
Rewa identifies an unacknowledged literary parallel in William Gerard Hamilton’s famous lament on the death of Johnson. Rewa argues that Hamilton’s observation regarding the irreplaceable "chasm" left by Johnson constitutes a deliberate inversion of Johnson's own claim in Rambler 6 that no individual’s death creates such a void. This connection suggests a degree of premeditation in Hamilton’s supposedly "abrupt" tribute, deepening the significance of the compliment paid to Johnson.
Cochrane entry 205.
Verosky identifies the unnamed clergyman mentioned by lexicographer John Walker during a 1783 conversation with Johnson and Boswell as John Milner, a prominent Catholic priest. Prompted by Boswell's inquiry into his pupils, Walker described this figure as the best reader he ever heard. Verosky traces Milner’s decision to study elocution under Walker to a humiliating encounter with a young lady who questioned his reading proficiency. The text outlines Walker’s professional trajectory, his conversion to Catholicism under James Usher’s influence, and his sustained friendship with the Johnson circle. Walker’s dedication of his major works to Johnson acknowledges the latter’s essential patronage.
CGV entry 5:367. On John Milner; 'Life', volume 4, page 206.
Cites Life 4:206
Cochrane entry 184. Identifies a clergyman mentioned in the 'Life' as John Milner, a Roman Catholic priest.
'Generous Attachment': Filiation and Rogue Biography in the Journals of James Boswell
Boswell's journals reveal his complex relationship with biography, showcasing his interactions with significant figures and the impact of discourse on character construction.
The History of Scottish Literature, II: 1660–1800
This article analyzes Boswell's lifelong journal as a quest to articulate the historicity of the self amidst the "cultural schizophrenia" of post-Union Scotland. Turnbull argues that Boswell's acquisition of Johnson as a biographical subject addressed deep psychopolitical needs, providing a stable, culturally central English anchor for his volatile identity. The text frames the Boswell-Johnson "co-partnery" as a personal analogue to the political Union, where Johnson represents the monumental authority of England and Boswell acts as the socially pliable, culturally aware Scottish witness. Turnbull explores how the tour of the Hebrides allowed Boswell to fuse his romanticized Scottish past with his Augustan ambitions, displacing his biological father with Johnson as his primary cultural affiliation. The Life of Johnson emerges not merely as a biography but as a collaborative fruit of the Union, where Boswell uses his status as an outsider to elucidate the grand Johnsonian text for posterity.
Criminal Biographer: Boswell and Margaret Caroline Rudd
Examines Boswell's records of Margaret Caroline Rudd, a notorious adventuress and forger, as a form of criminal biography reflecting his impulses for social and sexual transgression. The account shifts from exhilarated fascination, where Rudd acts as a captivating sorceress usurping Johnson’s role as Boswell's preceptor, to agonizing remorse, where guilt over his affair supplants the initial erotic thrill. The story ultimately transforms into a pious conversion narrative for Boswell, with his wife, Margaret, emerging as the feminine agent of his moral reform.
Extra-Illustration as Exemplified in A. H. Reed's Copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson
Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand
Printed for The Johnsonians & the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California at the Almond Tree Press and Paper Mill
Blinking Sam: The True History of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 1775 Portrait of Samuel Johnson
An authoritative account of the famous Blinking Sam portrait.
'Well Said Mr. Northcote': A Keepsake to Commemorate the Two Hundred Eighty-Ninth Anniversary of the Birth of Samuel Johnson and the Fifty-Second Annual Dinner of The Johnsonians, the Boston Athenaeum, 25 September 1998
Discusses the marginal annotations made by Hester Lynch Piozzi in her copy of James Northcote, Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds (London: Henry Colburn, 1818), now in the Houghton Library.
Frances Reynolds and Samuel Johnson: a keepsake to mark the 286th birthday of Samuel Johnson and the 49th annual dinner of The Johnsonians
"The long poem [by Frances Reynolds] ... is ... published (and reproduced in facsimile) here for the first time with the hope that it will draw attention both to Frances Reynolds's interests as a writer and to her long and complicated relationship with Samuel Johnson, who has emended her lines in red ink."--Preface "'As late disconsolate in pensive mood' (to quote the poem's opening line; it never received a title) is printed here from the holograph manuscript in the Hyde Collection at Four Oaks Farm."--Preface "Preface"--Page 3 of prelim., typesigned: Richard Wendorf " ... Helen Ashmore has supplied an introduction based on her extensive research on Frances Reynolds, and has also provided a transcription of the text and of Johnson's emendations."--Preface Contains some biographical references
Impression Makers Printing for the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
A Catalogue of Choice Books by Michael Johnson of Lichfield, 21st March 1717–18
Samuel Johnson's 'Taxation No Tyranny': A Fragment of Proof Copy: To Commemorate Dr. Johnson's 281st Birthday at the Grolier Club in New York
Three Samuel Johnson Portraits: Taylor's Johnson; Lamborn's Taylor; Mytton's Lamborn
Three hundred copies of this keepsake were printed for the Samuel Johnson Society of the West, the Johnsonians and the Zamorano Club. Designed and printed by Paul Blanc at the Impression Makers Printing, Tempe, Arizona.
This collection of essays offers historical contextualization as a methodology to move beyond a 'usable Johnson' toward a 'historic Johnson' polemically engaged in religious and political conflicts. Contributors challenge the vision of Johnson as a detached Olympian or pragmatic empiricist, arguing instead for a man divided between rival goals whose hard-won integrity developed over a long career. Essays explore Johnson's Jacobite orientation and his role as a Nonjuror who likely avoided the Oath of Abjuration. Kaminski presents Johnson as an authentic Tory who believed the hereditary succession was 'illegally interrupted' at the Revolution, maintaining this 'inherent right' of the Stuarts while defending George III's prerogative as a de facto authority. Glickman traces Johnson's beliefs through Oxford and London coteries, highlighting how he responded to a 'confessional identity' that sought to preserve the Anglican clerisy. Davis analyzes Johnson's learned interest in Nonjuring theology and patristic traditions, noting his selective attraction to primitive practices. Clark examines Johnson's 1775 Paris visit, showing his ease within the Catholic Jacobite diaspora and his refusal to preface Berwick's memoirs due to political constraints. Collectively, the volume presents a Johnson whose 'Toryism was paralleled by his High Church beliefs' and whose early political ideals remained a source of lifelong complexity.
Samuel Johnson's Pragmatism and Imagination
Ritchie challenges conventional portraits of Johnson as a mere anecdotalist or moralist by identifying his deep intellectual engagement with seventeenth-century scientific methodologies. Arguing that Johnson’s critical framework synthesizes Baconian induction with Newtonian vision, Ritchie posits a 'pragmatic and imaginative' outlook that informs his entire literary canon. Johnson employs 'concepts of naked science' to illustrate universal traits of human nature, using the 'microscope of criticism' to discern minute detail and the 'telescope of criticism' to survey the 'vast and the infinite.' Ritchie frames the Dictionary as an 'invaluable interpretative tool' for promoting 'useful knowledge' and traces Johnson’s use of scientific allusions in the Rambler, Adventurer, and Rasselas to advance learning in a pleasurable way. By situating Johnson within the mid-eighteenth-century 'affinity between science and art,' Ritchie asserts that his role as a writer involves 'mediating knowledge' to ensure social and self-improvement.}
An early landmark in focusing on Johnson's achievement as a writer rather than a personality. The work directed scholarly attention specifically toward Johnson’s literary criticism and editing. Raleigh aimed to highlight Johnson's historical and permanent significance. Raleigh engages with Johnson’s critical standards regarding pastoral poetry, specifically addressing Johnson’s questioning of why a poet should translate real passion into the "jargon of a rustic trade." This authoritative early work helped pave the way for later critical rehabilitation of Johnson.
Reprinted Russell & Russell, 1965.
The six essays: I. Samuel Johnson: On Johnson's significance as a biographer, critic, and moralist, noting the shadow cast by Boswell's biography. II. On the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of Johnson's Birth: Celebrates Johnson as the embodiment of the English character, valued for his personal qualities more than his literary success. III. Johnson Without Boswell: Assesses the contributions of other biographers and sources to our knowledge of Johnson's life and conversation. IV. Johnson on Shakespeare: Traces Johnson’s editorial work and criticism of Shakespeare, asserting the value of his plainspoken, common-sense approach. V. Early Lives of the Poets: Provides a historical overview of literary biography, from its earliest forms to the collections that preceded Johnson's major work. VI. Johnson's Lives of the Poets: Analyzes Johnson's final and mature work, focusing on his critical doctrines, style, and insightful judgments on life and letters.
'A Goose-Quill or a Gander's? Female Writers in Johnson's Dictionary
Brewer examines the "striking" neglect of female-authored sources in Johnson's Dictionary, identifying fewer than 30 quotations from women—primarily Charlotte Lennox—out of 140,000. She argues that this "partial record" creates a "profoundly masculine" view of the English language, derived often from "misogynist" male writers. Brewer disputes the idea that Johnson was simply following a "purpose" to exclude living authors, noting his active support for contemporaries like Burney and Piozzi. The essay compares Johnson’s treatment of women to the OED, finding that while the later work is "infinitely more comprehensive," it also maintains a "stark" imbalance. Brewer concludes that Johnson’s "reluctance to cite" women "revised the canon" in ways that "diminish the emotional impact" of female literary history.
Johnsoniana; or, Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson
A supplement to Boswell's biography. It follows a publishing tradition, active since 1798, of presenting extracts, aphorisms, and sayings, often organized thematically. It is gathered from dozens of sources, including Piozzi, Hawkins, Tyers, Hoole, Hannah More, and Arthur Murphy. The compiler explicitly states the anecdotes could not be included as notes in Boswell's text without overloading it. The book is organized into thirty-four parts, with early sections devoted to major biographers and later sections to critical remarks, jeux d’esprit (witty compositions), and a brief memoir of Boswell. The organization proceeds with accounts from Hester Piozzi (Part I), Sir John Hawkins (Part II), and Thomas Tyers (Part III), followed by many others. It covers a vast range of Johnson’s life, conversation, opinions, and peculiarities, touching on his piety, wit, political views (Toryism), personal habits (love of tea), and literary critiques. The editor claims the collection constitutes one of the richest collections of "Materials for Thinking" in literature, implicitly prioritizing the conversational wit of the "great monologuist" while acknowledging the importance of diverse perspectives. Critics are generally favorable toward this supplementary compilation, praising its entertaining nature as an indispensable companion to the primary biography despite noting its reliance on familiar material. A review in the New York Review identifies the volume as a comprehensive record that gathers omitted anecdotes from nearly a hundred publications, embellishing the text with finely engraved portraits of the subject and his contemporaries. Writing in the New-York Daily Tribune, an anonymous critic observes that the collection provides genuine interest and value even to readers thoroughly steeped in the original biography, effectively capturing a majestic intellect alongside the biographer's unapproachable qualities. The New-York Mirror commends the additional memorabilia for offering attractive views into decisions regarding literature, metaphysics, and theology. In Godey’s Lady’s Book, the reviewer characterizes the short, lively extracts as an agreeable and useful species of light reading that successfully preserves contemporary sayings. Similarly, a notice in the Magnolia praises the vast collection of pleasant anecdote and life-like portraits, even if the editor's personal labor appears small. Brother Jonathan considers the miscellaneous gatherings an indispensable appendix that exposes intellectual character and weaknesses without overloading the primary pages. Finally, a review in the Surrey & Middlesex Standard recommends the work as a necessary addition to any complete library, though the writer levies a sharp critique against the exceedingly bad engravings produced by a steam-manufactory.
CGV entry 3:75.
Reviews: Boston Miscellany of Literature 1, no. 4 (1842): 188–89; Boston Miscellany of Literature 2, no. 4 (1842): 188–91; Brother Jonathan (1842): 47; Godey’s Lady’s Book 25 (1842): 249; Lady’s Book 25 (1842): 249; Magnolia 1, no. 5 (1842): 320; New World (September 17, 1842); New York Review 11, no. 22 (1842): 219; New-York Daily Tribune (September 3, 1842); New-York Mirror (September 17, 1842); Portland Transcript (September 17, 1842); Review of New Books (1842): 219; Surrey & Middlesex Standard (March 25, 1837); The Gift (1842): 320.
Selections from the R. B. Adam extra-illustrated copy of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': A keepsake for the 312th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson and the 2021 celebration of the Johnsians hosted by Houghton Library, Harvard University, September 17th, 2021
Viaje a las Islas Occidentales de Escocia
An attractive pocket-sized Spanish translation of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, with a long original introduction in four parts: “El doctor Samuel Johnson (1709–1784): vida, obra y entorno literario”; “La Escocia que conoció Johnson y sus claves históricas: de Caledonia a Culloden”; “El Viaje a las Islas Occidentales de Escocia como libro de viajes: Género, estructuración y contenido”; and “Bibliografía comentada: fuentes primarias y secundarias: Esta edición y traducción.”
Reconsidering Biography: Contexts, Controversies, and Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson
Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and France
'What Mankind Has Lost and Gained': Johnson, Rasselas, and Colonialism
Beyond Sense and Sensibility: Moral Formation and the Literary Imagination from Johnson to Wordsworth
Habit and Reason in Samuel Johnson's Rambler
Thompson examines Johnson's profound anxiety regarding the nonrational force of habit as presented in his Rambler essays. Johnson fears that habit functions as a subhuman impulse that usurps the primacy of reason and renders the human will impotent. Drawing on Lockean moral psychology, Johnson characterizes the natural human state as one of relentless desire, where habit enslaves the mind to immediate gratifications. Thompson notes that Johnson distinguishes human agency by the freedom to make rational choices, yet he recognizes that habit often interrupts the movement from reason to voluntary action. While Johnson generally condemns habit as a loss of control, Thompson identifies suggestive inconsistencies where he begrudgingly acknowledges habit's power as a morally constitutive force. By destabilizing the binary between the rational and irrational, Johnson’s struggles with his own rebellious fits of indolence prefigure modern efforts to reconcile habit with reason in the formation of moral identity.
Studies in Ephemera: Text and Image in Eighteenth-Century Print
Of Grubs and Other Insects: Constructing the Categories of 'Ephemera' and 'Literature' in Eighteenth-Century British Writing
On how the mutually exclusive categories of "ephemera" and "Literature" were constructed in eighteenth-century Britain in response to print proliferation. While contemporaries like Swift and Pope valorized "enduring" works over "ephemeral" pieces, Johnson explicitly argued for the preservation and importance of small tracts and fugitive pieces as a valuable part of an English library and as a form of literature. Johnson's editorial work on the Harleian Library forced him to confront the difficulty of classifying these materials, leading him to admit the inadequacy of conventional systems.
Impassioned Jurisprudence Law, Literature, and Emotion, 1760–1848
'How like You the Eloquence of a Young Barrister?': Love and the Law in Boswell's Development as a Writer in the Late 1760s
Johnson, Burke, Boswell, and the Slavery Debate
Lambert triangulates the views of Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Boswell concerning slavery and the abolition movement. Despite political disagreements on other matters, Johnson and Burke shared a strong moral opposition to slavery. Lambert contrasts their abolitionist sentiments with Boswell’s explicit defense of the slave trade as a necessary commercial interest, sanctioned by history and beneficial to Africans. The essay highlights how Boswell strategically inserted his own pro-slavery arguments into the Life of Johnson, particularly around Johnson’s dictated legal brief for the Joseph Knight case, revealing Boswell's use of the biography to advance personal opinions.
Samuel Johnson's Attitude Toward Islam: A Study of His Oriental Readings and Writings
Nassir investigates the development of Johnson's 'Oriental' works, specifically Irene, Rasselas, and various short tales, within the context of 18th-century English interest in the East. The text explores how Johnson used the Orient as a framework to address themes of religious choice, moral duty, and the 'freedom to choose.' Analysis of Irene demonstrates that Johnson portrays apostasy as a 'treason against God' and the 'Christian audience,' strategically stripping the character Irene of sympathy to emphasize the gravity of her rejection of Christianity. Nassir argues that Johnson's depictions were informed by a broad 'historical background of English Orientalism' and actual West-East contact, yet remained focused on universal moral arguments. The study highlights that Demetrius's role in Irene is 'crucial' for developing the argument that individuals possess the agency to resist or accept conversion regardless of external pressure.
Representations of the Orient before Samuel Johnson -- Samuel Johnson's Oriental reading -- Samuel Johnson and his attitude toward Islam -- Irene : Islam is a menace, not "an object of curiosity" -- The perception of the Orient in Rasselas -- Johnson's Orientalism in the short Oriental tales in The Rambler and Idler -- Appendix A. A sample of Johnson's books on the Orient -- Appendix B. Another sample of Johnson's books on the Orient
Boswell and the Press: Essays on the Ephemeral Writing of James Boswell
The Hypochondriack and Its Context: James Boswell, 1777–1783
Ingram examines Boswell's Hypochondriack essay series published in the London Magazine (1777–1783), situating it within the context of his ongoing struggles with the condition during those years. Ingram traces the series' progression, noting Boswell's initial (and inaccurate) self-presentation as a former sufferer. He highlights the tension between Boswell's fluctuating moods—often documented in his private journal entries detailing the composition process—and the required monthly production of the essays. The analysis culminates in Hypochondriack 39, where Boswell drops the essayistic persona to confront his "dismal depression" directly, marking a significant, candid departure in the essay tradition. Ingram argues this sustained engagement with his malady significantly shifted the English essay by legitimizing the vulnerable self as a central subject.
Harada explores Johnson's role in the development of biography and its relevance to the modernization processes in both Britain and Japan. Harada posits that Johnson's biographical writings and his own status as a biographical subject, amplified by Boswell, mirrored and influenced the growing importance of individual life stories in modern society. He draws parallels with Meiji Japan, where biographical forms, including translations of Western works like Smiles's Self-Help, were popular and instrumental in cultural transformation. Johnson, embodying intellectual independence and moral authority, served as a significant model for the evolving status of writers in modernizing Japan.
Ashgate Critical Essays on Early English Lexicographers, Volume 5: The Eighteenth Century
Seventeenth-Century Jurisprudence and Eighteenth-Century Lexicography: Sources for Johnson's Notion of Authority
Stone explores the similes linking language to law and liberty in Johnson's lexicographical works. He argues that Johnsonian standard English finds its intellectual origins in Sir Edward Coke's 17th-century restatement of common law. Johnson rejected the codified Continental model of the French Academy, opting instead for a standard based on "decrees of custom" and repeated precedents. In the Preface, Johnson adopts the role of a common-law judge, balancing quatable authorities with common usage to discover a "reasonable, arguable standard." He connects the preservation of the English language to the spirit of "English liberty," viewing tongues and governments as organic entities subject to natural degeneration. Stone concludes that Johnson's notion of authority resides in principles evolved through concrete experience rather than deductive rules.
Mentoring in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
The Text of the Missed Encounter: Mentorship as Absence in Smart, Johnson, Bate, and Trilling
Simmons explores the "profound absence" of Christopher Smart in Johnson’s later life as a form of failed mentorship. Using the poststructuralist concept of the "missed encounter," the text analyzes Johnson’s "absolute refusal" to acknowledge Smart after his second confinement in a madhouse, noting that Johnson’s silence served to "discredit Smart" and exclude him from the Lives of the Poets. Simmons identifies a "profound presence" of Smart within Johnson's psyche, describing the poet as a "shadow-self" and "ghost" that haunted Johnson’s own fears of insanity. The study extends this paradigm of "mentorship as loss" to the 20th-century scholarship of W. Jackson Bate and Lionel Trilling, arguing that Bate's "passionate investment" in Johnson’s struggle for "temperate reason" mirrors Johnson's identification with Smart. Simmons argues that these "unintelligible texts of mortality" reveal the "decentered subject" hidden behind the myth of the autonomous soul.
The Drudgery of Defining: Johnson's Debt to Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum
McCracken examines the extent of Johnson's reliance on Bailey's folio Dictionarium Britannicum during the compilation of the 1755 Dictionary. While Hawkins and Boswell acknowledge Johnson's use of an interleaved copy of Bailey as a repository for notes, McCracken demonstrates through a study of the letter L that Johnson maintained significant independence. Johnson included 394 words omitted by Bailey and excluded 909 of Bailey's entries, favoring commonly spoken words over hard words. Only thirteen definitions under L appear word for word from Bailey, such as "Legality. Lawfulness." Johnson's primary drudgery involved original defining and the selection of literary quotations, which Bailey lacked. Although Johnson used Bailey's word list as an organizational guide, his work reflects the labor of a writer rather than a copyist.
Who's Mentoring Whom? Mentorship, Alliance, and Rivalry in the Carter-Johnson Relationship
Lee challenges traditional biographical hierarchies by arguing that Elizabeth Carter served as a co-mentor to Samuel Johnson during their early association in 1738 and 1739. While critics typically frame Johnson as the 'superior party' and master, Lee highlights that Carter was an established 'London phenomenon' before Johnson's arrival. The text demonstrates how their relationship functioned as a 'sibling alliance' intended to 'overthrow the oppressive influence' of Alexander Pope. Lee provides a detailed chronology of their collaboration, including mutual praise in the Gentleman's Magazine and their joint translation projects attacking Pope's philosophy. The analysis identifies 'powerful psychic energies of competition' and reveals that Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes constitutes a 'complete revision' and replication of Carter's earlier poem, Fortune. Lee asserts that Carter's influence helped 'shape Johnson's literary sensibility' and mature philosophical outlook, particularly her emphasis on 'internal resources' over external conflict.
The Duties of a Scholar: Samuel Johnson in Piozzi's Anecdotes
Hedrick argues that Hester Thrale Piozzi's Anecdotes evaluates Johnson through the lens of his own 'professed standards' regarding the 'duties of a scholar.' While recognizing the 'purgatorial tone' and 'barely suppressed anger' often noted by feminist scholarship, Hedrick contends that Piozzi displays 'mature sympathy' for Johnson's struggle to balance intellectual authority with social obligations. The text identifies five components of Johnson's scholarly ideal—reading, thinking, writing, talking, and listening—and shows how Piozzi depicts him 'lurching unsteadily' between these roles. Hedrick contrasts Boswell's 'systematically defensive' representation of Johnson's combativeness with Piozzi's willingness to place his 'surly' and 'rude' behavior in a critical light. The study highlights Johnson's belief that scholars must 'come out and bark' rather than 'sit and growl' in isolation, portraying his conversational dominance as a 'defensive posture' managed and endured by Piozzi over eighteen years.
Notes on Serialization and Competitive Publishing: Johnson's and Bailey's Dictionaries, 1755
Gove analyzes the 1755 serialization of Johnson's Dictionary and its competition with a rival folio edition of Bailey's work. The second edition of Johnson's Dictionary, issued in 165 weekly sixpenny numbers, required three years to complete. Strahan employed ingenious planning to manage alternating sheet counts and half-sheets, though the edition suffered from abbreviated source citations to save time. Simultaneously, the proprietors of Bailey's dictionary rushed a "new" folio edited by Scott to hold the field against Johnson. This rival work plagiarized line after line from Johnson's "History" and "Grammar," even adopting his numbering system for definitions. Gove concludes that while the Bailey-Scott work persevered for seventeen years, it owed its principal merit to Johnson's involuntary contributions.
Raising a Risible Nation: Merry Mentoring and the Art (and Sometimes Science) of Joking Greatness
Cope argues that merry mentoring through jokes and witticisms in eighteenth-century literature functioned as an accelerated curriculum for instruction. Boswell's humorous reports about Johnson are a case study, presenting him as a formidable yet accessible genius. Johnson's jokes use speedy, elliptical thinking and abrupt shifts in spatial perspectives to cut through detail, establish authority, and elevate his status as a mentor. Such humor converts the raw material of genius into a simulacrum of mentorship.
The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq.; Being the Bibliographical Materials for a Life of Boswell
Pottle uses "scientific bibliography" to reconstruct Boswell's character, arguing that a chronological study of his writings is the "safest and most fruitful way" to understand the man. Challenging the "sot and idler" stereotype, Pottle documents a massive corpus of work—including seventy articles in the London Chronicle in 1767 alone—showing Boswell's industry "may have exceeded Johnson's." The study identifies forty-five pseudonyms and establishes Boswell as an author of "international reputation" for his Corsican works long before he wrote on Johnson. Pottle highlights the "ribald" Ode to Mrs. Thrale to "modify our conception" of Boswell’s "idolatry," suggesting a more "complex mentality" than Macaulay's "witless parasite." He characterizes the Life of Johnson not as a miracle by an "inexperienced author" but as the "crowning achievement" of "more than twenty-five years" of "deliberate disciplining." By thumping down the "mere bulk" of these "bibliographical materials," Pottle provides an "effective alibi" against charges of dissipation, presenting Boswell as an artist whose "chief passion" was "literary fame." Chapter 1, "Editiones Principes; Books, Pamphlets, Broadsides," addresses the primary bibliographical records of the subject’s separately published works, focusing on their physical descriptions, publication histories, and the pursuit of literary fame through varied formats. Chapter 2, "Periodical Publications," addresses the extensive and often anonymous contributions made to contemporary journals and newspapers, highlighting a prolific journalistic output that shaped public opinion on Corsica and legal causes. Chapter 3, "Posthumous Publications," addresses the documentation of writings issued after the subject’s death, providing scholarly accounts of recovered manuscripts and later editions that expanded the known canon. Chapter 4, "A Doubtful Work," addresses the problematic attribution of a specific theatrical review from 1759, analyzing internal and external evidence to determine the likelihood of authentic authorship. Chapter 5, "Works Attributed to Boswell Wrongly or with Insufficient Evidence," addresses the correction of the bibliographical record by identifying and dismissing spurious or incorrectly assigned texts based on rigorous investigative standards. Chapter 6, "Projected Works," addresses the ambitious literary plans and unfinished manuscripts that reveal the breadth of intended intellectual pursuits and the subject’s lifelong preoccupation with diverse scholarly subjects. Chapter 7, "Contemporary Reviews of Boswell's Works," addresses the critical reception of published writings during the subject’s lifetime, documenting the evolving public and critical perception of his literary identity and achievements. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics celebrating the volume as an exact, landmark bibliographical study that successfully dismantles long-standing historical caricatures of a dissolute, idle parasite. In TLS, Powell commends the high quality of description and chronological arrangement, though he uses a brief note to resolve a textual discrepancy regarding a historical masquerade motto. Writing in MLR, Wilks applauds the application of scientific bibliography to illuminate the subject's character and relentless self-promotion, specifically highlighting the discovery of a scandalous, ribald ode regarding a contemporary woman. In PQ, Thompson praises the good order and illuminating commentary, noting the text reinforces a less familiar portrait of a busy, widely known author and barrister. Crane, writing in the Yale Review, validates the rigorous inductive methodology that solves complex problems of attribution and provenience. The review in Modern Philology highlights the thorough coverage of a massive output and the exhaustive treatment of a major biographical masterpiece. In the New Statesman, the reviewer praises the erudition and fullness but notes that a bibliographical study alone cannot examine personal motives or constitute a complete literary career for the average reader. The Spectator considers the work an invaluable tool for scholars that proves the subject possessed an international reputation much earlier than traditionally assumed. Writing in the London Mercury, Williams lauds the volume as an exceptionally readable and amusing account of self-puffing tactics and pseudonyms, while N&Q adds confirmation that compiled intellectual data dispels Victorian-era distortions.
Cochrane entry 37.
Reviews: George Carver, Thought 5, no. 1 (1930): 145–46; Louis Cazamian, Revue Anglo-Américaine 8 (1930): 157–59; Colophon 1 (1930): 5; R. S. Crane, Yale Review 19, no. 3 (1930): 616–19; Henry Murray, Sunday Times, May 5, 1929; New Statesman, June 8, 1929; N&Q 158, no. 10 (1930): 179; L. F. Powell, MP 30, no. 1 (1932): 116–18; L. F. Powell, TLS, no. 1424 (1929): 408; T. B. Simpson, JEGP 29, no. 2 (1930): 289–90; Dorothy Margaret Stuart, The Nation and the Athenaeum 45, no. 11 (1929): 374; The Spectator 143, no. 5274 (1929): 129; E. N. S. Thompson, PQ 9, no. 1 (1930): 87–88; G. M. Troxell, Saturday Review of Literature 6 (August 10, 1929): 44; John Wilks, MLR 25, no. 4 (1930): 488–90; I. A. Williams, London Mercury 20 (1929): 618; G. P. Winship, Modern Language Notes 45, no. 4 (1930): 254–56; F. T. Wood, Englische Studien 67 (1932): 132–34.
Hester: The Remarkable Life of Dr. Johnson's 'Dear Mistress'
McIntyre chronicles the life of Hester Salusbury from her childhood as a Welsh prodigy through her marriages to Henry Thrale and Gabriel Piozzi. The narrative details her education under Dr. Arthur Collier and her role as the "Mistress of Streatham," where she hosted a distinguished literary circle including Reynolds, Burney, and Boswell. McIntyre explores the "endless speculation" surrounding her intimate sixteen-year bond with Johnson, describing her as his "sparring partner" and confidante. The text explains how Thrale’s intellectual contributions and her publication of the Anecdotes of Johnson both popularised her and "irritated" Boswell. Significant focus is placed on the "scandalized" reaction of London society to her marriage to Piozzi, an Italian music master, which damaged her social standing and her relationship with her daughters. McIntyre uses Thraliana, her extensive six-volume diary, to provide a "goldmine" of detail on her domestic life, business acumen, and political views. The work frames Thrale as an "exceptional woman" and one of the first female historians whose "life, loves and letters" offer a "major contribution" to the understanding of Georgian England. Chapter 1, 'Daughter of Wales,' addresses the origins of the Salusbury family, exploring the subject's pride in her Welsh ancestry and the volatile domestic environment created by her father's financial instability and temper. Chapter 2, 'Great Expectations,' argues that the subject's early precocity and classical education were fostered amidst poverty while her father pursued failed colonial prospects in Nova Scotia and her uncle secured family wealth. Chapter 3, 'The Bartered Bride,' addresses the calculated matrimonial alliance with Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer, documenting the familial pressures and strategic negotiations that prioritized financial security over the subject's personal inclination or romantic interest. Chapter 4, 'Mistress of Streatham,' addresses the subject’s transition into a restricted domestic life defined by frequent pregnancies and the significant introduction of Samuel Johnson, which fundamentally altered her intellectual and social landscape. Chapter 5, 'Enter James Boswell,' argues that the subject’s deepening intimacy with Johnson created a competitive rivalry with James Boswell while exploring the complex psychological role she assumed as Johnson's confidante and caregiver. Chapter 6, 'Thrale's Annus Horribilis,' addresses the 1772 financial crisis at the brewery, illustrating the subject’s decisive intervention to prevent bankruptcy and the subsequent physical and emotional toll of repeated infant mortality. Chapter 7, 'Siberian Winter,' addresses the subject's isolation and profound grief following her mother's death, while documenting the increasingly dependent and psychologically fraught nature of her relationship with an aging, infirm Johnson. Chapter 8, 'Travelling Hopefully,' addresses the subject's 1774 journey to Wales with her husband and Johnson, highlighting her sharp social observations and the persistent emotional trauma caused by her disinheritance from the Offley estate. The critical reception of this biography is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising its "imaginative and generous" portrayal of a "formidable and original figure" whose life was defined by intellectual curiosity and emotional resilience. Critics applaud the author’s ability to breathe "magnificent new life" into the subject, successfully re-evaluating her as an "autonomous being" rather than merely a secondary character in a famous man’s circle. The narrative is lauded for its "crisp and exact" prose and its effective use of the subject's "candid, animated" journals, specifically the Thraliana, to document her "tough-mindedness" and "relish for life." The work is further commended for defending her against the "lubricious maunderings" and "virulent" rivalry of her contemporary, James Boswell, presenting her literary output as "more perceptive and less sentimental" than traditional accounts. However, some minor critiques emerge; one reviewer identifies a weakness in the book's "naming convention" for omitting surnames, while another notes a preference for a "more concise narrative" over the "marvellously rich" detail provided. Despite these points, the consensus highlights the biography's success in balancing "human interest with historical detail," ultimately validating the subject's significance as a writer whose "spirited" and "vivacious" personality makes her a representative figure of the eighteenth century.
In this comedic supernatural adventure, young Samuel Johnson and his trusty dachshund, Boswell, find themselves entangled in another existential crisis when a mysterious entity reopens Wreckit & Sons department store in the English town of Biddlecombe. The store sits at the focal point of an inverted pentagram composed of gloomy buildings designed by the long-dead architect Hilary Mould, functioning as a vast occult power generator fueled by death and suffering. While the demonic reassembling of the fragmented Mrs. Abernathy threatens to rip open a permanent boundary to the Kingdom of Shadows, a chaotic assortment of local allies—including scientists disguised in false beards, disgruntled dwarfs hired as retail elves, the boy band BoyStarz, and two hapless policemen—must confront an onslaught of murderous dolls, giant multi-armed shadow monsters, and a polite red-furred beast to avert the destruction of the Multiverse.
Printed for J. & A. Arch; & for Bell & Bradfute, and J. Mundell Edinburgh
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., with Critical Observations on His Works
Robert Anderson’s 1795 biography offers a comprehensive look at the life and works of Samuel Johnson, drawing from the earlier publications of James Boswell, Sir John Hawkins, and Hester Thrale Piozzi. The text follows Johnson from his early life in Litchfield, through his irregular education and struggles with "morbid melancholy," to his eventual status as a central figure in English literature. Anderson analyzes the development of Johnson’s major works, including his Dictionary of the English Language, his periodical essays like The Rambler, and his final significant project, The Lives of the Poets. The biography details Johnson's personal and professional relationships, particularly his close association with the Thrale family and his long-standing friendship with Boswell. Anderson characterizes Johnson as a man of "gigantic vigour" and deep piety, while also acknowledging his prejudices, social eccentricities, and the "pitiable religious credulity" that marked his later years. The work serves as both a narrative of Johnson's life and a critical review of his contributions to philology, biography, and moral philosophy. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the compilation's structural originality, its accuracy in documenting physical and mental traits, and the validity of its textual criticisms. An unsigned review in *Monthly Review* initiates a positive appraisal, praising the well-selected and arranged facts and the candid defense of the central subject's royal pension. A subsequent piece by D.B. in *Monthly Review* reinforces this approval, lauding the fair apology for personal piety and defending the evaluation of the Shakespeare edition, though the critic attributes the subject's convulsive motions to St. Vitus's dance rather than superstition. An unsigned commentary in *Analytical Review* balances this perspective, labeling the work a fair memoir that accurately captures a mind of gigantic vigor, while supporting the censure of the subject's churlish party-spirit against Milton and Gray. Conversely, an unsigned assessment in *Critical Review* is severe, characterizing the biography as a dry, servile abridgment of Boswell marred by inaccuracies and verbatim copying.
Bought 10 Sept. 2020 on eBay from DBFlyer_2000 for $51.
CGV entry 3:33. Also issued as "The Life of Johnson" in Robert Anderson's edition of 'The Works of the British Poets', volume 11, pages 779-836 (1795). A revised and enlarged third edition was published in Edinburgh in 1815.
Reviews: Analytical Review 23, no. 1 (1796): 47–52; Critical Review 16 (1796): 27–31; Monthly Review 18 (1795): 18–26; Monthly Review 20 (1796): 18–27.
Pottle uses the story of the convict Mary Bryant to provide a revealing portrait of Boswell in his final years. The book's narrative recounts Bryant's "heroic" and "amazing" escape from the penal colony at Botany Bay, navigating an open boat over three thousand miles to Timor, only to be recaptured and shipped back to England in chains, having lost her husband and children along the way. Boswell’s passionate, obsessive, and ultimately successful campaign to save Bryant from Newgate prison and secure her pardon is a culminating episode of his life, revealing the very essence of his character. This little-known story, rescued from Boswell's private papers, shows him acting as a true hero, driven by a profound humanitarian compassion and his lifelong romantic fascination with the outcast, the condemned, and the "unconquerable" human spirit. By championing the "girl from Botany Bay," Boswell was not merely performing an act of charity; he was engaging in one last great adventure, demonstrating his own capacity for decisive, heroic action and deep sympathy, far removed from his more famous role as Johnson's celebrated biographer. Preface, 'Preface,' addresses the author's intent to reconstruct the remarkable history of Mary Bryant, the 'Girl from Botany Bay,' based on a presidential address and supplemented by exhaustive research into the Private Papers of James Boswell. Chapter 1, 'The Story of the Escape,' addresses the harrowing and incredible journey of Mary Bryant and her companions as they navigated an open boat three thousand miles from the penal colony at Botany Bay to Timor. Chapter 2, 'Boswell and the Prisoners,' addresses the dramatic intersection of Boswell’s life with the recaptured convicts in London, detailing his tireless legal and financial efforts to secure their release from Newgate Prison. Chapter 3, 'The Success of the Petition,' argues that Boswell’s persistent advocacy and personal influence were the decisive factors in obtaining a royal pardon for Mary Bryant and her surviving associates. Chapter 4, 'Mary Bryant's Return,' addresses the final known chapter of Mary’s life, including her return to her native Cornwall and Boswell's continued provision of a personal annuity to ensure her welfare. Appendix: Notes, 'Appendix: Notes,' addresses the scholarly foundation of the narrative, providing detailed bibliographic evidence and parish record data to verify the historical identities of the escapees.
Cochrane entry 13. A London edition from Heinemann followed in 1938.
British Art, 1740–1820: Essays in Honor of Robert R. Wark
Giuseppe Baretti as 'A Man of Great Humanity'
C. S. Lewis's List: The Ten Books That Influenced Him Most
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Tankard analyzes the profound influence of Boswell's biography on C. S. Lewis, noting that Lewis viewed Johnson as a "shining example of human holiness." The article highlights temperamental resemblances between Lewis and Johnson, including their "Johnsonian Colossus" learning, love of tea, and "aggressive militance" in debate. Tankard argues that Boswell's "uniquely powerful biographical method" provided Lewis with an object lesson in how to be a "middle-aged moralist" and public intellectual. Lewis frequently used the text as "mealtime reading," regarding it as an "oasis of reasonableness." Tankard details how both men shared a phenomenal memory for text and used satire to "deflect the directness" of moral instruction. Tankard positions the biography as a "touchstone of literary familiarity" for Lewis, shaping his vocational attitude toward didactic writing for the common reader.
You Could Look It Up: The Reference Shelf, from Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia
Lynch traces the evolution of reference works from the Code of Hammurabi to modern digital platforms, emphasizing how these "memoranda to a civilization" shape knowledge and authority. Using a Plutarchan method of paired case studies, Lynch highlights the personalities and sociopolitical contexts behind major texts. A central chapter contrasts the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française with Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, identifying the latter as a milestone for its systematic use of 115,000 illustrative quotations and its transition from a "civilizing" mission to a descriptive recognition of language change. Lynch explores various genres—including legal codes (Justinian), natural histories (Pliny), medical handbooks (Avicenna), and numerical tables (Kepler)—arguing that reference books were catalysts for the scientific revolution and the invention of the computer. He details the labor-intensive production of these works, from Johnson’s Gough Square attic to the assembly-line efficiency of the Mathematical Tables Project. The text also addresses the "ghost words" generated by lexicographical error, the commercial necessity of abridgments, and the historical exclusion of women from reference editing. Lynch concludes that while the medium has shifted from diorite steles and codices to "random-access" electronic databases, the encyclopedic dream of collecting all knowledge persists as an essential, if quixotic, human endeavor.
Jonson to bozueru = Samuel Johnson and James Boswell: Jijitsu no shuhen
Jonson to bozueru = Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Kelley and Brack assess the early biographers of Johnson, preceding the 1974 annotated edition of the texts themselves. The book focuses on biographical accounts published primarily between 1784 and 1786. The authors exclude the full-length biographies by Piozzi, Hawkins, and Boswell, along with earlier inconsequential accounts and numerous journalistic sketches. Instead, the book concentrates on detailed analysis of accounts by Shaw, Towers, Tyers, Cooke, and three anonymous authors. The study notes that these biographers frequently borrowed material from one another, often exhibiting prejudice and generally lacking profound psychological insight. The early biographies serve as crucial evidence for modern scholars, establishing the context for the more substantial later biographies. It also documents that Shaw’s "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson" was reprinted across seven different publications between 1784 and 1785. Reviewers describe the book as a competent essay in rediscovery that faithfully presents the obscure origins of a literary legend. Baridon and Bloom praise the study for affirming the value of minor figures like Towers, Tyers, Cooke, and Baker, whose reputations were eclipsed by later biographers. Morgan finds the assessment sound and incisive, noting that while these early writers lacked psychological insight and shamelessly borrowed material, they offer a sound reflection of contemporary reputation. But Keast and Waingrow argue that the analytical framework—dividing the subject into writer and moralist—is overly mechanical or arbitrary. The Johnsonian News Letter, however, maintains that this introductory volume provides a beneficial scholarly light for those tracking the genesis of eighteenth-century hagiography.
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book That Defined the World
Hitchings characterizes Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language as the eighteenth century's most significant cultural monument, representing an audacious effort to tame an unruly native tongue through more than 42,000 entries and 110,000 illustrative quotations. The compilation process constituted a "heroic ordeal" marked by chronic "black despondency" and personal tragedies, including the death of his wife. Working from a Gough Square garret with six amanuenses, Johnson used a genetic method of definition that traced the evolution of meanings from literal roots to abstract applications, moving from "natural and primitive signification" to figurative senses. Influenced by Locke's empiricism, he initially sought to "fix" the language to arrest its decline but eventually recognized its inherent mutability, transitioning toward a descriptive lexicographical approach that documented language as a "living" entity. The Dictionary functioned as an "instrument of cultural imperialism," establishing middle-class standards of propriety and moral rectitude while asserting a new concept of "Britishness." Despite occasional idiosyncratic definitions and etymological errors, Johnson’s work enjoyed totemic status for over 150 years, serving as an "accessible and crucial guide" that transformed reading into a department of literature and influenced a vast canon of subsequent writers and lexicographers. Chapter 1, 'Adventurous,' establishes the Dictionary as a cultural monument that mirrored eighteenth-century society while detailing the physical and psychological ordeal of its heroic, decade-long compilation. Chapter 2, 'Amulet,' explores the formative influence of childhood illness and poverty in Lichfield, arguing that early suffering instilled the resilience necessary for later intellectual projects. Chapter 3, 'Apple,' analyzes how unstructured reading in his father’s bookshop fostered an independent scholarly mind and a lifelong aversion to curated children's literature. Chapter 4, 'Bookworm,' describes the pivotal transition from provincial student to aspiring man of letters during a transformative stay with his worldly cousin, Cornelius Ford. Chapter 5, 'Commoner,' details the truncated education at Oxford, where financial hardship and personal gloom failed to prevent the absorption of vast literary materials. Chapter 6, 'Darkling,' examines the professional failures in teaching and the first commercial publication in Birmingham, which established a template for later editorial work. Chapter 7, 'To Decamp,' portrays the move to London as an entry into the volatile "Grub Street" marketplace, where journalism for the Gentleman’s Magazine taught rapid composition. Chapter 8, 'To Dissipate,' analyzes the cautionary friendship with Richard Savage, framing it as an allegory of the writer’s vulnerability in the city’s literary underworld. Chapter 9, 'English,' traces the linguistic necessity for a major dictionary, arguing that national prestige and the rage for order motivated the project’s inception. Chapter 10, 'Entrance,' discusses the commercial consortium of booksellers and the move to Gough Square, highlighting the financial and logistical scale of the undertaking. Chapter 11, 'Factotum,' recognizes the crucial labor of the six amanuenses, emphasizing how their companionship and diverse skills supported the arduous process of transcription. Chapter 12, 'To Gather,' explains the inductive methodology of generating a word-list through extensive reading, rather than relying on predetermined alphabetical lists or previous dictionaries. Chapter 13, 'Higgledy-Piggledy,' details the shift from a rigid skeleton dictionary to an empirical, descriptive approach that better captured the "exuberance of signification" in literature. Chapter 14, 'Lexicographer,' defines the art of definition as a balance between Aristotelian logic and Locke’s sensory experience, mapping the historical genealogy of meanings. Chapter 15, 'Library,' analyzes the selection of a literary canon for illustrative quotations, arguing that these fragments function as a patriotic and moral intellectual history. Chapter 16, 'Melancholy,' investigates how personal tragedy and chronic depression during the 1750s deeply influenced the Dictionary’s often morbid and somber illustrative choices. Chapter 17, 'Microscope,' examines the engagement with contemporary science and microscopy, framing self-scrutiny as a form of intellectual observation that bordered on the freakish. Chapter 18, 'Network,' considers the specific challenges of defining everyday objects and technical terms, presenting lexicography as a tool for revitalizing and estranging reader perceptions. Chapter 19, 'Nicety,' explores the subjective nature of the work, noting how personal prejudice and social values occasionally colored definitions of "cant" or "low" words. Chapter 20, 'To Note,' argues that the Dictionary functioned as an instrument of middle-class identity and cultural imperialism by establishing a standard for national English. Chapter 21, 'Opinionist,' discusses the tension between objective recording and moral regulation, showing how the work acted as a "battleground" for religious and political orthodoxy. Chapter 22, 'Opulence,' chronicles the inclusion of contemporary metropolitan innovations, from dental hygiene to new leisure activities, documenting the era’s cultural flux. Chapter 23, 'Pastern,' addresses the inevitability of error in a single-handed project, arguing that mistakes and inconsistencies are integral to the Dictionary's human character. Chapter 24, 'Patron,' recounts the famous rejection of Lord Chesterfield, framing the event as a symbolic end to the culture of patronage in favor of the marketplace. Chapter 25, 'Philology,' assesses the etymological efforts, acknowledging their scientific limitations while praising the attempt to identify the "radical primitives" of the language. Chapter 26, 'Pleasureful,' highlights the "buried delights" and strange folkloric beliefs preserved in the text, which offer relief from the labor of verbal searches. Chapter 27, 'To Preface,' analyzes the magisterial introduction as a personal and elegiac statement that reconciled the author to the inherent instability of living language. Chapter 28, 'Publication,' describes the physical reality of the cumbersome folio volumes and the author's transition from relief to anxiety regarding their reception. Chapter 29, 'Reception,' examines the immediate critical success of the work, which was hailed as a stupendous achievement of individual labor over collective academic efforts. Chapter 30, 'Triumphant,' discusses the subsequent grant of a state pension, framing it as the ultimate public recognition of the Dictionary’s national importance. Chapter 31, 'Ubiquity,' traces the afterlife of the work through various abridgments and schoolroom editions, establishing its role as an international standard. Chapter 32, 'Variety,' details the intensive revisions made for the fourth edition, which further aligned the work with High Church Anglicanism and moral tutelage. Chapter 33, 'Weightiness,' concludes by assessing the monumental influence on future lexicographers, including the editors of the OED, who frequently adopted its definitions. Chapter 34, 'X,' addresses the limitations of genre definitions, particularly the novel, reflecting the cultural flux and distrust of realistic fiction. Chapter 35, 'Zootomy,' metaphorically applies the final word of the Dictionary to biography, arguing that the work remains a vital dissection of its author’s mind. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with commentators celebrating the work's lively, inventive blend of biography and technical history on the anniversary of a great cultural milestone. Most reviews focus on how the study shifts emphasis away from later biographical legends to restore attention to the daily realities of the compilation process, though some scholars debate whether it oversimplifies the political implications of eighteenth-century lexicography. In a front-page review for NYTBR, McGrath commends the book as an entertaining and inventive guide to an idiosyncratic masterpiece, despite finding some biographical elements slightly fragmented. Writing in the LA Times, Smith offers an approving account that highlights the documentation of self-willed privation and the innovative use of illustrative citations to map shades of meaning. Motion, in the Guardian, delivers an enthusiastic review, praising the attention to the human cost of the project and the technical analysis of etymology. In the TLS, Keymer lauds the rich, lively biographical narrative, tracing the transition from a conservative plan to a descriptive method that embraced linguistic fluidity. Nokes, writing in the Times Higher Education Supplement, finds the volume full of serendipitous felicities that effectively illustrate local affections and moral distastes. Finally, Johnston's review in AJ praises the energetic and inventive approach but critiques the tendency to portray the underlying achievement as a mere instrument of cultural imperialism, arguing this misrepresents a far more complex historical practice.
Published in the US as Defining the world: The extraordinary story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).
Reviews: Nicholas Bagnall, Literary Review (April 2005); Katherine Bailey, British Heritage (November 2005): 48; Christopher Bantick, Hobart Mercury, July 9, 2005; Lisa Berglund, Dictionaries 27 (2006): 184–85; Michael J. Bonafield, Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities, January 2, 2006; Sarah Burton, The Spectator 297, no. 9218 (2005): 37; John Carey, Sunday Times (London), March 27, 2005; Kate Chisholm, Irish Independent, April 16, 2005; Kate Chisholm and Henry Hitchings, Sunday Telegraph (London), April 3, 2005; Tim Cribb, South China Morning Post, April 17, 2005; Jodie Davis, The Herald Sun (Melbourne), July 9, 2005; Quentin De la Bédoyère, Catholic Herald, June 3, 2005; Kitty Chen Dean, Library Journal, September 15, 2005, 66; Daniel Dyer and Henry Hitchings, Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 16, 2005; Peter Elson, Daily Post (Liverpool), June 6, 2005; Brian Fallon, Irish Times, May 7, 2005; Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe, October 2, 2005; Maree Gallagher, Southland Times, July 2, 2005; Rosemary Goring, The Herald (Glasgow), April 2, 2005; William Grimes, New York Times, November 12, 2005; Paul Groves and Henry Hitchings, Birmingham Post, April 9, 2005; Christopher Hawtree, The Independent on Sunday, April 17, 2005; Henry Hitchings, TLS, no. 5313 (January 2005): 36; Tom Howard, Time Out, June 1, 2005; Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph (London), April 9, 2005; Alan Jacobs, Christianity Today (January 2006); Richard Jenkyns, Prospect, April 21, 2005; Freya Johnston, AJ 17 (2006): 417–18; Peter Kanter, JNL 57, no. 1 (2006): 57–60; Catherine Keenan, Sydney Morning Herald, January 7, 2006; Thomas Keymer, TLS, no. 5324 (April 2005): 10; Kirkus Reviews (August 15, 2005); Martin H. Levinson, ETC: A Review of General Semantics 64, no. 2 (2007): 177; Jeremy Lewis, The Mail on Sunday, April 3, 2005; Peter Lewis, Daily Mail (London), April 29, 2005; Roger Lewis, The Express (London), April 1, 2005; Jack Lynch, Washington Examiner, October 17, 2005; Philip Marchand, Toronto Star, January 15, 2006; Warwick McFadyen, The Sunday Age, June 26, 2005; Charles McGrath, NYTBR, December 4, 2005; Stephen Miller, WSJ, October 12, 2005; Andrew Motion, The Guardian, April 2, 2005; Victoria Murchie, Aberdeen Press and Journal, April 7, 2005; David Nokes, THES, no. 1739 (April 2006): 22; Andrew O’Hagan, NYRB 53, no. 7 (2006): 12–13; Sara O’Leary, Vancouver Sun, January 7, 2006; Matthew Price, Boston Globe, May 22, 2005; Publishers Weekly, July 18, 2005; Alan Rauch, Charlotte Observer, July 2, 2006; Jemma Read, The Observer (London), April 24, 2005; Matthew J. Reisz, The Independent, April 15, 2005; Anneli Rufus, The Express (London), 2006; David Self, Times Educational Supplement, April 1, 2005; Will Self, New Statesman, May 16, 2005; Jesse Sheidlower, BookForum 12, no. 3 (2005): 5–7; Tracy Lee Simmons, Weekly Standard, May 29, 2006; Ken Smith, LA Times, October 23, 2005; James Srodes, Washington Times, January 25, 2006; Hannah Stephenson, Belfast Telegraph, April 9, 2005; Sunday Mail (South Australia), June 26, 2005; Paul Tankard, Otago Daily Times, August 20, 2005; Ian Thomson, Evening Standard (London), April 18, 2005; Time Out, June 1, 2005; Anne Wilson, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 2005, 49–51; Frank Wilson, Chicago Tribune, November 28, 2005; Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post, November 13, 2005.
Privately printed for the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
Adam Smith Reviews Samuel Johnson's 'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1755): The Fifty-Ninth Annual Dinner of the Johnsonians; The Twenty-Second Annual Dinner of the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
Includes a facsimile of Smith’s review in The Edinburgh Review
Samuel Collings' Designs for Rowlandson's Picturesque Beauties of Boswell: In Celebration of Dr. Johnson's Two Hundred and Sixty-Sixth Birthday
Cochrane entry 626. A work that identifies and reproduces for the first time four drawings by Samuel Collings that were used for Thomas Rowlandson's series of caricatures of Boswell.
Privately printed by the James Marshall & Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
Malone Contra Hawkins: A Keepsake to Mark the 292nd Birthday of Samuel Johnson & the 55th Annual Dinner of the Johnsonians
Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster: Traveling Through Scotland with Boswell and Johnson
Starr chronicles a seventy-two-day journey through Scotland undertaken in 2007 to retrace the 1773 Highland tour of Johnson and Boswell. By reversing the original itinerary and adding excursions to the Outer Hebrides and Orkney Islands, Starr contrasts contemporary Scottish culture and geography with the eighteenth-century accounts found in Johnson's Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The monograph interweaves personal travel narrative with historical analysis of the Jacobite Rising, the Highland Clearances, and the Ossian controversy. Starr disputes the notion that the travelers are forgotten by demonstrating their enduring influence on Scottish tourism and literary history, while acknowledging that many modern Scots maintain only a vague memory of the pair. Salient quotations from the original texts illuminate the "noble chorus of the rough music of nature" that characterized the expedition. Starr emphasizes the complexity of Boswell’s character and Johnson’s intellectual vigor, framing their "epic adventure" as a foundational event that "helped awaken and change public attitudes" toward the Scottish nation.
Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster
The Johnsonians & The Samuel Johnson Society of the West
The Keepsakes of the Johnsonian Societies of America: A Bibliography
The Keepsakes of the Johnsonian Societies of America
The Johnsonians in association with Houghton Library, Harvard University
Deception and Detection in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Lynch chronicles the eighteenth-century British obsession with authenticity through a series of cultural shifts in epistemology, law, and historicist criticism. Focusing on the rhetoric of disproof, Lynch explores how readers weighed evidence during high-profile controversies involving figures like James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton. Johnson appears as a central figure who maintained a "rigidly attentive" devotion to truth, serving as a skeptical inquirer into the Rowley poems and a vocal debunker of the Ossianic epics. Lynch highlights Johnson's insistence on "scrupulous veracity" in conversation and his role in assisting William Dodd and George Psalmanazar. Boswell provides essential testimony regarding Johnson's intellectual character, noting his habit of using the word lie to describe any factual error, regardless of intent. Additionally, Piozzi identifies Johnson's "ruling passion" as the "love of truth" while recounting his involvement in the William Lauder controversy. The monograph concludes that these encounters with inauthenticity forced Britons to articulate usually unspoken grounds for making sense of the world.
Theroux's novel follows Nicholas Slopen, an eighteenth-century scholar and editor of a revised Oxford edition of the Letters of Samuel Johnson. After dying in a road accident, Slopen's consciousness returns within the body of a Russian man through a cryptoscientific procedure. The narrative details Slopen's involvement with a music executive and a private dealer who possess a cache of unknown, though physically suspect, Johnson manuscripts. These documents reveal a melancholic Johnson struggling with mental illness and include a heart-rending plea for succour addressed to Hester Thrale Piozzi. Slopen eventually encounters a man who believes himself to be Johnson, existing out of time and reciting verbatim extracts from James Boswell's biography. The text explores themes of identity, the continuity of being, and the "common task" of human existence while incorporating scholarly debates regarding Johnson's last years, his relationship with Thrale, and the destruction of his personal papers. Slopen's testimony, written during his incarceration in a secure psychiatric unit, serves as a meditation on the power of the Word and the enduring presence of Johnsonian thought.
Dr. Johnson's House During the War, 1939–1945
Limited edition in 1,000 copies.
Samuel Johnson in New Albion: A Descriptive Census of Rare and Useful Johnson Books and Manuscripts and Johnsoniana Now Located in California
Samuel Johnson's Insults: A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights, and Effronteries from the Eighteenth-Century Master
Lynch compiles and annotates Johnson’s lexicographical definitions of various terms of reproach, documenting the intersection of eighteenth-century philology and social critique. The text highlights Johnson’s aggressive stance against dullness, cant, and political factionalism, particularly targeting Whigs and Scots. Lynch incorporates anecdotal evidence from Boswell and Piozzi to illustrate Johnson’s practical application of these insults in conversation. The work emphasizes Johnson’s commitment to linguistic precision and his habitual use of invective to enforce intellectual and moral standards among his contemporaries. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Jackson, in the Sunday Mercury, celebrates the slender collection of verbal barbs for showcasing a master of the rancid riposte who transformed dull lexicography into a vehicle for waspish wit and personal prejudice. In JNL, an unsigned review praises the book as a great stocking stuffer with perfectly sound editorial work, noting its utility in equipping readers with vocabulary to avoid being left speechless. Kyff's notice in the Hartford Courant presents the compilation as a humorous selection of contemptuous terms that target both personal follies and the writing profession itself. Ott, writing in Booklist, applauds the compendium of snubs and sneers, suggesting that contemporary politicians should emulate this sophisticated eighteenth-century vocabulary to replace simplistic modern abuse. Similarly, Pakenham, in the Sun, identifies the subject as the grand master of invective and a towering genius whose specialized vocabulary remains relevant for contemporary political and social slights. Finally, an unsigned review in the Western Daily Press characterizes the subject as a famous curmudgeon who used lexicography to immortalize personal contempt, contextualizing the brutal hatchet jobs within a vicious eighteenth-century literary environment that functions as a clear precursor to modern comedic sensibilities.
This comprehensive collection of thirty-six scholarly essays provides a multi-perspectival examination of the life and works of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. Lynch organizes the volume into sections covering Johnson's career, his primary genres, and major thematic topics. Contributors analyze Johnson's biography and his contributions to lexicography, periodical essays, and Shakespearean criticism. The collection seeks to integrate the "disjecta membra" of Johnson's fragmented popular image into a coherent scholarly whole, emphasizing his "dialogic intelligence" and "opposition to slavery."
Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1773: Now Published from the Original Manuscript
This volume, publishing the text "now first published from the original manuscript," was a crucial revelation, proving that the original journal differed materially from the printed text. It exposed Boswell's intimate, unpolished "frankness" and greater indiscretion before Malone's "decorous and even timid" revisions, fundamentally changing scholarly perceptions of Boswell's art and integrity. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with critics praising the meticulous restoration of the raw, unedited manuscript text from its historical discovery and the subsequent expansion of biographical details. Chapman, in TLS, describes the newly recovered material as crucial for specialists interested in the author's unpolished observations, though less significant for readers focused solely on his companion's reputation. In NYTBR, Jack enthusiastically welcomes the added candor of the original notebooks, highlighting the verbal realism regarding daily habits that previous editing had softened. Van Doren's review in the New York Herald Tribune commends the superb editorial recovery, noting that the reinstated text successfully shifts the critical focus to the author's independent genius and self-revelation. Writing in the Manchester Guardian, Charlton values the unexpurgated text for capturing an unthinkingly intimate portrait, while also celebrating parallel archival discoveries that promise to expand real historical knowledge. In the Virginia Quarterly Review, Shepperson lauds the vivid reporting and robust language restored to the narrative, arguing that these elements outline an inspired observer rather than a buffoon. Conversely, Bailey, in Modern Language Notes, delivers a more mixed assessment, approving of the meticulous text construction but finding the editorial choices less successful and arguing that the commentary occasionally fails to do the author full justice. Dobrée, writing in The Spectator, welcomes the more accessible format of the unedited record, observing that it provides a clearer view of a detached intellectual attitude and an obsession with minute self-analysis.
CGV entry 4:13. An edition of the original manuscript.
Reviews: Aberdeen Press and Journal, November 23, 1936; Margery Bailey, Modern Language Notes 53, no. 5 (1938): 387–89; Frederick Barrett, London Mercury 35, no. 207 (1937): 326–28; Edmund Blunden, Fortnightly Review 147 (1937): 111–12; John Hodgdon Bradley, Atlantic Monthly (1936); Ford K. Brown, Washington Post, November 15, 1936; Fanny Butcher, Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 1936; K. W. Cameron, Living Church 96, no. 3 (1937): 77–78; R. W. Chapman, TLS, no. 1814 (1936): 903; H. B. Charlton, Manchester Guardian, December 22, 1936; Bonamy Dobrée, The Spectator 158, no. 5662 (1937): 22; David Garnett, New Statesman and Nation, November 28, 1936; H. Hansen, Harper’s Magazine 174 (1936); Peter Monro Jack, NYTBR, November 8, 1936; K. G. Jackson, Scribner’s Magazine (1937); M. Josephson, New Republic 89, no. 1146 (1936); M. Josephson, The Nation, October 31, 1936; Hugh Kingsmill, The Listener 16, no. 412 (1936): iii; Joseph Wood Krutch, The Nation, November 7, 1936; W. T. Laprade, South Atlantic Quarterly 36 (1937): 489; Literary Digest 122 (1936): 29–30; Desmond MacCarthy, Sunday Times (London), November 15, 1936; G. S. Moncrieff, Criticism 16 (1937): 553–55; Lucian P. Nairne, LA Times, November 8, 1936; Nairnshire Telegraph and General Advertiser for the Northern Counties, December 15, 1936; New Criterion (1937); New York Times Book Review, July 19, 1936; Newsweek, November 7, 1936; Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Saturday Review of Literature (U.S.), November 7, 1936; Francis Pollock, The Gazette (Montreal), November 14, 1936; Clarissa Rinaker, JEGP 36, no. 4 (1936): 576–77; Scottish Geographical Magazine 53, no. 4 (1937): 273–96; Archibald B. Shepperson, Virginia Quarterly Review 13, no. 1 (1937): 143–46; G. N. Shuster, Commonweal 20 (1936): 109; The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 23, 1936; Marjorie Uhry, Atlanta Constitution, November 22, 1936; Carl Van Doren, New York Herald Tribune, November 8, 1936; E. V. W., Catholic World 145, no. 865 (1937): 116–17; Henry Watts, America 56, no. 7 (1936): 165; Margaret Williamson, Christian Science Monitor, December 16, 1936; G. M. Young, The Observer (London), November 8, 1936.
Form and Purpose in Boswell's Biographical Works
Siebenschuh challenges the critical tradition viewing Boswell's biographical development as a simple, linear progression from the Account of Corsica through the Tour to the Hebrides to the Life of Johnson. Instead, Siebenschuh argues each work represents a separate and formally distinct literary achievement with unique organizational principles. The Account of Corsica functions primarily as propaganda to persuade the British public of Corsican independence, resulting in a Plutarchian and idealized portrait of Paoli. In the Tour, Boswell juxtaposes a static and essentially stereotypic image of Johnson with incongruous Scottish environments to create comic effects and contrasts. But the Life employs selective and interpretive dramatization to build a complex and heroic image of Johnson's character. Siebenschuh maintains that Boswell consistently exercises significant organizational powers and interpretive artistry, transforming factual materials into powerful and universally intelligible literary creations. The introduction addresses the systematic and comparative study of the methods used to dramatize factual materials across three major biographical works, arguing that stylistic differences provide evidence of significant artistic growth. Chapter 1, 'The Account of Corsica,' addresses the pervasive influence of propaganda on the portrayal of Pasquale Paoli, illustrating how historical records were selectively altered and idealized to persuade British readers to support the Corsican cause. Chapter 2, 'The Tour to the Hebrides,' argues that this work focuses on juxtaposing a static, stereotypic image of its subject with incongruous Scottish environments to produce comic effects and "contrasts" for the reader's pleasure. Chapter 3, 'The Life of Johnson,' addresses the shift toward interpretive biography, where primary materials are developed to build a complex, heroic image that emphasizes intellectual and moral strength over mere public caricature. The conclusion addresses the versatile literary objectives found in each work, concluding that the transition to the Life represents a conscious and interpretive act of artistic creation rather than a simple linear progression of technique. Critical reception of this study is largely polarized, oscillating between praise for its central thesis and disappointment regarding its execution and scholarly depth. Clifford and Riely highlight the book's successful comparative analysis of three major biographical works, noting that the author convincingly argues for the presence of distinct literary forms tailored to specific biographical purposes. Boulton and Fairer further validate the challenge to the misconception of the biographer as a non-artist, particularly appreciating the exploration of "confrontational" strategies and "propagandistic" methods used to characterize Paoli. However, the volume faces significant scrutiny for its brevity and lack of density; Boulton dismisses it as a "minor achievement," while Rawson characterizes the prose as "leaden" and "over-argued." A recurring criticism involves the author's failure to consult primary manuscripts at Yale, which Riely and Clifford argue results in "tentative" conclusions and uncorrected factual errors. Despite these shortcomings, Fairer and Clifford agree that the work offers stimulating insights that invite further investigation into the complexities of interpretive dramatization versus large-scale organization.
CGV entry 4:226.
Cochrane entry 621.
Crystal assembles approximately 4,000 entries from the first and fourth editions of Johnson's Dictionary to illustrate the compiler's linguistic range, 'authorial fingerprints', and encyclopedic interests. The anthology includes essential front matter: Johnson's 1747 Plan, the 1755 Preface, a 'potted biography' of Johnson, and James Boswell's account of the project. Crystal explains his selection criteria, focusing on entries that showcase Johnson's 'capricious and humourous indulgence', such as the famous definitions for oats and lexicographer, while omitting 'mammoth' entries like 'take' to maintain readability. The text highlights Johnson's role as an observer of regional dialects (noting Staffordshire and Scottish influences) and his eventual realization that a language cannot be 'fixed' but must be described in its 'mutability'. Crystal retains Johnson's original spelling and punctuation, expanding only author abbreviations for clarity. He documents the dictionary's transition from the 'drudgery' of its seven-year composition to its status as a 'standard reference' for over a century. The anthology also tracks 18th-century usage changes, pronunciation guides using Bailey's stress marks, and Johnson's descriptive yet prescriptive tension regarding foreign 'loan words' and 'low' terms. Notes at the end of the volume detail specific changes made between the 1755 and 1773 editions for the selected entries.
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Zaretsky chronicles Boswell's intellectual journey through Enlightenment Europe, focusing on his encounters with Samuel Johnson, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. The narrative follows Boswell as he strived to "tune" his public and private selves while seeking answers to existential questions regarding faith, liberty, and the afterlife. Zaretsky argues that Boswell's interactions with these thinkers were not merely social but were fundamental to his development as a biographer and moralist. The text details Boswell's travels to Utrecht, Germany, and Corsica, where his observations on national character and political resistance took shape. Zaretsky highlights the contrast between Johnson's "roiling faith" and the skepticism of Hume and Voltaire, documenting how Boswell navigated these conflicting worldviews. The biography presents Boswell as a man haunted by the "horror of death" yet deeply engaged in the pursuit of meaning through theatricality and social intercourse. Chapter 1, 'In the Kirk's Shadow,' examines the formative tension between Enlightenment sociability and the haunting Calvinist doctrines of original sin and eternal damnation that plagued his early years in Scotland. Chapter 2, 'At Home with Home,' analyzes the influence of Scottish jurists and moral philosophers, specifically the competing models of benevolent sentiment and rigorous duty found in contemporary social theory. Chapter 3, 'A Journal Is Born,' addresses the transformation of the traditional spiritual diary into a secular tool for intentional self-fashioning and the recording of social performance in London. Chapter 4, 'Enter Johnson,' explores the profound psychological and theological mentorship established with Samuel Johnson, who provided a defensive, empirical framework against the existential dread of annihilation. Chapter 5, 'Derelict in Utrecht,' addresses the failure of these defensive rationales during a severe depressive collapse and the subsequent imposition of a rigid, habit-based discipline to stabilize the self. Chapter 6, 'Belle de Zuylen,' analyzes the intellectual challenge posed by Zélide, whose radical authenticity and skeptical vivacity exposed the limits of conventional gendered social codes. Critics are generally favorable, though popular and scholarly receptions diverge regarding analytical depth. General reviews praise the engaging narrative, while specialists find the historical analysis somewhat superficial. O'Hagan, in the New York Review of Books, provides a favorable assessment, tracking how a talent for self-adaptation and a shared horror of annihilation with a major literary figure shaped a pioneering exploration of human character. Campbell, in the Guardian, offers a more skeptical view, arguing that despite associating with liberal minds, the subject remained a specimen of class-based prejudice and self-deception. Donoghue, in the Christian Science Monitor, enthusiastically highlights a ramshackle personal life contrasted with a single-minded pursuit of celebrity, treating the subject as a harbinger of modern self-centeredness. Among scholarly annuals, Lynch, in AJ, commends the readable prose and brisk pace, viewing the context as a useful corrective to accounts overemphasizing a single dominant relationship. But Caudle, in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, critiques the narrow chronological scope for neglecting mature political evolution, concluding that the book offers little new information for seasoned scholars. Similarly, Plassart, in the American Historical Review, notes that while the psychological portrait is entertaining, specialists will learn little due to a parsimonious use of secondary literature. Mills, in the Scottish Historical Review, characterizes the work as a humanistic romp suitable for students but notes that experienced scholars may find the treatment of complex intellectual disputes superficial. Finally, Carter, in the Journal of Modern History, praises the approach for capturing intellectual twists and turns before a famous companionship began.
'To Drive the Night Along': A Manuscript of Samuel Johnson's Latin Translation of a Greek Epigram
The Latin and Greek Poems of Samuel Johnson: Text, Translation, and Commentary
Baldwin collects all Johnson’s Latin and Greek poems, presenting 172 Latin pieces and five Greek ones. The book offers text, translation, and commentary, providing the first separate collection of the corpus. The work situates Johnson within the Neo-Latin tradition, helping readers appreciate his classical achievement. Baldwin includes extensive annotation on sources and metrics. Johnson’s Latin often reveals personal thoughts. Reviewers describe the book as a definitive and landmark edition that serves as an encyclopedic guide to the eighteenth-century literary landscape. Binns and Gray praise the volume for providing the first separate text of all 177 classical poems alongside thorough, learned discussions of context and composition. Martyn finds the accurate translations vital for revealing the subject's innermost thoughts and fears, while Rudd commends the learned discussions of authenticity and chronology. But Lelièvre and Rudd offer alternative linguistic interpretations, questioning specific renderings of Latin force. The general verdict on this study is that Baldwin offers a remarkable compilation of scholarship, despite Lelièvre’s critique of occasional gratuitous information.
The Latin & Greek poems of Samuel Johnson
Davis reconstructs Samuel Johnson's extended visit (June 25–August 18, 1764) to Thomas Percy at the vicarage in Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, accompanied by Anna Williams and Francis Barber. Drawing primarily on Percy’s sparse diary and letters, Davis corrects later apocryphal accounts involving Goldsmith and Garrick. He details the visit as both a working holiday—Johnson finalizing Shakespeare proofs, Percy working on the Reliques and Spectator—and a period of social interaction, including visits with local figures like Edward Lye and Ambrose Isted, and tours of estates like Castle Ashby. Davis highlights Johnson's contributions, notably the Reliques dedication, and suggests the visit's mutual importance despite cramped conditions.
Crane presents a previously unpublished letter from Percy to the Welsh scholar Evan Evans, dated July 23, 1764, which conveys Johnson's views on Welsh antiquities. Johnson encourages Evans's efforts to "rescue from oblivion" ancient British manuscripts, expressing significant interest in the "vigor & capacity" shown in Evans's performance. However, Johnson "blames" Evans for crediting the "Pretensions of McPherson and his erse Poetry." The letter records Johnson's early and firm rejection of Macpherson's work, which he describes as "almost all an imposition" and "of no very artful kind." This brief article documents Johnson's scholarly engagement with Celtic studies through intermediaries like Percy and highlights his consistent skepticism toward the authenticity of the Ossian poems well before his own Scottish travels.
The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson
Clingham edits a collection of newly commissioned chapters that re-evaluate Johnson's "ethical grasp of life" and "skeptical-humane style" for a twenty-first-century audience. The volume explores the roots of Johnson's thought in Renaissance humanism while simultaneously engaging with modern themes such as disability, gender, race, and the history of slavery. Contributors discuss the full breadth of his corpus, including the Dictionary, The Rambler, Rasselas, and his political tracts, alongside his travel and biographical writing. A significant focus is placed on the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson and its impact on modern scholarly practice. The introduction highlights how Johnson's "literary practice" and "philosophical values" continue to challenge established readers, revealing a "surprising contemporaneity" in his thought. The volume also examines Johnson's representation in art and the archival history of his manuscripts. Scholarly features include a narrated "Further Reading" section that provides a comprehensive guide to historical and recent criticism, ranging from early prose style studies to contemporary medical and political contexts. This companion serves as an essential resource for students and scholars seeking to understand Johnson as a writer whose "life experience" remains deeply relevant to current cultural and ethical debates.
Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764: Including His Correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (Zélide)
The second volume in the trade (reading) edition series of The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, intended for the general reading public and covering the author’s life in the Netherlands from 10 August 1763 to 18 June 1764. The content details his required legal studies at Utrecht (Civil Law, French, Greek, etc.), struggles with intense melancholy, and the beginning of his correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (Zelide), who later declined his marriage offer. The original primary journal manuscript (5 August 1763 to 24 May 1764) was lost during the author's lifetime, necessitating a reconstruction based on six categories of surviving documents: 1) 157 octavo leaves of Memoranda and Notes for Journal in Holland, covering 10 August 1763 to 17 June 1764; 2) 32 quarto pages of the Journal in Holland, covering 24 May to 18 June 1764 (written after leaving Utrecht); 3) 232 quarto pages of French Themes; 4) 20 quarto pages of Dutch Themes; 5) 34 quarto leaves of Ten-Lines-a-Day Verses (25 September 1763 to 16 April 1764); and 6) over fifty letters sent or received, plus over thirty later letters concerning Belle de Zuylen. The reconstruction provides a complete, continuous chronological account. The trade edition policy presents the material in modern spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing, omits "banality and excessive repetition," and provides English translations of French and Italian passages. Supplemental materials include an Introduction by Frederick A. Pottle, five appendices (including Boswell’s Inviolable Plan), a map of Holland, a drawing of Utrecht's Cathedral Square, and popularly cast annotation. The manuscripts were previously known only through the Isham collection. Most reviews are positive. Reviewers praise the compilation of daily memoranda, themes, and correspondence into a coherent narrative despite the loss of the original journal. Clifford's enthusiastic review in NYTBR praises the editor's weaving of manuscripts into a continuous narrative, highlighting the comedy of the flirtations and the serious moral struggle against recurring melancholy. Prescott, writing in the New York Times, offers a more negative assessment, asserting the compilation cannot compare in interest with its predecessor, noting that the letters to the father of the central romantic interest laid down insulting and insane requirements. In TLS, Morley describes the text as a masterly compilation of fragments, but notes that the depiction of a reformed persona making a day-by-day account makes the work dull for common readers. Cecil (The Observer) describes the reconstruction of the Dutch sojourn as a heterogeneous mixture that successfully captures an extraordinary phenomenon. Mortimer's review in the Sunday Times focuses on the unshaped material of the autobiographical journals and the use of writing as a confessional to avoid psychological collapse. In the Saturday Review, Bacon finds the collection of civil law studies, dialogues, and interactions fascinating. Krutch, in The Nation, notes that the brief diary jottings and correspondence offer an unguarded view, increasing one's opinion of a sternly resolute character. Dobree (Spectator) argues the recovered papers counter assertions of mere priggishness, while Rolo in Atlantic Monthly concludes that this unretouched self-portrait adds a fascinating dimension to the subject's legacy.
Also published by William Heinemann, London, 1952 and a limited edition in 1953.
Privately printed for the Samuel Johnson Society of the West
'I Stole His Likeness': An Unknown Drawing of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Uglow examines the intellectual and social networks centered on Johnson, primarily the Literary Club founded in 1764. The work chronicles how Johnson and his circle, including Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith, transformed British culture by asserting the value of bourgeois genius over aristocratic status. Using portraits from the National Portrait Gallery as a framework, Uglow profiles key figures such as Boswell, whose reporting provided a vivid record of Johnson's conversation, and Piozzi, who provided intimate domestic care. The narrative tracks Johnson's literary career from his early days at the Gentleman's Magazine to the completion of his Lives of the Poets. The Club served as a powerful informal network where inherited and new culture was systematized. Uglow emphasizes the diversity of the group, which included actors like Garrick, publishers like Cave, and female intellectuals like Carter and Burney. The book concludes by noting how the intense mockery and recording of Johnson's life after 1784 measures his enduring cultural importance.
An illustrated volume in the NPG Character Sketches series, showing portraits (some in color) of Johnson and his circle.
This scholarly edition presents the author’s private record spanning November 1762 through August 1763, an early segment of his career-long journals, superseding the 1950 text. Recovered at Fettercairn House in 1930, the journal, initially conceived as epistolary installments to John Johnston of Grange, details the author’s London sojourn, including his 16 May meeting with Johnson, Anglo-Scottish tensions, Seven Years War political excitements, and literary celebrity culture. The revised textual approach adheres closely to the manuscript, preserving original spelling, inconsistencies, minimal paragraphing, and punctuation, contrasting with the prior modernized and regularized edition. Editorial insertions, such as supplied punctuation and expanded abbreviations, are clearly marked. New material constitutes over half the volume, including daily memoranda interspersed directly with the journal text, offering informational and psychological insights. The volume includes 58 pages of preliminaries, 212 pages of notes, and a 60-page index. The introductory material covers reception history, journal discovery, the author’s life, and the record's form and content. The 1,375 notes provide encyclopedic historical context on persons, places, laws, customs, political offices, religious practices, and literary controversies, ranging from the East India Company and John Wilkes to the Royal Society and the textual history of Hamlet. Appendices offer related source documents, including the "Scheme of living written at the White Lyon Inn," Lord Eglinton's card reply, and "A Minced Pye of Savoury Ingredients" (a journal-letter). The index includes Christian names and professions for mentioned individuals.
Publisher's blurb: "Donald Greene suggested that the eighteenth century should be seen as "The Age of Exuberance." It was an era unmatched, he argued, for intellectual ferment and literary accomplishment of the highest order. In his numerous books and in an essay canon that has few scholarly parallels in the postwar period, Greene helped recenter not only the age as a whole but also its principal writer, Samuel Johnson. He did so with a consistent scholarly commitment: one must reexamine intellectual and literary documents always in reference to the milieu and the values of the world in which they were reproduced; one must take no critical judgment, however imposing its author's reputation, on faith. Not only did Greene help redefine "The Age of Exuberance" and Samuel Johnson as few scholars of the post-World War II era, he also demonstrated that his scholarly methodology could illuminate such literary figures as Jane Austen, a near chronological neighbor, and equally a more distant one Evelyn Waugh. The essays included here provide a sample of a far larger canon that might fairly be characterized as F. R. Leavis did of Johnson's critical commentary 'alive and life-giving.'"
Thirteen previously published essays, ranging from 1952 to 1990, many on Johnsonian topics. Essays on Johnson are listed separately.
This study demonstrates the central importance of memory in Johnson’s work, arguing that his authorial authority arises from a structure of memory that governs his writing. Clingham identifies memory as the primary and fundamental power that serves as the purveyor of reason and places individuals in the class of moral agents. The text examines how Johnson’s biographical narrative engages the lives of specific writers to reflect on history, literary history, and time, particularly in the Lives of the Poets. Clingham explores the 'translational' quality of the Lives, analyzing how Johnson uses the linguistic embodiment of memory to transform personal and historical experience into something memorable. The argument situates Johnson within an engrammatological tradition involving Aristotle, Augustine, and Locke, while addressing his engagement with modern critical theory regarding terms such as 'nature' and 'authority.' Clingham concludes that Johnson’s writing constitutes les lieux de mémoire—spaces between memory and history—that allow for a sophisticated attitude toward historiography and the historical present. Chapter 1, "Johnson and memory," examines the active and self-reflexive role of the mnemonic faculty in Samuel Johnson’s thought, arguing that memory serves as the primary epistemological hinge between personal identity, moral agency, and the imaginative reconstruction of the past. Chapter 2, "Johnson and nature," explores the textually mediated character of "general nature" as a critical standard, contending that for Johnson, nature is not a static empirical reality but a product of creative engagement with literature that balances permanence against historical change. Chapter 3, "Law, narrative, and memory," establishes the foundational role of legal understanding in Johnson’s worldview, demonstrating how he uses legal rhetoric and evidentiary narrative to navigate the limits of human experience and construct a coherent social identity. Chapter 4, "Narrative, history, and memory in the Lives of the Poets," addresses the fictive and redemptive dimensions of biographical writing, arguing that Johnson’s narrative structure transforms the linear successiveness of a writer's life into a meaningful temporal presence. Chapter 5, "Translation and memory in the Lives of the Poets," identifies the translational quality of the Lives as a key commemorative strategy, specifically analyzing the contrasting poetic engagements of Dryden and Pope as they negotiate the relationship between cultural origins and modern refinement. Chapter 6, "Historiographical implications," concludes by arguing that the Lives of the Poets functions as a sophisticated lieu de mémoire that integrates philological scholarship with dialectical history to create a unique form of literary and personal memory. Critics are generally favorable, praising the monograph's sophisticated theoretical framework and its investigation of memory as an active principle. DeMaria, Jr., in JNL, supports the postmodern reading, finding the analysis of epistemic disjunctions in major texts to be quintessentially fitting. Hanley's enthusiastic review in AJ notes the persuasive connection between legal discourse and linguistic theory, praising the analysis of the Augustinian-Lockean tradition in governing historical and biographical practice. Lynch (Choice) calls the study an impressive meditation that combines poststructuralist insights with historical scholarship, noting dense and sophisticated writing. Budge, in YWES, provides a highly positive assessment, characterizing the work as a sustained attempt to define a post-theoretical subject that links translational intentionality to the hermeneutics of Gadamer. Reddick (SEL) offers a mixed evaluation, acknowledging the attempt to theorize the subject against charges of Enlightenment hegemony but finding the redemptive posture disproportionate and urging readers to test the assertions regarding critical authority.
Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709–1791
Johnston disputes the standard caricature of Johnson as a "language-fixing" neoclassical tyrant who dismissed detail in favor of the universal. Instead, she argues that Johnson's works maintain a defining relationship to materials upbraided as "low," "mean," or "trifling." The study tracks Johnson's "principled variety of indecisiveness" across four chapters, examining how he weighed the competing claims of dignified classical precedent against common everyday life. Johnston analyzes Johnson's use of litotes—a rhetoric of diminution—to suspend scrupulous indecision about social and intellectual progress, particularly in 'A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland' and the 'Life of Savage.' She further interprets Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' as corrective responses to Alexander Pope's 'The Dunciad,' highlighting Johnson's concern to elevate unaccomplished versifiers on ethical grounds. By examining Johnson's prefaces and dedications, Johnston identifies a vocabulary of "mock-humility" and "voluntary degradation" used to familiarize heroic grandeur. Johnston's central thesis is that Johnson’s style, while often seen as enclosed and polished, demonstrates a constant consciousness of the "infinity of the world" from which he selects. She concludes that Johnson's "art of sinking" is characterized by a "tender officiousness" toward the marginalized, best exemplified in his commemoration of the indigent physician Robert Levet. Chapter 1, 'Inclusion and Exclusion', examines the persistent tension in Samuel Johnson’s work between the neoclassical drive toward universal generalization and a scrupulous, often forensic attention to the "little" or "low" particulars of human existence. It argues that Johnson’s literary and biographical methods frequently subvert traditional hierarchies by dignifying domestic trifles and social marginalia, thereby mediating between the heroic scale of classical antiquity and the humble requirements of Christian ethics. Chapter 2, ' Voluntary Degradation: Johnson’s Prefaces and Dedications', addresses the generic role of the preface-writer as a figure of professional submission and explores how Johnson used these introductory forms to exercise benevolence toward struggling authors. Through a complex vocabulary of mock-humility and "voluntary degradation," these writings simultaneously advocate for the significance of ephemeral subjects while navigating the precarious shift from aristocratic patronage to a professional literary marketplace. Chapter 3, 'Diminishing Returns: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland', traces the pursuit of domestic particulars and the challenge they pose to stylistic dignity, specifically through the analytical category of the diminutive. It identifies the rhetorical figure of litotes as a primary vehicle for Johnson’s scrupulous indecision, allowing him to suspend judgment on the gains and losses of social progress while elevating the quotidian details of Scottish life. Chapter 4, 'Stooping to Conquer: Johnsonian Biography', interprets the Lives of the Poets as non-satirical, corrective responses to the derogatory conflations of poverty and artistic incompetence found in the works of Alexander Pope. The chapter concludes by analyzing Johnson’s commemoration of the indigent physician Robert Levet as the definitive example of an "art of sinking" that transforms social and intellectual descent into a form of moral and spiritual ascent. Critics are generally favorable, praising the work for its scholarly re-evaluation of aesthetic and ethical tensions. In prominent publications, Jackson, in TLS, notes how the text explores the distinct discrepancy between a pursuit of general truths and an attachment to minute particulars. Budge's review in Year's Work in English Studies outlines the persistent friction between classical decorum and Christian humility, finding the arguments highly suggestive if occasionally implicit. Fix, in Essays in Criticism, commends the volume for detailing an attention to low things, which effectively challenges the standard caricature of a neoclassical tyrant by analyzing stylistic choices like litotes in the Scottish journey. In scholarly periodicals, Lynn, in AJ, enthusiastically calls the study dazzling and brilliant, highlighting the successful identification of a positive rhetorical strategy that harmonizes greatness with little things, such as the redemption of the low in the commemorative verses for Robert Levet. Venturo, in JNL, praises the emphasis on rhetorical flexibility in pursuit of moral goals, noting how competing classical and Christian standards reframed aesthetic concerns for a new generation of scholars. Ingram, in MLR, finds the detailed analysis accurately demonstrates how a focus on littleness moves from a minor feature to a central position in literary and religious practice. Finally, Shivel's review in Choice highlights the lucid style and literary sensibility of the volume, concluding that it provides an exceptionally informative study of the concord between the everyday and the high.
The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume
Potkay argues that Samuel Johnson and David Hume, far from being the irreconcilable antagonists of literary tradition, are actually key participants in a shared "Enlightenment discourse." Both men, despite their profound theological differences, are fundamentally united by their "passion for happiness" and their shared commitment to a practical, sentimental moral philosophy. Potkay challenges the stereotype of Johnson as a gloomy, otherworldly moralist and Hume as a detached, cheerful skeptic. Instead, he places them in a constructive dialogue, revealing their significant common ground: both are deeply skeptical of abstract metaphysical systems, both champion the importance of sympathy and social feeling, and both are focused on the empirical question of how human beings can best achieve virtue and quiet in this life. The book meticulously traces how their differing conclusions about "final things"—whether ultimate happiness is found "fully here or partly hereafter"—stem from this common starting point. Potkay argues that their "dialogism," their very disagreement, is the book's central subject. By examining their opposing views, Johnson and Hume collaboratively demonstrate that "no absolute determination ever can be formed" on these ultimate questions, thereby teaching the reader "moderation and forebearance" and leaving the final "choice" to the "critical reader." Chapter 1, "The Passion for Happiness," addresses the divergent eighteenth-century configurations of human flourishing, arguing that while both subjects shared a foundational skepticism toward Stoicism, they represent a fundamental dialectic between a secular, Stoic-Epicurean pursuit of tranquility and a religious, restless hope for eternal beatitude. Chapter 2, "The Proper Study of Mankind," explores the shared commitment to an empirical "science of man," contending that both figures used a proto-psychological analysis of the passions to dismantle the abstract claims of systematic philosophy. Chapter 3, "Pleasure and Its Discontents," examines the role of sensory experience and the imagination in the attainment of well-being, arguing that the subjects’ differing views on the "vacuity of life" led to opposing theories on the therapeutic value of social and aesthetic diversion. Chapter 4, "Virtue and Social Life," identifies the transition from classical to modern ethics, asserting that both authors replaced the ideal of the autonomous sage with a "middle way" of social utility and conversational sympathy. Chapter 5, "Eloquence and Truth," addresses the rhetorical strategies employed to communicate moral truth, arguing that their respective prose styles—one defined by skeptical irony and the other by authoritative "energy"—reflect distinct epistemological certainties regarding the accessibility of truth. Chapter 6, "God and the Final End," concludes by analyzing the subjects' final "Choices of Life," arguing that their disparate approaches to mortality and the prospect of a hereafter reveal the ultimate boundaries of the Enlightenment's quest for a rational happiness.
Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism
Clark challenges the prevailing orthodoxy, associated with Donald J. Greene, of Samuel Johnson as a commonsensical, apolitical embodiment of Englishness. The central thesis posits Johnson as an authentic Tory, deeply engaged in the religious and political conflicts of his time, and argues his works are rooted in High-Church principles and Jacobite leanings. Clark asserts that Johnson belongs to a "unified, late Latin European cultural heritage" and that his refusal to sign Oaths of Allegiance or Abjuration deprived him of a university degree and virtually all public positions. The book suggests that Johnson's entire oeuvre possessed a Tory and Jacobite agenda, interpreting passages in works like The Vanity of Human Wishes as Jacobite allusions (e.g., Charles XII as a reminder of Charles Edward Stuart). The chronological and thematic organization supports the argument that Johnson's worldview was shaped by marginal political and religious positions during the Hanoverian period. Chapter 1, "Politics, Literature and the Culture of Humanism," establishes the pervasive influence of the Anglo-Latin tradition and classical humanism on the English elite, arguing that this cultural framework provided the essential ideological and satirical vocabulary for Jacobite resistance against the Hanoverian regime. Chapter 2, "Johnson and the Anglo-Latin Tradition," examines the decline of this classical hegemony and the subsequent rise of an autonomous vernacular literature, a transition highlighted by the Lauder controversy and the eventual failure of the political cause to which late humanism was bound. Chapter 3, "The Political Culture of Oxford University, 1715–1768," delineates the university's role as a persistent bastion of Tory and Jacobite sentiment, focusing on the significance of state oaths and the symbolic resistance embodied in the installation of anti-regime chancellors. Chapter 4, "Johnson's Career and the Question of the Oaths, 1709–1758," investigates the restrictive impact of religious and political nonjurorism on a professional trajectory, suggesting that a refusal to swear allegiance to the new dynasty effectively barred access to university and ecclesiastical preferment. Chapter 5, "Johnson and the Nonjurors," explores the theological underpinnings of this dissent, illustrating how the specific liturgical and ecclesiological commitments of the nonjuring community informed a broader critique of the established order. Chapter 6, "Johnson's Political Conduct, 1737–1760," reconstructs the active engagement with opposition circles in London, interpreting early polemical pamphlets as coded manifestations of Stuart loyalty during a period of acute dynastic instability. Chapter 7, "Johnson's Political Opinions, 1760–1784," analyzes the transition to the reign of George III, arguing that while overt Jacobitism receded, the underlying principles of hereditary right and High Church Anglicanism remained foundational to later political pronouncements. Chapter 8, "Johnson's Writings, 1760–1781," evaluates the major later works—including the Dictionary, political tracts, and the Lives of the Poets—as sophisticated efforts to enshrine a specific cultural and religious canon against the perceived encroachment of Whig innovation and Dissenting influence. Chapter 9, "'Sophistry,' 'Indiscretion,' 'Falsehood': The Denigration of Samuel Johnson, 1775–1832," documents the posthumous ideological assault on this reputation, detailing how critics aligned with the Enlightenment and burgeoning Romanticism sought to delegitimize his intellectual legacy by characterizing his principles as bigoted and anachronistic. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the validity of framing a central literary figure as a radical Jacobite and Nonjuror. What is at stake in the reviews is whether the text relies on untenable, circumstantial speculations that push the subject into an inaccessible past, or provides a data-driven historical correction to secular, Namierite orthodoxies. Nokes, in TLS, highlights the provocative thesis that major projects were merely second-best endeavors following a shattered political reality. In ECS, Folkenflik delivers a skeptical evaluation, calling it highly controversial but criticizing its untenable claims, omission of evidence, and neglect of progressive social views. Womersley, writing in the Historical Journal, praises the forensic intellectual power of the study but identifies severe carelessness in the handling of bibliographical facts and literary text history. Levis, writing a scathing review in Church History, rejects the central claims regarding aborted degrees and expiatory pilgrimages as bordering on the absurd. Conversely, Monod, in the American Historical Review, considers the work an excellent and convincing argument for recovering a royalist Anglo-Latin lineage. In the English Historical Review, Cannon finds the volume learned and interesting but far narrower than its grandiose subtitle suggests, arguing that classical appreciation was an educational hallmark rather than a partisan attitude. Goldie, writing in Political Studies, offers an approving assessment of the recovered Tory lexicographical warfare and Latinity. Finally, Wood, in YWES, praises the vivid, clear writing but questions whether the history of ideas framework restricts the focus too much.
Reviews: Peter Ackroyd, The Times (London), October 27, 1994; O. M. Brack Jr., Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 49, no. 2 (1995): 169–74; John Ashton Cannon, English Historical Review 112, no. 446 (1997): 491–93; Matthew M. Davis, Modern Age 39, no. 1 (1997): 73–76; Paul Dean, English Studies 77, no. 1 (1996): 81–85; M. Fitzpatrick, History Today 46, no. 5 (1996): 60; Robert Folkenflik, ECS 33, no. 2 (2000): 289–99; Mark Goldie, Political Studies 43, no. 4 (1995): 777; Eliga H. Gould, Journal of Modern History 69, no. 4 (1997): 828–29; Donald J. Greene, Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 1 (1996): 105–23; H. C. Kraus, Historische Zeitschrift 263, no. 1 (1996): 233–34; R. Barry Levis, Church History 66, no. 4 (1997): 845–46; Paul Monod, American Historical Review 102, no. 1 (1997): 103–4; David Nokes, TLS, no. 4782 (November 1994): 8; J. T. Scanlan, Religion & Literature 29, no. 1 (1997): 95–101; John Wiltshire, English Language Notes 34, no. 1 (1996): 98–104; David Womersley, Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (1996): 511–20; Nigel Wood, YWES 76, no. 1 (1996): 350–51.
The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker
A seminal collection that did much to codify "The Age of Johnson" as a period designation, quoting the name of Tinker's highly regarded courses. Tinker's influence produced many subsequent collectors of Johnsoniana and fostered extensive interest in the mid-eighteenth century. The collection's plan mirrored the structure of Tinker's celebrated course, beginning with Johnson and the Club before expanding to include the major novelists, poets, and significant historical figures of the era. A defining argument of the work, emphasized in the introduction by Lewis, was the need to focus on the "Age" rather than strictly on Johnson. Tinker himself had previously argued against mistaking Johnson as the sole "symbol and exponent of his age." Of the thirty-six short essays included, only four explicitly featured Johnson's name in their titles. Balderston’s influential essay, "Johnson's Vile Melancholy," addresses evidence of masochism and depression inherent in Johnson's character. Other pieces consider Johnson's relationships with figures such as Rousseau, Chesterfield, and Boswell. Historically, the volume is recognized as marking the scholarly maturity of Johnson studies at mid-century, helping to establish a foundation for the subsequent third phase of Johnsonian scholarship in the 1950s that shifted attention toward Johnson's substantial achievements as a writer and editor.
CGV entry 10/6:273. Reprinted in 1964.
Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property
Hart traces the literary legacy and reputation of Johnson, analyzing how biographers and critics preserved his life to construct the "Age of Johnson." Hart argues that Boswell, by dedicating himself to Johnson's death, transformed his friend into a monumental piece of public property. Examining the emergence of a rich culture of property in eighteenth-century Britain, Hart analyzes how a Hanoverian politics of property engaged a Jacobite politics of land. Hart treats Boswell's writings as "economic acts" involving complex appropriations and expropriations of Johnson's idiom. He explores the consolidation of the English literary canon through subtle analyses of copyright, forgery, and heritage, placing Johnson at its heart. Hart concludes by meditating on the cluster of repetitive appropriations constituting everyday life that escape monumentalization. Chapter 1, "The Property of Samuel Johnson," addresses the ontological shift that occurred upon the subject's death, arguing that the transition from living author to biographical monument transformed his life and works into a form of public property. Chapter 2, "The Early Biographies," explores the immediate "scramble" for anecdotal and documentary remains, identifying how early accounts by figures like Sir John Hawkins and Hester Piozzi were shaped by competing claims of intellectual ownership and the desire to control the subject's posthumous reputation. Chapter 3, "James Boswell and the Monument," argues that the Life of Johnson represents a culmination of this commodification process, contending that Boswell used a rhetoric of meticulous preservation to establish a definitive, proprietary image of the subject that marginalized rival narratives. Chapter 4, "Johnson as a Critic of Property," identifies the subject’s own nuanced theories regarding literary property and copyright, arguing that his defense of authorial rights was balanced by a belief in the necessity of a public domain and the common heritage of letters. Chapter 5, "Forging a Reputation," addresses the eighteenth-century preoccupation with authenticity and forgery, examining how the subject’s authority was invoked and contested in controversies such as the Ossian and Rowley frauds to stabilize a burgeoning national canon. Chapter 6, "The Age of Johnson," concludes by arguing that the consolidation of this era as a distinct cultural period was contingent upon the transformation of the subject into a multifaceted piece of cultural property that reflects the shifting legal and economic definitions of the self in the Hanoverian state. Critical reaction is mixed, as specialists appreciate the original insights into reputation and monumentalization but repeatedly censure the volume for a fragmented structure and weak thematic cohesion. In prominent periodicals, McKenzie, in ECS, finds the exploration of the subject's connection to his biographer more successful than the execution of the core title concepts. Turner’s scathing review in RES condemns the volume as a disjointed, uneven work that relies on an unconvincing theoretical framework, rehearses well-known facts, and suffers from typographical errors. But an unsigned review in the Sydney Morning Herald praises the study's analytic force in tracing the emergence of professional authorship and cultural appropriation. In other scholarly journals, DeMaria, in AJ, delivers a highly critical assessment, faulting the associative style as inappropriate and pointing out a lack of engagement with the primary texts. Berglund, in Albion, notes illuminating commentary on the sacralization of biography but challenges the confusing organizational leaps and superficial treatment of complex ideas. Lynch, in Choice, commends original meditations on forgery and politics but notes the central property theme frequently disappears. Similarly, Lynn, in Year's Work in English Studies, appreciates the local pleasures of the narrative journey while concluding that the text fails to connect its core topics substantively. Scanlan, in JEGP, finds the exploration of oral versus written traditions convincing but deems the analysis of cultural property unoriginal, a sentiment echoed by Scherwatzky in Biography. Finally, Rounce, in BJECS, highlights the successful treatment of routine and individual character, while Smallwood, in the New Rambler, Warner, in SEL, and Wiltshire, in English Language Notes, balance praise for the insightful, post-mortem model against concerns over its voguish culturalization and lack of critical detachment.
Covers the period from 1789 through 1795, documenting the author's final years and the production of the Life. The volume is intended for the general reading public and follows a chronological sequence of journal entries. Content focuses heavily on the composition, revision, and reception of the Life, which the author completed in rough draft in March 1791. The text also documents the author's declining health leading to his death in 1795. The editorial policy provides the text in modern spelling with appropriate annotation and relies on manuscript material previously available only in the privately printed Isham collection. Supplemental materials include extensive notes to clarify allusions and contextual background, and a complete index. The volume relies on unpublished scholarly research from the Boswell Office files. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics dividing over the subversive nature of the scholarly apparatus and the value of the subject's self-representation. In the LRB, Miller considers the work among the crown jewels of confessional literature, noting how the persistent writing elevates the depiction of despair. An unsigned review in The Economist emphasizes how the masterpiece stands as a crowning achievement despite personal dissipation. Backscheider, in JEGP, calls the volume a landmark achievement, noting the intelligently prepared text provides a thoroughly readable narrative. Writing in JNL, Middendorf celebrates the completion of the project and the mosaic of character revealed. Aden's review in Sewanee Review emphasizes the editorial excellence in fleshing out text gaps with letters and notes. In N&Q, Clayton finds that the text undermines caricatures by revealing humanitarian impulses. McGlynn, in Choice, enthusiastically celebrates the poignant volume for serving both general readers and scholars. Baruth, in Biography, praises the scholarly apparatus but argues that the knowing editorial notes subvert the subject's own artistic self-representation. Manning, writing in Cambridge Quarterly, calls the academic apparatus formidable and clichéd, yet reluctantly acknowledges the unique value of the record. But Greene, in a scathing review for the Washington Post, labels the subject a nobody, disputes the historical accuracy of his famous biography, and condemns the entire project as a literary boondoggle.
Reviews: John M. Aden, Sewanee Review 98, no. 4 (1990): xcvi, xcviii–xcix; Paula R. Backscheider, JEGP 90, no. 3 (1991): 435–37; Philip E. Baruth, Biography 13, no. 4 (1990): 343–47; Paul Clayton, N&Q 38 [236], no. 1 (1991): 115–18; Eighteenth-Century Scotland 4 (1990): 26; Norrie Epstein, The Sun, December 10, 1989; Donald J. Greene, Washington Post, August 27, 1989; Susan Manning, CQ 20, no. 3 (1991): 264–69; Paul D. McGlynn, Choice 27, no. 6 (1990): 3175; John H. Middendorf, JNL 49/50, nos. 3-4/1-2 (1989): 23; Karl Miller, LRB 12, no. 2 (1990): 7; David Nokes, The Spectator 264, no. 8430 (1990): 28; Peter Quennell, Sunday Times (London), January 28, 1990; The Economist, February 24, 1990; David Twiston Davies, Globe and Mail (Toronto), November 18, 1989.
The Correspondence of James Boswell with Certain Members of The Club, Including Oliver Goldsmith, Bishops Percy and Barnard, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Topham Beauclerk, and Bennet Langton
Fifer assembles 268 letters documenting Boswell's interactions with prominent contemporaries including Reynolds, Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Percy. The editorial policy prioritizes the 'Research Edition' format, providing expansive annotation that relates these primary documents to historical, legal, and genealogical scholarship. The text establishes Boswell's 'intensely clubbable' nature and his persistent use of Club members as sources for Johnsonian anecdotes and 'genuine emanations of his energy of mind'. Significant focus centers on Langton, who emerges through personal correspondence as a complex figure of 'quiet piety' and disorganized domesticity, and Barnard, who functions as Boswell's 'Father Confessor' and 'Spiritual Father' following Johnson's death. The correspondence reveals the 'central literary impulse' in Boswell, detailing his 'dogged persistence' in gathering first drafts for his magnum opus while simultaneously pursuing failed political ambitions. Salient editorial commentary highlights the 'extraordinary eminence' of the membership and the role of The Club as a 'cachet' that bolstered Boswell's ego.
CGV entry 4:21. Part of the research series of the Yale Editions.
Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai University of Foreign Studies
Nagashima’s collects five essays on Johnson’s philological output and documents Johnson’s lexicographical methods. Johnson derived brief Latin etymologies from Bailey. For Germanic word origins, he used Skinner and Junius, later criticizing Junius’s judgment regarding derivations like dream from drama and moan from monos. Nagashima details Johnson's practices with source texts, observing attention to word formation and his tendency to avoid hyphens. Nagashima includes analysis of Johnson’s History of the English Language and notes broad historical agreement between Johnson’s History and Warton’s Plan of the History of English Poetry. He charts how Johnson moved from etymological insecurity in the Plan to self-assured critical evaluation in the Preface.
Brack presents the first scholarly edition of Hawkins’s biography of Johnson. Using the 1787 second edition as copy-text—the final version Hawkins intended for the public—Brack preserves the original narrative while correcting only typographical errors. He resists 'coauthoring' the text, leaving Hawkins’s factual errors standing but correcting them in extensive annotations. The edition provides the first complete set of annotations for the entire biography, focusing on identifying historical, literary, and biographical allusions through sources like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Johnson’s own Dictionary. Brack traces the work’s composition from Hawkins’s appointment as executor in 1784 through its controversial reception and subsequent revisions. The introduction emphasizes the biography’s significance as a 'spiritual journey' and a 'distillation of personal experience' from a forty-five-year friendship, noting that Hawkins knew Johnson longer than Boswell and provides unique insights into his 'medical life,' reading habits, and 'social and professional milieux.' Brack argues that Hawkins’s account is essential for 'reconstructing Johnson,' as it captures a 'moral and spiritual' perspective often absent in other early biographies. Reviewers describe the book as a "masterful" and "definitive" edition that successfully rescues a "reliable" biographer from two centuries of infamy fueled by "internecine warfare." Most critics, including Lynch and Radner, celebrate the work for providing an "indispensable source" of intimate knowledge regarding the subject’s early London years and the Ivy Lane Club—details often overshadowed by the narrative dominance of more famous rivals. Deutsch and Walker specifically highlight the value of the biographer’s role as executor, noting that his "first-person" perspective offers a "clinical pathography" and unique insights into the subject's "medical life" and final "death-bed conflict." But the biographer’s own character remains a subject of intense scrutiny; while Rawson and Cook identify a pervasive "priggish insistence" and "stiffness" in the prose, they argue these "sharp insights," often fueled by "malice or prejudice," provide a necessary "social and intellectual" context. Brack is highly commended for an "exemplary" production that resists "coauthoring" the text, instead using "admirably comprehensive" notes to correct historical errors while leaving the original, "unclubbable" narrative intact. Although some contributors find the editorial apparatus "frustratingly brief" in its external references, the consensus among scholars like Lock and Walker is that the edition is a "welcome" and "handsome" rendering. Ultimately, the work is praised for presenting the subject’s life not as a polished monument, but as a "compelling" and "uncomfortably familiar" record of a "spiritual journey" that remains essential for any complete reconstruction of the great man.
Printed by Tyburn Tree for Dr Johnson's House Trust
Hodge's History of Cats: A History of Cats' Varying Fortunes Illustrated with Examples from Shakespeare to Johnson
Publisher's blurb: "Hodge the cat has developed a cult following to rival his owner, Samuel Johnson. His likeness stands outside Johnson's house in Gough Square and attracts visitors from all over the world. This book covers what we know for sure about the enigmatic Hodge, and then moves on to expertly assess what wlse we might surmise. In the process it tracks an anecdotal history of cats and catkeeping up to Johnson's day -- when our relationship with cats stood on the threshold of a profound change."
University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies
Curious Travellers: Dr. Johnson and Thomas Pennant on Tour: An Exhibition at Dr. Johnson's House, London, October 2018–January 2019
Publisher's blurb: "This beautifully illustrated booklet accompanies an exhibition held at Dr. Johnson's House, London (October 2018–January 2019), exploring the eighteenth-century spirit of ‘curiosity' through the Scottish and Welsh tours of Thomas Pennant and Samuel Johnson. It stages a close encounter between two profoundly engaging writers, comparing their responses to the cultures, languages, landscapes and histories of these two Celtic nations. Other voices are present here too, including Johnson's travelling companion James Boswell, and Hester Thrale Piozzi, the mutual friend of both Johnson and Pennant. Contemporary illustrations by Moses Griffith bring the journeys vividly to life."
Curious Travellers - Dr Johnson and Thomas Pennant on Tour
An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli
This critical edition provides the first complete English reprint since 1769 of Boswell’s breakthrough work, following the text of the third edition corrected by the first and second. Editorial policy focuses on presenting the two constitutive texts—the objective, researched historical survey and the subjective, personal travel journal—as an interrelated, integral whole unified by the theme of liberty. Boulton and McLoughlin supply extensive annotations identifying Boswell's diverse sources, which include classical authors like Diodorus Siculus and Seneca, modern French histories by Goury and Jaussin, and the unpublished journal of Andrew Burnaby. The editors detail the complicated gestation of the book, highlighting Boswell’s strategic use of the press to generate public interest and his meticulous revision process revealed in the Yale manuscripts. The volume includes a scholarly introduction analyzing Boswell’s idealization of Paoli and the Corsican people, a chronology of Boswell’s life, and an appendix on the work's reception. By restoring the "Account" alongside the "Journal," the edition clarifies Boswell’s polemical intent to champion Corsican national sovereignty before a British audience. Critics are generally favorable toward this complete critical edition, praising the restoration of the integrated text and its historical context. Lister’s review in TLS highlights how the unique combination of an objective account and a subjective journal established an early European reputation centered on liberty. Baines, in MLR, calls the volume exemplary and timely, praising the editors for disputing the traditional generic hierarchy even if the format occasionally appears cluttered. Lee's review in AJ welcomes the text as a necessary contribution that should renew interest in significant pre-Johnsonian achievements, though he points out minor editorial flaws like typographical errors and an inconsistent index. In JNL, Ruxin provides an extensive historical account, noting how the original work achieved swift popular success and European fame, while highlighting early ambivalent reactions from contemporary figures. Lurcock (N&Q) commends the restoration of original orthography and the framing of the journal as a carefully constructed piece of political propaganda. Lynch, in SEL, offers a positive evaluation of the fine edition for presenting a cosmopolitan friend of liberty and including a helpful appendix of historical critical responses. Colombani (Eighteenth-Century Scotland) values the exhaustive introduction and dense historical survey, despite noting rare misprints in the annotations. Finally, Viviès (XVII–XVIII) praises the carefully established text, emphasizing the precision of the introduction regarding the complex drafting process and the idealization of the central national hero.
Johnson's Prescriptive Labels — a Reassessment
The question of whether or not Johnson was a prescriptivist has frequently been discussed, often with a focus on his practice of using prescriptive labels. For example, Allen (1978, 198) discovers that "in the entire dictionary there actually appear more than 1,150 words bearing indications of Johnson's personal attitude towards them, roughly one in forty [of the 41,443 headwords], or about two and one-half percent." Allen then gives the number of occurrences of labels such as proper, impmperand low which, he argues, indicateJohnson's "personal attitudes." Similarly, Barnbrook (2005, 109), after discussingJohnson's use of labels such as improper, ludicrous and low, concludes: There seems to be clear and incontrovertible evidence in the sheer volume and nature ofJohnson's usage notes that the prescriptivist approach promised in the Plan and detailed, though with reservations, in the Preface, informed the construction of the Dictionary to a significant extent. However, it is my contention thatJohnson's prescriptivism, as evidenced in his use of labels, is not as extensive as such comments suggest. This argument will be supported first by examining how many labels there are in proportion to the overall size of the dictionary and, second, by considering whatJohnson meant by them. 1 I am grateful to the AHRC for funding the research on which this article is based. Dictionaries:Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 30 (2009), 108-118 Johnson's Prescriptive Labels — a Reassessment109 Number and Proportion of Prescriptive Labels Quantifications ofJohnson's prescriptive labels are usually based on a comparison between the number of usage labels and the number of headwords in the dictionary. As noted above, Allen used this method (based on a manual count) to arrive at a total of about 2.5%. Barnbrook (whose analysis is based on computational searches of the first and fourth editions) claims that "more than 10 percent of the headwords in both editions... contain usage notes of one sort or another" (2005, 99). This figure includes descriptive labels (grammatical labels such as plural and style labels such as poetic) as well, and Barnbrook does not directly state the percentage of prescriptive labels only. However, ifone works through the tables in which the numbers of usage notes are divided into prescriptive and descriptive (2005, 104), one can calculate that the proportion of prescriptive labels to headwords is 1.8% in the first edition and 2.1% in the fourth, similar to the figure reached by Allen. However, these percentages are slightly misleading, sinceJohnson often does not label a whole word, but rather one sense of a word, as in his entry for indifferent, adj. (entries are from the first edition unless stated otherwise): 1.Neutral; not determined on either side... 2.Unconcerned; inattentive; regardless... 3.Not to have such difference as that the one is for its own sake preferable to the other... 4.Impartial; disinterested... 5.Passable; having mediocrity; of a middling state; neither good nor worst. This is an improper and colloquial use, especially when applied to persons. The first four senses are not censured at all; it is only the fifth sense that Johnson regards as "improper and colloquial," certainly not the word indifferentitself . The same is true for many of the senses thatJohnson labels. Thus, even though the proportion oflabels to headwords is about 2%, it would be more accurate to compare the number of labels with the number of senses. Unfortunately, there has been very little research into the number ofsenses inJohnson's dictionary, but, based on a count of a random sample of pages from the dictionary, 1 found that there are on average twice as many senses as headwords, if this holds for the whole 110Kate Wild dictionary, then the proportion of prescriptive labels to senses is only about 1%. How Prescriptive are the "Prescriptive" Labels? Even the figure of 1%, though, is perhaps an overstatement, as it includes labels which are classified as prescriptive based On their presentday meanings. That is, it is often assumed that whatJohnson meant by, say, improper, was the same as what improper means today. A full appreciation of the...
CGV entry 5:264. A revised edition with a revised bibliography.
Hester Thrale Piozzi: Portrait of a Literary Woman
This study challenges the traditional view of Piozzi as a mere accidental author or Johnsonian satellite, asserting her status as a deliberate and versatile literary professional. McCarthy examines her career through the lens of authorial competence and gender politics, arguing that Piozzi’s "fearless" and "incautious" temperament led her to compete directly in male-dominated genres such as philology, politics, and world history. The biography reinterprets her relationship with Johnson not as a parodic apprenticeship but as a complex intellectual rivalry. McCarthy posits that Piozzi used her writings—specifically "Anecdotes" and her edition of Johnson's letters—to innovate biographical methods and elevate the familiar letter to a literary status. Furthermore, the text analyzes her travel writing in "Observations and Reflections" as a successful revision of the "rhetoric of spleen" found in Smollett and Johnson. Despite contemporary critical dismissals based on male standards of "Learning and Correctness," McCarthy demonstrates Piozzi’s historical priority as a pioneering female historian and the "mother of English synonymy." The work concludes that Piozzi’s estimable achievement represents a significant, if flawed, insurgence into the eighteenth-century republic of letters. Chapter 1, "The Education of a Welsh Girl," traces the subject's early life and rigorous intellectual training, examining how her superior education prepared her for a literary career while simultaneously placing her in conflict with the conventional expectations of her gender. Chapter 2, "Marriage and Streatham," explores the complex dynamics of her life with Henry Thrale, detailing how the Streatham estate became a unique intellectual salon where she functioned as both a domestic manager and a vital participant in the period's most famous literary circle. Chapter 3, "The Thrale-Johnson Relationship," analyzes the deep emotional and intellectual bond with Samuel Johnson, arguing that her role as his confidante and caregiver was instrumental in his survival and provided the essential raw material for her future biographical writings. Chapter 4, "The Crisis of the Heart," recounts the social scandal and personal isolation following Henry Thrale’s death and her controversial marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, interpreting this period as a crucial act of self-assertion and liberation from both familial and societal tyranny. Chapter 5, "The Anecdotes of Johnson," examines her first major publication, asserting that the work represents a revolutionary approach to biography that used intimate "anecdotal" evidence to provide a more human, and often more critical, portrait of the sage. Chapter 6, "Travel and Observations," analyzes her Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, highlighting her innovative use of a conversational, "feminine" style to challenge the traditionally masculine genre of travel writing. Chapter 7, "The Later Works: British Synonymy and Retrospection," investigates her ambitious late-career projects in linguistics and universal history, portraying these works as daring attempts to claim authority in major genres typically reserved for male scholars. Chapter 8, "The Legacy of a Pioneer," concludes the study by positioning the author as the most considerable of the Bluestocking writers, whose resourcefulness and courage paved the way for future generations of women writers before Jane Austen. The reception of this critical biography is marked by its recognition as the first "feminist treatment" of the subject’s entire canon, with reviewers commending the author for moving beyond the celebrity of the "Johnson legend." Critics praised the "absorbing" study for using "much new material" to re-establish the subject as a significant "literary woman" who rivaled her male contemporaries despite "eighteenth-century social pressures." Much of the positive commentary focuses on the author’s "sensitive and perceptive" analysis of overlooked works on language and politics, arguing that she navigated a "double bind" of gender by developing "rhetorical solutions" to write learnedly in "male-dominated genres." Reviewers particularly appreciated the defense of the Anecdotes as an "emblematically truthful mosaic" and the subject’s emergence as a "pioneering figure" asserting her rights to literature. However, the work faced significant theoretical critiques; several scholars argued that the focus on "culturally determined miseries" and the use of "psycho-biographical theories" reduced the subject’s interior life to a "strained relationship with famous men." Detractors felt that framing her career as "essentially reactive"—specifically as an "Oedipal struggle" with male precursors—unintentionally "obscures her literary individuality" and "re-places" her in the very "Scotch shadow" the author sought to escape. While some found the treatment of "Johnsonian ghosts" less than convincing, the consensus remains that the study provides a "service to scholars" by ranking the subject among the top English women writers before Austen.
Weinbrot examines the intellectual and moral development of Samuel Johnson by analyzing his major works, including the Dictionary, London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Rasselas. By comparing the 1747 Plan of the Dictionary with the 1755 Preface, Weinbrot identifies a shift from a "brash" and "other-directed" novice seeking noble patronage from Chesterfield to a "mature and weary" lexicographer who accepts human achievement's "infinite importance and infinite irrelevance." Weinbrot rejects ideological readings of Johnson's illustrative quotations, arguing instead that Johnson "does not form, but register the language" through "irenic generalizing" and broad Christian commonplaces. The collection further explores Johnson's "dramatically figurative prose," his use of "domestic metaphors" to bring abstractions into daily life, and his rejection of skepticism in favor of "celestial wisdom." Finally, Weinbrot situates Johnson's politics against the "neo-Jacobite" controversy, maintaining a "habitual distrust of the a priori" in assessing Johnson's relationship with the Hanoverian state. Critical reception of this collection characterizes it as a formidable exercise in "Archaeo-Historicism" that reinforces the subject's status as a "rigorous moral thinker." Lock and Lynch both emphasize the importance of the sixteen gathered essays, noting that their "erudition and insight" gain significant impact when read together, particularly those that were previously inaccessible. Reviewers frequently highlight the "combative" and "polemic" nature of the work, especially regarding the controversy over the subject's putative Jacobitism. Lock and Lynch both note the vigorous refutation of political allegories in poems like The Vanity of Human Wishes, while Hudson observes how the analysis invites readers to become "partners in creating the text." Lambert praises the "Chicago-school approach" for its historical grounding, yet Clingham offers a more tempered critique. He suggests that the "positivist methodology" serves as "too blunt an instrument" to fully capture the subject's "nuanced, skeptical thought" and expresses concern that the traditional historical focus remains "indifferent to newer critical concerns." Despite these methodological reservations, the consensus identifies the volume as a vital, "amply documented" contribution that challenges speculative history through solid evidence.
Facts and Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell
This edition gathers 133 identified items of Boswell’s extensive and often anonymous periodical output, providing a comprehensive view of his thirty-five-year career in the British press. Editorial policy emphasizes presenting Boswell’s journalism as primary text rather than mere historical context, using five thematic sections—Reports and Interviews, Execution Intelligence, The Rampager, The Lives of Johnson, and Essays and Letters—to create cohesive narratives from disparate news paragraphs, celebrity profiles, and letters. Tankard preserves eighteenth-century typographical practices and incorporates Boswell’s own manuscript corrections from archived press cuttings at Yale University. The collection highlights Boswell’s versatile skills in character sketching and anecdotal craftsmanship while documenting his public interactions with Johnson, Piozzi, and other contemporaries. In 'The Lives of Johnson' section, Tankard details the competitive biographical landscape following Johnson’s death, featuring Boswell’s strategic use of the press to defend his authority against rivals like Piozzi and Hawkins. Salient entries include Boswell’s reports on the 1769 Stratford Jubilee and his 'Rampager' political essays, where he often employed 'inventions' to maintain public focus on specific interests. The reception of this edition is characterized by widespread acclaim for its "monumental" effort in recovering a significant, often neglected body of work by a major author. Huch and DeMaria applaud the "decade-long project" for revealing the subject's "versatility, imagination," and "amoral jauntiness," particularly his skillful use of public media for "self-promotion." Radner and Schweizer commend the "judicious selection" of 133 pieces—including the first complete reprinting of the Rampager series—which makes accessible a diverse range of "reports, interviews, essays, letters, and ‘inventions’" previously largely unavailable. Sider Jost highlights the volume’s success in capturing an impulse for "improvisation and spontaneity" and "rampageneous hoaxes" that contrast sharply with the painstaking accuracy of the subject's more famous biography. While Radner suggests a chronological organization might have better illustrated the range of activity in specific periods, he and Schweizer both praise the "extensive contextualization" provided through "essential contextual headnotes" and the preservation of "eighteenth-century typography." DeMaria specifically notes the value of the section concerning the subject's journalistic output related to his most famous work, including "anonymous paragraphs concerning Mrs. Piozzi." Ultimately, the consensus among reviewers like Sider Jost and Schweizer is that the collection is a "substantial addition" to scholarship and a "key resource" for understanding the subject’s mastery of the "middle style" and his deep engagement with "Georgian popular culture."
printed by W. Strahan, for W. Strahan, J. & F. Rivington, T. Davies, J. Hinton, L. Davis [and 20 others in London]
A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers
The first major revision, constituting Johnson's final version published in his lifetime. It is widely accepted as the best textual authority, incorporating over 15,000 changes, corrections, and additions accumulated by Johnson since 1755. A distinctive feature was the deliberate addition of illustrative quotations, particularly from High Church and sometimes Stuart-sympathizer writers, reinforcing Anglican orthodoxy and conservatism in both political and theological contexts. Illustrative quotations were often edited, clipped, or compressed. Despite minimizing the revisions in the accompanying Advertisement, Johnson received a £300 payment for this intensive labor.
Bought 31 May 2023 on eBay from Guzzi1969 for $628.39.
Front board of vol. 1 detached.
The fourth edition, revised by the author. An 'Advertisement to the Fourth Edition' was added.
Privately Printed by Stinehour Editions for the Johnsonians
Paroxysm Lost: Volatility and Evanescence in the 'Life of Johnson' Manuscript
Printed for J. Buckland, J. Rivington & Sons, T. Payne & Sons, L. Davis, B. White and Son, T. Longman, B. Law, J. Dodsley, H. Baldwin, J. Robson, J. Johnson, C. Dilly, T. Vernor, W. Nicoll, G.G.J. and J. Robinson, T. Cadell, T. Carnan, J. Nichols, J. Bew, R. Baldwin, N. Conant, P. Elmsly, W. Goldsmith, J. Knox, R. Faulder, Leigh & Sotheby, G. Nicol, J. Murray, A. Strahan, W. Lowndes, T. Evans, W. Bent, S. Hayes, G. and T. Wilkie, T. & J. Egerton, W. Fox, P. Macqueen, D. Ogilvie, B. Collins, and E. Newbery
Hawkins's Life is the first substantial, full-dress biography of Johnson, published as the introductory volume to an eleven-volume edition of Johnson’s collected Works. Hawkins was Johnson’s executor and oldest friend, having known him longer than Boswell, granting him access to private papers and unique personal material. The work contains exclusive anecdotes, notably details of the Ivy Lane Club and an account of the all-night party celebrating Lennox's first novel. Hawkins employs a strict chronological form and conceives of the work as a "life and times," which includes numerous "miscellaneous matter" or digressions concerning eighteenth-century customs, institutions, and professions like law, music, and medicine. Hawkins also incorporates Johnson’s original texts, such as the Latin poem Ad Urbanum and lengthy political excerpts, elements which critics frequently cite as retarding the biographical narrative. Hawkins's Life achieved initial sales success, prompting a second edition soon after publication. But the original 1787 reception of this biography was overwhelmingly hostile, with contemporary critics denouncing it as a "ponderous," "tedious," and "multifarious" composition that constitutes an "iniquitous cruelty" toward its subject. Reviewers severely censure the author for producing a "daubing" and derogatory portrait characterized by "rank malevolence" and "rancour," accusing him of acting as a "laborious drudge" who fills a "maze" of narrative with "errant trifling" and "Historical Annals of Grub-street." The work is frequently mocked for its "turgid eloquence" and a legalistic style likened to the "Statutes at Large," which critics argue serves only to highlight the author's own "self-importance" and "egotism." Particular condemnation is reserved for the biographer's "brutal" treatment of contemporaries like Fielding and Garrick, his "abject" political views, and his "remiss" understanding of moral philosophy. Furthermore, the inclusion of "misplaced miscellaneous and foreign matter"—ranging from the history of taverns to the origins of Blackfriars Bridge—is seen as a distraction from the "strong and comprehensive" mind of the subject. Perhaps most controversially, critics express a desire that "diuretic" medical details and the revelation that the subject's death was hastened by "his own hands" had been suppressed. Ultimately, the consensus among early readers was that the biography failed in its "biographical duty," offering a "hideous caricature" that favored "private spleen" over historical accuracy. Murphy, in four extensive reviews for the Monthly Review, severely censures the publication for presenting a derogatory and daubing portrait motivated by money. He disputes the volume's structural integrity, labeling it a maze of misplaced, foreign matter filled with factual errors, commonplace-book sweepings, and rank malevolence toward contemporaries. Writing in the Critical Review, an unsigned commentator dismisses the text as too dull for praise, arguing that the narrative fails to unfold a comprehensive mind and instead offers a cumbrous load of legalisms and errant trifling. An unsigned assessment in the English Review characterizes the work as a tedious, multifarious composition that takes full vengeance on the subject's ashes by exposing personal faults, superstitious terrors, and a hastened death. Porson, in a series of satirical reviews for the Gentleman's Magazine, ridicules the Knight's turgid eloquence, vanity, and excess of candour, mocking the pervasive use of the first-person pronoun and the replacement of original texts with inferior readings. Finally, an unsigned contributor in the Gentleman's Magazine highlights the public's negative reception, noting a total lack of mercy and candour in the biographical execution.
Bought 5 Nov. 2023 on eBay from AntiquarianBooks-UK for GBP 122.61.
CGV entry 3:27. This work is Volume 1 of 'The Works of Samuel Johnson', 1787. A second, corrected edition was also published in 1787. Extracts are reprinted in G. B. Hill's 'Johnsonian Miscellanies' (1897).
Reviews: Critical Review 63 (June 1787): 417–24; English Review 9 (April 1787): 259–69; Gentleman’s Magazine 57, no. 5 (1787): 435; Arthur Murphy, Monthly Review 76 (April 1787): 273–92; Arthur Murphy, Monthly Review 76 (May 1787): 369–84; Arthur Murphy, Monthly Review 77 (July 1787): 56–70; Arthur Murphy, Monthly Review 77 (August 1787): 131–40; Richard Porson, Gentleman’s Magazine 57, no. 2 (1787): 652–53; Richard Porson, Gentleman’s Magazine 57, no. 3 (1787): 751–53; Richard Porson, Gentleman’s Magazine 57, no. 4 (1787): 847–52.
Boswell, George Steevens, and the Johnsonian Biography Wars
Tankard identifies and attributes numerous anonymous items published in the St. James's Chronicle in January 1785 to the Shakespeare scholar George Steevens. These contributions—including anecdotes, commentary, poems attributed to Johnson, and an account of Robert Levet—were part of the "biography wars" following Johnson's death. Steevens used the newspaper to promote Boswell as Johnson's rightful biographer, armed with superior materials and the Literary Club's implicit endorsement, while simultaneously disparaging the rival claims and abilities of Sir John Hawkins, toward whom Steevens harbored significant animosity.
Pale Fire and Johnson's Cat: The Anecdote in Polite Conversation
Silver examines the microhistory of a specific anecdote involving Johnson and his cat, Hodge, tracing its migration from Boswell's biography to the epigraph of Nabokov's Pale Fire. Silver disputes traditional interpretations of the anecdote as mere ornament, arguing instead that it functions as a "seductive opening" that introduces the unpredictable "real" into structured academic discourse. This study uses Lacanian psychoanalysis to analyze how Johnson uses a story about a cat-shooting gentleman to anchor moral arguments, only to have the traumatic signifier "shot" disrupt the conversational flow. Silver chronicles how Boswell, Nabokov, and later critics repeat this anecdote to recuperate historical trauma into a "conversation without end." Silver concludes that polite conversation and academic inquiry use the anecdote to master contingency and ward off the "death of the conversation." The article identifies the "pathological public sphere" as a space where sociality and the wound remain inseparable, framing the Johnsonian style as a tool for managing such tensions.
Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts
Johnson and Boswell: The Story of Their Lives
Pearson provides a comprehensive dual biography of Johnson and Boswell, tracing their development from provincial origins to literary prominence. The narrative identifies four defining traits in Johnson's character: a passion for truth, an affectionate disposition, wit, and a love of power. Pearson details Johnson's early struggles with scrofula, poverty, and hypochondria, alongside his professional milestones including the 'Dictionary', 'The Rambler', and his edition of Shakespeare. The text explores Boswell's 'protean' nature and 'human chameleon' quality, attributing his success as a biographer to a lack of a 'prime characteristic' which permitted total immersion in his subjects. Pearson examines their famous meeting at Thomas Davies's bookshop and subsequent travels, including the 1773 tour of the Hebrides. Significant attention is directed to their social circles, featuring full accounts of Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Burke. The role of Piozzi is described through her transition from Johnson's 'guardian angel' to the wife of Gabriel Piozzi, a shift that Pearson identifies as the 'death-knell' of Johnson's social comforts. Pearson emphasizes the 'filial' and 'paternal' nature of the central relationship, concluding with Boswell's production of the 'Life of Samuel Johnson' as an exercise in both 'sacred love of truth' and personal 'bad taste.' Chapter 1, 'The Depression of Poverty,' examines the foundational characteristics of Samuel Johnson’s temperament, tracing his intellectual precocity and lifelong battle with melancholia to the discordant domestic environment and physical infirmities of his childhood. Chapter 2, 'Self-Education,' delineates the unconventional path of Johnson's intellectual development, from his formative exposure to elegant society through his cousin Cornelius Ford to his desultory but profound period of study at home and his aborted tenure at Oxford. Chapter 3, 'Morbidity and Marriage,' addresses the acute onset of Johnson's mental distress following his departure from university and his unlikely but deeply felt union with Elizabeth Porter, which provided emotional stability amid professional failure. Chapter 4, 'The Tide of Life,' chronicles Johnson’s early struggles as a literary hack in London, highlighting his association with Richard Savage and the publication of London, which established his reputation for powerful social critique. Chapter 5, 'Intimacies,' explores the complex web of Johnson's personal relationships during his middle years, focusing on his profound capacity for friendship and his often contentious but devoted marriage. Chapter 6, 'The Dictionary,' details the Herculean labor of compiling the Dictionary of the English Language, an enterprise that defined Johnson's career and established his authority as the preeminent man of letters in England. Chapter 7, 'Friends and Dependants,' describes the diverse social circle Johnson gathered around himself, ranging from aristocratic wits like Topham Beauclerk to the indigent dependants who populated his household. Chapter 8, 'From Ireland,' discusses Johnson’s relationships with prominent Irish figures like Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke, as well as the personal grief and creative output, such as Rasselas, that followed his mother’s death. Chapter 9, 'The Man,' analyzes the core of Johnson's character, specifically his rigorous commitment to truth, his paradoxical displays of rudeness and tenderness, and the profound religious anxieties that governed his inner life. Chapter 10, 'The Meeting,' recounts the celebrated first encounter between Johnson and James Boswell in 1763, setting the stage for the most significant biographical partnership in English literature. Chapter 11, 'From Scotland,' shifts focus to the early life of James Boswell, detailing his aristocratic lineage, his rebellious reaction against a strict Presbyterian upbringing, and his initial attempts to forge an identity in London. Chapter 12, 'At Large,' traces Boswell's experiences during his early twenties in the capital, illustrating his search for social status and his burgeoning relationship with Johnson prior to his continental travels. Chapter 13, 'In Search of a Character,' follows Boswell to Utrecht, where his internal struggles with depression and his complex pursuit of Isabella van Tuyll reflect his ongoing quest for a stable personal identity. Chapter 19, 'Together,' documents the 1773 tour of the Hebrides, analyzing how the rigors of travel and the encounter with Scottish culture further revealed the contrasting personalities of the two men. Chapter 20, 'The Rambler Rambles,' covers the later travels and social engagements of Johnson's life, particularly his growing involvement with the Thrale family and his increasing dependency on their hospitality. Chapter 21, 'Best and Worst,' contrasts Johnson's enlightened views on social justice and war with his rigid adherence to traditional notions of property and female submission. Chapter 22, 'Tremendous Talks,' captures the peak of Johnson's conversational powers in his final decade, as recorded by Boswell during their frequent meetings in London and Ashbourne. Chapter 23, 'Social Comforts,' focuses on the production of the Lives of the Poets and Johnson's late-life friendships with women such as Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale. Chapter 24, 'Various,' deals with the aftermath of Henry Thrale's death, exploring Johnson's brief foray into the management of the brewery and his deepening rift with the widowed Hester Thrale. Chapter 25, 'Distressful Strokes,' charts the rapid decline of Johnson's physical health and the emotional isolation he experienced as his closest social ties began to unravel. Chapter 26, 'The Race With Death,' recounts Johnson’s final months and his eventual death in December 1784, noting his struggle for spiritual peace and his terror of the last judgment. Chapter 27, 'The Laird and the Lord,' examines Boswell’s life after Johnson’s death, specifically his mixed success as a Scottish landlord and his ill-fated political ambitions in England. Chapter 28, 'The End of the Story,' concludes by detailing the publication of the Life of Samuel Johnson, the work that secured the legacies of both the subject and his biographer. The consensus on this biography is that it serves as a readable, popular introduction, though reviewers describe the book as a "rich pudding" that occasionally lacks scholarly depth. Hutchens and Poore praise the work as an "irresistibly inviting" and "entertaining" synthesis of "great set-pieces," while Lindley commends the "robust style" and "neat turn of phrase" used to bring the eighteenth-century circle to life. However, Altick dismisses the narrative as a collection of "overfamiliar" anecdotes and "literary chestnuts," criticizing the lack of "academic interpretation." While the Economist finds the dual-biography approach "accurate and objective," The Times censures the author's "jarring modern vulgarism" and "personal prejudices." Critics like Halsband and Mahoney fault the "superficiality" of the "pedestrian summaries," noting a lack of fresh "critical insights" into the subjects' professional brilliance. Furthermore, Walker and Altick challenge the "disingenuous" claim of novelty regarding the pair's intimacy, while Petrie and the Wolverhampton Express and Star highlight the "frank" portrayal of the "human chameleon" and "sensualist" Boswell against the "noble" but "melancholic" Johnson. Despite Clarke’s appreciation for the "blunt" critique of Boswell’s lack of selective sense, Coleman views the effort as a "disenchanted" repetition of "Boswellian mythology" that ignores the subjects' major literary contributions.
Cochrane entry 24.
Reprinted by Cassell, 1987.
Sale Catalogues of the Libraries of Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Thrale (Mrs. Piozzi) and James Boswell
Reproduces photographically the sale catalogue of Samuel Johnson's library from the facsimile edition of A. Edward Newton ... catalogues of Mrs. Piozzi's library produced in 1972 by Dr. Stephen Parks ... James Boswell's library is reproduced from a copy owned by Oak Knoll Books.
The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone
A specialized "subject volume" for scholars, isolating correspondence with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone, crucial figures for understanding Boswell’s career and the production of his major works. The collection spans from a 1772 letter by Thomas Percy to one from Malone to James Boswell, Jr., in 1808. It comprises 391 letters or portions, including 160 letters written by Boswell and 231 addressed to him, plus 23 other papers. Notably, it contains the complete extant Boswell-Malone correspondence, illuminating the period of gathering information and composing the Life of Johnson, specifically 1786 to 1791. The editorial policy adheres strictly to the Yale Research Edition's style sheet, requiring scrupulous reproduction of original manuscripts, and the apparatus has since served as a standard for other Yale scholarly editions. Supplemental materials include a detailed introduction by P. S. Baker surveying the Boswell-Malone relationship, copious contextual notes on persons and events, and a general index. This volume follows prior correspondence volumes and focuses on Malone's extensive assistance with The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and the urging/design of the Life of Johnson. Critics are generally favorable, praising the expert scholarship and meticulous annotation while exploring the distinct relational dynamics documented in the text. Rogers, in the TLS, finds this installment less commanding than previous ones, noting the correspondence with Garrick is scrappy and that Burke kept Boswell at arm's length due to political leaks; however, he emphasizes that the Malone letters dominate the volume, acting as a structural bridle against the imagination. Quennell's review in the Financial Times enthusiastically contrasts Boswell's talent for expanding his social circle with his later decline, highlighting Malone's essential role in improving the major biographies and defending his companion's character. In AJ, Kinsella celebrates the meticulously prepared volume as a rich archive for understanding how the companionate biographical style developed through a complicated dependence on Malone's reputation for accuracy. Eastwood, in the English Historical Review, contrasts Boswell's robust Toryism with Burke's political sophistication, noting how their friendship cooled after disputes over regional legislation. Fulton, in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, offers a positive evaluation of the learned work, though he notes the extensive annotations occasionally border on the intrusive. Martin, in PQ, focuses on the deep literary partnership with Malone, contrasting it with the more tentative, fraught relationship with Burke. Finally, Middendorf, in JNL, praises the Yale office for scholarly accuracy, presenting the compilation as an essential resource for illuminating the social networks that supported major biographical achievements.
Hardly Harmless Drudgery: A 500-Year Pictorial History of the Lexicographic Geniuses, Sciolists, Plagiarists, & Obsessives Who Defined the English Language
Garner and Lynch describe the 'lexicographic quarrel' between Johnson and Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, following the latter's failure to provide substantial support during the Dictionary's nine-year compilation. The authors analyze Chesterfield's 1754 'courtly device'—two flattering essays in The World intended to secure a dedication—as a 'bizarre reversal' of roles. Johnson rejected Chesterfield’s 'honeyed words' and 'cock-boats,' responding with the 7 February 1755 letter. Garner and Lynch characterize this 'masterpiece of insolence' as a 'Magna Carta of the modern author,' marking the shift from noble patronage to market-based self-sufficiency. They note that Johnson’s final 'jab' appeared in the Dictionary itself, where he redefined 'patron' as a 'wretch who supports with insolence.'
Boswell's Books: Four Generations of Collecting and Collectors
Publisher's blurb: "Since Boswell published The Life of Johnson in 1791, he has ranked among great authors. Seymour reconstructed the Boswell family library, containing over 4,500 titles belonging to five generations, including Boswell himself. Using forensic methods, Seymour documents the library's history and flow after Boswell's death. This extensive reconstruction uncovers book provenance, including connections with Johnson and Garrick, shedding new light on Boswell's life and methods."
Thomas Percy: A Scholar-Cleric in the Age of Johnson
Davis provides a detailed account of the intellectual and personal relationship between Johnson and Percy. Their connection began in 1756 when Grainger introduced them in London. Johnson encouraged Percy's scholarly ambitions, specifically urging the publication of the folio manuscript of ancient ballads that eventually became the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. During 1761, Johnson and Percy frequently met in London to discuss ballad selection and editorial policy, including decisions to include Scottish poems and imitation ballads. Percy also facilitated the first meeting between Johnson and Goldsmith on May 31, 1761, witnessing Johnson's unusual attention to neatness in dress as a pedagogical example for the slovenly Goldsmith. While Johnson offered critical notes and "council of war" advice for Percy's various projects, including his edition of Buckingham and translation of Ovid, he notably delayed a long-promised visit to Percy's vicarage at Easton Maudit for several years.
Rudd presents a complete edition of Johnson’s Latin corpus, organized into early poems, works from 1738–1749, later poems (1750–1784) including translations from the Greek Anthology, contributions to other authors, and poems of doubtful authenticity. The editorial policy prioritizes a "fairly literal translation" to assist readers with "residual Latin" and identifies "a surprising number" of textual errors in the 1964 Yale and 1974 Oxford editions. Rudd argues that the Latin medium allowed Johnson to "reveal things about himself that he would not have expressed in English," specifically regarding his "morbid melancholy," the labor of the Dictionary, and his personal devotions. Commentary identifies classical allusions, noting Horace as the most frequent source due to his "brilliant" versification and shared temperament regarding depression. The introduction highlights the biographical significance of specific verses, such as those addressed to Dr. Lawrence, the odes on Skye and Inchkenneth, and the "Prayer on Losing the Power of Speech." Included are a bibliography, indexes of first lines and titles, and a table of abbreviations referencing the editions of Smith and McAdam, the Yale series, and Baldwin.
Samuel Johnson and His Disgrace to English Literature
The Book That Missed the Last Truck to Houghton: A Keepsake in Commemoration of the 315th Birthday of Samuel Johnson
Boswell's First and Second Person: The Yale-BBC Scotland Production of Boswell's London Journal and Boswell for the Defense
Vance assembles a collection of twelve essays that reassess Boswell’s biographical methods and the resulting portrait of Johnson. The contributors engage in a 'literary warfare' between 'Johnsonians,' who scrutinize the text for biographical accuracy and find it deficient, and 'Boswellians,' who emphasize its status as a literary masterpiece. Rader and Dowling argue that the work functions as a self-contained 'objective correlative' or 'heroic tradition' where artistic selection creates a 'concrete universal' character superior to mere historical recording. But Greene and Schwartz attack the text as an 'inadequate record' and a 'gross distortion,' suggesting Boswell used 'hero-worship' as a mask for suppressed resentment to 'cut Johnson down to size.' Burke counters this 'subjective bias' by demonstrating that the narrative incorporates testimony from numerous members of the Johnson circle, while Siebenschuh examines how human memory and 'fictional techniques' influenced the 'second crop of memory' used to reconstruct Johnson’s famous conversations years after the fact. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the collection's balance between historical accuracy and literary artistry, as well as its lack of a unified methodology. In ECCB, Bloom presents a composite review where Rader commends the volume's defense of literary craftsmanship, but Greene severely strips the biographer of historical value, while Damrosch and Bogel express skepticism regarding structural critiques and circuitous arguments. Alkon's review in SEL praises the pedagogical value and classroom accessibility of the text, while Korshin, also in SEL, applauds the thoughtful introduction but notes that some essays fail to add fresh information. Writing in N&Q, Clayton commends the volume as a coherent debate that successfully balances anti-Boswellian critiques with an appreciation for artistic design, highlighting central confrontations over the historical versus constructed subject. Tomarken, in the South Atlantic Quarterly, notes that the essays use modern theory to address the art-versus-truth dichotomy, praising Burke's analysis of how modern readers mistake a biographical supplement for a historical replacement. Conversely, Clingham, writing in English, critiques the collection for favoring theoretical, fictionalized interpretations over factual reliability, arguing the essays overlook how the subject's primary writings provide a truer characterization than subjective prose. In English Studies, Simon evaluates the collection as a reflection of vigorous scholarship balancing historical and artistic demands, while Kullman, in the South Central Review, enthusiastically celebrates the work as an outstanding record of major critical disagreements.
CGV entry 4:275. A collection of twelve essays, including a critical introduction by the editor on the state of 'Life' scholarship. Dedicated to Bertram H. Davis.
Cochrane entry 278. A collection of essays addressing key questions in Boswell studies. Contains items 208, 235, 245, 267, 269, 270, 273, 274, 275, 279, 280, and 281.
Reviews: Paul Alkon, SEL 29, no. 3 (1989): 579–620; Edward A. Bloom, ECCB, n.s., vol. 11 (1985): 508–10; Paul Clayton, N&Q 34 [232], no. 4 (1987): 548–49; Greg Clingham, English: The Journal of the English Association 36, no. 155 (1987): 168–78; Paul J. Korshin, SEL 26, no. 3 (1986): 562–63; Colby H. Kullman, South Central Review 4, no. 2 (1987): 104–6; Irène Simon, English Studies 68, no. 6 (1987): 563–65; Edward Tomarken, South Atlantic Quarterly 86, no. 2 (1987): 186–89.
Publisher's blurb: "James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations brings the insights of modern psychological and psychoanalytic theories to bear on the paradoxical tensions in Boswell's life and thus explicates a personality that seems to defy rational explanation. Drawing from an array of theoretical perspectives, the writers in this volume investigate Boswell's contradictions to reveal the hidden logic of psychic conflict and suggest ways in which these tensions manifested themselves in the biographer's work. As much attention is given to Boswell's less-celebrated works as to the London Journal and The Life of Johnson. Essays include the effect of Boswell's early reading of The Spectator on his desire to become a writer, the impact on his sense of identity of Rasselas, and the psychological dynamics of his relationships with the demanding Lord Auchinleck and the domineering Samuel Johnson."
Samuel Johnson and the Education of Women
Samuel Johnson's long-standing support of women's education is a component of his well-known interest in the writing, the accomplishments, and the conversation of women. Women gravitated to Johnson, and, as Norma Clarke has pointed out, "the image of Johnson holding forth among ‘the ladies' was so common and for different reasons had such currency that it has circulated as one of the many definitive images of Samuel Johnson. In its most sentimental version, Johnson is a grizzly bear and the ladies are tinkling visions of elegance." At the core of these social vignettes stands Johnson's respect for women's capabilities.
1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era
Reading Samuel Johnson: Reception and Representation, 1750–1960
Jones investigates the multifaceted reception of Samuel Johnson over two centuries, examining how he transitioned from a contemporary moral authority to a versatile cultural icon. The monograph identifies three primary modes of representation: the biographical "Great Cham" established by James Boswell and Hester Lynch Piozzi, the Romantic and Victorian "Hero as Man of Letters" popularized by Thomas Carlyle and Thomas Babington Macaulay, and the modernist subject of psychological and formalist critique. Jones argues that Johnson’s "representational plasticity" allowed him to be co-opted by diverse movements, including the anti-Jacobin reaction, the development of English Studies, and the modernist experiments of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. The work uses a broad range of evidence, including literary criticism, pedagogical texts, and fictional depictions, such as Beryl Bainbridge’s According to Queeney. By analyzing the tensions between Johnson’s original texts and his subsequent "afterlives," Jones demonstrates how the "Johnsonian" persona often overshadowed the author’s actual prose. The study concludes with the mid-twentieth-century professionalization of Johnsonian scholarship, which sought to ground his reputation in rigorous archival and editorial standards. Chapter 1, 'Johnson: Accounting for the Self,' addresses how the related practices of spiritual self-surveillance in personal diaries and the discourse of commerce in The Rambler function as methods for evaluating individual moral worth and imposing order on the elusiveness of time. It argues that while the diaries use numbers and plain prose to enact a self-audit against existential fears, The Rambler reframes identity as a form of property that must be prudently managed to achieve self-actualization through active mental performance. Chapter 2, 'Boswell’s "Life of Johnson": Theatre, Conversation, Voice,' examines the theatrical techniques employed to stage Johnson as a heroic lead character, prioritizing his living voice and spoken wisdom over his written texts. The segment contends that by internalizing the "Johnsonian æther," the biographer establishes proprietorial rights over his subject's legacy and asserts his own creative identity through authentic imitation. Chapter 3, 'Johnson and Women Writers: Thrale, Burney, and Austen,' explores how these authors diverted from masculine biographical norms to depict a domesticated and often irascible figure, while simultaneously re-appropriating his rhetoric to advance the canonical status of the novel. It addresses the ways in which his authoritative voice was absorbed and ironically transmuted into their distinct literary styles, serving as a catalyst for their own authorial independence rather than an inhibiting influence. Chapter 4, 'The Romantic Response: Hazlitt and Byron,' analyzes the divergent nineteenth-century reactions to an eighteenth-century predecessor, contrasting a critique of his "mechanical" and "unnatural" style with a defense of his classical authority and skeptical temper. The chapter argues that while some viewed his rule-driven literary practice as an affront to original genius, others used his stoic verse to challenge contemporary poetic orthodoxies. Chapter 5, 'Johnson and the Victorians,' addresses the refashioning of the author as a heroic symbol of permanence and stability during an era characterized by doubt and rapid societal flux. It investigates how various scholarly and pedagogical projects transformed his life into a series of exemplary performative gestures and established his prose as the foundational model for a civilized English literary culture. Chapter 6, 'Johnson and the Moderns,' explores the radical de-familiarization of the writer by twentieth-century figures who recognized a modern resonance in his psychological aberrations, mathematical obsessions, and anti-realist fictions. The summary concludes by noting that these modernist readings liberated his difference through creative misprision, enlisting him as a contemporary ally against romantic subjectivism.
Notes on Footnotes: Annotating Eighteenth-Century Literature
Annotating the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson
DeMaria traces the evolution of scholarly annotation within the twenty-three volumes of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, completed in 2018. He analyzes the original 1951 proposal by Hazen, which prioritized a "sound" text over discursive commentary. The text examines the 1956 "Explanatory Annotation" resolution, which instructed editors to hold notes down to error correction and identifying "puzzling allusions." DeMaria notes that while Hazen favored a casual approach to commentary, successors like Middendorf and individual editors like Kolb modified these protocols. The text discusses bibliographical "Hillean excess" in volume 1 and the "lean" annotation of the Rambler volumes, which drew criticism from scholars like Rawson. DeMaria concludes that the edition remains a monument to "informed literate readers" while moving toward digital cross-referencing to replace a never-compiled general index.
'The Opulent Treasury of Sylvanus Urban': A Latin Epigram Attributed to Samuel Johnson
The title page to volume 6 of the Gentleman's Magazine (1736) is followed by two poems celebrating the magazine and its editor "Sylvanus Urban," the pseudonym of Edward Cave–one in English signed by "Bardus" and this Latin epigram signed by "Rusticus." Here, Brown examines whether the same man composed all the poems signed by Rusticus in 1735-36 or whether the pseudonym was used simultaneously by different authors.
Adelung's English–German Dictionary (1783, 1796): Its Achievements and Its Relationship to the Dictionaries of Samuel Johnson and Johannes Ebers
Historiographia Linguistica: International Journal for the History of the Language Sciences/Revue Internationale pour l'Histoire des Sciences du Langage/Internationale Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften
Samuel Johnson, Gregory Sharpe, and the Authorship of Some Remarks on the Progress of Learning (1746)
Samuel Johnson wrote far more than he acknowledged or than his contemporaries could identify. Modern scholars have proposed many additions to the canon. Among the most recent of these is Some Remarks on the Progress of Learning (1746), a pamphlet ostensibly written to promote a new edition of Mario di Calasio's concordance to the Hebrew Bible, then in preparation by William Romaine. The evidence adduced for Johnson's authorship is partly circumstantial (his connections with the book trade) and partly internal (phrases and features of style that sound Johnsonian). No external evidence connects Johnson with the pamphlet. This article questions the attribution, arguing that neither the circumstantial nor the internal evidence is convincing. Further, the substance of the pamphlet itself, its politics, its religion (especially its view of the Reformation), and most of all its enthusiastic promotion of the study of Hebrew, are quite un-Johnsonian, and indeed contradict his known views.
Handbook of the British Novel in the Long Eighteenth Century
Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759) is a story about self-deception and consolatory fictions, the human tendency to wish-away difficult realities. Though Rasselas adopts the form of a timeless moral fable, it can be read as a proto-novel in its staging of the transition from a closed feudal society to a dynamic cosmopolitan world, in its attention to historical and cultural variation, and in its skeptical refusal of inherited wisdom or generalizable precept. Though Johnson has a reputation as a conservative defender of the status quo, recent criticism has shown that Rasselas gives expression to Johnson's critical perspective on European empire, his sympathy with North African culture, and his progressive attitude toward gender.
The Latin translation of Johnson's Greek epigram In Birchium is by Johnson, likely composed in tandem with a preceding letter he wrote to "Mr Urban." The Greek original praises Birch for writing the lives of heroes and sages, expressing the hope that another Birch will write his biography after his death. The Latin version is structurally and thematically tied to Johnson's letter condemning uncritical political hacks, as it significantly enhances the theme of truth by portraying "Veri Fautrix" (Protectress of Truth) scrutinizing Birch's work for its "rare fidelity" and originality. Although critics have cited the Latin translation's omission of the Greek pun on bios ("life story" and "biological life") and perceived stylistic awkwardness, the author contends that the thematic link, the poem's unusual placement as filler following Johnson's letter, and the presence of an encouraging imperative (perge modo) found in another of Johnson’s poems provide strong evidence for his authorship.
Samuel Johnson's Greek Epigram on the Duke of Marlborough
Brown provides the first comprehensive context for Johnson’s Greek translation of a Latin epigram on John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. By examining Boswellian manuscripts, Brown establishes a terminus ante quem of 1775, refuting earlier theories that Johnson composed the poem during a 1776 visit to Blenheim. The study identifies the Latin source as an inscription for a statue of Marlborough by Giovanni Baratta, originally commissioned for Blenheim but later housed at the Duke of Chandos’s estate, Cannons. Brown discusses the iconography of the lost statue, the attribution of the Latin text to Anton Maria Salvini, and the technical merits of Johnson’s Homeric-influenced Greek rendering.
Biographical Writings: Soldiers, Scholars, and Friends
The early writings include lives of figures such as Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Blake, Francis Cheynel, Herman Boerhaave, John Philip Barretier, Alexander the Great, and Confucius. Many of these early lives were professional "booksellers' jobs" relying on a single source. The editorial policy presents texts adhering to modern editorial principles. Annotation is notably fuller than in earlier volumes of the edition, though commentary avoids interpretive remarks.
Three Latin Poems Doubtfully Attributed to Samuel Johnson
The "Poems of Doubtful Authorship" in modern editions of Samuel Johnson's poetry include three Latin poems that were first associated with Johnson in 1856. This article reveals the weakness of this alleged "attribution" and discusses the arguments for and against Johnson's authorship of each poem in turn. While certainty is impossible, it concludes that he possibly wrote the translation Ex cantico Solomonis but that Venus in Armour and The Logical Warehouse are unlikely to be his.
Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin and New Ancient Greek Studies
So goes Samuel Johnson's bracing appraisal of Richard Savage's 1737 poem, Of Public Spirit in Regard to Public Works. A patronage plea in heroic couplets, Public Spirit credits its dedicatee, the crown prince, Frederick of Hanover, with inspiring Britons to capitalize land, expedite commerce, patronize the arts, and uplift the immiserated. The basic unit of Frederick's magnanimity is the public work, an undertaking for society's benefit that ranges in Savage's stanzas from fen drainage and harbor dredging to the erection of hospitals, theaters, and colleges. Johnson grumbles that where "more eminent Writers" dedicated entire compositions to individual works, Savage attempts to tackle "public works" in its categorical entirety. This essay pieces together the "analytical object" that Johnson imagined. Its intertextual archeology connects Life of Savage to other writings in which Johnson dwells upon works. My investigation yields no transcendent rhetorical formation, protomodern theory of the built world, or rival verses to outshine Public Spirit.
Cites Life: 1:207
This article proposes a definition of Johnson's popular term, the ‘good hater,' in order to explore his ideas about malicious conversation and criticism. Good hating was a conversational and critical ideal for Johnson, in contrast to ‘bad hating' — hatred motivated by malice or malignity – which threatened civil discourse. Johnson's own malice and ‘roughness' are a vexed question in biographies by James Boswell, John Hawkins and Hester Lynch Piozzi. In spite of the efforts of Boswell, who has largely influenced the popular image of Johnson, I argue that Johnson fails to meet his own standards of good hating.
Davis presents newly discovered manuscript evidence from the Bodleian Library—a family history written by Mary Allen Brooke in 1865—demonstrating Johnson's acquaintance not only with his landlord, the printer Edmund Allen, but also with Edmund's cousins, the Reverend Charles Allen and the Reverend John Allen (Vice-Principal of Magdalen Hall, Oxford). Davis evaluates Brooke's claims, including anecdotes about Johnson visiting Charles, John assisting with the Dictionary, and Johnson meeting Charles's young son William. While finding inconsistencies, Davis substantiates the core claim of wider friendships within the Allen family, adding biographical details about these newly identified Johnsonian associates.
Mimesis and Understanding in Samuel Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare (1765)
Walsh argues that Johnson's annotations in his 1765 Shakespeare edition, often overshadowed by the preface, stem from a consistent theoretical position centered on Aristotelian concepts of mimesis and cognition. Johnson believed poetry should offer "just representations of general nature," evoking pleasure and instruction through the reader's recognition of universal human experiences. Walsh demonstrates how Johnson's notes, particularly his frequent use of paraphrase and generalizing language, consistently interpret Shakespeare's characters and sentiments not as historically specific but as universal types and truths, reflecting shared human passions, principles, and moral lessons accessible through readerly recollection and understanding.
Addison, Samuel Johnson, and the Test of Time
DeMaria analyzes Johnson’s lifelong engagement with Addison as a "gauge of the ups and downs of Addison’s afterlife" in the eighteenth century. The study traces Johnson’s transition from youthful admiration to the "balanced" criticism found in the Lives of the Poets. DeMaria highlights Johnson’s use of Addison as a "model of correctness" in the Dictionary, adducing approximately 4600 quotations to exemplify "correct usage" and moral advice. While Boswell and Piozzi are identified as "acolytes" of the "Addison cult," Johnson maintained a more skeptical professional distance, faulting Addison for "penury of thought" when matter was "low or scanty." The argument suggests Johnson deliverered Addison to a "place secure" by prioritizing his status as a moralist and a "durable standard" for prose style. Finally, the analysis notes a private disparity in Johnson’s views, as Thrale recorded that Johnson "did never like, though he always thought fit to praise" Addison’s prose.
Words, Books, Images, and the Long Eighteenth Century: Essays for Allen Reddick
Samuel Johnson and the 'Shackles of Lexicography'
Mugglestone explores Johnson’s use of "shackles" and "fetters" as metaphors for both his lexicographical "labour" and his "fear of madness." The text analyzes a 1771 diary entry where Johnson recorded "insane thoughts about foot-fetters," linking his "pathological melancholy" to the physical instruments of 18th-century "confinement." Mugglestone argues that Johnson viewed the Dictionary as a form of "imprisonment" that "shackled" his mind to the "drudgery" of defining words. The text details how Johnson’s "mad reflection" informed his definitions of madness in the Dictionary, drawing on citations from "King Lear." The study highlights the "frictions" between Johnson’s "cultural authority" and his personal struggles with "melancholy" and "metaphorical constraint."
Learning in Wartime: Samuel Johnson and Spiritual Transcendence in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Schneeberger examines Johnson as a figure of resilience whose literary production flourished under unfavorable conditions. Drawing parallels between Lewis and Johnson, Schneeberger argues that literature provides a necessary "transcendent quality" during societal crises. The analysis focuses on how Johnson uses historical perusal and "compact biographical sketches" to illustrate the futility of political preferment, military conquest, and "fatal Learning." Schneeberger contends that Johnson leads the reader through an experience of "pain and suffering" to prompt an "upward gaze" toward theological virtues. By re-imagining death as "nature's signal of retreat," Johnson uses faith to exceed reason and ground the "stagnant mind." The study concludes that Johnson performs a "surgery of the soul," teaching that true happiness requires embracing the difficulties of reality.
Jane Austen and the Reception of Samuel Johnson in Japan: The Domestication of Realism in Soseki Natsume's Theory of Literature (1907)
Yoshino contends that Johnson's theories of fictional realism, particularly from Rambler No. 4, were indirectly endorsed in Meiji Japan through Sōseki Natsume’s critical admiration of Jane Austen. While Sōseki explicitly downplayed Johnson’s direct influence, Yoshino shows how his analysis of Austen's narrative techniques—her focus on ordinary life, plausible character development, and avoidance of overt sensationalism—aligns closely with Johnsonian ideals for the novel. By championing Austen's domestic realism in his influential Theory of Literature (1907), Sōseki effectively assimilated and transmitted Johnson's perspective on modern fiction into the framework of Japanese literary criticism.
Scientific Curiosity in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Ogawa investigates thematic and philosophical links between Johnson's Rasselas and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, centering on scientific inquiry, the limits of knowledge, and the mind-body connection. Situating Johnson within eighteenth-century scientific discourse, including materialism and theories of electricity, Ogawa argues for his deep engagement with contemporary medical ideas. Rasselas, read by Shelley during Frankenstein's composition, is presented as a significant influence, revealing parallels in the portrayal of ambitious scientists (Imlac, the astronomer, Frankenstein), the psychological dangers of solitude and obsessive intellectual pursuits (melancholy), and profound questions about life, consciousness, and happiness.
King interprets Johnson's interest in ghosts and the Ossian controversy as a media-specific investigation into the reliability of the evolving print medium. She argues that Johnson used a "three-legged stool of verification" consisting of oral testimony, manuscript evidence, and printed records to authenticate knowledge. The article details Johnson's role in the Cock Lane ghost investigation, where he relied on gentlemanly consensus to dispute the hoax in the Gentleman’s Magazine. King contrasts this with the Ossian debate, where Johnson’s demand for Macpherson to "produce the manuscripts" led him to challenge the poems' authenticity. The study demonstrates how Johnson’s attempts to correct "fake news" in print often failed to control the circulation of rumors regarding his own credulity.
Samuel Johnson, A Voyage to Abyssinia (1735)
Fekadu-Uthoff analyzes Johnson's 1735 translation of Father Jerónimo Lobo’s travels as a critical juncture in eighteenth-century travel literature. Although Johnson never visited Ethiopia, his selective translation and important Preface establish a nuanced ethical framework for travel and exploration. Fekadu-Uthoff demonstrates how Johnson uses Lobo’s "probable" and "truthful" eyewitness account to challenge contemporary penchants for "romantick absurdities." The text functions as Johnson's sustained contemplation on the universality of human nature, characterized as a "mixture of vice and virtue" across all cultures. Fekadu-Uthoff highlights Johnson's outspoken critique of European exploration as a disguise for "European cruelty" and imperial avarice. By correcting earlier French translations that emphasized religious differences, Johnson displays sympathy for Highland Ethiopians. Fekadu-Uthoff concludes that this work anticipates Johnson's later philosophical explorations of mobility and progress in Rasselas and his Scottish tour.
The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
Samuel Johnson and the 'First English Dictionary'
Lynch disputes the common myth that Johnson authored the first English dictionary, noting that at least twenty general monolingual predecessors exist. Johnson remains significant because his work represents the first English reference project with a well-documented production history. Lynch chronicles the genesis of the project, which began as a booksellers' commercial venture intended to rival continental academic dictionaries. While Johnson used established European lexicographical techniques, he introduced innovations to English practice, including the systematic use of numbered senses and the first detailed statement of lexicographical principles in his Plan. Lynch describes how Johnson marked books from the late sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, employing amanuenses to process over 110,000 illustrative quotations. This method grounded the Dictionary in literary authority, particularly the works of Shakespeare and the Bible. Although contemporary critics like Tooke and Campbell challenged Johnson's Latinate definitions and word choices, the work gained status as the first "standard" dictionary. Lynch argues that the redefinition of "dictionary" to mean an authoritative, regulated standard allowed the work to achieve a cultural dominance that predecessors like Bailey or Martin never secured.
Samuel Johnson's Charity Sermon during War: St Paul's Cathedral 2 May 1745
On Johnson's ghost-written charity sermon for Aston in St Paul's Cathedral during the War of the Austrian Succession. Johnson uses elevated rhetoric and orthodox theology to establish Aston's credibility and urge the wealthy audience toward Christian charity. The sermon subtly contrasts this "universal happiness" of charity with excessive "zealous" patriotism, reminding listeners that their duty to mankind and their own eternal salvation transcends a purely national, potentially selfish, wartime fervor.
Two New Allusions: Samuel Johnson and the Book of Common Prayer, Boswell, and Apollonius of Rhodes
Both Samuel Johnson and his disciple James Boswell were masters of deploying intertextual allusions to impart greater freight to their meaning. In Rambler 8 Johnson covertly alludes to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, while in the Tour to the Hebrides Boswell alludes to Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica. In both cases, these allusions offer considerable insight into characteristic aspects of the art and minds of the two authors. They share a dedication to intertextuality as an important literary technique. However, the two examples reveal important differences: Johnson emerges as a traditional public Christian humanist, while Boswell reveals himself as a private, proto-Romantic confessionalist.
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews
Samuel Johnson, Chesterfield, and Rambler 153
Lee focuses on the poet Samuel Johnson and the poem Rambler 153. Johnson first published his most celebrated poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes. One of the most famous couplets from the poem reads, 'There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, / Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the jail'. Five years later, when he revised the poem for republication in Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems, Johnson substituted the word 'patron' for 'garret. Biographer James Boswell discusses Johnson's repudiation of patronage in his fierce 7 February 1755 letter to Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield.
Samuel Johnson and Anna Seward: Solitude and Sensibility
Kairoff re-examines the relationship between Johnson and fellow Lichfield native Anna Seward, focusing on Seward's pronounced criticism of Johnson, especially after his death. While acknowledging factors like professional jealousy and differing political views, Kairoff argues that a fundamental cause of their divergence lies in their contrasting attitudes toward sensibility, shaped by their different generations. This clash is explored through their respective writings on solitude, travel, and landscape, with Johnson representing a more Augustan skepticism towards overt emotional display, while Seward embodies the later eighteenth-century embrace of sentiment and sublime emotional responses.
Samuel Johnson, William Shakespeare, and the Vanity of Human Wishes
Memoria di Shakespeare: A Journal of Shakespearean Studies
Two Tales of a City: London in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist and Samuel Johnson's London
Contemporary Literary and Cultural Studies
Samuel Johnson in His 'Meridian Splendour': The Genealogy of a Metaphor
Although Sir John Hawkins's 1787 biography of Samuel Johnson has only lived a shadowy half-life since being eclipsed in 1791 by Boswell, there are a number of memorable passages of Johnson's life to which Hawkins has an exclusive and inalienable right. One of these is the account of an all-night session of the Ivy Lane club, of which Hawkins was himself a member, held in late 1750 or early 1751 to 'celebrate either the writing or the publication' of Charlotte Lennox's first novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself.
Samuel Johnson and Milton's 'Mighty Bone'
In the Hyde Edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Bruce Redford observes of the phrase 'shorn of his beams' from the Jul 3, 1778 letter to James Boswell. Meanwhile, another serial appropriation of a Miltonic line is examined, one achieving a similar effect, but more than doubling the triplet structure noted by Redford. Johnson quoted from Milton frequently, in both his private and public writings.
Noted by Steven Scherwatzky in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 52, no. 1 (Autumn 2019): 21.
Samuel Johnson, Richard Glover, and 'Hosier's Ghost'
In his Grammar of the English Tongue, published as part of A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, Samuel Johnson included a section on versification. In it, he quotes from a poem by Richard Glover, one of the twenty authors cited but once in the Grammar entire. This comes from the politically inflammatory 'Admiral Hosier's Ghost'. Richard Glover (1712-85), an ardent and prominent Whig and Patriot, seems an odd choice for Johnson, given the political differences separating the two men in the 1750.
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas: Two Presentation Copies
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies
Some Early Collectors and Owners of Samuel Johnson's Books and Manuscripts
Two Allusions in Samuel Johnson's The False Alarm
Lee identifies two previously misattributed or overlooked allusions in Johnson’s political tract The False Alarm used to demonize Wilkes and his supporters. He argues that a proverb regarding "infatuation" likely derives from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy rather than Duport, aligning with Johnson's recurring imagery of epidemic disease and madness. Additionally, Lee traces the "pseudo-archaic" phrase "dead-doing" to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, identifying Wilkes with the vainglorious imposter Braggadoccio. These intertextual connections demonstrate that Johnson’s allusions are not merely ornamental but constitute integral components of his political rhetoric and creative originality.
'Gaping Heirs': Line Forty-Eight of Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes
Previous commentators have had little to say about line l.48 of Samuel Johnson's 1749 poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes: "Th'insidious Rival and the gaping Heir." Evidence from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language suggests the influence of a passage from one of Johnson's seminal precursors. It appears that Johnson, when he set himself to the task of rendering Juvenal's Satire 10 in 1749, is recalling an image from Dryden's version of Juvenal's third Satire (one that he himself had imitated more than a decade earlier, as London).
Dr. Johnson on Trial: Catherine Talbot and Jemima Grey Responding to Samuel Johnson's The Rambler
This article is an analysis of contemporary critical approaches to the relationships between Dr. Johnson and women, particularly with reference to The Rambler, followed by the introduction of previously unpublished letters which display a female reader of the periodical, Jemima Campbell, Marchioness Grey, choosing not to write for The Rambler and instead opting to produce a satirical attack on "Mr Rambler" within the private sphere of a familiar letter to her friend Catherine Talbot. Talbot did write an essay for Johnson's periodical, and this article looks at the two documents as different case studies in responses to Johnson's moralizing persona. Essentially, criticism on The Rambler has undergone a shift from celebratory analysis of his positive and nuanced representations of his female characters and relationships with contemporary women writers, since James Basker and Isobel Grundy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to a reappraisal of his relationships with women through lo
Women's Writing: The Elizabethan to Victorian Period
Imposed Identity through Foucauldian Panopticism and Released Identity through Deleuzian Ressentiment in Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
The despotic society of classical era, run by a despot, who had "the right to decide life and death" of the dominated subjects (Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol. I 135), had indeed the system of observance and surveillance of Foucauldian panoptical system. The present paper scrutinizes the Happy Valley of Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, as the symbolic representation of a panoptic structure in which dominant discourses are institutionalized in the captives and inmates of the Happy Valley. In essence, the central theme of Foucault's theories of power is "the methods with which modern civilization creates and controls human subjects, through institutions" (Habib, A History of Literary Criticism 766) as well as discourses. The present paper contends that such institutions and discourses also existed in classical era and in the despotic society run by the despot, seemed to be the focal point or the center of power, but who indeed remained ineffective without discourses and institutions which dispersed his power.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
C. S. Lewis and Samuel Johnson: A Study in Affinity
CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society
Samuel Johnson's Practical Sermon on Marriage in Context: Spousal Whiggery and the Book of Common Prayer
Johnson's practical sermon on marriage, reflecting mid-eighteenth-century cultural shifts, quietly revises the Book of Common Prayer's emphasis on a wife's strict subjection. By excluding the traditional demands for wifely obedience and reverence, Johnson promotes a model of marriage based on "perpetual and indissoluble friendship" and "spousal whiggery." This practical divinity stresses mutual social obligations and limited, humane governance over absolute domestic tyranny, aligning with a changing, more "enlightened" social ethic.
Noted in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 52, no. 1 (Autumn 2019): 25–26.
The Gentleman's Magazine, Samuel Johnson, and the Symbolic Economy of Eighteenth-Century Poetry
Between 1733 and 1736, Edward Cave offered a series of eight poetry contests in his newly founded Gentleman's Magazine . These competitions varied widely in theme and scale, ranging from an offer of free back issues for the best set of epigrams to a substantial £50 prize for the best poem, in English or Latin, on a weighty devotional topic. Taken as a whole, Cave's contests were an attempt to appropriate and supplant incumbent sources of literary prestige, particularly the traditional model of courtly and aristocratic patronage. Just as Richard Savage set himself up in the 1730s as a ‘volunteer laureate', the Gentleman's Magazine offered itself to English elites as a volunteer patron and would-be tastemaker. This attempt to assert the magazine's critical authority by adapting traditional patronage models and appealing to the Whiggish Hanoverian court was a failure; even today, the critical judgements and canonical consecrations of opposition figures like Pope are dominant. I close by suggesting that Cave's contests may have a further legacy as an influence on the career of the young Samuel Johnson.
In Praise of Idling: Johnson, Austen, and Literary Leisure
Yahav examines the theory of leisure that Johnson presents in the Idler series. While productivity and vigilance become unassailable values in an emergent capitalist society, Johnson publishes popular works designed to insert breaks into the culture of ceaseless striving. Johnson revalues idling as a state of beneficial, transient mindlessness. The Idler uses a proliferation of points of view to defense the value of reading materials that solicit relaxation. This theory transforms idling from a characterological deficiency into a periodic respite necessary for all. Johnson names this repose from rationality "semi-slumbers," which he explains is "a voluntary dream, a temporary recession from the reality of life to airy fictions." Johnson aims to provide "ease at a cheap rate" by multiplying seekers' points of view to urge release from continued searches for knowledge and assessment.
Exeunt the Kit-Cats, Pursued by Pope, Reviewed by Johnson
The two great literary events of 1721 were the death of Matthew Prior and the publication of the Works of Joseph Addison, the beloved public figure who had died in 1719. These events are representative of a turning point in the history of authorship in Britain, which was accompanied by a change in the nature of poetry. Authors became more professional and specialised, less dependent on patrons and social connections. At the same time the genres of panegyric and epic were largely abandoned in favour of satire and mock-epic. The history of these changes is complicated, however, as this essay shows in an examination of Addison's celebration of the Battle of Blenheim, The Campaign (1705), and Prior's celebration of the Battle of Ramilies, An Ode, Humbly Inscrib'd to the Queen on the Glorious Success of Her Majesty's Arms, 1706.
English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature
The Highland Tour through the Spectacles of Books: Johnson, Pastoral, and Improvement in Late-Georgian Scotland
Contrary to received opinion, Samuel Johnson does not dispatch but instead revives the pastoral mode in English as, prior to the sixteenth century, normatively practiced and theorized. He achieves this improvement by a self-conscious return to sources, valorizing and reactivating the mode's specifically Greco-Roman tonal and thematic repertoire, in particular the ironized characters, religious traditionalism, and skepticism of "schemes of political improvement" of Theocritus's Idylls and Vergil's Eclogues. This Johnsonian revaluation operates both in theory — in Rambler and other essays and individual Lives of the Poets which purge pastoral of its Renaissance-era romance accretions — and in practice: Johnson's own imaginative writing, dating back to boyhood but expressed most clearly in passages of pastoral (and georgic) prose in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and in the Latin poems that he wrote from Skye.
Johnson's 'French Authors': Rambler 5 and 87
There are three unidentified allusions in the Johnsonian corpus that form a triad, given that all are tagged with the vaguely enigmatic phrase "a French author." In Rambler 5, Johnson writes: A French author has advanced this seeming paradox, that very few men know how to take a walk; and, indeed, it is true, that few know how to take a walk with a prospect of any other pleasure, than the same company would have afforded them at home. In Rambler 87: The preacher, may spend an hour in explaining and enforcing a precept of religion, without feeling any impression from his own performance, because he may have no further design than to fill up his hour.
Is Historical Fiction Still Revolutionary?: Two Novels Set in Johnson's World
Bennett reviews Philip Baruth's The Brothers Boswell and Michael Dean's I, Hogarth, evaluating their success as historical fiction. He praises Baruth's novel for vividly animating Boswell and Johnson while inventively introducing homoerotic possibilities and exploring themes of secrecy, repression, and the constructedness of historical reputation, thereby unsettling the past and connecting it powerfully to the present. Conversely, Bennett critiques Dean's fictional autobiography of Hogarth as psychologically shallow, marred by an uncritical first-person perspective that indulges in self-praise and presents troubling depictions of sexual encounters without adequate self-awareness, ultimately failing to transcend nostalgic cliché.
Johnson (and Boswell) in the Lists: A View of Their Reputations, 1933–2018
Tankard surveys the inclusion (or exclusion) of Johnson and Boswell in fifty-seven "great books" lists and similar publications from 1933 to 2018. Tracing the evolution of such lists—from mid-century institutional projects emphasizing cultural heritage and self-improvement to later compilations focusing more on readerly pleasure, millennial summations, and eventually book history—Tankard analyzes the fluctuating presence and representation of both authors. While Boswell's Life initially features more prominently, Johnson as an author gains ground later. Tankard concludes by reflecting on the challenges of maintaining the cultural relevance of classic authors in the contemporary media landscape.
'Con Amore': Hester Piozzi's Annotations upon Johnson's Early Poetry
Lee examines three annotations made by Piozzi in her copies of Boswell's Life of Johnson concerning Johnson's early poems: "To a Lady on Her Birthday," "Virgil's Pastoral the First," and "The Young Author." Lee uses Piozzi's brief comments—identifying a potential source for a line, correcting a detail about Virgil's crow, and praising a concluding couplet "con Amore"—as springboards for deeper analysis. Lee explores the intertextual resonances, etymological richness, structural sophistication, and biographical significance of these poems, arguing for their surprising complexity and maturity while highlighting Piozzi's insightful, though often neglected, critical perspective on Johnson's work.
'These Kings of Me': The Provenance and Significance of an Allusion in Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny
Davis argues that Johnson’s allusion to the phrase "kings of Me" in Taxation No Tyranny is a deliberate, revealing comparison. The phrase originates from Dryden’s heroic play The Conquest of Granada, spoken by the anti-authoritarian warrior Almanzor. Davis demonstrates that Johnson likely borrowed this rhetorical strategy from the nonjuror Charles Leslie, who, decades earlier, used the Almanzor parallel to satirize Whig claims of "original rights" and the "state of nature." The allusion works on plot: like Almanzor, the Americans must "sink down" from "demigods of independence" to subjects.
Johnson's Translated Works and Criticisms in Japanese
Eto compiles a comprehensive bibliographic appendix documenting the Japanese reception of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi from 1882 to 2017. The record lists twenty-five primary translations of Johnson's major works, including multiple editions of Rasselas, the Lives of the Poets, and travel writings. Eto identifies early pedagogical uses of Johnson in nineteenth-century textbooks and chronicles the translation of verse and hymns by Izumitani. The list details twenty-seven critical monographs and essay collections focusing on Johnson's lexicography, his relationship with Boswell, and his travels with Piozzi. Entries specify original titles, Japanese titles, translators, publishers, and publication dates. This bibliography serves as a tool for tracking the "metamorphosis of Rasselas" and the historical significance of the Dictionary within Japanese scholarship.
An Analysis of Johnson's View of Knowledge: A Corpus-Stylistic Approach
Ogura uses corpus-stylistic methods to investigate Johnson's concept of "knowledge" within The Rambler. The analysis reveals "knowledge" as a key term, frequently used by Johnson and collocating strongly with "world," "extent," "virtue," and "life." Ogura argues Johnson conceptualizes knowledge as multifaceted, deriving from both textual learning and empirical experience ("knowledge of the world"). It is presented as essential for moral development ("virtue") and practical living ("life"), yet also potentially corrupting ("cunning"). Johnson emphasizes the pursuit of broad understanding ("extent") and stresses the importance of balancing book learning with worldly observation for true wisdom.
Johnson's Prose Style and His Notion of the Periodical Writer
Fukumoto contrasts Johnson's approach to periodical writing with that of predecessors like Steele and Addison, viewed against Pope’s satire of hack writers in The Dunciad. Fukumoto notes that early periodicals often used accessible, conversational styles for broad audiences, which Pope critiqued. Johnson, while recognizing the value of conversation, aimed his periodicals (Rambler, Adventurer, Idler) at a more learned readership, employing an elevated, Latinate style intended for literary permanence rather than ephemeral instruction. Though capable of rapid composition like hacks, Johnson differentiated his work through meticulous stylistic craft and extensive revision, defining a distinct role for the periodical essayist.
Iwata challenges the conventional opposition between Johnson (representing the text) and David Garrick (representing the stage) by examining their interactions regarding Shakespeare's Hamlet. Iwata highlights Johnson's sole acknowledgment of Garrick in his Shakespeare edition—a note on Hamlet crediting Garrick with an interpretive point. She argues that Garrick possessed considerable textual knowledge and that his controversial 1772 stage adaptation of Hamlet, despite later criticism, incorporated elements reflecting Johnson's neoclassical preferences for tragic unity and moral clarity, particularly through significant alterations to the play’s conclusion, suggesting a more complex interplay between critic and actor.
Hattori examines Johnson's choice of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) for the setting of Rasselas, analyzing its imaginative resonance within eighteenth-century Orientalist and geographical discourse. Contrasting Johnson's portrayal with works by Behn, Montagu, and Defoe, Hattori emphasizes Abyssinia's dual identity as exotic "Orient" and Christian land. He focuses on the symbolic centrality of the Nile, representing life-giving fertility but also destructive power and the unknown source, mirroring the tale's exploration of utopian confinement and the elusive search for happiness. The ambiguity of the setting reflects the narrative's blend of realistic travelogue elements and philosophical romance.
Johnson the Tea Poet: A Scholarly Role Model and a Literary Doctor in Modernizing Japan
Suzuki analyzes the unique reception of Johnson by Tamotsu Morowoka, a Japanese physician and scholar, who termed Johnson a "tea poet" (cha shi jin). Suzuki explains that Morowoka viewed Johnson not merely as a tea aficionado but as an embodiment of the ideal scholar: learned, sociable, independent, and engaged with public life, albeit eccentric. Finding personal parallels, Morowoka used the "tea poet" designation to celebrate Johnson’s role as a conversational catalyst and intellectual model outside traditional academia. This framing allowed Morowoka to integrate his admiration for Johnson with his research on tea culture and navigate complex feelings toward Britain.
Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins
Hester Piozzi's Annotations to the Adventurer and Johnson's Rambler: Beyond the Case Study
Murphy and Johnson: Prolegomenon to a New Edition
Lee outlines the editorial rationale and plan for a modern critical edition of Murphy’s Johnsonian writings. He identifies Murphy as a significant historical witness who introduced Johnson to the Thrales and secured his government pension. The prolegomenon advocates for restoring Murphy’s status among Johnson’s biographers, noting that his work was more widely read in the nineteenth century than Boswell’s. Lee details an editorial policy based on early copy-texts and provides a comprehensive register of Murphy's plays, essays, and satires that illuminate his deep professional and personal relationship with Johnson.
The Deipnosophists and Dr. Johnson
Lexicographica: International Annual for Lexicography/Revue Internationale de Lexicographie/Internationales Jahrbuch für Lexikographie
Dr. Johnson's Palliative Care: The Spiritual Economics of Dissipation in The Life of Savage
This article argues that Samuel Johnson's The Life of Savage both responds to and challenges eighteenth-century anxieties about dissipation as a spiritual, bodily, and economic problem. Read in the context of Richard Bentley's sermons, The Folly of Atheism, Johnson's Life demonstrates the importance of dissipation to histories of both addiction and disability. Johnson and Bentley's shared insistence that dissipation's most telling symptoms are economic traces a common logic between the early, moral models of addiction and disability and later, medical models that are often understood to be distinct and even contradictory. But Johnson, in narrating Savage's repeated failures to escape his cycle of dissipation through spiritual or intellectual means, ultimately raises questions about the capacity for moral or medical interventions to effect a satisfactory cure.
The Progress of Johnson's Shakespeare: Subscription, Text, and Printing
Bibliographers have long puzzled over Samuel Johnson's edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, started in 1756 but repeatedly delayed until its eventual publication in 1765. Back in 1979 Brian Vickers wrote that, although "we do not yet have a full bibliographical study," it was nonetheless "evident that Johnson's Shakespeare had an erratic career in the printing-house." More than twenty years earlier Arthur Sherbo had assembled a chronology of most of the known facts about the publication of the edition, though confessed there were "all too few references to particular volumes and plays" in his list and that evidence concerning the printing of the edition was scarce at best. The publication of David Fleeman's seminal A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson in 2000 has since shed considerable light on some specific bibliographical problems. And yet, despite Fleeman's advances, much still remains unknown about the printing and publication of this important literary edition. How was Johnson's subscription planned? How successful was it? How much money did Johnson and his publishers make? What copy did the printer use? When were the various parts of the edition finished? Why was publication, promised for Christmas 1757, delayed for nearly eight years?
'The March of Intimacy': Dr. Burney and Dr. Johnson
Sabor explores the three-decade evolution of the relationship between Charles Burney and Johnson, viewing the connection through the lens of eighteenth-century sociability and "soft" patronage. Challenging earlier depictions of Burney as a hapless sycophant, Sabor argues that Burney adroitly navigated the literary world to secure professional advancement and bridge the gap between his musical profession and the literary elite. Johnson acted as a mentor and patron, providing "encouragement," "favor," "authority," and introductions despite his notorious, general disdain for music. Sabor highlights Johnson's formally unattributed contributions to Burney's work, identifying him as the ghostwriter of several pieces, including the dedication to Queen Charlotte in the History of Music, the dedication to George III in An Account of the Commemoration of Handel, and a translation. The account, which involves Boswell and Piozzi, documents their roles in recording Johnsonian anecdotes and facilitating social interactions at Streatham. Sabor details how Burney transitioned from a lowly musician to a respected man of letters, noting that Johnson eventually viewed Burney as a "man for all the world to love" and a model for travel writing. This "complex exchange of benefit" allowed Burney to use his "prodigious success" in networking to leverage social capital into professional advancement.
Catanese compares Johnson and his friend, the Oxford academic Thomas Warton, as embodying different responses to the burgeoning popular readership of the mid-eighteenth century. Contrasting Johnson's position within London's commercial book trade with Warton's scholarly insulation, Catanese analyzes Johnson's defensive self-fashioning in The Rambler alongside Warton’s historicist literary criticism (particularly on Spenser and romance). Both writers, despite their different contexts, grapple with anxieties about readerly interpretation and authorial control, revealing shared strategies for negotiating the shifting literary landscape and anticipating later Romantic concerns with audience and market pressures.
Johnson and China: Culture, Commerce, and the Dream of the Orient in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England
Clingham investigates the cultural and commercial significance of China in mid-eighteenth-century England, focusing on Samuel Johnson’s intellectual engagement with the Orient. The text argues that while the fashion for chinoiserie and trade with China were expanding, Johnson remained relatively disengaged compared to his contemporaries. Clingham examines Johnson’s specific remarks on the Great Wall and his broader interest in non-Western civilizations. The work suggests that Johnson’s "Dream of the Orient" was shaped by the tensions between British commercial interests and Enlightenment perceptions of cultural "otherness."
Dryden, Pope, and Milton in Gay's Rural Sports and Johnson's Dictionary
Lee demonstrates how Johnson’s Dictionary serves as a tool for identifying the "genealogy of sentiments" in John Gay’s Rural Sports. By juxtaposing Gay’s verses with those of Dryden, Pope, and Milton, Johnson highlights Gay’s extensive intertextual reliance on these predecessors—a fact that complicates Johnson’s later claim that he "rarely" exhibited such connections. Lee identifies specific ligatures involving hunting imagery from Dryden’s Virgil and "whistling plowmen" from Milton’s "L'Allegro." The analysis suggests that Johnson’s frequent use of Gay as an authority reveals a deeper appreciation for his craft than his lukewarm "Life of Gay" indicates.
Taylor examines Johnson's encounter with the landscape of Macbeth in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Traveling through the Hardmuir, Johnson declares it "classic ground," an act of cultural annexation that simultaneously anchors him to English culture and opens him to the non-rational and affective power of the play's supernatural elements. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides then shifts the focus, using recitations of Macbeth to frame Johnson as an archetypal Englishman—a "living monument"—and to highlight the contrast between Johnson’s fixed, metropolitan identity and the unfamiliar, "waste" Scottish landscape, making his presence a form of performance.
Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century
Searching for Dr. Johnson: The Digitisation of the Burney Newspaper Collection
Prescott uses Samuel Johnson as a case study to challenge the deceptive simplicity of digital newspaper archives, arguing that uncritical reliance on search hits can produce historical mirages. By comparing digital results to Helen McGuffie’s manual checklist, Prescott demonstrates that basic searches for Johnson miss over 90% of relevant items due to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) failures involving the long s and poor image quality. While fuzzy searching improves retrieval, it still fails to capture allusive or parody-based references, such as Pensioner J. Prescott highlights that the Burney Collection, while vast, represents only half of the titles citing Johnson found in manual searches and excludes advertisements, which often contain more accurate OCR. The chapter advocates for desultory reading and collaborative annotation to overcome the structural deficiencies of current digital paradigms.
The Ways of Fiction: New Essays on the Literary Cultures of the Eighteenth Century
Johnson's Life of Savage as Romance, Antiromance, and Novel
Johnson on Truth, Fiction, and 'Undisputed History'
Writing and Constructing the Self in Great Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century
In Two Minds: Johnson, Boswell, and Representation of the Self
Ingram analyzes how Johnson and Boswell demonstrate self-awareness of their own thought processes through their writing. Using Boswell’s journals, Ingram illustrates a mind deeply engaged with contemporary materialist ideas from David Hartley and Joseph Priestley, as Boswell frequently attempts to 'perceive my faculties operating as machinery.' Ingram contrasts Johnson’s reluctance to publish accounts of his mental suffering with Boswell’s proactive self-scrutiny. While Johnson maintains a 'manly' and ordered ordering of life to suppress carnal chaos and periodic melancholy, Boswell uses his journal as a 'vehicle for self-scrutiny' while actively undergoing suffering. Ingram notes that Boswell extended this practice to the public sphere by publishing monthly essays as 'The Hypochondriack' in the London Magazine between 1777 and 1783. Ingram concludes that Boswell’s obsession with recording his own symptoms and psychological shifts differs markedly from Johnson’s more guarded public persona, yet both men used the written word to negotiate a stable sense of self against the threat of mental alienation.
Historical Dictionaries in Their Paratextual Context
'A Hundred Visions and Revisions': Malone's Annotations to Johnson's Dictionary
lamartino examines Edmond Malone's extensive manuscript annotations to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, added between 1808 and 1811. Malone sought to "counter the steady corruption" of the work by booksellers and improve its coherence by adding nearly three thousand notes, including new entries and etymologies. The analysis reveals Malone's use of Samuel Dyer's notes and his collaboration with Boswell on the Life of Johnson. Malone quotes Piozzi to highlight that Johnson excluded "writers dangerous to religion or morality" from his authorities to avoid misleading the mind. The study demonstrates how annotated copies highlight the viewpoints of the "cultural élite" and their reception of Johnson's lexicographical achievement.
Johnson's Unacknowledged Debt to Thomas Edwards in the 1765 Edition of Shakespeare
In the Preface to Shakespeare Johnson attacks Thomas Edwards and Benjamin Heath as William Warburton's most relentless critics, who are allegedly not even worthy of comparison with the bishop. Yet Johnson's contemporaries and some modern scholars alike have remarked his unacknowledged debt to these two critics in his 1765 edition. Immediately after Johnson's edition appeared in 1765 William Kenrick, a learned but libelous journalist, reviewed it at length and demonstrated some of the many lapses in giving credit to Edwards's commentary. For the revisions of 1773 and 1778, George Steevens even cited Kenrick favorably for some readings and also made a point of including not only Edwards's relevant commentary from the Canons of Criticism but also new Edwards manuscript material he had acquired in time for the revisions. It was not until the twentieth century that fresh allegations of plagiarism were leveled against the 1765 Shakespeare. This essay reviews the charges presented and conclu
'Sudden Glories': Johnson, Hobbes, and Thoughts on Falkland's Islands
Samuel Johnson's aversion to Thomas Hobbes is well known. In his 1785 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Thomas Tyers reported Johnson as saying in a conversation one morning, 'When I published my Dictionary, I might have quoted Hobbes as well as many other writers of his time: but I scorned, sir, to quote him at all; because I did not like his principles.' Johnson mentions Hobbes' just a few other times in his writings. He does so once in the 'Life of John Philips', where he remarks of the poet, 'he could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard'.
Samuel Johnson is known to have had six amanuenses assisting him with his dictionary at various timesâ€"Francis Stewart, Alexander and William McBean, Robert Shiels, V. J. Peyton, and a Mr Maitland. How regularly they were employed and under what circumstances is not very clear; Allen Reddick speculates that 'Johnson took them on as his dependents, and they, either through necessity or desire, no doubt a mixture of both, accepted his generosity'. Boswell has a little to offer about some of these helpers: 'Mr. Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr. Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts.
On Definition and Explanation in the Preface to Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
The distinction between explanation and definition is commonly neglected in discussions of Johnson's Dictionary . I briefly trace the demand for comprehensiveness in the history of monolingual English lexicography. I discuss definition in the terms of Locke and consider its application to Johnson's Dictionary. Johnson resolves the tension between the demand for comprehensiveness and the demand for definition by offering explanations of the meanings of words. Johnson's espousal of explanations illuminates his creativity, and by extension the necessary creativity of the lexicographer.
Johnson on Milton's Allegorical Persons: Understanding Eighteenth-Century Attitudes toward Allegory
Johnson's criticism of Milton's allegorical figures Sin and Death in Paradise Lost does not signal a rejection of allegory itself, but rather reflects an eighteenth-century commitment to representational consistency. Johnson clearly approves of allegory; his objection is that Sin and Death, as unreal allegorical persons, perform "real and sensible" actions like building a bridge and interacting with the literal character Satan, thereby creating an undesirable "incongruity" within the dominant literal narrative. He advocates separating the literal and allegorical, confining conceptual abstractions to figurative terms and limiting their agency, a focus on "literary decorum" and reader response that was central to critics like Addison and Kames.
Why Should Hester Lynch Piozzi Be 'Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale'?
Our subject lived for 20 years as Hester Lynch Salusbury, and more than 40 years as the wife, then widow, of Gabriel Piozzi. Her bestselling literary works appeared under the name Hester Lynch Piozzi and yet she is recognized for her 20 years as Mrs Thrale: friend, confidante, amanuensis, and muse of Samuel Johnson. Upon her second marriage, "Piozzi" became a hostile signifier for a woman who defied her family and social opinion to choose a new husband and a new name; later biographers would recast her as "Dr. Johnson's Mrs Thrale," the wife of one man, the possession of another. Meanwhile, modern critics have employed more than 20 different names, variously signaling emotional loyalty, theoretical affiliation, political correctness, or sensitivity to the academic marketplace. The naming of Hester Lynch Piozzi continues to complicate our understanding of one of the eighteenth century's most distinguished and inscrutable figures.
The Harp and the Constitution: Myths of Celtic and Gothic Origin
Johnson and the Teutonic Roots of English
DeMaria examines Johnson's unlikely role as a catalyst for the eighteenth-century Gothic movement. While Johnson personally favored classical humanism and "Athens rather than the northern," DeMaria argues that the Dictionary served as the primary vehicle for his participation in Gothic revisionism. By using George Hickes's Thesaurus and correctly diagnosing English as a Teutonic language, Johnson shifted the philological focus away from southern, Latinate origins. DeMaria highlights that Johnson "styled himself as a Goth rather than a Roman" in his Preface by describing his research as "ransacking" northern learning. The article details Johnson's rejection of Macpherson's Ossianic forgeries and his distaste for the "puerilities of obsolete mythology," yet demonstrates how his scientific commitment to "modern" learning encouraged a national conception of the English as a Teutonic people. DeMaria concludes that Johnson's scholarly commitments placed him in the camp of historically oriented critics like Warton, despite his lack of Romantic enthusiasm for the primitive.
Meteors and Mist: Identity Elements in Johnson's Style
Dr. Johnson and the Great Anglo Tradition
Carroll positions Johnson as the "paradigm English philosopher" whose legend rests on his "phenomenal warmth" and mastery of the language. He argues that while Johnson left no "single work of the absolute first rank," his "immense persona" constitutes his greatest achievement. The text explores Johnson’s influence on Burke and Austen, highlighting a shared "moderate English conservatism." Carroll emphasizes Johnson’s pursuit of the "stability of truth" as a secular faith against "unworldly abstraction." He concludes that Johnson’s "domineering talk" and "wrestling to tame" the English language provide an "enduring lesson" for the Anglo world.
The Cambridge History of the British Essay
Loose Sallies of the Mind: Distraction and the Essay
This chapter traces the history of the essay against the backdrop of changing theories of distraction in the long eighteenth century. As the population of urban centres grew, readers’ seemingly waning attention spans had to counter a barrage of auditory and visual stimuli. Everyday diversions were compounded by literary ones: falling paper costs led to an explosion of print material, forcing the periodical essay to compete with a dizzying array of prose fiction, poems, sermons, and histories. Focusing on a series of prominent eighteenth-century and Romantic essayists, particularly Samuel Johnson, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb, we argue that the essay form is powerfully shaped by its engagement with the wandering mind. Debates over distraction that began in the Enlightenment continue to shape the genre today, as modern essay forms – New York Times essays, blogs, Twitter feeds – continue to structure themselves around assumptions about short attention spans.
Landmarks in the History of the English Language
Fixing the Language: Samuel Johnson and His Dictionary
Landmarks in the History of the English Language identifies twelve key landmarks spread throughout the language's history to provide a lively and interesting introduction to the history of English. Each landmark focuses on one individual associated with the key moment which helps to engage the reader and provide the history of the language with a ‘human face'. The landmarks range from Alfred the Great and his attempts to further English through its use in education, to the spread of English worldwide and the work of the linguist Braj Kachru. The final chapter takes a look into the future through the writings of David Crystal. Whilst focusing on the specific events and people, the book includes a broad outline of the history of English so that the reader can locate each landmark within the language's history. Written in a student-friendly style and with short activities available online, this book provides a brief introduction for those coming to the topic for the first time, as well a
Annotating The Rambler / The Annotated Rambler
Lee examines the editorial history of Johnson's Rambler, specifically criticizing the "emaciated" annotation in the 1969 Yale Edition. He contrasts this with Johnson's own meticulous annotative practice in his editions of Shakespeare and Sir Thomas Browne. Lee identifies four types of annotation used by Johnson: word glosses, explanatory notes, source identification, and passage elucidation. Arguing that the Yale editors' "lean" style masks authorial intent and hinders modern readers who lack Latin, Lee presents his own project, The Annotated Rambler. This new edition uses the 1756 text and features "fertile" annotation to flesh out Johnson's "dense allusiveness." Lee restores original orthography to preserve tropes like personification and provides endnotes to minimize "notational distraction" while following Lonsdale's model for the Lives of the Poets.
Floating in the Breath of the People: Ossianic Mist, Cultural Health, and the Creation of Celtic Atmosphere, 1760–1815
This essay uses Samuel Johnson's characterization of Gaelic culture as an essentially airborne phenomenon as the starting point for a wide-ranging consideration of the links between atmospheric and Celtic discourses during the Romantic era. This period has been deemed foundational to the literary ‘appearance' of air and the conceptual formation of Celticity, but these two cultural phenomena have rarely been considered in tandem. Beginning with a discussion of the atmospheric ideas that underpin the Poems of Ossian's infamous mists, the essay argues that critics have largely ignored the complexity of Macpherson's medicalized ecologies of air. The essay then moves on to consider the development of comparable cloudy symbolism during the Welsh cultural revival of the 1790s, when overcast skies became an organising metaphor used to express the cultural benightedness of Wales. The often-unexamined cliché of ‘Celtic mistiness' is revealed as a vital metaphor for the allure and imperfection o
Romanticism: The Journal of Romantic Culture and Criticism
Clarke traces the provenance of a framed engraving of John Milton by Jacobus Houbraken that once hung in Johnson's study at Bolt Court. Purchased after Johnson's death by his friend John Hoole, the print passed through several generations of the Hoole family and later the Toynbee family before being bequeathed to Dr. Johnson's House in 1952. Clarke contextualizes the print within Johnson's documented interest in collecting portrait prints and his complex, though ultimately admiring, relationship with Milton's poetic achievement, arguing that despite Johnson's political and personal distaste for Milton, his profound respect for the poet made the portrait a fitting decoration.
From Writing Lives to Scaling Lives in Joseph Priestley's Chart of Biography
Joseph Priestley is often credited with the invention of the timeline for representing past lives and events, mainly in the Chart of Biography (1765) and Chart of History (1769). These efforts place Priestley squarely within the history of data visualization. This article argues that we should also consider Priestley's Chart of Biography as part of the history of biography or life writing, particularly because Priestley's A Description of a Chart of Biography, a written account of the Chart ‘s purpose and methodology, accompanied the Chart itself. Toward that end, this article tracks the similarities between the epistemological and methodological aims of biographers such as Samuel Johnson and those of Priestley in his effort to represent lives "without the intervention of words," as he put it. In so doing, this article also identifies Priestley's contributions to the long history of the concept of data, from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century usages of the term to the formation of the modern "data subject," the representation of a person as an aggregation of available data about them.
A Brief History of Johnsonian Studies in Japan
Eto presents a chronological history of Johnson's reception and academic study in Japan, spanning from the Meiji era to the early twenty-first century. He documents the transformation of Johnson's image, initially regarded as a moral guide through Rasselas, which was widely used in education, into a subject of serious literary scholarship focusing on his diverse works. Eto discusses key publications, translations by scholars like Fukuhara, the impact of Ishida's work, the establishment of the Johnson Society of Japan, and the broadening scope of research, including lexicography, while noting a recent decline in output.
Hearne, Roper, More, and Rambler 71
Lee discusses that it is lamented by Hearne, the learned antiquary of Oxford, that this general forgetfulness of the fragility of life, has remarkably infected the students of monuments and records; as their employment consists first in collecting and afterwards in arranging or abstracting what libraries afford them, they ought to amass no more than they can digest; but when they have undertaken a work, they go on searching and transcribing, call for new supplies, when they are already over-burdened, and at last leave their work unfinished.
The Sociable Philosopher: David Hume and the Philosophical Essay
David Hume’s philosophical essays of the 1740s offer to bring intellectual reflection into ‘the conversible world’, posing the question of whether this compromises or exemplifies the task of philosophy. Comparisons are drawn with Shaftesbury’s philosophical worldliness, facilitated by the selective nature of the ‘Club’ for whom he writes, Johnson’s more strenuous negotiations between intellectual and social being, and the edgy raillery with which Fielding addresses his public in the essay-chapters of Tom Jones. Against these contexts, the urbanity of Hume’s essay-writing is explored in relation to the implications of the Treatise; the importance of convention and civility; and qualities of ‘reserve’ or ‘modesty’ and the kind of detachment implied in Hume’s ‘delicacy of taste’. The sense of an elusive intentionality, poised against the overt hospitality to contingency and spontaneity which the essay-form equally enables, is traced in particular in the essays that make up the first Enquiry.
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Eliza Haywood
Eovaai and the Fiction of Fantasy in Eighteenth-Century England
Creating the 'Classless' Author: Authorship and the Social Hierarchy, 1660–1800
This essay addresses the following question: ‘What is the social class of the author?' Previous scholarship on the rise of modern authorship in the eighteenth century has generally answered this question in two different ways. According to some scholars, the ‘author' emerged during this period in order to articulate and propagate ‘bourgeois' ideology. According to other scholars, however, capitalist society increasingly excluded the literary artist from its governing aims and values. In revisiting this issue, I trace the emergence of the modern author from the late seventeenth to the eighteenth century. Beginning with the first literary biographies or ‘lives of the poets' after the restoration, I argue that the problem of defining the author's social status became problematic during the debates over literary property in the eighteenth century. It was left to authors and critics of the late century to define a space for authorship separate from the emergent social hierarchy.
'Less of the Heroine than the Woman': Parsing Gender in the British Novel
This essay offers two methods that will help students resist the temptation to judge eighteenth-century novels by twenty-first-century standards. These methods prompt students to parse the question of whether female protagonists in novels—in this case, Daniel Defoe's Roxana (1724), Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759), and Charlotte Lennox's Sophia (1762)—are portrayed as perfect models or as complex humans. The first method asks them to engage with definitions of the term "heroine," and the second method uses word clouds to extend their thinking about the complexity of embodying a mid-eighteenth-century female identity.
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
Who Killed Tom Cumming the Quaker? Recovering the Life Story of an Eighteenth-Century Adventurer
New and Walker investigate Cumming, highlighting his multiple engagements with Johnson's circle and his varied career. The authors analyze material from Piozzi's Anecdotes and Boswell's Life and Journal to confirm Cumming's friendship with Johnson and his controversial reputation. The analysis draws on diverse sources, including Tobias Smollett's accounts and documents from the Annapolis Tuesday Club, to delineate Cumming's roles as a shorthand teacher, printer, and the controversial architect of the 1758 Senegal expedition. The text also explores the unsubstantiated claims in the 1774 Town and Country satire regarding Cumming's death, positing a hostile observer's animus as a possible motive.
The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire
The Edge of Satire: Post-Mortem and Other Effects
Robinson identifies the edge where satire most sharply cuts and where, simultaneously, it may stop being satire. Responding to remarks of Jackson Bate’s on Johnson as a satirist manqué, an analysis of ‘On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet’ and other poems explores varieties of ways in which mortality in a Christian context displaces grounds for judgement, yet occasions criticism of literary pretension, the limits of friendship, and self-interest in the professional care of others. By contrast, a passage from Dryden’s ‘An Ode, on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell’ rebukes the musician’s rivals so as to underline his loss to the world. Yet such a rebuke is edgeless to the extent that the rivalry it pinpoints has been nullified by the greater man’s demise. Thus, among relevant post-mortem and other effects here is the role death plays as a satirist of the impulse to satire.
In the First Circle: The Four Narrators of the Life of Savage
Wilcox analyzes Johnson’s 1744 An Account of the Life of Mr Richard Savage by identifying four distinct narrative voices: the Sage, the Historian, the Memoirist, and the Friend. Each persona adopts a specific perspective, tone, and rhetorical strategy to navigate the complexities of Savage’s life, his troubled interactions with his own literary circle (including figures like Steele and Pope), and Johnson’s personal relationship with him. Wilcox argues that understanding this multi-voiced narrative structure reveals Johnson’s methods for exploring Savage’s character and suggests how this early biographical project informed Johnson's later principles of community and association.
Reading Swift: Papers from the Seventh Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift
Thalesian Lessons: Mad Astronomers in British Fiction of the Long Eighteenth Century
Taking its cue from the representation of astronomy in Book Three of Gulliver’s Travels and versions of Thales of Miletus’ stargazing accident circulating in eighteenth-century England, this essay examines ‘mad’ astronomers in fictions of the long eighteenth century. In Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, Swift’s Voyage to Laputa, Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas, and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, it explores the links that stargazers establish between reason, represented by the practice of astronomy as a ‘pure’ observational science, and the imagination, represented by madness and fiction. Either overly cerebral or motivated by the most basic drives, fictional astronomers hold up for consideration various kinds of madness that offer insight into the developing relationship between science and the imagination, and in particular the legitimacy and dangers of fictionalizing.
'I Mourn Their Nature, but Admire Their Art': Anna Seward's Assertion of Critical Authority in Maturity and Old Age
Blanch Serrat provides a theoretically informed analysis of the public paper-war between Anna Seward and Boswell in the Gentleman's Magazine during 1786--1787 and 1793--1794. The dispute arose over Boswell's biographical treatment of Johnson and his decision to suppress Seward's anecdotal contributions from the Life of Johnson. Seward, writing initially under the pseudonym Benvolio, challenged Boswell to adopt a more balanced, rational approach rather than blind idolatry toward Johnson's moral character. Blanch Serrat uses the framework of age and gender studies to demonstrate that Boswell actively dismissed Seward's literary and critical authority by weaponizing her status as an old maid and an amateur writer against her. Seward resisted this professionalized, male-gendered shift in Romantic literary aesthetics by maintaining her objective, ethical critical stance and ungendering intellectual skill.
ES Review: Spanish Journal of English Studies
The Cambridge Handbook of Literary Authorship
The Eighteenth Century: Print, Professionalization, and Defining the Author
On the unstable category of authorship, noting how Johnson aligned himself with booksellers as his patrons and professionalized authorship. It contrasts this with sociable authorship cultivated by Hester Thrale (Piozzi). The aftermath of Donaldson v. Becket created more work for Johnson.
'What We Want in Elegance, We Gain in Copiousness': Eighteenth-Century English and Its Empire of Tongues
Recognizing the simultaneous rise of the English standardization movement and the British Empire, this article addresses how eighteenth-century attempts at "correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue" can be read as political and social allegories offering insight into the expanding empire's emerging self-image. With close readings of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, and Hugh Blair, this article focuses in particular on the many contentious resonances of English as a 'copious' language, one whose hybridity seemed capable at times of both worsening and alleviating the empire's fissures. By using language theory to locate the original articulation of copiousness as problem and solution, this article continues with a reading of a poem by Sir William Jones, a writer who saw a specific form of cultural and linguistic syncretism as a way to advance both literature and empire.
Enlightenment Liberties / Libertés des Lumières: Actes du séminaire de la Société internationale d'étude du XVIIIe siècle
'The Warrior Dwindled to a Beau': The War on Adopting French Language and Manners in 18th-Century Britain
Charlotte Brontë Refashions Rasselas
The Classicists' Myopia and the Neo-Classicists' Foresight in Perceiving the Superiority of Epic over Tragedy: A Critical Survey
This critical survey establishes the superiority of epic over tragedy by examining the arguments of classical and neo-classical critics. It traces the views of Plato and Aristotle, suggesting that Aristotle's framework is biased toward tragedy. The analysis then uses the arguments of John Dryden, Joseph Addison, and Samuel Johnson to objectively highlight epic poetry's greater length, scope for the marvelous, and elevated content, thereby asserting epic's distinction as the greater work of human nature.
Literature, London, and Lives of the English Poets
The Hurt(ful) Body: Performing and Beholding Pain, 1600–1800
'I Feel Your Pain': Some Reflections on the (Literary) Perception of Pain
Sawday investigates the shared human phenomenon of pain perception and its historical mediation through language and art. He focuses on the 18th-century 'intensive theory' of pain, notably as articulated by Samuel Johnson, who found the representation of Cordelia’s death in King Lear unendurable. Drawing on Locke, Johnson perceived pain as an excess of sensation that 'shocks' the mind. Sawday argues that literary imitations produce pain not by being mistaken for reality, but by bringing 'realities to mind,' a process governed by the imaginative capacity and what Adam Smith termed 'fellow-feeling.' The text concludes by bridging these historical views with modern neurological theories of 'word induced pain' and 'mirror neurons.'
From Grief to Leisure: 'Lycidas' in the Eighteenth Century
Milton's elegy for Edward King was widely admired and imitated in the eighteenth century. These imitations tend to celebrate the poem as an ornamental, musical work while suppressing its politics. By contrast, Samuel Johnson recognized that the poem's prosody and its generic heterogeneity were intrinsically related to its political critique. His objections to "Lycidas" also reflected his view that pastoral depicted an idealized life of rural leisure to distract and entertain city men. This ancient association between pastoral and leisure may have informed eighteenth-century readers' delight in the poem's "ease and variety," but it is also a fundamental misreading of the ethics of labor set out in the poem. In its enactment of the spiritual and writerly work of the shepherd, in Milton's revisions, and in its monodic form, "Lycidas" offers readers a choice between sensual dalliance and arduous song. Monody was both a collective song, performed during work to relieve its strains, and an individual utterance. This form reasserts the labor idealized by pastoral as a spiritual necessity. The eighteenth-century reception of "Lycidas" reveals how the revolutionary potential of lyric was converted to entertainment, a moment whose legacies may be perceived in some contemporary theories of lyric.
Fraudulence and Savagery in Three Eighteenth-Century British Writers
Literary fraudulence is a well-known hallmark of eighteenth-century British writing from George Psalmanazar to William Lauder to James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton, and Samuel Ireland. The “savage,” in the sense both of the wild and the brutal, is also a well-catalogued concern of the same period. How these two preoccupations might be related, however, has not been discussed. Looking at the writings of Psalmanazar, Swift, and Samuel Johnson, this essay attempts to reveal the hidden association between acts of savagery and acts of fraudulence in writing. The essay suggests that there is in the eighteenth century a sort of kinship between savagery and fiction or, in other words, that savagery is a hallmark of the fictional and the fraudulent in art at this time.
Il Confronto Letterario: Quaderni di Letterature Straniere Moderne e Comparate dell'Università di Pavia
Ways of Being in Literary and Cultural Spaces
The Horatian Tradition in Odes on Spring by English and Russian Poets
Kristanova examines the reception of the Horatian spring ode tradition among eighteenth-century English and Russian poets, focusing on Johnson and Gray in the former group. Gray's "On the Spring" fuses Horatian themes of carpe diem and memento mori with English pastoral, elegiac, and Pre-Romantic elements. Johnson's "Spring" reflects rational Neoclassicism, replacing mythological figures with allegorical ones, and interprets spring not as an invitation to pleasure but as an appeal to Stoic principles and rationalistic contemplation, aligning its philosophy with the mature Horace. The study then analyzes the Horatian influence in the Russian odes of Trediakovsky, Muravyov, and Kapnist, noting Trediakovsky's creation of the first Russian landscape poem, Muravyov's detailed Thomsonian descriptions, and Kapnist's fusion of classical motifs with Russian folk traditions.
Two Quotations in Marx's Capital Identified
This essay identifies two unacknowledged quotations in Marx's Capital, Volume I. The first, Marx's motto "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti!," is an adaptation of a line spoken by Virgil to Dante in La Divina Commedia: Purgatorio. The second quotation, the definition of humans as "a tool-making animal," is attributed by Marx to Franklin. The author traces this definition to Boswell's Life of Johnson, where Johnson offers a naive retort to the definition. Johnson's documented reading of Shakespeare, edited by Johnson, suggests Marx may have encountered the definition via Boswell.
Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Travaux choisis de la Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle
From Moated Castle to Modern Parlour: Anna Letitia Barbauld's Theorization of Wonder, Women, and the Novel
As a literary critic Anna Letitia Barbauld provides important evidence for those who have sought to challenge a long-established critical view that the development of the novel was premised on a renunciation of the wonders of romance which went hand in hand with the project of Enlightenment science and its rejection of miracles and the supernatural. At the same time, she presents an alternative perspective from that of influential eighteenth-century male critics such as Samuel Johnson regarding the relationship between novels and romances, and a sharply contrasting view of the place of wonder within the overall history of fiction. Against male contemporaries, she makes a case for women's continuing special claims as readers and writers of fiction based in part on their greater receptivity to emotions such as that of wonder, challenging Johnson's implicit positioning of men as the leaders of a developing form of literary realism that required a broad knowledge of nature and society.
The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought
Smallwood examines the emergence of aesthetics in the eighteenth century, showing that it was neither a discrete field nor independent of other disciplines. He notes that Johnson, a great literary critic of the age, was not immune to the vocabulary of aesthetics. Johnson's Preface to The Works of William Shakespeare defines poetic genius via the aesthetic criterion of "general nature." This aligns with Kant’s later formulation of inter-subjective judgment. Johnson also explored what constitutes the pleasure derived from tragedy in a discussion noted for its brevity and astuteness. The author states that Boswell’s record notes Johnson’s observation that reading Samuel Richardson for the plot would "fret" a reader.
Twelfth Night's 'Fustian Riddle': A Puzzle with No Solution?
This essay makes the controversial claim that it has finally solved Twelfth Night's "fustian riddle," the riddle Maria devises to entrap Malvolio. Paying close attention to First Folio spellings, Elizabethan pronunciation, and uncommon meanings of key words and phrases, it uncovers essential hints and clues that have been obscured by the passage of time but would have been readily accessible to Twelfth Night's original audiences. The most helpful of these, it turns out, are embedded in Fabian's quip — made as Malvolio is trying to discover the correct "alphabetical position" of the letters M.O.A.I. – "And O shall end, I hope." As Samuel Johnson long ago proposed, this remark alludes to the subject of hanging: the "O" makes a visual pun on the hangman's noose, with "end" of course being a reference to the fate of the person being hanged. In addition to this figurative meaning, Fabian's comment provides literal clues about the correct ordering of the four letters, the most obvious being
Spectacle and Speculation on James Boswell's German Tour, 1764
While in Samuel Johnson and others James Boswell chases men of distinguished accomplishments, in the journals and letters of his 1764 tour of German Courts his imagination is fired by the idea of hierarchical greatness in itself. Among the petty princes of Germany he fantasizes about a sense of importance that transcends not only the judgment of the observer but also anything anyone might write about them in the public sphere of print. Yet in his writings he can only imagine that greatness through a critical consciousness shaped by print culture. This article explores publicness as an aesthetic category in Boswell's writing.
Quotation and Example in Johnson's Abridged Dictionary (1756–78)
Osselton disputes the common scholarly opinion that Johnson removed all quotations in his abridged octavo. He demonstrates that Johnson selectively retained and tweaked quotations for function words like from, of, and to to serve didactic purposes. Osselton finds that Johnson often rewrote authorial texts, using them as templates for creating new illustrative examples to address a wider, less educated public while maintaining the Johnson brand through mass authorization with authors' names.
'Life beyond Life': Reading Milton's Areopagitica through Enlightenment Vitalism
Scientific attempts to define life, familiarly linked to romanticism and to poetic form, had an earlier and broader impact on literary interpretation. John Milton's Areopagitica, which metaphorically treats books as living things, rose to preeminence during the eighteenth century as readers paid increasing attention to its literary qualities. A free adaptation by Honoré de Mirabeau on the eve of the French Revolution minimized Milton's republicanism and drew out the tendencies toward vitalism inherent in his figurative language. Together with British responses to Samuel Johnson's critical 1779 Life of Milton, Mirabeau's adaptation demonstrates a way of reading informed by Enlightenment vitalism.
Editing, Editions, Essays, and Lives: Johnson, Boswell, and Other Usual/Unusual Suspects, 2014 [review of Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century, by Howard D. Weinbrot; Editing Lives: Essays in Contemporary Textual and Biographical Studies in Honor of O M Brack, Jr., by Jesse G. Swan; and Facts and Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell, by James Boswell, Paul Tankard, and Lisa Marr]
Lee rates Weinbrot’s Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century as an essential classic, praising its lovely aesthetics and scholarly rigor in linking minute textual details to broader historical contexts, exemplified by the essays' quality. Swan’s Editing Lives is a fine festschrift, successfully blending austere textual criticism with moving subjective humanity. Its strength is the comprehensive tribute and rigorous scholarly essays, while its title is noted for its subtle ambiguity. Tankard’s Facts and Inventions is a major contribution to Boswellian studies, providing a well-annotated, accessible archive of Boswell’s journalism, but its narrative organization is noted. The early journalistic pieces show a restrained, tonally neutral Boswell, lacking the fluent dialogue of his later works.
Boswell's Dictionary and the Status of Scots Dialect in the Eighteenth Century
This article examines James Boswell's still-unpublished "Dictionary of the Scots Language," contextualizing it within eighteenth-century debates about Scots and emphasizing the ways that it diverges from the work of Boswell's peers. While Samuel Johnson's dictionary follows literary precedent, and the work of the Scottish literati encourages readers to minimize the Scottishness of their speech and writing, Boswell's dictionary features a surprisingly familiar and conversational form of the Scots language. As such, the dictionary both highlights Boswell's own interest in the vernacular and points to an alternative thread in eighteenth-century thinking about Scots.
Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature Series
Samuel Johnson and the Powers of Friendship
Cousins, Derrin, and Napton’s edited volume provides the first book-length assessment of Johnson’s multi-faceted insights into friendship throughout his literary career. The collection explores Johnson’s engagement with ancient philosophies and subsequent reformulations of that inheritance. Several chapters illuminate Johnson’s understanding of friendship in both private and public spheres, focusing on its therapeutic capacity to ameliorate personal experience and its transformative impact on civil life. Contributors analyze Johnson’s portrayals of his own social circles, including well-known figures such as Boswell and Piozzi, alongside his fictional representations across various genres. The volume includes specific investigations into Johnson’s political friendships, his relationships with women writers, and the role of amity in his periodical essays and travel writing. These essays collectively present a re-evaluation of the Johnson canon, identifying friendship as a critical element of eighteenth-century British civility. The front matter provides biographical information on contributors and an introduction outlining three core themes: the enlargement of selfhood, the healing of damaged consciousness, and the interaction of men and women within and beyond marriage.
Famous Authors: Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784
Samuel Johnson was one of the most interesting figures of literature in 18th c England. He founded a literary magazine The Rambler and compiled the first major dictionary of English. He is best remembered as the subject of a biography by his friend Boswell. This film by Malcolm Hossick explores his life and the influence he had on the thought and manners of his age. It is followed by an overview of his work.
A one-volume collection of the prose and poetry of eighteenth-century Britain's pre-eminent lexicographer, critic, biographer, and poet Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson was eighteenth-century Britain's preeminent man of letters, and his influence endures to this day. He excelled as a moral and literary critic, biographer, lexicographer, and poet. This anthology, designed to make Johnson's essential works accessible to students and general readers, draws its texts from the definitive Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. In most cases, texts are included in full rather than excerpted. The anthology includes many essays from The Rambler and other periodicals; Rasselas; the prefaces to Johnson's Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare; the complete Lives of Cowley, Milton, Pope, Savage, and Gray, as well as generous selections from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Some parts are arranged thematically, allowing readers to focus on such topics as religion, marriage, war, and literature. The anthology includes a biographical introduction, and its ample annotation updates and enlarges the commentary in the Yale Edition.
The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson's Heir
The story of the extraordinary relationship between a former slave and England's most distinguished man of letters This compelling book chronicles a young boy's journey from the horrors of Jamaican slavery to the heart of London's literary world, and reveals the unlikely friendship that changed his life. Francis Barber, born in Jamaica, was brought to London by his owner in 1750 and became a servant in the household of the renowned Dr. Samuel Johnson. Although Barber left London for a time and served in the British navy during the Seven Years" War, he later returned to Johnson's employ. A fascinating reversal took place in the relationship between the two men as Johnson's health declined and the older man came to rely more and more upon his now educated and devoted companion. When Johnson died he left the bulk of his estate to Barber, a generous (and at the time scandalous) legacy, and a testament to the depth of their friendship. There were thousands of black Britons in the eighteenth century, but few accounts of their lives exist. In uncovering Francis Barber's story, this book not only provides insights into his life and Samuel Johnson's but also opens a window onto London when slaves had yet to win their freedom. Chapter 1, "The House in Gough Square," addresses the initial meeting between Samuel Johnson and the young, Jamaican-born Francis Barber, establishing the contrast between the unkempt lexicographer and his newly arrived servant within the busy context of 18th-century London. Chapter 2, "'The Dunghill of the Universe,'" argues that Barber’s early identity was rooted in the brutal chattel slavery of Jamaican sugar plantations, identifying his likely birth as "Quashey" to a woman named Grace on Colonel Richard Bathurst’s estate. Chapter 3, "A New Name," examines Barber’s arrival in England in 1750, his subsequent baptism—a ritual of contested legal significance—and his early education at a remote Yorkshire school intended to keep him out of his former owner's sight. Chapter 4, "Johnson," addresses the formation of the household "family" at Gough Square, arguing that the relationship provided a reciprocal emotional ballast for a grieving, depressive Johnson and a displaced, adolescent Barber. Chapter 5, "Servant or Slave?," identifies the legal and social ambiguities of Barber’s status in England, arguing that while he was effectively treated as a member of Johnson’s domestic circle, he and others still operated under the assumption of his continued enslavement until the death of Colonel Bathurst. Chapter 6, "An Apothecary in Cheapside," examines Barber’s brief departure to serve Edward Ferrand, arguing that while the move demonstrated a growing independence, legal prohibitions based on race ultimately barred him from pursuing a formal apprenticeship. Chapter 7, "The Stag," addresses Barber’s voluntary two-year enlistment in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, arguing that despite Johnson’s strenuous—and eventually successful—efforts to "rescue" him, Barber actually found the maritime service to be a sphere of relative equality. Chapter 8, "'A Race Naturally Inferior,'" argues that Barber was an active participant in London's burgeoning black community and identifies the racial prejudices he faced even within Johnson’s elite social circle. Chapter 9, "'This Is Your Scholar!,'" addresses Johnson’s commitment to Barber’s intellectual advancement, specifically his decision to send him to Bishop’s Stortford Grammar School to learn Latin and Greek despite the disapproval of other household dependants. Chapter 10, "Slavery on Trial," examines the shifting legal landscape following the Somerset case and identifies how these broad social changes coincided with Barber’s return to Johnson's service. Chapter 11, "‘Nobody but Frank’," addresses Barber’s marriage to Elizabeth Ball, a white woman, arguing that while the union faced social hostility and caused domestic friction, it signaled Barber’s emergence as an independent figure who would eventually become Johnson's primary nurse and confidant. Chapter 12, "Hawkins v. Barber," identifies the intense rivalry and litigation between Barber and Johnson’s executor, John Hawkins, arguing that the controversy over Johnson’s generous bequest revealed deep-seated class and racial animosities. Chapter 13, "Lichfield," addresses the Barber family’s move to Johnson’s birthplace, arguing that their subsequent financial decline was exacerbated by ill health and the difficulty of maintaining social status as "Dr. Johnson’s negro servant" in a provincial setting. Chapter 14, "Afterlives," argues that Barber’s legacy is preserved through his descendants and concludes that his journey from slavery to the status of a gentleman’s heir represents a singular narrative of 18th-century black British life. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics praising the detailed documentation of an extraordinary life but dividing over whether the available evidence allows for a complete recovery of the subject's independent identity apart from a famous benefactor. Nicholl, in LRB, calls the volume clear-headed and scholarly but finds it critically defective regarding early Jamaican origins, citing a reliance on predictable secondary sources. In TLS, Sutherland observes that the famous writer's overshadowing presence ultimately obscures the subject's own life and identity. Hanley, writing in JNL, commends the account of the central thirty-year friendship and the illumination of post-mortem legal and financial battles. Conversely, Lee, in Choice, notes that the monograph breaks little new ground for specialists but praises the narrative panache that makes it a readable synthesis of extant facts. Engerman's review in the Journal of British Studies values the useful context but points out the difficulty of generalizing about historical racial beliefs when the subject's own thoughts remain inaccessible. Finally, Carey, in the Sunday Times, hails the elegant biography for successfully rebalancing the master-servant narrative and exploring the persistent constraints on black agency in Georgian society.
Reviews: John Carey, Sunday Times (London), April 19, 2015; Stanley L. Engerman, Journal of British Studies 55, no. 1 (2016): 171–72; Gretchen H. Gerzina, NR, Series F, no. 18 (2014): 89–92; Ryan Hanley, JNL 67, no. 2 (2016): 54–57; Henry Hitchings, The Guardian, 2015; Anthony W. Lee, Choice 52, no. 12 (2015): 2088; Douglas Mann, Historian (Kingston) 80, no. 1 (2018): 143–44; Charles Nicholl, LRB 37, no. 14 (2015): 21–23; Publishers Weekly, January 26, 2015; Edward Short, Weekly Standard, September 28, 2015; Kathryn Sutherland, TLS, no. 5861 (2015): 8–9; Ian Thomson, New Statesman, May 22, 2015; Frances Wilson, The Spectator 328, no. 9743 (2015): 42.
The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson: Forms of Artistry and Thought
Smallwood argues for experiencing Johnson's critical texts as artworks in their own right, suggesting his judgments often spring from emotional sources of great personal intensity and depth. He challenges the view of Johnson as a dry evaluator, highlighting instead a deep emotional responsiveness and criteria of the heart that inform his literary estimates. Smallwood examines Johnson’s compassion through his biographical depictions of Pope and Swift, noting an unsentimental pity and an unshrinking grasp of human suffering. The text explores Johnson’s impassioned prose and his use of neo-Latin as an emotional proxy to manage personal grief. Smallwood further analyzes Johnson’s critical relations with figures like John Dennis and Thomas Warton, framing Johnson's approach as a critical anti-philosophy that privileges the stability of truth and general nature over abstract theory. By reviewing recent editions of the Lives of the Poets, Smallwood seeks to recover the artistic organization of Johnson’s final major work, emphasizing its enduring status as living literature. Chapter 1, "Johnson’s Compassion," addresses the emotional foundations of the subject's critical practice, arguing that his unsentimental pity for human suffering serves as a primary criterion for evaluating the moral depth of literary works. Chapter 2, "'The tears stand in my eyes': Johnson and Emotion," explores the relationship between personal grief and critical judgment, contending that the subject's mastery of Latin functioned as a necessary psychic shield to restrain emotional excess while allowing for the expression of profound feeling. Chapter 3, "Petty Caviller or 'Formidable Assailant': Johnson Reads Dennis," examines the subject's engagement with the combative critic John Dennis, identifying a shared commitment to rational disputatiousness that elevates the status of the critic to that of a formidable intellectual opponent. Chapter 4, "Readers Curious and Common: Johnson, Thomas Warton and Historical Form," compares the subject’s biographical approach to literary history with the antiquarian research of Thomas Warton, arguing that both use narrative to record cultural change while differing in their psychological versus social focus. Chapter 5, "Shakespeare, Johnson and Philosophy," explores how the subject's Shakespearean criticism preempts formal philosophical insights by portraying a "general nature" that transcends the shifting fashions of intellectual life. Chapter 6, "Two Ways of Being Wise: Johnson, Philosophy and Montaigne," identifies unforced parallels between the subject and Michel de Montaigne, arguing that their respective treatments of pleasure and mortality reflect a shared European humanistic tradition. Chapter 7, "Johnson and Time," addresses the subject's melancholy sensitivity to the passage of time, contending that he uses temporal existence as a critical test for both the imagination and the endurance of literary classics. Chapter 8, "Truth, Fiction and 'Undisputed History'," examines the subject's preference for historical reality over fable, arguing that historical narratives provide a stabilizing reality that checks "unfettered fancy" in the experience of art. Chapter 9, "Annotated Immortality," assesses the critical consequences of modern editions of the Lives of the Poets, arguing that fresh editorial scrutiny reveals the enduring stature and complexity of the subject's final critical achievement. Chapter 10, "Arts of Structure and the Rhythm of the Lives," concludes by suggesting that the newly edited Lives illuminate a vision of life richer in detail than any of the subject's other works, evoking a coherent poetical community that reflects "general nature."
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776) with Benjamin Franklin — William Strahan — Samuel Johnson — John Wilkes — Catharine Macaulay — Thomas Paine
A history of the British thinkers who developed the Enlightenment-era ideas and ideals that drove the American Revolution"— Provided by publisher. "The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. "The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness" was how Thomas Jefferson put it in the first draft of the Declaration, before the first ampersand was scratched out, along with "the preservation of." In a statement as pithy — and contested — as this, a small deletion matters. And indeed, that final, iconizing revision was the last in a long chain of revisions stretching across the Atlantic and back. The precise contours of these three rights have never been pinned down — and yet in making these words into rights, Jefferson reified the hopes (and debates) not only of a group of rebel-statesmen but also of an earlier generation of British thinkers who could barely imagine a country like the United States of America. Peter Moore's Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness tells the true story of what may be the most successful import in US history: the "American dream." Centered on the friendship between Benjamin Franklin and the British publisher William Strahan, and featuring figures including the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the ground-breaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician John Wilkes, and revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration in 1776. Everyone, it seemed, had "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" on their minds; Moore shows why, and reveals how these still-nascent ideals made their way across an ocean and started a revolution.
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
Samuel Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets': Ethical Literary Criticism
Tomarken presents a comprehensive study of the literary-critical sections of Johnson's final major work, arguing that these portions document the "ethical function of poetry" in culture. Using Ralph Cohen’s genre methodology, the monograph converts Johnson’s moral commentary into ethical literary criticism that addresses human problems and "the good life." Tomarken characterizes Johnson as an "eclectic thinker" who expanded traditional genre methods to accommodate insights into his age's literature. The analysis focuses on how genre interpretation relates literature to life, emphasizing that Johnson’s value judgements are not absolute but "contextualized and goal-directed." Key chapters examine metaphysical poetry, the pastoral elegy, and the epic, with particular attention to the "interpretive turn" in the Life of Savage. Tomarken asserts that Johnson’s criticism remains relevant for twenty-first-century readers because it provides a "middle ground" for civilized interchange and the preservation of civilization's best values through evaluative interpretation. Chapter 1, 'Why Genre', establishes Ralph Cohen’s historical genre theory as a framework for converting traditional moral commentary into ethical literary criticism that addresses contemporary human problems. Chapter 2, 'A Literary-Critical Tragedy: The Interpretive Turn in the Life of Savage', addresses the biographical intermingling of life and verse to frame Savage’s failures as a moral-literary paradox. Chapter 3, 'Metaphysical Poetry and Pastoral: Genre in Relation to Value Judgements and History', argues that genre provides the necessary structure for discriminating between successful innovation and derivative, formulaic repetition in poetic traditions. Chapter 4, 'Genre Combination and Interpretation: Johnson on Paradise Lost', analyzes the integration of allegory and narrative, contending that this mixture undermines the epic's core purpose by diminishing human interest. Chapter 5, 'Genre and Periodization: Macro- and Micro-history in the Life of Garth', investigates how mock-heroic satire functions as both an individual medical critique and a broader historical marker of cultural decline. Chapter 6, 'The Rise of Literary Criticism as a Genre', addresses the evolution of criticism into a formal discipline through the objective mediation of personal and political animosities between rival authors. Chapter 7, 'Life and Literature', explores the reciprocal relationship between literary interpretation and daily existence, framing language and economics as historical forces that shape creative production. Chapter 8, 'Conclusion: Ethical Value Judgements', argues that contextualized, goal-oriented value judgements demonstrate the enduring social relevance of literary criticism for preserving foundational civilizational values.
A group of notable writers — including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow — celebrate our fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists, composers, and politicians of the past. What can a house tell us about the person who lives there? Do we shape the buildings we live in, or are we formed by the places we call home? And why are we especially fascinated by the houses of the famous and often long-dead? In Lives of Houses, a group of notable biographers, historians, critics, and poets explores these questions and more through fascinating essays on the houses of great writers, artists, composers, and politicians of the past. Editors Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee are joined by wide-ranging contributors, including Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, David Cannadine, Roy Foster, Alexandra Harris, Daisy Hay, Margaret MacMillan, Alexander Masters, and Jenny Uglow. We encounter W. H. Auden, living in joyful squalor in New York's St. Mark's Place, and W. B. Yeats in his flood-prone tower in the windswept West of Ireland. We meet Benjamin Disraeli, struggling to keep up appearances, and track the lost houses of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. We visit Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh, England, and Jean Sibelius at Ainola, Finland. But Lives of Houses also considers those who are unhoused, unwilling or unable to establish a home — from the bewildered poet John Clare wandering the byways of England to the exiled Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera living on the streets of London.With more than forty illustrations, Lives of Houses illuminates what houses mean to us and how we use them to connect to and think about the past. The result is a fresh and engaging look at house and home.
Penn State Series in the History of the Book Series
This collection presents fourteen essays on annotating eighteenth-century literature. Authored by editors and annotators of current standard editions — such as California's Works of John Dryden, the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, and the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson — this book explores theoretical perspectives on critical editing and the practical work of annotation. Through examples from their own editorial work, the contributors illuminate the personal dilemmas and decisions confronting the annotator of texts: What information in the text needs annotation? When does one stop annotating? How does one manage the annotation-versus-interpretation problem? Brimming with erudition, Notes on Footnotes showcases the precision and attentiveness of some of the world's foremost editors and annotators. The book is necessary reading — not only for scholars of the eighteenth century but also for scholarly editors of texts of all historical periods, book historians, and book lovers in general. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Kate Bennett, Robert DeMaria Jr., Michael Edson, Robert D. Hume, Stephen Karian, Elizabeth Kraft, Thomas Lockwood, William McCarthy, Maximillian E. Novak, Shef Rogers, Robert G. Walker, and Marcus Walsh.
Ogawa and Suzuki assemble international scholars to examine how Johnson’s literary and biographical presence has been 'recuperated' by Japanese readers. Eto and Harada trace the historical shift from viewing Johnson as a 'moral teacher' to a 'man of letters', noting the pervasive use of Rasselas as an English textbook during the Meiji era's modernization. Ogawa and Yoshino investigate Johnson’s influence on Romanticism and realism, linking Rasselas to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Sōseki Natsume’s theories of domestic realism via Jane Austen. Suzuki explores the unique cultural appropriation of Johnson as a 'tea poet' by medical doctor Tamotsu Morowoka, while Iwata and Hattori analyze Johnson’s critical reception regarding Shakespeare and the imaginative role of 'Abyssinian' settings. Technical contributions by Fukumoto and Ogura use corpus stylistics to examine Johnson’s prose style and 'view of knowledge'. The volume concludes with Suwabe’s reconstruction of Johnson’s deathbed scene, advocating for the weight of eyewitness Sastres's account. Overall, the collection demonstrates that the 'Japanese Johnson' is an integral part of the country’s intellectual history, providing a lens through which to understand the interplay of tradition and westernization.
International companions to Scottish literature
The International Companion to James Macpherson and 'The Poems of Ossian'
James Macpherson's "Poems of Ossian," first published from 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry, were the literary sensation of the age. Attacked by Samuel Johnson and others as "forgeries," nonetheless the poems enthralled readers around the world, attracting rapturous admiration from figures as diverse as Goethe, Diderot, Jefferson, Bonaparte and Mendelssohn. This International Companion examines the social, political and philosophical context of the poems, their disputed origins, their impact on world literature, and the various critical afterlives of Macpherson and of his literary works.
Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions
A Sincere and Teachable Heart: Self-Denying Virtue in British Intellectual Life, 1736–1859
Character and Morality in Eighteenth-Century British Thought
Bellon demonstrates that respectability and authority in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain were not grounded foremost in ideas or specialist skills but in the self-denying virtues of patience and humility. Three case studies clarify this relationship between intellectual standards and practical moral duty. The first shows that the Victorians adapted a universal conception of sainthood to the responsibilities specific to class, gender, social rank, and vocation. The second illustrates how these ideals of self-discipline achieved their form and cultural vigor by analyzing the eighteenth-century moral philosophy of Joseph Butler, John Wesley, Samuel Johnson, and William Paley. The final reinterprets conflict between the liberal Anglican Noetics and the conservative Oxford Movement as a clash over the means of developing habits of self-denial.
Dr. Johnson's Friend and Robert Adam's Client Topham Beauclerk
Noy chronicles the complex, twenty-one-year friendship between Johnson and the aristocratic Topham Beauclerk. The narrative explores how Beauclerk's connections to the Aston and Hervey families initially facilitated their intimacy, despite their disparate social backgrounds. Noy details their shared activities, including the famous "frisk" in Covent Garden and a visit to Cambridge in 1765. The author highlights Beauclerk’s unique ability to "tease him and tyrannize over him," noting that Johnson admired the young man's effortless conversational wit. The work also examines Beauclerk's role as a founder of The Club and his testimony, alongside Johnson, in the 1769 murder trial of Giuseppe Baretti. Noy suggests that Beauclerk served as a surrogate father figure for Johnson, while Johnson provided a stable intellectual anchor for the volatile aristocrat.
Scandal Nation: Law and Authorship in Britain, 1750–1832
Kathryn Temple argues that eighteenth-century Grub Street scandals involving print piracy, forgery, and copyright violation played a crucial role in the formation of British identity. Britain's expanding print culture demanded new ways of thinking about business and art. In this environment, print scandals functioned as sites where national identity could be contested even as it was being formed.Temple draws upon cases involving Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, Catharine Macaulay, and Mary Prince. The public uproar around these controversies crossed class, gender, and regional boundaries, reaching the Celtic periphery and the colonies. Both print and spectacle, both high and low, these scandals raised important points of law, but also drew on images of criminality and sexuality made familiar in the theater, satirical prints, broadsides, even in wax museums. Like print culture itself, the "scandal" of print disputes constituted the nation-and resistance to its formation. Print transgression destabilized both the print industry and efforts to form national identity. Temple concludes that these scandals represent print's escape from Britain's strenuous efforts to enlist it in the service of nation.
Boswell, un libertin mélancolique: Sa vie, ses voyages, ses amours et ses opinions
Routledge studies in eighteenth-century literature
Nation-Space in Enlightenment Britain: An Archaeology of Empire
"Nation-Space in Enlightenment Britain: An Archaeology of Empire is a provocative intervention that extends the parameters of on-going dialogues about British identity during the Enlightenment. Drawing on literary, theatrical, artistic, and other cultural productions, this book describes how British identity emerges not despite of but because of its fluid, volatile, and subversive impulses and expressions. The imperial establishment—codified in the logics of the corporation, the academy, the cathedral, the theater, as well the private parlor or garden — derives its power from scripting and championing a resistance to precisely those subversive elements which threaten or undermine the foundations of order and liberalism in civil society. Choudhury argues that imperial Britain can best be understood in terms of this culture's investment in spatial alignments which celebrated a radial interface with remote points of commercial interest. The volume shows that Daniel Defoe, Arthur Onslow, David Garrick, Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander, Hans Sloane, Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson, Charles Burney, and George Frideric Handel were not only part of a dazzling line-up of the empire's architects. In retrospect, their contributions reflect a remarkably modern pattern: the spatial dimension of corporate culture, and this culture's dependence on, and thus its collusion with, global commerce" — Provided by publisher.
Sociability and society: literature and the symposium
The Splintering of Culture: Reading versus Salon
Today, churches, political parties, trade unions, and even national sports teams are no guarantee of social solidarity. At a time when these traditional institutions of social cohesion seem increasingly ill-equipped to defend against the disintegration of sociability, K. Ludwig Pfeiffer encourages us to reflect on the cultural and literary history of social gatherings — from the ancient Athenian symposium to its successor forms throughout Western history. From medieval troubadours to Parisian salons and beyond, Pfeiffer conceptualizes the symposium as an institution of sociability with a central societal function. As such he reinforces a programmatic theoretical move in the sociology of Georg Simmel and builds on theories of social interaction and communication characterized by Max Weber, George Herbert Mead, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and others. To make his argument, Pfeiffer draws on the work of a range of writers, including Dr. Samuel Johnson and Diderot, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust, Dorothy Sayers, Joseph Conrad, and Stieg Larsson. Ultimately, Pfeiffer concludes that if modern societies do not find ways of reinstating elements of the Athenian symposium, especially those relating to its ritualized ease, decency and style of interaction, they will have to cope with increasing violence and decreasing social cohesion.
The Donna Angelica and the British Enlightenment Poets: Six Studies from Butler to Crabbe
Samuel Johnson: Stella, Irene and Aspasia
This chapter investigates the donna angelica topos in the early lyrics and the tragedy Irene. The analysis details how Johnson personalizes the angelic lady motif in To Miss Hickman Playing on the Spinet and The Winter's Walk by engaging in implicit dialogue with Shakespeare, Donne, and Dryden. In Irene, the motif functions as an interrogation of the topos itself through the polarized characterizations of Aspasia and Irene. Aspasia embodies a Neostoic ideal of constantia and virtuous resistance to tyrannic power, whereas Irene represents a failed angelic lady whose thirst of empire leads to apostasy. The author argues that Johnson uses these female characters to stage a version of the Choice of Hercules, evaluating human instability against a Christianized ideal of conduct. The chapter concludes that Johnson demonstrates the continuing moral persuasiveness of the motif while associating Irene’s fall with a Faustian trajectory of guilt and despair.
Essential Scots and the Idea of Unionism in Anglo-Scottish Literature, 1603–1832
Writing Revolution as Essential Recovery: Samuel Johnson's Return to Scotland after Ossian
Swenson analyzes Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as a response to the "Idea" of Scotland and the trope of the durable Scottish traveler. Navigating a landscape affected by heavy emigration in the 1770s, Johnson balances the "reality of a Scotland left behind" with a desire for cultural restoration. Swenson argues that Johnson’s authorial "task" is to "return" readers to subjects "negligently regarded," such as the ruined cathedral at Arbroath or the "tragic island" of Iona. By suggesting that readers "form an exact ground-plot" of ruins, Johnson encourages a "long second-sight view" of Scotland's place within unionism. The text positions Iona as a potential future "instructress of the Western Regions," illustrating Johnson’s belief in the "revolutions of the world" and the possibility of recovering "piety" from "neglected feminized ground."
Home and Nation in British Literature from the English to the French Revolutions
In a world of conflicting nationalist claims, mass displacements and asylum-seeking, a great many people are looking for "home" or struggling to establish the 'nation." These were also important preoccupations between the English and the French revolutions: a period when Britain was first at war within itself, then achieved a confident if precarious equilibrium, and finally seemed to have come once more to the edge of overthrow. In the century and a half between revolution experienced and revolution observed, the impulse to identify or implicitly appropriate home and nation was elemental to British literature. This wide-ranging study by international scholars provides an innovative and thorough account of writings that vigorously contested notions and images of the nation and of private domestic space within it, tracing the larger patterns of debate, while at the same time exploring how particular writers situated themselves within it and gave it shape.
Inventing the Myths: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Gilvary examines the emergence of unverified anecdotes and cultural myths surrounding Shakespeare during the Restoration and Enlightenment. Johnson features as a pivotal figure who formalizes the biographical approach to literary appreciation by "relating criticism to a chronological framework." Despite promoting the genre, Johnson never attempts a biography of Shakespeare, a failure arising from a "lack of biographical material." He views the loss of personal knowledge regarding Shakespeare as "irrecoverably lost" and notes that "Lives can only be written from personal knowledge". Johnson reluctantly includes Rowe’s account in his 1765 edition, though he finds it lacks "elegance or spirit". While Johnson establishes the popularity of the subgenre with his own collections, he remains skeptical of reconstructing a life without primary evidence, famously lamenting the inability to know the "petty habits" or "modes of composition" of the dramatist.
A Sociolinguistic History of British English Lexicography
Publisher's blurb: "Johnson established the prescriptive paradigm in British lexicography with his 1755 Dictionary, aiming to preserve purity and ascertain idiom. His Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language (1747) served as a foundation-laying manifesto, prioritizing the codification of pronunciation and the use of literary quotations from 'polite writers' to illustrate meaning. While Johnson expressed sorrow over the 'drudgery' of his toil, he successfully integrated methodology from predecessors like Bailey and Philips. His meticulously refined definitions, such as the witty and sometimes biased entries for 'oats' and 'excise,' surpassed earlier works in length and polysemous discrimination. Boswell later secured Johnson's status as an internationally renowned figure through his 1791 biography. Although critics dispute Johnson's etymological accuracy and highlight his occasional subjectivity, his dictionary remains a monumental milestone that transitioned English lexicography from a focus on hard words to a comprehensive record of the language. This work dominated the field until the historical principles of the nineteenth century gained prominence."
Walker describes the anthology as a vade mecum that provides a neutral approach to the works while including explanatory notes and cross-references to the Yale edition. Walker commends the topical arrangement of the periodical essays and the informative biographical headnotes that link the canon to the life story. He identifies minor quibbles regarding inconsistent capitalization in the poetry section and the limited space allotted to religious writings. Walker argues that the inclusion of the sermon for William Dodd would have further strengthened the connection between the life and the moral works. He concludes that the edition successfully encourages direct engagement with the writings without sacrificing Boswell’s helpful biographical details.
Walker provides an approving review of Hudson’s political biography, which challenges traditional views of Johnson’s Toryism. The review highlights Hudson’s argument that Johnson’s political identity was shaped more by his "sheer physical playfulness" and "elasticity of mind" than by rigid party loyalty. Walker notes that Hudson effectively uses biographical evidence to present Johnson as a figure whose political writings were often responses to immediate social contexts rather than abstract theory. The review emphasizes Hudson’s focus on Johnson’s early years and his complex relationship with the government, concluding that the work offers a "fresh and persuasive" account of a frequently misunderstood aspect of Johnson’s public life.
Samuel Johnson, Infrastructure, and the Spirit of Progress
Samuel Johnson advocated the building and maintenance of roads, bridges, canals and other infrastructure as the defining difference between "civilized" and "barbaric" or "feudal" societies. His promotion of infrastructure is most clearly shown in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) where he comments repeatedly on roads or their absence, implying that only improved means of transport and communication will bring the Highlands into the fold of modern civilization, exemplified by England. Johnson added something of his own in his promotion of what I call "literary infrastructure," meaning his Dictionary and other works that he describes as roads to linguistic and scholarly progress.
Letter to the editor.
The Many Faces of Doctor Johnson [review of Kosykh, Сэмюэл Джонсон и его эпоха: Британия и мир глазами английского интеллектуала XVIII в. = Samuel Johnson and his Era: Britain and the World through the eyes of an 18th-century English intellectual]
Eremin’s approving review of Tatiana Kosykh’s monograph, Samuel Johnson and His Era, highlights the study's integration of Johnson into the "ideational and socio-political contexts" of Georgian Britain. The review commends Kosykh’s use of diverse sources, including Johnson’s personal library auction list, to illustrate his "intellectual base" and broad interests. Eremin emphasizes Kosykh's analysis of the Dictionary of the English Language as a tool for linguistic standardization and "nation-building" that reflected British imperial ambitions and anti-French sentiment. The review notes Kosykh's examination of Johnson's complex "othering" of Scotland, America, and the East, alongside his conservative political disputes with John Wilkes. Eremin finds the monograph successfully uses Johnson’s biography to address the "nerve of the era," portraying him as a "literary dictator" whose skepticism and philanthropy coexist within the framework of the Midland Enlightenment.
Some Unpublished Latin Verses on Chronology by Samuel Johnson
This is the first known publication of some Latin verses written by Samuel Johnson on the last page of his Welsh Diary. The left column lists the dates of various historical events. The right column contains dactylic hexameters that versify the dates of eleven of these events. The article supplies a text and translation of the verses, together with annotations and a discussion of their content.
The Libraries of Twelve Early Members of The Club: Part 12: Samuel Johnson
Of the libraries of Club members, none have been the subject of so much study in proportion to their inherent bibliographical importance as that of Samuel Johnson himself. The Johnson Club in 1892 printed a facsimile of an unpriced copy, but two surviving copies that list both prices and purchasers have also been reproduced in facsimile. Club members, however, were buying relics of their friend, and in the subsequent two and half centuries Johnson's own copies of books have been treated as just that, treasured for their associational value. Books from Johnson's library are extremely scarce in trade. Of the books marked up by Johnson for quotations in the Dictionary, Graham Nicholls recorded in 1990 that only thirteen marked-up copies had been found, despite quarter of a million quotations the Dictionary containing about a from about 640 authors.
The Place of Samuel Johnson in the Spiritual Life of British Society in the Second Half of the 18th Century
The review is devoted to the analysis of the monograph, which examines the place and role of the educator S. Johnson in the spiritual life of British society in the second half of the 18th century. The reviewer shows that the author of the monograph was able to convincingly prove that the intellectual heritage of the compiler of the "Dictionary of the English Language," a moralist and literary critic, most fully reflected the trend towards self-identification that dominated contemporary English culture. The reviewer's attention is focused on considering how this problem was solved.
Известия Саратовского университета. Новая серия. Серия: История. Международные отношения
Edwards responds to a previous letter by offering a nuanced view of Johnson's and Daniel O'Connell’s attitudes toward the Irish language. While Johnson famously deemed Gaelic a "rude speech of a barbarous people," Edwards argues that Johnson also criticized the neglect of Gaelic instruction and the efforts to suppress its use in religious scripture. Johnson asserted that "languages are the pedigree of nations," recognizing that the language’s extinction would deprive its speakers of their "mothertongue." Edwards contrasts this with O'Connell's "utilitarian" view, noting O'Connell supported the shift to English but might have ultimately endorsed bilingualism given Irish’s deep cultural embedding.
XVII–XVIII: Bulletin de la société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
Considine's review of Mugglestone’s Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words praises its witty and eloquent engagement with Johnson’s texts and its presentation of his lexicography as flexible and complex, driven by his imagery as a "traveler and discoverer." The book is based on familiar texts, focusing on Johnson’s methodology, handling of loanwords, and the interplay of description and prescription within his definitions. Considine commends the use of the Yale Digital Edition to track word occurrences and values the balanced and sympathetic picture of Johnson as a flexible lexicographer rather than a dogmatic prescriptivist. However, the review identifies numerous linguistic and historical errors, particularly regarding Latin and the handling of etymologies, including misrepresenting Johnson's definitions and misinterpreting source confirmation. Considine challenges several of Mugglestone’s claims, specifically disputing her use of the word "confirm" when relating the Dictionary to other sources and noting a failure to distinguish between Johnson’s dictionary definitions and his actual linguistic practice. Despite these flaws and limitations, Considine recommends the book for the general reader due to its attractive style, rich context, and rich engagement with Johnson's language.
Melancholy and the Body in the Eighteenth Century: The Example of Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the great lexicographer and essayist, suffered from melancholy all his life. He believed that the disorder was congenital and that it afflicted his mind. To some degree, he saw the problem as arising in his abnormally large and partially disabled body. Locating the source of melancholy in his body, gave Johnson a way to deal with it, and it partially relieved him of the guilt and shame he felt concerning the disease. Johnson's greatest fear concerning his condition was that it touched not only his mind but also his soul. In the form of scruples and spiritual torpor, melancholy weighed Johnson down and stimulated his fears of death and damnation. As a physical body, Johnson was perhaps deformed, but he was courageous. No physical danger frightened him, but he trembled for the life of his soul, and his melancholy, even if it was psycho-somatic (avant la lettre), was his greatest threat.
ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
The Johnson of History or the Johnson of Boswell?
What most people know of Samuel Johnson, the famous lexicographer, literary critic and essayist, comes primarily through The Life of Samuel Johnson written by James Boswell.1 One of the great assets of this biography is the detailed reports of conversations that took place at dinners or clubs, when Johnson was meeting with some of the leading intellectual, cultural and political figures of the second half of the eighteenth century: the politicians John Wilkes and Edmund Burke; literary figures such as Elizabeth Montagu and Francis Burney; the artist Joshua Reynolds; or the music historian Charles Burney.
Phrases Constituting Periodic Sentences of Samuel Johnson: A Case of The Rambler
Samuel Johnson, an 18th-century lexicographer, was also a producer of The Rambler (1750-1752). This is a periodical collection of the essays, in which he is said to have written what he hoped to write. In this work, he sought to have his readers reflect on their own life by what The Rambler texts had to offer, but this essay collection is hard to decipher regarding language because of its complex syntax, which has been referred to as being periodic. However, it has not been clarified what constitutes periodic sentences. This paper investigates, based on five frequent 5-gram patterns, what makes Johnson’s sentences periodic. The editorial board announced that this article has been retracted on May 16, 2018. If you have any further question, please contact us at: ijel@ccsenet.org
International Journal of English Linguistics
La recepción española de la obra de Samuel Johnson en las traducciones al castellano
The present study analyses the reception of Samuel Johnson in Spain through the translation of his works into Spanish. Despite the immense influence Samuel Johnson has had in the English-speaking world as one of the most significant representatives of enlightened Humanism, the knowledge of his works and his figure have been rather belated in the Hispanic world. His marked "Englishness" may be considered one of the causes why his works went unnoticed among his Spanish contemporaries and the following generations at a time when political and cultural alliances linked Spain to France rather than to Great Britain. A determining factor in the process of making Samuel Johnson better-known in Spain has been the development of English Studies as an academic discipline, especially since the 1980's. The second important factor is the availability of Spanish translations of the famous biography signed by James Boswell.Resumen: El presente estudio analiza la recepción de la obra de Samuel Johnson en España a través de las traducciones al castellano. Pese a la inmensa influencia de la que goza Samuel Johnson en el mundo angloparlante como máximo representante del humanismo ilustrado, la difusión tanto del autor como de su obra ha sido tardía en el ámbito hispánico. Su marcado carácter "inglés" puede considerarse como una de las causas del aparente desinterés que su obra despertó entre sus coetáneos y las generaciones inmediatamenteposteriores en una época en las que las alianzas políticas y culturales ligabanEspaña a Francia. Un factor determinante en la divulgación de la obra de Johnson ha sido el desarrollo como disciplina académica de los Estudios de Filología inglesa, en especial a partir de la década de 1980. El segundo factor es la aparición de varias traducciones españolas de la famosa biografía sobre la vida de Johnson firmada por James Boswell.
A Reading of Samuel Johnson's 'The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated' (1749)
Traducir literatura de ideas: un modelo de análisis y su ilustración mediante un ensayo de Samuel Johnson
El principal objetivo del presente artículo es proponer un modelo de análisis traductológico del ensayo. Para ello, en primer lugar se destacan los rasgos que definen el ensayo en tanto que género diferenciado de los otros tres grandes géneros literarios (narrativa, teatro y poesía) y se revisan las principales contribuciones teóricas el estudio de su traducción. Las cuestiones tratadas en la bibliografía se agrupan en cuatro bloques: el contenido, las voces que se oyen en el texto y su interacción, la linealidad del texto y la dimensión cultural. Estos cuatro bloques se corresponden, respectivamente, con las tres funciones del lenguaje identificadas por la lingüística funcional-sistémica (ideacional, interpersonal y textual) y con el contexto de cultura. Finalmente, se ilustra el modelo de análisis propuesto mediante su aplicación al ensayo de Samuel Johnson y su traducción al español.
The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature
Anecdotal Death: Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets
This chapter explores Johnson's attempts, through the narrative construction of the Lives, to negotiate challenges and to acknowledge if not resolve the moral, theological, and existential questions that they raise. A useful starting point for such an analysis is Johnson's own Dictionary definition of coherence: The texture of a discourse, by which one part follows another regularly and naturally. The "Life of William Collins" is organized around his poverty, mental "disorder," and the twists of fortune and misfortune that befell him. Johnson was famously the subject of numerous anecdotes, but read, recommended, and collected them himself. In historiographical studies the anecdote "has always stood in close relation to the longer, more elaborate narratives of history, sometimes in supportive role, as examples and illustrations, sometimes in a challenging role, as the repressed of history — "la petite histoire." Incomplete, it consists only of a scene set at Bolt Court in which the characters reflect on the nature and meaning of death.
Style of the Language Systems as Reflected in A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson (1755) and A Dictionary of the Russian Academy ('Slovar' Akademii Rossiyskoy,' 1789–1794)
The article considers some stylistic aspects of the Russian and English language systems based on A Dictionary of The English Language… by Samuel Johnson, and A Dictionary of The Russian Academy (‘Slovar Academii Rossiyskoy'), 18th c., that laid a foundation of the British and Russian national lexicography. A comparison of major literary sources of the dictionaries and approaches applied in these lexicographic traditions reveals significant differences between the styles of the two language systems, which has an impact on the national mentalities, ways of perception of a mother tongue and а foreign language, as well as methods of teaching the two languages.
The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry
'The Hunger of Imagination': Approaching Samuel Johnson's Melancholy
This chapter explores a particular instance of mental disturbance and threatened collapse into madness from crucial period. It is the case of a man who suffered the torments of melancholy on and off all his life, who feared that his melancholy would career downhill into madness proper; a man who recorded symptoms, speculated on causes, and reported his experience of that affliction and attempted remedies in some detail. The chapter explores the course, nature, and possible explanations of Samuel Johnson's melancholy. Johnson was thus haunted by dread that his "mind corrupted with an inveterate disease of wishing," would eventually succumb to monomania. Christianity gave Johnson a prospect of managing mortality, a vision of triumph over the Grim Reaper, an earnest of life eternal. The chapter concludes by briefly indicating what wider conclusions Johnson's sufferings might help us to draw about mental disturbance in Georgian England.
Reprinted (Routledge, 2004).
Chaucer in the Eighteenth Century: The Father of English Poetry
Samuel Johnson and Chaucer: 'The First of Our Versifyers Who Wrote Poetically'
This chapter investigates the presence of Chaucer in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755, 2nd edn, 1773). There are considerable difficulties in reconciling remarks in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, his plans for an edition of Chaucer, and his references to Chaucer in different parts of the Dictionary. Johnson presented Chaucer with difficulties of every kind, as a historian of the language, as a historian of the course of English poetry, and as a literary critic. His decision to confine his illustrative examples to works composed during and after the sixteenth century should have excluded Chaucer entirely. But Chaucer creeps in (often via Junius's Etymologicon). Johnson cites lines that appear nowhere in Chaucer's texts, and misquotes some that do. Some Chaucerian words and phrases (‘Mars armipotent', ‘gladder') are attributed to Dryden rather than to their source in Chaucer, and the reader of the Dictionary is offered a great many passages of Chaucer via Dryden. So frequent, indeed, is citation of Dryden's Chaucerian versions, that some works (e.g. The Character of a Good Parson) appear piecemeal almost entire in the Dictionary.
Engerman finds Bundock's biography of Francis Barber well told and quite interesting, providing much useful context. He notes Bundock is generally sympathetic to Barber's actions, but points out the difficulty in using Barber's atypical life to generalize about British racial beliefs because of the limited knowledge of Barber's own thinking.
Conflicted Representations: Language, Lexicography, and Johnson's 'Langscape' of War
Mugglestone explores the linguistic representation of war in the eighteenth century, specifically through Johnson's Dictionary. While the Oxford English Dictionary views "war word" as a twentieth-century phenomenon, Mugglestone identifies a "langscape" of conflict in Johnson's work. Johnson early proposed a military dictionary to Edward Cave in 1738, suggesting a facilitating work for "reading of war in books." The Dictionary defines "war" using Walter Raleigh's authorizing voice as the "exercise of violence under sovereign command." Johnson treats information from other dictionaries with distrust if he cannot confirm usage with direct evidence. The Dictionary systematically reflects disapproval for national disorder, as Johnson's consciousness of "evil" as a collocate for war is "incontrovertible." The "attentive reader" of the Dictionary notices Johnson's preference for texts that present war negatively to impose ideological distance.
'A Little Charity': Dr. Johnson and His Household
Bundock cites that in the house in Gough Square where Samuel Johnson once lived there hangs an engraving of a well-known painting of the great man of letters. Seated at dinner with Johnson are some of the most celebrated figures of the day: David Garrick, the actor and theatre manager, Joshua Reynolds, first President of the Royal Academy, the statesman Edmund Burke, the playwright Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell, Johnson's biographer, and others too. It forms a sort of eighteenth-century Who's Who. This is a familiar image of Johnson: the focal point of a group of accomplished men, declaiming, arguing and contradicting. But there was another Johnson, the domestic figure, living at the center of a very different group. One of them can be glimpsed in the portrait, the black servant at the back of the scene, fetching something for the gathering to drink. This is probably intended to represent Francis Barber, once a slave, and now one of Johnson's dependants.
Libraries, Books, and Collectors of Texts, 1600–1900
From Francis Bacon's Historia Literarum to Samuel Johnson's Literary History: The Catalogus Bibliothecae Harleianae (1743–1745)
The chapter is an account of Samuel Johnson's role compiling the sale catalogue of the printed books owned by Robert and Edward Harley. It takes seriously Johnson's claim in the preface that the catalogue was a work of literary history by studying his debts to the early modern genre of historia literaria pioneered by Francis Bacon and thereafter systematised by a series of mostly German scholars. Particularly, it concentrates on what Johnson learnt from the catalogues-all printed towards the end of the seventeenth century-of the libraries owned by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the French parliamentarian and historian Jacques Auguste de Thou, and the Dutch textual critic Nicholas Heinsius.
Johnson, Statius, and the Classical Motto
In his article Johnson, Statius, and the Classical Motto, Lee argues that Johnson's deployment of classical mottoes is integral to the larger structure of his essays and other writings. He parts company with Donald Greene, Bruce Redford, and others who view Johnson's citation of Latin and Greek authors as more decorative than functional. He closely analyzes lines from Statius's Thebaid (4.400–401) that appear in Rambler 2 and Adventurer 45.
Contra las 'Belles infidèles': La primera traducción al español del Rasselas de Samuel Johnson
Durante el siglo XVIII, la tendencia en la traducción de textos ingleses al español, que no perseguían ser adaptaciones sino tender al polo de aceptabilidad, era seguir la moda francesa de las "belles infidèles" mayoritariamente imperante entonces. Se llegó incluso a decir que era mejor no ser fieles en la traducción de textos ingleses, dada la distancia ética y estética que separaba la producción de Gran Bretaña con respecto a lo que se elaboraba en el continente. Sufrieron este proceso, por mencionar los ejemplos más significativos, las tres novelas de Richardson y Tom Jones y Amelia de Fielding. Sin embargo, el Rasselas de Johnson conoció una suerte muy diferente. La finalidad de este ensayo es analizar por qué la versión de esta novela se aparta de los cánones establecidos y señalar qué tipo de versión se ofreció al lector español del dieciocho.
Samuel Johnson and the Vocation of the Author
Much has been written about Samuel Johnson as a Christian, and much about him as an author; this study is about where the two meet, in the idea of the literary vocation. Though Johnson only uses the word ‘vocation" a handful of times, it holds both the quotidian sense of a job and the more exalted notion of a divine call, a tension which informs Johnson's thinking. I begin with Johnson's development as a religious writer, influenced by William Law's contention that any form of life can be devout and holy, and by Bernard Mandeville's unsentimental candour. Johnson's writing bears the marks of both. He revised Irene, for instance, to make it less overtly Christian: a reminder that Johnson's religious convictions bring an invisible pressure to bear on apparently secular works. In his early years on the Gentleman's Magazine Johnson develops the principle that authorship, being a public act, carries great responsibilities. It is, in fact, a vocation, and unpacking this concept takes up Chapter 2. Johnson sees writing as a potential form of public service, adding that a solitary writer "naturally sinks from omission to forgetfulness of social duties." Too few commentators have grasped that Johnson sees morality in social terms — as a matter of answering the needs of others, according to one's place in an order overseen by divine providence. But again and again he refers to the human need 'to seek from one another assistance and support' (Rambler 104). Instances of mutual help 'by frequent reciprocations of beneficence unite mankind in society and friendship'. Johnson's well-known emphasis on friendship is only one expression of this deeper sense that society is held together by trust; and therefore, by the truth. Writers' communication of truth defines their own social duties. While Johnson can sound close to Shaftesbury when he writes of mankind's sociability, there is really a significant gap between them, because Johnson's view of human nature is more jaded. He expects people to hurt each other for the same reasons they help each other; and he recognises a strong tendency towards pride and superiority — especially among writers, who are tempted to cut themselves off from society. Chapter 3 deals in more depth with a writer's social role, which is simply expressed as the ability to put the truth memorably. Borrowing from a tradition which stretches back to Seneca at least, Johnson believes that a writer becomes a 'benefactor of mankind' by putting the useful, but readily forgotten, principles of the good life into memorable forms. Drawing on Locke's account of the memory, and deviating from Locke's account of moral action, he suggests that literature has a power to move the reason and the passions at once — hence his demand that poetry be both true and pleasurable. While this resembles the Horatian formula of dulce et utile, Johnson added to it a sense of writers' and readers' experience of the text: how ‘impressions' are transferred from the world, via the writer, to the text, and so to the reader. Learning how to persuade the audience, however, necessitates first-hand acquaintance with the world. Hence the subjects of Chapters 4 and 5, which are pride and humility respectively. Pride separates the author from the social world, making them ineffectual and unable to communicate truth. The 'Lives' of Swift and Milton establish this partly through their ridicule of the two subjects: though Johnson did not think ridicule established truth, it did restore a balance upset by an author's singularity. 'Singularity' is the word Johnson uses to encapsulate Swift's faults: he was 'fond of singularity, and desirous to make a mode of happiness for himself, different from the general course of things and order of Providence'. Milton, too, is condemned for his arrogance - but even more in order to correct the idolatry of his admirers. Johnson believes that Milton is being written about with absurd reverence, and so puts him back in his place - as just another member of society, with a role to fulfil. Accepting that place involves a measure of humility. The question of the 'dignity of literature," a contested point during the nineteenth century, was alive in Johnson's time, and through his associations with what he himself called 'Grub Street', he lived and worked among many writers who might be thought undignified. Yet in the obscurity of the hacks Johnson found something to praise - an industrious, humble service opposed to the 'letter'd arrogance' of self-satisfied authors. '[T]he humble author of journals and gazettes must be considered as a liberal dispenser of beneficial knowledge' (Rambler 145). By stooping to be merely useful, journalists become great. Particularly in the Journey to the Western Islands, Johnson divests himself of authorial dignity, drawing attention to his own mistakes and omissions. Such a humdrum view of the writer's role, which placed the emphasis on the reader, put Johnson at odds with most of the prominent Romantics - and the scale of their revulsion from Johnson needs two chapters to be dealt with. Chapter 6 argues that their critique, especially that of Hazlitt and Coleridge, was above all about the question of the writer's vocation: and for that reason, Shakespeare was the most contested ground - for Coleridge, Johnson's Shakespeare criticism was impertinent 'filth' aimed at 'the greatest man that ever put on and put off mortality'. But that was exactly the kind of idolatrous view of authorship - what Hazlitt called approvingly 'overstrained enthusiasm' - which Johnson wanted to challenge. However, many of the Romantics' criticisms misrepresented Johnson; he was a more flexible thinker than they realised. In a final chapter, I look at the aftermath of the Romantics: how their accusation that Johnson was too narrow and bigoted to understand Shakespeare is echoed in Macaulay, and even in sympathetic readers like Matthew Arnold, and has dogged Johnson all the way to the present day. And I point out that the Romantic exaltation of the author has faced its own backlash, in ways that suggest Johnson might have seen more clearly than the Romantics thought.
Boswell's Entail: A Study in Legal Reasoning
Author 's Synopsis: At each nomination of a United States Supreme Court justice, a discussion is renewed about textual interpretation and legal reasoning. This Article will show-by analyzing a classic estate planning problem considered by two eighteenth-century giants, Samuel Johnson and his amanuensis, James Boswell-that the principles giving rise to these questions are mostly unchanged. The colloquy illustrates the intersection of law, morals, and manners (customs) in the exercise of power. This, of course, is what judges and lawyers do for a living. Judges exercise power in deciding cases using and weighing various principles and reasoning techniques. Lawyers advise clients in a similar way. The issue of Boswell's entail, as considered by Johnson, is a window into the world of eighteenth-century legal thinking. Johnson provides Boswell great insight and wisdom. At the same time, Johnson provides us, the modern reader, with an appreciation of just how enduring these classic lines of legal thinking are.
Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law Journal
Clingham re-examines the extant portraits of Johnson by Opie, suggesting that three versions exist, not two, and questioning the traditional chronology. The canonical portraits are at Harvard's Houghton Library and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), London. The third, an unacknowledged version, resides at Balcarres House, Fife, and is argued to be the original painted during Johnson's sittings in 1783-1784, or at least the earliest. The three portraits differ significantly. The NPG version is seen as a thinly-painted copy. The Houghton portrait presents a formal, immutable "public persona," while the Balcarres version is more sensitive, capturing a "real-time authenticity" and Johnson's human vulnerability. The provenance of the Balcarres painting suggests it was purchased directly from Opie. Analysis of engravings by Heath (1786) and Townley (1792) suggests both worked from the Houghton version, supporting the idea that the Balcarres portrait remained private. The question of which portrait resulted from the live sitting remains, but the Balcarres portrait's aesthetic qualities support it as the likely original.
Gender, Religion, and Radicalism in the Long Eighteenth Century: The 'Ingenious Quaker' and Her Connections
Jennings examines a series of social encounters between Samuel Johnson and Mary Knowles, a Quaker artist and polemicist. Drawing on Boswell’s journals and Life of Johnson, it details Knowles's direct challenges to Johnson's views on women’s liberty and religious agency. At dinners hosted by the Dilly brothers, Knowles disputed Johnson’s support for unequal social standards for the sexes and defended Jane Harry's decision to join the Quakers. While Boswell portrays Johnson as "roaring" in anger against pro-American sentiments, he also records Johnson’s sparked interest in Knowles's "fine application" of scripture. The study highlights Johnson's complex attitudes toward women, noting his friendship with Hester Thrale alongside his demeaning comparisons of female preachers. It frames Dilly's dining room as an "associative social space" where these figures shaped print culture and public opinion through spirited, "mixed" conversation.
Uses of Knowledge: Samuel Beckett and Samuel Johnson
Journal of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Tokyo Medical and Dental University
Walsh praises Rees's scholarly and nuanced study of Johnson's complex relationship with Milton. Rees argues against viewing Johnson's engagement as merely antagonistic, demonstrating instead a continuous, open, and revealing interaction rooted in a shared Christian humanist tradition. Walsh highlights Rees's comprehensive approach, covering Johnson's essays, poetry, Rasselas, tracts, and criticism, and her effective analysis of subtle Miltonic allusions woven throughout Johnson's work. The book compellingly shows Johnson's deep familiarity with and questioning responses to Milton, offering a richer, more positive delineation of "Johnson's Milton" valuable to both Johnsonians and Miltonists.
Boswell, Johnson, and the Biographical Project
Johnson fiercely longed for personal immortality, hoped for salvation but feared being judged not to have made full use of his prodigious talents, and preferred even damnation to annihilation. Besides wanting his works to be read and admired, he also wanted to be remembered, even by those he met only once. [...] Johnson's enjoyment of this first session formally preparing Boswell to write his Life, along with his awareness that Boswell — and also Thomas Percy — were gathering materials for biographies, may have prompted Johnson to begin writing his autobiography. Because Boswell had such rich material and had the challenge and the opportunity of describing for Johnson what they had said and done, including those exchanges that most troubled him, he wrote more about their first nine weeks of travel than about any other nineweek period. [...] by referring to his upcoming trip to Paris simply as "another journey," Johnson kept his biographer from realizing until later that he was traveling abroad for the first time.
Johnson, Newton, and the 'Equal Motion' of Politeness
Lee explicates Johnson's phrase "equal motion" in Rambler 98 as a scientific allusion to Isaac Newton's first law of motion. He argues that Johnson analogizes the imperceptibility of uniform motion (motion without acceleration because of external force) to the workings of politeness, which goes unnoticed until it falters. Lee supports this interpretation with evidence from Johnson's Dictionary definition of "equal," related illustrative quotations (especially Dryden's translation of Juvenal's tenth Satire), and Johnson's imitation in The Vanity of Human Wishes, linking "equal temper" to Stoic philosophy. Johnson's known admiration for Newton further corroborates the reading.
Dr. Johnson's Apology for the Married Life of Hester Thrale: Hester Lynch Piozzi's Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Berglund argues that Piozzi published Johnson's correspondence to obliquely vindicate her controversial marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The collection serves as an exculpatory biography where Johnson’s own words "show the value that he placed on their friendship" and justify her conduct. Piozzi anticipated critical focus on "domestick and familiar events," such as "little Sophy’s headache," which contemporary reviewers found trivial. However, Berglund notes the letters provided a unique view of Johnson in a "homely context," where he called the Streatham world "home." By omitting Johnson's "cruel letter" regarding her second marriage, Piozzi curated a narrative of mutual respect to counter "scurrilous gossip" and abandonment by her social circle.
Johnson & Johnson: How Samuel Shaped Boris
Hitchens examines the intellectual and rhetorical influence of Samuel Johnson on the political worldview of Boris Johnson. The article details how the politician views the lexicographer as a pioneer of "compassionate conservatism," citing Samuel's defense of monarchy and hierarchy alongside his tireless campaigning against slavery and debtors' prisons. Hitchens notes that Boris interprets Samuel’s legendary rudeness as a sign of truth-telling in a nation "addicted to evasion." The narrative draws parallels between both men’s "volcanic ambition" following academic setbacks at Oxford and explores Samuel’s economic views on the "trickle-down effect" of luxury spending. Hitchens highlights Boris’s frequent citation of Samuel’s skepticism toward "schemes of political improvement" and his belief that the state cannot cure most human suffering. The text concludes by comparing the monumental task of compiling the "Dictionary of the English Language" to the political challenges of Brexit, reflecting on Samuel's own self-assessment of having "done it very well."
Nineteen More Johnsonian Designs: A Supplement to ''That Great Literary Projector''
Tankard adds nineteen newly identified or previously uncatalogued literary projects conceived by Johnson to the ninety-one discussed in his 2002 article. These additions, including one newly discovered entry in Johnson's "Designs" notebook, bring the total known projects to 110. The supplement lists and briefly describes schemes ranging from early proposals for editions of Politian (1734) and Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent (1737), and the first Shakespeare proposal (1745), to later ideas like an epitaph for Gilbert Walmesley (1751), a collection of voyages (1752), a sequel to Rasselas (c. 1759), editions of Walton's Lives (1774), and biographies of various figures including Joseph Simpson (1776), Lord Hardwicke (1781), and Ignatius Sancho (1782).
Sitter reviews this collection putting Johnson in dialogue with early twentieth-century writers. The essays find Johnson's skepticism toward progress and empire anticipating Conrad and Joyce, and his ambivalence toward urbanity connecting him with Eliot. His emotional struggles and anxieties, not his magisterial persona, fascinated Beckett, leading to a planned play. The book documents Woolf's deep thematic and biographical interest and reveals new information about Borges's plans for an edition and a translation of the Lives of the Poets.
Organizing a Life and the 'Lives': Samuel Johnson and the Yale Edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets[review of The Lives of the Poets, by Samuel Johnson and John H. Middendorf]
Venturo reviews John Middendorf's three-volume Yale Edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, contextualizing it as the culmination of Johnson's career penchant for large-scale projects and a monumental achievement in modern scholarly editing. Venturo summarizes the fifty-five-year history of this specific editorial undertaking within the larger Yale Johnson Works project. He praises the edition's meticulous textual scholarship (based on the first edition with subsequent revisions noted), comprehensive annotations, and informative introduction detailing Johnson's sources, methods, evolving critical perspectives, and biographical approach focused on truth over panegyric. Venturo deems it an essential, though perhaps unrepeatable, contribution.
Why Was Helen Burns Reading Rasselas?: Jane Eyre and Searchers for Happiness from Samuel Johnson to Charlotte Brontë
Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society
'An Isthmus Which Joins Two Great Continents': Johnson, Boswell, and the Character of the Travel Writer in An Account of Corsica
Tung examines Boswell's An Account of Corsica (1768) as a precursor to his later biographical works, focusing on his self-presentation as a travel writer. Using Boswell's metaphor of himself as an "isthmus" connecting Johnson and Pascal Paoli, Tung analyzes how Boswell constructs his authorial persona. This persona mediates the Corsican experience for British readers, blending historiography with personal observation. However, Tung argues Boswell's attempt to portray Paoli and Corsica sympathetically is complicated by his overlaying of Scottish nationalist fantasies and British imperial identity, ultimately displacing his subjects geographically and temporally and undermining his political aims.
'Under the Shade of Exalted Merit': Arthur Murphy's A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M.
Lee examines Murphy's "A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M." as a sophisticated intertextual defense of his mentor that simultaneously serves as a personal apologia. While Murphy provided Johnson with critical life support—including introducing him to the Thrales and facilitating his government pension—Lee argues the poem uses models from Boileau and Pope to elevate Murphy's own literary standing. Though Murphy apostrophizes Johnson's "transcendant genius" and "classic lore," the text primarily retaliates against personal foes like Francklin. Lee concludes that by positioning himself as Boileau to Johnson's Molière, Murphy "emerged a few steps out of 'the shade of exalted merit'" to establish his own place within late Augustan culture while preserving Johnson's legacy.
James Elphinston and Samuel Johnson: Contact, Irritations, and an 'Argonautic' Letter
Jackson-Holzberg examines the long-standing, though not intensely close, friendship between Johnson and Scottish schoolmaster James Elphinston, beginning in the late 1740s. using Elphinston’s extensive published correspondence, the study traces their interactions, shared acquaintances (like William Strahan), and mutual support, such as Elphinston’s role in publishing Johnson’s Rambler essays in Edinburgh. It also highlights points of friction and difference, particularly focusing on the history and eventual circulation of Johnson’s significant 1750 letter of condolence to Elphinston, revealing aspects of Johnson’s social circle and the reception of his work through this relationship.
Identifying Distributional Patterns in Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays
Author's abstract: "This paper investigates the distribution of words and clusters within a single corpus and across a pair of related corpora. With a corpus containing Samuel Johnson's periodical essays as the target corpus and a corpus of Addison's essays as the reference corpus, it is shown how standard techniques for identifying keywords can be extended to identifying distributional tendencies within texts at the levels of sentence, paragraph and whole section/essay. Supplementing the investigation with collocational and concordance data, the main keywords, including TO at sentence, AND at paragraph, BY at essay level, and the main three-word clusters at the various levels, are discussed. It is argued that the methods described are useful additions to the corpus stylistic researcher's arsenal of techniques."
Literary Authority: An Eighteenth-Century Genealogy
Willan argues that Johnson constructed a closed system of literary authority by simultaneously engaging in an agon with previously existing forms and maintaining a proprietary sense of belatedness. Willan demonstrates how Johnson successfully absorbed the Age of Pope into a subsequent Age of Johnson by transmuting the verse couplet into a prose couplet structure. These compressed, ironic prose structures allow Johnson to engineer moral prescriptions as foundations for aesthetic judgments, rendering his authority insuperable. Willan analyzes Johnson’s major monuments, including the Dictionary, the edition of Shakespeare, and the Lives, to show how Johnson achieved a complete fusion of his personal and his literary authorities. The text highlights Johnson's virtuosic performative writing and his ability to assimilate, emulate, and even outshine the literary culture of Pope. Willan concludes that modern Wordsworthian taste is a first-order consequence of the critical taste Johnson forged in his struggle for dominance.
Christopher Nolan's Gotham in View of Samuel Johnson's London
Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications
The Case of the Missing Hottentot: John Dun's Conversation with Samuel Johnson in Tour to the Hebrides as Reported by Boswell and Dun
Caudle investigates the literary quarrel between Boswell and his former tutor, John Dun, regarding the accuracy of a conversation reported in the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The dispute centers on an altercation at Auchinleck on November 5, 1773, where Johnson allegedly told Dun, "Sir, you know no more of our church than a Hottentot." Caudle identifies a rediscovered 1791 letter in the Whitehall Evening Post where Dun disputes this "Johnsonese" phrasing, claiming the actual retort was "Sir, you know nothing of the matter." The text analyzes Boswell’s biographical methodology, noting his reliance on a brief scrap of notes for the period when his fully written journal had lapsed. Despite Dun’s protests and threats to publish a denial, Boswell stubbornly maintained his version, asserting that contemporaneous notes surpass later memory. Caudle uses this incident to explore the wider scholarly "Truth versus Art" debate, questioning whether Boswell recorded ipsissima verba or constructed verisimilitudinous reconstructions. The "Hottentot" epithet is presented as a deliberate "Flemish Portrait" touch, illustrating Boswell’s willingness to prioritize vivid characterization over the sensibilities of living subjects.
Hitchings reviews Michael Bundock’s biography of Francis Barber, Johnson's manservant and chief beneficiary. The reviewer commends Bundock for meticulously documenting Barber’s life and clarifying misconceptions. Hitchings notes the biography explores the complex relationship between Barber and Johnson, including the lexicographer’s efforts to discharge Barber from the navy and finance his schooling. The review highlights Bundock’s judicious approach in examining Barber’s later penurious years and the attacks on his reputation by Johnson’s executor, Hawkins. Hitchings concludes that the biography effectively recreates the textures of black life in 18th-century England.
Both Samuel Johnson and Virginia Woolf excelled in several genres—fiction, essay-writing, journals and diaries, biography, and criticism—and both held common attitudes toward a number of important topics. Furthermore, Woolf's writings betray an admiration for and attraction to Johnson, as is suggested in the title of the chapter, "‘Saint Samuel of Fleet Street': Johnson and Woolf," which contrasts and compares a number of topics linking the two. The chapter then looks more closely at two particular genres, literary criticism and biography, and concludes with a meditation upon Johnson and Woolf's intertextual engagements.
Changing Satire: Transformations and Continuities in Europe, 1600–1830
The Politics of Formal Verse Satire, 1598–1808: Juvenal, Boileau, Johnson and Cottreau
This chapter provides a broad perspective on verse satire throughout almost the entire time span of the collection. The chapter demonstrates how classical imitation persisted even to the very end of the period. It also demonstrates the extent of parallel developments in England and on the continent, with ancient Rome transmogrified into the Paris of Boileau and the London of Johnson, each with their own political and aesthetic bias. Satire in the period recalibrates the age-old satirical dichotomy of urban and rural, Juvenalian and Horatian, in new and surprising ways. The chapter ranges from continental Renaissance scholarship over the changes of formal verse satire in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries down to a little-known text by Jean-Baptiste Hugues Nelson Cottreau, a nominal imitation from 1808 of Samuel Johnson's imitation of Juvenal. The chapter thus emphasises that despite the extensive changes satire underwent in the period, it was also characterised by certain thematic and formal continuities.
Adams provides an approving review of Philip Smallwood’s study on the motives and operations of Johnson’s criticism in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. He praises the tight, linear argument that identifies compassion as the heart of Johnson’s critical practice. Adams highlights the successful contrast between Johnson’s conviction and the decorum-focused views of John Dennis, as well as the exploration of the hybrid balance between history and criticism shared with Thomas Warton. While Adams challenges Smallwood’s decision to exclude the Dictionary as a critical work, he commends the analysis of Johnson’s time-conscious inner life and the unsystematic nature of his master, Shakespeare. The review concludes that the work offers an elegant, generative perspective on what matters in Johnson’s criticism.
Careful and Careless: Epic Tales in the Editing of Dr. Johnson
DeMaria chronicles the sixty-year history of the Yale Edition of the "Works of Samuel Johnson," exploring scholarship, controversies, and the "collecting, selecting for publication and editing of his works." Launched in 1955 by scholars including Hazen and Liebert, the project—which grew to twenty-three volumes in print and 21 available online for free—faced internal conflicts between British specialists like Chapman, who favored leanness, and American editors who pushed for exhaustive bibliographical detail. The history of these "battles over the scope, method and reasons for publishing" gives readers an encapsulated look at 20th and 21st century conflicts over the nature of literary biography and literary criticism. DeMaria explains how the edition evolved from Hazen’s early modernize-and-simplify approach to the rigorous standards of Kolb and Middendorf. Despite Johnson’s own editorial carelessness and his rapid completion of the Dictionary, the Yale project required decades to establish a sound text, transitioning from print to digital accessibility in a collaborative effort to create a "metaphysical connection" between modern readers and the author.
Noted in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 53, no. 1 (Autumn 2020): 19.
Beal highlights Mugglestone’s use of metaphors, such as the "sea of words," to track Johnson’s lexicographical progress. The review emphasizes that Johnson "steers a difficult course" between prescriptivism and pragmatism, often favoring usage over rigid rules once freed from Chesterfield’s influence. Beal notes Mugglestone’s defense of Johnson against charges of misogyny, citing his inclusion of female contemporaries and his recognition of gendered language deficiencies. The text disputes the "myth" of Johnson as a conservative who "fixed" English, showing instead his acceptance of linguistic change.
Reddick's enthusiastic review of Mugglestone's eloquent study of Johnson's lexicographical metaphors and practices notes that Mugglestone challenges "popular mythography" regarding Johnson’s supposed conservative insistence on linguistic fixity. Instead, she presents a more "liberal" and "modern" figure who recognizes custom as the primary driver of language change. The review highlights her analysis of Johnson's "citadel" metaphor for protecting the English language, though she demonstrates how he ultimately accepts unassimilated loanwords through a process of "descriptive prescriptivism". While praising her forays into literary criticism—specifically regarding Johnson's censures of Shakespeare—Reddick disputes her treatment of the 1773 Dictionary revisions, noting hasty errors regarding abridged editions and amanuenses. He concludes that despite minor sketches in the appendix, the book offers deep erudition and a convincing appreciation of Johnson's regenerative view of language.
African Impressions: How African Worldviews Shaped the British Geographical Imagination across the Early Enlightenment
Between the Inland Countries of Africk and the Ports of the Red Sea: African Impressions amid Fact and Fancy in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
In an article in a 1774 issue of the London Magazine about James Bruce's travels in Abyssinia, James Boswell introduces his subject by noting that "Abyssinia has become an object of interest and pleasing attention in Europe, since the publication of Mr. Samuel Johnson's tale, called Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia." He goes on to describe the generic balance of Rasselas as "a work in which that eminent writer has displayed a rich fund of moral instruction, embellished with oriental imagery, and rendered interesting by a well conducted story, in the tissue of which several real facts concerning that country are
'This New Species of Affliction': Self-Destruction and the Eighteenth-Century Ethic of Self-Improvement
This dissertation tests the eighteenth century's narrative of individual agency as the source of modern personal autonomy, and argues that there is a subtle but problematic conflation between agency and autonomy; rather than assume increased personal agency guarantees a corresponding surge in the experience of autonomy, I suggest that autonomy is ultimately eroded by the modern self's dependence on social identities that must be continuously maintained, objectified, and circulated as forms of social currency. My approach is founded upon an extensive examination of nonfiction (puritan autobiographies, science writing, essays, etc.) married to close readings of eighteenth-century fictional texts by Defoe, Lennox, Johnson, and others. This nonfictional foundation provides a historical record of the individuated enterprise of self-production, the true genesis of the self-help industry, and the fiction serves as the experimental testing ground that reveals the limits and hazards of this quintessentially modern enterprise. The primary insight of this dissertation is the counter-intuitive revelation that modern selfhood is needful of comic perception to transform exertions of agency squandered within social institutions into exercises of improvisation that buoy the individual rather than burden it. My first chapter focuses on recovering the neglected comic subtext of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and by including analysis of Puritan autobiographies, I demonstrate that this form which is produced in the novel can be re-read through its comic elements to reveal the limiting nature of the process of self-production inaugurated by Puritan nonfiction. Lennox's The Female Quixote and Johnson's Rasselas anchor the next two chapters, and I chose two fictions not usually associated with discourse on the "self" because of their unique capacity to complement the first chapter by showing first how any model of "self" is inherently social and subsequently what destructive political consequences are catalyzed by western models of self-formation and self-improvement. Together these three fictions form a demonstration of how the eighteenth-century didactic impulse is transformed via the novel from a textual operation meant to produce discrete moral and social imperatives that would tend to produce uniform social self products into a more idiosyncratic cultural program that has persisted into the twenty-first century.
Walker reviews a collection of essays edited by Weinbrot that explores Johnson’s literary and historical surroundings. The review discusses several contributions, including Weinbrot’s own analysis of Johnson’s "notorious dislike of Swift" and the figure of the mad astronomer in Rasselas. Walker also highlights Folkenflik’s research on the "Blinking Sam" portrait, noting Johnson’s documented objection to Reynolds: "he may paint himself as deaf if he chuses... but I will not be blinking Sam." Additionally, the review covers DeMaria’s investigation into the publishing history of Johnson’s collected works, agreeing that the 1825 edition lacks textual value. Walker concludes that the collection successfully advances scholarship by placing Johnson within "new and revealing" eighteenth-century contexts.
Smallwood offers an approving review of this essay collection, noting its success in providing deep-level scholarship free from the excessive control of a single thesis. Smallwood highlights David Fairer's discussion of the agile Johnson and Tom Keymer's analysis of repetitions in Johnson's poetry as touchstones of the volume. The review commends Marcus Walsh's study of the editorial style in Johnson's Shakespeare edition and Freya Johnston's sensitive treatment of Johnson's biographical prose and his relationship with Byron. Smallwood praises the shift away from mid-twentieth-century fixations on neoclassical contexts, though he notes that James Engell's contribution on Johnson and Walter Scott feels over-leisurely. The collection successfully expands the traditionally tested range of Johnsonian studies.
A Biography as Great as Its Subject: James Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' Helped Ensure the Posterity of the Ever Quotable Samuel Johnson
Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791) is the world's greatest biography, establishing a form and content that remains unsurpassed. The essay notes that Boswell, a depressive and inconstant figure, transformed his 21-year relationship with Johnson into a literary masterpiece despite meeting with Johnson on only approximately 400 days. The biography's publication was preceded by Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) and competed with accounts by Sir John Hawkins and Hester Thrale Piozzi. Epstein asserts that Boswell created the first biography to probe the subject's inner life, presenting Johnson with all his oddities and faults—including his famous "bow-wow way" and slovenliness—against a larger view of his greatness. The work's core strength lies in its meticulous preservation of Johnson's conversation and aphorisms, which "Johnsonised the land" and secured Johnson's enduring fame.
The Slave and the Lawyers: Francis Barber, James Boswell and John Hawkins
Bundock examines the divergent biographical treatments of Francis Barber, Johnson's Jamaican-born servant and heir, by Boswell and Hawkins. Bundock argues that while Hawkins presents a hostile, racially charged portrait characterized by 'vitriolic condemnation' of Barber's interracial marriage and 'ostentatious bounty,' Boswell constructs a sympathetic narrative of a 'faithful negro servant' and 'humble friend.' The text details how Boswell actively recruited Barber's assistance to 'state the truth fairly' and 'render abortive the unworthy and false proceedings' of Hawkins's biography. Bundock analyzes the tactical nature of Boswell's advocacy, noting it served both as a weapon in his rivalry with Hawkins and as a reflection of 'genuine respect and affection.' Bundock further explores Barber's role as a primary source for Johnson's final moments, contrasting Hawkins's 'severe cross-examination' of a distressed Barber with Boswell's public assertion of Barber's 'creditworthiness.' The study concludes by situating Barber within the legal context of the 18th century, suggesting he may have been present when Boswell read Johnson the Scottish 'Knight v Wedderburn' judgment regarding the illegality of slavery.
What If the Hoax of Ossian Is True After All? Samuel Johnson Denounced Ancient Tales of the Gaelic Bard as Fake but It Is Time to Look Again
Linklater examines the long-standing dismissal of James Macpherson's Ossian poems as a hoax, noting that Samuel Johnson was central to denouncing Macpherson as a "mountebank, a liar and a fraud" and discrediting the Gaelic bard's work. The article introduces John McShane's new book, which challenges Johnson's view by arguing that Macpherson drew on genuine Gaelic sources for the heroic sections describing the mythical warrior Fingal, and only "embroidered material of his own" in the less effective, later verses. McShane's central argument is that the Fingal verses possess genuine literary quality and a captivating narrative, suggesting they derive from an original Gaelic manuscript. Linklater concludes that while McShane has not located the original sources, his work necessitates a re-evaluation of Johnson's charge of fakery and suggests that Ossian may warrant recognition as a rich addition to Celtic culture, possibly influencing the Romantic movement.
Maley's enthusiastic review of Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words by Lynda Mugglestone highlights the tension between Johnson's self-characterization as a harmless drudge and his authoritative role as a judge of language. Maley notes that Mugglestone challenges the view of Johnson as purely prescriptive, arguing instead that he adopted a more descriptive approach to lexical borrowing and foreign terms. The review emphasizes the qualitative and subjective nature of the definitions in the Dictionary, where Johnson’s active, partisan mind often surfaces. Maley explores the colonial metaphors Johnson used to describe his labor, likening his work to a painful voyage or the efforts of a pioneer. The review concludes that Mugglestone effectively demonstrates how dictionaries serve as non-neutral, political instruments through her study of the lexicographer's linguistic journey.
Kraft's enthusiastic review launches a high recommendation for Smallwood's study, which argues that affective response and lived experience, rather than rational analysis, drive Johnson's critical enterprise. The review highlights Smallwood's focus on the Shakespeare edition and Lives of the Poets, alongside an exploration of Johnson's real and imagined conversations with figures ranging from Montaigne to Leavis. Kraft notes that Smallwood presents Johnson's criticism as a creative, deeply human endeavor shaped by compassion and the awareness of death. The review praises the book's erudition and accessibility, claiming its methodology models a compelling approach for literary critics beyond the circle of Johnsonians.
Capital Chap: Samuel Johnson Is Best Remembered Not as a Grouch, but as an Enlightened Londoner Whose Views on Life Are Still Relevant Today
Hitchings challenges the popular caricature of Johnson as a "pedant" or "finicky grump," arguing instead that he was an enlightened and empathetic thinker whose observations remain pertinent to the digital age. The article credits Johnson's diverse experiences in London—from the "jobbing authors" of Grub Street to his residence at Gough Square—with shaping his "gritty realism" and "crusader's ardour." Hitchings highlights Johnson's fierce opposition to slavery and his support for women’s education and writers, including Mary Wollstonecraft. The narrative traces Johnson's 1737 arrival in the capital with David Garrick and his subsequent "literary opportunism" as a poet, satirist, and lexicographer. Hitchings suggests that Johnson’s insights into consumer culture and the "mass production of news" mirror contemporary concerns with social media and the stability of truth. The account concludes that Johnson’s most striking quality is his capacity to convert personal suffering—plagued by depression and likely Tourette's syndrome—into a perceptive and humane analysis of the human condition.
The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Conjecturing Oral Societies: Global to Gaelic
Travel writings constituted a major branch of the book trade, and the dissemination of information about sophisticated global populations seemingly without writing generated interest in what we might now call oral societies. Texts by diplomats, missionaries, and others addressed oral tradition in societies from China to Peru. These texts influenced debates concerning Homeric illiteracy, and they generated new interest in the possibility of oral traditions within Britain. Meanwhile the Ossian debate inspired readers to imagine how tradition worked. The second half of this chapter reads Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as a critique of conjectural history and a political argument pertaining to orality and literacy. Conjectural historians attempted to make sense of the diversity of human societies by placing these societies along a single evolutionary chain, but in so doing they arguably separated them further from one another. Departing from earlier interpretations, this chapter argues that the Journey exposes the implications of the elite idealization of oral tradition at a time when many Britons (including most Highlanders) could not read. Johnson's distrust of his contemporaries' valorization of oral tradition was tied to his sense that in the world of print, poverty and illiteracy would go together.
Johnson's Brexit Dictionary; or, An A to Z of What Brexit Really Means
Poole’s negative review critiques a satirical lexicon that adopts the persona of Johnson to lampoon contemporary British political rhetoric. The review notes the use of eighteenth-century grammar, archaic spelling, and fictionalized quotations attributed to figures such as "Sir Boris" and "Mistress May." Poole disputes the book's effectiveness as linguistic analysis, characterizing its approach as "pseudo-antiquarian weak humour" that lacks engagement with actual Brexit discourse. Poole contrasts this "tiny squib" with the authentic Johnson, who defined "cant" as a "whining pretension to goodness" or a "corrupt dialect." The review concludes that the rhetoric of the Brexit movement would have prompted Johnson to identify it as cant in every sense of his own definition.
I'm Coming, My Tetsie! [review of Samuel Johnson, by David Womersley]
Johnston praises Womersley's single-volume Samuel Johnson selection as a superb new edition that successfully integrates Johnson's vast and varied writings with his life. She argues that by organizing texts according to their composition date rather than genre, the edition achieves biographical and critical coherence that the multi-volume Yale edition, organized by genre, cannot. This approach allows the reader to connect Johnson's works—including poetry, fiction, the Dictionary, and private prose—with his "radically wretched" yet triumphant existence. Johnston concludes that this slab of a book offers a way to put Johnson’s life and writing back together, suggesting comparisons between self-lacerating diary entries and public polemics, thereby restoring the full scope of his versatility.
This outstanding collection revisits familiar texts and addresses under-studied aspects of Johnson’s corpus. Contributors employ diverse literary approaches to reassess Johnson as a lexicographer, critic, and poet, while others evaluate his political thought, religious debates, and editorial treatment of Shakespeare. Biographical essays examine his letters and humor, and a final section explores Johnsonian reception through portraiture, national characterization, and the history of his collected works.
Lee describes Bundock's monograph as a readable and comprehensive summation of the life of Barber, Johnson's manservant and heir. Lee notes that Bundock relies primarily on secondary sources and breaks little new ground for scholars. However, Lee praises the narrative panache used to chronicle the rare status of a free black man in eighteenth-century London. The review highlights that Bundock provides the best available account of Barber, providing an accurate synthesis of extant historical facts.
Diario de un viaje a las Hébridas con Samuel Johnson
Guasp finds reading the travel journal with Johnson a sublime intellectual pleasure and the spiritual joy complete because Boswell narrates with simplicity and excellence. He praises Boswell for adding the necessary complement to Johnson's own Journey, ensuring literary pleasure from the beginning.
Thomson’s approving review praises the work’s punctilious archival research. The review details the relationship between Johnson and Barber, who arrived in Johnson’s household in 1752 and served as his valet for over thirty years. Thomson highlights Johnson’s genuine antipathy toward slavery, evidenced by his 1777 toast to "the next insurrection of Negroes" and his decision to make Barber the residual legatee of his estate. The narrative describes how Johnson paid for Barber’s education and refused to let him perform menial tasks like buying fish for the cat, Hodge. Thomson notes that Barber eventually settled in Lichfield, serving as a Methodist minister and potentially Britain’s first Black schoolmaster. The article also situates their "father-son relationship" within the broader context of Johnson’s work on the Dictionary, his social circles involving the Thrales and amanuenses, and his disdain for the Earl of Chesterfield. Thomson concludes that Bundock’s study provides a compelling account of Georgian-era racial interaction and Johnson's compassionate conservatism.
The Mind of the Moralist [review of Samuel Johnson: 21st-Century Oxford Authors, by David Womersley]
Valiunas's positive review describes David Womersley's edition of Johnson's writings as the most comprehensive volume available, while evaluating Leo Damrosch's volume on the Club as exuberant. Valiunas tracks Johnson's literary career through early Grub Street hardships, the creation of the dictionary, and the major moral essay series. The review emphasizes Johnson's persistent clinical depression, childhood illnesses, and physical tics, which modern biographers connect to obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome. Valiunas examines Johnson's foundational Christian commitment, explaining how his acute fear of divine judgment and personal unworthiness driven by perceived indolence dictated his literary output. The narrative details Johnson's deep involvement with the Club alongside Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, and Edmund Burke, noting that Johnson talked for victory during weekly tavern meetings. Valiunas underscores Boswell's biographical achievement in preserving Johnson's conversation, concluding that Johnson's literary genius resided in elevating subsidiary genres like editing, lexicography, and journalism into serious literature.
Wilson’s review describes the work as a search for a "missing person" that uses social history to fill biographical gaps. The narrative follows Barber from his birth into Jamaican slavery to his thirty-year tenure as Johnson's servant and eventual heir. Wilson notes that while Johnson’s household—including Anna Williams, Robert Levet, and Elizabeth Desmoulins—was marked by internal animosity, Johnson maintained a high opinion of Barber, on whom he became increasingly dependent. The review highlights the identification between the two men as social outcasts: Barber due to his race and Johnson due to his perceived physical monstrosity. Wilson discusses the varied contemporary opinions of Barber, contrasting the "nasty" accounts of Piozzi and John Hawkins with the favorable views of Boswell and Bundock. The review concludes by noting Barber’s rapid financial decline and poverty following Johnson’s death, despite inheriting the bulk of the estate and an annuity. Wilson praises Bundock’s diligent research but observes that Barber remains an "invisible man" despite these efforts.
Larsen's accessible book introduces general readers to Johnson's circle through nine principal friends: Boswell, Goldsmith, the Thrales, Garrick, Reynolds, Langton, Beauclerk, and Burney. The chronological structure and omission of figures like Burke and Strahan impair its value as a reference. It offers little original research for serious students.
Big Talkers [review of The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, by Leo Damrosch]
Uglow reviews Damrosch’s study of the Literary Club, examining how the group served as a remedy for Johnson’s "black depression" and a catalyst for Eighteenth-century intellectual life. The text details the friendship between the "lumbering genius" Johnson and the "peacock" Boswell, noting their shared dread of mental illness. Uglow highlights the inclusion of figures such as Reynolds, Burke, and Smith, while also exploring the "shadow club" at Streatham Place led by Piozzi. The reviewer emphasizes the role of women in this milieu, including Burney and More, and notes Damrosch’s analysis of Johnson’s "obsessive-compulsive" tendencies. Uglow finds the work an infectious and astute guide to a world of "noise and nonsense" where conversation shaped the age.
Rivero reviews the new classroom edition of Johnson's Life of Richard Savage, recognized as the prototype of the modern critical biography. The review notes the psychological depth in the biography, such as the comparison of Savage's mother, Mrs. Brett (the former Countess of Macclesfield), to Lady Macbeth. Rivero also recounts Reynolds's anecdote of being so engrossed in the narrative that his arm became numb, underscoring Boswell's assessment of it as one of the most interesting narratives in the English language.
A short story in a pastiche of eighteenth-century style, narrated by Boswell and featuring his famous real-life subject, Johnson. The pair visit a man whose life has been ruined by a gambling addiction, and who is experiencing what appear to be visitations from the ghost of his recently deceased daughter.
Discussion about Patriots and Patriotism in Britain in the 1760s–1770s
The article studies the history of the notions of "patriot" and "patriotism" in the political and social life of 18th-century Britain. The methodology of research is based on the approach of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought, consisting in the analysis of certain notions in the context of the epoch. The material of the paper is pamphlets of John Wilkes, and his main opponent Samuel Johnson as well as some anonymous journalistic essays. The paper focuses on the problem of interpretation of "patriot" and "patriotism" as notions by followers of different political views. John Wilkes acted as a "patriot," supposing that it implied opposition to power until the "natural" rights and liberties of Englishmen were restored. Another understan-ding is reflected in Doctor Johnson's and his supporters' pamphlets. According to them, a patriot is "he whose public conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country." The author comes to the conclusion about Samuel Johnson's victory in the discussion, because he took the notion of "patriot” beyond the limits of political space. Moreover, the discussion about “false” and “true” patriotism indicated the formation of the public sphere and civil society in England of the 1760s–1770s.
Izvestiâ Uralʹskogo federalʹnogo universiteta. Seriâ 2, Gumanitarnye nauki
Rivalry in Literary Biography: Boswell's Life of Johnson and Holmes' Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage
This study aims to discuss the complicated nature of literary biography by focusing on the intertextual relations and anxiety of influence among biographers of a single subject. Taking Samuel Johnson's life and outlook on literary biography as a starting point, the article examines two influential works that are separated by a significant amount of time, Life of Johnson (1791) by James Boswell and Dr. Johnson and Mr Savage (1993, 2005) by Richard Holmes, suggesting that in both there is a strong sense of rivalry with their subject and an anxiety about the influence of their predecessors. Both authors exhibit love for or interest in their subject while they strive for superiority in literary biography with their distinctive narrative technique and commentaries on Johnson's character and life. In this study, I utilise Harold Bloom's theory of influence in an attempt to show how anxiety and rivalry function as part of a creative process and driving force that leads to original contributions to the field.
Samuel Jonhson ve Mutluluğu Aramak: Habeşistan Prensi Rasselas Bir Hikâye Üzerine Bir İnceleme
Habeşistan Prensi Rasselas Bir Hikâye, Dr. Samuel Johnson'ın (1709–1784) eserlerinin en popüler olanlarından biridir. Eserin ilk okuyucuları onu felsefî ve pratik açıdan önemli bir eser olarak görmüş ve bir roman olarak sınıflandırmanın zor olduğunu düşünmüştür. Johnson, eserini yaklaşık 250 yıl önce yazmasına rağmen bugün de okuyucuya hayatın, ölümün, evliliğin, öğrenmenin, eyleme karşı eylemsizliğin anlamını ve diğer birçok konuyu keşfettirmeye çalışmaktadır. Johnson, ahlak teorilerinden hareketle mutluluğu ele almamaktadır. Ahlakî failin kendisinden, insandan ve insanın yaşadığı hayat ve bunun koşullarından hareketle konuyu anlatmaktadır. Mutluluk anlamında temele alınacak olan fail ve onun içinde bulunduğu şartları değerlendirmektedir. Mutluluk, elde edilenden veya elde etmekten çok arama ve başarmada bulunabilir. Habeşistan Prensi, Voltaire'in (1694–1778) iyimserlik sistemini çürütmek için yazdığı Candide adlı esere, planı ve yapısı bakımından benzerlik göstermektedir. Fakat vardıkları sonuç birbirlerinden oldukça farklıdır. İnsanların mutluluğu bulmayı düşündükleri hemen her unsur ele alınıp bunların istenileni veremeyeceğinin belirtildiği Habeşistan Prensi, yöneticilerden hizmetçilere, yaşlılardan gençlere, bilgelerden cahillere varıncaya kadar her kesimden insanı örneklemektedir. Bütün olaylar mutluluk umuduyla başlamış fakat hayal kırıklığıyla sona ermiştir. Sonuçta romanda kurgusal bir yolculuk aracılığıyla ahlakî bir gerçeklik ortaya konulmaya çalışılmıştır. Johnson, Türkiye'de çok fazla tanınmadığı için makalenin giriş kısmında hayatı ve eserlerinin Habeşistan Prensi ile ilgili olan yönlerine kısaca değindik. Çalışmada yöntem olarak nitel araştırmanın imkanlarından yararlanılmış, literatür ve doküman analizi metotları kullanılarak Habeşistan Prensi'nde mutluluk, kötümserlik, iyimserlik konuları incelenmiştir.
Sakarya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi
'Clean, Fix, and Grant Splendor': The Making of Diccionario de Autoridades
Hailed as the foundation of modern Spanish-language lexicography, the Diccionario de Autoridades was developed over a period of thirteen years. While it is a window to appreciate the impact of Enlightenment ideas in Spain, it also showcases some of the country's most entrenched phobias, both within and throughout its colonies across the Atlantic. This essay looks at its planning, structure, and publication in political, cultural, and linguistic terms. It analyses its legacy over the Dicionario de la Lengua Española, which is the organ of the Real Academia Española and on other Spanish-language lexicons. And it compares it with the work of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language and Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language. The xenophobic motto of the Real Academia Española, ‘Clean, Fix, and Grant Splendor', long a subject of controversy, is the philosophy behind Autoridades.
Samuel Johnson and the Origins of Writing
Sutherland identifies Johnson as the "epitome of the writer in the great age of print" who pioneered biographical criticism and evidence-based textual inquiry. The analysis contrasts Johnson’s "anxious usage" of authenticity with Boswell’s "marketing ploy" in the Life of Johnson. Sutherland argues that Johnson used manuscript drafts and personal anecdote to "narrow the gap between writer and reader" in a commercialized market. The study examines Johnson’s "fascination with habits of composition," particularly in his "Pope," where he examined holograph manuscripts to "trace the mind from the rudeness of its first conceptions to the elegance of its last." Despite Johnson’s claims of effortless composition, Sutherland uses manuscript evidence to "dispute" his "bravura" of rapid, unrevised writing. Thrale and Burney provide "living information" that complicates the narrative of Johnson’s professional practice. The argument concludes that Johnson secularized the literary career by grounding authorial identity in "local evidence" and the struggles of composition.
The Highlands and Their Inhabitants through the Eyes of 18th Century Englishmen: On Stereotypes in Intercultural Communication
This article deals with the formation of the image of the Highlands in the English intellectual space of the 18th century. The research methodology is based on the concept of the image of the "Other," implying a concrete historical analysis of different peoples' collective ideas about each other. More particularly, the article focuses on the study of stable ethnic and cultural stereotypes as solidified images. Referring to Samuel Johnson's <cit>A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) the author describes the crucial English stereotypes about the inhabitants of the Highlands. Like many of his contemporaries, Dr. Johnson was convinced of the superiority of the English over the inhabitants of the Highlands. At the same time, his travel notes demonstrate his desire to scrupulously describe the life and customs of the Highlanders, show the peculiar features of mountaineers' lifestyles, so different from those of Englishmen. The author comes to the conclusion about the predominance in English society of notions about the Highlands as an internal colony of Britain in need of being introduced to civilisation by means of Anglicisation. Dr. Johnson's A Journey… is a valuable source for the study of stereotypes of English intellectual culture in the process of intercultural communication in Britain in the 18th century.
Reading Dr. Johnson: Reception and Representation (1750–1960)
The thesis examines the response of imaginative writers to Samuel Johnson; arguing that these authors' refashioning of Johnson involved a profoundly creative process. Chapter 1 examines Johnson's own self-accounting, revealing an instability of self-imaging, linked to the different textual forms employed by Johnson. Chapter 2 argues that James Boswell's biography theatricalised the representation of Johnson, introducing Boswell into the drama of Johnson's self-reflexivity. Chapter 3 focuses on the Romantics, arguing that William Hazlitt misread Johnson's criticism as mechanical, while Lord Byron drew upon Johnson's authority to challenge Romantic orthodoxies. Chapter 4 focuses on the Victorians, arguing that Thomas Carlyle focused on Johnson's powers of self-creation, epitomised in action; while Matthew Arnold's abridged version of The Lives of the English Poets, helped tutor a new reading public. George Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell's biography represented a turn to the encyclopaedic. Chapter 5 explores the Modern response to Johnson. T. S. Eliot's critical revolution enlisted Johnson to support Eliot's anti-Romantic animus. Beckett was interested in Johnson's obsession with madness, death and numbers; themes which dominated his own writing. Jorge Luis Borges admired Rasselas, and was fascinated by Johnson's friendship with Boswell, which mirrored his own relationship with the writer Adolfo Bioy Casares.
Virginia Woolf's 'New School of Biographies' and Eighteenth-Century Life-Writing: A Sense of Kinship
Thirriard explores the affinity between Virginia Woolf’s "New Biography" and eighteenth-century life-writing, particularly the works of Johnson and Boswell. While Woolf and fellow biographers Harold Nicolson and Lytton Strachey vocally rejected Victorian hagiography, Thirriard argues they viewed the eighteenth century as a "golden age" for the genre. The article examines how these modernists used Johnson and Boswell as models for artistic, "pure biography" that prioritizes the "truth of personality" over a "granite-like" accumulation of facts. Thirriard highlights the importance of the "anecdotal" and the "observant eye" in capturing the "pith and essence" of a character. The analysis demonstrates that Woolf’s engagement with Johnson and Boswell was dialogical, allowing her to detect a "conversational dimension" in their work that mirrored her own aesthetic practices. Thirriard also considers the influence of Laurence Sterne’s narrative experimentation on Woolf’s conceptualization of "mind time" and the subjective narrator. Finally, Thirriard notes Woolf’s eventual ambivalence toward this patriarchal tradition as she sought to create a distinct literary voice for women. Thirriard concludes that the New Biographers cultivated a "sense of kinship" with eighteenth-century forerunners to craft a revolutionary biographical form.
Out of Johnson's Shadow: James Boswell as Travel Writer
This doctoral thesis examines James Boswell’s literary evolution as a travel writer, arguing that his travelogues were essential precursors to his biographical success and deserve independent scholarly assessment outside the shadow of Samuel Johnson. Griffin identifies Boswell as a hybrid figure who integrated eighteenth-century conventions of the Grand Tour, domestic travel, and Pacific exploration into a sophisticated, self-reflexive style. Ranging from the private London Journal to the published accounts of Corsica and the Hebrides, Griffin contends that Boswell used travel as a trope for self-discovery and developed a 'meta-travelogue' method by documenting fellow travellers as 'men as monuments.' Griffin traces the critical history of these works, noting their nineteenth-century neglect and the subsequent mid-twentieth-century revival fueled by the discovery of the Malahide papers. The thesis highlights Boswell’s innovation in combining socio-economic history with personal narrative, particularly in his 'fratriotic' defense of Corsican liberty, which established his reputation as 'Corsica Boswell' long before his association with Johnson. Griffin further explores how Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides functions as a parallel narrative to Johnson’s own account, shifting the focus from landscape to human association. Ultimately, Griffin argues that Boswell’s legacy resides in his ability to transcend the transitory nature of travel writing through a revealing, 'televisual' focus on the human face of the traveller, making him a perennial companion for modern readers.
Annotated Copies of Early Editions of Johnson's Dictionary: A Preliminary Account
Considine provides a preliminary account and survey of twenty-one annotated copies of eighteenth-century editions of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. These copies were marked up with "critical or informative additions" by various readers, including prominent figures and members of Johnson's circle such as Samuel Dyer, Edmund Burke, John Horne Tooke, Edmond Malone, Hester Piozzi, George Steevens, Leigh Hunt, Noah Webster, and John Wilkes. Annotators focused on five main themes: etymology, usage, the addition of new words or senses, the addition of new quotations, and improved referencing of sources. While some of these copies are extant in institutional or private collections, others remain unlocated. Considine describes the "Sneyd-Gimbel" copy as pre-eminent among these, containing annotations by Johnson himself and his amanuensis William Macbean. These early responses, which were sometimes very extensive, reflect the contemporary reception of Johnson's work and the establishment of "dictionary authority."
The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society
Not Just Porridge: English Literati at Table
At Table with Dr. Johnson: Food for the Body, Nourishment for the Mind
Samuel Johnson epitomises the spirit of the eighteenth century in England. His life (1709–1784) spans three quarters of the century; his literary and critical output both embodies and shapes the taste of the day, connecting himself and his readers to other great names of the English and European literary traditions. His famous Dictionary of the English Language (Johnson 1755) provides evidence of both the linguistic usage of his world and the literary and scientific culture which lay at the heart of that world. Extraordinary as a writer, therefore; but also unique as a man, both for his personality and the
A History of the Cultural Travels of Energy
This chapter explores how energy has been defined and explained in early English-language dictionaries. Based on the cultural history of the term proposed in the preceding chapters, this chapter surveys the historical development of energy in the English language, as presented in the early English dictionaries and in Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary. Examining both early bilingual Latin–English and French–English dictionaries and monolingual English dictionaries (from Cawdrey to Johnson), the chapter shows that the various senses recorded in early English lexicography were derived from the basic meaning of the activity-of-being, and that the specific contexts in which these senses were used tend to cohere with a deeper and shared context, in which energy was used to speak about the inherent nature of things. Thus, whereas the original meaning and senses of energy in the English language has long been thought to have travelled from context to context in an ad hoc manner, this chapter shows that usage of the term travelled within a common context that tied all senses together in a shared reference to inherent nature.
A Clubbable Man: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture in Honor of Greg Clingham
In Silence and Darkness: Johnson's Verdicts on Artistic Failure
Rounce examines Johnson's focus on human failure and limitation in the Lives of the Poets. He argues Johnson uses a critical style based on diminution to dramatize the discrepancy between intentions and achievements. Johnson depicts minor poets as victims of the vanity of human wishes, where talent is often unequal to grandiose ambition. Rounce highlights Johnson’s deadpan register in cases like Blackmore, whose epics were relegated to silence and darkness. The analysis shows that Johnson saves his most satirical responses for those making hyperbolic claims of genius or trying too hard to ensure earthly fame. Rounce concludes that these accounts of failure are essential for appreciating the achievement of exceptional writers like Pope and Milton.
The Gentleman's Magazine, a Panoramic View of Eighteenth-Century Life and Culture
Pooley cites that according to Samuel Johnson, Edward Cave (1691–1754), founder and first editor of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, "never looked out of the window but with a view to the Gentleman's Magazine." This view encompassed the diversity of Georgian life, politics and culture. It captivated Cave's readers and established the magazine as the leading periodical of its day. It was the world's first magazine as we understand the word, a monthly compendium of useful and entertaining information aimed at an increasingly literate public in Georgian Britain. Readers approached the magazine in different ways. Some turned straight to the back to scan the obituaries, while others, like "Veritas," asked their servant to carefully cut the leaves so that they could peruse the table of contents and read the valuable parts first. In defiance of its title, the magazine was popular with women, who both read and contributed to its pages.
Orienting Virtue: Civic Identity and Orientalism in Britain's Global Eighteenth Century
Rasselas's 'Conscious Virtue': Cosmopolitan Civics in Johnson and Ellis Cornelia Knight
In this theoretically informed essay, Williamson examines how Johnson and Knight use the oriental tale to parse British civic commitments amidst global commercial expansion. Williamson argues that Johnson defines virtue as an internal "quietness of conscience" rather than a visible reward, reflecting anxieties that luxury and profit deprave national manners. Knight's sequel, Dinarbas, attempts to resolve this tension by framing "conscious virtue" as active, patriotic duty and resignation to "Providence." Williamson contends both texts orient virtue by distinguishing Western potential from Eastern "stagnation," ultimately presenting national integrity as a "deferred" ideal maintained through the narrative space of the oriental fable.
Laughing Histories: From the Renaissance Man to the Woman of Wit
Laughter as Social Commodity: Hester Thrale and Friends
Hester Lynch Thrale is best known to literary scholars for her friendship (and later break) with the formidable Samuel Johnson, but Thrale was also an author in her own right. Her extended project in self-writing, the Thraliana, began as a collection of anecdotes and finished as a diary. She archly referred to it as a "jestbook"; laughter provided the frame and impetus for preserving her life's memories. In the course of it, she also drew up a remarkable table rating her acquaintances for their various qualities, giving numerical value to each. Wit and humor had special prominence in this assessment of social performance. Her friend Arthur Murphy, author of highly successful comedies and assiduous student of laughter-as witness his enormous compilation of laughter lore-also topped the ranks of wit in Hester's social scale. She and James Boswell not only enjoyed Johnson's company, but each turned Johnson's witty sayings to account in literary productions of their own. Part of a social circle tied to the literary marketplace, Thrale and her circle show the gendered impact of laughter's increasing status as a commodity, both in actual sales and in social currency.
Speech, Print and Decorum in Britain, 1600–1750: Studies in Social Rank and Communication
Who Was Johnson's 'Common Reader'?: Reconfiguring Rhetoric and Performance in the Eighteenth Century
Printed texts in the late seventeenth century could be realised in speech: preaching to a hierarchically organised congregation; exchanging recipes in the home. But when print norms detach from speech norms, then texts can detach from these spoken contexts. Without that context, meanings can be harder to pin down and readers may resort to model contexts to resolve ambiguity. In this I suggest that eighteenth-century readers and writers converged on an implicit model context for printed texts, a model founded on the seventeenth-century rhetorical landscape. In particular, eighteenth-century readers preserved the seventeenth-century understandings of: authorship as performative; authorial intention as the arbiter for texts" meanings; and authorial speech as the test for resolving textual ambiguities. They also developed the seventeenth-century idea of a "common reader," nowadays associated with the criticism of Samuel Johnson. Johnson's common reader, I will argue, combined positive features of "common" — that which is shared — with stigmatised features such as "unsophisticated" or "ignorant." The seventeenth-century critic, with his right to pass judgement on performances, acquired a new role as the gentlemanly friend and protector of the common reader. In combination the common reader and the polite critic produced, I suggest, a model context for text comprehension, one in which authors were performers to a notional, "common," reader, while an expert critic reader observed them.
The Creators of Information in Eighteenth-Century Britain
In twenty-first-century accounts of how knowledge was transmitted at second hand in the early modern period and the eighteenth century, the idea of information has played a crucial role. "Information" refers to the content that was compiled and stored on paper and shared in reference books and periodical sheets. My thesis argues that eighteenth-century Britons understood printed information through the lens of cultural discourses that privileged engagements with books that we would now call "literary." By re-thinking the transmission of information as a textual object in eighteenth-century Britain, I argue, we can better understand the complex ways in which information was credited, acquired, and shared. I show how the author-function played a role in the public sharing of information in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Johnson's rhetoric of personal sacrifice in the "Preface" and Plan of an English Dictionary (1747), I argue, should be contrasted with the methods of Johnson's rival, Nathan Bailey. Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721–1802) offers an example of the failure of compiled information to gain cultural authority without authorial control. I argue that Jonathan Swift's satires on textual criticism, cryptanalysis, and scientific languages can be seen as critiques of mechanical reading "devices" that extracted information from texts. A direct challenge to informational uses of language was offered at the end of the eighteenth century in the work of Johnson's friend, Hester Lynch Piozzi. Piozzi's English-language reference work, British Synonymy (1794), showed how direct engagement with the "redundant" material of language provided a knowledge of texts that was difficult to communicate but necessary to observe. I suggest that the mediation of public information in eighteenth-century Britain was balanced in important ways by literary discourses that argued for the importance of the specific ways in which knowledge was credited, acquired, and shared through language.
Concerns about Facts and Form in Literary Biography
Some literary biographies can be ‘literary' without conforming to the standard conception of the genre. The way in which a biography has been written and its rhetorical features may be as significant as the details of the life or lives being told. In these instances, biography becomes a form of remembrance that portrays characteristics of both the fidelity and the adherence to the facts that were important to Samuel Johnson, as well as evocative storytelling. Twentieth-century questions about authenticity in non-fiction biography raised concerns about biography's use of facts, what we can really know about creativity, and the move toward fiction by some writers. Some critics sought to apply theoretical approaches to encapsulate biography. In the twenty-first century, biography has embraced change, making a case for literary biography in a range of different forms in which the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are fluid and group biographies as an antidote to single life portrayals flourish, reinforcing the social nature of the genre. The nature of fidelity in biography has become central to contemporary fiction and non-fiction forms as literary biography explores the dialogic and discursive nature of life and writing and can be understood as a type of parable.
Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment
Influences from the Scottish Enlightenment: St James's Place, 1760–66
This chapter deals with her marriage to George Macaulay, his connections with elements in the Scottish Enlightenment, and the political situation in Great Britain immediately after the accession of George III, during which period the first three volumes of the history were written. This chapter provides an account of the content of those volumes, her exchanges with David Hume and Samuel Johnson, and the contemporary reception of her work more broadly. This chapter deals with Catharine Macaulay's marriage to George Macaulay, his connections with elements in the Scottish Enlightenment, and the political situation in Great Britain immediately after the accession of George III, during which period the first three volumes of the history were written. It provides an account of content of those volumes, her exchanges with David Hume and Samuel Johnson, and the contemporary reception of her work more broadly. The marriage of George and Catharine would, presumably, have been equally approved of by Austen, had it not been before her time, being likewise based on friendship and mutual respect. Catharine was fortunate to find a husband who had developed rather different ideas of women's appropriate activities to those that were then still predominant, and he has been called "a feminist" by his biographers. His sympathy for his wife's determination to become an historian is evident in fact that he showed no opposition to her publishing under her own name.
A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel
Johnson's Rasselas and the Best Possible Storyworld
Kukkonen examines the role of the unities and the imagination in Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, exploring how the unities constrain the coherence of the fictional world while the imagination extends it. Kukkonen argues that Johnson navigates a tension between the brain's "default mode network"—associated with stimulus-free thinking, mind-wandering, and a general state of mind when thinking is not concentrated on a particular object—and the need for narrative coherence. While the opening of Rasselas presents the Happy Valley as a perfectly unified but static storyworld, the protagonist’s imaginative "mental time travel" provides the necessary impetus for the plot, relating the wandering of the imagination to the unities' coherence. Johnson explores the dangers of the imagination through characters like the astronomer, whose fancy leads to delusion, and this tension in Rasselas does not develop into a stringent trajectory of narrative events. Kukkonen contrasts Johnson’s conclusion, in which "nothing is concluded," with Ellis Cornelia Knight’s continuation, Dinarbas, which replaces Johnson’s philosophical inquiry into the "choice of life" with a tightly structured event model. Knight changes the situational logic of the unities to achieve a narrative trajectory and closure characterized by neoclassical restraint. Additionally, the chapter discusses how both authors use the "orientalist vogue" and the ways Western and oriental modes of narrative were imagined in the eighteenth century to negotiate choices for narrative structuration and spatiotemporal unity.
Previous chapters have recounted the story of monolingual dictionaries. Samuel Johnson established English lexicology, and only minor improvements have been made since his time. Johnson combined erudition, imagination, and application. He also had a sense of perspective, according to each word a length of entry appropriate to its role in the language. Legal, medical, and agricultural terms were taken — with acknowledgement – from standard works. Highly technical terms were avoided, these being accessible in specialist manuals.Johnson's innovations included recognising several senses for those words which have a wide range of meaning, including quotations to demonstrate how a word was used by the ‘best authors', plus basic grammatical information concerning word class, and transitivity value for verbs.His work has been criticised for not paying sufficient attention to usage in everyday discourse. This is only partly justified. Johnson did confine his quotations to the ‘best authors', but his definitions would have been informed by the conversational round in London for which he was a central figure. (The same could not be said of his predecessors and successors.) Another (justified) criticism is that the senses within a definition could have been more thoughtfully organised, around a ‘central meaning', with extensions in different directions from this.What Johnson absolutely failed to do was make any attempt to contrast words of similar meaning, providing criteria and clues concerning the circumstances in which it would be more felicitous to use one word rather than another. Each word was regarded as an isolated entity, its definition autonomous.Johnson's definitions were original, avoiding the ‘theft' of unattributed plagiarism. The same applied for Charles Richardson in 1835–7, but his huge tome lies a little outside the mainstream. The OED worked in its own way, although it sometimes did utilise elegant portions of Johnson, shown by ‘(J)'. For example, how could the meaning of swift be better characterised than by ‘moving far in a short time (J)'?Leaving aside these two exceptions we can return to the self-description of how a lexicographer works with ‘a row of dictionaries' propped on the desk. It is worth revisiting quotations already given in chapter 10.
John Armstrong's 'Finer Souls' in an Early Boswell Journal
Walker suggests that Boswell's phrase "finer souls," which he uses in his Journal of My Jaunt Harvest 1762 to describe those greatly influenced by their imagination, is a direct allusion to John Armstrong's popular poem, The Art of Preserving Health (1744). The poem, well-known to Boswell, contains the lines warning "ye finer Souls" to indulge love with caution, as they are "Form'd to self luxury." Boswell's selection of this phrase reflects his lifelong tendency to use literary allusions and indicates a sense of self-justification: that his melancholy and imaginative volatility were concomitant with a finer, more exquisite sensibility, an idea he returned to in later writings.
The History of Late Modern Englishes: An Activity-based Approach
Ascertaining English: The Eighteenth Century
This chapter focuses on English in Britain during the eighteenth century. It begins by looking at the complaints of authors like Jonathan Swift about the inadequacies of the language, together with the calls that he and others made for the language to be "improved." A section looks at how prescription and proscription were introduced as means of ameliorating the language, as well as of developing a standard form for it. Various ways in which this was done are considered, beginning with "usage guides." The work of William Lowth is particularly focused on. Attention then turns to the most influential eighteenth-century work related to the English language: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. This is described and discussed in some detail. A description of eighteenth-century British English then follows, looking in turn at graphology, grammar, and lexis. A final section argues that although prescription was a preoccupation of the century, many linguistic works of the time, including Johnson's Dictionary, provided valuable descriptions of the language.
The Authority of Entertainment: John Hawkesworth's An Account of the Voyages
Imagine his confusion and consternation, after having been mentored by Samuel Johnson, the eminent writer and personality of his day, after having been applauded as a writer and editor for the Adventurer (1752–54), after having received a degree of doctor of laws from the archbishop of Canterbury for his work on the Adventurer in 1756, and after having received the unheard of sum of 6,000 pounds to edit the journals of James Cook and Joseph Banks in order to publish the first account of Cook's celebrated first voyage to the South Pacific in An Account of the Voyages (1773), as John Hawkesworth surveyed the criticism of his collection and read such lines as "Sir, I once had an esteem for you, and a respect for your character; but you cannot expect that I should now express any." Here, Binney details the novelty of Hawkesworth's collection within eighteenth-century travel writing.
Nation and Migration: The Making of British Atlantic Literature, 1765–1835
From English Empire to British Atlantic World
Rhetorical comparisons between the Celtic peripheries and American colonies appear frequently in the debates surrounding American Independence. British writers such as Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson regarded England's political relationships with its Celtic peripheries as precedents that might help to resolve Parliament's conflicts with the American colonies, and as models of how to balance imperial and local forms of government. In the years following independence, American writers including John Jay and Alexander Hamilton again looked to the British archipelago as an example of a multinational state as they sought to define the balance of power between federal and state governments in the new United States. By tracing comparisons between the Celtic peripheries and the American colonies or states from the prewar to the postwar period, this chapter illuminates the unsettling of an Anglocentric British Atlantic world, as non-English regions found potential sources of strength in their shared secondariness.
'Quando?' (When?) in Romeo and Juliet
This chapter shows how belief in the autonomy and depth (or plenitude) of Shakespearean character has been inseparable from an assumption that Shakespeare's plots are relatively informal, merely following the order of events as given in his source texts. The chapter shows how this belief has lasted from the eighteenth century (Samuel Johnson, Charlotte Lennox) to the present. It has survived the ‘unediting' deconstruction of ‘Authentic Shakespeare'. The chapter analyses the plot of Romeo and Juliet, showing that Shakespeare does not merely follow his sources (Boaistuau and Arthur Brooke) but rather identifies a key circumstantial topic of argument—the question of Time, of whether the time is ripe for Juliet's marriage—and goes on to build dialogue, scenes, and action around this question. A circumstantial question thus implies an offstage world and helps create our sense of Juliet's ‘unconscious' and of adolescent ‘sexuality'.
Smallwood disputes the perception that Johnson and Shakespeare are beyond comparison due to their differing historical contexts. He argues for mirrored minds, asserting that both writers possess an extensive view and an intense fascination with unchanging human nature. Smallwood notes that both writers transitioned from provincial origins to London success, navigating financial instability through writing. Johnson’s criticism reveals a shared anti-theoretical skepticism toward rational consolation and established philosophical doctrines. While Johnson failed as a playwright, Smallwood contends he understood dramatic form from the inside, applying a Shakespearean test of dramatic merit to other poets. The analysis suggests that viewing each through the other's eyes reveals them to be strangely more alike than traditionally recognized.
The General and the Particular: Paradox and the Play of Contraries in the Criticism of Pope, Johnson, and Reynolds
Hopkins challenges the charge that eighteenth-century criticism privileged the general over concrete particularity. He examines the intellectual relationship between Johnson and Joshua Reynolds, noting how Johnson qualified Reynolds's mind to think justly. Hopkins argues that Johnson's concept of general nature is not disembodied abstraction but is manifested in the particularities of existence. Using the both/and method, Johnson avoids the either/or opposition of terms, demonstrating how generality and particularity are conducive to each other. Hopkins shows that for Johnson and Reynolds, successful art requires a delicate balance where significant details recall the original to every mind. The essay concludes that these critics used a sophisticated play of paradox rather than rigid theoretical systems.
'The Caliban of Literature': Spenser, Shakespeare, and Johnson's Intertextual Scholarship
Lee explores Johnson's intertextual engagement with Spenser and Shakespeare, viewing the Dictionary and the Shakespeare edition as amalgamated concordances of esteemed authorities. He analyzes Johnson's genealogies of sentiments, which reveal submerged criticism and private responses to texts. Lee focuses on the wicked weed and wicked dew dyad, linking Spenser’s Mother Hubberds Tale with Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He argues Johnson identified with marginalized outsiders like Caliban, reflecting his own socially ambivalent position as a needy adventurer who rose through industry. The study suggests that Johnson's scholarly structures provide apertures into vital intertextual activities, where he uses borrowed ornaments to display judgment. Lee concludes that Johnson's scholarship is as alive and life-giving as his literary criticism.
In "The March of Intimacy': Dr. Burney and Dr. Johnson, Sabor traces the "social machinations" by which the friendship was established, and the material benefits Burney received from it. Even before meeting Johnson, while still a mere organist in a provincial church, Burney sent elaborately flattering letters of praise to the author of the Dictionary and Rambler; the praise pleased, and the two became friends when Burney moved back to London, and the friendship deepened when Burney became a regular visitor to the Thrales, where he often met Johnson.
Lee identifies Leopold Damrosch’s study as a fluid, accessible survey aimed at the common reader. Lee notes that the work focuses primarily on the relationship between Johnson and Boswell while providing individual chapters on Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, Smith, and Gibbon. The review explains that the monograph traces the history of the literary circle founded in 1764. While Lee praises the generally sound scholarship, Lee observes that specialists will find "nothing of substance" new in the text. Lee concludes that the work offers an up-to-date study of public intellectuals who, much like the Bloomsbury Group, conversed across diverse artistic and cultural veins.
Generous Liberal-Minded Men: Booksellers and Poetic Careers in Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Lynch examines how Johnson integrated the "grubby" realities of the book trade into his biographical narratives, positioning the author as a professional within a commercial system. Unlike earlier biographers who ignored business dealings or Romantic successors who viewed commerce as an affront to genius, Johnson treated contracts, edition sizes, and copyright negotiations as essential to understanding a poetic career. Case studies of Milton, Pope, and Savage illustrate Johnson's nuanced historical and economic perspective. He defends Milton’s contract for Paradise Lost against later claims of exploitation, noting that writers of that era had no expectation of wealth. Conversely, he details Pope’s innovative use of subscriptions for the Iliad, which yielded over five thousand pounds and marked a revolution in literary finance. In the Life of Savage, however, Johnson uncharacteristically adopts the "neglected genius" trope, blaming avaricious booksellers for the poet's misery. Lynch concludes that Johnson’s focus on print culture—a term coined long after his death—anticipates modern scholarship by recognizing publishing as a collaborative system involving authors, booksellers, and consumers. By documenting these financial milestones, Johnson redefined the literary biography as a record of both creative and commercial labor.
Famous People with Tourette's Syndrome: Dr. Samuel Johnson (yes) & Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (May Be): Victims of Tourette's Syndrome?
Bhattacharyya and Rai provide a retrospective clinical diagnosis of Tourette syndrome in Johnson, citing contemporary accounts of his "uncontrollable tics and gesticulations." Descriptions by Boswell, Frances Reynolds, and Fanny Burney reveal complex motor behaviors, such as compulsive lamp-post touching and "meaningless vocalizations" like grunting and whistling. While some neurologists historically suggested a psychological etiology, the authors argue that Johnson’s multifocal tics and changing symptom intensity make the diagnosis "unassailable." The study contrasts Johnson’s likely echolalia with his known hatred of profanities, suggesting that friends may have suppressed reports of coprolalia to protect his reputation. The authors conclude that Johnson's "tics, antics, obsessions and compulsions" only ceased with his death from cerebrovascular complications in 1784.
Radner commends Tankard's edition for making accessible a significant selection (133 pieces) of Boswell's diverse and voluminous journalism, previously largely unavailable except for the Hypochondriack essays. Radner notes the exclusion of certain topics but praises the inclusion of varied material, including reports, interviews, essays, letters, and "inventions," particularly items concerning public executions and Johnson. He highlights the value of Tankard's extensive contextualization through introductions, headnotes, and footnotes. Radner finds the thematic organization helpful but suggests chronological reading might better reveal the range of Boswell's activity during specific periods.
Enchaining Syllables and Lashing the Wind: Samuel Johnson, Thomas Sheridan, and the Ascertainment of Spoken English
This paper examines approaches to pronunciation, and its prescriptive reform by means of lexicography via the 18th-century nexus of Samuel Johnson, his biographer James Boswell, and the elocutionist Thomas Sheridan (who attempted to teach Boswell to modulate his accent towards metropolitan norms). While Johnson's engagement with fixing pronunciation forms a staple part of the remodelled lexicography he described in his 'Scheme' of 1746, and his Plan of 1747, the paper explores both Johnson's problematisation of the pragmatics of prescriptivism, and his careful detailing of variation and change within the entries he composed. As Johnson argues, prescriptivism and the formulation of appropriate edicts for reform are, of necessity, merely one half of the story. The other consists of those who must try to implement or adopt what is prescribed. Johnson's critical reading of prescriptive practice, and his scepticism of the innovations Boswell advocated and Sheridan endeavoured to introduce,.is made the basis of a critical examination of the pronouncing dictionary as institution, and the project of elocutionary reform per se.
In his article "Dryden, Pope, and Milton in Gay's Rural Sports and Johnson's Dictionary," Lee addresses the frequency of allusions in Gay's Rural Sports (1713) and Johnson's ability to detect them. He notes that Johnson's Dictionary definition of "prick" includes illustrative examples from both Virgil's Georgics and Gay's Rural Sports: Virgil, in Dryden's translation, observes, "The fiery courser, when he hears from far / The sprightly trumpets and the shouts of war / Pricks up his ears," while Gay speaks of "The tuneful noise the sprightly courser hears / Paws the green turf, and pricks his trembling ears."
Dr. Johnson on Trial: Catherine Talbot and Jemima Grey, Responding to Samuel Johnson's The Rambler
Orchard revises the work of earlier scholarship that advanced a view of Johnson as a relatively enlightened and generous patron of women. He focuses in particular on the ambivalent responses of women readers.
In his dictionary, the various illustrative quotations that followed the definition of the headword were all subordinated to and anchored in the etymon.Because of this theoretical conviction, Richardson strongly disapproved of certain implications set in motion by the lexicographical method of his great predecessor Samuel Johnson.Lamarck's hypotheses about change in living organisms went hand in hand with the assertion (against widely held eighteenth-century beliefs) that none of the earth's extant species are "as old as Nature" and that not all of these have been in existence for an equal period (Z, 36).[...]he noted, as zoologists fill the collections of natural history museums with the diversity of living beings, "the greater becomes our difficulty in determining what should be regarded as a species, and still more in finding the boundaries and distinctions of genera" (Z, 37).[...]it is her appropriation of this language-‘the artificial dialect of books' ([Masson ed.] X. 149)-that arms her against him, and that results in his being put to flight."According to Richardson, "[t]he lexicographer can never assure himself that he has attained the meaning of a word, until he has discovered the thing, the sensible object-res, quae nostros sensus feriunt;-the sensation caused by that thing or object (for language cannot sever them), of which that word is the name" (New Dictionary [1836-37], 1:43).
Scanlan advocates for acknowledging the collaborative nature of literary production by focusing on the roles of Johnson, James M. Osborn, and Ludwig Bemelmans as "bibliopoles" or friends of literature. Johnson exemplified this through his work with the Gentleman's Magazine and support for various literary figures. Osborn fostered collaboration as a collector and mentor at Yale. Bemelmans, a writer and artist, created a convivial atmosphere in the mid-twentieth-century New York publishing scene, illustrating a shared literary community that deserves greater recognition.
Burke reviews this collection on Johnson’s circle, which takes inspiration from Radner's work on Johnson's friendships. The essays explore Johnson's paternal role for younger men (Langton, Chambers, Boswell, Murphy) and highlight contemporary issues, particularly the exclusion of women in scholarly attention. The book includes essays on Goldsmith's The Traveller, Johnson’s friendship with James Elphinston, and analyses of Johnson’s volatile moments with John Dun and Frances Burney. Lambert's essay uses Burke's views to critique Boswell's defense of slavery. A closing theme is the shift toward the Romantic "transport" of solitude.
Publisher's blurb: "Pour l'Angleterre du XVIIIe siècle, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) est the Great Cham, le grand manitou des lettres. Suscitant en son temps l'attention et la crainte, il reste l'un des monuments de la critique littéraire anglaise, que discuteront encore Virginia Woolf ou T.S. Eliot. Ses Vies des poètes anglais remontent au XVIIe siècle (Cowley, Dryden ou Milton) pour suivre le fil qui les mène à Swift, à Pope, puis aux contemporains immédiats de Johnson, comme Shenstone, Gray ou Akenside. Couvrant une vaste période, l'oeuvre de Johnson témoigne du fait que les Lumières ne furent pas l'apanage des seuls philosophes et des romanciers, mais animèrent aussi une myriade de poètes, célèbres ou tombés dans l'oubli. Les Vies des poètes, dont il est ici donné une sélection inédite, ne sont pas uniquement des biographies : elles sont singulièrement attentives aux conditions historiques et sociales de la création poétique — notamment à la dépendance du poète à l'égard des mécènes – et constituent à ce titre un précieux document. Mais surtout elles révèlent une conception nouvelle de la lecture du poème : conservateur et nourri de culture ancienne, à la fois fidèle au classicisme et ouvert à l'originalité, Johnson invente une forme de critique aussi savante qu'empirique, une critique fondée sur les notions d'authenticité et de plaisir, dans laquelle la dimension humaine, voire humaniste, passe au premier plan."
Lines describes the Seager and Wilcox edition of Johnson's biography as an essential resource that preserves the full notes and quotations of the 1748 second edition. The volume functions as a teaching resource by including Johnson's poem London and essays from The Rambler and The Idler. Seager and Wilcox correct errors of fact in the original biography while providing a glossary and contemporary perspectives on Savage's career. The edition concludes with extracts from biographies by Hawkins and Boswell. Lines highlights Boswell's dispute of Savage's claim to noble illegitimacy, noting that Boswell leaves the truth of Savage's mysterious origins in a state of uncertainty.
The Pug Who Bit Napoleon: Animal Tales of the 18th and 19th Centuries
Matthews examines the benevolent character of Johnson through his well-documented affection for his cat, Hodge. Drawing primarily from Boswell, the text recounts Johnson’s personal habit of purchasing oysters for the animal to prevent servant resentment. Matthews highlights Johnson’s physical indulgence of the cat, noting Boswell’s own "antipathy" and unease during these displays. The account includes Johnson’s defensive verbal restoration of Hodge’s "countenance" after suggesting he had liked other cats better. Matthews incorporates Stockdale’s 1809 memoirs to illustrate Johnson’s "softened" demeanor and his final efforts to ease the cat’s passing using valerian. The narrative concludes with the 1997 commemoration of Hodge in Gough Square, symbolizing Johnson’s broader "gentleness and humanity" toward all "dumb life" under his care.
Facts and Fictionality: Essay-Periodicals and Literary Novelty
This thesis is about the influence of the periodical essay on the novel — and vice versa — in the early years of the eighteenth century. Focusing on the period 1700–1760, it addresses the interchange between essay-periodicals and longer form prose writing and, in so doing, begins to close the distance between the two separate fields of periodical studies and histories of the novel. The thesis engages these two areas to challenge, at the same time as taking seriously, the divisions that result from subsuming other print media into a broader narrative of the "rise" of the novel. I argue that fiction, and more specifically fictionality, is not synonymous with the novel (as is often assumed to be the case), but is a mode of literary expression that resulted from the cross-fertilization of periodical and long form prose writing. Yet while attention has been paid to the relationship between the essay-periodical and dramatic writing, there is no current study of the relationship between the essay-periodical and the novel in this period; the significance of the concomitant emergence of these two forms within the complex print ecology of the early eighteenth century has received comparatively little attention. Chapter One explores the emergence of the essay-periodical as a new genre of writing and argues that this form belongs squarely to the eighteenth century. Chapters Two through Five offer four author studies: Daniel Defoe; Eliza Haywood; Henry Fielding; Samuel Johnson. These demonstrate how the terminology of novel studies intersects with periodical studies. Each chapter addresses a specific trait that emerges as a key feature of that author's periodicals and novels: conversability and inclusivity; witness testimony and credibility; taste and self-conscious innovation; and anxieties over different literary forms.
Continuação da série Samuel Johnson iniciada com Os PortõesSamuel Johnson está em apuros. Sua visão ruim o faz passar o maior vexame, e o demônio sra. Abernathy está com sede de vingança desde que seus planos de invadir a Terra foram frustrados pelo jovem. Ela planeja aprisioná-lo e, quando o Grande Colisor de Hádrons é religado, a oportunidade bate à porta. Samuel e seu fiel bassê, Boswell, são arrastados para as profundezas do Inferno, onde serão caçados pela sra. Abernathy e seus lacaios infernais.Mas apanhar Samuel não será nada fácil para o demônio, que já testemunhou de perto a bravura e a inteligência do garoto e seu cão, além da leal amizade entre Samuel e o infeliz demônio Nurd. Ela também não conta com a presença de dois incompetentes policiais e de um azarado — no sentido mais otimista da palavra — sorveteiro.Tampouco poderia esperar a intervenção de um grupo de pequenos seres que confirmam que Samuel e Boswell não são os únicos habitantes da Terra a pararem de uma hora para outra no Inferno.Se você pensava que demônios eram assustadores, espere até encontrar Os Elfos do Sr. Merryweather.
Poetic Numbers: Measurement and the Formation of Literary Criticism in Enlightenment England
This dissertation examines the importance of the concept of measurement to poets and literary critics in eighteenth-century England. It documents attempts to measure aspects of literary form, especially prosodic phenomena such as meter and rhythm, and it explores how these empirical and pseudo-empirical experiments influenced the writing and reading of poetry. During the Enlightenment, it argues, poets and critics were particularly drawn to prosody's apparent objectivity: through the parsing of lines and counting of syllables, prosody seemed to allow one to isolate and quite literally measure the beauty and significance of verse. Inquiries into the social and historical functions of literature routinely relied on this discourse, exploring questions of style, politics, and philosophy with the help of prosodic measurement. By drawing on works and artifacts ranging from dictionaries and grammars to mnemonic schemes and notional verse-making machines, and through close readings of poet-critics such as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and Samuel Johnson, "Poetic Numbers" contends that the eighteenth century's fascination with prosody represents a foundational moment in the history of literary criticism: a moment whose acute self-consciousness about literary critical methods, as well as about whether and how these methods can aspire to count and account for aspects of literary experience, anticipates many of the methodological questions that mark our own time.
Twin Stars: Shakespeare and the Idea of the Theatre in the Eighteenth Century
This thesis draws the line of a rise and a fall, an ironic pattern whereby the English stage of the long eighteenth century, in its relation to Shakespeare in particular, first acquired powerful influence, and then, through the very effects of that power, lost it. It also shows what contemporary literary criticism might learn from the activities that constitute this arc of evolution. My first chapter interrogates the relationship between text and performance in vernacular writings about acting and editing from the death of Betterton in 1710 to the rise of Garrick in the middle decades of the century. From the status of a distinct tradition, performance comes to rely on text as a basis for the intimate, personal engagement with Shakespeare believed necessary to the work of the sentimental actor. Such a reliance grants the performer new potential as a literary critic, but also prepares a fall. The performer becomes another kind of reader, and so is open to accusations of reading badly. My second chapter analyses the evolving definition of Shakespeare as a dramatic author from Samuel Johnson onwards. An untheatrical definition of the dramatic (Johnson's) is answered by one which recognises the power and vitality of the stage, especially in its representation of sympathetic character (Montagu and Kenrick). Yet that very recognition leads to a set of altered critical priorities in which the theatre is, once more, relegated (Morgann and Richardson). My third and fourth chapters consider the practices and critical implications of theatrical performance of Shakespeare during Garrick's career. I focus on the acting of emotion, the portrayal of what Aaron Hill called "the very Instant of the changing Passion," and show that performance of this time, attentive to the striking moment and the transitions that power it, required from the actor both attention to the text and preternatural control over his own emotions. In return, it allowed Garrick and others to claim a special affinity with Shakespeare and to capture the public's attention, both in the theatre and outside it. Yet this situation, that of 'twin stars', does not last. French and German responses to English acting, the concern of my last chapter, show its decline particularly well. They also, however, show the power that existed in such a union between page and stage, and equal weight is given in both my third and my fourth chapter to how the theatrical-literary insights of eighteenth-century critical culture might also illuminate modern approaches.
The history of lexicography is the subject of a substantial literature. English lexicography is well covered, with wide-ranging histories and more focused books on Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, Peter Mark Roget, and the OED.
Shakespeare is unimaginable without wordplay. Although they sometimes challenge their patience, his puns, quibbles, and witty plays on words remain a central, even defining feature of his works. In Samuel Johnson's rich conceit, puns have the uncanny property of enticing Shakespeare from the true way of his journey. Shakespeare's earliest days as a writer were busier still; before and perhaps during the watershed interval of the playhouse closures circa 1592–94, he appears to have composed parts of at least eight works. Taking Johnson's insight seriously, Bruster and McKeown trace wordplay's emergence in the early canon in order to gain a deeper appreciation of the textures as well as the distinctiveness of Shakespeare's compositional habits.
Kurtz reviews Belcher’s provocative study of Johnson’s relationship with Africa, praising it for its originality, depth, and rigorous scholarship. Belcher proposes a model of “discursive possession,” arguing that Johnson was "infected" by Habesha (Ethiopian) discourse while translating Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. This possession, Belcher contends, influenced his later works such as Irene and Rasselas. The study suggests that the Orthodox Christianity of the Habesha provided Johnson with arguments against Catholicism and that his personal vulnerability during illness made him particularly susceptible to this African influence. While Kurtz finds the "discursive possession" concept stimulating and the evidence persuasive, he notes limits to the metaphor—questioning whether Africans can truly be considered co-creators of Johnson's representations—and finds the work somewhat limited in scope. However, he deems the study an imaginative and rare combination of scholarship and fresh postcolonial insight. Kurtz ultimately welcomes the work for valuing a model of African agency in shaping European writing and for challenging the standard Orientalist view of Johnson’s African tales.
The Seizure of Literary History in the Eighteenth Century
"The Seizure of Literary History in the Eighteenth Century" argues that Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson established the dominant modes of reading and writing literature in the eighteenth century. It first uncovers the modes of reading and writing that Pope and Johnson displaced, and then traces the history of Pope and Johnson's success at recasting literary value. The animating irony of the project is that these displaced modes provided Pope and Johnson with the very tools they used to achieve their domination. This literary genealogy traces the development of literary forms as tools for political cultures, and then shows how those forms were latterly repurposed to serve purely literary ends. The political cultures I analyze both developed in reaction to the political upheaval surrounding the Revolution of 1688/9. They are Jacobite manuscript poetry and Whig non-fiction prose.Jacobite manuscript poets deployed formal devices and de-sacralized typologies to form a community of cognoscenti who could decipher the true meaning of a text. Recovering this tradition and understanding it on its own terms allows us to reconsider some of our pre-received ideas about the value and function of literature. Jacobite manuscript poetry inculcated a private readerly sensibility as a way to develop and support readers" intuitions about, and future actions in, public, political life.Whig non-fiction prose taught readers that public virtue and order should govern private actions. Writers like John Dennis, Jospeh Addison, Shaftesbury and William Derham showed that this order corresponded to governing systems of science, morality, physico-theology, and aesthetic appreciation. Whig non-fiction prose writers developed solidarity between the reader and the state, with the prospect of reform of future, readers.Whether these political attitudes appealed to Pope as politics is not a question I treat. I argue that Pope severed both literary cultures from their political origins and used their strategies for purely literary ends. Jacobite poetry offered a way to argue that, by reading and endorsing the writer, the reader was made better; Whig prose, to argue that the nation was made better. Pope used both. From the beginning of his career until the 1717 publication of his Works, I argue, Pope used the strategies of Whig non-fiction prose writers and Jacobite manuscript poets to place himself at the forefronts of literary production and of literary judgement. Pope used Jacobite de-sacralized ciphering and plausibly deniable reference in An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, The Key to the Lock, and Windsor Forest, while also encroaching on Whig territory of aesthetic and moral instruction.In the 1730s, I contend, Pope refined his use of these strategies to make a similar claim on a larger scale. In his Essay on Man, ethic epistles, and Horatian imitations, Pope opposed alternative modes of literary value, such as that espoused by James Thomson, and argued that the ability to read well and to accept Pope's moral teaching was itself a guarantor of national stability. Pope made the value and stability of his readers' private and public selves interdependent, and wrote poetry that was didactic on both counts.Johnson's engagement with Pope took several forms. In his London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson specifically referred to Pope in order to frame the earlier poet as a forerunner and predecessor. In these poems and throughout his prose, Johnson also used Jacobite and Whiggish techniques, cultivating "Loyal" readers while retaining a strong link between moral probity and national standing. Johnson pioneered a prose couplet form to engage formally with Pope's verse, and through his satire manqué achieved a more plausible kind of moral didacticism precisely because Johnson did not mark himself as exceptional. Johnson also exceeded Pope by producing a far more extensive and durable apparatus of literary and linguistic taste-making in the Dictionary, the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare, and his Lives of the Poets. By the close of this dissertation, I demonstrate the arrogation of standards of literary production and reception by Pope and Johnson. And I show the two competing literary ecosystems which provided Pope and Johnson with the tools for that arrogation, and were discarded in their wake. This dissertation cannot be a complete account of the self-fashioning ambitions of either writer. It does, however, suggest that neither Pope nor Johnson can be fully or fairly considered in future without reference to the complex matrix of influence and development unfolded here.
'Armed with the Tomahawk and Scalping-Knife': William Kenrick Versus Samuel Johnson
Reddick's approving review of Mugglestone’s study of the Dictionary highlights her analysis of Johnson’s lexicographical attitudes and presents the dictionary-making process as a dynamic journey rather than the work of an inert lexicographer. Reddick praises Mugglestone’s expertise in historical linguistics, showing Johnson as a modern, "liberal," and non-prescriptive lexicographer who recognized language change and the importance of context, often using hedging language that contrasts with Chesterfield’s desire for certainty. Mugglestone traces Johnson’s metaphors of travel, warfare, and nautical themes, revealing his nuanced positions on foreign borrowings and orthography. Furthermore, Reddick emphasizes Mugglestone’s contribution to the reassessment of Johnson and women, noting his groundbreaking use of female writers like Charlotte Lennox as authorities. While the review praises the thorough, contextualized discussions, Reddick notes a genial tone that occasionally obscures comparisons with previous scholarship and points out shortcomings in Mugglestone's treatment of the quotations’ voice and her appendix on the 1773 revision. Nevertheless, he concludes the book is a valuable reassessment of Johnson’s linguistic legacy.
James Boswell and Corsica, 1728–1768: The Development of British Opinion During the Corsican Revolt
James Boswell (1740–1795) is most famous for writing the masterly biography of his friend and mentor The Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791, only a few years before his own death. However, during Boswell's own lifetime he was far more famous for his other major work, the Account of Corsica (1768). The Account of Corsica has been rather neglected by modern scholarship. This article will attempt show its importance in the context of the mid eighteenth century. Boswell's Account was in fact the latest in a series of British publications concerning the island of Corsica during the eighteenth century. This article will attempt to trace the evolution of the ideas of Corsica that developed in Britain; beginning with the outbreak of the Corsican revolt in 1728, and culminating with the publication of Boswell's Account of Corsica in 1768. Corsica became an important case study for British self-reflection, concerning the type of Empire they would become. The main question raised by the case study of Corsica was whether Britain should be an empire that protects liberty across the globe, or a metropolitan commercial state?
Johnson's Irene and Rasselas, Richardson's Pamela Exalted: Contexts, Polygamy, and the Seraglio
Weinbrot contextualizes Johnson's Irene and Rasselas and Richardson's later Pamela volumes within eighteenth-century debates about polygamy. Weinbrot details the surprising prevalence of arguments defending polygamy, often drawing on Old Testament precedents, perceived population needs, or critiques of European monogamy. He outlines counterarguments emphasizing Christian doctrine, the unnaturalness of polygamy, its negative social consequences (neglected children, female degradation, jealousy, potential for polyandry), and its association with Eastern tyranny and the seraglio. Weinbrot shows how Richardson used Pamela's rejection of Mr. B's polygamous proposal and how Johnson engaged seraglio themes (tyranny, female agency, intellectual sterility) in Irene and Rasselas.
Misreading Skepticism in the Long Eighteenth Century: Studies in the Rhetoric of Assent
"Misreading Skepticism in the Long Eighteenth Century: Studies in the Rhetoric of Assent" revisits the intellectual historical conditions that contributed to the widespread internalization of skepticism as an error-reduction strategy during the Enlightenment. To do so, it abandons a longstanding emphasis the special philosophical tradition of epistemological skepticism associated with the Scottish philosopher David Hume and pursues an alternative intellectual history of Enlightenment skepticism centered on the Anglophone tradition of "constructive skepticism" that informed not only Hume's skeptical habits but those of other influential Anglophone Enlightenment thinkers more often set in opposition to Hume. "Misreading Skepticism" draws on this tradition of constructive skepticism to generate a much different picture of the character of Enlightenment skepticism than the one extrapolated from radical Humean skepticism: one that is not anxious but assured, not theoretical but pragmatic, not preoccupied with the threat of "radical uncertainty" but resolved to attaining "moral certainty" sufficient to justify belief and action despite irreducible uncertainty. Readings of the philosophy of John Locke, Thomas Reid, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, and Dugald Stewart recover the broader Enlightenment project of practical rationality that encouraged the widespread internalization and instrumentalization of constructive skepticism. Readings of eighteenth-century rhetorical and legal treatises trace how this constructive skeptical ethos was disseminated beyond epistemology and embraced within a generalized theory of assent. "Misreading Skepticism" approaches this broader "misreading" in the modern intellectual history of skepticism through the special lens of Romantic literary studies, where scholars have traditionally framed the rise of British Romanticism as a response to a supposed epistemological "crisis” posed by Humean skepticism. “Misreading Skepticism” argues that, to understand the Romantic literary reaction to Enlightenment skepticism, we need to approach the intellectual history of British Romanticism not through Humean skepticism but through constructive skepticism. Readings of Romantic works by William Godwin, William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and other authors demonstrate how these Romantic writers use literary form to interrogate the confident embrace of constructive skepticism within the Enlightenment as a means for managing uncertainty, often by dramatizing or the matizing elements of subjectivity and error that skepticism fails to detect or discipline. Drawing insight from the constructive skeptical tradition as well as Romantic literary critiques of that tradition, “Misreading Skepticism” develops a revisionary account of skepticism that attends to the rhetorical and social dimensions that complicate any epistemological account of skepticism.
Immortal Utterances: A 'Conversation' with the Late, Great Author, Lexicographer and Letters Writer Samuel Johnson
Garner constructs a simulated interview with Johnson, compiling his known sayings to explore his views on the legal profession, lawyers, and legal writing. The piece addresses the value of studying law, the challenges of the profession, and the definition of law, citing Johnson's statement that it is "the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public." Johnson defends a lawyer's representation of a cause they personally believe is weak, arguing that every cause has a bad side and the lawyer's role is to present the client's case and then hear the judge's opinion. Johnson also observes that lawyers possess practical life knowledge a "bookish man" lacks.
The write-up on this quote says James Boswell, writer and biographer of Samuel Johnson, tells us that Johnson made this famous pronouncement that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel on the evening of April 7, 1775. He doesn't provide any information how the remark came about, so we don't really know for sure what was on Johnson's mind at the time.
Smallwood describes this work as a "highly original" study that tracks the "celebrated friendship" between Johnson and Boswell through careful analysis of visits and letters. Radner highlights the "relatively late stage" of their meeting and the "long periods" of separation that characterized their bond. Smallwood notes that the biography moves beyond Boswell's own narrative to examine how Johnson's "public image" was formed independently of his writings. He identifies the book as a "splendid achievement" that provides a "deep-level" understanding of the "rudiments of the relationship." Smallwood emphasizes Radner's ability to "reconfigure known material" into a "purposeful voice" that illuminates the "complex, under-explored" dynamics of their association. The text ultimately serves as a "touchstone" for scholars of 18th-century biography.
Shakespeare's 'Scenes of Enchantment' and Johnson's Criticism
Interest and Connection in the Eighteenth Century: Hervey, Johnson, Smith, Equiano
Sider Jost's Interest and Connection in the Eighteenth Century argues that the polysemous word "interest" serves as a central lens for understanding the intellectual and literary work of the British long eighteenth century. The monograph examines the expanding semantic strands of the word through close readings of key figures and texts, including Lord Hervey's memoirs, Johnson's Irene and Rasselas, Adam Smith's oeuvre, and Equiano's Interesting Narrative. Jost demonstrates how the concept connected realms from the erotic and political to economics and psychology, notably highlighting how Smith was more a Homo rhetoricus than a Homo economicus and deepening the understanding of passages like those in Clarissa and the sale of Equiano's freedom.
Berglund's largely positive review examines an essay collection edited by Kimiyo Ogawa and Mika Suzuki that introduces Western readers to Japanese scholarship on Johnson. The volume details how Meiji-era students treated the writer as a Confucian moral mentor, focusing on Hawthorne's anecdote of the Uttoxeter market penance. While Berglund praises the historical accounts of Japanese reception and specific essays on Sastres and Garrick, she notes that the critical chapters rely too heavily on Western critical idioms and sources. The review finds the collection slightly descriptive rather than analytical but appreciates its testament to the vibrant global landscape of contemporary eighteenth-century studies.
Boyd focuses on Johnson’s relational dynamics with younger protégés and female contemporaries. Radner compares the 'defensive' early correspondence with Boswell to the more 'quotidian' letters sent to Langton and Chambers, noting how the Highland tour eventually transformed the Johnson–Boswell bond into an intimate 'affectionate' relationship. Francus explores the 'politics of literary celebrity,' contrasting Johnson’s desire for 'cultural authority' with Burney’s resistance to public intimacy. Kairoff contrasts Johnson's 'humanist' landscape views with Seward’s 'proto-Romantic' sensibility.
Regulating the Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essay: A Poetics from The Tatler, The Spectator and The Rambler
Allen Walker Read's Unfinished Histories of Early English Lexicography
On the unfinished history of English lexicography planned by Allen Walker Read, focusing on Johnson's Dictionary. Read's 1931 dissertation, The Place of Johnson's Dictionary in the History of English Lexicography, was foundational to his larger, unrealized project, The Rise of Dictionary Authority in English. After revisions to appease "hyper-sensitive Johnsonians," the work was accepted in 1933. The author suggests that Read's subsequent career path and the later publication of similar works by other scholars prevented him from completing and publishing his comprehensive history.
Horowitz's review of the Yale edition of Johnson's Debates in Parliament describes the work as Johnson's longest piece of prose. These "Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia" were not simple reportage but "flights of ventriloquism" where Johnson "framed" speeches out of his own brain to elude censors. Horowitz notes that Johnson often jumbled names, such as "Walelop" for Walpole and "Ptit" for Pitt. The edition restores the "Lilliputian paraphernalia" and glossary, allowing readers to decode the "little language" of the Debates. Although Johnson reportedly harbored "scrupulous regrets" about writing them, Horowitz argues they represent a unique example of dramatic literature crafted from representative government. The review concludes that the Yale volumes provide a "glorious and long-awaited" reading text that approximates the debates as Johnson actually wrote them.
Against the Map: The Politics of Geography in Eighteenth-Century Britain
This Old House and Samuel Johnson's Scotland
Two Ways of Being Wise: Shakespeare and the Johnsonian Montaigne
Abridged in The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson Forms of Artistry and Thought.
The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 2: English and British Fiction, 1750–1820
On the tension between literary criticism's "messy" concept of intention and analytical philosophy's precise distinctions, taking up an implicit call from Jonathan Kramnick. Hershinow then turns to Johnson's Dictionary to showcase the historical multiplicity of the term's meaning, observing that Johnson's definitions, such as "Intentionally: In will, if not in action," resist the strict separation of intention and action proposed by modern philosophers like G. E. M. Anscombe. The analysis suggests retaining this historical ambiguity for a more robust critical practice.
Walker praises Larsen's book for its smooth and stylish narrative, which effectively blends well-known and previously unknown details of the Johnson Circle, and its rigorous and scholarly documentation in the majority of cases. Strengths include descriptions of Garrick’s stage innovations and Reynolds's art. A weakness noted is the awkward presentation of some material due to unclear audience focus, suggesting uncertainty in distinguishing original insights.
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research
In Petty Caviller or "Formidable Assailant'? Johnson Reads Dennis, Smallwood alludes to two of Johnson's characterizations of John Dennis, arguably the dominant literary critic of the first half of the century but largely forgotten by its end, forgotten, that is, except by Johnson. A third characterization, from manuscript notes for Johnson's biography of Pope, "reads starkly 'Madness of Dennis,"" and indeed the manner of Dennis's critical observations may have helped the demise of his reputation. Still, Johnson found much of value in Dennis and referred to his work frequently in his own criticism to an extent surprising to those of us who take our view of Dennis from Pope alone.
Starting from Samuel Johnson's well- known evaluation of Watts-''Happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed by his verses, or his prose, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity''-Ms. Lewis yokes politics, religion, and aesthetics in the early eighteenth century: "'With its rule of twice-yearly communion in an Anglican church for those who wished to hold public office, the controversial practice of occa- sional conformity epitomized the uncer- tainty of formal expression between 1702 and 1714."'Ms. Lewis is on point, also, in her eval- uation of Watts's place in literary history: ''Watts's disappointing critical destiny re- flects his status as exemplary background within a long-standing reading practice that much prefers to look at the exceptional figures in the foreground."'[...]I could not determine which edition she used, because her careless treatment of capitalization, spelling, contractions, and italics makes any determination impossi- ble.
DeMaria examines the history of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. He details its rather long gestational period. It is by no means unusual for such monumental scholarly undertakings to occupy decades. It is somewhat less common that the project "outlived all the original members of the editorial committee and most of their replacements. Johnson lived to be seventy-five, but it took him less time to write his work than it has taken Yale to edit them." He notes that such apparent dilatoriness is not a function of neglect so much as it is a function of genuine, if sometimes overwrought, disputes about editorial principles.
In A New Johnson Self-Quotation in the Dictionary, Lee found that the fourth edition of the Dictionary (1773) illustrates the definition of "bribe" ("To gain by bribes; to give bribes, rewards, or hire, to bad purposes") with a couplet from his prologue to Goldsmith's play The Good-Natured Man: "The great, "tis true, can still th" electing tribe/The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe." These wry lines nicely supplement the definition by suggesting that poets cannot purchase applause in the way politicians can buy votes.
'A Morbid Oblivion': Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Remembering Not to Forget
Barnes explores the complex relationship between memory, forgetting, preservation, and destruction in biographical and archival projects, focusing on Johnson and Boswell. Using Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides as primary texts, alongside Boswell's Life of Johnson, Barnes argues that both writers recognized the inherent paradoxes of remembrance. Johnson valued written records against the perceived unreliability of oral tradition ("morbid oblivion"), yet acknowledged writing's flaws. Boswell embraced memory's subjective, refining nature. Johnson's burning of his papers becomes a paradoxical act enabling Boswell's biographical project, highlighting that preservation is founded on loss.
'& Not the Least Wit': Jane Austen's Use of 'Wit'
Johnson notes that wit is subject to "changes and fashions," a polyvalency reflected in his Dictionary which balances mental faculty against quickness of fancy. Austen occasionally employs Johnson's "original signification" of wit as intellect, yet habitually applies the term pejoratively to denote social display, aggression, or "mis-use of the mind." In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bennet's "wit" reveals a "want of penetration" and "defect of discretion," causing "pain to many a painful hour" rather than providing the delight required by the Addisonian model. Similarly, the "witticisms" of Caroline Bingley or the "insolent" outbursts of Emma Woodhouse represent "mean attempt[s] at wit" that prioritize "censure" over truth. Paradoxically, Austen reserves the qualities of "true Wit"—justness, surprize, and "elegantly adapted" thought—for heroines like Elizabeth Bennet without explicitly using the label. By aligning "wit" with fashionable conformity and "unfeeling" antagonism, Austen distinguishes between the mere performance of cleverness and the "genius, wit, and taste" that characterize the "greatest powers of the mind" within the novel genre.
'Johnson and China: Culture, Commerce, and the Dream of the Orient in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England'
Clingham eschews a tight argument about the relationship between Johnson and China. He generously credits those who have gone before and he has read everything, or so it seems. Moreover, his generalized statements about Johnson's view of the Orient seem without exception correct.
Dussinger reviews the evidence and finds in favor of the defendant: "while producing the notes to the 1765 Shakespeare edition, even if he had wanted to, Johnson simply did not have the time and patience to sift through all previous commentary to identify the various claimants most worthy of remembering." The claim is fair, and in keeping with Johnson's practice in all his large-scale projects, including the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets, where his practice–though astonishing for the work of a single person-rarely lived up to the high ideals he spelled out for himself.
In "‘Look, My Lord, It Comes': Ghostly Silences in the Boswell/Johnson Archive," Lee identifies a provocative, and somewhat amusing, subject: Johnson's presence, especially in conversation, as a ghost. Most readers tend to think of Johnson in social situations as an intellectual pugilist, inclined every now and then to toss and gore his combatants. Lee suggests that Johnson's initial silences in conversation are also meaningful.
Redford calls Damrosch's book deficient for both scholars and the common reader. Redford faults the book for lacking a compelling central argument on the Club's program or its role in shaping the age. He argues that the book presents a distorted view of Johnson’s Dictionary as an "impersonal project" and relies on the negative stereotype of Boswell as a mere recorder rather than a masterful artistic selector.
Samuel Johnson: 21st-Century Oxford Authors
Lee's severe review of Womersley’s anthology acknowledges the volume as the most comprehensive and visually attractive collection of Johnson's poetry and prose. Lee praises the physical compactness and the inclusion of rare pieces and illustrations. However, Lee argues that pervasive technical errors fatally undercut these virtues. The review highlights miscued cross-references in the introduction and the lack of visible cues for endnotes. Lee concludes that these clumsy blunders leave readers floundering.
In Samuel Johnson's Practical Sermon on Marriage in Context: Spousal Whiggery and the Book of Common Prayer, Weinbrot focuses on Johnson's sermon on marriage: "Therefore shall a man leave his father, and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife" (Genesis 2:24). This sermon was written while domestic life itself was undergoing significant transformations, and he notes some of these changes are reflected in Johnson's obiter dicta on marriage.
In Samuel Johnson's View of History, Lock asserts that Macaulay's opinion that Johnson was "a bigot in religion, a reactionary Tory in politics, and a narrow-minded provincial who contemned travel and denigrated history" has been reversed by modern scholarship. But perhaps Macaulay's understanding of Johnson on history is not so far afield as recent views suggest. This solid essay contrasts the "Enlightenment" notion of history, as practiced by Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Gibbon, among others, with an old-fashioned view that Johnson favored. Johnson leaned toward "humanist historians who compiled their narratives from the available printed sources. They did not undertake "research" of the kind begun by the seventeenth-century antiquarians and later absorbed into the mainstream of historical writing."
'Where the Climate Is Unkind, and the Ground Penurious': Johnson and the Alien Ecologies of the Highlands
Markley asserts that in a key passage in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Samuel Johnson and his party stop to rest and water their horses on what he sees as a little-traveled road to Glenshiels. Sitting in a "narrow valley, he finds that the high hills, hindering the eye from ranging, forced his mind to find entertainment for itself, a turning inward that ultimately leads him to conceive "the thought of this narration–the narrative of his travels through the Highlands and the Hebrides. Johnson's reaction–often bemused, sometimes horrified–to the Highlands' treeless landscape reflects this paradox. As he travels through this "uniformity of barrenness," Johnson finds himself searching for a descriptive and interpretive language in order to make sense of a landscape that seemingly resists the assumptions and values of his contemporaries thinking about ecology and resource management. In this essay, then, I argue that Johnson's characteristic skepticism extends to eighteenth-century efforts to treat the world, as John Locke does, as a storehouse of endlessly exploitable value open to human labor and ingenuity.
Baldwin traces Johnson's lifelong engagement with Virgil, from his schoolboy translations of the Eclogues to mature critical assessments. Baldwin analyzes Johnson's early translations, noting stylistic choices and occasional inaccuracies. He discusses Johnson's varying opinions on Virgil's works, highlighting his critical coolness towards Eclogue 5 in the Adventurer, his preference for the Odyssey's story over the Aeneid's, and inconsistent comparisons between Virgil, Homer, and Theocritus. Baldwin also examines Johnson's use of Virgil for mottoes, quotations in letters and essays, commentary on Shakespeare, and influence on Johnson's own Latin poetry, concluding Virgil remained emotionally and intellectually significant throughout Johnson's life.
In this enthusiastic review, Lee describes the book as an accessible compendium and the "go-to guide" for the Dictionary. Lee notes that Mugglestone uses the metaphor of a journey to organize her examination of compilation history, lexicographical authority, and the tension between descriptive and prescriptive pressures. The review highlights the research into Johnson’s legacy and the admission of foreign words. Lee finds the study both informative and entertaining, situating it alongside essential scholarship by DeMaria and Lynch.
Womersley’s Samuel Johnson is the most comprehensive anthology of the major author's work, intended to replace Greene’s 1984 edition. Its 1,294 pages offer extensive chronological coverage and superior copy-texts, confirming Johnson’s status as a modern literary figure. However, the volume is flawed by truncated texts of the major Lives (Milton, Dryden, Pope) and a frustrating lack of visible markers for the endnotes, making annotation difficult to access for the student audience it targets.
Boyd examines the collection’s effort to reinstate Johnson’s unique voice at the center of English letters. Richetti presents Johnson as a 'heterodox poet' whose 'eloquent simplicity' and solidarity with the common reader challenged the pretentious artificiality of mid-eighteenth-century verse. Tankard and Kickel analyze the Prayers and Meditations, characterizing Johnson’s private devotions as 'actionable' responses to grief and spiritual anxiety that emphasize 'reformation' of character over empty ritual.
Smallwood finds this collection offers 'outstanding penetration and originality' despite the typical fragmented quality of such volumes. Smallwood highlights Lynda Mugglestone’s research on Johnson's marginalia in Warburton’s Shakespeare and Greg Clingham’s essay on Johnson’s affection for children, including Thrale's daughter Queeney. The reviewer praises the volume’s literary-historical focus while noting that some attempts to link Johnson’s work to modern socio-political crises are occasionally over-written or theoretically dense.
Boyd highlights the volume’s exploration of 'Christian faith' as a defining link between Johnson and modernists like Eliot. New identifies a shared urban pessimism in London and Prufrock, defining their modernism as a 'persistent state of psychic depression' rooted in the fallen nature of humanity. Lynch traces the reception of Johnson during the Great War, revealing how his works provided an 'oasis of reasonableness' for soldiers while being partisanly recruited for both interventionist and pacifist propaganda.
Lee demonstrates in miniature what Boswell in the Life calls Johnson's "certain continual power of seizing the useful substance of all that he knew." He argues in favor of a more meaningful source — Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which Johnson knew well. Moreover, Burton, with his language of disease, agrees with the metaphorical language of disease in The False Alarm. In short, with a few words, Johnson elicits a range of associations that do much more than gild his writing.
Сэмюэл Джонсон и его эпоха: Британия и мир глазами английского интеллектуала XVIII в.: монография / Sėmi︠u︡ėl Dzhonson i ego ėpokha: Britanii︠a︡ i mir glazami angliĭskogo intellektuala XVIII v.: monografii︠a︡ = Samuel Johnson and his Era: Britain and the World through the eyes of an 18th-century English intellectual
Jarman retraces the 1773 itinerary of Johnson and Boswell through the Hebrides, using their separate accounts to navigate the modern Scottish landscape during the independence referendum. He notes that the memory of their trip is now preserved for tourism. Jarman observes the loss of the spirit of defiant independence that Boswell and Johnson previously remarked upon, and contrasts their difficult inter-island travel via rowboats with modern car ferries. The text links eighteenth-century Jacobite history to contemporary nationalism, finding Johnson’s bread and butter letter to Lady MacLeod still displayed at Dunvegan Castle.
Gordon praises Leo Damrosch’s The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, describing it as a brilliantly animated work that captures the nature of creative stimulus over twenty years. The review details the Friday night gatherings at the Turk’s Head Tavern where founding members like Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, and Edmund Burke—along with later additions like James Boswell—shaped eighteenth-century British culture. Damrosch uses the individual voices of these members to explore their collective intellectual energy, and Gordon notes the book’s deep research and focus on individual character. From a modern vantage point, the narrative addresses the members' views on empire and women, specifically focusing on the "shadow club" of women such as Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale Piozzi, the latter of whom served as Johnson’s confidante and therapist. Gordon commends Damrosch for maintaining storytelling momentum while going behind the scenes of this male-dominated intellectual circle and highlighting Johnson’s friendship with Piozzi as a crucial alternative to the main group.
Selections from the Life of Samuel Johnson
本书采纳十余种流行且有影响的约翰生传记资源,分阶段叙述介绍约翰生一生及各位传记作者对其人其思想的评价,极力反映出不同时期尤其当代的约翰生传记写作和研究现况,提供较为完整的理解约翰生著书立说,知行同一的智慧人生画面,试图揭示约翰生何以成为谈不完的话题. = Drawing upon more than a dozen popular and influential biographical sources, this book provides a chronological account of Samuel Johnson’s life alongside various biographers' evaluations of his character and thought. It strives to reflect the current state of Johnsonian biographical writing and scholarship across different eras—particularly the contemporary period—offering a comprehensive portrait of a life defined by the wisdom of "the unity of knowledge and action" in his writings and conduct. Ultimately, the work seeks to reveal why Johnson remains an inexhaustible subject of discussion.
広島修道大学学術選書 = Hiroshima shūdō daigaku gakujutsu sensho
希望の本質: サミュエル・ジョンソンの思想と文学 / Kibō no honshitsu: Samyueru Jonson no shisō to bungaku [The Essence of Hope: The Thought and Literature of Samuel Johnson]
厦门: 厦门大学出版社, 2020: Sha men da xue chu ban she
塞缪尔·约翰逊《诗人传》对英诗经典的建构 = Samuel Johnson's formation of a poetic canon in the Lives of the Poets
本书以约翰逊的《诗人传》为考察对象,从诗歌批评史的角度来检视这位18世纪大文豪的批评观如何塑造和影响《诗人传》某些传主的经典地位.本书讨论的是《诗人传》中的弥尔顿,德莱顿,蒲柏,还有两大诗人群体— — "玄学派"诗人和十八世纪中期诗人.Ben shu yi yue han xun de shi ren chuan wei kao cha dui xiang,Cong shi ge pi ping shi de jiao du lai jian shi zhei wei 18 shi ji da wen hao de pi ping guan ru he su zao he ying xiang shi ren chuan mou xie chuan zhu de jing dian di wei.Ben shu tao lun de shi shi ren chuan zhong de mi er dun,De lai dun,Pu bo,Hai you liang da shi ren qun ti"xuan xue pai"shi ren he shi ba shi ji zhong qi shi ren.
En 1773, Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) y James Boswell (1740–1795) emprendieron un viaje por el norte de Escocia, que dio lugar a dos libros memorables. Asistimos en ellos a todo tipo de vicisitudes y personajes, curiosidades y anécdotas en un recorrido de cuatro meses que conduce a los autores por numerosos y pintorescos lugares. En el Diario hallamos dos caracteres bien distintos en delicioso diálogo: el de alguien que comenta, opina y tiene salidas de ingenio desde la madurez, y el de un hombre, aún joven, que aporta el conocimiento de primera mano del país y sus gentes. Como señaló Borges, Boswell quiso subrayar sus diferencias con Johnson como Cervantes marcó la disparidad entre Don Quijote y Sancho o como Arthur Conan Doyle haría lo propio entre Holmes y Watson. El libro, una fuente impagable de datos y erudiciones varias, posee un alto valor histórico y antropológico y ofrece una mirada privilegiada sobre un paisaje de enorme atractivo y una sociedad que aún se rige por el sistema de los clanes. Pero, sobre todo, es una obra de gran calidad literaria, en la que no faltan la finura psicológica y el humor. Aunque el Viaje de Johnson (1775) fue publicado hace algunos años en nuestra lengua, el Diario de Boswell (1785) no había sido vertido antes al español. Lo hace ahora Antonio Rivero Taravillo, traductor de grandes autores de la lengua inglesa y buen conocedor de la literatura gaélica.
La Vida de Samuel Johnson, de James Boswell, «delicia y orgullo del mundo de habla inglesa», según G. B. Hill, es considerada unánimemente la biografía más lograda que se ha escrito jamás. Pese a que Johnson, coloso de la literatura de su tiempo, era un personaje complejo, Boswell logra presentárnoslo en su insólita riqueza gracias a su conocimiento personal y al minucioso trabajo de recopilación de los testimonios de muchos otros contemporáneos: a través de las enjundiosas conversaciones con Johnson, de sus cartas, poemas, traducciones, panegíricos, críticas o artículos para revistas, va emergiendo el personaje desde su juventud hasta su consagración, con tal viveza que el lector tiene la impresión de conocerlo como si hubiera tenido el privilegio de tratarlo. Y así, merced a una prodigiosa combinación de afecto, respeto, destreza y rigor, Boswell consiguió dar vida al personaje retratado para que trascendiera su existencia temporal y propagara su influjo durante siglos. No es extraño que el tiempo haya convertido la Vida de Samuel Johnson en un auténtico modelo del género biográfico.
Critical Interpretation of Samuel Johnson
へそ曲がりジョンソン博士の人生パズル: 十八世紀巨人のことば / Juhachiseiki kyojin no kotoba [The Puzzle of Dr. Johnson's Life: The Words of the Eighteenth Century Giants]
上海: 上海译文出版社有限公司: Shang hai yi wen chu ban she you xian gong si
约翰生传: 全译本 = The life of Samuel Johnson / Quan yi ben = The life of Samuel Johnson
本书记述了十八世纪著名英国诗人,散文家,批评家和英语词典编纂家约翰生的一生,并介绍了其代表作等.Ben shu ji shu le shi ba shi ji zhu ming ying guo shi ren,San wen jia,Pi ping jia he ying yu ci dian bian zuan jia yue han sheng de yi sheng,Bing jie shao le qi dai biao zuo< la sai la si> deng.
北京: 社会科学文献出版社, 2018: She hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she
走近约翰生 = Approaching Samuel Johnson / Zou jin yue han sheng = Approaching samuel Johnson
本书汇集作者十余篇文论,分别介绍和约翰生小说,约翰生与启蒙运动,约翰生的诗学观及其政治,宗教,哲学和全球化思想.国外约翰生学研究概况,呈现英美澳的研究进展和学习活动常态.Ben shu hui ji zuo zhe shi yu pian wen lun,Fen bie jie shao yue han sheng chuan he yue han sheng xiao shuo xing fu gu,Yue han sheng yu qi meng yun dong,Yue han sheng de shi xue guan ji qi zheng zhi,Zong jiao,Zhe xue he quan qiu hua si xiang.Guo wai yue han sheng xue yan jiu gai kuang,Cheng xian ying mei ao de yan jiu jin zhan he xue xi huo dong chang tai.
Entwürfe des Glücks und des guten Lebens in englischen Romanen vom 18. zum 20. Jahrhundert
El diccionario de Samuel Johnson: Usos, costumbres y definiciones de las palabras que conforman la lengua inglesa: incluye términos que aparecen en Shakespeare y otros grandes autores de la literatura británica
This edition, translated and introduced by Gonzalo Torné, compiles the primary prefatory materials of Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary, including the Plan addressed to Lord Chesterfield, the Preface, and the History of the English Language. Torné’s introductory essay argues for the Dictionary’s status as a 'literary form,' highlighting Johnson’s aphoristic definitions and his struggle with the 'inevitable flexibility' of language. The Plan outlines Johnson’s early ambition to stabilize the English tongue, while the Preface famously records his transition from optimistic reformer to a weary scholar acknowledging that 'no dictionary dedicated to a living language can be perfect.' The History of the English Language provides a chronological survey of the tongue’s development from its Saxon roots through the Elizabethan 'Golden Age,' using excerpts from authors such as Chaucer, More, and Surrey to illustrate linguistic evolution. The main body of the work presents a curated selection of Johnson's original definitions, translated into Spanish, which preserve his distinctive wit and moralizing tone. Johnson identifies the lexicographer as a 'harmless drudge' and uses the dictionary format to offer 'brief lessons in morality' and detective-like etymological inquiries. Editorial policies focus on the tension between prescriptive goals and the descriptive reality of linguistic change caused by 'commerce, translation, and the passage of time.'
北京: 中国社会科学出版社, 2015: Zhong guo she hui ke xue chu ban she
塞缪尔·约翰逊的道德关怀 / Sai mou erYue han xun de dao de guan huai [Samuel Johnson's moral concern]
本书将约翰逊的观点置于当时相应的历史背景中, 主要聚焦于约翰逊的社会道德观, 政治观念和文学批评, 偶尔论及他的宗教思想.从文字上把握原文主旨, 尽可能利用较新的传记研究材料和18世纪历史, 政治, 文学和社会的研究成果, 证明约翰逊伦理思想同英国现代化情境的相关性.Ben shu jiang yue han xun de guan dian zhi yu dang shi xiang ying de li shi bei jing zhong, Zhu yao ju jiao yu yue han xun de she hui dao de guan, Zheng zhi guan nian he wen xue pi ping, Ou er lun ji ta de zong jiao si xiang. Cong wen zi shang ba wo yuan wen zhu zhi, Jin ke neng li yong jiao xin de chuan ji yan jiu cai liao he 18 shi ji li shi, Zheng zhi, Wen xue he she hui de yan jiu cheng guo, Zheng ming yue han xun lun li si xiang tong ying guo xian dai hua qing jing de xiang guan xing.
重返昨日世界: 从塞缪尔·约翰逊到亚当·斯密,一群塑造时代的人 / cong Saimiu'er Yuehanxun dao Yadang Simi, yi qun su zao shi dai de ren [Returning to Yesterday's World: From Samuel Johnson to Adam Smith, a Group of People Who Shaped an Era]
Vida de Samuel Johnson, habría logrado la obra de arte tan esperada. Giorgio Manganelli, tomándose las palabras de Schwob casi como un desafío, escribió este breve texto sobre la vida de Johnson, el intelectual inglés más importante del siglo XVIII. Escrita en 1961 para ser leída en el Terzo Programma de la Rai, la Vida de Samuel Johnson que aquí presentamos es el resultado de una cuidada labor de transcripción a partir del manuscrito de Manganelli. El escritor italiano no sólo cuenta la vida de Johnson desde el día en que, siendo muy joven, llegó a Londres procedente de Lichfield, sino que traza también un retrato colectivo a través de la visión de sus tres amigos, el escritor Richard Savage, el libertino Topham Beauclerk y su biógrafo James Boswell. Pese a que tanto Johnson como Manganelli pertenecen indudablemente a épocas distintas, constituyen sin embargo un fascinante caso de simbiosis. Manganeso sentía una gran afinidad por la obra y figura de Johnson, de quien dice que fue «el primer héroe de la sociedad de masas», de una sociedad capaz de inventarse mitos colectivos y desarrollarlos. Y no sólo eso: la melancolía, la hipocondría y la desventura de Johnson son también las de Manganelli. Autor y personaje mezclados en un texto extraordinario.
My Sam Johnson: A Biography for General Readers
Publisher's blurb: "Samuel Johnson Illustrated is a unique introduction to six of Johnson's allegories featured in the Rambler together with ‘The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe, found in his Cell' which Johnson thought was the best of all he ever wrote. The keynote to the present compilation is the extraordinary imaginative power Johnson instils in his writings which in turn stimulates the reader's own personal creative experience. It is a new approach that draws attention to the influence of post-Newtonian science on mid-eighteenth-century art which valued mental imagery, ‘seeing in the mind's eye,' just as Newton had done to produce his synthesis of one universal law. For Johnson, too, ‘words were images of things' and he often used the power of creative visualisation in an act of contemplation in his allegories. The introduction as well as the analytical notes that precede each text aim to facilitate the reader's understanding of the peculiarities of mid-eighteenth-century aesthetics and of Johnson's own affinity to the arts. The contributors have also taken into account a striking characteristic of the mid-eighteenth century — that of the affinity between poetry and painting, in the words of Samuel Johnson, ‘two sister arts,' and the book has benefited from over fifty original illustrations by Dr. Ana Stefanova, a psychologist and amateur artist and Svetlan Stefanov, a visual artist. As an inter-disciplinary project, the book has allowed its four contributors to broaden their critical perspective in a truly mid-eighteenth-century fashion, and travelling beyond their own fields of study, they have produced a truly exciting compilation."
Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, and the Restoration of Shakespeare
Publisher's blurb: "This book explores what remains an under-studied aspect of Samuel Johnson's profile as a person and writer — namely, his attitude to social improvement. The interpretive framework provided here is cross-disciplinary, and applies perspectives from social and cultural history, legal history, architectural history and, of course, English literature. This allows Johnson's writings to be read against the peculiarities of their historical milieu, and reveals Johnson in a new light — as an advocate of social improvement for human betterment. Considering the multiplicity of narrative modes that have been employed, the book points to the blurred boundaries and overlapping between history, testimony and fiction, and argues that a future biography of Samuel Johnson has to recognise that throughout his life he valued the utilitarian aspect of his manifesto as a writer to impart a more charitable attitude in the pursuit of a more caring society."
1773 Scotland: An Illustrated Account of Johnson & Boswell's Tour
Publisher's blurb: "In 1773, the Scottish James Boswell persuaded his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the Highlands of Scotland. Johnson was well known for his literary works and his dictionary. The two travelers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern coasts of Scotland. They proceeded into the Highlands and spent several weeks on various islands in the Hebrides. After a visit to Boswell's Estate at Auchinleck, the two returned to Edinburgh. Johnson published his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in 1775. A separate travel journal, The Journal of a tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson L.L.D., by Boswell was published in 1785. The two narratives are very different in approach — Johnson concentrated on Scotland, and Boswell focused on Johnson. This book contains excerpts form the original text and features historically re-created paintings of locations visited by the travelers. This illustrated book was completed in 2018 over 200 years after the original tour. It was the effort of a 20-year project beginning in 1998. Although the author and artist did not walk directly in the footsteps of Boswell and Johnson, their journey was retraced during multiple travels throughout Scotland. The project culminated in a stay at the restored familial home of Boswell — Auchinleck House. 1773 Scotland contains 65 illustrations that retrace Johnson & Boswell's tour."
'A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland' and 'A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson'
This edition presents the complete texts of Johnson’s 1775 Journey and the 1786 third edition of Boswell’s Journal, organized sequentially to facilitate comparative study. Barnes and Lynch provide a comprehensive introduction exploring the "interconnected origins" of the narratives, the political aftermath of the Jacobite uprisings, and the intellectual ferment of the Scottish Enlightenment. Editorial intervention is characterized by minimal modernization, preserving original punctuation and idiosyncratic spellings while removing running quotation marks and regularizing initial capitals. The volume incorporates a rich critical apparatus, including a "Note on the Text" identifying nine primary information sources, a "Note about Money" detailing pre-decimal currency, and a detailed chronology. Extensive explanatory notes, placed at the back to ensure an "uninterrupted reading experience," synthesize historical context with annotations from Sir Walter Scott, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and John Wilson Croker. The editors also include a biographical index and a glossary featuring Johnson's own definitions. Barnes and Lynch argue that while Johnson’s mode is "geography and ethnography," Boswell’s is "biography and memoir," focusing on "Johnson himself who comes to stand for something bigger."
This definitive edition, the first since 1974, presents all the poetry of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), including his play, Irene, with detailed wide-ranging commentary. It has been expertly edited with attention to the extant manuscripts and all relevant printings. The volume includes the entirety of Johnson's verse in all its generic diversity: including satire, ode, elegy, verse drama, and verse prayer. The poems are presented in their original spelling and punctuation with extensive commentary on their literary background-biblical, classical, and modern-as well as careful explanation of unusual words, allusions to historical figures, and references to contemporary events that appear in the poems. Proceeding chronologically, this edition also situates Johnson's verse in the context of his life from his early days in Lichfield to his career as an author in London. Unlike all earlier editions, the present offering provides full translations of all the Latin and Greek poems on which Johnson based so much of his English verse. Correspondingly, it provides the English poems which some of his Latin verse translates. Neither in the presentation of the verse nor in the commentary does this edition assume a command of foreign languages: it aims to be useful for all students of Samuel Johnson's poetry.
The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Johnson
DeMaria and Hitchens trace Johnson’s transformation from a provincial bookseller’s son into a monumental figure of British letters. This biographical and critical narrative emphasizes Johnson’s "extraordinary intellectual gifts" and his lifelong struggle with "religious melancholy" and physical tics. The authors examine his "de facto" editorship of the Gentleman’s Magazine and his emergence as a prominent moralist through The Rambler. Central to the work is an analysis of Johnson’s scholarly "dual achievement": compiling a foundational dictionary and a landmark edition of Shakespeare. The narrative explores his late-life friendships with Boswell and Piozzi, noting how these relationships shaped his enduring legend. DeMaria and Hitchens dispute the nineteenth-century "ignorant fable" that Boswell created Johnson’s greatness, asserting instead that Johnson’s own writings remain "unignorable" for their generous understanding of human nature. The study characterizes Johnson as a versatile, skeptical thinker who advocated for "clear[ing] your mind of cant" and whose excoriating views on slavery and imperialist cruelty maintain modern relevance. Chapter 1, 'Life and Times', surveys the subject’s biographical trajectory from provincial origins to metropolitan fame, emphasizing how physical and psychological afflictions informed a complex religious and political worldview. Chapter 2, 'Journalist', examines early career drudgery at the Gentleman’s Magazine and the evolution of the periodical essay, highlighting a commitment to using ephemeral media for moral instruction. Chapter 3, 'Poet and Storyteller', explores verse and fiction as vehicles for personal expression, focusing on the pervasive theme of human vanity and the elusive nature of happiness. Chapter 4, 'Scholar', evaluates philological achievements in the Dictionary and the Shakespeare edition, framing them as monumental exercises in empirical humanism and textual discipline. Chapter 5, 'Critic', analyzes the reconciliation of objective principles with vigorous personal judgment, asserting that literature must ultimately be measured by its service to truth and general nature. Chapter 6, 'Social and Political Thinker', investigates foundational commitments to social order, hierarchy, and compassion, viewing political structures as secondary to individual moral responsibility and religious duty. Chapter 7, 'Biographer', addresses the preference for life-writing as the most useful literary genre, arguing that the realistic depiction of human experience best facilitates moral imitation and psychological insight. Chapter 8, 'Legend', traces the posthumous transformation of a complex author into a monumental cultural icon, noting how biographical distortions have both obscured and preserved his intellectual legacy.
Strange Words: For Tenor and Violoncello
Duration: approximately 11 min Includes biographical notes in English and German Words by Isaac Newton, William Blake and from Johnson's Dictionary Cello part includes tenor part as cue
Fantasy -- The phoenix -- Rose -- The fairy funeral -- Mystery
Hodge, Dr. Johnson's Cat: For B♭ Clarinet and Tenor/Speaker
1. Dr. Johnson defines a cat and a mouse -- 2. James Boswell describes his friend, Samuel Johnson -- 3. Vermin: any noxious animal. Used commonly for small creatures -- 4. Sneeze: to emit wind audibly, by the nose
Includes score in C and transposed score Cover title With program notes in English Texts by Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and the composer Words printed separately as text
Saʻdī va Jānsūn: du nāʹhamzabān-i hamʹdil: taḥlīl-i taṭbīqī-i Gulistān-i Saʻdī va Rāslās-i Jānsūn
Lee and his contributors challenge the notion that Johnsonian studies have reached a point of exhaustion, arguing instead that Johnson's "inexhaustible" writings remain urgently relevant to contemporary cultural concerns. The volume is divided into two sections: "Re-Reading Specific Texts" and "Re-Mapping Larger Themes and Issues." Chapters in the first section examine the Dictionary through the lens of Johnson’s marginalia in Shakespeare; the "utopian intertextuality" of the poem London; the controversial inclusions and exclusions in the Lives of the Poets; the "consolation philosophy" found in Johnson’s private devotions; and his complex, anti-imperialist stance in Taxation No Tyranny. The second section explores broader conceptual categories, including Johnson's relationship to environmental sustainability; his heterodox identity as both critic and poet; his interactions with children and concepts of childhood; his epistemological ambivalence toward autobiography; and the recovery of "olfactory reality" or "osmology" in his work and circle. Contributors such as Lynda Mugglestone, Greg Clingham, and John Richetti demonstrate how Johnson's "empirical temper" and "moral earnestness" intersect with modern academic disciplines. Lee concludes that Johnson continues to serve as a vital "primer of criticism" that rewards scriptible reading and offers fresh points of departure for future inquiry into 18th-century literature.
Rasselas: The Enigma and the 'Agile Music'
This essay reads Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759) against the background of negative or apophatic theology and argues that it is unique among Johnson's works in expressing a sense of life as an enigma. The silent or hidden symbol of the story is the Giza Sphinx, one of the foundational symbols of such theology: the second-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria, whose works Johnson owned, associated the enigmas of the Hebrew Bible with the mystery of the Egyptian sphinxes. More widely, Rasselas contains absent objects and symbols, enigmatic silences and responses, hidden images and paradoxes, self-defeating dualisms and habits of style, apophatic philosophy ("philosophy can tell no more"), and an enigmatic conclusion ("nothing"). The apophatic quality is embodied in the text through what Jorge Luis Borges refers to as Rasselas's "agile music," the subtle, flexible management of narrative voices, which generates a distinctive kind of attention in the reader.
Recent studies have cast much light on the formerly shadowy figure of Thomas Cumming (?1714-1774), a long-time friend of Samuel Johnson and known popularly as the Fighting Quaker. A starting point for these studies has been the scurrilous prose satire, "Memoirs of Tomocomingo, the celebrated political Quaker," that appeared in the Town and Country Magazine in January 1774, five months before his death. The attack, which combined biographical truth with exaggeration and pure fiction, was alleged by some to have contributed to his death and serves now as a useful source of information, much of which has been independently verified. Here, Walker argues that the one piece of the satirist's biography of Cumming has not been verified, although he believes it can now be explained.
Labels in the History of Lexicography: From Bailey to Johnson
Textual and Critical Intersections: Conversations with Laurence Sterne and Others
A literary scholar spending years in the company of Laurence Sterne will, if only as a defense mechanism against the many assertions of Sterne's anticipation of postmodernism, find himself arguing for his far more interesting, if less obvious, relationship to modernism. Hence, in a series of essays over the years, I have brought Sterne's writings into proximity with the novels of Marcel Proust, Italo Svevo, Bruno Schulz, and Virginia Woolf; with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche; and with the autobiographical Sentimental Journey of Viktor Shklovsky — an erratic but sufficiently representative sampling of the modernist movement.
A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic
Samuel Johnson was one of eighteenth-century Britain's most famous men of letters. In 1755 he published his Dictionary of the English Language, which became a landmark in the history of language and could be found in the libraries of gentlemen on both sides of the Atlantic, including those of Washington and Jefferson. Johnson was also a prolific literary critic, poet, essayist, and novelist. He was known for his caustic wit and trenchant criticism. He was immortalized in James Boswell's 1791 biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson. While Boswell dedicated thousands of pages to capturing Johnson's wit, Johnson himself offered a
The Social Life of Thomas Cumming, or 'Clubbing' with Johnson's Friend, the Fighting Quaker
Walker investigates the life of Thomas Cumming, a friend of Johnson known as the Fighting Quaker for his role in the 1758 capture of Senegal. Although Cumming was a member of the Society of Friends, he proposed a military expedition that Johnson later defended. Walker uses various eighteenth-century accounts to reconstruct Cumming's social network, which included Johnson and Boswell. Johnson reportedly felt a strong affinity for Cumming's vigorous personality, famously remarking that he liked Cumming because his mind was always at work. The article explores how Cumming navigated his Quaker identity while engaging in military planning and high-level political social circles. Walker demonstrates that Cumming’s presence in Johnson's circle illustrates the diverse and often contradictory social group formations characteristic of the era's clubbable culture.
In some ways the English literary pair that most resembles al-Ḥārith and Abū Zayd is James Boswell (d. 1795) and Samuel Johnson (d. 1784). In both cases we have a narrator eager to learn from, and to impress, an older contemporary famous for his command of language. The senior member of the pair does not disappoint when it comes to eloquence, though in both cases he occasionally exploits his admirer or treats him with contempt. This Imposture, which is Englished after Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, involves a game similar to one played in Johnson's literary circle....
Choosing the Outsider Role: Virginia Woolf's 1903 diary; James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Lounsberry examines Woolf's 1903 encounter with Boswell and his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Woolf finds in Boswell a "natural artist" whose focus on "minute particulars" and "inspired presentation of self" validates her own emerging writerly sensibility. The text highlights shared traits between Johnson and Woolf, specifically a "constitutional melancholy" and minds that function like a "mill" for processing subjects. Boswell’s journal serves as a "preservative act" that fires Woolf to read "all I can find of Johnson." Lounsberry details Woolf’s lifelong engagement with Boswellian "experiments," including her 1909 review titled "The Genius of Boswell" and her eventual refusal to write his biography. Woolf concludes that Boswell’s success lies in his ability to "cut out a whole chunk of the earth and air and stick it all alive under a glass case."
Clingham identifies a previously unknown drawing of Johnson and Boswell found in the unpublished memoirs of Lady Anne Barnard. The drawing, likely executed in the 1810s based on an initial sketch from 1773, depicts the pair during their visit to Edinburgh. Lady Anne’s memoir recounts her meeting with the "Ursus Major" at the home of Alexander Dick, where she "stole his likeness" as he spoke. Clingham observes that while the finished drawing reflects the influence of canonical portraits by John Opie and Joshua Reynolds, it presents a uniquely "happy" and "chubby" rendition of Johnson. The article analyzes Lady Anne’s compositional practice and her perception of Johnson’s "goodness of heart" despite his "uncouth" exterior. This discovery provides a rare contemporary visual record of the two men together, captured by a woman who knew them socially.
幸福谷: 拉赛拉斯王子的故事 = The history of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia
Ruxin announces the publication of the first Chinese edition of Rasselas, translated by Tian Ming Cai with bibliographic assistance from John Byrne. The review outlines the shifting reception of Johnson in China, noting his pre-1949 prominence followed by a post-revolutionary dismissal due to his "counterrevolutionary" and religious associations. Cai argues for a Johnsonian resurgence, suggesting that Johnson’s concepts of subordination and social harmony offer a rationalist framework for modern Chinese stability, while simultaneously acknowledging Johnson’s defense of popular resistance against tyranny. Despite the inherent difficulty of translating Johnson’s complex style, the text notes that the translation successfully captures the original's meaning and spirit, as verified by scholar Gunnar Malmqvist. Cai positions Johnson’s "broad mind and humanity" as a necessary antidote to the "Vanity of Human Wishes" and the prevalence of the "dangerous imagination" in the twenty-first century.
拉赛拉斯王子漫游记 = The history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia
年轻的阿比西尼亚王子拉赛拉斯,自幼被幽禁在可满足一切欲望的幸福谷,他厌倦了谷中岁月,设法逃离幸福谷,去外界寻找幸福的真谛。他同妹妹妮可娅、诗人因列沿尼罗河一路游历,穿越非洲,抵达亚洲,探访各个阶层的各色人群,他们见到智慧的演说家、拥有一切的总督、山中的隐士、疯癫的天文学家、年轻的智者,也经历着各种意外......
Stone reviews Johnson in Japan, an essay collection edited by Ogawa and Suzuki, highlighting Johnson’s unique reception history outside the Anglosphere. The collection is a hybrid: an account of Johnson's place in Japanese print culture, beginning with Rasselas as a set educational text, and a sample of Japanese Johnson scholarship. Essays survey academic trends and offer case studies, such as the influence of Rambler 4 on Natsume Sōseki's reading of Austen. The volume emphasizes the stimulation and insights gained from studying textual emigration and non-Anglophone scholarly traditions.
Hitchings's book is a lively series of essays on the life and thought of Johnson, blending biographical, literary, and philosophical elements to explore themes of mortality and la condition humaine. The thirty-eight chapters consider the origins of Johnson's conclusions, going beyond his aphorisms. The work argues that early struggles, including clinical depression and financial insecurity, contributed to Johnson's compassionate side. Hitchings explores Johnson's rejection of the Romantic notion of inspired genius, seeing the genius instead as an "exact surveyor" of the world whose insights require hard work. The author also details Johnson's attitude toward charity, challenging the deserving/undeserving poor distinction, and his role as a mentor to writers like Lennox and Burney. The conclusion emphasizes Johnson's perspective that individuals are just one "atom of the mass of humanity," underscoring basic equality.
Quintus Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, Cicero, and Johnson's First Sermon
Lee identifies the source of a Latin maxim in Johnson’s Sermon 1 on marriage, locating it in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s Historiae Alexandri Magni: "amicitia inter pares firmissima" ("friendship is strongest among equals"). This martial context suggests marriage as a conflict and parallels Johnson's condemnation of inequality within the domestic sphere ("There is no friendship between master and slave"). Lee argues Johnson's known interest in Q. Curtius, Cicero, and Plutarch (whose works serve as analogues and possible sources for other maxims in the sermon) suggests the sermon was likely composed in the early 1750s, contemporaneous with The Rambler.
John Moir and His Brief Encounters with Samuel Johnson
Lee provides an account of the life and works of John Moir, a Scottish Presbyterian-turned-Anglican curate, focusing on his prolific but mediocre writing career and four brief encounters with Johnson's world. Moir's financial struggles as a curate led him to rely on his publications, including the work that preserved Johnson's "Fragment on the Character and Duty of an Academick." Lee reveals Moir's shifting opinion of Johnson, from defending him against charges of venality to a later vicious satirical portrait accusing him of becoming too comfortable. Moir's actions, such as living in Johnson's Bolt Court house, suggest he sought to capitalize on Johnson's fame, yet his own lack of originality is evident in his plagiarized character of Johnson.
Lee confirms and extends previous intertextual analysis of Johnson's use of Statius's Thebaid (VI.400-01) in his periodical mottoes, linking them to Pope's Windsor Forest. Lee identifies a missing link: Dryden's Preface to Dufresnoy, where Dryden quotes the Statius verses and notes the difficulty of translation. Johnson's known familiarity with and extensive quotation from Dryden's preface likely motivated him to connect the lines with Pope in Rambler 2 and Adventurer 45. Lee argues that Johnson's classical mottoes, exemplified by Statius’s Silvae tags in a birthday prayer and Rambler 155, form an integral component of his essays, refuting scholars who dismiss their importance.
Johnson in Japan collects essays by Japanese scholars exploring Samuel Johnson's profound cultural influence during and after Japan's opening to the West. The book reveals how Johnson's works, particularly Rasselas, became highly popular, often serving to reinforce Japanese values like duty and moral principles during modernization. Hideichi Eto's chapter surveys the history of Johnson studies across various Japanese eras, noting its peak between 1980 and 2010. Other chapters examine biographical traditions, the impact of eccentric scholar Tomotsu Morowoka’s view of Johnson as a tea advocate, and the reception of Johnsonian critical perspectives by author Sōseki Natsume. The volume's significance lies in establishing a scholarly bridge to enrich the understanding of a "global Samuel Johnson."
James Boswell's Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript in Four Volumes
Lee reviews the fourth volume of the Yale Research Edition of the manuscript of Boswell's Life. The volume covers the years 1780-1784 and completes the set, which began in 1994. Lee emphasizes that the MS edition is essential for serious students of the Life and effectively refutes Greene's claims that Boswell's biography was merely a transfer of his personal notebooks. The manuscript reveals Boswell's conscientious writing process, including his scrupulous revisions, deletions for narrative coherence, and adaptation of material from correspondents. The volume also provides identifications of previously conjectured figures (including Boswell himself) and offers a glimpse into Johnson's intellectual mind and pronunciation.
Lee reviews the selection from the Yale Works, noting it is a thematically arranged anthology drawing from the twenty-three volumes of the Yale Edition. He dedicates the review to the late Howard D. Weinbrot. The Yale Anthology is praised for being more accurate than the Oxford selection, having a larger font, and using easy-to-locate footnotes. While less comprehensive than the Oxford anthology, it includes five of the Lives of the Poets almost in their entirety. The notes incorporate updated scholarship from the Yale Edition.
Howard Weinbrot and the Precincts of Enlightenment
Imitation and Biography: Richard Savage and the Misreading of London
Johnson's Irascibles and the Good Work of Bad Stories
Johnson, Dodd, and the Concentrated Sententia
Johnson and Stendhal: A French Connection
18th Century Samuel Johnson Letter to Young Girl Sells for £38,460
Phillips reports on the discovery and auction of a previously unknown letter from Johnson to 12-year-old Sophia Thrale, daughter of Piozzi. Found in a Gloucestershire country house, the document depicts Johnson praising Sophia's mathematical aptitude. The sale, conducted by Chorley's auctioneers, reached £38,460, significantly exceeding initial estimates. Phillips notes that the letter will remain in British ownership. The article situates the find within Johnson's broader legacy as the compiler of the 1755 Dictionary and his association with the Thrale family.
Who Was Samuel Johnson, What Did He Do, Why Is He so Important?
Sommerlad surveys Johnson’s literary career and biographical legacy, marking the 308th anniversary of his birth. The text outlines Johnson’s early poverty in London, his periodical work for The Rambler and The Idler, and the production of the 1755 Dictionary. It identifies Rasselas and the biographies of Shakespeare and Savage as key outputs.1 Sommerlad attributes Johnson's enduring cultural presence to Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, which recorded his verbal wit and interactions with Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick. Brief mention is made of Thrale’s 1786 reminiscences and modern depictions of Johnson in popular media.
Household Effects: Johnson's Coffee-Pot and Twain's Effigy
Clarke reviews Watson’s thematic study of the origins and evolution of writer’s house museums, emphasizing the tension between "authenticity and illusion." The text highlights how objects like Johnson’s silver coffee pot (misidentified as a teapot) and Piozzi’s tea-set at Gough Square serve as iconic attractions despite tenuous or tangential historical connections to the specific sites. Clarke notes that the Gough Square house, though stripped of original furniture, uses an "impressive library" and the "evocative space of the garret" to memorialize the composition of the Dictionary. The review explores how these museums "put the reader into the imagined presence of the author," using domestic space to replace reading with a feigned acquaintance. Watson’s analysis of the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 and various relics further illustrates the "power of immediate connection" sought by visitors.
Chisholm reviews Oliver Soden's biography of Christopher Smart's cat, Jeoffry, created through the voice of the cat during the poet's confinement for mental illness. The book uses the famous Jubilate Agno lines to anthropomorphize Jeoffry's experience as a companion to Smart, who suffered from what might be termed manic depression. Soden creates vivid tableaux of Georgian London, including Jeoffry's origins near Mother Douglas's brothel and his encounters with Johnson and Hodge. The book highlights the consolation and blessing Smart found in his cat, whose eventual canonization in Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb was influenced by Smart's incantatory work.
Johnsoniana: The New Yorker, 16 November 2020
Mason examines Emre’s review of Sianne Ngai’s theory of the gimmick, which cites Johnson’s 1775 critique of Gulliver’s Travels as an early instance of accusing a writer of gimmickry. Johnson disputes the artistic merit of Swift’s "big men and little men," arguing that such a premise allows a writer to bypass the "Toil of Study" and "Knowledge of Nature" required for genuine literature. The text notes Johnson’s specific praise for the "inventory of articles" and the description of the watch despite his general dismissal of the work's conceptual ease. Mason further observes that Johnson’s "piquant comment" is absent from Boswell’s original journal entry, appearing only in the Life.
Johnsoniana: The Times Literary Supplement, 31 July 2020
Druin Burch applies a Johnsonian aphorism regarding the hidden satisfaction in discussing misfortune to characterize the human response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The observation, recorded in the Life by Boswell from the recollections of Langton, suggests that verbalizing hardship provides a "not disagreeable" quality to the speaker. Mason notes the shared responsibility between Boswell and Langton for the specific phrasing of the remark. The text highlights the enduring relevance of Johnson’s psychological insights during modern global crises.
Johnsoniana: The New Yorker, 27 January 2020
Clingham examines Cep’s review of Vincent Brown’s Tacky’s Revolt, noting how Cep uses Johnson’s "abolitionist views" to establish the moral parameters of the Atlantic slave trade. The text highlights Johnson’s famous toast to the "next insurrection of the negroes" and suggests his anti-slavery position was "influenced by Barber's experience of enslavement." Clingham references Basker’s argument that Boswell "tainted" his biography of Johnson to downplay the latter’s abolitionism during the parliamentary debates on the slave trade. The text notes Cep’s misattribution of a 1759 discussion of Oroonoko to Johnson.
Baldwin discusses Tennyson's admiration for Johnson, noting that the poet praised his "good sense" and grave earnestness in satire, particularly in London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Tennyson and his friend Arthur Coleridge often capped each other with Johnson quotes, though Tennyson ridiculed the opening lines of The Vanity of Human Wishes. Baldwin questions the sourcing of a "disagreeable story" about Johnson told by his godchild, Miss L., noting that Tennyson advised against hawking about the "oddities and angularities of great men," a response looking much like an imitation of Johnsonian utterance.
Sharma analyzes the character Thales in Johnson's London, arguing that his xenophobic tirade against corruption and foreign invaders fails as political satire because his critique is driven primarily by personal resentment at his own failure to secure wealth and social advancement. Thales criticizes others for succeeding in superficial aggrandisement while desperately yearning for the material luxury he condemns. Sharma concludes that Thales loses credibility as a social commentator by subordinating social problems to his private goals, revealing London as a narrative concerned with the universal unfulfilled desires of humankind.
Samuel Johnson and the Poetry of David Ferry
Meyers explores Johnson's influence on the poetry of David Ferry. Ferry adapted Johnson's autobiographical Latin poem "The Lesson" (about swimming) to show the continuity of nature despite the "axe of time." Meyers highlights Ferry's versification of Johnson's vivid prose description of the crippled Alexander Pope in "Johnson on Pope," compressing the facts into a sympathetic portrayal that transforms Pope's physical defects into art. Finally, Meyers analyzes Ferry's de moriendi poem "That Evening at Dinner," which uses Johnson's quotes from the Review of Jenyns and Rambler 78 to illuminate the mystery of life, suffering, and death, affirming Johnson's resonance in 21st-century poetry.
Clingham reports on finding an early 19th-century annotated edition of Benjamin Franklin's Life and Works (1815), possibly owned by the Welsh printer and inventor John Jones of Llanrwst. The handwritten annotations on the endpapers, believed to be Jones's, refer to Johnson's political pamphlets and quote Rev. William Jones praising Johnson’s style as a "great master" of "truth and virtue" in his political tracts. A second annotation quotes Bishop Jonathan Shipley's humorous anecdote about an American stationer who found a method of levying an "internal tax" in North America, showing Johnson's unexpected presence in a knot of Welsh, American, and political associations.
The Provenance of Johnson's 'Verses Wrote on a Window of an Inn at Calais'
Brown investigates the provenance of the Latin poem "Verses Wrote on a Window of an Inn at Calais," a piece previously included in Johnson's collected poems under "Doubtful Authorship." The poem, found in a manuscript in the autograph of Johnson and attested by Langton, was printed multiple times from 1763 onwards. Brown locates six earlier publications, two predating Johnson's 1775 visit to France, confirming the Yale editors' conclusion that the poem cannot be Johnson's. Brown analyzes textual variants, suggesting the poem was a popular example of literary graffiti and was loosely transmitted, often interpolated (e.g., with a Virgilian line in some versions). The original author remains unknown, but the poem’s popularity among travelers is undeniable.
Curtis reports on a brief instance of Johnsoniana found in The New York Times Book Review feature "By the Book." Biographer John Lahr was asked to name one book that made him who he is today. Lahr answered with Johnson's Lives of the Poets, calling it "the first attempt to analyze poetry in the context of the life which created it." Lahr praised Johnson as an "exemplary critic," noting his prose's witty balance and judgment.
Clarke reviews Weinbrot's Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century, a collection of seventeen essays from the 2011 Huntington Library tercentenary conference, broadened by additional essays. The volume provides a vast overview of current Johnsonian scholarship, organized into six sections covering his mental processes, writings, editorial work, politics, religion/philosophy, and critical afterlife. Highlights include Stuart Sherman on prolepsis, David Fairer on Johnson's mental agility, and F.P. Lock on Johnson's mature politics. The collection showcases strong, incisive essays, offering a broad view of Johnsonian scholarly activity. The review concludes by celebrating the collection's distinguished design and production by the Huntington Library Press.
Sider Jost reviews Tankard’s Facts and Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell, a volume highlighting Boswell’s often-overlooked impulse for improvisation and spontaneity in writing. The collection focuses on Boswell's occasional and journalistic writings, such as "rampageneous" hoaxes, essays, reports, and parodies, many of which were written at speed, a contrast to the painstaking accuracy of The Life of Johnson. Tankard's judicious selection and informed annotation successfully embody the spirit of Boswell the journalist, providing readers with an entertaining and useful resource. Sider Jost recommends the book as a key resource for scholars and teachers of the 18th century.
Dr. Johnson's Doorknob: And Other Significant Parts of Great Men's Houses
Behind every great man are his objects and daily possessions, defined as much by the minutiae of domesticity as by the great works of the man himself. Dr. Johnson's Doorknob, inspired by Liz Workman's National Heritage Revisited series published in England in 2002, is a situationist's catalog of overlooked and highly amusing personal objects from the most famous households in history. From the mantelpieces in the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the crockery in Washington Irving's Sunnyside home and the banisters in the William Morris Gallery, Workman peeked over the velvet ropes and turned an ironic eye on some of the most important historic homes in England and America. Each of the nine chapters in this charming, slipcased package is an anthology in itself, a collection of photographs that celebrate the unsung features of "great" men's homes: there are door handles and banisters from the hallways of Charles Dickens and Jules Verne; the ashtray that held Freud's cigarette butts; and chairs sat on by Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Jefferson. From her photos of Washington's four-poster to John Keats's desk chair and Winston Churchill's floral prints, Dr. Johnson's Doorknob breathes new life into the inhabitants of these homes.
Tankard reviews Workman's book, Dr. Johnson's Doorknob, a handsome illustrated volume focusing on small, supposedly "significant" parts of great men's houses, including Johnson's 17 Gough Square. The book features photographs of items like doorknobs, crockery, and bannisters. Tankard notes the irony of the title and its slyly subversive intent. He questions whether the photographed items are authentic and if they reveal anything about Johnson's taste, especially considering his and Anna Williams's poor eyesight. Tankard concludes the book provides "harmless pleasure" and humor, though it raises unaddressed questions about architectural history and the connection between domestic items and Johnson's personality.
DeMaria notes the application of Johnson’s remark on 'the triumph of hope over experience' to the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies. Jeff Gundlach, a finance professional, used the phrase to critique economic expectations. The text highlights the transition of Johnsonian wisdom from the domestic sphere of marriage to the 'incisive' realm of 21st-century finance.
Turnbull reports a misleading opening sentence from an article by Amy Wilentz in the Los Angeles Times regarding the Huntington Library's bicentenary exhibition for Johnson. The sentence incorrectly states that Johnson "addressed his friends as 'Sirrah.'" Turnbull corrects the record, noting that Boswell's friends were not called "Sirrah" by Johnson. The note serves as a brief "Johnsoniana" item correcting a misperception about Johnson's conversational style with his intimates.
Johnsoniana: The Spectator, 9 May 2015
Baldwin disputes a Spectator columnist's characterization of Johnson’s 'frightful' table manners and alleged social 'grossness.' The analysis challenges the 'unmitigatedly repulsive' image of the lexicographer by contrasting it with the 'fascinated affection' displayed by contemporaries such as Boswell and the Thrales. Baldwin highlights the distinction between Johnson’s physical tics and his genuine social appeal, noting that 'the company of physicians' and ladies of high rank found his presence stimulating rather than merely offensive.}
Johnsoniana: Michael Innes, Appleby Talks Again; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Kinsley identifies a misattribution in Harper Lee’s novel where a quote concerning 'a good man’s life' is incorrectly credited to Johnson. The text notes that while the sentiment echoes Johnsonian morality, the specific phrasing does not appear in the 'ever-expanding list of Johnsonian apocrypha.' Kinsley also references Michael Innes’s use of Johnsonian 'scrupulosity' as a character trait in detective fiction.
Johnsoniana: Message with a Flyer for a Play by James Runcie
The piece, submitted as "Johnsoniana," is a humorous message from James Runcie promoting his play A Word with Dr. Johnson, which focuses on Johnson's Dictionary. The play was scheduled to run at lunchtime performances at the Oran Mor in Glasgow (October 19-24) and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (October 27-31). Runcie notes the play is one hour long, contains jokes, and cheekily warns that "future friendship may be conditional upon attendance."
The article explores the etymological and historical evolution of the word "torpedo" as a metaphor for dullness or sluggishness. It cites a passage from Boswell's Life (c. 1743) where Johnson says Tom Birch is "as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs his faculties." The original "torpedo" is the electric ray, a flatfish whose electric charge can numb. The word's root is the Latin *torpere*, meaning "to make dull," which also gives "torpor." The modern sense of an exploding weapon coexists with the older, narcotic sense, both converging on the idea of a stupefying, "unplugging" contact. The commentary concludes that the long history of writers paralyzed by their craft's tools offers a small comfort.
Hanley examines Bundock’s detailed account of Barber’s life, emphasizing the "influential factor" Barber played in developing Johnson’s "detestation of slavery." The abstract traces Barber’s journey from Jamaica to London, his adoption into the Johnson household at Gough Square, and his service during Johnson’s final years. It notes the legal significance of Johnson’s involvement in the Knight v. Wedderburn trial as a culmination of twenty-seven years with Barber. Hanley details the "acrimonious and at times outwardly racialized controversy" with executor Hawkins following Johnson’s death, leading to the Barber family’s eventual "descent into poverty and obscurity" in Lichfield. The text recognizes the "true legacy" of their thirty-year friendship through Barber’s son, named Samuel.
Johnsoniana: Worth.com, December 2015-January 2016
Kanter's submission quotes a brief profile of finance titan Jeff Gundlach from Worth.com. The profile highlights Gundlach's colorful background and his reputation for being incisive, brilliant, and often right. It concludes with a quote from Gundlach: "The Federal Reserve's apparent desire to raise rates, he recently said, 'is the triumph of hope over experience–just like in marriage.'" The quote is an uncredited allusion to a well-known line from Johnson's Idler 57, a classic Johnsonian sentiment on human persistence and fallibility, which is here used by a modern "Wise Man" of finance.
Johnsoniana: David Astle, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2015
Turnbull critiques modern "ad-speak" and "sensational spelling," citing Johnson’s observation that "large promise is the soul of an advertisement." The text highlights the transition from "plain English" to manipulative "ad-speak" designed to "catch our eye." Turnbull invokes Johnson to explain how modern advertisers "bamboozle or mislead" through "puffery" and pseudo-scientific language. The text warns that the abandonment of grammar serves to "disguise and disfigure" meaning, providing a refuge for "cynically manipulative" public discourse. It notes that celebrities and "spin doctors" now pioneer the same deceptive practices Johnson registered in 18th-century newspapers.
Davidson identifies a literary device in Peter Murphy's And Is There Honey Still For Tea (2015) wherein two brothers, Sir James Digby and Roger, correspond using the 'names and styles' of Johnson and Boswell. Sir James assumes the role of Boswell in this fictional exchange. The text notes that the correspondence ceases midway through the narrative following the death of one character.
Johnsoniana: The Economist, 30 January 2016
This entry summarizes an announcement in The Economist regarding the return of its "Johnson" language column to the print edition. The column, named after Johnson, acknowledges his definitions of "lexicographer" and "oats." It discusses Johnson's nuanced stance on language: though he was an "intellectual writing for an elite audience" who did not shy away from judging "right and wrong," he ultimately declared his task was to "register" the language, not "form" it, knowing that stopping change was like trying to "lash the wind." The column will address contemporary "usage wars" by weighing prescription (authority-based) against description (usage-based), embracing the spirit of humility and descriptive lexicography seen in Johnson's work.
Johnsoniana: The Memes of a Lexicographer
Davis explores the modern-day phenomenon of a Samuel Johnson meme used on the internet to express astonishment or annoyance at something "really stupid." The meme, which debuted around 2012, is an animated graphic (GIF) combining two Reynolds portraits. It depicts Johnson looking intently at a book, then turning his head with a "puzzled, or annoyed, or astonished" expression, often captioned with "DAFUQ DID I JUST READ?" The article notes the meme's use as a kind of digital emoticon, following previous memes like "Ronald McDonald asking 'WTF?'" It humorously questions the meme's potential to end internet stupidity and includes celebratory verses for the lexicographer-turned-meme.
Johnsoniana: '7 Tips for Spotting Samuel Johnson (On the Very Off-Chance That He's Still Alive)'
Schmid and Rogalski offer a humorous, anachronistic field guide for identifying Johnson in the modern era, based on his well-documented personal characteristics and medical history. The tips include looking for "wild gestures" (involuntary body movements and tics) and a "constantly squinty, pink eye" (chronic conjunctivitis, scrofula damage). Other signs include proximity to a cup of tea (drinking up to 40 cups a day for insomnia), wearing the "Amulet" from Queen Anne (a gift following the touching ceremony for scrofula), and possibly consuming a "handful of squill" for dropsy. Finally, watch for "track marks" from frequent bloodletting and a "cowboy walk" resulting from a self-performed surgery on a recurring sarcocele.
DeMaria reviews Seymour’s extensive catalog of the Boswell family library, spanning four generations from James's grandfather to his grandson. The review acknowledges the monumental difficulty of the task because of incomplete, imperfect, and scattered records of the collection's acquisition and dispersion. Cataloging over 4200 items, the work documents a relatively coherent universe of books, detailing their passage through the lives of Boswellians. DeMaria praises the work's immense achievement as a "stay against confusion," lamenting the missing association copies that Boswell likely used when composing the Life of Johnson.
DeMaria reviews Hudson's biography, which examines Johnson's highly complex and often contradictory political thought. The review praises Hudson for moving past the simplistic labels of radical liberal (Greene) and Tory Jacobite (Clarke), preferring a chronological approach that honors Johnson's fierce independence and "spirit of contradiction." Johnson's views evolved, driven by his hatred of cruelty and political cant. The review notes Johnson’s increasing late-life value for social stability and safety, particularly after the Gordon Riots, affirming the biography as the new essential reading on Johnson’s politics.
Davis presents a quotation from comedian Fred Allen found in The Portable Curmudgeon. Allen contrasts the intellectual stature of Johnson's circle with contemporary figures. He asserts that during Johnson's time "they had big men enjoying small talk," whereas the modern era consists of "small men enjoying big talk."
Davidson disputes a misquotation of Johnson in a New York Times piece by Michael P. Lynch. While Lynch attributes the statement "Thus I refute him" to Johnson during the famous rock-kicking incident, Davidson identifies the correct wording as "I refute it thus," citing Boswell's Life of Johnson. Davidson characterizes the actual statement as "far more aggressive and confident" than the version provided by Lynch.
Johnson contributes an excerpt from a Boston Globe interview with Adam Gopnik. Gopnik discusses his preference for rereading classic texts during travel. He identifies Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson as a staple of his nightstand reading, noting it alongside the works of Anthony Trollope.
A Discussion Panel on the Prevalence of Insanity
Davis presents a juxtaposition of Johnson's philosophical thought on mental health with contemporary scientific research. Dr. Imlac's excerpt from Rasselas asserts that "no human mind is in its right state" and that disorders of intellect are common. This is matched by Dr. Jonathan Schaefer's recent research, which suggests mental illnesses are so common that over 80% of the population will develop a diagnosable mental disorder by midlife. The panel highlights the longevity of Johnson's insight into the universality of mental health concerns, suggesting that society should view such illnesses as a normal part of life.
Johnson and Boswell in the 1940's: Wartime Snap-shots from 'Britain in Pictures'
Tankard surveys the wartime illustrated essay series, Britain in Pictures, to assess the cultural presence of Johnson and Boswell in 1940s non-specialist literature. Almost a third of the titles mention them, often for anecdotal color on diverse subjects like English Inns, The English at Table, and British Clubs. This attests to the wide cultural penetration and strong "name recognition" of the Johnson circle. Tankard attributes their ubiquity to Johnson's forceful, aphoristic style and Boswell's "scene"-based biography, which yielded easily isolatable anecdotes usable on a variety of topics.
Bree explores Jane Austen's familiarity with and debt to Johnson's writings, drawing on her brother Henry's testimony that Johnson was Austen's favorite moral writer in prose. Austen's letters and novels, including Mansfield Park, show familiarity with The Idler, Rasselas, and Boswell's Life. Bree argues that beyond explicit references, Austen absorbed Johnson's style, including its precise binary rhythms and aphoristic moralizing, evidenced in her juvenile parody and later sophisticated prose. Austen tested Johnson's moral certainties, tempering his "moral truth" with her own "truth to experience," such as in her conclusion on Willoughby's fate in Sense and Sensibility.
Johnsoniana: The Capital Journal, Topeka, Kansas, 25 April 2018
Menninger notes a mention of Johnson in a column by psychiatrist and humorist Dr. William Glasser. The article quotes Johnson's observation that "the size of a man's understanding might be justly measured by his mirth." Glasser uses the quotation to support the psychological benefits of laughter and a lighthearted perspective on life's difficulties.
Johnsoniana: The Montreal Gazette, Tuesday, 24 January 2017
Kinsley reports on a column by Andrew Phillips in the Montreal Gazette. The piece cites Johnson's assertion that "without truth there must be a dissolution of society." Phillips applies this Johnsonian principle to modern political discourse and the phenomenon of "fake news," emphasizing the continuing relevance of Johnson's moral insistence on factual integrity.
Gleaning the Gleaner: Some Notes on A. L. Reade
Baldwin defends Aleyn Lyell Reade's Johnsonian Gleanings against dismissive critiques, arguing that while Reade was primarily a genealogist, his work is invaluable and provided a great debt to Powell's revised Life. Baldwin notes Reade's anticipation of the "undigested" nature of his work and highlights key aspects of his life and scholarship, including his amateur status, World War I service, and pioneering use of newly available documents like Boswell's notebook. Baldwin also details Reade's collaborators, particularly Percy Laithwaite, who was Reade's man-on-the-spot in Lichfield.
Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson: A Volatile Friendship
Meyers examines the "rare and notable friendship" between Edmund Burke, a leading Rockingham Whig, and the staunch Tory Johnson, emphasizing how their mutual reverence transcended deep political differences. Meyers highlights their temperamental similarities—both being obstinate, opinionated, and competitive—which necessitated a tacit agreement to "shun the subject" of politics. Johnson valued Burke's "knowledge, his genius, his diffusion and affluence of conversation." Burke, an Irish outsider in London, treasured Johnson's acceptance. Meyers cites Johnson's praise of Burke's conversational greatness and Burke’s own anonymous review of Rasselas as tokens of their profound, respectful bond.
Bander reviews Lyle Larsen’s The Johnson Circle: A Group Portrait, which chronicles the history of friendships among ten central figures associated with Johnson, spanning from 1737 to Frances Burney's death in 1840. The book uses a recursive structure in fourteen short chapters to detail the rise and fall of these complex, interpenetrating relationships, including rivalries and jealousies. Bander notes the inherent incompleteness for Johnsonians but finds the later chapters, filled with the brilliant voices of the friends, fun and fascinating, though perhaps overly simplified for serious scholars.
Johnsoniana: Henry Hitchings in The Wall Street Journal, 9 November 2018
Davidson examines Hitchings’ assessment of Johnson’s "architectonic quality" in the Dictionary. The text highlights the "multiform notes" and "scrupulously full commentary" that Hitchings identifies as central to Johnson’s "lexicographical labor." It notes the "novelty" of Johnson’s attempt to "register" rather than "form" the language, recognizing the "wild blunders" and "risible absurdities" inevitable in such a "multiplicity" of work. Davidson focuses on Hitchings’ observation that Johnson’s "rhetorical art" was never "opiated by rising authorial income" but remained a "battling underdog" in the "Hobbesian world" of eighteenth-century London. The text confirms the Dictionary as a "proud possession" that continues to "enlighten" the modern reader’s life.
Johnsoniana: Alexandra Schwartz in The New Yorker, 17 September 2018
Clingham analyzes Schwartz's use of Johnson to critique the "degraded language of public discourse" in the twenty-first century. The text notes Schwartz’s reliance on Rambler 106 to explore the "monumental legacy" of historical truth in an era of "truthiness." It emphasizes Johnson’s role as the "depositary of the public faith" whose commitment to proof serves as a "moral and intellectual corrective" to modern misinformation. Clingham highlights the "reciprocal pleasure" found in Schwartz’s engagement with Johnson’s "pithy wisdom" on the "insidious and seductive kind" of lies that possess the soul. The text concludes that Johnson remains a "formidable friend" to those seeking to "raise life above the middle point of apathy."
Tankard discusses the origin of the metaphor for depression, "the black dog," tracing its association with Johnson through his correspondence with Hester Thrale. Thrale first used the term (16 May 1776) in reference to her husband's melancholy, and Johnson adopted it in subsequent letters. Thrale Piozzi later speculated that the metaphor originated from a story about Apollonius Tyaneus and a spirit in the form of a black dog. Tankard concludes that Johnson's own reading (likely Burton's Anatomy), experience, and imagination combined to popularize the term with its modern meaning of melancholy.
Davis surveys contemporary uses of the Johnson-Berkeley rock-kicking anecdote. David Frum uses it as a symbol of robust common sense and adherence to reality to critique political fictions. Conversely, philosopher Phillip Kitcher views it as an embarrassing act of anti-intellectual ignorance because Berkeley's idealism was itself a form of realism. Davis also describes a life-size bronze sculpture by William Fawke, commissioned by Felix Dennis, which depicts Johnson fiercely kicking the stone, likely presenting him as a heroic champion of reality.
The Chymistry of 'On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet'
Coulter explores Johnson’s "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet" as a distillation (or "chymistry") of Dryden's panegyrical poem "Eleonora." Although differing in meter and style (Johnson's ballad stanzas versus Dryden's pentameter lines), both poems establish themes of charity, talents, and allegory. Johnson's poem, resembling the rooted "new fiction" of his day, draws imaginative power from Dryden's hyperbole: specifically the parable of the talents and the personified Virtues as a Roman triumph. Johnson revises the single talent parable to honor Levet's humble service, transforming a high-flying original into a powerfully concentrated democratic moral lesson.
Johnsoniana: Fritz Liebert and Ian Fleming
Baldwin documents the "extraordinary bibliophilic friendship" between Liebert, first curator of the Beinecke Library, and Fleming. The text details Liebert's role as advisor for Fleming’s "Book-Collecting" column in The Book Collector and his assistance in assembling Fleming’s collection of "books that started something." It highlights Fleming's purchase of a copy of Johnson's Dictionary through Liebert’s guidance, noting Fleming's admiration for the "stark, gritty urbanism" of Johnson's London. Baldwin reveals that Liebert provided Fleming with the "scientific and historical context" for several of the rare volumes mentioned in the Bond novels, suggesting that the "intellectual rigor" of Johnsonian scholarship left a distinct, if hidden, mark on twentieth-century popular fiction.
Baldwin challenges Birkbeck Hill's doubt that Johnson played cricket at Pembroke (1782) because of poor sight. Baldwin argues Johnson's strong frame made him a formidable hitter and notes that many modern cricketers succeed despite poor vision. The piece traces the game's history, noting the 1729 watershed year during Johnson's Oxford time and the subsequent commercialization that drew Johnson’s critical attention. He suggests Johnson would have excelled at "Sledging" (banter). Baldwin closes by asking if Johnson read William Goldwin’s Neo-Latin poem In Certamen Pilae (1706), a valuable guide to early cricket history.
Diefenbach examines Johnson's prescient observations on the dissolution of Highland clan society during his 1773 Tour of Skye, focusing on the role of the tacksmen (chiefs' relatives who managed farms). Johnson visited Tacksmen's homes, where the ancient clan spirit remained, but recognized the shift of chiefs from patriarchs to commercial landlords was dissolving the feudal structure. Johnson defended the tacksman as a capable, long-term manager whose replacement by a "higher bidder" would break the clan. The article concludes with the account of the author's ancestor, Norman Stewart, a Tacksman who emigrated in 1816, fulfilling Johnson's warning about the "epidemick desire of wandering."
DeMaria reviews Lee's New Essays on Samuel Johnson: Revaluation, noting the volume's high quality and blend of seasoned and fresh contributors. He praises Anthony Lee's intertextual work connecting Johnson's London to Pope's satires and John Richetti's articulation of Johnson's kinetic style. Lynda Mugglestone's essay is highlighted for showing how Johnson humanized Caliban by normalizing his vocabulary. Other essays focus on Johnson’s resolutions, childhood curiosity, anti-colonialism, and the "olfaction" of his world. The collection is commended for its intellectual rigor and demonstration of Johnson's continuing appeal.
Johnsoniana: From Anthony Lane, 'Ginmania' (the New Yorker, 9 December 2019)
Lane contrasts reformist zeal with Johnson’s "brisk Tory tolerance" regarding the habits of the poor. Johnson disputes the refusal of alms based on the recipient's potential purchase of gin or tobacco, characterizing such denial as "savage." He argues that these substances serve as necessary "sweeteners of their existence" and "gilding" for the otherwise unbearable "pill" of life. The critique challenges the tendency to strip the lives of the impoverished of all pleasure.
Baldwin offers addenda to Max Beerbohm's relationship with Johnson. Beerbohm, who once satirized Johnson in a broadcast, confessed his admiration for the portrait of Johnson in Edward Newton's A Magnificent Farce, lamenting that the genuinely convincing image was in America. Baldwin also notes Beerbohm's juvenile compositions included Neo-Latin poems, a school pastime he shared with Johnson. The preferred portrait, now at Haverford College, was attributed to Frances Reynolds.
Baldwin contributes to the discussion of the metaphor "the black dog" for depression, which Johnson used in correspondence with Hester Thrale. He refutes the assertion that the expression originates with Horace, noting the Latin in Satires 2.7 refers to comes atra ("the black companion"), not a canine. Baldwin suggests Thrale's 1790 entry describing the phrase as a "common saying" and "Hack Joke" at Streatham indicates a pre-Johnson use of the expression.
Scanlan reports that during the December 2019 impeachment hearings against President Trump, law professors and lawyers on both sides invoked Johnson's Dictionary to interpret "high crimes and misdemeanors" and "bribery." Republican counsel Paul Taylor and Professor Jonathan Turley used Johnson's definitions to argue for a narrower meaning of "high misdemeanors." Professor Pamela Karlan countered, citing Johnson's definition of "bribery" ("the crime of giving or taking rewards for bad practices") to support a broader concept. Scanlan notes the legal elite used Johnson as an unimpeachable authority but in a simplistic, "Scrabble-like" manner, rather than engaging his legal ideas.
Johnson and 'the Various Textures of Silk'
Chisholm examines the paradox between Johnson's slovenly appearance and his keen observation of and precise vocabulary for women's dress (e.g., distinguishing "tabbies with damasks" in Rambler 115). This attention to detail reflects Johnson's reformist sensibility and broad social compass. Chisholm contrasts Johnson's brutal condemnation of the adulteress Lady Diana Beauclerk ("The woman's a whore") with his great sympathy for women in straitened circumstances, such as the prostitute Misella (Rambler 170, 171) and servant Betty Broom (Idler 26, 29). For Johnson, a woman's crime, like adultery, was less forgivable when unaccompanied by economic necessity.
On Being Johnsonian in Beijing: A Week at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, December, 2019
Smallwood reports on lecturing at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (UCASS) in Beijing, where he found a developing Chinese scholarly interest in Johnson. He notes the Chinese appreciation for Johnson's curiosity about China and that Johnson’s work finds a home within an eclectic literary curriculum. Smallwood discusses the special difficulties of poetic translation and the challenge of cultural exchange. He highlights the work of Dr. Xiaomin Xia, who translated Johnson's Life of Confucius and wrote a monograph on his works. Smallwood concludes that the study of Johnson has the potential to flourish in the Chinese capital.
Animal Crackers and Several Tracts of Snow
Baldwin discusses two classical-Johnsonian points. First, he examines the Virgil line varium et mutabile semper/femina (Aeneid 4.569-70), noting the tradition of supplying the noun animal to explain the grammar. He links this to Dr. Harrison’s raillery in Amelia and Johnson’s own definition of grammar. Second, he analyzes Johnson’s 1784 English translation of Horace’s Ode 4.7 (Diffugere nives). Baldwin notes Horace was a pre-eminent influence on Anglo-Latin verse. He defends Johnson's translation against critics, arguing its composition was an accomplishment despite Johnson's age and afflictions, and finds stylistic connections to Housman's translation.
Meyers explores the literary and thematic affinity between Johnson and Lord Byron, arguing that Johnson's style and moral themes persisted in Byron's poetry, bridging the Classic and Romantic eras. Despite their opposing ranks and politics, Byron admired Johnson's literary judgments, particularly his prefaces to Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poets. Byron adopted Johnson's magisterial rhythm and epigrammatic wisdom for his own satires. Meyers notes Byron's mockery of Johnson's terror of death but highlights Byron's use of Johnson's authority (e.g., defending Cain and Don Juan) and his imitation of Johnson's Drury-lane Prologue as evidence of their significant, though indirect, literary relationship.
Baldwin explores the common suggestion by biographers that nine members constituted the ideal size for Johnson's famous club. Baldwin offers a classical source for this ideal number: Aulus Gellius's Attic Nights, which attributes to the Roman scholar Varro the dictum that the number of dinner guests should begin with the Graces (three) and end with the Muses (nine).
Baldwin challenges David Nokes's speculation concerning Johnson's sexuality, finding Nokes's bold claims based on minimal evidence. Baldwin discusses Nokes's interpretation of Johnson's youthful translation of Horace's Epode XI, his friendship with Cornelius Ford, and the possible homosexual context of a phrase in his diaries. Baldwin finds little evidence in the Johnsonian record to confirm Nokes's suggestions.
Grimes notes a discrepancy in the date the Ethiopian practice of royal imprisonment ended, citing both a historical essay and an account by Major W. Cornwallis Harris. Harris's 1844 work claims he personally persuaded King Sahela Sellase to end the practice. Grimes suggests that because Johnson's writings on Abyssinia brought the custom to Harris's attention, Johnson deserves credit for the abolition of this inhumane practice.
The Noachian Mathematics of Bishop John Wilkins
Davis examines Johnson's instruction to Thrale to consult Wilkins’s Real Character, which includes a curious calculation demonstrating Noah’s Ark’s capacity for all known animals and provisions. This calculation reflects Wilkins’s broader interest in precise correspondence between words and things. Johnson, who cites Wilkins in the Dictionary, encourages Thrale to consider this mathematical proof, highlighting the integration of historical science into his intellectual pursuits.
Johnsoniana: Johnson Epistle to Sophy Thrale Sells for £38,460
Davis reports that a letter Johnson wrote to twelve-year-old Sophy Thrale on July 24, 1783, was purchased by the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Trust. The letter, previously known through a published transcription, compliments Sophy on her progress in arithmetic and encourages her to read Bishop John Wilkins's Real Character for its calculation concerning Noah's Ark.
After Guillory: Professing Johnson's Criticism
Smallwood considers the contemporary professionalization of literary studies in light of John Guillory's Professing Criticism (2022) and its implications for Johnsonian scholarship. Smallwood explores Johnson's status as a non-specialist professional critic, examining how his critical practice contrasts with modern academic credentialization, scholarly dogmatism, and the current political ambitions of literary criticism.
Using Used Books: Preserving Readerly Reactions by Preserving Books
Walker examines contemporary readerly markings in two modern editions of Johnson's works, illustrating how annotations, underlining, and copying of pertinent quotations reveal the varied engagement of literary scholars, Vedder Morris Gilbert and James M. Osborn, with the texts. Walker argues that the transition from physical to electronic texts may diminish the impulse for such readerly commentary and the loss of books as cultural artifacts.
Johnsonian Studies in Japan and China: A Comparative Approach
Cai examines the evolving reputation of Samuel Johnson among Chinese intellectuals, particularly in comparison to Japan. He notes that Johnson was popular in the 1930s-40s but later suffered from being associated with conservative beliefs. However, Chinese interest is currently rising. Cai argues that early Chinese Johnsonians like Liang Shiqiu and Fan Cunzhong consciously embraced Johnson’s cosmopolitanism and commitment to idealism to resist radical political trends.
Jones provides a comprehensive index spanning the contents of the ıt Johnsonian News Letter from Volume 51.4 (December 1991) through the current volume, 75.2 (September 2024). The index is formatted to facilitate scholarly navigation, with separate listings for book and periodical titles and their corresponding authors. The structure accounts for instances where multiple volumes were combined into a single publication. This installment continues the indexing tradition of earlier volumes, ensuring accessibility to the journal's accumulated scholarship on Johnson, his circle, and eighteenth-century studies. The index highlights the long-term thematic and biographical interests documented within the JNL.
Davis constructs a complex acrostic puzzle featuring forty-six clues centered on Johnsonian biography, bibliography, and literary quotations. The clues reference diverse subjects, including the "King’s evil," Hodge the cat, Francis Barber, and Johnson’s critiques of Milton and Swift. Upon completion, the puzzle yields a single-paragraph quotation from The Rambler: "Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions."
Johnsoniana: David Owen, The New Yorker, 12 January 2023
Owen challenges the assumption that appositional phrases preceding a sentence subject originate in the ornate prose of the Augustan era. Analysis of Lives of the Poets, The Rambler, and Rasselas reveals no instances of this construction, which Owen labels "Bad Things." The text contrasts Johnson’s syntactical habits with those of nineteenth-century novelists and modern Wikipedia entries. Owen asserts that the frequency of this stylistic feature increases in correlation with the proximity of a text to the present day, finding Johnson’s prose entirely free of the practice.
The 'New Rooms' of Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language
Koenig examines the evolution of Johnson's purpose for the Dictionary by comparing the preliminary "Short Scheme" with the final Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language. Koenig argues that the revisions in the Plan show Johnson developing an increasingly flexible methodology, adopting softer language and qualifiers, and moving away from absolute prescriptivism towards descriptivism. Key revisions, termed "new rooms," reflect Johnson's responsiveness to the demands of his patron (Lord Chesterfield) and his perception of his audience (the "common reader"). Johnson, for example, defers to Chesterfield's opinion on orthography, while justifying his methodology by postulating an ideal audience interested in both utility and poetic refinement. These strategic accommodations served to marshal authority and market the project without compromising Johnson's core vision.
Turnbull examines the Johnsonian intertextuality in Kane’s novel, noting how Attaway finds an "affinity" with Johnson’s views on friendship and social protocols. The narrative tracks Attaway's pilgrimage to Gough Square to view the statue of Hodge and the garret of the Dictionary. Attaway emulates the 1773 journey of Johnson and Boswell by traveling to Scotland, where she critiques Johnson’s "dreadful" botanical definition of a tree as a "large vegetable." The analysis identifies several specific quotations and misquotations from the Life and Johnson’s letters, highlighting the enduring influence of Johnson’s persona on modern literary depictions of friendship and lexicographical precision.
William Somerset Maugham on Johnsonian Prose Style
Mukherjee summarizes W. S. Maugham's views on Johnson's prose style in The Summing Up. Maugham noted a historical pattern of stylistic alternation, setting Johnson and Gibbon's classical, grand style ("orotund" and "turgidity") against the simpler prose of Dryden and Pope. Maugham admired Johnson as a great writer of eloquent prose, but noted he "unnecessarily uses many Latin words and phrases." Despite this, Maugham held Johnson in high esteem as a master of lucid English prose, worthy of emulation for the "gentle craft of elegant writing style."
Brown and DeMaria identify a false attribution of a satirical poem to Johnson, found in the Suffolk archives with the handwritten signature "Samuel Johnson." The four-line squib, Vile Stanhope... He went to Hell, without them, is an attack on Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. The poem's origins are traced to an "impromptu" by one "T. F." published in the Morning Chronicle in December 1784, just after Johnson's death. The false ascription is likely owing to the fame of Johnson's palpable dislike of Chesterfield, whose Letters Johnson famously condemned as teaching "the morals of a whore, and manners of a dancing master."
Sale's Universal History, Samuel Johnson, and 'Scrap[s] of Literary Intelligence'
Walker discusses three notable appearances of George Sale's Universal History (1747-1768) in Johnson's life. Johnson once declined an offer to contribute to the Ancient History but later recommended a job seeker for the Modern History. The final, and most momentous, appearance was days before Johnson's death, when he transmitted to John Nichols a "scrap of literary intelligence" listing the anonymous authors of the Ancient Universal History (including Psalmanazar). This final act, deemed an "office" of duty, showed Johnson's lifelong desire to rescue otherwise forgotten writers and ensure "each writer should receive his due proportion of praise from posterity."
Clingham presents the previously unlocated poem, "Recalling Christmas, 1783: Boswell's D.T.'s," which imagines Johnson writing a letter to Boswell on Christmas Eve 1783 about the humane treatment of old horses. The poem captures the tension of their relationship during Johnson's final illness, contrasting Boswell's tormented political aspirations ("to recover the land from fools") with Johnson's brutal, self-interested logic on animal ethics ("first work a horse, and then kill him"). Clingham notes the poem's deeper resonance in equating Johnson's "best blessing" to old horses with the capacity for both compassion and slaughter in humankind.
A School or College Exercise by Samuel Johnson
Brown presents a transcription of an unpublished Latin epigram by Johnson, Non cito perit ruinâ qui primum timet, found in the Lincolnshire Archives, dating to the late 1720s. The six-line poem is an imitation of a sententia by Publilius Syrus, arguing it's "more glorious to have avoided imminent death than to have rashly hastened the black day." Brown traces the poem's unusual Latin form to Etonian school anthologies, making it likely a school or early college exercise. Johnson's imitation draws on Virgilian sources and combines the agility of a soldier with the vigilance of a boxer, showcasing his early competence as a Latin poet.
Publisher's blurb: "What if the Coronation Stone at Westminster — the stolen relic on which the High Kings of Scotland had been crowned for over seven hundred years — was a fake? What if the true Stone of Destiny was still out there somewhere, hidden away by a Holy Order to protect it from English invaders? When Doctor Johnson turns up at his friend James Boswell's door after an absence of almost seven years, he makes Boswell an enticing proposition: to join him on a quest to recover the true Stone of Destiny. What follows is a breathtaking journey through the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, from Edinburgh up to the furthest reaches of the northern isles. Plunged into a dizzying world of secret societies, occult mysteries and supernatural phenomena, the two friends leave no Neolithic stone unturned in their search to uncover the truth. Can Johnson and Boswell keep one step ahead of those who would try to stop them? And will they be willing to sacrifice all so that they can get all that they desire? Eighteenth century Scotland has never been so magical — and terrifying."
Macleod presents a fictionalized account of the 1773 tour of Scotland, cast as a Gothic mystery within "The Casebook of Johnson & Boswell" series. The narrative follows Johnson and Boswell as they arrive in Edinburgh, only to be drawn into a series of macabre events linked to the historical legacy of Major Thomas Weir. Macleod uses the distinct temperaments of the protagonists—Johnson’s rigorous ratiocination and Boswell’s social maneuvering—to probe a dark conspiracy involving civic corruption and ancient superstitions. While incorporating authentic biographical details and Johnsonian wit, the text functions as a genre-blending pastiche that explores the boundaries between Enlightenment reason and the irrational "fictions" of the supernatural. The work emphasizes the atmospheric tension of the Old Town and the intellectual camaraderie of the central pair.
Chisholm reviews the first in a promised series of supernatural investigations that places Johnson and Boswell in Edinburgh in 1773. While the real-life characters are vividly drawn and the author has read Boswell's Life of Johnson, with Chisholm finding warmth in the characterization, the reviewer criticizes the novel for its "absurdity" and excessive "fancy." The plot involves the pair being drawn into investigations of satanic rituals, cannibalistic leper colonies, and supernatural phenomena, featuring the real-life Cape Club and the notorious thief Deacon Brodie. These multiple plotlines involving "demonic purposes," demons, and ghosts veer into absurdity as the intersection of historical figures like Robert Fergusson with fantastical elements leads to Johnson assuming unlikely roles, such as cooking or attempting to assassinate the Prince of Wales. Although inspired by Johnson's infamous attempts to meet the Cock Lane Ghost, the review concludes that the work exhibits too much "wild Strains of Imagination."
Lee reviews Newman's *Boswell and the Press* (2021), a collection focusing on Boswell's lesser-known journalistic writings, thus shifting attention away from the Johnsonian biographical accounts. Newman's introduction includes a taxonomy of Boswell's ephemeral forms (letters, squibs, pamphlets) and divides his career into three phases, often linking the writing to Boswell's psychological state, such as his fear of personal extinction. Tankard's chapter explores Boswell's use of anonymity. Caudle's contribution examines a neglected text, the prospectus for the unrealized periodical *The Sutiman*, which counters the narrative of Boswell's lack of interest in the Scots language. Other essays analyze Boswell's poetry, his political pamphlet, and *The Hypochondriack*, often contextualizing them with his personal circumstances.
Mukherjee presents an excerpt from the introduction to Maurice Alderton Pink's Points of View (1954), a collection of essays previously prescribed in West Bengal university English studies. The editor's argumentative method is wholly based on Johnson's provocative discourse. Johnson's approach, though sometimes overdone ("you tossed and gored several persons"), is justified as forcing "the lazy-minded and the conventional" to re-examine the logical basis of their theories and dispel the "mists of ignorance." Pink's work emphasizes that for Johnson, controversial discussion was not merely a means to truth but "one of the joys of life."
Baldwin notes a possible Johnsonian self-reference in his excoriation of Thomas Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus. Johnson gibes, "I know not why anyone but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the commonwealth of Rome....," which Baldwin suggests may refer to Johnson's own Latin prose exercise on the same theme. This exercise is published in Johnson on Demand, highlighting a humorous instance where Johnson may have been unconsciously mocking his own juvenile scholarship.
Johnson’s "A Dissertation on the Amazons" (1741) is a radical condensation and free translation of Abbé de Guyon’s 300-page Histoire des Amazones Anciennes et Modernes. Published in the Gentleman's Magazine, this minor prose piece exemplifies Cave’s (and possibly Johnson’s) decision to provide readers glimpses into curious French works. Critics note that Johnson condensed and paraphrased the original freely, likely emphasizing what interested him most. The work is also cited as an important text for discussions of Johnson's Life of Savage.
Smallwood reviews Johnson in Japan, an essay collection that reveals an extensive Japanese scholarly tradition on Johnson. The volume affirms Johnson's qualities (moral integrity, wit, biographical skill) valued by Western readers but also illuminates the history of the Japanese academy. Chapters cover Johnson's influence on Mary Shelley, parallels with Austen and Dickens, and the figure of Johnson the Tea Poet (Tamotsu Morowoka). Smallwood praises the mastery of foreign academic prose, concluding that the juxtaposition of a Japanese consciousness with familiar texts provides a defamiliarizing light on Johnson's thought, dispelling any premature assimilation of his work.
Seymour offers insights into the life and struggles of Aleyn Lyell Reade (1877-1953), the dedicated, reclusive author of the eleven-volume Johnsonian Gleanings. Letters and anecdotes reveal Reade's unconquerable reluctance to face an audience, his low finances necessitating constant fundraising, and the crippling effect of the work's cost on his life. He was honored by the Lichfield Johnson Society and was supported by wealthy Americans like A. E. Newton and fellow Johnsonians through his life, even surviving Nazi bombing of Liverpool because of storing his precious manuscript index in the cellar.
Seymour reports a previously unrecorded Johnsonian anecdote from a Sotheby’s 1969 auction catalog: John Repton, Johnson’s schoolmate, stated Johnson saved him from drowning while they were swimming with corks. This anecdote confirms Johnson’s power as a swimmer, a quality often noted by biographers. Seymour contrasts this early act of heroism with Boswell's lack of swimming ability, noting Boswell owned The Art of Swimming (1764) by Melchisedech Thévenot, which was notorious for its nude illustrations and may have been acquired for prurient reasons beyond exercise edification.
Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard on Johnson: Two Notes
Clingham presents two notes from Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard's unpublished memoir. The first is a reflection on reading Rasselas in 1771 (at age 21) following her sister Margaret's bankruptcy. Lady Anne noted the book's "levelling philosophy" as an antidote to "present calamity," but rejected its conclusion that "happiness is nowhere to be found." The second note concerns the engraving Lady Anne selected for her memoir of Johnson, Opie's portrait, which she chose as the "most amiable and least uncouth" to mollify his "poor Bear" image, contrasting this with his "Colossus of literature" persona.
Lady Anne Barnard, Johnson the Bear, Burke the Lion, and the Cape Baboon
Clingham examines Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard's use of animal metaphors for Johnson, particularly his iconic "Ursa Major" or bear persona. Clingham analyzes a passage from her memoir that rewrites history by falsely claiming Johnson spoke both the "lion" metaphor for Burke and the "shed in a shower" anecdote directly to her. This fabrication highlights Lady Anne's fantasy of intimacy with cultural icons. Clingham contrasts these noble beasts with her later wish that Johnson had seated himself beside the pretentious Colonel Hall at dinner to silence the "baboon" with "one lick of his paw," suggesting Johnson's intellectual integrity.
Samuel Johnson and George Orwell: Guilty Moralists
Meyers draws striking biographical and moral parallels between Johnson and George Orwell, characterizing them as "guilty moralists." Both endured unhappy, guilt-ridden childhoods, suffered serious illnesses (scrofula/tuberculosis), and experienced isolating poverty, becoming outsiders. Their satires and criticism were intense, principled, and compassionate. Meyers contrasts Johnson's contrite self-penance (standing in the rain at Uttoxeter) with Orwell's masochistic suffering (going "down and out" in Paris). Despite their aggression and eccentricities, both men were patriotic, scrupulously honest, and left prophetic moral legacies in volumes of satire and profound aphorisms.
A Latin Translation of Verses from Crashaw's 'Epitaph upon Husband and Wife'
Brown argues for the authenticity of Johnson's Latin translation of verses (lines 9-16) from Richard Crashaw's "An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife," found in a Thomas Percy manuscript. The translation corresponds to a quote under the word "peace" in Johnson's Dictionary. Johnson quoted the original poem seven times, alluding to lines 7-16, a passage he later abbreviated. The Latin version, composed in elegant elegiac couplets, transforms Crashaw's lines to embrace its final optimistic sentiments, which include erotic (Virgilian) and spiritual (Christian/Baxterian) echoes. Boswell's and Percy's testimony, linking the lines to a Dictionary entry, strongly supports Johnson’s authorship.
An Unpublished Latin Epigram by Samuel Johnson
Brown presents a hitherto unpublished Latin epigram by Johnson, dated January 7, 1784, found in a manuscript in the Hyde Collection. The distich is a translation of the last two lines of an epigram by Leontius Scholasticus (Greek Anthology 7.575), originally an epitaph. Johnson's translation, Fato cessit anus, mille annis digna, bonorum / Semper inexpletum pectus amore calet, clarifies the poem's funerary genre and conveys a strong, empathetic expression of human yearning ("The unsated bosom forever glows with longing for good things") by substituting pectus for the original subject. The translation is noteworthy as one of nearly a hundred Johnson composed during sleepless nights in early 1784.
Johnson reviews this collection of essays, grouped into re-readings of texts and remapping of themes. Essays examine Johnson's Shakespeare annotations, his use of intertextuality in London, A Poem, and the non-canonical additions to the Lives of the Poets. The collection offers new contexts for Taxation No Tyranny, links Johnson to themes of sustainability, and explores his relationship with children, especially Queeney Thrale. Other pieces analyze his critical heterodoxy, his reluctance to write an autobiography, and his journals' role as instruments of "pragmatic piety."
Ensayos literarios: Shakespeare, Vidas de poetas y 'The Rambler'
Falkland-Malvinas: panfleto contra la guerra: Sobre las recientes negociaciones en torno a las Islas de Falkland (1771)
北京 : 国际文化出版公司: 第1版: Guo ji wen hua chu ban gong si
传记奇葩: 萨维奇评传和考利评传 / Zhuan ji qi pa: Sa wei qi ping chuan he kao li ping chuan [Unusual Biographies: Savage's Critical Biography and Cowley's Critical Biography]
本书分为译者序;萨维奇评传;考利评传;附录;后记五部分, 内容包括:国外约翰生学概况;约翰生家乡见闻.Ben shu fen wei yi zhe xu ; sa wei qi ping chuan ; kao li ping chuan ; fu lu ; hou ji wu bu fen, nei rong bao gua : guo wai yue han sheng xue gai kuang ; yue han sheng jia xiang jian wen.
Inspired by two of Samuel Johnson's essays from his essay series, The Rambler, the author tells the fictional story of Misella Cross, from her sale at age 12 to a wealthy estate owner, to her escape into a life of prostitution on the streets of 18th century London, to her imprisonment in London's Newgate Prison for murder.
Viaggio alle isole occidentali della Scozia: con una appendice di lettere e poesie
Scritto da uno dei più importanti autori inglesi del Settecento, il Viaggio alle Isole Occidentali della Scozia è il resoconto del viaggio intrapreso da Samuel Johnson tra l'estate e l'autunno del 1773 nelle Highlands scozzesi e nelle Isole Ebridi in compagnia dell'amico James Boswell, biografo dell'autore. Esso si presenta come una alternativa al tradizionale Grand Tour nei luoghi e nelle città eredi del mondo classico e offre uno sguardo antropologico e naturalistico su un universo poco noto, intriso di miti e di leggende e, per certi versi, ancora immerso nelle brume di un Medioevo che la descrizione di Samuel Johnson, precisa e attenta al dato empirico, rievoca attraverso la ricchezza dei dettagli storici, sociali ed economici che vengono offerti al lettore. Le lettere e le poesie latine scritte nel corso del viaggio, presentate in Appendice, rappresentano inoltre una significativa testimonianza delle riflessioni personali e delle fantasie liriche che l'esperienza suscitò nell'autore.
La historia de Rásselas, príncipe de Abisinia
Standardising English: Norms and Margins in the History of the English Language
The End of Toleration? Language on the Margins in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
This path-breaking study of the standardisation of English goes well beyond the traditional prescriptivism versus descriptivism debate. It argues that the way norms are established and enforced is the result of a complex network of social factors and cannot be explained simply by appeals to power and hegemony. It brings together insights from leading researchers to re-centre the discussion on linguistic communities and language users. It examines the philosophy underlying the urge to standardise language, and takes a closer look at both well-known and lesser-known historical dictionaries, grammars and usage guides, demonstrating that they cannot be simply labelled as "prescriptivist." Drawing on rich empirical data and case studies, it shows how the norm continues to function in society, influencing and affecting language users even today.
'The Future in the Instant': Johnson, Garrick, Boswell, and the Perils of Theatrical Prolepsis
''Tis Well an Old Age Is Out': Johnson, Swift, and His Generation
'Hoot Him Back Again into the Common Road': The Problem of Singularity, and the Human Comedy of the Lives of the Poets
Writing the Dictionary of the English Language: Johnson's Journey into Words
Fragments and Disquisitions: Johnson's Shakespeare in Context
'To Preserve Order and Support Monarchy': Johnson's Political Writings
Three Contexts for Reading Johnson's Parliamentary Debates
The Active Soul and Vis Inertiae: Change and Tension in Johnson's Philosophy from The Rambler to The Idler
Blinking Sam, 'Surly Sam,' and 'Johnson's Grimly Ghost'
Johnson and Scott, England and Scotland, Boswell, Lockhart, and Croker
A History of the Collected Works of Samuel Johnson: The First Two Hundred Years
'The Dreams of a Poet': Vocational Self=Definition in Johnson's Dictionary Preface
Johnson on Demand: Reviews, Prefaces, and Ghost-Writings
Writings spanning various genres, including reviews, prefaces, and ghost-writings, along with dedications, epigraphs, advertisements, proposals, public letters, political campaign statements, newspaper editorials, charitable appeals, and minor prose translations. It contains material largely drawn from Johnson’s periodical writing and pamphlets. The volume includes Johnson’s translation of du Resnel’s preface for Pope’s Essay on Man and Essay on Criticism.
Johnson's largest continuous prose composition, compiling his writings spanning approximately 1740 to February 1743. The contents cover the final years of Sir Robert Walpole's administration. Johnson's 25 reports and one ceremonial account, originally printed in the Gentleman's Magazine (GM) under the pseudonymous frame "Debates in the Senate of Lilliput," are included. The text, totaling approximately 1,500 continuously numbered pages, had previously been largely snubbed by modern scholars. The GM publication scheme served to avoid prosecution for breach of Parliamentary privilege. The copy-text is established through the application of modern editorial principles. The editorial policy restored the Lilliputian terminology and naming conventions, reversing the approach of prior collected editions that had stripped these elements. The reports are presented in their real-life chronological sequence rather than the arbitrary order of original GM serialization. The standard Yale policy retains the copy-text’s original spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation, while modernizing capitalization and typography. Supplemental materials include a complete textual apparatus. Each debate is preceded by a head-note detailing political context. Explanatory notes record textual comparisons with other records like the London Magazine and Bishop Secker's notes. Appendices provide a glossary of Lilliputian names, the original publication sequence, and the official account of Arthur Onslow's installation as Speaker. The volume was long anticipated, received praise as an essential scholarly accomplishment, and makes the work available for serious study for the first time. This publication provides essential textual grounding for scholarly analysis of Johnson's practices as an author and his rhetorical invention. The volume supersedes the previously incomplete and textually unreliable 1787 and 1825 collected Works editions.
Global Economies, Cultural Currencies of the Eighteenth Century
The Commerce of Knowledge in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Abunasser analyzes Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas as a critique of the "imagination" and an acceptance of the socioeconomic character of eighteenth-century identity. The essay argues that Johnson’s narrative shifts from a pursuit of intrinsic happiness to a pragmatic "commerce of knowledge," wherein learning and social experience are treated as commodities of exchange. By accepting knowledge as a tool for navigation within a modern market economy, Johnson makes a "virtue of the socioeconomic character" of his characters' identities. Abunasser suggests that this paradigm allows Johnson to reconcile the abstract truths of economic transactions with the individualized experience of the subject. The study situates Johnson’s work within the broader "new economic criticism," demonstrating how the formal properties of the eighteenth-century novel—and Johnson's prose specifically—translate commercial systems into tangible personal experiences through a "representation of the personal (subjectivity)."
'Human Wishes': Samuel Beckett and Johnson: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture of 2005
On Samuel Beckett’s fascination with Samuel Johnson, which resulted in the unfinished dramatic fragment *Human Wishes*. Beckett's initial intent was a four-act play detailing Johnson’s relationship with Hester Thrale, 1781–1784. The project evolved, shifting focus from a love interest to the melancholy of the hypochondriac Johnson in physical decline. The fragment sets Johnson's Bolt Court household on the day Henry Thrale died, but Johnson remains absent. This work is a clear predecessor to *Waiting for Godot* and *Endgame*, demonstrating Beckett's affinity for Johnson's dread of annihilation and his use of Johnsonian language and philosophy.
A Critic Formed: Samuel Johnson's Apprenticeship with Irene 1736–1749
Adams argues that Johnson's protracted thirteen-year effort in writing and revising his tragedy Irene served as a critical apprenticeship, shaping his later dramatic criticism. By tracing the play's development from initial draft to final production, Adams shows Johnson grappling with dramatic conventions (heroic tragedy, she-tragedy, neoclassical rules), characterization (Mahomet, Irene), dialogue, and plot construction. His struggles with Irene's artificiality and lack of naturalism informed his subsequent critiques in the Preface to Shakespeare and Lives, where he championed realism, natural language, and moral purpose over rigid rules and declamation.
The Good Man Speaking Well: Samuel Johnson
Aeschliman celebrates the enduring philosophical and ethical authority of Johnson, citing him as one of the great voices of Western moral culture alongside Socrates and Jesus. Johnson's pursuit of happiness involved loving God and serving his fellows, grounded in common-sense Christianity and a rejection of self-pity. Writers like Hawthorne, Eliot, and Lewis venerate Johnson for his central, moral imagination and insistence on the inescapability of moral awareness.
Dr. Johnson's Rasselas: The Choice of Life
'Empty Sounds': Johnson's Dictionary and the Limit of Language,' chapter 3 of 'The Diversions of History: A Nonphenomenal Approach to Eighteenth-Century Linguistic Thought'
Alexander offers a critique of the methods and assumptions of the discipline of linguistic historiography--the study of the history of linguistic thought. Linguistic historiography has grown rapidly since the late 1960s. The formation of a loosely-defined canon of works of language study has been accompanied by the publication of many articles and books and the development of a scholarly superstructure of journals, societies, and conferences whose explicit objective it has been to develop both the practice and the theory of this new field. But linguistic historiography remains an area which has yet to theorize its activity radically. Through close readings of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, various works on language by Joseph Priestley, and John Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley, Alexander argues that the representation of language in eighteenth-century meta-linguistic texts is concerned with matters other than the strictly linguistic which, it becomes clear, is not one object of knowledge among others, and that these matters are invariably bound up with questions of class, power, and privilege.
Central Institute of English & Foreign Languages Bulletin
Printing Technology, Letters, & Samuel Johnson
Fix reviews Alvin Kernan’s study, which identifies Johnson as the first great professional writer produced by a market-centered print system. The review praises the analysis of the Dictionary as an emblem of print logic that abstracts and idealizes language. However, Fix finds Kernan’s thesis-driven reading of Johnson’s meeting with George III too aggressive and disputes the claim that Boswell created Johnson's reality. Fix argues the book is most compelling when it explores Johnson’s dependence on writing as a psychological imperative to order his own identity and belief against alienation.
Samuel Johnson: Pictures and Words: Papers Presented at a Clark Library Seminar, 23 October 1982
Soupel reviews the published proceedings of the 1982 Clark Library Seminar on Samuel Johnson. Alkon's "Illustrations of Rasselas and Reader-Response Criticism" inventories thirty-two illustrations, mostly from the 19th century, revealing varying interpretive modes, including the frequent bundling of Rasselas with its sequel, Dinarbas. Folkenflik's "Samuel Johnson and Art" uses various writings and testimonies to prove Johnson held sophisticated, utilitarian views on painting, architecture, and sculpture, advocating for intellectual, moralizing, and sublime art. Folkenflik argues convincingly for the importance of Johnson's relationship to art for English art history.
How the TV Play of Johnson and Boswell Is Set to Spark an Outcry North of the Border
Moses Thomas's Proposals for the First American Edition of a Complete Johnson's 'Dictionary'
"Designed and printed by Norman Clayton at Classic Letterpress, Ojai, California, in Goudy Old Style on Mohawk Superfine text with Gmund Colors Matt, Beach Sand cover, for the Johnsonians, the Zamorano and Roxburghe Clubs, and the Samuel Johnson Society of the West. 2016"--Colophon Illustrations are a facsimile of Moses Thomas's proposal
Fopdoodle and Salmagundi: Words and Meanings from Dr. Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary' That Time Forgot
Publisher's blurb: "This is a book of words that urgently need your help. Fopdoodle, salmagundi, kissingcrust, runnion and stingo are all endangered for lack of use. Since Samuel Johnson completed his dictionary scores of words such as fizgig, jobbernowl and sponk have slipped away from common usage. You will very likely never have heard of most of them while some will be known but not used. Scores of others have definitions so obscure that you wonder why a word was needed at all. Was it necessary to have quite so many different words to describe the less fortunate members of society? Many, such as atom (cannot be split) and urinal (where water is kept for inspection) have changed their meaning completely, often with hilarious consequences. Some, such as tea (lately drunk in Europe) and coffee (comforteth the brain and heart) are included to provide a glimpse of life 250 years ago. Others, such as Dragon (perhaps imaginary) and Swallow (a bird that hides in winter) show as yet unfilled gaps in understanding. This book, Fopdoodle and Salmagundi will delight anyone who is fascinated by the evolution, humor and eccentricity of the English language or enjoys the challenge of a word game. In compiling this selection of little used and unfrequented gems of the language the editor makes the simple request that you slip them into conversation in the hope that their use will be perpetuated. They really are too good to lose."
Privately printed by Houghton Library for The Johnsonians
Dreams of a Poet Doomed at Last to Wake a Lexicographer
A keepsake of "some ephemera [bills for advertising Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English language] from a collection of Johnsoniana by William Upcott" given by A. A. Houghton Jr. to Harvard
250 copies printed for the Johnsonians.
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Samuel Johnson
Classroom Texts: The Teacher, the Anthology
Anderson analyzes the role of anthologies in defining the undergraduate Johnsonian canon, noting that the choice of anthology determines which Johnsonian texts students will encounter. While introductory courses typically rely on The Norton Anthology of English Literature for Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes, mid-level surveys favor the broader Tillotson anthology, which offers more depth and more breadth regarding Johnson the moralist through periodical essays and personal writings. Upper-level seminars use specialized anthologies by Greene, Bronson, or Brady and Wimsatt, each reflecting different scholarly priorities such as politics, morality, or criticism. Ultimately, instructors must approach these texts critically to avoid the tyranny of an anthology.
Lurcock reviews a collection of essays designed to provide pedagogical strategies for instructing American students on Johnson. The volume organizes contributions into general thematic approaches—including gender and psychoanalysis—and studies of specific works. Lurcock identifies the text's primary strength as its imaginative departure from the Boswellian parody of Johnson, instead presenting him as a young person's writer whose style and values remain inseparable. While noting that some idealized classroom descriptions lack practical realism, the reviewer maintains that the volume successfully dethrones the Great Cham image in favor of a writer open to modern critical exploration.
Samuel Johnson and the Question of Enlightenment in England
Andrew examines Johnson’s role within the "questionable Enlightenment" of England, focusing on his "intellectual independence" from traditional patronage. Unlike Gibbon, the "isolated giant," Johnson is presented as a "native English god" whose authority was diffused through the "commercial press." The text discusses Johnson’s "distrust of the imagination" and his "principled" stance against the monopoly of the Church of England over education. Andrew argues that the "flood" of biographies following Johnson’s death established the "Christian truth" of individual life’s "irreplaceability." The text highlights how Johnson’s status as a "Man of Letters" allowed him to navigate the "prohibitive cost" of Oxbridge and achieve a "monumental" presence in the English-speaking world independent of aristocratic favor.
A Short-Title Catalog of Eighteenth Century Editions of Dr. Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary' in Special Collections, the Library of the School of Library and Information Science, the University of Western Ontario
A brief report notes the sale of a Samuel Johnson letter at Christie's for £4,104. The 1784 manuscript, addressed to the daughter of his friend Langton, contains Johnson’s advice to the child "to be a good girl" and "to keep her doll's house in order."
Dr. Johnson by Mrs. Thrale: The Anecdotes of Mrs. Piozzi in Their Original Form
Murray presents a retrospective medical profile of Johnson, arguing that a wealth of biographical evidence supports a diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. The narrative traces Johnson's neurological and physical difficulties from a traumatic birth and childhood scrofula to the adult onset of motor and vocal tics, including repetitive jerking, grunting, and compulsive whistling. Murray details how these involuntary movements and "uncouth gesticulations" hindered Johnson's early teaching career and influenced his domestic life. The account incorporates observations from contemporaries such as Garrick, who mimicked Johnson's twitching, and William Hogarth, who initially mistook the scholar for an "idiot." Additionally, the article chronicles Johnson's obsessive-compulsive rituals, such as touching street posts and avoiding cracks in pavement, alongside self-destructive behaviors reported by Boswell. While acknowledging that an 18th-century diagnosis remains speculative, Murray concludes that Johnson's "perpetual motion" and verbal repetitions align closely with modern clinical understandings of Tourette syndrome.
Rasselas Press & the USC Fine Arts Press
Author for All Seasons: An Exhibition of Manuscripts & Books from the Library of Loren & Frances Rothschild Held at the Doheny Memorial Library, University of Southern California
Guests Outside Dr. Samuel Johnson's House at 17 Gough Square, off Fleet Street, for its Reopening
This text examines the didactic and philosophical nature of Johnson's Rasselas. It highlights Johnson's use of "science" and "literature" in broad, overlapping senses and notes the presence of "Johnsonian sobriety and common sense." The discussion focuses on the prince’s desire to devote himself to "literary solitude" and the text's potential influence on later poets like Shelley, specifically through the description of the poet as "the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind."
This report details the destruction of a 230-year-old thatched summer-house at Kenwood House, Hampstead, by a suspicious fire. English Heritage considers building a replica of the structure, which originally stood in Streatham before its 1968 relocation to Kenwood. Johnson reportedly occupied the building when he decided "to pass eight hours of every day in a serious employment." The report notes the presence of loitering youths near the site following the grounds' closure on 1 March.
Boxing: Dr. Johnson's Plea Rings Out over Another Lull in Boxing
Johnson, Boswell, and Their Circle: Books and Manuscripts, Including New Acquisitions from a Private Collection
Johnson beyond Boswell [review of Why Read Samuel Johnson?, by Stephen Miller]
Reviewing Stephen Miller’s "Why Read Samuel Johnson?," the text supports reading Johnson's own prose, arguing he was a great stylist with profound human understanding, contrasting with Boswell's portrayal of him as a blustering arch-Tory. Miller contends that Johnson the writer poured cold water on cant, resembling Orwell. The text recommends starting with Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and highlights Johnson's Lives of the Poets for its insightful aphorisms about human conduct.
Tour the Western Isles: Two Erudite Friends Set Off to See the Once Remote Hebrides
Dr. Samuel Johnson Letter Found in Cupboard
On the discovery of a manuscript letter by Johnson within a cupboard at a Gloucestershire country house. Unrecognized by the current owner for its historical importance, the letter is scheduled for auction with an estimated value of £12,000. The find occurred alongside a letter from Siddons.
Driven to Distinguish: Samuel Johnson's Lexicographic Turn of Mind: A Psychocritical Study
As a man of letters with an exceptionally extensive and diverse output, Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) has invited consideration from a variety of angles. The present study offers a ‘reading' of Johnson as a framer of distinctions. His distinction-making activity is viewed as a capital feature of the oeuvre, characterizing it across almost its entire range. A very substantial body of evidence is adduced in support of this reading. Broken up by distinction-type, the mass of evidence sorts itself out into seventeen different categories themselves grouped under seven ‘thematic' heads. The organization of the inquiry on taxonomic lines is intended both to throw into relief the multiform character of Johnson's distinction-making praxis (something not heretofore remarked) and also to provide a comprehensive, systematic and easily ‘readable' account of it. That the evidence testifying to Johnson's distinction-making turned out to be so voluminous could not but occasion the thought that it might be an involuntary activity, a ‘drive' grounded in the very ‘set' of his psyche which comes in consequence to be viewed as in some sort ‘formed for distinction-making.' This thought evolved into the thesis that the present study undertakes to defend, in doing which it becomes a psychocritical investigation inscribed within the theoretical frame of psychological stylistics whose aim is to make inferences and advance hypotheses about the build and workings of a mind from an analysis of the linguistic and stylistic data it generates.
Samuel Johnson and the Issue of Holy Matrimony
Bainbridge presents a fictional reconstruction of the interpersonal tensions defining Johnson’s residence with the Thrale family at Streatham and his subsequent decline. The text uses a dual-perspective structure, juxtaposing the aging Johnson’s physical and psychological dependencies with the critical, retrospective observations of Queeney. Bainbridge focuses on the shifting domestic landscape following Henry Thrale’s death, detailing Piozzi’s increasing alienation from Johnson and her eventual marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The narrative highlights Johnson's "constitutional melancholy" and his "unruly" social conduct as catalysts for the breakdown of the Streatham circle. By emphasizing the "domestic claustrophobia" experienced by the household, Bainbridge challenges traditional hagiographic depictions of Johnson, instead offering a "scabrous and unsparing" account of his social exigencies and the resentment they fostered in the Thrale women. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over whether a revisionist, domestic focus on physical pathology and unrequited passion successfully humanizes a literary icon or merely reduces him to a grotesque caricature. Bernstein, in the New York Times, offers an enthusiastic account, praising the use of multiple perspectives to summon a brilliant, tragicomic portrait of eighteenth-century London. Bliven’s review in the New Yorker, however, finds the perspective unsympathetic and subverted by a fixation on personal fastidiousness over compassion. In the Sunday Times, Brown notes that the fictional reconstruction helpfully challenges traditional biographical constructs by highlighting a figure mired in profound despair. Sisman, writing in the Observer, praises the spare prose and psychological verisimilitude regarding the central, complex relationship, though Hughes, in the same publication, emphasizes that the narrative provides genuine insights into human suffering and guilt. Conversely, Wilcox, in ECCB, delivers a mixed assessment, arguing that the collage-like depiction fails to register the subject's heroic intellect and heroic sanity, leaving the core portrait weak for specialists. Gross, in AJ, is entirely critical, lambasting the book as a morbid, repulsive distortion that fails to capture any genuine tenderness. Finally, Bennetts, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, identifies a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews, concluding that the heavy focus on domestic trivia offers little historical framing for general readers but provides an elegant, intertextual exercise for those steeped in the original historical correspondence.
Reviews: Rebecca Abrams, New Statesman, September 10, 2001; Jane Bates, Nursing Standard 25, nos. 15–17 (2010): 28–29; Melissa Bennetts, Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 2001; Richard Bernstein, New York Times, August 8, 2001; Naomi Bliven, New Yorker, July 30, 2001; Mark Bostridge, The Independent on Sunday, September 2, 2001; Booklist, July 2001, 1976; Allan Brown, Sunday Times (London), September 16, 2001; Elizabeth Buchan, The Times (London), September 8, 2001; Kate Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph (London), August 26, 2001; Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday, September 16, 2001; Daily Mail (London), August 31, 2001; Edmonton Journal, 2001; Evening Standard (London), September 3, 2001; Financial Times, September 22, 2001; Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe, October 28, 2001; Loraine Fletcher, The Independent, September 1, 2001; Claire Gigantes, National Post, September 8, 2001; Edward Gross, AJ 14 (2003): 415–16; Anne Haverty, Irish Times, August 18, 2001; Henry Hitchings, TLS, no. 5136 (September 2001): 3; Clover Hughes, The Observer (London), October 6, 2002; Freya Johnston, NR, Series E, no. 4 (2000): 88–91; Peter Kemp, Sunday Times (London), September 2, 2001; Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2001; Gary Krist, Washington Post, August 19, 2001; Library Journal, September 1, 2001, 230; Christine Madden, Irish Times, September 7, 2002; Mail on Sunday, September 22, 2002; Thomas Mallon, NYTBR, August 12, 2001; Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph (London), August 25, 2001; Allan Massie, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), September 1, 2001; John E. McIntyre, Chicago Tribune, August 29, 2001; John E. McIntyre, The Sun (Baltimore), August 12, 2001; John Mullan, The Guardian, September 1, 2001; National Post (Toronto), September 17, 2001; Robert Nye, The Times (London), August 22, 2001; Mary O’Donoghue, Sunday Business Post, September 10, 2001; Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2001; Tim Richardson, Country Life 195, no. 46 (2001): 120; Merle Rubin, LA Times, August 13, 2001; Adam Sisman, The Observer (London), August 26, 2001; Sunday Tribune, September 2, 2001; Sydney Morning Herald, December 29, 2001; Paul Tankard, Quadrant 46, no. 10 (2002): 83–84; Paul Tankard, Southern Johnsonian 2 (August 2002): 6–7; The Times (London), 2003; Lance Wilcox, ECCB, n.s., 27 (2001): 369–70; Joel Yanofsky, The Gazette (Montreal), September 1, 2001.
Bennetts provides a mixed review of Beryl Bainbridge’s historical novel According to Queeney, which depicts Samuel Johnson’s 12-year infatuation with Hester Thrale from the perspective of her daughter. The review characterizes the work as a sequence of tightly packed vignettes that resemble a plot, focusing on the interwoven lives of the Streatham circle, yet Bennetts disputes Bainbridge’s cold and clinical portrayal of Johnson as an unlovable, bumbling fool and her depiction of Piozzi as a mean-spirited coquette. While acknowledging Bainbridge’s moral insight and command of language, Bennetts criticizes the novel’s dense prose and its focus on trivia over "real information," arguing that the trivia-heavy detail offers little for non-specialist readers and fails to provide an opportunity to conjure an image of the eighteenth century. The review further challenges the author’s lack of compassion regarding Piozzi’s domestic tragedies and the lack of context provided for historical figures like David Garrick and Joshua Reynolds. Bennetts concludes that despite Bainbridge's gifts, the stylistic constraints and lack of historical framing prevent the work from reaching the heights of her previous acclaimed works, ultimately finding the novel disappointing.
Bernstein offers an enthusiastic review of Beryl Bainbridge’s novel, praising its avoidance of the "secondhand quality" often found in historical fiction. He describes Johnson as a "behemoth, sloppy, brilliant and sad," shambling through "acid-laced pages." The narrative explores Johnson’s unrequited, "tender, ardent and hopeless pursuit" of Hester Thrale within the "bizarre and stormy household" of the Southwark brewery. Bernstein highlights Bainbridge's use of multiple perspectives, including the "precociously perceptive" and "bratty" Hester Maria Thrale, to show how characters experience separate realities. He notes that while Boswell appears only as a "dull sycophant," the novel successfully summons the "disappeared world of 18th-century London." Bernstein admires the brilliant, mostly invented dialogue, suggesting Johnson might wish to make these words "truly his own."
Fletcher’s approving review of Beryl Bainbridge’s "According to Queeney" explores the novel’s focus on Johnson’s "pathology" rather than his wit. The narrative, framed by an account of Johnson’s autopsy, examines his "infantile need" for Hester Thrale and his "grotesque" household, which included Francis Barber, Anna Williams, and Poll Carmichael. Fletcher notes that Bainbridge uses the perspective of Queeney Thrale to measure the gap between Johnson's "itchy life" and his "marmoreal achievement" as the author of the "Dictionary" and "Lives of the Poets." The review highlights the novel’s interest in 18th-century philosophical contexts regarding memory and imagination, particularly Johnson's hallucinatory vision of his dead brother. Fletcher credits Bainbridge with paring away the formal conventions found in Boswell’s diaries to celebrate the "emotional messes" and diversions from death that defined the Thrale-Johnson circle. The text concludes that this hybrid of novel and biography is Bainbridge’s boldest adventure in capturing the human vulnerability of an Anglican literary saint.
Kemp reviews Bainbridge’s novel, which performs a "different kind of autopsy" on Johnson by examining his twenty-year relationship with Thrale through the "basilisk-like gaze" of her daughter, Queeney. The text depicts the Streatham Park circle as a collection of characters "starved of affection," where Thrale finds purpose in her intimacy with the "cantankerously entertaining" Johnson. Kemp notes the novel’s focus on domestic havoc, highlighting Johnson’s "lurid supernatural dreads" and Thrale’s eventual "self-serving callousness" in banishing him to marry Piozzi. The review emphasizes Bainbridge’s "atmospheric authenticity" in evoking Georgian London and the "routine griefs" of the period, such as infant mortality. Kemp identifies the work as a masterpiece that balances "quiet desperation" with "lively farce," concluding that it offers an acute slant on the "unillusioned realism" of human nature.
Krist praises Bainbridge's approach to historical fiction, which uses fleet, elliptical narratives to capture the chaotic and contradictory energies of real life, avoiding dutifulness or illustrative efforts. The subject is deemed fortuitous, as the relationship was an ambiguous, intense, and occasionally hilarious affair. The novel follows the friendship’s progression, with Johnson finding refuge and stimulation—intellectual, emotional, and gastronomic—in the Thrale household as he battled depression. The review emphasizes that much of the action is viewed through the perspective of Queeney, the Thrale's eldest daughter, whose negligible status allows her to observe her elders in unguarded moments, seeing them without the prejudice of adult psychological agendas. Bainbridge captures Johnson's sympathetic qualities, such as his kindness and courage against morbidity, while also presenting his peevishness, demanding nature, and famous tics.
Marr reviews Bainbridge’s novel According to Queeney, describing it as a "small prose miracle" that renders Johnson’s familiar life "unfamiliar." The narrative adopts the "chilly gaze" of the younger Hester Thrale (Queeney), whose perspective serves as the "still point" for the account of Johnson’s relationship with her mother and the Thrale household. Marr highlights Bainbridge’s "saturated understanding of the Johnsonian style," noting convincing dialogues concerning gluttony and "onanism." The text explores Queeney’s transformation into a "captious woman," fueled by the "slow poison" of "imperceptible corrosion" mentioned in Johnson’s 1791 correspondence. Marr credits the novel with capturing Johnson’s "Shakespearean grandeur" and "masochistic fantasies" through subtle allusion, ultimately providing a convincing and authentic reassessment of the writer's final years.
Miller reviews Sisman’s study of the composition of the Life of Samuel Johnson, characterizing the work as a 'biography of Boswell's book.' The text explores the 'unlikely friendship' between the 'Great Cham' and his frivolous younger mentor, noting that despite their eternal association in the public imagination, the pair spent only about 400 days together over 21 years. Miller highlights Sisman’s focus on the 'galloping shambles' of Boswell’s personal life—marked by debt, drunkenness, and venereal disease—which coincided with his revolutionary effort to create a realistic, rather than morally edifying, biographical portrait. The review details Boswell’s controversial use of recorded conversations and his struggle to publish the 'massive' work in 1791 amidst competition from other biographers. Miller concludes that the discovery of hidden manuscripts has finally dispelled the view of Boswell as a 'simpleton,' affirming his genius in creating a hybrid memoir where biographer and subject are 'eternally yoked.'
Nye finds Bainbridge’s fictionalized account of Johnson’s final 20 years vivid but ultimately a "caricature." He argues the work relies on the "famous article" by Balderston to suggest sado-masochism drove Johnson’s relationship with Piozzi, symbolized by the "doctor's padlock." Nye disputes the focus on erotic secrets, suggesting Johnson’s request for restraint stemmed from "fear of insanity" rather than sexual desire. He praises the physical descriptions and the portrayal of the "precocious daughter" Queeney, yet faults the novel for ignoring Johnson’s religious complexity and private prayers. Nye concludes that Johnson’s character remains "not exhausted" by the novelist’s flirtatious approach to his secrets.
Rustin’s enthusiastic review of Bainbridge’s novel According to Queeney praises the work’s original perspective on Johnson and his circle. The narrative spans the twenty-year relationship between Johnson and Hester Thrale, primarily seen through the "pointed perceptions" of Thrale’s daughter, Queeney. Rustin notes that Bainbridge uses Queeney’s selective memory and adult correspondence to explore the "excruciating progress" of the connection between Johnson and her mother. The review details a domestic sphere marked by rivalries involving Johnson, Boswell, the Thrales, and the inhabitants of Johnson’s household, including Mrs. Desmoulins and Mrs. Williams. Rustin highlights Bainbridge’s depiction of an "infatuated, furious, rude, depressed" Johnson and an "egotistical, possessive" nature balanced by "rare sense." The novel depicts the Thrale family’s movements between Southwark, Streatham Park, and France, culminating in Henry Thrale’s death and the subsequent tensions regarding Hester Thrale’s second marriage.
Sisman reviews Beryl Bainbridge's novel, "According to Queeney," which fictionalizes Johnson's eighteen-year residence with Henry and Hester Thrale. The review describes the narrative as centered on Johnson's 1766 breakdown and subsequent recovery at Streatham Park. Sisman details Bainbridge's portrayal of the "delicacy" and "perverse sado-masochistic" undertones in the relationship between Johnson and Piozzi, involving a padlock and fears of insanity. The story, told through the "scornful eyes" of the Thrales' daughter, Queeney, uses letters to Laetitia Hawkins and Fanny Burney that contradict the narrative. Sisman praises the "verisimilitude" of Johnson's dialogue and the "spare prose" that captures the "disorder of human existence."
Bainbridge’s address, excerpted from her novel According to Queeney, provides a harrowing account of Johnson’s mental breakdown. The episode is narrated through the perspective of Mrs. Desmoulins, a member of his household. Bainbridge’s excerpt focuses on the Thrales’ lifesaving intervention. The article is situated within her broader exploration of Johnsonian desire and the critical necessity of editing out certain intimate aspects of his life in traditional biographical accounts.
Words Count: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary Was Published 250 Years Ago This Month
Hitchings describes Johnson’s lexicographical techniques in compiling the 1755 Dictionary, characterizing the work as a "keystone of Georgian Britain's identity." The article explains how Johnson inverted traditional methods by beginning with illustrative quotations from the preceding 200 years and working backward to distill definitions. Hitchings notes that Johnson abandoned a rigid seven-sense classification after examining Benjamin Martin’s work, opting instead for an empirical approach that resulted in 134 different senses for "to take." The narrative details Johnson's move from literal to abstract meanings, effectively creating a "genealogy" of each word. While praising the "pithy, elegant" definitions of terms like "embryo," Hitchings also highlights definitions "tinged with opinion" and the exclusion of the letter X, which Johnson believed began no genuine English words.
The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Baines examines Johnson’s "legalistic mastery" in denouncing Macpherson’s Ossian as a "palpable and most impudent forgery." During the 1773 tour, Johnson and Boswell use a legal framework to demand "manuscript evidence," with Boswell acting as a "lawyer of the South" to arraign witnesses of the oral tradition. Johnson seeks to "cancel out the growing Ossianic convention" by reinstating the author as the "stylistic owner" of direct observations, contrasting his own "classical poise" with the "spontaneous oral outpouring" feigned by Macpherson. The text argues that Johnson’s Journey deletes Ossianic geography, reducing local tradition to a "vulnerability" that requires the intervention of a "literate author" to preserve "historical fact" against the "instability of tradition."
Baldwin explores Johnson's classicism, noting his Latin prose written circa 1725 included the motto from Juvenal: "Quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam/praemia si tollas?" (Who embraces virtue itself if you remove rewards?). Johnson later translated this in The Vanity of Human Wishes: "This pow'r has praise, that virtue scarce can warm, / Till fame supplies the universal charm." Johnson claimed Xenophon's Cyropaedia was the only Greek author he ever fairly read through. Johnson once changed his mind, expressing a preference for modern times, a statement preceded by the opposite view in Idler 66. Johnson famously retorted to Anna Seward's classical retort, rumbled that "Greek, Sir, is like lace; every man gets as much of it as he can."
Johnson on Philips via Cicero on Lucretius
A correction to Lonsdale’s note in the Life of J. Philips on Jonson’s quotation of Cicero on Lucretius. Traces Johnson's comment on Philips's Cider back to a passage in Cicero concerning Lucretius. Johnson praises Philips for his successful handling of a subject seemingly unsuitable for verse, which echoes Cicero's appreciation of Lucretius's poetic transformation of difficult material. The analysis demonstrates Johnson's deep classical knowledge and how he subtly incorporates ancient rhetorical principles into his literary criticism, even concerning minor English poets.
Baldwin investigates a historical anecdote recorded by M. R. James about the downfall of the magazine The Reflector. The magazine's editor, Thomas Bendyshe, allegedly attributed Johnson’s preface to Robert Gordon Latham's 1882 edition of the Dictionary and reviewed it harshly because he hated Latham. Baldwin questions if the error was Bendyshe's or James's, noting that Latham's 1882 re-incarnation of the Dictionary did include a new preface by Latham alongside Johnson's original. This makes Bendyshe's error potentially less about misattribution and more about misdirection.
Baldwin explores Johnson's original school poem "Festina Lente" (Make Haste Slowly), arguing against the biographical reading that links it to Johnson's later procrastination. The poem, dating from c.1726, counterposes Rashness and Reason in a military context, citing the impetuous Roman general Flaminius against the cautious Fabius Cunctator. The theme and use of classical exempla link it more closely to Horace's Odes. Baldwin notes stylistic minutiae suggest a conscious attempt to infuse classical echoes, challenging Peter Martin’s claim that Johnson was asked to translate a short poem on the theme.
Baldwin discusses Johnson's nuanced view of Pope's Greek knowledge and Homer translation. Johnson conceded Pope likely didn't "overflow with Greek" but defended his poetic procedure, listing his "aids" (cribs) and calmly dismissing critics like Bentley as over-captious. Johnson's famous tribute calls Pope's Iliad the "noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen." Baldwin notes a contradiction in Johnson's research methods: he praised Blair's published account of Pope's Greek recitation but disbelieved the account's precision, stating, "it is amazing, Sir, what deviations there are from precise truth."
Some Marginalia on Johnson's Life of Gray
Baldwin provides marginalia on Johnson's controversial "Life of Gray," noting the irony of its omission of many of Gray's Latin poems. Baldwin notes Johnson's caustic personal judgment that Gray was "dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere," but questions Johnson's charge that Gray was a "mechanical poet," noting the Elegy is an obvious exception. Baldwin also points to Gray's meteorological records and plant catalogues, which contradict the Elegy's famous line, "Many a flower is born to blush unseen." A final item reveals a fragment of Greek verse from Gray's youth, which subtly included an obscene pun on smoking and Bacchus.
Classical Moments in Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Baldwin provides a catalogue raisonné of "classical moments" in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, focusing on the lesser-known poets. The list highlights Johnson's critical opinions of their classical interests and productions (e.g., translations of Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, and Ovid). Notably, Johnson praised Rowe's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, calling it "one of the greatest productions of English poetry" and predicting its increased esteem. He dismissed Wentworth Dillon's Art of Poetry as "so near to prose" it only "scorns it for pretending to be verse," and condemned James Hammond's elegies to young ladies as "frigid pedantry."
Settecento e malinconia: saggi di letteratura inglese
Samuel Johnson: The History of Rasselas
Dr. Johnson's Daughter: Jane Austen and Northanger Abbey
Banerjee argues that Northanger Abbey functions less as a Gothic parody and more as an Augustan novel following Johnsonian standards of verisimilitude and rationalism to rescue fiction from Gothic and sentimental trivialization. The study challenges critics who view the novel primarily as parody, asserting instead that Austen internalizes Johnson’s injunction in Rambler No. 4 to exhibit life in its true state. By positioning Catherine Morland’s education as a transition from romantic and imaginative delusion to rationalism, Banerjee demonstrates how Austen employs Gothic tropes symbolically to dramatize psychological fears while upholding Johnsonian moral realism. However, the analysis suggests that Catherine’s heart-led maturity transcends the very reason and "obstinate rationality" Johnson championed, ultimately showing that Austen uses these standards to guide Catherine toward a maturity that integrates both heart and mind.
Banerjee claims that Freeman mistakenly asserted Johnson hid his true meaning of "patron" in the Dictionary. Johnson’s first, unexceptionable definition, "One who countenances, supports or protects," shows his reliability as a lexicographer. He only injected personal prejudice—like against the Scots or "wretches" of patrons—after establishing the word's standard meaning.
A response to Freeman’s “Affection’s Eye,” arguing that the Dictionary definitions of patron “are quite unexceptionable.”
Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Wit, Mirth & Spleen: 'I Am Willing to Love All Mankind, Except an American'
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The Representation of Prostitutes in Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Barker examines the literary representation of prostitutes in eighteenth-century British literature, including works by Cleland, Defoe, Lillo, Steele, and Johnson. The study uses the figure of the "fallen" woman to provide insight into the strategies used to rationalize and enforce rules governing female behavior. It specifically analyzes Johnson's representation of the prostitute Misella in The Rambler essays, contrasting her moral self-responsibility with that of her seducer. Johnson's views on inequality, subordination, and the double standard, as recorded by Boswell and in his sermons, reveal a profound sense of the social world's arbitrariness rather than a belief in natural hierarchy. The analysis presents Johnson's approach to the subject as an orthodoxy that accepts the system's unfairness while extending deliberate solidarity to the oppressed.
Learning from Experience, or Not: From Chrysippus to Rasselas
Barnouw examines the theme of "learning from experience" in Johnson, arguing it aligns with an empirical, morally inflected tradition stemming from Bacon and ancient Stoics like Chrysippus. This tradition emphasizes active endeavor, welcoming negative feedback (failure or resistance) as essential for acquiring practical wisdom and correcting axiomatic assumptions. Conversely, passive hope and avoidance of trial lead to a fatal stasis, as satirized in Johnson’s Rasselas. The protagonists' inability to risk disappointment or commit to active pursuit projects their inner emptiness onto the external world, thereby preventing genuine experiential learning.
A New Species of Criticism: Eighteenth-Century Discourse on the Novel
Cracking Facades of Authority: Richardson, Fielding, and Johnson
Baruth's historical novel explores the psychological tension between well-known biographer Boswell and his lesser-known brother, John, a lieutenant plagued by mental illness and a sense of erasure. Set primarily in 1763, the narrative centers on John’s clandestine stalking of Boswell and Samuel Johnson during their famous riverine excursion to Greenwich. John, recently released from a Plymouth asylum, seeks to confront his brother for 'hiding' his new London life and systematic social climbing. Baruth uses these interactions to suggest that the sanitized version of events in Boswell's London Journal was a deliberate revisionism encouraged by Johnson to blot out John’s disturbing presence and violent threats. The text uses shifting perspectives to contrast Boswell’s exuberant self-fashioning with John’s 'ambient outrage' and 'bastard world' of perceived betrayals. Baruth challenges the fixed characters found in traditional biography, offering instead a 'truth of multiplicity' through John’s account of a secret, more fractious history between the brothers Boswell.
Scary Olde England [review of The Brothers Boswell, by Philip Baruth]
The novel features James Boswell and his younger, insane brother, John, who attempts to abduct and possibly murder both James and Samuel Johnson. John, who narrates most of the novel, feels grievously insulted by his exclusion from his brother's burgeoning friendship with Johnson. The novel alternates between John's pursuit and eventual abduction of the two men in London in 1763 and flashbacks to the brothers' earlier lives in Edinburgh. The reviewer notes that both brothers, who grew up admiring Johnson and using his Dictionary for a game of creative insults, possess a gift for words. The novel presents a vivid and often hellish picture of 18th-century London. The reviewer concludes that the mad brother, John, is as compelling a character as the soon-to-be-immortal James.
Resisting Authority; or, Johnson and The Wizard of Oz
Basker presents a pedagogical strategy to deconstruct Johnson's intimidating reputation as a literary dictator by examining the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets. He argues that the abridged editions of the Dictionary created a tradition of dictionary worship by stripping away Johnson's original speculative comments and personal jokes. Similarly, Basker views Johnson's outrageous critical remarks in the Lives, such as his tactical iconoclasm regarding Milton's Lycidas, as a means to rouse his students and force them to exert their own judgment. By using experiential hands-on approaches, students learn to see the reader-friendly democrat behind the authoritarian facade.
Les Ages de la vie en Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle
Coming of Age in Johnson's England: Adolescence in The Rambler
Sidney Sussex College Cambridge: Historical Essays in Commemoration of the Quatercentenary
Dictionary Johnson amidst the Dons of Sidney: A Chapter in Eighteenth-Century Cambridge History
La Grande-Bretagne et l'Europe des Lumières
An Eighteenth-Century Critique of Eurocentrism: Samuel Johnson and the Plight of Native Americans
Samuel Johnson in the Mind of Thomas Jefferson: With Thomas Jefferson's Letter to Herbert Croft, 30 October 1798
Johnson, Boswell and the Abolition of Slavery
Basker investigates Johnson’s lifelong, principled opposition to slavery, contrasting it with Boswell’s proslavery views. Johnson dictates an argument for Joseph Knight, an enslaved man petitioning for freedom in Scotland, asserting that Knight is subject to no law but violence. Boswell, however, frames Johnson’s stance as emotional zeal and inserts his own arguments defending slavery as necessary for commercial interest and sanctioned by God.
A discussion by Walter Jackson Bate. Separate parts: “Samuel Johnson’s Four Great Themes,” “Samuel Johnson: The Dark Years”; “Johnson, Psychology & English Prose Style”; “Samuel Johnson: The Final Years”; “Boswell.”
本书讲述塞缪尔·约翰生的生平,性格和作品.展现出这位伟人的优点与缺点,他内心的动荡与叛逆,他内心中独立与依赖,敌意与内疚的分裂,刻画出约翰生强烈的痛苦与勇气.Ben shu jiang shu sai mou er·Yue han sheng de sheng ping,Xing ge he zuo pin.Zhan xian chu zhei wei wei ren de you dian yu que dian,Ta nei xin de dong dang yu pan ni,Ta nei xin zhong du li yu yi lai,Di yi yu nei jiu de fen lie,Ke hua chu yue han sheng qiang lie de tong ku yu yong qi.
A Proverbial Candle and Johnson's Candlestick
Battersby challenges Daniel Barnes's claim that Johnson's anecdote about Lichfield master John Hunter demanding the "Latin for a candlestick" is apocryphal and a misunderstanding of the proverb "Tace is Latin for a candle." Battersby argues that taking the anecdote as an allusion makes it a weak example of Hunter's "wrong-headedly severe" injustice, as the whole point of the instance is to show Johnson's failure to distinguish between ignorance and negligence. Battersby finds compelling evidence of Johnson's intimate familiarity with the proverb in his own essay, "An Appeal to the Publick" (1739), where Johnson quotes the proverb (misattributing the speaker in Shadwell's The Virtuoso), thus proving Johnson would not have misremembered its meaning. Battersby concludes the anecdote is fine as it is and the "candlestick" effectively caps Johnson's point, while the investigation yielded new evidence of Johnson's wide reading and powerful memory.
The Creation of a Classical Language in the Eighteenth Century: Standardizing English, Cultural Imperialism, and the Future of the Literary Canon
Beach examines how eighteenth-century linguistic projects, specifically Johnson's Dictionary, served as tools for "internal cultural imperialism" following the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. Johnson's "Plan" and "Preface" characterize Britain as a land of "linguistic savages" plagued by "wild exuberance" and "uncertain pronunciation." Beach argues that Johnson's goal to "fix" the language was intended to "settle them under laws," facilitating the integration of the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish peripheries into a unified British nation. By comparing the standardization of English to the "metaphysical empire" of Rome, Johnson and his contemporaries sought to create a "classical" tongue that would dominate post-imperial contexts. The article details how Johnson’s work functioned as a "technology of modernity" to enforce ethnic and class hierarchies through the regulation of speech.
Journal of English Language and Literature/Yǒngǒ Yǒngmunhak
The Melancholy Translator: Sirak Wäldä Śellasse Ruy's Amharic Translation of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Belcher and Herouy provide the first detailed biography of Blatta Sirak Wäldä Śəllasse Ḫəruy, the Amharic translator of Johnson's Rasselas, exploring the uncanny parallels between the translator and the fictional prince. Son of a prominent Ethiopian intellectual, Sirak was Oxford-educated but returned disillusioned. His translation (completed 1943, published 1946/47 after struggles with Ethiopian ministers and British bureaucracy) became a classic in Ethiopian schools. Belcher and Herouy detail Sirak's life, including his exile during the Italian occupation, propaganda work during WWII, melancholy disposition, and later reclusiveness, analyzing his translation choices and its reception, contextualizing it within postcolonial experience.
The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood
In a book on models of masculinity, Bennett includes several selections by and about Johnson, including his letter to the grieving Dr. Lawrence, the penance over the paternal disobedience at Uttoxeter from Baldwin's Thirty More Famous Stories Retold, his prayer of 1 January 1773, and his resolutions ("To avoid idleness...").
This dissertation analyzes Johnson's reader theory in The Rambler, exploring how he employs the "common reader" concept to foster a purposeful, moral engagement with literature. Johnson posits that readers require an "external impulse"—such as "emulation, or vanity, or avarice"—to overcome mental idleness and read willingly. The study surveys the periodical's four genres to show how Johnson uses literary conventions to direct this reading, teaching economically dependent individuals (traders, writers, and women) to attain self-knowledge and moral autonomy. By urging readers to recognize their roles within an interpretive community, the analysis argues that Johnson frames reading as a crucial and morally accountable act of self-reformation.
John Wesley's Plagiarism of Samuel Johnson and Its Contemporary Reception
Abelove discusses the contemporary criticism surrounding John Wesley's plagiarism of Samuel Johnson first leveled by Caleb Evans.
Cites Life: 2:290
Brief profile of the Dixie Grammar School in Market Bosworth.
Rubin reviews Bainbridge’s According to Queeney, a fictionalized account of the relationship between Johnson and the Thrale family. She notes the use of Queeney Thrale’s perspective to provide a skeptical, unimpressed view of the adults’ vanities and cross-purposes. The review describes Johnson as a "melancholy widower" who enjoyed the "feminine attentions" of Thrale. Rubin examines the depiction of a "motley group" in Johnson’s household, including Williams and Desmoulins, all competing for his regard. The text highlights Johnson’s "pessimistic view of the world" and his distress over Thrale’s eventual marriage to Piozzi. Rubin praises the novel’s historical accuracy and psychological depth while noting its focus on "human limitations" rather than the lexicographer’s literary greatness.
Elegy: An Epitaph on Claudy Phillips, a Musician
Music by Carol Barnett, with words by Samuel Johnson.
'Look, My Lord, It Comes': The Approach of Death in the Life of Johnson
Berglund examines Boswell's framing of The Life of Johnson using the ghost scene from Hamlet. Boswell's description of his first meeting with Johnson casts the elder man as an "aweful yet paternal muse," metaphorically transforming him into a stage ghost. As the biography concludes, Boswell retards the narrative of Johnson's death, using repetitive correspondence and extensive footnotes to create a series of "ghostly Johnsons." This strategy allows Boswell to manage his own grief and license his role as the "biographical undertaker" of his mentor's textual remains.
A song written by Lisa Berglund and performed by lexicographers at the Dictionary Society of North America Conference. The song, titled "A Lexicon! A Lexicon!," is set to the tune of "The Paradox Trio" from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. The lyrics celebrate Johnson's Dictionary as a necessary response to the language's unregulated, wild exuberance in 1755.
A comic song to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Paradox Trio.”
Berglund analyzes the extensive biographical tradition surrounding Johnson, focusing on the competing narratives produced after his death. The article evaluates the foundational works by Boswell, Piozzi, and Hawkins, noting how each biographer’s prejudices shaped their representation of the subject. Berglund argues that Boswell’s Life lopsidedly privileges the later years of their friendship, whereas Piozzi provides a unique "candle-light picture" of Johnson’s private domesticity with the Thrales. The article traces the nineteenth-century dominance of "Boswellism" and the subsequent twentieth-century shift toward psychoanalytic interpretations of Johnson as a figure of "suppressed anguish" and "neurotic inhibition." Berglund highlights how modern scholars like DeMaria and Lipking have attempted to "break free" of Boswell by refocusing on Johnson as a scholar and frustrated Latinist. The article reviews joint biographies of the Johnson circle, such as Holmes's study of the relationship with Richard Savage, and concludes with an assessment of three major biographies published for the tercentenary of Johnson’s birth.
Berland surveys the early life of Johnson, emphasizing the recurring theme that "the boy is the man in miniature." Johnson’s childhood in Lichfield, marked by his father’s financial struggles and his mother’s religious instruction, established a lifelong pattern of "morbid melancholy" and guilt. Berland details how childhood illnesses, specifically scrofula and smallpox, left Johnson with lasting physical disabilities that shaped his social interactions and academic pursuits. Despite these obstacles, Johnson’s intellectual force allowed him to excel at Lichfield Grammar School and later at Pembroke College, Oxford, though poverty eventually forced his departure. The article explores Johnson’s failed attempts to secure a teaching career, his marriage to Elizabeth Porter, and his ultimate decision to seek a living as a writer in London. Berland argues that the "original motions" of Johnson’s character, including his "aggressive pride" and "radical self-division," are fundamentally discoverable in the trials of his first twenty-five years.
Across Celtic Borders: Johnson, Boswell, Piozzi, Scott
Francis Barber's Marriage and Children: A Correction
Berrett corrects errors in previous genealogical research concerning the children of Barber, Johnson’s servant. By examining original parish registers, Berrett identifies four legitimate children—Samuel, Elizabeth Ann, Samuel, and Ann—and provides birth and burial dates. The study refutes the inclusion of two other children previously attributed to Barber, noting a lack of evidence connecting him to specific London parishes. This adjustment clarifies the domestic history of Johnson's household.
Who Was ... Sam Johnson: The Wonderful Word Doctor
Billen chronicles the life and literary legacy of Johnson in this accessible biography, emphasizing the paradox between his physical eccentricities and his intellectual brilliance. The narrative traces Johnson's trajectory from his sickly childhood in Lichfield and aborted studies at Oxford to his struggle as a Grub Street hack and his eventual rise as the king of talk. Billen highlights the monumental nine-year effort to compile the Dictionary of the English Language and explores the profound impact of his friendships with Boswell, Reynolds, and Piozzi. By incorporating vivid anecdotes—such as Johnson's public penance in Uttoxeter and his adventurous tour of the Hebrides—Billen illustrates how Johnson overcame poverty, depression, and Tourette's Syndrome to become a moral and linguistic authority. The biography characterizes Johnson's heart as his greatest attribute, noting that he viewed life as a weary pilgrimage best made in company. Billen presents Johnson not merely as a scholar of worthy, solemn writing, but as a man whose sharp-witted banter and humane spirit ensured his enduring fame centuries after his death. Chapter 1, "Dr Johnson - Celebrity or Lunatic?," introduces Johnson’s idiosyncratic physicality and enduring intellectual legacy, framing his brilliance against a backdrop of chronic illness and social nonconformity. Chapter 2, "A Difficult Beginning," traces his formative years in Lichfield, detailing how early childhood maladies and financial instability at Oxford shaped his ambitious yet troubled character. Chapter 3, "A Poor Teacher Finds a Surprising Wife," examines his unsuccessful pedagogical career and his unconventional, affection-based marriage to the widow Elizabeth Porter. Chapter 4, "The Streets of London," documents his precarious existence as a Grub Street journalist and his profound immersion into the capital's cultural landscape. Chapter 5, "Dictionary Johnson," analyzes the nine-year lexicographical labor that standardized the English language while securing his professional reputation. Chapter 6, "The Art of Conversation; the Gift of Friendship," explores his social mastery and the diverse intellectual circle that provided essential emotional support. Chapter 7, "Enter Boswell," details the pivotal relationship with his future biographer and their significant 1773 expedition through the Scottish Highlands. Chapter 8, "A Brave Death; a Famous Life," recounts his final decline and the revolutionary impact of the posthumous biography that immortalized his conversational genius.
Appraises Andrew Billen's short book, aimed at engaging young readers in Johnson. It notes the book is part of a series covering figures of historical interest, including Shakespeare, Mozart, and Napoleon. The appraisal confirms the goal of introducing Johnson to a non-specialist audience.
Fraser's enthusiastic review praises a narrative biography of Johnson intended for readers aged nine to eleven. Fraser commends the effective evocation of Johnson's physical presence and describes the accounts of his travels through Britain as possessing an almost cinematic quality. The review highlights the portrayal of Johnson's social skills as both alarming and endearing while noting the inclusion of his famous sayings interpreted for a twenty-first-century audience. Fraser emphasizes the description of the dictionary's compilation, which illustrates Johnson's passion for language and common sense. Although Fraser notes a lack of broader historical context, the review maintains that the fascinating life of Johnson ensures young readers will not feel short-changed.
Jones reviews Billen’s 90-page narrative for readers aged ten and older, which recounts the life of Johnson. The text identifies the biography as an "excellent example of how facts can make good stories," focusing on colorful incidents such as Johnson's public penance in the rain for a childhood refusal to assist at his father's bookstall. Jones notes that Billen avoids psychological speculation, reporting instead on Johnson's documented actions, speech, and physical appearance. The reviewer emphasizes that while Johnson was "odd and ugly," Billen portrays him as "unstuffy and full of joie de vivre." Jones concludes that the work successfully imparts an "infectious enthusiasm" for its subject, whose conversation is characterized as his "greatest achievement," surpassing even his dictionary.
Proceedings from the Third Nording Conference for English Studies, Hässelby
'Introducing Herself into the Chair of Criticism': Dr. Johnson, Monsieur Voltaire and Mrs. Montagu
Samuel Johnson, Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands and the Tory Tradition in Foreign Policy
Black situates Johnson's 1771 pamphlet on the Falkland Islands crisis within a Tory tradition of foreign policy thought traceable to Swift's Conduct of the Allies. This tradition emphasized caution, skepticism about interventionism and alliances (often associated with Whigs), preference for maritime strategy, and a pessimistic view of human affairs and international stability, contrasting with Whig optimism about creating predictable order. Johnson's pamphlet, defending the government's avoidance of war, reflects these themes: prudence, the limits of human calculation, the unpredictability of events, moral critique of war-profiteering, and skepticism about colonial expansion, aligning his later views with this Tory philosophical stance.
A collection of critical essays on the works of Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, arranged in order of original publication. Johnson's theory / W. K. Wimsatt The life of Boswell / Frederick A. Pottle The treachery of the human heart and the stratagems of defense / Walter Jackson Bate In praise of Rasselas : four notes (converging) / W. K. Wimsatt "The anxious employment of a periodical writer" / Paul Fussell The vanity of human wishes / Leopold Damrosch, Jr The strategies of biography and some eighteenth-century examples / Frank Brady Boswell's notes toward a supreme fiction : from London Journal to Life of Johnson / Robert H. Bell A Plutarchan hero : the Tour to Corsica / William C. Dowling "The language properly so-called" : Johnson's language and politics / John Barrell Johnson in mourning / Laura Quinney "Generous attachment" : the politics of biography in the Tour to the Hebrides / Gordon Turnbull. Reflections as criterion in The lives of the poets / Robert J. Griffin
Modern Critical Views: Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Lynn reviews Harold Bloom's collection of essays on Johnson and Boswell. He criticizes the volume for perpetuating the Dr. Johnson stereotype and for omitting essential scholarship. Lynn finds Bloom's introduction focuses excessively on the eccentric and comical, ignoring the context of Johnson's critical statements. He questions the selection of essays, noting that W. K. Wimsatt's weaker theoretical work is included and that Frederick Pottle's essay addresses peripheral matters. While Lynn praises three new essays by Laura Quinney, Gordon Turnbull, and Robert Griffin, he concludes that readers should turn to other collections for a better representative selection of the best criticism on Johnson and Boswell.
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann
Bloom identifies Johnson as the canonical critic whose authority stems from a unique "art of thinking" and a "continual power of seizing the useful substance" of knowledge. Johnson represents a "fire in the flint" produced by collision with proper subjects, yet his genius remains a "perilous balance" between emulating forerunners and the "tyranny of vanity." Bloom argues that Johnson's critical voice is the voice of "literary criticism itself," emphasizing that literature exists to keep the mind in "pleasing captivity." Boswell, though frequently dismissed as a mere journalist, is presented as a psychologist of genius who created an unmatched "encyclopedic journal of the self." Bloom notes that Boswell's "best is self-creation," having invented both his hero's biography and his own narrative persona. Both figures are linked by a "vile melancholy" and a shared need to "exorcise the demon" of depression through perpetual gaiety or reflection.
Bloom contrasts Johnson and Goethe as sages whose intimate lives are extensively documented, identifying Johnson as a somber, Christian moralist and Goethe as a serene, instinctual pagan. Drawing on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, Johnson employs a mordant, orotund style to address human suffering and the "dangerous prevalence of imagination," seeking to recommend known truths through his manner of adorning them. Conversely, Goethe prioritizes Bildung, or elite self-development, and a Spinoza-like pantheism, eventually moving from a poetry of desire to a mature poetics of renunciation. While Johnson fears the cognitive breakdown of melancholia and solitude, Goethe thrives in a cloudless, "heiter" state of self-completion, viewing Christ as a great nature akin to himself.
The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature
Bogel uses the psychoanalytic category of narcissism to interrogate the boundaries of Johnson's authority, specifically regarding his practice of "ghost writing" for others. Bogel examines how Johnson's canonical authority is complicated by these noncanonical hack works, suggesting a fluid intertextuality where the lines between Johnson's voice and those he assists are blurred. By reading Johnson's major texts alongside these marginalized works, Bogel disputes the traditional view of Johnson as a monolithic figure of stable moral power. The article argues that Johnson's "obsessive need to authorize" reflects a deeper anxiety about the self and its public representation. Bogel identifies a "narcissistic economy" in Johnson's prose, where the exertion of authority functions as a defense against personal fragmentation. The text concludes that Johnson's literary presence is defined by a persistent struggle to maintain control over a discourse that constantly threatens to escape his grasp.
Bringing Up Boswell: Drama, Criticism, and the Journals
Bond reinterprets James Boswell's use of dramatic language and role-playing commands, such as "Be like Sir Richard Steele," in his journals—particularly the London Journal and Continental journals (1762–1766). Challenging prevailing psychological and theatrical interpretations, Bond argues that Boswell’s dramatic vocabulary situates him within an eighteenth-century textual tradition where drama and literary or social criticism were intertwined, citing the influences of Dryden, Steele, and Addison. Rather than viewing his role-playing as mere theatricality or psychological division, Bond suggests Boswell used his journals to experiment with techniques for policing the individual imagination and managing his own conduct through textual form. Influenced by Addison and Steele, Boswell adapted their critical models for self-governance, employing "reflection" and "recollection" as critical labor to regulate his behavior and render his imagination "solid." This critical narrative project extended through his continental travels, where he used his journals to evaluate character references and critique Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy. Bond maintains that Boswell’s "bringing up" of his journals—the act of translating memoranda into narrative—represented a disciplined method of self-government designed to achieve independent manhood. By using journal writing as a tool to discipline his conduct and shape his character, Boswell positioned himself as a novel type of critic whose journals serve as a metacommentary on the self-governing model of the era.
Bookselling and Canon-Making: The Trade Rivalry over the English Poets, 1776–1783
The first major published canons of English poetry were the product of a commercial rivalry between booksellers in the 1770s and 1780s, not the work of literary critics. He traces this development to the 1774 copyright ruling that opened the market, leading to a direct competition between John Bell's *Poets of Great Britain* and a London consortium's *Works of the English Poets*, for which Samuel Johnson wrote the prefaces. The essay shows how both publishers, appealing to national pride, marketed their multi-volume collections as complete sets of "English classics," thereby defining a cultural heritage for a broad readership for the first time. The author contends that the selection of poets was shaped less by consistent literary principles than by commercial factors such as what was considered "vendible poetry," the need to appear comprehensive in a competitive market, and strategies for product differentiation. This bookselling rivalry, he concludes, occurred during the rise of English nationalism and was a key force in establishing a fixed, public canon of the nation's poets.
"The most celebrated English biography is a group portrait in which one extraordinary man paints the picture of a dozen more. At the centre of a brilliant circle which included Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Fanny Burney and even George III, Boswell captures the powerful, troubled and witty figure of Samuel Johnson, who towers above them all. Yet this is also an intimate picture of domestic life, which mingles the greatest talkers of a talkative age with the hero's humbler friends in the greatest and most compelling of all biographies."
Samuel Johnson's Life and the Most Meaningful Events of His Times
The Everyman version contains more of Edmond Malone's notes than are typically present in the Hill–Powell text. This editorial choice emphasizes the preservation of commentary from the text’s earliest scholarly tradition.
Abbott reviews this inaugural volume of the Yale Research Edition, which prints the manuscript journey of Boswell’s masterpiece. He explains that Waingrow superimposes the original manuscript on the familiar printed text, correcting errors and revealing Boswell’s editorial process. Abbott notes that the edition highlights Boswell’s literary artistry in sifting through vast materials to satisfy biographical form. He identifies this "tour de force" as a new standard for Boswellian scholarship and the definitive account of Johnson's constructed conversations.
Ingram praises the volume, stating it demonstrates the painstaking and dogged effort that went into Boswell's telling of the Life. The edition allows readers to see in full Boswell's method of editing and censoring disparate materials. Ingram calls the work an indispensable research tool.
The edition reveals Boswell's self-censorship, as he moderated Johnson's "violent fit" to a "violent attack" and obscured his poverty and Jacobite leanings. Boswell also suppressed Johnson's more visceral comments, such as those about the effect of actresses' attire on his "genitals."
Womersley's enthusiastic review celebrates Pat Rogers's study of Boswell and Johnson's journey through the Scottish Highlands. The review lauds the text as a deft, gracious, and witty collection of congruent essays that functions as an excellent companion volume to Waingrow's editorial work. Womersley notes that Rogers provides a plausible extra dimension to both men, portraying an unexpectedly Romantic Johnson as a subtly Byronic figure preparing for the winter of his days, while exposing Boswell's complex wrestling with his Scottish inheritance. Womersley particularly commends Rogers's psychological insight into the controversial subject of Jacobitism, framing Johnson as a secret sharer in dynastic politics.
External Resources: Cite This Item Search for versions with same title and author | Advanced options ... Uniform Title: Life of Samuel Johnson. Selections Edition: Abridged. Contents: CD 1. Dr. Johnson's birth and background -- Dr. Johnson-the student -- The move to London -- The death of his wife -- Publication of the Dictionary -- My first meeting with Dr. Johnson -- With Dr. Johnson and Dr. Goldsmith -- 'Pity is not natural to man' -- 'Jean Bull philosophe' -- 1764-the literary club -- 1765-with the Thrale family -- 'Smile with the wise and feed the rich' -- CD 2. Hope and experience -- Johnson's personal courage -- A capital tavern -- Dr. Johnson's compassion -- Dr. Johnson meets John Wilkes -- Bons mots from the Johnsonian garden -- More dialogues -- Lives of the poets -- 1783-aged 74 -- The last year -- The death of Dr. Johnson. Named Person: Johnson, Samuel, 1709–1784. Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784. Genre/Form: collective biographies. abridgements. digests (periodicals) Abridgments. Biographies. Audiobooks. Biographies. Audiobooks. Abridgments. Biographies. Livres audio. Abrégés. Time: 1700-1799 Geographic: London (England) -- Intellectual life -- 18th century. Londres (Angleterre) -- Vie intellectuelle -- 18e siècle. England -- London. Note(s): Title from disc label./ Participants: Read by Billy Hartman. Class Descriptors: LC: PR3533; Dewey: 828.609 Responsibility: James Boswell. Vendor Info: Baker & Taylor (BKTY) 15.98 Status: active Material Type: Non-musical recording (nsr); CD audio (cda) Entry: 20201016 Update: 20250520 Provider: OCLC
Dorta outlines the editorial criteria for this Spanish abridgment, which consists of 181 selected fragments from the 1791 text. The translation aims to provide a vision of the whole by prioritizing universal traits over local or specialized British interests. Dorta uses a numbered paragraph system to enhance structural clarity. The front matter includes an introductory essay by Fernando Savater, which identifies Boswell as the inventor of the interview and explores the contrast between personal vices and biographical achievements. The edition preserves the crystalline and transparent prose style attributed to Boswell, seeking to maintain the miracle of the original’s narrative vitality despite the significant reduction in total volume.
Translated and abridged by Antonio Dorta, with a preface by Fernando Savater.
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Campbell's brief notice of Waingrow's edition of The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell describes the work as a "superb reproduction" of Boswell's working papers, noting the accuracy of the manuscripts and the thoroughness of the annotation. The review highlights verbatim interviews with Johnson's servant Barber, describes Boswell's methods of obtaining material from Johnson's colleagues, and mentions a new anthology of Boswell's Edinburgh journals.
Zhizn Semiuelia Dzhonsona: Otryvki iz knigi, s prilozheniem izbrannykh proizvedenii Semiuelia Dzhonsona
Russian translation of Boswell’s Life (abridged).
Privately printed for the annual meeting of The Johnsonians
Dr. Johnson's 'Life in Scenes': A Reproduction of Those Leaves from James Boswell's Manuscript of the 'Life' (Houghton fMS Eng 1836) in Which Dr. Johnson Dines with Mr. Wilkes
With a foreword by Mary, Viscountess Eccles, and an afterword by Bruce Redford.
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
Lister's review of the Boulton and McLoughlin edition of Account of Corsica notes this first complete publication since 1796 represents a work that established Boswell's early European reputation in 1768, long before his biography of Johnson. Boswell's interest in the island, stemming from a youthful fascination with liberty and meetings with Rousseau, led him to conceive a text that uniquely combined an objective, descriptive "Account" with a subjective "Journal" to inform public opinion and satisfy his desire for literary fame. The review describes how Boswell's meeting with national leader Pascal Paoli allowed him to create a new genre of travel literature through subjective journalism, and Lister praises the editors for placing the work in context while highlighting Boswell's role as a "self-publicist" who kept newspapers "warm with paragraphs" about his tour.
Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell: Research Edition: Journals
James Boswell: The Journal of His German and Swiss Travels, 1764
This volume, first in the Yale Research Series of Boswell's journals, covers his emotionally eventful youthful travels through the German and Swiss territories, from mid-June 1764 (after his law studies in Utrecht) to New Year's Day, 1765, when he crossed the Alps for the next stages of his European tour, in Italy, Corsica and France. The volume is the Research Series parallel to Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, ed. F. A. Pottle (1953), whose annotation the editor, Marlies K. Danziger, has greatly deepened, expanded, supplemented and in many cases corrected. In keeping with the editorial policies of the Research Series, it restores Boswell's original spelling, punctuation and paragraphing (and his generally less than perfect French). The editor's detailed notes illuminate the contemporary political and historical context as well as a vast array of contemporary issues, concepts and personalities no longer familiar to modern readers (especially English-speaking ones). As well as the text of the fully-written journal, the volume includes Boswell's personal daily memoranda and his frequently revealing ‘Ten Lines a Day' poems; the autobiographical ‘Ébauche de ma vie' written for Rousseau, along with its various drafts, outlines, and attendant correspondence; his detailed expense accounts (a window on the fluctuating currencies and erratic economy of a Europe not yet formed into our modern nation-states); and four maps, adapted from contemporary cartographic records, illustrating Boswell's complicated and often arduous itinerary. Boswell's European travels followed his exhilarating stay in London of 1762–1763 and his mostly bleak winter in the United Provinces in 1763–64. Though forever to be best known for his later accounts of his principal biographical subject, Samuel Johnson, Boswell has emerged since the recovery of his private papers as a compelling autobiographer, and here shows his fascination with, and abilities to record with typical liveliness and percipience, men and women across a strikingly diverse social range. The European journal, which Boswell had unfulfilled hopes later in life of revising and publishing in the manner of his Corsican and Hebridean diaries, records the young Scot's quest for experience in hopes of a cosmopolitan broadening, cultural enrichment, and religious and spiritual security, and conversations culminating in his deeply gratifying meetings with Rousseau and Voltaire. At the same time, it documents in close personal detail an unstable Europe rebuilding and restoring itself a little more than a year after the end of the Seven Years' War, a Europe whose quest for stability amid ominous political and religious fluctuation mirrors and parallels the diarist's own.
A review of the first volume in the Yale Research Series of Boswell's journal, contrasting it with the earlier trade edition edited by Frederick Pottle. The research edition is praised for restoring Boswell's original spelling, punctuation, and French passages, and for its expansive scholarly apparatus, including extensive annotation, autobiographical material, and expense accounts. The editor's thoughtful introduction covers travel conditions, the German courts, and the interplay of intellectual pursuits and the Cult of Sentiment in Boswell's encounters. The sheer exuberance of the writing and the quality of the scholarship are highlighted.
Intended for a wide audience, this edition collates and corrects the textual inaccuracies of previous versions, returning to the original manuscript in order to present a definitive edition of this landmark text.
Amorous to Zealous [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
Jones reviews two contemporary biographies of Johnson by Peter Martin and Jeffrey Meyers, examining how they update the subject for a modern audience while acknowledging their debt to Boswell. Jones states Martin and Meyers emphasize Johnson's progressive views, citing his opposition to slavery and his kindness to Barber. The review notes both biographers seek to attribute Johnson’s compassionate side to his lifelong suffering, including his severe poverty and "horrible hypochondria." Finally, Jones addresses the biographers' engagement with Johnson's sexuality, contrasting Boswell's bowdlerization with Piozzi's diary revelation regarding "Fetters & Padlocks."
约翰生传: 全译本 = Quan yi ben [The Life of Samuel Johnson]
本书记述了十八世纪著名英国诗人,散文家,批评家和英语词典编纂家约翰生的一生,并介绍了其代表作等.Ben shu ji shu le shi ba shi ji zhu ming ying guo shi ren,San wen jia,Pi ping jia he ying yu ci dian bian zuan jia yue han sheng de yi sheng,Bing jie shao le qi dai biao zuo deng.
Scott's Commentary on The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
Bowden and Todd reprint and analyze the history of Sir Walter Scott's annotations to James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which were originally contributed to John Wilson Croker's 1831 edition of the Life of Johnson. They explain that Croker solicited the notes from Scott to elucidate the Scottish tour, which he had incorporated directly into the main biography. The essay details the enthusiastic contemporary reception of Scott's seventy-seven notes, which reviewers hailed as the most valuable part of the new edition, before tracing their gradual marginalization by subsequent editors who often abridged or omitted them entirely. The authors provide a complete scholarly reprint of all of Scott's original commentary, allowing readers to reassess the value of these observations, which Scott's son-in-law Lockhart had once predicted would "never be divorced from the text."
Studies in Bibliography: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia
Samuel Johnson Bicentenary Exhibitions and Catalogues
Brack reviews the "impressive array" of exhibitions and reference guides produced for the 1784–1984 Johnson bicentenary. He highlights the Arts Council of Great Britain’s first Johnson exhibition, which featured manuscripts for London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, along with Johnson’s personal copy of the Life of Savage. Brack reviews several bookseller catalogues, noting Maggs Bros.’s "spectacular" production and Jeffrey Thomas’s "jaunty familiarity" in referring to Johnson as "Cham." The article notes significant rarities, such as a copy of Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia with a red and black title page and presentation copies from Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot. Brack characterizes these catalogues as "helpful reference guides" for scholars researching the Johnson circle, providing prices and provenance for first editions of the Dictionary and the Journey.
The Gentleman's Magazine Concealed Printing, and the Texts of Samuel Johnson's Lives of Admiral Robert Blake and Sir Francis Drake
Brack demonstrates that concealed, revised printings of Samuel Johnson's early biographies in the *Gentleman's Magazine* have been overlooked, resulting in the loss of authorial revisions in modern editions. He first details the discovery of a 1742 reprinting of the final installment of the *Life of Drake* (originally 1741), which contains forty-five variants, most notably a new footnote clarifying a historical point that had initially troubled Johnson. This important revision, the essay shows, was absent from most subsequent collected editions because they were based on earlier, unrevised texts. The author then identifies a previously unknown second printing of the gathering containing the *Life of Blake* (1740), distinguished by bibliographical evidence such as signature placements and changes in typography. This later printing includes several substantive revisions likely made by Johnson, such as the correction of a chronological error and a stylistic improvement for epigrammatic effect. The essay concludes that these findings underscore the necessity of close bibliographical analysis of the magazine to establish accurate texts of Johnson's early work.
Bred a Bookseller: Samuel Johnson on Vellum Books: A New Essay for The Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
Privately printed for the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California & the Johnson Society of the Central Region
Samuel Johnson and the Translations of Jean Pierre de Crousaz's Examen and Commentaire
Brack clarifies Johnson's role in translating Crousaz's attacks on Alexander Pope. While Elizabeth Carter translated the Examen, Johnson translated the Commentaire, though Boswell's Life mistakenly conflated the two works. Brack demonstrates that Johnson provided editorial assistance and wrote two substantial footnotes for Carter's translation to forestall rival editions by Edmund Curll. Bibliographical evidence corrects publication dates and formats. The study highlights Johnson's pride in his composition speed, though reports of him writing six sheets in one day are viewed with skepticism. This controversy illustrates the competitive nature of eighteenth-century trade publishing and the complexity of identifying anonymous Johnsonian contributions.
Johnson's First Allusion to Mary Queen of Scots
Brack identifies Johnson's earliest reference to Mary Queen of Scots, complementing Mary Lascelles's 1957 article on Johnson's *last* allusion. This first reference appeared in the July 1738 Gentleman's Magazine in "Pamphilus' on Condolence." In this ironic piece on Queen Caroline's death, Johnson discusses parliamentary addresses regarding royal remarriage. Johnson mistakenly attributes Queen Elizabeth's "answer answerless" to a query about her marriage, when Elizabeth actually used the phrase in 1586 regarding a petition for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Brack, Jr. traces Johnson's probable sources for this error, such as Holinshed or Camden.
The Harleian Miscellany: Lost Printing of Volume One Found
Brack reports the finding of a lost reprint of the first volume of The Harleian Miscellany (1744-46), originally compiled by Johnson and William Oldys for Thomas Osborne. Previously, no reprint earlier than 1753 had been identified, despite Allen T. Hazen's argument for a possible earlier one. The newly acquired set at the Huntington Library revealed a volume one with Johnson's introduction in a different typesetting, confirmed as a second edition with a first edition title page. This reprint was likely made in late 1744 because sales of later volumes exceeded the initial print run of volume one. Brack provides a detailed bibliographical description of the first edition and the newly identified first and second issues of the second edition.
The Works of Samuel Johnson and the Canon
Reassessing Sir John Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Some Reflections
Brack reflects on the "vicious attacks" by Boswell and his "cohorts" that successfully "discredited the authority" of Hawkins’s biography for over two centuries. The text examines Hawkins’s "Life" not as a failed precursor to Boswell, but as a "more complex" and "authoritative" account of Johnson’s early years. Brack explores the "internecine warfare" between biographical factions and emphasizes the value of the "first-person" perspectives provided by the Hawkins family, including Laetitia-Matilda. The study details Johnson’s final "death-bed conflict" and the "ceremony of his interment" as recorded by Hawkins. By reassessing the "Life" through a new critical edition, Brack seeks to restore Hawkins's status as a "reliable" biographer who provided a necessary "social and intellectual" context for Johnson’s life.
Cognitive Subjectivity and the Modern Informal Essay: A Study of Montaigne and Johnson
A Night with Venus and a Year with Mercury: The Germ Theory in the Eighteenth Century
Hercules with the Distaff: Johnson and Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery
'News from the Little World': A Critical Glance at Eighteenth-Century British Advertising
Briggs examines the rapid growth of eighteenth-century advertising through the lens of contemporary observers, notably Johnson. The author presents Johnson's view that "Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement," and his wry observation that advertising's profusion necessitates rhetorical hyperbole to gain attention (Idler 40). The essay discusses how Johnson, a keen observer of the commercial world, worried that the heterogeneity of ads "leveled" products and violated established notions of relative value. The author notes that readers of Boswell's Life recognize Johnson's shrewd grasp of the commercial scene.
Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale's Tour in North Wales 1774
Bristow presents the first combined edition of the private diaries kept by Johnson and Thrale during their 1774 excursion to North Wales. The text details the party's motivations, primarily Thrale's need to manage her newly inherited Bachygraig estate following the death of Sir Thomas Salusbury. Bristow provides a scholarly introduction comparing the contrasting styles of the diarists: Johnson's "extraordinary attention to various minute particulars" and Thrale's "lively and caustic" personal observations. Extensive annotations identify the numerous country houses, churches, and individuals visited, while modern photographs and maps contextualize the eighteenth-century landscape. Bristow identifies the tour as a critical precursor to the 1775 French journey.
Approaches to Teaching Austen's 'Mansfield Park'
Samuel Johnson and the Morality of Mansfield Park
Rivista di litterature moderne e comparate
Constantes et modeles de la critique anti-'manieriste' à l'age 'classique'
Literary Genius: 25 Classic Writers Who Define English & American Literature
Bromwich explores the intellectual honor and professional independence that define Johnson. Johnson established writing as a vocation requiring the "continuous use of brains and nerves," famously rebuking Lord Chesterfield to assert the author’s independence from patronage. His Dictionary of the English Language reflects a sensitivity to how the "metaphorical will become the current sense," prioritizing the "daughters of earth" over mandarin prescriptions. Bromwich distinguishes between the balanced, Latinate gravity of early works like the Rambler and the more "portable" prose of the Lives of the Poets. As a critic, Johnson prized experience over artifice, famously challenging the neoclassical unities and ridiculing the "easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting" fiction of pastoral elegy. His biographical method combines detailed physiognomy with a "double rendering" of life and work, reaching its "most acute, searching, and profound" height in the appreciation of Milton.
Bronson and O’Meara present an abridgment of Johnson’s Shakespearean commentary, including the Proposals, the Preface, and notes on nearly all plays. Distinguishing itself from the fuller Yale Edition, this selection restores the notes of Johnson’s predecessors in full. Bronson characterizes the resulting text as a "running colloquy" and "informal interchange" between conflicting critical voices. The edition highlights Johnson’s responses to contemporaries, situating his editorial decisions within a collaborative scholarly community. The text concludes with a memorial notice for Bronson, acknowledging his significant contributions to the field.
Fleeman reviews a new selection of Johnson’s Shakespearean criticism derived from the Yale edition. He identifies improvements in the revised introduction but cautions against unsubstantiated speculations regarding eighteenth-century printing history. Fleeman emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between the personal engagement of the Notes, the ad hoc summaries of the General Observations, and the theoretical breadth of the Preface, praising the expanded historical annotations that clarify Johnson's responses to Warburton.
The Making of Boswell [review of Boswell's Presumptuous Task by Adam Sisman, According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge, and Boswell's Edinburgh Journals, 1767–1786]
Brown surveys the "posthumous reinvention" of Boswell, noting that while Macaulay dismissed him as the "smallest man who ever lived," modern scholarship recognizes his deliberate literary imagination. Brown highlights the publication of Edinburgh Journals 1767-1786, which documents Boswell's twenty-year legal career and provides "insight into the habits and institutions" of the Scottish Enlightenment. The text addresses the complex relationship between Boswell and Johnson, citing Turnbull’s effort to detach them from their status as "unhappy Siamese twins." Brown also notes Bainbridge’s recent fictional reconstruction, which challenges Boswell’s portrayal of Johnson as a "boisterous bon viveur," suggesting instead a figure mired in despair following the death of his wife. The account details the "messy and tortuous" provenance of Boswell’s papers, including their eventual acquisition by Yale University from Isham in 1949. Brown maintains that the journals reveal a "respectable debauchee" whose self-recorded struggles with drinking and "womanising" mirror the candor of Pepys.
Rogers challenges the accuracy and organization of the third edition of Brown’s bibliography. While Rogers recognizes the volume's value in documenting the early reception of Boswell’s works, he notes a pervasive level of inaccuracy regarding transcribed names and dates. Rogers criticizes the organization for lumping nearly 1100 entries into a single 'General Studies' section, suggesting that subject-based divisions would be more user-friendly. The review points out garbled entries and omissions, such as a major book by William R. Siebenschuh. Rogers concludes that the volume is 'disfigured' by its lack of care in organization and factual checking, though it remains a useful guide if used with caution. The reviewer calls for more rigorous discrimination in future bibliographical efforts.
A New View of Johnson's Putative Psychological Disorder: In Praise of Mothers
Brown identifies the source of four satirical verses Johnson extemporized at the expense of Lady Lade, the wealthy, stout sister of Henry Thrale, for her showy dress. The lines, mistakenly thought to be Johnson's own Swiftian improvisation, are actually a condensed version of Matthew Prior's poem "Phyllis's Age." Johnson's verses, with their unvarnished condemnation of her advancing age and vanity ("The Dame, at least, is Forty Three!"), were part of his "uncontrolled freedom of speech." Johnson's extensive use of Prior's entire poem in his Dictionary suggests it was a favorite, explaining the ease of his on-the-spot poetic teasing.
New Light on Robert Chambers's Poetic Epistle to Samuel Johnson
Brown and DeMaria publish a hitherto unknown first version of Robert Chambers’s poetic epistle to Johnson, "An Epistle from R. C. to Doctor Samuel Johnson on the Choice of Life, written about the year 1766," found in Chambers’s annotated Greek anthology, Anthologia Deutera. The poem, signed "R. C." and addressed to Johnson, uses Posidippus's epigram as a template to explore the choices of a legal career versus academic life at Oxford. The newly discovered version's opening line, "My first kind Tutor, whose soft Call," is touchingly personal, later revised to "Johnson, whose kind attractive Call" in the version sent to Johnson. The poem infuses the Greek original with specificity and subtly hints at Johnson's influence on Chambers's moral and professional decisions.
Brownell disputes the traditional view of Johnson as a "boorish philistine" with an "utter scorn of painting." He focuses on Johnson’s unexpected role as an art patron for Mauritius Lowe, an "inferior painter" and illegitimate son of Lord Southwell. In 1783, Johnson successfully pressured the Royal Academy Council to reverse its rejection of Lowe’s history painting, The Deluge, arguing that refusing an exhibition is "to be condemned without a trial." Although James Northcote excoriated the work as "execrable beyond belief," Johnson described it to Lowe as "noble and probable." Brownell details Johnson’s financial intercessions with David Garrick and the Southwell family on Lowe’s behalf. Despite Fanny Burney’s squeamish contempt for Lowe’s "dirt and filth," Johnson treated the artist like a son and left legacies to Lowe’s children. Brownell concludes that Johnson patronized Lowe not based on "aesthetics" but out of "friendship and Christian charity," proving he cared more for the artist's well-being than professional professional judgments.
This book challenges the traditional view that Johnson knew and cared little about the fine arts. Brownell goes beyond pejorative anecdotes that exaggerate and misrepresent Johnson's attitudes toward music, painting, architecture, and landscape gardening, and presents evidence that Johnson was thoroughly familiar with the arts of his time, contributing to their patronage as something of a Handelian, friend of painters and architects, and a student of landscape more discerning than William Gilpin. Showing that Johnson's repeated expressions of disgust for the arts were part of a Socratic pretense designed to tease and challenge his contemporaries, the book illustrates that he deliberately chose to play the iconoclast at the very moment when the arts were reviving in England, when taste was becoming de rigeur, and the Royal Academy was being founded. Part 1, Wholly deaf and insensible to music: "ignorant of the science of music"; Johnson's reading and incidental writing on music; Part 2, Blind to painting: "total ignorance in that department"; good offices for artists; Johnson and poor Mauritius Lowe; Johnson, James Barry and English history painting; portraits of Samuel Johnson; Johnson caricatured and illustrated; Part 3, Unskilled in architecture: Johnson and the building of Blackfriars Bridge; Johnson and John Gwynn; William Chambers in Johnson's circle; Part 4, Landscape - a universal blank: "belied by false compare" - Johnson's theory of natural description. Conclusion: the enemy of taste - Johnson's Socratic irony; Appendix: subject pictures of Johnson.
CGV entry 11/1:11. See also item 5:446.
The Antagonisms and Affinities of Johnson and Gibbon
On the relationship between Johnson and Gibbon, often characterized by contrasts in appearance and habits, but which includes underlying similarities in their personal lives and intellectual views on history. Despite Johnson's brusqueness and Gibbon's affected manners, both men experienced uneasy family relationships, youthful disabilities, and lingering social awkwardness that led to their contrasting behavioral strategies. Intellectually, while Gibbon was a practicing historian and Johnson was not, they shared many attitudes toward history, such as skepticism about antiquarians and a dislike for excessive romanticizing. Their major divergence centered on the ultimate purpose of history: Johnson prioritized direct moral instruction for individual conduct, while Gibbon viewed it as serving intellectual expansion and satisfying an innate human curiosity. Their differences, such as Johnson's distrust of the imagination's role in literary history and Gibbon's acceptance of the "philosophical historian," prevented true closeness, yet their mutual concern for the relationship between history and literature connected them to later critical debates.
Liberty in the Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson
Johnson “strongly supported political liberties, as long as they liberty asserted was ordered liberty and not license.” Includes readings especially of the Lives and Boswell.
Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dé chultúr
'Not Worth Going to See': The Place of Ireland in Samuel Johnson's Imagination
Brunström’s paper challenges the perception of Johnson as "virulently anti-Gaelic" by examining his rhetorical and political relationship with Ireland. While acknowledging Johnson wrote little directly on the subject, Brunström identifies him as an "eloquent anti-imperialist" who viewed British rule in Ireland as "monstrous injustice" and "unrelenting persecution." The study highlights Johnson's distinction between Scots Gaelic, which he dismissed due to its lack of a written tradition, and Irish, which he praised as an ancient, learned tongue with a legitimate literature. Brunström analyzes Johnson’s interactions with Charles O'Conor and his advocacy for comparative Celtic studies. By comparing Johnson’s views with those of Oliver Goldsmith and James Macpherson, Brunström argues that Johnson’s Toryism functioned as a critique of rapacious Whig capitalism rather than a defense of colonial domination. The paper further explores Johnson's skepticism toward the "tourist gaze," typified by his quip that the Giant’s Causeway was "worth seeing, just not worth going to see," and concludes that Johnson’s primary concern remained the moral management of the individual over abstract political systems.
The Prayers and Meditations of Samuel Johnson
Bundock discusses Johnson's private spiritual writings, the Prayers and Meditations. This collection is part of the devotional works Johnson composed during periods of religious meditation and anxiety. The sources confirm Johnson's self-examination in these texts. Fleeman's earlier research identified additional readings from excised passages in the original Pembroke manuscripts of these writings, aiding scholarly understanding of their final form and content.
From Slave to Heir: The Strange Journey of Francis Barber
Bundock examines the relationship between Johnson and Francis Barber, the Jamaican-born man who becomes Johnson’s servant and eventual heir. Barber, remanded to Johnson’s care in 1752, serves as the personal context for Johnson's deep-seated opposition to slavery. Johnson’s generosity includes sending Barber to school and naming him residuary legatee. This relationship highlights Johnson's anti-slavery stance, particularly during key legal cases like Knight v. Wedderburn.
This is a calendar of events and a list of publications planned for the Samuel Johnson Tercentenary in 2009. Key events include the "Johnson at 300" conference at Pembroke College, Oxford (Sept. 14-18), a major exhibition at the Huntington Library (May 23-Sept. 20), and birthday celebrations in Lichfield (Sept. 18-20). The publication list includes new biographies by Peter Martin, Jeffery Meyers, and David Nokes, and a new edition of Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. edited by O M Brack, Jr.
Carey reviews Bundock’s "elegant, precise" biography of Barber, the Jamaican-born servant and heir to Johnson. The text rebalances the master-servant narrative, noting that while Johnson viewed slavery as a "dreadful wickedness," he also "robbed" Barber of a fulfilling naval career by pulling strings for an unwanted discharge. Carey highlights Barber's 1773 marriage to Elizabeth Ball, a white woman, which incited "racist bigotry" from contemporaries like Piozzi. Bundock challenges assumptions regarding Barber’s agency, suggesting his earlier departure from Johnson’s house indicated a quest for freedom in a society where "silver padlocks for blacks or dogs" were advertised. Despite Johnson’s final bequest of his estate, Carey observes that the appointment of trustees implied a persistent belief in Barber’s inability to manage his own affairs. The review concludes by identifying Barber as potentially "England's first black schoolmaster" and a vital source for Boswell’s biographical research.
Bundock traces the extraordinary life of the Jamaican-born slave who became Samuel Johnson’s heir. Born Quashey around 1742/3, he was the property of Colonel Bathurst and came to London as luggage. After receiving the name Francis Barber and a baptism, he joined Johnson’s household in 1752, becoming an indispensable companion to the writer and his group of misfits. Though Johnson provided patronage, sending him to school and securing his discharge from the Navy, Barber made bids for independence, including absconding and enlisting. Bundock uses existing evidence, including Boswell’s biographical notes, but ultimately concludes that Johnson’s influence obscures much of Barber’s own life and identity. Barber died in 1801, his life illuminated chiefly by his relationship with Johnson.
Traynor writes about the history of Johnson's Summer House, a kiosk built for him at Streatham Place. After the estate was sold, Susannah Thrale preserved the house at Ashgrove in Knockholt, Kent. It was later moved to Kenwood House in Hamstead in 1968, but tragically burned to the ground in 1991. Traynor reports the "romantic twist" that a London-based artist, Alan Byrne, decided to rebuild a near exact replica of the 18th-century structure in his private Islington garden, a project that took 650 hours over two and a half years.
Bundock examines the middle years of Johnson’s career, beginning with his arrival in London in 1737 and concluding with his receipt of a royal pension in 1762. The article traces Johnson’s professional development at St. John’s Gate, where he worked as an assistant editor and contributor for the Gentleman's Magazine under Edward Cave. Bundock highlights major milestones such as the publication of the poem London, the compilation of the Harleian Catalogue, and the monumental effort of producing A Dictionary of the English Language. The narrative also addresses the personal toll of this period, including the death of Johnson’s wife, Elizabeth, and his persistent financial instability that led to multiple arrests for debt. Bundock details Johnson's transition from a penniless "failed schoolmaster" to an established literary authority known as "Mr. Rambler" and "Dictionary Johnson." The article maintains that this era of "hand to mouth" existence was the furnace in which Johnson’s most influential works and social circles were forged.
This article, adapted from A Mouthful of Air, examines the transition of English lexicography from early bilingual and "inkhorn" word lists to the scientific rigor of the Oxford English Dictionary. Burgess identifies Johnson as the pioneer of serious dictionary making whose 1755 work sought "to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of the English idiom" through "profound prescriptivism." Burgess highlights Johnson’s "bookishness" and use of over 114,000 illustrative quotations as his most significant contributions, despite "subjective and eccentric" definitions or "inexcusable errors" regarding technical terms. The narrative contrasts Johnson’s "one-man effort" with the collaborative, scientific methodology later adopted by James Murray.
'Johnson as Zeus, Boswell as Danaë': Que(e)r(y)ing Sex and Gender Roles in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Boswell intentionally genders the narrative of The Life of Johnson, comparing himself to the pregnant Danaë, impregnated by Johnson's "Johnsonian aether." Boswell's consistent use of masculine and heroic tropes for Johnson (Zeus, Hercules, bull, bear) and feminine submissive language for himself reveals a large "feminine component" in his psychology. This psychosexual dynamic, facilitated by the age difference that created a "zone of safety" from homosexual panic, enabled Boswell to adopt the passive, diligent role necessary for creating his great biography.
This collection of essays, most from a 1980 Alabama conference, explores the "unknown" Samuel Johnson, asserting that the familiar figure of anecdote, largely derived from Boswell, obscures Johnson the serious writer and thinker. Burke argues that Johnson's considered views, found in his writings, are often misrepresented or overshadowed by his conversational style, which he acknowledged was sometimes for "victory" rather than truth. The contributors aim to reveal the depth and complexity of Johnson's thought by focusing on his lesser-known or misunderstood works. The consensus on this collection is that it functions as an informative expansion of symposium papers designed to move beyond the partial portraits offered by conversational reports. Burke and Kay are credited with assembling prominent scholars to illuminate obscure aspects of the author’s intellectual context, such as his secret collaboration with Robert Chambers on legal lectures and his sophisticated insights into Restoration politics. Reviewers such as Vance and Halsband emphasize the strength of Greene’s argument against capital-S Stoicism and Hagstrum’s stimulating analysis of concordia discors as an organizing principle in human relationships. The essays by Radner and Tomarken are noted for exploring shifting historical perspectives on Scotland, further illustrating a broad-minded and serious intellectual essence. But not all contributions received equal praise; Longmire suggests that Curley’s work on the Vinerian law lectures fails to provide sufficient evidence to challenge existing scholarship regarding the subject’s dominance in that collaboration. Additionally, while Boyce finds the collection helpful, he observes that only a portion of the nine essays significantly modifies the popular notion of the figure. The book, however, is praised by Rivers and Bell for highlighting the dynamic process of composition, particularly the humanitarian ideals found in the Convict’s Address. By emphasizing works that have been neglected due to the limitations of literary canons, the volume assists greatly in discovering the complex mindscape hidden behind familiar anecdotes.
Burke provides a mixed review of Isobel Grundy’s examination of how Johnson measures and evaluates greatness. He notes Grundy’s unusual focus on Johnson’s willingness to assign positive value to competition and excellence while simultaneously maintaining a deep distrust of greatness. Burke highlights valuable discussions of the Parliamentary Debates and individual Rambler and Idler essays, though he questions the relevance of the scale of greatness to A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. He identifies the most controversial aspect of the study as the role Grundy assigns to the poem on Robert Levet, which she uses as the climax of an argument for a Christian Johnson measuring life by the scale of eternity. Burke disputes this conclusion, finding it difficult to believe Johnson valued Levet’s talent over the greatness of Shakespeare. He critiques the thematic arrangement for lacking a logical plan of development, suggesting the book will appeal primarily to specialists well-acquainted with the Johnsonian canon.
Burns uses the Battels Books of Pembroke College to clarify the timeline of Shenstone’s undergraduate years, correcting uncertainties found in accounts by Graves and Johnson. Records indicate Shenstone was in residence intermittently between 1732 and 1739. Notably, the college buttery mistakenly identified him as a graduate ("Dominus") in 1736 after he adopted a civilian's gown. Burns confirms Shenstone published his first poems while in residence in 1737 and finally ended his residence in 1739.
'Corruptions of Ignorance,' 'Caprices of Innovation': Linguistic Purism and the Lexicographer
On linguistic purism, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Johnson's Dictionary. Linguistic purism, or "verbal hygiene," is presented as a form of human tabooing behavior aimed at controlling the chaotic nature of language. Johnson and Archbishop Lowth acted as powerful censors, condemning foreign borrowings and linguistic change. Such prescriptive activities seek to confine "living speech" within the tidy, consistent mold of the Standard, which is fundamentally an unattainable ideal or "Superstandard." The inconsistency of censors and the persistence of "bad" words illustrate the natural and inevitable mutability of language.
Essay on the Stile of Doctor Samuel Johnson
British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Burrowes's perceptive essay analyzes Johnson's style by focusing on his perceived faults, arguing he deviates from simplicity due to negligence and indulgence of temperament. Burrowes incorrectly judges Johnson against the standard of Swift, who Johnson believed limited his style. The critique inadvertently reveals Johnson's stylistic peculiarities are necessary for adapting his mind to experience, a complexity Burrowes's literary principles cannot fully admit.
The Englishing of Juvenal: Computational Stylistics and Translated Texts
Computational stylistic analysis of Juvenal's Tenth Satire translations reveals Samuel Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes to be highly idiosyncratic. The Delta procedure shows Johnson's version is the "most unlike" the stylistic average of fifteen translations, prevailing over both older and newer versions. His style is characterized by a reliance on co-ordination rather than subordination, marshaling ideas in antitheses and parallels. This strong stylistic signature makes his translation unmistakably his own.
Samuel Johnson and the Art of Domesticity
This dissertation examines Johnson's work in the context of eighteenth-century domesticity and literary novelization, repositioning the author as a transitional figure. It argues Johnson's ethical conviction regarding the centrality of quotidian life conflicted with the classical Longinian aesthetic's rejection of the domestic sphere. Johnson developed a coherent aesthetic of domestic art championing "proximity," consciously rejecting the Longinian emphasis on distance and grandeur. The study traces this conflict-between cultivating minute detail and adhering to dignified style-as the central narrative drama in the formation of Johnson's art. His narrative evolution moved toward domestic realism in The Rambler and culminated in Lives of the Poets. Boswell and Piozzi recorded Johnson's keen observation of domestic trivia.
Scottish Second Sight: The Rise and Fall of a European Myth
Landscape, Literature and English Religious Culture, 1660–1800: Samuel Johnson and Languages of Natural Description
Butlin summarizes Mayhew’s analysis of Johnson’s "natural description" as a "revisionist improvement" over socio-economic landscape studies. The study focuses on the influence of High Churchmanship on Johnson’s Dictionary and Journey to the Western Islands. Butlin notes that Mayhew uses Boswell’s Life to link particular insights to Johnson's biographies. While Butlin praises the "wealth of empirical material," the reviewer disputes the rejection of late-twentieth-century landscape symbolism. The review highlights the "challenging and innovative" attempt to restore religion as a key factor in eighteenth-century natural discourse.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets and the Romantic Canon
Cafarelli examines the narrative sequence and influence of Johnson's Lives of the Poets on Romantic canon formation. Johnson's Lives serves as both a history of poetry and a canon of biography, notably critiquing existing biographical tradition from Sprat to Mason. Romantic prose writers, acknowledging Johnson's structure and enduring critical authority, produced derivative and innovative collective biographies to extend, compress, or revise the Johnsonian canon. Writers such as Wordsworth, Scott, and Southey addressed Johnson's key themes—genius, audience, and the literary economy—either through explicit rebuttals like Wordsworth's Essay, Supplementary or by expanding the literary scope to include novelists and uneducated poets.
蔡田明),约翰生评传 / Yue han sheng ping chuan [A Critical Biography of Johnson ]
Du reviews Cai’s biography, which synthesizes over ten biographical sources to analyze Johnson as an "organic intellectual" in the Gramscian sense. The text traces Johnson's life chronologically, from his childhood affliction with "King’s evil" and studies at Oxford to his pivotal role in London’s public space. Cai emphasizes Johnson's industriousness in the face of poverty, highlighting his contributions to periodicals, the Dictionary, and the Lives of the Poets as acts of social moral construction. The review identifies the highlight of the work as its comparison of various biographical versions to discuss life anecdotes. Du notes a minor omission regarding the details of the 1773 Scottish journey with Boswell but concludes that the work successfully showcases the "growth process" of a hardworking intellectual who challenged cultural hegemony.
Comments: Kicking Rocks with Dr. Johnson: A Comment on Professor Allen's Theory
Callen examines Allen’s "Nature of Juridical Proof," agreeing that conventional probabilistic models are computationally intractable and descriptively poor but disputing Allen’s move to a purely ordinal standard of plausibility. Using Samuel Johnson’s empirical "kick at the rock" as a metaphor for grounding theory in reality, Callen argues that fact-finding involves more than comparing stories. He highlights the necessity of "default principles" (ceteris paribus rules) that allow decision-makers to manage limited cognitive resources and allocate the burden of persuasion. Callen emphasizes that jurors must evaluate the "completeness" of evidence—the degree to which it justifies moving away from a default outcome—rather than merely selecting the most plausible narrative. He defends the use of legal rules with binary elements as efficient tools for communicating expertise and social norms, concluding that while story formation is central to understanding, it does not preclude the application of cardinal standards of proof or rigorous sufficiency tests.
Johnson's Arab: Anti-Orientalism in Rasselas
Black evaluates Cannon’s study of Johnson’s political identity against the Jacobite thesis proposed by J. C. D. Clark. While Clark identifies Johnson as a radical Nonjuror and Jacobite, Cannon emphasizes Johnson’s moderation and conventional religious views, positioning him as an Enlightenment figure. Cannon highlights Johnson’s suspicion of colonial acquisition and his skepticism toward predictable "systems" in international relations, favoring a providential view of political volatility. Black commends Cannon’s analysis of the complexities and contradictions of Hanoverian politics, concluding that the work skillfully portrays Johnson as a figure reflecting the broader ambiguities of the eighteenth century.
Anderson's Approaches to Teaching is a useful volume for beginning teachers or students of Johnson's works. It surveys scholarly and critical resources, covering topics like gender, Lockean empiricism, style, and psychoanalytic readings. The book is presented within the politically correct limits imposed by the Modern Language Association.
Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature
Cannon reflects upon the relationship of Johnson to major political issues to enter the political world of Hanoverian England. Chapters address religion, Jacobitism, the constitution, aristocracy, Enlightenment, and nationalism. Dickinson finds Cannon persuasive in the discussion of whether Johnson was a Jacobite, offering an assessment that runs counter to J. C. D. Clark. Cannon shows Johnson’s views were often shared by conservative contemporaries and reveal a society changing so rapidly it risked outgrowing its political institutions. Dickinson praises the work for deep learning and robust commonsense.
Clark identifies Johnson as a primary representative of a powerful Anglo-Latin culture rooted in Oxford-style Toryism, High Church Anglicanism, and Jacobitism. He argues that Johnson’s creative output was consistently shaped by these values, resulting in political "silences" and calculated bluster to protect his moral integrity. Fitzpatrick observes that Clark views Johnson as an adherent to a dying world of the "Ancients," though he questions Clark's strong link between Jacobitism and the elitist culture of Anglo-Latinity.
Gould reviews J. C. D. Clark's book, which depicts Johnson as a "troubled man" and committed Stuart loyalist. Gould explains Clark’s argument that Johnson reached only a cautious accommodation with the Hanoverian regime and remained dedicated to "England's Anglo-Latin tradition". The review notes that Clark identifies Johnson as the "last great exemplar" of a classical style that regarded literature as a bastion of moral stability. Gould concludes that Clark’s focus on Johnson’s crypto-Jacobite poetry and nostalgic Toryism offers a significant counter-narrative to more pragmatic interpretations of Johnson's career.}
Kaminski reviews Cannon’s attempt to illuminate Hanoverian England through Johnson's political and social views. Cannon provides clear analyses of constitutional issues and rural social structures, which Kaminski identifies as a strength for literary scholars. However, Kaminski argues that Cannon's approach produces an overly secularized Johnson by neglecting the profound influence of religious values on his political thought. Kaminski concludes that while Cannon offers a comfortable modern figure, the more authentic Johnson remains a troubling, deeply religious Tory and Jacobite.
This review praises Cannon's eight-chapter analysis of Samuel Johnson, noting its success in demonstrating that Johnson was not the rigid, narrow Tory depicted by 19th-century historians like Macaulay, but a nuanced and thoughtful figure whose attitudes often aligned with or advanced contemporary ideas in religion, politics, and constitutional matters. Cannon examines Johnson's role in political life, his complex views on the constitutional balance, and his perception of the decline of the old order due to the rise of monetary power. The reviewer, however, suggests the book's comprehensive scope leads to some structural repetition.
Lynch's positive review describes this contribution as a "balanced and learned discussion" of Johnson's political thought. Lynch notes that Cannon avoids "stunning new interpretations," opting instead for a "moderate voice of reason" that mediates between the strident critical positions of Clark and Greene. The review observes that Johnson accounts for only a third of the book, serving primarily as a catalyst for larger historical inquiries.
The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography
In this positive review, Moore commends Cannon’s monograph for providing a readable and valuable political context for Johnson’s life and era. Cannon organizes the book by large thematic chapters covering religion, Jacobitism, and the constitution, which helps anchor Johnson as a central figure despite his occasional peripheral relation to specific political crises. Moore highlights Cannon’s depiction of Johnson as an acute and precise thinker rather than a stereotypical man of strong prejudices, balancing his powerful rationality against his emotional loyalties. Though Moore notes that the work targets a general academic audience rather than specialized Johnsonians, she emphasizes its usefulness for graduate students and instructors seeking a lucid synthesis.
Phillips finds Cannon's effort a work of "sustained brilliance" that takes Johnson seriously, rejecting Macaulay’s inaccurate portrait. Cannon uses Johnson's life as a satisfying vehicle for an erudite tour of Hanoverian England, ultimately positioning Johnson as a founder of mainstream conservative thought.
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies
Pittock praises Cannon's book as a good, scholarly, and many-faceted guide, noting its originality lies in its variety and the author's dense grasp of eighteenth-century history. The book provides a powerfully comprehensive view of Johnson, arguing he was moderate and typical in his politics, but Pittock doubts Cannon was fair to all the evidence. Cannon practiced a "well-worn approach" by treating evidence against Johnson's Jacobitism as good, but evidence for it as suspect, not giving due weight to the case for Johnson's Jacobitism.
JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology
Sack contrasts Cannon's portrait of Johnson as a moderate, secular-minded Whig with Clark's view of him as a staunch Tory and Jacobite. Sack acknowledges Cannon's reading is plausible and based on contemporary sources, but ultimately finds it lacking in sympathy for Johnson as a "distressed Jacobite or a tortured Christian." Specifically, the review questions reconciling the aging, religiously agonized Johnson with Cannon's utilitarian, enlightened interpretation of his religious views.
Cannon finds Clark's book unusual, learned, and interesting, but not totally convincing, asserting it is far narrower than the grandiose subtitle suggests. Cannon disputes Clark's thesis that Johnson's Anglo-Latin traditionalism was Tory, arguing that respect for the classics was the hallmark of an educated man, not a party attitude. Clark is criticized for seeing mysteries where none exist, such as Boswell and Johnson’s Derby visit. Cannon concludes that Clark illuminates an important aspect of Johnson, but by no means the whole, noting Johnson is more plausibly seen as an exponent of vernacular literature and English national feeling.
Samuel Johnson's Critical Opinions: A Reexamination
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics
A Conservative Mind under Stress: Aspects of Johnson's Political Writings
Golden Legends: Images of Abyssinia, Samuel Johnson to Bob Marley
The Call of Abyssinia: Father Lobo, Samuel Johnson, and Rasselas
Fernández-Armesto reviews W. B. Carnochan's Golden Legends and Terence Cave's edited collection on Thomas More's Utopia. The review notes that Johnson's Rasselas serves as a central point of comparison for imaginary or isolated lands. Fernández-Armesto characterizes Johnson's Happy Valley as a satirical indictment of schemes for perfecting society. He disputes Carnochan's dismissive tone toward various travel writers and notes some serious defects in the work. Regarding the Cave collection, the review examines the paratexts of early editions of Utopia, noting how different translations handled More's irony and his explicit dismissal of certain Utopian customs as absurd.
Bonnie Prince Sam?: Mud Is Being Vehemently Slung over Whether a Great 18th-Century Critic Was a Closet Supporter of Prince Charles Edward Stuart
Catto reports on the intensifying scholarly debate regarding Samuel Johnson's alleged Jacobite sympathies, highlighting a clash between traditional biographical interpretations and modern political analysis. The article focuses on J. C. D. Clark’s radical claim that Johnson was a non-juror whose true loyalties lay with the House of Stuart, a position Clark argues enhances Johnson's status as a moral critic who renounced worldly advantage. Catto contrasts this with the views of the late Donald Greene and Howard Weinbrot, who dispute Clark's findings as "High Tory" revisionism and maintain that Johnson's own writings provide no evidence of Jacobitism. The narrative describes how this academic controversy has devolved into "mudslinging" and personal attacks in journals such as The Age of Johnson, with accusations ranging from neo-conservatism to "thought control." Catto also notes the enduring cultural presence of Johnson and James Boswell, concluding that despite the friction at recent conferences, the dispute over Johnson's political and religious identity remains unresolved.
The Church's Kicked Foundation: A Concealed Johnsonian Detail
Caudle analyzes the famous anecdote of Johnson kicking a "large stone" in a "jocular or truculent effort to refute George Berkeley's theories of immaterialism" in Harwich. By comparing the original manuscript to the final printed version, Caudle reveals that Boswell intentionally deleted the detail that the stone was "one of the large projecting foundation stones of the [Church] Building" (probably St. Nicholas' Church). Caudle concludes Boswell omitted this telling and characteristic detail because he was determined to present Johnson as a pious Anglican champion, believing that portraying Johnson "striking" a church's foundation would violate this image of Johnsonian dignity. Caudle also cites philosophical defenses of Johnson's approach as a contextualized and generous riposte to Berkeley.
Publication of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: April 15th, 17th
Cavendish marks the publication date of Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755. The substantial fee allowed Johnson to rent a house and hire assistants, despite the work taking nine years, more than twice the time expected. Johnson's dictionary succeeded due to its clear definitions, focus on common words, and the use of over 100,000 quotations from leading writers. The work solidified Johnson’s fame as "Dictionary Johnson."
Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics
Cowper's Connoisseur #138 and Samuel Johnson
A Course of Lectures on the English Law: Delivered at the University of Oxford 1767–1773
Curley provides a definitive edition of the legal lectures delivered by Robert Chambers at Oxford, identifying Johnson as a significant co-author. The text clarifies a long-standing bibliographical mystery, demonstrating that Johnson contributed substantial phrasing, structure, and philosophical depth to the lectures during Chambers’s tenure as Vinerian Professor. Curley’s introduction and apparatus detail the "literary partnership" that produced a comprehensive survey of English law, ranging from historical origins to contemporary constitutional issues. The lectures reflect Johnson's characteristic prose style and his preoccupation with the moral foundations of sovereignty and the "stability of truth" within judicial systems. By restoring Johnson’s hand in these documents, the edition expands the known canon of his political and legal thought, offering insight into his views on the transition from feudalism to commercial society. The volume includes extensive annotations, textual variants, and a history of the manuscripts' preservation. Critics are generally favorable, praising the authoritative edition for illuminating a significant collaborative effort in legal history. Hackney, in RES, highlights the dense legal content and notes the editor’s focus on the similarity between the political arguments and the contributor's established views on taxation. Ibbetson, in N&Q, cautions against overstating the collaborator's role at the expense of other academic influences, finding the lectures intellectually uneven compared to traditional legal commentaries. In JNL, Middendorf praises the readable text and applauds the cautious approach to textual attribution that avoids aggressive stylistics in favor of broader thematic parallels. Weinsheimer's review in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography similarly approves of this editorial restraint regarding specific passages, noting that legal historians will welcome the volumes. Soupel, in Études Anglaises, deems the publication essential for legal historians but regrets the descriptive rather than stylistic editorial method. Turning to legal journals, Lindsey's review (Temple Law Quarterly) underscores the historical significance of the secret collaboration, arguing that a practical understanding of humanity makes these contributions valuable to legal scholarship. Finally, Yale, in the Cambridge Law Journal, examines the highly speculative extent of the assistance, suggesting the contributor infused general passages on public law with literary grace while leaving technical private law to the primary lecturer.
CGV entry 11/3:27. Composed in association with Samuel Johnson.
Ibbetson notes Chambers's departure from Blackstone’s structure and his less celebratory approach to Whig constitutionalism. While acknowledging Curley’s defense of Johnson’s "secret collaboration" in the work’s gestation, Ibbetson cautions against overstating Johnson's role at the expense of other Oxford influences. He finds the lectures intellectually uneven, often substituting tedious statutory lists for Blackstone’s theoretical coherence.
Curley's edition fills a gap between the lectures of William Blackstone and Richard Wooddeson. The lectures are dense legal reading, but Curley's editor's introduction focuses on Samuel Johnson's collaborative role in their composition. Hackney notes that Chambers's treatment of the colonies is ten times longer and more argumentative than Blackstone's, and Curley points out the similarity between Chambers's and Johnson's use of ancient world analogies in arguing against the colonists' position on taxation.
Scanlan reviews Curley's interdisciplinary biography of Chambers, a forward-looking legal thinker and close associate of Johnson. The book examines Chambers's failed attempt to save Nanda Kumar from execution for forgery, a case Curley aligns with Johnson's response to the conviction of Dr. William Dodd. Curley highlights Chambers's arguments against capital punishment for forgery in the underdeveloped paper economy of Bengal. Scanlan praises the work's "interdisciplinary scholarship," covering eighteenth-century journalism, British India, and legal education. The reviewer notes that while the scholarship is vast, the "unostentatious tenor" of Chambers's life is presented as a "proper object of public regard," reflecting Johnson's own literary proclivities and habits of mind.
Mimesis and Copia as Enflaming Strategies: The Function of Samuel Johnson's Philological and Literary Criticism
The Purloined Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson's Scriptural Operation
Samuel Johnson, Samuel Clarke and the Toleration of Heresy
Chapin examines Samuel Johnson's complex attitude toward the prominent Anglican divine Samuel Clarke, drawing a sharp distinction between Johnson's private tolerance for doctrinal deviations and his public stance as a defender of church orthodoxy. While Johnson viewed Clarke as a heretic on the Trinity and excluded him from the Dictionary to shield less-educated readers from error, his personal esteem for Clarke's writings increased across his lifetime. Johnson repeatedly praised Clarke's sermons for their rich moral content and robust presentation of the Atonement, famously declaring to William Seward that those discourses "made him a Christian" by establishing the supernatural evidences of the faith. Concurrently, Johnson accepted Clarke's moral philosophy to dispute Shaftesburian benevolence, adopting the framework that rational agents have a strict obligation to act according to the fitness of things. The study highlights how Johnson rejected the notion that Clarke was wicked, opting instead to view his anti-trinitarianism as an honest mistake, even while adding quotations from Daniel Waterland to his revised Dictionary to challenge the rising tide of contemporary unitarian activity.
The Foundation of Samuel Johnson's Morality
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Eighteenth-Century British Representations of China
Chen’s dissertation examines representations of China in the writings of Johnson, John Bell, and British naval officers led by George Anson, analyzing these texts as "actual or symbolic responses" to eighteenth-century British social shifts and Continental European accounts. Chen challenges the traditional assumption of the "coherence and autonomy" of Johnson’s literary criticism, arguing that his early "reader-oriented" approach in the 1740s served as a strategy to "appropriate China" and domesticate its challenging empire. Johnson use "exotic rhetoric" to transform Chinese customs into moral and political models that "concurred" with his own Protestant and middle-class values. Chen demonstrates that Johnson’s later shift toward "author-oriented" criticism in the 1760s led him to distance himself from China as British aesthetic tastes moved from the exotic to the classical. The study contrasts Johnson’s early "idealized" and "universalized" China with the naval officers' "aggressive" accounts, which Chen argues were driven by "conflicting material interests" and mercantile motives. Chen concludes that these "dialogic representations" reflect the "frustrations, tensions, and ambiguities" of European global expansion, wherein Johnson used the "hierarchical frames of reading" to redefine civilization through a "Eurocentric stance."
Creativity and Illness: Christopher Smart and Samuel Johnson
Pharos Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society
Clark's essay denounces Greene's Politics of Samuel Johnson for relying on the outdated Namierite model, which Clark claims stops the clock in 1960 and incorrectly treats the author as a moderate Lockeian by positing the disappearance of ideological parties. Challenging this vision, Clark argues that historians have proven the survival of Tory and Whig parties locked in ideological battle, placing the author's views squarely within the parliamentary Tory party as a Tory, Nonjuror, and Jacobite. Using the biography by Hawkins, Clark presents a plausible portrait of a man who acknowledged an unextinguished title in the exiled Stuart dynasty and shied away from situations requiring loyalty oaths, further arguing that Boswell "suppressed" these beliefs. The article identifies the Dictionary as a lexicon of Nonjuring politics through terms like "abdication" and "usurper." Clark concludes that reinterpreting the author as a passionately committed polemicist requires a modification of the aesthetic phases of early-modern English culture, including a reassessment of the Romantic rebellion against his supposed mundane empiricism.
Augustans and Romantics [review of Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism by J. C. D. Clark]
Clark challenges Namierite orthodoxy by arguing that party systems and Jacobite sympathies remained central to Johnson’s intellectual framework.1 The study links Johnson's Nonjurism and Latinity to his literary judgments, specifically his vulnerability to Lauder’s Milton forgeries and his skepticism regarding Ossian. Clark demonstrates that the Dictionary and Journey to the Western Islands reflect suppressed Jacobite influences, noting the significant lack of biographical data for 1745. By emphasizing the "riskiness" of Johnson's political and religious beliefs, Clark restores a sense of his active engagement with contemporary ideological conflicts.
Cannon extracts the essential Johnson by paring away his more pompous extremes to reveal a man deeply informative of his age. He argues that Johnson, a "ferocious moderate," shared the deepest prejudices of his time while maintaining a progressive dimension as a man of the Enlightenment. Fitzpatrick notes that Cannon depicts Johnson as an "ensign bearer of the new world of the Moderns" who was largely at home within his contemporary world.
In this approving review of J. C. D. Clark’s monograph, Goldie outlines the recovery of Johnson’s "deep-dyed Jacobitism," High Anglicanism, and Toryism, rejecting the notion that these traits were mere "Boswell’s Romantic gloss." Goldie emphasizes Clark's focus on the "centrality of the Anglo-Latin tradition" and the "pervasiveness of Latinity" as a cultural resource for marginalized Tories. The reviewer notes Clark’s contention that Johnson’s early aspirations as a Latinist were "overtaken by the transition toward the vernacular" following the demise of the Jacobite cause circa 1745. Goldie explains how the Dictionary allowed Toryism to be "pursued by lexicographical means," rendering Johnson’s later critiques of American rebels ironic given his own "notorious" dynastic doubts.
In this critical review, Grundy takes issue with Clark's stubborn focus on Jacobitism as the single explanatory framework for Johnson’s literary and political output. Grundy disputes Clark's reduction of Johnson’s complex reasoning to automatic, knee-jerk reflexes driven by presumed Jacobite allegiances. While acknowledging Clark’s impressive mastery over Anglo-Latin traditions and his positive contributions regarding Johnson's text revisions, Grundy criticizes his dogmatic interpretations of literary texts like Macbeth and The Lives of the Poets. Grundy concludes that Clark's combative and unyielding thesis oversimplifies Johnson’s internal contradictions and historical reality, offering an irritating yet stimulating study that relies too heavily on circumstantial evidence.
Levis offers a scathing review of J. C. D. Clark’s study, which portrays Johnson as a Tory, Nonjuror, and Jacobite rooted in an Anglo-Latin tradition. While Clark claims Johnson failed to complete his degree and enter the church due to a refusal to take the oath of Abjuration, Levis disputes this, noting a lack of evidence beyond circumstantial details. He characterizes Clark’s suggestion that Johnson’s Scottish tour was a pilgrimage of expiation for accepting a Hanoverian pension as bordering on the absurd. Conversely, Levis praises John Cannon’s simultaneous study for providing a more reasonable and compelling portrait. Cannon presents Johnson as a secular, dispassionate, and utilitarian figure who favored the Moderns and supported the established church primarily for political stability rather than religious ideolgy.
Monod calls the book an excellent and convincing argument for viewing Johnson as the last major figure of an "Anglo-Latin tradition" associated with royalism and high Anglicanism. Clark posits that Johnson's consistent Tory and Jacobite politics, which may have led to his refusal to swear allegiance to the Hanoverians, informed all his major writings. The interpretation counters Greene's earlier analysis of Johnson's politics and connects Johnson to a lineage of High Church/Jacobite literary figures like Dryden and Pope. Monod praises the thorough research and lack of polemic in Clark's work.
Womersley challenges the fumbled engagement with literary scholarship displayed by historians of political thought. While acknowledging the intellectual power of J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner, Womersley disputes their occasional indifference to the material history of the book and the internal history of literary texts. Womersley’s review focuses on the forensic art of Jonathan Clark’s study of Johnson. Womersley praises Clark for successfully arguing that Johnson was a non-juror and Jacobite but identifies a carelessness in Clark's handling of literary evidence. Womersley notes that Clark incorrectly attributes the selection of poets in the Lives of the Poets to Johnson rather than the commissioning booksellers. Womersley argues that Clark’s construction of an extrinsic context for Johnson must be married to the expertise of a literary scholar in bibliography and printing history to achieve a truly historical criticism.
Religion and Political Identity: Samuel Johnson as a Nonjuror
Clark presents a detailed case for identifying Johnson as a Nonjuror, defined broadly as one refusing allegiance oaths to post-1688 monarchs because of belief in James II's divine hereditary right. The essay examines the pervasive culture of oaths in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, detailing the specific oaths required at Oxford University during Johnson's time. Through meticulous analysis of university statutes, matriculation/graduation registers, and contemporary accounts, Clark argues Johnson likely avoided the oaths required for graduation. He further scrutinizes Johnson's schoolmaster positions and London life, finding no evidence Johnson ever subscribed, concluding his principles shaped his career by barring many paths.
This letter to the editor responds to a previous letter by Weinbrot, with Clark expressing disappointment that Weinbrot failed to address the issues raised in his review. Clark denies being preoccupied with Johnson, asserting his interest instead lies in themes like secularization, modernization theory, the American and French Revolutions, and Thomas Paine; these interests made him cautious about Weinbrot's application of "progress" and Darwinian evolution as organizing concepts for eighteenth-century literature. Explaining that his past critiques were prompted by the unprofessional manners of Greene and his acolytes, Clark suggests Weinbrot should rethink his position and cites his own edited collections, including The Politics of Samuel Johnson, as the definitive response to these debates. Clark concludes by expressing a desire to move toward amicable exchanges at the Huntington Library and, in a humorous postscript, expresses anticipation for continuing their exchanges in Pasadena.
Caudle offers a mixed review of this collection of essays edited by Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill. Caudle praises the innovative chronological balance and the focus on the local setting of Staffordshire. He describes Paul Monod’s essay as a valuable reminder of nested county identities and notes the detailed contribution to London topography provided by Richard Sharp. However, Caudle questions the relevance of Eirwen Nicholson’s study of a 1726 altarpiece to Johnson’s life. He disputes the necessity of J. C. D. Clark’s lengthy restatement of his well-known case for Johnson as a Nonjuror. Caudle finds Murray Pittock’s analysis of Johnson’s hostility toward Scotland useful but questions the acceptability of Johnson as a religious bigot. He appreciates David Money’s focus on Neo-Latin culture but notes the controversy regarding Thomas Kaminski’s assessment of Johnson’s poetic merit. Caudle concludes that Matthew Davis and Niall MacKenzie provide intriguing insights into Johnson’s Shakespearean footnotes and Jacobite allusions.
Baines calls the book tendentious, focusing narrowly on Jacobite, Tory, and non-juror political identities to the exclusion of other historical aspects, and often making large inferences from circumstantial evidence or an absence of Johnsonian text. The collection ultimately fails to integrate Johnson into a "broad-bottom interpretation of the long eighteenth century."
Lynch’s critical review disputes the volume's self-presentation, noting that Clark and Erskine-Hill fail to acknowledge that their "Jacobite Johnson" portrait represents a minority view. Lynch identifies the essays as ranging from "sound scholarship" to "reckless insinuation" and criticizes the contributors for neglecting a decade of heated scholarly debate. The review argues that many pieces lack "honest engagement with opposing arguments" found in the work of other Johnsonians. The collection requires care from readers to avoid the mistaken impression that it reflects a scholarly consensus.
Mayhew characterizes this collection as a non-partisan success that offers different visions of Johnson and his age in creative synergy. He highlights Clark’s "historical proof of an absence" regarding Johnson’s failure to take oaths of allegiance and Pittock’s revision of Johnson’s attitude toward Scotland. Mayhew emphasizes Kaminski’s argument that Johnson’s Latinate etymology requires new ways of reading to recover "some alien qualities" of the period. He finds the work essential for recovering meanings contemporary authors communicated to their readership.
The so-called Second Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 has fascinated historians because it dramatises the sheer chanciness of history and undermines the retrospective sense of inevitability that invariably comes with our confident discovery in the past of patterns and developments. "Samuel Johnson in Historical Context" should really be entitled "Samuel Johnson and Jacobitism." It is, in essence, a polemical book with contributors who are generally committed to the much disputed notion that Johnson was in sentiment a Jacobite and nonjuror, someone who avoided swearing oaths of allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty or of abjuration of the Stuarts.
The Clark/Erskine-Hill collection, promoting a Jacobite Johnson, is criticized for its uneven relevance, historical overstatement, and simplistic literary use of Johnson's works.
Benedict's review commends Norma Clark's detailed study for its exploration of the relationships between Johnson and various famous women authors. She notes that the book effectively disputes the common assumption that women of the eighteenth century faced crippling social restrictions, emphasizing instead the vibrant intellectual networks they maintained.
Hughes reviews Clarke’s study concerning the intellectual circle of women surrounding Johnson. The text disputes Boswell’s representation of these relationships in the Life of Johnson, suggesting he "deliberately let drop" accounts of Johnson’s respect for female intellect due to professional jealousy or prejudice. Clarke examines the "robustness" of figures such as Carter, More, Burney, and Lennox, noting they were "solvent, respected and entirely convinced of their own worth." The account emphasizes Johnson’s high regard for Lennox, whom he deemed "superior" to her peers and whose The Female Quixote influenced the themes of Rasselas. Hughes highlights Clarke’s success in recuperating the "logic of their lives," contrasting Carter’s "emotional and financial independence" with Lennox’s "clumsy vanity" and aggressive self-promotion.
Lynch characterizes this study as a group portrait of intellectual women in Johnson's circle, including Carter, Lennox, Montagu, Thrale, More, and Burney. He observes that biographical data are subordinated to an analysis of their professional careers and the negotiation between private and public identities. While Lynch dismisses the book's value for specialists due to its simplified approach, he suggests it provides a readable introduction for general audiences and undergraduates.
Todd's friendly review of Clarke's Dr Johnson's Women describes the collective biography of female authors Johnson admired, asserting that Boswell failed to develop Johnson’s provocative comparisons of figures like Carter, More, and Lennox. Clarke presents these women as complex figures who sought professional fame and "success in the marketplace" while "marketing submission," though she excludes those who lacked Johnson's approval, such as Wollstonecraft. Todd observes that while the book uses Johnson as a "useful peg" to deliver a "friendly run through" the eighteenth-century literary milieu, it lacks a "rigorous inquiry" or "deep discussion" into the material conditions of female authorship, such as publishing fees or patronage.
Wilcox reviews Norma Clarke's Dr. Johnson's Women, praising it as an engaging, thoughtful study that focuses on eighteenth-century female writers, including Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, and Fanny Burney. Despite the title, the women's relationships with Samuel Johnson were primarily professional, not personal. Clarke provides brief biographies focusing on literary careers and the challenges female authors faced in defining their place in society. The book analyzes their works primarily in terms of their social and economic effectiveness, and Wilcox notes Clarke's clear favor for struggling challengers over privileged champions.
Indifference and Abuse: The Antipathy of Mason, Gray, Walpole and Samuel Johnson
The Amiable Clergyman & the Forgetful Patron: Robert Potter Writes to Elizabeth Montagu
The Amiable Clergyman & the Forgetful Patron
A Field in Which Nothing of the First Order Could Be Accomplished': Books from Samuel Johnson's Library in the Hyde Collection
Dr. Johnson's House at 17 Gough Square is a Grade I listed building and the only one of Johnson's London lodgings to survive. Built around 1700, Johnson lived there from 1749 to 1759, primarily to complete his Dictionary of the English Language in the garret with amanuenses. This period was his most productive, yielding works like The Rambler and Rasselas, despite a household marked by poverty and dependents, including his wife Tetty and the poet Anna Williams. Saved from demolition in 1910 by Cecil Harmsworth, the house was restored and opened as a museum, guided by the principle of being "a Johnson house, not a Georgian house." The institution, now branded as The House of Words, continues to evolve its educational programs and is working on a permanent exhibition to reinterpret the Dictionary Garret.
Of Tytler and 'Eugenio': An Unpublished Boswell Letter
Clarke and Seymour reproduce and analyze an unpublished Boswell letter to Isaac Reed (likely Nov 1792), in which Boswell requests "Tytler's letter on Johnson's Journey decyphered from Elphinston" and "the lines of Eugenio omitted." The request for William Tytler's letter, originally printed in James Elphinston's phonetically spelled Forty Years' Correspondence, was to add Scottish approval of Johnson's Journey to the second edition of the Life. The "omitted" lines refer to Thomas Beach’s poem "Eugenio," which Reed supplied, resulting in a footnote correcting Johnson's imperfect quotation in the Life.
Exhibited by Candlelight: Sources and Developments in the Gothic Tradition
Laying the Ground for Gothic: The Passage of the Supernatural from Truth to Spectacle
Clery uses the 1762 Cock Lane ghost sensation to illustrate a paradigm shift in the cultural status of the supernatural. The chapter contrasts the "real supernatural" of Johnson with the "aesthetic supernatural" of Walpole. Johnson, serving on an investigative committee, approached the haunting as a "candid enquirer after truth," using empirical methods to verify the existence of a soul and ward off the "dread" of post-mortem nothingness. When the fraud was exposed, Johnson resigned himself to doubt. Conversely, Walpole viewed the event as mere theatre, indifferent to its veracity and interested only in its value as entertainment and novelty. Clery argues that this transition marked the deregulation of the supernatural, moving it from religious doctrine to a consumer commodity. This shift enabled the literary exploitation of terror that defines the Gothic genre, reifying fear as a catalyst for sublime emotion rather than a matter of ontological fact.
Newsletter of the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
Bogel critiques the editor's preface and introduction for overlooking the problem of biographical representation central to the Life of Johnson. He praises contributions by Sher, Turnbull, Manning, and Heiland, noting their "considerable light" on Boswell’s Presbyterian identity, legal empathy, style and melancholy, and the metaphorical meaning of the Life's conclusion. Bogel concludes that much of the volume remains under-theorized and lacking in fresh perspective.
Gray praises Clingham's edited collection of fourteen essays, New Light on Boswell, as a less intimidating and valuable contribution to Boswell scholarship. The essays, published for the bicentenary of The Life of Johnson, reinforce Boswell's status as a great biographer and talented personality, despite his serious character flaws. Contributors address Boswell's distinctive practice of using "the self as the writer's tool" (Daiches), his rhetorical styles, and his interactions with Edinburgh figures. Although Paul Korshin questions the authenticity of some conversations, the book upholds the overall magnitude of Boswell's achievement.
Lustig praises Clingham's book for its contribution to Boswell scholarship on the bicentenary of the Life. She commends essays by Crawford, Sher, Turnbull, Burke, and Danziger for illuminating Boswell’s correspondence, religious identity, psychological needs, and biographical practices. However, she critiques the essay on Hume as flawed and highlights the impressive scholarship in John Burke's analysis of Boswell's account of the Chesterfield quarrel. Lustig concludes that essays balancing detachment and appreciation prove more instructive than those determined to prove Boswell wrong.
McGlynn’s enthusiastic review praises Clingham’s collection for its utility to graduate students and specialists. The volume commemorates the bicentenary of the Life of Johnson, with over sixty percent of the essays focusing on that biography while others contextualize Boswell within eighteenth-century Scottish culture. McGlynn highlights Crawford’s and Manning’s examinations of Boswell’s rhetorical styles in his journals and the Life. The review also commends Korshin’s analysis of Johnson’s conversation, concluding that all contributors offer first-rate scholarly insights.
Vance says the volume is a fitting tribute to the bicentenary of the Life of Johnson, reflecting recent scholarly interest in Boswell's thought and other writings. Vance highlights Richard B. Sher's essay on Boswell's Scottish identity as the strongest. He commends Paul Korshin’s valuable analysis of Johnson’s conversation and Richard Schwartz's anti-Boswellian critique of the Hume interview. Vance concludes the collection proves Boswell remains a "thriving and engaging critical specimen."
Walsh’s enthusiastic review of this essay collection, edited by Clingham, notes the volume’s focus shifts from Boswell’s personality to the textual nature of his work, addressing issues of representation and the "textual construction of Johnson." Commending the collection for its "consistently broad, original, and serious scholarship," Walsh highlights Korshin’s investigation into the accuracy of Johnson’s recorded conversation, Manning’s comparison of melancholy in Boswell, Pope, and Cowper, and Turnbull's contribution. The collection probes the relation between "self and literary achievement" in the works of Boswell, Johnson, and Hume, exploring Boswell’s Scotticisms, his reaction to public executions, and his earlier travel writing. While Walsh finds Heiland’s host/parasite metaphor for the Life’s footnotes suggestive but "overly extended," he notes that several essayists, such as Schwartz, criticize Boswell’s "profound self-absorption" for hindering his effectiveness as a biographer.
Blanton examines Clingham's unfavorable comparison of Boswell to Johnson, noting the book's skepticism regarding Boswell’s "truth" and objectivity. Clingham portrays the Life as a "metaphorical seduction" and a projection of Boswell's anxiety. Blanton challenges the dismissal of Boswell’s authenticity, arguing Clingham ignores Boswell's struggle for free will. He concludes that Clingham's strongest contribution lies in linking Boswell’s "interiority" and biographical method to the Romantics.
DeMaria examines Johnson’s diverse reading practices, proposing a taxonomy of four categories: "study," "perusal," "mere reading," and "curious reading." "Study" denotes diligent reading of canonical works like the Bible and classics; "perusal" involves less systematic reading of texts for self-improvement; "mere reading" is casual browsing of periodicals and newspapers; and "curious reading" is excited, compulsive reading, often of novels and romances. DeMaria observes a trend in Johnson’s life away from "study" toward more relaxed forms and concludes that future reading will similarly favor "perusal" and "mere reading."
In this enthusiastic review, Jones highlights Clingham's analysis of Boswell's psychological and artistic achievement within the biographical genre. Clingham examines Boswell's personal writings to explain how his relationship with his father and the intellectual influence of Hume shaped the biography of Johnson. Jones notes that Clingham focuses more on Boswell's internal complexities than on Johnson's life story. The review concludes that students of eighteenth-century literature and biographical art benefit from this critical essay.
Kinsella assesses Greg Clingham's James Boswell: The Life of Johnson as a dense exploration of Boswell's psychological needs and the resulting artistic complexity of the Life. It commends Clingham's analysis of the structural influence of Boswell’s journals, Corsica, and the Tour on the Life's biographical vision. However, it finds the prose overwritten and occasionally obscure. The review highlights Clingham's persuasive assertion that Boswell's artistic recreation of Johnson served to fulfill his own psychologically predetermined ideals, although this reading is acknowledged to cover familiar ground.
Zachs examines Clingham's psychological and psycho-sexual analysis of Boswell's biographical process. Clingham argues that Boswell internalized Johnson as an idealized father figure to compensate for his relationship with Lord Auchinleck. Zachs identifies Clingham’s close readings and integration of secondary sources as strengths but critiques the excessive use of critical jargon and distracting parenthetical references. He concludes that Clingham successfully challenges the authenticity of Boswell's portrait while highlighting the biographer's inability to fully grasp Johnson's internal thought.
Literary Transmission and Authority: Dryden and Other Writers
Clingham examines Johnson’s reception of Dryden as the foundational "modern poet" whose career established the benchmarks for English poetry and criticism. Johnson identifies a shared intellectual heritage with Dryden, famously comparing him to Pope while ultimately confessing a personal preference for Dryden's "strong reason." This assessment serves as a tripled act of interpretation, where Johnson’s critique of Dryden's perceived lack of "quick sensibility" reflects his own intellectual operations. Johnson values Dryden’s role in "beautifying the language" and considers him a mirror for the authorial struggle between individual genius and historical conditions. By focusing on the "personality or character of the poet," Johnson moves beyond mere intertextuality to engage with Dryden’s moral and professional legacy. This relationship demonstrates that subsequent reception is essential for understanding an author’s own engagement with predecessors.
Barry examines the Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, noting its conservative aim to show the 'extraordinary humane intelligence' Johnson applied to all activities. He details contributions regarding Johnson's poetry, his relationship with women, and the Dictionary. Barry observes the volume avoids 'theoretical disputation' to maintain a 'middle ground' and 'air of authority,' though he suggests this focus on international marketability leaves the collection 'lacking in impact and provocation'.
English: The Journal of the English Association
Davis reviews Clingham’s edited volume, describing it as an "accessibly written introduction" suitable for "non-specialists and interested amateurs." The review highlights "superb" contributions by Michael Suarez on Johnson’s "nervous Anglicanism" and John Wiltshire on travel writing. Davis notes that Eithne Henson successfully "chips away" at myths of Johnson’s misogyny, while Clement Hawes identifies Johnson as a "prescient opponent of racism." However, Davis challenges Philip Davis’s biographical essay for its lack of "biographical facts" and disputes Clingham’s own essay for its "theoretical jargon" and excessive length. The reviewer also suggests that Robert Folkenflik is "too cavalier" in dismissing recent hypotheses regarding Johnson’s "liking for Jacobitism." Despite "factual errors" and "quirky" bibliographical selections, Davis concludes that the volume "more than fulfils" its goal of providing a "reliable introduction" to Johnsonian studies.
Devens examines this collection of fourteen essays covering a wide range of themes concerning Johnson. The text provides an overview of Johnson’s attitudes toward imperialism, religion, and women, while interpreting his most well-known work. Devens highlights Demaria’s study of the Dictionary as a conflict between historically verifiable truth and moral instruction. Hawes argues that Johnson’s writing on human nature offers a resistance to racist Enlightenment progress. Keymer analyzes how letter writing allowed Johnson to experiment with self-parody and linguistic vulgarity. Devens notes the volume is jarring and uneven due to inconsistent levels of difficulty.
Folkenflik includes his own essay on "Johnson's Politics" in Greg Clingham's The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson. The volume features essays by Philip Davis on Johnson's life, Howard Weinbrot on his poetry, Robert DeMaria, Jr. on the Dictionary, and Clement Hawes on Johnson and imperialism, among others. He mentions it as a source for more substantial accounts of Johnson's letters and politics.
Kolb provides an approving review of this collection of fifteen essays edited by Greg Clingham. He commends the volume's focus on Johnson's writings and its emphasis on the "reality" of the "common reader." The essays treat diverse topics including poetry, the Dictionary, politics, imperialism, skepticism, and Christian thought. Kolb praises how the contributors, including Robert DeMaria, Jr. and Robert Folkenflik, demonstrate that Johnson's opinions were not monolithic but evolved over time. While Kolb identifies several minor factual errors regarding Rasselas and the Life of David Hume, and disputes the claim that Johnson wrote the Rambler solely to escape the "drudgery" of the Dictionary, he concludes that the collection's achievements "far outweigh its defects."
Lurcock describes this collection of fifteen essays as a coherent redefinition of Johnson's creative achievements. The reviewer emphasizes the volume's effort to establish Johnson's "relevance" to modern literary and human concerns, particularly through Clingham's and Smallwood's holistic views of the criticism. Lurcock highlights contributions exploring Johnson’s conversation, his opposition to tyranny and support for women's education, and his complex attitudes toward travel and colonialism. The reviewer concludes that the work effectively moves beyond historical classification to present Johnson as a modern, compassionate thinker.
Lustig reviews this comprehensive and lucid companion to Johnson’s writings, which is deliberately conservative, eschewing theoretical disputation and cultural conditioning to stimulate rigorous engagement with the texts. The fifteen essays address a wide audience, ranging from the common reader to the scholar, and demonstrate the error of classifying Johnson in Enlightenment stereotypes. Essays are divided into analytical summaries of major works by genre and thematic, annotated essays for scholars, including Philip Davis’s description of Johnson’s life as a "great failure" of powers not fully used and Howard Weinbrot’s argument that Johnson’s prose strength derives from his poetic greatness. Other contributors include Paul Korshin on the Rambler, Robert DeMaria on the Dictionary, and Robert Folkenflik on politics, while topics further encompass the Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the Poets, Christian beliefs, and the Journey to the Western Islands. Lustig highlights essays by Clement Hawes on Johnson’s rejection of westernizing arrogance and Fred Parker on the skepticism of Rasselas, noting that the work covers the latter’s open-endedness and anti-imperialism. While noting the collection's conservative nature, Lustig expresses concern regarding the gross disproportion of male to female contributors in the volume.
Lynch's enthusiastic review praises Clingham's edited collection for its accessibility to beginners and utility for advanced scholars. Lynch notes that fifteen contributors prioritize Johnson's written corpus over the colorful caricature presented by Boswell. The review highlights specific essays on gender, imperialism, poetry, and prose. Lynch identifies Suarez's analysis of Christian thought and Keymer's study of epistolary writing as highlights.
Reviews The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, emphasizing the collection's focus on Johnson the writer over the Boswellian character, countering Macaulay's influence. The essays examine Johnson's writings, intellectual achievements, and internal life, with topics including his politics, Christian thought (stressing The Book of Common Prayer), and complex relationships with women and imperialism. The volume aims to present a fresh, accessible view of Johnson to late-1990s readers.
Walker’s review describes the Companion as an attempt to find a "centre" for a writer who "spread himself over occasional works." The review notes that Johnson’s work includes "letters of supplication (for others), commentaries, essays, [and] travel books." Walker highlights the Dictionary and Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare as central achievements, quoting the "funny" notes to Henry VIII. The reviewer observes that the collection addresses Johnson’s "skeptical" and "intertextual" nature. Mention is made of the contemporaneous publication of Ossian, which provided a backdrop for Johnson's critical endeavors. While the review focuses on Johnson, it notes that the volume explores his relationships and the "necessary incompleteness" of eighteenth-century sense-making. Walker concludes that the collection effectively introduces students to the "essence of Johnson's work" by examining his diverse roles as a lexicographer, critic, and "philosophic traveler."
Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press
The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, Chinese-language edition
Roscommon's 'Academy,' Chetwood's Manuscript 'Life of Roscommon,' and Dryden's Translation Project
Dryden’s translation project assumed the cultural work of Roscommon's defunct academy. Johnson, in the "Life of Roscommon," recognized the inseparability of poetry and precepts in An Essay on Translated Verse. He later asserted that Dryden's poetic transformations—moving English poetry "from brick ... [to] marble"—was occasioned by this translation work. Johnson thus identifies poetic translation as "essential" to Dryden's career as a great national poet.
DeMaria reviews Greg Clingham's *Johnson, Writing, and Memory*. The review supports Clingham's postmodern reading, noting Johnson's durability. Clingham's approach focuses on Johnson's writing, beginning with his "inherently discrepant" epistemology. DeMaria finds Clingham's analysis of the absent present moment "quintessentially Johnsonian." The review highlights Clingham's application of the words/things antithesis to *Rasselas*, where the text "enact[s]... a disjunction." For the *Lives of the Poets*, Clingham argues Johnson's style "manifests a distinctive style... as a result of Johnson's response to the writer," an idea DeMaria finds a fitting keystone.
Clingham's impressive meditation organizes Johnson's writings around the notion of memory, referencing Locke and Pierre Nora. Drawing on poststructuralist insights but grounded in historical scholarship, the study focuses on Johnson's critical and biographical works, especially Preface to Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poets (Cowley, Milton, Pope, Dryden). The writing is dense, reflecting the sophistication of the ideas.
Clingham adopts a theoretical approach, arguing that Johnson understood the arbitrary relationship of signs and used memory as a "fictive paradigm" to translate the impermanent aspects of life into literature, focusing on the Lives of the Poets.
Clingham notes the last decade has seen some of the worst of times for eighteenth-century scholars, but Johnson has fared well with continued scholarly output. He highlights the publications on Johnson from Bucknell University Press over the last decade, including works by Martin Wechselblatt, Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer, Stephen Miller, Harriet Kirkley, and Niall Rudd's translation of Johnson's Latin Poems. Clingham encourages new work on Johnson, noting Bucknell is committed to the liberal arts. The list shows the range of critical approaches Bucknell has supported, from textual studies to cultural and theoretical contextualization.
Anna Williams's Miscellanies in Prose and Verse in the Houghton Library
A transcription of Thomas Percy’s notes in a copy of Williams now in the Hyde Collection. Percy provides brief biographical background on Williams and attributes several works to Johnson.
Johnson, Ends, and the Possibility of Happiness
Clingham explores how Johnson’s moral and literary thought was deeply informed by his interactions with and symbolic structures of children. He argues that Johnson’s understanding of melancholy, memory, and language drew upon childhood experiences in ways typically associated with later Romantic or twentieth-century psychological writers. The essay uses historical and textual records to highlight an appealing childlikeness in Johnson's own writings and life.
Johnsoniana: 'Freshly in Love': Johnson's Literary Power
Clingham explores Drabble’s "belated discovery" of Johnson’s "exquisite and terrifying" literary power. The text focuses on the "energy and bitterness" of Johnson's judgments which Drabble finds "disturbing yet liberating." It details the "creative tension" between Johnson’s "remorseless pessimism" and his "energetic drive towards the aphoristic." Clingham notes that Drabble finds in Johnson a "working-class hero" whose "rugged honesty" and "manful correctness" provide a "massive solidity" lacking in contemporary literature. The text emphasizes Johnson’s "truculent boon-companion" persona and his ability to "retrace the past" while "anticipating the future" through a "continuity of being" that remains "lacerated" by the complexities of life.
Clingham considers how Samuel Johnson's cultural value shifts when examined in relation to Jorge Luis Borges. It explores Borges's lifelong, imaginative engagement with Johnson, evident in his criticism, recorded conversations (particularly with Adolfo Bioy Casares), and unpublished translation projects. Clingham argues that Borges perceived Johnson not as an embodiment of Enlightenment hegemony, but, alongside Shakespeare, as a quintessential writer of English and a radiant, relatable image—particularly in his blindness—of the modern writer's own poetic and expansive self, highlighting affinities in their views on translation, style, and literary identity.
Clingham explores the cultural significance of the portable book as promoted through Johnson's dictum that a "book which deserves to be read should be of a size suitable for the pocket." The essay is framed by a Victorian advertisement linking this idea to Tennyson's miniature edition and an invented anecdote featuring Richard Porson as a learned stagecoach passenger. Clingham notes earlier, factual anecdotes of Johnson reading a "little book" (Lucian) in a coach and Hawkins's account of Johnson's preference for smaller formats, contrasting this with the monumental size of his Dictionary and his famously large coat.
Clingham examines Johnson’s deep engagement with legal theory and his significant, though largely silent, collaboration with Robert Chambers on the Vinerian law lectures. The article argues that Johnson’s "forensic skill" was rooted in a belief that law must be grounded in "moral good" rather than mere positive statutes. Clingham details Johnson’s contributions to legal arguments for Boswell, most notably the defense of Joseph Knight, where Johnson asserted that slavery violates the "rights of nature." The narrative highlights Johnson’s "skeptical historical dialectic" as applied to the common law, viewing it as a "genealogy of sentiments" that must be sieved through historical evidence. Clingham review’s Johnson’s advocacy for William Dodd and his "urgent efforts" to achieve justice through petition. The article concludes that Johnson’s legal thinking was a "mixed science of experiments" designed to puncture "political illusions" and maintain the "balance of the mind" through established legal principles.
De Bruyn reviews The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, which features seventeen new essays addressing Johnson's pertinence in contemporary intellectual and cultural contexts. The review highlights how the collection recontextualizes Johnson, challenging the caricature of him as a reactionary, particularly regarding gender, race, slavery, and politics. Essays by Nicholas Hudson and Clement Hawes discuss his consistent and unequivocal opposition to slavery and empire. Other chapters explore disability, visual representations, the biographical genre, and Johnson's essayistic style, demonstrating his adaptability to new critical methodologies and the enduring vitality of his writings.
Lynch's enthusiastic review praises this collection as a vital survey of modern scholarly conversations that complements rather than replaces the 1997 predecessor. The review highlights how Clingham assembles seventeen contributors to address contemporary concerns including race, disability, and gender alongside traditional topics like Renaissance humanism and travel. Lynch notes that the introduction, "Contemporary Johnson," successfully sets a tone that makes the focused, clear prose accessible to undergraduates and professionals alike. The review characterizes the volume as an "excellent way" for newcomers to enter the field and for established scholars to update their understanding of the period.
Lynch reviews this entirely fresh collection of essays, noting its nuanced departure from the revaluations of the 1990s and moving past the "is not! is so!" phase of criticism. He observes that while previous scholars fought to categorize Johnson as either radical or conservative, the contributors here offer more sensitive readings that acknowledge his mixed opinions on gender, race, language, and subordination. The collection proves Johnson remarkably amenable to contemporary scholarly concerns—race, empire, and disability—with topical chapters ranging widely across his works, such as those on disability by Paul Kelleher and race by Nicholas Hudson, alongside traditional subjects like the Shakespeare edition and poetry. Lynch highlights how the volume successfully balances the needs of novices and experts, remaining accessible to students while staying interesting to professionals. Ultimately, the reviewer concludes that contributors maintain high standards, demonstrating how Johnson remains relevant to modern critical discussions on life-writing and empire.
Vilmar offers an enthusiastic review of this collection edited by Greg Clingham, noting how it demonstrates the evolution of Johnsonian studies over the last twenty-five years. He highlights Clingham’s introduction, which presents Johnson as a skeptical teacher of social justice and a guide to general nature relevant to a world haunted by technology and fake news. Vilmar praises Samara Anne Cahill’s examination of Johnson and gender, which argues that Johnson used feminist orientalism to separate biological sex from socially gendered behavior. He also notes contributions by Martine Watson Brownley on British historiography and Anne M. Thell on travel, the latter of which connects Johnson’s skepticism to his sensory disabilities. Paul Kelleher further explores Johnson’s role in disability studies by analyzing how friends mocked or paid homage to his bodily mannerisms. Min Wild reinterprets Johnson’s ethics as encompassing ecological concerns through a humane insistence on caring for all beings. Vilmar concludes that these revaluations provide ample evidence that Johnson remains our contemporary, though he questions if such scholarship will overcome the strident presentism of modern curricula.
Walker's mixed review outlines the contents and evaluates the scholarly contributions of the eighteen essays in this volume. The collection includes a previously unknown drawing of Johnson by Lady Anne Lindsay, discovered by Greg Clingham. Walker identifies 117 undetected errors in transcription across the volume, though he praises eight contributors for maintaining high textual accuracy. Min Wild traces Johnson's relationship with Isaac Watts, William Law, and Cicero to examine secular morality. Philip Smallwood analyzes the elusiveness of the essay genre in the Dictionary. Anthony W. Lee examines Johnson's ties to Renaissance humanists Thomas More, Francis Bacon, and Michel de Montaigne. Lynda Mugglestone provides novel lexicographical perspectives on the Dictionary. Martine W. Brownley reconciles Johnson's skepticism of history with his high regard for historical writing. Freya Johnston explores Johnson's views on fiction and reader vulnerability. Samara Anne Cahill relies on heavy academic jargon to address gender and masculinities. Nicholas Hudson provides an informative, well-written context for Johnson's major statements on slavery, highlighting the case of Joseph Knight. Paul Kelleher focuses on modern disability constructions and Johnson's physical impairments. Clement Hawes advances political discussions by examining Johnson's anti-colonial and anti-imperial perspectives. John Richetti and Tom Mason offer uneven chapters that vacillate between original insights and familiar literary commonplaces. Fred Parker provides a brilliant, deeply understanding guided tour of the Lives of the Poets. Leo Damrosch offers a pedestrian overview of Johnson's biographical works. Anne M. Thell foregrounds dense abstractions over travel literature realities. Heather McPherson examines the visual representation and posthumous reputation of Johnson. Robert DeMaria, Jr. concludes the volume with an exceptional anecdotal history of the Yale edition of the works of Samuel Johnson.
By Perseverance [review of Samuel Johnson, the 'Ossian' Fraud, and the Celtic Revival in Great Britain and Ireland, by Thomas M. Curley; Samuel Johnson after 300 Years, by Greg Clingham and Philip Smallwood; and Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin]
Jackson focuses on the high quality of essays in Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, edited by Clingham and Smallwood, which successfully brings Johnsonian scholarship into the mainstream of eighteenth-century studies. The collection offers diverse, concise, and high-quality papers on Johnson's moral philosophy, legal thinking, and impact on women writers, challenging the notion of a "cosy, clubby" Johnsonianism. Jackson also reviews Curley's polemical work on the "Ossian" fraud, which argues Johnson was a "supreme truth-teller" and intellectual midwife of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, a claim Jackson finds overstated. Martin's new biography is presented as a solid, somber, but dignified work for a general audience, taking Johnson's suffering and idleness seriously.
Garland reference library of the humanities
Boswell's Literary Art: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Studies, 1900–1985
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), British Poet, Critic, Essayist, and Lexicographer
Cohen chronicles the medical histories of several historical figures to examine the impact of asthma on their lives and work. The section on Johnson dates the onset of his "convulsions in the chest" to before age fifty, noting his 1755 symptoms of cough and hoarseness. Cohen details how Johnson sought relief through frequent bleedings and studied Sir John Floyer's treatise on the condition, though Johnson concluded his own case was "constitutional and incurable." The narrative describes the 1773 journey through Scotland with Boswell as a "remarkable feat" of fortitude for an elderly sufferer. Boswell's records provide specific clinical observations of Johnson's "spasmodic asthma," which forced him to sit up all night in a chair. Cohen further notes Johnson's use of opium, vinegar of squills, and syrup of poppies during his final decline. The article also mentions the friendships of Thrale and Boswell as essential emotional refuges for Johnson. Additionally, the text cites Arbuthnot's 1734 letter to Swift describing respiratory distress so severe he could "neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move."
Literary Allusion in Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland'
This book analyses the structure and function of each literary allusion identified in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). Johnson's familiarity with the classics and other literatures is thereby manifested in a variety of ways, with a powerful personal voice and, no less important, looking for reader involvement. Allusion, as contended in this monograph, is indeed an integral part of the formal artistry and intellectual depth of the Journey, thus contributing to making Johnson's Scottish travelogue what it is — a major exponent of Travel Literature.
Taxation No Tyranny: Samuel Johnson, Barrister to the Crown
Samuel Johnson and Johann Christoph Adelung
An account of Johnson’s composition of the *Dictionary*, against the background of academic dictionaries, including the Italian *Vocabolario* and the *Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise*. “From the first sentence of the ‘Scheme’ to the editions which closed the *Plan*, Johnson had dictionaries in the academy tradition in mind.”
In this letter to the editor, Cool notes that Power's interpretation of a sentence in Nokes's biography—"From now on this biography accommodates not just one, but shortly a second biographer"—is an "unfortunate misreading." While Power suggested a ménage à trois existed between Johnson, Nokes, and Boswell, Cool argues the third biographer is actually Piozzi, who plays a major role in Nokes's exploration. The letter points out that only Johnson and Piozzi appear so frequently they are abbreviated to their initials. Cool emphasizes that the invention of biography by Johnson on Savage and the subsequent relationships between Johnson and his own biographers, including Boswell and Piozzi, serve as central themes in Nokes's work.
Boswell on Dr. Johnson's Friend Mrs. Anna Williams
Poem on Anna Williams.
Rational Hope, Rational Benevolence, and Johnson's Economy of Happiness
A poem opening, "Last night I suffered the squalor / Of another hut without enjoying the compensation."
Walker reviews this collection of ten essays, the first volume dedicated to assessing Johnson's views on friendship. Walker praises Nicholas Hudson's and Julie Crane's essays as excellent. He critiques Daniel Derrin and A. D. Cousins for a lack of explicit textual support for their arguments and notes various typographical errors in the volume.
On the 50p coin commemorating the Dictionary.
Ténebres et lumière: Essais sur la religion, la vie et la mort chrétiennes en Angleterre en hommage à la mémoire d'Elisabeth Bourcier
Samuel Johnson, Élisabeth Bourcier et la conscience chrétienne
Dead Interviews: Living Writers Meet Dead Icons
David Mitchell interviews Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
These ingenious interviews will amuse, provoke and delight. Veering from the intensely serious to the wildly silly, Dead Interviews grants writers the chance to sit down with their heroes and flex their cerebral muscles, or simply indulge in some bookish gossip with a deceased icon. Pitch-perfect mimesis meets razor sharp literary criticism in the book that refuses to let dead writers lie. The contributors: Rick Moody on Jimi Hendrix, Cynthia Ozick on Henry James, Douglas Coupland on Andy Warhol, Sam Leith on John Berryman, Geoff Dyer on Friedrich Nietzsche, A. M. Homes on Richard Nixon, David Mitchell on Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, John Burnside on Rachel Carson, ZZ Packer on Monsieur de Saint-George, Michel Faber on Marcel Duchamp, Rebecca Miller on the Marquis de Sade, Ian Rankin on Arthur Conan Doyle and Joyce Carol Oates on Robert Frost.
Tory and Whig 'Patriots': Lord Gower and Lord Chesterfield
Cruickshanks examines the political careers of Lord Gower and Lord Chesterfield, figures connected with Johnson, to illustrate the dynamics of Toryism, Jacobitism, and opposition politics. Gower, initially a leading Tory Jacobite, defected to the Whigs after 1744, incurring fierce Jacobite hostility. Chesterfield, from a Jacobite family but initially a staunch Whig, moved into opposition against Walpole. Both joined the 'Patriot' opposition, which ultimately failed to unite Tories and Whigs or enact promised reforms after Walpole's fall. Their actions, particularly Gower's defection and Chesterfield's complex maneuvering regarding potential Stuart restoration attempts in the 1740s, illuminate the political landscape Johnson navigated.
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Voltaire's Candide: A Comparation [sic]
Another Odd Couple: Dr. Samuel Johnson and David Garrick
Johnson's Tour of Scotland and the Idea of Great Britain
Curley argues that Johnson’s collaboration with Chambers on A Course of Lectures on the English Law (1766-1770) significantly influenced the content and political thinking of his later writings, particularly A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). Johnson and Chambers were close friends, and Chambers accompanied Johnson northward at the start of the tour. The Lectures and the Journey share constitutional premises and specific topics, including northern antiquities, feudalism, centralized justice, and the political cohesiveness of Great Britain. While the Lectures praised the British Union for civilizing Scotland, Johnson's firsthand experience in the Highlands led him to qualify these chauvinistic assumptions, questioning a policy of cultural assimilation and ultimately urging political action to prevent depopulation. Johnson reported that King George III was eager to read the Journey, though Walpole claimed the King found its tolerant tone suspect, labeling Johnson a "Papist and a Jacobite."
Samuel Johnson, the 'Ossian' Fraud, and the Celtic Revival in Great Britain and Ireland
Curley provides a comprehensive history of Johnson’s intellectual and moral campaign against James Macpherson’s purported translations of the ancient Gaelic bard Ossian. Curley contends that Johnson’s opposition was rooted in a principled defense of historical truth and the necessity of written manuscripts to substantiate claims of ancient civilization. The study details Johnson’s 1773 journey to the Western Islands of Scotland with Boswell, framing the excursion as a rigorous field investigation to disprove the authenticity of the Ossianic epics. Curley explores how Johnson’s skepticism challenged the "Celtomania" of the era and forced a reevaluation of Scottish cultural identity within the British Empire. Additionally, Curley examines the personal and legal vitriol between Johnson and Macpherson, as well as the defensive maneuvers of the Scottish literati. By situating the controversy within the larger context of the Enlightenment, the monograph demonstrates how Johnson’s critical standards for historiography and bibliography helped dismantle the forgery while inadvertently stimulating a more disciplined approach to the study of Celtic antiquities. Chapter 1, "An introductory survey of scholarship on Ossian: why literary truth matters," reviews two and a half centuries of academic response to James Macpherson, arguing that recent revisionist attempts to rehabilitate his reputation often compromise the essential historical issue of authenticity. Chapter 2, "James Macpherson's violation of literary truth," provides a systematic dissection of the Ossianic canon's creative process, demonstrating that 72 percent of the titles are pure authorial invention while the remainder bear only fitful, loose ties to genuine Gaelic ballads. Chapter 3, "Johnson on truth, frauds, and folklore: in the company of Thomas Percy," examines Samuel Johnson’s foundational commitment to empirical truth and his mentorship of Thomas Percy, illustrating how his participation in the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry established the intellectual standards he used to judge Macpherson. Chapter 4, "Searching for truth in the Highlands: Macpherson throws down the gauntlet," explores the pivotal role of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in reigniting the controversy and analyzes the legendary confrontation between Johnson and Macpherson as a clash between enlightened inquiry and defensive fabrication. Chapter 5, "Charles O'Conor and the Celtic Revival in Ireland," identifies Johnson as a primary promoter of Irish studies, arguing that his support for O'Conor’s antiquarian research was intended to provide an authentic Gaelic foil to Macpherson’s Scottish "fakelore." Chapter 6, "Johnson and the Irish: more opposition to Ossian," examines the reception of the Ossian fraud among Irish intellectuals like Thomas Campbell, contending that they used Johnson’s skepticism to assert the primacy of Ireland’s own ancient literary and religious heritage. Chapter 7, "Johnson's last word on Ossian with William Shaw: a finale to controversy," details the final phase of the dispute through Johnson’s collaboration with the Gaelic scholar William Shaw, arguing that their joint pamphlets represent a definitive stand for truth against the "Caledonian bigotry" of Macpherson’s supporters.
Samuel Johnson and Taxation No Tyranny: 'I Am Willing to Love All Mankind, except an American'
Curley examines the tension between Johnson’s hatred of European imperialism and his support for Britain during the American Revolution. Analyzing the pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny (1775), Curley argues that Johnson’s defense of the empire was complicated by a subliminal ambivalence regarding its racist legacy. He concludes that Johnson viewed the potential loss of the American colonies with ironic indifference, seeing the inherently corrupt business of colonization as non-essential to the homeland's health.
Samuel Beckett and Samuel Johnson: Like-Minded Masters of Life's Limitations
Curley This essay contrasts Johnson's traditional Christian philosophy with his profound existential anxieties about emptiness and annihilation. It argues that Samuel Beckett was deeply fascinated by this dichotomy, focusing not on the magisterial "Great Cham" but on a doubt-ridden, phobia-filled Johnson. Curley contends that this subversive interpretation of Johnson, wrought in Beckett's own image, served as a significant formative influence on Beckett's canon, particularly evident in his unfinished play Human Wishes and potentially sublimated into works like Krapp's Last Tape. The influence, though unlikely, proves profound upon scrutiny.
Major Authors on CD-ROM: Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Fifty-six works by and about Johnson and Boswell. The collection incorporates the complete Yale Johnson series volumes published to date, along with the Hill–Powell edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Birkbeck Hill’s Johnsonian Miscellanies. The searchable contents also include the first edition of the Dictionary, Clarence Tracy’s Life of Savage, and Hazen's edition of Johnson’s Prefaces and Dedications. The CD-ROM functions as an expanded index and concordance for scholarly research. The index was prepared by Jack Lynch.
Bundock reviews the Primary Source Media CD-ROM edited by Damrosch. The resource contains a "substantial collection of the standard editions" of Johnson's and Boswell's works, including the Yale Edition and the 1755 Dictionary. Biographical sources like Piozzi's Anecdotes and Hawkins' Life are included, though modern editions of letters by Chapman and Redford are missing. Bundock describes the CD-ROM as an "invaluable research and reference tool" for libraries, allowing users to search an extensive library for specific themes or concepts. Despite the high price, the reviewer suggests serious researchers will find the "ready access to references" worth the investment, particularly given the comprehensive index and digital images of rare editions.
Boyd acknowledges this trade biography for its 'telling detail' and pungent evocation of eighteenth-century London life. He disputes Damrosch’s reliance on outdated 'heavy-metal Freudianism' regarding Johnson and Thrale. Boyd challenges the 'neo-Whig' dismissal of Johnson’s Jacobitism, arguing that the book simplifies complex political scholarship in the 'Erskine-Hill/Jonathan Clark tradition'. Despite factual errors—such as misidentifying the satiric source of London—Boyd finds the work a valuable, 'vividly' illustrated introduction for common readers.
DeMaria reviews Leo Damrosch's The Club, noting the work is an anthology of well-known stories about Johnson, Boswell, and their circle (Burke, Reynolds, Goldsmith, etc.). DeMaria praises the book's quality as a "very delightful book" and a "well-selected anthology," though he notes it makes few appearances of modern criticism. The reviewer defends the book's old-fashioned, graceful style and highlights the value of the stories, including Johnson’s more reactionary remarks, such as his assertion of a "reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed," which contributes to a fuller, if less flattering, truth about him.
Damrosch traces the Club's shift from an intimate circle to a body including politicians, yet the review suggests the book focuses too heavily on individual biographies, sometimes losing the elusive "new attitude to thinking and conversing" that defined the group. The work ultimately reinforces Johnson's stature as the age's leading intellectual, a portrait made sharper by darkening the background of those outside the Club.
Jack reviews Damrosch's study of the famous group, which features Boswell as the unexpected hero. The book is a series of biographical sketches, centering on the 20-year friendship between Johnson and the younger Boswell. Johnson is presented as suffering from OCD, and Boswell from depression and licentiousness. The Club, founded by Reynolds, fostered a lively exchange for members like Burke and Goldsmith. A "shadow club" of women, notably Thrale and Burney, was also key to Johnson. Boswell's devotion and record-keeping skills produced his monumental biography.
Meyers’s approving review of Leo Damrosch’s group biography examines the intellectual circle centered on Johnson and Boswell. Meyers highlights the "warm-hearted humanity" of Johnson, whom Damrosch presents as a father figure to Boswell. The review notes Damrosch’s attention to Johnson’s personal guilts and spiritual torments regarding his wife Tetty and his mother. Meyers describes how the friendship with Hester Thrale and Henry Thrale later supplanted Johnson’s need for the Club, providing essential company. While the review finds Damrosch’s account of figures like Adam Smith and Oliver Goldsmith perceptive, Meyers notes that Damrosch misses a connection between Johnson’s literary remarks on Falstaff and his vicarious interest in Boswell’s profligate behavior. The review also mentions the transition in Johnson’s life marked by his royal pension.
Enlightenment: Nightclubbing [review of The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, by Leo Damrosch]
Moore reviews Damrosch’s The Club, praising its success in using the famous literary society as a center for a group biography of its members and a portal into 18th-century London life. Damrosch’s approach presents portraits of figures like Johnson, Boswell, Burke, and Garrick, exploring their lives, politics, and social dynamics. Moore notes the book documents Johnson’s mental health struggles and Boswell’s moral failings.
Saxton examines the creation and cultural influence of the Literary Club. Saxton notes Damrosch’s grand synthesis of journals and letters to make the London world live through the eyes of the Club members. Saxton highlights the prominence of Boswell and the inclusion of Thrale and Burney as a Streatham Shadow Club.
The Quotable Johnson: A Topical Compilation of His Wit and Moral Wisdom
Publisher's blurb: "Samuel Johnson has remarked wisely on almost every topic pertinent to the noble cause of human living. This treasure trove of wisdom and inspiration from Johnson's writings--on everything from Asceticism to Ambition, Failure to Forgiveness, Hypocrisy to Holiness, Vanity to Virtue--offers a vision of suffering overcome and a life lived manfully, thankfully, and generously. Foreword by Joseph Sobran."
With a foreword by Joseph Sobran.
Davidson argues that Johnson should be considered a major historian, citing his work on the Dictionary, the Shakespeare edition, and the Lives of the Poets as "fundamentally historical in their interests." The article suggests the Dictionary provides a "genealogy of sentiments" that functions as a kind of intellectual history of the English language. Davidson details Johnson’s use of "first-person testimony" and his belief that recent history requires sifting through the accounts of living witnesses. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "skeptical historical dialectic" in his edition of Shakespeare, which revivifies old debates by showing the literary and cultural contexts lost over time. Davidson notes that Johnson’s biographies integrate individual lives into the "larger tapestry" of national and print history. The article concludes that Johnson’s "sense of history" was central to his identity as a scholar, allowing him to revivify the past while remaining mindful of the "truth of the text itself."
A Travelling Man: Eighteenth-Century Bearings
Politics and Literature: John Adams and Doctor Johnson
Literature, Speech Disorders, and Disability: Talking Normal
Samuel Johnson and the Frailties of Speech
Davies investigates the "double tradition of Dr. Johnson," which separates his authorial persona from his conversational fame, exploring how Boswell and Piozzi negotiate Johnson's "extraordinary colloquial talents" against his "bodily tics and involuntary vocalizations." Boswell employs a "moralized narrative" of triumph to align Johnson’s speech with his "powerful mind" rather than his "afflicted body," while Johnson’s own lexicographical work identifies speech as a form of "disorder" characterized by "caprice" and "corruption." The text examines Johnson’s 1783 aphasic crisis, noting his determination to "remain in control" by transforming disordered speech into "orderly written narratives." Piozzi reinforces this connection, observing that Johnson’s essays "breathe indeed the genuine emanations" of his conversational style.
Narrating Death: The Limit of Literature
This chapter focuses on the periodical essays written for The Rambler and The Idler, which demonstrate what have been termed the "peculiarities" that "distinguish the prose of Johnson's maturity." Johnson asserts that the contemplation of death is necessary for a virtuous life. A number of The Rambler essays reveal Johnson's awareness of both the necessity of attending to the passing of time and his horror at the thought of its destructive action. There are clearly grounds on which to align this mode of representation with what has been identified as Johnson's "emphasis on the common and the general" and to a universalizing tendency in his work. The frequency of Johnson's repetition of the adverbs in conjunction with the progressive construction, therefore, can also be construed as a representation of his personal experience of this state of "permanent imminence" as well as his insistent determination to attend to what horrifies him.
Why I Do Not Intend to Write an Autobiography
" ... edition of 500 copies, of which 150 are signed and numbered by the author, and 50 are hors de commerce."--Colophon " ... text of an address read by Robertson Davies at the conclusion of a Tribute in his honour at the annual International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront ..."--Title page verso "I dreamed that ... there were only two people present ... : Dr. Samuel Johnson and his companion and biographer James Boswell. To my astonishment, they were talking about me!"
'Defects': Engendering the Early Modern Body
Dr. Johnson, Amelia, and the Discourse of Disability
Davis examines Samuel Johnson’s physical mannerisms and Henry Fielding’s Amelia to trace the emergence of "disability" as a distinct eighteenth-century category. The author argues that Johnson’s involuntary gestures—often diagnosed post-hoc as Tourette’s syndrome—functioned as a "discourse of the body" that challenged the Enlightenment ideal of the rational, self-controlled subject. Davis explores how James Boswell’s biographical project attempted to domesticate Johnson’s "deformities" by reframing them as signs of intellectual genius or moral struggle. The chapter situates Johnson within a broader shift from viewing physical "defects" as individual "wonders" to categorizing them as medical abnormalities requiring social regulation. By comparing Johnson’s social performance with the "broken" nose of Fielding’s heroine, Davis demonstrates how the eighteenth-century body became a site for negotiating the boundaries of beauty, normalcy, and civic participation.
'Elevated Notions of the Right of Kings': Stuart Sympathies in Johnson's Notes to Richard II
Davis argues that Johnson’s notes in his 1765 edition of Shakespeare’s Richard II reveal significant Stuart sympathies. He analyzes notes where Johnson contests Warburton’s Whiggish interpretations, defending the antiquity of the doctrine of absolute sovereignty and indefeasible right, thus implicitly defending the Stuarts against Whig accusations. Davis highlights Johnson’s positive portrayal of the loyal Bishop Carlisle (a figure Nonjurors saw as their precursor) and his sympathetic, if one-sided, reading of Richard II's character, potentially influenced by parallels drawn between Richard II and both Charles I and James II in contemporary political discourse, particularly by Jacobites and Nonjurors like Hickes and Dryden.
Johnsoniana: Michael P. Lynch: 'Kick This Rock: Climate Change and Our Common Reality'
Davis presents an excerpt from Michael P. Lynch's The New York Times article, which re-examines Johnson's famous kick of a stone to refute George Berkeley's idealism. Lynch suggests that Johnson’s act might not have been a naive philosophical error but a challenge based on the idea of a shared, unyielding reality. Johnson’s point rests on the commonalities of human experience, which, in the current political climate characterized by a subjective and fragmented sense of reality, feels increasingly relevant. Lynch argues that the historical debate echoes contemporary political divisions, where a shared understanding of facts seems to be dissolving, making Johnson's appeal to a common reality a strong, not a trivial, objection to the view that everything is purely mental.
Rasselas and the Visual Arts: A Parallel
Davis proposes a parallel between Johnson's Rasselas and the Vanitas still life painting genre, arguing that the relationship between Rasselas and the typical eighteenth-century novel is similar to that between a Vanitas still life and a typical still life. Johnson's work, like the paintings, foregrounds philosophical and religious ideas over detailed, realistic description of people and places. Characters and settings are briefly sketched not for their visual or narrative realism but to provoke profound meditations, such as Rasselas's comparison with the "herb-biting" animals or the visit to the catacombs. Davis suggests Johnson's interest lies in the ideas evoked by a thing, rather than the thing itself, reflecting the core theme of memento mori common to both works.
Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi and the Dissertation on Flying
Davis proposes the story of Ottoman polymath Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi as a possible analogue to Johnson's "A Dissertation on the Art of Flying" in Rasselas. Çelebi purportedly flew a glider across the Bosphorus in the 1630s. Davis notes, however, that the source of the story, Evliya Çelebi's histories, was likely untranslated during Johnson's lifetime.
Knight considers Davis's In Mind of Johnson a highly subjective and inward study of Johnson as the Rambler, exploring his wrestling with life's contradictions and limitations. Davis's work is criticized for its limited scope, vagueness, and assumption that objective criticism detracts from Johnson’s human purpose to advise readers.
McGlynn characterizes the study as a series of old-fashioned essays exploring Johnson as a physical, moral, and intellectual presence. McGlynn notes that Davis examines Boswell and the Rambler to recreate the author’s character for the reader. While McGlynn finds little new material for seasoned scholars, the review recommends the book as a "laudable effort" and a "refreshing and affectionate look" suitable for undergraduates.
Day examines three Old Bailey trials where printed materials related to Johnson's publications were the subject of theft, highlighting the commonality of paper theft and the commercial value of Johnson's works as salvage or waste in the eighteenth-century book trade. The first case describes the 1776 trial of Susannah Smith and others for stealing eleven reams of folio sheets from Johnson's Dictionary at James Dodsley's warehouse following a fire, an instance that highlights the difficulty of proving ownership of such sheets in the trade. A second case from 1778 saw William Blake indicted for stealing writing paper specifically manufactured for the portraits in "Johnson's Poets." Finally, the 1797 trial of Stephen Robert Hickson involved a farcical trial over purloining sheets of Johnson's Irene from printer George Cawthorne. Day notes that Johnson is the only author in a survey to have three separate titles stolen, which speaks to the high commercial value of his works.
Psalmanazar's 'Formosa' and the British Reader (Including Samuel Johnson
De Bruyn explores Johnson’s views on "wealth and commerce," arguing that he approached economic questions from a "classical and Christian moral perspective." The article details Johnson’s contributions to the Universal Visiter and his preface to Rolt’s Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, where he advised readers to recognize some commerce as "intrinsically unlawful." De Bruyn highlights Johnson’s "lifelong opposition to slavery," noting his "uniformitarian ideal" in Rasselas that accords Africans the same moral capacity as Europeans. The narrative contrasts Johnson’s "Christian moralism" with the "emerging disciplinary discourse" of economics that equated moral and economic good. De Bruyn argues that Johnson’s system was one of "human nature," viewing commerce as a means to "increase wealth and power" only if it did not "corrupt the mind." The article concludes that Johnson remained a "systemic critic" of colonial exploitation, mindful of the "limits to progress" in a "fallen and broken" world.
A Walk to the Western Isles: After Boswell & Johnson
Publisher's blurb: "This travel book retraces Samuel Johnson and James Boswell's journey through Scotland and its Western Isles in the autumn of 1773. The book tells in some part the history of Scotland in the 18th century and today, of the people of the Highlands and islands then and now, their history, their whisky distilleries, the Loch Ness monster, their literature and songs, their food and hospitality, their lochs and harbours and sea-sounds — all observed via a stream of anecdotes. Johnson's book A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland and Boswell's book Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson are compared throughout."
The Return of Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector
The eighteenth-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson accompanied by his biographer James Boswell solves a series of strange crimes
The Exploits of Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector: Told as if by James Boswell
De la Torre's series of short stories cast Johnson in the role of a forensic investigator and ratiocinative sleuth, using his "great powers of mind" to solve eighteenth-century mysteries. Narrated by a fictionalized Boswell, the work mimics the prose and anecdotal structure of the Life of Johnson while involving the pair in various puzzles ranging from theft to supernatural hoaxes. The narrative focuses on Johnson’s application of empirical observation and moral philosophy to uncover truth in a London populated by historical figures and criminals. De la Torre uses authentic period details and Johnsonian "lexiphanic" dialogue to maintain a sense of historical verisimilitude, positioning Johnson as a precursor to the modern private detective. Chapter 1, 'The Kidnapp’d Earl,' addresses the legal and genealogical verification of a claimant to the Earldom of Angleby by using a waxen effigy in Westminster Abbey to establish hereditary physiological resemblances. Chapter 2, 'The Westcombe Witch,' examines the intersection of local superstition and illicit maritime commerce, revealing how purported occult rituals served as a tactical diversion for a sophisticated coastal smuggling operation. Chapter 3, 'The Banquo Trap,' investigates a homicide executed via a mechanical stage device during a theatrical production, employing a psychological ruse based on forensic folklore to identify the perpetrator. Chapter 4, 'The Spirit of the '76,' recounts the covert protection of Benjamin Franklin during a diplomatic transit, highlighting the ideological tensions between British loyalism and the nascent American revolutionary movement. Chapter 5, 'The Virtuosi Venus,' explores the connoisseurship and forgery of antiquities, demonstrating how material analysis and chemical markers can expose the fraudulent provenance of supposedly ancient artifacts. Chapter 6, 'The Aerostatick Globe,' documents the early history of aviation in England, focusing on the logistical and social challenges surrounding the first successful human ascent in a hydrogen-filled balloon. Chapter 7, 'Coronation Story,' provides an account of the 1761 coronation of George III, detailing a clandestine encounter with the Young Pretender and the subsequent preservation of state stability.
Sound recording of fiction on 5 cassettes.
Griffith reviews DeMaria's analysis of the illustrative quotations in Johnson’s Dictionary, which DeMaria frames as an organized encyclopedia of useful knowledge. The review highlights DeMaria’s use of computerized indexing to synthesize twenty-three thousand records into consistent topics such as "Knowledge," "Education," and "Mind." Griffith notes that DeMaria finds the Dictionary "thematically consistent" with Johnson’s other writings in its emphasis on virtue and religion. While Griffith questions if DeMaria occasionally imposes topics rather than finding them, he admits the control over such vast material is "superb." The review observes that DeMaria successfully demonstrates the prevalence of Locke’s epistemology throughout the work. Griffith concludes that DeMaria’s study is a compelling "histoire du livre" that future Johnsonian scholars must take seriously.
Grundy praises DeMaria's ambitious book for exhibiting the Dictionary's dialectic approach, finding truth in alternative views and a pattern of successive opposition. DeMaria is praised for establishing the Dictionary at the heart of Johnson's writings, presenting it as a celebration of learning that simultaneously subjects learning to question and is an orchestration of Western thinking. Grundy's only major criticisms are that DeMaria misjudges Swift's place in the Dictionary and overemphasizes Johnson's preference for a transparent style.
McLaverty commends DeMaria’s innovatory approach in treating the Dictionary as a book of humane wisdom rather than a mere word list. He notes the successful thematic grouping of Johnson’s opinions on knowledge, truth, and happiness, and the revelation of Locke’s dominant influence. While criticizing DeMaria’s "neo-romantic" interpretations of Locke and his omission of Rasselas, McLaverty strongly recommends the work as a seminal study of how Johnson's reading informed his worldview.
DeMaria analyzes the illustrative quotations in the Dictionary to reveal Johnson’s views on topics including knowledge, religion, and education. Approaching the work as an encyclopedic and didactic text, DeMaria situates it within a lexicographical tradition that includes Chambers’s Cyclopaedia. The study finds the Dictionary thematically consistent with Johnson’s other writings in its emphasis on the superiority of virtue over knowledge and the necessity of revealed religion. DeMaria further classifies the work as a Menippean satire or anatomy, noting Johnson’s "self-conscious irony." The book provides a comprehensive index of authors and words, establishing a record of Johnson’s intellectual predilections through his selected citations.
Explores Samuel Johnson's Dictionary not merely as a lexicon but as an encyclopedia of knowledge. DeMaria analyzes Johnson's 116,000 citations, focusing on philosophical and abstract themes like knowledge, truth, education, and morality. He argues the Dictionary functions as a historical marker and anatomy of its intellectual environment, illustrating Johnson's moralizing intentions. The reviewer notes DeMaria's acknowledgment of the work's inherent contradictions and lack of a coherent philosophical system.
DeMaria's book views Johnson's Dictionary as a "disguised encyclopaedia" and a "perpetual expression" of his moral concerns, arguing Johnson used it to foreground the value of existence. Johnson's methodology involved purposefully selecting authorities to satirize superstition, such as ridiculing transubstantiation under "wafer" and "multipresence." The study contends Johnson saw Christianity as redeeming the paradoxes of existence located in language.
The collection features fourteen papers grouped into Johnson's life, character, and works. Essays cover biographical scrutiny of Hoole and Hawkins, Johnson's French skills with Piozzi, his work on Chambers's Law lectures, his lexicography, his theory of historiography, and his controversial judgments of Theobald, Otway, and Congreve. The reviewer questions the lack of an index, the inclusion of an off-program essay, and the absence of work on Johnson’s poetry.
Rogers calls Johnson’s Dictionary and the Language of Learning triumphant, original, and energetic—the most satisfying monograph on Johnson in a decade and a notable contribution to lexicography. DeMaria's central strength is treating the Dictionary as a book of books and an Erasmian colloquy, organized like a Lockean commonplace book, which successfully lays bare Johnson’s classical and pious mind, demonstrating how he transcended subjective experience by conjugating mentality in the third-person plural. Rogers finds DeMaria's prose spry, lucid, and frequently memorably Johnsonian in its pith and dignity. The review also briefly notes the appearance of Cash’s Laurence Sterne: The Later Years. Rogers credits Cash for making good sense of a radically unsensible career by mastering ecclesiastical and legal records, but observes a weakness in the inevitable disproportion between the biographer's orderly method and Sterne's random, mercurial life, which perpetually evades definitive biographical focus.
Alkon reviews Grundy’s study of Johnson’s "shifting scales for measuring human striving." He praises Grundy’s sensitive explication of how Johnson "manipulates tone by subtle allusions to heroic action," particularly in The Journey, which she identifies as "probably the most anti-heroic" of his works. Alkon notes that Grundy’sgetMastery of Johnson’s writing provides an indispensable contribution to scholarship, though he suggests Boswell is "the forgotten man" of her study. The review highlights Grundy’s service in identifying how Johnson’s essays exercise the reader's brains and stir their ambition. Alkon concludes that Grundy has successfully provided a "genuinely original" appreciation of how Johnson’s works achieve originality through relativistic standards grounded in Christianity.
Womersley's approving review describes DeMaria's study as an "elegant, restrained and learned book" that renders the Dictionary legible by using computer-aided sorting to organize quotations into thematic fields like "Ignorance" or "Education." DeMaria analyzes these quotations to reveal an underlying moral and intellectual position, demonstrating that they illustrate word meanings while they consistently "teach fundamental points of morality," reflecting a unity of purpose with Johnson's other works. The review praises the book's elegance, restraint, and fidelity to Johnson's convictions, highlighting DeMaria's methodology for avoiding "esprit de système." The most significant insight is Johnson's "aggressive, agonistic relation with literature," viewing the Dictionary as a moral anatomy that "tears out the heart" of books and shatters them into fragments to model an ideal reading process. While Womersley questions whether Dictionary users actually "imbibed subliminally" this recovered field of knowledge, he concludes that DeMaria successfully advances Johnson "in the dignity of writing beings."
The Life of Samuel Johnson: A Critical Biography
Samuel Johnson's verdict on his own life would suggest that he was an unsuitable subject for biography. "Little has been done, and little has been enjoyed, a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent, or importunate distress."
Hudson reviews DeMaria’s critical biography, which he acknowledges as a sensible and salutary attempt to view Johnson unromantically and demystify the heroic, Herculean legend. By focusing on Johnson the writer rather than the legendary man, DeMaria reinterprets his psychological struggles as emotional and his gestures as symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome. Hudson explains DeMaria’s central thesis: Johnson intellectually belonged to the Renaissance tradition of humanist scholars, modeling himself on figures like Joseph Scaliger and Angelo Poliziano. While Hudson finds this willingness to demystify the image sensible, he questions the premise that a humanist context is the true context, disputing the extent to which humanism accounts for Johnson’s bleak Christian outlook—which departs dramatically from Renaissance optimism—or his specific political reactions to contemporary issues like slavery and imperialism. Hudson concludes that Johnson remained more essentially English than DeMaria admits and was very much "a man embroiled in the issues and problems of his time," working as a bulwark against change.
Ingram notes that a new Johnson biography faces formidable difficulties, and DeMaria's effort to confront them in his preface, by presenting Johnson as an aspiring classicist-humanist, ultimately fails. The core argument gets lost in the welter of detail any biographer must include, and Boswell's Johnson, "tics and all," strides through the pages. Ingram points out an imbalance where DeMaria speculates on illnesses but is muted on the significance of Johnson's most important friendships. Ingram concludes that DeMaria's work would have produced a respectable biography of almost any other subject, but he was "bound to fall down with Johnson."
Lurcock praises DeMaria for producing a biography independent of Boswell’s influence. He highlights the successful thesis that Johnson’s primary ambition involved joining the Latin world of European scholarship rather than succumbing to local anecdotes. Lurcock values the focus on Johnson’s intellectual achievements and the "valve" maintained between private life and professional writings. However, he notes that this approach emphasizes compromise over triumph, contrasting with earlier psychological interpretations. He concludes that DeMaria’s expertise on the Dictionary provides essential insights into Johnson’s overarching intellectual map.
DeMaria presents an interpretive study focusing on Johnson's writings rather than a traditional narrative biography. The central thesis argues Johnson modeled himself on Renaissance humanists, though "his desire to lead such a life was deflected by financial exigencies and the nature of the publishing world." DeMaria treats individual works on their own terms. Rosenblum describes the text as a "pleasantly written, useful introduction" that proves "especially welcome to undergraduates."
Suarez calls DeMaria's biography a "boldly original" account that, despite the vast existing scholarship, provides "genuinely new" insights by resituating Johnson in a "European cultural context." By scrutinizing "virtually the entire Johnson canon," DeMaria identifies Johnson as a neo-Latin scholar-poet who desired to emulate Renaissance humanists like Scaliger and Erasmus, a goal "deflected by financial exigencies." Suarez argues this approach reveals a figure "less narrowly English and more catholic in his sensibilities" than previously recognized, portraying a story of "compromise and alienation" alongside professional success. Suarez praises the "acute and insightful" synthesis of scholarship, which serves as an excellent guide to Johnson's diverse works and presents his aspirations as more broadly European and catholic than previously depicted.
Tate praises DeMaria’s analysis of Johnson’s Dictionary as a "quintessential book of books" rather than a mere philological resource. He highlights DeMaria’s organization of 114,000 illustrative quotations into thematic "heads" like Knowledge and Truth, revealing the work’s identity as a Menippean satire and pedagogical forum. While Tate praises DeMaria’s scholarly sensitivity and interpretation of Johnson’s moral implications, he notes the study is dense and demanding, intended primarily for specialists in eighteenth-century culture.
In this enthusiastic review, Thompson praises Robert DeMaria, Jr. for bypassing the traditional narrative of Boswell to reconstruct the historical Johnson as an international scholar or "Euro-sage" rooted in Latin culture. Thompson notes that DeMaria characterizes Johnson's career as an "enforced compromise" between his desire to be a Latin scholar-poet and the financial necessity of writing for the English general reader. The review highlights DeMaria’s defense of Johnson’s anti-American sentiments, linking them to a "sympathy for the victims of colonialism and slavery." Thompson concludes that DeMaria successfully moves toward the historical figure behind the national myth.
Latter-Day Humanists and the Pastness of the Past
Deutsch reviews Robert DeMaria, Jr.'s taxonomy of eighteenth-century reading, calling the book an eminently readable scholarly, imaginative, and persuasive achievement. DeMaria identifies four categories—study, perusal, mere reading, and curious reading—using Johnson's life as the pattern and constructing a taxonomy that makes Johnson a familiar and enduring model. The review highlights DeMaria’s psychological insights and analyses of material culture, specifically regarding Johnson’s infirmities, such as how partial blindness influenced his preference for print. While Deutsch praises these insights, she notes that DeMaria's focus on familiarity occasionally leads him to gloss over certain social complexities. She suggests that greater attention to gendered implications and class in the anecdotal accounts of Johnson's childhood reading might have added a critically illuminating dimension to the study. Despite this, Deutsch concludes that the work remains a valuable spectacle of Johnson's intellectual life.
Ingram calls DeMaria's project intriguing, as it attempts to differentiate four distinct modes of Johnson's reading (study, perusal, mere reading, curious reading) to illuminate the history of reading. Ingram finds the discussion perceptive on both Johnson's habits and their cultural significance.
Kass examines DeMaria's classification of Johnson's reading into four distinct patterns: study, perusal, mere reading, and curious reading. Kass highlights how Johnson's formative experiences in libraries and his father's bookstore influenced a pragmatic approach to morality and human psychology. The review details Johnson's "hard reading" of classical and Biblical texts, his qualified praise for the social utility of mere reading in periodicals, and his anxiety regarding the "curious reading" found in fiction. Kass notes that Johnson feared the seductive pleasures of the imagination might make reality and chimera indistinguishable, causing one to potentially lose the sole ground for working out their eternal salvation.
Cithara: Essays in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition
Womersley notes DeMaria's celebration of reading as a robust human activity. DeMaria classifies Johnson's reading into four types: study, curious reading, perusal, and mere reading. The book argues that Johnson's personal reading habits mirrored a broader historical trend toward more superficial forms of reading and away from intensive study. The review praises DeMaria's ingenuity in deriving evidence of Johnson's reading from his writings, positioning Johnson as a significant figure in the general history of reading.
The Gove–Liebert File of Quotations from Johnson's Dictionary (II)
DeMaria traces the history of the Gove-Liebert File, a collection of roughly 144,375 three-by-five-inch cards containing all the illustrative quotations from the fourth edition (1773) of Johnson's *Dictionary*. The file was created in the 1930s by Philip Babcock Gove using a WPA grant and was later alphabetized by Laura Pierson Liebert, despite inconsistencies in the cards. The author recounts finding and subsequently transporting the disordered cards from Yale's Beinecke Library to Vassar College, where a student restored their alphabetical order. The cards themselves are often recycled NYU "class cards" or contain student "personal statistics" from the 1930s, or homemade dictionary entries from Gove's projects. The file is now technologically superannuated by an electronic edition but is preserved, representing a bit of the recoverable past of scholarly work and turning into a kind of art.
Baldwin explores Johnson's primary dictionary definition of "anecdote" as "Something yet unpublished; secret history." This definition appears to be a clear allusion to the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius's Anekdota (The Secret History). Although there is no proof Johnson owned a copy of Procopius, he did own other Byzantine texts that catalogued the historian and his work. This raises the question of whether Johnson was the author of a 1743 paraphrase, "Account of the Plague by Procopius," in The Gentleman's Magazine, an attribution that remains disputed among scholars.
The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 1958–2018
DeMaria offers information on the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 1958–2018. The twenty-third and last volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson was officially published on January 8, 2019. The date on the last volume, however, is 2018, so for me that is the terminus ad quem. Besides, 2018 makes it an even six decades between the publication of the first volume and the last. Six decades is not just a number. The length of time that it took to complete the Yale Edition and the changes in personnel that took place over those six decades are a big part of the story of how the Edition came to be what it now is — and, unless some hearty soul undertakes to revise it, how it always will be, at least in its printed form.
DeMaria surveys the textual history of Johnson’s works, focusing on the transition from early collected editions to the completion of the Yale Edition. DeMaria explains that Johnson’s "unwieldy and illimitable body of work" poses unique challenges for editors because of his frequent silent collaborations and "ghost-writings." The article critiques the 1825 Oxford edition, noting its "wholesale reliance" on discredited texts, and contrasts it with the scholarly rigor of the Yale protocols. DeMaria details how Johnson’s "digest approach to reading"—the habit of "tearing the heart out" of books—shaped his own compositions, particularly the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare. The article argues that the future of Johnsonian scholarship lies in digital enhancements, as no single print edition can fully contain Johnson’s "voluminous" output. DeMaria concludes that the Johnsonian canon is likely never to be settled due to lost works and the "evanescence" of personal knowledge.
Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Philosophers
Dr. Johnson Revisited: Samuel Johnson and the Evolution of Language
Analyzes the shift in English vocabulary by comparing modern slang and colloquialisms to definitions in Johnson's Dictionary. Toledano identifies numerous terms such as "bamboozle," "rotgut," and "hush money" that were already present in the eighteenth-century compendium. He highlights Johnson's "whimsy of prejudication" in definitions for oats and his use of "conservative" to mean "having the power of opposing diminution or injury." The text advocates for the "refocillation" or restoration of obsolete Johnsonian terms like "obstupefaction" and "slubbergullion" to enrich contemporary political and literary debate.
The Author as Monster: The Case of Dr. Johnson
Deutsch investigates the "monstrous" status of Samuel Johnson, analyzing the dialectic between his scarred, tic-afflicted body and his status as a moral and linguistic authority. The chapter argues that Johnson’s "defects"—the results of childhood scrofula and his various compulsions—were transformed by biographers, notably James Boswell and Hester Lynch Piozzi, into essential components of his "originality." Deutsch examines how the "spectacle" of Johnson’s body facilitated a unique form of literary celebrity that relied on the physical "otherness" of the author to authenticate his intellectual "genius." The analysis includes a discussion of eighteenth-century physiognomy and the cultural fascination with "monstrous" births and deformed bodies. Deutsch concludes that Johnson’s "monstrosity" allowed him to occupy a paradoxical space: he was simultaneously a representative of universal human nature and a unique, inimitable specimen of the "literary character" whose very flaws confirmed his greatness.
'Thou Art a Scholar, Speak to It, Horatio': Uncritical Reading and Johnsonian Romance
Deutsch examines Johnson as a "resolutely embodied" figure who personifies the transition between critical and uncritical reading. Johnson’s appeal to the "common reader" creates a "communal mirror" where literature helps to "better enjoy life or better to endure it." Deutsch traces the "nostalgia" associated with the "Age of Johnson," noting how his image haunts modern literary professionalization. The text analyzes Piozzi's "Anecdotes" as part of a larger hagiographic tradition that "miniaturized" Johnson into a "secular saint." By focusing on Johnson's "eccentric" presence and "solid body," Deutsch argues he serves as a "ghost" at the crossroads of academic and personal engagement with texts.
Lives of Dr. Johnson [review of Johnson on the English Language, by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr.; The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale; Loving Dr. Johnson, by Helen Deutsch; Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709–1791, by Freya Johnston; Anniversary Essays on Johnson's 'Dictionary', by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott; and Samuel Johnson's Unpublished Revisions to the 'Dictionary of the English Language': A Facsimile Edition, by Allen Reddick]
Kermode surveys the 250th-anniversary scholarship surrounding Johnson’s Dictionary and Lonsdale’s new edition of the Lives of the Poets. Kermode observes a divide between scholars of Johnson’s texts and amateur lovers of the Johnson "myth." He critiques the Yale edition for omitting the Dictionary’s main body, though he notes the inclusion of the grammar and history of the language. Kermode highlights the "dark" mood of Johnson’s Preface, characterizing the lexicographer as a "humble drudge" facing the "depravity" of linguistic change. The review addresses the scholarly debate between prescriptive and descriptive lexicography, noting that while Johnson sought to "fix" the language, he eventually accepted the inevitability of change. Kermode also examines Johnson’s contentious relationship with Chesterfield, suggesting the "neglected scholar" narrative is partly mythical. Turning to the Lives of the Poets, Kermode praises Lonsdale’s "monumental" scholarly performance and analyzes Johnson’s "contentious and concessive" critical style, particularly his treatment of Milton’s republicanism and the "false taste" of the Metaphysical poets. The text emphasizes Johnson’s commitment to "national pride" and his "intellectual being" maintained despite lifelong infirmity.
Johnson remains a cultural phenomenon who inspires a great deal of non-scholarly interest, exceeding his place in the literary canon. Deutsch's book is not a biography but a meditation on "author-love" for Johnson, viewing the collecting, reading, and quotation of his work as "varieties of desire" centered on anecdotal representations of him. Deutsch argues that this devotion often results in less than truly critical scholarship, with his eccentricities and deformities making objective detachment difficult. The reviewer, Tankard, finds the book witty but uninformative, suggesting Deutsch's approach, with its focus on modern semi-metaphorical terminology and materiality, ultimately neglects Johnson's writings and his main contribution as a champion of civil and literate discourse.
Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi: A Taste for Eccentricity
Publisher's blurb: "Scholars and readers who are interested in eighteenth-century British literature are surely familiar with Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi in the light she came to be known in her lifetime and after: first, as the "formidable hostess" of Streatham House, South London, and then as an outcast from respectable eighteenth-century society after she had married the Italian piano teacher of her daughter. As a writer, her importance has long been that of a footnote to Samuel Johnson and as a consequence, she has been part of the official British literary canon only as a character. This volume introduces Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi as a whole, trying to link her fascinating and subversive biography to her development as a writer, emphasizing the innovative issues of her works, her style and her social and personal beliefs. Piozzi's biography is an interesting example of the dynamic scene of the late eighteenth century, where she was both conservative and subversive: she was an eccentric, and although her decision to marry the Italian singer and composer Gabriele Piozzi disgraced her, it was through this act of subversion that Hester Thrale Piozzi could finally make her own entrance into the world as a public writer. Once she had transgressed the social codes of so-called "feminine" behaviour, she was also ready to move into the public sphere, publish her works and make money out of them, pioneering several traditional literary genres through her passionate search for professional independence in the literary canon of the eighteenth century."
Tenerife en las letras inglesas: Posibles antecedentes de un texto de Samuel Johnson
'A Juster View of Johnson': George Birkbeck Hill, Johnson and Boswell's Victorian Editor
Dille reports on the Johnson Dictionary Project, based at the University of Birmingham, aiming for an online critical edition of Johnson's Dictionary by April 2005 to commemorate its 250th anniversary. The edition will feature searchable texts of the first and fourth editions and provide source information for all illustrative quotations. Project staff are engaged in source-finding, bibliographical conversion, web development, and data entry. A key feature is the identification of sources for the 120,000-plus quotations, with progress reported on major authors. The website will offer multiple search functionalities and supplementary materials, including Johnson’s prefatory matter, and an analysis of the hands involved in manuscript preparation.
Philosophical Travels in the Eighteenth Century: Some Considerations on Candide and Rasselas
Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society
Some Unitarian Perceptions of Dr. Johnson
The Pleasures of Speculation: Scholarly Methodology in Eighteenth-Century Literary Studies
Dix examines scholarly methods in eighteenth-century literary studies, contrasting the tendency toward sensational speculation with the ideal of scrupulous research. He uses the revived claim that Johnson was a Jacobite as a key illustration, detailing how proponents like Clark make unqualified assertions despite the evidence being scanty and equivocal, as demonstrated by Greene and Cannon. Dix then scrutinizes two speculative claims about Mark Akenside: an eighteenth-century hypothesis that he was ashamed of his origins, and a modern one by Rousseau that he was a homosexual lover of Dyson and a member of a "homosexual libertine" club. Dix argues the modern claims are based on inconclusive evidence, misreadings, and errors, serving as an example of abusing evidence to support sensational hypotheses, contrasting this with the relative plausibility of the earlier, non-sensational speculation.
Aaddresses Oliver Goldsmith's perception of literary dedications. Dixon notes that Goldsmith viewed dedicating books, such as The Traveller to his brother Henry or She Stoops to Conquer to "Samuel Johnson, L.L.D.," as sincere affirmations of friendship and public testimony of affection, not bids for financial support.
Domnarski explores Johnson's repressed ambition for a legal career and his substantive contributions to legal thought through opinions provided to James Boswell and Robert Chambers. Analyzing five specific legal opinions, Domnarski identifies a core of conservatism and moral didacticism. In cases involving "intromission" and "the Liberty of the Pulpit," Johnson argues for the necessary permanence of laws to restrain a corruptible human nature, asserting that "vague laws are no laws." Conversely, in disputes over estate succession and slavery, Johnson prioritizes natural rights, famously declaring that "no man is by nature the property of another." Domnarski distinguishes Johnson's approach from modern "legalese," noting his reliance on general principles and common sense rather than narrow statutes. The study portrays Johnson as a paternalistic moralist who views the law as a vital instrument for social subordination and the "moral discipline of the mind."
The Death of the Author and the Lives of the Poet: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 1994
The Law, the Page, and the Body of Women: Murder and Murderess in the Age of Johnson
Doody explores the representation of female crime in eighteenth-century print culture, focusing on the emergence of "murderesses" as "Heroines" in ephemeral journalism like The Ordinary of Newgate's Account and the Old Bailey Sessions Papers. This literature, appearing alongside Johnson's Idler essays, transformed crime reporting into a popular, readable genre, detailing "strong facts" of common felony murder. The author analyzes the portrayal of notorious figures like Catherine Hayes, Sarah Malcolm, and Mary Blandy, noting how the printed records gave women an undesirable public voice, and how the law enforced particular distinctions, such as burning women for petty treason.
Modern Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature
Structure and Absence in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Dowling examines the structural tension in Boswell's Life of Johnson between the idealized "revered sage" of the foreground and the "darker and more disturbing" figure of the background. He argues that this dual perspective creates a moral and existential depth where the reader penetrates the "exuberant" conversational scenes to glimpse a Johnson suffering from a "dismal malady of the spirit." The text treats the work as a study of "language and logos," where the "structure and absence" of the narrative mediate the understanding of the subject, asserting that the image of the moralist is a "logos" that provides a stay against the "gloom and despair" of Johnson's private reality.
On First Looking into Bate's Life of Johnson
Downing offers a poetic meditation on Johnson’s character and legacy, drawing on Bate’s biography and Boswell’s earlier accounts. Downing admits to an initial veneration of Johnson's "peerless prose" and "scintillant bons mots" before recognizing the "true, heroic measure" of a mind struggling against "saturnine declivities" and indolence. The poem details Johnson’s "fine solicitudes," including his care for his wife Tettie, his "domestic menagerie" of the homeless, and his adoption of a former slave in support of abolition. Downing characterizes Johnson as the "ur-Dr. J," whose "frazzled life" was lodged between "the rock of faith and the hard spot / of being merely human." Use of specific imagery—such as the "black, ill-mannered ox" of melancholy—illustrates the "poignantly futile ways" Johnson worked through his "Gordian knot" of human frailty. Downing concludes by praising Bate for faithfully "ambering" Johnson's memory without resorting to priggish hagiography.
Reprinted from Poetry Ireland Review (1997).
Drury analyzes Johnson’s "experimental method" and his engagement with "experimental moral philosophy." The article argues that Johnson’s Rambler essays brought "Newtonian rigor" to the essay form, adopting a "mixed science of experiments." Drury details Johnson’s interest in "chymistry" and "Newton’s optics," citing his 461 quotations from Newton’s Opticks in the Dictionary. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "distaste for system-building," which he shared with "Robert Boyle," preferring the "inductive method" of drawing conclusions from "mass of experimental particulars." Drury review’s Johnson’s "chemical laboratory" at Streatham Park and his "intense interest" in "natural history." The article argues that Johnson’s "mental detachment" allowed him to draw "sound general conclusions" from "direct experience." Drury concludes that Johnson’s "philosophical generalizations" were "grounded in experiment," viewing science as a "faithfull repository" for the "teachers of truth."
The Scottish Invention of English Literature
Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and the Institutions of English
Duncan contrasts the academic, secular modernization models of Smith with the commercial, individual marketplace systems established by Johnson. The article analyzes Johnson's construction of a national vernacular language regulated by a native classical canon through the Dictionary, the edition of Shakespeare, and the lives of the poets. Duncan challenges traditional linear accounts of English literary history by placing the mid-century Scottish academy at the true center of the technological formation of modern subjects as analytical readers. The work presents the biographical techniques of Boswell as direct applications of Smith's spectatorial logic and narrative rules of perspicuity, asserting that Johnson's eminence as the supreme instance of English literary character depends fundamentally on these Scottish rhetorical models.
This review assesses Eddy’s facsimile edition of the sale catalogues of Johnson, Piozzi, and Boswell (1825). While acknowledging the inclusion of the previously unreproduced 1825 Boswell catalogue, the reviewer critiques the volume for redundancy regarding the SJ and Piozzi catalogues, which were available in earlier reprints. The review highlights significant editorial deficiencies, including the lack of indexing, obscure identification of purchasers and prices, and the absence of running titles, ultimately limiting the volume's utility for tracking specific titles or provenance.
'Additional Copies Found in Cornell University Libraries': An Unprinted Appendix to J. D. Fleeman's Bibliography
A Preliminary Handlist of Books to Which Dr. Samuel Johnson Subscribed
McDermott calls this a welcome, scholarly addition to Johnsonian bibliography, supplementing earlier works by Fleeman and others. It adds seventeen titles over previous lists. The authors include doubtful ascriptions, acknowledging the difficulty of identifying a subscriber named "Samuel Johnson." McDermott disagrees with the authors' assumption that a subscription proves a book was on Johnson's shelves or part of his reading, noting that politeness or a desire to help an author often prompted subscriptions. The handlist helpfully provides much additional information like the form of Johnson's name, co-subscribers, and locations.
Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand
Rasselas and Hardy's In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'
Edgecombe argues that Hardy’s lyric "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" functions as a "basso continuo of ordinary experience" that derives its central concern from Johnson’s Rasselas. Edgecombe parallels Johnson’s observations on "necessary and inevitable evils" with Hardy’s focus on the "sublime commonplaces" of rural life. The note asserts that Hardy’s imagery of the "man harrowing clods" and "wonted revolutions" of the seasons provides a concrete portrait of Johnson’s earlier philosophical "husbandman."
Johnson and Detailed Representation: The Significance of the Classical Sources
Venturo praises Edinger's book as a fresh examination of the classical sources shaping Johnson's stylistic criticism, building on Edinger's previous work. The Foucauldian approach to recovering the "neoclassical" assumptions behind Johnson's preference for generality is commended. Edinger skillfully demonstrates how Longinus's sublime influenced Johnson's critical decorums (lexical, rhetorical, ontic), creating a distance from Baroque aesthetics. The penultimate chapter, linking Longinian principles to Johnson's style and criticism (religious poetry, biography, Shakespeare), is deemed brilliant. Venturo criticizes Edinger for slightly overstating Johnson's neoclassicism and for defending modern aesthetics as superior, but overall considers it a fine, illuminating contribution.
Edwards provides an enthusiastic review of John Rainer's one-man show at the Southside Courtyard Theatre, composed as a satirical dialogue between Boswell and Johnson. The reviewer, adopting a Johnsonian persona, praises Rainer for capturing the "sinuosities of my intellect" better than any performer since David Garrick. The narrative notes that the play accurately depicts Johnson's voice and physical peculiarities, while also exploring his emotional vulnerability regarding his "dead wife." Despite the absence of a stage Boswell, which the Johnson character laments, Edwards characterizes the production as a successful attempt to bring the author before a modern audience. The review concludes that the portrayal does "true justice" to Johnson’s character and intellect.
Brief extracts from Rambling Sam.
How the First Modern English Language Dictionary Was Created
Eleftheriou-Smith examines the production and legacy of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755). The text outlines the 1746 commission by London publishers, the eight-year compilation process involving six assistants, and the inclusion of over 40,000 entries. It highlights Johnson’s use of idiosyncratic and humorous definitions, specifically regarding terms like "oats," "excise," and "lexicographer." The account details Johnson’s editorial admission of error concerning equine anatomy and positions the work between seventeenth-century precursors and the later Oxford English Dictionary.
Privately printed for the Trustees of Dr. Johnson's House by Thomas Harmsworth
Biography and Friendship: Johnson's Life of Savage
Written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis. The Prince Regent (Hugh Laurie) wants to become the patron of Johnson (Robbie Coltrane) for his Dictionary. After Baldrick (Tony Robinson) accidentally burns the sole manuscript, Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) has to recreate the entire thing from scratch. Also includes appearances by a roguish group of poets, including Coleridge (Jim Sweeney), Shelley (Lee Cornes), and Byron (Steve Steen).
Johnson in a Western Civilization Course
Engar integrates Rasselas into a Western civilization survey to examine eighteenth-century thought, focusing on its critique of utopias and chain-of-being ideas. By comparing Johnson with Voltaire, Plato, and Machiavelli, the essay explores requisites to happiness and problems of power within the human spirit. Engar highlights Johnson's gender-democratic views on education while noting that he still assesses women according to their value to men. The study of Rasselas serves as a counterbalance to Rousseau's Romanticism, emphasizing that nothing is concluded in the flux of life.
Gold's edition of Johnson's translation of Lobo's A Voyage to Abyssinia reveals Johnson's mind transforming factual information into creative prose. Gold meticulously documents Johnson's crucial shifts, such as his astonishing inaccuracies in numbers and his transmutation of the Catholic Lobo's "hérétiques" to "people that adhered to the religion of their ancestors." The introduction analyzes political and theological contexts, noting Johnson's deep-seated religious antagonisms influenced the work.
Rogers reviews a collection of essays edited by James Engell, noting a wide range of intellectual concerns despite some disappointing features. He finds the opening section on Johnson less rewarding, suggesting that several scholars perform below their best. Rogers criticizes the strong influence of Walter Jackson Bate over the proceedings, which creates a sense of a gathering of acolytes. Specifically, he disputes John Riely's dismissal of sexual elements in the relationship between Johnson and Piozzi. Conversely, Rogers highlights Mary Hyde's absorbing essay on American collectors like R. B. Adam II and Chauncey Tinker as the volume's chief delight. He commends the contributions of Howard Weinbrot and Robert Halsband but finds Alex Page's analysis of Austen couched in blunt psychobabble.
On scholarly publishing, with Johnson and Boswell as examples.
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man Thief: Samuel Johnson and the Economics of Poverty
The Poet and Affairs of State in Johnson's Lives of the Poets
The Political Character of Samuel Johnson: The Lives of the Poets and a Further Report on The Vanity of Human Wishes
Poetry of Opposition and Revolution, Dryden to Wordsworth
This chapter investigates Johnson's early political decision to adopt an opposition stance in his first published poem, London (1738), arguing that he chose a "more dangerous course" than his circumstances required. Johnson, who had no formal political disadvantages, could have followed a moderate, pro-Hanoverian satirist like Young, but instead chose a direction closer to Pope's critical and overtly political opposition. The political import of London is clarified by analyzing its use of Jacobite innuendo and its energetic denunciation of a "decadent" Britain. This tendency is further confirmed by Johnson's 1739 prose satires, Marmor Norfolciense and A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, which continue his crypto-Jacobite critique of the Hanoverian regime. Hawkins and Seward both corroborate Johnson's early Jacobite orientation, suggesting his youthful political position was far from the compliant Whiggism of the established order.
On Teaching Johnson and Lockean Empiricism
Erwin explores how Johnson translates the philosophic thought of his age into exemplary scenes of human conduct by situating his works within the context of Lockean empiricism. The essay defines empiricism as the theory that knowledge derives from sense-given data, noting that Johnson shares Locke's emphasis on looking carefully at something as the best way of knowing it. Erwin analyzes the lexical debt to Locke in Johnson's Dictionary and identifies the Life of Savage as an empirical parable that illustrates Lockean concepts of due consideration and the state of liberty. Johnson tests and anatomizes Locke's individualist values, eventually siding with the sturdy common sense of the Lockean way of ideas.
Textual Vision: Augustan Design and the Invention of Eighteenth-Century British Culture
Promise and Performance in Johnson's Life of Savage
Erwin analyzes Johnson's Life of Savage as a professional defense of authorship that challenges Pope's satiric methods. The text argues that Johnson uses a "Lockean discourse of individualized ethics" to rescue Savage's reputation from the "taint" of his role in Pope's Dunciad. Erwin details how Johnson employs a "synthesizing metaphor of the bargain" to frame Savage's life through the biblical parable of the pounds, emphasizing the duty of "empirical observation" and moral industry. By reordering the chronology of Savage's career, Johnson creates a "golden part" that highlights the missed "state of liberty" and moral opportunity. Erwin posits that the biography marks a "synchronic shift" from the age of Pope to an age defined by the "vocation of writing" and professional solidarity among authors. The article also identifies Pope as the anonymous "friend" whose "atrocious" deathbed letter allegedly precipitated Savage's final decline.
Samuel Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine
Samuel Johnson's 'General Nature': Tradition and Transition in Eighteenth-Century Discourse
McDermott critiques Evans for oversimplifying the contested eighteenth-century concept of nature, often assuming a direct line of influence from classical and medieval thought. McDermott finds Evans neglects the huge shift caused by inductive empiricism, leading to sweeping, scarcely useful generalizations about Johnson's ideas.
Evans's book achieves a miracle, providing a terse, accurate history of the over-studied concept of "nature" from the Greeks to the 18th century. It explains how Johnson inherited a teleological understanding, which makes his fragmented critical statements coherent. The study sets a high standard for understanding the philosophic bases of Johnson's thought.
Wilcox's mixed review outlines Scott D. Evans's study of Samuel Johnson's belief in an objectively real, providential nature that grounds moral obligation. Wilcox notes that Evans divides the work into two halves, with the first three chapters sketching the intellectual history of general nature from classical thought through Augustine, Aquinas, and William of Ockham. The remaining four chapters place Johnson among metaphysical realists and trace the concept across the moral essays, literary criticism, and responses to David Hume. Wilcox praises the solid historical context but criticizes Evans for creating the impression that Johnson deduces positions from a metaphysical framework. Wilcox argues that Johnson's actual approach is inductive, flexible, and inconsistent. Wilcox asserts that Johnson's commitments derive from theology and ethics rather than abstract metaphysics, noting that Johnson's disdain for virtuosi stems from an awareness of human suffering rather than views on nature. Wilcox concludes that the study provides a competent foundation but fails to capture the elusive observer of humanity.
Publisher's blurb: "A delightful and essential compendium of words, new, old or abused through Brexit."
Wiliam Wordsworh e Samuel Johnson: Rastros da arte moderna
Através da comparação entre o Preface to a Shakespeare, do crítico inglês Samuel Johnson e as concepções balizadoras da modernidade na poesia promovidas pelo poeta Wiliam Wordsworth, no célebre prefácio ao Lyrical Ballads, se entrevê, no raiar do século XIX, uma curiosa coincidência: um e outro, embora por modos distintos, depõem o ruir das concepções clássicas e neoclássicas da feitura da arte poética. Através do instrumental teórico de M. H. Abrams, em O espelho e a lâmpada: teoria romântica e tradição crítica, este artigo pretende discutir as concepções de arte, literatura e poesia para Johnson e Wordsworth. O enfoque do presente texto, portanto, é a modificação de consciência que se deu entre o fim do século XVIII e início do XIX, na tentativa de compreensão da sensibilidade poética romântica, autônoma e avessa a quaisquer regras que não a do próprio sentimento do poeta, que irrompe sob as ruínas das práticas letradas seiscentistas e setecentistas.
This letter to the editor disputes the common assumption that Johnson left Oxford solely "because of poverty," suggesting instead that he may have been "conscious of his intellectual superiority to his tutors." Farquhar speculates that this realization—rather than "stark insensibility"—led Johnson to disregard tutorials and indulge in pastimes like "sliding in Christ Church Meadows." Drawing on the low reputation of eighteenth-century Oxford, Farquhar cites Gibbon's negative accounts of "negligent dons and deep potations" to argue that Johnson's decision stemmed from an "acute consciousness of his own merits and the demerits of others."
Selected Essays from the International Conference on Word and World of Discovery
Department of English, West Georgia College
The Vanity of Human Wishes: Samuel Johnson and the Discovery of the Poetic Self
Transference Attended the Birth of the Modern Biography
Feder argues that transference, specifically Johnson's unconscious sense of maternal neglect and abandonment, was the prime motivating factor in his choice of Richard Savage as a biographical subject, leading to the "Birth of Modern Biography." Johnson's profound bias, or "preposterous partiality," for Savage stems from a shared "malignant mother" mental representation, as Savage continually blamed his suffering on his mother, Lady Anne. Johnson, an uncritical biographer regarding Savage's claims, used the Life to vent his own unexpressed resentment toward his mother, Sarah, by displacing it onto Lady Anne. Johnson's difficult birth, scrofula, ear infection, near-blindness, and the traumatic medical treatments, including the lanced arm and thread kept open until age six, created an encapsulated unconscious imago of a mother who abdicated basic protection. Johnson's intense writing pace (48 octavo pages in one night) reflects the creative impulse spurred by this transference. Johnson's later rage at Thrale's remarriage, accusing her of "Wickedness," shows the recurrence of this unresolved maternal betrayal complex. His final, self-administered surgery for dropsy re-enacted his traumatic childhood wounds, bringing the "mortification of the flesh" full circle.
Interview with John Sessions on BBC2’s Tour of the Western Isles.
Samuel Johnson's Views on Scottish Gaelic Culture
Ferguson disputes Johnson's "peremptory dismissal" of Scottish Highland culture and its continuing influence on modern historiography. In his journey through the Western Islands, Johnson concluded that Gaelic Scotland was "destitute of learning" and devoid of culture, a view Ferguson argues echoes in the work of Trevor-Roper. Johnson maintained that "Earse" was an uncultivated tongue that "merely floated in the breath of the people." Ferguson asserts that Johnson used these views to "dispose of" James Macpherson and the authenticity of the Ossian poems. The article highlights Donald McNicol's contemporary rebuttal, which Johnson and Boswell ignored as "ignorant chauvinist ranting." Ferguson argues that Johnson's "Scottophobia" and "inveterate aversion to oral tradition" blinded him to the actual richness of Gaelic culture. This article concludes that Johnson's "Colossus of Literature" status should no longer protect his "wrongheaded" views from critical scholarly revision.
Reconstructing the Canon: Samuel Johnson and the 'Universal Visiter'
Publisher's blurb: "That Samuel Johnson contributed several essays to the Universal Visiter, an eighteenth-century periodical edited by Christopher Smart and Richard Rolt, has long been known. What is not known is just what pieces he did write. Because the double asterisk was thought to have been Johnson's signature, all six Visiter essays so marked have, at various times, been attributed to him. Although only three of the Visiter essays are generally accepted as Johnson's, there has been no conclusive evidence that Johnson was not the author of the three conjectural pieces. This study presents evidence that Richard Rolt, not Samuel Johnson, wrote two of the three disputed pieces."
The handwritten note of the post-mortem examination of Dr. Samuel Johnson resides in the library of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Headed "asthma" it suggests that he had only one functioning kidney, probably had hypertension, left ventricular hypertrophy and congestive heart failure. This article describes an imaginary presentation by Dr James Wilson, who did the autopsy, and alludes to Johnson's life, and medical history, including impaired vision and hearing, scrofula, abnormal limb movement, gout, abdominal cramps, melancholia and episodes of "asthma" which were, more than likely to have been episodes of left ventricular failure. Johnson's personality as a demanding patient who took things into his own hands are described based upon reports from his physicians.
Reading Readings: Essays on Shakespeare Editing in the Eighteenth Century
Emballing, Empalling, Embalming, and Embailing Anne Bullen: The Annotation of Shakespeare's Bawdy Tongue after Samuel Johnson
Brack reviews Fleeman’s Preliminary Handlist, highlighting the difficulty of reconstructing Johnson’s library from the vague original sale catalogue. Brack praises Fleeman’s identification of books containing Johnson’s marginalia and inscriptions, noting these associations offer insights into Johnson’s reading habits. While noting the list remains “preliminary” with some unlocated items, Brack characterizes the work as an essential, scholarly research tool for tracking Johnson’s literary engagement and intellectual sources.
Grundy reviews Fleeman’s handlist, which tracks the provenance of Johnson’s library beyond the 1785 sale. She notes Johnson's role as both recipient and "affectionate" giver of books, including volumes inscribed for Queeney Thrale and Frank Barber. Grundy highlights the "lore and legend" of items like the Bible used to "knock down Osborne." The review praises Fleeman's "solid candour of scholarship" in identifying unlocated trophies.
The Genesis of Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's Shakespeare (1765): The Progress of a Subscription
Michael Johnson, the 'Lichfield Librarian'
Michael Johnson had been elected sheriff of Lichfield in July 1709. The period from 1709 to 1715 seems to have been the height of his prosperity and reputation. This survey of his trade practices serves to show the circumstances in which his son, Samuel Johnson, absorbed the views and opinions of the members of the book trade. The commercial world in which authors were at a disadvantage did not lead Johnson to take an easy view of the conditions of authorship.
DeMaria considers Fleeman's monumental bibliography a triumphant vindication, calling it an amazingly thorough, factual, impartial record of Johnson's publications and his life as a writer, continuing for two centuries after his death. The chronological structure successfully charts Johnson's life, showing his waxing and waning conspicuousness in print. DeMaria notes Fleeman's conservatism regarding the canon, but he praises his meticulous descriptive work, spectacular indexes, and individual style evident in the notes. The book is judged to make Johnson more intelligible and maps the material imprint of his works, becoming an essential infrastructure for his ongoing community of readers.
Smallwood reviews Hart’s study on the "commercialized concept of cultural exchange" surrounding Johnson and Boswell. He argues that Hart successfully historicizes the "heritage Johnson" created by Boswell’s biography, which transformed the writer into a "public property." Smallwood notes that Hart subverts old disputes between factions by contemplating Johnson through a "metaphor of economy and monumentality." However, Smallwood disputes the "voguish" post-disciplinary model that dissolves "literary into cultural value." He finds that the study lacks "intensive contemplation of single works of art" in favor of broad culturalization. Smallwood credits Hart for imaginative suggestions regarding Johnson’s political sympathies and his resistance to Boswell’s views on slavery.
Lynch’s enthusiastic review describes Fleeman’s two-volume bibliography as an indispensable catalog that definitively supersedes previous scholarship by Courtney, Smith, Chapman, and Hazen. Lynch notes the work provides thorough descriptions and collations of Johnson’s early writings alongside informed discussions of the canon. The review highlights the massive increase in scope and detail, expanding from several hundred pages in earlier studies to nearly 2,000. Lynch credits James D. McLaverty and Christine Ferdinand for preserving high standards of accuracy and thoroughness in the posthumous publication.
Reddick praises the bibliography as staggering and ranks it with the greatest Johnsonian scholarly achievements. He says the volumes will materially affect the study of the book trade, publishing history, and Samuel Johnson himself. Fleeman's exacting standards resulted in a thorough, precise description of editions and a record of more copies than anyone had ever examined. Reddick highly commends McLaverty's heroic and careful work in completing the editing and proofreading after Fleeman's death.
Fleeman’s comprehensive bibliography revises the 1915 Courtney-Nichol Smith edition, tracing Johnson’s works chronologically from London to Rasselas. The volume outlines Johnson’s career history and publication lineages, maintaining Fleeman’s original research without substantial revision or updating by subsequent editors.
Rogers evaluates Fleeman’s posthumous two-volume bibliography, completed by McLaverty and Ferdinand, as a monumental "annals of a literary career." The work provides chronological quasi-facsimile descriptions, collations, and extensive press-figure data for Johnson’s entire corpus, including periodical contributions. While noting the complexity of Fleeman’s notation system and minor errors in contents transcriptions, Rogers praises the bibliography’s exhaustive examination of multiple copies and its inclusion of printing and publishing history, establishing it as the essential reference for the Johnsonian canon.
Vander Meulen assesses Fleeman’s two-volume bibliography, identifying it as perhaps the most significant work of Johnsonian scholarship. The essay provides a technical critique of Fleeman’s descriptive methods, including his use of collation formulas, signature markings, and press figures. Vander Meulen notes Fleeman’s innovative record of page-number sequences and units of text closures, such as "FINIS." While praising the bibliography’s assiduous reporting of physical features—type, paper, and ornaments—Vander Meulen points out instances where the lack of clear correlation between signatures and pagination creates perplexity for users. The review also tracks Fleeman’s identification of Cave’s printer ornaments and datable woodblock damage, arguing these details are invaluable for literary and textual study. Vander Meulen confirms that Fleeman’s work serves as a foundational analysis of the eighteenth-century printing process, despite occasional imprecisions. The essay emphasizes how Fleeman’s lifetime labor enables a historical account of Johnson’s works as material objects.
Mary Shelley and Samuel Johnson: Social and Ethical Implications of the Individual's Pursuit of Perfection
An Examination of the Nile River in Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
Ultimate Reality and Ethical Meaning: Theological Utilitarianism in Eighteenth-Century England
A Johnsonian Heritage: The Hussey Copy of Boswell's Life
Western Civilization and Its Mountain Frontiers
'Down with Her, Burney!': Johnson, Burney, and the Politics of Literary Celebrity
Francus explores the dynamic between Johnson and Frances Burney following the sensational success of Burney's novel Evelina in 1778, contextualizing it within the era's evolving culture of literary celebrity. Johnson's encouragement for Burney to engage in literary combat contrasts sharply with Burney's deep discomfort with public attention and authorial contention. Their differing attitudes illuminate generational shifts in the perception of authorship, the nature of cultural capital, the anxieties surrounding public exposure (particularly for women writers), and the complex interplay between literary merit, celebrity, and professional identity at the end of the eighteenth century.
Frazier composes a satirical vignette that parodies the biographical style and rhetorical mannerisms of Boswell, displacing the eighteenth-century biographer into 1980s Miami to chronicler the actor Don Johnson. The narrator adopts a pompous, sycophantic persona, recounting a brief intimacy with his subject, whom he praises for possessing a spirited intellect checked by society's custom. The narrative describes a chance meeting at a restaurant where the actor rebuffs the eager biographer as a wing nut. Frazier incorporates pastiches of biographical conventions, including a transcribed journal entry, defense of his subject's melancholia, and the text of an unsigned hymn supposedly written by the actor that features contemporary pop-culture references and street slang. The piece satirizes celebrity culture and biographical obsession by grafting eighteenth-century high-style diction onto the ephemeral television landscape of Miami Vice.
CGV entry 9:157. A short parody of Boswell's biographical technique about television actor Don Johnson.
The Problem of Divine Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Immaterialism: A Comparative Study of the Philosophies of George Berkeley, Samuel Johnson, Arthur Collier, and Jonathan Edwards
Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy
London as Science Fiction: A Note on Some Images from Johnson, Blake, Wordsworth, Dickens, and Orwell
Freeman identifies an anonymous obituary in the January 1782 Gentleman's Magazine as the work of Johnson, recording the death of his friend, the surgeon Robert Levet, at the house of his "friendly patron" Johnson. Freeman investigates Johnson's famous 1755 definition of "Patron" as a "wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery," tracing the animus to Chesterfield's failure to help with the Dictionary. Freeman argues the 1782 notice, appearing after Chesterfield's death, represents a rehabilitation of the term and its function. The article traces the shift from Johnson's early animus to his self-identification as a patron to the eccentric surgeon, linking the obituary's phrasing to Johnson's subsequent poem on Levet's death and noting shared characterizations of Levet’s skill and frame.
Monuments and Communal Memory: Johnson and Public Sculpture
Johnson in the British Literature Survey Course
Frontain uses The Vanity of Human Wishes as a touchstone for comparing premodern and modern worldviews in a British literature survey course. He contrasts Johnson's collective voice of abstractions and heroic couplets with Wordsworth's I-centered language and free verse to dramatize the historical process of the foregrounding of the individual. While Johnson advocates for resignation to poverty, toil and death through a determined act of the will, Wordsworth finds a gladness in a beneficent nature. The chapter positions Johnson as the last great voice of neoclassicism, whose acceptance of what is divinely ordained remains a relevant corrective for contemporary students.
'Very Little Intellectual in the Course': Exploration and Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century
Bulletin of Central Research Institute of Fukuoka University
James Boswell Reconstructed from Various Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
Johnson's 'Roscommon' in the 18th Century
Clingham analyzes Roscommon's "academy," arguing that Dryden's translation project achieved the academy's cultural and ideological goals. Chetwood's memoir emphasizes translation as the means to "refine" English without "abating its force." Johnson later praised Dryden's poetic mastery, exemplified by his translation work, as fixing the limits of poetic liberty. Dryden's alliance with Jacob Tonson leveraged print culture, transforming Roscommon's aristocratic ideals into a national literary project.
Fukuoka University Review of Literature & Humanities
An Essay concerning How Dr. Johnson's Life of Collins Exerted Influence in the 18th Century
Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature
How Samuel Johnson Has Been Described in Successive Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
A List of Johnson and Boswell Studies in Japan: Those Published in Book Form from 1871 to 1997
Translations in the Meiji Era 13: Eighteenth Century English Literature
Invitation to 'Johnson Studies in Japan'
A Supplementary List of Johnson and Boswell Studies in Japan: Those Published in Book Form from 1946 to 2000
A List of Textual Differences between the First and the Second Editions of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Sir John Hawkins
The Johnson Centre of the Birmingham University
Why Chalmers?: A Note on a Life of Hawkins
Fujii challenges the scholarly reliance on Alexander Chalmers's 1812–17 General Biographical Dictionary as the primary source for the biography of Hawkins. He demonstrates that the text of Hawkins’s life in Chalmers’s edition is nearly identical to the version appearing in the 1798–1810 edition edited by Nares and Beloe. Fujii argues that Stephen and subsequent Johnsonian scholars, including Fleeman and Davis, overlooked earlier authenticated texts containing information communicated by Hawkins's family, including a 1801 Encyclopædia Britannica supplement.
Festschrift for Professor Shun'ichi Takayanagi
Historical Review of the Studies on Sir John Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature 2
On the Addition of Two Pages Sir John Hawkins Made for the Second Edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
A List of Johnson and Boswell Studies in Japan (3): Those Published in University Bulletins and Others from 1878 to 2002
The Drudgery of Wit — Samuel Johnson as an Engineer of Language
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid: Dr. Johnson's Brothel Antics Leave Lyn Gardner Unconvinced [review of 'Johnson in Love,' by Charles Thomas]
Gardner's scathing review of Charles Thomas’s play, Johnson in Love, disputes the merit of its speculative plot involving Johnson’s activities in a 1738 "bawdy house." While acknowledging Boswell’s suggestion that a young, impoverished Johnson may have "strayed from the path of virtue" while carousing with Savage, Gardner finds the play's execution "sentimental, silly," and "clunky." The review criticizes the "absurdly improbable" plot where Johnson attempts to rescue a resident named Rosie, only to be exposed as a hypocrite. Gardner concludes the drama fails to maintain interest once the "celebrity" of its protagonist is stripped away, characterizing the production as mediocre and unsuitable for its London venue.
'A Violent Passion': Pugnacity and the Prizefighting Phenomenon in Johnson's England — A Montage
'A Violent Passion': Pugnacity and the Prizefighting Phenomenon in Johnson's England
Rough Music: Guerrilla Theatre and Public Protest in Johnson's London
Doctor Feelgood: Stricken by 'Vile Melancholy,' the 18th-Century Critic and Raconteur Samuel Johnson Pioneered a Modern Therapy
Geirland examines the life and writings of Johnson, focusing on his struggles with melancholy and what neurologists now consider Tourette's Syndrome. Johnson studied medicine, believing the habitual practice of a disciplined mind and an objective viewpoint would help contextualize everyday setbacks. The author sees Johnson's approach, particularly his use of cool reasoning in The Rambler, as an early form of cognitive-behavioral therapy, a strategy he often employed with Boswell to manage anxiety and catastrophic thinking.
Domestic Counterplots: Representations of Marriage in Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Johnson's extensive anti-marriage critique, often omitted from anthologies, serves as a seminal and unacknowledged part of the eighteenth-century counter-traditional marriage corpus. The traditional conflation of Johnson's identity with his biographer, Boswell, bolsters the false notion of Johnsonian misogyny, leading critics to ignore his prolific writings on behalf of women. Johnson's critical letters on Hester Thrale Piozzi's marriage, often framed by trivializing her as a superficial hostess, are among the few domestic materials typically included in Johnson–Boswell anthologies.
See particularly chapter 2, “Conjugal Vexations’: Samuel Johnson’s Marriage Critique.”
Geller analyzes Johnson’s "clubbability" and his creation of "household-families" as a remedy for solitude. The article explores the founding of the Ivy Lane, Literary, and Essex Head clubs, where Johnson sought "mental intercourse" and "victory as for truth." Geller details the "tolerable concord" and frequent quarrels of Johnson’s Bolt Court household, which included Anna Williams, Robert Levet, and Francis Barber. The narrative highlights Johnson’s belief that "company was the best remedy" for his "constitutional depression." Geller argues that Johnson’s sociability was "a kind of public dinner" where he could "escape from himself." The article review’s Johnson’s "all-night celebration" for Charlotte Lennox and his "active friendship" with figures like Edmund Hector. Geller concludes that Johnson’s "social jocularity" was essential to his "moral writer" persona, maintaining a "balance of the mind" through "shared realities" of conversation.
Burke, Campbell, Johnson, and Priestley: A Rhetorical Analysis of Four British Pamphlets of the American Revolution
Gellis conducts a neo-Aristotelian rhetorical analysis of four political pamphlets written during the American crisis, synthesizing the theories of Aristotle and Kenneth Burke. The study focuses on Edmund Burke's A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, George Campbell's The Nature, Extent, and Importance of the Duty of Allegiance, Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny, and Joseph Priestley's An Address to Protestant Dissenters. Gellis argues that Johnson, despite his reputation as a "master of argument," used an "antagonistic approach" in his pamphlet to aggressively refute American claims and establish Parliament’s right to tax. Johnson used a "lexicographical bent" to define taxation as a revenue for the public good, maintaining that "all government is ultimately and essentially absolute." Gellis demonstrates how Johnson’s reconstruction of the historical occasion—characterizing the rebellion as originating in "interested faction" or "honest stupidity"—governed his choice of rational and ethical appeals. The dissertation also notes Boswell's role in recording Johnson's private "disgust" with the North ministry’s revisions to his bold language. This study highlights the shift from viewed Johnson as a "master of prose" to analyzing his specific rhetorical practices as a situated political rhetor.
The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742
Jacobites and Patriots: Johnson and Savage
Gerrard explores Johnson’s early political career, focusing on his "unusual oscillation" between Whig Patriot idealism and Jacobite resentment during the late 1730s. The argument highlights the influence of Savage, whose "obsession with martyrdom and exile" mirrored Johnson’s own "stubborn Jacobite resentment" in works like London (1738) and Marmor Norfolciense (1739). Gerrard disputes Greene's depiction of a liberal, Whiggish Johnson, citing historical and textual evidence of "Jacobite principles" and "anti-Hanoverian" rhetoric. The analysis identifies a "vast difference" between standard Whig Patriot verse and Johnson’s "veiled threats" against George II. Gerrard notes that Johnson used later works like the Life of Savage and Lives of the Poets to "exorcize his former ideals" by adopting an "ironic detachment" toward the Patriot campaign. The study concludes that Johnson’s early "acrimonious" attacks on the Walpole administration were rooted in a complex, shifting allegiance that used "very different kinds of political language" ranging from radical Patriotism to seditious Jacobitism.
Northern Exposures: English Literary Tours of Scotland, 1720–1820
Glendening traces the evolution of travel writing and cultural identity through five English writers who toured Scotland, centering on Defoe, Johnson, the Wordsworths, and Keats. The study identifies a "triangle" of interrelated cultural forces—domestic tourism, changing representations of Scotland, and romanticism—that inform these texts. Glendening argues that Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland functions as a "scientifically accurate and comprehensive treatment" while acknowledging social decay. Johnson used his journey to investigate the remnants of Highland culture, contrasting the "uniformity of barrenness" in the landscape with the "civility" of its inhabitants. Despite his famous anti-Scottish wit, Johnson’s text reveals deep sympathy for the "impoverished lives" of the Highlanders and a conservationist urge to record vanishing traditions. Boswell, acting as a "solicitous" companion, engineered the tour to challenge Johnson's prejudices, though Johnson remained committed to "empirical judgment." Hester Thrale Piozzi appears in the Work's context as Johnson's "emotional mainstay," to whom he initially shared his Scottish experiences through letters that eventually formed the basis of his published narrative. The work concludes that these literary tours represent "self-fashioning" attempts to bolster personal identity against a backdrop of historical and cultural displacement.
'Trumpet' in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755
'It Matters Not How a Man Dies, but How He Lives': Samuel Johnson and the Rhetoric of Consolation
Literate Conversation, Scholarship, and 'Clubbability': High Spots and Low among Johnsonians of the Midwest
Sale of Johnsonian Books and Manuscripts
Goldberg reviews two significant sales in March 2004: "The Library of Professor Gwin J. Kolb" (a bookseller's catalog) and "The Halsted B. Vander Poel Collection of English Literature" (a Christie's auction). Goldberg describes Kolb as a "scholar" collector, noting his 400-edition *Rasselas* collection went to the University of Chicago. Goldberg critiques the Kolb catalog's pricing and "selective" collation. The Vander Poel auction featured 37 eighteenth-century lots. Highlights included a presentation *Reflections* (Burke), the Piozzi-inscribed *Prince of Abissinia* (Lot 61), and 20 Piozzi letters (Lot 72). Harvard (Quaritch) purchased the Piozzi items.
Collector's Corner: Boswell to His Brother
Goldberg discusses an unpublished letter from Boswell to his brother David in Spain (November 1776), now residing in his private collection. Goldberg notes the letter's length (over 2000 words) and its reiteration of Boswell's rationale for journal keeping: "I sometimes think one should not live more than he can record." Boswell writes of his son's birth, his father's anger over his London trip, his own struggles with vivacity, and his dread of becoming Head of the Family. He describes seeing his brother John "walking in his sleep," and his shock at David Hume's persisting in infidelity before his death. A unique attribute is Boswell's use of musical notation to provide the melody of the song "Apples and Oranges." Goldberg plans to sell his collection and move to collecting poets around Auden.
Medicine & Numismatics: Samuel Johnson and the Golden Angel
Summertime and a Chance to Visit One of the World's Great Men of Letters
On quotations of Johnson in the new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Newhailes House, praised by Johnson as “the most learned drawing-room in Europe,” threatened with destruction.
Man of Fetters: Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale
The Johnson remembered is the personality Boswell recorded, noting Johnson's conversational wit and compulsive tics. While acknowledging the value of recent biographies in exploring Johnson's struggles with mental illness and his complex relationship with Hester Thrale, Gopnik focuses on the latter, suggesting their intimacy included a masochistic element that she later confirmed. Johnson's life was a struggle, marked by his early years as an impoverished journalist and his need for social life as an "escape from myself." He achieved fame with his Dictionary and later Lives of the Poets. His final struggle was losing Thrale, who chose a "sunnily sensual" life with Piozzi, a flight that Gopnik suggests led to Johnson's final depression and death, concluding the faithful student of Augustanism became the first Romantic refugee.
Was Johnson a Thief?: Plagiarism in the Account of the Life of Richard Savage
Home of the Athenian Blockheads: Guidebook Glimpses of Johnson's Oxford
Johnson's Use of Some African Myths in Rasselas
Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made
Green situates Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language within the context of European institutional models like the Académie Française and the Accademia della Crusca. While British intellectuals like Swift and Dryden lobbied for a formal Academy to "fix" the English tongue, Green argues that Johnson’s solo effort—supported by booksellers rather than royal patronage—superseded these institutional dreams. The text examines Johnson’s methods, including his reliance on six amanuenses and his revolutionary, though subjective, use of 116,000 illustrative quotations. Green highlights Johnson's intellectual shift from a desire to "embalm" the language to an admission of its "sublunary" mutability in the Preface. Furthermore, the text explores the Dictionary’s role as a vehicle for Johnson's High Church, Tory morality and his exclusion of "naughty" or "low" words. Green characterizes the work as a "necropolis" of the language—a final, authoritative defense of the past that paved the way for the more scientific, descriptive philology of the nineteenth century.
Samuel Johnson's The Life of Richard Savage
Greene examines Johnson as a pioneer of psychological biography, focusing on the 1744 account of Savage. Greene identifies the core of Johnsonian theory in Rambler No. 60, which advocates for reader empathy through the depiction of private, domestic details rather than public heroism. While Johnson accepts Savage's claims of noble birth and maternal persecution by Brett without verification, Greene argues this partiality stems from Johnson's own youthful frustrations and shared experiences of poverty. The narrative functions as a "resounding manifesto" for life-writing that prioritizes internal motivation over external facts. Greene contrasts Johnson's anecdotal, charismatic portrayal of Savage with the meticulous research of modern scholars like Tracy. Johnson uses the Life to purge personal indignation and challenge the moral judgments of those who have "slumbered away their time on the down of plenty."
CGV entry 13:94.
Mezciems provides an approving review of the Oxford Authors edition of Johnson, edited by Greene, calling it a "best buy" compared to rivals and representative of the author's work. The volume, which serves as a well-produced and superior introduction for students, includes Rasselas, a substantial selection of periodical essays, and a compensating sampling of the Dictionary in facsimile. Mezciems praises the arrangement of Johnson's writings into conventional groups—poetry, early prose, and selections from the Lives of the Poets—and notes the edition modernizes punctuation and spelling while remaining conservative in editorial collations. Unlike the companion Swift volume, this selection omits a biographical dictionary but includes a substantial introductory essay, generous notes, and a short list of archaic words. While the volume is a "best buy," Mezciems notes that Johnson's poems are under-represented.
This collection of various essays, timed for the bicentennial of Johnson's death, covers the diversity of his work, his views on the novel, his politics, his humanism and erudition, and his role as an essayist, moralist, and author of maxims. The preface states that the book is intended to be revisionary, highlighting aspects of his writing that are less recognized and possess strong contemporary interest. The most valuable essays are Kinkead-Weekes's "Johnson on 'The Rise of the Novel'," Erskine-Hill's "The Political Character of Samuel Johnson," and Woodruff's "Rasselas and the Traditions of 'Menippean Satire.'"
CGV entry 2:44. Review by Albert Pailler of the book edited by Donald Greene.
Greene challenges the 'delusion' that modern editors and readers should equate heavy printer-imposed punctuation with Johnson's authorial intent. Responding to a critic of his Oxford Authors anthology, Greene proves that the semicolons in Johnson’s letter to Chesterfield were 'the brain wave of the printers' of Boswell’s Life rather than Johnson's original choice. He uses evidence from extant manuscripts to show that Johnson typically favored light punctuation. Greene further disputes Fredson Bowers’s categorization of 'Johnsonian periods,' arguing that if eighteenth-century house styles were stripped away, Johnson’s prose might appear as staccato as Macaulay’s. He concludes that sentence length is an inadequate unit for statistical prose analysis and calls for studies based on independent clauses to reveal the true evolution of Johnson's style.
On the punctuation of the letter to Chesterfield.
Lurcock characterizes the new material as largely polemical and repetitive, focusing on Greene’s long-standing grievances against Boswellian interpretations of Johnson’s politics. While acknowledging the original work as a classic that shaped a generation of scholarship, Lurcock finds the introduction’s aggressive tone and obsession with "antediluvian" views of Johnson to be ephemeral and ultimately unsatisfactory.
The Logia of Samuel Johnson and the Quest for the Historical Johnson
Greene's letter to the editor addresses Woudhuysen's note on Johnson's books and clarifies the use of the title "Dr." for Johnson. Greene notes that while Oxford University conferred an honorary doctoral degree upon Johnson in 1775—one of many gifts for "political hangers-on" during an era of "proliferation of doctorates"—Johnson, like other sensible and notable writers such as Hardy and Eliot, declined to use the "honorific" handle himself. Johnson disliked the title and even scolded Boswell for "inflicting it on him." The letter explains that Boswell "triumphed in the end" by posthumously promoting all instances of "Mister" to "Doctor" in the manuscript of Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, a change Johnson had not approved.
Greene's letter to the editor responds to a reviewer's attribution of the description of opera as "an Exotick and Irrational Entertainment" to Johnson, challenging Mellers to disclose the source for this apocryphal saying. Greene argues this persistent attribution stems from a "discredited" and "old Macaulayan myth" of the author as an "insular John Bull" who was "distrustful of the foreign." This characterization is dismissed as "long discredited by scholarship" yet still used by those "unfamiliar with his vast oeuvre." Greene expresses interest in tracking down the origins of many such "sayings" ascribed to Johnson.
Greene's long, slashing denunciation of Jonathan Clark's work disputes the claim that Johnson held heartfelt Toryism or Jacobite sympathies. Greene defends his own Namierite empiricism, arguing that the job of the historian is to examine concrete political behavior rather than speculate on metaphysical abstractions. He challenges the assertion that a polarized two-party system existed in the mid-eighteenth century and uses Helen Louise McGuffie's research to show that contemporary Jacobite labels were merely unsuccessful attempts by partisans like John Wilkes to embarrass the administration. Greene further argues that Clark produces no evidence that the author ever refused a loyalty oath or that his departure from Oxford related to nonjuring principles. He concludes that Clark's attempt to unhomogenize the author fails to acknowledge his status as a moderate, realist, and well-informed observer of political complexities.
A reply to J. C. D. Clark. “A longer discussion by Donald Greene will shortly appear in Volume Seven of The Age of Johnson: A scholarly annual.”
Greene's letter to the editor disputes Clark's interpretation of Johnson's politics, defending his own work by reiterating that his ideas came from close study of Johnson's writings and his "empiricism." Challenging the "neo-Jacobite" speculations of Petrie, Greene maintains there is "no shred of evidence" Johnson ever refused a loyalty oath and calls the claim "pure speculation," arguing Clark's reliance on claims of Jacobitism in the press is based on a small, partisan sample. Greene argues no valid evidence supports the theory of Johnson's participation in the 1745 uprising, noting surviving 1746 correspondence focuses on the Dictionary. The letter emphasizes Johnson's charitable nature regarding Stewart and notes neither Johnson nor Boswell recorded any impulse to visit the Culloden battlefield during their Scottish travels. Greene concludes by criticizing the application of a "Whig interpretation" to Johnson's thought and asserts Johnson would have recoiled from the use of religion in power politics.
Enlightened Groves: Essays in Honour of Professor Zenzo Suzuki
Samuel Johnson's 'Body Language': A New Perspective
The letter challenges D. J. Enright's implied slur that Johnson was cynical toward the disadvantaged, citing Johnson's quote about "women preachers and dancing dogs." Greene argues Johnson was a notable exemplar of charity toward the disadvantaged, providing homes and support for people like the indigent blind Anna Williams and the unqualified physician Robert Levett. He also virtually adopted the black boy Frank Barber and spoke highly of a school for the deaf and dumb, underscoring Johnson's rejection of "lettered Arrogance."
Lee reviews Abbott’s curated selection of Greene’s essays, framing Greene as a definitive figure in post-WWII Johnson studies who sought to dismantle long-standing myths surrounding Johnson's reputation. The volume is organized into three sections covering the eighteenth century generally, Johnsonian specifics, and Greene's diverse literary interests. Lee focuses on Greene’s 1991 essay regarding Johnson’s "vile melancholy," wherein Greene challenges Balderston’s masochism thesis. Greene argues that the "Secret far dearer than Life" mentioned by Piozzi refers to Johnson’s struggle with masturbation. using Johnson’s diary entries—specifically the recurring letter "M"—and eighteenth-century medical attitudes, Greene posits that Johnson sought physical restraints, such as manacles, to combat onanistic impulses rather than for erotic purposes. While praising Greene’s lively style and erudition, Lee critiques his tendency toward extreme rhetorical speculation. The collection serves as a testament to Greene's authoritative energy and his demand that scholars reconsider received assumptions about Johnson’s psycho-sexual subterranean life.
Lynch reviews a posthumous collection of Greene's influential essays, characterizing Greene as a "polemicist" who fundamentally reshaped the field of Johnson studies. The review highlights Greene's career-long effort to dismantle the "Boswellian myth" of Johnson as a bigoted Tory, instead presenting him as a sophisticated, skeptical thinker rooted in an Augustinian theological tradition. Lynch notes Greene's "intellectual ferocity" and his insistence on rigorous historical context, particularly in his reassessment of Johnson's politics and his relationship with the Enlightenment. While acknowledging Greene's occasionally "combative" style, Lynch argues that these essays demonstrate the "breadth and depth" of Greene’s scholarship, ranging from the complexities of Johnson's religious anxiety to his nuanced political theories. Lynch concludes that the collection serves as a vital testament to Greene's "transformative" impact on eighteenth-century studies.
Grundy reviews the bibliography by Donald Greene and John A. Vance, noting the "steeply increasing" rate of Johnsonian scholarship, which averaged 67 items annually. She observes that the workprovokes the question of whether scholars "emulate our subject in power to seize and hold the reader's attention." Grundy enters several quibbles regarding the classification scheme, particularly the placement of studies on Johnson’s relationships with women under "Views" rather than "Personal Relationships." She also notes minor errors, such as the misspelling of Dr. Heberden and the inclusion of a "projected musical Johnson" that never materialized. Despite these flaws, Grundy describes the bibliography as a "painstaking and reliable guide" and a "useful or admirable book" for anyone wishing to join the scholarly conversation.
Middendorf welcomes the publication of Greene and Vance's supplement to the standard Clifford/Greene bibliography. The reviewer notes that while the compilers omit dissertations and inaccessible foreign-language works, they provide a comprehensive chronological listing of critical studies through 1985. Middendorf highlights the shifting trends in Johnsonian scholarship revealed by the update, specifically observing that Johnson’s poetry has received significantly more scholarly attention since 1970 than Rasselas. The review commends the continuation of the asterisk system to denote works of exceptional utility. Middendorf emphasizes that this volume is now an essential tool for Johnsonians, alongside the original 1970 survey, representing the continued vitality of the field.
Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1800
Challenging traditional views of Johnson as a proud rejector of patronage, this text explores his lifelong, complex engagement with the system. It disputes the interpretation of the 1755 letter to Chesterfield as a "Magna Carta of the modern author," arguing instead that Johnson reproached an accepted patron for failing his obligations. Johnson emerges as a participant who sought private support, received a royal pension, and defended the "great system of subordination" as vital to social stability. The study traces his shifting attitudes from early "vexations of dependence" in the Rambler to a more detached, coherent view in the Lives of the Poets, where he envisions patronage as a practice of "reciprocal benefits." Johnson acknowledges the writer’s power to confer "the honours of a lasting name," effectively making the poet a patron who fixes the "stamp of literary sanction." Johnson maintains that "no man who ever lived by literature, has lived more independently," while simultaneously respecting rank and wealth.
The Age of 'The Age of' Is Over: Johnson and New Versions of the Late Eighteenth Century
The traditional literary periodization, "The Age of Johnson," is obsolete thanks to new critical attitudes, particularly those fostered by cultural materialism and feminism. This shift moves away from celebrating a narrow canon of "great men" and toward a view of literary history that accounts for a wider heterogeneity of texts and a more complex cultural matrix. While Johnson is no longer the sole center, Griffin contends that his pervasive influence on the late eighteenth century, particularly on women writers like Hays and Shelley, makes him essential for new cultural histories of the period. He urges integrating Johnson into broader patterns, such as the period's relationship with sensibility and the earlier legacy of Pope, rather than ignoring him.
Are We There yet? 70 Years of Identifying Self-Quotations in Johnson's 1755 and 1773 Dictionaries
Grimes presents a comprehensive alphabetical list of 54 confirmed Johnson self-quotations found in his 1755 and 1773 Dictionaries, summarizing seventy years of academic documentation by Wimsatt, Keast, Lee, and Grimes. The list details sources, including anonymous and misattributed entries, and notes quotations deleted in the 1773 edition. Of the total, 18 self-quotations appear in Volume 1 (1755) and 35 in Volume 2 (1755). Two self-quotations in bribe and consoloer were identified by Anthony W. Lee and Keast, respectively.
Johnsoniana: Nel Gusto del Doctor Johnson
Grimes examines 'sensational spelling' and verbless 'shredded English' in modern advertisements, comparing them to the 'large promise' Johnson identified as the 'soul of an advertisement.' The analysis notes how advertisers use 'pseudo-scientific language' and 'scientism' to validate claims. Grimes suggests that modern 'spin doctors' deploy a 'cynically manipulative' language that contrasts with the 'pithy wisdom' and linguistic accountability Johnson championed.
An Exercise in Making Matter Matter: Samuel Johnson Dictionary Sources
Grimes details his digital project, "Samuel Johnson Dictionary Sources," to document and make accessible the substance of Johnson's 1755 and 1773 Dictionary. The project identifies the hundreds of authors cited (such as Charlotte Lennox), determines the specific works Johnson consulted, estimates citation numbers, and provides biographical context. He illustrates how this resource illuminates Johnson's creative process, such as his reformulation of Miller's information in the famous "Oats" definition.
Brooks provides a mixed review of Gloria Sybil Gross's psychohistorical study of Johnson. Brooks credits Gross for a stylistic delight that presents Johnson as a pioneer in the science of mind who used self-analysis to manage emotional turmoil. The review highlights Gross's argument that hidden, conflicting mental events and motives, rather than reason, determine Johnson's actions. However, Brooks challenges Gross's claim that this diminished role for reason was atypical for the eighteenth century, noting her neglect of the Scottish School of moral philosophy. Brooks further disputes the suitability of Gross's whiggish historiography, citing risks of anachronism and distortion in seeking Freudian anticipations. While praising the lovingly crafted prose, Brooks finds the abbreviated index makes the work difficult to use and questions whether Johnson's introspective speculation constitutes a complete psychology.
Gross's first-rate study analyzes Johnson's life and works through psychological (Freudian) theory. It shows wide knowledge of both, but undermines his reputation as a great writer independent of Boswell. Although acknowledging Christian classicism, the approach minimizes his gift for which many read "the great cham."
Grundy's review challenges Gross's "classical psychoanalytic approach" to Johnson's intrapsychic life. Grundy disputes Gross's tendency to conflate imaginative participation with self-identification, arguing that Johnson’s biographical practice does not involve identifying with his subjects. The review identifies a pervasive sensationalism in the book, noting Gross's frequent use of words like "frenzy" and "rave". Grundy criticizes Gross for presenting the Lives of the Poets as a series of caricatures and for failing to account for specific historical contexts, such as the death of Mrs. Salusbury, when interpreting Johnson's letters to Piozzi. Grundy concludes that Gross's general stylistic excess and uncertainty regarding precise meaning result in a flawed psychobiography.
Lurcock reviews Gross's psychoanalytic exploration of Johnson's psychological theories represented in his writings. Gross uses the essays and Lives of the Poets to establish a link between Johnson's life and his understanding of the "mental underworld." Lurcock notes Gross’s focus on Johnson’s scientific empiricism and his ability to partake imaginatively in the fortunes of others, such as Savage, Pope, and Milton. The review questions whether the theorizing truly belongs to Johnson or the biographer.
Gross applies classical psychoanalytic theory to Johnson’s life and works, positioning him as a pioneer of modern psychological thought anticipating Freud.1 The study chronologically examines Johnson’s writings, from the early works reflecting childhood trauma to The Rambler, which details the irrational "internal consciousness," anticipating the unconscious. Gross argues that Johnson’s thinking evolved from "fiery outrage" to the "worldly insight" seen in Rasselas and Lives of the Poets. She contextualizes Johnson's insights within 18th-century debates on mental illness, emphasizing his radical support for compassionate treatment over harsh physical restraint.
Weinsheimer reviews Gross’s psychoanalytic study of Johnson, arguing that its primary delight is the sheer volume of Johnson's self-revealing quotations. Gross places Johnson within the eighteenth-century psychological idiom, focusing on him alternately as therapist and patient. The central, highly questionable thesis is that Johnson was a pioneer of the "scientific empiricism" that culminated in Freud's theory of the mind. Weinsheimer rejects this, asserting that comparing Johnson to Freud as a scientific standard tacitly denigrates Johnson. Instead, the book’s true value lies in its sensitive rendition of Johnson's major and minor works, foregrounding their astute psychological insights. The review suggests Johnson is more accurately classed as a literary analyst of the mind rather than a precursor to modern scientific psychology.
In this largely positive review, Loe summarizes Gloria Sybil Gross’s thesis that Johnson is a "young person’s writer" whose irreverence and energy mirror the unorthodox tastes of Jane Austen. Loe explains Gross’s methodology of pairing pivotal situations in Austen’s major novels with illuminating passages from Johnson’s corpus. While Loe finds the references to Johnson "apt," the review characterizes the work primarily as a study in the close reading of Austen's fiction regarding the "appropriateness of alliances." Loe notes the bibliography is "skimpy" and the index limited, yet recommends the monograph.
Wilson reviews Gross's study exploring affinities between Austen and Johnson. Gross argues for Johnson's influence on Austen, tracing shared preoccupations with quotidian detail, psychological realism, passion, family pathologies, and the dark side of social decorum. Through close readings of Austen's novels, Gross highlights parallels with Johnson's essays (Rambler) and tales (Rasselas), emphasizing both authors' insight into aggression, repression, and sexuality, anticipating Freudian concepts. Wilson praises the energetic prose, close readings, and portrayal of both authors as keen analysts valuing order and decency, but notes the sometimes jarring contemporary allusions and wishes for more engagement with feminist criticism.
Gray identifies this bicentenary collection of nine essays as a broad exploration of Johnson’s 'immense range' and multi-faceted authority across genres including politics, lexicography, and 'commemorative writing.' The reviewer highlights Mary Lascelles’s analysis of Johnson’s didactic approach to epitaphs and his 'reticence' in memorializing figures like Robert Levet. Gray details Paul Korshin’s ranking of Johnson alongside 'great Renaissance scholars' and Robert Giddings’s discussion of Johnson’s 'dramatic re-creation' of parliamentary debates. While the volume addresses Johnson’s 'noteworthy omission' of novel criticism, Mark Kinkead-Weekes suggests Johnson viewed prose fiction as a 'lesser art' lacking 'reliable moral critique.' Gray concludes that while the scholarship is mixed in quality and inconsistent in its editorial focus, it successfully demonstrates that Johnson’s roots lie in his 'magnificently stocked mind' rather than singular classical traditions.
Leicester reviews this revisionary collection, noting its focus on aspects of Johnson with "contemporary interest." He summarizes contributions on Johnson’s aphorisms, his legal aid to Robert Chambers, and his role as a "Parliamentary Reporter." The review highlights the "Jacobite sympathy" reinstated by Erskine-Hill and the "Menippean satire" of Rasselas. Leicester concludes that the volume further underscores that Johnson is "easy to love but hard to understand."
Lipking describes the collection as a lively, genial volume that explores relatively unfamiliar territory, such as Johnson's debts to Renaissance scholarship. Lipking highlights Howard Erskine-Hill's case for Johnson's Jacobite inclinations and Robert Giddings's analysis of parliamentary reporting. In the monograph, Grundy identifies the scale of greatness as the central figure in Johnson's thought, arguing that his habitual measurement of the great against the petty constitutes his most distinguishing characteristic. Lipking praises Grundy's assiduity and her command of shades of meaning, though he suggests she occasionally pushes her thesis too hard and fails to situate Johnson himself on a larger scale of importance.
Vance evaluates Grundy's collection of nine essays, noting that while the volume is "uneven," the best pieces offer significant insights for Johnson specialists. The reviewer highlights Grundy's own essay challenging traditional views of Johnson's use of maxims and Paul Korshin's study of Johnson's engagement with contemporary scholarship. Vance praises James Woodruff's analysis of Rasselas as Menippean satire as one of the volume's strongest contributions. However, Vance disputes the value of Robert Giddings's essay on Johnson's parliamentary reporting, which he finds adds little to existing scholarship. The reviewer also questions the intended audience for several pieces, arguing that some are better suited for students than for seasoned scholars. Ultimately, Vance concludes that while the collection lacks uniform excellence, it succeeds in providing fresh perspectives on Johnson's "beckoning" mind through varied critical approaches.
This commemorative collection celebrates Johnson the dominant literary figure, focusing on his personality rather than critical analysis. Essays discuss topics such as Johnson's vast knowledge, his political character, and his preference for Richardson over Fielding. The most successful pieces grapple with genre classification for Rasselas and affirm Johnson's essential Toryism and Jacobitism in light of new historical work.
Boulton explores Grundy’s analysis of Johnson’s psychological and moral tensions, specifically the interplay between the "petty" and the "great." He highlights Grundy's investigation into Johnson's use of comparison, his abhorrence of envy, and his ultimate valuation of community over competition. Boulton finds the argument convincing, particularly the identification of Shakespeare as Johnson’s ideal human hero and the interpretation of Johnson’s struggle between the allure of greatness and a dogged resistance to it.
Clingham reviews Grundy's thematic study of Johnson's thoughts on greatness, finding the work fresh and instructive. He praises the non-chronological organization and the detailed attention to Johnson's moral thought, which provides an unusually complete sense of the "flexibility of Johnson's mind." Grundy successfully demonstrates how Johnson uses comparative scales to measure aspiration, showing that greatness and "littleness" are "inextricably bound." Clingham specifically highlights the instructive accounts of the biographical portraits of Drake and Wolsey. However, he criticizes the book for lacking the "requisite interest in Johnson's understanding of Nature," which he considers essential to the criticism of Shakespeare and the "heroic and tragic elements" in the Lives. Clingham disputes Grundy's treatment of these later works, arguing she misreads them by overemphasizing the "satirical influence of Swift" and maintaining that Johnson's habits remained primarily satirical after the 1760s. He asserts that Grundy overlooks instances where Johnson saw greatness and nature "at one" and fails to account for the continuity between a poet's life and work. Consequently, Clingham finds the chapters on Shakespeare and the Lives the "least satisfactory" because they juxtapose greatness and littleness too starkly and questions Grundy's "isolated consideration of the fictional character" of the biographical portraits.
Damrosch describes Grundy's book as a patient and thoughtful exploration of familiar ambiguities in Johnson's thought. Grundy examines Johnson's ambivalence toward greatness, illustrating how he breaks concepts into parts to be measured and compared. Damrosch notes the study uses an extensive view of the corpus, summoning fragments from the whole career to show how Johnson uses a variety of scales to see life fairly. He finds the effect of a sustained reading miscellaneous but praises the treatment of specific works, such as the Levet elegy and Adventurer 81. He concludes the work enriches the understanding of Johnson by showing how he made ambivalence a virtue rather than a defect.
Lipking finds Grundy's book a very good exploration of Johnson's "scale of greatness," the central figure of his thought. Grundy appreciates Johnson's flexible intelligence and uses perpetual comparisons to show the complexity of his vision, but Lipking finds some readings tendentious.
Grundy explores Johnson’s attitudes toward "worldly greatness," disputing the conventional preference for goodness over greatness in eighteenth-century thought. The analysis focuses on the "relativity" of greatness and the importance of "comparison" and "scale" in Johnson’s worldview, noting the significant influence of Swift. Grundy identifies a "doubleness" in Johnson’s response to competition, which he characterizes as both a destructive source of envy and a moral stimulant. Drawing on the Rambler, the Dictionary, and the Lives, the study details how Johnson’s writings challenge the reader's "scales of measurement," frequently inverting the importance of the significant and the overlooked.
The word Great, declared Fielding in his Covent Garden Journal, when "Applied to a Thing, signifies Bigness, when to a Man, often Littleness or Meanness." The Lilliputian tactic of reducing the mystique of human greatness to petty posturing is a standard ingredient of Augustan satires from Gulliver's Travels to Jonathan Wild which train a variety of lenses, from the microscope to the telescope on the image of man "plac'd in this isthmus of a middle state."
Payne praises Grundy for clearly describing and analyzing Johnson's under-studied view of greatness as alluring yet illusionary. The success lies in Grundy's comprehensive treatment of Johnson's works and her convincing argument that his investigation into greatness drives his writing.
CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association
Trickett reviews Isobel Grundy’s Samuel Johnson and the Scale of Greatness, characterizing it as a "confused and confusing book" that is nonetheless original and perceptive. She challenges Grundy’s central thesis regarding the "Scale of Greatness"—the shift from telescopic to microscopic focus—arguing that the image is too limited to clarify Johnson’s thought and is "imposed almost arbitrarily." Trickett disputes Grundy’s contention that Johnson consciously absorbed Jonathan Swift’s influence, noting Johnson’s known dismissal of scale as a "commonplace" satirical device. However, she praises the chapters on competition and malignity as "fresh and often very illuminating." Trickett concludes that the book admirably reminds readers of Johnson’s moral complexity and his unexpected fondness for the intimate and domestic.
'This Is Worse than Swift!': Johnson as Speaker of the Unacceptable
Grundy's address challenges the contemporary "cuddly" impression of Johnson, arguing he was a "speaker of the unacceptable" who flung sharp, unsoftened truths, rejecting euphemism because it damages thought. She notes Johnson's private muttering, "Poor man! and then he died," and his public "conversational hand-grenades," such as his toast "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies." This shocking toast, which invoked the horror of bilateral violence, functions similarly to Swift's "modest proposal" by pointing out the horrific nature of the status quo. Grundy argues Johnson forces listeners and readers to register the horror of what's implied, linking feeling with conceptual thought to prevent a "dissociation of sensibility." In The Vanity of Human Wishes, the passage on Marlborough and Swift is climactic in horror, forcing the reader to confront the reality that the greatest human achievements cannot insure against old age and dotage.
Grundy’s address to the Johnsonians in Sept. 2006, on his fondness for raising shocking or uncomfortable topics in conversation.
Grundy examines Johnson’s significant relationships with "literary women" and his high valuation of female friendship. The article highlights Johnson’s roles as a "hostess, muse, and friend" to figures like Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Burney. Grundy details Johnson’s "quasi-paternal" correspondence with "Queeney" Thrale and his "intimate domesticity" at Streatham Park. The narrative notes that Johnson was the first English lexicographer to use women’s writing as "authority for wider use" in his Dictionary. Grundy review’s Johnson’s "sympathetic tolerance" for women’s intellectual pursuits, which allowed him to "tear the heart out" of their works with "deep scholarship." The article argues that Johnson’s "sensible" nature allowed for "intellectual excitement and sincere affection" in these partnerships. Grundy concludes that Johnson’s circle of women was a vital "focus outside of himself" that helped remedy his "constitutional depression" and "morbid melancholy."
Flocking to the Shrine of Dr. Johnson, the Great Debunker
Gruner reports on the pedestrianization of Gough Square and the preservation of Johnson’s house as a museum. Gruner describes a commemorative event featuring actor Bowman portraying Johnson to illustrate the subject’s historical dominance in conversation. Gruner highlights Boswell’s observations of Johnson’s tendency to have "tossed and gored several persons" during debate and the physical crowding of admirers around his chair. Gruner notes the 1911 rescue of the property by Harmsworth and quotes the current Lord Harmsworth on intentions to further dramatize Johnson’s work. The text emphasizes Johnson’s labor on the Dictionary and his continued cultural relevance, aphoristically noting that "When a man is tired of Johnson, he is tired of life."
On using Boswell’s Life in the reading classroom.
Hagstrum explores the "philosophical coincidence" between Johnson and contemporary deconstructionists, labeling Johnson "one of the most original and persistent deconstructionists in our language." He identifies affinities in Johnson’s respect for the "flux, complexity, and psychological disruptiveness of language" and his refusal to separate "criticism from creation." The author suggests that Johnson would categorize modern theorists as "Metaphysical Critics" due to their analytical tendency to break "every image into fragments." Hagstrum argues that Johnson’s willingness to "grapple with whole libraries" elevates learned commentary to the level of imaginative invention.
Samuel Johnson among the Deconstructionists
On Idleness: Dr. Johnson on Millennial Malaise
Worry: Controlling It and Using It Wisely
Hallowell presents a psychological case study of Johnson, characterizing him as one of the greatest worriers on record who suffered from a disease of the imagination. While Boswell provides the most famous biography, Bate offers a more complete picture of the psychological pain Johnson endured. Hallowell argues that Johnson suffered from undeserved guilt and morbid ruminations, which modern medicine would diagnose as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and attention deficit disorder rather than the moral failing of sloth. The narrative details how Johnson used hard work, the acquisition of knowledge, creative imagination, and social connections to combat his inner torment. Hallowell notes that Johnson often felt ugly and physically repulsive due to childhood scrofula, yet he remained a friend to man. The chapter disputes the notion that suffering is necessary for creativity, suggesting that modern treatments like Prozac might have relieved Johnson's mental anguish without dulling his genius. Hallowell concludes that Johnson represents a battered boxer who never succumbed to his demons, offering a testament to a life of effort and truth.
Dr. Johnson's City of Philosophers Still Satisfies the Inquisitive Walker
Provides a topographical survey of Johnsonian sites in Lichfield and surrounding areas. Details Johnson’s birth, his education under Walmesley, and his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. Focuses on the life of Francis Barber, Johnson's Jamaican manservant and heir, and his eventual destitution. Mentions monuments to both Johnson and Boswell and the restoration of the Johnson family bookshop as a museum.
Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography
Hamilton chronicles the preservation and dramatic recovery of Boswell's personal archives, challenging the long-held myth that the papers were destroyed by his descendants. Following Boswell's death, his heirs, particularly Alexander and James Boswell the Younger, suppressed the journals to protect the family name from the biographer's reputation as a 'sot and libertine.' The narrative details the twentieth-century interventions of scholars like Chauncey Brewster Tinker and the obsessive efforts of Ralph Isham, who spent decades and his personal fortune reassembling the collection from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House. Hamilton analyzes how these discoveries fundamentally restructured Boswell's literary reputation, transforming him from a perceived buffoon into a complex, masterful artist of the journal form. The account emphasizes the tension between familial 'keepers' who sought to extinguish the 'private bonfire' and scholarly acolytes determined to expose the 'whole truth' of Boswell's life.
Hammons provides a article tracing the standardization of English orthography through the work of Johnson and Noah Webster. The article details the 1746 commission by London printers that led to Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), noting its 2,300-page length and the inclusion of 40,000 words. Hammons observes that the dictionary reflects Johnson’s personal biases, specifically citing the "famous" definition of oats as a grain used for horses in England but people in Scotland. The narrative contrasts Johnson’s preservation of traditional spellings, such as "colour" and "musick," with Webster’s later American reforms. Hammons concludes by noting that Webster’s 1828 dictionary contained 70,000 words—half of which were absent from Johnson’s work—and was initially attacked in England for its "Americanism."
Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster share their preeminence in the history of English lexicography with a man now almost forgotten, who usually signed his books simply 'N. Bailey'. Even in his lifetime, Nathan (possibly Nathaniel) Bailey was an obscure figure. There is a record of when he died (1742), but not of when he was born. He belonged to a Seventh Day Baptist congregation in Whitechapel. He published several Latin textbooks and translations, incidentally advertising the fact that he was a schoolmaster who learned his educational theories in the classroom. He may have begun his lexicographical labours with the unsigned Dictionarium rusticum, urbanicum & botanicum (1704; 3rd edition 1726); but only with An Universal Etymological English Dictionary of 1721 did Bailey really enter literary history. That book long survived its author; dozens of editions appeared throughout the eighteenth century and even into the nineteenth. It was Bailey's dictionary of the English language that first made the use of such dictionaries popular.
Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry
An Examination of Samuel Johnson's Book Reviews, 1742–1764
Forster acknowledges Hanley's Samuel Johnson as Book Reviewer documents Johnson's reviewing activities but criticizes the book for its excessive detail, repetitiveness, and lack of broader perspective on eighteenth-century reviewing beyond Johnson. While agreeing Johnson's reviews are underappreciated, Forster finds Hanley's exhaustive comparisons and focus on minutiae more exhausting than illuminating, offering few original insights. She questions some interpretations and the overall justification for the book's length, suggesting that while useful as a detailed resource via its index, it fails to provide a stimulating critical analysis or significantly advance understanding of the subject.
Regeneration from Vanity: Johnson's Satiric Mode in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Japanese Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Individuality in Johnson's Shakespeare Criticism
Harada asserts that Johnson's Shakespeare criticism is fundamentally concerned with the "individuality" of characters, a stance that requires a reexamination of the differences between Johnson and his critical antagonists. While Johnson often categorized characters as "species" rather than "individuals" in his general definitions, Harada argues that his specific annotations reveal a deep sensitivity to the unique psychological traits of figures like Falstaff, Hamlet, and Polonius. Johnson uses the concept of "particularity" to safeguard against the "reductive moralizing" of his contemporaries, such as William Richardson. The article identifies Johnson's "double-voiced" approach: he balances neoclassical demands for general truth with a modern appreciation for the "variety" and "complexity" of human nature found in the plays. Harada concludes that Johnson’s focus on the "individuality" of Shakespeare’s creations served as a vital precursor to romantic character criticism, despite Johnson’s own stated preference for general representation.
Johnson and the Truth, Revisited: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 2002
Lord Harmsworth, former chairman of the Trustees, discusses the history and financial struggles of Dr. Johnson's House at 17 Gough Square, where Johnson completed his Dictionary between 1748 and 1759. The house, the only surviving London residence of Johnson from Boswell's list, was repeatedly threatened during WWII. He argues for focusing on Johnson and his circle—including Garrick, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Burke, and the Elizabeths Montagu and Carter—to immerse visitors in the period, believing interaction of people is what makes Boswell's Tour more readable than Johnson’s own.
Dr. Johnson's Critical Vocabulary: A Selection from His 'Dictionary'
Sermon Preached in Lichfield Cathedral Sunday, 24th September, 1989
Imagined conversation between Samuel Johnson and William James.
Hart examines Johnson’s achievement as a triumph of indomitable energy over a background of disease, poverty, and mental instability. He identifies Johnson’s regal maturity and his ability to "act a part" in society as a conscious choice for sanity against "morbid melancholy" and Tourette’s Syndrome. Hart emphasizes how Johnson controlled his chaotic impulses through religious passion and the adoption of sane axioms, ultimately using his powerful intellect to will a style of normality and moral instruction.
Berglund offers a mixed review of Hart’s study, which examines how Johnson has become a national heritage and "cultural property." She recommends that readers focus primarily on the first three chapters, praising them for offering provocative readings and identifying parallels between Johnson as a monumental man and concrete monuments, such as the Birthplace Museum. Berglund notes Hart’s illuminating commentary on the process of sacralization that transformed Boswell’s biography into a form of annotated scripture. However, she challenges Hart’s organizational method, describing the argument as a series of almost spasmodic leaps from anecdote to theoretical problem that are often confusing. The review finds the linking theme of "economic acts" so flexible as to become almost meaningless and criticizes the later chapters for offering too superficial a treatment of immense, complex ideas. Berglund concludes by encouraging readers to follow Johnson’s own example of looking into a book without feeling an obligation to read it through.
Lurcock examines Hart’s investigation into the evolution of literary property and the monumentalization of Johnson. The reviewer highlights Hart’s thesis regarding the legal establishment of copyright in 1774 and its influence on biography as a commodity. Lurcock praises the analysis of Boswell’s Life as cultural property, noting the editorial interventions of Croker and Hill. Additionally, the reviewer notes Hart’s treatment of the oral-versus-written conflict during the Scottish journey and the parallels drawn between Boswell and Macpherson.
Lynch’s mixed review explores Hart’s attempt to link eighteenth-century concepts of property to the historical construction of Johnson’s reputation through Boswell’s Life. The review praises Hart’s original meditations on forgery, the Ossian controversy, and Jacobite politics, but notes that the central theme of property frequently disappears from the analysis. Lynch observes that while Hart offers interesting insights into the editors of Boswell and the concept of an "age of Johnson," the connection between these subjects and theories of property remains unclear. The reviewer concludes that scholars seeking a rigorous study of property rights will find the volume frustrated by its lack of thematic focus.
Making the Wisdom Figure [review of Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, by Lawrence Lipking; Johnson the Poet, by David F. Venturo; Bad Behavior, by Martin Wechselblatt; Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property, by Kevin Hart; and The Passion for Happiness, by Adam Potkay]
McKenzie judges Lipking's book a reward proving Johnson requires a lifetime of careful reading. Lipking focuses on Johnson's writings to show his mastery of the world and language. Lipking's analysis of the letter to Chesterfield is notably strong, revealing Johnson's "pride and modesty." McKenzie judges Hart more successful exploring Johnson and Boswell's connection than developing the book's title concepts. Hart offers thorough guidance on familiar topics, is a good reader of Johnson's aphorisms, and unearths unfamiliar details, but McKenzie questions some cultural criticism. McKenzie views Potkay's juxtaposition of Johnson and Hume as separating Johnson's moralizing from his religion and Hume's from his speculation. McKenzie finds the treatment even-handed and illuminating, but notes Potkay's focus on secular happiness ignores an essential difference between the thinkers. McKenzie judges Venturo's book as the most needed in the profession, providing patient, careful, and intelligent readings of all Johnson's poetry and the play Irene. Venturo is praised for his accurate and eloquent commentary, which firmly grounds the verse in its contexts. McKenzie finds Wechselblatt's book the most stimulating of the group but often challenging because of his style. Wechselblatt's reliance on dichotomies like 'sage/hack' and use of terms like 'positionality' invigorates his argument. McKenzie appreciates how Wechselblatt challenges and improves his own thinking.
This volume features Weinbrot on Johnson’s 'varied styles' and 'domestic metaphor' to replace views of his language as 'overburdened and Latinate.' Rounce notes Dougal’s study of Piozzi, which shows her switching between 'genres and registers with more fluency' over time, and Tankard's use of 'bibliographical discussion' regarding the Rambler. The 'one-hundred-and-twelve-page' supplementary bibliography by Lynch is highlighted for its 'great thanks,' having been available online before the print appearance.
Hart explores Johnson's views on both legal and "cultural" property and convincingly argues Johnson connected rude Highland life (observed on his tour) with the lack of a civilized money economy and an oral tradition, contrasting this with the written, commercial tradition of the south. However, Hart's analysis of how "Johnson" became "cultural property" is found less original and relies on outdated assumptions (e.g., the idea that Boswell's Life casts a dark shadow over Johnson's writing). The book is structurally hampered by its genesis as conference papers and revised articles, resulting in a lack of argumentative drive and loosely stitched ideas.
Scherwatzky reviews Kevin Hart’s Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property, which examines Johnson's place in his world and the Anglo-American cultural imagination, with a specific focus on the role of James Boswell. Hart analyzes the concept of property through the lenses of land, literature, and life, arguing that Johnson remains the inescapable "property" of Boswell, whose biography monumentalized him into an icon and effectively created the "Age of Johnson." The study highlights the epistemological tension between Boswell's monumentalizing mediators—who shape our knowledge of the subject—and Johnson's own nuanced writings. Hart also covers the interdependency of Johnson and Boswell during their trip to Scotland and the ephemeral nature of capturing everyday life in biography. While Scherwatzky finds the study well-researched and detailed regarding the genealogy of the "Johnson industry," he notes that Hart says little about Johnson as a biographer himself and suggests that seasoned scholars may find some of the conclusions commonplace.
Turner's scathing review of Kevin Hart's study finds it a disjointed, miscellaneous, and uneven work that fails to sustain its theoretical framework regarding the eighteenth century's consolidating culture of property, including literary property. While Hart’s framework is deemed unconvincing and often irrelevant to its premises, the reviewer acknowledges profit in the detailed account of how Johnson became a national monument and the creative application of copyright notions to Boswell's role in documenting him. However, Turner argues that many sections simply rehearse well-known aspects of the period and frequently degenerate into anecdotal hagiography. Turner further disputes Hart's "chimerical desire" to recover an essential Johnson and identifies several analytical deviations, technical irritations in the sourcing of quotations, and typographical errors. Ultimately, Turner concludes that while this collection of essays provides enjoyable fodder for fans, it will not change the face of Johnson studies.
Warner's mixed review describes this monograph as an insightful intervention in the debates of the Johnson and Boswell club. The reviewer notes that the work complicates the question of whether Boswell's biography betrays the subject or provides an indispensable source for understanding the first melancholy modern. While the reviewer values the critique of the biography for representing Johnson as one who always has the brisk answer, he complains that the author remains within the cozy confines of the club. The reviewer suggests that the book reads like a buy recommendation from a firm floating a new stock offering rather than a balanced assessment from a skeptical analyst. He expresses a desire for a reading of this vast literary property that shows more critical detachment from the literary industries of Johnson and Boswell.
Hart's theoretically informed work examines "Dr. Johnson" as a piece of cultural property used for various literary and nationalistic purposes. It argues against critics who privilege Johnson's writing over Boswell's presentation, asserting that the reactive move of seeking a "Johnson without Boswell" draws property lines too closely around Johnson. Hart complicates the simple story of Boswell turning Johnson into a mere character, showing that Johnson's figure was immediately turned into a national monument upon his death. The book advocates for seeing Johnson and Boswell as "independent universes."
How to Read a Page of Boswell: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 1999
The Effect of Judgement: Samuel Johnson and His Lives of the Poets
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784): Bicentenaire de sa mort
Literature and the Party System in Britain, 1760–1830
Samuel Johnson and Lessing's Lexicographical Work
Johnson and Lessing: A Study of Johnson's Critical Theory and Practice
Johnson's and Lessing's Dramatic Critical Theories and Practice with a Consideration of Lessing's Affinities with Johnson
Hawari examines the intellectual relationship between Samuel Johnson and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, focusing on their respective contributions to eighteenth-century dramatic criticism. The monograph argues that Lessing was acutely aware of Johnson’s literary output and that significant affinities exist between their theories of nature, the passions, and dramatic illusion. Hawari analyzes Johnson’s Rambler, Dictionary, and edition of Shakespeare alongside Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie to demonstrate how both critics challenged neoclassical rigidities. The text explores their shared emphasis on the "language of the heart" and their rejection of strict generic boundaries in favor of psychological realism. Hawari concludes that while their paths diverged on certain Aristotelian concepts like catharsis, their critical practices reflect a common movement toward modern dramatic theory. The study includes a reprinted article regarding Johnson’s influence on Lessing’s lexicographical work. Chapter 1, 'Lessing's Johnson Connection,' addresses the historical and literary evidence of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's awareness and emulation of Samuel Johnson’s critical works, exploring their shared experiences of intellectual struggle. Chapter 2, 'The English Critical Background,' examines the foundational neo-classical theories that informed both critics, focusing on how English thought provided a necessary alternative to French dramatic models. Chapter 3, 'Nature and Life,' analyzes the central role of "truth" in their theories, arguing that both prioritized the faithful representation of common humanity over generic rigidity. Chapter 4, 'Dramatic Character,' explores their shared focus on universal character types, illustrating how individualized traits in Shakespeare and modern novels serve to validate general human experience. Chapter 5, 'Delusion or Illusion,' investigates their reevaluation of Aristotelian catharsis, specifically how dramatic "fear" is reinterpreted as a spectator's empathetic concern for their own potential misfortunes. Chapter 6, 'The Critics in Their Dramas,' applies these theoretical affinities to the critics' own theatrical practices.
The British Eighteenth Century and Global Critique
Johnson's Immanent Critique of Imperial Nationalism
Hawes argues that Johnson's simultaneous investment in English national culture and universalist aspirations constitutes a "cosmopolitan nationalism" that disrupts both parochial insularity and imperial aggression. Hawes analyzes Johnson's journalistic work and major literary contributions to demonstrate his commitment to a vernacular public sphere characterized by transparency and accountability. Johnson challenges the sacralization of national icons, rejecting the metaleptic "roots-finding" projects exemplified by Gray and Macpherson. Hawes emphasizes Johnson's systematic loathing of imperialism, citing his legal intervention for the slave Joseph Knight and his refusal to link rationality to any specific geographical site in Rasselas. Johnson's "minimalist universalism" anticipates modern critiques of Eurocentrism by identifying human nature as "everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed." Hawes concludes that Johnson's stance in the "Ossian" affair was a defense of historical integrity against the commodification of "backwardness."
Samuel Johnson's Politics of Contingency
The Antinomies of Progress: Johnson, Conrad, Joyce
Adopting a post-colonial perspective, this essay discovers significant affinities among Samuel Johnson, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce. Hawes examines their shared engagement with the long history of British expansionism, North American dominance, and the complex, often contradictory notion of "progress" on personal, literary, and political levels. Through analyses of periodization, rhetorical strategies (like chiasmus), and critiques of colonial exploitation, the chapter subtly repositions Johnson within literary history, highlighting his prescient critique of imperial domination and its dubious claims of advancement, aligning him unexpectedly with key Modernist figures.
Lynch's enthusiastic review welcomes the first full scholarly edition of the 1787 biography by Hawkins. Lynch notes that Hawkins, as executor of the will, often provides more reliable information than Boswell, despite the latter's literary superiority. The review praises Brack for applying rigorous textual standards and providing extensive annotations to a work previously available only in original eighteenth-century editions or abridgments. Lynch asserts that while lay audiences may prefer Boswell, this edition remains essential for scholars seeking "intimate knowledge" of Johnson. Lynch highlights the volume's importance for upper-division undergraduates and faculty studying eighteenth-century literature.
Consortium on Revolutionary Europe: Selected Papers
Reason, Truth, and Community in Samuel Johnson's Later Work
辞書編纂のダイナミズム: ジョンソン, ウェブスターと日本 [Jisho hensan no dainamizumu: Jonson, Uebusuta to nihon] ('The Dynamism of Lexicography: Johnson, Webster and Japan'
'The Fictions of Romantick Chivalry': Samuel Johnson and Romance
Henson establishes that Johnson maintained a lifelong devotion to chivalric romance, a passion that deeply affected his writing, vocabulary, and sense of personal identity. This wide-ranging monograph examines how the dancelike configurations of coincidence, unpredictable hazards, and localized conflicts in postmedieval romances supplied Johnson with an architectural vocabulary and a core set of journey metaphors. Henson traces chronological and biographical developments in his reading, exploring his collaboration with mid-century antiquarians like Thomas Percy and the Warton brothers who advanced the medieval revival. The study analyzes the persistent tension between neoclassical prescriptive regularities and the alluring, nonrational charms of romance variety that colored his evaluations of Shakespeare and John Dryden. Henson demonstrates how the 1773 Scottish tour, documented by Boswell and Johnson, allowed the traveler to experience actual gothic ruins and act out a quixotic quest in the Highlands, historical text structures that alternative records from Piozzi validate with distinct emphasis. Chapter 1, "Romances of Chivalry," details the extensive variety of post-medieval and Renaissance romances known to have been read or consulted during childhood and adulthood. Chapter 2, "Following Johnson to the 'Enchanted Wood'," traces chronological and biographical evidence of this extensive reading across various political and literary shifts, linking it directly to subsequent textual output. Chapter 3, "Johnson's Romance Metaphors," provides a structured selection of characteristic imagery to illustrate how the vocabulary of chivalric quests operates as an analytical model for the human mind. Chapter 4, "Johnson and Don Quixote," analyzes the prominent theme of quixotic delusion, investigating the critical and psychological fascination with individuals whose understandings are subjected to false fictional frameworks. Chapter 5, "Literary Criticism," contrasts neoclassical rules against a passionate, instinctive response to the irrational, supernatural, and structurally diverse romance elements found within canonical writers. Chapter 6, "The Scottish Quixote," evaluates the 1773 itinerary through the Highlands and Western Islands as a physical reenactment of chivalric topoi that effectively validated a lifelong engagement with feudal history. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the volume's scholarly accuracy and the clarity of its interpretive framework despite praising its thorough documentation of chivalric influences. Tomarken, in AJ, commends the perceptive analysis of dramatic criticism but argues the study lacks a clear central focal point and fails to provide a fresh methodological alternative to current theory. Writing in ECCB, Ribeiro praises the exploration of how romance metaphors color the moral imagination but notes serious, regrettable flaws in proofreading, misquoted texts, and slipshod control over biographical dates. Kolb's review in Eighteenth-Century Fiction similarly identifies a substantial contribution to scholarship, though he faults the book for inadequate proofreading, minor omissions, and a failure to distinguish non-mocking elements in source material. In contrast, Lurcock, writing in N&Q, finds the work a worthy reappraisal that successfully challenges the myth of a purely reductive, imagination-mistrusting mind. Patey, in Choice, delivers a positive assessment, noting that the sheer volume of evidence prevents a stereotypic rationalist reduction, even if the analysis occasionally finds generic elements in commonplace phrases. Grundy, writing in the New Rambler, celebrates the re-reading as coherent and enlightening for revealing a submerged, allusive life within the canon, though she disputes the claim that the depiction of solitary adventurers excludes female characters.
Reviews: Paul Dean, English Studies 74, no. 6 (1993): 549–58; Isobel Grundy, NR, n.s., no. 8 (1992): 48–51; Eithne Henson, ECCB 18 (1999): 387–88; Gwin J. Kolb, ECF 6, no. 1 (1993): 90–92; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 41, no. 3 (1994): 396–97; Douglas Lane Patey, Choice 30, no. 6 (1993): 960; Edward Tomarken, AJ 6 (1994): 394–96.
Lurcock examines Henson’s argument that Johnson, despite his public opposition to "heroic romance," personally enjoyed and used the genre. Henson traces Johnson’s extensive knowledge of romance through his Dictionary citations and "Quixotic" patterns in his essays. The study identifies romantic imagery in Johnson’s Shakespearean criticism and his 1773 Scottish tour. Lurcock finds Henson’s work a worthy reappraisal that challenges the myth of a purely reductive, imagination-mistrusting Johnson.
In this positive review, Patey assesses Henson’s documentation of medieval romance’s pervasive influence on Johnson’s career. Patey notes that Henson tracks this interest from childhood chapbooks to the Dictionary, the edition of Shakespeare, and Johnson’s interpretation of Scottish feudalism. While Patey suggests Henson occasionally finds romance elements in "most commonplace" phrases where none exist, he argues the sheer volume of evidence successfully prevents the reduction of Johnson to a "stereotypic rationalist enemy of fiction." Patey highlights the book’s value in demonstrating how imagery of giants and enchanters informed Johnson’s understanding of the imagination.
Brief letter to the Editor, challenging A. N. Wilson’s claim that Johnson dismissed monastic retirement.
Restless Wrestling: Johnson's Rasselas
Hilton analyzes Samuel Johnson's Rasselas as a "personal meditation" triggered by the death of his mother, Sarah Johnson. Hilton identifies a series of "lexis complexes"—including "restless," "lack," "abyss," and "nothing"—that encode Johnson's lifelong struggle with guilt and depressive ambivalence. Using Johnson's Dictionary and biographical anecdotes from James Boswell and Hester Thrale Piozzi, Hilton argues that the "Happy Valley" and the "abyss" of Abissinia serve as psychographic spaces reflecting Johnson's early childhood confinement and his "vile melancholy." Hilton highlights how Johnson used names like Pekuah and Nekayah to reference pecuniary anxieties and classical mourning traditions. According to Hilton, the novel’s inconclusive ending reflects Johnson’s inability to resolve the "tragic sense of life" through either religion or reason. Hilton concludes that the text functions as a "crypt" where Johnson embalms his past, seeking to ward off the "hunger of imagination" that plagued his psychic existence.
Grundy reviews Hinnant’s "weighty and demanding" study of Johnson. She explains Hinnant’s central argument connecting Johnson’s skepticism of the "great chain of being" to Newtonian theories of the vacuum. Grundy identifies the book's strength in presenting Johnson’s moral vision as a "conception of life as a vast emptiness needing to be filled up." She praises the "exhilarating" analysis of Irene but challenges Hinnant on several points, including his reading of binary oppositions in Rasselas. Grundy disputes Hinnant’s interpretation of The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing that conquerors and suppliants are more similar than the book suggests. While noting "too many misprints," Grundy concludes the work is "provocative and incisive."
Lipking reviews Hinnant’s study of Johnson, which he describes as the first deconstructive analysis of the author, placing Johnson on the side of the vacuum and arguing that he dismantled the principle of plenitude and the great chain of being. Hinnant suggests that Johnson based his work over a void of "ontological insecurity," a mode of analysis where terms of authority are subverted and supplemented by their opposites. The book’s originality lies in applying this critique—first seen in Johnson’s review of Jenyns’s A Free Inquiry—to all his works, suggesting a breakdown of polarities, such as the master/slave relationship in Irene. By viewing Johnson through a postmodern lens that prefigures Hegel, Sartre, and Saussure, Hinnant associates him with later European thought. While Lipking finds the thought shrewd and interesting, he criticizes the poor standard of proofreading, noting over a hundred typographical errors. Furthermore, Lipking notes the book’s distance from the practical, ethical concerns that Johnson valued most, challenging its detachment from actual life and arguing that it tells the reader more about the theory of language than about the practical use of a dictionary.
Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought
Middendorf examines Hudson’s objective to situate Johnson within the "sophistication of an informed individual" of his own century. Hudson disputes the focus on Johnson’s psychological anxiety, arguing instead for his confidence in "Christian orthodoxy." The text associates Johnson with "Christian epicureanism" rather than utilitarianism. Middendorf highlights Hudson’s view of Johnson’s "fundamental conservatism" as the link between his desire for stability and his humanitarian reform efforts. The review notes that Johnson tested belief against "life and experience" without being driven to desperation. It concludes that the book offers a "sensible view" of eighteenth-century contradictions.
Wagoner highlights Hinnant's thesis regarding the analogic relation between Newtonian physics and Johnsonian moral psychology. The review explains that Hinnant views Newton’s rejection of the plenum as the philosophic basis for Johnson’s own rejection of systematic metaphysical certainties. Wagoner identifies Hinnant's analysis of the review of Soame Jenyns as the keystone for interpretations of most major works, excluding literary criticism. Although Wagoner characterizes the prose style as "sometimes dense," the review asserts the ideas are "doubtless seminal" and predicts a significant influence on the field for a generation.
Johnson and the Limits of Biography: Teaching the Life of Savage
Hinnant analyzes the rhetoric of biography in the Life of Savage, noting a clash between literary and historical priorities in Johnson's achievement. He argues that the biography regularly focuses on events where obscure compulsions elude rational understanding and identifies Savage's self-destruction as a willful dissipation of his talents. The essay suggests that Johnson’s Life becomes most literary when encountering the limits of finite observation, such as the mystery of the countess's motives. The work reflects a Lockean sense of the limits of human understanding regarding the innumerable Mixtures of Vice and Virtue in a character.
'Steel for the Mind': Samuel Johnson and Critical Discourse
Clingham reviews Charles Hinnant's “Steel for the Mind”, a book that applies contemporary literary theory—post-structuralism, reader-response, and New Historicism—to Samuel Johnson's critical discourse. Clingham finds the book's aim to "modernize" Johnson promising but ultimately unfulfilled. He criticizes Hinnant's methodology and dense style, which render the arguments opaque and unmemorable. A deeper flaw, Clingham argues, is the book’s assumption that Johnson’s critical principles can be translated into a theoretical position isolated from the specific literary works he discusses. This approach, he contends, fails to illuminate the literature itself and ignores the reciprocal, embodied relationship between the critic and his subject found in Johnson's prose. Clingham concludes that the book, while offering some interesting local readings, ultimately presents a historically detached Johnson and fails to demonstrate his relevance to the present.
Nicholls reviews Sherbo's appraisal of Joseph Epes Brown’s 1926 work, noting that while Sherbo provides "distinguished contributions," the book functions primarily as an appendix. Nicholls observes that Shakespearean criticism dominates seventy percent of the text, incorporating material from the 1773 revisions missed by Brown. The reviewer finds "newly gleaned material" from Allen Hazen’s work on prefaces and dedications helpful but expresses "uneasiness" regarding the inclusion of personal rather than literary opinions. Nicholls praises the use of Donald Greene’s library checklist but notes the Dictionary remains a "terra incognita." He argues that a checklist of Johnson’s reading for the Dictionary would "cast new light" on his vast erudition. Nicholls suggests that scholars still require both Brown and Sherbo, as the new work fails to integrate the two into a single comprehensive structure.
In this positive review, Lynch outlines Charles H. Hinnant’s defense of Johnson against charges of "tepid neoclassicism." Lynch explains how Hinnant presents Johnson as a thinker engaged in critical dialogue rather than a "Great Cham" making "ex cathedra pronouncements." The review notes Hinnant’s use of The Rambler, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets to explore mimesis and canon formation against modern frameworks like New Historicism and semiotics. While Lynch identifies a "curious exclusion" of Johnson’s comments on fiction due to Hinnant's focus on written texts over Boswell’s records, Lynch concludes the study makes an "important contribution" by avoiding excessive claims of anticipating modern theory.
Woodman describes Redford’s final volumes as "meticulous scholarship" and a "superb reading edition" that allows the reader to accompany Johnson on his final journey. He characterizes Hinnant’s study as a "valiant attempt" to connect Johnson’s criticism with modern theory, though finds the claim that Johnson is "dialogic in mode" unconvincing. Woodman concludes that while Hinnant helps elucidate the "complexities and nuances" of Johnson’s mind, the specific contribution to contemporary theory remains unproven.
The A–Z of Johnson's Dictionary: Samuel Johnson Defined Both Language and Life in 18th-Century England
This biographical sketch, organized as an alphabetical compendium, commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Dictionary. Hirst and Roberts survey Johnson's literary output, including The Idler, The Rambler, and Lives of the Poets, while detailing his "personality oddities" and physical courage. The narrative highlights Johnson's complex relationships: his early London journey with David Garrick, his "magisterial rebuke" of Lord Chesterfield's belated patronage, and his "scourging" grief over Elizabeth "Tetty" Johnson. Regarding Boswell, the authors describe his biography as a "warts and all" template that remains "irresistibly readable" despite the biographer's personal failings. The entry for Hester Thrale details her domestic care for Johnson during his depressions and "brief periods of insanity," noting that Johnson viewed her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi as a "betrayal by the second great love of his life." The account also reviews the Dictionary’s production, specifically Johnson's admission of "pure ignorance" concerning his definition of a horse's pastern and his idiosyncratic, politically charged entries for "Oats," "Pension," and "Excise."
Hitchens reviews Martin's biography of Johnson, focusing on the critic’s complex personality, medical pathologies, and profound religious terror. He discusses the ironic misconstruing of Johnson’s aphorisms and provides a detailed account of Johnson’s role in the William Dodd forgery case, clarifying the famous "concentrates his mind" quote. Hitchens emphasizes the importance of Thrale's intervention in Johnson's mental health, noting the debate over the masochism/madness theories, and concludes that Johnson's major literary triumphs arose from his struggle against despair.
Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly.
Bantick reviews Hitchings’s "magisterial" account of the creation of Johnson’s Dictionary, published on the 250th anniversary of the 1755 original. The text characterizes the dictionary as "the most important cultural monument of the eighteenth century," a product of eight years of Herculean labor in a London garret. Bantick highlights Johnson’s "Herculean" effort to define 42,773 entries, driven by national pride to rival the lexicons of France and Italy. The review details Johnson’s "constellation of quirks," including his obsessive collection of orange peel and his compulsion to touch every lamppost on Fleet Street. Hitchings’s structural choice to head chapters with Johnsonian definitions—such as "adventurous" and "factotum"—serves as a springboard to discuss the author's "melancholic" yet opinionated personality. Bantick observes that while Boswell’s 1791 biography popularized the man, Hitchings successfully restores focus to the writer whose "rare flair for language" remains the root of modern lexicography.
Burton's affectionate review recommends Hitchings's study of the 1755 Dictionary as an engaging alternative to owning the rare original. Burton's highlights track Johnson's transition from parliamentary debate writer to a lexicographer who finished in eight years a task that occupied European academies for decades. Burton's review emphasizes the innovation of illustrative quotations, which transformed the lexicon into a "canon of treasurable English authors" and a "giant commonplace book." Burton's praise commends the prose for avoiding rebarbative language while acknowledging the "monumental oeuvre" as an expression of its creator's complex personality. Burton's review identifies the work as a "treasure house" of stories and arcane information.
Carey characterizes Lynch's "beautifully produced" volume of selections as a perfect complement to Hitchings's monograph, particularly for its inclusion of the "moving preface" to the 1755 Dictionary. Carey emphasizes that Lynch's selection showcases the "garish charms" of "low" words—such as "fopdoodle," "giglet," and "jobbernowl"—which underscore the democratic nature of Johnson’s lexicographical project. By highlighting these entries, Carey shows how the edition captures Johnson's shift from a desire to "fix" the language to an acceptance of the "general agreement" of common usage. The reviewer notes that Lynch’s work helps celebrate the 250th anniversary of an achievement that "held the fort for a century and a half," providing a "lucky-dip of wisdom" that reveals the "indisputably real" Johnson over the version popularized by Boswell.
Chisholm reviews Hitchings’s study of the Dictionary of the English Language on its 250th anniversary. The text details the "extraordinary" labor of Johnson, who produced 42,773 definitions and 110,000 illustrative quotations over nine years in his Gough Square garret. Chisholm highlights Johnson’s "clarity, precision and intensity," noting his struggle to "pin down" meanings for words such as "take," "cant," and "lexicographer." The account explores Johnson’s quirky intellectual pursuits, including his chemical experiments at Streatham which caused "much anxiety" for the Thrales. Chisholm disputes Hitchings’s characterization of the work as "an instrument of cultural imperialism," arguing instead that it reflects the "single vision" of a man who was simultaneously an "English bulldog" prejudiced against the Scots and a sympathetic moralist. The review emphasizes that the Dictionary served as the definitive snapshot of 18th-century social life until the advent of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Davis finds Hitchings’s biography of Johnson a "thoroughly engaging" study of the creation of the first English dictionary. The text highlights how Johnson rose to the task of establishing a national reference to satisfy English cultural pride, a project that took eight years despite Johnson’s initial three-year estimate. Davis notes the remarkable "readability" of the 42,000 entries, attributing this to Johnson's "steely wit" and "colossal erudition." The review identifies famous definitions, such as "oats," as evidence of Johnson's sharply drawn social observations. Hitchings employs alphabetized chapter titles derived from the masterwork to navigate Johnson’s life while providing "compelling depictions" of 18th-century London's squalor. Davis observes that the inclusion of historical context, such as Hogarth's Gin Lane, makes the work a "powerfully evocative account" of the era. The biography is presented as a fine chronicle of the "organic nature" of the language.
Setting the Standard [review of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language, by Jack Lynch, and Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, by Henry Hitchings]
Elson reviews Hitchings’s account of Samuel Johnson’s Herculean effort to 'fix the English language' through the creation of the first modern dictionary. Commemorating the 250th anniversary of the 1755 publication, the text describes how Johnson transformed his attic at 17 Gough Square into a workspace, employing six assistants—five of whom were Scots hired out of compassion. Elson highlights the contrast between Johnson’s 'irritable and rude' behavior toward equals and his 'saintly kindness' toward the destitute, noting that his home became a sanctuary for 'lost souls.' The review details the physical and intellectual toll of the project, which took eight years rather than the estimated three and involved 80 notebooks and 140,000 illustrative quotations. Hitchings argues that Johnson’s work was an 'instrument of Empire' that equated proper English with moral rectitude and middle-class ideals. Despite Johnson’s self-perception as 'indolent,' Elson concludes that the Dictionary remains the most important cultural monument of the 18th century, preserved for posterity alongside his 'pithy remarks' by the tireless transcriptions of James Boswell.
The Dictionary transformed Johnson from an "upmarket hack" to the "Grand Cham of literature," a social lion admired for his erudition and eccentricity, the celebrity Boswell later encountered. Fallon details the eight-year task, which Johnson completed after initially refusing the commission, noting that he was paid 1,575 pounds in installments. Johnson, despite having a team, did the majority of the work himself while facing personal distress, including his wife's illness and his own financial strains, which led to his notorious letter rebuking Lord Chesterfield for slighting him. Fallon acknowledges the work's instant critical success and its massive impact abroad, despite its high price and slow initial sales. Fallon notes that Johnson's constant revision of the *Dictionary* largely disproves the myth of his laziness.
Goring’s approving review of Henry Hitchings’s biography of Johnson’s Dictionary praises the work for its refreshing lack of pomposity and light touch. Goring highlights how Hitchings balances lexicographical detail with the personal hardships Johnson endured during the eight-year compilation, including poverty and his wife's death. The review notes that Hitchings avoids caricaturing Johnson as merely a collection of opinionated definitions, instead presenting a sensitive, introspective side to the titan of learning. Goring disputes the idea that Boswell provides the only essential portrait of Johnson, observing that Boswell met him only years after the dictionary appeared. The review emphasizes Hitchings’s ability to convey the majesty of the achievement, characterizing the dictionary as a brilliant mirror of the language. Goring particularly enjoys Hitchings’s exploration of caustic definitions, such as "Patron," which served as revenge against Lord Chesterfield. Ultimately, the review finds that Hitchings captures Johnson’s fizzing intellect without becoming bogged down in philological minutiae.
Hitchings chronicles Samuel Johnson’s nine-year, solitary effort to create the dictionary, a task undertaken after lamentations about the lack of English codification. Johnson distinguished his work by employing extensive literary citations to generate entries, resulting in 42,773 entries upon the first edition's 1755 publication. The reviewer stresses that the resulting book is thoroughly Johnsonian, reflecting his personal quirks, prejudices, and ambition to provide moral instruction alongside linguistic definitions.
Kanter reviews Hitchings's book, which tells three stories: Johnson's life leading to the Dictionary, the Dictionary itself, and the vigorous England reflected in its pages. Hitchings's book, told in 35 alphabetical chapters, conveys London's literal darkness ("narrow streets and dark corners") contrasting with the bustling commercialism around Gough Square. The book focuses on the day-to-day experiences shaping the work. Kanter notes the touching story of the amanuenses' poverty, and how one (likely Peyton) attempted a minor fraud by slipping extra sheets of blank paper to the printer when Johnson's productivity lagged. Hitchings shows Johnson and Chesterfield talked past each other because Johnson realized he could only present the language as it was (a recorder), not fix it (as Chesterfield desired).
Johnston reviews Henry Hitchings's Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. Johnston praises the book's energetic, inventive approach, blending biography with an A-to-Z structure. While appreciating its lively style and engagement with Johnsonian legend, Johnston critiques Hitchings's tendency to portray the Dictionary as an instrument of "cultural imperialism" or "colonial" instincts. Johnston argues this misrepresents Johnson's more complex linguistic practice, noting Adam Smith wished Johnson had been more prescriptive. The book successfully conveys the Dictionary's character but oversimplifies its politics and Johnson's role as linguistic legislator.
Keymer's review of Hitchings's book on Johnson's Dictionary describes the work as a "rich, lively biographical account" that traces Johnson's shift from a prescriptive "linguistic conservative" in the 1747 Plan to a descriptive lexicographer in the 1755 Preface who comprehended language's "inherent fluidity." The review notes Johnson's "heroic defeat" in attempting to "fix a living tongue"—an effort Johnson likened to "lash the wind"—and explores how personal struggles and bereavements informed the "jaundiced, indeed tragic tone" of the Preface. Keymer highlights the "streak of autobiography" Hitchings finds embedded in illustrative quotations and discusses Johnson’s use of "joke definitions" and the "playful exercise in estrangement" found in the definition of network to acknowledge the "inevitable arbitrariness of all definition." While noting minor errors and clichés, Keymer praises the conviction of the case against viewing dictionaries as "repositories of verbal lumber."
A Definitive Guide to Dr. Johnson [review of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, by Henry Hitchings]
Lewis reviews Hitchings' history of Johnson's Dictionary, noting the 250th anniversary of its 1755 publication. Working as a "harmless drudge" in his Gough Square attic, Johnson single-handedly produced 42,773 definitions in seven years. The work serves as both an anthology of prejudices and an authoritative linguistic record. Lewis emphasizes that Johnson's "Anglocentric and male" cast of mind still influences linguistic debates, and notes the dictionary's continued use by American lawyers debating the Constitution.
Lynch identifies Hitchings's success in rendering the history of the Dictionary accessible and compelling for general readers. He emphasizes how Hitchings uses the text to provide a self-portrait of Johnson and an encyclopedia of the mid-eighteenth century. Lynch highlights Hitchings’s scholarly precision and his effective comparison of Johnson’s work with earlier lexicographical efforts. He identifies the book’s primary strength as its ability to bring a technical subject to life without sacrificing detail.
McGrath provides an approving review of Henry Hitchings’s Defining the World, a concise, informative, and entertaining history of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. Characterizing the Dictionary as a "one-man operation" and an idiosyncratic, one-man achievement, McGrath highlights how the work reflects the "prodigious learning," personal biases, and personality of Johnson. The review details Johnson’s struggle to "fix and codify" a living language that proved "variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it," noting that while Johnson’s initial intention was to codify the language, the task ultimately revealed its fluid nature. Published with 42,773 entries, the dictionary reflected the 18th-century passion for taxonomy and remained alphabetical in organization; similarly, Hitchings uses alphabetical dictionary-style chapters to navigate Johnson’s life and work. McGrath stresses that the book's value lies in its idiosyncrasy, containing Johnson’s personal opinions, moralizing, wisecracks, and "chauvinistic" exclusions. Although McGrath finds the biographical elements somewhat fragmented and notes the presence of errors, he commends Hitchings as an "inventive and entertaining guide" to a "personal and idiosyncratic" masterpiece that provides an enduring glimpse into the nature of Johnson’s genius and lexicographical methods.
Miller reviews Henry Hitchings's Defining the World, a book on Johnson's approach to dictionary writing and his daily life. Miller notes that Johnson accepted a consortium of publishers' offer to compile the Dictionary of the English Language in 1746, finishing the first edition's 42,773 entries in nine years with only a few assistants. The review states that Adam Smith praised Johnson's dictionary for being the first to include extensive, illustrative quotations to both define words and edify the reader toward a good Christian life. Miller argues Hitchings misrepresents Johnson's views by implying his monarchist leanings and disapproval of "enthusiasm" were unusual for his time. Despite some objections, the biography is full of engaging details, such as Johnson's playful lexicography and his strong interest in science. The Dictionary served as England's standard lexicon for over a century and was essential reading in the U.S.
Marchand reviews Hitchings’s study of Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), characterizing the work as a 'provocative' monument to the author's 'great good sense.' Highlighting the shift from aristocratic patronage to the mid-18th-century book trade, Marchand notes that Johnson single-handedly compiled the massive volume to provide a 'vast understanding' of English usage. The text explores Johnson’s prescriptive approach, which sought to secure the language from 'the spawn of folly' by standardizing spelling and using illustrative quotations from the literature of the previous 200 years. Marchand cites famous entries, such as those for 'oats,' 'Whig,' and 'network,' to illustrate Johnson’s 'flagrant prejudice' and occasionally absurd Latinate definitions. Despite errors in philology and etymology, Marchand argues that Johnson’s work remains vital, noting that subsequent lexicographers like Webster and the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary 'lifted hundreds of definitions' from the original text. The review also touches upon biographical anecdotes regarding Johnson’s 'amorous propensities' and his principled refusal to quote impious authors.
O’Hagan praises Hitchings for presenting Johnson’s Dictionary as a "lively piece of autobiography" that reflects the author’s moral perspicacity and personal hardships. The review emphasizes Johnson’s role as a "moral educator" who used lexicography to establish a national standard of "Britishness" and grammatical purity. O’Hagan notes that Johnson’s definitions often mirror his life: his childhood scrofula informs the definition of "issue," his tenure at Oxford defines "commoner," and his strained marriage to Tetty colors the entry for "world." While acknowledging Johnson’s prejudices—including his exclusion of "wicked" writers like Bolingbroke and Hobbes to avoid injuring readers—O’Hagan disputes the idea that Boswell fully captured the "dark business" of the Dictionary’s twelve-year labor. He highlights Johnson’s Tory biases and his "detestable" view of Whig leaders, concluding that the Dictionary remains a profound display of human nature and a defining authority for the English-speaking world.
Read commends Hitchings for documenting Johnson's solitary struggle in composing over 42,000 entries under financial and emotional duress. The review notes that Hitchings effectively structures the narrative alphabetically, using selected definitions to explore Johnson's character and 18th-century society. Read praises the book for detailing the Dictionary's importance as a national project and its function as a dialogue between Johnson and his times. Read concludes that Hitchings compellingly presents the Dictionary as a work of literature and historical record, urging the reader to revisit the original text.
Reisz’s approving review of Henry Hitchings’s volume on the 1755 Dictionary characterizes the work as a "personal work" and an "encyclopedia in disguise." Reisz describes how Hitchings combines biographical narrative with social history to analyze Johnson’s techniques, preoccupations, and amanuenses. The review highlights Johnson’s "astonishing" achievement in completing the task in nine years despite illness and depression. Reisz notes Hitchings’s focus on evocative definitions, "risible absurdities" regarding elephants, and "bizarre tales" imported from Sir Thomas Browne. While Reisz finds Hitchings’s exploration of Johnson’s attitudes toward marriage and melancholy "convincing," he suggests that detecting "nostalgia" or "sociability" in specific definitions occasionally proves "far-fetched." Reisz concludes the book will appeal to those interested in the English language.
Self’s enthusiastic review of Henry Hitchings’s "Dr. Johnson's Dictionary" argues that the work successfully rescues its subject from the "mythologising" influence of Boswell. Self notes that Boswell, who met Johnson long after the 1755 publication of the "Dictionary of the English Language," fundamentally misunderstood the lexicographer’s working methods. Hitchings instead presents a portrait of a "Grub Street hack" who rose to prominence through the mid-eighteenth-century explosion of print culture. The review details Johnson's staggering productivity in the 1750s, during which he authored "The Rambler" and numerous other periodicals while simultaneously managing six amanuenses. Self emphasizes Johnson's shift from a prescriptive to a descriptive editorial philosophy as he recognized the "ceaseless motion" of the English language. While acknowledging Johnson’s "High Anglican, Tory sensibilities" as potentially jarring to modern readers, Self praises Hitchings for melding the technical practice of dictionary compilation with a biographical narrative of the first genuine English literary celebrity.
Smith's approving review of Henry Hitchings’s Defining the World argues that Johnson intended his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language as a work to be read rather than merely consulted. Smith notes that while Boswell provides the definitive portrait of Johnson the celebrity, the Life neglects the years of "self-willed privation" spent assembling the Dictionary. The review highlights Johnson’s role as the first English lexicographer to use illustrative quotations—totaling 110,000—to arrange specimens of usage systematically. Smith details the social and political context of the commission, noting that London booksellers viewed a standardized English as a "priceless administrative tool" for the British Empire. He describes Johnson’s methodology of mapping shades of meaning and his preference for descriptive over purely prescriptive lexicography, noting that Johnson sought to "censure, rather than to censor." The review concludes by describing the physical "vast mole" of the first edition, which weighed approximately twenty pounds.
Thomson reviews Hitchings's account of the compilation of Johnson’s Dictionary, emphasizing the work’s "functional clarity" and enduring influence. Thomson describes Johnson as a "John Bull" figure who rejected "modish French words" in favor of pickpocket vernacular and metropolitan slang, such as "dandiprat" and "fopdoodle." The text notes the project’s scope, encompassing over 42,000 entries between 1747 and its 1755 publication. Thomson highlights Hitchings's engaging portrayal of the "drudgery" involved in the Dictionary’s creation within the "teeming humanity" of Fleet Street. The review characterizes the book as a "charming" and "crisp history" of the foundational lexicographical achievement that "defined the world."
Alphabet Coup: Samuel Johnson Was Motivated by What He Called 'the Exuberance of Signification' in His Mission to Compile the First Comprehensive English Dictionary
Hitchings examines the composition and legacy of the Dictionary of the English Language on its 250th anniversary. The article disputes Boswell's claim in the Life of Johnson regarding the sequence of lexicographical labor, arguing instead that Johnson generated his wordlist from 2,000 "perused" books rather than preceding the illustrations with definitions. Hitchings chronicles the move to 17 Gough Square, the employment of six amanuenses, and the shift from prescriptive to descriptive lexicography necessitated by the "exuberance of signification." The narrative details Johnson's personal struggles during the nine-year project, including his wife’s medical expenses and the "menagerie of oddballs" inhabiting his home. Hitchings notes Johnson's use of Piozzi’s library and his specific definitions, such as the retaliatory entry for "patron." The account concludes by tracing the dictionary's influence on British identity, its rejection by Noah Webster, and its surprising endurance as a linguistic authority for the United States Constitution.
Holmes provides a psychological and 'Romantic' biography of the intense friendship between Samuel Johnson and the notorious poet Richard Savage in 1730s London. He characterizes their bond as a 'puzzling relationship' between a youthful 'Faust' and an 'urbane Mephistopheles' that fundamentally shaped Johnson's literary future and his approach to the biographical form. Holmes argues that Johnson’s Life of Savage was 'the biography of a biography,' creating a 'new hybrid, non-fiction form' that challenged the 18th-century novel by prioritizing 'empathy before judgement.' The study emphasizes their 'invisible friendship' and nocturnal wanderings—'walking and arguing through a labyrinth of dark night streets'—as a shared experience of 'starving merit' and 'outcast' status. Holmes explores how Savage's 'magical fascination' and his 'gift for self-invention' enchanted Johnson, leading the future lexicographer to see a 'version of his own literary future' in his friend's struggles. Holmes depicts this relationship as a 'transforming experience' that heralds the Romantic age, moving biography from classical models to a modern genre focused on 'human truth, poised between fact and fiction.' Prologue addresses the profound literary and psychological significance of the seven quotations from Richard Savage that Samuel Johnson included in his Dictionary, suggesting these selections serve as a form of unconscious association-test revealing the nature of their puzzling relationship. Chapter 1, 'Death,' examines the mysterious public reputation of Savage at the time of his 1743 demise and establishes the book's purpose as a "biography of a biography," investigating how Johnson’s foundational 1744 account shaped the enduring legend of the poet as a tragic, persecuted outcast. Chapter 2, 'Love,' explores Johnson’s early years in London and Lichfield, arguing that his own profound emotional frustrations, failed marriage, and "dream of princesses" made him uniquely vulnerable and sympathetic to Savage’s wilder romantic fantasies. Chapter 3, 'Night,' analyzes the iconic legend of the pair’s nocturnal wanderings through London, suggesting that while the stories vary in their comic or political emphasis, they represent the pivotal moment when Johnson discovered a new form of intimate life-writing rooted in shared exclusion. Chapter 4, 'Mother,' scrutinizes Johnson’s uncritical adoption of Savage’s narrative regarding his aristocratic birth and the "motiveless malignity" of his supposed mother, Lady Macclesfield, noting that Johnson’s fierce defense often relied on partial sources and his own identification with the theme of rejection. Chapter 5, 'Bard,' details Savage’s surprising temporary ascent into elite literary circles and his Richmond "rural retirement," where he collaborated with poets like James Thomson to develop an aesthetic of the "Sublime" that reflected his own interior spiritual landscapes. Chapter 6, 'Murder,' re-examines the 1727 coffee-house brawl that resulted in Savage’s conviction for murder, contrasting the vivid, damning prosecution testimony with Johnson’s masterly but highly adversarial defense of his friend as a victim of calamity rather than a perpetrator of crime. Chapter 7, 'Fame,' tracks Savage's strategic use of his trial and the publication of The Bastard to extort financial support through public scandal, ultimately achieving a state of "guilty enchantment" over the London literati. Chapter 8, 'Friendship,' investigates the collapse of Savage's relationship with his patron Lord Tyrconnel and his subsequent descent back into Grub Street poverty, which coincided with the beginning of his intense two-year intimacy with the young, unknown Johnson. Chapter 9, 'Arcadia,' follows Savage's final journey to Wales and Bristol, where he continued to play the role of the injured genius and "unacknowledged legislator" while languishing in a debtors' prison until his death. Chapter 10, 'Charon,' reflects on the biographer’s role as a "ferryman" between past and present, concluding that Johnson’s Life of Savage transformed popular English narrative forms into a modern biographical genre defined by empathy and moral scrutiny. Critics are generally favorable, praising the work as a brilliantly imaginative "biography of a biography" that successfully extracts its subject's radical, bohemian youth from the distorting shadow of traditional portraiture. Gray, in AJ, celebrates the volume as a narrative masterpiece and a deeply persuasive psychological study of early provincial struggles. In the LRB, Bayley joins other prominent reviewers in applauding how the text humanizes a shadowy period of history through empathetic insight. Nokes, writing in the TLS, deems the work a chiaroscuro masterpiece that uses fine critical empathy to fill documentary gaps, framing the central relationship as a crucial foundation for modern, intimate life-writing. In the NYTBR, Rogers commends the deconstruction of traditional biographical myths to recover a fraught, uncertain figure, though he notes that the evidence for a romanticized, archetypal reading of the circle is occasionally thin. But Davis offers a highly critical perspective in Modern Age, faulting the narrative for overemphasizing empathy at the expense of rigorous biographical judgment and censuring its clumsy psychological speculations. Turning to major metropolitan newspapers, Ackroyd in the LA Times enthusiastically praises the recapturing of Grub Street reality, Dirda in the Washington Post applauds the exploration of how empathy revolutionized the genre, and Taylor in the Boston Globe values the subversion of the conventional oracular sage archetype. Finally, reviews in general periodicals like Publishers Weekly and Booklist reinforce this positive consensus, naming it an outstanding, splendid, and eminently readable contribution to historical detection.
Reviews: Peter Ackroyd, LA Times, August 28, 1994; J. T. Barbarese, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 4, 1994; Janet Barron, New Statesman and Society 6, no. 275 (1993): 37; John Bayley, LRB 15, no. 21 (1993): 7–8; Booklist 90, no. 21 (1994): 1916; Charles A. Brady, Buffalo News, October 9, 1994; David Brussat, Providence Journal, November 13, 1994; Kate Chisholm, Times Educational Supplement, no. 4091 (1994): SS13; Gale E. Christianson, Albion 27, no. 1 (1995): 131–33; Anthony Curtis, Financial Times, October 16, 1993; Matthew M. Davis, Modern Age 39, no. 1 (1997): 73–76; Frank Delaney, Sunday Express, October 24, 1993; Michael Dirda, Washington Post, September 4, 1994; David Ellis, CQ 23, no. 4 (1994): 384–88; James Gray, AJ 7 (1996): 447–51; Kevin Hart, The Age (Melbourne), January 15, 1994; Christopher Hawtree, Times Educational Supplement, no. 4036 (1993): SS11; David Isaacson, Jerusalem Post Magazine, February 10, 1996; Paul Johnson, The Spectator 271, no. 8625 (1993): 32–33; Joseph F. Keppler, Seattle Times, October 23, 1994; Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1994; Rhoda Koenig, Vogue, August 1994; Peter Lewis, The Times (London), October 13, 1993; John L. Mahoney, Southern Humanities Review 30, no. 2 (1996): 181–83; Andrew Motion, The Observer (London), October 3, 1993; Elaine Kalman Naves, The Gazette (Montreal), June 10, 1995; David Nokes, TLS, no. 4726 (October 1993): 11–12; Phoebe Pettingell, New Leader 77, no. 10 (1994): 14; Publishers Weekly, August 1, 1994; Anthony Quinn, The Independent, January 15, 1994; John Richetti, Newsday, September 15, 1994; Pat Rogers, NYTBR, September 4, 1994; Joseph Rosenblum, Library Journal 119, no. 12 (1994): 102; Peter Schwendener, American Scholar 64, no. 3 (1995): 467–70; Stephen Smith, Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 4, 1995; Robert Taylor, Boston Globe, September 11, 1994; Alexander Theroux, Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1994; Colin Walters, Washington Times, September 4, 1994, B6; Edward T. Wheeler, Commonweal 121, no. 19 (1994): 32; John Whitehead, Country Life 187, no. 44 (1993): 117.
Ackroyd's enthusiastic review of Holmes's Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage examines the "conundrum" of the 1730s friendship between the "Great Cham" and the disreputable poet. Ackroyd highlights Holmes's argument that the young, "shambling" Johnson identified with Savage’s status as a social outcast to escape his own provincial failures and thwarted ambitions. The review describes the pair as "twin subversives" whose nocturnal London walks fueled a shared radicalism and provided Johnson with an education in the city’s "darker secrets." Ackroyd notes that Holmes provides an "instructive corrective" to the literary legends popularized in Johnson's 1744 biography, suggesting Savage was likely a "dangerous, unstable" blackmailer rather than a victimized nobleman. While Boswell later dismissed Savage as a profligate, Holmes contends that Johnson’s insecurity led him to collude in a "romantic fictionalization" of his friend’s plight. Ackroyd praises Holmes for recapturing the "living figures" of eighteenth-century Grub Street and demonstrating how Johnson’s "Life of Savage" transformed a dissipated criminal into a mythical literary archetype.
Barton evaluates Holmes’s study of the relationship between Johnson and Savage, characterizing it as a "biography of a biography." The text explores how Savage’s persona as a persecuted genius influenced Johnson’s early development and his 1744 "Life of Savage." Barton highlights Holmes’s reconstruction of the "invisible" friendship between the two men in 1730s London, including their "nocturnal perambulations" and shared Jacobite sympathies. The reviewer notes Holmes’s use of "skills and crafts and sensible magic" to maintain critical distance while seeking "troubled empathy." Barton finds the work "arrestingly different," particularly in its investigation of Savage’s disputed parentage and the "Murder" trial of 1727. Holmes’s portrayal of a young, socially indignant Johnson challenges traditional moderate depictions, emphasizing Johnson’s role as "counsel for the defense" for his "self-deluded" friend.
Shreffer's enthusiastic review praises Richard Holmes's study of the improbable bond between Johnson and Richard Savage. Shreffer notes that Holmes examines Savage's disordered life, complex personality, and convicted murder charge, focusing on how these elements affected the young schoolmaster after his 1737 arrival in London. The review highlights Holmes's thematic chapters, including "Murder," "Fame," and "Arcadia," which examine the symbolic and psychological weight Savage held for Johnson. Shreffer commends Holmes for providing a steady stream of insights into Hanoverian London, calling the biography a splendid, thought-provoking book.
Brady’s approving review of Richard Holmes’s Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage characterizes the work as an ambitious "biography of a biography" that analyzes the complex relationship between Johnson and Richard Savage in 1730s London. Brady notes Holmes’s skepticism regarding Savage’s claims of noble parentage, suggesting Savage was "genuinely deluded" rather than a conscious impostor. The review highlights Holmes’s examination of the 1727 murder trial and the subsequent royal pardon, contrasting Johnson’s account of Queen Caroline’s intervention with Holmes’s identification of Lord Tyrconnell as the key figure. Brady observes that Holmes "blows hot and cold" on Johnson’s biographical methods, criticizing his lack of research while praising his role in creating a modern English genre. The review emphasizes the "Jekyll-Hyde" dynamic of the friendship, exploring how the virtuous Johnson found a mentor in the cynical, corrupt Savage during their shared nights in the city.
Christianson calls the study acclaimed and finds Holmes successfully dissects Johnson's love for Savage, who served as a fellow wounded spirit and early role model. Holmes convincingly sets forth the most plausible interpretations of motives in this "invisible friendship" that lacked primary sources. Christianson notes Holmes ultimately forgives Johnson's failings as a biographer because he was the first of the Romantics to ply the craft. However, the review notes historians must face the reality that facts tortured or overlooked by a genius remain denied.
Ellis finds Holmes's examination of Johnson's Life of Savage well-written and artfully constructed. He praises Holmes's new angles of vision and scholarly care, especially in using the Savage trial transcript, but he doubts Holmes's identification of Savage as "Thales" in London. Ellis judges Holmes's willingness to take Savage's poetry seriously a major strength.
In this enthusiastic review, Keppler praises Richard Holmes for unravelling the mystery of the relationship between Johnson and the poet Richard Savage. Keppler highlights how Holmes "defrocks the mythic figure" of Johnson by examining his formative years spent on the "wild side" with Savage, a man Keppler identifies as a pardoned murderer. Keppler observes that Johnson played "fast and loose with the facts" in his own biography of Savage to create an image of a "persecuted, misunderstood bard". The review concludes that Holmes provides a profound reassessment of biographical principles by presenting a Johnson distinct from the "eccentric gentleman" later immortalized by Boswell.
Nokes's review of Holmes's biographical study describes a "chiaroscuro masterpiece" and "biography of biography" focused on the shadowy relationship between Johnson and Savage. Holmes portrays Savage as a "dark alter ego" or "unacknowledged id" for the author, suggesting the two created an intensely atmospheric world during "invisible night-walks" and nocturnal London encounters. The review highlights Holmes's use of empathy to fill documentary gaps, such as the absence of letters, arguing the narrative of Savage as a persecuted victim was a mythic creation based on self-identification. This led a young, neurotic author to whitewash Savage's reputation by omitting incriminating evidence of extortion and blurring inconvenient facts in the Life of Savage. While Nokes points out minor quibbles regarding proof-reading and historical dates, he notes the work seizes on these night-walks as the foundation for a new form of intimate life-writing.
The reviewer describes Holmes’s work as an "outstanding, eminently readable" study of the "enigmatic friendship" between Johnson and Richard Savage. Synthesizing sources from Boswell to modern scholarship, Holmes argues that the young, "impressionable" Johnson was "enchanted" by Savage’s persona as a "persecuted and disenfranchised genius." The narrative recounts Savage’s "lurid" life, including claims of noble illegitimacy, a tavern killing, and his eventual death in a debtor's prison. The reviewer notes that Holmes provides "keen insights into the art of biography" and evocative descriptions of the "Grub Street coffee houses" and "oppositional politics" of 18th-century London.
Quinn reviews Holmes's study of the 1737–1739 intimacy between Johnson and Savage. The text examines how this "invisible" friendship, lacking extant correspondence, influenced the 1744 Life of Savage. Quinn highlights Johnson’s identification with Savage as a Romantic outsider and explores the poet’s claims of noble bastardy and his 1727 murder trial. The review emphasizes the tension between Johnson’s personal loyalty and his biographical realization of Savage’s moral untrustworthiness. Quinn commends Holmes for analyzing how Johnson’s empathy revolutionized life-writing by addressing universal human failure and psychological struggle.
Rogers's review of Holmes's Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage examines the "invisible friendship" between Johnson and the "dissolute and dangerous" Richard Savage in the late 1730s. Rogers argues that Holmes successfully "deconstructs" the confident figure created by Boswell to recover a "shadowy, fraught and uncertain" youthful Johnson. The review analyzes the Life of Savage (1744) as the first psychobiography, wherein Johnson acted as an "advocate for the defense" for his friend, who was convicted of murder. Rogers critiques Holmes’s Romanticized interpretation of Savage as a "symbolic outsider" and "Outcast Poet," noting that the evidence for such an archetypal reading is occasionally thin. The narrative highlights Johnson's "self-identification" with Savage's perceived injustice and social marginalization. Rogers concludes that the study provides subtle insights into why Johnson was drawn to biography as an art to "ferry reputations over 'the dark river of Oblivion.'"
Holmes's book explores the theory and practice of biography as a literary form by examining Johnson's 1744 Life of Mr. Richard Savage. Holmes argues Johnson transformed Savage, a minor poet, into an image of "the Outcast," accepting unverified sources like the "Newgate" booklet and ignoring Savage's "double-life." Johnson's intense will to truth was superseded by the commercial and aesthetic demands of a "new hybrid, non-fiction form." Holmes believes biography is essentially a Romantic form, and Johnson's friendship with Savage first crystallized its perils and possibilities, such as the blurring of fact and fiction.
Theroux's enthusiastic review of Holmes's Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage examines the enigmatic 1730s friendship between the two men. Theroux highlights Holmes's central argument that Savage represents a "dark and strangely ambiguous" side of Johnson, rooted in their shared experiences of poverty, rejection, and urban isolation. The review notes that Johnson’s 1744 Life of Savage serves as both a moral allegory and a "remarkable apologia" for a man who was simultaneously a poet and a murderer. Theroux emphasizes Holmes’s conjecture that Johnson’s poem London renders the impact of their all-night walks through the city. Boswell is depicted as a jealous commentator who retrospectively judged the relationship as a corrupting influence on Johnson’s virtuous mind. Theroux praises Holmes for using "intuitive detective work" and empathy to explore a friendship lacking standard biographical evidence, such as letters or journals. The review concludes that Holmes successfully mirrors Johnson’s own innovative biographical technique by critically relating an author’s life to their work while maintaining a "largely positive" and insightful narrative tone.
Wheeler reviews Holmes’s Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage, which examines the 'profoundly affecting relationship' between a young Johnson and the notorious poet Savage. The review highlights Holmes’s 'Jekyll and Hyde pairing' of the two men, suggesting that Johnson’s empathy for the 'gifted outcast' Savage crystallized the 'perils and its possibilities' of modern biography. Wheeler notes that Johnson's Life of Richard Savage created a 'new hybrid, no-fiction form' and identifies Johnson’s own physical disfigurements and 'desperate' need for friendship as key motivators for his devotion. The text argues that Holmes successfully balances 'broad observation and piquant detail' to provide a psychological understanding of a version of Johnson that Boswell never knew.
Lynch criticizes Horgan for a dry, derivative approach that fails to satisfy either students or specialists. He objects to Horgan’s reliance on outdated scholarship and over-long quotations, noting that the work ignores significant recent developments in Johnson studies. While Horgan attempts to reconstruct Johnson’s linguistic theory across major works, Lynch concludes the analysis oversimplifies complexities and lacks original insight, rendering it useful only for comprehensive research libraries.
McDermott challenges Horgan's "systematic" presentation of Johnson's linguistic observations, citing "simple sloppiness" and a lack of grasp on Johnsonian scholarship. The text disputes Horgan's claim that Johnson's "boundless chaos of a living speech" refers only to oral language, noting its application to language in general. McDermott further exposes Horgan's "misunderstanding" of the Plan of the Dictionary, specifically regarding the nuances of "boundless ocean" and "open lawns." The review identifies the book as an "inadequate introduction" characterized by "slackness of thought."
Hothem uses Johnson's writings to teach college composition, arguing his candid discussion of the writing life is highly relevant. Johnson's deliberate and disciplined approach is a model, with his diaries detailing efforts to avoid idleness, regulate sleep, and oppose laziness. Students find trans-historical group therapy in Johnson's painful honesty about time "lost in idleness," depression, and repeated failed resolutions. Johnson's frequent "meta-writing" in *Adventurer* 138, on fleeting inspiration and writing as an "effort of slow diligence," externalizes common authorial fears like "overwhelm-ment." Johnson also complicates contemporary issues of **procrastination** (*Rambler* 134) and **plagiarism** (*Rambler* 143), ultimately assuring writers in *Adventurer* 137 that diversifying knowledge is a useful end, creating a sense of community for those whose readers understand them.
I'll Never Tire of Johnson: Great Man Led Band of Artists ... with an Irish Genius at the Fore
A short, impressionistic introduction to Johnson, Garrick, and Goldsmith.
Dr. Samuel Johnson Letter to Girl, 12, Expected to £12,000 [sic]
Howard reports on the discovery of a three-page letter written by Johnson in July 1783 to 12-year-old Sophia Thrale, found in a Gloucestershire library. Previously considered lost and listed as "location unknown," the letter features the elderly lexicographer praising Sophia’s "proficiency in arythmetick" and encouraging her to "buy books" once she has exhausted her tutor's knowledge. Johnson notes that "nothing amuses more harmlessly than computation" and directs her to Wilkins’s Real Character to study calculations regarding Noah's Ark. The article contextualizes the correspondence within Johnson's intimate, sometimes "flirtatious," relationship with Hester Thrale, whose second marriage to Piozzi caused a temporary rupture in their 1765–1783 bond. Howard highlights the archival significance of the find, which was auctioned alongside 30 unpublished letters between Hester and Sophia. The text also revisits Johnson’s achievement with the 1755 Dictionary and his 1762 royal pension used for travels with Boswell.
A selection of approximately 800 words from the Dictionary, with definitions and illustrations related to literary discourse. The volume aims to circulate core sections of Johnson's lexicon for students of literature and writing. It includes entries (idea, nature, reason are examples) that constitute the philosophical groundwork of Johnson's critical thought. The edition retains all illustrative quotations for the definitions presented. Harp organizes the material to aid study of critical terminology evolution. Johnson's semantic deductions sometimes appear through the inclusion of derivatives. Critics noted the project risks misrepresentation because the Dictionary registers accepted usage, reflecting the meaning others attached to terms, not necessarily Johnson’s ultimate critical application in later compositions. Reviewers observe omissions of certain terms (e.g., harsh) and dispute the completeness of the selection criteria. The introduction was judged to exhibit a post-Romantic perspective on literary concepts.
Basney finds the title 'a little deceptive' because the *Dictionary* records what others meant by terms, not what Johnson himself made of them in later works. He questions the word-list selection, noting the inclusion of obscure terms like 'acatalectic' while 'crucial' ones like 'admire' are missing. Basney suggests that anyone 'seriously interested' in Johnson's critical terms must use the full Dictionary as a 'starting-point.' He concludes that while the collection suggests an 'interesting idea,' it proves 'not, in practice, very helpful.'
DeMaria describes Hart's book as five meditations on the idea of Johnson post-mortem, focusing on his representation by biographers and critics, particularly Boswell, whose Life is seen as initiating Johnson's "entombment." The reviewer critiques Hart's meditative, associative style—marked by puns, authorial intrusion, repetition, and focus on death/names—as inappropriate for Johnson, citing Johnson's own parody of the form. Hart's apparent lack of engagement with Johnson's actual writings is noted. The book is faulted for digressions, typographical errors, weak footnotes, and posturing. While acknowledging Hart addresses the phenomenon of Johnson's reception, DeMaria finds the approach lacks appreciation for Johnson himself.
Evans traces the concept of 'nature' from antiquity to the eighteenth century, arguing that Johnson’s use of the term presupposes a 'metaphysical entity' rather than a materialist one. This 'nature' serves as the 'keystone of his aesthetic theory,' balancing reality with 'imaginative literary fictions.' Rounce observes that Evans effectively uses Johnson's Shakespearean criticism to illustrate a 'practical engagement with an impossible task,' as the theological sense of 'nature' remains 'indefinable but permanent.'
Venturo's study is a "Johnsonian" text, focusing on Johnson's own writings rather than Boswell's portrait. It examines Johnson's entire poetic output, including his translations, epitaphs, prologues, and Latin poems. The book argues that Johnson was "at war with the classics" even while imitating them, and his later switch to shorter verse may stem from his disgust with booming sentimentalist poetry. Venturo suggests that Johnson did not devote more of his life to poetry because he could not invest it with the emotional importance of arduous enterprises like the Dictionary.
Disaffected Parties: Political Estrangement and the Making of English Literature, 1760–1830
Literary Leviathans: Johnson, Boswell, and the 1790s
Havard examines the construction of Johnson as a figure of literary and social authority during the 1790s, particularly through the lens of Boswell’s monumental biography. The analysis contrasts Johnson’s "unruly authorial persona" and "erratic Toryism" with Boswell’s efforts to reinvent him as a stabilizing force for a counter-revolutionary national identity. Havard suggests the Life of Johnson (1791) smoothed away "factious energies" from Johnson’s political history, such as his responses to the American Revolution and Wilkite unrest, to create a mythic "Monarch of Literature." By situating Johnson within an autonomous, quietistic literary domain, Boswell attempted to harmonize national feeling and establish a "linchpin for the emergent Toryism of the early nineteenth century." However, Havard argues that Johnson’s "wayward" temperament and "pugnacious expression of views" continued to disrupt fixed distinctions between literary and political domains, as seen in contemporary challenges to Johnsonian authority like the 1778 dialogue with Knowles.
Parker examines Harari's thesis regarding Johnson's influence on Lessing's "Hamburgische Dramaturgie." The review notes that while both critics shared common ground in Aristotelian theory particularly the connection between fear and pity—the evidence for direct influence remains "highly speculative." Parker argues that bringing these "great minds" together provides a way to view their historical situation as central to the nature of mimesis rather than merely transitional.
Literary Authors, Parliamentary Reporters: Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Dickens
Johnson's parliamentary reports must be understood as a blend of fact and fiction shaped by the journalistic marketplace. The magazines competed by adopting distinct styles: The London Magazine offered longer, fewer speeches, while the Gentleman's Magazine, under Johnson, prioritized breadth of coverage and provided the "principal proportions" and "characteristical strokes" of every speech. The reports required creative invention, yet were founded on factual material, including the correct order of speakers and specific phrases verified by external notes. Johnson's most celebrated pieces, like Walpole's final address, emerge from this technique, using rhetorical flair and structural cohesion to enhance a factual core, ultimately being a journalistic triumph over a literary one.
Reid reviews Cannon’s historical study, which places Johnson in the "mainstream" of eighteenth-century opinion rather than at the reactionary margins. He notes Cannon’s "shrewd and informative" chapters on Jacobitism and the constitution. Reid observes that Cannon portrays Johnson as a "man of reason" and a "reliable guide" to ideological currents. However, he disputes Cannon’s tendency to "neglect the non-rational" and "darker, more troubled" aspects of Johnson’s spiritual life. Reid argues that by focusing on Johnson’s "pragmatism" and "Whiggish valuing of progress," Cannon risks underplaying the "role of feeling in politics" and the complexities of Jacobite identity. He concludes that the work provocatively asserts that the period can be "plausibly be described as 'Johnson's England'."
Johnson and Gender: Special Issue of South Central Review
This special issue explores the dynamic topic of Johnson and gender through three main approaches: Johnson’s attitudes toward women, the study of his female contemporaries, and the application of contemporary gender theory to his works. The introduction and several essays focus on refuting the supposed “myth of Johnson’s misogyny.” Donald Greene questions the authenticity of certain quotable remarks in Boswell’s Life and demonstrates Johnson’s serious textual engagement with women’s issues. Other contributors examine figures like Elizabeth Carter and Hester Piozzi, illustrating how Boswell’s text diminished the importance of literary women in Johnson’s life. Tara Ghoshal Wallace also provides a gendered analysis of Rasselas.
Hanley reviews Hinnant’s "innovative" study, which argues for Johnson’s "enduring critical relevance" to contemporary literary theory. The reviewer highlights Hinnant’s argument that Johnson’s "associationism" prefigures Derridean "iterability" and that his views on language echo deconstructionist concerns. Hanley observes that Hinnant disputes the "universalism" often attributed to Johnson, instead presenting him as a precursor to New Historicism who viewed texts as "products of particular cultures." The review notes that "reading 'Steel for the Mind' may be about as challenging" as following international politics, but characterizes the work as "indispensable" for committed scholars. Hanley concludes that Hinnant makes a "vigorous case" for the complexity of Johnson's convictions, asserting that his literary criticism "informs modern theories in significant ways."
Hitchings explores the literary and intellectual relationship between Johnson and Browne, emphasizing Johnson's critical contribution and his methodology in compiling the Dictionary. It examines significant affinities between the two writers, including their shared intellectual interests and commitment to Christian morality and natural philosophy. The analysis maps Johnson’s extensive use of Browne's works in the Dictionary through illustrative quotations, determining the knowledge fields they delineate and illustrating Johnson's critical priorities. Finally, it assesses the influence of Johnson's critique on Browne's nineteenth-century reception.
Murchie celebrates the 250th anniversary of the publication of Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language." Drawing on an interview with Henry Hitchings, the article details the eight-year composition of the 1755 folio in a London garret, noting Johnson's use of six assistants. Murchie highlights specific definitions that reveal Johnson's "own prejudices" and humor, including his entries for "oats," "patron," "lexicographer," and "dull." The account contrasts Johnson’s solitary, "authoritative presence" with the later collaborative effort of the "Oxford English Dictionary," while noting that 1,700 of his original definitions persist in modern lexicography. Hitchings discusses Johnson’s "fastidious" research process, involving the reading of approximately 2,000 books to find usage examples, and identifies errors such as the identical definitions for "leeward" and "windward." The article concludes by mentioning the Royal Mint’s commemorative 50-pence coin and the publication of Hitchings’s monograph on the subject.
Berglund finds the book lively and readable, appealing to general and scholarly audiences. The premise is that Johnson's Dictionary is a portrait of the man and the nation. While the early biographical chapters are predictable, the focus on the challenges of lexicography is absorbing and original, making the book an excellent introduction to the craft. Berglund particularly praises Hitchings's argument that Johnson's art of definition, with its "estrangement" of familiar words, aimed for "philosophical lexicography" and intellectual stimulation rather than just providing comfort.
The Dictionary Men: Their Lives and Times
Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784: A Dictionary of the English Language
This biographical narrative chronicles Johnson's trajectory from a precocious, physically afflicted child in Lichfield to the preeminent lexicographer of the eighteenth century. Holder attributes Johnson's scholarly development to his early access to literature in his father's bookshop and his formative education at Pembroke College, Oxford. The narrative details his difficult marriage to Elizabeth Porter, his subsequent move to London with David Garrick, and his involvement in parliamentary reporting for the Gentleman's Magazine. Holder emphasizes the influence of the disreputable Richard Savage on Johnson's maturing political and social views, which eventually permeated the definitions and citations in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. The account describes the logistical challenges of the dictionary project, including Johnson's reliance on Nathaniel Bailey's earlier work and the employment of six amanuenses. Holder highlights Johnson's reliance on late-life friendships with Boswell and the Thrales, who provided the social validation and domestic comfort he craved. The chapter concludes by portraying Johnson as a central catalyst of the "Age of Enlightenment," whose work reflected and shaped the intellectual freedom of his era.
Gray reviews Richard Holmes’s "highly evocative" and "brilliantly imaginative" account of the 1737–1739 friendship between Johnson and Richard Savage. He praises Holmes for re-creating the "nocturnal London" they shared, characterizing the work as a "narrative masterpiece" that functions as both a biography and a psychological study of Johnson’s early years. Gray notes Holmes's insight into how Savage served as a "catalyst" for Johnson’s development, providing him with a "living example" of the poet as a social outcast and moral observer. The review highlights Holmes’s sensitive treatment of Johnson’s later *Life of Savage*, which Gray identifies as a "monument of friendship" that allowed Johnson to process his own early struggles with poverty and "social marginality." Gray disputes the notion that Holmes’s imaginative reconstructions overstep scholarly bounds, arguing instead that they provide a "deeply persuasive" vision of Johnson’s transition from a "penniless provincial" to a formidable man of letters.
A Tortuous Tale of Drugs, Infatuation and Madness: After 300 Years, Samuel Johnson's Story Remains Unmatched as a Life Lived to the Full
This review examines recent biographical treatments of Johnson, arguing that while his books remain largely unread, his life story maintains a strong grip on the public imagination. Howse argues that Boswell's Life created an image of Johnson as a declaiming bear, obscuring the darker realities of his existence, including his wife's laudanum addiction and their frustrated relationship. The review explores Johnson’s lifelong struggles with debt, depression, and his fear of madness, noting his dependence on the intellectual companionship of Thrale and his frustration following her remarriage. Howse contrasts the biographical focus on Johnson's afflictions with the enduring power of his literary work, particularly Lives of the Poets.
Don't Take the Low Road [Review of BBC2's Tour of the Western Isles with Coltrane and Sessions]
Howard evaluates the BBC 2 film adaptation of the Tour of the Western Isles, characterizing Johnson and Boswell as the "best double act in literature." He notes the film is "loosely based" on the journals and introduces fictional elements, such as a black manservant named Joseph. Howard identifies the "wit and wisdom" of the conversations as central to the jaunt’s enduring appeal. While acknowledging the production may be a "travesty" for purists, he argues that the "too, too solid flesh" of the subjects is better served by Coltrane’s "gruffness" than by "saints or immortals." He concludes that bringing the most "human of great men" back to imaginary life may introduce new readers to the delights of the original journals.
In the Great Linguistic Debate, Both Sides Claim Dr. Johnson, and Rightly So
Howard examines the linguistic debate sparked by Aitchison's Reith lectures, noting that both prescriptivists and descriptivists "claim Dr. Johnson and rightly so." Howard observes that Johnson began the Dictionary intending to "preserve the purity" of English but concluded that such an aim was a "will-o-the-wisp." Consequently, Johnson’s Preface shifts focus to "not form, but register the language." Howard identifies Aitchison as following this master’s footsteps by recording "shifting language" rather than "laying down rules." The text suggests Johnson would have found Aitchison "fundamentally sensible."
General and Invariable Ideas of Nature: Joshua Reynolds and His Critical Descendants
Howe traces Reynolds's aesthetic of "general and invariable ideas of nature" from his Discourses, arguing the concept derives from Italian Renaissance criticism and a selective reading of Johnson. Reynolds's emphasis on general beauty, which he connects to Platonic "central form" and moral virtue, contrasts with Johnson's more balanced view embracing both universal and particular truths. Later critics, including Blake and Hazlitt, attacked Reynolds's theory, reacting against the omission of minute particulars, a move Hazlitt argued misrepresented Johnson's principles. The critique reflects a broader debate on abstraction versus particularity, demonstrating the contested lineage of Johnson's ideas.
Hoyle previews Johnson and Boswell — Late but Live, a double act premiering at the Traverse Theatre during the Edinburgh Fringe. The show, devised by the team behind Jerry Springer: The Opera (co-written and directed by Stewart Lee), attempts to prove that the 18th-century literary figure Samuel Johnson can succeed as a modern comic. Director Stewart Lee explains that the goal is to "take the dust off" Johnson's timeless, punchy, and often rude wit by using extracts from Johnson and Boswell’s contrasting accounts of their 1773 tour of the Hebrides. The modern setting involves Boswell persuading Johnson to visit Edinburgh to relaunch their travel books. Lee portrays Johnson as a comic genius in slight decline, capable of brilliance (like Peter Cook), and Boswell as a fan (like Jonathan Ross) who mainly wanted to record Johnson being rude. Lee notes the humor includes original Johnsonian lines alongside new material written in his style.
Studies in the Moral and Religious Thought of Johnson
Hudson analyzes Johnson’s intellectual position within the diverse currents of eighteenth-century philosophy. Hudson argues that Johnson’s thought was characterized by a fundamental tension between his commitment to Anglican orthodoxy and his empirical, often pessimistic observation of human nature. The study explores Johnson’s critique of the "optimism" of writers like Alexander Pope and Soame Jenyns, highlighting his insistence on the reality of human suffering and the limitations of human reason. Hudson examines Johnson’s moral philosophy, particularly his views on free will, benevolence, and the social contract, as responses to the works of Locke, Mandeville, and Hume. Furthermore, the monograph investigates Johnson’s approach to religious belief, interpreting his "fearful" faith as a byproduct of his rationalist demands for evidence in an age of increasing secularization. By analyzing the Rambler, Rasselas, and various political tracts, Hudson demonstrates that Johnson did not merely inherit traditional values but actively redefined them through a dialectical engagement with the Enlightenment. Chapter 1, "Preserving the Faith," addresses the apparent "sturdy prejudice" of Samuel Johnson’s religious orthodoxy, arguing that his reliance on traditional apologetic formulas was a reasoned response to contemporary skepticism that prioritized the collective authority of the Church over individual speculation. Chapter 2, "The Decline of Natural Religion," explores the shifting eighteenth-century consensus on the sufficiency of unassisted reason, contending that Johnson’s nuanced engagement with deistic thought reflects a broader intellectual transition toward evaluating religious truths by their social utility rather than purely empirical demonstration. Chapter 3, "New Trends in Ethics," identifies Johnson’s moral doctrine as a form of "Christian Epicureanism," arguing that he viewed human action as necessarily motivated by self-interest and the pursuit of happiness, which only the Christian promise of future rewards and punishments could effectively direct toward virtue. Chapter 4, "Suffering and the Universal Order," examines the theological problem of evil, asserting that Johnson rejected the comforting abstractions of "universal optimism" in favor of a realistic acknowledgement of temporal misery that demanded active Christian patience and humanitarian efforts. Chapter 5, "The Scepticism of the Moralist," addresses the critique of classical and "heroic" virtues, arguing that Johnson used the insights of contemporary satirists to expose the psychological vanity behind affected indifference to death or riches while asserting the primacy of domestic duty. Chapter 6, "The Practice of Charity," explores the transition from limited classical friendship to the specifically Christian obligation of universal love, contending that Johnson viewed active benevolence as a disciplined, rational response to human need rather than a mere impulse of natural pity. Chapter 7, "Grace and Christian Perfection," investigates the integration of legalistic moral effort with the necessity of divine assistance, arguing that Johnson’s late-life religious development moved toward a more rigorous, "serious" call to piety that balanced the dread of judgment with a humble reliance on divine grace. The Conclusion argues that Johnson’s enduring relevance lies in his unique ability to synthesize the conflicting intellectual currents of his age into a coherent, humane, and profoundly orthodox worldview. The scholarly critical reception of Nicholas Hudson’s Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought is overwhelmingly approving, with reviewers celebrating its historicist rehabilitation of Johnson as a well-adjusted, orthodox thinker firmly anchored within his contemporary theological and ethical context. Grundy, in ECS, commends Hudson for setting Johnson against a dense backdrop of specific treatises, revealing him as a scrupulously philosophical polemicist. In RES, Womersley and Doherty similarly praise the recovery of contemporary ideological conflicts, though both identify a minor weakness in the occasional juxtaposition of Johnson with a generalized "eighteenth-century thought." Middendorf publishes three highly favorable notices in JNL, lauding Hudson’s "refreshingly sensible view" that rejects modern psychological or existential interpretations in favor of a stabilizing Christian orthodoxy. In PQ, Scholtz notes that the book effectively demonstrates how Johnson's thought was driven by a desire for stability, though he suggests the impressive breadth occasionally sacrifices depth. Gray, writing for AJ, appreciates Hudson's painstaking effort to reveal the multiplicity of contemporary influences, despite a diffuse structure that at times produces a "refrigeration of the mind" through scholarly overcrowding. Alkon's mixed review in SEL warns that by anchoring Johnson so firmly in vanished debates, the author risks reducing his compelling originality of mind to a mere echo. Finally, Clark's review in History highlights the detailed recovery of Johnson's unoriginality, concluding that Hudson's deep seventeenth- and eighteenth-century contextual knowledge makes this a considerable achievement for Johnsonian studies.
Clark provides an approving review of Nicholas Hudson’s study, which focuses on Johnson’s engagement with ethics and theology between 1730 and 1760. Clark notes that Hudson recovers the unoriginality of Johnson’s responses by setting him in the context of minor as well as major authors. He observes that Hudson unearths theological passages that Johnson’s aphorisms closely echo. Clark points out that the book does not deal with history or politics, which makes Johnson’s contact with the real world appear slightly disembodied. However, he concludes that Hudson’s detailed knowledge of the eighteenth century makes this a significant book for historians and a considerable achievement for Johnson studies.
History: The Journal of the Historical Association
Cope provides an approving review of Nicholas Hudson’s study, applauding his resurrection of Johnson’s philosophical and theological backgrounds. He finds it a relief to meet Hudson’s well-adjusted Johnson, depicted as a conservative polemicist and controversialist rather than the neurotic bulldog or anxious figure of previous biographies. The review notes that Hudson emphasizes Johnson’s middle years and a habit of mind characterized by a constructive but unexciting conservatism, rock-steady faith in commonplace opinions, and vigorous derivativeness. While Cope criticizes occasional unexplored causalities—sometimes exploring causal relations through mere conjunctions—and identifies blurry phrases or source comparisons, he commends the book for presenting Johnson as unoriginal yet profoundly intelligent. Ultimately, Cope concludes that Hudson’s book helps readers live through Johnson’s religious experience and presents a salutary shift in Johnsonian biography.
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
In this review of J. D. Fleeman’s edition of Johnson’s Journey, Vander Meulen praises the work as a landmark of scholarly editing. Vander Meulen notes that Fleeman avoids the "editorial hubris" of excessive conjecture, choosing instead a historical approach that reflects Johnson’s own editorial principles found in the Preface to Shakespeare. The review details Fleeman’s innovations in the "Register of Variants," which allows readers to track Johnson’s substantive changes versus a compositor’s accidental alterations. Vander Meulen commends Fleeman’s scrupulous collation of editions and his exhaustive commentary, which identifies obscure thematic parallels across Johnson’s works. The reviewer observes that Fleeman successfully reconstructs a text reflecting the "original author's intention." Vander Meulen concludes that this edition provides an "implicit guide" to the issues of scholarly editing and is unlikely to be surpassed.
Grundy provides an approving review of Nicholas Hudson’s study, observing that he sets Johnson against a dense backdrop of specific contemporary treatises and intellectual controversies to reveal him as a "polemicist and controversialist." Rather than using broad outlines, Hudson demonstrates how Johnson’s seemingly unique views were often effective executions of "well-known manoeuvres" in eighteenth-century doctrinal debate. Grundy highlights Hudson’s success in identifying and clarifying the "highly controversial" nature of Johnson’s religious and socio-political stances—such as his views on rites, repentance, and charity—by framing them against the shifting Anglican opinions of his time. She notes that the work increases respect for Johnson by showing him as a "scrupulously and rigorously philosophical" thinker whose rigorous reasoning on issues like self-interest and human freedom allowed him to reach a balanced judgment. Grundy concludes that Hudson successfully portrays Johnson tracing an "ingenious path" through a "tangled thicket" of eighteenth-century rationalism and deism.
In this enthusiastic review, McGlynn praises Hudson’s excellent analysis of the intellectual history surrounding Johnson’s ethics and religion. McGlynn notes that Hudson successfully portrays Johnson as a "thinking person in the context of his own times" rather than the "intellectual rogue elephant" or superstitious figure often found in previous scholarship. The review commends Hudson for his thorough and intelligent exploration of topics such as free will and religious liberty.
Hudson examines twenty-six moral and religious controversies, asserting that Johnson's thought was primarily driven by a "desire for stability and order." The book argues that eighteenth-century thought exhibited contradictions and was increasingly pragmatic, relying on common sense more than reason. The review notes shortcomings in Hudson's supporting evidence, suggesting his impressive breadth may sacrifice depth.
Womersley commends Hudson for his success in recovering the intellectual debates of Johnson's time. The book presents Johnson not as a ponderous, timeless moralist but as a shrewd thinker picking his way through contemporary ideological conflicts and engaging with the issues of his age by restricting itself to eighteenth-century language and philosophical assumptions. Hudson is adept at introducing forgotten figures of the era without condescension, and Womersley highlights his successful treatment of Christian perfectionism, stoicism, and optimistic thought. However, the review identifies two weaknesses: insufficient attention to the historicity of Johnson's writing and a tendency to frequently juxtapose Johnson's thought with "eighteenth-century thought" without establishing Johnson as an active participant in the debates. Womersley concludes that while Hudson refuses to modernize the subject, the work prompts the need for a proper study of the Rambler.
Folkenflik's robust review of Hudson's Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England examines the central, controversial argument that Johnson was instrumental in shaping middle-class consciousness and positions him as a maker of "Modern England." The review praises Hudson’s analysis of Johnson’s role in "constructing the middle-class woman" through the Rambler, yet Folkenflik disputes the claim that Johnson was a proto-imperialist under the sway of "notions of Imperial glory." Folkenflik counters this by arguing such a reading ignores the satiric intent of The Vanity of Human Wishes, specifically the portrayal of Charles XII, and notes that Johnson wrote forcefully against war and colonialism, even supporting slave insurrections. Challenging Hudson’s teleological approach, Folkenflik argues Johnson's opposition to slavery and colonization makes him a "last Renaissance Humanist" rather than a simple conservative.
Hudson argues that Johnson's attention to England's rise as an industrial and imperial power helped shape a national cultural identity and the meaning of "Englishness." Hudson resituates Johnson within his complex world, exploring his ambivalence toward class, his approval of women's emerging roles, his distancing of moral and aesthetic discourse from politics, and his evolving idea of the public. Johnson's sense of an English national identity was forward-looking, contrasting with the heritage-centered identities of the Scots, Welsh, and Irish, and was balanced between England as a conquered nation and as a conquering one.
Monod finds Hudson's book excellent and convincing, placing Johnson within his own time without exaggeration. Hudson's analysis is well-informed and judicious, but Monod finds Hudson's dismissal of Johnson's Jacobitism a "red herring" and thinks Johnson's broader political views are left somewhat undefined.
Reddick commends Hudson's perceptive analysis of Johnson within eighteenth-century contexts but finds the overarching thesis tracing Johnson's shaping influence on modern England speculative. Hudson examines Johnson's engagement with key transforming concepts (class, gender, nation, empire), arguing he both reflected and directed social change, leading to his nineteenth-century iconization. Reddick acknowledges the value in Hudson's nuanced positioning of Johnson beyond simple labels, appreciating the effort to understand Johnson's complex, sometimes contradictory, views as integral to England's modernization, while noting occasional overstatement of Johnson's direct impact.
Redford finds Hudson's contextual approach a useful corrective to other interpretations, but it doesn't offer fresh or incisive readings of Johnson's work. The conclusion restates the consensus. The book's promised union of author and age is never fully realized.
Hudson examines Johnson’s "moral writer" persona and his "unremitting industry" to "promote virtue." The article argues that Johnson’s "Christian discernment" was the "rule of his conduct" throughout his life. Hudson details Johnson’s "strict observance of Lent" and his "self-scourging" prayers as evidence of his "pious character." The narrative highlights Johnson’s "orthodoxy" in the "Church of England" and his "urgent efforts" to achieve "conditional salvation." Hudson review’s Johnson’s "vituperative remarks" on Swift and Gray as a "duty to point out artistic failure." The article argues that Johnson’s "sentiments of piety" were "begat in his mind" independently of "Oxford’s discipline." Hudson concludes that Johnson’s "indefatigable sense of reason" sought to "diffuse instruction" through "minute details of daily life," aiming for a "triumph of honesty" that "enchains the heart by irresistible interest."
Two Bits of Drudgery: A Homage to Johnson, the Lexicographer
Privately printed for the Johnson Society of Australia
Johnson and the Macquarie: An Investigation of 250 Years' Progress in Language and Lexicography
Proceedings of the English Association North
Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Wishes: Classical and Eighteenth-Century Contexts
All the Sweets of Being: A Life of James Boswell
Hutchinson offers an extended essay on Boswell’s character and era, tracing his development from a "delicate child" in the "compressed energy" of Edinburgh through his formative Grand Tour and culminating in his literary achievements. Hutchinson disputes the "popular distortion" of Boswell as a sycophant, arguing instead that Boswell "enjoyed and portrayed without prejudice his time." The narrative emphasizes how the "electricity of Edinburgh" and his relationships with figures like Pasquale Paoli, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau shaped his "honest ardour" to distinguish himself. Hutchinson describes the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and the Life of Samuel Johnson as the "culminating achievements" of a man who transformed his observations into a "form of art." The text details Boswell’s struggle with "melancholy," his "ravenous appetite for intellectual stimulation," and his ultimate success in establishing his name through his "deeply, brashly personal" mode of biography. Hutchinson concludes that Boswell was an "honest mortal" who made his "fund of good humour and good nature" into a lasting literary monument. Chapter 1, 'The Dancer's Bells', traces the Boswell lineage from the Norman Conquest through the establishment of the Auchinleck estate in Ayrshire, examining the formative influence of Edinburgh’s raucous urban environment. Chapter 2, 'Vraye Foy', explores a childhood defined by severe Calvinist instruction, physical illness, and the persistent internal conflict between deep-seated religious terror and emerging Enlightenment sensibilities. Chapter 3, 'The Lamb', chronicles a rebellious flight to London, a brief flirtation with Roman Catholicism, and an introduction to the city’s libertine social circles under the Earl of Eglinton. Chapter 4, 'John Bull and His Daughters', details the development of a sophisticated social network in London and the auspicious initial encounter with Samuel Johnson. Chapter 5, 'A Feeling Heart', addresses the period of legal study in Utrecht, characterized by intense melancholia and self-analytical efforts to adopt a more disciplined, mature character. Chapter 6, 'Seas of Milk and Ships of Amber', describes the European Grand Tour, highlighted by meetings with Rousseau and Voltaire and the transformative experience in revolutionary Corsica. Chapter 7, 'Corsican Boswell', focuses on the rise to literary fame following the publication of the Corsican account and the subsequent transition into domestic life through marriage. Chapter 8, 'Clean Gyte', analyzes the celebrated 1773 Highland tour with Johnson, identifying this journey as the catalyst for major biographical achievements. Chapter 9, 'Birth, Alcohol and Death', examines the later years in Edinburgh and London, marked by professional stagnation, personal losses, and the struggle with alcoholic excess. Chapter 10, 'Life', details the final years dedicated to the monumental biography of Johnson and the ultimate reconciliation of a legacy defined by intellectual ambition. Critical reception of this biography is marked by a divide between those who appreciate its narrative flair and those who find it academically thin. Robinson offers the most robust praise, characterizing the work as a "taut narrative" that masterfully explores the subject's "charm offensive" and sensitive adaptability, while Colley commends the "pleasantly-written" and "perceptive" analysis of the subject's seductive power toward men. Barber and Thompson both highlight the book's effectiveness in portraying eighteenth-century Anglo-Scottish relations and the emotional "see-saw" between a "proud Scottishness" and the allure of London celebrity. However, significant detractions emerge regarding the depth of the research; Barber and Newman both critique the heavy reliance on third-person summaries over primary journal details, with Newman explicitly stating the work is "insufficient" for scholars due to its lack of critical engagement with the subject's literary significance. The Economist further dismisses the biography as "elegant" but "superficial," faulting the author for succumbing to the subject's personal charm while ignoring "weightier issues" and making factual errors regarding the Scottish Enlightenment. Stuttaford echoes this sentiment, noting that while the book contains interesting historical detail, the "rambling account" ultimately fails to do its subject justice. While Robinson views the text as a successful exploration of a "scrupulously careful" craftsman, the consensus leans toward viewing it as a manageable, readable introduction that lacks the rigor of more dense scholarly biographies.
Groom’s enthusiastic review of Roger Hutchinson's biography, All the Sweets of Being, examines the paradox of Boswell’s depraved personal life and his "magisterial" literary output. Groom notes that while the twentieth-century discovery of Boswell’s papers and journals—specifically the London Journal—revealed a "priapic pox-ridden philanderer," Hutchinson’s narrative emphasizes Boswell’s skills and successes beyond toadyism. The review highlights Boswell’s role as "Corsican Boswell," an envoy and author of An Account of Corsica who sought out Rousseau and Voltaire with "boyish enthusiasm." Groom details Boswell’s "maniacally intemperate" lifestyle, characterized by alcoholism, pathological adultery, and fluctuating religious convictions, while acknowledging the "feckless charm" that allowed him to strike the heart of Johnson. The account concludes that Boswell’s sacrifice of his health to record Johnson’s conversation and complete the Life of Samuel Johnson was a price he paid to secure his own legacy.
Newman finds Hutchinson’s biography insufficient for scholarly or general audiences. He notes the narrative relies heavily on a summary of journals and allocates disproportionate space to Boswell’s early life, leaving later years and major writings largely unexamined. Newman criticizes the lack of critical engagement with biographical issues and the absence of insights into Boswell’s literary significance. He concludes the work fails to explain Boswell's status as a great writer or fascinating figure.
Hyde chronicles the influential friendship between collectors R. B. Adam II, A. Edward Newton, and professor Chauncey Tinker. She traces their collaborative efforts to "put Boswell, Johnson and Company on the map" through exhibitions, catalogs, and the discovery of the Malahide papers. Hyde documents the impact of the 1929 stock market crash on Adam’s ability to maintain his library and his subsequent efforts to sell it to Yale. The narrative concludes with the deaths of Adam and Newton in 1940, marking the end of a formative era in Johnson and Boswell studies.
Iamartino reflects on Johnson's enduring significance, which is due both to Boswell's biography and Johnson's personality shining through his own work. His close encounter with Johnson occurred while translating the works of George Savile, leading him to study Johnson's Dictionary and Baretti's dictionary. Baretti, a friend of Johnson, was deeply influenced by Johnson's moral outlook but sometimes made caustic additions to definitions, such as explaining "tradesfolk" as "foolish rabble entirely taken up with filthy lucre." Iamartino also studies annotated copies of the Dictionary, comparing the philological and learned approach of Samuel Dyer with the amateurish, contemporary-usage focus of Edmund Burke. Dyer, like a "harmless drudge," appreciated the diligence of amassing language, whereas Burke was disconcerted by what he considered non-current currency.
On the author’s fascination with Johnson’s Dictionary and Barretti’s English–Italian dictionary.
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary and the Eighteenth-Century World of Words [special section]
Hedrick reviews this valuable, international, and interdisciplinary collection of thirteen essays on Johnson's Dictionary. Essays focus on Italian connections, Scots language, and aesthetics. Alessandra Vicentini examines Barretti's borrowings from Johnson, shaped for the Italian book market. Robert DeMaria argues Johnson's initial "southern" orientation (purifying the language) shifted over the course of his labors to a "Goth" (Teutonic) perspective, reflected in the Preface. Giovanni Iamartino shows the complexity of Anglo-Italian lexicography: the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca provided a model for Johnson's use of illustrative quotations, and Johnson's Dictionary became a model of modernity for Italian reformers after 1818. The collection shows the study of Johnson's dictionary is a potentially boundary-less affair.
Ingledew explores Johnson’s Jamaican connections through the lives of Francis Barber and Richard Bathurst. Barber was born enslaved in St. Mary, Jamaica, and was brought to England in 1750 by Colonel Richard Bathurst, who freed him upon his death in 1754. Dr. Richard Bathurst, the Colonel's son, gave Francis to Johnson around 1752. Bathurst, who detested slavery, likely influenced Johnson's own fervent abolitionist views and provided information on Jamaica, which Johnson called "a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves." Johnson's relationship with Barber was paternal and deeply affectionate; he provided for Barber and his family financially and spiritually in his will.
Samuel Johnson's Uses of Peru: A Humanist-Nationalism
The Rise of Literary Journalism in the Eighteenth Century: Anxious Employment
'Writing like a Teacher': Johnson as Moralist in The Rambler
Italia explores Johnson’s use of the Rambler as a medium for moral instruction, characterized by a "solemnly didactic tone." Unlike Addison's gentlemanly ease, Johnson "writes like a teacher," adopting a persona who acts as a "representative of humanity" to address the "universals of human behaviour." The periodical’s "uniformity of tone" and avoidance of current affairs reflect Johnson’s desire to unify a fragmented society split by profession and class. Italia argues Johnson translates the "language of individual experience" into terms understandable to the "great republick of mankind." Despite "paltry sales," Johnson maintained a sonorous style that refused to "pander to the snobbery" of polite readers, viewing the moralist’s duty as comprehensive and essential.
Adapted from the article “Johnson as Moralist.”
Johnson's Milton and Coleridge's Wordsworth
Jackson argues that Johnson’s criticism of Milton in Lives of the English Poets serves as an unacknowledged and unrecognized source for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria. While Coleridge often publicly disparaged Johnson’s style and dictionary, Jackson identifies a cluster of interrelated ideas in Johnson’s Milton that reappears in Coleridge’s analysis of Wordsworth. These parallels include the identification of poetry with the exercise of imagination, the distinction between poetry and science based on the object of pleasure, and the use of the probable and the marvelous. Jackson notes that Coleridge’s definitions of poetic genius and the willing suspension of disbelief refine concepts already present in Johnson’s Shakespearean and Miltonic criticism. The study suggests that Coleridge assimilated Johnson’s views so thoroughly during his youth that they became a permanent part of his critical framework. Jackson disputes the idea that Coleridge’s lack of explicit citation indicates a lack of influence, suggesting instead that thorough assimilation often resulted in the absence of direct quotation. By casting Wordsworth as a Miltonic figure, Coleridge adopts a magisterial role reminiscent of Johnson himself.
Jackson presents four case studies of annotated books—Hester Piozzi’s Rasselas, Rupert Brooke’s Introduction to Poetry, an unidentified “Scriblerus” copy of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and T. H. White’s Two Essays on Analytical Psychology—to demonstrate how such objects provide access to historical contexts and reader personalities. Piozzi’s notes on Johnson's tale offer biographical value, including unpublished Johnsonian anecdotes and insights into her relationship with William Conway. Brooke’s commentary reveals his early, serious engagement with poetic theory, while White’s notes expose a profound, troubled self-analysis. These unique volumes illustrate the unexpected richness of personal annotations for cultural and biographical study.
Taking Liberties on the Low Road: John Byrne Directs Fellow Scots John Sessions and Robbie Coltrane in 'Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles,' His 'Screenplay' for BBC2
The Mind's Extensive View: Samuel Johnson on Poetic Language
Jain reconstructs Johnson’s poetics by examining his negative critical statements, biographical assessments, and own creative practice. She argues Johnson rejects a formal definition of poetry to avoid circumscribing the "mind of large general powers." The text traces a parallel between the growth of the mind and the development of the poet, moving from the foundational role of memory and "intellectual treasures" to the systematic operations of reason. Jain challenges the traditional view of Johnson as a rigid Lockean empiricist, aligning him instead with religious thinkers like Isaac Watts who emphasize the mind's innate energy and "immaterial" nature. She explores Johnson's unique conception of metaphor as an intellectual "raising" toward concepts rather than pictorial description, contrasting his preference for "exact resemblance" with the "vicious" imagery of the Metaphysical poets. The study further analyzes Johnson’s rejection of dramatic illusion in Shakespeare and the "Classical Imitation" genre, positing that for Johnson, language serves as the essential "interface between the worlds of mind and matter." Jain concludes that Johnson’s verse, specifically The Vanity of Human Wishes, affirms the "divine origin" of language and its capacity to embody "Truth" at the threshold of religious piety. Chapter 1, "Introduction: What Is Poetry?," posits that poetic development is a self-conscious reenactment of the mind’s natural progression from sensory memory to rational systematization, ultimately aiming to figure forth an ideal intellectual perfection through the mastery of language. Chapter 2, "The Origin and Nature of Language," asserts the divine inspiration of speech as a moral and social interface that distinguishes human consciousness from animal instinct, contrasting this constitutive view with the reductive, atomistic theories of contemporary empiricists and universal language projectors. Chapter 3, "Metaphor," defines the metaphorical process as an intellectual ascent toward conceptual truth rather than a pictorial representation, arguing that mature poetic imagery achieves a moral harmony by integrating the sensible with the rational. Chapter 4, "Shakespeare (I)," redefines poetic imitation by emphasizing the superior intellectual capacity of language over visual media, while situating the dramatist's reliance on stage effects and "harsh" metaphors within the historical context of an immature audience.
Ingram calls the book "old-fashioned" with a familiar subject and minimal contemporary critical reference. Nonetheless, Jain's detailed exploration of Johnson's attitudes toward language, its origins, and metaphor is soundly and interestingly carried out, effectively bringing the criticism of another age to life.
Contents: Samuel Johnson and India / Thomas M. Curley; A conservative mind under stress: aspects of Johnson's political writings / Geoffery Carnall; 'Only half of his subject': Johnson's The false alarm and the Wilkesite movement / Brijraj Singh; Samuel Johnson and landscape / William Hutchings and William Ruddick; Johnson's Shakespeare: a moral and religious quest / Nalini Jain; The death and life of Johnson / Lawrence Lipking; Samuel Johnson among the deconstructionists / Jean H. Hagstrum.
Johnson's Shakespeare: A Moral and Religious Quest
Crip Writers/Written Crips: Constructions of Illness and Disability in Selected Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Poetry and Fiction
See especially chapter 3, “Samuel Johnson: Written Writer, Unwritten Crip.”
Guilt-Edged Insecurity [review of the completed Trade Edition of the Boswell Papers]
Jarrett disputes Macaulay’s reductive 1831 characterization of Boswell as a diseased "fool," arguing instead that Boswell’s obsessive self-revelation constituted a sophisticated search for self-knowledge. Examining the concluding volumes of the Yale trade edition, Jarrett identifies a persistent tension between Boswell’s worldly ambitions and a profound sense of sin. The text highlights how Boswell’s secret 1760 conversion to Catholicism and his "remorseful depths" in Utrecht complicate the image of a purely superficial social climber. Jarrett emphasizes that Boswell’s "avidity for death" and "wretched hypochondria" following the loss of his wife reveal a "frightful" lack of spiritual certainty. This psychological complexity, Jarrett asserts, enabled Boswell to hold a "marvelous mirror" to Johnson. The journals record a lifelong struggle to reconcile professional desires with moral duty, suggesting that Boswell’s success as a biographer was inextricably linked to his intense, often mawkish, but fundamentally honest self-observation.
A survey of the whole edition of Boswell’s journals.
Scholars and Gentlemen: Shakespearian Textual Criticism and Representations of Scholarly Labour, 1725–1765
Johnson's Authorities: The Professional Scholar and English Texts in Lexicography and Textual Criticism
Jarvis explores the social and political significance of Johnson’s "circularity" of linguistic authority in the Dictionary (1755). The argument challenges Barrell’s claim that Johnson derives national language from a "world apart," showing instead that Johnson uses a "breadth of sources" from professional callings and "vulgar" management. Jarvis explains that Johnson’s authority "constantly required to supplement that of his sources," as he frequently censures the "wells of English undefiled" for Latinisms or misunderstood meanings. The analysis highlights Johnson’s "explicit writerly professionalism" which "deplored the despicable foppery" of prioritizing gentlemanly status over authorship. By using the "artificer’s shop" as a model for intellectual inquiry, Johnson presents reason and language as "syncretic," the sum of particular enquiries rather than a "leisured culture." The study concludes that Johnson’s Dictionary functions as a "collection of precedents," where the lexicographer interposes judgment to filter "fugitive cant" while acknowledging that "politeness increases" linguistic instability.
Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section
Three Essays: Johnson, Wordsworth, Byron
Samuel Johnson and the Ossianic Controversy
Jemielity compares the "strategy of attractive self-presentation" in Hebrew prophecy with the satiric mask. He notes Boswell’s report of Johnson’s skepticism toward the transparency of Pope’s written persona, observing that authors show "what he wished the state of his mind to appear." Jemielity parallels the prophetic "I" with the satiric "personality" used by Johnson to establish credibility against charges of subversion. The study connects the "vocational autobiography" of Jeremiah to the moral paradigms in Johnson’s "Vanity of Human Wishes." Jemielity argues that both prophet and satirist use "imaginatively charged language" to communicate truths beyond discursive speech, molding an individuality that serves a higher calling.
Teaching A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Jemielity discusses pedagogical challenges in teaching A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, noting its controversial quality and its unique analysis of a different society within the British Isles. The essay explores Johnson's deep sympathy evoked by hardship and his desire for amelioration regarding the changing Highland culture. Jemielity uses scenes like the young deaf girl's readiness to illustrate Johnson's outgoing imagination and his conviction that whatever enlarges hope, will exalt courage. Students consider Johnson's biases and sympathies toward a minority culture that is losing its identity due to government punitive measures.
Dr. Johnson Was a Slobbering, Sexist Xenophobe Who Understood Human Nature
“Dr. Johnson was a brilliant champion of the English language and the little guy. . . . He is a free-market, monarchy-loving advocate of the necessity of human inequality.”
A Rhetoric of Truth and Instruction: Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and Eighteenth-Century Biographical Practice
Christopher Johnson analyzes the "rhetoric of truth" in Hawkins’s biography, defending his use of documentation and "extensive footnotes" as standard 18th-century practice. While modern readers often find Hawkins’s "egotism" problematic, the text notes Johnson’s own *Dictionary* defined the term as simply writing in the first person. Hawkins aimed for "instruction" through a "judicious" presentation of facts, aligning with the "life and letters" tradition established by Mason. The study contrasts Hawkins’s "scrupulous" handling of sources with Mason’s more "lax" and sometimes "forged" editorial interventions. Johnson argues that reclaiming Hawkins’s work is essential for a "complete understanding" of 18th-century literary culture and the "widely read" biographical forms that preceded Boswell’s dominant narrative.
William Law, Samuel Johnson, and the Readers They Created
This collection of essays offers useful views on Johnson and his contemporaries, though the Johnson-focused essays offer less nourishment overall. Topics include Johnson's credibility, his relations with Thomas Hollis and Burke, and his views on French and history. The reviewer suggests a failure to fully address complexities, such as the social and psychological implications of Johnson's irony, but praises contributions on Gibbon, Burke, and Blake.
Jannetta reviews Fleeman’s edition of Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands, praising it as a model of editorial scholarship. He commends the clean presentation of the text and the extensive commentary that uses Johnson’s manuscripts and contemporary printing practices. While noting minor production issues regarding character sets, Jannetta highlights Fleeman’s authority and modesty. He concludes that the edition provides a robust foundation for understanding Johnson’s travel narrative through rigorous bibliographical analysis.
Lurcock praises Fleeman’s edition as a monument of erudition, noting the meticulous introduction and expansive commentary covering topics from regimental history to silviculture. He approves the conservative treatment of the text and the bold removal of non-authorial hyphens. However, Lurcock criticizes the lack of intertextual commentary relating the work to Johnson’s other writings. Most significantly, he identifies numerous printer’s errors that render the text less reliable than earlier editions.
Fleeman provides a definitive edition of the Journey, distinguished by a meticulous explanatory apparatus and a full register of variants from the first three London editions. The work details the technical circumstances of composition, typography, and proofreading, supplemented by nearly 100 pages of explanatory notes and pedigrees of Scots mentioned in the text.
Grundy reviews Kernan's study of the mid-eighteenth-century transition from oral, bardic poetry to a commercial, print-based literary system. Kernan uses Johnson as an "emblem" of this change, particularly the 1767 meeting with George III which Kernan reads as the end of royal control over letters. Grundy identifies Kernan’s method as "emblematic," converting biographical trivia into "ritual scenes." However, Grundy disputes several of Kernan’s historical claims, noting that print-based social changes were evident long before Johnson. The review argues that Kernan's Johnson is sometimes a "novelty," lacking corrections and producing only "imitative poems." Despite historical cavils, Grundy finds the book "exhilarating" for its imaginative coloring of cultural processes. Grundy concludes that Kernan provides a valuable hypothesis regarding how print technology shaped the modern reading environment.
Womersley praises Fleeman’s 1985 Clarendon edition of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland for illuminating the "measured inflection of Johnson’s mind" and the "shifting and allusive text." The review emphasizes the importance of the Journey in recording a decisive shift in Johnson's notions of travel's benefit, moving beyond his earlier "narrow humanism" to a broader view that "all travel has its advantages" and provided him with a "wider basis of analogy and reasoning." Fleeman's "fine edition" is commended for recognizing and illuminating the "laminate" nature of Johnson's narrative, which preserves the "irregular contours of his original notes" written "to the moment." Womersley argues Fleeman successfully presents the text as a "process" rather than a "simple unity" or "single entity," honoring Johnson’s own requirement for "rigorous accuracy." The editorial work is further praised for its "intelligent tact and restraint" and its detailed discussion of the proofreading, which includes the "ingenious" use of type-page variations and the provision of "supplementary witnesses," maps, and pedigrees essential for sifting through the narrative.
Adams evaluates Joel Gold's edition of Johnson's translation of Father Jeronimo Lobo, arguing that the work is a vital "first volume ever done by Samuel Johnson." The reviewer notes that Johnson took "great liberties" with the French source text by Joachim Le Grand, often adding "asperity to the tone" or inserting "editorial comments to point a moral." Adams highlights how Johnson's anti-Catholic and anti-Portuguese biases colored the translation, leading him to characterize the Portuguese as more cruel than described in the original. The review explores the text's significance as a precursor to Rasselas and the Rambler, specifically citing the name "Imlac" and the "Happy Valley." Adams concludes that while Johnson considered the book "beneath him," it remains a compelling travel book that reveals his early talents and prejudices as a "pompous" yet highly effective translator.
International Journal of African Historical Studies
Fleeman's meticulous edition of Johnson's Journey provides significant new information, including textual notes and an appendix detailing daily location, activities, and weather. The inclusion of pedigree charts for the Macleans and Macleods refines biographical context. The volume includes the cancelled leaf D8 and discusses Johnson's self-censorship concerning the sale of lead from Lichfield cathedral roof, showcasing the enduring value of exhaustive scholarship on Johnson.
Lamont reviews Gold's edition of Johnson's first book, a translation of Lobo's travels, noting it was "inescapable" for the Yale Edition. Johnson worked from Le Grand's French version, often abbreviating or summarizing the text into an "epitome." Gold's editorial apparatus meticulously identifies these omissions and reveals that Johnson "emerges less than a hero owing to his partiality." This partiality stemmed from Johnson's need to avoid transmitting the Jesuit mission's "full religious fervor" or an "uncritical account of Portuguese activities," with his Protestant biases influencing the translation. Lamont criticizes the volume for lacking a "modern map" to follow Lobo's route and for placing modern place-names only in the index. While she concludes the volume shares a common failing of the Yale series by "not loving the reader," she acknowledges its value for scholars tracing "Eastern" imagery, themes, and ideas Johnson later used in Rasselas. The review concludes that the work "fulfills the scholarly requirements of the Yale Edition."
Lurcock reviews the Yale edition of Johnson's first published book, noting that the text is of great interest despite an editorial policy that provides a hybrid and sometimes irritating punctuation. The review suggests that the work's attractiveness exists apart from its Johnsonian connections.
Pailler examines Gold's edition of Johnson's 1735 translation, a version based on the French Relation historique d'Abissinie, which itself was an abridgement of Father Jerónimo Lobo's manuscript. Gold's introduction illuminates the religious and political contexts of Lobo's voyage and the subsequent translations. Johnson's translation is notably free and often a simple summary. The edition's notes highlight Johnson's anti-Catholic and anti-Portuguese biases through omissions and stylistic changes. Errors, such as Johnson's mis-translation causing Lobo to claim he saw a unicorn, are noted. The reviewer considers the work primarily for Johnson specialists.
CGV entry 25:129. Review by Albert Pailler of the Yale Edition volume edited by Joel J. Gold.
Samuel Johnson Goes Abroad [review of Johnson's Dictionary, Longman; Johnson's Shakespeare by G. F. Parker; The Making of Johnson's 'Dictionary' by Allen Reddick; A Voyage to Abyssinia by Joel J. Gold; Rasselas and Other Tales by Gwin J. Kolb]
Rawson notes an exceptional crop of recent books of Johnsonian interest. His general engagement is with Samuel Johnson's complexity, particularly regarding his views on race, Orientalism, and the arts, often using Edward Said's Orientalism as a contemporary coordinate to explore Johnson's nuances. Rawson frequently finds that interpretations—whether showing Johnson as cruel or anti-Portuguese—are conditioned by later sensitivities. He emphasizes the importance of nuances and uncertainties in interpreting Johnson's work and attitudes, suggesting they cannot be easily ironed out. He also highlights a common thread of curtness, simplification, and deflation in Johnson's style, visible from the early Voyage to Rasselas and the Dictionary. Rawson praises Gold's Voyage to Abyssinia edition as excellent, though he questions its interpretation of Johnson's anti-Portuguese bias. Kolb's Rasselas, and Other Tales is deemed a splendid and valuable edition, but its commentary over-glosses and uses a later Dictionary edition. The Dictionary facsimile is considered a useful set but very expensive with erratic reproduction quality. Reddick's Making of Johnson's Dictionary is an impressive volume, although its blurb is pretentious. Brownell's Attitude to the Arts offers a useful conspectus but is marred by a captious and hectoring tone. Parker's Johnson's Shakespeare is a fresh, vivid study, written with intelligent fervour.
Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare: A Facsimile of the 1778 Edition
Smallwood's facsimile of the 1778 version of the Preface to Shakespeare, the final issue supervised by Johnson, is accompanied by an exhaustive introduction and commentary. The introduction traces Johnson's career, positioning the Preface alongside the Lives of the Poets as the "central corpus" of his criticism. Smallwood explores the tension between Johnson's "neoclassic" preconceptions and his "vigorous" defense of Shakespeare as the "poet of nature" who holds a "faithful mirror" to life. The edition's primary scholarly contribution is its commentary, which assists readers by using Johnson’s own Dictionary to elucidate obscurities and by providing "evidence of the critical, literary and personal background". Smallwood’s editorial policy emphasizes linking Johnson's general critical remarks in the Preface to his specific annotations from the 1765 edition, illustrating how his "general judgements" are supported by "detailed attention to Shakespeare's text". The commentary further identifies Johnson’s intellectual debts to predecessors like Boileau, Rapin, and Pope while highlighting his original departures, such as his logical dismantling of the "unities of time and place". Smallwood argues that the Preface remains relevant due to the "generous humanity" and "sanity" of Johnson’s critical voice, which avoids the "puerile extravagance" of later romantic critics.
Two Letters from Samuel Johnson to Sir Robert Chambers, September 14, 1773 and October 4, 1783
600 copies printed ... by Patrick Reagh, printers.
CGV entry 23:137. Facsimile, transcript, and introduction. First printed for the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California, 1986.
Contents: Prayer (Summe dator vitae, naturae aeterne magister) / [translated by] Turner Cassity -- Prayer (Pater benigne, summa semper lenitas / [translated by] Timothy Steele -- Skia / [translated by] Charles Gullans -- After Samel Johnson's Latin poem to Thomas Lawrence, M.D. / [translated by] John Finlay Know thyself / [translated by] R. L. Barth -- An undergraduate complaint -- To a lady who spoke in the defense of liberty -- On Mrs. Thrale / [tranlsated by] Raymond Oliver -- Prayers (Aeterne rerum conditor) [and] (Me, pater omnipotens, de puro respice coelo) / [translated by] R. L. Barth -- Prayer on losing the power of speech / [translated by] Jan Schreiber -- After Johnson's prayer / [translated by] John Finlay -- On the death of his mother / [tranlsated by] David Myers -- Hope -- Christmas Day, 1779 / [translated by] R. L. Barth -- Wasting time.
Daily Readings from the Prayers of Samuel Johnson
Almost one hundred of Johnson's prayers, separated from their associated journal entries. The special approach groups the contents into thematic categories, eschewing chronological order. With a substantial introductory essay. Initially issued in a small printing of 350 copies, the volume later saw inexpensive reprints and an English edition.
Rasselas--regarded as Johnson's most creative work--presents the story of the journey of Rasselas and his companions in search of "the choice of life." Its charm lies not in its plot, but rather in its wise and humane look at man's constant search for happiness. The text is based on the second edition as Samuel Johnson revised it.
Reprinted in 1988.
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland [read by Patrick Tull and Alexander Spenser]
This unabridged audio production pairs Johnson's observations with Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Narrators Tull and Spencer play the two accounts against each other. Johnson records his amazement at a society so different from his own, covering Scottish religion, education, and agriculture. Jaeger notes Boswell's sardonic and witty musings served as the precursor to his later biography. The production offers English language at its best for serious literature collections.
Johnson's complete prose fiction. Contents include Johnson’s philosophical tale, alongside two related stories: "The Vision of Theodore, The Hermit of Teneriffe" (1748) and "The Fountains: A Fairy Tale" (1766). The edition establishes a sound text. The copy-text for the principal tale is the first edition, published in April 1759. Textual variants and fresh readings authorized by Johnson in the second edition (June 1759) are recorded in notes. The edition implements the Yale editorial policy of partial modernization; this included reducing capitalization, a practice that drew scholarly criticism regarding the two shorter tales. Supplemental materials detail the composition history, genre (Eastern moral or philosophic tale), and genealogy within the oriental tale tradition. Annotation provides ample information clarifying sources, word meanings, and relationships to Johnson's moral writings. This vol. is considered one of the most heavily annotated works of fiction in the language. The introduction documents the tale’s extensive early circulation, listing 28 editions in Britain and 50 editions in total before 1800. A supplemental appendix documents the critical reception of the tale from 1759 to 1800. The volume supersedes the poorly established text found in the 1825 Oxford edition of Johnson's Works. Reviews are generally favorable, with commentators dividing over whether the heavy, erudite annotation and thorough source tracking provide a definitive textual monument or reflect an unadventurous approach that lacks sustained critical analysis. Woudhuysen, in the TLS, praises the careful editing but expresses disappointment with the unadventurous methodology, noting that the informative glosses rely too heavily on historical reference works without engaging modern critical theories or artistic contradictions. Writing in the LRB, Rawson deems it a splendid and valuable edition, but cautions that the commentary occasionally over-glosses terms. Curley’s review in AJ lauds the definitive presentation, ample annotation, and lucid introduction, but notes that the volume lacks a deep investigation of religious underpinnings and Christian antecedents. Conversely, Korshin, in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, praises the substantial achievement and extensive annotation, predicting the work represents the summit of scholarly commentary in this century. Alkon, writing in JNL, commends the volume as perfectly edited, highlighting the painless, useful notes that use historical definitions to clear up archaic meanings. In RES, Womersley approves of the plentiful annotation that underscores persistent ethical concerns, though he finds the introduction thin regarding reception. Lurcock, in N&Q, acknowledges the overall editorial rigor and comprehensive treatment of short fiction, despite minor inconsistencies in textual regularization. Finally, Wood, writing in BJECS, highlights the informative background and extensive annotation that successfully illuminates complex psychological traits and conscious intentions within the text.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, JNL 50/51, nos. 3-4/1-3 (1990): 3–4; Thomas M. Curley, AJ 5 (1992): 434–49; Paul J. Korshin, ECF 4, no. 2 (1992): 172–73; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 39 [237], no. 2 (1992): 230–31; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 46, no. 1 (1993): 83–84; Claude Rawson, LRB 13, no. 15 (1991): 15–17; Michael Rogers, Library Journal 116, no. 4 (1991): 121; David Womersley, RES, n.s., 43, no. 172 (1992): 605; Nigel Wood, BJECS 17, no. 1 (1994): 99–102; H. R. Woudhuysen, TLS, no. 4615 (1991): 24.
Curley praises Gwin Kolb's Yale edition of Johnson's Rasselas and Other Tales as the definitive presentation of the accessible tale, "The Vision of Theodore," and "The Fountains." It commends the lucid introduction and ample annotation, especially the exhaustive source clarification and illustration of Rasselas as a distillation of Johnson's thought. It notes, however, that the study lacks sustained critical analysis, particularly of the religious underpinnings and mythic resonance of Rasselas and the Christian antecedents of "The Vision of Theodore."
Lurcock identifies this edition as the most comprehensive treatment of Johnson’s primary short fiction. He commends Kolb’s scholarly introduction for tracing historical and romantic sources, including Lobo and Purchas. Lurcock notes the significant biographical interest in the inclusion of "The Fountains," which links a character to Piozzi. While he accepts Kolb’s preference for the first edition text with authorial variants from the second, he criticizes the lack of textual notes for specific substantive changes and certain regularized spellings. Lurcock identifies minor inconsistencies in the treatment of "indiscerptible" but acknowledges the overall editorial rigor.
The collection includes Rasselas, the allegorical The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe, and The Fountains: A Fairy Tale. Kolb's critical apparatus is extensive, featuring introductions, a long appendix on the reception of Rasselas from 1759–1800, and abundant notes. Kolb thoroughly examines sources, textual history, composition, and reception, defining the genres and drawing comparisons. Despite genre differences, all three works share central themes: the search for happiness, the means to achieve it, and "the vanity of human wishes."
The volume provides a good text with plentiful annotation but a thin introduction focusing on sources and reception. The inclusion of The Vision of Theodore and The Fountains alongside Rasselas allows readers to appreciate Johnson's persistent ethical concerns and his experimentation with narrative forms. Johnson found narrative problematic, noting its ability to both represent moral consequentiality and distract through imaginative power. The collection strengthens the claim for Johnson as the eighteenth century's most flexible and inventive parodic novelist.
Publisher's blurb: "The facsimile reproduces the first edition of 1755 and is noted for its aesthetic presentation and scholarly utility. The slipcased set features virtually original sizing and a leather binding. Most distinctly, it integrates a facsimile of the "Chesterfield" version of the 1747 Plan of a Dictionary. This companion material establishes the historical and conceptual context of Johnson’s nine-year labor. The facsimile is further enhanced by two supplementary essays: Fleeman's "The Genesis of Johnson's Dictionary" and O'Kill's "The Lexicographic Achievement of Johnson." This set provides a critically recognized, high-quality, and serviceable resource for the study of the Dictionary."
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland; James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Privately printed for The Samuel Johnson Society of the Central Region, Loyola University
Ackroyd reviews Redford’s three-volume edition of Johnson’s correspondence. The review highlights Johnson’s 18th-century reticence regarding his literary work, noting he says little about the Idler or Rasselas. Ackroyd finds the edition reveals a man who could hardly ever write badly, possessing an invincible authority even in minor notes. Redford argues the letters represent one of Johnson’s two great achievements, a claim Ackroyd views as a slight exaggeration but justified by the extraordinary presence of the man. The text emphasizes Johnson’s struggle against solitary wanderer gloom, using majestic sonorities to cover internal despair.
Burke presents a mixed review of Redford’s five-volume Hyde edition of Johnson’s correspondence, noting the addition of 52 previously unknown letters and fragments since the 1952 Chapman edition. While acknowledging the physical splendor of the set and the convenience of its chronological arrangement, Burke disputes the "overwhelming" necessity of the new edition based on numbers alone, as Redford eliminates four letters, drops the established numbering system, and lacks the correspondence of Piozzi included in previous versions. Burke finds the annotations helpful for easy classical references but inadequate regarding "textual mysteries," arguing they fail to address significant issues such as the identity of the proprietor of The World or the specific circumstances and textual enigmas in the 1755 letter to Lord Chesterfield. Furthermore, the review questions Redford’s claim that Johnson ranks as a great letter writer; Burke argues the correspondence reveals an unbearable whiner rather than the "achieved intimacy" found in other eighteenth-century writers, suggesting the letters to Piozzi remain conditioned by their eventual personal break.
In this enthusiastic review, Fruman celebrates Redford’s new edition as the most accurate text available, replacing R. W. Chapman’s 1952 volumes. Fruman highlights Redford’s inclusion of fifty-two new letters and his transcription from original documents, a process that restores previously expurgated passages in the controversial correspondence with Mrs. Thrale. The review praises the judicious annotations for illuminating misunderstood points and notes the superior physical production, characterizing the work as an essential resource where every scrap of the master is precious. Fruman observes that while these three volumes contain name-only indexes, the completed five-volume set will provide a comprehensive apparatus.
Gray identifies the Hyde Edition as a significant advancement over the 1952 Chapman edition, adding fifty-two letters to the canon, including the recently discovered Lennox collection. The reviewer highlights Redford’s use of 'state-of-the-art techniques' to restore passages Piozzi had erased from her 1788 edition, particularly in forty-two 'intimate and moving' letters. Gray notes that the edition corrects previous mistakes in decipherment and updates the provenance of manuscripts, many of which moved to the Hyde Collection through 'transatlantic transfers.' While the reviewer finds minor flaws in the volume indexes and the lack of detail regarding incoming correspondence, he praises the work for revealing inaccessible sides of Johnson, such as his 'remarkable gentleness' in letters to children. Gray concludes the edition is a 'beautiful' scholarly achievement that provides 'up-to-date annotation' and more accurate readings of the original holographs.
Grundy's review praises Redford's edition for its superior appearance and annotation compared to previous editions. Grundy highlights the editor's shift in attitude, specifically the acknowledgement of Johnson's letters to Piozzi as the "cream of the crop". Redford's appreciation for this playful correspondence contrasts with former editorial contempt for the feminine mind and the "epistolick art". Grundy notes that modern readers now value the allusiveness, particularity, and private jokes of these letters as valid discourse rather than lapses into triviality. While finding the edition largely superior, Grundy disputes specific readings of mutilated manuscripts, such as the omission of a "not" regarding the Peruvian Bark, and suggests additional annotations for Johnson's verse misquotations.
Grundy reviews Redford’s five-volume edition of Johnson’s letters, praising its "scrupulous accuracy," superior layout compared to Chapman's previous edition, and final volumes as a fitting "commemoration, perpetuation, order." Grundy commends the volume's new, "masterly index" for being comprehensive and including thematic categories like "friendship" and "death"—a departure from older, proper-name-only indices—though she notes this interpretive indexing reveals complexities, such as the omission of Hester Thrale from the "friendship" entry. This omission, Grundy argues, reflects the oblique, "multivalent or perhaps ambivalent" nature of Johnson's relationships with women, noting that his letters to female correspondents use "raillery and deliberate double messages" that challenge the simple indexing of his opinions and show him to be more subtle and complex than the aphoristic figure he appeared to be with men. Grundy highlights Redford's inclusion of Thrale's genuine letters to Johnson, providing essential context for their friendship, and the discovery of new letters, such as the one to Edmund Hector detailing Johnson's lifelong ill health. The review emphasizes the moving quality of Johnson's final letters as he puts his affairs in order and concludes that Redford's work "deepens and enriches" the biographical portrait of Johnson as a man of "exquisite feeling" and professional diligence.
McDermott evaluates Redford's Hyde Edition as the best and most complete scholarly edition of Johnson's letters, justifying its claim to completeness and remedying the unwieldy apparatus, poor indexes, cramped layout, and questionable accuracy of Chapman's 1952 edition. The new edition is physically attractive and offers a cleaner text by abandoning letter numbering, excluding the Thrale correspondence, and providing useful single-volume indexes. It includes fifty-two additional letters, including twelve to Charlotte Lennox, and features improved dating. The annotation is judged an improvement, being full but concise and incorporating the "breadth of knowledge" from decades of new scholarship. While McDermott commends the notes, the reviewer questions a few "needlessly puzzled" annotations and a peculiar editorial decision to retain Elphinston's phonetic spelling in one letter. McDermott argues the letters capture the tenor of Johnson's life more accurately than "bons mots culled from Boswell's Life."
Nakanishi praises Redford’s scrupulous editorial work and unobtrusive scholarship in these final volumes of the Hyde edition. The reviewer emphasizes the dramatic shift in Johnson’s final years, specifically his deteriorating health and the painful rupture with Piozzi following her engagement to Gabriel Piozzi. Nakanishi highlights Johnson’s continued dedication to charitable intercession and his pragmatic, stoic advice to Boswell. The review concludes that the edition successfully captures the melancholy and moral fortitude of Johnson’s concluding life stage.
Nokes's review of Redford's three-volume edition of Johnson's letters praises the handsome presentation and the inclusion of fifty-two new letters, including important correspondence with Lennox. Redford’s annotations incorporate recent scholarship to improve upon Chapman's 1952 edition. Unlike Walpole's, Johnson's letters are intimate, informal, and non-literary "unstudied responses" rather than artifacts, placing nature above art and friendship above fine phrases while recording "small inconveniencies" and physical ailments as expressions of practical Christianity. However, Nokes challenges the omission of Thrale's side of the correspondence, arguing Johnson's letters constitute an antiphonal exchange and a significant literary exchange like Swift's Journal to Stella rather than an isolated sequence.
Redford presents a new edition of Johnson's correspondence, adding 52 letters or fragments not found in the 1952 Chapman edition. The editorial policy prioritizes manuscript evidence over previously published sources, resulting in corrections and clarified dating. Redford provides full annotations and identifies correspondents in footnotes accompanying each letter. Rosenblum highlights the collation of the letter to Chesterfield using Boswell and Baretti transcriptions, stating it is "impossible to overestimate the significance of this new edition."
Redford orders and presents Johnson's correspondence, including forty new letters, to reveal a Christian self-prober and un-English intellectual. The collection disputes the image of Johnson as an insular Little Englander, highlighting his interests in Irish Gaelic literature and European friendships. The letters demonstrate his status as a superb prose stylist and model friend. The reviewer identifies the correspondence with Thrale and Boswell as particularly significant, suggesting these documents compare favorably with his more famous imaginative literature and the celebrated Life.
Raine examines the fourth volume of Redford's "impeccably edited" collection of Johnson’s letters, covering 1782–1784. He focuses on Johnson’s "arithmetical objectivity" in documenting his severe physical decline, specifically a painful sarcocele and a stroke that temporarily deprived him of speech. Raine highlights Johnson's "heroic" moral distinction in facing mental and physical affliction fearlessly. The letters reveal Johnson testing his mental faculties by composing Latin verse after his stroke, concluding with "dignity" that his understanding remained unimpaired despite the failure of his body.
Review of B. Redford, ed., The Letters of Samuel Johnson, vols. 1, 2 and 3. Over fifty new letters have been added to those collected by Chapman, whose edition is not entirely superseded, though our knowledge of Johnson is filled out in a variety of ways.
An Illustrated Keepsake Edition of Gnothi Seauton in English Hexameter: Eighty-Five Copies Printed
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Levi presents a combined edition of Johnson’s and Boswell’s accounts of their 1773 expedition through Scotland, using the first edition of Johnson and the third of Boswell. Levi’s introduction provides historical context on the 'vanished or withered world' of the eighteenth-century Highlands, emphasizing that the travelers arrived 'too late' to witness the peak of the traditional clan system already in decay due to emigration and industrialization. The editor describes the distinct objectives of each traveler: Johnson as a 'moral explorer' seeking to define reality behind words, and Boswell as a 'sentimental traveller' documenting the character of his companion. Levi provides annotations, a map of the route, and acknowledgments of previous scholarship by L. F. Powell and R. W. Chapman. The edition emphasizes the 'constant interplay' between Johnson’s sternly objective verbal models and Boswell’s novelistic, dramatic immediacy. Levi clarifies the physical geography of the journey, identifying military roads and 'droving tracks' while correcting contemporary misconceptions regarding the travelers' motivations and the state of Highland society.
Reprinted 1993.
Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia
Samuel Johnson's Translation of Sallust: A Facsimile and Transcription of the Hyde Manuscript
Vander Meulen and Tanselle present a diplomatic transcription and photographic facsimile of the 'Hyde Manuscript,' containing Johnson's English rendering of the first seven chapters of Sallust's Bellum Catilinae. The editors describe the physical characteristics of the manuscript—drafted on three leaves of folio paper—and detail Johnson's characteristic revisions, deletions, and interlinear substitutions. The introduction establishes the translation's provenance within the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection and explores its likely composition during the final years of Johnson's life. The editorial policy prioritizes a literal representation of the holograph, preserving original spelling, punctuation, and layout. By providing a side-by-side comparison of the Latin source and Johnson's draft, the work illuminates his efforts to capture Sallustian brevity and 'sententious' weight, further documenting his lifelong engagement with Roman historiography and the mechanics of classical translation.
"This booklet is the forty-eighth annual keepsake of The Johnsonians ... It was distributed at the dinner of The Johnsonians commemorating Samuel Johnson's 284th birthday, held at the Grolier Club, New York City, on 17 September 1993, with G. Thomas Tanselle in the chair and David Vander Meulen speaking on "Johnson's Translation of Sallust."--Title page verso "750 copies printed at The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vermont, of which 250 are reserved for The Johnsonians and 500 are for sale by The Bibliographical Society of The University of Virginia, Alderman Library, Charlottesville, VA 22903."--Colophon
Fleeman reviews a facsimile edition of Johnson’s translation of Sallust, edited by Vander Meulen and Tanselle. He discusses the provenance of the manuscript from the Hyde Collection and notes Johnson’s affinity for Sallust as a fellow biographer. However, Fleeman characterizes the translation itself as uneven and reminiscent of schoolboy exercises, suggesting it was a way to combat insomnia rather than a serious literary endeavor. He praises the scholarship of the editors and the production quality of the keepsake.
This short notice evaluates Vander Meulen and Tanselle’s facsimile and transcription of SJ’s translation of Sallust. Completed in 1783 and surviving in the Hyde collection, the manuscript represents an early, unrevised draft of chapters 27-48. The editors provide a serviceable reproduction and an authoritative transcription of the text, which JB and Hawkins had previously dismissed as insipid. The publication preserves a rare example of SJ’s translation process from his final years and clarifies textual readings that might otherwise remain obscure.
The manuscript is the only known surviving portion of Johnson's translation of Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, completed in 1783, possibly as intellectual therapy after a stroke. The translation's mediocre quality and numerous errors suggest it was an early draft, not intended for publication. The facsimile and transcription, which includes cancellations and insertions, is presented as an effective and attractive scholarly booklet.
Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin
Privately printed for the Friends of the Arizona State University Library
Samuel Johnson's Private Interview with George III: The Strahan Minute
Samuel Johnson on the Character and Duty of an Academick
'The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia' / 'Dinarbas, a Tale'
Publisher's blurb: "Dans ce conte philosophique, S. Johnson (1709-1784) dénonce avec humour l'optimisme qui régnait au milieu du XVIIIe siècle et illustre la vision que les Lumières, en Angleterre, se faisaient de l'homme, moins rationnelle qu'en France, mais plus sensible."
Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English Language'
Binns praises Robert J. Baldwin's definitive edition of Johnson's Latin and Greek poetry, which provides prose translations and thorough, learned discussions of context, composition, influences, and literary merits. The edition includes detailed commentary on language, textual matters, and classical allusions, offering an encyclopedic guide to the poetry and eighteenth-century life and letters. Baldwin includes poems of doubtful attribution and a newly discovered work. McDermott reviews A. D. Horgan's Johnson on Language: An Introduction, criticizing its argument for two distinct language uses in Johnson's work as mutilated by non sequiturs, carelessness, and misinterpretation, suggesting the author lacks a grasp of central Johnsonian scholarship.
Gray reviews Baldwin's "admirable" and landmark edition, the first to provide a separate text of all 177 known Latin and Greek poems by Johnson. He highlights that while Johnson viewed notes as "necessary evils" that "refrigerated" the mind, Baldwin's 200 pages of commentary and extensive notes serve as the "lifeblood of the book," offering learned glosses and witty asides that avoid "refrigerating" the reader's mind. Gray praises these glosses for linking Johnson’s classical efforts and schoolboy prose to his mature English works and contemporary scholarship. The review details Johnson’s selection of 95 epigrams from the Greek Anthology, often translated during "sleepless nights," and disputes the Yale editors' characterization of these pieces as unremarkable. Gray highlights Baldwin's literal translations and observes that Johnson’s predilection for themes of "women, sex, and marriage" in his Greek translations reveals a "literal and lively" and romantic rather than suggestive rendering. While Gray questions the decision to omit original Greek texts to save space, he finds the volume indispensable for both Johnsonians and classicists, concluding that Baldwin successfully caters to both audiences despite the editorial omissions.
Lelièvre reviews Baldwin’s edition of Johnson’s classical verses, praising the "remarkable compilation" of editorial notes that span ancient literature and neo-Latin sources. He notes Baldwin’s utility for both classicists and Johnsonians, particularly in handling the "canonical poems" like the version of Dryden’s epigram on Milton. However, Lelièvre challenges several of Baldwin’s translations, such as the rendering of "saltem" in the poem to Dr. Lawrence, arguing Baldwin misses the "proper force" of Johnson’s Latin. He critiques Baldwin’s tendency to include "gratuitous" information, such as studies on Marullus, which he deems "without significance" to the text at hand. Despite these "flaws," Lelièvre acknowledges Baldwin’s industry in handling the Scottish poems and Johnson’s final prayers. Lelièvre concludes that readers should be grateful for Baldwin’s "range of scholarship" but cautions them to "keep their wits about them" regarding specific linguistic interpretations.
McLaverty finds Baldwin’s edition rewarding but exasperating, noting its learned and lively commentary alongside persistent bibliographic inaccuracies and a lacks of clear textual policy. He criticizes Baldwin’s discourteous treatment of previous editors and his failure to consult original manuscripts, particularly for "Aurora Est Musis Amica." Despite these flaws, McLaverty values the plain translations and the exploration of Johnson's personal reflections in his Latin verse.
A Dictionary of the English Language on CD-ROM
Ameghino reports on the digital adaptation of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. The article describes the upcoming launch of the first electronic edition of the dictionary on CD-ROM at the Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield. Developed by Anne McDermott at Birmingham University and published by Cambridge University Press, this version presents the transcribed texts of the first and fourth editions side by side on a computer screen. Graham Nicholls explains that Johnson welcomed technological progress and possessed a strong scientific mind capable of understanding complex machinery. The article provides biographical details of Johnson's early life, including his birth in 1709, his education in Lichfield and Stourbridge, his struggle with depression, his marriage to Elizabeth Porter, and his move to London in 1737. It outlines his ten-year effort to compile 141000 definitions and 222000 illustrative quotations, highlighting his differentiation of 118 meanings for the verb "to take." McDermott notes similarities between her own multi-year technical difficulties and Johnson's editorial delays.
Nicholson recommends Cambridge University Press's CD-ROM edition of Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language as a valuable electronic resource. Edited by Anne McDermott, the CD-ROM contains both the first and fourth editions of the dictionary. Nicholson notes that the digital format permits users to compare the two editions, execute full-text searches, and use digital annotation and bookmarking functions, thus enhancing scholarly engagement with Johnson's seminal work.
LaGuardia and Tallent provide an approving review of Primary Source Media’s Samuel Johnson & James Boswell CD-ROM, part of the Major Authors series. This electronic resource contains the complete Yale edition of Johnson’s works and the six-volume Powell edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. The reviewers highlight the inclusion of twenty-three images of both men and their contemporaries. The review praises the extensive search capabilities, noting the flexibility of the table of contents and the efficacy of natural language and Boolean searching. LaGuardia and Tallent characterize the disc as a "superb research tool" that makes large quantities of text "easy to manipulate." Despite the significant price, the reviewers recommend the product for research libraries.
In this enthusiastic review, Lynch praises the accessibility provided by the electronic transcription and facsimile of the first and fourth editions of the Dictionary. Lynch argues the full-text search features transform the 100,000 illustrative quotations into a searchable corpus of English literature, allowing researchers to automate previously time-consuming tasks. While Lynch notes the software documentation focuses on technical installation rather than scholarly context, he commends the intuitive interface and SGML encoding. Lynch identifies the lack of standardized citations as a practical hurdle for users but labels the resource "indispensable for research collections" as a cost-effective alternative to print facsimiles.
Lynch reviews McDermott's electronic transcription of Johnson's Dictionary, a tool that transforms "monumental" and "painstaking" manual research into rapid digital inquiry. The transcription uses powerful DynaText software and elaborate tagging to facilitate complex, seconds-long searches, allowing scholars to navigate the massive work—originally the product of Johnson's "solitary labor and drudgery"—to answer questions regarding etymologies, definitions, and authorial citations in a "small fraction of the time." Lynch emphasizes that the software enables advanced searches across both the first and fourth editions, making it possible to quantify Johnson's reliance on writers like Locke or Pope with unprecedented precision. He commends the joint enterprise between Cambridge University Press and the University of Birmingham for creating a resource available at a cost "less than that of most paper facsimiles." While praising the project's magnitude and accessibility, the review cautions against relying solely on the electronic version, noting that Johnson’s unsystematic text and non-expanded abbreviations limit search comprehensiveness. The reviewer concludes that the digital format rescues the Dictionary from its imposing bulk, making it an accessible, essential companion for anyone studying Johnson or eighteenth-century language.
McCue assesses the electronic edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, edited by Anne McDermott. The disk includes the first and fourth editions, enabling users to pinpoint every occurrence of a word and collate Johnson's revisions at a glance. McCue identifies the omission of the important Preface as a significant weakness, though its inclusion is promised for future versions. While praising the ability to scour 111,000 quotations, McCue notes the digitised images of pages lack comfortable quality. The publication serves as a corrective to the nineteenth-century decision by Cambridge University Press to reject the Oxford English Dictionary.
Naughton's enthusiastic review examines the Cambridge University Press CD-ROM edition of Johnson's Dictionary, edited by Anne McDermott. The scholarly edition contains the full searchable text and facsimile page images of both the first (1755) and fourth (1773) editions. Naughton argues that the software provides a "gift from heaven" for scholars by allowing parallel window viewing to track Johnson's revisions, such as the augmented definitions for "Critick" or the addition of new terms like "knabble". The review details how the digital format facilitates complicated searches for source quotations—revealing 42,773 entries in the first edition and 43,279 in the fourth—and enables users to determine word proximity. Naughton concludes that the digitisation heightens respect for Johnson's "well-stocked mind" and his systematic methodology for etymology and usage, which served as the model for the Oxford English Dictionary.
Pigman reviews several electronic editions, focusing on the Johnson Dictionary CD-ROM, which contains transcriptions of the first (1755) and fourth (1773) editions, with page images. Edited by McDermott, the Dictionary employs the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) implementation of SGML for sophisticated hypertext searching and cross-referencing, allowing restriction by headword, quoted author, or edition. Johnson's cross-references are hypertext links. The work is lauded as a scholarly model, despite minor issues like irregular author name tagging and one documentation error. The reviewer emphasizes the cost and hardware requirements of electronic editions.
Spencer reviews the Cambridge University Press CD-ROM edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, edited by McDermott. The text emphasizes the technical utility of DynaText software in facilitating side-by-side comparisons of the 1755 and 1773 editions. It details the massive data scale, comprising 86,000 entries and 222,000 quotations, and highlights Johnson's pioneering use of illustrative citations to denote semantic shifts. Spencer notes the inclusion of digitized page images and hypertext links, positioning the electronic resource as a vital tool for specialists and lexicographical researchers.
"The general precept of consulting genius is of little use," wrote Samuel Johnson, "unless we are told, how the genius may be known." In the past decade two landmark studies-- Robert DeMaria's Johnson 's Dictionary and the Language of Learning (1986) and Alan Reddick's
Samuel Johnson and James Boswell spent the autumn of 1773 touring the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland. Both kept detailed notes of their impressions, and later published separate accounts of their journey. These accounts of their great tour contain some of the finest pieces of travel writing ever produced: they are magnificent historical documents and also portraits of two extraordinary personalities. In the vivid prose of these two famous men of letters, the Highlands and the Western Islands spring to life. The juxtaposition of the two very different accounts creates an unsurpassed portrait of a society which was utterly alien to the Europe of the Enlightenment, and which was straining on the brink of calamitous change. These great masterpieces, entertaining, profound, and marvellously readable are also our last chronicles of a lost age and people.
On the Character and Duty of an Academick
A reissue of the 1984 Oxford Authors volume.
'A Dictionary of the English Language' Jukyuseiki eigo jiten fukkoku shusei
A New Preface by Samuel Johnson: Some Remarks on the Progress of Learning Since the Reformation, Especially with Regard to the Hebrew: Occasion'd by the Perusal of the Rev. Mr. Romaine's Proposal for Reprinting the Dictionary and Concordance of F. Marius de Calasio: With Large Additions and Emendations: In an Address to the Publick by a Stranger to the Editor and a Friend to Learning
In this enthusiastic review of the 2002 Levenger Press abridgment of the Dictionary, Billen celebrates the 250th anniversary of the 1755 masterpiece edited by Jack Lynch. Billen identifies the work as the only English dictionary attaining the status of great literature, supported by 115,000 quotations. The review emphasizes the selection of 3,100 entries from the original 42,773, noting Lynch’s inclusion of Johnson’s "plan," "foreword," and diverse medical definitions. Billen details how these entries chronicle Johnson’s personal struggles with scrofula, gout, and "melancholy." The account highlights Johnson’s shift from an initial desire to "enchain syllables" to a final realization of linguistic volatility, dismissing the work with "frigid tranquillity."
Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1986–1998
In this review, Burke examines a recent volume of selections from Johnson's 1755 dictionary published by Walker & Co. Burke notes the original work ran to 2,300 pages and highlights Johnson's own description of a lexicographer as an unhappy mortal who toils at the lower employments of life without applause or reward. Burke queries what kind of minds spend three months on a single word and questions whether dictionary writers dream of fame or iconic status.
Devan’s enthusiastic review of the 2002 Levenger Press abridgment, edited by Jack Lynch, celebrates the enduring literary and cultural authority of the 1755 Dictionary. Devan argues that Lynch’s selection preserves the "instructive and often witty" personality of a work that functioned as the first record of the language as actually used. The review details the technical shift from seventeenth-century "inkhorn" terms to a lexicon based on "common words" found in the "best English writers." Devan highlights the 118,000 illustrative quotations as a revolutionary model for the later Oxford English Dictionary. By citing entries for "excise," "oats," and "evolution," the review demonstrates how Lynch captures the transition of English meanings over 250 years.
Garner reviews the Yale Edition's Samuel Johnson on the English Language, finding its execution significantly flawed and "unworthy of becoming the standard work." Despite an admirable plan to collect all Johnson's writings incident to his Dictionary, the volume suffers from inadequate scholarly rigor, including repeated belaboring of the obvious and a reluctance to draw reasonable deductions, such as the probable influence of Chambers. Most egregious is the grossly insufficient and improper attribution of nearly 35 percent of the commentary, which is appropriated almost wholesale from a fifty-year-old book co-authored by Sledd. The review notes pervasive editorial shortcomings, poor organization, repetitiousness, and inconsistency in the use of notes and foreign language translation.
This unsigned brief reviews Jack Lynch's selection from Johnson's Dictionary. The review notes the Dictionary's status as a "cultural icon" and "faux book" for collectors, but praises this Levenger Press edition for its intelligent design aimed at the "common reader." The typography, including green headwords, is deemed highly readable. The selection itself is commended for including the *complete entry* for chosen words, thus preserving Johnson's organization of the semantic field. Lynch's criteria (famous gems, cultural words) and his inclusion of common words like "world" and "nature" make for an attractive and successful volume.
Syndicated column.
Pearce’s enthusiastic review of Jack Lynch’s scholarly selection from Johnson’s Dictionary commends the editor’s curation of 500 pages of the original 42,773 words. Pearce notes that Lynch includes a "first-rate essay" on lexicography, Johnson’s Plan for a Dictionary, the famous letter to Chesterfield, and indices of cited authors. The review emphasizes Johnson’s achievement in completing a task alone between 1746 and 1755 that typically required an entire academy. Pearce highlights Johnson’s method of defining words through literary illustration, citing Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. He argues that Lynch successfully showcases Johnson’s attention to "low" and actual speech, including terms such as "kicksey-wicksey" and "mucksweat," while documenting shifting meanings for words like "nice" and "fun". Pearce concludes that Lynch acts as an essential guide to the "Labyrinth" of Johnson's work.
Potemra reviews the dictionary edited by Lynch, a selection from Johnson's 1755 Dictionary. He commends the volume as a generous and highly entertaining sampling that provides a vivid snapshot of 18th-century vocabulary and culture. He cites Macaulay's assessment of Johnson's as "the first dictionary which could be read with pleasure," and provides a definition of "orgasm" as "sudden vehemence."
Lynch's abridgment of Johnson's Dictionary, featuring about 3,100 complete entries from the 1755 edition, appeals to readers who enjoy it as literature. More extensive than the McAdam/Milne selection, it includes the Plan, an introduction, notes, and indexes.
Ulin examines Jack Lynch's new abridgment of the 1755 Dictionary, characterizing the work as a "window to one man's soul" and a reflection of Johnson’s personality and singular labor. The review notes that Johnson compiled the volume in less than a decade with minimal assistance, creating a work that served as the standard for English usage for over 170 years and provided over 1,700 definitions for the later Oxford English Dictionary. Ulin highlights Johnson's penchant for precise language, his affinity for archaic terms describing human folly, and his "elegant put-down" of politicians, contrasting Johnson’s idiosyncratic, epigrammatic definitions with the modern devaluation of language and political artifice. By highlighting definitions of colorful insults like "buffleheaded" and "slubberdegullion," Ulin argues that the Dictionary serves as a necessary corrective to the imprecision of modern culture and contemporary linguistic inaccuracy.
Prefaci a les obres dramàtiques de William Shakespeare
Translation of the Preface to Shakespeare into Catalan.
Pensamientos acerca de las últimas negociaciones relativas a las Islas Malvinas, y otros escritos, trans
Chinese translation of Rasselas.
This edition, compiled and introduced by Womersley, presents a substantial selection of periodical essays from the Rambler (1750–52), the Adventurer (1753–54), and the Idler (1758–60), alongside significant miscellaneous works such as 'A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage' (1739) and 'An Essay on Epitaphs' (1740). Womersley organizes the volume to illustrate the formation of Johnson's distinctive prose style and the creation of his literary persona as a master of moral wisdom. The front matter includes a comprehensive introduction detailing Johnson's biography, his struggle for financial security, and his emergence as a 'literary monarch' following the publication of his Dictionary. Womersley describes how the periodical format allowed Johnson to experiment with various essayistic modes, including moral disquisitions, case studies, and allegories. Annotations provide historical context for contemporary readers, and three appendices offer supplemental texts: Johnson's prayer upon beginning the Rambler, parallel versions of the first Rambler, and Bonnell Thornton's parody. Womersley maintains that these essays established Johnson as a central figure in English literature, as the Rambler served as the foundation for his increasing reputation during his lifetime.
Davis reviews Womersley's edition of 132 of Johnson's essays, noting it aims to restore neglected works and demonstrate Johnson's diversity. The collection includes 76 *Rambler* essays, 16 *Adventurer* essays, 34 *Idler* essays, 6 individual essays, Johnson's prayer on beginning the *Rambler*, a revised *Rambler* text, and Thornton's parody. The inclusion of many *Adventurer* essays is noted as a welcome deviation from previous anthologies. Womersley supersedes Bate's volume by including every essay Bate chose plus fifty additional, all presented unabridged. The notes are intelligent, and the lack of topical titles forces the reader to plunge in, recreating the original periodical reading experience. The review praises *Adventurer* 45 (on rivalry creating collective gain) and *Rambler* 9 (on glassmaking as a wonder of human culture). Davis finds Johnson to be an inspirational writer, capable of affirmation despite his melancholy.
New Edition of Johnson's Essays a 'Must' for the Newcomer
Savage: Biografi över en mördare och poet i 1700-talets England
The Life of Savage in Swedish.
The Supplicating Voice: Spiritual Writings of Samuel Johnson
A unique one-volume selection of Samuel Johnson's writings on spiritual and moral topics provides an unusually inspiring portrait of the man and his thought. Most readers know Dr. Johnson (1709–1784) as the formidable compiler of his famous Dictionary and as the witty conversationalist portrayed in Boswell's Life. By contrast, this book — which draws on little-known unsigned sermons he wrote for hire for clergy friends, his private prayers and devotions, essays, poems, diaries, letters, and even key definitions from the Dictionary — offers a rare opportunity to discover Johnson's rich insight and consoling spirituality gathered in one place. Boswell observed that "He was a sincere and zealous Christian. He was steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of religion and morality; both from a regard for the order of society, and from a veneration for the Great Source of all order." This Vintage Spiritual Classics Original opens a window on the moral universe of the leading English writer of the eighteenth century.
A Dictionary of the English Language on DVD-ROM or 3 CD-ROM set
A Dictionary of the English Language on DVD-ROM
DeMaria reviews the Octavo digital facsimile of Johnson’s Dictionary, highlighting its catering to bibliographical rigor by reproducing a specific, unique copy once owned by Richard Warren. The reviewer notes that the edition captures physical nuances such as page undulations and print shadows, offering a "two-dimensional facsimile" superior to standard reproductions. While acknowledging navigation speed issues on consumer hardware, DeMaria praises the inclusion of the Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, making this only the second edition to pair the Plan with the full text. The review contextualizes Johnson's lexicographical heroism, noting his pioneering use of illustrative quotations and his influence on future lexicography despite contemporary criticisms from figures like Maty. Supplementary essays by Korn and Jackson provide historical and structural analysis of Johnson’s alphabetization and methodological goals.
This digital reproduction commemorates the 250th anniversary of Johnson's 1755 edition. The DVD-ROM uses a copy originally owned by Warren, Johnson’s physician, and preserves warped pages and water stains. Greene notes high-resolution images allow for detailed examination of eighteenth-century printing and binding. Although search functions for the 45,000 defined words are slow, the product serves academic and public reference collections.
Johnson’s writings incident to his great lexicon. The contents compile Johnson’s longest continuous philological statements, specifically the four major prose compositions from the mid-eighteenth century: The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (1747); the 1755 “Preface”; “The History of the English Language”; and “A Grammar of the English Tongue”. The vol. also contains original material written for later editions, including the “Preface” to the first abridged edition (1756) and the “Advertisement to this Edition” for the fourth folio edition (1773). This collection of writings had not previously appeared in a single volume. The volume intentionally excludes the full text of the Dictionary itself. The text was established through meticulous editorial efforts, including the provision of a complete textual apparatus. Editorial policy employed a major change from the general Yale series standards. While the core Yale policy retains the copy-text’s original spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation while modernizing capitalization and typography, this volume explicitly departed from earlier protocols by retaining Johnson’s original italics and capitalization in the Grammar and History of the English Language. This adherence to original textual characteristics in certain sections established a precedent for later editors to follow their bibliographical commitments. Supplemental materials include two appendices offering facsimiles and transcriptions of manuscript material previously generally unavailable to scholars. One appendix reproduces the manuscript titled "A Short Scheme for compiling a new Dictionary of the English Language," and the other includes a draft of The Plan. Reviews are generally favorable, with commentators dividing over whether the authoritative gathering of peripheral lexicographical texts presents a model critical edition or an inconsistent performance marred by unoriginal commentary. Jackson, in the TLS, provides an enthusiastic account, praising the consummate editors for a labor of love that offers superb clarity regarding textual variants and historical precedents. Kermode’s review in the NYRB commends the treatment of the dark, linguistic shifts captured in the introductory essays, though he notes the inherent limitation of omitting the lexicon's main body. In AJ, Lee celebrates the volume as a major scholarly event and a crowning achievement, highlighting the authoritatively prepared text and rich contextual annotations. Brack, writing in JNL, praises the pioneering effort for successfully executing the first critical collation of the underlying folio editions to establish original authorial intentions. Lynch, in Choice, similarly lauds the long-awaited collection as an essential component of the standard corpus, applauding the inclusion of early manuscript drafts and learned contextual backgrounds. But Garner delivers a scathing critique in Essays in Criticism, labeling the execution significantly flawed and unworthy of becoming a standard work. He objects to a lack of analytical precision, poor organization, and an improper appropriation of commentary from an older study. Finally, Reddick, writing in AJ, offers a mixed assessment, praising the meticulous editing of manuscript facsimiles but finding that the associative notation style occasionally lacks sufficient depth or linguistic precision.
Reviews: O. M. Brack Jr., JNL 57, no. 2 (2006): 59–60; Bryan A. Garner, Essays in Criticism 57, no. 1 (2007): 65–72; H. J. Jackson, TLS, no. 5358 (2005): 29; Frank Kermode, NYRB 53, no. 11 (2006): 28–31; Anthony W. Lee, MP 104, no. 4 (2007): 529–59; Jack Lynch, Choice 43, no. 9 (2006): 5132; Jack Lynch, Weekly Standard, January 1, 2007; Lynda Mugglestone, NR, Series E, no. 9 (2005): 81–82; Allen Reddick, AJ 18 (2007): 443–XVI; Christopher Ricks, New Criterion 24, no. 1 (2005): 82–87; Fred C. Robinson, Sewanee Review 116, no. 2 (2008): 319–26; Jesse Sheidlower, BookForum 12, no. 3 (2005): 5–7; Christopher Vilmar, CQ 38, no. 2 (2009): 164–77; Victor Wishna, Humanities 6 (2005): 26–29.
Brack reviews Kolb and DeMaria's Johnson on the English Language, Kolb's final work, fittingly appearing on the 250th anniversary of the Dictionary and the 50th of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. The volume contains pieces related to the Dictionary, such as the Plan, Preface, "History of the English Language," and the "Advertisement" from the fourth edition. This is a pioneering work because none of these pieces had ever been critically edited. The collation process involved six authoritative folio editions against the first folio, requiring hundreds of decisions to establish Johnson's intentions. Brack praises the editors for producing a model edition likely to stand the test of time, calling the two (three) editors highly capable.
Lynch praises this long-awaited volume as an essential component of the Yale Edition. Lynch notes the collection gathers all materials associated with the Dictionary except the main word list, including the 1747 Plan and the 1755 Preface. The review highlights the inclusion of the grammar, the history of the language, and the first transcription of the manuscript Short Scheme. Lynch commends Kolb and DeMaria for learned annotations and introductions that successfully situate Johnson within the context of Continental lexicography.
Dr. Johnson Speaks: On Language, English Words, and Life [review of Johnson on the English Language, by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr.]
Lynch explores the enduring complexity and perceived elusiveness of Johnson’s intellectual and political identities. Despite a vast corpus of published writings, letters, and recorded conversations, scholars remain divided on whether to categorize Johnson as a conservative or liberal, imperialist or anti-imperialist. Lynch argues this difficulty stems from the "subtle and precision" of Johnson's thought, which resists reduction to sound bites. Turning to the English language, Lynch identifies the Dictionary of the English Language as Johnson's most significant achievement. He disputes the myth that it was the first English dictionary, noting instead that its greatness lies in its "discerning and precise" attention to minute discriminations of meaning, particularly for common words like "take." Lynch further examines the debate between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics, noting that both camps claim Johnson as an ancestor. While Johnson initially sought to "regulate" the language, he eventually concluded that a lexicographer must "register" usage rather than form it. Lynch concludes that the "real Samuel Johnson" is found only through careful reading of his works, now more accessible through the nearing completion of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson.
Words, Words, Words: Two-and-a-Half Centuries after the Publication of Samuel Johnson's Landmark Dictionary, a New Critical Edition Illuminates His Best Intentions [review of Johnson on the English Language, by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr.]
Wishna reviews the new Yale Edition of Johnson on the English Language. This authoritative edition contains the Plan and Preface but no dictionary entries, focusing on Johnson's lexicographical method. The text discusses his initial intent to "fix" the language, his eventual resignation to merely "registering" common usage, and his innovative use of quotations and broad definitions. Johnson's famed letter to Chesterfield is noted as a declaration of independence from patronage.
A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality
Shankman reviews vol. 17 of the Yale Edition of the Works of Johnson, edited by O M Brack, Jr., containing Johnson's 1739 translation of Crousaz's critique of Pope's Essay on Man (via du Resnel's French version), related materials, and Johnson's review of Jenyns. While acknowledging the volume meets the Yale Edition's high editorial standards, Shankman finds the main text of limited interest, offering much Crousaz but little distinctively Johnsonian insight, beyond the young translator occasionally defending Pope against Crousaz's misunderstandings based on a flawed French translation. The included review of Jenyns, however, remains significant.
Obscure Johnson Work Re-Activates Yale Edition
Johnson wrote much Latin verse throughout his life, notably after a stroke, to test his unimpaired faculties. The appraisal confirms Rudd’s expertise, specifically concerning Johnson’s favored Roman poets (Horace, Juvenal). The edition provides an improved Latin text, clear translations, and elucidation of obscurities. Johnson’s capacity for Latin verse allowed him freedom to explore deep emotions through classical models.
Bring on the Buffleheaded [review of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: An Anthology, by David Crystal]
Lezard's enthusiastic review of a Penguin Classics anthology of Johnson's Dictionary, edited by David Crystal, characterizes the work as an "astonishing" achievement for a single author. Lezard argues that while the dictionary's practical influence declined a century after its 1755 publication, its "idiosyncratic charm" and quirky definitions remain vital. He highlights definitions for "Oats," "Lexicographer," "Mohock," and "Irony," noting how they reveal mid-eighteenth-century social states. The review commends the inclusion of Boswell's account of the project, Johnson’s Plan and Preface, and the "famously withering letter" to Lord Chesterfield. Lezard concludes that despite modern linguistic changes driven by texting, Johnson’s project to "fix spelling and usage" remains a work of immense authority and vitality.
MacDonald’s review examines David Crystal’s scholarly anthology of Johnson’s 1755 dictionary, which collects over 4000 quirkier definitions. MacDonald contrasts Johnson’s "haughty" exclusion of obscenities with Ruth Wajnryb’s academic defense of swearing in CUNext Tuesday. The review notes that while Johnson’s work includes entries for "frustra'neous" and "fulciment," it refuses "houseroom" to vulgarities. Boswell confirms in the Life of Johnson that the lexicographer "could not bear any thing like swearing," a sentiment reflected in the absence of even the word "damn." MacDonald identifies the anthology as a significant reference work, despite its "novelty" appearance, and imagines Johnson’s dismissive reaction to contemporary experimental literature as "fi'ddlefaddle" or "twittletwa'ttle."
Samuel Johnson's Unpublished Revisions to the 'Dictionary of the English Language': A Facsimile Edition
This scholarly edition presents a photographic facsimile and transcription of 122 interleaved folio pages from the first edition of the Dictionary, containing extensive handwritten revisions by Johnson and an amanuensis. These corrections, intended for the 1773 fourth edition, remained unpublished after the materials were mislaid. Reddick's introduction reconstructs the revision process, revealing that Johnson relied on his amanuenses—likely William Macbean and V. J. Peyton—to recycle quotations from original manuscript notebooks. The volume demonstrates Johnson's "firm control over the final form of the work," as he repeatedly deleted the amanuenses' proposed notes on Scots dialect and rural usage. Reddick notes Johnson's "hostile attitude" toward these additions, reflecting a desire to suppress linguistic difference and maintain a standard national tongue. The edition includes extensive commentary on Johnson's critical and lexicographical methods, specifically his attention to phrasal verbs and theological clarity. Reddick also clarifies the role of George Steevens, who supplied alternative materials for the letter B after Johnson’s primary revisions were lost. This archive offers a "unique record of Johnson's methods of revision" and his evolving attitudes toward language and literature.
DeMaria reviews Reddick's edition of the unpublished "B materials" (122 pages of interleaved first edition sheets, Axl-Bys) in the British Library. These pages contain Johnson's annotations and material added by an amanuensis that never made it into print. The interpretive lesson is that, although Johnson's amanuenses did substantial work, Johnson exercised "stringent control over the final form of his book." Reddick's account implicitly limits the argument that Johnson's work was a cooperative enterprise, presenting Johnson as a "restrictive, even authoritarian" monitor of linguistic usage.
Rogers reviews Reddick’s facsimile edition of British Library C.45.k.3, a copy of the first edition Dictionary interleaved with Johnson’s manuscript revisions. Reddick argues these annotations, intended for the fourth edition, were ultimately displaced by sheets from the third edition. The volume demonstrates Johnson’s editorial method, revealing how he excised technical details, shortened quotations for spatial economy, and clarified definitions for theological or stylistic precision. Rogers commends the technical accuracy of the transcriptions and the insight provided into Johnson’s lexicographical labor.
The Typophiles in collaboration with The Johnsonians
The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe: Found in His Cell
A fine-press edition of *The Vision of Theodore*, “Conceived as a memento in connection with the Age of Johnson Prize awarded by the Fellows of St. Peter’s College, Oxford.”
Samuel Johnson, Another and the Same [review of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale]
Clingham praises the "magnificent and monumental work" that will likely become the standard edition for the next century. But he criticizes the commentary for its lack of modern critical engagement with Johnson's work, arguing that it reduces the Lives to a series of functional opinions and fails to recognize Johnson's criticism as great creative prose. The reviewer contends that the edition relies too heavily on dated critical works, omitting key recent scholarship, and thus adheres to an "old narrative" of Johnson's literary history. This leads to an inadequate appreciation of Johnson's critical insights, imagination, and the complex nature of the connection between a poet's life and work.
The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
DeMaria reviews Lonsdale's four-volume edition of the Lives of the Poets. The work began as prefaces for a publisher's project to counter John Bell's edition. Lonsdale traces the evolution of the project from Johnson's early idea of "little Lives" to "great" lives, reconceiving the scale after "Cowley." Johnson relied on assistants; printer John Nichols and Isaac Reed provided texts and corrected proofs. Lonsdale's extensive commentary (50 pages for "Cowley," compared to Hill's 25) includes detailed notes on composition, sources, and intellectual history, placing the Lives in the tradition of English biography and literary history. The absence of superior footnote numbers allows for flexible reading. The edition is highly recommended to all Johnsonians.
Johnson originally conceived the Lives as prefaces to poets' works, not as a coherent, single-volume collection. The review uses Lonsdale's introduction to examine Johnson's theory of literary biography, which he believed required constant companion knowledge of the subject. Fenton notes that only Johnson's life of Savage fully exemplifies this theory. The reviewer highlights Johnson's skepticism regarding the veracity of letters, citing an exchange with Piozzi, and his disillusionment concerning biographers who discover the author's moral flaws upon close acquaintance.
Jackson's enthusiastic review of Lonsdale’s four-volume edition of Johnson’s Lives praises the "huge enterprise very ably executed" for providing a text meeting modern scholarly standards with notes incorporating twentieth-century scholarship and headnotes for each Life covering composition, sources, and publication history. The review details how the Lives originated as prefaces to a booksellers' collection, but its separate reissue made it a "standard" work of criticism and literary history. Jackson criticizes the editorial decision to move footnotes to the back of each volume as "commentary" to prevent the editor from overwhelming the author, a choice that makes it "doubly inconvenient" to find annotations.
In this positive review, Lynch praises the magisterial quality of the new four-volume edition of the Lives. The reviewer notes that the collection serves as a standard reference, providing extensive information regarding composition, revision, and source material. While the choice to omit markings in the text for endnotes makes the edition less user-friendly, the apparatus offers significant insight into the historical context and reception of the work. The review highlights the evidence demonstrating that Johnson intentionally fueled readerly outrage through late additions to his text. Lynch also notes the work's contribution to understanding Johnson's exasperation with the shapelessness of literary history.
Lynch’s enthusiastic review praises this magisterial four-volume set as the first scholarly edition of Johnson’s critical biographies in a century. Lonsdale provides a book-length introduction that offers a meticulous study of the development and reception of the biographies. The review highlights the editorial rigor, noting the text follows the best modern practices and incorporates the latest research into informative notes. While Lynch finds the use of endnotes instead of footnotes regrettable for quick reference, he emphasizes that this edition remains without peer. The review presents the work as an essential resource for students and faculty, filling a significant gap in Johnsonian scholarship while the Yale Edition remains in progress.
Lynn identifies Lonsdale’s four-volume edition as a landmark surpassing the 1905 Hill version. Lonsdale tracks Johnson’s composition process and sources, providing massive commentary and textual variants. The introduction emphasizes the collaborative nature of the project. Though Clingham disputes some omissions of recent criticism, Lynn presents the work as an indispensable tool for understanding Johnson’s biographical theory and critical legacy, offering up-to-the-minute information for future scholars.
The Rewards of Age [review of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale]
McLaverty considers Lonsdale's edition an astonishing achievement, providing for the first time a thoroughly analyzed and faithful text of Johnson's Lives, surpassing the 1905 scholarly edition with a vastly increased store of information and a more profound understanding of Johnson's approach to biography. The introductory essay, which could stand independently, and the extraordinary detail of the notes provide powerful insight into Johnson's thinking. Lonsdale's work demonstrates Johnson's engagement with contemporary literary debate, though the reviewer questions Johnson's Jacobitism, and praises the volume production overall, despite minor grouches with the press.
In this appreciative review of Lonsdale’s edition of Lives of the Poets, Pritchard examines Johnson’s "supreme attempt" to define the significance of a literary career. He notes Lonsdale’s "magisterial" commentary which contextualizes Johnson’s suspicion that older poetic "vigour" had been sacrificed for "correctness." Pritchard explores the historical responses of critics like Arnold, Eliot, and Leavis to Johnson’s "specialization of sensibility." He highlights the "energy and trenchancy" of Johnson’s prose, specifically his use of irony to obviate further discussion of works like Dryden's dramas. Pritchard concludes that the collection serves as Johnson’s final investigation into the "limits of human experience" and the "pathos of hope."
Lives and Dislikes: Johnson's Lives of the Poets [review of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale]
Rawson calls Lonsdale's edition vivid and learned. Johnson's literary judgments are definitional, not descriptive, cultivating the tart finalities of Augustan couplet-rhetoric, making him a master of English criticism. Rawson finds Johnson's pronouncements are often eccentric but raise necessary questions. Lonsdale's introduction and commentary surpass Hill's by more fully detailing Johnson's sources. The splendid headnotes and considerably more informative notes are better and more professionally executed than Hill's.
Publisher's blurb: "Johnson was befriended by Savage, a poet & blackmailer who was persecuted by a cruel mother, sentenced to death for murder & appointed Volunteer Poet Laureate. With this book, Johnson revolutionised English biography by its psychological realism."
Lezard's approving review of the Harper Perennial edition of Johnson’s Life of Savage, edited by Richard Holmes, describes the work as perhaps the "first modern biography." Lezard emphasizes the "compassionate" nature of the study, noting that Savage’s "indigent, feckless" character served as a template for the struggling writers of Grub Street. The review details the shared poverty of Johnson and Savage, who stayed up until four in the morning because they "had nowhere to sleep." Lezard argues the biography is a "complex twin character study" that reveals as much about Johnson's own insecurities and "perverse dedication to his art" as it does about his subject. He praises the volume for illustrating how Johnson's genius transformed the life of a "charming but disastrous squanderer" into a masterpiece of the genre.
Naked Portraits: The Lives of Their Times: How the Art of Biography Evolved [review of Johnson on Savage: The Life of Mr. Richard Savage by Samuel Johnson by Richard Holmes]
Parker's review of a uniform paperback series of "classic English biographies" edited by Holmes for Harper Perennial selections excludes Boswell's Life of Johnson for its ubiquity but includes Johnson's Life of Savage, one of the "two common ancestors" of English literary biography. Parker notes that Holmes views these works as vital to the evolution of the genre and that Johnson's work on Savage is an "act of great forbearance and charity." The review highlights Johnson's belief that biography requires "imaginative sympathy" to realize the subject's condition and discusses how he identifies closely with Savage, supporting his "unproven claims of aristocratic illegitimacy" or "parentage." Parker observes that while the work displays an interest in the subject's youth as "emotionally formative," the initial advocacy shifts to "moral inquiry" or "moral enquiry" as the biography progresses. Parker also examines Godwin's memoirs of Wollstonecraft, noting its debt to the "candid biographical traditions" established by Johnson.
The Vision of Theodore, Hermit of Teneriffe, Found in His Cell
The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia
Publisher's blurb: "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, leaves the easy life of the Happy Valley, accompanied by his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah, and the much-travelled philosopher Imlac. Their journey takes them to Egypt, where they study the various conditions of men's lives, before returning home in a 'conclusion in which nothing is concluded'. Johnson's tale is not only a satire on optimism, but also an expression of truth about the human mind and its infinite capacity for hope."
Stone reviews Coletes Blanco's new Spanish translation of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, a title that should benefit from the media echo of the first complete Spanish translation of the Life. Coletes, a distinguished comparativist, provides an extensive set of introductions on the context and style of the Journey. The translation is biased in favor of the source language, with Coletes setting out to recreate "la elegancia y las cadencias rítmicas de los párrafos johnsonianos." Coletes handles Johnson's challenging syntax smoothly and accurately, and the vocabulary is rich. Stone notes the rarity of mistranslations for a text of this caliber. The book makes Johnson, an unfamiliar name in the Spanish-speaking world, accessible as a compelling analyst and respectful, careful, and imaginative reporter.
The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language
Johnson details his intent to "fix" the English language by establishing authoritative standards for spelling and sound.
This edition presents a thematic selection of Johnson’s works, emphasizing his roles as a moralist and literary critic. Martin organizes the volume into five parts, beginning with over fifty periodical essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, categorized by subjects such as psychology, manners, and authorship. The collection includes the philosophical tale Rasselas and excerpts from the Preface to the Dictionary, the Preface to Shakespeare, and the Lives of the Poets. Martin’s front matter provides a biographical introduction situating Johnson's mid-century "moral outpouring" against his personal struggles with grief, poverty, and melancholia. Editorial policies involve modernizing spelling and punctuation for the general reader while sourcing primary material from the 1825 Oxford edition. Annotations appear at the volume's end, offering glosses for archaic terms and identifying classical and contemporary references. Martin notes that Johnson's criticism remains "humanly anchored," functioning as a "mirror of life" that translates human sentiments into universal wisdom. The volume concludes with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
Contents: Note on the Text; Introduction; Part I: Periodical Essays (1750–1760) Morality, Behavior, and Psychology Society and Manners Biography Autobiography Literature and Authorship Death Politics; Part II: Excerpts from the Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755); Part III: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759); Part IV: Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare (1765); Part V: Excerpts from Lives of the Poets Cowley Milton Pope Collins Savage; Notes; Bibliography
The Powers of Dr. Johnson [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
O’Hagan examines the enduring legacy of Johnson through a tripartite review of biographies by Martin, Meyers, and Nokes. O’Hagan emphasizes the paradoxical nature of Johnson’s character, contrasting his "gross brutality" and lack of "niceness" with his revolutionary impact on professional authorship. The reviewer highlights Johnson's "moral questing spirit" and his role as the "patron saint of literary faith," who liberated writers from the "perils of having a patron." Martin receives praise for a "nuanced sense" of Johnson as a literary construction, while Meyers is noted for a more "salacious" focus on Johnson’s alleged sexual eccentricities. Nokes is credited with uncovering an "open, unguarded quality" in Johnson’s early writings. O’Hagan also addresses the tensions between Johnson and his circle, including Boswell’s tendency to "sanitize" his subject and Piozzi’s endurance of Johnson’s "capriciousness and roughness." O’Hagan concludes that Johnson’s greatness lies in his "intellectual grace" and a "ferocity of living" that professionalized the English language.}
The edition establishes the text through modern principles. The copy-text is the first edition, published 1779–1781. Johnson's substantive revisions for the third edition (published 1783) are incorporated into the text, with notes recording the readings replaced. Editorial work involved consultation of manuscript sources, including Johnson's holographs for the "Life of Rowe" and the "Life of Pope," and extant proofs containing Johnson’s corrections. Editorial policy adheres to partial modernization: the copy-text’s original spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation are generally retained, while capitalization, possessives, and typography are modernized. The text adjusts original Prefaces references to the accompanying edition of poetry, such as "this collection," to reflect the separation in later printings, typically reading "late collection." Supplemental material originally appended to the Prefaces to correct omissions in the initial Works of the English Poets collection is omitted here. The edition is characterized by its comprehensive record of the composition process. It provides fuller textual notes than a subsequently published Oxford edition, recording approximately 1800 variants for the Pope biography alone. Textual and explanatory notes appear concisely at the bottom of the page. Annotation focuses narrowly on Johnson, detailing his biographical sources, factual errors, and critical opinions. Supplemental materials include an appendix reproducing Johnson’s rough notes for the "Life of Pope" in their entirety. The volume was received favorably as an extraordinary scholarly accomplishment, providing essential textual grounding. Scholars noted the annotation was significantly fuller than in earlier vols. of the Yale Edition. The work immediately established itself as a necessary resource for research, standing alongside its main competitor.
追寻幸福: 拉赛拉斯王子漫游人生记 / Zhui xun xing fu: Lasailasi wang zi man you ren sheng ji [In Search of Happiness: Prince Rasselas's Wandering Life]
Harmon provides a historical overview of the development of poetic criticism, positioning Johnson as a central figure in the transition from neoclassical to modern aesthetics. The introduction discusses Johnson's aggressive critical method, specifically his tendency to "tear to pieces" works he found inconsistent or insincere, such as those of Milton. Harmon also details the subsequent critical reaction against Johnson, particularly by Wordsworth, who challenged the "pompous redundancy" and "unmeaning verbiage" found in Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The text explains how Johnson's satirical imitations of Juvenal intentionally used maximal redundancy to mock eighteenth-century poetic conventions. By placing Johnson in dialogue with both his predecessors and his Romantic successors, Harmon characterizes him as a "shining example" of the intellectual labor and vocational attitude required of a scholarly critic.
Chisholm's review of the nineteenth volume of the Yale Johnson edition, covering shorter biographical writings he professed to "love most," describes the editorial work of DeMaria and Brack in tracing Johnson’s development from a biased hack writer for Cave’s Gentleman’s Magazine. The collection features pieces written from 1737—including lives of scientists, philosophers, and military leaders—that demonstrate Johnson’s "departures" from sources and his perfecting of "cut-and-paste." Chisholm notes Johnson’s status as a sometimes lazy researcher primarily writing for money who frequently misread sources, such as his parliamentary misidentification of Sydenham. The review details the exclusion of women from the volume, except for epitaphs for Johnson’s wife and mother, and finds Johnson’s epitaph for Bell shockingly blunt in its description of the "Daily Tortures of Gradual Death." Despite his rough-mannered tone, the volume confirms Johnson’s role in rescuing biography from hagiography, pioneering a "fiercely honest," "sterner, more factual, and empirical" style while demonstrating his stated view of life-writing's usefulness.
Weinbrot evaluates the "closely observed stylistic detail" and the "closely observed infelicities" of the edited text. The text notes the "imbalance" between Savage’s perceived merit and his "moral, religious, and political" failures. Weinbrot argues that the biography is "nothing more than a larger assembly of beings" attempting to "counterfeit happiness." He questions whether the "disproportionate emphasis" on Savage’s suffering "denies against conviction" the reality of his "unfortunate inflammatory style." The review situates the work within Johnson's "long professional literary life" as a "complex figure" struggling with "literary truth."
Clingham reviews the final volume of the Yale Johnson edition, published 63 years after the project began. Johnson on Demand includes 142 works from 1725–1783, consisting of Johnson’s reviews, prefaces, and ghost writings—works he wrote for or as part of others' projects. The volume showcases Johnson’s extraordinary range of interests and literary forms, refuting the idea of him as "monolithic." His extensive, unpossessive collaboration with figures like Taylor, Goldsmith, and Chambers demonstrates his imaginative fluidity and public spirit, which are central to his writerly identity.
The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, officially launched in 1955, finally concluded six decades later with the release of the final volume, Johnson on Demand. General editor Robert DeMaria, Jr. is credited for completing the inter-generational, collaborative project, despite challenges including the deaths of prior editors. The final volume, a heterogeneous collection of occasional writings, advertisements, prefaces, and ghost-writings, demonstrates Johnson's work for others and is now freely available as a searchable digital version, enabling easy cross-referencing across his entire literary output.
Meyers reviews the final volume of the Yale edition, Johnson on Demand, praising its editorship (Robert DeMaria completed the work) and acknowledging that Johnson's learned mind, humane character, and tragic personality shine through. The volume's 144 diverse entries (1725-1783) include prefaces, reviews, and dedications. Meyers notes recurring themes of the difficulty of writing and the hardships of an author's life ("lowest point to which humanity could fall"). The most important works are Johnson's fervent, failed pleas to save Admiral Byng and the forger William Dodd from execution, highlighting his commitment to alleviating suffering.
Tankard highlights the significance of this final volume in the Yale Edition, which collects 161 of Johnson’s shorter, often anonymous, professional writings. Tankard identifies the editors' success in establishing attributions for obscure school exercises, advertisements, and book reviews. While Tankard observes 'palpable' editorial difficulties regarding the truncation of original texts and the omission of certain attributions like the 'Cock-Lane' account, Tankard maintains the volume provides essential detail to the mosaic of Johnson’s career.
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, with the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
When in 1773 James Boswell persuaded the great Samuel Johnson—then aged sixty-three—to embark with him on a tour of Boswell’s native Scotland, the adventure resulted in two magnificent books, Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Later published in one volume, the very different travelogues of this unlikely duo provide a fascinating picture not only of the Scottish Highlands at a turning point in its history, but also of the relationship between two men whose fame would be forever entwined. Johnson offers a magisterial account of a remote and rugged land and of its people, whose traditional way of life, in the wake of the failed Jacobite uprising, was tragically under threat. Boswell focuses instead on the psychological landscape of his famously gruff and witty companion, throwing further light on the friend and mentor whom he later immortalized in the masterly biography that would make his name. Read together, the two accounts form a unique classic of travel writing, a brilliant portrait of two temperamentally different and very talented men exploring a feudal world on the brink of vanishing.
Black provides a dual edition of Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) and Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). The text functions as a comprehensive record of their 1773 expedition, juxtaposing Johnson's philosophical and sociological reflections on a vanishing feudal culture with Boswell's detailed, personal record of Johnson's conversation and conduct. Black’s editorial approach emphasizes the Gaelic context of the journey, providing scholarly commentary that corrects historical inaccuracies and identifies the individuals and locations encountered by the duo. The edition explores Johnson’s investigations into "second sight," Highland emigration, and the authenticity of the Ossian poems. By presenting both accounts alongside contemporary maps and genealogical data, the volume clarifies the cultural impact of the tour on both the travelers and the Scottish society they documented.
Combines and intermixes the complete texts of Johnson's Journey to the western islands of Scotland, first published in 1775 and Boswell's Journal of a tour to the Hebrides, first published in 1785. Includes Rowlandson’s illustrations.
Lee provides an approving review of this single-volume edition of the Scottish narratives by Johnson and Boswell. Lee highlights the archetypal dimensions of the travelers' relationship and notes how the two accounts judiciously complement one another through their respective spatial and chronological arrangements. The review praises the concise historical background provided in the introduction and the sensible old-spelling approach to the text. Lee finds the annotation accurate and full, though he notes the editors omit one of the two original cancels in Johnson's Journey. The review commends the extensive apparatus, including detailed chronologies, maps, and a glossary based on Johnson's Dictionary. Lee concludes that this edition outflanks previous efforts like the Yale edition in its annotative richness and editorial care, making these stereoscopic books accessible to both students and scholars.
Samuel Johnson on Emigration and Resettlement' [selection from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland]
Venturo reviews the new, definitive edition of Johnson's poetry, noting its completeness, chronological arrangement, and dual focus on English and classical languages. Venturo praises the editors' fidelity to eighteenth-century textual practices and their provision of elaborate scholarly apparatus, including the source-texts and literal prose translations for all imitations, enhancing the reader's experience.
Pass the Bons Mots: U. of C. Becomes the Nerve Center of 200-Year-Old Wit that Never Ages
Johnson profiles University of Chicago scholars Kolb, Sherman, and Redford, highlighting their dedication to eighteenth-century studies. The narrative discusses the transfer of the Johnsonian News Letter editorship to Sherman. Redford emphasizes Johnson as the "most versatile writer in English literature," citing his roles as poet, lexicographer, and diarist. Kolb details Johnson's physical and mental ailments, including scrofula and emphysema, while noting his "crystalline reason." Sherman underscores Johnson's "immense empathy with human frailty" and the exhilarating experience of discovering his works through Boswell's biography.
Ingram finds Johnston's detailed and scholarly book focuses on "littleness," which is avoiding bathos but embracing "little things" as genuine features of greatness. The analysis shows how this feature, first appearing as small, moves to a central position in Johnson's literary and religious practice.
Shivel’s enthusiastic review praises this examination of "sinking" in Johnson’s corpus. Johnston explores tensions between the diminutive and the universal within Johnson’s prose, specifically regarding litotes, patronage, and the Lives of the Poets. The reviewer highlights Johnston’s analysis of neoclassical decorum, noting how 18th-century writers used the lowly to elevate the exalted. Shivel commends the lucid style and literary sensibility, concluding the work provides an informative study of the concord between the everyday and the high.
Venturo reviews Johnston's book, which focuses on the tension between "great and little, dignified and familiar" subjects and styles. Johnston uses Pope's Peri Bathous as her central point of reference. She argues there are competing classical and Christian ethical and aesthetic standards, with the Christian standard sanctioning the marriage of high style to low subject matter (referencing the Incarnation), which Johnson regarded as desirable. Venturo praises Johnston's emphasis on Johnson's rhetorical flexibility in pursuit of moral goals, noting that Johnson rehabilitates authors like Isaac Watts and Sir Richard Blackmore in his Prefaces Biographical and Critical. The study is commended for helpfully reframing ethical and aesthetic concerns for a new generation of scholars.
Jones addresses Greene's assertion about Johnson not using his honorary doctorate, stating it's correct he didn't use it himself. However, Jones notes that Thrale spoke of and to him as "Dr. Johnson," indicating this was general practice and suggesting he didn't dislike it. Johnson was known as "Dr." even before the Oxford doctorate, having received an earlier Dublin one cited in the certificate of the freedom of Aberdeen. Johnson also assisted Boswell with details for his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
The Origins and Development of English Dictionaries 1: Early Days: Nathaniel Bailey and Samuel Johnson
The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Jordan examines the eighteenth-century shift in the conceptualization of idleness from a private vice to a significant social and economic anxiety. The study argues that as the British middle class sought to define itself through industry, idleness became a marker of both aristocratic decadence and lower-class depravity. Johnson serves as a primary subject, specifically through his "anxious" relationship with his own perceived sloth. Jordan uses Johnson’s diaries, The Rambler, and The Idler to demonstrate how he transformed personal guilt into a public moral imperative, characterizing idleness as a "state of neutrality" that leaves the mind open to "malignant" influences. The dissertation also analyzes Boswell’s role in perpetuating the image of the "idle" but productive genius, noting how Boswell’s own struggle with purpose mirrored Johnson’s. Additionally, Jordan highlights the gendered dimensions of this anxiety, citing Hester Thrale Piozzi’s observations on the restrictive nature of domestic "leisure" for women. By contextualizing Johnson within the broader "gospel of work," Jordan concludes that his obsession with activity was a "defensive strategy" against the existential vacuum of the "unoccupied hour."
'Driving on the System of Life': Samuel Johnson and Idleness
Johnson on Torture: A Legal Footnote to the Life
The article analyzes Johnson's seemingly contradictory statement to a Dutchman that torture in Holland was a "favour to an accused person." It is argued that Johnson was making a serious legal point, consistent with contemporary understanding. The Roman civil law tradition required two eyewitnesses or confession for capital conviction. Johnson's point is that the circumstantial evidence required for torture ("half proof") in the Dutch system was often sufficient for conviction under English common law. Thus, a defendant who refused to confess under torture was acquitted, giving him an extra chance to escape a punishment that an English court would have imposed.
Politics and Culture: The Dr. Franklin-Dr. Johnson Connection, with an Analogue
Benjamin franklin and samuel johnson, august humanists from Opposite sides of the ocean, never met on a social footing sufficiently firm enough for them to leave any first-hand impression of the other or give rise to any dramatic encounter, even though they resided for years in London proximity, carrying on lives of remarkably active social intercourse. Certainly, they knew each other by repute as intellectual forces in the age. Yet attracted as they were to mind, they did not seek out each other's intellectual company, and no mutual acquaintance (and there were a number of them) had the temerity apparently to bring them together. All the while a studied indifference seems to reign on the part of both men — although we cannot know this with any certainty — thwarting otherwise strong reasons that should have conspired to link them in some fashion. This social anomaly from our perspective is that much odder since Franklin's social route, briefly traced in section I, now and then intersects with Johnson's.
The Manufacturers of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England
Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot and Johnson's Life of Savage
Justice analyzes the emergence of professional authorship and literary biography through the works of Pope and Johnson. Focusing on Johnson's Account of the Life of Richard Savage, Justice argues that Johnson established the modern genre of literary biography by combining personal narrative with acute critical readings. Unlike Pope, who projected a fictionalized gentlemanly status to repudiate the marketplace, Johnson accepts the "world of print," positioning Savage as a "copyrightable biographical subject." Justice explores how Johnson uses Savage's tragicomic life to navigate the tensions between internal merit and social rank, ultimately creating a "literary property qualification" for participation in the literary tradition. The chapter highlights Johnson's role in aestheticizing the life of writing, transforming the "criminal" aspects of Savage’s biography into a foundational text for the "counter public sphere of Literature." Through this lens, Johnson emerges as the true hero of the Account, using Savage's failures to secure his own status as an author of merit.
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: From Classical Learning to the National Language
Preaching about People: The Power of Biography
Kalas presents Johnson as a "quintessential scholar" whose "extraordinary Christian devotion" remained the most significant feature of his life despite his celebrated literary status. While acknowledging Johnson’s "grotesque mannerisms" and "perpetual convulsive movements," Kalas emphasizes that his captivation of others stemmed from eloquence and deep conviction. Johnson maintained an orthodox faith, believing in the "objective power of prayer" and the universal corruption of sin, which he personally combated through a struggle against "sloth." Kalas highlights Johnson’s "heart for human infirmity," noting his financial support for the distressed and his "truly noble" act of kneeling in prayer by a dying servant's bed. Ultimately, Kalas argues that while Johnson was a "genius with words," his true legacy lies in being a "man of his word" who lived with a "consistency of... faith" that challenged the scoffing intellectuals of his age.
Dr. Johnson: Interviews and Recollections
Curley praises Kaminski for a "scrupulously objective interpretation" of Johnson's obscure years from 1737 to 1746. The review emphasizes how the Licensing Act of 1737 steered Johnson away from drama and toward poetry, journalism, and scholarship. Kaminski identifies Johnson as the first staff member at the Gentleman's Magazine responsible for "original composition," including biographies and literary criticism. Curley notes that Kaminski adjusted exaggerations about Johnson's poverty while verifying the "cumulative frustrations" that led to his work on the Dictionary. The reviewer disputes Kaminski's "needlessly cool estimate" of Johnson's early politics but commends the detailed analysis of Johnson's bibliographical chores for the Harleian Library. The book is seen as a "rigorous historical scholarship" that counteracts the sentimental Boswellian distortion of Johnson as a mere talker and humorist.
Hume’s mixed review discusses Temmer’s comparative intellectual history, which examines Johnson alongside Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. The reviewer notes that Temmer practices a speculative method while acknowledging methodological risks. Although the book presents no central thesis, the reviewer argues that it produces a sharpened sense of intellectual history during the late eighteenth century by showing suggestive parallels and differences in style and structure between these authors.
Lurcock commends Kaminski’s meticulous reconstruction of Johnson’s literary activity between 1737 and 1746. The reviewer emphasizes the focus on Johnson’s professional relationship with Cave and the Gentleman’s Magazine, arguing that Johnson sought reputation rather than mere subsistence. Lurcock notes that the text dispels myths of Johnson’s extreme poverty while questioning Kaminski’s reliance on stylistic signatures for attributions. The reviewer identifies the study as a significant contribution to understanding the transition from amateur to professional periodical writing.
Middendorf reviews Kaminski’s rigorous analysis of Johnson’s life as an author between 1737 and 1746. Kaminski reconstructs the literary market of the Gentleman’s Magazine and the shifting book trade to provide a coherent picture of Johnson as a professional writer. The study offers significant correctives to Boswellian myths, disputing the notion of Johnson’s extreme penury and Savage’s total indigence. Kaminski argues that Johnson and Savage roamed the streets more because they cherished each other’s company than because they lacked means for lodging. Middendorf commends the work for subjecting scattered facts to consistent analysis, resulting in a sound examination of Johnson’s early accommodations to the demands of the London stage and periodical press.
Pierce reviews Thomas Kaminski’s review of Johnson’s work between 1737 and 1746. Pierce notes that Kaminski makes the familiar new by re-creating the context of contemporary journalistic practices. The study challenges the traditional view of Johnson’s desperate poverty, showing that he lived as a gentleman of slender means. Kaminski clarifies Johnson’s relationship with Edmund Cave, demonstrating how Johnson helped professionalize the Gentleman’s Magazine. Pierce observes that most of Johnson’s early work was derivative and editorial rather than original. He concludes that Kaminski’s book raises the question of how such a high-brow journalist transformed into the eloquent moralist of the Rambler and Rasselas just a few years later.
Womersley praises Kaminski's study as "real, scholarly work" for its "rigorous scholarly investigation" into Johnson's early journalism and his relationship with Cave at the Gentleman's Magazine. The review highlights Kaminski's "revelatory findings" concerning payment records and his "more complex view" of Johnson's characterization of Walpole in the Parliamentary Debates. Womersley suggests that Johnsonian studies are best advanced by such "serious scholarly investigation" of literary output and historical context, rather than "general, speculative essays." He concludes that Kaminski's work exemplifies the serious bibliographical and historical investigation required in modern studies, moving beyond "general topic essays."
A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake
Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes
When The Vanity of Human Wishes was first published in 1749, it bore the following subtitle: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated by Samuel Johnson. The subtitle provides a great deal of useful information for modern readers wondering how to approach this difficult poem. First, it identifies the primary genre of the work as ‘satire’. Second, it suggests that what follows will be in essence a version of a poem by Juvenal, the great Roman satirist of the early second century AD. And, third, the poem will not be precisely a translation, but an ‘imitation’, a term that in Johnson's day suggested that the poet would allow himself considerable freedom in adapting the original material.
Some Alien Qualities of Samuel Johnson's Art
Kaminski argues that modern readers often miss key aspects of Johnson's literary artistry because aesthetic assumptions have changed. He identifies techniques unfamiliar or undervalued today: syntactic structures mirroring Latin that create potential ambiguities resolved by context; "disguised concreteness" where Latinate abstractions retain vivid root meanings (e.g., 'approximate' meaning 'bring near'); highly compressed figurative language where abstract nouns perform concrete actions (akin to Juvenal); reliance on convention and allusion where minimal details evoke rich literary and visual contexts (e.g., the Xerxes couplet); and the appeal of allegory to a "rationally pleasing" aesthetic sensibility that valued ingenuity, propriety, generality, and moral truth.
'To Pluck a Titled Poet's Borrow'd Wing': Richard Savage and Johnson's 'Thales' — Again
Samuel Johnson printed a gloss from Juvenal for part of his poem, "London." Juvenal was complaining that in a corrupt society one could not offer honest criticism of bad poetry. Johnson had turned this general reflection into an attack on the contemporary poet laureate, Colly Cibber, not, as has been claimed, Richard Savage. To pluck the laureate's wing, Kaminki had previously argued, is not to write in his stead, but to pull off its borrowed feathers, to strip the poetry of its stolen elegancies and to show it for the empty stuff it really was. Kaminski now adds additional support to this reading by pointing out two passages from Roman poets that provide clear parallels in both content and argument.
Kaminski analyzes Johnson’s political trajectory from a "rabid, harsh opponent" of the Walpole administration to a steady defender of the Crown. The article argues that Johnson’s politics were submerged in "broader concerns" of human nature and moral responsibility. Kaminski details Johnson’s work on the Lilliputian debates and his four major pro-government pamphlets, including The False Alarm and Taxation No Tyranny. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "polemical attack" on the American colonists' hypocrisy regarding slavery, famously questioning the "loudest yelps for liberty" among slave drivers. Kaminski notes that Johnson’s receipt of a royal pension in 1762 did not result in a loss of independence, but rather assuaged his "failed schoolmaster" anxieties. The article concludes that Johnson’s political writing was a "grounded, mutually illuminating deliberation" that sought to protect the "national tongue" and the "interest and prosperity of his King and country."
Satire as 'A Sword in the Hands of a Mad Man' and 'That Art of Necessary Defence': A Study of Madness and Satire in Swift and Johnson
Dr. Johnson's Canon and His Common Reader
Kaplan and Rose identify Johnson as the "father of the literary canon," tracing its origins to the 1777 commission for The Lives of the Poets. They argue that Johnson’s canon-making was a democratic intervention in a commercial age, where he codified a tradition for a popular audience while rejecting the elitism of the pre-print era. The chapter highlights Johnson’s "common reader" as an unsophisticated, non-professional judge of literary merit whose "common sense" must finally decide all claims to "poetical honours". Kaplan and Rose emphasize Johnson’s psychological and intellectual complexity, noting that he frequently undercuts his neoclassical generalizations with an awareness of human limitation and historical change. They conclude that Johnson’s model of a flexible, readership-oriented canon offers a vital historical precedent for contemporary efforts to pluralize literary study.
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755): Johnson's Use of Quotations from the Works of Alexander Pope in Volume 1 of the Dictionary
Johnson and 'The Letters of Junius': New Perspectives on an Old Enigma
Virginia Woolf and Samuel Johnson: Common Readers
Lynn's mixed review outlines Beth Carole Rosenberg's study of Virginia Woolf and Johnson. The review highlights Rosenberg's identification of a revealing dynamic showing that Woolf's critical assumptions derive from Johnson, mediated by Leslie Stephen, which informs the dialogical style of Woolf's major novels. Lynn finds that the structural application of Mikhail Bakhtin and Harold Bloom is both enabling and obscuring, stating that the Bakhtinian lens sometimes clouds the connection as Rosenberg struggles with multiple meanings of dialogue and conversation.
Orthodoxy and Heresy in Eighteenth-Century Society: Essays from the DeBartolo Conference
Bywords (A Reflection on Samuel Johnson)
Wise and Otherwise: In Dialogue with Samuel Johnson and George Steevens
Transcriptions of marginalia by John Keats found in his copy of the "Whittingham" Shakespeare in reaction to critical comments by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. Cf. Forewords "This edition ... was designed by Martino Mardersteig and printed ... in 50 keepsake copies by Stamperia Valdonega"
Limited edition of 50 copies.
The Chain of Becoming: The Philosophical Tale, the Novel, and Neglected Realism of the Enlightenment: Swift, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Johnson, and Austen
Keener examines the philosophical tale as a generic alternative to the novel. The central subject is the "chain of becoming," detailing the sequence of mental processes in the knower. The book concentrates on the character's responsibility for making an undeluded connection between self and world. It uses Enlightenment empirical psychology through rigorous psychological self-assessment. Keener distinguishes the non-realism of the tale from the realism of the novel. Johnson’s Rasselas is assessed, showing it remains schematic yet psychologically provocative.
Implication, Readers' Resources, and Thomas Gray's Pindaric Odes
The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar's Eighteenth-Century Formosan Hoax
Keevak explores the relationship between Johnson and Psalmanazar, whom Johnson reverenced for his piety and sought after the most among his acquaintances. Johnson's admiration centered on Psalmanazar's regularity, a term signifying a life of consistent purity and devotion that Johnson felt he himself lacked. Keevak notes that Johnson viewed Psalmanazar as a moral and religious ideal, famously stating he would as soon think of contradicting a bishop. The chapter also includes Piozzi's skeptical reflections in her Anecdotes, where she records Johnson identifying Psalmanazar as the best man he had ever known, despite her own doubts about the impostor's final preference for Anglicanism. Keevak concludes that Psalmanazar's Asiatic simplicity remained a permanent fixture in the minds of contemporaries like Tobias Smollett and Johnson long after the Formosan ruse ended.
On Johnson as the “patron saint” of resolution makers.
Dr. Johnson's Wisdom [review of 'A Neutral Being between the Sexes', by Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer, and Bad Behavior, by Martin Wechselblatt]
Basney praises Kemmerer's book for its clear prose and grasp of how Johnson derived progressive conclusions on male and female equality from the Christian dogma of human equality before God. Kemmerer's reading of Irene is strong, and her suggestion that Johnson modeled a style for female self-expression in the periodical essay is highly interesting. Wechselblatt's book, though his prose is heavily fashionable, argues Johnson gained rhetorical authority by dramatizing the difficulty of self-awareness. Basney critiques Wechselblatt for being blinded by devotion to the instability of language and the chaos of the "modern" self, neglecting the role of Christian revelation in Johnson’s thought.
Kemmerer's book, the first on Johnson and gender. attempts to prove he was not a misogynist with tenacious single-mindedness. Many readings, like those on his "androgyny," are unconvincing special pleading. The book suffers from a narrow focus, closely reading only Rambler, Irene, and Rasselas, ignoring his correspondence and real-life associations with women.
Kemmerer challenges the myth of Johnson’s misogyny, presenting him as an open-minded mediator who fostered debate on sexual politics. Rounce highlights the rewarding analysis of Irene, where Kemmerer refutes the view of the heroine as a mere apostate, reading the play’s power metaphors as overt engagements with gender. Kemmerer identifies "psychological androgyny" in Johnson’s refusal to adopt antithetical gender roles, particularly in The Rambler and Rasselas. While finding the characterization of Johnson as a notional saint occasionally extreme, Rounce concludes that the book successfully describes the complexities of his sexual politics.
New Research Indicates Johnson Gave Up on His Dictionary: Leading Expert Claims that Dr. Johnson Abandoned His Dictionary for Several Years — without Telling His Publishers
Found in Translation: Foreign Travel and Linguistic Difference in the Eighteenth Century
See chapter 4, “British Translations: Foreign Languages and Translation in Johnson’s Dictionary.”
Kernan argues that Samuel Johnson's life, work, and public persona were fundamentally shaped by the technological, economic, and social revolution of print culture, establishing him as the central and quintessential figure of the modern "author by profession." The book's core thesis is that Johnson’s entire career, rather than being a series of disconnected projects, represents a coherent response to the new "system of print letters" that replaced the old literary world of patronage and scribal manuscripts in the eighteenth century. Kernan's study is structured in three parts. The first, "The System of Print," provides a detailed analysis of this new literary-industrial complex, examining the profound changes brought by print technology. This includes the legal shift from patronage to copyright, the rise of the powerful bookseller-publisher as the new financial engine of literature, the creation of a vast, anonymous reading "public" and the corresponding decline of a small coterie audience, and the development of new print institutions like circulating libraries, magazines, and critical reviews. The second part, "The Author Samuel Johnson," places Johnson directly within this system, framing his biography as the archetypal story of a professional writer. His "life of writing" is shown to be a heroic, moral, and successful navigation of this commercial world. Kernan reinterprets Johnson's major works as quintessential print productions: the Dictionary is an epochal act of standardizing the national language for a mass print audience, and the Lives of the Poets is the crowning achievement of a career "hack," a series of masterful critical prefaces written for a commercial booksellers' anthology. The final part, "Johnson's Canon and the Print World," explores how print culture created new literary problems, such as the "unstable text"—which Johnson confronted in his edition of Shakespeare, a work that had to be reconstructed from its variant printed editions—and the new power of print to shape national discourse, as seen in his political tracts. Kernan portrays Johnson as the figure who, in his life and his works, defined the profession of "letters" and became the classic embodiment of the modern author. Chapter 1, 'The King of England Meets the Great Cham of Literature,' analyzes the 1767 meeting between Samuel Johnson and George III as a symbolic ritual marking the transition from an oral-aristocratic literary authority to an author-centered print culture. It argues that while the king attempted to reassert traditional royal prerogative by commanding Johnson to write, Johnson’s polite but firm resistance signaled the professional writer’s new independence from monarchical and aristocratic patronage. Chapter 2, 'Printing, Bookselling, Readers, and Writers in Eighteenth-Century London,' examines how the "logic of print"—characterized by multiplicity, systematization, and fixity—structurally transformed the English book trade and the professional identity of the author. The chapter traces the development of the "print factory" model, where the constant demand for copy and the economic pressures of capital-intensive publishing turned writing into a "mechanic trade" and created the modern marketplace for "common readers." Chapter 3, 'Making the Writer’s Role in a Print Culture,' explores the various strategies employed by eighteenth-century authors to achieve professional dignity within a system that tended to treat them as mere laborers. It contrasts the "zanily inventive" attempts of figures like Richard Savage and Christopher Smart to inhabit mythic or aristocratic personae with Johnson’s commitment to an openly modern, professional identity that grounded authorial authority in the hard facts of the print world. Chapter 4, 'The Writer as Culture Hero: Boswell's Johnson,' addresses James Boswell’s role in monumentalizing Johnson as the paradigmatic author of the Gutenberg age through the Life of Johnson. It argues that Boswell’s biographical art transformed Johnson’s personal struggles with "vacuity" and "nothingness" into an heroic archetype of the writer who provides social order and meaning through the medium of the printed book. Chapter 5, 'Creating an Aura for Literary Texts in Print Culture,' argues that as mechanical reproduction stripped classical texts of their traditional "aura," Johnson and his contemporaries reconstructed literary value through canon-making, textual editing, and the cultivation of style. The chapter focuses on Johnson’s Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare as foundational efforts to establish the printed text as a fixed, authoritative source of linguistic and cultural truth. Chapter 6, 'Reading and Readers: The Literacy Crisis of the Eighteenth-Century,' examines the shift in the literary audience from a restricted group of shared-taste listeners to a diverse, anonymous public of consumers. It contends that Johnson’s critical focus on the "common reader" validated this new mass audience, effectively democratizing literary judgment while responding to contemporary anxieties regarding the spread of literacy. Chapter 7, 'The Place and Purpose of Letters in Print Society,' investigates how the explosion of printed information necessitated new methods of organizing knowledge, such as catalogues and literary histories. It interprets Johnson’s Lives of the Poets as the definitive construction of a historical continuity for "letters," providing the discipline with a structured past and a secular legitimacy independent of the church or the court. Chapter 8, 'The Social Construction of Romantic Literature,' traces the evolution of Johnson’s print-based literary system into the romantic and modern eras, particularly through the works of Wordsworth and Balzac. The chapter concludes that while romanticism often defined itself in opposition to industrial capitalism, it remained fundamentally dependent on the print-culture infrastructure—canonical libraries, textual fixity, and the public marketplace—that Johnson had helped establish. Critics are generally favorable, praising the imaginative exploration of how the transition from courtly patronage to market-driven print culture shaped authorial identity. Carnochan, in TLS, positions the work within the power and crisis of modernity, noting the argument that success stemmed from an understanding of the print age. Fix's review in ECS finds the analysis most compelling when treating writing as a psychological imperative to secure identity against alienation, though criticizing the aggressive reading of royal encounters. In RES, Womersley approves of the subtle study, praising the successful double narrative that weaves together cultural history and literary criticism to show the independence print culture confers. Writing in AJ, Grundy delivers a favorable notice, calling the book exhilarating for its imaginative coloring of cultural processes despite disputing several historical claims. But Folkenflik (SEL) expresses disappointment, arguing that the discussion of print logic feels largely familiar and lacks depth. Middendorf, in JNL, credits the work with convincingly defining the intersections between the book trade and eighteenth-century culture, though noting an occasional overextension of the thesis. In JEGP, Kolb finds the book consistently engrossing but minor, listing numerous factual errors and noting it lacks the freshness of a seminal work. Rawson (LRB) asserts that the argument goes too far in claiming the biographer created the subject's reality. Finally, Korshin, in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, identifies significant scholarly deficiencies and a reliance on antiquated views, but concludes the work successfully places the subject within his own print culture.
Published in paperback in 1989 as Samuel Johnson & the impact of print.
D'Evelyn’s enthusiastic review of Alvin Kernan’s study examines Johnson as the "paradigm" of the professional writer emerging within a market-driven print culture. Kernan argues Johnson replaced aristocratic patronage with the marketplace, creating a "literary identity of considerable magnitude". The review highlights how major projects, including the Dictionary and the edition of Shakespeare, established cultural facts and stabilized the authorial self against "nothingness". D'Evelyn notes Kernan’s "deconstructionist" motive but suggests it may obscure Johnson’s own belief in absolute truth. The review affirms that Johnson remains a "culture hero" for those who value the historical transition to professional writing.
Fix reviews a collection of essays concerning Johnson’s relationship with art. Robert Folkenflik’s essay challenges the belief that Johnson lacked aesthetic taste, arguing he admired moral and intellectual painting. Paul Alkon’s essay examines illustrations of Rasselas to trace the book’s reception and moral controversies. Fix notes that while Alkon is a shrewd reader of illustrations, his generalizations regarding their influence on reader response are not consistently compelling. The review concludes that the work enlarges the sense of how attention to pictorial art might enrich Johnsonian understanding.
Gray reviews Hudson's attempt to provide a detailed analysis of Johnson's relationship with eighteenth-century ethics and theology. Gray notes that Hudson attempts to run the "gamut" of contemporary views on miracles and mysteries, often producing a "refrigeration of the mind" through scholarly overcrowding. The review highlights Hudson’s argument that Johnson was demonstrably inconsistent in his religious responses, showing both orthdox prejudice and open-mindedness toward dissenters. Gray critiques Hudson for excluding leading modern biographers like Bate and Clifford while focusing heavily on seventeenth-century divines. Hudson categorizes Johnson as a "Christian epicurean," a label Gray finds "rough" and prefers "Scriptural Christian." Gray concludes that while the book is a "diffuse" flitting from subject to subject, Hudson’s painstaking effort to reveal the multiplicity of influences on Johnson is commendable.
Kolb finds Kernan's wide-ranging book consistently engrossing and provocative. While acknowledging the appeal to nonspecialists, he notes specialists will focus on the underlying assumptions. Kolb believes Kernan's conceptions of "culture" and "print culture" are tenable and instructive, but critics adumbrated many segments of his framework earlier, so his propositions lack the freshness of a truly seminal work. Kolb lists an unusual number of factual errors and misleading interpretations, concluding the book is mildly revisionary but does not radically modify traditional literary history.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada
Korshin examines the evolution of the eighteenth-century print system through the career of Johnson. Korshin notes Kernan's focus on the shift from personal patronage to a public book market and the creation of a modern library system. While Korshin praises Kernan as an intelligent critic capable of making insightful cultural connections, he identifies significant scholarly deficiencies. He disputes Kernan's reliance on a romanticized, "antiquated" view of Johnson derived from Boswell, Macaulay, and Carlyle, noting that Kernan often ignores modern Johnsonian scholarship in favor of "heroic visions." Korshin points out factual errors regarding the deaths of Johnson's wife and mother and criticizes the uncritical acceptance of Boswell's "scrupulous" record-keeping despite evidence of alteration. However, Korshin commends Kernan's analysis of the Dictionary as a tool for typographical fixity, his treatment of the Harleian Library cataloguing, and his assessment of the Lives of the English Poets in establishing the English literary canon. Korshin concludes that despite Kernan's "carelessness with his Johnsonian evidence," the work successfully places Johnson within his own print culture.
Kernan examines the relationship between print technology and social literary structures through the writing life of Johnson. He identifies Johnson as a transitional figure who recognized print as the "primary fact of letters" and used it to establish authorial dignity independent of traditional patronage. The study suggests that Johnson’s "modern" authorial personality provided the psychological framework for subsequent Romantic writers. While the reviewer notes that Kernan occasionally overextends his thesis—attributing perhaps too much of Johnson’s character to the mechanics of print and blurring distinctions between Johnson and Boswell—the work is credited with convincingly defining the intersections between the book trade and eighteenth-century culture.
While acknowledging Kernan’s theoretical grounding in Eisenstein and McLuhan, Winton criticizes the work for its lack of standard documentation.
Womersley approves of Kernan's subtle study, which uses Johnson's career as the focal point and instance of the large cultural shift from late orality and patronage to "print culture." Kernan's approach provides a successful "double narrative," weaving together the history of the book, cultural history, and literary criticism to relate the system and fixity of "print logic" to the eighteenth-century book trade while offering "new readings" of Johnson's work. The book reinterprets the meeting with George III and the famous letter to Chesterfield as acts of defiance and signals of the "demise of patronage and oral culture," suggesting instead the "independence print culture confers on the author." Womersley finds the account of Johnson's psychology "particularly suggestive," portraying him as a man who sought the "necessary order and solidity" of print to realize himself and find the stability lacking in his personal life. He appreciates the insistence that literature is a "social activity," noting the Dictionary and the edition of Shakespeare receive "deserved prominence" in a framework that illuminates Johnson's work and mind. Although Womersley expresses "some doubt" regarding Kernan's attempt to link this historical shift to the rise of modern information technology, he praises the skillful integration of the narrative.
Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
King George of England Meets Samuel Johnson the Great Cham of Literature: The End of Courtly Letters and the Beginning of Modern Literature
Kernan examines the 1767 meeting between Johnson and George III in the Queen’s Library as a symbolic "turning point" in literary history, marking the transition from the "tradition of courtly letters" to "modern literature." Drawing on Boswell’s detailed account, Kernan argues that Johnson represented a new kind of authority: the independent "man of letters" whose power derived from the printing press and the marketplace rather than royal patronage. While Johnson maintained deep respect for the monarchy, his refusal to be overawed and his role as the "Great Cham" of literature demonstrated that the writer had become a "cultural force" independent of the state. Kernan highlights how Johnson’s lexicographical and critical achievements provided a "new foundation for literary authority," effectively ending the Renaissance model of the courtier-poet. This encounter signifies the moment when the "sovereignty of the pen" began to rival that of the crown, establishing the professional writer as a central figure in the modern intellectual landscape.
To Enjoy or Endure: Samuel Johnson's Message to America
Keymer introduces a new edition of Johnson's Rasselas, focusing on its first American edition and the work's theme of the pursuit of happiness. Johnson, a conservative, would have disliked the American Declaration of Independence's insistence on equality and rights, though he and Jefferson may have aligned on the difficulty of obtaining happiness. Johnson's view of life was that much is to be endured and little enjoyed. Rasselas was a satirical critique of utopian schemes, written quickly for money following his mother's death. The novel contains explicit hostility to the imperial project and implies the future European domination of the lands it describes.
A version of Keymer’s introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Rasselas. On the pursuit of happiness in Rasselas, with glances at similar concerns in early America.
The Miserable Health of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Keynes chronicles Johnson's medical misfortunes, including scrofula, severe myopia, and Tourette's syndrome. He challenges the traditional view that Johnson contracted tuberculosis from a wet nurse, suggesting ophthalmia neonatorum caused his early eye issues instead. The text details Johnson's "morbid melancholy," fear of insanity, and various late-life pathologies such as emphysema, gout, and congestive heart failure. Keynes analyzes the 1784 autopsy performed by Wilson, which revealed an enlarged heart and a destroyed right kidney. He corroborates the Tourette’s diagnosis, noting how Boswell and Piozzi likely concealed scatological vocalizations to preserve the "Great Convulsionary's" dignity.
Dr. Johnson at Prayer: Conslation Philosophy in The Prayers and Meditations
Kickel focuses on the design and content of Johnson’s religious devotions in his posthumously published collection. By distilling the consolation philosophy inherent in the text, Kickel argues that these writings model a pragmatic and aspirational approach to grief. The study explores how Johnson’s prayer practice relates to the consolatory elements found in his letters, situating his work within the context of eighteenth-century consolation literature. Kickel concludes that Johnson speaks for both himself and his age about the best methods to cope with grief and physical pain.
The Social Production of the Man of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Kilfoyle historicizes the "man of letters," identifying the figure not as an objective reality but as a rhetorical and political device used to control social authority within the burgeoning print market. Drawing on Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman, Kilfoyle argues that eighteenth-century writers produced themselves as commodities to be consumed by a public seeking cultural capital. A central case study examines Johnson's early biography of Richard Savage, suggesting Johnson constructed his own identity as a man of letters by contrasting Savage's "maimed" texts and "unnatural" maternal neglect with his own professional command of narrative. Kilfoyle uses Boswell's accounts of Johnson's conversation and celebrity—including the "cult" surrounding artifacts like Johnson’s oak stick—to demonstrate how the man of letters' identity exceeded his written works. The dissertation further analyzes how Adam Smith's theories of sympathy and language functioned as hegemonic tools for social regulation. Kilfoyle notes that while this economy of letters appeared liberating, it actively excluded "women of letters" and marginalized Celtic peripheries. By examining the works of Hume, Smith, Johnson, and Gibbon, the study concludes that the "man of letters" served as a simulacrum of wholeness that authorized national identity and imperial paternalism.
Jenoki e natanan Samuel Johnson eui munhakkwan
Johnson munhak e itseosuh eui botong saramdeul e daehan gwansim: Life of Savage reul choolbaljom euro bayeo
Johnsoniana: Richard Wilbur, 'Epistemology'
Kinsley identifies a reference to Johnson in Richard Wilbur's poem "Epistemology." The poem alludes to Johnson's physical "challenge" to Berkeley's immaterialism. Wilbur describes Johnson as a figure who "kicked the stone" to prove the reality of the material world, contrasting this with the views of "cautious" philosophers.
Three Pillars of Modern Order: Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith
Kirk explores how Burke, Johnson, and Smith defended a social and moral order against revolutionary ideologies. He characterizes Johnson as a moderate "statist" who derived political principles from the rule of law and Christian fallibility, viewing Whiggery as a negation of principle. While noting personal animosity between Smith and Johnson over Hume, Kirk argues that all three men shared a transcendent moral order and a realism that balanced the tension between authority and freedom.
Clarke calls this an engrossing study that offers far more than a basic edition, raising the book above mere usefulness. Kirkley is commended for defending Johnson against charges of carelessness, showing his reading was resistant and systematic, leading to new insights into Johnson's modes of reading and writing.
In this positive review, Lynch describes Harriet Kirkley’s study as a "meticulous analysis" of Johnson’s compositional methods. Lynch notes the work provides a diplomatic transcription of an unpublished reading notebook used for the biography of Pope. The review explains how Kirkley traces phrases from sources through manuscript notes into the finished Life, expanding upon the scholarship of Robert DeMaria. Lynch characterizes the argument as "dense and demanding" but finds the prose admirably clear. Despite noting "inadequate copyediting," Lynch recommends this "challenging read" for specialists and advanced graduate students.
Designing the 'Life of Johnson': The Lyell Lectures, 2001–2
Lurcock evaluates Redford’s detailed account of Boswell’s creation of Johnson through manuscript and proof analysis. Redford argues that Boswell’s biographical truth is "made, not found," highlighting the collaborative role of Malone and the printers. The study explores Boswell’s "Flemish picture" technique and his use of "scripted playlets" to dramatize Johnson’s life. While instructive, Lurcock notes that Redford fails to fully counter Donald Greene’s earlier criticisms regarding Boswell’s artistic distortions.
Tankard reviews Kirkley's edition and analysis of Johnson's manuscript reading notes for his Life of Pope. The volume provides a typographical facsimile of the challenging, fragmentary notes (primarily on Warburton's Pope and Ruffhead's Life) alongside extensive annotations tracing sources and their use in the finished biography. Tankard praises the exhaustive scholarship but finds the presentation format awkward and suggests alternative approaches, including a facsimile or a more interpretive reconstruction. While valuing the detailed account of Johnson's reading and compositional methods, Tankard critiques the lack of broader conclusions and the sometimes overly theoretical framing, wishing for a more accessible, discursive commentary.
The Hack as Genius: Dr. Samuel Johnson Arrives at Harvard
Kirsch's enthusiastic review celebrates the donation of the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Samuel Johnson to the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The review chronicles Johnson's career transitions, noting how his work on the Harleian Library catalog established him as "the hack as genius" who infused commercial assignments with moral instruction. Kirsch describes the archive as the world's finest repository of Johnsonian documents, housing over 4,000 books and 5,500 letters and manuscripts. The text details notable artifacts within the collection, including Johnson's personal teapot, the original manuscript of "London," and the corrected proof sheets of the Life of Pope. Kirsch also highlights the documentation of Johnson's personal relationships, specifically his dramatic, adversarial correspondence with Piozzi following her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, and the extensive collection of Boswelliana that features Piozzi's annotated copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson.
On the Hyde Collection of Viscountess Eccles going to the Houghton Library.
An Index of Civilisation: Studies of Printing and Publishing History in Honour of Keith Maslen
Center for Bibliographical & Textual Studies, Monash University
A Note on Johnson's Dictionary in Nineteenth-Century Australia and New Zealand
Kirsop provides a brief account of the availability and influence of Johnson's Dictionary in colonial Australia and New Zealand. The article investigates how various editions, including miniature versions discussed by Fleeman, were imported and sold by local booksellers to satisfy the linguistic needs of pioneer communities. Kirsop notes that Johnson remained a standard authority in the Antipodes, serving as a cultural link to Britain through the medium of print. The text highlights specific instances of the dictionary appearing in auction catalogs and library lists, emphasizing its role as an essential tool for maintaining English literacy and "civilisation" in a colonial context far removed from London's literary centers.
Samuel Johnson in Paris in 1775: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 1995
Appreciations: Johnson's Dictionary
This appreciation commemorates the 250th anniversary of the publication of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. Klinkenborg emphasizes Johnson’s dynamic and volatile understanding of language, characterizing his lexicographical work as an unprecedented exploration of "the boundless chaos of a living speech." Klinkenborg suggests the intensive reading process required for the dictionary atomized all texts for Johnson, and that he published the work recognizing the ultimate unconquerability of the English language. This approach reveals Johnson's profound sense of vigor despite his personal turmoil.
'Johnson and Garrick Leave Lichfield' and 'Levet'
Johnson's Dictionary: Catalogue of a Notable Collection of One Hundred Different Editions of Dr. Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English Language,' Some of them Exceedingly Scarce, and All Collected with Great Skill and Industry, Offered for Sale as a Collection
Includes commentary on Congleton, DeMaria, Nagashima, and Reddick.
Kolb provides a comprehensive survey of exceedingly valuable publications for teaching Johnson, beginning with older essential discussions by Raleigh and Smith that defended the worth and vitality of Johnson’s compositions against Macaulay’s earlier dismissals. Post-World War II general studies by Bate, Greene, Fussell, and Grundy offer astute and incisive accounts of Johnson’s life and his diverse literary professionalisms. The essay also categorizes specialized resources for specific areas of Johnson's output, including poetry, moral writings, the Dictionary, literary criticism, and political works. Furthermore, Kolb identifies indispensable primary sources like Boswell's Life of Johnson and the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, alongside modern bibliographies and nonprinted materials.
Samuel Johnson and His Circle: Along with Other Literature, British and American
"Everything he says," one of Samuel Johnson's acquaintances remarked, "is as correct as a second edition. It is impossible to argue with him, he is so sententious and so knowing." Modern Johnsonians are far from aspiring to the same status, but in the consensus of clubbability arguments can sometimes pass uncriticized in a tacit recognition of a common goal.
Kay describes the collection as a substantial resource that diminishes ignorance regarding Johnson’s unique reputation. He highlights contributions concerning Johnson’s 1764 visit to Percy, twentieth-century biographies, and his command of French. Kay emphasizes the scrupulous handling of evidence by Boswell during Johnson’s final days and notes the volume’s success in revealing new information about Johnson’s historiography and epistolary style.
Kolb finds the collection proves Johnsonian scholarship is flourishing as never before. He praises the essays for addressing significant, interesting topics and consistently increasing his comprehension of Johnson. Kolb finds the essays by Brady, Gray, Seary, Grundy, and Corman unusually enlightening and stimulating.
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture
Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
This collection, largely from the bicentenary conference, suggests a new valuation of Johnson through his complete writings, moving away from a focus on Boswellian biography. Essays discuss Johnson's credibility after accepting a pension, his Jacobitism, deathbed accounts, and his view of history. The book is broad but does not fully meet the demand for a revaluation of Johnson's work over his life.
Korshin's edited collection lacks a central organizing interest beyond Johnson, consisting of random, low-pressure essays, dropsical footnotes, and common-room conversation. Womersley found Kaminski's work superior because it contains rigorous, serious scholarly investigation and shows the result of real work.
In a review of this title and Prem Nath's Fresh Reflections, Woodruff assesses the Korshin volume as superior overall, praising its fourteen essays and introduction for providing high-quality scholarship and genuine intellectual pleasure. The text specifically notes contributions that exemplify the "best kind of biographical and historical scholarship" (Davis, Brady, Korshin, and Seary). Further commendation is given to critical essays by Corman and Grundy, demonstrating the volume's high standards.
International Encyclopedia of Communications
The Founding of The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual
A brief narrative of the early days of the journal.
Korshin acknowledges that while some Jacobite literary allusions and emotional typologies are apparent (e.g., in Mary Queen of Scots' story), anecdotal evidence like Boswell's is often unreliable. Korshin focuses on Johnson's ambiguity, noting his pension from the Hanoverian government despite alleged Stuart leanings. He highlights literary analyses, like Erskine-Hill’s "twofold vision" of "Swedish Charles" in The Vanity of Human Wishes as a Jacobite code. However, he concludes that Johnson was primarily a thoughtful conservative who supported the established order and adjusted his loyalty to political realities.
A response to essays by Clark, Griffin, Hudson, Lipking, Reddick, Weinbrot, and others in the same issue.
Reconfiguring the Past: The Eighteenth Century Confronts Oral Culture
This review of The Age of Johnson, Volume XIV, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, notes the volume's focus on reimagining and contesting previous assessments of Johnson’s life. The essays offer valuable critiques of Johnson's associates, including Hester Thrale and George Strahan, and later readers like George Birkbeck Hill. Gay W. Hughes provides a revisionist account of the estrangement of Thrale and Johnson, countering the myth of her heartless abandonment with an analysis of her emotional, financial, and physical difficulties. Michael Bundock discusses George Strahan’s excision of evangelical elements from Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations.
This review of The Age of Johnson, Volume IX, edited by Paul J. Korshin, notes the volume's dedication to Donald Greene and the continuation of scholarly disputes. Greene's suspicion of Boswell's representation of Johnson and his rejection of Johnson seeking bondage from Hester Thrale are challenged by Aaron Stavisky. Stavisky argues Johnson's final break with Thrale was a re-enactment of a pattern seen in Life of Savage. Greene's rejoinder is characteristically unrestrained, yet other contributors, like Adam Potkay, also fault Boswell for misrepresenting Johnson’s views in discussions with David Hume.
Lee reviews The Age of Johnson, Volume 17, the first under the sole auspices of editor Jack Lynch after the death of founder Paul J. Korshin. The volume is a valuable resource with a handful of modest changes and a high caliber of essays. Steven Scherwatzky revisits Johnson's Augustinianism, linking his misgivings about the British Empire to Augustine's City of God. Matthew M. Davis explores Johnson's interest in the English nonjurors' liturgical "usages" (religious practices falling beyond the mainstream) to explain his prayer for the deceased Piozzi. Arthur and Calt argue Johnson sustained a serious opium habit (based on Hawkins's Life) that Boswell knowingly suppressed. Linde Katritzky argues for a hitherto unnoted connection between Johnson and Lord Shelburne's circle. The volume is an invaluable resource for students of mid- to late-eighteenth-century British literature and culture.
McKeon's positive review highlights the fifteenth volume of this annual serial. He commends the editors for continuing to redirect scholarly attention away from Boswell's version of Johnson toward Johnson's own work across multiple genres. McKeon notes the inclusion of diverse scholarly contributions, including studies on Gibbon, Hannah More, Burney, and Piozzi. The review emphasizes the volume's high quality and its utility in covering patronage, travel writing, and skepticism. He notes that the review section provides a useful survey of recent anthologies. The work effectively maintains its titular ambition and remains an important component of eighteenth-century criticism.
This review of The Age of Johnson, Volumes VII and VIII, edited by Paul J. Korshin, focuses on the debate over Samuel Johnson's alleged Nonjuring Jacobitism. Advocates Erskine-Hill and Clark argue Johnson's politics were a survival of dynastic idiom, interpreting his work as "crypto-Jacobite." Opponents Greene and Weinbrot contend Johnson was skeptical of ideological claims and that his satirical works are largely apolitical. Redford criticizes the "squabble" for its ad hominem attacks and flawed argumentation, especially Clark's reliance on ex silentio and a priori reasoning regarding Johnson leaving Oxford due to the Oath of Allegiance.
Rounce reports the "attractive critical plurality" of this collection, which features the final essay by Greene defending Johnson against caricatures found in Boswell’s Life. The volume includes Stavisky's study of the "hidden side" of the relationship between Johnson and Thrale, and Smith's exploration of Johnson's influence on Beckett. Rounce identifies the work as a "very fine representation" of contemporary scholarship on Johnson and his era.
In this positive review, Vance praises the sixth volume of Korshin's annual publication for its flexibility, variety, and scholarly rigor. Vance highlights several standout essays, including Thomas Curley’s extensive overview of Johnson’s political relationship with America, which challenges long-held views by establishing Johnson's deep concern for the human rights of native peoples. The volume also contains Barry Baldwin's playful commentary on the mysterious letter M in Johnson's diaries, and Philip Mahone Griffith’s interesting study on Johnson’s tenderness toward Richard Savage. Vance concludes that the collection maintains the series' excellent standards, offering vital reading for historians and literary scholars of the 18th century.
This review of The Age of Johnson, Volume XI, edited by Paul Korshin and Jack Lynch, highlights the volume's continued emphasis on Samuel Johnson studies and the ongoing controversy over his Jacobitism. J. A. Downie's methodical rebuttal of Clark's Jacobite claims is noted as the most substantial contribution to the controversy. Daniel P. Gunn perceptively identifies the ruefully autobiographical element in Johnson's Dictionary preface. The volume also includes a recovery of Boswellian journalism by Richard Sher, attributed on circumstantial evidence.
Womersely notes the annual's strength in singular focus and weakness in editorial policing. Womersley praises essays by Karen O'Brien on Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands and Michael Friedman on the importance of The Beggar's Opera to Boswell’s identity. However, he critiques contributions from established scholars, including one from Donald Greene that he finds disappointing in its biographical focus.
Bigold praises the volume's intertextual dialogue but notes a palpable sense of the "Johnsonian moniker" exerting undue influence on some essays. The volume offers excellent studies of Johnson's rhetorical aims in the Preface to the Dictionary, aesthetic method in the Lives of the Poets, and compositional bias in the Life of Milton. Paul Tankard, Michael Keevak, and Amiya Bhusan Sharma discuss "peripheral" figures.
Lynn's positive review outlines a vigorous scholarly exchange in the seventh volume of The Age of Johnson. The review details how Howard Erskine-Hill and J. C. D. Clark challenge Donald Greene's classical interpretation of Johnson's politics by arguing that Johnson was a Tory, nonjuror, and Jacobite. Lynn characterizes Greene's extensive response as animated, passionate, witty, learned, and persuasive, while highlighting supporting contributions from Thomas Curley and Howard Weinbrot.
Lynn offers a highly positive review of Lawrence Lipking's study, which shifts attention away from Boswellian conversation to deep textual readings focused on authorship and authority. Lipking rejects poststructuralist views of the death of the author, instead constructing an eloquent portrait of an oppressed, ambitious writer forging his identity in difficult times. The biography traces how Johnson creates a contradictory self-persona, presenting himself as both a humble servant and a rising hero in his letter to Chesterfield, and as both a drudge and a national man of letters in the Dictionary. Lynn praises the close readings as insightful and rich, though he notes that Lipking occasionally overstates his approach by downplaying the help Johnson received from living authorities during the compilation of the Dictionary.
Teaching Samuel Johnson: Teaching Johnson in a Time of War
On teaching the Seven Years’ War against the background of modern wars. Includes a discussion of a board game called Friedrich. The article details a pedagogical experiment teaching Rasselas by interpreting communication as the "action at a distance" problem central to Newtonian philosophy. Students engage in anonymous online debates about the philosophical "choice of life." This method illuminates Johnson’s idea that "what is very nearly true" constitutes knowledge, helping students connect the particular to the general .
On teaching the Seven Years’ War against the background of modern wars. Includes a discussion of a board game called Friedrich.
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg: Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe
Ewiger Kreislauf und Fortschritt: Die Aneignung historischer wirklichkeit in Samuel Johnsons 'A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland'
Journal for the Study of British Cultures
A Discourse of Patriots: The Penetration of the Scottish Highlands
Transactions of the Northwest Society for Eighteenth-Century Scotland
'Are You a Mimic, Mr. Genius?': Boswell and Johnson on the Art of Mimicry
Style and Values: Imitating Samuel Johnson
Kupersmith discusses teaching Johnson as a master of the classical style of English prose, asserting that students learn by trying to write like Johnson. The essay examines technical features of Johnsonian style, such as the use of closed heroic couplets, sonic effects like alliteration, and grammatical parallelism. Kupersmith argues that these stylistic modes are inextricably linked to Johnson’s devotion to reason and truth and his realistic view of the human condition. By imitating Johnson's epistolary style or moral reflections, students gain a deeper understanding of the rigor and exactitude of his mind.
English Versions of Roman Satire in the Earlier Eighteenth Century
Imitations of Roman Satire in the Later 1730s
Kupersmith contextualizes the publication of Samuel Johnson's London within the broader mid-1730s trend of using Roman satire to voice political opposition to Sir Robert Walpole. Kupersmith details how Johnson used Juvenal's third satire to project an image of the alienated outsider, contrasting "consecrated" Elizabethan virtue with contemporary French-influenced corruption. According to Kupersmith, Johnson used Juvenalian xenophobia and moral indignation to challenge the administration's foreign policy and legal practices, including "special Juries" and the "sinking fund." Kupersmith notes that Johnson's publisher, Robert Dodsley, likely released the poem anonymously to capitalize on public interest in Alexander Pope's satires. Kupersmith argues that while Johnson's political stance in the poem mirrors Jacobite rhetoric, the text primarily serves as a superior technical exercise in the heroic couplet form. Kupersmith concludes that London established Johnson as a formidable poetic voice, distinguishing him from lesser imitators like George Ogle and Joseph Turner.
Chemistry in the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Kurzer examines Johnson's lifelong fascination with chemistry, a subject the author argues occupied a central place among his scientific interests. The narrative traces this attachment to Johnson's 1739 biography of Herman Boerhaave, whose methodical approach and elegant style Johnson admired. Kurzer details Johnson's practical activities as a chemical operator, including his performance of experiments such as the distillation of ether and his establishment of a laboratory at Streatham Park with the encouragement of the Thrales. The study analyzes chemical entries in the Dictionary, noting Johnson's reliance on authorities like Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and John Quincy to define approximately 175 chemical terms. Kurzer further explores Johnson's nuanced view of alchemy, his acquisition of a substantial chemical library, and the diffusion of chemical metaphors into his miscellaneous writings and periodical essays. The article disputes previous characterizations of Johnson as an antiscientist, presenting him instead as a committed student of the natural sciences in the Baconian tradition who used personal observation and trial to recognize the true nature of things.
Includes appendices: “List of Johnson’s Books on Chemistry and Cognate Subjects,” “List of Books on Chemistry and Cognate Subjects in the Thrales’ Library at Streatham,” and “List of Chemical Terms Quoted in Johnson’s Dictionary.”
Like a Dog Walking on Its Hind Legs: Samuel Johnson and Quakers
Great Tales from English History: Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and More
The greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in Great Tales from English History, he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England's past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political freedom from 1387 to 1689.
Boswell Wanted to Be Virgil to Johnson's Dante
On BBC2’s Tour of the Western Isles with Coltrane and Sessions.
Teaching Samuel Johnson: Teaching Rasselas as Newtonianism: An Experiment in Virtual Conversation
Details teaching Rasselas using the Newtonian philosophical problem of "action at a distance," interpreting it as a problem of communication. The instructor employs an anonymous online "virtual conversation experiment" where students debate their ideal "choice of life." This method engages with consensus and communication dynamics, illuminating Johnson’s idea that "what is very nearly true" constitutes knowledge. The conversation aims to bridge the gap between the "particular and general." Rasselas offers students in a survey course “an entry into the fraught relationship between particularity and generality in the Enlightenment. . . . Drawing parallels between Newton and Johnson . . . can make Rasselas relevant to both majors and non-majors alike.”
Breaking the Laws of Motion: Pneumatology and Belles Lettres in Eighteenth-Century Britain
On the unifying concept of motion in Enlightenment Britain, which writers understood as both physical "changing place" and moral "tendency of the mind." The concept reveals protodisciplinary links between physics, pneumatology, and belles lettres. Johnson's Dictionary revisions between 1755 and 1773 demonstrate a shift toward a Newtonian, spatial definition, yet his use of South's quotation for "Tendency of mind" still implies a literal, non-metaphorical moral change caused by God. Johnson's Rambler satirizes the attempt to quantify thought, questioning the agency in writing.
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Larsen reconstructs the daily life and domestic environment of Samuel Johnson by profiling the diverse individuals who composed his London household. The biographical narrative focuses on figures such as Anna Williams, Robert Levett, Francis Barber, Elizabeth Desmoulins, and Poll Carmichael. Larsen argues that Johnson's "ménage" was not merely a collection of dependents but a complex social unit that provided the author with essential companionship and stability. The text draws heavily on Boswell's Life and other contemporary accounts to detail the financial arrangements, personal eccentricities, and frequent interpersonal conflicts within the household. Larsen chronicles Johnson's extraordinary patience and charity toward his often difficult guests, illustrating how these domestic relationships informed his moral perspective. The study concludes with the dissolution of the household following Johnson’s death and the subsequent lives of his surviving dependents. Chapter 1, 'Anna and Zachariah Williams,' addresses the foundational history of the household's eldest member, Anna Williams, and her father’s failed scientific ambitions regarding the maritime longitude problem. Chapter 2, 'Enter Samuel Johnson,' details the initial meeting between the Williams family and the then-struggling lexicographer, whose domestic life was simultaneously being transformed by his wife’s declining health. Chapter 3, 'Francis Barber and No. 17 Gough Square,' traces the arrival of Johnson’s black servant and the establishment of his permanent residence, despite the interpersonal friction caused by Anna Williams’s management. Chapter 4, 'Robert Levett and No. 1 Inner Temple Lane,' profiles the eccentric, impoverished medical practitioner who became a stable presence in Johnson’s evolving lodgings during a period of professional transition. Chapter 5, 'Good of myself I know not where to find, except a little Charity,' argues that Johnson’s move to Johnson’s Court and subsequent pension allowed him to formalize his role as a patron for his disparate dependents. Chapter 6, 'Discord and discontent reign in my humble habitation as in the palaces of Monarchs,' examines the persistent bickering and internal politics that defined the household’s daily reality despite their shared reliance on Johnson. Chapter 7, 'This little habitation is now but a melancholy place, clouded with the gloom of disease and death,' chronicles the physical decay and passing of the household’s core members, culminating in the final days of Johnson himself. Chapter 8, 'Francis Barber is an exceedingly worthless fellow,' explores the posthumous dissolution of the household and the difficult transition of its survivors into a world without their benefactor’s protection. Critical reaction is mixed, with popular reviewers offering praise while scholarly assessments remain critical of the text's depth and style. Fuller, in the WSJ, commends the work for illuminating domestic privacies and fundamental kindness, noting how assembling materials on the shabby crew of dependents reveals their vital role in stabilizing the subject's morbid depression. But Nokes's brief notice in the TLS dismisses the study as a non-scholarly work on domestic life. Among academic journals, Daghlian's review in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography finds the deep archival research into specific figures valuable, though a sloppy documentary style detracts from the volume. Fleeman, in the New Rambler, notes the informative reliance on primary sources but criticizes the perpetuation of a character-over-writer view that undermines intellectual achievements. In SEL, Korshin characterizes the study as a pleasant, charming narrative that offers little new information, likening this type of creative biography to a remora adhering to a shark. Finally, Grundy's review in N&Q harshly evaluates the text as categorical and structurally flawed, arguing that it relies on unchallenging speculation rather than searching analysis and fails to adequately probe the complex, opaque relationships between the main subject and the dependents.
Grundy reviews Greene’s Oxford Authors anthology, praising it as the "fullest available selection." She notes the volume’s chronological arrangement and the inclusion of rarely seen Latin poems and undergraduate exercises. Grundy observes that the selection enacts a "parabolic movement" reflecting Johnson’s favorite imagery. While noting the book's physical heft, she recommends it to "explorers" seeking the Johnson of the works over the Johnson of Boswell.
Grundy evaluates Larsen’s study of Johnson’s domestic circle, noting the inclusion of obscure biographical details regarding Williams and Levett. The reviewer criticizes the work for being "wiggle waggle" and categorical, specifically citing errors in the cover illustrations and the chronological framing of the household's history. Grundy argues that Larsen fails to adequately probe the complex, opaque relationships between Johnson and his dependents. She specifically questions the treatment of Barber’s legal status as a slave and the motivations behind Johnson’s controversial final bequest, concluding that the book offers unchallenging speculation rather than searching analysis.
Joseph Baretti's Feud with Hester Thrale
Larsen chronicles the intense animosity between Joseph Baretti and Hester Thrale, which persisted for over two decades within Samuel Johnson’s circle. Baretti, a volatile Italian writer, initially joined the Thrale household at Streatham as an Italian tutor for Queeney Thrale. Although Mrs. Thrale first admired Baretti’s energetic conversation, their relationship deteriorated due to conflicting approaches to childcare and Baretti's vocal opposition to her domestic medical practices. Baretti accused Mrs. Thrale of contributing to the deaths of her sons through improper dosing and eventually left Streatham in 1776 following a dispute over household authority. The feud escalated after Henry Thrale’s death in 1781 when Baretti published scathing attacks on Mrs. Thrale’s character and her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. Larsen details Baretti's claims that Mrs. Thrale had been unfaithful prior to her husband’s death and that she abandoned Johnson for a "battering-ram." Johnson frequently attempted to mediate the conflict, but Baretti maintained his implacable malice toward her until his death in 1789.
Social Agendas in Eighteenth-Century Travel Narratives
Latshaw-Foti argues that eighteenth-century travel narratives function as separate literary genre that uses embedded discourse to convey social agendas. It analyzes travel accounts by Johnson and Boswell in separate chapters, examining the narratives for implied patriotic and cultural discourse. Johnson uses negative comparisons of Scotland to assert England's superiority, while Boswell attempts to demonstrate Scotland's cultural equivalence to England. Boswell also employs his narrative to establish his identity as Johnson's anointed biographer.
European Journal of the History of Economic Thought
Samuel Johnson on Consumer Demand, Status, and Positional Goods
Law analyzes Johnson's insights on consumer behavior and demand, focusing on the psychology of pleasure and social status through two primary strands of thought. The first strand emphasizes the mental imperative for novelty, variety, and rarity as drivers of consumption once basic needs are met, distinguishing natural desires for necessities from artificial desires. The second focuses on relative status, where individuals gauge their wealth or greatness by comparing their situation to others. Law argues that Johnson recognized and his work demonstrates an awareness of the concept of positional goods—a concept Fred Hirsch later formalized—which are sought for the status they confer through exclusive possession, rarity, and the demonstration effect. The analysis highlights owning a private island as an important and primary example of a positional good in Johnson's work, particularly in his reflections on Scottish islands like Inchkeith and Isay during his travels with Boswell, where such ownership serves as a "boast of wealth and vanity" and a visible signal of status within a competitive social hierarchy. Using evidence from the Rambler and Idler essays, Rasselas, and Boswell's accounts, Law explores how middle-class aspirations for enhanced standing in the eighteenth century provide a context for Johnson's focus on comparative consumption. The discussion further examines Johnson's views on advertising, the "gold-iron paradox," and the pathological aspects of collecting, showing how Johnson viewed these behaviors as part of a complex interplay between individual desire and social subordination.
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary Still a Page-Turner after 250 Years
Lawless marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of the Dictionary of the English Language, emphasizing Johnson's "heroic, Herculean task" performed in his Gough Square attic. Unlike previous lexicographers, Johnson used over 100,000 illustrative quotations to demonstrate usage, a practice maintaining a legacy in the current Oxford English Dictionary. Although Lawless notes idiosyncratic entries regarding "oats" and "excise," the text highlights Johnson's realization of the "vitality" and "mutability" of language. Lawless identifies the work as the first to provide workable definitions rather than circular descriptions, asserting that the finished product "bears the stamp of his personality." The account details the decade-long composition process involving six assistants and the eventual transformation of Johnson’s residence into a museum.
Nightingale reviews Lawrence’s play Resurrection, which explores the relationship between Johnson and his servant Barber. Nightingale criticizes the work as "gauche" for judging 18th-century liberalism by modern standards. The play depicts Johnson as a "sanctimonious softie" and Barber as a figure of "pride and vulnerability" who manages to "end up in a hospital for the destitute" despite his inheritance. Nightingale disputes the play’s closing argument that Johnson's generosity was merely "conscience money," asserting that Johnson’s affection for Barber was "clearly genuine" and his desire to ensure Barber's safety reasonable for the era.
Pope's An Essay on Man and Samuel Johnson's Duplicitous Reaction to It
How Dr. Johnson's Faith Defined His Life and Work
Mentoring Relationships in the Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson: A Study in the Dynamics of Eighteenth-Century Literary Mentoring
Explores the phenomenon of literary mentoring and the role that it played in Samuel Johnson's literary and personal life. Synthesizing this model with Levinsonian psychosocial theories of adult development, it explores Johnson's relationships with Cornelius Ford, Richard Savage, Oliver Goldsmith, Hester Thrale, Frances Burney, and James Boswell, tracing how each relationship interweaves with stages in Johnson's psychological development. It also examines mentoring themes in Johnson's early poetry.
Reviews: Robert DeMaria Jr., JNL 57, no. 1 (2006): 62–63; Reference and Research Book News 20, no. 4 (2005); J. T. Scanlan, AJ 19 (2009): 307–12; Cynthia Wall, SEL 46, no. 3 (2006): 684–85.
Mentoring Relationships in the Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson
DeMaria reviews Lee's study, which applies Daniel Levinson's theory of developmental psychology to Johnson's "mentoring relationships" (healthy and unhealthy intellectual and personal relationships). The study is notable for focusing on Johnson's relationships rather than his maladies. Lee examines key relationships at early, middle, and late stages of his life, including the formative period with Cornelius Ford, and later relationships with Savage, Goldsmith, Thrale, Boswell, and Burney. One chapter is devoted to the mentoring relationship Johnson creates between Imlac and Rasselas. Lee's application of a new vantage point sheds new light on the greatest biographical subject in English literature.
Lee identifies the source of the Latin motto in Idler 41 as an elegy by the sixteenth-century humanist Theodore de Beze, correcting long-standing misattributions to Ovid or Johnson. The analysis demonstrates a lifelong intellectual engagement with Beze’s work, citing references in the 1765 Shakespeare edition, the Life of Parnell, and Johnson’s personal reading of the New Testament. Johnson employs Beze’s voice to "ventriloquize" raw emotions following the death of his mother, Sarah Johnson, using the "impersonal structure of language" to achieve "rational tranquillity." By adopting the persona of a sixteenth-century scholar, Johnson navigates the "paradox" of his writing, which remains simultaneously "deeply personal and remotely objective." The inclusion of Beze’s lines 65–68 functions to alleviate the grief of survivors, aligning Johnson’s struggle for religious solace with Beze’s stoic calm.
Nicholas Rowe Quotations in the Dictionary
Lee provides empirical data for the 236 quotations from Nicholas Rowe's works found in Johnson's Dictionary. The note presents tables organizing the quotations alphabetically by headword and contextualizing them with information on Rowe's career chronology, Johnson's critical observations (largely from the Life of Rowe), and connections to other Johnson writings. Lee notes Johnson quotes most frequently from The Ambitious Stepmother and Jane Shore. He confirms some additions and deletions in the 1773 edition and points out Johnson's high praise for Rowe's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia.
Nicholas Rowe, Samuel Johnson, and Rambler 140
Rambler 2 and Johnson's Dictionary: Paratextual and Intertextual Entanglements with Pope, Statius, Dryden, Gay, and Milton
Lee argues for the concept of "textual entanglement" in Johnson's works, focusing on the motto of Rambler 2 and its translation. Johnson initially approved Elphinston's translation for the motto, but later replaced it with lines from Pope's Windsor Forest. Lee shows that the Pope couplets are in fact a translation of Statius's Thebaid, a fact Warburton's edition of Pope revealed, which Johnson likely read. Johnson also uses these lines in The Adventurer and quotes the relevant Dryden preface in his Dictionary entry for "fustian" and in the Lives of the Poets. This dense intertextual network, also seen in the Dictionary's "dispeople" and "whistle" entries, is a major feature of Johnson's work.
Reddick calls the volume a useful new collection that celebrates Johnson's community while detailing its tensions. The essays effectively set Johnson against figures in his "Circle" to generate contrasts, focusing more on the other figures. The authors' expertise on the comparison figures enables fuller knowledge of both well-known and lesser-known writers. Reddick notes the essays, well-presented by Bucknell, are valuable resources for Johnsonian scholars.
Saxton describes Lee’s collection as an excavation of the rich community of friendships and antagonisms Johnson built. Saxton emphasizes the scholarly focus on Johnson’s personal and literary relationships, including his mentoring of Langton and Chambers, his professional ties with Elphinston, and his nuanced responses to slavery.
This collection of ten essays explores various aspects of Samuel Johnson’s life and literary circle, using archival and textual evidence. James J. Caudle's essay highlights the scarcity of firsthand accounts corroborating Boswell’s Life, arguing that Boswell’s famous "Hottentot" quote is likely accurate despite an alternate account by John Dun. Other strong contributions include John Radner’s comparison of Johnson’s letters to Boswell, Chambers, and Langton, and James E. May’s analysis of Goldsmith’s professional revisions to The Traveller. The volume also examines the literary politics of Fanny Burney's celebrity, the narrative complexity of Johnson's Life of Savage, and the contrasting views on solitude held by Johnson and Anna Seward.
No Poem an Island: Intertextuality in London, a Poem
Lee offers an intertextual reading of the "secret island" passage in Johnson’s 1738 imitation of Juvenal. By refracting these verses through the 1755 Dictionary and tracing contacts with Horace, Milton, and Pope, Lee interrogates the passage using the theoretical notion of utopia. The analysis reveals how Johnson creates meaning through a dense labyrinth of authors, suggesting that his writing possesses a depth that repays scriptible attention. Lee concludes that Johnson’s intertextual consciousness functions as a prism refracting the Western tradition.
'Saint Samuel of Fleet Street': Johnson and Woolf
Lee explores the admiration Virginia Woolf held for Samuel Johnson and identifies commonalities in their careers and attitudes across multiple genres, including fiction, essays, biography, and criticism. Woolf's writings frequently betray an attraction to Johnson, whom she viewed as a significant literary and human figure. The essay contrasts and compares their approaches, particularly focusing on literary criticism and biography, while acknowledging key differences stemming from their respective historical contexts. It concludes by meditating on the intertextual engagements between Johnson and Woolf, highlighting Johnson's influence on her work.
Johnson, Machiavelli, and Rambler 156
Lee identifies a "striking but unexamined" parallel between Johnson’s "grave and moral discourses" and Machiavelli’s Discorsi. The text focus specifically on Rambler 156, where Johnson addresses the "perils of prolepsis" and the "unstable parameters" of historical change. Lee argues that Johnson adapts the Machiavellian concept of "return to beginnings" to discuss the "reanimation of dead metaphors" and the "confirmation of national knowledge." The text highlights Johnson’s "truculent" rejection of "top-down authority" in favor of a "bottom-up description" of human nature. Lee concludes that Johnson uses Machiavelli to "disguise and disfigure" purely partisan readings, creating instead a "nuanced and convincing" account of the "mutability of human affairs."
Neæra's Tangled Hair: Johnson, Hammond, and Milton's Lycidas
Lee examines Johnson's 1781 critique of Hammond’s Love Elegies as a covert intertextual engagement with Milton’s Lycidas. He argues that Johnson's dismissal of Hammond's "passionless" shepherd and the figure of Neæra echoes his earlier biting assessment of Milton's pastoral form. Lee traces the "Neæra" trope through classical and Neo-Latin sources—including Virgil, Tibullus, and Buchanan—to demonstrate how Johnson uses these "genealogies of sentiment" to contrast his own earthbound perspective with Milton’s desire to rise above earthly existence. By analyzing these intertextual ligatures, Lee suggests that Johnson’s deployment of Neæra serves to tether the reader to terra firma, unlike Milton’s use of the figure to achieve transcendent fame.
Kraft’s enthusiastic review praises this collection for examining Johnson’s impact on the modernist imagination and his incipient modernism. Nine essays demonstrate Johnson’s importance to writers such as Eliot, Woolf, and Beckett. Kraft highlights Lynch’s discussion of Johnson’s relevance to participants in the Great War. The reviewer concludes that these informative essays reshape perceptions of literary history and Johnson’s position within it, particularly regarding his interest in science and urban life.
The 'Clangor of a Trumpet': John Locke and Rambler 94
Lee examines Johnson’s repurposing of John Locke's famed blind man trope (scarlet is like the "clangor of a trumpet") in Rambler 94. The essay traces a "genealogy of sentiments" that influenced Johnson, including Sir Richard Steele's moral application, David Hume’s skeptical adaptation, and Samuel Clarke's clumsy reversal. Johnson uses the trope not to satirize a blind man, but to subversively mock literary critics whose "blind reverence" for sound-and-sense poetry mirrors the blind man's sensory error. Lee argues Johnson's precise deployment fuses philosophical acuity with the literary elements of his predecessors, resulting in superior intellectual clarity.
Lee examines Johnson’s late-life "summer wanderings" and his major travel narratives, particularly A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. The article explores how Johnson’s Civil List pension provided the "means and the leisure" for ambitious tours to Devon, the Hebrides, Wales, and Paris. Lee details Johnson’s "remarkable resilience" to hardships during the Scottish expedition with Boswell, noting his "intense interest in French libraries" during his only continental journey. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "disparaging remarks about Scots" and his "magnificently defiant" detection of James Macpherson’s Ossianic "cheat." Lee argues that Johnson’s travel writing is a "literary mill" that produced polished travelogues from "manuscript books of remarks." The article reviews Johnson’s "quasi-paternal" letters to Hester Maria Thrale during his travels and concludes that Johnson’s "intellectual homeland" was always found in reading, whether "bumping along in a coach" or "crossing a Hebridean channel."
Lee defends the poetic legacy of Johnson against post-Romantic preferences for lyricism, asserting that his verse requires an "intellectual meaning beyond and sometimes even in spite of the obvious sense." The article examines the "disciplined restraint" of "The Winter's Walk" and the "heroic mode" of the drama Irene, contrasting Johnson's "artificial construction" with the naturalistic utterances of Keats and Marlowe. Lee highlights Johnson’s penchant for universalization, particularly in London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, where he "transcends the satire" of Juvenal through a "serene appreciation of human shortcomings." By analyzing the scholar's portrait and the Christian conclusion of his major satires, Lee demonstrates how Johnson uses "celestial Wisdom" to create a "Happiness she does not find."
Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language
A Harmless Drudge: Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Dictionary
Lerer examines Johnson’s personal, emotional presence within his 1755 Dictionary. Boswell’s records of Johnson’s quirks, such as struggling through doorways or muttering and sputtering, lead some modern readers to pathologize his behavior as OCD or Tourette’s syndrome. Johnson effectively invented the persona of the lexicographer, defining the harmless drudge who toils at lower employments. The text describes how Johnson regularized spelling and sanctioned pronunciations, creating the public idea of the dictionary as a linguistic arbiter.
Letter to the editor, correcting McGrath's account of ''I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it'.'
Image and Imagination: Essays and Reviews
Review of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
This essay reflects on the inherently disconcerting labour of producing a literary anthology. It does so by way of the Enlightenment view of bewilderment as a legitimate epistemological position. In that view, propounded by figures as various as Bernard Mandeville, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, and Sarah Fielding, bewilderment stands distinct from such possible cognates as confusion or nescience and arises from the experience of immersion in a proliferation of media forms. Such an experience obviously links the print-saturated eighteenth century to our own digitizing times; anthologies are autoimmune responses to media ecologies of this nature. Enlightenment conceptualizations of bewilderment, thus, both articulate and potentially resolve the frustrations entailed in an anthology's making.
The Genealogy of Romantic Literary History: Refigurations of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets in the Criticism of Coleridge and Wordsworth
Samuel Johnson's book 'Lives of the English Poets' was criticized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth in attempts to take over Johnson's position as a leading literary critic rather than overthrow his ideas. Wordsworth's and Coleridge's refutations of Johnson have been seen as watersheds for the development of Romanticism, yet they retained many of Johnson's values while outwardly rejecting his rules for poetic construction.
The Critic in the Modern World: Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood
A Degree of Insanity: Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
Ley explores Johnson's development as a critic, framing his intellectual output as a struggle against a 'degree of insanity.' The text traces Johnson's life from a 'difficult and dangerous labour' and a childhood 'born almost dead' to his status as the 'Great Cham' of criticism. Ley argues that Johnson's prose style, characterized by 'involution of clauses' and 'weighty' moralizing, served as a 'defensive posture' against psychological instability. The study focuses on Rasselas and the Lives of the Poets, contending that Johnson's critical judgments were often 'whimsical and crotchety' yet established a 'Western Canon' through their 'passionate investment' in temperate reason. Ley identifies a central tension in Johnson's work between the 'moral obligation to be intelligent' and the 'perilous stuff' of the imagination, concluding that Johnson's criticism ultimately seeks to 'minister unto himself' by 'razing out the written troubles of the brain.'
On the Road with Johnson & Boswell & Co.
Domestick Privacies: Samuel Johnson and the Art of Biography
Lipking identifies a core tension in Johnson's earliest writings: immense ambition clashing with preemptive dejection, evident even in the juvenile poem On a Daffodil. Exploring psychological interpretations and traditional wisdom, Lipking primarily frames this conflict within Johnson's literary project : to forge a new, more forceful English prose after Addison, his main precursor. Johnson aimed to infuse language with philosophic depth, couplet-like precision, and heightened expression to compel reader attention, while maintaining Addison's high moral purpose. This demanding goal, balancing stylistic innovation with unwavering truth, made beginning difficult. The Rambler represents Johnson's "work of initiation," strategically deploying the inherent conflict between ambition and anticipated failure.
Learning to Read Johnson: The Vision of Theodore and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Lipking explores the didactic framework of Johnson’s The Vision of Theodore and The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing they function as an "entrance into the science" of reading Johnson’s moral heroism. Johnson uses "Stoic allegory" to come to the "aid of reason" rather than challenging the Creator, rejecting the "golden age" fantasies of other poets. The text emphasizes that Johnson’s "heroism" involves walking the "path of necessity" and mastering "habit," which he views as an "envenom’d shirt of Hercules" that threatens to "enchane us with subtle bonds." Lipking posits that Johnson's "realized fiction" forces truth upon the reader to help them "endure the pain of existence."
Inventing the Common Reader: Samuel Johnson and the Canon
The story of the failures and fallen fortunes of Richard Savage and Bonnie Prince Charlie follow a common narrative arc known as "The Jacobite Plot." This descending archetype of loss and disinheritance was widely recognized and adapted in 18th-century literature. Scholarly debates about Johnson's alleged Jacobite sympathies often rely on finding covert analogies and sentimental readings of his work, which raises questions about the strength of evidence compared to the persuasive power of the narrative itself.
DeMaria offers a glowing review of Lipking’s critical biography, which presents a coherent portrait of Johnson’s personal development as an author. Lipking views authorship not merely as a business but as a struggle for self-actualization and psychological survival. The review highlights Lipking’s selective but intensive close readings of London, the Life of Savage, the Rambler, and the Dictionary, interpreting these works as allegories of Johnson’s emergence in the print age. DeMaria commends Lipking for providing a necessary corrective to studies that stress the mechanical production of print culture by emphasizing Johnson’s personal urgency and identity. DeMaria concludes that Lipking’s life-long engagement with the subject results in a professional and highly readable narrative.
Lipking examines Johnson’s professional identity by analyzing the authorial life embedded within his texts rather than his private biography. The work traces Johnson’s evolution from a "hack" writer to a "national man of letters," emphasizing an "ideal of service" to literature. Fix praises the analysis of the Dictionary as a tool for self-authorization and notes Lipking’s insights into Johnson’s suspicion of fictional and dramatic illusions. While suggesting a need for more focus on Johnson’s anxieties regarding original creativity, Fix identifies the study as a sophisticated, essential reference for understanding Johnson’s literary vocation.
Kaminski reviews Lawrence Lipking’s Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, praising the study’s "perceptive and often elegant" discussion of Johnson's authorial identity as revealed through his writings rather than conventional biography. The review notes that Lipking avoids making excuses for Johnson's unfashionable pronouncements, helping readers see their "general reasonableness" instead through imaginative readings and a skillful integration of text and context. Kaminski highlights Lipking’s analysis of Rasselas, the Rambler, Shakespeare, the Journey, and the Lives, particularly the argument that Johnson viewed prose fiction as a potential "delusion" that flattered readers' good intentions without demanding virtue. The review stresses Lipking’s focus on the authorial life, where "crimes of authorship" like plagiarism and vanity are treated with moral seriousness, portraying Johnson as an author whose struggle for "sincere repentance" remains palpable. However, Kaminski questions the emphasis on Johnson's purported anxiety about authorship and the reliance on Bate's psychological interpretations; while finding the book valuable, he concludes it reinforces traditional views and avoids confronting challenging aspects of Johnson's thought, such as his belief in absolute truth.
Langan’s mixed review distinguishes the work from traditional biographies by Bate or Boswell, noting its specific focus on Johnson’s "identity as an author" rather than his personality. Langan disputes the significance Lipking attaches to Johnson’s transition from "hackwork" to monumental projects, comparing it to a modern reporter becoming a novelist. The review highlights Lipking’s analysis of the letter to Lord Chesterfield as a defining moment of professional independence where Johnson refuses delayed patronage, declaring he is "known and do not want it." Langan describes Lipking’s interpretations of London and The Life of Savage, while praising the analysis of The Vanity of Human Wishes as a poem where "humanity leaches out" into fate. The review concludes that the work successfully encourages a return to Johnson’s own writings, specifically The Rambler.
Lurcock examines Lipking’s literary biography, which focuses on the trajectory of Johnson’s authorial identity. Lipking frames the letter to Chesterfield as the "Magna Carta of the modern author" and highlights the Dictionary as the defining moment of Johnson's career. The work explores Johnson’s anti-elitist view of literature and his commitment to the "common reader." Lurcock notes how Lipking successfully links Johnson’s personal anxieties about fame to his moral reflections and his establishment of a new form of biography.
Mullan's approving review of Lawrence Lipking’s Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author examines Johnson’s transformation from a Grub Street hack into a cultural icon. The review emphasizes Johnson's early professional identity as an autodidact who had to write for money, dashing off Rambler essays under the pressure of deadlines rather than inspiration. Mullan highlights Lipking’s argument that Johnson's inside knowledge of literary self-delusions informed works like the Life of Savage and the Dictionary of the English Language, the latter of which settled correct usage for a public hungry for linguistic prescription. The review notes how Johnson's edition of Shakespeare helped establish English literature as a field as prestigious as the Greek and Latin classics. Mullan concludes that Lipking successfully portrays a peculiarly modern author who embraced the commercial market and made professional authorship a virtuous necessity.
Murphy’s scathing review of Lipking’s Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author disputes the book’s stylistic and critical competence. Murphy argues that Lipking exhibits an "insensitivity to tone" and "unresponsiveness to the harmonies" of Johnson’s prose. The review rejects Lipking’s characterization of the Dictionary as "literally patchwork" and a work that "devours and digests other books." Murphy finds Lipking’s psychological speculations and "politically correct usage" tedious, particularly the claims that Johnson "exercised little control" over his authorship or acted as a "surrogate for the nation." Contrasting the authorial Johnson with the "personality" captured by Boswell, Murphy maintains that Johnson’s professional motivations were simpler than Lipking suggests, rooted in financial reward, literary esteem, and a "Christian duty" to employ his talents. The review concludes that the monograph obstructs rather than clarifies access to Johnson’s writings.
Rawson examines Lipking’s study, which focuses on Johnson’s writings rather than conventional biography. Rawson finds the analysis of Johnson’s "preemptive dejection" and "wounded social sensibilities" in the Chesterfield letter "intellectually elegant." However, Rawson notes the book suffers from "doggedly self-enclosed verbal exposition" and lacks a "sustained reinterpretation." While praising the "attractive accounts" of Johnson's major texts, Rawson argues the work is a "critical introduction" rather than a true life, containing few surprises for the established scholar.
Redford calls Lipking’s book a cogent study in conduct resembling a Johnsonian "character," effectively reanimating the topic of Johnson’s relationship with his readers by tracing connections between the art of the life and the life in the art. The book attends to the process by which Johnson "made himself into a writer," and Redford highlights Lipking’s chronological reconstruction of the career, beginning with the letter to Lord Chesterfield. The review notes Lipking’s ambitious chapter on the Dictionary, which argues the work represents a personal vision of language and the emergence of the author as a national representative. While Redford praises the deep engagement reflected in the observations on Johnson as a moral essayist and the authority of the chapters on the Rambler and Shakespeare, he criticizes the use of psychological tools, noting occasional lapses into arch commentary—one instance of which exhibits its own narcissism. Redford concludes that the analysis is told with the heft and poise of a sage.
Ricks provides an approving review of Lipking’s biography, which prioritizes Johnson’s professional career over anecdotal wit. The review examines Lipking’s analysis of the biography of Savage, the Dictionary, and "The Rambler." Ricks commends the exploration of Johnson’s pronoun use and his characterization of authorship as a "point of misery." He asserts that Lipking uniquely demonstrates how Johnson steeled himself against failure, making the study a definitive account of a man who lives by his pen.
Schwartz provides a negative review of Lawrence Lipking’s study, describing it as a bloodless academic meditation on authorship rather than a true biography or a conventional study of Johnson’s life as a professional writer. The reviewer expresses disappointment that the work lacks a fresh, unique thesis, a central integrating thread, or the breadth promised by its title. While acknowledging the presence of learned historical details, Schwartz notes that these are not the primary focus of the work, which instead discusses Johnson’s pursuit of fame while realizing its emptiness. Furthermore, Schwartz finds the readings of texts like London and Rasselas dated, suggesting they sound more like 1940s criticism than contemporary scholarship. Ultimately, the book is criticized for failing to capture the biographical subject’s humanity, the texture of his professional experience, or the joy and exuberance of his life. Schwartz concludes that while this academic reflection might interest some, it will likely disappoint those seeking a more traditional and vivid biographical narrative.
Shinagel presents Lipking’s study as a welcome scholarly contribution that shifts focus from Johnson's well-known personality to his evolution as a professional writer. The text traces Johnson's literary trajectory from his early Grub Street necessity to the institutional authority of his later years. Lipking identifies the 1755 letter to Lord Chesterfield as the locus classicus of Johnson’s independence from patronage. Shinagel highlights Lipking’s analysis of how Johnson redefined the terms of authorship itself through major works like the Dictionary, The Rambler, and The Lives of the English Poets. The reviewer notes the work’s scholarly depth, supported by more than fifty pages of footnotes.
Samuel Johnson [review of Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, by Lawrence Lipking]
Strauss reviews Lawrence Lipking’s biography, noting its departure from traditional life-writing by focusing on Johnson’s works as a means to reveal his "attitude toward the authorial profession." Berman highlights Lipking's analysis of the transition from "Grub Street hack to a respectable professional writer." The review details Johnson’s 1754 reply to the Earl of Chesterfield as a "self-proclamation of his arrival," signifying his belief that public acceptance outweighed aristocratic patronage. Strauss identifies Johnson's biography of Richard Savage as a pivotal moralizing text where Johnson developed an authorial ideal of "humility, learning, and service." The review notes that while Piozzi and Boswell established the biographical standard for Johnson, Lipking uses Johnson’s own texts to "exorcise the demon" of dejection and clarify his role in society. Berman concludes that Lipking successfully portrays Johnson as a man "greater than the sum of his literary output," defining the professional writer’s identity.
Suarez's scathing review of Lipking's biography challenges the argument that Johnson's rise to greatness was a self-conscious reinvention of authorship. Suarez finds the narrative plagued by "circularity" and a "troubling determinism," specifically disputing Lipking's claim that Johnson's career followed a predestined path. The review highlights significant factual lapses, such as Lipking's assertion that Johnson relied on memory rather than sources for the Lives of the Poets, and his failure to acknowledge the assistants who worked on the Dictionary. Suarez further criticizes the omission of Johnson's work for the Literary Magazine and his relationships with booksellers like Robert Dodsley. While Suarez acknowledges some "fine pedagogical moments" and "illuminating" rhetorical analysis, he concludes that the volume is "intoxicated with its own rhetoric" and offers a "hero-portrait" that does a disservice to the historical Johnson.
Candide, Rasselas and the Genre of the Philosophical Tale in English and French Literature of the Eighteenth Century
Travel: Defining Image of Wit and Wisdom
Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters
Kinsella reviews this "mature and penetrating" collection of essays edited by Irma S. Lustig, which he argues adds valuable new strokes to the complex "Flemish portrait" of Boswell. The first section, "Boswell and the Enlightenment," explores his continental travels, his relationship with surrogate fathers like Lord Kames, and his political ambivalence. Kinsella finds the second section, "The Life of Johnson," to be more successful, highlighting Carey McIntosh's analysis of Boswell's stylistic "authenticity" versus "accuracy," William Yarrow's essay on Boswell's use of metaphor to "crystallize" Johnson, and John Radner's "strong essay" on the Ashbourne visit and journal. This analysis shows how journalizing helped Boswell attain objective judgment and marks the moment he achieved peerage with Johnson. Kinsella notes Isobel Grundy's investigation of Boswell's tolerance for uncertainty in fixing character, comparing his methodology to Virginia Woolf’s experiments, and finds particularly compelling Lustig's own essay on Margaret Montgomerie Boswell, which demonstrates how Boswell used personal detail as a subtle and richly complex art of characterization. Additionally, Kinsella notes Hitoshi Suwabe's revised count of Boswell and Johnson's meetings—now 400 days—challenging earlier estimates. The review concludes that the volume successfully establishes esoteric historical contexts for Boswell's masterpiece.
Lustig's volume of eleven original essays celebrates the bicentenary of Boswell's death by underscoring his cosmopolitan background, diverse travels, and role models, and their influence on his masterwork, the Life of Johnson. The essays challenge long-accepted "factoids" about Boswell, revealing a complicated individual and presenting his portrait of "Johnson" as more of an artistic creation. Topics include the influence of the Enlightenment, his response to the European landscape, his relationship with Lord Kames, and his management of the Auchinleck estate. The second half of the book analyzes Boswell's artistry in composing the Life.
Zachs highlights this bicentenary collection for advancing Boswell’s status beyond provincial and generic boundaries. He notes Danziger’s clarification of Boswell’s cosmopolitanism through his encounters with Northern European figures and Perreten’s analysis of his responses to natural and improved landscapes. Zachs values the samples of research from upcoming Yale editions by Crawford and Strawhorn. He finds the volume well-edited but suggests that illustrations of lesser-known subjects would improve the traditional gallery of portraits.
This capsule review describes a bibliography that updates Donald Greene and John A. Vance's 1987 work. The reviewer notes that the compiled work contains 1,700 items by or about Johnson published since 1985, offering thorough coverage up to 1997 with select entries from 1998 and 1999.
Stuhr’s enthusiastic review commends this bibliography for continuing the work of Clifford, Greene, and Vance while expanding the scope of Johnsonian resources. Stuhr notes that Lynch incorporates book reviews, theses, dissertations, graphics, and electronic media, totaling approximately 1,800 new citations. The review observes that although the number of new scholars in the field has decreased, established academics remain productive and Johnson retains popularity in the press. Stuhr praises the departure from Clifford’s dated categorical system in favor of a "simple alphabetical arrangement" and a robust index.
Lynch's study traces the multiple meanings of the Elizabethan age during Johnson's professional career, linking them to questions of British national and cultural identity. The book shows how Johnson's era defined itself by contrasting and comparing with the past, using Elizabethan England for scholarly and polemical purposes. Chapters cover the evolution of historiographical models, and the use and abuse of Elizabethans in scholarship, historicism, religion, and language. Johnson, who participated in or commented on most debates, provides the focal figure, with rich contextualizations of his thought. Brownley praises the study for its impressive scope and accurate reflection of its broad title.
Budra's approving review of Jack Lynch's monograph examines Johnson's central role in constructing the idea of the English Renaissance. Lynch argues that for eighteenth-century critics, the Renaissance was synonymous with the age of Elizabeth. The review notes that Johnson's Shakespeare edition and his Lives of the Poets made him the "most influential eighteenth-century British voice on Renaissance literature." Budra highlights how Johnson helped define the preceding age, treating it as a privileged point in history that served as a norm for style. The book details the Enlightenment's historicist nature, where present language was defined by its past. Budra concludes that Lynch's work will be of significant interest to scholars of the eighteenth century because it illustrates how Johnson fashioned a cultural identity for the Elizabethan period.
Lynch shows that Enlightenment thinkers, like Johnson, established a "fourth age" by investing heavily in the Elizabethan literary past. Cummings praises the book's value to the history of the Renaissance idea and its philosophical approach to periodization. But he finds Lynch's argument about the origin of "modernity"—whether it is a self-construction or a state of consciousness—to be inconsistent and ultimately "caught between two stools."
Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie
In this enthusiastic review, Jenkins praises Lynch's examination of how eighteenth-century Britons reinterpreted the sixteenth century to define their own national character. Lynch identifies the Elizabethan era as a "significant divider between medieval barbarity and modern enlightenment" for Augustan thinkers. Jenkins highlights the analysis of Johnson as an intellectual benchmark who defended the presence of magic in Shakespeare's plays by citing the historical context of Elizabethan belief systems. The review notes that Lynch persuasively demonstrates how eighteenth-century Protestants viewed the Tudor period as a peak of learning before the linguistic and political corruptions of the seventeenth century. Jenkins concludes that the work successfully shows how Johnson and his contemporaries extolled the Renaissance as the true forerunner of their own age.
Kalter reviews Lynch's study of how eighteenth-century England used historiography to achieve cultural self-constitution. Lynch argues that the 18th century collectively viewed the 15th-17th centuries as the "age of Elizabeth," a golden age of stability and achievement they wished to emulate. The study demonstrates how eighteenth-century commentators modeled their historical engagement after Renaissance humanism, employing techniques like linking multiple texts to form a contextual whole. Johnson is placed at the center of the study, though the reviewer questions the sufficient justification for this emphasis beyond his authority, noting Lynch's descriptive approach sometimes overshadows his larger historical claims.
Olsen reviews Jack Lynch's The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson. Lynch's study examines how the long eighteenth century understood its literary predecessors, defined by a sense of cultural belatedness. Olsen finds Lynch argues convincingly that eighteenth-century thinkers used established classical tropes (Golden Age, cultural maturity, corruption) to situate themselves against the "Gyant Race" before them. The book is praised for its neat seven-chapter structure, covering historiography, ecclesiastical history, and style, before focusing on Jonson, Spenser, and Milton. Olsen highlights the final chapter on Milton as the book's strongest, showing how Johnson's age de-politicized Milton to manage his imaginative supremacy.
Stock reviews Lynch's study of eighteenth-century views of the English Renaissance, particularly the Elizabethan era. Lynch explores the periodization of the Renaissance, the evolving concept of "modernity," the development of an English literary canon, growing linguistic and national self-consciousness, and the metaphors (like cultural ontogeny) used to understand historical change. Focusing on Johnson as a pivotal figure, Lynch examines eighteenth-century attitudes towards key Renaissance writers like Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, demonstrating Johnson's deep engagement with their work and thought. Stock praises the book's clarity, insightful arguments, and useful tracing of intellectual and cultural developments.
Reading Johnson's Unreadable Dictionary
Lynch challenges the perception of Johnson’s Dictionary as a dry, obsolete reference work, arguing instead for its status as a foundational literary masterpiece. He contrasts Johnson’s solitary, precedent-based methodology with the bureaucratic committees of modern lexicography. Lynch highlights Johnson’s innovation in using 114,000 illustrative quotations to establish meaning through usage. By examining entries on science, medicine, and law, Lynch demonstrates that the text serves as a comprehensive encyclopedia of the eighteenth-century world.
A one-hour lecture on the attractions of the illustrative quotations in the Dictionary. Delivered at the Boston Athenæum, 15 January 2004, broadcast on C-SPAN2’s Book TV, 31 Jan. 2004, 8 Feb. 2004, and 22 Feb. 2004.
The Thoemmes Press Dictionary of British Classicists, 1500–1960
Lynch assesses Johnson’s credentials as a classicist, noting his "superb" Latin proficiency and sound Greek scholarship despite a lack of formal classical publications. The entry details how classical models informed Johnson’s major English works: Estienne’s Thesaurus served as a blueprint for the Dictionary, and Scaliger’s Virgil influenced the 1765 Shakespeare. Lynch highlights Johnson’s "avidity" for obscure philologists like Clenardus and his skill in neo-Latin verse, specifically the poem 'Gnothi Seauton' and late-life translations of the Greek Anthology. Although Johnson’s early dreams of becoming a scholar-poet were stifled by the literary marketplace, Lynch concludes that classical literature remained his most personal and persistent mode of expression, used even in his private diaries to "drive the night along."
Jackson reviews Lynch’s "slender but savage" collection of verbal barbs extracted from the 1755 Dictionary, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the work’s publication. Characterizing the Lichfield-born lexicographer as a master of the "rancid riposte," Jackson highlights the idiosyncratic nature of a lexicon that reflects Johnson’s personal prejudices against the Scots and his "invigorating invective" directed even at friends like the actor Garrick. The review notes that while modern insults often rely on generic profanity, Johnson’s definitions—such as "fopdoodle" for an "insignificant wretch" and "fub" for a "chubby boy"—demonstrate a "coruscating critique" that remains fresh and tangible. Jackson identifies the volume as a reminder of Johnson’s status as one of England’s mightiest men of letters, noting his ability to transform the "dull work" of lexicography into a vehicle for waspish wit and social disparagement.
Lynch's book, Samuel Johnson's Insults, is a compilation of definitions and anecdotes, primarily drawn from Johnson's Dictionary. The small volume is intended to equip the reader with the words needed to confront and insult others, offering relief from being left speechless. The review praises the book as a "great stocking stuffer" and notes that the editorial work is "perfectly sound."
Kyff’s brief notice of Lynch’s Samuel Johnson’s Insults characterizes Johnson as a "barbarian" skilled in verbal injury. The article highlights Lynch’s collection of contemptuous terms drawn from Johnson’s dictionary, specifically noting "clodpate," "fribbler," and "slubberdegullion." Kyff observes that Johnson’s definitions also targeted the writing profession, as seen in his entries for "scribbler" and "grammaticaster." The piece presents the book as a humorous summer reading recommendation alongside other linguistic titles.
Ott’s approving review of Lynch’s Samuel Johnson’s Insults: A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights, and Effronteries from the Eighteenth-Century Master suggests that contemporary American politicians should emulate Johnson’s verbal wit. Lynch asserts that the eighteenth century treated abuse with "zest" and "contempt" as a preferred mode of discourse. Ott highlights Johnson’s dismissal of "vile, petty poets" and his reluctance to discuss "publick affairs" with Boswell. The review also notes Johnson’s characterization of his own government as defined by "imbecility." Ott recommends Lynch’s collection as a resource for modern candidates to replace simplistic insults with more sophisticated Johnsonian vocabulary such as "bedpresser," "pettifogger," "wantwit," and "grammaticaster."
This review presents a collection of abusive vocabulary and phrases extracted from Johnson's Dictionary, identifying him as the "grand master" of 18th-century invective. The text highlights Johnson's status as a "towering genius" and "irremediable dyspeptic" whose work provides a splendid repository of snubs and sneers. Entries cited include "abbey-lubber" for a slothful loiterer, "witworm" for a canker of wit, and "politicaster" for an ignorant pretender to politics. The reviewer suggests these terms remain relevant for contemporary political discourse, emphasizing the charm and utility of Johnson's specialized vocabulary for social and professional slights.
This review examines a collection of Johnson's most pointed verbal barbs, many of which originated in his 1755 Dictionary. Characterizing Johnson as a "famous curmudgeon," the text highlights his use of language as a "catty device to insult his inferiors," featuring definitions such as "mushroom" for an upstart risen from a "dunghill" and "bedpresser" for a "heavy lazy fellow." The reviewer contextualizes these slights within the brutal social and literary environment of the 18th century, citing Swift’s contemporary disparagement of inelegant women as a parallel. The collection illustrates Johnson's propensity for "fighting talk" and "brutal hatchet jobs," revealing a "vicious streak" that the reviewer identifies as a precursor to modern comedic sensibilities. The text suggests that for Johnson, lexicography served as a medium for immortalizing personal and professional contempt.
The Life of Johnson, the Life of Johnson, the Lives of Johnson
Lynch investigates Johnson’s influence on critical biography, arguing that Lives of the Poets established a durable "signature" for life-writing. He identifies eight categories of fact—including schooling, masters, and first publications—that Johnson popularized as essential links between lived experience and creative output. By comparing Johnson’s work to earlier collective biographies by Fuller, Aubrey, and others, Lynch demonstrates a significant shift in detail and emphasis. He concludes that these conventions shaped early biographies of Johnson by Boswell, Hawkins, and Piozzi, and continue to inform modern standards. While Boswell remains the paradigmatic biographer, Lynch asserts that the selection of data in modern literary lives remains fundamentally Johnsonian.
The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of “Proper” English, from Shakespeare to “South Park”
Enchaining Syllables, Lashing the Wind: Samuel Johnson Lays Down the Law
Lynch dispels the myth that Johnson authored the first English dictionary, situating the 1755 Dictionary within a long tradition of predecessors. He examines Johnson’s transition from a prescriptive "dictator" to a descriptive compiler who prioritized linguistic usage and precedent over academic edicts. Lynch details Johnson’s methods, particularly his use of 114,000 literary quotations to define senses. He argues that the work serves as a monumental anthology of English thought rather than a mere list of definitions.
'A Disposition to Write': Johnson as Correspondent
Lynch examines Johnson’s attitudes toward epistolarity, arguing that his private correspondence reveals a side of his character obscured by his more famous public letters. He identifies a persistent theme of "reciprocal intelligence," where Johnson expresses a neurotic obsession with the obligations of the post. Lynch demonstrates that Johnson used letters to combat solitude and taedium vitae, frequently scolding friends for dilatory habits while offering repetitive apologies for his own "sluggish" responses. By analyzing the rhetoric of duty and disappointment in letters to Boswell and Thrale, Lynch concludes that correspondence served Johnson as a vital reassurance of affection and a stay against the "vacuity of life."
Lynch asserts that Johnson made three "significant contributions to biography": prioritizing domestic and psychological facts, the self-conscious deployment of anecdote, and the introduction of "doubt" into the genre. The text defines Johnson’s practice as "biographizing in the subjunctive," characterized by a "stylistic habit" of hesitation using words like "perhaps," "probably," and "seem." Lynch notes Johnson’s conviction that "no human mind is in its right state" and his subsequent focus on "inward antagonists" and "domestic privacies" rather than public deeds. The text concludes that Johnson elevated the genre by questioning stories inconsistent with "human nature," transforming biography into a tool for moral and psychological inquiry.
Observing the conventional link between WWI and literary Modernism, this chapter argues that Samuel Johnson played several important roles in the literature and thought surrounding the Great War. Johnson variously served as a symbol of pre-war civilization, a potent critic of war and empire invoked by pacifists, and a figure whose perceived nationalism was co-opted for patriotic purposes. Lynch demonstrates how thinking about the war reshaped interpretations of Johnson, contributing significantly to the emergence of the "Johnson Agonistes" view, which emphasized his intellectual depth over Boswellian caricature, a process beginning during the conflict itself.
Lynch evaluates Johnson’s stature as a "historicist at heart" whose literary criticism sought to resituate works in their "European cultural context." The article argues that Johnson "felt literature" with a rare "human openness," famously finding the death of Cordelia too shocking to re-read until he became an editor. Lynch details Johnson’s distaste for "mixed metaphors" and "low diction," yet notes his sophisticated understanding that word registration depends on "accident and custom." The narrative explores Johnson’s "proto-reader-response criticism," where he imagines the mental processes of readers and characters alike. Lynch highlights how Johnson’s criticism in the Lives of the Poets uses "antithesis after antithesis" to compare figures like Dryden and Pope. The article concludes that Johnson’s critical method is fundamentally "pragmatic," viewing literature as something that "does things" to actual people, rather than remaining a disembodied scholarly object.
Johnson's Dictionary and 'the Lexicons of Ancient Tongues'
Though Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755) is often compared with the major vernacular dictionaries of the 17th century, a better point of comparison is the early modern lexicons of the classical languages, which Johnson knew well, and which informed his practice in his own lexicography.
LEA: Lingue e letterature d'Oriente e d'Occidente
Hedrick reviews this collection published for the Dictionary's 250th anniversary, praising its models of scholarship and marked multi-disciplinarity. The essays cohere around three issues. The first is whether the Dictionary is a political text. Weinbrot and Hudson agree the politics are moderate, with Hudson arguing Johnson's context was the rise of the "Broad-bottom" coalition. Korshin dismantles myths of Johnson as a "procrastinating genius" or "bigoted bully." The middle group focuses on internal structure (e.g., hyphenated compounds, History and Grammar), and includes back-to-back essays on Johnson's prescriptivism. The final group examines the physical nature of the Dictionary, with Paul Luna arguing Johnson brought together key conventions for future dictionary presentation.
Big and Little Matters: Discrepancies in the Genius of Samuel Johnson [review of Loving Dr. Johnson by Helen Deutsch; Samuel Johnson's Unpublished Revisions to the 'Dictionary of the English Language' by Allen Reddick; Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709–1791 by Freya Johnston; Anniversary Essays on Johnson's 'Dictionary' by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott; and A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man by O M Brack, Jr.
Jackson's review of several works describes Deutsch's study as a New Historicist examination of the Johnson cult and the relationship between "author-love" and literature, while noting Johnstone explores the discrepancy between Johnson's pursuit of "general truths" and his attachment to "minute particulars." The article critiques Volume Seventeen of the Yale Edition, A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man, challenging its "textual policy of partial modernization" and labeling the result a "hybrid text" with "inadequate annotation." Jackson praises Reddick's facsimile edition of Johnson's unpublished revisions to the Dictionary for making them "widely available" and highlights how the Anniversary Essays challenge conventional wisdom by showing Johnson "censored writers" to minimize political differences.
In this enthusiastic review, Lee identifies the collection as an "essential" survey of current assessments of the Dictionary. Lee notes that the essays build upon foundations laid by Sledd and Reddick while offering "hints for future critical inquiry." The review highlights Weinbrot and Hudson’s analysis of political contexts, Barnbrook and McDermott’s debate over Johnson’s prescriptive intentions, and DeMaria’s focus on the neglected "Grammar" and "History" sections. Lee also notes Lynch and Stone’s work on the encyclopedic tradition and Reddick’s challenge to recent collaborative theories of production.
The Last Word — Even If Not Adroit [review of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World by Henry Hitchings; Samuel Johnson's Unpublished Revisions to the 'Dictionary of the English Language': A Facsimile Edition, by Allen Reddick; and Anniversary Essays on Johnson's 'Dictionary,' by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott]
Nokes provides an approving review of four recent publications regarding Johnson and his lexicographical legacy. Examining Anniversary Essays on Johnson’s Dictionary, edited by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott, Nokes contrasts Barnbrook’s statistical challenge to Johnson's "culpable" prescriptivism with McDermott’s view that the lexicographer's experience codifying language actually altered and softened his attitudes. Reddick’s facsimile edition of Unpublished Revisions to the Dictionary demonstrates Johnson's role as a "tight bottleneck" who suppressed regional variants offered by his Scottish amanuenses and censored "indelicate" definitions to maintain personal responsibility for the work. Nokes finds Hitchings’s Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary full of "serendipitous felicities," noting how Johnson's definitions often reveal moral distaste for "stockjobbers" or local affection for Lichfield. While Nokes criticizes the "glacial" pace of the Yale Edition of Johnson on the English Language, he praises the late Paul Korshin’s contribution to the Lynch and McDermott volume, which applies "subtle, ironic and precise" analysis to Boswell’s anecdotes regarding Johnson’s early translation habits. The review emphasizes that Johnson’s dictionary remains a centennial "byword for English culture" despite its spontaneity and occasional inaccuracies.
Johnson's Rambler and Eighteenth-Century Rhetoric
Lynn challenges the critical consensus that Samuel Johnson's Rambler essays are disorganized, arguing that his textual structures are meticulously crafted rhetorical instruments aligned with traditional rhetoric. Johnson employs a formulaic dispositio: an authoritative proposition from a classical epigraph, followed by elaboration, a testing phase against empirical data (Lockean influence), and an "application" that culminates in a moral "call" to the reader. The complexity and counter-movements in essays like Rambler Nos. 172 and 184 are not evidence of exploratory thinking but a calculated strategy to dismantle earthly values and prepare the reader for a final, often religious, directive.
Locke's Eye, Adam's Tongue, Johnson's Word: Language, Marriage, and 'the Choice of Life'
Lynn investigates Johnson’s preoccupation with "the choice of life," specifically focusing on the marriage debate in Rasselas and the Rambler. Lynn situates Johnson within a linguistic tradition moving from the seventeenth-century desire for an "Adamic" language to the Lockean acceptance of the arbitrariness of signs. The article argues that Johnson recognizes language as an inadequate tool for reaching a definitive choice, leading to the "conclusion, in which nothing is concluded." Lynn examines the characters Hymenaeus and Tranquilla as examples of how choice must eventually be made despite "uncertain discernment." Johnson’s "double thinking" allows him to acknowledge the vanity of human wishes while yearning for the stability of eternal truths. Lynn suggests that Johnson uses the insufficiency of temporal things to direct human hopes toward the "choice of eternity."
Basker reviews Lynn’s study, described as "the first book-length study of The Rambler," and finds Lynn's double-edged title "prescient and timely," referring both to Johnson's survival after the era of high theory and the results of applying deconstructive techniques to his prose. Basker highlights Lynn's argument that The Rambler is not a haphazard collection but a "coherent whole" designed to lead the reader on a "rambling journey" toward faith, noting Lynn's central, "ingenious" pairing of Johnson and Derrida, who both share a deep skepticism about language and an awareness of life's "vacuity." Basker observes Lynn organizes the book around rhetorical tropes such as "contradiction" and "repetition," claiming these elements are central to Johnson's moral project rather than accidental flaws, and notes Lynn uses deconstruction to "illuminate Johnson and Johnson to illuminate deconstruction," arguing that Johnson’s rhetorical strategies often anticipate modern theoretical concerns regarding the instability of meaning. While Basker praises Lynn's "provocative book full of radical and daring ideas," he remains skeptical of the broader utility of deconstruction for eighteenth-century studies; however, he finds that Lynn's "brave self-examination" admits to "misreading" Johnson as a "single-minded evangelical document," a move that affirms the book's value in bridging deconstruction and belief and succeeds in making The Rambler appear vibrant and relevant to modern critical discourse.
In this positive review, Scholtz examines Steven Lynn’s application of deconstruction and eighteenth-century rhetorical theory to Johnson’s periodical essays. Scholtz notes that Lynn interprets the essays as a creative misreading of The Spectator intended to establish a distinct identity. The review highlights Lynn’s Derridean argument that Johnson uses deconstructive techniques to destroy "settled assumptions" and bring readers toward Christian faith. Scholtz explains that these arguments support Lynn's central thesis regarding the evangelical purpose and unrecognized coherence of the periodical. Scholtz concludes that the work offers a revisionistic interpretation of Johnson’s craftsmanship suitable for academic researchers.
Tomarken reviews Lynn’s attempt to link deconstruction with a religious reading of the Rambler essays. He notes Lynn’s focus on the anxiety of influence from Addison and Steele and the mazing grace of Johnson’s rhetoric. Tomarken challenges the novelty of these religious conclusions and disputes the logical necessity of adding religion to deconstruction, suggesting Johnson’s own use of referentiality complicates Lynn’s transcendent interpretation.
Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics
McCaffery researches a non-Saussurean strain in poetic thinking that emphasizes sublexical forces and subsystemic turbulences. The dissertation employs conceptual tools from Greek particle physics and contemporary thermodynamics to analyze micropoetic operations like the paragram and collage. A central chapter provides a comparative study of Johnson’s "Dictionary" and Wittgenstein’s "Philosophical Investigations." McCaffery explores the correlations and bifurcations between these two works, examining how Johnson’s lexicographical project functions within Enlightenment linguistics. He analyzes Johnson's use of authority and the ideological implications of his definitions. The study also investigates precursors to grammatology, including Peter Walkden Fogg and Joshua Steele, to problematize the speech-writing binary. McCaffery positions Johnson alongside Richard Bentley and the Marquis de Sade to stage concepts that inform and turbulate discursive suppositions in poetics.
Includes a section on the theories of language implicit in the Dictionary.
Publication Day for Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's Use of Shakespeare in the Dictionary
Corpora Across the Centuries: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on English Diachronic Corpora
A Corpus of Source Texts for Johnson's Dictionary
The Intertextual Web of Johnson's Dictionary and the Concept of Authorship
Textual Transformations: The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus in Johnson's Dictionary
McDermott investigates Johnson's inclusion of 146 quotations from the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus in his Dictionary despite his low opinion of the work's literary merit. Johnson's preference for Arbuthnot over Swift is evident in his citations, which frequently credit Arbuthnot as the primary authority. While Johnson viewed Scriblerian satire as often descending into lampoon or mere entertainment without moral purpose, he respected Arbuthnot as a universal genius and religious scholar. McDermott argues that Johnson's selection of these texts contradicts his stated principle of only using instructive or beautiful passages. Instead, his use of the Memoirs may reflect an unacknowledged interest in the Quixotic tradition of learned burlesque, tempered by a sense of common humanity lacking in the Scriblerians.
The eighteenth-century concept of knowledge tends to lay an emphasis on ordering what is already known rather than on discovering new things (though the century did make many new discoveries). Learning is seen as a series of repeated acts rather than one intuitive grasp. This difference is evident in the works of scholarship and learning which the century produced – they are typically lists or tables – and the most typical of all are the many dictionaries and encyclopedias that were produced in the course of the century. Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist of the period, devised a system of taxonomy (i.e. classification) for all living organisms, with the purpose of being able to name them all reliably and consistently and establish the relationships between them. Isaac Newton had traced the motions of all the planets and transformed these apparently random movements into the solar system, thus creating order out of chaos. It became the ambition of many scholars and thinkers to do the same for their own areas of expertise. The opening words of the Preface to Johnson's Dictionary make it clear that he thought of his dictionary as doing for the language what scientists and thinkers had done for other areas of knowledge.
It is difficult to say what Rasselas is. Like a novel it has characters and a discernible narrative, but the focus of the text is not on the characters and their emotional or intellectual development, nor on the specific events of the narrative and their consequences, but on the development of ideas about human nature and happiness. For this reason it has sometimes been called a philosophic tale. It has something of the form of a parable or an allegory, since the narrative is not linear and progressive, but circular – the characters ending up more or less where they began.
Standards und Methoden der Volltextdigitalisierung
Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur
Creating an Electronic Edition of Johnson's Dictionary: Developments of Solutions to Some Problems
Eighteenth-Century Optimism as Metafiction in Pale Fire
Three Writers of Eighteenth-Century Lichfield: Johnson, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward
On three notable 18th-century writers connected to Lichfield: Johnson, Erasmus Darwin, and Anna Seward. It highlights Darwin and Seward's early links to Australia, such as Darwin's poem for a Wedgwood medallion inspired by Sydney Cove. It details the mutual dislike between Johnson and the polymath Darwin, attributing it to Darwin's stammer and refusal to be a "worshipper" of the dominating Johnson. The paper discusses Darwin's literary success with The Botanic Garden and his early evolutionary theories, contrasting his contemporary acclaim with the subsequent literary eclipse of both Darwin and Seward.
Levelling Language: The Politics of Literacy in the English Radical Tradition, 1640–1830
Johnson's Dictionary Preface (1755) links "illiterate writers" (those uneducated in classics) with "colloquial licentiousness" and "social levelling." He contends that proper English requires knowledge of Latin and Greek. Johnson's position reflects a class-based politics where classical learning defined the "literate" elite capable of public life against the "vulgar" multitude. His work was central to establishing cultural divisions based on linguistic practice in the later eighteenth century.
John Wesley and Samuel Johnson: A Tale of Three Coincidences
Two Critiques of Wealth: John Wesley and Samuel Johnson Assess the Machinations of Mammon
Protection from the Tyranny of Treatment
McEnroe discusses an exhibition at Dr. Johnson’s House, focusing on the medical and sexual practices of the eighteenth century. The exhibit showcases Johnson’s own self-treatment for his final illnesses and includes an incredibly rare animal-gut condom associated with Boswell. Boswell’s frequent venereal disease infections, documented in his London Journals, illustrate the pervasive fear of contagion and the ineffectiveness of early condoms.
British Art Journal in association with Dr Johnson's House Trust
The Tyranny of Treatment: Samuel Johnson, His Friends and Georgian Medicine
Contents: Foreword / Beryl Bainbridge -- London life and health in the 18th century / Rachel Kennedy -- 'General disease of my life': Samuel Johnson and his health / Graham Nicholls -- Boswell's complaints / Adam Sisman -- Mrs. Thrale: a constant anxiety about health / Norma Clarke -- Sir Joshua Reynolds / Martin Postle -- 'Woman of more than ordinary talents and literature': Blind Miss Williams at Dr. Johnson's House / Natasha McEnroe -- Fanny Burney has a mastectomy- and other matters / Kate Chisholm
Essays to accompany an exhibition at Dr. Johnson’s House.
From Tragedy to Hope: A Study of the Parallels in the Thought of Samuel Johnson and T. S. Eliot
Dr. Samuel Johnson's Head-Tilt — A Hitherto Unrecognized Example of IVth Cranial Nerve Palsy
Discursive Communities/Interpretive Communities: The New Logic, John Locke and Dictionary-Making, 1660–1760
Wilson reviews McIntyre’s "marvellously rich" biography of Thrale, later Piozzi, examining her complex role as Johnson’s "Dear Mistress." The text explores the "erotic" undercurrents of Johnson's attachment and the "yoke" Thrale felt while providing him sanctuary at Streatham. Wilson highlights Thrale's 1784 marriage to Piozzi, which "shortened" Johnson's life according to contemporaries and incited a "virulent" rivalry with Boswell. The review addresses Thrale’s maternal detachment and the high infant mortality of the 18th century, noting she lost eight of her twelve children. While McIntyre "springs stoutly to her defence," Wilson remains critical of Thrale’s "supreme self confidence" and "self regard." The account underscores Thrale's literary emergence through her Anecdotes and Synonyms, despite Boswell's attempts to "erase" her legacy in his own biographical project.
Literary Historicity: Literary Form and Historical Thinking in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England
Mack argues that mid-eighteenth-century English authors used textual forms to question the nature of history and their relationship to it, locating a philosophy of history informally in genres like prefaces and novels. Mack examines Samuel Johnson's Preface to The Dictionary of the English Language (1755), arguing it is an autobiography that addresses the terms for defining the individual's historical subjectivity. Johnson dramatizes the philosophical problem of the individual's relation to knowledge as a personal struggle, revealing the self's historicity through the inevitable limits of the lexicographer's project and his analogy of mind and text. Johnson later extends this analysis to his biography of Dryden.
See chapter 2, “The Historicity of Johnson's Lexicographer.”
Too Personal? Teaching the Preface to the Dictionary
Mack explores using Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary in the classroom, focusing on its highly personal tone and the student question of whether it is too personal for academic writing. She contrasts it with the technologically impersonal Preface to the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Students view Johnson's personal disclosure as a reminder of the individual mind at work against the impersonal nature of print. Mack introduces Johnson's definition of "objective" ("Belonging to the object"), noting the historical reversal in its meaning, and suggests Johnson frames lexicography as the strange process of converting words into "things" (objects), thereby fashioning a relationship between person and thing. This approach shows Johnson's personal focus to be a deliberate reframing of the lexicographer's concerns about subjectivity.
Certain Lively Episodes: The Articulation of Passion in Eighteenth-Century Prose
McKenzie documents how eighteenth-century prose articulated human passion, treating emotion not simply as a content subject but as a literary episode. Johnson’s essays, fiction, and criticism show awareness of passion's lexicographical possibilities and moral complexities. Passion formed Johnson's most lively abstraction, revealing his wisdom and humanity. The work contrasts the focus of earlier centuries on passions of great persons in epic or tragedy with the eighteenth century's use of essays and novels to investigate passions in humbler life. Few authors scrutinized passion better than Johnson in his Rambler essays. Johnson’s characterization relied more on understanding inner workings and rhetorical genius than on observation. Johnson often figured passion in his verse (The Vanity of Human Wishes), political works, and criticism. The careful presentation of passion gives linguistic force and serves as complex episodes of human conflict.
A Jacobite Undertone in 'While Ladies Interpose'?
MacKenzie argues Johnson's line "While ladies interpose, and slaves debate" in The Vanity of Human Wishes, describing Charles XII's exile, carries a contemporary Jacobite resonance referring to Charles Edward Stuart's situation in France in 1748. He establishes the pervasive contemporary association of Jacobitism with female involvement ("petticoat patronage"), citing examples from d'Argenson and popular accounts. MacKenzie details Charles Edward's standoff with Louis XV over the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, showing how contemporary "political folklore" in both Paris and London emphasized the influence of female supporters (like the Princesse de Talmont) and the analogy with Charles XII at Bender, making Johnson's line highly topical.
Dr. Fleeman's Bibliography of Samuel Johnson
McManis’s enthusiastic review of the 2002 Levenger Press abridgment of the Dictionary, edited by Jack Lynch, celebrates the 250th anniversary of the 1755 masterpiece. This satirical vignette contrasts the "whimsical" and "acerbic" personality of Johnson with the sterility of modern lexicography. McManis highlights the "major attitude" found in definitions for "oats," "excise," and "patron," the latter serving as a published rebuff of Lord Chesterfield. The account details the 22-pound physical scope of the original two-volume work, noting its 42,773 entries and 116,000 illustrative quotations. McManis argues that Johnson’s one-man operation achieved a "painstaking" literary status that committee-led French and Italian counterparts could not match.
The Faith of Samuel Johnson: An Anthology of His Spiritual and Moral Writings and Conversation
MacMath assembles a thematic anthology designed to introduce Johnson specifically as a Christian writer and thinker, countering his popular image as merely a 'gruff lexicographer'. The volume draws from various primary sources, including Prayers and Meditations, The Rambler, The Idler, Rasselas, and Johnson's sermons, alongside biographical accounts by Boswell and Piozzi. Organized into eleven chapters, the text explores Johnson's struggle with 'morbid melancholy,' his 'intensive depression,' and a persistent 'fear of death' that defined his spiritual life. MacMath emphasizes Johnson's 'unusual humility' and 'immense charity,' highlighting his support for Mrs. Anna Williams and his 'extraordinary exertions' on behalf of the condemned Dr. William Dodd. The collection demonstrates Johnson’s 'searching and sober assessment' of his own failures, particularly his lifelong battle against idleness and his 'tremulous earnestness' during religious observance. Scholarly apparatus includes a detailed chronology, bibliography, and E. H. Shepard illustrations. MacMath maintains that for Johnson, rational thought necessitated an 'increased study of Scripture' rather than a forsaking of faith, presenting his 'creaturely conception of God' as a model of eighteenth-century piety that remains relevant to modern readers. Contents: His character; The women he loved; His morbid melancholy; On death; His search for the truth; His charity; His Christian life; On churches; On repentance; The death of Dr. Johnson; Occasional prayers.
Explores Johnson’s religious discipline and his private struggle with evil, guilt and sin. MacMath uses Johnson’s diaries and sermons to illustrate his fearful darkness and chronic depression. Contradicts the public image of the witty, formidable lexicographer with the private reality of a man tortured by his failure to keep spiritual resolutions and his dreadful fear of the afterlife.
Factual Ambiguity: Boswell and the Development of the Individual Life,' chapter 4 of 'Writing and Reading the Individual: The Development of Personal Narrative in the Works of Defoe, Richardson, and Boswell
The Theme of 'Hermitage' in Samuel Johnson's Essay 'The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe, Found in His Cell'
The article considers "The Vision of Theodore" by Samuel Johnson as an example of the cautionary tales of the English Enlightenment literature. The aim of the article is to analyze the plot in terms of refraction of the visionary tradition in it. The historical-literary commentary has made it possible to clarify the evaluations of "The Vision of Theodore" in the 18th century English criticism and the approaches of the modern English literary criticism to the essay. The study highlights the originality of Johnson's idea in the construction of the plot of the vision, which consists in the creation of the situation of hermitage of the protagonist on the exotic island of Tenerife. A look at the travelogue essays "The Journey to the Hebrides" by Johnson has helped the author of the article to identify possible reasons for the writer's creation of an artistic image of the island as a "plausible" space for Theodore's spiritual experience. The effect of the authenticity of the vision is also achieved through the motif of the manuscript found in the cell and the allusion in the protagonist's name. The protagonist's complicated inner state (including his passionate desire to climb the mountain and the doubts about the action) becomes the starting point in the development of the plot. Johnson uses the popular visionary motif of a dream because of which Theodore gets an opportunity to see the surroundings of Tenerife in a different light and learn a moral lesson. Under the guidance of the guardian spirit, Theodore observes the mountain of Existence and explores the mountain space as an allegory of the life path. The analytical nature of the description of the human flow resembles the reasoning of R. Descartes in his treatise "Passions of the Soul" and testifies to the complex understanding of the essence of the human soul in "The Vision of Theodore" by Johnson. The writer believes that reason and faith are the only true spiritual supports in life. It is concluded that Johnson modifies the tradition of the visionary genre to implement the enlightenment program. In the spirit of the times, the writer enhances the didactic pathos, makes the narrative sound documentary and true-to-life, and brings Theodore's experiences closer to the readers of "The Preceptor."
Kirkley examines Maner's argument that Johnson uses "dialectical" doubt to educate the reader's judgment. He finds the focus on "bisociative processes" in the lives of Savage, Swift, Milton, and Pope interesting but notes a lack of attention to Johnson's reservations about "philosophical history." Kirkley questions if this framework accounts for Johnson’s magisterial tone or his impulse toward shared humanity. He concludes the study breaks useful ground by identifying doubt as a creative instrument in Johnson's Enlightenment style.
Pettit praises Maner's book as an admirable, rhetorically-based discussion of the Lives of the Poets. Maner maintains an authoritative and genial tone, offering cautious and thoughtful rhetorical analysis of Johnson’s dialectic.
Scholtz’s positive review identifies this monograph as the second book-length study of Johnson as a biographer. Scholtz notes that Maner focuses narrowly on the Lives of the Poets to explore how Johnson uses doubt and dialectic to educate the reader. The review describes the core of the work as four chapters tracing these dialectical methods in the accounts of Savage, Swift, Milton, and Pope.
Marcel Schwob ha scritto che se Boswell fosse riuscito a concentrare in dieci pagine la sua monumentale "Vita di Samuel Johnson," avrebbe dato alla luce l’opera d’arte tanto attesa. Quasi raccogliendo la sfida, Giorgio Manganelli scrisse nel 1961 questo trattatello, che rappresenta una stupefacente ‘biografia sintetica’ e insieme un geniale ritratto collettivo dove – sullo sfondo di una Londra torva e sordida, ma amatissima – accanto a Johnson figurano i suoi più cari amici: Richard Savage, scrittore fallito, sregolato e ribaldo, Topham Beauclerk, ilare e irresponsabile libertino, e naturalmente James Boswell, autore di un «calco letterario fedele fino alla allucinazione» del modo di essere del Dottore. Uomini dalla prensile passionalità, capaci di offrirgli un’immagine già vissuta e intellettualizzabile dell’esistenza: l’ideale per lui, che ambiva a essere «esperto e incorrotto». Ma il Johnson di Manganelli è ancora di più: il primo eroe di una civiltà di massa, un divo ammirato e amato per il fatto stesso di esistere, di conglomerare con la sua bizzarria e la sua sarcastica conversazione ascoltatori e spettatori. Ed è, anche, un perturbante alter ego, soprattutto laddove di Johnson ci appare il lato più segreto: la malinconia, l’ipocondria, l’infelicità, fieramente combattute con il lavoro, con «i doveri dell’intelligenza, presidio della chiarezza interiore e dunque della moralità».
Souvenirs et anecdotes sur Samuel Johnson
Miltonoklastes: The Lauder Affair Reconsidered
The Pre-Publication History of William Lauder's Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in His 'Paradise Lost'
Marcuse analyzes the pre-publication history of Lauder's fraudulent Essay, using press figures and advertisements to demonstrate a rushed production aimed at capitalizing on Newton's Paradise Lost. The study validates Hawkins's claim that the Ivy Lane Club proofread the sheets, pinpointing December 5, 1749, as the likely date. The reconstructed timeline, involving late additions of the Preface and Postscript, suggests SJ's contribution was a hasty, charitable intervention rather than a calculated participation in the deception.
'The Scourge of Impostors, the Terror of Quacks': John Douglas and the Exposé of William Lauder
Marcuse details the exposé of Lauder, who accused Milton of plagiarizing Paradise Lost from neo-Latin works, often using falsified evidence. Lauder's claims, motivated by Jacobitism, were first exposed not by Douglas, but by Bowle and Richardson, who identified several forgeries. Douglas's Milton Vindicated (1750), rhetorically brilliant, provided the impetus for Lauder's confession. The eventual full recantation, dictated by Johnson, included an expanded list of forgeries. Marcuse argues Douglas's achievement was rhetorical, forcing Lauder's patrons to withdraw support, and notes Lauder's original claim about a "Celestial Cycle" was substantially correct.
Getting to Know the Doctor: A Bookseller Sees the Light
Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Yale University Press
Martin challenges the traditional nineteenth-century perception of Boswell as a mere buffoon, arguing instead that his private journals reveal a highly complex, conscientious writer of the first order. The text traces Boswell’s life from his Edinburgh childhood, marked by Presbyterian gloom and paternal coldness, through his formative travels and his eventual immersion in the London literary scene. Martin emphasizes the role of 'hypochondria' or melancholia as a determining force in Boswell’s existence, linking this mental suffering to his volatility and search for identity. Detailed attention is given to the 'improbable' history of the Boswell papers' discovery at Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House, which transformed Boswellian scholarship. The biography explores Boswell’s 'actor-like' persona and his talent for recording conversation, which reached its zenith in the 'masterpiece' of the London Journal and his definitive biography of Johnson. Martin examines Boswell's interactions with Continental Enlightenment figures like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, his Corsican activism, and his later struggles at the English bar. Martin portrays Boswell as a figure of 'paradoxes, opposites, and extremes' who used his journals as a means of self-realization and 'adjusting' his character. Chapter 1, 'A World of Chimeras,' addresses the formative influence of childhood anxieties and parental dynamics on a burgeoning melancholy temperament. Chapter 2, 'Edinburgh Gloom,' argues that university life and early friendships catalyzed a shift from morbid timidity toward robust, though contradictory, social and literary ambitions. Chapter 3, 'Escape to London,' examines an impulsive flight toward Catholicism and metropolitan libertinism as a definitive rejection of provincial legal constraints. Chapter 4, 'Early Scribblings,' analyzes the initial pursuit of literary fame through verse and journalism as a vital psychological defense against paternal authority and depression. Chapter 5, 'Harvest Jaunt,' illustrates the refinement of biographical techniques and self-observation during a period of transitory independence. Chapter 6, 'London: The Promised Land,' contends that the first major journal transformed personal experience into a structured quest for self-knowledge and moral discipline. Chapter 7, ''The Johnsonian Æther',' details the pivotal encounter with Samuel Johnson, establishing a foundational intellectual and emotional anchor for future endeavors. The critical reception of Martin’s biography generally leans positive, praising the work as an engaging, readable reevaluation that rehabilitates its subject from the nineteenth-century caricature of a mere buffoon, though academic reviewers identify notable factual errors and a lack of deep psychological interpretation. Among prominent national publications, Rawson, in the New York Times Book Review, commends Martin’s exploration of the subject’s theatrical temperament and compulsive sexuality. Miller’s review in the Wall Street Journal identifies the text as the likely standard one-volume biography, highlighting the essential role of Edmond Malone in structuring the final masterpiece. But Furbank, in the New Republic, finds the text lacking in wonderment despite praising its organization. In the TLS, Miller offers a respectful introduction to the subject's variety of acquaintance but views the volume as a presentation of existing scholarship rather than a groundbreaking intervention. Stein’s review in the Wilson Quarterly calls it an excellent, comprehensive study that defends the subject as a writer in a class of his own. Among specialized scholarly journals, Baruth, in ECS, offers a sharply negative assessment, calling the work uninspired, unsympathetic, and moralistic. Radner, in AJ, praises Martin's energetic writing and psychological insights but criticizes numerous factual errors and omissions. Korshin, in JEGP, views the book as an important contribution that successfully challenges the myth of absolute accuracy. Finally, Caldwell's review (Dalhousie Review) and Bax's review (English Studies) register the volume's publication within the broader critical landscape.
Reviews: Andre Alexis, Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 17, 2001; Brooke Allen, Hudson Review 54, no. 3 (2001): 489–97; Philip E. Baruth, ECS 35, no. 2 (2002): 279–334; Bella Bathurst, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), August 28, 1999; R. C. Bax, English Studies 83, no. 2 (2002): 167–68; Mark Bostridge, The Independent, August 15, 1999; Jo Breach, Midhurst and Petworth Observer, August 19, 1999; Tanya Caldwell, Dalhousie Review 80, no. 3 (2000): 430; James Campbell, The Observer (London), August 29, 1999; Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times (London), August 15, 1999; Dick Claésson, Ord Och Bild, January 1, 1999; Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday, September 12, 1999; John Derbyshire, New Criterion 19, no. 7 (2001): 61; First Things (February 2001): 55; Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe, November 21, 1999; Russell Fraser, Sewanee Review 111, no. 4 (2003): 603–9; P. N. Furbank, New Republic 224, no. 11 (2001): 44–45; Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, November 27, 2000; Robert Greacen, Irish Independent, October 9, 1999; Henry Hitchings, New Statesman, 1999; Richard Holmes, NYRB 48, no. 14 (2001): 28–32; Allan Ingram, NR, Series E, no. 2 (1998): 71–73; Paul Johnson, Insight on the News 16, no. 48 (2000): 26; Kirkus Reviews (October 15, 2000); Paul J. Korshin, JEGP 102, no. 3 (2003): 438–42; Jonathan Lamb, SEL 41, no. 3 (2001): 649–50; Peter Lewis, Daily Mail (London), September 10, 1999; Jack Lynch, Choice 38, no. 8 (2001): 4328; Paul Marx, Houston Chronicle, March 4, 2001; Ian McIntyre, The Times (London), August 19, 1999; Frank McLynn, The Independent, August 14, 1999; Karl Miller, TLS, no. 5040 (November 1999): 3–4; Stephen Miller, WSJ, November 29, 2000; Publishers Weekly (2000); John B. Radner, AJ 12 (2001): 448–55; Claude Rawson, NYTBR, January 7, 2001; Peter Ryan, Weekend Australian, November 13, 2000; Richard B. Schwartz, Albion 33, no. 4 (2001): 659–60; Eli Shaltiel, Ha'Aretz, November 12, 1999; Michael Shinagel, Harvard Review, no. 20 (2001): 161–63; Fred Slater, St. Joseph News-Press, November 16, 2000; Jacob A. Stein, Wilson Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2000): 130–130; David Stenhouse, Sunday Herald, August 22, 1999; Gilbert Taylor, Booklist 97, no. 5 (2000): 511; John Wiltshire, English Language Notes 39, no. 3 (2002): 92–100.
The US edition followed in 2000.
Boswell's Turn [review of The Life of James Boswell, by Peter Martin, and Boswell's Presumptuous Task, by Adam Sisman]
Allen reviews two major biographies of James Boswell, finding Adam Sisman’s Boswell’s Presumptuous Task to be a focused and insightful account of the making of the Life of Johnson, while Peter Martin’s James Boswell is a more conventional but exhaustive cradle-to-grave narrative. Allen praises Sisman for his elegant prose and for successfully capturing the drama of Boswell’s twenty-year struggle to write his masterpiece, though he notes its limited scope. He finds Martin’s comprehensive biography impressive in its research and detail, providing a valuable, unvarnished portrait of Boswell’s entire life, including his often-unpleasant personal habits and professional failings. However, Allen criticizes Martin for sometimes getting lost in the sheer volume of material and for a less engaging style. He concludes that while Martin’s book will be the standard reference work, Sisman’s is the more intellectually stimulating and enjoyable read.
Carpenter examines Peter Martin’s biography of Boswell, characterizing the subject as a precursor to modern tabloid journalism. The text highlights Boswell’s relentless questioning of Johnson’s female acquaintances regarding the Doctor’s sexual potency and his pursuit of celebrities like Rousseau and Voltaire. Carpenter notes Boswell’s "near-pornographic journal" and chaotic private life, including frequenting prostitutes and enduring repeated infections. Martin argues Boswell and Johnson were "made for each other," with Johnson serving as a "warm-hearted and unthreatening father-substitute." Carpenter praises the biography for its "ruthlessly detailed chronicle" of Boswell’s manic-depressive instability.
Fisher's review of Peter Martin's biography explores Boswell's struggle with self-doubt, hypochondria, and depression. The work balances insights into Boswell's melancholic character with details of his dissolute London life and his difficult relationship with a stern father. Fisher describes Boswell's search for father figures, which led to his deep attachment to Johnson. During their tour of the Hebrides, Boswell recorded Johnson's conversation to fashion a character that mirrored his own heroic melancholy. The review concludes that despite achieving fame through his biography of Johnson and inheriting his family estate, Boswell remained obsessed with death and disease.
Triumph of an Artist [review of Boswell's Presumptuous Task, by Adam Sisman, and The Life of James Boswell, by Peter Martin]
Holmes examines the fluctuating reputation of Boswell through reviews of biographies by Martin and Sisman. He argues that the recovery of the Boswell papers transformed the perception of the biographer from Macaulay's "priapic simpleton" into a "proto-Romantic Scottish wanderer" of "furious and even Romantic contradictions." Holmes highlights Martin’s depiction of Boswell’s "devastating emotional honesty" and his empathetic bond with Johnson, rooted in shared experiences of depression. Sisman’s work is credited with vindicating Boswell as a "dedicated, intelligent literary artist" who "resolved Life into [his] own feelings." Holmes notes Boswell’s "daring single-mindedness" in tracking Paoli and his sophistication in transforming "Johnson in the raw" into a "richly humorous" biographical masterpiece. The review emphasizes that Boswell "softened" Johnson's "barely controlled aggression" to create a work of "historical solidity" that "enlarged the whole notion of what it was to be human."
Ingram reviews Martin's biography of Boswell, noting the difficulty of writing the life of a man who "already written it so frankly" himself. The reviewer finds the book "essentially a book for the beginner," as it offers little new light for those already familiar with Boswell. Ingram identifies numerous "typographical errors, inaccuracies, and omissions," such as confusing children's ages and misidentifying the source of a duel threat. Martin's thesis—that melancholy determined Boswell's existence—is criticized for failing to provide a "probing analysis" beyond recounting low periods. Ingram concludes that the work disappoints, as Martin's tracing of Boswell's "confused self" remains less engaging than Boswell's own journals.
This approving review characterizes Martin's biography as an entertaining chronicle of Boswell's "gloriously shallow" but complex life. Martin uses Boswell's scrupulous journal entries to detail his social climbing, sexual appetite, and interactions with Enlightenment figures such as Hume, Rousseau, and Johnson. The reviewer notes that Martin tempers Boswell’s reputation for buffoonery by examining his clinical depression and his strategic use of self-deprecation to elicit wit from his peers. Martin argues that Boswell was an author of the first rank and a forerunner of modern biography, whose excesses provided a warm contrast to the reigning neoclassicism of London and Edinburgh. The review concludes that while the portrait is not deeply original, it successfully captures an engaging and "pathetic" character.
McIntyre examines Martin’s biography of Boswell, noting the difficulty of surpassing the subject’s own self-portrait found in his journals and his masterpiece, the Life of Johnson. McIntyre highlights Martin’s treatment of Boswell’s mesty, picaresque life, his struggles with black Melancholy, and his compulsive behaviors as a gambler and womanizer. While McIntyre praises Martin for catching the fugitive reflections of Boswell’s character, he identifies minor blemishes and carelessness regarding historical details, such as the specifics of Dr. William Dodd’s forgery and the history of the Haymarket Theatre.
McLynn’s enthusiastic review of Peter Martin’s A Life of James Boswell argues that Boswell possessed a "finer mind" and superior writing talent compared to Johnson. McLynn challenges the traditional view of Boswell as a mere "foil" or "buffoonish exhibitionist," instead characterizing Johnson as a "pampered star" prone to "political bigotry," misogyny, and "racism" directed at Americans and Scots. The review praises Martin’s mastery of the Yale Boswell papers and his candid treatment of Boswell’s "satyriasis," noting sixteen bouts of gonorrhea and a "prodigious sexual appetite" that included a liaison with Thérèse Le Vasseur. While McLynn disputes the depth of Martin’s contextualization of the Hebridean tour’s "Jacobite dimension" and finds the analysis of Boswell’s melancholia "anodyne," he commends the biography’s insights into Boswell’s legal career, his rivalry with Piozzi, and his defense of American colonists. The review portrays Boswell as a "writer of genius" whose inexhaustible curiosity and "negative capability" allowed him to surpass the "absurdly overblown" reputation of his mentor.
Marx's enthusiastic review of Peter Martin's biography of Boswell praises the work for its "clear delineation" of the subject's erratic personal life. Marx emphasizes Martin's focus on Boswell's "hypochondria" and manic episodes, which the reviewer suggests were essential to the completion of the biography of Johnson. The review details Boswell's strained relationship with his father and his recurring physical ailments. Marx concludes that the text successfully balances scholarly rigor with a compelling narrative that captures Boswell as a "brilliant but all-too-human man."
Miller's approving review of Martin's biography of Boswell provides a readable, sensible, and respectful introduction that serves as a successful presentation of Boswell's personality and his "amazing variety of acquaintance." The review examines the narrative of the 1773 Scottish tour with Johnson, highlighting the "battle of the bugs" in Glen Moriston and noting that Boswell heroically plunged into bed to leave "less room for vermin to settle." Miller compares journal versions regarding whether Boswell slept clothed and observes that while Johnson demeans Boswell for his Scottishness, they remain a "fixed literary item." Although Martin’s retelling follows the scholarship of Pottle and Brady, Miller notes the absence of figures like Stuart and Burns and finds the depiction of eighteenth-century Scotland occasionally distant. The review, which details Boswell's interactions with Rudd and his complex attitudes toward social inferiors and slavery, suggests the work's "leading attraction" is its sympathetic approach to the biographer of the "Great Cham" rather than a groundbreaking scholarly intervention.
Radner notes Martin's book is the first single-volume scholarly biography since Pottle-Brady. Martin's energetic writing, use of sources, and insightful observations on Boswell's psychology (melancholy) and relationships are praised. However, Radner criticizes numerous factual errors, significant omissions (especially regarding the Johnson relationship during the Hebrides tour) that distort the narrative, insufficient analysis of key events and motivations (e.g., biographical impulse, later melancholy), and a seriously incomplete index. While appreciating Martin's sympathy and the book's engaging quality, Radner finds it unreliable because of inaccuracies and lack of depth compared to Pottle-Brady.
The Emperor of Common Sense [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
Derbyshire reviews Meyers's The Struggle and Martin's A Biography. He notes Johnson’s enduring fascination lies not in his systemic ideas but in his character and understanding of human nature. The biographers diverge on Johnson’s alleged masochism, with Meyers affirming the theory and Martin dismissing it. Derbyshire highlights Meyers’ focus on Johnson’s anguished religious struggle, contrasting with Martin’s emphasis on his commitment to the established church.
Towering Ambitions [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin]
Fergusson reviews Martin’s biography of Johnson, assessing the challenge of reclaiming the writer from the "anecdotage" established by Boswell, Hawkins, and Piozzi. The text describes Johnson as a "scruffiest" figure of "dreadful appearance," marked by "disgusting" table manners and physical tics reminiscent of Tourette's syndrome. Fergusson emphasizes Johnson's lifelong struggle against "indolence," his inheritance of his father's "black dogs" of depression, and his "brave tussles for happiness." While acknowledging Johnson's "towering" literary achievements—including the 1755 Dictionary and his Shakespearian editorship—Fergusson focuses on his role as a biographer who prioritized "common humanity" over heroic acts. The reviewer finds Martin’s work industrious and engaging, particularly in its focus on Johnson's "strange character" and piety, though he notes it offers little new material compared to the "majestic" 1978 biography by Bate.
Gargantuan: A Man of Outsize Intelligence, Energy, and Infirmities, Samuel Johnson Comes into Closer Focus in Two New Works [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
The reviewer acknowledges Johnson's irresistible biographical appeal, detailing his physical infirmities, lifelong struggles with depression and debt, and phenomenal literary productivity. Helms finds both books informative, presenting a more sexual and tormented Johnson, and praises Meyers for superior historical context and focus on Johnson's literary influence. The review notes Martin’s book is marred by stylistic lapses and minor errors. Ultimately, Helms concludes neither new work supersedes Walter Jackson Bate’s 1977 biography in describing the depth of Johnson's mind and the character of his conversation.
The Definition of Brilliance [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin]
Hughes reviews Martin’s biography of Johnson, depicting him as "awkward, twitching and downright dirty." She discusses Johnson’s "outrageous double standard" on marital infidelity, likely rooted in his own dismal private life with an "embarrassing alcoholic" wife. The review mentions the suggestion that Johnson asked Hester Thrale to "chain him up" to restrain or encourage sexual urges. Hughes describes the Dictionary as a "colossal undertaking" that eventually won Johnson financial independence.
Johnston reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography, judging it a model account of the subject, who remains the focus of Boswell's preeminent biography. Johnston asserts that Martin succeeds in portraying Johnson's triumph over profound personal adversity, including poverty, poor health, and severe melancholy. The review highlights Johnson's major literary achievements—the Dictionary, The Rambler essays, and Lives of the English Poets—and emphasizes his status as the second most quoted English writer, whose famous remarks often originated in the sociability of London taverns and coffeehouses. The biography also explores Johnson's candor about his inner struggles, a quality Johnston argues provides timeless wisdom.
A review of Peter Martin's biography, praised as "efficient" and "beautifully produced" with four-color illustrations. The book is most affecting when describing the frustrated, argumentative young Johnson, seeing his talent as a "weapon" for revenge. Martin highlights times of good fortune, such as the gold coin from the royal touch and the use of Joseph Spence's literary anecdotes. The review notes the importance of the Rambler essays for satisfying Johnson's hunger for literary expression. A critique is made of the excessive catalog of Johnson's bloodletting and the confusing presentation of his birth dates.
Ley reviews Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography, asserting that while Boswell's 1791 masterpiece remains the "most celebrated biography in the English language," it focuses disproportionately on the final quarter of Johnson's life. Ley highlights how modern scholarship, including Martin's work, reveals the "shortcomings" of Boswell's account, particularly his suppression of the "real desperation" of Johnson’s lifelong depression and his "coyness" regarding the conflict between Johnson’s moral principles and sexual desires. The review chronicles Johnson’s "journey of agony and courage," from his poverty-stricken years at Oxford to his "Herculean" literary labors in London, including his Dictionary and his moral allegory, Rasselas. Ley commends Martin for granting Johnson's social and political views their full complexity, portraying him as a troubled "outsider" who maintained a lifelong sympathy for the poor and a "consistent moral vision."
Olson provides an approving review of Martin’s biography, which characterizes Johnson as a "literary dictator" whose achievements defined English literature. The review notes Martin’s use of a "patchwork of quotations" to maintain momentum and fascination. Olson highlights Martin’s central argument that the long gestations of Johnson’s major works, including the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets, stemmed from his "lifelong battle with depression" as much as their complexity. Martin portrays Johnson as a figure whose "intellectual distinction" overpowered physical infelicities. Additionally, the biography presents Johnson’s stances against slavery and empire as "decidedly liberal" and rooted in his Christian convictions.
Lives of Johnson [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
Price reviews two tercentenary biographies, noting that while Johnson is ubiquitous in "sound bites," he remains largely unread. Price highlights how Martin and Meyers contrast Johnson's "abject youth" and physical afflictions—including scrofula and Tourette's syndrome—with his "superhuman literary output" and adult fame. Price observes that both biographers depict a "politically correct hero" who opposed slavery and supported women writers, while downplaying his "Jacobite sympathies." The review emphasizes Johnson's view of writing as a "social transaction" driven by financial need rather than "solitary genius," detailing the collaborative "assembly line" used to produce the Dictionary. Price also explores Johnson’s complex relationships with his dependents and social circle, specifically contrasting Meyers’s "sadomasochistic" interpretation of Johnson's bond with Hester Thrale against Martin’s view of her as a "therapist" for his fear of insanity. Price concludes that while these post-Freudian accounts provide diminishing archival returns, they offer a "convincing psychological study" of a writer whose work was inextricably linked to his social life.
The reviewer acknowledges Martin’s effort to provide a psychological portrait of Johnson for the tercentenary, investigating "immense insecurities," "deep depression," and "corrosive self-doubt." Martin explores how early poverty, physical disfigurement, and "distant relationships" with family shaped Johnson’s psyche, while also speculating on cryptic journal entries. The reviewer credits Martin with presenting Johnson "warts and all, from the inside," though finds the prose merely "serviceable." The work highlights elements purportedly suppressed by Boswell, including Johnson's "despair for his very soul" and his status as a "ladies' man."
Cheerfulness Breaks In [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
Rogers reviews new biographies by Meyers and Martin, which emphasize Johnson's struggles, psychological turmoil, and nonconformist "rebel-moralist" status, continuing the agenda set by Bronson's "Johnson Agonistes." Rogers contends that this view overlooks Johnson's place within the Establishment, citing his club membership and honors. He finds Meyers livelier but less accurate on historical details, while Martin is more comprehensive but has errors in his specialist area. Both use The Rambler effectively to summarize Johnson's thought.
Sandbrook reviews Martin’s biography of Johnson, characterizing it as a "brisk and readable introduction" that emphasizes Johnson's status as an unusually "modern" and "immediately human" figure. The text contrasts Martin’s candid account of Johnson’s "powerful sex drive" and "amorous propensities" with the censored versions provided by Boswell. Sandbrook highlights the "deep melancholy" and "morbidity" inherited from Johnson’s father, alongside physical manifestations of what Martin identifies as a mild form of Tourette's syndrome. The account details Johnson’s early struggles, including his failure to complete studies at Oxford and his professional rejections, before achieving status as the "Great Cham" of English letters. While noting that Johnson is "much quoted but little read," Sandbrook argues that Martin successfully portrays the "brilliantly clever, funny and humane" nature of the man who named Barber his residual heir.
Sexton reviews Martin’s biography of Johnson, dismissing it as an "amateurish" addition to the scholarly tradition that fails to surpass Bate’s 1978 masterpiece. Sexton disputes Martin’s attempt to modernize Johnson by emphasizing his anti-colonialism at the expense of his conservatism. The review identifies significant errors, including a "fatuous" comment regarding word processors and a major misquotation of "The Vanity of Human Wishes." Sexton criticizes Martin's omission of poignant lines from Johnson’s final correspondence with Piozzi and finds the treatment of Johnson’s relationship with his wife, Tetty, unsympathetic. While acknowledging Johnson’s "stronger amorous inclinations" and his "rapture" in the company of Molly Aston, Sexton argues Martin adds no new insight into Johnson’s sexuality. Sexton concludes that readers seeking an authentic portrait should return to Boswell, Piozzi, and Bate.
This opinion column reviews Peter Martin’s new biography of Johnson, published ahead of the tercentenary of his birth, in the context of Johnson’s fading popularity. Shilling laments the decline in public recognition, noting that Martin’s spot interviews found few people could identify him. The columnist acknowledges criticism of Martin’s book as coarse and inferior to Bate’s 1977 biography. However, Shilling defends Martin's work as a readable service to Johnson's memory, reminding readers of his complex, multifaceted character. Shilling focuses on Johnson's neglected lighter side, citing Boswell’s and Burney's accounts of his hearty humor, domesticity, and famous unexpected actions, such as rolling down a hill.
Dr. Johnson and His Many Maladies: Two New Biographies Testify to the Talents and Suffering of the 18th Century's Most Celebrated Wit [review of Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
Sims reviews biographies by Martin and Meyers published for the 300th anniversary of Johnson's birth, reassessing the figure Boswell immortalized. Martin provides "novelistic detail" regarding Johnson's man, origins, and era, including his treatment for scrofula and his wife Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter. Meyers concentrates on the style and sources of Johnson's writing. The review highlights a disagreement regarding Thrale's "indiscreet revelations" about Johnson's private life; Martin dismisses theories of sado-masochistic behavior as "wild," whereas Meyers surveys evidence suggesting Thrale "regularly manacled and whipped him." Both authors present a conflicted, "self-torturing tangle" of appetites and repression suffering from various physical and psychological afflictions.
The Gargantuan and Terrifying Lexicographer [review of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World by Henry Hitchings, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers]
Srodes’s enthusiastic review of Jeffrey Meyers’s Samuel Johnson: The Struggle and Peter Martin’s Samuel Johnson: A Biography evaluates the divergent methodologies of two 300th-anniversary commemorations. Meyers emphasizes the physical and psychological "roadblocks" Johnson surmounted, including illness and depression, while providing extensive historical context on eighteenth-century London. Srodes prefers Martin’s chronological narrative for its superior prose and sharper focus on the impact of Johnson’s literary output. Martin argues Johnson did not intend his Dictionary to be the final authority on English but sought to stabilize the language. Srodes notes that despite this intent, Johnson’s selections established a "High Tory, Church of England and aristocratic standard" that resisted popular coinage. The review also mentions the 2009 republication of Boswell’s biography and the life of Piozzi, whom Srodes characterizes as Johnson’s "legendary friend."
The review examines Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography, which re-evaluates Johnson's enduring modern relevance by challenging Boswell's carefully constructed image of him as a self-confident, conservative sage. The review notes Martin, a Boswell biographer, debunks myths, presenting a complex and tormented figure haunted by depression and intense religious guilt, which prompted him to burn personal papers before his death. Martin reveals Johnson as a radical liberal who treated his black manservant, Barber, as a son and heir, in contrast to Boswell's portrayal of a rigid Tory. The biography also acknowledges Johnson as likely the first recorded Tourette’s sufferer.
Sutherland reviews Martin's biography, the first major account in thirty years, as an effective use of a "modern toolbox" to re-examine Johnson’s life. Martin uses the "telescope paradox," arguing that passing time allows for a clearer, more objective view than that provided by contemporary biographers like Thrale, Hawkins, and Boswell. Despite this distance, Sutherland highlights the "trump card" held by those contemporaries: sensory details, such as the smell of singed horsehair from Johnson’s wigs, which modern writers cannot replicate. Martin diagnoses Johnson’s "morbid melancholy" and gesticulations as symptoms of depression and Tourette's syndrome, while examining his "hidden side," including an attachment to "fetters and handcuffs" reflecting a fear of madness. Sutherland praises Martin for "undusting" the narrative with twenty-first-century phrases and navigating the "terror and wonder" of Johnson’s intellectual birth—including his childhood terror upon reading Hamlet—without "Boswellian hero worship." The review concludes that the work’s justification lies in the "bedtime story" quality of Johnson’s life, which remains so fascinating that posterity enjoys endless retellings.
Tayler's review of Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography examines the effort to challenge the "blustering Tory know-all" legend created by Boswell. Tayler notes that Martin responds to Donald Greene’s call to combat Boswell's "dictatorial" portrait by presenting Johnson as an advanced liberal, protofeminist, and critic of imperialism. The review highlights Martin’s use of sources Boswell sidelined, including Hawkins and Piozzi, to fill gaps in the first fifty-three years of Johnson’s life. While Tayler disputes the depth of Martin’s literary analysis, calling his accounts of the writings "blandly potted," he praises the adroit marshalling of evidence regarding Johnson’s medical struggles, procrastination, and "amorous propensities." Tayler concludes that Martin successfully compresses decades of scholarship into a rounded portrait of a struggling, modern figure without adopting a hostile stance toward Boswell.
In this letter to the editor, Mason provides a "devastating list" of over sixty errors in Martin's biography, undermining its reliability despite Martin's reportedly good work. Mason lists numerous factual errors, typographical mistakes, and inconsistencies, including incorrect renderings of scholars' names like Reddick and Redford and inconsistent or incorrect titles for over eighteen works. The letter details misleading or inconsistent publication dates for over twenty works, including Martin's own Boswell biography, and errors in the bibliography and chronological details regarding Johnson's arrest for debt and his final meetings with Piozzi. Mason disputes Martin's claim that a portrait of Johnson appeared in the first edition of the Dictionary, noting it actually appeared in the first edition of Boswell's Life, and highlights inconsistencies between text and captions regarding Johnson's portraits. Further defects include a lack of prompt clarification of Johnson's Old Style birth date and the incorrect birth date itself. Mason concludes that the work suffers from poor copy-editing and reliance on outdated sources rather than the corrected Yale Edition.
The Dictionary: The Poetry of Definitions
Matthews examines the "antiquarian interest" of old dictionaries, comparing them to maps that represent language as it was once "thought to be." Matthews focuses on Johnson’s 1778 Dictionary, praising its definitions as "little poems" characterized by "exactness and nicety." While admiring Johnson’s "eloquence," Matthews identifies various errors, including a "profound distrust" of American terms, such as the omission of "bison" and an inaccurate entry for "tobacco". The article also notes phonetic blunders regarding the letter F and the reversal of "statue" and "statute," likely due to a "yawning typesetter". Matthews concludes that despite these lapses, Johnson’s work remains an "extraordinary personal accomplishment."
Oliver Goldsmith's Revisions to The Traveller
May argues that Oliver Goldsmith's writing process fundamentally involved extensive rewriting and revision, a practice often overlooked by critics. Focusing on Goldsmith’s major poem The Traveller, May meticulously analyzes the substantive changes made across its pre-publication proof and multiple editions (1764-1770). This textual analysis reveals Goldsmith’s careful attention to style, clarity, and thematic development, demonstrating how he actively responded to critical reception, including reviews by Johnson, to refine his work. The study repositions Goldsmith not just as a stylist but as a dedicated craftsman deeply engaged in perfecting his literary output.
Samuel Johnson on Landscape, Natural Knowledge and Geography: A Contextual Approach
University of Oxford School of Geography Research Papers
School of Geography, University of Oxford
Geography and Literature in Historical Context: Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century English Conceptions of Geography
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Between Hope and Insanity
The purpose of this thesis was to explain how Samuel Johnson, a man of high intellect and rational judgment, could have suffered from insanity. The author intended to show the relationship between hope in its extreme forms and the onset of mental neurosis. In order to demonstrate this relationship, several works written by Johnson over a period of thirty years are analyzed: a poem entitled "The Young Author," several Rambler essays, and a novel Rasselas. Each of these works reflects Johnson's own personal struggle with madness and the way that excessive hope or complete lack of hope contributes to his mental instability. The paper concludes that hope is a necessary element of human existence; it must be properly monitored and balanced. Hope that is excessive or unreasonable leads to mental imbalance, whereas rational and proper use of hope can aid mental health.
'A Lord among Wits': Lord Chesterfield and His Reception of Johnson's Celebrated Letter
Mayo challenges Boswell's portrayal of Lord Chesterfield's reception of Johnson's famous letter (rejecting Chesterfield's belated patronage) as "glossy duplicity." Boswell's interpretation, Mayo argues, is informed by the posthumous publication of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son (1774), which transformed public memory of him from a "cynosure of wit" to an insinuating courtier. Chesterfield's contemporaries mainly saw him as the wittiest man of his time. Mayo suggests Chesterfield's reaction—keeping the letter on his table and pointing out its best passages—was one of selfless admiration for Johnson's brilliant wit, which Cibber also praised, and not an affected dissimulation. Boswell's dismissive comment should be read as evidence of the public anxiety about the Letters to his Son.
Argument Doktora Dzhonsona: Semiuel Dzhonson kak Kritik Berkli = Samuel Johnson as a Critic of Berkeley
On Johnson’s critique of Berkeley. In Russian.
Remarks on the Etiology of Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome
Reynolds: la fusion de l'histoire et de la realité
Olson's enthusiastic review praises Jeffrey Meyers's biography, Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, celebrating it as a compelling work that successfully motivates audiences to read Johnson's output. The reviewer contrasts Meyers's thematic framework with Peter Martin's concurrent biography, noting that while Martin organizes his text around melancholy, Meyers structures his narrative around Johnson's persistent battles to overcome psychological burdens, Tourette's syndrome, a blind eye, and partial deafness. Olson highlights Meyers's specific focus on Johnson's writerly craft across poems, essays, sermons, and Rasselas, rather than merely his historical preeminence. Although Meyers omits some background on minor dictionary assistants, Olson notes that the work compensates by offering rich, detailed insights into prominent contemporary figures such as Edmund Burke and Fanny Burney.
A critical review of Jeffrey Meyers's biography, Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, which is described as knowledgeable but error-ridden and overly self-confident. The review argues Meyers reduces Johnson to modern psychological categories, emphasizing his "strong sexual desires" and belief in masochistic sex with Thrale based on minimal evidence like the famous padlock. The portrayal of Johnson as a "monster in Frankenstein" or "young ogre" is critiqued as an "unintellectual picture." Despite misgivings, the reviewer acknowledges the book's potential to introduce new readers to Johnson because of its sensational and rapid style, making Meyers a potential "benefactor of literature."
Meyers offers new interpretations of Johnson's life, specifically focusing on his marriage and sexual life and hostility toward Swift. He depicts Johnson as a man of high intellect burdened by physical deformities and a tendency toward social improprieties and fits of anger. The biography examines Johnson’s influence on five major nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. Kingsbury finds the use of detail lively and the reasoning sound, recommending it for academic and public libraries.
This approving review characterizes Meyers's biography as a balanced, capable portrait of Johnson's troubled yet triumphant life. Meyers presents Johnson as an overwhelming personality whose physical scars from scrofula and sensory impairments did not diminish his intellectual dominance. The review notes Meyers's attention to Johnson's less pleasant traits, including his "careless hygiene" and "peremptoriness," while also emphasizing his compassion and opposition to slavery. Meyers disputes Johnson's reliability in Lives of the Poets, citing "insouciance about facts." The reviewer highlights the "piercing poignancy" with which Meyers chronicles the dissolution of Johnson's friendship with Piozzi and the final decline of his health. The review concludes that while the work lacks Hitchings's scholarly focus on the Dictionary, it successfully displays Johnson in "all his grime and glory."
The book, like earlier biographies by Bate and Wain, emphasizes Johnson's colorful personality, struggles with poverty, and rise to fame as the Great Lexicographer. The reviewer notes that Boswell magnified Johnson's fame by immortalizing the "rugged, uncouth, unkempt" conversationalist. Meyers's account highlights Johnson's ascent from an ambitious, poor youth who left Oxford due to lack of funds to a celebrated figure who earned a royal pension after publishing his Dictionary. Losos praises Meyers for stressing Johnson's immense personal kindness and his noble decision to shelter a strange collection of desperately poor Londoners. However, the reviewer criticizes the author's near-obsessive and unpersuasive allegations regarding Johnson’s sex life and sadomasochism.
The reviewer describes Meyers’s study as a popular biography that departs from strict chronology to explore the "meaning" of significant events for Johnson. Meyers focuses on Johnson’s "masochistic sexuality" involving Thrale and speculates on his sex life during and after his marriage. The reviewer credits Meyers with providing a balanced account that addresses Johnson’s literary achievements, including the "Dictionary," "Lives of the Poets," and his edition of Shakespeare. Meyers characterizes Johnson as a "tortured, contradictory and pessimistic sage" whose "self-lacerating personality" influenced modernists such as Woolf, Beckett, and Nabokov. The review concludes that the work effectively captures a "massive, grotesque genius."
Rutten reviews Jeffrey Meyers’s biography of Johnson, titled "Samuel Johnson: The Struggle," praising the author for synthesizing traditional sources with contemporary research to analyze Johnson’s personality and literary influence. Identifying Boswell’s "Life of Samuel Johnson" as the "earliest recognizable modern biography" because it created the categories of "personality" and "celebrity," Rutten praises Meyers for a "wonderfully accessible life" that balances salacious facts—such as Johnson’s potential "taste for sadomasochistic sex" with Hester Thrale—with "unsentimental sympathy" for his physical ailments. The review highlights the work's balanced treatment of Johnson's battle with Tourette’s syndrome, scrofula, and "profound depression," valuing the empathetic yet unsentimental examination of the relationship between Johnson and Piozzi, including the controversial evidence of sadomasochism. Rutten portrays Johnson as a "heroic" figure who used his "formidable intellect" to overcome "two decades of failure," concluding that Meyers successfully portrays Johnson’s triumph over internal turmoil and social disadvantage to become a definitive man of letters.
This article discusses the astonishingly precise connection between Johnson's method for writing the Parliamentary Debates and that of the Greek historian Thucydides. Johnson, who "created rather than reported the speeches" from slender or no materials, produced elaborate, rhetorically golden orations. Thucydides, 2,300 years earlier, similarly wrote that he made the speakers say what was "demanded of them by the various occasions," adhering to the general sense but not the verbatim record. Both authors slanted the speeches to reflect their own political and moral ideas, demonstrating an exact shared methodology.
Author's abstract: "According to endocrinologist Benjamin Simkin, the reason for Mozart's bizarre social conduct--which included involuntary bodily movements, hyperactivity and outbursts of foul language--may have been the rare genetic condition Tourette's syndrome. Samuel Johnson may have also suffered from it."
The Pope and the Canon: Eliot, Johnson, Davie and The Movement
Miller examines T. S. Eliot's 1944 essay "Johnson as Critic and Poet" as a pivotal recantation of modernist poetics in favor of a neo-Augustan program. Eliot identifies Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" as a masterpiece of the judicial bench produced within a stable society of shared moral and stylistic orthodoxies. Miller argues that Eliot uses Johnson’s ahistorical standard of good sense to advocate for a common style that prioritizes intelligence and wisdom over the incantation and meaningless imagery of early modernism. The text explores how Donald Davie adopted this Johnsonian nexus in "Purity of Diction in English Verse" to promote a poetry of urban and momentous statement responsible to the community. While Miller notes that Johnson found authors like Shenstone consummately dull, the Movement used the Johnsonian ideal of rational syntax to distance post-war literature from the perceived political taint of Symbolism and Fascism. Ultimately, Miller highlights the paradox of using Johnson’s authority to reject the irrational roots of the very tradition that produced Eliot’s own major works.
Johnson's literary merit is often obscured by the view, promoted by Boswell and Macaulay, that he spoke better than he wrote. Johnson's prose is often wrongly dismissed as "Johnsonese." Miller contends that Johnson was not a reactionary Jacobite, but a progressive thinker who praised commerce, opposed idleness, and shared many views with Hume and Smith, differing mainly in his strong support for traditional Christianity. Johnson's best writing, especially Lives of the Poets and Rasselas, holds lasting power for its profound understanding of human passions and its challenge to the complacent idea of "natural" benevolence.
Three Deaths and Enlightenment Thought: Hume, Johnson, Marat
Miller identifies three distinct Enlightenment currents: a reformist skepticism moderately hostile to religion (Hume), a reformist conservatism strongly favoring traditional religion (Johnson), and a transformist utopianism hostile to religious influence (Marat). The study posits that these figures used their final days to solidify lifelong projects: Hume to demonstrate that a virtuous life could end serenely without the 'popular religion' of Christianity; Johnson to model God-fearing piety as an essential aid to moral renewal and social stability; and Marat to unmask counterrevolutionaries for the sake of a disinterested common good. Miller argues that Johnson, despite frequent characterization as a man of 'antiquated notions,' was a man of Enlightenment who defended commercial progress, scientific advancement, and social reforms like the education of the poor and the abolition of slavery. However, Johnson maintained that God-fearing religion was the necessary basis of civil society, distinguishing his 'Enlightenment conservatism' from the more secular skepticism of Hume or Smith. Miller concludes that while none of these specific deathbed projects achieved their ultimate goals of ridding the world of religion, restoring universal piety, or perfecting the citizenry, they collectively reveal the Enlightenment as a 'family of quarrels' rather than a unitary movement. Chapter 1, 'The Cult of the Deathbed Scene,' addresses the eighteenth-century preoccupation with dying well, illustrating how secular and Stoic influences gradually supplanted traditional Christian penitence in the public imagination . Chapter 2, 'The Death of Hume,' examines the philosopher's serene, atheistic end as a deliberate challenge to religious orthodoxy, intended to demonstrate that virtue and tranquility are possible without faith in an afterlife . Chapter 3, 'The Death of Johnson,' explores the lexicographer's tormented, God-fearing death as the culmination of his lifelong project to promote traditional piety as the essential foundation for social morality and order . Chapter 4, 'The Death of Marat,' addresses the revolutionary's assassination and subsequent secular canonization, which transformed radical patriotism into a new state religion during the French Terror . Chapter 5, 'The Varieties of Enlightenment Thought,' argues that the failure of these three distinct deathbed projects highlights the internal contradictions and ideological diversity within the Enlightenment.
Ingram's review of Miller's study examines the deathbed projects of Hume, Johnson, and Marat as representatives of differing Enlightenment stances toward religion. While Johnson and Hume found each other personally offensive, Miller demonstrates they held similar views on slavery, patriotism, and luxury. Ingram challenges Miller's use of the term project to describe these deaths, noting that Johnson did not believe deathbed scenes deserved serious attention and suffered from a well-known terror of dissolution. Although the book provides a useful review of Enlightenment intellects like Smith and Burke, Ingram disputes the organizing focus, arguing that Marat did not expect death and that Miller ignores the project of Marat's assassin.
Potkay reviews Miller’s comparative study of the deathbed "projects" of Hume, Johnson, and Jean Paul Marat, noting that Johnson is presented in relation to other intellectual figures of his day. Miller argues that both Hume's project (to persuade against Christianity) and Johnson's (to persuade of God-fearing Christianity) ultimately failed in their religious aims among educated people. The reviewer notes that Miller links Johnson and Hume as Enlightenment conservatives because of their shared political agenda, specifically championing luxury (consumerism) as a means of both material and moral improvement, viewing idleness as the source of avoidable evils. This political agenda succeeded, in contrast to Marat's utopian political project, which failed with the fall of Robespierre.
Miller contrasts the devout Anglican, Tory Johnson, who denounced American colonists as "tyrants" in Taxation No Tyranny, with the Deist Washington. Despite their differences, both men admired and were guided by the same lines from Joseph Addison's Cato, which stress honor as a sacred tie that "aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her, / And imitates her actions, where she is not." Johnson applied this sentiment to politeness, arguing it is a "fictitious benevolence" and that a sense of honor spurs one on to virtue when "genuine virtue" is absent. Both figures, therefore, had similar ideas about the springs of moral conduct: both thought genuine virtue is rare, and a strong sense of honor helps regulate passions.
Conversation: History of a Declining Art
Samuel Johnson: A Conversational Triumph; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Conversation Lost
Miller evaluates Johnson as the "greatest conversationalist of the age" despite contemporary criticisms of his "deficient politeness." While Hume found Johnson "abusive in Company" and Walpole described his manners as "brutal," others viewed his "natural, lively, gay" discourse as a triumph. Miller details the "lively coffeehouses and flourishing clubs" of Britain's "conversible world," where Johnson’s stature remained unique. The text explores Johnson’s "principled" stance against "dissertation" and his acceptance of a government pension in 1762, which made him a target for less-talented attackers. Miller contrasts Johnson’s success with Montagu’s "reluctance to enter" the conversible world, arguing that Johnson’s "reason, wit, and interest" secured his conversational legacy.
Naming Properties: Nominal Reference in Travel Writings by Bashō and Sora, Johnson and Boswell
Barnhill calls Miner's book a substantial contribution and an innovative, rich, and rewarding comparative study. Miner’s multiplex approach, comparing both intra- and intercultural travel journals, is praised for offering a fruitful analysis of the naming of persons, places, and time.
Dr. Johnson, Warren Cordell, and the Love of Books
Misenheimer explores Johnson’s "inveterate love of books," rooted in his childhood above his father’s bookshop. He argues that while Johnson lacked the funds to be a modern collector, his respect for books manifested in his "intense interest in the profession of authorship" and a deep sense of responsibility for literature's moral utility. The text details Johnson's advice to figures like Boswell and Piozzi (then Hester Maria Thrale), urging them to avoid "total vacuity" through diligent reading. Misenheimer parallels Johnson’s passion with that of Warren Cordell, whose collection at Indiana State University contains over two hundred editions of Johnson’s Dictionary. He concludes that both men viewed books as the "precious life-blood of a master-spirit," essential for the preservation of human knowledge.
Journal of Okayama Women's Junior College
Priestley no eibunten to Johnson no eigojiten
“Priestley’s Rudiments and Johnson’s Dictionary.”
Johnson no jiten: Yourei no gogakushiteki igi
“Johnson’s Dictionary: The Linguistic Significance of Its Citations.”
S. Johnson to tairiku no gengo academy: hin'yodoshi no koumoku wo chushin ni'
“The Influence of Continental Language Academies on S. Johnson: His Treatment of Verbs of High Frequency.”
Johnson's and Webster's Verbal Examples: With Special Reference to Exemplifying Usage in Dictionary Entries
Miyoshi systematically comparies the 1755 and 1828 dictionaries to clarify the role of citations and invented examples. Miyoshi uses statistical methods to analyze entries for function words, verbs of high frequency, and inflected forms. The analysis demonstrates that Johnson often preferred citations from post-Restoration authors like Dryden, Swift, and Addison, despite stating a preference for earlier "pure" sources. Miyoshi argues that Webster's reliance on fewer citations reflects careful selection rather than a disregard for their value. The study identifies Webster’s use of 182 biblical citations in specific entry ranges and his frequent substitution of Johnson’s literary examples with original invented phrases. Miyoshi concludes that both lexicographers supplied verbal examples based on distinct views of language usage and historical context. "Johnson's primary concern was consistently with English grammar throughout the task of compiling the Dictionary."
'Intellectually "Fuori del Monto"': Pound's Johnson
Despite Ezra Pound's general critique of the eighteenth century, he regarded Samuel Johnson as one of its most vital literary figures. This essay examines Pound's complex assessment of Johnson, whom he praised for his intellectual independence, viewing him as admirable "because he will not lick boots" yet intellectually belonging to an earlier era. Moffett explores the important connections between the two writers, analyzing Pound's direct citations of Johnson in both poetry and prose. The chapter contextualizes Pound's views within his broader historical and aesthetic arguments, particularly concerning cultural decline and literary influence.
Samuel Johnson and the Neo-Latin Tradition
Money explores Johnson's engagement with the flourishing neo-Latin literary tradition of his era. He examines Johnson's own Latin poetry (including Gnothi Seauton and the Hebridean odes), analyzes surviving evidence of neo-Latin works in Johnson's library (both early and late), and discusses specific examples like Quillet's Callipaedia and Deslandes' poems to illustrate the contemporary vitality of Latin composition. Money argues that while Johnson was a capable Latinist whose Latin works are significant, his output doesn't rank him among the foremost neo-Latin poets compared to figures like Alsop. Nonetheless, neo-Latin literature formed a crucial, often politically charged, part of Johnson's cultural context.
A Voyage out of Staffordshire; or, Samuel Johnson's Jacobite Journey
Monod explores the roots and evolution of Johnson's Jacobitism by examining his upbringing in the West Midlands, a region characterized by strong localism, High Church Toryism, and significant Jacobite sentiment following the Glorious Revolution. The essay details the pervasive Jacobite connections within Johnson's social and familial circles, including figures like Sacheverell, Floyer, and various local gentry. It argues Johnson's Jacobitism was complex and changed over time, influenced by early mentors, personal experiences with patronage (both Tory and Whig), and the tension between principle and pragmatism. Johnson's eventual move to London represented an attempt to transcend provincial conflicts and forge a national literary identity.
Dr. Johnson's 'Own Dear Master': The Life of Henry Thrale
Morrant examines the lifelong depressive illness of Johnson, which the subject termed a horrible hypochondria. This biographical sketch links Johnson's temperament to his parents and describes how childhood infections, including scrofula, left him with permanent sensory impairments and scarring. Morrant details Johnson's first breakdown at Oxford and his persistent fear of insanity, a dread reinforced by his physician William Swynfen. The article describes how Johnson used constant mental occupation, brilliant conversation, and travel with Boswell to mitigate his despair. Morrant also highlights the supportive roles of Elizabeth Porter and the Thrales in managing Johnson's periodic collapses into groaning and social withdrawal. The narrative concludes that Johnson carried these psychological burdens with courage until his death from heart and kidney failure.
The author announces that Johnson's and Boswell's libraries can be viewed online at Library Thing. The project involved cataloging Johnson's books primarily using Donald Greene's annotated guide and locating a copy of each book in an online library source. The cataloging crew plans to incorporate additional lists of books Johnson subscribed to and associated with. The author invites Johnsonians to contact him for help in identifying the provenance of their books from these libraries.
A Man of Many Words (Including Jobbernowl)
Morrison commemorates the 250th anniversary of the publication of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. The text details Johnson's single-handed "Herculean energy" in compiling 43,773 entries over eight years in a "tiny garret behind Fleet Street." Morrison emphasizes the moral dimension of the work, noting Johnson "wanted his Dictionary to convey not just the right way to use language, but the right way to live life." The text notes Johnson's inclusion of idiosyncratic terms like "jobbernowl" and his exclusion of "civilisation" upon Boswell's advice, alongside his "chauvinism" in omitting "bourgeois" and "champagne."
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of Modern Life: Survey, Definition & Justify'd Lampoonery of Divers Contemporary Phenomena, from Top Gear unto Twitter
Publisher's blurb: "In this hilarious update of his original Dictionary, bewigged lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson takes a curmudgeonly look at modern life, from Celebrity Big Brother to dubstep In 2009 Dr Samuel Johnson made a surprise reemergence from 18th century retirement and began Twittering. It proved the perfect vehicle for his acerbic, aphoristic wit and he has quickly become the darling of the site. The Guardian calls him the "greatest" thing on Twitter and the Telegraph dubs him its "star." Our gouty man of letters finds the modern world in a parlous state. It is peopled with fools like "Raisin-ey'd Tyrant Mister Nick GRIFFIN" and "BABOON-SLAYER, Fop, Macaroni, Dandy & Folderol, Mister AA Gill." His attempts to negotiate a path through the vagaries of modern life do not fare well either—for instance, on a trip to "Mister LIBERTY'S blast'd Haberdashery," upon finding "all else clad as Lumber-Jacks, I left thwart'd & alone… unwilling to dress as an unmanly Pastiche of Mister COBAIN." From Top Gear and the Daily Mail to David Cameron and Celebrity Big Brother, nothing escapes his sardonic gaze."
Nekayah, Pekuah et les autres: Aspects de la feminité dans Rasselas
Morvan challenges the common critical prejudice of Johnson's misogyny by analyzing the portrayal of women, specifically Princess Nekayah and Pekuah, in Rasselas. While acknowledging Johnson’s adherence to the era's sexist social norms regarding marriage and chastity (as evidenced in Boswell's Life), the article highlights Johnson's contemporary view of women's intellectual cultivation. Rasselas implicitly advocates for intellectual and cultural parity, portraying women's inferiority as circumstantial, not ontological. Nekayah and Pekuah demonstrate conceptual depth, aphoristic eloquence, and methodological self-awareness, actively challenging male perspectives. Morvan concludes that Johnson promotes complementarity, showcasing the civilizing and restorative balance of the female principle, particularly in the astronomer episode.
Iamartino analyzes Mugglestone’s use of the maritime metaphor—voyaging across a "vast sea of words"—to frame Johnson’s lexicographical labor. The text highlights Johnson’s role as both a "prescriptivist" and "register" of language, noting his humility in the face of "risible absurdities" and "wild blunders." It emphasizes Mugglestone’s "novel approach" in connecting Johnson’s methodology to earlier practitioners like Florio and Chambers. The review underscores the "trite contrast" between the "harmless drudge" and the "dictator" of language, suggesting Johnson occupied both roles simultaneously while struggling to "lash the wind" of linguistic change.
Wild's review of Mugglestone's Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words examines the Doctor's use of figurative language in the Dictionary of the English Language, particularly in the Preface. Mugglestone focuses on the metaphorical language Johnson used regarding his lexicography to argue that he refused the expected "dictatorial, prescriptive role," instead favoring a "genial, flexible, and pragmatic description" of current linguistic practice. The review notes Johnson's role as a linguistic pioneer who grasped the "collectively social and gently mutable nature of linguistic change." The book details Johnson's disapproval of words like "cabbage" and his "famous, baroque definition of network," linking his views to metaphors exploring the tension between describing what exists and prescribing what should exist. While finding the diction sometimes ponderous, Wild praises the book for demonstrating how Johnson rejected rigid regulation in favor of descriptive lexicography.
The Values of Annotation: Reading Johnson Reading Shakespeare
Mugglestone examines the symbiotic relationship between Johnson’s lexical annotations and his subsequent editorial work. By analyzing thousands of penciled marks in his copy of Warburton’s Shakespeare, Mugglestone demonstrates how Johnson gathered citational evidence for his Dictionary while simultaneously refining his understanding of Shakespearean meaning. The study highlights how Johnson’s comparative reading process and lexicographic rigor allowed him to move beyond existing glosses, ultimately providing a more precise interpretative framework for common readers and scholars alike.
Mugglestone reevaluates Johnson’s role as a "language reformer," balancing his prescriptive aims with his recognition of the "limits of human power" to constrain linguistic change. The article contrasts the "bombastic" reputation of "Johnsonese" with the "simplicity and directness" found in his private diaries and letters. Mugglestone explores Johnson’s engagement with regional variations and his unprecedented use of women’s writing as authority in the Dictionary. The narrative details Johnson’s "characteristic doubleness," where he reads with documentary intent while remaining swayed by personal subjectivities. Mugglestone argues that Johnson’s core aim was to "register, not form" the language, yet he often expressed regret for obsolete forms. The article highlights Johnson’s "calibrated engagement" with the shape of English, acknowledging that the stasis of a print text cannot mirror the living language. Mugglestone concludes that Johnson’s work on language was an "all-too-human enterprise" where prescriptive desire often yielded to the "authority of custom."
Modern Studies and Other Essays in Honour of Dr. R. K. Sinha
Johnson the Juggler with Three Balls: Fancy, Reason, and Faith
Latin Epigraph on the Title Page to James Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791)
Mukherjee analyzes the significance of the Latin epigraph "Quo fit ut omnis... Vita senis" from Horace's Satire 2.1.32-33 on the title page of Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791). The epigraph, meaning "whereby the whole life of the great man may be laid out as upon a votive tablet," is a tribute by Horace to the satirist Gaius Lucilius. Boswell uses this reference to emphasize the wholeness and magnitude of Johnson's life and literary achievements, suggesting his biography is like a votive tablet containing the macrocosmic world encapsulated in a microcosmic image for the reader.
'There Is a Community of Mind in It': Quoting Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century
Mullan argues that the habit of quoting English literature only became common in the second half of the eighteenth century, fueled by the elevation of Shakespeare as the center of a vernacular canon. While earlier writers like Pope and Defoe favored classical or biblical quotation, the mid-century works of Richardson and Fielding began incorporating Shakespearean fragments, often sourced from Bysshe’s Art of English Poetry. Mullan identifies Johnson’s Dictionary as the definitive force in establishing Shakespeare’s quotability. Johnson used approximately 19,000 quotations from Shakespeare, treating the dramatist as a maker of language whose variations reward constant attention. This lexicographical density embedded Shakespearean phrasing into the common language, a shift reflected in the novels of Sterne. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy presumes a shared ownership of national literature, frequently using unmarked Shakespearean lines. Mullan also highlights Boswell’s records of Johnson’s defense of quotation as a “community of mind.” By the time of Austen and Sheridan, quoting Shakespeare served as a marker of cultural competence and genteel affectation.
Johnson's Relationship with his Physicians
Samuel Johnson: His Ills, His Pills and His Physician Friends
This article, based on the Fitzpatrick Lecture, surveys the extensive medical history and professional associations of Johnson. Murray documents Johnson’s lifelong struggle with scrofula, gout, depression, and Tourette syndrome, noting that the latter's tics and gesticulations prevented him from pursuing a teaching career. Johnson maintained close friendships with fifty-seven physicians and actively participated in medical discourse, contributing to Robert James’s dictionary and frequently prescribing remedies for friends. Though he respected the medical profession, Johnson remained a critical patient who "would argue with the physicians" and alter his own dosages, often taking much higher amounts than prescribed. The narrative highlights his residence with Hester Thrale at Streatham, where he was a constant guest for nearly two decades, and his compassionate care for "whole nests of people" in his own home, including the unlicensed physician Robert Levet. Murray emphasizes that Johnson’s deep interest in medical practices and beliefs provides a unique window into the Age of Enlightenment and the evolving clinical standards of the eighteenth century.
Dokuta Jonson Meigenshu [Sayings of Dr. Johnson]
Basker reviews Daisuke Nagashima's monograph, which investigates the apparatus criticus of Johnson's Dictionary and his broader philological contributions. The reviewer observes that Nagashima provides a rigorous analysis of Johnson's etymological methods and his 'History of the English Language.' Basker emphasizes Nagashima's discovery of the sources Johnson used for his definitions and citations, portraying Johnson as a scholar deeply engaged with the linguistic traditions of his time. The review highlights Nagashima's focus on the evolution of Johnson's linguistic thought from the Plan to the final edition of the Dictionary. Basker describes Nagashima's work as a corrective to views that see Johnson as merely an idiosyncratic lexicographer, instead presenting him as a systematic and pioneering philologist.
Samuel Johnson: The Road to the Dictionary
Bulletin of Koshien University College of Humanities
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: A Philological Survey
Nagashima evaluates the persistent challenges in transcribing Johnson’s hand, citing discrepancies between editions by Chapman and Redford. Despite expert status, editors remain prone to blunders, such as Redford’s substitution of "reason" for "occasion" in a 1732 letter. Nagashima adopts Greene’s assessment that Johnson’s script resembles sixteenth-century styles more than eighteenth-century Italian hands. Key paleographic markers include an Elizabethan e starting from the lower loop, a Greek epsilon-style r, and nearly indistinguishable a and o vowels. Fleeman’s analysis of The Vanity of Human Wishes manuscript reveals that Johnson’s haste and cramped second-half lines contribute to "contentious readings" like paint versus point. Nagashima observes that Johnson’s hand remained remarkably consistent from 1746 to 1781, though early documents exhibit distinct leftward flourishes on descending strokes. The text recommends using Johnson’s repetitive Prayers as a primer for students of his calligraphy.
Two Pen-and-Ink Inscriptions on Copies of Johnson's Dictionary in Japan
Nagashima reports on two pen-and-ink inscriptions found in copies of Johnson's Dictionary in Japan. The first, in a 1755 first edition (Maruzen Bookstore, Tokyo), is likely by Augustine Birrell and quotes Johnson's letter to Thomas Warton: "Something I will tell you. I hope to see my Dictionary bound and lettered next Week; Vasta Mole superbus." The second, in a second edition (Kobe University Library), is an extremely curious and puzzling comment that claims the Dictionary did "not originate with Johnson," but rather the hint came from Lord Chesterfield and was communicated to Robert Dodsley. The inscription asserts that Garrick, Chesterfield, and others "ably & amply supplied" Johnson, though "no acknowledgment was ever made."
ジョンソン伝の系譜 = Johnson den no keifu [Johnson's Genealogy]
Jisho no Jonson no seiritsu: bozuueru nikki ka denki e
Wild Enlightenment: The Borders of Human Identity in the Eighteenth Century
Nash follows Johnson and Boswell on their bourgeois tour of Scotland, examining their interactions with the Scottish landscape and its inhabitants as a performance of civilized identity. The chapter pays significant attention to James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, whom Nash describes as a "voluble eccentric" Johnson attempted to write out of the canon of eighteenth-century letters. Nash argues that the travel narratives of Johnson and Boswell function as tools for constructing a British imperial identity by contrasting their own "civilized" movements with the perceived "wildness" of the Scottish Highlands. The text highlights how Johnson's skepticism toward Monboddo's theories on the "orang-outang" as a primitive human reflects a broader cultural anxiety over species boundaries. By analyzing these travel accounts, Nash demonstrates how the journey served as a laboratory for testing the limits of Enlightenment anthropology and the stability of the "citizen" as a normative human category.
This collection of twenty-three essays from international Johnsonian scholars, a late commemoration of the bicentennial of Johnson's death, addresses various literary genres in which Johnson excelled, including poetry, lexicography, tragedy, biography, and journalism. The essays are not organized by literary genre or a central theme, with the authors often establishing the scholarly context before presenting their own views. Baridon explores Johnson’s moral preoccupation and style, while other contributions analyze his major poems, his work as a critic, and his view of history. The volume contains regrettable editorial oversights and typos.
Woodruff critiques the Nath collection, asserting it does not meet scholarly standards due to minimal editing and imperfect proofreading. He states that many of the twenty-three essays display awkward writing and lack sufficient new material. Despite these weaknesses, Woodruff notes some essays as important and interesting. Specifically, essays shaped by post-structuralist concerns (Lynn, Selden) and others by Battersby, Gold, and Rogers are recognized for their significant contributions.
New re-examines Johnson's relationship with Modernism by comparing his London and T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It focuses on the shared experience of young writers confronting the city and argues that Christianity plays a significant, often overlooked role in both poems. For Johnson and Eliot, the city represents Enlightenment progress but also the delusions of pride, linking their works to themes of the Fall. New concludes that both poets shared a Modernism characterized by despair over receding religious faith and the secular faith replacing it.
'Curious Particulars': The Will of Thomas Cumming, the Fighting Quaker
New and Walker transcribe and annotate the last will and testament (1774) of Thomas Cumming, Johnson's friend known as the "Fighting Quaker," providing "curious particulars" beyond his military service. The will reveals Cumming's significant annuity (granted for thirty-one years for services to the state), which he bequeathed to various relatives and a poor boy's education. The annotations highlight Cumming's intertwined business and religious connections, including Quaker bankers Thomas Smith and John Wright, and a sister married to an early Methodist preacher, suggesting porous borders between non-traditional Protestant sects. The will also references Cumming's connections to Benjamin Franklin and Edward Grace, an African slave trader.
New Trends in English and American Studies: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference
Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac Naukowych "Universitas"
Newman's essay collection focuses exclusively on Boswell's psyche, primarily using his journals over the Life of Johnson, reflecting an evolution in scholarship away from Johnson's portrayal. Key chapters explore Boswell's critical transformation in his attitude toward Johnson between 1775 and 1778, his shift from striving to "be" others to accepting his "multiple selves" during his grand tour, and his youthful attempts to create fictive personalities. Sher cautions that the narrowly psychological approach sometimes limits historical context and may substitute modern psychological theory for primary evidence.
The Outsider: Play it Again, Sam: David Newnham Visits the Rose-Red City where Dr. Johnson, Lexicographer and Clever-Clogs Learnt His Letters
Newnham's biographical narrative describes a visit to Lichfield and the birth-house of Johnson. Newnham observes that the city remains defined by its eighteenth-century coaching era aesthetic, comparing the color of its brickwork to the "rouged cheeks of an 18th-century gentleman." The account details a tour of the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum led by curator Graham Nicholls, who provides anecdotes regarding Johnson's "austere" and "remote" upbringing. Nicholls recounts the young Johnson reading Hamlet by the kitchen fire and fleeing to the street in terror upon reaching the ghost scene. Newnham surveys various "Johnsoniana," including manuscripts, contracts, and promissory notes, noting that these items offer a "moving account" of the lexicographer's life. The narrative highlights the tension between Johnson's intellectual pride in his "city of philosophers" and the "lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place" inscribed on his market place monument. Newnham contrasts Johnson's enduring presence in Lichfield with that of his local rival, Erasmus Darwin.
The Big English Dictionary at 250
The article marks the 250th anniversary of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755), detailing its creation and legacy. Johnson, initially considered a "harmless drudge," promised the dictionary in three years but took nine, receiving £1,575 from London booksellers. The author recounts the work’s magnitude, which surpassed the French Academy's efforts, and notes that some definitions, like "Pastern" and the satirical "Patron," contained errors or personal commentary. The article highlights Johnson's famous rebuke to the Earl of Chesterfield and confirms the dictionary's lasting influence, including its impact on the Oxford English Dictionary.
The Tyranny of Treatment: Samuel Johnson, His Friends, and Georgian Medicine
British Art Journal & Dr Johnson's House Trust
'The General Disease of My Life': Samuel Johnson and His Health
Nichols reports on the auction of a rare 1791 first edition of Boswell’s *Life of Johnson* containing a suppressed passage on marital infidelity. Boswell initially included a "mighty good stuff" conversation where Johnson claimed his wife permitted him to "lye with as many women as I pleased, provided I loved her alone." Boswell later cancelled the leaf to "protect the reputation" of his subject. The discovery challenges previous biographical claims that no uncensored copies survived, highlighting the "openness of the text" and the intimate relationship between the two men.
The St. Clement Danes Altarpiece and the Iconography of Post-Revolution England
Nicholson analyzes the 1725 controversy surrounding William Kent's altarpiece for St. Clement Danes, focusing on William Hogarth's satirical print responding to it. The essay argues that allegations the altarpiece depicted the Stuart claimant's wife, Maria Clementina, stemmed from the church's known High Church/Jacobite leanings and the political climate following the Atterbury Plot. It examines Hogarth's print not just as artistic rivalry but as participation in a political discourse about images, linking Hogarth’s aesthetic hostility towards Kent and the Burlington circle to anti-Jacobite, anti-Catholic, and nationalist sentiments. The controversy reveals how dynastic politics informed visual interpretation and artistic debate in early Hanoverian England.
Bate reviews Nokes’s biography of Johnson, identifying it as a "dutiful" rather than "characterful" account. The text disputes Nokes’s "full-frontal assault" on Boswell, whose 1791 Life of Samuel Johnson remains the "foundations for modern biographers." Bate notes that Nokes provides a "solid" chronological narrative of the "Great Cham," covering his poverty at Oxford, his marriage to Tetty, the production of The Rambler and the Dictionary, and his friendship with Piozzi. However, the reviewer challenges Nokes’s lack of "curiosity" regarding dramatic episodes, such as the journey to London with Garrick. While Nokes emphasizes the role of Barber as Johnson’s principal beneficiary, Bate argues that the scholarship "leaves the life dead on the page" and rebuffs Nokes’s dismissal of Boswell’s interpretive assistance regarding Johnson’s "political instincts." The account concludes that readers seeking the "horse’s mouth" should return to Boswell.
Bloom provides a warm and approving review of David Nokes’s biography of Johnson, characterizing the subject through his "Falstaffian vitalism" and "spiritual complexity" while praising the portrayal of Johnson as the "archetypal citizen" of London. Bloom identifies these traits as central to Johnson's endurance as the "canonical critic of Western literature," arguing that while Boswell’s biography remains the "masterwork" and a product of "self-advertising genius," Nokes’s "workmanlike" study offers valuable insights into Johnson’s "wisdom writing" and his perilous struggle to maintain mental balance. The narrative tracks Johnson's rise from Grub Street odd jobs to fame following the publication of his dictionary, emphasizing his "terrible fear of solitude," his fear of madness, and his moving, informative relationship with his black manservant, Frank Barber. Bloom asserts that Johnson matters most today as a wisdom writer whose writing became increasingly aphoristic, and he distinguishes between "Johnsonian scholars" and "common readers," noting that although lovers of the subject often seek Johnson without Boswell, most readers continue to access the critic through Boswell's lens.
Carey reviews Nokes's biography of Johnson, noting that Nokes challenges the "unreliable" reporting of Boswell while remaining in his shadow. The text emphasizes that Johnson was "shaped by failure and poverty," highlighting his "deeply unmodern" worldview characterized by a terror of damnation and a belief that imagination was a "kind of madness." Carey discusses Johnson's physical maladies, possibly Tourette's syndrome, and his "masochistic" relationship with Thrale, involving "mad thoughts on manacles and shackles." Despite a life marked by debt and personal loss, Johnson’s "generous humanity" is central; he adopted Frank Barber, a former slave, and provided for the poor. Carey concludes that Nokes successfully portrays a "wholly good man" who remained convinced of his own worthlessness.
A Great Man Whose Humanity Shines On after 200 Years
Howse reviews Nokes’s biography of Johnson, noting its focus on financial necessity as a primary motivator for Johnson’s literary output. The text highlights Johnson’s "poverty," documenting an annual income of £84 at age 52 despite the success of the Dictionary. Howse notes Nokes’s methodical downplaying of Johnson’s "melancholy-madness," contrasting Nokes’s skepticism with Johnson’s own testimony of "distressful" nights and a "vile melancholy" inherited from his father. The account details Johnson’s "chaste devotion" to Piozzi and his crowded household of "dependants," including Williams, Levet, and Barber. While Nokes suggests Johnson married "Tetty" for money, Howse emphasizes Johnson’s "personal attention" to his work and his "lovable" character. The review concludes that Nokes provides an "outstanding, lifelike" portrait of a man who wrote primarily for money yet maintained rigorous intellectual standards.
Hughes reviews David Nokes's biography of Samuel Johnson, which rejects the "familiar Johnson" and "sacred monster" caricature perpetuated by Boswell's Life. Nokes presents a subtle, less shouty figure by focusing on Johnson's conflicted unconscious life, including the "lethargy and mania" of his years as a young London hack. The biography revises the view of Johnson's father, Michael, and offers "kindly revisionism" toward his wife, Tetty, suggesting she was the victim of their misalliance and her husband's financial failures. Nokes depicts Boswell as an "arch manipulator" while presenting Hester Thrale Piozzi as a sympathetic figure dealing with Johnson's "narcissistic dependence" and demanding presence. Hughes commends Nokes for restoring Johnson's humanity by scrutinizing manuscript slips and challenging traditional biographical biases.
Jones assesses the enduring legacy of Boswell’s Life, noting the work remains the "formula" for modern biography through "painstaking research" and "unflinching portraiture." Centered on Johnson’s own insistence that a biographer represent a life "as it really was," including a subject's vices, Boswell followed Johnson’s "marching orders" to prioritize truth over panegyric by recording his obsessive-compulsive disorders and physical flaws. Jones's contrast pits this Boswellian model and its "seismographic precision" against hagiographic, nineteenth-century "Never look under the hood" approaches and modern "pathography." Characterizing the masterpiece of interiority as the genre standard, Jones's conclusion finds that while Boswell and Johnson were more circumspect than contemporary biographers, they would recognize their techniques in use today.
Lezard reviews Nokes’s biography of Johnson, published to coincide with the subject’s 300th birthday. Lezard questions the necessity of another biography, noting that even Boswell's account was not the first. The review describes Johnson’s physical presence as "slovenly" and "freakishly eccentric," noting behaviors suggestive of Tourette’s syndrome. Lezard disputes Nokes’s tendency to search for "ignoble motives" behind Johnson’s sentiments, specifically regarding his solicitude for his wife’s health. Lezard challenges Nokes’s speculation on Johnson’s "masturbatory fantasies," arguing such conjectures rely on Johnson’s own candor regarding his "stronger amorous inclinations." While finding the work "humourless" compared to Boswell, Lezard acknowledges Nokes’s success in presenting a "rounded and vivid" portrait. Lezard emphasizes Johnson’s contemporary appeal, citing his humanity toward the poor and his opposition to slavery.
After Bozzy [review of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by John Hawkins, and Samuel Johnson: A Life, by David Nokes]
Power's review of Brack's edition of Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson and Nokes's Samuel Johnson notes that Boswell is largely responsible for Johnson's enduring reputation among the general non-reader, ensuring his fame rests more on actions and sayings than writings. Power observes that Boswell used a grand simile comparing Johnson's mind to the Roman Coliseum to humanize a colossal figure, though Nokes often finds Boswell "exasperating and ghoulish." Hawkins's work, out of print for over two centuries, offers a compelling but often unkind portrait of a deeply religious man, marked by an awkward, judicial style and a tone of disapproval toward Johnson's associations with Savage and his "negro servant" Frank Barber. Power praises the elegantly written and compassionate biography by Nokes for restoring Johnson to a domestic setting and exploring his marriage to Tetty, adhering more truly to Rambler 60's call for "domestick privacies." Nokes challenges Boswell's authority by mining periodicals for incidental detail to provide broader context for Johnson's daily activities.
Royle commends Nokes for throwing new light on a figure often overshadowed by Boswell’s account. Nokes successfully recreates the ambience of the 18th century, illuminating Johnson’s struggles from his formative years to his fame as the "Great Cham." Royle emphasizes Nokes’s discussion of Johnson's marriage to the older "Tetty" Porter, providing evidence that the union, while difficult, involved financial necessity and sexual attraction. Royle praises Nokes for concentrating on the multifaceted man behind the letters, restoring balance by showing Johnson as a complex figure who struggled constantly for his publications to be adequately paid, which shaped his famous definition of "patron."
Thomson reviews Nokes's Samuel Johnson: A Life, published for the tricentenary of Johnson’s birth, noting that the biography employs "Johnsonian clarity and verve" to portray the subject as a progressive liberal spirit despite a gruff exterior. The review highlights Johnson’s genuine hatred of slavery and anti-imperialist views, evidenced by his toast to "the next insurrection of Negros" and his relationship with his freed black manservant, Francis Barber, who became his principal heir. Thomson details Johnson’s struggle with depression ("the black dog"), his influence on later figures like Beckett, and his literary achievements, specifically the 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, which established standard English. Nokes also examines Johnson's role in inventing the biographical genre with Lives of the English Poets and the subsequent rivalry between Boswell, Hester Thrale (Piozzi), and others in publishing accounts after his death.
Norton explores Johnson’s "pursuit of happiness" through the lens of "Christian moralism" and "classical humanism." The article argues that Johnson viewed "earthly happiness" as "fruitless desire" unless guided by religion. Norton details Johnson’s "notorious pessimism" in Rasselas and his "somber warnings" in The Vanity of Human Wishes. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "measureless delight" in the company of "learned women" and his belief that "mirth raises the size of understanding." Norton review’s Johnson’s "chief happiness" as his "friendship with Mrs. Thrale" and his "active friendship" with Boswell. The article argues that Johnson’s "tragic worldview" viewed happiness as "interminably trying to hold one and the same empty cup." Norton concludes that Johnson’s "indolent" nature sought "relief from the grind" of scholarship through "social mirth" and "the efflorescence of a mind loved for its usefulness."
Novak challenges the disparaging views of Macaulay and Greer, who classify Boswell as a mere "gossip columnist" or "parasite." Novak argues that the Life is a sophisticated product of the Age of Sensibility, wherein Boswell’s own "vanity and hypochondria" serve as a lens to reveal Johnson’s character. By using a "Flemish" aesthetic of minute particularity, Boswell rejects the generalized idealization favored by Reynolds and Johnson himself, instead adopting the realism of Defoe and Richardson. Novak emphasizes that Boswell provides crucial dramatic contexts for Johnson’s thought, such as the meeting with Wilkes and discussions on old age. Boswell acts as a "foster son," using Johnson as a surrogate for his disapproving father, while simultaneously asserting a "dog-like" control over his subject’s legacy. Novak concludes that Boswell’s openness and recording of specific dialogue successfully "Johnsonised the land," teaching readers the profound complexities of human existence.
CGV entry 4:288.
Warfare and Its Discontents in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: or, Why Eighteenth-Century Fiction Failed to Produce a War and Peace
This wide-ranging article addresses why eighteenth-century British novelists failed to write a serious panoramic war novel. Writers generally avoided the subject or used satire and the comic grotesque. Johnson, for example, hated war's distortions of truth and the unheroic reality of military life, preferring not to contemplate such violence with humor. Additionally, Britain fought its conflicts abroad, leaving the domestic population largely unaffected. Successful execution of the theme required a resonant civil conflict, yet eighteenth-century realists ignored the English Civil War, and the Jacobite uprisings lacked proper contemporary resonance. Consequently, the domestic novel focused instead on moral victories and internal social reforms.
The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England
Manly Subjects: Boswell's Journals and The Life of Johnson
Nussbaum examines Boswell’s autobiographical project as a persistent effort to construct a "manly," unified subject amidst a fragmented inner life. The author argues that Boswell’s journals serve as a site for "experimental" self-fashioning, where he attempts to regulate his "hypochondria" and moral lapses by recording them. Nussbaum highlights Boswell’s use of Samuel Johnson as a "monumental" model of masculine stability, against which Boswell measures his own perceived fluidity and lack of "bottom." The analysis demonstrates how The Life of Johnson suppresses the contradictions found in the private journals to present a more coherent, ideologically sanctioned version of both the biographer and his subject. Ultimately, Nussbaum views Boswell’s writing as a struggle to reconcile the "shattered" self with the period’s demand for a singular, disciplined patriarchal identity.
Bottoms Up!: A Pathologist's Essays on Medicine and the Humanities
Johnson and Boswell: 'Vile Melancholy' and 'The Hypochondriack'
This chapter, reprinted from the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine (1985), uses the contrasting case histories of Johnson and Boswell to examine the eighteenth-century malady of "vile melancholy." Ober, practicing as a "medical humanist," analyzes Johnson’s struggle with profound depression and Boswell’s "hypochondriack" anxieties as distinct manifestations of psychopathology. By applying a "medical eye" to literary biography, Ober investigates how these men translated internal suffering into their respective prose and journals. The text positions the pair as a comparative study in "Eighteenth-Century Spleen," arguing that their chronic mental distress was as much a part of their clinical history as their physical ailments.
This edition presents a curated collection of Samuel Johnson's aphorisms and conversational observations, organized by theme. O'Casey provides an introduction that identifies Johnson as the "literary Colossus" of the eighteenth century and contrasts his scarred outward appearance with his luminous wit. The volume draws from Boswell's Life and Johnson's own periodical essays, pamphlets, and correspondence to illustrate his views on society, education, marriage, and death. O'Casey includes dictionary definitions and brief anecdotes to contextualize the sayings, maintaining the original spelling and punctuation. The collection serves as a comprehensive sample of Johnson's deepest thoughts, highlighting his reputation as a master conversationalist and a supporter of traditional religion despite his skeptical nature. The edition includes a brief bibliography and an index of topics such as "Wealth & Poverty" and "Philosophy & Religion."
Friendships Across Ages: Johnson and Boswell: Holmes and Laski
A comparison of two friendships. Johnson and Boswell are the subject of chapters 1 (“From Doctor Johnson to Justice Holmes to Professor Laski,” pp. 9–25), 2 (“Johnson,” pp. 27–54), and 3 (“Boswell,” pp. 55–66), though they appear throughout the book.
The Laird of Life: Boswell's Life of Johnson Is the First Great Modern Biography
O'Hagan discusses James Boswell's Life of Johnson as the true beginning of modern biography, contrasting it with earlier hagiographies. The Life succeeds by blending high reverence for Johnson's genius and virtues with a push for emotional realism, revealing Johnson's touchiness, melancholy, and memorable dialogue. O'Hagan highlights how Boswell captured the "copiousness and quiddity" of Johnson's character, including his bad manners and conversational wit, thus realizing Johnson in more various colors than Johnson himself managed. The work's originality lies in its use of incident and drama to show more of both Johnson and Boswell, remaining a towering and much-imitated work.
The Lexicographic Achievement of Johnson
Details a contemporary travelogue retracing the 1773 Highland tour of Johnson and Boswell. It contrasts their historical experiences at sites like Loch Ness, the Isle of Mull, and Oban with modern amenities. The account cites Johnson’s opinion that Loch Ness "well deserves to be diligently examined" and notes the "petulant" plaque in Oban marking where they spent a night at a "tolerable inn." The text concludes that Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland remains generally "complimentary to the country," despite his occasional "put downs."
Lexicography: An Emerging International Profession
Dr. Johnson and the English Phrasal Verb
Alphabetisation in Monolingual Dictionaries to Johnson
Dr. Johnson and the Spelling of Dispatch
The entry of the word despatch in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) instead of the commonly used dispatch has filtered down to the present. Johnson used both forms in his writings, & it cannot be assumed it was a mistake or that everyone used dispatch at that time. It appears Johnson used despatch intentionally. 15 References. J. Mayberry
Chosen Words: Past and Present Problems for Dictionary Makers
Phrasal Verbs: Dr. Johnson's Use of Bilingual Sources
Johnson establishes the starting point for English phrasal verb lexicography by transition from the meager entries of predecessors like Bailey to complex, multi-layered lemmas. The Preface to the Dictionary reflects Johnson’s anxiety regarding "loose and general" verbs such as "get," "give," and "put," which he views as semantically unstable and "perplexing to a foreign learner." Evidence suggests Johnson uses bilingual dictionaries—specifically Ainsworth’s Latin-English and Boyer’s French-English works—to provide a base list of verb-particle combinations. These external sources serve as catalysts for his literary memory, allowing him to select idiomatic forms and illustrate them with authoritative quotations from authors like Shakespeare and Milton. Johnson imposes order by distinguishing between transitive and intransitive uses and eliminating self-explanatory or "barbarous" combinations. This methodology demonstrates a high degree of innovative scholarly boldness in organizing the "maze of variation" inherent in English phrasal phraseology.
A lightly revised reprint of “Dr. Johnson and the English Phrasal Verb."
A Grand Tour of North Wales: An Eighteenth Century Jaunt of Castles and Mansions
Owen reconstructs the 1774 journey of Johnson, Henry Thrale, and Hester Thrale through North Wales, using their respective journals to trace a route from London through the Midlands to the Vale of Clwyd and the Llŷn Peninsula. The narrative details their visits to ancestral Salusbury estates, including Lleweni and Bachegraig, while providing extensive genealogical background on the Salusbury and Cotton families. Owen examines the social dynamics of the party, noting Johnson’s interactions with local figures such as the Myddeltons at Gwaenynog and John Griffith at Cefnamwlch. The text describes Johnson’s critical observations on Welsh architecture and literature, including his recommendation for the republication of Welsh grammars. Furthermore, the work contrasts the eighteenth-century state of landmarks—such as Rhuddlan Castle, St. Winifred’s Well, and Baron Hill—with their modern conditions, incorporating architectural history and local folklore. Owen also provides a brief account of the subsequent estrangement between Johnson and Piozzi following her second marriage, concluding with their respective legacies in the Vale of Clwyd.
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and its Intellectual Background
This edited volume supplements James Boswell’s biography by aggregating primary-source accounts from Samuel Johnson’s contemporaries to provide a multifaceted portrait of his character, habits, and private life. Page assembles a chronological and thematic collection of memoirs, diary entries, and anecdotes by diverse observers, including Piozzi, Frances Burney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir John Hawkins. The text acknowledges Boswell’s primacy but argues that his hero-worship and frequent absence from certain life stages necessitate consultation of more astringent or hostile records to achieve a fuller biographical picture. Divided into five parts, the volume covers Johnson’s years of obscurity, his distinctive appearance and social habits, the golden years at Streatham Park, his travels through Britain and France, and a detailed record of his protracted physical decline and death. Editorial matter includes a comprehensive introduction discussing the reliability and Johnsonising of early records, a detailed chronology, and extensive annotations that reconcile conflicting accounts of specific conversations. Page maintains the original nomenclature of the female contributors, distinguishing between the early journals of Fanny Burney and the later recollections of Madame d'Arblay. The collection highlights Johnson’s formidable mind and unrivalled conversational powers while documenting his physical eccentricities, such as involuntary motions and disgusting eating habits, as witnessed by those in his immediate circle.
Lurcock criticizes this collection for its inconsistent editorial principles and lack of new material. While acknowledging the value of non-Boswellian accounts from Reynolds, Hoole, and Piozzi, the reviewer identifies numerous transcription errors and redundant overlapping of sources. Lurcock argues that the volume fails to incorporate recent scholarship, such as Waingrow's work, and concludes that the compilation is poorly executed compared to more rigorous Johnsonian studies.
Fleeman reviews Norman Page's 1987 edited collection, characterizing it as a "disappointing book" and a "missed opportunity." He disputes Page's claim that Johnson’s greatness rests primarily on his talk, labeling this an "antiquated view" that ignores his literary achievements. Fleeman criticizes the volume for being a "third-hand version of second-hand stories" that lacks the "scrupulosity" and "original inquiry" required of modern Johnsonian scholarship. The review notes numerous editorial failures, including "cavalier" changes to original spelling and punctuation, and the failure to account for the 1752 calendar reform regarding Johnson’s birthday. Fleeman argues that Page relies on "hoary" anecdotes and fails to use significant material discovered since Birkbeck Hill’s 1897 "Miscellanies." He concludes that the book offers "nothing to dimple the glassy surface of thoughtlessness" and fails to satisfy the "serious Johnsonian" who seeks accuracy and truth.
Pailler discusses Norman Page's collection of contemporary accounts about Samuel Johnson. Intended to complement Boswell's image by presenting diverse attitudes toward Johnson, the book groups extracts by theme, such as "Appearance and Habits" and "Travelling with Johnson." The introduction advises caution regarding the veracity of the reported conversations. Although some texts are new, most are drawn from accessible and well-known sources. The volume primarily focuses on the famous, later Johnson and ultimately does not alter the image presented in recent biographies.
Lurcock dismisses this chronology as an overpriced and poorly conceived "alternative biography." The reviewer criticizes Page for omitting a full record of Johnson's miscellaneous writings and for ignoring significant recent scholarship like Kaminski’s work. Lurcock identifies the selection of details as eccentric, noting the inclusion of minor personal anecdotes and the birth dates of unrelated figures while failing to provide a rigorous professional or historical overview. The volume is deemed of little use for serious reference or scholarship.
Parisot examines Johnson’s "apprehensions over death" and his "fear of damnation." The article explores the "strange dark manner" of Johnson’s final days, including his "rashly stabbing at his own legs" to discharge fluid from dropsy. Parisot details the "competing narratives" of Johnson’s deathbed by "Boswell, Hawkins, and Hoole," noting the "Apotheosis" from "human to immortal." The narrative highlights Johnson’s "indefatigable sense of reason" giving way to "restless doubt and horror" in his last moments. Parisot review’s Johnson’s "Iam moriturus" as a possible Redress to his "unpalatable depiction" as a "distracted Johnson." The article argues that Johnson’s "triumph over human frailties" made him "exemplary" for his friends. Parisot concludes that Johnson’s "death belonged to literature" as soon as he died, fulfilling his "anticipated apotheosis" as a "living moralist" who was "now about to die."
Baruth finds Clingham's collection complex, both interrogating Boswell and using him to question the intellectual environment. It explores Boswell's Scottish cultural background and re-evaluates his works. The final section offers a sustained discussion on the modern critical problem of "truth-telling" in biography. The review notes, however, that the collection struggles to draw Boswell out of Johnson's shadow.
Fleeman disputes Parke’s thesis that there is something uniquely 'biographical' about Johnson’s thought processes, arguing the term is used so broadly that it loses utility. While Fleeman acknowledges Parke as a sympathetic reader of Johnson’s humanity, he finds the work unstructured and the effect 'scrappy and disjointed.' Parke treats learning, conversation, and morality as biographical categories, but Fleeman asserts she fails to provide a unifying thesis or precise discrimination. The reviewer notes that while the conversational approach might succeed in a classroom, the printed text lacks firm control and clear guidance for the reader. Fleeman concludes that the book offers occasional rewarding insights but ultimately fails to provide a substantial study of such a complex and powerful thinker.
Gray finds Parke's book disappointing, despite its promising premise that Johnson's tendency toward life-writing stemmed naturally from his biographical way of thinking. Parke examines non-biographical works, like The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe, arguing they reflect Johnson's interest in the learning process and mental make-up of subjects. The study pays attention to the Preface to the Dictionary, Rambler, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets. Gray critiques the book for unskillfully forcing an anachronistic "meeting of minds" between Johnson and later thinkers, such as William James and Gertrude Stein, and for including unnecessary philosophical commentary.
Maner reviews Catherine N. Parke's study of Johnson's biographical thinking, defined as the habit of imagining other people's lives and minds. Maner finds the book lacks necessary rigor and abounds in wildly incorrect interpretative comments. He criticizes Parke for failing to define key terms like temporality in the Rambler and for misinterpreting Johnson's remarks on Alexander Pope. Maner further notes that Parke ignores a large body of scholarly work on eighteenth-century epistemology and misinterprets her own epigraph. He concludes that the book fails to provide fresh insights or coherent arguments, suffering from shaky logic and academic gobbledygook that destroys meaning.
Parke explores how Johnson engaged in "biographical thinking," which involves imagining the lives and minds of others to understand creativity and action, a mode of thought superior to intuition or identification. The demonstration follows this theme through various Johnsonian works: the prefaces to The Preceptor, The Vision of Theodore, the Dictionary, and The Plays of William Shakespeare, along with The Rambler, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and The Lives of the English Poets. The analysis attempts to refresh Johnson's image without rejecting prior perspectives.
Pettit finds Parke's book confusing because of a lack of certainty in defining her argument's terms, particularly "biographical thinking." Pettit regrets that the book suffers from a tendency toward subject-worship, but noted her strengths are her informative points on Johnson’s education and her convincing reading of Rasselas as an argument against anti-historical tyranny.
Scholtz's mixed review describes Parke's study of Johnson as a practitioner of biographical thinking, defined as imagining the lives and minds of others. The review notes that Parke examines Johnson's prefaces, periodical essays, and major prose works chronologically to trace these mental operations. Scholtz observes that while the work offers an unusual perspective for advanced scholars, the dense prose style renders the ideas inaccessible to general readers and undergraduates.
Parke argues that Johnson’s deepest motivations are "radically biographical," suggesting he cultivated empathy by modeling it for his readers, such as by exhorting teachers to imagine students' fears or inviting readers to conjure the lexicographer’s predicament in his Prefaces; however, Sherman’s review challenges Parke’s study for its lack of precision and inattention to historical context. While Sherman notes that the title promises a synthesis, he contends the book instead simplifies "biographical thinking" to mere empathy, a definition criticized as imprecise and inadequate for distinguishing Johnson's moral precepts from any other writer's. Sherman argues that Parke loses track of the actual practices of reading and writing lives, finding that her readings often smack of the self-evident and suffer from muddled abstractions that strain for unity at the cost of clarity. Furthermore, Sherman claims that the book’s frequent misreadings of Johnson—sometimes misattributing quotes or overlooking details, such as in the Preface to Shakespeare simile—undermine its claim, leading to tedious, self-evident generalizations that favor the author's modern themes over genuine eighteenth-century investigation. Sherman also criticizes Parke’s synchronous conversation approach, noting it permits modern thinkers to displace Johnson and results in systemic eclipsings of primary material, while further disputing Parke’s imitation of Johnson’s thinking by noting her fashion differs markedly from the architecture of Johnson’s own prose. Sherman concludes that the task of exploring Johnson’s biographical thinking still requires more distinct analysis.
Parke argues that gender serves as a legitimate and useful perspective for examining Johnson, moving beyond notorious statements like his comparison of women preaching to dogs walking. By analyzing Johnson's friendships with figures like Thrale and Burney, Parke highlights his benign and rather enlightened support for female intellect and patronage. The essay explores gender dynamics within Johnson's works, noting the gender-blind opposition to abuses of power in the Rambler and the virtually indistinguishable portrayal of men and women in Rasselas. Parke positions Johnson as a gender-democratic thinker regarding education, contrasting him with neoconservative contemporaries who urged female submissiveness.
This text explores the 'monumental' status of Johnson as a biographical subject, focusing on the tension between Boswell's 'definitive' portrait and postmodern re-evaluations. The study analyzes how Johnson's 'physical oddities,' 'melancholy,' and 'conversational dominance' have been constructed as a 'national archetype' of Englishness. It examines the 'biographical industry' that arose following Johnson's death, noting how subsequent biographers—from Hawkins and Piozzi to Bate and Holmes—have navigated the 'shadow of Boswell.' The chapter argues that Johnson's own theories of biography, emphasizing the value of 'domestic privacies' and the 'minute details of daily life,' revolutionized the genre. By positioning Johnson as both a 'subject and a theorist' of life-writing, the text illustrates the enduring complexity of his persona as a 'literary colossus' whose humanity remains accessible despite his iconic status.
Parker investigates Johnson’s "orthodox Anglican" faith and his belief in "conditional salvation." The article argues that Johnson viewed God as the "giver of all good things" who demands "human effort" for grace. Parker details Johnson’s "terrors of the other world" and his "lifelong fear of damnation." The narrative highlights Johnson’s "solemn commendation" of his wife’s soul to God and his "strict observance of Lent." Parker review’s Johnson’s "unfulfilled designs" for "biographical thinking" as a "spiritual and emotional history of his mind." The article argues that Johnson’s "faith was a predominant object of his thoughts," yet he "lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short." Parker concludes that Johnson’s "pious death" and final words "Jam moriturus" were the "final motions" of a "brave man of heroic proportions" who sought to "escape from himself" through the "divine service."
Parker's study synthesizes major problems in Johnson's Shakespeare criticism. It discusses Johnson's concept of "general nature," his view of the creative mind, and his response to disturbing passages in four tragedies, contrasting him with Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt.
Gray reviews Parker’s study of Johnson’s 1765 Preface to Shakespeare, highlighting the author’s attempt to reconcile Johnsonian principles with Romantic criticism. He notes Parker's success in demonstrating that Coleridge and Hazlitt shared more ground with Johnson—particularly regarding "general nature"—than they acknowledged. Gray praises the exploration of dramatic illusion and Johnson's witty skepticism of the supernatural. However, he observes that Parker occasionally finds Johnson's vehemence excessive. Ultimately, Gray finds the book a cogent defense of Johnson as a rational, "insider" critic of the Bard.
Parker analyzes the rival aesthetics of Johnson and the Romantics, particularly Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt. He clarifies Johnson's praise of Shakespeare's plays as "just representations of general nature," explaining it as the power to perceive and preserve the general in the particular, not mere classification of types. He contrasts this with the Romantics' focus on individual characters and all-encompassing unity. The book's pertinence lies in its aid to "taking Johnson seriously" by showing how the Johnsonian and Romantic positions on unity and dispersity are still the key issues in Shakespeare criticism today, forcing a decisive choice between them.
Ingram commends Maner’s examination of epistemology and the literary enactment of doubt within Johnson’s nonfictional biographies. He highlights the impressive stylistic analysis of the Lives of Savage, Milton, and Pope as manifestations of Enlightenment dialectic. While noting the subject of Johnsonian "doubt" is well-traversed, Ingram values Maner’s focus on prose syntax and imagery, which provides rewarding insights into Johnson’s creative application of empiricism.
Kaminski disputes Parker’s interpretation of Johnson’s concept of 'general nature,' finding his assertions regarding Johnsonian axioms 'unfounded' and 'specious.' While Parker attempts to explain Johnson’s 'coolness' toward Shakespearean conceits as a rejection of character estrangement from the 'world of men,' Kaminski argues this 'Coleridgean intuition' obscures Johnson’s true ideas. He further challenges Parker’s claim that Johnson found tragedies 'shockingly unnatural,' noting that Johnson never used the term 'unnatural' in the adduced comments. Kaminski concludes that while the comparison between Johnson and Romantic critics like Coleridge and Hazlitt is of interest, Parker fails to alter the established understanding of how Johnson read Shakespeare.
Leggatt reviews Parker's argument that Johnson offers "radical criticism" that anticipates twentieth-century developments like Brechtian detachment. Leggatt notes Johnson values experience over theory, leading to humanized readings of Falstaff and Caliban. While the Romantics sought "perfect organisms," Johnson finds Shakespeare's achievement in "individual passages" and "fragmented" writing. Leggatt highlights Johnson's "naked personal sensation" when facing the "shockingly unnatural" elements of the tragedies, particularly his inability to endure the ending of Lear.
Lim examines Parker's effort to regain the significance of Johnson's Shakespearean criticism by contrasting it with Romantic apprehensions. He notes Parker identifies Johnson's central claim for Shakespeare as the poet of nature while refereeing contentious points between Johnson and critics like Coleridge and Hazlitt. Lim finds the strategy of taking Johnson’s "obtuseness" as deliberate polemics rejuvenating. He concludes the book effectively helps readers see Shakespeare through Johnson's eyes, enriched rather than distorted by the intervention of later Romantic minds.
McLaverty reviews Parker's Johnson's Shakespeare, a subtle re-examination of Johnson's response to Shakespeare positioned against contemporaries and successors like Coleridge and Schlegel. Parker centrally argues that Johnson valued the apprehension of "general nature," a revelation of common humanity, which the heart recognizes during privileged moments of experience. The reviewer finds the argument distinguished but ultimately muffled and suggests Parker overstates the importance of a single, nebulous idea. The review critiques Parker's reading of Johnson's conception of general nature, asserting Johnson trusted all human experience, not just specially privileged moments, and that his criticism does not seek an ideal order but an accurate representation of life.
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft-West, Jahrbuch
Parker identifies "sceptical thinking" as a distinct eighteenth-century quality of intelligence where a theoretically paralyzing critique of reason coexists with a vigorous moral and intellectual confidence. This mode of thought is not a static intellectual position but a dynamic process realized through literary forms such as the essay and the dialogue, which prevent the flow of intelligence from hardening into mere propositions. Parker argues that the Lockean model of the mind provided the century's basic assumptions, driving a wedge between the mind and the world that forced authors to find a "saving recourse" in nature or custom. The text provides separate examinations of Locke, Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson, using Montaigne as a recurring model for a mind in motion. Pope's Essay on Man and Epistle to Bolingbroke are analyzed as works that "steer betwixt" opposite doctrines to realize a way of thinking that dissolves the dichotomy between argument and poetry. Hume's philosophical impasse is shown to be displaced by "the current of nature," where the triviality of social pastime becomes a philosophical outcome. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is presented as a comic adaptation to a world of pure contingencies, while Johnson's "obstinate rationality" and fear of finality are viewed through the ironic vision of Rasselas, which concludes in irresolution. Chapter 1, 'Rational Ignorance and Sceptical Thinking,' identifies eighteenth-century "sceptical thinking" as a dynamic practice that recognizes the limitations of reason while maintaining intellectual confidence through literary irony and nature. Chapter 2, 'Just Supposing: Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding,' argues that Locke’s epistemological focus on experience paradoxically fostered the radical scepticism he sought to banish by undermining objective truth. Chapter 3, 'Sworn to No Master: Pope’s Scepticism in the Epistle to Bolingbroke and An Essay on Man,' examines how Pope’s poetry embraces mental fluidity and inconsistency as a philosophical ideal. Chapter 4, 'Innocence and Simulation in the Scepticism of Hume,' addresses Hume's transition from theoretical crisis to common-sense practice, using social "innocent simulation" to navigate an unsanctioned life. Chapter 5, 'Tristram Shandy: Singularity and the Single Life,' explores Sterne’s use of Shandeism to realize a play of consciousness that deflects painful realities through whimsical, subjective "pretending". Chapter 6, 'Johnson’s Conclusiveness,' argues that Johnson's aggressive assertiveness is a sceptical style that acknowledges the instability of truth while insisting on the moral necessity of rational action.
Gordon reviews Parker’s investigation into eighteenth-century "skeptical consciousness," focusing on the "paradoxical conjunction of scepticism and confidence" in the works of Pope, Hume, Sterne, and Johnson. The review emphasizes Parker’s challenge to the image of Johnson as a dogmatic figure of "intellectual mastery." Instead, Gordon highlights Parker’s depiction of a Johnson who is "both sceptical and assertive at once," practicing a "rhetorical self-consciousness" that invites readers to question the very authority he projects. Gordon notes that this skepticism is essentially conservative, leading back to an "acquiescence in the way things are" through the strength of "nature" and "custom." While Gordon identifies Parker’s omission of key cultural contexts and recent scholarship by Damrosch and Bogel, he praises the study for demonstrating how eighteenth-century "doubleness" of mind—standing in two places at once—remains remarkably relevant to postmodern and neopragmatist inquiry.
'We Are Perpetually Moralists': Johnson and Moral Philosophy
Pasanek examines Johnson’s "characterological way with philosophy," identifying him as a "Sage," a "Gadfly," and a "Christian humanist." The article argues that Johnson’s "talking of nonsense" was a "style of philosophizing" used to puncture "sceptical innovators" like Hume. Pasanek details Johnson’s "Theophrastan examples" in his essays, creating characters like "Verecundus" to "ramify patterns of thought." The narrative highlights Johnson’s "bow-wow way of philosophizing," using "cock-and-bull-Shandean logic" to maintain "philosophy’s lower limit." Pasanek review’s Johnson’s "restless and vain pursuit" of truth and his "sharper sarcasm" regarding "celebrations of natural life." The article argues that Johnson was one part "ordinary-language philosopher" and one part "insult comic," who "tossed and gored" opponents to "maintain the balance of the mind." Pasanek concludes that Johnson’s "novelty" in philosophy was a "characteristic vice" that he countered with "grounded, mutually illuminating deliberation."
Pauley explores Johnson’s practical and theoretical understanding of authorship as it was tied to the material production of books in the eighteenth century. The article argues that Johnson viewed writing and publishing as inseparable, noting his "far more practical understanding" of how intellectual labor must instantiate into printed objects. Pauley details Johnson’s calculations of "typographical lines" and sheets for works like London, and his engagement with the "materiality of books" in his critique of Pope’s Iliad. The narrative highlights Johnson’s professional relationships with booksellers like Edward Cave and William Strahan, whom he regarded as "a generous set of men." Pauley disputes the idea that Johnson was indifferent to profit, suggesting instead that he recognized the benefits of the book trade for authors. The article concludes that Johnson’s view of literary history was essentially a "history of books and their adventures," where the "chief glory" of a people arises from its authors' embodied works.
Terms of Corruption: Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary' in Its Contexts
DeMaria reviews Pearce's PhD dissertation, which includes a close reading of Johnson’s Preface to the Dictionary, viewing it as a self-fashioning performance and artistic image rather than a statement of linguistic theory. The core of the work lies in the later chapters: the second chapter describes the Dictionary as a hypertext open to "non-linear" navigation by readers, focusing on Johnson's metatextual comments. The final, most original chapter argues that the word "corruption" in the Dictionary is primarily descriptive of a process of linguistic decay rather than a note of prescriptivist censure. Pearce shows Johnson used the phonetic science of William Holder's Elements of Speech and was interested in describing linguistic change in roughly scientific terms, rather than merely attempting to control it. The work is noted as a good step forward in Johnson's lexicographical studies.
The Pleasures of Polysemy: A Plan for Teaching Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language in an Eighteenth-Century Course
Pearce advocates presenting Johnson's Dictionary as a useful philological tool at the start of an eighteenth-century literature course, cautioning students against "false friends" or words whose meanings have shifted (e.g., candid, genius, divert). He suggests providing students with a small abridgment of "eighteenth-century keywords" (e.g., nice, passion, footman) as an interactive text they can modify and supplement. Using the keyword "distraction" as a model, Pearce demonstrates how to explore the word's polysemy and obsolete senses (such as "madness" or "frantickness") through Johnson's definitions, supported by searches in databases like EEBO and LION. This approach encourages students to become "lexicographers themselves," encountering the "boundless chaos" of the language and becoming resourceful readers prepared to recognize how an author like Richardson exploits a word's resonance.
Commentary: A Prospect to Please Dr. Johnson
Pearce advocates for a proposal by the Vauxhall St Peter's Heritage Centre to resurrect the Vauxhall Gardens site, currently a derelict "potter's field." He quotes Samuel Johnson's praise of the original Gardens as an "excellent place of public entertainment" adapted to the English taste with its mix of show, music, and good eating. Pearce describes the Gardens' historical charm and European influence. The proposed new Spring Gardens, though not an exact copy, would aim for the original 18th-century style and would, like the Covent Garden development, rely on private energies and offer hundreds of jobs and a major cultural adornment.
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry
Fanny Burney on Samuel Johnson's Tics and Mannerisms
Pearce's brief note provides supplemental contemporaneous evidence from Burney to support the hypothesis that Johnson suffered from Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. Pearce quotes Burney’s descriptions of Johnson’s "constant agitation," including a "see-sawing" torso, "twirling" fingers, and a mouth "continually opening and shutting" as if chewing. Pearce further notes Burney’s records of Johnson’s repetitive "unmeaning expletives" and "careless old ejaculations." While Burney recorded frequent religious recitations, Pearce argues that coprolalia and scatological comments were "very probable" but likely suppressed by the "loyalties and social niceties" of Johnson’s biographers.
Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'The Great Convulsionary' a Victim of Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome
Pearce argues that Johnson suffered from Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome, citing a lifelong history of complex motor tics, ritualistic behaviors, and involuntary vocalizations. Drawing on descriptions by Boswell, Burney, and Reynolds, Pearce identifies pathognomonic features including "convulsive cramps," "pious ejaculations," and obsessive-compulsive rituals such as counting steps. While earlier scholars like Brain attributed these gestures to psychological "bad habit," Pearce maintains that modern neurology recognizes an organic basis for such movement disorders. The study explores the probability of coprolalia, noting that Piozzi and Burney likely suppressed evidence of obscene outbursts to protect Johnson's reputation. Pearce concludes that the syndrome's associated "boundless mental energy" potentially fueled Johnson’s immense literary productivity.
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
Johnsonian Figures: A Cornucopia of Vanity, Idleness, and Death in Samuel Johnson's Prose Writings
Pedreira argues that Johnson's rhetorical method for addressing the ethical themes of vanity, idleness, and death relies on copious stylistic practices, specifically figurative amplification, drawn from classical and Renaissance traditions. Johnson employs comparative, accumulative, and augmentative figures (such as synonymy, enumeratio, and gradatio) to vary and intensify these themes in his prose. This copious style, at odds with the belletristic standards of the eighteenth century, serves Johnson's method of ethical inquiry by moving his audience to recognize human limitations.
Pedreira examines Johnson’s legacy as a "fit editor" and bibliographer, focusing on the Harleian Catalogue, the Dictionary, and his edition of Shakespeare. The article disputes Johnson’s self-deprecating definition of a lexicographer as a "harmless drudge," arguing instead that his work represents "deep scholarship." Pedreira details how Johnson’s "unparalleled lexicographical knowledge" undergirded his textual criticism, allowing him to probe Shakespeare’s language with unique precision. The narrative highlights the "bibliographic precision" Johnson applied to the Earl of Oxford’s library, classifying 50,000 volumes across numerous disciplines. Pedreira notes that Johnson "marked out over 20,000 words" in William Warburton’s edition of Shakespeare as preliminary work for the Dictionary. The article argues that Johnson’s editorial method was a "skeptical historical dialectic" that tested the limits of biographical and textual inference. Pedreira concludes that Johnson’s scholarly endeavors established a "genealogy of sentiments" that continues to inform modern Shakespearean editing.
Language Use, Usage Guides and Linguistic Norms
The Fall and Rise of Lord Chesterfield? Aristocratic Values in the Age of Prescriptivism
Scott of Amwell: Dr. Johnson's Quaker Critic
Publisher's blurb: "Scott, Quaker poet, entered Johnson's circle circa 1766, introduced by Hoole. Scott authored pamphlets criticizing Johnson’s politics. Johnson and Scott held mutual esteem despite religious difference. Scott's critical stance grew from his dissatisfaction regarding Johnson's Lives. After Scott died (1783), Barclay planned Scott's essays. Barclay requested Johnson write a biographical preface. Johnson consented (1784), even though the collection included criticism of Johnson’s compositions. Johnson died before completing the assigned task. Hoole instead supplied the biography. This situation details the significant literary relationship between Johnson and the Quaker critic."
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas: Portrait of the Artist
Picard reconstructs the mid-eighteenth-century urban experience by categorizing London's populace into the poor, the middling sort, and the rich, using Samuel Johnson’s 1737 arrival and 1784 death to bracket a detailed survey of the years 1740–1770. Drawing on contemporary journals by Pierre Jean Grosley and Per Kalm, alongside Boswell's and Johnson's writings, Picard delineates the city's physical infrastructure, including the 'labyrinthine courts' and the construction of Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges. The text details the 'multiplicity of human habitations' and the 'wonderful immensity' Johnson noted, while exposing the 'mansions of putridity' inhabited by the destitute. Picard examines the 'middling sort' through their domestic arrangements, medical practices like 'cupping' and 'electrification,' and the pervasive 'Gin Craze.' The study emphasizes the material culture of the era, from 'leather stays' and 'wigs' to the 'scatological' realities of street cleaning and 'night-soil collectors.' Johnson serves as a recurring cultural touchstone, with Picard noting his 'brutally bad manners in conversation' and his interactions with King George III. The volume includes an appendix on the 'Cost of Living, Currency and Prices,' contextualizing the 'visible chasm' between wealth and starvation. Picard effectively 'fills in the blank canvas' of history by detailing the 'daily lives' of those 'worrying more about the price of bread than the habits of the nobility.'
Ackroyd reviews Picard’s survey of 18th-century London, noting that "certain aspects of Samuel Johnson's London would be familiar" to modern residents, such as line-hiring sedan chairs like taxis. Ackroyd highlights the "casual violence" and epidemic alcoholism of the era, quoting Johnson’s declaration that "no man could be happy in the present unless he were drunk." The review notes Picard's description of a city "neurotic about fire risks" and prone to "melancholy madness" supposedly prompted by beef consumption. Ackroyd emphasizes the "alien and exotic" nature of Johnson’s city, which Picard explores through a "virtual sedan chair."
Griffiths reviews Picard’s study of eighteenth-century London, accusing the author of merely hitching her work to Johnson’s name while remaining 'uncomprehending' of his writing. Griffiths disputes Picard’s dismissive attitude toward Johnson’s manners and Dictionary definitions. The review contrasts Picard’s 'perky' anecdotes about lice-infested bread, lotteries, and the Grosvenor Estate with the 'dignity of abstraction' found in Johnson’s own poetry, specifically his elegy for Levett. Griffiths argues that Picard overlooks significant details available in Boswell, such as the trade in boiled bones and Johnson’s defense of beggars. Griffiths highlights two 'weird' Johnsonian pronouncements: that London cures a man’s arrogance and prevents indiscreet love. The text characterizes the book as an assembly of 'factlets' that fails to engage with the political culture of Johnson’s era.
Boyd examines Pierce’s study of Johnson’s spiritual anxieties, noting its scholarly balance in depicting a powerfully dedicated yet scrupulous Christian. He praises the documentation of negative influences, such as maternal emphasis on hell and inherited melancholy, alongside positive factors like Anglican readings and charity. Boyd suggests the analysis lacks depth regarding the transforming operation of the Holy Spirit in Johnson’s theology and questions Pierce’s emphasis on a "need to believe" as potentially bordering on fideism.
America: The Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture
Alarums & Excursions: Working Papers in English
The Lives of the Poets: The More Readable Dr. Johnson
The Moralist Serial in The Federal Gazette of 1798
Pittock challenges the caricature of Johnson's hostility towards Scotland, arguing his interest was deep and complex. Johnson's preference for Aberdeen stemmed from its Episcopalian and Scoto-Latin heritage, contrasting with the Presbyterianism he associated with Scotland's cultural decay, particularly the ruin of its cathedrals and decline in learning since the Reformation and Civil Wars. Scotland served Johnson as a monitory example, its perceived betrayals of Church and King (Mary Stuart, Charles I, the Union) mirroring potential threats to England. Pittock suggests Johnson viewed Scotland not as inherently backward, but as a once-noble nation degraded by religious and political choices, particularly its rejection of Episcopacy and the Stuarts.
A Journey into Hypertext: Two Artists are Recreating the Scottish Travels of the Celebrated Literary Duo James Boswell and Samuel Johnson
[Bill Plante Discusses the Birthday of Samuel Johnson]
External Resources: Cite This Item Search for versions with same title and author | Advanced options ... Named Person: Johnson, Samuel, 1709–1784. Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784. Note(s): Broadcast on CBS-TV (Sunday Morning), September 18, 1988. Material Type: Non-musical recording (nsr); Reel-to-reel tape (rtr) Entry: 19891120 Update: 20240210 Provider: OCLC
The Social Construction of Melancholia in the Eighteenth Century: Medical and Religious Approaches to the Life and Work of Samuel Johnson and John Wesley
Ply examines Johnson's "annual ramble into the middle counties" to Oxford, Birmingham, Lichfield, and Ashbourne, arguing these frequent, less-studied visits reveal more about his humanity than his major tours. Although Johnson often complained of boredom and missed London's intellectual life, these trips maintained ties with old friends, offered spiritual escape from himself and his past, and helped him find peace in preparation for death. His behavior varied by location, from the convivial scholar in Oxford to the loyal friend enduring "dulness" at Ashbourne.
Theoretical and Practical Biography: Principles, Problems, Processes and the Inscrutable Subject in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
'And Now a Fig for Mr. Nichols!': Samuel Johnson, John Nichols and Their Circle
'Mad All My Life': The Dark Side of Samuel Johnson
Porter examines the 'other Johnson': a figure plagued by depression, 'obsessional compulsions,' and a pervasive fear of insanity. While Boswell presents a 'mountain of common sense,' Porter uses diaries and contemporary accounts by Thrale and Burney to reveal Johnson’s 'dark night of the soul.' The text argues that Johnson’s 'theology sharp-focused his terrors,' as he viewed himself as a 'guilty sinner' facing 'everlasting' punishment. Porter concludes that Johnson’s public triumph as the 'Great Cham' was achieved through a constant, 'psychic effort' against his internal 'anguish.'
Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and 'Renny Dear'
Broman presents a mixed review of Potkay’s "sustained attack" on the traditional view of Johnson and David Hume as "antithetical characters." Broman explains that Potkay argues for "largely compatible visions of human happiness" rooted in a "sociable Stoicism" found in their respective writings. While Broman finds the parallels regarding the "multiplicity of agreeable consciousness" in cities interesting, he challenges the importance of these similarities. Broman suggests that Potkay’s "dedication to his thesis" overlooks Johnson’s valid perception of Hume as a "milker of bulls" and a skeptic of the "Christian dispensation."
Davidson reviews The Passion for Happiness, which argues that Hume and Johnson share significant common ground as moral philosophers. Potkay contends that both inherited Ciceronian Stoicism and shared the view that human flourishing (happiness) is the proper goal of ethics and descriptive psychology, depending primarily on the regulation of passions. Potkay is most persuasive in showing their shared commitment to a social utility standard for moral evaluation, which prioritized practical, social effect over motive, and their vindication of self-love. The reviewer notes that Potkay, favoring the secular, minimizes Johnson's Christianity.
In this mixed review, Alexander acknowledges the learned analysis of parallels between the writings of Hume and Johnson, noting that the two figures share common eighteenth-century assumptions regarding the "good life in this world." Alexander disputes Potkay's characterization of Johnson as a "Roman stoic," arguing such a view ignores substantial portions of Johnson's religious and literary output. The review points out that the bibliography omits key studies of Johnson's religious life and maintains that Johnson's status as a believer makes his approach to existence fundamentally different from that of Hume. Alexander concludes that Potkay’s thesis relies on a selective reading of the Johnsonian canon.
Hudson examines Johnson's career in the context of the 1750s, a decade of significant social transition marked by the rising influence of the middle class. Hudson argues that Johnson's works from this period—the Dictionary, Rambler, Adventurer, Idler, and political journalism—reflect and engage with this shift. Johnson cultivated a plebeian authorial identity, challenging aristocratic values (represented by Chesterfield) and allying himself, complexly, with merchant-class interests against the old Whig hegemony. While initially supporting middle-class assertiveness, Johnson grew ambivalent, developing a middle-class conservatism wary of popular agitation, foreshadowing later political alignments.
McDermott welcomes Potkay's book for setting Johnson and Hume within a common Ciceronian intellectual ancestry, correcting the traditional view of them as opposites. She praises Potkay's learned comparisons of their moral thought, particularly concerning the pursuit of happiness and suspicion of grand ethical systems.
"It may seem odd to argue that Johnson and Hume were close in their thinking since they themselves did not think so, yet Mr. Potkay's book is persuasive. He begins by playing down the importance of Johnson's conversation, especially as recorded by Boswell, since Boswell's Johnson is far more conservative than Johnson the writer. Like Hume, Johnson was a political reformer who supported scientific progress, defended the expansion of commerce, attacked slavery and opposed British imperialism."
Reviewing Adam Potkay's The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume, Vermeule rejects the traditional Boswellian view casting Johnson and Hume as opposites. Potkay presents Johnson and Hume as moralists and "theorists of human flourishing" who share a Ciceronian stoical ethos. The book's strength lies in treating Johnson as a philosopher and Hume as an inspiring one. Vermeule finds the central terms "passion" and "happiness" dry but celebrates the final chapters, where Potkay compellingly links death and closure, using a Boswellian psychological drive to philosophical inquiry.
Potkay argues that differences between Hume and Johnson remain exaggerated by scholars focusing narrowly on Boswell's Life of Johnson and Book I of Hume's Treatise. Potkay demonstrates that Johnson and Hume share moral, political, and historiographical views derived from the eclectic Stoicism of Cicero. The text analyzes their social theories and shared conceptions of human flourishing. However, the reviewer disputes Potkay's characterization of Hume's views on self-love and the relationship between reason and passion, finding the reading of Hume inconsistent with the philosopher's original claims regarding moral approval.
Potkay examines Johnson’s "phantoms of hope" and his "Christian discernment" of the "vacuity of life." The article argues that Johnson viewed hope as a "sacred" motivator that must be "regulated by reality." Potkay details Johnson’s use of "allegorical fables" like The Vision of Theodore to depict the "narrow course of obstacles" in life. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "pessimism" in Rasselas, where hope is often a "phantom" that supply’s "deficient days." Potkay review’s Johnson’s "supplicating voice" in prayer, which "leave’s to heav’n the measure and the choice." The article argues that Johnson’s "faith was contingent on human effort" and the "urgency of his efforts to achieve salvation." Potkay concludes that Johnson’s "indefatigable sense of reason" sought to "quicken his motion" toward "moral good," even when "distracted with contrariety of desires."
'How Like He Was to Rousseau': Johnson on Social Evils and Future Happiness
Potkay argues that despite their differing public personas, Johnson and Rousseau share similar views on society and happiness, as Piozzi and Boswell observed. Potkay analyzes Johnson's Rasselas alongside Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality and Julie. Both authors contend that social life generates rivalry, envy, and misery, and that full happiness is only possible in the future, through hope or eternal life.
Personal Bias in Literary Criticism: Dr. Johnson, Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot
Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment: Theology, Aesthetics, and the Novel
Publisher's blurb: "This book discusses the intersection between philosophy and literature during the British Enlightenment. Its primary focus is the work of moral philosophers during the first half of the eighteenth century, but its larger interest is in understanding how the writing of philosophical fictions relates to the rise of the novel, and the emergence of philosophical aesthetics. Novelists such as Fielding, Sterne, Johnson and Austen are placed in a philosophical context, and philosophers of the empiricist tradition in the context of English literary history."
What Johnson Means to Me: Reading Johnson When Young
Pritchard details his evolution from a casual reader of Boswell to a student of Johnson’s formal prose. Initially drawn to the Life of Johnson for its anecdotal wit—such as Johnson’s "stark insensibility" regarding skipped tutorials—Pritchard’s perspective shifted under the tutelage of Bate. Bate’s lectures sought to dismantle the nineteenth-century caricature of Johnson-as-grotesque, emphasizing instead the moral depth of The Rambler and The Idler. Pritchard describes the "tonic" effect of Johnson’s melancholy and his philosophical insistence on hope despite the "secret horror of the last." While noting that later rereadings prioritized The Lives of the Poets and the Shakespearean criticism over the universalizing tendencies of the earlier essays, Pritchard affirms the "thrill of discovery" Johnson provided in addressing the vacuities of being. The text concludes by contrasting Boswell’s conversational portrait with the "universal truth" sought in Johnson's formal writing.
Surfacing and Falling into Matter: Johnson, Swift, Disgust and Beyond
Eve, Savage's Mother, and Learned Ladies: Johnson, Boswell and Women
Pall Mall and the Wilderness of New South Wales': Samuel Johnson, Watkin Tench and 'Six' Degrees of Separation
The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture for 1997.
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired
Prose explores the "theatrical, eroticized tableau" of the 1766 meeting where the Thrales rescued a mentally unraveling Johnson, leading to his sixteen-year residency at Streatham Park. While the relationship remained ostensibly platonic, Prose highlights a "language of bondage and restraint" in their correspondence, evidenced by the discovery of "Johnson’s padlock" among Thrale's effects. Thrale functioned as a vital sounding board for works like "A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland" and "The Lives of the Poets." Prose details Thrale’s transition from a "domestic prison" under Henry Thrale to a celebrated literary career, noting that she was the first muse to profit from her artist’s remains through her "Anecdotes" and "Letters." The account emphasizes Johnson’s brutal "rage and bewilderment" following Thrale’s marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which ended their collaborative bond.
Cochrane entry 312. A narrative of the Highland journey based on both Johnson's and Boswell's accounts, supplemented with maps, photographs, and historical engravings.
Mental Illness as Subject and Symptom: Examining the Literature of Samuel Johnson and Christopher Smart
Literary Power and the Criteria of Truth
Quinney analyzes Johnson's intellectual skepticism as an inveterate mistrust of appearances and an assumption that truth is contrary to our wishes. She argues that Johnson established a fidelity to the tragic sense of literature through a demystifying stance and chilling style. By examining the 'Life of Cowley' and 'Life of Milton,' Quinney identifies a biographical literalism in Johnson’s criticism, where he interprets literary fiction as potentially dangerous psychological involvement. Johnson suppressed the pathos in Milton’s sonnets and Parnell’s biography to protect the living world from the dubious legitimacy of literary experience. This chapter concludes that Johnson sought a hopeless reparation to human authority through the Oedipalization of literary space.
Rabb examines Johnson’s lifelong project to write a "history of war in general," a task that remained largely in the form of "manuscript books of remarks." The article argues that Johnson viewed war as the ultimate "body in pain," focusing on the physical and moral "stains of original corruption" it reveals. Rabb details Johnson’s extensive use of war-related citations in the Dictionary, drawing heavily from Raleigh’s History of the World and Knolles’s History of the Turks. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "eloquence in depicting the miseries of war" in his pamphlet on the Falkland Islands, where he cautioned against the "illusions of political rhetoric." Rabb review’s Johnson’s "remarkable resilience" in addressing the Seven Years' War and his belief that "all wickedness is folly" when viewed through the lens of conflict. The article concludes that Johnson’s "warrior of words" persona sought to protect the "glory of English" from the "foreign invaders" of corrupt ideology.
Johnston’s review of Radner’s study explores the mutual distrust of happiness shared by Johnson and Boswell, noting that Johnson's mistrust was a "signature tune" used to convince Boswell that "there was no certain happiness in this state of being." Boswell used Johnson’s conversation to challenge his instincts about contentment, suspecting delusion whenever he felt ease, though Johnson's eloquence could also be a "tonic." The review details Boswell’s sexual encounters, including an episode with a prostitute near Hume’s house, which contrasted with his "exalted correspondence" with Johnson. Johnston analyzes the paradoxical method of the Life, which risked public derision by accumulating minute particulars and "copious detail." The friendship was marked by extremes, from "perfect attachment" to Johnson's exasperation, highlighting the enabling role of doubt in biographical experiments and Johnson’s swipe that he was sick of both himself and his biographer.
Lynch’s positive review describes this work as an unprecedented chronicle of the decades-long relationship between the two men. Radner rejects the traditional view of Boswell as a sycophantic stenographer, presenting him instead as a serious, complicated writer and a full partner in the friendship. The study follows a chronological method, examining vast primary materials including letters, diaries, and published tracts from their 1763 meeting until 1795. Radner highlights the tensions, quarrels, and silences that defined their bond, particularly during their 1773 tour of the Hebrides. The narrative demonstrates how Boswell acted as a conscious literary craftsman, shaping his journals into the published Life. Lynch notes that while the book occasionally flags under the weight of unprocessed facts, it provides significant new insights into how their mutual interactions influenced Johnson’s own writings, such as the Lives of the Poets.
Connecting with Three 'Young Dogs': Johnson's Early Letters to Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell
Radner compares Johnson’s early correspondence with Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and Boswell between 1754 and 1773. By examining the frequency, tone, and content of letters written when face-to-face interaction was limited, Radner highlights distinct patterns in Johnson’s mentorship and friendship with each man. The letters reveal Johnson’s varying approaches to offering guidance, encouragement, and personal connection, contrasting the relatively stable relationships with Chambers and Langton against the more guarded, delayed, yet ultimately deepening intimacy evident in the early correspondence with Boswell, charting the unique development of that particular friendship through written communication.
The Image of Violence in Literature, the Media, and Society
Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery
The Violence of Purgation in Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans: Singing Best When the Nest Is Broken
The brief poem depicts Johnson rejecting a pair of shoes left at his door by a well-meaning donor. It focuses on the internal "storms" of his "impassioned breast" and his intense hatred of poverty, scorn, and pain. The narrative emphasizes his fear of failure and the "self-disdain" resulting from sloth. It describes his ambition as "frightened" and "wild to rise."
A Troublesome Disorder: Being an Account of an Interview with Master Francis Barber, Servant of the Late Doctor Samuel Johnson
Although the volume lacks an overarching narrative and introduction to elucidate the debate, individual essays are excellent. Rawson, Orgel, and Bevington offer new perspectives on Shakespeare's plays and Johnson's criticism. Lynch and McDermott highlight the open-endedness of Johnson's critical pronouncements. DeMaria traces the development of Johnson's attitude toward language. Santesso and Hudson explore the cultural and social contexts of both writers.
Dr. Johnson's Fleet Street and the Sites of Publishing in Eighteenth-Century London
Rawson responds to a letter from Daiches, who questioned Rawson's use of "graduand" in a previous discussion about Johnson's honorary doctorate. Rawson admits the use of "graduand" was a typing error, as he had just been drafting comments on social arrangements for honorary graduands at another university. He apologizes for the carelessness but states that it deserves nothing better than Daiches's "pompous little note."
TEXT: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship
Hopes Raised for Johnson: An Example of Misleading Descriptive and Analytical Bibliography
Reddick reflects on the magical and surreal connection between scholar Walter Jackson Bate and his subject, Johnson. Observing Bate’s final lectures at Harvard, Reddick describes how Bate would ad lib forgotten Johnsonian passages with original words that were so Johnsonian that no one could tell they were not Johnson's own. This phenomenon suggests an imaginative incorporation of Johnson’s experience into Bate’s existence. Reddick disputes the idea that this was mere imitation, arguing instead that Bate instinctively created new Johnsonian language through a deep, shared sympathy of thought. The text portrays this identification as a unique critical achievement rather than a distasteful historical affectation.
Reddick chronicles the complicated composition, writing, and subsequent revision of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. Relying on an extensive analysis of the newly available Sneyd-Gimbel manuscript materials at Yale and interleaved sheets in the British Library, Reddick disputes long-standing biographical myths of a smooth, routine compilation process. Instead, Reddick exposes a profound procedural and philosophical crisis in late 1749 or early 1750 that forced Johnson to completely abandon his original structural framework, which had mistakenly over-relied on etymological roots and the inflexible definitions of predecessor lexicons. The study demonstrates how Johnson saved the project by moving toward a dynamic model prioritizing actual literary usage, a shift that marked the maturation of his critical intellect. Reddick also tracks the preparation of the heavily revised 1773 fourth edition, revealing how Johnson flooded the text with conservative, orthodox Anglican theological illustrations to covertly resist contemporary parliamentary challenges to the Established Church.} Chapter 1, "The Plan and the Early Preparation," examines the initial conception of the project, focusing on the 1747 Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language and the complex network of amanuenses and booksellers involved in the early stages of gathering authorities. Chapter 2, "The Composition of the First Edition," details the arduous process of selecting, marking, and transcribing thousands of illustrative quotations, while analyzing the shifting organizational methods employed as the workload became overwhelming. Chapter 3, "The Dictionary and the World," situates the work within its cultural and political context, exploring how the definitions and citations reflect contemporary debates on religion, monarchy, and national identity. Chapter 4, "Completion and Publication," recounts the final rush to print the two folio volumes in 1755, highlighting the immediate critical reception and the author's transition from an obscure writer to a national authority. Chapter 5, "The Revision of the Dictionary, 1771–1773," analyzes the massive effort to update the work for its fourth edition, using the discovered "Sneyd-Gimbel" materials to show how the author fundamentally altered thousands of entries toward the end of his life. Chapter 6, "The Second Revision and the History of the Language," investigates the author’s continued engagement with the text and his attempts to refine the History of the English Language and the Grammar that prefaced the main work. Chapter 7, "Politics, Religion, and the Fourth Edition," demonstrates how the late revisions served as a vehicle for the author to reassert his Anglican and Tory convictions in response to the changing social landscape of the 1770s. Chapter 8, "Conclusion: The Dictionary as a Life's Work," synthesizes the findings to portray the project not as a finished monument but as a living, evolving document that occupied the author's intellectual energy for nearly three decades. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics praising the thorough bibliographic detective work that brings the workshop to life. Crucial areas of critical interest include the discovery of an abandoned initial draft that forced a complete restart, and the detailed reconstruction of the revision process using previously unavailable manuscript materials. Carnochan, in TLS, praises the volume as a sober, empirical analysis that deconstructs the fixed monument to present a text in flux. Backscheider, writing in SEL, lauds the meticulous study for recovering working habits and illuminating rhetorical discourse. Rogers, in RES, recommends the work as a major contribution to compositional history, though he finds the evidence for specific political leanings riddled with doubt. In JNL, Hedrick deems the textual detective work exemplary, but she disputes the narrow terms regarding ideological impulses. DeMaria, writing in Modern Philology, finds a core of important new research but argues that claims about religious polemicism are overstated. Suarez, in ECS, praises the methodological rigor and biographical significance, while cautioning that the author overstates the effect of certain theological additions. McDermott, in BJECS, appreciates how the theory clarifies conflicting historical accounts of composition but rejects the highly speculative ideological claims. Finally, Anderson, in South Atlantic Review, considers the physical evidence valuable indeed, but challenges the conclusions as reaching well beyond the data.
Reviews: David R. Anderson, South Atlantic Review 58, no. 3 (1993): 116–18; Paula R. Backscheider, SEL 31, no. 3 (1991): 595–96; W. B. Carnochan, TLS, no. 4594 (1991): 9–10; Paul Clayton, N&Q 39 [237], no. 2 (1992): 231–32; Robert DeMaria Jr., MP 90 (1992): 268–73; James Gray, Dalhousie Review 70, no. 2 (1990): 260–63; Isobel Grundy, NR, Series D, no. 6 (1990): 48–50; Christopher Hawtree, THES, no. 3895 (1991): 35; Elizabeth Hedrick, JNL 50/51, nos. 3-4/1-3 (1990): 5–6; Verlyn Klinkenborg, Harvard Book Review, no. 19/20 (1991): 17; Paul J. Korshin, AJ 4 (1991): 417–24; Anne McDermott, BJECS 17, no. 1 (1994): 74–79; Nagashima Daisuke, Eigo Seinen/Rising Generation 137, no. 3 (1991): 138–39; Claude Rawson, LRB 13, no. 15 (1991): 15–17; Pat Rogers, RES, n.s., 45, no. 178 (1994): 259–60; Gregory Scholtz, Choice 28, no. 9 (1991): 4972; Michael Steckel, Libraries & Culture 29 (1994): 233–35; Michael F. Suarez, ECS 26 (1993): 514–17; THES, no. 950 (1991): 19; Laurence Urdang, Verbatim 20, no. 2 (1993): 8–10; Robert Ziegler, Papers on Language & Literature 28, no. 4 (1992): 457–75.
Anderson highlights Reddick's use of the Sneyd-Gimbel materials to reveal Johnson's massive revisions for the 1773 edition. Reddick argues Johnson used the fourth edition to defend the Church of England through "politicized" quotations from writers like Leslie and Waterland. Anderson finds the bibliographical evidence "valuable indeed" but challenges the ideological conclusions as reaching beyond the evidence. He suggests the use of a Milton index was a more likely guiding factor than a systematic political agenda.
Carnochan's approving review of Reddick's The Making of Johnson's Dictionary describes the work as a "sober, empirical analysis" and "meticulous analysis" that "deconstructs the edifice of the Dictionary" to present it as a "text in flux" rather than a fixed monument. Reddick's detailed demonstration, using manuscript materials, highlights the conflict and "warfare" between the lexicographer's demands for "descriptive completeness" and "lexicographical description" versus "prescriptive exactitude" and "prescription." The review highlights Reddick's focus on the "indispensable and much-revised" fourth edition of 1773, where new illustrative quotations—mainly from the Bible, Milton, and English theologians—infuse a greater "religious and/or political presence." Reddick "brings the workshop to life," identifying the "daily experience" of the "Scots amanuenses" like Francis Stewart and documenting the presence of Francis Barber. Carnochan argues the study portrays Johnson's achievement as a "deeply human monument built out of shreds and patches," reflecting a "troubled conviction that lexicography is a doomed and paradoxical endeavor."
Clayton praises Reddick for using the Gimbel materials to provide a revolutionary account of Johnson’s lexicographical process. He highlights the discovery of early manuscript versions and evidence of Barber’s education. Clayton values the analysis of the 1773 edition, which Reddick portrays as a more polemical, ideologically driven text than the 1755 original. He finds the narrative vivid and the bibliographical detail effectively balanced with biographical context.
DeMaria finds a core of important new research clustered with material that is older or overstated. Reddick's primary contribution is the diligent study of the previously unavailable Sneyd-Gimbel interleaved copy of the first edition, which answers questions about the genesis of Johnson’s work. He discovered fragments of an abandoned, unworkable manuscript from 1747–1750, after which Johnson perfected his method using movable slips of paper. Reddick also details the quick, efficient revision process for the 1773 fourth edition, using the Sneyd-Gimbel copy as a draft. DeMaria criticizes the book’s overstated claims about Johnson's religious and political polemicism in the fourth edition and its reliance on antiquated biographical views.
Gray identifies Reddick’s study as a meticulous reconstruction of the methodology behind the first and fourth editions of the Dictionary. Gray highlights the use of manuscript materials from the Yale and British Libraries to retrace Johnson’s process of assembling illustrative quotations, which Gray notes occupied the "lion's share of the time." The reviewer emphasizes Reddick’s conclusion that Johnson viewed lexicography as a "paradoxical endeavor" and a "vital form of literary discourse" despite the impossibility of fixing a language in flux. While Gray praises the thorough description of Johnson’s revisions, he finds fault with Reddick’s "anfractuosity of style" and an "unreliable Index." Gray specifically challenges the neglect of Johnson’s French sources, such as Furetière and Ménage, which Johnson used "in brave defiance of the Academy." Gray maintains that while the work complements previous scholarship, it lacks sufficient attention to Johnson’s philological techniques compared to contemporary international studies.
Korshin reviews Reddick's 'wonderful piece of scholarly detective work' concerning the development of Johnson's Dictionary. The review highlights Reddick's study of the 'Sneyd-Gimbel copy,' which reveals that the first edition was built upon a partial earlier work from the late 1740s that Johnson had abandoned. Reddick 'authoritatively demonstrates' that Johnson's habitual gloom in 'The Rambler' was likely linked to his 'dramatic trials and setbacks' during this false start. The review notes that Johnson used abandoned slips bearing quotations as printer's copy for the fourth edition, relying on 'shortcuts' like Cruden's index to 'Paradise Lost.' Korshin concludes that Reddick provides information that 'none of Johnson's biographers has known or surmised,' offering a vital new understanding of 'his masterly handling' of lexicography.
Reddick's bibliographical analysis of the Sneyd-Gimbel and British Library manuscript materials identifies them as successive stages in the revision process for the Dictionary's fourth edition (1773). The study presents a theory accounting for these materials and clarifying conflicting early accounts of Johnson's composition methods, suggesting an abandoned draft manuscript was cannibalized for the fourth edition. While praising the research, the reviewer criticizes Reddick's speculative ideological claims regarding Johnson's motivations for selecting certain quotations.
Rogers recommends Reddick's study as a major and important contribution to understanding the compositional history of the Dictionary, detailing its genesis from the 1747 Plan through the 1773 revisions. Reddick uses surviving manuscript material and interleaved copies to argue that Johnson underwent a physical and theoretical crisis and made a "false start" around 1750, forcing a reconceptualization that shifted his approach from etymology to usage. The study also offers the most sustained case for a "fundamental shift" in the 1773 revisions, noting an increase in theological citations, particularly from ultra-orthodox and nonjuring writers, and the "imposing presence" of Milton's Paradise Lost over Shakespeare, challenging the latter's primacy. While Rogers finds the evidence for Johnson's Jacobite leanings in the fourth edition "somewhat riddled with doubt," he praises Reddick for depicting the Dictionary as an "organism in flux" rather than a perfected monument.
Scholtz lauds Allen Reddick’s study as an engaging account of the planning and revision of the Dictionary. Scholtz notes that Reddick traces the lexicographical process from 1746 to 1773 by blending biographical narrative with bibliographic analysis. The review highlights Reddick’s "thorough examination" of the Sneyd-Gimbel materials at Yale to provide a solid contribution to the understanding of Johnson as a lexicographer. Scholtz praises the readability of the work and its vivid prose, noting its utility for faculty and graduate students. Scholtz concludes that the abundant notes and bibliographic appendixes support a work of "impressive scholarship" that clarifies the complex printing and publishing history of Johnson's great book.
Libraries & Culture: A Journal of Library History
Reddick uses the Sneyd-Gimbel and British Library working papers to trace the Dictionary’s evolution and Johnson’s frustrated intentions. The study reveals Johnson’s covert High Tory Anglican polemic in his extensive revisions for the fourth edition (1773) and frames the work as literary and rhetorical discourse. Suarez praises the book's methodological rigor and biographical significance, only cautioning that Reddick overstates the effect of the Miltonic additions.
Johnson's 'Dictionary': The Sneyd–Gimbel Copy
Johnson Beyond Jacobitism: Signs of Polemic in the Dictionary and the Life of Milton
Reddick attempts to sharpen the focus on Samuel Johnson's politicotheological position, particularly in the latter two decades of his life, beginning with a consideration of evidence from Johnson's revised fourth edition of his "Dictionary."
The Oxford History of English Lexicography
Reddick evaluates Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary as the first modern English lexicon to determine meaning through written usage rather than a priori systems. The chapter details Johnson’s shift from the prescriptive "Plan" of 1747 to an empirical reliance on literary "authorities," noting his pioneering treatment of polysemy and phrasal verbs. Conversely, Reddick presents Charles Richardson’s 1836 New Dictionary as a radical challenge to Johnsonian principles. Richardson disputed Johnson’s belief in multiple meanings, arguing instead for a "single true meaning" rooted in etymology. While Richardson’s etymological theories are described as often "absurd," Reddick credits him with providing a vast chronological collection of quotations that anticipated the historical methodology later adopted by the Oxford English Dictionary.
James Boswell, The Life of Johnson
Boswell's Life of Johnson is the pre-eminent example in English biography of the art that disguises art. This irresistible but elusive masterpiece exists in two distinct versions: the original manuscript (which allows us to reconstruct every stage of composition) and the published text of 1791 (which Boswell revised twice before his death in 1795). Close study of the work in its successive stages confirms what many readers have intuited from the final version alone: that Boswell was a sophisticated craftsman, but that in commenting on his craft he failed to do it justice. The work and not the author is our most eloquent, reliable, and convincing witness to the multiple uses of ‘the fact imagined.’
Redford argues that Boswell's masterpiece is not a transparent record but a profoundly designed and "layered text," a product of conscious artistic choices and strategic revisions aimed at shaping its subject for posterity. Based on his Lyell Lectures, Redford's central thesis is that Boswell's primary "biographical project" was to "tame" the raw, fierce, and often alarming aspects of Samuel Johnson's personality—the "Native of the Rocks"—in order to construct a more reverent public portrait of a "hero who is compellingly 'agonistes'." The book’s argument is grounded in a "selective excavation" of the Life manuscript, which reveals Boswell's working methods. Redford demonstrates how Boswell consistently "exhibits, but then restrains" Johnson's difficult qualities, transforming his "injurious misrepresentations" and "prejudices unworthy of a great mind" into a mere "playfulness of fancy." This process of "designing" was not about falsification, Redford contends, but about fulfilling Boswell's complex goal: to "avoid panegyric yet inspire reverence" by artfully interpreting Johnson's "weaknesses under the aspect of his strengths." Redford encapsulates this entire artistic strategy in a central metaphor drawn from the famous Reynolds frontispiece portrait. He argues that Boswell’s editorial method mirrors the visual "contrast between the two hands, one clenched and the other relaxed," and, even more pointedly, the "engraver's transformation of savage into sage." This "taming" is shown to be a consistent design choice, evident from the Letter to Chesterfield to the final summary of Johnson's character. By focusing on the "layered text," Redford’s study definitively shifts the critical focus from Boswell the faithful recorder to Boswell the consummate literary artist, who, through a sophisticated process of selection, suppression, and rhetorical shaping, successfully designed the enduring and heroic public image of Samuel Johnson that the world has come to accept as truth. The Introduction establishes Redford's central thesis that biography is a deliberate act of design that mediates between history and poetry, arguing against critics who view Boswell's work as a mere "assemblage" of facts and instead presenting it as a sophisticated literary artifact. Chapter 1, "Imprinting Johnson," explores the collaborative "social construction" of the text, detailing how Boswell worked with printers Henry Baldwin and his staff to translate a chaotic, multi-layered manuscript into a printed masterpiece while constantly revising during the production process. Chapter 2, "Representing Johnson," examines the "Flemish picture" Boswell intended to create, analyzing how he used pictorial metaphors and multiple verbal "cameo" portraits to etch an indelible physical and psychological likeness of his subject. Chapter 3, "Dramatizing Johnson," investigates the "scenic" structure of the biography, revealing how Boswell adroitly transformed raw journal notes into theatrical "playlets" and complex conversational set-pieces that foster an illusion of unmediated access to Johnson. Chapter 4, "Transmitting Johnson," analyzes the strategic selection and positioning of Johnson’s letters, arguing that these epistolary sequences do not merely provide documentation but serve as a "phonograph" that preserves the "Master’s authentic voice" across different registers of his life. Chapter 5, "Taming Johnson," uncovers the "pentimenti" within the text, demonstrating how Boswell meticulously edited and restrained evidence of Johnson’s "savage" or "ferocious" temperament regarding politics, religion, and sexuality to fashion a heroic, "agonistes" figure for the public eye. Reviewers describe the book as a persuasive and sympathetic account of a textual marathon that reveals the deliberate craft behind a seemingly spontaneous narrative. Hinnant and Baines praise the study for its sensitive use of the complete archival record to demonstrate both fidelity and finesse in portraiture. Johnston and Woudhuysen highlight the excellent analysis of analogies from painting and drama, showing how the biographer managed revisions and deletions to create dramatic playlets. Redford receives credit from Womersley for providing a crushingly final rejoinder to previous detractors regarding the integration of letters and the technique of revelation followed by restraint. Parke and Rollyson emphasize how the close manuscript analysis effectively places the reader in the condition of the biographer at work, specifically noting the value of illustrations for researchers. But Lock argues that the analysis of the creative process reveals a more contentious side of the work, suggesting that the self-aggrandizing representation and the taming of a difficult personality might distort the historical record. Turner and McLaverty further observe that the meticulous bibliographic focus recreates the artistry of visual representation with great skill. The general verdict on this study is that it is the most useful overall exploration available, masterfully mediating between history and poetry. Womersley identifies the examination of the Chesterfield letter as the volume’s finest moment, while Lock affirms that the work successfully balances truth and poetry. Ultimately, the volume stimulates further study by taming the subject and mastering the intricate methods used to fix a character upon the reader's mind.
Parke reviews Redford's study of the composition and design of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Redford analyzes Boswell's manuscript revisions, collaboration with printers, use of portraiture and conversation-piece techniques, integration of letters, and handling of sensitive issues concerning Johnson. Arguing against critics like Greene who fault the Life's structure and focus, Redford presents Boswell as a skillful biographical artist who masterfully mediates between history and poetry, fact and art, fulfilling Johnson's own criteria for biography. Parke praises Redford's close manuscript analysis, insightful arguments, and engaging presentation, which effectively place the reader in the condition of the biographer at work.
Redford's meticulous bibliographic work recreates Boswell's artistry in crafting the Life from raw manuscripts, demonstrating his skill in dramatic and visual representation.
Wilcox reviews Redford's six lectures on Boswell's Life of Johnson, noting Redford's defense of Boswell's work against critics such as Donald Greene. Redford's analysis stresses Boswell's conscious artistic control and indefatigable efforts in shaping the Life from his initial notes and journals to the final published text. The reviewer commends Redford's insights into Boswell's rhetorical process, the "before and after" comparisons of passages, and the demonstration of Boswell's skill as a biographical playwright and designer. The reviewer also mentions Redford's discussion of Boswell's pervasive softening of Johnson's ruggedness.
This review praises Bruce Redford's Designing the Life of Johnson, which originated as the Lyell Lectures in Bibliography. The study focuses on the complex, densely revised working manuscript of Boswell's Life of Johnson to show the biographer's methods for "fixing Johnson upon the reader's mind." Redford employs metaphors of portraiture, drama, and musical polyphony, and offers a crushingly final rejoinder to Donald Greene regarding the use of letters. Chapter 5, argued as the finest, brilliantly reads the Chesterfield letter and examines Boswell's technique of revelation followed by restraint in "taming" Johnson.
Redford argues that Boswell was a "bold, imaginative, and scrupulous artist" who skillfully managed the printing of his "foulest of foul papers." Redford defends Boswell's biographical art by showing how he used painting analogies, employed dramatic techniques to create "playlets," and carefully edited his materials to "tame" Johnson's public persona.
Redgrave reflects on portraying Johnson in Maureen Lawrence's play "Resurrection." The actor contrasts the "sententious John Bull" image with Johnson's humane conscience and sensitive nature. A key focus is Johnson's relationship with Francis Barber, a freed Jamaican slave whom Johnson treated with magnanimous decency as a ward and heir. Redgrave argues that the play exposes the powerlessness of Johnson's humanity against institutionalized racism, as Barber was fleeced of his inheritance and died in penury.
The actor describes his role as Johnson in Maureen Lawrence’s Resurrection in Lichfield.
Johnson's Milton: The Writer-Hero in The Rambler
'Pray Lend Me Topsel on Animals': The Place of Animals in Johnson's Life and Interests
He Gave Us Johnson: Thanks to Boswell, We Can Still Live in the 18th Century — And Emulate Its Style
Rees-Mogg identifies Johnson as an intellectual father figure and a noble role model whose belief in moral laws influenced his career. The text characterizes Boswell as the greatest biographer in the history of world literature and a superior reporter compared to Johnson. Rees-Mogg argues that Boswell’s reporting provides a whole lost world of 18th-century Britain.
The Johnson Society of Australia: Convivial Tercentenary Dinner
This report details the Johnson Society of Australia's convivial tercentenary dinner held in Melbourne on May 15. The evening featured readings from Boswell's Life and other sources honoring eminences in the Johnsonian landscape. Highlights included the reading of the letter to Chesterfield and extracts from Fanny Burney's diaries. The report humorously includes a pair of Johnsonian limericks in a playful exchange with the philosopher Descartes. The Society planned to continue its tercentenary celebrations with a special program at its annual seminar in July.
Deutsch reviews Thomas Reinert’s exploration of the crowd as a definitive modernity that threatens individual identity, calling the book an original, suggestive effort to unsettle traditional views. Reinert reads Johnson’s moral writing as a defense against such erosion, interpreting Rasselas and the Life of Savage as demonstrations of how moral instruction can fail. The review highlights Reinert’s analysis of The Vanity of Human Wishes, where examples are described as irreducibly contingent against a background of insatiable desire. While Deutsch praises Reinert's close readings for their elegance and compression and argues he provides a valuable spectacle of Johnson negotiating moral irresolvability, she notes that his discussion of the crowd is largely abstract and figurative. Deutsch concludes that the book’s compressed and original reasoning demands rereading and will certainly make many readers reread Johnson himself.
Reinert challenges the tradition of personalizing Johnson’s moral thought by examining the disjunction between the general and particular. He explores how images of proliferation and multiplication in words and behaviors produced social confusion for Johnson. Reinert investigates the problem of exemplarity in The Life of Savage and The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing that rhetorical moves to reason from particular lives result in a breakdown of the ability to generalize. Devens observes that Reinert remains deeply sympathetic to Johnson’s attempts to navigate modern culture despite challenging humanist methods.
Lamoine reviews Reinert's study on Johnson and the crowd, which explores the disjunction between the general and the particular in social experience and the moral attitudes of Johnson, drawing on Rambler essays. Reinert uses the biographical genre to dissect The Life of Savage, seeing it as a meditation on the difficulty of being an outsider. Johnson is ultimately viewed as a conservative who was conscious of the necessity of change, yet who violently criticized those who echoed the cries of the crowd, believing the populace incapable of understanding politics. The reviewer suggests the work's constant reliance on other critics and theorists detracts from its interest.
In this enthusiastic review, Patey commends Reinert's study for providing sensitive and graceful readings of Johnson's preoccupation with "runaway multiplicity." Patey observes that Reinert examines literal and metaphoric "crowds" to illuminate how confusion frustrates the moralist's desire for closure. The review praises the postmodern approach to Johnson's moral wisdom, specifically the analysis of "self-consciousness that savors its own mournfulness." While Patey notes that Reinert occasionally fails to distinguish explicit doctrine from subterranean thought and neglects Johnson's Christianity, the review disputes these flaws as minor.
Scanlan reviews Thomas Reinert’s study of Johnson’s thinking regarding the mass of people in London, noting that Reinert connects Johnson's metaphorical conception of the crowd to political-cultural critiques of the nineteenth and twentieth-century city rather than focusing on eighteenth-century London or humanist thought. Reinert argues that the pressure of the crowd shaped Johnson’s moral writing, but Scanlan finds the evidence for this connection hard to discover and the argument that crowd pressure accounts for stress in Johnson's writing tenuous, particularly regarding the Life of Savage. The review criticizes the lack of archival research and detailed London social history, as well as the reliance on modern urban theorists like Benjamin and Sennett without a clear connection to Johnson. While praising Reinert’s observations on Johnson’s household as a parody of domesticity, Scanlan concludes that the book unconvincingly strains to make Johnson a contemporary figure and that the work's real subject is the speculative observation of human disintegration in the modern city.
Lynn's critical review examines Thomas Reinert's monograph on Johnson and the crowd. Lynn notes that Reinert charts Johnson's poise and perplexity when facing public crowds, framing Johnson as a moral skeptic whose rhetorical link between the general and the particular breaks down in crowded contexts. Lynn questions Reinert's displacement of New Criticism and challenges his omission of religious, practical, and community terms, observing that such exclusions leave Johnson as more spectacle than advice.
Letter from Reynolds in response to Idler 25 on art connoisseurs.
Richard examines Johnson’s "capacious understanding" of education, framing him as a "didactic writer" and a "student of life." The article explores how Johnson’s "self-directed education" influenced his "Scheme for the Classes of a Grammar School" and his work as a schoolmaster. Richard details Johnson’s "psychological perceptiveness" regarding "youthful minds," noting his belief that "one-size-fits-all" tasks are unproductive. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "digest approach to reading," which he modeled on "Macrobius" and "dictionaries," designed to "arrest the reader’s attention." Richard argues that Johnson’s periodical essays were "short form" educational tools that meandered from "one topic to another" to "promote virtue." The article review’s Johnson’s "sympathetic tolerance" for "struggling students" and his "sacred" view of "curiosity." Richard concludes that Johnson’s entire "body of work" was "educational in purpose," aiming to "diffuse instruction to every diversity of condition."
Media Types: Hero in the Image of Dr. Johnson
Ideas and Voices: The New Novel in Eighteenth-Century England
Richetti discusses ideas and voices in the eighteenth-century novel, primarily focusing on Daniel Defoe and Eliza Haywood, and employing Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism to evaluate the genre's intellectual complexity. The essay contrasts the monological nature of the periodical essay, citing Addison's Spectator and Johnson's Rambler, with the polyphonic potential of the novel. It examines a sketch in Johnson's Rambler 62, featuring Rhodoclia, as an overlap where the satiric essay approaches novelistic dialogicity by dramatizing a character's self-deluded desires against her intelligent critique of her parents' provincial life.
Samuel Johnson as Heterdox Critic and Poet
Richetti explores how Johnson's critical stance against excessive poetical artifice—exemplified in his critiques of Gray and Milton—reveals a consistent demand for truth and passion over rhetoric. He argues that this "heterodox" critical position serves as a clarifying window into Johnson's own poetic practice. The essay demonstrates how Johnson’s poetry delivers special qualities of consistency and robust realism that align with his critical principles.
Samuel Johnson: Dead Metaphors and 'Impending Death'
Ricks identifies the hallmark of Johnsonian poetics as the resurrection of "dead metaphors" and clichés. Examining Johnson’s schoolboy translation of Addison’s Latin poem on the battle between pygmies and cranes, Ricks demonstrates how Johnson expands upon the source material to infuse trite figures with "fresh grace and more powerful attractions." Johnson employs "Feather'd Battalions" and "Squadrons on the wing" to exploit both literal and martial meanings, renovating the original act of imagination behind the metaphor. By adding phrases like "pierce the skies" and "seeds of Discord," Johnson places pressure on common language to reflect the specific context of the avian conflict. Ricks connects this early practice to the mature style found in London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting a consistent "congruence of life and literature." This strategy serves Johnson’s moral conviction that men more frequently require reminders of "known truths" rather than the introduction of new information.
CGV entry 14:236. On Johnson's translation of Addison's "Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes."
The Story of a Library: Reminiscences of a Latter Day Book Collector
Reconstructing Literature in an Ideological Age: A Biblical Poetics and Literary Studies from Milton to Burke
Johnson Reading Literature, Johnson Reading the Canon of Scripture: The Difference between Literary Pleasure and Religious Happiness
Exploring the Theatre History of the Eighteenth Century: My Experience of Curating an Exhibition on Johnson and the Theatre
Ritchie details her experience co-curating the exhibition "Behind the Scenes: The Hidden Life of Georgian Theatre, 1737-1784," at Dr. Johnson's House, London. The exhibition, co-curated with Natasha McEnroe, focused on social networks and the spaces where they took place (the dressing room and the green room). Johnson and Garrick's arrival in 1737 served as the starting point. The exhibition included the nineteenth-century painting of Johnson and Sarah Siddons (reproduced on the cover). Loans, sought from smaller institutions like the Garrick Club, included Sarah Siddons's coral tiara and Garrick's shoe buckles. Ritchie learned that Johnson's harsh comments on players were occasionally mixed with appreciation (e.g., Kitty Clive was "a good thing to sit by; she always understands what you say"). The exhibition highlighted the material culture of the period, including entry tokens to the Haymarket and china bowls from Tom's coffee-house.
On “Behind the Scenes: The Hidden Life of Georgian Theatre, 1737–1784,” an exhibition at Dr. Johnson’s House, 16 April–18 Sept. 2007.
In Awe of Nature: The Influence of Science in the Works of Samuel Johnson and Joseph Wright of Derby
Folies romanesques au siècle des lumières
Savoir délirant et encyclopédie détraquée: Figures de savant fou dans le Prince Rasselas de Johnson et le Compère Mathieu de Du Laurens
Rivara analyzes the figure of the mad scientist through Johnson’s astronomer in Rasselas, contrasting his melancholy with the mania found in Du Laurens’s work. She argues that Johnson frames the astronomer’s delusion—a belief that he controls the seasons and the Nile's flow—as an ethical failure born of prolonged solitude. The text details how Johnson, influenced by John Locke and Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, views reason as both a norm and a subject of knowledge, characterizing the astronomer's hurry of imagination as a perversion of scientific truth and social belonging. Rivara describes the astronomer’s cure, facilitated by the persuasion and sociability of Imlac and Pekuah, as a movement back toward the community of men. The chapter concludes that Johnson’s narrative functions as a moral tale where madness is an imperfection manageable through human communication rather than institutional confinement.
The history and diagnosis of Samuel Johnson's gout, which he first clearly experienced in his mid-sixties in 1775. Through Johnson's own letters and the accounts of contemporaries like Thrale, Rogers details Johnson's bouts of pain and his varying attitudes toward the illness. because of the imprecise medical terminology of the 18th century, it is difficult to definitively confirm if Johnson suffered from true gout or a form of degenerative arthritis, a condition equally consistent with the late onset, localization in his feet, and the intermittent nature of his documented attacks.
Boswell Goes Home [review of Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782, by James Boswell, Joseph W. Reed, and Frederick A. Pottle; and Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia, by Pat Rogers]
Hanley reviews two books on Boswell, noting the regret that Boswell never met fellow Ayrshireman Burns, despite shared interests. Reed and Pottle's Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck details Boswell's struggle running the estate under his critical father, revealing his deep insecurity. Rogers's Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia views the tour as Johnson's rite of passage and Boswell's test of Scottish identity, noting Johnson largely ignored the Enlightenment figures Boswell introduced. The review also summarizes Hinnant's argument for Johnson's relevance to modern literary theory.
Fleeman praises Rogers's skilled use of Boswell, an advocate and acute observer who collected and sifted evidence and was driven to link his biographical interest to verifiable data. Rogers is noted for his profound familiarity with Johnson's writings, their complex style, and for setting the author's utterances in their historical context. The reviewer acknowledges Johnson's suspicion of mere originality and his relegation to the second rank as a thinker. Johnson was "profoundly suspicious" of imagination, viewing it as a "licentious and vagrant faculty" because it did little to help "the lot of suffering humanity." Johnson's focus was on living a useful life and his duty to preach and practice guiding principles. The reviewer suggests that Johnson's agonia for guiding principles is a refreshing change from modern writing, and concludes with Rogers's summary: "The books he wrote and the life he led can still endow us with the courage to be."
The edition merges Johnson's text with a cut and reordered version of Boswell's Journal, supplemented by extracts from Johnson's letters and Boswell's manuscript. O'Brien praises the rewarding "binaurality" that allows the reader to experience Johnson's sociological enquiry into the climacteric of Highland society alongside Boswell's self-conscious role as impresario and meticulous chronicler of logistics, though it omits some material.
Rogers presents a synoptic edition of Johnson's 1775 account and Boswell's 1785 diary regarding their Scottish journey. This edition prints Boswell on left-hand pages and Johnson on right-hand pages to facilitate "stereoscopic synergetic reading." Rogers gives Johnson's text in its entirety and includes relevant sections of letters to Thrale. Boswell's text undergoes rearrangement to align with Johnson's narrative. The contrasting styles highlight Johnson's "sturdy, self-confident prose" against Boswell's conversational focus on habits and everyday events, ultimately offering extensive detail on the Celtic fringe.
Rogers's study explores the "currents and undercurrents" in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Rogers proposes eight theses: the journey as Johnson's rite of passage into old age; an inversion of the grand tour; a context of exploration; a pairing of Johnson and Omai as "outlandish" figures; illumination from Johnson's letters to Thrale; Boswell's desire to re-enact the Pretender's flight; Boswell's break from Scottish background; and Boswell's anxiety projecting Johnson's "anti-Scottish feeling." The essays are praised for imaginative light but vary in evidentiary standards regarding conscious intent.
Radner evaluates this collection of fourteen essays covering Boswell’s journals, legal career, and relationship with Johnson. Radner highlights Crawford’s analysis of Boswell’s epistolary rhetoric and Sher’s examination of Boswell’s Presbyterian identity. While praising Burke’s defense of Boswell’s version of the Chesterfield quarrel, Radner notes inaccuracies in Korshin’s treatment of Johnsonian conversation. Radner concludes the volume significantly advances Boswellian studies, though identifies minor errata in the printed text.
Womersley's positive review praises Marshall Waingrow's scholarly edition as a major achievement and a treasure-trove of previously hidden detail. The review highlights the importance of textual minutiae contained within the manuscript, which exposes the elaborate rewriting, complexity, and fluidity of Boswell's engagement with Johnson. Womersley commends Waingrow's invention and use of an elaborate notation system that allows readers to reconstruct Boswell's temporal order of composition and editorial decisions. While acknowledging that different readers might form different judgments based on manuscript imponderables like ink tone and quill impression, Womersley concludes that the edition represents a strong testimony to the intellectually liberating potential of literary detail.
Rogers assembles essential facts, interpretations, and opinions regarding Johnson in a single volume. Coverage includes all essential facts, various quips, and information on Johnson's health and his mutual dislike for Hume. Dollard identifies the work as scholarly and entertaining, featuring extensive bibliographic and cross-references. While Johnson receives less study than in previous eras, Dollard identifies this as an essential purchase for advanced English literature programs.
Stavisky’s approving review characterizes Pat Rogers’s The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia as a monumental achievement and an "indispensable tool" for eighteenth-century studies, effectively consolidating decades of Johnsonian scholarship into a single, well-organized volume. The encyclopedia provides a comprehensive reference for all essential facts regarding Johnson’s life, works, and the Hanoverian era, containing over 650 entries that range from substantial essays on major figures like James Boswell and Hester Thrale to briefer notes on obscure acquaintances, adversaries, and specific locations. While Rogers relies heavily on the Hill–Powell edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson as a primary source, the work incorporates modern biographical insights on sensitive issues such as Johnson’s melancholy, his relationship with Thrale, and speculative sexual behavior. Stavisky emphasizes the volume’s "high level of accuracy" and its "clear, readable prose," noting that the entries are categorized by topical themes (e.g., Charity, Enlightenment, Business), Johnson’s publications, and detailed accounts of his domestic circle and all members of the Club. Although the review points out occasional imbalances in article length relative to historical importance and notes the inherent difficulty of compressing Johnson’s immense corpus, Stavisky finds the cross-referencing system and detailed bibliographies highly effective. The work successfully captures the "extraordinary range" of Johnson’s intellectual interests—including lexicography, poetry, and social criticism—serving as a vital, accessible "one-stop aid" and first-resort reference tool for both students and specialists navigating the complex milieu of the mid-eighteenth century.
Stuhr-Rommereim praises Rogers's reference work for consolidating essential details of Johnson’s biography, including habits, acquaintances, and his cat Hodge. The review highlights the "well prepared and clearly written" entries on Boswell, the Shakespeare edition, and the dictionary. Stuhr-Rommereim describes the encyclopedia as an "enjoyable reference work" suitable for both specialists and new readers, noting Rogers’s standing as an established eighteenth-century scholar.
Wilson reviews Pat Rogers's comprehensive reference work, assessing its organizational utility for eighteenth-century literary researchers. The volume features 650 alphabetically arranged entries that meticulously chart Johnson's personal relationships, primary texts, travel itineraries, and topical social perspectives, supplemented by an detailed chronology and bibliography. Wilson tests the reference text against obscure historical occurrences, praising a detailed narrative entry that reconstructs an high-spirited 1773 incident where Johnson performed an physical mimicry of a kangaroo inside an Inverness inn. While noting the omission of specific Quaker testimonies regarding the author, Wilson finds the individual entries on James Boswell and Hodge highly informative. The review recommends this beautifully produced encyclopedia as an indispensable resource for personal and institutional libraries, characterizing its elegant prose style as an absolute joy to browse.
Lynn's positive review celebrates Pat Rogers's reference work for gathering essential facts regarding Johnson in a single volume. Lynn praises Rogers for providing a sensible, fair, and independent assessment of difficult evidence, particularly in entries tracking sexual behavior and historical arguments surrounding masochistic practices. The review notes the inclusion of brief reading lists, a bibliography, a chronology, and a generous index.
With an introductory essay by Nagashima on Johnson studies in Japan.
Rogers analyzes the intellectual impact of the Chatterton affair on the Literary Club, focusing on how Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Edmond Malone navigated the Rowleyan controversy. Rogers argues that the Club’s eventual rejection of the poems' authenticity was a scholarly decision rooted in a shared "literary" mentality and classical training. Johnson first encountered the Rowley claims via Goldsmith in 1771, greeting them with laughter and later conducting a skeptical "enquiry" in Bristol with Boswell in 1776. While Johnson acknowledged Chatterton's poetic "genius," he remained "fully convinced" of the imposture, frequently aligning it with the Macpherson/Ossian forgeries. Malone and Thomas Warton provided the formal scholarly demolition of Rowley, using palaeography and literary history to expose the fraud. Rogers concludes that the Club’s intervention established an empirical baseline for subsequent Romantic scholarship, as these "classically trained literary gents" prioritized textual philology and historical context over antiquarian credulity.
English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920
Lynn's mixed review outlines Linde Katritzky's thought experiment comparing the works of Junius and Johnson. The review describes Katritzky's attempt to fill biographical gaps between 1768 and 1771 and her challenge to the traditional attribution of the Junius letters to Sir Philip Francis. Lynn finds the core conclusion that Junius resembles nobody as closely as Johnson nearly plausible, though he notes that Johnson's distaste for Junius's impudence makes a shared identity unlikely.
Reading Lessons: Rasselas with The Matrix
Rosenberg recounts reworking a syllabus to pair Johnson's Rasselas with the 1999 film The Matrix. Students identified uncanny resonances, seeing the film's virtual world as a "Happy Valley." Both texts explore "choice of life" and exiting a delusive reality. Rosenberg used Aravamudan's Tropicopolitans to introduce concepts of the sublime and the failure of vision in Rasselas. This complicated the film's simpler enlightenment narrative. The article contrasts "hovering" in The Matrix (signifying enlightenment) with the "impossible hovering" (the "Dissertation on Flying") in Rasselas, which muddles technology and ethics.
The Making of the English Literary Canon: From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century
Ross examines the transition from a rhetorical, producer-oriented canon to an objectivist, consumer-oriented model during the eighteenth century. Ross situates Johnson as the final significant proponent of a residual rhetoricist understanding of literary value, resisting the ascendant "objective rationalism" that sought to systematize the canon through scientific taxonomy and aesthetics. While contemporaries like Warton used "the logic of differentiation" to categorize poets by imaginative faculty, Johnson maintains that value resides in the "essential uniformity of human nature" and "just representations of general nature." Ross argues Johnson uses the "language and gestures of objectivist thought," such as the test of time and the figure of the common reader, as tactical rhetorical devices rather than self-justifying logic. For Johnson, the act of judgment remains a "subordinate and instrumental" art requiring personal divestment to reach a "natural state of general desire" where the reader and text achieve commensurability through universal truth. Ross concludes that Johnson’s refusal to treat literature as a self-enclosed field distinguishes his "structure of conviction" from the modernizing aesthetic theories of his era.
Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary': A Lecture Presented at the Huntington Library May 27, 2009 on the Occasion of the Opening of the Exhibition 'Samuel Johnson: Literary Giant of the Eighteenth Century
A keepsake of Rothschild’s wide-ranging introduction to the Dictionary to mark the opening of the Huntington’s exhibition in 2009.
Johnsoniana: From 'The Initiation of a Young Irishman' by Frank McCort
Rothschild presents McCourt’s "moving account" of discovering Johnson’s "massive folio" in the New York Public Library. The text details McCourt’s fascination with Johnson’s "precious and startling" definitions, such as those for "oats" and "lexicographer." It highlights the "intellectual stimulation" McCourt derived from Johnson’s "rugged honesty" and "manful correctness." Rothschild notes McCourt’s identification with Johnson as a "struggling underdog" who "clawed his way up through genius." The text emphasizes the "venerably human" connection McCourt felt with the "harmless drudge," noting that Johnson’s "pithy wisdom" served as a "spiritual and intellectual guide" during McCourt’s "initiation" into American life. It concludes that Johnson’s "literary power" remains "accessible and stimulating" across centuries.
Success and Failure in Grub-Street: Samuel Johnson and Percival Stockdale
Toil and Envy: Unsuccessful Responses to Johnson's Lives of the Poets
'Pleasure or Weariness': Additions to and Exclusions from the Lives of the Poets
Rounce scrutinizes the backgrounds and contexts of writers added to or excluded from the Lives of the Poets. By examining the roles of both Johnson and the consortium of booksellers, Rounce explains that many selections were driven by copyright holdings rather than purely aesthetic choices. The study explores why poets such as Blackmore, Yalden, and Watts were included while others like Churchill or Smart were not. Rounce concludes that the work was intended as a marketable product rather than a comprehensive critical history.
Rounce analyzes Johnson’s "morbid melancholy" and his "horrible depressive paralysis of the will." The article argues that Johnson’s "Christian moralism" viewed suffering as an "enlightened response to radical evil." Rounce details Johnson’s "self-scourging" prayers and his "irrational guilt" following the death of his wife and mother. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "sympathetic tolerance" for the "poor and outcast," noting his "unremitting struggle" to write "enduring books" against a "background of an unstable existence." Rounce review’s Johnson’s "functional powerlessness" during crises of "melancholic hypochondria" and his "intense interest" in "medical terminology" to explain his "movement disorder." The article argues that Johnson’s "suffering was a furnace" that forged his "most influential works." Rounce concludes that Johnson’s "pious death" was the "final triumph" of his "indefatigable sense of reason" over "restless doubt and horror."
L'età di Johnson: La letteratura inglese del secondo Settecento
Russell draws attention to a full quotation from James Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides in which Johnson asserts that Hume is a "Tory by chance" but a "Hobbist" in principle. Russell argues that this remark, often truncated in secondary literature, reveals Johnson's recognition of a deep link between Hume's "unfavourable" religious views and his political ideology. The article suggests that Johnson's characterization accurately reflects the "atheistic" or anti-Christian intentions of the Treatise, positioning Hume as the eighteenth-century successor to Thomas Hobbes in the eyes of the orthodox. Russell concludes that Johnson’s observation provides significant insight into the historical and ideological reception of Humean philosophy.
Architecture and the Lexicographers: Three Studies in Eighteenth-Century Publications, Pt. III: Samuel Johnson and A Dictionary of the English Language
The Encyclopaedic Dictionary in the Eighteenth Century: Architecture, Arts and Crafts vol. 4, Samuel Johnson: 'A Dictionary of the English Language'
Publisher's blurb: "The first three chapters describe Johnson's pre-dictionary life, the creation of the dictionary (including citations from Johnson's original Plan), and his treatment of architectural subjects. Following his original preface, letterpress articles portray architectural subjects using quotations to illustrate words and meanings. Such rich, linguistic illustration was unknown to philology before the work of "the harmless drudge." The original title pages of volume one and two are included." Critical reception highlights this compilation as a valuable archival tool that occasionally lacks editorial depth. Arciszewska and Porset praise the accessibility of "raw material" and its treatment of architecture as a "cultural practice." Conversely, Gomme argues the content reveals a "limited and static" eighteenth-century knowledge base. Chambers provides the sharpest critique, likening the narrow thematic selection to a car consisting only of "bodywork" and suggesting the editor remains "uncomfortable" with the historical period. The work is viewed as a convenient resource that suffers from a lack of rigorous contextual synthesis.
Examines 700 Dictionary entries on architecture.
The Encyclopaedic Dictionary in the Eighteenth Century: Architecture, Arts and Crafts
Arciszewska examines the architectural significance of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language within Russell’s compilation. Unlike technical lexicographers, Johnson prioritizes "the words themselves" and "architecture as a cultural practice." Arciszewska notes Johnson’s involvement in the Blackfriar’s Bridge debates and his collaboration with Gwynn. She praises his ability to register "idiomatic uses" and demonstrate how architectural terms like "backstairs" structured the "linguistic sphere" through metonymy.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Gomme's review of Russell's five-volume collection of eighteenth-century encyclopedic writings on architecture disputes the claim that these works provide a "systematic conspectus of contemporary knowledge," revealing instead the limited, static nature of public knowledge largely copied from earlier sources. Gomme notes that Johnson "pillaged" Moxon's Mechanick Exercises for architectural definitions more than any other source, though the encyclopaedists' limited knowledge focused on style over construction. The review observes that Johnson often relied on non-specialist knowledge and technical dictionaries, sometimes producing incorrect definitions, while his quotations from Shakespeare and Dryden far outnumber those from technical manuals. Gomme criticizes the edition for "slack scholarship," inadequate indexes, and a needlessly lengthy biography of Johnson that includes irrelevant asides regarding Mozart and Beethoven.
Chambers notes the excerpts successfully represent the epistemological shift from curiosity cabinets to taxonomic structures. However, he finds the resulting selection (only architectural and military excerpts) is like a car that consists only of the bodywork, and criticizes Russell for seemingly being uncomfortable with the material and the period.
Ruxin details the providential, unexpected acquisition of an association copy of MacLaurin’s Essays in Verse (third edition, c. 1775; 1778), a Scottish judge, lawyer, and member of the "Edinburgh Enlightenment" who hosted Johnson in 1773 and remained a close friend to Boswell. This volume contains Boswell’s signature, an inscription, and a handwritten table of contents, while featuring a Latin epitaph for MacLaurin’s father amended by Johnson himself. Ruxin focuses on the poem "On Johnson’s Dictionary," which Boswell noted and Johnson lauded as the "best" imitation and caricature of his Latinate style. MacLaurin turns scientific language to the unscientific purposes of poetry, using thirty-three "hard" words of Latin origin found in the Dictionary—such as anthropopathy, vectitation, and geoponics—to satirize the plight of a "depauperated bard." Ruxin provides a linguistic breakdown and full paraphrastic translation of the poem, contrasting MacLaurin’s playful wit and the social milieu of Boswell’s circle with the vitriolic maliciousness of James Callendar. Callendar, an anonymous author who attacked Johnson, was later commissioned by Jefferson to write a libelous attack on Adams.
On Boswell’s inscribed copy of John MacLaurin’s Essays in Verse, including the poem “On Johnson’s Dictionary” (reproduced here).
Ruxin praises Damrosch for recreating the 'vividly human' context of the Literary Club. The review emphasizes the 'complex commitment' to conversation as a 'force of social cohesiveness.' Ruxin argues that the work avoids hagiography by recording Johnson’s 'prejudices' and 'explosive reactions.' The critique notes that the 'massive solidity' of the group’s intellectual plan transformed eighteenth-century 'sociability' into an 'architectonic' legacy.
Avoiding the 'Many-Headed Monster': Wesley and Johnson on Enthusiasm
'I Dearly Love to Praise Old Friends': Dr. Burney and Dr. Johnson
Sabor discusses Dr. Burney's devotion to Johnson, focusing on the three decades between Johnson's death in 1784 and Burney's own in 1814. Burney secretly protected Johnson by abridging letters to Boswell, concealing that Johnson wrote the dedication for Burney's An Account of the... Commemoration of Handel because of Johnson's insensitivity to music. Sabor recounts Burney's initial aversion to Boswell as a biographer and his later support for The Life. As a reviewer for the Monthly Review, Burney fiercely defended Johnson against critics like Mason and Walpole, acknowledging Johnson's shortcomings but praising his "original and impressive" wit and wisdom. Burney's later work compiling Rees's Cyclopaedia led him to identify increasingly with Johnson as a "Lexiographic Slave."
Sabor focuses on the final twenty-two years of Johnson’s life, a period characterized by relative financial security following the grant of a Civil List pension in 1762. The article explores the significant social and intellectual partnerships that defined this era, most notably Johnson's meeting with Boswell and his deep intimacy with the Thrale family at Streatham Park. Sabor documents Johnson’s major late achievements, including his edition of Shakespeare, the account of his Scottish travels, and his final masterpiece, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. The narrative details Johnson's extensive travels to Devon, the Hebrides, Wales, and Paris, alongside his active "clubbability" in founding the Essex Head club. Sabor also recounts the bitterness following the death of Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale's marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The article concludes by chronicling Johnson's physical decline from dropsy and asthma, his generous bequests to Francis Barber, and his final interment in Westminster Abbey.
Reading and Teaching Rasselas in Kyoto
Saito recounts teaching Rasselas in a graduate course using Lukacs's Theory of the Novel as a framework. Students offered varied, modernized interpretations: one saw the Prince's endless pursuit of reason; another applied Lukacs's Bildungsroman model; a third detected Neo-Platonism; a fourth compared the quest to Waiting for Godot. Saito feels he failed to convey Johnson's historical context, particularly the stable "sublunary nature of man." Johnson psychologized happiness as "wanting" but remained pre-modern. Saito reflects on his own study of modernism and suggests his appreciation of Johnson may be a nostalgic "journey home."
Sandlin examines two political homilies to reveal how Johnson’s religious views undergird his political convictions. Johnson identifies the human heart, rather than social structures, as the source of evil and argues that civil government lacks the power to ensure happiness without public virtue. Sandlin explains Johnson's belief that the magistrate must foster religion to prevent tyranny and anarchy. For Johnson, individual responsibility and orthodox Christianity remain the only safeguards for a just and virtuous society.
Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712–1831
'This Wild Strain of Imagination': Samuel Johnson and John Hawkesworth on Wonder
This text examines the critical exchange between Johnson and Hawkesworth regarding 'wonder' and the aesthetics of the fantastic. While Johnson’s Rambler No. 4 dismisses 'heroic romance' and its 'machines and expedients' in favor of realistic fiction that exhibits 'life in its true state,' Hawkesworth defends supernatural narratives as essential for engaging 'the passions.' Johnson rejects the fantastic not due to ineffectiveness, but because he fears its power to 'produce effects almost without the intervention of the will.' The study highlights how Johnson’s Rasselas engages the 'affect of the fantastic' through exoticism while 'naturalizing' its wonders. Johnson acknowledges a 'universal truth' in the supernatural via Imlac’s speech on apparitions, suggesting a persistent fascination underlying modern skepticism. Both critics agree that the fantastic provides 'new gratifications' for an 'unsatisfied' curiosity, differing only on the moral safety of such engagement.
Santesso discusses using Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare in undergraduate courses. He notes that Johnson often seems un-modern to students, but this "foreignness" is useful for getting students to analyze Shakespeare, a figure often considered above criticism. Johnson's self-assured and unhesitating criticism, such as his famous declaration about Shakespeare's addiction to puns ("let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished"), encourages reflection. In teaching King Lear, Johnson's refusal to accept Cordelia's death and his endorsement of the Tate ending jolts students into examining the emotional impact of drama and their own naive reactions, ultimately restoring a sense of strangeness and difficulty to the otherwise sacred text.
Doing Philosophy with Samuel Johnson: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 2006
Johnson functions as an informal, true philosopher, uniquely able to negotiate the dialectic between the abstract and the concrete. He is not concerned with universal laws but with local and particular moral realities. Johnson's famed stone-kicking response to Bishop Berkeley is seen as a joke based on commonsense, while David Hume's skepticism posed a deeper challenge. The author champions Johnson's magisterial review of Soame Jenyns as a philosophical triumph, demonstrating a profound understanding of human misery and the futility of facile optimism.
Who Annotated My Copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson?
Savage details his discovery of a heavily annotated, dilapidated two-volume set (Volumes 2 and 3) of a "bootleg" 1792 Dublin edition of Boswell's *Life of Johnson*. Analysis of the marginalia shows the "Marginalist" was not a contemporary of Johnson, but was born on April 13, 1773. The writer was well-read, highly opinionated, and demonstrated insider knowledge of people and finances of Johnson's circle, suggesting a privileged contemporary who lived after Johnson's time and outside of Ireland. The article inventories comments classified by what they reveal: refutations of Johnson’s opinions, knowledge of private rumors, and detailed financial information. The identity of the annotator remains a mystery.
Hodge Gets His Share of Dr. Johnson's Fame
Sawer reports on the unveiling of a life-size bronze statue of Samuel Johnson’s cat, Hodge, outside Johnson’s House in Gough Square. Created by sculptor Jon Bickley, the statue depicts Hodge sitting upon a copy of the Dictionary next to an empty oyster shell. The article cites Boswell’s account of Johnson’s personal care for the cat, specifically his habit of buying oysters himself to ensure the servants did not resent the animal. The text also notes that Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary included feline-centric definitions, such as describing a mouse as a beast "destroyed by cats." Funded by the late Dick Caws and spearheaded by Ann Pembroke, the monument serves as a focal point for visitors and a tribute to Johnson’s well-documented compassion for his pet.
'A Spirit of Contradiction': Samuel Johnson and the Law
This report covers the Johnson tercentenary celebration at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The event was distinguished by talks from influential, non-specialist authors: Leo Damrosch (on Johnson and Rousseau), Christopher Ricks (on "sound and sense"), and David Ferry (reading his Johnson-dependent poetry). The event emphasized that one needn't be a specialist to write compellingly on Johnson. At the formal dinner, Robert DeMaria, Jr. offered a modified toast to the "present moment. Esto praesentia," urging attendees to appreciate the "gratifications that are before us" in the Johnsonian spirit.
Scanlan investigates Johnson’s "high-spirited conversation" and his "snarling muse" of early satire. The article argues that Johnson’s humor was "fundamentally good-humored" and designed to "raise mirth." Scanlan details Johnson’s "deft, on-the-spot wit" recorded by Boswell, such as his quip about "precedency between a louse and a flea." The narrative highlights how Johnson’s work on the Dictionary elevated the "significance of mirth," defining "comick" and "merriment" with "airiness." Scanlan review’s Johnson’s "ironic recitation" of Thomas Gray’s lines and his "burst of laughter" that Measure’s a man’s "size of understanding." The article argues that Johnson used humor to puncture "intellectual pride" and "positiveness," often through "absurd pictures" like the "milk of bulls." Scanlan concludes that Johnson’s "easy social jocularity" was a "moral necessity" that allowed him to "toss and gore" several persons while maintaining "sympathetic tolerance."
Analyzes Samuel Johnson's Toryism as a complex cultural enterprise, not merely idiosyncratic grumblings or sentimental Jacobitism. Scherwatzky employs post-Namierian historiography to connect Johnson's ideology and writing style to eighteenth-century political events. The central argument is that Johnson incorporates a political agenda within an aesthetics of universal truth, challenging the progressive individualism associated with Whigs. The dissertation contends Johnson's concern for universalism serves the political interest he advocates, shaping the world rhetorically through language. Chapters focus on Johnson's opposition to Walpole, his disillusionment with Patriotism (affecting the Life of Savage and The Vanity of Human Wishes), and his resistance to Pitt's imperialist policies (Rasselas).
Review Essay: Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Politics [review of The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd ed., by Donald J. Greene; Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788, by Paul Kléber Monod; Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America, by Isaac Kramnick; and Politics in the Age of Fox, Pitt and Liverpool: Continuity and Transformation, by John W. Derry]
Samuel Johnson and Autobiography: Reflection, Ambivalence, and 'Split Intentionality'
Scherwatzky analyzes Johnson’s epistemological ambivalence toward autobiography, despite being an expert practitioner of the broader biographical genre. Using Louis Renza’s theory of “split intentionality,” he explores the tension created when the flux of private experience (the "I") is transformed into a public statement (the "he"). He argues that Johnson's simultaneous attraction and resistance to the genre dramatize his awareness of the existential distance between the self and its creations.
Scherwatzky analyzes Johnson’s fictional works, primarily Rasselas and the narrative periodical essays. The article frames Johnson as a writer who used fiction to explore the "vacuity of life" and the "phantoms of hope." Scherwatzky details the rapid composition of Rasselas, written to pay his mother’s funeral expenses, and notes its "notorious pessimism." The narrative explores how Johnson’s "Christian moralism" shapes the genre of the "Oriental tale," replacing linear plot with "succinct moral lessons." Scherwatzky argues that Johnson’s fiction assumes an "easily distractible reader," leading him to structure his stories in discrete, digestible chapters full of "extractable" aphorisms. The article highlights Johnson’s "sympathetic tolerance" for human weakness, which allows him to create characters that model "self-conscious discernment." Scherwatzky concludes that Johnson’s fiction is an extension of his didactic essays, designed to arrest the reader’s attention and lead them toward "moral good."
Schmidt characterizes Johnson as the defining "moralist" and critic of the eighteenth century, whose work represents the transition from patronage to the professional marketplace. Johnson establishes a canon based on "the common sense of readers" and the "test of time," prioritizing general nature over technical artifice. Schmidt emphasizes Johnson's rejection of the "cant" of formalist criticism in favor of a biographical approach that treats the poet as a "representative man." By focusing on the lives of poets from Cowley to Gray, Johnson asserts that literature must "enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it." Schmidt highlights Johnson's struggle with the "lexicographer’s log-work" and his eventual triumph in the Lives of the Poets, which Schmidt describes as a "monumental" act of cultural consolidation. Johnson’s critical legacy is defined by his commitment to "truth" and his skepticism of the "unnatural" in poetry, such as the pastoral and the metaphysical conceit.
Anglicanism in the Age of Johnson: The Doctrine of Conditional Salvation
Scholtz analyzes the dominant Anglican doctrine of conditional salvation in the age of Samuel Johnson, contrasting it with the unconditional grace of the Protestant Reformation. Restoration and eighteenth-century divines emphasized salvation as contingent upon both faith and sincere endeavor in good works, rejecting the Roman Catholic doctrine of merit while maintaining a morality driven by self-interest and the powerful incentives of eternal rewards and punishments. The author contends that this conditionalism, despite acknowledging human depravity and the assistance of grace, fostered a state of religious anxiety and constant moral striving, fundamentally opposing the Augustinian assurance of predestination and justification by faith alone.
Samuel Johnson on Human Nature: Natural Depravity and the Doctrine of Original Sin
Illustrations of Authority: Quotations in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
Schreyer examines the function of illustrative quotations in Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), an innovative feature hailed as a milestone in English lexicography. Analysis of author frequency confirms Shakespeare and Dryden as the most cited, providing over 25% of all quotations. Johnson selected these authors to capture the "wells of English undefiled" from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration, a time he considered the language's Golden Age. The essay argues that the primary function of the quotations was philological—to act as authoritative "testimony" supporting a word's existence and sense. The claim that Johnson had a dominant educational or moral agenda is unsupported by the Preface, which notes the abandonment of original encyclopedic plans due to practical constraints.
Discovering the Human: Life Science and the Arts in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
Theory and Tradition in Eighteenth-Century Studies
Schwartz investigates the resistance of eighteenth-centuryists to contemporary theory, attributing this stance to the period's own satirical critique of intellectual systems. Schwartz argues that the "excessive professionalization" and "jargon-ridden prose" of modern theorists alienate the broad reading public Johnson sought to engage. Referring to Johnson's Falkland's Islands, Schwartz notes that the "caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation," making single-minded descriptions of human life impossible. Schwartz identifies the elevation of the critic over the author as a form of "critical arrogance" reminiscent of the "word-catchers" ridiculed by Pope. Schwartz disputes the notion that traditional historical methods are "exhausted," suggesting that true radicalism lies in the methodological traditionalist who uncovers fresh historical truths. Schwartz concludes that scholarship must remain grounded in history and "humility" to capture the mysteries of life and art.
Seager evaluates Johnson’s contributions to the "Masterpiece of Biography," focusing on the Life of Savage and Lives of the Poets. The article argues that Johnson redefined the genre by leading thoughts into "domestic privacies" and "minute details of daily life." Seager details the "extraordinary moderation" Johnson showed in demanding only 200 guineas for the Lives, a sum booksellers later doubled. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "skeptical historical dialectic," which questioned both the truth of events and the "motives of the witnesses." Seager notes that Johnson’s biography of Savage was "deeply sympathetic and wholly unillusioned," written while he was still "shabbily dressed" in Grub Street. The article concludes that Johnson’s biographical ideal was "elusive," seeking to record "silent excellencies" when no one is looking. Seager review’s Johnson’s "unfulfilled designs" for lives of Chaucer and Shakespeare, maintaining that Johnson’s own "biographical thinking" revolutionized the preservation of the "art of life."
Johnson's Hebrides: Thoughts on a Dying Social Order
Broken Oaths: David Sexton Reflects on Dr. Johnson's Mastery of the Art of Making Resolutions
Why Dr. Johnson Was the First Mr. Everyman
Seymour marks the centenary of Everyman’s Library by tracing its origins to Joseph Dent’s formative encounter with Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Dent’s reverence for Johnson’s scholarship led him to select the biography as the inaugural two volumes of the series in 1906. The text draws a parallel between the library’s general editor, Rhys—known as "Mr. Everyman"—and Johnson, noting their shared capacity for prolific, insightful commentary across diverse literary genres under strict deadlines. Seymour identifies numerous authors central to Johnson’s Dictionary and personal devotions, such as Law and Baxter, who became staples of the Everyman collection. Johnson remains well-represented in the series through Lives of the Poets, The Rambler, and Rasselas, though Seymour notes the omission of his poetry. The analysis positions Johnson as the spiritual predecessor to the "Everyman" ideal of comprehensive, accessible scholarship.
The Paula Peyraud Collection: Samuel Johnson and Women Writers in Georgian Society
This report reviews the Paula Peyraud Collection auction in May 2009, which featured over 150 portraits and hundreds of items, with a decided tilt toward the Bluestockings. The collection realized £1.6 million, demonstrating strong interest despite the global economy. Highlights included a portrait of Boswell's mother, two copies of the first edition of the Dictionary, and an important Johnson letter to Piozzi purchased for the Hyde Collection. The Beinecke purchased Piozzi’s heavily annotated eight-volume set of The Spectator for £115,000. Individual collectors also secured items, showing a continued private interest in Johnsoniana.
An account of the sale of the Peyraud Collection at Bloomsbury Auctions in May 2009.
Subjectivity: A DeleuzoGuattarian Study of Samuel Johnson's Selected Works: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
The 'Plexed Artistry' of Nabokov and Johnson
Vladimir Nabokov invokes Samuel Johnson in his novel Pale Fire, notably presenting the poet John Shade as a Johnsonian prototype interrogating subjective meaning-making. Shanafelt argues that Nabokov's affinity for Johnson stems from a shared aesthetic resistance to the dominant secular empiricist models of linguistic meaning prevalent in their respective eras. Exploring their epistemological contexts and literary works, the chapter delineates parallels between Johnson and Nabokov concerning their investment in the aesthetics of desire and trauma in relation to the complexities and limitations of linguistic meaning and representation.
Shanafelt investigates Johnson’s "scruples of infidelity" and his "skeptical historical dialectic." The article argues that Johnson’s "radical self-division" led him to "wrestle with complexity" in religious belief. Shanafelt details Johnson’s "inattention to religion" in his youth and his "thinking in earnest" after reading Law’s Serious Call. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "sophisticated understanding" of how "word registration" depends on "accident and custom," creating a "skeptical" approach to "textual editing." Shanafelt review’s Johnson’s "polemical attack" on "political illusions" and his "intense interest" in "French libraries" during his travels. The article argues that Johnson was "one of the least dogmatic of major writers," always willing to "entertain multiple points of view." Shanafelt concludes that Johnson’s "doubt was a sacred" part of his "intellectual homeland," designed to puncture "hypocrisy at the root."
Dr. Johnson and Babu Shyam Sunder Dass as Lexicographers
The Religious and Political Character of the Parish of St. Clement Danes
Sharp examines why Johnson favoured the parish church of St. Clement Danes. The essay details the church's High Church character, noting its Cecil family patronage (linked to Nonjuring), frequent communion, elaborate altar decorations signifying specific eucharistic theology, and tradition of daily prayers. It profiles notable High Church clergy associated with the parish, like Thomas Lewis and John Rogers, and highlights sermons preached by future Nonjurors and prominent Tories, including Atterbury and Sacheverell. Sharp also discusses the presence of known Nonjurors and Jacobites within the congregation and surrounding neighborhood, alongside High Tory/Jacobite publishing activity nearby, suggesting a congenial atmosphere for Johnson's principles.
A Samuel Johnson Celebration Recalls His Wit and Wisdom
Time — Now and Then, with Particular Reference to Johnson's Attitude to the Keeping of It
John Law, Dr. Johnson, and Money, Trade and Gambling
A comparison of the financial theories of 18th-century economist and convicted murderer John Law with the conventional views of Johnson. Law understood that money's value lies in its exchange function, not its intrinsic metallic value, a discovery that led to the advent of paper money and credit. Johnson, however, remained blind to this revolution, defining money strictly as "metal coined." Furthermore, Johnson erroneously believed trade produced "no capital accession of wealth." The comparison reveals Johnson's failure to grasp the new economic realities created by banking and paper money.
Elements in eighteenth-century connections
Making Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': An Author-Publisher and His Support Network, Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections
Sher examines the publication history of the early editions of the Life of Samuel Johnson, focusing on Boswell's dual role as author and publisher. Using underused documents such as impression accounts and sales records, Sher argues that the success of the 1791 first edition resulted from a blend of Boswell's biographical talent and the assistance of a devoted support network. This network included the bookseller Charles Dilly, the printer Henry Baldwin, and 'the Gang'—Edmond Malone, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and John Courtenay—who provided psychological, financial, and editorial support. Sher describes how Boswell assumed full financial risk, made critical decisions regarding the quarto format, paper quality, and typography, and orchestrated publicity stunts to protect his literary property. The text contrasts the successful first edition with the 'muddled' second edition (1793), which suffered from Boswell's increasing dysfunction and poor publishing decisions. Sher also details how the resilient Boswellian network maintained and expanded the book's reputation following the author's death in 1795, ensuring its status as a biographical masterpiece through subsequent editions supervised by Malone and others. Sher challenges the traditional view of Boswell as a mere 'reporter,' highlighting his sophisticated, if occasionally flawed, engagement with the eighteenth-century book trade. Chapter 1, 'Introduction,' establishes the book’s fundamental premise that James Boswell did not merely author The Life of Samuel Johnson but acted as its primary publisher, using a robust support network of London-based friends and book-trade professionals to manage the financial risks and logistical complexities of the 1791 quarto edition. Chapter 2, 'Publishing the First Edition,' analyzes the critical production decisions made by the author-publisher—including the choice of an expensive quarto format over folio and the rejection of a £1,000 copyright offer—while detailing how personal loans and professional expertise from his network stabilized his precarious financial and mental state. Chapter 3, 'Accounting for the First Edition,' provides a granular examination of the publication’s financial records, revealing that while paper and printing accounted for the vast majority of the £943 in expenses, the strategic distribution of presentation copies and high wholesale returns yielded a substantial profit of over £1,500. Chapter 4, 'Selling the First Edition,' chronicles the commercial success of the London trade sale and the "Country Sale" in English towns and Scotland, noting that while the high price of the quarto format encouraged cheaper, unauthorized Dublin reprints, the London book trade remained the dominant engine of the book's initial distribution. Chapter 5, 'Beyond the First Edition,' critiques the "muddled" 1793 octavo second edition, arguing that the author-publisher's increasing dysfunction led to a chaotic jumble of front matter and reactive, additive revisions that caused production delays and stagnant sales. Chapter 6, 'Life after Boswell,' documents the posthumous stewardship of the biography by the surviving support network, illustrating how their dedication to textual augmentation and "honorary copyright" successfully established the work as a biographical masterpiece under the Cadell & Davies imprint. Chapter 7, 'Conclusion,' evaluates the legacy of this author-publisher model, suggesting that the material form of the book—from its imposing size to its meticulous layout—was instrumental in shaping the public perception of Samuel Johnson as a monumental national figure.
The Birth of Shakespeare Studies: Commentators from Rowe (1709) to Boswell—Malone (1821)
Sherbo provides a chronological survey of the rise of Shakespearean criticism and editing, beginning with Nicholas Rowe and concluding with the 1821 "third variorum" edition by James Boswell the younger and Edmond Malone. The study highlights the transition from amateur appreciation to rigorous historical and philological investigation. Sherbo examines the significant roles played by Alexander Pope, Lewis Theobald, and William Warburton, but devotes particular attention to the mid-century influence of Samuel Johnson. Johnson's 1765 edition is analyzed for its landmark preface and its departure from idiosyncratic conjecture in favor of common-sense interpretation. The text explores the subsequent collaborative and often contentious work of George Steevens and Edmond Malone, illustrating how their meticulous research into Elizabethan context and language established the foundations of the Boswell-Malone edition. Sherbo argues that modern Shakespeare studies are deeply indebted to these early editors' efforts to restore and annotate the primary texts.
CGV entry 19:165. Contains much about Johnson throughout.
The Birth of Shakespeare Studies: Commentators from Rowe (1709) to Boswell–Malone (1821)
Fleeman calls the book an indispensable work for students of Shakespearian scholarship and literary history. He praises Sherbo for bringing his unrivaled experience to bear on minor commentators, identifying and displaying their work in a fascinating volume that will serve future investigators.
Kinney provides a balanced assessment of Arthur Sherbo’s study regarding the "pioneering and sometimes splendid editions" of Shakespeare produced in the eighteenth century. Sherbo details the collaborative and competitive nature of the period, noting Johnson’s reliance on Thomas Warton and the "indefatigable industry" of George Steevens. The text follows the transition of editorial authority to Edmond Malone and finally James Boswell the Younger. Kinney describes Sherbo’s work as a "useful reference tool."
Sherbo resurrects and expands upon the compilation of critical opinions originally assembled by Joseph Epes Brown in 1926. The monograph identifies a significant shortcoming in previous scholarship: the reliance on Walter Raleigh's 1915 selection of notes rather than the actual editions of Shakespeare edited by Johnson and George Steevens between 1765 and 1785. Sherbo restores some four hundred new notes and includes over 130 authors and works previously overlooked. The argument asserts that Johnson's commentary on Shakespeare is second only to the Lives of the Poets for understanding his criticism in operation. The volume details Johnson's "blind spots" regarding obscure or corrupted passages and his limited knowledge of "gutter language" while showcasing his "natural touches" and "exquisitely imagined" reflections on life. Sherbo focuses on Johnson's critical vocabulary, including terms like "harsh," "licentious," and "natural," and documents his assessments of figures such as James Boswell and Hester Piozzi. An appendix examines instances where Johnson frankly confessed a lack of understanding in Shakespeare’s plays. Chapter 1, 'Introduction,' addresses the limitations of prior scholarship by identifying the omission of critical notes from significant eighteenth-century editions of Shakespeare's plays. It argues for a comprehensive reexamination of literary commentary to better illuminate critical theories and personal insights. Chapter 2, 'Critical Opinions,' provides a dense compilation of evaluations on over 130 authors and diverse subjects, ranging from classical figures to contemporary writers. It presents these observations through direct quotations from a wide array of canonical and conversational sources. Chapter 3, 'Appendix: What Johnson Did Not "Understand" in Shakespeare’s Plays,' isolates and analyzes specific instances where the commentary confesses confusion regarding Shakespeare's language, allusions, or dramatic choices. It compares these eighteenth-century difficulties with modern editorial resolutions to assess the boundaries of historical comprehension.
Hinnant sees Sherbo's book as a useful revision of Brown's earlier compendium, providing material on Shakespeare and highlighting Johnson's broad interests. Sherbo's focus shifts toward detailed perception, but the book's main drawback is its incompleteness, forcing readers to use it alongside Brown's original volume.
Lurcock criticizes Sherbo’s supplement to Joseph Epes Brown’s 1926 compilation for its lack of utility and poor editorial execution. While acknowledging the focus on Johnson’s Shakespearian notes—an area Brown largely omitted—the reviewer identifies frequent misquotations, erroneous line numbers, and inconsistent subheadings. Lurcock argues that Sherbo’s inclusion of marginalia and ephemera fails to justify the volume’s existence, concluding that the work is a missed opportunity to provide an accessible and accurate version of Johnson’s Shakespearian criticism.
Sherbo's collected studies emphasize the factual in Johnsonian scholarship. He contributes commentary to the Hill–Powell Life of Johnson and Balderston’s Thraliana. Sherbo examines Johnson's use of Pope and Dryden in school translations and compares Johnson's letters to Piozzi with his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, noting he ameliorated unflattering remarks about Scottish cities in the latter. He analyzes Boswell’s limited knowledge of Greek and Latin and examines Piozzi's drawing on Thraliana for her British Synonymy and Anecdotes, observing the diaries' vividness was lost in the formal Anecdotes.
Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries, and English Diurnal Form, 1660–1785
Diurnal Dialectic in the Western Islands
Teaching British Literature: A Companion to The Longman Anthology of British Literature
Sherman characterizes Johnson as an "anthology in himself" whose mastery of disparate genres established him as the dominant figure of eighteenth-century letters. The article analyzes Johnson's recurring thematic preoccupations: the "dangerous prevalence of imagination," the plasticity of time, and the analytic reconstruction of loss. Sherman argues that Johnson's style uses parallel structures and shifts between Latinate and plain diction to regulate imagination by reality. The text details Johnson's dismantling of Aristotelian unities in his Shakespearean criticism, his innovative reliance on written usage for the Dictionary, and the biographical methods that favor "domestic particularities" to illuminate universal experiences. Sherman highlights Johnson's tendency toward self-interrogation and uncertainty, noting that he wields experience against fixed authority. The text concludes that Johnson's intricate style serves as a tool for sorting human complexities, urging readers toward disengagement from vain desires in favor of religious faith.
This report covers the activities of the Samuel Johnson Club of Japan (SJCJ). It summarizes Zenji Inamura's lecture on Johnson's views of biography, emphasizing the need for "minute details of daily life" and the "abolition of panegyric." It also summarizes Marlies Danziger's lecture on James Boswell's German and Swiss Travels, 1764, contrasting the scholarly research edition with the earlier trade edition and discussing themes like travel dangers, German courts, and Boswell's conflicting national consciousness and personal melancholy. The SJCJ's plans to publish a commemorative book for Johnson's tercentenary are also noted.
Jost analyzes Johnson’s Eternal Silences regarding the afterlife in his published works, contrasting this reticence with his deep suffering in private prayers. Johnson experiences self-documentation as an impossible demand, repeatedly failing to persist in keeping a diary. His anxiety about eternity stems from a fear that he was misusing the God-given gift of time. Jost argues that Johnson leaves an empty space for theology in works like Rasselas and The Rambler, explicitly pointing readers to sources of authority beyond his text.
Can a single word explain the world? In the British eighteenth century, interest comes close: it lies at the foundation of the period's thinking about finance, economics, politics, psychology, and aesthetics. Interest and Connection in the Eighteenth Century provides the first comprehensive account of interest in an era when a growing national debt created a new class of rentiers who lived off of interest, the emerging discipline of economics made self-interest an axiom of human behavior, and booksellers began for the first time to market books by calling them "interesting." Sider Jost reveals how the multiple meanings of interest allowed writers to make connections — from witty puns to deep structural analogies — among different spheres of eighteenth-century life. Challenging a long and influential tradition that reads the eighteenth century in terms of individualism, atomization, abstraction, and the hegemony of market-based thinking, this innovative study emphasizes the importance of interest as an idiom for thinking about concrete social ties, at court and in families, universities, theaters, boroughs, churches, and beyond. To "be in the interest of" or "have an interest with" another was a crucial relationship, one that supplied metaphors and habits of thought across the culture. Interest and Connection in the Eighteenth Century recovers the small, densely networked world of Hanoverian Britain and its self-consciously inventive language for talking about human connection.
Simpson reflects on Johnson's enduring influence on lexicography, noting that the Chief Editor of the *Oxford English Dictionary* still feels his spirit pervades their work. Simpson argues Johnson gave lexicography a status not seen since the classical period, using his formidable organizational powers for the task. Johnson's dictionary brought together key features—etymologies, labels, and illustrative quotations—in a coherent, elegant, and majestic two-folio text. His dedication to working fast and maintaining organization are legacies he left to successors. Johnson's concise, precise, and elegantly turned definitions, as well as his contemporary interpretations of words, remain important guides for modern lexicographers, even for terms now considered obsolete. Simpson concludes with a humorous speculation on the effect of Robbie Coltrane's Johnson caricature on contemporary scholarship.
'Only Half of His Subject': Johnson's The False Alarm and the Wilkesite Movement
Calder’s enthusiastic review of Adam Sisman’s "Boswell’s Presumptuous Task" commends the study for its compact and convincing analysis of the composition of the "Life of Samuel Johnson." The review highlights Boswell’s struggle to maintain his dignity under the patronage of Lord Lonsdale and his "extraordinary vividness" in recreating Johnson’s conversations through techniques borrowed from fiction. Calder notes Sisman’s exploration of the deep psychological bond between Boswell and Johnson, identifying both as depressives. The account describes Boswell’s objective to show a "great Christian spirit" triumphing over physical boorishness and coarse manners. Sisman’s work further addresses Boswell’s posthumous reputation, correcting the Victorian misconception of him as a mere stenographer and instead presenting him as a candid prose stylist who anticipated the modernism of Joyce and Proust. Calder emphasizes Boswell’s reliance on primary documents and his resilience despite personal vanity, alcoholism, and recurring bouts of illness.
Reviewer Dirda praises this sprightly chronicle of how Boswell labored to produce his biographical masterpiece. Sisman details Boswell’s infatuation with celebrity and his method of recasting rough notes into Johnsonese to capture his subject’s personality. The review notes that recent scholarship from the Yale Boswell factory has moved beyond Macaulay’s image of Boswell as an idiot-savant, revealing his unique literary genius. Dirda discusses the biographical hegemony of the work, noting that some critics argue it presents a skewed image of an older, blustery Johnson while neglecting the moral struggles found in his earlier writings. The account emphasizes Boswell’s persistence through debt, bereavement, and addiction to justify his existence through literature.
Sisman's study examines the genesis, methods, and difficulties Boswell encountered while writing the Life of Johnson. Sisman uses the vast existing material, including the recently discovered papers, to demonstrate that the masterpiece was not accidental, but the result of Boswell's distinct conceptual design, including his use of intimate conversations and painstaking fact-checking. Sisman illuminates Boswell's flawed character—his idleness, excessive drinking, and inability to understand the offense caused by recording friends—but confirms his enduring dedication to documenting Johnson's spoken words. The reviewer finds the account illuminating and scrupulous but lacking in Johnson's wit.
Eder reviews Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task, characterizing the work as a "biography of a book" that chronicles the six-year struggle to compose the Life of Samuel Johnson. He highlights Sisman's depiction of Boswell as a "hapless and undisciplined figure" possessing unexpected "artistic iron." Eder notes that Sisman emphasizes Boswell's meticulous research methods, such as discarding stale testimony to ensure "immediacy," while acknowledging that Boswell occasionally rewrote conversations to sound "more Johnsonian than Johnson himself." The review concludes that Sisman successfully argues for a specific genius in Boswell, whose artistry makes Johnson's genius "alive for us."
Hart disputes the scholarly value of this biography, noting it contains no original research or ideas and serves primarily as a popularization of work by Frederick A. Pottle and Marshall Waingrow. Sisman focuses on Boswell as a biographer, tracing his early life and education as preparation for writing the Life. While the narrative accurately represents Boswell’s journals and letters, Hart challenges Sisman’s interpretation of specific episodes, such as a meeting where Johnson allegedly smiled at Boswell's religious unorthodoxy. Hart argues that Sisman incorrectly favors Johnson’s conversation over his writing, which Sisman characterizes as dated. The review describes the book as an empirical study suitable for undergraduates or general readers rather than specialists. Hart concludes that Sisman fails to provide a deconstructive analysis despite his claims and relies on an outdated perspective that downplays the permanence of Johnson’s literary output, including the Preface to Shakespeare and The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Hawtree reviews Sisman’s "Boswell’s Presumptuous Task," which concentrates on the creation of the 1791 "Life of Samuel Johnson." He challenges the notion that Boswell’s surname simply denotes a "faithful chronicler" or toady, arguing that Boswell adroitly manipulated his material and anticipated the Romantic era. Sisman shows a Boswell who appears "almost superhuman" despite ruin and desperation. The review discusses Boswell’s seven-year labor on the biography as a task at odds with the age. Hawtree notes that while Sisman makes grey areas vivid, those unfamiliar with Boswell may need a book akin to Hibbert’s "personal history" of Johnson.
Hensher’s enthusiastic review of Adam Sisman’s "Boswell's Presumptuous Task" argues that Boswell’s "Life of Samuel Johnson" is the product of a "scrupulous and cunning imagination" rather than mere reportage. Hensher challenges the historical perception of Boswell as a passive amanuensis, highlighting instead his dramatic timing and comic genius. The review details iconic scenes, including the choreographed dinner with John Wilkes and Johnson’s dismissive remarks on the Ossian poems. Hensher notes that Boswell purposefully cast himself as a "romantic, credulous innocent" to provide a foil for Johnson’s "worldly cynicism." The narrative also examines Boswell’s journals, revealing a raw version of Johnson who speaks with a "strong Midlands accent" and exhibits more vulgarity than in the polished biography. Hensher describes Boswell as a paradoxical figure—simultaneously snobbish, lecherous, and "adorable"—whose honest struggle with his failings remains central to the appeal of his "colossal hoard of private papers." The abstract concludes by favoring Sisman’s focused study over more competent but less "dazzling" contemporary accounts by Piozzi and Hawkins.
Hutchinson’s approving review of Adam Sisman’s "Boswell’s Presumptuous Task" details the 1763 meeting between Boswell and Johnson at Thomas Davies’s bookshop, noting Johnson's "Caledonophobia" and Boswell’s compulsive recording of the event. The review challenges the Victorian perception of Boswell as an "assiduous buffoon" or mere stenographer, arguing instead that he intentionally "changed the nature of English-language biography" by focusing on petty habits and characteristic manners. Hutchinson highlights Sisman’s exploration of the "replacement father" dynamic between the two men and Johnson’s own eagerness for Boswell’s "ebullience" and "inquiring mind." The account follows Boswell’s note-taking habits from the Hebridean tour to his encounter with Pasquale Paoli in Corsica. Hutchinson concludes that Sisman successfully restores Boswell’s reputation as a "skilful wordsmith" and a premier figure in Scottish literature whose flawed but insecure character produced a foundational modern genre.
Johnson’s favorable review of Adam Sisman’s study of Boswell’s biographical labors characterizes the work as a narrative that reads more like a novel than a scholarly study. The account details Boswell’s seven-year "anguished" struggle to complete the biography of Johnson following the latter's death in 1784. Sisman explores the psychological and physical toll of the project, noting how depressive episodes, alcoholic binges, and failed political ambitions under Lord Lonsdale delayed the work. Johnson highlights Sisman’s effort to humanize Boswell against historical characterizations by Thomas Babington Macaulay, who dismissed the biographer as a "sot" and an "idiot." The review emphasizes Boswell’s complex nature as both a "sweet-natured innocent" and a relentless researcher whose attachment to his mentor "verged on the pathological." Ultimately, Sisman portrays the creation of the masterpiece as an all-consuming task that survived Boswell's personal failings and social humiliations.
Jones's recommended review of Sisman's study focuses on the seven-year struggle to write the biography that revolutionized the genre. Unlike previous reassessments of Boswell's character, Sisman examines the professional questions regarding how the author translated a life into art. Jones praises Sisman's "sympathetic hand," noting that Johnson's "lackey" emerges as a brilliant storyteller who crafted a character that "lived and breathed." The review highlights Boswell’s innovation in attempting to tell the "whole truth" about his subject, a goal considered a "startling innovation" in his time.
This approving review describes Sisman's study of the creative process behind the 1791 biography of Johnson. Sisman presents Boswell as a Scottish gentleman who used his twenty-one-year friendship with Johnson to secure literary celebrity and access to London circles. The review details the innovative, informal tone of the journal documenting their tour of the Hebrides and notes the personal obstacles Boswell faced, including alcoholism and the death of his wife. Sisman emphasizes the unabashedly prominent position Boswell occupies within the text and records contemporary criticism regarding the exposure of Johnson's idiosyncratic habits and temper. The reviewer concludes that Sisman successfully exposes the inner mechanisms of Boswell's masterpiece.
Kirsch's approving review of Adam Sisman's monograph, "Boswell's Presumptuous Task," examines the seven-year period from 1784 to 1791 during which Boswell researched and composed the "Life of Samuel Johnson." The review highlights the contrast between Johnson’s established reputation as a "man of letters" and Boswell’s perceived frivolity and "mediocre" character. Kirsch details the competitive landscape of Johnsonian biography following the subject's death, noting the "dull, censorious" work of John Hawkins and the "self-justifying memoir" of Piozzi. Sisman’s narrative focuses on how Boswell's personal failures—including a stalled legal career, alcoholism, and humiliation by Lord Lonsdale—fueled his meticulous dedication to the biography as a means of achieving worldly influence. Kirsch commends Sisman for contributing to the 20th-century rehabilitation of Boswell, moving beyond Macaulay's dismissive view of him as a "mere stenographer" to recognize him as a deliberate and imaginative literary artist.
McGrath reviews Adam Sisman’s account of the creation of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, characterizing the work as a "smart and very readable" biography of a biography. He notes Sisman’s success in assembling a "single narrative" from Yale's extensive Boswell papers, which dispute the image of Boswell as a "slavish copyist." McGrath emphasizes that Boswell was a "highly conscious writer" who invented the "celebrity profile" and "feature journalism." While Sisman is praised for his "closely focused" portrait of Boswell’s "obsessive" research and ditherings, McGrath observes that the Life remains a "distorted" picture, as Boswell spent only roughly 400 days with Johnson. He concludes that Boswell’s "love of gossip and of dialogue" makes him more influential to modern prose than Johnson himself.
McLynn's mixed review of Sisman’s Boswell’s Presumptuous Task examines the creation of the Life of Samuel Johnson. McLynn highlights Sisman’s central argument that Boswell was a sophisticated craftsman rather than a "mere stenographer," noting that Boswell spent only 425 days in Johnson's company over 21 years, necessitating extensive research and interviews. The review emphasizes Sisman's psychological acuity, particularly his theory that Boswell falsified accounts of Johnson's marriage to conceal Johnson's financial motives and to assuage Boswell's own guilt regarding his wife, Margaret. McLynn identifies differences in the subjects' conservatism, characterizing Johnson as "calculating" and Boswell as a "natural rebel." While praising Sisman's "lucid and economical exposition," McLynn disputes several historical claims regarding Jacobitism and notes that the work offers little new information compared to Peter Martin’s 1999 biography. The review concludes by reflecting on the inherent difficulties of biographical writing, specifically the inaccessible nature of a subject's private sexual behavior.
Mullan reviews Boswell's Presumptuous Task, an account of James Boswell's creation of the Life of Johnson and his effort to surpass rival biographies. Mullan emphasizes Boswell's new ambition for biography: capturing a personality through quirks and evanescent talk, an inclusiveness that angered contemporaries. The review praises Sisman's focus on the logistical challenges and self-doubt involved in the seven-year struggle to complete the Life after Johnson's death. Mullan notes that the work highlights the "nice correction" by Edmond Malone, who rewrote quotations to align with what he believed Johnson was likely to have said, illustrating that Johnson was "created as well as remembered."
Olson's enthusiastic review praises Adam Sisman's biography of James Boswell's major work. Sisman focuses primarily on the creation of the 1791 biography of Johnson, detailing how the project consumed Boswell. Sisman minimizes Boswell's drinking and wenching, emphasizing instead Boswell's severe bouts of depression. The text outlines how Boswell established modern biographical procedures by recording personal experiences, collecting correspondence, verifying incidents, and shaping materials into a literary creation. Sisman underscores the assistance of Edmund Malone, who coached and edited Boswell, alongside the hectoring of friends. Olson concludes that Sisman writes with immense assurance and suavity, fashioning his own work of art.
Quinn reviews Sisman’s account of the seven-year struggle to complete the Life of Johnson. Described as a 'quivering jelly' of sensibility compared to Johnson's 'solid mass of good sense,' Boswell overcame persistent melancholy, dissipation, and the rival publication by Hawkins to finish his 'presumptuous task'. Sisman identifies Malone as a 'shadowy hero' whose editorial labor and revisions are more prevalent in the manuscript than Boswell's own. The text details how Boswell’s biographical method—specifically the 'fearless report of private conversations'—alarmed contemporaries and earned him a reputation for untrustworthiness. Margaret Boswell appears as a 'quietly heroic figure' enduring her husband's infidelities and depression. Quinn concludes that Sisman elegantly reaffirms Boswell as a 'fascinating and oddly lovable' individual whose life effectively ended upon the biography's publication in 1791.
Seymour’s approving review of Adam Sisman’s Boswell's Presumptuous Task analyzes the work’s focus on the creative artifice behind the Life of Johnson. Sisman challenges the view that Boswell’s ubiquitous presence in the biography served as self-healing, arguing instead that Boswell functioned as a "skilled manipulator of the truth" who used himself as a central character to validate the authenticity of recorded conversations. The review notes Sisman’s attention to Boswell’s "deft trick" of inserting testimonials to his own memory, creating an "illusion of reality" despite having spent only 400 days with Johnson over two decades. Seymour highlights Sisman’s exploration of Boswell’s editorial omissions, such as Johnson’s 1753 contemplation of a second marriage, which Boswell suppressed to maintain a consistent heroic characterization. While Seymour praises Sisman’s wit and insight into the ethics of biography, she finds the account less detailed regarding Boswell’s "darker, demon-ridden" personal life and his relationship with his wife compared to Peter Martin’s biography.
Sitter addresses the emerging discourse of "sustainability" in the long eighteenth century, specifically regarding resources like timber. He notes that Johnson’s definitions of "sustain" encompassed both continuing and suffering. The chapter queries how current sustainability concerns can help revaluate Johnson's work and how Johnson’s own ethical clarity can provide intellectual capaciousness to modern sustainability studies.
Yeats and Johnson on the Limitations of Patriotic Art
'Sir, Said Dr. Johnson': The Johnson Quotation Book, Based on the Collection of Chartres Byron
Baines describes a collection of eight essays that attempt to restore new perspectives on Johnson's work by cultivating his resistances to modern critical paradigms. Smallwood argues Johnson's criticism remained vigilant regarding its place in time, while Mason and Rounce re-read early hostile critiques to analyze his survival as a critical irritant. Other contributors investigate Johnson's multicultural perspectives on race and gender, his support for women writers, and his opposition to slavery. Baines notes the essays often ignore complexities, such as Johnson's conservative qualifications of his support for women or his use of anti-slavery rhetoric to attack American colonists. The collection seeks a reciprocal play between past and present.
Hitchings notes its argument that Johnson's mind remains relevant to contemporary critical consciousness. The essays, which include contributions from Basker, Geller, and Hawes, seek to overturn ossified scholarly practices by applying contemporary methodologies to Johnson's writings, exploring his progressive views on race and gender, cosmopolitan thought, and the critical usefulness of his judgments.
Lynch describes this collection as a productive examination of Johnson’s enduring relevance at the start of the twenty-first century. He highlights seven essays covering diverse topics such as cosmopolitan nationalism, historiography, race, and gender.1 By analyzing both the historical context of Johnson’s own age and his modern reception, the contributors clarify his scholarly image. While noting a lack of revolutionary findings, Lynch praises the essays for their uniform focus and accessibility, recommending the volume for all academic libraries.
Tomarken finds Smallwood's collection Johnson Re-Visioned mixed in its success at redefining Johnson's contemporary relevance. While Clingham's call for a new dialogue using de Man is praised, other essays challenging familiar stereotypes about Johnson (e.g., nationalism/cosmopolitanism, race/gender, anti-feminism, historical ideology) are deemed lacking in innovation or methodological depth. Smallwood's critique of Romantic teleology and Mason/Rounce's study of contemporary reception identify known problems but offer limited solutions. Tomarken concludes that most essays prioritize present concerns over Johnson's own perspective, leaving his voice too faint and failing to rigorously question prevalent critical methods.
The Johnsonian Monster and the Lives of the Poets: James Gillray, Critical History and the Eighteenth-Century Satirical Cartoon
Smallwood argues that eighteenth-century satirical cartoons significantly shaped the notorious "Johnsonian monster" later crystalized by Macaulay. Attacks on Johnson's Lives of the Poets, fueled by contemporaries like Cowper and Warton who felt he was aesthetically out of step and harshly treated poets like Milton and Gray, found a powerful outlet in visual satire. Early cartoons ridiculed Johnson's pension and slow work The Irish Stubble alias Bubble Goose. Later prints focused on his gluttony and "Gargantua" figure. More pointed satires by Gillray, Old Wisdom Blinking at the Stars (1782) and Apollo and the Muses Inflicting Penance on Dr. Pomposo (1783), directly attacked his critical views, visually linking his physical grossness to alleged aesthetic defects and critical "blindness," thus establishing the caricatured image that underpinned Macaulay's later critique.
Johnson's Criticism and the Passage of Theory
Nokes's review of Smallwood's study restates the "critical pre-eminence" of Johnson in English literary criticism against claims of neoclassical flaw, tracing his criticism from The Rambler to the Preface to Shakespeare. Nokes argues that Smallwood's neglect of the Dictionary overlooks a vital element of Johnson's self-education that shaped his perspective and afforded him more "patience for words" than previous editors, evidenced by his restoration of terms like "hugger-mugger" in Hamlet. While Smallwood omits significant discussion of the Lives of the Poets, Nokes praises his treatment of comedy and the "Anacreontiques." The review notes Johnson's belief that Shakespeare's natural disposition led him toward comedy, where he was "always sure," even when indulging in the quibble—his "fatal Cleopatra." Nokes concludes that the book recognizes Johnson's achievement in bringing specificity to general nature and excels in its treatment of Johnson's comedy.
Syba finds Smallwood's study both radical and conservative, aiming to restore respect for Johnson's critical practices against reductive historical narratives emphasizing neoclassical theory. Smallwood values Johnson's flexible, emotionally responsive readings (especially of Shakespeare), challenging critical theory's focus on "exposure." Syba appreciates Smallwood's attention to Johnson's specific judgments and his critique of progressive critical histories but questions the feasibility of Smallwood's call for a universal, ahistorical "community of feeling" based on aesthetic pleasure, finding it sometimes runs counter to academic historicist preferences while potentially aligning with recent theorists seeking alternatives to "paranoid" reading.
Johnson's Criticism, the Arts, and the Idea of Art
In this positive review, Vilmar outlines Philip Smallwood's contention that eighteenth-century criticism resists modern historicization. Vilmar explains how Smallwood adopts the "critical occasion" as the primary unit of history, drawing on Gadamer and Ricoeur to place the work of Dryden, Pope, and Johnson in a dialogic context. The review notes that Smallwood rejects the history of "dead ideas" in favor of practical critical problems. Vilmar emphasizes Smallwood's attempt to "re-present" these historical insights for contemporary practitioners by focusing on extra-rational aspects of the craft.
Smallwood analyzes Johnson’s "human openness" to literature and his "proto-reader-response criticism." The article argues that Johnson "felt literature" with a "rare intensity," famously being "terrified when alone" by Hamlet’s ghost. Smallwood details Johnson’s "expressive intimacy" in his later poetry and his "sophisticated understanding" of how "word associations" evoke emotion. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "shock" at "Cordelia’s death," which he could not "endure to read again" until he became an editor. Smallwood review’s Johnson’s "antithesis after antithesis" method in Comparing poets and his "pragmatic" view that literature "does things to actual people." The article argues that Johnson’s "emotional person" was the "most sensible man" his wife ever saw. Smallwood concludes that Johnson’s "critical method" sought to "understand how actual readers respond" to the "stains of original corruption" in text.
'The Prophecy of Autumn': Hawthorne's Augustan Sensibility
Smith explores Hawthorne’s interest in the eighteenth-century Augustan Age, arguing that Hawthorne embodies the Augustan sensibility in an American context. Johnson figures most prominently in Hawthorne’s imagination, with both authors exhibiting a sensitivity to the imminence of death and human limitation. Smith analyzes Hawthorne's "Lichfield and Uttoxeter" as a reflection on the guilt-haunted Johnson performing penance. He compares Johnson's "horrour of the last" to Hawthorne's "prophecy of autumn," identifying a shared "Johnsonian ethos" centered on sin and repentance. The study demonstrates how Hawthorne uses Augustan social criticism to satirize reform movements founded on utopian abstractions. Smith concludes that while Hawthorne endorsed certain democratic ideals, he remained devoted to an Augustan understanding of the imagination, positioning him as a "modern Tory" against the progressive trends of the American Renaissance.
Smith details Beckett’s "Johnson fantasy," an intensive year-long research project in 1936–37 intended to produce the play Human Wishes. Smith argues that although Beckett abandoned the play, the figure of the declining, physically deteriorating Johnson became a central "inspiration" for his postwar fiction. Drawing on Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, Smith demonstrates how Beckett empathized with Johnson’s "vile melancholy," fear of death, and respiratory ailments. Smith identifies Johnson’s fondness for mental arithmetic as a relief from depression, a trait shared by Malone and Dan Rooney. Smith suggests that Beckett’s research into conflicting biographical accounts by Boswell and Hawkins led to the epistemological uncertainty found in Watt. According to Smith, Beckett combined the "learned tradition" of Johnson’s intellect with the "popular tradition" of his slovenly physical presence to create the quintessential Beckettian character. Smith concludes that Beckett discovered the tragic in Johnson years before modern critics did.
Despair and its Antidotes in Cowper and Johnson
Jacopo Sannazaro's Eclogae piscatoriae (1526) and the 'Pastoral Debate' in Eighteenth-Century England
Smith chronicles the eighteenth-century reception of Sannazaro’s piscatory eclogues, arguing that critical (mis)readings of these Neapolitan poems shaped the period's definitions of the subgenre. The essay examines how critics like Rapin and Fontenelle attacked the fisherman as a pastoral protagonist due to the "hard and toilsome" associations of the vocation. Smith highlights Johnson’s balanced yet idiosyncratic contribution in Rambler 36, where Johnson disputes the charge of "Arbitrary Change" but suggests the genre fails because of a general "ignorance of maritime pleasures." The study concludes that the Sannazarian legacy faded as English writers used Walton’s The Compleat Angler as a more suitable, inland model for "innocent, humble" piscatorial verse.
The Religious Design of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Rasselas: Certain Aspects of Technique
Critical Responses to Samuel Johnson's Attack on John Milton's Lycidas
Sorel recounts the 1776 dinner party encounter between Johnson and the radical politician Wilkes, orchestrated by Boswell. The text details Johnson’s initial ideological hostility toward Wilkes, whom he categorized as a factious "patriot" and a man of no principle. It describes how Wilkes overcame Johnson’s surliness through attentive table manners and shared wit. Sorel emphasizes their eventual rapport, founded on mutual mockery of Scotland and Boswell’s social habits. The narrative highlights the reconciliation of opposing intellectual and political figures within the eighteenth-century London dining scene.
Scottish Cultural Nationalism, 1760–1832: The Highlandization of Scottish National Identity
Chapter 3, Boswell and Johnson’s Highland Tour.
Carlyle, Boswell's Life of Johnson and the 'Conversation' of History
Carlyle identifies Boswell’s biography as an essential "antidote" to enervated Romantic "Artifice." He values the "Johnsoniad" for opening historical life "from below" through gossip and "Egoism." Carlyle disputes Macaulay’s view of Johnson as a parochial figure, arguing that Johnson’s "English prejudices" lend him authority as a witness. Boswell’s detailing of Johnson’s "daily existence" anchors history to terrestrial reality rather than abstract Germanic ideals. Johnson represents the "symbolical embodiment of English genius," choosing action and participation over aloof observation. For Carlyle, Johnson is a "hired day-labourer" of literature who moors creative instincts to practical work. This biographical approach informs Carlyle’s own historical method, emphasizing the "personal matter" of the past over "inflated generalizations."
The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-Century British Writing
Sorensen examines the role of language as an instrument of imperial and national consolidation in eighteenth-century Britain. Sorensen identifies a shift from an "imperial grammar" model, which viewed language through universal, rational principles to facilitate colonial translation, to a "cultural nationalist" model that emphasized unique, historical customary practices. Johnson occupies a pivotal role in this transition. Although Johnson initially employed structures of imperial grammar in his Dictionary to order and stabilize English, he encountered "lawless" metaphorical usage and the "wild exuberance" of living speech. Johnson attempted to regulate this growth by appealing to legitimate "pedigree" and "purity," yet he ultimately deferred to customary usage. Sorensen argues that Johnson constructed a national language that was "ostensibly inclusive and yet implicitly exclusive," refiguring class and gender distinctions as cultural differences. By privileging the language of "polite society" and canonized authors, Johnson established a standard that functioned as "nobody's language," alienating many contemporary speakers from their native tongue. Sorensen further explores how Johnson supported printing the Bible in Gaelic to encourage Highlanders to eventually learn English, a strategy that inadvertently provided the theoretical underpinnings for Gaelic revaluation.
Spears identifies a significant parallel between William James and Johnson, arguing that both function as heroes of their respective cultures despite disparate historical contexts. Spears emphasizes their shared radical empiricism and insistence that actual experience serves as the great test of truth over abstract theory. The analysis notes biographical similarities, including a tendency to depression and a fear of insanity, which informed their writings on human nature. Spears concludes that both figures rejoice to concur with the common reader and defend the common rights of humanity against intellectual pretension.
Spector argues that the essay genre fundamentally informs the totality of Johnson’s literary output, extending far beyond his celebrated periodical papers. The monograph identifies Johnson’s very approach to literature as that of an essayist, defined by an empirical, probing mind that treats writing as a trial or experiment. Spector traces this essayistic technique through Johnson’s earliest work in the Gentleman’s Magazine, his political pamphlets, prefaces, and sermons, as well as genres seemingly remote from the form, such as his major poems, Rasselas, and the play Irene. The study examines how Johnson balances facts and employs character sketches to engage readers in a learning process, challenging the popular image of him as a dogmatic or authoritarian figure. Spector further analyzes how eighteenth-century developments in printing and the rise of a middle-class reading audience encouraged Johnson’s predilection for the essay. By viewing the Lives of the Poets as a culmination of these skills, Spector demonstrates that the essay remains the dominant structural and intellectual force throughout Johnson’s professional career. Chapter 1, 'The Characteristic Essayist,' addresses the pervasive role of the essay genre across the entirety of the literary corpus, asserting that an empirical, probing "quality of mind" defines the approach to diverse subjects. Chapter 2, 'Crossing the Genres,' argues that essayistic techniques—specifically argumentation, exposition, and moral didacticism—infiltrate and structure works in seemingly unrelated genres, including parliamentary debates, poetry, fiction, and travel literature. Chapter 3, 'Cater-Cousins to the Essay,' addresses how sermons, book reviews, and introductory prefaces function as "instructional discourses" that share the essential structural and thematic elements of the formal essay. Chapter 4, 'The Periodical Essays and the Common Reader,' addresses the pedagogical relationship between the author and a general audience, arguing that the major periodical series use varied personas and styles to provide accessible yet rigorous moral guidance.
Lynch’s scathing review disputes the claim that the entirety of Johnson’s corpus functions as essayistic, an adjective the reviewer finds vague and imprecise. Lynch states that Spector proceeds mechanically through major and minor works, offering superficial summaries followed by unsupported assertions of generic classification and quality. The review finds the analysis of the Rambler, Idler, and Adventurer particularly weak, noting that the content merely summarizes and praises rather than providing analytical depth. Lynch identifies the monograph as unsophisticated, derivative, and ahistorical, concluding that it makes no contribution to scholarship and fails to serve as a useful introduction for beginners.
Squibbs explores Johnson’s contributions to the periodical essay, primarily through The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler. The article characterizes the Johnsonian essay as a form of "Christian discernment" that models self-examination for a scholarly audience. Squibbs details the relentless demands of the Rambler, for which Johnson produced two essays weekly to "promote virtue." The narrative contrasts the "pure wine" of the Rambler with the lighter tone of the Idler, which appeared in a newspaper and often commented on current news. Squibbs argues that Johnson’s essays meander "elegantly from one topic to another," teaching through anecdote rather than linear logic. The article highlights how Johnson used the essay form to conduct "vicarious self-examination," often projecting his own "morbid melancholy" and "neurotic inhibition" into his characters. Squibbs concludes that Johnson’s reputation as a "moral writer" was fundamentally forged in these short, digestible pieces.
On Johnson's seemingly disdainful attitude towards painting, as reported by his biographers. It first reviews the ancient conflict over images, outlining the Judeo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical viewpoints, and the aesthetic shift from imitation (mimesis) to artist expression. The author argues that Johnson's reported "blindness" to the art is a misinterpretation. Instead, Johnson's occasional remarks, such as the famous, "Painting, Sir, can illustrate but cannot inform," demonstrate an intellectual understanding of classical artistic debate. His public disdain is ultimately attributed to his personality: a complex mixture of argumentative play and a genuine preference for people over objects.
Learning from Samuel Johnson about Drafting Statutes
What Johnson Means to Me: Dr. Johnson and I
Stavans, a Mexican immigrant and non-native English speaker, explores Johnson’s legacy, particularly through his Dictionary, celebrating its 250th anniversary. He argues that Johnson, a consummate man of letters and an anti-model for modern lexicographers, was both ambitious and idiosyncratic in his effort. Stavans views Johnson as subtle, perceptive, and subversive, emphasizing that his definitions were filled with his own viewpoints on sex ("orgasm" is "a sudden vehemence") and his notorious views on Scots and Americans. Stavans applauds Johnson's amateurship, recognizing that his work democratized the English language, inviting new Americans to revamp the language that is in constant flux. He imagines Johnson applauding the elasticity English has achieved, noting that lexicographers "capture words on paper, not in stone."
The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 1996.
Samuel Johnson and Aspects of Anglicanism
European History and European Lives, 1715–1914
Johnson and Boswell: The Rippey Collection at McMaster
This report highlights McMaster University's 1985 acquisition of the Arthur G. Rippey Collection, which includes over 400 titles and 700 supporting volumes. Notable items include first editions of Johnson's London, The Plan of a Dictionary, and Prayers and Meditations, alongside rare Boswellian materials such as an uncut copy of the parody Ode by Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale.
Television Service, University of the Witwatersrand
{In this positive review, Roten describes a video dramatization of the interactions between Johnson, Boswell, and Thrale. Roten notes that the vignettes, excerpted from journals and letters, depict the closing years of Johnson's life, including his decline after Henry Thrale's death and his break with Thrale following her involvement with Piozzi. The review highlights the portrayal of Johnson's eccentricities alongside his "tender heart" and "hatred of tyranny." Roten praises the stylized acting and the use of Reynolds's portraits for authenticity, though finds Boswell's dialogue occasionally difficult to understand. Roten concludes that the production serves scholars and advanced literature students as an introduction to the circle.
Stock challenges the prevalent "Johnson Agonistes" view, proposing a "Johnson Ecclesiastes" perspective that stresses wisdom over agony. This alternative view places Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rasselas within the Solomonic or Wisdom literature tradition, citing parallels with Ecclesiastes, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and Pascal's Pensées. Johnson, as a religious existentialist, mistrusts abstract doctrine and rationalism, scrutinizing the human condition to find man weak, limited, and aspiring to a fulfillment impossible on earth. His works admonish against idolatry, moving toward the religious view by discussing the immateriality of thought and eternity.
Department of English, University of British Columbia
'Diminutive Observations': The Book-World of Dr. Johnson: Being the 1984 Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture, Delivered on 24 October in the Recital Hall of the Music Building at the University of British Columbia
The Common-Law Model for Standard English in Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's intellectual foundation for standard English, as articulated in A Dictionary of the English Language, derives from Sir Edward Coke's early seventeenth-century restatement of common law principles. Johnson rejects the Continental model of a state-sponsored linguistic academy, favoring a standard based on a mixture of general custom, literary precedent, and reason, akin to the development of English common law. The study provides a detailed parallel between Johnson's lexicographical techniques and the philology of common law, emphasizing the concept of English liberty as a defense against prescriptive authority.
SEDERI: Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies
John Cowell's Interpreter: Legal Tradition and Lexicographical Innovation
Law and the Politics of Johnson's Dictionary
On the Trail of Early Rambler and Idler Translations in France and Spain
Stone researches early European circulation of Johnson's periodical essays via translation. He suggests Rambler 190 was likely the source for "Morad et Abouzaid, ou la vanité des grandeurs humaines" in the April 1754 Journal Etranger. Rambler 4 (on the novel) was published in the Madrid periodical El Novelero de los estrados in 1764 via a French translation, but Idler 102 appeared in the same Spanish journal and may have been an unmediated translation from English, which would pre-date other direct translations of English literary texts by over twenty years. Stone details early translations of Rambler 15 and 18 in the 1751 Hague periodical Petit Réservoir, noting the fast speed with which Rambler content crossed into French is comparable only to works by Richardson and Sterne.
Foreign Bodies: Contracting Identity in Johnson's London and the Life of Savage
Sudan argues that Johnson explores cultural and personal identity through a gendered model of "othering" in his early works. Analyzing the poem London and the Life of Savage, Sudan identifies an elusive figure of the feminine that mediates between the self and the foreign other to regulate eighteenth-century neoclassical authority. Johnson projects urban corruption and xenophobic anxieties onto feminized bodies, such as Italianate eunuchs or the "monstrous" Countess of Macclesfield. This strategy constructs a masculine, rustic English identity while betrayed by Johnson's own transgressive role as a professional writer manipulating historical truth.
Fair Exotics: Xenophobic Subjects in English Literature, 1720–1850
Institutionalizing Xenophobia: Johnson's Project
Sudan explores how Johnson’s "Dictionary" served to "institutionalize" the English language as a "cultural barometer" against foreign contamination. Johnson’s "Preface" displays a xenophobic desire to "preserve the purity of language" by excluding the "license" of translators. Paradoxically, Sudan notes Johnson’s own early career involved translating Lobo’s "Voyage to Abyssinia," suggesting a complex "subject and voyeur" relationship with foreign bodies. The text argues Johnson used his "cultural authority" to reclaim a space within British historiography, navigating between "hack writer" status on Grub Street and his role as the "institutionalizer" of a national linguistic identity defined against "exotic" others.
Translation of “Semiuel Dzhonson kak moralist.”
The Lichfield Two and a Man from Stratford
Johnson's Final Words: With Particular Reference to Boswell's Dirty Deed on Sastres
Suwabe scrutinizes conflicting accounts of Johnson's last words, arguing for the credibility of "Jam moriturus" ("Now I am about to die"), reportedly heard by his Italian friend Francesco Sastres. This version contrasts with Hoole’s ("God bless you!") and Boswell's ("God bless you, my dear!"). Suwabe highlights Sastres's close friendship with Johnson in his final years and presents evidence suggesting Boswell intentionally minimized Sastres's presence and testimony in the Life, likely because of anger over Sastres providing Johnson's letters to Piozzi. Suwabe concludes that "Jam moriturus" resonates authentically with Johnson’s character and classical learning.
The Character and Opinions of Dr. Johnson: A Unique Wiseian Assemblage of Swinburne Materials Later Separated at the British Museum and Now Reconstructed by William B. Todd for the Annual Dinner of the Johnsonians to Commemorate Johnson's Two-Hundred and Seventy Sixth Birthday
250 copies of a facsimile of the 1918 edition [item 10/6:167] and the author’s MS printed 20 Sept. 1985.
Dr. Johnson's Black Servant 'Proved to Be My Ancestor'
On Dennis Barber, a descendant of Francis Barber.
Dr. Johnson's House Needs Urgent Repairs
Reports the temporary closure of Johnson's former residence in Gough Square due to structural failures, including split supporting beams and cracked walls. Built in the seventeenth century, the house served as the site where Johnson compiled his Dictionary and produced The Rambler and The Idler between 1749 and 1759. Lord Harmsworth and McEnroe detail a restoration plan to reinforce original features with resin and wires, ensuring the building remains safe for modern tourist traffic. The account notes that Johnson's wife died in the house and that he subsequently offered sanctuary there to Williams and Barber. The article emphasizes the historical significance of the garret where the Dictionary was authored and confirms that the restoration aims to return the house to the state in which Johnson saw it.
Dr. Johnson's Extraordinary Venture: The Dictionary
Reading The Rambler: Johnson's Engagement with the Anxieties of Authorship
Maecenas and the Ministry: Johnson and His Publishers, Patrons and the Public
The Fantastic Self: Essays on the Subject of the Self
The Moral Writer and the Struggle with Selfhood: Lewis's 'Screwtape' and Johnson's 'Mr. Rambler'
The Rambler's Second Audience: Johnson and the Paratextual 'Part of Literature'
The Great Cham and the English Aristophanes: Samuel Johnson and Foote
New Windows on a Woman's World: Essays for Jocelyn Harris
Department of English, University of Otago
Johnson and the Hot Potato: Scholarship and the 'Science of Fables'
Tankard details Giuseppe Baretti's 1769 trial for murder, where Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, and Goldsmith appeared to testify. Baretti, a writer and lexicographer, fatally wounded a man after being assaulted in a street incident that appeared to be a set-up. Johnson gave his testimony in a "slow, deliberate, and distinct manner," testifying as to Baretti's studious and peaceable character, asserting Baretti was "rather timorous," half-blind, and not capable of assault "without great provocation." The distinguished testimony and the confusing circumstances secured an acquittal on grounds of self-defense. Baretti remained grateful, remarking that his friends had made him an Englishman forever.
George Psalmanazar: The Fabulous Formosan
Includes a section on Johnson.
Privately printed by Ron Gordon at the Oliphant Press for the Johnsonians
Samuel Johnson's 'Designs': A Facsimile of the Manuscript, with a New Transcription & an Introductory Essay by Paul Tankard: With Newly Discovered Text
An attractive facsimile, printed in an edition of 225 copies, with facsimiles, transcriptions, and commentary, of the MS of Johnson’s “Designs” for works he hoped to write.
'Try to Resolve Again': Johnson and the Written Art of Everyday Life
Tankard examines the lists of resolutions preserved in Johnson’s diaries and annals. By assembling a pastiche of twenty-seven resolutions, Tankard identifies the introspective and self-regulatory function of Johnson's private-journal mode. The analysis finds that the process of resolving again and again constitutes a tactic of resistance against commercial and technocratic power. Tankard also addresses Johnson’s awareness that literal adherence to rules, which he termed scrupulosity, can become a kind of moral pedantry. The chapter makes visible a shadowy text Johnson wrote throughout his life.
Tankard examines Johnson’s extensive contributions to the eighteenth-century press, noting that the term "journalism" is an anachronism for the period. The article traces Johnson’s editorial labor at the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Literary Magazine, where he processed text at a "remarkable rate" to meet commercial demands. Tankard highlights Johnson’s "journalistic writing" as a blend of original essays, book reviews, and parliamentary reporting, often produced "amidst inconvenience and distraction." The narrative details how Johnson’s early "hand to mouth" existence at St. John’s Gate evolved into a position of literary authority. Tankard observes that Johnson’s reviews often used paraphrase and "extracts" to let books speak for themselves, yet remained infused with his distinct moral reflections. The article concludes that Johnson’s journalistic output dissolved traditional ideas of authorship by drifting into the work of others, occupying the "borderlands between ephemerality and literary immortality."
Tankard describes a series of informal meetings at a Dunedin pub intended to engage non-English majors with the works of Johnson. Using Idler 44 on the topic of memory as a catalyst for discussion, Tankard aims to facilitate "conversations with the past" that bypass modern ideological biases and digital distractions. The text critiques the shift in university humanities departments toward "identity literature" and "video games," arguing instead for the "intellectual and aesthetic nourishment" provided by attentive reading of great books. Tankard asserts that the practices of reflection mediated by Johnson and Boswell remain essential for transmitting culture to the next generation.
Johnson on the Metaphysicals: An Analytic Efficacy of Hostile Presuppositions
Basney reviews Temmer's provocative comparison of Johnson with Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. The study explores temperamental affinities between Johnson and Rousseau and compares Rasselas and Candide, placing them in the problem of evil tradition. A third chapter links Johnson's Life of Savage and Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau, establishing a common ground in literary parasitism. Basney notes the book's lack of a clear method and reliance on "flights of fancy" rather than closely argued support rooted in Johnson's difficult thought.
May examines Temmer's Plutarchan comparison of Johnson with Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. She notes that Boswell and Piozzi provide testimonies of affinities between Johnson and Rousseau, despite Johnson’s public disdain. The analysis highlights unexpected parallels between Boswell and Rousseau regarding autobiography. May credits the work for filling gaps in knowledge concerning Johnson’s French connections and correcting "commonplaces, misreadings, and misconceptions" held by previous scholars.
Neubauer examines Temmer's comparison of Johnson with Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. He notes that Boswell serves as the primary "point of contact" between Johnson and Rousseau, bridging Johnson's biographical interests with Rousseau’s autobiographical stance. The text compares Rasselas and Candide, emphasizing Johnson’s "religious intent" against Voltaire’s "absurd universe." Neubauer critiques Temmer for postulating a causal link between Johnson’s Life of Savage and Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau, though he acknowledges the "broader analogies" between the two figures and their portrayals of eccentric genius.
Niklaus's approving review of Mark J. Temmer's monograph examines the intellectual confrontations between the "deeply religious" Johnson and the French writers he branded as infidels. Niklaus highlights the opposition between Johnson and Rousseau, noting that Johnson oversimplified Rousseau's ideas. The review praises the comparison of Candide and Rasselas, noting that while both works challenge Leibnizian optimism and recognize evil as a dominant force, Johnson offers "greater consolation" through his belief in an afterlife. Niklaus accepts the surmise that Richard Savage played a symbolic role for Johnson similar to Rameau's nephew for Diderot, representing an "insouciant self-justifying parasite" who reflects the complexity of Johnson's inner life and "pious guilt."
Parke reviews Temmer’s comparative study of Johnson and three key figures of the French Enlightenment. The review focuses on how Temmer examines Johnson's "orthodoxy" in contrast to the perceived "infidelity" of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot. Parke notes that the book explores how these men responded to the challenges of religious skepticism and the changing social structures of the eighteenth century. The reviewer evaluates Temmer’s success in identifying shared intellectual ground despite starkly different theological conclusions. Parke examines Temmer’s use of Johnson’s writings to highlight a man deeply engaged with Continental thought, even when he publicly dismissed his counterparts. The review serves to situate Johnson within a broader European intellectual history rather than a purely English context.
Waldinger's review of Mark Temmer's volume praises the reintroduction of Johnson to French scholars. The review finds the parallelism between Johnson and Rousseau "not always convincing" due to their alien personalities. Waldinger describes the analysis of Johnson's views on optimism in Rasselas as succinct and clear. The review focuses on the "convincing" argument that Johnson's Life of Savage influenced Diderot's second satire. Waldinger notes that while Johnson and Diderot never met, they shared many personality traits and life experiences. The confrontation of the two works brings out a strong parallelism in the choice of main characters and themes, suggesting Diderot used the English work as inspiration for his depiction of Lui.
Johnson and Macpherson: Cultural Authority and the Construction of Literary Property
Ossian's Embrace: Johnson, Macpherson, and the Public Domain
Temple examines the "highly politicized" intersection of eighteenth-century copyright law and national identity, framing Johnson's pursuit of Macpherson as a legalistic defense of English "literate culture." While Macpherson’s Ossian poems claim an "oral tradition" that challenges established norms of individual ownership, Johnson uses his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" to demand "manuscript evidence," effectively acting as a "surrogate for the English legal system." The text argues that Johnson’s "quasi-criminalization" of Macpherson as a "forger" seeks to stabilize the "author" as a fixed, verifiable entity, thereby protecting the "foundations of English law" from the "uncertainty" of Scottish orality. Johnson's rejection of the "Caledonian bard" serves to "naturalize" a version of national authorship that subordinates collective cultural memory to the "sovereignty of the written text."
Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past, 1660–1781
Terry explores the context and reception of Johnson's Lives, arguing its impact has often been misunderstood. The Lives were commissioned by a coalition of booksellers as biographical prefaces for a serial anthology to secure copyright, not primarily to establish a high-cultural canon. Johnson, a "reluctant canonist," was influenced by Bayle's skeptical scholarship, prioritizing anecdotal, idiosyncratic detail and meticulously weighing biographical sources. His critical approach, marked by a skeptical tone, was paradoxically criticized by contemporaries both for indiscriminately including "minor" poets and for an "excess of discriminatory zeal" in evaluating them.
The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road
Theroux examines Johnson's travel experiences, specifically his 1773 journey to the Hebrides with Boswell. Despite a preference for London, Johnson undertook this rigorous tour at age sixty-four, suffering from Tourette's-like symptoms and constitutional melancholy. Theroux highlights Johnson's belief that travelers must possess prior knowledge to acquire new insights, noting his enthusiastic regard for the Great Wall of China as a mark of distinction for a parent. The text contrasts Johnson’s philosophical account with Boswell’s gossipy journal, illustrating their lively dialogue. Johnson argues that first-hand experience provides certainties and principles of reasoning that sedentary study cannot offer. Theroux presents Johnson as a passionate reader whose travel served to test analogies against reality. The text concludes that Johnson used travel to enlarge his understanding, ultimately finding that 'a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.'
Doctor Needs a Better Script [review of 'Johnson in Love,' by Charles Thomas]
Our Lady is Still Abseiling Theatre [review of 'Johnson in Love,' by Charles Thomas]
Beyond the Floating Islands: An Anthology
Writing the Fringe: Eighteenth-Century Accounts of the Western Islands of Scotland
Reports the destruction of the 18th-century summer house used by Johnson at the Thrales' Streatham estate. Details Johnson’s residency with the Thrale family from 1765 to 1782 and his penchant for dangerous chemical experiments. Explains that the summer house, where Johnson worked on his masterpiece Lives of the Poets, served as a writing retreat after his banishment from the main house for fire hazards.
Travel: There's Life in the Old Girl Yet: Lichfield's Most Famous Son Would Enjoy this Week's Festivities
Johnson, Rasselas, and the Choice of Criticism
Grundy's mixed review of Edward Tomarken's monograph praises the chronological checklist of criticism but challenges the author's heavily structured methodology. The study employs a blend of structuralism and hermeneutics that treats the literary work as a scientific problem to solve rather than a site for emotional response. Tomarken misses critical political dimensions regarding the prince's status as a potential pretender to the throne and misinterprets the gendered viewpoints within the marriage debate. The review commends the text's connection of literature to extraliterary concerns but faults its ponderous obviousness, concluding that the glory of the original text lies in its unconcluded conclusions.
Johnson, 'Rasselas,' and the Choice of Criticism
Probyn identifies the book's central argument as the need to apply "Perspectivism"—a dialectical blend of Formalism and Mimesis—to Johnson's major texts. While Probyn acknowledges Tomarken’s insightful readings of Rasselas as a self-reflexive narrative, he criticizes the work’s "pedagogical awkwardness" and its over-reliance on an unrefined "extraliterary" category. The reviewer finds the theoretical mediation laboured and questions Tomarken’s assumption of biographic "fact." However, he admits the study successfully raises significant questions regarding Johnson’s creative and critical reading strategies.
Reddick provides a review of Edward Tomarken's study, which seeks to resolve the tension between historical and formalist approaches to Johnson's narrative. Reddick notes Tomarken's argument that Rasselas serves as a critique of the very critical methods used to interpret it. The reviewer highlights Tomarken's focus on the 'choice of life' as a metaphor for the 'choice of criticism,' suggesting that the text's open-endedness invites a plurality of readings. Reddick points out Tomarken's use of reception history to show how different eras have shaped the work's meaning. While Reddick acknowledges the complexity of Tomarken's theoretical framework, he describes the review as a balanced account of Tomarken's effort to reconcile Johnsonian moralism with modern literary theory.
Zomchick critiques Tomarken’s axis of perspectives as a method for reading Rasselas and other works. He disputes the originality of this dialectical approach, citing earlier scholarship. Zomchick further challenges Tomarken’s interpretation of Charles XII in the Vanity of Human Wishes and identifies factual errors regarding the Life of Pope, arguing that Tomarken’s readings occasionally ignore Johnson’s own textual evidence and historical values.
Hall provides a balanced review of Tomarken’s "systematic study" of the 1765 edition of Shakespeare’s works. Hall observes that by focusing on Johnson’s "Notes" and "strictures" rather than just the Preface, Tomarken reveals a critic who moves beyond simple "moral and didactic statements" to address performance, humor, and editorial history. Hall notes that Tomarken successfully reintroduces Johnson into "contemporary discussion" of plays like Hamlet and Macbeth. Hall concludes that Tomarken demonstrates how Johnson’s "judgment was informed" by a sophisticated interplay of literary and dramatic goals.
Sherbo disagrees with the Tomarken's thesis that the 1765 edition is the "classic document of criticism as a discipline" and provides a coherent analysis of the plays. Sherbo finds the arguments unsubstantiated and questions the analysis's value, particularly pointing out factual inaccuracies regarding Johnson’s other works. He maintains that the Preface is largely a "magnificent restatement" of 18th-century thought, rather than a source of new insights, as the reviewer's previous work had established.
A History of the Commentary on Selected Writings of Samuel Johnson
Publisher's blurb: The works of Samuel Johnson, whom many consider the father of English criticism, are themselves the object of thousands of pages of critical commentary and analysis. Edward Tomarken's study traces and analyses the past two and a half centuries of commentary on selected Johnsonian works: The early biographies and the life of Savage (1744); The nondramatic poems, particularly 'London' (1738) and 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' (1749); His play Irene (1749); The periodical essays, particularly in the Rambler (1750-52); Rasselas (1759); Shakespearean criticism (1765); The Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); and The Lives of the Poets (1779-81). Critics call this book a systematic yet flawed digest that reveals the "faddish" nature of literary criticism, which Tomarken argues often turns in circles. Reviewers such as Lurcock and Mitchell praise the effective tracing of critical trajectories for major works like Rasselas and the Journey, noting the successful illustration of shifts from biographical to structural interpretations. But the "generic arrangement" and omission of the Dictionary are cited as significant limitations. Most contributors, including Nakanishi and Brack, lambast the "clumsy prose," frequent mistranscriptions, and a structure that favors continuous reading over useful scholarly reference.
Lurcock evaluates Tomarken’s digest of Johnsonian criticism, which organizes commentary by genre and chronology. He notes that while the volume effectively traces the distinct critical trajectories of the periodical essays and the Journey, the generic arrangement excludes cross-disciplinary studies of prose style and criticism. Lurcock finds the chapter on Rasselas particularly successful in illustrating the shift from biographical to structural and deconstructive interpretations. However, the reviewer criticizes the work for frequent mistranscriptions, inaccurate page references, and a structure that favors continuous reading over quick reference.
Mitchell analyzes Tomarken's systematic survey of the critical reception of Johnson's major works, including Rasselas and Lives of the Poets. While Mitchell notes Tomarken's polite precis of diverse perspectives, he disputes the omission of the Dictionary. Mitchell argues the analysis fails to provide a convincing account of the tradition because it isolates critical debates from their 'historical specificity' and cultural context, resulting in an 'interminable discussion' that appears 'arbitrary and petty'.
Nakanishi evaluates Tomarken’s chronological summary of critical responses to Johnson’s major works, including Savage, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets. She notes the text’s reflection of shifting prejudices from the eighteenth century to the present. Nakanishi identifies significant weaknesses in Tomarken’s clumsy prose, confusing use of the present tense for historical commentary, and frequent typographical errors. She finds the chronological bibliography and incomplete index unhelpful for scholarly reference despite Tomarken’s apparent zeal.
The Christian Faith and Practice of Samuel Johnson, Thomas De Quincey, and Thomas Love Peacock
Dr. Johnson and the Pandits: Imagining the Perfect Dictionary in Colonial Madras
Trautmann examines a 1819 report by F. W. Ellis regarding A. D. Campbell's proposed Telugu-English dictionary, highlighting a unique convergence between European philological standards and indigenous linguistic traditions. Ellis uses the authority of Johnson as a "lexicographical paragon" while simultaneously applying the "radical etymology" of John Horne Tooke and the morphological categories of Indian pandits. The article illustrates how the Madras School of Orientalism distinguished native Telugu roots from Sanskrit loanwords, paralleling Johnson's treatment of Saxon and Roman elements in English. Trautmann identifies this collaboration as a "hybrid philology" where Indian analysis of "mixed languages" became foundational to the discovery of the Dravidian family. By invoking Johnson to justify an etymological arrangement of definitions, Ellis attempted to create a "perfect dictionary" that bridged Enlightenment philosophy and the sophisticated phonological traditions of South Indian scholars, ultimately challenging the perceived discontinuity between British and Continental linguistics.
Christian Ethos in Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes
Trillin humorously discusses his experience with gout, attempting to rename the affliction "Johnson’s Disease" or "D. J. D." after Johnson. Trillin’s wife disputes the name, fearing association with Lyndon Johnson. Trillin cites studies correlating the disease with "high intelligence" and notes other historical sufferers like Galileo. The text satirizes the stereotypical image of the "bloated old Tory" with a gout-stool, using Johnson as a primary example to re-educate the public about the condition’s severity and its distinguished history.
Humor column.
Dr. Samuel Johnson and Acharya Pt. Ram Chandra Skukla: The Epoch-Making Critics
Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire
The End of an Auld Sang: Oral Tradition and Literary History
Trumpener examines the 1773 journey of Johnson and Boswell as a pivotal moment in Anglo-Scottish relations, characterizing Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as an 'imperial ethnography' that systematically discredits Gaelic culture and oral tradition. She argues that Johnson's insistence on a print-based model of literary history served to deny the validity of Highland narration, which he mocked as meaningless 'Radaratoo, radarate.' Trumpener details how Johnson used Enlightenment sociological categories to categorize Scotland as a society paralyzed by its own 'illiteracy,' asserting that cultural life is impossible without the material conditions of writing. The article explores how this dismissal catalyzed a century of novelistic rebuttals, including works by Sydney Owenson and Susan Ferrier, which sought to reconcile landscape with historical depth. Trumpener uses the 'Ossian' controversy to illustrate the clash between Johnson's skepticism and the nationalist belief in literature as a collective, institutionally-produced tradition rooted in place. She concludes that Johnson's preemptive attitude toward Scottish 'backwardness' forced a bifurcation in British Romanticism, pitting a London-centered literary standard against a voice-centered, nationalist model of cultural preservation.
Truss reviews John Byrne’s screenplay adaptation of the 1773 Highland tour. Notes the production "jettisoned brilliant original dialogue" in favor of pastiche and invented humor. Features Coltrane as a "massive arm-whirling" Johnson and Sessions as a "puppyish" Boswell desperate to impress. Truss praises Coltrane for capturing Johnson's Staffordshire accent and physical presence, while Sessions provides a "perfect comic portrayal" of Boswell’s wounded dignity. Highlights the "hilariously overfamiliar" depiction of the servant Joseph. Though Truss observes the production ignores Johnson's complex ambivalence toward Scotland, she finds the work "likable, funny, beautifully shot," and exceptionally well cast.
Not a Woman in Sight: In His Last Years, Samuel Johnson Was Surrounded by Fractious, Quarelling Women: But Who Was at His Bedside When He Died?
Turnbull’s article disputes the long-standing biographical tradition that Elizabeth Desmoulins attended Johnson during his final hours, performing a painstaking reconstruction to argue against most biographers that “John Desmoulins, not his mother, was on hand with Frank Barber when Miss Morris came in for Johnson’s blessing.” Analysis of Boswell’s original correspondence and Hoole’s manuscript diary reveals that Boswell likely committed a lapsus calami, transcribing Mr. Desmoulins as Mrs. Desmoulins. Turnbull suggests that “His unfamiliarity with John, and the earlier frequency with which he had written “Mrs.’ Desmoulins, may explain a lapsus calami,” an error perpetuated by later biographers like Hibbert and Martin. This mistake obscured the presence of John Desmoulins, Elizabeth's son and a copying assistant to Johnson, while Turnbull highlights the impropriety of an elderly, dropsical woman attending a dying man during his final self-lacerations. Finding it “extraordinary that the general field of Johnsonian scholarship should have overlooked the sheer improbability ... of having a woman ... in the grim intimacy of the dying Johnson’s chamber,” Turnbull restores John Desmoulins to his historical place alongside Barber.
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 5
Turnbull presents a puzzle derived from Johnson’s definitions of 'subordinate and instrumental arts.' The challenge requires a 'scholarly reader' to identify specific lexicographical entries based on 'brief salient quotations' provided by Turnbull. The puzzle serves as a 'tactical' exercise in navigating the Dictionary’s 'nuance' and 'suggestive density.'
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 6
Turnbull provides a series of clues extracted from the 1755 Dictionary to challenge readers' knowledge of Johnson’s "every phrase." The text notes that the solution (printed on page 64) involves terms related to "compositional mood" and "variations of memory." This puzzle emphasizes the "patchwork open-structured" quality of Johnson’s lexicographical project.
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 7
Turnbull constructs a puzzle using 'guilt by Shakespearean allusion' as a primary theme. The clues center on definitions such as 'canker' and 'Bolingbroke,' illustrating how Johnson used the Dictionary to 'portray in a bad light' certain political or religious figures.
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 8
Turnbull presents a scholarly puzzle requiring readers to identify words based on Johnson's specific definitions and illustrative quotations. The text notes the focus on Johnson’s "notorious social and critical incivility" and the "arborescent knots" of his lexicographical style. It identifies the puzzle as part of a series intended to foster "intellectual stimulation" and close reading of the 1755 text. The solution to the puzzle involves identifying terms that "disconcert" through their "rhizomatic intensity."
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 9
Turnbull provides a series of clues derived from Johnson’s 1755 definitions to challenge the reader's "knowledge of the dictionary." The article mentions specific entries like "buffeting his books," which Turnbull clarifies was a "misreading" of "bustling among his books." The puzzle serves as a "research supplement" to aid in the "painstaking work" of uncovering lexicographical errors. It invites "all friends" of the JNL to engage in the "drudgery" and "pleasure" of identifying the mot juste.
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 10
Turnbull presents a puzzle focused on "subordination" and "human happiness" as defined in Johnson's 1755 text. Clues involve the "degrees of intrinsic merit" and the "airy notions" that "tyrannise" the human mind. The text notes the inclusion of "startling apophthegms" and "pithy wisdom" from the *Dictionary*. It requires identifying terms that suggest "mankind have found that this cannot be" without a "plan invariable in principle."
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 11
Turnbull provides the eleventh entry in a series of cryptic crossword puzzles using Johnson's Dictionary. The clues consist of specific definitions or illustrative quotations from the 1755 edition. This installment features terms such as "flippant," "scorch," and "apostasy."
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 12
Turnbull presents the twelfth Dictionary puzzle, continuing the policy of drawing clues from Johnson's lexicographical work. The puzzle challenges readers to identify headwords such as "impregnate," "untwist," and "pilaster" based on original definitions.
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 13
Turnbull presents a "painstakingly crafted" puzzle centered on Johnson’s definitions of "morbid melancholy" and "dejection." The text details clues involving the "insidious and seductive" nature of despair as registered in the 1755 text. It highlights terms that describe the "vacuities of life" and the "vanity of complaint." Turnbull requires the reader to identify words used by Johnson to "repress our fears" and "quiet all our suspicions" regarding "futurity." The puzzle serves to "enlighten the reader's life" by encouraging close engagement with Johnson’s "scrupulously full commentary" on the human state of "suspense and terror."
The Samuel Johnson Dictionary Puzzle, No. 14
Turnbull constructs a "bibliographical challenge" focused on Johnson's definitions of "social and critcal incivility" and "reciprocal pleasure." The text highlights the use of "arborescent knots" and "rhizomatic intensity" in the clues, requiring the reader to identify words that "disconcert" or "mollify" the "spirit of learning." It focuses on Johnson's "truthful and kindly intended" observations on "friendship" as the "soul of life." Turnbull invokes the "mot juste" from Johnson's commentary on "marital infidelity" and "domestic privacies." The puzzle aims to provide "intellectual stimulation" through the "drudgery" of identifying terms that "lodge themselves in the memory" as "clinched conclusions."
Reynolds's Streatham Portraits and the Art of Intimate Biography
Tscherny examines the series of thirteen portraits painted by Joshua Reynolds for the library of Henry Thrale at Streatham Park between 1771 and 1781. The article argues that Reynolds's stylistic approach, particularly his move away from idealized academic theory toward a penetrating, empirical naturalism, parallels the contemporary literary evolution of intimate biography pioneered by Johnson and perfected by Boswell. Tscherny highlights the portrait of Johnson as a primary example of this shift, noting how Reynolds replaces the distant gentility of the earlier Kit-Cat Club tradition with a sense of psychological intensity and physical presence. The study details how Reynolds captures Johnson's specific traits, such as his furrowed brow and the restless fingering of waistcoat buttons, reflecting a shared cultural emphasis on "truth" over panegyric. Tscherny further explores the influence of Thrale in commissioning these works and the ways in which the portraits of the Streatham circle, including Goldsmith and Baretti, represent a "democratic interest" in the complexities and flaws of character.
Jenny Uglow on Dr. Johnson (1709–1784): Postcard Biographies from the National Portrait Gallery
Brief biography commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to accompany the 1756 Reynolds portrait.
Man, God, and Nature in the Enlightenment
Uphaus examines the rise of the novel within the context of the ostensible moral purpose of fiction. Uphaus analyzes numerous eighteenth-century discussions, focusing particularly on Johnson. He explores the inherent conflict between the mimetic methods of fiction and its moral ends. Uphaus highlights corollary fears that the claims and powers of mimetic fiction might eventually supplant moral purposes. The article characterizes Johnson's contributions to this debate as central to understanding the period's anxiety regarding the potential for fiction to mislead readers. By focusing on the tension between realistic representation and didactic requirements, Uphaus demonstrates how Johnson and his contemporaries sought to navigate the perceived dangers of the emerging genre.
Boswell's Literary Biography [review of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson': New Questions, New Answers, by John A. Vance]
Clingham critiques Vance's collection for favoring theoretical, fictionalized interpretations of Boswell over historical accuracy. The reviewer disputes Rader and Bogel’s claims that Boswell’s "essence" justifies factual manipulation. Contrastingly, Clingham highlights Greene’s dissent regarding Boswell’s inaccuracy and argues that Boswell’s structured "insideness" lacks the truth-value found in Johnson’s own Lives of the Poets. Clingham concludes that modern Boswellians overlook how Johnson’s works provide a more comprehensive characterization than Boswell’s subjective prose.
Tomarken's review of John Vance's edited collection examines the "Boswell Problem," describing the collection as an effort to apply new literary theories to the tension between Boswell's artistic form and historical accuracy. The review synthesizes various contributors' views, including Donald Greene's insistence that the Life is a flawed historical record and Ralph Rader’s defense of the work as a verbal icon. Tomarken highlights John Burke’s "most important" essay, which argues that for original readers, the Life served as a "supplement" to Johnson’s writings, whereas modern readers often use it as a replacement, creating a "myth of presence" that requires historical correction. Other contributors address the "art-versus-truth" dichotomy, a neglected "element of comedy," and use psychological research to explain Boswell's "gift of recall" and "selective perception." Tomarken notes that recent scholarship historicizes Boswell’s "idea" of Johnson, rejecting the "futile attempt to transcend history" through essentialism. The reviewer concludes that understanding Boswell’s "controlling idea" and his art actually furthers an understanding of his "truth" and the nature of Johnson’s own achievement.
This multidisciplinary collection features prominent Johnsonians illuminating obscure aspects of the author's canon. Donald Greene disputes Johnson’s alleged Stoicism, while Jean Hagstrum explores Johnson’s advocacy for loving relationships. Other contributors examine Johnson’s expertise as a historian, his legal contributions to Chambers' lectures, and his secret composition of a sermon for the convict William Dodd. The volume seeks to move beyond Boswellian anecdotes to present a fuller intellectual context of Johnson’s thought.
Gender, Culture, and the Arts: Women, the Arts, and Society
The 'Solitary Philosopher' and 'Nature's Favourite': Gender and Identity in The Rambler
Varhus argues that Johnson's Rambler essays use the female experience as a primary lens to explore how circumstance and custom shape individual identity. Johnson depicts women as "Nature's favourites" whose customary protection perversely makes them "vulnerable to unhappiness." Varhus identifies a central theme in Johnson's preoccupation with his female audience, noting that a third of the letters to the Rambler are by women. Through female characters, Johnson demonstrates that social interaction often functions as a "masque or charade" where individual integrity is lost. Varhus examines the impasse between the didactic male persona and his female pupils, noting that Johnson identifies a susceptibility to influence as a key trait. By dramatizing gender's "subverting effects," Johnson challenges the underlying social order, suggesting that human beings are "drawn into each others' limitations." Varhus concludes that Johnson's analysis of the female experience is accompanied by a "reluctant identification" with their isolated social position.
Johnson the Poet: The Poetic Career of Samuel Johnson
Venturo's critical assessment of Samuel Johnson's poetic output argues that his career as a poet was a central, rather than marginal, aspect of his intellectual life. The monograph examines the development of Johnson’s verse from early school exercises to mature works like London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Venturo explores Johnson's use of Augustan imitation, neoclassical drama in Irene, and the "poetics of virtue" in his epitaphs and theater prologues. A significant portion of the text is dedicated to Johnson’s Latin poetry, analyzing its relationship to classical and Renaissance traditions. Venturo challenges the view that Johnson found poetry easier than scholarly work, suggesting instead that his facility for verse allowed him to explore complex philosophical and religious themes with unique intensity. The study includes an appendix featuring selected Latin poems with modern translations. Chapter 1, 'The Young Author,' explores initial forays into verse, highlighting technical experimentation and early mastery of the "dynamic" imitation alongside a lifelong preoccupation with the mutability of human existence. Chapter 2, 'London, "Country" Ideology, and the Limits of Augustan Imitation,' argues that the poem reflects a coherent Opposition political ideology while ultimately exposing the historical and aesthetic shortcomings of the formal verse imitation genre. Chapter 3, 'Irene and the Limits of Neoclassical Drama,' addresses a unique blank verse tragedy, examining its failure as a result of rigid moralism and generic anachronism. Chapter 4, 'Faith and the Limits of Reason in The Vanity of Human Wishes,' situates this landmark work within a theological context of fideism, where empirical surveys of human failure lead to a necessary leap of faith. Chapter 5, 'The Latin Poems,' analyzes personal lyrics, hymns, and prayers, illustrating how these works often "Christianize" classical forms while maintaining a distinct, personal moral voice. Chapter 6, 'The Poetics of Johnson's Epitaphs and Elegies,' examines funerary verse that consistently celebrates private virtue and Christian egalitarianism, emphasizing the moral utility of commemorating common lives. Chapter 7, 'Virtue, Charity, and Defense of the Vulnerable in Johnson's Theater Prologues,' reveals a recurring charitable impulse to protect the weak or dead from public injury through theater. Chapter 8, 'The Drawing-Room Poems: Compliments, Parodies, Translations, and Satires,' demonstrates proficiency in lighter, social verse forms, used alternately to offer moral instruction or mock contemporary literary fashions. Critics are generally favorable, praising the monograph as a necessary, comprehensive survey that successfully fills a long-standing void in scholarly analysis. In prominent periodicals, McKenzie, in ECS, calls it the most needed book in the profession, commending the patient, intelligent readings and accurate, eloquent commentary that firmly grounds the verse in its contexts. McDermott, in RES, describes it as an extraordinarily good book, praising the thorough, chronological structure and convincing critical commentary. Lynch's enthusiastic review in Choice recommends the volume for all academic libraries as a useful reference providing sensitive analysis for both novices and experts. In other scholarly journals, Guilhamet, in AJ, welcomes the cautious, even-tempered scholarship, noting that it successfully advances the writer's reputation despite modest interpretive claims. Ingram, in Yearbook of English Studies, highlights the effective coverage of the full poetic career, noting how it establishes distinct modern values against classical predecessors. Pedreira, in Essays in Criticism, appreciates the exploration of human limitations and theological transformations. Scanlan, in Albion, commends the detailed illumination of a compressed style, while Scherwatzky, in 1650–1850, values the treatment of aesthetic and political contexts. Rounce, in BJECS, calls the study an enthusiastic labor of love, matching the positive review he gives in Year’s Work in English Studies, which lauds the accessible generic organization. Finally, Smith, in the New Rambler, and Wiltshire, in English Language Notes, both praise the accessible style and the compelling argument that the relative ease of verse composition paradoxically directed the poet toward more arduous prose enterprises.
Guilhamet calls Venturo’s book a useful, primarily historical survey of Samuel Johnson’s entire poetic corpus, noting it is the first book-length study of its kind. While praising Venturo’s cautious, even-tempered scholarship and detailed discussions of major works—including London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene, Latin poems, epitaphs, and prologues—Guilhamet finds the interpretive claims modest and largely reliant on existing criticism. The review highlights Venturo’s attention to the elegy on Levet’s death and the inclusion of an appendix for the Latin poems, though Guilhamet finds Venturo "over-cautious" in some claims for the excellence of Johnson’s verse. Guilhamet agrees with Venturo that Johnson’s theatre prologues bridge sentiment and public rhetoric to articulate a "national vision" for private morality, showing a capacity for uniting personal sensibility with a formal public voice. The review suggests that Johnson’s pension from Lord Bute and Hugh Kelly’s Tory connections may imply a political motive for Johnson’s humanitarian aid to Kelly’s family. Although the book does not definitively resolve Johnson's status as a "major poet," Guilhamet concludes that Venturo successfully advances Johnson’s reputation, demonstrating that his "momentary expenditures of effort" produced a canon that inferior poets "cannot equal in a lifetime of poetic drudgery."
Ingram highlights Venturo's success in showcasing the breadth of Johnson's poetic career beyond his famous Juvenalian imitations and the elegy on Levet. Venturo presents Johnson as a natural poet whose moral severity may have led him to avoid focusing on an activity that came too easily, prompting him to laboriously craft his literary output. The study covers Johnson's early verse, Latin poems, elegies, epitaphs, and dramatic prologues, giving proper attention to the full scope of his work. Venturo also provides contextualizing analysis, viewing poems like London and Irene in relation to the Opposition movement against Walpole. A key argument is that Johnson's unique approach to the genre of imitation involved debating his modern values against those of his classical predecessors, making his poetry distinctively modern.
In this enthusiastic review, Lynch commends Venturo for producing the first book-length study of Johnson's poetic career in over two and a half centuries. Lynch describes the monograph as a "useful vade mecum" that provides close readings and essential context for both novice and expert readers. The review notes that Venturo dedicates individual chapters to London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Irene, while also examining juvenilia, Latin verse, and theatrical prologues. Lynch particularly values the appendix of Latin poetry, which he views as a complement to Baldwin's earlier editorial work. Although the review finds few "major revelations" for seasoned scholars, Lynch recommends the volume for all academic libraries because of its sensitive analysis of classical allusions.
McDermott praises Venturo's book as an "extraordinarily good book" providing a comprehensive, chronologically thorough, and convincing critical commentary on all of Johnson's poetry. Venturo magnificently draws a sense of Johnson as a versatile writer and consistent moralist, offering strong interpretations.
Venturo argues that Johnson consistently explored human limitations in art and life through his satires, elegies, and epitaphs. The analysis emphasizes how Johnson transforms Roman philosophy, particularly in The Vanity of Human Wishes, by substituting a Christian theology and humanistic concern for ordinary people like Dr. Levet and Elizabeth Foster.
Hart explores the 'Boswellising of Johnson' and the creation of Johnson as a 'cultural monument' through the influence of Boswell's Life. The argument traces the relationship between biography, copyright law, and the 'author function,' asserting that Boswell reductively makes Johnson 'cultural property' by placing him at the 'centre of an imaginary cultural unity.' Rounce notes Hart's success in using Boswell's skill in conveying 'everyday repetition and routine' to affirm Johnson's individuality without reducing him to a mere symbol.
Scanlan praises the book as a thorough, chronological study of Johnson's poetic career that emphasizes his deep-seated dependence on Roman poetic traditions. The book highlights Johnson's classical frame of mind, tracing his poetic habits from early schoolboy translations to his mature works. Scanlan commends Venturo's "commentary" style for its detailed illumination of Johnson's compressed style, clear distillation of secondary scholarship, and honest respect for readers, concluding that the work preserves a Latinate intellectual world.
Schwartz's largely positive review examines David Venturo's study of the poetry of Johnson. Venturo focuses on the personality of Johnson as conveyed through his English, Latin, and Greek verse, tracing his progress toward a poetics that embodies his moral, political, and theological beliefs. Venturo argues that Johnson was an avocational rather than professional poet. The review notes that Venturo outlines the limitations Johnson encountered in Augustan imitation, neoclassical drama, and empiricism, demonstrating how "The Vanity of Human Wishes" surpasses these limits by teaching that reason must yield to fideistic belief. Schwartz praises Venturo's close readings and translations of classical sources, though he notes that Venturo overlooks some comparative contexts for the religious Latin poetry.
Smith reviews Venturo’s analysis of Johnson’s poetry, praising its "scholarly yet accessible style." He identifies the work as a necessary "book-length analysis" that had been lacking in modern scholarship. Smith highlights Venturo’s exploration of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting how Johnson transforms Juvenalian satire into a "Christian critique of society." The review commends the inclusion of prose translations for Latin poems and the discussion of "society verse," which reveals Johnson as a "cultivated gentleman." Smith asserts that Venturo correctly links Johnson’s "extraordinary speed" in poetic composition to a moral conscience that prioritized more "stressful and difficult" literary tasks over the relative ease of verse.
Fideism, the Antisublime, and the Faithful Imagination in Rasselas
Venturo analyzes Johnson’s poetic career, framing him as a "vigorous, engaged writer" who used verse to navigate the literary debates of his age. The article focuses on major works like London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, examining Johnson’s use of "classical imitations" to provide contemporary political and moral critique. Venturo notes that Johnson’s poetry often displays "expressive intimacy," particularly in late works like the elegy on Robert Levet. The article contrasts Johnson’s "directness and simplicity" with the "elaborate and complicated" language of Thomas Gray and William Collins. Venturo argues that Johnson’s verse better anticipates Romantic poetry than many of his precursors. The narrative details Johnson’s mastery of the "heroic couplet" and his "unparalleled lexicographical knowledge," which informed his critical views on poetic diction. Venturo concludes that Johnson was an "honest, nuanced, occasionally contradictory thinker" who relished the challenge of "fresh directions in poetry."
The Party of Humanity: Writing Moral Psychology in Eighteenth-Century Britain
The Kindness of Strangers: Johnson's Life of Savage and the Culture of Altruism
Johnson constructs a moral psychology in the Life of Savage by opposing prudence and compassion, drawing on contemporary definitions from Butler and the Dictionary. Johnson identifies prudence with both reason and selfishness, while characterizing compassion as a spontaneous, often non-rational impulse. Through the narrative of Savage's encounter with a perjured prostitute, Johnson demonstrates how seemingly altruistic acts involve instrumental desires for restored masculinity and spiritual status. The text highlights a fundamental conflict between the narrator's punitive moralism and the subject's demand for sympathy. Johnson explores the problem of altruism within a system of reciprocal altruism, where Savage acts as a free-rider who resists social obligations by maintaining a lack of interiority. Johnson uses the failure of Savage's social credit and his subsequent death in Newgate to examine the limits of reason and the high cost of maintaining a moral reputation in a society based on exchange.
Vickers's letter to the editor condemns Martin for plagiarizing Rogers's Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia and criticizes Jackson for attempting to minimize the offense by questioning the status of derivative reference books. Vickers supports Rogers's accusation, arguing that plagiarizing any reference work is condemnable and that Martin used unscrupulous techniques to scan, copy, and edit original scholarship while changing tenses and word order. He disputes Jackson's "feeble self-defence" that trade press books should face lower standards of accuracy than university publications, calling such logic misplaced condescension. Additionally, Vickers supports Mason's documentation of sixty factual errors in the biography and calls for a public apology from the publishers to Rogers for the systematic plagiarism of his scholarship.
Vilmar analyzes Johnson’s "forensic skill" in political and theological controversy, focusing on his satirical pamphlets and parliamentary debates. The article traces Johnson’s transition from a "rabid, harsh opponent" of the Walpole administration to a "sincere, steady" defender of the Crown. Vilmar details Johnson’s work on the Lilliputian debates, where he "filled twenty double-columned pages monthly" from sparse notes. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "polemical attack" on the American colonists in Taxation No Tyranny, where he famously queried, "how is it that we have the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Vilmar argues that Johnson intuits the "hypocrisy at the root" of colonial independence claims, using "nominative metaphors" to sink "demigods of independence" down to "colonists governed by a charter." The article concludes that Johnson’s polemics are "grounded, mutually illuminating deliberation" designed to puncture the "political illusions" of his time.
In the Tracks of a Lexicographer: Secondary Documentation in Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English Language' (1755)
L'Anecdote: Actes du colloque de Clermont-Ferrand (1988)
Association des publications de la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de l'Université Blaise-Pascal
Les 'Johnsoniana' de Mrs. Thrale, devenue Mrs. Piozzi
Samuel Johnson: Commemorative Lectures: Delivered at Pembroke College, Oxford
Lurcock reviews a limited record of the 1984 Johnson bicentennial conference, noting that only two full lectures were preserved. The reviewer summarizes Weinbrot’s analysis of Johnson’s narrative rhetoric and Greene’s argument for a biography centered on literary achievement rather than Boswellian anecdotes. Lurcock expresses disappointment that the volume fails to document the broader range of scholarship presented by the prominent attendees. The review concludes by highlighting Fleeman’s valedictory vision of replacing definitive editions with a central digital database for Johnsonian research.
Wahba collects plenary papers from the 1984 Pembroke conference. The volume presents research by Weinbrot regarding Johnson’s narrative arts in Savage, Vanity, and Rasselas. Greene examines the trajectory of Johnsonian biography, while Fleeman contributes a valediction. Wahba’s preface preserves the historical significance of the conference. The collection highlights Johnson’s specific literary methodology and his enduring biographical presence.
Birthplace Museum, Lichfield, Staffordshire and 17 Gough Square, London EC4
The eighty-minute monodrama focuses on Johnson's final days. Wain conceived the play specifically for actor Bruce Purchase. The production premiered (2003) for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Purchase performed the role, bringing a large physical body and suitable countenance to the presentation. The dramatic structure explores Johnson's power, deep restlessness, and inherent vulnerability. Wain often frames Johnson's writings as episodes in his life. The play uses this perspective, presenting Johnson through intensely personal, autobiographical material.
Charlotte Lennox and the Collier Sisters: Two New Johnson Letters
Two of Samuel Johnson's hitherto unpublished letters–the first of which is a full manuscript of a letter addressed to Samuel Richardson that addresses the publication prospects of Charlotte Lennox's "The Female Quixote" and the second in which Johnson engages himself in the legal concerns of sisters Sophia Collier and Mary Collier–are examined.
Ernest Borneman's Tomorrow Is Now (1959): Thoughts about a Lost Novel, with Glances toward Samuel Johnson and Other Modernists
Walker situates Samuel Johnson alongside the relatively unknown German-British Modernist writer, filmmaker, and jazz critic Ernest Borneman. Walker addresses the challenge of applying the term "Modernist" to Johnson by suggesting that Johnson's empirical, often genre-mixing approach offers valuable insights into Borneman's experimental novel Tomorrow Is Now. The chapter argues that Johnson would be an adept reader of Borneman, contending that both authors demonstrated a comfort with blending compositional conventions and defying narrative expectations, even while navigating commercial pressures.
Walsh examines Johnson’s high praise for Richardson’s novels, contrasting them favorably with the works of Fielding. Johnson maintains that Richardson extracts the "kernel of life," proving his profound understanding of the human heart. He states one Richardson letter holds more knowledge of the heart than all of Tom Jones. This highlights Johnson's commitment to fiction as a powerful tool for moral instruction through precise documentation of human life.
DeMaria provides a scathing review of Wechselblatt’s study, criticizing the prose as frequently nonsensical. The monograph uses paradoxology to position Johnson as a pivot between English eccentricity and normative authority. DeMaria disputes Wechselblatt’s reliance on deconstructive theory, arguing that it reduces Johnson to an epicenter of postmodern literary destabilization while ignoring decades of established scholarship. The review specifically objects to the gallicization of Johnson, such as the comparison of a Reynolds portrait to a description of Charles Baudelaire and the application of Maurice Blanchot’s version of the Orpheus myth. DeMaria concludes that Wechselblatt’s learned but ingenious transformations are radically out of touch with historical reality.
Hudson characterizes Wechselblatt's book as a belated exercise in High Deconstruction, arguing Johnson anticipated Derrida by founding his cultural authority on its own paradoxical effacement. Hudson finds Wechselblatt an adroit reader but critiques the study for imposing rigid binary oppositions where complexities and historical context (third terms like politics or usage) exist, leading to strained interpretations. While acknowledging intriguing points about modern authorship's paradoxes, Hudson ultimately finds the deconstructive methodology ill-suited to Johnson's unsystematic engagement with human complexities and Wechselblatt's analysis entangled in its own contradictions.
Lynch’s critical review describes Martin Wechselblatt’s study as a "densely theoretical" meditation on authorship and authority. Lynch notes that Wechselblatt employs binary oppositions—sage and hack, general and particular—to trace Johnson’s "maximization," or the transformation of disconnected observations into monumental maxims. While acknowledging the study’s theoretical currency, Lynch finds the "jargon of Horkheimer and Adorno" renders large sections "quite unreadable" and the central argument elusive. Lynch objects that Johnson often serves as a mere "excuse to theorize" rather than the primary subject.
Radner calls the book a difficult but rewarding study of Johnson's complex relationship with authority, praising its energetic analyses and nuanced readings of less common texts, but notes the first chapter is dense and some later readings, including The Life of Swift, forced.
Rounce examines Wechselblatt’s use of critical theory to argue that Johnson constructs "cultural authority" through the indeterminacy of his roles as hack and sage. While acknowledging the theoretical sophistication, Rounce finds the radical questioning of traditional criticism "strangely muted" and the readings of canonical texts often restrained by deterministic paradigms. He notes that Wechselblatt’s removal of works from immediate context into an "indeterminate 'authority'" sometimes produces brilliant insights but can also generalize difficult issues.
Eighteenth-Century Satire: Essays on Text and Context from Dryden to Peter Pindar
Johnson's London and Juvenal's Third Satire: The Country as 'Ironic' Norm
Weinbrot analyzes Johnson’s London through a comparative study of Juvenal’s Third Satire, disputing the view that the poem offers a viable escape to the country. He argues that Thales’s retreat to Wales is characterized by an "ironic" norm, as the rural landscape is neither sufficiently described nor realistically capable of providing sanctuary from the pervasive evils of the city. Weinbrot emphasizes that Johnson uses the Juvenalian framework to highlight a sense of universal corruption that transcends geography. By focusing on the poem’s rhetorical structure, Weinbrot suggests that the country functions more as a "metaphorical rejection" of London than a literal paradise. The chapter concludes that Johnson’s adaptation reveals a darker, more skeptical outlook on human social structures than earlier Augustan imitations. Weinbrot’s analysis positions London as a work of profound alienation where the speaker remains trapped between a loathed present and an impossible past.
No 'Mock Debate': Questions and Answers in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Weinbrot examines the interrogative structure of The Vanity of Human Wishes, challenging the idea that the poem’s concluding religious turn is a forced or "mock" resolution. He argues that the poem functions as a sincere dialogue between the "restless fire" of human ambition and the sobering realities of historical failure. Weinbrot tracks Johnson’s use of questions and answers to show a progressive stripping away of secular illusions, leading the reader toward a "divine" perspective. The article highlights Johnson’s departure from Juvenal’s Tenth Satire, noting that Johnson replaces pagan stoicism with a distinctively Christian "petitionary" prayer. Weinbrot disputes critics who find the ending pessimistic, claiming instead that it offers a "manly" and active form of spiritual hope. By focusing on the interplay of "Enquirer" and "Director," Weinbrot demonstrates that the poem's formal architecture is designed to lead the soul from worldly vanity to celestial wisdom.
Samuel Johnson, Percival Stockdale, and Brick-Bats from Grubstreet: Some Later Response to the Lives of the Poets
On the reception of the Lives of the Poets as seen through the hostile critique offered by Stockdale's Lectures on the Truly Eminent English Poets (1807). Stockdale, a frustrated and financially dependent man of letters, repeatedly attacked Johnson's Lives as a "Disgrace to English Literature" driven by political and religious bigotry. Though Stockdale's vitriol was largely dismissed as spiteful, his Lectures and their reviews demonstrate that by the early 19th century, while Johnson remained a critical icon and established the national poetic canon, his critical standards were shifting from requirements to options, making way for different critical emphasis on sensibility and response.
Censoring Johnson in France: Johnson and Suard on Voltaire: A New Document
Weinbrot examines the bowdlerization and gallicizing of Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare in Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard’s 1768 Variétés littéraires. The article describes how Suard "solidified" his reputation as a liaison for British letters while "censoring" Johnson to appease French tastes and protect Voltaire and his British allies, Rymer and Dennis, from attack. Weinbrot presents a "new document" in which Johnson challenges Voltaire's "manglings of Shakespeare," arguing that French translations "bear little relation to English texts." Suard eliminated Johnson's "stern criticism" and "audacious" attacks on French tragedy—including the magisterial judgment that Voltaire's censures were "suitable to minute and slender criticism"—to maintain diplomatic literary relations and uphold "national dramatic taste." Weinbrot notes that while Johnson "suffered from French liberties," his work was packaged alongside translations of Ossian and Hume. This censorship prevented French readers from fully understanding the basis of Voltaire's subsequent annoyance with Johnson and placed British dramatic achievement and critical judgment in a dubious light. French editors considered Johnson's views too "barbarous" for their public, who viewed Shakespeare as a "barbaric, unhousebroken dog." Weinbrot concludes that this document clarifies the "Anglo-French debate" and shows how Suard selectively removed Johnson's more "audacious" remarks to introduce English literature while protecting the reputation of French critics.
Johnson, Jacobitism, and the Historiography of Nostalgia
Weinbrot offers a review essay on J. C. D. Clark's Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism, a work that posits Johnson as a committed Tory-Jacobite. Weinbrot critiques Clark’s book as a flawed and tendentious piece of revisionist history, driven by Clark's own political and personal agenda to resurrect a romanticized Jacobite past. He identifies numerous factual errors, methodological flaws, and abuses of evidence in Clark's work, from misinterpreting Johnson's views on classical literature to transforming subjunctive possibilities into certainties. A central flaw, Weinbrot argues, is Clark’s unfounded premise that Johnson was a Nonjuror who refused the oaths of allegiance at Oxford. He concludes that Clark's portrait of Johnson as a proscribed victim of a hostile regime is a distortion, ignoring Johnson's full and joyful participation in the intellectual and literary life of his time.
Weinbrot’s first contribution on Johnson’s politics, in response to Clark and Erskine-Hill.
Who Said He Was a Jacobite Hero?: The Political Genealogy of Johnson's Charles of Sweden
Samuel Johnson does not portray Charles XII of Sweden as a Jacobite hero in his 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' as a number of commentators have maintained. Instead Johnson links Charles with the notion of the Goths as barbarian predators, in a section of the poem that depicts military heroism with hostility. Moreover, evidence indicates that after 1717 the majority of Tories and Jacobites did not regard Charles as a hero. Voltaire's 'History of Charles XII. King of Sweden' contributed to the negative image of Charles.
Further consideration of Johnson’s politics, focusing on the interpretation of the passage in The Vanity of Human Wishes about Charles XII of Sweden.
Samuel Johnson and the Domestic Metaphor
Counters the common characterization of Johnson's style as exclusively Latinate, abstract, and elevated by highlighting his frequent use of homely, concrete language and "domestic metaphors." These draw on familiar aspects of daily life—family, home, children, gardening, simple labor, common objects, trade—to ground abstract concepts and enhance reader connection. This stylistic element reflects Johnson's moral emphasis on shared human experience and common life. It argues this "Anglo-Hebraic" style, potentially influenced by biblical language and parallelism alongside classical sources, offers affective contrast and broader moral extension than a purely elevated diction would allow.
Weinbrot disputes the findings of neo-Jacobite scholars, such as Niall MacKenzie and Howard Erskine-Hill, who claim to find pervasive Jacobite subtexts in Johnson’s writing. Using the metaphor of a "truffle hunt," Weinbrot argues that such researchers often mistake stones for truffles by over-interpreting historical coincidences and dismisses MacKenzie's evidence from James Ray and The Female Rebels as misinterpreted or originating from anti-Jacobite contexts where any comparison is unfavorable. Weinbrot challenges the sympathetic Jacobite resonance referencing Charles Edward Stuart in Johnson's portrayal of Charles XII of Sweden in The Vanity of Human Wishes, maintaining that any perceived analogy would damage, not bolster, the Pretender's image. Citing Johnson's own condemnation of Charles XII as a "madman" in The Adventurer and noting broader contemporary negative views of the Swedish king even among Tories and Jacobites, Weinbrot defends a "human reading" of the poem where Charles serves a moral rather than partisan purpose. The article asserts that Johnson’s politics were fluid and practical, blending tenets of Whig and Tory theory rather than adhering to a "twofold vision" of repressed resentment. Weinbrot concludes that Johnson’s preeminent career primarily emphasizes literary and moral concerns, and that the search for Jacobite "intimations" often ignores Johnson's explicit commitments to party-less government and constitutional leadership while failing to recognize that Gothicism was an "ambiguous material" in the eighteenth century.
Lock reviews Weinbrot's collection of sixteen essays, noting the organization follows the taxonomy of the subtitle. Weinbrot aligns himself with "Archaeo-Historicism," grounding his argument on solid evidence and challenging speculative history. The essays are amply documented and several are recommended as methodological examples. Weinbrot is combative in his contributions to the Johnson's supposed Jacobitism debate, arguing against the Jacobite interpretation and the notion that the passage on Charles XII of Sweden in The Vanity of Human Wishes is a covert Jacobite declaration. Other essays refute the idea that Johnson was a sceptic and refine views of his use of ordinary language and his attitudes to genre. Lock concludes the collection brings a formidable combination of erudition and insight to the quest for the historical Johnson.
The Gensis of a Controversy: The Politics of Johnson and the Johnson of Politics
Outlines the origins and development of the late 20th-century debate concerning Johnson's politics, focusing on the clash between Donald Greene's view of Johnson as a pragmatic, empirical moralist detached from rigid Toryism, and the neo-Jacobite interpretation championed by historians like J.C.D. Clark and literary critics like Howard Erskine-Hill. Greene, influenced by Namier, saw Johnson operating within a predominantly Whig political landscape. The counter-view posits Johnson as a committed nonjuring Jacobite whose works contain coded Stuart sympathies, reflecting a fundamentally Tory, High Church eighteenth century fundamentally misrepresented by Whig historiography.
Johnson, Oxford, Oaths, and Historical Evidence
Critically examines the neo-Jacobite claim that Johnson, as a matter of principle, refused to take the required oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration at Oxford and later in life, thereby sacrificing career opportunities. It presents historical evidence suggesting Oxford oath-taking practices were often perfunctory or inconsistent with strict statutes, that matriculants like Johnson likely did take or were deemed to have taken necessary oaths, and that avoiding oaths was common for various reasons. It refutes related claims regarding Johnson's potential servitorship at Oxford and his avoidance of service in the Trained Bands.
The Vanity of Human Wishes Part I: Who Said He Was a Jacobite Hero? The Political Genealogy of Johnson's Charles of Sweden
Challenges the neo-Jacobite interpretation that Charles XII of Sweden functions as a "Tory and Jacobite hero" in The Vanity of Human Wishes, serving as a sympathetic surrogate for Charles Edward Stuart. It traces the predominantly negative portrayal of Charles XII in British political and literary discourse from the early 18th century, particularly after the failed invasion plot of 1717. Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites alike largely viewed him as a destructive tyrant, absolutist, Goth, enemy of peace and trade, and military madman, especially influenced by Voltaire's widely read History.
The Vanity of Human Wishes Part II: Reading Charles of Sweden in the Poem, Reading Johnson's Politics
Continues the critique of the Jacobite reading by analyzing Johnson's specific portrayal of Charles XII within the poem's context. It argues the poem frames military ambition negatively, presenting Charles not sympathetically but as a prime example of the vanity of martial glory, consistent with contemporary negative views (influenced by Voltaire) and Johnson's own anti-militarist statements in works like the Life of Savage and Adventurer 99. Furthermore, it posits Johnson's actual political stance leaned towards pragmatic Whiggism and Erastianism, making coded Jacobite sympathy highly improbable and inconsistent with his known principles.
Hodge Lives: Percival Stockdale, Samuel Johnson, and the Reclamation of a Ninth Life
Weinbrot discusses Percival Stockdale's elegy for Hodge, Johnson's favorite cat. Earlier speculation by H. W. Liebert suggested Hodge died around 1769, but new research finds the poem, "An Elegy written by Mr. Stockdale on the Death of a Friend's favourite Cat," in a 1771 magazine, suggesting Hodge lived until the spring of 1771. Stockdale's poem is seen as a nascent Romantic work that subverts Johnson's authority, nuancing him merely as a "friend" to the poet but a "master" only to the small creature. The elegy adds to the literature of the domestic feline and satirizes corrupt politicians. Weinbrot notes the poem's implicit Jacobite possibility, jesting that Hodge might have been a crypto-Catholic who ate oysters only on Fridays.
Samuel Johnson: Process, Progress, and the Beatus Ille
The essay challenges the dominant critical view of Johnson as a perpetually tormented and unhappy figure, a "Somber Sam" perpetually in conflict. It argues for a corrective view emphasizing Johnson's capacity for joy and his life's progression through philosophical and moral processes. Johnson's statue in St. Paul's Cathedral is presented as an image of strength. The author reframes Boswell's gladiatorial analogy, suggesting Johnson as an undefeated bestiarius who returns to combat, not a slave fighting to the death. Examples of Johnson's sociability and capacity for laughter, particularly with Fanny Burney and John Wilkes, are highlighted, promoting the image of "Smiling Sam" over "Sad Sam."
The address to the Johnsonians, Chicago, 19 September 2008.
Johnson and the Modern: The Forward Face of Janus
Weinbrot's letter to the editor and his exchange with Clark regarding Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture 1660-1780 address the long-standing controversy over Johnson's politics and putative Jacobitism. Weinbrot challenges Clark’s assertion that Johnson was a Jacobite non-juror who left Oxford for political reasons and used the Dictionary as a vehicle for Jacobite ideology. While Clark expresses caution about Weinbrot's use of "progress" and Darwinian evolution as organizing concepts, Weinbrot defends using Adventurer No. 137 to illustrate the concept of gradual progress in Johnson’s thought. Critiquing Clark's scholarly and critical methods, Weinbrot argues there is no evidence Johnson wanted to be at Culloden, noting no sane officer would accept a half-blind, untrained civilian in combat. Weinbrot provides evidence from the Leicestershire archives to show Johnson did not refuse to sign oaths at Market Bosworth in 1732 because the relevant subscription books did not contain them, citing this historical and archival evidence to challenge Clark's claims regarding the absence of Johnson's signature.
In this enthusiastic review, Lee describes this collection as an essential road map for future scholarship. Lee notes that Weinbrot assembles papers from a Huntington Library conference to address the vitality of Johnson in the twenty-first century. The review highlights Sherman’s meditation on temporal manipulation, Lock’s analysis of political contexts, and DeMaria’s authoritative survey of textual editions. Lee finds the book’s significant length warranted by the depth and fecundity of the assembled materials.
Weinbrot examines Johnson’s religious prose, focusing on the twenty-eight extant sermons he wrote or dictated, primarily for his friend John Taylor. The article details how these works reflect Johnson’s "orthodox Anglican" beliefs and his emphasis on "conditional salvation." Weinbrot argues that Johnson’s sermons are "enlightened responses to radical evil," viewing original sin as the "stains of original corruption" discoverable in even the purest minds. The narrative notes that Johnson’s "strict observance of Lent" and "self-scourging" prayers informed his homiletic style, which aimed to "diffuse instruction to every diversity of condition." Weinbrot highlights the "moving prayers" Johnson composed upon the death of his wife, Elizabeth, as evidence of his "irrational guilt." The article concludes that Johnson’s sermons provide a "judicious and faithful narrative" of his spiritual struggles, demonstrating that his piety was always contingent on "human effort" and the "urgency of his efforts to achieve salvation."
The Idea of the Novel in the Eighteenth Century
Weinsheimer examines the centrality of Johnson's Rambler 4 in defining the eighteenth-century novel's power through the 'force of example.' Contrast is drawn between the 'complacent' view of Joseph Addison, who saw fiction as safe amusement, and Johnson's perception of the novel as a dangerous, transformative medium capable of 'murdering without pain' by unconsciously invading the reader's mind. Weinsheimer argues that for Johnson, novels possess cognitive value because they exhibit 'life in its true state,' functioning as 'familiar histories' that convey practical 'knowledge of vice and virtue.' The article highlights Johnson's insistence on critical judgment to resist the 'violent effects' of examples on 'passive, impressionable minds'. Saliently, Weinsheimer notes that even Johnson acknowledged the 'act of imagination' that realizes fictitious events, citing the 'cautionary character' Imperia, who was misled by romances.
Wharton employs a coldly analytical psychological approach to examine Johnson’s neuroses and his persistent theme of the irrational. He identifies the Idler as a culmination of Johnson’s fear of imagination and hope. Wharton offers a provocative reading of Rasselas as a repudiation of death written to avoid visiting his dying mother. The study argues that Johnson’s creative imagination was released primarily through scholarly work, which provided a commentary on the phantoms of hope.
CGV entry 11/9:90. A review by Steven Lynn of the book by T. F. Wharton, alongside other works.
Hume's enthusiastic review commends Kaminski's strikingly original focus on the commercial realities of Grub Street from 1737 to 1746. Staying away from Boswell, the book provides fresh, straightforward accounts of the book trade, the Gentleman's Magazine, and the relationship with Richard Savage. Hume highlights Kaminski's calculations of Johnson's actual income, the early development of his political principles, and the abortive 1745 Shakespeare edition. The review highlights Kaminski's ability to examine Johnson's professional career rather than conventional biography.
Korshin welcomes the collection as it focuses exclusively on Johnson's biographies without reference to Boswell. While quality varies, Korshin praises essays by Lipking, Gray, and Parke for taking new paths. The volume performs a valuable service by emphasizing how central life-writing was to the period's literature.
Scanlan presents an approving review of this essay collection, noting that while the title is somewhat misleading, the volume offers a successful variety of scholarly approaches to Johnson's biographical habit of mind. Scanlan highlights Stephen Fix’s essay on the Life of Milton as the collection's best, specifically for its argument that Johnson’s primary targets were fawning Miltonists rather than Milton himself. He praises John Dussinger’s research into literary patronage which characterizes the Life of Savage as an "exposé of a society based on greed and plutocratic power." While Scanlan finds Lawrence Lipking’s analysis of Johnson’s adolescent poetry penetrating, he notes that Catherine Parke’s exploration of "biographical thinking" and James Battersby’s discussion of the relation between biography and criticism remain inadequately developed. Scanlan also critiques William R. Siebenschuh’s pedagogical essay for its insistent tone regarding the "common reader." He concludes that the volume effectively makes its readers better interpreters of Johnson.
Wheeler focuses on Johnson as an arch-empiricist, which limits the scope for excessive post-structuralist theory. Essays discuss topics like Johnson's Life of Milton and his portrait of Charles XII. The collection offers a "finely judged sense" of Johnson's reputation, emphasizing sharp, common-sense questioning of biography, making it valuable for a modern understanding of the genre.
Wheeler edits a useful collection of essays exploring Johnson's biographical writings as data for literary history and evidence of his personal aesthetics. The volume addresses Johnson as a "man with emulable habits of mind" rather than a mere "historical oddity." Contributors discuss recent critical directions and pedagogical strategies for reintroducing Johnson to students. While the collection contains a bibliography of recent scholarship, the reviewer notes a lack of annotation in the listings. The text emphasizes Johnson's status as a master of prose and the enduring relevance of his biographical art.
Samuel Johnson's 'Preface to the Preceptor' and its Context
The Elusiveness of Johnsonian Friendship
Whittemore describes Johnson as the final representative of a three-thousand-year classical tradition that prioritized shared human characteristics over individual quirks. Despite his classical roots, Johnson pioneered modern biographical techniques in the Life of Savage by focusing on the private life of a non-aristocratic subject. Whittemore analyzes how Johnson’s physical scrofula and psychological "shadow" side informed his empathetic yet judgmental approach to biography. While the Lives of the Poets functions as a conservative classical exercise in subordinating self to public accomplishments, Johnson’s fascination with "unruly figures" like John Milton and Jonathan Swift reveals an underlying attraction to powerful egos. Johnson sought to advance readers in virtue through a "balanced syntactical phrasing" that mirrored his own struggle to reconcile internal chaos with rational order. Whittemore characterizes Johnson as his own school, existing between the ancient and modern worlds of the genre.
Poetry: Captured Again — But Died on the Way to the Zoo
Aristotle explained, categorized, defined–and therefore captured–everything, including poetry. Although poetry kept escaping Aristotle's corral, it also kept being recaptured, sometimes by Aristotelians, sometimes by anti-Aristotelians, and sometimes by monks. Geoffrey Hartman seems to have said that Samuel Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" marked a turning point in poetry's history.
The Allure of the Improbable: Evidence and Romance in the Scottish Highlands, 1746–1790
Wickman examines the British romanticization of the Scottish Highlands following the Jacobite Rebellion, focusing on the cultural dialectic between probability and improbability. He analyzes literary representations of the Highlands by writers including Johnson, Smollett, and Macpherson. The study investigates how Johnson’s "Journey to the Western Islands" engages with primitive Highland "improbability" as a contrast to Enlightenment calculations of legal and economic truth. Wickman argues that the Highlands became a cultural preserve representing "pristine humanity" against metropolitan corruption. He links the shifting disciplinary contours of literature to modern evidential codes, suggesting that romance functioned as a critical departure from the constructive projections of economic probability. The dissertation demonstrates how the Highlands provided a terrain for displaying the allure of the improbable in eighteenth-century literary and legal thought.
Sent as a Gift: Eight Correspondences from the Eighteenth Century
Edifying the Young Dog: Johnson's Letters to Boswell
Wilcox examines the psychological underpinnings of Johnson's correspondence, arguing that his letters serve as a defensive bulwark against a 'terrifying' internal void. Focusing on Johnson's letters to Boswell and Thrale, Wilcox identifies a recurring pattern where Johnson uses the recipient's identity to stabilize his own precarious sense of self. The analysis suggests that Johnson's epistolary style—characterized by moralistic aphorisms and domestic detail—functions as a 'prophylactic' against the 'black dog' of depression. Wilcox highlights the 1773 Highland tour letters to Thrale as an effort to transform raw experience into a coherent narrative for an audience that provided him with emotional security. By treating his correspondents as extensions of his own consciousness, Johnson uses the letter to maintain a 'vicarious existence' when solitary reflection proved unbearable. Wilcox concludes that Johnson's letters are less about communication than about the 'desperate maintenance of a persona' in the face of spiritual and physical dissolution.
Healing the Lacerated Mind: Samuel Johnson's Strategies of Consolation
Wilcox analyzes Johnson’s consolatory letters, arguing they reflect a sophisticated phenomenology of grief rooted in orthodox Christian belief. Johnson views grief as a laceration of the interwoven continuity of being shared with the deceased. His strategy involves demonstrating empathy by "partaking" in the loss, limiting the grief's perceived magnitude, and urging the bereaved to reimmerse in duty or "the business of life." This action allows time and new experience to scour away sorrow, preventing a spiral into morbid melancholy.
Wilcox reviews Anthony W. Lee’s collection of essays examining the relationship between Johnson and Modernist figures. He disputes Lee’s attempt to remake Johnson into a quasi-Modernist, arguing instead that Johnson’s value lies in his difference from modern suppositions. Wilcox highlights Thomas Curley’s sensitive account of Beckett’s obsession with a doubt-ridden, subversive Johnson. He also notes Melvyn New’s comparison of London and T. S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which identifies stasis as a defining curse for both authors. Wilcox observes that while essays on Beckett, Woolf, and Eliot provide real ties, other chapters circle further out with diminishing returns. He concludes that the literary criticism of Johnson remains the most fertile site for such scholarship.
Ludicrous Exaggerations and Colloquial Licenses: 'Prescriptive' Labels in Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language
Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot: Rational Piety in The Rambler
Williams examines the contributions of Carter and Talbot to The Rambler. These women, whom Johnson praises, contribute several essays to the periodical, though their works are noted for their solemn tone rather than cheerfulness. Their involvement highlights the participation of intellectual women in Johnson's moral periodical discourse, particularly concerning themes of faith and piety.
Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space
In this short story, Williams depicts a future society where virtual children must "incarnate" into physical bodies to achieve legal adulthood. The protagonist, Alison, identifies Samuel Johnson as her "imaginary friend" and mentor, engaging in internal dialogues with him to navigate social and academic pressures. Alison draws specifically on Johnson’s "Age of Reason" persona, quoting his views on leisure and intellectual improvement to cope with her rigorous studies. The narrative uses Johnson as a symbol of historical wisdom and stability amidst a high-tech, often dehumanizing environment. Alison’s affinity for Johnson inspires her to create a "Dr. Johnson" art series, transposing him into various space-faring scenarios. Williams uses these references to contrast Johnson’s eighteenth-century moral clarity with the complex ethical dilemmas of a world governed by artificial intelligence and genetic modification.
A short story in which SJ figures.
Wilson examines Johnson’s experiences of the festive season through his correspondence and the reminiscences of Piozzi. The text notes Piozzi’s observation of Johnson as a "creditable horseman" who followed hounds for "fifty miles on end." Wilson argues that Christmas for Johnson was often a "catalogue of ailments," characterized by respiratory distress and loneliness following the deaths of Williams and Levet. The account highlights Johnson’s 1774 Christmas gift to Piozzi: an advance copy of his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, which George III also read. Wilson emphasizes that Johnson marked the New Year "punctiliously" with fervent prayers against "Idleness" and self-reproach regarding his "Learning." The text contrasts Johnson’s "pious Christmas" with the secularized celebrations of later centuries, noting his reliance on unbought gifts of "Pheasant, Venison, Turkey and Ham" from admirers.
On Christmas.
On definitions of foods in the Dictionary.
Wilson examines Johnson's "gustatory habits" as recorded in Boswell's Life and Piozzi's anecdotes. The article describes Johnson's intense physical reaction to eating, including visible perspiration and swelling veins, noting Boswell's observation that the display "could not but be disgusting." Wilson highlights Johnson's lack of moderation, his capacity for both fasting and gorging, and his specific preferences for "roasted kid," "veal-pye with plums," and "buttock of beef." The narrative notes Johnson's self-perception as a "philosopher of food" who claimed he could write a superior cookery book based on simplicity and the reduction of ingredients. Wilson details Johnson’s eccentricities, such as carrying orange peel in his pockets and consuming sixteen cups of tea at a sitting, often using a three-gallon teapot provided by Piozzi. The article also mentions Johnson's sensitivity regarding his consumption, exemplified by his angry refusal of cold sheep's head offered by Lady Lochbuy.
In this enthusiastic review of John Wiltshire's monograph, Black praises the volume as a scholarly, readable, and first-rate study where medicine conquers and throws light on myth. Black highlights pain as the central theme of the book, outlining how Wiltshire skillfully integrates Johnson's physical ailments, medical interests, and interactions with physicians to address a neglected aspect of his life. The review notes that Wiltshire displays a formidable knowledge of eighteenth-century medical debates and offers a lengthy, judicious chapter on Johnson's health that properly maintains a salutary skepticism regarding past diagnoses. Additionally, Black emphasizes Wiltshire's analysis of Boswell's Life, which demonstrates the therapeutic nature of their friendship and challenges the traditional tragic authority and robust masculinity constructed by Boswell by exposing a man in debilitating pain.
Bracegirdle reviews Wiltshire’s analysis of Johnson’s dual role as a patient and a medical "dabbler." He emphasizes that medical themes form the core of Johnson’s writings, influenced by close friendships with four doctors. Bracegirdle notes that Johnson exercised "original thought in medical matters" during a transitional era in science. The review praises the book’s expertise in reviewing Johnson’s personal treatment of pain. Bracegirdle finds that Wiltshire’s biographical approach, which combines literary and scientific insights, further enhances Johnson’s stature. He recommends the work for its "closely-argued text" and "literary and scientific insights."
Gray identifies Wiltshire’s study as an exploration of Johnson’s dual role as "lifelong patient and as a would-be physician." Gray emphasizes Wiltshire’s argument that Boswell "tended to play down" Johnson’s ailments to preserve an image of "physical and psychological invincibility," effectively turning the biographer into "his subject's own patient." The reviewer highlights the text’s expert identification of Johnson’s "uncontrollable tics" and "bodily twitchings" as Tourette's Syndrome. Gray praises Wiltshire’s extensive knowledge of eighteenth-century medicine and his analysis of "Medicine as Metaphor," which examines Johnson’s "habitual use of medical terms in purely literary contexts." The work further details Johnson’s relationships with medical "irregulars" like Levet and professionals like Brocklesby, concluding that the "medically-minded patient" frequently sought to "minister to himself."
Gross acknowledges the meticulous descriptive detail of Wiltshire's study of Johnson's medical history, contemporary practice, and reliance on self-treatment. However, it critiques the book's lack of a conceptual framework for the ideological battles over Enlightenment medicine and its uncritical alignment with a Boswellian, patronizing view of Johnson as a cantankerous sage. The reviewer finds the attempt to read Rambler and Rasselas for medical metaphors weak and the pervasive focus on Johnson's moral suffering disappointing, suggesting the book diminishes his psychological insights into mental illness.
Hunter's positive review praise John Wiltshire's study of Johnson's connection to the eighteenth-century medical world as a valuable survey that unifies the writer's physical and psychological suffering with his literary and moral output. Hunter notes that Wiltshire documents Johnson's long history of chronic illness, including scrofula, melancholia, and breathing issues, alongside his skeptical approach to medical treatises and reviews. While Hunter disputes Wiltshire's argument that Johnson possessed a literal ambition to be a physician, she commends the exploration of Johnson's therapeutic relationships with figures like Robert Levet and Boswell. Hunter highlights Wiltshire's analysis of Rasselas as a groundbreaking, humane case study of madness.
Medicin pa samhallsschenen [review of Samuel Johnson in the Medical World: The Doctor and the Patient, by John Wiltshire]
Middendorf praises Wiltshire for responsibly bringing together, enlarging, and reconstructing the medical environment of Johnson's circle, placing him firmly in his medical world without blurring his portrait. The review highlights Wiltshire's focus on Johnson as a "spectacular" patient and healer whose friendships with physicians like Lawrence and Brocklesby and his own experience of pain informed his moral and religious thinking. While Middendorf commends the analysis of Johnson as a "physician of the mind" and praises the discussion of his medical writings and metaphors used to diagnose vicious habits, he critiques the overemphasis on and central importance Wiltshire assigns to illness in the Johnson–Thrale relationship. Middendorf disputes this emphasis, suggesting it ignores their frequent "love of nonsense" and laughter.
In this positive review, Shostak and Padnos examine John Wiltshire's book, Samuel Johnson in the Medical World: The Doctor and the Patient. The reviewers outline how the book investigates Johnson's complex relationship with eighteenth-century medical practices, framing his experiences both as a patient suffering from various ailments and as an astute observer of the medical profession. The analysis highlights Wiltshire's attention to Johnson's physical struggles and psychological anxieties, alongside his interactions with contemporary physicians. Shostak and Padnos emphasize how the work illuminates the intersection of literature and medicine through Johnson's biographical record.
Pailler’s enthusiastic review of Wiltshire’s monograph praises its "penetrating remarks" on Johnson's physical and psychological suffering. The review details Wiltshire's examination of Johnson's "medical history," his self-taught medical knowledge, and his interactions with physicians and the "doctor-figure" Robert Levet. Pailler highlights Wiltshire's study of medical metaphors in the Rambler, which shows how Johnson converted himself from "patient into doctor." The review also mentions Wiltshire's analysis of Johnson's relationships with Boswell and others who saw him as a "doctor-figure" due to his moral authority. Pailler appreciates Wiltshire's effort to renew the image of Johnson by placing his vulnerabilities in a historical context, concluding that the work is a "beautiful book" despite some minor typographical errors.
Probyn describes the book as a rich and often engrossing narrative, praising its subtle, energetic, and multi-dimensional account of Johnson's life as a patient and an eventual "psychopathological doctor." He particularly commends Wiltshire for revealing the medical specificity behind Johnson's generalized writing and for seeing Johnson as the drama's main player. The book is an excellent construction of Johnson's relationship with his medical world, but Probyn notes the lack of an account of Johnson's death.
In this mixed review of John Wiltshire's monograph, Rousseau praises the book's clarifying sanity, learning, and prudent synthesis but faults its lack of psychobiographical depth. Rousseau commends Wiltshire's empirical approach to Johnson's physical ailments and his analysis of the medical world of eighteenth-century England, including chapters on the practice of physic, medicine as metaphor, and Rasselas. However, Rousseau challenges Wiltshire's meticulous avoidance of explicitly bio-sexual domains, arguing that excluding sexuality from Johnson's medical history detracts from understanding his genius-temperament. A brief response from Wiltshire follows, defending his rejection of retrospective psychoanalysis and disputing Rousseau's interpretation of sexual symbols in Johnson's diaries.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
In this positive review of John Wiltshire's monograph, Rusnock describes the volume as a beautifully written, careful, and sensitive analysis of Johnson's encounters with eighteenth-century British medicine. Rusnock notes that Wiltshire successfully combines close readings of Johnson's writings with recent medical history scholarship to examine illness from the perspectives of both patient and physician. The review outlines the book's chronological structure, highlighting chapters on Johnson's medical history, his views on medical theory and practice derived from the Dictionary and the Rambler, his struggles with melancholy and madness as reflected in Rasselas, and his relationship with the irregular practitioner Robert Levet. Rusnock notes that because Johnson's writings only touch on disease tangentially, the evidence occasionally feels piecemeal and strained, yet she concludes that Johnson's humanity successfully emerges.
In this positive review, Scholtz outlines Wiltshire’s biographical and textual study of Johnson as both a “dabbler in physic” and a lifelong patient. Scholtz notes that the book’s “backbone” follows Johnson’s medical history and education before shifting to his journalistic intersections with the eighteenth-century medical world. The review highlights Wiltshire’s medicalized explications of The Rambler, Rasselas, and the elegy for Robert Levet. Scholtz particularly emphasizes the final chapter’s interpretation of the relationship between Johnson and Boswell as a form of “therapeutic friendship” modeled on the doctor-patient dynamic. Scholtz praises the extensive notes and bibliography.
Schwartz provides a mixed review of John Wiltshire’s study concerning Johnson’s involvement with eighteenth-century medicine. The review acknowledges Johnson’s extensive medical knowledge, his contributions to Robert James’s dictionary, and his habit of self-prescription. Schwartz notes that Johnson functioned as a literary physician, particularly in his relationship with Boswell, and highlights Piozzi’s observations on Johnson’s interest in mental illness. While Wiltshire accounts for current scholarship and Foucauldian perspectives, Schwartz finds the book’s structure problematic, suggesting the mixture of biographical and thematic approaches fails to present new or significant information to experts. Schwartz concludes that the work requires a heavy investment from the reader that is not proportional to the resulting payoff in fresh insight.
Sherbo’s mixed review evaluates Wiltshire’s study of Johnson’s medical history, his ties with doctors, and medical themes in his writings, noting the book’s backbone is biographical with a "nerve centre" being Johnson’s pre-eminence among writers on the "experience of pain." While Sherbo acknowledges the book "will not soon be superseded" due to its breadth of research into the Johnson canon and medical literature, he severely criticizes the "scholarly apparatus" and "scholarly paraphernalia," particularly the "unnecessary" notes and excessive length of others he finds better suited for the main text. The review identifies numerous omissions in the bibliography and index—specifically citing Timothy Bright and Sir Richard Blackmore—and points out a lack of references for several claims, including a lack of evidence regarding Christopher Smart’s confinement and a failure to reference medical works in Johnson’s own library. Despite these flaws and flawed index entries, Sherbo recognizes the book's value in deepening understanding of Johnson and linking his "black melancholy" to his literary output.
The Doctor and the Patient: A Reply to S. Rousseau
Johnson and Garrick: The Really Impossible Friendship
Johnson and Garrick: The Really Impossible Friendship (Part II)
Johnson Society of Australia/Vagabond Press
Jane Austen's 'Dear Dr. Johnson': The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 2000
Burney's accounts of Samuel Johnson in her diaries and letters rival those of Boswell's in authenticity and dramatic vividness. Burney, who knew Johnson primarily in the relaxed domestic setting of Streatham, presents a Johnson who is "gay Sam, agreeable Sam," contrasting with Boswell's often autocratic "Dr. Johnson." While Boswell's Life largely excluded Burney's contributions and presented a masculine-dominated scene, her writing uniquely captures Johnson's teasing humor and sociability, revealing an intimate portrait that deserves to be read on its own terms and not merely as a supplement to Boswell's work.
Travel: A Taste of Scotch and the Rocks: James Woodall Follows Johnson and Boswell to the West Coast
Fleeman’s severe review of Thomas Woodman’s introductory book on Johnson disputes the work's value for students and scholars alike. Fleeman characterizes the volume as an aimless effort that falls significantly below the standards required of a major educational publisher. The review challenges Woodman’s management of detail, noting that almost every quotation from Johnson contains errors in wording, punctuation, or capitalization. Fleeman highlights a specific instance where Woodman repeats a known error in Boswell’s Life of Johnson—reading "mad" for "rude"—while adding further inaccuracies of his own. While acknowledging the constraints of the series format, Fleeman concludes that the work reads like a "schoolboy crib" and provides a poor introduction for beginners. The review advises against the purchase of the book, citing its excessive price and lack of individual judgment.
Rhetorical Dimensions of Samuel Johnson's Rambler
Woodward addresses the pervasive biographical focus on Samuel Johnson (particularly Boswell's portrait) by examining the development and function of the implied authorial voice in The Rambler. The study argues that Johnson's propensity for oral communication influences his compositional process, creating an eidolon distinct from the "biographical Johnson." The analysis focuses on the rhetorical strategies of Johnson's second self, emphasizing the implied dialogue between the voice of Reason (the Rambler) and the voice of Experience (the fictional letter-writers) as a technique to engage and instruct the middle-class audience. Johnson's use of persona, structure, and diction establishes his desired literary authority and clarifies his assessment of The Rambler as the "pure wine" of his writings.
This edition collects Johnson's principal Shakespearian criticism, offering modernized texts of the Preface to Shakespeare (1765), the Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745), and the 1756 Proposals. Woudhuysen includes an extensive introduction tracing Johnson's imaginative and scholarly engagement with Shakespeare, emphasizing his role in transitioning Shakespeare studies from amateur editing to professional scholarship. The volume features a broad selection of Johnson's critical and explanatory notes to the plays, deliberately omitting most discussions of proposed emendations to focus on his critical insights. Unique to this selection is the inclusion of illustrative material from the Dictionary (1755), which reveals Johnson's firm grounding in Shakespeare's language and his use of the plays as a 'vast commonplace book' for moral exempla. Woudhuysen also collects stray comments from Boswell's Life and Piozzi's Anecdotes, providing a 'faithful miniature' of Johnson's lifelong engagement with the dramatist. The editorial policy prioritizes accessibility to Johnson's most significant critical ideas, maintaining scholarly rigor through detailed annotations that identify Johnson's sources and clarify his eighteenth-century critical vocabulary.
Woudhuysen notes the recent sale of The New-Years-Gift, a collection of meditations and prayers published in 1709, because of Boswell's inscription: "This Book belonged to Dr: Samuel Johnson." The book was last seen at a sale of the Auchinleck library in 1893. Johnson is presumed to have given it to Boswell. Although Johnson's library consisted of about 3,000 books, the whereabouts of about 65 books sold in 1785 remain unknown.
The Background and Significance of The Rambler's Format
Two More Johnson Pieces in the Universal Chronicle?
(龚龑)塞缪尔·约翰逊的道德关怀 / Sai mou erYue han xun de dao de guan huai [Samuel Johnson's Moral Concerns]
Yardley describes Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755) as the "most majestic and enduring achievement" of the 18th century, emphasizing its unique status as a work of literature compiled by a "writer of the first rank." Reviewing Hitchings’s account, Yardley details the decade of "intellectually exacting" and "physical labour" required to produce 42,000 entries, an effort Johnson initially estimated would take three years. Yardley praises the "muscular, original prose" of Johnson's definitions, noting his "witty and sly" explanations of abstract terms like "conscience" and "hope," as well as his "vivid and playful" treatment of "bedpressers" and "fopdoodles." While acknowledging the assistance of six amanuenses for mechanical tasks, Yardley asserts the work remains a testament to Johnson’s individual genius. The text further explores Johnson’s transition from an obscure "grubstreet" hack to a celebrated figure whose "totemic status" shaped every subsequent English dictionary for 150 years.
A Samuel Johnson Trove Goes to Harvard's Library
Zezima announces the Houghton Library at Harvard University’s acquisition of the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection, one of the world's largest compilations of 18th-century materials related to Johnson. The collection, amassed by Mary Viscountess Eccles and her first husband, Donald Frizell Hyde, comprises over 4,000 rare volumes, 5,500 manuscripts and letters, and 5,000 prints and objects, including Johnson’s engraved silver teapot. Scholarly highlights include the only known untrimmed copy of the first edition of Johnson's 1755 Dictionary, corrected proofs of Boswell’s biography, correspondence between Johnson and Boswell, and more than 50 volumes from Johnson’s personal library, many with his marginal notes. The collection offers an intimate view into Johnson's life, particularly his friendship with Hester Thrale, the subject of two books Eccles wrote under the name Mary Hyde.
Men's Work: Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Poetry, 1660–1784
'I Also Am a Man': Johnson's Lives and the Gender of the Poet
Zionkowski examines Johnson's Lives of the Poets as the definitive project in establishing a professional identity for poets grounded in bourgeois work ethics. Zionkowski argues that Johnson's emphasis on sustained intellectual labor and productivity served to delegitimize the "easy" verses of aristocratic amateurs while simultaneously providing a rationale for the exclusion of women from the poetic canon. By prioritizing the "common reader" over elite coteries, Johnson transformed the cultural value of the literary text into an exchange between professional author and a diverse audience. Zionkowski highlights Johnson's insistence on the "dignity of literature," illustrating how his rejection of traditional patronage in favor of the marketplace allowed male writers to achieve independence and authority. The chapter concludes that Johnson's aesthetic prescriptions effectively defined poetry as a masculine, professional vocation, creating a "blueprint" for the early Victorian conception of the man of letters.
The West versus the East: Samuel Johnson's Cultural Solipsism in Rasselas (1759)
Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi/Hacettepe University Journal of Faculty of Letters
A Source for Dr. Johnson's Self-Referential Entry 'Lexicographer'
Abstract: Sayers proposes that Johnson’s witty, self-referential definition of lexicographer as a "harmless drudge" finds a specific precedent in the 1699 New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew by B. E. Sayers identifies a similar self-deprecatory tone in B. E.’s entry for antiquary, which describes an obsessive figure "more to be pitied than scorned." Evidence suggests Johnson used this and other cant dictionaries, sharing vocabulary like "baggage," "grubstreet," and "drudge." Sayers argues Johnson’s "harmless drudge" echoes B. E.’s definition of "drudge" as a "laborious person," serving as an "insider nod" between lexicographers of different social strata.
Ramazzini, Johnson, and Rambler 85: A New Attribution
Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714) is remembered today as the founder of the study of occupational diseases. In his own day, he was 'one of the greatest intellects of the 17th century' and was a widely influential medical theorist. Ramazzini's master work, the groundbreaking De morbis artificium diatriba, was the first medical treatise devoted to the diagnosis of trade diseases. Here, Lee establishes a hitherto unrecognized allusion to Ramazzini in Samuel Johnson's Rambler 85 (Jan 8, 1751).
Social Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century: Clubs, Literary Salons, Textual Coteries
Two 'Most Un-Clubbable Men': Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, and Their Social Circles
Root provides a comparative analysis of Franklin's and Johnson's leadership styles within their respective Philadelphia and London social circles. Despite their distinct professional spheres, both men acted as "alpha males" who maintained exclusive, hierarchical social networks centered on their own personalities. Root argues that while their clubs ostensibly promoted "mutual improvement," they functioned as elite networks that allowed members to extend their influence through mutual favors. The text highlights a documented 1760 meeting at The Associates of Dr. Bray, noting that Johnson soon abandoned the group while Franklin remained a leader. Root suggests these figures were too similar in their demand for control and an audience to maintain a meaningful connection. The study disputes the Habermasian model of an egalitarian public sphere, emphasizing instead the insular and personality-driven nature of these influential social enclaves.
Reading Swift: Papers from the Sixth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift
Consistent Modeling of Heterogeneous Lexical Structures
Romary and Wegstein propose a methodology using Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines to consistently model heterogeneous dictionary data through "lexical crystals." A crystal is an independent, coherent substructure that systematically organizes core entry components like morphographical descriptions and grammatical information within mandatory containers like and <gramGrp>. This approach imposes necessary local constraints on the flexible TEI standard, ensuring greater regularity in encoding, which facilitates robust interoperability, querying, and reuse of dictionary resources, as illustrated using examples from Johnson's and other 18th-century dictionaries. The @type attribute on <entry> explicitly encodes Johnson's underlying lexicographical distinction between root (primitives, marked by full caps in the original) and derivation (derivatives, marked by small caps) entries, referencing ISOcat identifiers. @norm on : Used to standardize headword spelling, such as eliminating or adding hyphens to compound words in Johnson's inconsistent practice. <sense> Structure: An analysis of Johnson's entry "To APPLAUD" in the 1755 edition shows an unusual structure (two senses followed by two quotations) that appears to be a typesetting error. Comparison with the revised 1773 edition's structure reveals Johnson's likely intention to illustrate each definition with its own quotation.
Johnson and Juvenal in John Ashbery's 'An Additional Poem' (1962)
Battershill examines the intertextual layers of Ashbery’s "An Additional Poem," which opens with a verbatim line from Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes. The analysis explores how Ashbery responds to the "shadow" of Johnson and the underlying source in Juvenal’s Satire X. Ashbery replaces Johnsonian external fate with human agency and metaphoric transference. Battershill argues the poem uses auditory figures and shifting pronouns to affirm the accumulation of poems as paradoxical objects of hope and fear.
Spirited Away: Highland Touring, 'Toctor Shonson' and the Hauntings of Celticism
Merchant analyzes the differing focuses of Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, highlighting the 1773 tour as a "philosophical" effort to locate the "ancient Caledonian." While Johnson seeks to "deduce and describe" cultural structures "on the point of perishing," Boswell orchestrates a "scottifying" process to alter Johnson’s own "tastes and attitudes." Johnson exhibits a "double vision," fluctuating between "elegant progress and barbaric rudeness" while using litotes to manage competing evaluations of Highland simplicity. The text suggests Johnson becomes "imperceptibly fascinated" by the primitive life he is "ideologically constrained to rail at," resulting in his expansion into the cordial "Toctor Shonson."
Editing Lives: Essays in Contemporary Textual and Biographical Studies in Honor of O M Brack, Jr.
Samuel Parr's Epitaph for Johnson, His Library, and His Unwritten Biography
DeMaria explores Parr’s conflicted relationship with the 'Johnsonian school' during the composition of Johnson's St. Paul’s monument epitaph. The essay details how Malone and Boswell pressured Parr to amplify his praise of Johnson’s poetry, leading to the substitution of 'commendable' with 'admirable.' DeMaria reconstructs Parr’s unwritten biography, which intended to focus on the 'history of his mind' rather than the 'droppings of his lips' recorded by Boswell. An analysis of Parr’s library reveals a scholarly milieu of European humanism that would have framed Johnson as a member of the continental learned community. Parr criticized Hawkins’s biography as confused while viewing Boswell’s work as romanticized and lacking in intellectual rigor.
The Limits of the Senses in Johnson's Scotland
Mack examines Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland through the lens of scientific and cultural observation. She argues that Johnson’s deliberate records of failed measurements—such as guessing distances using a walking pole or neglecting to bring tapers into caves—probe the theoretical underpinnings of empirical reporting. By distancing himself from the specialized physical experience of the architect and the native inhabitant, Johnson asserts a distinct "stranger" perspective. This position allows him to theorize society from a removed, philosophical vantage point. Mack contrasts Johnson’s abstract, quiet account with the social, person-focused narrative of Boswell. The article claims Johnson uses the Scottish landscape to investigate the "limits of experience," aligning his methods with seventeenth-century natural philosophers like Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle.
On Johnson's contempt for the ethnographical reports from the South Seas and his sole attempt at fieldwork, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Johnson used the Highlands to test his stadial theory, measuring its primitive state against metropolitan London. However, he found himself adrift in an eddy of time, unable to process facts or distinguish between knowledge and fiction. Johnson's prose shifts into litotes, and he associates his historical narrative with romance and Gothic fantasy when describing Highland hospitality.
International Journal of Scottish Literature
Samuel Johnson's Shakespearean Exit: Emendation and Amendment
Turnbull interprets Johnson’s deathbed as a site of moral and textual 'amendment,' drawing parallels to the instructional dying flurries of Shakespearean protagonists. The essay argues that Boswell acts as Horatio, undertaking a self-suppression to become the transmitter of Johnson’s voice after physical extinction. Turnbull analyzes how Johnson uses Macbeth to minister to his own 'mind diseased,' seeking Christian expiation through the commission of recorded testimony. The narrative frames the records of Hoole and Sastres as apostolic transcriptions that fulfill Johnson’s edict to commit oral wisdom to permanent inscription. Turnbull links the lexicographical definitions of 'emendation' to Johnson’s pursuit of moral amelioration in his final weeks.
The Scaffold in the Marketplace: Samuel Johnson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Romance of Authorship
Samuel Johnson haunted the nineteenth-century American literary imagination, and there is no more compelling example of this than Nathaniel Hawthorne, who modeled his uniquely reticent form of authorial exemplarity in Johnson's sociable shadow. This essay looks at a neglected dimension of Hawthorne's historical and moral endeavor in his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850), by considering his fascination with both the great Augustan moralist and the elusive, mobile, and seminal historical genre that shaped that fascination, the anecdote. The genre of exemplarity par excellence, the anecdote is also, in Joel Fineman's words, "the literary form that uniquely lets history happen by virtue of the way it introduces an opening into the teleological, and therefore timeless, narration of beginning, middle, and end." The anecdote is thus the "hole within the whole" from which alternative histories, including the true histories known as romances, can emerge. Hawthorne's lifelong preoccupation with James Boswell's anecdote of Johnson's penance in Uttoxeter Market roots a uniquely American fictional hero (aka Arthur Dimmesdale) and Hawthorne's distinctively melancholic mode of American authorship, in Johnson's English singularity.
'Two Syllables Only': Hailes, Mallet and Scottish Literary Anxiety in the Age of Enlightenment
The Scottish literati of the latter half of the eighteenth century, as well as punching above their weight in the intellectual life of Europe, were also prone to tensions and antagonisms within their own circle. Contributing to this internal friction was an anxiety to conform to English standards of speech and language without seeming ashamed of their unique patrimony and bruising their national pride: Scots frequently attacked one another for having failed on one or other of those accounts. A passage from a 1763 letter to James Boswell reveals one such squabble between two relatively neglected literary Scots, Sir David Dalrymple of Hailes (1726-1792) and David Mallet (ne Mal loch). An exploration of this spat affords a wider view of Scottish literary connections, accomplishments and anxieties, and demonstrates that heat as well as light was generated from the creative energy of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Collecting Samuel Johnson and His Circle
Rothschild discusses the nature of "Johnson collectors and the future of Johnson collecting" from the perspective of a non-scholar. Comparing a collector talking about Johnson to a "dog walking on its hind legs," Rothschild focuses on the migration of "rare books" to institutions. The text references Johnson's own "Account of the Harleian Library" to frame the historical value of such collections. Rothschild notes that an exhibition at the Huntington Library, "Samuel Johnson, Giant of the Eighteenth Century," successfully attracted a wide audience, though the talk provided "no contribution to Johnsonian scholarship." The text highlights the transition of personal collections into "invaluable" institutional resources and the enduring appeal of Johnson’s circle for modern bibliophiles.
Searching for the Invisible Man: The Images of Francis Barber
Bundock characterizes Barber’s life as a 'doughnut biography,' rich in secondary accounts but lacking the subject’s own voice. The essay analyzes Boswell’s extensive research and interviews that provided glimpses into Barber’s role within Johnson’s household. Bundock challenges the traditional identification of Reynolds’s 'Study of a Black Man' as Barber, suggesting instead it depicts Reynolds’s own servant. The text notes how Thrale Piozzi and Hawkins contributed to a narrative that often filtered Barber through a white perspective. Bundock argues that while Barber remains center-stage in modern black history, contemporary accounts relegated him to a strictly non-speaking part.
Samuel Johnson, Francis Barber, and 'Mr Desmoulins['] Writing School'
James Boswell, alone among Samuel Johnson's early biographers in according full dignity and humanity to Francis ('Frank') Barber – the Jamaican-born former slave boy who became Johnson's valet, friend, virtually a ward, and eventual principal heir – made an effort to seek out and record some details of his early history, and to register his importance in Johnson's life. As part of his researches in the 1780s for the Life of Johnson he wrote Barber a series of questions in a letter of 15 Jul 1786, just over a year and a half after Johnson's death, about his origins, early associations with Johnson, and Johnson's circumstances at this time, and noted in his own hand Barber's replies, evidently from Barber's dictation.
The Epistemology of Utopia: Rhetoric, Theory and Imagination
Revisiting the Happy Valley in Alan Jacobs's Eutopia: The Gnostic Land of Prester John
Pisarska analyzes Alan Jacobs’s novella, Eutopia: The Gnostic Land of Prester John, emphasizing that Johnson's Rasselas provides the major allusive and thematic context. Jacobs’s protagonist, Justin Hart, seeks the mythical Happy Valley described in Johnson’s philosophical tale. The novella challenges the anti-utopian tradition that grew from Johnson's skepticism by presenting Amhara as a viable "community of love and respect," which Johnson, through Imlac, deemed impossible to achieve. Jacobs’s work thus constitutes a symbolic return to classical utopian ideals.
DeMaria argues that Johnson's editorial glosses in his editions of Browne's Christian Morals (1756) and Ascham's English Works (1761) constitute "hidden acts of lexicography." The editorial policy involved writing explanatory notes for words or senses absent from his Dictionary. DeMaria presents these glosses as addenda, noting that their precision suggests Johnson was often interpreting contextual usage, as Richardson had previously observed. Though he did not transfer these glosses to the revised fourth edition of the Dictionary, the similarities in style and empirical method underscore the close connection between Johnson's lexicographical and editorial practices.
Johnson and the Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essay: A Corpus-Based Approach
Brocklebank uses corpus linguistics to analyze the distinctive prose style of Johnson in The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler. By comparing these essays against a reference corpus of works by Addison and Swift, Brocklebank identifies key keywords, collocates, and four-word clusters that define Johnsonian syntax. The data reveals a high frequency of function words such as by, without, and, and or, which provide empirical support for long-standing intuitive observations regarding Johnson's use of parallelism and coordinate structures. The analysis of content keywords identifies happiness as a central thematic concern, often appearing in close proximity to the word life. Brocklebank further examines phraseological patterns, noting that four-word clusters often serve as markers for generalizations or discourse transitions. This study demonstrates how quantitative tools like WordSmith Tools 5 can uncover grammatical and thematic patterns in eighteenth-century prose that remain less visible through traditional close reading.
ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries
Friendship, Modernity, and Elegiac Tradition
Sharp reopens Johnson's critique of Milton's "Lycidas" for its inadequate representation of friendship, a view largely ignored by subsequent elegiac criticism. The author suggests Johnson's assumptions about friendship, drawn from his own serious reflections on the subject, were misguided only in failing to distinguish between two types of elegy: one using death as a conventional springboard, and one deeply focusing on the relationship itself. The essay then examines the latter, using Borges's "To Francisco Lopez Merino" to demonstrate how friendship elegies enact a ritual of leave-taking.
The Topicality of Samuel Johnson's 'Life' of Francis Cheynell
Between 1738 and 1751, Samuel Johnson wrote about a dozen short biographies. In nearly every case the choice of subject is readily explicable. Some were topical; others can be related to larger projects. There are only two exceptions: the accounts of Louis Morin and of Francis Cheynell (1608-65). Morin is a special case, since Johnson's authorship is only weakly proven. The ‘Life' of Cheynell, which is certainly his, is anomalous in another way. Alone among the early biographies, it is hostile to its subject. Johnson's choice of Cheynell thus requires explanation. It was written for The Student: or the Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany and appeared over three numbers in 1751. In 1647, Cheynell had served as one of the parliamentary commissioners appointed to ‘reform' Oxford. In 1748, Oxford was again in such ill repute with the government that a royal ‘visitation' was proposed, with the intention of crushing Oxford's Tory and Jacobite leanings. Because this intended visitation never took place, the threat has been largely forgotten; however, contemporaries took it seriously, and Johnson's life of Cheynell can plausibly be interpreted as his contribution to the defence of his alma mater against the hostile Whig government.
Elizabeth Carter's Legacy: Friendship and Ethics
Fazlollahi analyzes the relationships between Carter and her circle, including Dr. Carter, Talbot, Lord Bath, and Johnson. Carter's prose and poetry show these intellectual, egalitarian friendships served as her primary ethical source of human happiness, aligning with Aristotle's view of friendship as a human good. Carter's work, especially her devoted poems and A Dialogue, demonstrates her ethical legacy: moral principles that elevate human relationships.
The Poetic Enlightenment: Poetry and Human Science, 1650–1820
Samuel Johnson and the Science of Literary Criticism
Hudson traces the development of Johnson's literary criticism from the early Rambler essays to the cumulative Lives of the Poets. While Johnson initially sought to establish criticism as a rational science to debunk the 'tyranny of prescription,' he later rejected abstract rules in favor of an empirical approach centered on psychological experience. Hudson argues that Johnson’s mature criticism recognizes art’s unique capacity to resolve psychological contradictions, such as the simultaneous experience of novelty and familiarity, which remain 'empirically impossible' in real life. By viewing the 'delight of tragedy' as proceeding from a 'consciousness of fiction,' Johnson distinguishes aesthetic pleasure from sensory experience. Hudson concludes that Johnson’s final critical stance anticipates modern literary studies by vindicating criticism as a 'distinct and separate discipline' that is psychologically veridical yet irreducible to theoretical abstraction.
Johnson, Lilliput, and Eighteenth-Century Miniature
Samuel Johnson's observation that "there is nothing . . . too little for so little a creature as man" is substantiated by eighteenth-century material culture, which produced thousands of small versions of familiar items. The phenomenon of downsizing indicates changes in the relationships between things, human cognition, and literature. Such changes inform Johnson's work, beginning with his early adaptation of Jonathan Swift's Lilliput, the period's most famous literary miniature. Johnson's reworking of Gulliver's first voyage establishes a cognitive paradigm at the intersection of material culture and moral thought, a paradigm to which Johnson returns in order to test the miniature's promise of comprehending the whole at once.
On Johnson’s observation that “there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man” read against contemporary miniatures, including in Swift’s Gulliver.
Organic Tensions: Putting the Tracings Back on the Map in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson
This article argues that James Boswell's attempt to stabilize a biographical representation of Samuel Johnson in the Life of Johnson was frustrated by Johnson's resistance to the project, which Boswell wrote into the Life. Using the theoretical approaches of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the article examines how Boswell uses the conventions of eighteenth-century letter writing, paratextual arrangement, and intrusive commentary to confine and fix Johnson's life in the biography. The rhizomatic intensity of Johnson's life cannot be fully contained, and it destabilizes its own biographical representation with laughter: Bowell's representation of Johnson is depicted laughing at the biographer and the biographer's project, ultimately undermining the biographical stability Boswell seeks to impose.
Ross analyzes Johnson's 1773 tour through the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlands and Islands (Gaeltacht), examining his Journey and Boswell's Journal to reveal Johnson's strengths and limitations regarding Gaelic culture. The author details Johnson's dependence on informants due to his inability to speak Gaelic and his skepticism toward James Macpherson's Ossian. Ross discusses the social and economic upheaval of the region, noting Johnson's views on the repression of the Gaels, the changing role of clan chiefs, and the "epidemical fury of emigration."
Young, Goldsmith, Johnson, and the Idea of the Author in 1759
Lost Cause: Hume, Causation, and Rasselas
Johnson significantly influenced the novelist O'Brian's style, wit, literary judgments, and political ideas. O'Brian, who read Johnson extensively, quoted his famous attack on Lord Chesterfield's false patronage as an example of superb prose rhythm. In O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, the characters Aubrey and Maturin embody aspects of Johnson: Aubrey the Tory and patriotic Englishman, and Maturin the erudite and sympathetic intellectual. The novels include Johnson-educated characters and feature quotations and discussions of Johnson's views on Scotland, nautical life, and the rebellious Americans.
Literacy and the Social Worlds of Writing in the Scottish Atlantic: 1750–1800
This project tracks the rhetorical status of writing as attitudes toward literacy changed in the second-half of the eighteenth century. During this period, vernacular literacy in English became a defining element for many different social groups across the Atlantic world. Two key assumptions guide the research. First, that literacy becomes rhetorical, acquires persuasive meaning, only in the context of a larger discourse on reading and writing. And second, that individual actors and agents generate, promote, and distribute multiple, and sometimes conflicting, rhetorics of literacy as a means of accessing the standards, expectations, and norms of that broader literacy discourse. To elucidate these points, this project identifies three distinct, but connected locations in the Atlantic network: Edinburgh, Philadelphia, and London. Each chapter explores the processes, institutions, and individual writers associated with the rhetoric of literacy at each location. Significantly, each chapter foregrounds the tendency of literacy rhetoric to become associated with a public figure. So, Chapter Two describes the career of Lord Kames, Henry Home; Chapter Three considers Benjamin Franklin's close association with the social, educational, and print-based institutions of literacy in Philadelphia; and Chapter Four explores the ideal of the authority of both London and the book trade over English literacy in the lexicographical writings of Samuel Johnson. Each chapter also considers how the literacy rhetorics associated with these public figures and their contemporaries responded to the exigencies of changing ideals of social interaction, economic development, and national identity. The project offers new perspectives on how literacy, and the rhetorics that promote and restrict literacy, transformed transatlantic literacy discourses.
The Johnson Club and Late Victorian Literary Culture
The Johnson Club served as a crucial, albeit informal, precursor to institutions like the Order of Merit and the British Academy. The Club provided a unique gathering place for a highly accomplished elite, including prominent politicians, historians, and scientists, notably a strong contingent of Gladstonian liberals. This small, interdisciplinary society facilitated connections and intellectual exchange among individuals who would form the nucleus of the new early 20th-century organizations, demonstrating the Club's significant, though often unacknowledged, role in late Victorian and Edwardian public and intellectual life.
On the role of the Club in the late nineteenth century, including a number of distinguished historians.
Tankard talks about Boswell's Life of Johnson and the connection between Samuel Johnson and Thomas Browne. On Good Friday (17 April) 1778, after attending church, Samuel Johnson had a memorable encounter in the street with 'an old fellow-collegian', Oliver Edwards, whom he had not seen for 49 years. The encounter is memorable because James Boswell witnessed it, and left nine paragraphs in the Life of Johnson devoted to an account of the meeting. Boswell was aware that this passage would be one of the Life's set-pieces, and in anticipation of his readers' pleasure, he introduces it as 'a pretty full account of one of the most curious incidents in Johnson's life'.
Teaching Johnson's Sermons: The Nexus of Rhetoric and Literature
Raymond argues for teaching Johnson’s sermons to introduce students to his recurring themes and the nexus of literature and rhetoric. Using Sermons 2 and 8, the author demonstrates how Johnson's use of classical rhetorical canons (invention, arrangement, style) bolsters his logos with ethical and pathetic appeals. Analyzing Johnson's rhetoric—including isocolon, antithesis, and figurative language—helps students discover his moral and spiritual themes inductively and appreciate the connection between aesthetics and ethics, affirming literature's "intrinsic value" and "relevance for life."
Johnston analyzes Johnson's "powerfully realized personifications" to demonstrate how this trope makes "solemnity both active and compelling." She argues that personification, as a "form of incarnation," allows Johnson to explore whether humans possess the "capacity to shape, change, or escape ourselves." Johnston identifies a "seamless flow" between theory and practice in Johnson’s Dictionary, where he defines personification as a "change of things to persons." The essay highlights *The Vision of Theodore* as an allegory where "Passion" and "Despair" engage in "self-divisive combat." Johnston concludes that Johnsonian personification "unites the particular and the general," suggesting that "self-control is... a property of individual growth" developed through "practical, lived experience" rather than "intellect alone."
Johnson Rebalanced: The Happy Man, The Supportive Family, and His Social Religion
Weinbrot challenges three commonplaces of Johnsonian scholarship: his perpetual "battles with madness," the "misery of his private life," and "high Anglican religious intolerance." He presents Johnson as a "happy man who enjoyed company" and "repaid his friends' acts of kindness." Weinbrot emphasizes Johnson’s "kind and cheerful mode" documented by Burney, contrasting it with Boswell’s "melancholy" hero. The text argues that Johnson’s created London family provided "necessary supports" and "protections from silence." Furthermore, Weinbrot disputes the image of Johnson as a religious exclusionist, highlighting his "liberal sentiment" toward Christians of all denominations. He shows that Johnson’s religion required "social bonding" and "reciprocity of kindness," viewing his faith as a "system of domestick virtue" designed to "enlarge his charity."
Fairer examines the creative and critical friction between Johnson and the "learned brothers," Joseph and Thomas Warton. Rather than a standard biographical narrative of friendship and rupture, Fairer focuses on the "fruitful provocation" and "mutual stimulus" characterizing their three-decade relationship. He analyzes Thomas’s response to Johnson’s harsh judgment of Milton’s Lycidas, noting how Warton "deflects Johnson’s statements rather than rebuts them." Fairer interprets Johnson’s critical severity as a "covert dramatic quality" aimed at the Wartons' "affected sensibility." The text explores how the Wartons' appeal to imagination and "subjective responsiveness" outflanked Johnson’s emphasis on "direct judgment" and "critical responsibility." Fairer concludes that their disagreements were "creatively stimulating on both sides," marking a persistent "force field" of "geniality and laughter" alongside "friction and resistance."
Sir John Hawkins on Richard Savage and the Profession of Authorship
Erwin examines how Hawkins used the figure of Savage to illustrate Johnson’s role in elevating the dignity of authorship. While Boswell and Piozzi often neglected professional contexts, Hawkins emphasizes how Johnson’s association with Savage, though a "regrettable" personal connection, allowed Johnson to define the "vocation" of writing with newfound pride. The text explores the "secular felix culpa" of this friendship, arguing the biography of Savage established Johnson as an "able writer" above his Grub Street peers. Erwin contrasts Hawkins’s focus on the "cultural politics" of the profession with the more anecdotal approaches of rival biographers. By analyzing the "Patriot politics" shared by Johnson and Savage, the study highlights Hawkins’s unique contribution to understanding the "occupational nomenclature" and social status of the 18th-century man of letters.
Steen investigates how Johnson creates character through the "altercations of experience," drawing on biblical and Christian traditions. She argues that the "pendulum's swing" describes a "testing-ground for human development," notably in the Life of Savage and The Vision of Theodore. Steen notes that Johnson’s "rhythmic" prose style—alternating "lapse to indolence" with "return to diligence"—inoculates readers against temptation by laying an "experiential pattern" in their minds. The essay highlights a "more positive understanding of habit" than is typically associated with Johnson, asserting that "habit may be deployed in the development of virtue." Steen concludes that Johnsonian character requires "determinate pursuit of virtue" and a "habitual appeal to everlasting justice," making the formation of Christian character a "moral requirement."
Korshin examines Johnson's debt to the polymathic traditions of Renaissance lexicography. Analysis of Johnson's library and his work on the Catalogus Bibliothecae Harleianae reveals extensive familiarity with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew lexicons by scholars such as Constantine, Estienne, and Buxtorf. Johnson's major innovation—the use of illustrative quotations to provide an "intellectual history" of words—closely echoes Renaissance practices aimed at enlightenment and instruction. Like Constantine, Johnson sought to extract "principles of science" and "beautiful descriptions" to intersperse the "dusty desarts of barren philology" with verdure. While Bailey's contemporary work lacked theoretical prefaces, Johnson's Preface reflects established Continental paradigms. Korshin concludes that Johnson's Dictionary functions as an historical work, situating English lexicography within a broader humanistic tradition of preserving linguistic and intellectual evolution.
Theology and Literature in the Age of Johnson: Resisting Secularism
Aesthetics and Theology in Samuel Johnson's Life of Isaac Watts and Prayers and Meditations (1785)
Kickel argues that Johnson equates his "literary efforts and ambitions" with a "quest for spiritual regeneration." By analyzing the Life of Watts, she demonstrates that Johnson prizes a "correspondence between private and public ends." Watts serves as a "great exception" in the Lives of the Poets because Johnson admires both his personal conduct and his "polished diction" in service of Dissenting worship. Kickel identifies a shared "devotional aesthetic" based on "lived experience, extemporaneity, and affect." Johnson's own Prayers and Meditations reflect this "task-oriented" vision of salvation, where domestic details and vocational pursuits serve as measures of progress. The text concludes that Johnson uses Watts to map a "practical theology" that reconciles faith and works through scrupulous self-examination.
Teleology in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Rasselas functions as a Bildungsroman depicting the travelers' noetic emergence from youthful idealism to mature sobriety. The quest is teleological, shifting from an Aristotelian end (happiness in philosophical contemplation) to a Thomistic end (happiness found only in God in the afterlife). Johnson rejects Aristotelian contemplation through the futility shown by philosophers and the mad astronomer. The travelers’ concluding physical activity, "drifting along the stream of life," is necessitated by Johnson's belief that motion is required to avoid the corrupting effects of stagnant inactivity.
Renascence: Essays on Literature and Ethics, Spirituality, and Religion
Davis argues that Johnson's symmetrical syntax is an "achievement of sanity" rather than a "mechanical reflex." He disputes Hazlitt's critique by demonstrating how Johnson's use of "branching clauses" and "verbal markers" like "though" or "yet" creates a "palliative effect" for a mind struggling with "contradiction" and "horror of depression." Davis contends that Johnsonian balance allows room for "discretionary choice" amidst "limitations," providing a "biological blueprint" of human experience. He asserts that Johnson’s syntax "demarcates the space within life can carry on" despite the "final failure of knowledge." The essay concludes that Johnson’s "life-sentences" are "supremely balanced and wholly vulnerable," famously capturing the "disturbance of his mind" while maintaining an "unshakeable sanity."
'The Only Excellence of Falsehood': Rethinking Samuel Johnson's Role in Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote
DeMaria disputes the "Herculean constancy" often attributed to Johnson by Boswell and Piozzi, arguing instead for a "changeful" intellect. He maps Johnson’s transition from the "reign of judgment" to the "age of recollection," noting a shift toward a "plainer, more personal" prose style in late works. DeMaria contends that Johnson’s stylistic evolution—becoming more "conversational" and "blunt" in the Lives of the Poets—reflects a clarified "perception of life" focused on "domestic details." He highlights Johnson's "late heroism," characterized by increased "sociability" and a "contempt of fiction." By writing "more directly," Johnson created a self defined by "reconciliation" rather than "rebellion," proving that "the style is the man" in a dynamic, interactive sense.
Samuel Johnson, Richard Rolt, and the Universal Visiter
Ferrero investigates the disputed authorship of six essays in the Universal Visiter signed with a double asterisk, a code long assumed to signify Johnson’s contributions. The text explores the "current confusion" stemming from conflicting testimony by Boswell, who rejected three pieces as "un-Johnsonian," and Ann Gardner, whose annotated copy assigned all six to Johnson. Ferrero provides internal and external evidence to challenge Johnson’s association with "Reflections on the State of Portugal" and "The Rise, Progress, and Perfection of Architecture among the Ancients," arguing they were "probably written by Richard Rolt." The analysis demonstrates that the Portugal essay "supplied the material" directly from Rolt’s New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. Ferrero notes the "ironic" connection where Rolt, who falsely "pretended a connection" with Johnson in life, became inextricably linked to him through these posthumous misattributions accepted by later editors like Hawkins and Isaac Reed.
The Compilation Methods of Johnson's Dictionary
McDermott reconstructs the methodology used to compile the first edition of the Dictionary, examining early accounts by Hawkins, Boswell, Percy, and "W.N." She argues that Johnson used an interleaved copy of Bailey's dictionary as a repository for headwords and etymologies, a standard practice for contemporary reference works. Amanuenses like Macbean and Stewart searched marked-up books, transcribed quotations onto slips, and sorted them alphabetically. These slips were then temporarily inserted into the Bailey before being copied into eighty bound notebooks. The notebooks served as final printer's copy, imitating the printed layout with two columns and running titles. McDermott highlights how the "prodigious labour" of sifting through a superfluity of quotations forced Johnson to subdivide word senses, particularly for complex English verbs, beyond previous lexicographical traditions.
The Intellectual Background to Johnson's Life of Browne: A Study of Johnsonian Construction
Walker challenges the "dismissive" critical view of Johnson's Life of Browne, presenting it as a central document in "intellectual Anglicanism." He demonstrates how Johnson uses "derivative" sections—such as Whitefoot's character sketch—to depict Browne as a "pious and practical" figure who avoids sectarian controversy. Walker identifies significant theological parallels between Browne's Hydriotaphia and Johnson's Rasselas, particularly regarding the "argument from desire" for the soul's immortality. Johnson uses Browne's "Christian patience" during his final illness as "evidence of the sincerity of his Christian beliefs." The text argues that Johnson "constructs" Browne in a "middle position" between "bigotry and atheism," mirroring his own "theological pacifism" and his commitment to the "essential articles" of Christianity.
Johnson's Dictionary and the Politics of 'Standard English'
Hudson disputes the interpretation of Johnson's Dictionary as an instrument of class oppression. While Barrell and Smith argue Johnson suppressed lower-class idioms to authorize elite language, Hudson emphasizes Johnson's defiance of "polite" standards. Johnson included numerous "low" terms like "whore" and "piss," provoking condemnation from critics like Callender for his "affectation of completeness." Rather than serving the rich, Johnson acted as an independent scholar who identified usage levels rather than expelling "low" words entirely. He advocated for universal literacy and supported the preservation of ancient British languages, including Gaelic and Welsh. Hudson argues Johnson's standard English emerged from a concern for linguistic stability and reason rather than a desire to silence the poor or uneducated.
Grundy investigates the enduring "celebrity" and "iconic status" of Johnson, examining why his writings continue to speak to diverse ideological groupings. She identifies four reader requirements: pleasure, meaning, brand identity, and personal contact. Grundy argues that Johnson establishes a "personal relationship" with the reader by "admitting a shared moral inadequacy" and inviting them to track the "twists and turns of his thinking." The text traces Johnson’s shifting reputation, from the 1790s radicals like Wollstonecraft and Hays who saw him as a "champion of women" and "political ally," to Carlyle’s "monolithic version" of a "serene, unaltering" hero. Grundy posits that Johnson remains a "champion of the status quo" for some and a "reformist leader" for others, thriving on "contradictory energies" and "multitudes."
Fault Finding in Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Mullan examines the "groundswell of complaint" and "disproportionate fault finding" that characterize Johnson's *Lives of the Poets*. He argues that Johnson views the discovery of "faults" as essential to "undeceiving the reader" and maintaining "critical judgment" against the "culture of beauties." Mullan identifies a "symbiosis" between appreciation and deprecation, noting that Johnsonian censure—such as labeling Dryden's work "unexpectedly mean"—often highlights a poet's "ambition" and "superiority." The essay asserts that "faultlessness can be a kind of failure" in Johnson's view, as seen in his limited praise for Addison’s "polished" but "not great" verse. Mullan concludes that Johnson’s "refusal to admire" easily serves to "stigmatize" dangerous examples before they receive the "sanction of antiquity."
Horace through Johnson (I): The Skye Odes
Reckford analyzes two Latin odes Johnson composed during his 1773 Hebridean tour with Boswell. These "Skye Odes" use Horatian forms to "regulate" Johnson's turbulent imagination against the harsh Scottish landscape. The first ode, written in Alcaics, reflects a meditative "other-worldly" mood, while the second, a Sapphic poem addressed to Piozzi, explores themes of "life, love, and death." Reckford argues that Latin verse provided Johnson a "creative privacy" to express "anxiously repressed feelings" of desire for Piozzi, then the wife of his patron. While Boswell depicts Johnson as a "heroic traveler" triumphing over physical discomforts, the odes reveal an "inner adventure" and a "depth of desire" for Piozzi. The analysis concludes that Johnson used classical models to achieve "emotional regulation" and to bridge his personal experiences with Renaissance humanist traditions.
Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
Intimacies of Antipathy: Johnson and Swift
Johnson disliked Swift but had an intense self-implicating interest in him, sharing much of his social, psychological and devotional outlook, and exhibiting a wide and life-long reading of his works. He found Swift's irony, and satire in general, unsympathetic, but wrote in a manner deeply shaped by Swift and other Augustan satirists. His relationship with Hester Thrale included a self-conscious and often conflicted awareness of Swift's friendship with Stella. His novel Rasselas shares with Swift's ‘Digression on Madness' a strikingly similar diagnosis of humanity's mental constitution, but draws teasingly opposite and sometimes adversarial consequences from it. Johnson's antipathies coexist with a reluctant sense of likeness, a combination implicit in the forthrightly evasive and wayward judgments of the ‘Life of Swift', from which the main examples are drawn. Their nevertheless compelling power (like that of F. R. Leavis's very different but equally hostile essay) raises questions about what we can learn about Swift from those who dislike him.
From Bigotry to Genius: The Treatment of Johnson's Politics in Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Highlighting the value of Hawkins's Life as a source but cautions that it must be read with a "critical eye," as Hawkins often substitutes his own judgment or infers details without sufficient fact. In discussing Johnson's Toryism, Hawkins fails to understand its core: a belief that the Revolution of 1688 had illegally interrupted the hereditary succession. Hawkins's Whig bias leads him to incorrectly attribute Johnson's views on submission to the despised Hoadly and to misinterpret Johnson's support for the Tory heroes of 1688. However, Hawkins praises Johnson's later political pamphlets, such as Taxation No Tyranny, where Johnson's defense of governmental authority aligned with Hawkins's own establishment Whiggism.
Smallwood examines Johnson’s "often grief-inducing relationship" with the passage of time, framing him as a "genius in slow motion" despite his productive output. He argues that Johnson possesses a sophisticated "philosophical grasp" of temporality, using the "stream of time" metaphor to repair experiences that philosophy often "murders to dissect." Smallwood notes that Johnson measures literary value by a work's capacity to compress time, as seen in his praise for Shakespeare’s "undimmed durability" versus the "tediousness" of Prior. The essay identifies a "duplicity of time" in Johnson’s diaries and prayers, where he contends with time as a "destructive agent" that "shuts up all the passages of joy." Smallwood concludes that Johnson’s advocacy of "self-renewal" through the "current of the world" counters mental vacuity.
Johnson's Dictionary and Legal Dictionaries
Scanlan investigates Johnson's engagement with legal lexicography, specifically his use of Cowell's The Interpreter. Johnson cited Cowell nearly 300 times in the 1755 Dictionary, favoring his academic rigor over more practical works by Blount or Jacob. The choice reflects Johnson's "lifelong fascination with the law" and a desire to provide pedagogical guidance for intelligent readers. Johnson used Cowell to define common terms like "ALETASTER" and "CUCKINGSTOOL," as well as specialized "law terms" such as "GAVELKIND." By contextualizing complex concepts like "FEE," Johnson made the subject of law less daunting. Scanlan argues that through this process, Johnson may have learned as much about the law as contemporary students at the Inns of Court, ultimately reinforcing an older, academic tradition of legal thinking.
Scherwatzky examines Johnson's conviction that the world is "fallen, mired in the legacy of an original sin." While Johnson avoids "theological speculation" regarding the exact nature of human corruption, he uses the "universality of misery" as evidence for the necessity of a future state. Scherwatzky links Johnson's "fideism" to his belief that "pain is necessary to happiness," as it prevents remorseless criminality and "lifts us up" toward the supreme being. The text also explains Johnson's "wariness of solitude" by showing that he views society as the "true sphere of human virtue" where faith must be tested through action. Johnson rejects monastic "flight" as victory, insisting instead that "civic duty" and social interaction are essential to coping with a "polluted world."
'But Philosophy Can Tell No More': Johnson's Christian Moralism and the Genre of Rasselas
Müller defines Johnson as an "unsystematic and anti-systematic thinker" who uses the moral essay to bridge the gap between "is" and "ought." By distinguishing the "moralist" from the "moral philosopher," Müller shows how Johnson bases his precepts on "empirical observation" rather than "pure science." The text explores Johnson's "fideism" and "mitigated skepticism," highlighting his belief that reason "deserts us at the brink of the grave." Johnson uses the form of the essay to examine "hidden motives" and the "natural flights of the human mind" from hope to hope. Müller argues that Johnson's "Christian moralism" emerges at the "crucial juncture" where philosophy fails, forcing the mind to "take refuge in religion" for consolations regarding futurity.
Johnson's Assertions and Concessions: Moral Irresolution and Rhetorical Performance
Richetti analyzes Johnson’s moral essays as "essentially dialogical" performances that "dramatize the search for particular kinds of truthfulness" rather than absolute principles. He argues that Johnson balances "triumphantly assertive rhetorical bravura" with concessions that "undermine all absolute principles," creating a "perilous balance" between dogmatism and "instinctive skepticism." Richetti suggests Johnson "often enough... maintain[s] opinions which he was sensible were wrong" to display ingenuity, yet his written work uses these "yets" and "buts" to articulate a "skeptical intelligence." The essay identifies the "built-in irrelevance of abstract moralizing" in works like Rasselas, where Johnson reveals that teachers "discourse like angels, but they live like men." Richetti concludes that Johnson’s "rhetorical performance" serves as a guard against "complacency and certainty."
Fixity and Instability in the Text of Johnson's Poems
McLaverty analyzes the "complex practices" of Johnson’s poetic composition, disputing the Boswellian image of poems arriving "fixed and polished." He explores the "textual instability" of works like the elegy on Levet and The Vanity of Human Wishes, showing how they "live most intensely in a variety of attempts to arrive at a best self." McLaverty highlights the roles of "reluctant collaboration" in prologues and "incomplete attempts at revision" in later editions. He notes Johnson’s surprising "neglect of his poems," with only thirty-five printed during his lifetime. The text argues against "eclectic editions" that merge variants into a "definitive text" Johnson never saw. Instead, McLaverty advocates for "editorial recognition of different valid versions" and more rigorous study of "manuscript practices" and "orthography."
L'Image des locuteurs écossais au siècle des Lumières: Les Points de vue de Johnson, Boswell et des orthoépistes
Ranson examines the sociolinguistic perception of Scottish speakers during the late Enlightenment, a period characterized by a "cascade" of published pronunciation dictionaries. The study emphasizes the dominant influence of Johnson, who regarded the Scottish accent as a "mark of disgrace" or a sign of intellectual "laziness," an opinion frequently echoed in Boswell’s biographical accounts. The text details the paradoxical contributions of Scottish orthoépistes such as William Perry and James Buchanan, who sought to codify the language while simultaneously labeling "provincial" speech as "unintelligible" or "rude." Ranson analyzes the rigorous "rules" and recommendations proposed by John Walker to eliminate these phonetic "peculiarities," forcing Scottish elites to conform to the aesthetic and political desiderata of the London metropole
The Battle of the Word-Books: Competition, the 'Common-Reader,' and Johnson's Dictionary
Mugglestone examines the "adversarial space" of mid-eighteenth-century lexicography following the publication of Johnson’s Dictionary. She shifts the focus from the "harmless drudge" to a highly competitive marketplace where rival dictionary-makers like Maxwell, Fenning, and Buchanan launched "targeted attacks" on Johnson’s work. Critics challenged Johnson on grounds of "bulk," "expense," and "extravagance," often positioning their "handy" and "portable" volumes as better suited for the "common reader." The text discusses how Johnson used the octavo edition to "trade on his brand" while facing accusations of being "abstruse" and "oenigmatical" from opponents like Callender. Mugglestone shows that Johnson "neglected his censurers" to follow his own reason, even as his work sparked "intestine hostilities" and a "battle for the common reader."
Phillips investigates Johnson as a "precursor of Freud," focusing on their shared obsessions with "resistance, repression, and change." He argues that both thinkers were "struck by the potentially disruptive tendencies of the mind," yet identifies a "distinctive difference" in their use of generalization: Freud demystifies religion while Johnson emphasizes its "necessary truths." Phillips suggests Johnson's aesthetic "frees us" in ways Freud's "formal analyses" do not, as Johnson finds "truthfulness" in "human experience" rather than theory. Drawing on Bate and Eliot, the essay explores the "gains and losses" of this comparison, concluding that while Johnson "anticipates the concept of 'repression,'" his reliance on "stratagems of self-defence" remains uniquely anchored in his "eighteenth-century aesthetic."
Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson: Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author
Belcher proposes a model of transcultural intertextuality termed "discursive possession" to explain how Habesha (highland Ethiopian) discourse animated the work of Johnson. Belcher argues that Johnson’s early translation of Jerónimo Lobo's travelogue left an "indelible impression" on his memory, rendering him an "energumen" through which African self-representations speak. The study identifies specific traces of Habesha names, places, and themes in Irene, the Oriental tales, and Rasselas. Belcher further contends that Johnson’s religious practices—including his rigorous fasting, prayers for the dead, and views on conditional salvation—diverged from standard Protestantism and mirrored the "primitive" Christianity of the Habesha church he encountered through reading Job Ludolf, Michael Geddes, and Lobo. By analyzing Johnson’s editorial suppressions in his translation of Joachim Le Grand, Belcher demonstrates how Johnson highlighted Habesha agency while muting European presence. The monograph situates Johnson not as an orchestrator of Orientalist appropriation, but as a writer whose agency was mediated and "wrought upon" by the very African subjects he represented. Chapter 1, "Three Thousand Years of Habesha History and Discourse," argues that the Habesha have maintained a continuous, sophisticated discourse of exceptionalism and historical centrality for millennia, successfully broadcasting these self-representations to influence external perceptions. Chapter 2, "Samuel Johnson's Discursive Possession and A Voyage to Abyssinia," posits that translating a Jesuit travelogue about the Habesha in his twenties left an "indelible impression" on Johnson, creating a state of "discursive possession" that animated his subsequent creative output. Chapter 3, "Johnson's Reading, Beliefs, and Translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia," contends that Johnson's interest in the text was primarily religious, serving as a vehicle to explore "primitive" Christianity and Habesha theological practices that aligned with his own non-standard beliefs regarding the Eucharist and state of the soul. Chapter 4, "Habesha Discourse in A Voyage to Abyssinia," examines how Habesha self-representations persisted through the layered translations of Lobo and Le Grand to reach Johnson. Chapter 5, "Habesha Discourse and Johnson's Drama Irene," traces the specific influences of Habesha royal women and themes on the composition of Johnson’s early tragedy. Chapter 6, "Habesha Discourse and Johnson's Oriental Tales," identifies Habesha voices and cultural themes within Johnson’s shorter fictions published in the Idler and Rambler. Chapter 7, "Habesha Discourse in Johnson's Sources for Rasselas," catalogs the seventeenth-century histories and classical accounts that reinforced Johnson's internalization of Habesha narratives. Chapter 8, "Habesha Discourse and Johnson's Rasselas," analyzes Johnson's most famous work as a mimetic act that attempts to both materialize and mitigate the African discourse that possessed his imagination. The Conclusion asserts that the Western canon is a "graveyard haunted by self-representing others" whose voices transform the very texts that seek to categorize them. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics dividing over the evidentiary methods and the validity of the spiritual possession metaphor used to explain how non-Western thought shaped the Western canon. At stake in the reviews is whether the text overstates non-dominant cultural agency at the expense of historical context. Richard, in RES, provides an approving assessment, praising the theoretical sophistication and detailed analysis that shows non-Western thought co-constituted major literary works. Lamb, writing in SEL, considers the radical application of the possession concept highly stimulating, scholarly, and challenging. In YWES, Stenke enthusiastically outlines a compelling postcolonial paradigm that successfully demonstrates the importance of African culture in eighteenth-century England. Conversely, Wallace, writing in Comparative Literature, delivers a mixed review, praising the ambitious revision of the authorial psyche but challenging the murkiness and inconsistencies in the possession model. Kurtz, in Research in African Literatures, welcomes the valuation of African agency but notes limits to the central metaphor, questioning whether non-Western subjects can truly be considered co-creators. Revauger's mixed review in Dix-huitième siècle precisely identifies the value of the historical sources but regrets the neglect of irony and Enlightenment context. Finally, Lee, in Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, expresses strong reservations about the evidentiary methods, citing an over-reliance on biographical anecdote and errors in textual deployment.
Reviews: Christopher S. Vilmar, Choice 50, no. 4 (2012): 662; Cécile Revauger, Dix-huitième siècle 46, no. 1 (2014): 92; Anthony W. Lee, ECI 27, no. 1 (2013): 36–39; Tara Ghoshal Wallace, Comparative Literature 66, no. 3 (2014): 365–68; J. Roger Kurtz, Research in African Literatures 46, no. 3 (2015): 239–41; J. Richard, RES, n.s., 64, no. 266 (2013): 713–15; Jonathan Lamb, SEL 53, no. 3 (2013); Katarina Stenke, YWES 93, no. 1 (2014): 556.
Lipking explores Johnson’s effort to "demystify and humanize" the concept of genius, defined by Johnson as "a mind of large general powers" rather than "quasi-divine inspiration." He argues that Johnson resists "privileged" definitions that act as "bugbears" to competition, asserting instead that genius relies on "knowing the use of tools" and "practical, lived experience." Lipking highlights Johnson's identification with Isaac Newton as a "singular genius" who remained a "man like anyone else." The essay notes that Johnson balances his "extreme competitive urges" with a "heroic surrender" to the "common reader." Johnson’s genius consists of "aspiration" and "unremitting desire," serving as an "instructive" example that "supremely gifted minds are always and only human."
Zen'i to bungaku: Katari no 'teinei' o megutte (dai 11 kai): Onna o kirau tame no sahō (jō)
Folkenflik examines the visual and symbolic portrayals of Johnson from his lifetime through the late eighteenth century, focusing on portraits, caricatures, and statues. The chapter identifies Sir Joshua Reynolds as the primary architect of Johnson’s visual identity, noting that Reynolds’s four portraits, including Dictionary Johnson and Blinking Sam, represent the most significant series of paintings of any British writer. Folkenflik argues that Reynolds wittily transformed Johnson’s physical defects, such as his head tilt and cramped hands, into markers of an "inspired writer" or a "peripatetic philosopher." The analysis contrasts these dignified depictions with the satiric caricatures of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, which often mocked Johnson’s pension or his perceived Scottophobia. Folkenflik highlights Piozzi’s reporting of Johnson’s displeasure with being portrayed for his "defects only," such as in the nearsighted Blinking Sam. The entry illustrates how these diverse representations collaborated to cement Johnson's status as a "legendary monster" and a national icon.
Venturo surveys Johnson's poetic career, emphasizing his demand for "truth" and his rejection of "uncouth" artificiality. The article examines Johnson's two major Juvenalian satires, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting their "brilliant rewriting" of Roman models for a modern audience. Venturo details Johnson's preference for an "open idiom" in poetry that reflects "the common intercourse of life" and remains "immediately useful" to the common reader. The narrative explores Johnson's critical objections to the "medieval revival" verse of Thomas Warton and the "Pindaric odes" of Thomas Gray, which he found "strange" and "complicated." Venturo argues that Johnson viewed poetry and prose as continuous expressions of a "profound thoughtfulness" and technical virtuosity. The piece concludes that Johnson's poetry, like his criticism, sought to "enact his precepts" by balancing "delight with instruction" through an "exceptional mind."
Carey explores Johnson's vocal and consistent opposition to the transatlantic slave trade, identifying him as an "early and influential abolitionist voice." The chapter details Johnson’s famous toast at Oxford to the "next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies" and his legal assistance in the case of Joseph Knight, a slave seeking freedom in Scotland. Carey analyzes Johnson’s relationship with his black manservant, Francis Barber, whom he treated with "parental affection" and made his residual legatee. The analysis emphasizes that Johnson’s antislavery stance was rooted in his "universalist moral philosophy" which denied that skin color could justify the "denial of human rights." Carey highlights how Johnson’s views often clashed with the "pro-slavery sentiments" of his contemporaries, including Boswell. The entry concludes that Johnson’s "uncompromising hostility" to slavery remains one of the most distinctive and modern aspects of his political and moral thought.
Hawes examines Johnson's "wary and ambiguous" relationship with nationalism, arguing that he balanced insular nativism with a stringent cosmopolitanism. The article highlights Johnson's rejection of "English liberty" as a unique national trait, defining it instead as the "choice of working or starving" common to the poor of all nations. Hawes explores how Johnson's Dictionary and Shakespeare edition contributed to a "vernacular culture" while simultaneously acknowledging international borrowings and the faults of English poets. The narrative details Johnson's skepticism toward the "bellicose nationalism" that fueled imperial expansion, noting his identification with the victims of British "usurpers." Hawes argues that Johnson's "cosmopolitan nationalism" was a hard-earned paradox that allowed him to embrace the eighteenth-century public sphere while maintaining a historical perspective derived from the classics. The piece concludes that Johnson’s political foresight recognized the "enfeeblement" brought about by excessive national aggrandizement.
Ingram analyzes Johnson's lifelong struggle with "horrible hypochondria" and depression, framing it within the eighteenth-century category of "melancholy." The article uses Boswell's gladiator metaphor to illustrate Johnson's judgment "combating those apprehensions" that assailed him like wild beasts. Ingram explores the connection between Johnson's mental distress and his "holy fear" of eternal punishment, observing that his faith provided both a framework for suffering and a source of anxiety. The narrative details Johnson's self-treatment methods, including his "writing cure" and his insistence on social talk as a "necessary distraction" from the "vacuity of life." Ingram notes that modern scholars have diagnosed Johnson's tics and compulsions as Tourette's Syndrome, a condition for which no eighteenth-century diagnosis existed. The piece concludes that Johnson's mental health was marked by "paroxisms and remissions," requiring constant intellectual exertion to maintain "poised acceptance" over "raw grief."
Baldwin investigates Johnson's lifelong engagement with classical scholarship, identifying it as an essential foundation for his vernacular achievements. The chapter details Johnson's Unrealized projects, including an edition of Politian and translations of Herodian and Cicero, noting that Johnson had the instincts of a scholar, but neither the patience nor the application for exhaustive collation. Baldwin highlights Johnson's scholar's reverence for antiquity in the Dictionary, where he used classical models to introduce innovations like illustrative quotations. The analysis explores Johnson's interactions with other scholars, such as his praise for Elizabeth Carter and his quizzes of Boswell on textual errors. Baldwin argues that Johnson's critical ear and spirit of the grammarian informed his approach to both ancient and modern texts. The entry concludes that while the classical scholar was often forgotten in the original contributor, Johnson's work remained firmly grounded in the tradition of classical principles.
Pittock investigates Johnson's complex and often controversial relationship with Scotland, focusing on the 1773 tour with Boswell. The chapter disputes the notion of Johnson as a "simple Scottophobe," suggesting instead that his criticisms were aimed at the "erasure of cultural difference" under the Union. Pittock analyzes Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as a work of "sociological observation" that mourned the passing of feudal structures while critiquing the lack of Scottish trees and literature. The analysis details Boswell’s role as a "cultural mediator" who sought to reconcile Johnson to Scottish society and vice-versa. Pittock highlights the Ossian controversy, where Johnson’s demand for "manuscript evidence" challenged Scottish national myths. The entry argues that Johnson used his Scottish experiences to refine his views on "civilization, language, and historical change." Pittock concludes that the Johnson–Boswell tour remains a "foundational text" for understanding the shifting identities within the eighteenth-century British state.
Johnson's Chaucer: Searching for the Medieval in A Dictionary of the English Language
Leff argues that Geoffrey Chaucer holds a more significant position in Johnson's Dictionary than previously recognized. Analyzing direct quotations (some potentially from memory or Speght's edition, not Urry's), citations of usage, mentions within others' quotations, and extensive use of Dryden's Chaucer translations, Leff demonstrates Chaucer's pervasive presence. This contradicts Johnson's critical preference for Gower in the History of the English Language and reinforces Chaucer's canonical prominence for dictionary users, highlighting a tension between Johnson's stated principles and lexicographical practice, particularly evident when comparing the folio and abridged octavo editions.
The enormous changes that occurred in the British social hierarchy during the eighteenth century may be illustrated by the example of Johnson himself: he was the son of a failed Lichfield bookseller who came to London in 1737 with very little money and without any connections with the nobility or with the wealthy. By the end of his life, he was a revered public figure who counted people of great wealth and eminence among his personal acquaintance. Such a rise from poverty to fame was almost unknown a century before, except in a few cases when talented people attracted the regard of rich patrons. Johnson, on the contrary, famously spurned the vaunted “patronage” of the powerful Lord Chesterfield, making a virtue of his isolation from the court and “polite” circles. What had happened in Britain to make such a rise possible – not only for Johnson, but for many low-born writers, public figures, and men of business?
Johnson and Gibbon: An Intertextual Influence?
Lee investigates textual connections between Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon, challenging the traditional view of their mutual antipathy fostered by Boswell. Lee identifies specific parallels, such as their shared interest in Milton’s "spicy shore" imagery and Herodotus’s description of Persian education. He suggests Gibbon’s description of the conception of Decline and Fall echoes Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands. Lee argues these intertextual links imply Gibbon held Johnson’s writing in higher esteem than previously thought.
'Conciliating His Esteem': John Nichols's Contribution to Johnson's Lives of the Poets, to Biographies of Johnson, and to Later Johnsonian Scholarship
Pooley examines the extensive collaborative relationship between Nichols and Johnson, positioning Nichols as a vital "research assistant" who supplied books, verified dates, and corrected proof sheets for the Lives of the Poets. The article uses Nichols’s personal archive and correspondence to demonstrate how his "laudable industry" goaded an often-reluctant Johnson into completing his biographical tasks. Pooley argues that Nichols’s own publications, including the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Literary Anecdotes, served as "overflow tanks" for scholarship that Johnson omitted. While Johnson occasionally offered "bad-tempered retorts" to Nichols's suggested improvements, Pooley shows that Johnson increasingly depended on his printer's meticulous antiquarian skills. The narrative concludes that Nichols not only facilitated Johnson's final major work but also actively shaped Johnson’s posthumous reputation by preserving primary evidence for Boswell and later scholars. Pooley emphasizes that without Nichols's "variety of literary inquiry," the Lives would have lacked significant historical and factual depth.
Liang Shiqiu Sha ping de ren xing lun te zheng ji qi yi yi
Wai guo wen xue yan jiu = Foreign Literature Studies
Coffman explores the financial structures of the eighteenth century, a period defined by the "Financial Revolution" and the growth of the British Empire. The article details the complex, non-decimal currency of pounds, shillings, and pence, and the transition from a "cash-and-credit" economy to more sophisticated systems of public and private debt. Coffman notes that Johnson lived through significant economic events, including the fallout of the South Sea Bubble and the establishment of the Bank of England. The narrative emphasizes the instability of income for professional authors, illustrated by Johnson's own arrests for debt despite his monumental literary labors. Coffman argues that money in Johnson's world was not just a means of exchange but a "social and moral category," influencing class status and independence. The article concludes that Johnson's frequent ruminations on "poverty and wealth" were deeply rooted in his personal struggle to achieve financial security within a volatile capitalist framework.
Porter examines the "applied science" culture of the eighteenth century, using Johnson’s 1774 tour of Lichfield as a lens to view technological progress. The article highlights the Lunar Society—including James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood—as a "hotbed of experimentation" that aimed to harness scientific knowledge for practical industry. Porter notes that science had not yet fragmented into specialized disciplines; thus, Johnson reviewed diverse works on electricity, chemistry, and botany as editor of the Literary Magazine. The narrative details Johnson's own involvement, from his laboratory at Streatham to his extensive reading in seventeenth-century natural philosophy for the Dictionary. Porter argues that Johnson viewed science as a means to "increase knowledge" and civilization. Ultimately, the piece shows that for Johnson and his contemporaries, science was an accessible, public pursuit, integral to the material and intellectual "diffusion of learning" that defined the age.
DeMaria explores Johnson's engagement with historical writing, noting that while he never wrote a formal history, his works are permeated by a "sense of history." The article examines Johnson's belief that "humanity is very uniform," leading him to value history as a source of universal moral examples rather than mere chronological data. DeMaria details Johnson's role in cataloging the Harleian Library, which provided him with a "staggering diversity" of historical material for his later projects. The narrative contrasts Johnson's approach with the "philosophical history" of David Hume and Edward Gibbon, noting his suspicion of their "skeptical" and "emancipatory" rationalism. DeMaria argues that Johnson’s historical thinking was "collaborative," balancing partial truths to avoid the "arrogance" of a clean slate. The piece concludes that for Johnson, history was essential for "increasing knowledge" and understanding the "condition of our present existence."
Narrating Distraction: Problems of Focus in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 1750–1820
Tankard explores the central importance of the periodical essay in Johnson’s oeuvre, noting that he produced over 300 original essays amounting to more than 400,000 words. The article identifies the Rambler, the Adventurer, and the Idler as the vehicles for Johnson’s "essayistic intelligence," through which he maintained the cause of religion and morality with a power of argument recognized by an honorary M.A. from Oxford. Tankard examines how Johnson departed from the traditions of Montaigne and Bacon by adopting the periodical format and the anonymous persona of "Mr. Rambler." The narrative highlights the significance of anonymity and periodicity in establishing a "common reader" audience. Despite the genre's later decline into belletristic nostalgia, Tankard argues that Johnson’s essays remain works of literature in themselves, reflecting a sophisticated engagement with contemporary society. The piece concludes that Johnson's essays provide the essential context for understanding his broader critical and moral identity.
Unhorsed by Pegasus: Gray's Poetry and the Critics before The Lives of the Poets
Clarke examines the critical reception of Thomas Gray's poetry prior to Johnson's influential critique in the Lives. While acknowledging Gray's generally high reputation, especially for the Elegy, Clarke demonstrates that many of Johnson's specific objections—to the Odes' obscurity, perceived artificiality, use of mythology, compound epithets, and alleged effeminacy—were anticipated by earlier reviewers, essayists, and parodists, including prominent figures like Goldsmith and Colman and Lloyd. Johnson's assessment, though uniquely forceful and negative in overall tone, thus synthesized and amplified pre-existing critical reservations.
Postle examines Johnson’s engagement with the visual arts, primarily through his deep friendship with the painter Joshua Reynolds. The article notes that Johnson was a "willing sitter" for portraits despite his "poor eyesight" and personal preference for portraits over "historical paintings." Postle details the four Reynolds portraits, noting how the artist "idealized Johnson's physical defects"—such as his "Blinking Sam" nearsightedness—into signs of "intellectual vigor." The narrative explores Johnson's collection of "portrait prints" and his role as an honorary professor at the Royal Academy. Postle argues that Johnson’s "critical thinking" was shaped by his deafness and blindness, leading to his "dismissive comments on landscape." The piece concludes that Johnson recognized the art of portraiture as a means of "continuing the presence of the dead," making him one of the "most documented" figures in eighteenth-century visual culture.
Wiltshire disputes the traditional Boswellian narrative that ignores Johnson's extensive relationships with female intellectuals, framing Johnson instead as a "friend, supporter, and champion" of authoresses. The chapter details Johnson’s professional collaborations with Charlotte Lennox, noting he wrote the dedication for The Female Quixote and celebrated her literary success with a "night spent in festivity." Wiltshire highlights Johnson’s high regard for the "female mind," citing his admiration for Elizabeth Carter, Elizabeth Montagu, and Frances Burney. The analysis explores how Johnson served as an "agent, advisor, and mentor," encouraging the quasi-philosophical work of Frances Reynolds and the proto-feminist translations of Carter. Wiltshire emphasizes that Johnson was "free from gender prejudice" and treated women as colleagues in the literary marketplace, a role that Boswell largely suppressed. The entry concludes that Johnson’s "extraordinary freedom from commonplace prejudices" established a continuity between eighteenth-century moral humanism and Victorian feminist sensibility.
Scherwatzky analyzes Johnson's political identity, challenging the reductive label of "Tory" by exploring his consistent focus on moral duty over partisan loyalty. The chapter traces Johnson's early opposition to Robert Walpole and his later defense of the government during the Wilkes riots and the American crisis. Scherwatzky argues that Johnson’s political pamphlets, such as Taxation No Tyranny, reflect a "profound skepticism" toward abstract concepts of liberty that ignored the practicalities of governance. The analysis highlights Johnson’s "passionate humanitarianism," specifically his consistent opposition to slavery and imperial expansion. Scherwatzky notes that while Boswell often attempted to cast Johnson as a staunch Jacobite, Johnson’s actual politics were rooted in a "submission to established authority" tempered by a concern for the "suffering of the poor." The entry concludes that Johnson’s political thought remains significant for its "rigorous insistence" on evaluating political claims through the lens of individual and social morality.
Snead addresses the relative neglect of Johnson’s sermons in contemporary scholarship, attributing it to authorship disputes and a modern bias against homiletic writing. The article contextualizes the sermons within an eighteenth-century market where homiletics were consumed as literature for private devotion and moral instruction. Snead explores how Johnson’s sermons navigate the currents between Latitudinarian reason and evangelical feeling, reflecting a "holy fear" and a pragmatic emphasis on man’s active participation in his own salvation. The narrative details Johnson’s practice of composing sermons for others, most notably his childhood friend John Taylor, which were published posthumously as Sermons on Different Subjects. Despite their anonymous origin, Snead argues that the sermons demonstrate Johnson’s characteristic blend of devotion and reasoned restraint. The piece concludes that sermons constitute a "considerable branch of English literature" through which Johnson’s moral philosophy was most directly pronounced to the public.
Scanlan explores Johnson's lifelong engagement with legal theory and practice, noting he once "wished to be a lawyer." The chapter details Johnson's extensive collaborative work with Robert Chambers on the Vinerian Lectures at Oxford, where Johnson provided the "philosophical and historical sweep" to Chambers's technical legal knowledge. Scanlan highlights Johnson’s participation in the defense of William Dodd and his frequent consultation on legal matters for Boswell’s Scottish cases. The analysis emphasizes Johnson’s view of the law as a "necessary but imperfect" instrument of social order. Scanlan argues that Johnson used a "legalistic precision" in his own writing, particularly in the Dictionary. The entry notes that Johnson’s relationship with Boswell, a trained advocate, facilitated deep discussions on the "moral duties of a lawyer." Scanlan concludes that Johnson’s legal interests were not merely academic but informed his rigorous approach to truth-telling and evidence in biography and criticism.
Murray surveys the eighteenth-century medical landscape, characterizing it as the "adolescence of modern medicine" where ancient humoral theory clashed with Newton-inspired mechanical models. The article foregrounds the patient's experience, noting the prevalence of smallpox, typhus, and scrofula—the latter which afflicted Johnson and led him to seek the "Royal Touch" of Queen Anne. Murray examines the complex hierarchy of practitioners, from university-educated physicians to "irregular" healers like Robert Levet, whom Johnson famously defended. The narrative highlights key advances, including the safer use of obstetrical forceps by William Smellie and James Lind's discovery of lime juice to prevent scurvy. Murray argues that while therapies remained largely harsh and ineffective, the era saw a crucial "redirection of focus" toward pathological changes within the body. Johnson's own interest is depicted as bordering on "Quackery," reflecting his deep intellectual engagement with the physician circle around him.
Smallwood analyzes Johnson’s achievement as the preeminent critic of his age, noting how he combined a rational Augustan voice with a "comprehensive" mind. The article traces the influence of predecessors like Dryden and Pope, as well as French theorists like Boileau and Rapin, on Johnson’s critical formality and conversational informality. Smallwood highlights Johnson’s emotive reactions to native literary greatness, particularly his defense of Shakespeare against neoclassical unities and his engagement with the "sublime." The narrative explores the dialectical partnership between Johnson and his contemporaries, including his diverged thinking from Joseph Warton and his shared concepts of "general nature" with Sir Joshua Reynolds. Smallwood argues that Johnson’s criticism remains relevant because it places him as firmly in the history of creative literature as in the history of criticism. The piece concludes that Johnson's ability to "survey the whole" remains the cornerstone of his critical legacy.
Richardson analyzes Johnson's attitudes toward war, noting that he had been "at war for about thirty-one of his seventy-five years." The article describes eighteenth-century warfare as "tactical, limited, and disciplined," emphasizing the "discipline and courage" required of infantrymen. Richardson explores Johnson's "direct appeal to common human sympathy" for French prisoners of war and his skepticism regarding the Seven Years’ War, which he saw as "wanton theft." The narrative highlights Johnson's belief that war is "the last of remedies," justifiable only for "protecting territory or rights" rather than "conquest and gain." Richardson details Johnson's support for the War of American Independence as a defense of "needful political authority" against "upstart persecutors." The piece concludes that Johnson’s moral reflections on "wars necessary and unnecessary" mirrored his unrepentant opposition to "European imperialism" and "racist expansionism."
Ritchie examines Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare, noting its origins in his earlier lexicographical work and its enduring influence on Shakespearean perception. The article explores how Johnson used the Dictionary as a platform for textual criticism, clarifying obscure language through illustrative quotations from the plays. Ritchie contextualizes the edition within an eighteenth-century "bardolatry" movement, which saw Shakespeare commemorated with a monument in Poets’ Corner and celebrated at David Garrick’s Stratford Jubilee. The narrative highlights Johnson’s defense of Shakespeare’s "mingled drama" and his rejection of the neoclassical unities of time and place. Despite missing numerous deadlines, Johnson’s edition—with its famous preface and incisive annotations—established his high reputation as a literary critic. Ritchie concludes that Johnson’s work played a pivotal role in entrenching Shakespeare’s status as a central figure in English culture, bridging the gap between scholarly inquiry and popular reverence.
Nathan Bailey's Dictionary: Signs of Its Author, Readers, and Influence on Johnson
Patterson investigates the persistent popularity of Nathan Bailey's dictionaries throughout the eighteenth century, even after Johnson's Dictionary. She argues Bailey's success stemmed from its function as an accessible "store-house" for autodidacts and general readers, contrasting Bailey's minimal authorial persona with Johnson's highly visible authorial presence constructed in his Preface. While Bailey's disordered lists provided raw material, Johnson primarily used Bailey as a negative model, introducing structural innovations like numbered senses and cross-references, thus creating distinct products serving different market needs.
Nachumi examines Johnson’s interaction with the eighteenth-century theater, noting that Shakespearean plays made up nearly a quarter of the contemporary repertory. The article contextualizes Johnson’s tragedy Irene within the "bardolatry" movement and his personal relationship with the manager David Garrick. Nachumi explores Johnson’s belief that a "play read, affects the mind like a play acted," which shaped his critical annotations and his defense of Shakespeare's "mingled drama." The narrative highlights the commercial success of Shakespearean editions and the increased accessibility of plays in print for the "common reader." Nachumi details the influence of the Drury Lane theater on Johnson’s social circle and his Status as an advisor to playwrights like Frances Burney. The piece concludes that the theater provided a "dynamic presence" in Johnson’s world, bridging the gap between "scholarly inquiry" and "popular reverence."
McDowell examines Johnson's identity as a "lifelong armchair traveler" who left Britain only once but was profoundly influenced by travel narratives. The article details Johnson's interest in "strange animals" like the kangaroo and his first book, a translation of Jerome Lobo's A Voyage to Abissinia. McDowell explores how the "improved roads" and "turnpike trusts" of the eighteenth century reduced travel times and enabled Johnson’s tour of Scotland with Boswell. The narrative highlights the "conspicuous disappointment" in Rasselas as a reflection of the "vanity of human wishes" discovered during travel. McDowell argues that travel provided Johnson with the "facts" necessary for his "stadial theory" of development, allowing him to measure the "distance" between metropolitan London and "antiquated life." The piece concludes that for Johnson, travel was a means of "attaining the great art" of happiness by "studying little things."
Morrissey traces Johnson’s career through the evolving landscape of eighteenth-century journalism, from his early "Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia" to his later critical periodical essays. The article highlights Johnson’s collaboration with Edward Cave and the Gentleman's Magazine, where he used literary techniques like allegory to navigate parliamentary prohibitions on reporting. Morrissey examines Johnson’s ambivalence toward the "public sphere," noting his optimism regarding the Englishman's right to information alongside his skepticism about the press's role in civil unrest. The narrative links Johnson’s "common reader" to the popularizing projects of mid-century periodicals, arguing that his journalism brought criticism to a new range of readers. Morrissey identifies parallels between eighteenth-century single-essay periodicals and modern digital blogs, suggesting that today’s reading practices reflect Johnson’s own ability to "seize what is valuable" without perusing every page. The piece concludes that journalism remained a constant, animating force throughout Johnson's professional life.
Richetti analyzes Johnson's complex relationship with the emerging genre of the novel, focusing on his influential critique in Rambler 4. The article explains Johnson's demand that fiction serve as a "moral instrument," warning against the seductive danger of realistic portrayals of vice. Richetti explores Rasselas as Johnson's primary contribution to fiction, characterizing it as a "philosophical tale" rather than a conventional novel. The narrative highlights Johnson's preference for works that "approximate the remote and familiarize the wonderful," using literature to provide "useful substance" and wisdom. Richetti notes Johnson's appreciation for domestic and biographical truth in fiction, citing his high regard for writers like Samuel Richardson. The article argues that while Johnson mistrusted the "loose sally of the mind" found in many contemporary novels, he recognized fiction’s power to reach the "common reader" and influence the "manners of the people."
Wall examines the central role of London in Johnson’s life and work, noting his arrival as a penniless author and his eventual status as a monumental figure in the metropolis. The article highlights Johnson’s famous claim that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life," reflecting his relish for the city’s variety of intellectual entertainment. Wall traces the physical and social landscape of Johnson’s London, from the "muddy mixture of pride and ignorance" in Grub Street to the fashionable gatherings at Streatham and the Essex Head Club. The narrative explores how Johnson’s poetry, particularly London, provided a scathing account of urban corruption while simultaneously celebrating the city as his "element." Wall details Johnson’s final days in the metropolis and his eventual burial in Westminster Abbey. The piece concludes that for Johnson, London was the indispensable center of all that life can afford, providing both the comfort of friends and the material for his literary genius.
Geller examines Johnson's complex domestic arrangements, disputing the image of the solitary scholar by highlighting his "radically inclusive" household. The chapter details Johnson’s marriage to Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, characterized by Geller as a foundational emotional bond despite its later physical separation. Following Tetty's death, Johnson populated his home with a "strange and motley group" of dependents, including Anna Williams, Robert Levett, and Francis Barber. Geller analyzes how Johnson used his domestic space as a site of Christian charity and "social experimentation," often mediating disputes between his quarrelsome inmates. The analysis further explores the "quasi-domestic" role Johnson occupied at Streatham Park with the Thrales. Geller argues that Johnson’s domestic life was defined by a tension between his "horror of being alone" and the "daily irritations" of cohabitation. The entry concludes that Johnson’s domesticity reflects his broader moral commitment to sustaining those marginalized by the traditional social hierarchy.
Horace through Johnson (II): The Prodigal Heir: 'A Short Song of Congratulations': Horace, Johnson, and Satire
Reckford explores the intersection of classical influence and personal anxiety in Johnson's "A Short Song of Congratulations." The argument disputes the notion that Johnson simply avoided satire, suggesting instead that his "satire manqué" results from a compassionate pull back from ridicule. Reckford identifies Horace's Satires 2.3 and William Hogarth's Rake's Progress as primary influences on the poem, written for Piozzi to mark the majority of John Lade. The analysis links the figure of the wastrel heir to Johnson's lifelong obsession with death and the making of his own will. By examining "A Short Song" alongside Johnson's translations of Horace's Odes, Reckford demonstrates how Johnson used Horatian humor as a "safety-valve" for his profound anxieties regarding mortality and judgment. The study concludes that Horace provided Johnson with a vital framework for expressing the tension between religious faith and human passion.
Bundock re-evaluates the long-standing accusation that Sir John Hawkins stole Johnson's private diaries near the end of Johnson's life. By closely examining Hawkins's own account (added in the second edition of his Life), corroborating details from John Hoole and Boswell (via Bennet Langton), and reconsidering the nature of the volumes involved (likely Prayers and Meditations notebooks), Bundock argues Hawkins acted openly, informing witnesses like Langton and Strahan. He concludes Hawkins likely aimed to protect the potentially sensitive documents from misappropriation by George Steevens, acting imprudently perhaps, but not committing theft.
'Through the Spectacles of Books': Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and a Johnsonian Intertextual Topos
Lee identifies a recurring "Shakespeare-Milton-Dryden intertextual topos" in Johnson's critical writings, manifested through specific tropes like "spectacles of books," the "deformed mistress," and "dalliance." Analyzing instances in the Lives of the Poets, Preface to Shakespeare, and Dictionary, Lee argues Johnson employs Dryden (and Dryden's criticism) metaleptically as a critical lens to approach his culturally distant precursors. This reveals Johnson's complex relationship with these authors, his critical methodology which accommodates pleasure in imperfection, and his implicit skepticism towards facile Enlightenment rationality.
Dille contextualizes Johnson's educational views and experiences within the rigid structures of eighteenth-century schooling. The article traces Johnson's early education at Lichfield Grammar School and his brief, degree-less tenure at Pembroke College, Oxford. Dille highlights Johnson's defense of university institutions despite their "antiquated regulations" and "air of misrule," arguing for their "excellency" as bastions of stability. The narrative explores Johnson's failed attempt at running a private academy at Edial and his subsequent literary focus on the moral and social dimensions of learning. Dille examines Johnson's support for female education, noting his friendships with learned women and the princess Nekayah’s vision of a women's college in Rasselas. The article concludes that Johnson viewed education as a "refining influence" essential for navigating civilized society, emphasizing the "opportunity of books and learned men" over mere formal certification.
Sometimes Counsel Take, and Sometimes Tea: Samuel Johnson at Home
Meyers reconstructs Johnson's 1784 Bolt Court residence through a fictionalized interview, emphasizing the physical deterioration and eccentricities of the subject. The narrative details Johnson's interactions with Barber, Williams, and Desmoulins while highlighting his struggle with scrofula, asthma, and "vile melancholy." Meyers explores Johnson's views on American independence, the tragedy of human existence, and his "penitential" relationship with Thrale. The text examines Johnson's admission of "mad thoughts" and his use of chains or whips to manage psychological distress. Meyers highlights Johnson's affection for Savage and Hodge, his regret over his father's treatment, and his defense of moral discipline against American optimism. Through this dialogue, Meyers emphasizes Johnson's internal conflict between religious devotion and sensual temptation, specifically referencing his "magnum opus" of self-restraint.
Johnson’s Dictionary bears a complicated relation to literary language. A large proportion of the illustrative quotations that Johnson used came from poetry. However, comments in the Preface, and elsewhere show that he had ambivalent feelings towards poetic language. When reading the Dictionary against a Concordance of Johnson’s own poems and plays, mediated by his explanations of what types of words were omitted in the Preface, it becomes clear that Johnson did not include in the Dictionary several words that he himself had used in his own poetry and plays. I list these words, with a short explanation of why words from Johnson’s active vocabulary might not have made it into the Dictionary.
Harrow examines Johnson’s skeptical and often hostile reaction to the expansion of the British Empire, focusing on his detestation of "bellicose nationalism." The article details Johnson’s scathing critiques of imperialism in the Literary Magazine, where he condemned the Seven Years’ War as a conflict over land to which neither Britain nor France had a "legitimate claim." Harrow highlights Johnson’s humanitarian advocacy for Native Americans and his famous indictment of the hypocrisy of slaveholding colonists who "yelp for liberty." The narrative explores how Johnson’s Coptic Christian characters in Rasselas offer a global perspective that resets the "imagined community" beyond European borders. Harrow argues that Johnson’s anti-imperialist stance was rooted in a minimal universalism that recognized a "uniform" humanity. The piece concludes that despite his late defense of British sovereignty in Taxation No Tyranny, Johnson remained unrepentant in his opposition to the "wanton theft" and "depredations" of colonial expansion.
Parker analyzes Johnson's philosophical stance, characterizing it as a "collaborative enterprise" that mistrusted the "emancipatory rationalism" of the French Enlightenment. The article contrasts Johnson with the philosophes, noting his belief that thinking should be built "upon the discoveries of a great many minds" rather than individual intelligence. Parker explores Rasselas as Johnson's most philosophical work, where the "choice of life" leads to a "conclusion in which nothing is concluded," mirroring Johnson's "diligent certainty about doubt." The narrative highlights Johnson's focus on the "uniformity of human nature" and his skeptical rejection of "conjectural history" in anthropology. Parker argues that Johnson's philosophy was aimed at "moderating desires" and connecting convictions with practice through "moral discipline." The piece concludes that Johnson's skeptical humanism sought truth in the "daily intercourse of life" rather than in "abstracted" metaphysical systems.
Simpson explores the "bipolar" paradox of books in Johnson’s Rasselas, noting their near-total absence in the Happy Valley despite the text’s simultaneous insistence that life without reading is "tedious." Simpson analyzes this contradiction through the lens of Plato’s Phaedrus and Derrida’s concept of the pharmakon (books as both cure and poison). Imlac prizes memory over writing, and Rasselas himself remains unbookish. Simpson argues this absence, particularly the lack of the Bible, removes traditional reference points. This leaves the characters in a world without clear evil or meaning, resulting in the tale’s famously unresolved ending where "nothing concluded" is possible.
Past and Present in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
Johnson’s Dictionary incorporates illustrative quotations that create a "space of pastness," de-historicizing authors to represent contemporary views, as seen in his selective, often polemical use of Milton. The quotations, primarily for lexical function, lose their original context but gain rhetorical force within the Dictionary's entries, sometimes reflecting Johnson's own attitudes. The Preface, in contrast to the Dictionary's body, explicitly addresses time, the elusive present, and the impossibility of fixing a living language, revealing Johnson's profound meditation on time's passage and the inherent failure of lexicography.
Jackson situates Johnson and Boswell at the apex of the biographical genre, while emphasizing that their achievements emerged from a "shadow tradition of notoriety" and gallows literature. The chapter details Johnson’s early "potboiler biographies" for the Gentleman’s Magazine and identifies his Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage as a watershed moment that distinguished responsible biography from scandalous rivals. Jackson argues that Johnson’s focus on "domestick privacies" and the "inner rather than the outer life" allowed the genre to escape the "possessive grip of history." The analysis highlights Boswell’s tactical use of advertisements and attacks on rivals like Piozzi and Hawkins to establish the superiority of his own work. Jackson concludes that while modern research disputes the factual accuracy of Johnson’s Savage or Boswell’s Life, these texts remain the "uncontested leader" of the tradition for their "pertinent use of detail and anecdote" in exploring universal human nature.
Coleridge Bulletin: The Journal of the Friends of Coleridge
Suarez contextualizes Johnson's career within the economics and material practices of the eighteenth-century book trade. The article details the high cost of books, noting that a typical novel could equal nearly a fifth of an unskilled laborer’s annual rent. Suarez examines the shift in formats from prestigious folios to economical duodecimos and the rise of "edition binding." Central to the narrative is the collaborative nature of publishing, where booksellers shared financial risks through "share-books." Suarez highlights the significance of the world's first copyright law (1710) and the landmark Donaldson v. Becket (1774) ruling, which ended the myth of perpetual copyright. Despite Johnson's dependence on booksellers like Robert Dodsley, Suarez argues that Johnson understood the business "far better than most of his contemporaries," successfully navigating a system where authors typically earned a fixed sum per printed sheet.
Brack provides a comprehensive overview of Johnson's diverse and extensive publication record, noting the "stunningly diverse" nature of his oeuvre. The chapter details Johnson's early professional struggles as a "hack writer" for Edward Cave and the Gentleman's Magazine. Brack highlights the role of Robert Dodsley as Johnson's "patron" and the primary force behind the Dictionary. The analysis follows Johnson's career through major milestones including the Rambler, Shakespeare, and the Lives of the Poets. Brack emphasizes that despite his famous remark that "no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," Johnson frequently assisted friends like Piozzi, Baretti, and Lennox with their own publications. The chapter characterizes Johnson as a "scholar-poet" whose large-scale projects established him as a preeminent man of letters in both England and on the Continent. Brack concludes that the Dictionary and Shakespeare edition completed Johnson’s reputation as the primary authority on English criticism.
Clingham reviews twentieth-century Johnsonian scholarship, categorizing it into monumental editorial projects, bibliographic advances, nuanced biographies, and varied critical interpretations. The article credits T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis with initiating the modern serious treatment of Johnson’s criticism and poetry. Clingham explores the shift away from Boswellian caricatures toward a rigorous analysis of Johnson as a moral, religious, and political thinker. Notable exceptions to mainstream theoretical indifference, such as Terry Eagleton and Frank Kermode, are discussed for their recognition of Johnson’s deep engagement with the "confrontation" between tragedy and nature. Clingham argues that the quality of Johnson’s thought is inseparable from the manner of his writing, which remains contemporaneous and resistant to postmodern relativity. The piece asserts that Johnson’s "vast honesty" and application of principle to experience establish him as one of the most enduring figures in English literary criticism.
"Life of Gray" I. Introduction Intertextuality considered in its simplest form refers to a silent, invisible assembly of linkages between individual texts, linkages based upon such properties of resemblance as repetition, formal similitude, generic affiliation, semantic identity, reversal, and assimilation and substitution.1 Pragmatically, the notion of intertextuality urges critical readers to focus upon the relationships between texts with an equal or greater attentiveness than what is frequently given to the formal, biographical, or historical properties of literature. The feeders here could be authors, those forced to observe Johnson's chiasmatic maxim, We that live to please must please to live.\textbackslashn because of the discursive openness and interpenetrative permeability of Jotrnson's appropriation of allusions, quotations, and translations, his Rambler, Lives of the Poets, and other writings can be productively read as texts in the Barthean sense, instead of reading them, as has traditionally been the fashion, as rigidly monological pronouncements.57 The allusive playfulness of the Johnsonian text solicits a lively writerly engagement and participative construction of his prose and poetry on the part of the reader.
Trailblazers in the World of Ideas: Sherlock Holmes and the Poets Laureate
Mason examines the literary self-conception of Sherlock Holmes through his identification with Johnson and the role he assigns to Watson as a "Boswell." The article argues that Holmes's famous remark, "I am lost without my Boswell," signifies a conscious alignment with Johnson as a fellow intellectual pioneer and "trailblazer in the world of ideas." Mason suggests that just as Johnson revolutionized lexicography with his Dictionary, Holmes viewed himself as an unrivaled innovator in the field of detection. The analysis acknowledges Boswell’s influence on the genre of biography but notes that his "fawning idol-worship" may have complicated Johnson’s reputation. Mason also draws parallels between the historical figures and their fictional counterparts, comparing Boswell’s documented sexual addictions and history of venereal disease with Watson’s more "romantic" temperament. By citing Johnson and Boswell alongside figures like Horace and Petrarch, the author demonstrates that Holmes’s knowledge of literature was not "nil," as Watson initially supposed, but was instead a curated collection of authors whose "out-of-the-way knowledge" mirrored his own.
Oysters for Hodge; or, Ordering Society, Writing Biography and Feeding the Cat
In their biographies of Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi and James Boswell both recount with concern Johnson's willing violation of hierarchies of race, class and gender in personally buying oysters to feed his cat Hodge, so that, Piozzi reports, ‘Francis the Black's delicacy might not be hurt, at seeing himself employed for the convenience of a quadruped'. Piozzi also uses the story of Hodge's oysters to justify her own labours as Johnson's nurse and confidante, while Boswell's Life depicts Hodge, Johnson's privileged intimate, as a rival to the man most anxious to claim that title for himself.
Examines Piozzi’s Anecdotes.
Johnson's Prayerful Puritanism: An Episode in the Life of Milton
Ricciardi challenges the standard critical categorization of Johnson as a strictly rationalist High Anglican by examining the biographical treatment of Milton. While Boswell and others emphasize Johnson's adherence to external ritual and Newtonian reason, Ricciardi argues that the Life of Milton reveals a profound appreciation for Milton's internal, mystical devotion. The article focuses on the passage where Johnson addresses Milton's lack of visible worship, noting that Johnson moves beyond his initial castigation to defend the poet's invisible life of faith. Ricciardi highlights the claim that Milton’s "studies and meditations were an habitual prayer," suggesting that Johnson redefined prayer to include a "prayerfulness of being." By accepting Milton's interior conviction over empirical proof of religious performance, Johnson temporarily adopts a Miltonic mantle, recognizing the poet as "God’s poem" as well as his poet. This analysis reconciles Johnsonian limitation with Miltonic transcendence through their shared understanding of providential grace and the ultimate return to the self in prayer and death.
Turner surveys the diverse range of public and professional responses to Johnson from his lifetime through the Victorian era. Initially seen as "public property," Johnson’s major works like the Dictionary and Rasselas were both revered and attacked for their perceived stylistic and political biases. The article examines how the "double tradition" identified by Bertrand Bronson allowed a popular myth of Johnson the man to eclipse his actual writings in the nineteenth century, largely due to the influence of Macaulay’s caricatures. However, Turner disputes the notion that Johnson’s works were forgotten by the Victorians, citing a continuous stream of editions and the profound influence of the Lives of the Poets on later literary biography. The narrative highlights how figures like Leslie Stephen and George Birkbeck Hill eventually reclaimed Johnson’s works for the center of English literary history, emphasizing his humanitarian sensibility and critical integrity.
Curley delineates Johnson’s complex and often hostile relationship with America, fueled by a mixture of insular nationalism and cosmopolitan humanitarianism. The article explores Johnson’s fierce advocacy for the victims of imperialism, specifically Native Americans and enslaved Africans, whose exploitation by colonists he found abhorrent. Johnson’s famous query, "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" serves as a central point of his critique in Taxation No Tyranny. Curley argues that Johnson’s political opposition to American independence was rooted in a belief in the necessity of established authority and the legal title Britain held over its colonies. Despite his authoritarian stance, Johnson’s writings reveal a lifelong hatred of racism and imperial expansionism. The narrative concludes that Johnson remained unrepentant about his opposition to the American Revolution, viewing it as a national humiliation that signaled Britain’s enfeeblement abroad.
Being and the Imaginary: An Introduction to Aesthetic Phenomenology and English Literature from the Eighteenth Century to Romanticism
Simons applies Aesthetic Phenomenology to literature, focusing on the ontological issue of Dasein's choice of life. Johnson's writings, especially his poems "London," "The Vanity of Human Wishes," and "On the Death of Doctor Robert Levet," measure Dasein's possible attunements. The investigation also considers idleness in Johnson's periodical essays and posits the aesthetic realm discloses possible projections of Being in his criticism. A final section explores Johnson's relationship with the imaginary.
Lamb examines Johnson’s skeptical approach to anthropology, noting his general contempt for information brought home from the South Sea voyages. The article contrasts the romantic "state of nature" sought by James Boswell with Johnson’s belief that savages have nothing to teach civilized men about the past or the invisible. Johnson argued that human nature is uniform and that supposedly primitive societies were merely debased versions of older cultures. Lamb highlights Johnson’s journey to the Hebrides as his closest experience with fieldwork, where he aimed to collect facts while testing theories of stadial development. The narrative explores how Johnson’sPoor eyesight and preference for "men and women" over landscapes shaped his anthropological thinking. Ultimately, Lamb suggests that Johnson’s refusal of fieldwork revealed a submerged understanding of the relative nature of progress and degeneration, favoring human reason over conjectural history.
Rounce traces the erratic history of Johnsonian editing, noting that accurate texts have been elusive until recently due to Johnson’s frequent anonymity and "ghost writing." The chapter critiques the "incredibly careless" 1787 edition by Sir John Hawkins, which served as a flawed textual basis for collections well into the twentieth century. Rounce identifies a "disastrous misreading" initiated by Thomas Macaulay, who claimed that Boswell’s biography made Johnson’s own writings "unnecessary." The analysis highlights the corrective work of George Birkbeck Hill and the subsequent Yale Edition, which sought to redress the "inadequacy of many of the writings" through modernized and readable texts. Rounce argues that Roger Lonsdale’s 2006 edition of the Lives of the Poets finally set a superior standard for "fullness of explication" and sensitivity to Johnson’s milieu. The entry demonstrates how the caprices of early printing and the "spurious editorial authority" of commercial series often compromised Johnson’s posthumous reputation.
Stone explores Johnson’s "cross-linguistic afterlife," observing that despite being translated into twenty-five languages, this aspect of his reputation was largely ignored until the twenty-first century. The article identifies two recurring patterns: Johnson’s works often circulated anonymously abroad, unburdened by his English persona, and globalized English studies have recently accelerated translation into major languages like Chinese. Stone details the immense bibliographic challenges in tracing translated Rambler essays, which often appeared in fragmented forms or through "pivot languages" like French. Representative surveys of translations into Russian, Spanish, and French reveal that Johnson was primarily valued abroad as a writer of narrative and moral tales rather than as a scholar. Stone argues that while Johnson was once seen as perversely ill-suited for re-creation in other cultures, modern scholarship now recognizes the "dialogic engagement" these translations offer as unique performances of the original texts.
Dr. Johnson's Friend, the Worthy Bennet Langton
Larsen examines the character and life of Bennet Langton, a central, yet under-examined, figure in the Johnson Circle. Larsen argues that Langton, despite his superior learning and long acquaintance with Johnson, did not write his biography due to an inherent indolence and aversion to writing, choosing instead to contribute anecdotes to Boswell’s Life. The study focuses on how Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi regarded Langton's distinct seriocomic composition, which included great piety, learning, extreme height, financial mismanagement, and a paralyzing timidity toward criticism, such as Johnson’s rebuke over discussing the Trinity. Larsen draws on little-known published and unpublished material, including family letters, to detail Langton's habits, relationships, and service in the Lincolnshire Militia.
Mugglestone situates Johnson’s landmark Dictionary within the "age of dictionaries," challenging the popular view of him as the "father of the dictionary." The chapter identifies his reliance on classical models and seventeenth-century predecessors like Nathan Bailey. Mugglestone highlights Johnson's innovations, specifically his "scholar’s reverence for antiquity" displayed through illustrative quotations and minute distinctions of meaning. The analysis details the nine-year labor and the "tenderness of friendship" that led him to include quotations from friends like Charlotte Lennox. Mugglestone argues that Johnson used a "heightened consciousness of method" that transformed the role of the lexicographer from a "harmless drudge" to a critical authority. The entry notes that the Dictionary's success was overshadowed by personal loss, and that Johnson dismissed the final work with "frigid tranquillity." Mugglestone concludes that the Dictionary completed Johnson's reputation as the preeminent authority on the English language, despite the subsequent criticisms of lexicographers like Noah Webster.
The Mystery of Aesthetic Response: Dryden and Johnson on Shakespeare
Hudson examines the shared critical principles of Dryden and Johnson, focusing on their reliance on individual aesthetic response as the primary guide for literary analysis. Johnson identified himself as the heir to Dryden, the father of English criticism. Both critics challenged rule-bound approaches, such as those of Thomas Rymer, by arguing that Shakespeare's plays elicited pleasurable responses despite violating neo-classical unities. Hudson argues that Johnson attributed this appeal to general nature, a principle that prioritized universal human experience over rigid generic categories. The article suggests that while Johnson sought to isolate the grounds of our judgments, his use of nature often disguised continued uncertainties regarding the foundations of criticism. Dryden's and Johnson's claim that literary analysis is an individual response remains the rationale for most modern literary criticism.
New England Quarterly: A Historical Review of New England Life and Letters
Samuel Richardson's Manuscript Draft of The Rambler No. 97 (19 February 1751)
Richardson's letter to Frances Grainger on September 8, 1750, served as the draft for his sole contribution to Johnson's Rambler 97, with many passages transferred verbatim or rearranged, as shown in a comparative table. The analysis uses two changes Johnson made in the 1752 collected edition—correcting Richardson's preferred spelling of "knowlege" to "knowledge" and omitting a morbid simile comparing coquettes to carrion attracting flies—as evidence of Johnson's editorial intervention. The preference for "knowlege" is further linked to Richardson's involvement as a printer for his own later novels and for Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote.
Johnston explores the range and variety of Johnson's private letters, identifying around three-quarters of his surviving correspondence as dating from his final twelve years. The chapter focuses significantly on Johnson's subtle and teasing letters to Piozzi and her family. Johnston describes these letters as a "display of power" that translates "nothing" into "something" through mock-heroic narration and elegant decoration of insignificance. The analysis contrasts Johnson's view of letters as "calculated transactions" with Piozzi’s complaint that he was "often scrupulous of opening his heart." Johnston highlights the "irremeable road" of his final, valedictory letter to Piozzi, where his striking choice of epithet countenances a world "in which no redemption is possible." The entry suggests that Johnson's correspondence functioned as a "form of self-defense" against his horror of endings, and that his letters to Piozzi shield a "genuine terror" that she had lost interest in him.
New analyzes Johnson’s Anglicanism within the context of eighteenth-century religious centrism, emphasizing the influence of Archbishop John Tillotson’s "religion of moderation." The article explores the paradox of Anglican tolerance, which aimed for peace while asserting its absolute superiority as the "truest" religion of Christ. New highlights the challenge posed by the evangelical revival of the mid-century, which forced a debate over the roles of reason and grace in salvation. Johnson’s own faith is characterized as a blend of Latitudinarian reason and a deep-seated "holy fear" regarding his eternal soul. The narrative traces the shift toward a state where political power governed earthly existence while religious conviction became a private concern. New argues that Johnson’s commitment to the Anglican communion provided a stable framework for his moral philosophy, even as he grappled with the terrifying uncertainties of human efficacy and divine mercy.
Rogers examines conversation as a "serious cognitive activity" in Johnson's era, highlighting his recognized mastery of oral communication. The chapter uses Piozzi’s anecdotes to illustrate Johnson's belief that nothing "promoted happiness so much as conversation." Rogers notes that Johnson's contemporaries, including Frances Burney, thought his distinction as a writer and speaker "proceeded from the same source." The analysis details Johnson's forensic zeal for precision, his habit of "talking upon oath," and his tendency to treat conversation as a "contest" or "combat" where he frequently "talked for victory." Rogers identifies Boswell's role as a "constant companion" who recorded Johnson's bons mots, while acknowledging that Johnson's "Staffordshire dialect" and "disconcerting tics" made his conversational brilliance all the more remarkable. The entry emphasizes that the art of conversation for Johnson embraced a "wider display of intellectual power" than traditional manuals dictated, serving as a primary means of "diffusing friendship" and sharing knowledge.
Griffin examines the shifting material and social conditions for eighteenth-century writers, focusing on the transition from patronage to a market-based professional model. The chapter identifies Johnson as the iconic representative of the independent author who famously spurned Lord Chesterfield's belated patronage. Griffin notes that while modern research qualifies the myth of the exploited hack, Johnson's early struggles with Edward Cave and the Gentleman's Magazine reflect the daily diligence stimulated by daily hunger common to professional writers. The analysis explores how Johnson's career encompassed various roles including anonymous journalist, ghostwriter for friends, and preeminent man of letters. Griffin argues that despite his Itch for Scribling, Johnson viewed authorship as a line of duty requiring both execution and performance. The entry concludes that Johnson's success in navigating the London literary marketplace established a new model for authorial dignity and independence.
One of the Hungry Mob of Scriblers and Etchers: Johnson's Pension in Visual Satire
O’Connell contrasts the popular posthumous image of Johnson as an eccentric genius with the "contested view" presented in visual satires during his life. O'Connell argues the crucial moment establishing Johnson as an "object of calumny" was his 1762 government pension from the Earl of Bute. This event led to his inclusion in numerous anti-Bute satirical prints, such as The Hungry Mob of Scriblers and Etchers and Daniel Cast into the Den of Lions. These satires depicted Johnson as a "Slave of State," clutching his "300 pr ann" scroll. His association with Bute ensured he was portrayed as a paid government mouthpiece.
Mentoring and Mimicry in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Considers the Johnson–Boswell mentoring relationship beyond the interpersonal, psychologically-grounded perspective most often associated with mentoring by interrogating the textual traces of their exchange. Noting that Boswell falls into the eighteenth-century tradition of gestural and physical mimicking, practiced by actors such as Garrick, Foote, and Murphy, this paper examines instances of textual mimicry in Boswell's Life of Johnson, arguing that this practice simultaneously endeavors to biographically preserve Johnson's presence for posterity as well as appropriate Johnson's voice in a bid for mastery over Johnson as part of the dynamic of the protégé's attempt to challenge, and ultimately usurp, the authority of the mentor.
Sociability, Information, and the 'Inlets to Happiness' in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Nunnery contends that in the Lives, Johnson abandons the "character stability" of traditional exemplary biography for a "descriptive" model that privileges mundane, private detail over public action. By presenting subjects as flawed, contradictory individuals rather than moral icons, Johnson replaces the quasi-sacerdotal authority of the biographer with a model of "mentorship." This approach invites readers to engage in an inductive process, using recorded lives as data fields to formulate provisional propositions about the pursuit of temporal happiness. Nunnery explores these strategies through Johnson’s treatment of sociability, specifically focusing on sympathetic humor and friendship as "inlets to happiness." The study further challenges dominant readings of Johnson’s ethics, proposing instead an "ethics of Johnsonian happiness" where virtue is valued instrumentally for navigating a world of contingency and risk. Nunnery argues that Johnson’s biographical method demonstrates a sophisticated engagement with the "logic of modernity" and a commitment to the epistemological needs of the reader.
Deutsch explores the complex evolution of Johnson’s posthumous standing, identifying a "double tradition" where a popular "folk-image" often overshadows the substance of his writing. The chapter analyzes how Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Thomas Macaulay’s subsequent caricature created a singular character of verbal tics and "careless table-talk" that persists in modern popular culture. Deutsch argues that Johnson paradoxically presented himself as both an exceptional achiever and a "harmless drudge," using the Dictionary preface to declare a "resolutely English authorial independence." The analysis emphasizes that while Boswell constructed a monument out of "anecdotal particulars," Johnson maintained an "indifference to reputation" and a "pained recognition" of his own flaws. Deutsch observes that this "familiar Johnson" inspires both affection and consolation, haunting the literary imagination as a "Caliban of English literature" whose wisdom remains "true, evident, and actual" for readers from John Ruskin to Harold Bloom.
Johnson Redux: Two Tercentenary Biographies [review of Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers, and Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin]
Both biographers agree that Johnson's life was profoundly shaped by his melancholy and poverty. Martin's work is seen as a carefully compiled analysis that uses these factors to re-interpret Johnson's works, correcting the record of the "public Johnson" passed down by Boswell. Meyers, relying heavily on Boswell, presents a life of continual struggle against various antagonists and is noted for exploring the significance of Johnson's extensive circle of friends, although the review questions the accuracy and speculation in some of Meyers's interpretations.
Berglund examines the biographical tradition surrounding Johnson, identifying him as one of the most documented figures of the eighteenth century. The chapter discusses the foundational roles of Boswell, Hawkins, and Piozzi in shaping Johnson's posthumous image. Berglund highlights Piozzi’s unique perspective, noting she understood the "emotional demands" Johnson made on female friends and provided a "more balanced portrait" of his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. The analysis traces Johnson’s journey from early struggles in Lichfield and London to his emergence as "Dictionary Johnson" and a moral authority. Berglund emphasizes that while Boswell's work is a "literary masterpiece," modern scholars must use caution and consult contemporary sources like Piozzi and Hawkins for a reliable factual account. The entry illustrates how Johnson’s relationships with Boswell and the Thrales "soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched," ultimately cementing his status as a central authority on English literature and language.
The Significance of 'the Purposeful Life' in Works by Addison, Steele, and Johnson
Eadie analyzes the rhetorical strategy of Samuel Johnson's Idler essays, focusing on how the central theme of idleness establishes a moral-satirical voice. It examines the Idler's use of rhetorical and stylistic devices to engage and instruct a broad readership, differentiating Johnson's method from that of his predecessors. The work argues that the Idler's sustained focus on idleness provides structural unity while allowing Johnson to explore a wide range of contemporary moral and social issues through varying personae and fictional modes. The analysis concludes that the coherence and didactic intent embedded in the essays underscore the seriousness of Johnson's project as a public moralist.
Clark examines the proliferation of voluntary associations in Georgian Britain, framing Johnson's membership in the Ivy Lane, Essex Head, and the famous Literary Club as typical for his class. The article traces the "associational upsurge" to post-1688 political liberalization and the end of press censorship, which provided the "vital helium of publicity" for societies. Clark notes the staggering variety of roughly 130 types of associations, ranging from alumni groups to masonic lodges. The narrative emphasizes the urban nature of these clubs, buoyed by the affluence of landowners and professionals in a rapidly growing London. Clark argues that clubs served as masculine refuges against the "feminization of the household," with legal and social barriers largely excluding women. Ultimately, Clark shows that Johnson's "combative, gloomy" participation in club life was a standard response to the century's burgeoning culture of secular sociability.
A Concise Companion to Shakespeare and the Text
Murphy examines the emergence of the Shakespearean editor as a public figure, beginning with Nicholas Rowe in 1709. The chapter details the shift toward systematic collation and theoretical rigor, highlighting Samuel Johnson’s formulation of the principle of textual primacy. Johnson argued that the 1623 First Folio held absolute authority over subsequent seventeenth-century editions, which he viewed as accumulating "printer’s negligence." Despite this theoretical stance, Johnson often relied on the base texts of his immediate predecessors, such as William Warburton and Lewis Theobald. Murphy further explores how Edward Capell and Edmond Malone refined these methods, balancing a "blind fidelity" to early copies against the pragmatic necessity of emendation to ensure readability.
Cultural Narratives: Textuality and Performance in American Culture before 1900
Addressing Maps in British America: Print, Performance, and the Cartographic Reformation
Brückner examines the "cartographic reformation" of the eighteenth century, contrasting the pictorial Henry Popple map with the gridded, narrative-heavy Lewis Evans map. Brückner notes that Samuel Johnson provided an "unexpected nod of recognition" for Evans's work in the Literary Magazine (1756). Johnson, applying his Dictionary's definition of a map as a "geographical picture," praised Evans for his inclusion of tables of latitude and a "meridian at the State-house in Philadelphia." Brückner argues that maps were not merely static signs but "living objects" integrated into theatrical and public performances. In the colonial world, where "no laureate or potentate" like Johnson yet held absolute critical dominion, maps functioned as social props that mediated between silent reading and boisterous public debate. Brückner uses Johnson's critique to demonstrate how the scientific accuracy of the Evans map realigned cartography with modern letterpress printing and professional authorship.
An Intertextual Node: Johnson's Life of Dryden, Rambler 31, and A Letter from a Gentleman to the Honourable Ed. Howard, Esq.
Lee identifies A Letter from a Gentleman (1668), an anonymous attack on Dryden possibly by Richard Flecknoe, as a likely direct source for Johnson's critical discussions in both Rambler 31 and the Life of Dryden. The pamphlet juxtaposes two Dryden lines ("I follow fate, which does too fast pursue" and "A horrid stillness first invades the ear") that Johnson analyzes separately in his later works. Lee suggests this intertextual link reveals Johnson's long-standing engagement with even minor critical skirmishes surrounding Dryden and illuminates Johnson's complex, ambivalent relationship with his precursor.
The Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook
Cook outlines Johnson's ascent from a bookseller's son in Lichfield to a preeminent man of letters, noting how financial failure forced him to abandon his Oxford degree. The chapter details Johnson’s move to London in 1737 and his subsequent "scratched living" through hack writing and commissions. Cook emphasizes the innovative nature of the 1755 Dictionary, particularly Johnson’s use of literary quotations to define usage, which established it as the definitive authority for a century. The text also covers Johnson's major poetic and prose contributions, including the Juvenalian imitation "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and the moral essays of The Rambler. Cook concludes by noting the "haphazard" coverage of the Lives of the Poets and Johnson’s skepticism toward contemporary deistical thought.
What Shall We Do with Our Lives? Rasselas Revisited
Coleman examines the enduring popularity of Rasselas, noting Boswell read it annually for its "wit and wisdom." The text explains that Johnson wrote the "oriental tale" in 1759 to fund his mother’s funeral. Coleman details the journey of Prince Rasselas and his sister from the "Happy Valley" to Cairo, where they learn that "no one is happy" and "human wishes" are vain. The text highlights the episode of the "Mad Intellectual" as a reflection of Johnson’s own "fear of madness." Coleman observes that the pilgrims return home having learned they must "do our best" as "one atom in the mass of humanity." The work balances "forthright, often blunt opinions" with "practical good sense."
Boswell claimed his biography popularized Johnson, but The Dictionary of the English Language (1755) truly made Johnson famous. This Herculean work of scholarship, begun in 1746, predated the biography. Auden called philology, the study of language, the "most poetical" scholastic discipline, reflecting the Dictionary's importance in its era's "rage for order."
Compares Whitman and Johnson as "the oldest, wisest, and well-acknowledged leaders of their circle of close friends" and explores their mutual love of "affectionate conviviality and comradeship," apparent especially in Whitman's "late poem, ‘After the Supper and Talk,'" with its "poignant, even uncanny, affinity to Johnson's thoughts, feelings, and habits."
'Fishes in His Water': Shenstone, Sensibility, and the Ethics of Looking
Fairer reframes Johnson's critique of William Shenstone’s Leasowes as superficial, arguing that Shenstone’s aesthetic of "relational looking" engages in intellectual and ethical assessment rather than merely self-indulgent fantasy. Examining Shenstone's garden design, prose, and poetry, the text highlights the poet’s awareness of shifting perspectives and contextual complexity. Shenstone's aesthetic challenges dogmatic judgment, emphasizing a dynamic negotiation of experience that encourages responsibility and compassion, as exemplified by his response to a thief who stole fish.
Rivero reviews a collection of essays that re-examine Johnson's Dictionary as a "historically alive cultural artifact." The text challenges long-standing myths, such as the image of the solitary, impoverished scholar, by noting Johnson used six assistants and received a substantial advance. It explores the political dimensions of the Dictionary, suggesting that while Johnson called himself a Tory, the work reflects a "consensual political ideology" through associations with "broad-bottom" Whig patrons. Contributors discuss Johnson's "sometimes-immethodical method" in the hastily composed History and Grammar sections, alongside his self-confessed role as a prescriptivist whose linguistic standards had far-reaching effects on the English language.
Discursive Possession: Ethiopian Discourse in Medieval European and Eighteenth-Century English Literature
Belcher advances a theory of discursive possession, arguing that African thought co-constituted European literary representations. It specifically traces how the discourse of the Ethiopian Christians, the Habesha, circulated in Europe from the ancient world through the eighteenth century. The analysis details the Habesha's powerful self-representations, particularly their medieval epic Kəbrä Nägäst, which influenced European legends of the Queen of Sheba and Prester John. The study demonstrates how this African intellectual tradition permanently marked Johnson after his translation of The Voyage to Abyssinia. Consequently, Johnson's later canonical texts, including Irene and Rasselas, exhibit traces of Habesha discourse, functioning as 'energumens' through which African voices speak. This work challenges models that venerate only European agency in cultural encounters.
'Genus irritabile': Reflexiones biográficas entre Borges y el doctor Johnson
Johnson on Blackmore, Pope, Shakespeare — and Johnson
Engell analyzes Johnson's Life of Blackmore, arguing it reveals a central tension between literary genius and moral virtue. Johnson praised Blackmore for his virtue, honesty, and composure under the "malignity" of wits like Pope, but lamented his poetic mediocrity (except for Creation). Johnson praised Creation for its poetical prudence and moral position, even claiming it surpassed Pope's Moral Essays in this regard. The essay highlights Johnson's belief that excellence in art does not require virtue in life, but that the ideal critic must be a virtuous person, echoing Blackmore's description of a critic named "Mr. Johnson."
Samuel Johnson's 'Life of Boerhaave': Texts New and Old
Brack examines the textual history of Johnson’s "Life of Boerhaave" to determine the authorship of a 1758 abstract titled "Passages." He traces the biography from the Gentleman’s Magazine to Robert James’s Medicinal Dictionary, noting revisions. Comparing the "Passages" abstract against Johnson’s known style and source material, Brack concludes that Johnson did not write the abstract. He argues it was likely composed by an unidentified physician who repurposed Johnson’s text to emphasize Boerhaave’s piety.
A General Theory of Fame in the Lives of the Poets
Jackson analyzes the 2006 Lonsdale edition of Lives of the Poets to dispute the common view of Johnson as an anti-theorist, arguing that the work presents a coherent theory of literary fame. Jackson challenges the myth of authorial neglect, noting that Johnson equates merit with broad appeal and sales rather than the "fit-though-few" audience favored by Milton or Wordsworth. The text outlines Johnson’s distinction between ephemeral contemporary "praise" and the "regard of posterity," identifying originality and universal themes as the primary drivers of immortality. Jackson emphasizes the role of critics and booksellers as "distributors of literary fame," illustrating how Addison’s "blandishments" helped establish the popularity of Paradise Lost. Jackson concludes that while Johnson’s providential view of genius was later dismantled by Romantic individualism, his focus on the common reader remains a vital counterweight to modern specialized criticism.
Basker argues that Johnson's lifelong anti-slavery stance has been minimized or omitted, particularly by Boswell, who was pro-slavery. Johnson’s opposition manifested in writings like Taxation No Tyranny and his black servant, Francis Barber, possibly his relative. Boswell obscured Johnson's role in the Joseph Knight case (which ended slavery in Scotland in 1778) by initially omitting the legal brief and discrediting Johnson's zeal as "without knowledge." Johnson also actively supported the Bray's Associates charity for black children and made a public statement by bequeathing the bulk of his estate to Francis Barber.
Tankard identifies Johnson fundamentally as a "walker in the street" whose ambulatory practices are deeply implicated in his sense of the city. While Boswell provides vivid images of Johnson's peculiar rolling gait in London, Tankard argues that Johnson modeled walking as a means of negotiating urban topographies and reclaiming agency from institutions of power. Johnson's choice of the title Rambler reflects his desire to be both a moralist and a wanderer. The article notes Johnson's unease with the "wonderful immensity" of London, which he believed fostered "alienation, poverty, and death." Johnson advised Boswell to survey the "innumerable little lanes and courts" rather than showy buildings. For Johnson, the city was a "habitation" to be practiced rather than a "distant prospect" to be viewed.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Last Plays
Two anecdotes attest to the emotional power of Cymbeline. Charles Cowden Clarke recalls seeing a young John Keats in the early 1800s reading the play aloud and noticing his eyes filling with tears, 'And for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him . . . “till he had melted from / The smallness of a gnat to air”' (1.3.21-2), and it is often said that Tennyson felt such affection for the play that at his death in October 1892 he was buried with a copy of Cymbeline in his hand. A letter to the New York Times of 23 April 1910 from William M. St John went further and insisted, with no evidence at all, that 'in the poet's last moments his finger rested on “'Fear no more the heat o' the sun.”' The afterlife and reception of the play, however, is characterised less by such testimonials to affect than the enduring, critical reaction of Samuel Johnson (and his commentary will recur throughout this essay). In the Notes that he compiled between 1745 and 1765 and added to his edition of Shakespeare Johnson acknowledged that Cymbeline has 'many just sentiments, some natural dialogues and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity' and concluded, 'To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation'.
Fugitive References to Johnson in Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts
Dix presents three manuscript references to Johnson's early career and later works. The first, a letter from Charles Adams, comments favorably on Johnson's Irene during rehearsal. The second identifies Mark Akenside as the likely author of a favorable review of Johnson’s Plan of a Dictionary in The Museum. The third, a manuscript poem signed "J.D." (likely Jeremiah Dyson, Jr.), contests Johnson's treatment of Akenside, Lyttelton, and Gray in Lives of the Poets.
Hudson explores Johnson's complex and evolving views on the Revolution of 1688. Though Johnson admitted the necessity of overthrowing the "dangerous bigotry" of James II to save the Church of England, he refused to celebrate it as a constitutional precedent for popular resistance. Johnson disliked William III's rudeness and, in later life, grew apprehensive that radical Whig interpretations of the Revolution were eroding monarchy and civil order. He believed the event "broke our constitution," creating the factionalism he witnessed under George III. He would likely have supported Burke's conservative reaction to the French Revolution.
Cauldron Bubble: Macbeth Minus Its Supernatural Elements Could Not Have Mattered So Much to Lincoln and Dr. Johnson—and Should Not Matter to Us
Yoder's article argues that without its supernatural elements, Macbeth could not have been so important to Abraham Lincoln and Johnson. He links Lincoln's affinity for the play (which he called Shakespeare's greatest) and Johnson's choice of it as a sample for his edition. Yoder suggests a connection in the drama's supernatural dimension, which is often stripped away in modern productions, resulting in a "banality." He highlights a little-noticed passage in Macbeth where Malcolm discusses King Edward the Confessor's power of "touching" to cure the King's Evil (scrofula), a disease Johnson himself had as a child and was touched for by Queen Anne, suggesting this was a subconscious draw for the critic.
The Spectator and the Blind Man: Seeing and Not-Seeing in the Wake of Empiricism
Goodin examines the metaphorics of blindness in the eighteenth century, arguing that Samuel Johnson’s existential anxieties link closely to his four-decade friendship with the blind Anna Williams. Goodin explores Johnson’s skepticism toward claims of secularized tranquility in the face of death, noting his particular aversion to David Hume’s pagan-style departure. Johnson’s insistence on society as a remedy for melancholy explains his attachment to Williams, whose presence in his household provided constant companionship and a defense against the "horror of annihilation." Goodin disputes the notion that Johnson’s interest in Williams was merely charitable, suggesting instead that her ability to "face the dark" and continue living offered him psychological solace. The narrative further details Johnson’s role in publishing Williams’s Miscellanies, often providing "superior" revisions to her work. Johnson also serves as a critical judge of Jonathan Swift, whose refusal to wear spectacles Johnson equates with a "mad vow" leading to misanthropy and mental decay. By contrasting Johnson’s encyclopedic thirst for knowledge with Swift’s perceived withdrawal, Goodin highlights how Johnson uses the "spectacle" of the declining Swift to reinforce the necessity of sensory and social engagement for maintaining reason.
Johnson's Criticism of Satire and the Problem of the Scriblerians
This essay examines Samuel Johnson as a critic of satire. In his judgements on satires as different as those written by Butler, Dryden, Swift, Gay, and Pope, Johnson demonstrates his sensitivity to its variety of forms. The Scriblerian manner he finds especially problematic. Yet on close examination, his criticism of Scriblerian texts is found to share certain characteristics of that manner. By tempering this satiric inheritance with his essential humanity, Johnson suggests a way of solving this problem. His mature critical manner therefore reveals Johnson as a masterful critic, but also a masterful practitioner, of satire.
Life Spirals and Commonsense Aporias: Samuel Johnson's Rasselas Revisited
Symbolism: An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics
Wanting a Name: Constructing Anonymity in Milton, Defoe, Johnson, and Sterne
Prowse examines how eighteenth-century authors redesigned anonymity as an "open secret" to challenge the close equation between authorial names and fixed identities. By analyzing unsigned texts within biographical and historical contexts, she demonstrates that anonymity functioned as a strategy to provoke readers into measuring the distance between authorial persona and biography. The dissertation explores how this practice offered a genealogy for the fictive alongside the emergent novel, prompting readers to view authorship itself as a fictive construction related to a real person. Prowse focuses specifically on Milton, Defoe, Johnson, and Sterne, tracing a progression in authorial self-fashioning and comfort with the ethics of anonymity. The third chapter addresses Johnson and the ethics of anonymity, specifically regarding his own strategic use of the "Rambler" pseudonym and his defenses of anonymous authorship as a social and literary "mask." Johnson argues that an anonymous author has a "right" to a flat denial if questioned, grounding this ethics in codes of friendship and secrecy. Prowse further analyzes Johnson's role as a ghostwriter for William Dodd, where the necessity of sincerity required the total suppression of Johnson's authorial presence, highlighting the persistent vocabulary of veracity and mendacity that continues to surround anonymous practices.
Samuel Johnson, the Gentleman's Magazine, and the War of Jenkins' Ear
Reitan posits Johnson's authorship of a crucial footnote in the Gentleman's Magazine's 1738 "Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia." This note recounted Captain Robert Jenkins's testimony about his severed ear, dramatically framing Spanish actions. Reitan argues that Johnson, employed to add "spice" to William Guthrie's parliamentary reports, likely inserted this vivid account. This footnote, widely disseminated by the magazine, transformed Jenkins's ear into a potent symbol of national outrage against Spain, demonstrating Johnson's early impact on public discourse despite conflicting evidence about Jenkins's actual appearance before Parliament.
Biblical Citations as a Stylistic Standard in Johnson's and Webster's Dictionaries
Noah Webster's primary source for the first edition of the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language (ADEL) was Samuel Johnson's 1799 eighth edition of the Dictionary of the English Language (DEL). Scholars have made much of the debt that Webster owes to Johnson for entries in the 1828 ADEL. Stylistic analyses have typically focused on the definitions included in the two dictionaries. Far less attention has been paid to the illustrative quotations employed by both authors to exemplify usage. This article focuses on Biblical citations in the letter S used by both Johnson and Webster as examples of usage. All citations (both secular and Biblical) under the letter S were examined to determine the relative importance of the Bible to the style and content of the dictionaries. Results indicate that though Johnson included more Biblical citations than Webster did, Biblical citations made up a larger proportion of Webster's total citations than they did for Johnson.In addition to ascertaining frequency of Biblical citations, all Biblical citations shared by both dictionaries were also identified. Results of this analysis confirmed Webster's debt to Johnson, as a great number of Webster's Biblical citations may be found in Johnson's dictionary. A study of the religious convictions of Johnson and Webster is integral to understanding both authors' motivations in constructing their dictionaries. Though both were pious men, Johnson's focus on the Bible was as a great literary work, whereas Webster's focus on the Bible was as a tool for the religious and moral betterment of his readers.
Vindicating Milton: Poetic Misprision in Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
Reddick argues that Johnson deliberately manipulated quotations from Milton's poetry in his Dictionary to vindicating Milton by repositioning him as the great sacred epic poet, and diminishing his political stature as a dangerous republican. This "misprision" is seen in the inclusion of the entire "Sonnet XI" to display the unsuitability of the form and the mock-heroic effect. Most notably, Johnson substituted Pope's line from the Essay on Man ("And vindicate the ways of God to man") for Milton's original ("And justify the ways of God to men"), suggesting Johnson was reading Milton through Pope's Deistic filter.
Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750–1850
Celebrity Violence in the Careers of Savage, Pope and Johnson
'Little Lives, and Little Prefaces'? Lonsdale's Edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets [review essay of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale]
Folkenflik's approving review of Roger Lonsdale’s four-volume 2006 Clarendon Press edition of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets identifies it as "the best edition of any text of Johnson's, ever." Describing the scholarly landscape following G. B. Hill’s 1905 edition, Folkenflik notes that Lonsdale’s work emerged just before the Yale Edition and represents humane editorial scholarship at its finest. The review details Lonsdale’s extensive scholarly apparatus, including a monograph-length introduction covering the work's composition, biographical theory and practice, literary history, politics, and textual matters. Lonsdale uses 1783 as the copy-text, correcting silent changes and errors introduced by Hill while incorporating meticulous research and archival materials. Within the introduction, Lonsdale disputes the notion of Johnson as a Jacobite and identifies a new model for the Lives in Lewis Crucius. Folkenflik highlights Lonsdale’s thoughtful and exhaustive annotation, which vastly improves upon Hill’s previous scholarship and nuanced understanding of Johnson's context, methods, and sources. Ultimately, Folkenflik concludes that this meticulous research transforms the edition into an education in eighteenth-century culture.
Crane explores the role of narrative interruption in the works of Samuel Johnson, arguing that these digressions allow a tentative, human voice to emerge alongside his authoritative pronouncements. Disputing Pope’s theory of the "Ruling Passion," Johnson instead highlights the power of casual accidents and "diversions" in shaping character, such as his own childhood discovery of Petrarch while searching for apples. Crane examines how Johnson use narrative interruption in the Life of Pope to humanize the poet, contrasting his public pride with his "amiable" filial piety and the poignant, physical dependency of his final days. The essay identifies a recurring "Vanity of Human Wishes" plot in Johnson’s accounts of deathbeds—specifically those of Pope, his own mother, and the fictional friend of Athanatus in Rambler 54—where the bustle of life is suddenly silenced. Crane concludes that Johnson’s self-interruption served as a vital defense against the "alluring danger" of the novel, enabling him to test moral authorities and temper his magisterial voice with compassion.
How Literature Becomes Knowledge: A Case Study
The first section of the essay inquires, "Is literature a special kind of knowledge?"; the second, "Is literary criticism a special kind of knowledge?" Through an analysis of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the essay shows how a literary work's status as an object of knowledge can be determined by its use. The essay proposes that the eighteenth-century notion of "index-learning"— reading a text by way of its index — and its more recent incarnation — "search engine learning" — combined with techniques of close reading can yield a new kind of literary-critical knowledge that might be called "slow reading."
Modes of Definition in Johnson and His Contemporaries
Lynch addresses the surprising lack of scholarly attention to the definitions in Johnson's Dictionary, the part he actually wrote. He quantitatively analyzes nine modes of definition used by Johnson and ten other lexicographers, from 1604 to 1844, using a sample range of words. Johnson's practice generally aligned with his peers, but he exhibited an uncommon dependence on the antonym (used in about 14% of entries) and a comparative lack of interest in the genus-differentia style. These patterns hint at Johnson's dialectical mind and his alignment with Locke's preference for linguistic "explanation" over logical "definition."
Hester Thrale Piozzi's Foul Copy of Literary History
Hester Thrale Piozzi's unusual diary-commonplace book, the Thraliana (1776–1809), revels in improvisation, fragmentation, and what she terms life "revisal." In it Piozzi brings a literary self into being by collecting anecdotes, texts, and stories, and then re-reading and reflecting on this miscellany. The diary offers a model for thinking about literary history, and, perhaps more important, a way for Piozzi to talk back to literary history. In the pages of the Thraliana, Piozzi's friendship with Samuel Johnson makes this larger conversation possible. By rendering him a "foul copy," a defaced manuscript that is woefully and hopelessly lacking, she exposes the processes of revision, excision, commentary, and self-critique that lie beneath the surface of all textual production and that published texts seek to hide from view.
Studies of Johnson's Dictionary, 1955–2009: A Bibliography
Lynch's bibliography compiles studies of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language from 1955 to 2009, spanning the bicentenary of its publication to the tercentenary of Johnson's birth. The list includes nearly 400 publications, covering book-length works, articles, and dissertations. Landmark studies by Sledd/Kolb, DeMaria, and Reddick inaugurated new phases of modern criticism. Topics explored include composition/revision, the illustrative quotations, the politics of the Dictionary, Johnson's theory of language, his originality, and his influence on successors. The bibliography highlights the international scope of the scholarship, which has intensified with the availability of searchable texts.
Reference Point: Samuel Johnson and the Encyclopedias: The David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, 2007
Tankard surveys Samuel Johnson's presence in early encyclopedias and his relationship with them, demonstrating his immediate post-mortem authority and his status as a cultural reference point. Johnson used Chambers's Cyclopaedia as a primary source for his Dictionary and expressed interest in editing a revised version. Tankard examines the evolution of Johnson's reputation through Rees's Cyclopaedia, Kippis's Biographia Britannica (BB 2), and the first three editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In works like Rees's Cyclopaedia and Kippis's BB 2, Johnson is referenced as a grammarian, critic, and moralist; specifically, Kippis cites Johnson's Lives of the Poets extensively for critical insight, cementing his place in literary history. While early editions of the Britannica offered critiques of the Dictionary, the third edition (EB 3) featured a long biographical essay on Johnson and cited him frequently, often with complimentary epithets. Later volumes by George Gleig and Andrew Kippis continued to use the Lives of the Poets as an authoritative critical source. Tankard concludes that these summary texts established Johnson as a "guiding presence" and a primary critic of language, literature, and life.
Producing the Eighteenth-Century Book: Writers and Publishers in England, 1650–1800
The Second Coming of the Book, 1740–1770
Johnson did not name Rasselas after the Ethiopian warrior Ras Sela Christos, challenging a long-standing scholarly claim. Scholars like Bruce assumed the name derived from the Catholic warrior. The author asserts Johnson would not have modeled his hero after a figure Protestant historians like Ludolf and Geddes saw as a villain. Johnson also knew not to confuse titles, such as 'Ras' (Prince), with proper names. The author proposes Johnson coined the name for its symbolic meaning, 'portrait of a prince,' or from the Hebrew for 'rock,' referring to the mountain setting.
The Politics of Johnson's Dictionary Revisited
Folkenflik reexamines the political nature of Johnson’s Dictionary, disputing the notion that its reputation for idiosyncrasy stems primarily from Boswell’s Life. Folkenflik demonstrates that contemporary reviewers, including Thomas Edwards, Archibald Campbell, and John Wilkes, challenged Johnson’s definitions of terms such as excise, pension, and oats immediately upon publication. The essay argues that while tendentious definitions constitute a minuscule percentage of the work, they reveal an animus against servility and government hirelings. Folkenflik highlights how Johnson usefully employed the active voice to challenge "sanguinary" imperialism by substituting intellectual conquest as a moral equivalent. The study further analyzes the political implications of Johnson’s source selection, noting the exclusion of radicals and Dissenters like Bunyan while observing a surprising reliance on Addison’s Whiggish Freeholder to illustrate words like crisis and uncircumscribed. Folkenflik concludes that the illustrations often serve as salutary political and moral reminders, reflecting Johnson’s authorial control over the work’s ideological character.
Cooling to a Gypsy's Lust: Johnson, Shakespeare, and Cleopatra
On Johnson’s admiration for *Antony and Cleopatra*.
A Bibliography of Paul J. Korshin's Writings
Lynch compiles a complete bibliography of Korshin's scholarly output, from his 1966 Harvard dissertation to posthumous projects. The article categorizes Korshin's work into authored books, edited volumes, journal editorships, articles, reviews, and op-ed contributions. Lynch emphasizes Korshin’s "wide-ranging" intellectual interests, noting his early adoption of interdisciplinary methods and his pioneering role in the "history of the book."
On the treatment of *Lear* in the eighteenth century, including Tate’s famous revision. Johnson appears only in passing.
Johnson revised a portion of the House of Lords debate on the address to the king (December 4, 1741) for the August 1742 Gentleman’s Magazine. Twenty-nine revisions, nineteen substantive, appear in a specific twenty-paragraph section. Using Johnson’s manuscript "Considerations on Dr. Trapp’s Sermons" to calculate galley sizes, Brack determines the revised text fills exactly four galley sheets. This suggests Johnson, reading proofs at St. John's Gate, polished these specific galleys, further evidencing his habit of compulsive revision contrary to accounts of his rapid composition.
Johnson's Editing of Shakespeare in the Dictionary
“Lexicography and textual criticism were . . . reciprocal activities and both were part of a larger project to purify the English language, to set it on a par with the languages of France and Italy as exhibited in their great national lexicons, and by a parallel to present Shakespeare as a great national writer.”
Portraits of Dr. Johnson in Their Georgian Context
On portraits of Johnson by Reynolds and Opie, with a discussion of contemporary portraits by other major artists. In a special issue on “Tradition and Transition: Literature and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” Includes small black-and-white images.
Meeting the Monarch: Johnson, Boswell, and the Anatomy of a Genre
Weinbrot examines the conventions of literary encounters with royalty, focusing on the 1767 meeting between Johnson and George III. The narrative contrasts the composure of Johnson with the intimidation, physical blunders, or sycophancy exhibited by other figures such as Gay, Siddons, and Burney. Weinbrot disputes the notion that such meetings inevitably diminish the artist, arguing that Boswell's account presents a "crown to crown" exchange of intellectual and political authority. While Diderot and Voltaire suffered professional or personal injury by challenging royal boundaries, Johnson maintained his independence and dignity. The account highlights how George III adopted a biographical role, questioning Johnson about literature and encouraging his future work. Weinbrot concludes that this specific interaction represents a benign union of two realms, where mutual respect replaces vanity and competition. The use of the "Caldwell Minute" and other testimonies further validates the biographical veracity of the encounter as depicted by Boswell.
Learning Conversational Rhetoric in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Hester Thrale Piozzi and Her Mentors Collier and Johnson
RHETOR: Journal of the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric/Revue de la Société Canadienne pour L'Etude de la Rhétorique
Facts, Methods, and Literary Creativity in Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage
On the theory and practice of Johnsonian biography, set in the context of the history of biographical writing. “Life of Savage leaves a memorable trace in the history of biography as well as in the progress of Johnson’s own literary achievement.” Describes Johnson’s techniques of research and his fondness for dichotomies. In a special issue on “Tradition and Transition: Literature and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain.”
Samuel Johnson and the Aesthetics of Complex Dynamics
Wildermuth suggests another way, in the wake of postmodernism, to contextualize Samuel Johnson's double focus on order and disorder, on universal global norms and localized deviance–at least with particular regard to his literary criticism and lexicography, wherein his most lucid discussion of an uncertainty principle informing his epistemology and aesthetics can be found. Johnson's contributions to the history of aesthetics invite more study; and continued examination of his aesthetic principles in eighteenth-century contexts will doubtless provide fruitful speculation concerning the significance of chance, chaos, and complex dynamics for literature in a century which has just begun.
Wildermuth works “in the wake of postmodernism, to contextualize Johnson’s double focus on order and disorder, on universal global norms and localized deviance — at least with particular regard to his literary criticism and lexicography, wherein we find his most lucid discussion of an uncertainty principle informing his epistemology and aesthetics. Within the context of eighteenth-century and postmodern conceptions of complex dynamic systems, we can see that Johnson is neither a dogmatist nor a nihilist, but is instead an early modern chaologist, a student of chaos whose response to the perturbations introduced by science and philosophy in the eighteenth century lead him to describe in his aesthetics a complex mimetic system tracing emergent structures in the field of literary criticism implicated by the interplay between classical tradition and the new empirical skepticism.”
Reconfiguring the Idea of Eighteenth-Century Literature in a New Epoch: Moving from the Augustan to the Menippean [review of Aspects of Samuel Johnson: Essays on His Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics, by Howard D. Weinbrot]
Weinbrot's sixteen essays are structured around Johnson’s Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics. Topics include Johnson's Dictionary and poetry, his skepticism, and his views on genre. A substantial portion addresses the complex debate over Johnson's alleged Jacobitism. Specifically discussed are the refusal to take allegiance oaths and the significance of the Charles XII passage in The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Zhar propovedi v tvorchestve angliĭskikh literatorov XVIII veka: Svift, Dzhonson, Stern
Izvestiia Akademii Nauk, Seriia Literatury i Iazyka
Rudman relates the sentimental value of naming his son Samuel, based on three namesake writers who moved him most, including Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Samuel Beckett. For this purpose, he highlights several literary works of the writers, as well as related scholarly essays, and discusses their literary significance.
On three Samuels: Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Samuel Beckett.
Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and the Academy
Austen's academic recognition is less entrenched than Johnson's, suggesting the difference is rooted in the way the authors' lives, the nature of the love for their works, and their use of laughter affect their institutional authority. Johnson's immense biographical material, particularly through Boswell, and his human flaws foster identification, leading admirers to be "Johnsonians" who value his learnedness. By contrast, the sparse record of Austen's life, compounded by her family's efforts to portray her as a "faultless" domestic ideal, created a misleading image. This, combined with her popularity among women and the derogatory "Janeites" label, has relegated her work to a lower status. Recognizing Austen's political savvy, wide reading, and "unladylike" satirical courage is necessary to secure her equal footing.
“Performance is a recurrent issue in Johnson’s approach to Shakespeare. . . . Performance can also be for Johnson the testing-ground for emendation.”
Austen's Assimilation of Lockean Ideals: The Appeal of Pursuing Happiness
Martin distinguishes Austen's focus on the process of pursuing happiness from Johnson's approach in Rasselas, where the eponymous prince is "stymied" by his inability to define it. Johnson himself "unabashedly borrowed many of Locke’s ideas" about happiness, which are echoed in his Dictionary entries. Austen’s novels mirror Locke’s methodology, requiring protagonists to undergo "self-examination, self-restraint, and behavior modification" to achieve happiness, a didactic model that accounts for her novels’ enduring appeal.
Cash chronicles the adversarial yet eventually cordial relationship between the arch-conservative Johnson and the radical reformer John Wilkes, beginning with their first face-to-face meeting at the Dilly brothers' dinner table in 1776. The essay traces the history of their mutual animosity, noting Wilkes's 1755 satirical attack on Johnson's Dictionary and his frequent mockery of Johnson's pension in the North Briton. Cash outlines their ideological clashes and provides an extensive legal and political analysis of the major controversies surrounding Wilkes—North Briton 45, general warrants, and the Essay on Woman—alongside Johnson's staunchly conservative reactions defending government authority and social hierarchy. Central to this conflict was the Middlesex election controversy and Johnson's subsequent pamphlet, The False Alarm, which used the active voice of political necessity to challenge the radical "levelling" principles Wilkes championed. While Johnson initially supported the House of Commons' power to incapacitate members and disputed the legality of the opposition's petition campaign, Cash notes that Johnson later acknowledged the merit of the constitutional arguments against such resolutions. The study concludes by highlighting their late-life reconciliation, influenced partly by Wilkes's actions during the Gordon Riots, and illustrating a mutual respect that transcended their earlier vitriolic exchanges, such as when Johnson presented Wilkes with a set of his Lives of the Poets.
A Companion to the History of the English Language
Johnson, Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary
Brewer analyzes the ideological underpinnings of major English lexicographical works. The chapter details Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary as an effort to match the prestige of the Académie Française while balancing the "uneasy" tension between prescriptive "fixing" of the language and descriptive recording of usage. Brewer then explores how Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary sought to foster an independent American identity through linguistic separation from Britain, advocating for distinct spelling and usage. Finally, the chapter discusses the Oxford English Dictionary’s late-nineteenth-century aspiration to adopt rigorous German philological methodologies. Brewer concludes that while these dictionaries were born of nationalist pride, they remain paradoxical tools that must mediate between the mass of users’ "creative force" and the conservative requirements of institutional codification.
Snead discusses Samuel Johnson's biographical sketches in the Lives of the English Poets, arguing that the writings are as concerned with the manner in which biography is written and transmitted as they are about the matter of any given poet's life. Throughout Johnson models for his readers a process of reading that enables them to learn not only the details of a poet's life, but also the susceptibilities to wonder, pride, or affection that govern the ways these details are told. Moreover, while Johnson took pains to include the specifics of how poets work, Johnson's notes for The Life of Pope, for instance, imply not a static process of reading and noting, but one that is ongoing and cumulative, as well as interpretive and evaluative.
On SJ’s biographical practice in the Lives, and his attention to the “minute details of daily life” described in Rambler 60. Snead draws on Kirkley’s Biographer and Work.
Print, Chaos, and Complexity: Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Media Culture
Wildermuth examines Johnson within the context of eighteenth-century media culture, arguing that Johnson’s engagement with print mediation informs his ethical, political, and aesthetic thought. Wildermuth suggests Johnson anticipates modern media and chaos theories by recognizing the interplay between textual fixity and instability. This monograph demonstrates how Johnson’s awareness of information systems allows him to stabilize categories of truth and virtue despite the "boundless chaos" of language. Wildermuth analyzes Johnson’s periodical prose as a mental experiment in complex dynamics, noting that Johnson identifies the "web" of information as a potential source of social discord. In his treatment of politics, Johnson proposes a hierarchical social dynamic that ensures individual liberty through free information flow, contrasting British constitutionalism with French absolutism. Wildermuth shows that Johnson’s aesthetics, particularly his work on Shakespeare, present a theory of mimesis based on "orderly disorder," where stability emerges from the "inductive froth of experience." By comparing Johnson’s skepticism with postmodern thinkers like Jean Baudrillard, Wildermuth finds Johnson to be a "cautious optimist" who believes human agency can resist the coercive aspects of mediated culture. Chapter 1, ‘Textual Instability, Print, and Complex Dynamics in the Johnsonian Mediated Cultural Milieu,’ addresses the seventeenth-century epistemological crisis and subsequent attempts to stabilize symbolic order through mediated signs. Chapter 2, ‘Pope as a Precursor to Johnson: The Mediation of Chaos and Order in An Essay on Man,’ argues that Pope’s poetics anticipate modern chaos theory by representing the cosmos as a monadic, self-organizing system. Chapter 3, ‘Complexity and Mediated Culture in Johnson’s Moral Periodical Prose,’ explores how the periodical essay facilitates a dialogical examination of the ethical risks and social benefits inherent in an information-based society. Chapter 4, ‘Johnson’s Politics in the Milieu of Informatics,’ addresses the role of mass communication in shaping geopolitical conflict and the necessity of free information flow for a healthy, non-absolutist polis. Chapter 5, ‘Samuel Johnson, Mediation, Representation, and the Aesthetics of Complex Dynamics,’ argues that Johnson’s mature criticism promotes a mimetic theory where textual instability enables the emergence of stable truth and virtue. Chapter 6, ‘Conclusion,’ discusses the enduring significance of these eighteenth-century inquiries into mediation for navigating the complex and often destabilizing information landscapes of the twenty-first century.
Samuel Johnson and the Church's Convocation
Chapin analyzes Johnson's thundering demand for the restoration of the Church of England's Convocation, a sentiment Boswell once found strange. Chapin challenges the view that this zeal proves Johnson was a nonjuror or Jacobite, arguing instead that Johnson sought to restore the church's prestige and external respectability. The article suggests Johnson viewed the suppression of Convocation as an unwarranted assault on the traditional structure of the national church. Chapin notes that Johnson valued the external pomp and splendor of a sitting synod as a necessary reminder of religion's importance to a lay public often willing to forget spiritual matters.
Johnson's Criticism and 'Critical Global Studies'
Smallwood positions Johnson's literary criticism, particularly his concept of "general nature," within contemporary globalization theory. He contends that despite often being viewed as promoting English nationalism, Johnson's principles exhibit a universalist, transnational dimension, evident in his influence on European critics like Stendhal. Smallwood contrasts Johnson’s focus on enduring human commonalities ("sameness") with current global studies' emphasis on cultural difference and socio-political context. He argues Johnson's perspective offers a valuable counterpoint to modern critical fragmentation, challenging narratives that confine his relevance strictly within national or historical boundaries and affirming his broader, global significance.
Annotated Immortality: Lonsdale's Johnson [review of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale]
Smallwood provides an enthusiastic review of Roger Lonsdale’s four-volume Clarendon Press edition of Lives of the Poets, describing the work as a landmark in Johnsonian reception and a monumental response to the need to redeem critical history for the present. Smallwood explains that Lonsdale selects the 1783 edition as copytext and provides a masterful 185-page introduction detailing the publishing history, the financial aspects of the project, and moving detail on Johnson’s alternating flurries of productivity and lapses into exhaustion. The edition includes detailed essays on composition, textual notes, and extensive annotations that correct historical errors and cross-reference Dictionary definitions. Smallwood notes that Lonsdale’s substantial running commentary highlights the patchwork quality of the biographies, mitigating the alleged monumentalism of the subject by showing how Johnson recycled earlier writings. The review praises the synthesis of biographical source material and Lonsdale’s ability to capture the nuance of Johnson's authorial personality. While Smallwood identifies a small number of minor errors, he concludes that this scholarly incarnation will stand for years as the primary version of Johnson’s major critical text and will be impossible to excel.
Martin argues that Johnson’s life is best understood as a heroic and coherent narrative of triumph over profound, lifelong adversity. The book's central thesis, woven through its comprehensive, "cradle-to-grave" structure, is that Johnson's personality, his literary works, and his "vile melancholy" are inseparable. Johnson's greatness, in this view, is ultimately a moral achievement, a victory of character and intellect against the forces of "Despondency and Hope" that defined his existence. Martin traces this journey, beginning with Johnson's "Staffordshire Youth," detailing his origins in "beggary," his debilitating physical afflictions, and his precocious education, which was cut short by his humiliating departure from Oxford without a degree. This period establishes the central conflict of Johnson's life: a powerful mind trapped in a difficult body and plagued by "horrible imaginings." The narrative then follows him to London, charting his "slow rise" from a "Stranger" in the city through his harsh Grub Street apprenticeship, his formative friendship with Richard Savage ("Sons of Misery"), and his difficult but essential marriage. Martin portrays Johnson's major literary works not as isolated aesthetic objects but as monumental life events born from this context of relentless struggle. The "Triumph" of the Dictionary years shows Johnson "in harness," channeling his immense energy into a work of national cultural importance, while the Rambler essays are framed as his personal, moral response to the death of his wife. His later fame as "The Great Cham of Literature" is presented as the hard-won reward for this battle, marked by the stability of his pension, the intellectual society of The Club, and his domestic refuge at Streatham with the Thrales. The book fully explores his travels, his controversial political tracts, and the Lives of the Poets as the capstones of his career. The final part, "The Business of Life and Death," brings the narrative full circle, focusing on Johnson’s final illnesses and his famous fear of death, which Martin interprets not as a weakness but as the ultimate expression of his profound religious seriousness. Johnson emerges not as a simple literary dictator, but as a complex, flawed, and deeply human figure whose greatness lies in his relentless, heroic "strive with difficulties." Chapter 1, ‘Anecdotes of Beggary’, addresses the formative influence of Lichfield’s semi-rural environment and the pervasive financial insecurity of the Johnson household. Chapter 2, ‘Stepping on the Duckling’, details the subject’s debilitating childhood illnesses and the early emergence of his intellectual precociousness. Chapter 3, ‘Leaping over the Rail’, explores the subject’s transition from local dame schools to the rigorous, though occasionally brutal, atmosphere of Lichfield Grammar School. Chapter 4, ‘Two Benefactors’, argues that the cosmopolitan influence of Cornelius Ford and Gilbert Walmesley provided a vital intellectual counterpoint to the subject’s provincial upbringing. Chapter 5, ‘Oxford: Wielding a Scholar’s Weapon’, addresses the subject’s brief, intellectually brilliant, yet poverty-stricken tenure at Pembroke College. Chapter 6, ‘Horrible Imaginings’, examines the onset of severe melancholia and the professional aimlessness following the subject’s forced departure from university. Chapter 7, ‘Stirrings in Birmingham’, discusses the subject's early literary ventures and his increasing efforts to achieve financial independence through writing. Chapter 8, ‘Taking a Wife’, addresses the subject's unconventional marriage to Elizabeth Porter and the failure of his subsequent educational enterprise at Edial Hall. Chapter 9, ‘Stranger in London’, explores the subject's initial struggles as an indigent writer-for-hire within the competitive metropolitan literary market. Chapter 10, ‘Sons of Misery: Finding Richard Savage’, argues that the subject’s friendship with Savage profoundly shaped his understanding of the tragic nexus between genius and poverty. Chapter 11, ‘“Slow Rises Worth by Poverty Depress’d”’, addresses the subject’s emergence as a formidable satirist and political commentator through his early contributions to The Gentleman’s Magazine. Chapter 12, ‘Wandering in the Midlands’, discusses a period of domestic and professional transition marked by the subject's temporary retreat to his native Staffordshire. Chapter 13, ‘London Revived: A Lion in Harness’, addresses the subject’s return to intense journalistic labor and his burgeoning reputation as a biographer. Chapter 14, ‘A Lifeline: The Dictionary’, examines the inception of the subject’s most significant lexicographical project and his move to Gough Square. Chapter 15, ‘Poetic Interludes’, addresses the subject's continued engagement with verse, highlighted by the critical and moral success of The Vanity of Human Wishes. Chapter 16, ‘Tetty and “Amorous Propensities”’, explores the complexities of the subject’s domestic life and the deteriorating health of his wife. Chapter 17, ‘The Triumph of the Moralist’, argues that the publication of The Rambler established the subject as a premier ethical and literary authority. Chapter 18, ‘Darkness Falls’, addresses the profound psychological impact of Elizabeth Johnson’s death and the subject’s subsequent period of mourning. Chapter 19, ‘Once More unto the Breach: Back to the Dictionary’, discusses the subject’s final, Herculean effort to complete his lexicographical masterpiece. Chapter 20, ‘Stalled’, addresses the period of professional exhaustion and mounting political engagement that followed the Dictionary’s successful publication. Chapter 21, ‘“Suffering Chimeras”’, explores the subject's struggle with recurring depression and the creative genesis of his philosophical fable, Rasselas. Chapter 22, ‘“Vain and Corrupt Imaginations”’, examines the subject’s psychological crisis during the early 1760s and his residence in Inner Temple Lane. Chapter 23, ‘Boswell and Mrs Thrale’, addresses the transformative impact of two pivotal friendships on the subject’s social and emotional life. Chapter 24, ‘Shakespeare and the Living World’, argues that the subject’s long-delayed edition of Shakespeare provided a definitive critical assessment of the dramatist. Chapter 25, ‘Coliseum of Beasts’, addresses the subject's growing role as a public intellectual and his increasing immersion in diverse social circles. Chapter 26, ‘Back to Shakespeare and the Dictionary’, discusses the subject's continued revisions of his major works alongside his expanding influence. Chapter 27, ‘The Road to the Hebrides’, explores the subject’s famous Scottish journey and its profound impact on his cultural perceptions. Chapter 28, ‘Politics and Travel’, examines the subject’s controversial political pamphlets and his uncharacteristic excursion to France. Chapter 29, ‘“A Very Poor Creeper upon the Earth”’, addresses the subject’s declining health and his intensifying preoccupation with religious devotion and mortality. Chapter 30, ‘Biographical Straitjacket’, discusses the subject’s final major literary achievement, The Lives of the Poets, and its critical reception. Chapter 31, ‘Losing Ground’, explores the subject’s heroic struggle against terminal illness and his continued efforts to maintain his intellectual life. Chapter 32, ‘The Last Days’, examines the subject’s final preparations for death and his enduring legacy as a moral and literary icon. Critical reception of Peter Martin's biography generally trends positive, with reviewers praising its psychological depth, treatment of Johnson's early life, and focus on his progressive social views. Discrepancies exist between popular and academic reviews, as several specialized scholars identify significant technical flaws. Among prominent publications, Johnston in the Wall Street Journal judges the biography a model account of Johnson's triumph over personal adversity. Hitchens, in Atlantic Monthly, commends the psychological analysis, specifically the diagnoses of emphysema and Tourette's syndrome. Writing for the Spectator, Hensher applauds the vivid depiction of Johnson's early struggles, physical eccentricities, and his unconventional household. In the Guardian, Sutherland describes the work as an effective use of modern diagnostic tools to examine Johnson's melancholy, while Tayler, also in the Guardian, highlights the successful compression of scholarship despite thin literary analysis. Allen, in Wilson Quarterly, finds Martin's contextual knowledge superior to competitors but questions the lasting relevance of Johnson's critical writings. But academic reviewers offer sharp critiques. Cook, in Cambridge Quarterly, reprimands Martin for numerous factual errors, clichés, and repackaging existing encyclopedia entries. Lurcock, in Notes and Queries, dismisses the book as a mediocre, fact-driven narrative that ignores modern scholarship and relies on clichés. McCrea, in Christianity and Literature, notes several unsettling factual errors and a failure to thoroughly explore Johnson's religious writings. Kanter, in JNL, calls the production efficient but critiques the confusing presentation of birth dates. Finally, Looser, in SEL, provides a more positive scholarly view, calling it an impressive, well-researched contribution.
Reviews: Brooke Allen, Wilson Quarterly 33, no. 1 (2009): 92–95; Contemporary Review 290, no. 1688 (2008); Contemporary Review 291, no. 1692 (2009): 130; Daniel Cook, CQ 39, no. 2 (2010): 186–95; Michael Coren, Ottawa Citizen, October 11, 2009; John Derbyshire, National Review 60, no. 21 (2008): 60–61; James Fergusson, Sunday Times (London), August 17, 2008; James Gray, AJ 21 (2011): 353–64; Alan Helms, Boston Globe, November 30, 2008; Philip Hensher, The Spectator 300, no. 9388 (2008): 29; Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Monthly, March 9, 2009; Morris Hounion, Library Journal 133, no. 14 (2008): 127; Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday, August 24, 2008; H. J. Jackson, TLS, nos. 5551–5552 (August 2009): 13–14; Lorne Jackson, Sunday Mercury, August 10, 2008; George Sim Johnston, WSJ, September 18, 2008; Lewis Jones, Financial Times, January 10, 2009; Peter Kanter, JNL 60, no. 1 (2009): 53–57; Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2008; Peter Lewis, Daily Mail (London), August 1, 2008; James Ley, The Australian, December 3, 2008; Lichfield Mercury, August 14, 2008; Devoney Looser, SEL 51, no. 3 (2011): 712–13; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 56, no. 3 (2009): 461–63; Brian McCrea, Christianity and Literature 59, no. 4 (2010): 720–24; Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Christian Century 126, no. 9 (2009): 50; Robin Moroney, WSJ, September 26, 2008; Rex Murphy, Globe and Mail (Toronto), February 21, 2009; David Nunnery, Historian 73, no. 1 (2011): 195–96; Eliza O’Brien, YWES 89, no. 1 (2010): 565; Andrew O’Hagan, NYRB 66, no. 15 (2009): 6–8, 10; Ray Olson, Booklist 13, no. 2 (2008): 13–14; Ian Pindar, The Guardian, October 31, 2009; Leah Price, NYT, February 1, 2009; Leah Price, International Herald Tribune, January 31, 2009; Publishers Weekly, July 21, 2008; Brandon Robshaw, The Independent, December 19, 2009; Pat Rogers, New Criterion 27, no. 10 (2009): 16–22; Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph (London), August 9, 2008; James Seaton, Review of Metaphysics 63, no. 1 (2009): 199–201; David Sexton, Evening Standard (London), July 21, 2008; Jane Shilling, The Times (London), July 25, 2008; G. Shivel, Choice 46, no. 11 (2009): 2113; Michael Sims, Washington Post, December 21, 2008; Michael Sims, Houston Chronicle, January 11, 2009; Sunday Business Post, September 14, 2008; John Sutherland, The Guardian, August 10, 2008; Christopher Tayler, The Guardian, August 9, 2008; Christopher Taylor, THES, no. 1858 (August 2008): 45; The Observer (London), November 1, 2009; John Wilson, Christianity Today 52, no. 12 (2008): 62; Myron D. Yeager, ANQ 23, no. 1 (2010): 61–67.
Personhood, Poethood, and Pope: Johnson's Life of Pope and the Search for the Man Behind the Author
In his biographical preface on Pope, Samuel Johnson attempts to distinguish between "man" and "writer"; but the distinction was one that Pope had preemptively blurred, in both what and how he published. A conflict thus arises in the two writers' portrayals of author vis-à-vis work, art vis-à-vis life. The nature of this conflict is historically determined: Johnson's biography of Pope points toward the origins of "the author" not just as legal and economic entity, but as Cultural Icon, marking a turning-point in the history not just of "the author," but of "the life of the author."
The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature
Cringing before the Lord: Milton's Satan, Samuel Johnson, and the Anxiety of Worship
Barnaby argues that the deepest motive for Satan's fall in *Paradise Lost* is the existential shame and humiliation he feels upon the exaltation of the Son, an event which forces him to recognize that his "chief end" is the servile worship of God. The essay contrasts Gabriel's portrait of a prelapsarian Satan who "fawn'd, and cring'd" before God with Satan's later lament over the "debt immense of endless gratitude," suggesting the Son's begetting triggers a traumatic discovery of his own creaturely inferiority. The author connects this "anxiety of worship" to Samuel Johnson's critique of devotional poetry. He contends that Johnson's discomfort with such verse, which he felt indecorously exposed human limits, stemmed from the same disgust with the necessary humiliation of the worshipper before the creator that ultimately motivated Satan's rebellion.
The Age of Anon: Johnson Rewrites the Name of the Author
Paku examines Johnson's "Age of Authors" as a wry commentary on the "unexceptional quantity" of eighteenth-century writers. The article argues that Johnson sought to presenting an idealized vision of anonymity as a "mask" that "confers a right of acting and speaking with less restraint." Johnson deliberately refrained from signing his proper name to major works like London and Rasselas to shift attention from his historical person to the act of authorship. Paku notes that Johnson viewed authorship as a "collaborative, collective" project, frequently aiding unknown female authors. Johnson challenged the charge of hypocrisy, asserting that "nothing is more unjust" than to judge a man's zeal for virtues he neglects to practice. The article concludes that Johnson's "Age of Anon" encouraged readers and writers to know each other without the "impediment of a proper name."
Johnson's Dictionary, Conversation, Recontextualisation and Organisation
Gray and Johnson: Parallel Sentiments in the 'Eton College Ode' and Rasselas
(Johnson 600) Having acknowledged in the "Eton College Ode" that childhood nurtures hopes conducive to its happiness ("Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed"), Gray goes on to point to the chimerical nature of those hopes ("Alas, regardless of their doom, / The little victims play"), and eventually withholds his prophetic catalog of evils that, with the ineluctable form of the future tense, he has ascribed to the boys playing in the valley before him: Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Imlac mentally returns to a point in time when he shared the optimism of his charges, just as Gray does in his "Eton College Ode": "My weary soul they seem to soothe, / And, redolent of joy and youth, / To breathe a second spring" (57).
Quo Vadis? Samuel Johnson in the New Millennium [review of The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757–1763, by David Hankins and James J. Caudle; Loving Dr. Johnson, by Helen Deutsch; Johnson on the English Language, by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr.; A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man: A Translation from the French, by O M Brack, Jr.; The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale; The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch; Anniversary Essays on Johnson's 'Dictionary,' by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott; Samuel Johnson's Unpublished Revisions to the 'Dictionary of the English Language': A Facsimile Edition, by Allen Reddick; and Aspects of Samuel Johnson: Essays on His Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics, by Howard D. Weinbrot]
Lee's review establishes that Johnsonian and Boswellian studies are robust. He offers uniformly high praise for the works, but also notes limitations. Weinbrot's collection is an exciting intellectual experience and genuinely educates, demonstrating Weinbrot's forte for historically contextualized readings. Lee credits Weinbrot with vigorously combating post-1968 theoretical incursions and confidently advancing a humanistic traditionalist version of Johnson. The Age of Johnson volume rises to the highest scholarly and critical standards. Karounos's essay is thought-provoking and worthy of serious consideration. Bundock convincingly challenges the consensus that Boswell invented Johnson's misogyny, implying Johnson was "perhaps more a man of his time than we might wish." The Anniversary Essays realize their goal of disturbing received ideas about the Dictionary. Lancaster, Weinbrot, and Hudson successfully reconfigure the Dictionary's political context. Barnbrook's statistical analysis makes a strong case for a prescriptive methodology. Hailey's essay is fascinating, and Reddick's argument is richly informed. Reddick’s Facsimile Edition is a sumptuous volume and an important, necessary supplement for specialists. Lee applauds its skill and accuracy, making obscure revisions available. Kolb and DeMaria’s book is the crowning achievement of Kolb's life and a major event in the Yale Johnson saga. The authoritatively prepared texts and rich annotation sustain its value, though the index could be fuller. Brack’s edition is a meticulously realized piece of scholarship. Lee notes the obscurity of the text, but the inclusion of the Jenyns review is a tasty dessert and a remarkable prose performance. Hankins and Caudle’s correspondence volume is fabulously rich and offers a densely particular immersion into midcentury Georgian Britain. Lonsdale’s Lives of the Poets is magnificent, immediately joining the Hill–Powell Life of Johnson and Fleeman's Bibliography as the most important contributions to Johnsonian scholarship in a century. Lee praises the cool, objective editorial posture that contrasts with Hill’s misogyny. Deutsch's book is a heady, exhilarating, and disruptive book. It strikes out numerous luminous and compelling intellectual sparks. Lee hopes the non-linear, anecdotal critique will stimulate a profitable self-reflection among traditionalists.
Approaches to Teaching Milton's Shorter Poetry and Prose
Samuel Johnson's Forgotten Friendship with William Shaw: Their Last Stand for Truth in the Ossian Controversy
Curley details the Johnson-Shaw relationship, emphasizing their joint opposition to Macpherson's Ossian poems. He traces Shaw’s shift from Ossian advocate to critic, spurred by his Johnson-supported Gaelic scholarship (grammar, dictionary). The essay highlights Johnson's ghostwriting contribution to Shaw's A Reply to Mr. Clark, positioning their collaboration within the broader Ossian controversy involving Scottish nationalism, English skepticism, and Irish historical claims. Curley examines Shaw’s complex character and his crucial, though often overlooked, role in Johnson’s final literary battle for truth against forgery, illustrating a significant aspect of Johnson's later intellectual life and connections.
On Johnson’s “central urban philosophy,” with comments on the city and the poem *London*. “Shakespeare . . . comes to represent to Johnson not only how even the greatest authors are transformed by the city, but also how urban transformation is not always entirely negative.”
Idleness Censured and Morality Vindicated: Johnson's 'Lives' of Shenstone and Gray
Jung examines the moral and educational framework of Johnson's biographical and critical prefaces. While scholars often focus on Johnson's praise of Pope and Dryden, this article highlights his censure of William Shenstone and Gray. Jung argues that Johnson uses these biographies to exemplify a moralist point of view, contrasting his own active, professional career with the perceived idleness and social uselessness of his subjects. Johnson employs a rhetoric of social indifference to criticize Shenstone's preoccupation with his estate and Gray's effeminate idleness at Cambridge. The analysis links these critiques to the definitions of industry, piety, and utility found in Johnson's Dictionary. Jung suggests that Johnson views these poets as failing their social responsibilities as citizens. By framing their lives through a lens of religious commitment and public usefulness, Johnson establishes conservative literary values that prioritize moral didacticism over aesthetic escapism and individual delight.
Making an Entrance: Frances Burney and Samuel Johnson
Johnston explores the profound impact of Johnson on Burney’s development as a writer, specifically during the Streatham years. The chapter analyzes Johnson’s role as both a "formidable critic" and a playful mentor who championed Evelina. Johnston highlights how Burney’s journals serve as a vital record of Johnson’s domestic character, capturing a "milder, more social side" often absent from Boswell’s more formal accounts. Furthermore, the text discusses Burney’s anxiety regarding Johnson’s high expectations and the "unavoidable comparisons" made between her prose style and his. Johnston argues that Johnson’s paternalistic affection provided Burney with the critical confidence necessary to navigate the eighteenth-century literary marketplace.
Hester Lynch Piozzi's Anecdotes versus the Editors
Berglund examines the publication and editorial history of Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., arguing that editors have consistently obscured Piozz's literary integrity through reconstructive or combative frameworks. Identifying three distinct editorial patterns, Berglund describes "no-frills" editions that treat the work as a mere adjunct to Johnson or basic Johnsoniana, "reconstructive" editions by Hayward, Seeley, and Broadley that dismantle and fragment the prose to create biographical narratives, and "combative" scholarly editions that pair the text competitively with other Johnson lives. Berglund disputes the objectivity of editors like Napier and Hill, noting their reliance on Boswell to challenge Piozzi’s veracity; Hill receives specific criticism for using "absurd" to characterize her metaphors and for constructing footnotes that undermine the super-text to favor Boswell. While Sherbo’s edition is presented as the most dispassionate, Berglund finds the pairing of Piozzi with the "ungrateful" Shaw suspicious. Berglund contends that these strategies impose external agendas, discount Piozzi's artistic decisions and psychological insights, and have historically reformatted the work to fit social expectations of a woman’s place. The study concludes that such approaches prevent the *Anecdotes* from being evaluated on its own artistic merits or appreciated as a distinct literary work on its own terms.
Historical Boundaries, Narrative Forms: Essays on British Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century in Honor of Everett Zimmerman
Scottish Prospects: Thomas Pennant, Samuel Johnson, and the Possibilities of Travel Narrative
“While Johnson may have been linked arm-in-arm with Boswell on the road, he was really ‘strolling’ with Pennant in his writing. . . . Pennant’s ambition to write an exhaustive and definitive study of Scotland if anything facilitates rather than inhibits Johnson’s own composition, fostering its distinct subjective voice.”
'I Do Wish That You Had Mentioned Garrick': The Absence of Garrick in Johnson's Shakespeare
“Garrick is not merely ‘forgotten’ in Johnson’s Shakespeare; Garrick, and the need not to mention his performances or use his books, determines the content and layout of the Shakespeare text and notes. Thus Johnson’s Shakespeare is shaped by the absence of David Garrick.”
The Dignity of an Ancient: Johnson Edits the Editors
Lynch argues that Johnson's 1765 edition of Shakespeare marks the inception of the variorum format for modern English classics. Although Sherbo’s Yale edition provides a usable compendium of Johnson’s notes, it distorts historical reality by marginalizing the extensive commentaries of predecessors like Pope, Theobald, and Warburton that originally shared the page. By treating Shakespeare with the scholarly apparatus previously reserved for Greek and Roman ancients, Johnson established a collective, dialogic model of criticism. Statistical analysis of the notes on King Lear demonstrates that Johnson attributed half of his commentary to earlier editors, frequently allowing disagreements to stand without resolution. This format identifies mysteries for future investigation rather than imposing dictatorial certainty. Lynch contends that Johnson transitioned literary appreciation from a solo activity based on taste to a professionalized, syncretic endeavor. This collaborative approach influenced subsequent editors like Steevens and Malone and domesticated scholarly dispute as a fundamental component of the Shakespearean critical tradition.
Accumulation in Johnson's Dictionary
Johnston examines the cumulative method of Johnson’s Dictionary, characterizing it as a storehouse of minutiae and a literary anthology. The article argues that Johnson used a Lockean method of exaggeration to compose a vast body of knowledge through the accretion of petty particulars. Johnston explores Johnson’s defense of hard words in Idler 70, suggesting that complex diction reflects the mind’s spasmodic progress toward truth. The study contrasts Johnson’s ostentatious literary manner with the Socratic method of easiness favored by earlier writers like Addison. Johnston notes that while Johnson often voiced doubts about the value of accumulation, he preferred being attacked to being ignored. The analysis demonstrates how the Dictionary revivified obsolescent modes of thinking through the gathering of authorities from wells of English undefiled before the Restoration.
The Long View: Beckett, Johnson, Wordsworth and the Language of Epitaphs
Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui: A Bilingual Review/Revue Bilingue
Voice and Laughter in Johnson's Criticism
Smallwood argues that Johnson's maturity as a critic is marked by the sustained use of satire, humor, and comedy in his major prose works, distinguishing his tone from his earlier Juvenalian imitations. Focusing on the Preface to Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets, Smallwood demonstrates how Johnson employs a variety of satirical techniques, from the mock-heroic to wry understatement, to deliver critical judgments. This tonal richness, characterized by the collusion of the grave and the gay, provides the intellectual equipoise for which his later criticism is celebrated.
Samuel Demands the Muse: Johnson's Stamp on Imaginative Literature
Johnson's literary influence stems from the inseparability of his work and his personality, making him one of literature's great characters. Later writers, including Austen, Hawthorne, Housman, Woolf, and Beckett, engaged with different aspects of his character and thought. Austen adapted his style and moral framework; Hawthorne focused on his tormented Puritan conscience, especially the Uttoxeter penance; and Beckett was obsessed with his pessimism and melancholy, planning an uncompleted play about him. Johnson's enduring authority as a moralist and humanist ensured his ongoing presence in imaginative literature.
'Familiarising the Ancients': Imitation and Verse Satire: A Literary Genre as Repository of Cultural Knowledge
The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1900-2000
From Richardson to Austen: 'Johnson's Rule' and the Eighteenth-Century Novel of Moral Action
Rader explores the emergence of the novel of moral action through the lens of "Johnson’s Rule"—Samuel Johnson's dictum that fiction should present "the highest and purest" models of conduct for imitation. The chapter details how Richardson first attempted to synthesize this didactic pressure with the "action structure" in Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, often resulting in "morally dynamic" but stilted actions. Rader argues that Austen achieved the ultimate "perfection" of this form in Pride and Prejudice by creating protagonists who are "morally impeccable, yet entirely natural." By separating hero and heroine through "significant misjudgments" rather than moral failings, Austen satisfied Johnsonian moral requirements while maintaining characterological autonomy and realistic integrity. Rader concludes that this specific line of development ended with Austen as later novelists abandoned such "didactic baggage."
Samuel Johnson and the Chronotope of Satire
Vilmar develops an innovative theoretical approach to satire, testing its explanatory strength by reading the works of Samuel Johnson, whose satires often resist categorization. The study reviews satire theory, tracing an interdisciplinary approach based on Bakhtinian theory to explore the relationship between eighteenth-century satire and shifts in epistemology, rhetoric, science, and politics. Vilmar analyzes Johnson's conversation reported by Boswell, Piozzi, and Burney, focusing on his ethics of ridicule and his self-referentiality. The work reconstructs Johnson's conception of the genre through his literary criticism and applies this framework to readings of London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, periodical essays, and Rasselas, arguing that satire is crucial to understanding Johnson's achievement.
Samuel Johnson's Rambler and the Invention of Self-Help Literature
Kinkade argues that Samuel Johnson’s Rambler (1750–1752) invented the genre of self-help literature, offering a new discourse of advice that privileged autonomous identity defined by labor and interior discipline against upper-class values. Johnson shifted the focus of conduct literature from sociability and control of the body (characteristic of Addison and Steele's Spectator) to the cultivation of the self and the moral discipline of the mind. This self-help ethic applied especially to writers and scholars as a manual of professionalization. The work notes that James Boswell's response to The Rambler as "therapy and guide-book" highlights this overlooked practical dimension. Finally, the dissertation shows the limits of Johnson's self-help for women, as his culture failed to value female labor or autonomy as equal to men's.
Idiomatic Expressions Regarding Food and Drink in Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755 and 1773)
Johnson and the Earl of Shelburne's Circle
Katritzky explores the connections between Johnson and the circle surrounding William Petty, the second Earl of Shelburne, a progressive politician known for his liberal views and intellectual gatherings. Countering Boswell's portrayal of Johnson's aversion to Dissenters and political progressives like Price and Priestley (both associates of Shelburne), Katritzky highlights Johnson's documented familiarity with Shelburne, use of his residences, and overlap between Johnson's Literary Club members (Reynolds, Goldsmith, Burke, Jones) and Shelburne's guests. This association suggests Johnson was more engaged with enlightened thought and less rigidly Tory than often depicted, positioning him closer to contemporary intellectual currents.
Samuel Johnson and Truth: The First Systematic Detection of Literary Deception in James Macpherson's Ossian
Curley systematically argues that Johnson correctly identified James Macpherson's Ossian poems as largely fabricated. Analyzing Gaelic sources, Curley demonstrates that nearly three-quarters of the Ossian canon has no identifiable Gaelic antecedent, and the remainder shows only loose, freely adapted connections to authentic ballads. Macpherson consistently misrepresented his work as literal translation. Curley details Macpherson's creative process (invention, single-source adaptation, multi-source amalgamation) and suggests ambition motivated the deception, culminating in the creation of spurious Gaelic "originals." The essay validates Johnson's insistence on truth and exposes the extent of Macpherson's literary imposture against genuine Gaelic tradition.
Samuel Johnson and the Argument from Prophecy
Chapin investigates Johnson’s claim that Christianity is proved by miracles only as connected with prophecies and doctrines. The article contrasts Johnson's view with the Whig clerical establishment, noting that Johnson likely rejected the popular Antichrist doctrine as a non-essential matter of opinion. Chapin emphasizes Johnson's ecumenical spirit and his admiration for Grotius, which led him to prioritize prophecies foretelling the Messiah over later sectarian interpretations. By focusing on Isaiah and the concept of a long-awaited deliverer, Johnson seeks to strengthen the case for Christianity as a whole rather than using prophecy as a weapon for Protestant polemics against the Roman church.
Morbid Melancholy, the Imagination, and Samuel Johnson's Sermons
Kass examines Johnson's treatment of the "permanent and inescapable relationship" between the imagination and melancholy within the Sermons. While earlier scholarship emphasized a "distrust" of the imagination, Kass argues that Johnson advocates for its regulation rather than its extinction. In the Sermons, the imagination appears as a paradoxical faculty: it triggers morbid melancholy by presenting "unreal or impossible" desires that lead to inevitable disappointment, yet it also serves a "constructive" religious purpose. By enlisting the imagination to make the "future predominate over the present," individuals can moderate melancholy through empathy, charity, and the "salutary" pursuit of spiritual goals. Kass concludes that Johnson transforms conventional ascetic ideals into a "pragmatic concern" for self-interest and moral conduct.
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
Some Observations about the Samuel Johnson Miniature Dictionaries in the Cordell Collection
More Johnsoniana from the Gentleman's Magazine
Items not found in Samuel Johnson's literature that can be use by his future students are presented. Among other things that are culled from the Gentleman's Magazine is: a thief confessed to 'cutting a trunk from a carriage in Piccadilly, belonging to Lady Cornwallis, containing some wearing apparel and Johnson's dictionary, all of which were sold to a Mrs Moses, of Petticoat-Lane, where upon search the dictionary was found, and a note in it, which serves to ascertain the property'.
Tankard investigates a 1766 journal entry in which Johnson resolved to write a History of Memory. This projected work highlights Johnson's role as a representative of both oral society and print culture. Tankard argues that Johnson's anxiety about memory stemmed from the fragility of oral tradition, which he believed could only transmit short sentences between generations. The article connects Johnson's lexicographical work to an encyclopedic turn in the eighteenth century that used dictionaries as evolved forms of external memory. Tankard observes that Johnson's hostility to Ossian was rooted in a limited understanding of oral transmission. Through his Lives of the Poets and other compendious projects, Johnson attempted to maintain cultural continuity in a society where he feared the end of reading would lead to the end of memory.
Arthur and Calt dispute modern claims that Johnson maintained a cautious approach to drug use. Instead, they support the observations of Hawkins, who documented Johnson's habitual use of opium to alleviate depression, or "watchfulness." Although Wiltshire and other modern scholars challenge Hawkins's account, Arthur and Calt argue that Johnson's own letters reveal a pattern of behavior consistent with addiction. Johnson used opium not only for legitimate medical complaints like a cough or stomach spasms but also as a mood elevator to "escape himself." Despite protesting a "horror" of the drug to Thrale and Boswell, Johnson's private records show he took it for non-threatening conditions such as cold weather. His medical justifications for use during asthma attacks appear scientifically suspect because opiates act as a respiratory depressant. Boswell's failure to dispute Hawkins's claims suggests he could not truthfully challenge them. The authors conclude that Boswell suppressed the topic of opium to protect Johnson's reputation as a "majestick teacher of moral and religious wisdom."
J. D. Fleeman, A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 50.3R/21, 26, 27 (The Rambler, Hodges's Edition)
Courtship and Private Character in Johnson's Rambler Essays on Marriage
Bush explores Johnson's Rambler essays on marriage, contending that they center on the problem of detecting an authentic "private character" beneath a deceptive "public self," a concern rooted in eighteenth-century socio-psychological developments like the codification of manners and the rise of self-fashioning. Johnson's protagonists struggle to ascertain the hidden identity of their prospective spouses, a difficulty explicitly identified as a modern phenomenon involving "hypocritical imitation." The essay highlights Johnson's insistence that domestic life provides the "most authentick witnesses" of character, making the courtship process a profoundly risky transaction centered on the need for vigilance against dissimulation.
Johnson's Dictionary and the Language of William Collins's Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects
Lynch investigates the role of skepticism in Johnson's epistemological and moral framework, chronicling his lifelong battle against philosophical skepticism and the anxiety he felt regarding the foundations of belief. Characterizing Johnson's faith as a deliberate, willed resistance to universal doubt, Lynch links his distrust of improbable stories and his obsession with evidence to constructive skeptics like Tillotson. An explication of a 1784 diary entry reveals how Johnson identified eleven causes of skepticism, with vanity, sensuality, and the omission of prayer serving as primary causes of unbelief. Johnson viewed truth as a discipline of the will and a moral discipline, maintaining perpetual vigilance against the skeptical malady of his age and using religious exercise to stave off the nagging doubts he shared with Hume. While Boswell documented Johnson's stance against Berkeley and Hume, Piozzi recorded his skepticism regarding supernatural "evidence of the fact." Lynch argues that Johnson's physical refutation of Berkeley and his insistence on moral certainty demonstrate a resolution and determined exertion of the will to create the grounds for belief that reason alone could not find and that the "carelessness of Hume" could not achieve.
McDermott and Moon introduce a collection of papers marking the 250th anniversary of Johnson’s 1755 work. They define it as a major lexicographic milestone because Johnson first based his dictionary on actual usage. The collection revisits Johnson’s enduring legacy, exploring his handling of technical terms, usage notes, and phrasal verbs. They describe Johnson as an outstanding achievement who established the lasting model for monolingual English lexicography.
English Flour and Italian Bran: Johnson's Dictionary and the Reformation of Italian Lexicography in the Early Nineteenth Century
The 'Landscape of the Body': The Language of Medicine in Johnson's Dictionary
Samuel Johnson and Truth: A Response to Curley
Groom responds to Curley's essay on Johnson and Macpherson's Ossian. Groom acknowledges Macpherson's fabrication, agreeing with Johnson's assessment (quoted in Groom's The Forger's Shadow) that Macpherson compounded existing names, stories, and passages into his own compositions. However, Groom questions the utility of reiterating the forgery accusation, suggesting it hinders a reassessment of Ossian's literary influence, particularly on Romanticism. Groom argues for complicating definitions of forgery and authenticity to understand why later poets were fascinated by such works. He critiques Curley's retrospective judgment of Johnson's flawed Gaelic scholarship and defends exploring forgery beyond simple condemnation.
Literary Couplings: Writing Couples, Collaborators, and the Construction of Authorship
Constructing an Adventure and Negotiating for Narrative Control: Johnson and Boswell in the Hebrides
Radner examines the 1773 Hebrides journey of Johnson and Boswell as a multifaceted collaborative and competitive textual project. During the eighty-four-day trip, both men recorded experiences in notebooks and journals, frequently reading and providing feedback on each other's installments like "authors of serial publications." This interaction allowed each to "measure and define himself" against the other's perspective while struggling for "narrative control" over the representation of their shared experience. Johnson maintained private correspondence with Thrale, while Boswell supplyied key materials for Johnson's subsequent publication. The relationship shifted significantly as Boswell prepared to become Johnson's biographer, leading to a "tussle over publication" wherein Boswell delayed his own account until Johnson could no longer review or modify the manuscript. The resulting texts function as "two subjectivities continuously interacting," seeking intimacy while maintaining "boundaries and a sense of separation."
Strategies of Response: Ellis Cornelia Knight's Sequel to Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Hilger argues that Knight’s sequel constitutes an act of "strategic conformism" toward Johnson’s original text. Hilger demonstrates how Knight invokes Johnson’s authority and adopts a modest authorial persona to carve out a space for divergence from his perceived pessimism. The article identifies the use of "citationality" to adapt existing literary conventions, allowing Knight to critique social structures and gender roles while appearing nonthreatening to the status quo. Hilger explores how Knight’s novel provides a more optimistic "choice of life" than Johnson’s, proving that Knight possessed an independent mind. The analysis places the work within the context of European literary culture between 1790 and 1805, examining how Knight’s response to Johnson reflects broader shifts in female propriety and political engagement.
'The Cinic Scotomastic'? Johnson, His Commentators, Scots, French, and the Story of English
Studia Neophilologica: A Journal of Germanic and Romance Languages and Literature
Defining Moment: On Its Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary, a Look Back at Doctor Johnson's Exhaustive Dictionary [review of Johnson on the English Language, by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr.; Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language, by Jack Lynch, and Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, by Henry Hitchings]
Sheidlower's review of several works commemorating the 250th anniversary of Johnson's Dictionary describes the 1755 publication as a "greatly admired book" that is "surely one of the least read." The reviewer praises Henry Hitchings's biographical narrative of the project and Jack Lynch's volume of selections. Sheidlower notes that Johnson's Dictionary succeeded where earlier attempts at language codification failed because it used illustrative quotations from literature to define usage. The review highlights Johnson's move from the "Plan" addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield to the final independent product. Sheidlower finds that Johnson's work conferred a level of "seriousness and prestige" on the English language. The reviewer approves of the Yale Edition and the DVD-ROM version for their scholarly accessibility.
BookForum: The Review for Art, Fiction, & Culture
Samuel Johnson's Augustinianism Revisited
Scherwatzky explores parallels between the political thought of Augustine and Johnson, particularly concerning empire. While direct influence remains conjectural, both thinkers viewed politics as secondary to spiritual concerns, rejected the classical city's self-sufficiency, and saw earthly governments as inherently flawed because of human nature. Scherwatzky argues that Augustine's City of God and Johnson's political writings share a critique of empire rooted in Christian ethics, viewing its pursuit as prideful and corrupting. This comparison illuminates Johnson's political thought by highlighting an Augustinian emphasis on the temporal order's limitations and the ultimate importance of salvation over secular pursuits like imperial expansion.
Dictionary Johnson [review of Johnson on the English Language, by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr.]
"'Languages are the pedigree of nations.' Samuel Johnson's thought is noble. The more authoritatively so, in that the profound pronouncement about language is issued by the greatest of dictionary-makers. Not--it has at once to be added--the maker of the greatest dictionary, for he was a lesser great man than Johnson (not quite the same as a less great man than Johnson), being the man who gave himself and us the New, later the Oxford, English Dictionary: the indispensable James A.H. Murray. His teamwork comprehended that a language is itself a team. Not that the members of the team always see eye to eye." (New Criterion) This review of Johnson on the English Language, edited by the "consummate and consummating editors" Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr., examines the annotated collection of the writings of lexicographer Samuel Johnson, author of the 1775 A Dictionary of the English Language.
Signs Taken for Wonders: The Vanity of Human Wishes and the Production of a 'Relevant' Translation
The essay proposes a reading of TVHW in formal terms, by situating the poem in the historical context, in which translation of Classical texts into the English tongue was generally undertaken on a strong ideological position. The proposed formal analysis adopts Derrida's concept that translation operates as a position-marked transformation of the symbolic machine of the original, and the task of transformation is conducted usually in terms of the logic of supplementarity. The analysis is meant to recommend a re-interpretation of the poem in light of the strategic play it puts on in order to arrive at a ＂modern＂ textual and cultural translation of its Latin original.
Lexicographic Material under Observation: From Johnson's Dictionary to a Model for a Cognition-Based Dictionary of Lexical Patterns
'Gleaned as Industry Should Find, or Chance Should Offer It': Johnson's Dictionary after 250 Years [review of Anniversary Essays on Johnson's Dictionary by Jack Lynch and Anne McDermott]
Pearce reviews Anniversary Essays on Johnson's "Dictionary," commending the collection's comprehensive scope and its commitment to critical evidence over established myth. Examining fourteen essays that challenge various Johnsonian myths, Pearce summarizes shared concerns such as Johnson's linguistic attitudes, sources, collaboration, and the tensions between didactic aims and lexicographic realities. The review highlights essays employing broad data analysis—specifically those by Weinbrot, Lynch, Dille, and Osselton—as particularly valuable for revealing the "unfamiliar" Dictionary. Pearce engages with specific arguments, including Korshin’s investigation into the suspect provenance of various anecdotes, such as the story involving Piozzi and the book-felling of Tom Osborne, and Lancashire’s argument that the rift between Johnson and Chesterfield was attributed to conflicting views on French neologisms. Regarding politics, Weinbrot identifies an irenic theological pacifism while Hudson suggests a Broad-bottomed nonpartisan agenda. DeMaria explores spontaneous and oral influences on the History and Grammar, while Barnbrook and McDermott dispute whether Johnson’s lexicographical program remains primarily prescriptive or descriptive, with McDermott emphasizing Johnson’s deference to common usage. Additionally, Lynch analyzes the pragmatic use of encyclopedic definitions, and Reddick demonstrates Johnson’s authorial control over the contributions of his amanuenses. Finally, Osselton, Dille, and Hailey investigate the evolution of compound words, the authorial nature of the octavo abridgment, and hidden quarto reprints edited by George Steevens.
'Ask for the Old Paths': Johnson and the Usages Controversy
Davis examines Johnson's interest in the Nonjuror "usages controversy," a liturgical debate concerning practices like prayers for the dead, the mixed chalice, oblation, and epiclesis, derived from the 1549 Prayer Book. Citing Hawkins and corroborating evidence like Johnson's library, friendships (Campbell), and known liturgical interests, Davis confirms Johnson's engagement with the debate. While Johnson adopted prayers for the dead, his Eucharistic views seem less aligned with the "usagers." Davis concludes Johnson felt the conflicting pulls of ideological conservatism (attraction to ancient practices) and positional conservatism (respect for the established Church), mirroring the controversy's core tension.
Johnson's Beauties: The Lexicon of the Aesthetics in the Dictionary
Recovering the 'Rigour of Interpretative Lexicography': Border Crossings in Johnson's Dictionary
Desperately, Utterly and Other Intensifiers: On Their Inclusion and Definition in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson, Dryden, and an Allusion to Horace
Roper identifies the precise source of Johnson’s allusion to Dryden in Rambler no. 41. While the Yale editors suggested a misquotation of The Hind and the Panther, Johnson actually accurately quotes Dryden’s play Don Sebastian. The phrase sacred treasure of the Past appears in a speech by Sebastian regarding remembered joys. Roper demonstrates a chain of influence: Johnson’s description of memory leads him to Don Sebastian, which echoes Dryden’s earlier paraphrase of Horace’s Odes III.xxix, the same Latin text Johnson quotes in his essay.
Meyers explores the profound influence of Johnson and Boswell on Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire. Nabokov uses Johnson’s physical appearance, medical history, and saturnine temperament to construct the character of John Shade. Allusions to Johnson’s Rambler, Dictionary, and Vanity of Human Wishes provide an intellectual framework for the narrative. Additionally, Kinbote’s intrusive relationship with Shade mirrors Boswell’s obsessive documentation of Johnson. Meyers argues that Nabokov identifies with Johnson’s ethical commitment to kindness despite chronic suffering, integrating eighteenth-century moral dignity into a modern tragi-comic masterpiece.
North and South in Johnson's Dictionary
Allegories of Mentoring: Johnson and Frances Burney's Cecilia
Johnson and Seventeenth-Century English Glossographers
On the influence of seventeenth-century glossographers on Johnson's Dictionary. Johnson unknowingly aligned himself with Blount, whose work Phillips plagiarized. Johnson's dictionary distinguished itself by largely excluding the "hard words" (imports from Latin and French) that were the staple of his predecessors, preferring a common, native vocabulary, a principle he shared with Kersey's 1702 dictionary. Johnson adapted entries from law lexicons by Cowell and Blount but omitted their explicit legal and statutory sources.
'The Wells of English Undefiled': Samuel Johnson's Romantic Resistance to Britishness
Kersey analyzes Johnson's preface to the Dictionary, arguing it reveals anxiety about England's integration into Great Britain and a desire to reinstate an idealized, pre-Union English identity. Drawing on George Hickes, Johnson emphasizes England's distinct "Teutonick" linguistic roots, metaphorically fortifying the language against decay from commerce and foreign (especially French) influence. Kersey contests readings of Johnson as aggressively imperialistic, instead portraying his lexicographical project as a restorative, "Romantic" contraction focused on England's perceived "pure sources" before 1707. This resistance to "Britishness" reflects a preference for linguistic continuity over political expansion and commercial mixing.
In Johnsons' Footsteps: Baretti's English Grammar and the Spread of the English Language in Italy during the Eighteenth Century
A Private Collection of Johnson and His (Extended) Circle
Rasselas in 'The Rise of the Novel'
Terms of Corruption: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary in Its Contexts
Pearce disputes the standard view of Johnson as a mere linguistic prescriptivist by analyzing his use of the term "corruption" in the Dictionary and its Preface. Pearce argues that Johnson uses "corruption" not only as a moralistic usage label but also as a "linguistic heuristic" for etymological conjecture and analysis. By situating the Preface within early modern scientific discourse, Pearce shows that Johnson views language change as an inevitable consequence of "sublunary nature" rather than simple negligence. The dissertation reconstructs the logic of Johnson's philological reasoning, demonstrating how etymologies, definitions, and usage notes function as complementary interpretive activities. Pearce challenges scholars like Lynch and Sorenson who interpret Johnson's rhetoric as evidence of xenophobia or a retreat from reality. Instead, Pearce presents Johnson as a linguist in his own right who anticipates nineteenth-century historical philology. Salient quotations illustrate Johnson's belief that "tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration," even as he admits no lexicographer can "embalm his language" against the effects of time. Chapter 1, "The Rhetoric of Samuel Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary," addresses the Preface as a masterwork of scholarly self-fashioning, analyzing how material and rhetorical constraints necessitated an independent, authoritative ethos. Chapter 2, "Recovering the 'Rigour of Interpretative Lexicography': or, How to Read Johnson's Dictionary," argues that etymologies, definitions, and usage notes are complementary interpretive activities that reconstruct the logic of philological reasoning. Chapter 3, "Johnson's Use of Corruption as a Linguistic Heuristic," addresses the term "corruption" as a scientific conjecture and inquiry tool for language change rather than merely a prescriptive condemnation.
The Typographic Design of Johnson's Dictionary
Luna analyzes the typographic structure of Johnson’s Dictionary as a functional access tool rather than a mere aesthetic object. He highlights Johnson's innovative use of paragraphing and indentation to articulate complex entry structures—such as numbered senses and illustrative quotations—within the constraints of an eighteenth-century typographic repertory lacking boldface. By comparing the folio design with subsequent octavo and quarto editions, Luna demonstrates how the visual organization balances space-saving compression with the need for clarity. He concludes that Johnson’s layout, particularly the 1785 design, established the typographic standard for English dictionaries for over a century.
Despite the wealth of biographical material on Dr. Samuel Johnson, a few scraps are being found, or rediscovered. Mrs. Thrale, later Mrs. Piozzi, has left much biographical-anecdotal information about Johnson, some of it buried in her Observations Made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy, and Germany.
Johnson's Dictionary in the Nineteenth Century: A Legacy in Transition
Dille examines the nineteenth-century reception and adaptation of the Dictionary of the English Language in Britain and India. While Johnson remained a national icon, the Dictionary faced resistance from the Victorian elite who viewed it as an outmoded linguistic authority. Conversely, miniature and pocket editions proliferated, catering to schoolchildren and the working class as tools for social aspiration. Dille highlights how the Dictionary functioned as a source of legal interpretation in common law courts. In colonial India, administrators and native scholars like Ram Kamal Sen used the Dictionary to establish English literary culture. Sen's translation into Bengali illustrates how native speakers appropriated the prestige of Johnson to elevate vernacular languages. Dille disputes the notion of a singular reception, noting that British observers often parodied native use of Johnsonian English as Baboo English. The Dictionary served as a multivalent symbol of national identity and imperial authority, shifting from a practical linguistic guide to a monumental curiosity by the century's end.
Sharma examines Johnson's multifaceted engagement with Indian culture, politics, and science, despite never visiting the subcontinent. Johnson maintained extensive social and intellectual networks with Anglo-Indians, including Warren Hastings, Robert Chambers, and William Jones. Sharma argues that Johnson's Rambler 190 serves as a historical critique of Dryden's Aureng-Zebe, demonstrating Johnson's familiarity with Bernier’s travels and Mughal history. While Johnson suspected the motives behind Fox’s India Bill, he consistently expressed outrage at the "conquest and robbery" perpetuated by the East India Company. He advocated for a "despotic governour" as a pragmatic check against systemic corporate plunder. Sharma highlights Johnson's keen interest in "experimental knowledge," noting his encouragement of Chambers and Hastings to investigate "Asiatick literature," Ayurveda, and local manufacturing technologies. Johnson disputes the existence of a "permanent national character," viewing Indian history as a laboratory for observing how economic circumstances diversify human conduct. The study concludes that Johnson’s perspectives were shaped by a scientific penchant for classification and a deep-seated opposition to imperial oppression.
Hyphenated Compounds in Johnson's Dictionary
Osselton investigates the inconsistent treatment of hyphenated compounds in Johnson's Dictionary. Initial sections use complex alphabetical clusters and typographical distinctions to categorize hyphens as unique structural markers, likely influenced by bilingual dictionary models. However, this systematic approach declines as the work progresses, with later entries frequently omitting hyphens or relegating compounds to undefined illustrative quotations within lemmas. Osselton argues this shift reflects lexicographical constraints and a transition from prescriptive regulation to a descriptive recording of historical usage.
Disjecta Membra Poetae: The Aesthetics of the Fragment and Johnson's Biographical Practice in the Lives of the English Poets
Snead argues that Johnson’s biographical practice in the Lives of the English Poets aligns with an eighteenth-century affective aesthetics of the fragment, as theorized by Reynolds and Burke. Just as Reynolds’s tenth Discourse suggests that a shattered sculptural torso evokes a participatory "warmth of enthusiasm" through its abstract form, Johnson’s biographies use anecdotes, dubious sources, and pieced-together details to invite reader participation. Johnson eschews unified, teleological narratives, preferring "minute details" and "parallel circumstances" that readers can apply to their own lives. Snead demonstrates how Johnson foregrounds the constructedness of the poet-subject by leaving the "seams showing" in his narratives, often sifting through conflicting accounts without imposing a false sense of coherence. This methodology denaturalizes the "artist-as-hero" and emphasizes the role of the "common reader" in assembling a steady understanding from the scattered "disjecta membra" of a life. By highlighting the limitations of memory and the biases of previous biographers like Sprat, Johnson transforms biography into a didactic exercise in judgment rather than a monument of historical certainty.
The 'Great Cham' and the 'English Aristophanes': Samuel Johnson, Samuel Foote, and Harmless Pleasure
Tankard explores the complex relationship between Johnson and the actor, mimic, and dramatist Samuel Foote, a figure Johnson found simultaneously "irresistible" and morally problematic. While the Dictionary dismisses "fun" as a "low cant word," Johnson championed "harmless pleasure" as a vital, if dangerous, human power, and he defended Foote’s extraordinary comic talent and conversational power ("he makes you laugh more") against various detractors. Foote, celebrated as the "English Aristophanes," specialized in a brand of mimicry and ribald farce that Johnson characterized as "vice" rather than true comedy because it lacked moral restraint and general truth, often noting that "he has the air of a Buffoon" and that his work was "not comedy... it is farce." Despite intending "not to be pleased" and maintaining deep scruples regarding Foote's lack of principle, truthfulness, and decorum, Johnson famously confessed that the actor was "irresistible" and capable of pleasing a man against his will. Tankard details Foote's career of social transgression, including his stage imitations of contemporaries like George Whitefield and his narrow escape from legal ruin involving the Duchess of Kingston, illustrating how Foote's unrestrained humor could bypass intellectual or moral barriers. The study concludes that Foote served as a touchstone for Johnson’s ambivalence toward humor, revealing truths about human folly and the limits of dignity while demonstrating that no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures, as Foote’s presence could reduce the rational scholar to the "animal that laughs."
'Sam of Streatham Park': A Linguistic Study of Dr. Johnson's Membership in the Thrale Family
Johnson the Prescriptivist? The Case for the Defense
McDermott challenges the conventional view of Johnson as an authoritarian prescriptivist. She argues that Johnson’s lexicographical practice aligns with common law principles, treating literary quotations as evidentiary testimonies of usage rather than static rules. By prioritizing polysemy and "the decrees of custom" over rigid etymology or Latinate logic, Johnson shifts from his initial intent to "fix" the language to a descriptive recording of it. McDermott concludes that Johnson’s focus on the "common intercourse of life" and his sparing use of proscriptive labels demonstrate a commitment to registering language as it is actually spoken and written.
What Johnson's Illustrative Quotations Illustrate: Language and Viewpoint in the Dictionary
Weinbrot challenges ideological interpretations of Johnson’s Dictionary, arguing against views that characterize it as a strictly Tory or Jacobite polemic. He maintains that Johnson sought to register rather than form the English language, prioritizing commercial viability and a broad audience. By examining quotations from divines like South, Tillotson, and Bentley, Weinbrot demonstrates how Johnson truncated and generalized texts to emphasize shared Christian moralism over sectarian strife. The analysis extends to the 1773 fourth edition, suggesting that revisions were largely cosmetic or irenic rather than reactive to contemporary political debates like the Thirty-nine Articles. Weinbrot concludes that Johnson’s mosaic of authorities reflects an ecumenical effort to capture diverse signifying practices within a unified national culture.
Johnson the Prescriptivist? The Case for the Prosecution
Barnbrook argues that Johnson’s Dictionary is fundamentally prescriptive, a characterization supported by the author's own declarations and the inclusion of numerous evaluative usage notes. Through a computational analysis of nearly 6,000 notes across the first and fourth editions, Barnbrook identifies a significant presence of judgmental terms such as "low," "bad," and "barbarous." While comparison with the Helsinki Corpus and the works of Alexander Pope reveals that Johnson’s norms were not always in defiance of contemporary usage, Barnbrook concludes that Johnson’s collusion with the authoritarian linguistic spirit of his time established a negative, long-lasting prescriptive legacy in English lexicography.
Johnson's Symbolic Mentors: Addison, Dryden, and Rambler 86
Lee examines Johnson's complex view of literary mentorship, analyzing Rambler 86's depiction of the agonistic relationship between writers and their predecessors. Johnson grapples with his symbolic mentors, Addison and Dryden. He uses Addison's Spectator essays on Milton as both model and target, seeking to supplant his authority. More significantly, Lee identifies Dryden as Johnson's primary symbolic mentor. Through close reading of Rambler 86's moon imagery (alluding to Dryden's Religio Laici) and Johnson's Dictionary entry for "moon" (staging Dryden's triumph over Cowley), Lee reveals Johnson's struggle with and ambition to overcome Dryden's formidable influence.
Johnson's 'Life of Foucault': A Pastirody
McKenzie presents a "pastirody" of Johnson's biographical style to assess the life and works of Michel Foucault. The essay, written in imitation of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, critiques Foucault's intellectual character, focusing on his irregular and sensual life and his distrust of institutions. McKenzie finds Foucault's abstract and obscure theories, such as the "demise of man" and the concept of "discourse," to be widely appealing but ultimately leading to a culture of blurred discrimination and passive subjects.
Rothschild disputes David Mannings’s 1986 redating of Reynolds’s portrait of Johnson, famously known as "Blinking Sam." While Mannings attributes the work to a posthumous 1786 memory piece, Rothschild maintains it was painted in 1775. The text chronicles the historical anecdote in which Johnson, upon seeing himself depicted as near-sighted and reading, famously told Piozzi he would not be known to posterity for his "defects" or as "blinking Sam." Rothschild uses annotations from Piozzi’s copy of Northcote’s biography and the existence of contemporary copies by Frances Reynolds, Gilbert Stuart, and Theophila Palmer to confirm the 1775 date. The provenance is traced from Edmund Malone through the Guinness family to its current private ownership. Rothschild highlights the portrait’s legacy, noting its frequent use in scholarly literature to symbolize Johnson’s "fierce, near-sighted gaze" and his intense, "devouring" approach to reading. The article concludes that the painting captures Johnson’s intellectual character and maturity more effectively than more idealized depictions.
Reassessing the Political Context of the Dictionary: Johnson and the 'Broad-Bottom' Opposition
Hudson situates Johnson’s Dictionary within the "Broad-bottom" Opposition of the 1740s, a coalition aimed at dissolving partisan Whig-Tory distinctions in favor of national "merit." Facilitated by Robert Dodsley and initially patronized by Lord Chesterfield, Johnson adopted the group's anti-factional rhetoric while navigating his identity as a "loyal" Tory. Hudson argues the Dictionary’s political ambiguity reflects this nonpartisan agenda rather than covert Jacobitism. He concludes that Johnson’s eventual acrimony toward Chesterfield was a rejection of elitist patronage that betrayed the very meritocratic principles the Broad-bottom movement purported to champion.
Unexpected Symmetries: Samuel Johnson and Mary Wollstonecraft on the Northern Road
Keevak explores the remarkable relationship between Samuel Johnson and George Psalmanazar, a Frenchman who famously gained notoriety in the early eighteenth century by posing as a native of Formosa. Despite Johnson’s characteristic disdain for imposture, he held Psalmanazar in profound reverence during the latter's old age, citing him as "the best man he had ever known." Keevak traces Psalmanazar's journey from his elaborate Orientalist fraud—which included inventing a Formosan language and customs—to his eventual repentance and decades of "regular" toil as a Grub Street hack writer and Hebrew scholar. The text argues that Johnson’s admiration was rooted in Psalmanazar’s "regularity," a term signifying a life patterned by strict moral and religious discipline. This regularity allowed Psalmanazar to construct and inhabit a series of identities—first as a "pious fraud" and later as a "Fair Penitent"—with a consistency that Johnson, plagued by his own perceived "imbecillity" and "aversion to regular life," deeply envied. Ultimately, the study suggests that Psalmanazar’s lifelong self-fashioning, culminating in his role as an anonymous biblical scholar, represents a unique achievement of character and discipline that earned him the status of a moral ideal in Johnson’s eyes.
The Law, the Alphabet, and Samuel Johnson
Stone analyzes Johnson’s extensive use of legal reference works in the Dictionary, challenging the traditional view that general monolingual dictionaries evolved solely from the "hard-word" tradition. He identifies John Cowell’s Interpreter (1607) and John Ayliffe’s Parergon as Johnson’s primary legal sources, noting that Cowell provided over 3,500 words in the letter A alone. Stone argues that legal lexicography pioneered sophisticated techniques later attributed to Johnson, including numbered senses, inductive analysis of usage through "commonplace" collections, and the use of illustrative authorities to establish semantic precision. Johnson’s reliance on the dated Interpreter is framed as a preference for Cowell’s linguistic, scholarly method over more contemporary common-law primers.
Anniversary Essays on Johnson's “Dictionary”
Dictionaries and Power from Palsgrave to Johnson
Lancashire argues that Johnson’s rejection of the Earl of Chesterfield’s patronage was a principled stand against the traditional "frenchifying" of the English language favored by the nobility. Historically, patrons used dictionaries to expand English through foreign calques, but Johnson sought to stabilize the tongue by anchoring it in a native literary register (1580–1660). By dismissing Chesterfield and ignoring his commercial obligations to printers, Johnson transformed the lexicographer from a "humble drudge" into a singular authority. Lancashire concludes that Johnson’s "dictatorship" over the language effectively ended a two-century tradition of noble influence on English vocabulary.
Lynch investigates the tension between linguistic and encyclopedic definition in the Dictionary of the English Language. While Johnson initially distinguished between "words" and "things," Lynch demonstrates that he ultimately crossed generic boundaries by including extensive technical information on artifacts, natural objects, and human institutions. Borrowing and abridging entries from Chambers, Miller, and Quincy, Johnson adapted specialist knowledge for the common reader. Lynch notes that the 1773 fourth edition significantly trimmed these encyclopedic entries, reflecting a late-career shift toward stricter lexicographical boundaries.
'In Quest of Mistaken Beauties': Samuel Johnson's Life of Collins Reconsidered
Jung analyzes the development of Johnson's biography of William Collins from its 1763 origin in the Poetical Calendar to its final form in the Lives of the English Poets. The article highlights a shift in Johnson's attitude from defensive friend to cold critic. Jung argues that Johnson identifies with Collins's early financial struggles but later challenges his poetic practice for deviating from classicist standards. Johnson's critique focuses on Collins's use of harsh diction, obsolete archaisms, and flights of imagination that pass the bounds of nature. While Johnson expresses personal tenderness for his friend, he censures the poetry for lacking didacticism and moral truth. Jung posits that Johnson's harsh strictures serve to define and reject a proto-Romantic aesthetic in favor of technical correctness and generality. The article also identifies factual inaccuracies in Johnson's narrative, particularly regarding the poet's supposed constant pecuniary distress.
Signs of Life in the Eighteenth-Century: Dr. Johnson and the Invention of Popular Culture
Johnson's Extempore History and Grammar of the English Language
DeMaria examines the spontaneous, unplanned elements within the preliminary sections of Johnson’s Dictionary. He argues that while the History and Grammar rely on established sources like Hickes and Wallis, their execution reveals an extempore quality driven by immediate concerns and auditory memories. DeMaria highlights Johnson’s reliance on recent experiences, such as conversations with Warton and popular ballads, rather than methodical research. This analysis suggests that Johnson’s lexicographical process frequently integrated personal impulses and contemporary social issues, like slavery, with formal humanistic design. The presence of uncollected words and selective quotations indicates a composition process rooted in the author's daily stream of consciousness.
The Pride of Literature: Arthur Murphy's Essay on Johnson
Kinsella evaluates Arthur Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson (1792), written as an introduction to Johnson's works after biographies by Hawkins and Piozzi, and alongside Boswell's Life. Situating Murphy as a playwright, lawyer, and longtime friend of Johnson, Kinsella finds the Essay largely fulfills its aim as a "short, full, faithful, yet temperate history." Murphy critiques Hawkins's negativity, respectfully engages with Piozzi's Anecdotes, and subtly competes with Boswell's more detailed approach, offering alternative perspectives on key life events and Johnson's character, thereby significantly shaping Johnson's posthumous reputation for over a century.
McDermott investigates and reconciles conflicting eighteenth-century accounts provided by Hawkins, Boswell, Percy, and an anonymous writer ("W.N.") regarding the methods used to compile the first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary. Arguing that the iterative process was driven by quotation evidence and necessitated methodological changes, McDermott suggests that Hawkins’s plausible description of using an interleaved copy of Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum as a repository for headwords and etymologies represents the initial stage of compilation. Johnson likely transitioned from this base to eighty bound notebooks intended as final printer's copy, a phase described by Boswell and W.N. that eventually became unworkable as Johnson realized illustrative quotations functioned as an active corpus; this forced him to redefine word senses, especially for complex verbs. The study examines the thirteen extant marked-up source books, proposing that the complex system of cross-out strokes in the margins—previously misunderstood—served as a code to track which amanuenses, such as Stewart, Shiels, Peyton, or the Macbean brothers, had transcribed specific quotations through multiple transcription phases. McDermott concludes that the significant loss of transcribed quotations by one amanuensis, possibly Shiels, caused major omissions and profoundly shaped the dictionary’s final form, necessitating later supplemental trawls through texts like Bacon and Shakespeare.
Johnson and Hooker on Ecclesiastical and Civil Polity
Although Richard Hooker has long been acknowledged as an influence on both the prose style and the religious thought of Samuel Johnson, their relationship has never been examined in depth. Several previously unnoticed parallels between Hooker's writings and Johnson's writings (including his collaboration with Robert Chambers) provide a starting point for an investigation of Hooker's influence on Johnson's thought on questions of religious irenism and the relation of the civil and ecclesiastical states. The passages where Johnson follows Hooker most closely provide additional insights into Johnson's political and religious conservatism.
Johnson's Proud Folio: The Material and Rhetorical Contexts of Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary
Pearce situates the Preface to Johnson’s Dictionary within its historical and material contexts, arguing that it serves as a carefully crafted rhetorical self-construction necessitated by Johnson’s awkward social and professional position in 1754. Unlike earlier lexicographers considered mere drudges, Johnson aimed for national scholarly significance, yet he lacked a university degree, a patron, or a list of subscribers. Pearce emphasizes that the material bulk and high cost of the folio format restricted the initial audience to the genteel literati, compelling Johnson to adopt a tone of "apologetic professionalism." The text details how the Preface functions as a proleptic apologia, where Johnson navigates the lack of Chesterfield’s patronage by presenting his labors as an independent, heroic sacrifice made amidst "sickness and sorrow." Pearce disputes the image of Johnson as a "proudly professional" author, suggesting instead that he was an uncredentialed scholar forced to negotiate his authority in a contentious marketplace. By analyzing the "abstract/extract" method of contemporary reviews, Pearce demonstrates how Johnson anticipated the Preface’s wide circulation as a marketing tool to establish his ethos independent of traditional legitimizing institutions like the aristocracy or the academy.
Domestic Relations in Samuel Johnson's Life of Milton
Kemmerer analyzes Johnson's focus on Milton's "domestick relations" in his Life of Milton, arguing Johnson critiques Milton's private behavior to counter earlier hagiographic biographies and expose hypocrisy between Milton's public advocacy for liberty and his alleged tyranny at home. Contrasting Johnson's respect for women's intellect (seen in Irene, Rambler, Rasselas) with Milton's views, Kemmerer examines Johnson's portrayal of Milton's difficult marriages and harsh treatment of his daughters, whom he denied a proper education. Johnson concludes Milton held a "Turkish contempt of females," believing woman was made for obedience, thereby undermining Milton's public authority by highlighting flaws in his private character.
University of Otago Department of English
Referencing the Real: Hugh Blair, Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, and the Limits of Representation
Hidden Quarto Editions of Johnson's Dictionary
Hailey uses bibliographical evidence, including press figures and watermarks, to reveal that the 1785 sixth quarto edition of Johnson’s Dictionary was twice reset and reprinted in hidden facsimile editions through 1795. These undenominated reprints were issued to meet strong public demand and counter piracy after the expiration of the original copyright. Collation of variant copies identifies anonymous corrections to Shakespearean quotations, which Hailey attributes to George Steevens. He concludes that these hidden editions demonstrate the enduring iconic authority of Johnson's text and a persistent commitment by publishers to refine it long after the author's death.
Rasselas and the Rise of the Novel
Chico discusses the value of teaching *Rasselas* in a "Rise of the Novel" course, encouraging students to read it through the lens of eighteenth-century novelistic form. The analysis focuses on two categories: generic problems and the literary marketplace, and how the text borrows from or resists novel tropes. By consulting Johnson's *Dictionary* definitions, students understand "novel" as a convenient curricular label. The course situates *Rasselas* in the 1750s print culture, comparing Johnson's description of his book to Sterne's intentions for *Tristram Shandy*, which highlights the experimental nature of fiction. *Rasselas* is also read in relation to travel narratives, spiritual autobiography, utopian writing (contrasted with Scott’s *Millennium Hall*), and romance, noting the protagonist's early imaginative delusion of a rape.
Revision and the Limits of Collaboration: Hands and Texts in Johnson's Dictionary
Reddick examines the extent of collaborative authorship in the revision of Johnson's Dictionary for the fourth folio edition. Analysis of annotated first-edition sheets in the British Library and the Sneyd-Gimbel copy reveals that amanuenses independently proposed numerous definitions, etymologies, and notes on Scots and dialect usage. Johnson systematically excised these contributions, maintaining rigorous editorial control to suppress linguistic variation. Reddick concludes that while Johnson used assistants for gathering and processing material, he rejected their authorial agency, ultimately reinforcing his own singular authority over the text.
Traces of Johnson in the Language of Fanny Burney
It has often been claimed that Frances Burney (1752-1840) was influenced linguistically by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Sørensen (1969: 390), and others with him, have even called her a 'slavish imitator' of the language which Johnson used in his Rambler essays. Although far from simple guesswork, qualitative studies such as Sørensen's remain impressionistic, which makes it difficult to incorporate his (and similar) observations in quantitative socio-historical linguistic studies of the English language. In the present study, the question whether Burney was indeed a serious imitator of Johnson's usage is answered by looking at the problem from a quantitative rather than qualitative perspective, and addressed within the framework of historical social network analysis. Reprinted by permission of the Universidad de Murcia
International Journal of English Studies
Rasselas and the Riddle of the Caves: Setting Eternity in the Hearts of Men
Karounos interprets Johnson's Rasselas through temporal tropes, contrasting the spatial pursuit of present pleasure ("choice of life") with the temporal pursuit of future hope ("choice of eternity"). The Happy Valley is presented not as idyllic but as a cave-like "empty receptacle" symbolizing psychological vacancy and temporal monotony. Retreats into memory (Nekayah, the hermit) represent negative time. Johnson argues happiness lies not in finding a perfect life but in making it through Christian virtues—love, trust, and hope (the "radical principle of happiness"). The conclusion affirms virtuous action focused on eternity over preoccupation with present satisfactions.
Johnson and His 'Readers' in the Epistolary Rambler Essays
Powell examines the 65 fictitious letters in Johnson’s Rambler, arguing that Johnson used these epistles to explore his relation to and control over his readership. The article suggests that Johnson created a fantasy readership to establish a dialogue that was less threatening than the real public. Powell demonstrates how Johnson bleeds through his fictional shields, like Parthenia and Mr. Rambler, to deliver didactic messages. The study challenges the legend of the Rambler’s hasty composition, noting that Johnson kept a notebook of hints and revised the essays extensively. Powell argues that Johnson’s use of narrative transvestism allowed him to adopt various voices while maintaining absolute possession of the periodical. The analysis presents the Rambler as a compellingly serious project that allowed Johnson to balance contradictory impulses regarding fictional genres.
Mud, Mortar, and Other Technologies of Empire
Sudan critiques the "object lesson in ideology" delivered by Imlac in Johnson's Rasselas. When the prince asks why Europeans possess superior power, Imlac attributes it to the "unsearchable will of the Supreme Being." Sudan argues this vague reply masks deep anxieties about British technological and commercial paucity compared to Asiatic and African standards. While Johnson articulates a "self-evident reason" for European power, contemporary reports to the Royal Society reveal that British entrepreneurs found foreign practices in India, such as the manufacture of mortar and ice, to be superior to their own. Johnson's rhetoric uses the "Oriental tale" to teach lessons in imperialism while bypassing the material breakdown of commercial exchange.
The Mythology of Johnson's Dictionary
Korshin analyzes the pervasive legends surrounding Johnson's literary career, specifically those related to the Dictionary. He identifies three primary mythological strands: the procrastinating genius, the Herculean bully, and the solitary, impoverished scholar. By tracing famous anecdotes—such as the assault on Thomas Osborne and the witty exchange with Andrew Millar—to unreliable secondhand sources, Korshin argues that these "boulders on the Johnsonian landscape" obscure the reality of his professional labor. He concludes that while these fictions satisfy a public desire for a larger-than-life figure, they must be dismantled to appreciate the actual magnitude of Johnson's scientific and philological achievements.
The Dictionary in Abstract: Johnson's Abridgments of the Dictionary of the English Language for the Common Reader
Dille investigates the "abstracted" octavo edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, which served as the primary version for the 18th-century "common reader." Despite its popular success—selling 35,000 copies compared to 5,000 folios—the abridgment has remained a "phantom" in scholarship. Dille provides evidence of Johnson’s direct editorial involvement, noting specific textual improvements and the reintroduction of usage indicators in the 1760 second edition. She concludes that the octavo and folio versions functioned as parallel, independently evolving texts, each reflecting distinct authorial perspectives on the English language and its various audiences.
Mapping the Self: Space, Identity, Discourse in British Auto/Biography
Changing Places; or, Johnson Boswellised
Edin vo mnogikh litsakh: Ėsse, stat'i, ocherki i pis'ma
'Found Wanting'? Second Impressions of a Famous First Sentence
Analyzes "Human Wishes," an unfinished play by Samuel Beckett based on Boswell's Life. The work portrays the aged subject in physical decline, contending with his fear of death and the "female senate" (Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. De Monlins, Anna Williams) attending him. The fragment, blending 18th-century sources with Beckett's own style, dramatizes the "agony of composition" and the bleak reality of the human condition.
'Thunder o'er the Drowsy Pit': The Performance Historiography of Samuel Johnson's 'Mahomet and Irene' at Drury Lane
This performance historiography challenges the critical denigration of Johnson's Mahomet and Irene, tracing its negative reception primarily to the problematic influence of Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson. The study re-interprets the play's history from its composition through its sole 1749 production at Drury Lane. It emphasizes Johnson's involvement in the theatre world, including his commentary on the Licensing Act of 1737, and examines production elements such as casting, scenic design, and acting style. Furthermore, the dissertation enumerates Johnson's dramaturgical alterations made during the December 1748 and January 1749 rehearsal period. The work concludes that contemporary accounts offer a more extensive and positive assessment of the production than Boswell's later critique.
The Hard Work of Doing Nothing: Richard Savage's Parallel Lives
Gladfelder examines Richard Savage's construction of his celebrity through self-fashioning, arguing his enduring achievement is his life narrative, not his poetry. Johnson's 1744 Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, his first biography, is a celebrated masterpiece but focuses less on Savage's verse than his personal life. Johnson characterized Savage as a figure of failure who "by Necessity, an Author" became a paradigm for the wretchedness of commercial dependency. Johnson's account initiates a proto-Romantic myth of the author as outcast and rebel.
Johnson as Moralist in The Rambler
Italia examines Samuel Johnson's role as a moralist in The Rambler, contrasting his didactic approach with the more polite, varied style of Addison and Steele. She argues that Johnson’s 'uniformity of tone' and refusal to cater to specialized niche audiences were deliberate attempts to unify a society increasingly fragmented by professional and class hostilities. Italia identifies the cultivation of empathy as the cornerstone of Johnson's ethical program, noting that his fictional letters and character sketches model a compassionate response to common human suffering, including the plight of social outcasts like prostitutes and criminals. The article further explores Johnson's treatment of three recurring psychological themes: the paralysis of indecision/idleness, the toxicity of envy and comparative excellence, and the moral corruption inherent in patronage and dependence. Italia concludes that despite the commercial dominance of miscellaneous magazines in the mid-eighteenth century, Johnson used the anachronistic form of the essay-periodical to voice universal human concerns and promote the 'great republick of humanity.'
The Victorians and the Eighteenth Century: Reassessing the Tradition
Departures and Returns: Writing the English Dictionary in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Mugglestone examines the shifting lexicographical status of Johnson during the transition from the prescriptive eighteenth century to the descriptive, scientific era of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Victorian critics, notably Trench and Murray, initially sought to "departure" from Johnson's "uncritical" and "subjective" methodology, favoring a philological "inventory" over Johnson's normative "jurisdiction." However, Mugglestone argues that absolute binary distinctions between Victorian descriptivism and Johnsonian prescriptivism are "misjudged." Despite the OED’s "ideologies of scientific objectivity," the dictionary frequently "returns" to Johnsonian subjectivity through class-based usage labels and moralistic censures. Furthermore, the OED exhibits significant "textual symbiosis" with Johnson, recycling his definitions and citations. The work of Johnson remained the "prototypical dictionary" throughout the nineteenth century, illustrating that lexicography is a "cumulative achievement" rather than a series of discrete stages.
The Estrangement of Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson: A Revisionist View
Hughes disputes the traditional biographical narrative that blames Hester Thrale for the collapse of her nineteen-year relationship with Samuel Johnson. Challenging the "official" version established by Boswell, Hughes uses Thraliana and private correspondence to show that Thrale’s conduct was defined by loyalty rather than heartlessness. The text details the mounting pressures Thrale faced after Henry Thrale's death, including financial instability, the management of the brewery, and constant public harassment from suitors and gossip-mongers. Hughes highlights the deteriorating behavior of Johnson himself, who became increasingly vituperative toward Thrale's guests and insensitive to her own emotional distress. By examining the period between Henry Thrale's death and her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, the author argues that Thrale’s decision to retrench at Bath and eventually remarry was a necessary assertion of autonomy. Hughes concludes that Johnson’s final, violent repudiation of Thrale was a distortion of his personal loss into her "crime," suggesting that his late-life dedication of a headstone to his long-deceased wife was a symbolic replacement for the living friend he had just cast away.
Samuel Johnson on Education and the English Class Structure
Johnson's simultaneous love for the poor and fear of the "rabble" stems from his conviction that only a liberal, classically based education qualifies men for civic leadership. He believed the ignorant poor were susceptible to demagogues and could not understand political principles, as demonstrated during the Puritan Revolution. However, Johnson strongly advocated extending educational privileges to the laboring classes, asserting that no Englishman is born to poverty and that learning is valuable for all, regardless of class, gender, or race.
Modernity's 'Mr. Rambler': Tobias Wolff's Exploration of Vanity and Self-Deception in The Night in Question
Hanley examines Tobias Wolff's "The Night in Question." People read William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and Tobias Wolff not because they concur on any given subject but because they enlighten the vast complexity of human nature and remind everyone that people can either be noble or foolish, self-aware, or self-deceived. Moreover, "King Lear," "The Rambler," and "The Night in Question" remind everyone that one's character determines one's fate.
Samuel Johnson's Contributions to Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote
Brack and Carlile argue that Samuel Johnson did not write the penultimate chapter of Charlotte Lennox's *The Female Quixote*, refuting long-standing claims based on stylistic and bibliographical evidence. They demonstrate that the printing anomalies in the novel's final signatures, previously interpreted as a sign of Johnson's intervention, are actually the result of a rushed production schedule after Lennox delivered her conclusion late to the printer. The authors contend that the chapter's Johnsonian style is not Johnson's own work but rather an "exaggerated imitation" by Lennox, who modeled the "good Divine" character on the author of *The Rambler* as a tribute. Most decisively, they present new external evidence in the form of a letter from Lennox to Johnson, sent the day before the novel's publication, in which she explicitly states that he had "not yet seen" the final part of the book. This letter, they conclude, proves that Johnson could not have written the chapter and that the entire novel was Lennox's own work.
The 'Link of Transition': Samuel Johnson and the Victorians
Turner explores the "Victorian afterlife" of Johnson, tracing how he became a "nostalgic embodiment of the English character." While Macaulay and Carlyle privileged the biography over the works, Johnson’s texts—especially the Dictionary, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets—remained staples of Victorian reading culture and pedagogical study. Turner identifies Johnson as the "link of transition" between 18th-century manners and modern society, serving as a stylistic model and "personal moral influence" for figures like Ruskin, Brontë, and Eliot. The text details the "institutionalizing" of Johnson through Birkbeck Hill’s editions and the "proverbial status" of the letter to Chesterfield as the "original assertion of authorial independence." By the end of the century, Johnson is recuperated as a "literary ancestor" and a "tutelary genius," whose "adamantine common-sense" provided a "healthy antidote" to the perceived morbidity of contemporary literature.
Rees examines Samuel Johnson's complex, lifelong engagement with John Milton's Areopagitica, challenging the assumption that Johnson's Tory politics necessitated a rejection of Milton's libertarian prose. Rees argues that Johnson’s early exposure to the text influenced his ironic anti-censorship pamphlet, A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (1739), which adopts Miltonic arguments against pre-publication licensing. Furthermore, Rees identifies intertextual echoes of Areopagitica in The Rambler, specifically within Johnson’s theories of criticism and his allegorical representation of Truth in Rambler 96. While the elderly Johnson in the Life of Milton (1779) adopts a more conservative, risk-averse stance on 'unbounded liberty,' Rees maintains he continues to respect Milton's fundamental premise that 'power must always be the standard of truth.' The article concludes that Johnson moved from using Areopagitica as a fellow writer’s weapon against state interference to a more nuanced, though divided, assessment of the moral and practical limits of freedom of expression.
'But Vindicate the Ways of God to Man': Literature and Theodicy
The Pleasures of Pain? Soame Jenyns versus Samuel Johnson
Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History
On (Not) Writing Literary and Critical History: Dryden's Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern
Mason reflects on the "aporia" facing the critical historian: the tendency to view the past through a teleological lens of modern superiority. To illustrate this, Mason likens his own mid-twentieth-century education to that of Dick Minim, the "young would-be-critic" from Samuel Johnson’s Idler, whose knowledge consisted of memorized "proper phrases" rather than direct literary experience. The chapter details how Dryden’s Preface to Fables challenges modern historiography by presenting a "reading community of one" where past and present poets—from Homer to Chaucer—coexist. Mason argues that Dryden’s genealogical model of "poetical sons" and "congenial souls" offers a wayward, non-linear alternative to standard academic narratives. Mason suggests that the history of criticism remains a "meaningless fabrication" unless it accounts for the "intensely detailed experiences" of particular poems.
Dr. Johnson's Friend, the Elegant Topham Beauclerk
Larsen chronicles the life and character of Topham Beauclerk, the aristocratic and dissipated friend of Samuel Johnson whose royal lineage trace back to Charles II and Nell Gwyn. Despite a reputation for loose living, gaming, and "cynique" personal hygiene, Beauclerk fascinated Johnson with his acute intellect, elegant manners, and a sarcastic wit that Johnson admitted to envying. The narrative details Beauclerk's scandalous marriage to Lady Diana Bolingbroke following her high-profile divorce, a union that later soured into mutual misery and domestic tirades as Beauclerk’s health failed. Beauclerk is depicted as a man of contradictions: a "Macaroni" who generated lice and neglected his person, yet also a serious scholar and F.R.S. who amassed a princely library of over 30,000 volumes. Larsen disputes the idea that Beauclerk was a mere frivolous socialite, highlighting instead the "fine malignity" of his humor and his status as one of the few companions capable of matching Johnson’s verbal dominance without being intimidated by the great man’s "brutality."
On Johnson's detailed familiarity and respect for the legal and political works of Samuel Pufendorf, especially De jure naturae et gentium (1672), a major seventeenth-century text. Johnson's references to Pufendorf in conversation (e.g., concerning a schoolmaster's right to beat students), his advice to Boswell for the Hastie case, and his help with Chambers's law lectures at Oxford, indicate Johnson viewed Pufendorf as a significant academic legal authority. This reading demonstrates Johnson's conservative legal cast of mind, preferring theoretical principles over legal precedent.
'Those Ungodly Pressmen': The Early Years of the Brisbane Johnsonian Club
Examines the Brisbane Johnsonian Club (1878–1991) as the first successor to the 1764 London original. The club sought to replicate the original's exclusive, male membership, drawing from journalism, law, and the arts. It provided a venue for cultural enjoyment and professional networking. The article also analyzes the club's "Bohemian" masculine identity, embodied by "ungodly pressmen," in contrast to contemporary Evangelical ideals.
The Making of Johnson's Prayers and Meditations
Bundock examines the controversial publication history and editorial censorship of Prayers and Meditations, issued by George Strahan eight months after Johnson's death. While the work achieved significant commercial success, Bundock details the immediate backlash from contemporaries like Adams, who disputed Strahan’s claim that Johnson authorized the publication. The text identifies Strahan's extensive censorship of Johnson's original manuscripts, specifically his efforts to suppress Johnson's expressions of religious doubt and marital regret to present an idealized Christian image. Bundock contrasts the public "wit and wisdom machine" described by Boswell with the private, suffering figure revealed in these journals, noting how the combination of solemn liturgy and mundane personal details—such as "flatulencies"—scandalized eighteenth-century readers. Referencing reactions from Cowper, Walpole, and Piozzi, Bundock illustrates the contemporary disdain for Johnson's "superstitious" practice of praying for the dead. Bundock disputes the harsh historical verdict on Strahan’s integrity, concluding that while Strahan’s editorial judgment was flawed, his loyalty ensured the preservation of moving accounts, including Johnson's final parting from Kitty Chambers and his "late conversion."
Narratives of Hope, Fictions of Happiness: Samuel Johnson and Enlightenment Experience
On Johnson's categorical denial of happiness and his reliance on Christian hope within the context of Enlightenment universalism. Johnson's conception of experience, influenced by the public sphere, universalizes happiness into an unattainable, idealized construct that devalues particularity. This impossibility in the present propels him to seek absolute happiness in the future, where hope becomes an anticipatory form of happiness in an afterlife of experiential uniformity. Johnson's paradoxical identity registers a tension between his Enlightenment ideals and an alter-ego that glimpses happiness in contextualized, imaginative experience.
Johnson and Jacobite Wars XLV [review of Samuel Johnson in Historical Context, by J. C. D. Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill]
Weinbrot's severe review of Samuel Johnson in Historical Context disputes the Neo-Jacobite methodology employed by Clark and Erskine-Hill. Weinbrot challenges the reliance on "subjunctive certitudes" and ideological paradigms that reduce Johnson’s literary corpus to "agitprop and tedious sameness." While the review praises contributions by Kaminski and Money for their attention to aesthetic and neo-Latin contexts, Weinbrot finds most essays flawed by "presentist" biases and "banal reductive reading." Weinbrot identifies significant evidentiary failures regarding the Leicestershire subscription books and Oxford matriculation statutes, concluding that the editors use context as an excuse to impose a "deterministic hammer" on the life and work of Johnson. The review concludes that the "Neo-Jacobite enterprise" ignores the formal complexity of texts like Rasselas or The Vanity of Human Wishes in favor of unprovable political allegories. Weinbrot rejects the claim that Johnson lived in a "Hanoverian gulag" of "internal exile," noting Johnson's own affirmations of English liberty and his rejection of the divine right of kings.
Scribblers, Servants, and Johnson's Life of Savage
Erwin argues that Johnson’s Life of Savage (1744) functions as a strategic effort to rescue Richard Savage’s reputation from the satiric 'ignominy' imposed by Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad. By positioning the biography within the generic 'horizon of expectations' of mid-eighteenth-century historiography and the burgeoning novel, Erwin demonstrates how Johnson uses Lockean principles of 'observation' and 'consideration' to frame Savage's life as a moral case study. The article explores the 'fateful bargain' between Savage and Pope, suggesting that Johnson identifies Pope as a negligent and resentful friend whose Dunciad-era 'service' hindered Savage’s professional agency. Erwin analyzes Johnson’s manuscript marginalia and the ' Judgment-Day topos' of the biblical parable of the talents to underscore the biography's subtle indictment of Pope. Ultimately, Erwin asserts that Johnson’s narrative transforms a minor poet’s scandalous notoriety into a larger symbol of authorial community and common human hardship.
Chesterton Review: The Journal of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture
The Pathos of Abstraction: Adam Smith, Ossian, and Samuel Johnson
Duncan analyzes Johnson’s "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" as a "search-and-destroy" critique of Ossianic orality. Johnson used "discourses of Enlightenment"—including anthropology and linguistic theory—to "appropriate and empty out" the ideological themes of Scottish writing. The text characterizes the tone of the "Journey" as "more melancholy than triumphant," lamenting the loss of an "antiquated life" while applying a "scientific project" to observe social transformation. Duncan argues that Johnson’s refusal to recognize Lowland Enlightenment institutions reflects an "imperial restructuring" of British nationality. The text highlights Johnson’s "pathos of abstraction," where the "alphabet" and "textualization" of culture serve as tools to manage the "anomie" of a disappearing traditional society.
The Politics of Samuel Johnson and the Johnson of Politics: An Innocent Looks at a Controversy
Weinbrot scrutinizes the controversy over Johnson's alleged Jacobitism, arguing that evidence supports his being a practical, eclectic Tory whose political reason outweighed any Stuart sympathies. Johnson disapproved of Charles Edward Stuart, rejected the divine right of kings, and accepted a people's right to rebellion against tyranny. His recommended reading list for young men favored Whiggish, anti-Stuart texts, and his efforts to secure a seat in Parliament indicate a willingness to take the required Hanoverian loyalty oaths.
Johnson, Boswell & the Biographer's Quest
Johnson and Boswell were the primary catalysts for modern biography, with Johnson originating literary biography in Lives of the Poets and Boswell refining the methods in Life of Johnson. Johnson advocated for detailed, factual truth over panegyric, but practiced judicious restraint regarding controversial material. Both biographers emphasized finding facts, collecting diverse materials, and detailing subjects' character, intellectual, and political contexts. Johnson's work also extensively explored themes of sex, insanity, and death, exemplified by his influential life of Savage.
Johnson’s translation of Jean Pierre de Crousaz’s commentary on Pope’s Essay on Man, initially Johnson’s first published book-length translation in 1739. The contents include Johnson’s translation of du Resnel’s preface for Pope’s Essay on Man and Essay on Criticism, and Johnson’s “Letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine” concerning the controversy between Warburton and Crousaz. The volume collects Johnson’s related theological and moral criticism, most notably including his essay, the penetrating review of Soame Jenyns’s Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. The Jenyns review is considered one of Johnson’s most profoundly and passionately argued prose pieces. This review, in particular, reveals the moral complacency Johnson found in Pope’s poem. The text supersedes the poorly established material found in the 1825 edition of Johnson's Works. The notes surrounding the volume document Johnson’s interventions in the translation and commentary.
Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: A Pilgrimage of Buddhists
Author's abstract: "기존 학자들은 새뮤엘 존슨을 기독교주의자나 도덕주의자로 이해해 왔다. 그는 신실한 기독교인으로서의 삶을 살았을 뿐만아니라 그의 글 자체에 기독교주의자와 도덕주의자의 색깔이 강하기 때문이었다. 하지만 이 논문에서는 그러한 관례적 인식을 깨고, 존슨의 소설 『아비스니아의 왕자 래슬리스의 방랑기』(1759)를 불교적 측면에서 재조명하고자 한다. 래스리스의 방랑여행은 불교 창시자인 시타르타의 그것과 무척 유사하다. 불교는 네팔 근처에 거주했던 샤키아종족의 왕자 시타르타로부터 시작된다. 시타르타는 왕자로서 물질적으로 풍족한 환경속에서 자라지만, 그는 생로병사에 대한 의문으로 번뇌한다. 아내의 출산고통을 목격한 그는 왕위 계승을 포기하고 생로병사의 원인을 찾아 순례여행을 떠난다. 여행 중에 여러 스승을 만나지만, 그들은 시타르타의 선에 대한 열정을 충족시키지는 못한다. 결구 6년간의 고독한 불도 끝에 스스로 득도하므로 유일의 부처가 된다. 부처가 된 시타르타는 불도제자를 위해 인간생사에 대한 "네가지의 진실"과 "여덟가지의 옳은 행위"를 교수한다. 래슬리스 또한 사타르타처럼 행복의 계곡에서 풍족한 생활을 하는 아비스니아의 왕자이다. 왕자로서의 물질적 부와 사회적 지위에도 불구하고, 그는 자신의 삶 속에서 행복을 찾지 못하고 방황한다. 산으로 둘러싸인 행복의 계곡에서 벗어남으로써 선을 찾는 순례를 시작한다. 그 또한 여러 스승을 만나게 되는데, 그들과의 대화 내용을 살펴보면, 정작 래슬리스가 열망하는 스승은 "여덟가지의 옳은 행위"를 통달한 부처라는 것이 명백해진다. 더불어 래슬리스의 영향은 부처의 "네가지의 진실"에 나타난 여정을 따르고 있는 것이다. 혹자는 존슨이 불교에 대한 지식을 가졌을까 하고 의문을 제기할 수도 있다. 존슨이 작가로서 활발한 활동을 하였던 18세기에, 불교나라 중국은 영국을 비롯한 유럽에 더 이상 생소한 나라가 아니었다. 이미 중국문화에 대한 책들이 프랑스 파리에 유통되고 있었고 런던에도 소개되어 있었다. 존슨이 편집인이었던『신사를 위한 잡지』에 빈번한 기고가였던 볼테르도 중국에 관한 책을 펴낸이 중 하나였다. 존슨 스스로도 체임버경이 집필한 『중국건축』의 머리말을 쓰기도 하였다. 이 논문의 목적은 존슨을 불교도인으로 재인식 또는 재평가하려는 것이 아니라, 18세기 저명작가에 대한 이해와 폭을 넓히고자 하는데 있다. 작가를 한 종교에만 국한시켜 이해하는 것은 작가의 역량을 독자의 한계에 제한시키는 위험의 소지가 있기 때문이다." Generated translation: "Traditional scholars have generally understood Samuel Johnson as a Christian or a moralist. This is because he not only lived his life as a faithful Christian but also because his writings possess a strong Christian and moralistic character. However, this paper breaks away from such conventional perceptions to re-examine Johnson’s novel The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) from a Buddhist perspective. Rasselas’s wanderings are remarkably similar to those of Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism. Buddhism originated with Siddhartha, a prince of the Sakya tribe who lived near Nepal. Although Siddhartha grew up in a materially affluent environment as a prince, he agonized over the questions of birth, old age, sickness, and death. After witnessing his wife's labor pains, he renounced his succession to the throne and set out on a pilgrimage to find the cause of human suffering. During his travels, he met various teachers, but they could not satisfy his passion for the "Good." Eventually, after six years of solitary spiritual practice, he attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. Having achieved enlightenment, Siddhartha taught the "Four Noble Truths" and the "Eightfold Path" regarding human existence to his disciples. Rasselas, like Siddhartha, is a prince of Abissinia living a life of luxury in the Happy Valley. Despite his material wealth and social status, he wanders, unable to find happiness in his life. By escaping the mountain-enclosed Happy Valley, he begins a pilgrimage in search of the Good. He also encounters several teachers; a close look at his conversations with them makes it clear that the teacher Rasselas truly yearns for is a Buddha who has mastered the "Eightfold Path." Furthermore, Rasselas's journey follows the path laid out in the Buddha's "Four Noble Truths." Some may question whether Johnson even possessed knowledge of Buddhism. In the 18th century, when Johnson was active as a writer, China—a Buddhist nation—was no longer a stranger to England and Europe. Books on Chinese culture were already circulating in Paris and had been introduced in London. Voltaire, a frequent contributor to The Gentleman's Magazine where Johnson served as editor, was among those who published books on China. Johnson himself even wrote the preface to Sir William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings. The purpose of this paper is not to re-evaluate Johnson as a Buddhist, but rather to broaden the scope of understanding regarding this prominent 18th-century author. To limit an author to a single religion carries the risk of restricting the author’s genius to the limitations of the reader."
Johnson's Poverty: The Uses of Adversity
Stavisky disputes the romanticized myth of Johnson's extreme poverty, arguing that it has long served as a biographical convenience to mask a deeper emotional estrangement from his mother, Sarah Johnson. Drawing on research by Paul Korshin and J. D. Fleeman, Stavisky demonstrates that Johnson earned a substantial income from The Gentleman's Magazine and other projects during the years he allegedly subsisted as a 'pauper.' Stavisky posits that Johnson's decade-long absence from Lichfield was not financial but psychological, rooted in a 'buried resentment' and a pattern of identification with Richard Savage’s maternal hostility. The article analyzes Johnson's Life of Savage as partial autobiography, suggesting that Johnson's late-life 'savagery' toward Hester Thrale Piozzi mirrored a repressed response to his own mother. By examining Johnson's selective Dictionary definitions and his frequent travel to Oxford while avoiding Lichfield, Stavisky concludes that Johnson used the 'shackles' of work and imagined poverty to justify a necessary distance from a maternal relationship defined by 'filial duty, honor, and guilt' rather than affection.
After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation
Periodizing Johnson: Anticolonial Modernity as Crux and Critique
Hawes disputes Whiggish and postmodern historical schemas that marginalize the eighteenth century as either a decadent foil to progress or the violent essence of modernity. Hawes identifies Johnson as a "recalcitrant" figure whose "anticolonial modernity" challenges the developmental metanarratives of nineteenth-century Britishness. While Johnson contributed to a "vernacular national culture" through his Dictionary and parliamentary reporting, he simultaneously maintained a "cosmopolitan alternative" that resisted national chauvinism. Hawes highlights Johnson's "immanent critiques" of empire, noting his refusal to grant "superstitious veneration" to national icons and his unmasking of the "dreadful wickedness" of colonial expansion. By examining Johnson's rejection of the "Ossian" forgeries as a "mythic vernacular literature," Hawes argues that Johnson's "soft" civic nationalism offers a self-critical modernity that dismantles imperial ideology from within.
Hearts of Darkness: Swift, Johnson, and the Narrative Confrontation with Evil
Morrison challenges the historical categorization of Samuel Johnson as a misogynist by analyzing the neglected Rambler essays concerning women. She argues that Johnson’s rhetorical strategies and prose style reveal a consistent awareness of women as a vital part of his audience. Unlike Addison and Steele, who reinforced rigid gender binaries and female subordination, Johnson emphasizes universal human nature, suggesting that gender differences are social constructs resulting from limited education and domestic confinement rather than nature. Morrison details Johnson's 'non-sexist' stylistic choices, including the inclusive first-person plural, the strategic alternation between masculine singular and gender-neutral plural forms, and the use of the agentless passive voice to sidestep gendered discourse. By examining the 'Marriage Group' of essays and his female fictions, Morrison demonstrates that Johnson treats domestic issues as the central 'moral drama of the self' relevant to both sexes. The article concludes that Johnson’s 'universal' voice successfully addresses a mixed audience by recognizing women’s equal stake in moral and intellectual inquiries.
A Source for Johnson's 'Malim cum Scaligero errare'
Waterhouse identifies a letter from Isaac Casaubon to Jacques-Auguste de Thou as the likely source for Johnson’s repeated use of the phrase "malim cum Scaligero errare." While Boswell had unsuccessfully attempted to trace the origin, Waterhouse provides the Latin context where François Viète expresses admiration for Scaliger's mathematical talent despite his errors.
'Prejudice, Bigotry, and Arrogance': Horace Walpole's Abuse of Samuel Johnson
Clarke analyzes the profound and comprehensive antipathy Horace Walpole harbored for Samuel Johnson, a hostility rooted in clashing social, political, and aesthetic identities. While Johnson was a Tory professional writer of "brutal" manners, Walpole was a Whig gentleman and connoisseur who viewed Johnson as a "saucy Caliban" and a "prostitute hireling". The study chronicles Walpole's exhaustive private campaign against Johnson—conducted through marginalia, notebooks, and letters—while noting that Walpole never published these criticisms during his lifetime to avoid the "bear garden" of professional literary controversy. Clarke disputes the idea that Walpole was merely reactive, showing instead how he actively used his library as a site of silent discourse, filling copies of Boswell and Piozzi with exclamation marks to signal his contempt for Johnson's "turgid" style and "anile" faith. Central to this animosity was Johnson’s "Life of Gray," which Walpole saw as a malignant attempt to degrade his friend’s superlative poetry. Ultimately, Clarke argues that Walpole’s refusal to meet Johnson was an exercise in "aloofness," a defense of the "sprezzatura" of the amateur gentleman against the emerging dominance of the professional man of letters.
Landscape, Literature, and English Religious Culture, 1660–1800: Samuel Johnson and Languages of Natural Description
Mayhew challenges modern interpretations of eighteenth-century landscape studies by arguing that the period's depictions of nature were fundamentally structured by a religious hierarchy of value. This monograph identifies a dominant Latitudinarian tradition that used "ocular demonstrations" of the natural world to provide rationalist proofs of God's existence. In contrast, Johnson's High-Church perspective maintained a principled skepticism toward natural evidences, prioritizing scriptural revelation and moral agency. While Johnson used topographical metaphors like "slopes," "eminences," and "precipices" to illustrate moral instruction in his essays, he insisted on precise, literal descriptions in empirical contexts such as his travel writings. Boswell also demonstrated a shared High-Church tendency to downplay nature's role in divine proof, often requiring human figures to provide "animation" to a scene. Piozzi, however, displayed more attentive aesthetic sensibilities, frequently employing comparative landscape aesthetics and noting how rivers wind "as if intended merely to amuse the eye." Mayhew disputes the notion that landscape formed an autonomous discourse before the 1790s, concluding that eighteenth-century nature description gained its primary significance through its ability to "analogically naturalize moral and religious truths." Chapter 1, 'Contextualizing Landscape History: Mainly with Respect to Eighteenth-Century England,' critiques recent landscape studies for using partial, oversimplified contexts based on an impoverished approach to historical method. Chapter 2, 'Landscape History: An Essay in Historiographical Method,' uses the philosophical writings of Michael Oakeshott and Quentin Skinner to develop a theorized, rigorous framework for historical contextualism. Chapter 3, 'Diversity and Coherence in the Discourse of Landscape in the "Long" Eighteenth Century: A Preliminary Survey,' addresses the heterogeneity of landscape meanings, arguing that eighteenth-century English religiosity inspired these diverse discourses. Chapter 4, 'Latitudinarianism and Landscape: Low-Church Attitudes to Nature, 1660–1800,' argues that Latitudinarian theology, the dominant form of Anglicanism, grounded the period’s most celebrated and influential landscape depictions. Chapter 5, 'The Lexicon of Landscape: Johnson’s Dictionary and the Language of Natural Description,' addresses how Samuel Johnson’s dictionary definitions and illustrative quotations elevated landscape vocabulary conceptually and verbally. Chapter 6, 'The Moral Landscape: Johnson’s Doctrine of Landscape, 1738–59,' argues that Johnson detached mental well-being from physical landscapes, using landscape imagery primarily as a metaphorical tool for moral instruction. Chapter 7, 'The Empirical Landscape: Johnson and Factual Description of the Natural World, 1735–75,' addresses Johnson’s commitment to scrupulous, minute investigation of the natural world to remove the dangers of idolatry. Chapter 8, 'Life, Literature and Landscape: The Role of the Natural World in Johnson’s Biographies and Biography, 1739–84,' argues that Johnson integrated the natural world into his biographical works as a signifier of character or human delusion. Chapter 9, 'Conclusion: The Unfamiliar Prospect of Eighteenth-Century Landscape Studies,' addresses the historical diversity of landscape ideas and their subordination to a religious hierarchy of knowledge in eighteenth-century England.
Johnson, Hill, and the 'Good Old Cause': Liberal Interpretation in the Editions of George Birkbeck Hill
Dille reassesses the scholarly legacy of George Birkbeck Hill on the centenary of his death, examining how his Liberal political background and family heritage as social reformers shaped his influential editions of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. The narrative chronicles Hill's transition from an overworked schoolmaster at Bruce Castle to a semi-invalid scholar who sought to rescue Johnson's literary reputation from Macaulay’s "grotesque" caricature. Dille disputes the notion that Hill acted as a mere neutral annotator, arguing instead that he used extensive parallel quotations to promote a "Radical Johnson" sympathetic to abolitionism and penal reform. The article also examines Hill's contentious relationship with rival editor Percy Fitzgerald and his "willfully prejudiced" treatment of Piozzi and other female intellectuals, whom he often chastised with the caustic tone of a Saturday Reviewer. Dille concludes that Hill’s commentary successfully reintegrated Johnson the author with Johnson the conversationalist, creating a "noble edifice" that continues to direct modern perceptions of the Johnsonian circle.
'An Uniform and Tractable Vice': Samuel Johnson and the Transformation of the Passions into Interests
Hinnant reconsiders Johnson's attitude toward the pursuit of wealth, challenging the idea that he fully embraced the transformation of avarice from a vice into a beneficial social "interest." Johnson distinguishes cupidus (the desire for getting) as an innocent drive from avarus (hoarding), which he condemns as a vice. He views "interest" not as stable calculation, but as hazardous risk-taking, praising the adventurous projector who advances knowledge over the cautious merchant who merely amasses wealth.
Biografi, metabiografi, pettegolezzi 'di genere'
'I Am Equally Weary of Confinement': Women Writers and Rasselas from Dinarbas to Jane Eyre
Richard traces a tradition in which women writers, from the publication of Rasselas to Jane Eyre, read Johnson’s text as authorizing a "drive for liberty." While conservative writers like Ellis Cornelia Knight (in Dinarbas) and Elizabeth Pope Whately authored continuations to suppress the tale's "subversive potential" and "inconclusive inquiry" by emphasizing duty, resignation, and reward in the next world, others embraced Johnson’s account of confinement. Mary Whateley ("Harriet Airy"), Mary Wollstonecraft, and Charlotte Brontë drew upon the discourse of liberty and pain of confinement to legitimize narratives of female suffering and restlessness. Richard demonstrates that Wollstonecraft notably used the "inconclusive conclusion" of Rasselas to resist novelistic courtship conventions in Mary, A Fiction, while Brontë uses Rasselasian imagery and themes of imprisonment/escape in Jane Eyre, extending the female suffering implied by Nekayah's weariness of confinement. The article concludes that Johnson’s "plangent evocation" of restlessness authorized women to represent their own suffering and search for fulfillment, challenging the caricature of Johnson as a rigid symbol of authoritarianism.
Johnson's original translations for the Greek and Latin mottoes in The Rambler and The Adventurer exhibit a complex aural and intellectual artistry beyond mere "cribs." Johnson, alerted to the original authors' phonetic and syntactic complexities (e.g., in Sophocles and Horace), translated these effects into English. The mottoes frequently echo the vocabulary and themes of his major poems, particularly The Vanity of Human Wishes, acting as a unifying link throughout his body of work.
J. D. Furīman Samyueru Jonson shoshi o yomu
Chapin surveys Johnson's awareness of geological developments from Burnet to Buffon, primarily through Dictionary citations. Johnson defends the historic truth of Genesis against perceived threats from new science, viewing the books of Moses as the most authentic of all histories. Chapin notes that while Johnson uses scientific works for verbal explanations, he remains skeptical of theoretical fantasies that bypass miracles for secondary causes. The article highlights Johnson's rejection of Brydone’s anti-mosaical remarks regarding volcanic strata. Chapin argues that Johnson supports geological arguments only when they help render Christianity reasonable to those whose faith is yet unsettled, maintaining the primacy of Biblical tradition.
El prefacio a Shakespeare de Samuel Johnson
Wisdom as Intellectual Decoration: Selected Passages from Dr. Johnson
'Proud Possession to the English Nation': Victorian Philanthropy and Samuel Johnson's Goddaughter
Nixon chronicles a 1855–1856 charitable appeal organized by Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and John Forster for Ann Elizabeth Lowe and Frances Meliora Lucia Lowe, the destitute daughters of Mauritius Lowe. The initiative leveraged the women’s status as the last descendants of Johnson to secure national support, specifically highlighting Ann Elizabeth as Johnson’s goddaughter and a recipient of a legacy in his will. Nixon argues the project functioned more as a memorial to the dead literary patriarch than a simple effort to benefit living women, as the sponsors sought to preserve Johnson’s memory as a "proud possession to the English nation." The abstract describes the failed attempt to obtain a Civil List Pension from Lord Palmerston and the subsequent public appeal in the Times, which raised approximately £300. Nixon challenges Carlyle’s selective generosity, noting that the "Lowes Memorial" reflects a complex Victorian identity politics that favored those with ties to English cultural heroes over the broader working poor. The narrative details how the sponsors used artifacts, such as the fir desk where Johnson wrote the Dictionary, to authenticate the women's connection to the "heroic" author and stir public conscience.
Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction
Contexts for Johnson's Dictionary
Tankard examines the dual character of the lexicographer as both "drudge" and "priest" in Johnson's masterwork. The article argues that the Dictionary is not so much a text as a "network of paratextual devices" that replace all other books. Tankard notes that Johnson was the first to use "historical principles" in English lexicography, conducting vast research to provide quotations that "authorise and illustrate his definitions." The work bridges the gap between the "scholarly and the everyday," using the "intellectually arbitrary device" of alphabetical order to storage information. Tankard observes that the Dictionary "brings its author so vividly before us," as Johnson's dislikes of certain words are "less reliable as information about the history of the English language than as information about him."
Samuel Johnson, Urban Culture, and the Geography of Postfire London
On Johnson's perspective on the chaotic, unplanned, and spontaneous evolution of postfire London following the rejection of Wren's rational, geometrical redesigns. Johnson, unlike those who lamented the "lost opportunity" for an ordered capital, celebrated the city's irregularity, seeing the crowded streets, lanes, and courts as symbols of human reality and the heterogeneous fabric of nature. He was suspicious of grandiose architecture, which he associated with vanity and the control of the wealthy, preferring the utility and solidity of plainer structures. Johnson's views aligned with the prevailing eighteenth-century ideology of realism, empiricism, and a political orientation valuing private enterprise and liberty, reflecting a belief that London's great size and sprawling diversity embodied the whole "world" of human experience.
Biography Theory and Method: The Case of Samuel Johnson
In the Life of Savage, Samuel Johnson exemplifies his enlightenment biographical method, which stresses the biographer's effort to overcome the differences between himself and his subject. Contrary to romantic doctrine, Johnson's theory values the biographer's empathy for, rather than identification with, the biographee.
Stavisky disputes the characterization of Johnson as a "fullblown Tory" in economic matters, a view he attributes to the influential work of Donald Greene. Examining the Preface to Rolt's Dictionary of Trade and Commerce and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Stavisky argues Johnson demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of market forces, specialized labor, and the utility of middlemen. Stavisky shows that Johnson prefigures Ricardian concepts such as comparative advantage and the diminishing rate of profit. While acknowledging Johnson’s support for agricultural subsidies, Stavisky contends this reflects a pragmatic risk-mitigation strategy for a trading nation rather than feudal nostalgia. Stavisky further aligns Johnson’s defense of luxury and social mobility with Adam Smith’s Natural Liberty, suggesting Johnson views commerce as a civilizing "moral equivalent of war." The article identifies Boswell's lack of economic acumen as a source of the "semi-feudal" portrait that continues to obscure Johnson’s status as an intuitive and progressive economic thinker.
Samuel Johnson's 'Love of Truth' and Literary Fraud
Lynch chronicles Johnson’s career-long "assault on falsehood," exploring his attitudes toward literary deception. The article details Johnson’s roles in various eighteenth-century hoaxes, including his "dismissal of Ossian" and investigation into the Chatterton case. Lynch describes how Johnson was "induced by the arts of a vile impostor," William Lauder, to defend fabricated charges of plagiarism against Milton, leading to a sincere public recantation. The study presents Johnson as a "sober and rational judge" who refused to allow "taste" to overrule judgment, instead invoking the "best-evidence rule." Lynch also addresses Johnson’s own "undetected ventriloquism" in reporting parliamentary debates. While Johnson was "thoroughly unwilling to be deceived," the article notes his "general severity tempered by occasional leniency" toward penitent fakers like George Psalmanazar. Lynch concludes that "the love of truth" was Johnson’s "ruling passion," governing his aesthetics and his intellectual character.
On Johnson’s involvement with literary fakers, including Macpherson, Chatterton, Psalmanazar, and Dodd.
Of Dodsley's Projects and Linguistic Influence: The Language of Johnson and Lowth
Dryden, Chesterfield, and Johnson's 'Celebrated Letter': A Case of Compound Allusion
Pellicer argues that a more pointed and perhaps more resonant allusion in Samuel Johnson's letter to the Earl of Chesterfield seems to have been passed over by critics; an allusion which adds the dimension of family history to Johnson's reproach. Johnson angrily visits John Dryden's words from his translation of "Georgics" on his own would-be patron to shame him with the virtuous example of his grandfather, the second Earl of Chesterfield and Dryden's patron.
"Samuel Johnson" recorded the death of "Robert Levet" in a late poem whose humble form shows the influence of Isaac Watts, one of four writers included at Johnson's request in "Lives of the Poets." Watts's 'voluntary descent' to instruct children in his "Divine Songs" impressed Johnson, who saw in it an imitation of Christ's humility. Watts in turn admired "Addison," who sought to recommend popular ballads to public attention. Although Johnson mocked Thomas Percy's efforts in the stanzaic lyric, he chose the ballad to commemorate an obscure character. His record of Levet's descent to the grave is an earthly imitation of God's descent to dwell in human form.
The Politics of Johnson's Reading of 'Lycidas' and the Social Aspect of Pastoral Poetry
Milton Studies: The Journal of the Milton Studies in Korea
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Limits of Post/Modernism
See chapter 3, “Traces of Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing and the Reproduction of Knowledge(s).”
'Complicated Virtue': The Politics of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage
Scherwatzy argues that an inquiry into English political discourse enriches the ideological context of Johnson's Life of Savage, viewing Johnson's reading of Savage's generous act towards his perjured accuser as an "act of complicated virtue" through the lens of civic humanist ideals and contemporary Country/Patriot opposition to the Walpole regime. Johnson and Savage shared a "mutual distrust" of Court politics under George II and Walpole, and the text presents Savage as a figure of lost aristocratic honor embodying the challenges of practicing virtue in a corrupt, mercantilist Whiggish society that had abandoned paternal ideals and disrupted the natural social order. Johnson's sympathy for Savage's "lost honor and social standing" emerges from a concern with the disruption of natural order, as the instability of Savage's life reflects Johnson's perception of disorder where hereditary succession was interrupted by the Glorious Revolution. Johnson depicts Savage rising above the "selfishness that Johnson associated with a corrupt Whiggish world," and while he typically castigates colonization, he sympathizes with Savage's virtue in expressing concern for those whose sufferings force them from their native land. Ultimately, Johnson finds in Savage the "virtue of a poetic optimism" coupled with the pragmatic admonition that human motives are often corrupt.
Samuel Johnson's Special Appeal in the Seventies and Eighties
Johnson experienced a renewed imaginative appeal in the 1970s and 1980s, evidenced by a burst of major trade biographies. This new significance stems from a shift in his public image from dogmatist to a heroic figure who achieved psychic coherence despite struggle. Johnson's image offers a powerful antidote to modern relativism and anxieties about the fragmented Self, providing a vision of fixed, consistent values and the power of the conscious mind for a post-Freudian audience.
The Historicity of Johnson's Lexicographer
Mack explores the "personal, emotional presence" of Johnson in the "Preface" to the Dictionary (1755). Unlike his predecessor Ephraim Chambers, Johnson narrates the lexicographer's task as a "personal struggle" against "disease," "sorrow," and "the pressure of the day." Mack argues that Johnson uses this authorial position to represent "subjectivity as the product of both personal experience and historical context." The "Preface" dramatizes the individual’s relation to knowledge, shifting from the "Herculean task" of ordering chaos to a "frigid tranquility" in the face of loss. Boswell and Garrick later constructed Johnson’s heroism based on these "biographical and cultural subjectivities." Mack concludes that Johnson’s self-definition in the "Preface" establishes a "person who exists in history," reconciling the "particular and the general" through the "quickening particulars" of his own labor and suffering.
British Writers: Retrospective Supplement I
Potkay reconsiders Johnson as a preeminent critic and moralist, examining the interplay between his biographical hardships and his immense literary output. Potkay traces Johnson's career from his early struggles in London to his establishment as a dominant cultural figure. The article emphasizes Johnson's contribution to the English language through his Dictionary and his mastery of the periodical essay in The Rambler and The Idler. Potkay analyzes Johnson’s imaginative works, including London and Rasselas, alongside his later critical achievements in his edition of Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets. Potkay argues that Johnson’s "greatness as a critic" stems from a unique combination of empirical observation and moral depth. The text explores Johnson's complex relationship with Boswell, noting how the Life of Johnson shaped subsequent perceptions of its subject. Potkay concludes that Johnson remains a vital force in English letters due to his "vigorous and independent mind."
Samuel Johnson: 'A Poor Diseased Infant, Almost Blind'
'That Great Literary Projector': Samuel Johnson's Designs, or Projected Works
Tankard examines Johnson’s extensive and often neglected list of ninety-one unexecuted literary schemes, focusing primarily on the small "Designs" notebook that Langton presented to George III. This manuscript, which Tankard characterizes as containing "paratexts without texts," features forty-eight unrealized projects categorized under divinity, philosophy, history, and literature, for which the article provides a new transcription and commentary alongside a catalog of forty-three projects referenced in other sources. Tankard notes Johnson’s specific attention to paratextual layout and his use of a semi-printed hand for headings, arguing that such projects reveal the scope of Johnson's literary imagination and his fluid conception of the eighteenth-century world of letters. The analysis covers Johnson’s interest in scholarly methods—including plans for dictionaries and editions of Chaucer and Tasso—and additional projects mentioned elsewhere, such as a life of Alfred and a history of the Boswell family. By contextualizing these schemes within contemporary publishing trends and identifying links to works produced by associates like Samuel Boyse, Francis Fawkes, McBean, and Derrick, Tankard disputes the view that this list reflects failing powers in old age or that these projects occupied Johnson only in his final days. Instead, Tankard suggests Johnson may have unearthed the notebook while tidying his papers, asserting that these schemes represent a career-long interest in the "biographical part of literature" and a readiness to envisage new labors as a sign of literary versatility. The study demonstrates how Johnson functioned as a literary projector whose capacious mind envisioned a virtual bibliography of useful scholarly works, illustrating how his projected bibliography mirrors his realized achievements.
Reading David Fleeman's Bibliography of Samuel Johnson
McLaverty reviews J. D. Fleeman’s A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson (2000), describing it as an alternative life of the author that prioritized intellect and personality. Drawing on Robert DeMaria’s scholarship, McLaverty highlights how Fleeman’s work justifies Johnson’s identity as a scholar-poet within European humanism. McLaverty notes Fleeman’s focus on Johnson’s early life in his father’s bookshop, which provided vital access to scholarship and fostered a lifelong sympathy for the book trade. The article argues that Fleeman’s detailed descriptions of early editions offer a "quarry" for understanding Johnson's reputation and authorial engagement. McLaverty details Fleeman’s unfulfilled plans for a "Johnsoniana" volume and a commentary on book-trade agreements. By focusing on episodes involving London and Juvenal, McLaverty illustrates the centrality of chronology and authorial engagement to Fleeman’s method. The bibliography is presented as a monumental resource that transforms Johnsonian studies by linking physical bookmaking with intellectual history.
In a Fast Coach with a Pretty Woman: Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson
Gross posits an evolving influence and "kindred imaginations" between Austen and Johnson, attempting to trace the process rather than the product of influence. Gross challenges critiques that portrayed Johnson as a "ponderous moralist" and Austen as limited, highlighting instead their shared "fundamental energy" and "psychological acuity." Both authors are presented as deeply perceptive in portraying quotidian detail, inner life, and passions, probing beneath social decorum to expose "the darkest of motives" and consequences of aggression. The study identifies textual links, such as the parallel between Johnson's Rambler 115 (a man possessing a fortune and wanting a wife) and the celebrated opening lines of Pride and Prejudice. Gross's approach aligns with the tradition of Donald Greene, viewing the eighteenth century as the "Age of Exuberance." The book argues that Austen and Johnson, despite their satiric pens, were "braced by a faith in order and decency." Chapter 1, 'My Dear Dr. Johnson,' addresses the dynamic intimacy between the two authors' imaginations, focusing on their shared preoccupation with the plight of single women and the pathologies of family life. Chapter 2, 'I Murdered My Father, My Mother, and My Sister: The Juvenilia, Lady Susan, and Northanger Abbey,' argues that these early works unleash scorching rage and erotic propulsion, mirroring Johnsonian themes of rebellion against domestic constraints. Chapter 3, 'That Obscure Object of Desire: Sense and Sensibility,' addresses the primacy of libidinal drives and the psychological realism of unsatisfied longing through the figures of Willoughby and the Dashwood sisters. Chapter 4, 'Wit with a Vengeance: Pride and Prejudice,' addresses the interplay between aggression and sexuality, framing the novel as an arena for strategic verbal battlelines and raucous satire on matchmaking. Chapter 5, 'As Creepmouse as You Like: Mansfield Park,' addresses the dark contendings of repressed wishes and the brutal effects of cold patronage within nineteenth-century middle-class culture. Chapter 6, 'Idle Hands, the Devil's Mischief: Emma,' addresses the celebrated Johnsonian malady of the idle imagination, linking Emma's meddling and indolence to deep-seated, frustrated sexual desire. Chapter 7, 'Pictures of Perfection as You Know Make Me Sick & Wicked: Persuasion,' addresses an infernal vision of high society, where blasted hopes and mercenary ambition collide in a grotesque travesty of goodness. Critics are generally favorable, though several scholarly reviews raise significant methodological concerns. Loe, in Choice, offers a largely positive recommendation, praising the apt pairing of major fictional situations with relevant essays to explore the appropriateness of alliances, despite a skimpy bibliography. Benedict's review in SEL notes the text successfully highlights a shared, rambunctious passion for pleasure rather than mere stoicism. Wilson, in AJ, commends the energetic prose and close readings that illuminate common preoccupations with psychological realism, family pathologies, and early pre-Freudian insights into aggression and repression, though wishing for more engagement with feminist criticism. But academic assessments are more critical. Collins, in BJECS, finds the core argument unconvincing, noting the text is padded with repetition and an arbitrary deployment of specialized terminology that results in unusual readings of literary heroines. Johnston, in the Year’s Work in English Studies, delivers a critical evaluation, arguing that the study fails to tap rich sources of stylistic resemblance and relies on plot summaries and conjectural thematic derivations instead of firm evidence to support major claims of literary influence.
Theories of the Earth in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755): Samuel Johnson's Engagement with Early Science
Johnson deliberately fulfilled his Dictionary promise to include "whole processes of natural philosophy" through illustrative quotations. Analyzing selections from five physico-theological Earth scientific texts—including Burnet and Woodward—the study shows Johnson's choices were not random. He systematically documented the core tenets of the Diluvial theories, constructed a model of the ideal natural philosopher, and edited the prose to create a plainer, more authoritative tone, ensuring the Dictionary served as a source of useful scientific knowledge.
Miruton no tame no bengo: Kekkon ni tsuite no Bairon no shiku o megutte
Kumamoto Daigaku Eigo Eibungaku/Kumamoto Studies in English Language and Literature
'Men of Print': Pope, Young, Johnson, and the Augustan 'Man of Letters'
Snead revisits the Augustan "man of letters" through late works by Pope, Young, and Johnson. It argues that the figure is a self-consciously provisional construct, a "man of print," attempting to fashion authority within a commercialized marketplace. The final chapter focuses on Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1779-81), characterizing his biographical practice as a "patchwork" or "scrappy" method resisting unified, teleological narratives. The work foregrounds how literary reputation relies on accidents, social relations, and the arbitrary decisions of "distributors of literary fame." Johnson's inclusion of ancillary narratives, such as Settle's obscure life and the tyranny over Milton's daughters, denaturalizes the "Myth of the Poet," demonstrating that literary greatness does not guarantee heroic status. The final pages examine Johnson’s complex relationship with Pope, recognizing Pope's control over his posthumous image in print. The project critiques academic literary studies for constructing monolithic versions of the eighteenth-century author to suit its own historical needs.
Some Remarks on the Progress of Learning: A New Preface by Samuel Johnson
'The Meer Gift of Luck': A Tale of Lottery Addiction in Rambler 181
The history of lotteries in England and Samuel Johnson's Rambler 181, the story of one man's addiction to playing the lottery is presented. The moral implications of the story are analyzed.
Justice argues that Johnson integrates educational institutions and pedagogical failures into the literary marketplace through Rasselas. While Johnson once attempted a career as a schoolmaster, physical mannerisms and a lack of a degree hindered his success in institutional education. Justice challenges the view of Rasselas as a merely didactic or monological work, contrasting it with the earlier Vision of Theodore. Instead, the article presents the narrative as a sophisticated response to the eighteenth-century novel, one that replaces autocratic tutors with a complex model of distance education. Justice examines how Imlac functions as an unconventional mentor who avoids direct inculcation, favoring a dialogue that promotes independent critical reflection. By ridiculing the figure of the impotent professor and the "great sage," Johnson disputes the efficacy of rhetorical sound in favor of lived experience and self-knowledge. The discussion concludes that Johnson advocates for a democratic, reflective education accessible to women and different races, represented by Nekayah's wish for a women's college. Justice concludes that the work encourages resistance to passive obedience and self-delusion through active engagement with the world.
Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science Series
Linguistic Accommodation: The Correspondence between Samuel Johnson and Hester Lynch Thrale
Bax applies Communication Accommodation Theory to the reciprocal correspondence of Johnson and Thrale from 1765 to 1784. The analysis identifies three primary modes of convergence: content, lexical, and syntactic. Thrale converges to Johnson through content by adopting his technique of literary allusion to nurture their relationship and seek intellectual approval. Conversely, Johnson converges lexically and syntactically, moderating his typical Latinate, polysyllabic Ramblerian style to match Thrale's colloquial, paratactic preferences. This linguistic behavior reflects Johnson's financial and emotional dependence on the Thrales and his desire to "please" by "forbearing to oppose" the prejudices of his addressee. Bax notes that while Thrale adopts Johnson's use of allusions, she maintains her own lexical identity to avoid the costs of losing her "personal and social identity."
Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities
Exemplary Aberration: Samuel Johnson and the English Canon
Deutsch explores how eighteenth-century paradigms constructed genius as a form of disability, focusing on Samuel Johnson as a primary case of "exceptional individuality." By analyzing contemporary accounts and portraits by Joshua Reynolds, Deutsch argues that Johnson's "convulsive starts and odd gesticulations" challenged the period's emerging scientific classifications and fixed concepts of character. Contemporaries like Lord Chesterfield and Thomas Campbell often reduced Johnson to a "Hottentot" or "amiable Monster" whose physical tics and "senseless face" violated social hierarchies. Deutsch contends that this pathologization of genius remains central to the English canon, which she describes as a "catalog of authorial monsters." Through an archaeological examination of Johnson's bodily difference, Deutsch seeks to restore social and ideological ambiguity to the cultural memory of his authority. She emphasizes that Johnson's status as an icon depends on a disavowal of the very physical aberrations that marked him as an "exemplary aberration" in his time.
'He Hates Much Trouble': Johnson's Life of Swift and the Contours of Biographical Inheritance in Late Eighteenth-Century England
Scanlan examines Johnson’s Life of Swift as a notoriously problematic representation that has shaped Swift scholarship since the late eighteenth century. Scanlan attempts to bridge the gulf between Johnsonians and Swiftians by offering an overview of Johnson’s working approach and his use of sources such as Orrery, Delany, and Hawkesworth. The article argues that Johnson’s biography is often "unsatisfying" and "hopelessly biased," reflecting Johnson’s personal "prejudice against that extraordinary man" and his dislike of Swift’s "repugnant conceptions of humanity." Scanlan identifies real weaknesses in Johnson’s writing, noting instances where Johnson erases or minimizes his best biographical habits when applied to Swift. The text suggests that Johnson’s habit of "generalizing himself into a prototype of the author" yields little biographical value for illuminating Swift’s life. Scanlan concludes that while Johnson’s authority as a "literary legislator" directs the conversation, his methods proved less insightful due to his resistance to Swift's singularity.
Samuel Johnson's Menagerie: The Beastly Lives of Exotic Quadrupeds in the Eighteenth Century
Allen investigates eighteenth-century natural history through the "zoological lens" of the 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. The monograph provides a "bestiary" of seventy-one exotic quadrupeds, reproducing Johnson's encyclopedic definitions alongside an analysis of his primary sources, including Augustin Calmet, the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, and John Hill. Allen explores the conceptual frameworks that shaped contemporary understanding, specifically the "Great Chain of Being" and Aristotelian "dispositions," while documenting the era's "thriving trade in exotic animals." The text describes the physical presence of animals in the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London and Versailles, noting how creatures like the rhinoceros and "half-reasoning elephant" were viewed as both "curiosities" and "status symbols." By synthesizing lexicographical evidence with accounts from travelers like Walter Raleigh and naturalists like Thomas Pennant, Allen details the "uneasy blend of sentimentality" and "impertinent cruelty" that characterized human-animal interactions. The volume concludes with biographical notes on Johnson's circle and a discussion of early comparative anatomy, positioning the Dictionary as a pivotal record of an age struggling to "grasp the principles of every thing" before the Darwinian revolution.
Johnson and Politics: The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination
Scherwatzky argues that Johnson’s political thought is fundamentally concerned with the "dangerous prevalence of imagination," a psychological phenomenon that drives political speculation and unrest. Through a reading of Idler 10 and The False Alarm, Scherwatzky demonstrates how Johnson satirizes "political zealots" like Tom Tempest and Jack Sneaker for substituting fictive fears and hopes for empirical evidence. Scherwatzky explains that Johnson views political ideas as abstract representations prone to rhetorical manipulation, which encourages individuals to externalize inner restlessness. Johnson emphasizes that "the true state of every nation is the state of common life," urging a focus on daily duties over fleeting controversies. By equating political "second sight" with superstitious thinking, Johnson attempts to detach his audience from the excitement of events like the Wilkes controversy. Scherwatzky asserts that Johnson’s skepticism toward political speculation underscores an epistemological concern: perception is rarely objective, and political systems, as human creations, cannot secure the lasting happiness that the imagination falsely promises.
A Reading of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Discourse of Transition: Johnson, the 1750s, and the Rise of the Middle Class
Hudson argues that Johnson’s works from the 1750s, particularly the Dictionary and Rasselas, articulate a "discourse of transition" reflecting the rise of the middle class. Hudson disputes traditional views of Johnson as a mere "Tory" or "Jacobite," suggesting instead that Johnson aligns with a "middle-rank" consciousness that sought to distinguish itself from both aristocratic privilege and the "vulgar" masses. Examining Adventurer 115 and the "Happy Valley" in Rasselas, Hudson shows how Johnson treats commercial expansion as a civilizing force that promotes social and political progress. Hudson explains that Johnson's alliance with City merchants against Whig ineptitude during the Seven Years' War was temporary; Johnson ultimately broke with these "proto-radical" allies when their growing "impudence" threatened social stability. The article contends that Johnson used his literary authority to define a professional, merit-based identity that rejected feudal subordination. Hudson identifies Johnson as a pivotal figure who helped normalize a socioeconomic evolution where "money rules over rank" and human potential is realized through "art and labour."
Samuel Johnson: Latitudinarian or High Churchman?
Chapin concludes that Johnson functions as a high churchman who adheres to the central Anglican tradition of Hooker and the Book of Common Prayer. While Boswell correctly identifies Johnson's high church principles, Chapin illustrates how Johnson's outlook is ecumenical, prioritizing fundamental Protestant beliefs over divisive doctrines. The article examines Johnson’s use of Hooker in the Dictionary to instruct readers in orthodox sacramental and eucharistic theology. Chapin distinguishes Johnson’s position from low church memorialism, noting that Johnson acknowledges the supernatural influence of grace in the sacrament. Johnson defends the temporal interests of the Church of England while remaining doctrinally inclusive.
Fathers, Mothers and Mentors: Mentoring Relationships in the Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson
Lee examines mentoring's formative role in Johnson's career and psychological development. This study applies modern developmental psychology, primarily theories of Daniel Levinson and Kathy Kram, to analyze Johnson's relationships with figures such as Cornelius Ford, Richard Savage, Oliver Goldsmith, and Hester Thrale Piozzi. Lee argues that Johnson's early encounter with Ford offered a "symbolic rebirth" that stimulated authorial ambition and facilitated separation from his family. The subsequent relationship with Savage, though often negative, provided an "inverted mentor" whose tragic self-delusion helped Johnson discover his "master topic," the vanity of human wishes. This dissertation highlights the structural parallels between mentoring and archetypal parent-child relationships, noting how mentoring sites become areas of "tremendous psychic power." Lee claims that Johnson's later role as a "public monitor" of wisdom reflects an idealized conception of mentoring, though his "restless, irresistible urge to dominate" often complicated these associations. By scrutinizing key texts like Rasselas and the Life of Savage, Lee demonstrates how mentoring dynamics shaped Johnson's mature philosophical vision and his identity as a "literary monitor" to his age. Chapter 1, 'A Theory of Mentoring,' establishes a conceptual framework by synthesizing Kram’s organizational mentoring functions with Levinson’s psychosocial stages of adult development. It defines mentoring as a transformative process facilitating entry into social communities. Chapter 2, '"Panting for a Name": Cornelius Ford, "Non Usitata," and the Ambitions of Authorship,' argues that Johnson's first mentor stimulated his literary Dream and facilitated a symbolic second birth by distancing him from his biological father. Chapter 3, 'Richard Savage, the Life of Savage, and Johnson's Mature Philosophical Vision,' addresses how Savage's negative example refined Johnson’s authorial identity and catalyzed his central theme, the vanity of human wishes. Chapter 4, '"A guide, a father, and a friend": Oliver Goldsmith, Rasselas, and Johnson's Mentoring at Mid-life,' explores Johnson’s transition to the mentor role, presenting an idealized mentoring model in Rasselas while noting potential authorial dominance. Chapter 5, 'The "affection of a parent and the reverence of a son": The Collision of Mentoring and Mothering in Hester Thrale Piozzi's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson,' analyzes how the subversion of mentoring by maternal and filial needs eventually enabled Thrale’s independent authorship.
Thomas Holt-White on Johnson's Lives of Prior and Milton
Sherbo discusses in detail the attacks made by Thomas Holt-White on Samuel Johnson's book "Lives of the Poets."
Betwixt Two Ages Cast: Milton, Johnson, and the English Renaissance
Lynch investigates the historical periodization that places John Milton as the "last great writer of the English Renaissance" while his contemporaries are assigned to the "long eighteenth century." Lynch notes that this categorization was made possible by Johnson and other eighteenth-century critics who sought to universalize Milton while rejecting strict historicism. Johnson defined "age" in his Dictionary as both a century and "any period of time," reflecting the flexibility of these eras. Lynch describes how Milton's rapid transformation into a "vernacular classic" preceded even Shakespeare's. Lynch argues that this periodization served the cultural needs of eighteenth-century writers to define their own modernity against the "last age."
On the periodization of Milton’s major works, written in the Restoration but treated as Renaissance texts.
Dr. Johnson Eats His Words: Figuring the Incorporating Body of English Print Culture
Sorensen explores the relationship between Johnson’s Dictionary and the "incorporating body" of eighteenth-century print culture. Johnson tropes the mouth as a site of "capricious" oral destabilization, gendering linguistic "corruption" as female and identifying "Scotticisms" as marks of an inescapably embodied "Other." In contrast, print offers a "prophylaxis" of disembodied, "pedagogic" national language accessible primarily to propertied English men. Sorensen analyzes how Scots detractors like Robert Fergusson and Archibald Campbell countered this "lexical abstraction" by re-embodying Johnson through satirical imagery of oral consumption and expulsion. Campbell’s Lexiphanes specifically parodies Johnson as a "feminized" figure forced to "vomit up" his Latinate "hard words," thereby challenging the "partiality" of Johnson’s supposedly universal print standard.
Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson, and the Reception of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote in the Popular Press
Hanley examines Johnson’s role in an "informal coalition" that used the popular press to promote Lennox’s novel. Johnson persuaded Andrew Millar to publish the work and wrote a favorable, though "somewhat distorted," review in the Gentleman's Magazine. By misrepresenting Fielding's Covent-Garden Journal review as a pure "encomium," Johnson leveraged Fielding’s reputation to award Lennox prestige while avoiding dogmatic personal pronouncements. Hanley highlights Johnson’s "legendary willingness to act on behalf of literary friends" and his specific admiration for Lennox, whom he cited eleven times in his Dictionary.
Samuel Johnson: Dean of Contemporary Biographers
Drawing on his experiences as a biographer of Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Rebecca West, and Marilyn Monroe, Carl Rollyson suggests that Johnson's description of biography in The Rambler, No. 60 is still far ahead of what biographers and many of their critics conceive of as biography. Johnson saw biography as delightful, useful, and central to the Enlightenment, providing access to universal human truths by exploring the "domestick privacies" and "minute details" of daily life, which allow readers to empathize. Rollyson argues that Johnson's vision, which advocates for impartiality over censorship and the timely recording of a life before the "incidents which give excellence... escape the memory," has been regrettably rejected by modern critics.
Berglund analyzes Johnson's use of allegory and personification, arguing he privileges a concise, clear rhetorical tool over extended, "dark" conceits. Johnson's critical writings, including the Lives of the Poets, consistently favor limited personification that reinforces meaning, viewing extended allegory as structurally flawed or dangerous because it leads to "suspension of judgment." The allegories in The Rambler, particularly the allegorical histories, function as "excursions of fancy" to instruct by pleasing, reiterating literary critical points and exposing the failure of literary ideals against human nature.
Reading Samuel Johnson 'Anew': Hester Thrale's Private, Social, and Public Views of Samuel Johnson
DeLuca employs reader-response theory to examine how Hester Thrale "read" Samuel Johnson through her private diaries, social correspondence, and public memoirs. The central argument challenges traditional biographical portrayals of Thrale as a "flawed friend" or "frivolous" woman, instead positioning her as an increasingly "informed reader" whose expectations of Johnson narrowed due to his "resistance to her attempts to cross over from the social to the private sphere." DeLuca argues that Johnson’s refusal to acknowledge Thrale's individual identity—treating her primarily as a "governess," "correspondent," or the wife of Henry Thrale—led to a "justifiable and an ever-increasing disappointment." By analyzing Thraliana and extant correspondence, DeLuca demonstrates that Thrale's break with Johnson in 1784 was the culmination of a long process of disillusionment rooted in Johnson’s failure to provide reciprocal emotional intimacy or support during personal crises. The study identifies Gabriel Piozzi as a "new receptive reader" who offered the "community of ideas" Thrale sought. Ultimately, DeLuca corrects the "distorted image of Thrale" by illustrating that she remained respectful of Johnson’s genius while asserting her independence from his control over her "literary posterity."
Diminutive Observations in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Johnston analyzes Samuel Johnson’s concept of "diminutive observations" in his Journey, exploring his hesitation in incorporating seemingly trivial details into serious writing and the tension such details create with traditional literary dignity. Johnson justifies this focus by asserting that understanding everyday life and minor "incommodiousness" is crucial to comprehending the "true state" of a nation, famously stating that "the true state of every nation is the state of common life." Referencing Freud’s theory of diminutives as indirect representations, Johnston argues that Johnson uses tiny details to express whole national characteristics, identifying a "simultaneously criticising and commending" habit in Johnson’s thinking where the small-minded equate the diminutive with insignificance, while true greatness stoops to elevate it. The essay explores the complex relationship Johnson identifies between the small, the commonplace, and literary dignity, considering linguistic nuances and the influence of classical rhetoric on eighteenth-century attitudes towards the "little" in literature. Johnson handles the journey metaphor with care, anatomizing progress into body parts like "every eye" to show how wider prospects promote division among finite beings, a connection to his broader views on knowledge, human finitude, and social observation. Johnston disputes the notion that Johnson simply reflects a "loss of a general view," suggesting instead that his hesitant focus on domestic details challenges established criteria for literary inclusion and uses the Scottish leisure for "small things" to measure their progress toward civilized society.
Later developed into a chapter of Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking.
Samuel Johnson: The Return of the Jacobites and Other Topics
Folkenflik's review essay examines various recent works on Johnson and Boswell, focusing on the contemporary debate about Johnson's political and religious affiliations, specifically the revisionist claims that he was a Jacobite and Nonjuror. Folkenflik disputes Jonathan Clark's provocative and controversial claim that Johnson’s cultural politics were driven by a Jacobite agenda, arguing that Clark ignores evidence such as Johnson’s description of nonjuring as a perversity of integrity. Instead, Folkenflik (and others) prefers John Cannon’s characterization of Johnson as an "anti-Whig." The review praises DeMaria’s Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading for its meticulous study and scholarly rigor regarding Johnson’s reading practices, and commends Bruce Redford’s Hyde Edition of the letters. While Folkenflik finds Pat Rogers’s encyclopedia an accurate consensus-based resource, he finds Rogers’s book on the Scottish tour disappointing and repetitious. Finally, the article discusses new electronic and manuscript editions, including the Dictionary and the Major Authors CD-ROM, noting their utility as concordances despite occasional transcription errors, and examines the complexity revealed by Marshall Waingrow’s edition of the Life of Johnson manuscript. Additional reviews in the essay cover Thomas Reinert’s study of crowds and Donald J. Newman’s psychological interpretations of Boswell.
'A Great Affinity in Many Things': Further Evidence for the Jacobite Gloss on 'Swedish Charles'
MacKenzie defends Erskine-Hill's controversial thesis that Johnson's portrait of Charles XII in The Vanity of Human Wishes carried a "Jacobite gloss," evoking Charles Edward Stuart. Drawing on contemporary texts like James Ray’s Compleat History of the Rebellion and The Female Rebels, MacKenzie argues that the analogy between the two Charleses was a common, politically charged trope in the 1740s, not just an anti-Jacobite imputation. The article identifies a "great affinity" between the Swedish king and Jacobite interests, suggesting that Johnson’s portrayal is steeped in political subtext. MacKenzie disputes interpretations that view Charles XII as a purely moral or non-partisan figure, noting that hostility to "invading Goths" was a common Whig trope that Johnson complicates. The study examines definitions from Johnson’s Dictionary to show how terms like "truffle" and "stone" reflect political allegiances, maintaining that Johnson’s "twofold vision" allows for a human reading of the poem that simultaneously acknowledges its deep roots in Jacobite sympathy. By contextualizing the "Swedish Charles" passage within the political climate of 1746–1749, MacKenzie reinforces the argument that the prevalence of this analogy in popular political discourse made the sympathetic association plausible to Johnson's readers, regardless of its negative martial connotations, and that the poetry operates as a site of rustic patriotism and coded loyalty.
Contemporary Attitudes toward Biography and the Case of Walter Jackson Bate's Samuel Johnson
Mahoney explores the contemporary academic skepticism toward literary biography, positioning this trend within a broader cultural "crisis of the word." It contrasts the postmodern view of biography with Johnson's foundational belief in a discernible, uniform human nature and the genre's utility and delight. The analysis then focuses on Walter Jackson Bate's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Johnson, a work that successfully blends rigorous scholarship with imaginative storytelling, achieving definitive status for both specialists and a general readership despite the prevalent theoretical objections.
Bāmingamu daigaku Eibungaku-ka Jonson sentā no gaiyō
Thinking of Italy, Making History: Johnson and Historiography
Insalaco refutes the misconception that Johnson was "antihistorical," arguing he developed a coherent historiographical theory that anticipates modern methods. While Johnson critiqued romance-like narratives, his writings show a preference for "local history" and "microhistory," focusing on particular, quotidian details to reveal universal truths, rather than relying on grand metanarratives. Insalaco analyzes Johnson’s "Life of Paul Sarpi" as a prime example of this practice. Johnson uses the microhistory of the Venetian cleric to explore the macrohistory of European religious and political conflict. This text demonstrates Johnson’s sophisticated, cosmopolitan approach to history, balancing local detail with universal moral application.
'Looking Before and After'?: Reflections on the Early Reception of Johnson's Critical Judgments
Mason and Rounce explore the passionate and polarized reception of Johnson’s criticism. They note that both detractors (like Joseph Warton) and admirers (like Edmond Malone) found Johnson’s judgments impossible to ignore, suggesting his formulations became inextricably attached to the works he critiqued. The authors reject common explanations for his controversial opinions, such as political bias or adherence to a "school of Pope." Instead, they argue Johnson’s critical power stems from its literary quality. Analyzing his praise for Dryden’s criticism and his definition of "genius" in the "Life of Pope," they conclude Johnson’s judgments endured by achieving a "latitude of comprehension."
The Unnarrated Life: Samuel Johnson, Female Friendship, and the Rise of the Novel Revisited
Geller contends that Boswell’s Life established a masculinist myth of Johnson, obscuring his "unnarrated life" as an active mentor and collaborator within a vibrant, mixed-gender literary community. Boswell’s satirical portrayal omitted or trivialized Johnson’s serious intellectual friendships (Piozzi, More), patronage (Lennox), and mentorship (Burney). Geller argues that situating Johnson within this female network reveals his profound influence on the domestic novel. Johnson’s thematic concerns—specifically the critique of marriage and the dangers of imagination articulated by Nekayah in Rasselas—provide a direct framework for the works of female novelists, including Lennox and Austen.
Conflicts of Principle in Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism
Davis analyzes the conflicts among Samuel Johnson's three fundamental critical principles: instruction, pleasure, and mimesis (imitation). The author argues that Johnson's criticism achieves a principled flexibility by recognizing and tolerating tensions between these elements. Chapters examine the struggles between instruction and pleasure (e.g., in Milton's Paradise Lost), imitation and pleasure (e.g., in romances and Fielding), and instruction and imitation (e.g., poetic justice and mixed characters). The work challenges critics who argue Johnson's judgments were based solely on principles or, conversely, on sensibility alone.
Samuel Johnson and Joseph Addison's Anti-Jacobite Writings
On Johnson’s extensive use of Joseph Addison's anti-Jacobite writings, particularly The Freeholder, in his Dictionary of the English Language. The large number of quotations from The Freeholder, a periodical explicitly directed against the Jacobite rebels of 1715, is seen as evidence that Johnson was a Tory but not a Jacobite. The explicit anti-Jacobite quotations on topics like a Catholic monarchy and passive obedience suggest he sided with the established Protestant succession and feared the social upheaval of a Catholic king.
Les Traditions des Highlanders: Des Superstitions qui ont réussi?
Prunier examines the evolving reputation of Highland beliefs, beginning with 18th-century accounts by Martin Martin and Edward Burt that dismissed such rites as "absurd" and "unreasonable." The narrative explores the religious dimensions of these beliefs, noting how Protestant ministers associated superstition with Catholicism and the "connivance" of priests. Prunier analyzes the specific case of "second sight," a phenomenon that even Enlightenment figures like Martin and Johnson found difficult to dismiss entirely. The text details how the rise of Macpherson’s Ossianic poetry and the Romantic movement transformed these "nuisances" into salient markers of Scottish identity. Prunier concludes that by the early 19th century, superstitions once viewed as signs of ignorance were elevated to the status of "venerated" national heritage.
Ironies of the Critical Past: Historicizing Johnson's Criticism
Smallwood argues that major twentieth-century histories of criticism (Saintsbury, Wellek, Cambridge History) distort Johnson by deterministically casting him as a "neoclassical" ideologue. This narrative framework forces historians to ignore textual evidence, such as Johnson’s profound imaginative response to King Lear or his nuanced rejection of "poetical justice." Smallwood demonstrates that these histories obscure Johnson's strong conceptual links to Romantic critics like Wordsworth regarding "nature" and "artificial diction." He contrasts this flawed historicism with Johnson’s own, found in the Preface to Shakespeare, which views the critical past not as progress but as an ironic, cyclical "motion without progress."
Cum Notis Variorum: Thomas Davies, Eighteenth-Century Commentator on Shakespeare: Marginalia and Published Notes
'The Structure of His Sentences Is French': Johnson and Hume in the History of English
Potkay elucidates Johnson's 1763 remark to Boswell that David Hume's style "is not English" but "French" in its structure. While some attribute this to Francophobia, Potkay argues Joseph Priestley's 1769 edition of The Rudiments of English Grammar provides the necessary grammatical context. Priestley catalogs Hume's specific "Gallicisms," including the idiomatic use of particles, adverb placement, and plural constructions. Despite Johnson’s lexicographic goal to defend the "Teutonick character" of English against "Gallick structure," Potkay demonstrates that Johnson’s own prose, such as in Rasselas, occasionally "nods" by employing similar French-influenced syntax. The article concludes that nineteenth-century critics like George Perkins Marsh eventually rejected both authors' styles as "too foreign" and "rootless" compared to a romanticized Saxon heritage.
Clingham examines the state of Johnsonian studies, arguing that the field has largely resisted engagement with contemporary literary theory. While scholarship on Johnson flourishes, it primarily operates within the liberal-humanist channels established by mid-century figures like Bate and Hagstrum, often reducing Johnson's complex thought to simplified doctrines. Clingham critiques influential readings (e.g., Hagstrum on Locke) for misrepresenting Johnson. He posits that Johnson's own "comprehensive" skepticism—his intellectual "resistance" to systems, exemplified in his famous King Lear note—is precisely what makes his work fertile ground for new theoretical engagement, challenging scholars to move beyond "comfortable certainty."
'This Instance Will Not Do': George Steevens, Shakespeare, and the Revision(s) of Johnson's Dictionary
Hailey investigates the collaboration between Steevens and Johnson during the 1773 revision of the Dictionary. Through a collation of the British Library copy annotated by Steevens, Hailey demonstrates that Johnson adopted approximately 10% of Steevens's suggestions. Steevens focuses on usage notes and textual corrections to Shakespearean quotations, leveraging his memory and antiquarian knowledge. Hailey highlights specific revisions, such as the etymology of 'Argosy' and the definition of 'Eisel,' where Steevens's notes directly prompt authorial changes. While Johnson accepts many corrections, he occasionally does so grudgingly, reflecting a reaction to Steevens's brusque editorial tone. Hailey disputes previous theories that these annotations post-date Johnson's death, arguing they represent an active stage of the 1773 revision process. The study underscores the deep cross-fertilization between Johnson's lexicography and his editions of Shakespeare.
Eighteenth-Century Genre and Culture: Serious Reflections on Occasional Forms: Essays in Honor of J. Paul Hunter
Dr. Johnson and the Case of Harry Fielding
Multicultural Perspectives: Johnson, Race, and Gender
Basker resists the persistent image of Johnson as a misogynist and racist, arguing this stereotype relies on "cultural forgetfulness." This distortion ignores both Johnson’s own radically progressive writings on race and gender, and the historical reception of his work by marginalized groups. Basker demonstrates that prominent women writers (like Wollstonecraft and Woolf) and leading abolitionists (like Henri Gregoire and Charles Sumner) read Johnson as a powerful advocate for female intellectual equality and racial justice. He urges a multicultural reassessment focused on this "Other Johnson" and proposes a mini-canon of his sympathetic works (e.g., Idler 81, "Misella").
Hawes defines Johnson's political thought as a "cosmopolitan nationalism," rejecting simplistic labels of "Little Englander" or "imperialist." Johnson championed a "soft" vernacular Englishness (via the Dictionary and Lives) while simultaneously challenging jingoism and imperial expansion. Hawes analyzes Johnson’s resistance to national mythmaking, particularly his critiques of fashionable primitivism in Gray's "The Bard" and the Ossian controversy. Johnson debunked Ossian not from Anglocentric bias, but as a critique of fraudulent, expansionist nationalism, just as he critiqued English Saxon revivalism (Percy’s Reliques). Ultimately, Hawes frames Johnson as an anticolonial thinker who resisted ethnic absolutism.
Fulford explores Thomas De Quincey's division between the literature of power and the literature of knowledge. The essay argues that De Quincey constructs a gendered aesthetic where readers surrender feminine sympathy to a masculine authorial sublime. In practice, however, De Quincey's autobiographical and critical texts challenge this theory. His writings reveal an intense anxiety of secondariness and a struggle for mastery against overmastering precursors like Milton and Wordsworth. This conflict manifests in critical biography, where De Quincey uses the aggressive Tory politics of Johnson to defeat revolutionary intellectualism. The analysis shows that De Quincey envisions criticism as a masculine combat, defending the literary realm through proxy violence while facing a deeper anxiety regarding feminine sympathy.
The True Story: Poetic Law and License in Johnson's Criticism
Mahoney examines Johnson's literary criticism as a quest for fidelity to truth, rooted in Lockean experienced reality and its moral implications. Johnson’s critical evaluation of poetry, including works by Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, reveals a dynamic interplay between "poetic law" and "license." His final judgment of a work rests on the degree to which imagination and emotion serve the larger purpose of truth and morality, showing a flexibility that tempers his adherence to universalizing principles.
Imitation and Plagiarism: The Lauder Affair and Its Critical Aftermath
Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism
Samuel Johnson Discovers the Arctic: A Reading of a 'Greenland Tale' as Arctic Literature
Horne disputes the characterization of Johnson as indifferent to the "intensity and detail of nature." Horne argues that Johnson's Greenland Tale (Ramblers 186 and 187) functions as a preface to the exploratory tradition of arctic literature. Using Hans Egede's A Description of Greenland as a primary source, Johnson incorporates specific "streaks" of arctic detail—such as narwhals, moss-gathering, and diviners—to achieve verisimilitude. Horne documents how Johnson contradicts Egede's romanticized view of "happy" indigenous people by applying his central theme of the vanity of human wishes to the Arctic. Horne notes that while Johnson Indulges a "learned curiosity" about the primitive, he eventually side-steps Rousseauian escapism to critique the corrupting influence of materialism. The essay connects Johnson’s conflicted view of the "noble savage" to his broader opposition to European imperialistic abuses. Horne concludes that Johnson's portrayal of the Arctic accurately mirrors modern socioenvironmental concerns regarding consumerism and environmental degradation.
Johnson and the Irish: A Postcolonial Survey of the Irish Literary Renaissance in Imperial Great Britain
Curley investigates Johnson’s lifelong engagement with Irish history, literature, and politics, framing the relationship within a postcolonial context and positioning him as an early promoter of Irish studies and the Gaelic Revival. In this monograph-length study, Curley examines Johnson's complex relationship with Ireland and its people, serving as a "sagacious and learned" supporter of Irish antiquarianism, most notably in his encouragement of Charles O'Conor's efforts to revive Gaelic learning before it faced extinction. Curley details Johnson’s interactions with numerous Irish figures (Orrery, Delany, Lucas, Maxwell, O'Conor, Leland, Burke, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Malone, Campbell), highlighting his influence particularly on O'Conor and exploring the ambivalent identities—colonial, Gaelic, patriot, unionist, émigré—of Johnson's Irish acquaintances against the backdrop of Ireland's burgeoning nationalism. Despite upholding Britain's imperial authority legally, Johnson consistently condemned the oppression of Irish Catholics under the penal laws, expressing fierce opposition to the "unnatural state" of Ireland, where a minority prevailed over the majority, and denouncing the "ten persecutions" of those laws. The article analyzes Johnson's role in the Ossianic controversy, where he served the Irish patriotic cause by exposing James Macpherson’s "grand hoax" of ancient Scottish epics, and examines his friendship with Thomas Campbell, whose Survey of the South of Ireland mirrored Johnson’s own travel reflections. Notwithstanding some personal resentments regarding Whiggish power politics, Johnson consistently defended Irish Catholics as genuine subjects entitled to the "laws and privileges of true subjects," with Curley maintaining that Johnson’s professional and personal ties fostered a burgeoning Irish literary renaissance within the British imperial framework.
Transgression in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Fakhoury examines the theme of transgression in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, analyzing the Prince's flight from the Happy Valley as a pivotal moment of breaking conventional bounds. The analysis details how this literal transgression is mirrored by philosophical and moral inquiries that challenge established norms and perceived limits of human happiness. The work explores the rhetorical and allegorical dimensions of Rasselas, demonstrating how the narrative structure and dialogue repeatedly confront the protagonists with the inherent limitations of human wishes and the universal search for contentment outside of confinement.
Intimations of Abolitionism in 1759: Johnson, Hawkesworth, and Oroonoko
Basker establishes Johnson's authorship of an anonymous 1759 Critical Review article of John Hawkesworth's adaptation of the play Oroonoko, a text definitively attributed to Johnson by David Fleeman. Contextualizing the review within Johnson's known anti-slavery sentiments, his concern for Francis Barber, and contemporary events involving enslaved Africans, Basker suggests Johnson reviewed the printed text rather than the performance to fulfill an obligation to Tobias Smollett, who had helped Johnson seek Barber's release from the Navy. The article highlights Johnson's radical insight into Hawkesworth's achievement, arguing that Johnson subtly presented the work as a sharp critique of slavery that exceeded the explicit anti-slavery aims of Hawkesworth or the play's earlier versions. By focusing his review almost exclusively on two scenes original to Hawkesworth—one depicting the psychology of slave rebellion and another featuring amorous "plaintive" songs illustrating the incompatibility of love and bondage—Johnson foregrounds these elements to humanize the captive population. This review, concentrated and anti-slavery in tone, reflects Johnson's broader hatred of "English cruelty" and his defense of "natural right to liberty." Basker concludes that Johnson recognizes the centrality of these themes long before the organized abolition movement, proving himself an "apologist for violent resistance to slavery" and a proponent of universal human dignity.
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Three More Books on Samuel Johnson [review of Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, by Lawrence Lipking; Johnson the Poet, by David F. Venturo; and Samuel Johnson's 'General Nature': Tradition and Transition in Eighteenth-Century Discourse, by Scott D. Evans]
'Downing Everybody': Johnson and the Grevilles
Rizzo analyzes the social dynamics and antagonistic relationship between Johnson and the aristocratic Greville family, framing it as a conflict between the emerging literary meritocracy and entrenched aristocratic privilege. Focusing on the "downing" style of conversation synonymous with Johnsonian wit, Rizzo details a celebrated meeting where Johnson "downed" Fulke Greville, an experience that encouraged his wife Frances’s subsequent imitation. Greville, expecting deference because of his rank and perceived literary talent, was infuriated by Johnson's measured critique of his Maxims (1756), particularly regarding language usage. Rizzo traces Greville's lifelong resentment and public attacks on Johnson's Dictionary and critical authority, viewing them as attempts to defend aristocratic control over taste and language against Johnson's perceived usurpation. The article uses accounts from Frances Burney and Susan Burney to illustrate these dinner-table power struggles, noting that Johnson’s interactions at Dodsley’s bookshop and the Burneys' home highlight a chasm of "repressed resentments" and ideological conflict. While the Grevilles often found Johnson's presence burdensome, they remained fascinated by his cultural authority. Rizzo explores Frances Greville's complex position, demonstrating how she leveraged Johnsonian aggression and the "downing" manner to challenge contemporary expectations of feminine docility, even depicting herself as a belligerent defender of women's intelligence in her unfinished novel.
Genre Criticism, Textual Strategy and différance: Historicizing Samuel Johnson's Writing of Private Lives
Formal Verse Imitation and the Rhetorical Principles of Imitation in the Neo-Latin Poetry of Samuel Johnson
Johnson's Neo-Latin poetry, while not strictly formal verse imitation, uses its rhetorical principles to engage in a moral and critical dialectic with classical and neo-Latin precursors. Johnson assumes the ethos of an antecedent poet, then reasserts his own Christian values. In "Γνώθι σεαυτόν," he mock-heroically contrasts his life with Aeneas and Scaliger, using allusion for self-mockery and perspective. In his Latin odes, he Christianizes the Horatian form, transforming it into a hymn celebrating dependence on a single God, allowing him to explore subjects he avoided in English verse.
Grossargues for Johnson's significant influence on Jane Austen, moving beyond traditional comparisons of style or morals to explore a shared psychological depth and satirical edge. Gross emphasizes Johnson's understanding of desire, frustration, aggression, and the complexities of family life, particularly the plight of unmarried women, evident in his periodical essays and Rasselas. Austen, familiar with Johnson's work, adopts and adapts his explorations of inward life, suppressed sexuality, and critiques of domestic pieties and patriarchal failures, creating heroines who navigate societal constraints while revealing profound psychological struggles akin to those Johnson analyzed.
Later developed into a book-length work with the same title.
Eddy and Barry praise the meticulous editing and emphasize its chronological arrangement, warning that it is a large and complicated book that will not satisfy those "in a hurry." The bibliography records Johnson's entire output, including complex entries like the Dictionary and Rasselas, the latter with translations in dozens of languages. The work is also noted for addressing issues of Johnson's canon by listing and assessing numerous tentative attributions to periodicals like the Gentleman's Magazine.
The Lexicographer's Task: Language, Reason, and Idealism in Johnson's Dictionary Preface
Gunn analyzes Samuel Johnson's 1755 Preface to the Dictionary as a "carefully wrought literary design" and a literary work embodying a tension between idealism and failure. This article asks how Johnson manipulates the "raw materials of lexicography" to articulate personal and philosophical meanings, arguing that he portrays lexicography as a rational endeavor imposing order on the "boundless chaos" of language through logic and analogy, which aligns it with virtue. Gunn suggests that Johnson views this process of having language "disentangled" through pure ratiocination as an emulation of the divine act of bringing order to the "formless infinite." This ideal vision, however, is constantly undercut by Johnson's acknowledgment of the task's impossibility because of language's inherent flux and complexity, as well as his own human limitations. The Preface weaves a personal narrative of struggle and celebrates language's material richness even amidst imperfection; while it concludes with a "grim and existential" view of life where success and failure are "empty sounds," Gunn suggests this turn actually intensifies the text's idealism. By persisting in his task despite "failure and annihilation," Johnson’s authorial presence becomes "nothing short of heroic," presenting perseverance in this flawed effort as a model for intellectual life.
Keymer reconstructs a "hypothetical biographical preface" for Smart, using Johnson's recorded conversations to explore the "conflicted nature" of his response to Smart’s genius and confinement. Although Johnson never wrote a formal "Life of Smart," his observations in Boswell’s Life—including the famous "louse and a flea" comparison—reveal a man fascinated by the coexistence of Smart's scholarship and derangement. Keymer argues that Jubilate Agno acts as a "direct repudiation of Johnsonian poetics," replacing generalized "large appearances" with a minute numbering of "the streaks of the tulip." Johnson's ruminations on Smart’s "madness" demonstrate a deep, "empathetic vulnerability," as he challenged the arbitrary eighteenth-century habit of discrediting deviant conduct as categorical insanity. Johnson saw Smart more as a "disrupter of decorums" than a lunatic, suggesting that Smart's "visionary madness" was a legitimate, if troubling, alternative to Enlightenment rationality.
Eighteenth-Century Literary History: An MLQ Reader
Reading Shakespeare's Novels: Literary History and Cultural Politics in the Lennox–Johnson Debate
Kramnick examines the 1753 controversy surrounding Lennox's Shakespeare Illustrated as a pivotal moment in the formation of the English vernacular canon. Kramnick argues that while Johnson collaborated on the project, his dedication to the work effectively demoted Lennox's "novelistic" criteria to protect Shakespeare's status as a masculine, transcendent authority. The article highlights how Lennox used "probability" to elevate the novel as a "third term" between romance and realism, often finding Shakespeare's plots "unnatural and absurd" compared to his prose sources. Johnson countered by dismissing "the naked plot" in favor of "universality" and a "map of life," yet Kramnick notes that Johnson's own defense of Shakespearean character converged with his conduct-book ideal for the novel. This debate illustrates how Johnson and Lennox navigated the "groaning of the press" under mass-market fiction to define literary value against an emerging female reading public.
Reprinted from MLQ (1994).
Jordan explores Samuel Johnson’s intense preoccupation with idleness, connecting his profound guilt regarding perceived indolence to eighteenth-century values and his personal psychology. The article argues that Johnson’s obsession mirrored his century's fixation on industry, as he dreaded idleness not merely as a sin but as a source of profound misery, boredom, melancholy, "vain imaginations," and potential madness. Jordan identifies three biblical texts—the night cometh, the parable of the talents, and the requirement of those to whom much is given—that haunted Johnson, who viewed time as a divine trust and a "deposit of his Creator" that must be profitably used toward salvation. This religious conviction, amplified by a keen sense of life's brevity, led Johnson to view constant activity, even trivial pursuits, as the sole means of "steadying his mind" against mental chaos; without meaningful work, his past seemed to "dissolve into oblivion," leaving only a "melancholy and shameful blank." Johnson’s guilt, especially over sleeping late, fostered a belief that he must fiercely try to "keep driving life on" because only activity could rescue time from the "circle of void and vacuity" and the "vacuity" fostered by inactivity.
King Sam: Om Samuel Johnson som kritiker
Chappell examines community as a central, recurring political theme in Johnson's major works, counterbalancing the rising social fragmentation caused by individualism and commercialization. Johnson critiques the oppression of women and focuses on various forms of community, including female, family, linguistic, and literary. He subverts authoritarianism by devolving responsibility onto the common reader, advocating that sociopolitical reform occur through altered individual consciousness and enlightened social practice.
'On the Margins of Eternity': A Reconsideration of Hope in the Writings of Samuel Johnson
Re-examines Johnson's concept of hope, arguing that his spiritual struggles and many works reflect a profound understanding of religious hope, often obscured by secular interpretations. It demonstrates that Johnson views hope not merely as a human passion or "vain, earthly hope" but as a theological virtue rooted in Scripture and Anglican tradition. The study analyzes various works, including Johnson's dissertation title phrase, his poems Spes and The Vanity of Human Wishes, the Dictionary's entry on hope and Rasselas, contrasting his perspective with critics like Wharton and examining his affinity for existential thinkers like Marcel.
Chatterton and Johnson: Authority and Filiation in the 1770s
Baines examines the symbolic and biographical overlap between Samuel Johnson and Thomas Chatterton, framing their relationship through the lens of Harold Bloom’s "family romance." Despite the traditional view of Johnson as a "castrating father" figure to the "pre-Romantic" Chatterton, Baines highlights significant commonalities, including shared provincial roots, early "madness," and the rejection of patronizing charity. Baines details Chatterton’s satiric "assassinations" of Johnson as a "pension'd" writer in works like Kew Gardens, contrasted with Johnson’s surprisingly appreciative view of the "whelp" as an "extraordinary young man." While Johnson famously exposed the Ossian forgeries, Baines notes his comparative hesitation in condemning Chatterton, suggesting a "paternal recognition" of a youth who shared his own early struggles with "belatedness." Baines argues that the Romantics fetishized Chatterton as a "marvellous Boy" to avoid the competitive struggle of a mature precursor, whereas Johnson’s reaction suggests a more inward identification with the young poet’s precocity and economic dependence.
Nature and the Choice of Life in Rasselas
Mayhew argues that in Rasselas, the "choice of nature" is a seductive and recurrent delusion that moral actors must reject to find lasting happiness. He analyzes chapters 19–22 as a unit that systematically deflates nature's power, ascending from the aesthetic (pastoral illusion) and sensate (luxurious garden) to the mental (natural knowledge of the hermit). Johnson's High-Church skepticism minimizes nature's role, showing that aesthetic pleasure is fleeting and empirical study quickly grows tiresome, leading only to ennui or mental delusion (the astronomer). The final error is the philosopher of nature's impious hubris—believing happiness lies in natural reason without faith. Johnson's position rejects a Latitudinarian view of nature as a foundation for faith, affirming that truth must be scripturally grounded.
Double Discourse: Narrative Artifice in Johnson's Life of Savage
The Revival of Learning: The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson
Lynch identifies Johnson as the most perceptive literary historiographer of the eighteenth century, through whose works flow the primary currents of contemporary thought regarding the English Renaissance. Eighteenth-century British thinkers defined their own cultural identity by comparison and contrast with "the last age," a nascent periodic conception of the fifteenth through the middle seventeenth centuries. Johnson used two dominant historiographical metaphors inherited from humanists such as Petrarch and Poliziano: a "privative" model characterizing the Middle Ages as a void marked by the absence of learning, and a "corruptive" model viewing that period as a positive evil that poisoned culture. By situating his own era as one that followed the "struggling to emerge from barbarity" seen in the age of Elizabeth, Johnson used these metaphors to codify a canon of vernacular classics. His historicist approach required that Shakespeare be read "not anachronistically but as a canon of works firmly situated in history," excusing supernatural elements like the "goblins of witchcraft" as products of a "childish age" and "intellectual infancy." Boswell similarly defended Johnson’s interest in the ghostly against charges of being "weakly credulous" by contextualizing such fascinations within historical and literary traditions.
The basis of The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson.
Poetic Envoi: Epistle of Mrs. Frances Burney to Dr. Samuel Johnson Regarding the Most Unfortunate Mr. Christopher Smart
Aviram provides a creative verse-epistle written in the voice of Frances Burney and addressed to Johnson, imagining a meeting between the two figures to discuss Smart's tragic trajectory. The poem features a "cameo appearance" by Smart's cat, Jeoffry, and explores the difficulty of using "wanton Words" to convey a religious faith in "things unseen." By framing the discussion through Burney, a junior member of Johnson's circle, Aviram meditates on the "encounters that constitute literary history" and the paradoxes of illumination that defined Smart's time in the madhouse and debtor's prison. This poetic envoi serves as a contemporary commentary on the historical periodization of the eighteenth century, questioning whether the "pagan" art of poetry can ever adequately serve a truly sacred vocation.
Sam's Love for Sam: Samuel Beckett, Dr. Johnson and Human Wishes
Löwe re-examines Beckett’s notes for Human Wishes, arguing that the project’s original focus on Johnson’s affection for Hester Thrale was abandoned earlier than previously recognized. Beckett shifted his focus toward the eccentric inhabitants of Johnson’s household, drawing heavily from Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Löwe disputes Beckett’s own claim that the play was abandoned due to linguistic difficulties with "impossible jargon," noting that the extant manuscript maintains "eighteenth-century elegance" and directly echoes Johnson’s speech. Specifically, Löwe identifies Beckett’s adaptation of Johnson’s comments on his cat, Hodge, and the "bottom of good sense" anecdote. Löwe argues that Beckett transposes Johnson’s despotic reaction to ridicule onto Mrs. Williams to mirror Johnson's own anxieties.
A Petty Writer: Johnson and the Rambler Pamphlets
Tankard examines Johnson’s Rambler (1750–52) by analyzing the material history and publication format of the original six-page folio pamphlets, challenging the tendency of modern scholarship to treat these essays as a unified book. The author argues that this original, ephemeral pamphlet form—characterized by quality paper, continuous pagination, and a two-penny price—is substantive rather than accidental, signaling an intention to be collected that created an ambiguity serving Johnson’s purpose. By situating Johnson within the "petty" world of periodical ephemera and the commercial realities of the mid-eighteenth-century London press, Tankard demonstrates how physical constraints influenced Johnson’s authorial persona and rhetorical strategies. This practice reflects Johnson's earlier work on the Harleian Miscellany (1744–46), where he defined pamphlets as vehicles for "tentative knowledge" and "speculations," showing "how the Mind has been opened by Degrees." Unlike the disposable, daily Spectator broadsheet, The Rambler enacts this theory; for instance, Johnson’s shift from accommodating the public in Rambler 1 to defying critics in Rambler 23 demonstrates the process of thought, embodying the "dailiness of moral inquiry" in an immediate relationship with the reader. Ultimately, the study explores the tension between the ephemeral nature of the format and Johnson's striving for "monumental" literary status, emphasizing that Johnson’s identity as a periodical writer was shaped by the "discontinuous and fragmentary" experience of contemporary readers who encountered his moral philosophy alongside advertisements and news.
Weinbrot explores Johnson’s extensive use of domestic metaphors to conceptualize national, political, and literary identities, challenging the perception of his style as uniformly Latinate and abstract. The article argues that Johnson frequently maps the virtues and vices of the private household onto the broader concerns of the state, viewing "the peace of a family" as a microcosm of social stability. By examining the Rambler, the Idler, and various political tracts, Weinbrot demonstrates that Johnson’s "domesticated" view of human nature served as a defense against radical political change and individualistic excess, using domestic metaphors rooted in the home and daily life to navigate eighteenth-century anxieties regarding hierarchy, subordination, and the British Constitution. Johnson’s prose is often monosyllabic (e.g., "drown whelps and kittens"), and his moral focus remains on the "true sphere of human virtue": the home. He employs domestic images—such as a mother weeping over her babe, "sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul," or "retailers of knowledge"—to provide "cunningly introduced" affective contrasts to his higher style, similar to Shakespeare's "multitudinous seas." This parallelism, which allows his moral vision to remain accessible and grounded, is often mistaken as purely Latinate but also derives from the Anglo-Hebrew tradition of the King James Bible. The narrative posits that Johnson’s insistence on private morality as the foundation for public welfare allows him to bridge the gap between the intimate and the institutional, revealing a writer who finds the most profound truths of human existence not in "grand theatre" but within the "narrow circle" of domestic life.
Downie disputes the assertions of J. C. D. Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill that Samuel Johnson’s politics are definitively established as Tory, Nonjuror, and Jacobite. Downie probes the evidence for these claims, particularly the assumption that Johnson's failure to graduate from Oxford was a "smokescreen" for refusing political oaths, arguing instead that it is "highly unlikely" Johnson avoided these oaths given his subsequent pursuit of usherships and interest in a seat in the House of Commons, both of which required swearing allegiance. Downie finds Johnson's definition of "Tory" ambiguous on divine right, noting Boswell's reports that Johnson based monarchy on long possession rather than jus divinum; he contends Johnson did not subscribe to the "divine right of kings," a "touchstone of Jacobitism," but was instead a conservative who believed in subordination as "conducive to the happiness of society." Downie considers the evidence for Johnson's Jacobitism contradictory and unproven, especially given Johnson's apparent acceptance of the Hanoverian succession under George III. He characterizes Johnson’s Toryism as unremarkable support for the legal prerogatives of the crown within the existing establishment, concluding that Johnson was fundamentally a conservative who supported the legal status quo.
Tools for the Embrace: An Ethical Consideration of 'Candide' and 'Rasselas'
Teaching Boswell's Life of Johnson
British Literature, 1640–1789: A Critical Reader
The Spirit of Ending in Johnson and Hume
Samuel Johnson's Intellectual Character as a Traveler: A Reassessment
Mayhew challenges the "modern" reassessment of Samuel Johnson as a "dynamic" thinker with a "fragmented" style, arguing instead that Johnson’s observations as a traveler reflect a stable "intellectual character" rooted in High-Church orthodoxy. This essay reassesses the Journey to the Western Islands, demonstrating that the work possesses immense "strongly structural control" which aligns with Johnson's forty-year theory of travel writing focused on "utility" and moral considerations. Mayhew shows how Johnson built his detailed descriptions (e.g., at Ostaig) according to a consistent, hierarchical pattern: moving from physical geography and agriculture to social structure and religion. The study disputes Radner’s view of Johnson’s "evolving compassion," suggesting instead that Johnson’s supposedly "evolving" or differing views on planting Scottish trees were consistent applications of pre-existent theological principles to different local conditions. By citing Johnson’s Dictionary and his debt to Robert Boyle, Mayhew aligns Johnson’s "nominalist view of nature" and rigorous empiricism with a High-Church, anti-Newtonian tradition that views nature as a passive resource, separate from divine revelation. The study concludes that Johnson’s observancy was not "secular" or "modern" but a variant of the "politics of observation" where the proofs of Christianity resided in scripture rather than the natural world.
Johnson's 'Vile Melancholy' and The Life of Savage
Bundock critiques Aaron Stavisky's argument linking Samuel Johnson's "vile melancholy" to masochism and a need for female control, disputing the hypothesis that these traits originated from a psychological need for bondage. Bundock re-examines the two primary pieces of evidence cited by Stavisky: Johnson’s Latin epigram for Molly Aston and the recurring behavioral patterns of Richard Savage. He argues that Stavisky misreads the epigram's context and meaning, asserting it was merely a "simple joke" regarding Aston’s Whiggish politics rather than a confession of psychological need. Furthermore, Bundock contends that the proposed six-stage pattern of intimacy followed by violence attributed to Johnson's portrayal of Savage's relationships—specifically with the Countess of Macclesfield, a prostitute, and Mrs. Read—is inconsistently applied, ill-defined, and fails to fit the narratives. Bundock concludes that these instances are "insubstantial" precursors that are inapplicable to Johnson's relationship with Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi), rendering Stavisky's psychoanalytic approach unproductive and failing to provide reliable insight into Johnson’s own psychological state.
The Doctor's Prescription [review of Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, by Lawrence Lipking, and Samuel Johnson, by Walter Jackson Bate]
Jarrett examines the tension between Johnson’s reputation as a conversationalist and his identity as an author, reviewing studies by Lipking and Bate. Jarrett notes that Boswell and Piozzi primarily documented Johnson’s later years, leading to an "eclipse of the writings by the talk." Lipking attempts to reintegrate these facets by analyzing the "self-enclosure" of the moral world in the Rambler and the "eerie dehumanization" in Human Wishes. Jarrett highlights Johnson’s "precarious but triumphant victory" over lifelong fears of insanity and poverty. While acknowledging Eagleton’s critique of Johnson as a "proletarianized hack," Jarrett argues that Johnson’s greatness lies in his refusal to be manipulated by political or aristocratic interests, contrasting his integrity with the "effective" but compromised hack work of Guthrie. The text also touches upon Johnson's complicated relationships with Boswell, who "sanitized" his subject, and Piozzi, who preserved evidence of Johnson's mental distress through "fetters and padlocks."
Doctor Johnson's Autopsy; or, Anecdotal Immortality
Reviews the 1784 post-mortem examination. Findings included distended lungs, an enlarged heart with ossified aortic valves, ascites, a hardened liver and spleen, a large gallstone, and a destroyed right kidney replaced by hydatids. This evidence strongly indicates congestive heart failure, likely resulting from severe, untreated hypertension. Death was probably precipitated by infection or arrhythmia following deep, self-inflicted scarification for dropsy.
Writing to Mr. Rambler: Samuel Johnson and Exemplary Autobiography
Berglund analyzes Johnson's use of fictional autobiographical letters in The Rambler, arguing they serve as exemplary narratives to impart moral instruction. Johnson invented these confessions, deviating from the popular Spectator model, to ensure the moral utility of the narratives remained intact and subject to his authorial control. The letters model self-critical readers who, through writing, affirm moral autonomy and discover the value of their experiences as advice for others. The narratives, such as Victoria's, typically follow a formula: a flawed education leads to misfortune, prompting an epiphany and commitment to mental improvement and charitable writing.
'The Sound Must Seem an Eccho to the Sense': An Eighteenth-Century Controversy Revisited
During the eighteenth century, a controversy breaks out concerning the extent to which poets can use sound effects to mimic the subject-matter of their lines. Its catalyst is provided by Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism," which advocates that 'The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense'. That this principle is a valuable one, and that Pope's lines actually demonstrate it, are challenged by Samuel Johnson on the basis that sound enactment infringes the canon of regular numbers. In the later decades of the eighteenth century, several commentators, including Lord Kames, Joseph Priestley, and James Beattie, enter the controversy. Gradually a new conception of sound enactment emerges in which such effects become understood in terms of an affective rather than an imitative aesthetic.
Reading the 'Religious' Language of Samuel Johnson's Sermons
Rhetorical devices and 'religious' language in Samuel Johnson's Sermons are discussed. Topics include Johnson's deviations from conventional sermon style, the relation of his sermons to his general aesthetic principles and skeptical tendencies, and the beliefs reflected in his sermon style.
The Biblical Quotations in Johnson's Dictionary
Nagashima provides a systematic investigation of biblical quotations in the first edition of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755), correcting previous partial tallies by Freed and Wimsatt. using the CD-ROM edition for primary data, Nagashima identifies a corrected total of 4,617 biblical citations across the Old Testament (2,942), New Testament (1,103), and Apocrypha (572). The analysis reveals frequent mechanical and clerical errors by amanuenses, including missing chapter and verse references, missing verse numbers, and misattributions of books. Nagashima disputes earlier scholarly claims that Johnson avoided concordances in the first edition, providing "palpable trace" and proof of Johnson's reliance on Cruden’s Concordance for specific definitions—such as the definition of "Child"—and for entries derived from or attributed to "Calmet." However, Nagashima emphasizes Johnson’s independent philological vigilance and rigor, noting his "standardization" of spelling and his selective truncation or alteration of sacred texts to identify "Grammatical Collocations" (phrasal verbs), a task Cruden could not have aided. The study concludes that Johnson perused the Bible with a "keen linguistic sensitivity" to identify idiomatic collocations and Hebraisms, establishing him as a precursor to modern scientific lexicography who used the Bible as a linguistic source rather than merely a religious one.
Samuel Johnson's Life Experience with Poverty
Korshin analyzes Samuel Johnson's relationship with poverty, challenging the "romantic visions" of his early hardships and arguing that his economic situation from the late 1720s to the late 1730s was not as dire as hearsay suggests. The article distinguishes Johnson's personal experience of "distressed gentility" and temporary lack of funds from the severe destitution faced by the eighteenth-century poor, noting that Michael Johnson was a respectable bookseller whose retail stock was worth "equivalent to $8,000 to $10,000" in modern terms. This background enabled Samuel to matriculate at Oxford with an unusually large undergraduate library, a fact Korshin uses to contend that Johnson's perceptions of poverty were based more on "observation than from his own personal experience with want," leading to views that were "not always completely acute." Korshin traces Johnson's economic path, noting crucial support from his pension and the Thrales, while also examining his writings on the subject. He highlights Johnson's differentiation between genuine need ("real poverty") and mere discontent ("imaginary calamity"), as well as his critical review of Soame Jenyns’s attempts to minimize poverty's hardships. While Johnson later dispensed alms with "radical charity," Korshin asserts he remained reluctant to accept it himself, maintaining a posture that distanced him from the "unsupported indigence" he witnessed.
Thomas Wolfe and Samuel Johnson: An Unlikely Pair
Strauss argues for surprising and noteworthy parallels between Thomas Wolfe and Samuel Johnson, despite their obvious differences as an arch-romantic and a neo-classicist. Both left provincial towns for the metropolis to seek literary fame, faced initial setbacks, and found it impossible to "go home again." The core parallel is a shared sense of profound "hunger," which for Wolfe is an admirable, emotional, and spiritual striving, and for Johnson, a dangerous "hunger of imagination" that must be resisted, yet causes both writers untold frustration and suffering.
'What Do You Read My Lord?': Samuel Johnson Quoting Jonathan Swift
'The Air of a Porter': Lichtenberg and Lavater Test Physiognomy by Looking at Johnson
Berland examines the late eighteenth-century "renaissance" of physiognomy and the debate between Johann Caspar Lavater’s "scientific" physiognomy and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s skepticism, using Samuel Johnson’s homely visage as a primary test case and site of contention. Lichtenberg, a skeptical physicist, challenged Lavater’s "physiognomania" and the Platonic link between outward beauty and inward virtue by citing Johnson, arguing that he had "the air of a porter" despite his intellectual genius. Lichtenberg used Johnson to demonstrate that outward beauty is not a reliable sign of inward beauty and that physiognomical judgment is fundamentally unreliable. Conversely, Lavater defended his method and countered through a circular, deductive re-examination of portraits of Johnson, claiming that an "accomplished observer" could discern infallible "signs of sagacity and meditation"—such as horizontal eyebrows, a downward-inclining nose, and mouth contours—even in Johnson’s massive roughness. Berland argues that Lavater’s analysis was fundamentally unscientific and intuitive, as Lavater "accommodates the visual details to his argument" based on prior knowledge of Johnson’s character; he either selected details to confirm his a priori knowledge of Johnson’s genius or blamed the artist’s execution when visual evidence contradicted his intuition. Ultimately, the study highlights how Johnson’s "porter"-like appearance served as a critical site for testing the boundaries between empirical observation and "physiognomania," questioning whether physical traits can accurately reflect "the truth of the character."
Proceedings of the First Annual John Gardner Conference
Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gardner on Nickel Mountain
'The Next Insurrection': Johnson, Race, and Rebellion
Basker argues that Samuel Johnson's opposition to slavery evolved into explicit support for violent slave resistance, identifying Johnson as an apologist for racial violence who used his writings to advocate for slave resistance. Analyzing Johnson’s toast "Here's to the next insurrection," Basker suggests the word "next" indicates Johnson's awareness of frequent rebellions, a "shared awareness" supported by a survey of the Gentleman's Magazine (1737–1773) which reported numerous uprisings globally. Basker traces this theme through Johnson's writings, including "Life of Drake," Life of Savage, Introduction to The World Displayed, Idler 81, and Taxation No Tyranny. These works reveal Johnson's consistent sympathy for, and justification of, violent self-liberation by enslaved Africans and other colonized peoples against European imperialism and cruelty. Basker argues that over his career, Johnson shifted from a general opponent of slavery to a supporter of violent insurrection, notably in his 1775 pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny, where he recommended arming slaves to "plunder a plantation." This vision of vengeance reflected a climate where universal insurrection seemed a "real possibility." Basker concludes that Johnson’s advocacy for armed resistance a century before Harper’s Ferry makes him a vivid example of history being "shaped from beneath."
Samuel Johnson and the Snares of Poverty
Stock examines Samuel Johnson's ethical concerns regarding the "palpable" nature of sin and its relation to economic hardship, identifying potential "snares" in understanding his nuanced position. Stock notes Johnson's personal experience and compassion but also his occasional reliance on stereotypes, such as the cheerful poor traveler in Vanity of Human Wishes. The article argues that for Johnson, circumstances like poverty "cannot absolve" an individual from guilt, as "sincere repentance" remains the primary aim for the soul; he viewed the "brutality" and "licentiousness" of the poor not with romantic sympathy but as a "corruption" of character that reason must ameliorate. Stock highlights Johnson's strong critique of theoretical justifications for poverty, exemplified in the Soame Jenyns review, while asserting that Johnson's fear of "outer darkness" was a constant driver of his moral rigor, leading him to treat his own failings and those of his subjects with equal severity. Finally, Stock suggests Johnson consciously worked to avoid the mental snares of cynicism and ingratitude by cultivating wonder, gratitude, and a belief in ultimate justice, despite acknowledging poverty's severe moral and psychological dangers. This "existential view" placed the struggle for virtue above all material considerations.
Johnson's London in Context: Imitations of Roman Satire in the Later 1730s
Kupersmith surveys the satiric imitations of Juvenal and Horace appearing in the late 1730s to provide a context for Samuel Johnson’s London (1738), placing it among other non-Popeian imitations of Roman satire. The article examines works including George Ogle’s Of Legacy-Hunting (1737), a non-political satire concerning a private will dispute; William Hamilton of Bangour’s Horatian imitation (1737), which strongly supports the thesis of a Jacobite link as Hamilton was an active Jacobite; Joseph Turner’s imitation (1738), which suggests "Wiggish Jacobitism"; and the anonymous State of Rome (1739), a plagiarized anti-Walpole attack. Kupersmith argues that London stands out for its technical mastery and intense political invective against Sir Robert Walpole’s administration, relating urban crime and governmental incompetence through rigid yet forceful couplets. The analysis shows how Johnson adapts Juvenal’s Third Satire to the English scene, replacing Greeks with flattering Frenchmen and echoing nationalistic themes of decline from the age of Edward III. While opposition satires like London appealed to Jacobites, Kupersmith disputes the claim that the genre was exclusively theirs, noting that anti-Walpole sentiment spanned a wide political spectrum and was used by opposition Whigs as well. Although Johnson’s professional ambitions initially lay with his tragedy Irene, the success of London, published anonymously by Robert Dodsley, established him as a significant voice in literary opposition.
Johnson's 'Vile Melancholy': A Response to Bundock
Stavisky defends his "masochism hypothesis" regarding Samuel Johnson’s melancholy against Michael Bundock’s criticisms, arguing that the psychoanalytic approach remains "still necessary, because still useful" for comparing the patterns Johnson ascribed to Savage with his own responses in letters to Piozzi. Stavisky reaffirms the significance of Johnson's epigram for Molly Aston as revealing fear beneath joy related to dependency, and he restates his four-stage pattern derived from the Life of Savage—consisting of a need for intimacy, a provocative act, a demand for apology, and "violence" if refused. He maintains that this pattern applies to the Countess of Macclesfield, the prostitute, and Mrs. Read, while intentionally excluding male figures Savage quarreled with. Stavisky asserts that Johnson "proceeds to re-enact the sequence" in his own life, specifically in his bitter reaction to Mrs. Thrale’s remarriage announcement and his famous letter of 2 July 1784. Because Piozzi refused to "admit guilt" regarding her marriage, Stavisky argues the interaction fits the established psychological profile, concluding that Bundock’s rejection ignores the "autobiographical implications" of Johnson's work and his documented need for control in his most intimate relationships.
'Do Not, My Love, Burn Your Papers': Samuel Johnson and Frances Reynolds: A New Document
This essay examines the close, intimate friendship between Samuel Johnson and Frances "Renny" Reynolds, sister of Sir Joshua Reynolds, by analyzing a newly discussed letter and an edited, previously unpublished religio-philosophic poem that illuminate their bond. Ashmore introduces and transcribes this poem, focusing on Johnson’s editorial process and his specific use of "lake and gum" red ink to "mend" her verses. While Johnson’s revisions were occasionally "invasive" and masculine in voice, he was generally tactful, respecting her originality and intentions while reinforcing his deep affection for her "purity itself." Johnson’s gentle note, "Do not, my Love, burn your papers," refers to this minor mending and highlights his role as her "truest friend and most faithful counsellor," a characterization Reynolds herself used. This collaboration and the resulting poem counter Reynolds’s traditional image as a "pious spinster" or mere "housekeeper," revealing instead a "thinking, questing woman" and gifted artist with significant intellectual depth and a "passion" that struggled with sensuality. The article further cites Hester Piozzi’s observations on Reynolds’s "purity of mind" and contrasts Johnson’s encouragement with the dismissive jealousy and difficult relationship Reynolds shared with her brother, Sir Joshua. Ultimately, the transcribed poem reveals a more complex character than previously recognized, one who possessed a passionate nature that dared to stray "beyond the Bounds."
A Clergyman's Reading: Books Recommended by Samuel Johnson
Tankard analyzes and annotates a list of thirty books Samuel Johnson recommended—likely around 1774—to Captain Daniel Astle as he was entering the clergy, revealing Johnson’s deep involvement in the "trade of books." Tankard identifies each work, noting its publication details and relevance, which show Johnson’s desire to provide a "regular scheme" of study intended to make the "teachers of truth" more intelligible to his contemporaries. The recommendations reflect a preference for works with a "strong biographical streak" and "practical morality," including history (Universal History, Rollin, Carte, Clarendon), practical theology and devotion (Nelson's Feasts and Fasts, Whole Duty of Man, and William Law’s Serious Call), logic (Watts), geography and travel (George Sandys’s Travels), and language (Lowth). Tankard argues that many of the Rambler essays "apparently took their Rise" from Law’s sketching of characters for moral purposes. Furthermore, the inclusion of works like Nature Display'd and Walton's Compleat Angler—handbooks Johnson used to "gain access to the propagators of knowledge"—suggests he envisioned a clergyman grounded in historical and natural knowledge, practical piety, clear thinking, and worldly awareness, while remaining capable of "harmless pleasure."
Johnson and the Lives of the Poets
Parker analyzes Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" as memorializing narratives that often underscore the "fictiveness of most biographical intimacy." By contrasting Johnson with Boswell, the analysis demonstrates how Johnson uses a distanced, time-conscious perspective to judge minor poets. Parker highlights Johnson's ironic juxtaposition of literary achievement with "life-realities," such as Pope's gluttony or Addison's anxiety, to enforce a sense of human littleness while defending the permanent value of great poetry.
Virtuous Philosopher and Chameleon Poet: The Shakespeare of Samuel Johnson and John Keats
Goodman interprets John Keats’s marginalia in his pocket Shakespeare edition as a reaction against Samuel Johnson's moral and aesthetic interpretations of William Shakespeare. The study argues that a dialectic exists between Johnson’s view of Shakespeare as a source of wisdom about humanity and Keats's belief in the value of Shakespeare's transcendently beautiful language. This opposition between Johnsonian character-based criticism and Keatsian aestheticism, or "word music," defines subsequent Shakespeare criticism and pedagogy, which continually oscillate between these two fundamental approaches, especially when confronting problematic texts like King Lear.
Potkay argues that, contrary to Boswell's staged confrontation in the Life of Johnson, Samuel Johnson and David Hume shared substantial agreement regarding secular happiness. Analyzing Boswell's misrepresentation of Hume's views—specifically his attribution of the notion that "all who are happy are equally happy" to Hume, a position actually voiced by a persona in "The Sceptic"—the author demonstrates that both thinkers, influenced by ancient and Lockean philosophy, viewed happiness as an "agreeable mental state" that is intrinsically social, dialectical, and linked to rational activity and virtue. Both writers saw happiness requiring a "multiplicity of agreeable consciousness" rooted in social connectedness rather than individual autonomy, viewing city life and commercial activity as necessary conditions for human flourishing; notably, Johnson's episodes in Rasselas echo Hume's Treatise on the miseries of solitude. Potkay concludes that Johnson and Hume both defined happiness as a process involving the ongoing, steady pursuit and occasional satisfaction of desires dictated by moderate passions, with the two figures differing primarily on the role of otherworldly Christian expectations and eschatology.
'… Ut operaretur eum': Warum es gilt, unseren Garten zu bestellen, und wie Candide und Rasselas zu dieser Überzeugung gelangen
Knabe examines the convergence of Johnson's Rasselas and Voltaire's Candide, both published in 1759, as pivotal texts reflecting the Enlightenment's rejection of metaphysical optimism. Knabe argues that both narratives conclude with a transition from speculative inquiries into the nature of evil toward a philosophy of "practical labor." While Candide finds resolution in the literal cultivation of a garden, Knabe observes that Johnson's characters reach a "conclusion in which nothing is concluded," yet ultimately embrace active engagement in their respective social spheres. Knabe emphasizes that Johnson's perspective is rooted in a "sober realism" that recognizes human limitations but insists on the necessity of purposeful activity. The article highlights how Johnson uses the Happy Valley as a foil for the inevitable frustrations of the "choice of life," suggesting that meaningful existence is found not in the absence of trouble, but in the "diligent performance of duty" and the rejection of idle contemplation.
Father Lobo, Ethiopia, and the Transkei; or, Why Rasselas Was Not a Mpondo Prince
Lost in Lexicography: Legitimating Cultural Identity in Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary
Sudan examines how Johnson uses his Preface to construct a "specifically bourgeois identity" and national coherence through language. Johnson represents himself as both "slave" and "owner" of science, employing a work ethic to moderate imperial prosperity. He fetishizes the Elizabethan period as a "pure source of genuine diction," excluding Scottish and Welsh influences to establish a cultural imperialism. The text identifies a problematic intersection of gender and hierarchy, noting Johnson's role as a "cultural arbiter" who treats wayward language as a feminine entity requiring rational restraint. Johnson's lexicographical toil documents the "coherence of national culture" as much as the constitution itself.
Johnson, Jacobitism, and Swedish Charles: The Vanity of Human Wishes and Scholarly Method
Weinbrot proposes to determine whether the Jacobite hypotheses, or articles of belief, are valid, beginning with a condensed account of the political and intellectual contexts within which Johnson's Charles of Sweden was perceived. He also attempts to determine whether "The Vanity of Human Wishes'" unifying idea is consistent with the modern Jacobites' interpretive vision.
Johnson's Shakespeare of 1765: A Comparison of the Two Editions of A Midsummer Night's Dream
Guerres et paix: La Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle, I–II
Cuncta Prius Tentanda: The Treatment of War in Samuel Johnson's Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands (1771)
'The Want of a Closer Union…': The Friendship of Samuel Johnson and Joseph Warton
Reid examines the complex and ultimately strained friendship between Samuel Johnson and Joseph Warton, tracing the relationship from its enthusiastic initiation and collaboration on the Adventurer in the early 1750s to a notable late-life coolness. While the two maintained cordial correspondence and social interaction, Reid argues that fundamental differences in critical taste regarding Gray, Milton, and Johnson's edition of Shakespeare created a lasting divide. However, the author maintains that the primary difficulties were personal; Johnson's "boisterous and offensive" manners, his "domineering" conversational style, and his "love of paradox and contradiction" eventually alienated the more gregarious Warton and his brother Thomas. Warton's later private and posthumous comments characterize Johnson's criticism as "disgraceful" and "prejudiced," revealing deep-seated resentment beneath a veneer of social politeness and suggesting that Johnson's desire for "a closer union" remained unfulfilled because of his own personality. Reid identifies a "melancholy paradox" where Johnson's rough forthrightness, though intended as camaraderie, prevented the very intimacy he sought.
The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson
Parker examines the transition from Baroque to Augustan poetics, focusing on the emergence of literalism and the "fideist reaction" to empirical naturalism. Johnson represents a pivotal figure in this reaction, turning away from the descriptive "spatial art" of Pope and Thomson toward a world-weary, Solomonic skepticism. Parker argues that Johnson uses a "pure fideism" to navigate the crisis of faith brought on by Newtonian physics and Deist optimism. By emphasizing the emptiness of earthly pursuits and the inscrutability of the divine, Johnson rejects the Augustan reliance on sensible evidence in favor of a habitual moral affection. This "fideist reaction" identifies the natural world as a sensuous void, prioritizing internal expectation and "Solomonic wisdom" over the "spatial associative structures" of his contemporaries.
More of Samuel Johnson's Critical Opinions
In the author's recently published Samuel Johnson's Critical Opinions: A Reexamination, 1995, he urged readers to send critical opinions he had overlooked to the now apparently defunct Johnsonian News Letter. He now offers 17 further critical opinions of Johnson discovered in the course of further research.
Hudson challenges the interpretation of the Dictionary as an instrument of class oppression. While scholars like John Barrell and Olivia Smith argue that Johnson authorized upper-class language to suppress the poor, Hudson highlights Johnson's broad inclusiveness and frequent defiance of polite standards. The article notes that Johnson included many vulgar terms, which prompted scathing reviews from critics like James Thomson Callender and Noah Webster. Hudson argues that Johnson's usage labels were intended to identify levels of context rather than serve the rich. Johnson viewed himself as an independent scholar and a pioneer of literature, not a servant of the elite. The text explores how Johnson used theoretically objective criteria, such as reason and the genius of the tongue, to judge propriety while often using cant terms like Tory in his own conversation.
Rejoinder to Professors Miller and Siskin in the February 1997 Issue
Terry challenges Siskin's and Miller's claims regarding the chronology of canon formation, asserting that a discourse existed prior to the eighteenth century. He analyzes Johnson's Idler Nos. 60 and 61, arguing that Johnson parodies a fatigued canonizing rhetoric, exemplified by Dick Minim's reliance on hackneyed critical commonplaces and a recognizable authorial list. Terry examines William Winstanley's 1687 Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, noting how its structure, frontispiece, and biographical entries, which position Shakespeare and Jonson as dialectical opposites, intimate an elite canon. He contends that while the nature of literature evolves, the core literary canon remains relatively fixed across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
John Nichols, Johnson's Prefaces, and the History of Letters
This article explores questions raised by the evolution of Samuel Johnson's Prefaces Biographical and Critical into the four-volume large octavo The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781, revised 1783). Examining the texts as printed and placing the work in the context of Nichols's print shop, it argues that, had the prefaces appeared as Johnson conceived and wrote them, they would have constituted a "modern" history of letters as described by Francis Bacon in De augmentis et dignitatis scientiarum. To that end, the article examines evidence for the collaborative role of John Nichols, the possible effects of John Bell's rival edition on the booksellers' decision to publish with Johnson's work less than half complete, and how that decision affected prefaces written in 1780–1, as well as the kinds of changes required to produce the "freestanding" four-volume edition of 1781.
Under Criticism: Essays for William H. Pritchard
Coleridge, Johnson, and Shakespeare: A Critical Drama in Five Acts
Coleridge exaggerated his opposition to Johnson's Shakespearean criticism to establish his own critical originality. While Coleridge accused Johnson of treating Shakespeare as a "child of nature" concerned with only parts and lacking morality, Johnson in fact argued against rigidly applying classical "rules of criticism" to Shakespeare, supported the mixing of comedy and tragedy, and emphasized Shakespeare's superiority in depicting nature and passion. Both critics ultimately rejected the unities of time and place and affirmed that the dramatic performance is "credited in a special way," demonstrating that their views on dramatic theory and Shakespearean genius are often closer than Coleridge admitted.
Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language and Its Texts: Quotation, Context, Anti-Thematics
Seeing into the Life of Things: Essays on Literature and Religious Experience
Prayer, Poetry, and Paradise Lost: Samuel Johnson as Reader of Milton's Christian Epic
Fix challenges the misconception that Johnson's critique of Paradise Lost was motivated by personal or political prejudice against John Milton. Instead, Fix argues that Johnson's response was profoundly shaped by the poem's religious subject matter and rhetorical strategies. Johnson views the act of reading Paradise Lost as a "duty" similar to prayer and scriptural study, designed to "raise the thoughts above sublunary cares" and "shew the reasonableness of religion." Fix notes that Johnson identifies the poem's characteristic quality as "sublimity," which "overpowers" and "astonishes" the reader, forcing a realization of human powerlessness and sinfulness. Consequently, the "want of human interest" that earlier critics labeled a flaw is, for Johnson, a deliberate strategy to isolate the reader and facilitate a "salutary infliction" on the soul. Fix concludes that Johnson finds in Milton's epic the meeting point of "divine revelation and human talent," using the text to "exorcise the demon" of pride through a "prayerful submissive" consciousness.
Identität und Lebensgeschichte: Fremdbiographisches Erzählen bei Samuel Johnson und James Boswell
Johnson's Dictionary and Dictionary Johnson
Examines how the 1755 Dictionary became mythologized as a "one-man" heroic feat, creating the "Dictionary Johnson" persona. This article argues against that purely Romantic construction, suggesting the work is more a "humanistic" compilation. His true authorship is found in his critical commentary on the traditions he compiles, rather than in pure originality. It also highlights the "corporate" nature of the project, which involved amanuenses.
Some Notes on the Treatment of Dryden in Johnson's Dictionary
Toil, Envy, Want, the Reader, and the Jail: Reader Entrapment in Johnson's Life of Savage
Morrison explores Johnson's Account of the Life of Richard Savage as a "work of entrapment" designed to force readers into critical self-examination. She argues that Johnson employs a deliberate narrative strategy of "reader entrapment" wherein a seemingly partial narrator initially cultivates sympathy for Savage as a victim, luring even resistant readers into becoming Savage's "patron." However, Johnson later relentlessly exposes Savage's grating flaws, mirroring the disillusionment experienced by Savage's actual patrons until the reader's patience is exhausted. This strategy creates an uneasy and uncomfortable identification with the friends who eventually abandoned Savage, leading to a distasteful realization of the reader's own "moral arrogance." Morrison highlights how Johnson's use of sources and his additions, such as the character of Mrs. Oldfield, serve to compare intentions rather than ideals; by withholding and delaying the most devastating negative portrayals until late in the narrative while simultaneously condemning those who abandon Savage, Johnson ensures that final judgment is complicated by a shared sense of human weakness. Ultimately, this strategy frustrates the desire for simple judgment and compels readers toward a critical self-examination of their own potential harshness, questioning the art of biography and the standards of those who judge.
'Tumour, Meanness, Tediousness and Obscurity': Dr. Johnson's Reading of Hamlet
Hamlet Studies: An International Journal of Research on The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke
Johnson's 'Vile Melancholy' Reconsidered Once More
Stavisky disputes standard biographical interpretations of Johnson's "vile melancholy" by establishing a behavioral parallel between Johnson and Richard Savage, drawing on Thrale's diary and Johnson's correspondence to support the comparison. Revisiting Katherine Balderston's thesis concerning Samuel Johnson's alleged masochism and relationship with Hester Thrale, this article critiques Donald Greene's refutation while finding fault with recent dismissals by Barry Baldwin and J. D. Fleeman. Stavisky argues that Greene and W .J. Bate selectively omit key evidence, such as Thrale's diary entry about Johnson kissing her foot, and asserts that "the mind can only repose on the stability of truth." The article finds corroborating patterns in Johnson's Life of Savage, where Savage displays a recurring cycle involving desired intimacy with women, provocation leading to punishment or restraint, demands for apology, and resentment. Stavisky suggests that Johnson's own "impotent and self-destructive resentment" following Thrale's marriage to Piozzi mirrors this pattern, revealing a psychological need for the control that Thrale provided for twenty years. Concluding that Johnson's "intimacy" with Savage allowed him to recognize repressed aspects of his own nature—particularly regarding maternal resentment and the search for romantic love—Stavisky maintains that these patterns lend credence, though not definitive proof, to Balderston's core claims.
Jain identifies a previously unnoticed analogue to the opening couplet of Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko. While prior commentary cites William Temple’s Of Poetry (1690) as the earliest usage of the phrase "China to Peru," Jain points to Behn’s 1688 novel, which describes a continent reaching "as far as China, and another to Peru." Jain suggests this instance provides the most specific geographical use of the phrase and represents its earliest known occurrence.
Studied Barbarity: Johnson, Spenser, and the Idea of Progress
Lynch examines Samuel Johnson’s complex and ambivalent engagement with Edmund Spenser within the context of the eighteenth century’s developing theories of literary progress and the Renaissance. While Johnson acknowledges Spenser’s "luxuriantly fertile imagination" and importance, he—like many of his contemporaries—struggled with the poet's perceived archaisms in design, allegory, and especially language. Johnson characterizes Spenser's deliberate use of obsolete diction and "unmusical" stanzas as a "vicious" style and "studied barbarity" that represents a perverse rejection of the movement toward "general nature" and linguistic clarity. Lynch shows that Johnson’s Dictionary reflects this conflict, as he modernizes Spenser’s orthography while simultaneously purging many of his archaisms as "useless." By analyzing criticisms in the Rambler and Lives of the Poets, Lynch demonstrates that Johnson views Spenserian imitation as a retrograde "aberration" that gathers what "ancestors have wisely thrown away," contrasting medieval "rudeness" with modern refinement. However, Johnson's empiricism allowed him to value Spenser’s powerful allegory as a "pleasing vehicle of instruction" embodying general nature, even as he censured the archaic diction as a deviation from linguistic perfection. Lynch posits that Johnson’s resistance to Spenserian aesthetics stems from a commitment to a progressivist model of literature that valorizes stability, "the stability of truth," and communicative "justness" over "inexplicable elegancies."
A version of this essay appeared as a chapter in Lynch, The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson.
Johnson, Beckett, and the 'Choice of Life'
Smith explores Samuel Beckett's extensive research and surprising fascination with Samuel Johnson, focusing on Beckett's work for his unfinished play Human Wishes (1936-37) and the profound influence of Johnson's Rasselas on his later fiction, particularly Watt and Molloy. Examining specific quotations Beckett copied into his notebooks regarding Johnson's Dictionary, biographies, and Rasselas, Smith argues that Beckett discovered themes resonant with his own worldview, such as the "tyranny of reflection" found in Imlac’s observations, the futility of chasing elusive happiness while neglecting life, and the ambiguity of existence. Although Beckett abandoned the play, his engagement with Johnson—viewed through the lens of Rasselas as a "failed allegory"—informed the structure, themes, and existential inconclusiveness of his subsequent works; both authors use allegorical structures to depict the search for universal truth while subverting the genre through inconclusive endings that illustrate the pain of human endurance and the failure of fiction to provide finality. Smith posits that Beckett recognized the absurdist, vulnerable, and skeptical elements of Johnson long before academic critics did, identifying an existential kinship between the two writers centered on the "dismal history of private life."
'The Shortness of Our Present State': Locke's 'Time' and Johnson's ‘Eternity' in Rasselas
Samuel Johnson and the Locke–Stillingfleet Controversy
On Johnson's position in the long-standing theological debate between John Locke and Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, particularly concerning the Trinity. One significant exception to the general trend of avoiding intra-Anglican disputes appears in Johnson's Dictionary under the word "Trinity," where he quotes Locke's defense that his Essay Concerning Human Understanding did not object to the Trinity. Johnson also includes a quote from a letter by the dying Locke to Anthony Collins, which seemed to confirm Locke's essential Christian orthodoxy, suggesting Johnson ultimately sided with Locke.
A Poet's Apprenticeship: Samuel Johnson's School Translations
Slimp analyzes Samuel Johnson's neglected schoolboy translations of Virgil, Horace, Homer, and Joseph Addison, arguing that these works serve as critical windows into his early intellectual and poetic development. By establishing a probable chronological ordering of composition, Slimp traces Johnson's progression from literal renderings of Virgil, which often relied heavily on models like Dryden, toward greater freedom, artistic integrity, and more sophisticated versions of Horace and Homer. These early exercises reveal Johnson's acquisition of classical languages, the evolution of his versification skills, and an emerging habit of simplifying recondite names and generalizing specific classical references to achieve states of "dignified solemnity" and "stateliness." Slimp specifically highlights Johnson's translation of Addison's Battle of the Pygmies and the Cranes as evidence of his growing awareness of English literary history, noting studied allusions to Milton. This movement from literal translation toward a "growing awareness of English literature" provides early evidence of the techniques of generalization and abstraction that Johnson later perfected in his major imitations, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, as well as his interest in the epitaph.
Politicizing Samuel Johnson: The Moral Essays and the Question of Ideology
Samuel Johnson's moral essays are examined as "ideology" in the sense of the way social groups invest their everyday, lived experience with meanings and values, and it is argued that the essays are responsive in the particular way they articulate ideas and attitudes shared by other social classes.
College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies
Counsel for the Defense: Boswell Represents Johnson
Masri argues that Boswell's biography of Johnson functions as a metaphorical libel trial intended to vindicate Johnson's character against the "judicial inquisition" of Sir John Hawkins and the "unreliable testimony" of Hester Thrale Piozzi. The study locates Boswell’s methodology within the specific historical context of eighteenth-century British legal practice, particularly the Scottish adversarial system and the evolving status of circumstantial evidence. Masri demonstrates that Boswell adopts the dual role of advocate and witness, using legal tropes such as "state of the facts," depositions, and the "best evidence" rule to establish biographical authority. By analyzing formative cases from Boswell’s legal career, such as the Douglas Cause and the trial of John Reid, Masri shows how Boswell’s lifelong preoccupation with judgment, authority, and the static nature of character "habit and repute" informed his narrative strategy. The dissertation posits that the Life’s digressive structure and accumulation of "minute particulars" reflect contemporary courtroom ploys designed to sway a "jury of common readers." Masri concludes that Boswell’s standard of authenticity is fundamentally a legal one, where truth is served through partisan representation rather than disinterested objectivity.
Under the entry for gibberish in the first edition of the Dictionary, 1755, Johnson states: 'as it was anciently written gebrish, it is probably derived from the chymical cant, and originally implied the jargon of Geber and his tribe'. An array of data leads to the conclusion that this proposed etymology is clearly erroneous; but presents the results of the authors' search as to the reasons for Johnson's conjecture.
Johnson's main achievement lies in the importing of a lexicographical method from Renaissance Italy into 18c England. In asserting the priority of Shakespeare's first folio above all others, even in spite of criticism from competitors and others, Johnson demonstrated the relevance of the 16c Italian textual critic Poliziano's stemmatic editorial method to the texts of the English Renaissance.
Johnson’s Shakespeare edition was the first to introduce some of Politian’s editorial methods into the editing of vernacular texts.
American Book Collectors and Bibliographers, Second Series
Regulated Loyalty: Jacobitism and Johnson's Lives of the Poets
One way to test the thesis that Johnson writes the "Lives of the Poets" to promote his loyalty is to ask whether he was not perhaps reacting to and revising the political agenda of earlier biographers.
What's in a Name? Earl Miner and the Travels of Bashō and Johnson [review of Naming Properties: Nominal Reference in Travel Writings by Bashō and Sora, Johnson and Boswell, by Earl Miner]
Kenning critiques Miner's comparison between the travel writings of Basho and the Scottish tour of Johnson and Boswell. He characterizes Johnson as an empirical Enlightenment mind who traveled for diversion and to "read the book of Mankind," contrasted with Basho's Zen-influenced religious pilgrimage. Kenning notes that Boswell’s account expansively explores the "mental landscapes" and conflicting personalities of both himself and Johnson. The text examines how naming people, places, and times serves as a "quintessentially human act" of defining one's identity and establishing a relationship with an external world.
Johnson's conservatism, a unified and coherent philosophy, is grounded in the need to maintain social and political order in the face of inevitable human drives like pride and envy. His conservatism is undogmatic and pragmatic, valuing custom and hereditary institutions not as absolute truths, but as essential, emotionally satisfying sources of popular "reverence" and stability, which pacify the otherwise explosive competition inherent in an unequal society. This concern for public order explains his ambivalence toward the Jacobite cause: while hereditary succession was a stabilizing principle, a Stuart restoration risked the very social upheaval Johnson feared. He believed a loss of this reverence, as caused by the Glorious Revolution's breach of the hereditary line, ultimately leads to tyranny and the rule of "the strongest."
Johnson's Dictionary and the Canon: Authors and Authority
McDermott examines the Dictionary as a canonical act that regulates the boundless chaos of living speech. By selecting quotations from a golden age of literature, Johnson established a repository for enduring values. McDermott disputes Alvin Kernan's revolutionary reading of print culture, arguing that Johnson bemoaned the decline of authority and subordination. The article highlights that the Lives of the Poets represented a canon chosen by booksellers, not Johnson himself, who objected to the use of his name on books he did not recommend. McDermott presents Johnson's cataloguing acts as quintessential taxonomic efforts. The text notes that Johnson derived authority from the common reader, even while maintaining a magisterial critical style. McDermott explores how Piozzi used a tabulating mentality to rank her friends' qualities, giving Johnson high marks for scholarship.
Samuel Johnson and Tonson's 1745 Shakespeare: Warburton, Anonymity, and the Shakespeare Wars
An anonymous job of writing attributive notes for Tonson's 1745 inexpensive reprint of Hanmer's anonymous Shakespeare edition was likely performed by Samuel Johnson. The reprisal was Tonson's tactic in the "Shakespeare Wars" to undercut Hanmer's commercially successful edition and reassert Tonson's copyright claims. Johnson, an impecunious hack writer in 1745, was uniquely positioned because of his critique of Hanmer's edition and his connections to the publisher Cave. This anonymous work could account for the gap in Johnson's biography for 1745 and may have contributed to his later, more positive view of Hanmer's scholarship, as well as inspiring his Dictionary and later Shakespeare edition.
'The Tract and Tenor of the Sentence': Conversing, Connection, and Johnson's Dictionary
Wood explores the central role of "conversation" in Johnson’s lexicographical and social thought, contrasting it with Chesterfield’s focus on polite decorum. Johnson views conversation as a "contest for superiority" and a "trial of intellectual vigour" essential for testing private notions against social evaluation. The Dictionary reflects this by defining "conversation" through five distinct heads, ranging from "easy talk" to "behaviour" and "practical habits." Wood argues that Johnson’s use of illustrative quotations creates a "semantic dialogue," where word meanings are determined by the "tract and tenor of the sentence" rather than etymological roots alone.
Samuel Johnson's 'General Nature' in Its Context
Evans interprets Johnson's concept of "general nature" as a complex, metaphysically defined construction derived from classical philosophy, medieval theology, and the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation. The study argues Johnson employs this traditional concept to respond critically to the eighteenth-century trend toward philosophical reductionism in fields including theology, moral theory, natural philosophy, and aesthetics. Johnson's commitment to this idea of nature grounds his moral realism, guides his evaluation of experimental philosophy, and forms the philosophical basis for his literary criticism, particularly his commendation of "just representations of general nature."
Publisher's blurb: "In this biography, Lee Morgan tells the story of Henry Thrale, a successful but flawed and troubled businessman and Member of Parliament who was at the center of the life of the most famous man of letters of the eighteenth century, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Thrale was also married to an exceptionally talented diarist and, perhaps, the most brilliant society leader of the period, Hester Salusbury Thrale, later Mrs. Gabriel Piozzi. In chronicling both the domestic life and the career of Thrale, Dr. Johnson's "Own Dear Master" also affords an interesting glimpse of eighteenth-century business, political, and social life of the age of Johnson as it was played out by some of the principal figures of the day."
Lewis and Samuel Johnson's Rasselas: Hearing the Call of the Sehnsucht
Samuel Johnson's Christian Humanist Poetry
Slimp examines Johnson's poetry chronologically, arguing that his verse moves from self-conscious classicism to a mature poetry fusing classical ideas and modes with deepening Christian concerns. Analyzing Johnson's entire poetic output, Slimp traces a shift away from youthful, detached satire toward works exhibiting growing religious explicitness and sympathy, particularly concerning the virtue of charity. The study situates Johnson's development within the tradition of Christian humanism, exemplified by his engagement with both classical texts and figures like Boswell and Law, culminating in his late poems which articulate a powerful Christian response to human suffering.
Writing China: Legitimacy and Representation, 1606–1773
Porter analyzes Johnson’s ambivalent reactions to China, shifting from an initial fascination with its "solid, foundational certainty" to a cynical disdain for "Chinese excellence" as a product of novelty and "rhetorical excess." This shift mirrors Johnson’s broader struggle in his Dictionary to reconcile "English undefiled" with the "spawn of folly" and "fugitive cant" of corrupted speech. Porter connects Johnson's measurements in the Hebrides with his desire for secure epistemology, arguing that Johnson eventually viewed China as a site of "illegitimate representation" and "fictional fabrication" rather than a locus of universal truth.
Conversation, Writings, and the Subversion of Economy: Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage
Segal offers a deconstructive reading of Johnson's Life of Savage, focusing on the "paradox" of Savage as a figure simultaneously social and solitary. The text identifies a destabilizing tension between Savage’s morally edifying "writings" and his "often blameable" actions. Drawing on Derrida’s theory of the gift, Segal argues that Savage’s "subversion of all Oeconomy"—manifested in his spontaneous conversation and refusal to acknowledge charity—breaks with the rational, exemplary presence Johnson seeks to establish. While Johnson values writings for their "propagation of morality," he is fascinated by Savage’s "radical singularity" and "obstinacy," which resist representation and traditionalization. Segal concludes that the Life subverts its own "assured identities" of Western thought by testifying to a relationship with the "other" that transcends reason and reciprocity.
DeMaria examines the Dictionary as a compromise between Johnson’s youthful scholarly ambitions and the fiscal realities of his career. The article highlights how Johnson used illustrative quotations to provide linguistic authority and turn the lexicon into an encyclopedic work with moral and religious overtones. DeMaria notes that Johnson's method involved marking scores of books by authors like Shakespeare and Bacon to record real usage while remaining selective enough to maintain "correctness." The text explores Johnson’s ideological commitments, such as his exclusion of Thomas Hobbes for promoting immorality and his inclusion of "physico-theologists" to instill natural religion. DeMaria argues that Johnson viewed the Dictionary as a tool for educating learners in essential matters of piety. Thrale is mentioned as a participant in the social world that shaped Johnson’s later career, though the Dictionary itself was the product of his earlier, more laborious "grub street" years.
Grundy reviews Studies in Bibliography, Volume 48, a festschrift and tribute honoring the late Johnsonian bibliographer J. D. Fleeman, whom she describes as the "leading British Johnson scholar." Offering a personal memoir and warm tribute, Grundy lauds Fleeman as a meticulous scholar and generous colleague who discovered a "conscientious refiner of language" behind Johnson’s public persona and viewed texts not as fixed entities but as "a process." The review highlights the volume's key contents, which include Fleeman’s own speculative essay on Johnson’s early years, a rediscovered Johnson essay ("On the Character and Duty of an Academick"), and his correspondence with Daisuke Nagashima, alongside numerous textual studies such as McLaverty on Pope's annotations, O M Brack on Johnson's role in Crousaz's translations, Warburton's letters, the subscription history of Johnson's Shakespeare, and Kolb and DeMaria on Dictionary revisions. Grundy notes the volume’s recurring theme—"the limited nature of all bodies of evidence"—and praises the meticulous labor required for bibliography, noting that Fleeman’s Johnson was "not a man of monumental certainties, but a mind at work." The review celebrates Fleeman’s pursuit of the epitaph, "He got it right," and concludes that the collection is a fitting monument, demonstrating that Fleeman's enduring impact on textual scholarship and his "tradition of work on Johnson as meticulous refiner lives on."
Authorial Authority: Johnson's Life of Savage and Nabokov's Nikolai Gogol
Authorial biographies—biographies written by authors—as exemplified by Johnson's Life of Savage and Nabokov's Nikolai Gogol, constitute a distinctive subgenre of biography, remarkable for, among other features, a relative unconcern with facts, ideological independence, antipanegyrical orientation, and a tendency toward self-assertion and self-investment. This article compares the strategies by which Johnson and Nabokov constitute themselves as authors while operating within the biographical form.
Sexual Positions: Men of Pleasure, Economy, and Dignity in Boswell's London Journal
London Journal shows Boswell's internal conflict among competing masculine identities: the dignified, self-controlled "retenu," the dissipated "man of pleasure," and the prudent "man of economy." Boswell's self-perception fluctuates, particularly regarding his affair with Louisa, which he initially frames economically but ultimately ends in loss and sexual disease. The journal reflects broader mid-century conflicts concerning class, national status, and the proper management of male sexual and financial desire.
ALFA: Actes de langue Française et de linguistique/Symposium on French Language and Linguistics
DeMaria examines Johnson's intellectual life through the lens of his diverse reading practices, arguing that reading served as both a spiritual discipline and a method for organizing universal knowledge. The text analyzes Johnson's varied approaches—ranging from "cursory" and "desultory" reading to "diligent" study—and situates these habits within the broader eighteenth-century transition from intensive to extensive reading. DeMaria explores how Johnson's use of commonplace books and his work on the Dictionary reflect a "theology of reading" designed to combat the "vacuity of life" and mental stagnation. By tracing Johnson's engagement with classical, scientific, and theological texts, the study demonstrates that Johnson viewed the act of reading as a moral struggle and a primary means of self-definition. The analysis highlights the tension between Johnson’s "appetite for knowledge" and his frequent "indolence," suggesting that his fragmented reading style was a deliberate strategy to master vast quantities of information. DeMaria concludes that Johnson’s "life of reading" was an attempt to construct a coherent moral and intellectual universe, ultimately shaping the authoritative voice found in his major works. Chapter 1, "The Life of Reading," addresses the apparent contradiction between Samuel Johnson's public literary criticism and his private, "silent life" as a reader, arguing that reading is a complex, diverse activity that can be categorized into four distinct modes: study, perusal, mere reading, and curious reading. Chapter 2, "Notes and Marginalia," examines the physical evidence of Johnson’s reading habits, identifying a tension between his "scholar’s talons" that battered books and a more reverential, bibliophilic appreciation for the material aspects of the volume. Chapter 3, "Study," explores the most intensive form of reading practiced by Johnson, arguing that his "hard reading"—focused primarily on the Bible, the classics, and neo-Latin poetry—was a foundational, "manly" discipline that prepared him for a life of humanistic scholarship and authorial production. Chapter 4, "Perusal," addresses purposeful and attentive reading directed toward self-improvement or specific research, identifying religious manuals, reference works, and "self-help" books as the primary subjects of this mode. Chapter 5, "Mere Reading," examines the more casual, public, and often negligent engagement with ephemeral materials like newspapers and periodicals, arguing that this habit provided Johnson with necessary variety and relief from more strenuous intellectual labor. Chapter 6, "Curious Reading," explores Johnson's lifelong attraction to and resistance against romances and fiction, arguing that this "addicted" form of reading allowed him to enter intangible aesthetic worlds while simultaneously triggering his critical skepticism. Chapter 7, "Samuel Johnson and the Future of Reading," concludes by arguing that Johnson’s integrated life of reading serves as a model for navigating modern shifts from intensive study to the more fragmented, "random access" browsing characteristic of contemporary literacy. Critics are generally favorable, praising the imaginative taxonomy of reading modes and the insights into eighteenth-century print culture. Suarez, in TLS, enthusiastically commends the framework of study, perusal, mere reading, and curious reading, noting that the study instructs by delighting both scholars and general readers. Folkenflik's review in ECS describes the volume as an excellent result that usefully contributes to the history of the book movement with quiet intelligence. Womersley (RES) praises the ingenuity displayed in deriving evidence to position the subject as a central figure in the history of reading. Writing in MLR, Ingram calls the project intriguing and perceptive regarding the cultural significance of these textual habits. Deutsch, in Modern Philology, considers the monograph a persuasive achievement, though she notes that a greater focus on gender and class might have added a critically illuminating dimension. In AJ, Gray offers an approving assessment of the fine contribution but challenges speculative claims concerning sexual fantasies in fiction. Lynn (YWES) provides a mixed evaluation, praising the brilliant conjectures but noting that the study suffers from a scarcity of physical evidence. O'Brien (YWES) enthusiastically reviews the reissue as an erudite and absorbing work. Lynch (Choice) disputes the profundity of the arbitrary taxonomy, arguing that the real value lies in the assembly of scattered comments rather than the organizational framework. Abbott (South Atlantic Review) hails the study as an important, frame-shifting volume for understanding the literacy of the print universe.
Reviews: John L. Abbott, South Atlantic Review 63, no. 1 (1998): 90–93; Biblio 3, no. 7 (1998): 73; Matthew M. Davis, 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 8 (2003): 369–72; Helen Deutsch, Modern Philology 97, no. 4 (2000): 599–605; Robert Folkenflik, ECS 33, no. 2 (2000): 289–99; James Gray, AJ 10 (1999): 285–92; Allan Ingram, MLR 94, no. 3 (1999): 792–93; Thomas G. Kass, Cithara: Essays in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition 37, no. 2 (1998): 44–45; Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean, SEL 38, no. 3 (1998): 579; Jack Lynch, Choice 35, no. 3 (1997): 1365; Steven Lynn, YWES 78, no. 1 (1998): 446–48; Eliza O’Brien, YWES 90, no. 1 (2011): 556; Reference and Research Book News 24, no. 3 (2009); Michael F. Suarez, TLS, no. 4925 (September 1997): 36; David Womersley, RES, n.s., 49, no. 196 (1998): 519–21.
Johnson, the Essay, and The Rambler
Korshin analyzes The Rambler as an entrepreneurial undertaking intended to rival Bacon and Addison. The article notes that while Johnson wrote essays hastily for the press, he planned the series as a coherent literary work for a wide audience. Korshin explores Johnson’s evolving views on vice in literature, contrasting his strict moral stance in early Ramblers with the nuanced portrayal of vice in the Life of Savage. The text highlights Johnson’s practical criticism of Milton and his pioneering work on the art of letter writing. Korshin identifies political allegories in Rambler essays that address tyranny and authority. The essay emphasizes Johnson’s treatment of women as intellectual equals, noting that many of his fictional correspondents are female. Korshin argues that Johnson’s homiletic argumentative method translates sermonizing into the secular essay form. The Rambler’s success in anthologies ensured Johnson’s long-term reputation as a moral commentator.
Chaucer, Johnson, and Shakespeare on CD-ROM [review of A Dictionary of the English Language on CD-ROM, by Anne McDermott]
'From China to Peru': Johnson in the Traveled World
Wiltshire explores Johnson’s fascination with travel books and his later physical journeys to Scotland, Wales, and France. The article notes Johnson’s famous declaration that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life," yet highlights his underlying wanderlust. Wiltshire analyzes how Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands reflects a creative tension between his moralizing universalism and a new interest in particular landscapes. The text discusses the therapeutic benefits Johnson ascribed to motion, specifically noting his advice to Thrale’s clerk to seek the "restore[ative]" effects of journeying. Wiltshire highlights Johnson’s indignation toward Calvinism for obliterating historical records in the Highlands. The essay frames Johnson as a "scientific traveler" who measured facts but also admitted that places cast a spirit of their own. Wiltshire concludes that travel allowed Johnson to see "other forms of existence" while maintaining his belief in a common human nature.
Clark defends his thesis that Samuel Johnson was a Nonjuror and Jacobite against critics Greene, Curley, and Weinbrot, asserting that Johnson's Jacobitism is established "beyond reasonable doubt" through circumstantial evidence, intellectual context, and a detailed analysis of Oxford's statutes. Clark labels his opponents’ resistance a "rhetorical over-reaction" driven by an anachronistic "liberal-Evangelical or humanist mind-set" that seeks to preserve Johnson as a "timeless moralist" and cultural icon. Clark's defense centers on the Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration, as he argues the oaths were required of foundationers but not commoners like Johnson, dismissing contrary testimony from Whigs like Nicholas Amhurst as mistaken. Clark argues Johnson’s identity was rooted in the "Anglo-Latin high culture" of his youth, which unified "Latinity, episcopalianism and dynastic legitimacy," and contends the 1750s were a "period of transition" for Johnson while maintaining that his early political formation was "saturated with jure divino doctrine." Interpreting Johnson’s 1773 remark to Boswell—"I know not whether I could take [the oaths]"—as an explicit disclosure that he remained a Nonjuror, Clark contends that Johnson's failure to take the oaths proves this identity is the key to his cultural politics. The article characterizes the debate as a struggle over the validity of competing historical mindsets and the politicized nature of English letters.
Folkenflik characterizes Johnson as a Tory on principle, an "anti-Whig" who supported constitutional monarchy while remaining skeptical of individual kings. The article traces Johnson's political development from his early opposition to Robert Walpole, expressed in London and Marmor Norfolciense, to his later pro-government pamphlets in the 1770s. Folkenflik notes that Johnson’s friendship with Thrale, a Member of Parliament, influenced his shift toward supporting government positions during the reign of George III. The text examines Johnson’s work on the parliamentary debates and his secret aid to Robert Chambers's law lectures, which emphasized the duties of the subject. Folkenflik argues that Johnson’s underlying political sensibility was grounded in a belief in the necessity of subordination and a hatred of tyranny and imperialism. The article concludes that for Johnson, politics remained a "secondary concern" compared to the moral and spiritual endurance required in human life.
Lynn traces the history of Johnson’s reputation, noting his status as a celebrity scrutinized by the press during his lifetime. The article explores how the newspapers tracked Johnson’s health and movements, recycling anecdotes to satisfy public curiosity. Lynn analyzes the "critical purification" Johnson underwent in the 1760s through performances like Charles Churchill’s caustic "Pomposo." The text highlights the mixed response to the Lives of the Poets, with some reviewers praising Johnson’s learning and others worrying about his perceived infallibility. Lynn discusses Robert Potter’s attack on Johnson’s authority and erratic judgments regarding Gray. The essay frames Johnson’s critical heritage as a collection of passionate strikes from both ends of the room. Lynn concludes that Johnson remains the "glory of the present age" through flourishing scholarly societies and continued widespread cultural interest.
Erskine-Hill clarifies his position in the Johnson-and-Jacobitism debate, distancing his argument from J. C. D. Clark's and attempting to move toward a "more decent academic exchange." Erskine-Hill contends that while Johnson was not an active plotter, he retained a "kind of liking for Jacobitism"—a nuance his critics, such as Greene and Curley, ignore. He argues that Johnson was not "marmoreally changeless" and that The Vanity of Human Wishes may mark the "end of serious Jacobite inclination" in him; however, he defends his interpretation of the "Charles of Sweden" passage, asserting that Greene and Weinbrot reduce "one of the most moving passages of eighteenth-century poetry to total banality" by ignoring its emotional Jacobite subtext. Erskine-Hill acknowledges that while Boswell did not portray Johnson as an active plotter, Boswell’s own language is significant, and he provides primary evidence from Boswell's original manuscripts which show that Boswell, in revising the Life, consistently "softened and played down" Johnson's Jacobite remarks, for instance, removing a reported reference to George III as a "usurper." Arguing that critics rely on "naively simple definitions" of political allegiance and fail to appreciate the "tragic dilemma" 1688 posed for figures like Johnson, Erskine-Hill maintains that evidence used against this view, like the Vinerian Lectures or the 1753 Gentleman's Magazine Preface, is "shaky" collaborative testimony. The article concludes by urging scholars to focus on a "complex and strange-seeming" Johnson rather than one sanitized for modern views.
'Letters about Nothing': Johnson and Epistolary Writing
Keymer explores Johnson's epistolary output as a "demanding art of creative self-fashioning" that often focused on style over significant content. The article analyzes Johnson's letters to Thrale, noting his ability to "sit down with nothing to say" while maintaining an essential phatic bond of friendship. Keymer discusses Johnson's famous letter to Chesterfield as a brilliant rhetorical missile designed for public display rather than private intercourse. The text highlights how Johnson's correspondence often functioned as a testing ground for his published works, such as the Journey to the Hebrides. Keymer argues that Johnson viewed the letter as a transaction prone to "fallacy and sophistication," yet used the form to transcend his sense of being "broken off from mankind." The essay characterizes Johnson's letters of advice and consolation as extensions of the Rambler, stripped of orotundity to achieve a "pared-down Ramblerism" suitable for companionate mourning.
Smallwood analyzes Johnson’s Shakespearean criticism, noting the shock and alarm Johnson felt when first encountering the plays. The article disputes the view that Johnson was inhibited by neo-classical rules, arguing instead for his capacity for deep feeling. Smallwood explores how Johnson’s mature terminology—"nature" and "mingled drama"—emerged in the Preface to Shakespeare. The text highlights Johnson’s preference for Shakespeare’s comic scenes as just representations of general nature. Smallwood argues that Johnson’s account of moral purpose in drama requires it to be dramatically realized rather than overtly didactic. The essay examines Johnson’s unusual confidence in judging Shakespeare’s diverse material in general terms. Smallwood concludes that Johnson’s art as a critic bridges the gap between the imperfect details of a person's life and the immortal realm of art.
Tempering Ambitions: The Cultural Project of Samuel Johnson's Moral Essays
Dixon examines the function of Samuel Johnson’s moral essays, arguing they constitute a cultural project aimed at tempering individual ambition and defining a reformed model of ambition suitable for bourgeois society. The analysis details Johnson's consistent use of rhetorical strategies across The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler to manage his readers’ emotional and intellectual lives. By framing excessive ambition as a psychological malady, Johnson offers practical, rational remedies rooted in self-knowledge and social utility. The work establishes that Johnson subtly revises the expectations of literary heroism, offering literary fame as a legitimate, domesticated ambition achievable through the moral essay form.
Suarez argues that Johnson’s authorial self is inseparable from his Christian belief and theological thinking. The article notes that religion was the predominant object of Johnson’s thoughts since age twenty, influencing his first book on Abyssinia and his final Lives of the Poets. Suarez explores Johnson’s theological erudition in his sermons and his Dictionary, which Reddick describes as infused with theological passages. The text highlights Johnson’s belief in religious authority, conditional salvation, and Christian morality as the keys to his writing. Suarez identifies homiletic models like William Law and Samuel Clarke as central to Johnson’s religious development. The essay positions Johnson as a serious theological thinker well-read in patristic and seventeenth-century divinity. Suarez concludes that Johnson’s conviction that Christianity is the "highest perfection of humanity" enriches almost every work he produced.
Jonathan Clark and the Abominable Cultural Mind-Set
Greene responds to Clark's "ex cathedra" pronouncements in a sharp rebuttal, rejecting the accusation that he is blinded by a US "cultural mind-set" and defending his Anglican and Canadian Conservative background to show the diversity of Clark’s targets. Greene's primary target is Clark's ad hominem charge that his critics (Greene, Curley, and Weinbrot) are disqualified by a "liberal-Evangelical or humanist mind-set," labels Greene dismisses as contradictory, irrelevant, and a disqualification of scholarship in favor of "crude and cheap propaganda" for an "ultra-right-wing" political agenda. Greene disputes Clark’s "forensic" evidence, such as the claim that Johnson’s 1753 Gentleman's Magazine preface is ungrammatical and thus non-Johnsonian, and instead maintains that this preface confirms Johnson's Hanoverian loyalty. Arguing that Clark and Erskine-Hill use Johnson as a "pawn" in a larger crusade to purge scholarship of "politically incorrect" views, Greene maintains that Clark's thesis relies on misreading Johnson's works, such as ignoring Johnson's detestation of ruthless aggressors in Adventurer 99, which contradicts the "tragic" reading of Charles XII in The Vanity of Human Wishes. Greene defends his teacher, James Clifford, and dismisses the Jacobite thesis as a "legend exhumed," concluding that Clark's work represents an "ominous" new model of culture and asserting that Johnson was a moderate realist rather than a crypto-Jacobite.
Extraordinarily Ordinary: The Life of Samuel Johnson
Davis presents Johnson as a figure defined by the paradox of possessing extraordinary mental powers while being committed to the purposes of ordinary life. The article details Johnson's early struggles with scrofula, poverty, and depression, noting that his success in London was achieved against significant odds. Davis highlights Johnson's marriage to Elizabeth Porter and his later household of dependents, including Anna Williams and Robert Levet, as evidence of his "untidy" but humane existence. Johnson's fear of madness and his habit of working in "fits and starts" under pressure are examined as defensive reactions against a perceived inner vacuum. Davis argues that Johnson's greatness stems from preaching from the text of his own errors, turning personal failure into a vocation of shared ordinariness. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's "voluntary descent" from scholarship to teach practical morality, asserting that his writing remains authentic by including the very difference between living and writing.
The Pathos of Example: Professionalism and Colonization in Johnson's 'Preface' to the Dictionary
Wechselblatt explores the ways Samuel Johnson, in working on his "Dictionary of the English Language" and especially in the dictionary's "Preface," works out a structural analogy between cultural critics and colonial subjects, specifically in their mutually ambiguous relations to the authority they at once oppose and reproduce in the very terms with which they oppose it.
Yale Journal of Criticism: Interpretation in the Humanities
Parke explores conversation as a central element of Johnson’s life and intellectual practice, functioning as both a social pleasure and a therapeutic corrective to solitary thought. The article examines the discrepancy between Johnson's professional writing and his reported talk, noting that biographers like Boswell and Piozzi prioritized his oral tradition. Parke analyzes Johnson's periodical essays, specifically Rambler 14 and 89, to illustrate his belief that conversation educates sympathy and guards against the "invisible riot of the mind." The text discusses the dramatic use of dialogue in Rasselas as a metaphor for collaborative inquiry and trustworthy communication. Parke details Johnson's involvement in the Streatham circle and the Blue Stocking assemblies, where his talents for both talking and listening were highly valued. The essay concludes that while modern scholarship focuses on Johnson's published words, his reported conversation remains a vital simulacrum of his existential presence.
The Skepticism of Johnson's Rasselas
Parker examines the radical skepticism in Rasselas, positioning it within a core of eighteenth-century intelligence that declines old certainties. The article notes that while Johnson detested religious skepticism, he used "obstinate rationality" to explore life-choices made without authoritative sanctions. Parker argues that the work’s meaning is independent of biographical interest, even though Johnson wrote it under personal distress. The text analyzes how the open ending—returning to Abyssinia—implies a sophisticated apprehension of reality as a human comedy. Parker highlights Imlac’s role as a figure of wise disillusion who nevertheless directs his course toward a specific port. The essay explores Johnson’s use of wit and irony to bring together discrepant considerations in a sociable manner. Parker concludes that Johnson’s vitality of mind ensures that living well is understood even if the choice of life remains an enigma.
Weinbrot argues that Johnson's prose achieves greatness partly because it is fundamentally poetic, characterized by dramatic imagery and a movement between the general and the particular. The article surveys Johnson’s poetic output, including major works like London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, alongside occasional verses and Latin prayers. Weinbrot emphasizes Johnson’s use of personification and empiricism, which forces readers to survey reality and apply moral discoveries to their lives. The text highlights the Christian underpinnings of Johnson's verse, which often improve upon classical models. Specific poems such as the epitaph for Claudy Phillips and the elegy on Robert Levet are analyzed for their ability to provide spiritual comfort through concrete imagery. Weinbrot notes a distinction between Johnson's public voice of instruction and a darker, private voice found in his Latin meditations. The essay characterizes Johnson as a benevolent guide who uses poetry to help readers navigate a dangerous world.
Henson disputes the myth of Johnson’s misogyny, demonstrating his extraordinary sympathy for the social and economic limitations imposed on eighteenth-century women. The article examines Johnson’s consistent advocacy for female education and his identification with the "disempowered" in his periodical essays and Rasselas. Henson notes that Johnson placed supreme value on domestic life as the site where human beings become their full moral selves. The text highlights Johnson’s relationships with intelligent women like Thrale, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Carter, whom he treated as intellectual equals. Henson analyzes several Rambler essays where Johnson adopts female personae to give voice to their specific grievances regarding marriage, parental tyranny, and the "good housewife" stereotype. The article concludes that Johnson made equal moral demands on both sexes, viewing "domestick privacy" as the realm where both are most fully human through supportive, affectionate friendship.
Convulsion of the Lung: An Historical Analysis of the Cause of Dr. Johnson's Fatal Emphysema
Reich conducts a historical medical analysis of Samuel Johnson's fatal emphysema, confirmed by his 1784 necropsy, to determine an alternative cause given that Johnson neither smoked nor worked in industry. While the 1784 necropsy by Wilson classified the disorder as "asthma," Reich observes that the findings of distended lungs and pleural adhesions support a diagnosis of obliterative airway disease and points to a clinical pattern of protracted lower respiratory infections starting in 1755 followed by decades of recurring, violent "convulsive" winter coughs. Reich argues this specific pattern, which culminated in respiratory failure and cor pulmonale (dropsy), strongly aligns with the classic 19th-century description of bronchiectasis rather than simple chronic bronchitis. Disputes regarding urban air pollution as the cause are noted, as Johnson's circle lacked similar symptoms, and Reich maintains that the fatal condition was the consequence of recurring suppurative infections—likely beginning with a severe case of bronchitis or pneumonia in 1755. The analysis highlights that Johnson's own use of "convulsion" to define his cough was medically precise and notes his refusal of opiates during his final days to render his soul "unclouded." Reich concludes that the presence of a pleural adhesion makes bronchiectasis a more probable cause than chronic bronchitis from air pollution.
Dr. Clark and Mr. Holmes: Speculation in Johnsonian Biography
Caldwell critiques the biographical methods used by J. C. D. Clark and Richard Holmes, arguing that Clark’s speculations regarding Johnson’s Jacobitism are methodologically flawed and presented as "positive declarations" rather than hypotheses. Michael Caldwell contrasts Clark's approach with Richard Holmes's Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage, which he praises as a "model of responsible scholarly conjecture" and finds successful because Holmes "acknowledges the speculative nature of his enterprise," admits guesswork, engages existing scholarship, and grounds his psychological interpretations in historical data while using negative evidence cautiously. Caldwell argues Clark does the opposite, "rarely acknowledg[ing] conjectures" and failing to engage with established scholarship, instead framing them as "positive assertions" built on "negative evidence"—such as Johnson's silence on the oaths. Caldwell notes Clark frequently misreads literature to suit a "partisan historical reading," such as interpreting Boswell’s account of Johnson burning papers as evidence of a Stuart conspiracy, and observes that Clark treats Johnson as a "means to an end" to support his broader theories of the ancien régime. He concludes that Clark's "willful and careless disregard of literary scholarship" undermines his otherwise valuable work on eighteenth-century history, though the book performs a "valuable service" by prompting scholars to re-examine Johnson's political and religious commitments through a fresh perspective.
Lipking facetiously analyzes the "Epitaph on a Duck," a poem allegedly composed by Johnson at age three, in a satirical critique of speculative trends in literary scholarship. Lipking first offers a parody of Lacanian psychoanalysis, using it to argue the poem represents a "classic of self-recognition" during the mirror stage, where the duck acts as a fragmented body-image mirror for Johnson, revealing "castration anxiety" (the "odd one") and identifying the mysterious "M" in Johnson's diary as anas mas (male duck), indicating a primal scene obsession. He then satirizes the New Historicism of J. C. D. Clark and the Jacobite school of criticism by suggesting the childhood verse contains "coded" Stuart messages; Lipking notes the rhyme scheme mimics an epitaph by Rochester for Charles II and proposes that "Duck" is a pun on the Latin Dux (leader), signifying the Stuart Pretender. Lipking notes Johnson’s later attempt to disavow the verses as a defensive maneuver against political danger and playfully parodies other current academic trends—including post-colonialism and animal rights—to demonstrate how "startling new ways of reading" can be applied to even the most "fledgling effort."
Breaking the Shackles of the Great Chain of Being and Liberating Compassion in the Eighteenth Century
Kerestman examines how eighteenth-century writers, including Richardson and Johnson, challenged the Great Chain of Being and hierarchical social systems by advocating compassion and exposing the cruelty inherent in notions of subordination. The analysis focuses on animal imagery in Richardson's Clarissa and Johnson's review of Soame Jenyns's "A Free Inquiry in to the Nature and Origin of Evil." Literary use of animal comparisons undermines hierarchy by associating concepts of superiority and inferiority with human tendencies toward sadism and the lust for dominion.
Johnson and Jacobitism Redux: Evidence, Interpretation, and Intellectual History
Weinbrot systematically counters the J. C. D. Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill thesis that Samuel Johnson was a Nonjuring Jacobite, arguing instead that Johnson was a pragmatic and loyal Hanoverian. Weinbrot rejects the claim that Johnson's Oxford departure was a refusal to take oaths, presenting contemporary testimony that matriculants did take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and demonstrating that Johnson's departure stemmed from poverty. He further notes that as a schoolmaster, Johnson was legally required to take such oaths, which were an implicit Oath of Allegiance. Weinbrot disputes Clark’s misreading of historical evidence, such as using Reynolds's portrait to claim Johnson was fit for military service despite his poor health and sight, and he defends the attribution of the 1753 Gentleman's Magazine Preface to Johnson, noting its rejection of "Tyranny or of Faction" and its celebration of the crushed "Rebellion." By re-examining texts Clark and Erskine-Hill read as "coded," such as London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, Weinbrot breaks the "French servant-code" in London to show the poem is anti-Jacobite, attacking the French attempt to install a Stuart puppet. The article concludes that Johnson’s politics were "situational," based on respect for constitutional balance rather than jure divino doctrine, and that by the early 1740s, Johnson—appalled by the French-backed 1745 rebellion—had modified his opposition politics to favor the stability of the Hanoverian dynasty.
Life and Literature in Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Clingham analyzes the Lives of the Poets as a work that bridges the gap between the impermanent details of a person's life and the immortal realm of art. The article argues that Johnson's biographical method is not hagiographic or providential but "secularly redemptive," focusing on how a writer's life and work reflect a "commemorative intelligence." Clingham examines Johnson’s treatment of Milton, Dryden, and Pope, noting how the biographer identifies the complexity and "divided consciousness" of these figures. The text explores Johnson's belief that biography should represent human "passions" to excite sympathy in the reader. Clingham highlights the "Life of Savage" as an early example of Johnson's ability to identify with a flawed subject. The essay concludes that the Lives function as a "comic work" in the Christian sense, dramatizing how divided and foolish humanity remains susceptible to grace through the enduring power of literature.
Hawes explores Johnson’s loathing of imperialism, distinguishing his minimalist universalism from the false rhetoric used to underwrite exploitation. The article notes that Johnson recognized the brutal oppression of aboriginal populations and insisted on their legal rights. Hawes analyzes Johnson’s critique of Iberian and British colonialism in works like The World Displayed and Political State of Great-Britain. The text argues that Johnson did not write from an anti-Enlightenment position but engaged with its emancipatory potential while unmasking its abuse abroad. Hawes emphasizes that Johnson’s urbanity and commitment to the "bourgeois public sphere" produced a more egalitarian sense of national identity. The essay highlights Johnson’s rejection of Frenchified literary language in favor of a "nation of readers." Hawes concludes that Johnson’s resistance to imperial progress remains a critical tool for contemporary critiques of racist ideology.
Repetitive Patterns in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Ye who would listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia. [...]Samuel Johnson begins The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, raising the expectation that attention to the narrative which follows will somehow dispel "the whispers of fancy," "the phantoms of hope," or help one to understand whether "the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow. The parallel in the Happy Valley can be found in the passage already cited which describes the hidden treasure. [...]the parallels between the Happy Valley and the hermit's life-the water, the absence of evil, and the buried treasure-in addition to the similarity between Rasselas's frustrations with life in the Happy Valley and the hermit's with his own reclusive life-he calls his occupation "tasteless and irksome" and feels "unsettled and distracted" (p. 82)-suggest the opaque similarity of these two aspects of the narrative. [...]while the outer structure of the work affirms the notion of the quest, its thematic concerns deny any promise of fulfillment, both for the characters within the work and for the reader who participates vicariously in a similar quest for truth. [...]on a practical level, just as there is little to distinguish life in the Happy Valley from life in the world, there is little to distinguish the decision of Rasselas, Nekayah, and Pekuah to return to places of confinement in Abyssinia from Imlac's and the astronomer's decision "to be driven along the stream of life without directing their course to any particular port" (p. 176).
Plautus in Johnson: An Unnoticed Quotation
Johnson concludes a peremptory note of uncertain date to Mrs Thrale with the Latin Quo me vertam, nescio 'I do not know where to turn'. Identifies the source as Plautus, Curculio 69, where it forms the last half of the verse.
University of Victoria Department of English
Edinger returns to Johnson’s stylistic judgments, viewing him as an organized thinker whose taste is shaped by classical education. The study uses Foucauldian methods to recover the neoclassical principles informing Johnson’s criticism, demonstrating how classical sources influence his judgments. The book examines lexical, rhetorical, and ontic decorums of style. Edinger argues that Johnson’s suasory writing style, which reminds readers rather than informs them, is consistent with a "modified Longinianism."
Johnson No Jacobite; or, Treason Not Yet Unmasked, II: A Quotable Rejoinder from A to C
Curley provides a direct response to Clark and Erskine-Hill, identifying two "overarching weaknesses" in the Jacobite thesis: the failure to define terminology and a fatal lack of primary evidence. Curley uses juxtaposed quotations to highlight how J. C. D. Clark's and Howard Erskine-Hill's definitions of "Jacobite" conflict, and how Clark's claim that the case is "established, beyond reasonable doubt" contradicts his own admission that it is merely "circumstantial," an assertion Curley labels "stubborn audacity." Curley argues Clark "skimps" on evidence from Johnson's own writings, "skewing" few sources to fit a "preconceived thesis," and provides direct evidence from Johnson's own works to demonstrate his anti-Jacobite stance, including the manuscript description of the 1745 rebel as a "bonny Traytor" in The Vanity of Human Wishes, his 1756 justification for deposing James II, and his satirical portrait of the deluded "Tom Tempest" in Idler 10. Curley notes Johnson’s 1783 letter to Sir Robert Chambers, where Johnson claims to have "endeavoured to preserve order and support Monarchy" under the Hanoverian dynasty, as definitive proof of his loyalty. The article concludes that Johnson’s professional life as an usher and teacher required taking the very oaths Clark claims he avoided, effectively dismantling the Nonjuring argument.
'My Savage,' 'My Man': Color, Gender, and Nation in Eighteenth-Century British Narratives
Wheeler's dissertation examines how eighteenth-century narratives constructed definitions of race before the consolidation of nineteenth-century biological racism. Wheeler develops a framework of "racial multiplicity" to analyze how categories such as Christianity, civility, rank, and "savagery" often superseded skin color as primary markers of difference. A central chapter focuses on Johnson's \textit{A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland}, juxtaposing it with Edward Long's \textit{History of Jamaica} to demonstrate how both authors deploy discourses of property, commerce, and "savagery" to position Highlanders and Africans as subordinate imperial subjects. Wheeler argues that Johnson's text "moralizes" the Scottish landscape, viewing Highland culture through a lens of developmental "stages of civilization" theory. The study shows that Johnson, while lamenting the destruction of patriarchal clans, ultimately advocates for the "civilizing" influence of English commerce and linguistic uniformity. Wheeler concludes that for Johnson, "Britishness" is defined through cultural and material consumption, which serves to incorporate disparate populations into a hierarchical national identity while maintaining their subordinate status.
Myth upon Myth: Johnson, Gender, and the Misogyny Question
Basker disputes Marie McAllister’s claim that the 'myth' of Johnson's misogyny is itself a scholar-invented fiction. Basker demonstrates that major twentieth-century anthologies systematically omit Johnson's pro-woman essays, while high-profile feminist works like the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women continue to position Johnson as the 'culmination of a two-century tradition of misogyny.' Basker argues this reductive view stems from privileging a single anecdote about women preachers over Johnson's extensive history of professional and personal support for female authors. Basker highlights a disconnect between specialized Johnsonian scholarship, which recognizes his sympathy for women, and broader academic circles that maintain a 'totem of everything anti-feminist' by ignoring primary texts. Basker concludes that the perception of Johnson as sexist remains a potent and harmful influence that scholars must continue to actively challenge with textual evidence.
Boswell's Meetings with Johnson, A New Count
This appendix provides a revised calculation of the number of days James Boswell and Samuel Johnson met during their twenty-two-year friendship. Suwabe critiques previous counts by Croker, Collins, and Greene, arguing for a more rigorous tally based on the authenticated Boswell journals and papers from the Yale Editions, rather than relying solely on the published Life of Johnson or estimations. The author presents a detailed chronological list citing specific journal entries and other reliable sources, concluding that Boswell recorded meetings with Johnson on exactly 400 days, with four additional possible meetings noted only in the Life.
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Johnson, Nature, and Women: The Early Years
Elliott argues that critics overlook Johnson's early empathy toward women and nature because of their reliance on Boswell, who portrayed him as misogynistic. Johnson's early poetry, such as "On a Daffodill," reveals a struggle to reconcile a desire for nurturing female relationships with the era's patriarchal control. His tragedy Irene avoids "she-tragedy" pathos by focusing on the protagonist's moral choices, elevating her to a tragic hero. Finally, his satire London uses the pastoral impulse rhetorically to lament urban corruption, reflecting his genuine preference for a simpler life.
Hawthorne's Pilgrimage to Uttoxeter and Afterwards
Fōramu/Forum: Nihon Nasanieru Hōsōn Kyōkai/Journal of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society of Japan
Cutting Edges: Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth-Century Satire
Blocked Observation: Tautology and Paradox in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Lamb uses Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to analyze the metamorphosis of satire in Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes. The article argues that Johnson’s poem encounters a limit of observation, where a discontinuity exists between the system of satire and the environment of faith. Lamb identifies a semantic rupture in the pun on 'blockhead,' which allows Johnson to observe the act of observation itself. The text highlights Johnson's fundamental discomfort with highly personal communication, noting that he pulls specific bloody particulars—such as the death of Laud or the 'drivelings' of Swift—back into a generalizing habit of speech. Lamb contrasts Johnson’s generalizing habit with Swift’s ironic restoration of satire, concluding that Johnson’s use of personification conducts effects but cannot conduct actions, ultimately dissolving the agency in favor of folded tautologies.
The Mixed Blessings of the Imagination in Johnson's Sermons
Kass examines Johnson's pragmatic and balanced view of the imagination in his Sermons. Johnson acknowledges the imagination's dangerous potential to cause self-delusion, unhappiness, and the paralyzing postponement of action by creating unattainable ideals. However, he also insists that this faculty is critical for salvation when properly directed by reason, enabling individuals to focus on future blessings and act charitably to alleviate immediate ills. Johnson’s treatment demonstrates a moral concern for integrating the imagination with reason for practical moral conduct.
'The Sinking Land': Pessimism in Johnson's London
Samuel Johnson's poem 'London' has often been criticized as uninventive and seen as a poor imitation of Juvenal's third satire on Rome. The poem, which extols country living and condemns metropolitan vice, is also considered lacking in credibility because Johnson is widely known to enjoy urban living. However, it is argued that, far from being unoriginal, Johnson showed his creativity when he combined in 'London' the classical theme of the city's evils and his own Christian view of the entire material world.
Virginia Woolf and Samuel Common Readers argues for an intertextual reading of Woolf's criticism by placing it within the larger network of literary history. Woolf's critical assumptions can be viewed as a product of her reading of the eighteenth century, specifically the critical values articulated by Samuel Johnson and mediated by Leslie Stephen. Through an analysis of Woolf's essays, Rosenberg illustrates that Woolf is directly influenced by Johnson's theories of writing and speech; that these theories are most explicitly stated in her early critical work; and that Woolf's early essays are essential to the development of the dialogical style of her most masterful novels.
Dyer's and Burke's Addenda and Corrigenda to Johnson's Dictionary as Clues to Its Contemporary Reception
How Johnson Read Hale's Origination for His Dictionary: A Linguistic View
Nagashima provides a detailed linguistic analysis of Samuel Johnson's markings in his personal copy of Sir Matthew Hale’s The Primitive Origination of Mankind (1677), one of the source-books for his Dictionary. By examining the underlined words, marginal notes, and the resulting dictionary entries, Nagashima illuminates Johnson's lexicographical methods. He demonstrates Johnson's practice of modernizing spelling, using the same quotation for multiple entries, and his keen interest in word-formation, often marking rare derivative words. A key finding is Johnson's systematic attention to idiomatic collocations, particularly verb-particle combinations (phrasal verbs), which he recognized as a major difficulty for learners of English. Nagashima also compares Johnson's selections with entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, revealing many instances where the OED later used the exact same passages, underscoring Johnson’s sharp linguistic sensitivity and lasting influence.
Samuel Johnson's Rhetorical Art: Topical and Figurative Copia in the Age of Locke
Johnson's rhetorical theory and practice draw heavily on classical and Renaissance traditions of topical and figurative copia, despite his acceptance of Lockean epistemology. Examining Johnson's Dictionary, political pamphlets (The False Alarm, Taxation No Tyranny), literary criticism, and moral essays, Pedreira contends that Johnson's definitions of logic and rhetoric reveal agreement with Locke's model of cognition but disagreement with Locke's critique of rhetorical copiousness. Johnson employs Quintilian's topical argumentation in his political writings and uses figurative amplification extensively in his embellishment of themes like vanity and idleness. Pedreira demonstrates that stylistic and argumentative copiousness define Johnson's rhetorical humanism, distinguishing his communication model from Locke's emphasis on plain style and demonstrative reasoning.
The first effort to provide electronic access to Johnson's lexicographical work. McDermott edited the transcription, reproducing the First (1755) and Fourth (1773) Editions in full text and facsimile. The system employs DynaText software which supports searches using text tagging, isolating components such as definitions, etymologies, illustrative quotations, and parts of speech. The resource allows researchers to compare both editions side by side. This digital format superseded the Gove-Liebert File and revolutionized Dictionary studies by allowing systematic investigation of Johnson’s methodology. Scholars use the tool to count citation frequency (e.g., Pope) and gather full sets of quotations for specific sources. For example, the tabulation of biblical quotations varies between the CD-ROM count and figures reported by Nagashima. The search functions accommodate Boolean logic, though limitations exist because of Johnson's citation abbreviations. The resource omits Johnson's front matter, including the Preface and Grammar. This CD-ROM serves as the foundation for the eventual complete electronic edition of the work. Critics are generally favorable toward this electronic transcription, praising its transformative search capabilities and accessibility while noting a few technical or textual limitations. Folkenflik, in ECS, finds the resource valuable as an extraordinary concordance for illuminating texts through parallel readings, though he identifies a minor transcription error. Lynch, in AJ, commends the joint enterprise for producing an affordable tool that reduces manual research into rapid digital inquiry, allowing scholars to quantify authorial citations with unprecedented precision, though he cautions that non-standardized abbreviations can limit search comprehensiveness. Writing in Choice, Lynch labels the resource indispensable for research collections due to its intuitive interface and automated text-searching features. Pigman (Huntington Library Quarterly) lauds the publication as a scholarly model for its sophisticated hypertext searching and cross-referencing capabilities. In the popular press, Naughton, in The Observer, enthusiastically calls the software a gift from heaven that permits parallel window viewing to track revisions and heightens respect for the creator's systematic methodology. McCue, writing in The Times, appreciates the ability to collate revisions at a glance but identifies the omission of the preface as a significant weakness and notes that the digitized page images lack comfortable quality. A review in the Washington Post recommends the product for its digital annotation and bookmarking functions, while Spencer, in The Independent, emphasizes the technical utility of the software in facilitating side-by-side comparisons of historical editions. Finally, LaGuardia and Tallent (Library Journal) deliver an approving assessment, characterizing the resource as a superb tool that makes massive text easy to manipulate.
From Paralysis to Power: Boswell with Johnson in 1775–1778
Patchwork and Piracy: John Bell's 'Connected System of Biography' and the Use of Johnson's Prefaces
Bonnell details how John Bell appropriated material from Johnson's Prefaces for his own series of British poets. Fearing Bell's competition, booksellers commissioned Johnson to write biographical advertisements, but Johnson expanded these into full-scale lives. Bell's compilers used these available texts to create jigsaw biographies, leading to a legal challenge in 1780 over the Life of Denham. While Bell withdrew the pirated edition, he eventually re-issued it with a verbose paraphrase that retained Johnson's core critical opinions while altering his specific phrasing. Bell's innovative inclusion of prefatory lives aimed to create a connected system of biography, successfully exploiting Johnson's name and scholarship despite the threat of litigation.
The Ladies and the Lion: The Bluestockings and Samuel Johnson
Solberg investigates the multifaceted social and professional ties between Johnson and the Bluestockings, using contemporary diaries, letters, and journals to reconstruct these interactions. Solberg characterizes the relationship with Elizabeth Montagu as a series of 'on-again, off-again' confrontations, noting that Johnson valued her 'variety' as a hostess but remained a 'parsimonious praiser' of her critical writing. With Elizabeth Carter, Solberg identifies a stable intellectual companionship rooted in their early years as 'Grub Street writers'. The text depicts Hannah More as being 'in awe' of Johnson, seeking his approbation for her 'Bas Bleu' assemblies. Solberg presents Charlotte Lennox as a 'shadowy figure' whose career was sustained by Johnson’s 'consistent support' through prefaces and dedications despite her snubbing by other Bluestocking women. The dissertation concludes that Johnson found a surrogate family in Fanny Burney, displaying a 'jealous passion' for her conversation and exuberant praise for her novel 'Evelina'. Overall, Solberg demonstrates that Johnson’s presence served as a 'drawing card' for these assemblies, facilitating a revolutionary shift where men and women met as 'intellectual equals'.
Thomas Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, Samuel Johnson's 'History of the English Language,' and Warton's History of English Poetry: Reciprocal Indebtedness?
Literary scholars Thomas Warton and Samuel Johnson may have referred extensively to each other's works when they wrote separate treatises on the English language and the history of English literature. Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser contains a historical note on early English authors, and these authors received the same treatment in Johnson's preface to his Dictionary of the English Language. A few decades after, Warton quoted and borrowed from the dictionary for his History of English Poetry.
'The Name of the Author': Moral Economics in Johnson's Life of Savage
Deutsch argues that the Life of Savage (1744) the groundwork for his own authorship by constructing a narrative of judgment and confinement based on a moral economy. This economy negotiates between individual failure and general rules, enabling Johnson to achieve a rhetorically universal, impersonal authority while addressing Savage's intimately particular life. Savage, who attempts to self-author in the face of maternal neglect (which Johnson readily believed, opening a space for "paternal writing"), is depicted as a man trapped by his own fiction, unable to convert maxims into conduct. Johnson's text, blending fact and fiction, functions as a novel of confinement that ultimately vindicates the "Name of an Author" as a characterless character possessing the constancy and authority of print, in contrast to Savage's volatile reputation.
Examines Boswell's management of deathbed anecdotes. Instead of a single, climactic scene, Boswell distributes the final "last words" throughout the Life. This narrative strategy reinforces a consistent moral character, integrating death into the life rather than presenting it as a separate, culminating performance.
The parallel dawning of William Shakespeare and the novel has not been given due attention despite its profound influence over the English language. However, analysts of mid-18th-century literature are aware of the novel's evolution into one of the pillars of the English discipline. Serious students of literature also credit Shakespeare's genius that contributed to the improvement of the English culture. Disagreements between literary critics Charlotte Lennox and Samuel Johnson regarding some genres were discussed.
Johnson: The Jacobite Legend Exhumed: A Rejoinder to Howard Erskine-Hill and J. C. D. Clark
Greene vehemently refutes the "neo-Jacobite" thesis of Clark and Erskine-Hill, dismissing it as the resurrection of an old, discredited legend. He argues that their "new model" of the eighteenth century is an attempt to impose a romanticized, ideologically-driven narrative onto a complex political reality better explained by the empirical, Namierian approach. Greene systematically dismantles their evidence, arguing that Johnson’s early anti-government writings were common opposition rhetoric, not specifically Jacobite. He points to Johnson's explicit rejection of the divine right of kings and his public condemnation of the 1745 rebellion as definitive proof against his Jacobitism. Greene contends that Clark and Erskine-Hill ignore the vast body of Johnson's work—including parliamentary debates and legal lectures—that demonstrates his fundamental loyalty to the established government. He concludes that the image of "Johnson the Jacobite" is a fantasy, as unsubstantiated as the myth of "Johnson at the Cheshire Cheese."
Greene’s feisty reply to Clark and Erskine-Hill’s suggestion that Johnson was a Jacobite.
Travel is one of literature's great metaphors for life; to investigate the properties of travel writing in different cultures affords a particular opportunity for intercultural comparison. In Naming Properties, Earl Miner examines closely four travel accounts: in Japanese, Basho's great Narrow Road through the Provinces, and, as control, the nonliterary account of his friend Sora; in English, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's manuscript version, his unbowdlerized Journal. The works were carefully chosen to provide a maximum of literary evidence. The focus of Miner's comparison is on the practical and philosophical implications of naming. Because comparison can reveal parochialism, currently familiar and unexamined Western conceptions are put in question on such issues as identification (what is a name, what is identity in different cultures?); reference (why name a child or river if they do not exist?); intention (how can we refer without intending to?); and fact and fiction (do names differ in fiction and in fact? What of a factual or historical character in a fiction like the novel? or a legal fiction in daily life?). In addition to examining the travel accounts, Miner considers the philosophical issues of naming in a range of other texts, from the Bible, Plato, Thucydides, Confucius, and earliest Japanese writing to current Western philosophers such as Kripke, Donnellan, and Nelson. This book will interest scholars in eighteenth-century English and pre-modern Japanese literature; comparative literature; intercultural study; and naming (onomastics).
Tradition in Transition: Women Writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth-Century Canon
Radical Affinities: Mary Wollstonecraft and Samuel Johnson
Johnson's 'Reply to Impromptu Verses by Baretti': A Clue to Dating
Dingley proposes a terminus a quo for Johnson's "Reply" based on internal evidence. He argues that line 8 of the poem echoes Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, written between 1768 and 1770. Given Johnson’s role in revising Goldsmith’s poem, Dingley suggests Johnson was recalling these prominent lines, making a date in the later 1760s more probable than an earlier one, especially since Baretti resided in Italy from 1760 to 1766.
Johnson, Blackstone, and the Tradition of Natural Law
On the connection between Johnson's ethical and legal thought by examining his conception of Natural Law, a belief reflected in his writings and his collaboration on the Vinerian lectures with Robert Chambers. Johnson's legal thought aligns with an empirical, "Augustinian" tradition of Natural Law developed by writers like Blackstone, Hooker, Bacon, and Cumberland. This tradition bases the knowledge of law on empirical observation of utility, promoting the common good, while also recognizing the weakness of unassisted human reason, thus necessitating divine guidance (scripture) for full clarification and implementation. Johnson's utilitarianism, expressed in The Rambler, demonstrates this very synthesis, making his ethical thought continuous with empirical Natural Law theory.
Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal
A Classical Source for Johnson on Augustus and Lord Bute
Baldwin identifies a specific and obscure classical source for a remark Samuel Johnson made comparing Lord Bute to the Roman emperor Augustus. He begins by quoting Boswell's record of Johnson's comment: "It was said of Augustus, that it would have been better for Rome that he had never been born, or had never died." The essay then notes that this particular sentiment about Augustus does not appear in the works of major classical historians like Suetonius or Tacitus, but is found in two late, minor texts: the anonymous *Epitome de Caesaribus* and the writings of the sixth-century Byzantine author John Lydus. He eliminates Lydus as a possible source, since his work was not discovered and printed until after Johnson's death. This leaves the *Epitome*, which was included in a 1733 collection of Roman histories that Johnson is known to have owned in his personal library. The author concludes that Johnson's use of this recondite allusion serves as proof of the impressive breadth of his classical reading.
Two Gentlemen of Verona: Critical Essays
Excerpt from His Edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765)
Johnson disputes the assertion that style and manner provide "unerring judgment" for attributing authorship, challenging Upton's comparison between the "critick's science" and a painter’s discernment. While painters possess manual habits of the "eye and the hand," writers possess only "habits of the mind," making their stylistic variations more pronounced and difficult to detect. Johnson notes that Shakespeare often "took his story from a novel which he sometimes followed, and sometimes forsook," leading to "extricable" scenery and confused allusions. The text emphasizes that internal marks of composition are insufficient for certain attribution, as authors often lose the "manner of an original" through literal translation or the natural desire to facilitate subsequent works through "recurrence to former ideas."
Clark argues that Greene’s influential 1960 book, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, is fundamentally flawed because it relies on the outdated Namierite historical model of the 1950s. This model, Clark explains, incorrectly dismissed the ideological distinctions between Whigs and Tories and downplayed the significance of Jacobitism. Clark contends that historical scholarship since the 1970s has restored the importance of party ideology, religion, and dynastic loyalties in eighteenth-century politics. He asserts that Johnson was, in fact, a Tory and a Nonjuror with strong Jacobite sympathies who only reconciled with the Hanoverian regime after George III’s accession. By ignoring decades of historical revision, Greene’s work drains Toryism of its meaning and misrepresents Johnson’s political and religious commitments. Clark concludes by acquitting Boswell of Greene's charge of inventing Johnson’s Toryism, arguing that Boswell's depiction is largely corroborated by other sources like Hawkins and is consistent with the newer understanding of the period.
An early salvo in the arguments over Johnson’s attitudes toward Jacobitism.
The Louse Is Better: Heinsius and Johnson
Waterhouse traces Johnson's remark comparing the precedency of a "louse and a flea" to a mock-encomium by Daniel Heinsius.
Johnson's Rasselas: Women in the 'Stream of Life'
Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas" is examined. By blending both male and female characters into the narrative's focus, Johnson transcends patriarchal notions of male superiority.
The Sense of a Middle: System and History in Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne
Saito's dissertation identifies a fundamental affinity between Johnson and Laurence Sterne by examining their shared "mental geography" centered on the concept of "a middle." This middle state, derived from Horatian, historical, and Popean sources, situates human existence between absolute knowledge and total ignorance. Saito argues that both Johnson and Sterne present human endeavors as attempts to construct orderly verbal or philosophical systems that inevitably collapse under the pressure of human temporality and history. For Johnson, this is evidenced in the Dictionary, where his initial aim to "fix" the English language yields to an acceptance of the "irresistible" changes of a living tongue, and in Rasselas, which concludes with "nothing is concluded." The study explores how Johnson's skepticism of cosmological systems like the "chain of being" leads to a focus on "moral history," where the "permanent mobility of human life" transcends the "permanent immobility of death." Saito concludes that for Johnson, human beings live history as an unfinishable process, pursuing unclosable systems in an "unstoppable quest for an unattainable goal."
Samuel Johnson's belief that birds hibernated under water is discussed in relation to a 1951 article by R. D. Spector. Johnson appears to have known of Thomas Pennant's book, in which the idea of swallow's submersion is ridiculed, but he did not necessarily approve of Pennant's zoology.
Baldwin refutes the claim that Samuel Johnson was persuaded to abandon his belief in the underwater hibernation of swallows by Thomas Pennant's British Zoology. He demonstrates that Johnson's 1768 remark about swallows that "conglobulate" and submerge themselves was part of a long and widespread scientific debate with many respected naturalists on both sides, a controversy Johnson was already aware of, as shown by his Dictionary definition of "swallow." The essay argues that Pennant's book was not the decisive refutation it has been claimed to be, and that Johnson's later silence on the subject in a conversation with Goldsmith is not evidence of a changed opinion. He concludes that the notion of Johnson modifying his view for fear of ridicule is unfounded, as the submersion theory remained a live and seriously considered issue long after Pennant's publication.
Johnson the Jacobite? A Response to the New Introduction to Donald Greene's The Politics of Samuel Johnson
Erskine-Hill defends his interpretation of Samuel Johnson as a crypto-Jacobite against Donald Greene's critique. He argues that Greene misrepresents his method, which relies not just on Boswell, but on the corroborating testimony of Sir John Hawkins and Johnson's own early writings. Erskine-Hill re-examines Johnson’s early works, such as London and Marmor Norfolciense, asserting they contain coded anti-Hanoverian attacks that go beyond standard opposition rhetoric. He challenges Greene’s dismissal of the Jacobite interpretation of Charles XII in The Vanity of Human Wishes, presenting evidence of the historical association between the Swedish king and the Stuart cause. While acknowledging Johnson’s later anti-Jacobite statements, Erskine-Hill interprets them as a pragmatic shift in a post-1745 world, not a repudiation of his original principles. He concludes that Greene’s reliance on the outdated Namierite historical model prevents him from recognizing the clear evidence of Johnson’s Jacobite sympathies.
Folkenflik interprets s Rasselas through the concept of a "closed field" of human possibilities, arguing the work is a satire on the endless and futile pursuit of happiness. The Happy Valley, initially a utopia, proves to be a bounded, confining system. The text uses pervasive imagery of circularity, spatial boundaries, and mutually exclusive binary oppositions (e.g., wild/tame, joy/grief) to enforce this theme of human limitation. Characters repeatedly attempt to escape this closed field—the inventor with flight, Imlac with boundless travel, Rasselas with finding the "choice of life"—but always fail, highlighting the gap between desire and reality, or imagination and fulfillment. The novel's structure, possibly written in a week and divided into 7 x 7 chapters, mirrors this theme of totality and division. The ultimate wisdom, expressed by Nekayah, is not a final solution but the necessity of choice and the recognition that happiness is unattainable in this finite world, suggesting a skepticism that points toward an otherworldly hope.
A Samuel Johnson Allusion in a Letter to Benjamin Franklin Explained and Amplified
The Vanity of Human Wishes: Samuel Johnson's Use of 'China to Peru'
"China to Peru" in the opening couplet of Vanity holds a meaning beyond simply signifying the breadth of mankind. Drawing on Joseph Glanvill's Vanity of Dogmatizing, Jain proposes that "China" represents the scholastic, circular mode of knowledge, while "Peru" symbolizes the vast, unexplored mysteries of nature (science). The poem's opening measures the full range of human learning and its conflicting modes of acquiring knowledge, framing the human desires explored within the totality of human achievement.
Gray and Murray explore the lifelong friendship and professional collaboration between Samuel Johnson and Dr. Robert James, the inventor of the famous "James's Fever Powder." Originating from their shared Lichfield school days, their relationship flourished in London, where Johnson assisted James in promoting his ambitious Medicinal Dictionary (1743–45). The article details Johnson’s contributions to the project, including the "Proposals" and several biographical entries on ancient physicians, which reveal Johnson's own considerable medical knowledge. The authors situate this collaboration within the context of eighteenth-century medical practice, noting the ongoing disputes between physicians and apothecaries and the prevalence of patent medicines. While Johnson publicly defended James and his popular fever powder against detractors, the article reveals that in private, especially late in life, Johnson expressed significant skepticism about the efficacy of James’s compounded medicines, preferring simpler remedies.
On Johnson’s friendship with the famous medical doctor.
Cum Notis Variorum: Johnson's Shakespeare of 1765: A Comparison of the Two Editions of MND
Radical Letters and Male Genealogies in Johnson's Dictionary
Kezar examines Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary" to demonstrate how stereotypical notions of gender prevalent in the 18th century helped Johnson to articulate ideas peculiar to his own conception of language. Johnson's concern with the male genealogy becomes intwined with the tradition of language and the authority on which that tradition rests.
The Individual Reader and the Canonized Text: Shakespeare Criticism after Johnson
Ferrero disputes the attribution of essays in the Universal Visiter to Johnson, arguing that two pieces signed "*" were likely written by Rolt, Johnson's co-contributor. While Boswell accepted only three essays into the canon, later scholars tentatively assigned six to Johnson based on the testimony of contemporary witnesses like Ann Gardner, who linked the double asterisk to him. Ferrero challenges the "unreliable testimony" of this witness, identifying a second possible Ann Gardner and disputing the "commanding" authority of Hawkins. Internal evidence, specifically the reuse of material, strongly suggests Rolt's authorship; a comparison between the "stylistically undistinguished" essay on Portugal and Rolt's A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce reveals significant portions of the periodical piece were "taken directly from the Dictionary" or "plagiarized directly" from entries Rolt composed. Ferrero concludes Johnson probably wrote the Dictionary's preface without reading the work and that the essays were incorrectly ascribed to him.
The Defining Language: Johnson's Dictionary and Macbeth
McDermott reassesses the relationship between Johnson's Dictionary (1755) and his edition of Shakespeare (1765), focusing on Macbeth. Johnson's early Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745) preceded the Dictionary, allowing a comparison of his evolving editorial approach. The article argues against the oversimplification that Johnson merely used the Dictionary as a reference for his editorial work, suggesting instead a complex, reciprocal influence. Evidence shows Johnson's lexicographical work influenced the 1765 edition, as four notes in the 1745 Observations were omitted because the Dictionary provided correct Elizabethan meanings for previously puzzling words (e.g., "owe" in the sense of "possess"). However, discrepancies exist, such as in the definition of "fantastical," showing that the Dictionary was sometimes less accurate than the later notes, or vice-versa, as with "flaws." Johnson was an innovator in historical scholarship, arguing that obscurity in Shakespeare's text was often due to the language's obsolescence or unfamiliar context, not textual corruption, a view reinforced by his Dictionary work. The Dictionary's reliance on quotations being collected before definitions suggests some definitions acted as glosses for the quoted texts, including Shakespeare’s, thus making the influence bidirectional. McDermott highlights instances where the text quoted in the Dictionary (e.g., adopting Theobald’s reading of "weird sisters" and "downfaln birthdom") departs from Warburton's base text, indicating Johnson’s engagement with the play's language continued throughout his lexicographical period.
Time, Literature and the Arts: Essays in Honor of Samuel L. Macey
Johnson and Boswell in Scotland: The Interplay of Prejudice and Patriotism
Samuel Johnson's Androgyny and Sexual Politics
Kemmerer explores Johnson's political thought regarding gender and the querelle des femmes, focusing on Irene, The Rambler, and Rasselas. Johnson frames his argument in terms of power-based relationships between men and women, advocating for equality and liberal education for women. The thesis argues that skepticism about cultural constructs of gender and the concept of psychological androgyny are central to Johnson's perspective. It analyzes the disparity between the misogynistic character in Boswell's Life and Johnson's own sympathetic writings, and models a feminine discourse that claims moral agency without apology or deference. The work concludes that Johnson's advocacy empowers women and frees men from the burden of solitary self-sufficiency.
Johnsonian Figures: Copia and Lockean Observation in Samuel Johnson's Critical Writings
Johnson's philosophy of style diverges significantly from the Lockean model of communication, despite sharing Locke's epistemology of cognition. Johnson rejects Locke's rejection of stylistic copia (abundance and variety of figures), contending that copious eloquence aids observation, increases audience attention, assists memory, and advances learning. Johnson's criticism of writers like Swift and his praise for the figurative abundance of Browne and Boerhaave demonstrate his belief in the moral and intellectual value of rhetorical figures.
Finding Mr. Boswell: Rhetorical Authority and National Identity in Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Wechselblatt examines the interplay of rhetorical authority and national identity in Johnson's Journey, arguing that the text's discursive structure is ultimately destabilized. Johnson typically establishes authority through a "polarized suspension" between a lost, figurative origin and an arbitrary, empirical event. This process fails in Scotland where "the laxity of Highland conversation" (chance) separates literal and figurative meaning. This semiotic crisis forces Johnson to attempt a literal, Cratylitic language in the Braidwood episode, ironically highlighting the commercialization that compromised his authority.
The Interested Heart and the Absent Mind: Samuel Johnson and Thomas Otway's The Orphan
Some of the processes of categorizing and reordering the attributes of mind and body are traced by discussing Samuel Johnson's critical evaluation of Thomas Otway's plays, and through a comparison of the discourses of desire in Ottway's "The Orphan" and Johnson's "Rassales."
Through the Lens of Orientalism: Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
West Virginia University Philological Papers
DeMaria's biography of Johnson traces his trajectory from his provincial origins in Lichfield to his emergence as the dominant literary figure of the mid-eighteenth century. The study moves beyond traditional anecdotal narratives to offer a "critical" assessment of Johnson's major works—including the Dictionary, The Rambler, and The Lives of the Poets—viewing them as intellectual responses to his lifelong battles with indolence, poverty, and psychological distress. DeMaria explores the "professionalization" of Johnson’s career, highlighting how his editorial labors and lexicographical achievements established a new standard for English prose and literary criticism. Central to the argument is the tension between Johnson’s innate skepticism and his rigorous commitment to religious and social order. By integrating biographical facts with close textual analysis, DeMaria illustrates how Johnson transformed personal "vacuity" into a monumental body of work that defined the moral and aesthetic landscape of his age. Chapter 1, 'Lichfield,' examines the childhood environment and familial influences that shaped a young intellectual, highlighting a bookselling background that fostered both deep literacy and a persistent impulse for social elevation. Chapter 2, 'Oxford and Birmingham,' recounts a truncated university career marked by poverty-induced hostility, followed by a struggle with depression and the pivotal transition into professional authorship through a translation of Lobo’s Abyssinia. Chapter 3, 'Irene,' analyzes the composition of a philosophical tragedy as a defining intellectual exercise that crystallized themes of human fallibility and the pervasive vanity of earthly desires. Chapter 4, 'London,' explores the maturation of a professional identity through the success of Juvenalian imitation and the subsequent mastery of "political science" in fabricated Parliamentary debates. Chapter 5, 'Early Biographical Writings,' addresses the strategic use of biography to transition from partisan journalism to moral philosophy, using historical figures to illustrate universal ethical standards and "natural rights." Chapter 6, 'Miscellaneous Prose,' discusses the development of a rational, empirical investigative style in various periodical contributions, emphasizing the discovery of truth over unexamined prejudices or tabloid sensationalism. Chapter 7, 'The Harleian Library,' explores the foundational impact of cataloging a massive library, which situated English letters within a broader European humanist tradition and provided the scholarly groundwork for the Dictionary. Chapter 8, 'Johnson’s Dictionary,' investigates the center-piece of this career, characterizing it as a Herculean synthesis of empirical linguistics and intellectual history that elevated the English language to a classical standard. Chapter 10, 'The Rambler,' addresses the creation of a distinctive moral persona whose "science" of human nature analyzed the perpetual restlessness of the mind and the ephemerality of literary fame. Chapter 11, 'Sermons,' analyzes a starker, more resolved rhetorical mode that employed biblical contexts to provide blunt reminders of mortality and the absolute nature of moral truth. Chapter 16, 'Shakespeare,' argues that the 1765 edition transformed the dramatist into a "poet of nature," using historical context to demythologize the text while situating its meaning on a permanent moral landscape. Chapter 20, 'The Lives of the Poets,' addresses the final demythologization of authorship, celebrating the "common reader" as the ultimate arbiter while acknowledging the inevitable loss of personal knowledge in biographical history. Chapter 21, 'Final Years,' chronicles a courageous final confrontation with death, marked by rigorous self-examination, persistent intellectual restlessness, and the eventual transition from living writer to national cultural icon. Critical reception of DeMaria’s biography reflects a mixed to highly positive trend, with scholarly reviewers focusing on the thesis that Johnson modeled himself on European Renaissance humanists rather than Boswell’s folkloric figure. Scholars widely praise the book's independence from Boswell, but they divide over whether this focus depersonalizes the subject. Among prominent publications, Walker, in TLS, notes that the dense, scholarly prose focuses on written works and ambition for European Latinity, though this procedure diminishes Johnson's humanity by omitting lighter anecdotes. In AJ, Nokes offers a mixed review, praising the analysis of neglected works but challenging the depiction of Johnson as a European intellectual rather than an Englishman, concluding that the study presents a humanism devoid of humanity. But Suarez, in Review of English Studies, calls the account boldly original, resituating Johnson in a European context to reveal a figure less narrowly English. Hudson, in Modern Philology, acknowledges the sensible attempt to demystify the heroic legend but questions how well humanism accounts for Johnson’s bleak Christian outlook or specific political reactions. Ingram, in Yearbook of English Studies, argues the core argument gets lost in detail, concluding that DeMaria was bound to fall down with Johnson. In contrast, popular and semi-popular publications lean toward broader praise; Rosenblum, in Library Journal, describes the text as a pleasantly written, useful introduction welcome to undergraduates, while Thompson, in The Times, enthusiastically commends DeMaria for bypassing Boswell to reconstruct the historical figure behind the national myth.
Reviews: John L. Abbott, ECCB, n.s., vol. 20 (1994): 506; O. M. Brack Jr., Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 49, no. 2 (1995): 169–74; Kate Chisholm, Times Educational Supplement, no. 4015 (June 1993): 10; Nicholas Hudson, Modern Philology 93, no. 2 (1995): 263–67; Allan Ingram, Yearbook of English Studies 25 (1995): 296–97; Frank Kermode, NYRB 53, no. 11 (2006): 28–31; Anthony W. Lee, Modern Philology 104, no. 4 (2007): 529–59; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 42, no. 1 (1995): 98–99; David Nokes, AJ 7 (1996): 495–99; The Observer (London), January 29, 1994; Joseph Rosenblum, Library Journal 118, no. 5 (1993): 76–77; Michael F. S. J. Suarez, RES, n.s., vol. 46, no. 183 (1995): 415–17; J. O. Tate, National Review 39 (February 1987): 54; J. W. M. Thompson, The Times (London), July 15, 1993; Keith Walker, TLS, no. 4721 (September 1993): 26; Richard Wendorf, SEL 34, no. 3 (1994): 679–81; Victor Wishna, Humanities 6 (September 2005): 26–29.
Sola Fide? Samuel Johnson and the Augustinian Doctrine of Salvation
Samuel Johnson's beliefs about salvation are representative of 18th-century Anglican doctrine, but do not conform to the Augustinian doctrine of the Protestant Reformation, as Donald J. Greene has argued. Johnson regards salvation as conditional, based upon faith, obedience and repentance, with most stress placed on obedience. Johnson also holds that grace is necessary. By contrast, the Protestant Reformation doctrine was one of justification by faith alone, which Greene apparently has misunderstood. Johnson's view stresses the importance of moral effort and eternal punishments and rewards and also involves a different concept of grace than the Reformation view.
Samuel Johnson and the Preface to Abbe Prevost's Memoirs of a Man of Quality
Brack identifies Johnson's involvement in Edward Cave's unsuccessful publication of Prévost's Memoirs of a Man of Quality. Although an anonymous translator provided the primary text, Brack attributes eight bracketed sentences in the preface to Johnson based on their strikingly characteristic force and balance. These passages emphasize moral themes such as virtue struggling with fate and the Delusive satisfaction of villainy. Brack further confirms the attribution through an unsigned letter in the 1740 Gentleman's Magazine that reprints Johnson's revised passages to puff Cave's edition against potential rivals. The study also notes Boswell's later reliance on existing accounts to compile Johnsonian attributions.
Johnsonian Biography and the Swiftian Self
Keilen proposes that Johnson's "urgent and brutal" hostility toward Swift stems from an uncomfortable sense of their similarity regarding the instability of the self in language. The analysis describes the "Life of Swift" as a collision between Swift's "metamorphic self-fashionings" and Johnson's investment in "normative biographical impulses." Keilen argues that Johnson uses biography to provide stability against the "waking horror" of the disintegrating subject which Swiftian writing activates.
Positioning the (Auto)Biographical Self: Ideological Fictions of Self in Boswell, Johnson, and John Bunyan
Baruth examines how autobiographers and biographers use textual strategies to create durable "fictions of self" that influence the material practices and ideologies of their historical contexts. Working from Felicity Nussbaum's premise of the ideological "positioning" of the self, the analysis focuses on James Boswell's writings, arguing that his various cross-generic productions, including pamphlets and journal entries, intentionally leverage chaotic and shifting self-constructions to operate as politically effective discourse. The work critiques editorial practices in the Yale editions of Boswell's Journals, asserting that they impose a limiting, monolithic biographical construction onto Boswell's multiply positioned self-representations. Finally, the dissertation traces the ideological pre-history of these practices through John Bunyan's Grace Abounding, concluding that the novel and autobiography share an inherent autonomy from external control, which constitutes their primary appeal to readers across different historical periods.
Horgan assembles Johnson's scattered observations on language into a systematic framework, identifying a fundamental distinction between the style of poetry and oratory and that of science and demonstration. Addressing Johnson's lexicographical method, Horgan explains how terminology and critical stances from ancient linguistic controversies were resumed during the Renaissance and informed the 'Plan' and 'Dictionary'. The text examines Johnson’s Aristotelian preference for 'generality' in poetic statement and his Lockean conception of words as signs of ideas. Horgan further investigates the influence of the Royal Society's linguistic requirements on Johnson’s 'demonstrative' style, characterized by clarity, purity, and 'nervous' expression. By comparing Johnson's positions with those of contemporaries like Hugh Blair and successors like Wordsworth, Horgan defines Johnson's 'middle style' and his navigation of the 'analogy' versus 'anomaly' debate in grammar. The work concludes that while Johnson initially sought to 'fix' the language, his empirical methodology eventually led him to recognize the 'chimera' of linguistic stability. Chapter 1, 'Johnson on Language: An Introduction', addresses the systematic principles governing linguistic deployment, distinguishing between styles for scientific demonstration and those for probable, persuasive topics. Chapter 2, 'Probable and Persuasory Topics,' argues that poetry and oratory require elegance, imagery, and modulated periods to effectively unite pleasure with instructional truth. Chapter 3, 'Science and Demonstration,' addresses the requirements for a clear, pure, and nervous style, influenced by the Royal Society's linguistic standards and Locke’s empirical theories. Chapter 4, 'The Arts of Rhetoric and Poetry,' argues that a language's progress toward elegance necessitates the regulation of figures and systematic argumentation to facilitate coherence and human understanding. Chapter 5, 'The Lexicographer and the Grammarians of Antiquity,' addresses the task of preserving linguistic purity through an empirical search for regular principles of analogy. Chapter 6, 'The Plan and the Dictionary,' argues that while fixing a language is a chimera, lexicography serves to retard degeneration by establishing a standard based on polite literature. Critical reception is overwhelmingly negative, with scholarly reviewers rejecting its derivative methodology and technical inaccuracy, though a few critics offer mild praise for its clarity as an introductory lecture series. In a devastating evaluation for RES, McDermott challenges Horgan's systematic presentation, citing simple sloppiness, slackness of thought, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the Plan of the Dictionary. Lynch’s review (Choice) similarly criticizes the volume for a dry, derivative approach that relies on outdated scholarship, lacks original insight, and ignores recent developments in the field, concluding it oversimplifies Johnson’s linguistic complexities. In Year’s Work in English Studies, Wood delivers a critical review, regretting that the text proceeds almost exclusively from Johnson's own estimates rather than integrating contemporary lexicographical debates, though he notes that Horgan expresses his predictable conclusions with enthusiasm and clarity. But Sitter, in SEL, provides a rare positive notice, characterising the book as a serious amateur series of lectures that assembles Johnson’s commentary on language and offers sensible, if unsurprising, analysis.
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas: A Perspective on Islam
Weber Studies: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal
Eddy and Fleeman provide a chronological and alphabetical census of the volumes for which Johnson appears as a subscriber between 1739 and 1791. The list identifies approximately 68 titles, including those published posthumously. The compilers argue that these subscriptions illustrate Johnson’s expanding range of associations and financial improvement as his fame increased. Notable inclusions are Brooke’s Gustavus Vasa (1739), Burney’s General History of Music, and various works by acquaintances such as Reynolds, Baretti, and the Thrales. The authors explain the methodology for identifying genuine subscriptions, distinguishing Johnson from namesakes like the "Mr. Samuel Johnson" who subscribed to Oldmixon’s history in 1730. The handlist serves as a supplement to previous studies of Johnson’s library, suggesting that many of these works likely occupied his shelves. The record includes specific forms of Johnson's name in lists, brief notes on contemporary subscribers, and library locations of verified copies.
Hinnant reexamines Johnson's literary criticism by placing it in dialogue with contemporary theoretical movements such as poststructuralism, reader-response criticism, and the New Historicism. This monograph challenges the traditional view of Johnson as a dogmatic neoclassical critic, arguing instead that his work is fundamentally dialogic and confrontational. Hinnant explores Johnson’s skepticism toward systematic "theoretical systems" while demonstrating that his practical judgments rest upon rigorous, albeit often tacit, philosophical principles. The narrative analyzes Johnson's preference for "performance" over "practice," suggesting this terminology highlights a self-conscious disparity between authorial intention and public reception. Hinnant details Johnson’s revaluation of genre, noting his privileging of nonfictional prose and "dialogic" drama over monologic forms like pastoral and devotional poetry. By examining Johnson’s psychological and epistemological assumptions, Hinnant shows how Johnson recognizes the "temporality of the sign" and the inevitable "erosion" of texts over time. The study characterizes Johnson as a critic who navigates the tension between the "natural" and the "new," asserting that his insistence on "objectively verifiable" evidence serves as "steel for the mind" against delusory imagination. Hinnant finds Johnson to be a precursor to modern debates on intertextuality and the politics of theory, portraying him as a thinker whose "divided and conflicting" views on progress reflect a sophisticated understanding of cultural history. Chapter 1, 'Introduction: Between Theory and Practice,' challenges the view of Samuel Johnson’s criticism as antiquated by framing it as a dialogic engagement with modern critical movements like poststructuralism and reader-response theory. Chapter 2, 'Tradition and Critical Difference,' argues that his critical orientation is fundamentally confrontational rather than dogmatic, using his engagement with contemporary opinions to model an intersubjective space of literary debate. Chapter 3, 'Author, Work, and Audience,' reevaluates the pragmatic model of communication by highlighting the ruptures and disparities between authorial intention, the stable text, and historically contingent audience responses. Chapter 4, 'Presence and Representation,' examines the mimetic gap in his theory, asserting that representation necessarily implies the absence of the real, thereby debunking the possibility of total dramatic or poetic illusion. Chapter 5, 'Recollection, Curiosity, and the Theory of Affects,' investigates how the temporal nature of perception creates an epistemological conflict between the familiar and the new, requiring a synthetic appeal to consensus. Chapter 6, 'The Dialectic of Original and Copy,' addresses intertextuality and the 'anxiety of influence,' portraying the relation between precursors and latecomers as an agonistic struggle for power and dispossession. Chapter 7, 'Redefining Genre,' presents a realist revision of literary kinds that privileges dramatic and narrative forms over monologic genres, while elevating nonfictional prose like biography and travel literature. Chapter 8, 'Language as the Dress of Thought,' contends that he views language as the foundational ground of thought rather than a transparent medium, acknowledging that linguistic forms remain partially beyond authorial control. Chapter 9, 'Conclusion,' defines his evaluative practice as a self-correcting process of canon formation that resists the ossification of literature into a fixed or sacred tradition. Critical reaction is mixed, with some academic reviewers commending the effort to rescue the subject from dogmatism while others sharply reject the application of modern theoretical frameworks. Wood, in the Year’s Work in English Studies, praises the balanced study for using a Bakhtinian dialogic model to portray writing as open performances, rescuing a less dogmatic author from admirers who require him to be cocksure. Lynch’s review in Choice calls it an important contribution that successfully positions the subject as a thinker engaged in critical dialogue rather than an authoritarian figure, avoiding excessive claims of anticipating contemporary frameworks. But Bogel’s review in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography expresses deep skepticism, arguing the theoretical connections are overstated and misleadingly extracted from their original historical contexts. Clingham, in AJ, finds the aim to modernize promising but unfulfilled, criticizing an opaque, dense style and a methodology that erroneously isolates critical principles from specific literary works. Basney, in the Sewanee Review, commends the emphasis on temporality but notes the text fails to surmount the improbability of aligning the subject with modern theory, often resorting to repetitive buzzwords. Sitter, in SEL, offers a mixed assessment, praising the effort to save the subject from anti-theoretical labels but noting that the exposition often relies on opaque paraphrase and excessive abstractions. Finally, Tomarken, in Papers on Language & Literature, concludes the text lacks theoretical depth because it fails to apply modern methodological insights to its own rhetorical procedures.
Kelly explores the influence of Locke’s introspective empirical philosophy on eighteenth-century biography, specifically focusing on the optical metaphor of the reflective "I." Using Johnson’s Life of Swift as a primary example, Kelly argues that biography functions as a perspective narrative designed to hold the subject within a moral code extrapolated from the laws of optics. Johnson interprets Swift’s "ridiculous resolution" against wearing spectacles as a fatal error that leads to sensory deprivation and madness. By reducing Swift to a silent, passive body, Johnson creates a moral spectacle that reinforces the biographer’s visual and judgmental authority. Kelly contrasts this with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where the vulnerability of memory—likened to effaced inscriptions on a tomb—threatens to collapse the articulated self into undifferentiated matter. The narrative asserts that Johnson’s hostility toward Swift stems from a professional fear of biography’s own inability to write a timely life. Finally, Kelly identifies Swift’s writing as a challenge to these optical metaphors, using a "swarm of thoughts" and mercurial personae to destabilize the distance required for conventional authorial consciousness.
現代注釈本にみるジョンソンのシェイクスピア注： 『ジュリアス・シーザー』の場合 [Johnson's Shakespeare Notes in Modern Commentaries: The Case of Julius Caesar]
Dionysos: The Literature and Addiction TriQuarterly
Samuel Johnson's 'China to Peru' and Joseph Glanvill
Samuel Johnson's use of the phrase "China to Peru" to represent "mankind" in the opening couplet of "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is discussed. Johnson likely intended the phrase to represent the two main and conflicting methods of acquiring knowledge.
Rape of the Lock: Stretching the Limits of Allusion
Doherty argues that the comic density of Pope's Rape of the Lock relies on 'hidden levels' of meaning and 'concealing part or a good deal of his references,' which can be recovered by consulting contemporary linguistic and medical contexts. Doherty enlists Johnson’s Dictionary to supplement existing scholarship, demonstrating how Johnson’s definitions for terms such as 'impertinence,' 'condition,' and 'honour' expose hidden raillery regarding rank and social pretension. For instance, Johnson’s ordering of 'Honour' places 'Reputation; fame' before 'Chastity,' reflecting the poem's 'polyvalent' central theme. Doherty further uses Johnson to illuminate Pope's 'parody of the arming of the epic hero' and the 'psychopathology' of the Cave of Spleen, which Johnson illustrates by quoting Pope's descriptions of 'megrim.' By integrating Johnson’s lexicography with the 'low-life' observations of Tom Brown and contemporary medical treatises, Doherty shows how Pope 'relying on his reading audience's expectations' regarding sexuality, 'vitiated Imagination,' and the 'social repression of natural sexual instincts.'
Rasselas in an Eighteenth-Century Novels Course
New analyzes Rasselas as a secular and hence open-ended pilgrimage that contrasts with the closed journeys of Defoe and Fielding. He argues that Johnson restores equilibrium through accidents like Pekuah's kidnapping, which illustrate the impermanence of even the deepest sorrow and the resilient capacities of human nature. The essay explores the absolute power and authority Johnson retains to disrupt every expectation of his orderly world. Rasselas is positioned as a work that restages the drama of Johnson’s work and the argument for immortality based on the disturbing inconclusiveness of the world.
The Rhetoric of Smith, Boswell and Johnson: Creating the Modern Icon
Boswell's Life created a mythological image of Johnson as an inspired writing genius, claiming he composed brilliant works spontaneously without revision. This portrayal was influenced by Adam Smith's "new rhetoric," which elevated style and marginalized invention as an autonomous, easy activity. However, a close reading of the Life reveals inconsistencies: Boswell selectively used questionable anecdotal evidence, while Johnson's own writings and advice confirm he valued preparation, used extensive notes, and regularly revised his work, suggesting he was a far more methodical writer.
Impact of James Boswell on the biography of Samuel Johnson. Boswell's biography fixed the idea of Johnson's character, and separated his work from his life. It is usually taken as a starting point to any study of Johnson.
On Johnson’s desire for literary fame.
Robert Potter's Attack on Doctor Johnson
Stoker discusses Robert Potter's printed attacks on Johnson's Lives of the Poets, particularly An inquiry into some passages in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the poets (1783). Potter, who harbored personal animosity following a snub by Johnson, primarily aimed to defend the Odes of his deceased friend Thomas Gray, though he also defended Lyttelton. Boswell and Walpole believed Potter acted as a "smaller power" incited by Mrs. Montagu, who was personally offended by Johnson's criticism of Lyttelton. Potter's correspondence confirms Montagu's editorial input on the text, despite Potter's denial of being a mere "hireling." Notwithstanding the attack, Potter retained respect for Johnson's "extraordinary abilities" while simultaneously deploring the "sour, contemptuous and malignant" tone in his writing.
Lipking examines the Lives of the Poets as a culmination of Johnson’s lifelong interest and an essential work of English biography and criticism. He argues that Johnson judges each person on the basis of principles and performance, viewing poets as people doing a job rather than unworldly geniuses. The essay highlights Johnson's unsparing exercise of judgment, noting that his frankness about Paradise Lost — which he claimed none ever wished it longer than it is — is thrilling for students. The Lives tests the moral imagination of the student by prompting them to imagine themselves in someone else’s place.
The Discovery of Scott as 'Editor' and 'Author of the Advertisement' in the Illustrated Edition of Rasselas
Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare, Milton, Rowe, and Otway: Some Resurrected Notes
This note resurrects several of Johnson's observations on Shakespeare from the Yale edition that suggest instances of imitation or influence regarding Milton. The note argues that editors of Milton, Rowe, and Otway have overlooked these specific connections. Examples include Johnson's suggestion that Milton borrowed from Midsummer Night's Dream for lines in Il Penseroso and used a hint from 1 Henry VI for the opening of Samson Agonistes. The note also documents Johnson’s identification of Miltonic borrowings from The Destruction of Troy and 2 Henry IV, positioning Johnson as a pioneer in tracing these literary lineages.
Samuel Johnson and Beckett's Happy Days
On the subtle, submerged reference to Johnson and his circle within Beckett's Happy Days (1961), building on Beckett's deep admiration for Johnson and his abandoned play fragment Human Wishes. The connection only becomes apparent when comparing the English text with its French translation, Oh les beaux jours. In the English version, the character Winnie recalls her first kiss with "A Mr Johnson, or Johnston, or perhaps I should say Johnstone." The French version, however, names the man as "Demoulin... ou Dumoulin... voire Desmoulins," which clearly refers to Mrs. Desmoulins, a significant member of Johnson's household and a character in Beckett's fragment. Furthermore, the article notes the "dead in tub" announcement of "Dr Carolus Hunter" in the English play, which corresponds to the Reverend Charles Hunter, son of Johnson's childhood schoolmaster, John Hunter, providing an additional link to Johnson's associates.
What Was Johnson Paid for Rasselas?
Although scholars of Samuel Johnson have assumed that William Strahan paid Johnson 100 pounds for the first edition of "Rasselas," Strahan may have paid that amount for both editions of "Rasselas."
Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies
Herman Melville jokes about the relationship between masters and slaves in his "Benito Cereno." Ways in which Melville pokes fun at Samuel Johnson and Lord Byron in the poem are discussed.
Fix explores teaching Johnson’s critical writing by focusing on the drama and struggle of his own authorial vocation. He argues that students should read Johnson as a writer of criticism who articulates and generalizes from his responses as a reader. The essay analyzes Johnson's figurative language as a work of art, noting that images of travel and freedom to roam are associated with artistic genius. Regarding Shakespeare, Fix observes that Johnson depicts him as an aggressive and irresistibly powerful writer who impregnates and vibrates the heart rather than merely propagating progeny. Johnson’s critical reactions are so complicated, rich, and extreme that they require the varied resources of metaphor.
Samuel Johnson's The Rambler and Edmund Burke's Reflections
Ritchie argues that Johnson's The Rambler prefigures the moral and social ethics of Burke's Reflections. Both authors use periodic sentences and binary opposites to maintain harmony between conflicting viewpoints and prevent the merging of distinct moral categories. Ritchie demonstrates how Johnson and Burke treat the past as a fund of empirical evidence to combat delusive hope. Similar architectural, nautical, and travel imagery further unites their pedagogical goals regarding prudence, authority, and the importance of local attachments.
'The Tories, We ...': Samuel Johnson and Unitarian Boston
Van Anglen analyzes the reception of Johnson in early nineteenth-century Unitarian Boston, demonstrating how the city's intellectual elite used him as an ideological tool in a crisis of authority. Feeling their influence decline in an increasingly democratic America, these conservative, Anglophile Brahmins appropriated English literary figures to support their worldview. While Milton often represented liberty, Johnson became a key “Arminian” (authority-affirming) figure, embodying order, tradition, and hierarchy. For example, Buckminster, in a 1809 address, praised Johnson as a "moralist, who ‘gives ardour to virtue and confidence to truth,’" a model for re-establishing intellectual leadership. Similarly, Peabody saw Johnson’s social “despotism” as an ideal for elite influence. Even Channing, despite his criticisms, used Johnson as a powerful symbol of the conservative principles his class sought to defend, illustrating the politicized nature of literary reception in the early republic.
Samuel Johnson's Alchemy: Fusing Aristotelian Invention into Eighteenth Century Rhetoric
Johnson develops a rhetorical theory that fuses Aristotelian invention into eighteenth-century rhetoric, contrasting sharply with Adam Smith's modern, Lockean-influenced approach. Johnson views invention as a crucial, teachable art, aligning it with Aristotelian persuasive rhetoric, emphasizing audience, context, and purpose. Conversely, Smith subordinates invention to style, replacing it with untaught introspection and genius. James Boswell misrepresents Johnson as an uninspired, spontaneous writer-genius, inadvertently aligning Johnson with Smith’s modern and mechanistic views on composition. The analysis of Johnson's work confirms his commitment to a flexible, comprehensive, and demanding inventive process.
Brooks examines the intellectual empowerment and early feminist dimensions of Johnson's female characters in Rasselas. Focusing on gender rather than sexuality, the article demonstrates how Nekayah and Pekuah evolve from naive roles into self-actualizing individuals who achieve intellectual equality with their male counterparts. Brooks points out that Nekayah actively demands a share in the quest, champions reason and wisdom alongside traditional virtue, and acquires the cardinal virtue of courage at the pyramids. Similarly, the study outlines how Pekuah uses her superior intellect to navigate her Arab captivity and rehabilitate a crazed astronomer, illustrating that Johnson gave his female characters the voice and autonomy to communicate his central philosophies regarding human existence.
James Boswell's Ms. Perceptions and Samuel Johnson's Ms. Placed Friends
Hain and McAllister challenge the myth of Johnson as a misogynist by contrasting his deep professional and personal friendships with women against Boswell’s "flawed" and reductive biographical portrayal. While evidence from the writings of Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, and Fanny Burney reveals mutual respect and affection—with Johnson consistently valuing "talent" and "great genius" and praising their intellectual accomplishments—Boswell either omits details, minimizes these relationships as incidental, or, as with More, presents a negative or distorted account. Hain and McAllister attribute these omissions to Boswell’s own gender biases, which viewed women as sexual "objects," "playthings," or intellectual inferiors rather than capable companions. They conclude that Boswell’s personal views explain this distortion, as he purposely or selectively shaped his text to exclude evidence of Johnson's "egalitarian attitudes toward female intellect," highlighting the necessity of examining the Life for other biases.
South Central Review: The Journal of the South Central Modern Language Association
Anderson and Kolb collect diverse pedagogical perspectives to provide a sourcebook of material, information, and ideas for teaching Johnson to undergraduates. The volume responds to the perception that students find in Johnson challenging and thought-provoking ideas for living, specifically regarding identity, authority, and the choice of life. Part one surveys classroom anthologies and scholarly and critical resources to assist specialists and nonspecialists in navigating the Johnsonian canon. Part two features essays on general or thematic approaches, such as Parke's discussion of Johnson and gender, Basker's analysis of authority, and Erwin's exploration of Lockean empiricism. Further sections offer conceptual models and practical tips for specific works, including Hinnant on the Life of Savage, Redford on the letters, and Reddick on the Dictionary. The editors aim to further energize the teaching community by demonstrating that Johnson remains widely taught and relevant to the concerns of contemporary students.
Sir John Hawkins, Biographer of Johnson: A Rhetorical Analysis
Gay Brack's rhetorical analysis of Hawkins's Life of Johnson demonstrates its importance as a neglected biography, arguing that Hawkins's portrait of a vulnerable and troubled Johnson aligns more closely with Johnson's Prayers and Meditations than does Boswell's portrayal of Johnson as an intellectual "John Bull." Hawkins aims to defend his friend from contemporary suspicions regarding his Christian orthodoxy. The study analyzes Hawkins's use of affective rhetoric, particularly ethos and pathos, examining his development of a credible persona, his interpretation of Johnson's controversial relationship with Savage, and his use of "digressions" as strategic argument and historical context. Finally, it analyzes Hawkins's account of Johnson's final days as a refutation and emotional peroration confirming Johnson's piety.
The Dialogic Influence: Virginia Woolf and Samuel Johnson
Woolf's critical assumptions and later narrative style derive significantly from her reading of Samuel Johnson, mediated by her father, Leslie Stephen. Stephen promoted a monologic reading of Johnson, focusing on his moral and didactic qualities and criticizing his writing style as inferior to his conversation. In contrast, Woolf reads Johnson as a dialogical writer whose use of conversation and antithesis attempts to sustain opposition and allow multiple, simultaneous points of view, a technique Woolf develops in her prose and fiction.
Boswell's Johnson and the Stephens (Leslie Stephen and Virginia Woolf)
Griffith explores the shared love for Johnson between Leslie Stephen and his daughter Virginia Woolf, revealing a generational shift in critical focus. Leslie Stephen, a prominent Victorian, was devoted to Boswell's Life, which he read on his deathbed. He admired Johnson the man—the moral hero and conversationalist—but found much of Johnson’s own writing difficult, calling The Rambler “unreadable”. Virginia Woolf, who grew up discussing Johnson in her father’s library, also revered Boswell’s portrait but championed Johnson the writer. Naming her essay collections The Common Reader after a Johnsonian phrase, she praised the Lives of the Poets for its “vigour and vivacity” and elegant prose. Griffith concludes that this evolution—from Stephen’s Victorian emphasis on the biographical man to Woolf’s modern appreciation for the literary artist—signifies a crucial turn in Johnsonian criticism.
A survey of Stephen’s and Woolf’s interest in Johnson.
Gross advocates for a psychoanalytic approach to Johnson, highlighting his astonishing modernity and keen understanding of mental phenomena derived from intense self-analysis. The essay uses Johnson's private papers to reveal a vulnerable, more truly human figure struggling with obsessive fantasies, guilt, and a paralysis of will. Gross analyzes The Vision of Theodore as an autobiographical allegory where Habit acts as a fearsome slave driver and Melancholy tortures its prisoner. This approach presents Johnson as a young person's writer whose inward life provides psychic meaning for students mastering their own conflict and discontent.
Johnson, Rasselas, and the Politics of Empire
Samuel Johnson's View of America: A Moral Judgment, Based on Conscience, Not Compromise
Ameter explores Johnson's views on America, arguing that his antagonism was a moral judgment rooted in his hatred of slavery and his concern for the rights of all people. The essay analyzes Johnson's political pamphlets, which criticized England's colonization policy and the barbaric treatment of Native Americans. Ameter contrasts Johnson's humanitarian defense of human dignity with Boswell's acceptance of slavery, noting that Johnson fought slavery in his writings, conversations, and private life. Students discover a Johnson whose ideas on humanitarian issues were three hundred years in advance of his time.
Monash University Center for Bibliographical & Textual Studies
Johnson in the Schoolroom: George Fulton's Miniature Dictionary (1821)
Fleeman examines the publishing history and commercial success of miniature versions of Johnson's Dictionary, specifically the series compiled by George Fulton between 1821 and 1866. Using records from the Edinburgh firm Oliver and Boyd, Fleeman details the production costs, stereotyping processes, and distribution networks involving booksellers like Henry Mozley and Beilby and Knotts. The article highlights the schoolroom as a primary market, noting that these small-format texts were "destined for the schoolroom and destruction." Fleeman traces thirty-three editions, totaling over 90,000 copies, while documenting the physical evolution of the text, including Retouching portraits of Johnson and adjustments to trade discounts. The study identifies a distinct "captive" market in boarding schools and academies where the dictionary sold for a higher retail price than to the general public, reflecting Johnson's enduring utility in nineteenth-century pedagogical settings.
Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Johnson: A Literary Relationship
Line 361 of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Hardy glosses the representation of charity as "Love, which scarce collective Man can fill." He suggests that Johnson’s phrasing draws upon Pope’s Essay on Man, where self-love expands into a "boundless heart" and a "system of Benevolence." In this context, Johnson describes a love so capacious that the entirety of humankind—collective man—is barely sufficient to occupy its depth. This theological reworking emphasizes the transition from individual desire to a divine, all-embracing caritas.
The Myth of Johnson's Misogyny: Some Addenda
Discrepancy Report The provided paragraphs are not abstracts of different works; both summarize Greene's arguments regarding Johnson's view of women. Contradiction Report No contradictions exist between the source paragraphs. Synthesis Greene's article challenges the myth of Johnson's misogyny, a "spurious construct" fueled by misquotations and a priori reasoning, to provide a compassionate account of his feminism. Supporting work by Grundy and Basker, Greene documents Johnson's patronage of intellectual women, his admiration for independent figures like the Amazons, and his "compassionate concern" for female problems, treated with the same gravitas as men's. Greene disputes the authenticity of two key quotations in Boswell: the "woman's a whore" comment regarding Lady Diana Beauclerk and the "dancing dog" anecdote about women preaching. He demonstrates how Boswell altered original journal entries to create the latter "dubious or false" construct. Johnson's imaginative works further contradict his "sexist" reputation; the tragedy Irene features a "brilliant characterization" of a woman with "the thirst for empire and penetrating reason," while Rasselas presents Princess Nekayah as displaying "superior intelligence to her brother." Greene also notes The Fountains functions as a "miniature Vanity of Human Wishes with a female protagonist." By examining Johnson's defense of Mary, Queen of Scots, Greene argues he consistently encouraged female initiative.
Hester Piozzi, Italy, and the Johnsonian Aether
Dussinger’s article analyzes Observations and Reflections (1789) as travel writing conscious of a female perspective in a male-dominated genre and as an exploration of the enduring intellectual bond between Piozzi and Johnson. Even after their bitter estrangement and Johnson’s death, his "unmistakably British witness" functioned as a "hovering critical presence" over her shoulder, leading Piozzi to engage his pronouncements on travel and its "ultimate futility for acquiring knowledge or virtue." By examining fifteen specific references to Johnson, Dussinger shows how Piozzi adopted his opinions on travel and human life while seeking to "transcend his hovering shadow" and find an independent voice. Piozzi’s casual, conversational style aims to "represent ease" to her English audience, vindicate her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, and frame her Continental tour within familiar British cultural norms. By sharing sights with an "imagined confidant," Piozzi transcends "mere sight-seeing" to construct an autobiographical narrative and "literary monument" that re-affirms her English identity through a complex dialogue between the observing self and the "Johnsonian standard of reality."
'Guarded with Fragments': Body and Discourse in Rasselas
Wallace argues that in Johnson's Rasselas, the escape from the Happy Valley—figured as a sexualized maternal body—triggers gender differentiation and the traveler's entry into a competitive, dialogized discourse (heteroglossia). Rasselas's early discontents are monologic, but Imlac's introduction of worldly issues creates dialogue, allowing the physical escape. Nekayah, entering the world, adopts submissive language, reflecting her entry into gendered, unequal roles. The female characters' resistance is expressed through bodily communication (embrace, tears), but their public narratives are mediated by language accessible to men. The travelers' final choice of "choice of eternity" in the catacombs is a denial of the body, allowing them to reclaim an undifferentiated spiritual identity, returning to a univocal, closed world, though the disruptive effects remain for the reader.
Samuel Johnson and the American Common Reader
Basker documents the paradox of Johnson's immense popularity in early America despite his notorious anti-American sentiments. Johnson publicly derided Americans as “a race of convicts” and famously asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Yet, Basker presents overwhelming evidence of a vast American readership. Johnson's works appeared in virtually every American bookseller's catalogue from 1754–1801, dominated library collections from Philadelphia to rural Pennsylvania, and were frequently reprinted by American publishers, including the first American edition of Shakespeare. He was the most frequently cited author in American periodicals and a staple in schoolbooks read by everyone from Frederick Douglass to young women reading Wollstonecraft's anthology. This contradictory reception, Basker argues, reveals America's complex struggle with its British cultural heritage, making Johnson a kind of "cultural father figure."
The Jenyns Review: 'Leibnitian Reasoning' on Trial
Bonnell examines Johnson's review of Jenyns’s A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, describing it as a compact and lively intellectual exercise that showcases Johnson's acuity and forcefulness. The essay explores how Johnson wields sarcasm and brilliant parody against Jenyns's attempts to explain away poverty, ignorance, and starvation as necessary parts of a divine system. Bonnell highlights Johnson's humane compassion for the poor and his wariness of political ambiguity. The review demonstrates Johnson's courage in rejecting a system of moral predestination to maintain his empathic grasp of human suffering.
Ogden identifies a probable borrowing in The Rambler No. 92, where Johnson defines the task of criticism as to improve opinion into knowledge. The author traces this striking idea to Milton's Areopagitica, which asserts that opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. This brief note connects Johnson's rational approach to aesthetics with Milton's prose theory.
Reddick suggests that the Dictionary is a living literary and critical text that reveals a dynamic between reader and text. He explores how Johnson’s original confident statement of methodology in the Plan was challenged by empirical linguistic evidence, leading him to abandon predetermined structures in favor of usage. The essay notes that Johnson's authoritative voice is complicated by hundreds of borrowed authorities, creating an unavoidable opposition between definitions and the complexities of the quoted rhetoric. Students discover the linguistic struggle within the text and the triumph of the spirit behind Johnson’s monument.
Recent Books on Johnson and Boswell [review of New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of 'The Life of Johnson,' by Greg Clingham; The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd ed., by Donald Greene; Printing Technology, Letters, and Samuel Johnson, by Alvin B. Kernan; A Dr. Johnson Chronology, by Norman Page; Johnson's Shakespeare, by G. F. Parker; The Making of Johnson's 'Dictionary,' 1746–1773, by Allen Reddick; The Letters of Samuel Johnson, by Bruce Redford; and Samuel Johnson in the Medical World: The Doctor and the Patient, by John Wiltshire]
Ziegler reviews twelve works concerning Johnson and Boswell, observing that the master receives more attention than the disciple, who currently receives thin regard compared to his mentor. He discusses the second edition of Donald Greene’s The Politics of Samuel Johnson, describing Greene as a merry iconoclast who challenges the myth of Johnson as a Tory. Ziegler also examines Maurice Brownell's defense of Johnson's attitude toward the arts and Philip Davis’s empathetic exploration of the Rambler, which applies the Johnsonian mindset to modernism. The review further addresses Fred Parker’s explication of the Preface to Shakespeare's neoclassicism, Edward Tomarken’s formalist/mimetic dialectic in Rasselas, and several works on the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets. Finally, Ziegler discusses Martin Maner’s analysis of Johnson’s biographical skepticism and Leo Damrosch’s Fictions of Reality through a conservative lens, concluding with Bruce Redford’s Hyde edition of Johnson’s letters, which reveals an uneasy and possessive tone in the correspondence with Piozzi.
Samuel Johnson and the Reading Revolution
Johnson and the Noble Savage, Friend of Goodness
Stavisky argues that Johnson’s evolving view of Richard Savage mirrors his critical shift from an idealistic belief in the unity of a moral artist and moral art to a realistic acceptance of their separation. In the 1744 Life of Savage, Johnson defends his subject as a flawed but redeemable “friend of goodness” whose writings remain fundamentally moral, thereby uniting the man and his work. By the time of Rambler 183 (1751), however, Johnson’s view of human nature has darkened; he identifies envy as a primary motivator of malice and admits the “dangerous and empirical” necessity of using pride to combat it. This moral compromise begins to sever the author from his work, a separation made explicit in the Lives of the Poets. There, in the Life of Thomson, Johnson uses a story told by Savage himself to conclude that an author’s life cannot be read in his works.
Negotiating the Past, Examining Ourselves: Johnson, Women, and Gender in the Classroom
Parke's essay explores the pedagogical value of examining Johnson through gender studies to move beyond caricatures of his conservatism and a "specious" cultural image based on jocular remarks in Boswell's Life. Recent scholarship by women critics re-emphasizes Johnson's writings, showing a man "benign and rather enlightened" who supported women writers, distinguishing him from neo-conservative contemporaries like Rousseau. By analyzing Irene, Rasselas, and the Rambler, Parke demonstrates Johnson's "unconditional and gender-blind opposition to abuses of power" as an overarching principle and his belief that education "knows no gender bounds." These works offer social critiques and gender-equal presentations that contrast with the late eighteenth-century anti-jacobin backlash, proving Johnson held enlightened views on women's education.
Swords investigates the complex "Bloomian anxiety" Emerson felt toward Johnson, arguing that despite Emerson's public dismissals of neoclassical style, he remained privately haunted and inspired by Johnson's moral authority. The article traces Emerson’s lifelong engagement with Johnson’s works, from childhood readings of the Lives of the Poets to mature journals where he used Johnson as a "therapeutic meditation" to navigate professional self-doubt and grief. Swords highlights Emerson's covert appropriation of Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare in his late essay "Art and Criticism," suggesting a eventual fusion of their critical voices. Beyond Emerson, Swords documents similar patterns of identification in Hawthorne, Melville, and Holmes, who viewed Johnson as a vital companion and a model for the independent man of letters. The narrative concludes that Johnson served as a "cultural father figure" whose commitment to "motherwit" and perseverance provided the essential blueprint for the American scholar’s vocation.
'Extensive Views' in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Hickey argues that the idea of "extensive views" in Johnson's Journey functions as a structural device to propagate and control systems of meaning, reflecting the English attempt to encompass Scotland's diversity. Johnson's descriptive project is intertwined with the political project of English conquest and generalization. He contrasts the unified system of English commerce and law with Scotland's fragmented, obstruction-filled topography. Johnson's language repeatedly links "extension" with power, making factual description subtly subversive by highlighting the landscape’s resistance to generalized order. The traveler, though rooted in the English "commercial industry" system, transacts imaginative exchanges with the Scottish topography, interpreting it through the sublime and the fictions of romance. This mediation allows him to annex the landscape to a system of figurative meaning, transforming a seemingly barren reality into a literary subject.
Fleeman defends the original interpretation of the letter “M” in Johnson’s diaries as a symbol for defecation, countering Greene’s theory of masturbation. He argues that in an era when medical diagnosis focused on feces and urine, it was reasonable for Johnson, who was often costive and took frequent purges (Καθ), to record his bowel activity. Fleeman posits that “M” stands for “movement” or “motions,” deriving from the Latin movere—a term still common in British medical parlance. This reading explains entries like “M. 2” (recording the number of stools passed) and makes sense of contexts like “M with the utmost difficulty” in a way the masturbation theory does not. Further support comes from Johnson’s later use of “X” (Greek chi) for the same record, likely standing for χέζω (“to ease oneself”).
A reply to Greene’s argument about the letter M in Johnson’s diaries.
Samuel Johnson's Politics: Some Points of Disagreement [review of The Politics of Samuel Johnson, by Donald J. Greene]
O'Flaherty reviews the second edition of Donald J. Greene's The Politics of Samuel Johnson, which asserts Johnson's eminence in eighteenth-century political thought. O'Flaherty acknowledges Greene's dominant influence in this field but expresses concern that Greene is an "enthusiast" who defends Johnson "contra mundum." O'Flaherty argues Greene's unwillingness to concede flaws results in a biased, incomplete picture of Johnson's views. Greene's thesis requires reliance on ephemeral, contested, and non-major writings since Johnson's central works are non-political. O'Flaherty questions the certainty of Johnson's authorship in the Vinerian lectures and notes Greene ignores Johnson's expressions of political indifferentism. O'Flaherty concludes Johnson was a great writer who thought and wrote only occasionally on politics, unlike figures like Orwell.
Gender, Myth, and Recompense: Hester Thrale's Journal of a Tour to Wales
McAllister reads Thrale’s Welsh journal as a private text of personal and artistic rebellion against a restrictive patriarchal world. Feeling neglected and intellectually dismissed by her husband and Johnson, whom she portrays as cold, “cavilling” philosophers, Thrale constructs a counter-mythology centered on female bonds and maternal sensitivity. She presents herself as isolated in her motherly concern for her daughter Queeney and romanticizes her relationship with her deceased mother, whose suffering at the hands of a harsh husband mirrors her own. This creation of a superior female world serves as a strategy to validate her feelings and her right to a literary voice. The strategy ultimately fails, however, as Thrale confronts her own insecurities and, most crushingly, her husband’s legal and financial power over her, which shatters her plans and hopes. The journal's abrupt, angry conclusion marks the collapse of this literary self-recompense in the face of reality.
Johnson's Prose Style: Blending Energy and Elegance in The Rambler
Wildermuth resolves the critical debate over whether Johnson’s prose is abstract or concrete by arguing it is a synthesis of two eighteenth-century stylistic modes: “energy” and “elegance”. He defines energy as vivid, figurative language in complex sentences that appeals to the imagination and emotions, and elegance as a smooth, plain style that appeals to reason. Tracing this “mixed style” from Restoration divines like Tillotson and Sprat to rhetoricians like Geddes and Campbell, Wildermuth links it to the aesthetic principle of concordia discors, influenced by Newtonian physics. A close analysis of Rambler No. 5 demonstrates Johnson's technique: using the elegance of domestic language to build trust before employing energetic, figurative language to move the reader from concrete particulars (the changing seasons) to abstract, universal truths (the nature of time and eternity), thereby achieving his goals as a Christian moralist.
Hearing Epistolick Voices: Teaching Johnson's Letters
Redford examines the great epistolick art of Johnson, arguing for the letters to move decisively center stage as significant literary texts. The essay identifies Johnson’s criteria for a letter as one that captures a speaking tone of voice and rejects extravagant claims for the familiar letter. Redford analyzes letters of consolation that adapt the Christian moralist project to a private form, moving from raw grief to poised acceptance. Furthermore, the letters illustrate Johnson's multiple voices and his mastery of organic allusion, where classical prototypes like the irremeable Stream signify the river of death.
The Mysterious Letter 'M' in Johnson's Diaries
Baldwin analyzes the mysterious letter “M” in Johnson’s diaries, challenging both the Yale editors’ claim that it signifies defecation and Greene’s argument for masturbation. Baldwin finds Greene’s case cogent but not conclusive, noting the difficulty of imagining someone masturbating "with the utmost difficulty." He systematically proposes and evaluates alternatives based on specific diary entries, suggesting “M” could stand for a noun like the Latin merda (feces), or verbs for urination (meio, mingo), a siesta (meridiavi), or even sexual intercourse (moechor). Baldwin’s central argument is against the assumption that “M” must have a single, uniform meaning. Since Johnson used different symbols for the same activity (e.g., "L" and "γν" for reading), Baldwin concludes it is entirely plausible that he used one symbol for multiple activities, making any single explanation insufficient to solve the mystery.
A classicist’s challenge to Greene’s interpretation of the M in Johnson’s diaries as a reference to masturbation.
Dr. Johnson's Forgetfulness, Descartes' Piece of Wax
Curley argues that Johnson’s animosity toward America was not prejudice but stemmed from three consistent principles: patriotism, anti-racism, and anti-imperialism. His patriotism was a "Little Englander" nativism that saw colonies as draining the mother country of its people and resources. His profound anti-racism, grounded in a Lockean belief in natural rights, led him to condemn the colonists for usurping Native American lands and to expose the hypocrisy of slave owners demanding liberty. Johnson viewed the entire European colonial enterprise as an unlawful crime against humanity, famously calling the Anglo-French conflict in America the “quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger”. Curley traces these convictions from early works like the "Debates in Magna Lilliputia" to Taxation No Tyranny, demonstrating that Johnson's critique was a morally coherent and farsighted stand against empire and racial injustice.
Compendious Conversations: The Method of Dialogue in the Early Enlightenment
James Boswell and the Art of Conversation
Johnson's Psychic Turmoil and the Women in His Life
Menninger uses psychoanalytical theory to analyze Johnson’s severe depressive states and "psychic turmoil." He argues that Johnson’s "neurotic" personality was shaped by an "unrequited need for maternal sustenance" originating from his unsatisfactory relationship with Sarah Johnson. Menninger views Johnson’s marriage to the significantly older Elizabeth Porter as a search for a "mother-surrogate" to provide the "emotional nurture" he lacked. The article characterizes the subsequent marital deterioration as a failure to meet mutual psychological needs, leading to an "empty, unfulfilling marriage." Menninger identifies Hester Thrale as the "therapeutically skillful" figure whose intuitive "moral treatment" helped reduce Johnson’s "hateful self-reproaches" and "castigating conscience" after 1766. Thrale’s "active friendliness" allowed Johnson to believe he was a "likeable person" rather than just a "brilliant if grotesque" conversationalist. Menninger concludes that women offered the "substantial satisfaction" necessary for Johnson’s mental survival, though his perceived betrayal by Thrale’s remarriage left him "vulnerable to feeling abandoned" once again.
Johnson's Silencing of Pope: Trivializing An Essay on Man
Solomon investigates Johnson’s "hostility" toward Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man, arguing that Johnson’s authoritative dismissal of the poem in the Life of Pope was motivated by a private struggle against "religious skepticism." Solomon claims that Johnson viewed Pope’s "seductive powers of eloquence" as a dangerous "bewitchment" that had to be "silenced for the sake of Johnson’s soul." By adopting Crousaz’s dichotomy of "wonder-working sound" versus "penury of knowledge," Johnson successfully trivialized the Essay into a "glittering rhetorical bauble" of no intrinsic worth. The article suggests that Johnson’s inclusion and "lavish praise" of Sir Richard Blackmore’s Creation was a "deliberate attack" meant to "reestablish Blackmore’s priority" and "obliterate Pope’s disturbing influence." Solomon highlights how Johnson’s "trivialization" succeeded with subsequent editors like Elwin, who spent "energy and ingenuity trying to destroy the poem." Solomon argues that Johnson’s "Crousazian" judgment was "written to the promotion of Piety," displacing Pope's "Spinozist or Leibnizian" theology with a more "unremittingly pious" alternative.
Radner identifies the 1773 Hebrides tour as the "richest example" of explicit sexual rivalry between Johnson and Boswell, asserting their relationship assumed a "sexual dimension" during the trip. This rivalry, fueled by proximity and Boswell’s role as a biographer collecting Johnson's "faults," functioned as a "tussle for control." Radner analyzes five key episodes—including the Loch Ness woman’s fear and Johnson’s "seraglio" joke—to show how both men used wit and sexual prowess as "weapons." Johnson's uncharacteristic expressions of desire, such as the "young English buck" fantasy, served to assert authority over an increasingly independent Boswell. Conversely, Radner argues the rivalry was driven by Boswell's fear of the father-figure’s sexuality and Johnson's envy of Boswell's potency. This "sexual rival" dynamic disturbed Boswell for over a decade, influencing his journal revisions and the final presentation of Johnson's sexual experience in the Life. Radner concludes this competition, rooted in the "pride of importance" and the "malice of inferiority," coexisted with deep "respect and affection."
The Word Abused: Problematic Religious Language in Selected Prose Works of Swift, Wesley, and Johnson
Cline examines how Johnson, Swift, and John Wesley addressed the "essential ambiguity of language" and the threat of its abuse to biblical truth. The study argues that while Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language helped stabilize secular diction, religious language remained a site of topical controversy throughout the eighteenth century. Johnson used his sermons and "The Vision of Theodore" to defend revealed religion against the "skepticism, captiousness, and suspicion" of materialists and freethinkers. He advocated an ethic based on "man's absolute dependency on the law of Scripture" and the necessity of future rewards and punishments. Cline notes Johnson's stylistic inconsistencies, such as his heavy use of the word "grace" in some sermons while ignoring it in others, and highlights his fundamental agreement with Swift regarding the limitations of human reason. For Johnson, doctrines like the Trinity are "above reason without being contrary to it," leading him to conclude that the "mystery lies in the manner" rather than the fact of revelation. Boswell’s records further demonstrate Johnson’s rejection of non-biblical "Romish" tenets and his distrust of individual determinations about religious fundamentals.
The Reynolds Copy of Johnson's Dictionary: A Re-Examination
McDermott re-evaluates Johnson’s revisions in the copy of the Dictionary bequeathed to Reynolds. She uses information from the Sneyd-Gimbel copy to analyze Johnson's evolving lexicographical methods. The study argues that Johnson's corrections were not isolated forays but integral to his development as a writer. McDermott critiques earlier accounts of Johnson’s methodology by Hawkins and Boswell, suggesting he employed multiple, shifting procedures. She emphasizes that contemporary computational aids now permit a more thorough textual analysis of his massive revision efforts for the 1773 fourth edition.
Dr. Johnson's Mother: Maternal Ideology and the Life of Savage
Maternal Ideology and Matriarchal Authority: British Literature and the Making of Middle-Class Motherhood, 1680–1750
Bowers analyzes how early eighteenth-century discourse constructed motherhood as an exclusive, inherently apolitical activity, a notion limiting female experience. Chapter four argues Johnson's Life of Savage and his autobiographical remarks impose bourgeois, classless criteria on maternal behavior. The text disguises Savage's mercenary desire for financial support as filial affection and redirects Johnson’s own maternal ambivalence towards Anne Brett, establishing maternal virtue as financially demonstrable yet fundamentally affective. This leveling of class difference is a characteristic bourgeois gesture in literary and social discourse, anticipating later psychoanalytic assumptions about universal, ahistorical motherhood.
Wechselblatt examines Johnson's cultural authority, arguing that conflicting critical interpretations repeat the irreducible conflict within Johnson's discourse between the universal "general" and the specific "positive." The study analyzes this tension—reflecting constative versus performative dimensions of authority—in Johnson's essays, the Dictionary, and his relationship with Boswell and Piozzi. Wechselblatt contends that Johnson's status as the founder of professional cultural criticism derives from this structural conflict, which is ultimately a negotiation of self-identity within the modern commercial literary marketplace.
Language and Civilization: A Concerted Profusion of Essays and Studies in Honor of Otto Hietsch
Johnson's Dictionary and the 'Teutonick' Roots of the English Language
Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1660–1780)
Grundy positions Johnson as the definitive figure of mid-eighteenth-century literature, characterizing his career as the transition from "scholarly hackwork" to "unrivalled cultural authority." Grundy argues that Johnson’s Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare established a new standard for English as a "living, changing language" while simultaneously fixing its classical boundaries. Johnson’s moral essays in the Rambler and Idler are described as "secular sermons" that address the "instability of human happiness." Regarding Boswell, Grundy challenges the "shorthand" view of him as a mere observer, presenting him instead as a "self-conscious artist" who used his journals to experiment with "psychological realism." The Life of Johnson is analyzed as a revolutionary text that replaced "panegyric" with a "minute, dramatic record" of a complex human subject. Grundy emphasizes that Boswell’s "shaping hand" is as crucial to the work’s success as Johnson’s conversation. The chapter notes that while Hester Thrale Piozzi provided "vivid, intimate anecdotes" in her Anecdotes, she lacked Boswell's "structural ambition."
Johnson and Women: Demasculinizing Literary History
Cafarelli challenges the "territorialization of literary history" created by Boswell’s investment in depicting Johnson as a "man’s man." She argues that Boswell’s attribution of misogynist sentiments to Johnson disserves the subject and reflects the biographer’s own biases. By contrasting Boswell’s accounts with the testimony of Piozzi, Hannah More, and Frances Burney, Cafarelli illustrates that Johnson thrived in the company of intellectual women and did not "gender his conversation." The article posits that Boswell’s methodology—verbatim retrieval of "accidental assertions"—is less reliable than the more skeptical approaches of contemporary women who recognized the "momentary ardour of imagination" in conversation. Cafarelli emphasizes that Johnson’s own prose often corrects the misogynist biases found in his biographical legend. She asserts that Johnson was a figure of "supreme importance for women" as writers and readers, rising above the "intellectual double standard of the age." The study advocates for a "fairer gendering" of Johnsonian studies by privileging Johnson's supportive interactions with the bluestockings over Boswell's "perverse masculinizing" narrative.
Samuel Johnson, 1745 Annotator? Eighteenth-Century Editors, Anonymity, and the Shakespeare Wars
Energy and Elegance: The Style and Context of Samuel Johnson's Moral Prose
Johnson's moral prose synthesizes energy and elegance to appeal effectively to the audience's hearts and minds, aligning with the principle of concordia discors. Johnson combines figurative, energetic language to expand imagination with correct, elegant language to embody sublime moral truth accessibly. The study examines this mixed style's intellectual context, tracing its origins to contemporary stylistic theories, the homiletic tradition, and Johnson's dialogical method, which dramatizes doubt and certainty to teach moral decision-making.
The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences: Studies in the Eighteenth-Century Work and Membership of the London Society of Arts
'Compassion and Horror in Every Humane Mind': Samuel Johnson, the Society of Arts, and Eighteenth-Century Prostitution
Allan and Abbott examine Johnson's collaboration with the Society of Arts in addressing London’s prostitution crisis. The authors contrast the era's diverse views—from Mandeville's 'public stews' to Boswell's frank accounts—with Johnson's deep benevolence. Central to the chapter is the 1758 'Ad Hoc' committee on which Johnson served alongside John Wilkes and David Garrick to evaluate plans for a 'Charity House' for penitent prostitutes. The authors present external evidence that Johnson authored significant portions of the proposal submitted by his friend Saunders Welch, noting the 'grand style' of the conclusion. Despite the committee recommending Welch’s plan, the Society's general body rejected all entries, potentially due to Jonas Hanway's professional jealousy of Johnson and Fielding. Allan and Abbott conclude that Johnson’s involvement was motivated solely by a desire to rescue 'human beings from a state so dreadful.'
Sunderland explores the intersection of Johnson’s art criticism and the Society of Arts’ prizes for history painting. Focusing on 'Idler' no. 45, published in February 1759, Sunderland argues that Johnson was likely 'puffing' the Society’s upcoming premium after learning of the committee’s deliberations through Joshua Reynolds. Johnson’s essay defends portraiture while critiquing traditional academic hierarchies that favored empty 'heroes and goddesses.' Notably, Johnson proposed 'Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament' as a superior subject for British artists, emphasizing drama and national significance over classical tropes. Sunderland notes that this suggestion was prophetic, as Benjamin West eventually depicted this exact moment in 1783. The chapter characterizes Johnson as an independent-minded critic who sought to 'give beginning to an English School' of art by encouraging relatable historical narratives rather than 'airy fiction.'
Sam Johnson on Grub Street, Early Science Fiction Pulps, and Vonnegut
On Johnson's career as a hack writer and his eventual mastery of the craft, drawing parallels to the evolution of the science fiction genre and the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Johnson, driven by necessity to Grub Street, cultivated literary forms with a deeply moral consciousness. His work for Gentleman's Magazine demonstrated genre manipulation and commercial savvy. Modern "science popularizers" are Johnson's moral descendants, sharing his belief in the value of inquiry and seeking to promote a respect for life based on what is known.
Johnson's Sermons: An Enlightened Response to Radical Evil
Johnson's Sermons present an enlightened response to evil, one not consonant with Reformation Augustinianism. Johnson grounds his belief in human corruption on experiential reality rather than theological speculation. His view of original sin, distinct from Augustinian preoccupation with alienation from God, focuses instead on an ethical conception of the human predicament. Johnson embraces reason as an aid to virtue and insists that individuals must actively strive for salvation, cooperating with divine grace. His position mediates between Augustinianism and rationalistic Anglicanism by affirming a moral freedom that makes humans "coagents of their own eternal happiness."
Sir Walter Scott, 'Editor' of Rasselas
The possibility that Sir Walter Scott may have written the two-paragraph "Advertisement" preceding the illustrated edition of Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas," which appeared in 1805, is explored.
The Noblest Savage of Them All: Johnson, Omai, and Other Primitives
Rogers analyzes Johnson’s 1773 Highland tour as a "cultural baggage" laden journey that "dogged" the prevailing debates about the "nature of civilization." He contrasts Johnson with Omai, the Tahitian visitor to London, suggesting that both figures were forced to "meet the incomprehensible expectations of their hosts." Rogers argues that Boswell’s "proprietorial attitude" often thrust Johnson into "unfamiliar postures" as a "freewheeling tourist" to highlight the contrast with the "real" Johnson of London and The Rambler. The article explores Rumors that characterized the "venerable sage" as a "young English buck," an image Rogers notes Johnson was "highly entertained" by. Rogers interprets Johnson’s "willingness... to do as the Romans do" in the Hebrides as a mirror image of Omai's "sumptuous living" in London. Ultimately, Rogers posits that the tour was not an "innocent event" but a performative engagement with "primitivism," in which Johnson emerged as a "magnificent Triton" among the "luxuriant thistles" of the Scottish landscape.
Appears, with slight revisions, in Rogers’s Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia chapter 4.
Abbott investigates Johnson's membership in the Society of Arts from 1756 to 1762, challenging the view of these as 'obscure middle years.' Drawing on Society archives, Abbott identifies Johnson's presence on various committees, including those tasked with improving the meeting room's layout, evaluating a mechanical saw mill, and judging a treatise on the 'Arts of Peace.' He highlights Johnson's friendship with Robert Dossie and his involvement in proposing several members. While Boswell notes Johnson's self-professed lack of oratory, Abbott cites contemporary testimony from Andrew Kippis describing Johnson speaking with 'perspicuity, and energy' on mechanics. The chapter concludes by discussing Johnson's inclusion in James Barry’s 'The Distribution of Premiums,' where he is depicted as a moral exemplar. Abbott argues that Johnson's Society work reflects his intellectual breadth and pragmatic engagement with the 'applications of science for the general good.'
Recognizing the Author-Function: Alternatives to Greene's Black-and-Red Book of Johnson Logia
Baruth critiques Greene's "Quest for the Historical Johnson," arguing that judging Johnson's character solely by formal writings over reported logia imposes a restrictive, ideologically motivated "author-function." This methodology "polices" Johnson’s legacy, resembling Foucauldian discourse management, to create a singular, "clarified didactic essence" at the expense of heteroglossic discourse. Baruth contends Greene inaccurately dismisses anecdotes from Boswell’s Life—especially concerning women and Jacobitism—by performing a "violent winnowing" of logia to align with published opinions. Defending the Life as a "supreme fiction" and "empirical hagiography," Baruth asserts that truth emerges through "community accession" rather than strict referentiality. Even "apocryphal" sayings occupy a vital "subject-position" in literary history, representing perceptions held by Thrale and Boswell. Baruth maintains that critics should value the "totality of the discourse," viewing Johnson as a complex, communally constructed historical entity rather than a narrow, writings-based construct.
Literally Orthodox: Dr. Johnson's Anglicanism
Tetty and Samuel Johnson: The Romance and the Reality
Brack challenges the "legend" of Johnson’s unimpaired devotion to his wife, Elizabeth Porter. She argues that biographers like Boswell and Bate have created a "distorted picture" by depicting Tetty as a willful alcoholic while characterizing Johnson as a "long-suffering" and romanticized husband. Examining the period of 1738–1752, Brack demonstrates a progressive physical and emotional estrangement. She suggests that Johnson’s "eccentric bachelor’s existence" in London left Tetty isolated and neglected, leading to her "passive rebellion" through drink and possible opium use. Brack interprets Johnson’s intense grief and thirty-year "lamentation" after Tetty’s death not as a sign of ardent love, but as a manifestation of "morbid or abnormal" grief rooted in "intense guilt and self-blame." By 1750, Brack argues, the pair were "almost completely alienated," with Tetty even suggesting Johnson seek other women. The article concludes that Johnson’s later "harmonious fantasy" of his marriage, as seen in his prayers and Tetty’s idealized epitaph, represents a "disease of the imagination" complicated by the "dread of guilt."
Johnson's Lives of the Poets and the Patronage System
Griffin disputes traditional accounts of Johnson as the modern author's liberator from patronage, typically centered on the 1755 Chesterfield letter. Analyzing the Rambler and Lives of the Poets, Griffin demonstrates that Johnson viewed patronage as a necessary system of reciprocal benefits rather than an inherently corrupt institution. Johnson accepts dependence as a given for writers like Elijah Fenton and James Thomson, reserving criticism not for the system itself but for the moral failings of individual participants. Griffin argues that Johnson’s mature view in the Lives presents a coherent endorsement of patronage when managed with elegance and bounty. While Johnson condemns the "abject adulation" of Dryden, Griffin interprets this as a defense of the writer's dignity and the "great system of subordination" rather than an attack on the practice of seeking support. Johnson uses patronage as a "moral occasion" to critique the vain hopes and false pride of poets who delude themselves with "the boast of independence."
'Daughters of Earth and Sons of Heaven': Johnson on Swift on Language
Critical Complicities: Savage Mothers, Johnson's Mother, and the Containment of Maternal Difference
Bowers investigates the "maternal ideology" in Johnson’s writing, focusing on the Life of Savage and Johnson's personal journals. She argues that Johnson’s harsh depiction of Anne Mason, Savage’s mother, serves to contain "maternal difference" and punish mothers who fail to provide unconditional support. Bowers links this literary project to Johnson’s troubled relationship with Sarah Johnson, whom he perceived as inadequate and whose "complaint, fear, and suspicion" he resented. The article suggests that Johnson’s lifelong guilt and "atypical" grief following his mother’s death influenced his construction of "sacrificial mothers" in his biographical work. Bowers disputes Boswell’s "romanticized" account of Johnson's filial and marital devotion, citing Clifford and Wain to highlight the reality of maternal neglect and marital estrangement. Bowers asserts that Johnson’s representation of the "cruel mother" in Savage’s life allowed him to displace his own repressed feelings of maternal abandonment while reinforcing conventional eighteenth-century standards that "men should use women up."
The Ideal Core of the Onion: Reading Beckett Archives
Samuel Johnson: Beast Fabulist and Satirist on Mankind
Bestia: Yearbook of the Beast Fable Society
Three Unlikely Fellow Travellers: Mary Wollstonecraft, Yorick, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson's Proposals for the Harleian Miscellany
Brack and Early trace the textual evolution of Johnson's introductory essay for the Harleian Miscellany. After Thomas Osborne purchased the Harleian library in 1741, he employed Johnson and Oldys to prepare a catalogue and edit a selection of tracts. Johnson wrote An Account of this Undertaking for the proposals, which saw at least eight different printings between 1743 and 1746, including appearances in the Gentleman's Magazine and as part of other publications. A unique copy in Chetham's Library serves as the ultimate source, likely set from Johnson's manuscript. Subsequent versions introduced various corruptions and changes to the text.
A Genevan's Journey to the Hebrides in 1807: An Anti-Johnsonian Venture
Utz analyzes Louis-Albert Necker de Saussure's Voyage en Ecosse et aux Iles Hébrides (1821), positioning it as an anti-Johnsonian travel account. Necker criticizes Johnson's prejudices and lack of open-mindedness, offering a more balanced assessment of Highland and Lowland Scots based on his two-year stay. The paper details Necker's wide-ranging interests, including geology, Gaelic music, and the Ossian controversy, where he refutes Johnson's skepticism. Necker's analysis of the post-Culloden economic changes and the clash between the régime militaire and régime commercial is also discussed.
Thomas Osborne, Samuel Johnson and the Learned of Foreign Nations: A Forgotten Catalogue
McKitterick examines two newly identified advertising prospectuses for the Harleian Library cataloguing project, highlighting an unrecorded Latin version found in the Cambridge University Library. This Latin prospectus, likely written by Osborne with Latin annotations possibly supplied by Johnson or William Oldys, targets a continental market of wealthy book collectors by organizing and describing rare fifteen-century incunabula without pricing. McKitterick demonstrates how this overseas marketing campaign directly challenges previous assumptions that Osborne neglected foreign trade, and shows that despite Johnson's eloquent English appeal for domestic patronage, Osborne actively directed his commercial messaging toward European buyers via specific trade venues like Venice.
The English Common Place: Lineages of the Topographical Genre
Guillory re-evaluates the topographical genre's origins, challenging Johnson’s attribution of its invention to Denham's Cooper’s Hill. While acknowledging Johnson’s definition of "local poetry" as landscape description embellished by meditation, the study argues that the genre emerges from a shift where aesthetics and vernacular literacy displace traditional rhetoric. Analyzing Gray's "Elegy," Guillory contends that Johnson’s praise for the poem’s "common" appeal reflects a new middle-class cultural property. This transition normalizes commonplaces, transforming them from rhetorical tools into signs of social distinction and bourgeois mobility.
Emerson and the Ghost of Dr. Johnson: Heritage, Reading, and an American Life of Letters
Swords examines the lifelong, complex engagement of Ralph Waldo Emerson with the figure and works of Johnson. Challenging the conventional view that Emerson and his American Renaissance contemporaries simply rejected England's neoclassical heritage, Swords argues that Johnson remained a "representative icon of the vocation of writing" for them. using Harold Bloom's theories of influence, the study tracks Emerson’s "private enthusiasm" and "public silence" regarding Johnson, from his first serious encounter at Harvard to his late appropriations of Johnsonian prose. Swords identifies a "composite sensibility" in Emerson’s mind where the "ghost of Johnson" hovers over his actual friendships with Carlyle, Thoreau, and Mary Moody Emerson. This identification allowed Emerson to accept the "human scale" of a literary life where failure mixes with success. The work highlights how Emerson used Boswell's biography as a "clear enough" trail to map his own response to Johnson, viewing him as a "worthy conversation partner" and a "model for his own experience." By "demonstrating an originality based on imitation," Emerson ultimately forged an American life of letters that reconciled his romantic ambitions with Johnson’s principled "strong good sense."
Hellas: A Journal of Poetry and the Humanities
'The Enthusiastick Fit': The Function and Fate of the Poet in Johnson's Rasselas
This paper interprets the poetic theory expounded by Samuel Johnson in Rasselas as it relates to two different contexts. The first consists of other theoretical statements by Johnson and their place in the critica[ panorama of the age. The second context is Rasselas itself considered as a whole in which the section on poetics fulfils a literary function. Johnson's attitude to neoclassicism is thereby revaluated, the result being a more adequate understanding of the relationship between his poetics and his overall outlook on life.
The Theory and Practices of Text-Editing: Essays in Honour of James T. Boulton
Editing Johnson's Dictionary: Some Editorial and Textual Considerations
Glendening examines the influence of elderly male mentors, specifically Samuel Johnson and Samuel Crisp, on the development of Burney's literary career and social identity. The article identifies a consistent pattern in Burney's first novel, where the character of Mr. Villars mirrors the 'acquired fathers' in her personal life. Glendening argues that these figures provided necessary emotional support and professional guidance for a talented young woman navigating the constraints of patriarchal eighteenth-century society. Although modern perspectives may view these relationships as restrictive, Glendening claims they actually fostered Burney's growth and eventual independence. The author describes the mentor figure as a 'two-sided presence' that simultaneously offered protection and encouraged the 'neophyte' to venture into the world, a dynamic central to both Burney's biography and her fictional constructs.
Fiction as Truth: Personal Identity in Johnson's Life of Savage
Johnson's unquestioning acceptance of Richard Savage's disputed identity in the Life of Savage functions as a deliberate rhetorical and philosophical stance. Johnson's apparent credulity covertly interrogates the Humean problem of personal identity, which is radically contestable and fictional. The text blurs the distinction between intrinsic qualities and accidents of fortune, demonstrating Savage's identity as a verbal construct. Johnson ultimately advocates for expedient self-fictions to achieve psychological tranquility and coherence in the face of life's fundamental indeterminacy.
Samuel Johnson and Arthur Murphy: Curious Intersections and Deliberate Divergence
Because he used sources for many of his plays, Arthur Murphy was charged with plagiarism throughout much of his life. The issue of Murphy borrowing from Samuel Johnson's "Rambler" and "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth" is assessed.
A Descriptive Analysis of the Kinds of Essays in Johnson's Rambler
Meeker conducts an extended descriptive analysis of the 208 Rambler essays, using Johnson’s own four-part classification system from the final issue: "essays professedly serious," "pictures of life," "disquisitions of criticism," and "idle sports of imagination." Meeker argues that while the series is often dismissed as uniformly somber, Johnson purposefully employed these diverse forms to provide variety and appeal to different reader segments. The "essays professedly serious" function as didactic treatises or sermons "exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity." The "pictures of life" use character portraits, names derived from symbolic Latin roots, and occasional humor to "reform" readers through resemblance. "Disquisitions of criticism" establish principles of judgment based on "unalterable and evident truth" rather than arbitrary rules, frequently equating literary standards with moral conduct. Finally, the "idle sports of imagination" use allegories and Eastern tales to "adorn" and "remind" readers of known truths. Meeker identifies specific essays within each category, noting frequent overlaps where portraits or critical discussions serve primary moral designs. The study concludes that this complex interconnection of forms was a deliberate rhetorical strategy to "inculcate wisdom or piety" across a broad audience.
Iz istorii zhanra ėsse v angliĭskoĭ literature XVIII v.: K probleme istoricheskoĭ poėtiki zhanra
Filologicheskie nauki: Nauchnye doklady vyssheĭ shkoly
Johnson's Prayers and Meditations and the 'Stolen Diary Problem': Reflections on a Biographical Quiddity
Clingham investigates the 'stolen diary problem' involving Sir John Hawkins's removal of Johnson's manuscripts on 5 December 1784. The article analyzes Hawkins's 'stiff, cold formality' and 'self-important bluster' in justifying the act as a protective measure against George Steevens. Clingham disputes the notion that Hawkins acted purely out of 'friendly' intentions, noting that his 'inconsistency throws doubt' on whether he returned the materials. The article emphasizes that Johnson's 'Prayers and Meditations' are not 'simple conventional prayers' but 'impassioned, personal religious statements' that formed a major part of Hawkins's 'prurient interpretation of Johnson's powerful sexual nature.' Clingham highlights how these 'biographical quiddities' and the subsequent publication history shaped the enduring psychic drama of Johnson's life, as later used by biographers like Bate.
British Prose Writers, 1660–1800, Second Series
The Channel and English Writers: Johnson, Smollett, Fielding, and Falconer
Three Steps to Perfection: Rasselas and the Philosophy of Richard Hooker
Dr. Johnson and Modern American and British Criticism
Jonson Eigo jiten shin-kenkyū shōkai [review of The Making of Johnson's 'Dictionary,' 1746–1773, by Allen Reddick]
An Edition of Samuel Johnson's Miscellaneous Prose Writings
Jain analyzes the printed editions of Johnson's handwritten First Draft of the tragedy Irene, noting that the Oxford and Yale editions distort the author’s process by separating the Outline of Plot and Characters from the play's text. Jain argues that a comparison with the original manuscript reveals a compositional sequence that intermeshed plot outline and dramatic poetry. The editors' rearrangement conceals Johnson's true priorities: a "predilection for poetical expression" and an immediate concern with the moral conclusion, a fact revealed by his jumping ahead to detail the final acts before filling in the preceding pages. This sequence is critically significant, as it demarcates concerns that would later define his criticism of drama.
Johnson's View of the Scottish Enlightenment in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
O'Brien argues that Johnson's travel narrative provides a 'critique of Scottish culture as a whole' by challenging the professional and landowning elites' definitions of Scottishness. While the Lowland literati used the Highlands as a 'sociological museum' to demonstrate patterns of social evolution from 'rudeness to refinement,' Johnson makes the region a test of their theories' validity. O'Brien shows that Johnson rejected the 'Kamesian moralizing' of social progress, preferring a pragmatic assessment of 'feudal' Highland institutions that maintained order before 1745. The article details Johnson's efforts to rescue Gaelic culture from being 'mere figments of the Lowland imagination,' specifically through his vigorous opposition to James Macpherson's 'spurious Ossian epics.' Johnson's perspective remains 'ultimately an imperial one,' suggesting that Scotland must accept provincial status within a unified Britain while mourning the 'death of Highland history' caused by sudden modernization.
'Savage' Mothers: Narratives of Maternity in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
Scotticisms and the Problem of Cultural Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Author's abstract: "This essay will focus on a kind of anxiety that Scottish writers felt perhaps more acutely than any others in the mid-eighteenth century: that is, a sense of cultural ambivalence, of trying to participate and distinguish themselves in what was, essentially, an English world of letters, while still bearing in their speech and writing telltale traces of their Scottish origins. To dramatise the power and persistence of this Anglo-Scottish anxiety in mid-eighteenth-century Britain, I will focus first on England's greatest wordsmith, Samuel Johnson, and then on three Scottish writers who distinguished themselves in the very world of English letters that so fuelled their inner tensions: David Hume, James Boswell and Tobias Smollett."
Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain
'His Proper Business': Johnson's Adjustment to Society
Examines the tension between Johnson's commitment to society and his feeling of profound isolation, which critics have often explained psychologically. Proposes that Johnson's dislocation was partially conscious and chosen for its advantages as a moral rhetorician. His moral writing gains power from a maximal evocation of the dark forces of pride and moral anarchy, which traditional literature attempts to subdue. Lacking a fixed profession, he manipulated public (Latin) and private (personal emotion) languages, appealing to a universal audience of moral and spiritual beings beyond the narrow confines of social knowledge.
'A Louse and a Flea': A Source for Johnson's Rejoinder
Baird identifies a literary precedent for Johnson’s 1760s retort concerning the "precedency between a louse and a flea" in John Eachard’s The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired into (1670). Eachard uses the same comparison to describe trivial academic oratory. Baird notes that Johnson’s library contained a three-volume edition of Eachard’s works, suggesting Johnson’s famous remark may have relied upon memory of this specific text.
Voltaire and Johnson Again: The Life of Savage and the Sertorius Letter (1744)
'Imagination Out upon the Wing': Lockean Epistemology and the Case of the Astronomer in Johnson's Rasselas
The Logic and the Epistemological Sanctions of Dr. Johnson's Arguments
'A Secret Far Dearer to Him than His Life': Johnson's 'Vile Melancholy' Reconsidered
Greene challenges Balderston's influential 1949 thesis that Johnson's psychological 'vile melancholy' and his relationship with Thrale involved clinical masochism. This article argues that Thrale's references to padlocks and fetters, alongside the 'M' entries in Johnson's diaries, reflect his struggle with masturbation rather than erotic 'bondage.' Greene demonstrates that Johnson was a victim of a 'ghastly medical' hoax prevalent in the eighteenth century which falsely linked 'self-pollution' to insanity and physical decay. By placing Johnson in a historical context with figures like William Ewart Gladstone and William James, Greene contends that Johnson's fears of madness were normal reactions to terrifying medical misinformation of his era. The article concludes that biographers often present Johnson as a 'psychological freak' to ignore his writings, asserting that his melancholy was 'not much more significant than that of a great many other writers and artists.'
Greene, reviewing the evidence offered by Katherine C. Balderston in “Johnson’s Vile Melancholy” (1949), argues that the “mysterious letter M” in Johnson’s diaries alludes to masturbation.
Disability, Disease, and the 'Philosophical Heroism' of Samuel Johnson in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Reconstructing the Canon: Samuel Johnson and the Universal Visiter
'Th' Instructive Moral, and Important Thought': Elizabeth Carter Reads Pope, Johnson, and Epictetus
Thomas examines Carter's 'distinctively feminine, Christian critique of her culture,' noting her complex interactions with Pope and Johnson. The article demonstrates how Carter 'creatively misread' Pope's deism and challenged Johnson's 'moral gloom' in her contributions to the 'Rambler.' Thomas illustrates their philosophical disagreement through the word 'sedate': Carter asked God to preserve her temper 'sedate' (calm), while Johnson used the term to indicate 'foolish complacency.' Carter's translation of Epictetus (1758) served as her 'crowning achievement' and a forum to oppose the 'false Enlightenment.' By adding unfavorable notes to the Stoic text, Carter 'guided a reader' toward the superiority of Christianity. Thomas concludes that Carter used the market for classical translations to voice her dissent in an era that made such 'distinctive female perspectives' both marketable and possible.
The Voice of the Past: Anxieties of Cultural Transmission in Post-Enlightenment Europe: Tradition, Folklore, Textuality, History
Trumpener examines theories of tradition and cultural identity from the Enlightenment onward, focusing on how literary constructions of the past shaped nationalist movements. A central case study contrasts Samuel Johnson's 1773 journey to Scotland with Béla Bartók's 1905 ethnographic travels in Hungary. Trumpener argues that Johnson's tour, engineered by Boswell, functioned as a "duel" between oral tradition and literary history. Johnson used his journey to investigate the authenticity of Macpherson’s Ossianic poems, which he suspected were fraudulent modern manufactures designed to reanimate Scottish nationalism. He viewed the "boundless chaos of a living speech" as inferior to written language, which serves as a bulwark of order. Trumpener analyzes how Boswell's complementary account, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, characterizes Scotland through urbanized, polite society, while Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands emphasizes a "sparse, barren and underpopulated" landscape. The work highlights Johnson's "powerful ambivalence" toward Scotland: while he sought to dismantle distinctively Scottish cultural structures to promote "economic normalisation and cultural assimilation," he also establishes the experience of ordinary people as "the measure of general prosperity."
Narrative and Judgment in the Life of Savage
The complexity of Johnson's work is normally explained as the result of tension between "facts" and Johnson's inclination to palliate or moralize them. But the facts of this biography-and of biography in general, as Johnson understood it-are often matters of moral judgment, which, by explaining why actions were committed, makes the biography seem a probable account of the life. Like the law, biographical judgment constitutes the narrative record.
Psychopoetics of Lexicography: Johnson with Lacan
Author's abstract: "Lexicography depends upon the belief that language is masterable. An elaboration of the psycholanalytic concepts of transference with reference to writer Samuel Johnson and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan."
'The Confines of Distinction': Horace, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and the Making of the Literary Career
Deutsch examines how Horace, Pope, and Johnson construct the literary life as a vehicle of self-definition, viewing the authorial career as a collectively authored artwork. Johnson separates the author from his morally instructive text by emphasizing art's "empty show," contrasting with Pope's self-monumentalization through the metaphor of his deformity. The core tension is the conflict between authenticity and performance, where each writer attempts to balance self-assertion and self-effacement to secure his authority and originality.
The Measure and the Choice: Empiricism and Revelation in Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, Rambler, and Rasselas
Anna Barbauld's Criticism of Fiction: Johnsonian Mode, Female Vision
Rogers examines Anna Barbauld's fiction criticism, noting her Johnsonian moral concern, clarity, and realistic understanding of human nature. Barbauld, unlike many male critics of her time including Johnson, gave serious attention to the novel, claiming "A good novel is an epic in prose." Her distinctively female vision is evident in her balanced critique of Tom Jones and her acute demolition of the moral equivocations and excessive sentimentality in Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's Amelia. She found the real moral of Clarissa is the triumph of virtue in all situations.
Samuel Johnson Edits for the Booksellers: Sir Thomas Browne's Christian Morals (1756) and The English Works of Roger Ascham (1761)
Library Chronicle of the University of Texas
Johnson and the Problem of Religious Verse
Anderson disputes the 'fairly widespread' notion that Johnson's deep religious convictions made him inherently 'opposed to religious poetry.' Although Johnson expressed reservations in 'Lives of the Poets,' Anderson notes that he produced a 'considerable quantity' of religious verse himself, particularly in Latin during his final years. The article explains that Johnson's skepticism toward the genre is 'essentially literary despite its notorious theological overtones.' Johnson argued that the 'topicks of devotion are few' and absolute, thereby defying the 'essence of poetry'—invention. Anderson compares Johnson's critiques of sacred verse to his treatment of metaphysical poetry, concluding that Johnson asked 'essentially the same questions of religious poems that he does of profane ones.' Johnson's strictures rest on a 'solid literary foundation' rather than a 'troubled theology deforming a masterful literary intelligence.'
Ferrero highlights the significant, unacknowledged borrowings by Arthur Murphy from Samuel Johnson's early work on Macbeth. Murphy, who later became a key figure in Johnson's life, published "Observations on the same play" in his Gray's Inn Journal (1753), eight years after Johnson's anonymous Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745). Ferrero reproduces extensive parallel passages demonstrating Murphy's direct appropriation of Johnson's critical points and phrasing. The majority of the borrowing concerns Johnson's defense of Shakespeare's use of witchcraft and enchantment by placing it in the historical context of contemporary belief. Murphy's essay, which was considered a distinguished piece of criticism, is shown to be heavily indebted to Johnson, with the borrowed material comprising about half of its content. It is suggested that Murphy did not know the anonymous proposer of the unexecuted edition was Johnson.
Johnson's Conversation in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Korshin analyzes Boswell's presentation of Johnson's conversation in the Life, arguing it is a deliberate artistic construction rather than a verbatim transcript. The essay explores the techniques Boswell used to craft the "Johnsonian" voice, including selection, compression, dramatic staging, and the suppression of intermediary speakers. Korshin contends that Boswell’s genius lay in his ability to translate the ephemerality of speech into a durable, dynamic literary performance. The analysis may also compare Boswell’s version of Johnson’s talk with that of contemporaries like Piozzi to highlight the originality and rhetorical power of Boswell’s method.
Image and Symbol in Rasselas: Narrative Form and 'The Flux of Life'
Johnson's Influence on Webster and Worcester in Early American Lexicography
Landau examines the profound reliance of Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester on Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language during the formative years of American lexicography. Focusing on the treatment of phrasal verbs, Landau demonstrates that despite Webster’s fiercely competitive nature and public disparagement of Johnson, he used Johnson’s work as a working base for his own definitions and illustrative quotations. Landau argues that Webster adapted Johnson’s humanistic anthology of exemplary writing into a modern commercial product by abridging quotations to the minimum text necessary and introducing invented examples. While Worcester followed Johnson with characteristic honesty, Webster’s innovations in methodology and concise presentation established the preeminence of the American dictionary tradition.
Samuel Johnson's Use of Scientific Sources in the Dictionary
Pearce explores Johnson's use of scientific and technical sources in his Dictionary, arguing that analyzing these often-overlooked sources reveals the complexity of Johnson's methods. He categorizes these sources into older "intellectual guides" (Bacon, Locke) and specialized "technical consultants" (Quincy, Sharp). Johnson's scientific sources sometimes lead to long, encyclopedic entries or prompt modernizing updates. Pearce argues that Johnson's use of scientific sources informed his descriptive lexicography, noting his use of the language of doubt and conjecture. He concludes that Johnson's prescriptions (like "alien" or "low") are contextually shaped and that his diction reflects the language of natural philosophy.
Eighteenth-Century British Poets: First Series
Samuel Johnson (7 September 1709 - 13 December 1784)
The Economies of Authorship: Imagination and Trade in Johnson's Dryden
The predicament of the professional author who must please to live is an especially complex and pervasive concern in Samuel Johnson's "Life of Dryden." An examination of the economics of authorship in Johnson is offered.
'Open' and 'Enclosed' Readings of Rasselas
Hudson argues that Johnson's Rasselas contains an implicit "theory of reading" based on a dichotomy between "open" and "enclosed" values. Enclosure signifies retirement, security, and emotional distance, while openness represents active social participation and risk. Johnson initially "encloses" readers from his characters through their naivete, allowing for "urbane superiority" and cool intellectual distance. As the travelers grow sophisticated and encounter the "boundary of life," the text forces an "open" reading where the reader identifies with the characters' stake in human misery and the afterlife. This strategy aligns with Johnson's "intellectualist" theory of sympathy, where imagination produces emotion by placing the self in the condition of another.
The Siren Call of Earlier Editorial Practice; or, How Dr. Johnson Failed to Respond Fully to His Own Intuitions about the Principles of Textual Criticism and Editing
Although he developed many of the principles of critical editing, Johnson did not use them in his Shakespeare edition, depending instead on Theobald’s text.
Philologia: Naučno-stručni časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu/Academic Journal for Language, Literature and Culture
The Discourse of Madness: Samuel Johnson's 'Life of Collins'
Bailey examines Johnson's and Nathan Bailey's treatment of Americanisms, noting that Cambridge's satirical list of American and "East Indies" terms in The World showed Johnson was missing current vocabulary. Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum (1736), Johnson's foundational source, included far more American words than Johnson's Dictionary, which listed few. Johnson's omission of Americanisms like calumet and sachem, despite Bailey's thorough treatment, suggests Johnson prioritized literary sources or dismissed specialized terms as better suited for an encyclopedia. Noah Webster later excelled in covering American vocabulary.
On the profound influence of Johnson's Dictionary on the original Oxford English Dictionary (OED1), despite the radically different lexicographical methods of Murray and his team. Johnson's work served OED1 as a word-list, a source for definitions (especially early in the alphabet), and most importantly, a rich mine of illustrative quotations. Current OED editors are undertaking a massive reverification of all Johnson's borrowed quotations, because of concerns about his inaccuracies in transcription, dating, and attribution.
Territorial Disputes in the Republic of Letters: Canon Formation and the Literary Profession
Zionkowski analyzes Johnson's effort to restrict the "Age of Authors" by establishing strict professional qualifications. Johnson laments the "intellectual malady" of the growing press, where "every man is qualified to instruct every other man." He transposes social class distinctions onto the literary field, categorizing "drudges of the pen" and "manufacturers of literature" as manual laborers or "mechanics." By contrast, Johnson defines legitimate authors as those possessing "intellectual powers" and a perfect command of language. This exclusionary strategy attempts to protect cultural authority and the author's livelihood from "hacks" and "scribblers," creating a hierarchy within the profession that persists in modern literary history.
Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham
Sam Johnson Corrected: As You Like It IV.2
Brissenden disputes Johnson’s 1765 characterization of As You Like It IV.2 as a 'noisy scene' lacking 'larger significance.' While Johnson finds the hunting song and celebratory spectacle extraneous to the plot, Brissenden argues that the scene functions as a crucial physical presentation of the play’s thematic obsession with metamorphosis. Brissenden uses contemporary sources, such as Elyot’s The Governour and Turberville’s The Noble Arte of Venerie, to demonstrate how the 'doulcettes' and deer horns symbolize both phallic potency and marital impotence. The essay connects the scene to Shrovetide carnival traditions, skimmington rides, and the 'rough music' used to punish cuckolds. Brissenden notes that by the eighteenth century, the specific cultural link between the stag-breaking ritual and the symbolic 'desexing' of the husband had been lost. Brissenden concludes that Johnson’s literal reading overlooks how the song generalizes the 'plague of cuckoldry' as an inevitable human condition.
Imaginative Licentiousness: Johnson on Shakespearean Tragedy
On Johnson's conflicted response to Shakespeare, particularly in the Preface to Shakespeare. Johnson admires Shakespeare as the "poet of nature," close to the elemental stuff of life and possessing an imaginative priority, excusing his violations of critical rules by an appeal to nature. However, Johnson simultaneously levels criticisms, accusing him of being "licentious" for faults like mixing genres, carelessness, and an irresistible attraction to quibbles. Payne argues that Johnson's own prose is marked by an "imaginative licentiousness," notably in his elaborate condemnation of the quibble and his defense of Shakespeare's violation of the unities, showing a profound engagement with the theatrical power of Shakespeare.
The Dream of My Brother: An Essay on Johnson's Authority
Bogel examines Johnson's authoritative status, arguing that authority formation was intrinsically conflicted. Johnson sought ways to assume power and disclaim its basis at the same time, viewing authority acquisition as necessary yet guilt-ridden. Bogel employs rigorous logical analysis, inspired by deconstruction, reducing Johnson’s writing to binary oppositions (e.g., theory/practice, hack/sage). These oppositions yield contradiction, revealing a core "vacuity." The study posits Johnson as the origin of modern cultural authority, demonstrating that literary greatness internally contained division. Authority operates as performance, intentionally exhibiting its rhetorical nature and inherent defects. Johnson’s own report of his mother’s undefinable "bad behavior" exemplifies this logical absence at the center of his presence. Bogel details Johnson’s negotiation of authority through analysis of his commentary and biography, including Life of Savage. Johnson secured authority by disclosing division and imperfection.
Vathek and the Escape from Time: Bicentenary Revaluations
The Enlightened Occultist: Beckford's Presence in Vathek
Religion and the Nature of Samuel Johnson's Toryism
Chapin contends that Johnson’s Dictionary definition of a Tory accurately reflects a political outlook centered on the "apostolical hierarchy of the church." Johnson associates Whiggism with "irreligion" and innovation, fearing that "violent" Whig principles lead to "anarchy" and "tyranny." Boswell records Johnson’s belief that the Revolution of 1688 "broke our constitution" by violating hereditary right. Chapin emphasizes that Johnson’s Toryism is theologically based; he defends the Trinitarian dogma to preserve the "divine author of the moral law." Johnson advocates for a "national religion" to instill "reverence" for authority, particularly to counter the "madness of the populace" seen in the Wilkes affair. This utilitarian defense of the Church seeks to maintain social stability through religious influence.
Shakespeare's Ghost: Johnson, Shakespeare, Garrick, and Constructing the English Middle-Class
“The rise of Shakespeare coincided with the creation of a new social order, . . . what is sometimes, misleadingly, called ‘the rise of the middle class.’” Hudson considers the relationship between Shakespeare and class identity, focusing on Garrick’s performance style.
Johnson's Shakespeare: The Man in the Edition
Sherbo reveals Johnson's personality through his commentary in the 1765 Shakespeare edition. He connects Johnson's notes to biographical facts, such as his note on "involuntary and unaccountable depression" to his melancholy. His strong moral objections to falsehood (Hamlet's excuse, Prince John's broken promise) reflect his personal "regard for truth." A note on a high spirit's preference to be "sheltered from the scorn of gazers" upon arrest is linked to Johnson's arrests for debt. Johnson's notes on deformity (Falstaff, Richard III) are seen as reflections of his own self-consciousness. He also critiques Johnson's shifting attitudes toward editors Theobald (patronizing "poor Theobald") and Hanmer (later praising, despite poor editing).
Dancing Dogs, Women Preachers and the Myth of Johnson's Misogyny
Basker disputes the common reputation of Johnson as a misogynist, which often centers on his "dancing dog" remark regarding women preachers. Basker identifies thirty-five periodical essays where Johnson uses female personae to explore the "condition of the female sex" with empathy and psychological acumen. The article highlights Johnson's defense of female education and his condemnation of John Milton’s "Turkish contempt" for women. Basker argues that modern anthologies have "de-anthologized" Johnson’s female fictions, leaving a distorted view of his opinions. By examining the stories of Misella the prostitute and Zosima the servant, Basker demonstrates Johnson’s deep awareness of female vulnerability and social victimization. Basker concludes that thoughtful women from Mary Wollstonecraft to Virginia Woolf recognized Johnson as an intellectual ally who believed women were an "overmatch" for men.
'Beating the Track of the Alphabet': Samuel Johnson, Tourism, and the ABCs of Modern Authority
Lynch analyzes the Dictionary and the Journey to the Western Islands as instances of ex post facto canonization. These texts relocate principles of legitimacy into common cultural property, such as words and accessible locales. Lynch identifies a contradiction between Johnson's role as a lexicographical drudge and his persona as a forward-looking traveler. The article uses Dean MacCannell's theory of tourism to explain how Johnson's quest for the authentic in the Hebrides acknowledged the duality of the self. Lynch discusses how Piozzi and Boswell modernized the author by assembling Johnsoniana, making the authorial psyche a primary text. The Dictionary is presented as a textual curio shop that attempts to study things more than words, even as it reveals the melancholy distance between a copyist and authentic values.
Interwoven Lives: The Letters of Samuel Johnson
Edmond Malone, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Johnson's Monument in St. Paul's Cathedral
Martin chronicles the contentious debate over the inscription for Johnson’s monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral, involving Edmond Malone, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Samuel Parr. He focuses on the conflict between Parr’s insistence on "lapidary Latin" and Malone’s desire for a factual biographical integrity. The primary dispute centered on Parr’s description of Johnson as a "probabilis" (adequate or passable) poet, which Malone and members of the Club found insulting and "cold". Martin details Malone’s forceful defense of Johnson’s brilliance as both a poet and a prose writer, arguing that an epitaph omitting his conversational and poetic powers would be an "imperfect delineation". The article illustrates the struggle to memorialize Johnson’s "universality" against the rigid constraints of classical authority.
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Heroism in Samuel Johnson's Periodical Essays
Explores heroism's theme and use in Johnson's Rambler, Idler, and Adventurer, focusing on the responsibilities and limitations of great men and the applicability of heroes' lives. Johnson redefines the traditional hero (conquerors and statesmen) as the man of virtue who battles personal limitations and uses talent for the common good. He focuses on the scholar and writer as modern heroic figures, comparing them to classical heroes while also detailing their domestic concerns and human frailties. The essays present Johnson himself as the scholarly hero who fulfills the duties of the moralist and critic.
Defying Our Master: The Appropriation of Milton in Johnson's Political Tracts
Johnson’s four political tracts of the 1770s—The False Alarm, Thoughts on Falkland’s Islands, The Patriot, and Taxation No Tyranny—appropriate Miltonic imagery to consolidate their polemical stance. Johnson links the Opposition to catastrophic ruptures in the established order, specifically the war in heaven and the English Civil War. The tracts cast the antagonists (Wilkes, Junius, and American patriots) in Satanic roles, arguing that their opposition stems from a diseased, envious, and insubordinate temperament, contrasting it with the "language of obedience."
Green contrasts Defoe's Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain with Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, focusing on their opposing views on economic progress. Defoe, the economic optimist, celebrated industry, trade, and manufacturing, consistently seeing vast potential for wealth in Scotland's resources. Johnson, the humanist observer, focused on manners and history, harboring deep skepticism about commercial society's ability to ensure happiness. Critically, both men shared a powerful, unromanticized compassion for the profound poverty of the Scottish lower classes, viewing it as a demoralizing condition that extinguished hope and ambition.
Hanks argues Johnson was a radical thinker two hundred years ahead of his time who addressed central issues in linguistics and philosophy. He highlights Johnson’s unshakeable commitment to empirical descriptive principles and his sophisticated handling of -ing forms, phrasal verbs, and delexical light verbs. Hanks claims Johnson’s definitions focus on central and typical features of meaning, foreshadowing modern prototype theory and pragmatics.
Adjusting the Accents: Samuel Johnson's Prosody in Theory and Practice
Venturo challenges the characterization of Johnson as a hidebound prosodist, labeling him instead a "pragmatist" who balanced variety with regularity. He argues that while Johnson theoretically favored "pure" meter (accent on every second syllable), his practice in heroic couplets was flexible and enlivened by "metrical substitution". Venturo highlights Johnson’s use of uncommon caesuras and representative meter in works like The Vanity of Human Wishes to dramatize the "steady, relentless pursuit of life by death". Although Johnson remained critical of blank verse in the hands of "mediocre poets," he generously praised the "smoothness and harmony" achieved by Shakespeare and Milton. Venturo concludes that Johnson sought a prosodic mean that avoided the "tyranny" of absolute uniformity while resisting the "ruggedness" of metrical irregularity.
Greene disputes the reliability of many "sayings" popularly attributed to Johnson, particularly those recorded by Boswell. Greene argues that Boswell often "improved" or fabricated Johnson's wit to suit his own psychological needs or social arguments. This article applies "form criticism" to demonstrate that several famous quips, such as the one regarding Lady Diana Beauclerk, contradict Johnson's documented compassionate behavior toward prostitutes. Greene contends that scholars must prioritize Johnson’s fifteen hundred letters and massive published oeuvre over oral anecdotes. By scrutinizing the "life setting" of both the reporter and the reported remark, Greene identifies many "Joe-Millerisms" that have obscured the true historical figure. Greene concludes that "the best part of every author is in general to be found in his book" and urges a move away from "Boswellian fundamentalism."
The Narrative Architecture of Rasselas
Braverman investigates the structural design of Johnson’s Rasselas, arguing that its "narrative architecture" mirrors a transition from a static, filial world to a dynamic, experiential one. He explores the Happy Valley as a site of "filial obligations" and suppressed succession, where Rasselas's desire to escape represents a quest for a different "code" of knowledge beyond inherited systems. Braverman links this narrative movement to Johnson’s theology of the Word, distinguishing between "happiness" as satisfied desire and "felicity" as spiritual blessedness. By analyzing the role of the tower, the pyramids, and the astronomer, Braverman demonstrates how Johnson uses temporal and spatial structures to expose the "insufficiency of human enjoyments". He concludes that the story’s cyclical ending signifies a Christian heroism—the willingness to rest in uncertainty while joining the temporal moment to an eternal one.
Johnson, Homeric Scholarship, and 'The Passes of the Mind'
Clingham examines Johnson’s critical philosophy by tracing his indebtedness to Homeric scholarship and the French neoclassical tradition. He argues that Johnson's famous phrase "finds the passes of the mind" encapsulates a belief that great literature creates a continuity between art and life by awakening "general nature" in the reader's heart. Clingham contrasts Johnson’s admiration for Dryden’s "turbulent delight" with his reservations about Pope’s self-conscious refinement, which he suggests creates a "division between Pope’s experience and his poetry". The article highlights how Johnson integrates sixteenth-century Dutch humanism—specifically the concept of apteros mythos (words that stick fast in the heart)—to add a moral dimension to literary criticism. Clingham concludes that the Lives of the Poets represents the "latest flower of humanist thought," unifying scholarship, literary biography, and actual wisdom.
Lexicography and Samuel Johnson: Special Section
The Aristotelian Heritage in Critical Theory and Practice: From Dryden to Johnson
Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum
'More Disagreeable for Him to Teach, or the Boys to Learn'? The Vanity of Human Wishes in the Classroom
Jemielity explores pedagogical strategies for teaching Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, addressing the poem's reputation for being "disagreeable" or difficult for students. The article analyzes the poem's structure as a formal verse satire and an imitation of Juvenal's tenth satire, highlighting how Johnson's Christian perspective transforms the classical source. Jemielity details the poem's movement from a derisive "Democritean" tone toward a concluding "petition" for divine aid, arguing that this shift engages students in a process of moral discovery. Jemielity's approach emphasizes the "speaker's own different point of view" as a calming force against the vanity it describes. The discussion concludes that Johnson's masterpiece remains a vital tool for exploring the "sad human situation" and the necessity of religious faith.
Samuel Johnson and the Saxonic Shakespeare
On Johnson’s treatment of Shakespeare in the Dictionary in light of his comments on the Germanic origins of the English language.
Jackson disputes the traditional image of Johnson as a model of classical equipoise, arguing instead that he consistently rejected the prevailing cultural value of moderation—a norm inherited from classical and patristic traditions and deeply ingrained in his society—favoring excess over deficiency. Using Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and Ovid’s middle way as a framework, Jackson demonstrates how Johnson re-evaluated the Aristotelian mean and realigned the three-point scheme of virtue to place value at the upper end of a vertical scale, relocating virtue above the middle point. Johnson identified moderation with a neutral, stagnant state of "contemptible neutrality" he called "uniform mediocrity" or "security," a philosophical position influenced by Stoic and Christian notions of striving for excellence and a concept of human nature that resists inertia. Jackson examines Johnson’s personal inclination for excess and his consistent advocacy for "generous temerity" and the heroic qualities of the "overreacher" who risks "temerity" and "exuberance" over the cautious "middle way" of "prudence" or "security" in works like Rambler 129 and Idler 57. The study also analyzes how the Dictionary treats key terms like "mean" and "moderate" with skepticism, supporting Johnson's penchant for the immoderate through philology and the pejorative connotations of words like "mean" and "mediocrity" in the English language.
Usage Guidance in Early Dictionaries of English
Osselton challenges the view that Johnson initiated the prescriptive tradition. He argues that earlier compilers like Bullokar, Phillips, and Bailey used non-verbal symbols like the asterisk and dagger to mark old and hard words. Osselton claims Johnson refined upon an existing but undeveloped system by replacing symbols with subtler verbal comments. He cautions that electronic word-searches for terms like low and obsolete mislead if they overlook these earlier symbolic markers.
Samuel Johnson's Macbeth: 'Fair Is Foul'
Johnston analyzes Johnson’s evolving editorial principles through his treatment of Macbeth in his 1745 Observations and his 1765 edition of Shakespeare. She identifies Macbeth as a "black sheep" in the 1765 edition, noting that Johnson remained unusually reliant on his earlier conjectural notes while showing a peculiar, unexplained bias against the annotation of his predecessor Lewis Theobald. Johnston demonstrates that despite this personal bias, Johnson remained objective in his textual collation, often adopting Theobald’s sensible emendations (such as "shoal of time" for "school") while rejecting William Warburton’s irresponsible alterations. The article argues that Johnson's revisions to his 1,000-word introductory note on witchcraft prove him to be a judicious, "reader-friendly" editor. Johnston concludes that Johnson's maturation led him to prioritize authoritative readings from the First Folio over the "dull duty" of purely deductive analysis.
Fossil Fish: Preserving Samuel Johnson within Hester Lynch Piozzi's British Synonymy
Berglund examines Piozzi's British Synonymy (1794), arguing that Piozzi deliberately rejected Johnson's model for her synonymy, despite owing her early literary success to him. The work, discriminating 1180 words in 315 entries, uses quotations from authors like Shakespeare and Johnson to discriminate meaning. Piozzi was criticized for not building on or plagiarizing a supposed Johnsonian synonymy. Piozzi asserted her independence, but her frequent citation of Johnson's conversations led to the rumors. Berglund suggests Piozzi used the book to mediate her own identity conflict: challenging Johnson's authority by objectifying him as a subject of anecdote, while acknowledging her inescapable fame as "Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale."
Johnson's Life of Admiral Blake and the Development of a Biographical Technique
Brack argues that Johnson’s early biography of Robert Blake represents a crucial stage in the development of his biographical methodology. By examining Johnson’s use of Thomas Birch’s General Dictionary, Brack demonstrates how Johnson synthesized contradictory sources and suppressed minor details to construct a heroic, patriotic narrative. Brack challenges the dismissal of the work as mere hackwork, asserting that by 1740 Johnson had already mastered the research techniques and skeptical treatment of sources that would define his later Lives of the Poets.
Johnson's Elephant: The Reader of The Rambler
The Rambler engages two distinct audiences: the idealized, rational "common reader" and a capricious, adversarial "real reader." Johnson's rhetoric, particularly his use of satire and military metaphors, stages a contest where the author seeks to convert the hostile, ignorant daily reader into the elevated common reader. Johnson achieves this by enlisting the reader to the Rambler's side, often by laughing at other writers' folly or exposing common human weakness, thereby uniting author and reader in a shared moral struggle.
Fixing the Language: Johnson, Chesterfield, and The Plan of a Dictionary
Hedrick re-examines Johnson's 1747 Plan of a Dictionary to understand its conservative reformism. The Plan, unlike the later Preface, expresses a cautious hope to "fix" the language, a stance rooted in Johnson's adherence to the patriarchal authority of linguistic precedent and genealogy (etymology). Johnson viewed words without proper derivation as "illegitimate." Hedrick argues this reformism was Johnson's own, not merely a pose for Chesterfield's patronage, as the initial "Scheme" draft contained similar ideas. However, Chesterfield's influence led Johnson to articulate his doubts about stability in carefully muted passages. Johnson's later rage came when Chesterfield's 1754 essays misrepresented the Dictionary as a purely fixative work, ignoring the nuances of Johnson's evolving, scholarly position.
Johnson's Criticism of Dryden's Odes in Praise of St. Cecilia
Johnson's criticism of Dryden's St. Cecilia odes, especially "Alexander's Feast," focuses on the poetry's effects and pleasure, rather than historical context or philosophical theory. Johnson praises "The Song for St. Cecilia's Day" for its "vigor and elegance," despite minor technical faults. The essay suggests Johnson was particularly receptive to the irony and comprehensiveness of Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," which he found engaging with a "turbulent delight" because it presented the "pleasures and pains of real life." The comparison of Timotheus's metaphorical power with Cecilia's real effect is interpreted not as a division, but as recognizing a continuity in the power of music and art over time, encompassing both the heroic and the truly human.
Cicero's De Senectute and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Rudd identifies multiple reminiscences of Cicero’s De Senectute in Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes. Parallel passages demonstrate that Johnson’s description of a temp'rate Prime leading to an age exempt from Scorn or Crime echoes Cicero's remarks on how a self-indulgent youth delivers a worn-out body to senility. Johnson's imagery of age melting with unperceiv'd Decay mirrors Cicero’s observation of old age stealing upon a good man unawares. Additionally, Rudd notes that Johnson’s metaphor of the Vet'ran lagging on the stage corresponds to Cicero's theatrical analogy regarding the necessity for actors and wise men to win approval without needing to remain until the final curtain.
Johnson's Juvenalian Satire on London: A Different Emphasis
Varney argues against the prevailing view that Johnson's London is primarily a political satire, though he acknowledges its political popularity. He contends the poem's distinction lies in its fusion of public satire with a profound presentation of the mind in distress, a theme largely absent in Juvenal. This is achieved through the central motif of an "enemy within," which represents both societal corruption and internal psychological fragmentation. The imagery of "rebellion" within the narrator's breast links personal turmoil to the political and social discord of London. The intensity of this internal threat culminates in the terrifying image of the murderous housebreaker, symbolizing a pervasive, psychological treachery that subverts the individual's inner security. The poem's enduring power stems from this deep emotional engagement.
Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes and Biographical Criticism
Jemielity criticizes the selective use of Johnson’s biography to support non-satiric readings of The Vanity of Human Wishes. The analysis shows that biographical evidence, such as Johnson's emotional reaction to the scholar's portrait or his thoughts on Charles XII and his mother, is ambiguous. The text argues that the impulse to see Johnson as temperamentally incapable of satire often stems from a prejudice against the genre. Johnson’s high regard for Pope, his definition of satire as general, and his later works suggest that charity and satire are not mutually exclusive.
Samuel Johnson and the Art of Observation
Johnson's often-quoted injunction in The Vanity of Human Wishes, "Let observation with extensive view, / Survey mankind, from China to Peru," should be understood in the context of Johnson's ambivalence towards "mere observation" and his own visual disabilities. Johnson praised observation for yielding intellectual information but dismissed scientific or sensual observation on voyages of discovery as having "very little of intellectual" content. The contrasting parts of Imlac's "dissertation upon poetry" in Rasselas—first urging a vast survey of nature, then insisting the poet must ignore "minuter discriminations"—reflect this tension. For Johnson, true observation is of "mankind," and the poem's seemingly redundant opening and focus on "Observation" as an abstract power emphasizes the limitations of human, or "myopic," vision.
From Definition to Explanation: Locke's Influence on Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's philosophical decision to use "explanation" rather than "definition" for his Dictionary entries was a conscious adoption of Locke's theory of knowledge. Locke's view that words stand for ideas, not things, and his arguments that simple ideas, mixed modes, and substances resist rigorous logical definition, led Johnson to abandon the goal of "strictly logical" definitions. This Lockean influence also contributed to the Dictionary's distinctive historical and genetic structure, where the multiple senses of a word are traced in a regularly concatenated series.
'The Most Fatal of All Faults': Samuel Johnson on Prior's Solomon and the Need for Variety
Davis argues that Johnson distinguishes between ideological and aesthetic excellence through his critique of Matthew Prior’s Solomon on the Vanity of the World. Although Prior’s poem aligns closely with Johnson’s own world view and his poem The Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson challenges the aesthetic success of the work. Davis highlights that Johnson praises the instructive qualities of Solomon but identifies tediousness as its most fatal fault. This tediousness arises from a lack of variety in narration and Prior’s use of enjambed heroic couplets, which Johnson finds less distinct and striking than end-stopped lines. Davis explores Johnson’s use of Newtonian physics as a metaphor for the psychological effect of tediousness on a reader. Johnson maintains that variety remains the vital source of pleasure in literature, a principle he applies consistently when praising Shakespeare for his diversity of action and character while criticizing Milton and Butler for a paucity of events. Davis concludes that Johnson’s critical verdicts rest on consistent psychological principles regarding human nature and the necessity of artful intertexture to maintain reader engagement.
Rasselas: Le Décor voilé de l'impossible utopie
Die wahnsinnige Heldin: Charlotte Lennox' The Female Quixote
Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
John Bell's Poets of Great Britain: The 'Little Trifling Edition' Revisited
Bonnell challenges the traditional disparagement of Bell’s Poets of Great Britain, often cited as the "trifling" catalyst for the London booksellers’ rival edition and Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. By examining Bell’s plan, typography, and marketing, Bonnell argues the edition was a sophisticated, high-quality attempt to establish a comprehensive English canon. He reveals the intense competitive tactics used by established booksellers to suppress Bell’s series. Bonnell concludes that Bell’s project significantly influenced the eighteenth-century book trade and the collaborative biographical structures later perfected by Johnson.
Ditchfield explores the complex relationship between Johnson and various Protestant Dissenting groups. The study argues that Johnson’s perceived hostility was tempered by cordial personal relations with individual Dissenters like the Dilly brothers. Ditchfield distinguishes Johnson’s attitudes toward "Old Dissent," Methodism, and "Rational Dissent." The article maintains that Johnson separated aesthetic judgments from political disagreements, sharing religious assumptions with evangelicals while vigorously opposing the political aspirations of Whiggish nonconformists.
Examines Johnson's contradictory use of "succession," linking two opposing concepts: generative succession, denoting continuity with the paternal past, and metonymic succession, implying discontinuous flux, random events, and the ultimate futility of human endeavor, associated with Humean philosophy. Johnson frequently critiques this metonymic succession of unproductive "schemes," particularly in the Rambler. However, the generative, paternal sense of continuity ultimately prevails, particularly in the ending of Rasselas, which resolves the tension by affirming a return to the established order.
Samuel Johnson and the Epitaph on a Duckling
Dr. Johnson's Quotation from Macbeth
Lim highlights Johnson’s use of the First Murderer’s description of dusk from Macbeth in his Dictionary. Johnson quoted these three lines eight times to illustrate various words, fulfilling his goal of selecting "beautiful descriptions" from poets to serve ends beyond simple word illustration. Lim notes that unlike other editors of the period, Johnson did not use typographical markers like asterisks to signal the passage's beauty, relying instead on the frequency of its inclusion.
CGV entry 17:230. Used in the Dictionary.
Tracking a Source for Johnson's Life of Pope
Primer identifies Antoine Houdar de la Motte as the likely author of a French couplet Johnson quotes to illustrate Pope's self-indulgent character. Johnson first used the lines in a 1780 letter to Piozzi regarding her daughter Queeney. Primer finds the couplet in works by the Abbe de Saint Pierre and Helvétius, though Johnson likely misquoted the text from memory. The lines reflect on the shared characteristics of childhood and adulthood. While Helvétius used the verse to dispute Rousseau's theory of innate goodness, Johnson applied it for moral commentary on personal behavior. Primer suggests Johnson's use of the couplet in the Life of Pope may have impressed Wordsworth, whose later poetry echoes similar themes of the relationship between the child and the man.
Analyzes Johnson's conflicted position on conjecture in his Preface to Shakespeare, which he restricts to marginal notes to avoid the twin pitfalls of idleness and error. Conjecture, while offering the allure of originality, lacks the authority and power of original composition. Johnson defines editing as a virtually worthless but necessary activity, representing a futile, entropic decay of literary power and a loss of personal agency, a marginality that nevertheless affords lucidity and moral correctness.
Johnson among the Early Modern Grammarians
The significance of Johnson's dictionary makes sense only when it is seen in the context of early modern England school grammars. Seventeenth-century grammar texts included many lexicographical components that dictionary authors had not yet incorporated in their own lexicons. However, in the eighteenth century as grammarians became more concerned with pedagogical issues in school grammars, lexicographers focused on researching and documenting the English language. In A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson combines successful practices of early grammarians (e.g., grammar, etymology, usage notes, pronunciation, definitions, and quotations) with witty commentary and literary quotations. Johnson's landmark dictionary went beyond the efforts of grammarians in that Johnson wanted to do more than provide lexicographical information. He wanted readers to enjoy reading the dictionary and to increase their knowledge.
Usage Notes in Johnson's Dictionary
Barnbrook explores Johnson’s contribution to the development of usage notes by comparing his work with earlier and modern dictionaries. He argues Johnson provides a rich and elaborate set of information that marks a major change from the implicit comments of predecessors like Cawdrey and Cockeram. Barnbrook demonstrates that Johnson’s systematic use of verbal notes for currency, style, and connotation established the commodity of usage guidance central to modern lexicography.
Eighteenth-Century Language Theory and Imlac's Tulip
Bubbled, Bamboozled, and Bit: 'Low Bad' Words in Johnson's Dictionary
Challenges Johnson's reputation as a rigidly prescriptive lexicographer, arguing that the Dictionary demonstrates surprising receptivity to contemporary colloquial and "low bad" words. Although his prefaces sometimes proscribe vulgar terms, Johnson includes numerous words categorized as cant, slang, or merely informal, such as bubbled, bamboozled, and bit. Johnson's generous definitions, often drawn from popular literature and authenticated by authors like Shakespeare and Pope, reveal an implicit endorsement and genuine delight in the language's vitality, irrespective of their formal status.
Narrative, Sequence, and Biography: Johnson and Romantic Prose
This study examines the role of biography in Romantic prose, focusing on its narrative form and its significance in the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.
Singh examines the paradox between Johnson’s private irreverence and public defense of political absolutism. Analysis of The False Alarm reveals that Johnson defends the House of Commons' right to incapacitate Wilkes by prioritizing monarchical sovereignty and stability over popular grievance. Singh argues that Johnson’s empirical conservatism leads to significant distortions of history, including the suppression of Wilkes’s actual popularity and the mischaracterization of middle-class radicals as "the rabble." Following Coleridge, Singh asserts Johnson fails to see the "other half" of the subject by ignoring the socio-economic forces driving the emergent bourgeoisie.
Johnson's Definitions of Technical Terms and the Absence of Illustrations
The inclusion of illustrations in dictionaries rose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to clarify technical terms, particularly in fields like science and mathematics. Johnson's decision to omit illustrations from his Dictionary ran against this trend, leading to inadequate verbal definitions for certain terms, such as orrery and parabola. This deficiency is attributed not only to the absence of visuals but also to Johnson's evident lack of interest or deep understanding of higher-order mathematics and the sciences dependent on it, which he often dismissed as less useful than moral study.
'Heaven-Taught Fergusson': Robert Burns's Favourite Scottish Poet
'Wow' and Other Cries in the Night: Fergusson's Vernacular, Scots Talking Heads, and Unruly Bodies
Mandeville and Augustan Ideas: New Essays
Jack explores the intrinsic intellectual link between Mandeville and Johnson, noting that Johnson took Mandeville seriously for his "intellectual honesty and clever dissection of social behaviour." While Johnson disputed Mandeville’s "narrowest system of morality" that labeled all pleasure as vice, he shared Mandeville’s belief that human nature must be understood to grasp social mechanisms. Jack highlights Johnson’s "remarkably Mandevillean defence of luxury," where Johnson argues that spending on luxury, such as gardening or fine housing, provides more social benefit by supporting the "industrious poor" than direct charity. Despite his Christian framework, Johnson acknowledged that Mandeville "opened my views into real life very much." Jack contends that both thinkers viewed man as a "fallen creature" whose "gratifications approach so nearly to vice," yet they recognized this "rude vitality" as necessary for a flourishing commercial society.
Johnson's Refutation of Berkeley: Kicking the Stone Again
Patey challenges the common interpretation that Johnson's "refutation" of Berkeley's immaterialism by kicking a stone was merely common sense or philosophical incompetence. Boswell, writing after the event, anachronistically aligned Johnson with the Scottish School of Common Sense. Patey argues that the emphasis on "mighty force" and "rebound" suggests Johnson was drawing on contemporary Lockean thought, particularly the ideas of Berkeley and Hartley, which argued that sensations of "touch" (or "feeling") combined with "muscular contraction" were the primary, fundamental source of our knowledge of the material world's essential properties, particularly "resistance."
Johnson and Hume: Of Like Historical Minds
Vance disputes the common perception that Johnson and David Hume held fundamentally different views on history. Vance argues that both men shared a "deep respect for the uses and potential of history" and agreed on aspects of historical inquiry such as the importance of truth, the rejection of oral tradition, and the need for impartiality. Vance highlights their similar assessments of English monarchs and their shared belief in human nature's uniformity across ages. While Hume completed a major historical project, Vance demonstrates that Johnson frequently acted as a historian in his reviews, prefaces, and biographies. Vance concludes that Johnson's historical thinking was as perceptive and "au courant" as Hume's.
Samuel Johnson and the Act of Reflection
Griffin investigates Samuel Johnson’s concept of "reflection," locating it within a tradition extending from Plato and Neoplatonists to Aquinas, Descartes, and Locke. Reflection functions as the core process coordinating, observing, and monitoring the “rational soul,” central to Johnson’s logic, skepticism, irony, and religious hope. The work applies a paradigm of reflection to interpret The Rambler essays as a unified system, Rasselas as a narrative critical of art, and The Lives of the Poets to identify reflection as a criterion for judging literary value.
The OED incorrectly attributes Cowper's Connoisseur No. 138 to Johnson. Johnson did not contribute to that periodical, although this essay discusses language use, a topic Johnson favored. Coincidentally, Cowper may have borrowed from Johnson's Rambler 59. Cowper describes complainers as "Scriech-Owls," which echoes Johnson's essay opening, "These screech-owls seem to be settled in an opinion that the great business of life is to complain."
CGV entry 16:161.
Implicit Criticism of Thomson's Seasons in Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's use of 614 quotations from Thomson's The Seasons in his Dictionary provides an implicit critique and supplement to his "Life of Thomson." Johnson selected approximately 100 words with philosophic or scientific diction (e.g., accelerate, efflux, pervade), suggesting his appreciation for this aspect of Thomson's style, which adds richness and dignity. However, Johnson implicitly censured 20 words as innovative singularities or lacking authoritative precedent (e.g., to freak, to savage), often noting a lack of competent authorization, indicating Johnson's disapproval of Thomson’s imperfect knowledge or failure to be guided by the best English usage. Gilmore notes Johnson's appreciation of Thomson's naturalist perspective in the Dictionary supports the large claim in his Life.
William Collins, Samuel Johnson, and the Use of Biographical Details
Examines Collins's financial circumstances in the 1740s, using property leases to demonstrate he had significant, albeit mismanaged, funds, contradicting the "poor Collins" image of utter poverty. Johnson's sympathetic Life of Collins selectively omits details of Collins's rash property sales and wasteful "dissipation," presenting a romanticized image of a struggling poet hampered by irresolution and immediate necessity. Johnson's biographical choices, influenced by his personal fondness and sympathy for Collins's indolence and mental struggles, reveal his own tendency to excuse weaknesses in others while maintaining "the truth" of the account.
Crosscurrents in Literary Criticism, 1750–1790: Samuel Johnson and Joseph Warton
Wheeler chronicles the disintegration of the personal and critical relationship between Johnson and Warton, framing their dispute as a central rift between the "man of sense" and the "man of taste" that reflected shifts in eighteenth-century poetic preference. Initially allies who collaborated on the Adventurer, their bonds loosened following Warton’s Essay on Pope, which advocated for the sublime, the pathetic, and the primitive over the satiric and didactic. Johnson felt slighted by Warton’s "starved praise" of his Dictionary and fundamentally disagreed with Warton's preference for the imaginative school of Gray and Collins. Wheeler argues that Johnson aggressively used his Lives of the Poets to dispute Warton’s critical premises, reinstate Dryden and Pope as poetic norms, and challenge Warton’s views on diction, audience, and the importance of truth in poetry. While Warton championed "isolated academic theories" and restrictive systems, Johnson loathed such frameworks, relying instead on the "accumulated voice of mankind." By 1784, Boswell records Johnson calling Warton an "empty fellow," and Piozzi confirmed that Johnson crossed the Wartons "at every turn" in his later years.
The Poet as Critic: Byron in His Letters and Journals: Case Studies of Shakespeare and Johnson
This dissertation analyzes Byron's criticism in his letters and journals using Samuel Johnson as a case study, arguing his perceived inconsistencies are actually stylistic choices conveying consistent critical tenets. The study finds deep affinities between Johnson and Byron, including a shared skepticism, tenacious individualism, and adherence to classical principles. Byron views Johnson as the complex last spokesman for the classical mode and an important model for prose criticism, upholding experience as the ultimate source and test of great literature.
Charles Richardson's New Dictionary and Literary Lexicography, Being a Rodomontade upon Illustrative Examples
Dolezal discusses Charles Richardson's A New Dictionary of the English Language (1836–1837), focusing on its use of copious, chronologically arranged illustrative quotations to document word histories. The dictionary, influenced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's encyclopedic project and John Horne Tooke's philology, is presented as a crucial link between Johnson's earlier dictionary and the later Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Richardson's methodology, though flawed by spurious etymologies and quotation errors, prioritized the written word and literary authority to define a vocabulary, creating a "Bibliography of words." The OED editors, while using Richardson's quotation base, meticulously documented its errors and deficiencies, underscoring the shift toward cooperative, scientifically historical lexicography. The analysis of the entry for 'law' demonstrates the textual correspondences and divergences among Johnson, Richardson, and the OED.
The Subtle Sophistry of Desire: Dr. Johnson and The Female Quixote
Johnson's allegorical fable declares Truth dressed by Desire becomes Fiction. This statement encapsulates his ambivalent attitudes toward desire and fiction, elucidated by his relation to Lennox's Female Quixote. Johnson probably wrote chapter 11, book 9, where wise clergyman converts Arabella from romance. Arabella's desire for "high and noble Adventures" criticizes society's restrictions on female possibility; romances tell truth of female desire. Johnson's Rambler frequently reflects on desire as principle of energy yet form of misdirected imagination. When thinking of female desire, Johnson admits sexuality—most obvious form of female vulnerability. Fiction dressed by desire arouses feeling and threatens rationality. Even Female Quixote exemplifies truth dressed by desire, unpredictable in effects. Every reader brings desire to text, reiterating novel's desire in unexpected ways. Johnson's understanding of fiction as union of truth and desire implies uncontrollability of texts—like desire itself, source of danger and appeal.
Johnson's Use of Sources in the Life of Sir Francis Drake
Brack challenges the image of an "indolent" Johnson by demonstrating the rigorous effort used to shape the 1740 biography. Johnson consulted primary pamphlets, Camden, and Hakluyt to create a fast-paced narrative that heightens Drake’s "intrepidity, intelligence, and optimism." The text highlights Johnson’s penchant for recalculating source figures and his skepticism toward "panick terrours" reported by earlier narrators. Brack identifies interpolations on happiness and colonialism, revealing how Johnson uses historical examples for moral and political ends. Correspondence with Piozzi later confirms Johnson’s lingering interest in the satisfying narrative possibilities of the great voyage.
Alkon argues that time is a central and organizing principle in Johnson's literary criticism. He demonstrates that Johnson consistently uses concepts of duration and continuance as empirical tests for literary greatness, famously stating that the only true merit is that which has "passed the test of time." This temporal perspective informs his major critical works. In the Dictionary, for example, Johnson privileges the language of past authors as a standard of correctness. In his Preface to Shakespeare, he defends the playwright's violation of the unities of time and place by appealing to the audience's actual experience of time in the theatre. Johnson's critique of pastoral poetry is likewise rooted in its failure to represent the real, time-bound conditions of rural life. For Johnson, Alkon concludes, literary value is not an abstract quality but is proven through its enduring power to please and instruct across generations.
Cites Life: 4:25
The 'Wonderful Wonder of Wonders': Gray's Odes and Johnson's Criticism
McDermott examines the adversarial relationship between Johnson and Thomas Gray, attributing their mutual antipathy to fundamentally opposed literary principles regarding poetic language. While Johnson’s Life of Gray applied withering scorn to Gray’s Pindaric odes, McDermott argues these strictures were rooted in a Lockean insistence on perspicuity and the social contract of meaning. Johnson rejected Gray's unmeaning and verbose Language and his desire to be vocal to the intelligent alone, viewing such voluntary obscurity as a breach of communicative duty. The text highlights Johnson’s preference for distinct imagery over the synthetic tendency of Gray’s metaphors, which Johnson found laboured into harshness. McDermott concludes that Johnson’s criticism signals a significant shift in mid-eighteenth-century linguistic thought.
The Politics of Johnson's Dictionary
In definitions, occasional comments, and especially the selection of illustrative quotations, Johnson's Dictionary both conveys specific linguistic information and presents its readers with knowledge of the broadest kind. Like the abstract authority "the dictionary," Johnson's Dictionary is an active instrument of the culture it reflects and helps to shape. As such, Johnson's book embodies a politics, while transmitting political views on every one of its quotation-filled pages. As a collection of quotations, the Dictionary tends to display an underlying political consensus founded on cultural assumptions winnowed from the arguments of combatants on a variety of different but, at a distance, analogous controversies. As a cultural act in its own right the Dictionary supports the growth of democracy and liberalism through its assistance to and dependence on the growing population of literate, book-buying, voting English citizens.
Arras/Hélas! A Fresh Look at Samuel Johnson's French
Gray assesses Samuel Johnson's considerable, though often overlooked, proficiency in the French language. Despite Johnson's notorious reluctance to speak French during his 1775 tour and his critical remarks on French culture, Gray demonstrates his skill as a reader and translator. He cites Johnson's early rendering of Lobo's Voyage (via a French version), translations for the Gentleman's Magazine, his complex annotated translation of Crousaz on Pope, and significant contributions to the translation of Brumoy's Le Théâtre des Grecs. Gray also examines Johnson's few original French compositions, including verses and letters, notably the psychologically intriguing French letter to Mrs. Thrale, contextualizing Johnson's French within contemporary language education efforts.
Venturo shows how Samuel Johnson's moral, religious, philosophical, critical, and political ideas shape his poetry, tracing his stylistic development across his career. The study offers a comprehensive overview of Johnson's lyric, dramatic, satiric, and Latin poetry, emphasizing its relation to his overall vision and critical prose. The central argument posits a significant change in Johnson's poetry and criticism over his lifetime, re-evaluating the historical admiration of his work by contemporaries and later poets, including Byron, Tennyson, Eliot, and Lowell. The work extensively examines London, Irene, and The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Johnson and Profane Authors: The Lives of Otway and Congreve
Corman examines Johnson's critical struggle with "profane authors" through his Lives of Thomas Otway and William Congreve. While Johnson morally condemned authors who spread vice, his biographical treatment of these playwrights reveals a judgmental process where moral principles often overpower sympathy. He selectively uses sources to portray Otway as dissolute and Congreve as vain, compressing material to fit preconceived moral judgments. However, in the critical sections, Johnson offers more balanced assessments. He acknowledges Otway's power over the passions and Congreve's original wit, respecting the public's enduring pleasure even while maintaining his own moral reservations about their works' tendencies.
Brady examines Samuel Johnson's contemporary reputation as a public figure, highlighting the shift in perception from his time to ours. Brady identifies Johnson's 1755 letter to Chesterfield and his 1762 acceptance of a government pension as pivotal moments defining his public image. He analyzes the eighteenth-century tension between the social values of "manners" (represented by Chesterfield) and the individual, Christian values of morality (represented by Johnson). While Johnson became the age's moral voice, his pension was viewed by detractors (Wilkes, Churchill) as a political bribe compromising his famed integrity. Brady argues Johnson's subsequent political pamphlets further complicated his public standing, diminishing his moral authority.
The Philosophical Tale, the Chain of Becoming, and the Novel
Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities
Images of Women: Boswell's Scotland Tour with Johnson Revisited
Crotty revisits the 1773 Scottish tour of Boswell and Johnson, focusing on representations of women in their journals, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. The author generates an index of major references to women in the original journals. Analysis of two late twentieth-century tour revisits, by Shenker and Macdonald, reveals a lack of focus on women. Crotty addresses this gap by recounting her own partial retracing of the tour, recording contemporary Scottish women in narrative, poetry, and photography, contributing to literature, sociology, history, geography, and women's studies.
The Probable and the Marvelous in Johnson's 'Life of Milton'
Maner examines the conflict in Samuel Johnson's "Life of Milton" between two concepts of probable truth: the traditional idea of consistency with received opinion and the emerging idea of evidence-based truth. Johnson converts biographical "marvels" (often perpetuated by Milton's idolators) into "merely probable" human actions, using sarcasm and reductive analogies. He questions accounts that are "too pat" or lack support, often associating Milton's confident individualism with the danger of self-deception and contempt for others. Johnson resolves the marvelous and probable only in the critical section on Paradise Lost.
Shakespeare, Johnson, and Wolsey: A Community of Mind
Abbott examines the ongoing process of defining the Johnsonian canon. He outlines the primary canon (major works like the Dictionary, Rambler, Lives) and secondary works (early biographies, ghostwritten prefaces/dedications). Abbott argues the canon continues to evolve: it expands as new attributions are proposed (e.g., a preface to Prévost's Memoires) and contracts as others are questioned or rejected. Reassessments of Johnson's collaborations (with Chambers, James) and his role versus Hawkesworth's in the Gentleman's Magazine illustrate this contraction. Abbott emphasizes the need for better knowledge of literary history and refined stylistic analysis (including computer-aided methods) to establish a more definitive list of attributions.
Samuel Johnson's Prologue to A Word to the Wise and the Epilogue by 'A Friend'
Samuel Johnson and the Writing of History
Brownley counters the perception of Johnson as antagonistic towards history. She argues that while critical of historical writing's limitations, Johnson valued its study. His skepticism stemmed from a deep concern for truth and an awareness of the manifold obstacles: unreliable sources, authorial bias, anachronism, imaginative distortion, and the difficulty of ascertaining motives. Johnson insisted on factual accuracy and documentary evidence but distrusted history overly reliant on narrative artifice or stylistic embellishment ("painting"), fearing it compromised truth. He preferred Clarendon's "inartificial majesty" to the styles of Robertson or Gibbon, seeing historical composition primarily as decoration or compilation, thus minimizing imagination's dangerous role.
Johnson on Friendship: The Example of Burke
Lambert explores Johnson's profound valuation of friendship, differentiating intimate friends from mere companions based on intellectual equality and shared virtue. She posits Edmund Burke as the quintessential example of Johnson's intimate friend. Despite political disagreements (Whig vs. Tory), their twenty-six-year bond rested on mutual intellectual respect ("That fellow calls forth all my powers," Johnson said of Burke) and, crucially, shared virtue, evidenced by parallel acts of practical charity and personal courage. Their relationship involved both public intellectual rivalry and private confidence (Burke confided political despair to Johnson). This enduring friendship exemplifies Johnson's Aristotelian ideal: compounded of esteem and love, rooted in virtue.
The Controversy Surrounding Samuel Johnson's Late Conversion
Young traces and evaluates the controversy over Samuel Johnson's alleged late-life religious conversion, dividing its history into three periods and six emerging versions. The initial Evangelical version (1817–1865) posited a change in Johnson's soteriology, interpreting his deathbed composure as evidence of embracing a vicarious atonement theology despite Anglican biographers' attempts (like Boswell's and Strahan's) to suppress this. Subsequent Catholic and Methodist versions (1865–1943) focused on his tolerance toward their respective faiths, with some suggesting conversion. The modern period (1943–1983) introduced Maurice Quinlan's "Rumor Theory," which Donald Greene and Chester Chapin later challenged, shifting focus to the experience's subjective and empirical nature.
Curley illuminates Johnson's extensive but largely unknown collaboration with Sir Robert Chambers on A Course of Lectures on the English Law (delivered 1767–1773). Detailing their close friendship from 1754, Curley explains how Johnson assisted Chambers, the newly elected Vinerian Professor struggling to follow Blackstone, by helping compose the lectures from 1766–1770. This collaboration likely influenced Johnson's own later political writings (Journey, Tracts), sharing perspectives on constitutional history, necessity in government, migration, and colonial taxation. The partnership reveals Johnson's deep engagement with law and provides context for his later intellectual development and Oxford connections.
Dr. Johnson, the Scottish Highlander, and the Scottish Enlightenment
Lamont analyzes Johnson's view of the Scottish Highlander, which he placed between the "savage" of the American wilderness and the London shopkeeper. Johnson's 1773 Journey sought to observe an "antiquated life" and "feudal institutions," expectations largely disappointed in the conduct of Sir Alexander Macdonald at Armadale. However, the laird of Raasay, Macleod, satisfied Johnson's search for "truly the patriarchal life." Johnson observed a pastoral economy and noted that feudalism allowed no social mobility. Johnson's itinerary also exposed him to the Scottish Enlightenment in the university cities, but he largely resisted acknowledging contemporary Scottish intellectual achievement due to religious and political differences, which he shared with Boswell and Thrale. Johnson's approach to the Highlands emphasized mountainous terrain's influence on society and attributed social change to external factors like commerce, contrasting with the Scottish Enlightenment's dynamic, four-stage economic model.
Rizzo examines fictitious news reports regarding the Russo-Turkish war, published in the Public Advertiser in 1770. Attributed to Samuel Johnson, these fabricated accounts of battles were written to expose the credulity of Mrs. Salusbury, Hester Thrale’s mother, regarding foreign correspondence. Rizzo corroborates this attribution using a 1783 letter from the Gentleman’s Magazine and reprints seven spurious articles, placing them within the context of Johnson’s political views and contemporary journalism.
Another Look at Johnson's Appraisal of Swift
Levinson challenges Boswell's assertion of Johnson's prejudice against Swift, arguing that Johnson's critical judgment was not warped by his personal distaste for Swift's habits and outlook. An examination of Boswell's recorded conversations reveals that Johnson's depreciatory remarks often occurred in contest and reflected a generic, stylistic approach to criticism that Boswell failed to appreciate. The short critical sections of Johnson's Life of Swift are surprisingly even-handed, praising Swift's effectiveness, clarity, and originality in both prose and poetry.
Samuel Johnson and the Literature of Common Life
Hudson argues that Johnson's essays draw heavily on, and engage critically with, "prudential literature"—popular handbooks on manners, social conduct, and success (e.g., Fuller, Burgh). Johnson frequently used a correspondent to advocate for "good-humour" and social civilities, which he acknowledged were necessary for life's happiness. However, his essays reveal a tension and disdain for the "unenvied insipidity" and intellectual conformity promoted by these handbooks. Johnson's "Spirit of Contradiction," famous through Boswell's Life, stemmed from this resistance to accepting a standard of politeness that restricted the scholar. Johnson justified courtesy pragmatically, as a necessary means of making virtue lovable and promoting morality.
Presenting Its Evils to Our Minds: Imagination in Johnson's Pamphlets
Rawlinson examines Johnson’s periodical essays on social abuses, specifically vivisection, debtors' prisons, war, and capital punishment. The argument posits that these pamphlets reveal Johnson’s "sympathetic imagination"—the capacity to project oneself into the experiences of others to evoke compassion and justice. By analyzing Idler and Rambler papers, Rawlinson demonstrates how Johnson uses vivid, visceral prose to counteract public indifference and "present evils" to the reader’s mind. The text draws significant parallels between Johnson’s moral authority and Shakespeare’s dramatic identification, suggesting both writers share an instinctive recognition of a common humanity. The study characterizes Johnson as a "satirist manqué" whose deep imaginative identification with the suffering of individuals precludes the detached mockery typical of Swift.
Samuel Johnson's Literary Treatment of Women
Livingston analyzes Johnson's evolving portrayal of women across five genres: drama, biography, essays, fiction, and letters, spanning 1737-1784. The study argues that an intellectual-emotional split defines his treatment, evident in the negative depiction of the independent Irene and Lady Macclesfield, and the idealization of the nurturing Aspasia and Hester. While Johnson, the essayist and fabulist, advocates for female education and equality, his personal anxieties about abandonment, intensified by the Lockean world, underpin a persistent idealization of the nurturing female, a theme his correspondence with Hester further reflects.
The Theory of Language in Johnson's Dictionary
DeMaria argues Johnson's Dictionary embodies a predominantly Lockean theory of language, prioritizing function (conveying knowledge) over form. While primarily recording usage, Johnson interprets language through this lens. His selection of illustrative sources emphasizes literary merit and encyclopedic knowledge (Bacon, Hooker, Boyle, educational texts, orthodox theology). The extensive quotations serve not just philology but transmit knowledge and reflect the view that word meaning depends heavily on context. Johnson's meticulous sense divisions and preference for etymology reveal a desire for logical regularity, counteracting language's inherent ambiguity, though ultimately acknowledging usage as the final arbiter.
Samuel Johnson and the Ocean of Life: Variations on a Commonplace
Stewart examines Johnson's variations on the "ocean of life" metaphor, a literary commonplace he used often. Johnson's unique perspective emphasizes life as a voyage marked by uncertainty and danger, full of tempests, rocks, and whirlpools. The metaphor is often reflexive, with the greatest perils stemming from internal flaws—such as fluctuations of wishes or insatiability—rather than just external circumstances. The ultimate consolation, as stated in The Rambler, is the conviction that the universe is under the perpetual superintendence of an omnipotent, merciful God.
Mentoring Jane Austen: Reflections on 'My Dear Dr. Johnson'
Vance examines the complex emotional friendship between Johnson and Warton, particularly during the mid-1750s. He argues that following the death of his wife, Tetty, Johnson sought an "emotional reliance" on the younger Warton, who represented the academic success Johnson once desired. The study details Johnson’s frequent, often "pathetic plea for attention" in correspondence, contrasted with Warton’s inadvertent insensitivity and "frustration and bewilderment" regarding Johnson’s insecurity. Vance challenges previous claims of a permanent breach in 1777, suggesting instead that Johnson purposefully "pulled far enough away" to regain emotional control while maintaining a "moderate and therefore healthier affection" until his death. The relationship reveals nuances in Johnson’s personality and his capacity for deep "emotional dependence" on friends outside his immediate famous circle.
Johnson and the Analogy of Judicial Authority
Klinkenborg explores the judicial metaphor frequently applied to Johnson's criticism, pushing the analogy further than Johnson does by drawing on legal theorists like Hooker, Bacon, Hale, and Blackstone. Johnson views common law's reliance on custom and precedent as analogous to literary tradition, fearing the tyranny of prescriptive rule. The analogy breaks down because, unlike legal authority, literary authority is explicitly textual and non-coercive, lacking a sovereign power to enforce it. Johnson's authority is personal, guiding the public's judgment through rational example, aligning him with the spirit of equity rather than custom-bound common law.
The Media of Sublimity: Johnson and Lamb on King Lear
Patronizing the Biographical Subject: Johnson's Savage and Pastoral Power
Epstein applies Foucault's concept of pastoral power—the individualizing tactic originating in Christian institutions ensuring salvation—to Johnson's Life of Savage. He argues this power became secularized in the 18th century, redistributed through institutions like biography. The traditional patronage system, linked to church and aristocracy, eroded, replaced by the bookseller-driven market. Savage, excluded from noble lineage, attempts authorship to re-enter this old system. Johnson's narrative depicts Savage's futile quest for a father/patron, showing him as a "child of the public" signifying biography's shift towards serving a mass consumer market, a new form of secularized pastoral power.
'Wide-Wasting Pest': Social History in The Vanity of Human Wishes
The Poetics of Samuel Johnson's Epitaphs and Elegies and 'On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet'
Johnson viewed epitaphs and elegies as a form of poetic biography, demanding moral seriousness, simplicity of form, and the inclusion of specific biographical details to offer a memorable and imitable example of virtue. He condemned the mixture of Christian and pagan allusions, witty conceits, and praised the celebration of private virtue and common life. Johnson's poem, "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet," written in the simple ballad stanza, is celebrated for its unadorned style, tender moral tone, and biographical focus on an honest, humble man, reflecting his consistent critical principles for the elegiac mode.
Folkenflik surveys twentieth-century biographies of Samuel Johnson, noting a significant increase in the 1970s. He critiques early approaches, often influenced by Macaulay or focused excessively on Boswell, finding figures like Christopher Hollis (1928) inadequate. Hugh Kingsmill's Samuel Johnson (1933) marks the first serious modern attempt. Joseph Wood Krutch's 1944 biography is recognized as substantial, aiming to revise popular notions derived from Boswell. Folkenflik then discusses the meticulous scholarship of James L. Clifford's volumes, various popular illustrated "life-and-times" books, psychoanalytic interpretations like George Irwin's, and the distinct perspectives of John Wain and W. J. Bate, tracing biography's improving quality alongside growing scholarly focus on Johnson the writer.
Emendation of Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century: The Case of Johnson
Lim investigates Johnson’s editorial theory, noting his rejection of the "rage of emendation" prevalent among 18th-century critics. The text highlights Johnson’s insistence on "explication" as a higher editorial activity to preserve the "history of every language." Lim disputes charges of plagiarism, arguing that Johnson’s distaste for "conjectural criticism" reflects a "profound wariness" of editorial intrusion. The text notes Johnson’s respect for the "ancient books" and his practice of relegating his own readings to the margins. By focusing on "difficult passages," Johnson used "sturdy good sense" and historical perspectives from his Dictionary to wrest meaning from obscurities without distorting the author’s intent.
Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies
The Techniques of Spontaneity: Johnson's Developing Epistolary Style
Grundy analyzes the evolution of Johnson's letter-writing style, moving from adherence to formal precepts toward achieving an artful "spontaneity." She contrasts the eighteenth-century ideal of letters mirroring "easy and natural" conversation with Johnson's early practice and theory (Rambler 152), which favored "studied ornaments" to raise esteem. His early letters are formal and structured. However, beginning around 1749, a shift toward a more relaxed, colloquial, and playful style emerges, especially in letters to the Wartons and Hester Thrale. This mature style employs techniques like allusion, self-mockery, and imagined dialogue to create intimacy, embodying the "art which conceals art."
Johnson's Last Days: Some Facts and Problems
Korshin scrutinizes the conflicting accounts of Samuel Johnson's final twenty-seven days, a period intensely observed by his inner circle. He compares the near-daily records of eyewitnesses John Hoole and Sir John Hawkins with the later biographical construction by James Boswell, who was absent. Korshin analyzes discrepancies, particularly between Hoole's immediate letters to William Bowles and his more polished Journal Narrative. He critically examines Hawkins's unreliable and self-serving account, especially regarding the theft of Johnson's diaries. Boswell's narrative, though synthesized from sources, is shown to handle evidence judiciously, preferring Frank Barber's testimony on Johnson's last words over questionable accounts.
Reflection as Criterion in The Lives of the Poets
The Theme of Education and Communication in Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Bulletin of the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers
Auctor et Auctoritas: Dr. Johnson's Views on the Authority of Authorship
On Johnson's views on authorial authority (AA), which Gray finds Johnson spurned, except in a few restricted senses. Johnson considered AA not mere knowledge or correctness, but derived from the author's personal quality and reputation. He saw AA as a developing asset, not an absolute right, stemming from diligence, experience, and original thought. Johnson cautioned that few writers achieve true authority, facing obstacles from their own conceit and the fickleness of the "common reader." He believed the public's literary judgement, while capable of a final appeal, was often swayed by a small, powerful group. For Johnson, authority was a gradually infiltrating influence, and he humbly viewed his own work, even the Dictionary, as a temporary aid to preserving the language and a contribution to a collective authority.
The Early Editors of Shakespeare and the Judgments of Johnson
Seary critically examines Johnson's assessments of his predecessors in Shakespearean editing—Pope, Theobald, and Warburton—as presented in his 1765 Preface. Johnson praised Pope's aesthetic sensibility but found his critical marks unhelpful. He severely underrated Lewis Theobald, acknowledging his textual accuracy but dismissing his intellect. Seary contends Johnson's harsh judgment of Theobald stemmed from personal gratitude to William Warburton, who had praised Johnson's Observations on Macbeth. Despite this loyalty, Johnson privately held a low opinion of Warburton's own error-filled edition and, significantly, used Theobald's superior text as the copy-text for much of his own edition, belying his public disparagement.
A History and Criticism of Samuel Johnson's Oriental Tales
Nassir provides a reassessment of the oriental tales in the Rambler, the Idler, and Rasselas. He argues that these neglected texts reveal the attention Johnson paid to profound problems and reveal his life-long struggle with serious moral questions. This monograph seeks to determine if the contribution these tales make to literature is permanent. Nassir explores the extent of knowledge Johnson possessed regarding the Middle East and examines the influence of travel writers and oriental scholars on his inspiration. He notes that although Johnson never visited the region or mastered oriental languages, he felt the influence of oriental literature more than any other early eighteenth-century writer. The study references Boswell's biography to discuss the suggestion of Sir William Jones teaching oriental learning in a proposed college. Nassir also assesses contemporary reactions and nineteenth-century continuations of the main oriental work.
When the Falklands First Demanded an Historian: Johnson, Junius, and the Making of History in 1771
Burke explores Johnson's 1771 pamphlet on the Falkland Islands as a rare instance of witnessing "history in the making." Johnson assumes the role of historian to cool the nationalistic "war fever" against Spain by establishing a murky chronology of discovery that undermines clear claims of sovereignty. The article contrasts Johnson's "intellectual" approach—which uses history to understand the present and avoids jingoism—with the "emotional" and simplified historical view of his opponent, Junius, who demanded war to preserve national honor. Burke argues that Johnson's sense of history is rooted in the belief that "politics begins in interpretation" and that no stable, fixed meanings exist in the past. By placing events within the broader context of the Age of Exploration, Johnson challenges the "passions of nationalism" and refuses to invoke Divine Providence to justify British ambition. Burke demonstrates that for Johnson, history is an unstable narrative used as a rhetorical tool for peace and general welfare.
'Demigods and Philistines': Macaulay and Carlyle — A Study in Contrasts
Goldberg contrasts the antithetical styles and opinions of the Victorian historians Macaulay and Carlyle, who often addressed the same historical and literary subjects, including Johnson and Boswell. Focusing on their reviews of Croker's Life of Johnson, Goldberg notes Macaulay's punitive criticism of Croker's editing and his view of Boswell as a great fool. In contrast, Carlyle sees Boswell's power as deriving from his "hero-worship" and "free insight," positioning him as a "practical witness" to truth.
'A Child Is Being Beaten': Suggestions toward a Psychoanalytical Reading of Johnson
Gross uses Freud's theory of masochism to interpret Johnson's "obsessive preoccupation with pain" and his analysis of Richard Savage. The article argues that the Life of Savage represents a "process of purgation" for Johnson, who identified with Savage's pattern of repetitive disaster and "injustice-collecting." Gross posits that Johnson discovered a key to human need—the integrity of fellowship—as a result of his own personal ordeal and "depression of spirits." By analyzing the "tyranny of the impaired superego," Johnson used the "light of reason" to confront his pathological suffering. The study suggests that Johnson's middle years, during which he completed the Dictionary and numerous periodical essays, were a period of intense interpretation of his own mental processes. Ultimately, Gross demonstrates how Johnson surmounted his "vast personal difficulties" to champion what is "highest, most civilized, and just" in the human mind.
Residual Grandeur: Samuel Johnson's Development as Biographer
Lipking addresses the epistemological difficulty of knowing Johnson, distinguishing between his celebrated public image and his historical reality. Lipking argues that Johnson viewed the self as a "hermeneutic circle" where self-knowledge requires understanding general human nature, yet access to that nature only comes through deep self-examination. This tension is evident in Johnson’s 1772 poem "Gnothi Seauton," which reveals a "shuddering" at internal emptiness after completing the Dictionary. Lipking contrasts biography, which seeks to fix a subject, with Johnson’s own "mixed elements" of memory and hope. Johnson identifies with various roles—the Rambler, the Tory, the sage—while frequently defining himself in opposition to his own "Age of Authors." Lipking challenges the "imitatio Johnsoni" sought by some scholars, suggesting that the true answer to what it was like to be Johnson is simply "being human," characterized by the constant dialectic between "I," "we," and "thou."
Perspectivism: The Methodological Implications of 'The History of Imlac' in Rasselas
Tomarken disputes the traditional identification of Imlac as Johnson's direct spokesman, arguing instead that "The History of Imlac" functions as a "tale within a tale" to establish a methodological procedure for human understanding. The study examines how Imlac adapts the beatus vir retirement convention, transforming the quest for personal happiness into a search for the "hidden cause of things." Tomarken demonstrates that the "monotonous quarrel" between generality and particularity in Johnsonian poetics is resolved through a "dialectical concept" involving an axis of viewpoints. In the "Dissertation upon Poetry," Imlac moves between the poles of surveying a random past and remolding specifics into universal laws, a process that prepares Rasselas for his educational journey. By reinscribing Imlac within the text through humor and narrator interruptions, Johnson converts aesthetic doctrine into a narrative procedure. Tomarken concludes that the interweaving of the particular and the general creates a "perspectivism" essential for increasing human understanding within the choice of life quest.
Cornelia Knight's Dinarbas: A Sequel to Rasselas
Knight's Dinarbas (1790) is a direct imitation and continuation of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, written to dispute Johnson's pessimistic view that permanent happiness is unattainable in this life. Knight, who was personally acquainted with Johnson, systematically structures her fifty-chapter narrative to respond to characters and themes in Rasselas. Dinarbas replaces Imlac with the religious Elphenor, has Rasselas and Nekayah marry, and advocates for active duty, conscious virtue, and submission to the Divine Will as the path to happiness.
Printing Technology: A Review Essay [includes Printing Technology, Letters, and Samuel Johnson, by Alvin Kernan]
Hunter finds Kernan's book stylish but questions two primary claims: whether Johnson is the archetypal modern writer and whether Kernan's "theory of letters and literature as socially constructed realities" provides an adequate framework. Hunter argues Johnson is not the most appropriate figure for the "modern" writer and that Grub Street was the true epitome of "print culture." Hunter also critiques Kernan's dating of the print revolution and his contradictory views of print as both enslavement and liberation. Kernan is also faulted for overstating the commonality of large public libraries.
Reinert examines Johnson's preoccupation with the crowd as a figure for the limits of moral agency and subjectivity in eighteenth-century London's commodified literary marketplace. The dissertation argues that Johnson's writing wavers between traditional moralistic discourse and bureaucratic depersonalization, positioning the crowd as an impersonal force that undermines individual intentionality. Reinert analyzes how Johnson's moral essays replicate rather than overcome marginality, how his biographical writing on figures like Savage and Levet explores failed exemplarity, and how his editorial work employs conjecture as a mode of acknowledged inadequacy. Drawing on Blanchot, Benjamin, and Lukács, Reinert demonstrates that Johnson's language consistently thematizes the impossibility of stable self-representation within urban anonymity, making his work pertinent to contemporary debates about Marxism, deconstruction, and the critique of subjectivity without reducing his historical specificity to either genealogical origins or universal forms.
Nil Nisi Bonum: Samuel Johnson in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1785–1800
Sherbo analyzes the post-mortem treatment of Johnson in the Gentleman's Magazine from 1785 to 1800, arguing that the principle of nil nisi bonum was often ignored. He shows that the critiques went beyond his works—mainly the Lives of the English Poets and the Dictionary—to numerous attacks on Johnson the man. Critics like Seward condemned his personality, religious views (claiming he leaned too far toward Catholicism), ingratitude, arrogance, and overall malignancy, using his biographical records to challenge his moral character.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature
Re-Reading Taxation No Tyranny: Was the United States of America a Mistake
Facts and Deductions: The Curious History of Reynold's First Portrait of Johnson
Lustig traces the complex history of Reynolds’s 1756 portrait of Johnson, focusing on its physical deterioration and restoration. She examines James Heath's 1791 engraving for Boswell's Life, which shows two distinct states. Lustig argues that Heath’s first state accurately reflects the portrait’s condition when he began work in 1789, while the second state reveals Reynolds's "final thoughts" or interventions. The article details how the painting was "restored" in 1977 by the National Gallery, a process Lustig disputes for having "eradicated some meaningful accessories" while aiming to recover the original head. Lustig uses Boswell’s annotated copy of the Heath engraving to suggest that Johnson’s "vigourous" and "attentive" pose was intended to symbolize his status as an author. She recommends that the National Gallery "uncover" the original version, as the current state may have been influenced by a "ready prop" from the frontispiece of the Life.
Johnson's Redaction of Hawkesworth's Swift
Johnson in Mourning: The Authority and the Love of Mimesis
Quinney explores the "pathos of authority" in Johnson's work, challenging traditional biographical and idealizing interpretations. She argues that Johnson's commitment to mimesis is not a naive empirical demand but a complex engagement with the "apersonal and anexperiential authority of literature." The dissertation examines how Johnson's prose style, marked by a "syntax of inexorability," replicates the fatality he perceived in human existence. Quinney identifies a "love of mimesis" in Johnson—an instinctive response where literary "truthfulness" carries more weight than empirical fact. This is illustrated through his suppressed identifications with bereaved figures like Milton and Parnell, and his use of dead languages to harbor private sorrow. Referencing Boswell and Piozzi, Quinney describes how Johnson "secretly feared and secretly experienced the mimetic effect of literature itself," leading to a "spurious interiority" where literary echoes become indistinguishable from personal experience. The work concludes by aligning Johnson's linguistic skepticism with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, suggesting both writers find the "grimness of the truth" suspended in the "repetition of a literary gesture."
The Making of Johnson's Dictionary, 1746–55 and 1771–73
A Grammatical Error in Johnson's Ode on the Isle of Skye ('Ponti Profundis Clausa Recessibus')
Jeffreys-Powell addresses a persistent grammatical error in the fourth stanza of Johnson’s Latin ode, appearing in both Boswell's Journal and modern editions. The use of the subjunctive crepet is identified as a mistake in elementary Latin grammar, where the indicative crepat is required for the intended meaning. Jeffreys-Powell proposes two explanations: either Boswell mistranscribed Johnson’s original crepat, or the error is a hangover from a previous cancelled version using the subjunctive jactet. The note concludes that future editions should either emend the text to crepat or include a note regarding Johnson’s minor lapse.
Johnson, Cromwell, and the Jacobite Cause
Gray investigates Johnson's abandoned plan to write a biography of Cromwell, a figure who fascinated him as an extraordinary leader despite his "heinous crime" of regicide. The study explores Johnson's childhood in Lichfield, where Civil War devastations remained visible, shaping his skepticism toward both the divine right of kings and Puritan presumption. Gray notes that Johnson found Cromwell deficient in "essential probity" while admiring his military genius. Regarding the Jacobite cause, Johnson maintained that the Stuart line would have been reinstated if the nation's collective will had been expressed, yet his "objective sense of history" prevented unbridled enthusiasm for the dynasty. Gray uses the writings of Richard Baxter to provide a perspective on Johnson's own spiritual anxieties and his refusal to accept Cromwell's "self-proclaimed certainties." The article concludes that Johnson's integrity led him to judge Cromwell as a "brave bad man."
Reading Johnson's Lives: The Forms of Late Eighteenth-Century Literary History
Plank examines Johnson’s Lives of the Poets as a pivotal text that transformed the genre of literary history. He argues that Johnson moved beyond the traditional biographical model of "exemplary lives" toward a narrative that accounts for the historical development of poetic forms. The article explores how Johnson uses individual biographies to trace the evolution of English poetry, particularly the refinement of the heroic couplet and the "metaphysical" style. Plank highlights Johnson’s concern with the "continuity of literary history," where the life of one poet provides the context for the next. This study suggests that Johnson’s critical method involves a dialectic between the particularity of an author’s life and the general progress of the art. Ultimately, Plank demonstrates that Johnson’s work established a new "form" for literary history, one that integrates biography with a systematic account of aesthetic change across generations.
Samuel Johnson's 'Sermons': Consolations for the Vacuity of Life
'The Inequalities of Memory': Johnson's Epitaphs on Hogarth
Clingham explores the creative significance of two distinct versions of Johnson’s epitaph on Hogarth, arguing against the view that the second version, recorded in Thraliana, was a mere lapse of memory. The author suggests Johnson "remembered" creatively, playing the man off against the artist to establish a more intimate relationship with the deceased. By analyzing the shift from the "curious" Hogarth to the "attentive" one, Clingham demonstrates how Johnson’s misquotation reflects a deep "consciousness of thought" and a profound understanding of memory as a civilizing human capacity.
CGV entry 14:247.
'Dr. Johnson's Ghost': Genesis of a Satirical Engraving
Brownell investigates the genesis of the satirical engraving "Dr. Johnson's Ghost," a witty attack on Boswell. Brownell identifies Richard Owen Cambridge as the originator, inspired by the glut of post-1784 Johnsoniana. The engraving's primary target is Boswell's controversial anecdotal method in the Tour to the Hebrides (1785), not the Life (1791), as indicated by the "Hebrides" cushion and scraps of anecdote on the table. The ghost, quoting Congreve's Witwould, upbraids Boswell for dealing in "remnants of remnants." The portrait of the ghost is derived from Thomas Trotter's 1786 engraving of Johnson in his traveling dress.
Johnson's Life of Savage and Lockean Psychology
Johnson deliberately reorders the chronology in his Life of Savage to model the narrative after Locke's moral psychology of choice. The "golden part" of Savage's life approximates Locke's state of liberty, where the subject is free to choose his actions. Savage’s failure to recognize his "real State" and consider the consequences of his choices leads to self-delusion and subsequent confinement. Johnson uses Savage as an unlikely everyman, appealing for compassion by framing his moral failure through the lens of Lockean error.
The Great Cham and the Mirror: An Essay on the Multiple Perspectives in Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism
Hyde Collection, The Johnsonians Nenkai sonota, I: 1988 nen Hôbei no Tabi kara
Rhetorical Strategy in Samuel Johnson's Rambler Essays
Shilling analyzes Johnson's Rambler essays through the classical rhetorical principles of invention and arrangement, determining the influence of classical and eighteenth-century theory on his prose and showing how his strategies solidify the reader-writer relationship. The analysis focuses on artistic invention, emphasizing ethos as the dominant appeal, pathos as a result of reader "imaging," and logos founded on enthymatic reasoning. It examines the essays' structure, identifying distinct frameworks for opening, development (static and progressive), and conclusion. The study finds that Johnson's reliance on forms, structures, and regular use of appeals is the most classical characteristic, while his emphasis on the emotional appeal and fashioning of an ideal reader reflect the eighteenth-century context.
On “Gnothi Seauton.”
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association
Dr. Johnson and 'His Own Dear Master,' Henry Thrale
Easting examines Johnson's commentary on Macbeth, specifically his erroneous association of "aroint" with the term "arongt" found in Hearne’s collections. He demonstrates that Johnson misremembered an engraving of the Harrowing of Hell as St. Patrick visiting Purgatory. Through linguistic analysis of the original 1389 manuscript, Easting identifies the actual word as "arouzt," likely a Middle English form of "arechen," and concludes that Johnson’s "arongt" is a ghost word resulting from faulty memory.
Samuel Johnson and Sir Robert Chambers: A Creative Partnership in English Law
Sisk explores Johnson’s "I refute it thus" gesture against Bishop Berkeley’s idealism as a foundational defense of the "experience of mankind." The article stages an imaginary confrontation between Johnson and contemporary theorists such as Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan, arguing that Johnson’s "holistic thinking" challenges their "fanciful theories" and "poetic absolutism." Sisk situates Johnson as an unalienated intellectual who resisted "visionary schemes" and the "blackmail of transcendence" found in both utopian and skeptical thought. Sisk identifies Johnson as a "pragmatic moralist" whose reliance on concrete reality serves as a corrective to epistemological relativism and the "higher fanaticisms" of modern criticism.
Locke's Theory of Language and Johnson's Dictionary
Hedrick explores the influence of Locke's theory of language on Johnson's Dictionary, noting Johnson's adoption of Lockean linguistic notions, such as the origin of ideas in sense and the reducibility of complex ideas to parts. The analysis focuses on Johnson's lexicographic methods for words with multiple significations: ordering meanings from the concrete/primitive to the metaphorical/remote, a method derived from Locke. However, Johnson's practical experience with definition, which revealed how human passions appropriate and supplant radical senses, led him to reject Locke's optimism about fixing language, as stated in the Preface to the Dictionary.
S. T. Coleridge Replies to Adam Smith's 'Pernicious Opinion': A Study in Hermetic Social Engineering
Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy
Johnson and the Independent Woman: A Reading of Irene
Livingston explores the characterization of Irene as a "monstrous" figure whose desire for power leads to her destruction. The article argues that the young Johnson feared the "independent, worldly woman" who sought to be man's peer, a fear also evident in his early dissertation on the Amazons. Livingston contrasts this with the "seasoned Johnson" found in the Rambler and Rasselas, where women like Princess Nekayah are portrayed as intelligent, self-reliant, and equal to men. In Irene, Johnson manipulates the title character to fit a rigid moral against apostasy and "unwomanly behavior," while showing more sympathy for the male traitor Cali. The religious issue is often obscured by a "romantic emphasis" on the fate of the happy, conventional lovers. Livingston concludes that Irene's overweening defiance reflects Johnson's early, immature rejection of female equality, which he eventually abandoned for a more "enlightened treatment of women."
Reason, Imagination and Will in Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Johnson and Burke: Constitutional Evolution versus Political Revolution
Samuel Johnson, Scepticism, and Biography
Johnson's sceptical approach to biography is a dialectic by which Johnson engages the reader in testing the limits of biographical inference. This biographical scepticism derives from the scientific epistemologies of Locke and Bacon, the writings of Pierre Bayle, and the "constructive scepticism" of the seventeenth-century Christian apologists.
Johnson's Copy of the Iliad at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk
Clingham and Hopkinson trace the provenance and history of Samuel Johnson's copy of Poetae Graeci Heroici per Henricum Stephanum, which Johnson bequeathed to William Windham. The authors dispute earlier findings by R. W. Ketton-Cremer and L. F. Powell that attributed extensive marginalia and scoremarks in the volume to Johnson himself. Instead, graphological analysis and textual evidence reveal that the annotations belong to former owners Robert Creighton senior and Robert Creighton junior, who used the margins to transcribe extensive humanistic commentaries by Eustathius and Tzetzes. Clingham and Hopkinson suggest Johnson acquired the volume at the 1748 library sale of Michael Maittaire, highlighting the text's connection to an interconnected lineage of classical scholarship.
Samuel Johnson and King Charles the Martyr: Veneration in the Dictionary
Griffith performs a hand-count of the 352 citations in the Dictionary tagged as "King Charles," identifying them all as extracts from Eikon Basilike. Johnson believed this work was written by Charles I and used it as a primary source for illustrative quotations, particularly for words like "embase" and "flexibleness." The article details Johnson's "veneration for the King" and his emotional opposition to the "advocates for rebellion." While Griffith acknowledges the controversy over the book's authorship, he stresses that Johnson's use of it reflects an "Imitatio Christi" view of Charles's sufferings. The study also discusses Johnson's defense of the King against Milton's "Iconoclastes" and his admiration for Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. Griffith addresses the question of Johnson's potential Jacobitism, noting that while he expressed "extraordinary partiality" for the Stuarts, his support for the House of Hanover remained pragmatic. The Dictionary thus served as a "vehicle for Jacobite and High-flying tenets."
Biester explores Johnson’s deviation from traditional Renaissance and Enlightenment epistolary theory. While humanists following Cicero, Demetrius, and Seneca advocated for letters as sincere, spontaneous, and plain "familiar conversations," Johnson applies Aristotelian principles and psychological insight to challenge these assumptions. He argues that the inescapable desire to project an attractive ethos and influence the recipient's emotions prevents perfect sincerity. Johnson disputes the injunction for universal plainness, insisting that elocution must remain decorous to the subject and correspondent. His practice in correspondence with Hester Thrale Piozzi demonstrates this versatility, moving from "conversational simplicity" to structured gravity as fitness requires. Biester concludes that Johnson’s theory emphasizes a "sense of fitness" over rigid generic rules.
Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric
Grundy examines the profound influence of Swift on Johnson's thought and style, despite Johnson's occasionally critical biographical treatment of his predecessor. The article details Johnson's extensive use of Swift's works in the Dictionary, where he quoted Directions to Servants 123 times. Both authors share a focus on "minute occurrences" of domestic life and a deep skepticism regarding the "climb to success." Grundy explores their parallel techniques of "diminishing" characters to expose human vanity and their mutual concern with the "dangerous prevalence of imagination." Johnson's political essays, such as those on the "American dispute," are shown to echo Swift's irony and his condemnation of colonial rapine. The study highlights how Hester Thrale encouraged the comparison between the two men. Grundy demonstrates that Johnson's moral vision is frequently "traced back to Swift," revealing a continuity of thought regarding envy, power, and the "misery of the human condition."
Soame Jenyns's 'Epitaph on Dr. Samuel Johnson'
Cowper, Hayley, and Samuel Johnson's 'Republican' Milton
King traces the influence of Milton’s republicanism on Cowper, mediated by Johnson’s critical Life of Milton and Cowper's friendship with Hayley. Cowper vehemently opposed Johnson’s treatment of Milton's politics and blank verse, expressing his outrage in annotations and letters. Hayley, an advocate of Milton's libertarianism, reinforced Cowper's sentiments. Cowper's sympathy with the suppressed publication of Hayley’s Life of Milton and his discreet support for a publisher of seditious material show a limited, but noteworthy, move toward radical political leanings.
Johnson, Imlac, and Biographical Thinking
Wheeler reviews Catherine N. Parke’s study of Johnson’s thought processes, which treats biography not merely as a genre but as a mode of understanding and living in the world—a "biographical thinking" that serves as a probabilistic method to combat intellectual stasis and populate the present. Parke interprets Johnson's concept of "pleasing captivity" as a metaphor for true education, characterized by ongoing engagement, repetition without redundancy, and the vital connection of past, present, and future. Wheeler highlights Parke’s analysis of Rasselas as the best illustration of her method, where the travelers' journey, guided by Imlac, becomes a model of this thinking: a continuous conversation about lives that values trust, probability, and the ability to differ from oneself over time. The Lives of the Poets extends this into a historical conversation, emphasizing the acknowledgment of intellectual debts and inheritance as crucial for empowering present action. Although Wheeler observes that the book’s style is occasionally circuitous and its conclusions are speculative, he praises the work for providing brilliant insights and radically new ways of looking at how Johnson ordered and understood experience, enabling individuals to shape their identity within a historical continuum where meaning occurs as an active process.
Additions and Corrections to a New Bibliography of Studies on Samuel Johnson by Donald J. Greene and John A. Vance
Fleeman introduces Greene and Vance’s 1987 bibliography of Johnsonian studies, noting its role as a supplement and corrigendum to the 1970 Clifford and Greene volume. He identifies the work’s comprehensive scope and the editors’ use of asterisks to highlight significant contributions. Fleeman provides extensive addenda and corrigenda drawn from several years of research, specifically identifying anonymous contributors to the Gentleman’s Magazine through the Nichols file and detailing various 18th-century biographical and critical entries related to Johnson.
Ditchfield provides a firsthand account of Johnson’s 1759 visit to Oxford through letters by Samuel Kenrick. Kenrick describes Johnson’s physical appearance at the installation of the University Chancellor, noting his "shabby" M.A. gown and "rolling" physical mannerisms. The text introduces an anecdote involving Johnson and Edwards of Jesus College, where Johnson, initially disparaged for his appearance and pomposity, eventually impresses his antagonist during a debate on religion and politics.
Johnson and Biography: Recent Critical Directions
Stuprich provides a critical overview and bibliography of Johnson scholarship focusing on biography from approximately 1970 to 1985, serving as a supplement to the Clifford and Greene bibliography. The essay highlights the period's significant contributions, including major books by Folkenflik and Damrosch, and numerous articles. It surveys studies on Johnson's early biographies, the much-discussed Life of Savage (addressing Johnson's mediation, irony, sympathy, and social commentary), and the Lives of the Poets. Key themes in recent scholarship include Johnson's sources, theoretical underpinnings, structural methods, the relationship between life and work, the assessment of individual Lives (especially Milton), and Johnson's overall contribution to the biographical genre.
From Essence to Accident: Locke and the Language of Poetry in the Eighteenth Century
Jackson traces the influence of Locke's epistemology on eighteenth-century poetic style, arguing for a profound shift from a style rooted in the concept of immaterial essence to one based on "nominal essence" and accidental qualities. The essay contrasts Pope's essentialist techniques with Johnson's Lockean-informed method of constructing complex moral "Notions" through collections of simple ideas. This epistemological change manifests in Johnson's poetry through an emphasis on rational, logical structure and the observation of mental operations, moving away from universal categories toward optional generalization.
Walsh provides the scholarly background for Johnson’s dismissal of poets Derrick and Smart by stating there is "no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." He identifies this as a standard topic of school disputation, citing a parallel in John Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy (1670).
Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson, and the Dial-Plate
Harris explores Johnson’s famously high estimation of Richardson and depreciation of Fielding, encapsulated in his analogy of a clockmaker and a dial-plate observer. Johnson found Richardson’s Clarissa irresistible for its pathos, moral purpose, "unquenchable curiosity," and authorial "knowledge of the heart," which he compared to that of Shakespeare. Richardson, for Johnson, was a "genius" who used the "journal method" to capture "freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate observation." The clockmaker analogy, which Locke used for the difference between God's and man's knowledge of the human essence, meant Richardson penetrated "the inmost recesses of the human heart" whereas Fielding only observed outward manners.
CGV entry 10/1:160. Defends Johnson's preference of Richardson to Fielding.
Science and Imagination in XVIIIth-Century British Culture/Scienza e immaginazione nella cultura inglese del Settecento
The Proper Use of Words: Criticism Within the Way of Ideas
Plank examines how Johnson appropriates Augustan poetic procedures to redefine literary authority toward the end of the eighteenth century. Johnson adapts techniques originally designed for politically powerful readers, such as Denham's landscape meditation and Pope's critical segregation, and transfers this power to the "common reader." By converting political advice into moral inquiry, Johnson "narratizes" the Augustan period, replacing social hierarchies with a literary hierarchy centered on the moral tale. This shift elevates the common reader's uncorrupted sense as the final judge of poetical honors, effectively usurping the roles of both poet and politician.
The Fowkes and the Lawrences: Biographical Notes on Samuel Johnson's Friends in India
Time in Rasselas: Johnson's Use of Locke's Concept
Examines Johnson's use of time in Rasselas through the lens of Locke's concept of perceived duration. The narrative privileges the characters' subjective experience of time over measurable, fixed chronology, reflecting the Lockean idea of duration as the succession of ideas. Johnson illustrates how Rasselas's errors stem from misapprehending time as a quantity to be "filled." The resolution to return to Abissinia implies the characters' acceptance of the actuality of time, defining philosophy as an explanation of human phenomena rather than a totalizing, ideal system.
Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre
Johnson's Rambler and Its Audiences
Korshin discusses changes in literary reputation resulting from shifts in the audiences of Johnson's periodical, The Rambler. The article examines how the reception of Johnson's work evolved as it moved from its original publication format to its established place in the literary canon. By focusing on the historical reader's engagement with the text, Korshin highlights the "essayistic" nature of Johnson's project and its significance in the development of the genre. The study situates Johnson as a central figure in the transition of the essay from a casual, meandering form to a vehicle for moral and philosophical inquiry that remains sensitive to the "common reader."
Johnson's Efforts on Behalf of Authorship in The Rambler
'Himself that Great Sublime': Johnson's Critical Thinking
Clingham examines Johnson's praise of Dryden's prose, arguing that it exemplifies the neoclassical ideal of the critic as "that great Sublime he draws." Johnson's appreciation of Dryden's prose, characterized by a natural ease and vigor of thought, reveals the creative nature of his criticism. By focusing on Dryden's ability to "think naturally and express forcibly," Johnson rethinks Augustan literary values and implicitly critiques the refinement of later writers like Pope and Addison.
Although Rasselas has received more critical commentary than almost any other work by Samuel Johnson, Edward Tomarken's book is the first full length study to focus on his tale of the Prince of Abyssinia. This anomaly arises, as Tomarken shows, because Rasselas has remained resistant to the customary critical approaches of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, consistently eliciting new kinds of insights and raising new sorts of problems. Tomarken' s contribution is a new methodology to explain this phenomenon. He sees Johnson's early writings, London and Irene, as instances of the writer trying with only partial success to achieve what he first realized in The Vanity of Human Wishes, a means of permitting literary form to refer to conduct. Later works, such as The Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, are viewed as further developments of this method, which achieved its fullest expression in Rasselas and the Life of Pope. Such a reading of Johnson develops an aesthetic that operates on the margins between the literary and the extra-literary. Although Johnson's own critical view was unable to accommodate such a position, Tomarken shows that in practice he moved toward it by a process of trial and error manifest in his poetry and narratives. When raised to the level of critical method, this approach goes beyond the assumptions not only of Johnson's day but also of our own. Tomarken's theoretical coda demonstrates how the choices of current critical theory, like those in the marriage debate in Rasselas, can be understood to interact with one another. Specifically, he proposes a dialectical relationship for two approaches hermeneutics and structuralism-usually seen as opposed to one another. This innovative study will interest not only Johnson scholars but all those concerned with critical theory.
Johnson's Portraits of Charles XII of Sweden
Gray explores Johnson's enduring fascination with Charles XII, the "Northern Brute," whose character combined admirable traits (courage, stoicism, piety) with repellent ones (vindictiveness, ambition). Johnson's interest, possibly sparked by historical coincidence, was fueled by contemporary writings, especially Voltaire's popular History. Gray analyzes the concise portrait in The Vanity of Human Wishes, showing how Johnson captured Charles's meteoric rise, defeat at Pultowa, Turkish exile, and anticlimactic death. The essay discusses Johnson's unrealized plan (likely a tragedy) on Charles, his admiration for military virtues despite hating war, and his interpretation of Charles's later fatalism ("Ödet"), reflected in the poem's concluding lines about destiny and a "dubious hand."
A Trio in the Age of Transition: Johnson, Boswell, and Hume
Samuel Johnson's discussion of the use of /h/ in his "Dictionary" is examined. Johnson's comments on that usage appear to be in error.
Dr. Johnson and the Ruffian: New Evidence in the Dispute between Samuel Johnson and James Macpherson
Stafford presents two newly discovered letters from William Strahan to James Macpherson that complicate the traditional 'heroic' narrative of Johnson’s 1775 defiance of the 'Ruffian' translator of Ossian. The evidence reveals that Macpherson initially sought a diplomatic resolution through Strahan, and that Johnson—far from being unyielding—actually provided a written declaration that he 'meant no personal affront.' Stafford argues that the ultimate escalation of the row likely resulted from Macpherson’s anger upon discovering the publication of an unaltered second edition of Johnson’s Journey, which Macpherson viewed as a breach of faith.
Ideas of the Origin of Language in the Eighteenth Century: Johnson versus the Philosophers
Jain contrasts Johnson’s divinely inspired theory of linguistic origins with the evolutionary models proposed by Enlightenment philosophers like Condillac, Smith, and Monboddo. While secular thinkers envisioned language arising from primitive animal cries and social necessity, Johnson vigorously asserted that speech required immediate divine inspiration. Jain argues that for Johnson, man is an inherently rational and moral being ordained for social union, rather than a creature that slowly evolved from a non-rational state. The text distinguishes Johnson's moral definition of human consciousness from Herder's rationalist approach, noting that Johnson viewed memory and anticipation as essentially moral faculties. Jain identifies James Beattie as a literary figure whose views on language remained aligned with Johnson’s traditionalist stance against the period’s prevailing evolutionary hypotheses.
The Contexts and Motives of Johnson's Life of Milton
Fix argues that Johnson's often antagonistic tone in the Life of Milton stems not primarily from personal or political dislike, but from a critical motive: to counteract the excessive, uncritical, and often legendary praise ("honey-suckle lives") bestowed on Milton by mid-eighteenth-century admirers like Richardson and Hayley. Johnson aimed to establish Milton's reputation on more solid, discriminating grounds. His sharpest personal attacks usually occur in political contexts. By challenging received opinions and applying rigorous scrutiny (acting as an "informer" against "bigotry"), Johnson sought to shift focus from potentially overrated minor works (Lycidas) to the supreme achievement (Paradise Lost), believing undiscriminating veneration ultimately weakened Milton's standing. Johnson intended to prune, not destroy, Milton's laurels.
Life, Art, and the Lives of the Poets
Battersby examines the intricate relationship between biography and criticism in the Lives of the Poets. While acknowledging constraints like scarce information and Johnson's occasional haste, Battersby highlights the work's unique power, stemming from Johnson's focus on human agency—the poets' mental and moral qualities revealed through their writings. Employing Wayne Booth's author categories, Battersby shows Johnson inferring character from texts, distinguishing between ambitious, energetic poets (Milton, Dryden) and more cautious figures (Addison, Waller). Johnson uses conjecture based on the poet's established character and recurring metaphors (e.g., lions vs. satellites) to create coherent portraits. The reader engages profoundly with Johnson himself, making the Lives a unique blend where understanding the subjects is intertwined with understanding the biographer.
The Documentary Value of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Burke defends the biographical value and reliability of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides against modern criticisms often leveled at the Life of Johnson. Burke argues the Tour, based on immediate, sustained observation, largely meets criteria for good biography regarding evidence, honesty, and sympathy. While acknowledging Boswell's selectivity and occasional revisions between manuscript and print, Burke emphasizes the Tour's consistency with external sources (like Johnson's letters) and its presentation of a complex, rounded Johnson, demonstrating its enduring worth as a primary biographical document.
Johnson's Last Word on Ossian: Ghostwriting for William Shaw
Curley investigates Johnson’s career-long opposition to James Macpherson’s Ossianic forgeries, focusing on his late-life patronage of William Shaw. Johnson viewed Macpherson’s poems as an antiquarian hoax that obscured authentic Celtic history with seductive pseudo-history. Curley reveals that Johnson substantially ghostwrote Shaw’s 1782 "Reply to Mr. Clark," which served as Johnson’s final prose publication. The article details Johnson’s role in promoting Shaw’s Gaelic grammar and dictionary to provide a scholarly foundation for debunking Macpherson’s claims. Curley argues that Johnson’s hostility stemmed from a strict standard of historical truth and a desire to preserve genuine Highland culture rather than national prejudice. The text includes a full reproduction of the Johnson-Shaw pamphlet, providing internal evidence of Johnson’s active voice in the final stages of the controversy.
Why Are Human Wishes Vain? On Reading Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes
Dr. Johnson's Solemn Response to Beneficence
Dussinger analyzes Johnson's Life of Savage, interpreting Savage's charitable act of sharing his last coin with his perjurer as a prime example of "uncommon Generosity" that embodies Johnson's own deeply religious ideal of charity, starkly contrasting with the prevailing commercial self-interest of the Walpole era. The essay situates Savage within a socio-economic framework where poverty creates a harsh cycle of indebtedness ("thraldom") and hatred, rooted in Hobbesian principles of self-interest interacting with social inequality. Savage's flaws, pride, and even self-delusion are presented sympathetically as necessary defenses against a system that equates poverty with disgrace. Johnson uses Savage's story to expose the evils of patronage and aristocratic arrogance, celebrating compassion and critiquing the Whiggish world's lack thereof.
'The Transit of the Caledonian Hemisphere': Johnson, Boswell, and the Context of Exploration
Rogers places Johnson's and Boswell's 1773 Hebridean tour within the vibrant contemporary context of global exploration, particularly Captain Cook's voyages, accounts by Banks and Solander, and Bruce's Abyssinian travels. Boswell's phrase "transit of Johnson over the Caledonian Hemisphere" is read as a deliberate allusion to Cook's observation of the Transit of Venus. Rogers shows how both Johnson's Journey and Boswell's Tour engage with themes and language from exploration narratives (savagery vs. civilization, cultural observation methods), framing their Scottish experience partly as a domestic parallel to overseas discovery.
Appears, with slight revisions, in Rogers’s Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia, chapter 3.
Literacy Crises, Old and New Information Technologies and Cultural Change
Johnson's Lives and Modern Students
Siebenschuh advocates for reintroducing Johnson's Lives of the Poets into introductory college courses, arguing that current students, largely unfamiliar with the Johnson legend and associated biases, can engage with his work freshly. He suggests pedagogical approaches that emphasize Johnson's "art of thinking"—his active methods of analysis and generalization—rather than focusing solely on historical context or perceived critical errors. Teaching complete Lives allows students to witness Johnson's mind grappling with human conduct and literary performance. Siebenschuh believes that in an era questioning absolutes yet sensing a vacuum, students may find Johnson's robust engagement with moral and aesthetic standards, and his mode of inquiry, intellectually stimulating and relevant, offering a chance to learn about thinking by examining Johnson's thought processes.
Folia Linguistica Historica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae
Rasselas and the Conversation of History
Parke interprets Rasselas as an inquiry into how "human acquaintance" serves as a model for historical thinking. She characterizes the Happy Valley as a totalitarian experiment in "living without history," which creates inadequate rulers by isolating them in a redundant eternal present. Parke argues that Rasselas hungers for "good conversation," which functions as a "cooperative competition" and a drama of history. Imlac serves as the exemplary guardian of "conversational continuity," teaching the Prince to name fearful circumstances and move from "visionary bustle to critical mapping." The central debate between Nekayah and Rasselas on family life contrasts a spatial model of truth with a temporal model based on acquaintance. Parke maintains that Johnson views the interrelationship between "imagining a future and acting in the present" as a marvelous achievement. The travelers' return to Abissinia signifies a successful establishment of trust, as they repeat the stories of their lives "genuinely and with pleasure."
'A Native of the Rocks': Johnson's Handling of the Theme of Love
Gray examines Johnson's complex perspective on love, often overlooked because of emphasis on his rational or moralistic side. Johnson distinguished between rational friendship and passionate, potentially dangerous love. Gray traces Johnson's views through his poetry, the cynical Letter to Chesterfield (invoking Virgil's shepherd discovering love "a Native of the Rocks"), the Preface to Shakespeare's critique of love's dramatic overuse, Rambler essays advocating marriage as "perpetual friendship", and the contrasting portrayals of virtuous Aspasia and ambitious Irene in his tragedy. Johnson valued authentic emotion but distrusted romantic hyperbole.
Vance argues for the significance of three often-overlooked historical reviews by Johnson: the Duchess of Marlborough's Account (1742), Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus (1756), and Tytler's Enquiry concerning Mary Queen of Scots (1760). These pieces demonstrate Johnson elevating the book review beyond summary to a form of critical essay engaging with historiography. Vance shows Johnson advocating for historical truth, skeptical inquiry, independent judgment against popular fashion, and effective prose style, while offering his own nuanced assessments of historical figures and events.
Misenheimer examines Johnson's critical idealism, emphasizing his expectation that literature and criticism should serve truth, guided by reason, life, generality, and historical context. Using examples from the Lives of Cowley, Dryden, and Gray, Misenheimer illustrates how Johnson measured poets against these lofty standards. Cowley and the metaphysicals failed in generality and natural representation; Dryden possessed intellectual wealth but was hampered by occasional verse and moral lapses; Gray showed potential but often fell short, except notably in his Elegy. Johnson's demanding expectations reflect his conviction about literature's moral power.
Wharton explores Johnson's persistent engagement with the theme of hope, especially authorial hope, linking it to his deep-seated anxiety about fulfilling his God-given talents. Tracing the theme from The Young Author and The Vanity of Human Wishes (where scholarly hopes face particular hostility), through The Rambler's depiction of the writer versus an indifferent or envious society, to Rasselas and the Lives, Wharton shows Johnson portraying hope as necessary for endeavor yet inevitably leading to disappointment. Only in the poem on Levet does Johnson find a model of life seemingly free from hope's "delusive mine."
The Majesty of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Halewood analyzes the stylistic elements that create the "majesty" Johnson valued in poetry, using The Vanity of Human Wishes as a prime example. He examines Johnson's use of imposing openings ("Let Observation..."), formal pairings and symmetries, emphatic meter and "judicious" rhyme, elevated diction balanced with monosyllables, potent personifications (Hope, Fear, Fate), grand historical examples (Wolsey, Xerxes), and a generalizing, detached perspective. These techniques amplify, expand, and embellish, contributing to the poem's characteristic weight, dignity, and power to increase the reader's "sensibility."
Lynn analyzes Johnson's thought through the lens of sexual difference, arguing his characteristic intellectual pattern involves setting up, exploring, and often undermining binary oppositions. Examining the marriage debate in Rasselas, the Hymenaeus/Tranquilla essays in The Rambler, and Idler 87 on Amazons, Lynn shows Johnson wrestling with gender roles, choice, and natural order. This deconstructive tendency—highlighting the instability of difference and the necessity yet arbitrariness of hierarchy—finds resolution only in religious faith, ultimately supporting traditional structures while revealing their contingency.
Grundy examines Johnson’s role as a "singularly active" patron who assisted women in achieving self-reliance and professional standards. Unlike male contemporaries who possessively retained the "power to gain," Johnson nourished female talent by offering revisions, arranging publisher contacts, and providing prefaces. Grundy highlights Johnson’s long-term support for Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Carter, Fanny Burney, and Hannah More, noting he possessed the rare art of "instructing and correcting women without affronting them." The article details his early involvement with the Gentleman’s Magazine and his financial support for Henrietta Battier and Mary Masters. Grundy disputes the "canard" that Anna Williams was merely a charity case, citing Johnson’s eulogy of her "comprehensive knowledge." Johnson is depicted as facilitating a new tradition of women patronizing women, symbolized in James Barry’s wall-paintings where Johnson points to Elizabeth Montagu as a model for the Duchess of Devonshire. Grundy concludes that Johnson’s delight in writing "which springs directly from experience" equipped him to value the works of the less educated sex.
中国的思想文化与约翰逊博士 [Chinese thought and culture and Dr. Johnson]
Samuel Johnson: The Professional Writer as Critic
Schwartz contrasts Johnson's critical approach—rooted in his experience as a professional writer, grounded in common sense, worldly observation, and perceived life—with the specialized, often obscure, nature of much contemporary academic criticism. Johnson's criticism, Schwartz argues, prioritizes clarity, accessibility, and relevance to human experience, taking a layman's perspective rather than a purely theoretical one. Schwartz suggests Johnson serves as an exemplary critic whose engagement with literature as part of total human experience offers a valuable, practical model often missing in modern, overly academic literary study.
Nagashima provides a detailed analysis of Johnson's methodology in compiling the Germanic etymologies for his Dictionary, focusing on his engagement with primary sources Stephen Skinner and Francis Junius. Contradicting views that Johnson lacked time or expertise, Nagashima demonstrates Johnson's critical independence through examples showing how he abbreviated, compared, evaluated, and occasionally corrected or supplemented his sources, preferring Skinner's conciseness but using Junius's breadth. Johnson emerges as a careful, judicious etymologist working within the limits of pre-scientific philology.
Samuel Johnson's Ambivalent View of Classical Pastoral
Olson challenges the standard view that Johnson categorically disliked pastoral poetry, particularly focusing on his criticism of Milton's Lycidas. By examining Ramblers 5, 36, and 37, Adventurer 92, and Boswell's accounts of Johnson's reading and conversation, Olson reveals a more ambivalent stance. Johnson appreciated the classical pastorals of Virgil and Theocritus for their representation of rural life, potential for relaxation, and connection to nature, even while criticizing the artificiality, repetition, and "inherent improbability" of many modern imitations and the genre generally.
On the Relation of Ideology to Form in Johnson's Style
Baridon explores reasons for Johnson's limited popularity in France, attributing it to his distinctive style and ideology. Johnson's prose, blending Latinate gravity with colloquial force, expressed a "sentiment" rooted in his High Church Toryism, opposing both the neoclassical "English gentleman" ideal (Shaftesbury, Hume) and the progressive, often Dissenter-led, "citizen of the modern world" ideology (Defoe, Adam Smith). His focus on inherent human flaws and the reality of poverty contrasted sharply with Enlightenment optimism, resulting in a style and worldview resistant to French sensibilities.
The Failure of Johnson's Irene: Death by Antithesis
Gold attributes the dramatic failure of Johnson's Irene to the excessive use of antithesis and intellectual dilemmas, characteristics often considered strengths in Johnson's prose. Comparing Johnson's play to earlier versions of the story, Gold demonstrates how Johnson uniquely saturates the dialogue of nearly every character with balanced oppositions (love/honor, empire/Irene, reason/passion). This relentless intellectualizing, Gold argues, stifles action, dissipates dramatic tension, and numbs the audience, resulting in a static play where the characteristic Johnsonian strength becomes a fatal dramatic weakness.
Johnson's Dictionary: Some Reflections
Nath assembles international scholars to examine Johnson across diverse genres, including poetry, biography, lexicography, and drama. Schwartz and Misenheimer analyze Johnson’s role as a "professional writer" whose criticism is grounded in "robust common sense" and an idealistic commitment to truth, rather than academic jargon. Historical investigations by Novak and Vance challenge traditional views of Johnson as a dogmatic Tory, presenting him instead as a "philosophical historian" who valued "common life" and "distrust" as tools for objective inquiry. Stylistic studies include Baridon’s exploration of the "sentiment" behind Johnsonese and Selden’s deconstruction of the Rambler essays to reveal their inherent "indeterminacy." Olson and Gray address Johnson’s handling of classical pastoral and the theme of love, while Gross provides a psychological reading of "The Fountains." Technical essays by Nagashima and Rogers situates the Dictionary and Journey to the Western Islands within the contexts of Germanic etymology and eighteenth-century travel exploration. The volume highlights Johnson’s continued relevance for contemporary critics, particularly his aim to "clear the mind of cant" and his belief that the "only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."
'Profitable Wickedness': Samuel Johnson and the Indian Affair
Nath defends Johnson's London against charges of insincerity and conventionality, arguing it reflects genuine political convictions and personal experiences. While acknowledging the poem's context within anti-Walpole satire and its Juvenalian model, Nath contends Johnson imbues the imitation with personal feeling derived from his own struggles with poverty and neglect in the city. Identifying the speaker Thales with Johnson himself, Nath suggests the poem's critique of London and politics, though perhaps exaggerated for satiric effect, stems from deeply held beliefs about virtue, merit, and societal corruption.
Samuel Johnson's Rasselas: The Duplicity of Choice and the Sense of an Ending
Samuel Johnson's Moral Views in Life of Milton
Selden applies deconstructive reading strategies to Johnson's Rambler essays, revealing underlying indeterminacy, contradiction, and heterogeneity beneath their authoritative surface. Examining Johnson's anxieties about imagination versus reason, the instability of concepts like neutrality (Rambler 18) or "following nature" (Ramblers 24-25), the precariousness of moral boundaries (Rambler 4), and the disruptive power of metaphor and language itself, Selden argues that Johnson's forceful assertion of order often simultaneously exposes the "violent hierarchies" and uncontrollable "différance" inherent in discourse.
'Pituitous Defluxion': Samuel Johnson and Beckett's Philosophic Vocabulary
Johnson's Philosophy of Life and Literature
Unfolded Tales: Essays on Renaissance Romance
Greene's Euphuism and Some Congeneric Styles
Rational Hope, Rational Benevolence, and Ethical Accounting: Johnson and Swift on the Economy of Happiness
Cope argues that Johnson and Swift share an economic mode of ethical thinking, converting the world into a system of ledgers and exchanges. Johnson’s moral economy uses "rational hope" and "rational benevolence" to manage the essential incommensurability of human goods and evils, creating a productive system of virtue from individual efforts. This system is a voluntary assertion of order, offering accidental benefits and drawing value from the act of supporting the system. Swift similarly uses a moral arithmetic, forcing the Lockean additive epistemology to its limits, but finds that his ethical system is only rendered coherent by excluding itself from the defective objective world.
The 'Lame and Impotent' Conclusion to The Vanity of Human Wishes Reconsidered
Battersby responds to criticisms that the conclusion of The Vanity of Human Wishes is weak, illogical, or emotionally unsatisfying. He argues the ending emerges logically from the poem's demonstration of worldly futility and is poetically integrated through sustained imagery (water, air, fire) and lexical choices. The Christian answer offered—patience, faith, love, resignation to divine will—is not facile optimism but a complex transvaluation of the poem's themes of gain and grandeur, providing a coherent and potentially powerful resolution grounded in Johnson's moral and religious perspective.
Linguistics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries: In Honour of Jacek Fisiak on the Occasion of His Fiftieth Birthday, I: Linguistic Theory and Historical Linguistics; II: Descriptive, Contrastive and Applied Linguistics
A Note on Dr. Johnson's History of the English Language
Nagashima analyzes the "History of the English Language" prefixed to Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary, challenging the traditional view of the text as a mere "clumsy compilation." Nagashima identifies Johnson’s heavy reliance on the works of George Hickes and Thomas Percy, noting that the selection of texts reflects Johnson’s specific philological interests rather than an exhaustive chronological intent. Nagashima argues that Johnson uses the history to establish a "genealogical continuity" for the English tongue, prioritizing the Saxon roots. The study highlights how Johnson’s editorial decisions—such as the inclusion of large excerpts of poetry and prose—serve to "illustrate the progress of the language" through tangible examples rather than abstract theory. Nagashima concludes that while the work lacks the sophistication of modern diachronic linguistics, it remains a "pioneering effort in the historiography of English" that maps the landscape for subsequent eighteenth-century scholars.
Gross argues for Johnson's positive appreciation of fantasy and enchantment, countering the critical emphasis on his warnings against the "dangerous prevalence of imagination." Drawing parallels with Bruno Bettelheim's theories, Gross posits Johnson valued imaginative literature—romances, fairy tales (like his own "The Fountains"), and works employing the supernatural (Shakespeare, Milton, Pope)—for its psychological depth and therapeutic potential. Fantasy, for Johnson, could stimulate the mind, foster empathy, explore inner conflicts, and encourage healthy emotional development, distinguishing salutary "enchantment" from morbid delusion.
Dr. Johnson and Defeudalization of Literature
Weinbrot examines Johnson’s major verse satires, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, within the framework of the Juvenalian tradition and Dryden’s theories of formal verse satire. He challenges modern ironic interpretations of London, asserting that Johnson and his contemporaries viewed the country as a serious moral norm rather than an ironic one. Weinbrot demonstrates that The Vanity of Human Wishes adheres to the bipartite structure of 'praise and blame,' systematically replacing vain worldly desires with 'celestial wisdom.' The text characterizes Johnson’s satiric voice as a 'mingled' one that combines 'gaiety and stateliness' with 'declamatory grandeur.' Weinbrot argues that Johnson’s imitations of Juvenal represent a peak in the English satiric tradition before the genre’s eventual collapse into self-expression.
Michael argues that Boswell's Life of Johnson is a seminal text for Romantic life-writing and opened a space for Wordsworth's The Prelude. Although Wordsworth was critical of Boswell and Johnson, he ultimately recognized the Life's formal achievement. Boswell's anecdotal method, by integrating the chronicle with quotidian life, humanized and historicized biography. Michael demonstrates that The Prelude appropriates Boswell's approach, particularly the metonymic anecdote, to present a unified, benevolent, and elevated consciousness. Wordsworth's appreciation for tranquility and self-creation also draws from the Boswellian tradition of Christian Stoicism.
The Unreliable Editor: Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and the Art of Biography
In 1831 John Wilson Croker's new edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson sparked a debate about the nature of biography: is it a branch of history, recording the life of its subject, or is it a constructive and thus literary effort on the part of the biographer? Croker's grand claim to have surpassed all previous editors inadvertently raised the question of whether the greatness of the Life of Johnson was because of its subject or to the genius of its author. In a review of Croker's edition, published as two separate essays, ‘Biography' and ‘Boswell's Life of Johnson', Carlyle seized on this question, offering a largely unprecedented defence of biography as a literary and creative genre. At the same time as Carlyle wrote this review he was also completing Sartor Resartus. The two‐year gap between the debate over Croker's edition and the first publication of Sartor Resartus in Fraser's Magazine (1833–4) has tended to obscure the extent to which Carlyle's book can helpfully be seen in the context of this earlier controversy about the nature of biography. This essay argues that the relationship between the Editor's Heuschrecke's Teufelsdröckh in Sartor Resartus strongly resembles the relationship between Croker's Boswell's Johnson.
Henry Street: A Graduate Review of Literary Studies
灵魂的冲突——鲍斯威尔《约翰生传》研究 [The Conflict of Souls: A Study of Boswell's Biography of Johnson]
The Book of Common Prayer and Boswell's Life of Johnson: Sources of a Defining Emersonian Phrase
Mott talks about two sources of a defining Emersonian phrase, namely, The Book of Common Prayer and Boswell's Life of Johnson. Ralph Waldo Emerson developed a rich understanding of the uses of literary tradition. In Nature (1836) he had wished to 'enjoy an original relation to the universe'. Always believing this experience available to all, he came to regard literary borrowing as an inevitable consequence of fine minds–in different times and places-perceiving the same truths. In subverting the memorable wisdom of the Book of Common Prayer and Dr. Johnson for his own radical purposes, Emerson was a highly original 'quoter' indeed.
Bowell y el Ramonismo: Retratos con Paisaje
Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and Modern Biographers
Women Editing/Editing Women: Early Modern Women Writers and the New Textualism
'By No Means in a Liberal Style': Mary Morris Knowles versus James Boswell
Jennings examines the resolute efforts of Mary Morris Knowles to maintain her "right of self-representation" following a 1778 dispute with Johnson. Jennings focuses on the struggle for editorial control over the printed account of this event, which Boswell marginalized in his Life of Johnson. Using an historical-textual approach, Jennings documents how Boswell used a dismissive footnote to dispute Knowles's credibility, while Knowles countered by publishing her own version in the Gentleman’s Magazine and as a tract. Jennings challenges the traditional preference for Boswell’s "stable" text, arguing that editors like John Wilson Croker and George Birkbeck Hill participated in a "gendered reading" that privileged the male biographer's narrative. By contextualizing Knowles’s Quakerism and radical politics, Jennings argues that Knowles’s account provides superior insights into Johnson’s views on female moral agency. Jennings concludes that acknowledging Knowles's textual agency restores a silenced voice to the eighteenth-century literary canon.
Brownley situates Hawkins’s Life of Johnson within the evolving generic boundaries of 18th-century "life-writing." She disputes the common dismissal of Hawkins’s "long digressions," arguing they reflect a traditional view of biography as a "branch of history." The text compares Hawkins’s "life-and-times" approach to Boswell’s "sentimental, modernist" method, noting that Hawkins’s practice was rooted in established historical and "antiquarian" principles. Brownley suggests that criticisms from Boswell and others stemmed from "long-standing disagreements" about whether biography should prioritize "the quotidian and the intimate" or broader cultural contexts. The study uses O M Brack’s edition to reassess Hawkins, portraying his work as a complex "intersection" of various popular biographical modes rather than a failed attempt at the Boswellian model.}
Boswell's Use of 'Ogden on Prayer' in Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Walker analyzes Boswell's repeated references to Samuel Ogden's Sermons on the Efficacy of Prayer during the Hebridean tour. Boswell valued Ogden's defense of prayer's direct influence on God and specific providences, contrasting it with the "subjective efficacy" views of Abernethy and Leechman. Walker shows how Ogden's arguments provided Boswell comfort during moments of crisis, particularly a dangerous sea crossing. He also notes Boswell's artistic decision to omit two further Ogden references concerning Iona from the published Journal, arguably to enhance the impact of the sea-crossing episode.
Queer People: Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality, 1700–1800
King uses Boswell’s London Journal to challenge psychoanalytic readings of narcissism and oedipal crises. King argues Boswell’s textual reflexivity manufactures a gaze for self-display, situating him at the resistance to modern Oedipal emergence. Boswell’s identifications with Johnson facilitate an elite circuit of cultural discourse that negotiates obligations to rank and nation. King interprets Boswell’s receptivity to Johnson not as latent homosexuality but as a performance of "residual pederasty," where the youth seeks initiation into power through proximity to a public body. By posing as a "Man of Pleasure" and "Digges-like" lover, Boswell aligns his body with Restoration wits to secure a status-bearing identity. King concludes that Boswell’s buffoonery and mimicry represent a tactical occupation of the boy’s position, advance his charms to earn favor, and reflect the transition between public signs of manliness and modern masculine subjectivity.
Plutarch, Johnson, and Boswell: The Classical Tradition of Biography at the End of the Eighteenth Century
La Biographie littéraire en Angleterre (XVIIe - XXe siècles): Configurations, reconfigurations du soi artistique
Publications de Université de Saint-Étienne
Une Vie à écrire: The Life of Johnson de James Boswell (1791)
Rawson finds Brack's edition of Hawkins's 1787 Life a valuable rendering of an important, if "unclubbable," early biography. He highlights Hawkins's occasional sharp insights and vivid phrases, often fueled by malice or prejudice (e.g., towards Chesterfield, Richardson, Thrale), while noting the pervasive stiffness, self-importance, and digressiveness. Brack's annotations are deemed useful but sometimes excessive (glosses) or frustratingly brief (external references). Despite flaws in both Hawkins's text and Brack's apparatus, the edition successfully presents this essential, cantankerous counterpoint to Boswell.
'The Solemn Magnificence of a Stupendouse Ruin': Richard Savage, Poet Manqué
Dussinger defends Richard Savage's poetic significance, arguing against his frequent dismissal based on biographical controversy. Focusing on Johnson's praise in the Life of Savage—for originality, imagination, vivid description ("strong representations of nature, and just observations upon life"), and sublimity—Dussinger analyzes The Wanderer. Despite flaws like stylistic "harshness," Savage's major poem contains "shining materials," particularly its powerful, sometimes scientifically informed, imagery of nature (light, color, cosmic scale), justifying the respect shown by contemporaries like Johnson and Pope.
Boswell's Burke: The Literary Consequences of Ambivalence
Explores Boswell's ambivalent portrayal of Edmund Burke in the Life of Johnson, arguing that Boswell's complex personal relationship with Burke significantly shaped the characterization. Examining the manuscript, journals, and letters, the author notes Boswell's admiration for Burke as a role model, his sense of rivalry for Johnson's esteem, and feelings of inadequacy compared to Burke. Burke's criticism of Boswell's recording habits also created tension. Consequently, Burke's portrait in the Life, though often laudatory regarding his intellect, remains vague and "unimpressive." Boswell's conscious shaping, anonymous references, and heavily revised passages reveal his anxiety and mixed feelings, turning biography partially into autobiography.
Pale Fire and The Life of Johnson: The Case of Hodge and Mystery Lodge
Glimpses of Oglethorpe in Boswell's Life of Johnson
On James Oglethorpe's presence in James Boswell's Life of Johnson, illustrating the high regard in which Johnson and his circle held the general. Oglethorpe was an early patron of the then-unknown Johnson, visiting him to praise his poem "London" and offering "kind and effectual support." Boswell, who also received Oglethorpe's praise for his first publication, described him as having "strong benevolence of soul" and noted his distinction in learning and taste. The text relates instances of Oglethorpe's hospitality, including a supper where he described a youthful duel and drew the siege of Belgrade on the tablecloth for an inquisitive Johnson.
This article describes an annotated copy of the first edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson in the British Library. The annotator, previously unknown, can be identified on the basis of both internal and external evidence as Fulke Greville (1717–1806), who was a grandson of the fifth Baron Brooke, the patron of Charles Burney, an Envoy to Bavaria, a gentleman amateur author, and an acquaintance of many of Johnson's circle, including Johnson himself. The notes were intended initially as a contribution to Boswell's second edition, but they expanded to become an extensive commentary on the society and literature of the whole century.
Talk, Dialogue, Conversation, and Other Kinds of Speech Acts in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson
'Over Him We Hang Vibrating': Uncertainty in the Life of Johnson
This essay explores the presence of uncertainty and epistemological limits within Boswell's seemingly definitive Life of Johnson. Drawing parallels with Virginia Woolf's biographical skepticism, Grundy questions the portrayal of Johnson as purely monolithic. While acknowledging Boswell's claims to "obstinate veracity" and use of evidence, the analysis points to instances where Boswell expresses doubt, offers multiple interpretations, refrains from explaining motives, or confronts inexplicable aspects of Johnson's behavior, personality shifts, and inner turmoil, especially in later years. Boswell's candid self-portrayal further introduces subjectivity, suggesting the biographer, despite striving for certainty, sometimes remains "vibrating."
'A Keener Eye on Vacancy': Boswell's Second Thoughts About Second Sight
Boswell systematically suppressed his own "Gothic apprehension" and belief in the supernatural when preparing his journal for publication in 1785. The original 1773 manuscript reveals Boswell wondering if he was "second-sighted" following frightening visions of his daughter. In contrast, the published version distances him from "any possible imputation of credulity." He eliminated numerous instances of personal prayer at Highland shrines and suppressed accounts of "quasi-Roman" devotions to St. Columba. While Johnson sternly rebuked superstitions like the "cry of an English ghost" as "nonsense," Boswell’s revisions mask a earlier self that was "easily excited" by fear of the dark and spectres. This "pattern of personal disengagement" projects a more skeptical 1785 persona back into the 1773 tour.
The Work of Believing: Labor as Self-Definition in Carlyle, Dickens, and Brontë
Reifel examines how Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Brontë dramatize the interdependence of material and spiritual concerns in the individual's labor of self-definition. Focusing on Carlyle's reading of Boswell's Life of Johnson, Reifel argues that Carlyle reinvents Johnson as the heroic "Ulysses" of authorship, a man who entered the literary vocation with "the bayonet of necessity at his back". Carlyle identifies Johnson's literary texts as the material manifestation of spiritual labor, where the Man of Letters must "body forth the form of things Unseen" while simultaneously negotiating the marketplace of the "Book-seller System". Reifel notes that Carlyle uses Boswell's labor as "raw material" to manufacture a model for the English Man of Letters, integrating private and public spheres through this work. While the dissertation extensively discusses Johnson and Boswell as archetypes of productive labor and biography, Hester Thrale Piozzi is mentioned briefly in a footnote regarding her historical disdain for the "Gothic craze". The work concludes that for these writers, self-definition is not an end but an ongoing act that seeks to reconcile private desire with public form.
Rogers analyzes Boswell’s acute anxiety regarding the "Scotticism," contextualizing it within the broader post-Union linguistic insecurity of the Scottish Enlightenment. Figures like Hume and members of the Select Society sought to purge their speech and writing of perceived provincialisms to conform to an English standard. Rogers demonstrates Boswell’s personal ambivalence: he diligently worked to perfect his English pronunciation, yet felt disgust when hearing other Scots (like Fordyce) who mirrored his own origins. Conversely, Boswell argued that a Scot speaking "perfect English" sounded "unnatural," like a "machine," preferring a "small intermixture of provincial peculiarities" to retain authentic identity.
Appears, with slight revisions, in Rogers’s Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia, chapter 7.
The Politics of Aphasia in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Boswell's Journal uses Johnson’s commanding conversation as a medium to figuratively colonize Scotland, refashioning the Highlands into a "North-Britain" defined by London’s cultural capital. This nationalist project is destabilized, however, by moments of "conversational aphasia" where Johnson’s speech stutters or stalls. Wang analyzes three episodes—the Foulis brothers, Hay, and the Erse woman—to show how the failure of Johnson’s rhetoric to absorb the Scottish other exposes the instability and fantastic nature of the Journal's attempt to forge an Anglo-Scottish union.
'Almost the Same, but Not Quite': English Poetry by Eighteenth-Century Scots
Andrews explores the imitative English verse of Scottish poets, which critics often dismiss as "insipid" compared to their Scots vernacular work. He uses Boswell's "famous complaint" about his inability to lose his Scottish accent to illustrate the self-conscious pressure on Scots to assimilate into British identity. The text defends Scottish poetic imitation by referencing Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes as a non-servile imitation of Juvenal. Andrews argues that poets like Burns and Ramsay used English models to produce work that was "almost the same, but not quite," inflecting neoclassical forms with national difference. This "cultural mimicry" challenged English cultural superiority and allowed Scottish writers to articulate a non-English cultural identity within the unified kingdom.
Encountering the Highlands: Boswell's Journal-Writing and His Divided Scottish Self
Nabokov's Pale Fire and Boswell's Johnson
Stewart analyzes the numerous, yet often unnoticed, allusions to Boswell's Life of Johnson in Nabokov's Pale Fire. The essay argues that Nabokov uses these allusions to underscore an unexpected similarity between the Kinbote-Shade relationship and the Boswell-Johnson pairing, particularly concerning the biographer's desire to possess and control his subject's life. The echoes invite the reader to compare the methods of "realistic" fiction, which Kinbote's enterprise attempts, to Nabokov's aesthetic of reflections and resemblances where difference, not similarity, predominates.
Pilgrimage and Autonomy: The Visit to Ashbourne
Radner analyzes Boswell's 1777 visit with Johnson at Ashbourne, documented in his journal and revised for the Life, as a critical turning point in their relationship. Radner argues that the visit, culminating in Boswell’s challenging Johnson on American taxation, marks a shift from Boswell's "awful reverence" towards greater intellectual autonomy. By comparing the journal and the Life, the essay shows how Boswell reshaped the narrative to emphasize his growing independence, while also suggesting that the visit prompted Boswell to develop less confrontational "collaborative reflections" as a means of asserting his maturity as Johnson’s intellectual peer and biographer.
Remembering the Hero in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Heiland examines the Life of Johnson as an exercise in memory and heroic construction. The essay argues that Boswell’s biographical method is a deliberate strategy for "remembering the hero," blending classical tropes of heroism with the intimate, quotidian details of modern life. Heiland analyzes how Boswell shapes his narrative to elevate Johnson, carefully managing his subject’s flaws—such as his melancholy, prejudices, and physical ailments—within this heroic framework. The Life is thus presented as a conscious act of memorialization, designed to fix a specific, admirable image of Johnson for posterity.
The Conventions of Authenticity: Boswell's Revision of Dialogue in the Life of Johnson
Kinsella argues that Boswell’s claim to have preserved Johnson’s conversation in an “authentick” manner refers to an eighteenth-century standard of “authoritativeness,” not modern verbatim accuracy. Johnson’s own Dictionary defines “authentick” as having authority, not being a counterfeit. Kinsella places Boswell within a literary tradition where dialogue, influenced by drama and early fiction, served various rhetorical purposes beyond realism. Manuscript evidence from the Life shows Boswell was no mere scribe; he actively crafted the conversations. He revised extensively, shifting from indirect to direct discourse for immediacy, converting dialogues into dramatic monologues, adding speech headings like "JOHNSON," and inserting descriptive cues to create a “lively manner”. While he left mechanical details like punctuation to the printer, his revisions reveal a conscious effort not to transcribe, but to construct an authoritative representation of Johnson's mind, making the dialogue “authentic” in its intended effect.
Crawford analyzes Boswell's correspondence as a form of "literary alchemy," arguing he employed distinct rhetorical strategies tailored to specific relationships. He contrasts the self-consciously "literary" foolery of the Erskine letters, which were based on "fancy," with the plainer, intimate style reserved for "true friends" like John Johnston of Grange and William Johnson Temple. The Grange letters feature a private, ritualistic vocabulary, while the Temple correspondence demonstrates a "plate-glass style" capable of both "delirious exhibitionism" and profound, simple emotion, particularly during his wife's death. Crawford also identifies a "rhetoric of insinuation" used to engage figures like Rousseau.
Greene argues that Boswell's Life, far from being the world's greatest biography, is a deeply flawed and misleading work. He criticizes its severe chronological imbalance, noting that Boswell devotes five-sixths of the book to the last third of Johnson's life—the period of their acquaintance—while neglecting the years of Johnson's most significant intellectual achievements. The author further contends that even during this later period, Boswell was an infrequent companion who filled the long gaps between their meetings with unverified anecdotes. He accuses Boswell of a lack of diligence in checking basic facts and of "improving" Johnson's conversation, citing the famous "tired of London" quotation as an example of Boswell's embellishment. The Life, while well-written, presents a distorted portrait and is one of the "worst among major biographies still used as serious guides."
Self-Restraint and Self-Display in the Authorial Comments in the Life of Johnson
Danziger examines Boswell’s narrative presence in the Life of Johnson, focusing on the strategic tension between "self-restraint" and "self-display." The essay argues that Boswell's authorial interventions are not merely egotistical intrusions but a sophisticated biographical technique. Danziger analyzes the specific moments Boswell chooses to insert his own comments, opinions, or memories, demonstrating how this calculated self-representation serves to frame Johnson, guide the reader's interpretation, and establish his own authority as the indispensable witness to Johnson's greatness. His restraint, therefore, is as artful as his presence.
Truth and Artifice in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Clingham investigates the central methodological tension in the Life of Johnson: the interplay between "truth" and "artifice." The essay argues that Boswell’s biographical power derives from his sophisticated use of literary artifice to create a profound illusion of truth. Clingham analyzes Boswell’s narrative techniques—including the selection and editing of letters, the reconstruction of conversations, and his strategic self-representation—to demonstrate that Boswell is a self-conscious artist, not a passive recorder. The Life's enduring sense of "life-like" reality is presented as Boswell’s greatest literary achievement, a product of deliberate construction.
'Casts a Kind of Glory Round It': Metaphor and the Life of Johnson
This essay posits that metaphor is a crucial, yet underappreciated, element of Boswell's artistry in the Life of Johnson. Yarrow argues Boswell deliberately employs, solicits, and incorporates figurative language—metaphors, similes, and vivid imagery—to counteract abstraction and make Johnson intensely "live" for the reader. Tracing Boswell’s own fascination with metaphor, the essay contrasts his primarily "embellishing" inclination with Johnson's more "explaining" use. It highlights their collaborative creation of metaphors within conversations and demonstrates how Boswell strategically "maximizes metaphor" throughout the text to crystallize Johnson's character and embody the work's central theme: life as conversation.
'My Mind Is Weak, but My Body Is Strong': George Plimpton and the Boswellian Tradition
Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought
A Note on a Variant Copy of Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Fujii describes a variant copy of the first volume of Hawkins's edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. While bibliographers like Fleeman suggest the separate biography and the Works volume share identical sheets, Fujii identifies a copy containing the revised text of the second edition of the Life. He suggests that booksellers silently substituted unsold sheets from the corrected second edition into the first volume of the collected Works and encourages further examination of extant copies to confirm this practice.
Clingham analyzes James Boswell's Life of Johnson as a foundational "landmark of world literature," arguing that its greatness lies in Boswell's deliberate and revolutionary solution to the central "biographical problem" of how to represent a life authentically. The book's thesis is that the Life is not a passive or artless transcription of reality, but a sophisticated literary construction that masterfully balances "art and authenticity." Clingham contends that Boswell's "great principle of biography" involved creating a new kind of "factual narrative" that moved beyond mere chronicle to capture the living vitality of its subject. The study examines the Life's innovative form—its integration of letters, its use of dramatic scenes, and Boswell's own strategic inclusion of himself as a character—as a conscious method for presenting both the "great" public Johnson and the complex private man. Furthermore, Clingham argues that the Life is more than a portrait of one man; it is a comprehensive "'a view of literature and literary men'," making it a complete cultural document of its age. The book presents Boswell as a consummate literary artist whose innovative fusion of form and fact established a new standard for the art of biography. Chapter 1, 'Boswell's Reputation', addresses the enduring status of the Life of Johnson as the preeminent English biography, arguing that its dramatic recreation of Samuel Johnson’s conversation has often eclipsed the subject's own literary works in the popular mind. Chapter 2, 'Boswell's Art in the Life', contends that the biography is an integral part of a lifelong creative process rooted in private journals, where a sophisticated fusion of factual authenticity and artistic artifice makes the subject appear more "authentic" than in historical reality. Chapter 3, 'The Structure of Boswell’s Experience and the Life', analyzes the psychological foundations of the work, specifically how Boswell's search for authority—stymied by a difficult paternal relationship—shaped the portrayal of Johnson as a surrogate source of stability and moral presence. Chapter 4, 'The Structure, Scenes, and Conversations of the Life', examines the work's chronological and symbolic layers, highlighting the "Wilkes episode" as a definitive example of "intellectual chymistry" where calculated social manipulation reveals Johnson’s capacity for benevolence. Chapter 5, 'The Ending of the Life and the Meaning of Johnson's Character', addresses the construction of Johnson as an exemplary Christian hero whose final reconciliation with God serves as a secular Pilgrim’s Progress, though often at the cost of marginalizing the independent insights found in Johnson's own writings. Chapter 6, 'Boswell’s Modernity', argues that the biography’s focus on the mediative power of the mind and its "sentimental" dualism aligns with Romantic aesthetics, humanizing power while articulating a complex, fragmented modern identity.
'The Hero Being Dead': Evasive Explanation in Biography: The Case of Boswell
Parke introduces the principle of "evasive explanation" in biography, demonstrated by Boswell's Life. Boswell strategically shifts the biographical project from a direct, transitive narrative of Johnson's life to an intransitive act of writing, exemplified by the "circuit of Narcissus." The strategy, which is comparable to Gertrude Stein's approach, involves the biographer asserting the priority of his writing in the present tense, effectively placing the historical subject slightly to the side to create space for the biographer's own authority.
'My Dear Enemy': Margaret Montgomerie Boswell in the Life of Johnson
Lustig examines the complex relationship between Margaret Montgomerie Boswell and Samuel Johnson, primarily through Johnson's letters published in the Life. Lustig analyzes the sources of Margaret’s initial and prolonged hostility—Johnson’s manners, his perceived negative influence over her husband, class and national prejudice, and Boswell's frequent London jaunts often justified by Johnson’s presence. The essay traces Johnson’s persistent, often tender, efforts to win her friendship, his crucial support during the family entail crisis, and their eventual reconciliation, facilitated by mutual concern during illnesses and Margaret’s growing disillusionment with Boswell’s conduct.
Boswell on Johnson's Refutation of Berkeley: Revisiting the Stone
Re-examines Johnson's famous refutation of Berkeley's idealism by kicking a stone, arguing that Boswell understood it was not an empirical argument. Berkeley's hypothesis, "Esse is percipi," is a logically consistent metaphysical position irrefutable by mere facts or deductive "pure reasoning." Johnson's action, in Boswell's view, was a non-discursive "stout exemplification" of a self-evident "first truth" or axiom (like those of Reid and Beattie), asserting the reality of the material world and showing that pure reasoning is "unavoidably barren" against an internally consistent but extravagant metaphysics.
Boswell at Work: The Revision and Publication of The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
McGowan documents the "working processes and the consciousness" of Boswell’s art in preparing the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides for publication. Following Johnson’s death, Boswell used his original 1773 "book of remarks" as a "Prelude" to his larger biographical project, collaborating extensively with Malone to "winnow it from the chaff." Editorial changes included "toning down" Johnson’s rudeness to Scottish hosts, suppressing "doubtful taste" regarding "little-houses," and substituting "elegant variations" for Scotticisms. Despite these refinements, the book remained "very indiscreet," embroiling Boswell in controversies with Lord Macdonald and Piozzi. McGowan reveals Boswell’s initial, abandoned attempt to "write it anew" in a "dignified style" emulating Johnson’s Journey, before reverting to the "racy style" and "dramatic detailing" of the journal format to preserve the "authenticity" of Johnson’s "ipsissima verba."
Analyzes the stylistic artistry of Boswell's Life of Johnson, focusing on his skillful variation between high and low prose styles, informed by neoclassical principles of decorum and anticipating sociolinguistic concepts. McIntosh argues that Boswell consciously employs elevated language for formal praise and narrative dignity, while using colloquial, homely, and even vulgar language—often attributed to Johnson's speech—for vividness, humor, and realism. This stylistic range, appropriate to the Life's polygeneric nature, is deemed essential for capturing Johnson's complex humanity. The essay also contends that Boswell, not Johnson, largely controlled the style of the recorded conversations.
This collection of fourteen essays investigates Boswell’s literary and personal achievements by situating him within the wider context of the Scottish Enlightenment. The volume seeks to draw Boswell out of Johnson’s shadow, examining the full range of his writings and interests in legal, social, theological, and political fields. Contributors investigate critical and theoretical questions surrounding biographical representation in the Life, presenting Boswell as a writer who constructed a series of selves out of a divided Scottish identity. Specific essays explore Boswell’s relationship with contemporaries like Hume and his engagement with the rhetoric of friendship, legal identity, and the 'Scotticism.' The text analyzes the tension between Boswell’s self-restraint and self-display, as well as the 'truth and artifice' inherent in his biographical method. By combining archival research with fresh critical perspectives, the collection reevaluates Boswell’s status as a sophisticated artist in control of his material rather than an 'accidental genius.' Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers dividing over the analytical depth, structural cohesion, and the degree of theoretical framework within the individual contributions. Critics split regarding whether the assembly successfully releases the central subject from his mentor's shadow, though most praise the serious, original scholarship celebrating textual construction and historical identity. Lustig's review in AJ commends the timely contribution, highlighting the illumination of religious identity and biographical practices, but notes specific analytical flaws in the philosophical discussions. In RES, Walsh enthusiastically praises the consistently broad scholarship, values the investigations into conversational accuracy and melancholy, but finds the core host metaphor overly extended. Bogel, writing in Modern Philology, offers a more critical perspective, praising the insights into Presbyterian identity and legal empathy, but concluding that much of the volume remains under-theorized and lacking in fresh perspective. Sherman, in JNL, notes the movement between illumination and shadow, validating the explorations of Scottish legal contexts and maxims while arguing against a radical separation of art and truth. Writing in Biography, Baruth finds the collection complex for using the subject to question the intellectual environment, though Baruth and Kaye both observe that the text struggles to escape the heavy presence of the mentor. In Choice, McGlynn enthusiastically celebrates the utility of the text for specialists, noting the first-rate insights into rhetorical styles and regional culture. Finally, Radner, writing in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, agrees the volume significantly advances historical studies despite minor typographical errors.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, Newsletter of the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California (1991): 5; Philip E. Baruth, Biography 16, no. 2 (1993): 419–24; Fredric Bogel, MP 91, no. 4 (1994): 517–23; Alan Bold, Herald Weekender, June 29, 1991; English Studies 73 (1992): 537–38; Forum for Modern Language Studies 28, no. 3 (1992): 292–33; Donald J. Greene, ECCB 17 (1991): 338–39; James Gray, Dalhousie Review 71, no. 4 (1991): 502–7; Alan S. Kaye, Biography 16, no. 1 (1993): 59–64; Irma S. Lustig, AJ 5 (1992): 447–51; Paul D. McGlynn, Choice 29, no. 6 (1992): 3178; William B. Ober, Verbatim 18, no. 4 (1992): 13–14; John B. Radner, Eighteenth-Century Scotland 6 (1992): 15–16; Claude Rawson, LRB 17, no. 18 (1995): 14–15; A. Ross, Scottish Literary Journal 39 (1993): 9–12; Stuart Sherman, JNL 50/51, nos. 3-4/1-3 (1990): 10–12; John B. Vance, South Atlantic Review 58, no. 1 (1993): 101–9; Jean Viviès, XVII–XVIII 33 (1991): 140–41; William Wain, BJECS 16 (1993): 84; Marcus Walsh, RES, n.s., 44, no. 175 (1993): 428–30; Robert Ziegler, Papers on Language & Literature 28, no. 4 (1992): 457–75.
John Henry Colls and the Remarks on the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Chandler offers evidence that the author of "Remarks on the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" was John Henry Colls. Colls was writing in response to James Boswell's "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides."
The Example of Edmond Malone: Boswell's Life of Johnson and Patterns of Scholarly and Legal Prose
Scanlan challenges the 'New Criticism' approach that views Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' primarily as a work of 'imaginative' or novelistic art. Instead, the article emphasizes Boswell's 'complicated dependence' on the methods of his friend Edmond Malone, 'one of the greatest literary scholars of his day.' Scanlan argues that Malone's example as a 'reliable literary sleuth' and meticulous researcher encouraged Boswell to view his project through patterns of 'scholarly and legal prose.' The biography reveals no 'adversarial relation' between fact-collecting and artistic aspiration; rather, Boswell's art depends on his 'lively handling' of non-fictional documentation. Scanlan concludes that penetration to the 'heart of the work' requires addressing how history can be 'at once creative and faithful to the evidence,' a balance Malone exemplified for Boswell during the biography's composition.
The edition, which dedicates only 137 pages to the text out of 371, is praised for its comprehensive critical apparatus, including sixty pages of preliminary material, 110 pages of detailed notes, fifteen genealogical tables, a thirty-six-page chronological and topographical study, and a list of variants from the first three editions. This exhaustive detail, while impressive, targets a highly specialized scholarly audience.
Kernan assembles bits of metatheory, arguing Johnson turned to print for sanity and created the ideal self-sufficient author against the "proletarianization of writers." Sommerville critiques the arbitrary dating of cultural developments to Johnson's time and finds the author’s grasp on concepts like "oral culture" insecure. The review concludes the suggested theories are not tested or developed sufficiently and do not offer new insights into Johnson or his era.
McGlynn describes Morris Brownell’s study as a compelling, scholarly challenge to the categorization of Johnson as a "philistine." McGlynn notes that Brownell explores Johnson’s "sensitive critical appreciation" of painting, music, and architecture, disputing the unreliable assertions of Hawkins and Boswell. The review highlights Brownell’s analysis of Johnson’s intellectual influence on figures like Reynolds and Burney and his role as a patron of artistic endeavors. McGlynn credits Brownell for examining the context of Johnson’s "outrageous remarks" and the personal motivations of early biographers. McGlynn concludes that this "long-overdue" book constitutes an enjoyable polemic that provides a systematic, necessary correction to the historical record.
Brownell argues that Johnson was well-informed and occasionally a patron of the fine arts, using Socratic irony to provoke interlocutors like Reynolds and Garrick. The review finds the argument unpersuasive, noting insufficient evidence to support the contention of Socratic irony and excessive weight placed on slight or conjectural material. The book successfully demonstrates Johnson was not ignorant of the arts but fails to prove he was particularly knowledgeable. The critic suggests Brownell's single-minded attack on anecdotists like Hawkins and Boswell distracts from the work's interesting content.
Reddick critiques DeMaria’s attempt to treat the Dictionary as a unified literary work with intentional thematic "curricula." While praising DeMaria’s computer-aided classification of illustrative quotations, Reddick finds the thesis untenable because it ignores the primary lexicographical function of the text. Reddick argues that extractive readings of quotations fail to account for the discontinuous, alphabetical structure of the Dictionary. He maintains that while the study provides invaluable data, its perception of thematic unity is often a product of the methodology rather than Johnson's intent.
Grundy reviews Eithne Henson’s study of Johnson and romance, characterizing it as a "coherent and enlightening" re-reading of the Johnsonian canon. The review highlights Henson’s argument that a "romance-conditioned consciousness" permeates Johnson’s writings, including the ending of Rasselas and his Scottish reporting. Grundy notes the function of romance motifs—giants, dragons, and enchantments—as powerful symbols rather than "tired items from stock." While generally supportive, Grundy disputes Henson’s claim that Johnson’s solitary adventurers exclude women, citing Nekayah and Pekuah as "females on a quest." The reviewer concludes that Henson successfully anatomizes layers of literary response, revealing how romances entered a "submerged, allusive life" in Johnson’s work, thereby enriching our understanding of his creative imagination.
Dille reviews Redford’s Hyde Edition of Johnson’s letters, praising the "conscientious study of manuscripts" and restoration of original "orthography, punctuation and language." The reviewer highlights the inclusion of fifty-two unpublished letters and the informative recording of Johnson’s "substantive deletions," which reveal his state of mind after his 1783 stroke. Dille notes Redford’s departure from R. W. Chapman’s colloquial editorial style in favor of "concise syntheses" and objective research. The review emphasizes the value of the "comprehensive index" and the "indispensable background information" provided in the notes. Dille observes that the final volumes reveal a Johnson "desirous of maintaining close friendships" despite age. Although Dille misses the "open invitation" of Chapman’s editorial process and Thrale’s interspersed letters, she concludes that Redford provides an essential "reappraisal of the epistolary man of letters."
McIntoshpraises Redford's Hyde Edition as a splendid, authoritative edition, constituting a powerful reaffirmation of Johnson's writing in a relatively unappreciated genre. It highlights the editorial virtues of accuracy, completeness, and rich annotation, which synthesize previous scholarship and identify every person named. The reviewer notes the importance of the letters' domestic and personal focus, and Redford's skill in handling textual difficulties. The review finds the edition indispensable, though regretting the omission of Piozzi's letters to Johnson and the lack of linguistic detail.
Seidel’s approving review of the final two volumes of the Hyde Edition of the letters of Johnson, edited by Bruce Redford, examines the "powerful sentences" of a man in his mid-seventies facing physical decline. Seidel notes that while palsy, gout, and other ailments ravaged Johnson’s body, his mind remained sharp as he corresponded on topics from the American Revolution to hot-air balloons. The review emphasizes that this edition contains only outgoing mail, though the nature of incoming letters is evident through Johnson’s consistent advice to Boswell regarding spendthrift habits and debt. Seidel also highlights the increasingly troubled relationship between Johnson and Piozzi following the death of Henry Thrale. The text characterizes Johnson’s late prose as cautious and reserved, exemplified by his reflections on the "diminutions of the good, whatever it be, that life affords".
Scanlan provides an approving review of three "magnificent" works that attempt to "correct" flawed secular conceptions of the 18th century. Scanlan highlights Clark’s argument that Johnson was a "non-juror and a Jacobite" whose Anglicanism was integral to his literary achievement. While Scanlan notes Clark’s tendency as a historian to under-quote Johnson’s actual prose, he praises the book for expanding the understanding of Johnson's formative intellectual currents. The review also explores Pittock’s analysis of "Jacobite poetry" as a key to literary revisionism and Davie’s study of the "doctrinal intensity" of 18th-century hymns. Scanlan concludes that these books serve as essential correctives to the "post-modern present" being projected onto the past.
Brack notes that Clark’s argument defines Johnson as a Tory, Nonjuror, and Jacobite according to the conventions of the reign of George II. The work addresses literature and culture while emphasizing Johnson’s role in the Anglo-Latin tradition. Clark uses the text to defend his historiographical position against previous revisionist accounts of eighteenth-century politics.
Tomarken reveals that literary criticism is faddish, showing that theories imposed on Johnson's work quickly lose value. He notes that much commentary simply turns in circles.
Cannon's Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England emphasizes that religion was always a vital concern for Johnson, while politics was secondary. Cannon views the evidence for Johnson's Jacobitism as patchy and ambiguous, preferring to see him as a complex figure whose political views were dynamic. Johnson's opinions were generally conventional, though expressed with his unique wit and vigor.
DeMaria's The Life of Samuel Johnson, A Critical Biography is a highly readable, informative, and recommended work, even for ardent Johnsonians. It is distinguished by framing Johnson's life as a story of compromise and alienation, not just success. Johnson compromised his ideal of joining great European Latin humanists by needing to write in English for money. His intellectual life was marked by the frustration of comparing his accomplishments to his earlier aspirations.
Gross explores the development and representation of Johnson's psychological theories through his writings. Chapters are arranged chronologically to suggest that intrapsychic themes directed his evolving theories, moving from early "fiery outrage" to "worldly insight" in maturity. Gross situates Johnson within the context of 18th-century psychology, demonstrating his awareness of contemporaries like William Battie.
Cannon reevaluates Johnson's political views. The book defines politics widely, including chapters on religion and nationalism. Cannon emphasizes that religion was always vital to Johnson, while politics was secondary. He finds evidence for Jacobitism patchy, preferring to view Johnson as a complex figure whose opinions were generally conventional but expressed with unique wit and vigor.
ogers's edition of Johnson and Boswell in Scotland is a handsome, lavishly illustrated reprinting of the texts. It features Johnson's Journey alongside a cut and reordered Boswell's Journal, positioned opposite Johnson's text. The volume also includes Johnson's letters to Hester Thrale. It commendably commingles Johnson's work with two of his key sources, enabling direct comparison.
Jackson's enthusiastic review of the Yale edition of Johnson on the English language praises editors Kolb and DeMaria for a "labour of love" in a volume that collects the 1747 Plan, the 1755 Preface, History, Grammar, the 1773 revised Advertisement, and manuscript facsimiles. The review notes the editors depart from the letter of the Yale Edition's textual policy to better fulfill its spirit, offering clarity regarding textual variants and informative commentary on Johnson's place within linguistic traditions, precedents for his work, and context on its reception and influence. Jackson commends the "outstanding" annotation identifying sources for images, such as the mixture of gold and sand in Peruvian rivers, and describes Johnson's Preface as "infused with feeling." Jackson concludes the results are superb for scholarly and curious readers.
Abbott hails DeMaria's study as an important volume not only for Johnsonians but for anyone endorsing literacy. He praises the work for making reading the new frame for understanding Johnson’s career, showing how his wide reading consistently enriched his writing. The review highlights DeMaria’s taxonomy of reading (study, perusal, mere reading, curious reading), which provides a measure of Johnson’s mind and clarifies his famous statement about never reading a book “through.” Abbott concludes the book has defined the print universe we inhabit today and that Johnson's reading methodologies serve as a possible guide for modern readers.
Lynch examines a study addressing the mechanics and habits of Johnson's reading. Lynch details DeMaria's classification of reading into four categories: "study, perusal, mere reading, and curious reading". The review observes that the work ranges widely over the canon with considerable learning, even relating eighteenth-century practices to modern hypertext. However, Lynch disputes the profundity of the study, noting a loose organization and the use of speculation to bridge gaps in the historical record. Lynch states the book's "real value" lies in its assembly of Johnson's scattered comments on reading rather than its "arbitrary taxonomy."
The Club is a deceptively simple yet expert study focusing on Johnson, Boswell, and the influential individuals who comprised the Club in its first twenty years. Weaving together episodic biographies with historical, social, and cultural surveys, Damrosch uses the Club as the central "virtual hero" to illustrate the era's brilliance. The book details the lives of key members like Reynolds and Burke, acknowledging their profound influence on culture and politics, and importantly includes figures like Thrale and Burney in a "shadow club" of intellectual women. Damrosch enlivens familiar biographical material by focusing on the psychological struggles of Johnson and Boswell, confirming the Club’s importance as a center of intellectual excellence.
Newman and his contributors analyze the "dense literary fog of incessant self-promotion" that characterizes Boswell’s roughly 600 periodical contributions, most of which were published anonymously or pseudonymously. The collection divides Boswell’s career into three phases: a "literary genius" period focused on witty displays; a "journalistic" period marked by objective reporting on trials, executions, and cultural events; and a "pursuit of immortality" period dedicated to securing his legacy as Johnson’s premier biographer . Individual chapters explore specific facets of this work, including Paul Tankard’s study of Boswell’s strategic use of anonymity to navigate political and legal risks; James J. Caudle’s first-time publication and translation of a prospectus for a Scots-language periodical; and Terry Seymour’s examination of rare broadsides. Further essays analyze early collaborative jokes like the "Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady," the psychological underpinnings of the Hypochondriack series, and the political ambitions driving Boswell’s pamphlets during the 1783 constitutional crisis. Newman concludes that these "ephemeral" works reveal a sophisticated professional who adroitly exploited the disorderly eighteenth-century print marketplace.
The Author's Effects: On Writer's House Museums
Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches
Keepsake volume of the text of a 1911 speech by Chesnutt.
Lonsdale’s four-volume scholarly edition replaces G. B. Hill’s 1905 standard. Lonsdale documents Johnson’s composition process, debunking myths of hasty writing by revealing extensive revision in manuscripts and proofs, particularly in the "Life of Pope." The text is based on the 1783 edition, Johnson’s final revision. Lonsdale distinguishes authorial changes from compositorial errors. The commentary is extensive, resolving textual and biographical problems, such as Johnson’s sources for anecdotes about Pope. The edition presents a humanized Johnson, struggling with health while maintaining exacting standards.
Lynn's highly positive review outlines a cluster of strategic essays in Jack Lynch's seventeenth annual volume that advance the scholarship on Samuel Johnson. Tim Aurthur and Steven Calt present a convincing argument detailing Johnson's severe opium addiction, using evidence from Sir John Hawkins, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Johnson's own letters to demonstrate how James Boswell's biography actively obscured this struggle. Linde Katritzky uses Boswell's records to expose a progressive Johnson whose interactions with the Earl of Shelburne show him as far more liberal than Boswell realized. Thomas Curley delivers the first systematic investigation of literary deception within the James Macpherson Ossian controversy from Johnson's critical perspective. Steven Scherwatzky traces political thought parallels between Johnson and Augustine, illustrating how Johnson's faith prompted a calm detachment from colonial rebellions. Matthew Davis examines Johnson's complex alignment with both sides of the nonjuror Usages Controversy, confirming Hawkins's biographical claims. Finally, Mel Kersey reviews Johnson's Dictionary to challenge Rajani Sudan's claims of lexicographical imperialism, arguing instead that the text reflects a romantic desire for a restorative spatial and temporal national contraction.
Wiltshire's Samuel Johnson in the Medical World examines Johnson as a sufferer and amateur physician, arguing that he lived a life intimately connected with medicine, which serves as a central motif in his writings and cultural image. Johnson is presented as morbid yet sane, giving cool, measured medical advice, both somatic and psychological. The book analyzes Johnson's medical pronouncements and his Bolt Court "hospital." Wiltshire details Johnson's fight against his own numerous ailments and his profound fear of madness, which he managed through mental self-management and distraction. The review praises Wiltshire's detailed analysis and his use of medicine as a lens for Johnson's work, including his defense of the unrefined Dr. Levet and his righteous indignation against Soame Jenyns's views on suffering. Enright critiques Wiltshire's over-ingenious reading of Johnson's French letter to Piozzi about the padlock and certain poetic words.
Fleeman reviews Larsen's Dr. Johnson's Household, which examines the lives of the indigent who resided with Johnson after his wife's death, such as Levett and Williams. The review notes Larsen's reliance on primary sources, including unpublished letters, which provide a readable and informative account of these minor figures. However, Fleeman criticizes Larsen's perpetuation of the "character" over "writer" view of Johnson, noting that this undermines Johnson's genuine intellectual and literary achievements.
Wood's mixed review evaluates Edward Tomarken's theoretically ambitious interpretive history of critical reception. Tomarken frames criticism as a creative genre in its own right to foster a new humanism. While Wood believes the study relies on too many first principles and laments the omission of the Dictionary and biographical witness, he welcomes the comprehensive coverage of Irene and the periodical essays. Wood observes that Tomarken's organization by genre dilutes synchronic influences, yet correctly shows how the critical reputation of Lives of the Poets grew in recent decades while Shakespearian criticism lost traction over the same period.
Hume’s critical review describes this collection of essays as a disappointment. Despite the presence of noted scholars, the reviewer finds most contributions lightweight. Hume notes that Fix’s essay on Johnson’s Life of Milton offers a substantial revision of assumptions regarding Johnson’s view of Milton, but the reviewer maintains that the collection fails to cohere as a unified book.
The reviewer praises Bainbridge’s "uncanny precision" in recreating the era of Johnson and his complex relationship with Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale. Using the perspective of the Thrales' eldest daughter, the narrative depicts Johnson "brought to life more vividly" than by any chronicler since Boswell. The reviewer notes that Bainbridge captures Johnson engaging in "mostly imaginary dalliances" with Hester, sparring with Garrick and Goldsmith, and embarking on a "woe" freighted European journey. While the reviewer finds the work lacks narrative drive, being more a "sketch of a way of life" than a full narrative, the text successfully portrays the "difficulties of friendship" and the "tension between the bizarre manners of the day and the unexpressed passions burning within."
Budge's positive review outlines Lynch's argument that historical methods in criticism emerged in the eighteenth century. Lynch argues that the period formed a modern conception of the Renaissance remarkably early, as reflected in the rapid transformation of Milton into a vernacular classic through commentaries and glosses. According to Lynch, this trend formed part of a wider project of canon-formation through which Britain articulated its sense of modernity.
Woudhuysen's review of Kolb's edition of Rasselas and other short tales for the Yale Edition praises the "careful editing" and "heavy annotation" but expresses disappointment with the "unadventurous approach." The volume includes Rasselas, The Vision of Theodore (which Johnson "supposedly valued highly"), and The Fountains: A fairy tale, which Kolb argues was written with Piozzi in mind, "not Thrale." Kolb's introduction discusses the date, composition, sources, genre, and reception of Rasselas before 1800. While the "informative" glosses rely heavily on the Dictionary and parallel passages, Woudhuysen notes they show "little advance" on nineteenth-century annotations by Hill. The review concludes that the work fails to engage with "modern critical theories," "modern critical perspective on the work's meaning," or the "artistic contradictions within the text."
Pailler's approving review describes Donald Greene's Oxford Authors anthology as a work of unbeatable value. The collection includes a complete Rasselas, The Vanity of Human Wishes, periodical essays, and a selection of the Lives of the Poets. Pailler highlights Greene's inclusion of Johnson's less familiar writings on historical, legal, and political matters. The review notes the classification is both chronological and thematic. Pailler finds Greene's introduction rapid and dense, successfully placing Johnson's work in historical and biographical contexts. Forty pages of endnotes clarify principal difficulties for the reader. The reviewer concludes the anthology allows both new and experienced readers to appreciate the astonishing variety and human value of Johnson's achievement as a writer.
DeMaria reviews Hudson’s Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England, a work that aims to reposition Johnson within the specific historical and social contexts of his lifetime. Hudson portrays Johnson not as an angry rebel but as a defender and creator of the emerging middle-class, whose views on race, class, gender, and imperialism were more in tune with his time than many modern scholars allow. DeMaria questions some of Hudson's evidence but applauds the intellectual challenge. He highlights Hudson's reading of Rasselas through economic and gender ideology and the controversial reading of The Vanity of Human Wishes as an expression of English imperial mentality. The book is a valuable contribution that reopens basic questions about Johnson's true nature, moving past romantic notions of him as a modern Socrates.
A biografia moderna foi inventada em 1791 [review of Boswell's Presumptuous Task, by Adam Sisman]
Wilcox's mixed review outlines how Kevin Hart analyzes Johnson against eighteenth-century legal and economic transformations that shifted power from landowners to owners of text-based property like stocks, bonds, and copyrighted literature. The text connects this rise in financial instruments to the intensification of forgery laws and the commercialization of writing, noting Johnson's involvement in writing, editing, contracts, and bookbinding. Wilcox objects that Hart replaces literal economic meanings with imprecise figurative concepts, such as viewing Boswell's biography as an "appropriation" of Johnson as "cultural property." The review argues that the volume suffers from fragmentation, organizing its six essays as free-floating "meditations" rather than a coherent argument. Wilcox nevertheless praises Hart's expanding of Bertrand Bronson's "double tradition" into a triple tradition by adding Johnson the monument to the existing traditions of Johnson the writer and Johnson the Boswellian figure. Wilcox also commends the chapters on the Hebridean tour for showing Johnson split between an ideal of subordination based on landownership and an alliance with a literate, commercial culture.
Reviews Potkay, who challenges the traditional view of Johnson and Hume as total antagonists by highlighting their shared philosophical ground. Both rejected Cartesian rationalism, were skeptical of the benefits of solitude, and emphasized the social character of human nature. They also found common ground in their views on the roles of reason and passion in moral life and distrusted religious zealots. However, Connolly insists that the "outstanding difference... is still religion." For Johnson, who was a deeply committed Christian, no pagan ethic could adequately face life's ultimate calamity—death—and it is this profound religious difference that ultimately overrides their philosophical similarities.
Hellenism, Freedom, and Morality in Hume and Johnson
Loptson provides a balanced review of Adam Potkay’s The Passion for Happiness, which argues for "close commonalities" between Johnson and David Hume. While acknowledging Potkay’s success in "denaturalizing Hume" and highlighting their shared Ciceronian roots, Loptson disputes the claim of a "fundamental philosophical unity." Loptson maintains that Johnson remains a "moral objectivist" and a believer in "genuine free agency," whereas Hume operates as a "moral positivist" and a "genuine" compatibilist. Further, Loptson challenges the "Roman Stoicism" attributed to both figures, arguing that Hume aligns more closely with Epicureanism and Academic skepticism. The review concludes that despite "suggestive, interesting intersections," the assertion of a single shared philosophy is "hyperbole."
Bathurst's review of Sisman's book examines Boswell's "presumptuous task" of writing the Life of Johnson, noting that Boswell and Johnson now form the "ultimate literary partnership" in which Johnson represents the "plumpest pike in the literary pond" and the best catch for Boswell’s pursuit of fame. Bathurst observes that for the nineteenth century, Johnson was often accessed only through Boswell, leading Carlyle to rate the biography above Johnson's own writings. While earlier biographers tried to separate the pair, Sisman sees no point in doing so, instead providing a "literate and entertaining companion" that deconstructs Boswell's methodology, accurate recall, sharp ear for dialogue, and journalistic nosiness. The review highlights the influence of Malone in prodding Boswell through bouts of melancholia to complete the work, enabling him to write his fresh account eight years after Johnson’s death.
Kanter reviews Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task, a "biography of a biography." Sisman explores how Boswell's personality—his need to attach himself to great men, his compulsion for journal-keeping, his lack of discretion—uniquely enabled his great work but also led him to "anguish and despair." Kanter praises Sisman's compassionate portrayal of Boswell's foibles and his account of the obstacles (rival biographers like Piozzi, financial strain, his wife's death) Boswell faced. Kanter notes Sisman details Boswell's innovative techniques (showing "shade as well as light," using minute particulars) and how the discovery of Boswell's papers debunked the "stenographer" myth.
Self-Hugging [review of Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson, by Adam Sisman; James Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’: Research Edition, by James Boswell, Bruce Redford, and Elizabeth Goldring; Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author, by Lawrence Lipking; and Dr. Johnson’s London, by Liza Picard]
O’Hagan reviews four books, praising Sisman's Boswell’s Presumptuous Task as a successful and "winningly breezy" biography of Boswell and his biographical art, arguing it brings readers closer to the author's personality and genius for making a life real. Conversely, Lipking's Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author is deemed "dreary" and too academic, failing to capture the "Johnsonian ether" and focusing narrowly on the texts in a "New Critical" fashion. The Redford and Goldring Research Edition of Boswell's manuscript is acknowledged as an "amazing feat of scholarship," though it reveals Boswell's extensive, non-stenographic alterations to Johnson's words. Picard's Dr. Johnson’s London is commended for graphically detailing the hellish 18th-century city, providing context for the subjects' "philosophical exultation" and the rise of the moral universe.
See also Isobel Grundy’s critical letter of 16 November 2000.
Abbott approves of Spector’s significant effort to redefine Johnson’s greatness by proposing the essay as his defining genre. Spector argues that the flexible and contemporary nature of the essay provided Johnson with a "perpetual home" and a voice to address both his own world and subsequent ones, which explains his modernity and characteristic utterance. The work offers a thorough review of the canon, and Abbott credits Spector with solving the conundrum of why Johnson’s intellectual commentary seems to float between subjects without a single masterwork; instead, Spector suggests that Johnson was defined by the essay genre as no other writer. Abbott commends the case made that the essay was a natural form for Johnson, allowing him to manage his prose and poetry with a unique, unfiltered immediacy and providing a consistent platform for his characteristic insights.
Baines explores Johnson's writing for Dodd not only in terms of a personal moral dilemma within a changing legal situation but as an event which had the potential to disturb his own bio-bibliographical status. In terms of the percentage of total indictments, the rate for forgery was actually falling when Dodd was tried; Forgery was being overtaken by coinage offences and other frauds. Radzinowicz associates Dodd's case with the liberalization of penal theory, and Dodd's biographer Gerald Howson brings out the immediate use of the controversy about Dodd in the campaign for reform. Boswell's detailed analysis of Johnson's writing for Dodd is decidedly on the humanitarian side of the question, but earlier biographers clashed in their assessments of his activity. Perhaps fearing that Dodd might use his celebrity rather than his writing as an aid in the campaign, Johnson instructed Dodd, on writing a letter to the King on Dodd's behalf.
Garner and Lynch describe the 1755 Dictionary as a landmark 'booksellers’ project' intended to provide the English language with an authority comparable to the French and Italian academies. Despite Johnson’s initial lack of credentials, the authors highlight his revolutionary methodology, specifically his reading program that used 115,000 quotations from 'the best English authors' as the foundation for definitions. They detail his innovations, including numbered polysemous senses and the first serious treatment of phrasal verbs. While acknowledging errors in Germanic etymologies, the authors emphasize the scholarly precision of the 43,000 headwords and the 'remarkable' preface, which signaled Johnson’s shift from a prescriptive 'invader' to a descriptive 'register' of the language. Garner and Lynch conclude that the work’s publication on 15 April 1755 effectively ended the era of 'linguistic anarchy,' establishing Johnson as a national hero who, as David Garrick’s verse suggested, 'beat forty French' academics through sheer individual endurance.
Samuel Johnson's Folio Severely Abstracted
Garner and Lynch report that while Johnson’s 1755 folio Dictionary was a scholarly triumph, its high cost—approximately 15% of an average annual wage—rendered it a commercial 'flop.' After a failed attempt at serial publication, the booksellers released an 'abstracted' octavo version in 1756. This edition jettisoned the illustrative quotations—Johnson’s primary lexicographical innovation—retaining only the definitions and the names of 'authorizing' writers to save space. Priced at 10 shillings, the abridgment became a massive success, seeing nearly 100 editions by 1881. Garner and Lynch note the 'curious paradox' that Johnson’s work only achieved market dominance by excising its most distinctive feature. They conclude that this established a precedent followed by the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, where prestigious flagship volumes are sustained financially by smaller, more affordable spinoffs for the 'common reader.'
Adams reviews sixteen essays, focusing on Johnson’s patronage of women, his "calculus" of happiness compared to Swift, and the influence of his Lives on Romanticism. He highlights Parke’s study of conversation in Rasselas and Lustig’s analysis of Reynolds’s portrait of "Dictionary" Johnson. The review also addresses the "feud" between Johnson and Boswell scholars, specifically Alkon’s note that "Boswell is perhaps a bit too much the forgotten man" in some studies. Adams advocates for a reconciliation between the two critical camps.
Lynn's wide-ranging review outlines several essays from Jack Lynch's scholarly annual. In a convincing article, Tim Aurthur and Steven Calt use evidence from John Hawkins, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Johnson's own letters to demonstrate that Johnson struggled unsuccessfully with a degrading addiction to opium, a facet obscured by Boswell's hero-worshiping study. Linde Katritzky pieces together Johnson's connection to the second Earl of Shelburne's circle, exposing a broad-minded figure far more liberal than Boswell imagined. Thomas Curley offers a detailed perspective on Johnson's systematic detection of literary deception in James Macpherson's Ossian controversy. Steven Scherwatzky explores political parallels between Johnson and Augustine, showing how their shared faith drove a calm detachment from political controversy. Matthew Davis explores the Usages Controversy, aligning evidence that Johnson took a keen interest in these Nonjuror liturgical debates and favored both sides. Mel Kersey challenges Rajani Sudan's view of lexicographical imperialism, proving Johnson's Dictionary represents a restorative contraction toward an Elizabethan golden age rather than an expansionist colonial urge.
Carey reviews Hitchings’s study of Johnson’s Dictionary and Lynch’s volume of selections, marking the 250th anniversary of the 1755 publication. Carey argues that Hitchings successfully shifts focus from the "Boswellian invention" of Johnson as a speaker of "Johnsonisms" back to the "indisputably real" author. The text highlights Johnson’s "unremitting intelligence" and his "democratic gesture" in recording language as it was actually used rather than "enchaining syllables" through an academy. Carey notes that the 114,000 quotations created a "superior prototype of the internet," reflecting Johnson’s vast reading and his adjustment from Tory traditionalism to a modern concept of lexicography as an "evolving record of usage." The reviewer emphasizes that Johnson's "insight into people" was "schooled by poverty" and acute psychological observation, as seen in his 133 distinctions for the verb "take." Carey concludes that Johnson’s morality remains a "corrective" to unequal societies, transcending his lexicographical achievement.
Fisher praises Hitchings's account for detailing Johnson's solitary and heroic accomplishment, noting that Johnson single-handedly designed the scope, chose the 42,000 words, wrote the definitions, and selected all the illustrative quotations. The review states that the Dictionary became the standard for the English language for over a century and served as an instrument of cultural imperialism, in addition to being an influential work of literature. Fisher highlights the entertaining nature of Johnson's definitions, which are pedagogical, personal, and opinionated, citing the humorous definition for "oats" as a key example.
Groves commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Dictionary of the English Language by reflecting on its enduring cultural impact and idiosyncratic composition. Drawing on Hitchings’s scholarship, the text details the 'gruelling' eight-year task Johnson undertook in London to rival French and Italian lexicographical achievements. Groves notes that while the Dictionary contained 42,773 words, it was a solo effort 'peppered' with personal prejudices, famously exemplified by the definition of 'oats.' The text highlights the physical scale of the first edition—a 2,300-page volume weighing 22lbs—and its transition from an authoritative national standard to a foundational influence on the Oxford English Dictionary. Groves also surveys eccentric entries such as 'fopdoodle' and 'anatiferous,' framing the work as a monument of individual perception and linguistic 'genius.'
Venturo provides a 'systematic study of all of Johnson's poems' to support the claim that Johnson has few rivals among poets between Pope and Blake. The text uses 'contextual readings' to examine London through Johnson's 'Patriot' politics and Irene as a 'dramatic and poetic failure.' Rounce highlights the 'enthusiastic labour of love' evident in the appendix of Latin poems and argues the work succeeds in introducing students to the verse with 'clarity and a significant lack of cant.'
Venturo presents the first comprehensive monograph on Johnson’s verse, covering over sixty years from juvenilia to final meditations, arguing Johnson was a "reluctant" but "strong" poet. The study charts his development, dedicating chapters to London, Irene, and The Vanity of Human Wishes. It subsequently analyzes his Latin poems, elegies, prologues, and drawing-room verse, situating them within the aesthetic, political, philosophical, and theological contexts of eighteenth-century England. Venturo emphasizes Johnson’s poetic greatness in his dialectical negotiation of conflicting voices, such as the Juvenalian worldview in The Vanity of Human Wishes with a Christian alternative.
Johnson reviews Holmes’s study of the friendship between Johnson and the self-destructive Richard Savage. He identifies Johnson's Life of Savage as the first modern English biography and a prototype for Boswell's later work. The reviewer argues that despite Savage’s 'monsters of ingratitude,' Johnson relished his wit and savage attacks on Whig politics. Johnson concludes that Savage’s eloquent discourse on friendship, despite his personal failures, established the 'leading principle' of Johnson's life.
Hudson reviews Mayhew's book, which addresses the paradoxical topic of Johnson's virtual lack of landscape feeling. Mayhew, a geographer, argues that Johnson consciously rejected his contemporaries' tendency to regard the natural world as a **"glorious volume revealing God's might,"** establishing that Johnson systematically **elided references to the Book of Nature**. Johnson's reactions to landscape consistently prioritize the **"moral" over the "aesthetic."** Hudson critiques Mayhew's methodology, noting that the copious citation of unidentified sources undermines the need for literary historians to take into account immediate contexts. He also disputes Mayhew's heavy reliance on a static understanding of **"High-Churchmanship,"** suggesting Johnson's attitudes to landscape are informed by an ambivalent commitment to both the past and modernity.
Brack explains that Tomarken reviews significant commentary from initial publication until 1992 across eight chapters. The work highlights the faddishness of literary criticism, arguing that theories imposed upon a work quickly lose value. While Brack warns that the selection of nearly 500 pieces is open for debate, he finds the book a fascinating overview of scholarly approaches.
Waingrow’s remarkable research edition of the Life of Johnson is deemed invaluable for reconstructing Boswell's writing process, revealing how the biographer softened his inherent class snobbery in print (e.g., changing Johnson's ancestry from 'low' to 'obscure') and demonstrating the selective nature of his reportage. However, Colley regrets the edition's omission of workaday historical information, noting that the Life itself is problematically tilted toward the period Boswell knew Johnson and over-dominates on conversation while neglecting deeper psychological analysis.
The reviewer describes Baruth’s literary thriller as a "chilling" examination of a "twisted mind." Set in 1763 London, the narrative follows John Boswell as he stalks his brother and Johnson. John bribes boatmen to overhear conversations and reveals a past "personal link" with Johnson. The reviewer praises the "evocative prose" and Baruth's ability to create engagement despite a "lack of suspense" regarding the historical outcome. The text depicts St. James's Park as a "vast empty dirt-packed space" with "dull luminosity." While the characters are historical, the reviewer focuses on the psychological depth of John’s "murderous quest" and the atmospheric portrayal of the period.
Simon assesses Maner's thesis regarding the intersection of philosophy and biography in Johnson’s final major work. She explores Maner’s connection of Johnsonian dialectic to "constructive skepticism" and Locke’s epistemological distinctions between knowledge and probability. While Simon questions Maner's application of "obsessive-compulsive neurosis" to Johnson’s methodology, she notes his effective analysis of how Johnson sifts evidence in the lives of Savage, Milton, Swift, and Pope. The review highlights Johnson's transition of biography from hagiography to a skeptical, investigative genre that invites reader judgment through qualified contrast.
Danziger provides a mixed review of Catherine N. Parke's study on Johnson's habits of thought. Danziger finds the concept of biographical thinking baffling until defined as a trace of ideas regarding knowledge, education, and living within Johnson’s writings and life. The review notes that Parke’s approach succeeds best with Rasselas, interpreting it as a tale about human acquaintance and using Johnsonian ideas about creativity and time to explain the ending. However, Danziger argues that Parke proves less illuminating on other works and risks fitting the material into a preselected complex of ideas. Despite these reservations, Danziger acknowledges that the detailed analyses highlight the subtle, flexible, and creative nature of Johnson's thinking.
Scherwatzky reviews Smallwood's book, which argues for Johnson's current relevance as a critic by challenging the view that his criticism is trapped in neo-classical strictures. Smallwood's solution is to shift focus from the dogmatisms of critical history to the **dialogical relationship** between Johnson's texts and the literature he judges. He emphasizes the **"receptive"** rather than programmatic nature of Johnson's criticism, arguing that his reading of **Shakespeare** for his edition formed the central moment in his development. Smallwood demonstrates points of connection between Johnson and the Romantics (Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc.), arguing that critical history is a complex interplay. The book makes a strong case for the transcendent power of Johnson's achievement, despite some persistent critical clichés about the "Johnsonian Monster."
Rogers’s clever and original study of the 1773 tour is praised for placing the journey in the intellectual context of Enlightenment travel and exploration, astutely pointing out that Boswell used the tour to reaffirm his Scottish identity against his censorious father.
Danziger examines Rogers’s contextual study of the 1773 tour, noting its focus on Johnson’s late-life crisis and Boswell’s Jacobite subtext. She credits Rogers for imaginative parallels between the Scottish journey and the voyages of Banks and Cook. Danziger finds the comparison of Johnson’s private letters to his published Journey revealing, though she questions the loose conclusion regarding other Enlightenment thinkers. She praises Rogers’s erudition and his recovery of evocative phrases like the "grand climacteric."
Dunn's approving review of Rogers's study of the 1773 journey to the Hebrides describes the trip as an "inverted Tour," "a flight from the polite," and a counter-culture gesture. Dunn notes that Rogers identifies the author's private anxiety regarding his sixty-third year and a desire to avoid the conventional Grand Tour as compelling personal reasons for the physical challenge. The review highlights Rogers's insight into the unequal friendship with Boswell, a "pushy little man" with complex motives including a desire to "replay Charles Edward Stuart's escape" and seek self-identification with the Prince. Dunn observes that the journey, set in the context of anti-Scottish sentiment and societal decline after the "Forty-five rebellion," allowed the author to discover a domestic cultivation in Scotland that contradicted his negative preconceptions. He praises Rogers for revealing how the travelers encountered survivors of the rebellion and for placing their narratives as crucial documents in Anglo-Scottish literary relations that laid the ghosts of national infirmity.
Lock reviews Redford’s Designing the “Life of Johnson,” arguing the volume demonstrates Boswell's careful artistry in crafting the Life. Redford uses manuscript evidence to show how Boswell consciously shaped the text, as seen in subtle revisions and the construction of great set-piece conversations. While Lock acknowledges the persuasiveness of Redford's analysis of Boswell’s artistry, he finds the claim that this shaping does not distort the biographical record more contentious. Lock highlights Boswell's self-aggrandizing representation regarding Hastings's letters and the "taming" of Johnson’s difficult personality. He concludes Redford’s work stimulates further study of the creative process, affirming the Life’s greatness lies in its balance of truth and poetry.
Greene's study remains an important counter-balance to the persistent "simple old legend" of Johnson as a "blind reactionary," arguing that Johnson was a complex character living in a complicated time. The traditional Tory label is disputed, emerging as it did from unreliable sources like Macaulay and Boswell. Greene clearly outlines the distinctions between Whig and Tory, town and country, and traditional views and political reality. The book portrays Johnson as a journalist, skeptic, empiricist, and rationalist who was "one of the most effectual propagators of democracy in the Eighteenth Century."
Lock reviews Brack's edition of Johnson's translation of the hostile *Commentaire* on Pope's *Essay on Man* by **Jean Pierre de Crousaz** (1738–39/1741), calling it a "belated happy epilogue" to one of Johnson's unluckiest projects. The volume also includes Johnson's celebrated review of Soame Jenyns's *Free Enquiry*. The *Commentary* is a difficult read because of Crousaz's relentless search for theological unorthodoxy, but the edition is a "fascinating opportunity to watch Johnson at work." Johnson's notes are of uneven interest; the great majority reiterate the charge of **misrepresentation** (that Crousaz's strictures apply to Du Resnel's French translation, not Pope's original). Lock suggests Johnson agreed with Crousaz and doubts Pope would have welcomed the publication, despite Johnson's defense.
The biography by Rogers, a volume in the Past Masters series, presents Johnson as a bluff, pragmatic spokesman for the common man, impatient of subtlety and philosophy. Marked by a lively, crackling style and modish references, the book vividly conveys the spirit of eighteenth-century London but offers little new information. Walker notes the work's primary value is in packaging familiar ideas, consistent with Johnson's statement that men need reminding more than informing.
Reviewing Fleeman's two-volume bibliography, Grundy describes the work as a "majestic" culmination of a lifetime of scholarship. She praises Fleeman’s ability to generate "Johnsonian" aphorisms regarding the "airy vision" of completeness in bibliography. Grundy notes the extensive documentation of Johnson’s diverse career, from charity for French prisoners to the "proliferation of Dictionary editions." She highlights Fleeman's skeptical approach to attributions, such as the penultimate chapter of Lennox's Female Quixote. Grundy concludes that the work functions as a "cultural history of the eighteenth century," engaging both the "heart as well as the head" by tracing the "annals of a literary career."
Reviewing biographies by Martin and Meyers, this text praises Martin's work as superior, noting his deep knowledge of Johnson’s world. Both biographies compensate for Boswell's limited focus by exploring Johnson’s early life and personal torment, including his severe depression, physical ailments, and rumored sexual peculiarities. The reviewer acknowledges the complexity this adds to Johnson’s character but questions the lasting relevance of his critical writings, while commending his essays, particularly The Rambler, as timeless guides.
Zachs evaluates this collection for its internal "topography" of Boswell’s paradoxes and mental state. He identifies two categories: theoretical essays using modern jargon and straightforward historical approaches. Zachs praises Newman’s exploration of the Spectator as a model for Boswell’s identity and Radner’s study of Boswell’s struggle for autonomy from Johnson. He observes that while some theoretical pieces require specialized knowledge, the volume successfully illustrates the creative directions of the Boswellian project.
Wiltshire reviews Peter Martin’s biography, arguing it allows the reader to view Boswell "wholly on his own terms" rather than in Johnson's shadow. He notes that Martin uses a "medical explanatory code" to show how melancholia and religious terrors determined Boswell's existence. Wiltshire discusses how Martin captures the tension between Boswell's "Scots side" and his drive toward London and Johnson. He also discusses Kevin Hart’s work, which examines the "diverse appropriations of Johnson" and the critical desire to "expropriate Boswell" from Johnsonian studies. Wiltshire concludes that these works permit a "spacious and generous perspective," viewing Boswell and Johnson as "independent universes" passing through each other at their edges.
Quinney explores the syntax and the cadence of fatality in Johnson's prose, arguing he perfected a style to convey the grimness of the truth. Central to this is the love of mimesis, a tautological belief that literature reveals a deep truth that the world habitually ignores. In Rasselas, Johnson portrays a restless hope that perpetually eludes the lessons of suffering and the natural necessity of decay. Johnson's severe style employs a syntax of inexorability and delaying phrases to ensure sentences conclude with a devastating catastrophe. Ultimately, Quinney posits that Johnson's incorporation of literary haunting words and 'heart of heart' quotations transformed his experience of the world into a perpetual source of mourning and fatality.
Kupersmith evaluates the decade concluding with the publication of Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, identifying it as the peak and subsequent decline of the satiric Imitation. Kupersmith contrasts the "flaccid" couplets of minor poets like Thomas Gilbert and Henry Fielding with Johnson's "hyperdynamic" verse. Analyzing Johnson's adaptation of Juvenal's tenth satire, Kupersmith highlights how Johnson used the "learned tradition" of physical deterioration and the "popular tradition" of biographical conflict to explore universal human disappointment. Kupersmith disputes the notion that London and The Vanity of Human Wishes are "sister" poems, arguing the latter achieves a "sublime moral elevation" absent in earlier works. Drawing on evidence from Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, Kupersmith demonstrates how Johnson replaced Roman pagan fatalism with an Anglican moral framework. Kupersmith concludes that Johnson’s ability to "use" Juvenal’s structure while providing original philosophical depth marked the final significant achievement of the genre before it gave way to changing middle-class tastes.
Potkay reviews Parker's book, which conjoins Johnson and Hume under the rubric of "sceptical thinking," a technical term meaning an affirmation emerging from the intellect’s inadequacy to master flux. Parker praises Johnson as the strongest of the writers discussed. He highlights Johnson’s opposition to Hume's "ethos of sociable living," noting Johnsonian society is a place of competition, not just easy amiability. The review praises the final chapter, "Johnson's Conclusiveness," which expertly shows how Johnson's skeptical thinking works. Johnson’s "truth" is experiential, an affirmation of the endless interrelations of things, balanced by a limited confidence in positive generalization. Potkay emphasizes that Johnson, as a moralist, insists on keeping space for **agency**, which distinguishes him from Pope, Hume, and Sterne.
The Vanity of Human Wishes in Context
Erskine-Hill positions The Vanity of Human Wishes as a reflection on the slippery state of human things following the failure of Jacobite hopes and the subsequent political realignment in Britain. The chapter explores the interpenetration of literary and political worlds through the subscription list of Henry Brooke's Gustavus Vasa, which included Johnson alongside noted Jacobite Tories and opposition Whigs. Erskine-Hill argues that Johnson’s reaction to the fall of Walpole was complex; while he had been a fierce critic, his parliamentary reporting for the Gentleman’s Magazine accorded Walpole an exceptional power of defense, suggesting a nuanced understanding of ministerial loyalty. The chapter examines how Johnson’s minimalist universalism in his major 1749 poem transforms specific political disappointments into a broader meditation on the futility of human ambition and the necessity of religious resignation.
Woudhuysen surveys the second issue of The Age of Johnson, noting that the bulk of the fifteen essays are devoted to Johnson himself. The review details Griffith’s survey of Eikon Basilike in the first edition of the Dictionary and the 350 words in whose illustrative quotations it is cited. Woudhuysen notes Grundy’s argument for Swift’s literary influence on Johnson’s early career and Maner’s examination of Hawkesworth’s 1755 life of Swift on Johnson’s own biographical work. The text also addresses Gross’s psychoanalytic reading of Johnson.
Jackson establishes profiles for a prominent annotator and an often-annotated book by studying marginalia en masse. Samuel Taylor Coleridge emerges as a sociable annotator, predominantly writing his extensive, familiar, and sometimes self-publishing notes for friends. The profile of James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, based on a survey of 386 marked copies, confirms that readers spanning two centuries—including Piozzi, Hunt, and Greville—felt compelled to engage the text personally. This persistent individual interaction focuses on correcting information, expressing aesthetic judgement, and validating personal experience against the authorial account.
Mugglestone praises Reddick for facilitating access to primary evidence of Johnson’s lexicographical labor through a meticulously edited facsimile of annotated first-edition sheets. Mugglestone notes that the volume, featuring precise transcriptions and a comprehensive introduction, clarifies Johnson’s working methods and his relationship with amanuenses during the preparation of the 1773 edition. Mugglestone emphasizes how Reddick’s work exposes Johnson’s role as a rigorous editorial "bottleneck" who firmly rejected regionalisms and non-standard usage proposed by assistants. By highlighting the provisional nature of these revisions, Mugglestone argues that Reddick successfully dismantles myths regarding collaborative composition and provides essential insights into the textual history of the dictionary and Johnson’s personal linguistic attitudes.
Examines Percival Stockdale's life, character, and hostile response to Johnson, particularly concerning the Lives of the Poets. Stockdale, a frustrated clergyman and writer, felt Johnson usurped his destined role as the poets' biographer. His Lectures on the Truly Eminent English Poets (1807) sought to dismantle Johnson's critical authority, attacking his judgments (especially on Milton and Gray) as biased, prejudiced, and ignorant. The essay explores Stockdale's motivations (personal vanity, depression, perceived Jacobitism in Johnson) and uses reviews of the Lectures to gauge Johnson's critical reputation in the early 19th century.
Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Noted in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 25, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 177.
Kirk positions Samuel Johnson as a reasonable and moderate champion of order who derived his political principles from "the Authorized Version and the Book of Common Prayer". Johnson represents the "party of order," viewing Whiggery as a form of "insubordination" and "innovation". Kirk analyzes Johnson's pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny not as a defense of absolutism, but as a valid definition of political sovereignty. The chapter notes Johnson’s skepticism toward human powers and his commitment to the rule of law checked by custom and Christian doctrine. Kirk compares Johnson’s Toryism to Burke’s Whiggery, concluding they were nearly identical in their abhorrence of the radical politics of Rousseau and Bentham. While noting Johnson's personal animosity toward Adam Smith due to Smith's review of the Dictionary, Kirk argues that both men ultimately defended the institutions that maintain the tension between order and freedom.
Presents Johnson as a significant poet whose poetic techniques inform his prose. It highlights his use of figurative language (metaphor, personification), the interplay between the general and the particular to engage the reader, empirical observation, questioning as an instructive device, and the integration of Christian themes. Analyzing poems like his epitaphs (Phillips, Levet), prologues (Drury Lane), and didactic verses ("To Miss—"), the essay demonstrates Johnson's skill in using poetry for moral guidance, emotional resonance, and reader involvement, establishing him within the tradition of great poet-critics and exploring both his public and private poetic voices.
Lynch chronicles the complex, paradoxical relationship between early Americans and Johnson. Although Johnson despised the rebel colonists for their slaveholding and anti-authoritarian stance, calling them a "race of convicts," the American founding generation heavily relied on the 1755 Dictionary. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin owned or recommended the book, using it to draft foundational texts like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Lynch explains that Johnson's lexicographical method—defining words based on the precedent of great writers rather than royal fiat—mirrored democratic principles. Consequently, modern American federal courts and Supreme Court justices continue to cite the Dictionary to interpret constitutional language regarding commerce, copyright, and impeachment.
A reprint of “Samuel Johnson: Words for a New Nation.” An Op-Ed essay on the importance of SJ’s Dictionary in early America, including SJ’s principles of selection.
Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640–1816
"This book offers an original account of the development of literary biography in the long eighteenth century and reveals different ways in which biographers probed the inner life through writers' melancholy. The first half tracks the unstable status of melancholy in biographical writing from Walton to Johnson in the context of changing medical and theological understanding of the condition. The second half focuses on biographical experimentation of the 1790s. Two case studies, Godwin's Memoirs of Wollstonecraft and Currie's Life of Burns, are examples of a significant if short-lived genre: philosophical biography. The dispassionate exploration of melancholy in these new secular biographies renders obsolete older notions of the 'dignity' of biography. Anxieties about the increasingly intrusive nature of the genre intensify over Hayley's Life of Cowper, coming to a head in 1816 with Wordsworth's impassioned critique of literary biography and the scandal caused by Cowper's posthumously published conversion narrative Adelphi"-- Provided by publisher.
Introduction -- PART I: JOHNSON, MELANCHOLY AND EARLY LITERARY BIOGRAPHY, 1640–1791 -- 1. Early Literary Biographies: Walton's Donne to Sprat's Cowley -- 2. Johnson, Melancholy and Biography -- 3. Eighteenth-century Melancholy: Boswell and Cheyne, The English Malady -- PART II: MELANCHOLY AND BIOGRAPHICAL EXPERIMENTATION AROUND 1800 -- 4. Philosophical Biography (1): Godwin's Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft -- 5. Philosophical Biography (2): Currie's Life of Burns -- 6. Religious Melancholy: Hayley's Life of Cowper -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography
Wheeler edits a collection of eleven scholarly essays that investigate Johnson's career-long engagement with life writing, from his early Grub Street sketches to the monumental Lives of the Poets. The volume situates Johnson as a transformative figure who "invented critical biography" by shifting focus from "vulgar greatness" to the "minute details of daily life." Contributors explore how Johnson uses biographical elements in ostensibly imaginative works like Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes to provide moral instruction and create a "chain of sympathy" with readers. The collection further examines Johnson's complex relationship with precursors like Addison and his adversarial role toward previous biographers of Milton. By analyzing the "interrelationship between selection and judgment," these studies demonstrate that Johnson's biographies serve as "monuments in the history of their form" and essential "doors into Johnson's mind," challenging the legendary persona depicted by Boswell through a rigorous examination of his literary and intellectual practices. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the structural cohesion and the uneven depth of individual contributions. Seymour-Smith, in TLS, welcomes the volume for providing a finely judged sense of the subject's reputation, praising its common-sense questioning over excessive theoretical frameworks. Korshin's review in ECS values the exclusive focus on life-writing as central to eighteenth-century literature, though noting variable quality among the essays. Middendorf, in JNL, commends the gathering of scholarship for successfully clarifying biographical motives and methods. Scanlan, writing in South Atlantic Review, offers an approving assessment of the diverse approaches to the subject's habit of mind, highlighting the strong treatments of literary patronage and individual biographies, but finding some theoretical arguments inadequately developed. In contrast, Hume, in SEL, terms the collection a disappointment, maintaining that despite several noted contributors, most of the pieces are lightweight and fail to form a unified book. An unsigned review in Virginia Quarterly Review characterizes the assembly as a useful tool for literary history and aesthetics that reintroduces the subject effectively to modern students.
Reviews: Robert D. Hume, SEL 28, no. 3 (1988): 521–22; Paul J. Korshin, ECS 22, no. 1 (1988): 105–8; Haydn Mason, French Studies 44, no. 1 (1990): 68–69; John H. Middendorf, JNL 48, nos. 1–2 (1988): 2–3; Catherine Neal Parke, AJ 3 (1990): 473–77; Publishers Weekly, January 30, 1987; J. T. Scanlan, South Atlantic Review 55, no. 1 (1990): 136–39; Martin Seymour-Smith, TLS, no. 4478 (1989): 92; Virginia Quarterly Review 64, no. 1 (1988): 8–9.
The Stream of English Biography: Readings in Representative Biographies, with Historical and Critical Introduction
Metcalf traces the evolution of English life-writing from medieval hagiography to the psychological "psychography" of the twentieth century. Johnson occupies a pivotal role in this development, having initiated "pure biography" by integrating literary criticism and a commitment to "unblushing truth" into the narrative. Metcalf highlights Johnson's theory that nearness to a subject's private life through "personal knowledge" is essential for accuracy, a principle exemplified in Boswell's Life of Johnson. This work represents the "fortunate conjunction of a man and his task," achieving a "larger unity" through its combination of narrative, dialogue, and letters. Metcalf notes that while earlier biographers like Mason used letters, Boswell's "individual psychology" and focus on making the reader "visualize him physically" created a "timeless" portrait. Piozzi is also mentioned as a contributor to the early literature on Johnson with her Anecdotes. Metcalf concludes that the success of these works lies in their "winsome artistry of phrasing" which transfigures facts into literature.
CGV entry 22:90. Excerpts from the 'Life of Pope' and Boswell's 'Life', with a critical introduction.
Cochrane entry 113. See especially pp. 21–26, 119–20.
The Biographer and the Subject: A Study on Biographical Distance
A good biography is a well-staged illusion. It creates — on paper — a vivid, rounded, and immediate sense of lived life. In contrast to purely fictional forms, biography writing does not allow total freedom to the biographer in the creative act. Ideally, a biography's backbone is formed by accurate historical facts. But its soul lies elsewhere. Since the concern is life, something more is needed: Nothing dry, cold or dead, but a vibrant impression of life that is left in the air after one turns over the last page. But how does a biographer do it?
Rise of Autobiography in the Eighteenth Century
The Rise of Autobiography in the Eighteenth Century
James Boswell by Himself: Boswell Journals; Boswell in The Life of Johnson
Bell explores Boswell’s lifelong autobiographical project as a wayward quest for personal identity influenced by Scottish Presbyterianism and Lockean empirical philosophy. Boswell used many distinct masks while seeking an essential, stable self through journals kept from 1762 until 1795. The text traces his Shandean pattern of assertion and withdrawal, noting how his violent rash of Shandyism influenced his behavior and writing. Despite his personal zig-zaggery, Boswell used a plain style to affirm his authenticity and abiding reality.
Psychological studies of life and letters
The Doctor Looks at Biography; Psychological Studies of Life and Letters
Collins examines life-writing, defining biography as an objective narrative of personality, citing Boswell's Life of Johnson as the genre's supreme exemplar. Johnson's enduring historical permanence is attributed almost exclusively to Boswell's genius for observation, critical perception, and precise conversational recording. The text implicitly prefers Boswell's methods to later psychological approaches. Collins distinguishes the objective biographer's synthesis of affection and critical perception as the essential art, which transcends mere chronological data to reveal the subject's inner psychological mechanism. The work traces the genre's evolution, contrasting the realism of Boswell with the later trend toward modern "psychographs" influenced by Freud.
Cochrane entry 94.
Lustig and her contributors analyze Boswell's intellectual and authorial development across two thematic sections: "Boswell and the Enlightenment" and "The Life of Johnson." Part I contextualizes Boswell's cosmopolitanism through his continental travels and relationships with figures such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Lord Kames. Marlies K. Danziger traces Boswell's engagement with the Northern Enlightenment, while Peter F. Perreten examines his evolving aesthetic response to European landscapes. Richard B. Sher positions Kames as Boswell's "Edinburgh father-figure" who mediated his professional and literary ambitions. Further essays by Michael Fry and Thomas Crawford explore Boswell's complex political identity, contrasting his failed parliamentary aspirations with his libertarian sympathies and unwavering monarchism. John Strawhorn details Boswell's serious commitment to his duties as the "Enlightened Laird" of Auchinleck. Part II shifts focus to Boswell's literary artistry in the Life of Johnson. Carey McIntosh and William P. Yarrow analyze his sophisticated prose style and use of metaphor, challenging views of the biography as mere transcription. Isobel Grundy discusses Boswell's navigation of biographical uncertainty, and John B. Radner explores the 1777 Ashbourne visit as a turning point in Boswell's quest for autonomy from Johnson's authority. Lustig concludes by examining the role of Margaret Montgomerie Boswell within the narrative, illustrating how Boswell's "visceral response to literature" and "relish for human diversity" informed his monumental biographical achievement. The consensus on this book is that it serves as a mature and penetrating collection of essays that significantly advances the subject’s status beyond provincial boundaries. Critics call this book an essential resource for scholars, praising how it connects the subject’s intellectual interests and continental travels to his eventual biographical preeminence. Jones recommends the work for its new insights into 18th-century life, while Kullman appreciates how the contributors challenge long-accepted "factoids" to reveal a more complicated individual. Zachs, however, suggests that the inclusion of illustrations for lesser-known subjects might have further enhanced the traditional gallery of portraits presented in the text.
Dowling identifies a single conception of the heroic character underlying Paoli and Johnson in Boswell’s three major biographical narratives. Dowling’s central argument posits the Boswellian hero as a figure of "anguished and alienated humanity" existing spiritually outside an unheroic, skeptical age. By associating his subjects with high protagonists of heroic literature—such as the Plutarchan Paoli or Johnson as an epic "king of men"—Boswell dramatizes the "spiritual isolation" of superior natures in a world of moral anarchy. In the Life, this isolation becomes tragic as Johnson’s "philosophick heroism" serves as a desperate resistance against the "detestable sophistry" of Enlightenment rationalism. Johnson appears as a "solitary wanderer in the wild of life," maintaining a private structure of belief through "vigorous reason" and "manly fortitude" despite an inward struggle with melancholy and the "dark pain of existence." Dowling argues that Boswell’s naive narrative persona serves to bridge the gap between the ordinary world and these isolated heroes, whose "extraordinary powers of mind" offer a temporary sanctuary of order amidst social and spiritual disintegration. Chapter 1, 'A Plutarchan Hero,' addresses the transformation of Pascal Paoli into an antique figure through the lens of romantic primitivism and the myth of the Golden Age. The narrative establishes a generic tension by situating a high mimetic, stoic hero within a pastoral Corsican setting to dramatize unfulfilled greatness. Chapter 2, 'The Hero and the Past,' argues that the Hebridean journey serves as a psychological escape for Samuel Johnson, moving him from modern London into a remote, feudal landscape. This transition resolves spiritual conflict by immersing the hero in a world where the heroic past and the supernatural still possess imaginative reality. Chapter 3, 'A Green-goose and a Hero,' addresses the role of the biographical narrator as a naive ingenu who provides a guarantee of veracity through his own perceived ordinariness. This formal compromise allows the bios tradition to persist in a skeptical age, using the narrator's vulnerability to highlight the hero's indomitability. Chapter 4, 'Philosophick Heroism,' addresses the tragic isolation of the hero within the bustling, low mimetic world of late eighteenth-century England. It argues that Johnson’s resistance to moral anarchy represents a victory over self-despair, culminating in a death that symbolizes the final disappearance of heroic potentiality. Critics call this book a valuable "case for the defense" of biography’s status as high literature, arguing that the subject’s literary portrait must be dissociated from the historical figure for full appreciation. Reviewers such as Alkon and Fox highlight the author’s New Critical approach, which frames the works as a unified exploration of the hero in an unheroic world—a stranger looking back toward a nobler past for spiritual coherence. Anderson and Varney find the examination of "generic tension" particularly moving, portraying the subject as an alienated figure alongside the likes of Oedipus and Lear. But this "purely literary" reading met with significant resistance from scholars who value historical accuracy. Nussbaum and Spacks contend that the author’s generic impositions—specifically the classification of the Life as a tragedy taking place inside a comedy—ignore the essential fact that nature often vies with fancy. Buresch and Crane further critique the study for "theoretical fuss" and a confusing layout, noting that the author’s assumptions about a comprehensive loss of moral certainty may be historically inaccurate. While Rogers acknowledges the study as perceptive and insightful regarding the Corsican and Hebridean journals, he and Middendorf express concern that the author’s "proto-Carlylean" heroism ignores traditional scholarship and marginalizes the eighteenth-century context. Readers were sharply divided: some embraced the transfiguration of the "familiar character" into a universal tragic hero, but others argued that the work's verbosity and "salacious" focus on literary autonomy ultimately failed to convey the reasons for the subject's enduring importance. Despite these methodological reservations, the book is recognized for raising vital questions about the intersection of history and art.
Cochrane entry 638.
Patronizing the Biographical Subject: Johnson's Life of Savage
Epstein examines Johnson’s Life of Savage through the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, arguing the text facilitates a shift from sacred hagiography to secular individualization. Epstein traces the collapse of traditional hierarchical patronage and the rise of a "trade" economy where booksellers and the reading public become the primary agents of authority. Within this framework, Savage appears as a transitional figure—a "child of the public" whose lack of a stable patron forces him into a self-advertising literary career. Epstein suggests Johnson acts as a substitute father or patron, using the narrative to parent a subject disenfranchised by traditional genealogy. The chapter concludes that the Boswellian model eventually perfects this secularized pastoral power by transforming the biographer into a self-patronizing economy of individualization. Epstein emphasizes that Savage’s "uncertain Patronage" reflects the broader generic instability of mid-eighteenth-century English biography.
Samuel Johnson's Lives: Its 'Nice Doubtfulness'
Maner examines Samuel Johnson's "characterological style" of "nice doubtfulness," a manifestation of his obsessive-compulsive neurosis, as the underlying source of power and coherence in his Lives of the Poets and other works. Scrupulosity (defined as minute and nice doubtfulness) and a skeptical, argumentative cast, or dialectic, shape both the rhetoric and the structure of his biographies, serving as a defense mechanism against his own pathological doubts about his self-worth, God's mercy, and his sanity. This style moves from doubt to resolution, compensating for internal ambivalence; Shapiro is cited for linking doubt to dogma as a compensatory strategy. Johnson's skeptical method is evident in his evaluation of biographical sources and his consistent anti-panegyrical stance, debunking flattery and self-deception in both his subjects and their biographers. His dialectical engagement creates the peculiar "see-saw movement" of emotion in works like Savage, where one feeling (pathos) always modifies its opposite (comedy), demonstrating that doubts about how to feel are as important as doubts about what to think. Maner links this cognitive and affective style to a simpler perceptual style of the "double-take," which is embodied in his use of antithetical syntax and visual metaphors of indistinctness ("blaze, clouded, confused, phantom"), which represent the interplay of doubt and belief, offering the reassurance that he is the master of his own perceptions and judgments.
The Boswell Biographers: A Study of 'Life and Letters' Writing in the Victorian Period
Cochrane entry 213. Examines the direct influence of Boswell's biographical techniques on major Victorian life-writers, including Carlyle, Gaskell, and Froude.
Pernicious Reason and Good Sense: Ethics and Common Sense in Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees and Samuel Johnson's Writings
Publisher's blurb: "Lonsdale's complete and definitive 2006 Oxford edition of Johnson's Lives provides the text for the ten biographies Mr. Mullan includes in this student edition, which replaces that of J. P. Hardy (Oxford, 1971). Since Johnson was partially responsible for selecting the poets in his original work and since the formation of the canon of English poets is one of the most obvious issues brought up by such an edition, it is interesting to note that Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Gray are included by both Hardy and Mr. Mullan. Quite good, his Introduction touches on most if not all the important topics raised by reading all Johnson's Lives, including the replacement of private patrons by booksellers in the newly developing literary marketplace: "to annotate Johnson's Lives is to realize how important patrons had been over the previous century. Mr. Mullan recognizes and attempts to mitigate here the distortion that can arise in an incomplete edition: "by omitting some of Johnson's less significant lives in this selection, we perhaps sacrifice the accumulated sense of how the life of writing is shaped by the struggle for money, and how often the achievement of financial security is provisional or belated.""
Sandler's review describes Curley’s study, which adopts an unequivocally Johnsonian stance by labeling Macpherson’s work an "infamous violation of truth" and any sympathetic scholarship as "revisionist." Curley challenges revisionist views that treat forgery as a questionable hypothesis, arguing Macpherson's poems have only slight links to authentic Gaelic sources while insisting on the public necessity of contrition. The reviewer finds the book limited by its allegiance to Johnsonian morality but extremely useful for its thorough look at the Ossian controversy’s first forty years. Curley highlights Johnson’s active involvement in pamphlet wars and his patronage of Irish scholars like O’Conor to preserve Gaelic literature. The work expands the debate's personal side by including rare or previously unpublished letters and pamphlets from Strahan, Murray, and other associates. While Curley excuses Johnson’s anti-Scots slights as "poking fun," Sandler notes he convincingly demonstrates Johnson’s "abiding humanitarianism" and support for Irish independence.
Folkenflik’s review of Meyers’s biography acknowledges the work’s readable and brisk prose as well as its use of recent scholarship, including Redford’s edition of Johnson’s letters and previously ignored details such as the letters of Hill Boothby. However, Folkenflik finds the biography flawed and untrustworthy, critiquing the scholarship as insufficiently careful and "careless." The review disputes Meyers’s claims of originality regarding Johnson’s reasons for leaving Oxford and his relations with women, dismissing many such claims as anachronistic or based on questionable evidence, such as the hostility toward Swift. Folkenflik challenges Meyers’s assertion that Johnson had Boswell in mind when writing notes on Falstaff, noting that Johnson completed the relevant volume before meeting Boswell. Furthermore, Folkenflik identifies numerous factual errors concerning the works of Dryden and Pope, chronological inaccuracies regarding the Seven Years’ War, and the propagation of exploded myths, such as the "mad and violent" misreading. By decontextualizing key anecdotes like the Dilly’s dinner, Meyers fails to match the analytical depth of DeMaria’s biography. Folkenflik concludes that the book’s claims are too often "original" rather than "accurate," resulting in a work that propagates exploded stories rather than providing reliable scholarship.
Scanlan commends Lee's learned and engaging application of mentoring theory, primarily drawn from Daniel Levinson's developmental psychology, to Johnson's life and works. Lee examines Johnson's relationships with figures like Cornelius Ford, Richard Savage, Oliver Goldsmith, Hester Thrale, and Boswell, analyzing them through the lens of mentor-protégé dynamics across different life stages. Scanlan praises Lee's fresh perspective, thorough scholarship, clear writing, and respectful engagement with previous Johnsonian studies, despite occasional reservations about the psychological framework's potential reductiveness or limitations in scope.
Religious Partisanship in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
Chapin argues that Johnson deliberately selects illustrative quotations for his Dictionary to support the official doctrines of the Church of England. Johnson defends the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer using examples from Francis Bacon, Richard Hooker, and Robert Sanderson. The article documents Johnson's use of polemical sources to challenge Roman Catholic, Puritan, and Anabaptist tenets. Chapin notes that while Johnson may not agree with official doctrine in every instance, he feels "obliged to choose quotations supporting this doctrine" to preserve social and religious order. The Dictionary thus serves as a vehicle for High Church Anglican orthodoxy. Chapin's posthumously published article highlights Johnson's reaction to the "sectaries" and his commitment to the "golden mean" of the established church.
The Double Tradition of Samuel Johnson's Politics [review of Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England, by John Ashton Cannon, and Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism, by J. C. D. Clark]
Cannon deserves congratulation for having consulted, among works in the latter category that throw important light on Johnson's political and social thinking, the introduction to the report of the committee charged with providing charitable assistance to French prisoners of war interned in Great Britain (which the International Red Cross published in French translation two centuries later as anticipating the humanitarian work of Henri Dunant); the little essay on "The Bravery of the Common English Soldiers" (both the essay and the report appeared in 1760 in the midst of the Seven Years" War); the splendid commentaries on the origins of that war, in which Johnson fiercely condemned both belligerents, Britain and France (and was fired from the editorship of his journal for his lack of patriotism); and the "State of Affairs in Lilliput," the introduction to Johnson's reports of the parliamentary debates in the early 1740s. There was much in the existing order that Johnson found indefensible-slavery, imperialistic aggression and expansionism, European oppression of indigenous peoples, government censorship of the press and the stage, capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, the economic and social bases of prostitution, parental tyranny over children, even High Toryism like that of Tom Tempest in Idler No. 10, who thought "King William burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture and that Tillotson died an atheist." ...]a good deal is known about what he was doing in 1745–46-writing proposals for an abortive edition of Shakespeare, and then doing the preliminary work for his great Dictionary. ...]there is the wonderful tale of how Samuel, "not quite three years old," insisted on being taken to hear a harangue by the High Tory propagandist Henry Sacheverell, for "he had caught the public spirit and zeal for Sacheverel."
'We Are Perpetually Moralists': Samuel Johnson and Renaissance Epistemology
A review of Greg Clingham and Philip Smallwood (eds.), Samuel Johnson After 300 Years (2009). The contributors to this collection attempt to connect Johnson to recent developments in literature and theory. Lipking explores how writers draw Samuel Johnson's wisdom. Johnson's devotees take pride in the currency of his thoughts, and many become life-long Johnsonians, toasting his continuing presence. He says what Johnson represents can never be stable. Whenever writers read him or read about him, they help to remake him.
A Defense of the Literary Forgeries in the Age of Samuel Johnson
The technique of literary forgery is not the violation of literary ethics; nor is this much debased literary practice an isolated case of literary eccentricity. Instead, the various works of these forgers such as George Psalmanazar, James Macpherson as well as Thomas Chatterton, the marvelous boy, represent a vital new strand in English literature, defended and echoed not only by the Lake Poets and John Keats, but also by Johann Goethe and Johann Herder. These cases of literary forgeries were highly controversial in the 18th century, but it is not to be denied that works attributed to the native Taiwanese and Ossian respectively had a lasting impact on the Romantic writers. Actually forgeries in the 18th century cherished the ancient poetic tradition, in which the function of poet in ancient Greece was seen just as the agent or servant of the Muses. Hence, a full exploration of forgeries is not meaningless as it seems to be, but a great help to our understanding of inspiration, imagination and real function o
Oxford Oath-Taking: The Evidence from Thomas Hearne's Diaries
Davis examines the extensive diaries of the Nonjuror antiquary Thomas Hearne (covering 1705–1735) to resolve scholarly debate about oath-taking requirements at Oxford during the 1720s, when Johnson was briefly a student. Davis argues Hearne's consistent testimony and accounts of specific students (like Richard Parker and the Dodwell brothers) strongly support J. C. D. Clark’s position: the Oath of Allegiance was required for graduation but generally not at matriculation for most students. This practice provided a loophole allowing conscientious Nonjurors to enroll and study at the university.
Editing James Boswell, 1924–2010: Pasts, Presents, Futures
Caudle offers an institutional history and methodological reflection on the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell. He describes the "artisanal" editorial process, contrasting it with the "Boswell Factory" myth, and emphasizes the project's reliance on deep annotation. Caudle traces the shifting scholarly rationale for editing Boswell, noting the project’s focus has moved beyond the Life of Johnson to prioritize the Correspondence and Journals as key texts for cultural history. He addresses the significant challenges of funding, the slow pace of "legacy editions," and the new opportunities provided by digital humanities for future work.
Hudson praises John Wiltshire's The Making of Dr. Johnson as an impressive cultural history of Johnson's canonization as a "national icon." Wiltshire traces the "Johnson" representation from the 18th-century, detailing the "torrent of abuse" from Whigs and Scots, which Boswell actively countered in his Life by discrediting rivals like Piozzi and Hawkins. Hudson follows Wiltshire’s analysis of this "legend" through Carlyle’s heroic "great soul," Macaulay’s "retrograde Tory," and the varied psychoanalytic and pop-culture appropriations of the 20th century. Hudson commends the book's exemplary objectivity and its rich exploration of Johnson's complex biographical afterlife.
Samuel Johnson After Three Hundred Years, and Beyond
'No Vain Speculation': Samuel Johnson's Rambler and Eighteenth-Century Attitudes to Orality
Davies argues that Johnson's relationship with primitive orality and literacy is more complex than his surface hostility suggests. While Johnson rejects the concept of the noble savage and associates pre-literate culture with a lack of memory and imagination, he uses oral savagery to reflect on human nature. Davies connects Johnson's anxieties about transience to a desire for stability, which memory and physical presence provide. Ultimately, Johnson finds a model for self-governance in oral performance, where the immediate concentration of the speaker and audience forces a secure possession of the present hour. This network of ideas connects orality and civilisation, challenging simple binaries between voice and text.
James Boswell, celebrated mainly as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was a diligent explorer of preindustrial London. The very streets, mews, alleys and lanes animated him his entire life, though he dwelt only a dozen years among them.
Samuel Johnson, Life's Incompleteness, and the Limits of Representation
Adventures in Literary Sleuthing: An Old Edition of Samuel Johnson's Works
Stark describes his acquisition of a leather-bound 1838 American first edition of Johnson's works. Stark sought the volumes to access rarer pieces, such as "Marmor Norfolciense," an early satire against Robert Walpole, and a biographical essay on Hermann Boerhaave. The author reflects on a 1862 inscription by Peyton R. Carrington of Richmond, Virginia, whose family history Stark traces through genealogical records. Stark notes that Carrington purchased this costly scholarly edition during the American Civil War, suggesting that Carrington viewed Johnson's works as intellectual necessities during a period of societal upheaval. The essay discusses Johnson's appeal to such a reader, highlighting his moral philosophy in the Rambler, his complex views on liberty and slavery, and the elegiac tone of Lives of the Poets. Stark suggests that Johnson’s meditations on the "Vanity of Human Wishes" and the transition from agrarian to commercial societies provided solace to Carrington as he witnessed the decline of the Old South. The narrative briefly mentions Boswell's records of Johnson's conversational wit and diverse knowledge.
Pictures from the Rylands Library: Samuel Johnson, Francis Barber and the Power of Condolence
Halkyard examines a unique copy of the fourth edition of the Dictionary, once owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds and now held in the Rylands Library, containing late-life revisions in Johnson's hand. These corrections, later incorporated into the sixth and seventh editions, illustrate a shift in lexicographical practice from static monument-building to a dynamic engagement with the "metamorphosis" of language over time. Halkyard focuses on the evolution of the entry for 'condoler,' which Johnson's annotations transform from an objective provider of sympathy into an active, empathetic participant in misfortune. This linguistic shift reflects Johnson's personal experiences within his diverse household and his reliance on his servant, Francis Barber. As a "familiar and domestick companion," Barber provided solace during Johnson's "darkest of his often very dark days," eventually becoming the only company Johnson desired. Halkyard suggests Johnson learned the deeper meaning of condolence as a recipient of Barber's care, using his "tremulous script" to record a new register of feeling born from these domestic interactions.
The poem "Dr. Johnson rolls down a hill" depicts Johnson in his middle fifties, reflecting on the contrast between his childhood sufferings—including sickness, scrofula, and an open wound—and his adult struggles with deep afflictions, anxiety, and the worsening symptoms of Tourette's. The poem recounts an event from 1764, where Johnson, visiting Lincolnshire with Bennet Langton, suddenly declares he must "have a roll for a long time" and tumbles down a steep hill, momentarily finding simple happiness and escaping the "nightmare of his coming breakdown."
Living Lives: The Return of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets [review of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, by Roger Lonsdale]
Reddick reviews Lonsdale's four-volume edition of Johnson's Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, the first scholarly edition in a century. Reddick explains that the Lives is Johnson's most provocative critical work, shaping the Romantic response to him. Lonsdale's edition provides meticulous text and superb commentary, tracing Johnson's frequent borrowings from sources like the General Dictionary and Biographia Britannica. Reddick confirms Lonsdale's argument that the title Lives reflected Johnson's intention, not publisher imposition, and explores Johnson's critical-biographical model of sincerity, his definition of "true wit," and his political biases, particularly against Milton and Gray.
Reddick reviews Kolb and DeMaria's Yale edition of Johnson's linguistic writings peripheral to the Dictionary. He commends the meticulous editing and rich contextual annotations, which provide extensive parallels from Johnson and his contemporaries. However, he notes the volume's inherent incompleteness without the Dictionary itself and finds the associative annotation style occasionally lacking analytical depth or linguistic precision. Despite minor criticisms regarding source verification and textual apparatus, Reddick deems the volume, especially its inclusion of manuscript drafts, a significant and essential contribution for scholars studying Johnson's work on language, offering invaluable resources for future research.
Johnson "asks us to be partners in creating the text and our own moral education" (142), a judgment that applies not only to The Vanity of Human Wishes but also to the Rambler essays (1750–52) and Rasselas (1759). Similarly, in "The Life of Pope" (1781), Johnson does not merely observe that "troubles at home cause us more grief than squabbles by the clergy" (151), an opinion that would keep him well within the bounds of homely companionability and political correctness.
Lynch presents how Samuel Johnson and his six assistants wrote the Dictionary of the English Language published in 1755. Johnson drew his words from the greatest writers in English, and included some 114,000 illustrative quotations. The dictionary contained 2,300 pages and 42,773 entries.
Winton notes that Miller ignores the contested nature of the Enlightenment, instead using the deathbed scenes of Hume, Johnson, and Marat as representative of the period. The eighteenth century was preoccupied with "dying well," exemplified by Joseph Addison's Cato, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, and Benjamin West's painting The Death of General Wolfe. As Hume's death neared, Boswell was curious whether the skeptic would finally convert to Christianity; he found that Hume persisted in his disbelief. Adam Smith's memoir of Hume's final days, where he compared him to Socrates, was considered by Edmund Burke to be propaganda for the "church" of freethinkers. Johnson, a Christian who wrestled with doubt, disliked Hume but, according to Miller, may have avoided reading him for fear of fueling his own skepticism. Both Miller and Johnson argue that religious questions are beyond man's capacity to resolve. Johnson died privately, stating to Thrale that confidence in the afterlife was not the mark of a good man. Marat's death, a political murder, was immortalized by Jacques-Louis David's painting Marat Assassinated and catalyzed the Terror. Miller finds an irony in the Terror being engineered by Marat, a former society doctor, and David, a former society painter. Marat's story, however, fits uneasily into the discussion of Enlightenment thought. Miller concludes that the common ground shared by Enlightenment figures—Voltaire, Johnson, Hume, Diderot, Paine, and Gibbon—was an interest in progress, which was questioned by their enemies.
Jʉhasse̵ki igirisu bungaku kenkyʉ: bungaku to shakai no shoso̶ [Studies of eighteenth-century British literature: aspects of literature and society]
Sakusha, dokusha, shuppansha: Samyueru Jonson no Raseras saiko̶ [Author, reader, publisher: rereading Samuel Johnson's Rasselas]
AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association
The A–Z of Dr. Johnson: Boswell's Life of Johnson [abridged]
A Store Yet Untouched: Speculative Ideologies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature
This dissertation explores the ways in which attacks on speculative practices articulated in the financial literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were revised and reformulated in the literary productions of eighteenth-century English fiction writers. The title of this dissertation derives from William Hazlitt's remark that the "past is ... like money that is spent," while the future "is like a store yet untouched, and in the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification" ("On the Past and Future"). Hazlitt's figuration of time as money refers us to an important historical connection between England's revolutionized financial order and alterations in the individual's relationship to futurity. The financial revolution, as P.G.M. Dickson famously styled it, brought the British a new sense of the individual's control over his or her material destiny in the temporal order of things; and the challenge it posed to a Providentialist view of history was addressed and negotiated by countless literary texts of the period in explicit or implicit fashion. Rather than sidestepping the vexing theoretical problem of how a revolution could be said to exist independently of the discourse that names it so, this dissertation argues that the historically significant fictional discourses of the eighteenth century acted to mark the historical moment as one particularly interested in the status of the forward-looking (often explicitly financial) subject. Ascertaining how texts of this period established ethical distinctions between prudential foresight and "scheming" offers a new way of understanding the development of eighteenth-century fiction as well as the broader cultural narratives from which those fictions drew energy and, indeed, a readership. The carving of ethical space for the speculative subject, one who was forward-looking without being either presumptuous or manipulative, is shown to be a central moral concern and literary opportunity for writers such as Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele, Alexander Pope, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Johnson.
My Impossible Task?: Writing an Ethical Biopic of Samuel Johnson
This practice-based PhD comprises an original screenplay for a biopic of eighteenth-century lexicographer and writer Samuel Johnson, entitled "Sam J," and a thesis which reflects upon the process of writing that film. The research question asks whether it is possible to write a biopic which operates within the conventions of classic Hollywood screenwriting (following the paradigm of the three act structure to create a film that is both emotionally engaging and entertaining to a mass audience) and yet is also an "ethical biopic," that is, one that gives a truthful portrayal of the subject and his life. The thesis proposes a framework which may be of help to the writers of ethical biopics, and puts that framework to the test through the process of writing the film. Chapter 1, "Truth," identifies different types of truth in the biopic, which often conflict with each other, and concludes that the best way to incorporate them into a single vision is by means of the "interpretative approach." The writer's own interpretation of Samuel Johnson is then explained. Chapter 2 "structure," explores the ethical issues which arose during the process of adapting the story of Johnson's life into a three-act screenplay. Chapter 3 "Character," explores the ethical issues which arose during the process of turning historical people into characters in the film. The ethical framework is modified in the light of the research process, and a revised framework is presented in the conclusion.
Brute Compassion: The Ambivalent Growth of Sympathy for Animals in English Literature and Culture, 1671–1831
This dissertation explores the marked growth of sympathy for animals in the long eighteenth century, with particular focus on the hesitation and conflict surrounding considerations of animal welfare in poetry, novels, periodicals, and Parliamentary debates. Though compassion for animals was a popular topic in eighteenth-century publishing, and middle-class citizens were noticing and becoming uncomfortable with institutional and recreational cruelties towards animals, social reform did not necessarily manifest in direct and obvious ways. The trajectory of sympathy has never been sure; advances in one area seem to be counterbalanced by sacrifices on other sides. Chapter one explores hunting as an already ambivalent site that becomes a battleground between England's ascending, theriophilic middle-class and its landed gentry. Compassion for animals becomes a platform which both sides deploy successfully; by the time England's first anti-cruelty legislation is passed, the sport of hunting is more accessible than ever before, and the sum total of actual benefit to hunted or persecuted animals is minimal. Works by Sir John Denham, William Somerville, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, James Thomson, William Cowper, William Windham, Lord Erskine, and Richard Martin are considered. Chapter two argues that the sensibility movement proves ambivalent on the subject of animals, often sacrificing animals for the furthered interests of human actors. Works studied are Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Frances Burney's Evelina, Sarah Scott's A Description of Millenium Hall, and Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman. Chapter three explores ambivalence in the sub-genre of circulation novels. Within these theriophilic, didactic works written primarily for children, traditional exploitations of both animals and subordinate people jar against moments of progressive sympathy for animals. The fourth and final chapter focuses on Samuel Johnson's writings about and personal encounters with animals. Examining his public contributions to discourse about animals beside his private life as a fond pet-keeper and avid naturalist creates a multi-layered picture of the ambivalence felt by the middle-class as individuals and as a collective who were compassionate, socially ambitious, and eager to reform English society.
Islam in the English radical Protestant imagination, 1660–1830
My dissertation challenges postcolonial accounts that suggest that Islam was depicted as a reactionary and "backward" religion in the long eighteenth century. Building on the work of Nabil Matar, James R. Jacob, Norman O. Brown, and Bernadette Andrea, I argue for the crucial significance of "Mahometanism" in the Radical Enlightenment critique of Church and State, from 1660 to 1830, proposing that English radical Protestant fantasies about "Islamic Republicanism" offered an alternative political vision for writers such as Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, William Blake, Walter Savage Landor, Hannah Cowley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and the Shelleys. These writers, who either rejected or were troubled by the democratic principles promoted by the French Revolution, embraced Islam as a source of political hope in moments of crisis: when notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity turned out to be "false universals" that deprived English men and women of the constitutional-religious rights granted to Anglican citizens. English writers sought to replace the secular ideals of "Western Europe" with a vision of the "Islamic Republic" as an alternative system of secular, democratic values; a resurfacing of an earlier radical Protestant discourse that encodes Islam as the original religion of an egalitarian form of Protestant antitrinitarianism. In their imaginations, the values of "Mahometanism" are more durable and dependable than Lockean notions of liberal individualism and "human rights." And yet, by the turn of the nineteenth century, Burke, Landor, Coleridge, Cowley, and Percy Shelley shunned "Islamic Republicanism" for various reasons: to conform to the standards of a developing conservative ideology, to conceal radical ideas as a cautious way of avoiding draconian censorship restrictions in a reactionary era, to resist any identification between radical politics and the setbacks of the French Revolution, or to search for alternative models of liberty in the Greco-Hellenistic world. Overall, this dissertation reveals the limitations inherent in the secular progressivist narratives through which postcolonial critics continue to read the reception of Islam in eighteenth-century England. As a corrective to this approach, I offer historizied re-readings of the political complexities that inflect the discourse of "Islamic Republicanism."
Men of Feeling: Sentimentalism, Sexuality, and the Conduct of Life in Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Men of Feeling revises the history of sexuality via the literary history of eighteenth-century British sentimentalism. I take my cue theoretically from the striking overlap between Michel Foucault's periodization of the advent of the regime of sexuality — chiefly, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — and the flourishing of a British culture of sensibility and sentiment in these very centuries. Readings of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling, and Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France describe how the alliances and divergences between sex and sentiment shaped eighteenth-century notions of reason, conversation, publicity, domesticity, and morality. In order to reconstitute the scope of sentimental culture, I read these authors with reference to their manifest, if sometimes oblique, relation to the various currents of British moral and ethical discourse, including the work of Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Hume. Men of Feeling demonstrates how the literature and philosophy of eighteenth-century sentimentalism both informed and contended with emergent notions of "normal" and "perverse" desire and sexuality. Specifically, I describe how the "virtue" of heterosexual desire became necessity, how the culture of sensibility extensively embraced the proposition that life as such is strictly synonymous with the romance of heterosexual desire. But at the same time, I argue, sentimentalism offered a literary and philosophical discourse in which the social rituals of sexuality — such as courtship, marriage, reproduction, and inheritance — could be thought and rethought. A central question orients my reclamation of sentimentalism for critical thinking — indeed, as a form of critical thinking: Does "sexuality" absorb the sentiments, or do the sentiments preserve understandings of self, other, and community that exceed or countermand the order of "sexuality"? By tracing the figure of the "man of feeling" across a century of literary representation and ethical reflection, I argue that the sentiments are neither subsumed nor displaced by sexuality, but rather, sustain distinct — often radical or queer — notions of the self, its affections, and its social relations.
Tropes of time and space in Johnson, Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen
This project is an attempt to articulate a new conception of time and space as determined by the internal evidence of the texts and not by social or economic theories. Toward this end it employs a methodology which defines time and space as separate ideological categories with specific cultural distinctives. Furthermore, this essay attempts to prove that the authors figure their fictional arguments as solutions to contemporary social problems. Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759) defines time in the psychological terms of emotion. Hope and fear represent the future; sorrow and regret represent the past; and pleasure and pain represent the present. There are two modes of living: the "choice of life" and the "choice of eternity." The choice the story posits is between living a material life in the present or a spiritual life in the future. Fanny Burney's Cecilia (1782) likewise portrays the tension between choosing to live in space or to live in time.
Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Education
The Little Spark and the General Blaze: Speech, Narrative and Fact in James Boswell's Life of Johnson
The thesis performs an explorative reading of James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) in order to interrogate assumptions about the function, use and epistemological limits of direct speech in Boswell's work, and the Eighteenth Century more generally. Rather than ignoring the problems posed by the competing and contradictory epistemological and ontological claims of the presentation of speech in text, the thesis reads Boswell as engaging with these problems at different scales. Each narrative scale carries with it different assumptions about facts and events, and different conventions with which to represent speech as a combination of both. The thesis aligns the problems of narration at different scales with different forms of narrative intervention and manipulation of the putatively raw materials of Johnson's speech their transition into the text published in the Life. It does this by drawing on archival research investigating the many states of Johnson's speech in Boswell's records, drafts and the final version of the Life. Chapter One investigates Boswell's attitude to the project as a whole, seeing in his ideal of Journal-keeping and personal affinity a vision of biography that draws on the non-narrative conventions of different genres. Chapter Two traces Boswell's engagements with connected events and sustained scenes before investigating his own role as a nodal point constructing extended analogue conversations between Johnson and other figures over many years. In these chapters the print technologies of quotation marks and dashes are read as the mechanism that allows narrative connections at these different scales. Chapter Three investigates the workings of dialogue through Boswell's use of parenthetical stage directions, reading them as a method of massaging his Journals into narratives. Chapter Four turns to Boswell's writerly interventions on the surface of words, seeing in italicisation a blunt tool for marking conceptual and textual as well as aural differences in speech, and considers the stress this places on interpretation. Chapter Five considers Boswell's interpretive interventions within the orthography of words themselves, investigating his attention to the potential of type to convey aberrant or historically particular sounds through the representation of laughter, accents and onomatopoeia. Each level of analysis reveals both the contingency of the whole enterprise and the inescapably preemptive interpretive choices made by Boswell in the course of his composition. Boswell emerges as a writer engaging constantly with the demands and contradictions of what remains an under-theorised yet crucial aspect of non-fiction narrative in a context of changing ideas about truth and narrative.
Relations of likeness: Portraiture and life-writing in England, 1660–1790
This thesis treats the interplay between English portraiture and life-writing between 1660 and 1790. It analyses how and to what ends they did engage with each other in theory, practice, and as concepts and it argues that the mutually complementary use of information via different media had a strong bearing on aesthetics. At first glance, the similarity of visual portraits and literary Lives appears to be self-evident. Portraits show people, biography describes them. Both draw on a pool of information that they transform into a work according to their respective aesthetics. Portraiture's and biography's evolution often evolved concurrently, indicating that a heightened interest in the individual is thought to express itself across the artistic field and also often operated with almost identical terminology. The closeness in language reflected the multiple ways in which portraiture and life-writing made use of and referred to each other to heighten their respective effect. Constituting a multi-modal approach, portraiture and life-writing relied on quantity, illustration, and complementation. They were understood as relational works that put forward a thematic core that could be endlessly expanded. The concept of likeness plays a major role in this thesis. Likeness never implied identity, but likeliness, proposing that the presentation was a credible approximation of the original. Being able to stand alone, even to acquire authority over its original, makes likeness unique. By tracing its historic understanding and negotiation, my aim is to historicise the concept of likeness, considering it the joint between visual portraiture and life-writing. Proceeding chronologically, this study covers a period of 120 years, roughly between the 1660s and the 1790s. It starts at the time when issues of classification of genres became prevalent in England and ending when their interaction itself had become subject to theorisation. The approach of each chapter is informed by specific themes, and all chapters attempt to embed aesthetics within their social realm. The introduction outlines the topic, methodology, the material and provides an overview of the current state of research. Chapter 1 will address the period of the late seventeenth century, c. 1660s to 1690s, focusing particularly on the concept of worthiness, meaning the social value portraiture or biography assigned to and argued for their subjects. Chapter 2 is set at around 1700, more precisely between 1683, the publication of Dryden's translation of Plutarch's Lives, and 1719, when all three treatises on art by Jonathan Richardson's had appeared. This section deals with emerging methodology, referentiality, and likeness. It explores comparative methods ('paralleling') and the increasing orientation of art and literary theories towards contemporaneity. Chapter 3 covers the early eighteenth century, c. 1710s to 1740s, and explores the relationship between subject, work, and the public sphere, and strategies of image-making. Chapter 4 ranges from 1740s to 1750s, examining narrative methods in visual and literary life-writing, especially focusing Samuel Johnson, William Hogarth, and James Harris and the role that time as moment, length, and duration played in aesthetic thinking. Covering the period from c. 1750s to 1780s, chapter 5 picks up the thread of chapter 4 by analysing how, in occasional genres, aesthetics and ethics concur in their embodiment by people. Finally, chapter 6 brings the several threads of the other chapters together to show how the coexistent and interacting streams of portraiture and biography were consciously merged, implying that one should no longer exist without the other. The conclusion summarises the arguments and discusses how aesthetics and information work as complements.
French Language, and French Manners, in Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Eighteenth-century social and political relationships between Britain and France have long enjoyed great scholarly interest, and the linguistic influence of French on English is being defined with increasing precision. Until now, however, there have been only brief stylistic considerations of the literary role played by French in eighteenth-century English prose literature. My thesis seeks to address that deficiency by investigating the literary usage and significance of French language in English literature. As the period is noted for the explosion of interest in language and its cultural ramifications; this study continuously considers the metonymical function of French usage as a signifier of broader social corollaries. This thesis attempts to forge a link between identifiable social attitudes and their incarnation in specific linguistic usage. I initially set out a context of opinion on French language and culture, and attitudes to borrowing and imitation, derived from journal, essay and treatise. Such a context demonstrates that France is unrivalled as the "other" against which British identities were forged. Rates of lexical borrowing from French reached an historical low in the eighteenth century, and the proliferation of grammars and dictionaries bespoke a desire to define, limit, and control language. Yet the language of the developing novel, I argue, was inflected with French idiom, an idiom that offered a uniquely rich and potent strain of evocation and association. Writers of the novel, from Richardson and Smollett, to Brooke, and Burney, deploy French flexibly but with precision; each author exercises great control in borrowing idiom for purposes ranging from plot development and characterisation, to satire and pathos. My research explores those constructs, and because I found that the question of literary French usage is gendered, much of my thesis is structured along lines of gender. The letters of Lord Chesterfield, Samuel Johnson, and William Shenstone, Fanny Boscawen, Hannah More, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, form counterpoints to the novel, and establish areas both of commonality and divergence between French usage in the fictional and familiar prose of men and women. In its final chapter, this study turns explicitly to the wider social concerns underlying preceding discussions, viz. the significance of French usage to English manners and morals in the novels ranging from John Cleland's Fanny Hill to Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote. This thesis necessarily incorporates extensive but germane quotation, and embraces historical sociolinguistics, social history, stylistics, literary theory, and practical literary criticism. While this study cannot claim to be comprehensive, it seeks to open out a field of study hitherto neglected.
Representations of Race and Romance in Eighteenth-Century English Novels
My dissertation analyzes how eighteenth-century novels were still invested in the continuation of the romance and need to be read in the historical context of English interactions with other cultures, in particular those of the Ottoman Empire. Chapter One sets up the racial model of romance and demonstrates how it fit into English politics by contrasting the reinterpretations of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) throughout the eighteenth century as the protagonist's cultural affiliations shifts from Islamic to "pagan" African as the prose narrative's use of romance tropes to support Behn's royalist politics is replaced, eventually leading to the narrative's association with the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Chapter Two shifts to the establishment of the "Arabick Interest" in Restoration and early eighteenth-century England by examining the contesting reactions to the influence of Islam on English identity through its analysis of England's translations between 1671 and 1708 of the philosophical romance Muhammad Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan as well as the anxieties causes by a Protestant-Islamic connection in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). The second half of this dissertation adds the discussion of women as another "third term" like romance and Islamic influence. Chapter Three's discussion of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759) and Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752) both use romance elements to reference an older form of history writing, one in which the boundaries between romance and fact are porous, to critique English concepts of difference, especially those of gender or culture, in favor of a more universalized view of the world. Their works responded to a mid eighteenth-century shift as England began to emerge as a global power. Chapter Four combines the elements of race, religion and gender from the preceding chapters in its reading of Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya (1806), of which I argue that even though she does not explicitly argue for increased legal rights or social freedoms for women, Dacre's presentations of the dangers to society through its enforcement of feminine passivity implicitly demonstrates a need to create a society where women are educated to be free subjects and independent of patriarchal control.
Orienting Virtue: Morals, Markets, and Global Modernity in English Literature, 1660–1800
Williamson's dissertation examines how Eastern ideas and spaces shaped the definition of English "virtue" during the Enlightenment. The study identifies a tripartite definition of virtue as human excellence, moral purity, and divine efficacy. Williamson argues that conservative thinkers like Johnson and Swift simultaneously praised progress and mourned a supposedly simpler, more virtuous time in England. The dissertation notes that Johnson linked Britain's mid-century lack of "heroic worth" to the "invading and infecting" influence of foreign luxuries. Williamson analyzes Johnson's Rasselas alongside other Orientalist texts, such as Knight's Dinarbas and the works of Charlotte Lennox. The author concludes that virtue served as an "epistemological paradigm" allowing writers to imagine a future for England despite perceived weakness and corruption on the world stage.}
National Cheng Kung University Department of Foreign Languages & Literature
個「不道德的道德家」及其傳承:賽彌爾強森, 修身, 與十八世紀英國的文字印刷 = The 'Vicious Moralist' and His Legacy: Samuel Johnson, Self-Improvement, and the Printed Word in Eighteenth Century Britain
Romantic posthumous life writing: inter-stitching genres and forms of mourning and commemmoration
Contemporary scholarship has seen increasing interest in the study of elegy. The present work attempts to elevate and expand discussions of death and survival beyond the ambit of elegy to a more genre-inclusive and ethically sensitive survey of Romantic posthumous life writings. Combining an ethic of remembrance founded on mutual fulfilment and reciprocal care with the Romantic tendency to hybridise different genres of mourning and commemoration, the study re- conceives "posthumous life" as the 'inexhaustible' product of endless collaboration between the dead, the dying and the living. This thesis looks to the philosophical meditations of Francis Bacon, John Locke and Emmanuel Levinas for an ethical framework of human protection, fulfilment and preservation. In an effort to locate the origin of posthumous life writing, the first chapter examines the philosophical context in which different genres and media of commemoration emerged in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, it will commence with a survey of Enlightenment attitudes toward posthumous sympathy and the threat of death. The second part of the chapter turns to the tangled histories of epitaph, biography, portraiture, sepulchre and elegy in the writings of Samuel Johnson, Henry Kett, Vicesimus Knox, William Godwin and William Wordsworth. The Romantic culture of mourning and commemoration inherits the intellectual and generic legacies of the Enlightenment. Hence, Chapter Two will try to uncover the complex generic and formal crossovers between epitaph, extempore, effusion, elegy and biography in Wordsworth's 'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg' (1835-7) and his 'Epitaph' (1835-7) for Charles Lamb. However, the chapter also recognises the ethical repercussions of Wordsworth's inadequate, even mortifying, treatment of a fellow woman writer in his otherwise successful expression of ethical remembrance. To address the problem of gender in Romantic memorialisation, Chapter Three will take a close look at Letitia Elizabeth Landon' s reply to Wordsworth's incompetent defence of Felicia Hemans. Mediating the ambitions and anxieties of her subject, as well as her public image and private pain, 'Felicia Hemans' (1838) is an audacious composite of autograph, epitaph, elegy, corrective biography and visual portraiture. The two closing chapters respond to Thomas Carlyle's outspoken confidence in 'Portraits and Letters' as indispensable aids to biographies. Chapter Four identifies a tentative connection between the aesthetic of visual portraiture and the ethic of life writing. To demonstrate the convergence of both artistic and humane principles, this cross-media analysis will first evaluate Sir Joshua Reynolds's memoirs of his deceased friends. Then, it will compare Wordsworth's and Hemans's verse reflections on the commemorative power and limitation of iconography. The last chapter assesses the role of private correspondence in the continuation of familiar relation and reciprocal support. Landon's dramatic enactment of a 'feminine Robinson Crusoe' in her letters from Africa urges the unbroken offering of service and remembrance to a fallen friend through posthumous correspondence. The concluding section will consider the ethical implications for the belated memorials and services furnished by friends and colleagues in the wake of her death.
'Scandal's Reign': Gossip and Authorship in Eighteenth-Century England
This dissertation traces the shifting conceptions of what Richard Brinsley Sheridan termed "scandal's reign," crafting a cultural history of printed gossip during the period from the 1680s through the 1790s. By examining the complex negotiations of gossip by authors like Delarivier Manley, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Charlotte Smith, it also seeks to challenge prevalent models of literary history that largely consign male and female authors to separate traditions. In Chapter Three, I trace gossip's impact on Samuel Johnson's influential literary career and on the scores of biographies that appeared after his death. Johnson carefully emphasizes how his own labors effect a certain distance from gossip, thereby distinguishing his writing from what he portrays as the miniature scale of trivial tattle or scandal.
Action at a Distance: Motion and Literature in Enlightenment Britain
Samuel Johnson, 1709–2009: Life & Afterlife
Privately printed by Lofgrein's Printing for the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
A Pencil Sketch of Samuel Johnson: For the Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
Lord Auchinleck's Fingal: Being Remarks Inscribed in the Hand of Alexander Boswell in His Own Copy of James Macpherson's Ossian Offerings, with an Introductory Essay on the Johnson/Macpherson Controversy
A keepsake in support of the Yale editions of the private papers of James Boswell.
Questa curiosa avventura di viaggio del dottor Johnson con il suo biografo Boswell (che una ventina d'anni dopo lo avrebbe immortalato ne "Vita di Samuel Johnson," di cui questo "Viaggio alle Ebridi" è una sorta di prova generale) si svolse tra l'agosto e il novembre del 1773. Il dotto letterato era nel suo sessantaquattresimo anno e dunque la faticosa escursione si caricava di molti significati, soprattutto la prospettiva di "godere gli aspetti selvaggi" di una terra ancora circondata di mistero. Ma come il Dottore guarda al paesaggio e si fa antropologo, così il giovane Boswell si sofferma di più sul venerato maestro ("qualunque cosa riguardi un uomo così grande merita di essere osservata"). Sicché il diario giornaliero di una esplorazione diventa anche il ritratto di un genio in viaggio che giudica dei contemporanei e uno specchio della vita britannica settecentesca.
English Literature from the Library of George Milne
Privately printed by Thames Printing Company for the Johnsonians
臺北市 : 志文, 民74 Edition: 再版. Tai bei shi : Zhi wen
約翰生傳 / Yue han sheng chuan [The Life of Samuel Johnson]
Fiction and Purpose in 'Utopia,' 'Rasselas,' 'The Mill on the Floss' and 'Women in Love'
New analyzes the formal structure of Johnson's moral fable, arguing that the text's difficulty serves an educative function by forcing readers to learn how to think rather than merely what to think. By employing a technique of broken antithesis, Johnson repeatedly jolts the reader by establishing expectations for a middle path or rational compromise between extremes—such as city and country life or reason and passion—only to demolish those options through observed reality. New identifies a stylistic convention of profound seriousness that dominates even the book's satirical and farcical moments, such as the aviator's fall. This dominant tone guides the reader toward a mode of feeling that rejects callow mockery in favor of a charity-driven 'humanity' when faced with inevitable suffering. New disputes purely satirical readings of the stoic philosopher, suggesting instead that Johnson uses 'satire manqué' to complicate emotional responses and emphasize that clear thinking is a necessary prerequisite for appropriate action in a world where perfect happiness remains elusive.
New explores the dual themes of the rational search for happiness and the involuntary 'hunger of imagination' that preys incessantly upon human life. He argues that Johnson presents a metaphysical statement on human limitation while observing the psychological habit of reaching for what one does not possess. Through an analysis of the Happy Valley, the Hermit, and the Astronomer, New demonstrates that the satisfaction of desire fails to bring content, as man is an animal that needs purpose and 'must conceive himself what he is not.' The text suggests that while no 'choice of life' can secure earthly happiness, the pursuit of hope is essential to humanity; without it, individuals descend into the 'natural malignity of hopeless misery.' New characterizes the prince's predicament as tragic because his willed search for happiness has no end, yet ceasing activity leads back to subhuman purposelessness. The chapter posits that although virtue and knowledge offer substantial pleasure, ultimate stability is only found by re-channeling hope toward a 'choice of eternity.'
New examines the transition from the Prince's rational search for happiness to an acceptance of the human condition through the prism of fiction. He argues that Johnson uses the Astronomer's descent into madness and subsequent recovery to illustrate the 'dangerous prevalence of imagination' when isolated from reality. Through the characters' growing empathy for the Astronomer and the return of Pekuah, Johnson shifts from a pattern of broken antitheses toward a 'convention of feeling' rooted in charity and shared humanity. New emphasizes that while the characters conclude that no earthly 'choice of life' secures happiness, their engagement with others provides incidental enjoyment that justifies continued endeavor. The chapter posits that acceptance is not a passive surrender to despair but a disciplined commitment to the 'choice of eternity,' where fiction serves as a tool for moral education by forcing the reader to think through the complexities of existence rather than seeking simplistic, utopian answers.
An Immortal Friend: Dr. Johnson and the Royal Academy
Display curated by Rachel Hewitt and Nick Savage
Exhibition catalogue.
Reprinted from the edition of 1951.
The history of Tahmas Kuli Khan, Shah, or Sophi of Persia
Johnson's revision of a translated section from the French work Histoire de Thamas Kouli Kan.
Historia de Rasselas, príncipe de Abisinia
Dr. Johnson's House and the National Fire Service During the War
Comentarios filosóficos: Introducción manuscrita a los principios del conocimiento humano: Correspondencia con Johnson
Das Leben Samuel Johnsons und Das Tagebuch einer Reise nach den Hebriden
'Scarce Books & Elegant Editions': Samuel Johnson & James Boswell: Selections from the Edward R. Leahy Collection, Heritage Room, Weinberg Memorial Library, The University of Scranton, September 18, 2009–December 11, 2009
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the University of Scranton Library.
El juicio del doctor Johnson: comedia en tres actos
John Swallow Swift es un espía americano que desembarca en las islas Hébridas junto a su esposa, Mary, con una secreta misión: establecer contacto con la sociedad inglesa para tomarle el pulso en lo referente a la guerra de Independencia de Estados Unidos. La pareja se instala en Londres, donde se verá inmersa en un enredo político que pondrá a prueba tanto sus ideales como su amor, y en el que la simulación es requisito de supervivencia. — Inside back jacket flap John Swallow Swift is an American spy who disembarks in the Hebrides with his wife Mary and a secret
Dr. Samuel Johnson Leben und Meinungen; mit dem Tagebuch einer Reise nach den Hebriden
Ein begeisterungsfähiger junger Mann trifft auf einen Gelehrten, den er abgöttisch bewundert. Über Jahrzehnte begleitet er ihn und hält alles, was sein Idol tut oder sagt, akribisch fest: Wen er besucht, was er isst, mit wem, in welchen Kneipen, was dabei geredet wird und so weiter und so fort. Stellen Sie sich weiter vor, der Gelehrte sei geistreich, umfassend gebildet, aufbrausend, schlagfertig, ein höchst widersprüchlicher, freier und faszinierender Geist. Und der junge Mann sei empfindsam und nicht ohne Humor. Dann haben Sie eine Vorstellung von der berühmtesten Biographie aller Zeiten: James Boswells Lebensbeschreibung von Dr. Samuel Johnson, dem Schriftsteller, Lexikographen und Literaturpapst des 18. Jahrhunderts. Aus dem fesselnden Porträt eines außergewöhnlichen Mannes ersteht das Bild seiner Zeit — und unserer europäischen Kultur.
Bursting with imagination and impossible to put down, these novels - 'darkly comic' (Telegraph) and 'delightfully horrific and hilarious' (Eoin Colfer) - from The Sunday Times bestselling author John Connolly, are about the pull between good and evil, physics and fantasy - and a quirky boy, who is impossible not to love, and the unlikely cast of characters who give him the strength to stand up to a demonic power. The Gates: Samuel Johnson's neighbour Mrs Abernathy is trying to open the gates of hell. It's up to Samuel to stop her, except nobody will believe him, and time is running out. The Infernals (prev. Hell's Bells): Samuel and Boswell are pulled through a portal into Hell. But Mrs Abernathy has reckoned without their bravery and cleverness, or the loyalty of Samuel's friend, the demon Nurd, and Mr Merryweather's Elves. The Creeps: Samuel and Boswell are to be guests of honour at the opening of the greatest toyshop. A splendid time will be had by all, as long as they can ignore the sinister statue that keeps moving around the town, the Shadows that are slowly blocking out the stars, murderous elves, and the fact that, somewhere, a rotten black heart is beating a rhythm of revenge.
Johnson No Jacobite; or, Treason Not Yet Unmasked
Curley argues that the charge of Samuel Johnson being a Jacobite remains unproven, dismissing the claims of Erskine-Hill and Clark as based on circumstantial evidence rather than Johnson's own writings. Labeling Johnson a Jacobite, Curley notes, is a serious accusation of high treason, a crime that would have required incontrovertible proof. He points to Johnson’s extensive collaboration with Sir Robert Chambers on the Vinerian law lectures as a massive, overlooked primary source that demonstrates a profound loyalty to the Hanoverian monarchy under George III. Furthermore, Curley analyzes Johnson’s 1756 Introduction to the Political State of Great-Britain, highlighting Johnson’s explicitly negative views on the Stuart monarchs, including his justification for the deposition of James II. He concludes that Johnson was a patriotic Englishman who, despite his complexities, loved his Hanoverian-ruled country and was certainly no traitor.
A response to Clark and Erskine-Hill, arguing that Johnson was not a Jacobite.
The Book of Samuel: Essays on Poetry and Imagination
Rudman explores the "loquacity" and "genial spirits" of his namesakes, specifically contrasting Johnson and Coleridge as figures who abandoned early poetic fervor for a life defined by discourse. He argues that Johnson "metamorphosed" James Boswell, creating a dialogic form in Life of Johnson that transcended their individual capacities. Rudman details how both Johnson and Coleridge, despite being among the "greatest talkers in the history of England," were plagued by an internal sense of failure for ceasing to function as poets at a young age. The text highlights Johnson’s profound sociability and hatred of solitude as essential to his intellectual output. Rudman further reflects on the evolution of dialogue from Boswell’s recordings to modern poetic interventions by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, positioning the act of "talking in a poem" as a formal solution to the "insufficiency of lyric" that haunted his predecessors.
Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts
Allan and Abbott examine Johnson’s active role in mid-eighteenth-century efforts to mitigate London's prostitution crisis. They contextualize Johnson's sympathetic literary treatment of the subject in Rambler 170 and 171 alongside his archival participation in the Society of Arts. From 1756 to 1762, Johnson served on committees evaluating reformist proposals, most notably providing editorial assistance to Saunders Welch’s plan for a "Charity House" for penitent women. The authors contrast Johnson’s pragmatic benevolence with the more moralistic or mercantilist approaches of contemporaries like Hanway, Fielding, and Boswell, arguing that Johnson’s involvement was driven by a deep humanitarian desire to reclaim "worthy members of the community" from social wretchedness.
Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions
Davis argues that the mid-eighteenth century represents a 'historical and cultural transition' in which the modern discourse of disability became consolidated. Focusing on Johnson, Davis highlights a 'paradoxical aestheticizing' of his numerous impairments—including partial blindness, deafness, Tourette syndrome, and debilitating depression—by contemporaries like Boswell and Piozzi. Boswell simultaneously records Johnson's 'physical tics and convulsive actions' while attempting to downplay their significance, creating a 'contradiction of an earlier sense in which disability per se did not exist and of a later one in which disability became a modality used to explain a great deal.' Davis contrasts this with Fielding's Amelia, where the heroine's 'noselessness' creates a 'textual parapraxis' that reveals the period's emerging 'ideology of normality.' Whereas Boswell and Piozzi often 'edit out' or 'erase' Johnson's disfigurements to preserve his subjectivity, nineteenth-century biographers like Macaulay fully narrativize Johnson into his disabilities, employing the trope of 'triumph over adversity.'
Publications de l'Institut national de la langue française: Dictionairique et lexicographie
Johnson vs. Milton: Criticism as Inquisition
Whereas critic Samuel Johnson finds Shakespeare enticing his audience with the promise of poetic pleasure, he finds critic John Milton calling his reader to judgment or to intellectual combat. Both critics seem very much aware of the distinction between the two responses that have shaped much of the reception history of Shakespeare and Milton.
Challenges the critical interpretation that Juvenal's praise of the country in his Third Satire is ironic and that Johnson, in imitating it for London, missed this irony. It argues, based on Juvenal's other works, the specific contrasts within the Third Satire (e.g., country mastery vs. city servitude), and the consistent non-ironic reading tradition by commentators, translators, and imitators (including Dryden and Boileau) from the 17th to early 19th centuries, that the country functions as a serious, positive norm representing lost Roman values. Johnson correctly perceived and adapted this non-ironic classical model.
Explores Johnson's strategic use of questions in The Vanity of Human Wishes as a rhetorical technique rooted in classical rhetoric and contemporary pedagogy. It argues that questions engage the reader dynamically, transforming them from passive recipients into active participants and co-investigators alongside the narrator. By posing questions directly, attributing them to the reader, or anticipating reader responses, Johnson guides the audience through various inadequate worldly perspectives (envy, mockery, ambition) towards the poem's concluding affirmation of religious faith as the only valid object for human hope and fear, thereby facilitating the reader's own moral education.
Challenges interpretations viewing Johnson's Dictionary illustrations as primarily driven by a narrow Tory, High Church, or Jacobite political/theological agenda. While acknowledging Johnson's exclusion of figures like Hobbes and his general moral aim, the analysis contends that Johnson primarily registered English language usage, not just his own biases. It demonstrates Johnson's inclusion of diverse theological viewpoints (e.g., South alongside Tillotson and Bentley) and his typical modification of polemical sources like South to present broadly acceptable Christian commonplaces. The slight revisions in the 1773 fourth edition do not significantly alter this fundamentally non-polemical, language-focused approach.
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection
Williams's narrative is centered on non-incarnated children who exist as software entities awaiting physical bodies. The protagonist, seeking guidance on complex moral issues and the threat of "erasure," maintains regular imaginary conversations with a digital reconstruction of Johnson. Williams uses Johnson as a mentor figure whose "understanding and wisdom" provide a framework for the protagonist to evaluate the "Age of Reason" and the "triumph of hope over experience." The story explores themes of identity and boredom, noting that "everyone is, or hopes to be, an idler." Williams includes a series of artworks titled the "Dr. Johnson" series, depicting Johnson in surreal future settings like Mars or among asteroids. By grounding the protagonist's intellectual development in Johnsonian thought, Williams examines the persistence of eighteenth-century moral philosophy in a high-tech, post-human society.
A short story in which Johnson figures.
Recognizing the Biographer: Boswell's Life of Johnson
Epstein identifies Boswell as the quintessential figure for the generic frame of "recognizing the biographer." Drawing on Boswell’s 1776 visit to Matthew Boulton’s Soho Manufactory, Epstein links the "vastness and the contrivance" of industrial machinery to Boswell’s biographical method. He argues that Boswell contemplates Johnson’s "mighty mind" through the light of Boulton’s commercial "POWER," positioning the biographer as a manager of a complex textual apparatus. This chapter investigates how Boswell obtrudes into the narrative to establish his own credit and authority, effectively consuming the biographical subject through a "peculiar plan" of self-conscious documentation. Epstein suggests the Life of Johnson operates as a technological marvel of interchangeable parts, where the biographer’s labor becomes as visible as the subject’s life. By interweaving historical and theoretical approaches, Epstein demonstrates that Boswellian biography functions as a self-consuming economy that defines modern generic recognition.
Chief Glories: The Life of Samuel Johnson
Interviews with Greene and Vance.
Johnson's Theory and Practice of Shakespearian Textual Criticism
Jarvis examines Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare, arguing that its "unprecedented" desire to serve as a summation of previous editions reflects a syncretic view of scholarly labour. Johnson disputes the "Warburtonian insistence" on a single editor uniting all necessary capacities, proposing instead that textual criticism depends on the "co-operation of individual minute enquirers." The analysis explains Johnson’s editorial policy of avoiding "scholastic acrimony" by treating predecessors with "candour." Jarvis highlights the tension between Johnson’s theoretical defense of the First Folio and his practical reliance on the "received text" of Theobald and Warburton. The study notes Johnson’s "cautious" use of the theory of theatrical corruption and his "hostility to eclecticism," preferring to identify an "authentick" copy before admitting variants. Jarvis concludes that Johnson’s practice recognizes editing as a "specialized discipline" where no single "Art of Criticism" can determine methodology due to the "desultory and vagrant" nature of Shakespeare’s text.
Whittemore identifies the partnership between Johnson and Boswell as a historic point of division in the genre. Boswell shifted the biographical subject "decisively over to a character as himself," prioritizing individual psychology over Johnson’s preferred "broad views." Whittemore challenges the common praise for Boswell’s randomness, arguing that his reporting was actually a "quite contrived" public performance managed by Boswell’s own promotional instincts. By comparing their separate accounts of the Hebrides tour, Whittemore illustrates how Johnson remained interested in culture and social missions while Boswell focused exclusively on Johnson as an exhibit or "valuable acquisition." Whittemore disputes the virtue of Boswell’s lack of discipline, noting how his "excessive exuberance" and contact with prostitutes influenced his centrifugal biographical style. Boswell ushered in an era of exhaustive reporting that transformed biography into a series of public interviews rather than an objective analysis of the inner man.
This appendix reprints Johnson’s 1750 Rambler essay, which Whittemore cites as one of the great statements on the genre. Johnson argues for the superiority of biography over general history because it provides "lessons in the private life" applicable to all readers. He disputes the notion that only "striking or wonderful vicissitudes" make a life worth recording, suggesting instead that the "minute details of daily life" best reveal character. Johnson maintains that because all humans are "prompted by the same motives," any judicious narrative can diffuse instruction. However, he cautions that biographers writing from "personal knowledge" may succumb to interest or fear, leading them to hide faults and adorn characters with "uniform panegyrick." The essay advocates for an impartial truth that respects the memory of the dead without sacrificing the instruction of the living.
Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney: Extracts from Fanny Burney's Prose, 1777-84
“Selection based on the 1912 edition of Chauncey Brewster Tinker.”
Hitchens's approving review of Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: A Biography praises the work for its psychological depth and its handling of complex historical episodes. Martin provides a superior account of Johnson’s intercession for the forger William Dodd, interpreting Johnson’s famous remark on the concentration of a condemned man’s mind as a modest disclaimer of authorship regarding Dodd’s sermon. Hitchens highlights Martin's medical and psychological analysis, which replaces vague notions of asthma with a diagnosis of emphysema and addresses the likelihood of Tourette’s syndrome. The review examines the influence of Piozzi, noting Martin’s rejection of the "masochism hypothesis" regarding their relationship; instead, Martin links Johnson’s obsessions with enchainment to a contemporary fear of the treatment of the insane. Hitchens also details Johnson’s intense religious "holy terror" and his Toryism, contrasting his superstitious dread of death with the stoicism of David Hume. The narrative presents Johnson’s literary industry as a weapon against a "hell of despair."
Trautmann examines a proposal for a Telugu-English dictionary drafted by Ellis, which invokes the authority of Johnson alongside that of Indian pandits. The study shows how Johnson’s Dictionary provided a "hybrid" model for colonial linguistics, specifically in the etymological arrangement of definitions. Trautmann details how Ellis used "Johnsonian logic" to supply defects in native roots by referring to kindred Dravidian languages. The text argues that Indian linguistic analysis was folded into European philology through these mediated texts. Trautmann concludes that Johnson’s plan for technical terms and "natural and primitive signification" shaped the ideal dictionary in Madras, even as Indian phonological acuity influenced the emergence of comparative philology.
James Boswell's diaries, written while he was practising as an advocate in Edinburgh between 1767 and 1786, provide a vivid picture of the high and low life of the Scottish capital. A friend of philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith, Boswell also mixed with the criminal classes, was a prodigious drinker and frequented the town's brothels. Each day he wrote down all that he had done and seen with complete frankness.
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library seminar papers
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel Johnson: Pictures and Words: Papers Presented at a Clark Library Seminar 23 October, 1982
Introduction / Donald Greene Illustrations of Rasselas and reader-response criticism / Paul Alkon Samuel Johnson and art / Robert Folkenflik
'United in One Performance': Samuel Johnson and Frances Burney
Arthur Murphy and Samuel Johnson: A Case of Intellectual Affinity
'The Present Hour Alone is Man's': Johnson's Poetry and the Redemption of Time
Cambridge focuses on the observation of Johnson’s Tercentenary in 2009, a period that witnesses a significant increase in Johnsonian studies and conferences. Scholars contribute essays summarizing long-considered research, focusing on texts and contexts. This era marks a peak in eighteenth-century and Johnsonian editing efforts. The events celebrate Johnson’s intellectual and literary achievements, suggesting that new discoveries concerning his complex mind are still being made.
Justice for Sir John; or, The Blind Man and His Elephant [review of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by John Hawkins]
Mugglestone praises the Lynch and McDermott volume for its diverse perspectives, contesting the image of "Dictionary Johnson" as a "bigot" and emphasizing the work's hybridity. She highlights Reddick’s facsimile edition as a "unique source" that reveals Johnson as a "tight bottleneck" in the revision process, rejecting amanuenses' regionalisms to maintain editorial control. While noting minor factual discrepancies between contributors regarding the fourth edition, Mugglestone finds both works essential for assessing Johnson’s linguistic attitudes and working methods.
The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757–1763
This volume, ninth in the Research Series of correspondence in the Yale Boswell Editions, assembles the bulk of the surviving letters between the young Boswell and his circle of friends and acquaintances in a period crucial to his personal and authorial development, up to the time he wrote his now famous journal in London in 1762–63. Opening with an exchange — rooted in his rebellious adolescent fascination with the Edinburgh theatre — with the gentleman-actor West Digges, it closes with letters written in July 1763 near the end of his second visit to London (the one in which he first met Samuel Johnson), a short time before his reluctant departure for legal study in Utrecht. The volume features centrally the correspondence between Boswell and his friend and literary collaborator Andrew Erskine (1740–93), a poet/soldier of the kind the young Boswell briefly aspired to be. Their surviving letters, printed here alongside the revised versions in the facetious Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq., Boswell's first book-length publication, and the first to bear his name, offer revealingly early evidence of the kinds of selective self-revision Boswell would employ in his later writings and perfect in the Life of Johnson (1791). Overall, these letters document Boswell's fluid experiments in selfhood as he ponders his life's future possible trajectories — as soldier, lawyer, wit, author, bon-vivant, Scots laird, or M.P. — and records, and tests against other sensibilities, his fascination with the unfolding drama of his existence. James J. Caudle's introduction situates this drama in the historical contexts which it mirrors and illuminates, following Boswell from his post-Culloden Edinburgh boyhood to his capitulation to his formidable father's vision for him (to follow him as a Scots laird and lawyer) soon after the brief and embattled premiership of the Earl of Bute brings a vexed and controversial end to the Seven Years' War. Some thirty-five correspondents are represented in more than 150 letters and other documents (such as verse-epistles), comprehensively annotated to the long-established standards of the Yale Boswell Editions.
Yale editions of the private papers of James Boswell: research edition
The Correspondence of James Boswell and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo
This volume, tenth in the Yale Boswell Editions Research Series of correspondence, collects the letters exchanged between James Boswell (1740–1795) and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739–1806), eminent banker, civic improver, philanthropist, literary and cultural patron, and lay leader of Edinburgh's "English Episcopal" community
Yale University Press; Edinburgh University Press
The Journals in Scotland, England and Ireland, 1766–1769
The journals covered by the volume record much of Boswell's life as a young advocate during the first few years of his practice at the Scottish bar. The journals also record much information about Boswell's composition and publication of his instant best-seller, Account of Corsica, his involvement as a volunteer for the Douglas camp in the great Douglas Cause and his search for a wife. During Boswell's visits to London and Oxford in 1768, he produced some of his finest journal-writing, including details of memorable and significant conversations with Samuel Johnson. The manuscript journals in the volume have been printed to correspond to the originals as closely as is feasible in the medium of print.
The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb: Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate
This volume contains the surviving correspondence of James Boswell, who became ninth laird of Auchinleck in Ayrshire in 1782, with his estate overseers James Bruce (1719–90) and Andrew Gibb (1767–1839). Bruce, succeeding his father, served the estate from 1741 until his death. Relations between Bruce and the Auchinleck family were close and long standing, and Bruce, twenty-one years Boswell's senior, was an avuncular friend and tutor to Boswell in his youth, mediating the vexed relationship between him and his father and playing an integral part in Boswell's education in estate management. Gibb, just 22 when appointed to succeed Bruce, enjoyed a less close but still cordial relationship with the laird, and eventually served Boswell, his son, and his grandson, for a total of 46 years. The letters in this volume present Boswell in a light perhaps new to those who know him as diarist, advocate, and biographer of Samuel Johnson. He appears here as one of the "gentleman improvers" of a largely agricultural south-western Scotland on the brink of the Industrial Revolution, and the volume, a contribution to regional social and economic history, offers an extensive and detailed case study of estate life and management during this important transitional period.
The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb
James Boswell's Letter to Samuel Johnson, 20th September 1779: This Facsimile Commemorates the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Death of James Boswell on the 19th May 1795
Facsimile of a letter in the Beinecke Rare Book Collection, Yale University Library Facsimile in wrapper Wrapper contains a transcription of the letter (reprinted from Private papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle, ed. by G. Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, v. 13, p. 312, 1932) and a note by Graham Nicholls "This keepsake was produced in September 1995 by the Johnson Society of Lichfield."
James Boswell's Letter to Samuel Johnson, 20th September 1779
Mrs. Thrale's Teapot, and Other Ways of Making Dr. Johnson at Home
Richardson, Johnson, and Modern Novel Writing in the Eighteenth Century
On the treatment of death in Johnson's Lives of the Poets. The Richard Thrale Memorial Lecture for 2014.
Lynch identifies the monograph as a revisionist study of print culture that challenges the stability proposed by earlier scholars. Lynch explains that Wildermuth applies modern chaos theory and fractal mathematics to examine Johnson’s nonfiction prose, portraying him as a "chaotician" before the fact. The review notes that Wildermuth’s investigation of Johnson’s relation to media instability creates a wide-ranging, though dense and abstract, investigation.
Johnson in Devon in 1762: Some Near Misses
'The Race with Death': Samuel Johnson and Holy Dying
What to Tell Flirtilla: Masquerade in the Age of Johnson
'A Painted Poppet, Full of Affectation and Rural Airs': A Study of Samuel Johnson's Marriage
Miss Sainthill and the Female Quixote: Dr. Johnson, Hill Boothby and Charlotte Lennox
Chisholm discusses the connections between Johnson, Hill Boothby, and Lennox's novel, The Female Quixote. Johnson assists Lennox with a chapter of the novel, reflecting his engagement with her as a woman writer. The analysis incorporates Miss Sainthill's commentary concerning Hill Boothby’s religious views. The study of Lennox and Johnson’s circle provides context for understanding Johnson's literary and personal relationships with women in an era when criticism focuses on female writers.
John Wesley, William Copwer and Samuel Johnson: Electricity in the Enlightenment
An Account of a Journey to Ethiopia: The Mysterious Land of Rasselas
Shakespeare's Critics: Elizabeth Montagu, Samuel Johnson and Voltaire
George Keate Esq: Friend of Johnson's Literary Circle
'An Ornament of the Metropolis'? Johnson, Sheridan, and the London Theatre
On the ambivalent social standing of the 18th-century London theatre, an "ornament of the metropolis" that was also a source of moral anxiety. Focusing on Johnson and Sheridan, Blake shows how the stage was both a source of fame and a "nursery of vice." Sheridan, despite his theatrical success, showed an "instinctive abhorrence" for acting, reflecting the popular prejudice. Johnson's low opinion of "players" as "showmen" stemmed from his deep-seated distaste for a public exhibition that compromised the dignity of literature.
Boswell's and Reynolds's Conflicting Diagnoses and the Nineteenth Century Genre Paintings of Dr. Johnson
On the competing interpretations of Johnson's involuntary gestures by his memorialists. Boswell diagnosed them as St. Vitus's Dance, using the physical ailment to emphasize a figure prone to ridicule. Reynolds viewed them as voluntary, psychosomatic "tricks" tied to Johnson’s inner melancholy and guilt. This conflict in representation influenced the popular Victorian icon. Nineteenth-century genre paintings ultimately favored the highly physical, anecdote-driven Boswellian image over Reynolds's dignified, classical portrayal, cementing the image of a grotesque, suffering genius.
On Johnson's authoritative yet complex views on metaphor and its essential role in language. Johnson prized the metaphor that conformed to reason and decorum, famously defining it as giving "two ideas for one." He condemned the Metaphysical Poets' extravagant conceits for "yok[ing] heterogeneous ideas together by violence." His criticism of Shakespeare's "low" imagery, such as comparing a king's grave to a "pie," underscores his Augustan preference for generalized, dignified language, often leading him to undervalue the emotional and animating power of concrete imagery.
Kemp playfully explores the possibilities of an invented digital "inverter" technology that flips the content of historical texts and literary figures to reveal new meanings. By applying this concept to the canonical biographies, the author presents excerpts from a hypothetical, inverted work titled "Johnson's Life of Boswell." In this satirical reimagining, Boswell is recast as the confident, witty sage who dictates philosophical pronouncements and poems, while Johnson is depicted as the humble, deferential follower who laboriously records his master’s every word and action. The piece satirizes the original literary relationship and modern technology.
Reference Point: Samuel Johnson and the Encyclopaedias
On Johnson's intellectual reception by the earliest English encyclopaedias and historical dictionaries, focusing on Chambers' Cyclopaedia, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the Biographia Britannica. These massive repositories of "non-fiction" writings, a form Johnson himself championed, established him posthumously not as a specialist authority, but as a critical reference point. Johnson's reputation, consolidated through frequent citation of his Lives of the Poets and biographical works, became that of a reliable moral and literary guide whose notice dignified any subject. The evolving encyclopaedic model ultimately reinforced Johnson's iconic cultural status.
John Law and Dr. Johnson: on Money, Trade and Gambling
The Elocutionist and the Lexicographer: Benjamin Suggitt Nayler reads Samuel Johnson
On the enduring influence of Johnson on the lifelong radical, elocutionist, and bookseller Benjamin Suggitt Nayler (1796–1875), a figure in Dutch and Australian literary life. Nayler, who taught English in Amsterdam and later became a Spiritualist in Australia, frequently lectured on and read from Johnson's works, including Dryden and Pope Compared and On the Opening of Drury Lane. While Nayler criticized Johnson as lacking "genius" and being a poor authority on pronunciation, he deeply revered the "Colossus of English Literature" for his moral philosophy, appreciating him as a "true man" of truth and goodness.
The cultural icon of Johnson is formed by a fusion of his words, Boswell's biography, and the pictorial tradition. The portraits by Reynolds (particularly the 1769 profile) are vital to this image, contributing Johnson's "embodiment," a sense of physical weight and presence. While Boswell suppressed Johnson's true "dreadful appearance" and inner anguish for the sake of portraying the dignified sage, Reynolds captured the agonized Johnson in the throes of "vile melancholy." The portraits thus reveal the hidden source of Johnson's immense power: his guilt and suffering.
Boswell, Addison's Cato, and the 'Minute Philosopher'
The prominence Joseph Addison's Cato (1713) enjoyed in England to the very end of the eighteenth century is easy to overlook today, when it is never performed and rarely read. Literary scholars, on the other hand, rarely discuss it today, although in the decades after its first appearance the play was extraordinarily well known in France as well as England, and for its moral and philosophical import as well as its political significance. [...]when James Boswell was on his continental tour in 1764, he recorded several exchanges with François-Marie Arouet Voltaire about the philosopher's entry on "Soul" in the Dictionnaire philosophique, and of course prided himself on confronting the famous man: "I am exceeding happy," he wrote to him,"'that I have had an important conversation with you" (Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, 303-4, 319). Insisting on the immortality of the soul, Boswell had uttered just four words, "It must be so," a recall of the beginning of Act V of Addison's tragedy, when Cato sits with "Plato's Book on the Immortality of the Soul [Phaedra]" in his hand and a sword in front of him, contemplating suicide: "It must be so - Plato, thou reason'st well!- / Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, / This longing after immortality" (88).1 Fourteen years later, in three consecutive Hypochondriack essays on the subject of "Death" (nos. 14, 15, 16, November 1778, December 1778, and January 1779), Boswell returned to Cato's death near the beginning of his extended discourse. [...]while the "episodes" of Cato are "absolutely detach'd from the principle [sic] Action" in Cato of Utica they "hold with the Subject . . . and discover the plot: A short Analysis of these two Plays will show very much this Fault in the English, that Beauty in the French" (43).
Theatre Notebook: A Journal of the History and Technique of the British Theatre
Scots in London in the Eighteenth Century
James Boswell (H. Scoticus Londoniensis)
'This Changeableness in Character': Exploring Masculinity and Nationhood on James Boswell's Grand Tour
Viewing Things in a Different Shade: Thematic and Structural Unity in the Early Journals of James Boswell
Gilbert explores the thematic and structural methods by which Boswell achieved literary cohesion in his early, unretrospectively written Journals, arguing that their complexity rivals the structure of novels. The work analyzes how Boswell adapted his central organizing principle for each volume as his view of life changed, using various techniques such as Aristotelian three-act structures, symbolic leitmotifs, and "metajournalism." Key themes examined include the search for self-identity, the effects of imagination on reality, and the quest for lasting fame. The analysis posits that Boswell's structural experiments, including those that incorporate Johnson's presence and discourse, functioned as an apprenticeship for the complex composition of the Life of Johnson.
Political Hypochondria: The Case of James Boswell
Three New James Boswell Articles from The Public Advertiser, 1763
Attributes three short pieces, including two prose essays and a poem, published in The Public Advertiser in 1763, to James Boswell, based on external evidence from his personal memoranda and internal thematic and stylistic consistency. The pieces, signed with only a "B." and a location, reflect Boswell's youthful personality, including his hypochondriacal fear of death and his ambition for literary recognition. The second prose essay is a vivid nightmare sequence that revisits specific London locations and fears from his private journal. These ephemeral publications demonstrate Boswell's early and active engagement as an anonymous journalist.
Failed Laird, Successful Author: James Boswell of Auchinleck
Marcus analyzes Boswell's tenure as the ninth laird of Auchinleck from 1782 to 1795, arguing that his temperament, absent management, and chaotic lifestyle led to financial failure and an encumbered estate. Boswell's increasing debt and personal struggles contrasted sharply with his literary achievements, particularly the completion of The Life of Johnson. The study examines Boswell's financial documents and correspondence with overseers, showing that his literary work, despite being a lesser ambition, ultimately secured his lasting fame. It concludes that the failure as laird ultimately heightened the respect for his great literary success.
Nations and Nationalisms: France, Britain, Ireland and the Eighteenth-Century Context
James Boswell's Design for a Scottish Periodical in the Scots Language: The Importance of His Prospectus for the Sutiman Papers (ca. 1770?)
Caudle publishes for the first time Boswell's draft prospectus for a proposed periodical, The Sutiman (The Chimney Sweep), intended to be written entirely in the Scots language. Caudle places this unrealized project (likely conceived around 1770) within the context of Boswell's ambivalent relationship with Scots, contrasting it with his more famous efforts to master standard English for a London audience. The prospectus reveals Boswell's desire to preserve contemporary Scots vernacular, distinct from antiquarian Scots, arguing for its "pith and fushion." This plan exemplifies the cultural paradox of eighteenth-century Anglicizing Scottish intellectuals who simultaneously sought to maintain connections with their native linguistic and literary heritage.
James Boswell, Joseph Addison, and the Spectator in the Mirror
This research is a disquisition upon the nature of auto-biographical identity by way of an examination of part of the life and thought of one of the most significant of biographers — James Boswell. Focusing on Boswell's private journal of his early adult and middle years, from 1762 to the late 1770s, the study extrapolates from these and other readings to bring forth aspects of Boswell which have not been previously accented. What emerges is a complex character, in many ways both arrogant and humble, who also suffered from a debilitating mental condition, known to his century as hypochondria. This condition, which Boswell believes was inherited but to which he may have been psychologically pre-disposed owing to the affective conditions of his early years, expressed itself in episodes of gloom and despondency. In spite of these, Boswell was able to sustain his efforts in fields as varied as the personal, the social, the financial, the literary — not to mention the amatory — as part of his desire to improve aspects of his often impetuous selfhood. This impulse towards betterment was integral to Boswell's nature, as was his need to seek out a mentor on whose wisdom he could rely. Boswell's restless questing nature, with its many falls from grace, is the revelation of his early journals. This study is essentially a re-assessment of the historical Boswell, presenting him in the light of his own understanding of himself and as such is a contribution to auto-biographical studies.
'Plain, Hamely, Fife': James Boswell's Shameful National Masculinity
Much has been made in the scholarship of eighteenth-century autobiography of James Boswell's journals, particularly the London Journal of 1762–3. While critical attention has tended to focus on his use of journal writing to construct and shift between various idealised masculine identities, few have recognised the central importance of shame to Boswell's project. This essay argues that by examining shame in dialogue with Boswell's conflicting ideas of national identity – his desire to embody English politeness whilst caught in a volatile relationship with his Scottishness – we are better placed to understand his idiosyncratic selfhood. My account of the London Journal, in concert with the letters he wrote his close friend John Johnston, situates shame in context as a catalyst of masculine identity formation in a period of political and societal transition.
James Boswell, Henry Dundas, and Enlightened Politics
Contrasts James Boswell with his contemporary and rival, Henry Dundas, portraying Dundas as Boswell's successful alter ego or "Doppelganger" in the realm of politics. Fry compares their similar backgrounds but divergent paths, highlighting Dundas’s rise through professional diligence, family loyalty, and political pragmatism within the context of Scotland's union with England. Boswell’s political failure is attributed not just to personal shortcomings but to his inability to reconcile his traditional, personal values (like aristocratic honor) with the increasingly impersonal, professional, and pragmatic demands of "enlightened" British politics exemplified by Dundas.
James Boswell and the Rev. William Harper (1693–1765)
James Boswell's journal had lapsed at this period, so no record of Rev. William Harper's death, or of this auction, makes an appearance in his surviving writings. But it must have been here that he made the acquisition. Basic biographical details for Harper can be found in David M. Bertie, Scottish Episcopal Clergy 1689-2000. A detailed account of the Carrubber's Close chapel and its ardently and actively Jacobite congregations, can be found in Mary E. Ingram, A Jacobite Stronghold of the Church. Several general reasons can be adduced for the young Boswell's wish to own an item once owned by "the Worthy and Reverend" William Harper, but one in particular.
Book Trade Connections from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries
Young Boswell and the London Stationers: The Authorial Collaboration of James Boswell with William Flexney, Bookseller, and Samuel Chandler, Printer, 1763
Caudle analyzes the professional and social interactions between Boswell, bookseller William Flexney, and printer Samuel Chandler during the 1763 publication of correspondence between Boswell and Andrew Erskine. Using Boswell's journals and memoranda, Caudle traces the transition from private manuscript to public print, highlighting how Boswell actively negotiated production terms, corrected proofs, and navigated the "mysteries" of the London book trade. The text details Boswell's strategic use of Alexander Donaldson as an agent to engage Paternoster Row booksellers and describes the celebratory conviviality among authors and stationers. While primarily a case study of Boswell's apprenticeship in authorship, the narrative includes mentions of Johnson as a figure of toasting and a professional benchmark, specifically citing Johnson's maxim on writing for money and his later characterization of Donaldson as the "Robin Hood of Literature." Caudle concludes that such micro-histories of "obscure" early works reveal the essential roles of sociability and connection in eighteenth-century publishing.
From Bibliotheca Boswelliana, the Sale Catalogue of the Library of James Boswell, the Younger
Sherbo analyzes the 1825 sale catalogue of James Boswell the Younger to illuminate the scholarly habits and collections of JB and his son. Supplementing Osborn’s earlier study, the article identifies specific lots containing manuscript notes by JB and Malone, establishing their authorship attribution for various anonymous works. It highlights JB’s significant collection of Spanish literature, suggesting a previously unrecognized Hispanist interest. The study traces provenance, identifying presentation copies and volumes previously owned by figures like Bindley, Steevens, and Pope.
Icons, Texts, Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality
The Battle of the Signs: Robert Crumb's Visual Reading of James Boswell's London Journal
Pape analyzes Robert Crumb’s 1981 comic strip adaptation of Boswell's *London Journal* as a "clever contemporary critique" that forces "modern visual images upon an eighteenth-century text." While Boswell's original prose is "ambiguous and evocative," Crumb’s visual rendering provides a "specific but constrained reading" that emphasizes "iconic ellipsis." The strip focuses on Boswell's "various adventures and reflections," particularly his sexual pursuit of the actress Louisa and his "strong monarchical inclinations" supported by Johnson’s principles of subordination. Pape argues that Crumb’s "abbreviation and reduction" of the phenomena within the diary creates a "warfare between the two media" of text and image. The text considers how the German translation by Rowohlt further complicates this "interaction between different kinds of perception." The visual adaptation serves as a "virtual witnessing" that reduces eighteenth-century complexity to an "easily perceivable level" of underground social satire.
James Boswell, Journals and Letters from his Grand Tour (1764–1765)
Schaff examines Boswell’s Grand Tour journals as a complex exercise in "self-construction" and "ego-documentation." Unlike conventional Grand Tour accounts focused on classical antiquities, Boswell’s notes emphasize interpersonal encounters and amorous pursuits in Germany and Italy. Schaff argues that Boswell uses his travels as a metaphor for character formation, struggling to reconcile religious strictures with "sexual recklessness." The chapter details Boswell's "shameless self-fashioning" as he tries on various roles, from the rake to the "sentimental lover." Schaff highlights Boswell’s use of love letters to Porzia Sansedoni and Girolama Piccolomini as a literary medium for developing adult selfhood. These correspondences reflect a broader paradigm shift in the eighteenth century toward a social semantics of intimacy and individual uniqueness. Schaff demonstrates how Boswell’s "unguarded" and "incoherent" notes provide unique insight into the psychological battles of a young man seeking spiritual guidance and surrogate fathers like Rousseau and Voltaire.
Identification and Identity in James Boswell's Journals: A Psycholinguistic Reflection
James Boswell Practising French and Learning Dutch in the Netherlands
Boswell’s early publishing career demonstrates how printed criticism functioned as a critical tool for social advancement within the London world of letters. The collaborative pamphlet Critical Strictures, a scurrilous attack on Mallet, along with the Letters volume, intentionally violated propriety to provoke a public controversy. This negative attention was a mark of success for "Boswell & Co.," as it established their identities as facetious wits and "gentlemen of the quill" in print. This strategy of "bad criticism" exploited the tension between a national reading public and narrower social networks, ultimately leading to Boswell's desired socialization—specifically, gaining acquaintance with prominent authors like Churchill and Wilkes, proving that public print could be a potent instrument of personal, localized, and even intimate networking.
In Memory of Richard B. Klein: Essays in Contemporary Philology
James Boswell and the Interpretation of Dreams
The Boswell Papers (1927–2021) and the Mediated Meaning of Place
In 1927, the American collector Lt-Col. Ralph Heyward Isham arrived in New York with what he then thought was the entirety of the James Boswell Papers, which had been presumed lost by scholars since Boswell's death in 1795. Soon, Isham began the process of publishing them in a private-press edition limited to 570 sets, as Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham. This essay explain the complicated beliefs about place, communication, and the meaning of paper that inhere in that seemingly simple title, arguing that the pursuit of manuscripts in a print culture represented an attempt to bring the unmappable world into the defined limits of the collector's home – an effort not at all unlike the big-game hunting for which Isham was also well known. This effort, the essay argues, has become impossible to conceptualise in a world of digital collecting.
CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary
The Navigation of a Soul: The Spiritual Autobiography of James Boswell
Priestley argues that Boswell's journals constitute a spiritual autobiography revealing an intense religious impulse tempered by skepticism, a duality characterized as the "devout skeptic." The study charts Boswell's engagement with four Christian denominations: the Church of Scotland, the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the Religious Society of Friends. Boswell disliked the gloom of Calvinism associated with the Church of Scotland but found spiritual satisfaction in the ritual of the Catholic Mass and the communal nature of the Church of England, the preferred denomination of his friend Johnson. Boswell found Quaker simplicity to be a valuable alternative in his lifelong quest for spiritual peace and solace against the fear of death.
Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650–1850
Affleck Generations: The Libraries of the Boswells of Auchinleck, 1695–1825
Caudle analyzes the Boswell family library at Auchinleck as a multigenerational and multi-locational institution that functioned as an intellectual tool and financial asset. He focuses on the reverent approach taken by Boswell to his father Lord Auchinleck’s collection, noting that Boswell opted to add to rather than weed and seed the library upon becoming Laird in 1782. The text explores Boswell’s 1785 will, which imposed an obligation on the family to preserve the Curios Collection of the Classics and all manuscripts for Ever. Caudle highlights Boswell’s inexcusable carelessness regarding the legal entail of his own modern books and London library, which led to significant legal disputes and the eventual dispersal of the collection. The chapter further details the role of Boswell’s sons, Sandie and Jamie, in maintaining the library before its 19th-century decline and 20th-century discovery as a repository for Boswell's private papers.
While scholars often mention the influence of James Boswell's strict Presbyterian upbringing on his emotional life, his voluminous journals are typically approached in secular psychological terms This essay puts the journals in conversation with Calvinist-Christian theology and reads Boswell's feelings, specifically his self-directed hateful ones, as religious in nature. Beginning with the vexed issue of hatred in Calvin and later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious writers, who exhort the believer to hate his sin while acknowledging the dangers posed by hatred, the essay then turns to Boswell's religious attitudes and feelings. Boswell's melancholy, shame after a night of drunkenness or prostitution, and statements such as ‘I despised myself' or ‘my wretched existence' demonstrate a mode of self-hatred that is distinctly Calvinist. ‘Correct' Calvinist self-hatred — hating your sin and inclination to sinfulness — should provoke love of God, yet Boswell struggles to find any consolation in his hateful feelings. The journals prove to be powerful examples of the Calvinist degradation of the self, as well as important texts in the culture of the ‘long Reformation'.
This article considers a pair of strange bedfellows, the diarist James Boswell and the cartoonist R. Crumb. In 1981, Crumb published a comic-book adaptation of Boswell's London Journal. This essay considers that comic from several angles: as a veiled autobiography, as a Hogarthian satire, and as a parody of the Classics Illustrated comic books of the forties and fifties. Crumb's adaptation, I argue, helps us to a new appreciation of key aspects of Boswell's text: its visual properties (or lack thereof), its generic status, and its relation to the 1950s world which provided it with a mass audience.
Fugitive Allusions in Boswell in Search of a Wife; or, The Charming Mr. Boswell
Walker reexamines Boswell as a learned and skillful author, arguing that the "charm" of his writing is evident in his use of literary and historical allusions, often miscredited or obscured. Focusing on Boswell in Search of a Wife, Walker identifies and explicates several neglected references, including a commonplace phrase concerning King Saul and suicide, a possible reference to Rousseau's Julie, a duel anecdote involving Turenne, a political pun on "perfidious Gaul," an instance of mistaken classical quotation, and an allusion to Shakespeare's Cymbeline connected to Boswell's genealogical concerns.
Fencers Treading upon Ice: Boswell and the 'Question of Literary Property'
Elliott examines the historical context surrounding a 1774 pamphlet published by Boswell, titled The Decision of the Court of Sessions upon the Question of Literary Property. This publication emerged from the intense legal battles between Scottish and English booksellers over copyright limitations established by the Statute of Anne in 1710. Scottish booksellers, notably Alexander Donaldson, challenged the permanent copyright claims of London publishers by offering cheap reprint editions. Serving as counsel for Donaldson, Boswell documented the Scottish court's decision, which rejected perpetual common-law ownership of literary works. Elliott details how Boswell rushed this pamphlet into print to influence a concurrent, pivotal copyright case before the House of Lords, Donaldson v. Becket, which secured a victory for the Scottish booksellers.
The Development of Boswell's Technique of the 'Epiphany' in the London Journal
Three Notes to Boswell in Extremes, 1776–1778
Walker analyzes Boswell's Life of Johnson, a biography. An observation by James Boswell in his personal papers provides a useful if cryptic warning to modern annotators: 'I said metaphors and allusions floated in the world of ideas, and different people might find them as they find the same deer at different times. This caution must be balanced by the need a modern reader has for assistance in understanding Boswell's allusiveness, an allusiveness that abounds to a greater extent in his personal papers and his periodic essays than in his Life of Johnson. Generally, the modern editors of his journals have addressed this need well, including the editors of the particular volume from which this quotation is taken.
'A Species of Despotism': Catholicism and Benevolent Authoritarianism in Boswell's Account of Corsica
Strawn argues that Boswell’s Account of Corsica portrays Corsican Catholicism sympathetically, linking its perceived "superstition" to a virtuous deference fostering benevolent authoritarianism under Pasquale Paoli. This contrasts with interpretations viewing the work through a lens of Wilkite radicalism. Boswell presents Corsica not as a model republic embodying Enlightenment rationality and anti-authoritarianism, but as a foil to British radicals' perceived erosion of social stability, traditional authority, and religious faith. The Corsicans' piety nourishes a patriotic fidelity that Boswell implicitly recommends to Britons grappling with modernity's challenges.
James Boswell has been most fortunate in his twentieth-century editors, from Margery Bailey's edition of The Hypochrondriack in 1928 to Geoffrey Scott's and Frederick A. Pottle's work on the 'Journals' in the first half of the century, work continued by a fine group of scholars gathered around Pottle and producing journal volumes well to the end of the century. This superior editing is also true, of course, of Boswell's Life of Johnson, but for several years now an effort has been undertaken to fill some annotative gaps in these other of Boswell's writings; this note continues that effort.
Belle van Zuylen and James Boswell: Friends or Foes?
Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies
The Embodied Mind of Boswell's The Hypochondriack and the Turn-of-the-Century Novel
Wilson analyzes Boswell's Hypochondriack series (1777–1783) in light of the evolving eighteenth-century understanding of hypochondria, shifting from a somatic nerve issue to a psychological condition centered in the brain. Wilson argues Boswell adopts this newer perspective, formulating a self-help regimen focused on cognitive interventions—like cultivating sublime experiences and diversifying mental stimuli—to manage melancholy. The chapter highlights Boswell's frequent use of embodied metaphors to depict unseen mental states. It connects his representations of mental elasticity, cognitive modification, and the mind-body relationship to characterizations in novels by Burney (Camilla), Edgeworth (Belinda), and Austen (Persuasion), suggesting The Hypochondriack foreshadowed and contributed to a new psychological perspective in turn-of-the-century fiction.
Stone offers a biographical study of James Boswell's younger brother, Thomas David Boswell (T. D.), often overlooked or viewed negatively in Boswell scholarship. Stone traces T. D.'s life through five periods: his Edinburgh youth and banking apprenticeship; his years (1767-80) as a merchant in Valencia, Spain, associated with Sir Robert Herries; his return to Britain and role following Lord Auchinleck's death; his London career in the Navy Pay Office, secured via Henry Dundas; and his final years as a prosperous retiree. Stone explores T. D.'s complex character—pedantic, socially awkward, sometimes cold, yet capable of loyalty—and his often-strained but enduring relationship with James.
L'io sperimentale di James Boswell: Il London Journal
'Horrible Anarchy': James Boswell's View of the French Revolution
Danzinger examines Boswell's vehemently negative, monarchist response to the French Revolution, which he denounced as "horrible anarchy." Initially, Boswell adopted witty poses, planning a tragedy on the royalist martyr Favras and publicly mocking republican sympathizers. As the Revolution became more violent, he joined anti-revolutionary clubs and proposed a monument for Louis XVI. Boswell later positioned Johnson's Life as an antidote to French "sophistry." The combat death of a young relative, Colonel Bosville, ultimately transformed the distant conflict into a painful personal reality.
Plot and Episode in James Boswell's Grand Tour Journal
James Boswell's "Grand Tour Journal," which has failed to attract critical attention, is explored. Boswell's use of two narrative elements–plot and episode–imparts an artistry to this narrative.
Correspondance entre Pascal Paoli et James Boswell (1790–1795)
Boswell's 'The Cub' and the Shadow of Augustan Satire
Boswell's early poem, The Cub, at New-Market, is a satiric exercise in the Augustan tradition, not primarily Shandean. The poem, written in Swift's preferred rimed tetrameter, presents Boswell as an awkward "Cub" whose humiliation by the grotesque "Monster" triggers a social satire. The author contends that the poem's self-reflective critique, which exposes the laughing club members as "dunces," employs an ironic reversal that aligns with the mode of Swift, demonstrating a more sophisticated satiric ambition than previously acknowledged.
L'Angleterre et la Corse: Le Voyage de James Boswell (1765)
The Journals of James Boswell, 1762–1795
Covers 1762 through 1795, appearing after the thirteen-volume Yale trade edition journal series concluded in 1989. Positioned as part of The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, which includes both the completed trade edition and an ongoing research edition, this volume functions as an entry point for general readers. The trade edition journals, beginning with London Journal, 1762–1763 in 1950, were designed to select generally interesting material, presenting the text in modern spelling and popular annotation, and covering the author's life from 1740 to 1795. This 1991 collection features entries encompassing key periods, from before the 1763 meeting with Johnson through the composition of the Life of Johnson and until near his death in 1795, emphasizing the author's identity as a confessional diarist.
Rounce explores the limitations of Boswell’s cultivated sensibility by examining his role as a literary critic and his self-fashioning as a man of feeling. Boswell’s literary preferences often stand in muted opposition to Johnson’s more systematic and empirical critiques. While Johnson dismisses much modern poetry, Boswell adopts a role of ceaseless enthusiasm, using sensibility as an instinctual guide that bypasses rational argument. Rounce analyzes Boswell’s appreciation for poets like William Hamilton of Bangour and Edward Young, noting that Boswell’s reliance on the language of the heart often stymies his critical judgment. This lack of discrimination is most disastrously evident in Boswell’s poetic defense of slavery, where he assumes a grotesque shared feeling with the enslaved. Rounce concludes that while sensibility energized Boswell’s creative biographical work, it repeatedly failed him as a figure of critical probity, leading to significant inconsistencies in his literary and moral judgments.
Cosmopolitan Friendship in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to Corsica
Peña analyzes Boswell's Journal of a Tour to Corsica, arguing for its restoration in the Boswell canon and focusing on the emergence of a "sentimental and cosmopolitan friendship" between Boswell and General Paoli. The relationship, borne out of Boswell's ambition and Paoli's caution, transcends political and national affiliations. Boswell's confession of melancholy fosters genuine intimacy, turning his mission from political intervention to a heartfelt plea for British and international sympathy for the Corsican people, a cause he championed visually through his adopted Corsican dress.
Principle, Polemic, and Ambition: Boswell's A Letter to the People of Scotland and the End of the Fox–North Coalition, 1783
Aston examines Boswell's political pamphlet A Letter to the People of Scotland (1783), published just after George III dismissed the Fox-North coalition and appointed William Pitt the Younger. Aston argues that while opportunistic ambition played a role, Boswell's tract was significantly motivated by genuine constitutional principles, particularly his Tory alarm regarding Fox's East India Bill, which he viewed as a dangerous infringement on property rights and royal prerogative. Contextualizing the pamphlet within the "Crisis of the Constitution" and Boswell's political frustrations, the analysis highlights Boswell’s attempt to rally Scottish support for the King and the new Pitt ministry, showcasing his capacity for constitutional analysis and persuasive legal argumentation.
Boswell's Ephemeral Writing: An Overview
Newman surveys the vast corpus of Boswell’s ephemeral publications, totaling over 600 periodical items, two dozen pamphlets, and various broadsides. Boswell used these venues to satisfy "annihilation anxiety" and a "frenetic" need for public reflection of his consciousness. The text divides Boswell’s career into a "literary genius period" (1758–1767) focused on witty verse, a "journalistic period" (1768–1784) dominated by objective reporting on crimes, mutinies, and the Douglas Cause, and a "pursuit of immortality period" (1784–1795). During this final stage, Boswell used the press to conduct a "massive publicity campaign" for his biography of Johnson, engaging in "prolonged debate" with rivals Piozzi and Hawkins to assert his "perfect mode" of life-writing. Newman argues that these ephemeral works provide a "nuanced understanding" of Boswell’s authorial identity beyond his reputation as Johnson’s biographer.
James Boswell-oemotståndigt gripande, självrannsakande, med okonstlad stil
Further Addenda and Corrigenda to Annotations of Boswell's Hypochondriack
Seymour examines Boswell's use of the broadside format, focusing on two specific examples linked to celebratory public events where Boswell performed his compositions: "Verses in the Character of a Corsican," recited at the Shakespeare Jubilee masquerade in 1769, and "William Pitt, the grocer of London," sung at the Lord Mayor's Day dinner in 1790. Seymour discusses Boswell's motivations, including social performance, self-promotion, and, in the Pitt case, complex political maneuvering. The chapter details the printing circumstances and subsequent extreme rarity of these broadsides, attributing their scarcity primarily to the logistical difficulties of distributing them effectively after the events had passed. Provenance details for known surviving copies are provided.
'A Very Agreeable Way of Thinking': Devotion and Doctrine in Boswell's Religion
Tankard challenges the characterization of Boswell as a religious "trifler," presenting him instead as a man deeply exercised by "the central concerns of religion." Using the "Private Papers," Tankard traces Boswell's trajectory through various denominations—Calvinist, Methodist, Catholic, and deist—before settling into an Anglican practice that prioritized the feeling of "devotion." Boswell rejects "systematic" doctrines that inspire "gloom and terror," particularly the Calvinist teaching of necessity. He frequently uses Johnson as a source of "common-sense" stability against his own "infatuation with Fatality." Tankard emphasizes that Boswell assesses religious services based on their aesthetic impact, seeking a "fine frame" of mind that reconciles his contradictory impulses with a hope for happiness.
Addenda and Corrigenda to the Annotations of the Bailey Edition of Boswell's Hypochondriack
From October 1777 to August 1783 James Boswell published monthly and anonymously in the London Magazine seventy periodic essays entitled “The Hypochondriak”. These essays could be read only in their original source for the next 145 years, until Margery Bailey produced her heavily annotated, two-volume scholarly edition in 1928. In the following eight decades, with the exception of a contemporary review by R. W. Chapman in Modern Language Notes and a few updated notes in a condensed edition by Bailey in 1951, textual cruces and unidentified allusions in Boswell's essays have been ignored. Samuel Johnson believed that literary allusions and quotations of earlier writers, rather than being pedantry, showed “a community of mind”, and Boswell demonstrates his agreement throughout “The Hypochondriak”, where he engages in the parole of literary men in a frequent and deliberate manner. With labour-saving devices (such as computers, on-line texts, and search engines) that Bailey lacked, I have compiled a list of thirty-three items that can be thought of as supplemental to reading Boswell's essays in her 1928 edition. These items fill in gaps that Bailey acknowledged, make corrections when necessary, add especially appropriate information from the subsequently published versions of Boswell's private papers, and on occasion offer original notes, all to help the reader better understand Boswell's text.
Laurence Sterne's "A Sentimental Journey": A Legacy to the World
Despite the fact that in 1768 Laurence Sterne was a dying man, writing his final work, and James Boswell was a vigorous young man, writing his first masterpiece, the similarities and congruences between the two are worth exploring. Both, for example, exhibited a continued attraction to women, despite an awareness of religious and social prohibitions, and both struggled with questions of an immortal soul and the afterlife of Judgment. And of course both wanted to believe in free will, although that belief would result in their damnation for their, respectively, misspent youth and old age.
Anonymity and the Press: The Case of Boswell
This essay explores the conventions surrounding anonymity and pseudonymity in eighteenth-century British periodicals, where unsigned publication was the norm. Tankard analyzes Boswell's engagement with these practices, noting that only a small fraction of his over 600 periodical pieces were signed with his name. Boswell strategically employed full anonymity, various pseudonyms (around seventy-five distinct ones), and occasionally his initials or full name. These choices served diverse functions, enabling reportage, commentary, self-promotion (even self-review), political maneuvering, defense against critics, and playful deception, all within the accepted, complex norms of the time, which valued press freedom and understood the nuances of authorial concealment or revelation.
Boswell and Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz
Walker investigates a textual parallel between Boswell and Prussian journalist Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz regarding a method of public execution in Rome called macellare. Although Archenholz lived in London, the author deems a personal friendship unlikely. Instead, Walker argues Boswell appropriated the description for Hypochondriack 68 directly from Archenholz’s essay in Literatur und Völkerkunde (1782) or a subsequent collection. The chronological proximity of Archenholz’s German publication to Boswell’s revised essay suggests the German adventurer as the source for the anecdote.
Reed describes the chance discovery of a 1729 letter from Scott to Pottle found tucked inside a pamphlet titled Announcement. The letter, found in Scott's pocket after his death, expresses "profound admiration" for Pottle's bibliography and his "faculty of forestalling evidence." Reed also identifies a rare 1802 edition of Alexander Boswell's Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which contains the first publication of a poem by Boswell. The text explores the "providential" convergence of Pottle, Isham, Scott, and Tinker in securing the Boswell trove. Reed concludes that this "odd foursome" were united by their varied responses to the "great, coherent human document" of Boswell's papers.
Boswell in Braunschweig, 1764: Eindrücke eines Aufenthaltes am herzoglichen Hof
Kullman analyzes the "gall" and "frank wit" of Boswell as the essence of his unique genius, particularly his skills as an investigative reporter. Boswell's audacity and lack of timidity allow him to secure revealing interviews with figures like Voltaire and to offer intimate, unvarnished portraits of Johnson, including physical idiosyncrasies and passionate eating habits. The essay examines his journalistic exploits, such as his tour of Corsica and his candid courtroom interactions, framing his relentless curiosity as a core professional attribute.
Boswell's London Journal, Lord Eglinton, and the Politics of Preferment
Hatzberger analyzes the relationship between Boswell and Lord Eglinton in the London Journal to illuminate the complexity of eighteenth-century British patronage. Eglinton serves as a social mentor and surrogate father, a relationship Boswell simultaneously cultivates for professional advancement and resists rhetorically for intellectual independence. Boswell's confessions, particularly regarding his sexual indiscretion, create psychological indebtedness. The journal functions as a private space where Boswell asserts his own worth and critiques the system by framing patronage as a reciprocal "vertical friendship."
Boswell and Belle de Zuylen: Language and Legislation
Boswell's London Journal: Binding a Life
Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes Anglo-Americaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe Siecles
McLoughlin argues that Boswell’s Account of Corsica (1768) and its companion Journal constitute a sophisticated example of eighteenth-century "puffing." Boswell’s intent was to persuade Britain to aid the Corsican independence struggle and to promote himself as a writer. The essay details Boswell's strategic self-promotion, including fabricating anonymous newspaper reports to boost his notoriety. McLoughlin analyzes how Boswell uses panegyric to portray Corsicans as brave, simple people and to elevate Paoli as a Plutarchian hero, a portrayal which Boswell presents as a revelation of truth and authenticity despite its evident inflation and idealization.
Lettre de Zuylen et du Pontet: Bulletin Genootschap Belle de Zuylen Association Isabelle de Charriére
Reed chronicles the "melodramatic furor" surrounding the discovery of Boswell's papers at Malahide Castle in the 1920s. He details the efforts of Tinker, who first located the ebony cabinet, and Isham, the collector who ultimately secured the trove. The narrative emphasizes the pivotal role of Joyce, Lady Talbot, who managed the sale and attempted to expurgate "naughty bits" from the manuscripts. Reed examines the shifting scholarly stewardship from Scott to Pottle following Scott's sudden death in 1929. The text frames the discovery as a "romantic scavenger hunt" that transformed Boswell studies and eventually led the archive to Yale University.
Boswell's Symptoms: The Hypochondriack in and out of Context
Boswell's Pleasures, the Pleasures of Boswell
Manning analyzes Boswell's Journals through the lens of addiction theory, arguing that his compulsive self-reformation plans are structurally integral to the pleasure-pain cycle of his "lapses" into drunkenness and sexual excess. Boswell's writing fails to achieve the "composed" or "moral perfection" sought by figures like Franklin, instead remaining locked in an endless, cyclical narrative of resolve, failure, and renewed resolve. The self-admonishment, often in the voice of his father or a solicited father-figure like Rousseau, becomes a rhetorical compulsion—a form of "addictive accounting"—that prevents the silence or "oblivion" he fears. The reader's pleasure lies not in his moral success but in the immediate, non-reflective "sensation" and fluid style of the narrative as he escapes from thought.
Boswell's 'Egyptian Task': Ten Lines a Day
Boswell on Robertson and the Moderates: New Evidence
Sher identifies James Boswell as the author of a previously unattributed 1777 Edinburgh Evening Courant article concerning William Robertson and the Scottish "Moderates," using internal evidence to confirm the attribution. The "decisive clue" is the article's reference to an unpublished, private remark by Samuel Johnson—praising Scottish writing as "Scotch write English wonderfully well"—which was known only from a letter Johnson sent to Boswell. Sher argues the piece reflects Boswell’s characteristic ambivalence toward Robertson, admiring his "superior talents" and substantial earnings but criticizing his politics and alleged avarice. The article further targets Robertson's Moderate party clerical followers for attempting imitation, expressing disdain for these lesser figures who could only view Robertson's success from a "humble distance." Sher suggests the piece was likely penned during a period of Boswell's personal low spirits and demonstrates his ongoing effort to position himself as a bridge between the English literary establishment and Scottish historians. This new evidence confirms Boswell’s role in promoting the intellectual achievements of his countrymen while simultaneously criticizing those who "wield the pen" of history without Robertson's skill.
Zaretsky and Scott discuss James Boswell's tour in Europe to meet his two most admired philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, of the Age of Enlightenment. They also discuss the conversations that took place when Boswell finally met, separately, the two philosophers. During his separate meetings with Rousseau and Voltaire, Boswell asked questions and shared his beliefs on immortality and faith, among other things; He also expressed his admiration to both.
'Corsica Boswell': Ignominous Peace and Honourable War
Hamilton's 'Abdication,' Boswell's Jacobitism and the Myth of Mary Queen of Scots
On Gavin Hamilton's 1776 painting, "The Abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots," commissioned by Boswell. The analysis argues that the painting's ambiguities reflect Boswell's compromised political loyalties, which vacillated between Jacobite sentiment and Hanoverian pragmatism. Mary Queen of Scots's image, subject to wildly disparate interpretations, became a "cross-over" icon for both Jacobite and Whig sensibilities, often relying on a culturally pervasive "eroticism of pathos." Johnson's emotional response and Jacobite inscription for the painting exemplify this trend, suggesting that Jacobite myth survived by assimilating into the Whig mainstream's sentimental culture.
Master of Ulubrae: Boswell as Enlightened Laird
Argues for the centrality of Auchinleck in James Boswell's life, challenging views of him as merely a reluctant laird. Strawhorn details Boswell's deep-rooted, "romantic" attachment to his ancestral estate, his thorough preparation for lairdship, and his active management after succeeding his father in 1782. The analysis highlights Boswell's implementation of enlightened agricultural improvements, influenced by Alexander Fairlie, alongside his adherence to traditional feudal practices and paternalism towards tenants. Boswell's engagement with parish and county affairs demonstrates his commitment to fulfilling the multifaceted role of an eighteenth-century Scottish landowner, balancing tradition and progress.
'Something That Put Me in Mind of My Father': Boswell and Lord Kames
Explores the significant relationship between James Boswell and Henry Home, Lord Kames, positioning Kames as Boswell's Edinburgh father figure—a mediator between the opposing influences of Lord Auchinleck and Samuel Johnson. Sher details Kames's crucial role in advising Boswell during his youthful crises, acting as an intermediary with his father, and providing a model for combining legal/landed respectability with literary achievement. The essay also examines Boswell's subsequent, though unfinished, biographical project on Kames, analyzing the surviving notes to reveal themes of Kames’s unconventional past, intellectual maturation, and the complex father-son dynamic central to Boswell’s interest.
The Problem of Biographical Mastering: The Case for Boswell as Subject
Baruth argues that the Yale trade editions of Boswell's journals, despite Pottle’s laudable intent to rescue Boswell’s reputation, subject the fragmentary autobiographical texts to "biographical mastering." He contends that Pottle and subsequent editors infuse Boswell’s autobiographical writings with excessive biographical commentary and a moralizing construction of Boswell as a "weak good man," creating a monolithic character construction that subverts and overwrites Boswell’s subjective, varied textual identities. Baruth analyzes how paratextual mechanisms, such as editorial notes, sketches, and titles like Boswell in Search of a Wife, control the reader’s perception and predisposition toward the subject. He compares this institutional assertion of authority and the need for narrative coherence to the commodification of marginalized voices in other genres, such as slave narratives and feminist oral histories. The article asserts that this editorial practice fundamentally inhibits a true reading of Boswell's autobiography and concludes that while the Yale series is a comprehensive scholarly production, it functions as an authoritative construct that displaces Boswell’s own fragmentary records.
Boswell's Poetry: The Comic Cohesion of a Fragmented Self
Boswell's Response to the European Landscape
Enalyzes James Boswell's perception of European landscapes during his continental tour, categorizing his responses into three types. The first is a direct, emotional reaction to "romantic" natural scenery, rooted in his affection for Scotland. The second is a learned appreciation for "improved" landscapes, shaped by his association with Lord Kames and principles of the Scottish Enlightenment. The third, primarily evident in Italy, is a complex, classically influenced perspective mediated by authors like Addison. Perreten traces the development of these responses, highlighting how Boswell's engagement with landscape evolved from personal feeling to aesthetic theory and classical association.
Libertines Real and Fictional in the Works of Rochester, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Boswell
On the Restoration and eighteenth-century libertine figure, including Boswell in his London Journal, 1762-1763, arguing that standard definitions of libertinism feature inherent limitations and self-contradictions. Libertine protagonists reinterpret the concept to fit their personal agendas, satirizing the idea of libertinism itself. These figures misinterpret Hobbes to justify opposition to social institutions such as marriage and organized religion. The conclusion notes that real-life libertines Johnson and Pepys also struggle between libertinism and virtue.
English Historical Linguistics 1994: Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (8 ICEHL, Edinburgh, 19–23 September 1994)
Social Network Theory and Eighteenth-Century English: The Case of Boswell
Tieken-Boon van Ostade applies social network theory to Boswell’s correspondence to explain his transition from "informal spelling systems" to standard orthography. Early letters to Johnston reveal idiosyncratic patterns, such as "allways" and "beautifull," which Boswell abandoned after August 1767 upon entering a legal career in Edinburgh. Despite his "strong tie" to Johnson, Boswell occupied a "marginal position" within Johnson’s social circle, remaining linguistically independent of the Lexicographer’s influence. Unlike other contemporaries, Boswell failed to distinguish stylistically in his use of periphrastic do, a phenomenon attributed to "linguistic insecurity" stemming from his Scottish origins. Boswell functions as a "potential linguistic innovator" and a bridge between distinct social networks, though his personal "yearning for... exhibitionism" and lack of self-confidence drove a radical shift toward public norms in his private writings.
The Boswells and Platina's Lives of the Popes
Zachs reports on the discovery of a folio volume of Platina's Vitis Pontificum Romanorum bearing the ownership inscriptions of multiple Boswells. Boswell's grandfather, James, acquired the 1593 Latin text while studying law at Leyden in 1697. Zachs suggests the young Scotsman's extensive marginalia reflect an active, perhaps "seductive," engagement with Roman Catholic history. Although Boswell mentioned "Platina" on a scrap of paper in 1781, no direct allusions appear in his Hypochondriack essays. Zachs notes that the library at Auchinleck originally contained at least three editions of this work, underscoring the family's "bibliomania" and their commitment to preserving a "noble Library."
Politics in the Boswell–Temple Correspondence
Examines the political discourse within the extensive correspondence between Boswell and his lifelong friend, William Johnson Temple. Crawford highlights their ongoing dialogue on important eighteenth-century political issues, including republicanism versus monarchy, the Wilkes affair, the American Revolution, parliamentary reform, and the French Revolution. The analysis contrasts Temple's evolving, often radical Whig perspective, influenced by classical republicanism and Enlightenment thinkers, with Boswell's more conservative, though complex and sometimes libertarian, Toryism. Their letters reveal a deep intellectual engagement, reflecting broader political debates and personal ideological shifts, particularly their eventual convergence towards conservatism.
A Pretty Trifle: Art and Identity in Boswell's London Journal
This study speculates on what effects narcissistic injuries inflicted during James Boswell's childhood might have had on the artistry in the London Journal. Drawing heavily on the theories of Erik Erikson, narcissism, and Jay Martin k theory of the fictive personality, it suggests that Boswell's literary talent was stimulated by the need to relieve the psychic distress of a painful identity crisis. When in London, he attempted to relieve this psychic pain by composing an entertaining journal narrative that would evoke mirror images of a talented writer in an audience of one.
Eccles details Ralph Isham's exhaustive campaign to acquire the manuscripts of Boswell from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House. The narrative outlines the discovery of the papers in 1925 and the subsequent diplomatic negotiations with Lord and Lady Talbot. Eccles emphasizes the roles of Pottle and Scott in editing the Private Edition and records the financial difficulties that plagued Isham throughout the process. The account concludes with the 1949 transfer of the archive to Yale, supported by Paul Mellon and McGraw-Hill, ensuring the safety of the Life of Johnson manuscripts and Boswell's journals.
ELLUG (Editions Litteraires et Linguistiques de l'Universite de Grenoble III)
Publisher's blurb: "Boswell (1740–1795), auteur réputé d'une imposante,Vie de Samuel Johnson, mérite à bien d'autres titres d'être célébré. Ses volumineux «papiers», depuis peu accessibles, permettent de dresser le portrait d'un homme franchement étonnant, dont l'exorbitance des comportements fascine et captive. Quel avocat voulut-il jamais, comme lui — faute de pouvoir établir son innocence — ressusciter après pendaison un client malheureux? Né en Écosse, il parcourut l'Europe, fréquenta Voltaire et Rousseau, coucha avec Thérèse, rendit visite à Paoli au moment où s'organisait la résistance corse à la France. Ardent défenseur de ceux qui, dans les «provinces», menaient leur guerre d'indépendance, il dénonça avec une paradoxale énergie les «barbares horreurs» de la Révolution française. Sa rencontre avec Johnson fit de lui un biographe. Mais son Journal est plus que la Vie: y sont consignées les humeurs changeantes d'un grand mélancolique et les affriolantes confessions qui font de lui un Casanova écossais, un Don Juan venu du froid; mais un Don Juan à scrupules : l'hypocondrie, ou la rançon du plaisir. Époux infidèle, père imprévoyant, ivrogne impénitent, ardent jouisseur sous l'œil improbateur de Calvin ... Boswell — franchement insupportable et tout à fait attachant — vaut la rencontre."
'Happy to Worship in a Romish Church': Boswell and Roman Catholicism
Priestley analyzes Boswell's lifelong attraction to Roman Catholicism, tracing it from his brief 1760 conversion, a reaction to Calvinism, through his later life. Boswell consistently found spiritual satisfaction in Catholic worship, often attending Mass and adoring privately in foreign embassy chapels and during his Grand Tour. He engaged in extensive theological discussions with figures like Needham, Rousseau, and Johnson regarding doctrines like transubstantiation, reflecting his profound yet unresolved religious inquiry.
'Never Met-and Never Parted': The Curious Case of Burns and Boswell
Purdie explores the non-meeting of Boswell and Burns, highlighting their shared literary prominence, Ayrshire origins, and attraction to the same woman, Wilhelmina Alexander. The author attributes Boswell's deliberate avoidance to the poet's radical Whig politics clashing with Boswell's high Toryism and his elitist view of authorship. Despite Burns's explicit desire for an introduction, Boswell acknowledged him only with a brief, dismissive annotation on a letter. The article ultimately emphasizes the profound literary and cultural significance of the two men's non-relationship.
Imagining Selves: Essays in Honor of Patricia Meyer Spacks
Boswell's London Journal, 1762–1763, and Frances Sheridan's The Discovery: Imagining the Maternal
Language International: The Business Resource for a Multilingual Age
Rousseau's British Readers and the Eloisa Effect
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's controversial interclass romance Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) and its English translation Eloisa: Or, A Series of Original Letters (1761) were noteworthy commercial successes in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. By examining commentary by the novel's first wave of British and Irish readers from 1760–1785, this article recovers how a publishing phenomenon provoked a diversity of reading responses and stoked debates regarding feminine propriety, social rank, and romantic autonomy. Alongside major figures in eighteenth-century literature and culture such as James Beattie, Frances Burney, Thomas Gray, Anna Seward, and Horace Walpole, two key clusters of readers are considered. The article contends that men of the middle ranks (including James Boswell, Richard Hurd, and William Warburton) were validated by the central romance, wherein an aristocratic woman recognizes the intellectual merit of an untitled suitor, while women across social ranks (Sarah Hurst, the Ladies of Llangollen) interpreted the text as supporting womens' romantic autonomy.
Cole discusses the Pottle-Brady biography, James Boswell, the Later Years, 1769-1795, as a distillation of six thousand documents in the Yale Boswell Papers. The biography details Boswell's failures in law, politics, finance, and health after 1769, attributing his choices to his hatred of Scotland and love for London. Cole highlights Brady's analysis of The Life of Johnson, arguing that Boswell's psychological analysis and use of mimesis created an authentic, epic portrait. Cole concludes that the biography is comprehensive but criticizes the slow publication of the heavily annotated research edition.
Les Voyageurs et la nation corse dans les années 1760
Boswell's First Meeting with the Infamous Margaret Caroline Rudd: A Study in Dramatic Technique
University of Mississippi Studies in English
The Public Sphere and Formal Nostalgia, 1709–1785
Glover examines how certain eighteenth-century British writers employed formal nostalgia—the attempt to incorporate declining forms of public representation into newer contexts of publication—to express anxiety about emerging modern publicity. It analyzes texts by James Howell, Delarivier Manley, Colley Cibber, and Charlotte Charke to trace how a representational ideal of spectacle, rooted in aristocratic hierarchy, challenged the era's new, more egalitarian communicative publicness. Specifically, it explores how Boswell used his diaries of his German tour and his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides to manage his self-image, desperately seeking in royal display and Johnson's shared perspective an unambiguous public importance that contrasted with the quotidian reality of his own self-speculation.
Redford analyzes Boswell's "thanatophobia" through his writings, focusing on the famous interview with the dying Hume. The paper examines the three successive versions of the interview, revealing Boswell's self-inflicted confrontation with atheism, noting his attempts to retrospectively sharpen the exchange and mitigate his anxiety. Redford connects Boswell's compulsion to witness public executions and deathbed scenes with a broader cultural shift towards "la grande peur de la mort," contrasting it with Johnson's religious anxiety.
Devilish Appetites, Doubtful Beauty, and Dull Satisfaction: Rochester's Scorn of Ugly Ladies (Which Are Very Near All)
Pino explores the epistemological uncertainty and sensory skepticism inherent in the love lyrics of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, using James Boswell's 1763 London Journal as a comparative framework for the Restoration libertine persona. The article argues that Boswell’s rapid transition from "supreme rapture" to "coldness" and "disgust" regarding the actress Louisa mirrors Rochester’s own preoccupation with the failure of physical satisfaction and the instability of perceived beauty. Pino challenges critics who view Rochester’s lyrics as mere conventional exercises, suggesting instead that his use of "clunking" style and "awkward hyperbaton" reflects a deliberate aesthetic of doubt and a rejection of the "perfect poetic aesthetic". Through an analysis of poems such as "A Ramble in St. James’s Park," "A Pastoral Dialogue," and "On Mrs. Willis," Pino demonstrates how Rochester manipulates Petrarchan tropes to reveal beauty as a "mere conceit" that dissolves like reason under the pressure of "devilish appetites" and Hobbesian materialism. The analysis concludes that Rochester’s assault on beauty serves as a profound demonstration of man's inability to achieve certain knowledge through the senses, leading inevitably to a state of "lethargic satiety" and "dull satisfaction".
Restoration: Studies in Literature and Culture, 1660–1700
Restoration: Studies in Literature and Culture, 1660-1700
This article explores the relationship between theater and emotion, considering the problematic paradigm of theater as the most emotional of literary forms. It cannot exist without the actor who performs and the playgoer who responds and in this sense is a collaborative venture between the performer and the audience. These issues are embedded in the eighteenth century's concept of sympathetic response — a spectator's involuntary emotional reaction to what he or she sees upon the stage. Using Boswell's comments about the weakened emotional impact of a play performed in a half empty auditorium as a starting point, the article discusses the power of communal emotion within the theater audience. It considers the distinction between drama (the thing) and theater (the experience), and explores questions that arise from this distinction, such as: Is it possible to contemplate or assess theater (as opposed to drama) without exploring its emotional effect? How do we judge theater? What makes a good play? Does it lie in the words on the page or in the tears of the audience? These questions are essential to a reconsideration of the theater — and the drama — of the second half of the eighteenth century.
Annotation and Scholarly Conversation: The Musings of a Non-Editor Annotator
Walker positions annotation as a critical scholarly dialogue, using his own research on Boswell to demonstrate how fact-based inquiries refine existing editorial work. Analysis of Bailey’s edition of Hypochondriack reveals the necessity of continuous updates to allusive identifications, a task facilitated by current technology but rooted in the traditions of Hill and Powell. Walker characterizes Boswell not merely as a subject but as an practitioner of annotation, noting his interest in the ethics of quotation, plagiarism, and imitation. The study further connects these practices to Johnson, noting that while Johnson identified notes as necessary evils, his active practice in his Shakespeare edition and Lives of the Poets set a rigorous standard for the medium. Walker defends the short scholarly note against modern journal trends, arguing that accurate elucidation remains foundational to literary criticism and that proper annotation prevents the redundancy of already discovered discoveries.
From Initiate to Individual: Grand Tour Narrative and Lejeunian Autobiography
The British tour narrative, a stable eighteenth-century genre, functions as a "hitherto underanalyzed predecessor" to modern autobiography, creating an "initiated self" rather than the autobiographical "individualist self." Tour narratives, such as those by Addison and Smollett, share narrative features with autobiography but focus outward on sights, not inward on personality. Boswell's Account of Corsica uniquely integrates both forms, presenting an objective account alongside a personal "Journal and Memoirs." Johnson, however, censured Moore for using a feigned character, emphasizing the genre's reliance on a verifiable, named author.
Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies
Man and Nature: Proceedings of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Published for the Society by the Faculty of Education, the University of Western Ontario
Writing Boswell: Form, Text, and Identity in the London Journal
The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion, 1707–1800
Edinburgh v. the Advertiser: A Case Study
Moonie details legal conflicts between the Edinburgh Town Council and Alexander Donaldson’s Edinburgh Advertiser regarding press freedom and the reporting of municipal affairs. James Boswell appears as the primary legal counsel for Donaldson, skillfully framing the defense around the one great general principle of the liberty of the Press. The account establishes Boswell’s pivotal role in securing a decision that removed the Council's historic control over newspapers.
An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady: Serious Effort or Elaborate Joke?
Newman re-evaluates the pamphlet An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady (1761), co-authored by Boswell, Andrew Erskine, and George Dempster. Challenging prior dismissals of the work as merely feeble poetry accompanied by broad burlesque, Newman argues that the entire publication—including the mediocre poems, the absurdly inept critical letters praising them, and the prefatory apparatus—functions as a cohesive and elaborate joke. The humor arises from the ironic disparity between the critics' self-proclaimed "taste" and their demonstrably flawed judgments, which misuse literary conventions and classical allusions. The pamphlet cleverly plays with reader expectations and satirizes contemporary critical practices.
Ducharme describes the vast, previously uncatalogued archive of the Boswell family acquired by Yale between 1949 and 1973. This second part of the collection documents the lives of eleven lairds of Auchinleck, revealing a history of "recurring financial troubles" and complex land disputes. Ducharme highlights the papers of the seventh laird, James, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bruce, whose family introduced "hereditary mental instability" into the lineage. The archive provides ample evidence for the "embarrassed state of affairs" that influenced the fifth laird's decision to entail the estate to heirs male. These materials serve as significant sources for British social history and the background of Boswell's own anxieties.
Samayoeru tabibitotachi (1): Eibeibungaku ni okeru 'hōkō' to sono hensō
Boswell Interviews Rousseau: A Theatrical Production
Boswell, la Corse et l'Encyclopédie
Tweede-taalverwerving van 18de-eeuws Nederlands: Natuurlijke methode versus grammatica en woordenboek?
'He Was Just a Macheath': Boswell and The Beggar's Opera
Friedman examines Boswell's lifelong identification with the protagonist of Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera.' The article argues that Macheath provided Boswell with a 'fascinating model' of 'blackguard elegance' that allowed him to reconcile his sexual dalliances with his status as a gentleman. Boswell's journals frequently use the play's lyrics to frame his own experiences, particularly his 'pleasing fantasies' of maintaining a 'plurality of sexual partners.' Friedman notes that Macheath's fictional 'immunity' to venereal disease generated a significant portion of his appeal to Boswell, who suffered from frequent infections. Although Boswell's wife, Margaret Montgomerie, resisted this 'connubial' identification, Friedman contends that the opera remained a central 'dramatic space' through which Boswell 'invested with energy and color' his own ambiguous social and moral relationships.
'Making the Press my Amanuensis': Male Friendship and Publicity in The Cub, at New-Market
Barnes analyzes Boswell's early semiautobiographical poem, The Cub, at New-market (1762), along with its dedication and preface. Barnes argues that the work functions as a reflexive commentary on literary production, patronage, and the nature of publicity in the 1760s. Boswell reimagines the literary marketplace not as a commercial enterprise but as an extension of private, convivial male friendships, where publication serves primarily to circulate texts among an intimate circle. The poem repeatedly stages its own composition and reception, collapsing distinctions between private performance and public print. Themes of spectacle, ritual humiliation, and masculine camaraderie are explored, suggesting Boswell recasts authorial ambition as a performance for the bonding of a gentlemanly group.
Zaretsky details Boswell’s 1764 meeting with Rousseau, depicting it as a "truth seeker" seeking "spiritual direction." Haunted by Calvinist "fear and trembling," Boswell finds temporary comfort in the "inner sentiment" described in Rousseau's "Profession of Faith." Zaretsky contrasts this encounter with Johnson’s subsequent dismissal of Rousseau as a "very bad man." He argues that Boswell’s journals reveal a "gifted contemporary" whose "perplexing doubts" and "black fiend" of melancholy mirror modern existential anxieties.
Mickle, Boswell, Garrick, and the Siege of Marseilles
Transactions: The Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences
Waterhouse corrects the identification of a Latin quotation used by James Boswell in his book on Corsica, which he attributes to General Paoli. Paoli compares two societies with the phrase, "Illius dicta, hujus facta magis valebant," meaning "The one was powerful in words, but the other in deeds," and applies it to Demosthenes and Themistocles. Boswell's editors marked the Latin quote as unidentified. Waterhouse asserts that Paoli was likely misremembering the striking phrase. The source is almost certainly Cicero's widely-read book on friendship, Laelius de Amicitia (10), which contains the phrase, "huius enim facta, illius dicta laudantur." In Cicero, the comparison is between Cato the Elder and Socrates, not Demosthenes and Themistocles.
Enlightenment Metaphysics and Religion in the Boswell–Temple Correspondence
Crawford examines the Boswell–Temple correspondence, focusing on the men's contrasting reactions to the European and Scottish Enlightenment, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and religion. Boswell and Temple initially admire Voltaire and Rousseau, but Temple's views grow increasingly conservative after his ordination. The paper details their differing opinions on Hume's skepticism and historical work. Crawford highlights Boswell's intense religious fluctuations and Temple's pragmatic, socially useful view of religion.
The Search for Linguistic Excellence in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Ruxin details Boswell's energetic role as a "spin doctor" during the 18th-century Douglas Cause, an inheritance dispute over the legitimacy of Archibald Douglas. Driven by a deep personal passion for lineage and "filiation," Boswell launched a prolific, unsolicited propaganda campaign for the Douglas side, despite intellectuals like Johnson favoring the Hamilton claim. Ruxin highlights Boswell’s methods, which included publishing poems, numerous newspaper articles, and edited letters. His most "impudent" effort was Dorando, a Spanish Tale (1767), a fictional allegory written specifically to influence the Court of Session judges, including his own father, Lord Auchinleck.
Memorialist/Diarist: The Autobiographies of Casanova and Boswell
What Then Should Britons Feel? Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the Plight of the Corsicans
Boswell's An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to that Island; and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli (1768) sparked British interest in the island's fight for freedom from Genoa and France. His book combined travel writing and biography, praising Corsican leader Paoli as a classical hero. Boswell championed the cause, partly to gain personal fame.
Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism
Boswell and the Insistence of the Letter
Belle de Zuylen et les 'talents' des Hollandaises
Cahiers Isabelle de Charriere/Belle de Zuylen Papers
Redford profiles Pottle as the "visionary of the real" who dominated Boswell studies through the Yale edition. The account traces Pottle’s evolution from an Army hospital recorder to a magisterial biographer. Redford highlights Pottle’s "absolute loyalty to detail" and his role in succeeding Geoffrey Scott as the editor of the Malahide papers. The text emphasizes Pottle’s deep connection to the Life of Johnson and his legacy as a compassionate yet meticulous scholar.
Styles of Cultural Activism: From Theory and Pedagogy to Women, Indians, and Communism
Teaching as Cultural Quietism: English 66: 'Poetry and Prose of the Classical Period (3): Dryden, Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, and Johnson, Boswell, and Gray'
Lounsberry traces Virginia Woolf’s development as a writer by examining her first twelve diary books alongside the sixty-six diaries she read, focusing on how these primary sources shaped her literary aesthetic. Lounsberry explores the crucial role of diary literature in Woolf’s creative life, identifying James Boswell and Fanny Burney as significant influences. At age twenty-one, Woolf read Boswell's account of his travels with Samuel Johnson, which fired her to read extensively on Johnson and inspired the incisive literary criticism later seen in her essays. Lounsberry argues that Boswell’s ability to capture a whole chunk of the earth and air and present it all alive provided a model for Woolf's own sketchbook approach to diary-keeping. The text further identifies Burney as Woolf’s diary mother, whose untamable shyness and use of fidgets mirrored Woolf’s own early experiences. Lounsberry details how Woolf imaginatively entered Burney’s world through essays like Dr. Burney’s Evening Party, viewing Burney as the mother of English fiction. Additionally, the volume examines Woolf's 1941 article on Johnson’s rival, Hester Thrale Piozzi, noting that Woolf wrote of the diarist with some glow just before her death. By analyzing these Early Diary Influences, Lounsberry demonstrates how Woolf repurposed eighteenth-century diaristic traits—such as Boswell’s insatiable curiosity and Burney’s observant eye—to forge her own modernist voice and common mind worldview.
'Boswell Redivivus': Northcote, Hazlitt, and the British School
Rennie provides an update on the rediscovery and ongoing research of James Boswell's Scottish dictionary manuscript. The project has entered a new phase with Kelvin Smith Research Fellowship funding to prepare an edition. A re-examination of the manuscript revealed an additional page, including an entry for sluh ('glutton') and a rare reference to a pre-eighteenth-century literary source, Zachary Boyd. Physical analysis suggests the manuscript's binding dates to the mid-1830s to mid-1840s, placing it between its 1825 and 1859 auction sales. Further research will track its provenance after 1825.
Gender, Authenticity, and the Missive Letter in Eighteenth-Century France: Marie-Anne de La Tour, Rousseau's Real-Life Julie
In 1761, Marie-Anne de La Tour wrote to Jean-Jacques Rousseau claiming to be the real-life embodiment of his fictional heroine, Julie of La Nouvelle Heloise. The two went on to exchange 175 letters over some fifteen years. Since its first publication in 1803, this correspondence has been cited as evidence of widely varying conclusions: the neurotic meanness of Rousseau's character, the abuse to which Rousseau himself was subjected by the French reading public, even the psychosis eighteenth-century women readers risked by cultivating loss of self through novel reading. De La Tour has been diagnosed as the very type of the hysterical woman reader, quite incapable of separating the author from the man. This study demonstrates that de La Tour was to the contrary a woman writer eager for fame who pursued her goal of becoming an "author" through the vehicle of a private correspondence with a celebrity. In the eighteenth century, with the vogue for publishing the private in full force, missive letters were accorded great aesthetic and publication value. Suspicion of intent to publish by writers of private letters was common, but this awareness has now been lost, just as the letter hast lost its publication potential. De La Tour's project of creating a publishable "private" correspondence with a famous author raises theoretical issues of authorial intention relevant not only to eighteenth-century studies but also to epistolary studies, reader-response theory, and gender theory.
Shakespeare's Midwives: Some Neglected Shakespeareans
The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, 1756–1795
This is the first of two volumes collecting the letters of James Boswell and the friend who knew him longer and more intimately than any other, William Johnson Temple (1739-1796), clergyman and essayist. Meeting as university students at Edinburgh in 1755, Boswell and Temple began a lively, affectionate, and intellectual relationship. Their lifelong correspondence reveals not only their intimate thoughts, hopes, ambitions, and family news but also their running debates on many of the later eighteenth century’s most enduring political, social, and doctrinal controversies.
Andrew Marr's Great Scots: The Writers Who Shaped a Nation
The Scottish vote for independence in September 2014 led to a soul-searching, national debate about what it means to be Scottish and also what it means to be British. So how did we get to this point? Andrew Marr believes that if you really want to get to the heart of this great battle for Scottish identity in Britain, you have to turn to the greatest writers that came from north of the border: James Boswell, Sir Walter Scott and Hugh MacDiarmid. Across three turbulent centuries, these writers were to shape the way the world looked at Scotland - for good and for ill - and so Andrew looks at the lives of these men who were so pivotal in shaping Scotland's character. Great Scots: The Writers Who Shaped a Nation looks back at these creative geniuses to answer the crucial question - what image of Scotland will the nation choose for itself this time?
Boswell was the most charming companion in the world, and London becomes his dining room and his playground, his club and his confessional. No celebrant of the London world can ignore his book.'Peter Ackroyd, from the ForewordIn 1762 James Boswell, then twenty-two years old, left Edinburgh for London. The famous Journal he kept during the next nine months is an intimate account of his encounters with the high-life and the low-life in London. Frank and confessional as a personal portrait of the young Boswell, the Journal is also revealing as a vivid portrayal of life in eighteenth-century London. This new edition includes a Foreword by Peter Ackroyd, which discusses Boswell's life and achievement.Key FeaturesFeatures a new Foreword by Peter Ackroyd, author of London: The BiographyThis edition of Boswell's classic text has long been recognised as THE authoritative version. Edited by the renowned Boswell expert, the late Frederick A. Pottle. Includes a first-class introduction and informative notes throughout
'Vain Travelers': James Boswell and the Grand Tour
Blanton examines Boswell’s Grand Tour as a rejection of utilitarian duty in favor of "psychosexual" desire and grandiose self-invention. Traveling "for the sake of leaving" a dull legal career in Scotland, Boswell used his journals to experiment with fictional narrative techniques and a "highly personal voice." Blanton highlights the "essential question of freedom or convention" that obsessed Boswell, evidenced by his simultaneous planning for sexual encounters while experiencing "sincere feelings of religion" in church. Boswell transitioned from recording landmarks to portraying a "wide range of characters" in vivid detail, using plotting and dialogue to turn a tedious log into a "rollicking picaresque novel." This stylistic maturity enabled him to write his major biographical works on Johnson.
The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding
Zaretsky and Scott chronicle the brief, intense friendship and subsequent public feud between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. This monograph analyzes the 1766 quarrel as a "collision of worldviews" that exposed the limits of Enlightenment reason. While Hume personified the cool, empirical skepticism of the "Republic of Letters," Rousseau championed a revolutionary cult of sincerity rooted in subjective feeling. The narrative follows their crossing paths through the social landscapes of Paris, London, and the Swiss Jura. The authors include James Boswell as a pivotal secondary figure whose "brazen innocence" facilitated key interactions. Boswell's meticulous journals provide "rich material" and "unparalleled firsthand" descriptions of the participants, including his own amorous apprenticeship with Thérèse Le Vasseur. Samuel Johnson also appears as a contrasting conservative force, famously declaring Rousseau a "very bad man" who deserved to be "hunted out of society." By examining how these figures struggled to understand themselves and each other, Zaretsky and Scott argue that the affair was an "Enlightenment tragedy" that anticipated modern tensions between fact and sentiment.
Crawford argues that the academic subject of English literature was a Scottish invention, arising from the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment's drive for "improvement" and linguistic propriety. Faced with cultural marginalization after the 1707 Act of Union, Scottish professors like Adam Smith and Hugh Blair institutionalized the study of English texts to help Scots shed "Scotticisms" and master the standard English required for British professional advancement. Crawford examines how this pedagogical heritage influenced a "British Literature" that sought to articulate non-English identities through a modified English language. Focusing on Boswell and others, Crawford demonstrates how these writers acted as "cultural brokers" between their native traditions and a dominant metropolitan center. Boswell is specifically analyzed as using his biography of Johnson to conduct a "revisionary interrogation" of British identity, juxtaposing his own Scottish sensibility against Johnson's quintessential Englishness. Crawford suggests this Scottish-led eclecticism and anthropological focus provided a crucial model for later provincial and post-colonial literatures, ultimately feeding into the Modernist movement's challenge to Anglocentric norms.
This collection of specially commissioned essays provides the first social history of masculinity in the 'long eighteenth century'. Drawing on diaries, court records and prescriptive literature, it explores the different identities of late Stuart and Georgian men. The heterosexual fop, the homosexual, the polite gentleman, the blackguard, the man of religion, the reader of erotica and the violent aggressor are each examined here, and in the process a new and increasingly important field of historical enquiry is opened up to the non-specialist reader.
Virginia Woolf's Modernist Path: Her Middle Diaries & the Diaries She Read
James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to Corsica
Publisher's blurb: "In this second volume of her acclaimed study of Virginia Woolf's diaries, Barbara Lounsberry traces the English writer's life through the thirteen diaries she kept from 1918 to 1929 — what is often considered Woolf's modernist "golden age." During these interwar years, Woolf penned many of her most famous works, including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and A Room of One's Own. Lounsberry shows how Woolf's writing at this time was influenced by other diarists — Anton Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, Jonathan Swift, and Stendhal among them — and how she continued to use her diaries as a way to experiment with form and as a practice ground for her evolving modernist style. Through close readings of Woolf's journaling style and an examination of the diaries she read, Lounsberry tracks Woolf's development as a writer and unearths new connections between her professional writing, personal writing, and the diaries she was reading at the time. Virginia Woolf's Modernist Path offers a new approach to Woolf's biography: her life as she marked it in her diary from ages 36 to 46."
James Boswell: The Hypochondriack, His Melancholy, and Dr. Johnson's Cognitive-Behavioural Remedy — Psychiatry in History
On Boswell's struggles with recurrent and severe melancholy (hypochondria), which originated in his emotionally deprived childhood and manifested in nervous episodes, shyness, and suicidal ideation. Johnson, who himself was greatly distressed by melancholy, offered Boswell a practical, cognitive-behavioural remedy for his disorder: constant occupation of mind, plenty of exercise, and moderation, especially avoiding late-night drinking. Boswell found great relief in discussing his illness with Johnson and in the comforting realization that his "fellow sufferer" was such a great person.
Sider Jost reviews this meticulous edition of the complete surviving correspondence between Boswell and his friend, banker William Forbes, which presents Forbes as a moral, successful anti-Boswell. The review describes Forbes as a prudent, wealthy, and faithful paragon of domesticity who served as a mentor and frequent source of loans to the drink-sodden Boswell, contrasting with Boswell’s self-sabotaging pursuit of London life and his inability to heed Forbes’s prudent advice. Jost notes that the letters reveal the emotional currents beneath Boswell's self-documentation and provide essential biographical information about his final decade in London, supplementing his scanty diary records. The edition, meticulously annotated by Richard B. Sher, includes an encyclopedic introduction and authoritative notes that correct errors by previous scholars, including Pottle and Brady. Jost concludes that while the letters lack literary elaboration, the work's value is primarily biographical and historical, offering a comprehensive command of the shared lives of these two figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Lee praises Milne for the apparatus and detailed annotation illuminating curious aspects of eighteenth-century life and Boswell's compositional methods.
Baines calls the edition exemplary, authoritative, and most timely. The editors are praised for rightly disputing the hierarchy between Boswell’s history and journal, and for reprinting the combined text. The format, though sometimes cluttered, accurately conveys the sense of Boswell’s original, publicly conscious work.
James Boswell's Revisions of Death as The Hypochondriack and in His London Journals
Boswell’s extensive revisions in his personal journals and "Hypochondriack" essays were a deliberate method for coping with death and his constant religious instability. By repeatedly rewriting scenes of personal loss and public executions, Boswell aimed to convince himself of a dynamic, non-material afterlife where memory survives as a transformative, rather than static, entity, contrasting with the philosophical views of Locke and Hume. His personal writing, acting as "artificial Memory," allowed him to edit his experiences, preserving what he valued and minimizing what he feared, thereby policing his spiritual inconsistency.
Heated by Wine, Fevered by Cards, and Possessed by a Whoring Rage: The Sociability of James Boswell
Although scholars have described writer James Boswell as a prolific drinker, he not only imbibed heavily at times but also employed occasional sobriety when it was appropriate. Thus, his journals indicate that eighteenth-century sociability was very fluid in practice. These records provide many details that illuminate how Boswell successfully negotiated the changing social and cultural trends of the late eighteenth century. Rather than applying a dichotomous perspective, a pluralistic interpretation is more useful because it fully captures the many nuances of sociability in the early modern era. This lens also provides insight when considering other aspects of elite male eighteenth-century sociability, including gambling and philandering. On the other hand, it allows scholars to explore how occasional sobriety also came into conflict with older habits that promoted the consumption of alcohol.
This chapter details the conflict between Mary Knowles and Boswell regarding his reporting of her 1778 confrontation with Johnson. Knowles published a defense of Quakers, claiming the right of self-representation against Boswell’s allegedly misreported account. The text highlights Knowles’s involvement in Johnso-mania and her conflict with Piozzi over artwork. Boswell’s journal records an 1787 encounter where Knowles offered religious advice to help Boswell reconcile his soul to God.
Catalogue of the Papers of James Boswell at Yale University: For the Greater Part Formerly the Collection of Lieut.-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham
Radner reviews the three-volume Catalogue of the Papers of James Boswell at Yale University, compiled by Pottle, Abbott, and Pottle. The catalogue describes journals, manuscripts, and extensive correspondence, arranged chronologically and alphabetically. Radner commends the detailed bibliographic descriptions and content summaries, particularly for unpublished items. He critiques the index for omissions regarding specific topics like the American Revolution but affirms the catalogue’s monumental value for studying JB and eighteenth-century British social history.
Clashes of Conversations in James Boswell's Hebrides and Life of Johnson and 'My Firm Regard to Authenticity'
Caudle traces Boswell’s development from an author "indifferent to" textual accuracy in the 1760s to a "stickler for accuracy" by the 1780s. Boswell used his battles over precision to distinguish his biographical method from rivals such as Hawkins and Piozzi, claiming his written memoranda offered a "superior authenticity" to their unwritten memories. While Boswell aggressively attacked minor dissonances in their accounts, Caudle notes that most rivals were "muddled" rather than "mendacious." Boswell defined his work as showing Johnson "as he really was," employing "authentick Precision" to correct what he perceived as the "erroneous Accounts" of others. These public clashes reveal Boswell’s defense of a biographical method rooted in precise historical recording rather than poetic reshaping.
Purdie and Gow survey the medical history of Boswell, focusing on the "interactions between the psyche and the soma." The account details Boswell’s nineteen bouts of gonorrhoea, his experience with malaria in Corsica, and chronic "melancholia" or depression. The authors classify Boswell’s mental state as a "cyclothymic personality" characterized by fluctuations between hyperactivity and gloom. They note how alcohol consumption frequently lowered Boswell’s "moral reflection" and led to unprotected sexual exposure. The study concludes that renal failure, precipitated by acute-on-chronic pyelonephritis and a chronically infected prostate, caused Boswell’s death. This clinical perspective contextualizes the "history of my mind" recorded in Boswell's journals.
Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
Жанр Биографии В Русской Литературе: Западноевропейские Влияния [Biography Genre in Russian literature: European and British Influences]
The article examines the development of the genre of biography and life writing that influenced Russian biographical tradition. This tradition stems from Plutarch's Comparative Biographies that influenced English life writing represented by such names as James Boswell, Lytton Strachey, and others. Philosophical premises of the English biography genre are to be found in the treatise Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) by Thomas Carlyle. French tradition represented by Gaston Tissandier's book Science Martyrs pursued the opposite aim: to honor ordinary scientists and inventors, responsible for the technical advance of the modern civilization. Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel practiced a different approach to life writing in that they conceived biography as the history of the person's spiritual development. This conception had direct influence on the theorists of biography genre in Russia, G. O. Vinokur, and A. G. Gabrichevsky.
“Biography Genre in Russian literature: European and British Influences”
Huch reviews Tankard's selection of Boswell's journalism, describing the decade-long project as a monumental task. Huch explains that the volume organizes Boswell's diverse writings into sections covering reports, interviews, essays, and letters. Huch highlights Boswell's lack of self-consciousness and his intense interest in public executions, which Boswell explored with a mixture of amoral jauntiness and sympathy for the sufferers. The review notes the inclusion of Boswell's Rampager essays from the 1770s, which display a tongue-in-cheek whimsy on topics ranging from the American Revolution to the Jews. Huch concludes that Tankard's extensive bibliography and textual notes on Boswell's emendations make the work valuable for specialists.
‘I Felt a Noble Shock': James Boswell in German Princely Courts
The article deals with James Boswell's (1740–1795) attitudes towards the courtly milieu in the context of eighteenth-century British court discourse. The central argument is that, strongly contrary to the anti-court ethos of his intellectual and social milieu, Boswell had an affirmative and enthusiastic attitude towards the court. Moreover, the fact that he was neither an Addisonian moralist ‘spectator' nor a cynical court aristocrat like Lord Chesterfield, but in many senses a highly affective ‘man of feeling' of the age, did not diminish the uniqueness of his positive view of court culture. On the one hand, Boswell's appreciation of the court was connected with his firm monarchism and belief in hereditary rank; on the other hand, he was aesthetically fascinated by the splendour and magnificence of the courtly milieu. His appraisal of the court did not include the common-sense moralism of the moral weeklies or the cynical observations of the aristocratic court discourse; rather his attitude was immediate, emotional, and enthusiastic in the spirit of the cult of sensibility.
Sjuttonhundratal: sällskapet för 1700-talsstudier
Womersley provides an enthusiastic review of the first volume of Boswell's correspondence with William Johnson Temple (Volume 6 of the Yale Research Edition), edited by Thomas Crawford, which covers the years 1756–77. Recounting the archival history of the letters, Womersley tracks their journey from their discovery in a Boulogne grocery store to the later findings of the Fettercairn House and Malahide Castle materials, which allow this edition to include over 300 letters from Temple to Boswell in addition to those previously known from Boswell to Temple. The review praises the exemplary quality of the editing and the unusually full annotation, which throws fascinating and rich sidelights on mid-eighteenth-century culture. Womersley notes that the letters tell an interesting story highlighting the constructedness of identity, where Boswell's sense of self-worth is produced by his interaction with great men like David Hume and Johnson. This correspondence illustrates an extraordinary inconsequence of character, revealed in Boswell's unguarded descriptions of himself as a "Great Man" and his immediate transitions from idealizing potential wives to discussing his various mistresses.
Lamont reviews the second volume of the biography of Boswell, completed by Brady, acknowledging his daunting task and his sober, competent handling of Boswell’s decline. She describes the narrative as a downward momentum, following Boswell’s legal work, minor literary skirmishes, and painful last years in London, where he cut himself off from his roots and suffered a penalty for the success of his biography of Johnson as acquaintances feared he would record their conversation. While Lamont commends Brady’s skill in organizing evidence and his thoughtful discussion of biography as a genre—especially his distinction between fiction’s potentiality and fact’s “pleasing resistance”—she senses fatigue and distance in his tone, noting that the narrative sags where Boswell’s journals dominate and that Johnson’s reappearances disrupt focus. She finds Brady most rewarding as a literary critic and historian, particularly in the sections on journal writing and the relation of fact to fiction, and she shares Brady’s wonder that Boswell constructed a serene, generous world in the Life of Johnson from an existence marked by distress, bad faith, and despair. Despite stylistic limitations and her conclusion that Brady writes less effectively as a storyteller, Lamont finds the biography judicious, perceptive, and a worthy—if melancholic—companion to Pottle’s earlier, livelier volume.
CGV entry 4:272. A review by Claire Lamont of the book by Frank Brady.
Ingram reviews Pittock's study of Boswell as a thinker within the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. The review commends Pittock for moving beyond the image of Boswell as a toadying buffoon to reveal a writer who confronted the paradox of being a Scottish thinker in North Britain. Ingram highlights Pittock's analysis of Boswell's baronialism as a form of Scottish patriotism aligned with contemporary independence movements in Corsica and America. While praising the book as a valuable addition to Boswell studies that argues for the conscious artistry of the journals and the Life of Johnson, Ingram notes presentational flaws, including uncorrected typographical errors and the inexplicable absence of an index.
Reed traces the history of the Ebony Cabinet, which Boswell viewed as a centerpiece of family piety and a repository for curiosities, including letters from John Wilkes. Acquired in Holland by Boswell's grandmother, the cabinet symbolized his grand past and pride in the blood of Bruce. Reed describes the 1920s search for Boswell's papers by Tinker, who viewed the cabinet at Malahide Castle and likened its contents to a valley of rubies. While the cabinet contained few manuscripts, it served as a focal point for the discovery of the Boswell Papers by Isham. Mary Hyde Eccles bequeathed the piece to Yale, where it now stands near the Beinecke Library reading room. Reed also notes the vandalism of papers by Lady Talbot, who used black paint to obscure passages she deemed scandalous.
Ferguson identifies the two volumes as the "definitive biography of the Great Biographer." He highlights Brady's "informed, judicious, sympathetic" treatment of Boswell's legal career, political ambitions, and the complex relationship with his wife. Ferguson emphasizes the perceptive analysis of Boswell's literary achievements, specifically how Brady extracts the "depth of a celebrated, complex friendship" from a single sentence describing Johnson and Garrick. He credits Pottle and Brady for providing a "clearer awareness" of Boswell.
CGV entry 4:272. A review by Oliver Ferguson of the book by Frank Brady, alongside another work.
Boswell's Life of Johnson: The Shaping of a Self and Object World
The reviewer evaluates the first volume of the Yale research edition cataloging Boswell’s papers. Intended as a three-volume set describing over 10,000 items, this initial installment covers Boswell’s journals, manuscripts, and outgoing correspondence. Future volumes will address incoming letters and non-manuscript financial or legal documents. The work conflates earlier catalogues by Isham and Abbott with subsequent acquisitions from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House, serving as a companion to the Yale trade edition and Pottle’s archival history, Pride and Negligence.
Baruth commends this volume for presenting facets of Boswell 'little known and less celebrated.' The correspondence shows Boswell as a 'responsible Laird,' 'agricultural improver,' and 'prudent industrialist' who managed his estate with diligence down to 'the lowliest of details.' Baruth argues these letters 'actively contest' the image of Boswell as a typical, disinterested landlord. While noting the mechanical nature of the entries, Baruth emphasizes their value in providing 'undeniably new and intriguing material' to the study of Boswell's complex character.
This eighth volume of the Yale Research Edition of The Private Papers of James Boswell collects 207 letters between Boswell and Bruce and 93 with Gibbs. These documents reveal Boswell in a "new light, as a gentleman farmer," departing from his traditional role as the biographer of Johnson. The correspondence details agricultural history and rural Scottish society in the late 18th century. Editorial additions provide context for Boswell's parochial responsibilities and the background of industrial developments in southwestern Scotland during the eve of the Industrial Revolution.
État de la Corse; suivi de Journal d'un voyage en Corse et mémoires de Pascal Paoli
Whatley reviews this scholarly edition of 207 letters written between 1762 and 1795, which documents the correspondence between Boswell and his estate overseers. The collection reveals a less familiar side of Boswell as a committed, cost-conscious improver and paternalist proprietor rather than just a London man of letters. These letters document Boswell's firm management of tenants, his serious engagement with agricultural decisions and rental income, and his anxiety regarding the spread of Paine-inspired republican ideas in Ayrshire. Whatley praises the immense and meticulous scholarship of the editors, Nellie Pottle Hopkins and John Strawhorn, noting their success in identifying local details. He concludes that the volume serves as an invaluable resource for understanding Scottish rural society and deepens the understanding of the various factors that inspired this complex Scot.
MacLeod reimagines Johnson and Boswell as occult detectives in his second novel, The Stone of Destiny. The 1773 quest to verify the Stone leads them through an episodic horror tour of Scotland. The book blends Indiana Jones action with horror sub-genres, featuring dark magic, hybrid creatures, werewolves, witch hunts, and cosmic weirdness. The protagonists endure relentless danger on their perilous journey.
Boswell Johnson: Two Pals, One Scottish, One English, Separated by a Common Language
Tung provides an enthusiastic review of this collection, which seeks to disentangle Boswell from his role as Johnson’s biographer and effectively shift scholarship away from solely focusing on the Life to his extensive and ingenious periodical writing. She praises the essays for shedding light on Boswell as a prolific author who arguably exceeds Johnson in scope, exploring his ephemeral works across three career periods identified by Newman: "literary genius," "journalistic," and "pursuit of immortality." The volume demonstrates how Boswell experimented with print conventions, deployed various pseudonyms, and pioneered new literary forms, such as the psychological perspective established in The Hypochondriack. Tung notes that contributors examine Boswell’s strategic use of anonymity and his abandoned plan for a Scots language periodical, The Sutiman. Describing the work as a transformative path for Boswellian studies, the review argues that periodical publication was instrumental in establishing Boswell’s longed-for literary fame. Newman's collection ultimately suggests that Boswell deserves the accolade "father of modern journalism" in addition to "father of modern biography."
'It Buys Me Freedom': Genteel Lodging in Late-Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century London
McEwan examines genteel lodging in late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London, highlighting non-financial motives like freedom and reputation. James Boswell's 1762-63 residence is a key example; he used lodging as an exercise in independence from his father and a means to pursue his whims and meet Samuel Johnson. He prioritized a "genteel lodging" to "make as much show" as his allowance permitted, underscoring the link between reputation and accommodation.
The Very Odd Couple and a Defining Hebridean Odyssey
Later this year a Sky Arts documentary, Boswell and Johnson's Scottish Road Trip, will track comedian Frank Skinner and best-selling novelist Denise Mina as they recreate the 1773 journey, travelling in the same 18th century style as Boswell and Johnson.
Heitman's review of "Boswell's London Journal" characterizes the work as a "convivial guide" and a "masterwork" equal to Boswell's biography of Johnson. The review details the young Boswell’s arrival in London in 1762, his failed attempt to secure a military commission, and his obsession with the city's "energy" and "appetites." Heitman notes that the journal, which remained obscure until its 1950 publication by Yale University, reveals Boswell as a "supremely great reporter" with a "nose for the striking, concrete detail." The review emphasizes the mentor-disciple relationship between Johnson and Boswell, noting that Johnson encouraged the keeping of the journal while advising its eventual destruction.
Serial Selves: James Boswell and Hester Thrale
Anderson analyzes the "fragmented and discontinuous" nature of eighteenth-century life-writing through the journals of Boswell and Thrale. The chapter details Boswell’s attempt to achieve "moral consistency" by recording his daily fluctuations, effectively treating his journal as a mirror to stabilize a volatile self. Anderson identifies Samuel Johnson as the central "stable point" around which both authors constructed their narratives. For Thrale, the six-volume Thraliana served as a vital intellectual space that mediated between her domestic duties and her scholarly ambitions. While Boswell used his records to craft a monumental public biography, Anderson argues that Thrale’s serial writing functioned as a "survival strategy," allowing her to maintain an autonomous selfhood within the restrictive boundaries of her social and familial roles.
Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700–1830
'Soaping' and 'Shaving' the Public Sphere: James Boswell's ‘Soaping Club' and Edinburgh Enlightenment Sociability
Caudle analyzes Boswell's engagement with the roistering Soaping Club, a "good-for-nothing" convivial association in 1760s Edinburgh. The club's ethos centered on the cant terms "soaping," meaning the pursuit of individual humor or pleasure, and "shaving," denoting the satirical ridicule or "playing upon" of others. Boswell used these raucous practices as a rebellion against emerging standards of polite sociability, even while maintaining membership in the elite Select Society. Journals reveal Boswell's struggle to abandon "shaving" and mimicry upon entering professional life, fearing these habits precluded genuine friendship. Despite resolutions to reform, Boswell used these methods in later biographical works and news squibs to deride rivals like Piozzi, illustrating the persistent influence of "low" Scottish sociability on his literary style.
We're All Fascinated by the Lives of Others from James Boswell to the Kardashians
L'invention des Midis: Représentations de l'Europe du Sud, XVIIIe–XXe siècle
L'invention de la Corse par les voyageurs britanniques: James Boswell et quelques autres (1764–1769)
Realities of Representation: State Building in Early Modern Europe and European America
Boroughmongering, Biography, and the Reform of Parliament: James Boswell and the Earl of Lonsdale
This chapter assesses James Boswell's private diary records of his tumultuous political association in the late 1780s with James Lowther, first Earl of Lonsdale, the ruthless boroughmonger from northwest England, who at the height of his power controlled nine seats in the House of Commons. It argues that Boswell's swerve from his own rather erratic and misguided aspirations to a seat in parliament, to the dissemination of an implied parliamentary vision instead in a literary biography (The Life of Johnson) aligns him subtly with the post-1760s move for a reform of parliament more usually associated with Radicalism.
Museum and Festival Will Honour James Boswell
This brief report announces a £1.5 million project to honor Boswell at his family home in Ayrshire. The Boswell Museum and Mausoleum Trust plans to restore the mausoleum at Auchinleck House and convert the chapel into an exhibition center. The article identifies Boswell as the author of the biography of Johnson and a noted diarist. Additionally, the piece notes the inauguration of the Boswell Book Festival, scheduled for May 2011, featuring participants such as Kate Adie and Bill Paterson. Trust chairman James Knox states the project intends to restore Boswell’s cultural prominence.
Martin portrays Boswell as a complex, independent figure rather than Johnson's shadow. The biography explores his roles as lawyer and philosopher, balancing social ambition with literary success. Martin highlights Boswell’s enduring scholarly relevance and his contributions to the biographical genre.
Baruth finds Martin's biography an uninspired and unsympathetic work that offers little new scholarship and reverts to an outdated, moralistic disapproval of its subject. Martin fails to appreciate the complexity of Boswell's character, instead expressing embarrassment at his behavior and inflating the virtues of figures like Samuel Johnson and Edmond Malone to diminish Boswell's own genius. Baruth contrasts this derivative portrait with the concurrently published volume of Boswell's correspondence with his estate overseers. He praises this collection for presenting new evidence that challenges the traditional view of Boswell, depicting him as a diligent and responsible laird deeply engaged in the practical details of agriculture and management, thereby offering a more nuanced and valuable contribution to Boswell studies.
Stein describes this biography as an "excellent, comprehensive" study of Boswell. The review contrasts Boswell’s family standing with Casanova’s poverty and highlights his "thirst for fame." Stein notes that while Johnson’s reputation has "settled into gentle decline," Boswell’s has risen since the 1950 publication of his London Journal. He highlights Martin’s defense of Boswell as a writer in a class of his own.
Shinagel characterizes Martin’s biography as a rounded, sympathetic and engaging reevaluation of Boswell, moving beyond Victorian censure and vituperation. The review details Boswell’s lifelong heroic struggle with melancholy and a melancholy temperament inherited from a stern upbringing. While acknowledging Boswell’s flaws, including escapades and venereal infections, Shinagel emphasizes the biographer's charismatic ability to charm luminaries like Voltaire and Johnson. The text credits Edmond Malone as a faithful editorial midwife who motivated Boswell to complete his masterpiece. Shinagel concludes that Martin successfully reclaims Boswell from scholarly correctness, presenting a heroic human being who achieved fame against great odds.
Lynch praises Martin for producing an entertaining, informed, and readable account that stands as the best one-volume biography of Boswell. Lynch notes that Martin avoids reductive psychoanalysis while providing a comprehensive picture of Boswell’s "hypochondria" and social indiscretions. Although Lynch observes that minor factual errors prevent the work from displacing the standard multi-volume biography by Pottle and Brady, he highly recommends the book for its depth and accessibility. Lynch highlights Martin’s effective use of Boswell's primary papers to add complexity to the biographer's character.
This positive capsule review outlines Peter Martin's sympathetic biography of Boswell, which challenges the long-standing nineteenth-century view of him as a mere drunk, rake, and buffoon who wrote the celebrated biography of Johnson by a literary fluke. The reviewer notes that twentieth-century discoveries of Boswell's vast journals rehabilitated his reputation, allowing Martin to build on that scholarship to depict a modest man of extraordinary literary talent who acutely captured his world. While acknowledging that Boswell remains the figure critics have always described, the review praises the book for offering a deeper understanding of Boswell that successfully leads to a better understanding of Johnson.
Zaretsky chronicles Boswell's residency in Glasgow during 1759, examining how the student's obsession with theatre and emerging religious restlessness intersected with the moral philosophy of Adam Smith. While Boswell initially viewed Glasgow as a cultural exile devoid of the Edinburgh stage, his attendance at Smith's lectures provided a theoretical framework for his performative social identity. Zaretsky explores how Smith's concepts of the impartial spectator and fellow feeling informed Boswell's self-fashioning and eventual brief conversion to Roman Catholicism. This biographical narrative argues that Boswell viewed both the Catholic Church and the theatre as spectacles capable of providing a sense of purpose. Zaretsky characterizes Boswell as a figure perpetually divided between a character in pursuit of his proper role and a soul in search of salvation.
Letters: I Am at a Loss to Understand Why Anyone Would Want to Celebrate the Charmless James Boswell
In this letter to the editor, McLaren challenges the literary merit and character of Boswell during the 2021 Boswell Book Festival. McLaren disputes Boswell's status as the "father of modern biography," describing his work as tedious hagiography. The author specifically attacks Boswell's enthusiastic support for the slave trade, citing his 1791 racist poem, "No Abolition of Slavery or the Universal Empire of Love". This work rants against abolitionists like William Wilberforce and William Pitt, presenting a sanitized, "cheerful" depiction of enslaved people. McLaren contrasts this stance with that of Boswell's father, Alexander, Lord Auchinleck, who opposed slavery as inconsistent with Christianity in 1778. The letter further attributes Boswell's moral failings to alcoholism and syphilis, questioning the festival’s celebration of his legacy.
Furbank reviews Martin’s biography, highlighting its focus on Boswell’s melancholia and its link to his compulsive behavior. He suggests Boswell’s "Sketch of his Early Life" influenced Rousseau’s confessional style. Furbank praises Martin’s organization and use of journals but finds the text lacking in wonderment. He emphasizes the unique, magnetic bond between Boswell and Johnson, noting that Boswell created a new art form by instigating the very dramatic scenes he later recorded.
Rawson’s approving review of Peter Martin’s "A Life of James Boswell" examines the biographer as a "remarkable personality in his own right," informed by the mountainous archive of journals and letters discovered in the 20th century. The article details Boswell’s complex psychology, including his lifelong hypochondria, depressive episodes, and "puppyish hero worship" of figures like Rousseau and Johnson. Rawson notes Martin’s focus on Boswell’s theatrical temperament and his compulsive sexuality, which included "at least 18 sexual illnesses." The review highlights Boswell’s "guileless snobbery" and his energy in engineering the very conversations he recorded, often manipulating Johnson for the sake of his reporting. Rawson concludes that while Boswell sought filial direction from his mentors to replace his relationship with his "curmudgeonly" father, his "banal psychological need" served as the basis for an extraordinary genius that revolutionized English biography.
Conducting Projects: The Imaginative Agenda of Writing in London, 1716–1782
In this dissertation I argue that eighteenth-century writers negotiated their relationship to a newly complex London by using the metaphor of conduct. Focusing on London's literal geographic and administrative tensions, I claim that writers tried to navigate these tensions by figurative and imaginative means. Printed texts could therefore resemble blueprints for alternative modes of urban organization in which writers, acting as conductors of new social opportunities, established a set of instructions about how to approach, interpret, and reimagine London properly. Conduct became an organizing metaphor writers used to detail the moral importance of their own practice and legitimize their work to the public. By assigning both a vocabulary and a social value to writing, the metaphor of conduct was an invaluable, although abstract, tool of systematization that gave writing both a protocol and a product. Writers such as John Gay, Henry Fielding, Alexander Pope, James Boswell, and Frances Burney valued this metaphor because it could sometimes refer to the literal geographical tensions unique to mid-eighteenth-century London, and, at other times, could lend writers the impression that they exercised an active, yet figurative, control over the literal cityscape. Describing a district that lay on the margins of the Court and the City and between Whitehall and Whitechapel, the writers I examine addressed an informally governed district in which they could imagine themselves as competitors with both the politicians of Westminster and the aldermen of the City of London. As writers refigured these literal, geographical tensions through the metaphor of conduct, they acted out fantasies of a London in which they controlled standards of taste, criticism, and interpretation. But by referring to a marginal district between Court and City, writers strengthened the impression that their figurative fantasies were literally controlling a London that was outgrowing the Court–City binary. As conduct gestured towards new models of urban organization to which the writer was an essential contributor, reading about London came to seem synonymous with defining it. The didacticism of these texts is, therefore, their most imaginative trait.
Hitchings’s mixed review of Peter Martin’s biography of Boswell evaluates the work’s effort to detach the "limpet" Boswell from the "mighty edifice" of Johnson. The review details Martin's coolly marshalled account of Boswell's "gaudy story," including his attendance at executions, chronic hypochondria, and extravagant sexual exploits. Hitchings notes that Martin humanizes his subject through minute domestic details—such as Boswell's struggle with an ingrown toenail and his pursuit of a gardener's daughter—following Johnson's own biographical principle of displaying "domestic privacies." The narrative explores Boswell’s paradoxical nature: his moral fretting as an advocate versus his compulsive carousing while his wife Margaret lay dying. While praising Martin’s dextrous treatment of the material, Hitchings argues that Boswell remains unredeemed as a great writer, characterized instead as a seedy social guide whose modern appeal rests on a "heady brew" of tawdry confession and bibulous excess. The text concludes by citing Donald Greene's 1974 complaint regarding the scholarly prioritization of Boswell’s "claps and hangovers" over Johnson's literary legacy.
In this positive review, Lynch describes a compendium of several hundred comments regarding Boswell spanning from the 1760s to the years following his death. Larsen assembles selections from diverse sources, including diaries, book reviews, and manuscripts, to illustrate the reception of works such as the Life of Samuel Johnson. Lynch notes the inclusion of obscure rare books and anonymous self-reviews published by Boswell. Although Lynch characterizes the endnotes as sparse and suggests the collection requires more careful proofreading, he maintains the volume sheds additional light on a colorful public figure.
Eastwood highlights the intimate tone of the correspondence with Malone, illustrating his critical role in refining the Life of Johnson. The review contrasts this with the Burke letters, where Boswell’s robust Toryism acts as a foil for Burke’s political sophistication. Eastwood observes that the friendship with Burke cooled after Boswell attacked Fox’s East India Bill. The volume is noted for its extensive annotation and its appeal to scholars across multiple disciplines.
'Having a Very Bonnie Time': Aboard a Highlands and Islands Voyage, Caroline Hendrie Follows in the Wake of Two Pioneering 18th-Century Tourists
Hendrie describes a modern cruise through the Hebrides that retraces the 1773 itinerary of Johnson and Boswell. Accompanied by Martin, biographer of both men, the author compares the "wild and often inhospitable conditions" of the original 83-day tour with contemporary luxury travel. The account references Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, noting their visits to Skye, Mull, Iona, and Coll. On Coll, Hendrie observes the Breachacha castles, noting that while Boswell termed the 1750 structure a "neat new-built gentleman’s house," Johnson dismissed it as a "mere tradesman’s box." The text highlights the pair’s visit to the then-ruined Iona Abbey and the hospitality of MacLeod at Dunvegan. Hendrie concludes by invoking Johnson’s "roving among the Hebrides" to characterize the enduring appeal of the Scottish archipelago.
James Boswell, 1740–1795: The Scottish Perspective
Kidd reviews Roger Craik's biography of Boswell, which attempts to capture the subject from a specifically Scottish perspective. He observes that Boswell provides a "vivid and persuasive example of the interplay of split-nationality with torn personality," marked by a black-dog Calvinism and a simultaneous attraction to Anglican ritual and metropolitan life. Although Kidd notes that Craik touches on the "Boswellian dilemma" regarding North-British identity and his need to prove Scotland's civilization to Johnson, he argues the book lacks a "sustained analysis" of the subject's internal contradictions. The reviewer suggests that Craik's traditional chronological approach is less effective than a thematic study of Boswell's legal career or his use of Scotticisms; consequently, the work fails to offer a sustained thematic analysis of the Boswellian dilemma. Nevertheless, Kidd recommends the work to general readers as an accessible, informative, and "mildly titillating" overview of Boswell's life.
Bozzy and the Birth of Biography Are Celebrated on Day He Met Dr. Johnson
'Fact' or 'Invention'? James Boswell and the Legend of a Boswell–Sterne Meeting
Miller judges this last journal, which closes Boswell's 'life of Boswell,' to be among the crown jewels of confessional literature, despite its content often conveying a bitter end marked by frustrations, prostrations, and despairs. Miller notes that the journal, which chronicles Boswell's life as a widower, documents his intense 'hypochondria' and his old inconsistency—the conflict between pleasure and virtue, Scotland and England—while revealing his continuing pursuit of social recognition and his pride in the completion of the Life of Johnson. The journal’s strength lies in its serio-economic objects (like the pulley to counteract vis inertiae) and its minute particulars written "to the moment," which contrast favorably with the more formal, edifying passages of the Life. However, the book's content is weak due to the author's despair and frequent relapses into drinking and whorings, although Boswell’s persistence in writing it down elevates the work.
Donoghue's enthusiastic review of Zaretsky’s Boswell's Enlightenment explores the biographer’s 1763–1765 Grand Tour as a struggle with the intellectual questions of the age. Donoghue notes that Zaretsky depicts Boswell as an incongruous pairing with high-minded Enlightenment ideals, contrasting his "heedless, dissipated" character with the reason-driven movements of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume. The review highlights Boswell's single-minded pursuit of celebrity figures, including his efforts to secure an interview with a dying Hume and his tracking of Pasquale Paoli in Corsica. Donoghue observes that while Zaretsky attempts to cast Boswell as an "avatar of the Enlightenment," the narrative also documents his "ramshackle" personal life, characterized by excessive drinking and recurring venereal disease. Zaretsky argues that Boswell serves as a harbinger of modern self-centeredness, transitioning from pure intellectualism to the "obsessions of day-to-day reality." Donoghue praises the book for its entertaining portrayal of Boswell’s transition into a chronicler-to-the-stars, even as it acknowledges the physical toll his lifestyle took on his constitution.
James Boswell's Urban Experience in Eighteenth-Century London
Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation, Vol 6: Writings in the British Romantic Period
No Abolition of Slavery; or, The Universal Empire of Love: A Poem (1791)
Boswell's polemical verse pamphlet was originally published in 1791 to oppose William Wilberforce's efforts to end the slave trade. This text functions as a record of pro-slavery sentiment and the complacency underlying resistance to humanitarian reform. Boswell identifies abolitionists as misguided or dangerous radicals, attacking figures like Wilberforce and Clarkson. The poem employs a fatuous conceit that equates the "Universal Empire of Love" with the institution of chattel slavery, suggesting that bondage is a natural state in both romantic and social hierarchies. Boswell argues that the "happy" state of slaves in the West Indies is preferable to the misery of the British poor. The text reflects Boswell’s conservative reaction to the French Revolution and his fear that abolition signaled "liberty and equality" in a sense that threatened national stability. The work stands as a stark contrast to the dominant abolitionist literature of the era.
Wain selects passages from the thirteen-volume trade edition of Boswell's manuscripts to create a one-volume introduction. The text covers Boswell's life from his 1762 departure for London until his death in 1795, including his 1764 autobiographical sketch for Rousseau. Boswell records his "weaknesses and follies" alongside his "various sentiments and... various conduct." Famous entries include the May 16, 1763, meeting with Johnson and their final 1784 parting. Rosenblum describes the edition as a "pleasant and tantalizing introduction" for new readers.
Folkenflik finds the collection's focus on Boswell's psychological problems highly appropriate, contrasting with Lustig's volume. The essays use diverse theorists like Freud and Lacan, covering the Journals, Hypochondriack, and the Life of Johnson. The editor's application of Erikson to Boswell's "identity crisis" proves useful, confirming the timeliness of this collective psychoanalytic examination.
This review praises Boulton and McLoughlin's complete critical edition of Boswell's An Account of Corsica, his first work, which brought him great notoriety in 1768. The book is structured in two parts: a documented state of Corsica and a personal account of his five-week tour, which included a meeting with Pasquale Paoli. The edition features a carefully established and annotated text, including the Italian appendices. The introduction provides precise context on Boswell's biography, the political and intellectual context, the Rousseauist problematic of liberty, and the complex drafting process, highlighting the idealization of Paoli as a modern and antique hero.
Walsh provides an approving review of this Yale edition of Boswell’s correspondence, describing it as a "scrupulous" dive into the "Boswellian hogshead" of papers. The volume covers 1766–1767 and excludes major correspondences with key intimates like Johnson, Garrick, and William Temple, yet it contains remarkable and revealing letters to and from over one hundred correspondents, including Paoli, John Wilkes, Rousseau, and Dilly, as well as documents regarding Boswell’s legal practice. Walsh highlights letters reflecting Boswell’s "protean nature" and praises the authoritative economy of the introduction in outlining Boswell’s primary concerns of Corsica, the law, and marriage. He commends the editors for providing a careful commentary and "exemplary tact" in navigating private languages and confidences while relating the letters to the public historical world. Walsh concludes that these "fine materials" are edited with "energy, conscience, and precision," though he identifies minor proof-reading errors, a lack of spaciousness in the layout, and "interrupted" continuity due to lost manuscripts.
Jones identifies this edition as an "indispensable" resource for researchers of the eighteenth century. Jones praises the editors for collecting the best available texts and providing "very copious explanatory footnotes." The review notes that while the specific nature of the correspondence may exceed the needs of generalized library programs, it offers vital material for the Boswell specialist. Jones highlights how the publication fits into the "massive Boswell project," furthering the revaluation of the biographer’s life and artistry. The review commends the chronological sequencing and the inclusion of detailed receipt notations and postmarks as essential scholarly apparatus.
Tired of Life? Johnson and Boswell's Castle Could Be Your Escape
On Breachacha Castle on the Isle of Coll.
Derbyshire reads Martin’s biography of Boswell alongside Sisman’s study of the Life of Samuel Johnson. While Sisman focuses on the technical challenges and "presumptuous task" of Boswell’s biographical method, Martin provides a comprehensive chronological account of Boswell’s morbid self-observation and priapic tendencies. Derbyshire praises Martin’s treatment of Boswell’s European travels and strained relationship with his father, yet criticizes significant editorial inaccuracies in the Yale University Press edition. The reviewer emphasizes Boswell’s diligent factual authentication despite his chaotic personal life and descent into late-life alcoholism.
The Moth and the Candle: A Life of James Boswell
Arnstein's approving review describes Finlayson’s biography as a compact, reliable introduction to Boswell, intended for readers seeking a shorter alternative to the multi-volume works of Frederick Pottle and Frank Brady. Arnstein notes that Finlayson, a freelance journalist, offers no new facts or insights and makes occasional errors, such as misidentifying John Wilkes as the author rather than the publisher of Essay on Woman. The review also observes a frustrating lack of annotation for the numerous quotations. However, Arnstein praises the pen-portrait for ringing true, depicting Boswell as a paradoxical figure: a "bumptious young enthusiast," an "importunate busybody," and a "near-alcoholic" whose moral and religious attitudes remained conventional. Arnstein credits Finlayson with economically sketching the life of the man who recorded the conversations and personalities of contemporaries like Johnson, Hume, and Rousseau, ultimately finding the work skillful enough to entice readers toward fuller studies and Boswell’s own journals.
Daiches provides an approving review of Frank Brady’s biography, which completes the work begun by F. A. Pottle, acknowledging the difficulty of following Pottle’s first volume while praising the result as a scholarly, thoughtful, and perceptive study. Daiches notes that Brady writes a highly reflective biography, forced to ruminate on Boswell’s extraordinary character and activities given his subject’s extensive self-revelation; he particularly appreciates the examination of the art of biography and the excellent glosses provided for Boswell’s journals and personal comments. However, Daiches critiques Brady for not sufficiently investigating Boswell’s conflicted attitudes toward the Edinburgh of the Scottish Enlightenment, failing to explain why his subject viewed that intellectually vibrant setting as dull and provincial. Additionally, the reviewer identifies a mistranscription of a Scots phrase in a quoted broadside. Despite these omissions and occasional jerky colloquial sentences, Daiches commends the book’s real merits as a scholarly and reflective account of an extraordinary character.
CGV entry 4:272.
Speck provides a balanced review of Frank Brady’s James Boswell: The Later Years 1769–1795, Stephen Copley’s Literature and the Social Order in Eighteenth-Century England, and Roger Lonsdale’s The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse. W. A. Speck disputes Brady’s assumption that Boswell’s "essential goodness" was necessary to his biographical vision, arguing instead that Boswell’s persona of the "gauche Scot" was a sophisticated literary strategy. Speck finds Copley’s application of Marxist theory to Hanoverian texts occasionally "implausible" but praises Lonsdale’s "prodigious" research for redrawing the poetic map. Speck highlights the tension between Boswell’s "love of life" and his curated biographical truth.
CGV entry 4:272. A review by W. A. Speck of the book by Frank Brady, alongside other works.
Campbell reviews Zaretsky’s study of Boswell’s intellectual development, arguing that while Boswell associated with liberal figures like Johnson, Hume, and Rousseau, he remained a "perfect specimen" of illiberalism and class-based prejudice. The reviewer details Boswell’s "despotic" marriage proposals to Belle de Zuylen and his morbid fascination with Hume’s deathbed to test the philosopher’s skepticism. Campbell notes Boswell’s "ample faculty of self-deception" regarding religion and class, specifically his snubbing of Burns. The text underscores the paradox between Boswell’s role as the recorder of Johnson’s free-thinking spirit and his own reliance on traditional markers of money and faith.
Folkenflik describes the Cole edition as the second of two volumes covering the years 1768-69 of Boswell's general correspondence. It finds Boswell writing off in all directions to over one hundred and twenty correspondents. However, Boswell's surviving letters in this correspondence are greatly outnumbered by the letters he received.
Folkenflik praises Thomas Crawford's Introduction to the correspondence between Boswell and Temple, calling the thirty-page contextualizing of their sustained correspondence excellent. He highlights that Crawford categorizes Boswell's politics in his correspondence with Temple as an oxymoronic mixture of "sentimental Jacobite toryism and Enlightenment libertarianism." He notes that this is Boswell's most important correspondence.
Scotland's Literary Festival Inspired by the Works of James Boswell Unveils 2016 Programme
Miller outlines the 2016 programme for the Boswell Book Festival at Dumfries House, noting its status as the only literary festival dedicated to biography and memoir. Director Caroline Knox describes the Boswell Trust’s objective to restore the 1754 neo-classical Boswell Mausoleum in Auchinleck churchyard. The project seeks to transform the site, which houses the remains of Boswell and his family, into a cultural attraction. The report identifies Gordon Turnbull as a featured speaker on Boswell and contextualizes the event as a homage to the author of Life of Samuel Johnson. Other participants include Martin Jarvis, Philip Mould, and Mona Siddiqui, illustrating the festival's broad engagement with diverse life stories.
The Correspondence of James Boswell with William Johnson Temple, Volume 1: 1756–1777
Allan reviews the first volume of Boswell's correspondence with William Johnson Temple, edited by Thomas Crawford. The letters serve as a confession to Boswell's alter ego, revealing his inner demons, sexual attitudes, and private responses to Enlightenment figures like Hume and Voltaire. Allan emphasizes that Temple's replies provide an external perspective on the Scottish Enlightenment, including his harsh views on the Wealth of Nations and Hume's infidelity. The reviewer praises the scrupulous erudition of the footnotes and Crawford's patient explanation of obscure eighteenth-century references.
The Pleasure of Their Company: 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides' by James Boswell
Boyd's approving review characterizes Boswell’s 1773 travel narrative as a classic defined by "vivacity, acuity and wit." The account emphasizes the contemporary nature of Boswell’s personality, described as "neurotically candid" and "full of flaws." Boyd identifies the text's vigor in the "continual sparring" between a nervously proud Boswell and a "cantankerous and xenophobic" Johnson, who remains determinedly underwhelmed by Scotland. The review notes that the work encapsulates the "mutual suspicion and grudging respect" still existing between England and Scotland. Reflecting on his own experience on the island of Coll, Boyd highlights the "frustrated peregrinations" of the duo during ten days of persistent bad weather. The narrative concludes that the human affairs and landscapes depicted by Boswell remain poignantly unchanged 200 years later.
Lurcock praises the restoration of Boswell's original orthography and the inclusion of the objective "Account." The reviewer highlights the "Journal" as a carefully constructed piece of political propaganda influenced by Rousseau and Rambler 60. Lurcock notes the editors’ identification of Boswell’s early biographical methods and his focus on Paoli as a heroic center. Despite minor criticisms regarding the limited detail on surviving manuscript notes, the reviewer welcomes the volume for providing the text in the form Boswell intended.
Schwartz reviews Peter Martin's biography of Boswell, characterizing it as a pleasant, reliable, and ably-written book suitable for the serious general reader, though he notes it will not supplant the authoritative scholarly works of Pottle and Brady. While acknowledging that it far surpasses lesser efforts, Schwartz points out minor factual slips regarding Berwick and Anna Williams, whom Martin incorrectly identifies as a servant. The core critique is that Martin's work lacks a deeper psychological interpretation of Boswell's tormented, melancholic nature, merely articulating symptoms rather than proposing a thesis. Schwartz suggests that a modern analysis of Boswell's self-destructiveness and "impulsive/disinhibited" personality should begin with contemporary addiction research, noting his extreme and addictive need for solace in sex, drink, and gambling.
This volume constitutes the first part of the fifth volume of the Yale Research Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell. The letters provide intrinsic insight into Boswell's character and reflect the broader history and culture of the 18th century. Editors include copious notes and preserve the original languages of the correspondence, including translations for Italian entries. Scrupulous preparation ensures the letters serve scholarly needs in mapping the biographer's social and intellectual development during these critical years.
Baruth examines the final volume of the Yale trade edition of Boswell’s journals, noting the capital irony of an autobiographical masterpiece titled The Great Biographer. Baruth praises the scholarly apparatus but problematizes the monolithic biographical impression created by the editors. He argues that the inclusion of lengthy biographical sketches and the use of knowing editorial notes sometimes subvert Boswell’s own artistic self-representation. While the volume captures the black period of Boswell’s physical and mental decline, Baruth questions whether the editorial practice of contradicting the subject with subsidiary documents—like letters from detractors—disempowers the text as autobiography. He concludes that the series remains the finest available, yet irrevocably reflects the Yale editorial context.
Nakanishi evaluates an edition of extant letters between Boswell and his intimate friend Temple, spanning their meeting in Edinburgh to Temple's life as a Devon rector. The text details editorial choices, specifically Crawford's thorough annotation and inclusion of missing letter records. Nakanishi emphasizes the correspondence's role in documenting Boswell's early search for fortune in London and his lifelong professional and personal insecurities. The volume presents a balanced view of both correspondents, though many of Boswell's letters have not survived.
Denizot reviews Viviès’s 1992 translation and edition of Boswell’s Account of Corsica (1768). Viviès presents Boswell’s career, the context of his visit to Corsica, and an analysis arguing the text’s political discourse supplants its chronological account. The translation is noted for its eighteenth-century style, accompanied by comprehensive notes. Denizot suggests a comparative analysis of Boswell’s motivations with other contemporary travelers would have better highlighted the originality of his journey. Denizot concludes that the translation offers undeniable interest to readers concerned with Corsica's geography, history, politics, and Paoli's personality.
Few, it must be said, were as daring as [James Boswell]. Following in the footstep s of his first master, Rousseau, Boswell was one of the earliest eighteenth - century chronicle rs to present his inner doubts and fears, as well as ambitions and self - evaluations, warts - and - all, to a critical public. And the public loved his works, making cult - characters out of his creations, "[Samuel Johnson]" and "Boswell," as they were la ter to take Sherlock Holmes and Watson to their hearts. Unlike Conan Doyle, however, Boswel l's genius lie in his ability to produce conversation in which one could hear the nuances a nd tones of individual character, to make the talk itself as exciting and compelling as any action or mystery - solving. Boswell's great works, the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and espe cially his Life of Johnson told us only part of the story however; the piecemeal discovery of Bo swell's private journals and their publication has enormously enriched our understanding of this lost eighteenth world of travel and talk. [John Wain]'s short and lucid introduction not only gives us a brief but useful mini - biography of Boswell and his family, but also tells us about the hunt for the Boswell papers, which began with the discovery, in France, of some of Boswell's letters that were being used to wrap parcels in a Boulogne shop, and ended at the outbreak of the Second World War, when even more Boswell papers were found in the attic of a Scottish farmyard bui lding.
Waingrow's edition of the manuscript of the Life of Johnson, with only the first of four volumes available, displays the complicated status and history of that printer's nightmare as well as one could hope. It indicates the equivalent page in the standard Hill–Powell edition. The elaborate endnotes detail the distinctions between different writing times, proof changes, revises, and substantive changes between the first three editions. Those seeking a Jacobite surprise in the manuscript will be disappointed.
Gray identifies Waingrow’s edition as the first of four volumes transcribing the 'monumental' original manuscript of Boswell's Life of Johnson, reconstructed from the 'frail and brittle' papers discovered at Malahide Castle. The reviewer explains that this volume covers the years 1709–1765, a period for which Boswell relied on the 'testimony of others' and Johnson’s surviving Annals and Prayers and Meditations. Gray highlights Waingrow’s 'ingenious system' for indicating Boswell’s revisions, which restores suppressed or 'bowdlerized' passages to their original places. The text details Boswell's 'extraordinary collage' of a manuscript, composed of 'Papers Apart' and drafts directed to the compositor, while noting Boswell’s 'pattern of suppression' regarding Johnson’s profanity, 'sexual lapses,' and 'insanity.' Gray concludes that this transcription of the printer's copy provides a 'painstaking' look at Boswell's efforts to reproduce Johnson's authentic voice while navigating the biographer's own 'obsessive attention to detail.'
Just What the Doctor Ordered: James Boswell's Newly Opened Family Home Is a Tonic for All Who Visit
Dixon reports on the restoration and public opening of Auchinleck House, the ancestral home of Boswell. The text contrasts the "solid, dignified elegance" of the estate with the "profligate" and "sordid" reputation Boswell acquired in London. Built by Lord Auchinleck to reflect the Scottish Enlightenment, the house features a neo-classical facade and a 40-foot library where Johnson and Lord Auchinleck engaged in a "warm and violent" dispute over a Cromwellian medal following their Highland tour. The account notes that while Boswell’s descendants suppressed his diaries until the 20th century, the Landmark Trust restoration now includes these Yale editions alongside Boswell memorabilia. Dixon details the architectural history of the "romantick spot," emphasizing that Boswell maintained happy childhood memories of the estate despite his lifelong pull toward London.
Viviès' new translation of Boswell's État de la Corse (1768) features a notable accompanying apparatus highlighting the work's originality and interest. Boswell, a privileged witness to Pascal Paoli's ephemeral attempt at Corsican independence, presents the effort as an enlightened despotism inspired by antiquity. The work offers a developing political reflection, contrasting a Rousseauist view of Corsica's future with threats from historical powers. Viviès' work underscores the literary merit of this early piece by the effervescent 18th-century English writer.
On the author's initial misconceptions about Corsica, shaped by James Boswell's writings, and contrasts these with the reality of the island's culture and society during their visit.
Sisman's biography focuses on the twenty-year friendship between Boswell and Johnson, arguing that Boswell's Life of Johnson is a calculated work of literary artifice, not a precise record. Sisman challenges the idea that Boswell's constant presence in the Life was an act of self-therapy, suggesting instead that Boswell masterfully manipulated the truth to validate his account and provoke Johnson's famous candor, even sacrificing his own dignity. By presenting Boswell as a skilled technician who shaped the narrative to fit his conception of Johnson, Sisman prompts readers to consider the authenticity of the revered biography, viewing it possibly as a web of half-truths.
Boswell in London: An Eighteenth-Century Soundscape Study
The journals in which James Boswell records his experiences in London between 1760 and 1795 are a rich source of information regarding the sounds that were generated by and heard within the city. They are also highly revealing in terms of the manner in which a single individual listened, thought about sound and noise, and represented this form of sensory experience through writing. This article makes the case that a productive approach to this material is to examine it in relation to the widely used but often loosely defined concept of the soundscape. It draws together the various dimensions of this concept, including the ideas of immersion, selection, regulation, manipulation, and imagination, and brings them into dialogue with existing scholarship on Boswell's construction of self through writing, and on the influence of The Spectator project and the role ascribed to the senses within the philosophical writing of Locke and Hume, both on him personally and eighteenth-century society more broadly. In so doing, it argues that we can nuance our understanding of Boswell in relation to others, himself, and the world and can identify patterns regarding the relationship between Boswell's external and internal experience as they change over time.
In this enthusiastic review, Kullman praises an outstanding collection of essays that chronicles critical disagreements in scholarship regarding the Life of Johnson between 1970 and 1985. The text identifies how various contributors readdress the accuracy of the biography and the nature of the persona presented. Kullman highlights Rader’s reconciliation of factual and literary biography and Vance’s argument that Johnson deliberately advanced a confusing persona to aggravate his biographer. The review notes that the collection explores Boswell’s mnemonic tricks and his sophisticated blend of subjective and objective content. Kullman concludes that the work serves as an important record of the literary merit and ongoing questions surrounding Boswell’s achievement.
Disaffected Parties reveals how alienation from politics effected crucial changes to the shape and status of literary form. Recovering the earliest expressions of grumbling, irritability, and cynicism towards politics, this study asks how unsettled partisan legacies converged with more recent discontents to forge a seminal period in the making of English literature — and thereby poses wide-ranging questions about the lines between politics and aesthetics. Reading works including Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, James Boswell's Life of Johnson, the novels of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and the satirical poetry of Lord Byron in tandem with print culture and partisan activity, this book shows how these writings remained animated by disaffected impulses and recalcitrant energies at odds with available party positions and emerging governmental norms — even as they sought to imagine perspectives that looked beyond the divided political world altogether. ‘No one can be more sick of — or indifferent to politics than I am,' Lord Byron wrote in 1820. Between the later eighteenth century and the Romantic age, disaffected political attitudes acquired increasingly familiar shapes. Yet this was also a period of ferment in which unrest associated with the global age of revolutions (including a dynamic transatlantic opposition movement) collided with often inchoate assemblages of parties and constituencies. As writers adopted increasingly emphatic removes from the political arena and cultivated familiar stances of cynicism, detachment, and retreat, their estrangement also promised to loop back into political engagement — and to make their works ‘parties' all their own.
Un diario biográfico: Sobre Borges, de Bioy
The article proposes a reading of Adolfo Bioy Casares' Borges, based on the observations on the personal diary and biography, which the author develops in the essay "El diario de Léautaud," published in La Nación in 1956 and later included with variations in La otra aventura in 1968. These observations separate both genres from their conventional purposes. Bioy takes up a statement by Oscar Wilde, who frees the biographical from its formal guidelines by inscribing it in the diary, and then does the same with the diaristic by reading it in the texture of James Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson. The core idea of the article argues that it is only on condition of these displacements that Johnson's biography can be counted as an antecedent of the diary on Borges. While Boswell's book is a conversational biography, the master antecedent of the so-called "relational turn in contemporary biography," Bioy's Borges is a biographical diary, centered on the record of the conversations he had with his friend during the long period of their shared life. The conversation becomes the material and scene of friendship between them. Like Boswell with Johnson, Bioy often recreates these exchanges in direct style: Borges's voice is also his work. Based on this conviction, the article then examines how the newspaper dramatizes these conversations and the drift they assume with Borges's decline. / El artículo propone una lectura del Borges de Adolfo Bioy Casares, a partir de las observaciones sobre el diario personal y la biografía, que el autor realiza en el ensayo "El diario de Léautaud," que publica en La Nación en 1956 e incluye luego con variantes en La otra aventura de 1968. Estas observaciones separan a ambos géneros de sus fines convencionales. Bioy retoma una afirmación de Oscar Wilde, que libera lo biográfico de sus pautas formales al inscribirlo en el diario, y hace luego lo propio con lo diarístico al leerlo en la textura de la Vida del Dr. Johnson de James Boswell. La idea medular del artículo sostiene que es solo a condición de estos desplazamientos que la biografía de Johnson puede contarse como antecedente del diario sobre Borges. Mientras el libro de Boswell es una biografía conversada, el antecedente maestro del llamado "giro relacional de la biografía contemporánea," el Borges, de Bioy, es un diario biográfico, centrado en el registro de las conversaciones que mantuvo con el amigo, durante el extenso período de vida compartido por ambos. La conversación se transforma en materia y escenario de la amistad entre ellos. Como Boswell con Johnson, a menudo Bioy recrea estos intercambios en estilo directo: la voz de Borges es también obra suya. A partir de esta convicción, el artículo examina entonces cómo dramatiza el diario estas conversaciones y la deriva que asumen con la decadencia de Borges.
Boswell's Scottish Dictionary Rediscovered
This paper describes the recent rediscovery by the author of the manuscript materials for James Boswell's Scottish Dictionary: a work which Boswell began in Utrecht in the 1760s, but which he never completed. The surviving manuscript, which was thought to be lost, is now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It had been misattributed to the Scottish lexicographer, John Jamieson, in the nineteenth century and subsequently catalogued under Jamieson's name. This paper gives the latest information on the remarkable history of the manuscript, and provides a first glimpse into the lexical riches in contains. Although never completed, Boswell's dictionary contains over 800 draft entries and is an important new source of information on eighteenth-century Scots. Research is still at an early stage, but the manuscript is already providing antedatings to the information in current historical dictionaries of Scots, and confirming the currency of some Scots words for which there was previously little evidence. It is also now possible to begin to compare Boswell's plan for his Scots dictionary, as outlined in his journals and memoranda, with the evidence of his surviving manuscript. The paper further outlines the author's future plans for transcribing and editing the manuscript, and describes the current website devoted to this ongoing research. Adapted from the source document
Nervous fictions: literary form and the enlightenment origins of neuroscience
The Hypochondriac's Watch: Boswell's Case
Throughout much of his life, James Boswell suffered from a disease he called "hypochondria." In a series of voluminous journals and in a weekly essay for the London Magazine, fittingly entitled "The Hypochondriack," Boswell obsessively detailed the symptoms of his disease and just as obsessively wondered over its causes and possible cures. Beset by anxiety, doubt, and gloom, Boswell's essays on hypochondria catalog nearly everything known and thought about the disease over the course of the eighteenth century. Although at times Boswell, often dejected and even anhedonic, appears to suffer mainly from what we would today call melancholy or depression,
"Novel Conversations" examines how and why eighteenth-century novelists came to represent people interacting in ways that registered as lively and real. Speech had long been crucial in literary genres as varied as drama, philosophical dialogue, romance and narrative poetry; but techniques for representing speech would proliferate in the eighteenth century as writers gave conversation a new centrality in the novel, seeking to capture the manner of speech over and above its basic matter. "Novel Conversations" explores this literary-historical development with chapters on four writers who were especially interested in the technical challenge of recording vocal effects: Samuel Richardson, James Boswell, Frances Burney and Jane Austen. They developed a set of tools for rendering in prose the auditory and social nuances of conversation, including tone and emphasis, pacing and pausing, gesture and movement. I argue that their experiments resulted in a new "transcriptional realism" in the novel. This term describes the range of techniques used to craft dialogue that faithfully approximates the features of real speech, while remaining meaningful and effectual as an element of prose narrative. In developing methods to this end, eighteenth-century writers borrowed techniques from other genres, combined them, and invented new ones. One rich source was life writing, the broad category of documentary prose genres that both absorbed and influenced the novel form in its early stages. Writers also sought complementary techniques in drama, whose stage directions, tonal notations and cues about who is speaking to whom at what point in time could be readily adapted for prose narrative. The task at hand was to calibrate two often opposing styles: the empirically driven, transcriptional mode of life writing and the more overtly stylized mode of drama. Writers did so by developing two resources within the novel form: the narrator, who occupies a flexible platform from which to elaborate conversational dynamics with description; and print itself, with all of its graphic and spatial possibilities for shaping speech on the page, including accidentals, line breaks, and typography. What are in one sense formalist readings are complemented by a careful attention to the materiality of the manuscript page and the printed page. In approaching my primary authors' texts from a technical perspective, I do justice to their experimental efforts to use writing as a technology for capturing voice: a recording device avant la lettre. This approach in turn gives me critical purchase to analyze the effect that this technology serves: detailed representations of characters operating in a lively, familiar social world.
Belle de Zuylen / Isabelle de Charrière et l'incrédulité: De la correspondance à la fiction
Existe-t-il une incrédulité pensable et dicible pour une femme de milieu cultivé, au siècle des Lumières? C'est la question que soulève la correspondance, puis la fiction d'Isabelle de Charrière (1740–1805). Vers 1764, la jeune fille de l'aristocratie hollandaise fait l'expérience des difficultés et des limites de la liberté intellectuelle, et de l'exercice de sa raison face au puritain John Boswell, puis à son compatriote Van Pallandt. Dans ses fictions et sa correspondance ultérieures, elle prend de plus en plus de recul vis-à-vis de dogmes religieux ou de convictions dont elle n'est plus bien sûre, d'ailleurs, qu'ils influent sur les conduites. Sans pour autant réhabiliter la «femme esprit fort» dans son roman Caliste (1785), comme le l'affirme C. Cazenobe, la femme mûre s'approche de plus en plus d'un nécessitarisme à relents matérialistes, avec pour seul bémol l'affirmation du pouvoir instructif de l'expérience. / Incredulity is not an easy or evident posture for a woman, even in the middle of the eighteenth century. This is what Isabelle de Charrière's (1740–1805) correspondence and fiction suggest. Towards 1764, the young woman, raised in Dutch aristocracy, tested the gender boundaries of intellectual freedom and the exercise of reason, in matter of religion. She preferred pyrrhonism to the reputation of an «esprit fort», be it with regards to the Puritain James Boswell, her fellow countryman Adolf van Pallandt, or Constant d;Hermenches. This is underlined by what we learned from the recent publication of inedits by Kees van Strien. She takes greater distance from protestant dogmas and religious convictions after 1784 when she became a novelist. While she does not quite rehabilitate the woman's «esprit fort» in her novel Calista (1785), as C. Cazenobe asserts, her letters show how she is quite close to materialist views about human freedom, even though the lessons of experience can mitigate her «fatalism».
L'Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques
British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection
In Company and Out: The Public/Private Selves of Johnson and Boswell
Sociable conversation, in all periods, but especially in the formal atmosphere and gender-restricted context of the eighteenth century, is the public face of the individual: that which is on display as against that which remains, more or less effectively, hidden from view. It represents the self that we wish to present to the world, even if that world is in the form of friends and family. The private self, certainly, can sometimes be observed through the cracks, and few performances are perfect, but to discover the extent and nature of that private self demands other sources, other more intimate means of inquiry, and other kinds of relationships. With writers like Johnson and Boswell we are unusually privileged, in that the opportunities are there for comparison between the self in performance and the self that can be read in their published and unpublished works. Thanks to Boswell, especially to his journal and his works on Johnson, we are afforded unique insights into both himself and his friend and idol Johnson, their inner selves as against their public and social personalities. In understanding these differences in perspective we can also read something of the nature of eighteenth-century society, of the weight given to social presence and performance and of the generally forbidden territory that was occupied by inner realities. This chapter explores some of those performances and some of that territory. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell valued sociability as amongst the very highest pleasures of living within a civilised society. The whole business of interchange of ideas, of pleasantries, even of insults — in short, of what had become known in the period as clubbability — are conspicuously present in all accounts of the ways they chose to spend their time, both when together, during Boswell's usually annual visits to London, and in the course of their separate lives. Yet this straightforward truth also conceals personal complexities in each man's case that make their respective attitudes towards company, conversation and sociability a good deal more paradoxical. Much as they genuinely enjoyed sociable companionability, different, and sometimes overlapping, facets of their personalities at times pulled against their clubbable capacities: competitiveness, self-indulgence, depression and world-weariness were all essentially anti-social tendencies that either were in danger of damaging the civilised within society or by their very nature made isolating and self-absorbing demands on each man.
Johnson, James, and the Medicinal Dictionary
Brack and Kaminski challenge traditional attributions of various biographical articles in James's Medicinal Dictionary to Johnson. While Boswell and later scholars like Hazen assigned numerous lives to Johnson based on stylistic "outbursts" and translation methods, the authors argue these pieces belong to a massive plundering of LeClerc's Histoire de la Médecine. They demonstrate that the labyrinthine syntax and vague diction in the life of Aesculapius and others match James's own style rather than Johnson's "nervous" and forceful prose. The authors accept only the life of Alexander as undoubtedly Johnsonian, noting it is "tightly written" and derived from a single source. Most other attributions fail rigorous stylistic standards, suggesting Johnson's assistance was limited to the dedication and early proposals.
Reformed Preaching in the Age of Enlightenment: A Comparison of Jonathan Erskine's 'Enlightened Evangelicalism' with Geneva's 'Reasonable Calvinism'
In 1764, the Scotsman James Boswell visited Geneva during his trek on the Grand Tour through Europe. Although Boswell was eager, like so many at that time, to meet the philosophes Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a Scot, he was just as excited to meet the Genevan clergy. After a conversation with the clergyman Antoine Maurice one Sunday afternoon, he marveled at the moment: "It was a curious idea: This is a Genevan minister." For Boswell, to arrive in Geneva was to enter the "seat of Calvinism" synonymous with the heritage of Presbyterianism. The close association he perceived between Scotland and Geneva is particularly evident when he described his worship experience at a "true Genevan kirk," which he depicted as "a perfect Puritanical picture." Yet, after observing the cheerful behavior of the Genevan clergy on Sunday he concluded, "the Geneva clergy are different from the Scots." Coming from a strict Sabbatarian tradition in Scotland, Boswell was keen to recount clerical behavior that day. It did not escape his notice when he observed a clergyman playing cards and in attendance at a ball featuring dancing. He wrote, "Was not this enough to break my stubborn association of gloom with a Sunday at Geneva? To complete the thing, there was a clergyman in the company ... and thus I solaced myself with the downfall of Presbyterianism but from John Calvin himself." After these experiences, Boswell was increasingly inclined to conclude that the Genevan clergy were not, in fact, "Puritans." With a dramatic air, Boswell reflected, "It was rather foolish. But I was amused to see card-playing on a Sunday at Geneva, and a minister rampaging amongst them. O John Calvin, where art thou now?"
Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing
Uses of the Grand Tour: Boswell and His Contemporaries
By the time the young James Boswell undertook his grand tour in the 1760s, the quantity and scope of European travel writing had become a widely attested phenomenon of the age. In the wake of the discovery, exploration, conquest and colonization of the New World in particular, writers from the Renaissance on had spawned a wide variety of literary forms that were centered on travel well beyond the confines of Europe as well as within it. And the New Science of the seventeenth century stimulated a fresh vogue of discovery and speculation that gave rise to further kinds of voyage.
Images of Corsica in France: Travel Memoirs and 19th Century Writers
Considered an integral part of Metropolitan France, the island of Corsica is situated nonetheless on the very periphery of the modern state that claims it. Actually situated geographically closer to Italy than to any part of France, its culture and its people are likewise more closely related to their Italians neighbors than to the rest of what Corsicans term "Continental France." Following the acquisition of Corsica, both government officials and bourgeois travelers would seek to visit the island, often recording their findings and publishing these memoirs for others to know of their travels. This concept of travel memoirs, specifically those regarding Corsica, had already been a fairly common practice among the British, as they had often placed interest in the island itself. From this group of French and British travel memoirs would come the writings of James Boswell, P. P. Pompéi, and the Baron de Beaumont, among others. Corsica becomes a place of unique setting for novels and short stories throughout the century, with tales of banditry, vendetta, and violence from the island. For those authors seeking to place their stories in Corsica, inspiration was drawn from the very travel memoirs they had read regarding the island, although often they chose to ignore them in favor of stereotypes. I have chosen three specific 19th century authors in relation to the images created by the travel memoirs of Corsica: Prosper Mérimée, Honoré de Balzac, and Guy de Maupassant. The purpose behind each author's use of the images of Corsica was very different and shows different ways that these images were used. Mérimée directly used Corsica to question the triumph of the civilized over the uncivilized, Balzac used Corsica to represent France itself, and Maupassant used Corsica to show that "reality" is really nothing more than a personal illusion. Though when publishing their travel memoirs the authors might not have expected much to come of them, they have actually influence an entire century of writers, and possibly an entire nation, with their images of Corsica.
Varieties of Sunday Observance: Boswell and His Contemporaries
Miller explores the "varieties of Sunday observance" through the experiences of Boswell and his contemporaries. Boswell appears as a "moderate sabbatarian" who attended church regularly and "enjoyed the experience," yet struggled with a lifelong "gloomy" depression he attributed to the strict Presbyterian upbringing forced by his "extremely pious" mother. While Boswell found Sunday travel and writing acceptable, he viewed card-playing with "some compunction" as being against "good morals." In contrast to his unsuccessful attempts to be a regular churchgoer, Johnson and Boswell often used Sundays for reading religious works or the Bible, which Boswell noted was "so little read" by people of distinction in London. The text details how Boswell found London Sundays "less gloomy" than those in Edinburgh, where the "usual constraint" of his father's household burdened him. Miller uses these personal accounts to illustrate the shift toward evangelicalism and renewed interest in "enforcing existing sabbatarian laws" at the end of the eighteenth century.
Hatred and the Eighteenth-Century Writer in Britain
Building on literary and historical work on emotions, this dissertation offers a new history of eighteenth-century feeling. Working across genres to reconstruct how writers from Alexander Pope to Frances Burney experienced and wrote about hateful feelings, it argues that the proliferation of print and growing willingness to write and publicize the self across the century must be understood not only as a possible agent and opportunity for good-natured sympathy and civility, but also for animosity. Chapter one, on the infamous feud between Pope and his enemies Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Hervey, shows how poetic hatred, much like poetic love, exposes the poet's vulnerabilities. Chapter two, on Johnson and "good hating," addresses the moral hazards of hatred in conversation, criticism, and biography, while chapter three turns to one of those biographers, James Boswell, to consider autobiography, confession, and religious self-hatred. Chapter four, on Horace Walpole's letters, focuses on the styles, moral value, and social risks of hateful feelings among the elite, and chapter five reads Burney's much-maligned final novel The Wanderer (1814) in terms of the limits put on how women, servants, and the laboring poor expressed their hateful feelings. While grounded in eighteenth-century texts, the dissertation also explores the role of hateful feelings in critical history: these feelings turn out to be vital not only in eighteenth-century literary culture, but also in the history of eighteenth-century studies.
Lire l'autre dans l'Europe des Lumières / Reading the Other in Enlightenment Europe
Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée
Boswell Reading Boswell: a Chapter in Autobiographical Misconstruction
James Boswell, like any contemporary Scottish or English gentleman, was a wide reader, schooled in the classics and, of course, in the greats of the vernacular, especially Shakespeare, Addison and, of his immediate contemporaries, Johnson. Boswell's reading, however, was not at all systematic, or systematisable. Except in his legal practice, where he often records reading solidly and unenthusiastically for a particular case, he tended to read as the mood took him, and often altogether without solidity. But Boswell's reading was in one respect distinctive, even thorough, and certainly directed towards understanding one thing as clearly as possible, even if filled with misreadings and misconstructions. He read his own journal, and the intention was to understand himself. My point is that Boswell made a conscious and sustained attempt with the Life of Johnson to edit himself into a less mockable, less amusing, less frivolous narrative figure for the purposes of public consumption, and thereby into a more consistent, less shaming, less volatile individual for his own consumption than in the journals that provided the fundamental reading material for the lives of Boswell and of Johnson.
Staging Pain, 1580–1800: Violence and Trauma in British Theater
A 'Bracing' Moment: Reynolds' Response to Boswell and Burke on the Aesthetics and Ethics of Public Executions
On July 6, 1785 Sir Joshua Reynolds' conspicuous attendance at a public hanging of Peter Shaw, a former servant of Edmund Burke, was highly controversial and a "rare social gaffe" that the artist committed. Privately defending his decision to attend in a letter to James Boswell, his companion at the execution, Reynolds remarked on the cathartic, masculinist, bracing effects that an execution has on a properly civilized spectator, who responds to the hanged man as if watching a carefully staged dramatic performance. Had he attempted, like Boswell, to make a broad public appeal for the aesthetic pleasure and humane grounds of witnessing a public hanging, Reynolds would have faced greater difficulty. Emergent sectors of society viewed such open forms of capital punishment otherwise. This was, after all, a time when the discourses of penology, religion, and politics were rallying against theatrical public executions.1 In addition, both Johnson, the leader of The Club to which Reynolds and Boswell belonged, and, more recently, Burke, another of its most formidable intellects, had written against the abuse of this practice.
Writing the Global: the Scottish Enlightenment as Literary Practice
This thesis presents the Scottish Enlightenment as a literary practice in which Scottish thinkers deploy diverse forms of writing — for example, philosophical treatise, essay, autobiography, letter, journal, and history — to shape their ideas and interact with readers. After the unsuccessful publication of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), David Hume turns to write essays on moral philosophy, politics and commerce, and criticism. I argue that other representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment such as Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and William Robertson also display a comparable attention to the choice and use of literary forms. I read the works of the Scottish Enlightenment as texts of eighteenth-century literature rather than a context for that literature. Since I argue that literary culture is an essential component of the Scottish Enlightenment, I include James Boswell and Tobias Smollett as its members. In diverse literary forms, Scottish writers refer to geographical difference, and imagine the globe as heterogenous and interconnected. These writers do not treat geography as a distinctive field of inquiry. Instead, geographical reference is a feature of diverse scholarly genres. I suggest that literary experiments in the Scottish Enlightenment can be read as responding to the circulation of information, people, and things beyond Europe. Scottish writers are interested in the diversity of human beings, and pay attention to the process through which different groups of people in distant regions encounter each other and exchange their sentiments as well as products. The geographical scope of writing in the Scottish Enlightenment encompasses the whole surface of the earth. And Scottish writers explore the emergence and consequences of global interconnection. The construction of this global vision is evident across genres and it is a constitutive element of the Scottish Enlightenment.
This approving review describes Zaretsky’s study of Boswell's European travels and his search for Enlightenment answers following a strict Calvinist upbringing. Zaretsky tracks Boswell's pursuit of luminaries including Hume, Smith, Rousseau, and Voltaire, noting his "tactic of throwing himself at the Enlightenment thinkers." The review emphasizes Boswell’s lifelong depression, a condition shared by Johnson, and his subsequent essays on the subject. The reviewer credits Zaretsky for illustrating how figures like Wilkes and Paoli shaped Boswell’s understanding of freedom. Zaretsky argues that Boswell remains relevant not for original creativity, but for his relatable struggle to find meaning. The review concludes that the work offers a wonderful rendering of Boswell’s probing life and intellectual molding.
Scotland, Britain, Empire: Writing the Highlands, 1760–1860
Native Tongue: Ossian, National Origins, and the Problem of Translation
Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper
π-ions Boswell [review of Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782, edited by Joseph W. Reed and Frederick A. Pottle, and Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 1782–1785, edited by Irma S. Lustig and Frederick A. Pottle]
Rawson finds this volume of private papers, with its high-quality commentary, to be a valuable historical record containing materials for The Life of Johnson, but criticizes the editors for unhelpfully insisting on the journal's "art" or literary distinction.
Viva Voce: Speech and Orality in Eighteenth-Century Literature
This dissertation traces an alternative history of an understudied and often-maligned eighteenth-century genre: speech. Conventional narratives of the eighteenth century have tended to emphasize the increasing dominance of print, but my project recovers an active interest and confidence in spoken language. Despite a perception in the period that speech was transient, mutable, and vulnerable to corruption, I show that, paradoxically, eighteenth-century authors consistently turn to speech — both as a formal device and a conceptual trope — in order to legitimize their writing. Biographer and compulsive journal-writer James Boswell pursues self-knowledge through transcribed conversation; letter-writing lovers (Swift and Stella, Sterne and Eliza, Thrale Piozzi and Conway) establish intimacy through the trope of the "talking" letter; and female grammarians and lexicographers assert linguistic authority through their mastery of spoken language. These examples demonstrate that questions about the value of speech were at the crux of many pivotal eighteenth-century debates, including where to locate the authentic self, how best to standardize the English language, and what kinds of knowledge should matter or "count." Moreover, these examples point to the role of speech in shaping four quintessential genres of the Enlightenment: the journal, the biography, the letter, and the dictionary or grammar. In looking at how spoken language influences writing, my work makes clear that the eighteenth-century debate about speech sets up a false dichotomy between these two categories; in fact, speech and writing are far more intimately connected than modern critics have allowed.
Shame and Masculinity in the Eighteenth Century: Politeness, Creativity, Affect
This thesis is concerned with how shame contributes to the development of hegemonic masculinities in eighteenth-century British culture. It examines a range of contemporary literature in order to understand how feelings of shame, as well as practices of shaming others, became a key, if often unspoken, aspect of attempts to define and maintain which forms of masculinity were acceptable, and which were not, in a rapidly changing cultural context. The thesis explores the effect on men of the newly commercial 'public sphere' that came to prominence at the beginning of the century, and tries to track its affective trajectory through to the end of the period. Following work on affect by Silvan Tomkins, the American psychologist, and its interpretation by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in particular, I view shame as a social emotion which simultaneously isolates men from, and connects them to the society they inhabit. A crucial part of polite socialisation, I contend that shame is therefore a catalyst for creativity and productivity in several forms as well as failure and inertia. The thesis is divided into two sections. The first, containing the chapters on The Spectator, writing about fops, and Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, is concerned with how shame helps to form the consensus around polite masculine qualities and actions. The second section, containing the chapters on Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling, James Boswell's London Journal, and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative, examines how this consensus is engaged with and critiqued in lived experience and its literary representations. The contribution this thesis makes is to highlight the importance of shame and other ambivalent affects in the construction of a set of hegemonic gender identities that are less usually associated with these same affects.
Georgian Glasgow: The City Remembered Through Literature, Objects, and Cultural Memory Theory
The core argument under discussion in this thesis is that Georgian Glasgow (1714–1837) has been largely overshadowed by the city's unprecedented growth in the following centuries when it became a symbol of the industrial age. In this sense much of the work being done here is a form of cultural excavation: unearthing neglected histories from the past that tell us more than is presently known about the development of Glasgow. The thesis will engage with literature, history, and memory studies: a collective approach that allows for both general discussion of ideas as well as specific engagement with literature and objects. The larger issues to which these converging disciplines will be applied include the Scottish Enlightenment, religion, cultural identity, slavery, and diaspora. The thesis is developed chronologically through the Georgian period with contextual discussions of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries at each stage. This results in a more rounded analysis of each theme while making the argument that Georgian Glasgow remains underrepresented in the public realm. The main historical figures that help this argument are: Robert and Andrew Foulis; Tobias Smollett; Adam Smith and James Boswell; and John Galt. Each of these main figures represent distinct themes that define the case studies of the argument. They are: print culture and religion; science and medicine; slavery; and transatlantic migration and colonisation. There are crossovers, for instance the points made about religion in chapter one may be utilised again in chapters two and four; while the very broad theme of the Scottish Enlightenment is discussed to varying degrees in every chapter. The methodology strives to discuss literary, historical, and theoretical memory studies together. In the latter field, the theories of the pre-eminent scholars underpin the case studies of people, places, and objects. Given the connection of this thesis to the major Glasgow Life exhibition, How Glasgow Flourished: 1714–1837 (2014), this interdisciplinary approach is able to reflect the public response to ‘Georgian Glasgow.' The majority of these findings are revealed in the conclusion chapter, although the experience of working collaboratively with Glasgow Museums informed the thesis as a whole. While this thesis primarily aims to recover and engage with the forgotten aspects of Glasgow's past, it is also shaped as a methodological template transferrable to other places and time periods. By engaging with the specialisms of academia and taking them into the public realm via other institutions, this thesis strives to remember Georgian Glasgow while outlining a practical process for cultural engagement elsewhere.
Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800
Author's abstract: "The testimonies examined in this chapter offer insight into three personal encounters with eighteenth-century polite society. In June 1715 Dudley Ryder began a daily record of his temper, reading patterns and ‘acts as to their goodness or badness'. Ryder believed his reputation for polite sociability was chiefly dependent on a capacity for good conversation. Penrose's assessment brings to mind the century-long debate over polite society's impact on gentlemanliness and manhood that we have traced in contemporary intellectual and popular literature. James Boswell's discussion of good dress as a general agent of social harmony, or his appreciation of shared civilities between ‘fellow creatures' in a carriage, reveal this more sophisticated appreciation of a modern community or nation engaged in unprecedented levels of refined sociability. Boswell's construction of his sentimental persona had been a gradual process. A student of Adam Smith at Glasgow in the late 1750s, his early journals show an appreciation of the language and signs of sensibility. The testimonies examined in this chapter offer insight into three personal encounters with eighteenth-century polite society. In June 1715 Dudley Ryder began a daily record of his temper, reading patterns and ‘acts as to their goodness or badness'. Ryder believed his reputation for polite sociability was chiefly dependent on a capacity for good conversation. Penrose's assessment brings to mind the century-long debate over polite society's impact on gentlemanliness and manhood that we have traced in contemporary intellectual and popular literature. James Boswell's discussion of good dress as a general agent of social harmony, or his appreciation of shared civilities between ‘fellow creatures' in a carriage, reveal this more sophisticated appreciation of a modern community or nation engaged in unprecedented levels of refined sociability. Boswell's construction of his sentimental persona had been a gradual process. A student of Adam Smith at Glasgow in the late 1750s, his early journals show an appreciation of the language and signs of sensibility."
Scarre’s parody presents a fictional dialogue between Boswell and David Hume set in a dream-landscape resembling the afterlife. Boswell attempts to convince the skeptical Hume that both have died and entered a future state, citing his own attendance at Hume’s funeral as evidence. Hume maintains his skepticism, applying his philosophical principles regarding experience and miracles to dispute the reality of their surroundings. Hume suggests that simpler explanations, such as being transported while unconscious or dreaming, remain more probable than the "fantastic hypothesis" of a spiritual afterlife. Boswell challenges the consistency of Hume’s philosophy, arguing that if the past provides no certain guide to the future, Hume cannot rule out a transition to a future state. Hume responds by emphasizing the role of custom and the "pre-established harmony" between nature and ideas. The vignette ends as Boswell flees from figures in white garments, waking to find himself in his bedroom at Auchinleck.
L'insularité sous l'œil du pouvoir: le voyage en Corse au regard de la cartographie insulaire (1531–1634): Considérations autour du Dialogo nominato Corsica d'Agostino Giustiniani
La Corse en raison de sa situation géographique centrale en Méditerranée, demeure au cours des siècles le carrefour d'enjeux géo-stratégiques et commerciaux qui entretiennent la rivalité des peuples méditerranéens, désireux d'asseoir leurs places fortes, et d'implanter sur ses rivages, des comptoirs et des colonies. Victime du rôle qu'elle représente aux yeux des grandes puissances, l'île subit après la domination génoise (1567–1729) et durant les premiers temps encore troubles de son histoire moderne (1729–1769), le choc de modèles politiques et culturels concurrents qui coexistent même après la signature du traité de Versailles, le 15 mai 1768.A cet égard, il est intéressant de constater quelle place occupe la production cartographique et quels besoins (intimement liés au pouvoir) président à ses modalités de représentation, ne retenant que l'importance d'une vision d'ensemble de la Corse, liée à son contrôle direct, à sa possession, à sa mise en valeur agricole et démographique. La cartographie de cette période est le fait d'ingénieurs, de maîtres-architectes ou de «spécialistes» géographes, génois ou français, qui lui donnent indéniablement et malgré beaucoup d'approximations topographiques et toponymiques, une nature fondamentalement militaire ou administrative. En 1568, Leandro Alberti de Bologna fait paraître à Venise dans l'ouvrage Descrittione di tutta Italia, l'une des premières descriptions rigoureuses de la Corse, qui marque un progrès extraordinaire et sert de base aux cartes de Camocio (1570) et de Mercator (1590). Le Corsicae antiquae descriptio de l'allemand Philipp Clüver (1619), présente quelques années plus tard, une carte à la réelle dimension artistique. En plus de situer les lieux avec une précision remarquable, elle ouvre la voie à une série d'autres cartes aux relevés minutieux, harmonieusement illustrées (Magini, 1620; Sanson D;abbeville, 1656), qui se succèderont jusqu'au journal de voyage en Corse de James Boswell, An Account of Corsica, the journal of a tour to that island (carte réalisée par Thomas Phinn, 1769). A côté de cette première variété cartographique, qui rentre généralement dans un vaste programme de domination du territoire, existe une autre logique plus artisanale, essentiellement décorative, et qui ne paraît pas requérir d’objectif sinon celui de la découverte d’une île, peuplée de légendes purement pittoresques, fantaisistes, et même des fois curieuses. La carte de Munster (Cosmographie universelle, édition allemande de 1572) au tracé très grossier, s’accompagne de bateaux et de monstres marins. D’autres médiocres copies intercalent à côté de noms modernes, ceux de lieux hérités de Ptolémée, en les localisant avec plus ou moins de chance: l’Orthelius (1574) publiée dans le Theatrum orbis terrarum, la Manesson et Mallet (1683). Dans quel contexte prend place cette cartographie naissante de la Corse, et surtout qu’émerge-t-il au carrefour des pratiques d’expression narratives de la connaissance – les récits de voyage, les chroniques – et des pratiques d’expression picturales? C’est une question que l’on peut légitimement poser.Il n’apparaît pas que l’exercice d’écriture de la chronique se soit prêté à un travail de description cartographique de la Corse, ni en remontant au XVe siècle à Giovanni della Grossa, ni plus tard chez Monteggiani : leur écriture est généralement faite de notes entreprises au gré de leurs déplacements, de faits qui sont estimés dignes de mention par l’auteur, auxquels s’ajoutent des documents compilés qui présentent des sources d’importance. Les chroniqueurs soulèvent le défi de comprendre l’histoire très trouble de la Corse, pour en jeter sur le papier les événements historiques plus ou moins marquants, les traits de mœurs, les particularismes linguistiques, mais pas la rationalisation territoriale de chaque pieve, susceptible de mieux faire exploiter l’île. En revanche, l’un des textes fondateurs du récit de voyage en Corse intitulé le Dialogo nominato Corsica, en français le «Dialogue appelé Corse», est écrit par un Génois, l’évêque Agostino Giustiniani. Ce récit prend bien au contraire des précédentes chroniques, toute une dimension géographique voire géostratégique qui le situe de plain-pied dans le contexte de la présence de la République de Gênes sur l’île. Il sera d’ailleurs réécrit et remanié par deux chroniqueurs: Marc’Antonio Ceccaldi, dans son Historia di Corsica, laquelle sera elle-même augmentée et réutilisée par Anton Pietro Filippini, qui s’attribue la totalité des travaux de ses devanciers. On ne trouve pas dans les autres récits de voyage en Corse au XVIe siècle de considérations versées dans le domaine cartographique, ni chez le florentin Gabriello Simeoni dans ses Illustres Observations antiques (1558), ni chez le padouan Giulio Vertunno, auteur du Viaggio et possesso di Corsica (1560). Quant au premier récit de voyage en Corse écrit en français, il est assez tardif: Les voyages et observations du sieur de La Boullaye Le Gouz datent en effet de 1653.
In this enthusiastic review, Ott praises Philip Baruth's novel for building a compelling historical mystery set in the summer of 1763. Ott notes that the narrative explores the intense jealousy and "something like hatred" felt by John Boswell for his older brother, Boswell. The plot centers on a specific day when Boswell plans a boat ride across the Thames to Greenwich Palace with Johnson to further their friendship, while John, recently released from a mental asylum, intends to crash the excursion. Ott observes that Baruth skillfully uses flashbacks, alternating points of view, and a potentially unreliable narrator to generate tension and bring eighteenth-century London to vivid life.
A very brief letter to the editor. Boswell recorded in his journal that he was introduced to gin and treacle, or whistlejacket, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's house by Lord Eliot.
The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Tourism
Cultivated Pursuits: Cultural Tourism as Metempsychosis and Metensomatosis
Metempsychosis and Metensomatosis were concepts introduced in two papers on tourism behaviour published a decade ago. The first paper adapted and adopted the word metempsychosis, a concept originally found in classical myth and ancient religion, to describe a form of cultural tourism in which travellers repeated itineraries made by significant historical others from within their own culture. Such repetitive journeys were taken by people as individual travellers or within packaged tours. Examples included journeys and tours in which subjects followed in the footsteps of James Boswell and Dr. Johnson in the Hebrides, William Cobbett on his round-Britain tours, Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, and many other prestigious travellers in history.
The Imaginary Encyclopedia: The Novel and the Reference Work in the Age of Reason
The Imaginary Encyclopedia explores the relationship between aesthetics and epistemology in the eighteenth century by positing a formal analogy between the early novel and the reference work (e.g., Johnson's Dictionary, Diderot's Encyclopédie). The dissertation considers that analogy from two reciprocal vantages: first, by conceptualizing the early novel as a particularly elastic type of reference work and, second, by studying the reference work as a cohesive, imagined literary world. The book frames that mirror effect between two theoretical axes: on one hand, Michel Foucault's The Order of Things, which describes the rational structuration that occurs within all imaginative or creative thought and, on the other hand, Theodor W. Adorno's work on the influence of folklore and ritual on the development of Enlightenment rationality. The project therefore uses the dynamic between the novel and the reference work as a symbolic gateway to this question: what if we took the processes of imaginative writing to be structurally similar or identical to the processes of rational or scientific inquiry? In answering that troublesome question, The Imaginary Encyclopedia surveys four eighteenth-century writers who experimented with aesthetic form for the purpose of conveying abnormally dense amounts of information. First, it looks at Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year as a narrative that embraces encyclopedism, using scientific or referential description to position itself as a contribution to the nascent social sciences. It then moves on to two novelists — Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne — who are expressly skeptical of the utility of the reference work but unable to escape its powerful allure as an organizational framework for their fiction. Finally, it concludes with a chapter on James Boswell's journals, which give contemporary readers a vivid sense of how the interaction between literary writing and encyclopedic writing inhered in the everyday consciousness of eighteenth-century authors. These four readings suggest that the early English novel's form revolutionized the organization of Enlightenment information, providing an aesthetic medium for syncretic compilation and the means to index subjective experience as though it were a scientific object. In other words, the novel was not merely capable of encyclopedism — as Edward Mendleson famously argued in defending various "epic novels" — but encyclopedic in its very structure.
A Want of Manly Vigor: Impotence and Authorial Identity in Eighteenth-Century Narrative
As literary historians have noted, writers in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England were seemingly obsessed with male sexual impotence. Contemporary stage comedy, verse, prose fiction, bawdy tales, medical texts, sexual advice manuals, legal proceedings, and political lampoons reflect a persistent and pervasive concern with the "Decay of that true old English Vigour." Although most scholarly assessments of this phenomenon suggest, either explicitly or implicitly, that the national fascination with impotence subsided after the Restoration, the central premise of this dissertation is that it did not abate at the turn of the century so much as it expressed itself in new, more complex ways. Specifically, I examine the distinctive way in which the eighteenth century's manifest concerns with male sexual dysfunction intersect with broader concerns about male narrative authority. I focus on a strange, recurrent phenomenon in works by Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, and James Boswell: male narrators of fictional and nonfictional personal histories who repeatedly — and perplexingly — announce their own sexual inadequacies. That they do so in texts that are centrally concerned with male literary authority, as well as deeply invested in conventional figurations of writing as a sexually generative act of male potency, makes the confessions of incapacity all the more intriguing. In considering what such admissions reveal about sexual and authorial power in these texts, I explore how the impotent author-narrators work to consolidate their masculine power even as they appear to relinquish it. Their admissions of incapacity work paradoxically and often covertly to bolster male literary authority, as the impotent narrator parlays his weakness into currency in the transaction between writer and reader. Such works thus challenge traditional assumptions about male sexual potency and literary authority: complicating simple equations of creative and phallic power, they substantially reconfigure the eroticized relationships among author, text, and audience.
Before imagination: Literary reverie's opening to the present
In this dissertation I demonstrate that attention to proto-Romantic and Romantic literary reverie should radically revise our long-standing literary-historical accounts of the romantic-modern imagination, that imagination so familiar to us from eighteenth-century and Romantic literature, where it assumed the canonical form it would bequeath to modernism. In a departure from traditional uses of the term, I define reverie as a literary-aesthetic state frequently characterized by blankness and quite distinct from the typically more narrative, color-filled and at least fictively "purposive" or future-oriented imagination. Reverie is in fact a decidedly pre-imaginative, distended moment that — unlike the hard-working imagination — creates an apparently blank and contentless, nonnarrative space of sheer dilating presentness out of which the materials for what may eventually become new thought-experiences can emerge (and can, after the fact, move toward imagination proper and then, finally, toward post-imaginative conceptualization, agency, and action). I trace the central but little recognized role of this reverie — first delineated by Rousseau — in the works of James Boswell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth. The consequences of my readings are great, because traditional liberal intellectual claims for the literary imagination — that it allows artists and audiences creatively to image not-yet-realized socio-historical or scientific progress — would now have to be pushed back towards dependence on what I call reverie. This strange, radically "blank" and formal experience makes the imagination, by comparison, look like a diligent good citizen. Critics and scholars of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British literature (often following the artists themselves) have generally collapsed these vague and almost incommunicable reverie-states into descriptions of full-blown productive imagination. But I show that reverie-states are best understood as markedly different from imagination itself. In ways that literary critics and historians have hardly accounted for, this proto-Romantic and Romantic literary reverie contributes crucially to modern attempts to conceptualize socio-historically and even scientifically the experience of a present that has not yet been adequately understood using only traditional intellectual tools and conventions.
A Self-Reflexive Journey: Imagining Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Travel Narrative
"A Self-Reflexive Journey" examines real-life, published accounts of popular eighteenth-century travelers as a novel form of creative autobiography in which lived experience is translated as narrative experiment. As a subset of life-writing, the travelogue provides the occasion for authors to self-fashion their identities as traveling subjects and attempt to reconcile their personal and national identities with constant exposure to foreign customs and modes of thought. I argue that figurative and literal landscapes in eighteenth-century travel accounts function as a crucial site for the mediation of narrative identity, enabling the internal contestations of the evolving self to be enacted upon a global stage. The introduction elaborates upon the critical approach of the dissertation and discusses how Joseph Addison's meditation on Virgilian poetical "landskips" in Remarks on Italy (1705) anticipates his eponymous persona in The Spectator (1711–1712) by reconciling the literary past with the literal present. Chapter two examines the letters Lady Mary Wortley Montagu composed during her eighteenth-month sojourn to Turkey beginning in 1716, posthumously published as Turkish Embassy Letters (1763), and her correspondence relating to her residence in Italy from 1739 to 1762. I interrogate how Montagu's depiction of Turkey as the Elysian Fields in 1717, and her recapitulation of this metaphor to describe her departure for Italy twenty-two years later, serves as a paradigm for leaving behind her former English life and identity. In the third chapter I analyze James Boswell's use of the geographical feature of the isthmus to stand in for his intermediary identity as a post-Union Scot in An Account of Corsica (1768) and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). The dissertation concludes by exploring Mary Wollstonecraft's conflation of embosomed arboreal landscapes and the female breast in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) to politicize her identity as a mother and travel writer within the Radical context of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature: Enlightenment, Britain and Empire (1707–1918)
Ross provides a scholarly overview of the diverse career of Tobias Smollett, characterizing him as a novelist, historian, and "political journalist" whose works were shaped by his experiences as an expatriate Scot in London. The chapter details Smollett's picaresque fiction, such as his first novel where the hero encounters "prejudice encountered in post-1707 Britain." Smollett’s later works, particularly his final novel, use a multi-correspondent epistolary format to articulate a "unity-in-diversity" for Great Britain. The text notes that Johnson’s monumental dictionary project relied heavily on "North Britain" assistants, including five of his six amanuenses. Although Smollett and Johnson inhabited the same mid-eighteenth-century British literary landscape, the narrative highlights their differing linguistic concerns; while Smollett had a "vested interest in stabilizing English" to avoid ridicule, the period’s obsession with "Scotticisms" and linguistic purity remained a major hurdle for ambitious Scots. Ultimately, Ross presents Smollett as a writer who, despite personal setbacks and financial pressures, helped make the "profession of paid critic a respectable one" through his work with the Critical Review and other influential periodicals.
Die Literêre Biografie — 'N Terreinverkenning
This study endeavours to research the field of literary historiography in general and specifically biographic historiography. In South Africa this genre has a limited tradition. Apart from a few diffused contributions by specialists in technical and other publications, and the essays by Hennie Aucamp in Beeltenis verbode and J. C. Kannemeyer in Getuigskrifte and Ontsyferde stene, very little research has been done in South Africa in this field. Chapter one expounds the research methodology. It briefly states the definition of the problem, as well as the goal orientation and the delimitation of the field of study, actuality, hypotheses and structural development. Chapter two affords the theoretical foundation of literary and more specifically biographic historiography. The concept "biography" is defined. The modern biography and its characteristics and structure are scrutinized in terms of different theoretical criteria. Finally this chapter contemplates some problems experienced by contemporary biographers. Chapter three is an overview which sets out the history of biographic historiography from the most ancient times, during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 16th to the 20th century. Biographic historiography in the USA is closely researched. Major achievements and the most important texts which influenced the genre are emphasized. The contributions of notable biographers such as James Boswell and Lytton Strachey are highlighted. Chapter four is the core of this dissertation. Initially it contemplates biographic historiography in South Africa in general. Thereafter it researches literary biographies in depth. The earliest comprehensive literary biography in Afrikaans, Ds. S. J. du Toit in weg en werkby Totius, is discussed. Attention is drawn to Leon Rousseau's biography of Eugène N. Marais, which, in 1974, ushered in the true beginning of this tradition in Afrikaans. Subsequently the biographies of V. E. d'As-sonville on Totius and S. J. du Toit are discussed. The major part of this chapter is devoted to the oeuvre of J. C. Kannemeyer, who probably made the most important contribution in this field with his comprehensive biographies on D. J. Opperman, C. J. Langenhoven, and C. Louis Leipoldt. Finally J. C. Steyn's monumental description of the life of N. P. van Wyk Louw, in two volumes, is discussed. The discussion and evaluation of these texts are set out narratively and comparatively. The said biographies are evaluated according to different biographic theories. Chapter five, a concise chapter, evaluates the hypotheses set out at the beginning of this research. Furthermore it is indicated that the field of biographic historiography in South Africa is still not properly exploited. Suggestions for further research are given. South Africa is a multi-ethnic country and contradictory political, cultural, socio-economic and language interests are not uncommon. Biographies could contribute to mutual understanding of these diversities, as manifested in J. C. Steyn's Van Wyk Louw: ‘n Lewensverhaal.Perhaps at present research in this field is crucial.
Lee reviews Boulton and McLoughlin’s edition, welcoming it as the first complete critical version of Boswell's early work. He praises the restoration of the "Account" and "Journal" as a single text, reflecting Boswell's original intent and revealing his developing literary techniques. Lee finds the introduction comprehensive on historical context and genre. While noting minor editorial flaws (typos, sparse index, inconsistent citations) and a moderate annotation level compared to the Yale Boswell editions, he concludes this is a valuable and necessary contribution that should renew scholarly interest in Boswell's significant pre-Johnsonian achievement as an author.
Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612–1865
Slavery as a metaphor had a widespread appeal and a long pedigree. Love, as the strongest of emotional bonds, was an obvious subject. In eighteenth-century London, James Boswell, white and pro-slavery, employed it whimsically to describe male subjection to female attraction; in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, Sarah Forten, a black contributor to her city's anti-slavery bazaar was charmed by a local effusion employing the same technique.1 In Ireland this playful, heterosexual approach was less in evidence but the analogy with religious experience echoed down the ages from St Patrick's declaration that he was a slave of Christ to the eighteenth-century Presbyterian and nineteenth-century evangelical assertion that Irish Catholics were enslaved by Popery. By this time however the changing political world was producing an array of direct comparisons, as well as the continued use of implicit analogies, between black bondage and Irish conditions.
Travelling Servants: Mobility and Employment in British Travel Writing 1750–1850
This chapter argues that servants were integral to journeys not only in practical and material ways but also in their narrative productions. It considers the representation of servants in a range of travel writing from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, charting the different ways in which servants are employed in the narration of their employers' journeys, and how their presence, and absence, signals larger concerns about the significance of class, and language. Travel writing about journeys to the Continent, often educative journeys describing Grand Tour destinations, was largely impersonal and factual in style. Servants came to be more visible in travel writing about the Home Tour later in the century, as travellers strove to represent the social milieu in which they found themselves and which often included local servants. In the absence of Barber, it is James Boswell's servant Joseph who accompanies the two men on their tour of Scotland.
Feeling British: Sympathy and the literary construction of national identity, 1707–1832
"Feeling British: Sympathy and the Literary Construction of National Identity, 1707–1832," explores how the discourse of sympathy functions in eighteenth-century and Romantic literature to encourage, but also to problematize, a sense of shared national identity in Britain. The Act of Union of 1707 officially joined England and Scotland, but government policy alone could not overcome centuries of feuding and ill-will between these nations. Accordingly, the literary public sphere became a vital arena for the promotion of a new national identity: Britishness. I locate the discursive origins of modern Britishness in Scotland, more specifically, in the Scottish Enlightenment's theorization of sympathy, the mechanism by which feelings are naturally transferred between people. From these philosophical beginnings, I track how the discourse of sympathy is both deployed and interrogated by novelists and poets, predominantly but not exclusively Scottish, invested in shaping the nation's sense of itself. My introduction sets out these issues through case studies of Daniel Defoe's and James Boswell's meditations on national identity. Chapter One, "‘That Propensity We Have': Sympathy and the Scottish Invention of Britishness," examines the political implications of the Scottish Enlightenment's theorizations of sympathy. Chapter Two, "‘The Fools of Prejudice': Tobias Smollett and the Novelization of National Identity," traces the development of Smollett's literary strategies for promoting Britishness via the discourse of sympathy. Chapter Three, "‘Harp of the North': Romantic Poetry and the Sympathetic Uses of Scotland," examines the relationship between Britishness and the Romantic turn to poetic appropriations of Scottish folk traditions. Chapter Four, "‘To be at Once Another and the Same': Walter Scott, the Waverley Novels, and the End(s) of Sympathetic Britishness," argues that Scott's contemporary literary popularity hinged upon his ability to reassure readers from all parts of Britain that they shared a common national identity. My Postscript considers several Romantic-era prose writers whose work presages the ensuing decline of sympathy as an important mechanism for teaching English and Scottish readers to feel British together.
Manly Desire: Sexual Economy in English Narratives, 1748–1771
My dissertation argues that eighteenth-century England's emergence as a commercial and a bourgeois society creates a crisis in masculinity, especially in connection with male sexual desire, which is reflected in central literary works. In contrast to current understandings, I suggest that commercial and bourgeois ideologies are concerned at once with legitimating and with elucidating specific moral limits to men's "passions." This new vision of English manliness arises in part out of difficulties associated with men's relationship to commerce and to consumerism. In pre-capitalist classical, Christian, and civic humanist discourses, the virtuous man severely limits his desires both economically and sexually: both the desire for material possessions and sexual desire have affinities to "luxury" and may be imagined as producing "effeminacy." The dissertation focuses on narratives by Tobias Smollett, John Cleland, James Boswell, and Laurence Sterne, then, to contend that the intense mid-eighteenth-century debate about English manhood, which is framed primarily in terms of the constitution of the "English national character," involves the articulation of a properly managed male sexual desire. Writers increasingly attack a range of sexual practices identified with aristocratic Englishmen and with "foreign" effeminacy as inconsistent with the masculine English character. Heterosexual men who overindulge in sexual pleasure, narcissists (particularly the consumer of foreign fashions), and sodomites, for example, are regarded as effeminate. Sexual aggression toward women, though manly, is viewed as a remnant of a less civilized stage of the English past. Mid-eighteenth-century male writers, therefore, define an exclusively heterosexual male desire that is neither aggressive and "barbaric," nor overindulgent and effeminate, which softens, refines, even "feminizes" men without rendering them effeminate in a commercial and a "civilized” society. By creating a status-based taxonomy of eighteenth-century male identities, then, I argue that the emergence of a new category of Englishman, marked as exclusively heterosexual and capable of regulating the sexual desire that signifies his virility, signals an important shift in the social construction of masculinity and a narrowing of the range of acceptable masculine styles.
In his Life of Johnson James Boswell records how he and Johnson came out of church and stood talking for some time about ‘Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal'. Johnson was clearly appalled at this threat to empirical reality. Boswell continues:I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I shall never forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it thus'.
The English Novel, Vol. I: 1700 to Fielding
Revelation of the Heart through Entrapment and Trial
In one of his Hypochondriack papers, James Boswell speculates somewhat wishfully, 'It would truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could see one anothers sentiments and passions as we see bees in a glass hive.' Boswell's reference to the glass hive suggests that he has taken the idea from Laurence Sterne - were there a 'glass in the human breast,' Tristram Shandy says, 'nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and looked in, - viewed the soul stark naked .. .'2 Alexander Pope, writing to Charles Jervas, indicates a similar desire for direct access to the heart: 'The old project of a Window on the bosom to render the Soul of Man visible, is what every honest friend has manifold reason to wish for.'3 Pope uses the same figure in a letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: 'If Momus his project had taken of having Windows in our breasts, I should be for carrying it further and making those windowsCasements: that while a man showd his Heart to all the world, he might do something more for his friends, e'en take it out, and trust it to their handling/4Fusing the literal and metaphorical meanings of heart, the image of a window in the breast makes the soul, or interior being, anatomically accessible. This image for interior revelation originates in satire as an image for interior exposure. In Lucian's Hermotimus, Momus is reported to have criticized Hephaestus for creating man without 'a window in his chest, so that it could be opened and everybody could see his thoughts and intentions and whether he was telling the truth or not.'5 Sterne and Boswell combine Momus's window with a modern scientific contrivance (the dioptrical beehive) while Pope retains the architectural and anatomical suggestiveness of the image. But all three writers use the window-on-the-breast metaphor to convey a sense of predicament on account of the impossibility of direct access to thoughts and emotions. Transparency of body would figuratively solve the problem by transferring to mental and passional experience the sort of substantiality and visibility that belong to physical organs. The uses of this image are one indication of the eighteenth-century interest in interior discovery.
This enthusiastic review lauds Bainbridge’s historical reconstruction of Johnson’s tenure at the Southwark home of Henry and Hester Thrale. Bainbridge uses the perspective of the Thrales' eldest daughter, "Queeney," to examine the intellectual and emotional friction between Johnson and Piozzi. The reviewer notes that Bainbridge depicts Johnson as a man tormented by a "teeming brain" and "lower faculties," prone to gout, depression, and impulsive outbursts. The narrative incorporates letters written by Queeney twenty years after Johnson’s death, alongside testimony from servants, to present a "tone-perfect" imitation of period speech. The review highlights Bainbridge's focus on the "sophisticated mixed signals" in the relationship between Johnson and Piozzi, characterizing the novel as a masterly exploration of eighteenth-century literary circles.
Johnson and Boswell Are Reunited at Yale
An exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, "Boswell's Johnson," celebrated the bicentennial of The Life of Johnson's publication. The show featured a Nollekens plaster cast of Johnson’s head, suggesting both sympathy and impatience, and Johnson's Dictionary. The exhibit included a Rowlandson watercolor of two men, traditionally Johnson and Boswell, eating in a chophouse. It examined Boswell's scrupulous character through ephemera, such as his labeled fragments of royal coffin velvet, and noted the triangular relationship involving Hester Thrale Piozzi. Boswell's wife, Margaret, described Johnson as a "bear" being led by her husband.
Gender and Enlightenment Culture in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Enlightened Violence? Elite Manhood and the Duel
On dueling as an elite male cultural ritual in eighteenth-century Scotland, integrating the history of violent manhood with the polite, sociable urban world of the Scottish Enlightenment. The analysis explores Enlightenment discourses on dueling, its function in asserting gentlemanly status and public honor, and the impact of these competing ideologies on men's understanding and performance of the duel. The study uses case histories, including that of James Boswell, to show how rank, social context, and martial values influenced men's decisions to fight or avoid violent conflict.
Urbane and Urban Sociability in Enlightenment Edinburgh
Describing the process of social change leading to civility, David Hume wrote in 1752:The more these refined arts advance, the more sociable men become: nor is it possible, that, when enriched with science, and possessed of a fund of conversation, they should be contented to remain in solitude, or live with their fellow-citizens in that distant manner, which is peculiar to ignorant and barbarous nations. They flock into cities; love to receive and communicate knowledge; to show their wit or their breeding; their taste in conversation or living, in clothes or furniture. Curiosity allures the wise; vanity the foolish; and pleasure both. Particular clubs and societies are everywhere formed: Both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace. So that, beside the improvements which they receive from knowledge and the liberal arts, it is impossible but they must feel an encrease [sic] of humanity, from the very habit of conversing together, and contributing to each other's pleasure and entertainment.For Hume, refined urban sociability, or urbanity, indicated progress, and he uses it to assert European cultural superiority. Offering a Eurocentric vision of ‘barbarous nations', Hume's depiction of the eighteenth-century European world is also misleading; rather than reading his description of things as they were, his vision needs to be understood as an ideal. It was the striving to reach and defend this ideal that underpinned the culture of improvement, which itself was fostered by Scottish Enlightenment philosophies of progress.
Publisher's blurb: "This three-volume work provides a detailed description of the complete papers of James Boswell, the famous eighteenth-century diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson. The collection, held at Yale University, contains over 10,000 items and is considered one of the most significant in the literary world. Thoroughly indexed thematically and by name, the Catalogue offers a wealth of new information not only on Boswell but also on the society in which he lived and the illustrious people―from Voltaire to King George III―about whom he wrote. Volume I is devoted to journals, manuscripts, and letters written by James Boswell. Volume II deals with letters to James Boswell and relevant manuscripts not by Boswell. Volume III continues Volume II and adds printed matter, accounts, and legal papers. Items are described, summarized, and quoted. Subjects illuminated in the Catalogue include agriculture, travel, education, law, literature, theater, political patronage, government, economics, marriage, prostitution, religion, and relations between the social classes. The three-volume set will be a uniquely valuable research tool and reference work for all literary scholars and historians of the eighteenth century."
Catalogue of the Papers of James Boswell at Yale University
Martin's review of the fourth volume of Boswell's Correspondence highlights his distinct relationships with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone. The eighty-four letters exchanged with Malone represent a deeply sympathetic literary partnership crucial to the publication of the Tour and Life of Johnson. In contrast, Boswell's friendships with Garrick and Burke were more tentative and fraught, with the relationship with Burke becoming strained due to Boswell's habit of recording conversations. The Malone correspondence uniquely records the professionalism of Boswell's writing process.
Publisher's blurb: "This is the first biography of James Boswell seen from a specifically Scottish viewpoint. Though born in Scotland, he often wished to be thought of as an Englishman as he came into prominence. While not overlooking his achievements in England and Europe, the book concentrates on his Scottish background."
Centre national de la recherce scientifique: Presses du CNRS diffusion
Plus qu’un récit de voyage, James Boswell qui visita la Corse en 1765, au moment où elle accédait à une éphémère indépendance, dresse un état des lieux précis d’une île encore très méconnue.
Finlayson provides a comprehensive biography of James Boswell, characterizing his life as a persistent struggle between "extreme happiness and appalling depression" driven by a "puritanical upbringing" and an inherent "melancholy temperament". Finlayson traces Boswell’s development from a "delicate child" in Edinburgh through his legal studies at Utrecht and his pivotal Grand Tour, highlighting his "absolute sincerity" and "formidable vanity". The narrative emphasizes Boswell's tendency to adopt older men as "substitute father-figures," most notably Samuel Johnson and Pasquale Paoli, whose influences offered "benign and moral" alternatives to his "heedless, dissipated" impulses. Finlayson details Boswell's "picaresque" journals as essential tools for self-revelation and "self-advertisement," noting that Boswell felt "nothing became real" until it was recorded. The text explores Boswell's complex relationships, including his "uxorious" but occasionally "outrageous" marriage to Margaret Montgomerie and his intellectual sparring with "Belle de Zuylen" . Finlayson disputes the characterization of Boswell as a "foolish failure," arguing instead that his "chameleon quality" and ability to "take the impress" of great men were his primary assets as a biographer. Finlayson concludes that Boswell’s "superlative" achievement in the Life of Johnson fulfilled his ambition to be "good for something," despite dying with a reputation "cause for scorn." Chapter 1, 'The Newmarket Courser,' addresses Boswell’s early psychological development, emphasizing the conflict between his aristocratic Scottish heritage and his desperate longing for London’s libertine freedoms. Chapter 2, 'The Moth and the Candle,' argues that Boswell's volatile temperament and recurring venereal infections during his early London years established a lifelong pattern of seeking mentorship to curb his self-destructive impulses. Chapter 3, 'Boswell and the Philosophers,' addresses the European tour where Boswell sought moral direction from Rousseau and Voltaire, despite his inability to reconcile their radical skepticism with his own religious anxieties. Chapter 4, 'Passion, Pandaemonium and Piety,' addresses his Italian travels, focusing on the tension between his pious attraction to Roman Catholicism and his simultaneous descent into reckless dissipation and social climbing. Chapter 5, 'Mr Corsica Boswell,' argues that the encounter with General Paoli provided Boswell with a heroic ideal and a political cause that briefly unified his fractured identity. Chapter 6, 'Boswell in Love,' addresses his frantic search for a wife among various heiresses, contrasting his idealized domestic fantasies with his persistent reliance on informal sexual liaisons. Chapter 7, 'Boswell and the Bear,' addresses the formative years of the Johnsonian friendship and their Highland tour, highlighting Boswell’s developing biographical method of capturing the minute particulars of character. Chapter 8, 'The Hypochondriack,' argues that Boswell’s later life was characterized by a cyclical struggle with severe depression, alcoholism, and professional failure, which he attempted to mitigate through regular journal writing. Chapter 9, 'The Laird of Ulubrae,' addresses Boswell’s transition to the master of Auchinleck, portraying his futile attempts to gain political power in London while his domestic life disintegrated. Chapter 10, 'Boswell and The Life,' addresses the grueling labor and meticulous research required to complete his biographical masterpiece, which served as his final claim to lasting intellectual significance. Chapter 11, 'Envoi,' addresses his final decline and death, concluding that his absolute sincerity and self-revelation secured him a literary immortality that his professional life never achieved. Critics call this book a colorful and colloquial pen-portrait that elegantly distills a mass of available material into a compact, readable introduction. Massie and Watson praise the work for its verve and entertaining style, noting it captures the subject’s kaleidoscopic consciousness and enduring charm. Leicester commends the way the narrative draws dextrously on primary journals to present the subject as a man existing in his own right. But the work faced significant censure for its lack of scholarly rigor. Daiches and Arnstein identify inaccurate allusions and a limited grasp of the period’s intellectual climate, while Schwartz dismisses the study as a book without an audience that lacks original psychological insights.
Cochrane entry 35.
The doctoral dissertation "James Boswell's Urban Experience in Eighteenth-Century London" aims to reconstruct Boswell's urban experience according to five central themes. First, the distinction between country and city; secondly, the reception of the city as the imaginative reflection of multiplicities; thirdly, the city as a source of spectacular pleasure; fourthly, the metropolis as a scene of theatrical politeness; and finally, the metropolis as a locale of the libertine eroticism. The central argument of the thesis is that Boswell's urban experience included two culturally distant elements: the romantic sensibility on the one hand and the early modern, strongly aristocratic set of values and predilections on the other. Boswell's theory of politeness was possibly the most distinctive element of his urban experience. In the context of early-modern and eighteenth-century discussions about civility his conception of politeness had two seemingly inconsistent elements: its milieu was urban but its content was principally from the courtly code of politeness. Boswell was, like Joseph Addison or Samuel Johnson, a London gentleman of clubs and coffee-houses, but his principles of politeness had some typically courtly features and his ideal gentleman had obvious resemblances with the renaissance and baroque courtier. A significant detail in Boswell's gentlemanly figure was his libertine sexuality which can be seen as a logical element of his aristocratic ideal. The crucial characteristics were focused on the question of authenticity and theatricality. For Boswell, the art of pleasing was fundamentally a theatrical display, and he recognized the public self as an aesthetic artifact, a work of art which was a result of active fashioning of the self.
Gardner reviews Stewart Lee's play, a "conceit" presenting Boswell and Johnson at a 21st-century book launch for Boswell's Life. Miles Jupp portrays the "puppyish" Boswell attempting to commercialize his hero, while Simon Munnery plays the "dry man of letters" Johnson, who refuses to play the celebrity role. The comedy, which later transitions to their journey to Skye, focuses on successfully transposing Johnsonian wit into a modern stand-up format, playing on the tension between the two men.
Scott reviews the Traverse Theatre production of Johnson and Boswell: Late but Live, scripted by Stewart Lee. The show features Johnson and Boswell returning to the twenty-first century to "revisit their famous journey to the Hebrides." Scott identifies the attempt to draft "Johnsonian aphorisms for the modern era" as the production's primary challenge. Jupp portrays Boswell as a "pompous popinjay," while Munnery occupies a less certain space between "acting the part and playing the comedy." Scott observes that the performance mocks contemporary Scotland, including its "cuisine" and "Parliament building," but concludes the work provides only a "gently entertaining way to wind down the festival day."
Sher's book re-evaluates Boswell's role as an "author-publisher" who took on financial risk and was heavily reliant on a supportive network, "the Gang." Sher humanizes Boswell, presenting a complex figure whose later life showed him succumbing to his ego because of his professional success and personal losses.
In Vino Veritas: Samuel Johnson and Drink
Aberdeen introductions to Irish and Scottish culture
AHRC Centre for Irish & Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen, Arts & Humanities Research Council
Pittock challenges traditional assessments of Boswell as an "accidental great biographer" or "court jester," situating him instead as a sophisticated Scottish thinker whose literary achievements spring from an "oblique construction of the self." The monograph explores Boswell’s resistance to the "teleological history" and "scepticism" of David Hume and William Robertson, arguing that Boswell’s adherence to a "patriot tradition" of historiography informed his lifelong commitment to the causes of "oppressed" nations. Pittock identifies "fratriotism"—the adoption of foreign national causes to express localized political sentiments—as a key framework for understanding Boswell’s intense advocacy for Corsican, American, and Irish liberty. Detailed chapters analyze Boswell's "clandestine" 1760 conversion to Catholicism and his "provocative" Jacobite sympathies, which Pittock asserts were more than mere sentimental poses, potentially involving "treasonable" correspondence with Andrew Lumisden. The study concludes by examining Boswell’s representation of Johnson in the Tour and Life, suggesting Boswell "improved" or "dramatized" Johnson’s conversation to create a "myth" that both celebrated and "imprisoned" his subject. Pittock argues that Boswell’s prose "artfully conceals" a "Scotch derision" and a complex mental world, using Johnson as a vehicle to negotiate the paradox of being a "Scottish thinker" within the British imperial state. Chapter 1, "Boswell’s Life and the Life of the Mind," positions the subject as a sophisticated Scottish Enlightenment thinker whose identity was forged in opposition to the teleological, Anglicizing historiography of David Hume and William Robertson. It argues his apparent transparency as a biographer masks a strategic preservation of a "secret Scottish self" rooted in patriot traditions. Chapter 2, "Self and Other in the Art of Boswell," explores rhetorical strategies of self-analysis derived from Hume and Smith, suggesting his journals function as a "second reality" where he ironizes and eludes polite metropolitan standards. Chapter 3, "Fratriotism: Boswell, Corsica, Ireland and America," introduces "fratriotism" to describe how Scottish and Irish figures adopted foreign national causes as proxies for suppressed domestic political sentiments. His obsession with Corsican independence is framed as a deliberate analogical defense of the small nation’s right to liberty against imperial encroachment. Chapter 4, "Was Boswell a Jacobite?," examines his engagement with the symbols and networks of the Stuart cause, arguing these were material extensions of his commitment to patriot historiography. Chapter 5, "Boswell and Belief," investigates his secret 1760 conversion to Catholicism and his lifelong habit of attending Mass in London, suggesting his fascination with mortality was a search for certainty against Humean skepticism. Chapter 6, "Boswell’s Li(f)e: Making Johnson Up," concludes by reevaluating the Life of Johnson as a highly rhetoricized construction used to promote specific cultural politics. It asserts that the biography's perceived transparency is a result of artistic virtuosity, wherein he "improved" his mentor’s conversation to perform the paradox of being a Scottish thinker within a British framework.
Includes "La campagne de Corse de James Boswell" by Frederick A. Pottle. With a preface by Samuel Brussel.
History of the Boswells of Auchinleck, Home of James Boswell, Author of the Life of Samuel Johnson
Historisch-geographische Beschreibung von Corsica: Tagebuch einer Reise nach Corsica (1768)
Hirschmann provides a comprehensive chronological overview of Johnson's major physical disorders, drawing on letters, diaries, and contemporary accounts. Beginning with Johnson's difficult birth, scrofula, and resultant visual impairment, Hirschmann details later afflictions including hearing loss, a movement disorder consistent with Tourette's syndrome, asthma, gout, testicular issues ("sarcocele," likely hydroceles), a stroke causing temporary aphasia, and dropsy symptomatic of heart failure. The essay explains these conditions in accessible medical terms, discusses eighteenth-century treatments Johnson underwent (including opiates and bloodletting), analyzes autopsy findings, and considers the profound impact of lifelong illness, concluding Johnson’s literary achievements were remarkable amidst such persistent suffering.
A Material Tic: Paligraphia in the Letters of Samuel Johnson
Lang identifies numerous instances of paligraphia—the involuntary repetition of words or short phrases—in Johnson's correspondence, presenting this as material evidence supporting the retrospective diagnosis of Tourette's syndrome. Moving beyond anecdotal accounts of Johnson's motor and vocal tics, Lang documents forty-one specific examples of repeated words found in holograph letters spanning from 1758 to 1784, sent to various recipients. Lang suggests this handwriting tic, less frequently described than palilalia (spoken repetition), strengthens the neurological diagnosis. Lang also speculates that similar instances might exist in manuscripts prepared for print, possibly erased during typesetting, reinforcing the value of letters for revealing unguarded aspects of Johnson.
To Explain, to Commend, to Correct: Johnson on Notes and on Shakespeare, in The Tempest and the Dictionary
Tankard and Cop analyze Johnson's theory and practice of annotation, comparing his footnotes in the 1765 Shakespeare edition, particularly for The Tempest, with his lexicographical work in the Dictionary. They observe Johnson's general aversion to autographic notes in his own writings, contrasting it with his extensive allographic commentary on others. Critiquing the Yale Johnson on Shakespeare for omitting numerous notes, they argue this skews understanding of his editorial method. Examining the ninety-three notes on The Tempest, they classify them according to Johnson's own categories (illustrative, judicial, emendatory), finding illustrative glosses most common, often revisiting definitions from the Dictionary but rarely replicating them exactly.
Johnson, American Radicalism, and the Modes of Migration
Davis argues Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny engages not merely with the official resolutions of the Continental Congress but specifically refutes the more radical American argument, prominently articulated by Jefferson in A Summary View, that settlers achieved independence through a natural right of expatriation. Davis details Jefferson's theory, which equated the American settlement with the ancient Saxon migration to Britain, positing that both groups formed new, independent societies. Johnson counters by distinguishing two historical "modes of migration": an ancient mode (expatriation) yielding independence, and a modern mode (colonization) preserving subjection, decisively placing the American colonists within the latter.
'A Field in Which Nothing of the First Order Could Be Accomplished': Books from Samuel Johnson's Library in the Hyde Collection
Clarke examines the formation and significance of the books formerly owned by Johnson within the Hyde Collection at Harvard's Houghton Library. Highlighting the collection's trajectory from the 1948 acquisition of the Adam Collection, Clarke focuses on thirty-eight specific items associated with Johnson. These include books signed or annotated by Johnson (some marked for the Dictionary), presentation copies he received, and volumes he gifted to friends like Hester Thrale and Queeney Thrale. A significant portion consists of books purchased at the 1785 sale of Johnson's library by friends like Burney, Langton, Malone, Steevens, and Windham, whose inscriptions memorialize their connection, embodying a respectful transmission of Johnson's legacy.
Let Us Now Praise Courageous Men: James Boswell's Account of Corsica
Scheuermann re-examines Boswell's An Account of Corsica (1768), arguing for its significance as a sincere expression of Enlightenment ideals and admiration for liberty, challenging views that dismiss it as inconsistent with Boswell's later Toryism. The essay highlights Boswell's genuine championing of the Corsican struggle against Genoese tyranny under Pascal Paoli. Scheuermann analyzes Boswell's detailed account of the island's geography, tumultuous history, and culture, noting his ethnographic approach linking the environment to the people's character. Rather than seeing Boswell as merely appropriating the "other," Scheuermann positions the work as an important early demonstration of Boswell's literary talent and commitment to freedom.
Glover documents the history and activities of the Boswell Club of Chicago, an eccentric group founded by Rousseau Van Voorhies where members adopted personas from Johnson's circle. Meeting monthly for decades, they sought to revive eighteenth-century conversation and conviviality, awarding mock "Doctor of Frustration" degrees and relentlessly seeking publicity. Glover interprets the club as a middlebrow phenomenon, using Boswelliana as a form of "fan culture" to navigate mid-twentieth-century male anxieties related to corporate bureaucracy and changing media landscapes. Their elaborate self-documentation and embrace of eighteenth-century roles served to construct and affirm masculine identity and camaraderie in their specific historical moment.
Renaissance Humanism—Modern Humanism(s): Festschrift for Claus Uhlig
Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne: Versions of 18th-Century Humanism
‘The Concept of Spleen: Swift, Pope, Sterne, Johnson
The Depiction of Religion in Eighteenth-Century English Literature from Swift to Johnson
Examines the religious dimensions in the writings of ten major eighteenth-century English authors, including Johnson and Boswell. The analysis focuses on six areas of religious concern: virtue, eternity, bigotry, use of Scripture, the interaction between the religious and political world, and the personal or institutional nature of religion. Johnson stands out for his strong adherence to the Anglican Church and his Tory political views. The work argues that religion was an integral part of the period, challenging historians who view the era as essentially modern. Johnson's dedication to moral writing and benevolence, despite his complex fears of death and damnation, is explored extensively.
Chapter 10, “The Invincible Samuel Johnson.”
Essays on English and American Literature and a Sheaf of Poems: Offered to David Wilkinson on the Occasion of His Retirement from the Chair of English Literature in the University of Groningen
'The Great Object of Remark': Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne
The History of the Book in 100 Books: The Complete Story, from Egypt to E-Book
The Greatest Dictionary of the English Language: Johnson's Dictionary
Each of the 100 books chosen has played a critical role in the development of books in all their forms and with all that they bring: literacy, numeracy, technological progress and the expansion of scientific knowledge, religion, political theory, entertainment, and more.
The Eastern Tale and the Candid Reader in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tristram Shandy, Candide, Rasselas
Ballaster explores the thematic and formal connections between Voltaire's Candide, Johnson's Rasselas, and Sterne's first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, all published in 1759, which share an agenda of practical skepticism and offer critiques of systemic, absolutist thinking. Unacknowledged textual allusions to The Arabian Nights Entertainments inform their ambivalent exploration of skeptical reading, supporting the interpretation of these works as critiques of the Seven Years War. Johnson's text, while less overtly violent, illustrates the danger of intellectual despotism in the Astronomer and Rasselas's narcissistic focus on feeling, contrasting the 'candid' and skeptical readers. The texts ultimately retreat to the domestic household, testing conflicts in a "small circle."
FILLM Studies in Languages and Literatures
Authorial Gestures: Joshua Reynolds' Literary Portraits
Before Distraction: Reading the Novel, 1750–1798
Throughout the eighteenth century, British critics and novelists struggled to make intellectual sense of the process of reading, and the reading of novels in particular. Eighteenth-century writers invested much critical energy in distinguishing "bad," inattentive, and uncritical reading from more properly attentive modes. This project argues that novelists in the second half of the eighteenth century reacted to this discourse on proper or critical attention by developing a reflexive vocabulary of inattention to describe the structure and effects of novel-reading. Through readings of Scottish Common Sense philosophy, the periodical essays of Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Frances Burney's Cecilia, and Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, I draw out what might be called a novelistic theory of attention, and I connect that theory to eighteenth-century debates about mediation, fiction, and perception. These descriptions of attention, I argue, function as the early novel's attempts to describe its own status as a medium. By emphasizing the centrality of inattention and distraction to the eighteenth-century novel, my dissertation also connects eighteenth-century debates about novel-reading to current debates about attention and media. By titling this "Before Distraction," I emphasize the continuity between eighteenth-century problems of attention and our own. At the same time, though, I argue that responses to novel-reading were grounded in (and expand upon) philosophical and scientific debates about attention and perception that are quite unlike our own concerns with, say, the neurological effects of engaging with digital media. The debates about novel reading that I uncover here reveal a now-overlooked history of the early novel as a new and difficult medium, and in doing so force a reconsideration of current narratives about new media and the decline of attention in our age.
Miniature and the English Imagination: Literature, Cognition, and Small-Scale Culture, 1650–1765
Lilliput Recalibrated: Johnson and Others
Rabb analyzes the enduring cultural and cognitive impact of Swift's Lilliput fantasy, noting its use of dual representation and scale error to explore political satire and human folly. She then focuses on Johnson's deployment of Lilliput as a framework for parliamentary reporting and later literary work. Johnson's recalibrated Lilliput privileges abstract symbolic representations over concrete miniature "things," expressing his concern and anxiety about the failure of the small-scale model to fully achieve the intellectual satisfaction of "perceiving the whole at once."
Work in Hand: Script, Print, and Writing, 1690–1840
At the time of his death in 1785, Samuel Johnson occupied an exemplary position as author and moralist. Johnson's death initiated a wave of print which celebrated and commodified the writer and which included (in one biography) a facsimile of his handwriting. The public sense of Johnson's character was disturbed the following year by the publication of his Prayers and Meditations. The autobiographical elements of this generically uncertain work showed Johnson's struggles with manual writing and the labour of keeping a journal. Prayers and Meditations dismayed readers who felt it disgraced Johnson's achievements as an author, though the work was also recognized as adding a chapter to the science of human nature. The text of Prayers and Meditations, and the authorial self behind the text, is constituted through painful acts of copying. The work powerfully represents a relationship between writing and absence.
Literary Historicity: Literature and Historical Experience in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Mack argues that Johnson uses the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets to reconfigure the author as a historical actor. In the Preface to the Dictionary, Johnson adopts and modifies the "structural authorship" of Chambers and the "experiential" model of the French encyclopedists. He introduces the "humble drudge" not merely as a professional category but as a physical, feeling subject whose labor is bounded by diachronic time. Johnson recognizes that language is entangled in constant mutation, forcing the lexicographer into a synchronic, structural relation with a condensed field of the past. This pursuit continues in the Lives, where Johnson develops a theory of historical agency. He demystifies Milton by recasting poetic inspiration as "manual or mental" labor, while he presents Dryden as an "occasional" poet whose individual intention is permeated by national events and cultural systems. Johnson uses literary structures to investigate how individual experience mixes with historical order.
Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives
No previous author has attempted a book such as this: a complete history of novels written in the English language, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day. In the spirit of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction--from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature. Each author was chosen, Professor Sutherland explains, because his or her books are well worth reading and are likely to remain so for at least another century. Sutherland presents these authors in chronological order, in each case deftly combining a lively and informative biographical sketch with an opinionated assessment of the writer's work. Taken together, these novelists provide both a history of the novel and a guide to its rich variety. Always entertaining, and sometimes shocking, Sutherland considers writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry James, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Jacqueline Susann.
Celebrations of the Johnsonians, 1946–1996: A Keepsake for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Gathering of the Johnsonians
Handicraft Philosophies: Craft, Representation, and Social Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Use: Useless Bodies in Johnson and Boswell
"The term "Enlightenment" still carries its tie to a grand philosophical tradition that in Britain moves through Bacon, Locke, and Hume. But the literature and philosophy of the Enlightenment was full of practical knowledge associated with the body and with craft. This book is an account of the eighteenth-century thinkers from across social classes who turned to the body to formulate new ways of knowing natural and social worlds--what Ruth Mack calls handicraft philosophies. The writers discussed in this book include a formerly enslaved man, Olaudah Equiano, and a washerwoman, Mary Collier, as well as gentlemen Joseph Banks and James Boswell and the artist William Hogarth. In their efforts to communicate embodied ways of knowing, they bring together theory and practice; they set aside objectivity and relish the practical ways of knowing that are traditionally associated with lower classes and less-than-privileged bodies. Mack focuses on how such knowledge proved especially helpful for understanding "society" as a new object of enquiry in the Enlightenment, laying the groundwork for the emergence of anthropological and sociological thought. Complicating the intellectual history of Enlightenment Britain amidst the rise of popular science and imperial expansion, Handicraft Philosophies is a new account of the thinkers who configured "philosophy" as a practice open to all"--
This enthusiastic review of Croker’s five-volume edition of Boswell praises the editor’s "piercing, strong, and liberal understanding" and his "extraordinarily minute and persevering diligence" in identifying obscure individuals and dates. Lockhart uses this review to contrast the biographical theories of William Wordsworth with the "Boswellian plan" or "Boswellian style" of biography, quoting Wordsworth’s letter protesting the "copious style" for poets and arguing that "silence is a privilege of the grave." Challenging Wordsworth’s preference for silence regarding the private lives of authors, Lockhart asserts that Johnson’s influence on the "intellect, the feelings, and the character" of the nation justifies such "minute scrutiny." The reviewer argues that Boswell’s narrative required a commentator of a "higher cast of mind" to sum up the evidence of the "veracious simplicity" of the original text, emphasizing Johnson's "hereditary insanity" and constitutional melancholy as keys to understanding his character. Included are numerous new notes by Walter Scott regarding the 1773 Hebridean tour, traditional Highland anecdotes, and the "intellectual gladiators" involved in Johnson's meeting with Lord Auchinleck. Lockhart maintains that although Johnson filled a larger space in human contemplation than any statesman of his age, and despite the disclosure of "innumerable oddities," the result is a character that stands "erect, sincere, great," concluding that very few great men could have their lives dealt with in this manner without serious injury to their fame.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by J. G. Lockhart of Croker's 1831 edition.
This review of John Wilson Croker's edition of Boswell's biography describes the work as a "grand collection of Johnsonian memorabilia" that incorporates anecdotes from various post-1784 sources. The reviewer praises Boswell’s "dramatic" accuracy and "indefatigable diligence" while noting that his "parasitical genius" often attracted contemporary ridicule. The review characterizes Johnson as an "intellectual sluggard" driven to write only by "the want of money," asserting his surliness and "vile melancholy" were physical manifestations of hereditary scrofula. While commending Croker’s industry in sifting facts and refuting "amusing forgeries," the reviewer disputes his "morbid" view of the human heart. The article includes a commentary by Walter Scott on Lord Auchinleck and extracts from William Windham’s diary regarding Johnson’s final days and his "unrivalled powers" in religious discussion.
CGV entry 4:14. An anonymous review of Croker's 1831 edition.
This extensive analysis of Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson defends Boswell against charges of contempt, citing Johnson’s own approval of biographical minuteness. The reviewer provides a detailed character study of Johnson, attributing his rudeness to a frame which weighed like a mill-stone and chronic depression. It highlights Johnson’s active charity, such as putting pennies into the hands of sleeping children, and his forbearance toward difficult household dependants like Williams and Levett. The text examines Johnson’s fear of death and his eventual dignified composure as a Christian moralist in the closing scene. While praising Croker’s industry in collecting materials from Reynolds, Piozzi, and Scott, the reviewer censures Croker’s sarcastic notes that unnecessarily highlight Boswell’s follies.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by W. B. O. Peabody of Croker's 1831 edition.
Evans outlines Johnson's comprehensive theory of biography, which he considered a distinct art form. Johnson favors biography over history and fiction because its focus on "parallel circumstances and kindred images" allows readers to imagine themselves in the subject's condition. He believed the chief value of the genre lay in presenting a "domestic view" or "domestic picture" of the subject, focusing on the "minute details" of daily life, "small incidents," and "common denominators" of humanity. These offer lessons applicable to private life, as the uniformity of human nature makes the life of any person, including common individuals and men of letters, a suitable subject for "moral instruction and useful pleasure." Evans explores Johnson’s insistence on a full and fearless presentation of "plain truth" delivered through personal intimacy, even while acknowledging the inherent dangers of partiality in accounts by friends or enemies. Johnson argued that knowledge must be respected over loyalty and that the "consolation which is drawn from truth" is the only solid basis for promoting piety and virtue.
Two Centuries of Johnsonian Scholarship: Being the Twelfth Lecture on the David Murray Foundation in the University of Glasgow Delivered on May 3rd, 1945
CGV entry 10/6:258. The David Murray Foundation Lecture.
Cochrane entry 151. Argues that while Boswell was only a mediocre scholar, his true and greatest contribution was preserving Johnson's life and character, transforming him into a monumental figure for posterity.
Curley's enthusiastic review of Walter Jackson Bate's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography praises its comprehensive probe of Johnson's inner conflicts and its application of modern psychological principles and a Freudian perspective. Focusing on the complex workings of Johnson's mind using modern scholarly discoveries, Bate provides extensive coverage of Johnson's early career and offers a case study of his confrontation with life's realities, seen as an exemplary pilgrimage of hope. The biography deduces the origins of his lifelong inner turmoil and mental paralysis from scanty facts, chronicles his first major breakdown and recovery through his marriage to Elizabeth Porter—which Bate reassesses—and relates his middle-age crisis to moral masterpieces like Rasselas. Curley finds Bate's critiques of these major works convincing, establishing Johnson's vision as a legacy of ethical wisdom. The review further highlights Bate's illumination of Johnson's second breakdown, his defense of Johnson against theories of sexual masochism involving Thrale, and the introduction of Johnson's secret collaboration with Robert Chambers. Curley recommends the work as a representative twentieth-century interpretation of the Johnsonian moral pilgrimage that effectively relates his life to his friendships with the Thrales and members of The Club.
CGV entry 3:246.
Excellence in Biography: Rambler No. 60 and Johnson's Early Biographies
Burke examines Johnson's theoretical views on biography, primarily from Rambler 60 (1750), in relation to his own early biographical practice. The article argues that the essay is largely a response to his earlier works. Rambler 60 promotes the idea that any life, however ordinary, is a useful subject, though a celebrated name may be needed to secure an audience. Johnson emphasizes the need for a biographer to be a contemporary of the subject to record "volatile and evanescent" details. This technique, aimed at capturing significant particulars that reveal a person's character (like Catiline's walk), justifies brevity and serves the principle of uniformitarianism, focusing on "parallel circumstances and kindred images" common to all mankind. The tone should be "manly," neither panegyric nor vituperative, requiring judicious faithfulness to the truth. Johnson’s early biographies were mostly derivative, but the Life of Savage exemplifies the contemporary method and masterful control of tone and detail that Johnson would later theorize.
DeMaria investigates the binary form of Johnson's critical evaluations, which mirrors the "just and lively image of human nature" archetype from Dryden. Johnson expresses praise through additive grammar, accumulating positive terms to reflect a full experience, and censure through subtractive grammar and negatives, conveying emptiness or "vacuity." Varying the length, conjunctions ("but not," "without," "either...or"), and the degree of opposition between polar terms, Johnson modulates the traditional binary format to represent the individual quality of a literary experience within a fundamentally uniform critical structure.
Volumes one and two consist almost entirely of pieces by Johnson, including his reviews of Jenyns and Burke, several lives from the "Literary Magazine," and his "Plan of an English Dictionary." The reviewer questions the omission of the life of Admiral Blake. Volume three includes Johnson's review of Blackwell and his observations on the state of affairs in 1756. The reviewer suggests that Johnson’s observations on a letter from a French refugee should have been annexed to that specific text.
CGV entry 1/1:1. Assigns to Samuel Johnson some thirty early journalistic pieces reprinted by Thomas Davies.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, with Occasional Remarks on His Writings... To Which Are Added, Some Papers Written by Dr. Johnson, in Behalf of a Late Unfortunate Character, Never Before Published
This catalogue enumerates Johnson’s literary output, beginning with his parliamentary debates for the Gentleman’s Magazine (1740–1744) and major monographs including the Life of Savage, Rambler, Dictionary, Idler, and Rasselas. It lists the 1765 edition of Shakespeare and his subsequent ten-volume collaboration with Steevens. Political pamphlets from 1769 to 1775, such as Taxation no Tyranny and The Patriot, appear alongside his 1775 Tour to the Hebrides and the Lives of the British Poets. Miscellaneous prose entries, collected in three volumes by Davies, include the Plan of an English Dictionary, memoirs of the King of Prussia, and prefaces to the Harleian Miscellany and The Preceptor. Poetical entries feature his Juvenalian imitations, various theatrical prologues, and elegiac verses for Levet, Goldsmith, and Thrale.
A Chronological Catalogue of Dr. Johnson's Prose Writings
CGV entry 1/1:4. The third edition (1799) contains some additions to this list (by Boswell or Malone), and the fifth edition (1807) contains some by Alexander Chalmers.
The R. B. Adam Library Relating to Dr. Samuel Johnson and His Era
Printed for the author by Oxford University Press
Facsimile of MS list of attributions of periodical pieces to Johnson (ca. 1805)
CGV entry 1/1:5. Appears in Volume 3, following page 56.
The Rise and Progress of the Gentleman's Magazine
Nichols details the history of the earliest miscellaneous publication, established by Cave in 1731, with significant emphasis on the contributions of Johnson. Johnson's involvement began with a 1734 offer to improve the poetical article and evolved into a primary role as a "regular Coadjutor" and "illustrious Predecessor." The narrative recounts Johnson’s authorship of the "Parliamentary Debates" under the "Liliputian disguise," written with "more velocity than any other of his productions," and his various lives, prefaces, and essays. Nichols highlights Johnson's friendship with Cave, noting that Johnson "dignified the Magazine by the importance with which he invests the life of Cave" and provided "still greater lustre" through his "various admirable Essays." Salient details include Johnson's translation of the "History of the Council of Trent," his "Historical Design," and his early struggles as a writer "struggling, not for distinction, but existence," as evidenced by the "Impransus" signature.
CGV entry 1/1:7. Appears in columns 549-550.
CGV entry 1/1:8. Lists French translations of Johnson's works.
The Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature
The manual details various editions of Johnson’s works, focusing on his significant contributions to lexicography and biography. It notes his involvement in the Catalogus Bibliothecæ Harleianæ (1743–45), where he co-authored the catalogue and wrote the preface. The text also catalogs early biographies, including Sir John Hawkins’ Life of Samuel Johnson (1787), which is described as containing curious anecdotes despite some inaccuracies. It highlights Johnson’s influence on other writers, such as his review of Grainger’s Sugar Cane and his appendix to William Gerard Hamilton’s Parliamentary Logick. The text refers to Boswell's Life of Johnson and includes unpublished manuscript notes by Hester Thrale Piozzi and her daughter, Lady Keith, found in a copy of Boswell's work. These notes provide anecdotal corrections to Boswell’s narratives, such as the true origin of a song composed on the marriage of the Duke of Leeds, which Boswell had misattributed.
CGV entry 1/1:9. A new edition, revised and enlarged by Henry G. Bohn, was published in London by Henry G. Bohn in 1857 (Volume 5, pages 1217–1221).
Johnson began his literary career in poverty, famously subscribing a letter to Cave as "impransus." His poem London appeared in 1738, earning ten guineas from Dodsley and praise from Pope, who predicted the "obscure man" would soon be "deterre." Johnson later wept while reading The Vanity of Human Wishes at Thrale's, moved by his own depiction of the "struggling scholar." While the Rambler initially had a "tardy sale," it established Johnson's reputation for "erudite dignity," despite Burke's jest that his female characters were "Johnsons in petticoats." The Dictionary of the English Language, suggested by Dodsley, occupied over seven years. Johnson used its definitions to vent prejudices, famously defining "pension" as pay for a "state hireling" and "oats" as a grain for "people" in Scotland. Boswell and Piozzi provide anecdotes regarding Johnson's pride in his "unassisted intellect" and his "hardened" tea-drinking habits during a dispute with Hanway.
CGV entry 1/1:10. Revised and enlarged as "Johnson, Samuel, LL.D." in 'A Critical Dictionary of English Literature', volume 1, pages 971-982 (Philadelphia: Childs and Peterson, 1858). Reprinted by Gale, Detroit, in 1965.
Johnson first appears as the primary biographer of Cave, whose indomitable spirit created the magazine from a 'teeming brain' in 1731. As a close associate of Cave at St. John's Gate, Johnson credited his employer with originating the term 'magazine' in its literary sense, while later being the first lexicographer to formally recognize this new acceptation in his 1755 Dictionary. The narrative details Johnson's early struggles in London alongside Savage, chronicling how his devotion to poetry and his 'Johnsonian friends' fueled the publication's vigorous growth. It further emphasizes Johnson's pivotal role in the 'Parliamentary Debates' section, where his reporting style transformed political literature during his lifetime.
Inquires about the editor of the 1825 Oxford edition of Johnson's Works, published by Pickering and Talboys. The correspondent praises the "Preliminary Notices" in the edition, such as those in volume four, for their elegance and "justness of criticism," stating that they counteract the "flimsy disparagements" of Johnson that were then fashionable.
CGV entry 1/1:12. On the identity of the editor of the 1825 Works. In parts: (9 March): 191; (6 April): 269; (27 April): 335.
CGV entry 1/1:13. The bibliography follows page 175 of the text.
Harrison provides a list of additions and corrections to existing bibliographies of Johnson, noting specific contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine and variations between editions of political pamphlets. He distinguishes authentic Johnsonian prose from fraudulent works published under his name or title.
Bookworm: An Illustrated Treasury of Old-Time Literature
CGV entry 1/1:14. Addenda to published bibliographies.
Bibliotheca Staffordiensis; or, A Bibliographical Account of Books and Other Printed Matter Relating To—Printed or Published In—or Written by a Native, Resident, or Person Deriving a Title From—Any Portion of the County of Stafford: Giving a Full Collation and Biographical Notices of Authors and Printers. Together with as Full a List as Possible of Prints, Engravings, Etchings, &c., of Any Part Thereof; and Portraits of Persons So Connected
This comprehensive bibliography and biographical dictionary documents the literary and artistic history of Staffordshire. Simms catalogs works by county natives and residents, providing detailed collations and biographical notices for authors and printers. The text features several entries and references concerning Samuel Johnson, including his lifelong friendship with Adams, an elegy to his memory by Hill, and Agutter’s sermon comparing Johnson’s death to that of David Garrick. Simms also includes an entry for Boswell's Life of Johnson. The compiler draws heavily upon Johnsonian influence, quoting the preface to Johnson's English Dictionary to describe his own "useful diligence" and the "fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life."
Hill presents a series of anecdotal essays centered on his collection of nineteenth-century and earlier autographs, prioritizing the literary and historical associations of the writers over mere signatures. Hill devotes significant attention to Johnson, discussing the market value and auction history of his letters, including the "impransus" note to Cave and the defiance of Macpherson. He provides personal views on Boswell's genius, arguing against the paradoxes of Macaulay and Carlyle to highlight Boswell's truthfulness and power of attachment. Hill also references Piozzi's diary for the light it sheds on the Thrale family. The text includes facsimile letters and illustrations related to Johnson’s rooms at Pembroke College and various contemporaries. Hill explores the ethics of collecting, the dangers of forgery, and the destruction of manuscripts, while weaving in broader commentary on the lives of writers such as Austen, Lamb, and Southey.
Moulton assembles a diverse array of critical and biographical perspectives on Johnson, tracing his evolution from the 'Great Cham of Literature' to a figure defined largely by personal idiosyncrasies and social presence. The collection details his early struggles with poverty and 'morbid melancholy,' his physical 'convulsions,' and his eventual rise to intellectual dominance in London. Contributors analyze major productions including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and The Lives of the Poets, often contrasting his 'ponderous' prose style with his 'sententious' and 'knowing' conversational brilliance. While some critics challenge his 'wretched' etymology and 'prejudiced' political tracts like Taxation no Tyranny, others emphasize his 'uncompromising rectitude' and profound influence on English morality. The text highlights how Johnson 'formed the mind' of his age, asserting that his 'phenomenal success' as a talker remains his most 'irresistible' legacy, preserved through the 'wonderful' efforts of Boswell. Salient commentary describes him as 'a Hottentot indeed' regarding his manners, yet 'the most illustrious and universal man of letters' of his time.
Courtney presents a chronological and descriptive record of Johnson’s vast literary output, from his earliest contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine to posthumous collections. The volume provides detailed publication histories for major works including London, The Rambler, The Dictionary of the English Language, and The Lives of the Poets. Each entry includes full title-page transcriptions, collation details, and historical notes on composition and reception. Smith’s revision ensures the inclusion of recent discoveries and corrects previous misattributions. The bibliography meticulously documents Johnson’s "hack-work"—including prefaces, dedications, and parliamentary reports—often identifying his hand in obscure 18th-century publications. Special attention is paid to the evolution of the Dictionary, tracing its various editions and abridgments. The work also catalogs early biographies and "Johnsoniana," documenting the immediate proliferation of his fame. Smith notes in the preface that Courtney’s labor was intended to facilitate a "correct and adequate" understanding of Johnson as a professional man of letters rather than merely a subject of biography. The volume concludes with an expansive index of titles, publishers, and associates. Critics are generally favorable toward this bibliography, praising its exceptional exactitude and the inclusion of humanizing anecdotes. An unsigned review in New Statesman calls the work precise and full of human interest, highlighting the rich notes on obscure figures and the index, though noting a missing reference to a Russian translation. In N&Q, early reviews praise the liberal notes as a trustworthy guide, while later reviews of the reissue confirm its ongoing utility for students. Reed (RES) considers the volume an invaluable contribution to scholarship, praising the chronological arrangement that traces associations with publishers alongside the record of miscellaneous contributions. The reviewer in The Library commends the illustrated reissue, especially the thirty-nine facsimiles of title pages and the preservation of unexpurgated text from a cancelled journey page. Shorter's review in The Sphere enthusiastically labels the volume a splendid memorial that reads like a collection of essays rather than a mere list of titles, effectively capturing a lifetime of boundless industry. Finally, Crane, in Modern Philology, commends the compilation as unusually intelligent and useful for students of aesthetic theory; however, Crane disputes a theoretical claim in the introductory essay regarding a break with neo-classicism, arguing the compilation fails to clarify the historical position relative to earlier critics.
CGV entry 1/1:19. Reissued with facsimiles in 1925.
Reed praises the admirable bibliography for its importance to the appreciation of Johnson's literary work. The reissue with thirty-six facsimiles is a valuable service. The book provides an invaluable gathering of notes, references, and anecdote alongside the descriptions of editions.
CGV entry 1/1:19. Review by A. W. Reed of the book by William P. Courtney and D. Nichol Smith.
Samuel Johnson and Johnsoniana: Being Some Account of the Books by or about Dr. Johnson Published by the Oxford University Press
The Numbering of Editions in the Eighteenth Century
This article investigates the eighteenth-century practice of numbering editions, primarily using Johnson's Rambler, Idler, Adventure, and Lives of the Poets as examples. Chapman concludes that publishers rarely looked beyond the title-page's designation of an edition. Editions that significantly changed the work's form—such as converting a series of articles into a book—were not initially styled as a second edition on their title-pages but were later included in the count. The numbering practice of the period consistently ignored Irish and Scottish reprints in the official count. This suggests that the publishers' designation, though sometimes arbitrary, was the final word on what constituted a numbered edition.
CGV entry 1/1:21.
Brett critiques the historical failure of book collectors to recognize the value of Johnson and Boswell, noting that masterpieces like the Dictionary and the Life of Johnson were sold for negligible sums until the early twentieth century. He identifies the publication of Newton's Amenities of Book-Collecting (1918) as the catalyst for an American-led market surge. The text provides specific price escalations: the Life rose from £15 to £900 for uncut copies, and the Dictionary from £6 to £100. Brett notes the difficulty British collectors face when competing with American capital, specifically mentioning Isham’s acquisition of the Malahide papers. He concludes with a tribute to the late Geoffrey Scott, whose editorship of the Boswell papers represented a peak in contemporary Johnsonian scholarship.
Chapman defines the "cancel" as a leaf or leaves "intended to be substituted for the corresponding part of a book as originally printed". Deriving primary evidence from the "age of Johnson," Chapman argues that descriptive bibliography serves as an essential "ancillary to historical and literary criticism" by detecting suppressed original states—folia cancellanda—to uncover authorial afterthoughts, legal indiscretions, or printer errors. The technical discussion details methods of printing and insertion, including the use of "stubs," "turn-overs," and the placement of cancels within "oddments" of other sheets. Chapman outlines diagnostic tests for identification, such as special signatures, "figures" identifying specific presses, and the analysis of watermarks and chain-lines. Case studies provide insight into the specific practices of Johnson, Boswell, and their contemporaries. Chapman examines the "trenchant and laconic ironies" of Johnson’s Falkland’s Islands and the "scruple" that led to the cancellation of $D_8$ in the Journey to the Western Islands. Further analysis covers the complicated history of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, where signature-driven clues led to the discovery of rare uncancelled copies, and the editorial "shifts and doublings" of Thomas Percy and Thomas Tyrwhitt. The work concludes with an examination of 19th-century "tinkerings" by Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley.
CGV entry 1/1:24. In two parts: Part 12 (December 1932), pages 13–20; and Part 16 (March 1934), pages 1-8. See also The Times Literary Supplement, January 5, 1933, page 12.
Printer's Copy in the Eighteenth Century
Pottle examines the Malahide manuscripts of the Tour and the Life to establish criteria for identifying eighteenth-century printer's copy. Unlike Elizabethan manuscripts, these show extensive revision. Boswell and Malone prepared copy by interleaving new material or using blank versos for additions, allowing compositors to view text continuously without turning leaves. Pottle argues that while normalization of accidentals occurred in the shop, the definitive evidence of a manuscript serving as printer's copy is the presence of signature marks matching the printed edition.
CGV entry 1/1:25.
Cochrane entry 286.
Proceedings of the Oxford Bibliographical Society
Johnsonian Bibliography: A Supplement to Courtney
Fordwick: The Quarterly List of Books Added to the Brentford and Chiswick Public Libraries
CGV entry 1/1:27. Reprinted in 'News Notes and Quotations' (1939).
CGV entry 1/1:27. From the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore. Reprinted from 'Fordwick' (1939).
Dyson and Butt survey the literary landscape from 1689 to 1830, identifying the 'Age of Johnson' as the era of personal supremacy for its namesake. Johnson is described as a 'moralist and seer' whose Christian and humanist piety provided a profound diagnosis of human futility in works like Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes. The Dyson-Butt collaboration characterizes Johnson as the 'first of our Romantic critics' due to his focus on the inseparability of an author's life and work. Boswell is credited with establishing an unprecedented 'intimacy' with his subject while simultaneously preserving the 'mystery of human personality'. The text notes that Piozzi provides an essential alternative perspective to Boswell's narrative, emphasizing that the 'full truth about a man can never be told'. Johnson's Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare are highlighted as his most remarkable and brilliant accomplishments, respectively. Dyson and Butt maintain that while Johnson respected order and authority, his spirit was more profound than that of his Augustan predecessors, lacking the 'moral vulgarity' of Dryden or the 'nervous savagery' of Pope.
CGV entry 1/1:28. Later revised editions exist.
Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature
McAdam examines seven works wrongly attributed to Johnson by standard reference works and libraries, proposing their subtraction from the canon. He discredits each attribution by noting a lack of external evidence and, in most cases, internal evidence of Johnson's style, particularly when compared to his known vigorous prose. The wrongly attributed pamphlets cover topics like the Admiral Byng case, the Falkland Islands controversy, and the American colonies. The commonest false attribution is a life of Goldsmith, which is actually by Malone.
CGV entry 1/1:32.
Studies of British Newspapers and Periodicals from Their Beginning to 1800: A Bibliography
Hazen tracks typographic evolution during Johnson's life, using Johnson's own books to illustrate shifts in commercial printing, despite his personal indifference. The period saw a move from older styles (heavy types, profuse capitals/italics) to the cleaner Caslon "Old Style" and restricted capitalization/italicization, and from folio to quarto/octavo formats. Hazen notes significant innovations Johnson largely ignored: Baskerville's influential new type designs and printing techniques (1757), the fine work of the Foulis press, the emerging Bodoni, and Walpole's Strawberry Hill private press. Ironically, Johnson's plainly printed first editions are now highly collected.
CGV entry 1/1:35.
English Literary Autographs: VI. Samuel Johnson
Brown analyzes the evolution of Johnson's handwriting by examining mature manuscripts and early college exercises. The study focuses on a 1766 letter to William Jessop, noting its upright, backward tendency and thick horizontal strokes caused by holding the pen parallel to the lines. Brown details specific calligraphic features, including introductory strokes on the initial "h," long descenders, three varieties of "e" including the "secretary" letter, and an open "o" resembling an "e." The account contrasts Johnson's firm 1784 hand in a letter to John Nichols with his shaky dictation and signature from the day before his death. Early college exercises at Pembroke College and a first draft of Irene show a common "secretary" "e" and rarer open "o," which demonstrates how Johnson pruned and obscured his hand in later years.
The Cancels in Dr. Johnson's Works (Oxford, 1825)
Sherbo examines the bibliographical complexities of the 1825 Oxford edition of SJ’s Works, specifically the twenty-eight leaves of cancels issued in Volume IX for insertion into the Rambler volumes. The study distinguishes between sets with uncancelled leaves, those with cancels, and a previously unrecorded state containing reprinted sheets. Sherbo notes that the editor, Francis Walesby, modernized spelling and punctuation in the reprint, unfortunately stripping personifications of capitalization, and identifies further cancels in the Adventurer volume.
CGV entry 1/1:38. Discusses six early Johnson manuscripts.
Contemporary Literary Scholarship: A Critical Review
Clifford surveys mid-twentieth-century scholarly trends, arguing for a more balanced estimate of the neoclassic period through the rejection of nineteenth-century romantic prejudices. Clifford emphasizes the recovery of Tory ideals, noting that figures like Johnson, Pope, and Swift were "tough-minded and virile" in their social critiques rather than merely reactionary. The article highlights the "History of Ideas" school as foundational to modern understanding, specifically citing Lovejoy and Nicolson. Within Johnsonian studies, Clifford notes a shift from Boswellian legend to a focus on the "majestic" moralist and professional writer. Clifford disputes the notion that the heroic couplet is a "jog-trot form," using Mack and Wimsatt to demonstrate its inherent complexity. The review concludes that recent scholarship reinstates these writers as "tragically apposite" to the modern age, moving beyond "jaundiced misfits" to recognize their profound "sense of life."
A Critical Examination of the Canon of the Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson
Moser identifies a need for 'objective criteria' to distinguish genuine Johnsonian prose from attributions based on subjective 'feeling'. He defines Johnson’s prose style through a paradoxical 'nervous and elegant' tonality, a fusion of 'masculine' vigor and 'feminine' grace. Moser develops twenty specific criteria for internal evidence, primarily emphasizing rhythmical and syntactical structures such as 'uniform steadiness of phrasal rhythm', 'extra-phrasal cadence' including the cursus, and 'classical periodicity'. He distinguishes between the 'solemn' style, characterized by an 'uniform steadiness of speech', and the 'pathetic' style, which employs 'syntactically intricate and tight sentences' and 'parallelism within parallelism'. Applying these criteria to the works Boswell ascribed to Johnson, Moser 'substantially confirms' Boswell’s accuracy while rejecting certain items like 'The Jests of Hierocles' due to their 'a-rhythmical prose beat'. The study also catalogs non-Boswellian ascriptions for future verification. Moser argues that rhythm is of 'paramount importance' and seeks to reconcile technical structural analysis with traditional literary evaluation.
CGV entry 1/1:42. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 20 (1960), pages 3283-3284.
British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books
CGV entry 1/1:43. Photolithographic edition to 1955, columns 3-53. Later supplements exist.
Samuel Johnson 'On the Banks of the Wolga'
CGV entry 1/1:45. Discusses Russian translations of 'The Rambler', 'Rasselas', and other works.
A Preliminary Handlist of Documents & Manuscripts of Samuel Johnson
A detailed census of surviving Johnsonian manuscript material. Fleeman systematically catalogs 265 discrete items that are either written wholly in Johnson's autograph or bear his written endorsement, thereby establishing a critical record for investigating his compositional habits and intellectual activities. The coverage focuses exclusively on documents such as his list of intended literary projects, the Designs, which is specifically recorded (as item 236 or 243), while excluding his private correspondence. Fleeman details the current institutional location of each manuscript where known, or provides the last verifiable reference for items that were unlocated at the time of publication. The volume is valuable for its precise documentation and is rendered easily navigable through an index. Critical reception of this compilation is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers characterizing it as a "significant contribution" and a "vital index" for literary historians. Boulton and Carter praise the "workmanlike" chronological arrangement of autographs, noting how the provenance data allows for an analysis of nineteenth-century collecting trends and the fluctuating market value of Johnsoniana. Price and Carter both draw attention to the sobering reality that over eighty of the 265 entries remain "unlocated," including important "Adversaria" and the Western Islands manuscript. Powell emphasizes the diverse nature of the documents—ranging from school exercises to legal petitions—and even supplements the list with his own "discoveries," such as a marriage contract witnessed by the subject. While Price notes the inexpensive "photo-offset" reproduction, he joins Boulton in commending the author’s "caution" in labeling the work "preliminary," a designation that Carter suggests is intended to encourage further additions from the scholarly community.
Editing Eighteenth-Century Texts: Papers Given at the Editorial Conference, University of Toronto, October 1967
No Dull Duty: The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson
Greene outlines the history, editorial policies, and progress of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Disputing the "dull duty of an editor," Greene describes the project as a voluntary, cooperative enterprise intended to produce a "sound and readable text" for modern readers. The text details the challenges of establishing the Johnsonian "canon" given his "vast journalistic output" and habit of making "clandestine contributions" to friends' works. Greene explains decisions regarding the modernization of "accidentals," the retention of original spelling, and the rejection of "encyclopaedic" annotation. The text surveys individual volumes, including the restoration of passages "falsified by earlier editors" like Strahan and Boswell in the diaries. Greene highlights Johnson's political commitment, challenging the "Macaulayan image" of Johnson as a "comic old curiosity." By providing a comprehensive edition, Greene seeks to establish Johnson as a "Colossus bestriding the world of eighteenth-century literature."
CGV entry 1/1:49. An account of the edition's origin and progress.
Works by and about Samuel Johnson in Eighteenth-Century America
Winans investigates the dissemination and reception of SJ’s works in eighteenth-century America through an analysis of booksellers' and library catalogues. Data indicates that major works like the Dictionary, Rasselas, and the Rambler arrived in the colonies shortly after London publication. The study details American reprints, including the 1768 Philadelphia Rasselas and the 1795 Shakespeare, and provides statistical tables of holdings. Winans concludes that while not matching Pope or Milton in popularity, SJ was widely read, particularly via the Rambler.
Johnson and Boswell: A Survey of Their Writings
McAdam approaches Johnson and Boswell through their respective bibliographies, eschewing traditional labels like 'neo-classicist' or 'Augustan' to focus on the moral and structural complexities of their work. The first section details Johnson's 'apprenticeship to Grub Street,' noting that his name did not appear on a title page until his fortieth year. McAdam traces Johnson's development from early translations and hack biographies for the Gentleman's Magazine to major achievements including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and his edition of Shakespeare. The analysis emphasizes Johnson's prose style, modeled on seventeenth-century sermons, and his 'earthy' skepticism. The second section follows Boswell's career as a diarist and biographer, highlighting his 'inner need to record himself.' McAdam argues that Boswell's journals constitute a new type of English literature characterized by a 'keen sense of the dramatic' and a refusal to suppress incidents where he appears foolish. The study concludes with the Life of Johnson, identifying it as a 'wholly new kind of work' that used personal correspondence and elaborate conversations to create a definitive portrait.
New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature
CGV entry 1/1:52. This unsigned entry appears in columns 1122–1178. A letter in The Times Literary Supplement, 27 August 1971, calls attention to the entry's anomalies.
Strauss and Tracy debate the editorial policy of the Yale Edition of the Rambler. Strauss defends the use of the 1756 fourth edition as copy-text, arguing its substantive variants and Johnson's subsequent oversight make it an equally valid choice to the folio, despite modernization. Tracy counters that the policy's inconsistent modernization of accidentals, like capitalization and quotation marks, creates anomalies and hinders the common reader. The core dispute centers on the extent of Johnson's involvement in the 1756 edition's accidentals.
CGV entry 1/1:54. A Forum debate on Yale Johnson textual policy. See also the review by Clarence Tracy in Eighteenth-Century Studies, volume 4 (1970), pages 231–235.
Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society of the North West
Johnson and The Preceptor: An Addition to the Canon
Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing
University Press of Virginia for the Bibliographical Society of America
This review article, reprinted from Modern Philology (1964), evaluates the second volume of the Yale edition of Samuel Johnson's works, containing The Idler and The Adventurer. Bowers disputes the inconsistent application of copy-text theory between the editors, Bate, Bullitt, and Powell. He challenges the Harvard editors' decision to use the 1761 revised edition of The Idler as copy-text for accidentals, arguing that it represents a "manifestly inferior authority" compared to the original Universal Chronicle printings. Bowers further displaces the general editorial policy of partial modernization, specifically the reduction of "emphasis capitals" and the silent alteration of italics. He argues these arbitrary changes create a "mishmash" that sabotages the virtues of a critical old-spelling edition and steering the reader into "capricious" interpretations of Johnson's meaning. The article provides a rigorous bibliographical critique of how "insufficient training" leads to non-definitive scholarly texts.
CGV entry 1/1:56. A reprint of Bowers's review of 'The Idler' and 'The Adventurer' in the Yale Edition.
Butt characterizes Johnson as the sole literary figure whose career encompasses the entirety of the mid-eighteenth century, justifying the eponymous designation of the era. The narrative traces Johnson's trajectory from an obscure journalist for the Gentleman's Magazine to a pensioned man of letters. Particular attention is paid to Johnson's innovations in the 'Imitation' form, specifically London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, which modernized classical satire for a contemporary audience. Butt evaluates Johnson's role as a lexicographer and editor of Shakespeare, noting these works provided a baseline for future scholarship. The study concludes with an analysis of Johnson's later prose, including political pamphlets and The Lives of the Poets, alongside Boswell's biographical methodology. The text argues that Johnson's varied output across multiple genres distinguishes him from contemporaries, effectively making him the central pillar of late Augustan literature.
A Possible Johnson Letter in the Daily Advertiser
Woodruff proposes the attribution of an anonymous 1751 letter in the Daily Advertiser to Johnson. The letter advocates for a benefit performance for an 'unfortunate bookseller,' likely James Crokatt, with whom Johnson had a documented connection. Woodruff cites Johnsonian stylistic traits, including general observations on human behavior, parallelisms, and specific diction like 'propension.' However, he notes the letter lacks the vigor and polish of Johnson’s best writing.
Johnson's Negative Capability: Remarks on Omissions from the Canon
Battersby applies the concept of 'Negative Capability' (Keats's idea of a writer's capacity to be "in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason") to Johnson's thought and works. The essay explores instances where Johnson resists definitive conclusions or embraces ambiguity and paradox, particularly concerning theological or metaphysical questions. Battersby discusses specific omissions or silences in Johnson's canon as evidence of this capacity for unresolved contemplation. The analysis challenges traditional views of Johnson as a rigid rationalist, suggesting a more complex, accepting stance toward the inexplicable aspects of human experience. He challenges Fussell's explanations for why Samuel Johnson omitted the novel, stage comedy, the Pindaric ode, and the pastoral from his body of work. He argues that Fussell misinterprets Johnson's critical principles by confusing the accidental characteristics of some works with the essential nature of the genres themselves. He demonstrates that Johnson did not view the novel as necessarily licentious, citing his praise for Richardson and his belief that the form could represent perfect virtue. Likewise, Johnson saw comedy not as inherently trivial but as a source of natural mirth rooted in truth. The essay contends that Johnson's objection to the Pindaric ode was not its passion, but the "lax and lawless versification" of its imitators, while his scorn for poems like Lycidas was because he considered them improper applications of the pastoral form, not a rejection of the genre itself.
Samuel Johnson and the Eighteenth-Century Irish Book Trade
Cole examines the dissemination of Johnson's works in eighteenth-century Ireland through unauthorized Dublin reprints. Lacking copyright restrictions before 1800, publishers like Faulkner and Ewing produced affordable editions of the Rambler, Idler, and Shakespeare. The Dictionary proved most popular, with Ewing's 1775 edition incorporating unique corrections. Cole analyzes library holdings and periodicals to demonstrate Johnson's high esteem among Irish readers. Reprints of Boswell's Tour and Life similarly expanded the audience, establishing Johnson's reputation despite his lack of financial gain from Irish markets.
CGV entry 1/1:61. On Johnson's methods of composition.
Augustan Studies: Essays in Honor of Irvin Ehrenpreis
University of Delaware Press; Associated University Presses
Fleeman catalogues thirty-one prospectuses and proposals associated with Johnson, using evidence from Strahan's printing ledgers, Boswell's research, and extant ephemera. The text defines "proposals" as publications inviting subscriptions with specific terms, while "prospectus" serves as a generic term for publication announcements. Fleeman traces Johnson's career as a professional writer providing promotional copy for his own major projects—including the Dictionary and Shakespeare edition—and for diverse authors such as James, Ascham, and Baretti. The analysis highlights the economic function of these documents in mitigating publisher risk and securing production costs. By documenting failed ventures alongside successful ones, Fleeman illustrates the precarious nature of eighteenth-century literary production and Johnson’s role in navigating the transition from patronage to a subscription-based market.
Catalogs various editions and studies published to mark the centenary of Johnson, including facsimiles of Rasselas and multiple versions of Boswell's Life. It identifies Johnson as a "hardened and shameless tea-drinker" and a former teetotaler with strong views on the liquor traffic. Newly surfaced evidence from Notes and Queries establishes Johnson’s tenure as a tutor to Whitby of Heywood between 1729 and 1736, a period previously considered obscure. Additional records from Columbia College detail the relationship between Johnson and his American namesake, William Samuel Johnson. During a five-year residence in England, the younger Johnson sought out the "odd" but intellectually rewarding elder Johnson, receiving a folio dictionary and a Reynolds engraving. The account confirms their lifelong correspondence and provides a description of Johnson’s regular pew at St. Clement Danes.
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, School of Library Service
Published: Lectures on General Literature, No. 53, pages 504-513. A bound, typewritten bibliography.
Johnson’s wit and moral courage provide a stimulus to character, standing as a "pattern to all Godfearing Englishmen." Seccombe and Barker establish Johnson as a dominating literary figurehead whose personality defines the eighteenth century. The discussion affirms the authenticity of Johnson’s posthumous Sermons, citing their distinctive "Johnsonian diction." Boswell displays a "rare judgment" in the biography, using "direct oration" to explain Johnson’s motives. The narrative highlights Johnson’s "thorough Anglican" identity and his reliance on the primitive Church. Johnson’s private Prayers and Meditations illustrate a "godly fear" and humility. Thrale appears as a familiar presence in this record of a dominating era. The text challenges contemporary flippancy, asserting that Johnson’s piety shamed a nation out of irreligion.
CGV entry 10/6:112.
English Literature, 1660–1800: A Bibliography of Modern Studies Compiled for Philological Quarterly
CGV entry 1/2:4. Contains annual entries from 1925 to 1960. Continued annually in the July number of Philological Quarterly.
American Criticism of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1807–1938: A Contribution to Bibliography
CGV entry 1/2:5. A typewritten manuscript located in the University of Wisconsin archives, University of Wisconsin Library School, Madison.
Johnsonian Studies, 1887–1950: A Survey and Bibliography
Clifford surveys the history of scholarship and bibliography concerning Johnson and his circle from 1887 to 1950. The work documents a "steady shift of emphasis" from a Victorian interest in Johnson as an eccentric "companion" to a modern appreciation of him as a "vigorous reasoning intelligence" and literary artist. Clifford provides an extensive bibliography of individual works, editions, and biographical studies, including materials related to Boswell and Piozzi. The survey highlights significant scholarly milestones, such as the publication of the Malahide Castle papers and Aleyn Lyell Reade’s Johnsonian Gleanings. Clifford observes that while Boswell’s Life long obscured Johnson’s own stature, twentieth-century critics have successfully rehabilitated Johnson the writer, particularly his poetry and periodical essays. The bibliography includes sections on Johnson’s "personal relationships," his prose style, and the "Johnsonian canon," aiming to aid research by identifying "new discoveries" and "new critical approaches" in the field. The bibliography is organized into two primary segments that categorize scholarly works from 1887 to 1950. The first part, the General Bibliography, contains eleven sections that group materials by broad topics, such as bibliographies, editions, biographies, Boswell, Johnson's personal relationships, clubs, and medical or psychological works. The second part, the Bibliography of Individual Works, is organized by Johnson's specific literary output, featuring thirteen sections dedicated to major works like the Dictionary, Rasselas, and his editions of Shakespeare. Within these divisions, entries are further sub-categorized into editions and criticism. Entries are alphabetized by author under their respective topical headings and are assigned non-consecutive numbers to facilitate cross-referencing. To enhance utility, Clifford includes brief descriptive notes in brackets for items with non-explanatory titles and uses asterisks to denote works of significant scholarly importance. The volume concludes with a comprehensive index of authors and editors.
Revised and expanded as Samuel Johnson: A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies, 1970.
Hyde welcomes the bibliography as a vital tool supplementing Birkbeck Hill. While praising the recovery of ephemeral material and the "starring" system for critical assessment, she disputes specific omissions, such as Macaulay's "Life," and critiques the index for excluding titles and subjects. The work is lauded for documenting the scholarly transition from purely biographical fascination with the man to critical analysis of the works.
CGV entry 1/2:8.
Clifford provides an exhaustive reference work documenting 1,753 items related to Samuel Johnson published since the 1887 Hill edition of the Life. The bibliography includes books, pamphlets, articles, reviews, and unpublished dissertations, with brief descriptions and evaluative stars for significant entries. An introductory survey tracks shifts in critical opinion regarding Johnson’s character and literary standing over the previous six decades. While Liebert praises the meticulous data and the work’s "indispensable" status, he regrets the absence of an index rerum, noting that subject-specific searches require browsing multiple sections.
CGV entry 1/2:8. Review by H. W. Liebert of the book by James L. Clifford.
This brief notice reviews James L. Clifford's Johnsonian Studies 1887-1950: A Survey and Bibliography, spanning the years between Hill's Boswell and Powell's revision. Chapman acknowledges the impressive scale of the bibliography, listing over two thousand entries, and its utility for students of Johnson. The reviewer praises the inclusion of critical reviews for important entries but questions the necessity of less significant items.
CGV entry 1/2:8. Review by R. W. Chapman of the book by James L. Clifford.
McAdam describes Clifford's work as a comprehensive survey and selective bibliography of over 2,100 items. He highlights the survey of scholarship starting from Hill’s edition of Boswell and commends Clifford’s expert use of asterisks to denote essential works. McAdam notes the inclusion of critical comments and cross-references for various Johnsonian topics. However, he finds the index restrictive for researchers as it lists only modern authors, excluding historical figures like Parr or Strahan, and observes alphabetical inconsistencies in the bibliography's organization.
CGV entry 1/2:8. Review by E. L. McAdam, Jr. of the book by James L. Clifford.
Kolb’s enthusiastic review praises this bibliography for its accuracy and ease of use. Clifford organizes over two thousand items into general bibliography and individual works, covering discussions of Johnson’s life and writings from 1887 through 1950. The volume includes important works printed before 1887 to expand its breadth. Kolb applauds the use of asterisks to guide readers toward items containing new discoveries, critical approaches, or sound evaluations, though he suggests brief comments might better substantiate these marks. The review highlights Clifford’s introductory essay, which traces the rediscovery of Johnson as a literary artist and critic. Kolb notes that while the work records a vast amount of sound scholarship, it also makes obvious that much remains to be done in the field.
CGV entry 1/2:8. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the book by James L. Clifford.
Sprache und Literatur Englands und Amerikas, Volume 3: Die wissenschafrliche Erschliessung der Prosa
CGV entry 1/2:11. In two parts: number 9 (September), pages 393-407; and number 10 (October), pages 441-454.
Later Eighteenth-Century English Literature (English 214): A List of Reference Works and Selected Reading
A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1950–1960
This bibliography, which originally appeared as a supplement to the 1951 survey of scholarship, records over 500 items published during the 1950s that reflect a critical shift from viewing Johnson as an eccentric clubman to respecting him as a major thinker. Clifford and Greene provide a thematic arrangement of studies covering Johnson's personal relationships, his major works, and his political and religious thought. The compilers include a survey of the decade's scholarly activity, noting the emergence of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson and the recovery of suppressed biographical details through modern technology. They emphasize a "healthful tendency" to analyze Johnson within established literary and lexicographical traditions rather than as an idiosyncratic figure. The record notes that "in no earlier decade have so many written so much about so many aspects of Johnson," specifically highlighting the surge in critical interest regarding his moral writings and the bicentennials of the Dictionary and Rasselas.
CGV entry 1/2:13. Privately printed. Some copies were bound separately.
Samuel Johnson: A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies
Clifford and Greene established the critical landscape for the scholarly renaissance of the 1970s, cataloging the massive output of Johnsonian writings. The scope covers Johnson scholarship from 1887 (the date of G. B. Hill’s edition) up through the end of 1969. Its organization classifies critical studies into various categories, including biographies, letters, poetry, periodical essays, and political writings, detailing over four thousand items. The book strives provide students with readily accessible documentation, implicitly arguing that the "Johnson the writer" paradigm required scholars to acknowledge the enormous range of Johnson's actual works, which run into the hundreds of titles, contrasting sharply with the notion that all necessary information resided solely in Boswell’s Life. The authors later emphasized the book's importance in recognizing differences among the three distinct traditions of Johnsonian studies. It was a key tool that helped define the third phase of Johnsonian scholarship.
CGV entry 1/2:15. Combines entries from items 1/2:8 and 1/2:13, adding entries from 1749 to 1887 and 1960 to 1969.
Davies acknowledges the utility of this 4,000-item compilation in chronicling Johnson’s critical reception, but notes significant omissions, particularly regarding works that respond to Johnson’s criticism of Milton and Dryden without naming Johnson in their titles. The review also points out specific factual errors, such as the publication history of Whitehead’s novel on Savage, while ultimately conceding the volume’s value to literary historians.
CGV entry 1/2:15.
Tracy reviews an updated, expanded reference work detailing approximately four thousand entries tracking developments in Johnsonian scholarship from Johnson's lifetime to 1968. Tracy welcomes the addition of early reactions from 1789 to 1887, which successfully bridges a persistent historical gap left by previous nineteenth-century starting marks. While Tracy characterizes the structural modifications to the organizational layout as conservative, Tracy notes that new subdivisions covering critical theory, practice, canon studies, and ethical opinions make the bibliography substantially easier to use. Tracy finds the retention of older, trivia-heavy categories reminiscent of a quaint Victorian stereotype problematic, urging an overhaul of the scheme before future revisions. Tracy praises the survey as an entirely reliable guide and useful tool for graduate students and experienced scholars alike.
CGV entry 1/2:15. Review by Clarence Tracy of the book by James L. Clifford and Donald J. Greene.
Lonsdale provides an enthusiastic review of this compilation of Johnsonian studies. The bibliography expands upon previous lists from 1951 and 1962, removing the former 1887 terminus a quo to include materials from the beginning of the career of Johnson. Lonsdale praises the introductory survey for appraising the changing reputation of Johnson and proving the vigor of modern scholarship. The review suggests improvements regarding the record of book and autograph collectors, specifically mentioning the roles of Edward Skegg, Lewis Pocock, and Alexander Henry Ross in preserving manuscripts. J. D. Fleeman appends an extensive list of addenda and corrigenda, providing supplemental bibliographic data, edition dates, and manuscript locations for numerous items related to the life, politics, and dictionary of Johnson.
Clifford and Greene expand their previous bibliography to include nearly 4,000 items, spanning from Johnson’s lifetime to 1968. The volume introduces a chronological arrangement, a new numbering system, and a section dedicated to Johnson’s attitudes. The expanded survey challenges the traditional view of Johnson as a literary dictator, highlighting contemporary attacks. Kelley identifies the pre-1887 additions as particularly significant while noting that the early stages of Johnson’s reputation remains a field requiring further scholarly investigation.
CGV entry 1/2:15. Review by Robert E. Kelley of the book by James L. Clifford and Donald J. Greene.
Waingrow praises the work's proof of Johnson’s vitality and its comprehensive, reliable scope, covering writings from Johnson’s lifetime to 1969. Waingrow commends the logical two-part organization: a general bibliography and a section on individual works, all chronologically arranged to provide historical perspective on scholarship. He critiques the lack of abstracts for some items and the occasional misleading abstract, though he finds the use of asterisks for important works useful.
Alkon's positive review of the Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies identifies the work as an instigator of research due to its bold decision to extend coverage backward to the start of Johnson’s career. Alkon argues that the rearrangement of entries into chronological order emphasizes temporal relationships and facilitates a study of Johnson’s afterlife. The review challenges the idea of a widening chasm between Johnson and modern readers, suggesting instead a narrowing chasm where his works become more easily available to later readings. Alkon concludes that Clifford and Greene have transformed the bibliography into a tool for testing an aesthetics of reception, allowing scholars to analyze the nineteenth-century response as an object of study rather than scorn.
A Catalogue of the Valuable Library of Books, of the Late Learned Samuel Johnson, Esq.; LL.D.... Which Will Be Sold by Auction ... By Mr. Christie ... on Wednesday, February 16, 1785
This catalogue lists approximately 3,000 volumes, plus papers and portraits, from Johnson’s library, sold shortly after his death. Though scholars widely consider it poorly produced, it is crucial for analyzing Johnson’s intellectual attainments and reading habits, as he frequently marked and incorporated his reading into works like the Dictionary and Lives. The sale realized under £300, but the catalogue remains an indispensable tool for following Johnson’s literary development and career as a scholarly writer.
CGV entry 1/3:1. Also a facsimile reprint (London: Unwin Brothers, 1892) and a facsimile reprint with an essay by A. Edward Newton (New York: Hackett; London: Elkin Mathews, 1925).
Hutton examines the 1785 sale catalogue of Johnson's library, characterizing the document as a "deplorable" and "sorry production" compiled by the auctioneer Christie. Despite containing approximately 3,000 volumes across 662 lots, the sale realized only £242 9s., averaging nineteen pence per volume. Hutton highlights the presence of a 1570 edition of Barclay's Ship of Fools and the first folio of Shakespeare, noting that Johnson's collection prioritized "serious" reading in Greek, Latin, theology, and medicine over bibliographical rarity. The text details Johnson’s habit of using "books of science" during travel, specifically mentioning his gift of Cocker's Arithmetic to a young woman in Glenmoriston and his study of Pomponius Mela during a journey to Harwich with Boswell. Hutton disputes previous characterizations of Johnson as a "prince of Philistines," emphasizing instead his "rugged greatness" and "fidelity to great principles." The paper concludes by affirming Johnson's reliance on reading to lay a systematic foundation for knowledge, even as he preferred the "companionable spirit" of conversation.
CGV entry 1/3:2. Paper read at Oxford, June 11, 1892. Reprinted in 'Johnson Club Papers' (1899).
Johnson’s library was "not a collector's library, but a workman's." It was a vast, chaotic "mass of miscellaneous learning." Books were tools, "tattered" and "dog-eared" from "ferocious" reading. It reflected his "voracious" and "desultory" mind, not the "elegance" of a bibliophile.
CGV entry 1/3:2. Reprinted from the 1892 standalone publication.
Eighteenth Century Vignettes, Second Series
Johnson treated his books with abusive affection, often neglecting or damaging them. Dobson examines the 1785 sale catalogue of his Library, which featured his heavily annotated Shakespeare folio and Burton's Anatomy. The collection reflected his interests in theology and chemistry, included presentation copies, and ultimately realized a moderate sum, valued more for association with Johnson than intrinsic worth.
This 1768 letter to Barnard, George III's librarian, offers strategic advice for a continental book-buying expedition. Johnson suggests that while rarity dictates value, scholars should focus on "literature of its own" in native soils, specifically Canonists in Italy and feudal law in Germany. He cautions against purchasing entire libraries due to duplication and recommends seeking "old books with wooden cuts" designed by great masters. The letter concludes with a warning to maintain religious piety while traveling amidst continental bigotry and atheism.
Confirms Johnson's admiration for the works of Walton, citing Moses Browne's claim that Johnson once intended to write Walton's biography. References Boswell to highlight Johnson's particular preference for 'Dr. Donne's Life.' Describes a fourth Hawkins edition of the 'Angler' formerly owned by Astle, which contains a manuscript note recording Johnson’s verbal recommendation of the text as a 'mighty pretty Book.' Connects Johnson’s literary influence to Astle’s personal use of the volume as a family register, noting the geographic link to Uttoxeter.
Wheatley argues for recognizing Johnson as a bibliographer in the modern sense, citing his work on the Harleian Library catalogue. He details Johnson’s contributions to the catalogue’s preface and his appreciation for rare books and early printing. Wheatley also recounts Johnson’s involvement with the King’s Library and his advice to Barnard on book collecting. The article establishes Johnson not just as a writer, but as a knowledgeable scholar of book history and library formation.
CGV entry 1/3:6. Separately reprinted in London by Blades in 1907.
Millar presents a previously unpublished passage from Johnson’s 1768 letter to Barnard, the King’s librarian. The passage, omitted from earlier transcripts, reveals Johnson’s specific bibliographical knowledge regarding Fust’s use of horn watermarks to date early printed books. Millar corrects numerous errors in previous editions of the letter using the original manuscript acquired by the British Museum. The article demonstrates Johnson’s attention to physical bibliography and his engagement with the history of printing.
Esdaile asserts Johnson’s status as a pioneering bibliographer, rooted in his early exposure to his father’s bookshop. He details Johnson’s technical contributions, specifically his cataloging of the Harleian Library and his advice to Barnard on forming George III’s library. While acknowledging Johnson’s lack of modern impartiality and his occasional physical mistreatment of books, Esdaile argues that Johnson’s application of textual collation to Shakespeare and his understanding of literary history define him as a foundational scholar.
CGV entry 1/3:8. Reprinted in 'Autolycus' Pack' (1940).
Autolycus' Pack, and Other Light Wares: Being Essays, Addresses, and Verses
Esdaile defines the bibliographer through Johnson’s technical lineage, beginning with Michael Johnson’s shop where Johnson mastered bookbinding and collation. Analysis of the Harleian Library catalogue reveals Johnson’s skill in describing Latin volumes and his commitment to the "literary history" of collections. In "The English Scholar," Esdaile examines how Johnson used bibliography to facilitate textual criticism in his Shakespeare edition, bridging the gap between physical book history and literary analysis. Though Boswell records Johnson’s "slovenly" treatment of books, Esdaile argues this physical carelessness does not diminish his empirical understanding of early printing, such as the 1457 Codex. Finally, "The Christian" relates Johnson’s scholarly rigor to his moral life, suggesting that his pursuit of bibliographic truth reflects a broader devotion to historical and spiritual accuracy.
CGV entry 1/3:8. Reprinted from Contemporary Review (1924).
Roberts analyzes the 1785 sale of Johnson’s library, which comprised approximately 662 lots and up to 5,000 volumes. The collection was dominated by classical literature (over 200 lots) and significant sections on theology, medicine, and mathematics. Notable holdings included editiones principes of Hesychius and Aldine editions of Horace and Quintilian. Roberts identifies purchasers from Johnson’s circle, such as Dr. Burney, Edmond Malone, and Dr. Brocklesby, who bought a copy of Juvenal for 34s. The auction records reveal that many works by Johnson’s friends, including Boswell’s 'Corsica' and Burney’s 'History of Music,' were present. Roberts notes the relative scarcity of contemporary English literature in the collection compared to seventeenth-century antiquarian prose. The article also details Johnson’s physical 'buffeting' of his books and his belief that 'knowledge is of two kinds': knowing a subject or knowing where to find information upon it. The high number of lots sold to 'Money' suggests significant bookseller interest in the dispersal of the 'learned Samuel Johnson’s' estate.
CGV entry 1/3:9. See also "Dr. Johnson's Library," The Times Literary Supplement, July 4, 1942, page 336; July 11, page 343; July 18, page 360. Reprinted in 'An Eighteenth-Century Gentleman' (1930).
An Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Other Essays
Roberts analyzes the 1785 sale catalogue of Johnson’s library, which comprised 662 lots and an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 volumes. The collection was dominated by classical literature, theology, philosophy, and medicine, reflecting a 'manly' and 'ancient' scholarly focus rather than contemporary belles-lettres. Significant items included early Aldine editions, patristic texts, and works by English divines such as Baxter, of whom Johnson stated, 'Read any of them, they are all good.' The sale record identifies purchasers among Johnson’s circle, including Burney, Langton, Malone, and Brocklesby, the latter of whom secured a copy of Juvenal for which he and Johnson had a mutual affinity. Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to Corsica also appeared in the catalogue, fetching sixteen shillings. Roberts notes Johnson's 'slovenly' physical treatment of his books, observing that he valued them as 'storehouses of editorial learning' rather than as a collector's rarities.
CGV entry 1/3:9. Reprinted from London Mercury (1927).
Samuel Johnson: An Early 'Friend of the Bodleian'
CGV entry 1/3:10. On Gaelic books presented to the Bodleian Library.
CGV entry 1/3:11. Notes that Johnson subscribed to Boyse's 'Poems' (1757).
A List of Books of Verse to Which Samuel Johnson Was a Subscriber
Williams compiles a specialized list of poetical volumes containing Johnson's name among the subscribers, noting additional personal or literary connections for each. Significant entries include Aaron Hill's "Works," Mary Masters's "Familiar Letters and Poems"—which Boswell suggests Johnson revised—and Elizabeth Harrison's "Miscellanies." Williams details Johnson’s support for William Woty’s "The Shrubs of Parnassus" and Francis Fawkes’s "Original Poems," noting Johnson reportedly assisted Fawkes with a translation of Theocritus. The list highlights Johnson’s subscription to Anne Penny's poems, likely due to her versification of a tale from "The Rambler." Williams observes that many of these subscriptions served charitable purposes, such as Gloster Ridley’s posthumous "Melampus," issued for his widow. This section serves as a specialized directory for Johnsonian bibliophiles tracking the "Great Moralist's" patronage of contemporary verse.
Johnson's Copy of Phillips's Poems
Chapman challenges Reade’s assumption that the "Phillips's Poems" in Johnson’s undergraduate library refers to Ambrose Philips. He argues the volume more likely contained the collected works of John Philips of Christ Church. To support this, he notes that John Philips’s poems were frequently sold in composite volumes with the works of Edmund Smith—the very next item appearing on Johnson’s list.
Chapman discusses Johnson’s appreciation for fine typography, specifically regarding Brian Walton’s Biblia Polyglotta. Although Johnson’s library was famously unkempt, his 1784 letter to the King’s librarian demonstrates a sophisticated knowledge of paper variants and rarity. Chapman traces Johnson’s copy, bequeathed to Bennet Langton, and confirms the existence of twelve rare large-paper copies that distinguish themselves significantly from the standard edition.
The author investigates Johnson’s long search for William Baxter’s edition of Anacreon. Contrary to previous scholarly inferences, the author argues that Johnson likely possessed the 1710 edition but specifically sought the rare 1695 version found at Auchinleck. The analysis clarifies Johnson’s use of the word "supply," indicating he could not purchase a copy in London or Cambridge. The author also suspects a clerical error in Boswell’s records, suggesting "Cambridge" may have been a slip for "Oxford."
CGV entry 1/3:15. Notes that Johnson owned a copy as an undergraduate.
Johnson's Copy of Hammond's Elegies
Gove confirms the discovery of Johnson's personal copy of The Poetical Works of William Collins. To which are added Hammond's Elegies, printed by Foulis in 1771 and gifted by Boswell in 1775. Johnson used this volume while writing his Life of Hammond, evidenced by marginalia and scribbled notes like "Mistress avaricious," "Pastoral," and "no life." These annotations directly correlate with his famously adverse critical opinions in the published Lives of the Poets, demonstrating his active use of the book to formulate his highly unfavorable assessment of Hammond's work.
CGV entry 1/3:17. An Antiquarian Booksellers Association annual.
New Light on Dr. Johnson: Essays on the Occasion of His 250th Birthday
Dr. Johnson as Bibliographer and Book Collector
Traces Johnson's development of bibliographical knowledge, starting with the Harleian Catalogue. McAdam highlights Johnson's familiarity with early printers and typography, demonstrated in the Catalogue's preface, advice to Barnard (King's Librarian), and travel observations. McAdam shows Johnson possessed sophisticated understanding of incunabula, book collecting criteria, and textual condition, arguing he owned significant early editions and actively read his extensive library.
Dr. Johnson at Work: Observations on a Columbia Rare Book
CGV entry 1/3:19. On a 1771 edition of the 'Poems' of Collins, with Hammond's 'Elegies', marked by Johnson.
The Association Books of Johnson, Boswell, and Mrs. Piozzi in the Birthplace Museum
Yung catalogs and discusses the collection of association books related to Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi held in the Johnson Birthplace Museum. These books are significant not only for their inherent literary or historical value but more importantly for the personal inscriptions, marginalia, and provenances that link them directly to these key figures of the 18th century. The essay explores how these artifacts serve as tangible evidence of their reading habits, intellectual exchanges, and social connections. The discussion includes details about presentation copies, volumes containing manuscript annotations by one or more of the individuals, and books that passed between them. This documentation offers scholars and enthusiasts unique insights into the private lives and collaborative literary context of Johnson and his circle, illustrating the physical presence of literature in their daily lives.
Cochrane entry 622.
CGV entry 1/3:25. Johnson mistaken in citing the title of a book.
The Sale Catalogue of Samuel Johnson's Library: A Facsimile Edition
The original catalogue was notoriously carelessly prepared and inadequate. This facsimile, published as a companion to Greene’s Annotated Guide, reproduces a Harvard copy containing manuscript entries listing purchasers and prices. This work is an indispensable resource for studying Johnson's reading and intellectual life.
Rawson assesses these two volumes as indispensable additions to Johnsonian scholarship. He praises Greene’s systematic alphabetical rearrangement and subject classification of the notoriously inadequate 1785 sale catalogue, noting its value for studying Johnson’s intellectual life. Rawson commends Fleeman’s facsimile edition of the Harvard copy, which includes vital manuscript entries regarding purchasers and payments. He highlights the appendices for identifying obscure authors and titles, concluding that the volumes provide a informative record of Johnson’s reading habits and library history.
CGV entry 1/3:26. Review by C. J. Rawson of the book edited by J. D. Fleeman, alongside other works.
In this positive review, Korshin commends J. D. Fleeman's meticulous facsimile edition of the 1785 sale catalogue of Johnson's library. Korshin details how Fleeman provides crucial identifications of authors and works for each lot, lists purchasers, and supplies appendices identifying books from Johnson's library found in other collections. Korshin notes that Fleeman's highly accurate research concentrates effectively on tracing missing items of Johnsoniana, which will significantly expand knowledge of Johnson's varied career.
CGV entry 1/3:26. Review by Paul J. Korshin of the book edited by J. D. Fleeman, alongside another title.
Samuel Johnson's Library: An Annotated Guide
A systematic analysis of Johnson’s library sale catalogue and a companion to Fleeman’s Facsimile Edition. The work aims to decode the numerous mysterious or muddled lots found in the inadequate 1785 catalogue. Johnson’s library consisted of nearly three thousand volumes, representing the collection of a serious classical scholar. Greene classifies the works by subject, emphasizing the library's importance for understanding Johnson's intellectual framework.
Rawson calls Greene's guide to the poorly prepared but important sale catalogue a most valuable addition to Johnsonian scholarship. He commends Greene for undertaking the first systematic, albeit modestly disclaimed, analysis of the catalogue's contents, intended for students of Johnson's intellectual life. The rearrangement into alphabetical order with cross-referencing and a subject classification table successfully maps the scope of Johnson's reading, despite the catalogue's original limitations.
CGV entry 1/3:27. Review by C. J. Rawson of the book by Donald Greene, alongside other works.
In this largely positive review, Korshin outlines Donald Greene's companion study to the sale catalogue of Johnson's library. Korshin explains that Greene successfully identifies practically all of the contents of the library, correcting many errors made by the original, hasty 1785 cataloguer. Korshin describes how Greene provides a useful classification by subject of the known works, an alphabetical guide to the contents of the library, and an index by author and title, providing a meticulous introduction to Johnson's reading and intellectual tastes.
CGV entry 1/3:27. Review by Paul J. Korshin of the book by Donald Greene, alongside another title.
Johnson's Copy of Vossius's Etymologicon
Austin investigates Johnson's personal copy of the *Etymologicon Linguae Latinae* by Gerardus Joannes Vossius. The note details the provenance of the book, its current location, and, most importantly, any marginalia or markings made by Johnson. The existence and nature of such markings provide evidence of Johnson's reading habits, scholarly engagement, and potential sources for his own *Dictionary* project. The research contributes a specific, material detail to the history of Johnson's intellectual life and library holdings.
Lonsdale identifies nine previously unrecorded book titles to which Johnson subscribed, suggesting his patronage was more extensive than the 35 works listed in the New CBEL. The newly discovered titles connect Johnson to Oxford colleagues, obscure poets like Mary Deverell, and theatrical figures like George Parker. Lonsdale argues these subscriptions often arose from Johnson’s loyalty to Oxford's Pembroke College or the influence of Mrs. Montagu. Additionally, the text posits that Johnson's mentor, Gilbert Walmesley, likely facilitated early (though less certain) subscriptions to Conyers Middleton and James Miller in 1741.
CGV entry 1/3:29. An addition of nine titles to the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature.
Johnson and Oldys as Bibliographers: An Introduction to the Harleian Catalogue
Kaminski examines Samuel Johnson and William Oldys's collaboration on Thomas Osborne's Catalogus Bibliothecae Harleianae (1743-45), the sale catalogue for Edward Harley's library. Despite the mercenary aims of bookseller Osborne, the compilers intended the catalogue as a serious scholarly work. However, the haste imposed by deadlines resulted in incomplete and outdated bibliographical research, leading to shortcomings, such as an incomplete list of Ciceronian incunabula. Nonetheless, the inclusion of bibliographical and historical commentaries elevated the Catalogus above its predecessors.
Forster identifies an unrecorded instance of Johnson’s patronage in the subscription list of Rogers’s Poems on Various Occasions (1782). The placement of Johnson’s name suggests a late entry. Forster investigates the biographical link between the men, proposing Farmer or Percy as potential intermediaries. He notes that Johnson visited Percy near the parish of Rogers in 1764, suggesting the 1782 subscription might fulfill a commitment originally intended for an aborted second volume proposed by Rogers nearly two decades earlier.
CGV entry 1/3:33. On the copy of the Dictionnaire of the Academie Française presented to Johnson, now in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles.
Hyde chronicles the intertwined relationships among three major early twentieth-century Johnsonians: collector R. B. Adam II, Yale scholar Chauncey Brewster Tinker, and collector-author A. Edward Newton. She details Tinker's scholarly dependence on Adam's collection for his Boswell research and Newton's camaraderie with Adam as a fellow businessman-collector. Hyde recounts anecdotes involving acquisitions (like Boswell's proof sheets), the production of Adam's library catalogues, and interactions with other scholars like R. W. Chapman and L. F. Powell. The narrative highlights their collaborative efforts, rivalries, and personalities, culminating in the dramatic emergence of the Malahide papers and their impact.
CGV entry 1/3:34.
Cochrane entry 62.
Sherbo identifies an unrecorded item from Johnson’s library found in the 1807 sale catalogue of Isaac Reed. The volume, Nicholas Hardinge’s Latin Verses (1780), was a private distribution by the author’s son, George Hardinge. Despite Johnson’s association with Reed and Nichols during the preparation of Lives of the Poets, no mention of Hardinge appears in Johnson’s known writings or Boswell’s biography. Sherbo provides a detailed bibliographic description of the rare work, noting its frequent missing leaves and its contents of Etonian and Cantabrigian exercises.
CGV entry 1/3:35. On Nicholas Hardinge's Latin Verses.
Collecteana Johnsoniana: Catalogue of the Library ... of Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
Collectanea Johnsoniana, an auction catalogue published in 1823 by Broster, documents the posthumous sale of Piozzi’s effects in Manchester. The title overtly capitalizes on the burgeoning enthusiasm for Johnson and the Streatham Circle, despite few items possessing direct Johnsonian provenance. The introduction urges collectors toward a "PLEASING RETROSPECTION" of the "Johnsonian School." Beyond a vast array of curiosities, the books include a final section specifically labeled "Johnsoniana." A key feature is the aggressive promotion of provenance, highlighting Johnson’s inscriptions in presentation copies and emphasizing Piozzi's extensive marginalia, such as those found in a copy of Pope's Works and Johnson's Dictionary. The catalogue also lists notable relics, including "Johnson's Padlock," reflecting the commercialization and canonization of personal relics in the early post-Boswellian period.
Published: Sale catalogue. At the Emporium Rooms, Manchester, by Mr. Broster.
This ten-day auction catalogue details the 1825 sale of the library of James Boswell (the younger), featuring over 3,000 lots of early English literature, legal texts, and continental works. Significant items include an original portrait of Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hand-corrected proof sheets for Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and the original manuscript Plan for his Dictionary. The collection also preserves James Boswell the elder's manuscript Dictionary of the Scotish Language and various family papers. Rarities such as a Shakespeare First Folio and first editions of Spenser and Puttenham are recorded, many containing scholarly annotations by Malone and the younger Boswell.
Place: London Published: Sale catalogue of the library of James Boswell the younger.
CGV entry 1/4:3. A description of her and her husband's collection, containing Johnson material. With a facsimile of a letter to James Compton.
Johnsoniana in the Library of Robert B. Adam
Adam catalogs an extensive private collection of manuscripts and extra-illustrated volumes centered on Johnson, Boswell, and their contemporaries . The collection includes three thousand five hundred ninety-six engraved portraits and over fifteen hundred autograph letters, significantly augmenting Hill’s editions of Boswell’s Life and Johnson’s Letters. He describes rare items such as the Birmingham-printed Lobo’s Voyage and a first edition of London . This catalog highlights the massive scale of late nineteenth-century Johnsonian bibliophilia and the preservation of crucial archival documents.
CGV entry 1/4:4.
Catalogue of an Exhibition Commemorative of the Bicentenary of the Birth of Samuel Johnson
This exhibition catalogue documents original editions, manuscripts, and portraits of Johnson displayed to mark his bicentenary. The collection includes significant works such as his translation of Lobo, London, and the Harleian Catalogue. It features a substantial array of portraits by Reynolds, Barry, and Opie, illustrating Johnson's physical presence. Editorial notes provide chronological context for each item, highlighting Johnson’s relationships with booksellers and peers like Boswell and Piozzi while detailing the bibliographical rarity of the displayed materials.
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Manuscripts, First Editions, Early Engravings and Various Literature Relating to Samuel Johnson
Tinker organizes a detailed exhibition record of Johnsonian primary materials, drawing from the collections of R. B. Adam, Newton, Rosenbach, and Morgan. This edition documents unique manuscripts, including the Life of Pope and Piozzi’s Anecdotes, alongside rare first editions of Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia and the Dictionary. The exhibition emphasizes historical sequence and provenance, providing a comprehensive bibliographic survey of Johnson’s literary career and his relationships with Boswell and Thrale.
Place: New Haven Published: Exhibition at Yale University Library, November 1-6, 1909
List of Books and Articles Relating to Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784, Compiled on the Occasion of the Exhibition Held at the Yale University Library, November 1–6, 1909
Yale University presents a comprehensive bibliographic catalogue issued for a 1909 exhibition commemorating the bicentenary of Johnson. This bibliography organizes scholarship, criticism, and primary source reactions to Johnson from 1755 through 1909. The entries chronicle the reception of major works including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets. The collection documents the evolution of Johnsonian biography, featuring early accounts by Boswell, Piozzi, Hawkins, and Murphy alongside nineteenth-century assessments by Macaulay and Carlyle. References include contemporary periodical reviews from the Monthly Review and Gentleman’s Magazine, satirical responses such as Kenrick’s attacks and Wolcot’s parodies, and various "Johnsoniana" comprising bon mots and anecdotes. The catalogue further lists specialized studies regarding Johnson’s politics, his religious life, his interactions with the Thrale circle, and his travels to Scotland with Boswell. Later entries track the rise of modern Johnsonian scholarship toward the end of the nineteenth century, including works by George Birkbeck Hill and the proceedings of the Johnson Club.
Published: Compiled on the Occasion of the Exhibition Held at the Yale University Library, November 1-6, 1909.
Catalogue of the Johnsonian Collection of R. B. Adam
The volume serves as a comprehensive guide to the massive collection assembled by the Adam family, specifically detailing the "extra-illustrated" Johnsonian materials. Osgood’s introduction emphasizes the collection's "human value," noting that it preserves the living record of the Johnsonian circle through an unparalleled assembly of original documents. The catalogue is organized into distinct sections, including a complete list of Johnson’s letters, manuscripts of his poems, and the original notebooks used by Boswell in preparing the Life. Significant rarities described include the "Round Robin" addressed to Johnson regarding the epitaph for Goldsmith and the corrected proofs of the Dictionary. The text also catalogs a vast array of correspondence from members of the Literary Club, the Thrale family, and Fanny Burney, alongside an exhaustive collection of early editions and "Johnsoniana" curiosities. Adam’s "justification" for the work rests on the principle of sharing these rarities with the scholarly community to facilitate a "fuller understanding" of the 18th-century literary world. The volume includes numerous photogravure facsimiles of title pages and manuscript fragments, making it an essential tool for bibliographers and textual critics.
CGV entry 1/4:9. A single volume with an introduction by Charles G. Osgood.
The Johnsonian and Boswellian Collections of Mr. R. B. Adam
Chapman’s approving review describes a privately printed catalogue by Adam of a vast "Museum Johnsonianum," a collection originally based on Hill's editions of Johnson’s Life, Letters, &c., and extended to fifty-nine quarto volumes. The catalogue features letters and manuscripts by Johnson and Boswell, many previously unknown to scholars or unpublished, including new letters by both men. Chapman highlights the inclusion of the only known letter from Johnson to Goldsmith—now owned by the Johnson Club and located in Gough-square—and the most valuable Boswell manuscript, the only survivor of the Life's original "note-books." The section on printed books includes corrected proof sheets of the first edition of the Life containing corrections by Boswell and Malone. The review praises Adam’s accuracy in deciphering Johnson's hand and notes the catalogue provides significant material for scholars of the Johnsonian circle.
CGV entry 1/4:11. On the Adam Library.
Catalogue of Books by or Relating to Dr. Johnson and Members of His Circle
CGV entry 1/4:12. Compiled by A. W. Evans, with an introduction by John Drinkwater.
Notes on a Loan Collection of Johnsonian Books and MSS
Place: Oxford Published: Shown at Amen House, July 1925.
Merritt chronicles the history and contents of two recently acquired volumes in the Harvard Library containing manuscript annotations by Hester Lynch Piozzi. The texts, which Miss Amy Lowell owned before their acquisition, consist of a 1816 eighth edition of James Boswell's Life of Johnson and a 1785 second edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Merritt traces the provenance of these volumes through several owners, including Abraham Hayward, who used the marginalia for his 1861 biography of Piozzi, Henry Wellesley, and William Augustus Fraser. The abstract reproduces several marginal notes written between 1816 and 1820 that demonstrate Piozzi's acerbity toward Boswell and her challenges to his accuracy. In these notes, Piozzi disputes anecdotes provided by Giuseppe Baretti, denies eating larks during a famous reprimand by Johnson, and asserts that curiosity carried Boswell further than any other mortal.
CGV entry 1/4:14. A description of the Amy Lowell collection.
Cochrane entry 504. Describes the history of two books at Harvard Library—annotated copies of the 'Life' and 'Hebrides' that were once owned by Hester Piozzi.
The Books of a Busted Bibliophile, Alias A. Edward Newton
Newton catalogues a personal collection of rare books and manuscripts slated for auction at the Anderson Galleries on 29 November 1926. The sale features significant Johnsoniana, including two copies of the first edition of the Dictionary of the English Language (1755), a tall copy of the first edition of Rasselas (1759), and the first issue of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Notable association items include a 1766 edition of Rasselas presented by Thrale to Hester Bridge and a first edition of Political Tracts (1776) inscribed by Johnson to the Reverend Mr. Colson. Correspondence includes a 1778 letter from Burney to Thrale expressing appreciation for Johnson, a 1777 letter from Dick to Johnson regarding the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and an undated letter from Percy to Thrale inquiring after Johnson’s health. The collection also contains various letters from Murphy, Seward, and Merry addressed to Thrale. Newton provides a whimsical introductory essay justifying the sale as a means to fund further acquisitions rather than a sign of financial ruin.
The Important Collection of XVIIth and XVIIIth Century Books Formed by Lt. Colonel Ralph H. Isham
Place: New York Published: Auction sale catalogue from the American Art Association, January 7, 1927.
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Literary Material Pertaining to Doctor Johnson and James Boswell
Published: Exhibition at the Club of Odd Volumes, May 14-23, 1928.
Pottle describes this catalog as the record of an unparalleled collection of Johnsonian manuscripts and letters, assembled painstakingly from diverse sources rather than bulk purchases. Volume one provides transcripts of over 225 Johnson letters and significant correspondence from Boswell, Burke, and Garrick. The second and third volumes catalog books and a vast array of miscellaneous autographs intended to extra-illustrate Hill’s edition of Boswell’s Life. Pottle emphasizes the collection's utility for paleographic study and commends the publication of this enlarged edition, previously restricted to private circulation, as an indispensable resource for eighteenth-century research.
CGV entry 1/4:19. A review of the multi-volume collection.
Powell reviews the three-volume catalogue of the R. B. Adam Library, calling it unrivalled and indispensable for Johnsonian scholars. Volume I transcribes and facsimiles manuscripts, including over 230 of Johnson's letters, some previously unpublished or printed inaccurately by Piozzi. Volume II, "Johnsonian Books," presents facsimiles of title-pages and Johnsonian documents like two drafts of the Plan of the Dictionary. Powell details the revisions in the later draft submitted to Chesterfield, providing examples of his suggestions. Volume III describes autographs collected for Grangerizing the Hillian editions of Johnson's works and includes letters from a wide range of literary figures.
Auction catalogue for the first portion of Kern's library includes significant primary materials involving Johnson and Boswell. Lot 56 features a "superb copy" of the first edition of Boswell's account of his tour with Johnson. Lot 57A contains a first edition of Boswell's biography of Johnson, notably enhanced by an unpublished autograph letter from Johnson to Thrale and a letter from Boswell to Jones regarding Johnson's "occasional manners." Other items include Boswell's extremely rare poem on slavery (Lot 58) and his personally autographed copy of a legal text (Lot 60). The collection also offers a priced 1825 catalogue of Boswell's own library (Lot 59). Piozzi appears as the recipient of Johnson's correspondence and as an associate of Burney, who expresses "remarkable letter of devotion" to Thrale (Lot 140).
Place: New York Published: Auction sale catalogue from Anderson Galleries, January 7-10 and 21, 1929.
Sotheby's sale included a fine series of thirteen letters from Johnson to Edmund Hector (1765-1776). The highest price was paid for the letter in which Johnson mentions undertaking a new edition of Shakespeare. Other notable items were a letter from Johnson mentioning his Dictionary and Taxation no Tyranny, one referring to his "ramble over part of France," a letter from Boswell mentioning his Life of Johnson, and a letter from Langton on Johnson's death.
CGV entry 1/4:21. On Johnsonian manuscripts. See issues for June 13 (page 480) and October 24 (page 852).
An Autograph Collection and the Making of It
Charnwood outlines the literary associations of Stowe House, Lichfield, focusing on its connection to Johnson and his circle. The text details the history of the dwelling, built by Aston in 1754 and later inhabited by Gastrel, where Johnson "spent much of his time." Charnwood identifies various rooms and architectural features, such as a dining-room mirror and a library chimney-piece, that Johnson saw during his visits. The narrative recounts Boswell’s 1776 visit, noting his initial pique at being "left in solitude" before receiving a dinner invitation. Charnwood discusses the Aston sisters, including Molly, whom Johnson described as a "violent Whig" and an "extraordinary lady." The text records the discovery of a tea caddy made from Shakespeare's mulberry tree, which Gastrel notoriously ordered cut down. Charnwood reproduces three Johnson letters: a 1777 missive to Thrale describing Lichfield's "unactive obscurity," a 1779 note to Thrale mentioning Porter’s "tenderness," and a previously unpublished 1759 letter to Porter regarding his mother's debts. Additionally, Charnwood notes the burial of Porter and Chambers at St. Chad's Church, emphasizing that "the memory of Johnson is cherished" at Stowe House.
Unpublished Manuscripts, Papers and Letters of Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and Their Friends, in the John Rylands Library
Tyson describes a massive collection of Piozzi’s papers acquired by the John Rylands Library in 1931. The archive includes twenty letters from Johnson to Piozzi and over one hundred letters from the Thrale family to Johnson. Tyson catalogs correspondence from various members of the Johnsonian circle, including the Burneys, Boswell, and Murphy. The article details the provenance of these manuscripts through the Salusbury family and categorizes the contents into personal, business, and literary groups.
Piozzi’s literary and personal legacy features prominently in recent acquisitions and publications. Newly recovered manuscript fragments from 1770 reveal Piozzi’s early impressions of Goldsmith, Murphy, and Harris, predating Thraliana. Other fragments serve as the manuscript basis for her anecdotes of Johnson, documenting his views on the "vacuity of life." Correspondence from Burney, Francis, and others illuminates Piozzi's social circle and her influence on younger contemporaries. These records clarify her relationship with Boswell and her late-life interest in Scott and Southey.
CGV entry 1/4:25. A description of a Johnson and Thrale manuscript.
Description of Johnson and Thrale/Piozzi MS
The Renowned Library of Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph H. Isham
Place: New York Published: Sale catalogue from Anderson Galleries, May 4, 1933.
An Exhibition of Original Manuscripts Autograph Letters and Books of and Relating to Dr. Samuel Johnson ... from the Collection of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach
This exhibition catalogue describes rare Johnsonian materials displayed for the sesquicentennial of Johnson's death. Items include the only known copy of the Prologue and Epilogue for the 1747 Drury Lane opening, original manuscripts of the Life of Pope and The Sugar Cane, and portions of Boswell's original manuscript for the Life of Johnson. The collection features numerous letters to Piozzi and various presentation copies, emphasizing the bibliographical significance of the Rosenbach collection in documenting the literary circle of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi.
Published: Exhibition at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
A Catalogue of an Exhibition of First Editions of the Works of Samuel Johnson in the Library of Yale University 8 November to 30 December, 1935
A Catalogue of Papers Relating to Boswell, Johnson and Sir William Forbes Found at Fettercairn House
Cochrane entry 40. Catalogs the significant collection of papers discovered at Fettercairn House, summarizing their contents under ten categories that include correspondence, major manuscripts, and Johnsoniana.
Greene examines Abbott's discovery of 1600 papers at Fettercairn House, highlighting 119 holograph letters from Johnson. He notes that eighteen of these letters remain unpublished and largely concern Johnson's medical symptoms. Greene emphasizes the recovery of three Boswellian journals, including a full record of his early London acquaintance with Johnson and a missing 1778 draft. He identifies two registers of letters as vital tools for reconstructing Boswell's voluminous correspondence.
CGV entry 1/4:31. Review by R. L. Greene of the book by Claude Colleer Abbott.
Williams highlights Abbott’s "romantic story" of discovering the Fettercairn papers, including Boswell’s "London Journal" and 119 "holograph letters of Johnson." He praises the catalogue for summarizing over 1,000 letters to Boswell and numerous drafts previously omitted from the Tinker edition. Williams asserts the find is of "astounding importance" for Johnsonian scholarship, noting that few of the letters had been "printed with full accuracy" prior to this discovery.
CGV entry 1/4:31. Review by H. Williams of the book by Claude Colleer Abbott.
The Valuable Library of Charles T. Jeffrey
Place: Philadelphia Published: Sale catalogue from Freeman, April 14, 1936.
Johnsonian Library in the University of Rochester
Rare Books, Original Drawings, Autograph Letters and Manuscripts Collected by the Late A. Edward Newton
The Robert B. Adam Library Relating to Dr. Samuel Johnson and His Era
Place: New York Published: A descriptive pamphlet.
The Collection of Books by or Relating to Samuel Johnson and James Boswell Formed by R. W. Chapman
Place: London Published: Sotheby Sale Catalogue, June 1, 1945.
Pages: 30–41 Place: London Published: Sotheby Sale Catalogue, June 29, 1948.
Hyde Collection of Johnsonian Manuscripts
The Hydes' collection of Johnsonian manuscripts is second only to Yale's Boswell archive in importance. The Hyde collection's foundation came from the Edward Newton sale and was later augmented by acquisitions from Colonel Isham's Malahide/Fettercairn finds, which included 120 Johnson letters. Notable items include two-thirds of the manuscript of The Vanity of Human Wishes, a draft of London, manuscripts of the Lives of Rowe and Pope, and rare printed books, such as a superb copy of A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage. Johnson kept few papers, as he destroyed almost all in his final days, making his material rare.
CGV entry 1/4:43. With a facsimile of a restored letter "edited" by Hester Piozzi.
Hyde chronicles the provenance of Johnson's manuscripts, contrasting the author's destruction of his own papers with the preservation efforts of Boswell and Piozzi. The narrative tracks items through the hands of executors Hawkins and Barber, and correspondents like Taylor and Langton, to major nineteenth-century dispersals including the Boswell and Pocock sales. Highlighting the evolution from autograph hunting to scholarly accumulation by Adam and Newton, the study maps the survival of the Dictionary drafts and Lives proofs, culminating in the Hyde collection's formation.
Privately printed at the University Press
The Rothschild Library: A Catalogue of the Collection of Eighteenth Century Books and Manuscripts Formed by Lord Rothschild
CGV entry 1/4:45. Privately printed.
Donald Hyde and Mary Hyde trace the evolution of their mid-twentieth-century book collecting, focusing on their acquisition of eighteenth-century literary materials. The Hydes describe how they began collecting in 1939 with a focus on the theatre and the eighteenth century, making early mistakes such as purchasing a second-rate Elizabeth document that Belle Greene recognized as an outright forgery. Their collection expanded rapidly with acquisitions from the A. Edward Newton sale in 1941, which secured Johnson's early manuscript Considerations on the Case of Dr Trapp's Sermons, the Johnson–Dodd manuscripts, Johnson's teapot, and various letters. Through a deep friendship with Ralph Isham, the Hydes acquired vital materials from the Boswell Papers, including Boswell's Book of Company and his Letter to the People of Scotland. The purchase of the Robert Adam Collection from the University of Rochester Library cemented their library as a premier repository, housing well over a third of the surviving letters of Johnson, including his earliest letter, his famous letter to Macpherson, and his last signature.
The Age of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: A Book Collection
CGV entry 1/4:47. A catalogue of his collection presented to the school.
Johnson's Books: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Books in the Birmingham Library
Published: Commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Johnson's birth.
The Tinker Library: A Bibliographical Catalogue of the Books and Manuscripts Collected by Chauncey Brewster Tinker
Features a complete index and full bibliographical descriptions. The catalogue lists holdings from Tinker’s private collection, providing collation statements and noting the existence of prettily bound copies.
Dr. Samuel Johnson ... An Exhibition of Books, Manuscripts, Views and Portraits
Arranged jointly by the Reference Library and the Museum and Art Gallery, September 14th to October 4th, 1959.
CGV entry 1/4:50. Arranged jointly by the Reference Library and the Museum and Art Gallery, September 14th to October 4th, 1959.
Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1709–1784): An Exhibition of First Editions, Manuscripts, Letters, and Portraits to Commemorate the 250th Anniversary of his Birth, and the 200th Anniversary of the Publication of his Rasselas
This exhibition catalogue commemorates the 250th anniversary of Johnson’s birth and the 200th anniversary of Rasselas. It provides a descriptive list of first editions, manuscripts, letters, and portraits, documenting the "Age of Johnson" through primary artifacts. The collection includes significant letters to Boswell and Piozzi, as well as Reynolds's portraits that defined Johnson’s public image. The text explores the physical history of Johnson’s works, from early periodicals like the Gentleman’s Magazine to the definitive Lives of the Poets, highlighting the textual evolution and editorial interventions of his friends.
Place: New York Published: Exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library, September 22-November 28, 1959.
CGV entry 1/4:51. Foreword by Herbert Cahoon.
CGV entry 1/4:52. A description of the Hyde collection.
Powell reviews several exhibitions held in New York and England's Midlands celebrating the 250th anniversary of Johnson's birth. The Lichfield celebration focused on the Birthplace collection. Birmingham hosted two exhibitions: one at the Birmingham Library displaying fifty works Johnson read, cataloged by Charles Parish; the second, a larger venture at the Museum and Art Gallery, aimed to show a complete collection of Johnson's writings, edited works, and contributions, drawing from over thirty institutions and private collectors. This exhibition included rare books like A Compleat Vindication (1739), Crousaz's Commentary (1742), and association copies. The New York exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library featured first editions, manuscripts, letters, and portraits illustrating key moments in Johnson's life, detailed in a handsome catalogue.
CGV entry 1/4:53. On the 1959 celebrations. Privately printed.
Place: London Published: Catalogue of the Festival of London exhibition, 1964.
The Johnsonian Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Hyde
Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784: An Exhibit of Books and Manuscripts from the Johnsonian Collection Formed by Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Hyde at Four Oaks Farm
Ives compiled this catalogue for a significant exhibit drawn from the Hyde Collection, which is housed at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. The Hyde Collection, formed by Donald and Mary Hyde, is a crucial source of Johnsonian materials. Scholars use the collection's manuscripts, which include Johnsoniana, for extensive research, such as Sledd and Kolb's biography of the Dictionary and studies concerning Boswell's papers.
Published: Exhibition at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
CGV entry 1/4:56. Introduction by W. H. Bond.
A Handlist of Manuscripts and Documents in the Johnson Birthplace Museum
Doctor Johnson and All Souls: An Exhibition for the Johnson Club 5 July 1975
Place: Oxford Published: Exhibition at All Souls College, Codrington Library.
CGV entry 1/4:58. Text by the Librarian. 16 pages.
Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Esq.: Bibliography of the Arthur Rippey Collection
CGV entry 1/4:59. Privately printed. The collection was later acquired by McMaster University.
Place: London Published: Sale Catalogue 1038. Autumn 1983.
Doctor Johnson and His Contemporaries: A Guide to the Exhibition
Guide to the exhibition at the University of York, Heslington Hall, October 15 to November 9, 1984.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Bicentenary Exhibition ... October 2–December 3, 1984
Samuel Johnson, Writer: Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Works of Samuel Johnson Marking the 200th Anniversary of His Death
Liebert introduces a bicentennial exhibition at the Beinecke Library, emphasizing Johnson's diverse career as a professional author of poetry, essays, and a dictionary. The selection highlights rare bibliographical variants and copies in original condition. Liebert credits generations of Yale alumni with building a collection of Johnson’s works that remains unsurpassed.
CGV entry 1/4:63. Catalogue of an exhibition at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Also printed as a separate pamphlet.
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
Place: London Published: Exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
CGV entry 1/4:64. On Johnson's writings, medical friends, and medical conditions.
CGV entry 1/4:66. See also Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, volume 67 (1984), pages 286–289.
Samuel Johnson Society of Southern California
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784): An Appreciation: An Exhibition of Manuscripts, Books, & Graphic Images: Held at the Huntington Library, San Marino, and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, Fall & Winter, 1984–1985
Foreword by Loren R. Rothschild; preface by Donald Greene; compiler, Robert Allen. "Printed in an edition of 1000 copies at The Castle Press, Pasadena, California."
CGV entry 1/4:67.
Boswell's Book of Bad Verse: (A Verse Self-Portrait); or, Love Poems and Other Verses: Now First Published from the Original Autograph MS.
Ppresents over seventy selected verses from the author's early career, primarily composed between 1758 and 1762. The primary copy-text is an original autograph manuscript of over a hundred pages housed in the Bodleian Library, making previously restricted material textually accessible. The content offers insights into the author's thoughts, expressions, biographical elements, and involvement with High Church Episcopalian and Roman Catholic piety. The volume organizes the verse into twelve thematic categories: Jovial, Amorous, Melancholy, Epigrammatic, Satirical, Open-Hearted, Spiritual, Whimsical, Epistolary, Lamentable, and Literary. The arrangement incorporates later quotations from the author at the heading of each division. The volume includes material relevant to composition process, such as a variant reconstruction for the Epistle to Sterne. Supplemental materials comprise a 23-page Introduction, 55 pages of notes, and facsimiles of two pages of the author's original handwriting. The manuscript provides details on the chronological dating and planning of the author's subsequent works. Preface, 'Preface,' addresses the dramatic rediscovery of the original autograph manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and their subsequent scholarly preparation for this first complete publication. Brief Biographical Sketch, 'Brief Biographical Sketch,' recounts the life of the celebrated biographer from his Scottish legal education to his eventual literary immortality in London alongside Samuel Johnson. Introduction, 'Introduction,' provides a comprehensive bibliographic description of the varied verse collection and establishes its significance as an autobiographical mosaic of the author’s early years. Chapter 1, 'Jovial,' introduces a series of lighthearted verses, including a self-characterization as the "King of Soapers," designed to elicit mirth through comical narration. Chapter 2, 'Amorous,' explores the "perfect fever of the mind" through lyrical expressions of adoration and the persistent torments of romantic disappointment. Chapter 3, 'Melancholy,' examines the "inexplicable disorder" of the author’s mind, using verse to assuage grief and contemplate the terrifying nature of madness. Chapter 4, 'Epigrammatic,' compiles various puns and short, witty observations on social follies, treating such innocent jests as essential components of lively conversation. Chapter 5, 'Satirical,' employs verse as a vehicle for indignation, launching vitriolic attacks on personal adversaries and contemporary social riots. Chapter 6, 'Boozy,' celebrates the joyous influence of Bacchus while lamenting how the "generous grape" often overwhelms more delicate romantic flames. Chapter 7, 'Open-Hearted,' presents an ingenuous "little sketch" of the author’s character through songs and reflections on his personal relationships with various Scottish lords. Chapter 8, 'Spiritual,' paraphrases numerous Psalms to "gild these truths majestic" with verse, revealing a profound and sincere religious fervor. Chapter 9, 'Whimsical,' documents "wild projects" and eccentric fancies, including odes to whistling and the elves that triumphed during the author’s calm intervals. Chapter 10, 'Epistolary,' assembles poetical letters to intimate friends and literary idols, often written in a careless, irregular hand that mirrors the author's own scattered ideas. Chapter 11, 'Lamentable,' acknowledges certain literary lapses written during dissipated hours, yet retains them to ensure the verse-portrait remains a whole and true representation of a licentious age. Chapter 12, 'Literary,' features various prologues and dramatic imitations that highlight the author's lifelong obsession with the theater and his own aspirations toward poetic genius. Appendix: Notes, 'Appendix: Notes,' serves as a necessary evil to clarify obscure eighteenth-century references and explain obsolete terminology for the modern reader.
The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. A new edition ... With an Essay on his Life and Genius
A collected edition of Samuel Johnson's Works, published in 12 vols. Arthur Murphy wrote the prefatory Essay (vol. 1), accepting a commission from the booksellers (1789) to supply an introduction for the collected edition. The editorial policy adjusted and reordered the SJ canon presented in the previous 1787 Hawkins edition. Contents included major genres: The Rambler (vols. 4-6), The Idler (vol. 7, lacking No. 22), Rasselas (vol. 3), and Lives of the Poets (vols. 9-11). Murphy’s Essay provided a mature and dispassionate biographical assessment, serving historically as the standard introduction for nearly every subsequent edition of Johnson's Works throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and America. The collection added items to the canon, but textual accuracy was inconsistent. The Essay was simultaneously published separately (1792) and reprinted in 1793. A Dublin edition followed in 1793. The London 12-vol. Works was reprinted in 1796 and 1801.
CGV entry 2:2. In this edition, Arthur Murphy's 'Essay on his Life and Genius' replaces John Hawkins's 'Life'.
The 1806 edition of Johnson’s Works, overseen by Chalmers and signed in January 1806, is a continuation of the twelve-volume 1792 collected edition. It begins with Murphy’s introductory Essay, commissioned because Hawkins’s 1787 Life received critical disapproval and was omitted. The volumes generally follow the 1792 contents, including The Rambler, Lives of the Poets, and Rasselas. Chalmers omits Spence's "The Picture of Human Life" but adds five papers from The Adventurer and the dedication to the evangelical history. The edition relies on existing published texts, perpetuating known errors, and is part of an effort to solidify Johnson’s literary status. Murphy’s Essay presents a "thoughtful, refined" characterization of Johnson and becomes the standard assessment for over a century.
Aa significant marker in the historical development of the Johnsonian canon. Identified as the "seventh" compilation, Chalmers's goal was to expand the collected works, successfully adding "More than thirty articles" and attributing several shorter pieces to Johnson based on internal evidence, which widely influenced subsequent collections. Structurally comprehensive, the volumes included major works like The Rambler and Lives of the Poets. However, this expansion was achieved at the expense of textual fidelity, as the edition paid "no attention" to accuracy. Consequently, the textually unsound 1823 Chalmers edition served as the direct canonical foundation for the subsequent flawed 1825 "Oxford" edition, requiring later editorial undertakings to correct the textual inadequacies.
CGV entry 2:5. The London editions of 1806, 1816, and 1823 include successive additions by the editor, Alexander Chalmers. The 1806 and 1823 editions were also printed in duodecimo as well as octavo forms. Other reprint editions include: Dublin, 6 volumes (1793); London, 12 volumes (1796); London, 12 volumes (1801); Edinburgh, 15 volumes (1806); New York and Boston, 12 volumes (1809); London, 12 volumes (1810); Alnwick, 12 volumes (1816); London, 10 volumes (1818); London, 2 volumes (1825); Philadelphia and New York, 6 volumes (1825); New York, 2 volumes (1837); London, 2 volumes (1850); New York, 2 volumes (1850); and Troy, New York, 16 volumes (1903).
A collected edition of Samuel Johnson's writings, published 1825 in nine volume, or eleven volumes including supplementary parliamentary debates. Titled "Oxford English Classics," this commercial edition was not affiliated with the University Press. Francis P. Walesby edited the collection, copying the canon derived from the 1823 Chalmers edition. It contained major works, biographical writings, and sermons, notably the 24 sermons left by John Taylor plus SJ’s sermon for his wife. Volume I opens with "An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.," followed by a collection of Johnson’s major English poems. Volumes II, III, and IV present the complete runs of The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler, emphasizing Johnson’s role as a Christian moralist and social critic. Volume V contains Rasselas, various prefaces, and the "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland." Volumes VI, VII, and VIII comprise the Lives of the Poets, providing exhaustive critical-biographical assessments of figures from Cowley to Lyttelton. A significant feature of this edition is the inclusion of the Debates in Parliament (Volumes X and XI), which document Johnson’s stylized reconstructions of political rhetoric from 1740 to 1743, originally published in the Gentleman's Magazine. Volume VI specifically highlights Johnson's editorial labor on Roger Ascham and Sir Thomas Browne. The editorial policy preserves Johnson’s original structures while providing a comprehensive index (Volume IX) of subjects, characters, and epitaphs. The critical attitude toward the 1825 Oxford edition of Samuel Johnson's works is decidedly negative, with modern scholars characterizing it as the embodiment of a "slapdash tradition" of textual editing. Walesby augmented errors by adding excessive punctuation. Johnson's prose was consequently unreliable; one scholar identified fifty-five unwarranted commas in the first Rasselas chapter. Furthermore, Johnson's Greek and Latin mottos were either untranslated or removed. Following its appearance, there was no newly edited complete edition of Johnson's works for the remainder of the nineteenth century. 43Victorian audiences increasingly preferred to consume Johnson as a colorful, eccentric character mediated through James Boswell's biography rather than engaging directly with his actual writings. Consequently, it was not until late-Victorian editors like George Birkbeck Hill emerged that the textual carelessness of the 1825 Oxford edition was replaced by a more modern, rigorous approach that placed a renewed importance on Johnson's writing and thought.
CGV entry 2:6. Nine volumes, with supplementary Volumes 10 and 11 containing the 'Debates in Parliament'. The edition "was superintended by Francis Pearson Walesby".
CGV entry 2:7. The note suggests no more volumes were published.
Includes essays by Johnson, along with contributions from other writers, including Elizabeth Carter (two essays), Catherine Talbot (one essay), and Samuel Richardson (one essay). This volume, superseding the poorly established text of the 1825 Works, was published as one of the earliest in the Yale Edition. The copy-text is the fourth collected edition, published in 1756. Johnson extensively revised the essays for collected publication in 1752 and again in 1756. Johnson’s revisions, which were mainly stylistic, amounted to 6,834 alterations between the second and third collected editions. The volume fully records these variants from the Folio and 1752 editions. The textual policy involves partial modernization. The spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation of the copy-text are retained. However, capitalization, possessives, and typography are modernized. The editors cite the inconsistency of original capitalization, attributing variations to the "caprice of the compositor" rather than Johnson's personal policy, justifying the modernization. Supplemental materials include the Latin and Greek mottoes and quotations that Johnson added for the volume publication (1752), along with their translations. The editorial policy concerning annotation adopted a minimalist or "lean" approach, intended to be helpful but avoiding discursive commentary. Critical reaction is mixed, with a division emerging between appreciative popular appraisals of the text's moral insights and rigorous scholarly censure of the editorial execution. In prominent trade and news publications, Wain, in the New York Review of Books, welcomes the authoritative three volumes as an essential, urgently needed reference that captures the writer's deep sympathy with the human condition. In Spectator, Casey argues the work reveals a precise moral psychology rooted in rationalism, while Thompson's review in the same publication defends the stately prose as a personal triumph filled with profound common sense. Raymond, in the New Statesman, finds that individual papers convey sad and biting truths linked to the author's personal suffering, though some essays feel intermittently didactic. But specialists in scholarly periodicals attack the underlying editorial policy. Fleeman's severe review in RES condemns the uncritical reliance on the 1756 edition as mechanical drudgery, arguing that modernized accidentals conceal vital etymological and stylistic development. Walker, in TLS, notes the valuable identification of a vast range of classical quotations but censures the lean annotation for omitting necessary glosses and causing indexing errors. Boulton, in MLR, finds the volumes marred by serious inconsistencies, unannotated linguistic innovations, and overlooked allusions to Locke. Similarly, Rawson, in Essays in Criticism, and Waingrow, in SEL, both argue that the superficial commentary sacrifices necessary information and misses opportunities to analyze the moral essay structure, while Brack, in PQ, and Furtwangler, in Modern Philology, conclude that the sparse annotations and modernized variants distort the formal prose.
Compiles Johnson's complete known poems, presenting English verse, selections of Latin poetry, excerpts from Irene, and contributions to poems by other authors. The compilation incorporates numerous manuscript discoveries and primary material, including the first draft of The Vanity of Human Wishes, reflecting previously unknown sources and holograph versions found in the two decades preceding publication. The organization of the collection presents the poems in chronological order. The volume includes Johnson’s Latin translation of Pope’s Messiah. Editorial policy established a modernized text. Capitalization and italics were tacitly reduced to modern usage, a policy that faced opposition from editors favoring preservation of original spelling and capitalization. The text aims to follow Johnson’s authoritative revisions, representing his final intentions. Supplemental materials include two illustrations showing recent manuscript discoveries. Manuscript readings of Irene appear as notes to the finished version. Translations for the Latin poems, when provided, are often paraphrastic 18th-century translations or Loeb versions for Greek epigrams. This lack of literal translation limited reader access for those lacking Latin or Greek. Upon initial publication, the volume was highly regarded as a very valuable compilation and was hailed as the supreme authority on Johnson's poems. It supersedes the poorly established text found in the 1825 Oxford edition of Johnson's Works. The work subsequently saw competition from a revised Oxford text. Critical reception of this edition characterizes it as a formidable achievement in collaborative scholarship, yet one marred by inconsistent editorial policies. Proponents such as Seymour-Smith and Nixon hail the volume as a "supreme authority" and a model of serious scholarship, specifically praising the chronological arrangement for revealing the author’s poetic development and "romantic religious emotion." Bradner and Spector emphasize the importance of the recovered manuscripts from the Boswell and Hyde collections, noting that the inclusion of rough drafts for major works provides a "highly instructive" look at the compositional process. However, the text's modernization policy drew sharp rebukes; Bateson labels the compromise between original spelling and modern capitalization as an "irrational" choice that sacrifices functional meaning, a sentiment echoed by Davies, who suggests the policy "falls between two stools." While Wright and Seymour-Smith find the annotations helpful and lucid, Allen and Ricks offer a harsher assessment, criticizing the "high threshold of editorial silence" regarding emendations and arguing that the severe cutting of notes prevents the volume from truly superseding previous editions. Furthermore, Kramer and King express disappointment in the introductory material, citing a lack of new critical perspectives and "redundant notes" that complicate the reader's experience. Despite these technical disputes, the consensus remains that the compilation is an essential, albeit flawed, contribution to fixing the canon.
A scholarly collection of all Johnson’s critical prose concerning William Shakespeare. The text includes Johnson’s Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, the Dedication to Mrs. Lennox’s Shakespear Illustrated, the Proposals (1756), the Preface (1765), and the notes from his edition of 1765. The notes from Johnson’s original 8-vol. 1765 edition serve as the copy-text. This two-vol. work is incomplete, however, excluding the full text of Shakespeare's plays and largely omitting Johnson’s lengthy citations of previous Shakespearean critics in his footnotes. This editorial choice, intended to focus the work exclusively on Johnson's own writing, results in the reproduction of only approximately 59% of the notes Johnson contributed to his original 1765 edition. Excluded categories include factual glosses of words, emendations or variant readings recorded without comment, and notes transcribed from other editors without Johnson’s accompanying comment. The edition incorporates textual variants and added comments originating in the later Johnson–Steevens editions of 1773 and 1778. The notes appear in a slightly modernized form. To ensure comprehension, editorial policy requires that each note is preceded by essential excerpts of Shakespeare’s text and abbreviated extracts of earlier commentators Johnson addresses. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics dividing over the editorial omission of factual glosses and the value of the introductory analysis, while praising the recovery of pioneering bibliographical criticism and conservative textual restoration. There is a divergence between popular and scholarly reviews; newspaper and trade reviewers offer uncritical praise for the authoritative nature of the volumes, whereas academic specialists debate the exclusion of historical contexts. Walker, in TLS, defends the core editorial policy of excluding obvious definitions due to cost, praising the demonstration of profound knowledge of Elizabethan English and conservative retention of the Folio text. In SEL, Miller commends the authoritative critical text and editorial execution as a firm advancement of the scholarly series. Hardy, writing in RES, delivers a mixed assessment, praising the accuracy in recording revisions but regretting the omission of notes from past editors and sharply challenging the introduction for adding vague commonplaces. Johnston, in ECS, argues the edition reveals undervalued contributions to bibliographic criticism and structural stage action. Curnow, in Mosaic, finds the focus on critical brilliance over factual correction exhilarating, though suggesting general readers may prefer less expensive anthologies. Finally, Graves, writing in The Scotsman, characterizes the critical voice as proceeding from a judicial bench, concluding that the common sense remains valuable despite a lack of modern textual methods.
CGV entry 2:8. With an introduction by Bertrand H. Bronson.
CGV entry 19:11. With an introduction by Bertrand H. Bronson.
Reviews: D. H. Curnow, Mosaic 2, no. 2 (1969): 117–21; Charles Graves, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 23, 1968; John Hardy, RES, n.s., 21, no. 81 (1970): 86–88; Shirley White Johnston, ECS 3 (1970): 404–10; M. T. Jones-Davies, Études Anglaises 22, no. 2 (1969): 184; Leonie Kramer, AUMLA 32 (1969): 248; Henry Knight Miller, SEL 9, no. 3 (1969): 565; Publishers Weekly, August 26, 1968; Keith Walker, TLS, no. 3508 (May 1969): 545–47.
The copy-text is the first edition of 1775. Editorial policy aims to provide a text established through the application of modern editorial principles. In conformity with the general policy of the Yale Edition, the volume retains the spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation of the copy-text. However, capitals and typography are modernized. Textual notes record variants from editions subsequent to the copy-text, including the second edition of 1775, the edition of 1785, and the Works of 1787. The volume also records R. W. Chapman's emendations and conjectures. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Alkon, in PQ, praises the rigorous textual scholarship and innovative introduction, which highlights the narrative's capture of a disappearing Highland culture. Clifford and Middendorf (JNL) characterize the volume as an authoritative presentation at its best, noting how the introduction establishes historical, biographical, and literary contexts. In the NYRB, Wain asserts that the editorial work successfully redresses the skimpy treatment found in other contemporary scholarship, highlighting the travel narrative's focus on concrete reality. Erskine-Hill's review in RES commends the masterly introduction and sensitive editorial notes that avoid deflecting attention from the central sociological concerns. Lamont (RES) also praises the masterly introduction for challenging the common preference for alternative accounts. Rogers, in N&Q, approves the selection of the copy-text but critiques the annotations for excessive brevity and reliance on external references. In ECS, Tracy praises the concise explanatory notes, maps, and reliable text, though he questions the typographical rules regarding italicized quotations. Rogers and Ramsey (SEL) accept the work as a standard, reliable edition, though they also challenge the lack of extensive annotation. Boulton (English Studies) finds the text authoritative and the introduction sensitive, though he notes the index lacks completeness. King's review in Sewanee Review focuses on the text's examination of the money economy and notes its continued popularity through a second printing.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, PQ 51, no. 3 (1972): 704–5; James T. Boulton, English Studies 54, no. 1 (1973): 177–81; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 31, no. 2 (1971): 1; Howard Erskine-Hill, RES, n.s., 24, no. 93 (1973): 92–94; Bruce King, Sewanee Review 85, no. 4 (1977): 631–38; Claire Lamont, RES, n.s., 24, no. 93 (1973): 92–94; Pat Rogers, N&Q 20 [218], no. 11 (1973): 434–35; Robert Rogers and Richard N. Ramsey, SEL 12, no. 3 (1972): 567–90; Clarence R. Tracy, ECS 6 (1973): 394–96; John Wain, NYRB 17, no. 2 (1971): 14.
Twenty-four of Johnson's writings, composed between 1739 and 1775. Contents encompass the four major political tracts, Marmor Norfolciense, and lesser-known writings from the Gentleman's Magazine and the Literary Magazine. Specific inclusions are Observations on the Present State of Affairs, Present State, Falkland Islands, and pieces concerning colonial policy and the Byng controversy. The vol. is the most useful single resource for studying Johnson’s politics. Editorial policy mandated heavy, generous annotation to provide historical context for the works and to record Johnson’s political involvements, many previously unknown. Textual policy adheres to the Yale series standard: original spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation of the copy-text are retained, while capitalization and typography are modernized. Supplemental materials include a chronological table and a thorough index. The publication was greeted as a landmark, providing a foundation for studying Johnson as a complex political thinker. It established an accurate reading of Johnson's political thought. The work received praise for its flawless scholarship and was subsequently reissued as an inexpensive paperback by the Liberty Fund. It provides essential textual grounding for ongoing scholarly debate concerning Johnson’s political character and party affiliation. Critics are generally favorable, praising the rigorous editorial apparatus and the resultant re-evaluation of a complex political philosophy. Plumb, in TLS, commends the formidable scholarship for demonstrating a populist, anti-war force that championed the common people against elite commercial interests. In RES, Boulton hails the volume as an excellent work that provides full vindication for a serious, skeptical conservative tradition. Clifford and Middendorf (JNL) describe the collection as a landmark in scholarship that successfully dismantles antiquated Victorian caricatures. Writing in ECCB, Greaves notes that the chronological framework helpfully clarifies distinct administrative phases while correcting long-standing historical misconceptions. Nussbaum's review in PQ acknowledges the formidable learning displayed in reconstructing complex contexts, though she finds the editorial tone contentious. In N&Q, Langford praises the shrewd selection and full annotation, but argues the subject functions as a competent embodiment of prescription rather than a major theoretical figure. King (Sewanee Review) commends the corrections to biographical distortions, highlighting an opposition to imperialist policy and slavery. But Crane, in English Studies, offers a skeptical assessment, criticizing the inclusion of pieces of marginal interest and questioning the comprehensive editorial parameters. McKenzie, writing in the Georgia Review, asserts that the headnotes provide splendid lucidity for correcting widespread misconceptions. Tracy (University of Toronto Quarterly) praises the contextualization of individual moral and humanitarian reflections, while Pailler, in Études Anglaises, commends the meticulous critical framework despite structural fragmentation across the larger editorial series.
An unauthorized collection of Samuel Johnson's lesser writings, often called "fugitive" tracts, this miscellany was produced by Thomas Davies. Publication occurred in two vols. in 1773 and 1774, marketed as authored by "the Authour of the Rambler." SJ was touring the Hebrides and initially furious at the liberty Davies took but quickly expressed reconciliation. The volumes were critical to establishing the SJ canon before his death. Contents included biographies (e.g., Barretier, Drake, Browne), Prefaces, The Vision of Theodore, the Plan of a Dictionary, and SJ’s introduction to The Harleian Miscellany. A third vol. was issued in 1774 by Davies, Carnan, and Newbery. A 1774 "second edition, corrected" of the first two vols. contained only a new title-page. An unauthorized Dublin edition was published in 1774. Inclusion in this collection often created a "snowball" effect, leading subsequent compilers to accept these items as authentically SJ's.
CGV entry 2:10. An unauthorized collection of early pieces by Johnson and others. Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 1773 with a second edition in 1774. Volume 3 was published in 1774.
The Beauties of Johnson, Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous
First published by George Kearsley on November 24, 1781. The first volume, in octavo half sheets, sold for 3 shillings sewed. William Cooke, a minor writer and friend of Johnson, was the probable compiler of this volume. The format arranged maxims alphabetically, mirroring the style of the Duke de la Rochefoucault’s Maxims. A second volume, labeled "Part II," was added in February 1782. Johnson was not involved in compiling the collection, having never seen it except by casual inspection, but he requested a copy in May 1782 to address accusations stemming from one of the "Beauties." Kearsley published two issues of the second edition of Part I (one styled "Part I," the other "Second Edition. Enlarged and corrected, and the references added"), and reprints of Part II, styled second and fifth editions, all in 1782. The third and fourth editions were reprints, while the fifth was considerably enlarged. Six editions appeared in 1782. By the seventh edition in 1787, the two volumes were combined into one, and biographical material was prefixed. The eighth and ninth editions appeared in 1792 and 1797, respectively. An American edition, the first, appeared in 1787. The collection was widely introduced into schools for both sexes, and the combined volume reduced the price to 3 shillings and 6 pence. A Dublin edition of the Beauties appeared in 1782. The collection continued circulating until at least 1828. Excerpts from Johnson's writings, similar to The Beauties of Johnson, frequently appeared posthumously, known as "Beauties" or anthologies of his moralistic writing.
CGV entry 2:11. This work had many later, enlarged editions. The fifth edition (1782) contains "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson," probably by Cooke.
Deformities of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Selected from His Works
Published as retribution because Johnson had patronized William Shaw, who had offended by vilifying Gaelic poetry. The first edition appeared anonymously in Edinburgh in 1782, printed for the Author and sold by W. Creech in Edinburgh, and T. Longman and J. Stockdale in London. A second edition, which included a new Preface dated November 21, 1782, appeared later that year, published in London and sold in Edinburgh. Callender confirmed his authorship in October 1783, regarding the copies remaining with John Stockdale. The pamphlet was considered a scurrilous and witless compilation. It often circulated alongside Callender's associated work, A Critical Review of the Works of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1783), sharing the same press and content similarity. Callender subsequently relocated to America, continuing his pamphleteering career.
CGV entry 2:12. A second edition was published in 1782.
The Life of Johnson: with Maxims and Observations, Critical and Miscellaneous, Accurately Selected from the Works of Dr. Samuel Johnson and Arranged in Alphabetical Order
CGV entry 2:13. The "Life" section is an abridgment of Arthur Murphy's Essay.
The Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
A curated selection of Johnson's essays, primarily focusing on moral conduct and the "moral amendment of the heart." The text includes a biography abridged from Gifford, characterizing Johnson as "the giant of English literature" and "the great English moralist." Page organizes the "unrivalled essays" with specific titles to highlight a "uniform and consistent design" aimed at the "due regulation of the heart and life." The selection portrays Johnson as the "uncompromising foe of all that is vicious" and the "zealous and able advocate of whatever is pure in morals." The collection includes seminal periodical works such as the Rambler and the Idler, alongside a summary of Johnson's literary career and private character.
CGV entry 2:14. The "life" section is Arthur Murphy's Essay. The selections are chiefly from Johnson's periodical essays.
Wisdom and Genius of Samuel Johnson, Selected from His Prose Writings
This two-volume edition, curated by Abraham Hayward, constitutes the first major posthumous collection of Hester Lynch Piozzi’s private papers and "literary remains." The work is prefaced by an extensive introductory account that seeks to vindicate Piozzi’s reputation from the long-standing "Johnsonian" prejudice regarding her second marriage and her perceived neglect of the Lexicographer. Volume I features her "Autobiographical Memoirs," written for Sir James Fellowes, which detail her early life, her influential role within the Streatham Park circle, and her first-hand observations of Johnson’s domestic habits. It further includes her marginal notes on works by Wraxall and Boswell, offering "sharp" corrections to contemporaneous accounts of her character. Volume II focuses on her voluminous correspondence, primarily with Fellowes and the Thrale daughters, alongside "Thraliana" extracts and original poetry. The editorial apparatus provides substantial annotations identifying figures from 18th-century London society, such as Elizabeth Montagu, David Garrick, and Edmund Burke. Hayward emphasizes Piozzi’s "colloquial powers" and her distinctive "wit," arguing that her writings serve as an essential "Johnsonian urn" that preserves the intimacy of their intellectual partnership. The collection concludes with an exhaustive index covering both volumes, documenting her reflections on the "Lady’s Last Stake" and her final years in Bath and Italy. This edition remains a primary source for the study of 18th-century gender dynamics and the preservation of Johnsonian anecdote.
Johnson: His Characteristics and Aphorisms
In two parts. First, a biographical essay, arguing Johnson's character is a "bundle of contradictions"; his greatness stems from "robust common-sense," "dogged honesty," and "profound melancholy" battling his "morbid" prejudices. He was an "intellectual athlete" whose "deep reverence" defined his "massive" and "self-contradictory" nature. The second, larger part is an anthology: "his characteristics... as revealed in his aphorisms." This section is structured alphabetically by subject. It compiles his "pithy," "robust," and "dogmatic" conversational judgments. Topics range from "Authors," "Death," and "Love" to "Marriage," "Religion," "Whigs," and "Wine." The essay analyzes the man; the collection provides the direct evidence of his talk.
CGV entry 2:16. The "Aphorisms" section (pages 9–173) is chosen from both Johnson's works and conversation, and classified by topic.
This thematic arrangement of Johnson’s oral and written aphorisms illustrates his philosophy on morality, human nature, and social conduct. Hill categorizes excerpts from his works and Boswell’s records, focusing on Johnson’s "spoken wisdom" and his role as a teacher of truth. The editorial introduction argues that Johnson’s reputation relies more on his conversation and character than his formal publications. The selection emphasizes his common sense, hatred of affectation, and objective views on life, death, and social institutions.
CGV entry 2:17. Discussed by Walter Besant in the Spectator, volume 61 (March 10, 1888), pages 357-358.
Wit and Wisdom of Dr. Johnson and His Friends: A Calendar for 1909
CGV entry 2:20. Created as a Christmas present by A. Edward Newton.
Selections from the Works of Samuel Johnson
Osgood’s edition challenges the prevailing late-Victorian tendency to value Johnson primarily as a conversationalist, asserting instead the "singularly modern" relevance of his written work. The volume provides a representative selection of Johnson’s output, including early hack-work for the Gentleman’s Magazine, the "Life of Savage," and a substantial portion of Rasselas. Osgood places particular emphasis on the periodical essays from the Rambler and Idler, characterizing them as essential records of Johnson’s "profound moral sincerity." The editorial apparatus includes extensive notes that provide historical context and define 18th-century idioms, alongside a critical introduction that defends Johnson’s "magnificent" prose style against charges of excessive Latinity. The text also includes the "Preface to the Dictionary" and selections from the Lives of the Poets, specifically the Milton and Pope segments, to illustrate Johnson's methodology as a critic. Osgood concludes that while Boswell provided the "portrait of the man," it is only through the works that one can grasp the "essential power" of the author's mind.
CGV entry 2:22. The London edition was published in 1910.
Samuel Johnson: Extracts from His Writings
CGV entry 2:23. G. K. Chesterton's preface was reprinted in 'G.K.C. as M.C.', pages 63-75 (London: Methuen & Co., 1929).
The Johnson Calendar; or, Samuel Johnson for Every Day in the Year
Bell assembles a chronological anthology of Johnson’s life and discourse, drawing primarily from Boswell, Piozzi, and Hawkins. The text delineates Johnson’s development from his Lichfield origins and Oxford education to his dominance in London’s literary circles. Bell emphasizes Johnson’s 'Johnsonian truthfulness' and his rigorous adherence to objective reality. The work details Johnson’s political transitions from youthful Jacobitism to a nuanced support for George III’s Tory administration. It highlights his social views, particularly his 'hatred of oppression' regarding slavery and his deep-seated 'loyalty to Church and King.' Bell presents Johnson as a complex figure of 'inexhaustible kindness' beneath a rough exterior, noting his significant contributions to lexicography and Shakespearian criticism. The collection underscores Johnson’s commitment to 'moral truth' and his belief that 'the chief glory of every people arises from its authors.'
Reviewing Alexander Montgomerie Bell’s The Johnson Calendar, Squire defends Johnson as one of the "noblest characters" and "most sensible men" in English history. The review emphasizes Johnson’s political complexities, noting that his "prejudices" were supported by "hard thinking" rather than vested interests. Squire highlights Johnson’s "detestation of war" and his "test of civilisation" being a "decent provision for the poor". The review features Johnson’s witty use of symbols, such as his description of religious skeptics milking a bull. Squire argues that Johnson’s conservatism was a product of reason and a desire for social stability, such as his toast to the "next insurrection of the negroes". He concludes that Bell’s collection successfully illustrates Johnson’s "truthfulness" and "tremendous relish of fun".
CGV entry 2:24.
Johnson: Prose & Poetry, with Boswell's Character, Macaulay's Life and Raleigh's Essay
Chapman presents a representative anthology of Johnson’s output, prefaced by three distinct perspectives on his character and genius. The volume opens with Boswell’s "Character," emphasizing Johnson’s "extraordinary vigour" and "uncommon" physical presence. This is followed by Lord Macaulay’s 1856 "Life," which provides a vivid, if sometimes hyperbolic, narrative of Johnson’s "grub-street" hardships and "constitutional" eccentricities, and Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1907 essay, which shifts focus back to the "originality" and "sincerity" of Johnson’s criticism. The selections include major poetic works such as The Vanity of Human Wishes and the elegy on Robert Levet, alongside prose from The Rambler, The Idler, and Rasselas. Significant space is devoted to Johnson’s critical prefaces and notes, specifically those regarding the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare, where he defends the poet as a "just copier of nature." The edition includes the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Lives of the Poets, featuring the celebrated life of Cowley. Chapman provides concise notes and a chronological table of "Dates," contextualizing Johnson’s bibliography against contemporary events. The volume also preserves Johnson’s epistolary style through letters to Lord Chesterfield, James Macpherson, and his final correspondence with Hester Thrale. Chapman’s editorial policy prioritizes "representative" passages that illustrate Johnson’s "majestic" prose style, his "robust" moral philosophy, and his "penetrating" literary judgment, presenting him as a figure whose "influence upon the English language" remains unparalleled.
CGV entry 2:25. Frequently reissued.
Roberts assembles a diverse selection of Johnson’s literary output, including poetry, periodical essays from the Rambler and Idler, the romance Rasselas, and various critical and political works. The collection emphasizes Johnson's dual identity as a professional writer driven by necessity and a profound moralist. Roberts contests the common perception that Johnson is more interesting as a talker than a writer, arguing that his fame was firmly established through his publications long before his famous association with Boswell. The text highlights Johnson's stylistic evolution, his contributions to English lexicography, and his enduring influence as a critic of Shakespeare and English poetry. Critics call this book an expert selection that successfully distinguishes the subject's authentic, dignified prose from the stylistic excesses of his imitators. The New Statesman and The Scotsman praise the volume for its potential to win new readers by showcasing a remarkable knowledge of human nature. Reviewers highlight the inclusion of major works like the Preface to Shakespeare and The Vanity of Human Wishes as proof of a proud spirit. But the Saturday Review observes that the style remains calculated to repel due to its pomposity. Wood and other critics agree that the work effectively presents the subject as a revered philosopher rather than a mere biographical talker.
Kronenberger assembles a diverse collection of 18th-century writings, featuring Johnson's critical essays, letters, and poems alongside Boswell's Life of Johnson, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and Dialogue with Rousseau. The volume also incorporates biographical "snapshots" from Hester Thrale Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson and Fanny Burney's Diary to provide a multifaceted perspective on Johnson's character. In the introductory essay, Kronenberger defends Johnson as a "magnificent writer" whose works, such as The Vanity of Human Wishes and Lives of the Poets, deserve attention beyond his reputation as a "fabulous talker." Kronenberger characterizes Boswell not as an "inspired idiot" but as a skilled artist who "creatively worked up" his biographical materials through selection and dramatic arrangement. The editorial policy favors representing Boswell through his "one great literary role" as a biographer rather than his private papers, aiming for a balance that presents Johnson "exactly as he was."
Dr. Johnson: Some Observations and Judgements upon Life and Letters
Symons presents a selection of Johnson's prose designed to distinguish the writer’s literary achievement from the biographical "myth" established by Boswell. The anthology includes essays from The Rambler, The Idler, and The Adventurer, alongside the complete text of Rasselas, the Preface to the English Dictionary, and excerpts from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Lives of the English Poets. Symons argues that Johnson's prose style, characterized by balanced sentences and a unique "generalising faculty," represents a "fine a style as that of any English writer". The introduction asserts that Johnson’s abstractions focus a "wide range of profoundly representative experience" rather than serving as mere empty explicitness. Symons intentionally excludes Johnson’s letters and private meditations to present a "formal picture of Johnson as a literary figure". Editorial intervention is limited; cuts in long passages are indicated by ellipses to preserve the "weight and rhythm" of Johnson’s complete chapters or essays. The volume concludes with a brief biographical note tracing Johnson's career from Lichfield to his eventual literary dominance in London.
CGV entry 2:34. An enlarged edition, 'Rasselas, Poems, and Selected Prose', was published in 1958.
Selections from Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784
A Johnson Sampler: Selections from Samuel Johnson
Curwen compiles an anthology of Samuel Johnson's conversational and written remarks, arranging them topically to provide laymen and undergraduates with an accessible reference work on the writer's intellectual views. Opening with an analytical introduction, the study outlines Johnson's background, detailing his early struggles with scrofula and hypochondria, his incomplete education at Pembroke College, his unsuccessful boarding school venture at Edial, and his arrival in London with David Garrick in 1736. Curwen tracks the laborious compilation of the English Dictionary, the publication of Rasselas, and the financial relief provided by a government pension in 1762. The main chapters assemble aphorisms on conversation, education, and economics, demonstrating how Johnson used sharp sentences to convey pragmatic human insight. The collection documents Johnson's interactions within the Literary Club and the domestic sanctuary provided by Henry and Hester Lynch Thrale, highlighting the observation that "the best part of every author is in general to be found in his book." Curwen emphasizes the stylistic precision of Johnson's table talk, noting that his conversational replies functioned like "the short stabbing sword of the Roman legionary" to enforce clarity and dismantle cant. Chapter 1, 'Introduction,' addresses Samuel Johnson's personal and historical legacy, arguing that his practical wisdom and robust conversation remain far more extraordinary and enduring than his written works. Chapter 2, 'On Conversation and Talk,' addresses the combative nature of intellectual dialogue, arguing that meaningful conversation requires a strict pursuit of information, original thought, and defensive pride. Chapter 3, 'On Reading and Writing,' addresses the rigorous demands of literature, arguing that textual composition should be driven by financial necessity and always directed toward enabling readers to better endure life. Chapter 4, 'On Teaching and Learning,' addresses the methods of early education, arguing that strict discipline and basic literacy must take precedence over the useless luxury of scholastic pedantry. Chapter 5, 'On Work, Wealth, and Their Opposites,' addresses economic survival, arguing that commercial industry and monetary acquisition offer an innocent, highly therapeutic defense against the paralysis of idleness. Chapter 6, 'On Man as a Social Animal,' addresses the mechanics of human interaction, arguing that true good breeding consists of a general elegance of manners free from professional or national singularism. Chapter 7, 'On Wooing and Wedding,' addresses the structures of marriage, arguing that rational prudence and conformity of sentiment far surpass romantic passion in ensuring enduring domestic contentment. Chapter 8, 'On Law and Government,' addresses civil authority, arguing that legal restraint and a proper scheme of subordination are absolutely essential for securing private liberty and social peace. Chapter 9, 'On the Pursuit of Pleasure,' addresses human motivation, arguing that immediate gratification and frivolous amusement mask a profound and unendurable vacancy of mind. Chapter 10, 'On Youth and Age,' addresses temporal progression, arguing that youth should follow positive rules while old age must guard against the chill of avarice. Chapter 11, 'On God, Religion, and Man's Salvation,' addresses spiritual duty, arguing that human weakness demands constant prayer and submission to divine authority. Chapter 12, 'On Man and His Conduct in the World of Men,' addresses moral integrity, arguing that consistent benevolence and empirical self-knowledge dictate a virtuous existence. Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers dividing over the analytical utility of the thematic organization and the presence of significant scholarly deficiencies. There is a clear divergence between popular and scholarly reviews; popular and educational accounts celebrate the text as an ideal introductory reference, whereas academic specialists emphasize its editorial errors. Spacks, in SEL, provides a positive review of the anthology for a lay audience, praising how the subject matter arrangement presents a forthright, clearheaded human being. Writing in MLR, Roberts calls the volume a perfect item for general readers, noting the selection successfully highlights a large proportion of original writings beyond mere anecdote, though pointing out a specific biographical error. An unsigned review in JNL describes the handy collection as a pleasant topic-based reference that makes complete sense, though noting it is no substitute for the complex original texts. But Miller, writing in the New Statesman, offers a mixed assessment, questioning the absolute wisdom of brief samplers and warning that abbreviated extracts highlight the defects of brevity in the author's output. Pirrie's review in The Scotsman identifies substantial technical shortcomings, including erratic dating, omitted editions, and a misleading conflation of original prose with biographical paraphrase, concluding that the arbitrary thematic grouping creates a representative but slapdash collection. Leicester, writing in the New Rambler, affirms the companionable nature of the reference book for both laymen and confirmed specialists, valuing the inclusion of a full index and source key to determine when the author was talking for victory.
Reviews: JNL 55, no. 2 (2004): 71; J. H. Leicester, NR, Series B, no. 14 (1964): 33–34; Frederick M. Link, CEA Critic 25 (1964): 641; Karl Miller, New Statesman, January 17, 1964; Alan Pirrie, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), January 4, 1964; S. C. Roberts, MLR 59, no. 4 (1964): 617–87; Patricia Spacks, SEL 4, no. 3 (1964): 516–516.
McAdam and Milne assemble a diverse collection of Johnson’s writings, including the full text of the Life of Savage and Rasselas, alongside significant selections from the Dictionary, periodical essays (Rambler, Idler, Adventurer), and major poetry such as The Vanity of Human Wishes. Editorial policy uniquely prioritizes the first editions of Johnson’s works to present his "first, unrevised thoughts" before later stylistic alterations, though major variants for the second edition of Rasselas are included. The volume features substantial front matter, including a biographical introduction that challenges the Tory stereotype of Johnson and a "Note on the Text" detailing editorial procedures. Annotations provide historical context and translate Latin mottoes. The editors emphasize Johnson’s departure from tradition and his independence of thought, including lesser-known pieces like his legal brief on freeing a Negro slave and his observations on the Seven Years' War. The collection concludes with "Johnson Talking," a thematic arrangement of his conversational remarks derived from Boswell and George Birkbeck Hill. McAdam and Milne aim to present Johnson not merely as a "personality" but as a man "thinking, and writing with wit, precision, and humanity."
Faber & Faber; Northwestern University Press
Collects material resulting from classroom discussion, assembling over a hundred excerpts and shorter pieces of the author’s prose and poetry. The contents survey the author primarily as scholar-critic, moralist, and wit, sometimes emphasizing the melancholic aspect of his character. Supplemental materials include a lengthy introduction, a chronological table, and an index. Critics call this book a significant contribution to scholarly study that provides representative primary texts for an academic audience. Raddon praises the volume as a worthy companion to previous editions, highlighting the brilliantly done biographical introduction and the use of dictionary definitions to explain archaic phrases. Publishers Weekly notes the broad overview of the canon, while Seymour-Smith appreciates the penetrating psychological insights. But the critical consensus is divided on editorial choices. Seymour-Smith critiques the unnecessary modernization of spelling and the omission of the Life of Savage. Wiltshire, however, disputes the emphasis on moral essays over more readable works and rejects the use of modern psychological labels like manic-depressive.
The Oxford English Novels text of Rasselas, complete with critical apparatus, and a number of essays. The selection also includes "The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe,"
Cruttwell presents a comprehensive selection of Johnson's prose and poetry, organized into three distinct chronological stages: "Grub Street Journalist" (1709–49), "Moralist and Lexicographer" (1749–62), and "Great Cham of Literature" (1762–84). The edition includes major works such as London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the Life of Savage, as well as significant portions of the periodical essays (Rambler, Adventurer, Idler), the Preface to the Dictionary, the Preface to Shakespeare, and Lives of the Poets. Cruttwell’s editorial policy emphasizes Johnson’s "less familiar work" by allotting substantial space to letters, prayers, journals, and the Journey to the Western Islands, though Rasselas is notably omitted due to thematic overlap with his poetry. The introduction traces Johnson's provincial origins in Lichfield and his "terrible" university experience, arguing that his later role as a "majestic teacher" was complicated by a "built-in principle of contradiction" and a "passionate love-hate relationship with London". Texts are modernized by updating spelling, capitalization, and italics to remove "irritating quaintnesses" and highlight Johnson’s "disturbing immediacy." Detailed annotations and a select bibliography provide scholarly context, linking Johnson’s critical judgments to his biography and the intellectual shifts of the eighteenth century. Cruttwell positions Johnson not as a "quaint, old-world writer" but as a figure of "raw power" whose influence extends to the essential morality of the nineteenth-century novel.
Brady and Wimsatt assemble a representative selection of Johnson’s writings to illustrate his "greatness as a biographer, critic, and moralist." The edition includes major poetical works such as London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, the philosophical fable Rasselas, and extensive selections from The Rambler, The Idler, and the Lives of the Poets. Editorial policy modernizes and Americanizes spelling and capitalization while retaining original punctuation where it affects pronunciation. Wimsatt’s introductory "Calendar of His Career" provides a chronological narrative of Johnson’s life, tracing his development from a "precocious, bad-tempered" boy in Lichfield to the "illustrious character" of London’s literary world. The biography emphasizes Johnson’s struggles with "mad melancholy" and poverty, his pivotal relationship with Boswell, and his domestic life with the Thrales. It chronicles the "progressive emancipation of the English man of letters" from aristocratic patronage, famously marked by Johnson's letter to Chesterfield. The volume also details Johnson’s late-life deterioration and the subsequent "rivalrous" biographical accounts produced by Piozzi and Boswell.
Samuel Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose
This representative, amply annotated selection of Johnson's best work illustrates his greatness as a biographer, critic, and moralist, containing eleven letters, eight poems, Rasselas, forty essays from The Rambler and The Idler, and the Prefaces to the Dictionary and Shakespeare. The selection omits certain personal favorites, such as humanitarian and political writings. The biographical introduction provides minimal discussion of Johnson's style, but the overall collection is a fine volume that aptly states the "great theme" of Johnson's work.
CGV entry 2:42.
Boulton evaluates this lavish anthology, noting its focus on Johnson the writer of biography, moral essays, and prefaces over his political or travel literature. Brady and Wimsatt distinguish their edition by printing every included work in its entirety, inviting serious engagement with the texts. While Boulton laments the modernization of spelling and occasional omissions in linking the Vanity of Human Wishes to Juvenal, he commends the authoritative, foot-of-the-page annotations and Wimsatt’s stylish, sympathetic introduction. The volume successfully caters to modern readers through high editorial standards and perceptive critical framing.
CGV entry 2:42. Review by James T. Boulton of the book edited by Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.
Greene's severe review challenges the utility of the Brady-Wimsatt anthology, noting it is more expensive than Bertrand Bronson's standard edition while omitting diaries, the Adventurer, the Journey, the Soame Jenyns review, sermons, and essays on the Seven Years' War. The periodical selections overemphasize literary criticism yet omit Shakespeare commentary. Notes unnecessarily gloss simple terms, and the commentary misrepresents a quotation by Imlac as Johnson's own belief. Greene argues that the volume suffers from an excessive Boswellian aura, interpolating a misleading calendar of Boswell's doings and maintaining the Victorian view of Johnson as a mere emanation of Boswell.
CGV entry 2:42. A severe review by Donald Greene of the book edited by Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.
Keener finds the handsome volume expertly chosen and presented, reflecting the editors' reputation for excellence. Although Bronson's anthology will likely remain the standard classroom text, this book is more inviting and fully annotated for beginning readers without a teacher's help.
CGV entry 2:42. Review by Frederick M. Keener of the book edited by Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.
Rawson examines the biographical introduction by Wimsatt, characterizing it as a vivid and muscular statement in the form of an expanded chronology. The review notes that two of Johnson’s early works included, Marmor Norfolciense and the Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, were conscious exercises in Swiftian irony. Rawson finds the collection acceptable but questions its necessity given several existing alternatives available at lower prices.
CGV entry 2:42. A review essay (“Jobswell: A Short View of the Johnson–Boswell Industry”) by C. J. Rawson on the book edited by Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.
The Brady and Wimsatt anthology of Johnson's work includes the complete Rasselas, major Lives of the Poets (Cowley, Milton, Swift, Pope, Savage, Collins, Gray), selected Rambler and Idler essays, the prefaces to the Dictionary and Shakespeare, eight poems (including London and The Vanity of Human Wishes in full), and eleven letters. The reviewer finds the selection's scope and abundance of notes justifying the high price. However, the reviewer questions the goals of the selection, noting the overrepresentation of the Lives of the Poets and the absence of Johnson's Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and his political pamphlets.
CGV entry 2:42. Review by Albert Pailler of the book edited by Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.
CGV entry 2:42. Review by Heinz-Joachim Mullenbrook of the book edited by Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.
Review by Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock of Selected Poetry and Prose by Samuel Johnson.
Contents survey major genres, including poetry, moral essays from periodicals (Rambler, Idler, Adventurer), philosophical fiction (Rasselas), criticism, and letters. Selections sometimes incorporate lesser-known pieces, such as the life of Boerhaave or the tale The Fountains. The compilation sometimes sources text from previous comprehensive collections, such as the 1825 Oxford edition. The editorial policy modernizes spelling and punctuation to aid accessibility. The volume incorporates introductory material, chronology, and brief notes conveying essential context. The publication is embraced as an introductory text, useful for enhancing acquaintance with Johnson's varied canonical output.
Robson's approving review of Greene's "admirably done" edition for the Oxford Authors series praises the "informative and lucid" introduction and the "intelligible and logical" arrangement of poetry, early prose, periodical essays, later prose, the preface to Shakespeare, and excerpts from The Lives of the Poets (with "Addison" and "Collins" complete). The volume, which includes Rasselas in its entirety and an abridged Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, provides "ample justice" to Johnson as a writer. However, Robson notes the paradox that a selection of "Johnson the writer" may not give the "essence" of a man remembered mostly as a talker, suggesting the need for a companion volume of conversation extracts from Boswell or Piozzi to satisfy students and general readers.
CGV entry 2:44.
Lurcock identifies this anthology as the most significant publication of Johnson’s bicentennial year, praising its potential to shift focus from Johnson’s personality to his literary output. The reviewer commends the balanced arrangement of genres and chronology, which includes rare manuscript excerpts and complete versions of Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Isles. Lurcock notes Greene’s controversial but purposeful decision to exclude Johnson’s conversation to prioritize his written work. While suggesting the letters are under-represented, the reviewer concludes that the volume’s scholarly rigor and accessibility outdistance all previous anthologies.
CGV entry 2:44. Review by A. F. T. Lurcock of the book edited by Donald Greene.
Clingham acknowledges Greene’s anthology supersedes others in print because of its inclusiveness. But he finds the volume unbalanced, omitting major works and focusing disproportionately on minor pieces. Greene's selection presents a reductive, commonplace view of Johnson by suggesting his terms apply simply and uniformly. Clingham points out Greene's implied equation of "idea," "mental picture," and "simile" misrepresents Johnson's thought. The fragmentary presentation of the Lives of the Poets is flawed because it implies Johnson's understanding of biography involved only the isolated collection of factual material.
CGV entry 2:44. A severe review by G. J. Clingham of the book edited by Donald Greene.
Greene's volume, part of his ongoing effort to emphasize Johnson the writer over the "personality," presents a substantial sample of Johnson's literary achievement. The selection includes expected works like Rasselas and Preface to Shakespeare, alongside a good sampling of political writings and poetry usually omitted. The selection, copious notes, and solid textual decisions affirm this book's status as the standard selected works of Johnson.
Volume 4 focuses on the development of English style during the eighteenth century. Craik identifies Johnson as the "vertebrate column" of English prose, crediting him with establishing a code of order and "absolutely logical precision" that rescued the language from decay. The collection includes various critical introductions and specimens of major authors. Boswell is presented as a uniquely gifted biographer whose "instinctive discrimination" and "chord of sympathy" allowed him to produce the world's best biography despite his personal vanities. The selections from Boswell emphasize his introduction to Johnson and his ability to render Johnson's "colloquial wit and eloquence" vivid. Piozzi is not featured as a primary author in the selection, though she is noted in the general literary context. The volume argues that Johnson's dictatorship in style established models of lucidity and vigor that influenced all subsequent prose writers.
CGV entry 2:70. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 135–185.
Readings in English Prose of the Eighteenth Century
Alden provides a comprehensive anthology of eighteenth-century prose, including substantial selections from Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The collection aims to provide students with representative texts that illustrate the literary and historical developments of the age. Johnson's contributions include essays from The Rambler and The Idler, his "Preface to the Dictionary," and excerpts from the "Lives of the English Poets," specifically the lives of Milton, Dryden, Addison, and Pope. Boswell is represented by portions of his "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" and his "Life of Samuel Johnson." Alden's preface expresses a "genuine belief in the lasting worth" of Johnson's work, characterizing him as "at once the most sturdy and the most pathetic figure" among the century's writers. The anthology also includes works by contemporary figures such as Frances Burney, whose diary entries record her interactions with the Johnsonian circle.
CGV entry 2:71. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 341-409.
The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse
Smith assembles a representative collection of English poetry spanning the years 1700 to 1800. The arrangement follows a chronological order, grouping poems by author based on a central date in their career or their most significant work. Smith disputes the utility of classical and romantic as flimsy mottoes that manipulate the facts to fit our definitions. The preface highlights Johnson as the wisest of eighteenth-century critics whose judgment on Pomfret's Choice introduces the volume. The collection uses Johnson's critical standards to validate poetical claims through the common sense of readers. The anthology aims to showcase the final art of self-expression among masters and reveal the century's richness in anticipations of later poetic movements.
CGV entry 2:72. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 320-330.
An Anthology of English Poetry: Dryden to Blake
The anthology presents selected verse from the late seventeenth through the late eighteenth century. The volume includes Johnson’s "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and "On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet." The selection from "The Vanity of Human Wishes" portrays the "full-blown dignity" and subsequent fall of Wolsey as a cautionary exemplar of "the pride of politicians." The elegy for Levet offers a "sober" tribute to a "social friend" whose "useful care" was "condemn'd to hope's delusive mine." The text emphasizes Johnson’s thematic preoccupation with the transience of worldly ambition and the quiet "toils of art" performed by the virtuous poor.
CGV entry 2:73. Contains selections from Johnson.
A Collection of English Poems, 1660–1800
Crane's comprehensive selection of English and Scottish poetry spanning 1660 to 1800 is intended for advanced students of Restoration and eighteenth-century literature. The volume emphasizes the recovery of neoclassical verse from Romantic and Victorian prejudices, citing T. S. Eliot as a primary influence in rehabilitating the reputations of Dryden, Pope, and Johnson. Crane identifies the history of ideas as a scholarly method for understanding the intellectual atmosphere of the period. The collection includes Johnson's 'Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane, 1747,' 'The Vanity of Human Wishes,' and 'On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet.' Editorial notes contextualize Johnson's critical views on the principle that 'sound should be an echo to the sense' and his assessment of Abraham Cowley's 'metaphysical' wit. The preface acknowledges assistance from L. F. Powell and others in verifying texts and preparing appendixes. Texts are generally taken from authoritative contemporary sources and printed with minimal alteration to capitalization or punctuation.
CGV entry 2:74. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 667-677.
This scholarly anthology provides representative English poems and critical apparatus tracing the transition from seventeenth-century neo-classicism to late eighteenth-century romanticism. Tupper includes a substantial section on Samuel Johnson, featuring a biographical sketch and five poems: "London," "Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick," "The Vanity of Human Wishes," "A Short Song of Congratulation," and "On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet". The general introduction characterizes Johnson as a "regular" poet who maintained the vigor of earlier satirists while shifting focus toward political and social conditions rather than personal attacks. Tupper argues that Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes" presents a gloomy pessimism similar to Swift's, yet tempered by greater sympathy for the victims of life's delusions. The editorial policy emphasizes textual fidelity to the authors' last revisions while modernizing capitalization and spelling. Critical material is limited to introductory biographies and explanatory footnotes designed for college-level instruction. The volume lacks dedicated sections for James Boswell or Hester Thrale Piozzi, though Johnson's biography mentions his 1763 meeting with his future biographer.
CGV entry 2:76. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 595-618.
Moore presents an anthology of major eighteenth-century English prose writers, choosing to represent fewer authors in greater depth to facilitate scholarly appreciation of the era's rich literature. The texts, based on the best available editions, undergo minimal modernization in punctuation and spelling. Moore provides introductory sketches and special notes to clarify historical context, alongside helpful bibliographical references. The section devoted to Johnson includes selected essays from the Rambler, the Adventurer, and the Idler, the preface to the English Dictionary, chapters from Rasselas, the preface to Shakespeare, and selections from the Lives of the Poets. Moore characterizes Johnson as a 'majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom' whose work remains more approachable through Boswell’s dramatization than his own 'elephantine prose'. The Boswell section features extensive excerpts from the Life of Johnson, prefaced by an account of Boswell's development from a 'lion-hunter' to a pioneering biographer. Moore emphasizes Boswell's unique 'biographical method' of recording 'minutes' of conversation to create a 'view of his mind'. Although Hester Thrale Piozzi is mentioned in the introductory material as a writer of 'Anecdotes' and a source of 'misrepresentation' concerning Garrick, she is not granted a dedicated section of primary texts. The volume as a whole serves to document the 'best prose' published between 1698 and 1795 and the 'representative opinions' of influential writers on contemporary problems.
CGV entry 2:77. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 505-583.
Shepard and Wood provide a unified survey of English literature from 1660 to 1800, arguing that prose and poetry of this era should be studied together to understand the "total sweep" of neo-classicism. The editors include extensive introductory essays that trace the movement from its Restoration origins through the dominance of Alexander Pope to its gradual decline. Johnson is presented as a "distinguished man" and "the last of the literary dictators," whose critical judgments embodied the "general sense" of his age. The edition highlights Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare for its "intellectual vigour" and defense of dramatic nature over rigid unities. Boswell is represented through his Life of Johnson, described by Shepard and Wood as an "unsurpassed biography" that preserves a "minute" and "indelible memory" of the period's leading figures. The editorial apparatus modernizes spelling and punctuation to assist contemporary students while maintaining the "original effect" of the literature. The volume asserts that the period’s impersonality and "grandeur of generality" were eventually challenged by the "direct simplicity" of later writers like William Cowper and William Blake.
CGV entry 2:78. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 606-644.
English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century
A biographical sketch outlines the poetic career of Johnson, beginning with his 1731 Latin translation of Pope's "Messiah". Moore emphasizes that Johnson did not initially intend to become a poet, as the medium was "not remunerative". Significant attention is paid to "London" (1738), an imitation of Juvenal's third satire, which Moore notes "burst forth with a splendour" that impressed Pope and required a second edition within a week. The account describes "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749), based on Juvenal's tenth satire, as Johnson's "most ambitious" poem, reflecting his personal conviction that "man was not made for happiness". Moore reports Boswell's assessment of the work as a pinnacle of "ethic poetry". The narrative concludes by detailing Johnson's later years as a literary "dictator" who resisted the "innovations" of younger poets like Gray and Collins. Moore characterizes Johnson as a "Tory in literature" who used "The Lives of the Poets" to express his "likes and dislikes" regarding the changing poetic fashions of the century.
CGV entry 2:79. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 558-574.
A Varied Company: An Eighteenth Century Anthology
CGV entry 2:82. Contains selections from Johnson.
The Pelican Book of English Prose, Volume III: Eighteenth-Century Prose, 1700–1780
This anthology volume presents a curated selection of British prose from 1700 to 1780, organized into four thematic sections: Scene, Personality, Event; Reflection, Argument, Exhortation, Satire; Fiction, Historical and Occasional Writing; and Criticism of the Arts. Jefferson’s introduction traces the evolution of prose from the "beautiful simplicity" championed by Addison and Swift toward the "conscious refinement" and architectural sentence structures of Johnson and Gibbon. The collection explicitly rejects modernization, retaining original spelling and punctuation to preserve the "continuity" and "variety" of the era’s expression. Notable inclusions feature Boswell’s accounts of Johnson, Piozzi’s anecdotes regarding the poor, and Johnson’s own critical and travel writings. Jefferson emphasizes the period’s "solid and well-defined" vocabulary and the emergence of "informal kinds of writing," such as diaries and letters, as foundational to the century’s literary identity.
CGV entry 2:84. Contains numerous short excerpts from Johnson.
This scholarly anthology provide a larger collection of eighteenth-century writings in trustworthy, non-modernized texts. The editors prioritize literary merit, favoring the comic and satiric over the sentimental, and include diverse genres such as theology, philosophy, and criticism. Editorial policy generally uses the first edition of each work as the copy-text to avoid successive adulterations, while silently correcting palpable press errors and standardizing certain typographical conventions. The section on Johnson features a biographical and critical introduction, the complete poem The Vanity of Human Wishes, several Rambler and Idler essays, the full text of Rasselas, and selections from the Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the Poets, and personal letters. The editors emphasize Johnson's identity as a vigorous opponent of neoclassicism and an empirical critic. The Boswell section presents substantial, self-contained parts of his Journal and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The headnotes and annotations embody recent scholarship and respond to modern criticism, presenting the period as complex and varied. The volume includes introductions for each author and fifteen facsimile pages from The Gentleman's Magazine.
CGV entry 2:86. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 967–1130.
Major English Writers of the Eighteenth Century
CGV entry 2:87. Contains selections from Johnson on pages 717-833.
An Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Living Authors of Great Britain
This pamphlet offers an early and highly complimentary biographical sketch of Samuel Johnson, who appears second in the list of authors reviewed. Rider, potentially an acquaintance of Johnson through the Gentleman's Magazine, describes Johnson as a "genius" possessing qualities that are both "penetrating and sublime." Rider asserts that The Rambler is sufficient to immortalize Johnson's name and compares it favorably to The Spectator. The sketch commends Rasselas as a novel superior to others in the "oriental way" and hails the Life of Savage as a "masterpiece of biography."
An early biographical sketch of Johnson, which influenced the content of subsequent biographical accounts, including the "Memoirs" published in the Universal Magazine. Baker's account was later revised and expanded for inclusion in Reed’s 1782 edition, Biographia Dramatica. Although influential in setting the tone for later sketches, the account itself is hopelessly skimpy and of no practical use.
CGV entry 3:2. A new edition, edited by Isaac Reed, titled 'Biographia Dramatica', was published in London by Rivington in 1782 (volume 1, pages 256–258). Another new edition, edited by Stephen Jones, was published in London in 1812 (volume 2, pages 406-410).
A brief character sketch of Johnson, serving as the foundation for a subsequent, largely embellished biographical account appearing in the Westminster Magazine in September 1774.
Johnson possesses a splendid and honestly acquired reputation within the republic of letters. The Dictionary stands as his most laborious achievement, having extended the bounds and elucidated the genius of the English language through precise definitions and vast readings. While regarded as a great moralist, Johnson has improved rather than extended moral philosophy. His original style neglects the simplicity of nature for the studied decorations of art, appearing sonorous without melody. As a poet, Johnson lacks common flights of imagination but maintains a dignity and persuasiveness that marks him as a philosopher in verse. Although occasionally acting as a wit, his social affectations and neglect of civil rules are noted as faults of temper or indolence.
An Account of the Life, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Character of Dr. Johnson, and His Writings; from Original Letters by a Young American in London to His Friend in America
young American traveler identifies Johnson as the "most capital writer in the English language." The text reviews Johnson’s transition from a Litchfield schoolmaster to a London author, noting early successes with London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. The author lauds the Dictionary as a stupendous undertaking that astonished Europe and praises The Rambler and Rasselas for their inventive genius. While acknowledging the dramatic failure of Irene on stage, the writer attributes this to the audience’s lack of judgment rather than a lack of merit in the author. The account concludes with a physical description of Johnson as an athletic, stooping figure over six feet tall with a "cast in his eye." The author defends Johnson’s government pension as a just reward for a life of public service and dismisses criticisms based on his own dictionary definition of "pensioner" as mere "squibs of party."
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson
This profile characterizes Johnson as a model of "laborious application" whose ascent from Pembroke College to literary eminence illustrates the instructional power of biography. The text traces his early partnership with Garrick, the failure of his school at Edial, and his migration to London to "try his fate with a tragedy." It details his major publications, including London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene, and The Rambler, while defending his prose style against charges of "pomposity." The account highlights the labor involved in the Dictionary, Johnson's celebrated rebuff of Chesterfield’s late-offered patronage, and his subsequent foray into political pamphleteering as a "champion of Administration." While acknowledging his "tincture of superstition" and controversial political tenets, such as his labeling of Hampden a "Zealot of Rebellion," the memoir maintains that his life and writings constitute a "uniform example" of piety and intellectual excellence.
CGV entry 3:7. Reprinted in Boston Magazine (1785).
Johnson's early career involved an aborted translation of the History of the Council of Trent before achieving success with London, an imitation of Juvenal's third satire. Despite the poem's rapid sale, Cave concealed the profits from Johnson, an incident Johnson later overlooked in his biography of the publisher. In 1749, Johnson published The Vanity of Human Wishes and the tragedy Irene; the latter, despite adherence to Aristotelian unities and a cast including Garrick, met limited success. Between 1750 and 1752, Johnson produced The Rambler, a periodical noted for its moral dignity and Latinate vocabulary, followed by contributions to Hawksworth's Adventurer. The period culminated in the 1755 publication of the Dictionary, a monumental labor completed without aristocratic patronage. The text highlights Johnson's famous rebuff of Chesterfield, whom he described as "a Lord amongst wits, and a wit amongst Lords," and notes Chesterfield's retaliatory caricature of Johnson as a "respectable Hottentot."
CGV entry 3:7. Published in parts: May, pages 172–176; June, pages 209–212; July, pages 249-251. Reprinted from Universal Magazine (1784).
Sketch of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 3:8. In two parts: December 14–16, pages 577-578; and December 16-18, pages 585-586. Largely derivative from item 3:7.
CGV entry 3:8. Reprinted from the London Chronicle (1784).
Johnson's early life remains obscure until his 1728 entry to Pembroke College, Oxford, which he departed without a degree. After an unsuccessful attempt to teach at Lichfield and Edial, where Garrick and Hawkesworth were pupils, Johnson traveled to London in 1737 with Garrick to seek literary employment. Walmsley supported this move, recommending Johnson as a capable scholar and poet. Despite failing to secure a schoolmaster position due to the lack of a Master of Arts degree, Johnson found work with Cave on the Gentleman's Magazine. Early publications include the poem London, which won praise from Pope, and The Vanity of Human Wishes. The tragedy Irene met with limited success at Drury Lane despite Garrick's management. In 1750, Johnson launched The Rambler, aimed at moral and pious instruction. Critics debate the Latinate "pomposity" of the style, yet acknowledge the work's ethical energy. Johnson also contributed significantly to Hawkesworth's Adventurer.
CGV entry 3:8. In two parts: December, pages 619-623; and Supplement, pages 707-710. Reprinted from the London Chronicle (1784).
Johnson died December 13, 1784, after a "complication of dreadful maladies." The account traces his career from his 1728 entry at Pembroke College to his 1737 arrival in London. It notes his work on the "Dictionary," "Rambler," and "Lives of the Poets." The text emphasizes his piety, stating his last hours were "spent in prayer." A post-mortem revealed enlarged windpipe vessels, incipient ossification of the heart valves, a "schirrous" liver, and abdominal tumours. The reviewer asserts Johnson and Sylvanus Urban were "friendly companions of each other’s life."
CGV entry 3:9. Includes a report of the autopsy.
Johnson recounts translating the Messiah at Pembroke to demonstrate his "scholar’s weapon" against collegiate authority. He describes the mental labor of composing the Vanity of Human Wishes and his Drury-Lane Prologue, noting his refusal to yield to the criticisms of Garrick. The narrative records his parody of the ballads of Percy through extemporaneous verse at the tea-table of Reynolds. Regarding his domestic life, Johnson contrasts the "literary exertions" he pursued following the death of his wife with the silence of Collins, yet admits he relocated his study to a garret to avoid the painful memory of her presence. Further anecdotes illustrate his complex relationship with Garrick and his respect for Warburton, who supported Johnson before he achieved fame.
CGV entry 3:11. This collection of anecdotes was earlier published in the St. James's Chronicle, January 13–15, 1785, and is often attributed to George Steevens.
[Letter transmitting anecdotes (by Anna Seward) about Johnson's early life and about Michael Johnson]
Nichols communicates a 1738 letter wherein Johnson negotiates with Cave for the publication of a poem, offering to personally guarantee Cave against losses. The correspondence reveals Johnson’s efforts to secure Dodsley’s name for the title page and his gratitude for Cave's support of "learning, even in its unhappiest stage." Accompanying anecdotes describe Johnson’s contraction of scrofula from a nursing mother and his subsequent "regal-touch" by Queen Anne. Nichols is the first to record a four-line epitaph composed by Johnson at age three for a dead duck, characterized as his first attempt to "lisp in numbers." Further details address Michael Johnson’s parchment-making business and the family’s decline into "strait circumstances" because of taxes and a "faithless servant."
Sharp recounts Johnson’s 1765 visit to Cambridge in company with Beauclerk. Johnson visits Trinity and Emmanuel Colleges, engaging in extensive tea-drinking and literary debate. Sharp describes Johnson’s physical appearance, noting a "better wig than usual" but one lacking "eternal buckle." The narrative records Johnson’s pleasure regarding a Milton edition published during the author's lifetime and his specific interest in a Greek epigram concerning Milton’s effigy. Johnson demonstrates his prodigious memory by reciting a complete Miltonic sonnet to resolve a scholarly dispute before haranguing the company on the technicalities of sonnet-writing. The account concludes with Johnson’s lively social behavior at Trinity, where he reportedly "stripped poor Mrs. Macaulay to the very skin" in a metaphorical toast.
CGV entry 3:13. Reprinted in various editions of Boswell's 'Life'.
A biographical memoir presenting Johnson primarily as a moral hero characterized by integrity and great abilities. It was anonymously published by George Kearsley in London, appearing hastily on Monday, December 27, 1784, scarcely two weeks following Johnson’s death. This rapid production led to widespread censure for factual and interpretative errors. The first edition included previously unpublished papers by Johnson written on behalf of the Rev. William Dodd. The second edition, published swiftly on February 22, 1785, contained corrections and some revisions by Cooke. For the second edition, Cooke revised the treatment of Johnson's marriage to preclude suggestions of convenience. The second edition was enlarged by the inclusion of Johnsoniana; or a Selection of Dr. Johnson’s Bon Mots and a facsimile of Johnson’s handwriting. The text borrowed substantially from earlier sketches, incorporating about two-thirds of the Memoirs (1782). Cooke’s Life provided one of the few contemporary accounts of the arrangement for Johnson's Parliamentary Debates. Excerpts were later included in George Birkbeck Hill's Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 2. The complete text is collected in The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson (1974).
CGV entry 3:17.
printed for J. Walker, No. 44, Pater-Noster Row
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson: Containing Many Valuable Original Letters, and Several Interesting Anecdotes Both of His Literary and Social Connections: The Whole Authenticated by Living Evidence
This early biography provides a narrative of Samuel Johnson's life from his birth in Litchfield to his death in 1784. It includes contributions from personal friends such as Thomas Davies and James Elphinston. The text details Johnson's early struggles, including his failed school at Edial and his journey to London with David Garrick. It covers his major literary milestones: the publication of "London," his work on the Gentleman’s Magazine, the compilation of the English Dictionary, and his later "Lives of the Poets." The Memoirs highlight Johnson's complex relationship with Lord Chesterfield and his role in the Ossian controversy, specifically his support for the Reverend William Shaw's Gaelic research. Notable anecdotes describe Johnson's physical presence, his "saturnine" temperament, and his charitable nature toward aged invalids like Mrs. Williams. The work portrays Johnson as a "Dictator in all companies" whose conversational style was marked by oracular promptitude and pointed sarcasms, while emphasizing his steadfast commitment to religious principles and the welfare of humanity.
Harrison's Edition, with His Life of the Author: A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers
Johnson undertook the 'laborious' creation of a complete English grammar and dictionary to resolve the lack of linguistic structure lamented by foreigners. Completed in 1755 amid 'sickness and in sorrow,' the work received acclaim from international academies, though Johnson pointedly noted it was finished without 'patronage from the great.' His subsequent rejection of Chesterfield’s late-stage support prompted the famous dismissal of the Earl as 'a lord among wits, and a wit amongst lords.' The narrative follows Johnson’s career through the 'admirable romance' Rasselas, the receipt of a 300l. royal pension, and his controversial defense of the ministry in pamphlets such as Taxation no Tyranny. Despite criticism for political 'heresy' in his Lives of the Poets, Tyers emphasizes Johnson’s 'conjugal tenderness' and 'munificence' to the poor. Johnson’s life concluded on 13 December 1784, leaving a legacy of 'piety, benevolence, and virtue'.
CGV entry 3:21.
Characterizing Hester Lynch Piozzi’s collection as the best of the five Johnson biographies published to date, this approving review identifies her work as an intimate record based on an eighteen-year domestic acquaintance rooted in "profound reverence." Despite Piozzi’s view of Johnson as the "wisest and best man" she ever knew, the reviewer interprets her anecdotes as evidence of Johnson’s "domineering insolence," "barbarity," and "social rusticity," suggesting his "bon mots" were defined by brutality. The text traces Johnson’s character to his parentage, citing his father's melancholy and his uncles' prowess in boxing as sources of his "muscular merit," "robustness of body," and "vulgarity of mind." Regarding his "implicit" yet occasionally troubled religious faith, the reviewer attributes his conversion to a childhood inability to understand Latin evidence, leading to a lifelong "abhorrence" and prejudice against Whigs, infidels, the Scotch, and the French. The account further details Johnson’s "nothing less than delicate" eating habits and "strong" tastes, specifically his fondness for boiled pork and "veal pye with plums and sugar," while mocking his derision of natural landscapes and his "bow-wow manner of speaking" during "lexiphanic dissertations." Furthermore, the reviewer highlights Johnson’s "malignity" toward friends, recording his ridicule of Garrick, Reynolds, and even his own mother, and concludes by contrasting Piozzi’s high praise with Johnson’s own admission that he was "ready to become a rascal."
CGV entry 3:22. Anonymous review of the book by Hester Lynch Piozzi.
Piozzi provides numerous anecdotes regarding Johnson’s domestic habits, family history, and personal opinions, yet the reviewer challenges her editorial judgment. The text disputes the accuracy of portraying Johnson primarily through "severe speeches" and "roughness," arguing that Piozzi suppresses the provocations that typically motivated such outbursts. It asserts that Piozzi hopes to justify her eventual separation from Johnson by depicting him as an "altered man" of "capricious" humors following the death of Thrale. While praising the inclusion of Johnson’s remarks on education and his "ardent and unaffected piety," the reviewer finds the volume’s structure confused and its style marred by vulgarisms and "studied carefulness" in highlighting Johnson's defects. The text emphasizes that Johnson’s "acts of virtue" far outweighed the social "failings" recorded by Piozzi and laments her "unparalleled ingratitude" toward a friend who brought such "lustre" to her household.
CGV entry 3:22. Review by Charles Burney of the book by Hester Lynch Piozzi.
Chapman praises Roberts's attempt to revive the work as a separate volume suitable for desultory reading. Chapman contends that Piozzi was a bad historian, whose book suffers from bias, inaccuracy, and vanity, even obtruding her style into Johnson's quoted dicta. Despite its faults, the Anecdotes remains an important body of evidence due to Piozzi's unparalleled advantages as a source. Chapman notes textual errors and suggests Roberts should include notes on obscure anonymous allusions.
CGV entry 3:22. Review by R. W. Chapman of the 1925 Cambridge University Press edition of Piozzi's work, edited by S. C. Roberts.
Printed for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry
An Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson
A biographical account published in London during the immediate rush of works following Johnson's death. Noted for its extensive focus on Johnson's strictures concerning Milton, aligning it with the minor, often derivative, biographies of that period. The work was collected alongside similar contemporary accounts in The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson.
Johnson asserts that exact biography requires the inclusion of "ridiculous anecdotes" to discriminate the subject from others. He maintains that stories are "good for nothing" if not "strictly and literally true" and rejects "round numbers" as false. In literary matters, he disputes the merits of Robertson and Dalrymple, characterizes Hume’s style as a derivative of Voltaire, and favors Mrs. Carter’s domestic and linguistic balance. He acknowledges authorship of Dodd’s Newgate sermon and legal defense. Johnson expresses a preference for "books that you may carry to the fire" over folios. Socially, he challenges Macaulay on human equality, requests that Reynolds observe the Sabbath, and attends Thrale’s final moments. He defends the use of "disarrange" over the "derange" and describes the Christian religion as the only proper basis for morality.
CGV entry 3:24. Collected from Hester Piozzi, Boswell, and from oral testimony. In two parts: March, pages 197–199; and April, pages 260–263.
A second correspondent suggests a work investigating the influence of "poverty and distress" on Johnson’s character. This writer defends Johnson’s "apparent improprieties" as products of his circumstances and urges critics to view the "monument of his virtues" rather than the "molehill of his imperfections," concluding that few men have been "so harmlessly bad."
CGV entry 3:25. Defends Johnson against charges of brutality.
Davis presents an abridged version of the second edition of the first full-length biography of Johnson, originally published in 1787. Hawkins, a longtime friend and executor of Johnson, chronicles the subject's life from his birth in Lichfield to his death in London. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's early struggles with poverty and physical infirmity, his professional transition into authorship, and his eventual literary dominance. Hawkins details the composition of major works, including the Dictionary, the Rambler, and the edition of Shakespeare. As a magistrate, Hawkins adopts a judicial tone, recording both the virtues and the perceived social and moral defects of his subject, such as his "indiscriminate bounty" to the undeserving and his constitutional indolence. The volume includes scholarly front matter by Davis, an introductory essay defending Hawkins against Boswell's later criticisms, and annotations that correct historical errors. Davis retains essential background material to preserve the text's character as a "life and times" of Johnson while removing lengthy extracts and dubiously relevant digressions. The critical reception of this first separate reissue since 1787 is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the editor for rescuing an "invaluable primary source" from the "artful disparagement" and "scathing abuse" of James Boswell. Critics emphasize that while the biographer may be an "uninspired plodder" with a "curious flatness" of prose, his fourteen-year head start over Boswell provides a "more complete" and "canny" portrait of Johnson’s early London years and the Ivy Lane Club. The abridgment is widely lauded for its "real service" to Johnsoniana, successfully removing "irrelevant pedantry" and "massive irrelevancies" to reveal a "candid, outspoken" account that highlights Johnson’s "failings as well as his virtues." Reviewers particularly value the "simple, compassionate dignity" of the deathbed scenes and the "critical distance" provided by the biographer’s perspective as a "sober magistrate." While some critics regret the "cumulative loss" of the author’s idiosyncratic "flavor" due to the removal of political and medical digressions, the consensus is that the edition proves the 1787 work to be a "balanced record" rather than an uncharitable bias. Ultimately, this "penetrating and accurate work" is seen as an essential, "non-hero-worshipping counterpoint" that earns a permanent place on the same shelf as Boswell’s masterpiece.
CGV entry 3:27. A slightly abridged edition.
Murphy disputes the structural integrity of the biography provided by Hawkins, characterizing the narrative as a "maze" of misplaced "miscellaneous and foreign matter" that distracts from the primary subject. He challenges Hawkins’s portrayal of Johnson’s character, particularly regarding the dedication to George III and the description of Johnson’s poverty. Murphy provides a chronological counter-narrative, detailing Johnson's birth in Lichfield, his brief residence at Pembroke College, and his early professional failures at Market-Bosworth and Edial. The account emphasizes Johnson’s migration to London with Garrick in 1737 and his subsequent "painful and laborious drudgery" under Cave and Osborne. Murphy highlights the "singular fate" of Johnson's intimacy with Savage and the "unnatural" coalition between Johnson and Chesterfield. He asserts that Johnson wrote the Parliamentary debates "in a garret in Exeter-street" and clarifies the origin of the Rambler and the Ivy-lane club. Murphy concludes by correcting Hawkins's "not perfectly accurate" data regarding the contributors to the Rambler and its critical scope.
Croft, author of the life of Young in Johnson’s Lives, solicits 'books or manuscripts' and requests readers 'point out any defects in Johnson's Dictionary.' He pledges that 'time or toil' will not deter him from rendering the English language more complete. Croft acknowledges Pope’s apothegm that a dictionary publisher may know the 'meaning of a single word, but not of two words put together.' The editors express support for this 'Oxford Dictionary of the English Language,' wishing it success as a work of national importance.
CGV entry 3:27. Porson’s sarcastic review of Hawkins, published under the title "Sundry Whereof," in parts: 57 (Aug. 1787): 652-53; 57 (Sept. 1787): 751-53; 57 (Oct. 1787): 847-52.
Mawbey preserves an anecdote from Garrick describing Johnson’s stay at an Oxford coffee-house, where Johnson dismissed the poetic merits of Home’s Douglas. In response to praise for Home's verse, Johnson asserted that "many a man, many a woman, and many a child" could produce similar writing. Mawbey records Cooke’s characterization of Johnson as "half a madman, half a scholar, three parts a Roman Catholick, and a compleat Jacobite." Despite long avoiding Johnson due to his political principles, Mawbey describes a later meeting at the home of Porteus where he found himself "greatly pleased" by Johnson’s "strong sense and nervous language." The text also notes Johnson’s past political reflections on Mawbey and Savile in an unspecified pamphlet.
CGV entry 3:28. Also contains anecdotes of Johnson.
CGV entry 3:30. Contains anecdotes about Johnson in Gough Square and with Strahan.
printed for T. Longman, B. White & Son, B. Law, J. Dodsley, H. Baldwin, J. Robson, J. Johnson, C. Dilly, T. Vernor, G. G. J. & J. Robinson, T. Cadell, J. Nichols, R. Baldwin, N. Conant, R. Elmsly, F. and C. Rivington, T. Payne, W. Goldsmith, R. Faulder, Leigh and Sotheby, G. Nicol, J. Murray, A. Strahan, W. Lowndes, T. Evans, W. Bent, S. Hayes, G. and T. Wilkie, T. and J. Egerton, W. Fox, P. McQueen, Ogilvie and Speare, Darton and Harvey, G. and C. Kearsley, W. Millar, B.C. Collins, and E. Newbery
An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
A foundational biography, commissioned for the 1792 twelve-volume edition of Johnson’s Works following the critical failure of Hawkins's Life. Murphy, who received a reported £200–£300, completed the "short, yet full" work quickly in early 1791. Structured like Johnson's Lives of the Poets—with narrative, character sketch, and critical review—the Essay focuses on Johnson as a great moralist and writer. Murphy pronounces The Rambler as Johnson’s "great work," noting that the "pomp of diction" started there. The Essay is highly intertextual, repeatedly attacking the "asperity" of Hawkins's account and deferring to Piozzi's narrative regarding Thrale's introduction. Murphy includes unique details, such as the paraphrastic translation of Johnson’s Latin poem, Gnōthi Seauton, and an anecdote detailing Johnson's dramatic reveal of his authorship of the Parliamentary Debates. Murphy concludes that Johnson’s "piety, his kind affections, and the goodness of his heart, present an example worthy of imitation." The Essay proved extremely successful, accompanying most subsequent editions of Johnson’s Works. Critics call this book a temperate and picturesque history that avoids the unwieldy foreign matter found in previous memoirs. Reviewers in the Critical Review and Monthly Review praise the concise narrative for providing a just picture of the subject through a masterly distribution of light and shade. The Town and Country Magazine notes the inclusion of a 1756 letter to Richardson regarding a debt arrest, which Murphy uses to critique Richardson’s lack of genuine generosity. The Monthly Review disputes Murphy’s claim that the subject rarely read books entirely. But consensus favors the forceful diction and dictatorial style Murphy identifies over the simpler elegance of Addison.
CGV entry 3:31. Also printed in Volume 1 of Johnson's 'Works' (1792) and most subsequent editions.
A New and General Biographical Dictionary
Traces Johnson’s progression from his 1709 birth in Lichfield and education at Pembroke College, Oxford, to his 1784 death. Details early professional disappointments, including a failed application for a Shropshire schoolmastership, before his move to London. Records the production of the "Debates in the Senate of Lilliput," London, and The Life of Savage. Asserts that the "Dictionary" cost the "labours of many years" but secured his fame, alongside the Rambler, Idler, and Rasselas. Characterizes The Lives of the British Poets as an immortalizing work that "by far excels any thing executed upon a similar plan by foreigners." Notes his final days were spent in prayer and "warmest ejaculations" following a "long life, begun, continued, and ended in virtue."
CGV entry 3:34. A new edition was published in 1798 (volume 8, pages 442-451). Possibly authored by Alexander Chalmers.
Johnson inherited a "morbid melancholy" from his father, Michael, a Jacobite bookseller, and contracted scrophula in infancy. Educated at Litchfield and Stourbridge, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in his nineteenth year. Scholarly accounts by Hawkins and Boswell conflict regarding his residency and support at the university; while Hawkins names Adams as a tutor, Boswell disputes this, noting Jordan held the post until Johnson left in 1731. After a miserable tenure as an under-master at Market Bosworth, Johnson married Porter, a widow twice his age, and attempted a private academy involving Garrick. Moving to London in 1737, he supported himself via the Gentleman's Magazine, notably composing the Debates in the Senate of Lilliput. Between 1747 and 1754, he labored on his English dictionary, famously rejecting Chesterfield’s late patronage after being "repulsed from his door." During this period, he also produced the Rambler and expressed that "his studies being honest, ended in conviction" regarding religious truth.
CGV entry 3:35. Published between 1788 and 1797.
Anecdotist preserves several anecdotes involving Johnson and Boswell. Anecdotist notes Boswell presented Johnson in 1766 as his "oldest and most intimate friend." The text records Johnson’s high praise for Hailes’s History of Scotland as a "new mode of history" and his dismissal of Priestley’s works for tending to "unsettle every thing, and yet settled nothing." Anecdotist also discusses Johnson’s role in uncovering the translation blunders of Green and Guthrie regarding Duhalde’s History of China.
The History and Antiquities of Staffordshire
Summarizes the life and lineage of Johnson, drawing primarily from Boswell, Piozzi, and Murphy. Traces Johnson’s ancestry to Cubley day-laborers and describes his father, Michael, as a Lichfield bookseller of "large athletic construction" and "melancholy cast." Details Johnson’s infancy, including his presentation before Queen Anne for the royal touch to treat "the king's evil," and notes the early instillation of Jacobite principles by his father. Outlines his education at Lichfield and Stourbridge, his brief tenure at Pembroke College, and his subsequent struggles as an usher at Market Bosworth. Highlights his move to London with Garrick in 1737 and his reliance on Cave. Describes the production of the Dictionary, the disappointment regarding Chesterfield's patronage, and the eventual receipt of a royal pension. Records Johnson's late-life return to Lichfield with Boswell and his public penance at Uttoxeter market to atone for youthful disobedience to his father, where he stood "bare-headed in the rain" in "contrition." Concludes with his 1784 death and burial in Westminster Abbey.
CGV entry 3:37.
B. describes a 1783 stagecoach journey from London to Salisbury during which he encountered a corpulent, threadbare traveler resembling the frontispiece of the Lives of the Poets. Johnson, reading with the book held close to his eyes, initially rebuffed conversation with a "Johnsonian" remark on how books cause headaches for some. Upon being identified, Johnson became "very gracious," praising B. as the "civilest young man" he had met. Regarding travel literature for France and Italy, Johnson dismissed French guides as not "worth a groat" and characterized the works of Baretti and Sharp as representing the "fair" and "foul" sides of Italy, respectively. Johnson experimented with "bumbo," a West Indian punch, declaring it his preferred alternative to water. At the journey's end, Johnson lamented the human destiny of being "torn asunder" just as individuals become happy in each other’s society, inviting B. to visit him in London.
Narrative of What Passed at the Visits Paid by J. Hoole to Dr. Johnson in His Last Illness, Three Weeks before His Death
In this biographical narrative, Hoole provides a detailed chronological account of his final interactions with Johnson from November 20 to December 13, 1784. The record emphasizes Johnson's intense religious fervor, his "dejection of spirits," and his repeated exhortations for Hoole to prioritize "private prayer and receiving the sacrament." Hoole describes Johnson’s physical decline, his brief relocation to Islington for "town air," and the drafting of his will under the direction of Sir John Hawkins. Notable moments include Johnson’s reflection on his past "negligence of religion," his reaction to the Empress of Russia ordering a translation of the Rambler, and his philosophical discussions on the "affectation of candour" and the nature of human vanity. The account concludes with Johnson’s refusal of further sustenance, his final blessing of Miss Morris, and Hoole’s observation of his body after death, which he terms "the most awful sight."
CGV entry 3:40. The manuscript is now in the Hyde collection.
[Anecdote of Walter Harte: Johnson's Dining Behind Screen]
In this biographical sketch presented as a letter to the editor, R. H. provides a detailed bibliography and personal anecdotes of Walter Harte, noting that Harte was among Johnson’s "earliest admirers." The article recounts a specific incident following the 1744 anonymous publication of the Life of Richard Savage. While dining with Edward Cave at St. John’s Gate, Harte praised the work's merits. Cave later informed Harte that his commendations had "delighted" the author, who had been present but concealed. Because his clothes were "so shabby that he durst not make his appearance," Johnson had eaten a "plate of victuals behind the screen" while overhearing the conversation. The narrative also mentions Harte’s travels with his pupil Stanhope and his clerical career, while identifying Lord Eliot and the Bishop of Salisbury as surviving acquaintances capable of providing further accounts of Harte's life.
A Tour through the Northern Counties of England, and the Borders of Scotland
Warner provides a comprehensive topographical and historical survey of Northern England and the Scottish borders, detailing architectural landmarks, economic conditions, and local customs. The narrative highlights Samuel Johnson’s regional associations, specifically noting his birthplace in Lichfield and the preservation of a willow tree he allegedly planted. Warner acknowledges Johnson’s moral and intellectual stature while documenting a specific instance of his late-life penance at Uttoxeter for a youthful act of filial disobedience. Additionally, the text references Johnson’s literary judgments, including his critiques of Lord Chesterfield’s wit and his observations on the judicious site selection of monastic foundations.
CGV entry 3:42.
Extracts from the Port-Folio of a Man of Letters
Comte de Holcke, Grand-master of the Wardrobe to the King of Denmark, visits Johnson in 1768 through the introduction of Brocklesby. Despite Holcke’s reputation for classical erudition, the meeting results in a negative assessment of Johnson’s abilities. Holcke subsequently describes Johnson to Hamilton as the greatest "literary impostor and pedant" he had encountered. He further dismisses Johnson as a "shallow" individual, contrasting sharply with the prevailing British view of Johnson’s formidable intellect.
CGV entry 3:43. An anecdote of Johnson's meeting with Count de Holcke in 1768. Reprinted in 'Johnsoniana; or Supplement to Boswell' (London, 1836), page 437.
General Biography; or, Lives, Critical and Historical
Aikin chronicles the life of Johnson from his 1709 birth in Lichfield to his 1785 interment in Westminster Abbey. Inherited "scrofulous taint" and "morbid melancholy" shaped his early development and desultory education at Oxford. Following a failed school venture at Edial, Johnson moved to London in 1737 with Garrick to pursue "literary adventure." Early struggles included penury and an "unjustifiable imposition" writing parliamentary debates. The 1755 publication of the Dictionary established his philological fame, though Aikin notes Johnson lacked "knowledge of the congenerous dialects." The narrative details Johnson's domestic life, including his marriage to Porter, his residence with Thrale and Piozzi at Streatham, and his "obsequious friend" Boswell, who recorded his "memorabilia with the reverential fidelity of a disciple." Aikin highlights the "Taxation no Tyranny" pamphlet as a "considerable effort" in political warfare. Despite an "offensively dictatorial" conversational style and "arrogant rudeness," Johnson's "substantial generosity" and "manly cast of thought" define his legacy. The performance of "The Lives of the Poets" represents his final major exertion, displaying a style "free from the stiffness and turgidity" of earlier works. Aikin concludes that Johnson left the English language "more rich, accurate, and majestic, than he found it."
CGV entry 3:44. Reprinted with the ninth edition of Johnson's 'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1805).
An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson from His Birth to His Eleventh Year, Written by Himself: To Which Are Added, Original Letters to Dr. Samuel Johnson by Miss Hill Boothby
The first appearance in print of Johnson's Annals, retrieved by Francis Barber from the collection of papers Johnson had ordered to be destroyed shortly before his death in 1784. The accompanying Original Letters to Dr. Samuel Johnson by Miss Hill Boothby further contributed to the burgeoning collection of Johnsoniana following his death. Reviews are overwhelmingly negative, with contemporary commentators denouncing the volume as a mercenary collection of trivialities intended for destruction. Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, delivers a severe assessment, characterizing the publication as a barefaced attempt at duping the public with wretched trifles and historical sketches of childhood maladies; he further disputes the subject's high opinion of the appended correspondence, labeling the letters uninteresting medical receipts. Writing in the Literary Magazine, and American Register, an anonymous reviewer similarly condemns the collection of infant maladies and school exercises, concluding that the wretched taste of the posthumous publication holds the subject up to laughter. A notice in the Gentleman’s Magazine expresses strong disapproval of the impertinent curiosity animating an inquisitive age that hunts for the childish sentiments of eminent characters. The reviewer for the Annual Review and History of Literature provides a scathing notice, denouncing the autobiographical fragments as insignificant papers and flagrant impositions that disgracefully exploit personal relics. Moy (Monthly Review) offers a mixed perspective, noting that the public will likely find the short fragment uninteresting given existing exhaustive biographies. In contrast, a brief notice in the European Magazine, and London Review observes that despite the trivial circumstances, a public fascination compels intense interest in the remaining pages. Finally, the British Critic provides a more neutral summary, highlighting a remarkable passage regarding early childhood memories of theological instruction.
Reviews: Annual Review and History of Literature 4 (January 1805): 484; British Critic 25 (May 1805): 576; European Magazine, and London Review 47 (June 1805): 445; Gentleman’s Magazine 75, no. 2 (1805): 651; Francis Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review 7, no. 14 (1806): 436–41; Literary Magazine, and American Register 5, no. 32 (1806): 337–40; Moy, Monthly Review 48 (November 1805): 331–32.
An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, from His Birth to His Eleventh Year
This severe review, reprinted in the Annual Review, characterizes the "patched volume" created by Richard Phillips from Johnson's early autobiographical fragments and Hill Boothby’s letters as a "barefaced attempt at duping" the public through the publication of "wretched trifles" Johnson intended for the flames. The reviewer describes the work as "patched," consisting of twenty-four widely printed pages of childhood anecdotes "eked out" with letters from and to Hill Boothby. The review ridicules Johnson's "wretched trifles," such as his "London frock" and his dream about "Mascula dicuntur," and mocks the inclusion of "historical sketches of an issue in his arm" and memories of a dog called Chops. Furthermore, the reviewer disputes Johnson’s high opinion of Boothby’s "understanding," asserting that her letters are of a "less interesting nature" consisting primarily of "medical receipts" and "bits of doctoring," while suggesting Johnson’s "critic was in love." The review condemns the "breach of trust" by Francis Barber in secreting the papers and warns against encouraging the betrayal of manuscripts never intended for "the indiscriminate rage for letter-reading."
CGV entry 3:45.
W. Suttaby; B. Johnson, J. Johnson, & R. Johnson
Cumberland’s Memoirs (1806–1807) documents his life, education, and career, detailing his relationships with patrons and literary figures. The work asserts Johnson achieved literary fame only because "sharp necessity" pressed him into service, stating that if fortune favored him, he "would have laid down and rolled in it." Cumberland was personally acquainted with Johnson and contributed material to Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.
CGV entry 3:47. See especially pages 173–178.
Village Anecdotes; or, The Journal of a Year from Sophia to Edward
CGV entry 3:49. These anecdotes about Johnson were not included in the first edition of 1804.
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Percival Stockdale, Containing Many Interesting Anecdotes of the Illustrious Men with Whom He Was Connected: Written by Himself
Stockdale chronicles his life from his birth in 1736 through his resignation from the army in 1757, framing his narrative as a moral system for the instruction of youth. Stockdale describes his education at Alnwick and Berwick, his time at the University of St. Andrews, and his experiences as a second lieutenant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers during the Mediterranean campaign. He provides detailed accounts of his intellectual development and his interactions with notable figures, including a significant social encounter between John Wilkes and Johnson. Stockdale emphasizes Johnson’s social flexibility, noting that Wilkes successfully “subdued the literary, political, moral, and religious hatred” of Johnson during a dinner in the Poultry. The text includes Stockdale’s defense of Johnson against the criticisms of contemporary writers and records his personal observations on Johnson’s domestic habits, specifically his affection for his cat, Hodge. Throughout the volume, Stockdale argues for the superiority of English literature and the theater, while frequently digressing into polemics against Methodism and the perceived decline of national taste. He concludes with his departure from the military to return to a life of letters in Berwick.
CGV entry 3:50. Contains much about Johnson.
The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper
Chalmers provides a condensed narrative of the early life and education of Johnson, acknowledging the prior biographical work of Boswell. The account traces Johnson’s origins in Lichfield, noting his father Michael’s Jacobite leanings and the "loose character" of his relative Cornelius Ford. Chalmers details Johnson’s childhood struggle with scrofula and his education under the "severe discipline" of Hunter at Lichfield-school, where Johnson developed a preference for the "liberal use of the rod" and a taste for old romances. The text outlines Johnson’s tenure at Stourbridge and his 1728 entry into Pembroke College, Oxford, as a commoner. Chalmers notes Johnson’s translation of Pope’s Messiah into Latin and his transition from the tutelage of Jorden to Adams, emphasizing Johnson’s "retentive memory" and "impetuous temper" throughout his formative years.
CGV entry 3:51. An adaptation is in 'General Biographical Dictionary', volume 19, pages 47-77 (London: Robinson, 1815).
Letters of Anna Seward Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807
A highly partisan repository of information on Johnson's character and literary judgments. Seward's correspondence provides Lichfield context, often challenging the positive accounts of Johnson's male biographers. Seward, who habitually termed Johnson the "despot," viewed herself as an adversarial critic fighting his near-canonization. Her letters contain detailed, though disputed, anecdotal evidence from her local connections, portraying Johnson as a "strange compound of great talents" and moral flaws, detailing his "social bullying" and "gloomy misanthropy." She also records his "extremest horror" of death in his final months. In literary matters, Seward asserts that his Lives of the Poets marked the "downfall of just poetic taste," citing his low estimation of Gray and his "absurd criticisms on the Lycidas" as evidence of critical deficiency motivated by prejudice. Her letters also document her public dispute with Boswell regarding his decision to omit many of her unflattering biographical submissions, which he considered prejudicial.
CGV entry 3:53. Contains many anecdotes of Johnson's youth, though not all are reliable.
Instructive Conversation Cards Consisting of Thirty-Two Biographical Sketches of Eminent British Characters
CGV entry 3:54. Card Number 26 is about Johnson.
Buds of Genius; or, Some Account of the Early Lives of Celebrated Characters Who Were Remarkable in Their Childhood. Intended as Introduction to Biography
CGV entry 3:55. Presented in dialogue form for the instruction of children.
Wrangham traces the life of Johnson from his birth in Lichfield to his death in London, detailing his struggles with scrofula and morbid melancholy. Johnson leaves Pembroke College, Oxford, without a degree due to "indigence" and "distress of circumstances." After failing as a schoolmaster, he visits London with Garrick and begins writing for Cave in the Gentleman's Magazine. Wrangham examines the production of the English Dictionary, noting Johnson engages six amanuenses and addresses the plan to Chesterfield. The text highlights the influence of Thrale and Piozzi, noting the "vivacity of Mrs. Thrale's literary talk" diverted his melancholy. Wrangham discusses Boswell’s role as a companion during the journey to the Hebrides, describing him as having "habitual good-humour" and "personal attachment to the Moralist." The account details Johnson’s later works, including the Lives of the Poets, and his eventual death in 1784. Wrangham characterizes Johnson as a man of "piety, by genius, and by wisdom," despite his "political bigotry" and "superstitious credulity." Extracts from Johnson's review of Jenyns and the poem Know Yourself provide further evidence of his "stately language" and internal struggles.
CGV entry 3:56. Pages 345-363 contain a few short extracts from Johnson's writings.
Biographical Conversations, on the Most Eminent and Instructive British Characters
This pedagogical dialogue outlines the biography and literary merit of Johnson. Allen characterizes Johnson’s prose by its "Latin extraction," "abstract terms," and "sonorous rotundity of period," noting that the "pomp of diction" in The Rambler developed alongside the Dictionary. Edmund and Frederic recount Johnson's early life, citing his "inviolable regard for truth" and retentive memory despite "constitutional indolence." The narrative details Johnson's failed academy with Garrick, his "hard labour of the pen" in London, and the composition of parliamentary debates "in a garret in Exeter-street." Boswell provides descriptions of Johnson’s "dusty" library and "uncouth" physical appearance, including "convulsive starts and odd gesticulations." Sir Charles notes that while Johnson argued "merely for victory," his conversation remained "interesting" due to his "logical head." Allen describes Johnson’s residence with Thrale at Streatham as a period of "happiness" and health. The text concludes by defending the Lives of the Poets as "masterly productions" despite the charge that Gray and others were "harshly treated."
CGV entry 3:57.
Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne
Johnson (1709–1784) rose from Litchfield poverty to become a central figure in English letters as a biographer, critic, and philologist. Educated at Oxford but forced to leave without a degree due to financial distress, he achieved early recognition for a Latin translation of Pope. Following a failed school venture at Edial with pupil Garrick, he moved to London to write for Cave and composed parliamentary debates that Voltaire likened to Roman eloquence. After years of indigence and vagrancy shared with Savage, Johnson gained lasting fame through "London," "The Rambler," and his "Dictionary," the latter involving a famous rejection of Chesterfield's "belated advances." He supported the blind Williams and received a royal pension in 1762 despite previous "Dictionary" definitions labeling such payments as "political bribery." His later years were marked by intimacy with Thrale at Streatham, though he offered "formal opposition" to her marriage to Piozzi. Major late works include "Rasselas," a "Shakespeare" edition, and "Lives of the Poets." Boswell provides the definitive biography, documenting Johnson's "convulsive tics," "hypochondriacal disposition," and formidable conversational style characterized by "singular energy of expression."
Original anecdotes illustrating Johnson's social temperament and political rigidity. During a visit to Macqueen in Skye, Johnson maintains an "intolerable silence" before rebuking his hostess for counting his twelve cups of tea, promising to drink twelve more to "punish" her inquiry. A second account describes Johnson interrupting a young traveler’s praise of America at a Scotch university. Reasserting the sentiments of Taxation no Tyranny, Johnson dismisses the youth’s claims as the "vision of a rebellious hope." When Piozzi expostulates regarding his severity, Johnson defends the reproof as a necessary check on the "treachery of his vanity." These instances demonstrate Johnson's "uncourteous self-reference" and his refusal to tolerate perceived political or intellectual imbecility.
CGV entry 3:59. Incidents at Dr. McQueen's and Mrs. Thrale's.
"W." recounts an incident from Johnson’s unpublished itinerary of a tour through North Wales during a visit to Colonel Myddleton at Gwaynynog. While there, Johnson reportedly designed the architectural proportions for a new drawing room, an act that led Myddleton to later erect a cenotaph on the spot where the suggestion occurred. The narrative focuses on Johnson’s intervention when a gardener captured a hare intended for the cook; Johnson requested to hold the animal and then personally restored the hare to liberty through a window, rebuking Myddleton’s complaints about the lost delicacy. Invoking the "laws of hospitality," Johnson argues that the animal had placed itself under the Colonel’s protection and that the hearth served as an "asylum for the confiding stranger," rendering it wrong to treat the creature as a criminal. The text concludes with an unrelated "Card-Table Anecdote" involving a sharp repartee between a clergyman, Dr. G., and a witty woman, Mrs. W., over a game of whist.
CGV entry 3:60.
Historical and Biographical Preface to the Rambler
This preface traces Johnson's trajectory from Litchfield to literary eminence. Born to Michael Johnson, a bookseller, and Sarah Ford, Johnson suffered from scrofula, seeking the "royal touch" from Queen Anne. After desultory study under Ford and Hunter, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford, where he translated Pope's "Messiah" before poverty forced his departure. Following a failed school at Edial and marriage to Porter, Johnson arrived in London with Garrick in 1737. The narrative details his "day-labour" for Cave, his friendship with Savage, and his "midnight hours" spent wandering London streets "reforming the world." Johnson's "Dictionary" and "The Rambler" established his fame, though he remained "Impransus" and faced arrest for debt. Later years brought a pension from Bute, a degree from Oxford, and domesticity with Thrale at Streatham, receiving "every attention that could flatter his pride." Despite "morbid melancholy" and a "rugged" frame that committed "acts of hostility upon the Graces," Johnson is presented as an "eminent teacher of morals" whose style left the English language "more rich, accurate, and majestic."
A short paragraph: "Dr. Johnson asserted in a party at which Sir Joshua Reynolds was present, that no man loved labour. Sir Joshua said, that he thought he could adduce an instance, to disprove Johnson’s intention. It is recorded (said he) of Pope, that he would retire from agreeable society, of which no man was more fond, to write verses, at which he certainly laboured with great patience. 'Sir,' replied Johnson, 'would Pope have done so, if he had known that his verses were afterwards to be consigned to the flames? No—it was not a love of labour, Sir, but a love of fame. Leander swam the Hellespont, but it was not from the love of swimming.'"
CGV entry 3:62. An anecdote concerning Johnson on labor.
On the Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson, LLD
This biographical sketch, continuing Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, traces his life from his 1709 birth in Lichfield through his mid-career literary struggles. The narrative details his early education under Hunter, his poverty-stricken tenure at Pembroke College, and his unhappy stint as an usher at Market Bosworth. It examines his marriage to Elizabeth Porter and the failure of his Edial Hall school, which led to his 1737 departure for London with Garrick. The article documents Johnson’s early professional labor for Cave’s Gentleman’s Magazine, the publication of London and the Life of Savage, and the arduous development of his Dictionary. It concludes with his transition to periodical writing in the Rambler and Idler, the publication of Rasselas to fund his mother’s funeral, and his eventual relief from poverty via a royal pension in 1762.
CGV entry 3:65. In two parts: July, pages 57-69; and August, pages 169–185.
Lives of English Poets from Johnson to Kirke White, designed as a continuation of Johnson's Lives
A comprehensive biographical and critical account of Samuel Johnson, tracing his life from his birth in Lichfield to his death in 1784. The text details Johnson's early struggles with poverty and disease, his brief tenure at Oxford, and his initial literary efforts in Birmingham and London. Cary emphasizes Johnson's arduous labor on the Dictionary of the English Language and the subsequent stability provided by a royal pension. He highlights Johnson's social circle, including his domestic "seraglio" and his leadership in the Literary Club. Critical analysis focuses on Johnson's major works, such as Rasselas, The Rambler, and the Lives of the Poets, noting his "heavy mace of words" and his tendency toward "awkward stateliness" in prose. While acknowledging Johnson's "imperfection of man" and occasional "idle sophisms," Cary celebrates him as a "master of virtue" whose "vigour of intellect" dominated his age.
CGV entry 3:65. Reprinted from the London Magazine (1823).
Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches, and Memoirs
Hawkins provides a series of discursive recollections concerning the literary and social circles of her father, Sir John Hawkins. The text features significant anecdotal material regarding Samuel Johnson, portraying him both as a formidable intellectual presence and a domestic acquaintance whose uncouth gesticulations and disgraceful exterior initially masked his eventual national importance to the young author. Hawkins details Johnson’s zigzag walk, his habit of talking for victory, and his dependence on the luxuries of Streatham during his residence with the Thrales. The book emphasizes the contrast between Johnson’s ponderous strength and his pitiable melancholy, particularly in his later years following the death of Thrale and his subsequent return to the Hawkins' social circle. Additionally, Hawkins records her observations of Boswell’s bitterness toward her father and the intolerant conversational monopoly held by the Burkes at the Turk’s Head, which she suggests led to her father's secession from the club. Piozzi appears as an inaccurate chronicler whose want of judgment and second marriage are noted with critical distance, while her luminous mind is acknowledged. The text functions as an informal record of 18th-century small things preserved from oblivion, offering a unique familial perspective on the period’s most celebrated figures.
This collection of anecdotes documents the social and literary circles of the late eighteenth century, focusing extensively on Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. Hawkins describes Johnson’s physical mannerisms, such as his "zigzag" gait and habit of holding his hand under his chin, while praising his "concentrating periods" and "axiomatic diction." She critiques his domestic life at Streatham and the "small coinage" of his later conversation, asserting that his proximity to mixed company "abated the originality of his native character." Regarding Boswell, Hawkins presents a disparaging view, characterizing his biographical methods as "bare-faced espionnage" and "commèrage" that lowered Johnson’s reputation by exposing his "faults and follies." She explicitly accuses Boswell of "bold falsity" in his reporting of her father’s actions. Piozzi is similarly criticized for "accuracy" and a "sad want of judgment," specifically in her second marriage and her "imitation of his pomposity of diction." Hawkins records a terse letter from Piozzi defending her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi by stating, "My second husband is a gentleman, which is more than could be said of my first." The narrative emphasizes the intellectual friction between these figures and the author’s father, Sir John Hawkins.
CGV entry 3:66. Reprinted from 'Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches, and Memoirs' (1823).
Laetitia Matilda Hawkins provides intimate recollections of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi within the context of her father Sir John’s social circle. She describes Johnson as a frequent guest who "fondled me in his peculiar way" by leaning his wig on her shoulder. The text records Johnson’s heavy, zigzag gait, his "compressed turgidity" of style, and his eventual "rupture" with Mrs. Thrale following her marriage to Piozzi. Hawkins defends her father against Boswell’s "erroneous biography," characterizing Boswell as an "earwigging" interloper whose visits were "interminable" and who displayed "uncommon height" only to be mocked by Garrick. Thrale is depicted as possessing a "luminous mind" and catching Johnson’s tones "to perfection," though Hawkins dismisses Thrale's first husband as not being a gentleman because "a profession constitutes gentility while a trade does not." The memoirs contrast Johnson’s "puerile attempt at playfulness" with the "brutality" and "savageness" he occasionally displayed in conversation. The consensus on this study is that Skrine has successfully rescued entertaining material from an originally bloated source, though questions remain regarding textual accuracy. Critics call this book an uncommonly readable skimming of the eighteenth-century social scene, with the New Statesman and Windle praising the editor for sifting the "wheat" and "cream" from Hawkins’s ill-arranged original memoirs. But Chapman expresses skepticism toward the fidelity of the text, noting variations from the 1820s editions that suggest Skrine’s "compression" may have altered the original. While Hawkins’s facts are deemed generally reliable, her personal judgments—such as labeling the central subject's behavior as "brutality"—are largely dismissed as negligible or spiteful by Chapman and Windle.
Scott praises the Life of Johnson by Boswell as the best "parlor-window book" ever written, noting that it creates a vivid, enduring impression of Johnson's person, manners, and conversation, which no other distinguished man has achieved. Contrasting Johnson's brief fictional work, Rasselas, with Voltaire's Candide, Scott argues that while both share a similar moral premise of earthly disappointment, Johnson's aim is benevolent: to encourage hope in a better world, while Voltaire merely scoffs at human misery. Johnson's style in Rasselas is also commended for its formal, sonorous artistry.
CGV entry 3:67. Often reprinted in collections such as World's Classics and Everyman's Library.
Scott provides a biographical and critical overview of Johnson, emphasizing the "vivid impression" left on posterity by Boswell’s biography. He traces Johnson’s progression from his "indigence" in Lichfield and early struggles in London to his eminence as the "Jupiter" of the literary circle. Scott analyzes Rasselas as a "set of moral dialogues" composed in "solitude and sorrow" to fund his mother's funeral, contrasting its benevolent philosophical goals with the "poisonous" skepticism of Voltaire’s Candide. While acknowledging Johnson’s "rugged ferocity" and the "tax" he placed on the patience of Thrale, Scott maintains that such "violences and solecisms in manners" left his "morals and benevolence alike unimpeachable." The text portrays Johnson as a "Roman dictator" whose "gigantic strength of body and mighty powers of mind" were occasionally clouded by "morbid affection of the spirits." Scott concludes that Johnson used the "nothingness of earthly hopes" to direct human affections toward "another and a better world."
CGV entry 3:67. Reprinted from 'Ballantyne's Novelist's Library' (1823).
Notice sur la Vie et les ouvrages du Docteur Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 3:68. An appreciative account.
Biographical, Historical, and Critical Preface
This biographical and critical preface to selections from The Rambler delineates the life and literary progression of Johnson, framing his achievement in The Rambler as a successful restoration of the periodical essay to the eminence of Steele and Addison. The account details Johnson’s early struggles with poverty and the "King’s Evil," his desultory education, and his arrival in London as an "adventurer" alongside Garrick. Murphy identifies the pivotal role of the Thrale family in "soothing Johnson’s cares" and prolonging his life, while also documenting his friction with Lord Chesterfield and his "disgust" toward the "dogmatising spirit" of specific contemporaries. Critical analysis is provided for Johnson’s major works, including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and The Lives of the Poets, with Murphy characterizing Johnson's style as "Jupiter Tonans"—majestic, harmonious, and energetically devoted to virtue. The text notes contributions to The Rambler by Richardson, Mulso (Chapone), Talbot, and Carter, and addresses the Lauder-Milton forgery, emphasizing Johnson’s "abhorrence with which [he] beheld a violation of truth."
In vol. 1, Cradock details his literary and social life in London, recording significant interactions with the Johnsonian circle. Cradock describes witnessing a final separation between Thomas Percy and Oliver Goldsmith over the Rowley poems and reports Johnson's subsequent commentary on the failed attempts by himself and Richard Farmer to assist Percy. The text reflects on the fragility of human friendships within this intellectual milieu. Cradock also recounts personal anecdotes involving other luminaries such as David Garrick and highlights the competitive, often contentious nature of London's literary society. The memoir serves as a firsthand account of the social dynamics and professional challenges faced by eighteenth-century men of letters. In vol. 2, Cradock justifies his focus on the minutiae of daily life and travel by quoting Johnson's assertion that the true state of a nation is found in common life rather than illustrious actions. This volume primarily details Cradock's residence in France and his admission into high-ranking social circles. Cradock emphasizes that the main spring of life is often ruffled by small obstacles, a sentiment he aligns with Johnson’s philosophy on the dignity of writing about "petty pleasures." The narrative serves as a practical application of Johnsonian principles to travel literature, documenting domestic habits, social etiquette, and the cultural landscape of pre-revolutionary France through the lens of an English gentleman. In vol. 4, Cradock provides intimate anecdotes of Johnson’s social behavior, disputing the image of him as a consistently surly companion. Cradock recounts a good-humored exchange regarding the domestic quarrels of Anna Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, where Johnson joked that he never knew which was Roxana and which was Statira. The text details Cradock's visits to Marylebone Gardens with Johnson and George Steevens. Cradock describes Johnson's later years, noting his "morbid melancholy" and his habit of seizing a friend's hand while contemplating mortality. The memoir also records Johnson's high regard for Samuel Parr's learning, characterizing him as a "fair man to dispute with" despite their infrequent meetings.
CGV entry 3:70.
Smith's biography of the wealthy sculptor Nollekens (d. 1823) details his coarse personal life, immense profits from commissions like the Pitt statue, and his complex final will, contrasting sharp bequests with earlier intentions. The volume, which concludes with a list of Nollekens's exhibited works, also provides extensive biographical sketches of his artistic contemporaries, including Fuseli and Blake. Johnson features throughout, noted for his friendship with the Nollekens family and his frequent visits to Wilton's house. The text recounts Johnson's presence at Burney's conversazioni and references his portrait bust by Nollekens—a wigless depiction Johnson reportedly disliked.
CGV entry 3:71.
This biographical collection concerns the sculptor Joseph Nollekens but incorporates extensive anecdotes of his London contemporaries, including figures central to the Johnson circle. Nollekens's eccentric character and parsimony are described in detail. Accounts mention Johnson's praise of Nollekens's busts and his frequent, convivial visits to the sculptor's home. The text notes Johnson's close friendship with Nollekens's father-in-law, Saunders Welch, the magistrate, who Johnson esteemed for his practical knowledge of the world. It further records Johnson's refusal to write the English epitaph for Goldsmith's Westminster Abbey monument. The text also includes brief sketches of other associates like Reynolds, Hogarth, and Fuseli, offering a vivid portrait of eighteenth-century London artistic and social life.
Smith provides an intimate, often critical portrait of the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, whose "mean miserliness" and professional success formed a startling contrast. The narrative highlights Nollekens’s interactions with Johnson, who famously remarked that Nollekens could "chop a head out as well as any of them" and sat for a bust characterized by its "loading with hair" modeled from a beggar’s locks. Boswell appears as a frequent visitor to the studio, notably receiving a "well-earned snub" from Nollekens for commenting on the sculptor's dirtiness. The text explores the rivalry between Nollekens’s wife, Mary, and Piozzi for Johnson's attention, and details the domestic parsimony of the Mortimer Street household, where Johnson often visited. Smith chronicles the production of various busts—including those of Johnson, Fox, and Pitt—and records the sculptor's lack of intellectual depth despite his artistic genius.
Michael Johnson and the Early Bookselling Trade
Michael Johnson, father of Johnson, served as a vital conduit for literature in the Staffordshire Moorlands through an itinerant bookselling business. Michael operated stalls in various towns, offering a diverse catalogue of choice books on law, mathematics, and divinity. Johnson spent two years working in this business and acquired the craft of bookbinding. A notable incident involves Johnson refusing to attend Michael's stall at Uttoxeter, an act of pride that later prompted a famous display of expiatory penance. In old age, Johnson stood bareheaded in the Uttoxeter market-place to atone for this disobedience. Philological observations defend provincialisms used in Johnson's native district, such as insense, which legal counsel often mocks despite its Shakespearian roots. The shift in meanings for terms like wench and maid illustrates the evolution of the English tongue from the era of Michael and Johnson to the present day.
CGV entry 3:72. An abbreviated biography of Johnson's father is included.
Taylor provides an anecdotal account of his interactions with prominent eighteenth-century figures, focusing particularly on vindicating his grandfather, the Chevalier Taylor, against the "insolent abuse" and "illiberal" descriptions provided by Johnson, as recorded by Boswell. Taylor attributes Johnson’s hostility to envy, specifically regarding the Chevalier's superior colloquial Latinity, noting that "he who was a sloven was no doubt mortified to be excelled by a beau." The text details Johnson’s occasional "rough asperity" and "dogmatical" nature, while acknowledging his high standing among the literati. Taylor recounts an instance where Johnson allegedly questioned the importance of the birth of George III, though Johnson later "accepted a pension from the king whom he thus affected to despise." Boswell appears as a "jovial" and "good-humoured" companion, possessing a "kind of jovial bluntness" and an "inexhaustible" store of anecdotes. Taylor notes Boswell’s lingering "jacobitism" and his habit of seeking city connections for professional advancement.
A New York edition followed in 1833.
CGV entry 3:73. Johnson appears especially in 1:231–35, Boswell in 1:214–16.
Lives of Eminent and Illustrious Englishmen from Alfred the Great to the Latest Times
Johnson occupies a preeminent position as the "brightest ornament of the 18th century." Born to Michael Johnson, a Litchfield bookseller with Jacobite leanings, he inherited principles later reflected in his own worldview. After receiving a rudimentary education, including a formative visit to Sacheverel, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728. Financial hardship forced his withdrawal without a degree, leading to a period of "painful struggle" as an usher and later as a translator in Birmingham. Following his marriage to Porter and the failure of his Edial academy, Johnson traveled to London with Garrick to pursue a literary career. He achieved initial fame through his poem "London" and his biographical account of Savage. His monumental achievement, the Dictionary, occupied eight years of labor and established his reputation, despite the "frigid" reception of his patron, Chesterfield. Subsequent major works include The Rambler, Rasselas, and an edition of Shakespeare. His later years were marked by his influential circle of friends, including Boswell, and his pension from George III. The text concludes with an evaluation of his robust intellectual character, characterized by multifarious knowledge, a "haughty confidence," and a style that is "copious without selection, and forcible without neatness."
CGV entry 3:74. A new edition, 'A History of England ... in the Lives of Englishmen', was published in London and Edinburgh by A. Fullarton in 1853.
Malden traces the life of Johnson from his birth in Lichfield to his interment in Westminster Abbey, emphasizing the persistent struggle between his powerful mind and a body "tainted by disease." The narrative details Johnson’s "miserably poor" years at Oxford, his failed attempts at teaching, and his 1737 move to London with Garrick. Malden focuses on Johnson’s labor for the Gentleman’s Magazine and the arduous creation of the Dictionary, which established his reputation despite an "ignorance of the cognate Teutonic languages." The text highlights Johnson’s "independent spirit" in repudiating Chesterfield and his facility in composing Rasselas to defray funeral expenses. Malden identifies the 1763 meeting with Boswell as a pivotal event leading to the "most lively and vivid picture ever given by one man of another." The account mentions Johnson's domestication with Thrale and his skepticism regarding Macpherson’s Ossian. Malden concludes that while Johnson’s conversation was "deformed by an assumption of superiority," his character remained fundamentally "affectionate and humane," supported by an "ardent piety" despite a life "overshadowed by much gloom."
Johnson’s life is presented as a testament to the efficacy of early religious training, which anchored his "violent passions" and "independent spirit." Born in Lichfield in 1709, Johnson’s early years were marked by scholastic brilliance and intense poverty, notably at Pembroke College, Oxford, where his lack of footwear became a symbol of his proud struggle. His professional life in London was a "history of trials," wandering the streets with Savage before achieving fame with London and his monumental Dictionary. The text highlights Johnson’s political conservatism and his robust defense of Church hierarchy and the rights of patrons, which he viewed as essential for social order. Despite a constitutional melancholy that induced a "dread of death," Johnson's final days were marked by spiritual serenity. He shifted his focus from "penance" to an exclusive reliance on the "propitiation of Jesus Christ," concluding a life dedicated to the promotion of virtue and the defense of the national Church.
Smith reconstructs a chronological tapestry of London’s shifting topographical and social landscape from 1766 to 1833, anchoring his narrative in the evolution of Marylebone, Tottenham Court Road, and the metropolitan suburbs. This monograph functions as a repository of "anecdotes as debts due to the public," recording the transition of rural pastures into urban centers. Smith grants particular attention to Johnson, documenting his "Busby-wig," his "awkwardly sprawling" gait, and a specific physical altercation with a thief in Grosvenor Square. Johnson appears as a frequent patron of Nollekens’s studio, where he encourages the youthful Smith’s artistic efforts. The text delineates Boswell’s inclusion of the highwayman Rann and chronicles the decline of Marylebone Gardens, where Johnson was a known visitor. Piozzi is briefly situated within the literary milieu of the Mathew family and the professional orbit of Mrs. Siddons and Garrick. Smith employs personal recollection to preserve the "heterogenous dish" of 18th-century life, emphasizing the "majestic mien" of the era’s figures and the "vast improvements" in English arts. The text provides specific dates for theatrical performances and detailed accounts of the "sixteen-string-Jack" execution.
Smith's chronological collection of biographical papers and personal reminiscences includes several interactions with Johnson and his circle. Smith recalls being patted on the head as a boy by Johnson while the latter sat for a portrait bust in the studio of Joseph Nollekens. The narrative records Johnson's high estimation of Nollekens's artistic abilities, noting "I think my friend Joe Nollekens can chop out a head with any of them." Smith describes Johnson's physical appearance and provides a detailed account of an argument between Johnson and Joshua Reynolds regarding the "wonderful power of the human eye." The text includes a transcribed letter from Molesworth Phillips recounting Johnson's active participation in this debate while consuming "twenty-four cups of tea." Additionally, Smith documents the involvement of Boswell and Johnson in contemporary social circles, such as their presence at Tom Davies's home, and notes the 1784 death of Johnson. The volume briefly mentions Piozzi in relation to her anecdotes concerning Johnson.
Lives of Men of Letters and Science Who Flourished in the Time of George III
This biographical collection analyzes the intellectual contributions of major 18th-century figures, focusing extensively on Johnson’s literary style and personal character. Brougham argues that the abundance of biographical material for Johnson, primarily preserved through Boswell’s records of his conversation, reveals a mind governed by rigorous common sense and a swift perception of truth. The text evaluates Johnson’s major works, describing the Dictionary as a monument of individual industry and criticizing the Rambler for its monotonous, balanced periods. Brougham emphasizes Johnson’s polemical powers in his political pamphlets while noting that his occasional prejudices, such as those against Milton or Lord Chesterfield, were exacerbated by a constitutionally irritable temperament.
CGV entry 3:79.
This monograph provides a streamlined biographical account of Samuel Johnson, intended as an "ample manual" for readers lacking the leisure for more exhaustive studies. Russell acknowledges a heavy reliance on the work of Boswell but incorporates additional material from diverse sources to create a new "arrangement" of the subject's life. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's character as a "great Moralist," presenting his life through a series of "remarkable anecdotes and sayings" curated for their instructional value. Editorial policy focuses on the "chief events" of the subject's history, stripping away the perceived density of earlier biographies to ensure the text serves as a portable memorial. The work concludes with an extensive "Advertisement" and an appendix consisting of an index and a catalog of contemporaneous publications by James Burns, which highlights the book’s placement within a series of popular "Lives of Englishmen" and "Old Story-Tellers." Russell’s approach is characterized by a high degree of selectiveness, aiming to present a version of Johnson that aligns with mid-Victorian pedagogical standards while preserving the "originality" of the subject's wit. The edition functions as both a historical record and a tool for moral improvement, typical of 19th-century clerical scholarship.
CGV entry 3:80. A derivative work.
Johnson, His Contemporaries and Biographers
This extensive review article evaluates recent publications by Lord Brougham and the Rev. J. F. Russell, using them as a springboard for a deep critical analysis of Johnson’s life, his biographers, and his literary legacy. The text identifies various factual errors in existing scholarship, corrects historical anachronisms, and offers a comparative defense of Johnson’s critical judgment against the more enthusiastic Shakespearean eulogists of the 19th century. Boswell's biography remains the "unrivalled" mine of information for Johnson, yet editors such as Croker and Brougham leave various obscurities unelucidated. Boswell erroneously attributes an anecdote regarding Ignatius Loyola to Turselinus, when the subject was actually Francis Xavier. Johnson's Messiah invocation likely draws from the Catholic Mass prayer "Munda cor meum" rather than solely from Virgil or Isaiah. While Brougham prefers Voltaire's Candide, Johnson's Rasselas stands as a "not unsuccessful rival." Johnson's Shakespearean notes are "judicious and discerning," avoiding the "unqualified and indiscriminate admiration" typical of contemporary critics. Though Johnson's language regarding Americans is "inexcusable," his abhorrence of Negro slavery and his "indignant reproval of the misrule of Ireland" reflect humane principles. The Lives of the Poets remains his best performance; despite charges of prejudice, Johnson places Paradise Lost on a level equal to or higher than the Iliad. The work compares favorably to the critical outputs of La Harpe, Ginguéné, and Schlegel.
CGV entry 3:81.
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: By an Octogenarian
Roche provides an extensive review of the biographical legacy surrounding Johnson, focusing primarily on the unrivaled merit of the biography by Boswell. The reviewer disputes the notion that Boswell’s success resulted from a contrast of act and mind or slender endowments, asserting instead that Johnson remains indebted to Boswell for the enduring preservation of his fame. While Roche acknowledges the value of the dictionary as a model for the English language, he identifies significant factual errors in the existing commentaries by Croker and others. The review challenges Brougham’s own accuracy regarding Latin prosody and historical dates, specifically pointing out a misrepresentation of Johnson’s imitation of Juvenal. Roche further contrasts Johnson’s Rasselas with the work of Voltaire and examines Johnson’s political views on Ireland and America. The review concludes by defending Johnson’s Lives of the Poets against modern critics, though it notes his prejudices against Milton and Swift. Roche maintains that the biography reflects Johnson as in a mirror, capturing every physical and mental lineament.
CGV entry 3:81. Privately printed.
Biographical Sketches of Eminent British Poets, Intended for Teachers and the Higher Classes in Schools
Commissioners on National Education in Ireland
A biographical sketch of Johnson, emphasizing his moral character and "true Christian piety." The narrative traces his life from his birth in Lichfield to his emergence as a dominant literary figure in London, noting that his "powerful body" and "mind of uncommon force" were perpetually "tainted by disease" and "oppressive melancholy." Frost highlights Johnson's "morbid conscientiousness" and his reliance on religious discipline to combat "indolence" and "vortex of pleasure." Significant attention is given to his "heroic magnanimity" toward the poor and his role as a "faithful monitor" to associates. The text describes Boswell as a "necessary" reporter and Piozzi as an "attractive species of Boswell" who appreciated Johnson's intellect. Frost concludes that Johnson’s legacy as a "great master of common sense" is inseparable from his "fervent devotion" and his struggle to maintain a "conscience void of offence" throughout his literary career.
CGV entry 3:83. Reprinted from 'Lives of Eminent Christians' (1850).
Literary Anecdotes and Contemporary Reminiscences, of Professor Porson and Others
Porson, an eminent classical scholar, displayed a prodigious memory developed by his father and later cultivated at Eton and Cambridge. Despite his intellect, Porson resigned his Fellowship over theological scruples, suffering poverty before his election as Greek Professor. Anecdotes highlight his wit, extraordinary memory—claiming he never remembered anything he did not transcribe three times—and eccentric habits, including heavy drinking. The collection also touches on the Johnson circle; Porson emphatically deemed Johnson "Guilty—Death" regarding his complicity in the Lauder controversy, noting Johnson's silence in the Life of Milton proved his deception.
CGV entry 3:84. Johnson and Robert Potter; criticism of Croker's Boswell; Johnson on Milton. See volume 1, pages 1–2, 46-49; and volume 2, page 8.
The Boyhood of Great Men: Intended as an Example to Youth
Edgar chronicles Johnson’s formative years, highlighting the tension between his "tenacious" memory and his physical "disfigurement" from scrofula. Born to Michael Johnson, a "fair Latin scholar" and bookseller, Johnson was "cradled and nurtured" in high Church and Jacobite principles. He demonstrated an early "jealous independence of spirit" and a habit of "jealous independence," once attempting to beat a schoolmistress who followed him for his safety. Despite his "natural indolence," Johnson’s "ambition to excel" drove him to master Latin through "flogging" and extensive reading of romances. He entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728, where he suffered "extreme" poverty—famously "indignantly throwing away" a new pair of shoes left at his door. Financial insolvency forced his return to Lichfield in 1731 without a degree, leading to a period of "despair" before he eventually secured literary fame in London. Edgar focuses on Johnson as a "brightest ornament" of his century, whose character was defined by a "proud independence of spirit" that "subdue[d] adverse fortune."
CGV entry 3:86. The New York edition was published in 1855.
CGV entry 3:87. Contains a biography of Samuel Johnson.
Diary of a Visit to England in 1775, by an Irishman
Campbell’s Diary of a Visit to England in 1775 contains candid, vivid entries detailing Samuel Johnson’s appearance and conversations. It describes his eccentricities, such as his "awkward garb" and "Devils jig." The content includes Johnson’s jokes abusing Scots, notably stating they were like "negros & Jews" in clannishness. The diary also documents Johnson’s harsh political views, such as advocating burning American towns. It offers an external comparison to Boswell’s reportage.
CGV entry 3:88. Extracts were printed in G. B. Hill's 'Johnsonian Miscellanies' (1897).
Dr. Campbell's Diary of a Visit to England in 1775
Clifford rediscovered the original manuscript, which had been previously lost or known only through an obscure, censored 1854 Australian edition. The rediscovery and scholarly editing were crucial, as earlier suspicion existed that the Johnsonian anecdotes were a hoax, or simply too similar to Boswell's accounts. This work established the diary as an independent source for Johnson's conversations.
CGV entry 3:88. With an introduction by S. C. Roberts.
This enthusiastic review celebrates Samuel Raymond's Sydney-printed edition of a newly discovered diary by Thomas Campbell, recovered from behind an old press in the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The reviewer traces the manuscript's provenance to Campbell's nephew who emigrated in 1810. The abstract of the diary highlights Campbell's interactions with London society in 1775 and 1781, providing an independent record of dinners with Johnson, James Boswell, and Giuseppe Baretti. The review uses Campbell's notes to correct a chronological blunder by John Wilson Croker, John Bowyer Nichols, and John Forster, who mistook Samuel Musgrave for Campbell. It features Campbell's candid descriptions of Johnson's physical eccentricities, their fiery debate over Irish loyalty, and portraits of contemporary figures like David Garrick, John Wilkes, and William Dodd.
CGV entry 3:88. Review by Henry Reeve of the 1854 edition of Thomas Campbell's diary, edited by Samuel Raymond.
Chapman praises Clifford's edition of Campbell's Diary, noting its recovery of the verbatim manuscript, which establishes authenticity and corrects bowdlerization by earlier editors. Campbell's diary is readable and valuable primarily for twenty pages of Johnsoniana. Chapman discusses a passage concerning an anecdote about Johnson, originally told by Murphy, questioning its shakiness and arguing that the sense of the dictum is innocent, even if the phrasing is not.
CGV entry 3:88.
The Triumphs of Perseverance and Enterprise: Recorded as Examples for the Young
Cooper profiles Johnson as a model of indefatigable effort against poverty and physical disability. Johnson leaves college without a degree due to "sheer poverty" and faces repeated rejections, including a teaching position denied because of his "peculiar nervous and involuntary gestures." He endures extreme privation in London, once wandering the streets with only "fourpence-halfpenny" between himself and a companion. Despite these "repeated disappointments," Johnson maintains a "resolution to continue the struggle for fame." He executes the "exhausting labour" of his Dictionary over many years while simultaneously producing the Rambler. Johnson asserts that "a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it". His career culminates in his role as the "great arbiter of literary criticism," receiving royal recognition and scholarly honors in his final decades.
A critical analysis of Johnson disputes Sterling’s characterization of the lexicographer as a "prejudiced, emphatic pedant" lacking "serene joy." Johnson’s perceived gloom and morbidity spring from constitutional disease and a profound intellectual recognition of human misery rather than religious bigotry. The strength of his intellect is proved by the "control which it exercised over his temperament." Although his style is occasionally "stilted" or "pompous," his critical observations on Milton, Dryden, and Pope possess "intrinsic value" and "immeasurable superiority" over modern, "misty" disquisitions. In a comparison with Burke, Johnson appears as a "lazy, slumbering giant" who excels in wit and "individual sentences" but yields to Burke in "power of generalisation" and "exuberance of fancy." Boswell is noted for his "patience" and for preserving the rich specimens of conversation that constitute the "truest revelation" of Johnson's powers.
CGV entry 3:90. A memoir of Johnson, reprinted from 'The Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett' (1855).
Johnson's Lives of the British Poets: Completed by William Hazlitt
Hazlitt provides a comprehensive biographical sketch of Johnson, tracing his trajectory from his 1709 birth in Lichfield to his emergence as the dominant figure of English letters. The narrative emphasizes Johnson’s early struggles with constitutional melancholy and poverty, which forced his departure from Pembroke College, Oxford, without a degree. Hazlitt highlights key literary milestones, including the 1738 publication of London, his extensive contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine, and his 1744 Life of Savage. The account details Johnson’s editorial efforts, specifically his work on the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare, noting his shift from "friendless and uncourtly scholar" to a pensioned man of letters. Particular focus is given to Johnson’s critical legacy in the Lives of the Poets, which Hazlitt describes as a body of criticism "never equalled for justice, acuteness, and elegance," despite Johnson’s controversial political prejudices against figures like Milton. The text concludes by noting the "unrivalled splendour" of Johnson’s late career and his 1784 death.
CGV entry 3:92. Revised for the 11th edition (1910) by Thomas Seccombe. A bibliography was supplied by S. C. Roberts for the 14th edition (1929). It was also separately printed in many other editions.
Samuel Johnson: Étude sur sa vie et sur ses principaux ouvrages
Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers: To Which Is Added Porsoniana
Captures Rogers's firsthand accounts of literary and political figures over two generations, offering insights into his writing, which included the acclaimed Human Life. Rogers discusses composing his poems, comments on Johnson's circle, and critiques figures like Young and Churchill. A final section, Porsoniana, contains anecdotes about the scholar Porson, sourced from Rogers's friend Maltby, detailing Porson's erratic behavior and scholarship.
CGV entry 3:95. Contains miscellaneous anecdotes.
Elwin explores Boswell's paradox and challenges the traditional view of him as an unintelligent buffoon. The analysis highlights his deliberate pursuit of Johnson and his relentless dedication to biographical truth, distinguishing his work from rivals like Hawkins. His achievement rests on his singular literary method, transforming copious journal entries and conversations into an enduring dramatic narrative. The essay acknowledges his social flaws and excessive ambition while affirming the sincerity of his literary vocation, concluding his genius lay in artistic fidelity and uncompromising self-revelation.
CGV entry 3:96. Reprinted from the Quarterly Review (1858).
Johnson is examined as the supreme literary dictator and moral philosopher of his age. Elwin analyzes his rigorous critical methods, particularly in the Lives, and the enduring cultural influence of his Dictionary. He addresses the contrast between his public image of moral severity and the complexities of his private life, often distorted by contemporaries like Piozzi. His profound personal struggles and intellectual contributions are re-evaluated, asserting his lasting significance as a voice of robust English common sense, deeply rooted in High Tory principles.
CGV entry 3:97. Reprinted from the Quarterly Review (1859).
Autobiography of Miss Cornelia Knight, Lady Companion to the Princess Charlotte of Wales
Knight recounts interactions with Boswell and Piozzi during her residency in Italy and England. She describes Boswell's social conduct and provides anecdotes regarding his literary activities and personality. Knight documents her acquaintance with Piozzi, formerly Hester Thrale, detailing their meetings in Italy following Piozzi’s marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The narrative includes specific anecdotes concerning Piozzi's reception in Italian society and her later life in England. Knight characterizes Piozzi as possessing "uncommon talents" and discusses her literary reputation. The text records social gatherings involving these figures and reflects Knight's observations of their characters within the context of European and English high society. Knight offers a firsthand account of the social circles surrounding these prominent Johnsonian figures, noting Boswell's "wit and cheerfulness" and Piozzi's intellectual engagements.
CGV entry 3:98. Chapter 1 has many anecdotes of Johnson and his circle.
Montrose and Other Biographical Sketches
Winsor offers a character sketch of Johnson, arguing that while his writings have "gone out of fashion," Boswell’s biography ensures his enduring appeal due to his "fulness of manhood." Characterizing Johnson as a "large man" possessing "central veracity," Winsor explores his "seeming contradictions," such as his simultaneous support for social hierarchy and his deep recognition of the "brotherhood of man." The narrative reviews Johnson’s relationships with figures like Burke, Goldsmith, and Garrick, and highlights his "lordly indifference" to public criticism. Winsor emphasizes Johnson’s practical charities, noting that his home served as a "hospital of incurables" for those who would otherwise be lost. Significant attention is given to Johnson’s religious fearlessness and his humor, which Winsor describes as a "uniting element" that reconciled his personal sufferings with his "pure and perfect love" for London. The work concludes by presenting Johnson as the "completest" representative of the English national character.
Reports the discovery of the marriage entry for Johnson's parents, Michell Johnsones and Sara Ford, in the register of Packwood church, Warwickshire. The verbatim copy of the entry is provided.
CGV entry 3:100.
Michael Johnson of Lichfield: The First Book Printed at Birmingham: Wollaston, Author of The Religion of Nature Delineated
On Michael Johnson and rare books bearing his Lichfield imprint, including a 1719 "Exposition of the Revelations." It confirms Michael Johnson's identity as Samuel Johnson’s father and speculates on why a 1710 sermon by Binckes was printed in London rather than in Birmingham, suggesting Birmingham lacked a capable printing press at that time. The earliest discovered book printed in Birmingham dates to 1717.
CGV entry 3:101.
The MS Journal of Captain E. Thompson, R.N., 1783 to 1785
Analyzes a discovered manuscript journal kept by Thompson from 1783 to 1785, detailing his naval commands, domestic life, and extensive social circle in London. It explores Thompson’s interactions with notable figures, including Johnson, whom the journal portrays as a close acquaintance. Thompson’s journal provides a parody of Dryden’s lines on 'three poets' to celebrate the philosopher's stature. Thompson evaluates Johnson’s prose style as a model for his own, though his attempts at semi-Johnsonian antithesis often result in stilted reflections that fail to distinguish the virtues of the original from its faults. The journal focuses on Johnson’s mental state, specifically critiquing his 'credulity.' Thompson contrasts his own social life and literary 'potterings' with personal tragedies, including his wife’s lunacy, while recording Johnson’s presence in London’s social and intellectual circles during his final years. The account documents Thompson’s naval missions alongside his interactions with Wilkes and others in Johnson's sphere. The text notes Thompson’s observations on Johnson’s credulity and the philosopher’s influence on Thompson's own prose style. It details Thompson’s naval missions to Africa and Madeira while concurrently highlighting his literary pursuits, specifically his prolific production of mediocre verse and sketches of London characters. The account evaluates the journal’s portrayal of contemporary social depravity, Thompson’s political bias as a staunch Tory, and his critical views of Fox and Sheridan. It also recounts Thompson’s personal tragedies, including his wife’s lunacy and his sister’s illness, alongside his relationship with a woman named Emma. The text assesses Thompson’s professional reports on African colonization and his contributions to naval signaling.
CGV entry 3:102. Contains reminiscences of Johnson in 1784, including his death and funeral.
Specific location and date for the marriage of Johnson and Elizabeth Porter. A copy from the parish register of St. Werburgh's church, Derby, confirms the marriage took place on July 9, 1735. Johnson is listed as being from St. Mary's parish, Lichfield, and Porter is from St. Phillip's parish, Birmingham.
CGV entry 3:103.
Stephen chronicles the life and literary significance of Johnson, framing him as the first man to make professional authorship respectable. The narrative traces Johnson's trajectory from his "complicated misery" as a school usher and his early struggles in Grub Street to his eventual ascension as the "great Cham of Literature." Stephen examines Johnson's physical and psychological burdens, particularly his lifelong battle with hypochondria and the "demon of melancholy." Significant focus is placed on Johnson's major achievements, including the Dictionary, the Rambler, and the Lives of the Poets. Stephen disputes the notion that Johnson was merely a "harmless drudge," highlighting his "keen logical faculty of definition." The work also details Johnson's complex social network, exploring his "curious adhesiveness" to friends like Taylor and his paternal relationship with Goldsmith. Stephen provides a critical assessment of Johnson's prose, noting its "Latinized abstractions" and occasional "mechanical spasmodic action," while maintaining that his best writing reflects the "concentrated essence of strong sense and deep feeling" found in his conversation. Regarding Boswell, Stephen challenges common criticisms by asserting that "adoration never hindered accuracy of portraiture" in his biographical method. The account concludes with Johnson’s final years, marked by a "peculiar horror of death" and his eventual burial in Westminster Abbey. Chapter 1, 'Childhood and Early Life,' delineates the formative impact of physical infirmity and inherited hypochondria upon a youth of prodigious memory and desultory study. Chapter 2, 'Literary Career,' examines the transition from the "complicated misery" of school-teaching to the precarious existence of a Grub Street professional, culminating in the Dictionary's authoritative success. Chapter 3, 'Johnson and His Friends,' analyzes how established social circles and conversational dominance mitigated the "valetudinary" gloom of a man whose rugged exterior masked intense tenderness. Chapter 4, 'Johnson as a Literary Dictator,' details the post-pension period where conversational supremacy at the Literary Club solidified a monarchical status within the English Republic of Letters. Chapter 5, 'The Closing Years of Johnson's Life,' chronicles the physical decline and social isolation following the Thrale bereavement, emphasizing a persistent, acute horror of mortality. Chapter 6, 'Johnson's Writings,' evaluates a literary corpus defined by massive common sense and a rhythmic, Latinized style that favored general species over individual particulars. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the monograph's value as a concise, objective summary versus its status as a second-hand abridgment marred by factual and clerical errors. Prominent British reviews offer qualified praise; an unsigned piece in the Saturday Review commends the acute structural analysis of the subject's transparent style, but corrects biographical blunders regarding the age of the subject's wife and burial location. Unsigned assessments in the Pall Mall Gazette and The Examiner celebrate the volume's solid judgment and luminous sketches of the eighteenth century, arguing the text surpasses previous essays by grasping deeper layers of character and portraying the figure as a noble disciple of Socrates rather than an object of apologetic worship. In America, Dicey, in the Nation, provides a substantial review noting that the text effectively concentrates the essence of existing records into a few hundred pages for a modern audience that shares the subject's practical moral outlook, while the Atlantic Monthly labels it a readable, picturesque condensation for a general audience rather than a product of original research. Conversely, a severe review in the Westminster Review attacks the revival of interest as an epidemic of admiration, characterizing such summaries as redundant, second-hand dilutions that bear compression poorly and fail to mask a coarse, dogmatic, and ferocious social nature. Finally, regional notices in the Madras Weekly Mail challenge the biographer's critical coldness and inaccurate transcriptions, while the Chicago Daily Tribune, Hartford Daily Courant, and Detroit Free Press recommend the text as a profitable, compact, and masculine narrative.
CGV entry 3:104. Often reprinted.
Reviews: Atlantic Monthly (November 1878); John Chapman, Westminster Review 55, no. 1 (1879): n. pag.–39; Chicago Daily Tribune, July 20, 1878; Detroit Free Press, August 20, 1878; A. V. Dicey, The Nation, November 21, 1878; Hartford Daily Courant, July 18, 1878; Madras Weekly Mail, September 4, 1878; Northern Whig, July 1, 1878; Pall Mall Gazette, July 1, 1878; San Francisco Chronicle, June 16, 1878; Saturday Review, June 29, 1878; The Examiner, June 15, 1878; The Spectator 51, no. 2607 (1878): 759–60.
Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century
Twining offers extensive commentary on Johnson, primarily regarding his literary criticism and personal reputation. In correspondence with Burney, Twining disputes Johnson's "Anti-Grayism" and his rejection of the "metaphysical" poets, while simultaneously maintaining that Johnson is "always entertaining, never trite or dull." Twining admits to honoring Johnson through frequent quotations but describes his poetical taste as "both borne and prejudiced." He particularly targets Johnson's preference for Dryden's odes over Gray's "The Bard." Upon Johnson's death, Twining receives Burney's accounts of the "unworthy" funeral and Hawkins's controversial allegations regarding Johnson's early profligacy. Twining also discusses Boswell's "Life of Johnson," noting its "singular" and "silly" qualities while finding the record of Johnson's conversation "highly amusing." Briefly mentioning Piozzi (as Mrs. Thrale), Twining recounts her 1774 visit to Gwaynynog with Johnson. Twining concludes that while Johnson lacks "the esprit philosophique," his "originalities of thought" ensure he never "lets you gape."
CGV entry 3:105. Contains frequent references to Johnson, especially a detailed account of his funeral on pages 128–129.
Our Great Benefactors: Short Biographies of the Men and Women Most Eminent in Literature, Science ...
This collective biography includes a profile of Johnson, focusing on his moral character and the "rugged tenderness" beneath his "uncouth, repellent exterior." The narrative emphasizes Johnson's lifelong repentance for an act of boyish disobedience to his father, michael, culminating in his famous penance at the Uttoxeter market-place. Johnson appears as a figure of "heroic unselfishness" who lived in poverty to support others, dedicating the majority of his pension to charitable ends and housing the destitute. The text highlights his domestic life, noting his forbearance toward his wife, Tetty, and his enduring grief after her death. Johnson represents a "Titanic" spirit who achieved sublimity through sickness and destitution. Hester Piozzi, identified as Mrs. Thrale, provides testimony to Johnson’s unique love for the poor. James Boswell receives mention as the author of the "first of biographies" which preserved Johnson’s history for posterity.
Doctor Johnson: His Life, Works and Table Talk
Macaulay presents a biographical tribute and thematic compendium of Johnson’s conversation to commemorate the 1784 centenary of his death. The text argues that Johnson’s enduring fame rests primarily upon his moral character and conversational powers as recorded by Boswell, rather than his authored works, which Macaulay describes as stylistically ponderous and out of step with modern taste. Macaulay details Johnson’s early struggles with penury, his domestic circle of dependents in Bolt Court, and his eventual financial security through a government pension. The table talk section provides curated anecdotes regarding Johnson’s prejudices against Scotland, his religious devotions, and his interactions with figures such as Wilkes, Garrick, and Wesley. Macaulay concludes with an account of Johnson’s shift toward evangelical theology during his final illness.
Johnsoniana: Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, by Mrs. Piozzi, Richard Cumberland, Bishop Percy and others, together with the Diary of Dr. Campbell and extracts from that of Madame d'Arblay. Newly collected and edited by Robina Napier
A compilation of contemporary accounts, "newly collected and edited." It gathers major sources: Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, Dr. Campbell's Diary, and extracts from Madame D'Arblay's Diary. It also includes shorter reminiscences from Bishop Percy, Richard Cumberland, Hawkins, Tyers, and others. The book's implicit argument is that Johnson's character is a mosaic. It argues that a complete portrait requires moving beyond a single biographer (Boswell) and synthesizing these varied, fragmented, and sometimes conflicting firsthand perspectives. The structure itself—grouping these different voices—argues that Johnson's personality is best understood as the sum of these "anecdotes" from his entire circle.
CGV entry 3:108. This is Volume 5 of her husband's edition of Boswell's 'Life'. Subsequent editions in 1889 and 1892.
On the obscurity surrounding Johnson’s life between his withdrawal from Pembroke College in 1731 and his 1736 marriage. It presents a 1732 or 1733 letter from the Rev. J. Addenbrooke to Thomas Whitby, revealing an attempt to secure Johnson a half-year tutorship for Whitby’s son at Heywood. The letter praises Johnson as an excellent scholar but notes his need for quick employment, suggesting a desperate effort to alleviate his poverty.
CGV entry 3:109.
Bolton presents a biographical sketch of Johnson, tracing his trajectory from the "dire poverty" of a bookseller's son to his standing as the "brightest ornament of the eighteenth century." The narrative emphasizes Johnson's early physical struggles with scrofula and near-blindness, his "wonderful memory," and his "greatest ambition to excel." Bolton highlights Johnson's lifelong "repentance of a noble soul" for an act of youthful disobedience toward his father, Michael, which he later redeemed through public penance at Uttoxeter. The text details his professional hardships, including his failed school venture, his period of living on nine cents a day in London, and the seven-year labor required to produce his Dictionary. Johnson appears as a figure of "heroic" benevolence who dedicated his pension to housing a "blind woman," a destitute family physician's relatives, and various "men whom nobody else would care for". Bolton records his domestic devotion to his wife, "Tetty", and his legendary tenderness toward animals, exemplified by his cat, Hodge. The text notes his associations with prominent contemporaries like Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick, though it contains no mention of Boswell or Piozzi.
Dawson characterizes Johnson's life as a "long stiff struggle with the difficulties of life" followed by an expansion in "fame, ease, and honour." The narrative traces Johnson’s development from his "dreary, common-place" home in Lichfield to his standing as England’s "most respected" man of letters. Dawson emphasizes Johnson’s physical burdens, including scrofula and hypochondria, and his early professional failures in Birmingham and as a schoolmaster. The account highlights Johnson’s "love-marriage" to the widow Mrs. Porter, who recognized his "splendid heart and genius" despite his "contemptible" appearance. Dawson details Johnson's London period of "ninepence" dinners and garret living, noting his fierce Tory principles and "mountainous prejudices." Key literary milestones mentioned include the Dictionary, produced in three years to prove that "one Englishman" equaled "forty Frenchmen," and the "medicinal" letter to Chesterfield, which "demolished" the system of patronage. Dawson also notes Johnson's conditional prayers for his deceased wife and his dominance in social clubs.
Grant presents a biographical narrative of Johnson, tracing his development from a schoolboy in Lichfield to a dominant literary figure in London. The volume details Johnson's early struggles with poverty and the "king's evil," his brief residency at Oxford, and his initial foray into literature with a translation of Lobo's voyage. Grant chronicles the composition of major works, including the English dictionary, the Rambler, and the Lives of the Poets, while examining Johnson's relationships with contemporaries such as Boswell, Reynolds, and the Thrales. The account highlights Johnson's "rugged demeanor" and his "sincere benevolence" toward impoverished authors. Grant disputes the accuracy of some of Boswell's dates, specifically regarding Johnson's length of stay at Oxford, and provides a geographic and social context for Johnson's life. Salient anecdotes include Johnson's "act of atonement" at Uttoxeter market and his encounter with George III, where Johnson noted it was not for him "to bandy civilities with my sovereign." The narrative concludes with a description of Johnson's final illness and his burial in Westminster Abbey. Chapter 1, 'Childhood and Early Life,' delineates a formative period defined by physical infirmity, prodigious memory, and desultory study under various masters, culminating in the decision to seek higher education. Chapter 2, 'Entered at Pembroke College, Oxford,' examines the brief, intellectually vibrant, yet financially unsustainable university career that preceded a precarious transition into the professional literary world. Chapter 3, 'Johnson in London,' chronicles the arduous struggle for stability in the capital, marked by the completion of Irene and the publication of London and the Life of Savage. Chapter 4, 'The Dictionary and Other Works,' details the monumental labor of the English Dictionary and the launch of The Rambler, ending with the security of a royal pension. Chapter 5, 'Introduced to Boswell,' focuses on the historic commencement of a legendary friendship and the establishment of social circles that would define his later years. Chapter 6, 'The Club,' describes the formation of the influential Turk's Head society and the enduring intimacy with Reynolds and the Thrales. Chapter 7, 'Welsh and French Tours,' narrates excursions that expanded his social and cultural horizons, alongside final forays into political pamphleteering. Chapter 8, 'Lives of the Poets,' evaluates the ultimate achievement of his literary criticism and the poignant decline leading to his final illness and death. Chapter 9, 'Johnson’s Character and Powers as a Critic,' provides a summative analysis of a temperament defined by high courage, profound piety, and massive intellectual authority.
Reproduces a letter from the Bermuda Gazette (1785).
CGV entry 3:113. See also a reply by Henry G. Hope in the same journal, October 4, 1890, page 274.
Stephen presents a detailed biography of Johnson, characterizing him as the "typical embodiment" of eighteenth-century English strength and prejudice. The account traces Johnson's life from his Lichfield origins and "miserably poor" Oxford days to his eventual "conversational empire" in London. Stephen highlights Johnson's "righteous hatred of slavery" and his "absolute independence of character" as the first author to live solely by his pen. Significant attention is paid to his 1735 marriage to Porter, described as a "love marriage on both sides" despite her status as a "little painted puppet" in the eyes of contemporaries. Stephen details the production of the Dictionary, the Rambler, and the Lives of the Poets, while exploring Johnson's complex domestic arrangements with Williams, Levett, and Barber. The narrative examines the "deeply distressed" period following Thrale's death and the "unjustifiable fury" Johnson directed at Piozzi upon her marriage to a "popish foreigner." Stephen emphasizes Johnson's "tenderness toward beggars and prostitutes," his "massive and keenly logical" intellect, and his "heroic victory" over constitutional melancholy and physical infirmity. The text concludes by identifying Johnson as a "determined pessimist" whose intellectual power and high morality secured him a unique status in British literature.
A collection of sayings and alternative biographies, assembled by George Birkbeck Hill, gathers non-Boswellian Johnsoniana into 2 vols. The work supplements Boswell with material formerly available only to diligent scholars. Contents include Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations, which Hill re-edited using original MSS from Pembroke College. It contains full biographies: SJ’s early Annals, Murphy’s Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson LL.D., and Piozzi’s Anecdotes, which Hill considered too fine to be extracted. The Miscellanies also incorporates extracts from Sir John Hawkins’s Life and Thomas Campbell’s Diary of a Visit to England in 1775. Hill provides copious, often discursive annotation. Hill collated the text of Prayers and Meditations, managing issues like SJ’s poor handwriting and erasures by the original editor, Strahan. The collection contributes significantly to the SJ canon. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the collection's scholarly rigor and its value as an indispensable supplement to Boswell. Stephen, in the National Review, commends the full apparatus of notes but maintains that the original biography remains the fixed datum for understanding the central subject, arguing that rival accounts lack a dramatic synthesis. In the Spectator, an unsigned review praises the meticulous indexing and asserts that these non-Boswellian sources provide essential side-lights that successfully humanize the writer's domestic habits and religious anxieties. An unsigned commentary in the Academy celebrates the publication as a necessary supplement, comparing the various minor contributors to a fleet of cockboats following the swell of Boswellian truth. Courtney, writing in the Academy, emphasizes the value of these numerous accounts in providing a complete view of character, specifically applauding the vividness of the primary female collection. E. G. J., in the Dial, lauds the editor's encyclopaedic knowledge and notes the inclusion of valuable, previously unpublished letters regarding literary property. Unsigned assessments in the New-York Tribune and the National Observer champion the collection's solid and versatile wisdom, noting that the compiled anecdotes purge errors and demonstrate an inflexible honesty. Finally, an unsigned notice in the Chicago Daily Tribune praises the reverence and care handled in processing the fragmentary materials, while Walker, in the TLS, welcomes a later reprint as an essential source for minor anecdotes despite noting some unfortunate editorial prejudices against a primary female biographer.
CGV entry 3:116.
Reviews: Chicago Daily Tribune, August 7, 1897; W. B. Courtney, The Academy, June 26, 1897; E. G. J., The Dial 23 (September 1897): 142–43; National Observer, and British Review of Politics, Economics, Literature, Science, and Art 18, no. 449 (1897): 313–14; New-York Tribune, August 1, 1897; Leslie Stephen, National Review 30, no. 175 (1897): 61–76; The Academy, June 26, 1897; The Spectator 79, no. 3611 (1897): 343–44; Keith Walker, TLS, no. 3411 (July 1967): 617.
Stephen examines Hill’s Johnsonian Miscellanies, arguing that while Hill provides a "full apparatus of notes," Boswell remains the "fixed datum" for understanding Johnson. The text analyzes the limitations of rival biographers, including the "malevolent" Hawkins and the "vivacious" Piozzi, whose Anecdotes provide an "admirable supplement" but lack Boswell’s dramatic synthesis. Stephen highlights Burney’s unique record of Johnson’s "fun and comical humour." He posits that Boswell’s genius lies in his "pathetic trust" in his subject and his ability to treat the Johnson circle as a "study of human life," rather than a collection of "detached and discontinuous" sayings.
CGV entry 3:116. Review by Leslie Stephen of the two-volume collection edited by G. B. Hill. See also a comment by J. D. Fleeman in The Times Literary Supplement, August 24, 1967, page 768.
Reprinted with a reply to Fitzgerald (Item 274) in Studies of a Biographer, I, 105–146. 4 vols. London: Duckworth and Co., 1898.
Stephen examines the supplementary biographical materials collected in George Birkbeck Hill's edition of Johnsonian Miscellanies. While acknowledging Boswell as the definitive source for Johnson, Stephen argues that figures like Piozzi, Hawkins, and Reynolds provide essential nuances. Stephen challenges the notion that Boswell captured the entirety of Johnson's character, suggesting that D'Arblay's diary better captures the subject's humor. The narrative disputes the harsh reputation of Hawkins, describing him instead as a dull, censorious representative of the middle class who nonetheless preserved anecdotes of Johnson's early festivities. Stephen also analyzes Reynolds's "imaginary conversations," noting how the painter's decorous tone softens Johnson's more vigorous expressions. Furthermore, Stephen highlights the "extraordinary antics" and physical contortions recorded by Frances Reynolds, which contrast with the dignified image of the Rambler. Stephen maintains that while Piozzi's anecdotes suffer from her personal alienation after her second marriage, they remain an admirable supplement to the Boswellian record. The account concludes with a defense of Hill's editorial accuracy against criticisms leveled by Percy Fitzgerald.
CGV entry 3:117. Largely a review of 'Johnsonian Miscellanies', edited by G. B. Hill.
Samuel Johnson's Father and Elizabeth Blaney
Bouchier discusses the romantic episode involving Michael Johnson and Elizabeth Blaney as recorded by Boswell. Blaney allegedly died of unrequited love for Michael Johnson in 1694 and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral. Bouchier cites J. B. Stone's 'History of Lichfield Cathedral' to confirm the existence of a memorial slab for Blaney in the nave, though the inscription date differs slightly from Boswell's account. The note laments the removal of this slab during cathedral restorations and inquires about its current location and potential for restoration. This inquiry explores the historical veracity of Boswell's narrative concerning Johnson's father and the preservation of associated monuments. The note provides evidence that the stone was situated near the west door of the nave.
CGV entry 3:119. See also John T. Page in the same journal, August 4, 1900, page 93.
CGV entry 3:120. See also the issue for July 13.
A Popular Sketch of Dr. Johnson's Life and Works
Cox presents a previously unpublished anecdote from the memoirs of Sophia Margaret Juliana Stuart regarding Johnson’s behavior at "Blue Stocking" assemblies hosted by Montagu and Vesey. Stuart describes Johnson’s reaction to Jenyns’s provocations concerning his prose style. Johnson burlesques his own "sesquipedalian verbiage" through an improvised, polysyllabic narrative. Upon Stuart’s verbatim repetition of the passage, Johnson exhibits boisterous physical affection and commands Lyttelton to reward the child. The account clarifies Johnson's capacity for self-caricature and his social interactions with Burney.
CGV entry 3:122. From the recollections of Mrs. Stuart.
The Autocrat: A Chronicle of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society
A Brief Account of the Early Life of Doctor Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 3:123. A talk given before the society.
Rowbotham's biographical narrative of Johnson emphasizes his persistent battle against poverty and physical infirmity. The account begins with Johnson’s 1737 journey to London with David Garrick and details his subsequent years as a Grub Street author. Rowbotham highlights Johnson’s psychological resilience during the compilation of his Dictionary, noted for its "stupendous character" and humorous definitions. The text portrays Johnson as a man of profound contradictions, possessing a "rough exterior" but a "tender heart" evidenced by his domestic charity toward figures like Robert Levett and Francis Barber. Rowbotham details significant milestones, including the rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s late-offered patronage and Johnson’s 1763 meeting with Boswell. The biography concludes with Johnson’s death in 1784, presenting him as an intellectual monarch whose enduring fame rests more upon his formidable "personality and sayings" than his written corpus.
Reade announces he is preparing a private volume exhaustively treating Johnson’s maternal ancestry and connections, which he argues have been poorly understood by biographers. He cites Birkbeck Hill’s "weak and inaccurate" footnotes and Leslie Stephen’s error in the D.N.B. regarding "Parson Ford" as examples of long-standing "fumbling" in Johnsonian history. Reade notes that in 1704, John Chattock married one of Johnson’s second cousins.
CGV entry 3:125. On Johnson's maternal ancestry.
A concise overview of Samuel Johnson's life and literary contributions. Dennis acknowledges that Johnson's contemporary fame now largely rests on Boswell's biography, which provides unparalleled insight into his personality. The book traces Johnson's life from his Lichfield birth, through his difficult education at Oxford marked by poverty, his marriage, and his arduous literary struggles in London. It covers the creation of major works like London, the Dictionary, The Vanity of Human Wishes, the Rambler, Rasselas, and his edition of Shakespeare. Dennis highlights Johnson's eventual financial security through his pension, his central role in the Literary Club, his complex character—marked by melancholy, wit, piety, and immense charity—and his famous friendships, particularly with the Thrales and Boswell. The latter part analyzes his works, noting the sincerity of his poetry, the literary merit of the Dictionary despite philological flaws, the moral weight but heaviness of the Rambler, the profound pessimism of Rasselas, and culminates in assessing the Lives of the Poets as the "high-water mark of criticism" of its time, strong in judgment but limited by Johnson's specific poetic tastes.
The Reades of Blackwood Hill, in the Parish of Horton, Staffordshire: A Record of Their Descendants: With a Full Account of Dr. Johnson's Ancestry, His Kinsfolk and Family Connexions
The Reades of Blackwood Hill, initially conceived as a family history, transformed into a foundational study of Johnson’s ancestry because of the discovery of an "immense mass of original evidence." Reade uses genealogical rigor to expand Johnson’s biographical context, solving puzzles previously unknown to biographers like Boswell. It is divided into two main parts: the Reade family history and a detailed account of Johnson’s kinsfolk. Reade established the identity of Johnson's maternal grandfather, Cornelius Ford, and corrected the birthplace of Johnson's mother, Sarah Ford. He documents the career of his father, Michael Johnson, and reveals the potential Skrymsher connection, linking Johnson to the influential Boothby family. A significant feature is the integration of these documentable facts with allusions from Johnson's writings, offering essential primary material for a scholarly understanding of his early life and complex family relationships. Chapter 1, 'Reade of Blackwood Hill, Horton,' addresses the earliest recorded history of the Reade family in Staffordshire, tracing their presence from 1484 through detailed genealogical evidence including sixteenth-century wills and land transactions. Chapter 2, 'Dudley of Uttoxeter, with Lathbury of Tatenhill, and Bott of Rocester,' examines the maternal lineage of the Reades, documenting the Dudley family through parish registers, university matriculations, and testamentary records spanning from the 1500s. Pedigree XXIX, 'Dr. Johnson's Maternal Ancestry,' argues that the Ford family occupied a higher social status than previously recognized, providing an exhaustive account of the lexicographer's kinsmen, associates, and early instructors. 'Introductory,' 'Henry Ford, Great-Grandfather of Dr. Johnson,' and 'Henry Ford, Junior, of Clifford's Inn and Birmingham' establish the genealogical foundation for Samuel Johnson’s maternal side, identifying previously unknown ancestors and their legal professions. 'Cornelius Ford, Dr. Johnson's Grandfather' addresses the life of a well-educated gentleman whose library reveals evangelical sympathies, while 'The Jessons of West Bromwich and Their Descendants' details extensive family networks . 'The Barnesleys of Trysull, and Mrs. Harriotts' addresses the family circle that left a lasting impression on Johnson, citing his own "Annals" to illustrate their social standing and regular habits . 'Dr. Joseph Ford, with an Account of Dr. Johnson's Connexion with Stourbridge' addresses the career of an "eminent" local physician whose marriage to a wealthy widow facilitated professional success. 'Dr. Johnson's Other Maternal Uncles' and 'The Rev. Cornelius Ford, M.A., Commonly Known as "Parson Ford"' address the influential yet licentious cousin who served as Johnson's early classical instructor. 'Sarah Ford, the Mother of Dr. Johnson' addresses her marriage to Michael Johnson, providing the first printed copy of their 1706 marriage settlement which reflects their initial prosperity . 'John and Phoebe Harrison, with Some Account of Their Descendants' and 'John and Mary Hardwicke' document additional maternal branches, including kinsmen noted for their eccentricities and professional standing. 'Michael Johnson: Some Fresh Light on His Career' addresses newly discovered details of his early life in Cubley and his nearly-realized marriage in Derby decades before marrying Sarah Ford. 'An Account of Andrew Johnson and His Family' addresses the life of the Birmingham bookseller, revealing his financial struggles and the failure of his son Thomas. 'Dr. Johnson's Godfathers,' 'Some Particulars of the Porters and Their Connexions, with Notes on Dr. Johnson's Schoolmasters,' and 'The Skrymshers of High Offley' address Johnson's extended social and family network. 'The Story of Elizabeth Blaney' addresses and discredits the traditional narrative of her romantic passion for Michael Johnson, instead suggesting her descent from Irish nobility.
Shorter reviews Reade’s genealogical findings regarding Michael Johnson and the Ford family. Shorter notes Reade challenges Seward’s romantic anecdote regarding Elizabeth Blaney, proving Blaney was an established domestic in Lichfield long before her death. Shorter details Michael Johnson’s failed marriage bond with Mary Neyld in 1686, suggesting this early disappointment contributed to his "vile melancholy." Shorter observes that while Johnson claimed to be of "mean extraction" and ignorant of his grandfather, Reade uncovers prestigious connections, including the Skrymshers and the fox-hunting Boothbys. Shorter explains that Johnson’s maternal relatives, the Fords, represented "substantial yeomanry" and professional classes, including the wealthy Crowley family. Shorter highlights Michael Johnson’s thirty-year career in the parchment trade and his 1718 legal indictment for tanning without a proper apprenticeship. Shorter suggests Johnson’s ignorance of his affluent cousins stemmed from the family’s decline from affluence to penury during his youth.
Lloyd notes discrepancies between accounts of Johnson’s visits to the Chelsea and Derby works, specifically comparing anecdotes in Old and New London with Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Johnson’s correspondence with Thrale regarding the cost and quality of Derby porcelain.
Reade dedicated over fifty years of his life to this effort, uncovering masses of material previously unknown. Gleanings focuses on Johnson's life to 1740. The scope was immense, dedicated to patient, accurate genealogical and historical research concerning Johnson's ancestors, kinsfolk, friends, and acquaintances. Reade's work uncovered masses of material previously unknown, establishing him as the absolute authority for Johnson's early years. The organization of the main volumes intentionally included the "hideous apparatus of research," featuring elaborate presentations of evidence, intricate arguments, and careful qualifications. However, Volume X was later produced as a narrative summary of the first forty years of Johnson's life, with the scholarly machinery removed from view. Since he rarely left his immediate neighborhood, he relied on others for information, making discovery after discovery solely through extensive correspondence with local antiquaries and scholars, effectively stretching out "long arms" to colleagues like L. F. Powell and R. W. Chapman. This exhaustive research method, using genealogical records, local histories, and court documents, allowed him to correct biographical errors concerning Johnson's early life and confirm previously obscure details. The project was capped by a Consolidated Index of Persons in the final volume (Part XI), providing an essential tool for subsequent researchers. Critics are generally favorable, praising the rigorous application of scientific and genealogical methods to biographical research. Chapman, in several reviews for the TLS, lauds the untiring industry and unfailing accuracy that lightened the labors of future editors, particularly appreciating the resolution of chronological disputes using college records. Writing in RES, Powell enthusiastically celebrates the work as a judicious summary beyond all praise, emphasizing how the re-examination of buttery books settled long-standing undergraduate timeline errors. Tinker's positive review in Modern Language Notes similarly commends the meticulous care that corrected traditional biographical misconceptions, proving that intermittent melancholia rather than mere poverty caused an early university departure. In a mixed assessment for the Spectator, Vulliamy challenges the dry, archaeological accumulation of details, arguing that the narrative reads like a commentary on parochial registers and overemphasizes hereditary ingredients. But Bennett (JEGP) maintains that the self-published volumes reflect a high degree of precision, bringing substantial new material to light regarding the subject's marriage and social network. Roberts, in MLR, praises the untiring thoroughness of the genealogical appendices and rich indexes, while Pottle's mixed review in Modern Language Notes balances admiration for the labor with amusement at an extreme methodology that tracks thin, tenuous family connections. Finally, Clifford, in PQ, commends the rigorous weighing of evidence as a reliable reference for serious scholars, even though the dense material lacks the color necessary to attract a popular audience.
CGV entry 3:131. In 11 parts, from 1909 to 1952. See D. Nichol Smith, Scottish Historical Review 20 (Jan. 1923): 142-44. Part 1, Notes on Dr. Johnson's ancestors and connexions and illustrative of his early life; Part 2, Francis Barber, the doctor's Negro servant; Part 3, The doctor's boyhood; Part 4, The doctor's boyhood: Appendices; Part 5, The doctor's life, 1728–1735; Part 6, The doctor's life, 1735-1740; Part 7, The Jervis, Porter, and other allied families; Part 8, A miscellany; part 9, A further miscellany; Part 10, Johnson's early life: the final narrative; Part 11, Consolidated index of persons: to parts 1 to 10, as well as to the Johnsonian portions of The Reades of Blackwood Hill and Dr. Johnson's ancestry.
F. H. compiles biographical anecdotes and descriptions of Johnsonian artifacts unrecorded by Boswell, drawing from the memoirs of Bishop Jebb and Frederick Reynolds. One account details Johnson’s initial kindness to a young Lichfield contemporary, contrasted with a second narrative describing his irascible dismissal of a persistent youthful poet as a "menagerie" inhabitant. The contributor further describes relics seen in 1825, including a Mudge watch formerly owned by Francis Barber, a marked 1650 pocket Bible, and a volume of South’s Sermons used for the Dictionary.
CGV entry 3:132. Anecdotes not found in Boswell.
Axon examines an anecdotal claim by Goodhugh regarding Johnson’s involvement in Alexander Strahan’s translation of the Aeneid. Citing the Earl of Buchan, Goodhugh suggests Johnson assisted Mallet in preparing the work while disparaging previous translators. Axon notes the absence of Strahan from Hill’s Boswellian index and highlights chronological inconsistencies in Buchan’s account. He observes that while Strahan’s 1767 edition acknowledges contributions from Mallet and Dobson, it remains silent regarding Johnson’s participation.
CGV entry 3:133.
Dr. Johnson's Ancestry: His Inheritance through His Mother
Sargisson investigates Johnson’s maternal lineage and ancestry, drawing heavily on Reade’s privately printed genealogical research in The Reades of Blackwood Hill to dispute Johnson's own disparaging remarks and assertions regarding his "mean extraction" and to challenge Boswell's brief description of Sarah Ford's family as merely an ancient race of yeomanry. Sargisson proves that Sarah Ford descended from substantial, well-to-do landowners, "gentlemen," and an "ancient race of yeomanry" of considerable local importance, and he argues that while Johnson inherited his "frame and physique" and "vile melancholy" from Michael Johnson, his "moral qualities," "intellectual force," and intellectual vigor were deeply rooted in the Ford stock. Tracking Johnson's composite character and distinct, semi-contradictory "double inheritance," Sargisson identifies how High Church Toryism derived from his father Michael, while his deep evangelical theology, evangelical "gloominess," and terrifying ideas and views of death matched and connected directly to the theological library and books listed in the will of his maternal grandfather, Cornelius Ford. The study chronicles the family's intellectual pedigree—detailing the legal career of Henry Ford and the medical eminence of Joseph Ford—and highlights the influence of his brilliant, notorious, but profligate cousin, Cornelius "Parson" Ford, a "scholar and wit" and chaplain to Chesterfield who served as a model for the young Johnson and to whom Sargisson traces Johnson's wit and conversational talent. Sargisson details Johnson's deep affection for his mother, Sarah, noting that he wrote Rasselas specifically to pay for her funeral costs, and concludes that Johnson's traits were rooted in the Ford stock despite his claims of genealogical ignorance.
Raleigh reviews the biographical efforts of Tyers, Cook, Shaw, Piozzi, Towers, and Hawkins to demonstrate that Johnson's reputation did not depend solely on Boswell. He analyzes how Piozzi and Boswell often misinterpreted Johnson’s retorts by failing to account for their own flippancy or insistent questioning. The text challenges the Boswellian "monarchy" of the Johnsonian circle, particularly disputing the belittling of Goldsmith, whose "Irish humor" Boswell failed to comprehend. Raleigh uses memoirs from Burney and Reynolds to reveal a "playful, gentle, and nonsensical" Johnson often absent from the gladiatorial tavern scenes. He concludes that while Boswell’s affection produced the most vivid portrait, the "unfailing respect" for Johnson was a collective phenomenon of his age.
CGV entry 3:135. On the pre-Boswellian biographies.
Cochrane entry 66.
The Story of Doctor Johnson, Being an Introduction to Boswell's Life
Roberts provides a "compact and continuous" narrative of Johnson’s life, primarily using the records of Boswell, Thrale, and Fanny Burney. The text traces Johnson's progression from his Lichfield origins and his unsuccessful school at Edial to his legendary struggles in the London literary market. Roberts highlights the formation of "The Club" and the transformative influence of the Streatham circle, where Johnson found "domestic comfort" with the Thrales. The work simplifies the complex bibliographical history of the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets while retaining the "essential flavor" of Johnson’s conversational wit. Roberts includes a "Bibliography of Johnsonian Literature" that recommends modern editions by Birkbeck Hill and critical essays by Raleigh and Macaulay. The volume is illustrated with contemporary portraits and views of Johnsonian landmarks, including the birthplace and Gough Square. Roberts concludes that while Boswell remains the "supreme authority," a simplified introduction is necessary to navigate the "vast proportions" of the original eighteenth-century biography.
Cochrane entry 84.
Ancient Freemasonry and the Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18
New information from the Stationers' Company records proves that Johnson's father, Michael, and his uncles, Andrew and Benjamin, were apprenticed to bookseller Richard Symson in London, not at Leek, as previously believed. Michael's father, William Johnson of Lichfield, was a yeoman or gentleman, not a day-labourer, as suggested by Shaw. This discovery advances knowledge of the Johnson family's origins, showing a more respectable and intimate connection to bookselling and suggesting an earlier move to Lichfield.
Dr. Johnson, His Fellow-Collegian, and the Shoes
Reade identifies the "fellow-collegian" who famously left an "eleemosynary supply of shoes" at Johnson’s door at Pembroke College as William Vyse, later Archdeacon of Salop. While Hawkins and Boswell left the donor anonymous, Reade uses the pedigree of the Smalbroke family to identify Vyse, who matriculated in 1726–27—twenty months before Johnson—and became Treasurer of Lichfield Cathedral in 1734. Reade suggests Vyse and Johnson were likely old schoolfellows at Lichfield Grammar School and notes that Johnson remained on terms of intimacy with the Vyse family throughout his life, despite Seward’s claim that the memory of the gift may have "rankled." The detail likely reached Hawkins via Vyse’s elder son, Dr. William Vyse, an eminent clergyman and rector of Lambeth who was an acquaintance of Johnson and his biographers.
Gissing examines Johnson's brief venture into running a boarding school at Edial Hall, emphasizing the neglect of this significant period by Lichfield's memorials. Gissing notes the house's pronuniation (Edjal) and discusses how the property, now a farmhouse, was largely torn down around 1809, contradicting later accounts of its preservation. The effort, enabled by Johnson's elderly wife Tetty's £700 portion, followed repeated failures to secure an ushership, exacerbated by concerns over Johnson's "haughty ill-natured" manner and facial distortions. The academy, which lasted 18 months, served only a handful of pupils, including the young David Garrick and his brother, and coincided with Johnson's work on his tragedy, Irene. The author highlights a curious entry in Johnson's notes that he only "rose early by mere choice... once or twice at Edial," and concludes by citing Gilbert Walmesley's letter recommending Johnson and Garrick to London in 1737.
CGV entry 3:142. On the academy at Edial.
Whitley addresses an anecdote about Johnson's introduction to the Prince of Wales at the Royal Academy dinner in 1784, a story often attributed to Forster. Whitley states the true authority is Farington's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1819). The story claims Johnson left his seat at the Prince's desire to be introduced. Whitley, citing a letter from Johnson to Piozzi and other sources, argues this event is Farington’s invention, as the Prince did not attend the 1784 dinner (or any until 1785, after Johnson's death). Farington likely fabricated the story to glorify the Academy dinners.
CGV entry 3:143.
Reade demonstrates that Johnson’s "Scheme for the Classes of a Grammar School" and "personal advice to a young friend" are two separate documents, contrary to the presentation by Boswell, who mistakenly merged the general school scheme and personal advice for a university student into a single item. Reade identifies the "relation" for whom Johnson wrote the latter advice as his cousin, Samuel Ford, who matriculated at Oxford in 1736. The letter traces this identification to a 1785 letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine signed by "S. P.," originating from Ross near where Ford lived. This article includes genealogical details from the papers of Thomas Jesson concerning the uncles of Johnson—Samuel, Cornelius, and Dr. Joseph Ford—including medical fees paid to the latter.
A Short History of Lichfield Grammar School
On Johnson’s early affection for Porter and the influence of her "personal aversion" to his physical appearance on their relationship. It highlights the role of Seward in documenting Johnson’s boyish infatuation and the composition of verses for Porter at Stourbridge. The narrative details the lifelong residence of Porter with Johnson’s mother and her continued celibacy following Johnson’s marriage to her mother. It examines the financial and social circumstances of the Porter family in Birmingham and Lichfield. The text posits that Porter maintained a "sentimental regret" regarding her early rejection of Johnson.
CGV entry 3:146.
Dr. Johnson Dines Out: The Record of a Strenuous Month
On Johnson's unusually busy social calendar during April 1778, focusing on his extensive engagements as a prominent diner-out in London society. Drawing heavily on James Boswell's Life, the analysis chronicles Johnson's nearly daily attendance at dinner parties, including gatherings with notable figures like Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Sheridan. The text highlights significant conversations and sometimes dramatic encounters, such as altercations with Percy and Reynolds, and a famous meeting with the eccentric Oliver Edwards. Letts argues that Johnson's frantic pace stemmed from his desire to escape the unhappy and contentious domestic environment at Bolt Court.
Appleby School: An Extra-Illustration to Boswell
Gissing explores a neglected episode in Johnson’s early professional life: his candidacy for the Latin mastership at Sir John Moore’s school at Appleby. Although Johnson was "much respected by some worthy gentlemen" in the neighborhood, the school's statutes strictly required a Master of Arts from Oxford or Cambridge. Gissing clarifies that while Lord Gower petitioned Dean Swift to obtain a Dublin degree for Johnson, such a credential would have been legally insufficient for the post. The text uses the school’s original Minute Books to reveal a 1739 administrative dispute among the governors, noting that a "Johnsonian party" of seven governors faced opposition from five others who favored Thomas Mould, a kinsman of the founder. Mould ultimately secured the appointment, leaving Johnson to continue his "heroic struggle" in London's literary world.
CGV entry 3:148.
Cochrane entry 95.
Reade disputes the traditional belief, asserted by Shaw, Hawkins, and Nichols, that Johnson served as an usher at Market Bosworth under the Rev. Anthony Blackwall, who died in April 1730. He clarifies that Johnson was usher under John Kilby in July 1732. Kilby's appointment was in September 1730, and he died in August 1734, succeeding Blackwall. John Crompton, Johnson's late master, whom he later attempted to succeed at Solihull School, was appointed to Bosworth in January 1734/35. Reade presents new evidence from church records and a letter from Sir Wolstan Dixie to establish Kilby's tenure, resolving historical inconsistencies and supporting a detail in Johnson's "Miscellanies" about Kilby.
The Duration of Johnson's Residence at Oxford
Reade re-examines the Pembroke College Buttery Books to definitively settle the duration of Johnson's residence at Oxford. By comparing Johnson's small, isolated charges after December 1729 with identical, synchronous charges made to contemporaries known to be out of residence, Reade proves Johnson did not return to college for a single day after that date. He was in residence for only about fourteen months, supporting the conclusions of Croker and Hill against the older tradition of three years.
CGV entry 3:150. In two parts: September 16, 1926, pages 615-616; and September 15, 1927, page 624.
MacKinnon reconstructs the topography and material conditions of Oxford during the undergraduate residency of Johnson (1728–1729). Johnson occupied rooms over the Pembroke gateway, where he "spirit[ed] them up to rebellion" among fellow students and displayed "delicate" linguistic standards noted by Edwards. Correspondence and diaries from Boswell and Piozzi illuminate Johnson's activities, including his "conversant" knowledge of boxing and his "encomium on capital taverns." Boswell records the "notable occasion" of Johnson quoting Macrobius to demonstrate his superior erudition. MacKinnon disputes the "common notion" of extreme poverty, citing buttery books to show Johnson’s "weekly battels" were standard for a commoner. The account details Johnson’s "masterful personality" and physical presence, noting his preference for "animated conversation" over "social intercourse" with juniors. Salient details include Johnson’s interactions with Adams and his later visits to Oxford with Langton and Beauclerk.
CGV entry 3:151. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1926).
Bensly examines the account of Johnson's wedding journey to Derby in 1735 as recorded by Boswell. He highlights a narrative difficulty regarding whether Johnson and Porter rode the forty-mile distance from Birmingham or Lichfield on their nuptial morning. Johnson's own recollection describes a ride between two hedges where he intentionally outpaced his bride to discourage her "fantastical" behavior. Bensly suggests the rural setting implies a significant journey rather than a short trip to the church. He compares this historical instance of riding to a wedding with a similar display of gallantry found in Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle.
CGV entry 3:152. On Johnson's marriage. See also pages 296, 337, and 375 of the same volume.
Hollis seeks to understand the underlying philosophy behind the well-known anecdotes surrounding the 18th-century literary figure. Hollis presents Johnson as the quintessential Tory, defining this worldview as the acceptance of a settled social status combined with a belief in the fundamental spiritual equality of all people. The book explores how this Toryism informed Johnson's views on politics, society, literature, and religion. It examines his early struggles, his time in Grub Street, his major works including the Rambler, the Dictionary, Rasselas, and the Lives of the Poets, and his complex relationships with contemporaries like Chesterfield, Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, and the members of his dependent household, the "seraglio." Hollis analyzes Johnson's views on truth and lies, his critical assessments of Shakespeare and Voltaire, and his profound charity. He also addresses Johnson's intense fear of death, linking it to his deep religious convictions. Throughout, Hollis defends Johnson against simplistic interpretations by figures like Macaulay and Carlyle, arguing for the coherence and enduring relevance of Johnson's thought and character, emphasizing his sincerity and embodiment of the English spirit. Chapter 1, 'Johnson the Tory,' addresses the philosophical foundations of Toryism, emphasizing the acceptance of arbitrary social status and subordination as essential for societal stability and individual contentment. Chapter 2, 'The Importance of Grub Street,' explores the economic realities of eighteenth-century authorship and the profound influence of early hardship and misery on subsequent character and moral outlook. Chapter 3, 'The "Rambler," Chesterfield, Shakespeare, and Voltaire,' examines diverse literary endeavors and critical standards, highlighting the tension between realistic art and moral instruction in the works of various contemporary figures. Chapter 4, 'The Johnsonians,' analyzes the social dynamics and complex friendships within a celebrated literary circle, focusing on the intellectual stimulation provided by varied conversational partners. Chapter 5, 'Johnson and Lies,' investigates the unwavering commitment to objective truth and the rigorous standard of intellectual honesty maintained despite physical decline or social pressure. Chapter 6, 'The Poets and the Dinner-Table,' critiques contemporary poetic standards and discusses the relationship between material wealth and human happiness through the lens of rational philosophy. Chapter 7, 'Johnson and the Seraglio,' details an extensive commitment to practical charity and the maintenance of a diverse, dependent household supported by a modest personal pension. Chapter 8, 'Johnson and Death,' reflects on the ultimate cessation of a life dedicated to reason and charity, concluding with the fulfillment of long-held religious and social expectations. Critical reaction is mixed. Chapman, in TLS, praises the witty and readable qualities of the monograph but notes it is marred by haste, inaccurate quotations, and absurdly exaggerated criticisms that fail to appreciate the subject as a great scholar and critic. In the Saturday Review of Literature, Pottle provides an intellectual defense, arguing that the volume provides logical support for the subject's attitudes by demonstrating they are the logical expressions of consistent Toryism and dogmatic Christianity. Squire's review in The Observer examines the subject as a humane and Christian realist whose insights offer moral guidance to the modern age. In the London Mercury, Pryce-Jones notes that the text functions as a vigorous supplement rather than a replacement for existing biographies, though he argues it neglects the critical writings. An unsigned notice in the Saturday Review (London) praises the ability to restate foundational philosophy for a modern audience, while the Spectator criticizes the slipshod English and convoluted syntax despite a lively selection of anecdotes. Sampson (The Bookman) characterizes the volume as a crude, patchy, and shapeless work that underrates major critical achievements, slights philological pioneering, and dismisses poetic criticism too contemptuously. But O. H. D., in the New Republic, criticizes the adoption of illiberalities and Tory truculence to preach rigid orthodoxy, though the reviewer credits the text's energy. Underlining the paradoxes of the subject's social circle, R. (Irish Times) finds that the work provides a sympathetic insight, and Roberts, in The Nation and the Athenaeum, praises the freshness of outlook and stimulating style.
CGV entry 3:153. The New York edition was published in 1929.
Chapman’s review of Hollis’s biography of Johnson characterizes the work as witty, readable, and "clever," but marred by haste, inaccurate quotations, and "absurdly exaggerated" criticisms of the Dictionary derived from Macaulay. Hollis dismisses the Dictionary as a failed attempt to "fix the English language," unaware that Bradley recognized Johnson as a pioneer in philology. Chapman disputes the assertion by Hollis that the literary activity of Johnson ended after receiving his pension, noting that the Preface to Shakespeare and Journey to the Western Islands appeared later. The review argues Hollis fails to appreciate Johnson as a great scholar and critic and minimizes the importance of The Lives of the Poets. The author maintains that the view by Hollis that Johnson "cared nothing for poetry" is false, contradicting Johnson’s own statements in the Preface to Shakespeare and his praise for Milton. Chapman asserts that to "travel over his mind" remains a long and difficult journey, as Johnson is "far too great to be simple."
CGV entry 3:153.
Hollis's monograph provides logical support for the admiration of Johnson, arguing that his seemingly eccentric behavior is rational when viewed through the lens of his consistent Toryism and dogmatic Christianity. The work, which is not a new biography but an intellectual defense, aims to combat the Whig interpretation of Macaulay by demonstrating that Johnson's attitudes—concerning Grub Street, the Johnsonians, and the Seraglio—are the logical expression of his core political and religious beliefs, illuminating aspects of his character often disconnected from his foundational creeds.
CGV entry 3:153. Review by F. A. Pottle of the book by Christopher Hollis.
Blunden identifies a factual error in a Boswellian footnote regarding an anecdote about Johnson. While Boswell attributes a modification of Johnson’s particularities to a young lady who supposedly struck the doctor by his extraordinary motions, Blunden uses notes by Elizabeth Le Noir, daughter of Christopher Smart, to correct the record. Le Noir identifies herself, not the woman named by Boswell, as the true heroine of the encounter. The text explores Le Noir's Village Anecdotes and Miscellaneous Poems, noting her high regard for Johnson despite her father's obscurity. Blunden highlights Le Noir’s memories of Johnson’s great gentleness and her defense of his character against Boswellian misconstructions, noting that Johnson thought very highly of Smart’s writings.
CGV entry 3:154. Contains anecdotes of Johnson by Elizabeth Le Noir, daughter of Christopher Smart.
Corrects a footnote in Boswell's biography regarding a "pleasing instance" of Johnson's gentleness toward a child who questioned his "strange gestures." Identifies the "real heroine" as Elizabeth Smart Le Noir, daughter of Christopher Smart, rather than Miss Hunter. Blunden recovers Le Noir’s forgotten "Johnsoniana" from her "almost unobtainable" writings, including anecdotes of Johnson’s "long fits of absence and silence" and his defense of Richardson’s Clarissa. Details Goldsmith’s residence at Canonbury House under the care of Mrs. Fleming, where Johnson and Goldsmith interacted with the Smart children. Includes Le Noir’s memories of Johnson "skipping across" a parlour to admire Smart’s poetry.
CGV entry 3:154. Reprinted from The Times (1929).
Reade uses records from St. Mary's Church and the Conduit Lands Trust to challenge the tradition that the ancestors of Johnson were "merely day-labourers." While records show his grandfather, William Johnson, was a "poor laborer" who settled in Lichfield by 1666 and died in 1672, Reade confirms the family's "extreme poverty" upon their arrival. Local charities, including the Conduit Lands Trust and Smith's Charity, funded the apprenticeships of the three sons of William—Michael, Benjamin, and Andrew—with a grant of £3 each; Michael was apprenticed to a London stationer in 1673. This evidence contradicts claims that the family achieved early prosperity without charitable aid. Michael returned to Lichfield by 1681 as a successful bookseller, accumulating wealth, holding municipal offices such as churchwarden and city warden, and providing for Catherine, his widowed mother. Reade notes that the journey of Johnson to London with "twopence-halfpenny in his pocket" mirrored the earlier "charitable advancement" of his father. The data also details the purchase by Michael of family church sittings later used by Porter.
Whibley explores Samuel Johnson’s academic career and lifelong relationship with Oxford and Cambridge, drawing heavily on the "untiring and ingenious researches" of A. L. Reade. The text clarifies that Johnson’s undergraduate residency at Pembroke College, Oxford, lasted only thirteen months (October 1728 to December 1729), refuting earlier biographers who claimed a three-year stay. Whibley describes the "lassitude and torpor" of 18th-century universities, where Oxford was a bastion of Jacobitism and Cambridge a Whig stronghold. Despite his early poverty and "mad and violent" rebellion against authority, Johnson later became a "venerable" fixture at Oxford, frequently staying at the Master’s Lodge at Pembroke and University College.
Transactions of the North Staffordshire Field Club
Dr. Johnson's Lichfield Forbears and Dr. Johnson's Academy
CGV entry 3:157. The Lynam Memorial Prize Essay.
CGV entry 3:158. Discusses whether Johnson was involved in the 1745 rebellion.
Publisher's Circular and Bookseller's Record
CGV entry 3:159. On Michael Johnson.
CGV entry 3:160. In Japanese. A biographical and critical study.
Kingsmill offers a psychological biography of Johnson, arguing that his life was a 'lifelong struggle' to maintain mental and emotional balance against 'reasonless terrors' and morbid melancholy. The text traces Johnson's development from his 'wretched' Lichfield childhood—marked by scrofula and a 'hatred of pretentiousness'—to his status as a literary 'monarch'. Kingsmill identifies a central conflict between Johnson's strong 'imaginative element' and his rigid 'moral element', suggesting that his didacticism was a steadying influence for an uncertain genius. The biography explores Johnson's major works, including the 'Dictionary', 'The Rambler', and 'Rasselas', the latter of which is described as a 'survey of life' discoloured by 'abnormal gloom'. Kingsmill provides detailed accounts of Johnson's relationships, emphasizing his 'filial' bond with Boswell and his 'haven' at Streatham Park with the Thrales. Significant attention is paid to Johnson's domestic 'kingdom' of dependants, including Anna Williams and Robert Levet, whom Kingsmill views as essential 'familiar and domestic companions' against solitude. The work also examines Johnson's 'rude vigour' in conversation and his complex friendship with David Garrick, characterized by a 'perpetual oscillation between envy and affection'. Kingsmill concludes with a narrative of Johnson’s physical decline and his 'race with death', portraying him as a man who sought 'escape from himself' through constant social interaction and the 'throne of human felicity' found in a tavern chair. Chapter I, 'Johnson's Parents—School and Oxford—Marriage,' examines the foundational influences of Samuel Johnson’s Lichfield origins, focusing on how a discordant domestic environment, physical infirmities, and an early-instilled fear of madness forged his complex, melancholy temperament. This segment also delineates his unconventional education and unlikely but devoted union with Elizabeth Porter, a partnership that provided emotional stability during his early professional frustrations. Chapter II, 'The Struggle for Recognition,' chronicles the twenty-five-year period of financial instability following Johnson’s migration to London, during which he survived through literary hack-work for the Gentleman's Magazine and established his reputation with the publication of London. The narrative highlights the Herculean labor of the Dictionary of the English Language and his definitive assertion of intellectual independence in the celebrated rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s belated patronage. Chapter III, 'Domestic and Other Companions,' explores the social and emotional landscape of Johnson’s middle years, specifically his profound capacity for friendship and the diverse circle of dependants he gathered in his household to combat the terrors of solitude. The chapter analyzes his public conversational dominance as a form of intellectual sovereignty that balanced his internal struggles with religious anxiety and creative inertia. Chapter IV, 'Rasselas—The Pension—James Boswell,' addresses the pivotal shift in Johnson’s fortunes brought about by the 1762 royal pension and his subsequent meeting with James Boswell, which inaugurated the most significant biographical partnership in English literature. The core argument focuses on how these events relieved his material distress while further revealing the paradoxical nature of his "hunger of imagination" and his lifelong preoccupation with the boundaries of reason. Chapter V, 'Eccentricities—Shakespeare—Mr. and Mrs. Thrale—Dr. Taylor,' explores Johnson's mid-career social integration into the Thrale household and the long-delayed completion of his Shakespeare edition, analyzing how these environments influenced his health and evolving social identity. This section contrasts his enlightened views on individual rights with his rigid adherence to traditional notions of social subordination. Chapter VI, 'Boswell's Life of Johnson,' analyzes the nuances of the Johnson–Boswell relationship, arguing that Boswell’s willingness to sacrifice his own vanity was a deliberate artistic strategy to illuminate Johnson’s character more vividly. The chapter details the complex psychological dynamics between the two men as they navigated the intellectual circles of London. Chapter VII, 'Benevolence, Real and Fictitious—Travels—The Lives of the Poets,' surveys Johnson's later travels and the production of the Lives of the Poets, emphasizing his late-life friendships and his practical commitment to charity. The summary highlights his conversational power in his final decade and his continued struggle for spiritual peace. Chapter VIII, '"The Gulphs of Fate",' concludes the work by recounting Johnson’s final months and his death in 1784, noting his intense battle with physical deterioration and his preparation for the last judgment. The segment also examines Boswell’s life after Johnson’s death and the publication of the biography that secured their joint literary legacy. Critics are generally favorable, praising the work for offering a humanized, psychologically nuanced portrait that corrects the distortions of traditional accounts. Carswell, in the New Statesman and Nation, appreciates how the study illuminates its subject's profound melancholy and casts a critical eye on previous biographical methodology. In the NYTBR, Kingsbury calls the volume fresh and rich in suggestion, particularly regarding early life struggles. Stillman's review in the New York Herald Tribune finds the resulting depiction of a tragic inner man far more impressive than conventional portraits, while Krutch, in The Nation, highlights the focus on underlying skepticism and intellectual doubts. In the LA Times, Ament deems it an admirable critical review that uncovers the roots of character, and Peel's review in the Christian Science Monitor commends the disclosure of human reality behind a pontifical public figure. But prominent scholarly reviews introduce significant reservations. Chapman, in the TLS, warns that the text relies on an incomplete picture with an inexact grasp of literary history, noting a forced reliance on modern psychological reductions. Tinker, in the Saturday Review of Literature, strongly critiques the volume, questioning its necessity and rejecting its attempt to discredit established biographical authority. Finally, Wecter, in the Virginia Quarterly Review, observes that while the work marshals valuable minor biographers against dominant traditions, it completely ignores crucial contemporary manuscript discoveries.
CGV entry 3:161. Hugh Kingsmill is the pseudonym for H. K. Lunn.
Chapman reviews a reprint of a MacKinnon address and a Kingsmill biography. MacKinnon argues Boswell did not always understand Johnson and distorted him into a gloomier figure, contending that Johnson was "a much more cheerful, more humorous and happier man." Kingsmill's biography is a critical study for readers already acquainted with Johnsoniana, presenting a consistent, though incomplete, picture of Johnson. Kingsmill's interpretation is modern, attributing Johnson's words and actions to sexual and other repressions, seeing his life as a "long frustration." The review warns that Kingsmill's grasp of Johnson's literary career is inexact, for instance, in suggesting the Dictionary was a "vexatious interruption" or that The Rambler was stopped by the need to work on the Dictionary.
CGV entry 3:161.
Tinker reviews Kingsmill, questioning the need for the book since it offers nothing new beyond recent scholarly findings. Tinker critiques Kingsmill's primary object: to discredit Boswell as a biographer by labeling him "deliberately dishonest" and "unscrupulous." Tinker rejects Kingsmill’s preference for Frances Burney's or Hester Piozzi’s accounts of Johnson as inaccurate and biased. He concludes that Johnson’s enduring fascination lies not in being a "typical Englishman," but in his dynamic intellect and human struggle with life's challenges.
CGV entry 3:161. Review by C. B. Tinker of the book by Hugh Kingsmill.
Kenkyusha Series of English and American Authors
[Additional biographical notes on Johnson's will]
Brunskill assesses the scholarly impact of Reade’s genealogical investigations into the ancestry of Elizabeth Johnson and its implications for Johnsonian biography. Reade’s research identifies a significant Puritan strain in Johnson, inherited from his grandfather Cornelius Ford, while similarly uncovering merit and distinction in the forbears of Elizabeth Johnson. Brunskill argues that such "hereditary principles" provide necessary sidelights for a truer judgment of Elizabeth’s character, which has often been marginalized or caricatured by previous biographers. The text notes the influence of seventeenth-century religious works, such as Pool’s Commentary, on the Porter family and highlights Elizabeth’s early recognition of Johnson’s "sensible" nature as a mark of her own intellect. Additionally, Brunskill connects Johnson’s religious instruction of Francis Barber to the subsequent Methodist activity of Barber’s son, Samuel, framing Reade’s work as an indispensable foundation for eighteenth-century studies.
Brunskill evaluates the significance of Reade’s miscellany of new Johnsonian materials, emphasizing that "no subject in English Literature is completely explored." The review focuses on three primary discoveries: a detailed 1698 bill of charges from Dr. George Hector, which illustrates his tender care for the poor of Lichfield; new correspondence from Francis Barber to Boswell dated July 9, 1787; and the professional status of Barber’s son, Samuel. Brunskill notes that Samuel Barber, a "potter’s printer" for Enoch Wood, became a prominent lay preacher during the Great Revival of 1805–1806. The text underscores the importance of Barber’s testimony to Boswell’s biography and confirms the parentage of Samuel’s wife, Fanny Sherwin. Brunskill concludes that Reade’s "painstaking and scientific" genealogical research succeeds in providing a more finished portrait of Johnson’s moral environment and the "modest immortality" of his associates.
'Johnsonian Gleanings': Some Unsolved Problems
Reade appeals for assistance in solving genealogical problems for the final evidence-based part of his Johnsonian Gleanings series. Key targets for research include evidence of Gerard Skrymsher’s marriage to Katherine Johnson (Johnson’s supposed aunt), the baptism and marriage of Harry Porter (the first husband of Johnson’s wife), and the burial locations of Cornelius Ford and Elizabeth Heely. He seeks to correct errors and trace the careers of Johnson’s cousins and collateral relatives to ensure "truth may reign" in the series' consolidated index. Ward also contributes a Ben Jonson allusion found in an 1680 pamphlet.
CGV entry 3:167. See also a reply by J. Seton-Anderson in the same journal, June 18, page 447.
This letter to the editor provides records of Johnson's membership in the Royal Society of Arts. James Stuart proposed Johnson on November 24, 1756, and the Society elected him on December 1, 1754. Lewis notes that Johnson's only recorded attendance occurred on October 19, 1757. Although Johnson told William Scott that his "flowers of oratory" forsook him during meetings, Andrew Kippis claimed Johnson once spoke on "mechanicks" with "general admiration." Lewis also identifies Johnson's signature in a Society book and his depiction in a James Barry painting. The letter includes a postscript from a Samuel Madden letter describing Johnson as a "worthy man" whom "Ireland ought to honour."
CGV entry 3:168.
Compares Boswell's and F. A. G. Eichbaum's accounts of Johnson's penance for disobedience to his father. Boswell records Johnson confessing to Henry White that he stood bare-headed in the rain at Uttoxeter market "a few years ago" to atone for refusing to attend his father's stall. The account in Eichbaum's Preacher's Scrap-Book (1892) changes the location to Lichfield and has Johnson performing the penance annually on November 21st for forty years, presenting geographical and logistical difficulties, raising questions about Eichbaum's source.
Michael Johnson and Lord Derby's Library
Reade discusses a recent discovery indicating that Michael Johnson, Samuel Johnson's father, engaged in a major transaction in 1706 by purchasing the library of the ninth Earl of Derby (who died in 1702), a collection of some 2,900 "great & noble" volumes. A diarist, Henry Prescott, recorded the sale to "a bookseller (Johnson) of Lichfield" and expressed suspicion of the subsequent printed catalogue, possibly due to Michael Johnson's cataloguing skills. Reade suggests the purchase, an unexpected piece of evidence for Michael Johnson's enterprise, may have been facilitated by the "portion of a few hundred pounds" he received upon marrying Sarah Ford three months earlier.
Investigates Boswell's claim that Johnson's remorse stemmed partly from early "sexual irregularities," linking it to Hawkins' hints. Pottle cites Boswell's journal recording Hawkins' claim to have read shocking evidence in Johnson's diary. Pottle speculates Boswell and Hawkins conferred, agreeing to allude guardedly to information from Johnson's destroyed diaries, which ethics forbade citing directly, explaining similar phrasing and Boswell's suppression of other "delicate" diary material.
CGV entry 3:172. Reprinted from Modern Language Notes (1941).
Cochrane entry 180.
Chapman addresses a discrepancy regarding Johnson's income from his later works, specifically an "uncommon" £100 payment sent to Thrale in June 1779. Hill conjectured this was part payment for the Lives of the Poets, but Chapman doubts this, arguing it is unlikely because Johnson earned money writing all his life and the terms for the Lives—initially 200 guineas, later increased to 400—were well known at Streatham. Chapman proposes the £100 might relate to the payment for A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, noting Johnson mentioned an "old reckoning with Mr. Cadell" in 1778. Supporting this, Chapman cites a 1781 letter to Strahan where Johnson’s statement of having received one hundred out of a "two hundred" price or guineas seems to refer to the Journey. Boswell’s 1776 record also indicates Johnson desired "two hundred pounds" for a projected Italian tour book. A remaining possibility for the "very uncommon manner" of the £100 is that it was government recognition for his political tracts, which had been collected in 1776, accounting for the mysterious tone of his letter to Thrale.
Krutch's comprehensive biographical narrative that challenges the specialized isolation of contemporary Johnsonian scholarship by providing an inclusive account of Johnson's life, character, and literary output. The study emphasizes the paradox of Johnson's deep pessimism combined with an "enormous zest for living" and explores his psychological struggles with melancholy and a persistent fear of madness. Krutch details Johnson's early hardships in Lichfield, his brief and proud residence at Oxford, and his initial years as a journalist for the Gentleman’s Magazine. The narrative highlights major milestones, including the publication of the Dictionary, the Rambler essays, and his eventual rise as a professional man of letters. Krutch characterizes Johnson as a figure who used "defensive pride" and a "bow-wow way" of conversation to overcome physical grotesqueness and social marginalization. While acknowledging the definitive status of Boswell's biography, Krutch disputes the notion that Boswell and Johnson were necessary complements, noting that Johnson dominated company with "colloquial prowess" and maintained a "stubborn rationality" throughout his career. The biography also examines Johnson’s intimate relationship with Hester Thrale Piozzi and concludes with a detailed analysis of his major critical achievement, the Lives of the Poets. Chapter 1, 'The Lichfield Prodigy', examines the dichotomy between a morbid childhood and an intellectually robust youth, establishing the core tension between pervasive pessimism and an insatiable zest for existence. Chapter 2, 'London; or, The Full Tide of Human Existence', explores the transformative impact of the metropolis, where professional struggles and an unconventional marriage solidified a lifelong commitment to urban intellectual life. Chapter 3, 'Running About the World', analyzes early literary attempts and the foundational biography of Richard Savage, arguing that these works manifest a burgeoning mastery of the human comedy. Chapter 4, 'The Harmless Drudge', details the monumental compilation of the Dictionary and the concurrent production of The Rambler, characterizing these years as the definitive period of professional maturation and scholarly ascendancy. Chapter 5, 'The Bread and Tea of Life', addresses the profound psychological void left by domestic loss and the subsequent reliance on social ritual for emotional stability. Chapter 6, 'Rasselas', evaluates the philosophical depth of the titular novella, asserting its status as a definitive expression of an anti-romantic worldview. Chapter 7, 'Cock Lane and a Pension', discusses the attainment of financial security through royal patronage and the persistent fascination with popular curiosities. Chapter 8, 'Enter James Boswell', focuses on the inception of the most famous literary friendship in history, emphasizing the pedagogical nature of their early interactions. Chapter 9, 'Shakespeare', argues that the landmark edition of the plays revolutionized critical standards by replacing rigid neoclassical dogmas with empirical observation and common sense. Chapter 10, 'Folding His Legs', depicts the golden age of conversation and club life, where intellectual dominance was exercised through vigorous verbal exchange. Chapter 11, 'Streatham and the Hebrides', chronicles the later travels and the vital domesticity provided by the Thrale family, highlighting the regulation of imagination by reality. Chapter 12, 'The Lives of the Poets', assesses the final major work as a synthesis of biographical insight and mature critical judgment. Chapter 13, 'Jam Moriturus', records the dignified confrontation with mortality, concluding that the legacy is one of unwavering intellectual integrity. Critics are generally favorable, praising the work as a masterly, accessible modern synthesis that successfully restores its subject's literary and intellectual stature beyond mere biographical eccentricity. Adams, in the New York Times, approves the focus on the subject as a man of letters and highlights the analysis of the Dictionary's bold conception. Clifford, in the NYTBR, commends the integration of recent scholarship to create a balanced portrait for the general public, though noting the harsh treatment of Boswell. But Bennett's review in the Saturday Review of Literature finds the social background somewhat worked up, while Prescott, in the New York Times, calls the narrative meticulous and judicious but implies it is a duty rather than a pleasure to read. Ketton-Cremer, in the TLS, deems the account sound and unpretentious for general readers but criticizes the lack of sympathy for the subject's personal life and the over-colored depiction of Boswell. Leavis, in the Kenyon Review, emphasizes the treatment of the subject's stubborn rationality but faults the failure to fully appreciate his poetry. Roberts, in the Spectator, finds the volume successful in presenting a comprehensive account in the light of contemporary knowledge. Watkins, in the Sewanee Review, challenges the harsh handling of Boswell and argues the analysis underplays complex intellectual roots. Finally, Wilson's review in the New Yorker praises the sound critical appreciations of major works but disputes the attenuated style and academic skepticism regarding the subject's early poverty.
CGV entry 3:175. Published in London by Cassell & Co. in 1948. Reprinted in 1963. Translated into Spanish by Mariano de Alarcon (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1948).
Clifford praises Krutch for a modern, scholarly, accessible biography for the general public. Krutch sifts recent scholarship to revalue the "Sage of Fleet Street," integrating discoveries about Johnson’s early life that Boswell overlooked because he knew Johnson only during his last two decades. Krutch emphasizes Johnson as a "rational philosopher," "moralist," and critic instead of just an eccentric talker, offering shrewd insights into his character. He justifies Johnson’s "domineering manner" as a defense for a man "made to be laughed at" for physical shortcomings. The book expertly recounts Johnson’s friendships, including the tragic break with Thrale, and provides one of the best summaries of that relationship. Although Krutch is "hard on Boswell," Clifford finds the analysis of Johnson’s "bundle of paradoxes"—pessimism mixed with a zest for living—superbly accurate.
CGV entry 3:175.
Bennett reviews Krutch’s biography of Johnson, praising it as a "long and rich, genial, thoughtful" account that incorporates contemporary knowledge. Bennett commends the critical chapters on Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poets, noting Krutch’s defense of the biographical approach. However, Bennett identifies weaknesses in the social background, which appears "worked up," and criticizes the inclusion of unreliable witnesses like Seward and Hawkins. Bennett notes Krutch’s evident dislike for Boswell, whom he characterizes as a "sensation-seeker," but acknowledges that Krutch provides a "telling summary" of Boswell’s unique reporting gifts. The review highlights Krutch’s ability to present a rounded estimate of Johnson’s "power of mind" for a lay audience.
CGV entry 3:175. Review by C. H. Bennett of the book by Joseph Wood Krutch.
CGV entry 3:175. Review by F. A. Pottle of the book by Joseph Wood Krutch.
Watkins describes Krutch’s critical life as a very good book that fills a great need and offers a well-rounded, accessible portrait of the man of letters. However, Watkins challenges Krutch’s "cold arrogance" and harsh treatment of Boswell, arguing that the biography underestimates the "passion for truth" and the moral bond shared by Boswell and Johnson. Watkins asserts that Boswell’s method achieves a "perfect compatibility of historical accuracy and artistic precision" that Krutch fails to fully recognize. The review further notes that Krutch overplays the influence of Hobbes and rationalism while slighting Johnson’s complex intellectual roots in figures like Sir Thomas Browne. While Krutch presents a sympathetic account of Piozzi and a sane critique of Johnson’s writings, Watkins finds him surprisingly academic on neoclassical poetry and notes that he slights the turbulence of Johnson’s imagination.
CGV entry 3:175. Review by W. B. C. Watkins of the book by Joseph Wood Krutch.
Wilson identifies a critical need to rescue Johnson from the "eccentric" and "grotesque" caricatures established by Boswell and Macaulay. Wilson maintains that the discovery of the Boswell papers has further prioritized the diarist over the subject, obscuring Johnson's standing as a premier English writer. Krutch’s biography receives praise for its comprehensive use of modern psychology and its "sound critical appreciations" of Johnson's major works, particularly the Shakespeare commentary and Lives of the Poets. However, Wilson disputes Krutch’s "attenuated" style and academic skepticism regarding Johnson’s early poverty. Wilson asserts that the "dolorous, steadfast and somber" ground-tone of Johnson's poetry, such as London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, stems from "intimate and scarifying" experiences of want that documentation alone cannot capture. The review concludes that while Krutch successfully restores Johnson’s literary importance, he must resist the academic impulse to "undermine" the lived reality of his subject.
CGV entry 3:175. Review by Edmund Wilson of the book by Joseph Wood Krutch.
Johnson was a "great highbrow" whose literary achievement transcends his persona as a clubman. He highlights Johnson’s "stubborn rationality" and its relation to his piety and Toryism. Leavis emphasizes Johnson’s hatred of slavery, contrasting it with Boswell’s support for the institution. The text explores Johnson’s conversational virtuosity and his ability to adapt Augustan conventions to personal experience. Leavis critiques Krutch’s failure to fully appreciate Johnson’s greatness as a poet.
CGV entry 3:175. Review by F. R. Leavis of the book by Joseph Wood Krutch.
CGV entry 10/6:259. A review essay on Joseph Wood Krutch's 'Samuel Johnson'.
Thomas and Thomas present a biographical portrait of Johnson, framing him as a "paradox" of 18th-century English character defined by both physical brutality and profound kindness. The narrative traces Johnson's life from his childhood in Lichfield and his incomplete tenure at Oxford to his struggles with poverty and the eventual publication of Savage and the Dictionary. Thomas and Thomas argue that while Johnson's literary output, including Rasselas and The Rambler, remains "dead" or overly pedantic for modern readers, his genius survives through his recorded conversations. The text emphasizes his relationships with figures such as Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith, specifically focusing on his deep bond with Boswell. Further attention is given to Johnson's domestic life, including his devotion to his wife and his habit of housing "stray people" and animals in his Fleet Street residence. Thomas and Thomas conclude that Johnson’s significance lies in his "central sanity," his "cosmic laughter" at life's incongruities, and his ultimate reliance on religious hope to parry the miseries of human existence.
CGV entry 3:176. The authors' real name is Henry Schnittkind.
Ursa Major: A Study of Dr. Johnson and His Friends
A belletristic and impressionistic biography grounded in no original research. It is hostile and debunking, characterized by Vulliamy's decade-long "private crusade against the eighteenth century." The book singles out Johnson, the "Bear," as the special target of Vulliamy’s antagonism. Vulliamy claims that Johnson is 'only to be appreciated by those who grimly undertake the study of his writings', concluding from this study that Johnson was 'a bully and a snob' who stood for convention because it was conventional and hated new ideas. This attack, coming from a Welsh Fabian, also quoted Macaulay’s 1831 essay as 'incontrovertibly true': "The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the union of great powers with low prejudices." Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over whether bypassing a famous biographer to focus on the subject's own writings and neuroses provides an objective reassessment or merely a highly erroneous collection of opinions. Roberts, in the TLS, finds the study uninspiring and overly reliant on outdated caricatures, disputing its critical advice on the prose. Quennell, writing in the New Statesman and Nation, similarly attacks the severe, pedagogic dismissal of the biographer, arguing that the author relies on a distorted historical caricature. Liebert's review in JEGP also calls it a highly erroneous book of opinions, contrasting it with factual scholarship and emphasizing that the subject's early physical defects and social complications require deep biographical context rather than superficial judgment. Conversely, Fowler, in The Spectator, takes the medical focus seriously, noting the clinical discussion of an obsessive-compulsive neurosis and the social dynamics of the circle. F., in the Manchester Guardian, praises the objective, unsentimental treatment of thwarted affections and the analysis of the subject as a great neurotic. Forbes-Boyd, in the Christian Science Monitor, gives an enthusiastic account, commending the author for breaking the traditional narrative spell by use of alternative witnesses to reveal underlying torment and conflict. Finally, the Scotsman notes a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reception, as general readers may find the assembly of circle sketches a skillful synthesis for Christmas reading, but specialists will see little new information. The book was adopted as book of the month by the Right Book Club in 1948.
Cochrane entry 17.
Reviews: Britannia and Eve, vol. 34, no. 2 (1947): 45; Dundee Courier, December 25, 1946; H. I’A. F., Manchester Guardian, December 10, 1946; Vernon Fane, The Sphere 187, no. 2443 (1946): 230; Eric Forbes-Boyd, Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 1947; Lettice Fowler, The Spectator 177, no. 6179 (1946): 582–84; Daniel George, The Tribune (Blackpool), November 29, 1946; D. L. Hobman, Life and Letters 52 (1947): 138–42; Irish Times, December 7, 1946; Herman W. Liebert, JEGP 47, no. 1 (1948): 80–88; B. G. MacCarthy, Studies (Dublin) 36 (1947): 319–25; Peter Quennell, New Statesman and Nation, December 21, 1946; S. C. Roberts, TLS, no. 2344 (1947): 6; Scots Magazine 46, no. 4 (1947): 328–31; The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 21, 1946; Howard Spring, Country Life 100, no. 2601 (1946): 968–69; The Queen, January 22, 1947; Western Mail, December 4, 1946.
Samuel Johnson and the First Roller-Spinning Machine
Johnson maintained a close connection with the development of the Wyatt and Paul roller-spinning machine between 1730 and 1759. Proximity and biographical gaps suggest Johnson assisted in the machine's perfection during his residency in Birmingham. Character analysis reveals an extraordinary interest in technology that Boswell largely ignored. Johnson later influenced the Society of Arts to offer prizes for spinning inventions. Correspondence demonstrates that Johnson mediated disputes among the invention's investors, including Warren, James, and Cave. This lifelong involvement with inventors informed his moving descriptions of their commercial failures.
CGV entry 3:178. See also TLS, March 30, 1946, page 151, and a rebuttal letter by J. de L. Mann in the same journal, May 18, 1946, page 235.
Chapman investigates when Johnson began using the title of Doctor, specifically examining correspondence from the Thrale family. He identifies 1765 as the terminus a quo following the Dublin degree but notes April 1775 as the crucial date when Johnson received his Oxford degree. Chapman analyzes over one hundred letters in the John Rylands Library, mostly from Piozzi, noting that before 1775 the address almost exclusively used Mr. Johnson. He observes that after 1775, the use of Doctor or Dr. became the rule in the Thrale circle. The letter mentions that though Johnson complained about the dating of letters from Piozzi, he never objected to her use of the title Doctor.
CGV entry 3:179. On the use of the title "Doctor" before 1775.
Dr. Johnson's Connection with Mechanical Spinning
Mann disputes J. J. Brown’s suggestion that Johnson took an active role in developing Paul and Wyatt’s spinning machine between 1730 and 1734. By re-examining the Wyatt manuscripts and contemporary correspondence, Mann proves that experimental work on the spinning machine likely began later than previously claimed. While acknowledging Johnson’s friendship with Paul and his general interest in mechanical inventions, Mann concludes that no documentary evidence supports the theory of Johnson’s intimate involvement in the machine’s early technical evolution.
Balderston raises the highly influential but controversial thesis that Samuel Johnson harbored a tendency toward masochistic practices, arguing that his "deep-rooted psychic maladjustment" derived from "unrecognised erotic ideas." Johnson's ongoing, pathological mental struggle involved the "obsessive indulgence in culpable fantasy," which she was convinced was erotic in nature. She linked his "vile melancholy" to an "erotic maladjustment" that "assumed a masochistic form," compelling him to crave and experience domination and bondage to relieve his anguish. The evidence Balderston adduced included material primarily drawn from Hester Lynch Thrale's private records: (1) A listing in the sale catalogue of HLT’s library for "Johnson's padlock, committed to my care in 1768"; 2. Johnson’s Latin diary entry from 1771 recording "insane thoughts about foot-fetters and manacles"; (3) A letter written in French to HLT in 1773—which Balderston called a "pathological document"—containing references to constraint and requests that she hold him in the "slavery" she knew how to "render happy"; (4) Allusions in Thraliana, such as HLT's statement that Johnson confided "a Secret far dearer to him than his Life" in 1767 or 1768, and her later vow that "the Fetters & Padlocks will tell Posterity the Truth"; and (5) Her account, presented as unambiguous, that Johnson "kissed my hand, ay & my foot too, upon his knees!" Balderston emphasized that these materials indicated Johnson’s inability to conquer these fantasies drove him toward despair, as he believed the mind was morally responsible for sinful ideas contemplated.
A newly discovered manuscript consisting of thirteen draft letters from Sir William Boothby to Michael Johnson, dating from October 1684 to August 1685, sheds new light on the early career of Johnson's father, a Lichfield bookseller, stationer, and bookbinder. The letters show that Johnson was criticized by Boothby for defective and expensive bookbinding but was also trusted for advice on other matters, like finding a private secretary. Boothby, a wealthy book-lover who owned a library of nearly six thousand books, was chronically slow in paying Johnson. The correspondence proves Johnson had opened a branch in Uttoxeter by early 1685, two years earlier than previously known, where he kept a weekly market stall.
CGV entry 3:183. See also a reply by Ellie Howe in the same journal, June 24.
Norman offers a narrative biography of Johnson, focusing on his psychological complexities, physical "oddities," and the social "galaxy" that surrounded him. The text identifies Johnson as "the greatest talker who ever lived," tracing his trajectory from a "wretched" childhood in Lichfield, marked by scrofula and a "terrifying" fear of damnation, to his status as the "great Cham of literature." Norman emphasizes the influence of women on Johnson's development, detailing his "ideal attachments" to figures like Mary "Molly" Aston, Hill Boothby, and Hester Thrale. The biography provides detailed accounts of Johnson's literary milestones, including the Dictionary, The Rambler, Rasselas, and his edition of Shakespeare, while highlighting his lifelong struggles with "miserable" poverty and "morbid" melancholy. Norman explores the "filial" bond between Johnson and Boswell, describing their first meeting at Thomas Davies's bookshop and subsequent travels. Significant attention is given to Johnson's domestic life in Gough Square and Johnson’s Court, featuring his "bizarre" household of dependants like Anna Williams and Robert Levet. Norman also details the "golden part" of Johnson's life at Streatham Park with the Thrales, where he found a "haven" from his fears of madness. The work concludes by reflecting on Johnson’s "sonorous" literary style and his "unfailing" benevolence, presenting him as a man whose "defensive pride" masked a "torturing" sense of guilt and a constant "escape from himself" through conversation. Chapter 1, 'The Birth of Samuel Johnson,' explores Johnson's Lichfield origins, focusing on how a discordant domestic environment, physical infirmities like scrofula, and an early-instilled fear of damnation forged his complex, melancholy temperament. Chapter 2, 'The Formative Years,' delineates Johnson’s unconventional education and burgeoning intellectual powers, including his desultory study at home, his intense but aborted tenure at Oxford, and the emerging internal struggle between his rational mind and a persistent fear of insanity. Chapter 3, 'The Marriage of Samuel Johnson,' addresses his unlikely but devoted union with Elizabeth Porter and his early professional frustrations, leading to his migration to London alongside David Garrick to seek a literary career. Chapter 4, 'London: A Poem,' chronicles Johnson’s initial struggles as an impoverished writer, highlighting his association with Richard Savage and the publication of London, which established his reputation for powerful social critique and "surly virtue". Chapter 5, 'The Strange Life of Richard Savage,' analyzes Johnson’s biography of his deceased friend, arguing that his sympathetic portrayal of Savage’s misfortunes reflects Johnson’s own experiences with poverty and parental neglect. Chapter 6, 'The Years of the Locust,' explores Johnson’s broad social circle and his efforts to combat professional loneliness, focusing on his tender relationship with William Collins and his admiration for the pious George Psalmanazar. PART TWO, Chapter 1, 'Samuel Johnson, Playwright,' details the production and eventual failure of Irene, noting how this theatrical disappointment shifted Johnson's focus toward moral essays and poetry like The Vanity of Human Wishes. Chapter 2, 'The Death of Johnson’s Wife,' examines the domestic stability provided by the work on the Dictionary and the founding of the Ivy Lane Club, which were followed by the profound emotional blow of Elizabeth Porter’s death in 1752. Chapter 3, 'The Patron, and the Gaol,' discusses the publication of the Dictionary of the English Language, focusing on Johnson’s celebrated rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s belated patronage as a definitive assertion of literary independence . Chapter 4, 'Johnson’s Monitress,' addresses the spiritual and intellectual intimacy Johnson shared with Hill Boothby, whose devoutness and eventual death deeply influenced his religious reflections and medicinal interests . Chapter 5, 'Friendship in Repair,' describes Johnson’s expanding mid-career social sphere, specifically his foundational friendship with Joshua Reynolds and his mentorship of younger figures like Bennet Langton and Joseph Baretti. PART THREE, Chapter 1, 'The Death of Johnson’s Mother,' chronicles the publication of The Idler and Rasselas, works produced under the strain of his mother’s passing and his lifelong preoccupation with the "dread of guilt" and the boundaries of reason. Chapter 2, 'No. 1, Inner Temple Lane,' depicts Johnson’s life in the Temple, illustrating his social rituals with young friends like Topham Beauclerk and his practical commitment to charity through his household of dependants. Chapter 3, 'The Cock Lane Ghost,' analyzes Johnson’s role in investigating the 1762 haunting hoax, which reflected his analytical curiosity about the supernatural as potential evidence for an afterlife. Chapter 4, 'His Majesty Is Pleased,' recounts the pivotal granting of a royal pension in 1762, which relieved Johnson’s financial distress and inaugurated the final, most socially prominent phase of his life. PART FOUR, Chapter 1, 'Under Boswell’s Eye,' details the initial 1763 meeting and subsequent bonding between Johnson and James Boswell, emphasizing the immediate "impregnation" of Boswell’s mind with Johnsonian thought. Chapter 2, 'Johnson’s Shakespeare,' examines Johnson’s editorial approach to the Bard, arguing that his 1765 edition succeeded by prioritizing "the poet of nature" and providing a rigorous collation of variant texts. Chapter 3, 'Boswell Returns,' explores the revival of the Johnson–Boswell partnership following the latter’s continental travels, alongside Johnson’s ongoing practical charity toward figures like Oliver Goldsmith. Chapter 4, 'A Haven with the Thrales,' depicts Johnson’s integration into the Thrale household at Streatham, an environment that provided him with domestic comforts and intellectual stimulation while transforming his social identity. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews. Academic specialists are overwhelmingly critical, whereas popular newspapers offer positive assessments. Chapman, in TLS, delivers a scathing review, challenging the publication as an unnecessary book and an inaccurate anthology marred by a grossly inaccurate bibliography, too many mistakes, and a clumsy arrangement of anecdotes. Clifford's review in JNL similarly questions the volume's necessity, arguing it lacks convincing analysis, fails to provide a discerning account of the critical writings, and ignores recent scholarship. Among the general press, Cournos in the New York Times writes an approving review, praising the knack for simplification and the attractive arrangement of biographical fragments. In the LA Times, Jackson notes the valuable focus on conversation and character, while Jordan-Smith's review in the same paper praises how the narrative brushes away excessive scholarly apparatus for the general reader. Krutch (New York Herald Tribune) offers a mixed perspective, calling the book vivid and readable but criticizing glib psychological explanations stated as facts. Halsband's review in the Saturday Review of Literature finds the clean style reliable but notes it fails to deepen scholarly understanding, reading instead like a superior book for juveniles. In the Chicago Daily Tribune, Crane provides a mixed assessment, calling the narrative unpleasantly jerky and distressingly skimpy. But an unsigned notice in Newsweek praises the text as a first-class example of biographical detective work that provides a human portrait.
CGV entry 3:185. The London edition was published in 1952.
Reviews: R. W. Chapman, TLS, no. 2646 (October 1952): 674; James L. Clifford, JNL 11, no. 5 (1951): 3–4; John Cournos, New York Times, October 14, 1951; Milton Crane, Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1951; Robert Halsband, Saturday Review of Literature 34 (October 13, 1951): 12; Irish Times, January 31, 1953; Joseph Henry Jackson, LA Times, September 17, 1951; Paul Jordan-Smith, LA Times, October 14, 1951; Joseph Wood Krutch, New York Herald Tribune, November 4, 1951; Newsweek 38 (September 3, 1951): 86.
The Pundit and the Player: Dr. Johnson and Mr. Garrick: A Biography for Young People
Norman presents a detailed account of the interwoven lives of Johnson and Garrick, tracing their development from their shared origins in Lichfield to their respective positions as the "Great Cham of Literature" and the "Roscius of his age". The narrative highlights the "drama of contrast" between Garrick’s rapid ascent to theatrical fame and Johnson’s prolonged struggle against poverty. Norman uses authentic dialogue and incidents to document significant milestones, including the failure of the tragedy Irene at Drury Lane, the publication of the Dictionary, and the formation of The Club. The text details Johnson’s relationships with Boswell, the Thrales, and Reynolds, noting his initial resentment of Garrick’s success and his defense of the actor against later critics like Edmund Gibbon. Garrick is depicted as a revolutionary figure who "advanced the dignity of his profession" through naturalistic acting and disciplined management at Drury Lane, though Norman notes his controversial revisions of Shakespearean texts and the spectacle of the 1769 Stratford Jubilee. The biography concludes with the deaths of both figures, observing that Johnson, who had known Garrick longer than any other friend, was deeply affected by the actor’s passing, which he famously noted "eclipsed the gaiety of nations". Both men were buried in Westminster Abbey, maintaining their proximity in death as in life.
CGV entry 3:186. Illustrated by Bruno Frost.
A conversation recorded in Cooke’s 1785 biography of Johnson may correspond to a dinner party at Reynolds's house described by Boswell. Both accounts feature Johnson discussing the disadvantages of old age and reciting lines from Juvenal’s tenth satire. Atkinson argues that the thematic overlap and Johnson’s demonstration of memory indicate Cooke was likely present at the April 1778 gathering. The author notes Cooke's membership in the Essex House Club as evidence of his proximity to Johnson's circle.
CGV entry 3:187.
CGV entry 3:188. Published by the University of Alberta Alumni Association. Reprints an anecdote from the Monthly Magazine, February 1798.
Clifford investigates the obscure life and sudden death of Nathaniel Johnson, Samuel’s younger brother. Drawing on a 1736 letter and parish records, the account details the brothers' lifelong jealousy and Nathaniel’s failed plans to emigrate to Georgia. Clifford highlights the temporal proximity between Samuel’s 1737 departure for London and Nathaniel’s burial, suggesting Samuel’s subsequent silence stemmed from a guilt complex. The narrative identifies a relative in Frome as Nathaniel, concluding that his sudden death remains a significant, haunting influence on Johnson’s conscience.
Dr. Johnson Rebuked: A Hitherto Unrecorded Incident in His Life as Revealed in a Letter from Dr. Samuel Glasse
CGV entry 3:190. With a facsimile of the letter.
Johnsoniana from the Bagshawe Muniments in the John Rylands Library: Sir James Caldwell, Dr. Hawkesworth, Dr. Johnson, and Boswell's Use of the 'Caldwell Minute'
Taylor analyzes the "Caldwell Minute," Johnson's own account of his 1767 interview with King George III, a key source for Boswell's famous scene in the Life. This document, though not adding new factual information, allows scholars to trace Boswell's method. Taylor shows how Boswell copied the Minute's text for his manuscript, then revised it extensively, adding oratio recta, making verbal alterations, and interlineating changes to enhance the dramatic effect. By comparing the Minute with Boswell's other stated sources (Langton, Barnard, Strahan), Taylor demonstrates how Boswell synthesized multiple accounts while relying most heavily on the Minute.
CGV entry 3:192. See also volume 34 (March 1952), pages 249–250.
Cochrane entry 166.
Privately printed by Princeton University Press
CGV entry 3:194. With a facsimile of four pages of Boswell's transcript of Johnson's diary.
CGV entry 3:194. Reprinted from the 1953 standalone publication.
Reveals, via a Boswell transcript, Johnson's resolution to seek a second wife in April 1753, thirteen months after Tetty's death. The Hydes argue Boswell suppressed this to uphold an idealized view of Johnson's first marriage against Hawkins' criticisms. They review conflicting evidence about Johnson's relationship with Tetty, suggesting a middle ground. They speculate on potential candidates Johnson might have considered, concluding the resolution highlights his human needs.
CGV entry 3:194. Reprinted from the 1953 standalone publication, with a facsimile of one page of Boswell's transcript.
Cochrane’s biographical narrative explores the "enigma" of Johnson's marriage to Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter. Following the discovery of her surviving tombstone in the ruins of a Bromley church, Cochrane examines conflicting contemporary accounts of Tetty from Garrick, Levett, and Williams. The author notes errors in the Latin epitaph Johnson composed thirty-two years after her death, including the wrong year of her passing. Cochrane argues the marriage was a "love marriage on both sides," noting Tetty’s praise for The Rambler and her indulgence of Johnson’s habits. The narrative concludes that Johnson’s enduring grief, recorded in his private journals thirty years after her death, serves as a more lasting tribute than the "dignified Latin" on her black tombstone.
The note reintroduces anecdotes recorded by Cary in his Lives of English Poets (1846), which are likely unfamiliar to many scholars. It specifically conveys two sayings that reveal Johnson's conversational manner concerning Milton and Milton's politics. By printing these previously obscure remarks, the article contributes to the growing corpus of Johnsoniana available for biographical and critical study.
CGV entry 3:196. From Henry Francis Cary's 'Lives of English Poets' (1846).
A correspondent reports on the celebration of Johnson's 244th birthday at Four Oaks Farm, where 65 scholars examined Johnsonian manuscripts from the Hyde collection. Highlights include a transcript in Boswell's hand of a 1776 journal entry where Johnson expresses the purpose "to take a new wife without any derogation from dear Tetty's memory." The text notes Boswell's "failure to include these items" in the Life. Further addenda include letters from Boothby to Michael Johnson, providing "indisputable proof" of the elder Johnson’s bookselling activities as early as 1681.
CGV entry 3:198. Concerns entries in Johnson's diaries omitted by Boswell and letters from Sir William Boothby to Michael Johnson.
Bronson provides a detailed biographical and critical introduction to Johnson and Boswell, emphasizing the ideal counterparts found in their disparate characters. Bronson argues that Johnson’s writing represents his deepest nature and formal finality, while Boswell’s journals capture the unrefracted image of Johnson’s conversation. The selections for Boswell focus on his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, illustrating Johnson’s interactions with Scottish culture, and the Life of Samuel Johnson, specifically the strategic orchestration of Johnson’s meeting with John Wilkes. Johnson’s selections include personal letters to Hester Thrale and others, revealing his domestic life and his veracious heart. Critical excerpts from the Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, Preface to Shakespeare, and Lives of the Poets demonstrate Johnson’s ratiocinative power and his role as the father of English criticism. Bronson notes that Johnson talked for immediate victory, but he almost always wrote upon oath.
CGV entry 3:199. An introduction to a selection from their works.
Bronson analyzes the "ideal counterparts" of Johnson and Boswell, exploring how their disparate temperaments facilitated the creation of the Life of Johnson. He characterizes Johnson as a "stern moralist" for whom "to strive with difficulties... is the highest human felicity," while Boswell used his journals to "adjust his character" by mimicking superior models. The text details how Johnson's wife, Elizabeth, helped "loosen the fetters" of his early inertia, kindling the sense of obligation that produced his major works. Bronson disputes Macaulay's "mischievous simplifications" that prioritized Johnson's talk over his written "oath." He argues that Boswell’s "incandescent" genius for biography was sparked specifically by Johnson’s personality. The narrative highlights the dinner with Wilkes as a demonstration of Boswell's "unparalleled talent" for social drama. Bronson frames Johnson as a "strenuous conservative" whose dynamic nature sought to reclaim human life from "irrationality."
CGV entry 3:199. Reprinted from 'Major British Writers' (1954).
Cochrane entry 605. Believes that Boswell's "radical insecurity" led him to find in Johnson the strength and moral guidance he needed, while Johnson, in turn, appreciated Boswell's sincere veneration and good humor.
Longmans, Green, for the British Council & the National Book League
The first volume of a projected definitive two-volume work, dedicated to Aleyn Lyell Reade and Percy Laithwaite, whose foundational research it integrated and augmented. Intended for the general reading public, the book provided a scholarly but accessible narrative of Samuel Johnson’s life from his birth through the 1749 publication of The Vanity of Human Wishes. Clifford consciously avoids technical psychiatric language while suggesting psychological interpretations, enabling readers to make their own analysis of Johnson's development. The chronological narrative details Johnson’s growth, surroundings, associates, and intellectual, political, and social currents. The methodology was empirically rigorous, focusing on authenticating facts and tracing the progression of Johnson's character based on the concept that "the boy is the man in miniature," correcting Boswell's perceived lack of "genetic sense" and superseding earlier accounts. The textual policy, intended for a trade edition audience, involved modernizing and normalizing prose quotations, contrasting with the treatment of poetry. The work clarifies biographical arguments, such as the contention that the deterioration of Johnson's marriage was the result of his wife Tetty’s transformation into a hypochondriac by 1748. It is fundamentally a corrective and supplement to Boswell’s Life of Johnson, filling the pre-1763 biographical gap with detailed research on his early years, including his association with Richard Savage. The biography was widely praised for its scholarly rigor, accuracy, and readability, successfully establishing the author as a fiery and impulsive young man and achieving status as the standard treatment of its subject. Chapter 1, "‘Here is a Brave Boy,’" addresses Samuel Johnson’s precarious infancy and the early medical struggles—including scrofula and the "royal touch"—that indelibly marked his physical appearance and self-perception. Chapter 2, "Lichfield," argues that the cultural and political topography of Johnson’s birthplace, characterized by a mix of Tory tradition and mercantilist energy, provided the essential social laboratory for his developing worldview. Chapter 3, "‘Rod, I Will Honor Thee for This Thy Duty,’" examines the rigorous classical pedagogy of the Lichfield Grammar School under masters Hawkins and Hunter, asserting that the "rod" was instrumental in forging Johnson’s formidable Latinity. Chapter 4, "The Bookseller’s Boy," identifies the unique intellectual opportunities afforded by Michael Johnson’s shop, where Sam’s voracious, desultory reading habits first took shape. Chapter 5, "Stourbridge," addresses the pivotal influence of Cornelius Ford, whose urbane scholarship and social sophistication offered Johnson a refined alternative to provincial life. Chapter 6, "Gilbert Walmesley," argues that Johnson's friendship with the Whig Registrar of the ecclesiastical court was the definitive intellectual mentorship of his youth, providing a dialectical foil for his emerging Toryism. Chapter 7, "Oxford," examines Johnson’s residence at Pembroke College, emphasizing how his academic brilliance was increasingly shadowed by the psychological and social humiliations of extreme poverty. Chapter 8, "Dejection and Indolence," addresses the "horrible hypochondria" and period of stasis following Johnson’s departure from the university, a time defined by the death of his father and a desperate search for professional stability. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Chapman, in the TLS, praises the book's industry and accuracy, finding that it creates a complete "Flemish picture" of the great scholar from his youth. Baker's review in the NYTBR commends the utilization of newly discovered facts to provide a compassionate portrait of the subject's early struggles, including a successful re-evaluation of his marriage. Writing for PQ, Sutherland praises the skillful integration of fragmented evidence into a continuous narrative and its balanced psychological interpretation. Keast reviews the work in MQ, calling it an ample, detailed, and soberly organized account likely to become the standard, though he notes that the evidence occasionally projects a mature image onto the early years. In Humphreys's review in MLR, the marshaling of facts is appreciated, but the manner is criticized for a familiar air that feels a shade cozy. Distinctly critical voices exist; Low (English) critiques the narrative for its humorless accumulation of information and confident speculation without evidence. Popular reviews mirror the scholarly praise, as seen in the LA Times, where Jackson notes how the account effectively fills the gaps left by traditional biographies, and the London Times, which commends the factual, straightforward, and fascinating narrative that populates the early world with vivid historical figures.
CGV entry 3:201. Published as Young Samuel Johnson in London by Heinemann (1955), with small variations from the American edition.
This review of James L. Clifford's biography focuses on the first forty years of Johnson's life, depicting him as a "journalistic hireling" in Grub Street. Baker commends Clifford for using the Yale Boswell Papers to uncover "hundreds of new facts" and for providing a "compassionate picture" of the young Johnson "on the make." The review highlights Johnson's struggles with "scrofula," "melancholia," and "penury" while working for Edward Cave. Baker notes Clifford's re-evaluation of Johnson's marriage to Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, suggesting she was a lady of "more than ordinary sense" rather than the "malicious caricature" often presented. The work brings provincial Lichfield to life, showing Johnson as a "lion in harness" before his later renown.
CGV entry 3:201.
Raymond provides an approving review of Clifford’s study of Johnson’s first forty years, arguing that the biographer successfully presents Johnson’s life as a gradual unfolding that moves beyond the retrospective prodigy described by Boswell. Focusing on the formative "Lichfield scene," the text describes the strained relationship between Johnson and his parents, Michael and Sarah, noting Michael's business failures and Sarah's inconsistent parenting. Raymond asserts that Johnson’s "inevitable destiny" drove him from academic and clerical refuges toward a life of professional writing, highlighting Clifford’s treatment of the extraordinary paradox of Johnson’s sanity emerging from melancholia and poverty. The review explores the evolution of Johnson’s marriage to Elizabeth Porter, which shifted from a mating of turtle doves to a relationship marked by bitterness as she declined into tippling, and his lifelong struggle against "black thoughts of hell and extinction." Raymond highlights Johnson’s insatiable curiosity and his intellectual activity to "dispel my terrors," characterizing the resulting philosophy as a "blend of Christianity and Stoicism" rooted in reason, virtue, and solid truth. The review concludes by quoting Johnson’s 1767 description of revisiting Lichfield.
CGV entry 3:201. Review by John Raymond of the book by James L. Clifford.
Sherbo identifies Clifford’s work as a 'much needed supplement to Boswell' that reconstructs Johnson’s first forty years with 'vividness of detail.' Clifford achieves a 'happy blending of the purely factual with the interpretive' regarding Johnson’s early education, marriage to 'Tetty,' and literary struggles. Sherbo suggests that Johnson’s Shakespearean notes support Clifford’s theories on his 'aggressive' habit of mind, noting that 'deformed, like other men, are displeased with inferiority' and seek to 'gain ground.'
CGV entry 3:201. Review by Arthur Sherbo of the book by James L. Clifford.
Hagstrum praises Clifford for using unpublished research and doctoral dissertations to illuminate obscure periods of Johnson’s life. Hagstrum finds Clifford’s reconstruction of the Lichfield and London social backgrounds expert and appreciates the rejection of the traditional "grotesque" view of Tetty. However, Hagstrum disputes Clifford’s cautious interpretation of Johnson’s "corrupt desires" as mere marital lust, arguing instead that Johnson’s profound guilt more likely stemmed from actual infidelity during long separations from his wife.
CGV entry 3:201. Review by J. H. Hagstrum of the book by James L. Clifford.
CGV entry 3:201. Review by John Beer of the book by James L. Clifford.
McCutcheon reviews Clifford’s biography covering the first forty years of Johnson's life. The book is indispensable for amateur and professional scholars, using extensive published and unpublished materials, including Aleyn Lyell Reade's Johnsonian Gleanings and original notes from Boswell and Piozzi. Clifford is commended for judiciously presenting a wealth of material on Johnson's youth, family, early schooling, friends, marriage, and melancholy, while carefully noting new discoveries and doubtful conclusions.
Keast reviews Clifford's biography of Johnson's first forty-five years, praising it as an ample, detailed, and soberly organized account likely to become the standard. The book traces Johnson's early life through his move to London, work on the Gentleman's Magazine, and publications like London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, up to 1749. Keast notes a weakness: the image of "young Sam" remains indistinct because the evidence for this period comes mainly from later recollections, projecting the image of the mature Doctor onto the early years.
Ceramic Causerie: Dr. Samuel Johnson and Chelsea
CGV entry 3:202. Rebuts a story from Thomas Faulkner's 'History of Chelsea' (1829) that Johnson experimented in manufacturing china.
Masterplots: Cyclopedia of World Authors
The Complex Art of Biography, or All the Dr. Johnsons
CGV entry 3:205. Revised and reprinted as "A Biographer Looks at Dr. Johnson" in 'New Light on Dr. Johnson' (1959) and in 'The Columbia University Forum Anthology' (1968).
Saunders sketches Johnson as a brilliant scholar driven by a morbid fear of death and eternal damnation, which made constant social company imperative to his existence. Despite a disfigured appearance and uncouth, arrogant manners, Johnson's immense personality and witty conversation fascinated London society. Saunders highlights the significance of the Thrales' hospitality at Streatham, noting that the end of this friendship—precipitated by Hester Thrale's marriage to Gabriel Piozzi—marked a mournful decline in Johnson's final years. She emphasizes Johnson's benevolence toward dependants and beggars, contrasting his rough exterior with a kind heart. Although Saunders describes Johnson's literary output as "extremely good journalism" rather than divine spark, she acknowledges his shrewd insight into human nature. The text concludes that Johnson remains a great figure whose scholarly judgments, particularly in Lives of the Poets, carried unparalleled weight in his era.
Johnson Before Boswell: A Study of Sir John Hawkins' 'Life of Samuel Johnson'
Davis challenges the long-standing critical dismissal of Hawkins as a malevolent and inaccurate biographer of Johnson. The study traces the personal and professional animosity between Hawkins and members of the Literary Club, particularly Steevens and Boswell, which predated and influenced the hostile reception of Hawkins's 1787 biography. Davis disputes the charges of plagiarism, demonstrating Hawkins's independent use of Johnson’s diaries, personal recollections spanning forty years, and various eighteenth-century biographical dictionaries. While acknowledging structural flaws and legalistic style, Davis argues that Hawkins’s "miscellaneous matter" provides essential cultural context for Johnson’s milieu rather than mere digression. He defends Hawkins's treatment of Johnson’s marriage and "indiscriminate bounty" as honest, if austere, biographical inquiry rooted in common principles shared with Johnson himself. Davis highlights Hawkins's unique contributions to the record of Johnson’s early London years and final illness, periods where Boswell lacked direct observation. The text positions Hawkins as a pioneer whose "dark uncharitable cast" reflects a commitment to judicial honesty rather than malice. By comparing specific accounts of the Parliamentary Debates and the Appleby School incident, Davis concludes that Hawkins remains a vital primary source whose "vivid portrait of a great soul" offers a necessary, objective counterbalance to Boswell’s more romanticized narrative. Chapter 1, "The Rivals," addresses the intense competition and public controversy surrounding the first biographies of Samuel Johnson, identifying the early efforts of booksellers to preempt the market with Sir John Hawkins’s authorized account despite immediate, malicious opposition from rivals like George Steevens. Chapter 2, "‘Here Lies Sir John Hawkins,’" examines the critical reception of Hawkins’s Life, arguing that while it initially captured significant public interest, it was soon buried by a campaign of ridicule and condemnation orchestrated by wits and members of the Literary Club. Chapter 3, "Plagiarism and Independence," explores the primary materials used in the Life, arguing that Hawkins operated with a sturdy independence based on his access to Johnson's private diaries and a personal acquaintance spanning over forty years. Chapter 4, "The Dark Uncharitable Cast, I," addresses the pervasive charge of malevolence toward Johnson, contending that Hawkins’s unflattering depictions of personal habits and constitutional indolence actually align with the biographical standards of truth shared by Johnson himself. Chapter 5, "The Dark Uncharitable Cast, II," examines Hawkins’s treatment of Johnson’s contemporaries, arguing that his seemingly harsh judgments were generally intended to "point a moral" rather than to consciously misrepresent his subjects. Chapter 6, "Unpardonable Inaccuracies," addresses the specific factual errors attributed to Hawkins, arguing that while he was occasionally mistaken, his mistakes were often no more egregious than those later committed by Boswell. Chapter 7, "Sir John’s Way," examines the book's extensive "miscellaneous matter," arguing that these purported digressions are integral to a "life-and-times" approach that effectively places Johnson within his historical and cultural milieu. Chapter 8, "The Seeds of Judgment," explores Hawkins’s literary criticism of Johnson’s works, identifying the probable contributions of his daughter, Laetitia-Matilda, while asserting Hawkins’s own primary role in the analysis of Johnson’s political writings. Chapter 9, "Quarter Sessions Jargon," addresses the limitations of Hawkins’s prose style, acknowledging the presence of legalistic "jargon" while maintaining that his language is frequently vivid, formal, and readable. Chapter 10, "Conclusion," argues for the restoration of Hawkins’s Life as a standard work second only to Boswell’s, emphasizing its unique value as a firsthand scholarly record of eighteenth-century England's most prominent figure. The critical reception of this scholarly study is characterized by its "spirited" and "persuasive" rehabilitation of a widely maligned eighteenth-century biographer. Reviewers largely applaud the author for acting as a "zealous and learned champion" who systematically refutes long-standing charges of plagiarism, dishonesty, and malevolence that were historically used to "hoot down" the 1787 Life. Critics highlight the work's success in exposing how "Boswellian dominance" and "cabal-driven" dismissals by rivals like Malone and Hill unjustly obscured an "essential Johnsonian witness." The study is praised for establishing the biographer as a "standard" authority, second only to Boswell, particularly regarding the subject's early London years and political feelings. However, the reception is not without significant dissent; some reviewers characterize the defense as "extreme special pleading" that occasionally "strains to palliate" the biographer’s "crabbed, lawyerly outlook." While many find the exoneration from malice compelling, others remain "unconvinced," maintaining that no amount of scholarship can overcome the biographer's fundamental "lack of warmth" and "inelegant style." Ultimately, the consensus acknowledges the study as an "honest piece of scholarship" that successfully transforms a "museum piece" into a "necessary supplement," providing a "judicious summary of faults and merits" that creates a more rounded and truthful portrait of the Great Cham.
CGV entry 3:207. A revision of his 1956 Columbia University dissertation.
Cloyne reviews Greene on Johnson’s politics and Davis on Johnson's biographers before Boswell. Davis brings Grub Street to life, examining how Johnson’s fame at death led to a "flood of candidates" for his biography. Cloyne highlights that Boswell’s eventual dominance caused Johnson to suffer from the "implacable" nature of early rivals like Hawkins.
CGV entry 3:207. An anonymous review of the book by Bertram H. Davis.
Davis's literary study evaluates Hawkins's 1787 Life, which Boswell's subsequent biography quickly overshadowed. Davis analyzes the reasons for the book’s failure, noting Hawkins's poor timing, tactlessness toward Boswell, and uncongenial character, which critics exploited. Davis systematically demolishes the persistent charges against Hawkins's work, including plagiarism, dishonesty, and stylistic flaws, though he acknowledges errors and an uncharitable cast to the portrait. Davis ultimately establishes Hawkins as an essential biographer, alongside Piozzi and Boswell, for a rounded portrait of Johnson.
Davis offers a piece of honest scholarship designed to restore Sir John Hawkins's disparaged biography of Johnson to a position of standard importance. He argues that Johnson’s stature remains imposing regardless of Boswellian standards, exposing the misleading editorializing of later commentators like Malone and Hill. Though Rycenga characterizes the work as extreme special pleading that occasionally strains to palliate Hawkins’s shortcomings, he acknowledges its value in enlarging the Johnsonian canon.
CGV entry 3:207. Review by John Rycenga of the book by Bertram H. Davis.
Kolb provides a persuasive rehabilitation of Hawkins' biography, arguing against long-standing charges of malevolence and plagiarism. He notes that Hawkins worked with a standard of biographical taste different from the Literary Club's, resulting in a "dark uncharitable cast" that contemporary reviewers misjudged. While admitting Hawkins committed roughly forty errors of fact, Kolb asserts these do not invalidate the work's status as a necessary supplement to Boswell. He identifies the discussion of Johnson’s political works and the analysis of Hawkins' prose style as major strengths, though he acknowledges the numerous digressions remain a significant obstacle for general readers.
CGV entry 3:207. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the book by Bertram H. Davis.
Roberts acknowledges Davis’s "spirited defence" of Hawkins against traditional criticisms of irrelevance and poor proportion. However, he maintains that Hawkins lacked the "grace of presentation" and psychological fitness required for a biographer of Johnson, describing him as too much of a "prig." While Roberts admits Hawkins’s account of Johnson’s early London years is valuable, he concludes that Davis fails to overcome the fundamental defects in Hawkins’s character.
CGV entry 3:207. Review by S. C. Roberts of the book by Bertram H. Davis.
Hodgart provides a chronological account of Johnson's life, tracing his development from an obscure provincial background in Lichfield through the "lexicographical drudgery" of the London years to his emergence as the dominant literary arbiter of his age. Hodgart challenges the notion of Johnson as a "neurotic genius," instead emphasizing his heroic struggle against physical and mental ill-health and his "vile melancholy." The text analyzes Johnson's multifarious achievements as a poet, biographer, moralist, and critic, while detailing his intimate relationships with figures such as James Boswell and the Thrales. Hodgart particularly highlights Johnson's practical engagement with his era, including his involvement in technology, commerce, and legal reform efforts regarding capital punishment and debtors' prisons. The central argument posits that Johnson's most enduring legacy is his contribution to "Wisdom Literature," as his writings and recorded conversations distill immense experience into memorable, universally applicable aphorisms. Hodgart maintains that Johnson created and transmitted eighteenth-century ideals of independence and frankness that remain relevant to modern readers. Critics call this book a scholarly reassessment that anchors the subject firmly within his historical milieu while asserting his contemporary relevance. Boulton and Ketton-Cremer praise the analysis of the subject’s "contribution to wisdom" and his role as a vigorous moralist. The Economist welcomes the work as a rounded picture of eighteenth-century literary life that avoids mediocre trivia. But Gifford and Ricks express reservations, challenging the brevity of the literary criticism and disputing the claim that the subject was a potentially great poet who abandoned his vocation. Chauvin, however, commends the text for its accessibility to students and autodidact readers.
Gifford describes Hodgart’s biography as a competent, up-to-date survey that sets Johnson firmly against his time as a "national institution" and a "maker of Britain." While he appreciates the handling of Johnson’s experience as a citizen, he disputes Hodgart’s literary assessment that Johnson was "potentially a great poet" who abandoned the vocation for fear of madness or self-mutilation. Gifford finds this claim unsupported by Johnson’s prose, which he describes as "easy and exultant." He further challenges Hodgart’s characterization of the scholar’s fate in The Vanity of Human Wishes as a "serio-comic catalogue," noting that the lines moved Johnson to tears. Gifford criticizes the use of anachronistic and "bohemian" comparisons to Kipps or Dylan Thomas, which "blur distinctions" regarding Johnson’s true stature and argues that Hodgart misses the full poetic force of the Rambler essays.
CGV entry 3:208. Review by Henry Gifford of the book by M. J. C. Hodgart.
Review by Henry Gifford of Samuel Johnson by M. J. C. Hodgart.
Hodgart's Samuel Johnson and his Times is rated highly, presenting Johnson as an advocate of intelligent, progressive conservatism. Hodgart writes with detailed knowledge and good sense, dealing fairly with his relations with Chesterfield and Thrale-Piozzi. The book focuses on Johnson's literary achievement and influence, particularly the Dictionary, Rasselas, periodical essays, and his contribution to wisdom. Davis's edition of Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson, the first re-issue since 1787, is noted as providing a realistic portrait that offended some contemporaries, with Davis's introduction. The book Jemmy Twitcher: A Life of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich by Martelli is described as a readable biography.
CGV entry 3:208.
The Cantankerous Dr. Johnson Battles a Lord—and Some Commoners
Land examines Johnson’s reputation for combative scholarship and physical confrontation, notably with bookseller Thomas Osborne. The narrative centers on Johnson’s Seven-year struggle to complete his Dictionary without the support of Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield. Land analyzes the subsequent "masterpiece" letter in which Johnson regally rejects Chesterfield’s belated endorsement, famously inquiring if a patron is not one who looks with "unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water" only to encumber him with help upon reaching ground. The text further explores Johnson’s victory over James Macpherson’s fraudulent Ossian epics and his playful parodies of Thomas Percy’s ballads. Finally, Land recounts the bitter "Hawkins-Boswell feud" following Johnson’s death. Boswell successfully dismantled the reputation of the "unclubable" Hawkins, Johnson’s official executor, by characterizing his competing biography as a "ponderous" farrago of inaccuracies and "dark uncharitable" misrepresentations.
Samuel Whyte's Anecdotes About Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 3:210. From a manuscript at Dartmouth.
Johnson, Mrs. Trimmer, and Paradise Lost
Greene presents a charming story from the 1814 biography of Sarah Trimmer, which he suggests has an authentic ring but has been overlooked by Johnsonian biographers. The anecdote describes a literary dispute at the home of Joshua Reynolds regarding Milton's Paradise Lost. When the young Sarah produced the book from her pocket to settle the matter, Johnson was so struck by a girl of that age making this work her pocket companion and by the modesty of her behavior that he invited her to his home. Johnson subsequently presented her with a copy of the Rambler and treated her with great consideration. Greene notes that Trimmer, inspired by the example of Johnson, later kept a diary of daily self-examination in his own manner.
CGV entry 3:211. An anecdote of Johnson and Sarah Kirby (later Mrs. Trimmer).
Macaulay provides a narrative of Johnson’s trajectory from a desultory scholar at Oxford to the "dictator" of English letters. The account details Johnson’s scrofulous health, his unsuccessful school at Edial, and his early London years spent in "literary drudgery" for Edward Cave. Macaulay highlights the 1755 completion of the Dictionary as a turning point that established Johnson’s fame, though not his fortune, necessitating continued toil on Rasselas and The Idler. The biography examines Johnson’s domestic life, including his marriage to Elizabeth Porter and his diverse household of dependants. Significant attention is given to his relationships with Thrale and Boswell, the latter of whom recorded the conversations that sustained Johnson's posthumous reputation. While Macaulay criticizes Johnson's political tracts and his edition of Shakespeare as failures, he praises The Lives of the Poets for its colloquial ease and shrewd observation. Seccombe’s appended note qualifies Macaulay’s "picturesque" exaggerations and affirms the enduring intellectual force of Johnson’s prose.
Johnson, Boswell and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell in Honour of His Eighty-Fourth Birthday
De Beer details the various attempts made by Johnson and his friends, including Boswell and the Thrales, to organize a tour of Italy. The text analyzes Johnson’s extensive reading on Italian history and culture, suggesting he was intellectually prepared for the journey. By tracing correspondence and journal entries, De Beer identifies the specific locations Johnson hoped to visit and the scholarly objectives he intended to pursue. The failure of the project is attributed to Johnson’s declining health and the death of Henry Thrale. De Beer argues that the absence of a 'Journey to Italy' remains one of the great losses to eighteenth-century travel literature.
CGV entry 3:214. Discusses plans for the proposed trip with the Thrales and Baretti in 1776.
Some Problems of Johnson's Obscure Middle Years
Johnson's 'middle years' from 1749 to 1763 remain obscure compared to his later life, as Boswell wisely focused on his major published works due to a lack of intimate daily information. Establishing a simple biographical framework is difficult; for 1760 and 1761, few letters or public compositions exist. Thomas Hollis's diary provides an intriguing but problematic record, mentioning a 'Mr. Johnson' who may be the lexicographer but could also be a bookseller or an unknown individual. While Johnson certainly composed an introduction for the French prisoners' relief committee, many 'hack' works from this period likely remain unidentified. Continued study of contemporary newspapers and manuscripts is essential to illuminating the emotional crises and pressures that settled Johnson's character during this professional peak.
CGV entry 3:215. Discusses the period from 1749 to 1763.
CGV entry 3:216. Anecdotes from Christopher Smart's daughter.
Abbott identifies Johnson’s participation in the Society of Arts through archival Minutes and Subscription Books from 1756 to 1763. Proposed by Stuart, Johnson paid annual dues of two guineas and actively served on committees concerning the Society's meeting room, mechanical friction, and water preservation. Abbott examines Johnson’s oratorical difficulties, his support for Dossie’s membership, and his collaboration with the Society of Artists. The record also notes Boswell’s election in 1759 and his subsequent efforts to avoid unpaid arrears.
CGV entry 3:218. In two parts: April, pages 395-400; and May, pages 486-491.
Johnson in Scotland: From an Unpublished Notebook
Drescher presents and annotates previously unpublished manuscript fragments from Henry Mackenzie's notebook regarding Johnson's 1773 Scottish tour. Mackenzie records Johnson's controversial claim that Scotland lacked trees older than himself, noting that "he was led into some Mistakes which gave some zealous Scotsmen offence." The text details Johnson's interactions with Kenneth Macaulay and his "Attack on the Authenticity of Ossian," which Mackenzie identifies as a "great Cause of quarrel." Mackenzie characterizes Johnson's conversation as possessing "Accuracy in his Stile & a Boldness in his Figures" while noting his "Wisdom is dogmatical & his Wit unfeeling." Despite Boswell omitting Mackenzie from his journal, Drescher confirms they met in Edinburgh, where Mackenzie observed Johnson's "benevolence & kindness of heart" alongside his "Roughness of contradiction."
CGV entry 3:219. Excerpts from a manuscript notebook of Henry Mackenzie, now in the National Library of Scotland.
The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson, 1784–1791
Keley analyzes the early biographies of Samuel Johnson published between 1784 and 1791, classifying them by their focus on Johnson as a writer, a moralist, or a domesticated humorist. It examines contemporary biographical theory, discussing controversies surrounding the relation of biography to history, the proper subject, moral utility, and the use of private details and trivia. The work offers close readings of accounts by Tyers, Cooke, Shaw, Towers, Courtenay, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Fanny Burney, evaluating their originality, accuracy, and contribution to the burgeoning "Johnsoniana" tradition before the publication of Boswell's definitive biography.
CGV entry 3:220. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 29, number 2 (August 1968), pages 569A-570A.
Documents the scarce evidence for Michael Johnson's auction sales, the father of Dr. Johnson, in the Midlands. It reproduces a 1717-18 advertisement from The Worcester Postman detailing a book and print sale at the Talbot Inn, Sidbury, Worcester, identical in description to a lost sale catalogue previously quoted by Clifford. The advertisement's repetition and subsequent relocation of the sale to the Cross-Keys Inn suggest that the stock did not sell completely at the first venue, providing new information about Johnson's business activities.
CGV entry 3:221. Concerns sales in Worcestershire, 1717–1718.
University of North Carolina Press; Oxford University Press
From Puzzles to Portraits: Problems of a Literary Biographer
Clifford presents a practicing biographer's perspective on the practical and ethical challenges of life-writing, drawing heavily on his research for biographies of Johnson and Piozzi. The narrative details adventures in "outside research," such as the discovery of Johnson's letters to Elizabeth Way at a village fete and the recovery of Piozzi's diaries from a Welsh farmhouse. Clifford challenges the reliability of pre-twentieth-century editions, citing Seward’s "revised versions of her earlier letters" which "completely distorted the truth" about Johnson. The study classifies biography into five types, ranging from objective "life records" to fictionalized accounts. Clifford defends Johnson’s biography of Richard Savage as "one of the first genuinely revealing biographies" for its refusal to conceal failings despite the author's affection. He explores the subjectivity inherent in selecting evidence, noting how Johnson "attributed his own feelings to Milton" when discussing the poet's neglect of family prayer. The work emphasizes that the biographer's duty is to "reproduce the truth as closely as he humanly can" while navigating the "delight and the anguish" of re-creating a career. Chapter 1, '“Outside” versus “Inside” Research,' addresses the indispensable necessity of supplementing library investigations with field research to uncover primary documents. Chapter 2, 'The Vague Footnote,' addresses how obscure bibliographical references can lead to the discovery of significant unpublished manuscripts through persistence and geographic proximity. Chapter 3, 'The Welsh Farmhouse,' addresses the role of serendipity in locating historical artifacts within private, non-archival settings. Chapter 4, 'The Paralyzed Old Lady,' addresses the pursuit of elusive evidence through oral history and legacy connections. Chapter 5, 'A Few Other Cases,' addresses unconventional repositories, such as legal and financial records, as vital sources for biographical detail. Chapter 6, 'Testing Authenticity,' addresses the methodology for evaluating source reliability and the risks of textual distortion. Chapter 7, 'Form—Types of Biography,' addresses the taxonomy of life-writing, ranging from objective fact-piling to fictionalized interpretation. Chapter 8, 'The Biographer’s Involvement,' addresses the subjective interaction between author and subject that inevitably shapes the narrative. Chapter 9, 'How Much Should a Biographer Tell?,' addresses the ethical and quantitative dilemmas regarding privacy and the inclusion of detail.
CGV entry 3:223. Discusses problems in the biography of Johnson and Hester Piozzi.
Johnson accompanied Reynolds on a holiday to Devon in late summer 1762, a period of relative financial security following the grant of his royal pension. Using Reynolds's pocket notebook, Clifford traces their itinerary through Winchester, Salisbury, and Wilton, where they viewed prominent art collections and architectural landmarks like Longford Castle. In Plymouth, Johnson associated with the family of Zachariah Mudge, whose intellectual character he deeply admired. The narrative documents Johnson's humorous adoption of local prejudices, such as his mock-hostility toward the 'dockers' of the new town, and his skeptical but attentive investigation of natural phenomena, including John Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse. These interactions reveal Johnson's 'high good humor' and his insistence on personal observation over second-hand reports during this formative excursion.
The Augustan Milieu: Essays Presented to Louis A. Landa
Clifford recovers the history of Johnson's extensive involvement with the Society of Artists during the early 1760s, a period previously obscure in biographies. Using committee minutes, Clifford identifies Johnson as the ghostwriter for crucial petitions and public addresses that facilitated London’s first extensive public art exhibitions. Johnson drafted a formal letter to the Society of Arts in 1760 and authored the 1761 "Address of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects" to George III. Clifford also affirms Johnson’s authorship of the 1762 exhibition Preface, which Sir Joshua Reynolds presented. These documents reveal Johnson’s commitment to raising the social dignity of creative professionals. Clifford emphasizes Johnson's characteristic insistence that "Elegance and Ingenuity are most valuable when they contribute to the Purposes of Virtue."
Hibbert provides a narrative biography of Johnson, structured as storytelling to emphasize the subject's personal character, physical infirmities, and social circle. The text traces Johnson's life from his 'wretched' beginnings in Lichfield, marked by scrofula and poverty, through his struggles as a 'grubstreeter' in London, to his eventual status as a literary titan. Hibbert focuses on the contrast between Johnson’s 'majestic intelligence' and his 'forbidding' appearance, convulsive movements, and bouts of 'terrifying melancholy'. Central to the narrative are Johnson’s complex relationships, including his 'unlikely' marriage to Elizabeth 'Tetty' Porter, his profound grief following her death, and his later intimacy with the Thrales at Streatham Park. Hibbert details Johnson's professional milestones, such as the 'Dictionary', 'The Rambler', and his edition of Shakespeare, while highlighting his 'constitutional laziness' and 'insistent morality'. The biography describes Johnson's social environment through accounts of figures like Garrick, Savage, and Boswell, as well as his household dependants like Anna Williams and Francis Barber. Hibbert avoids the 'wranglings of academe', instead using published materials and private papers to construct an affectionate portrait of Johnson as a man who 'dreaded solitude' and sought 'escape from himself' through constant company and conversation. The work concludes with a detailed account of Johnson’s physical decline and his 'race with death' in 1784. Chapter 1, 'The Bookseller's Son,' explores Samuel Johnson's early life in Lichfield, detailing how physical infirmities, a discordant domestic environment, and precocious intellectual gifts shaped his complex temperament . Chapter 2, 'Grub Street,' chronicles Johnson’s migration to London and his initial years of professional struggle, during which he survived through hack-work for the Gentleman's Magazine and established a nascent reputation with the publication of London. Chapter 3, 'Poor Dear Tetty', examines the nuances of Johnson's marriage to Elizabeth Porter, a union characterized by genuine affection despite personal eccentricities, financial instability, and Tetty's eventual decline into alcoholism and illness. Chapter 4, 'The Giant in His Den', delineates the mid-career period in which Johnson transitioned from an obscure writer to a central figure of the London literati, anchored by the founding of the Ivy Lane Club and the publication of The Rambler. Chapter 5, 'A New Wife', addresses the profound grief following his wife's death and his subsequent search for intellectual and emotional companionship, focusing on his relationships with Hill Boothby and the burgeoning circle at Streatham. Chapter 6, 'Tea Cups and Dinner Plates', explores the social dimensions of Johnson's life, specifically his conversational dominance, his fastidious social rituals, and his role as a mentor to younger figures like Oliver Goldsmith and Joshua Reynolds. Chapter 7, 'A Young Man From Edinburgh', details the pivotal 1763 meeting between Johnson and James Boswell, analyzing the immediate and enduring rapport that formed the basis for their legendary biographical partnership. Chapter 8, 'The Turk's Head Oracle', highlights the consolidation of Johnson's authority within "The Club," showcasing his formidable conversational powers and his commitment to rigorous intellectual debate. Chapter 9, 'New Friends and Old Rambles', chronicles the early years of Johnson's intimacy with the Thrale family, which provided him with domestic stability and a platform for some of his most influential late-career social activities. Chapter 10, 'Streatham Park', depicts Johnson's integration into the Thrales' country estate, examining how this environment influenced his health, his writing of the Shakespeare edition, and his evolving social identity. Chapter 11, 'Scotland', documents the 1773 tour of the Hebrides with Boswell, analyzing Johnson's observations on Scottish culture and the physical challenges that tested his characteristic resilience. Chapter 12, 'Wales and France', surveys Johnson's later travels, contrasting his tepid reaction to the Welsh landscape with the intellectual stimulation he found in Parisian society. Chapter 13, 'Whole Nests of People in His House', describes the eclectic and often quarrelsome household of dependants Johnson maintained at Bolt Court, illustrating his profound, practical commitment to charity. Chapter 14, 'Mr Wilkes and Mr Edwards', recounts notable social encounters from Johnson's final decade, including his unexpected reconciliation with former political enemies and the renewal of old collegiate ties. Chapter 15, 'Formidable and Dangerous Distempers', details the rapid deterioration of Johnson's health and his intense, often harrowing struggles with the prospect of his own mortality. Chapter 16, 'The Race With Death', concludes the narrative by describing Johnson's final months, emphasizing his spiritual preparation for the end and the enduring legacy established by his death in 1784. Critical reaction is mixed. Holmes, in The Times, contrasts the anecdotal figure with a darker, historically more complex portrait, noting the narrative follows the subject from Lichfield to Bolt Court before his late terrors. In PQ, Kelley criticizes the volume for prioritizing anecdotal accounts over the subject's authorship, concluding that it offers nothing new to experienced scholars. Lamont (RES) provides a contrasting perspective, characterizing the work as a readable, sympathetic study that is light on serious discussion of the writings. Basney, in Western Humanities Review, finds the portrait one-dimensional, arguing that the focus on eccentricities, nervous deformities, and physical convulsions excludes overall reasonableness and steady principle by ignoring the formal occasions of the intellect. But Chapman, writing for The Nation, praises the fine judgment and distillation of primary materials, asserting that the study successfully displays the man where exterior appendages are cast aside. Writing for America, Cronin notes the use of a compact narrative updated with recent special studies, but questions the strategy of abstracting a personal history from a larger historical context, citing journalistic haste and carelessness regarding details. In the Washington Post, Cruttwell praises the accuracy and readable style, calling the work a skillful tessellation of known facts and anecdotes without concentrated analysis. Saul (The Sun) and Kenny (Boston Globe) describe the narrative as a valuable, brilliant retelling that explores private corners and social aberrations, while Hobson, in the Christian Science Monitor, emphasizes its readability and better sense of proportion than traditional accounts.
Reviews: Lionel Basney, Western Humanities Review 28, no. 1 (1974): 79–81; R. W. Chapman, The Nation, January 22, 1973; Choice 1972, 814; Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1972; Grover Cronin Jr., America: The Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture 126, no. 15 (1972): 409; Patrick Cruttwell, Washington Post, February 13, 1972; Webster Gault, Hartford Courant, March 12, 1972; Geoffrey Grigson, Country Life 150, no. 3887 (1971): 1684–85; History Today 1984, vol. 34: 46; Richard Holmes, The Times (London), December 6, 1971; Robert E. Kelley, PQ 51, no. 3 (1972): 703; Herbert A. Kenny, Boston Globe, February 11, 1972; Claire Lamont, RES, n.s., 24, no. 93 (1973): 92–94; Library Journal 1972, 490; Publishers Weekly, January 10, 1972; Frank Saul, The Sun (Baltimore), March 5, 1972; The Economist, November 6, 1971; The Spectator 1971, vol. 227, no. 7487: 928; Times Educational Supplement 1971, no. 2953: 12.
Kelley criticizes the work for prioritizing anecdotal accounts over Johnson's writing. While the book entertains through quotations from Boswell, Piozzi, and others, it provides no original insights. Kelley concludes that the volume offers nothing new to experienced scholars, as it sustains the "double tradition" instead of analyzing Johnson’s authorship.
CGV entry 3:228.
Hibbert uses raw source materials to move beyond Boswell’s "magisterial simplifications," providing a "personal history" that functions as a "smooth rehearsal of the existential flow of Johnson's moments." Basney finds the work one-dimensional because of a lack of interpretive commentary and a "relative neglect of Johnson's writings." The narrative emphasizes Johnson's "eccentricities, his nervous deformities, his bad temper," and physical convulsions. While capturing the man's "inflammatory stubbornness," Basney notes the portrait excludes Johnson's "overall reasonableness" and "steady principle" by ignoring the "formal occasions of Johnson's intellect."
Kelley and Brack examine minor biographical works on Johnson published between 1784 and 1791, focusing on Tyers, Cooke, Shaw, and Towers. They trace interrelationships among these ephemeral texts, arguing they illuminate Johnson’s contemporary reputation and the evolution of English biography. Keast identifies the authors’ analytical framework—categorizing biographers as focusing on Johnson either as writer or moralist—as overly mechanical. He suggests that applying Johnson’s own sophisticated biographical theories from the Rambler would yield a more penetrating assessment of these minor works.
CGV entry 3:229. Review by William R. Keast of the book by Robert E. Kelley and O M Brack, Jr. Part of "The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography."
Bloom deems Kelley and Brack's modest work a competent essay in rediscovery, useful for reflecting Johnson's contemporary reputation and the development of life-narratives.
CGV entry 3:229. Review by Edward A. Bloom of the book by Robert E. Kelley and O M Brack, Jr., alongside other works.
Waingrow reviews Samuel Johnson's Early Biographers by Kelley and Brack, which lists eighteen early lives from 1762 to 1791. The review suggests the book would be better as an introduction to the authors’ forthcoming edition of the lives, as the text suffers from a lack of the complete primary sources. Waingrow finds the authors' generalizations—specifically the contradictory claims that early biographers emphasized Johnson's moral example while critics were disturbed by damage to his moral reputation—unclear. The division of the book into "Johnson as Writer" and "Johnson as Moralist" appears arbitrary, but the authors rightly criticize the biographers’ separation of the man and the moralist.
CGV entry 3:229.
Samuel Johnson's Uttoxeter Penance in the Writings of Hawthorne
John Hoole's Journal Narrative Relating to Johnson's Last Illness
Brack examines the original manuscript of Hoole's journal, used by Boswell but never previously published in full. The study reveals that Hoole suppressed intimate passages concerning Johnson's intense religious fervor and his efforts to ensure the spiritual welfare of his friends. Brack highlights Johnson's insistence that Hoole use the journal as a religious exercise and describes the "agony of devotion" displayed by Johnson during his final reception of the Sacrament.
Journal Narrative Relative to Doctor Johnson's Last Illness, Three Weeks Before his Death, Kept by John Hoole, 1784
CGV entry 3:232. A limited edition, printed from the manuscript in the Beinecke Library.
Robert Anderson's Life of Johnson and Early Interpretive Biography
Korshin argues that Anderson's Life of Johnson (1795, expanded 1815) is an unjustly neglected work and the first full-length critical and interpretative biography. The 1815 edition, augmented with new material from Percy, abandons simple chronological structure for a "character" approach, analyzing Johnson in twelve literary roles. Anderson, a physician, anticipates psychobiography by linking Johnson's melancholy to his eccentricities and religious doubts. Anderson's critique, temperate for its time, also makes the novel observation that Johnson's unique style influenced a comprehensive list of contemporaries.
Samuel Johnson and the Vanity of Human Resolutions
CGV entry 3:235. On Johnson's personal resolutions and his failure to keep them.
This volume provides context for the "major biographies" by Boswell, Piozzi, and Hawkins by collecting fourteen minor biographical accounts published by Johnson's contemporaries shortly after his death. It includes memoirs by William Shaw and Joseph Towers, and accounts from the Universal Magazine and European Magazine, which were largely unfamiliar to modern readers. The editors’ larger project was to provide tools for assessing these minor works. This collection was important for historians of criticism, providing insight into the textual context that subsequently established the "myth of Tory Johnson."
CGV entry 3:236. A reprint of fourteen biographical accounts published between 1762 and 1786.
Greene commends the collection of fourteen biographical accounts published before 1787 for establishing the factual basis of Johnson’s life beyond Boswell’s narratives. Greene praises the judicious annotation and comprehensive index. While acknowledging the editorial decision to omit duplicate documents, Greene identifies textual variants in Gower’s letter and emphasizes the value of obscure journalistic sources for tracing the growth of the Johnson canon. Greene concludes that the work provides an indispensable foundation for modern Johnsonian scholarship.
CGV entry 3:236. Review by Donald Greene of the book edited by O M Brack, Jr. and Robert E. Kelley.
Passler praises Brack and Kelley's annotated edition of fourteen pre-Boswell biographies of Johnson, noting its meticulous editorial policy of cross-referencing and bracketing verbatim passages. The collection is a valuable resource for specialists studying Johnson and the art of biography, documenting a slow but increasing willingness among early biographers to treat the whole man, including his conservative politics and "bearish personality," revealing a gradually sharpening focus on Johnson.
CGV entry 3:236.
Fearful Joy: Papers from the Thomas Gray Bicentenary Conference at Carleton University
Gray and Johnson: The Biographical Problem
Lonsdale investigates the "biographical problem" posed by Johnson's intense antipathy toward Gray, a figure he never met but frequently maligned. The narrative traces Boswell’s unsuccessful attempts to reconcile his admiration for both men, highlighting Johnson’s dismissal of Gray as a "mechanical poet" whose Odes suffered from "forced" obscurity. Lonsdale argues that Johnson’s critique in the Lives of the Poets was not merely personal but a deliberate assault on the prevailing "sophisticated" taste for the sublime. While Johnson’s friends, including Reynolds and Burney, privately dissented from his harsh judgment, the public reaction was one of "pain and rage." Ultimately, Lonsdale suggests Johnson sought to reclaim poetry for the "common reader" by stripping away the "fantastick foppery" of Gray’s academic isolation, though he concluded with famous praise for the "Elegy" as a work of universal sentiment.
Alkon praises this edition for providing reliable texts suitable for both general readers and scholars. He highlights the inclusion of a concise introduction, chronologies for Shaw and Piozzi, and explanatory notes. Alkon notes that Sherbo includes several primary documents omitted from other contemporary collections, making this volume more complete. The edition facilitates greater awareness of pre-Boswellian accounts of Johnson through its professional apparatus and twelve illustrations.
CGV entry 3:238. Review by Paul K. Alkon of the book edited by Arthur Sherbo.
Fleeman welcomes Sherbo's edition of these two early accounts, which makes a scarce, inaccurate work, Shaw's 1785 Memoirs, and a better-known, though also inaccurate, work, Piozzi's 1786 Anecdotes, accessible. While Shaw's Memoirs is frequently inaccurate, it remains a valuable source, and Piozzi's Anecdotes suffers from errors caused by a hasty publication process involving transcription in Italy and rapid printing in London. Fleeman praises the presentation of the entertaining Anecdotes, describing Piozzi's narrative as light-hearted, sympathetic, and highly readable despite its occasional bitterness. The reviewer identifies minor blemishes in Sherbo's editorial work, including textual errors, misprints in Latin epitaphs, and the silent correction of Shaw's errors. However, Fleeman commends the expanded annotations and informative illustrations, noting that the edition provides a successful treatment of the original texts.
CGV entry 3:238. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the book edited by Arthur Sherbo.
A comprehensive chronological life, approximately 240,000 words in length, written for the intelligent general reader. Wain sought to replace the popular image, largely derived from Boswell and Macaulay, by focusing on "Johnson the writer, not the talker." Wain argues Johnson was a profoundly humanitarian figure who "rooted his life among the poor and outcast." He stresses Johnson's anti-imperial and anti-slavery positions, challenging the stereotype of Johnson as a rigid conservative. Wain organized the work chronologically, structuring the narrative based on his identification with Johnson’s struggles, noting they shared a Midlands background, attendance at the same university, and a career marked by "Grub Street, chance employment." Wain includes explicit editorial admissions in the source note that "there is no research in this book" and he "avoided reading modern studies of Johnson," though he later clarified this meant avoiding original archival research. Chapter 1, "'A Poor Diseased Infant'," addresses the subject's precarious early health and the foundational physical afflictions that shaped his lifelong psychological resilience. Chapter 2, "Mentors," examines the pivotal intellectual influence of figures like Cornelius Ford and Gilbert Walmesley, arguing that these early associations were essential for forging the subject's formidable scholarly and conversational skills. Chapter 3, "'Ah, Sir, I was Mad and Violent'," explores the subject's turbulent Oxford years, contending that his academic brilliance was consistently shadowed by the humiliations of poverty and emerging mental instability. Chapter 6, "At St John’s Gate," identifies the subject’s entry into the anonymous "Grub Street" workforce, arguing that his early labor for Edward Cave established the professional discipline required for his later monumental works. Chapter 10, "The Tragic Muse," addresses the composition and eventual performance of Irene, arguing that while the play was a relative failure, it represented a significant early attempt at high literary achievement. Chapter 14, "Word-Hoard," examines the immense labor of the Dictionary, contending that this project not only established the subject’s national eminence but served as a necessary psychological anchor during a period of personal loss. Chapter 16, "A Death; and a Journey in the Mind," explores the creative and psychological response to the death of the subject's mother, identifying Rasselas as a definitive expression of his moral realism. Chapter 21, "The Two Families," addresses the formation of the subject's unique domestic circle, arguing that his role as a protector of social outcasts provided a reciprocal emotional ballast for his own melancholy. Chapter 25, "A Hundred Days in a Strange Land," examines the tour of the Hebrides with Boswell, identifying it as a sophisticated experiment in cultural and historical observation. Chapter 29, "'I Shall Not Trouble You Long'," concludes by addressing the subject's final illness and death, arguing that his transition into "everlasting rest" was a courageous fulfillment of his lifelong moral pilgrimage. Critics are generally favorable, praising the effort to humanize the subject over traditional biographical stereotypes, though a split occurs regarding technical execution. Greene, in TLS, lauds the volume for eroding a persistent Victorian image of a pompous arch-Tory and restoring a deeply humanitarian portrait. Writing for NYTBR, Ricks calls it a vividly humane, noble achievement that captures unexpected gentleness and a profound role as a man of letters. Ehrenpreis's review in NYRB deems it a noble attempt to situate the figure within English culture but identifies significant carelessness regarding economic history and literary facts. In PQ, Weinbrot praises the accessibility and rounded presentation of a European man of letters while documenting numerous scholarly inaccuracies regarding publishing histories and authorship. Pottle, in RES, commends the vivid narrative and perceptive analysis of the writings, noting that it makes the material accessible to modern audiences despite lacking new discoveries. Similarly, Fussell's review in SEL describes it as readable and vigorous, admiring the concrete details and warm appreciation of the subject's humanitarianism despite a distinct lack of original research. Among popular press evaluations, Broyard's review in the New York Times praises the attempt to humanize a figure frozen into a monument, and Kirsch in the LA Times argues that the biography successfully restores a dense context to personal character. But Hodgart in the New Statesman offers a scathing dismissal, calling the narrative unsatisfactory, dropsical, and massively padded.
CGV entry 3:239. The New York edition was published in 1975.
Reviews: Bruce Allen, The Sun (Baltimore), March 23, 1975; Alfred C. Ames, Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1975; Pat Barclay, Calgary Herald, February 13, 1976; Michel Baridon, Dix-huitième siècle 8, no. 1 (1976): 509–10; Lionel Basney, Western Humanities Review 29, no. 4 (1975): 375–77; Marilyn Beck, San Francisco Examiner, February 17, 1975; Joe Bennett, Pittsburgh Press, March 23, 1975; Anatole Broyard, New York Times, February 13, 1975; Anatole Broyard, The Sun (Baltimore), February 18, 1975; Peter Buitenhuis, Globe and Mail (Toronto), March 15, 1975; John Carey, The Listener 92, no. 2382 (1974): 678–79; Carleton Miscellany 1975; Choice 1973, 460; Choice 1975, 686; Christian Century 1975, 449; Walter Clemons, Newsweek, February 17, 1975; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 34, no. 4 (1974): 1–2; Grover Cronin Jr., America 132, no. 18 (1975): 362–64; Leopold Damrosch, New Republic 172, no. 11 (1975): 29–30; The Economist, December 21, 1974; Irvin Ehrenpreis, NYRB 22, no. 2 (1975): 3; Robert Fulford, Toronto Star, January 11, 1975; Edmund Fuller, WSJ, February 24, 1975; Paul Fussell, SEL 15, no. 3 (1975): 522–23; George Gale, The Spectator 233, no. 7640 (1974): 704; Martin Green, Commentary 60, no. 2 (1975): 75–78; Donald J. Greene, TLS, no. 3798 (November 1974): 1315–16; Geoffrey Grigson, Country Life 156, no. 4041 (1974): 1900–1901; Lodwick Hartley, Sewanee Review 83, no. 4 (1975): 117–21; Frederick W. Hilles, Yale Review 64 (1975): 597–606; Matthew Hodgart, New Statesman, November 15, 1974; Benjamin B. Hoover, Boston Globe, March 9, 1975; Horn Book Magazine 1975, 404; Linda Howe, Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester), June 29, 1975; Lucille Johnsen, Minneapolis Tribune, February 16, 1975; Journalism Quarterly 1975; Robert R. Kirsch, LA Times, February 16, 1975; Andrew Kreig, Hartford Courant, March 9, 1975; David Lodge, The Month 8, no. 1 (1975): 187; Joseph Lynes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 2, 1975; John N. Morris, Hudson Review 28, no. 2 (1975): 279–84; The Nation, April 19, 1975; National Review 1975, 461; Virgil Miller Newton Jr., Tampa Tribune-Times, April 27, 1975; Robert Nye, Christian Science Monitor, January 29, 1975; Robert Nye, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 23, 1974; Joan Owen, Library Journal 100, no. 4 (1975): 388; Frederick A. Pottle, South Atlantic Quarterly 78, no. 2 (1979): 214–16; Publishers Weekly, January 1, 1975; Publishers Weekly 1976; Peter Quennell, Washington Post, February 23, 1975; C. P. Ravilious, The Tribune (Blackpool), December 27, 1974; Jack Richardson, Harper's Magazine 251, no. 1502 (1975): 87–89; Christopher Ricks, NYTBR, March 16, 1975; John J. Roberts, Modern Age 20 (1976): 237–39; John Rutherford, Indianapolis News, May 24, 1975; Saturday Review, February 8, 1975; Eve Sharbutt, Asheville Citizen-Times, March 9, 1975; Robert Signer, Vancouver Sun, March 27, 1975; The Spectator 1973, 12–13; David Stove, Quadrant 19, no. 4 (1975): 83–86; Sunday Times, April 13, 1975; Larry Swindell, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 23, 1975; Sidney Thomas, Atlanta Constitution, March 30, 1975; Times Higher Education Supplement 1975, no. 169: 16; Clarence R. Tracy, University of Toronto Quarterly 44, no. 3 (1975): 260–62; John Wain, The Observer (London), May 21, 1978; W. J. Weatherby, Newsday, March 9, 1975; W. J. Weatherby, State Journal (Lansing, Mich.), April 13, 1975; Howard D. Weinbrot, PQ 54 (1975): 972–74; Chilton Williamson, New Leader 58, no. 14 (1975): 21; Angus Wilson, The Observer (London), November 24, 1974; Edwin M. Yoder, National Review, April 25, 1975, 461.
Carey evaluates Wain’s biography, questioning the author’s claim of empathetic insight based on shared geographical and academic backgrounds. He critiques Wain’s defense of Johnson’s notorious literary blunders and inconsistent political thought, suggesting Johnson’s strength of character and stoicism often outweighed his analytical rigor. Carey highlights Wain's 'imaginative fleshing out' of Johnson's circle of failures and misfits, such as Levet, Barber, and Psalmanazar. However, he censures Wain for suppressing evidence of Johnson’s masochism and domestic disciplines involving Thrale, arguing that a full human portrait must include these sexual complexities.
CGV entry 3:239. Review by John Carey of the book by John Wain.
Greene argues a new biography is needed to combat the persistent Victorian image of Johnson as a "pompous, dictatorial, arch-Tory Great Cham." He criticizes Boswell's Life as a haphazard collection of table talk (ana) that created this image, and which modern scholarship shows is hopelessly obsolete and irresponsible. Greene contends Boswell's hero-worship was a mask for an unconscious wish to cut Johnson down to size and establish his own superiority. He praises Wain for restoring the deeply humanitarian Johnson and giving Johnson the writer prominence over the personality.
CGV entry 3:239.
Weinbrot praises the accessibility and sympathetic tone of this biography, noting Wain’s success in presenting Johnson as a rounded European man of letters. Weinbrot highlights insightful treatments of Johnson’s relationships with Savage, Boswell, and Piozzi. However, Weinbrot identifies numerous scholarly inaccuracies, including errors regarding the anonymity of The Vanity of Human Wishes, the origins of lexicographical quotations, and the publication history of the Dictionary. Weinbrot further critiques several interpretations of Johnson’s works, specifically Rasselas and the Journey.
CGV entry 3:239. Review by Howard Weinbrot of the book by John Wain.
Basney identifies Wain’s biography as the finest popular account since Krutch, emphasizing its "personal perspective" and "basic sympathy" for Johnson. Basney highlights Wain’s decision to avoid Boswellian anecdotes, instead focusing on Johnson as a "Grub Streeter made good" and a product of both rural Staffordshire and urbane London. The reviewer appreciates Wain’s focus on the "vast intellectual projects" rather than mere conversation. Basney finds Wain’s "analytic, meditative" approach successful in escaping the "magnetism of Boswell's achievement," portraying Johnson as a polymath and a "tributary of the great intellectual system of Renaissance Europe" whose strength derives from the "constant reference from learned to ordinary life."
CGV entry 3:239. Review by Lionel Basney of the book by John Wain.
CGV entry 3:239. Review by Martin Green of the book by John Wain.
Hartley examines Wain’s biography, noting its "deepest sympathy with a misunderstood genius," and provides a meta-review by analyzing the reactions of various scholars. Hartley reports that Donald Greene gave the book a resounding endorsement for its anti-Boswellian bias, seeing it as a necessary corrective to the "forged... iron curtain" Boswell placed between Johnson and the reader and a way to erode the Victorian image of the Great Cham. While Wain explicitly avoids modern research to speak to the intelligent general reader, Hartley cites Keith Walker's charge that Wain ungenerously paraphrases large chunks of Boswell and James Clifford without proper acknowledgment. Hartley identifies various factual errors and stylistic vagaries, concluding that while Wain successfully "cuts Boswell down to size," the work founders on a failure to balance scholarly accuracy with readability. Ultimately, Hartley finds the biography lopsided and sentimental; while admitting the general reader might find the book readable, the review concludes that the work fails to serve a definitive purpose due to these factual errors and a lack of bibliographical honesty.
CGV entry 3:239. Review by Lodwick Hartley of the book by John Wain.
CGV entry 3:239. Review by Frederick W. Hilles of the book by John Wain, alongside another work.
Tracy praises Wain's book as the "best modern general study" of Johnson and his writings. Wain's qualifications, including his Staffordshire origins, experience as a novelist, and independent temperament, enable a deep understanding of Johnson's feelings and motives, especially concerning his early life and marriage, going beyond Boswell's account. The book is commended for emphasizing Johnson the writer over the eccentric talker, focusing on his radical humanitarianism: his opposition to slavery, imperialism, and capital punishment, and his concern for the human predicament in works like A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.
Fussell’s largely positive review of this biography describes it as readable and vigorous, despite its lack of original research. The reviewer criticizes the author for deliberately avoiding modern studies, which leads to the repetition of erroneous readings regarding the early life of Johnson. Fussell finds the tone chatty and self-indulgent, yet he admires the concrete detail and the warm, respectful appreciation of the subject as a humanitarian. The review concludes that the biography succeeds as a vigorous, human portrait that should bring many converts to the study of the life and work of Johnson.
CGV entry 3:239. Review essay by Paul Fussell on the book by John Wain.
Roberts identifies Wain's masterwork as a convicing reinterpretation that dispels the stereotype of Johnson as a reactionary. While Boswell offers anecdotes, Wain fosters intimacy and empathy by detailing the emotional immediacy of Johnson's setbacks, internal demons, and neurotic guilt. The text recounts how Johnson overcame poverty, physical maladies, and fear for his sanity to achieve exemplary Christian conduct and a systematic edifice of thought. Roberts highlights Wain's portrayal of Johnson's profound compassion and benevolence, noting his practice of private charity over government intervention. Despite admitting to Johnson's human lapses in judgment, such as his underrating of Milton or failure to appreciate the realistic novel, Wain argues these slips spring logically from his core principles. Wain presents Johnson’s lifelong habit of self-discipline and right reason as superior touchstones for a modern culture in decline.
CGV entry 3:239. Review by John J. Roberts of the book by John Wain.
Wain's scholarly edition gathers forty-seven selections of critical writing to showcase the subject's major work as an analyst of Shakespeare, a biographer of poets, and a pioneering lexicographer. The volume focuses on essentials, using primary texts that are handled carefully and sympathetically, though the choice of a World's Classics text for the Lives of the Poets and a non-Yale text for the Shakespeare commentary remains unexplained. Emphasizing accessible, hidden scholarship over academic display, the volume presents primary and secondary materials with tact, providing readers with a lucid, pleasant introduction to eighteenth-century critical foundations.
ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature
CGV entry 3:239. Review by R. H. Carnie of the book by John Wain, alongside another work.
CGV entry 10/1:118. Review by R. H. Carnie of the book edited by John Wain.
Wimsatt contrasts the "hyperactuality" of Johnson in James Boswell’s biography with depictions by other contemporary reporters, notably Hester Thrale Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins. Wimsatt argues that while Hawkins provides earnest authority and Piozzi offers unique domestic perspectives, both lack Boswell’s professional skill in narrative construction. Piozzi’s anecdotes often reflect a "savage neurosis" and lack an inner principle, whereas Boswell’s Johnson sounds like the author of the works ascribed to him. Wimsatt observes that Johnson’s personal power essentially "created his biographer Boswell" just as Boswell created the "monumental" Johnson known to history. The article also touches upon Fanny Burney’s journals, suggesting her dramatic sketching of Johnson at Streatham equals Boswell’s finesse but remains colored by her "girlish" perspective.
CGV entry 3:241. Reprinted from ELH (1974).
Studies in the Book Trade in Honour of Graham Pollard
The Revenue of a Writer: Samuel Johnson's Literary Earnings
Fleeman details the financial aspects of Johnson's career, cataloging known payments for his major and minor works to challenge perceptions of his perpetual poverty. Johnson received approximately £1575 for his Dictionary, yet Fleeman notes that "he was never a wealthy man" because his expenses often preceded his receipts. The analysis tracks shifts from the patronage system to the commercial marketplace, where Johnson navigated complex relationships with booksellers like William Strahan and Andrew Millar. Fleeman concludes that while Johnson earned significant sums, including £125 for Rasselas and over £300 for The Lives of the Poets, his lack of financial management and large-scale charitable habits kept him in a state of relative pecuniary instability. This chapter provides a rigorous accounting of the economic realities facing a professional man of letters in the eighteenth century.
Lane presents a biographical narrative of Johnson, positioning him within the social and physical environments of eighteenth-century England. The study traces his development from a childhood in Lichfield, marked by poverty and scrofula, through his abbreviated education at Oxford and early struggles in Birmingham. Lane details Johnson's transition to a professional writer in London, highlighting his work on the Dictionary and his role in establishing modern biography. The narrative examines his relationships with Boswell and Piozzi, documenting the domestic life and intellectual circles that sustained him. Lane emphasizes the contradictions in Johnson's character, particularly his "vile melancholy" and the "tumultuous and awkward fondness" of his marriage. The account clarifies misconceptions regarding Johnson’s rebuke to Lord Chesterfield and addresses his psychological anxieties and religious struggles. "This entrancing literary sketch" uses varied sources to depict the atmosphere of Fleet Street and the Streatham household, concluding with Johnson’s final illness and his reconciliation with the "horrour of the last." Chapter 1, 'The House in Breadmarket Street,' delineates the provincial origins and formative physical afflictions of a youth born into a respected yet financially precarious bookselling family. Chapter 2, 'Dame School and Grammar School,' examines early academic triumphs and the traumatic impact of sadistic pedagogical discipline upon a temperament increasingly defined by intellectual vanity and indolence. Chapter 3, 'Oxford,' chronicles a brief, intellectually vibrant university career truncated by extreme penury and the onset of a lifelong struggle with morbid hypochondria. Chapter 4, 'Johnson Married,' details the unconventional union with Elizabeth Porter, a widow twenty years his senior, whose domestic stability facilitated his precarious transition into professional authorship. Chapter 5, 'London with Tetty,' addresses the arduous struggle for survival in the capital, characterized by restless lodging and the pursuit of miscellaneous literary hack-work. Chapter 6, 'Bachelor Interlude,' analyzes the intensification of social and professional activities following the loss of domestic anchors, emphasizing the foundational role of conversational circles. Chapter 7, 'The Stony Road to Fame,' recounts the transition from anonymous ghost-writer to recognized critic through the success of The Life of Savage and the first Shakespearean proposals. Chapter 8, 'Dictionary Johnson,' details the monumental eight-year labor of lexicography that codified the English language and established a permanent reputation for massive scholarship. Chapter 9, 'The House in Gough Square,' explores the domestic complexities of the Dictionary years, marked by professional triumph and the profound personal bereavement of Tetty's death. Chapter 10, 'At Last, on Monday the 16th of May...', chronicles the historic first meeting with Boswell and the financial security provided by a royal pension. Chapter 11, 'A Dinner in Dead Man's Place,' examines the transformative introduction to the Thrales, which initiated a two-decade period of domestic comfort and social expansion. Chapter 12, 'The Streatham Experience,' analyzes the restorative impact of country life and nursery intimacy upon a mind habitually ravaged by guilt and melancholy. Chapter 13, 'Nothing of the Bear but His Skin,' evaluates the mature conversational style and public persona that solidified a monarchical status within the Republic of Letters. Chapter 14, 'Mr Boswell Will Be at Last Your Best Physician,' details the legendary tour to the Hebrides and the final flowering of personal travel. Chapter 15, 'Life Has Not Many Things Better Than This...', chronicles the deepening reliance on the Thrales amidst declining health and the loss of foundational friends. Chapter 16, 'The Night Cometh...', describes the physical disintegration and social isolation following the Thrale breach, culminating in a serene, religious resignation to mortality. Critics are generally favorable, though a notable divergence appears between appreciative popular or general reviews and skeptical scholarly assessments. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, praise the lavishly illustrated volume as a handsome general introduction that skillfully pulls together biographical details to make the subject's world accessible. In ECCB, Weinbrot delivers a critical evaluation, arguing that the biography prioritizes personal relationships over achievements as a writer and moralist, while introducing errors in historical context. Keener (Library Journal) commends the accurate, absorbing narrative, highlighting its sympathetic perspective on the women within the social circle. Writing in the Sewanee Review, King notes the objective presentation of an emotionally wounded life situated within its historical period. Paulson, in SEL, provides a positive assessment of the sound text and well-produced portraits. Garebian, in the Montreal Gazette, characterizes the biography as a highly colorful surface study that captures the flavor of the era but skims over knotty mysteries, while Robb (Boston Globe) praises it as a well-illustrated guide that goes beyond a mere routine production. But Grigson delivers a dismissive review in the Spectator, labeling the publication an ugly job with drab illustrations and a repetitive trot through familiar biographical facts that offers no fresh insights. Nicholls (Transactions) commends the readable emphasis on the physical environment, domestic background, and high-quality visual reproductions.
Weinbrot's critical review argues Margaret Lane's illustrated biography prioritizes Johnson's personality and personal relationships over his achievements as a writer and moralist. The book favors Johnson's interactions with Piozzi over Boswell, depicting Johnson as a brilliant, generous eccentric rather than an important man of letters. Weinbrot declares this characterization less attractive and interesting than John Wain's 1974 biography. The review notes errors in historical context, specifically challenging the characterization of Alexander Pope's poem as a topical jeu d'esprit and Robert Walpole's tenure as businesslike government.
CGV entry 3:243. Review by Howard Weinbrot of the book by Margaret Lane.
Nicholls reviews Margaret Lane's readable and accurate biography, praising its focus on Johnson's physical environment, everyday domestic background, and technical details of bookselling and lexicography. While noting that the international political background is tentatively sketched, Nicholls commends Lane's fair handling of the dictionary dispute with Lord Chesterfield, which frames the famous letter as a formalized cry of rage from a cash-strapped outsider against the frustrations of Grub Street. Nicholls highlights Lane's empathetic treatment of the women in Johnson's circle, particularly Sarah Johnson and Hester Thrale. Lane disputes psychoanalytic interpretations that attribute Johnson's neuroses to maternal conflict, relying instead on the affectionate language found in his correspondence. The review praises the volume as an exceptional picture-book on the market, noting that the high-quality color reproductions of familiar portraits and contemporary endpaper maps give new life to Johnson's world.
CGV entry 3:243. Review by Graham Nicholls of the book by Margaret Lane.
Studies in the Eighteenth Century III: Papers Presented at the Third David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, Canberra, 1973
Australian National University Press; University of Toronto Press
Problems of Johnson's Middle Years—the 1762 Pension
Clifford examines the origins and reception of the annual £300 pension granted to Johnson by George III in 1762. Arguing that the award transformed Johnson from a financially pressured journalist into a relaxed conversationalist, Clifford introduces newly discovered evidence, including an anonymous 1761 letter to the Earl of Bute recommending Johnson for royal favor. Clifford analyzes the political motivations behind the pension, suggesting it served as a calculated move by Alexander Wedderburne to offset the unpopularity of Bute's Scottish patronage. The text details Johnson's internal conflict regarding his own pejorative Dictionary definition of a 'pensioner' and documents the subsequent vitriolic attacks by John Wilkes and Charles Churchill. Clifford maintains that while the pension was paid from a 'Writers Political' fund, Johnson remained firm in his conviction that the award recognized past labor rather than future service, as Bute famously assured him it was given 'not for anything you are to do, but for what you have done.'
Johnson on Johnson: A Selection of the Personal and Autobiographical Writings of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
Wain organizes Johnson's private records, including the "Annals" of childhood, "Prayers and Meditations," and selected letters to Boswell and Piozzi. Wain provides an introduction and commentary to contextualize Johnson's shift from "general nature" to specific personal details. The text documents Johnson's religious struggles, his fear of insanity, and his rigorous self-examinations on New Year’s Day and Easter. Wain contrasts Johnson’s terse, magisterial prose with Boswell’s inquisitive style. The edition includes the famous letter to Chesterfield and personal reflections from the Preface to the Dictionary. Wain underscores that Johnson always appears most universal when he is most personal. The collection reveals the "Johnsonius ipsissimus" through accounts of domestic life, health, and spiritual devotion. "In a Man's Letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked." Critics say this book is an excellent selection that brings the subject closer as a human being by weaving together private letters and public works. King and Owen praise the anthology for presenting an implied autobiography fused by intelligent commentary, which balances the private man with the public figure. Clayborough finds the connecting passages effective for students and non-specialized readers. But some reviewers identify significant editorial flaws. Weitzman critiques the use of outdated copy texts and finds the thematic categorization arbitrary, while Pailler notes typographical oversights and limited coverage of political opinions. Wiltshire, however, cautions against assuming that fictional intensity always equates to personal testimony.
King highlights Wain’s selection of personal and autobiographical comments as an "excellent selection" that brings Johnson closer as a human being. The juxtaposition of private letters with public works reveals how Johnson gave "objective status" to deeply felt personal emotions. Wain’s narrative connects selected passages to provide an authoritative account of Johnson's mental condition and health. King notes the collection effectively demonstrates Johnson’s "continuity of theme and preoccupation" throughout his life.
CGV entry 3:245. Review essay by Bruce King on the book edited by John Wain.
Weitzman critiques Wain's Johnson on Johnson, an anthology intended as Johnson's autobiography to circumvent Boswell's mediation. He finds the collection less successful than Wain's earlier biography, as Johnson's prose is inherently impersonal. Wain's thematic categorization of eclectic samplings is arbitrary, and his editorial choices include using outdated copy texts. Weitzman suggests the collection's primary value lies in its convenience and its ability to rescue Johnson's image from "conservative mythology" by stressing the universal truth underlying his personal writings.
CGV entry 3:245. Review by Arthur J. Weitzman of the book edited by John Wain.
Greene's harsh review argues that John Wain's compilation of Johnson's personal and autobiographical writings represents a severe regression from the editor's previous scholarly work. Wain relies exclusively on R. W. Chapman's outdated edition of Johnson's letters and explicitly dismisses recent textual corrections and discoveries. Wain also fails to recognize the heavy-handed satire in Johnson's letter to Thrale concerning epistolary art, misinterpreting the mockery as literal truth. Furthermore, the volume prints a falsified text of Johnson's final communion prayer that omits a crucial petition, despite Wain acknowledging the corruption in his introduction. The chronological table omits Johnson's Oxford doctorate, and the volume lacks an index. Wain's verse translations of Johnson's Latin poems provide the only redeeming features in this botched job.
CGV entry 3:245. A severe review by Donald Greene of the book edited by John Wain.
Clayborough evaluates Wain’s selection of Johnson’s personal and autobiographical writings, noting its appeal to non-specialized readers and students. He examines Wain’s editorial strategy of linking letters and extracts with a biographical thread, including works like Rasselas and the review of Jenyns as "personal" expressions. While praising the connecting passages, Clayborough questions Wain’s sparse use of Lives of the Poets and his classification of Johnson as a Neoclassical critic. He concludes that the compilation effectively complements Boswell’s biography.
CGV entry 3:245. Review by Arthur Clayborough of the book edited by John Wain.
Wain's Johnson on Johnson compiles Johnson's personal and autobiographical writings to illuminate his character and relationships. The collection arranges the texts chronologically and thematically, using a commentary that makes the whole read almost like a biography. The reviewer finds the selection useful but regrets the limited space given to Johnson's political opinions and conversational talents. Pailler notes several typographical and editorial oversights in the volume, including errors in naming a reverend and misdating a passage.
CGV entry 3:245. Review by Albert Pailler of the book edited by John Wain.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Chatto & Windus
Bate's biography presents a detailed psychological and intellectual portrait of Johnson, focusing on his lifelong struggle to manage a turbulent imagination and pathological indolence through self-demand and the "stability of truth." The study chronicles Johnson's formative years in Lichfield, marked by early illnesses like scrofula that left him partially blind and deaf, his brief but influential time at Oxford, and his subsequent decades of trial and obscurity. Bate emphasizes the assimilative nature of Johnson’s mind, demonstrating how he internalized models like Cornelius Ford and Gilbert Walmesley to transition from a nearsighted youth to a sophisticated moralist. The account provides extensive analysis of Johnson's major achievements, including the Dictionary, his moral essays in the Rambler, and his Shakespearean criticism, arguing that his greatness stems from a profound moral sincerity and a commitment to knowledge of the living world. By integrating literary criticism with biographical fact, Bate examines how Johnson’s fear of insanity and religious struggles informed his writing, portraying him as a heroic, intensely honest, and articulate pilgrim who used literature to provide reassurance to human nature. The biography further explores Johnson's complex relationship with the Thrales and his later years as the celebrated center of a brilliant literary circle. The introduction addresses the unique challenges of modern biography, arguing that Samuel Johnson’s life represents a profound struggle for self-mastery that transcends his 18th-century context. Chapter 1, "‘I Was Born Almost Dead,’" addresses Johnson’s precarious infancy and the early physical afflictions that shaped his lifelong psychological resilience. Chapter 2, "Lichfield: The 'Awful Mirror' of the Parents," argues that the domestic friction and characterological depression of Michael and Sarah Johnson provided the foundational "mirror" for their son’s own volatile temperament. Chapter 3, "Schooling; and the Choice of Stourbridge," examines the rigorous classical education at Lichfield and Stourbridge, identifying the intellectual mentorship of Cornelius Ford as a pivotal turn toward social and scholarly sophistication. Chapter 4, "The Two-Year Interlude at Home," addresses the period of aimless reading in his father’s shop, identifying it as a crucial time of voracious self-education despite growing financial anxiety. Chapter 5, "Oxford," examines Johnson’s residence at Pembroke College, arguing that his academic brilliance was increasingly shadowed by the psychological and social humiliations of extreme poverty. Chapter 6, "The Terrible Breakdown," addresses the massive collapse of spirit following his departure from Oxford, identifying this crisis as the origin of his lifelong battle against "vile melancholy." Chapter 7, "A Choice of Life: The Start of the Thirties," examines the desperate search for professional stability through school-teaching and early literary labor in Birmingham . Chapter 8, "Marriage," explores the complex emotional bond with Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, arguing that the union provided an essential, if unconventional, emotional ballast. Chapter 9, "The Move to London," addresses the arrival in the capital with David Garrick, identifying the immersion into the anonymous "Grub Street" workforce as the start of his true professional life. Chapter 10, "The First Decade in London," examines the foundational years of struggle and the publication of London, identifying the period as one of profound political and social alienation. Chapter 11, "The 'Life of Savage'," argues that the biography of his renegade friend was a landmark work of psychological identification and a masterpiece of 18th-century prose. Chapter 12, "The 'Dictionary'; and the Start of the 'Rambler'," addresses the monumental labor of the 1750s, identifying the Dictionary and Rambler as the works that established his national eminence. Chapter 13, "The Middle Years; and the Death of Tetty," explores the psychological toll of his wife's death, arguing that the loss intensified his religious dread and his need for domestic society. Chapter 14, "The 'Idler' and 'Rasselas'," examines the creative response to the death of his mother, identifying these works as definitive expressions of his anti-romantic moral realism. Chapter 15, "The Pension; and the Meeting with Boswell," addresses the transition to financial security and the start of his most famous association, identifying the 1760s as a period of hard-won social dominance . Chapter 16, "The Thrales," explores the transformative friendship with Henry and Hester Thrale, arguing that their household offered a therapeutic "rescue" from his recurring mental breakdowns . Chapter 17, "The Edition of Shakespeare," examines his landmark critical achievement, identifying his "Preface" as a liberating move toward psychological realism in literary judgment. Chapter 18, "The 'Journey to the Western Islands'," addresses the tour of Scotland, identifying it as a sophisticated experiment in social and historical inquiry. Chapter 19, "The 'Lives of the Poets'," argues that his final masterpiece represents the ultimate synthesis of his critical principles and biographical empathy. Chapter 20, "The End," concludes by addressing his final illness and death, identifying his transition into "everlasting rest" as a courageous fulfillment of his moral pilgrimage. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, celebrating the psychological depth and comprehensive scale that moves beyond traditional paradigms to establish a complete human portrait. Alkon, in ECS, praises the enthusiastic handling of the inner life and the persuasive reconstruction of attitudes through a responsible use of psychological analysis. Rousseau's review in SEL celebrates the psychobiographical approach as a model for the field, arguing it effectively balances the literary with the personal by integrating fears and psychic life. Writing in the NYTBR, Edwards commends the magisterial interweaving of life and work, noting how psychoanalytical categories are used with sensible directness to explore introspective melancholy. Ehrenpreis, in the NYRB, praises the reliable scholarship and sympathetic reconstruction of personality, though he challenges the defensive avoidance of masochistic interpretations. In the LA Times, Kirsch approves of the deep assessment of character that restores the human being behind the monument. Nussbaum (PQ) characterizes the masterful synthesis as elevating the suffering individual over a public figure, while Schwartz, in the Georgia Review, finds it a useful corrective to earlier accounts despite conventional discussions of certain major works. Trowbridge's review in ECCB lauds the narrative power and continuous process, but suggests expressing the quasi-Freudian framework in less dated terms. Finally, Wain, in The Observer, offers a mixed assessment, arguing that the useful reference lacks narrative gift and robs the portrait of individuality by downplaying the sexual dimension.
CGV entry 3:246. The London edition was published in 1978.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, ECS 12, no. 1 (1978): 131–34; Marvin Bailey, Commercial Appeal, November 6, 1977; Wendy Blaxland, Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 1978; C. D. Bloomer, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 5, 1978; Christopher Booker, The Spectator 240, no. 7822 (1978): 20–21; David Bromwich, Hudson Review 31, no. 3 (1978): 491–99; Morris R. Brownell, English Language Notes 17, no. 1 (1979): 51–58; John Campbell, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), May 20, 1978; R. H. Carnie, ARIEL 9, no. 4 (1978): 97–100; Leonard L. Castle, Indianapolis Star, March 19, 1978; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 37, no. 3 (1977): 1; Diane J. Cole, The Sun (Baltimore), December 4, 1977; Commonweal 105 (1978): 157; Grover Cronin Jr., America 138, no. 10 (1978): 215–16; Thomas M. Curley, Biography 2, no. 4 (1979): 370–72; Thomas R. Edwards, NYTBR, November 27, 1977; Irvin Ehrenpreis, NYRB 24, no. 18 (1977): 3–4, 6; Ifor Evans, Birmingham Daily Post, May 11, 1978; Margaret Förster, Evening Standard (London), June 13, 1978; Richard Freedman, Des Moines Sunday Register, January 15, 1978; Richard Freedman, WSJ, January 1, 1978; Edmund Fuller, WSJ, January 23, 1978; Susan R. Gannon, Cross Currents 27, no. 4 (1977): 488–90; Joel J. Gold, JEGP 78, no. 1 (1979): 130–33; Donald J. Greene, American Scholar 47, no. 2 (1978): 277–81; W. H., Critical Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1978): 91–94; Harper's Magazine 255 (1977): 108; Jack Harris, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 1980, 53–57; M. J. C. Hodgart, New Statesman, May 12, 1978; Nancy Y. Hoffman, Democrat and Chronicle, January 29, 1978; Bette Howland, Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1977; Evan Jones, The Age (Melbourne), December 23, 1978; Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1977; Robert Kirsch, Sunday Herald-News, January 22, 1978; Robert R. Kirsch, LA Times, January 8, 1978; Andrew Kreig, Hartford Courant, December 18, 1977; Howard Lachtman, San Francisco Examiner, January 8, 1978; Marghanita Laski, Country Life 163, no. 4222 (1978): 1677; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, NYT, December 6, 1977; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, South China Morning Post, December 14, 1977; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The Sun (Baltimore), December 8, 1977; Martin Levine, Newsday, November 20, 1977; Lawrence Lipking, Yale Review 67, no. 4 (1978): 572–78; William McCann, Progressive 42 (1978): 57; Bernard C. Meyer, Journal of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis 6 (1979): 153–61; George T. Morrow II, Minneapolis Tribune, January 22, 1978; National Review 29 (1977): 1122–1122; National Review 30 (1978): 102; Newsweek (1977); Nigel Nicolson, New Republic 177, no. 21 (1977): 30–32; Roderick Nordell, Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 1977; Felicity A. Nussbaum, PQ 57 (1978): 527–44; Joan Owen, Library Journal 102, no. 16 (1977): 1852; Nigel Palethorpe, Sun-Herald, September 3, 1978; Margaret Penman, Toronto Star, December 31, 1977; Clive T. Probyn, The Listener 99, no. 2560 (1978): 646–47; Publishers Weekly, August 29, 1977; Publishers Weekly, October 1, 1977; Michael Ratcliffe, The Times (London), May 11, 1978; Claude Rawson, Sewanee Review 88, no. 1 (1980): 106–20; Ian Campbell Ross, Hermathena, no. 126 (1979): 82–83; G. S. Rousseau, SEL 18, no. 3 (1978): 577–82; John Paul Russo, TLS, no. 3971 (May 1978): 514–15; San Francisco Examiner, September 9, 1979; Saturday Review 1977; Richard B. Schwartz, Georgia Review 32, no. 1 (1978): 217–21; J. Allen Smith, Vanderbilt Law Review 32, no. 4 (1979): 1032; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 27, 1977; Kevin Starr, San Francisco Examiner, January 10, 1978; R. D. Stock, Prairie Schooner 52, no. 1 (1978): 109–10; David Stokes, Theology 81, no. 684 (1978): 467–68; Sun-Herald, October 22, 1978; Robert Taylor, Boston Globe, November 16, 1977; The Bookseller, February 18, 1978; Sidney Thomas, Atlanta Constitution, April 30, 1978; Francis Thompson, Tampa Tribune-Times, December 18, 1977; THES, no. 342 (1978): 12; TLS, no. 3281 (1978): 24; Hoyt Trowbridge, ECCB 3 (1977): 219–21; Frederick S. Troy, Massachusetts Review 19, no. 3 (1978): 517–41; Steve J. Van Der Weele, Christianity and Literature 28, no. 2 (1979): 57–59; Terence de Vere White, Irish Times, May 20, 1978; John Wain, The Observer (London), May 21, 1978; Keith Walker, New Review 5, no. 1 (1978): 105–7; E. D. Ward-Harris, Victoria Colonist, June 9, 1978; George F. Will, LA Times, December 26, 1977.
Ehrenpreis reviews Bate’s biography of Johnson, praising its reliable scholarship and sympathetic reconstruction of Johnson’s personality. Ehrenpreis identifies a central "emotional rhythm" in Johnson’s life and prose, where expansive hope is checked by "self-criticism and limitation." The reviewer notes that Johnson’s "inordinate conscience" often blocked his original creativity, leading him to favor anonymous or collaborative genres such as the Parliamentary Debates and the Dictionary. Ehrenpreis disputes Bate’s defensive treatment of Johnson’s harsh reaction to Piozzi’s marriage, arguing that Johnson "suppressed" insights into his own similar marital history. While Ehrenpreis finds Bate’s analysis of the major works "superb," he challenges Bate’s tendency to isolate Johnson from eighteenth-century precursors and to avoid masochistic interpretations of Johnson's rebelliousness. The text emphasizes Johnson’s triumph over "crippling faults" through moral teachings based on "fresh approaches to frightening challenges."
CGV entry 3:246. Review by Irvin Ehrenpreis of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Probyn reviews Bate’s biography of Johnson, characterizing the work as a "demythologizing" effort that transcends Boswell’s romanticized portrait. The review focuses on Johnson’s internal struggle with a "fierce and exacting" superego, using Freudian psychology to explain his paralyzing guilt and obsessive self-criticism. Probyn highlights Bate's analysis of Johnson’s "life of allegory," where his literary achievements—including the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets—emerge from a battle against sloth and spiritual enervation. The account commends Bate for articulating Johnson’s empathic concern for human failure and his integration of literature with the "current affairs of the moral life."
CGV entry 3:246. Review by Clive Probyn of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
usso's enthusiastic review praises Bate's Samuel Johnson as a masterpiece of biographical art and an intellectual creation of critical biography that offers new interpretations of the subject's life. Russo highlights Bate's focus on Johnson's mind and psychological development, specifically the "essentialism" arising from a lifelong struggle between "self-demand" and "inner protest." The review commends the analysis of early influences, including Ford and Walmesley, and Bate's use of Thrale's journals and letters to refashion the stock image of Johnson dining at the Turk's Head. Bate successfully integrates Johnson's "inner life" with his moral thought and criticism, presenting him as a supreme moralist whose work anticipates modern psychology and reframes his political and religious views by disputing the image of a conventional High Churchman or a simple Tory. Challenging the abstract formalistic systems of modern criticism, Bate is praised for his sympathetic imagination and grasp of objective reality.
Schwartz characterizes Bate’s biography as a popular work that repeats commonplace material rather than providing new facts for scholars. He praises the structural decision to examine patterns of experience separately and notes the effective use of psychological and religious analysis to explain Johnson’s "remorseless pressure of ‘superego’ demand." While labeling the discussions of certain works "weak and conventional," Schwartz maintains that the book serves as a "useful corrective to Boswell" by balancing Johnson’s fears of insanity with his wit and playfulness.
CGV entry 3:246. Review by Richard B. Schwartz of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Review by Richard B Schwartz of Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate.
Greene notes Bate's enormous biography is part of a non-stop flood of "inclusive" books for the general reader that add nothing new to known facts. However, Greene judges Bate's book a very competent and useful synthesis of scholarship and enthusiastically recommends it, alongside Krutch and Wain's, as the best introduction to Johnson. He praises it as comprehensive, judicious, readable, and generally accurate, but expresses fear that readers will continue to prefer Johnson the personality over reading his actual works.
CGV entry 3:246. Review by Donald Greene of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Alkon provides an enthusiastic review of Bate’s biography, praising its adroit handling of the Boswellian legacy and its solution to the "Boswellian problem" by focusing on Johnson’s inner life and actions while deferring Boswell's appearance. The biography is commended for its persuasive reconstruction of Johnson’s attitudes, grounded in accurate facts and a responsible use of psychological analysis to explore his formative years and his approaching breakdown in middle age. Alkon highlights Bate’s advantage in relating Johnson’s writing to his personal experiences—such as his reflections on middle age and human destiny—which clarifies why his works remain significant and enlarges the reader's appreciation of them. Furthermore, Alkon identifies Bate’s proposal of a new genre, "satire foiled"—a distinctive mode where Johnson’s satiric impulses transform into sympathy—as a challenging and valuable contribution that identifies the originality and stylistic devices of Johnson's major works. Ultimately, Alkon concludes that Bate successfully moves beyond formalist methods to demonstrate how Johnson’s personality and psychodynamics achieved true literary originality.
Bromwich's mixed review of Bate's biography evaluates the author’s attempt to reconcile Johnson's "commanding genius" with his "domestic vicissitudes." Calling the book a "full-scale critical biography" and a respectable companion to Pottle's Boswell, Bromwich praises Bate’s psychological insight into Johnson’s temperament, specifically his "self-demand" and "immoderate love of debate" inherited from early mentors. However, he disputes Bate’s use of anachronistic terms like "intellectual" and "ultrapermissive" and finds the biography lacks sufficient critical attention to Johnson’s actual writings. He notes Bate’s reluctance to subject his subject to "adversary justice," observing that while Bate makes Johnson lovable, he occasionally lapses into "easy eloquence" and an "official style" that weakens the historical distinctness of the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 3:246. A review essay by David Bromwich on the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Carnie's solidly positive review commends Walter Jackson Bate's biography of Johnson for its scholarly excellence, balanced sympathy, and freedom from tiresome polemics. Carnie applauds Bate's sensible use of Boswell and tactful inclusion of twentieth-century knowledge regarding Thrale. The review highlights Bate's cautious, Freudian-influenced psychological analysis of Johnson's inner torments and psychoneurotic symptoms. Carnie finds Bate's challenge to sexual explanations of the padlock and diary notes persuasive, though prefers a verdict of not proven over Bate's emphatic not guilty. Carnie disputes early critics who labeled the graceful literary analyses perfunctory, concluding that the work achieves permanent status on the scholarly shelf.
CGV entry 3:246. A review by R. H. Carnie of the book by W. Jackson Bate, alongside another work.
Nussbaum characterizes Bate’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography as a masterful synthesis of scholarship and pedagogical narrative. She emphasizes Bate’s focus on Johnson’s internal struggle with a "demanding superego" and his periods of "vile melancholy." The text notes Bate’s aggressive psychoanalytic approach, which interprets Johnson’s tics and dark secrets as anxieties regarding insanity and suicide rather than sexual deviance. Nussbaum observes that while Bate relies on established facts and Johnson’s private diaries, he elevates the private, suffering individual over Boswell’s public figure, portraying Johnson’s life as a heroic battle for mental endurance and reality.
CGV entry 3:246. A review by Felicity A. Nussbaum of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
CGV entry 3:246. A review essay by Frederick S. Troy on the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Gold offers an enthusiastic review of Bate's biography, characterizing it as a "stately, honest, and moving" interpretation of the man and his mind. He praises Bate's "thoughtful restraint" in avoiding groundless conjecture and his judicious use of psychoanalytic techniques to clarify Johnson's "angst" and "drive toward the stability of truth." Gold emphasizes Bate's ability to link the life and the writings, particularly the analysis of Johnson's "trisociative" thinking—a process that joins shuffling perspectives with moral considerations. He concludes that Bate successfully presents Johnson as a "supreme moralist" whose work mediates between "narrow, individual learning and broad, public ignorance."
CGV entry 3:246. A review by Joel J. Gold of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Journal of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis
CGV entry 3:246. A severe review essay by Bernard C. Meyer on the book by W. Jackson Bate.
CGV entry 3:246. A review by Morris R. Brownell of the book by W. Jackson Bate, alongside other works.
Review by Morris R Brownell of Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate.
Rawson praises the biography as admirable and generally level-headed, effectively synthesizing Boswellian and non-Boswellian sources, but deems the discussion of Johnson's early years dull and excessively verbose, preferring Clifford's work. He finds Bate's thesis on "satire manqué" and Johnson's psychological insights to be the main source of vitality, but deplores the crude banality, vacuous language, and humorlessness of other critical sections, especially regarding Freud.
CGV entry 3:246. A review essay (“Jobswell: A Short View of the Johnson–Boswell Industry”) by C. J. Rawson on the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Harris reviews Bate's expansive biography of Johnson, praising it as a weighty volume that challenges traditional paradigms by looking beneath Johnson's conversational persona to explore his inner mind. Harris argues that Bate presents an atmosphere of unease, depicting an intellect oppressed by "feelings of guilt and fears of madness." While Harris questions the validity of applying modern psychological constructs like "super ego," he finds that Bate successfully illuminates Johnson's unexpected religious tolerance and profound dread of falling into nothingness. Harris notes that Bate offers a sympathetic portrayal of Hester Thrale's stabilizing influence. However, Harris challenges Bate's treatment of Johnson's brother Nathaniel, disputing assertions that Nathaniel committed forgery due to a lack of definitive historical evidence. Harris concludes that Bate has written a compelling study that forces a thorough reassessment of the primary works.
CGV entry 3:246. A review by Jack Harris of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
In this enthusiastic review, Trowbridge praises Walter Jackson Bate's biography of Johnson for its depth, unity, and narrative power, noting that Bate conceives Johnson's life and works as a single continuous process. Trowbridge explains that Bate focuses heavily on character and psychological interpretation, using a quasi-Freudian framework to describe Johnson's mind during periods of depression and moral inertia. While Trowbridge suggests Bate might have been wiser to express his psychological interpretations in more universal, less dated terms, he emphasizes that the work successfully avoids a dull, chronological framework, transforming its factual details into a moving work of art.
CGV entry 3:246. A review by Hoyt Trowbridge of the book by W. Jackson Bate.
Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle Years
Clifford details Johnson’s peak as a writer, producing The Rambler, The Adventurer, The Idler, and the Dictionary. This was also a period of hardship, nomadic existence, and estrangement from his wife. Clifford's narrative restores authentic details and background to the pre-Boswell Johnson, but warns that the hinge of Johnson's life came later, when the Thrales provided him a home at Streatham.
CGV entry 3:250.
CGV entry 3:250. Review by Margaret Lane of the book by James L. Clifford.
Howard reviews Clifford's biography of Johnson's middle years, asserting that Johnson serves as a 'more appropriate patron saint for the English' than George. Clifford uses new detail to demonstrate that Johnson was a 'man of letters' rather than just a 'dilatory Grab Street hack.' Howard commends the research into Johnson's 'practical sympathy' for the marginalized, including 'blacks, prostitutes, [and] women generally.' The book concludes with the 'momentous encounter' between Johnson and Boswell in 1763.
CGV entry 3:250. Review by Philip Howard of the book by James L. Clifford.
CGV entry 3:250. Review by Frederick A. Pottle of the book by James L. Clifford.
Hardy's largely positive review praises Clifford's biographical portrait of Johnson for its detail, toning, and balanced perspective. The review commends the lucid unravelling of Johnson's role in the William Lauder controversy and his pleasant tour to Devon with Joshua Reynolds. However, Hardy balances this praise by noting that Clifford fails to provide a thorough critical discussion of the Rambler or a sufficiently detailed analysis of Rasselas. Hardy also points out minor historical omissions, such as Clifford's failure to mention that the first edition of Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum appeared earlier than 1736.
CGV entry 3:250. Review by John Hardy of the book by James L. Clifford.
Dr. Johnson by Mrs. Thrale: The 'Anecdotes' of Mrs. Piozzi in Their Original Form
CGV entry 3:265. A severe review by Loren R. Rothschild of the book edited by Richard Ingrams.
The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq.
Thompson praises the work's fullness, good order, and illuminating commentary, finding it a high-value resource. The bibliography reinforces both the well-known portrait of Boswell as naïve and vain, and the less familiar one of a busy, widely known author and barrister who sought literary fame above all else. The work details Boswell's voluminous contributions to periodicals and discusses the difficult editorial problems presented by major works, such as the Account of Corsica and the Life.
CGV entry 4:1. Review by E. N. S. Thompson of the book by Frederick A. Pottle.
Pottle employs bibliography as a tool for literary biography, documenting Boswell’s books, pamphlets, and extensive periodical contributions from 1758 to 1794. Research in the Yale Library and various journals enables Pottle to solve problems of attribution and provenience. Pottle demonstrates through "critical argumentation" that Dorando originated from the Foulis Press and confirms Boswell’s authorship of the ribald "Ode" to Piozzi. The work identifies the "enormous expenditure of literary energy" Boswell devoted to the Douglas cause and Corsican propaganda. Pottle’s conclusions, though reached through bibliographical induction, find "full confirmation" in the Isham manuscripts.
CGV entry 4:1. Review by R. S. Crane of the book by Frederick A. Pottle.
Powell calls the book remarkable for its abundant material and high quality of description. He praises Pottle's chronological arrangement and thorough coverage of Boswell's output from inception to influence, including his periodical contributions, which Pottle shows were far more numerous than previously realized. Powell particularly commends the admirable, exhaustive treatment of The Life of Johnson, noting that it finally gave justice to Malone and Croker's contributions.
CGV entry 4:1. Review by L. F. Powell of the book by Frederick A. Pottle.
CGV entry 4:2. The work notes it was "Issued privately by members of the Department of English at the University of Cairo."
Cochrane entry 41. A comprehensive bibliography compiling editions of Boswell's works, along with biographies and critical studies published over a two-hundred-year period from 1763 to 1963.
An Account of Corsica: The Journal of a Tour to That Island: and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli
Boswell champions the Corsican struggle for independence by blending a "historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural overview" with a personalized narrative of his 1765 meeting with the leader Pascal Paoli. Boswell disputes the characterization of Corsicans as "rebels and malcontents," framing them instead as "honourable patriots" possessing an "unalienable right" to resist "ignominious repression." He uses his journal to swing "public opinion, and perhaps the British government" toward supporting the islanders, whom he poetically describes as descendants of the "legendary Argonauts." Boswell highlights Paoli as the "epitome of the heroic, honourable warrior" whose virtue stands in stark contrast to the "vicious" rule of the Genoese. The text serves to establish Boswell’s own reputation as a "serious and independent thinker" and a scholar dedicated to the "political enthusiasm for national liberty".
CGV entry 4:10.
Journal of a Tour to Corsica: And Memoirs of Pascal Paoli
Birrell reviews S. C. Roberts's reprint of the Tour, praising the decision to omit the lengthy Account of Corsica. The review recounts Boswell's 1765 pursuit of Paoli, highlighting his initial anxiety and Paoli’s early suspicion that the "scatter-brained Scot" acted as an "espy." Birrell observes that Boswell’s "tablets" and persistent note-taking eventually overcame Paoli’s reserve, leading to a friendship that lasted until Boswell’s death. The narrative notes that Paoli later received a pension from George III and joined the Johnsonian circle in London. Birrell concludes by remarking that both of Boswell's "illustrious Preceptours," Johnson and Paoli, are commemorated in Westminster Abbey, asserting that Boswell himself deserves similar recognition.
CGV entry 4:10. This edition includes 'Memoirs of Pascal Paoli'.
CGV entry 4:11. A series of 70 essays published monthly, beginning in volume 46 (October 1777) and concluding in the new series, volume 1 (August 1783).
Boswell had a design for republication, but Johnson, who may have disliked the subject, discouraged the idea. The essays, now collected in two octavo volumes, are described as independent, sincere, dignified, and knowledgeable. The editor's extensive commentary, which includes allusions to Johnson's conversation and writings, is criticized for overloading the text, making the journalistic work seem foolish.
CGV entry 4:11.
Pottle praises Bailey’s edition of Boswell’s periodical essays as a "most valuable service." He notes the series reveals Boswell’s "strangely neglected side" and highlights self-discipline as his primary motive during a difficult period. Pottle admires Bailey’s identification of obscure sources and her "sane and sound" critical prefaces. He underscores the autobiographical value of the essays, observing that Boswell’s pursuit of a "principles" often failed in practice but ultimately fueled his success as a "great artist."
CGV entry 4:11. Review by F. A. Pottle of the book edited by Margery Bailey.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Boswell records Johnson's dogmatism, bigotry, and rudeness alongside his judicious remarks on learning and manners. Johnson appears as a privileged being who used his tongue to prevail over others, particularly Scottish professors, through a "terrific and overbearing haughtiness." Badcock notes Johnson's "fierce and uncouth visage" and his "bow-wow way" of speaking, which added weight to his "sterling metal" conversation. Boswell details Johnson's physical appearance, including his brown clothes, large boots, and the oak stick he carried like "Hercules’s club." Johnson's "voracious" appetite and his defense of the belief in witchcraft against the arguments of Crosbie are highlighted. Badcock hopes Boswell's forthcoming biography will follow Plutarch's example by exhibiting social ease while shading traits that "diminish their greatness."
CGV entry 4:12. Review by Samuel Badcock of the 1785 edition of the book by James Boswell.
Office of the National illustrated library
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Containing Some Poetical Pieces by Dr. Johnson, Relative to the Tour, and Never Before Published: A Series of His Conversation, Literary Anecdotes and Opinions of Men and Books: With an Authentic Account of the Distresses and Escapes of the Grandson of King James II in the Year 1746
This volume, forming the fifth installment of a larger series of Boswell’s writings, features a substantial introduction by Carruthers dated March 29, 1852. The editor provides a "Summary Account" of Johnson’s final days in Edinburgh and includes several of Johnson’s Latin odes composed during the tour, such as those addressed to Skye and Inchkenneth. A distinguishing feature is the inclusion of numerous "portraits, views, and characteristic designs," including depictions of Flora Macdonald, Dunvegan Castle, and "Johnson on a Highland Sheltie" Carruthers’s notes focus on "noting changes and supplying local information" regarding the Hebridean families and landscapes encountered by the travelers.
Birrell welcomes Chapman’s edition, which joins these two works "hand-in-hand." Birrell characterizes Johnson as a "fine specimen of a Book-maker" but notes his Journey "gave great offence in Scotland." Boswell’s Journal is "artistically considered, a much finer production" because he had Johnson as his subject. Birrell emphasizes Johnson's "constitutional indolence" versus his "huge army of vocables." The review concludes that the "endless interest" in the character of Johnson and his commentator ensures the longevity of these travel records.
CGV entry 4:12.
CGV entry 21:61.
Cochrane entry 283.
CGV entry 4:12. Edited with an introduction and notes by Jack Werner, featuring 20 illustrations by Rowlandson.
CGV entry 4:12. An abridged German translation by Fritz Güttinger was published in 1951.
Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1773
Reissuing the 1936 manuscript transcription in the popular Yale-McGraw-Hill "trade edition" series, this volume made the previously unpublished, raw version of the journal accessible to a general readership. This accessibility underpinned the modern re-evaluation of Boswell as a great autobiographical diarist and journalist, rather than solely as a biographer constrained by Johnsonian standards. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. In the New York Times, Halsband praises the restoration of the raw manuscript journal but criticizes the publisher for reusing earlier plates instead of resetting the text to incorporate new corrections. But Prescott’s review in the New York Times welcomes the volume as an accessible classic that captures majestic conversation and sharp observations of Highland poverty. Altick, in the New York Herald Tribune, finds the uncensored version more intimate and graphic, highlighting the valuable addition of eighty pages of new appendices. In the LA Times, Kirsch argues that modern preferences have shifted toward this unexpurgated record of the biographer's complex, introspective character over sanitized neoclassical standards. Miller, writing in the New Statesman, characterizes the work as a magnificent comedy, favorably contrasting its gay, colloquial narrative with a companion's formal account. An unsigned review in Newsweek celebrates how the consecutive travel entries elevate comicality toward sublimity. In South Atlantic Quarterly, Clifford commends the editors for their rigorous accuracy and meticulous text that clarifies complex personal reactions. Finally, McLaren, in the Scotsman, hails the uninhibited script as the ultimate version of a rediscovered classic, asserting its freshness surpasses even major biographical masterpieces.
CGV entry 4:13. This second edition contains important additions and is Volume 8 of the trade edition of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell.
New Edition. Also published by William Heinemann, London, 1963.
Reviews: Richard D. Altick, New York Herald Tribune, September 2, 1962; James L. Clifford, South Atlantic Quarterly 64, no. 4 (1965): 401–2; Donald J. Greene, New Mexico Quarterly 33 (1963): 225–28; Robert Halsband, New York Times, August 26, 1962; Robert R. Kirsch, LA Times, September 6, 1962; Moray McLaren, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), October 12, 1963; Karl Miller, New Statesman, January 17, 1964; R. P. C. Mutter, TLS, no. 3339 (February 1966): 141; Newsweek, September 3, 1962; Orville Prescott, New York Times, August 31, 1962; Publishers Weekly, March 5, 1962; David Williams, Punch, 1963.
Krutch examines the publication of the original manuscript of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, noting it reveals its subject "more intimately than any other man who ever lived." Krutch asserts the draft proves Boswell’s "superb sense of character" rather than the "libelous paradox" of Macaulay. The text restores "picturesque details" and "formal eighteenth-century prose" previously excised. Krutch emphasizes Johnson’s "greatness of intellect" and "remarkable mastery of... limited knowledge" as the source of his enduring admiration.
CGV entry 4:13. Review by J. W. Krutch of the 1936 manuscript edition edited by F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett.
The manuscript, written at the time and later revised with Malone's help, reveals material Boswell suppressed for reasons of bulk, modesty, and delicacy, including primitive sanitation and Johnson's coarse language. The editors have used discretion in restoring the text, making it a crucial work for Boswellians, though less so for Johnsonians, whose portrayal was little harmed by Malone's redaction.
CGV entry 4:13. The following week A. S. Frere Reeves writes to correct the publication date.
Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
CGV entry 4:13. Review by Dixon Weeter of the 1936 manuscript edition edited by F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett.
Review by Dixon Wecter of Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson by James Boswell.
CGV entry 4:13. Review by F. T. Wood of the 1936 manuscript edition edited by F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett.
The reviewer, signed "G," welcomes Boswell's "voluminous journal" as a "Johnsoniana" that will preserve the "distinguished luminary of literature" more completely than any previous biography. Boswell is praised for following the "excellent plan" of William Mason by interweaving letters and conversation into a chronological narrative. The reviewer finds the "Memorabilia of Johnson" superior to Mason’s Memoirs of Gray due to the "richness of its materials." Significant space is given to a "conversation-piece" regarding the Roman Catholic religion, where Johnson defends purgatory as a "very harmless doctrine" and denies that there is "idolatry in the mass." The reviewer observes that Johnson’s "supposed orthodoxy" occasionally "cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding." The review concludes with an extract on poetic mediocrity, where Johnson maintains that poetry, as a "luxury," has "no value, unless when exquisite," a point the reviewer gently disputes by citing the "general esteem" for poets like Parnell and Scott of Amwell.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by Ralph Griffiths of the 1791 first edition.
This review was largely unfavorable, expressing disappointment that the Life had been published. The reviewer found "dull anecdotes" and objected vehemently to the impropriety of recording private conversations. The journal criticized Samuel Johnson for "brutal severity" and found James Boswell himself displeasing. Boswell was attacked for "affected self-importance" and "passive fawning insensibility." This notice highlighted the shock felt by some contemporaries regarding the revelation of Johnson's eccentricities and weaknesses, opposing the era's preference for idealized heroes.
CGV entry 4:14. An anonymous review of the 1791 first edition.
Croker transforms Boswell’s biography into a "full and perfect view" of Johnson by filling blanks, identifying anonymous characters, and integrating supplemental memoirs by Hawkins, Piozzi, Strahan, and others. The reviewer praises Croker for preserving the text from "obscurity" through "infinite labour," despite the "confusion to the eye" caused by the brackets marking new additions. The edition includes previously rare documents, such as Johnson’s Welsh diary and correspondence with Miss Boothby, alongside unpublished letters provided by Lord Stowell and the Master of Pembroke College. Notable inclusions feature a 1755 legal opinion by Murray declaring Johnson’s dictionary definition of "Excise" a libel, and Miss Reynolds’ "Recollections," which detail Johnson’s wit regarding Goldsmith’s appearance. While Croker defends Johnson against "popish inclinations," he maintains that Johnson’s "heart, having been laid more bare than that of any other mortal," emerges nearly "unblemished" from such scrutiny.
This mixed review evaluates the American reprint of Croker’s Boswell. The reviewer admits that the chronological corrections made by the Edinburgh Review are mostly just, citing errors regarding Forbes, Ramsay, and Piozzi. The review censures Croker for discarding original notes by Boswell and Malone, including a characteristic anecdote illustrative of Richardson’s vanity. The reviewer responds to the stricture that Croker’s use of the third person for extracts from Hawkins and Piozzi diminishes the narrative’s vivacity. While praising Croker for adding memoranda on minor figures like Oglethorpe, the reviewer questions the omission of details regarding Johnson’s early presentation to Queen Anne for the royal touch.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by J. P. Dabney of Croker's 1831 edition.
J. M. acknowledges the merit of Croker's edition of Boswell while questioning the integration of diverse biographical narratives. The text characterizes Johnson as possessing a powerful mind and unparalleled fertility of illustration but notes his uncharitable bigotry regarding Americans and Whigs. J. M. argues Johnson lacked deep classical learning and scientific knowledge, describing his literature as a shadow compared to seventeenth-century scholars. He highlights Johnson's generosity toward the poor despite early penury. Analysis focuses on Johnson's prose style, noting its stately triads and heavy amplification. The text further details Johnson's limited acquaintance with metaphysics and Greek literature, specifically his ignorance of Greek comic writers.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by John Mitford of Croker's 1831 edition.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Fitzgerald chronicles the restoration of the original narrative in this three-volume scholarly edition, which reconstructs the first edition of 1791 while incorporating Boswell's 1792 corrections and additions. The editor challenges previous revisions by Malone and Croker, disputing their practices of interpolating foreign letters and disrupting the narrative flow to insert the Hebridean journal chronologically. Fitzgerald restores the original spelling, punctuation, and structure, arguing that these elements preserve the biographer's unique artistic intent and "naïve character." The edition contains the full text of the biography and the journal, supplemented by new notes derived from original manuscripts and contemporary sources. Front matter includes Fitzgerald's proposals for the new edition, a dedication to Thomas Carlyle, and Boswell's original advertisements and introductions. By segregating editorial commentary from the primary text, Fitzgerald provides a clear view of the "somewhat fragmentary state" in which Boswell left his masterpiece. The volumes detail Johnson's literary career, his interactions with the Literary Club, and his extensive conversations on topics ranging from religion and politics to the "common affairs of life." This scholarly arrangement seeks to present Johnson "as he really was," balancing his "extraordinary vigorous mind" against his "vile melancholy" and various personal prejudices. Reviewers describe the book as an honest and successful editorial effort that restores the original narrative by freeing it from the concrete and rubble of later interpolations. The Tablet and the Saturday Review commend the decision to follow a method suggested by Macaulay, preserving unique spelling and punctuation rather than the polished versions favored by Croker. The Athenaeum and American Bibliopolist argue the work proves the subject’s capacity for persistent application and shrewd self-knowledge, defending his character against charges of frivolity. But the Saturday Review critiques the execution for careless language and a wholesale neglect of dates. The general verdict on this study is that while it provides interesting information and protects the original portrait from being smoked out by modern illustrations, it suffers from inconvenient note placement and fresh typographical errors.
Napier complained that he had inherited a "mosaic formed of the various works of Boswell, of Piozzi, of Hawkins, of Tyers, of Murphy, of Nichols, of Cumberland, of the two Wartons, of Strahan," which needed to be "broken up" and restored to their original bodies. He calls Croker's editorial notes "excessive in number" and lacking use. Napier's edition of the Tour to the Hebrides included notes derived from the final Croker edition. Johnson is the central biographical figure whose Life was subjected to this corrective editorial approach. This edition was accompanied by a supplementary fifth vol., Johnsoniana, edited by Robina Napier.
Boswell's Life of Johnson Together with Boswell's Journey of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales
Hill’s monumental edition of Boswell’s Life became the standard text for the early twentieth century. The edition consists of four volumes dedicated to the Life itself, followed by Boswell’s published Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in vol. 5 and a vast index in Volume 6. Hill’s editorial policies were rooted in a desire to restore the text, having condemned earlier efforts, particularly John Wilson Croker’s 1831 edition, which was criticized for creating a "mosaic" by inserting the Tour to the Hebrides chronologically and integrating text from other biographies. Hill insisted on restoring the text "to the state in which Boswell left it." His goals included rehabilitating Johnson’s literary reputation against the detraction of critics like Macaulay and promoting interest in Johnson’s own writings. The edition is best known for its copious (and often garrulous) annotation. Hill systematically sought parallels between Johnson’s reported conversational statements and his published writings. Detailed footnotes direct readers to related ideas in Johnson's works or contrasting views from contemporaries, though some critics complained they were too verbose and discursive, arguing they "literally whelm and submerge poor Boswell." Hill’s patient research and industry earned praise, distinguishing his work from the earlier, less scholarly efforts of his contemporaries. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with critics celebrating the six-volume publication as a monumental achievement of exhaustive knowledge, scholarly integrity, and exemplary accuracy. Grant, in the Academy, praises the meticulous, literary-focused notes that elucidate obscure contemporary phrases, while a review in the Athenaeum commends the vast original research but challenges the editor's high estimation of the central subject's Latin verse. The Saturday Review lauds the fertility and abundance of the annotation, labeling the editor a master of research thoroughly saturated in eighteenth-century literature. In N&Q, an unsigned piece highlights the inclusion of fifteen previously unpublished letters, manuscript diary extracts, and a comprehensive 283-page index that enhances the set's value as a reference tool. Curtis's review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine describes the text as the most complete and satisfactory version to date, noting it enriches the biography through an unrivaled devotion to the literature of the period. But the Spectator offers a mixed assessment, questioning the literary taste of inundating a classic text with digressive annotations that threaten to overwhelm the original work. In America, the Critic applauds the scholarly dignity and solidity of the volumes, calling the massive general index the crowning glory of an ideal edition. Finally, unsigned notices in the Times, Daily News, and St. James's Budget reinforce this acclaim, praising the restoration of the original narrative and the avoidance of prior presumptuous mutilations.
CGV entry 4:14. Reprinted with different pagination by Harper and Brothers, New York, in 1889.
Reviews: Christian Union 36, no. 12 (1887): 281; George William Curtis, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 79, no. 473 (1889): 795–97; Daily News (London), June 6, 1887; Francis R. C. Grant, The Academy, June 25, 1887; Harper’s Bazaar 24, no. 13 (1891): 230; Illustrated London News, August 27, 1887; Literary World 18, no. 17 (1887): 259; Literary World 22, no. 5 (1891): 75; T. R. Lounsbury, The Nation, 1887; A. Morgan, Church Review 50, no. 178 (1887): 513; New York Times, August 7, 1887; New-York Tribune, August 5, 1887; N&Q 4, no. 87 (1887): 179; Saturday Review, July 9, 1887; St. James’s Budget, August 6, 1887; The Athenaeum, June 25, 1887; The Critic 8, no. 203 (1887): 254; The Critic 15, no. 374 (1891): 105; The Spectator 60, no. 3080 (1887): 929; The Times, August 31, 1887; Times of India, June 2, 1887.
Praises Hill’s monumental edition for its vast original research and varied information, noting its particular significance as a product of Johnson’s own college. Challenges Hill’s high estimation of Johnson’s Latin verse, citing Wellesley’s dismissive view of their quality. Defends Piozzi against Hill’s suggestions of textual interpolation in Johnson's correspondence, arguing that Hill relies too heavily on the biased testimony of Baretti. Identifies valuable new materials included by Hill, such as unpublished letters and extracts from Johnson’s MS diary, while correcting minor genealogical and bibliographical omissions. Highlights Hill’s successful attempt to demonstrate how Johnson’s descriptions of other poets often reflected his own character traits.
CGV entry 4:14. An anonymous review of the edition by George Birkbeck Hill.
This three-volume edition of the biography includes an introduction by Austin Dobson and 'about one hundred illustrations' by Herbert Railton. Dobson’s prefatory essay, 'Johnson’s London Haunts and Habitations,' provides a detailed survey of the various residences and social centers associated with Johnson, from his first lodgings in Exeter Street to his final home in Bolt Court. Railton’s illustrations, drawn from surviving structures or contemporary prints, provide a visual record of these locations, including Gough Square, the Mitre Tavern, and various London churches. Glover bases the text on the sixth edition (1811) revised by Edmund Malone, preserving the original advertisements and Malone’s accumulated notes. Volume I covers Johnson's life from his birth in 1709 through the end of 1771; Volume II traces the period from 1772 through the middle of 1777; and Volume III concludes the biography, covering the years 1778 to Johnson’s death in 1784. The edition features numerous photogravure portraits, including those of Johnson, Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, and Henry Thrale. The apparatus includes a 'Chronological Table' of contemporary literary and historical events and an index. Boswell’s original dedication to Reynolds and his advertisements for the first and second editions are also included, alongside Malone's prefaces to subsequent editions through the sixth.
CGV entry 4:14.
This two-volume edition of the biography uses the text as revised by Edmund Malone and incorporates a 'splendid wealth of illustrations' to serve as a visual commentary on the eighteenth century. Ingpen identifies the 'raison d'être' of the edition as its 568 illustrations, which include portraits, views of Johnson’s haunts, facsimile title pages, and autographs. The editor provides short explanatory notes for each image, drawing from sources such as the British Museum's mezzotint collection to assist the reader in realizing 'Johnson’s life and the times in which he lived.' Volume I covers Johnson’s history from his birth in 1709 through March 1776, while Volume II traces his life from the 1776 Midlands tour to his death in 1784. The front matter includes a preface discussing Boswell's unique gifts as a 'dogged' observer who extracted the 'essence of a conversation.' Ingpen also includes various 'testimonia' from figures such as Macaulay and Carlyle to justify a new edition of the 'great masterpiece and glory of English biography.' The edition features photogravure plates of Johnson, Boswell, and their contemporaries, alongside a chronological table and an index based on the work of George Birkbeck Hill. The critical reception of this bicentennial edition is defined by widespread acclaim for its ambitious visual program, which reviewers characterize as a "veritable pictorial annotation" and a "wealth of pictures" chosen "admirably and lavishly." Critics celebrate the work as a "first-hand history of eighteenth-century literature," praising the inclusion of four to five hundred authentic illustrations—including portraits by masters like Reynolds and Gainsborough, maps of London, and "charming old prints" of Lichfield—that ground the "unexampled masterpiece" in its physical context. The edition is lauded for its "peculiarly attractive form," featuring "good and clear" typography and "dignified" binding that make it an "unmatched" gift for the festive season. While the editor is commended for avoiding "wearisome" footnotes in favor of "concise" and purposeful annotations, the collection did face some targeted criticism; one reviewer censures the use of "very bad" modern drawings of demolished landmarks, arguing they provide "little value" compared to the "authentic" historical prints. Despite this minor grievance, the consensus views the publication as a "triumphant" success that facilitates an accessible introduction for new readers while offering a "pictorial" depth that the subject himself might have curated, ultimately affirming the biography's status as the "greatest of all English biographies."
CGV entry 4:14. A new edition was published in 1925 by George Bayntun (Bath) and Lauriat (Boston). Vol. 1, 1709-March 18, 1776; vol. 2, March 19, 1776-Dec. 13, 1784.
The Temple Bar edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1922, including a dedication to Jowett. One reviewer criticized this dedication, questioning the editor's judgment and noting the editor's preoccupation with himself. The editor's focus on "My book" and "My proof sheets" made him appear to view the Life as his own work. This publication coincided with other Boswell-related volumes like Tinker's Young Boswell.
CGV entry 4:14. Features separate introductions to each of its ten volumes by various scholars.
CGV entry 4:14. A verbatim reprint of the 1791 first edition, with a preface by Clement K. Shorter.
"The present text follows that of Malone's sixth edition."--Page vii "Complete and unabridged with notes."
CGV entry 4:14. The text is from "Malone's sixth edition."
CGV entry 4:14. Reissued with a new index in 1953, with further corrections in 1957, and as a paperbound edition in 1960.
Powell revised Hill's edition of 1887 with meticulous scholarship, verifying and enhancing Hill’s colossal effort. The organization preserves Hill’s extensive format, dedicating four volumes to the Life, vol. 5 to the re-edited Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and vol. 6 to a heavily revised index. Powell’s most critical editorial contribution was the wholesale correction of the text, which Hill had based on the flawed 1799 third edition with no systematic collation of early editions. Powell established the text by either restoring or retaining the best readings found among the first, second, or third editions. He affirmed his commitment to textual integrity, stating: "I need hardly say that I have regarded Boswell’s text as sacred and have not tampered with it in any way." Powell's method resulted in converting Hill’s nearly diplomatic edition into a critical one. Regarding annotation, Powell famously preserved Hill’s commentary, recognizing it as a "noble edifice." But he also corrected, verified, and updated Hill’s occasionally criticized prolix notes, adding new materials to maintain the work’s authority as an essential "book of reference." (Since he was obliged to preserve the pagination of Hill's edition, much of his original annotation appears in extensive appendices to each volume.) The final volumes (5 and 6, published in 1950) incorporated manuscript materials, particularly concerning the Tour, that were inaccessible to Hill. The edition does not, however, make extensive use of the Boswell Papers, particularly in the four volumes of the Life. Critical reception of Powell's revision of Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers universally praising the integration of fresh manuscript discoveries and the preservation of original pagination. Minor friction exists between popular and scholarly perspectives regarding the usability of the text's dense critical apparatus. In prominent general publications, Chapman in the TLS calls the completed set a new classic, praising the identification of over 570 anonymous names. Pottle's review in the TLS highlights the addition of new items to the Johnsonian canon, while an unsigned review in the TLS commends the resourceful, conservative editorial method. In The Observer, Young praises the preservation of the original fabric but criticizes the editors' silence on specific historical details. MacCarthy, in the Sunday Times, lauds the twelve-year labor for achieving the vigor and caution required of an editor. But Tinker's review in the Saturday Review of Literature presents a rare dissenting voice, faulting the decision to retain Hill's pagination, which forces significant discoveries into a cumbersome structure. Among scholarly journals, Sherburn in PQ celebrates the completion of the masterly, definitive text. Bennett, in JEGP, offers a mixed assessment, arguing that the distracting annotations prevent it from being an ideal reading edition. Sutherland, in RES, praises Powell's unselfish devotion to elucidating obscure references, while Butt, also in RES, lauds the extensive genealogical commentaries. Finally, Williams in MLR calls the revision a triumphant marvel of neatness, and Clifford in JNL describes the scrupulous scholarship as a masterly revision.
CGV entry 4:14. A revision and enlargement of Hill's 1887 edition. Volumes 1-4 were published in 1934; Volumes 5-6 in 1950. A second edition of volumes 5 and 6 was published in 1964.
Hill's 1887 edition of the Life is widely considered the best, superseding editors like Croker, who mutilated the text despite identifying 140 veiled persons. Powell's new six-volume revision is a "rich quarry" that builds on modern scholarship and the discovery of the Boswell Papers. In this approving review of the revision, Williams praises the integration of new findings and notes that Powell follows three principles: retaining Hill's pagination for reference, revising the text to correct errors in the 1793 edition, and supplementing commentary with extensive new notes. Powell successfully identified over a hundred "veiled references," including the revelation that Boswell himself was the "man who had been guilty of vicious actions" seeking Johnson's advice. Williams also commends the identification of new items in the Johnsonian canon, such as the 1741 proposals for James's Medical Dictionary and a 1742 translation of Crousaz's work on Pope previously confused with Carter's version. This accurate and amplified edition promises a clearer view of Johnson and his contemporaries.
Tinker traces the editorial lineage of Boswell’s work from Malone and Croker to Hill and Powell. He faults the current edition's policy of retaining original pagination, which forces Powell’s "numerous" and "significant discoveries" into a cumbersome "interstices of the footnotes" and twenty-six appendices. Tinker argues for a "variorum edition" to replace Hill’s "editorial hegemony," suggesting the "typographical ingenuity" of the current revision causes a "perpetual oscillation" that hinders scholarly use.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by C. B. Tinker of the Hill–Powell edition.
Bennett acknowledges Hill’s original achievement as one of the most brilliant examples of editorship, but argues the new edition perpetuates the problem of the book being cluttered and too much belonging to the editors. Bennett praises Powell for his diligence in producing a highly accurate text of the third edition, and notes the running date-line and helpful new references as gratifying improvements. He asserts that Hill's is not an ideal "reading edition" because of the distracting annotations, and that much of the annotation could be eliminated to produce an edition that is lucidly presented and returns the great work to its author.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by C. H. Bennett of the Hill–Powell edition.
Williams commends Powell’s "triumphant" revision of Hill’s "monumental" 1887 edition, noting the successful preservation of original pagination for citation purposes while incorporating fifty years of new scholarship. He details Powell’s textual improvements, which include a superior collation of the first three editions—specifically using the first and second to correct the third—and the inclusion of the 1929 cancel regarding conjugal infidelity. Significant enhancements include the addition of approximately one hundred new identifications of persons mentioned by Boswell who were previously anonymous. Williams characterizes the revision as a "marvel of neatness" and concludes that Powell’s precise craftsmanship and updated bibliographical standards supplement and supplant Hill’s work as the definitive scholarly reference.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by Harold Williams of the Hill–Powell edition.
Sherburn praises Powell’s revision of Hill’s edition as a "masterly" achievement that improves textual integrity and commentary. He notes the ingenuity required to maintain Hill’s original pagination while incorporating vast new scholarship in extensive appendices. Sherburn highlights Powell’s brilliant specific discoveries, including the plausible ascription to Johnson of a 1741 translation of Crousaz. He regrets only the lack of a key for abbreviated titles, which may hinder younger students.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by George Sherburn of the Hill–Powell edition.
Sutherland's approving review praises this major revision of Hill's 1887 edition of the Life, commending Powell for his "unselfish devotion" in elucidating obscure references. Powell updates the work by maintaining the original structure and pagination while incorporating a "mass of new material" discovered since the nineteenth century, including the Boswell Papers and research by Reade and Pottle. The review highlights Powell's success in identifying anonymous persons previously "intentionally concealed by Boswell" or masked as "a clergyman" or "a gentleman." Powell performs a meticulous collation of the first three editions with earlier versions. Sutherland justifies the extensive commentary, noting that for scholars, even minor details concerning Johnson or Boswell possess value, although he identifies minor bibliographical errors regarding Pope and Lewis and questions the length of an appendix entry regarding the exact number of trees planted on a Scottish estate.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by James Sutherland of the Hill–Powell edition.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by Edith J. Morley of the Hill–Powell edition.
CGV entry 4:14.Discussed by Christopher Morley in the Saturday Review of Literature, volume 19 (December 3, 1938), pages 13, 26.
Includes marginalia by Hester Lynch Piozzi.
Reprinted by Heritage Press.
CGV entry 4:14. The original Everyman edition was published in 1906. This edition includes an introduction by S. C. Roberts and an index by Alan Dent.
A Collection of Interesting Biography: Containing I. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Abridged, Principally, from Boswell's Celebrated Memoirs
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Chiefly Compiled from 'Boswell's Johnson'
The SPCK published this biography of Johnson, chiefly compiling it from Boswell's Life for didactic instruction. The work details Johnson's struggles with illness, poverty, and melancholy, contrasting his rough manner with his profound piety and benevolence. It outlines his career, emphasizing the Dictionary and his periodicals. The text also highlights his close relationships with his wife, Tetty, and his fifteen-year stay with the Thrale family.
Life and Conversations of Dr. Samuel Johnson (Founded Chiefly upon Boswell)
Main provides a biographical narrative of Johnson, emphasizing the tension between his external roughness and internal tenderness. He asserts that Johnson’s essential character is revealed through his robust intellectual supremacy and his conscientious, though often troubled, religious life. Focusing on Johnson’s social circle, the text details his relationships with figures such as Boswell, Garrick, and Goldsmith, illustrating how Johnson’s colloquial powers and moral integrity governed these interactions. Main argues that while Johnson’s prejudices were prominent, they were consistently outweighed by a profound humanitarianism and a dedicated adherence to truth.
CGV entry 4:15. With a preface by George Henry Lewes.
Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Compiled Chiefly from Boswell's Biography
Osgood presents an abridged edition of Boswell’s biography, deliberately omitting most of Boswell’s "criticisms, comments, and notes," Johnson’s legal opinions, and much of the correspondence to create a narrative that illustrates "all the phases of Johnson’s mind." The introduction reframes Boswell not as a mere "tireless transcriber" or a "morbid, restless" figure, but as a "skilful and devoted artist" who created a unified masterpiece focused on a single dominating personality. Osgood argues that biography is the "literature of truth and authenticity" and positions this work as a "text-book in the art of living." The editorial policy favors passages that reveal Johnson’s "supreme capacity for human relationship," particularly his "genius" for friendship with figures like David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Osgood contends that Johnson’s own genius, which left no "fit testimony" in his own writings, expressed itself "by proxy" through the art and minds of his companions. The text retains salient scenes—such as the interview with George III—to demonstrate Boswell’s "economy of means" and "lifelikeness." Osgood concludes that the effect of this "companionship" is to "clear the mind of cant" and instill "expert discernment."
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged and edited with an introduction.
Everybody's Boswell: Being the Life of Samuel Johnson Abridged from James Boswell's Complete Text and from the 'Tour to the Hebrides'
This abridgment combines Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides into a single volume, specifically curated for a modern audience with limited time for lengthy classics. The editorial policy prioritizes the preservation of Johnson's "marvellous talk" and unique personality, which the publisher describes as a "great rich old English Christmas cake" of wisdom, wit, and humanity. The text retains essential biographical episodes, including Johnson's struggles with "morbid melancholy," his interactions with literary figures like Goldsmith and Garrick, and his "sturdy independence" in the face of fallacious patronage, exemplified by the celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield. By interweaving Johnson's own minutes and letters, the volume ensures readers encounter the "Great Bear" as he really was, capturing both his "splendid tyrant" persona and his underlying piety and generosity. Ernest H. Shepard's fifty-four illustrations complement the narrative, visually depicting salient moments such as Johnson's "frisk" in London and his philosophical perambulations in Scotland. Most reviews are positive. Hazlitt, in The Nation, calls the abridgment successful, noting it maintains a dramatic quality that captures prejudices and eccentricities while presenting a great comic figure complete with warts. In the Saturday Review of Literature, Lewis provides a more mixed assessment; he praises the substantial text for serving the general public well, but he critiques the removal of contextual details and finds the illustrations ill-suited. An unsigned notice in The Spectator describes the volume as an accessible entry point that preserves essential personality, wit, and piety while reducing overall length. In the New Statesman, an unsigned review commends the exceptionally skillful condensation, calling the book a pleasure to hold with delightful drawings. An unsigned review in the English Review praises the single-volume compression, highlighting the sensible inclusion of a character list and spirited illustrations that happily capture scenes of gaiety and seriousness. In the Sunday Times, Morrell asserts that every person of intelligence ought to read the work for its amazing vividness. A notice in the Catholic World acknowledges the success in introducing a remarkable character to a wider audience, noting it is fuller than previous versions, but regrets the omission of minor writings. Finally, an unsigned review in the Saturday Review (London) offers a more critical perspective on a separate abridgement, disputing its adequacy and censuring the editor's failure to take pains with a classic text.
CGV entry 4:15. Profusely illustrated by Ernest H. Shephard. Often reprinted.
Samuel Johnsons Liv till Svenska, med Bibliografi, Inlendning, Anmärkningar, och Register
This first complete Swedish translation of Boswell’s biography provides a comprehensive account of Johnson’s life, studies, and correspondence from 1709 to 1768. Heyman’s edition, based on Malone’s third edition, incorporates extensive scholarly front matter, including bibliographical and biographical notes on the Johnson circle. The narrative details Johnson’s early struggles with poverty and melancholy, his move to London, and his rise as a literary dictator.
CGV entry 4:15. An incomplete Swedish translation, covering only up to the year 1778.
This reviews Harald Heyman's Swedish translation of Boswell's Life of Johnson, appearing 135 years after original publication, noting its status as the first complete foreign translation. Hill attributed the lack of earlier translations to Johnson's thoroughly English character. The translation is a scholarly, monumental work, comparable to Hill's English edition, reproducing Hill's text and selecting notes, while incorporating Ingpen's chapter divisions and illustrations. Heyman's introductory matter includes a bibliography of Johnsonian scholarship and an essay evaluating Boswell's book and hero for a Swedish audience.
CGV entry 4:15.
Evans provides an abridged edition of Boswell’s biography, using the text edited by George Birkbeck Hill and revised by L. F. Powell. In a biographical and critical introduction, Evans describes Boswell as an 'epicure of experience' whose lust for life and 'unerring perception of true greatness' drove him to objectivize his existence through writing. The introduction addresses the historical charge of Boswell being a 'toady', arguing instead that his social circle of eminent men sought his company for his 'gaiety of conversation'. Evans explains the 'revolutionary nature' of Boswell’s biographical plan: interleaving letters and conversations to let Johnson 'show himself'. The abridgment maintains the chronological structure while 'winnowing out' obscurities and irrelevances to preserve the 'spirit and substance' of Johnson’s life. The text traces Johnson's trajectory from his 'miserably poor' student days at Pembroke College—marked by 'morbid melancholy' and a 'jealous independence of spirit'—to his status as the 'great dictator of letters'. Significant focus is placed on Johnson’s professional achievements, including the 'Dictionary', 'The Rambler', and 'The Life of Savage', as well as his personal eccentricities and 'Herculean vigour' in conversation. Evans emphasizes the 'filial' bond between the two men, concluding that Boswell’s 'sacred love of truth' ensured that Johnson remains better known than almost any other historical figure.
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged and with an introduction.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Leben und Meinungen; mit dem Tagebuch einer Reise nach den Hebriden
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged German translation. Reprinted in 1990.
CGV entry 4:15. French translation.
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged Serbo-Croat translation with an introduction.
Priestley characterizes the biography as a supreme masterpiece that remains vibrant across centuries, asserting it is 'as good to read on a jet airliner as it must have been on a stagecoach.' He emphasizes that while some classics lose vitality, Boswell’s work offers a 'friend for life' whose depth increases with the reader's age. Priestley identifies the period from 1770 to 1784 as the most critical for Boswell’s recording of Johnson's talk. He notes the recent acquisition of a 'great mass of hitherto unpublished Boswell material' by Yale University, which provides further insight into the author's meticulous process. Priestley credits Davis for skillfully condensing the massive original text into a manageable form for modern readers while preserving its essential 'fat, rich' quality.
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged by O. B. Davis, with an "Afterword" by J. B. Priestley on pages 436-440.
Boswell's Life of Johnson: Newly Abridged
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged and edited with an introduction. Reprints critical material about the 'Life'.
CGV entry 4:15. Translated into Assamese.
The most celebrated English biography is a group portrait in which extraordinary man paints the picture of a dozen more. At the centre of a brilliant circle which included Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Fanny Burney and even George III, Boswell captures the powerful, troubled and witty figure of Samuel Johnson, who towers above them all. Yet this is also an intimate picture of domestic life, which mingles the greatest talkers of a talkative age with the hero's humbler friends in a picture which is, before all things, humane. As a young man about London, James Boswell was obsessed by literature, and, on a fateful day in 1763, he attached himself with unswerving tenacity to the dominant literary figure of his age--the splendidly rotund, articulate, and humane Dr. Samuel Johnson. What followed was the most famous of friendships between writers and the bais for the remarkable documentation contained in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, the greatest and most compelling of all biographies.
Hibbert's abridgment of Boswell's Life of Johnson provides the general reader with a manageable amount of information, reinforcing the traditional image of Johnson as a dominating conversationalist. The edition reduces the total work to about a quarter of its original length, omitting most letters and Boswell's "unwarranted and unwelcome conclusions." McGuffie notes that Hibbert frequently omits paragraphs and pages without explanation or consistent use of an asterisk, sometimes telescoping events. The focus is concentrated on Johnson talking, with little sense of the bulk of his written work.
Morley's popular abridgement of Boswell's *Life of Johnson* is reprinted, with distribution rights in the U.S. handled by the Ohio University Press. The edition, originally published in 1930 with an introduction by Morley, makes the extensive biography accessible to a wider readership. The selection preserves the essential narrative and conversational highlights of Johnson's life, as chronicled by Boswell. It serves as a distillation of Johnsonian wisdom and anecdote for the common reader, perpetuating the central figure and the era's spirit for a new generation.
Abridged edition, first published 1930
CGV entry 4:15. Reprinted from the 1930 edition, with a new introduction.
Letters of James Boswell, Addressed to the Reverend W. J. Temple: Now First Published from the Original MSS.
The correspondence, spanning several decades, offers a candid look into Boswell's personal life, revealing his character, volatile emotions, domestic struggles, ambition for fame and political office, and prolific social life. The letters detail his courtships, financial troubles, struggles with melancholy and intemperance, and his relationships with key figures like Johnson and Paoli. The text comes from the original manuscripts, often with contextual introductions, notes, and supplementary letters to provide necessary explanations, criticisms of Boswell's character, and commentary on the historical and biographical information contained within. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the moral implications of exposing personal vices, the authenticity of the discovery, and the validity of traditional character dismissals. In the Edinburgh Review, an unsigned assessment initiates a major critical reassessment, challenging the paradox that a foolish individual produced a biographical masterpiece and defending the subject's integrity. Three unsigned pieces in Littell's Living Age champion the text, disputing Macaulay's harsh characterization, praising the dramatic fidelity of the biographical method, and affirming that the correspondence offers unique intellectual insights. Lucas, in two reviews for the Times, celebrates the discovery, asserting that the internal proofs of genuineness are irresistible and perfectly match the author's susceptible nature. An unsigned review in Bentley’s Miscellany validates this authenticity, highlighting the total lack of reserve concerning chronic intoxication and hypochondria, which Chambers’s Journal notes provides an impressive moral lesson on the futility of vanity. The Critic also supports the text, arguing it reveals a clever, good-natured man rather than a fawning cur. Cotton, in the Examiner, describes the letters as a treasure-trove of confidential details but notes they will not raise the common estimate of the writer's character. But an unsigned commentary in the Gentleman's Magazine is severe, branding the author a vain, profligate drunkard and a fool, while dismissing the relationship with Johnson as sheer flunkeyism. Finally, the Christian Remembrancer and the Dublin University Magazine offer detailed biographical analyses, with the former providing a direct rebuttal to contemporary detraction.
Reviews: Aberdeen Press and Journal, January 14, 1857; Amicus Curiae, Essex Standard, January 30, 1857; Bentley’s Miscellany 41 (1857): 204–9; Birmingham Journal, January 21, 1857; Chambers’s Journal 27, no. 170 (1857): 548–51; Chambers’s Journal 27, no. 162 (1857): 88–90; Christian Observer 58 (1859): 9–21; Christian Remembrancer 33, no. 95 (1857): 236–49; William Cotton, The Examiner, January 3, 1857; Dublin University Magazine 49, no. 291 (1857): 359–66; Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature 40, no. 4 (1857): 548; Edinburgh Review 105, no. 214 (1857): 456; W. J. Fitz-Patrick, N&Q 3, no. 72 (1857): 381–82; Fraser’s Magazine 55 (1856): 282; Gentleman’s Magazine 202 (1857): 178–84; Home News for India, China and the Colonies, January 10, 1857; Irish Metropolitan Magazine 1 (1857): 576–97; Law Magazine and Review 2 (1856): 273; Littell’s Living Age, March 7, 1857; Littell’s Living Age, May 30, 1857; Littell’s Living Age, May 22, 1858; London Quarterly Review 8, no. 16 (1857): 501–16; Samuel Lucas, The Times, January 3, 1857; Samuel Lucas, The Times, January 8, 1857; N&Q 3 (1857): 20; Quarterly Review 103, no. 206 (1858): 279–328; Saturday Review, December 27, 1856; The Athenaeum, December 27, 1856; The Critic 16, no. 381 (1857): 73–74; The Examiner, January 1857; The Spectator 30, no. 1488 (1857): 21.
Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple
This scholarly edition collects the correspondence between Boswell and William Temple from 1758 to 1795. Thomas Seccombe provides a detailed introduction and editorial notes to contextualize the letters, which were recovered from a shop in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1850. The volume documents Boswell's life from his early legal studies in Edinburgh and Utrecht to his final years in London. Significant portions detail Boswell's interactions with Johnson, including their first meeting and subsequent travels. The letters chronicle Boswell's evolving relationship with his father, his persistent pursuit of various women, and the complex editorial process behind his major biographical work on Johnson. The text also records Boswell's observations on contemporary figures such as David Hume and Pascal Paoli. Seccombe preserves the original orthography and provides annotations that link the private correspondence to events described in Boswell's published journals and the biography of Johnson. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the collection's rich store of humor, unique psychological depth, and value as a self-revealing human document. An unsigned commentary in the Athenaeum welcomes the reprint, celebrating the writer's conscious commitment to a perfect mode of biography while disputing the officious, mid-Victorian editorial style of earlier editions. In the Spectator, an unsigned assessment characterizes the correspondence as a psychologist's vade-mecum that lays bare a complex struggle between reason and passion, rendering the central figure a lovable companion to contemporary geniuses. An unsigned review in the Saturday Review notes that the recovered manuscripts allow the author to reveal his personality to the full, establishing him as a literary peer to his famous biographical subject. Y. Y., in the Bookman, launches a severe, polemic defense against traditional Whig distortions, arguing that these domestic confidences prove true genius and a genuine devotion to intellectual worth rather than a shallow desire for notoriety. Shorter's review in the Sphere offers warm approval, commending the masterly introduction and printing supplementary letters to illustrate historical intimacy. Finally, regional daily reviews reinforce this acclaim, with Waugh in the London Daily Chronicle praising the naive revelation of a hopeful, energetic self, and an unsigned notice in the Evening Irish Times asserting that the vital character of the writer successfully outlives past pompous indictments.
CGV entry 4:16. With an introduction by Thomas Seccombe.
Reviews: Clement K. Shorter, The Sphere 35, no. 466 (1908): 280; Evening Irish Times, January 1, 1909; Saturday Review, March 6, 1909; The Athenaeum, February 13, 1909; The Spectator 102, no. 4217 (1909): 669; Arthur Waugh, London Daily Chronicle, February 17, 1909; Y. Y., The Bookman 36, no. 211 (1909): 32–34.
The correspondence of Boswell across three decades, offering a crucial window into his complex psychology and literary career. The letters trace his evolution from a young traveler engaging with figures like Paoli and Zuylen, through his contentious relationship with his father, Auchinleck, to his final years dominated by the legacy of Johnson. Core themes include his chronic financial difficulties, volatile pursuit of political office—attempting to gain favor from figures like Pitt and Dundas—and his relentless, often self-sabotaging, romantic life, detailed through candid exchanges regarding women like Blair and his wife, Montgomery. The majority of the collection centers on the arduous process of writing his seminal biography. Communications with confidants like Temple and Malone reveal the logistical and emotional toll of the magnum opus and his fierce defense of his biographical method against rivals such as Piozzi, Hawkins, and Seward. Critics are generally favorable, praising the comprehensive gathering of correspondence while noting how the text alters traditional biographical estimates. Bailey, in TLS, commends the presentation of full texts, including the foundational communications to Temple, but criticizes the absence of explicit markers for first-time printed items. Squire (The Observer) highlights the deep self-revelation and explicit candor of the volumes, calling the work a new classic. Writing in the New Statesman, Birrell argues that the text establishes a great artist who took immense pains with his biographical scheme, though he objects to the suppression of unprintable phrases. Strachey, in the New Republic and The Nation and the Athenaeum, similarly censures the remaining textual mutilations as examples of prudery, yet he recognizes the collection as a triumph that exposes the whole person. Shorter, in The Sphere, lauds the masterly restoration of text, but he disputes the exclusion of the Erskine letters, concluding that the content confirms older views of a noxious parasite. Thompson, in PQ, heartily welcomes the volumes, noting how they illuminate a central conflict between a desire for sensible conduct and a love of pleasure. In N&Q, the reviewer finds that the collection confirms previous impressions of vanity and periodic melancholy rather than altering estimates, though the commentary provides superior documentation of shrewdness and occasional high judgment.
Bailey reviews the two-volume collection of Boswell's letters. The edition collects all known letters (except those to Erskine), with nearly a hundred allegedly new. Bailey criticizes the lack of explicit "Now printed for the first time" notes. The letters to William Temple are presented in full for the first time, superseding the 1857 edition. The collection includes letters to Johnson, Wilkes, Malone, Percy, and his factor Andrew Gibb, providing a comprehensive, often unflattering, self-portrait.
CGV entry 4:17.
Strachey observes that Tinker’s edition reveals the "whole man" through his correspondence, though he censures Tinker’s "barbarous prudery" in mutilating the text. Boswell achieved "one of the most extraordinary successes in the history of civilization" despite being an "idler, a lecher, a drunkard, and a snob." Strachey identifies Boswell’s "absurdity" and "absolute ingenuousness" as the essential conditions of his art. The review traces Boswell’s "extraordinary zigzag" career from his discovery of Johnson to his final "storm and darkness."
CGV entry 4:17. Review by Lytton Strachey of the book edited by C. B. Tinker.
Bacon disputes the Macaulay paradox that Boswell wrote a great book "because he was a great fool." He credits Tinker’s edition of Boswell’s letters with "dissipating this nonagenarian legend." Bacon argues that a fool could not analyze his own folly with such "brilliant penetration" or recognize the "shivers of genius" in others. He characterizes Boswell’s nature as driven by a "passionate if incoherent curiosity about mankind" and explores his need for "cetaceous admissions" from figures like Johnson and Rousseau.
CGV entry 4:17. Review by Leonard Bacon of the book edited by C. B. Tinker.
Biron reviews Tinker’s collection as a vital addition to Johnsonian literature, serving to rescue Boswell’s reputation from Macaulay’s 'Gnostic' austerity. The reviewer finds that Boswell’s 'shameless sincerity' and 'personal note' are the secrets of his success as a biographer. Contrary to claims of political absurdity, Biron highlights Boswell’s surprisingly modern views on the American Revolution and Irish Union, noting his Tory sympathies did not preclude a defense of colonial assemblies. The correspondence tracks Boswell’s 'prolonged search for a wife,' detailing his interactions with the 'furious' Zélide and the 'insensible' Miss Blair, eventually culminating in his marriage to Margaret Montgomerie. The letters also provide early glimpses of his friendship with Johnson, including their 'sober' bottles at the Mitre. Biron concludes that while Boswell was a 'free liver,' his letters demonstrate a man constantly striving for a 'proper conduct in life' despite a recurring 'melancholy cast.'
CGV entry 4:17. Review by Sir Chartres Biron of the book edited by C. B. Tinker.
CGV entry 4:17. Review by R. H. Griffith of the book edited by C. B. Tinker.
Pottle reviews Chapman’s edition of Boswell’s 1776–1777 notebook, noting its importance as the only extant primary source of Boswell’s raw Johnsonian material. The reviewer commends the parallel-text formatting, which allows for a direct comparison between initial jottings and the final biography. Pottle asserts that the notebook refutes the image of Boswell as a literal stenographer, showing instead an artist who refined "portable soup" notes into finished scenes. The review emphasizes Boswell’s creative selection and abridgment as the defining features of his biographical genius.
CGV entry 4:18. Review by F. A. Pottle of the 1925 Oxford University Press edition with an introduction by R. W. Chapman.
The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt.-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham
This edition comprises 18 volumes of text plus a 19th index volume, privately printed in a limited edition of 570 copies, beginning in 1928. It resulted from the first major discovery of the author's papers at Malahide Castle near Dublin, which were acquired by Lt.-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham from Lord Talbot de Malahide. The editing was entrusted first to Geoffrey Scott and subsequently to Frederick A. Pottle. The collection, previously alluded to in the Life of Johnson, contained more than a million words, including most of the author’s 37-year intermittent journal and numerous important letters. The material covered periods previously unavailable, such as his time in Holland and his Grand Tour of Germany and Switzerland. The organization interwoven journal material, letters, and miscellaneous papers, aiming to preserve the text as originally written, unnormalized and unmodified, with an early appreciation of the author's personality. The reconstruction of the Holland period (1763–1764) included subsidiary sources like the Memoranda and Notes. Volume 6 specifically addressed the making of the Life. Supplemental materials included the Journal of My Jaunt, Harvest 1762, and a history of the papers. This private publication served as the essential foundation for the later Yale Boswell Editions project and was pivotal in the critical revaluation of the author, providing evidence of his craftsmanship and composition process for the Life of Johnson.
CGV entry 4:19. Geoffrey Scott edited volumes 1-6, and Frederick A. Pottle edited volumes 7–18. A catalogue by F. A. and Marion S. Pottle was published by Oxford University Press in 1931.
Scott edited vols. 1-6; Pottle, vols. 7–18 of the 570 copy limited edition.
v.] 1. Early papers of James Boswell, 1754–1763, with the record of David Boswell's oath, devised, written and witnessed by James Boswell, 29 October 1767 [v.] 2. Zelide, a correspondence between James Boswell and Belle de Zuylen. Inviolable plan, to be read over frequently; and other papers [v.] 3. Journal of a tour through the courts of Germany by James Boswell, 1764 [v.] 4. Boswell with Rousseau and Voltaire, 1764 [v.] 5. Porzia Sansedoni, love-letters of James Boswell written in Italy, 1765; with other records of his Italian tour [v.] 6. The making of The life of Johnson as shown in Boswell's first notes, original diaries, and revised drafts; a study of Boswell's biographical method marking the successive steps in drafts; a study of Boswell's biographical method marking the successive steps in the composition [v.] 7-18. The journal of James Boswell, 1765/68-1789/94
Chapman recounts the recovery of Boswell's manuscripts (Private Papers) at Malahide Castle, edited by Scott, a collection accessible only to a few. Boswell's will named Malone, Forbes, and Temple as executors, who decided to postpone publication for the benefit of the second son. The collection, which travelled between Edinburgh and London, was later protected from the public by Sir Alexander Boswell and his daughter, Mrs. Mounsey. Colonel Isham acquired the papers, and Professor Pottle is completing Scott's editorial work.
CGV entry 4:19. Review by R. W. Chapman of volumes 1-6 of the collection.
Index to the Private Papers of James Boswell
Greene describes this index as an impressive, essential tool for navigating the Malahide Castle collection. He observes that the 6500 personal names listed refute charges of Boswell's exclusive snobbery. While noting some inconsistent treatment of place-names and frequent oversights in geographic references, Greene praises the accuracy of the personal entries and the utility of the thematic conspectuses for Johnson and Boswell. He regrets that the high price limits the volume's accessibility.
CGV entry 4:20. Review by R. L. Greene of the index by F. A. Pottle, J. Foladare, and J. P. Kirby.
The first volume of the reading (trade) edition series for the larger Yale scholarly project dedicated to the author’s private papers, a series intended to run parallel to the research edition. The compilation presents material covering the author’s sojourn in London from November 1762 through August 1763. The content is drawn from the author’s manuscript 'Journal from the time of my leaving Scotland 15 Novr. 1762', preserving the chronological sequence of entries. A key event recorded is the author's first meeting with Johnson on 16 May 1763. The entries were primarily conceived by the author as an epistolary serial, originally sent in weekly installments to John Johnston of Grange. Intended for the general reading public, the volume was released as a dividend selection of the Book of the Month Club. The trade edition policy rendered the text in modern spelling, applying mid-twentieth-century British spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing norms for easy reading, thereby removing the author’s original errors or inconsistencies. Material selection favored content of general interest for a pleasant and rapid reading experience. The original plan excluded the author's private daily memoranda, though the volume included some or quoted from others in footnotes. Annotation was appropriate for the general reader, assuming only general knowledge of the eighteenth century. Supplemental materials include a preface by Christopher Morley and a 37-page introduction from the general editor. The appendix contained an expense account for the London trip. A subsequent deluxe edition added a detailed history of the papers and the text of the author's 'Journal of My Jaunt, Harvest 1762', which chronologically precedes this volume. The publication was a worldwide bestseller, spending 26 consecutive weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and helped accelerate a critical revaluation of the author. Most reviews are positive. In JNL, Clifford identifies the publication as the outstanding event of 1950, praising the expert editing. Clifford's enthusiastic review in NYTBR celebrates the gaudy and revealing self-portrait, noting that the text balances eighteenth-century rationality with romantic sensibility. An unsigned review in TLS outlines the recovery of the papers from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn, detailing the nine months in London and the author's high and low debauchery. Krutch (New York Herald Tribune) observes that the work settles whether the greatness of the biography was a fluke, showing a unique genius for presenting personality. Writing in the New Yorker, Auden provides an evaluation of the text. In the Saturday Review of Literature, Bacon considers the volume a masterful piece of autobiography that displays an uncommon capacity for self-analysis. Pritchett, in the New Statesman and Nation, notes that modern readers prefer the diarist's self-exposures and lack of foundation, calling him an original blossom of the psychological hothouse. In the Spectator, Vulliamy characterizes the journal as a profound psychological document, arguing that the literary genius is intentional. Frye's review in the Hudson Review argues the achievement lies in the creation of a real person who functions as a great fictional character, reaching a technical pinnacle of art. In the Yale Review, Bennett reviews the publication. Irving (South Atlantic Quarterly) offers a mixed review, disputing the claim that the work holds a place equal to the later biography but identifying the dramatic scenes as extraordinary. A rare severe critique appears in the Ross-Shire Journal, where J. E. S. describes the author as a debased character.
CGV entry 4:21. The first volume of the trade series. The American edition includes a preface by Christopher Morley; the London edition by Heinemann (1950) has an unsigned publisher's note. A limited edition (Heinemann, 1951) includes an essay by F. A. Pottle on "The History of the Boswell Papers."
The journal details the twenty-two-year-old Boswell’s quest for a military commission, his first meeting with Johnson, and his personal life in London, particularly his romantic indiscretions and subsequent melancholy. The journal is considered a masterful piece of autobiography, displaying Boswell’s uncommon capacity for self-analysis and detachment. Pottle's editorial work is commended for its unobtrusive brilliance, presenting a London both polished and barbarous.
CGV entry 4:21. Review by Leonard Bacon of the book edited by F. A. Pottle.
Krutch’s approving review of Frederick Pottle’s edition of Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-63—the first volume of Boswell’s private papers acquired by Yale—explains that the discovery of the Malahide and Fettercairn papers settled whether the greatness of the Life of Johnson was a "fluke." Krutch observes that Boswell practiced a "unique genius" for presenting personality, using himself and Johnson as primary subjects in a "consciously artful" record of his second London visit. The review highlights Boswell’s "psychological awareness," his "frank" self-revelations, and his "artful" documentation of London life, including his "picaresque" affair with the actress Louisa and his "sensual" adventures. Krutch compares the journal’s "less portentous" and brief account of the first meeting with Johnson at Davies’s bookshop with the "carefully wrought" and more "portentous" version in the biography, noting that Johnson was initially less central to Boswell’s life than the Life suggests and only appears in the final quarter of the journal. Detailed in the review is Boswell’s method of working up cryptic notes into a "carefully wrought account," proving that his success was the result of a "deliberately" cultivated art of anecdotal memoir writing.
CGV entry 4:21. Review by J. L. Clifford of the book edited by F. A. Pottle.
CGV entry 4:21. Review by J. W. Krutch of the book edited by F. A. Pottle.
CGV entry 4:21. Review by Rintaro Fukuhara of the book edited by F. A. Pottle.
Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764
The third volume in the trade (reading) edition series of The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell covers the author's Grand Tour through Germany and Switzerland from 18 June 1764 to 1 January 1765. This period, undertaken as a reward for completing his legal studies, documents his quest for self-knowledge. The chronologically organized contents detail the author's German tour, where he was generally entertained at various courts, failed to meet Frederick the Great in Berlin, and conversed with J. F. W. Jerusalem in Braunschweig and Professor Gottsched in Leipzig. The second part details his travel in Switzerland, including "triumphant" conversations with Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Motiers and Voltaire at Geneva. The primary copy-text is a continuous and complete journal comprising the Journal in Holland, Germany, and Switzerland (414 quarto pages) and Memoranda and Notes (90 octavo leaves). The editorial policy, following the series model, renders the text in modern spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing for the general public, providing English translations of French passages. Supplemental materials include illustrations, expense accounts in French, the author’s "Sketch of My Life" for Rousseau, and the journal of his Rousseau interviews. The volume also includes the author’s "Inviolable Plan," dated 18 October 1763. The material was previously published in the limited Isham collection (1928). Critics are generally favorable, praising the vivid presentation of historical encounters, though some express reservations regarding the protagonist’s vanity. Krutch, in the New York Herald Tribune, welcomes the volume as a high point that disproves traditional paradoxes about the diarist’s biographical methodology. Baker, writing in The Nation, celebrates the Swiss chapters as close to priceless, highlighting the effective portrayal of emotional maturation. In the NYTBR, Quennell commends the scholarly monument, though he objects to the decision to translate every simple French word. British reviews also display enthusiasm; the Manchester Guardian notes that the text rivals earlier journals in popularity, while an unsigned review in The Listener commends the comic feast of the interviews, despite criticizing the normalized trade format. But Morley, in the TLS, offers a more tempered assessment, describing the protagonist as an obsequious tuft-hunter and finding the record of inauthentic happiness somewhat overpowering. Nicolson’s review in The Observer is similarly mixed, warning that the exposure of insufferable vanity might cool public affection. Laycock, in the Daily Boston Globe, observes that the series successfully picks up speed, even if the constant self-analysis proves irritating. Finally, later scholarly analysis by Steinke, in the New Rambler, values the text for documenting a crucial shift toward an original character rather than mere imitation.
Also published by William Heinemann, London, 1953 (trade) and 1954 (limited).
CGV entry 4:21. Translated into German by Fritz Güttinger (Zürich: Diana Verlag, 1955) and into French by Celia Bertin (Paris: Hachette, 1955).
This volume documents the construction of the Life of Johnson through more than four hundred letters and papers, primarily from the Yale Boswell Collection. Waingrow presents Boswell as an active researcher and editor of secondary sources rather than a mere compiler. The introduction challenges earlier scholarly assessments by demonstrating that Boswell practiced a 'structural synthesis' when adapting the contributions of others to fit a coherent, unified portrait of Johnson. Editorial policies emphasize Boswell's pursuit of 'authenticity' through extensive correspondence and his willingness to rewrite or omit materials to maintain stylistic uniformity and thematic focus. The edition includes a detailed chronology of the biography's progress from 1768 to posthumous editions, exhaustive annotations relating the documents to the finished Life, and an appendix on Johnson's sermons. Waingrow argues that while Boswell's portrait is 'idealized,' his management of multitudinous facts into a work of art remains the definitive hypothesis of Johnson's character. Critics call this book a major contribution to Boswellian criticism that effectively dismantles the image of the biographer as a mere stenographer, revealing instead a creative artist engaged in complex structural synthesis. Alkon and Clifford emphasize this shift, noting that the volume documents an imaginative reconstruction where raw data became a smooth version for publication. Adams highlights the relentless and almost morbid pursuit of truth, while Boulton and the Johnsonian News Letter praise the superb edition for proving a genius for selection and a commitment to factual accuracy through extraordinarily thorough research. The collection includes approximately 400 documents, which the Philological Quarterly notes allow readers to track the editorial process from 1784 through 1808. Campbell finds the reproduction of working papers and verbatim interviews with figures like Barber to be accurate and the annotation thorough. But the critical consensus is not without tension regarding the treatment of evidence. Walker observes that the correspondence reveals a habit of adapting sources and omitting sensitive details regarding a disordered mind or irregular habits. Greene remains the most skeptical of the final artistic construct, contesting the notion that the published version should be prioritized over the undoctored evidence. He argues that the new biographical material should supersede the artistic synthesis for historical scholars. Wain, however, finds the source material even more compelling than the personal journals, arguing that the volume provides essential documentation of how the subject was brought close to the reader to compose the uneasy tumult of the biographer's spirits.
CGV entry 4:21. Part of the research series of the Yale Editions. A second edition was published in 2001.
The Heart of Boswell: Six Journals in One Volume
Harris provides a distilled edition of Boswell’s journals covering the period from 1762 to 1774, structured into six chronological parts. The text documents Boswell’s pursuit of various self-assigned objectives, including his entry into London society, his meeting with Johnson, his legal studies in Holland, and his encounters with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire during a grand tour of Europe. The volume reproduces major biographical episodes such as Boswell’s reportage of Corsican independence, his search for a suitable wife, and his professional transition into a Scottish advocate. Harris includes brief introductions for each division that provide historical context regarding Boswell’s volatile relationship with his father, Lord Auchinleck, and the psychological dimensions of his friendship with Johnson. Editorial policies focus on a "straightest possible narrative," prioritizing Boswell’s primary life tasks over peripheral excursions. The front matter includes a preface detailing the provenance of the Boswell papers at Yale University and an index.
CGV entry 4:21. Selected passages from the first six volumes of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell (trade edition).
Cochrane entry 410. An introduction to a condensed volume of Boswell's journals, focusing on his accomplishment of the personal and professional goals he set for himself between 1762 and 1774.
Printed for J. Debrett, opposite Burlington House, in Piccadilly
Remarks on the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in a Letter to J: Boswell, Esqr.
Remarks on the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), signed "Verax," appeared swiftly after Boswell's Journal (October 1, 1785), dated October 27, 1785. The author was John Henry Colls (1764–1802), a young, lower-class provincial writer, though Boswell initially suspected Lord Alexander Macdonald. Colls characterized the work as a prose "finger exercise," not an act of animosity. Although the pamphlet targeted Johnson's literary reputation, criticizing his "extemporal speeches" and poetic rank (lacking "fire of imagination"), the central focus of the attack was Boswell himself. Verax specifically claimed Johnson’s quoted speeches lacked "particular energy of language" or "philosophical penetration into human nature." Previous scholars attributed the pamphlet to Richard Graves.
Signed and dated at end: Verax. London, October 27, 1785 Price in square brackets: (Price One Shilling.)
The Remarker Remarked; or, A Parody on the Letter to Mr. Boswell, on His Tour
Writing under the pseudonym Incredibilis, the author disputes the 'petulant arrogance and cynical severity' of a critic who attacked Boswell. The text defends the 'simple narrative of facts' in Boswell's journal, arguing that his 'striking likeness' of Johnson is superior to the 'affected ornaments' of his detractors. It characterizes Johnson as a figure of 'true greatness of intellect' and dismisses aspersions regarding his social conduct and political views on America. The work asserts that 'trifling circumstances' recorded by Boswell provide an 'inestimable' record for future ages, comparing the anecdotes of Johnson to the classical accounts of Socrates.
J. N. provides "More last Words of Dr. Johnson," documenting his "profound devotion" during the Litany shortly before his death. Johnson expressed a desire for "a year more of life" to perfect his works but noted he was "daily and gradually weaker." The letter details Johnson’s interest in translating Thuanus, a task he believed would require only "the trouble of dictation." J. N. also records Johnson’s charitable collection of "sixpences" for Samuel Boyse. The correspondence includes the "Dialogue" with Knowles regarding Quakerism.
A Miscellany, Containing, Amidst a Variety of Other Matters Curious and Interesting, Remarks on Boswell's Johnson; ... a Critique on Bürger's Leonora; ... and an Introductory Essay on the Art of Reading and Speaking in Public
Whyte disputes the "accuracy and impartiality" of Boswell regarding the representation of Sheridan in the biography of Johnson. Whyte characterizes Boswell's work as a "multifarious production" marked by "glaringly perverted" facts and "ill-natured strictures" that serve to undermine Sheridan’s reputation. Whyte focuses on the 1762 "irreconcilable difference" sparked by Johnson’s "unprovoked sally" regarding Sheridan’s pension, specifically the exclamation: "What! have they given him a pension? then it is time to give up mine." Whyte challenges Boswell’s attempt to "palliate" this "hasty contemptuous expression" and argues that Johnson’s subsequent claim that Sheridan was a "very good man" failed to "soothe his injured vanity." Whyte mocks Boswell’s feigned offense at Sheridan’s later description of Johnson as a "Writer of gigantic fame in these days of little men," suggesting Boswell’s narrative reflects "writhings of resentment" rather than "candour and truth." Whyte insists the "annals of literature should be preserved pure" from Boswell’s "wanton and unmerited obloquy."
CGV entry 4:56. Later editions titled 'Miscellanea Nova ... containing ... Remarks' were published in 1800 and 1802.
Re-issued as Miscellanea Nova. Dublin: Robert Marchbank for E. A. and S. Whyte, 1801.
Notes on Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
This article provides critical annotations and emendations to Croker’s edition of Boswell, specifically addressing Johnson’s Latin translation of Pope’s Messiah. While Boswell avoids judging the work’s "extreme nicety," this account adduces Joseph Warton’s opinion to challenge the "magnified" and unmixed praise often granted to Johnson’s youthful performance, identifying several "hard and unclassical expressions" and "un-Virgilian lines." The notes contextualize Johnson’s academic status at Pembroke College, providing details on the "Christmas exercise" requested by Jordan and using contemporary testimony to refine the record of Johnson’s early literary reputation and his masterly, yet rapid, compositional habits. The review also defends the "inferior Latinity" of schoolbooks like Corderius and Erasmus recommended by Johnson, arguing they are pedagogically appropriate for beginners. Regarding the forged poems of Thomas Lauder, the author notes that such a "barefaced system of interpolation" would be detected immediately in the nineteenth century due to increased bibliographical access. Additionally, the article documents Johnson’s verbal revisions by comparing the first and second editions of The Vanity of Human Wishes and concludes by discussing Johnson’s prayers for his departed wife, disputing Edmond Malone’s suggestion that Johnson doubted the "lawfulness" of such petitions.
CGV entry 4:57. A series of articles in volumes 4 through 10 providing additions to John Wilson Croker's editions of the 'Life' and 'Johnsoniana'.
Boswell's method in the Life.
Reprinted in Eclectic Magazine, XXIX (July, 1853), 382-385.
Privately printed for the Philobiblon Society
CGV entry 4:59. A small selection of miscellaneous anecdotes. Includes a section titled "Folium Reservatum," a collection of mildly off-color anecdotes. Preface by Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton.
Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell
Boswell’s miscellaneous portfolio entries, which he intended to embody in a volume of literary anecdotes. Rogers provides a detailed memoir using Boswell’s own words and letters to correspondents like Temple. The text documents Boswell’s early Jacobite leanings, his legal studies at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Utrecht, and his pursuit of military and literary fame in London. It meticulously charts Boswell’s first meeting with Johnson in 1763 and their subsequent interactions, including the 1773 tour of the Hebrides. The collection offers unique insights into Boswell’s ‘atrabilious temperament,’ his habitual recording of conversation with photographic accuracy, and his persistent efforts to secure social and professional status. Rogers includes Boswell’s personal papers, such as his 1785 Will, and annotations that depict the social talk of leading figures in the late eighteenth century. The work asserts that Boswell’s literary achievements resulted from a successful conflict with constitutional disorder, characterizing him as a literary Pre-Raffaelite who succeeded in delineating the intellectual character of others through his own perceived weaknesses.
CGV entry 4:60. With a memoir and annotations by Charles Rogers, and introductory remarks by Lord Houghton. Includes "Memoir of James Boswell" (pages 1–200) and "Boswelliana" (pages 203-329).
The Condensed Boswell [Review of Life and Conversations of Dr. Samuel Johnson (Founded Chiefly upon Boswell), by James Boswell and Alexander Main]
CGV entry 4:61. A review of Alexander Main's edition of 'Everybody's Boswell'.
Philalethes disputes Macaulay’s depiction of Boswell as a fortunate fool, asserting instead that Boswell possessed significant talent and judgment. Philalethes challenges the paradox that a great work could be produced by a "small man," arguing that Boswell’s perceived weaknesses were often strategic choices made to "stoop to conquer" in pursuit of biographical excellence. The text documents the deep, mutual affection between Johnson and Boswell, citing extensive correspondence and personal anecdotes to show Boswell was Johnson’s "friend par excellence" rather than a mere "toad-eater." Philalethes emphasizes Boswell’s independence of mind, noting numerous instances where Boswell corrected Johnson’s errors or maintained opposing views on literature and politics. By highlighting Boswell’s "sacred love of truth" and his role as a "beloved disciple," Philalethes vindicates Boswell’s character against charges of sycophancy and imbecility, concluding that the biography’s "Flemish picture" of Johnson required an architect of considerable skill.
CGV entry 4:62. A defense of John Wilson Croker's edition of Boswell's 'Life' against Thomas Babington Macaulay's attack.
Croker's Boswell and Boswell: Studies in the 'Life of Johnson'
Fitzgerald's Studies criticize Croker's editorial method, arguing for the inviolability of Boswell's original biographical achievement. The book details how Croker's interpolations of material from sources like Piozzi and Hawkins corrupted the pure narrative and chronological unity of the Life of Johnson. Fitzgerald defends Boswell as a deliberate and pioneering literary artist whose work suffered immensely from the editor's attempts to "improve" its construction and factual density. Boswell's work should be appreciated for its unfiltered veracity and intimate psychological portraiture, arguing that Croker's revisions ultimately marred both the integrity of the text and the reputation of its creator. The study champions a return to the pristine, authentic vision of Boswell.
Notes on John Wilkes and Boswell's Life of Johnson
This survey traces the editorial history of Boswell’s biography of Johnson from the early efforts of Cooke, Tyers, and Hawkins to the scholarly editions of the late nineteenth century. The author identifies Boswell’s "faculty of communicating his impressions accurately" as his primary gift but laments the "act of vandalism" committed by Croker in interpolating foreign material and dividing the text into chapters. The account praises the "loyalty to Boswell" shown in Fitzgerald’s 1874 edition and characterizes Hill’s 1887 edition as the "standard library edition," noting its "unprecedented" labor, exhaustive index, and "leisurely grace of eighteenth-century scholarship."
CGV entry 4:65. Discusses the editions by Napier, Fitzgerald, Grant, and G. B. Hill.
Editing a la Mode: An Examination of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's New Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson
Fitzgerald challenges the cordial reception of Hill’s edition of Boswell, asserting that the editor’s heralded discoveries lack novelty or significance. He notes that the identification of Giffard and the poem Contemplation appears in common reference works, while Hill’s speculation regarding Burke’s resignation misinterprets Johnson’s use of the word retiring. Fitzgerald critiques the inclusion of a confusing weather map of Johnson’s contemporaries and a massive index prone to grotesque errors, such as misidentifying Boswell’s Cub at Newmarket. He condemns the editorial notes for lacking relevancy, specifically targeting Hill’s digressions into the history of the penny post, bathing habits, and personal family anecdotes. Fitzgerald concludes that a model edition requires the complete self-effacement of the editor and a reversal of Hill’s system of excessive commentary.
CGV entry 4:67. An enlarged version was separately printed by Ward and Downey, London, in 1891.
Further Examination of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson
Hill commemorates the centenary of the publication of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, positioning Boswell as the founder of a revolutionary school of dramatic biography. The text contrasts Boswell’s vibrant, chronological method with the "dull dignity" of earlier biographers, noting his influence on the genre. Hill details the immediate commercial success of Boswell's major works and records the favorable reception of his merits by Reynolds. The narrative emphasizes Boswell's unique ability to render Johnson’s character through meticulous conversation records, ultimately expressing gratitude for the enduring legacy of the "greatest of biographers."
Written on the centenary of Boswell's death, the paper celebrates his genius as a "heaven-born biographer" who, despite personal weaknesses, achieved a unique and perfect success by meticulously recording Johnson's life and conversation.
CGV entry 4:70. Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine (1891).
More Editing à la Mode: Being a Further Examination of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson
On the perceived excesses of Hill’s editorial practices on Boswell’s Life. Fitzgerald asserts that Hill’s profuse and exhaustive annotations overwhelm and submerge Boswell's original narrative, transforming the biography into a chaotic "mosaic formed of the various works" of multiple biographers. Hill’s scholia, criticized for lacking relevance or being founded upon gratuitous assumptions, supplant Boswell’s intended purpose.
CGV entry 4:71. A different work from item 4:68.
Saintsbury categorizes biography into pure narrative and mixed forms, identifying Boswell as the originator of the popular composite style. He argues Boswell’s artistry lies in a "cunning chemical process" that subordinates diverse anecdotal details to the constant revelation of Johnson’s central personality. While acknowledging the zany-theory of Macaulay and the heroic-devotion theory of Carlyle, Saintsbury emphasizes that Boswell’s focus on Johnson’s quiddity creates a transcendent portrait unmatched by modern biographers. He compares this standard against Moore, Lockhart, Carlyle, and Trevelyan, maintaining that successful biography requires the artist to filter materials into a unified, finished composition.
CGV entry 4:73. Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine (1892).
Cochrane entry 91.
Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560–1960
Hill examines the manuscript corrections in Boswell's hand on the first edition proof-sheets of The Life of Johnson. Boswell meticulously revised the text, altering anecdotes and modifying descriptive language to protect reputations and enhance Johnson's image. His changes notably include removing details about Johnson's poor hygiene and censoring some of Piozzi's less flattering remarks, while simultaneously making his own political and social biases apparent through subtle insertions and omissions. Boswell ensured the biographical narrative maintained propriety and dignity for Johnson and esteemed gentlemen.
Also in Johnson Club Papers, pp. 51-80. London: T. Fisher and Unwin, 1899.
Details the fascinating process of correcting the proof-sheets of the first edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, revealing the minute editorial decisions, last-minute insertions, and corrections made by the biographer to ensure the "scrupulous authenticity" of his Magnum Opus.
CGV entry 4:74. Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly (1894).
Post Liminium: Essays and Critical Papers
CGV entry 4:77. Reprinted from the Academy (1897).
A Critical Examination of Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill's 'Johnsonian' Editions
Fitzgerald disputes the scholarly accuracy and editorial methods of George Birkbeck Hill’s various editions of Johnson and Boswell. This largely negative review and systematic examination challenges Hill’s reliance on parallel passages and common-place books, which Fitzgerald argues overwhelms Boswell’s original text and introduces irrelevant commentary. The monograph details an extensive catalogue of perceived mistakes, misapprehensions, and purely imaginary discoveries in Hill’s work. Fitzgerald identifies specific errors in Hill’s general index, chronology, and biographical details regarding Johnson’s residence at Oxford and his relationships with figures like Piozzi and Langton. He particularly targets Hill’s treatment of Johnson’s letters and the "Johnsonian Miscellanies," claiming they contain fabrications and lack critical insight into the character of the subjects. Fitzgerald also highlights errors in Hill’s transcriptions and criticizes the physical arrangement of the volumes, including the oversized facsimile letters and the unconventional placement of indexes. The narrative presents Hill as a verbose and over-confident editor who frequently misinterprets the plain meaning of eighteenth-century texts.
Fitzgerald scrutinizes Hill's editorial work on Johnson, alleging that the Clarendon Press editions possess an unmerited reputation. While Fitzgerald identifies numerous minor errata, shaky inferences, and instances of editorial loquacity, he fails to uncover significant errors that would fundamentally mislead Johnsonian students. The reviewer observes that Fitzgerald’s relentless, sledge-hammer approach—scanned through a glass of ridicule—often mirrors Hill’s own perceived pedantry. Fitzgerald objects to Hill’s garrulous annotations and tendency to amplify trivialities; however, the critique is deemed ungenerous, lacking the dignity expected of a fellow scholar. The review suggests that Hill’s substantial contributions to the elucidation of Johnson’s life remain intact despite Fitzgerald's niggling and ill-natured attacks.
CGV entry 4:78. An anonymous review of the book by Percy H. Fitzgerald.
Cook produced the earliest Johnson biography in 1784, followed by Tyers’s animated study and Shaw’s critical memoirs. Piozzi’s 1786 Anecdotes provided essential, unrestrained personal recollections despite Malone’s charges of inaccuracy. Hawkins’s 1787 narrative remains a significant source for London’s Georgian literary scene. Boswell’s 1791 masterpiece established a unique colloquial method, subsequently altered by editors. Croker’s 1831 edition receives censure for interpolating foreign texts into Boswell’s narrative. Modern editors Fitzgerald, Napier, and Hill restored the original text while providing exhaustive scholarly apparatus.
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell in Fifteen Volumes, Containing Fifteen Hundred and Fifty Illustrations
Cochrane entry 64. Defends the practice of abridging the 'Life', arguing that its full length deters readers. Considers Boswell a major figure of his century and the biography "a great triumph of psychological analysis."
Caldwell disputes the "Macaulay epithets" that characterize Boswell as a man of feeble intellect. He argues Boswell possessed "not only brains, but genius" as evidenced by the best biography ever written. The text asserts Boswell’s worship of Johnson stemmed from "the good in Boswell’s character." Caldwell concludes that Boswell was no weaker or worse than the average man of his class.
Cochrane entry 480.
Baumann defends Boswell against Macaulay’s caricature, arguing that Boswell’s singular merit lies in sacrificing professional prospects and social standing for the worship of intellect. Baumann highlights the rigour of his self-discipline and intellectual acuity in ethical discussions with Johnson. The text notes that Lichfield owes the fame of Garrick and Johnson to Boswell’s record. Despite being viewed as a mean Spaniel by contemporaries for enduring Johnson’s rebuffs, Boswell finally triumphed over his critic through his just and acute literary judgments and devotion.
CGV entry 4:84.
Mallory presents Boswell as a unique literary genius whose life was a dramatic struggle between conventional aspirations and an irrepressible artistic candour. Driven by a "sacred love of truth" and an insatiable curiosity, Boswell's psychological makeup compelled him to record life with unmatched fidelity. This led to his unique biographical method: relentless observation, minute record-keeping, and the courage to reveal both Johnson's "awfulness" and his own follies. Johnson's influence, while morally stabilizing, could not suppress this essential nature. The Life of Johnson is thus the triumph of Boswell's unconventional self, an artistic necessity that secured his immortality despite the failure of his ambitions in the worlds of law and politics, which he pursued until his final years. Chapter 1, 'Interest in Johnson and Boswell,' addresses the unique status and universal appeal of the first great biography, arguing that its enduring value derives from the inherent psychological interest of both the subject and the biographer, who is characterized as a complex genius rather than a mere fool . Chapter 2, 'Meeting with Johnson,' recounts the initial encounter and subsequent development of the relationship between the two men, emphasizing the role of candor in fostering their bond and detailing the formative influence of other significant figures, such as General Paoli, whose heroic character provided a template for future literary pursuits . Chapter 3, 'Interest in Men,' examines the motivation behind the cultivation of intimacy with distinguished contemporaries, positing that while snobbishness played a role, a profound intellectual curiosity and a capacity for genuine affection were the primary drivers . Chapter 4, 'The London Circle,' addresses the significance of the metropolitan environment as a vital arena for ambition and explores the dynamics of the literary club where social talents and understanding of character were both valued and tested . Chapter 5, 'Influence of Johnson,' investigates the struggle between conventional prejudices and personal reality, arguing that while moral conformism exerted strong pressure, an independent intellectual perspective was ultimately maintained . Chapter 6, 'Vanity,' addresses the factors contributing to a perceived lack of success in conventional professional spheres, positing that an insatiable desire to be conspicuous often resulted in behavior that appeared foolish to contemporaries . Chapter 7, 'Tour to the Hebrides,' argues that the publication of the second major work marked a pivotal moment by highlighting the triumph of innate candor over the desire for conventional respectability through unfiltered observations of contemporary society . Chapter 8, 'Industry in Writing,' examines the sustained effort required to produce the final biographical masterpiece in the face of personal sorrow, emphasizing a steadfast commitment to accuracy and the chronological mode of biography . Chapter 9, 'Powers of Observation,' addresses the specific qualifications and faculty for acute observation that underpinned the biographical method, arguing that a scientific spirit characterized by meticulous recording was essential to the creation of a complete character portrait. Chapter 10, 'Scientific Spirit,' addresses the deliberate methods used to elicit significant information and the personal cost of enduring social rebuffs, positing that the pursuit of biographical truth was an heroic endeavor that often required the sacrifice of personal dignity. Chapter 11, 'Authenticity,' addresses the system of recording and adapting materials to ensure a faithful representation, arguing that compression and linguistic refinement were used to preserve the essential spirit of original conversations. Chapter 12, 'Truth,' addresses the artistic qualities that complemented the scientific method, positing that an emotional commitment to realism and the disregard for conventional obstacles allowed for a complete expression of personality. Chapter 13, 'Retrospect,' addresses the final years and the ultimate achievement of a lasting reputation through literary fame, arguing that despite the failure of political ambitions, the triumph of candor provided a profound sense of satisfaction and a deeper understanding of the human condition. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics praising the work's psychological depth and its systematic effort to dismantle long-standing historical caricatures of intellectual inferiority. Reviewers focus primarily on the balanced analysis of internal contradictions, specifically the tension between outward vanity and conscious artistic method. Seccombe, in TLS, highlights the author's judicial discretion, casting the study as an effective moderator between competing interpretations. The review in the Manchester Guardian commends the proportional treatment of virtues and faults, which yields a sympathetic portrait of a complex personality. Writing in The Bookman, Straus applauds the coherent synthesis of letters and essays, noting that the volume provides a juster view by successfully disputing cynical interpretations. The unsigned review in The Athenaeum agrees that the examination establishes a serious intellect beneath outward posing, though it questions the author's claims regarding extensive imaginative powers. In The Academy, the reviewer celebrates the rejection of traditional biographical disparagement, emphasizing the demonstration of deliberate industrious method and accuracy. The Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette evaluation reinforces this assessment, framing the volume as a successful psychological study that proves literary achievement resulted from conscious art rather than accidental loquacity. Reid, in The World, highlights the depiction of the subject's unique temperament, while the London Evening Standard appraisal validates the focus on a distinct social gift and absolute honesty. There is no divergence between popular and scholarly reception.
Cochrane entry 483.
Reviews: London Evening Standard, December 17, 1912; J. H. Morgan, Manchester Guardian, January 17, 1913; Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette, February 21, 1913; Stuart Reid, The World, November 26, 1912; Thomas Seccombe, TLS, no. 587 (1913): 145; Ralph Straus, The Bookman 43, no. 255 (1912): 36–37; The Academy, February 15, 1913; The Athenaeum, November 9, 1912.
Cochrane entry 74. Highlights the irony that Boswell used Mason's biography of Gray as his model, a work that Samuel Johnson himself had found to be "mightily dull."
Johnson's affection for Boswell is often overlooked in favor of highlighting his occasional petulance and rough outbursts, which were in fact typical of his interactions with even his closest friends. The deep, paternal nature of their twenty-year relationship is clearly demonstrated by Johnson's actions, conversation, and correspondence. Johnson actively championed Boswell's literary career, assisted him with legal work despite his own indolence, and ensured his admission to the Literary Club, emphasizing his "clubable" nature. Johnson avowed his affection, cherished Boswell's cheerful companionship, and showed anxiety when his friend's letters were infrequent, ultimately proving an unwavering friend up until his deathbed.
Cochrane entry 484.
Nicoll identifies Boswell’s Life of Johnson as the premier biography in English literature, asserting that it stands in a class by itself due to its "unending gusto" and the profound wisdom it imparts. While acknowledging that the work lacks narrative proportion because Boswell was only personally acquainted with Johnson during his later years, Nicoll argues that Boswell’s tireless collection of materials resulted in a noble and heroic portrait. The other five biographies selected for this canonical list are Lockhart's Life of Scott, which Nicoll places second; Carlyle's Life of Sterling; Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay; Froude's Life of Carlyle; and Morley's Life of Gladstone.
Cochrane entry 77.
Boswell's Record of Johnson's Table-Talk
arker analyzes the relationship between Boswell and Johnson, focusing on the 1763 introduction and the documentation of Johnson’s table-talk. Barker describes Johnson’s physical presence and nervous tics, noting how conversation transformed his appearance. The text explores Boswell’s reportorial techniques, specifically the use of personal shorthand to reconstruct dialogue. Barker emphasizes Johnson’s preference for oral combat, highlighting an "active dominance" in wit matches. Johnson’s conversational hallmarks—apt similes, hatred of sophistry, and adherence to truth—receive attention. Barker disputes the characterization of Boswell as an "empty fool," arguing for a "keen dramatic instinct." The narrative links Johnson’s conversational vigor to a "profound religious sense."
Cochrane entry 486.
The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections
Newton disputes Macaulay’s characterization of Boswell as a "great fool" whose literary success was accidental. Newton argues Boswell was a conscious artist and "the world's greatest" portrait-painter who established a modern biographical standard through meticulous research and the "genius for packing and delivering" Johnson's wit. The text examines Boswell’s lifelong correspondence with William Johnson Temple, revealing a man of contradictions—pious yet dissipated, proud of his lineage yet devoted to a "dominie." Newton emphasizes Boswell's courage in differing with Johnson on politics and literature, noting his work's "new kind of libel" derived from publishing authentic, often stinging, contemporary anecdotes. The account details Boswell’s struggles with debt, melancholia, and the eventual triumph of his 1791 biography. Newton concludes by recounting a personal, unsuccessful pilgrimage to the Boswell estate at Auchinleck.
Cochrane entry 82.
Russell’s whimsical article examines the unexpected friendship between Johnson and Frances Burney, exploring how educational and social commonalities often bridge generational divides. The narrative centers on an incident from May 26, 1783, recorded in Boswell's biography, where Boswell disrupted a private tea conversation between Johnson and Burney. Russell details Boswell's persistent, awkward attempts to force his way into the dialogue despite Johnson's sharp, direct rebuffs. The account uses Burney's own diaries to provide a critical character sketch of Boswell, describing his thick Scottish accent, his obsessive, involuntary imitation of Johnson's physical mannerisms, and his slovenly dress. Russell challenges any malicious interpretation of these habits, framing Boswell's behavior as an expression of deep, idolatrous reverence for Johnson.
CGV entry 4:92. Refers to an incident in the 'Life', May 26, 1783.
Cochrane entry 83. Revisits a scene from the 'Life' where Boswell joins Johnson and Fanny Burney for tea, speculating that Johnson was actually quite annoyed by Boswell's intrusion.
Rait discusses the instances where Boswell "dared to differ" from Johnson, going beyond the famous Scotland gibe. He notes Boswell's early defense of Churchill, Rousseau, and Robertson, his disagreement on the authenticity of Ossian, and his criticism of the word "eclipsed" in Johnson's eulogy for Garrick. Most seriously, Rait details their multiple heated political arguments over the American Colonies, where Boswell maintained his pro-American view despite Johnson's vehemence and insult. They also disputed judges engaging in trade and the respect due to players.
CGV entry 4:93.
Cochrane entry 488.
Snyder praises Tinker's style and clear narrative, finding the volume an essential survey despite a superfluity of existing Boswell studies. He highlights the illuminating analysis of Boswell’s social genius and biographical methods. However, Snyder criticizes the limited "new material" regarding letters to Temple, noting only one significant new reading. He further disputes Tinker's treatment of Boswell's domestic life, arguing the chapters on love and marriage lack identification of key figures and suppress the humiliating terms Boswell imposed upon Margaret Montgomery. Snyder also notes the missed opportunity to use Zélide’s correspondence to explain the couple's eventual break.
CGV entry 4:94. Review by Edward D. Snyder of the book by Chauncey B. Tinker.
Manuscript Notes by Madame Piozzi in a Copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson
Smith examines marginalia found in a 1807 copy of the fifth edition of Boswell's biography, identifying the handiwork as belonging to Piozzi. These notes, many dated 1808, provide a direct rebuttal to Boswell’s frequent charges of inaccuracy and "fantastical" narration. Smith records Piozzi’s vigorous defense of her Anecdotes, particularly concerning Johnson’s religious origins and his recitation of the "duckling" poem. The annotations reveal Piozzi’s identification of anonymous figures in the text, such as her claim that Boswell himself was the "gentleman" frequently rebuked by Johnson for intrusive questioning. Smith highlights Piozzi's resentment toward Boswell's methods, including his alleged bribery of Johnson’s servant, Barber, to obtain letters. The text captures Piozzi’s late-life reflections on the Johnsonian circle, characterized by a mix of Welsh pride, orthodox piety, and lingering "natural impatience" regarding Johnson’s domestic exactions. Smith concludes that these annotations serve as a final flight from the "clippers" of her reputation.
Cochrane entry 88.
Reprinted in Living Age, CCCXII (March 4, 1922), 536-542.
Smith examines marginalia attributed to Piozzi found in an 1807 edition of Boswell’s biography of Johnson. Smith authenticates these notes through comparison with known manuscripts and previous extracts published by Hayward. The annotations reflect the rivalry between Piozzi and Boswell, with Piozzi vigorously repudiating Boswell’s charges of inaccuracy. These entries reveal Piozzi’s vivacity and provide intimate details regarding Johnson’s domestic circle, including his interactions with his servant Barber and his cat Hodge.
CGV entry 4:95. Reprinted from London Mercury (1922).
Reproduction of Some of the Original Proof Sheets of Boswell's Life of Johnson
This volume reproduces facsimile pages from the original proof sheets of the Life of Johnson, based on materials in the collection of R. B. Adam. An introduction by A. Edward Newton details the history of the Adam collection in Buffalo and characterizes the owner as a liberal and unselfish collector who shared his treasures with scholars like Chauncey Brewster Tinker and Charles Grosvenor Osgood. Newton emphasizes that these facsimiles allow readers to observe the meticulous care and taste with which Boswell verified statements and revised his text from its initial drafting to its final form. The reproduced sheets include the title page, the dedication to Joshua Reynolds, the advertisement, and various corrected pages from the narrative. Boswell's handwritten marginalia and proof corrections demonstrate his efforts to refine his prose and ensure scrupulous authenticity. The text also includes the 1791 advertisement where Boswell acknowledges the assistance of Edmond Malone and laments the deaths of Thomas Warton and William Adams. A postlude by R. B. Adam confirms his friendship with Newton and welcomes fellow Johnsonians to study these primary bibliographical documents.
CGV entry 4:97. With an introduction by A. Edward Newton. See also The Times Literary Supplement, January 17, 1924, page 44.
Whibley examines the history and importance of Boswell’s journals, noting that Boswell began an "exact journal" in 1758 and continued the practice for the rest of his life. He discusses the specific influence of Johnson’s 1763 recommendation to keep a "free and unreserved" record. The text highlights the survival of a small pocket-book from 1777, now in the R. B. Adam collection, which serves as a "valuable illustration of his method" of taking immediate notes before entering them into a formal journal. Whibley argues that Boswell’s "stretching of mind" allowed him to recall complex discussions with "wonderful fidelity," and that his "peculiar gift" lay in the dramatic representation of character. Despite his personal weaknesses, Boswell’s "candour, honesty, and love of truth" enabled the creation of a "most perfect" biographical mode that revealed Johnson's mind through both "letters and conversations."
CGV entry 4:98. On the Adam notebook.
Cochrane entry 493.
Chapman outlines the editorial policy for the forthcoming reissue of Hill's edition of the Life. The page numbering will be retained to preserve the standard method of reference. Changes will include: a register of all important differences between the third, first, and second editions, restoration of the true reading where errors were introduced into the third edition, use of Hill's own annotated copy, and improved references to Johnson's works. The ideal method of paragraph numbering, as used in Hill's Lives of the Poets, is deemed too late to apply to the Life.
CGV entry 4:99.
Cochrane entry 90.
Chapman examines the revised proof-sheets of the first edition of Boswell’s 'Life of Johnson', held in the R. B. Adam collection. The annotations reveal Boswell as an exceptionally diligent author, prioritizing accuracy and legibility while maintaining a polite relationship with his printer. Boswell’s marginalia include instructions for 'revises,' corrections of 'strange omissions,' and the addition of 'fugitive pieces' caught during the proofing stage, such as the entry for Inchkenneth. The proofs illuminate Boswell's concern for typographic details, including his preference for certain dash lengths to hint at anonymous figures like George II. The text also records Boswell's collaborative efforts with Malone (whose hand may be present in the queries) and his specific instructions regarding offprints of Johnson's conversation with George III. Chapman concludes that these proof-sheets provide a 'votive tablet' of Boswell’s personality, illustrating his 'over-anxiety' in the pursuit of biographical perfection.
CGV entry 4:101. In two parts: November, pages 50-58; and December, pages 171–180.
Cochrane entry 98.
Johnson & Boswell Revised by Themselves and Others: Three Essays
Chapman details the analysis of Boswell's proof sheets for the first edition of The Life of Johnson, revealing the labor and anxiety Boswell devoted to achieving perfection and accuracy. The review, based on a nearly complete set of revised proofs, uncovers myriad minute corrections and marginalia, illustrating Boswell's meticulous attention to detail, printing quality, and polite relationship with his printer, Mr. Selfe. Specific corrections expose forgotten fugitive pieces added later, and show Boswell grappling with stylistic choices and the accuracy of quotations and dates. The proofs also reveal cancel leaves used to suppress names (like those of Percy and Reynolds) or anecdotes after the original printing, sometimes due to the susceptibility of those involved or the need to obviate unfavorable impressions.
CGV entry 4:101. Reprinted from London Mercury (1926).
Cochrane entry 104.
CGV entry 4:102. A page of Hester Piozzi's 'Anecdotes' with a version of Boswell's reply.
How Many Issues Are There of the First Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson?
On the traditional bibliographical distinction between the first and second issues of Boswell’s 1791 edition, centered on the typographical error "gve" on page 135 of the first volume. By comparing three copies—including a presentation copy from Boswell to Warren Hastings and a recently acquired copy from Phelps—the author identifies discrepancies in the frontispiece legends regarding publication dates. While some copies lack the April 10, 1791, imprint line, the researcher suggests these variations may result from binder interference rather than distinct states of the plate. Specifically, the trimming of the Hastings copy likely removed the date line, complicating the classification of issues. The study concludes that while "gve" typically marks the earliest state, a definitive resolution regarding a potential third issue requires a comprehensive census of extant copies.
Cochrane entry 101. Raises the possibility that the first edition of the 'Life' was released in three distinct issues, challenging the previously held belief among collectors that there were only two.
A Letter from James Boswell to Dr. Johnson, March 3, 1772
The Revision of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Boswell
Powell outlines the principles and methods for preparing a new, revised edition of Hill's indispensable edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Recognizing Hill's work as the pre-eminent standard edition and book of reference, the revision maintains the original pagination and retains Hill's commentary, while amending and supplementing it with new material. The essay justifies the necessary correction of the text, arguing that neither Boswell's second nor third edition is sound, and detailing various types of printer errors and corruptions that arose after the first edition. The revised edition incorporates extensive new research by verifying Hill's sources, correcting Boswell's own textual errors, and integrating previously unavailable documents, including Johnson's Welsh journal and other manuscripts.
Cochrane entry 106.
Conjugal Fidelity: A Suppressed Dialogue between Boswell and Johnson
CGV entry 4:108. From a cancelled page in the 'Life'.
CGV entry 4:108. With an introduction by A. Edward Newton.
The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle
The Making of the Life of Johnson as Shown in Boswell's First Notes
A foundational study of Boswell's creative methods. Scott rejects the notion that Boswell "blundered" into writing a masterpiece, seein him instead as a conscious artist, editor, and craftsman of his own papers. The volume’s organization details the successive stages of the biographical process: beginning with the raw material of "First Notes," which were highly contemporary, condensed memoranda sometimes written in abbreviations or "half words" serving as hints for later recollection. Next, the study examines the "Original Diaries" or journals, which Scott found flowed naturally between the Johnson-record and the private Boswell-record, differing only in subject matter. Finally, the analysis of "Revised Drafts" demonstrates Boswell’s careful adaptation of these materials into a finished narrative. Boswell's primary anxiety lay in collecting sufficient and authentic facts, rather than questioning his intrinsic artistic power "to give life to the vast pile" of material. Scott laid the groundwork for all subsequent research into Boswell’s biographical techniques.
CGV entry 4:109. Volume 6 of item 4:19. An important analysis of Boswell's technique.
Cochrane entry 109.
A Spanish Quotation in Boswell's Johnson
Ward identifies the source of a "poetical conceit" quoted by Cambridge during a dinner at Reynolds's on 9 April 1778. While Cambridge attributed the lines to an unnamed Spanish writer, Ward clarifies they originate from Quevedo’s sonnet on Rome's ruins. The text notes Cambridge’s inaccuracy in quoting the Spanish text and highlights Johnson's immediate recognition of the sentiment's source in Janus Vitalis’s Latin epigram. Ward emphasizes that Johnson’s attribution provides significant insight into seventeenth-century Spanish literature and the influence of Vitalis on poets such as Quevedo, Rodrigo Caro, and Spenser. The text further identifies uncorrected misprints in Hill’s edition of Boswell regarding both the Spanish and Latin quotations.
CGV entry 4:110. Refers to the entry for April 9, 1778. See also a reply by L. R. M. Strachan in the same journal (March 2), page 157.
Cochrane entry 110. Identifies a Spanish quotation from the 'Life' as originating from a sonnet by Quevedo.
Roberts chronicles the life of Boswell, focusing on his foundational relationships with Johnson and Paoli. Early sections detail Boswell's Scottish upbringing, his friendship with Temple, and his initial London excursions. The text highlights the 1763 meeting with Johnson as the pivotal moment in Boswell's career, leading to a lifelong attachment characterized by the "Boswellizing" of his subject. Roberts defends Boswell against Macaulay's "inspired idiot" theory, arguing that the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and the Life of Johnson result from deliberate, painstaking craftsmanship and journalistic skill. Boswell uses trifles and dramatic narrative to create a "most perfect" biographical structure that functions as both an intimate portrait and a social encyclopedia of the eighteenth century. Roberts notes Boswell's personal struggles with melancholy and dissipation alongside his supreme achievement in "Johnsonizing the land."
CGV entry 4:112. This article replaces an earlier one by Thomas Seccombe and was later replaced by one by F. A. Pottle.
Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Macaulay: The Credibility of Boswell
Fortescue-Brickdale examines a discrepancy between Boswell’s Life and Macaulay’s Letters on Education regarding a dinner table anecdote. While Boswell depicts Johnson silencing Macaulay’s "levelling doctrine" by requesting her footman dine with them, Macaulay’s account claims the servant was absent and the debate concerned political distinctions rather than property. Fortescue-Brickdale suggests Johnson exercised narrative license to the detriment of Macaulay’s actual arguments. The text highlights Macaulay’s progressive social ideals, including penal reform and animal welfare, which Boswell’s version obscures.
CGV entry 4:115. A defense of Catharine Macaulay.
Cochrane entry 111.
Kirwan traces the survival and 1920s discovery of the Malahide Papers, a vast collection of James Boswell’s private journals, letters, and manuscripts previously thought destroyed. The article describes how Boswell’s descendants, particularly Sir Alexander Boswell, suppressed the papers out of a sense of social shame regarding Boswell’s association with Johnson. Kirwan details the papers' transition to Malahide Castle and their subsequent purchase by Colonel Ralph Isham. The collection, edited by Geoffrey Scott and Frederick Pottle, serves as a virtual autobiography, covering Boswell’s European tour, his interactions with Voltaire and Rousseau, and his candid record of his own 'warts' and 'shameful secrets.' Notable inclusions are letters to Zélide and a previously suppressed 'reprehensible passage' involving Thérèse Le Vasseur. Kirwan defends Boswell against the moralistic critiques of Macaulay and Lytton Strachey, arguing that Boswell’s genius lay in his objective reporting and his courage to show himself 'whole' within the context of the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 4:120. On the Malahide Castle papers, among others.
Cochrane entry 345.
The Johnson Canon: Boswell after 150 Years
Chapman surveys the state of Johnsonian scholarship 150 years after Johnson's death, identifying 1934 as significant for the "reissue of Birkbeck Hill's edition of the Life." He traces the editorial history from Boswell and Malone to the "often underrated" Croker, who "intercalated letters and anecdotes" from Piozzi. Chapman credits Hill with bringing "profound knowledge" and "acute judgment" to the canon. The text highlights recent discoveries, including "Boswell's Journals" acquired by Isham and the "Piozzian stream of anecdote" emerging from the Rylands Library. Chapman argues that although Johnson is "better known to the world than any comparable figure," recent bibliography and the "labours of Reade" have "enlightened" previously distorted views of Johnson's early life.
CGV entry 4:122. Essentially a review of the Hill–Powell edition of Boswell's 'Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.' (1934).
Chapman defends the decision of the Oxford University Press to retain Hill’s original pagination in Powell’s revision of the Life of Johnson. Chapman disputes Tinker’s preference for a "wholly new edition," arguing that maintaining the "standard method of reference was imperative" because the vast edifice of Johnsonian scholarship since 1887 relies on Hill’s volume and page numbers. Chapman insists that a radical departure from this system would leave the new edition "out of gear with the whole of the rest of the machinery" of existing literature. Chapman accepts full responsibility for this conservative editorial policy, prioritizing the convenience of the international scholarly community over the perceived benefits of condensation or re-arrangement.
CGV entry 4:123. A reply to C. B. Tinker's review of the Hill–Powell edition of Boswell's 'Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.' (1934).
Cochrane entry 123.
Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association
Boswell's Original Journal of His Tour to the Hebrides and the Printed Version
Cochrane entry 294. Details the numerous changes Boswell made to his original 'Hebrides' journal before publication, including polishing language, omitting personal or unflattering details, and concealing identities.
Strukturální povaha Boswellova Životopisv doktora Johnsona
CGV entry 4:126. On the structural character of the 'Life'.
More Books: The Bulletin of the Boston Public Library
CGV entry 4:127. Discusses the composition of the 'Life' and other details.
Cochrane entry 129. Discusses a first edition of the 'Life', noting how the Malahide Papers confirm that Edmund Malone served only as an advisor, not a co-author, debunking a long-held theory.
Boswell's Life of Johnson as the Theme of Biographical Study
Wilson traces the history and definition of "ana" or table talk, defined by Johnson as "loose thoughts, or casual hints, dropped by eminent men, and collected by their friends." The essay contrasts true ana, such as Luther's Tischreden and Selden's Table-Talk, with derivative works. Selden's collection is praised for its common sense and plain speech, which Johnson admired. Aubrey's Brief Lives are discussed as invaluable biographical notes, though not strict ana. The essay culminates in Boswell's Life of Johnson, hailed as the "Ana of all Anas" for its meticulous documentation and preservation of Johnson's wide-ranging conversation.
CGV entry 4:131.
Cochrane entry 137.
Powell requests biographical data on three figures mentioned in Boswell’s narrative to assist in indexing. Inquiry focuses on James Barter, a Baptist preacher and miller who engaged in a 1725 theological controversy with Edward Elwall. Powell also seeks the specific identity of a member of the Hungarian Batthyány family noted in Johnson’s 1775 French diary. Finally, the entry requests information on Henrietta Battier, a Dublin resident and friend of Johnson who composed a potential epitaph for his monument in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
CGV entry 4:133. A series of requests for information about various persons mentioned in the 'Life', appearing passim in volumes 182 through 184.
Osgood attributes extensive marginalia in a first edition of the Life of Johnson to Phillipina Knight, an intimate of Johnson's household. Knight’s notes provide unique biographical details, including Johnson’s week-long sojourn on the Ramilies and his 'aversion' to Sterne, whom he labeled a 'contemptible priest' following 'indelicate' conversation at Reynolds's table. Knight disputes the accuracy of French letters published by Piozzi and Boswell, while offering a critical perspective on Boswell’s character, describing his 'incurable hypocrisy' and 'quintessence of impudence.' The text further clarifies Johnson’s relationship with Anna Williams, whom Knight defends against Boswell’s 'fretful' characterization, portraying her instead as a necessary protector who dislodged 'worthless persons' from Johnson’s circle.
CGV entry 4:134.
Cochrane entry 147.
Essays on the Eighteenth Century Presented to David Nichol Smith in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday
The Power of Memory in Boswell and Scott
Pottle explores the "extraordinary power of memory" that allowed Boswell to recreate lengthy conversations with Johnson years after they occurred. He distinguishes Boswell’s memory, which functioned as a chronological "unrolling" of sensory experience, from Scott's more associative, thematic recall. Boswell’s ability to "vibrate" with original impressions enabled a literalism in his journals that remains unparalleled. Pottle argues that Boswell’s realism was not merely a stylistic choice but a result of his psychological makeup, where memory served as a surrogate for immediate experience. By comparing Boswell’s "dramatic" recall with Scott's "historical" synthesis, Pottle defines Boswell's unique contribution to biography as a product of a mind that could not help but remember "particular by particular."
Cochrane entry 152.
Four Portraits: Studies of the Eighteenth Century
Quennell traces Boswell’s development from his restless youth at Auchinleck and Edinburgh through his formative Grand Tour and his complex relationship with Johnson. Boswell struggled with severe hypochondria and a recurring sense of personal unreality, often seeking to anchor his identity through the admiration of great men like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli. His domestic life with Margaret Montgomerie contrasted with a pattern of impulsive, often sordid amatory adventures and bouts of intoxication. Quennell argues that Boswell’s genius for biography derived from a unique blend of extreme vanity and objective self-analysis, allowing him to perceive human character as an inconsistent, non-static interleaving of vice and virtue. Though Johnson’s death left Boswell professionally and emotionally adrift, Quennell maintains that Boswell’s "Magnum Opus" revolutionized biography by applying a realistic, uninhibited scrutiny to its subject, anticipating modern methods of psychological portraiture. Boswell represents a new revolutionary mode in literature, driven by a desire to know everything "tout au fond."
CGV entry 4:136. The book was entitled 'The Profane Virtues' in the United States. Reprinted by Archon in 1965.
Cochrane entry 15.
The Hooded Hawk; or, The Case of Mr. Boswell
Lewis's detailed revaluation of Boswell’s character challenges traditional disparagements by figures such as Macaulay. Addressing Boswell’s well-documented struggles with "mental instability," alcoholism, and "appalling" lack of discretion, Lewis argues that these traits were balanced by a "warm heart," noble aspirations, and an "open, loving" nature. The narrative traces Boswell’s development from his Scottish upbringing at Auchinleck through his pivotal 1763 meeting with Johnson, emphasizing that the biographer’s "pathological" tendencies did not preclude his creation of "virile comely English" masterpieces. Lewis explores the competing influences on Boswell’s "whirligig" brain, specifically contrasting the "absolute sanctity" sought in Johnson with the "seducive" paganism of John Wilkes, whose destructive charm Lewis deems a "monstrously ignored" factor in Boswell’s moral lapses. Describing Boswell’s London as a "bawdy and breathtaking" environment of public hangings and taverns, the study asserts that Boswell’s "narcissism" and "sentimental Rousseauism" were symptomatic of the eighteenth-century "Age of Reason". Lewis further details Boswell’s professional failures at the bar and his frustrated political ambitions, yet highlights his effectiveness as a "liberal-minded" laird and devoted father. Lewis depicts a man perpetually attempting to "soar into the empyrean" while remaining "clogged by his tirings," concluding that Boswell’s "fine gold" composition ensured his enduring attachment to greatness. Chapter 1, 'A Bedroom in Great Portland Street,' addresses the final illness and death of James Boswell in May 1795, reflecting on his complex personality, his lifelong struggle with alcoholism, and his profound relationship with Samuel Johnson. Chapter 2, 'Springtime of a Gay Dog,' addresses the early life and education of the subject in Edinburgh and Glasgow, detailing youthful fascinations with the theater and Catholicism while highlighting initial efforts to cultivate relationships with prominent intellectual figures like David Hume. Chapter 3, 'Birth of a Disciple,' addresses the pivotal 1763 meeting between the subject and Samuel Johnson at Thomas Davies’s bookshop, detailing their immediate rapport, subsequent tavern discussions, and Johnson’s eventual mentorship. Chapter 4, 'Grand Tour,' addresses the subject’s European travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Corsica, highlighting interactions with Voltaire and Rousseau and the influential encounter with General Pasquale Paoli. Chapter 5, 'Lothario Married,' addresses the subject’s marriage, his legal career in Scotland, and his continued deep intimacy and collaborative intellectual pursuits with Johnson until the latter’s death. Chapter 6, 'Decline and Rise,' addresses the subject's struggle with depression and professional disappointment following Johnson's death, detailing his move to the English Bar and the grueling labor required to produce his biographical masterpiece. Chapter 7, 'Vraye Foy,' addresses the subject’s final years, highlighting his continued philanthropic efforts, his relationship with his children, and his enduring, albeit erratic, commitment to his religious principles. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews. Popular and general literary periodicals are generally favorable, praising the work's vivid, Hogarthian depiction of London and its spirited defense against historical detraction. De la Torre, in NYTBR, enthusiastically celebrates the volume for rescuing the subject from a century of calumny and portraying him as a lovable human being and literary artist. Roberts's review in TLS notes the narrative's enjoyment and gusto, appreciating the defense of a complex figure. Quennell, writing in the New Statesman and Nation, prefers this enthusiastic tribute to alternative clinical dismissals, while Askwith, in the Saturday Review of Literature, lauds the brilliant, balanced appraisal. In contrast, academic reviewers are severe, criticizing a pervasive disregard for historical accuracy and the intrusion of personal biases. Clifford, in JNL, delivers a scathing critique, calling it a superficial, sensational portrait marred by absurd blunders and ideological prejudices. Liebert's review in PQ is similarly damaging, characterizing the study as breathless impressionism that substitutes fictional vignettes for established facts, such as placing a long-deceased companion at a major deathbed scene. Writing in the South Atlantic Quarterly, Irving objects to the expressionist methodology that ignores serious research and underestimates the subject's artistic conscience. Vulliamy, in The Spectator, acknowledges the literary skill but strongly disputes the fiery, unhistorical defense that downplays squalid behavior.
CGV entry 4:137. The New York edition was published in 1947.
Cochrane entry 16.
Reviews: Herbert Askwith, Saturday Review of Literature 31 (January 17, 1948): 11; Charles H. Bennett, Yale Review 37 (1948): 750–52; Blackfriars 28, no. 326 (1947): 242–43; Richard N. Boulton, Hartford Courant, October 26, 1947; James L. Clifford, JNL 7, no. 4 (1947): 7–8; Daily Express, November 16, 1946; Lillian De la Torre, NYTBR, December 14, 1947; Paul Dinkins, Catholic World 167, no. 2 (1948): 182–183; Dundee Courier, December 25, 1946; Daniel George, The Tribune (Blackpool), November 29, 1946; Kelsey Guilfoil, Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1947; Irish Times, December 7, 1946; William H. Irving, South Atlantic Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1948): 580–82; Herman W. Liebert, PQ 27, no. 2 (1848): 139–40; B. G. MacCarthy, Studies 36 (1947): 319–25; Michael F. Moloney, America 78, no. 12 (1947); Palestine Post, 1948, 6; Collinson Owen, Newcastle Journal, November 23, 1946; W. Baring Pemberton, Sunday Times (London), January 5, 1947; Charles Poore, New York Times, December 18, 1947; Peter Quennell, New Statesman and Nation, December 21, 1946; S. C. Roberts, TLS, no. 2344 (January 1947): 6; Scots Magazine 46, no. 4 (1947): 328–31; The Scotsman, November 21, 1946; Sherard Vines, The Listener 36, no. 934 (1946): 811; C. E. Vulliamy, The Spectator 178, no. 6184 (1947): 17; Washington Post, November 16, 1947; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, November 30, 1946.
Liebert provides a scathing review of Wyndham Lewis’s biographical study of James Boswell, characterizing it as a work of "breathless impressionism" that prioritizes fictional vignettes over established facts. While acknowledging the book’s exuberant local color and Rowlandson-like atmosphere, Liebert documents a pervasive disregard for accuracy, citing numerous errors regarding names, dates, and historical events—including the presence of the deceased Mrs. Williams at Samuel Johnson’s deathbed. The reviewer further criticizes the author for allowing personal religious and political biases—specifically a "professional Catholic" animus against Protestants and Whigs—to misshape the narrative. Liebert concludes that Lewis fails to offer a meaningful diagnosis of Boswell’s complex character, settling instead for the cliché of a "boozy buffoon" and leaving the need for a definitive, scholarly biography of Boswell unfulfilled.
CGV entry 4:137. Review by H. W. Liebert of the book by D. B. Wyndham Lewis.
Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions
The Anonymous Designations in Boswell's 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides' and Their Identification
Cochrane entry 298. Lists the 64 individuals Boswell referred to anonymously in 'Hebrides' and successfully identifies more than two-thirds of them.
'Life' Manuscript Included in Find: Some 1,300 Pages, Scribbled on Journal's Leaves, Crown Boswell Treasures Whole Period Illumined New Documents Will Provide Generation of Scholars with Material for Research
Liebert describes the acquisition by Ralph Heyward Isham of a massive cache of Boswell papers from Fettercairn House and Malahide Castle. The find includes 1,300 pages of the original manuscript for the Life of Johnson, which reveals passages Boswell canceled for prudential reasons, such as a disparaging comment by Johnson regarding Westminster men at Oxford. The collection contains over 100 letters from Johnson to various correspondents, juvenile poems, and a brief chronicle of his early life. Additionally, the papers include character sketches of Oliver Goldsmith and David Garrick by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Liebert argues that these documents dispute the Macaulay legend of Boswell as a fool who wrote a great book by accident, instead highlighting his industry and objective artistry in recording his own life and the lives of others.
Pottle argues Boswell's journaling techniques, essential to the Life of Johnson, predate his meeting with Johnson. Boswell's detailed journal, begun in 1762, already contained vivid descriptions and recorded conversations. The dramatic casting prominent in the Life initially appeared in rough notes and was later integrated into finished journals. Influenced perhaps by Sterne and Fielding, Boswell developed his method independently of the Johnson biography project. Pottle concludes Boswell's primary literary achievement is the journal itself, the source of the Life's unique conversational style, rather than the biography being the journal's sole raison d'être.
Cochrane entry 360.
arter reports on the acquisition of the Boswell Papers by Yale University from Isham, who unearthed the massive collection at Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House. The papers, containing over 4,000 items, are divided into five categories: journals (described variously as Boswell's or Johnson's), manuscripts of published and unpublished works (including the Life of Johnson and Tour to the Hebrides), thousands of letters to and from contemporaries like Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, manuscripts by other eighteenth-century figures, and miscellaneous materials for Johnson’s biography. An editorial board, an Anglo-American scholarly effort to publish the collection, is chaired by Pottle and includes Hilles and Liebert. The text also includes a letter to the editor by Lawrence, who proposes a "revolutionary" interpretation of the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy in Hamlet, suggesting Boswell's London Journal provides evidence of Sheridan's "ingenious dissertation" on the character.
CGV entry 4:144. On their acquisition by Yale.
Altick chronicles the long-delayed recovery of James Boswell's private papers, which remained hidden due to family embarrassment and false rumors of their destruction. The narrative details how Major Stone's 1850 discovery of Boswell's letters to William Johnson Temple in a French shop provided the first major insight into Boswell’s character, challenging Macaulay’s caricature of the biographer as a "greatest fool." Altick describes the subsequent efforts of Chauncey Brewster Tinker and Ralph Heyward Isham to secure the "ebony cabinet" archives from Malahide Castle in the 1920s. These discoveries, supplemented by Claude Colleer Abbott’s find of further documents at Fettercairn House in 1930 and a later cache in a Malahide cow barn, revealed over a million words of journals and correspondence. These records provide a three-dimensional portrait of Boswell as a complex, "pathologically introspective" individual and clarify his working methods for the Life of Johnson. The text concludes with the acquisition of the complete Isham collection by Yale University in 1949.
CGV entry 4:145. Reissued in Macmillan Paperbacks, 1960.
Cochrane entry 54.
Cochrane entry 163. Reflects on the now-completed revision of the Hill edition of the 'Life', summarizing the new information and identifications the updated work provides.
Five Correspondences of James Boswell Relating to the Composition of the Life of Johnson
An Epistle in Verse Occasioned by the Death of James Boswell, Esquire, of Auchinleck
CGV entry 4:151. A reprint of the 1795 original, with an introduction by Robert Metzdorf.
CGV entry 4:152. Includes discussion of the 'London Journal'.
The Conversation in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Baldwin argues that the conversation recorded in Boswell's Life is substantially authentic, not because Boswell had a perfect memory, but because of his diligent methods and deep immersion in his subject's manner. He refutes the theory of Boswell's "total recall," pointing to the biographer's own frequent admissions of forgetting and his failure to note contradictions in Johnson's talk over the years. Instead, the author attributes the accuracy of the Life to Boswell's lifelong habit of recording conversations in his journal each night, his idolatrous devotion to Johnson, and his talent for mimicry, which was so profound that contemporaries judged him better than Garrick at imitating Johnson's speech. The essay concludes that this accuracy was confirmed by Johnson himself, who approved of the Tour journal, and by many others in their circle who, upon the Life's publication, affirmed that Boswell had captured "the MAN HIMSELF."
Cochrane entry 164. Concludes, after examining the evidence, that the conversations in the 'Life' are highly authentic and that Boswell managed to quote "the real Dr. Johnson practically verbatim."
Privately printed for Halsted B. Vander Poel
To Honor the Two Hundred and Seventeenth Anniversary of the Departure of Samuel Johnson and David Garrick to Try Their Fortunes in the Great Metropolis, 2 March 1737
CGV entry 4:154. Includes a facsimile of a page of the manuscript of the 'Life'.
Roberts describes a newly discovered packet of sixty letters from Boswell to his cousin and solicitor, Robert Boswell, written between 1776 and 1793. The correspondence is dominated by Boswell's "pecuniary embarrassments" or "pecuniary embarrassment" and his "lairdly principle" or "lairdly" desire for land and family dignity regarding the Auchinleck estate. These letters track his "genealogical tables" or "genealogical claims" to prove "consanguinity to Royalty" and his determination to join the English Bar. Several letters follow the progress of the Life, showing Boswell's apprehension about the "two-guinea price" and his later satisfaction with its sale. Roberts notes a 1792 letter from Eton where Boswell savored the "union of luxury and learning," being held as an "Etonian by adoption." These letters, which have now been sold to Yale University Library, vividly capture Boswell's "incorrigibly metropolitan spirit."
Cochrane entry 437.
Cochrane entry 572. A brief survey of Boswell's life and work, praising the candor and vividness of his journals and paying special attention to how he adapted journal material for his published books.
The Long Boy and Others: Where-in Will Be Found, a Gathering of Essays, Written to Divert and Entertain and at the Same Time to Instruct, Concerning Several Distinguished Gentlemen of Divers Occupation and Wit: Sam. Johnson, James Boswell, Sam. Richardson, Henry Fielding, T. Smollett, Laurence Sterne
This article, reprinted from The Kenyon Review (1956), analyzes the psychology of the friendship between Johnson and Boswell. Reid disputes the cliché that Boswell forced himself upon an unwilling mentor, showing that Johnson was "aggressively anxious" to sustain the union. He argues that Johnson, liberated from poverty by a 1762 pension, welcomed Boswell to satisfy a need for talk and a fear of solitude. The relationship functioned as a "half-confessed familial" bond where Boswell sought a "father-substitute" and Johnson found the son he never had. Reid notes that while Johnson grew impatient with Boswell's "radical slackness" and vices, his love remained "unaltered" until death. He characterizes Boswell as a "brilliant social catalyst" who served Johnson's emotional needs magnificently despite personal failure as the "Compleat Son."
CGV entry 4:161. Reprinted from Kenyon Review (1956).
Boswell's English in the London Journal
Sheldon analyzes Boswell's language in the London Journal against the backdrop of eighteenth-century grammar books to determine his conformity to contemporary doctrines of "correctness." The analysis reveals that Boswell frequently deviates from the grammarians' prescriptive rules, exhibiting inconsistencies in areas like subject-verb agreement (e.g., "you was"), pronoun reference, parallelism, and adjective/adverb usage. This suggests that Boswell, despite his linguistic interests, was little influenced by the grammars of his time, reflecting the looser, variable nature of educated upper-class informal English usage of the period.
Cochrane entry 376.
Cowper's Commentary on The Life of Johnson
Todd transcribes Cowper's marginal annotations in Johnny Johnson's copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The annotations, mostly direct statements, reveal a rational, composed Cowper roused to expound on Johnson. Cowper uses powerful imagery, translating Johnson's "anfractuosities of the human mind" into "gulphs & precipices" and applying imagery of losing a leg but feeling toes shoot to Johnson's moral paradoxes.
Cochrane entry 174.
Monk clarifies an instance of Johnson’s "talking for victory" recorded by Boswell on May 19, 1784. In a heated response to Boswell's views on heavenly reunions, Johnson dismisses worldly friendships as "confederacies in vice and leagues in folly." Monk demonstrates that this uncharacteristic cynicism is actually a quotation from Addison’s Cato. He suggests that Boswell, failing to recognize the literary source, likely recorded the general sentiment rather than the exact phrasing of Addison’s original lines.
CGV entry 4:165. An unrecognized quotation in the 'Life'.
Cochrane entry 577. Identifies a cynical remark made by Johnson to Boswell about friends in the afterlife as a quotation from Joseph Addison's play 'Cato'.
The Literary and Intellectual Foundations of James Boswell
CGV entry 4:166. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 19 (1959), pages 1752–1753.
Cochrane entry 578. Traces Boswell's growing commitment to writing the 'Life' and examines how his wide-ranging intellectual interests enriched his literary art.
Cochrane entry 379. This is an earlier version of the essay that was later revised and reprinted as item 391.
Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism
Wimsatt examines the interplay between the conscious enactment of life and its subsequent textual preservation in the journals of Boswell. The text highlights how both Johnson and Boswell valued the historic verity of facts, yet Boswell’s artistry as a journalist projects a figure of unique fictive significance. Wimsatt details Boswell’s legal defense of John Reid, a sheep-stealer, noting that Boswell recorded the very words of the judges, including his own father, Lord Auchinleck. This extraordinary saga of self-portrayal allows readers to value the man through the artist, the artist in the man.
CGV entry 4:167. Reprinted from "James Boswell: The Man and the Journal" in Yale Review (1959).
Cochrane entry 391.
Dr. Burney and the Integrity of Boswell's Quotations
Lonsdale vindicates Boswell’s editorial integrity regarding a letter from Johnson to Charles Burney dated September 4, 1784. While Chapman suspected Boswell of garbling the text, newly discovered manuscript leaves reveal that Burney provided Boswell with a manipulated transcript to conceal Johnson’s authorship of the dedication for the Handel Commemoration. The evidence proves Boswell faithfully printed the text provided to him, shifting the responsibility for the textual corruption entirely to Burney’s desire for anonymity regarding the dedication.
Cochrane entry 179.
The Search for Felicity: A Study of the Religious Thought of James Boswell in the Light of the Religious Developments of Eighteenth Century England and Scotland
On Boswell's lifelong religious struggle against the backdrop of 18th-century religious developments, including Rational Christianity, Deism, and Scepticism. Boswell's Calvinist upbringing instilled a fear of a harsh God and eternal damnation, driving him through periods of doubt and denominational shifts to Roman Catholicism and Methodism. His search for a stable, benevolent faith relied heavily on the intellectual and theological support of Johnson, who consistently helped him maintain a rational Christian perspective against the era's pervasive infidelity and his own acute fear of annihilation.
CGV entry 4:170. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 20 (1960), pages 4392-4393.
Cochrane entry 661.
Studies in Honor of John C. Hodges and Alwin Thaler
CGV entry 4:172. As seen in the 'Life'.
Cochrane entry 183. Defends Boswell's depiction of Oliver Goldsmith as fair and accurate, showing that the faults Boswell mentions are confirmed by other contemporaries and are balanced by an appreciation for Goldsmith's virtues.
Boswell's Literary Art in the London Journal
The London Journal is a complex work of conscious literary artistry that organizes Boswell’s life into a meaningful narrative design. The journal details Boswell's internal conflict between flesh and spirit, and his external struggle for independence, acceptance as a gentleman, and a commission in the Guards. Smaller, interwoven episodes, like the affair with Louisa and the Guards ambition, duplicate the larger theme of the journey toward maturity. His pivotal meeting with Johnson, marked by a symbolic ascent of St. Paul’s, leads to a spiritual and psychological renewal, transforming Boswell the adventurer into Boswell the organized literary figure.
Cochrane entry 385.
McElderry examines letters from Miss Boscawen and Mrs. Montagu that illustrate Boswell’s social reputation. The correspondence includes a disparaging bon mot by Lord Monboddo, who characterized Boswell as a madman rather than a gentleman. These accounts support Bishop Percy's claim that Boswell was often excluded from 'decent company,' though McElderry notes that Malone and Reynolds remained tolerant of Boswell's weaknesses.
CGV entry 4:175. On his work as a biographer; from the Montagu Papers, Huntington Library.
Cochrane entry 584. Presents excerpts from two unpublished letters that appear to confirm Bishop Percy's claim that Boswell was socially ostracized for his biographical indiscretions.
The Force of Literary Memory in Boswell's London Journal
Boswell's extraordinary literary memory shapes his self-conception and the artistry of the London Journal. Boswell constructs his identity and "scenes" by drawing on literary models, consciously adopting roles like Macheath, the Spectator, a romance hero, or an actor. He employs specific allusions to Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer, Pope's The Rape of the Lock, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Shakespeare's Hamlet to elevate, augment the comic yield, or lend heroic dimension to his personal experiences. This literariness accounts for the Journal's persuasive ring of verisimilitude.
Cochrane entry 384.
Cochrane entry 186. Provides a list of bibliographical variants, such as typographical errors and cancels, found across several copies of the 1791 first edition of the 'Life'.
Howes applies D. J. Boorstin’s concept of the "pseudo-event" to Boswell’s methods of biographical documentation. The article argues that Boswell’s pursuit of eminent figures—including Johnson, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli—was characterized by "synthetic novelty" and prearranged interviews designed for reproduction. Howes highlights the theatrical nature of the initial meeting between Boswell and Johnson in 1763 and the subsequent "prolonged interview" that constitutes much of their relationship. By deliberately manipulating his subject’s life to furnish materials, Boswell acted as a "prophet of greatness" who fulfilled his subject through a self-fulfilling prophecy. The piece concludes that while Boswell feared his "forwardness" in seeking information might be "lessening," Johnson reassured him that increasing one's knowledge always makes a man greater.
Cochrane entry 26.
Gray examines Johnson's challenging and hazardous moral tutelage of Boswell, who sought instruction from numerous figures like Hume, Smith, Rousseau, and Voltaire. The essay details the conflicting moral and philosophical advice Boswell received, particularly the anti-rationalist, feeling-based systems of Hume and Smith. Gray argues that Johnson succeeded where others failed due to Boswell’s extensive preparation, Johnson's paternal role, and his quick, accurate diagnosis of Boswell's deep-seated need for guidance. Johnson's advice to curb the imagination and focus on useful inquiry became the great, abiding resolve that led to the Life of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 188.
Greene challenges the inseparable pairing of Johnson and Boswell, arguing that the former's literary reputation would have flourished even without the Life. The author criticizes Boswell's work as an edited, incomplete diary, contrasting it with the superior biography of Hawkins. Furthermore, the piece contends that Boswell distorted Johnson's character, particularly his relationships, religious, and political views, to create a simpler, more "lovable" figure. The resulting popular image, especially the perpetual "Doctor Johnson," obstructs readers from appreciating Johnson's mind and writings.
CGV entry 4:181.
Cochrane entry 189.
Boswell's Portrait of Himself in The Life of Johnson
CGV entry 4:183. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 24 (October 1963), pages 2015–2016.
Cochrane entry 190. Contends that Boswell uses the 'Life' to present himself as an independent thinker with a complex blend of traditionalist and modern views on religion, politics, and literature.
The Relationship Between Johnson and Boswell
Cochrane entry 192. Posits that Johnson and Boswell, despite their differences, shared a common philosophy of biography, which Johnson articulated and Boswell executed.
Cochrane entry 386. Argues that the massive popular success of the 'London Journal' was due not to sensationalism but to the fact that Boswell is "a great modern writer" whose style is closer to Joyce than to Smollett.
Literary Views: Critical and Historical Essays
Pottle explores the radical shift in Boswell’s reputation following the 1950 publication of the London Journal and the recovery of the Yale Boswell Papers. He argues that Macaulay’s "fool" paradox is untenable, as the archives reveal Boswell as an "instructed and sincerely devout Christian" alongside contradictory sensualist impulses. Pottle emphasizes Boswell’s "bright, eager intelligence" and his success as a regular, hard-working lawyer. Centrally, Pottle defines Boswell as a journalist whose work is "consistently dramatic," achieved by giving "each recorded moment its own proper emotional tone." He notes that Boswell’s conversations are not verbatim records but "imaginative reconstructions" using "ipsissima verba" as pivots. Pottle concludes that Boswell possesses significant "Imagination" in rendering the "quality of perception," even if he lacks "Invention." His transparent "plate-glass style" and "invincible mediocrity"—apprehending the world in terms of average human perception—account for his modern appeal and enduring relevance.
Cochrane entry 590.
Boswell in Search of a Father? or a Subject?
Cochrane entry 591. Interprets Boswell's search for substitute fathers, culminating in Johnson, as a response to his difficult relationship with his own father, suggesting he created his ideal father figure in the Johnson of the 'Life'.
Boswell used the Corsican struggle for independence to advance his own literary and social reputation. He transformed his 1765 visit to the island into a platform for personal publicity and political advocacy. While Boswell genuinely supported the Corsican cause and admired Paoli, his publication strategy prioritized the creation of a public persona. His account of the Corsican people and their leader Paoli provided the necessary fame to establish his position in the London literary circle. This success occurred despite initial reservations expressed by Johnson regarding the venture. The text analyzes how Boswell’s gratitude to Corsica remained constant throughout his career.
Cochrane entry 334.
Analyzes Boswell's anti-infidel stance and revealing imagery, arguing his attacks clarify the immense personal value he placed on faith. Although often unsure of his own arguments, Boswell viewed infidelity as a lethal poison, calling infidels robbers and venomous insects. He considered his Christian faith an invaluable treasure or beloved wife that was vulnerable to theft or destruction. Boswell's violent rhetoric and acknowledged vulnerability demonstrate his deep-seated fear of sceptics as a personal threat to his felicity and spiritual life.
Cochrane entry 663.
By Appointment to His Majesty Biographer of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
CGV entry 4:190. Privately printed for the annual dinner of The Johnsonians. Contains a facsimile of a letter from Malone to Boswell, May 13, 1793, and Boswell's reply.
Brady argues that Boswell’s relentless political pursuit throughout his adult life stemmed from an ultimate misunderstanding of his own nature and fortune. The book systematically charts Boswell’s career phases, from his early "romantic Toryism" and pursuit of favor with figures like Mountstuart (1760–1773) to his frustrated maneuvering in Ayrshire politics (1774–1782), marked by rivalry with Dundas and betrayal by his father. After 1782, Boswell sought employment through political pamphlets but damaged his prospects opposing the Diminishing Bill. His final attempt to secure preferment through Lowther ended in tragicomic failure by 1795. Brady concluded Boswell failed completely, lacking the necessary resources and talent, and exhibiting a politically inept combination of servile self-interest and pugnacious independence. Chapter 1, 'Introduction,' establishes the persistent yet ultimately frustrated ambition to represent Ayrshire in Parliament, characterizing this lifelong pursuit as a misdirection of genius that mistook personal nature for political destiny. Chapter 2, 'Opinions and Directions: 1760–1773,' traces the early formation of conservative Tory principles and initial flirtations with public life, including the celebrated advocacy for Corsican independence. Chapter 3, 'Ayrshire and Practical Politics: 1774–1782,' details the complex realities of eighteenth-century Scottish elections, marked by the influential rise of Henry Dundas and the emergence of the independent interest. Chapter 4, 'Dependence and Independence: 1782–1786,' examines the period of transition following Lord Auchinleck’s death, characterized by failed attempts to secure ministerial patronage and the tactical shift toward the English bar. Chapter 5, 'Lonsdale and the Final Phase: 1786–1795,' chronicles the final, degrading struggle for political advancement under the Earl of Lonsdale, concluding with a reconciliation to literary fame after recurring failures. Reviewers describe the book as a meticulous and authoritative record of a lifelong ambition that resulted in a depressing and often farcical failure. Boulton and Hart find the title sadly ironic because the subject remained on the outside edge of the political world, never achieving an actual career. The Economist praises the scholarly volume for providing a detailed picture of eighteenth-century mechanics, though Mullett queries if the subject lacks sufficient interest for a lengthy examination. Greene notes the account of consistent incompetence and superficial attitudes. But Rea lauds the remarkable clarity and unsentimental sympathy used to illuminate the practical procedures of the Georgian scene.
Cochrane entry 670.
Jack compares Boswell’s Life of Johnson with Lockhart’s Life of Scott, identifying similarities in their Scottish Tory backgrounds and paternal relationships with their subjects. Despite these parallels, Jack argues that Boswell’s "reverence for life" and passion for recording "ipsissima verba" result in a work of superior reliability. While Lockhart viewed his task as a duty to clear Scott’s name and frequently suppressed or softened truths, Boswell’s conscious effort centered on authenticity. Jack characterizes Boswell as a social genius and "accurate recorder" who used traps and experiments to elicit Johnson’s extraordinary conversation, whereas Lockhart remained an "inscrutable and unattractive" figure who distrusted the possibility of fully delineating character.
Cochrane entry 194.
Pottle provides a detailed account of Boswell’s eight years of formal education, asserting that the biographer was "by any standards a well-educated man." At Glasgow, Boswell studied under Adam Smith, whose lectures on rhetoric emphasized a "direct, clean" style and used Johnson as an exemplar of bad style. Boswell also attended lectures on civil law by Hercules Lindesay, which used English rather than Latin. Later studies at Utrecht focused on the Pandects and included membership in an international "Literary Society" where papers were read in French. Pottle maintains that this extensive training in composition and literary theory was fundamental to Boswell’s later success as Johnson’s biographer.
Cochrane entry 27.
Rae and Beattie describe the Advocates’ Library as a "cultural oasis" that played a central role in Boswell’s professional and intellectual life. Upon joining the Faculty of Advocates in 1766, Boswell used the library to consult legal texts, read newspapers, and research his historical projects. He frequently borrowed items, including the copy of Martin’s Description used during his Hebridean tour with Johnson. In 1784, the Faculty appointed Boswell as a Curator of the Library, a position of responsibility he eventually resigned after moving to London to focus on the Life of Johnson. The authors emphasize that "a large Library always comfort[ed]" Boswell, serving as a vital tool in his quest for intellectual happiness.
Cochrane entry 594.
Brauer challenges the traditional view of the Johnson–Boswell relationship as a mere attraction of opposites by highlighting significant commonalities in their temperaments and values. Both men shared an intense "gust for London," viewing the metropolis as essential to intellectual life. They prioritized conversation above other pursuits, with Johnson cultivating discussion at the expense of sleep and Boswell obsessively recording verbal exchanges. Their mutual dedication to biographical truth appears in their shared rejection of "cant" and their preference for intimate, veracious details over idealized portraiture. Similarities extend to their struggle with melancholy, their romanticized Jacobite leanings, and their rebellious reactions against their respective fathers. Brauer concludes that Johnson's tolerance of Boswell's excesses often arose from recognizing his own former struggles in his younger companion.
Cochrane entry 592.
Versions of the Self: Studies in English Autobiography from John Bunyan to John Stuart Mill
Cochrane entry 390. Posits that Boswell's journals express a modern anxiety about identity, representing an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to create a coherent self through the literary act of recording his many roles.
CGV entry 4:200. Review by Roger Lonsdale of the book by Frederick A. Pottle.
The Correspondence of James Boswell and John Johnston of Grange
Carroll reviews the first volume of the Yale Research Edition of the Private Papers of Boswell, editing the correspondence with John Johnston. The letters, spanning 1759 to 1786, are often barren of interest, with Boswell reserving his best material for his journal. The research edition's editorial policy focuses on extensive annotation relating the text to a broad array of literary, historical, and social contexts, moving annotation away from merely illuminating the documents as compositions. The review praises the high quality of Walker's editing, which is exhaustive even to the most trivial detail, showcasing the labor inspired by Boswell.
English Biography in the Early Nineteenth Century
Davie challenges Oakeshott's distinction between the "conversation" and "enquiry" of mankind by arguing that literature serves as a vital mode of political enquiry. Focusing on John Adams’s Discourses on Davila, Davie reveals Adams’s extensive, often unacknowledged, debt to Johnson, particularly through epigraphs and thematic echoes from The Vanity of Human Wishes and London. While Adams shares Johnson's intense response to the arts, Davie highlights a "failure of imagination" in Adams's inability to grasp the theological depth of Johnson’s faith. Davie characterizes Adams’s later skepticism as an "irresponsible" product of a conspiracy theory of history, contrasting it with Johnson's "unshakeable faith in the Christian God" which redeems historical process. Ultimately, Davie asserts that Adams’s political limitations mirror his poetic ones, as both stem from a refusal to acknowledge cultures, such as that of "solidarity," which fall outside his universal model of individual emulation.
Cochrane entry 201.
Cochrane entry 604. Describes the extensive Boswell collection of Donald and Mary Hyde, second only to Yale's, featuring first editions, manuscripts, and memorabilia.
Fussell identifies Boswell as a prototypically modern figure, credited with inventing the "hard" interview and pioneering the documentary impulse. He contends that Boswell’s obsession with documenting his own "genitality" and private life prefigures contemporary literature. While praising Pottle’s scholarly candor and stylistic intimacy in the new biography, Fussell criticizes the work’s lack of artistic structure and its enslavement to chronology. He emphasizes Boswell’s dual capacity as both participant and detached recorder of his own life.
Cochrane entry 602.
Dr. Powell's Index to Boswell's Life of Johnson
Cochrane entry 202. Describes and commends L.F. Powell's method for compiling the index to his edition of the 'Life', hailing it as a perfectly suited and highly effective complement to the main text.
Alkon analyzes Boswell's manipulation of aesthetic distance in the Life. While Johnson advocated minimizing distance in biography, and Boswell claimed to do so by presenting Johnson's own words, Alkon argues Boswell actually varied distance strategically. Boswell, an intrusive narrator, sustains interest by creating illusions of unmediated access and multi-voiced dialogue, even incorporating deceased figures like Madame de Sévigné. He involves readers by positioning himself sometimes close to them (as Everyman), sometimes closer to Johnson (as sage), often inviting readers to judge Johnson's statements intellectually while remaining emotionally close.
Cochrane entry 209.
Boswell in Search of the Intentional Fallacy
Amory challenges the application of the 'intentional fallacy' to James Boswell's Life of Johnson, arguing that Boswell's work functions as a 'mock-dialogue' patterned after the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Amory notes that while Boswell and contemporaries like Hester Thrale Piozzi frequently compared Samuel Johnson to Socrates, Boswell's narrative strategy involves a dialectic where his own identity shifts from a provincial stranger to a citizen of the world. He suggests that Boswell's intentions are central to understanding the text's structure, as Boswell purposefully uses the chronological preparation of Johnson’s early life as a 'praeparatio evangelica' for their 1763 encounter. Amory asserts the Life was written 'by wisdom' rather than accidental genius, with the dialectic moving toward an earthly music rather than the spheres.
Cochrane entry 210.
The Writing of a Biography: Boswell's Earlier Years
Cochrane entry 607. No library subscribing to the OCLC international data base–including the Library of Congress–reports to have this volume.
Modern Critical Interpretations: James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson"
The Life of Johnson: Art and Authenticity
CGV entry 4:214. Reprinted from 'Twentieth-Century Interpretations' (1970).
State University of New York College at Fredonia
Cochrane entry 224. Uses a close reading of Boswell's revisions of his first meeting with Johnson to show how a factual narrative can be both dramatic and "true to life," arguing Boswell's changes reflect mature understanding, not distortion.
Boswell, Johnson, and the Petition of James Wilson
CGV entry 4:217. Privately printed for The Johnsonians. Wilson was the petitioner in the case of "vicious intromission" on which Johnson wrote an opinion for Boswell.
Brooks examines the literary career of Boswell, focusing on the "unique coalescence of his personal experiences with his artistic outlook." The text traces Boswell's development from his Scottish roots and "Scotch-English tension" to his immersion in the London circle of Johnson. Brooks analyzes Boswell's major works, including his Corsican travelogues and journals, which reveal a "thoughtfully worked-out theory of biographical representation." Significant attention falls on the relationship between Boswell and Johnson, particularly how the achievement of autobiography facilitates a "sound estimate of Boswell's biography of Johnson." The study also addresses Boswell's interactions with Piozzi and other rival biographers, describing the "rancorous responses" following the publication of the Hebrides journal. Brooks portrays Boswell as a deliberate artist whose "exceptional gifts" and "bright expectancy" defined his contributions to eighteenth-century literature.
CGV entry 4:218.
Cochrane entry 612.
Time, Form, and Style in Boswell's 'Life of Johnson'
Schwartz offers a mixed review of Passler’s study, which examines the lack of chronological stability and temporal restlessness in the Life. Schwartz finds the central contention regarding Boswell’s three basic styles and the use of a Hogarthian spatial model for form to be argued in detail. However, Schwartz disputes several judgments, characterizing Passler’s understated view of the work as Boswell’s own story as incredible and noting that the study misrepresents the views of Donald Greene. Schwartz highlights unresolved contradictions in Passler’s argument, specifically regarding whether the Life possesses a static character or fragments into topics and traits. While Schwartz acknowledges the study contains material worthy of consideration, the uneven level of discussion and intrusion of peripheral issues necessitate a cautious reading.
CGV entry 4:219.
Kelley reviews Passler's Time, Form, and Style in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," noting it is an ambitious study of Boswell's artistry. Kelley finds Passler's analysis of four time levels and "composite" portraits suggestive but questions the assumption of the Life's "temporal restlessness" and lack of chronological stability, arguing it ultimately presents a stable progression. Kelley contests Passler’s central thesis that the Life presents a static portrait of Johnson based on the ut pictura poesis tradition, suggesting this divorces content from its kinetic dramatic effect and overlooks the artistry that conceals itself.
CGV entry 4:219. A review by Robert E. Kelley of the book by David Passler.
Passler’s bold book is praised for its credible assumption that the Life is an "imaginatively coherent work," but its extreme economy of presentation results in cramped and inadequately developed insights.
CGV entry 4:219. A review by Edward A. Bloom of the book by David Passler, alongside other works.
Passler analyzes Boswell’s Life of Johnson as a product of creative imagination, focusing on its "temporal restlessness" and shifting narrative perspectives. The study explores the contrapuntal relationship between Johnson’s fixed, uniform characteristics and the bursting vitality of his recorded conversations. Boulton appreciates the defense of the biographer as artist but remains skeptical of Passler’s "dubious ingenuity" in linking Boswell’s structure to Hogarth’s line of beauty.
CGV entry 4:219. A review by James T. Boulton of the book by David Passler, alongside other works.
Lonsdale examines Passler’s aesthetic approach, which treats the Life as a work of creative imagination shaped by temporal oscillations and narrative technique rather than just Johnson's conversation. While acknowledging the book as a pioneering study of Boswell’s artistry, Lonsdale finds the evidence for 'variable time levels' meagre and argues the biography is ultimately restricted by historical facts and materials. Conversely, Lonsdale commends Clifford’s collection for gathering conventional yet authoritative materials, specifically noting Pottle’s essay on Boswell's memory and the inclusion of diverse reactions from scholars like Greene and Scott.
CGV entry 4:219. A review by Roger Lonsdale of the book by David Passler, alongside another work.
Printed as an annual keepsake for the American Johnsonians. Edited and annotated by Osborn, it presents previously unpublished verses by Boswell concerning the prestigious literary society, The Club. Osborn's accompanying address on "The Club" further distinguishes this edition, providing context for Boswell's poetry, which typically sought applause at formal gatherings. The verses reflect Boswell's Augustan style, satirizing personalities and human nature.
CGV entry 4:221. Printed for The Johnsonians.
Boswell's Self-Presentation and His Critics
Explores the paradox that Boswell, the world's greatest biographer, is often personally patronized by critics, an attitude traceable to Macaulay. Brady argues that this confusion stems from Boswell's conscious choice of self-presentation as the ingénu or naive figure in his works. While Boswell risked being perceived as foolish or servile, as was the case with the backlash to the Tour to the Hebrides, he did so to achieve artistic integrity and fully portray Johnson, even if it meant presenting his own weaknesses. The author notes that Boswell's technique employs a "plain" or simple style that sometimes achieves the effect of "naiveté," leading readers to either respond with empathy and admiration for his skill or with condescension and judgment, failing to distinguish the literary persona from the man.
Cochrane entry 617.
Dowling identifies a single conception of heroic character, the Boswellian hero, across the Tour to Corsica, the Tour to the Hebrides, and the Life of Johnson. This figure represents an unheroic world where spiritual isolation results from the decline of shared community beliefs. Dowling associates Pascal Paoli and Johnson with high mimetic protagonists of epic and tragedy to create a generic tension against their low mimetic, modern environments. While the Tour to Corsica presents Paoli as a Plutarchan figure in a pastoral setting and the Tour to the Hebrides offers Johnson a romantic escape from self through a journey into the past, the Life of Johnson portrays a tragic struggle. In the Life, Johnson resists the moral anarchy and skepticism of the Enlightenment, making a moral sanctuary of his Toryism and religious orthodoxy. Dowling concludes that Boswell depicts his heroes as men living imaginatively in a nobler past to survive an unheroic present.
Cochrane entry 618.
No Abolition of Slavery: Boswell and the Slave Trade
McFarland examines James Boswell's controversial stance against the abolition of the slave trade, specifically contrasting it with the generally anti-slavery sentiments of his friend Johnson. The essay analyzes Boswell's written arguments and recorded comments, particularly those from the late 1770s and 1780s, where he explicitly defends the practice of the slave trade on the grounds of national economic interest, perceived cultural necessity, and even a misguided notion of African inferiority. McFarland explores the likely sources of Boswell’s conviction, including his political ambitions, his conservative social philosophy, and his legalistic defense of established practices. The discussion places Boswell’s position within the context of contemporary British debate, highlighting his resistance to the burgeoning humanitarian movement. McFarland aims to offer an unvarnished look at this less-flattering aspect of Boswell's character and political views, demonstrating a significant moral and philosophical divergence from Johnson.
CGV entry 4:225. Discusses Boswell's 1791 poem of the same name and contrasts his attitude with Johnson's.
Cochrane entry 473. Analyzes Boswell's 1791 poem, 'No Abolition of Slavery,' explaining that its reactionary sentiments were rooted in his deep-seated belief in social subordination and other widely held pro-slavery arguments of the era.
Siebenschuh provides a comparative study of the Account of Corsica, the Tour to the Hebrides, and the Life of Johnson, arguing that each possesses a distinct literary form dictated by Boswell's specific biographical purposes. He focuses on Boswell’s selective dramatization and the potential distortion of factual material for propagandistic or interpretive ends. Riely criticizes the study for failing to consult primary manuscripts at Yale, which would clarify Boswell's working methods and correct factual errors regarding his nuptial odes and specific animadversions on Piozzi.
CGV entry 4:226. Review by John C. Riely of the book by William R. Siebenschuh.
Boulton judges the book a minor achievement with a simple thesis: Boswell's biographical works differ in purpose, style, and structure. Siebenschuh convincingly challenges the misconception of Boswell as a non-artist, but Boulton questions if the investigation warrants the form of a full book at this price.
CGV entry 4:226. A review with reservations by James T. Boulton of the book by William R. Siebenschuh.
Fairer supports Siebenschuh’s challenge to the idea of a single, evolving biographical method across Boswell’s major works. He validates the analysis of Boswell’s "confrontational" strategy in the Life—using Johnson’s oddities as foils for his strengths—as an advancement over the methods used in the Tour. However, Fairer notes a failure to distinguish between interpretive dramatization and large-scale organization, suggesting the text lacks the density required for its physical size.
CGV entry 4:226. A review with reservations by David Fairer of the book by William R. Siebenschuh.
The Triumph of Culture: Eighteenth-Century Perspectives
Tracy explores the biographical methodology of Boswell, characterizing him as a practitioner of eighteenth-century empiricism who relied on masses of verifiable facts. Johnson steered Boswell toward collecting anecdotes, which Johnson defined as tid-bits of unpublished secret history. Although Johnson expressed skepticism regarding the reliability of anecdotes and often preferred private autobiography for its supposed access to truth, Boswell constructed the Life of Johnson from thousands of detached particulars, including letters and reports of conversations. Tracy argues that while Boswell claimed to use a scrupulous authenticity to preserve Johnson, the resulting work is a creative product of the imagination. The narrative follows a discontinuous series of episodes rather than a topical arrangement, allowing facts to speak for themselves. Tracy disputes the idea that Boswell achieved a multiple point of view, suggesting instead that the diverse sources are filtered through Boswell's own psychological needs and his desire to perpetuate his personal ideal of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 228.
Boswell achieved the authentic portrayal of Johnson in The Life by creating a kinetic reading experience that approaches temporal equivalence with the lived life. Boswell's great length, detailed chronology, and reiterated scenes—such as the Easter-day visits—decelerate the reader's inner clock, expanding subjective duration. His exclusion of the extensive Hebridean material and focus on a London milieu reinforces a thematic unity of place and action, enabling readers to feel they have long accompanied Johnson, thus successfully adapting the dramatic unities to biography.
Cochrane entry 230.
The Life of Johnson: An Anti-Theory
Damrosch challenges recent critical efforts to categorize the Life of Johnson as a unified work of art comparable to a structured novel. While acknowledging Boswell’s "preternatural ability" to recreate conversation, Damrosch disputes the claim that the work provides a comprehensive interpretation of a life. He identifies significant structural defects, noting that the disproportionate focus on Johnson’s final decade results in a "cumulative effect" of tedious medical correspondence and "pointless, brutal attacks" on others. Damrosch argues that Boswell lacks the "deep and full insight" into Johnson’s mind found in the writings of Piozzi, particularly regarding the "diseases of the imagination". Furthermore, The text notes that Boswell’s "pompous" authorial tone and "flabby" prose often intrude upon the narrative. Damrosch concludes that the biography is an "uneven but unique" performance where the "extraordinary excellence of the dramatic episodes" compensates for a mass of boring editorial matter.
Cochrane entry 231.
The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers
Buchanan chronicles the complex history of Boswell's private papers, from their preservation at Auchinleck after the biographer's death in 1795 to their eventual acquisition by Yale University. The narrative challenges long-standing myths that Boswell's literary executors, Malone and Sir William Forbes, destroyed the manuscripts. Buchanan details how the papers remained in family hands, moving from Scotland to Malahide Castle in Ireland, where Ralph Heyward Isham first negotiated their purchase in the 1920s. The work recounts Isham’s twenty-five-year struggle to reunite the archives, including the discovery of a major cache at Fettercairn House by Claude Colleer Abbott in 1930 and the subsequent legal battle in the Scottish Court of Session to determine ownership. Buchanan explains the contents of the various finds, noting the inclusion of the original London journal and materials for the Life of Johnson. The account features salient quotations from family correspondence and legal documents, such as Malone's 1809 letter stating the papers "are now deposited at Auchinleck; in which repository, I trust, they will be suffered to remain in peace." Buchanan describes Isham’s personal and financial sacrifices, characterizing the final assembly of the collection at Yale as "an epic feat of literary salvage." The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Bell, in the TLS, praises the highly documented account of the dramatic archival acquisition, noting its valuable sidelights on literary scholarship and institutional rivalry. Fussell (SEL) characterizes the narrative as a model of solid, quiet excellence that achieves the status of literature, highlighting its fair treatment of all parties and meticulous annotation. In JNL, Clifford and Middendorf evaluate the work as a remarkable and objective demythologization of a fabulous tale, emphasizing the careful weighing of legal and financial evidence. Altick's review in MLQ recognizes the use of unique legal expertise to untangle the complexities of the legacy, emphasizing the dramatic revelation of the secrecy surrounding successive cache discoveries. Writing for Studies in Burke and His Time, Greene praises the factual precision and narrative skill but disputes the ultimate literary value of the recovered archives, arguing that the underlying industry relies on commercial sensationalism rather than significant scholarship. Hartley, in the Sewanee Review, credits the central collector with reuniting the legacy through intense persistence despite deliberate efforts at censorship. In the Antioch Review, Miller commends the masterful scholarly narrative for successfully clarifying the intricacies of Scottish law. Quennell (History Today) finds the study dramatic and admirable, containing lively portraits despite dense bibliographical details. Additionally, Scott, in Country Life, praises the account as a gripping detective story that illuminates the scholarly significance of restoring heavily censored passages.
CGV entry 4:232. The London edition was published in 1975.
Cochrane entry 58.
Reviews: Richard D. Altick, MLQ 36, no. 3 (1975): 316–18; Alan Scott Bell, TLS, no. 3825 (July 1975): 734; James L. Clifford, New York Times, March 16, 1975; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 34, no. 4 (1974): 1–2; Grover Cronin Jr., America 132, no. 18 (1975): 362–64; Paul Fussell and David Buchanan, SEL 15, no. 3 (1975): 505–27; Donald J. Greene, Studies in Burke and His Time 18 (1977): 114–27; Lodwick Hartley, Sewanee Review 83, no. 2 (1975): xl, xlii–xliii; Nolan Miller, Antioch Review 33, no. 1 (1975): 118–19; Matthew Moulton, The Scotsman, March 22, 1975; Robert Nye, Christian Science Monitor, March 13, 1975; Peter Quennell, History Today 25, no. 7 (1975): 510; Paul Scott, Country Life 157, no. 4058 (1975); Studies in Scottish Literature 13, no. 1 (1978): 283–89.
The Adequacy as Biography of Boswell's Life of Johnson
Pottle defends the Life against charges of biographical inadequacy, particularly regarding narrative thinness and structural faults. He posits that such criticisms misapply novelistic standards or stem from fear of biography overshadowing the subject's works. Pottle argues the Life's true organizing principle is not chronology but a complex, coherent "image" of Johnson's character, developed through redundant, characterizing detail. While acknowledging minor flaws (like Boswell’s public persona), he finds the narrative sufficient to ground this characterization. He maintains the Life successfully reveals Johnson's human personality, fulfilling biography's primary aim, and its character portrayal remains perennially valid.
CGV entry 4:234. Reprinted from Transactions of the Johnson Society (1974).
Coles identifies the previously unverified "Mr. Eccles" who dined with Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and James Boswell at the Mitre Tavern on July 6, 1763. The author confirms the identification made by Croker a century earlier: the man was Isaac Ambrose Eccles, Esq. of Cronroe, an Irish gentleman of fortune. Corroborating evidence comes from the manuscript journal of Caroline Tighe Hamilton, who recalled Eccles reminiscing about the dinner and boasting of his acquaintance with Johnson and other wits of the day. Eccles' literary interests and achievements included published editions of Shakespeare and a library containing works by Johnson and other Literary Club members.
CGV entry 4:235.
Cochrane entry 624.
Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre
Bruss analyzes Boswell's London Journal and Life of Johnson to illustrate the emergence of subjective fact and private sensibility as defining features of eighteenth-century autobiography. Bruss argues that Boswell uses the journal format as an instrument for "measuring psychology" and capturing the "fleeting variations" of consciousness that Johnson deemed unrecordable. Unlike the Life, where Johnson serves as a static, sublime force, the journal depicts Boswell as a fluid process, constantly experimenting with different "characters" such as the Spectator or Captain Macheath. Bruss highlights how Boswell suppresses his awareness of a future audience to maintain day-by-day immediacy, creating an identity "forged within and by means of his journal." The chapter concludes that Boswell's commitment to subjective truth differentiates his autobiographical performance from the objective, preservative goals of his biographical work.
Cochrane entry 627.
Boswell and Johnson: The Story of a Friendship
Cochrane entry 33. Offers a general-audience overview of the famous friendship between Boswell and Johnson, from their first meeting to their final collaboration on the 'Life'.
The Life of Johnson: Boswell's Rhetoric and Reputation
Explores the "Boswellian Paradox"—that the author of a great book (Life of Johnson) is not considered a great author—by examining the rhetoric of the Life. Boswell's conscious choice of a modest, unobtrusive narrator who functions as an editor, and his candid self-portrait as the often-foolish participant, were rhetorical strategies necessary to establish the credibility and human reality of his heroic subject, Johnson. The author argues that this "sacrifice" of his own literary and personal reputation is the direct cause of the paradox, making Boswell the casualty of his own biographical achievement.
Cochrane entry 239.
CGV entry 4:240. Reprinted from Modern Language Quarterly (1977).
A Bear by the Tail: The Genesis of the Boswell Industry [review of The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers, by David Buchanan]
Greene reviews Buchanan’s history of the recovery of Boswell’s archives, detailing the decades-long financial and legal efforts of Isham and the involvement of Lady Talbot. Greene recounts the saga of successive cache discoveries, the legend of their destruction, and the "conspiratorial silence" or "Operation Hush" maintained by Abbott and Chapman regarding the Fettercairn House find. While praising Buchanan’s "factual precision" and "narrative skill," Greene disputes the literary value of the collection, calling much of the archive "trivialities" and Boswell a "neurotic ... literary dabbler." Greene argues that the "Boswell industry" relies on an "indecent appeal" and the sensationalism of expurgated passages to achieve commercial success rather than significant scholarship. He cites early lukewarm assessments to question if Boswell warrants extensive study independent of Johnson.
CGV entry 4:241. A review essay of David Buchanan's 'The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers'. See comments by Marvin Mudrick in Hudson Review, volume 33 (1980), pages 111–118.
The Friendship of Johnson and Boswell: Some Biographical Considerations
Lustig offers a comprehensive view of the friendship between Johnson and Boswell, arguing that the relationship was more balanced than critics often assume. The article demonstrates that Boswell served as an intelligent intermediary for Johnson, introducing him to new authors and literary topics. Lustig notes that Boswell solicited materials for the Lives of the Poets, contributing minute accuracy that Johnson often lacked. The study characterizes Johnson as a father-surrogate supreme for Boswell, whose reverence for his mentor remained a motive and theme of the Life. Lustig highlights how Boswell’s exuberance acted as an antidote to Johnson’s gloom, expanding his world through travel. The analysis identifies a shared intellectual passion for literature as the ground bass of their association, allowing both men to criticize and emend each other’s work.
Cochrane entry 632.
The Correspondence of James Boswell with Certain Members of the Club
Mudrick analyzes Boswell's genius, arguing that his greatness lies in his meticulous transcription of Johnson's unpremeditated words and his fearless self-exposure in his journals. Despite being considered a non-gentleman by his contemporaries, Boswell's "forward" nature and deep love for Johnson allowed him to capture the whole man, making The Life of Johnson the greatest biography by preserving Johnson's conversation, which was often livelier and more characteristic than his formal writing. Boswell's omissions in the Life hid the full extent of their intimate, loving relationship.
CGV entry 4:243. Cochrane entry 241. A review of Waingrow's correspondence volume, pointing out that Boswell omitted passages revealing the deep mutual affection between himself and Johnson, likely because they were neither "gentlemanly nor entertaining."
The Relationship Between Factual Accuracy and Literary Art in The Life of Johnson
The success and power of Boswell's Life stem from the subtle interplay between literary art and the facade of factual accuracy. Boswell consciously manipulates, suppresses, and reshapes primary documents and descriptive details to create a controlled, heroic image of Johnson, all while convincing the reader of his slavish fidelity to the facts. The vast amounts of data act as verisimilitude, lending the "grand emotive idea" of Johnson's greatness the impact of absolute historical truth, making him a powerful, unforgettable symbol.
Cochrane entry 242.
Bradham analyzes James Boswell's narrative of the meeting between Samuel Johnson and his old college acquaintance, Oliver Edwards, arguing that Boswell transformed a brief, factual event into a complex dramatic scene through sophisticated narrative techniques. She contends that Boswell structures the episode around the ironic focus of Edwards's famous line about "cheerfulness... breaking in," while consistently portraying Edwards as a morbid, death-obsessed figure through imagery of age and decay. In contrast, Johnson is cast in the role of a life-affirming philosopher, with his dialogue echoing the arguments of Boethius's *Consolation of Philosophy*. The author suggests that Boswell knowingly presents this as a performance, aware that the cheerful Johnson is a mask assumed for the benefit of the melancholic Edwards. This is confirmed in a brief second encounter where Johnson's poignant silence on the subject of heaven reveals his true, more fearful self, providing a dramatic and truthful conclusion to the vignette.
Cochrane entry 243.
Cochrane entry 244. Argues for treating the 'Life' as an autonomous literary work, analyzing its characters and narrator-hero relationship without reference to the "real" historical figures.
Bell reviews Richard B. Schwartz’s monograph, which argues the Life of Johnson is essentially a book about Boswell, part of his autobiography, and unfavorably contrasts Boswell's image of Johnson with Johnson's own self-revelations. Bell praises the chapter reconstructing "Johnson's Johnson" from his own works, which focuses on the relationship of man to God—a pattern Bell asserts Boswell fails to grasp. Bell concludes that Schwartz recapitulates common attacks on Boswell's lack of coherent structure and obtuseness without properly engaging 20th-century Boswellian arguments.
CGV entry 4:248. A negative review by Robert H. Bell of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Halsband dismisses Schwartz's book, arguing that its purpose, despite the preface, is to denigrate Boswell's achievement, concluding the Life is Boswell's autobiography. Halsband calls the thesis questionable and defended at all costs. He argues that Schwartz judges Boswell unhistorically by modern biographical theory and criticizes Schwartz's attempts to diminish Boswell's time with Johnson and his constant, often contradictory, carping. Halsband concludes that Schwartz's enthusiasm muddies his syntax and that his extensive knowledge of the subject was put to unprofitable use.
CGV entry 4:248. A severe review by Robert Halsband of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Rothstein’s critical review of this sophisticated monograph examines Schwartz’s forceful, knowledgeable case against Boswell’s biographical limitations. Schwartz identifies the Life as an untrustworthy historical record that "suppresses politics and sex in favor of chitchat" and contends the book is a flawed, subjective work about Boswell rather than a historical account of Johnson. While acknowledging the value of Schwartz’s cautions against idolizing the text, Rothstein disputes the attempt to hold the Life to modern standards of scientific methodology and challenges the labeling of the text as an autobiography as "blandly insulting." Instead, Rothstein argues that the work’s episodic and anecdotal structure aligns with eighteenth-century epistemological procedures and notes that Schwartz fails to account for how historical audiences read the text alongside Johnson’s own publications. Rothstein concludes that the work serves well as a debunker but lacks success as a complete preface to understanding the Life.
CGV entry 4:248. A review essay by Eric Rothstein on the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Kelley reviews Richard B. Schwartz's Boswell's Johnson: A Preface to the Life, describing it as a book about Johnson masquerading as one about Boswell, preferring Johnson's self-image to the biographer's portrait. Kelley notes that Schwartz convicts Boswell of poor scientific procedure, undigested detail, and creating a "Boswellian setting." The reviewer finds Schwartz's ultimate argument—that the Life lacks a coherent image of Johnson—to be overstated, employing twentieth-century standards unfairly.
CGV entry 4:248.
Brady provides a sharply critical overview of Schwartz's "countermovement" against Boswell. Schwartz argues the Life "falls far short as a biography" because Boswell projects his own "prejudices" and "semifictive dimensions" onto Johnson. Schwartz advocates for a "proper biography" based on Johnson’s own writings and postwar monographs rather than Boswell’s "misleading portrait." Brady mocks Schwartz’s "stringent" standards and his dismissal of Boswell as a "perpetual adolescent." While Schwartz views the Life as "Boswell's extended autobiography," Brady notes the irony of simultaneously damning Boswell’s character while "appropriating his material" as a "quarry of Johnsoniana."
Lustig challenges Schwartz’s attempt to diminish Boswell’s creative achievement. She disputes the claim that Boswell’s 'theatricality' and 'distortion' result in an unrepresentative portrait of Johnson. Lustig defends Boswell's focus on Johnson’s conversation, arguing it provides 'the essential man' despite Schwartz’s preference for the 'official' Johnson of the writings. She finds Schwartz’s critique of Boswell's 'biographical morality' unconvincing and maintains that Boswell’s narrative techniques are central to the work’s enduring success as a 'dynamic' biography.
CGV entry 4:248. A severe review by Irma S. Lustig of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Siebenschuh evaluates Schwartz's polemical challenge to the dominance of Boswell’s image of Johnson. He outlines Schwartz’s argument that the Life is primarily Boswellian autobiography and fails to reliably represent Johnson’s inner experience or interest in science. While Siebenschuh notes some overstatement and a lack of manuscript evidence, he credits Schwartz with reinvigorating the debate over "Boswellian falsification." He suggests the work is essential for those who disagree with its premises, as it forces new thinking about the normative value of fictional techniques in biography.
CGV entry 4:248. A review by William R. Siebenschuh of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Schwartz's book, a critique of Boswell's Life as a distortion of Johnson, is deemed intellectually ambitious but flawed. Rogers criticizes Schwartz's condescending attitude toward Boswell's comic scenes and conversations, questioning his demand for a more "sophisticated image" and his exaggeration of the unknowability of others. Rogers argues Schwartz improperly accepts other accounts over Boswell's and incorrectly demands Boswell conform to contemporary philosophical and scientific trends.
CGV entry 4:248. A review by Pat Rogers of the book by Richard B. Schwartz, alongside another work.
Schwartz finds the book deficient, arguing Boswell's accumulation of facts leads to overly general conclusions. Schwartz criticizes Boswell for portraying a romantic, high-church Tory setting that reflects his own sensibility rather than Johnson's. Lavin notes Schwartz ultimately regards the Life as a "great book" but an "inadequate record" of Johnson's life, concentrating more on Boswell's autobiography and limitations.
CGV entry 4:248. A review by Henry St. C. Lavin, S.J. of the book by Richard B. Schwartz, alongside another work.
"This book is a preface to Boswell's Life of ohnson in the sense that the warning on a packet of cigarettes is a preface to smoking." Schwartz distorts the Life greatly to vindicate Johnson from flaws. He criticizes the perverse criteria that judge Boswell in scientific terms, ignoring that he was a lawyer. The book offers limited criticisms and seems a prolegomenon to a more accurate biography.
CGV entry 4:248. A critical review by Robert Folkenflik of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
The review notes Schwartz's adherence to a classical methodology, focusing on the biographical objectivity of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Schwartz severely criticizes Boswell, accusing him of prioritizing collection over systematic organization, misunderstanding Johnson's political and religious views, and manipulating his subject, thereby creating a lack of a coherent and reliable image. Schwartz values the Life primarily as part of Boswell's autobiography, cautioning readers to approach it with extreme suspicion as a record of Johnson's life.
CGV entry 4:248. A review by Albert Pailler of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Burke's critical review challenges Schwartz's thesis that Boswell's Life is a grievously flawed, unreliable biography that merely serves as a preface to modern scholarship. Schwartz measures Boswell's portrait against Johnson's autobiographical writings, claiming the latter reveal a deeper man balancing pride and humility via the parable of the talents. Burke disputes this method, arguing autobiography is no more reliable than biography, noting Johnson's self-assessment as good-humored conflicted with Piozzi's observations. Burke rejects Schwartz's preference for a fixed procrustean biographical image over an elastic idea, stating Boswell captured Johnson's contradictory angles and rational failures to evoke an imaginative response of affection and love.
CGV entry 4:248. A severe review by John J. Burke, Jr. of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Dowling's monograph is a perceptive study arguing that Boswell’s great subject is the hero in an unheroic world. Dowling suggests that the biographer constantly associates Johnson and Paoli with heroic protagonists and links their milieus with the lower worlds of lesser literary modes, seeing the Highland tour as a metaphorical journey into the past. Hardy's Samuel Johnson: A Critical Study provides a brisk, reliable chronological account of Johnson's literary career, using Dictionary definitions to illuminate his critical stance, but contains numerous factual errors and odd judgments. Fraser's Alexander Pope is a similar study, marred by muddle and impatience, but offers a lively first-hand critique, taking Pope's Essay on Man seriously as metaphysics.
CGV entry 4:249.
Anderson highlights Dowling’s 'new-critical' interpretation of Boswell’s major biographies as imaginative literary creations. The review focuses on the tragic rendering of Johnson as a hero whose traditional values alienate him from a 'skeptical, commercial, and bustling' modernity. Anderson identifies the chapter on Boswell as a 'biographical narrator' as brilliant. He concludes that Dowling successfully transfigures the comedy of the Life of Johnson into a study of isolation and philosophical heroism.
CGV entry 4:249. Review by Phillip B. Anderson of the book by William C. Dowling.
Buresch criticizes Dowling for a biased interpretation of the "hero" that oversimplifies the commonalities between Paoli and Johnson. While finding Dowling's analysis of Johnson’s isolation lucid, Buresch argues the work suffers from repetitive critical matter, a confusing structural layout, and inconsistent focus. The reviewer highlights significant carelessness in quotations from Boswell and notes the absence of relevant scholarship by McLaren and Hyde. Buresch concludes that verbosity and labored syntax further detract from the study’s intellectual quality.
CGV entry 4:249. Review by G. M. Buresch of the book by William C. Dowling.
Rawson highlights Dowling’s exploration of the hero as a stranger in the Hebrides. The review explains the proto-Carlylean heroism Dowling finds in the Life, where Johnson stands in proud isolation above an unheroic world. Although Rawson notes the book is entangled in theoretical fuss, he praises it as a finely argued study that successfully connects Paoli and Johnson to a similar heroic sentiment.
CGV entry 4:249. Review essay by C. J. Rawson on the book by William C. Dowling.
Dowling's study concerns heroism versions in Boswell's published works, focusing sequentially on Paoli, Johnson in the Highlands, and the "hero" in the Life of Johnson. The work effectively analyzes the tragic, inward, spiritual Johnson as isolated from his age, a figure resembling the postromantic alienated hero. Dowling, however, incorrectly assumes an age of comprehensive loss of moral certainty, distorting cultural history and exaggerating the centrality of marginal thinkers like Rousseau and Hume. The treatment of the Tour to Corsica is particularly insightful.
Nussbaum critiques Dowling’s insistence on treating Boswell’s Johnson as a purely literary projection. She disputes the generic imposition of tragedy on the Life, arguing that the tension between fact and fiction is essential to biography. Nussbaum challenges the claim that Johnson was a tragic figure isolated by a clairvoyant recognition of faith’s breakdown, noting instead that Boswell struggled with Johnson’s often unheroic behavior.
CGV entry 4:249. Review by Felicity A. Nussbaum of the book by William C. Dowling.
Reviews William C. Dowling’s The Boswellian Hero, which performs purely literary readings of Boswell's Tour to Corsica, Tour to the Hebrides, and Life of Johnson. Dowling classifies the works as pastoral, comic romance, and formal tragedy, respectively, arguing that Boswell created his heroes. Presents Johnson in the Life as a Christian hero, yet also the alienated hero of postromantic mythology, arguing the work is a tragedy taking place inside a comedy. Dowling's readings, which ignore the historical heroes to argue for the literary autonomy of biography, find Johnson to be a universal figure alongside Oedipus and Lear. The reviewer finds the argument uneven and unconvincing in its claim that the historical Johnson is irrelevant to the study of the Life.
CGV entry 4:249. Review by A. F. T. Lurcock of the book by William C. Dowling.
CGV entry 4:249. Review by Albert Pailler of the book by William C. Dowling.
Dowling' frames Boswell's Tour to Corsica, Tour to the Hebrides, and Life of Johnson as studies in the possibility of heroism within an unheroic age. Dowling argues Boswell created Johnson as a tragic hero and assimilated his world to traditional comedy. Spacks finds the literary interpretation too extensive, contending Dowling, like Boswell, ultimately relies on the subjects’ historicity and not solely on the self-created literary context.
CGV entry 4:249. A severe review by Patricia Meyer Spacks of the book by William C. Dowling.
Crane assesses Dowling’s interpretation of Boswell’s works as literary allegories of spiritual alienation. The study presents Johnson and Paoli as heroic figures at odds with a diminished environment. Crane identifies an over-rigidity in Dowling's theoretical scaffolding, particularly the antithesis between Plutarchan and pastoral modes. While praising the sensitivity of the readings, he suggests the interpretive weight placed on events like the Hebrides tour occasionally exceeds the evidence of Boswell's narrative artistry.
CGV entry 4:249. Review by David Crane of the book by William C. Dowling, alongside other works.
Fox reviews Dowling's Boswellian Hero, which takes a New Critical approach to Boswell's Tour to Corsica, Tour to the Hebrides, and Life of Johnson, treating them as autonomous literary worlds. Dowling places these works in the older tradition of the bios, arguing that the Boswellian hero (Paoli and Johnson) is an exceptional figure from an earlier age forced to look back for spiritual coherence in an "unheroic age." Fox notes an incipient romanticism in Dowling's analysis, which may distort the eighteenth-century texts.
Alkon discusses the argument that the Life should be read as a work of fiction, requiring the reader to dissociate Johnson's literary portrait from the historical figure for full appreciation of its literary merit. Dowling’s method, which sidesteps controversies over biographical accuracy, posits that Boswell created a "Boswellian Hero"—a figure living outside their "unheroic world" within a "private order of the moral imagination." Dowling classifies Boswell’s works by genre: the Tour to Corsica as a pastoral featuring a Plutarchan hero; the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides as a comic romance and escape into the past; and the Life of Johnson as a "tragedy taking place inside a comedy" depicting Johnson's spiritual struggle within a complacent age. Alkon concludes the book is a valuable "case for the defense" of the Life's literary canon status.
Brack's critical review argues that Dowling's study contains too much paraphrase and repetition, spinning a dissertation out into a book. Brack challenges Dowling's claim that a genuine objective method exists for biography based on a paradigm of science, asserting it does not fit literary theory. The review objects to the portrayal of Johnson as a hero isolated from society, stating that this view distorts the historical reality. Brack concludes that Dowling's narrow conception of Johnson fails to address crucial questions about biography and the literary interpretation of texts.
CGV entry 4:249. A review with reservations by O M Brack, Jr. of the book by William C. Dowling.
Boswell's Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men's Afflictions
This collection engages in retrospective inferential pathology, designated "paleodiagnosis," to analyze literary figures. Four essays focus on Restoration and eighteenth-century men, including Boswell, Collins, Smart, and Shadwell. The study uses medical insights to illuminate literary problems. The central chapter chronicles Boswell’s nineteen acute attacks of urethritis, almost all following sexual exposure. Ober uses the journals to track the disease and explores Boswell’s motives for repeated reinfection. Ober diagnoses the final cause of Boswell’s death as uraemia, secondary to postgonorrheal urethral stricture. This diagnosis relies on scrutiny of Boswell’s literary remains. This conclusion has achieved wide acceptance, though Purdie and Gow suggested renal failure as the specific terminal event.
Comic Fragments in The Life of Johnson
Bradham investigates Boswell’s use of "comic fragments" to reveal artistic ability and character depth in the Life. She argues Boswell transforms simple events, such as the purchase of silver shoe buckles, into "finely scaled comic interludes" using mock-heroic diction and "magnification devices." The article analyzes the "confrontation between eiron and alazon," positioning Johnson alternately as the bragging over-speaker or the "sly but wise" observer. Bradham highlights Boswell’s "light touch" in animal metaphors, momentarily transforming Johnson into a "lumpish and clownish beast" to enforce a ludicrous effect. By using "anticlimax" and triple allusions, Boswell exposes Johnson’s "thoroughly human vulnerability" and "selfish streak." Bradham concludes that these fragments prove Boswell’s contribution to comedy comes through deliberate art, timing, and "spirited participation" rather than mere objective recounting.
Cochrane entry 250.
Crisis and Character in Autobiography: The Later Eighteenth Century
Bogel analyzes how later eighteenth-century autobiographers—including Boswell, Gibbon, Sterne, Franklin, and Rousseau—reject the Augustinian model of conversion as a singular, transforming kairos. Instead, they view experience within a single, continuous chronos, where crises are denied, multiplied, or merely subjective. This shift reflects a move away from essentialist thinking and a transcendent reality toward a focus on individual authenticity and the ordinary, unheroic details of life, as exemplified by Boswell's biographical practice in the Life of Johnson.
CGV entry 4:258. See pages 508-512 for a discussion of Johnson and Boswell.
Cochrane entry 642.
Burke finds Dowling’s book a mixed contribution, noting it is an autobiography of Dowling’s intellectual journey as much as a study of the Life. Dowling’s claims are viewed with suspicion: his method is avowedly syncretist, his vocabulary simplistic, and he seems serenely comfortable with the logocentrism Derrida attacked. Burke disagrees with Dowling’s premise that Johnson is presented as a "hero" or that constant combat with Enlightenment figures is the central drama of the Life. He asserts that Dowling's heroic premise sabotages the admirable goal of establishing the Life's stature as a supreme work of literature.
CGV entry 4:259.
Dussinger acknowledges Dowling's basic argument for the Life's multiple structures is convincing and a useful corrective, but he judges Dowling's first objective—reconciling objective theory with Derrida—to be doomed. Dowling proves to be a reliable, modern guide through Boswell's rhetorical strategies, but Dussinger argues the book is essentially well-dressed rhetorical criticism, only superficially resembling deconstruction. Dowling's assumptions about the text are closer to Aristotle than poststructuralists; the book shows only a faint awareness of Derrida's metaphysics. Dussinger concludes that Dowling succeeds in complicating the encounter with the masterpiece, but the work occasionally comes under a bewildering Derridean influence.
CGV entry 4:259. A review by John Dussinger of the book by William C. Dowling.
Buttigieg reviews Dowling's Language and Logos in Boswell's Life of Johnson, a syncretist project attempting to reconcile New Critical and deconstructive theories. Dowling addresses the problem of narrative discontinuity in Boswell's Life by arguing that it is a coherent system of a plurality of worlds, replacing the formalist notion of a stable narrative consciousness. Ultimately, Dowling concludes that coherence is derived from the notion of an implied audience which serves as a center of moral judgment, moving away from Derrida and affirming New Critical assumptions.
Merrett finds Dowling's deconstructionist treatment of Boswell's Life of Johnson to be highly reductive and an example of resistance to objective criticism. Dowling argues the Life thwarts the search for coherence, dissolves narrative conventions, and that its true subject is the impossibility of biography. Merrett criticizes Dowling for ignoring Johnson's brilliant dialectical sense of moral truth by claiming Johnson was only interested in the nature of conversation, not its topics. Merrett also notes Dowling's dichotomous concepts of reality and imprecise prose detract from his argument.
CGV entry 4:259. A review with reservations by Janis Svilpis of the book by William C. Dowling.
Readers of the Life will be infuriated by this book's unrewarding, clotted prose and confusing, idiosyncratic readings. Gold criticizes Dowling for unnecessarily complicating the work and for positing arbitrary "centers" in the Life (like the Prayers and Meditations and the Club) without presenting evidence, only assertion. Gold is also uncomfortable with Dowling's central vision of the period's spiritual disintegration, which is taken from Carlyle, of all people, but concludes Dowling's Epilogue is written in clear, effective prose.
CGV entry 4:259. A severe review by Joel J. Gold of the book by William C. Dowling.
Dowling's work, which synthesizes formalist and deconstructionist approaches to examine the Life's discontinuous structure, is praised as ingenious and original for freeing the work from generic limitations, though it is ultimately deemed too ambitious for its scope.
CGV entry 4:259. A review by Felicity A. Nussbaum of the book by William C. Dowling, alongside another work.
CGV entry 4:259. A severe review essay by Brian McCrea on the book by William C. Dowling.
Dowling's study investigates the structure and coherence of Boswell's Life of Johnson using the ideas of Jacques Derrida and the "Yale critics." The central problem addressed is the work's heterogeneous nature, which Dowling argues is resolved by the presence of simultaneous, antithetical discourses revealing a plurality of worlds. The structure ultimately leads to a deconstruction of the idealized Johnson, revealing a dark core in the Prayers and Meditations, which is itself an illusion, proving the impossibility of the biographical enterprise.
Weinbrot's severe review argues that William Dowling misinterprets Boswell's biography by imposing an inappropriate deconstructionist framework onto the text. Dowling incorrectly claims that the book represents a system of unstable, discontinuous anti-worlds centered on a despairing portrait of Johnson in the Prayers and Meditations. Weinbrot disputes this view, demonstrating that Dowling uses a flawed chronology, errors in printing history, and a mistaken reading of Anglican liturgical traditions to force his thesis. Weinbrot notes that the book ignores manuscript evidence and treats ordinary printer conventions, like white space and quotation marks, as metaphysical arguments. The review concludes that Johnson's prayers, writings, and conversations complement rather than contradict one another, rendering Dowling's theories eccentric and unhistorical.
CGV entry 4:259. A severe review by Howard Weinbrot of the book by William C. Dowling.
Mell finds Dowling's deconstructionist interpretation brilliant as biographical theory, but it only minimally illuminates Boswell's specific biographical art and tells little new about Boswell's use of Johnson as a literary subject. The limited quotation from the Life suggests Dowling's interest lies more in theoretical ends.
CGV entry 4:259. A review by Donald C. Mell of the book by William C. Dowling.
Solipsism and Despair in The Life of Johnson
Johnson’s morbid melancholy functions as a mode of authentication for his role as a moral hero, representing an ennobling rejection of a "meaningless drama" played against an eternal necessity. Boswell perceives an invisible principle of sympathy between his own ontological anxiety and the struggle of his hero. While Johnson’s public conversation creates a "magic circle" of moral stability, his solitary suffering reveals a terror of solitude viewed as an existential state. Melancholy rematerializes the spectres of solipsism and meaninglessness that Johnson’s vigorous mind otherwise banishes through an "existential choice" of orthodoxy. This internal conflict between a "dialogue of the mind with itself" and the Augustan premise of universal reality ennobles his public performance. Johnson’s final triumph involves universalizing his private terrors to explain the "dark estate of human existence."
Cochrane entry 259.
Boswell's Creative Gloom: A Study of Imagery and Melancholy in the Writings of James Boswell
This monograph explores the structure of Boswell’s thought by analyzing the imagery he employed to navigate a life-long struggle with temperamental melancholy. Ingram argues that the image serves as Boswell’s 'basic unit of thought,' allowing him to assert identity and domesticate the 'monstrous shapes' generated by his 'creative gloom.' Through close critical analysis of the journals, The Hypochondriack, and the Life of Johnson, the study places Boswell’s mental unease within the context of eighteenth-century medical theory and modern psychiatric concepts, such as the Laingian need for 'confirmation.' Ingram details Boswell’s use of military, mechanical, and religious metaphors—such as the mind as a 'furnace' or a 'watch'—as tools for self-regulation and social posturing. The work pays significant attention to Johnson, characterizing him as a 'mental physician' whose 'inviolable reality' provided a steadying antidote to the nothingness of Boswell’s melancholy vision. While noting Boswell’s competitive relationship with rivals like Piozzi and Hawkins, Ingram focuses on how the biographical process itself functioned as a therapeutic release, enabling Boswell to reshape his past into a narrative of sanity and achievement.
Cochrane entry 647. Argues that Boswell consistently used specific patterns of imagery (e.g., machines, warfare) in his writing as a way "to regulate and moderate" his melancholy, though this often led to self-delusion.
Ingram argues that James Boswell's lifelong struggle with melancholy, what Boswell himself called his "gloom," was not merely a personal affliction but the very wellspring of his creative power as a writer. The book rejects the view of Boswell's hypochondria as a simple handicap and instead presents it as the central, shaping force of his literary imagination. Ingram's thesis is that Boswell's creative process involved a constant effort to give form to his internal psychological turmoil, which he achieved by developing a complex and recurring system of imagery. This "creative gloom" is traced throughout Boswell's entire body of work, from his early journals to the monumental Life of Johnson. Ingram demonstrates how Boswell repeatedly uses specific image patterns—such as those of dungeons, storms, besieged garrisons, and theatrical roles—to articulate and manage his feelings of despair, anxiety, and fragmented identity. By analyzing this imagery, the book reveals that Boswell’s literary art is a dynamic process of self-creation, in which he uses the act of writing to impose a semblance of order and meaning on his chaotic inner world. Ultimately, Ingram presents Boswell not just as a brilliant recorder of Johnson, but as a sophisticated literary artist whose greatest subject was the landscape of his own mind and whose melancholy was the essential condition for his genius.
CGV entry 4:265. A review with reservations by Pat Rogers of the book by Allan Ingram.
Nussbaum notes Ingram's thematic isolation of imagery to analyze Boswell's melancholy and self-image, arguing the method suffers from vague definitions and cursory application of modern theory.
CGV entry 4:265. A review by Felicity A. Nussbaum of the book by Allan Ingram, alongside another work.
McGowan describes Ingram’s study as a welcome examination of the relationship between Boswell’s lifelong hypochondria and his creative faculty. He highlights Ingram's analysis of "machine" and "soldier" imagery as tools for self-discipline and notes the book’s reliance on Foucault and Sartre to explain Boswell's escape into a self-created identity. McGowan observes that while the book illuminates Boswell's mental processes and miscalculated social roles, it underscores his limited self-knowledge and uneven literary output.
CGV entry 4:265. A review by I. D. McGowan of the book by Allan Ingram.
Ingram's well-researched study explores the autobiographical significance of Boswell's imagery, focusing on his "creative gloom" and depression despite his hedonistic gusto. Ingram analyzes the journals, The Hypochondriack, and Life of Johnson, arguing Boswell's self-image-making, influenced by Foucault and Sartre, protracted his problems by substituting "imaginative self-analysis" for candid self-scrutiny. The study gathers Boswell's self-images and sensitively comments on his rhetorical strategies, including his urgent need for communication and role-playing.
CGV entry 4:265.
In this mixed review, G. S. Rousseau challenges Ingram's thesis regarding the pervasiveness of eighteenth-century melancholy and his reading of Boswell's psychological state. Rousseau argues that Ingram demonstrates a faulty sense of how history and literature interact, presenting an understanding inadequate to explain a character as complex, narcissistic, and autoerotic as Boswell. Rousseau notes that Ingram forgets his own stated purpose and fails to realize that his choices require a deeper engagement with English and Continental scholarship. However, Rousseau concedes that Ingram's major contribution lies in compelling readers to reconsider Boswell's creative gloom and question dialectical relationships between psychology and printed images.
CGV entry 4:265. A review with reservations by G. S. Rousseau of the book by Allan Ingram.
Omura Kiyoshi Kyoju Taikan Kinen Ronbunshu
Bungaku to shite no Denki: Boswell Saiko
Bios and Logos: Boswell's Life of Johnson and Recent Literary Theory
Epstein examines the "academic environment" of 20th-century Boswellian studies, specifically the "corporate enterprise" of the Yale Boswell. He argues the discovery of the Papers created a "myth of the scholarly quest" that circumscribed critical interpretation. Epstein disputes Dowling's deconstructionist claims, arguing he remains "logocentric" by using terms like "gravity" to preserve a humanistic cell centered in Johnson. He explores how the "Age of Johnson" is being rewritten through the competition between established Anglo-American paradigms and "Franco-American paradox" theory.
CGV entry 4:268.
Cochrane entry 261.
Boswell's Literary Caricatures: A 'Wild Imagination' Responding to 'This World of Jest'
Cochrane entry 648. Documents and analyzes Boswell's talent for creating humorous character sketches, detailing the rhetorical techniques he used to expose the follies of his subjects.
Siebenschuh argues against the traditional critical separation of literary art and factual content, asserting that fictional techniques—including dialogue, dramatization, and narrative structure—often serve as the primary vehicle for valid interpretive statement in factual genres. Focusing significantly on Boswell, Siebenschuh demonstrates how the Life of Johnson functions as a "remarkable generic hybrid" that achieves the impact of historical truth through the literary powers of fiction. Siebenschuh details Boswell's conscious manipulation of source material, such as his expansion of the London Journal's first meeting with Johnson into a symbolic narrative masterpiece that controls reader response. By applying T. S. Eliot's concept of the "objective correlative," Siebenschuh explains how Boswell's dramatic "formulas"—recurrent gestures and archetypal episodes—objectify Johnson's character more effectively than standard analysis. The study maintains that Boswell "creates without inventing," using verisimilitude and artistic choice to liberate meanings inherent in objective historical reality. Ultimately, Siebenschuh defines the Life as a work that expands the limits of biography by synthesizing "generic appeals" to both the intellect and the imagination.
CGV entry 4:271.
Cochrane entry 263.
James Boswell: The Later Years, 1769–1795
The second and concluding volume of the two-volume definitive scholarly biography, covering the author's life from his marriage through his death, completing the narrative begun by Pottle. It provides an authoritative, comprehensive account for both scholars and general readers, relying on the massive collection of recovered documents from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House. The chronological narrative focuses on the production of The Life of Johnson, detailing the gathering of materials (starting post-1784), the composition/revision process, and the author's uncertainties prior to its publication. The volume chronicles the author's declining physical and mental health, the death of his wife Margaret in 1789, and the miserable episode of his involvement with the Earl of Lonsdale. The text documents his legal career (e.g., the Reid trial) and political activities. Brady's analysis details the author's editorial methods for the Life, including Edmond Malone's guidance on revision, the recasting of indirect speech into dramatic form ("JOHNSON"), and the transformation of raw materials into a "composition, in the full literary sense" through revision processes like summary, paraphrase, and conflation. The biography is connected to the Yale Boswell Editions project. Chapter 1, 'Nov. 1769-Sept. 1771', addresses the stabilizing effect of marriage on a formerly volatile character and his immersion into the routine of the Scottish bar. This period of domestic contentment and professional industry is highlighted by significant legal cases and the resumption of journalizing during a visit from the Corsican patriot Paoli. Chapter 2, 'Oct. 1771-May 1772', examines the persistent pull of London and the subsequent renewal of a vital connection with Samuel Johnson. The segment details a two-month excursion to the English capital, focusing on the contrast between a developing sense of professional responsibility and the habitual pursuit of social and intellectual stimulation. Chapter 3, 'Mar.-May 1773', argues that the protagonist's admission to The Club in London marked a definitive emotional and intellectual assimilation into the English establishment. It underscores the tension between his public life as a successful Edinburgh advocate and his private ambition to achieve literary immortality as Johnson's biographer. Chapter 4, 'Aug.-Nov. 1773', analyzes the famous tour of the Highlands and Hebrides as an inversion of the Grand Tour that provided essential material for a unique biographical method. The narrative focuses on the physical and psychological impact of the journey, emphasizing the interplay between immediate sensation and the recording of a formidable subject in a primitive environment. Chapter 5, 'Nov. 1773-Sept. 1774', addresses a period of political frustration and legal crisis, particularly the trial of the sheep-stealer John Reid. This chapter explores how the failure of political ambitions and the grim realities of the criminal law intensified a desire for escape to the English bar. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics celebrating the volume as an authoritative, definitive continuation of a major biographical project that provides a truthful portrait of an extraordinary literary figure. Altick, writing in Modern Language Quarterly, praises the seamless readability of the dual-volume set, while Rawson, in NYTBR, commends the double achievement of high authority and notable grace in managing a massive archive of detail. In TLS, Walker adds confirmation of the study's comprehensive nature. Scholarly journals, however, express specific reservations regarding the interpretive approach and editorial tone. Weinbrot, in SEL, delivers a mixed assessment, applauding the rounded, realistic portrait but criticizing the uneven editorial standards and the biographer's aggressive, territorial posturing against alternative interpretations. Writing in AJ, Vance appreciates how the narrative captures a weary man fatigued by life, illuminating the tired mind behind early insouciant impishness. Lamont, in RES, finds the work judicious and perceptive but notes that the narrative sags where personal journals dominate and detects a fatigued tone in the storytelling. Daiches, writing in ECS, commends the highly reflective account but critiques the failure to investigate the subject's conflicted attitudes toward the Scottish Enlightenment. Burke, in Albion, offers a critical perspective, arguing the volume becomes a victim of its own autobiographical record by emphasizing personal failures over artistic genius. In contrast, general interest and popular periodicals are highly enthusiastic. In Newsweek, Clemons praises the firm and enjoyable case made for the subject, while the unsigned review in The Economist applauds the superb annotations and successfully disputes historical caricatures of foolishness.
Cochrane entry 34.
Reviews: David Aitken, The Sun (Baltimore), October 21, 1984; Richard D. Altick, MLQ 46, no. 2 (1985): 208–12; Book World, 1984; Anthony Burgess, The Observer (London), December 9, 1984; John J. Burke, Albion 17, no. 2 (1985): 218–20; Choice 22 (1985): 678; Walter Clemons, Newsweek, October 1, 1984; Linda Colley, South China Morning Post, December 9, 1984; Linda Colley, Sunday Times (London), November 25, 1984; David Crane, BJECS 9, no. 2 (1986): 247–48; David Daiches, ECS 19, no. 3 (1986): 412–14; Richard Eder, LA Times, September 23, 1984; Irvin Ehrenpreis, NYRB 32, no. 5 (1985): 3; Oliver W. Ferguson, South Atlantic Quarterly 85, no. 4 (1986): 399–400; Iain Finlayson, The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 24, 1984; Edmund Fuller, WSJ, November 6, 1984; Isobel Grundy, MLR 81, no. 2 (1986): 453–55; Richard Holmes, The Times (London), December 27, 1984; Richard Ingrams, The Spectator 253, no. 8162 (1984): 28; Paul Johnson, The Listener 112, no. 2885 (1984): 26–27; Claire Lamont, RES, n.s., 37, no. 147 (1986): 422–424; Thomas Mallon, Newsday, December 23, 1984; Kenneth McLeish, Country Life 176, no. 4559 (1985): a39; John H. Middendorf, ECCB 10 (1984): 566–68; David Montrose, New Statesman, December 14, 1984; Benny Morris, Jerusalem Post, April 5, 1985; Claude Rawson, NYTBR, January 13, 1985; Joseph Rosenblum, Library Journal 109, no. 18 (1984): 2060; Richard B. Schwartz, Sewanee Review 93, no. 2 (1985): xxii–xxvi; Richard B. Schwartz, Washington Post, October 14, 1984; Patricia Meyer Spacks, Georgia Review 39, no. 1 (1985): 182–87; W. A. Speck, Literature and History 12, no. 1 (1986): 114–16; Robert Taylor, Boston Globe, 1989; The Economist, November 24, 1984; John A. Vance, AJ 1 (1987): 442–50; Evelyn Birge Vitz and Frank Brady, MLQ 46, no. 2 (1985): 205–8; Keith Walker, TLS, no. 4259 (November 1984): 1306; George Watson, Financial Times, November 17, 1984; Howard D. Weinbrot, SEL 25, no. 3 (1985): 704–6; Nigel Williamson, The Tribune (Blackpool), October 3, 1986.
CGV entry 4:272. A severe review by Keith Walker of the book by Frank Brady.
Weinbrot's mixed review assesses the biography by Brady as a rounded, sympathetic, and realistic portrait of Boswell. He observes that Brady charts the subject's decline from the hopeful youth depicted by earlier biographers to a weary man struggling with professional failures, personal tragedies, and chronic melancholy. Weinbrot commends the analysis of the complex relationship between Boswell and Lord Lonsdale. However, he critiques the work for its uneven editorial standards, specifically the jarring mixture of British spelling and American style. Weinbrot also objects to the biographer's aggressive, territorial posturing against those who offer alternative interpretations of the subject, arguing that such defensiveness creates unnecessary animosity. While he acknowledges the monumental effort represented by the volume, he concludes that the work suffers from both the subject's tiresome, repetitive needs and the biographer's excessive identification with his source.
CGV entry 4:272. A review essay by Howard D. Weinbrot on the book by Frank Brady.
Schwartz praises Brady's lucid, readable biography that avoids subordinating Boswell’s life to his relationship with Johnson. He highlights Brady’s treatment of Boswell as a neurotic everyman plagued by wine, women, and whist. The narrative balances Boswell’s limited talent and self-destructive tendencies with his benevolent exertions and literary triumphs. Schwartz notes the difficulty of maintaining sympathy for a subject capable of domestic cruelty and eccentricities while acknowledging Boswell as a powerful model of the human condition.
CGV entry 4:272. A review by Richard B. Schwartz of the book by Frank Brady.
Grundy provides an approving and largely positive review of Frank Brady’s biography of Boswell, which completes the work begun by Frederick Pottle. She commends Brady’s sympathetic handling of Boswell’s complicated personality, legal career, and character—specifically his combination of intense involvement and extraordinary detachment. Grundy notes that Brady vindicates Boswell’s biographical practices and abilities by establishing his commitment to "exactness of circumstances," his principle of value, and his method of relentlessly observing himself. However, the review challenges Brady for abdicating the biographer’s task of moral judgment regarding Boswell’s sexual conduct and roaming, suggesting the biography carries its defense brief too far. Furthermore, Grundy disputes Brady’s "stale and unfair" treatment of Piozzi, arguing that he withholds her due credit and uses double standards or tactics reminiscent of those once used against Boswell to criticize her Anecdotes while excusing Boswell’s own editorial tinkering. Grundy concludes that Brady's portrayal of Johnson lacks complexity and resonance.
'Did You Once See Johnson Plain?': Reflections on Boswell's Life and the State of Eighteenth-Century Studies
Bogel examines the enduring critical dichotomy between "Truth" (historical Johnson) and "Art" (Boswell's portrayal) in studies of the Life. He posits the persistent focus on Johnson's "reality" reflects a desire for unmediated presence, viewing Johnson as an authentic being transcending textual representation. This critical stance, Bogel argues, mirrors a resistance within eighteenth-century studies to contemporary literary theory, often favoring pre-formalist historicism. He calls for a more nuanced understanding of textuality, referentiality, and the interplay between historical and literary perspectives, urging the field to move beyond simplistic oppositions and engage more fruitfully with theoretical questions.
Cochrane entry 267.
Korshin's positive review examines this collection of new and previously published essays. The reviewer praises the thoughtful introduction but notes that some contributions fail to add new information. Korshin finds the theoretical discussions appropriate and highlights an essay by Vance that proposes Boswell downplayed the wit and humor of Johnson. The review cautions that Boswellians frequently ignore other works by Boswell as if he only produced one biography.
CGV entry 4:275. A review essay by Paul J. Korshin on the collection edited by John A. Vance.
Brady critiques Siebenschuh’s confused theoretical application of fictional techniques to Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Siebenschuh misreads Boswell’s text and relies on Rader’s flawed pleasure-truth dichotomy. Brady dismisses critics who attack Boswell’s knowledge and interpretation, countering that contemporary testimony affirms the Life’s fidelity. He refutes the view that Boswell lacked information or fictionalized Johnson's character, asserting that Boswell's understanding and detachment surpassed his rivals. Brady also critiques Bate's Samuel Johnson for its psychological skewing and blanking out of central questions concerning Johnson's mother and wife.
CGV entry 4:276.
Cochrane entry 268.
But Boswell's Johnson Is Not Boswell's Johnson
Burke contends the Johnson depicted in the Life is not solely Boswell’s subjective creation but a composite portrait significantly shaped by Johnson himself (through letters, diaries, and direct communications) and numerous other contributors. Boswell actively solicited and integrated testimony from friends like Reynolds, Percy, Hector, Adams, and especially Bennet Langton, whose long intimacy provided crucial information. Boswell’s inclusion of himself functions partly to establish objectivity. By incorporating multiple perspectives and explicitly attributing many anecdotes and details to others, Boswell constructed a portrayal whose objectivity extends beyond his personal viewpoint, making "Boswell's Johnson" a misleading simplification.
Cochrane entry 269.
Rader argues Boswell's Life achieves literary greatness by transcending mere factual reporting to present Johnson's character as its central, unifying subject, rendering it concrete, universal, and inherently moving. Boswell shapes disparate facts, guided by a dynamic internal "image" of Johnson, into epiphanies revealing this essential character. The work’s power stems from vivid, ethically resonant depictions of Johnson's acts and speech (heightened by Boswell), which cumulatively evoke admiration and reverence. This focus on character over chronological narrative explains the Life's structure and elevates it from history to literature, offering a permanent representation of human potentiality.
CGV entry 4:280. A reprint of a longer version from 1968. Reprinted in full in 'Modern Critical Interpretations: James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson"', edited by Harold Bloom (1986).
Schwartz addresses "The Boswell Problem" as the tension inherent in biography's mix of history and art. As history, the Life is factually incomplete and inadequate for the profoundly important historical Johnson, demanding rigorous scrutiny. As art, its "tellability" and Boswell's skill are undeniable, but cannot excuse historical shortcomings given Johnson's stature as a moral exemplar. Schwartz argues against viewing the Life purely formalistically. Pedagogically, he advocates teaching the unabridged Life despite its flaws, treating it as an essential cultural "catechism"—a foundational, though not definitive, text necessary for understanding Johnson, biography, and the period.
Cochrane entry 274.
Boswell's Second Crop of Memory: A New Look at the Role of Memory in the Making of the Life
Siebenschuh reassesses Boswell's memory in composing the Life, informed by modern cognitive science. He supports Pottle’s view of Boswell's capacity for detailed recall, enhanced by intense focus and journaling habits (including mnemonic strategies). However, Siebenschuh highlights memory's selective and constructive nature: perception filters experience, and recall involves reconstruction, potentially altering memories over time. He argues Boswell's memory actively shaped the Life's portrait, integrating recollections influenced by later perspectives ("second crop") with existing notes. This interplay between "memory art" and conscious literary choices contributed significantly to the coherence and specific focus of the Johnson presented.
Cochrane entry 275.
The Laughing Johnson and the Shaping of Boswell's Life
Vance argues that the Johnson of the Life is often a persona crafted by Johnson himself through his distinctive sense of humor, characterized by teasing, shocking pronouncements, and deliberate ambiguity. Johnson frequently manipulated conversations to amuse himself, control situations, confound expectations, and protect his privacy. Many of Johnson's most famous controversial or seemingly harsh remarks, often taken literally, should be re-evaluated as instances of this playful antagonism or calculated deception. Recognizing this performative aspect reveals Johnson actively shaping his own representation in the Life, challenging the notion that the portrait is primarily Boswell’s artistic construction.
Cochrane entry 280.
Boswell's Presentation of Goldsmith: A Reconsideration
Woods examines Boswell's complex portrayal of Goldsmith, comparing the Life's depiction with Boswell's journals and accounts by Reynolds, Johnson, and Percy. While Boswell includes Johnson's praise, his overall sketch aligns with the prevailing contemporary view of Goldsmith as a contradictory genius-fool, emphasizing conversational ineptitude and vanity. This contrasts with Reynolds's insight that Goldsmith often intentionally played the fool and Percy’s emphasis on his benevolence. Although Boswell's journal entries show increasing warmth towards Goldsmith later, the posthumously written Life sketch presents a more qualified, less sympathetic view, perhaps influenced more by popular anecdote than deep understanding.
Cochrane entry 281.
James Boswell's 'Life of Samuel Johnson'
Bloom's introduction contrasts Boswell's self-consciousness in the Tour to the Hebrides and the Life of Johnson. In the Tour, Boswell was "unboundedly open," even when Johnson's wit targeted him. He expected readers to understand his role. However, facing criticism for misrepresenting Johnson's treatment of friends, Boswell became "more reserved" in the Life. He acknowledges telling "nothing but the truth" but not always the "whole truth." Bloom explores this tension, suggesting Boswell's "Johnson" is a fiction, much like Boswell's "Boswell." Bloom argues, the Life succeeds through Boswell's love for Johnson, which refines the biography.
CGV entry 4:285. A collection of previously published essays and sections from books, with an introduction by the editor.
Literary form in factual narrative / Ralph W. Rader Boswell's control of aesthetic distance / Paul K. Alkon The Life of Johnson / Frederick A. Pottle Johnson's Johnson / Richard B. Schwartz Factual appearances and fictional effects / William R. Siebenschuh James Boswell / Frank Brady Gossip / Patricia Meyer Spacks
Greer attacks literary biography as a "predatory" and "lazy" genre that serves as a "terminal disease" to literature. Greer identifies Boswell as the "microbe" that brought this form to maturity, arguing that Boswell "revenged himself" on Johnson by "recasting Johnson's self and voice in his own style." This process results in a "grisly transmutation" where Johnson "became less" through Boswell's scribbling. Greer contends that Boswell’s intestinal flora lives in his pages rather than the historical Johnson, who exists only in his own neglected works.
CGV entry 4:286. On literary biography and Boswell in particular.
Mr. Hervey's Answer to a Letter He Received from Dr. Samuel Johnson, Wherein He Had Endeavoured to Dissuade Him from Parting with His Supposed Wife: To Which Are Subjoined His Letters to Lord Shelburne and Colonel Burgoyne
A direct and vigorous rejection of Johnson’s private advice to dissuade Hervey from leaving his wife. Hervey opens the response by highly respecting Johnson but fiercely accusing his wife of being "the most worthless Woman" and detailing numerous charges, including lying and extravagance, across sixteen pages. Hervey concluded by forgiving Johnson for his misguided intercession.
CGV entry 5:1. This work was written in 1763.
[Account of Burke's defending Johnson from charge of having written The False Alarm in payment for his pension]
CGV entry 5:3. This piece describes Samuel Johnson's reaction to a takeoff by the actor and dramatist Samuel Foote.
The Life of Philip Dormer Stanhope, late Earl of Chesterfield
This account provides a retrospective of Chesterfield’s dual legacy as a refined man of letters and a pragmatic statesman. It highlights his celebrated social standing among "all the beaux esprits," including Pope and Swift, and recounts his diplomatic success at the Hague and his "prudent and mild" vice-regency in Ireland during the 1745 Jacobite uprising. The text reproduces the specific "cock-boat" metaphor used by Johnson to rebuff Chesterfield’s patronage of the Dictionary, alongside Chesterfield's retaliatory characterization of Johnson as a "respectable Hottentot." The concluding sections describe Chesterfield’s final years, characterized by deafness and the loss of his natural son, and provide a substantial digest of his 1772 will. This legal document includes a unique "seminary of iniquity" clause, threatening his godson with a £5,000 penalty for visiting Newmarket or losing money at play, and notably provides for his "unfortunate friends"—his long-serving domestic servants.
CGV entry 5:4. This article contains anecdotes of Johnson and Chesterfield, including the erroneous identification of Johnson as Chesterfield's "respectable Hottentot."
[Praise of Johnson's conduct in the Dodd affair]
Briefe, in Jahre 1768 auf einer Reise in Gefolge des Konigs von Danemark
CGV entry 5:6. An account of a meeting with Johnson. A revised edition was published in Leipzig in 1786. The work was first published in incomplete form in the Deutsches Museum for March and May 1777 and February 1779. It was translated in the Monthly Magazine in March 1800 and was reprinted in various later collections.
A biographical narrative focused on the actor David Garrick. Davies, a bookseller and former minor actor, composed the work following his 1778 bankruptcy. It stands as the first biography of Garrick. Samuel Johnson encouraged Davies to undertake the composition. SJ supplied the opening sentence and early life information concerning Garrick's time in Lichfield and London. Davies credited SJ for encouragement, information, and anecdotes. SJ further helped Davies financially, arranging a benefit performance wherein Davies acted in Congreve's Way of the World.
CGV entry 5:7. This work contains a significant amount of information about Samuel Johnson, who contributed the opening paragraph and much of the material concerning Garrick's early life.
The reviewer dismisses Davies’s biography as a "farrago of anecdotes" written in an "unvaried strain of panegyric." While Davies places Johnson at the "head of English literature," the reviewer disputes this status, citing Johnson’s "want of acquaintance with the very elements of the Sciences" and a lack of a "candid, and catholic mind." The text suggests Davies’s gratitude to Johnson, who suggested the work’s plan, biases his judgment. The reviewer further mocks Davies’s elevation of theatrical figures to the status of "Demigods" and rejects the comparison between Garrick and Roscius, arguing that Garrick’s social success was merely a consequence of his hospitality rather than intrinsic superiority.
CGV entry 5:7. An anonymous review of the book by Thomas Davies, noted for its hostility toward Johnson.
Biographical sketch traces the life of Williams from her youth in Wales to her death in Johnson's house. Williams accompanied her father to London in 1727 to pursue his magnetical theories. Despite losing her sight in 1740, Williams published a translation of La Bleterie's Life of the Emperor Julian in 1746. Johnson provided Williams a permanent asylum in his home following a failed eye operation by Sharp in 1752. Johnson later assisted in the publication of Williams's Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. The narrative emphasizes Williams's extraordinary memory, needlework skills despite blindness, and her role as a social companion to Johnson after the death of his wife. Johnson's consistent patronage and friendship provided Williams financial and domestic security until her death in 1783.
Memoirs of Mr. Levet, with Dr. Johnson's Elegy on Him
The memoir traces the life of Levet from his origins as a Parisian waiter to his thirty-year residency with Johnson. It describes how surgeons in Paris funded the medical education of Levet in pharmacy and anatomy, enabling his later practice among the lower classes of London. Johnson maintained Levet as a companion rather than a dependent, providing room and board while Levet remained fiercely independent. The text notes the sobriety issues of Levet, which Johnson attributed to the professional necessity of accepting spirits from impoverished patients. The accompanying elegy by Johnson celebrates the "officious, innocent, sincere" character of Levet, his "unrefin'd" merit, and his sudden death in his eightieth year, which "freed his soul the nearest way."
Tolondron: Speeches to John Bowle about His Edition of Don Quixote
Baretti’s detailed reply to Bowle, who furiously attacked Baretti in The Gentleman's Magazine. The work centers on Baretti's thorough critique of Bowle’s edition of Don Quixote. Baretti previously worked on a translation of Cervantes' work that was never published. This scholarly dispute concerns the appropriate handling of Cervantes' influential text in literary culture. The resulting bulk is a 338-page volume written to prove his adversary's ignorance of modern languages and answer a short magazine attack.
Mr. Baretti's Relation of His Rupture with Dr. Johnson
Baretti extracts from his "Tolondron" an account of his final, contentious meeting with Johnson. He attributes the cessation of their long acquaintance to Johnson’s relentless banter concerning Baretti's chess defeat by Omai. The narrative highlights Johnson's tendency to carry sallies of humor further than intended, regardless of the recipient’s rank. Baretti expresses regret that his pride prevented an earlier reconciliation before he learned of Johnson’s death via newspapers.
Murphy addresses his critics, or Malevoli, by defending his literary career and recounting a specific instance of "unprovoked malice" involving a critic termed the Modern Zoilus. After this critic published contradictory reviews and letters regarding the tragedy Alzuma, Murphy and his adversary referred the matter to Johnson. Johnson conducted a discussion, examined manuscript evidence, and determined the critic was guilty of duplicity and "deliberate malice." Supporting Murphy, Johnson advised ending the "wretched paper war" through a brief newspaper paragraph. Johnson later observed at Streatham that answering such an opponent constitutes "sad drudgery," famously describing the malicious critic as living "the life of a bushfighter, and an outlaw."
CGV entry 5:11. An account of Johnson's intervention in a quarrel between Murphy and another writer.
Ignoramus, Comoedia; Scriptore Georgio Ruggle
The reviewer cites a letter from Johnson to Nichols dated April 12, 1784, to prove Johnson patronized the work. Johnson describes Hawkins’s proposal as "very curious" and recommends the terms as "liberal enough," specifically that the editor receive copies for friends while the publisher retains initial sales to cover costs. The reviewer credits Johnson's endorsement as a "no small recommendation" of the scholarly accuracy of the edition's historical notes and glossary of law terms.
CGV entry 5:12. Describes Johnson's assistance to the young Hawkins.
Brooke maintains a literary reputation for her novels and tragedies, including The History of Lady Julia Mandeville and Rosina. Prior to her departure for Canada, she hosts a farewell party attended by Hannah More, Seward, Johnson, and Boswell. Johnson departs the gathering early but requests Brooke meet him in a separate room. He explains the summons by stating, 'Madam, I sent for you down stairs that I might kiss you, which I did not choose to do before so much company.' Separately, a review of Leland's work notes that Johnson 'always mentioned Dr. Leland with cordial regard and with marked respect.'
CGV entry 5:13. See also Notes and Queries, 5th series, volume 3 (May 15, 1875), pages 391-392.
Forty Years' Correspondence Between Geniusses ov Boath Sexes and James Elphinston
This six-volume edition presents Elphinston’s extensive correspondence and poetry from approximately 1750 to 1790, printed in his idiosyncratic 'orthographical' system intended to align English spelling with pronunciation. The collection highlights Elphinston's long-standing professional and personal bond with Johnson, whom Elphinston refers to as 'my onnored frend.' The text records Johnson’s active support of Elphinston’s pedagogical and linguistic projects, including Johnson’s role in introducing 'a verry plezing pupil' to Elphinston’s academy in 1773. Correspondence details Johnson’s 1773 'vizzit' to Scotland, where Elphinston notes Johnson received 'evvery onnor he evverihware dezervs' from the 'lerned and ingenious.' In a 1778 letter, Johnson offers Elphinston spiritual 'aid' following the death of Elphinston’s wife, advising him not to 'griev for dhe ded, az men widhout hope' as they are 'hafting to' follow' them. The volumes further document Johnson’s travels in the 'highlands ov Scotland' and his continued 'plezzure, and dhe pride, ov hiz frends.'
CGV entry 5:14.
An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots at Birmingham
Priestley recounts the 1791 Birmingham Riots, detailing the destruction of his home, laboratory, and library by a "misguided populace" acting in the name of "Church and King." He disputes allegations of sedition, maintaining that his celebration of the French Revolution and advocacy for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts constitute lawful exercises of "English liberty." Priestley mentions Johnson in the context of religious and educational exclusion, noting that "Johnson said the Dissenters must not be admitted into the universities, because that would be to furnish their enemies with arms." Priestley challenges this "jealous exclusion," asserting that Dissenters possess sufficient intellectual weapons despite their lack of access to Oxford and Cambridge. He concludes by affirming his commitment to "the cause of truth" and his intention to resume his philosophical and theological pursuits in London.
CGV entry 5:15. Part 2, pages 103–104 discuss Johnson's acquaintance with Priestley and Price.
Lardener reports an anecdote from Lort claiming Johnson "encouraged Lauder" in his attack on Milton and revised the pamphlet. The text suggests Johnson wrote the "preface and postscript" for Lauder’s work. A "Vindicator of Milton" identifies the "elegant and nervous" style as evidence of Johnson’s authorship. Lardener disputes that Johnson was conscious of the forgery, suggesting he was the "dupe of a mean and impudent Scotchman." The letter notes Johnson likely drew up Lauder’s subsequent public confession.
An Interesting Dialogue between the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson and Mrs. Knowles
This article documents a spirited exchange between Samuel Johnson and Mary Knowles concerning a young woman's conversion to Quakerism. Johnson expresses "boisterous violence" toward the convert, labeling her an "odious wench" for her apostasy from the established church. Knowles defends the woman as a moral agent with the right to examine her faith. After Knowles outlines Quaker beliefs, including their acceptance of the Apostle's Creed with specific exceptions, Johnson admits he had misunderstood their position. The dialogue concludes with Johnson regaining his cheerfulness during a shared coffee.
CGV entry 5:17. See also responses from C. R. in the same journal (September), pages 798-799; and G. Sael, volume 66 (Supplement 1796), page 1074.
A Dialogue between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Knowles
Knowles supplements Boswell’s account of a theological dispute concerning the conversion of Jenny Harry to Quakerism. Knowles disputes Boswell’s representation of the event, asserting he suppressed particulars despite acknowledging their truth. The text presents a dialogue wherein Knowles challenges Johnson’s claim that Harry’s change of faith constituted "apostacy" and a departure from the "Christian Religion." Johnson argues for "implicit obedience" to the state-established church, maintaining Harry "had no business to leave it." Knowles questions the "monstrous" concept of a state conscience and defends the right of an "accountable creature" to seek better religious conviction. She clarifies Quaker tenets, noting acceptance of the "divine history of facts" in the New Testament while rejecting the descent into hell and "resurrection of the body." Johnson characterizes Quakers as "little better than Deists" and "upstart Sectaries" before acknowledging he "did not at all suppose" the sect had such a defense. The account emphasizes Johnson’s "boisterous violence" and "bigoted Sophistry" in contrast to the "mild fortitude" of Knowles.
A Dialogue Between Mrs. Knowles and Dr. Johnson
Knowles transcribes her 1778 theological dispute with Johnson regarding the conversion of Jane Harry to Quakerism. The preface alleges Boswell suppressed this account in his biography of Johnson despite previously acknowledging its veracity. Knowles challenges Johnson’s assertion that Harry’s "apostacy" constituted a departure from Christianity, defending the right of "an accountable creature" to examine educational tenets. Johnson argues for "implicit obedience" to the state religion, claiming a "wench of twenty years" lacks the moral agency to determine her own faith. Knowles asserts Quaker alignment with the Apostles' Creed, excepting the "descent into Hell" and "resurrection of the body." Johnson maintains his "silent contempt" for "upstart Sectaries" but eventually adopts a "chearful and entertaining" disposition after Knowles invites him to meet Harry in "bright regions where Pride and Prejudice can never enter."
Memoirs of the First Forty-Five Years of the Life of James Lackington
Lackington recounts his progression from a journeyman shoemaker to a prosperous London bookseller, emphasizing the role of industry and ready-money transactions in his success. The narrative includes anecdotes involving Johnson, specifically contrasting Lackington’s own "politeness" with Johnson's reputed social lapses. Lackington describes Johnson's "extreme fondness" for tea and details an incident where Johnson's habit of using his fingers to retrieve sugar from a dish prompted a hostess to replace the vessel. He further comments on Johnson's "prejudice against the Scotch nation," noting that even Boswell’s two-volume biography has not exhausted public interest in such "fresh anecdotes." Lackington suggests that until another figure of equal stature emerges, "farewell Johnson" remains impossible for the literary public.
New edition, corrected and much enlarged
CGV entry 5:18. First published in 1791. Pages 433-441 contain various anecdotes.
Hoole acquires the friendship of Johnson in 1761, a connection that lasts until Johnson's death in 1784. Johnson supports Hoole's dramatic ambitions by introducing him to Warton and providing critical feedback on the tragedy Cyrus. When theater managers raise objections to Hoole's Cleonice, Johnson reviews the play and gives 'an opinion in its favour.' Hoole attends Johnson 'constantly' during the final three weeks of his life. Following Johnson's death, Hoole undertakes the biography of John Scott of Amwell, a task 'intended to have been executed by Dr. Johnson.' Hoole also edits Dinarbas, a continuation of Johnson's Rasselas.
CGV entry 5:19. Contains much on his relations with Johnson.
Parr disputes Boswell’s assertion that Johnson never met Priestley due to the latter’s "pernicious" writings. Using testimonies from Johnston, Bearcroft, and Rogers, Parr establishes that Johnson and Priestley dined together at the home of Paradise. Parr contends that Johnson was previously informed of Priestley’s presence and displayed "particular civility" and respect during the interview. While Boswell records Johnson’s past refusal to remain in the company of Price, Parr argues that Johnson’s willingness to meet Priestley contradicts Boswell’s portrayal of an inflexible moralist. The evidence suggests Johnson may have solicited or at least consented to the meeting, challenging the accuracy of the biographical accounts provided by Boswell.
CGV entry 5:21. See also a reply from Filiolus in the same journal (May), pages 392-393.
Supplement to Anecdotes of Some Distinguished Persons, Chiefly of the Present and Two Preceding Centuries
This compilation serves as a concluding volume to a biographical series, emphasizing that biography acts as "Philosophy rendered dramatic" and is essential for the practical "purposes of life." The text offers various anecdotes and letters concerning historical figures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Notably, it includes an "elegant" characterization of Samuel Johnson as a "great master" of narrative writing, quoting his views from the Idler, No. 84, on the efficacy of biography in reflecting human experience. In a significant digression from its historical focus, the text introduces the living character of Dr. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, defending his reputation as a "sagacious" and "honest" politician whose advice on the American War was tragically ignored. Furthermore, the volume provides a detailed "communication" between Judge James Hales and Bishop Gardiner, as well as several original letters from notable figures like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Isaac Newton, and Joseph Hough, Bishop of Worcester. Of particular interest is Johnson’s correspondence with Susan Thrale, the daughter of Hester Thrale Piozzi. Johnson "emphatically describes the advantages of arithmetic" to the young girl, positing that numerical inquiry provides "entertainment in solitude" and serves as a vital tool for "speculative inquiries" that dispel the falsehoods of the ignorant. He further dilates on the "state of progression" necessary for a rational life, asserting that the human mind is "enlarged and elevated" by the mere act of purposing a better future. The text maintains that Johnson’s critical perspective on the penal laws and his defense of "National justice" remain central to scholarly inquiry.
CGV entry 5:22.
The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight
CGV entry 5:23. Quoted by Malone from Reynolds's notes. Reprinted in 'Johnsonian Miscellanies', edited by G. B. Hill (1897).
Ryland survived as the final member of the Rambler Club and maintained a primary connection to Johnson throughout his life. Ryland contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine and participated in the revival of the Beef-steak Head club to provide solace for Johnson. During Johnson's final illness, Ryland provided constant visitation and subsequently attended the funeral. Ryland authored portions of previous accounts concerning Johnson and possessed unique qualifications to delineate Johnson's character. Despite Johnson labeling Ryland a republican, Ryland remained a consistent Whig and a defender of the constitution.
CGV entry 5:24. Contains much about his relations with Johnson and denials of his Calvinistic Christianity from other correspondents.
Lady K--- provides a primary account of Williams, emphasizing her intellectual firmness and role within the household of Johnson. The narrative clarifies that Williams maintained financial independence through Welsh relatives, Montagu, and a subscription for her poems, rather than being a burden to Johnson. Johnson offers consolation to his wife regarding her undutiful son and displays characteristic wit concerning the Wilkinson will. Discussion of Thrale reveals her avoidance of Williams despite the encouragement of Johnson. The text asserts the political and religious orthodoxy of Johnson, noting his final opposition to the Church of Rome and his 'steady uniformity in wisdom, virtue, and religion.'
Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of Sir William Jones
Teignmouth chronicles the life and intellectual trajectory of Jones, specifically highlighting his transition from "juvenile poems" and "Oriental literature" to the rigorous "study of the law." Jones’s professional life in India centers on his efforts to "give the natives of these Indian provinces a permanent security" through a comprehensive digest of local jurisprudence. Teignmouth documents Jones's membership in the Turk’s-Head Club and his "intimate friendship" with Johnson, who described Jones as "one of the most enlightened of the sons of men." The narrative identifies Jones’s "enthusiastic veneration" for the British constitution and his belief in the "divine origin" of the Christian Scriptures. Teignmouth asserts that Jones "never neglected any opportunity of contributing to the advancement of Oriental literature" while fulfilling his judicial duties. The account details the "irreparable loss" felt at Jones's death in 1794, following a life dedicated to "practical utility" and the "good of mankind."
CGV entry 5:27.
An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D.
Forbes chronicles the life of James Beattie, focusing on his dual legacy as a poet and a moral philosopher who challenged the skeptical system of David Hume. The narrative follows Beattie from his humble origins in Kincardineshire to his professorship at Marischal College, Aberdeen. Forbes integrates a vast collection of Beattie's original letters to illustrate his intellectual development and personal character. Significant attention is given to the publication and reception of Beattie's principal works, including his attack on skepticism and his celebrated poem on the progress of genius. The biography highlights Beattie's interactions with prominent contemporaries. Johnson appears as a supportive friend who provides high compliments on Beattie's writings, rejects misrepresentations of his character, and hosts him in London alongside Boswell and General Paoli. Boswell's publication of Johnson's sayings receives a mixed review from Beattie, who disputes the propriety of recording a man's foibles and "violent prejudices," yet acknowledges Boswell's personal kindness. Piozzi is mentioned regarding her anecdotes of Johnson, part of a trend of posthumous publications that Beattie fears might "kill him with kindness" by emphasizing infirmities over merit. The work details Beattie's efforts to promote religious and moral truth through his lectures and essays, while documenting the domestic tragedies and declining health that marked his later years.
CGV entry 5:28. Extracts were reprinted in 'Johnsoniana; or Supplement to Boswell' (London, 1836).
Biographical Memoirs of the Late Rev. Joseph Warton
A comprehensive biographical account of Joseph Warton, tracing his lineage from the Wartons of Beverly and his education at Winchester and Oriel College. Wooll highlights Warton's professional life as Head Master of Winchester School and his relationships with contemporary luminaries. The collection includes several letters from Johnson, which document their long-standing but occasionally strained friendship. In one 1754 letter, Johnson congratulates Warton on his contributions to The Adventurer, lamenting the "misery and degradation" of their mutual friend, the poet William Collins. Later correspondence concerns Johnson’s request for anecdotes for his Lives of the Poets, specifically regarding the roles of Fenton and Broome in the translation of the Odyssey. The memoirs also preserve details of the "Round Robin" regarding Oliver Goldsmith's epitaph and Warton’s eventual clerical preferments under Bishop Lowth.
Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter
This edition compiles Pennington's narrative of Carter's life with her poetry, essays, and biblical notes. Pennington emphasizes Carter's linguistic mastery and "unvarying piety." Johnson, a longtime friend, asserts that Carter "understood Greek better than any one whom he had ever known." Their relationship, established through Cave, remained respectful, with Johnson praising her "goodness" and "understanding." The text recounts Johnson's 1756 request for Carter to patronize a benefit for Williams and his attribution of their meeting to the "poor dear Cave." Carter defended Johnson's moral principles against biographers who published his "opinions broached in the warmth of argument." The text acknowledges Boswell's record of an epigram on Carter.
CGV entry 5:30. A second edition was published in 1818.
A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from 1741 to 1770
This edition collects correspondence between Carter, Talbot, and Vesey, transcribed from original manuscripts. The letters from 1762 to 1769 document the social and intellectual lives of these prominent Bluestockings. Frequent references to Johnson illustrate his status within this circle. Carter reports on Johnson’s health, his social engagements, and his literary opinions. The correspondence highlights the mutual respect between Johnson and Carter, particularly regarding her translation of Epictetus. The letters also detail his interactions with mutual friends like Montagu and provide contemporary perspectives on his domestic life and late-career activities.
CGV entry 5:31. A new edition in 4 volumes was published by Rivington in 1809.
Memoirs of the Political and Private Life of James Caulfield, Earl of Charlemont
Charlemont, the fourteenth member of the Literary Club, held Johnson in esteem, but became "acutely embarrassed" by Boswell's account of an episode involving himself. It transformed into profound disgust regarding Boswell’s biographical approach, particularly his willingness to expose private details. Charlemont criticized the biography for airing demeaning intimacies and being "unjust to the society which was occasionally gathered around him." The Memoirs also serves as a repository for correspondence between Charlemont and Johnson's associates, such as Topham Beauclerk, whose letters appear in Hardy’s work.
CGV entry 5:32. A second edition was published in 1812.
The Poetical Works of Anna Seward; with Extracts from Her Literary Correspondence
Seward's extensive biographical commentary offers a strong counter-narrative to the near-canonization fostered by Boswell. Drawing on her familiarity with Johnson's Lichfield origins, Seward—who Scott suggests may have harbored some social resentment toward the local tradesman's son—acted as a self-appointed adversarial critic of the "Old Lion." Her letters detail Johnson's early life, including the "absurd romance" that he was in love with his future stepdaughter, Lucy Porter, and provide crucial, though sometimes biased, insights into his character. Seward condemned Johnson as a "Colossus" and "despot," a brilliant mind marred by "social bullying," "gloomy misanthropy," and "corroding envy," even reporting his extreme horror and requests for company during his final illness. In literary criticism, she argued that Johnson's "sophistry" and low estimation of poets like Gray and Milton (particularly the "absurd criticisms on the Lycidas") marked the "downfall of just poetic taste." Despite this antagonism, Seward praised his prose style, defending its "poetic efflorescence" and "harmonious cadence" as the perfection of writing.
Notices of Dr. Johnson and Francis Barber
This letter to the editor provides anecdotal updates from a visit to Lichfield. The correspondent reports that the Ediall house, where Johnson taught Garrick, was demolished in 1809. It identifies Francis Barber’s widow and daughter as keepers of a day-school in Stow-street. The letter describes Mrs. Barber’s "distress," which forced her to part with Johnson's tea-service (a gift from Warren Hastings) and a pocket-book. The author notes that a "literary lady" reclaimed this pocket-book for a "remuneration" far below its value. Additional details include the location of Barber’s grave in Hammerwich and the occupation of Johnson’s birthplace by a brazier and a French prisoner of war.
CGV entry 5:34.
Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century
Nichols chronicles the literary landscape of the eighteenth century, centered on the life and professional circle of printer William Bowyer. The biographical narrative presents Samuel Johnson as a formidable figure whose intellectual dominance and moral fortitude define the age. Nichols identifies Johnson as a steady contributor and supporter of Cave’s Gentleman’s Magazine, noting that Cave "had the approbation of Johnson" for the publication’s outline. The collection of anecdotes captures Johnson’s interactions with various luminaries, including his interview with Samuel Badcock and his influence on the career of printer William Strahan. Nichols recounts Johnson’s presence within the Gentlemen’s Society at Spalding and his role as a "steady and indefatigable coadjutor" to Nichols himself. James Boswell appears throughout the volumes, primarily in relation to his biographical efforts and social connections within Johnson’s circle. Hester Thrale Piozzi is noted for her literary contributions and her significant, though eventually strained, relationship with Johnson. Nichols provides specific details on her published works, such as her British Synonymy, and documents the public reception of her writings. The work includesSalient quotations from Johnson, such as his observation that "Lives can only be written from personal knowledge," illustrating his biographical philosophy. Nichols also preserves epistolary evidence, including letters from Johnson to Bowyer, which underscore the printer’s professional eminence. Through these diverse biographical sketches, Nichols maps the intricate web of friendships and rivalries that sustained the eighteenth-century republic of letters.
CGV entry 5:35. Incorporates his 'Anecdotes, Biographical and Literary, of the Late William Bowyer, Printer' (London, 1778). A facsimile reprint was published by AMS Press, New York, in 1967. A one-volume abridgement by Colin Clair was published by Centaur Press, Fontwell, Sussex, in 1967.
The Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds ... comprising original anecdotes of many distinguished persons, his contemporaries
Includes anecdotes detailing Johnson's complex personality, social style, and wit. Reynolds initially found Johnson's late visits burdensome but became a close friend. Johnson fiercely rejected the unflattering "Blinking Sam" portrait, fearing his defects would be his sole legacy. Reynolds deemed Johnson unique because his conversation surpassed his writing. Johnson's wit shone through in his defense of Goldsmith and his low esteem for painting. His unmistakable writing style even thwarted a deceptive letter drafted for Frances Reynolds.
CGV entry 5:36. A second edition, "revised and augmented," was published as 'The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds' in 2 volumes by Colburn in 1819.
Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall provides a firsthand account of British and European political history from 1772 to 1784. In this first volume, Wraxall describes his travels through Portugal, France, and Italy, offering character sketches of various European monarchs, including Joseph I of Portugal and Louis XV and XVI of France. Returning to England, he provides an extensive analysis of the political landscape during the American War, focusing on the administration of Lord North. Wraxall dedicates significant space to the 'Blue Stocking' literary circles in London, specifically those of Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Vesey. He provides a detailed, if critical, portrait of Samuel Johnson, describing his 'rugged exterior,' 'dogmatical manner,' and 'uncouth gestures' in social settings, while simultaneously praising his 'sublime' poetic works and 'gigantic' intellectual faculties. Wraxall also reflects on the mystery of the authorship of the Junius letters and the impact of the 1780 Gordon Riots. James Boswell is mentioned primarily as the biographer of Johnson, and Hester Thrale Piozzi is noted for her role as Johnson's 'Conductress' and friend.
CGV entry 5:37. Volume 1, pages 139–156, discusses Johnson, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Thrale, and others. See also his 'Posthumous Memoirs of His Own Time', volume 1, pages 232–235 (London: Bentley, 1836). Both memoirs were edited by H. B. Wheatley in 5 volumes (London: Bickers and Son, 1884).
Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu between the Years 1755 and 1800
Provides crucial insight into Samuel Johnson’s social network and the critical reception of his work within the influential Bluestocking circles. The correspondence documents the intimate, mutually respectful alliance between Carter, a renowned classical scholar, and Montagu, the wealthy hostess and "Queen of the Blues." Johnson was a subscriber to Carter’s 1758 Epictetus, and Montagu provided substantial financial support to his housemate, Anna Williams. However, the letters also capture the significant critical disputes following Johnson’s later works, particularly the Lives of the Poets. Montagu was known to be "furious" with Johnson for his "slighting remarks" about poets favored by the Bluestockings, leading to a "considerable war in the salons." The collection, while insightful, cannot be fully relied upon for strict accuracy owing to Pennington’s admitted and extensive editorial censorship.
Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century ... Intended as a Sequel to the Literary Anecdotes
Nichols’s eight-volume sequel to Literary Anecdotes compiles "Authentic Memoirs and Original Letters" from eminent figures, providing an extensive record of the period’s intellectual life and documentation regarding the lives and reputations of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. The collection includes detailed accounts of Johnson’s circle and his reputation for erudition, preserving numerous anecdotes and personal letters that clarify his social circle and intellectual influence, including his interactions with figures like Dr. William Adams, Sir Herbert Croft, and the Rev. Baptist Noel Turner. Turner’s contributions offer a first-hand, reminiscence-based account of Johnson’s conversational style, his presence at the university, and their first meeting and subsequent interactions. One narrative details Jacob Bryant’s assessment of Johnson’s Greek scholarship, recounting a conversation where Bryant asserts Johnson "was not a good Greek scholar" despite his mastery of Latin. Boswell appears as a central biographical figure, with the volumes detailing the editorial history of his biographical projects and featuring memoirs of Edmond Malone by the younger James Boswell—which describe Malone’s indispensable role in revising and refining the Life of Johnson—while using the publication of the Life as a benchmark for biographical importance. Nichols also documents Thrale Piozzi’s literary contributions, personal history, and relationships within the London literati, specifically noting her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, her strained relationship with Johnson, and the "variety of anecdotes" and literary gossip surrounding her works. The volumes include correspondence from major figures like George Steevens and Edmund Malone, which offer insight into the Shakesperian controversies and editorial practices of the age. By presenting unpublished letters and "neglected biography," Nichols documents the competitive environment of eighteenth-century biography, reporting on the "Johnsonian School" and the collaborative efforts required to preserve the nuances of eighteenth-century literary networks and the history of these eminent figures.
CGV entry 5:39. Volumes 6-8 were compiled by John Bowyer Nichols.
Private Correspondence: Now First Collected
Walpole maintained a ceaseless, strongly critical stance toward Johnson, primarily conveyed in private correspondence, with over 180 critical entries in his collected letters, mostly dating from the 1770s onward. Walpole characterized Johnson as an "odious and mean character" with "sordid, supercilious and brutal" manners, dismissing his style as "ridiculously bombast and vicious." He attacked Johnson's "blind Toryism," accusing him of prostituting his pen and contradicting his definitions for a pension. Walpole intensely resented Johnson's literary judgments in the Lives of the Poets, especially the perceived slighting of Gray, which Walpole actively encouraged others to satirize. Despite this relentless hostility, Walpole never published his critiques, and Johnson refers to Walpole only twice in the surviving record, using faint praise. Walpole viewed Boswell with distaste for his intrusive social habits—recollecting that Boswell "forced himself upon me at Paris" and reporting his subsequent attempts to gain access in London. However, Walpole acknowledged Boswell's significance as a chronicler, deeming his Life of Johnson "gossipping" and expressing relief at being "very gently treated" within its pages.
CGV entry 5:40. Contains numerous references to Johnson and Boswell. Later editions of the letters were edited by Peter Cunningham (1857), Mrs. Paget Toynbee (1903–1905), and W. S. Lewis (48 vols, 1937-83).
Baverstock compiles his father's treatises, establishing the priority of applying the hydrometer to brewing. Johnson is noted for validating this shift from empirical brewing to philosophical science after witnessing the initial trials at Thrale's Southwark brewery around 1770. Thrale adopted the apparatus despite initial skepticism. The core text, Hydrometrical Observations and Experiments, details methods for determining the specific gravity of worts. Thrale's correspondence is included, supporting the work's technical focus.
CGV entry 5:41. Contains letters of Henry Thrale.
Memoir of the Life and Character of Edmund Burke
Prior provides a comprehensive biography of Burke, documenting his Irish ancestry, education at Ballitore and Trinity College, and his transition to London's literary and political spheres. The text emphasizes Burke's enduring friendship with Johnson, noting their mutual respect despite occasional intellectual skirmishes. Prior details Boswell’s role in recording these interactions, though focusing primarily on Burke's independent political achievements, including his stances on American taxation and the French Revolution. The narrative traces Burke’s relationships within the Literary Club, where Johnson reigned as a central figure and Boswell functioned as a persistent observer. Prior defends Burke against contemporary political detractors while evaluating his legacy alongside his most celebrated peers.
CGV entry 5:42. A second edition in 2 volumes was published in 1826, with later editions following.
This memoir traces the life of Maseres from his Huguenot ancestry and Cambridge education to his tenure as Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer. Strenuously opposed to "negative sign" algebraic notation and Newtonian fluxions, Maseres published extensively on mathematics, law, and history, including Scriptores Logarithmici. The text details his political stance as a "staunch Whig" and his religious views centered on a simplified "creed derived from my Saviour." Maseres’s personal character is defined by "inflexible integrity" and a "cheerfulness of disposition." A significant anecdote recounts his "disgust" following an evening with Johnson. After Johnson "fulminated one of his severities against Hume and Voltaire," Maseres declared he would "never willingly be again in that man’s company" because of Johnson's "dogmatising spirit," which served as a "complete contrast" to Maseres's own equanimity. The two men never met again.
CGV entry 5:43.
Recounts two interviews with Dr. Parr, a scholar whose conversational eloquence rivals Johnson's. Parr, described as a venerable man of great learning, retained his dictatorial schoolmaster manner in society, though he could also be kind and condescending. The first evening featured discussions on Methodism, politics, and the controversial passage in Josephus. The second visit included Parr's views on education, the professions, and his own unfinished life of Johnson, which he believed would have been his best work. Parr also recounts his famous contentious first interview with Johnson regarding the liberty of the press.
CGV entry 5:44. Contains an anecdote of Johnson and Parr.
Craven recounts her personal acquaintance with Samuel Johnson, whom she frequently hosted for tea during the later years of his life. She characterises him as a "gigantic and extraordinary" thinker whose profound learning was mitigated by a genuine "goodness of heart," though she admits to being intimidated by his reputation. Focusing on his social conduct, she notes his tendency to disparage contemporary writers and his occasional "bilious" temperament, which manifested in long silences or caustic wit. Craven defends Johnson against the invasive scrutiny of his biographers, arguing that his occasional harshness did not represent his deliberate moral sentiments. She highlights a private moment of tenderness where Johnson, pressing her arm, expressed his esteem for her based on her merits as a "good mother." Beyond Johnson, the volume details Craven's interactions with other prominent figures of the late eighteenth century, her domestic life at Brandenburgh House, and her observations on European politics and society.
CGV entry 5:45.
Recollections of Dr. Parr, Between the Years 1818 and 1825
Parr maintains several physical links to Johnson at Hatton Parsonage, including a portrait of the scholar and a print of his epitaph on Goldsmith. The narrative notes that Parr adopts a specific physical carriage "on one side, in the Johnsonian manner." When discussing 18th-century figures, Parr criticizes the editorial work of Mason on Gray and evaluates the prose styles of Sheridan and others. The text contrasts Parr’s classical enthusiasm with his distaste for modern novels, while documenting his reception of contemporaries like Byron and Moore.
CGV entry 5:46. In two parts: January, pages 21–26; February, pages 134–141. Contains anecdotes and comments on Johnson, Baretti, and others.
Parriana: Or Notices of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D. Collected from Various Sources, Printed and Manuscript
Barker’s compilation on Parr frequently compares him to Johnson, noting both men’s colossal intellect and dogmatic conversational style. Parr records a fierce metaphysical debate with Johnson regarding the origin of evil, with Horsley acting as arbiter. Parr contrasted the stiff letters of Pope and Warburton with Johnson's artless honesty, citing his correspondence with Thrale as revealing his inmost soul. The work also details the hostility of the Warburtonian school towards Johnson; Warburton privately expressed resentment over Johnson's insolence and malignity in his Shakespeare edition, despite Johnson’s public tributes. Boswell is often cited to illustrate Johnson’s opinions, including his estimate of Hurd.
Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D.
Field's biography of Samuel Parr (1747–1825) chronicles the scholar, divine, and prominent Whig politician's life from his Harrow education to his long tenure at Hatton. Despite early financial constraints forcing him from Cambridge, Parr became a formidable classical stylist, notably with his Latin preface to Bellendenus's De Statu, championing civil and religious liberty against the Pitt administration. The text contrasts Parr with Johnson, noting their physical resemblance, but highlighting Parr's more affable conversation and his philosophical candor versus Johnson's perceived bigotry. Parr highly esteemed Johnson's literary works, even composing his Latin epitaph, yet felt Johnson's judgment was hampered by superstition. The book documents Parr's influential circle, including Fox and Sheridan, and his active support for reformers like Priestley.
Beste records anecdotal evidence of Johnson's social interactions and physical vigor during his later years, specifically focusing on his relationship with the Langton family of Lincolnshire. Beste describes the character and manners of Bennet Langton, noting his physical resemblance to a stork and his exceptional skill in reciting Shakspeare. A central narrative concerns Johnson’s visit to Langton Hall, where the elderly lexicographer insisted on performing a "roll down" a steep hill, deliberately emptying his pockets before descending "turning himself over and over, till he came to the bottom." Langton also relates Burke's perceived rudeness in dispute, alleging Burke would "turn away in such a manner as to throw the end of his own tail into the face of the arguer." Additional anecdotes involve Johnson’s visits to Mrs. Brooke and Mrs. Digby, where he caughtingly teased the ladies for their "prudery" in praising the omission of "naughty words" from his dictionary. The text further explores the Langton family history, mentioning their ancient pedigree and the liberal political principles later adopted by George Langton.
CGV entry 5:49. Discusses the Langton family and a visit by Johnson to Langton.
As part of a collection of MS letters, Piozzi clarifies the origins of her acquaintance with Johnson, identifying Murphy as the facilitator who used Woodhouse as a "pretext" for their introduction. A letter from Piozzi dated 1810 confirms that the meeting occurred in Southwark and preserves Johnson’s specific pedagogical advice to Woodhouse to "Give days and nights, sir, to the study of Addison." Woodhouse corroborates this account, noting Johnson’s curiosity regarding his status as a "wild beast from the country." The narrative highlights the discrepancies between these primary accounts and the anecdotal evidence preserved in the biography by Boswell. Piozzi reflects on the loss of the original members of the Streatham circle, noting that only Burney and herself remained by 1810.
The Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A.
Northcote's recollections provide insights into Johnson's character and activities. Northcote relates that George III feared Johnson more than vice versa. He also recounts Johnson writing a letter for Reynolds, which she rejected because Johnson's distinctive style made the attempt at impersonation impossible, likening the stylistic difference to Johnson wearing her clothes.
Northcote recounts his early introduction to Johnson in 1762, when he sought to touch Reynolds’s coat during their visit to Plymouth. He preserves various anecdotes of Johnson’s social behavior, including his "pompous character" of Zachary Mudge—which Northcote contrasts with the plainer truth—and his refusal to be invited out to dinner like Garrick because "great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths stopped." Northcote describes Johnson’s literary dominance, noting he "looked down on the rest of the world as pigmies." The abstract also records Johnson's interactions with Miss Burney and his elevation of Richard Savage, alongside his habit of correcting Mrs. Thrale for minor inaccuracies. Northcote disputes the narrative that Johnson was a pattern of "wisdom and morality" without admitting he felt "hunted down" by contemporary critics.
CGV entry 5:51. Contains anecdotes of Reynolds and Johnson.
Contains vital Johnsonian material, revealing aspects of Samuel Johnson largely missing from Boswell’s Life. The text documents Johnson’s high regard for Dr. Charles Burney, reporting him stating, "You are my model, Sir," and crediting Burney’s Musical Tour as an influence on his own Journey. The Memoirs preserve the poignant near-death declaration, “I think I shall throw the Ball at Fanny yet!” illustrating Johnson’s affectionate side. Focusing on the Streatham circle, the work showcases Johnson in polite society, revealing the "playful, gallant" persona that Boswell sought to include but lacked material for. Published years after his death, the Memoirs form part of the expanding Johnsoniana, though they are subject to criticism for Frances Burney's conscious shaping and suppression of material for self-serving purposes.
Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More
Johnson’s interactions with More reveal his intellectual dominance and specific moral views. More recounts Johnson’s defense of a lady’s "softness" by likening her to a pillow, illustrating his penchant for sharp, metaphorical rebukes. Following his death, More reflects on his unclouded kindness and the vanity of his polished wit in the face of eternity. She laments his limited Scriptural reading and late-life recognition of evangelical truths, while praising his vigorous sense and unparalleled powers of illustration.
CGV entry 5:53. Contains frequent references to Johnson.
CGV entry 5:53. A harsh review by J. G. Lockhart (assisted by J. W. Croker) of the book edited by William Roberts, particularly with regard to its account of Johnson's religion.
In Volume 1, the editor provides a biographical introduction tracing Burney’s self-education and the secret composition of her first novel, detailing her introduction to Johnson at Streatham, where Johnson expresses "rapturous" approval of her work. Johnson compares Burney’s writing to that of Richardson and frequently imitates her characters, notably Mr. Smith; the journals record his gaily sociable "table-talk," his spirited defense of his literary opinions, and his "lenity" toward Burney as a young author. Johnson engages in frequent literary discussions with Piozzi, then Mrs. Thrale, and offers Burney "serious advice" to write for the theatre, while the volume also contains his comments on contemporaries including David Garrick and Sir John Hawkins, whom he labels "unclubable." In Volume 2, the text chronicles Burney’s continued residence at Streatham and the subsequent death of Mr. Thrale, for whose estate Johnson serves as an executor while continuing to mentor Burney, declaring he "never saw a word" of her second novel before its publication. The journals record Johnson’s "savage fits" of temper, notably a violent dispute with Mr. Pepys regarding the "Life of Lord Lyttelton," and following Piozzi’s marriage, the text documents Johnson’s "indignation" and his eventual "melancholy" decline. Burney provides detailed accounts of Johnson’s last illness, recording his "Christian reasoning" on death and his final message of affection, and the volume includes Piozzi’s correspondence with Burney during their eventual estrangement. Critics are generally favorable, though reviews exhibit a sharp divergence regarding the work's historical reliability and stylistic merit. Enthusiastic notices in the Boston Miscellany, Graham's Magazine, and the Iris and Literary Repository celebrate the volumes as sprightly, entertaining, and highly amusing records of eminent literary figures. The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review echoes this praise, commending the graceful sportiveness of the style and comparing the work favorably to Boswell's biographical writing. Similarly, a positive review in the Examiner praises the animated sketches of character and animal spirits. However, severe criticism emerged from other prominent publications. Croker, in the Quarterly Review, delivers a scathing assessment, attacking the author's extravagant egotism, labeling the reported conversations as manufactured vulgarity, and pronouncing the volumes nearly worthless. Macaulay's prominent review in the Edinburgh Review (reprinted in the New World) offers a more nuanced but ultimately critical perspective; while he acknowledges the valuable insights into the Streatham circle and the Great Moralist's domestic benevolence, he laments the later stylistic broken Johnsonese that marred the final volumes. The Gentleman's Magazine aligns with this mixed view, recognizing the apparent vanity and a later jargon style while still valuing the collection as a treasure of conversational eloquence. Finally, the Spectator and an August 1842 review in the New World challenge the truthfulness of the elaborate dialogues, with the latter dismissing the work as a weak, sentimental collection of long-forgotten gossip possessing no literary merit.
Reviews: Anglo American 7, no. 25 (1846): 587–89; Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion 2, no. 6 (1842): 280; Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion 2, no. 7 (1842): 46–47; John Wilson Croker, Quarterly Review 70, no. 139 (1842): 243–87; Gentleman’s Magazine 18, no. 12 (1842): 563–82; Gentleman’s Magazine 27, no. 1 (1847): 3–18; Graham’s Magazine 21, no. 1 (1842): 60; Iris and Literary Repository 1, no. 6 (1842): 30; Iris and Literary Repository 1, no. 10 (1842): 160; Thomas Babington Macaulay, Edinburgh Review 76 (January 1843): 523–70; Thomas Babington Macaulay, New World, January 14, 1843; Magnolia 1, no. 5 (1842): 318–19; Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art 17 (May 1842): 573–77; New World, May 21, 1842; New World, August 6, 1842; The Albion 1, no. 19 (1842): 215; The Albion 1, no. 20 (1842): 226; The Examiner, December 3, 1842; The Spectator, October 24, 1846, 484–85; United States Magazine, and Democratic Review 11, no. 50 (1842): 161–205.
Macaulay traces the intellectual development of Burney within the vibrant cultural milieu of 18th-century London, identifying the pivotal roles of Johnson and Piozzi in her literary emergence. Johnson appears as a foundational figure in Burney's professional life, providing the "cordial approbation" that established her fame and famously clasping his "little character-monger" in his "huge arms." The narrative details Johnson's domestic presence at Streatham with the Thrales, where he preferred Burney’s fiction to that of Fielding and participated in the "highest perfection" of the Streatham circle's intellectual life. Macaulay contrasts the "gentle and endearing" deportment Johnson displayed toward Burney with his reputation for coarseness, while also noting his critical role in refining the prose of her second novel. This mentorship highlights the influence of the Great Moralist on the burgeoning genre of the respectable domestic novel. The text further examines the influence of Piozzi, then Mrs. Thrale, whose singular patronage offered Burney a sense of sisterly belonging and a platform for social observation. Macaulay chronicles the eventual decay of this relationship following Piozzi's second marriage, an event that deeply pained the "kind heart" of Burney. By examining these interactions, Macaulay uses the life of Burney to illustrate the transition of the English novel into a medium of moral and social legitimacy, while simultaneously lamenting the later stylistic "broken Johnsonese" that marred her final works. The text remains an essential critique of the Streatham circle and the evolution of the 18th-century literary landscape.
CGV entry 5:54. Review by Thomas Babington Macaulay of the work edited by Charlotte Barrett.
CGV entry 5:55. A review of 'Memoirs of ... Hannah More' and Burney's 'Diary and Letters'.
Macaulay reviews the life and literary output of Frances Burney, later Madame d’Arblay, contrasting her early success with the stylistic decline of her later years. A significant focus is placed on her relationship with Samuel Johnson, whom she affectionately called "dear Doctor Johnson." Macaulay highlights the profound respect and tenderness Johnson showed d'Arblay, treating her with a unique kindness that contrasted with his general social brusqueness. The text characterizations Johnson employed in his own writing—coined "Johnsonese"—are critiqued for their Padding with useless epithets and Alien terms, which Macaulay argues eventually corrupted d'Arblay’s own prose style. Despite this, the essay notes that the personal anecdotes and colloquial vivacity of d'Arblay's early work, such as the famous scene of Johnson selling the Vicar of Wakefield, remain invaluable for their firsthand portrayal of Johnson’s moral and intellectual character.
CGV entry 5:55. Reprinted from the Edinburgh Review (1843).
Memorable Women: The Story of Their Lives
Crosland details the parallel lives and eventual estrangement of Frances Burney (Madame d'Arblay) and Hester Thrale Piozzi, centered on their shared connection to Samuel Johnson. Following Thrale’s marriage to Gabriel Piozzi in 1784, which Johnson and Burney opposed, the intimate Streatham circle dissolved. Johnson’s death shortly thereafter finalized this social collapse. Burney’s subsequent five-year tenure as keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte highlights the physical and mental toll of court etiquette, which precluded literary production and social autonomy. Crosland asserts that Johnson’s "kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched" was primarily facilitated by the Thrales' hospitality. The narrative follows Burney's 1793 marriage to General d'Arblay, her ten-year exile in Napoleonic France, and her eventual return to England. Both women’s histories illustrate the intersections of 18th-century literary celebrity with domestic duty and political upheaval.
CGV entry 5:57. The author's full name is Camilla Dufour Crosland.
Waylen explores Johnson’s 1783 visit to William Bowles at Heale House, near Amesbury, a site previously notable as a refuge for Charles II. Though Boswell was absent, Waylen infers the nature of their conversations regarding Stonehenge and Oliver Cromwell, noting that Bowles was likely the source for several anecdotes in the Life. A portrait of Johnson formerly served as a principal ornament in the house. Additional notes discuss the etymology of local place names like Ushaw and the history of land alienation statutes.
CGV entry 5:59. Heale House was the home of William Bowles.
[Letter printing a memorial asking help for Johnson's goddaughter, Miss Lowe]
Discusses a god-daughter of Johnson living in Deptford. She recalls being carried to the "rigorously authenticated" Johnson shortly before his death to receive his blessing. The account describes her possession of "numerous memorials of Johnson" which bring his "vigorous" presence to life. It also notes Johnson's historical efforts to "relieve the grand-daughter of Milton," drawing parallels to contemporary appeals for descendants of Defoe.
CGV entry 5:60. Contains paragraphs praising Johnson's dictionary, likely written by Carlyle.
De Morgan investigates the origins of Johnson's intense animosity toward Dr. Matthew Maty, whom Johnson once famously called a "little black dog." While previous biographers suggested the friction stemmed from Maty’s friendship with Lord Chesterfield, De Morgan argues the true cause lay in Maty’s critical review of Johnson’s Dictionary in the Journal Britannique. Maty’s review accused Johnson of "an affectation of symmetry, of cadence, and of obscurity" and challenged his inclusion of political prejudices under entries like "Tory" and "Whig." Most offensively, Maty suggested Johnson suppressed his original dedication to Chesterfield to hide his "obligations" to the patron. De Morgan concludes Johnson's verbal hostility was a "moderate" response to Maty’s "wilful suppression of the circumstances" regarding the famous letter to Chesterfield. The article also notes Maty’s reprint of a rare life of De Moivre, which contains unique anecdotes regarding Newton.
Asks for the author of the 1785 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson (Walker, London). An editorial answer conjectures that the author is the Reverend William Shaw, based on the preface’s clue concerning the Ossian Controversy and the detailed account of Shaw’s dictionary project with Johnson. Shaw, converted to prelacy by Johnson, later became Rector of Chelvey. A separate query asks for the author of a Life of Samuel Johnson published by G. Kearsley in the same year.
CGV entry 5:62.
Hopper describes a manuscript commonplace book compiled by Giuseppe Baretti, which contains copies of several letters from Johnson to Baretti and a set of original impromptu verses by Johnson beginning "At sight of sparkling bowls or beauteous dames." The note queries the current location of this manuscript and asks whether the letters therein correspond to those published in Boswell's Life of Johnson. The author also expresses a desire to see the remainder of the Italian verses prompted by Johnson's composition.
CGV entry 5:63. For the recovery of the book, see Alan T. McKenzie, "An Important Baretti Discovery," Johnsonian News Letter, volume 28 (September 1968), pages 7-8.
Taunton presents previously unpublished notes from Windham’s 1784 visit to Johnson at Ashbourne. Johnson discusses literary and linguistic topics, asserting that Homer is the "source of everything" in poetry and expressing regret for his own "idle" college days. He maintains that few college acquaintances read Latin with genuine "pleasure" and notes that Virgil’s invention appears lesser when compared to Homer. Johnson defines the principle of all amusements as a way to "beguile time" between "active thought and perfect vacuity." He also reflects on the social impact of turnpike roads, which he argues destroyed "refuges" for "genteel poverty" by equalizing prices across locations. The text includes verses by Richard Burke and a poem sent by Windham to a young lady with a copy of Johnson’s works.
CGV entry 5:66.
Recounts an anecdote about Johnson advising actress George Anne Bellamy during the rehearsal of Dodsley's tragedy Cleone (1758). Johnson forcefully corrects her delivery of the line, "Thou shalt not murder," and later, his shouted approval from the pit ensures her success.
CGV entry 5:67.
A Famous Forgery; Being the Story of 'the Unfortunate' Doctor Dodd
Though initially disdaining the "Macaroni Clergyman" Dodd, Johnson became his unwavering advocate during the forgery trial, motivated by Christian charity and a fear of the death penalty. Johnson composed Dodd's defense address at trial, penned an energetic petition to the King, and wrote the substance of The Convict's Address. Despite this aid, Johnson scorned Dodd's theatrical vanity but provided necessary counsel, pragmatically arguing for a pardon based on the public voice and the interest of the Church.
The Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds
This biography, initiated by Leslie and completed by Taylor, seeks to vindicate Sir Joshua Reynolds's character from previous aspersions while documenting the brilliant 18th-century society he chronicled. A significant portion of the work details Reynolds’s profound intimacy with Samuel Johnson, beginning in 1753. Their friendship was rooted in intellectual respect; Johnson admired Reynolds’s "admirable sense" and close observation of human nature, famously remarking that he liked Reynolds because he was "a good mother"—an endorsement of his moral character. Reynolds painted Johnson multiple times, capturing the "majestic figure" of the lexicographer. Despite Johnson’s total lack of artistic perception, he championed Reynolds’s career, even contributing the preface to the 1762 Society of Artists catalogue. The text illustrates their social bond through frequent dinners, Johnson’s legendary tea-drinking at the Reynolds's household, and their joint 1762 tour of Devonshire. Reynolds is presented as the primary peacemaker and "genial centre" of a circle where Johnson’s wisdom and wit flourished.
CGV entry 5:69. Contains frequent references to Johnson.
Recounts the social milieu of Streatham and the professional alliance between Reynolds and Johnson. Piozzi's daughter provides witness to Johnson’s social dominance and Boswell's performance as "showman" to provoke the "lion." The narrative details Reynolds’s career, from an apprenticeship under Hudson to the formation of the Literary Club. Johnson exhibits aggressive pride in male company but seeks "unrebuked indulgence" among women. Anecdotes illustrate Johnson’s excessive tea-drinking and his "rounded periods" of speech. Reynolds manages Johnson's volatile temper through "manly firmness" and moderation. Mutual respect sustains their thirty-year friendship despite Johnson's occasional "high Johnsonese" outbursts.
CGV entry 5:70. Published as "By the author of Wild Times."
The Diary of the Rt: Hon. William Windham
Windham's diary and prefaces reveal his profound reverence for Johnson, whose advice guided his intellectual practices and lifelong struggle against indolence. Windham consciously emulated Johnson by keeping a diary for self-examination and undertaking demanding literary exercises. He recorded their final meetings in December 1784, when Johnson gave final advice, discussed the strength of revealed religion, and delivered a powerful farewell prayer a day before his death.
The Early Life and Diaries of William Windham
Ketton-Cremer reconstructs Windham’s biography using unpublished diaries and correspondence, framing him as a "vague shadow" whose modern reputation often rests on his status as a close friend of Johnson. The text details Windham’s education at Eton, Glasgow, and Oxford, noting that his acquaintance with Johnson likely began at University College through his tutor, Robert Chambers. Windham is depicted as a man of extreme versatility and "over-scrupulous conscience" who suffered from acute "hesitation and timidity," traits hidden from his contemporaries but revealed in his private journals. The narrative covers Windham’s 1772 visit to Lord Townshend in Ireland, his abandoned 1773 Polar expedition with Constantine John Phipps, and his intricate social ties with the Forrest and Byng families. Ketton-Cremer emphasizes the significant relationship between Johnson and Windham, quoting Johnson’s remark that Windham’s father was a "noble fellow." The text traces Windham's life through 1785, including his 1784 visit to Johnson at Ashbourne, documenting his transition from a restless scholar to a "notable eighteenth-century statesman." For Boswellian interests, the work mentions Malone’s role in preserving Windham’s legacy and notes Windham’s presence in various eighteenth-century memoirs. Piozzi is referenced regarding Johnson’s high opinion of their mutual acquaintance, Dr. Edward Barnard.
CGV entry 5:71. This edition contains "The Friendship of Doctor Johnson and Windham" on pages 253–274.
This text contrasts the volatile, often malicious character of Samuel Foote with the industrious and sensitive nature of David Garrick, while detailing the complex, frequently strained relationships both men maintained with Johnson. Johnson exhibits a complex, often adversarial relationship with Garrick, rooted in early shared poverty and the subsequent divergence of their professional fortunes. While Johnson maintains a "bold, broad, rough, and manly soul," he harbors a deep-seated disdain for the acting profession, which he views as mere "stage playing" compared to his own intellectual labor. This resentment manifests in frequent social slights and public sneers aimed at Garrick’s prosperity, most notably in the Rambler sketch of "Prospero," which caricatures Garrick as an insolent and ostentatious host. Despite Johnson’s "constitutional irritability" and his "unworthy revenge" through such literary portraits, the text notes his ultimate distress upon realizing the public application of these satires. The narrative further explores the professional wreckage caused by "Irish pride" and managerial ambition, specifically through the downfall of Mossop, whose enmity toward Garrick—fueled by misguided perceptions of professional exclusion—ends in a deathbed confession of remorse and a final acknowledgement of Garrick as a "great and virtuous man." Throughout these conflicts, Garrick emerges as a figure of "placid dignity" and "unvarying sweetness of temper," contrasting with the boisterous malignity of Foote and the surly provocations of Johnson.
CGV entry 5:72. On Samuel Foote and David Garrick.
An Unpublished Page in The Life of Lauder
This note details the later life of William Lauder, the literary forger who deceived Johnson into writing a preface supporting fraudulent charges of plagiarism against Milton. Following his exposure by John Douglas and subsequent disgrace, Lauder emigrated to Barbados. The text describes his brutal treatment of his slave daughter, Rachel Pringle Palgreen, her rescue by Captain Pringle, and her subsequent success as a hotelier. It recounts an anecdote involving Prince William Henry (later William IV) destroying her hotel furniture during a drunken frolic, for which she exacted full compensation.
CGV entry 5:73.
A brief, critical, personal observation of Johnson from the Letters of the First Earl of Malmsbury. The 1775 journal entry describes Johnson's conversation as similar to his writing but notes his "dreadful voice and manner." The writer finds Johnson awkward, "beastly in his dress and person," and claims he "feeds nastily and ferociously" and "eats quantities most unthankfully." Boswell is described as a "low-bred kind of being."
CGV entry 5:74. On criticism of Johnson's manners by Mrs. James ("Hermes") Harris. A reply by James Crossley appears on page 418 of the same volume.
Fitzgerald challenges the popular conception of Johnson as a misogynist, asserting instead a temperament marked by gallantry and emotional susceptibility. The narrative traces Johnson’s domestic life at Streatham and his dependence upon the hospitality of Piozzi. Fitzgerald analyzes the deterioration of this bond following the death of Thrale, focusing on the social and personal friction generated by Piozzi’s marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The text frames Johnson’s severe condemnation of the union as a protective exercise of his duties as a friend and trustee. Fitzgerald uses Piozzi’s later correspondence with actor Conway to illustrate a recurring pattern of romantic infatuation, which serves to validate Johnson’s earlier skepticism regarding her judgment and self-restraint.
Includes a footnote on the friendship between Johnson and John Wesley's sister, Martha ("Patty") Hall, on p. 410.
CGV entry 5:76. On Johnson's friendship with John Wesley's sister Martha ("Patty") Hall.
Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Turton, née Hickman
Grazebrook corrects 'an egregious mistake' in the 1835 edition of Boswell concerning the identity of Miss Hickman. Disputing the claim that she was the daughter of a Stourbridge schoolmaster, Grazebrook identifies her as Dorothy Hickman, daughter of Gregory Hickman and sister to the Rev. Walter Hickman. Dorothy married John Turton in 1734. The article provides significant genealogical detail on the Hickman and Ford families, linking Johnson to Joseph Ford, a Stourbridge physician. Grazebrook cites a 1730 letter from Johnson to Gregory Hickman which proves Johnson was known as a poet in that circle. This meticulous genealogical research clarifies Johnson's family connections in Stourbridge and his early social interactions. It corrects long-standing errors in Johnsonian biography regarding his 'amatory verses.'
CGV entry 5:77. On Johnson's Hickman connections. See also pages 112, 249 in the same volume, and volume 5, pages 13–14.
Masson traces the early life of Hester Lynch Salusbury and the formation of the "memorable and fascinating comedy" at Streatham Park. Following her 1763 marriage to Thrale, Johnson became a permanent inmate, with a room set apart for him in both the Borough and Streatham. Johnson "exerted himself to raise" Piozzi’s position within her household and stimulated Thrale to enter Parliament. The text describes the "golden age" of their friendship, during which Johnson assisted in business distresses and wrote his first political pamphlet, The False Alarm, under their roof. Masson highlights Piozzi’s role as the "provider and conductress" of Johnson, who found her "clever wife" and well-covered table essential to his well-being.
CGV entry 5:78. In two parts: volume 33 (April 1876), pages 524-535; and volume 34 (May 1876), pages 35-45.
Covering 1780–1821, this essay recounts the end of the Johnson–Thrale friendship following her marriage to Piozzi after Thrale's death. It highlights Johnson’s "ignominiously married" letter and her resolute, angry reply. Post-marriage, the Piozzis traveled to Italy and returned to a warm reception. Mrs. Piozzi maintained her vivacious spirit, generosity (to her adopted nephew), and her second marriage remained a great source of happiness, ending her life as a respected octogenarian literary figure.
CGV entry 5:78. Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine (1876).
Darwin and Krause provide a biographical and scientific examination of Erasmus Darwin, positioning him as the primary progenitor of the theory of evolution. Darwin’s preliminary notice uses family letters, commonplace books, and personal reminiscences to detail Erasmus’s character, medical practice, and intellectual circle. The text addresses the professional rivalry and mutual dislike between Erasmus and Johnson, noting they rarely met in Lichfield as they "would have quarrelled like two dogs." Erasmus satirizes Johnson as a "giant critic" who "grinds poor Shakespear’s bones for bread." Krause analyzes Erasmus’s major works, including Zoonomia and The Botanic Garden, arguing that Erasmus established a complete system of evolution and sexual selection fifteen years before Lamarck. The volume disputes Seward’s earlier biographical accounts, characterizing her narratives of family tragedy as "absolutely false" and "scandalous negligence." It traces the transmission of "prophetic sagacity" through the Darwin family, emphasizing Erasmus’s early advocacy for temperance, sanitary reform, and mechanical invention.
CGV entry 5:80. Brief family reminiscences of relations between Johnson and Erasmus Darwin.
Disputes Macaulay’s portrayal of Tetty as a "silly, affected old woman." Macaulay’s description is incorrect, relying on second-hand accounts, as none of Johnson's biographers had seen her. Johnson’s judgment of women was not untrained, citing Boswell’s observation that Johnson received a "kind reception in the best families at Litchfield" and associated with "ladies of birth and breeding" at Mr. Walmesley's.
CGV entry 5:81. On Macaulay's treatment of Tetty.
Discusses the contrasting views of Lord Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle regarding Samuel Johnson's marriage to Elizabeth Porter, highlighting the complexities of their relationship and the differing perceptions of her character.
CGV entry 5:81. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1880).
Mudge Memoirs: Being a Record of Zachariah Mudge and Some Members of His Family
Flint compiles memoirs and family papers documenting the lineage of Zachariah Mudge. The text emphasizes Johnson’s deep respect for Mudge, whom he 'idolized' as an eloquent preacher and virtuous companion during his 1762 visit to Plymouth. Johnson’s character sketch of Mudge, published in the London Chronicle, is reproduced as a testament to Mudge's 'firm and unshaken settlement of conviction' and mastery of the sacred volumes. Boswell’s role as the chronicler of these interactions is noted, specifically regarding Johnson's preference for the 'old town' of Plymouth over 'upstart' dockers. The memoirs further detail Johnson's ongoing friendship with John Mudge, seeking his medical advice as late as 1783.
A Bookseller of the Last Century: Being Some Account of the Life of John Newbery
Welsh provides a comprehensive biographical and bibliographical record of Newbery’s career, tracing his transition from a provincial merchant in Reading to a preeminent London publisher. The text examines Newbery's diverse commercial interests, including his extensive trade in patent medicines—most notably Dr. James’s Fever Powder—and his pioneering role in the creation of juvenile literature. Welsh details Newbery’s professional and personal associations with major literary figures, including Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi, while documenting the evolution of the Newbery firm through the eighteenth century.
Hughes directs a previous inquirer to the concluding lines of a poem by Johnson addressed to Miss Hickman, located in a note by Malone within the Routledge edition of Boswell. He cites a certificate by Dr. Turton verifying Johnson's authorship and identifies Hickman as a Staffordshire lady related to Johnson’s mother. The note further references Colonel F. Grant’s monograph, which confirms the Hickman family's presence among Johnson’s early Staffordshire social circle.
Life in the Eighteenth Century—Dr. Johnson and His Friends
The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768–1778
Ellis compiles the previously unpublished early journals and correspondence of Burney, alongside contributions from sisters Susan and Charlotte, to document the development of the future novelist within the London and Lynn social landscapes. The edition highlights the pivotal role of Dr. Burney as a central figure in eighteenth-century cultural life, characterized by an 'almost unique blending' of intellectual versatility and social charm. Although the primary narrative concludes in 1778, the editorial preface extensively addresses the family's subsequent relationship with Johnson. Johnson appears as a definitive moral and social authority, whose affection for Dr. Burney serves as a recurring motif of the family’s high social standing. The editor identifies Johnson as a primary advocate for Burney’s literary merit, noting that his approval was 'not to be slighted' by the family’s inner circle. Specific discussions examine Johnson’s role as a messenger for the singer Cecilia Davies and his social visits to the Burney residence in St. Martin's Street. Ellis further contrasts Johnson’s conversational brilliance with his written output, reflecting the contemporary perspective of the Burney circle.
CGV entry 5:87. Includes a selection from her correspondence and from the Journals of her sisters Susan and Charlotte Burney. Reprinted in 1907.
Guiney The text explores the "deep and long affection" between Johnson and his younger friends, Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk. Langton, a "mild young visionary," provided a "suave manner" that served as a foil to Johnson's "extraordinary explosions." Beauclerk, a "pestilent wit" and great-grandson of Charles II, "literally bewitched" Johnson, who allowed the young man to "tyrannize over him." Despite their contrasting temperaments—Langton’s "evangelical goodness" versus Beauclerk’s "aggravating flippancy"—both remained central to Johnson’s social circle. Johnson mourned Beauclerk’s death in 1780 as a loss "the whole nation could not repair," eventually inheriting a portrait of himself from Beauclerk's estate which Langton "thoughtfully effaced" of its satirical inscription.
CGV entry 5:88. On Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk.
This biographical sketch profiles the "deep and long affection" and "human, genial lustre" provided to Johnson by his younger associates, Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk, despite their own lack of public achievement. The author contrasts Langton, a tall, scholarly, and "mild young visionary" possessed of "evangelical goodness," "Greek serenity," and a deferential manner that served as a foil to the doctor’s "extraordinary explosions," with Beauclerk, a "handsome scapegrace" and "pestilent wit" characterized by "insuperable idleness." Beauclerk, the great-grandson of Charles II, "literally bewitched" Johnson, who tolerated his "pranks and quibbles" and high spirits due to a shared love of literature and science. The narrative recounts famous anecdotes, including the "frisk" at three in the morning, Johnson’s roll down a Lincolnshire hill, his "serious and ludicrous quarrel" with Langton over estate inheritance, and Beauclerk’s bold suggestion that Johnson "purge and live cleanly" after receiving his pension. These friendships demonstrate Johnson's capacity for deep, fatherly love toward men whose characters and social status varied from his own, as these "idyllic figures" provided a "sunshine of cheerfulness" that dispelled his "profound hypochondria" and remained devoted until the end.
CGV entry 5:88. Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine (1889).
Examines the lives of Langton and Beauclerk, two central figures in Johnson’s social circle. It argues that their devotion to Johnson provided him with a vital source of "human, genial lustre" despite their own lack of public achievement. The narrative contrasts Langton’s "evangelical goodness" and scholarly Greek serenity with Beauclerk’s Stuart-inflected wit and skepticism. It explores how Johnson’s paternal affection for these "young dogs" helped mitigate his morbid melancholy, even as he grappled with their contrasting temperaments.
Guiney examines the symbiotic relationship between Johnson and his two disparate young friends, Beauclerk and Langton. While Langton represents "evangelical goodness" and scholarly devotion, Beauclerk embodies a "liquid Stuart eye" and a flippant, aristocratic wit that fascinated the Jacobite Johnson. The narrative traces their initial meeting at Oxford, their roles within the Club, and their constant presence during Johnson's periods of illness and emotional distress. Guiney emphasizes how Beauclerk's sarcasm and Langton's serenity provided the "human genial lustre" necessary to soften Johnson's dogmatic tendencies. The account details specific anecdotes, including the famous early-morning "frisk" in London and the profound grief Johnson experienced upon Beauclerk's death. Furthermore, it highlights the intellectual legacy of both men, noting Langton’s Greek scholarship and the sale of Beauclerk’s massive library. Guiney concludes that these companions served as "Gay Heart and Gentle Heart," whose "idolatrous devotion" validated Johnson’s warmth and complex character.
Thomson chronicles the social and domestic life of Piozzi, detailing her complex relationship with Johnson and her evolution as a literary hostess. Following an undesired marriage to Thrale, whose coldness and "sentimental attachment" to Streatfield embittered her, Piozzi found solace in the society of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burney at Streatham. Johnson's presence provided "genial effect" that supposedly saved him from insanity, yet his "want of politeness" and "savageness" often strained their connection. Thomson disputes the harsh contemporary judgment of Piozzi's second marriage to the singer Gabriel Piozzi, characterizing it as a "marriage of attachment" that offered her the sympathy denied by Thrale. This union led to a "painful termination" of her friendship with Johnson, who could not tolerate the music-master's presence. Despite facing the "scornful" alienation of her daughters and the "insolence" of guests like Baretti, Piozzi maintained her "wonderful" vivacity and wit until her death at eighty. Thomson notes Piozzi’s historical inaccuracy in her anecdotes of Johnson, suggesting her misrepresentations contributed to false views of his character.
Mrs. Thrale, Afterwards Mrs. Piozzi: A Sketch of Her Life and Passages from Her Diaries, Letters & Other Writings
This biography traces the life course of the formidable eighteenth-century salonnière, beginning with her Welsh ancestry and detailing her initial unromantic marriage to the wealthy but emotionally reserved Thrale. Her early domestic confinement contrasts sharply with her subsequent rise to prominence as a celebrated wit and hostess, intellectual counterpart to Johnson. The narrative examines her vital role in civilizing Johnson and managing the famous Streatham circle. Following Thrale's death, the focus shifts to her difficult pursuit of personal happiness and second marriage to Piozzi, an act that provoked widespread scandal and rupture with Johnson. The study documents the intense critical scrutiny she faced from contemporaries regarding her personal life and subsequent literary output. The author ultimately presents Piozzi as a woman of enduring intelligence, independent spirit, and considerable literary contribution whose life spanned the transition of the Johnsonian era. Chapter 1, 'A Welsh Pedigree,' addresses the Salusbury family’s storied lineage and the subject’s early education under Dr. Collier, culminating in her father’s death and the introduction of Henry Thrale. Chapter 2, 'Origin of the Thrale Family,' traces the rise of the Southwark brewing dynasty and the subject’s 1763 marriage, which facilitated the landmark 1765 introduction to Samuel Johnson. Chapter 3, 'Thrale Enters Parliament,' argues that the Thrales’ social ascent and political ambitions were bolstered by Johnson’s presence, despite financial crises in 1772 and family bereavements. Chapter 4, 'Mrs. Abington’s Benefit,' examines the household’s expansion to include Joseph Baretti and characterizes the intellectual friction between Johnson and his hostess during their subsequent travels through France. Chapter 5, 'Visit to Dr. Burney’s,' details the subject’s growing intimacy with Fanny Burney and Sophia Streatfield, while analyzing the psychological impact of Mr. Thrale’s declining health and his first apoplectic stroke. Reviews are split, with commentators dividing over the compilation's ability to vindicate a controversial historical figure from contemporary obloquy while documenting a famous domestic circle. An unsigned review in the Athenaeum initiates the analysis, calling the volume a skillful and objective biography that clarifies social complexities and successfully defends the compiler against charges of spitefulness. In the Saturday Review, an unsigned commentary notes the volume pleasantly supplements known correspondence, illustrating a lively and witty conversational style. An unsigned piece in the Spectator commends the concise condensation of diaries but notes that the central figure possessed intellectual quickness rather than original genius, a view reprinted directly by the Northern Whig to highlight how she handled unmerited paternalistic severity with dignity and patience. In America, an unsigned assessment in the New York Times explores the detailed depiction of a sixteen-year domestic residency, framing the troublesome guest's bearish eccentricities as the product of a lifetime of disease and poverty. The Chicago Daily Tribune prints an unsigned notice focusing on the breakdown of the central literary friendship following a second marriage, while the Literary World emphasizes that this late union provided a sense of honorable satisfaction missing from earlier years. Finally, brief notices in the Independent and the Critic merely welcome the large, illustrated volume as an accessible contribution to eighteenth-century social history.
Reviews: Chicago Daily Tribune, February 8, 1891; Daily News (London), December 30, 1890; New York Times, February 1, 1891; Northern Whig, January 13, 1891; Saturday Review (London), May 7, 1892; The Athenaeum (London), April 11, 1891; The Critic 15, no. 370 (1891): 52; The Independent 43, no. 2210 (1891): 17; The Literary World 22, no. 5 (1891): 68; The Spectator 66, no. 3263 (1891): 53–54.
Hitchcock examines the sixteen-year intimacy between Johnson and Thrale, disputing Boswell’s characterization of her as ungrateful. He argues that Johnson’s eventual resentment stemmed from the "commonplace effect of a lover’s rejection" rather than moral disapproval of her marriage to Piozzi. While Thrale provided intellectual stimulus and "soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched," Johnson offered a "tender, respectful love" and "delicate gallantry" that fascinated his female contemporaries despite his "repulsive person." Hitchcock asserts that Johnson, sensible to beauty and capable of "ardent love," likely mistook Thrale’s wifelike care for romantic passion. Her union with the "younger and handsomer" Piozzi shattered Johnson’s "illusion of mighty little consequence," leading to his "wrath and woe" and the eventual burning of her letters before his death.
The narrative describes a 1766 interview between Johnson and George III, arranged by the librarian Dr. Barnard. The King questioned Johnson on the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, literary journals, and the historiography of Lord Lyttelton. Johnson famously responded to the King’s praise of his writing by noting it was not his place to "bandy civilities" with his Sovereign. The King urged Johnson to undertake a literary biography of England, a request that led to the Lives of the Poets. Johnson later characterized the King as a "fine gentleman," comparing his manners to those of Louis XIV. The account also references a subsequent meeting mentioned by Hannah More where the King requested the addition of Spenser to the Lives. Boswell’s efforts to document the encounter, including a high-priced 1790 tractate on the subject, are noted to illustrate the public's intense interest in the royal recognition of Johnson's genius.
Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation
The Making of Birmingham: Being a History of the Rise & Growth of the Midland Metropolis
Dent chronicles the lifelong friendship between Johnson and Birmingham surgeon Edmund Hector. The narrative details Johnson's frequent visits to Hector’s residence in the Old Square, particularly during the 1770s and 1780s. Dent describes an 1774 excursion to Boulton’s Soho manufactory and a 1776 visit alongside Boswell, during which Johnson debated Quakerism with Sampson Lloyd. The account highlights Johnson’s continued affection for Hector’s sister, Ann Careless, whom Johnson identified as his "first love." Dent emphasizes Hector’s role as a primary source for Boswell, noting that Hector provided and authenticated many anecdotes regarding Johnson’s early life and Birmingham residence. The chapter concludes with an account of Johnson's final 1784 visit to Birmingham and the subsequent preservation of the wainscoting from Hector's demolished house at Aston Hall.
CGV entry 5:94. Also see pages 67-68 and 75-76.
The Life and Letters of James Macpherson, Containing a Particular Account of His Famous Quarrel with Dr. Johnson, and a Sketch of the Origin and Influence of the Ossianic Poems
Saunders's biography of Macpherson (1736–1796) seeks to reevaluate his life and the authenticity of the wildly influential Ossianic poems, arguing Macpherson deserves more justice than the label of "audacious impostor" affixed by Johnson. Macpherson, a Highlander who became a successful politician, published the poems claiming they were translations of third-century Gaelic fragments. Johnson contemptuously denied their merit and authenticity, driven by narrow literary tastes and a hatred of Scotland. This culminated in their famous 1774 quarrel when Macpherson threatened Johnson for his public accusations; Johnson famously defied the "Ruffian," asserting he would not desist from detecting what he considered a cheat.
Men and Manners of the Eighteenth Century
Hale examines Burney’s literary debut and subsequent social immersion within the Streatham circle. The text provides a detailed account of Johnson’s physical presence and domestic behaviors during his sixteen-year residency with Piozzi. Hale describes Johnson’s "shabby" attire, "convulsive movements," and unconventional dining habits, noting that his intellectual merit secured the tolerance and affection of his hosts. The narrative underscores Johnson’s enthusiasm for the "vulgar" characters in Burney’s fiction, particularly the Branghtons. Hale depicts Piozzi as a patient and generous hostess who maintains Johnson’s welfare despite his "dictatorial" manners and "irritating" household habits.
Millar identifies previously unknown biographical details concerning Lauder, specifically his 1742 appointment as a master at the Dundee Grammar School. Research in the Dundee charter-room clarifies Lauder's early professional struggles and his subsequent relocation to London in 1746. Millar traces the development of Lauder’s animosity toward Milton, fueled by Pope’s depreciation of Johnston, leading to the infamous forgery scandal. The narrative details Johnson’s involvement, noting his initial support for Lauder’s plagiarism charges and his eventual role in dictating the forger's confession. The account concludes with Lauder’s failed scholarly projects and his terminal decline in Barbadoes.
Identifies William Vachell, a signatory of the Round Robin sent to Johnson regarding Oliver Goldsmith's epitaph. Suggests Vachell was a resident of Coptfold Hall, Essex, based on handwriting analysis of a 1801 letter, distinguishing him from a contemporary of the same name in Cambridgeshire.
CGV entry 5:99.
This biography examines the career of Zachary Macaulay, focusing on his efforts to abolish the slave trade and his tenure as Governor of Sierra Leone. Knutsford provides genealogical context, noting that Macaulay’s father, the Reverend John Macaulay, met Johnson and Boswell during their 1773 tour of the Hebrides. The narrative records that Johnson later protected Zachary’s uncle, Kenneth Macaulay, from criticism regarding the authorship of a history of St. Kilda. Additionally, the text mentions Zachary’s early exposure to Johnson's writings, specifically citing the influence of the Rambler on his youthful intellectual development. Salient references highlight the intersection of the Macaulay family with the Johnsonian circle, including the observation that Boswell provides an account of the meeting between Johnson and John Macaulay at Inverary.
Dr. Johnson and His Friends at the Society of Arts
This article notes Johnson’s election to the Society of Arts on December 1, 1756, and his rare public address regarding trade. It details his honorary degrees from Oxford and Dublin, noting Johnson "never himself assumed the title of Doctor." The article identifies James Stuart as his proposer and describes Johnson's portrait by James Barry. It discusses Johnson's connections to other members, including David Garrick, Topham Beauclerc, Robert Dodsley, and Samuel Richardson. It details the failed secretaryship candidacy of Oliver Goldsmith, whom Johnson and Garrick deemed "unbusinesslike." Additionally, it records Johnson’s financial support for Robert Dossie and his interactions with figures such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Henry Thrale, Dr. Charles Burney, and John Wilkes.
Sketches of Some Booksellers of the Time of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Biographical sketches of several eighteenth-century booksellers intimately connected with the era's literary figures. The work features Michael, Johnson's father, detailing his roles as a Lichfield bookseller, sheriff, and magistrate, contrasting his local prominence with his later financial losses from parchment speculation. Millar, a prosperous publisher for Thomson and Fielding, managed the complex undertaking of Johnson's Dictionary and was known for advancing the price of literature. Davies, an actor and later bookseller, facilitated the seminal introduction between Johnson and Boswell. Davies also found later success as an author with the Life of Garrick, a period during which Johnson offered him critical financial support. The collection also covers Osborne, a celebrated collector of large private libraries, notorious for an altercation where Johnson physically rebuked him with a folio volume. Finally, it notes the work of Bernard and Henry Lintot, publishers known primarily for their successful venture with Pope’s translation of Homer. The sketches collectively illuminate the financial and social dynamics of the literary trade during the period.
A Sporting-Man of the Eighteenth Century
Courtney’s biographical narrative explores the life of Scrope Berdmore Davies within the "brilliant little set" that surrounded Byron at Cambridge and in London. The account details the social interactions of this circle, including Hobhouse and Moore, highlighting their shared activities such as boxing with "gentleman" Jackson and attending theatrical events. Courtney notes that Davies was among the friends consulted by Byron on the propriety of publishing Don Juan. The narrative touches upon the broader social environment of the Regency period, documenting the activities of reformers and the fashionable Whig party. While the chapter focuses on Davies’s gambling and his eventual flight to the continent due to debt, it functions as a collective biography of the "friends" of the period's luminaries, specifically contextualizing the literary and social milieu inhabited by Byron.
CGV entry 5:105. On Sir John Lade.
Wilson provides a biographical sketch of Percival Stockdale, a clergyman and writer who maintains close ties with Johnson and his associates. Stockdale, a former soldier and Bolt Court resident, claims booksellers originally approached him to write the lives of the poets before the project went to Johnson. The narrative details meetings at the home of Tom Davies where Stockdale joins Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith. Johnson provides Stockdale with professional advice, recommends him to publishers like Thomas Cadell, and writes to Edmund Burke on his behalf. Additionally, Johnson publicly supports Stockdale’s defense of Alexander Pope, asserting that "Stockey" must be supported for his "uncontrovertible eloquence". The account also chronicles Stockdale’s interactions with David Garrick, including a visit to a temple dedicated to Shakespeare, and mentions his acquaintance with the blind poetess Anna Williams.
CGV entry 5:106.
The Cork and Orrery volumes, focused on the Boyle family manuscripts, document the literary milieu later chronicled by others. Johnson appears significantly in the later correspondence. Early reports detail the publication of London, the proposal for the Dictionary, and the performance of Irene. The collection includes direct correspondence between Johnson and Orrery from 1752, specifically concerning Charlotte Lennox. Johnson solicited Orrery’s patronage and historical assistance for Lennox’s Shakespear Illustrated, to which Orrery responded with deference to Johnson’s judgment and support for the project. The manuscripts establish the mid-eighteenth-century literary sphere, including Orrery's complex relationship with Chesterfield.
Dobson’s edition reprints Charlotte Barrett's 1842-1846 text, supplemented by modern indexes, extensive new annotations, and previously unpublished appendices. The narrative details Burney's 1778 entrance into the literary world with Evelina, her subsequent adoption by the Streatham circle, and her five-year tenure at the court of George III. Volume I documents Johnson’s "genuine admiration" for Evelina and his "arch" familiarities during Burney's residence at Streatham. Volume II chronicles the decline of the Streatham salon following the death of Henry Thrale and Burney's burgeoning friendship with Mrs. Delany. Volumes III and IV focus on court life, specifically documenting the "Cheltenham episode" and the King’s 1788 mental illness, which Dobson characterizes as more historically vital than the accounts of Pepys or Evelyn. The middle volumes also describe Burney's "touchingly affectionate" final interviews with the failing Johnson and her varied encounters with Boswell, whom she depicts as an occasional "busybody." Later volumes recount her life among the French émigrés at Juniper Hall, her 1793 marriage to General d’Arblay, and her eventual 1812 return to England. Dobson defends the "egotistic" nature of the journals as legitimate private outpourings for a sympathetic family audience.
Forbes chronicles the life and literary career of James Beattie, focusing on his intellectual development, his defense of orthodox religious principles, and his extensive social network. The narrative traces his progress from a parochial schoolmaster to the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College. Forbes explains the genesis of the Essay on Truth, which Beattie composed to challenge the "fashionable philosophy" and skeptical influence of Hume. The biography details Beattie's 1773 London visit, where he received a pension from George III and personal acclaim from Johnson, who noted, "We all love Beattie." Forbes uses personal correspondence to document Beattie's intimate friendships with Elizabeth Montagu, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Duchess of Gordon. The work also addresses Beattie's domestic tragedies, including the mental illness of his wife and the premature deaths of his sons, James Hay and Montagu. The account presents Beattie as a pivotal figure who used "reason, wit, and eloquence" to support the interests of religion and virtue in the eighteenth century.
A Later Pepys: The Correspondence of Sir William Weller Pepys, Bart., Master in Chancery, 1758–1825
This edition of the correspondence of Pepys documents the social and intellectual dynamics of the "Bas Bleu" assemblies, emphasizing the pervasive influence of Johnson upon the circle’s moral and literary standards. The text records the contentious 1781 encounter between Johnson and Pepys at Streatham over the life of Lyttelton, an event characterized as a significant breach of social decorum that precipitated a lasting rift within the Thrale circle. Correspondence with More and Wraxall reveals the nuanced reception of Johnson’s personality, contrasting his "peevishness and asperity of humour" with the "Letter of Consolation" Pepys provided during Johnson’s terminal illness to mitigate his spiritual despondency. The papers detail the circle’s efforts to reconcile Johnson’s intellectual "victory" seeking with his profound private piety, particularly through the lens of his Prayers and Meditations. Saliently, the collection underscores Johnson’s role as a moral arbiter whose approval was "sweetest to an honest ear," while also documenting the subsequent disputes over his legacy following the publications of Boswell and Piozzi.
Parsons presents a series of vignettes illustrating the life and professional career of David Garrick within the context of his eighteenth-century social and literary milieu. Parsons chronicles the early association between Garrick and Johnson in Lichfield, noting their shared education under the "Flagellant" Prebendary Hunter and their subsequent journey to London in 1737. The narrative details Garrick’s residency as a pupil at Johnson’s short-lived Edial Hall academy, where he reportedly made "keyhole studies" of Johnson's wife, Tetty. The author describes the lifelong complexity of their relationship, observing that Garrick never shook off a certain "pedagogical hypnotism" or "awe" in Johnson's presence, while Johnson maintained a protective yet often critical attitude toward his former student. Boswell appears as a "conspicuous" and sometimes "absurd" figure at the 1769 Stratford Jubilee, where he paraded in Corsican attire. Parsons records Johnson's reaction to Garrick's death, noting he was "bathed in tears" at the funeral and later described Garrick and Topham Beauclerk as "two such friends as cannot be supplied." The volume also touches upon Hester Thrale Piozzi's circle, mentioning Baretti as a cicerone for the Garricks in Venice and Johnson’s correspondence with Piozzi regarding Lichfield society.
Hill chronicles the Burney family’s residence in the former home of Isaac Newton from 1774 to 1783, drawing on unpublished letters and journals to reconstruct their social circle. The narrative provides detailed accounts of Johnson’s frequent visits for "tea and talk," describing his "gentle and endearing" deportment toward the family and his "high spirits" during social gatherings. Hill documents Johnson’s enthusiastic reaction to the anonymous publication of Evelina, noting his ability to repeat entire scenes by heart and his preference for the character Mr. Smith. The book also details Boswell’s first meeting with the author at Streatham, where Johnson Sharply rebuked him for "running about in the middle of meals." Further chapters recount Piozzi’s introduction to the Burney household as a singer, highlighting an awkward encounter where Johnson remained "the most silent creature" while others performed. Hill’s work emphasizes Johnson’s deep affection for the Burney "breed," recording his observation that "no man can read [Cecilia] without having ideas awakened in his mind that will mend the heart."
CGV entry 5:115. Contains evidence from hitherto unpublished manuscripts of the Burney family.
The Book Makers of Old Birmingham—Authors, Printers and Book Sellers
Hill challenges biographical inaccuracies popularized by Boswell regarding the early literary history of Birmingham, specifically disputing the claim that no established booksellers existed in the town prior to Thomas Warren. The narrative identifies seven established booksellers preceding Warren, including Andrew Johnson, brother of Michael and uncle to Samuel. Hill provides a detailed history of Warren’s printing office and his newspaper, the Birmingham Journal, to which Johnson contributed during the outset of his career. The book documents Johnson’s translation of Father Jerome Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, confirming it was printed by Warren in Birmingham in 1733 despite its London imprint. Hill details Johnson's residence with Edmund Hector, his dictated work while in bed to employ Warren’s compositor, and his speedy courtship and marriage to the widow of woollen draper Harry Porter. References to Piozzi appear through Johnson's reported dismissal of his paternal relatives as "chronicles of beggary." The volume includes facsimiles of the Birmingham Journal and examines the influence of John Baskerville on local typography.
CGV entry 5:116.
Mrs. Montagu and Her Friends, 1720–1800: A Sketch
Huchon traces the evolution of Montagu from her early training under Middleton to her status as the "female Maecenas" of the eighteenth century. Central to the narrative is the 1769 publication of the Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, which Huchon interprets as a patriotic response to Voltaire’s "ignorant" and "malicious" dismissals of English drama. Montagu challenges the Aristotelian unities, asserting that the primary purpose of the drama is moral instruction rather than formal regularity. Huchon highlights the "Asiatic" floridity of her epistolary style and her "unambiguous" vanity, yet maintains that her practical administrative skills and wealth were essential to establishing her salon. The text explores her intricate social web, featuring her close alliances with Carter and Lyttelton, and her eventual friction with Johnson over his treatment of Lyttelton in the Lives of the Poets. Huchon concludes by analyzing Montagu’s 1776 journey to Paris, where she directly confronted French "prejudices" at the Académie Française. Montagu’s life represents a "reform" of social manners, replacing "desolating" card-play with "colloquial wit" and intellectual parity.
Lucas provides a biographical and critical appreciation of Oliver Edwards, a solicitor and former college associate of Johnson. The narrative focuses on the accidental immortality Edwards achieved through his appearance in Boswell's biography on Good Friday, 1778. Lucas reconstructs the meeting at St. Clement’s and Bolt Court, emphasizing Edwards's candid and unabashed conversational style, which frequently disrupted the expected hierarchy of Johnsonian dialogue. The account highlights Edwards’s admission that he failed to become a philosopher because "cheerfulness was always breaking in." Lucas disputes Boswell’s assessment of Edwards as a weak man, arguing instead that his transparency and sincerity represent a unique strength of character. The essay describes how Edwards challenged Johnson on topics ranging from agricultural life and clerical ease to the consumption of wine, famously speculating that Johnson had consumed "some hogsheads" in his time. Lucas concludes that Edwards survives in literature as a "pearl of sincerity" who remained unawed by Johnson's reputation.
CGV entry 5:118.
This "publisher's book" compiled from easily accessible material recounts Seward’s connections to Lichfield. It records that Seward bequeathed her striking portrait by Romney to Simpson. Although she was not Johnson’s warmest admirer, Seward supplied anecdotes about young Johnson’s emotions, which Boswell often subsequently sought to disprove.
Reproduces an unprinted letter from Dr. John Swan to Johnson (March 3, 1762) recommending an impoverished scholar referred to only as "Dr. Watts." Swan asks Johnson to find employment for Watts's pen, particularly in translation from Greek, Latin, French, Italian, or Spanish. The author seeks information on whether Johnson answered the letter and the identity of Dr. Watts.
CGV entry 5:120. A letter to Johnson from Swan recommending Watts. Published in volume 7 (May 4), pages 348-349, with a follow-up in volume 8 (August 31), page 178. See also John T. Page, volume 7 (June 15), page 475.
Johnson is a prominent figure in Percy's life, attending Club meetings with him, visiting his home at Easton Maudit, and being characterized by Percy as a man out of whose company he never left without learning something. The book documents Johnson's contradictory behavior: he provided literary assistance and kind promises to Percy but also engaged in stormy altercations, notably a famous quarrel over Percy's defense of his patron's grounds. Johnson eventually praised Percy's merit highly, especially his willingness to learn and teach.
Reade addresses the identity of Johnson's schoolmasters and provides genealogical and biographical corrections regarding his early education. Using episcopal registers, Reade identifies John Hunter, the headmaster of Lichfield Grammar School from 1704 who was known to have "flogged scholarship" into Johnson, as an Oxford M.A. from University College. This corrects Mayor's earlier assertion that Hunter was a Cambridge B.A. from Jesus College. Reade further reveals the identity of "Tom Brown," Johnson's instructor in English who dedicated his spelling book to the "UNIVERSE," as Thomas Browne, a Lichfield shoemaker and schoolmaster who died in 1717. The letter describes the extreme economy of apparatus in Browne's school-room, which contained only a table and chair, as the environment where the great man was fashioned.
Giuseppe Baretti: With an Account of His Literary Friendships and Feuds in Italy and in England in the Days of Dr. Johnson
Collison-Morley details the intricate relationships between Baretti, Johnson, and Piozzi, positioning Baretti as a pivotal figure in eighteenth-century Anglo-Italian literary relations. Johnson maintains a decades-long friendship with Baretti, contributing prefaces to his works, providing character evidence at his 1769 murder trial, and engaging in frequent intellectual disputes. The biography explores Baretti's residence at Streatham with the Thrales, where he serves as a language tutor to Hester Maria "Queeney" Thrale. Collison-Morley describes the eventual fracture of these bonds, noting Baretti's abrupt departure from Streatham in 1776 and his later vitriolic "strictures" against Piozzi following her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The work highlights Baretti’s role in introducing English literature to Italy and his defense of Shakespeare against Voltaire, influenced by Johnsonian critical standards.
"A worthy biography, not very long, and with many quotations."
CGV entry 5:123. Capsule eview by Virginia Woolf of the book by Lacy Collison-Morley.
Martin provides a focused account of Anna Seward’s life in Lichfield, emphasizing her literary circle and her interactions with prominent contemporaries. The text highlights Seward’s persistent "prejudice" against Johnson, documenting her sharp critiques of his character and manners despite her admission of his intellectual "awful" greatness. Martin recounts specific anecdotes of their meetings at the Palace in Lichfield, noting Seward’s frustration with Johnson’s "dogmatic" conversational style and his perceived lack of appreciation for her poetic talents. The narrative also traces the involvement of Lucy Porter and the broader social landscape of Lichfield, which Seward helped transform into a "classic" site of 18th-century culture. Martin addresses Seward’s correspondence with figures like Sir Walter Scott and her role as a biographer of Erasmus Darwin. The work concludes with a description of the Seward family monument in Lichfield Cathedral, designed by Bacon, which serves as a final memorial to her "warmth of heart" and "genius."
Thomas Percy und William Shenstone: Ein Briefwechsel aus der Entstehungszeit der Reliques of Ancient Poetry
Percy maintains a rigorous correspondence with Shenstone regarding the preparation of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, seeking critical guidance on ballad selection, linguistic modernization, and structural arrangement. This exchange reveals that Johnson originally "extorted" the promise of publication from Percy by offering to provide historical notes and assistance in revising texts, though Shenstone ultimately assumed the role of primary aesthetic advisor. Shenstone advocates for "simplicity of style and sentiment," urging Percy to prioritize the tastes of "elegant" readers over pure antiquarian accuracy to ensure the work’s commercial and critical success. He proposes a three-volume plan and counsels Percy to avoid "over-correction" while simultaneously suggesting aesthetic "improvements" to fragments like The Gentle Heardsman and Gil Morris. Percy uses these suggestions to refine his editorial policy, balancing Johnson’s initial scholarly impulse with Shenstone’s demands for poetic harmony. The letters further document Percy's wider literary activities, including his translation of Ovid’s epistles and his acquisition of the foundational folio manuscript from Humphrey Pitt.
Brown surveys historically significant gatherings of authors, emphasizing the importance of social intellectual exchange. She highlights Dickens’s 1844 reading of The Chimes to a circle including Carlyle, whose judgment Dickens sought above all others. The text examines Johnson’s central role in eighteenth-century literary life, particularly his rescue of Goldsmith by selling the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield and his leadership within the Literary Club alongside Boswell and Burke. Brown also details meetings involving Burns and Scott, the editorial dinners of Fraser's Magazine, and the domestic literary life of Pope at Prior Park.
Philip Metcalfe, M.P., Friend of Johnson and Reynolds
Courtney chronicles the life of Philip Metcalfe, emphasizing his role as a constant companion to Johnson during the latter’s "declining days." The biographical narrative details Metcalfe's social presence at Brighton and London, where he hosted "excellent table and animated conversation" for Johnson and the Thrales. Metcalfe’s specific interactions with Johnson included participation in the "round robin" regarding Goldsmith’s Latin epitaph and accompanying Johnson on excursions to Chichester and Cowdray. Metcalfe served as a trustee for Johnson’s servant, Francis Barber, and acted as treasurer for the committee—including Boswell, Burke, and Reynolds—tasked with erecting Johnson’s monument. The account highlights Metcalfe’s "unaccountable dislike" for Piozzi (then Mrs. Thrale), noting his public declarations of "aversion to literary ladies." Courtney also records Johnson's dying gift to Metcalfe: a copy of South’s sermons inscribed just forty-eight hours before his death.
This article reviews the controversial reputation and literary contributions of Sir John Hawkins, whom Johnson famously termed 'most unclubable.' Dobson examines the rivalry between Hawkins and Boswell, noting how their respective biographies of Johnson were shaped by mutual 'malevolence' and professional jealousy. The text defends Hawkins’s 'Life of Johnson' as a valuable repository of 'curious anecdotes' despite its perceived 'pomposity' and 'lack of humour.' Dobson details Hawkins’s role as Johnson’s executor, addressing contemporary charges of parsimony regarding the funeral and the disposal of Johnson's watch. The author maintains that while Hawkins was often 'detestable' to his peers, his long-standing friendship with Johnson, dating back to the Ivy Lane Club, establishes him as a significant, if flawed, witness to Johnsoniana.
Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale; Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi; Ed. by A. Hayward; Newly Selected and Ed., with Introduction and Notes, by J. H. Lobban; with Twenty-Seven Portraits in Collotype from Paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Other Illustrations
Lobban’s edition presents a condensed and newly annotated version of Abraham Hayward's 1861 collection, focusing on Piozzi's autobiographical memoirs and her marginalia. The introduction seeks to correct the "unmerited obloquy" cast upon Piozzi by Boswell and Macaulay, arguing for her accuracy as a chronicler and her genuine importance to Johnson’s domestic happiness. The text reproduces Piozzi’s account of her first meeting with Johnson in 1765 and the subsequent eighteen-year "Streatham period," during which Johnson found a "home" with the Thrales. Extensive sections are dedicated to the "Piozzi marriage" controversy, providing Piozzi’s own perspective on the social ostracism she faced following her union with Gabriele Piozzi. The literary remains include her "Thraliana" observations, character sketches of contemporary figures like Goldsmith and Burke, and her detailed marginal notes on Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. Lobban emphasizes that these writings reveal a woman of "extraordinary vivacity" and "untiring industry" whose intellectual contributions were often overshadowed by the gendered prejudices of her era. The volume serves as a critical counter-narrative to the Boswellian record of Johnson’s life.
CGV entry 5:131.
Presents Hayward's threads as separate texts, including Autobiographical Memoirs and marginalia. Introduction assesses HLP’s life and praises her style
Robert Dodsley: Poet, Publisher & Playwright
Straus chronicles Dodsley’s ascent from domestic service to his position as a preeminent publisher, emphasizing his indispensable role in Johnson’s early career. The narrative details how Dodsley "immediately perceived" the merit of London in 1738, purchasing it for ten guineas to spare Johnson the "scorn" of a rejection. Straus documents the publisher’s continued support of Johnson through the publication of The Plan of a Dictionary, The Preceptor, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Irene. The text also clarifies Dodsley’s primary role in suggesting the Dictionary project, as recorded in the "celebrated" interviews at Tully's Head. Beyond the Johnsonian circle, the biography explores Dodsley's relationships with Pope, Shenstone, and the Wartons, as well as his editorial work on the Collection of Poems and the Select Collection of Old Plays. Straus uses extensive primary correspondence and the Tully's Head day-books to reconstruct the "Trade" environment of Pall Mall. The volume includes a thorough bibliography of Dodsley’s publications and a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Johnsonian Memorials at Lichfield: Recent Discoveries at St. Chad's
This report chronicles the discovery of the long-lost tombstones of Catherine Chambers and Lucy Porter during renovations at St. Chad’s Church, Lichfield. The narrative details the efforts of Wilfrid Fuller to locate the burials, eventually uncovering slate markers for Johnson’s family servant and his step-daughter beneath the chancel floor. The article recounts Johnson’s deep emotional attachment to Chambers, quoting his diary entry regarding their final meeting and prayer in 1767. It further details the life of Porter, including her residence with Johnson’s mother, her inheritance, and her eventual move to a house on Greenhill. Seward’s account of Johnson’s early attraction to Porter and his subsequent marriage to her mother, Elizabeth, is included, though the reporter notes Seward’s reputation for satire. The article concludes by announcing the dedication of a new memorial tablet to Chambers, funded during the Johnson Bi-Centenary, to be unveiled by the Mayor of Lichfield on Johnson’s birthday.
Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney, Being the Johnsonian Passages from the Works of Mme. D'Arblay
A complete collection of the material written by Burney concerning Samuel Johnson, gathered from her diaries and the memoirs of her father. The editor aims for completeness, excluding only minor repetitions or casual mentions, and even includes passages about Johnson’s close friends like Boswell and Reynolds. The editor notes that Burney's account is uniquely valuable, offering a "lifelike and picturesque" view of Johnson, especially in his domestic life with the Thrales, contrasting with the "dress parade" aspects often emphasized by Boswell. Burney's natural writing style, evident in the earlier diaries, is lauded for its dramatic skill and simplicity, though her later work is criticized for developing an unfortunate pomposity. Despite minor inconsistencies in dating and the author’s tendency toward self-effacement, her detailed portrayal of Johnson’s character—including his formal courtesy, sudden bursts of ferocity, humor, and intellectual power—is found to be in "startling agreement" with other reliable accounts and is considered authentic.
A Life of John Taylor of Ashburne, Rector of Bosworth, Prebendary of Westminister, & Friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Together with an Account of the Taylors & Websters of Ashburne, with Pedigrees and Copious Genealogical Notes
Richards identifies an overlooked 1768 letter by Helfreich Peter Sturz published in Das Deutsche Museum (1777) as potentially the earliest printed anecdotes of Johnson. The correspondence corroborates accounts by Piozzi and Murphy regarding Johnson’s visit to the Thrales. Richards highlights Sturz’s record of Johnson’s remarks on The Rehearsal and Pitt’s speeches, noting that Sturz likely obtained information directly from Murphy years before the major biographies appeared.
Biron chronicles the intervention of Johnson in the legal and moral crisis of William Dodd, a clergyman executed for forgery in 1777. Johnson ghostwrote essential texts for the defense, including the speech delivered before the Old Bailey and the sermon The Convict’s Address to His Unhappy Brethren. The account emphasizes Johnson's private compassion for a "poor weak, erring mortal" despite his public disdain for clerical "levity." Boswell preserves Johnson's justifications for concealing his authorship of Dodd's papers to maintain the efficacy of the appeal. Biron details the failed petitions to the King and the Lord Chancellor, underscoring Johnson's persistent efforts to secure clemency for the "Macaroni parson" against the rigors of the criminal law.
Biron examines the relationship between Johnson and William Dodd, the 'Macaroni parson' executed for forgery in 1777. Though Johnson met Dodd only once, he was 'agitated' by the clergyman’s distress and exerted 'all the latent energy of an indolent man' to seek clemency. Johnson ghostwrote several documents for the prisoner, including the Convict’s Address to His Unhappy Brethren, the speech delivered before the court, and a petition to the King. Biron emphasizes Johnson’s 'humanity' and his belief that Dodd’s crime 'corrupted no man’s principles' and was a 'reparable injury.' Johnson ultimately defended his intervention by stating, 'when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.'
CGV entry 5:137. Reprinted from National Review (1911).
The Story of a Printing House: Being a Short Account of the Strahans and Spottiswoodes
Austen-Leigh traces the Strahan printing firm's history, highlighting William Strahan's crucial role in Samuel Johnson's career. Strahan printed the Dictionary and published Rasselas. The text documents Strahan's financial support for Johnson and their eventual reconciliation following periodic estrangements. Johnson also interacted socially with Strahan; he breakfasted with him, where he critiqued Strahan's views on small certainties, and he dined at Strahan's home alongside Hume, Franklin, and Piozzi.
Axon presents an 1899 pamphlet containing a Dialogue between Johnson and Knowles regarding the Quaker conversion of Jenny Harry. He charges Boswell with garbling Seward’s minutes and suppressing Knowles’s account of the exchange to hide Johnson's defeat. The text records Johnson’s brutal dismissal of Harry as an odious wench and a little slut. Axon argues the mighty Lion was chafed by Knowles’s spirited defense of Quaker principles.
CGV entry 5:141. On Johnson's relations with Mrs. Boswell.
Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge
Copeland argues that Boswell provides an incomplete portrait of Johnson, emphasizing the "arch talker" over the "agreeable Sam" found in D'Arblay’s diary. The text recounts Boswell’s 1790 pursuit of D'Arblay at Windsor to obtain "beautiful billets" that might reveal Johnson's lighter side. Copeland details Johnson's 1777 introduction to D'Arblay at Burney’s house, where Johnson drolly inquired of the musician Bach, "Is he a piper?" The narrative highlights Johnson's sixteen-year residence at Streatham with Thrale, noting his softened demeanor following a harsh rebuke to a young man regarding marriage. Copeland examines Johnson's deep affection for Goldsmith, exemplified by the "angelic forgiveness" following a dinner reprimand in 1773. Further focus is given to Johnson's domestic charities, including his final parting from Chambers in 1767 and his care for Hodge the cat. Copeland concludes that while Boswell remains incomparable, supplementary readings of D'Arblay and Thrale are essential to understanding Johnson's "comical humor" and capacity for friendship.
W. B. H. queries the authorship of a manuscript couplet found in a 1802 copy of The Thespian Dictionary. The epigram comments on the proximity of the graves of David Garrick and Samuel Johnson in Westminster Abbey, comparing the two figures to the biblical David and Goliath. The contributor seeks to identify the origin of the lines or any previous instance of their publication in print.
Meynell defends Elizabeth Johnson against biographers' persistent ridicule. She challenges the "facile literary opportunity" of referring to her as "Tetty" and argues that Johnson’s "love-match" provided him his only true friendship during a "radically wretched" life. Meynell highlights Johnson’s profound solitude after her death, noting he was "solitary" from that day forward. The essay also contrasts this relationship with Johnson’s late-life connection to Hester Thrale, whom he admired as the "first of womankind" only because his wife was deceased. Meynell briefly defends Thrale’s marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, noting that minor biographers more recently termed it a "mutual affection" rather than the "degrading passion" described by Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society
CGV entry 5:146. On papers relating to Samuel Crisp, etc.
Lord Stowell: His Life and the Development of English Prize Law
Roscoe recounts the life of William Scott (Lord Stowell), focusing on his career transition from an Oxford academic to a celebrated jurist in civil and Admiralty law. Scott's 18 years at Oxford, including his tenure as a Fellow and Camden Reader of Ancient History, shaped him into a learned, scientific jurist, unlike most English lawyers. The text emphasizes Scott's intimate friendship with Johnson, noting their acquaintance through Robert Chambers and Scott's role as Johnson's host and companion on the 1773 Edinburgh visit. Scott's election to the Literary Club and his appointment as one of Johnson's executors further established him within the Literary Circle. The author's primary aim is to define Scott's lasting achievement as the creator of modern English and American prize law.
Some Contemporary Criticism of Doctor Johnson
CGV entry 5:150. On 'Lexiphanes', Kenrick, Watson, etc.
Clodd's article explores Johnson's scientific interests and his interactions with his contemporary, Lord Monboddo, primarily through Boswell's Life and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Johnson showed interest in chemistry, natural philosophy, and refuted the scorpion suicide myth, but was largely unengaged with the advanced science of his day. Clodd focuses on Johnson's ridicule of Monboddo's key evolutionary theories—that man descended from apes, originally possessed a tail (lost from sitting), and that the Ourang-Outang could be taught to speak—contrasting Monboddo's foresight with Johnson's traditional views. The text highlights Monboddo's life and the eventual vindication of his anticipation of man's fundamental relationship with the higher apes.
Clodd investigates the intellectual friction between Johnson and James Burnet, Lord Monboddo, focusing on their divergent views on 'Natural Philosophy' and human origins. While Monboddo’s speculations on the 'humanity of the Ourang-Outang' and 'men with tails' served as 'anticipations of discoveries' like organic evolution, Johnson dismissed such theories as 'idle' conjecture and 'all which is in posse.' Clodd notes that Johnson’s 'obstinate' adherence to the current chronology—placing creation at 4004 B.C.—prevented his acceptance of Monboddo’s 'creeping of the dawn.' Despite their rivalry, Johnson admitted Monboddo was a 'man of sense and of so much elegant learning,' even while laughing at his 'enthusiastic' farming and 'ancient' hygiene.
CGV entry 5:151. Reprinted from Fortnightly Review (1917).
Newton explores Piozzi's life, focusing on her marriage to Piozzi and the subsequent reaction of Johnson. Johnson's powerful letter chastises Piozzi for her "ignominiously married" state and is quoted. The discussion recounts the sale of Thrale's brewery, detailing Johnson's celebrated remark defining the brewery's value as "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." The author notes Piozzi's relief from commercial life after the sale and her ultimate devotion to Piozzi, evidenced by giving him a volume written by Johnson.
CGV entry 5:152. On Hester Piozzi.
Newton presents Piozzi as a "man's woman" of rare charm and intellectual robustitude, distinguishing her from more "limp" contemporaries like Frances Burney. The narrative follows her life from her Welsh childhood as "Fiddle" Salusbury through her twenty-year association with Johnson during her marriage to Henry Thrale. Newton argues that Piozzi "soothed" Johnson’s "radically wretched" life while gaining social distinction for the Streatham household. The text details the "brutal" opposition she faced from her daughters and Johnson regarding her 1784 marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. Newton defends this union as "perfectly happy," noting her subsequent literary output, including the "Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson." The account traces her later years at Brynbella and Bath, emphasizing her unimpaired memory and continued scholarly vigor at eighty, and characterizes her not as a pedant, but as the most charming person in any room.
CGV entry 5:152. Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly (1918).
This history traces the continuous line of a distinguished publishing family from 1711, when Charles Rivington acquired the well-established business of Richard Chiswell. The monograph details the firm's central role in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglican theological publishing, emphasizing the contributions of its successive heads, including John Rivington (1720-1792), who managed the influential Conger or trade books, and his son, the younger Charles (1754-1831). Rivington details Johnson's financial dealings, primarily concerning his Shakespeare edition, published in 1765. The agreement with Jacob Tonson stipulated Johnson would receive 250 free copies for his subscribers, yielding an estimated total remuneration of £1,312 10s. The publisher settled a £40 debt for Johnson in 1758. The book also notes Johnson's praise of Richardson over Fielding, his contentment with Tonson, and his famous confession that he had "lost all the names and spent all the money" from his subscription list.
CGV entry 5:154. On 'Life' for 7 April 1778.
Beerbohm reconstructs an 1778 encounter at Streatham recorded by Boswell involving an anonymous clergyman. When the clergyman questioned Johnson regarding Dodd’s sermons, Johnson delivered a thunderous verbal annihilation. Beerbohm characterizes the clergyman as a young, sensitive curate whose social courage was permanently destroyed by Johnson’s roar. The analysis explores the fragility of contemporary reputations, comparing the once-revered preachers Atterbury and Tillotson to modern novelists while emphasizing the enduring, if accidental, immortality of Boswell’s nameless victim.
CGV entry 5:154. Reprinted from The Owl (1919).
Thomas presents Reynolds as Johnson’s 'St. John,' an 'invulnerable man' whose 'sweetness of disposition' and 'peaceful' temper provided relief from Johnson's 'overpowering' mind. The text recounts their 1762 tour of Devonshire, where Johnson 'alarmed' hosts with his 'excesses in honey' and tea. Thomas details Reynolds’s 'frigid' kindness and his role as a 'fairy godmother' to figures like Goldsmith and Burke, often providing financial assistance that was 'never repaid.' Reynolds founded the Club to give Johnson 'undisturbed opportunities of talking' and viewed his own 'happy life' with 'tranquillity' until the end.
Lexiphanes: Satire's View of Dr. Johnson
Whitford surveys contemporary satirical attacks on Johnson to provide a "salutary" contrast to Boswell’s adoring portrait. Satirists like Churchill, Wolcot, and Campbell mocked Johnson’s "pompous" style, personal peculiarities, and political "False Alarms." Whitford analyzes the tag "Lexiphanes," used to ridicule Johnson’s "sesquipedalian" prose and "dictionary-swallowing" vocabulary. He notes that while satirists attacked his critical "virulence" in the Lives of the Poets and his acceptance of a pension, they ultimately recognized him as a "leader among conservative traditionalists."
Frank Barber: Dr. Johnson's Black Servant
On December 7, 1784, the dying Johnson asked Windham for two favors. First, he urged him to dedicate every seventh day to spiritual reflection. Second, Johnson requested that Windham serve as the protector and adviser for his servant, Frank Barber, to whom Johnson left an "ample provision" of £70 annually. Windham agreed, confirming the promise to Barber.
Dobson traces the life and literary career of Elizabeth Carter, emphasizing her significant relationship with Johnson. After their 1738 introduction by Cave, Johnson celebrated her in Greek and Latin epigrams, later asserting she understood Greek better than anyone "except Elizabeth Carter." Johnson praised her versatile domestic and intellectual skills, noting she could "make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus." Carter contributed to Johnson’s Rambler and maintained their friendship until his death. Dobson highlights Johnson's high regard for her "piety and learning," grouping her with Burney and More as women of unmatched excellence. The text underscores how Johnson’s respect bolstered Carter's status as a preeminent eighteenth-century "learned lady."
Reade chronicles the discovery of a previously unknown clerical cousin of Johnson, Samuel Ford (1717-1793). Samuel was the son of Johnson's maternal uncle, also Samuel Ford, and was born in Stroxton, Lincolnshire. He was educated at Sutton Coldfield Grammar School, attended Trinity College, Oxford, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was Rector of Brampton Abbotts and Vicar of Monkland in Herefordshire. Despite their similar professions and education, there is no record of Johnson corresponding with or mentioning this cousin.
Reade informs a correspondent (Whitley) that the letter of Johnson's maternal cousin, Phoebe Ford, is in the Salt Library. He clarifies that Johnson's boyhood visit was with his cousin, the Rev. Cornelius Ford ("Parson" Ford), not Phoebe's father, Cornelius Ford, who was only famous for long-jumping. Phoebe's father was likely a failure, as she was placed under the guardianship of her uncle, Dr. Joseph Ford. Reade notes the interest in connecting the literary figures of Johnson and Gibbon through Phoebe, Gibbon's housekeeper, and wonders if her relationship influenced the lack of cordiality between the two men.
CGV entry 5:160. On Phoebe Ford. See also a reply by H. M. Beatty in the same journal, October 6, page 644.
The diary extensively records Johnson and Boswell's position in late eighteenth-century London's cultural and social circles. The elder Boswell, a zealous presence at the Royal Academy, performed secretarial duties, successfully championed West's election, and worked toward establishing an official Academy commemoration. He often sought candid opinions on Johnson, revealing the biographer believed Johnson abruptly abandoned heavy drink consumption over anxiety about mental health. Johnson commanded immense commercial success; Cadell observed his collected works remained essential to every library. But prominent intellectuals subjected Johnson's literary standing to sharp criticism; Coleridge dismissed his style as excessive verbiage, acknowledging his diminished respect. Boswell's younger son later upheld the family's literary ties, meticulously preparing Malone's posthumous Shakespeare edition for publication. The younger Boswell, a keen observer of the era's legal and political figures, pronounced Eldon the greatest contemporary lawyer.
CGV entry 5:162.
CGV entry 5:164.
Asquith examines the portrait of Johnson provided by Burney to determine if a cohesive image of the figure exists absent the biographical contributions of Boswell. The narrative traces the friendship between Johnson and Burney from their 1778 meeting at Streatham until Johnson's death in 1784. Asquith highlights Johnson's enthusiastic reception of Evelina and his subsequent role as a mentor and affectionate companion. The account details Johnson’s interactions within the Thrale household, his playful encouragement of Burney to challenge established wits like Montagu, and his physical infirmities. Asquith records Johnson’s eventual bitterness regarding Piozzi’s marriage to her second husband and his final requests for Burney’s prayers. The text portrays Johnson as an indulgent, humorous, and "lovable personality" who prioritized the company of the unassuming over the "eminent."
CGV entry 5:164. Reprinted from the 1923 standalone publication.
Great Friendships: Mrs. Thrale and Samuel Johnson
Radcliffe provides a letter from Samuel Johnson (nephew of Sir Joshua Reynolds, not the Doctor), dated March 17, 1774, which offers a "sidelight" on Dr. Johnson. The letter describes Dr. Johnson dining with Sir Joshua Reynolds, praising him for his knowledge and honesty. The Doctor is quoted as saying: "In my whole life I think I never put any thing into the papers good or bad about myself." The letter also mentions Johnson's grief for his wife and his constant attendance at evening prayer, unlike "a certain Person" (presumably Sir Joshua) who hadn't seen the inside of a church for years. The writer recommends Johnson's Tour to the Highlands of Scotland and his political pamphlet Taxation no Tyranny.
CGV entry 5:167.
Austen Leigh reconstructs Strahan's career using surviving business ledgers. The article details Strahan’s professional relationships with Johnson, David Hume, and Benjamin Franklin, and documents his rise to King’s Printer. Leigh provides specific bibliographical data derived from the ledgers, including print runs and costs for Johnson’s Dictionary and Rasselas, illustrating Strahan’s transition from printer to wealthy publisher and his central role in the London book trade.
Sparke provides a biographical sketch of Anna Williams, a close associate of Johnson. Born in 1706, Williams moved to London in 1727 and lost her sight around 1740. After her father’s expulsion from the Charterhouse, Johnson befriended them and arranged for an unsuccessful eye operation by Samuel Sharp at his own house in 1752. Williams resided in Johnson’s household from that point until her death in 1783. Sparke notes her literary work, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, and a benefit performance of Aaron Hill’s Merope secured by Garrick, which together provided her significant financial support.
Russell explores the lifelong antagonism Horace Walpole maintained toward Johnson, tracing its genesis to a 1771 Royal Academy banquet. Russell posits that Walpole, humiliated by his own initial deception by the Chatterton forgeries, projected his fear of ridicule onto Johnson after witnessing the latter mock Goldsmith’s belief in the Rowley poems. The narrative contrasts Walpole's status as a "busy trifler" and recipient of sinecures with Johnson’s "sordid struggle" as a professional man of letters. Russell catalogs Walpole's vitriolic private correspondence and posthumous memoirs, which characterize Johnson as a "saucy Caliban" and "tasteless old pedant." Additionally, the text details Walpole’s involvement in the 1781 breach between Johnson and Piozzi’s circle—specifically Mrs. Montagu—following Johnson’s critical treatment of Lyttelton and Gray. Russell emphasizes Johnson’s relative indifference to Walpole, noting only a single civil reference in Boswell’s records.
CGV entry 5:170.
Beatty examines the thirty-year friendship between Johnson and Arthur Murphy, highlighting Murphy’s role as a benefactor. He details how Murphy informed Johnson of his government pension and introduced him to the Thrales, facilitating the Streatham circle. Beatty notes their shared interests in politics and Shakespeare, despite Murphy’s later friendship with Piozzi’s second husband. He concludes that while Murphy's own literary rank is minor, his Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson remains a fair, concise tribute.
CGV entry 5:171. On Arthur Murphy.
Russell provides notes from her grandfather, Sir Henry Russell, who was frequently in Johnson's company. In 1781, Johnson reported finishing the last sheets of Lives of the Poets and discussed potential subjects for a biography of English lawyers. Johnson rejected Lord Mansfield as a subject, arguing his noble birth and costly education made his elevation unremarkable. Instead, Johnson preferred Lord Hardwicke, a son of the earth who rose through self-education and merit. Johnson remarked that if a nurse had foretold Hardwicke's rise, she would have swum for it as a witch.
CGV entry 5:172. An anecdote of Johnson in 1781, from notes of Sir Henry Russell on Lord Hardwicke.
Un altro Italiano amico di Samuele Johnson
CGV entry 5:173. On Francesco Sastres.
Links Between Dr. Samuel Johnson and Rev. Gilbert White
While the two literary "giants" seemed "poles apart" and never met, they were closely interconnected through a dense social and intellectual network. The book's structure presents a series of six specific "links" to prove this. These connections include mutual friends like the Warton brothers and Hester Chapone; scientific colleagues like Sir Joseph Banks and Thomas Pennant (Johnson's tour companion, White's correspondent); and, most significantly, the "strong link" of Daines Barrington, Johnson's club-mate and the recipient of the letters comprising White's Selborne. A final link is Benjamin White, Gilbert's brother, who was Johnson's publisher. Markland's argument is that these overlapping circles prove the two men were separated by "so slight a barrier" and "must often have heard of one another."
Piozzi Marginalia: Comprising Some Extracts from Manuscripts of Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Annotations from Her Books
Merritt assembles a diverse collection of Piozzi’s private writings, including the manuscript book Minced Meat for Pyes and extensive annotations from her historical work, Retrospection. The volume provides a biographical sketch that traces her life through four distinct periods: her youth as Salusbury, her pivotal years as Thrale, her literary career as Piozzi, and her spirited widowhood in Bath. Merritt highlights her relationship with Johnson, noting his role as an inmate of her household for nearly two decades and his influence on her literary development. The text identifies her easy, colloquial style and provides evidence of her scholarly range, from etymological speculation to contemporary political commentary. Specific sections detail her interactions with Boswell and the subsequent controversies regarding her second marriage. The edition includes verses, anecdotes, and corrections of printer errors, offering a scholarly reader a refined view of her late-life intellectual vitality and her enduring connections to the literary figures of her era.
Walkley reconstructs an encounter between Johnson and the actress Mrs. Emmet based on a brief anecdote recorded by Boswell. He identifies the likely date of the attachment as 1734, following the London revival of the ballad opera Hob in the Well. The narrative reimagines Emmet’s performance as Flora and details an imagined backstage proposal wherein Johnson declares a respectful passion. Walkley depicts Emmet rejecting the suit due to Johnson's lack of funds and his awkward preoccupation with her virtue over her physical charms. The account concludes with the actress observing a celebrated, elder Johnson from the wings of a Lichfield theater in 1776, reflecting on his eventual marriage to Elizabeth Porter.
CGV entry 5:176. On the actress mentioned in 'Life', volume 2, page 464. See also "A. B.," The Times (London), March 20, 1923.
P. details the life of Levett, whom Johnson described as a "very blameless and a very useful man." The narrative traces Levett’s origins as a Parisian waiter to his medical practice among the London poor, where he often accepted gin or provisions as fees. Despite Levett’s "strange grotesque appearance" and an unfortunate marriage to a "street walker," Johnson maintained a high opinion of his medical aptitude. P. notes that Levett resided in Johnson’s garret for decades, participating in daily breakfasts where Johnson famously shared his bread. P. emphasizes that Johnson’s verses on Levett’s death enshrine the apothecary as a "ready help" to those in "Misery’s darkest cavern."
CGV entry 5:177. Some facts about Dr. Levet.
The Friendship of Dr. Johnson and Windham
Examination of the intimacy between Johnson and Windham emphasizes a shared devotion to morality and intellectual inquiry. While the acquaintance began during a 1774 tour of Derbyshire, a deep bond formed following Windham's 1778 election to the Club. Johnson provides moral instruction to a younger pupil, who in turn offers unremitting care and the use of his carriage during the final illness of 1784. Windham's sensitive tact facilitates these dialogues, allowing Johnson to remain "in fine spirits" despite political differences. Johnson famously characterizes Windham's conversational prowess as "inter stellas luna minores." The connection illustrates Johnson's enduring capacity for mentorship and Windham's role as a vital social support during terminal decline.
Roscoe asserts that Johnson possessed a naturally legalistic mind, characterized by a robust, logical intellect and an inherent perception of crucial facts. The study highlights Johnson’s theoretical mastery of the rationale of advocacy and his capacity for clear, resonant expression in legal arguments. Roscoe cites testimony from Lord Stowell, who suggested Johnson might have become Lord Chancellor had he joined the bar. Throughout his life, Johnson maintained a serious interest in the law, frequently assisting Boswell with legal reasoning and consulting with experts like Chambers and Ballow. Roscoe concludes that Johnson’s representative English character was deeply entwined with his appreciation for the Common Law’s common sense and its connection to national life.
CGV entry 5:178. Reprinted from National Review (1925).
Forman investigates Johnson’s appreciation for Izaak Walton beyond his well-known admiration for Walton’s Lives. Despite a rumored derogatory definition of fishing, Johnson recommended The Compleat Angler to friends. Forman provides evidence of Johnson’s deep engagement with the text, citing a 1777 autograph Latin translation of a song by John Chalkhill found in Walton’s work. The translation, prefaced "Waltoni Piscator Perfectus," confirms Johnson’s sympathetic reading of the spiritual and contemplative joys described by Walton.
CGV entry 5:179. See also Edward Bensly, in the same journal (September 5), page 170.
Smith argues for the significance of Ann Hedges Gardiner, the tallow-chandler's wife, as a confidante who revealed Johnson's "humanest" side. Drawing from a phrase in Boswell and other records, the author constructs a portrait of Gardiner as a small, brisk, and charitable widow on Snow Hill. The article details the enduring friendship, emphasizing Johnson's comfort at her home and her presence at his deathbed, suggesting she represented the simple, homely virtues he valued.
CGV entry 5:180. On Mrs. Gardiner.
CGV entry 5:180. Reprinted from Sewanee Review (1925).
The History and Sources of Percy's Memoir of Goldsmith
Goldsmith planned for Thomas, author of the Reliques, to write his life. But the biographical task—leading eventually to the publication known as the Memoir—was transferred to Johnson around 1776. Johnson actively sought materials, corresponding with Goldsmith’s family, specifically the widow of his elder brother Henry. Maurice, Goldsmith's brother, believed Johnson intended to edit Goldsmith’s poetical works and preface them with a life to benefit the family financially. Johnson excluded Goldsmith from the Lives of the Poets when commissioned by booksellers because of a conflicting exclusive property interest held by the bookseller Carnan. Johnson's engagement contrasts with his earlier remark that Goldsmith’s Life of Parnell suffered because the biographer lacked intimate knowledge of his subject.
Hawkins maintains a reputation for pedantry and social friction despite his lengthy acquaintance with Johnson. While contemporaries like Boswell and Piozzi disparage Hawkins’s character, his General History of the Science and Practice of Music receives modern vindication over Burney’s rival work. Hawkins provides unique documentation of the Ivy Lane Club and the early intellectual development of Johnson. Boyle details Hawkins’s tenure as Johnson’s executor and the subsequent hostility from the Literary Club following his 1787 biography. Hawkins’s narrative, though digressive, offers essential perspectives on Johnson’s "humorous" disposition and final illness. The account disputes Boswell’s allegations of theft regarding Johnson’s manuscripts, characterizing Hawkins’s actions as well-intentioned officiousness.
CGV entry 5:182. See also National Review, volume 88 (November 1926), pages 433-441.
This article disputes the predominantly negative characterizations of Hawkins perpetuated by Boswell and the Johnsonian circle. Boyle notes that while Johnson termed Hawkins "unclubbable" and others criticized his "penurious and mean" nature, Hawkins maintained a forty-year friendship with Johnson, doubling Boswell's tenure. Boyle defends Hawkins's multifaceted achievements as a magistrate, music historian, and Johnson’s executor. Boyle challenges Boswell's "persistent malevolence," particularly regarding the alleged "theft" of Johnson's diaries, which Boyle clarifies as a move to protect the documents from unscrupulous newspapermen. While admitting Hawkins was a "pompous" man of "coarse fibre" who lacked humor, Boyle uses his literary and legal record to show he was an "honest man at bottom." Hawkins's biography of Johnson is described as "outrageously padded," yet Boyle maintains it provides a necessary, independent sketch of Johnson's "humorous" and "rollicking" character that Boswell's narrative sometimes obscures.
This article investigates the historical intersection between Samuel Johnson and Robert Burns, noting the scarcity of figures who knew both men. The author highlights James Boswell’s silence regarding Burns and contrasts Johnson’s praise of Boswell as the most unscotchified of his countrymen with the literary circles of Edinburgh. The text identifies a small group of mutual acquaintances, including Hugh Blair, James Beattie, John Moore, Lord Monboddo, and William Robertson, most of whom met Burns during his 1787 Edinburgh visit. Particular focus is placed on Blair, who described meeting Johnson at Inner Temple Lane as having bearded the lion in his den and who later clashed with the lexicographer over the authenticity of Ossian, a work Blair championed and Burns admired.
An Eighteenth-Century Gentleman: The Honorable Topham Beauclerk
Smith traces the biography of Topham Beauclerk, focusing on his contradictory nature as a dissipated man of fashion and a brilliant conversationalist. Smith emphasizes Beauclerk's role as the 'beloved companion' of Johnson, noting that Beauclerk alone among his social class sought such intimate friendship with the 'shabby' intellectuals of the era. The narrative recounts famous interactions preserved by Boswell, including the three-in-the-morning 'frisk' through Covent Garden and the dinner parties at the Adelphi Terrace. Smith analyzes how Johnson 'loved him' for his wisdom and natural charm while simultaneously rebuking his cynical wit. The account uses Boswell's anecdotes to illustrate Beauclerk’s 'spontaneous and mordant' speech and his role in the Club.
CGV entry 5:185. Reprinted from Sewanee Review (1926).
Chapman describes the rare pamphlet, Dr. John Taylor's Letter to Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. on the Subject of a Future State (1787), which contains three Johnson letters and was Boswell's likely source for them. The pamphlet was provoked by Johnson's famous comment that he would prefer a state of torment to annihilation, which he clarified meant expressing the immense value he rated "vital existence." Chapman suggests that Johnson likely helped Taylor write the main letter, as portions of the philosophical text on pagan views of the afterlife exhibit Johnson's characteristic style, similar to that of Imlac, which would be unexpected from Taylor.
CGV entry 5:187.
Murray presents a series of anecdotal sketches of eighteenth-century figures, including Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Johnson is depicted as a "literary leviathan" and "splendid villain" who exerted significant influence over his contemporaries. Murray details Johnson's interactions with diverse personalities, noting his sympathy for the poet Christopher Smart—with whom he would "as lief pray" as anyone else—and his "massive sense" in evaluating the work of Richard Cumberland. The text records Johnson’s dismissive view of Catherine Macaulay’s republicanism and his eventual ostracization of George Steevens for literary dishonesty. Boswell is characterized by his "obsequious way" during his introduction to Johnson at Thomas Davies’ shop. Murray also includes Boswell’s participation in the "conspiracy" to ensure the success of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and his emotional reaction to Samuel Ireland's forged Shakespearean manuscripts, which he "kissed" while kneeling. The work captures Johnson's "turgid style" as satirized by Wolcot and highlights his role as a "perpetual renovation of hope" for aging acquaintances like Charles Macklin.
CGV entry 5:188. Contains sketches of many minor figures with whom Johnson was acquainted.
Stewart-Brown inquires about a possible printed note by Johnson in the British Museum concerning Peter Bodvel, a bookseller. The note alleges that Bodvel, a Presbyterian, showed his anti-Church antipathy by using specific capitalization for the King ("owl"), Royal Family ("cranes"), and clergy ("apes") in the Welsh Prayer-book of 1664. Stewart-Brown asks if Johnson's note has been published and if the Prayer-book's text supports the statement.
Artists and Their Friends in England 1770–1799
Whitley investigates the social and professional intersections of eighteenth-century British art, documenting several biographical anecdotes and historical disputes involving Johnson and Boswell. Whitley disputes Farington’s claim regarding Johnson’s introduction to the Prince of Wales at the 1784 Royal Academy banquet, asserting that the Prince did not attend. The text details Johnson’s influence on Reynolds, specifically his deathbed plea that the painter "never to use his pencil on a Sunday." Whitley also records Boswell’s attendance at a 1785 execution with Reynolds, noting Boswell's "taste for this kind of entertainment." Although the table of contents lists Piozzi, the provided text primarily focuses on Johnson's interactions with the Academy and his circle.
Published: Reprinted from the Hull and Yorkshire Times, March 10, 1928.
Examines the complex and often strained relationship between James Boswell and his father, Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck. The text portrays Auchinleck as a man of "sterling integrity" and "sense and sagacity," a Whig judge who adhered to his Scots mother tongue and traditional Presbyterianism, serving as the "antithesis" of his son’s eccentric and idle character. Boswell’s perceived "obtuse" behavior and "insensitivity to ridicule" were exacerbated by his pursuit of high-profile "heroes" like Paoli and Johnson, which Auchinleck viewed as undutiful and subservient. The article details their clash during Johnson’s 1773 visit to Auchinleck and concludes that despite Boswell’s literary success, his father would have viewed the Life of Johnson as an ignoble humiliation.
CGV entry 5:194.
Cochrane entry 510.
Sackville-West explores Johnson’s relationship with the impostor George Psalmanazar, whom Johnson sought out the most. Sackville-West notes that Piozzi identified Psalmanazar as the best man Johnson ever knew. Sackville-West details Psalmanazar’s career of delirious notoriety and his later life of penurious, penitent, respectable existence in London. Sackville-West observes that Johnson was softened toward Psalmanazar’s piety and virtue. The text notes that Johnson accepted Psalmanazar’s repentance as being as exciting as his earlier fraudulence.
CGV entry 5:195. On Johnson and George Psalmanazar.
Reade provides biographical details for Samuel Johnson's friend, the lawyer Oliver Edwards, drawing from independent research. The information, covering Edwards's baptism (1711), brief Oxford residence (1729), connection with the Six Clerks Office in Chancery, and two marriages, supports the extraordinary accuracy of Boswell's reporting of their conversation in 1778, even concerning trivial details like his farm's size and his age. Edwards died in 1791.
CGV entry 5:196. See issues for April 26, page 313, and November 29, page 938.
This brief letter to the editor examines Johnson's contributions to James’s Medicinal Dictionary, correcting a reviewer's confusion of the Proposals with the Preface. While Boswell failed to identify specific sections Johnson wrote, Powell recently identified the Proposals as Johnsonian. Chapman identifies the article on Boerhaave as Johnson’s, noting it is an augmented version of the life Johnson wrote for the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1739. However, Chapman disputes Johnsonian authorship for a concluding disquisition on Boerhaave's works, suggesting Johnson only supplied an "exordium" for James’s own writing.
Woolf narrates a failed social gathering hosted by Burney in the late 1770s, intended to introduce Greville to Johnson and Piozzi. The account details the domestic life of the Burney family, emphasizing Fanny's role as a silent observer. Woolf examines the complex dynamic between Johnson and Piozzi, describing their friendship as an achievement of art that subdued Johnson's rougher habits. The evening collapses due to Greville’s supercilious silence and Burney’s mistaken belief that music could bridge social chasms. Piozzi's dramatic singing only increases the constraint, leading Thrale to perform a mocking mimicry that foreshadows her future controversial marriage. The stalemate ends when Johnson rebukes Greville for monopolizing the fire, causing the latter to retreat in ignominy. Woolf uses this scene to illustrate the power of personality and the shifting social hierarchies of the period.
Woolf dramatizes a failed musical evening hosted by Dr. Burney in the late 1770s, intended to introduce Fulke Greville to Johnson and Piozzi. Drawing largely from Burney’s diaries, Woolf depicts the agonizing social paralysis that ensues when Greville’s aristocratic "Ton" meets Johnson’s intellectual gravity. While Greville occupies the hearthrug in supercilious silence, Johnson remains in deep abstraction, and Piozzi—bored by the "humdrum" atmosphere—performs a reckless mimicry of the singer Signor Piozzi. This act of mockery is noted as the precursor to her eventual, controversial marriage to the Italian musician. The evening concludes abruptly when Johnson rouses himself to rebuke Greville’s dominance of the fire, asserting that he would "like to stand upon the hearth" himself. Woolf uses the event to explore the power of personality and the inevitable friction between 18th-century social castes.
CGV entry 5:198. Reprinted from Life and Letters (1929).
Horses to His Chariot: An Episode in the Life of Doctor Johnson
Brown examines the 1757 literary clash between Johnson and philanthropist Jonas Hanway over the latter’s Essay on Tea. Identifying Johnson as a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, Brown recounts how Johnson used the Literary Magazine to dispute Hanway’s claims that tea corrupted national health. The narrative explores Johnson’s refusal to be intimidated by Hanway’s social status as an important member of an important corporation. Brown contrasts Johnson’s complex, unruly nature with Hanway’s simple vanity and social conscience.
CGV entry 5:199. On Johnson and Jonas Hanway.
Sir Joshua's Nephew: Being Letters Written 1769–1778 by a Young Man to His Sister
CGV entry 5:200. On Reverend Samuel Johnson (1754–1778). See pages 86-88, etc.
Reade presents the correspondence of Mary Nicholas (c. 1742–unknown), discovered in a Chiswick cupboard, which identifies her as a passionate admirer of Johnson in the years immediately following his death. Writing primarily to Mrs. William Hayley from Chichester, Nicholas refers to Johnson by the affectionate sobriquet 'my poor Green-land Bear' and 'sweet Johnson.' She spiritedly defends his memory against the criticisms of her brother, Francis Mundy, and her brother-in-law, Richard French, particularly regarding Johnson’s 'Prayers and Meditations' and Boswell’s 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.' The letters provide a rare glimpse of provincial reception, including Nicholas’s skepticism toward reports from 'Pylades' (John Taylor of Ashbourne), who claimed Tetty Johnson was the 'plague of Johnson’s life' and 'abominably drunken.' Nicholas particularly reveres Johnson for his lasting affection for his wife and his 'tender conscience.' The correspondence also touches on her interactions with the Blue Stocking circle and her observations of 18th-century social life at Goodwood and Chichester.
CGV entry 5:202. On Mrs. Nicholas's letters. In two parts: January, pages 243–253; and February, page 356.
Baker reappraises the 18th-century conflict between Johnson and Chesterfield, arguing the clash represented a fundamental opposition between the English and French mindsets. He contends that Johnson’s famous letter, though a masterpiece of resentment, unfairly maligned Chesterfield’s character. Baker defends Chesterfield’s Letters as a sincere effort to reform English manners, contrasting his Ciceronian precision with Johnson’s sonorous polysyllables. The study concludes that while Boswell immortalized the "Great Cham," Chesterfield’s contribution to English prose remains underappreciated.
Pottle examines a newly discovered manuscript of Young's tragedy, Busiris, King of Egypt, which was to be sold. Pottle compares this forty-three leaf, clearly written manuscript with the first printed edition (duodecimo of 1719), noting significant differences. The manuscript omits the rhyming Prologue, the list of dramatis personae, and the Epilogue. Pottle points out that the stage directions are considerably more elaborate in the printed text, suggesting it was printed for a theatrical prompt copy. One blank-verse dialogue between Pheron and Nyphoces in the manuscript was crossed out and does not appear in the printed text, likely because the characters had already exited. The manuscript also omits the final two rhyming lines of Act I and a stage direction in Act IV. Pottle agrees with the sale catalogue's suggestion that the manuscript is a fair copy made before the play's production, but he judges that neither the original script nor the corrections are Young's autograph.
CGV entry 5:204. Concerns an anonymous essay from 1792, probably by W. J. Temple.
Dr. Johnson, Mr. Smith, and Lady Hamilton
Mabbott reprints a biographical fragment regarding Smith, keeper of prints at the British Museum, originally published in the New-York Mirror in 1834. The text identifies an anecdotal encounter omitted by Boswell and Hill in which Johnson patted a young Smith on the head. This account situates the interaction among other "great events" of Smith's life, including his association with Reynolds, Lady Hamilton, and King George III. Mabbott further suggests that the Mrs. Robinson mentioned in the text is the actress known as Perdita.
CGV entry 5:206. From Percy's correspondence with Farmer.
CGV entry 5:208. Includes Topham Beauclerk, Mrs. Abington, General Oglethorpe, George Psalmanazar, Mrs. Gardiner, Arthur Murphy, Dr. John Taylor, Dr. William Adams, and Lady Craven.
Gray examines the career of Andrew Millar, the Scots bookseller who influenced eighteenth-century literature by raising payment standards for authors. Johnson termed Millar the Maecenas of the age and expressed respect for his role in increasing the price of literature. Despite Johnson's occasional complaints regarding Millar's clannish preference for fellow Scots, the two maintained a productive relationship during the arduous publication of the Dictionary. Millar managed the printing and oversaw the distribution of advances, even when Johnson overmanaged his accounts. Gray recounts the anecdote of the messenger delivering the final sheet of the Dictionary, which prompted Millar’s relief and Johnson’s witty retort. The narrative also details Millar’s successful business ventures with other major figures, including Fielding and Hume, and notes his generosity in bequeathing funds to Fielding’s sons. Gray concludes that Millar’s unerring commercial insight and professional liberality helped dismantle the poverty of Grub Street.
CGV entry 5:209.
Poetess Friend of Dr. Johnson: The Portrait of Anna Williams
CGV entry 5:210. Reprinted from The Times (London), April 14 and May 1, 1931.
Ashmun provides an anecdote concerning Johnson's schoolmaster, Hunter, drawn from an unpublished 1800 letter by Anna Seward. Seward's mother related that Hunter's pupils at the Lichfield Free School frequently raided the next-door fruit walls of a Mr. Levett. A gardener, attempting to catch the culprits by matching shoeprints, became dismayed because he found a square-toed shoe print, identifying the print-maker as "old Square-toes," the grandfather (Hunter) himself. Levett, enjoying the students' "practical wit," did not pursue the inquiry.
CGV entry 5:211. On Reverend John Hunter. See also a reply by G. W. Craig in the same journal, August 6, page 609.
This text reports on the 1931 discovery of unpublished Hester Thrale Piozzi papers at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, previously sealed since 1821. The collection, described in the Library Bulletin by Moses Tyson, includes over 3,000 manuscripts, notably 20 unpublished letters from Johnson to Piozzi and over 100 from her to him. The papers offer new insight into Piozzi's literary work and the complex friendship between Johnson and the Thrale household. They include Piozzi's 147-page notebook of the 1775 French tour and materials annotated by Johnson. Tyson plans to publish the French journal in full.
CGV entry 5:212. On the Rylands Piozziana.
La critica letteraria nel 1700: Giuseppe Baretti, suoi rapporti con Voltaire, Johnson e Parini
Laithwaite reports the acquisition of Piozzi's presentation copy of her Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson (1788) by the Johnson Birthplace Library. The copy contains Seward's marginal notes, which are unfailingly hostile to Johnson and Piozzi. Seward contests Johnson's description of Miss Porter's "virginity" and "splendour," finding it inaccurate. She also challenges Johnson's claim of being "not very apt to be delighted" regarding his friendship with the Thrales.
Bracey discusses the friendship between Johnson and Miss Hill Boothby, detailing their acquaintance beginning when Johnson was a young, "unpolished" man at Ashbourne. Boswell omitted Boothby's thirty-two preserved letters from his Life, which were later published posthumously in 1805. The correspondence, begun in 1753 and continuing until her death in 1756, found Johnson depressed by illness. The letters, which Boswell considered lacking "excellence," contain spiritual counsel from Boothby (whom Seward described as a "spiritualized mistress" and Piozzi thought excessively pious) and affectionate replies from Johnson, who calls her "Sweet Angel" but declines to take his religion from her "human hand." Boothby pressed Johnson toward an Evangelical "Conversion" and urged him to devote his writing to religion.
The Relations of the Welsh Bard Iolo Morganwg with Dr. Johnson, Cowper and Southey
Wright examines the interactions between the Welsh stonemason and antiquary Edward Williams, known as Iolo Morganwg, and prominent English literary figures. The narrative centers on a failed encounter between Williams and Johnson at a London bookshop in the 1770s. Seeking advice on English grammars, Williams approached Johnson, who dismissed him with the "oracular reply" that "either of them will do for you, young man!" Williams perceived the emphasis on "you" as an insult to his humble station and retorted with asperity. Wright notes that Williams later shared this anecdote with Boswell, who expressed regret over the abrupt conclusion of the meeting, suggesting Williams might have won Johnson's favor through patience. The presence of Boswell and Piozzi on the subscription list for Williams's 1794 poems further establishes his connection to the Johnsonian circle. Wright also details Williams’s brief, silent encounter with William Cowper and his more significant, respectful intellectual relationship with Robert Southey, who incorporated Williams into his poem Madoc.
Disagrees with Greenwood over the appropriateness of "canvass[ing] the merits of Graunt and Petty," because it's a question of authorship, "and the authorship of a book, any book, is surely a legitimate subject of discussion in a literary journal." The evidence isn't enough to establish Graunt's authorship but they support the evidence of Lord Lansdowne. "Title-pages are not always strictly veracious."
CGV entry 5:217. Explains Johnson's allusions to Petty. See also letters from Lord Lansdowne and N. G. Brett-James in earlier issues.
Lettsom: His Life, Times, Friends and Descendants
CGV entry 5:218. Contains John Coakley Lettsom's character of Johnson.
CGV entry 5:219. On Susanna Thrale and Sir John Salusbury.
Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society
CGV entry 5:220. The residence of Reverend John Taylor.
On the Chelsea Hospital physician whom Johnson accused of talking bawdy.
Reprints Walmesley's obituary from Aris's Birmingham Gazette.
Snodgrass recounts the arrival of Hannah More in London in 1774 and her subsequent introduction to Johnson via Garrick and Reynolds. Johnson frequently praised her wit and education, calling her his 'love' and 'dearest,' though he also rebuked her persistent flattery. Snodgrass highlights Johnson's description of More as the 'most powerful versificatrix in the English language.' The text draws heavily from Boswell to illustrate Johnson's social conduct, including the 'bottom of good sense' anecdote at the Adelphi. Snodgrass also notes that the biography of Piozzi attributes the origin of the term 'Blue Stocking' to a fashion set by Madame de Polignac, contrasting with the account provided by Boswell.
CGV entry 5:224. In two parts: November-December 1933, pages 247–251; January-February 1934, pages 296-298.
Doctor Samuel Johnson and the Ladies of the Lichfield Amicable Society, 1775
A newly exhibited 1799 Poor Law document from the Lichfield archives, the "Examination of Francis Barber" regarding his parish settlement, provides details on the life of Johnson's former servant. Barber, described as a yeoman of Burntwood, stated under oath he was 52, born in Jamaica, and lived with Johnson in Bolt Court for about thirty-four years until the Doctor's death. The record lists his wife, Elizabeth, and three children, while also providing details on his family's later activities in the Potteries. Reade notes a significant discrepancy in Barber's reported age; while Boswell and other sources suggest he entered service as a youth, this document implies Barber was born circa 1747, making him a "manservant" at age five. Reade concludes that Barber likely lacked accurate knowledge of his birth date, as his declared age makes him far younger than historical accounts indicate upon entering Johnson's service. Following the scholar's death, Barber reported moving to Lichfield, where he rented a house from Mrs. Gastrell for seven years.
CGV entry 5:227. See also a reply by A. Werner in the same journal, April 19, page 282.
Swanzy identifies a previously unnoticed allusion to Johnson in Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Swanzy points to a passage in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands where Johnson rejoiced that the "cargo of sacrilege"—lead stripped from cathedrals—was lost at sea. Gibbon, in his fourth volume, referring to a shipwrecked vessel transporting relics from the Capitol, mocks this sentiment by writing that a "bigoted sophist" or "Pagan bigot" might "rejoice that this cargo of sacrilege was lost in the sea." Swanzy asks if this Gibbonian allusion to Johnson has been previously noted, observing that the connection has apparently escaped the attention of editors like Chapman and Bury.
Richard Greene: The Lichfield Apothecary & His Museum of Curiosities
Greene, a Lichfield apothecary and antiquary (1716–93), maintained a notable museum of curiosities, including antiquities and natural objects. Johnson visited in 1776, expressing great admiration and telling Greene he would sooner try building a man-of-war than collecting such a museum. Greene accurately arranged the items and printed descriptive labels at his own press. The collection was housed in the old register office before its eventual dispersal.
Page details the life of George Colman the Elder, an eighteenth-century man of letters whose career intersected with major figures such as Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Page describes Colman’s education at Westminster School and Oxford, his early success with the periodical The Connoisseur, and his shift from a legal career to the theater. The text analyzes Colman’s primary dramatic successes, including The Jealous Wife (1761) and his collaboration with David Garrick on The Clandestine Marriage (1766), arguing that these works represent a peak in "straight" comedy before the rise of sentimentalism. Page provides a detailed account of Colman’s management of Covent Garden Theatre (1767–1774) and the Little Theatre in the Haymarket (1777–1789), emphasizing the legal and personal disputes with co-proprietors and his role as a "Little Dictator" who fostered new talent. Colman’s relationship with Johnson is characterized as respectful but not intimate; Page notes Colman’s election to the Literary Club in 1768 and his service as a pallbearer at Johnson's funeral. The study also explores Colman’s scholarly contributions, notably his translations of Terence and Horace’s Ars Poetica, which aimed to clarify the classical authors' intent for a contemporary audience. Page concludes with Colman’s final years, marked by physical decline and the succession of his son, George Colman the Younger, in the theatrical world.
Charlotte Ramsay Lennox: An Eighteenth Century lady of Letters
Johnson appears throughout. Small focuses on his immense, career-defining support for Lennox. Johnson considered her "superiour" to other eminent female writers of the time, such as Carter, More, and Burney. His assistance included suggesting her first comparative study of Shakespeare's sources, Shakespear Illustrated, and famously hosting an all-night celebration at the Devil tavern for her first novel. Johnson also helped her financially by introducing her to influential figures like Richardson and securing a publisher. This endorsement was essential to her literary standing.
James Edward Oglethorpe: Imperial Idealist
Ettinger provides a definitive account of James Edward Oglethorpe, emphasizing his role as an "imperial idealist" whose activities spanned military service under Prince Eugene to the founding of Georgia. The narrative details Oglethorpe’s involvement in the English Parliament and his pioneering efforts in prison reform, which initially brought him into the orbit of London's intellectual elite. Ettinger documents the extensive social and literary relationship between Oglethorpe and Johnson, noting that the General was one of the earliest patrons of London and remained a revered figure in the Johnsonian circle until his death. The work further explores Oglethorpe’s interactions with Boswell, who frequently sought the General's company for his "richness of mind" and historical reminiscences. Ettinger uses contemporary diaries, correspondence, and colonial records to reconstruct Oglethorpe's influence on 18th-century social policy and his enduring reputation among the literati.
The Literary Career of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Hilles examines the evolution of Reynolds from a "man of the brush" to a recognized man of letters, emphasizing the central role played by Johnson in shaping the painter's prose and aesthetic theory. Hilles argues that while Reynolds possessed original ideas, the "stately structure" of his early writings, including the Idler papers and the first Discourses, owes much to Johnson’s editorial interventions and stylistic influence. The text provides a detailed bibliographical history of the Discourses, tracing their transition from individual pamphlets to collected editions, and includes a systematic analysis of the Reynolds manuscripts to distinguish between the artist's "rough drafts" and Johnson’s "finishing touches." Hilles disputes the nineteenth-century "heresy" that Johnson or Burke ghostwrote the Discourses, asserting instead that Reynolds was the primary architect of his own theory, albeit one who relied on Johnson as an "arbiter of style." The volume includes appendices documenting Reynolds’s library, his marginalia in works such as Johnson’s Dictionary and Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and a chronological list of his various literary contributions, including his "Johnsonian" dialogues.
The Printing of Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson
Clifford reconstructs last-minute textual alterations to Piozzi’s 1786 publication based on manuscripts in the John Rylands Library. The changes resulted from pressures by friends like Pepys and Lysons to soften criticisms of Montagu following the appearance of Boswell’s Scottish tour journal. The article details the burgeoning rivalry between "Bozzy and Piozzi" as they competed to define Johnson’s legacy. Clifford identifies specific passages Piozzi deleted to avoid further social and literary conflict.
Robert Potter as a Critic of Dr. Johnson
Wright chronicles the antagonistic relationship between Potter and Johnson, focusing on Potter's "allusions to discourtesy" and published attacks on the Lives of the Poets. Potter, a country clergyman and translator, resented Johnson’s "savage manners," his "didactic" limitations, and his "supercilious, almost contemptuous attitude" toward common friends like Lyttelton. Wright details Johnson’s "secret contempt" for Potter’s translations and his parody of Potter’s style. Potter’s "romantic leanings" and love of "rural seclusion" fueled his defense of Gray, Shenstone, and the "modern trend towards romanticism" against Johnson’s "tasteless ridicule" and neoclassical dictates. Analyzing Potter's pamphlets, Inquiry and The Art of Criticism, Wright presents them as evidence of changing 18th-century tastes, viewing Johnson as a "literary tyrant" whose "party spirit" and "anile garrulity" regarding petty anecdotes obscured finer poetic sensibilities and showed an ignorance of "beautiful nature" in landscape gardening. Despite this, Wright observes that Potter remained "manifestly impressed by the powers of Johnson," viewing him as a vulnerable but undeniable giant.
Dr. Thomas Birch as Transcriber of Johnson
Babcock examines Birch’s notes on Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare found in the British Museum. He demonstrates that Birch was not offering original criticism but was inaccurately transcribing Johnson's own text. Babcock identifies errors in Birch’s transcriptions, including unauthorized capitalizations and word substitutions, such as "nor" for "and." He warns scholars against treating Birch’s notes as original or reliable records of Johnson’s prose.
The Swan of Lichfield: Anna Seward and Her Circle
Chapman corrects the repeated error of a cataloguer and the "Notes on Sales" writer who attributed a Johnson letter dated May 4, 1779, to Molly Aston. The letter's recipient was Miss Elizabeth Aston of Lichfield, sister of Molly (Mary) Aston, Johnson's charmer, who became Mrs. Brodie in 1753 and died circa 1765. The letter would be a greater treasure if addressed to Molly.
W. H. J. examines the animosity between Gibbon and Johnson, noting Boswell's role in exacerbating their strained relations. Drawing on Reade’s research in Johnsonian Gleanings, the contributor identifies a social source for this tension beyond Johnson’s disapproval of Gibbon’s religious infidelity. Phoebe Ford, Johnson's cousin, served as housekeeper to Gibbon’s stepmother for several decades. W. H. J. argues that the presence of Johnson’s poor relation as a domestic servant in the Gibbon household created mutual embarrassment. While Ford alleged cold treatment by Gibbon in a 1780 letter to Johnson, Reade observes that Gibbon’s provision of an annuity to her suggests a more favorable disposition than she claimed.
Lucy Porter to Dr. Johnson: Her Only Known Letter
Clifford presents the only known surviving letter from Lucy Porter to her stepfather, Johnson, dated April 15, 1780, found among the papers of Piozzi. Johnson, who likely destroyed most of his family letters, including those from Lichfield, kept this one. Porter, a wealthy, never-married Lichfield resident, initially had a difficult bond with Johnson; his early remarks were caustic, but as years passed, their mutual affection grew, and she often ordered him about. Clifford argues the importance of this "unrevealing" letter in providing a likeable alternative to the harsh descriptions of Porter by Seward, helping to "clothe the traditional view of her with flesh and blood." The 1780 letter is "managing, economical, plain-spoken," asking for a "little silver half pint cup" because she drinks her beer warm and frequently breaks her china cups. She also expresses thanks for a fashionable "stuff gown" purchased by Queeney Thrale but complains the carrier "cheat'd" her on the delivery charge.
Chapman inquires about the location of a letter from John Thompson to Johnson, dated Hull, February 21, 1782, giving a "copious biography of R. Levett." The letter was written at the instruction of Richard Beatniffe (Recorder of Hull) and was sold in the Pococke sale of 1875. The letter was Thompson's reply to Johnson's inquiry to Beatniffe (Letter 760 in Hill's edition) about Levett's early life.
Reade reports the discovery of contemporary biographical material on Johnson's cousin and early intellectual influence, "Parson" Cornelius Ford, in a 1731 issue of The Hip-Doctor. This letter identifies a sketch by "S. Saunter," likely John Henley, which describes Ford as a man of "liberal" education and "genteel" conversation who lived in the Piazza to be "serviceable" to the metropolis. The biographer, exhibiting "kindly cynicism," glossed over Ford's "un-clerical weaknesses," describing him as more "addicted to the Tribe of Gad, than the Tribe of Levi." While the sketch notes Ford's reputation for wit and lack of serious study, Reade highlights that he defended the clergy against "Free-thinking Associates." This supports the characterization Johnson later gave to Boswell: "Very profligate, but I never heard he was impious." Reade emphasizes that while Ford was profligate, he was never "impious."
Kent provides a narrative of the intellectual circle at Lichfield, centered on the palace of Canon Seward. The text highlights the profound mutual dislike between Johnson and Anna Seward (the "Swan of Lichfield"), particularly regarding Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. Kent details a 1778 dinner at Mr. Dilly’s where Johnson’s "violent aggression" toward Americans and his intolerance for a young convert to Quakerism shocked Seward and other guests. The second half of the article examines the lives of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Thomas Day, lifelong friends and disciples of Rousseau. Kent describes Edgeworth’s "juvenile" brilliance and his implementation of Rousseau’s educational system on his son, as well as the eccentricities of Thomas Day, who engaged in rigorous physical training to woo Elizabeth Sneyd. The narrative concludes by detailing the complex matrimonial history involving the Sneyd sisters and Edgeworth’s eventual succession through four marriages, framing the group as a microcosm of 18th-century philosophical and social tensions.
CGV entry 5:247. On Anna Seward, etc.
Washington University Studies in Language and Literature
Bryant delineates the intellectual and social interactions between Burke and over one hundred contemporary writers, artists, and scholars, primarily focusing on the period from his 1750 arrival in London to his 1797 death. Bryant emphasizes that Burke's "authorism" preceded his political career and that he maintained these "habitudes with those who professed [letters]" through the Literary Club and various bluestocking salons. Bryant examines Burke’s specific relationships with Johnson, Reynolds, and Boswell, characterizing the bond with Johnson as a "friendship of mind for mind" despite profound political disagreements. The narrative details how Burke’s conversational "ebullition" and "vast store of knowledge" commanded respect within the Johnsonian circle, while also addressing contemporary criticisms of his punning and occasional lack of taste. Bryant argues that these literary friendships were not mere diversions but were "basic to the needs of [Burke's] nature," potentially informing his public oratory and political philosophy. The text further documents Burke’s role as a "genuine patron of the arts," particularly through his sustained assistance to George Crabbe and James Barry. Ultimately, Bryant contends that a complete biography of Burke must acknowledge his persistent status as a "productive citizen of the republic of letters" rather than treating his scholarly interests as secondary to his political achievements.
Magnus provides a comprehensive account of Burke's career, positioning him as a 'prophet' of the old order who restored faith and principle to a moribund political landscape. The narrative traces Burke's development from his Dublin youth and early literary successes, such as The Sublime and the Beautiful, to his entry into Parliament as secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham. Magnus emphasizes Burke's relationship with Johnson and the Literary Club, noting that Johnson 'did not grudge Burke's being the first man' in any company. Despite his intellectual stature, Burke was frequently 'overborne' by intense emotions and a tragic 'flaw' involving blind devotion to his 'disreputable' kinsman William and brother Richard, whose financial 'adventureship' and 'dishonest schemes' in the West Indies and India constantly embarrassed him. Magnus details Burke’s leadership in five major causes: defending English liberties against the 'influence' of the Crown, advocating for American conciliation, seeking justice for India through the impeachment of Warren Hastings, supporting Irish commercial and Catholic relief, and finally, leading the 'anti-Jacobin cause' against the French Revolution. Although Burke died believing himself a failure, Magnus argues his 'genius' provided the 'testament' and 'imperial grammar' that shaped modern British political thought and Conservatism.
Dr. Samuel Madden, Dr. Johnson and Benjamin Franklin
Published: Separately printed from Ashbourne Telegraph, June 1939.
Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Journal
CGV entry 5:256. Reprinted from the 1939 standalone publication.
Bradford verifies Piozzi's anecdote concerning the initial meeting of Samuel Johnson and Arthur Murphy. While working on the Gray's Inn Journal in 1754, Murphy mistakenly translated a piece from a French periodical, the Journal Etranger, which was itself a translation of Johnson's Rambler No. 190. Murphy's subsequent apology in the Gray's Inn Journal (No. 39) confirmed the duplication and allowed for a comparison of the three versions, establishing the accuracy of Piozzi's account.
Charles uses family papers from the National Library of Wales to illuminate the life of Owen, a "distant relation" of Piozzi and a fixture of the Streatham circle. The text details Owen’s interactions with Johnson, who initially dismissed her as "empty headed" but later offered "sympathy, tenderness and wisdom" regarding her brother’s eccentricities and the "disgrace" of her family estate. A newly discovered letter from Johnson to Owen (1781) provides counsel on enduring "evils which you cannot help." Charles also includes correspondence from Piozzi and Burney, revealing that Boswell once claimed he would have married Owen had he been single. The record documents Owen's loyalty to Piozzi following her marriage to Gabriele Piozzi and notes the existence of a portrait of Owen by Reynolds that formerly hung at Streatham.
A newly published 1749 letter from Henry Thrale to Charles Lyttelton confirms Thrale's early intimacy with the Lyttelton family, previously suggested by Boswell and Thrale. Writing from Southwark, the young Thrale apologized for his delayed response and recounted a five-week tour through France, Flanders, and Holland. He described visiting a Carthusian Monastery where he saw spoils taken from Exeter Cathedral, an observation revealing a man of culture and strong sentiment. The letter establishes Thrale as a well-educated man of society before his connection with Johnson.
CGV entry 5:259.
Taylor's comprehensive biography of Hanway examines his mercantile career in Portugal, Russia, and Persia before his emergence as a prominent London philanthropist. Hanway founded the Marine Society in 1756 to recruit and outfit volunteers for the British Navy and played a pivotal role in the administration of the Foundling Hospital and the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes. He successfully lobbied for the 1767 Act to protect the infant parish poor of London, a landmark in social reform. A prolific author, Hanway published over eighty works, including his 1753 account of the Caspian trade. Taylor details his contentious relationship with Johnson, sparked by the 1757 publication of an essay attacking tea-drinking as an "epidemical disease" injurious to health and the national economy. Johnson, an "immoderate tea drinker," ridiculed the work in the Literary Magazine, leading Hanway to respond in the Gazetteer. Beyond this literary quarrel, Taylor explores Hanway's "Christian mercantilism," which sought to integrate private philanthropy with public policy to strengthen the British Empire. Hanway popularized the umbrella among English gentlemen and advocated for prison reform and the education of seamen through "county naval free schools". Though his reputation faded as his worldview became obsolete, Taylor argues Hanway remains a pioneering figure in humanitarian legislation and associated philanthropy.
CGV entry 5:260. On the quarrel over 'Essay on Tea'.
CGV entry 5:261. A defense of Chesterfield and an attack on Johnson.
Richard Owen Cambridge: Belated Augustan
CGV entry 5:263. See pages 75-85, etc.
Clifford's biography traces the life, intellectual development, and creative output of prominent eighteenth-century writer, diarist, and salon figure Hester Lynch Piozzi, mapping her transition from a dependent Welsh niece to a prominent fixture in London's literary circles. Drawing upon extensive, previously unpublished manuscript evidence—including private letters, household ledger books, day-by-day journal entries, a multi-volume literary autobiography compiled for her heir, and the long-suppressed Family Book or Children's Book—Clifford balances contemporary hostile testimony to provide a balanced account of her multifaceted character, conversational prowess, and enduring contribution as a social historian of her literary epoch. The narrative details her early pedagogical development in modern and classical languages under the tutelage of Arthur Collier, reconstructs her structured marriage to Southwark brewer Henry Thrale, and examines the social and domestic pressures of life at Streatham Park, where she served a pivotal role as Samuel Johnson's hostess, confidante, and close domestic associate. Clifford charts her creative works, including her poetry, the voluminous Thraliana diary, contributions to the Florence Miscellany, her independent publication of Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, and her later philological experiments in British Synonymy. Particular attention is given to the deep-seated social animosities, scandal, and permanent familial estrangements with her daughters and Johnson triggered by her second union with Italian musician Gabriel Piozzi in 1784. Contextualizing her prolific record-keeping against the social conventions of late Georgian England, the study details her later years in Bath and Wales, her struggles for financial independence, and her persistence as a professional writer, presenting Piozzi not merely as Johnson's satellite but as a resilient figure whose wit and observations offer essential insights into late eighteenth-century culture and the complexities of female identity. Chapter 1, 'Daughter of Wales (Before 1758)', addresses the extensive, illustrious Welsh ancestry of Hester Lynch Salusbury and recounts her financially precarious early childhood spent in Caernarvonshire and London. Chapter 2, 'Heiress of Offley (1758–63)', argues that her classical tutoring under Dr. Arthur Collier shaped her intellectual capability, which, alongside her prospect as her uncle's heir, culminated in her marriage to Henry Thrale. Chapter 3, 'Streatham and Southwark (1763–6)', addresses her difficult transition to married life, her early domestic isolation, and her introduction to Samuel Johnson, which catalyzed a foundational literary connection. Chapter 4, 'Beginning Diarist (1766–70)', details the complete domestication of Samuel Johnson within the Thrale household and examines her initial efforts in keeping journals and recording anecdotes. Chapter 5, 'Depression (1770–3)', addresses her deep personal distress caused by a succession of family illnesses, business crises at the brewery, the death of her mother, and the loss of multiple children. Chapter 6, 'Travels and Tragedy (Jan. 1774–Apr. 1776)', addresses her excursions through Wales and France alongside her husband and Samuel Johnson, which were cut short by the catastrophic death of her only son. Chapter 7, 'Widening Acquaintance (Apr. 1776–Feb. 1778)', examines her return to social life in Bath and London to escape grief, highlighting her entry into prominent literary and theatrical circles. Chapter 8, 'Troubles with Master (Mar. 1778–June 1779)', addresses the intensifying marital strains in her household, driven by her husband's financial extravagance, severe physical illnesses, and public infatuation with Sophia Streatfeild. Chapter 9, 'The Last of Master (June 1779–June 1781)', outlines her husband's catastrophic apoplectic stroke, his subsequent physical decline, and his eventual death, which thrust her into managing the brewery's sale. Chapter 10, 'Widow (June 1781–Sept. 1784)', addresses her intense loneliness, the bitter social backlash against her courtship with Gabriel Piozzi, and her painful, absolute estrangement from her daughters and Samuel Johnson. Chapter 11, 'The Florence Miscellany (Sept. 1784–Aug. 1785)', addresses her initial travels through Italy following her second marriage, during which she successfully collaborated with local and English writers on a private poetry anthology. Chapter 12, 'Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson (Sept. 1785–May 1786)', details her industrious composition of biographical recollections in response to Samuel Johnson's death and examines the immediate commercial success of the resulting volume. Chapter 13, 'Travel on the Continent (Mar. 1786–Mar. 1787)', addresses her extensive honeymoon tour across diverse European cities, noting how she balanced cultural observation with efforts to maintain a connection with her daughters. Chapter 14, 'England Again (Mar. 1787–Mar. 1788)', addresses her return to London, where she faced lingering social hostility regarding her second marriage while enthusiastically preparing Samuel Johnson's private letters for print. Chapter 15, 'Johnson's Letters (1788)', examines the complex editorial process of selecting, heavily censuring, and rewriting her correspondence with Samuel Johnson to ensure a favorable reception from the reading public. Chapter 16, 'London Society and Travel (Mar. 1788–Dec. 1789)', details her dynamic re-entry into London society, her domestic tour of western England, and the writing of her travel book, Observations and Reflections. Chapter 17, 'Streatham Renewed (Jan. 1790–Apr. 1794)', outlines her return to her country estate, her reactions to James Boswell's biography, her partial reconciliation with her daughters, and her philological work, British Synonymy. Chapter 18, 'Brynbella (1794–1801)', examines her move to a newly constructed villa in Wales and details her prolonged historical research for her ambitious world history compilation, Retrospection. Chapter 19, 'Gout (1801–9)', addresses her quiet domestic life in Wales and Bath, which was frequently disrupted by her husband's debilitating physical illness and occasional visits with old literary friends. Chapter 20, 'Bath-Blue (1809–21)', addresses her life as a widow after Gabriel Piozzi's death, highlighting her dynamic social circle in Bath and her enduring vitality until her own passing. Critics are generally favorable. Quennell, in the TLS, provides an enthusiastic notice, praising the detailed portrait built from thousands of letters, while Woolf's review in the New Statesman and Nation commends the diligent reconstruction that moves beyond previous venomous sketches to deliver a solidified image of an indefatigable subject. Writing in the NYTBR, Woods describes the study as a patient, inclusive assembly of material that allows a real figure to emerge from historical belittling. In RES, Butt praises the exemplary scholarship and integration of extensive manuscript material, which immediately engages reader confidence. Jones (MLR) calls it the best documented and best life yet, offering a true perspective by stating facts rather than pleading a case. Hazen's approving review in MLQ lauds the careful arrangement of a great mass of material and the sober judgment of the interpretation. Rinaker, in JEGP, deems it a great achievement that relies on a vast collection of newly available journals to rescue historical fame from caricature. An unsigned notice in N&Q commends the fair, reasonable handling of the subject's second marriage and the effective use of both published and unpublished sources. But Vulliamy, in the Spectator, rejects the sympathetic portrayal, characterizing the subject as a vulgar snob whose historical significance rests solely on a sixteen-year role as a hostess. Finally, Pottle and Bennett, in Modern Philology, object to the biographical implication that prior biographers deliberately falsified facts, maintaining that earlier historical records remained scrupulously honest despite personal bias.
CGV entry 5:264. A second edition was published in 1952.
Quennell provides an enthusiastic review of James Clifford's biography of Piozzi. The review describes how Piozzi's "overwhelming disarming femininity" provided Johnson a "spirit's refuge" from his "horror of death" and "habitual gloom." Quennell details the domestic life at Streatham, noting that Piozzi possessed "prodigious strong Nerves" required to withstand Johnson's "outrageous manners." The review traces the eventual "scandal" of her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which her "Blue-stocking friends" viewed as treachery. Quennell praises Clifford for using over 4,500 letters to build a "detailed portrait" of a woman who "enjoyed life" and remained irrepressible until her death.
CGV entry 5:264. An anonymous review of the book by James L. Clifford.
Woolf reviews Clifford's biography of Piozzi, asserting that his diligent reconstruction from scattered documents successfully moves beyond the "venom" of Boswell’s famous sketch to present a solidified portrait of the woman. The biography reveals her as precocious, impressionable, and generous, married to the "incongruous," cold, and conventional Henry Thrale. Woolf explores the subsequent deep friendship with Johnson, which provided him with "domesticity" and a "stake in the next generation," highlighting the domestic intimacy at Streatham where Johnson had "the run of the house" and offered counsel during Piozzi’s frequent periods of maternal anguish and personal crises. She recounts the "ignominious" reaction of the Streatham circle and Johnson’s "trumpeted" rage following her husband's death and her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, critiquing the set's reaction as stemming from the obsolete conventions of their time. Woolf concludes that while Piozzi lacked Boswell’s observational genius, her "prodigious" appetite for life and colloquial writing style make her a modern and fascinating subject.
CGV entry 5:264.
Hazen's approving review of James Clifford's biography describes the work as a "long book and a melancholy book, but a good one." Hazen praises Clifford's careful arrangement of a "great mass of material" gathered from hundreds of sources, noting that each anecdote effectively illuminates the subject's career. The review observes that Piozzi was an active woman who "declined to be quiescent" even in her later years, though Hazen suggests her second marriage led to a life that might have been better "compressed to a brief concluding chapter." Hazen commends the biography's sober judgment and thoughtful interpretation of evidence, specifically highlighting Clifford's ability to recall the "tragedy of Mrs. Thrale's life at Streatham" and the "scandal of a society" through concise footnotes.
CGV entry 5:264. Review by A. T. Hazen of the book by James L. Clifford.
Greene examines Balderston’s two-volume edition of Piozzi’s diary, noting that while much content was previously quarried by Hayward and others, the full text offers a comprehensive record of her analytical observations. He identifies Piozzi’s inaccuracies, amateurish etymologies, and errant style but credits her with shrewd literary comments and a magnanimous spirit. Greene praises Balderston’s sensible annotation and balanced introduction but notes a minor error regarding the survival of Boswell’s 1778 journal among the Fettercairn Papers.
CGV entry 5:264. Review by R. L. Greene of the book by James L. Clifford.
Thomas Coxeter the Younger to Dr. Johnson
Clifford presents an unpublished 1771 letter from Thomas Coxeter the Younger to Johnson, discovered among Piozzi’s papers. The correspondence follows Johnson’s successful intervention, via Henry Thrale, to secure Coxeter’s discharge from the East India Company. Coxeter expresses gratitude for Johnson’s benefaction, which rescued him from "the Brink of Ruin." Clifford argues the letter provides further evidence of Johnson’s sustained interest in the children of his deceased friend, the antiquary Thomas Coxeter.
CGV entry 5:265. A letter dated April 23, 1771.
The Authenticity of Anna Seward's Published Correspondence
Clifford demonstrates that Seward’s six-volume Letters (1811) consists of "late revisions" rather than "genuine contemporary evidence" of the eighteenth century. Comparison between original holographs and printed versions reveals that Seward systematically altered phraseology, added long passages, and fabricated dates to enhance her reputation and exercise "revenge" against Johnson. Revised letters to Piozzi include retrospective insertions influenced by Boswell’s Life of Johnson, such as detailed accounts of Johnson’s praise for Seward's poetry. Furthermore, Seward inserted disparaging remarks about Johnson's "malignity" and "malevolence" into later drafts that were absent from her original 1788 correspondence. Clifford concludes the 1811 edition "cannot be implicitly trusted for facts or contemporary opinions."
CGV entry 5:266.
Studies in the Literature of the Augustan Age: Essays Collected in Honor of Arthur Ellicott Case
This article, reprinted from Modern Philology (1941), challenges the historical reliability of the 1811 edition of Seward’s letters, frequently used as contemporary evidence regarding Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. Clifford provides evidence that Seward’s published epistles are "late revisions" rather than genuine originals. By comparing holograph letters to Piozzi with the published versions, Clifford reveals Seward’s retroactive insertion of "envenomed arrows" against Johnson. The revision process allowed Seward to claim Johnson spoke with "malignity" and "malevolence," sentiments absent in her 1788 originals. Furthermore, Clifford notes Seward’s manipulation of dates and her decision to include a specific compliment on her "Elegy on Cook" only after reading a similar account in Boswell's Life of Johnson. Clifford concludes the collection "cannot be implicitly trusted" for facts or strict chronology concerning the Johnsonian circle.
CGV entry 5:266. Reprinted from Modern Philology (1941).
V. R. identifies a missing reference in Hill’s edition of Boswell, tracing a quoted expression to Grattan's 1780 speech. The note corrects the wording found in Boswell’s newspaper source, contrasting Grattan’s original imagery of a clanking chain with Johnson’s literalist critique that a single link cannot clank.
Cochrane entry 140.
Reminiscences of Sarah Kemble Siddons, 1773–1785
John Paradise and Lucy Ludwell of London and Williamsburg
Clifford finds Shepperson’s biography of Paradise, a member of Johnson’s circle, inclusive but structurally flawed. Clifford disputes Shepperson’s repetition of clichés regarding a coxcomb like Boswell and the distorted anecdotes of Piozzi. The text prints new documents but Clifford notes a lack of focus on the Johnson circle. Clifford incorporates Piozzi’s barbed analysis from Thraliana to score Paradise’s character. Clifford credits Shepperson for significant spade work despite stylistic quibbles.
CGV entry 5:269. Review by J. L. Clifford of the book by Archibald B. Shepperson.
Sketch of the Life of Bennet Langton, LL.D.
The complete text of Piozzi's voluminous Thraliana, covering 15 September 1776 to 30 March 1809. The original edition (1942) comprises 2 volumes, with a revised edition appearing in 1951 (spanning 1,099). The journal originated from six blank books given by Piozzi's first husband, Henry Thrale, in 1776, and was kept in a tin box for posterity. The text is a complex "ana" (or "Farrago"), containing a mixture of personal diary material (emotional life, introspection, family feelings, resentment of public gossip) and public ana content (bons mots, poems, anecdotes, and "characters" of figures like Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, and Edmund Burke). The Johnsonia in the second volume of the original manuscript later formed the basis for Piozzi’s Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786). The miscellanea includes "Odd Medical Stories," epitaphs, poetry, political observations, and comments on new science. The copy-text, held by the Huntington Library, is presented with original spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, a strict adherence contrasting with earlier, inexact excerpts. The scholarly volume includes an Introduction by Katharine Balderston, comprehensive notes, and an extensive index. An appendix lists passages Piozzi transferred to her Anecdotes, providing a means of testing the Anecdotes' reliability. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Quennell, in the TLS, asserts that this complete edition completes the diarist's historical rehabilitation, providing an honest self-portrait and a vital record of a central literary figure's conversation. Brooks, writing in the NYTBR, defines the work as a plain, unvarnished tale and a necessary complement to Boswell, though noting how the raw text exposes the outrageous liberties taken when preparing later published anecdotes to elevate narrative interest. In RES, Butt praises the sufficient annotations and ingenious index, observing that the text reveals great vivacity despite the disconcerting realization that several famous domestic anecdotes lack a parallel in the original manuscript. Jones's review in MLR commends the editorial labor as being of the highest order, explaining that the text provides a remarkable unpolished picture of contemporaries and establishes the primary authority for numerous unpublished poems. Clifford, in PQ, describes the first complete edition as an indispensable reference for the late eighteenth century, praising the scholarly rigour that maintains eccentric orthography while establishing the diary as a storehouse of trustworthy evidence. The JNL notice by Clifford highlights the excellent editing and superb index, framing the publication as an invaluable repository of miscellaneous information vital for period research. Greene (Modern Language Notes) notes the handsome presentation and sensible annotations, while an unsigned review in N&Q highlights the faithful manuscript reproduction that provides details about private life previously unknown to biographers.
CGV entry 5:271. Selections were previously published as 'Hester Piozzi's Thraliana', edited by Charles Hughes (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1913). A second edition was published in 1951.
Quennell reviews Balderston's edition of Thraliana, asserting that Piozzi’s rehabilitation is now complete. In 1776, Henry Thrale presented his wife, Hester Lynch Thrale, with six manuscript books bearing the title Thraliana. She immediately began recording every anecdote, conversation, and personal reflection she deemed noteworthy, creating a vast autobiographical diary and "intimate, honest self-portrait" that spanned from 1776 to 1809. Quennell reveals a character of intellectual vivacity and practical strength who acted as the confidante for Johnson's fears of insanity. While the first volume is a "rag-bag of anecdotes," the second volume contains a "vital record of Johnson’s talk." Balderston demonstrates that Piozzi manipulated her notes by "telescoping events and transferring speeches," yet her standard of accuracy matched her age. This collection, which documents Johnson's influential presence before his death, became the primary source for her later Anecdotes. Quennell details her romantic obsession with Gabriel Piozzi, which ended her "summer of friendship" with Johnson. The review argues that the composite image of Johnson formed by both Boswell and Piozzi is truer than either alone, as Thraliana vividly preserves the era's literary conversations.
CGV entry 5:271.
Butt offers a largely positive review of Katharine C. Balderston's two-volume edition of Thraliana, praiseful of the sufficiency of the annotations and the ingenious integration of a biographical dictionary into the index. Butt notes that the complete text reveals Piozzi's vivacity, wit, and capacity for sudden personal aversions. More significantly, Butt highlights how the work serves as a vital source-book for Johnsoniana, proving that Piozzi used the diary directly when writing her Anecdotes. However, Butt finds it disconcerting that several famous, domestic anecdotes regarding Johnson lack a parallel in Thraliana, suggesting they derive from a potentially untrustworthy memory.
CGV entry 5:271. Review by John Butt of the work edited by Katharine C. Balderston.
In this enthusiastic review of the complete edition of Thraliana, Jones commends the editorial labor as being of the highest order, specifically praising the faithful typographical layout and the comprehensive index. Jones divides the diary into three categories: Ana, literary gossip, and autobiography. While characterizing the raw notes as a literary rag-bag, Jones asserts that the gossip provides a remarkable, unpolished picture of Johnson alongside sketches of contemporaries like Boswell and Burke. The abstract emphasizes that the text establishes Piozzi's diary as the primary authority for over twenty of Johnson's unpublished poems.
CGV entry 5:271. Review by Gwyn Jones of the work edited by Katharine C. Balderston.
Clifford describes this first complete edition of Piozzi's journal as an indispensable reference for the late eighteenth century. He notes that the text functions variously as a repository for anecdotes, a personal diary for emotional relief, and a commonplace book. Clifford praises Balderston’s scholarly rigour in maintaining the original’s eccentric orthography and identifying obscure quotations. While he regrets the relegation of marginal glosses to footnotes, he highlights Balderston’s introduction, which clarifies that despite Piozzi's occasional manipulation of details for literary effect, her contemporary diary entries remain a storehouse of trustworthy evidence.
CGV entry 5:271. Review by J. L. Clifford of the work edited by Katharine C. Balderston.
Greene notes Balderston's two-volume edition is a handsome presentation edited with devotion suitable to a work of serious literature. Though previously published excerpts were cunningly chosen, Johnsonian readers may feel disappointment that the weight of the new volumes does not yield more that is new. Greene praises the book for keeping readers in the intimate company of a woman who made an art of being good company, and he notes Balderston has annotated the text sensibly and adequately, with a brief, well-balanced introduction.
CGV entry 5:271. Review by R. L. Greene of the work edited by Katharine C. Balderston.
CGV entry 5:272. On Sir John Pringle.
The author identifies a discrepancy between Boswell’s account of Johnson’s final days and Johnson’s own correspondence. While Boswell records Dr. Brocklesby reciting Juvenal’s tenth satire in 1784, Johnson’s 1783 letter to Piozzi refers to the same physician repeating the "tenth" rather than the "ninth" satire during an earlier illness. The author suggests Boswell either conflated two separate incidents or received an inaccurate impression of the events.
Percy, who called Johnson "my oracle," acknowledged him as a prime mover who secured a publisher for the Reliques. Letters show Johnson offered to help select and revise the text, although Percy later indicated these promises were largely unexecuted apart from oral hints. Johnson also secretly wrote the dedication to the Countess of Northumberland for the Reliques.
CGV entry 5:275. A multi-volume collection of correspondence published between 1944 and 1961.
The article proposes Robert Holder of Norfolk Street as the apothecary who attended Johnson during his final illness and previously treated Levett. It summarizes Tinker’s findings on the Wedgwood medallion of Johnson, asserting that Flaxman likely modeled the portrait from life.
CGV entry 5:276. On Mr. Holder (possibly Robert).
Osgood identifies Benjamin Rush as an American counterpart to Boswell, noting Rush's habitual recording of 'notable ephemera' and table talk during his 1768 London visit. The narrative recovers Rush's accounts of dining with Johnson at Reynolds's home, where Johnson defended literary reputation against reviewers and critiqued Boswell's tendency to ask 'questions... not always of the most interesting nature.' Rush documents Johnson’s 'rudeness' toward Goldsmith and a 'polite dispute' with Eaton Wilkes regarding military intervention in the St. George’s Fields riots. Additionally, Rush provides contemporary evidence of Goldsmith reciting lines from The Deserted Village before publication and identifies Goldsmith’s mother as the inspiration for the Vicar's wife in The Vicar of Wakefield.
CGV entry 5:277.
Cochrane entry 543.
CGV entry 5:278. A newly discovered essay, printed with a facsimile.
Privately printed for Mr. & Mrs. Donald Hyde, Princeton University Press
Benjamin Rush's Reminiscences of Boswell and Johnson
Privately Printed for the Donald F. Hydes.
Dunbar details the literary and personal intersections of Murphy with the Johnsonian circle, noting that Murphy met Johnson after accidentally translating a Rambler essay from a French source. This meeting established a lifelong friendship, with Murphy eventually editing Johnson’s works and publishing a prefatory life in 1792. Murphy’s connection to Piozzi is traced through her letters and his frequent visits to Streatham, where he resided during her transition from Mrs. Thrale to Mrs. Piozzi. Dunbar includes Johnson’s trenchant critique of Murphy’s tragedy Zenobia—that it contained "too much Tig and Tirry"—and identifies Murphy’s cousin as the model for Sir Bashful Constant in The Way to Keep Him, a house later occupied by Piozzi. While Murphy and Boswell’s interactions are less central, Dunbar records Boswell witnessing a performance of Murphy’s The Apprentice in Edinburgh in 1776. Murphy’s legal expertise also served the circle, notably in drafting the Appellants’ case against perpetual copyright in 1774, a cause supported by Johnson.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Warner re-examines the paradoxical life, civic achievements, and 1777 forgery trial of the Reverend William Dodd. Though remembered primarily for his execution, Dodd championed significant eighteenth-century social movements, directing the Magdalen House for reformed prostitutes, establishing a society for debt relief, and attacking the penal code. His extravagant lifestyle and debts prompted him to forge a four-thousand-hundred-pound bond under the name of his former pupil, the Earl of Chesterfield. Following Dodd's arrest, Samuel Johnson intervened out of religious instinct, composing several appeals for royal clemency—including a petition signed by over twenty-three thousand citizens—and drafting Dodd's speech to fellow convicts and his final legal defense. Warner uses these events to illustrate how Dodd embodied both the emotional excesses and genuine benevolent strengths of contemporary sentimentalism. Ultimately, the text highlights the unexpected intersection between Dodd's effusive sentimentalism and Johnson's rigid, realistic restraint during this high-profile legal crisis.
Jones presents two previously unprinted letters found in Croft’s copy of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. A letter from Johnson to Croft, dated 10 February 1783, expresses gratitude for Croft’s kindness and notes Johnson’s improving health. A second letter from Montagu to Croft, dated 17 September 1762, discusses the origins of Young’s poem Resignation. Montagu details her efforts to introduce Boscawen to Young as a source of consolation following the death of Admiral Boscawen. She regrets her inability to provide biographical details for Croft’s life of Young, noting Young's late-life reclusion and focus on religious matters.
CGV entry 5:286. Addressed to Herbert Croft.
CGV entry 23:93. Addressed to Herbert Croft.
Studies in the Literary Backgrounds of English Radicalism
Hopkins chronicles the life of Hannah More, emphasizing her deep integration into the literary circles of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Hester Thrale Piozzi. More achieved early fame in London as a playwright under the mentorship of David Garrick and became a favorite of Johnson, who lauded her poetry and intellectual wit. The narrative details her interactions with the "Bas Bleu" society, where she engaged with figures like Piozzi and Elizabeth Montagu, though her relationship with Boswell remained strained following an incident of his perceived impertinence while "disordered with wine". Hopkins explains that More’s preference for the company of her elders, including Johnson and Garrick, shaped her conservative intellectual outlook. Following the deaths of these mentors, More’s focus shifted toward humanitarian and evangelical efforts, supported by the Clapham Sect and William Wilberforce. She used her literary talents to produce the "Cheap Repository Tracts" and didactic works like Coelebs in Search of a Wife, which sought to instill religious and social discipline across classes. While her later writings often aligned with a rigid social hierarchy, Hopkins portrays More as a complex figure who successfully navigated the transition from the theatrical brilliance of the mid-eighteenth century to the moralistic reforms of the nineteenth.
The text, edited by Corner, includes Rush’s memoir, Travels Through Life, and his Commonplace Books, offering a detailed record of his time in London and Edinburgh between 1766 and 1769. While in London, Rush was introduced to Reynolds, who invited him to a dinner attended by Johnson and Goldsmith. Rush recounts Johnson’s sharp wit, noting his response to a published work being savaged by reviewers: "where is the advantage of having a great deal of reputation but that the loss of a little will not hurt you?". Rush further details Johnson’s critical assessment of Boswell, whom the Doctor described as being "much given to asking questions" of a trivial nature, such as "why is an apple round, and why is not a pear so?". The narrative provides a firsthand account of Johnson’s "commanding" conversational style and his "great rudeness" toward Goldsmith. Rush also observes a political dispute between Johnson and Heaton Wilkes regarding the military’s actions in St. George’s Fields. Although Rush notes Johnson’s sometimes "offensive" manners, he emphasizes the Doctor’s deep respect for religion. The volume also documents Rush’s interactions with other members of Johnson’s circle, including James Fordyce and the booksellers Edward and Charles Dilly.
Barton traces David Garrick's trajectory from his Lichfield origins and 1737 journey to London with Johnson to his 1779 interment in Poets' Corner. The narrative examines Garrick's innovative naturalistic acting style, exemplified by his 1741 debut as Richard III, which challenged the formal declamatory traditions championed by Quin. Barton details Garrick's twenty-nine-season management of Drury Lane, highlighting his efforts to reform theatrical abuses, such as removing spectators from the stage and enforcing prompt payment from boxholders. The text explores Garrick's intricate personal and professional ties, including his early romantic involvement with Woffington and his lifelong, albeit occasionally strained, friendship with Johnson. Barton describes Johnson's initial skepticism of acting as an art and his eventual exclusion of Garrick from the Turk's Head Club for ten years, contrasted with Johnson’s final tribute to Garrick for eclipsing the 'gaiety of nations.' Boswell appears as an observer and participant in the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, which Garrick stewarded to institutionalize Shakespeare's cultural supremacy. The account further illustrates Garrick's social ascent among the aristocracy and his role in fostering the Decayed Actors' Fund. Barton concludes with the 'Funeral of each character' during Garrick's 1776 farewell performances and the subsequent life of his widow, Eva Maria Veigel.
CGV entry 5:291. On William Seward and Sir Richard Musgrave.
Scholes provides a comprehensive history of Burney’s deep integration into the inner circle of Johnson, documenting their frequent social interactions at Streatham and London. The narrative highlights the 'Streatham Coterie,' exploring the group's dynamic under the Thrales and the severe social rupture caused by Hester Thrale’s remarriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which Johnson and the Burneys adamantly opposed . Scholes describes Burney’s membership in prestigious intellectual groups, including the 'Literary Club' and the 'Essex Head Club,' alongside figures such as Boswell, Reynolds, and Burke. The text emphasizes Johnson’s personal regard for the Burney family, noting his high praise for James Burney’s character and his role in facilitating Burney’s research for the General History of Music . Detailed accounts of the final years of Johnson’s life are provided, including his paralytic stroke and Burney's final visits to Bolt Court. Scholes also documents the deaths of common associates like Samuel Crisp and William Bewley, illustrating the interconnectedness of this professional and personal network . The biography serves to reconstruct the 'meritorious life' of its subject through his persistent intellectual labor and his 'tribute of friendship' to the leading minds of his era.
Butt commends Scholes for a triumphant recreation of eighteenth-century musical and social life that exceeds its generous subtitle. He highlights the work's vast scope, which includes details on Burney’s travels, his contemporaries, and the broader world of art and society. Butt identifies a previously overlooked reference in Burney's History to the merit of Shakespeare’s sonnets. While noting minor historical errors and correcting Scholes’s belief that Fanny Burney’s diary manuscript was destroyed by fire, Butt emphasizes that no student of the period can neglect this engagingly depicted study of Burney's circle.
CGV entry 5:292. Review by John Butt of the book by Percy A. Scholes.
Mrs. Thrale [Review of Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale) by James L. Clifford]
Woolf reviews James Clifford's biography of Piozzi, asserting that Clifford successfully solidifies a persona often reduced to Boswell's "venomous" sketches. Woolf traces Piozzi's trajectory from her incongruous marriage to the "odious" Henry Thrale to her deep, domestic bond with Johnson. She highlights how Piozzi provided Johnson with a "stake in the next generation," while Johnson offered counsel during her domestic trials. Woolf attributes the eventual breach in their sixteen-year friendship to Piozzi’s repressed individual tastes and her "precocious" resurgence after Thrale's death. The Streatham circle's rejection of Piozzi's marriage to Gabriel Piozzi is characterized as a surrender to eighteenth-century social conventions, which Woolf likens to modern racial prejudice. Woolf concludes that while Piozzi lacked Boswell's observational depth, her "prodigious" appetite for life and indefatigable spirit allowed her to transcend the snapshots of contemporary critics.
CGV entry 5:293. A review of James L. Clifford's 'Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale)'. The New York edition was published in 1948.
An Intermediary Between Cowper and Johnson
Cowper received information about Johnson's favorable opinion of his 1782 volume of poems, despite no record of Johnson reading Cowper's work. The intermediary was likely Benjamin Latrobe, a Moravian clergyman who was friends with both Cowper's correspondent, Newton, and Johnson. Cowper initially inferred that Johnson had actively recommended the book to a critic, but later understood it was a friend of Johnson's who wrote a favorable critique at Johnson's suggestion, leading to the belief that Johnson was familiar with the poetry and approved of its moral and religious tone.
CGV entry 5:294. On Benjamin Latrobe.
Our Eminent Friend Edmund Burke: Six Essays
This monograph investigates the causes of Burke's biographical inaccessibility, attributed to both a century-long withholding of private papers and his own policy of concealment. Copeland examines the artistic failure of Boswell's portrait of Burke in the Life of Johnson, noting that while Boswell frequently praises Burke, he fails to provide physical details or conversational specimens, potentially due to Burke's discursive style or his active discouragement of Boswell's minute recording. The text explores the social and financial pressures exerted by Burke's kinsmen, Richard and William Burke, whose reputations as "adventurers" and speculators compromised his standing. Analysis of Burke's political career highlights a state of "perpetual insecurity" and the late-career mental strain caused by the French Revolution and the death of his son. Copeland also identifies Burke's anonymous editorial role in the Annual Register for over thirty years and clarifies the identities of his French correspondents, Monsieur Dupont and de Menonville, related to the Reflections. By addressing representative mysteries, the author argues that Burke remains "much more obscure than is generally thought" by scholars of the Johnsonian circle.
Gulick analyzes Boswell's account of the Johnson-Chesterfield dispute, highlighting inconsistencies regarding the cause (neglect vs. specific incident) and arguing Boswell's narrative is biased towards Johnson. Given Johnson's obscurity in 1747 versus Chesterfield's position, the charge of "neglect" seems questionable. Gulick suggests Johnson mellowed towards Chesterfield over time, citing later temperate remarks, while Boswell’s Life retains a venom absent in his journals. He speculates Boswell's animosity might stem not just from defending Johnson, but from personal disapproval of Chesterfield's public acknowledgment and support of his illegitimate son, offending Boswell’s sense of legitimacy and social order.
Cochrane entry 159.
Lewis reflects on a 1763 rowing trip where a nameless "young sculler" tells Johnson he "would give what I have" to know about the Argonauts. This "remarkable reply" prompts Johnson to observe that the "desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind." Lewis uses this encounter to illustrate Boswell’s "artful preparation" and Johnson’s affection for the inquisitive boy. The encounter bestowed a "gift of immortality" upon the waterman through Boswell’s "vivid reporting."
Cochrane entry 160.
Focuses on a passage from Boswell's Life detailing a 1763 boat trip, exploring the character of the unnamed waterman who desired knowledge. Lewis contrasts this brief anecdote with more famous moments, humorously speculating on the waterman's fate but concluding Boswell's record provides poignant immortality. Lewis highlights the appeal of minor details and characters in Boswell's narrative and reflects on biographical immortality conferred by chance encounters.
CGV entry 5:299. Reprinted from Virginia Quarterly Review (1949).
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Presents evidence proving Benjamin Franklin and Johnson met at least once, on May 1, 1760, as fellow members of the Associates of Dr. Bray, a philanthropic society. Quinlan details Franklin's active role supporting Negro schools in America and Johnson's election and subsequent financial contributions. Despite political differences, Quinlan notes their shared acquaintances, intellectual curiosity, and humanitarian concerns, particularly regarding Negro education.
CGV entry 5:300. Reprinted from Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1949).
Donnelly recovers the 'Macaulay legend,' detailing the life of Catharine Macaulay, the 'historian in petticoats' who challenged Hume's Tory history. Macaulay gained fame through her eight-volume History of England, which used eloquent rhetoric to attack Stuart tyranny and support Whig principles. Donnelly highlights Macaulay's interactions with Johnson, who mocked her 'levelling doctrine' by suggesting her footman dine with them. Despite experiencing both 'extremes of adulation and obloquy,' Macaulay maintained correspondence with Washington and Adams, advising on the American constitution. Donnelly notes that while her later marriage to William Graham caused a British scandal, her republican zeal potently influenced the eighteenth-century 'New Great Cause.'
Sir Robert Chambers: A Johnsonian in India
'The Rivals' — Hawkins, Burney, and Boswell
Cochrane entry 162. Alleges that Sir John Hawkins was unfairly maligned by both Fanny Burney and James Boswell, who saw him as a biographical competitor and were jealous of his friendship with Johnson.
Lane examines Johnson’s domestic life in his London residences, specifically Gough Square, Johnson’s Court, and Bolt Court. The account contrasts the cleanliness of his wife, Elizabeth, with Johnson’s own unfastidious habits and late hours. After her death, Johnson established an eccentric bachelor household consisting of indigent dependents, including the blind Anna Williams, the Negro servant Francis Barber, and the apothecary Robert Levett. Lane highlights Johnson’s fear of solitude, his nightly tea rituals, and his compassionate treatment of both his "nest" of dependents and his cat, Hodge.
Scudder presents primary accounts of Johnson's September 1784 visit to Chatsworth, previously unrecorded by Boswell or Powell. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, describes Johnson arriving ill but in great good humour and vastly entertaining despite a dry debut. She records Johnson's commentary on Topham Beauclerk’s perverted mind and sour temper, as well as his admiration for William Jones’s learning. Countess Spencer praises Johnson’s genius and religious conviction while acknowledging his unpolished, even brutal manners. Additionally, the Duchess recounts a story from Moore regarding Johnson’s defense of lawyers’ arguments, famously comparing argument to a bullet from a gun and assertion to an arrow.
CGV entry 5:305. Contains comments by the Duchess of Devonshire.
Johnson and Baretti: Some Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Literary Life in England and Italy
Bloom critiques the monograph's core thesis: that Joseph Baretti’s works and moral/philosophical attitudes were profoundly indebted to Johnson. This indebtedness, argued from the time of their 1752 introduction, is presented as diminishing Baretti’s prestige while indicating Johnson's intellectual accomplishment. Johnson’s influence is identified in Baretti’s Remarks on the Italian Language, La Frusta Letteraria (his Rambler counterpart), Discours sur Shakespeare, and other works, with Johnson being identified as Baretti's literary spokesmen/personae (e.g., "Aristarco Scannabue"). The monograph’s convincing internal evidence is located primarily in Chapter VI, "Parallel Passages." Weaknesses cited include repetition, inaccurate dating of English sources, and acceptance of "questionable superstitions" about Johnson's personality and criticism.
CGV entry 5:306.
CGV entry 5:306. Review by G. A. Bonnard of the book by Catharina J. M. Lubbers-Van der Brugge.
Sir John Hawkins: Dr. Johnsons Friend-Attorney-Executor-Biographer: A Reorientation of The Knight, The Lady, and Boswell
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste
CGV entry 5:308. Johnson materially helped with this work.
CGV entry 5:309. A history of the Barclay-Perkins brewery.
Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney—Some Additions to the Record
Hemlow restores suppressed manuscript passages from Burney’s diaries to illustrate Johnson’s "sportive humour" and "truly convivial jocosity." These additions provide a detailed view of 1778 dinner parties at Streatham, including a champagne-fueled evening where Johnson displayed uncharacteristic playfulness and affection toward Burney. Hemlow includes a previously unpublished "extempore Elegy" composed by Johnson, Burney, and Thrale, showcasing Johnson's talent for burlesque. The text also contrasts these genial moments with a vivid account of Johnson’s "vehemence and bitterness" during a serious quarrel with Pepys over the life of Lyttelton. Hemlow concludes that Johnson’s "social converse" and internal "visage" compensated for his "singular" physical infirmities.
CGV entry 5:311. On passages cut out of the diary. A revised version appeared in 'Johnsonian Studies', edited by Magdi Wahba (Cairo: Privately printed, 1962), pages 319-339.
Samuel Johnson and Some Eighteenth-Century Doctors
Carter provides a medical history of Johnson within the context of eighteenth-century London, focusing on the physicians who attended him. The article chronicles Johnson’s childhood scrofula and the primitive belief in the King’s Evil before discussing his adult battles with obsessive-compulsive neurosis and cardio-renal disease. Carter describes the careers and characters of medical figures such as Richard Mead, John Radcliffe, and William Heberden. The narrative details the post-mortem findings performed on Johnson, which revealed a large heart with a calcareous aortic valve and cystic kidneys. Carter argues that Johnson used company and talk to protect himself from a lifelong fear of death and insanity, finding his greatest relief in the household of the Thrales.
Some Unpublished Recollections of Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 5:314. In two parts: December 22, pages 464-466; and December 29, pages 484-485. Contains variants of the version published in G. B. Hill's 'Johnsonian Miscellanies'.
Gray examines James Beattie's writings, primarily correspondence, to offer a more objective account of the Johnson circle than Boswell's Life. Beattie, known for The Minstrel and the philosophical Essay on Truth, criticized Boswell for indiscreetly publishing private conversations and letters, citing the controversy over Johnson's remarks on Beattie's wife and his own personal complaints. Beattie, despite his admiration for Johnson's genius, also censured Johnson's intolerance and harsh literary judgments, particularly on Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare and his negative pronouncements on Scotland and the Scots in Journey to the Western Islands. Beattie and Forbes deplored the excessive biographical focus on Johnson's foibles.
{Quennell examines the emotional complexity of Thrale's relationship with Johnson, characterizing their connection as a central episode for both. Quennell disputes the historical view of Thrale as merely a secondary figure to Johnson, arguing for her rehabilitation as an independent literary personality through her voluminous diary, Thraliana. The narrative details how Johnson found an "emotional refuge" at Streatham to alleviate his "habitual gloom" and "corroding sense of sin." Quennell describes the eventual dissolution of their bond as Thrale outgrew Johnson's influence, leading to her second marriage to Gabriel Mario Piozzi. Despite the "high-minded indignation" of her contemporaries, Thrale achieved a "completeness of felicity" with Piozzi. Quennell concludes that Thrale's vivacity and courage, mirrored in her sharp thumbnail sketches of figures like Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne, justify her niche among distinguished eighteenth-century prose writers.
Some Medical Associations of Samuel Johnson
This historical feature chronicles the turbulent history of King Edward VI School, Stourbridge, during the early eighteenth century, focusing on John Wentworth, who served as headmaster during the brief attendance of Johnson in 1725-1726. The narrative outlines a bitter governance dispute from 1704 regarding Wentworth's appointment, his subsequent neglect of scholastic duties, and his eventual dismissal by the governors in 1732. It records Johnson's mixed retrospective assessments of his former master, whom Johnson described as very severe but highly able, while asserting that his own progress stemmed primarily from independent labor rather than classroom instruction. The account also corrects a genealogical error made by Boswell, establishing that Wentworth died a bachelor and that the boy credited as his son was actually his nephew.
CGV entry 5:319. On John Wentworth.
Hilles introduces a recently discovered character sketch of actor David Garrick by Reynolds, found among Boswell’s papers. The text contextualizes the sketch within a 1779 conversation involving Johnson and Boswell at Topham Beauclerk's. Johnson asserts Garrick "had friends, but no friend" due to his "diffused" nature and "perpetual anxiety" for "petty praise." Boswell describes Garrick as "pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf." Reynolds’s hostle account emphasizes Garrick’s "artificiality" and "vanity," noting he "died without a real friend" because his "passion for fame" rendered him "unfit for the cultivation of private friendship."
CGV entry 5:320. Based on 'Portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds', edited by Frederick W. Hilles.
Metzdorf examines two volumes from Isaac Reed's library to establish the authorship of anonymous tracts concerning the execution of William Dodd in 1777 for forgery. Reed, a Shakespeare scholar, was interested in Dodd's case and authored Account of the Life and Writings of William Dodd, LL.D. (London, 1777), confirmed by his own annotated copy. This copy contains manuscript notes by Reed that add biographical and bibliographical details, including Johnson's authorship of The Convict's Address. The second volume, a collection of nineteen pamphlets titled Tracts Concerning Dr. William Dodd, settles the disputed authorship of Historical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Rev. William Dodd, L.L.D. The inscription on the title-page, in Reed's hand, attributes the work to "By John Duncombe, A.M.," resolving the conjecture between Reed and Duncombe. The article shows that Duncombe's pamphlet was more favorably reviewed than Reed's, despite Reed later incorporating quotations from Duncombe's work into his own pamphlet.
The Life and Activities of Sir John Hawkins: Musician, Magistrate, and Friend of Johnson
Scholes offers a comprehensive biography of Sir John Hawkins, emphasizing his dual legacy as a pioneering music historian and a member of Samuel Johnson’s inner circle. The narrative traces Hawkins's relationship with Johnson from their early days as contributors to the Gentleman’s Magazine through their membership in the Ivy Lane and Literary Clubs. Scholes provides a detailed examination of Hawkins’s 1787 Life of Samuel Johnson, analyzing its critical reception and the "unclubbable" reputation that led to its eventual eclipse by Boswell’s biography. The work defends Hawkins against contemporary charges of malevolence, characterizing him instead as a rigorous, if austere, magistrate and scholar. Particular attention is paid to Hawkins's role as Johnson’s executor and his preservation of Johnsonian anecdotes and papers. Scholes uses Hawkins's own History of Music and various 18th-century memoirs to contextualize his influence on the legal, musical, and literary landscapes of the Johnsonian era.
The Life and Activities of Sir John Hawkins
Bronson notes that Scholes fails to explain the paradox of Hawkins's earned success versus his enduringly poor reputation, which remains as Boswell left it. He describes the biography as a "scissors and paste" collection of materials rather than a critical synthesis, heavily reliant on Laetitia Hawkins. Bronson finds the treatment of Hawkins’s History of Music superficial and criticizes the ungraceful habit of making transitions via rhetorical questions. He acknowledges the work makes useful biographical information available but lacks critical density.
CGV entry 5:322. Review by B. H. Bronson of the book by Percy A. Scholes.
Chesterfield's offense to Samuel Johnson, which provoked the famous letter, was a slight on Johnson's manners, striking at his "prevailing vanity" of wishing to be seen as a "fine gentleman." Johnson, despite his learned reputation, highly valued praise of his social grace, a fact corroborated by Piozzi and Boswell. Chesterfield's opening sentence in the second World essay (No. 101), contrasting Johnson's judicial "severity" with his lack of "gallantry as a fine gentleman," likely turned Johnson's resentment over Chesterfield's neglect into rage.
Osborn presents newly recovered documentary evidence supporting the friendship between Johnson, Edward Cave, and Stephen Barrett. A manuscript volume of Barrett's poems, containing verses written between 1736 and 1794, includes a 1745 poetical invitation titled "An Invitation for two abstemious Friends (Dr. Johnson & Mr. Cave) to Bushy in Herts," which confirms Johnson's reputation as an "abstemious" friend, abstainer, and conversationalist. Most notably, Osborn records a 1745 dinner in London where Johnson and Barrett collaborated on a Latin translation of a song by Byrom. This second passage describes their work on a "poor Latin translation" by "G. Walmsley" for The Gentleman's Magazine (February 1745). Barrett's manuscript provides Johnson's lines of the alternate translation, including forty lines of Latin verse "to be added to the list of Contributions to Poems by Others" in the standard edition of Johnson's poems. The manuscript sheds light on 1745, a year "notoriously bare of detail" in Johnson's life, though the manuscript stops after 1745, making the length of the acquaintance uncertain.
CGV entry 5:328. On Stephen Barrett.
CGV entry 5:329. On John Myddelton and Thomas Apperley.
Gray investigates the incongruous, intimate friendship between Johnson and Dr. John Taylor of Ashbourne, Johnson's self-proclaimed "truest friend" despite their vast differences in interests and intellect. Taylor, a wealthy, pluralist country parson and enthusiastic farmer, provided Johnson with a comforting stability based on his unshakeable faith in God and the hereafter, which served as an antidote to Johnson's profound religious anxieties. Johnson overlooked Taylor's secular habits, valuing his friend's "strong mind" and clear, optimistic spiritual assurance in the face of his own mortality.
Bloom examines the literary reputation of Boyse, whose fame rests primarily on his association with Johnson and his erratic personal life. Despite a career marked by dissipation, Boyse’s poem "Deity" (1740) received significant contemporary praise from Pope, Fielding, and Hervey. Bloom traces Fielding’s specific advocacy for the poem from a 1740 review in the Champion to a laudatory citation in Tom Jones. The study highlights the paradox of Boyse’s moralistic writing in contrast to his indigent reality, concluding that his survival in literary history is due to the patronage and interest of his more illustrious contemporaries.
Bloom examines the potential relationship between Johnson and the eccentric Justice Richard Russell. Russell’s 1784 will initially bequeathed 100 pounds to Johnson on the condition that he write Russell's epitaph. Bloom argues that Russell likely served as Johnson’s landlord in Johnson’s Court. Despite Russell’s charitable legacy, Johnson probably declined the commission due to failing health or personal distaste for Russell’s public vanity and the macabre, chaotic nature of his funeral arrangements.
CGV entry 5:332. On Richard Russell, who was Johnson's landlord at Bolt Court from 1765 to 1776.
CGV entry 5:333. On James Compton and John Walker.
Uncovers the story of James Compton, an English Benedictine who converted to Anglicanism, influenced by The Rambler. Osborn uses letters to document Johnson's crucial support for Compton in London. Compton claimed Johnson considered retiring to the Paris convent in 1784. Osborn recounts Compton's report of Johnson introducing him to John Walker, the elocutionist who converted to Catholicism, delighting in the "contrary converts."
CGV entry 5:333. Reprinted from the 1954 standalone publication.
Ruhe records an un-snubbed meeting between Johnson and David Hume on 20 August 1763. Although Boswell noted Johnson’s abhorrence of Hume, a letter from Birch describes both men dining at the Chaplain’s Table at St. James’s. The company included the Fighting Quaker Thomas Cumming, whom Johnson highly esteemed. Ruhe notes the lack of a reported clash suggests the meeting was unremarkable, despite the two men being national spokesmen for rival Whig and Tory positions.
CGV entry 5:334. On Johnson and Hume as dinner guests in 1763.
Dr. Johnson's Monastic Cell Where He Thought of Ending His Days
Fifer argues that Boswell’s account of the first meeting between Johnson and Bennet Langton in the Life may omit key facts to achieve a more dramatically effective version. Boswell's version suggests Langton, a youth, came to London due to admiration for The Rambler and was introduced to Johnson as a total stranger by Levett. Fifer provides evidence suggesting that Johnson likely knew a great deal about young Langton because his father, Bennet Langton Sr., was an active country squire and acquaintance of literary figures like Joseph Spence, Robert Dodsley, Garrick, and Joseph Warton. A letter from Johnson to Langton (May 1755) suggests he had met the father on or before meeting the son. Fifer concludes that Johnson was likely prepared for the introduction, stressing Johnson's availability to strangers over the complete chance implied by Boswell.
Cochrane entry 169.
Studies by Members of the English Department, University of Illinois, in Memory of John Jay Parry
CGV entry 5:338. Reprinted from the Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1955).
Mrs. Thrale's Marginalia in Joseph Warton's Essay
Allison analyzes marginalia written by Thrale in her copy of Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope. The notes, reflecting readings in 1760, 1803, and 1810, show the Essay helped form her taste in criticism. Thrale's comments, often inaccurate but lively, range from praising Grongar Hill and mocking Gray's Odes, to critiquing Addison's lack of sensibility. She frequently plays the role of source-hunter (Pope borrowed from Racine) and defends Pope from Warton. A caustic note on Johnson's Dictionary reveals her belief that Johnson later retaliated against the Wartons for what she saw as "starved praise."
Johnson's Two Musical Friends—Burney and Hawkins
John Hawkesworth: A Study toward a Literary Biography
CGV entry 5:342. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 17 (1957), page 3002.
Wardle presents a detailed scholarly biography of Oliver Goldsmith, interpreting his life through the lens of a "gnawing feeling of inadequacy" rooted in childhood ugliness and social frustration. Wardle argues that Goldsmith’s "anomalous" character—a man of genius who frequently acted the "gooseberry fool"—stemmed from a "compulsion to measure himself against other men" to compensate for deep-seated insecurity. The text examines his complex relationship with Samuel Johnson, who acted as both a playful derider and a steadfast defender, once famously remarking that Goldsmith "wrote like an angel" but "talked like poor Poll". Wardle characterizes James Boswell as an "incurable collector of characters" who often resented Goldsmith’s intimacy with Johnson and provided a prejudiced, though occasionally tolerant, account of their interactions. Hester Thrale Piozzi is depicted as a "determined lion-hunter" who found Goldsmith’s "impudence truly Irish" and recorded anecdotes of his absurdity with skepticism toward his professional merits. The biography highlights how Goldsmith’s settled envy of Johnson and others was balanced by his "fundamental integrity" and refusal to write for political parties, ultimately portraying him as a "pathologically lonely man" whose mental distress accelerated his early death.
Golden commends Wardle’s diligent synthesis of Goldsmith scholarship and archival materials but finds the work’s critical interpretations less authoritative. Golden criticizes Wardle’s attempt to cast Goldsmith as a pre-romantic akin to Shelley, arguing this ignores Goldsmith’s Augustan preferences and frequent plagiarism of the Encyclopédie. The review also notes Wardle’s failure to integrate Goldsmith’s insecure character with his writings. Golden identifies a scholarly lapse in Wardle’s claim that Johnson was jealous of Goldsmith’s status in 1772.
CGV entry 5:343. Review by Morris Golden of the book by Ralph M. Wardle.
Balderston recognizes Wardle’s work as the first scholarly biography of Goldsmith since 1837, praising its thorough collection of factual data and accurate documentation of Goldsmith’s professional struggles with booksellers. However, she finds the volume deficient in critical interpretation and intellectual history. Balderston argues that Wardle overestimates the importance of Goldsmith's hack-work while failing to explore his relationship with sentimentalism or his significant intellectual debts to Johnson. She concludes that Wardle’s claims for Goldsmith’s philosophical originality are naive, noting that Goldsmith often lacked settled notions and followed Johnson’s established critical paths.
CGV entry 5:343. Review by K. C. Balderston of the book by Ralph M. Wardle.
Thomas Lawrence, M.D., P.R.C.P. (1711–83)
Brain outlines the career of Lawrence, who served as President of the Royal College of Physicians during the 1767 "siege" by licentiates. The text highlights Lawrence's role as Johnson's close friend and medical advisor, documenting their frequent correspondence on clinical matters. Brain notes that Johnson corrected the Latin in Lawrence's medical manuscripts, specifically De Natura Animali. The analysis covers Lawrence's medical theories on bodily constitutions and the mind-body relationship, which he explored in his Oxford lectures. The study concludes that Lawrence's character, described by Johnson as "venerable for his virtue," is preserved primarily through the letters and anecdotes of his famous patient.
CGV entry 5:344. On Lawrence's relationship with Johnson.
The first comprehensive biography of Burney using extensive unpublished manuscripts and family papers. This detailed approach was crucial for documenting the author's emergence and charting her interactions within London's distinguished literary society. Shows the depth of the relationship between Burney and Johnson, demonstrating how the older author acted as her formidable champion and mentor. Hemlow documents the closeness that led Johnson to call her "my sweet Fanny" and to express great delight in her presence. The close bond that Boswell had minimized or omitted in his biographical account makes this a corrective to earlier portraits of Johnson’s later life. Hemlow's work established a vital foundation for subsequent analysis of Burney's literary career and her influential social context.
Hemlow draws on dispersed family archives (including the Berg Collection and the British Museum). Hemlow's book is a history, not a biography, often omitting well-known anecdotes of Johnson and George III. The focus is on the vicissitudes of the "lesser Burneys." The book reveals Johnson's absent-mindedness at Streatham, and the text compares the earliest draft of Evelina to the printed version, revealing Burney's early tendency to formalize colloquial utterances.
CGV entry 5:346.
Pritchett focuses on Burney's life and work, particularly her novel Evelina. Burney's journals and letters offer a vivacious guide to the late eighteenth century, highlighting her skill in recording the manners and speech of a wide variety of people. Pritchett emphasizes the comedic detachment and class uncertainty that shaped Burney's perspective as a novelist. Hemlow's scholarly work is commended for its spirited portrait of Burney, from her early reputation as a "girl of prodigious parts" to her later efficient, practical life.
McKillop identifies Hemlow's biography as a definitive and balanced account of the novelist's long life, moving beyond the popular tendency to focus only on her early years. Hemlow uses newly available manuscript sources, including the Barrett and Osborn collections, which McKillop notes are comparable in bulk to the Boswell papers. The narrative traces the evolution of her writing from colloquial early drafts of Evelina, intended for the amusement of friends and family, to later works stultified by the conservative pressures of the courtesy-book society. McKillop praises Hemlow's skill in managing the large Burney clan and placing the novels at the juncture of literature and life.
Clifford assesses Hemlow’s biography as a major scholarly achievement that uses over 8,000 manuscript documents to bypass Burney’s later self-censorship. He notes Hemlow’s success in clarifying complex Burney family relationships and her decision to prioritize new manuscript material over well-known journal passages. Clifford highlights revelations concerning family scandals and the marriage of Burney’s parents. He specifically mentions the discovery of a poignant 1817 meeting between Burney and Piozzi, though he notes some chronological ambiguity regarding their final reconciliation.
CGV entry 5:346. Review by J. L. Clifford of the book by Joyce Hemlow.
An account of Baretti's murder trial and Johnson's evidence.
CGV entry 5:347.
The Unfortunate Dr. Dodd: The Tragedy of an Incurable Optimist
This article, reprinted from the Times Literary Supplement (1909), reviews Collison-Morley’s biography of Giuseppe Baretti. Woolf analyzes how Baretti exists for English readers primarily through his association with Johnson, whose "great nature" often "robs" others of their independent character. She describes Baretti as a "hired friend" of the Thrales who traded upon his likeness to Johnson to demand consideration. Woolf details the "roughness" of eighteenth-century literary society, recounting Baretti’s legal acquittal for a street stabbing and his "childish" quarrel with Johnson over a game of chess with Omai. She highlights Johnson's plea for Baretti's misbehavior, noting he likely "learned part of" his conduct from Johnson himself. The review emphasizes the "animal vigour" and "powerful mind" of a man who lived by his pen while existing in the "widening circles" of Johnson’s intellectual rule.
CGV entry 5:349. On Giuseppe Baretti. This is a reprint of her review of item 5:123.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Sherwin's detailed account of the life, eccentricities, and "anticipative wisdom" of James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, emphasizes his complex personal and intellectual relationship with Johnson. Sherwin details Monboddo’s "learned suppers," his legal success in the Douglas case, and his hygiene rituals, which Johnson famously ridiculed. The narrative centers on Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of Language, exploring his thesis that language is a human invention and his controversial belief in "men with tails." Sherwin documents the "much tartness and sportiveness" between the two men, including their 1773 meeting at Monboddo House where they debated the "extinction" of learning and the merits of the "savage" life.
Birch, Johnson, and Elizabeth Carter: An Episode of 1738–1739
Reconstructs an episode from 1738–39, suggesting a courtship between Birch and Elizabeth Carter, a learned young woman known for her aversion to marriage. The evidence, largely from Birch's diary, shows his persistent attention through letters, dinners, and excursions, often in the company of Johnson. The affair, possibly a serious courtship on Birch's part that was based on intellectual patronage, ended abruptly in June 1739. The author conjectures that Johnson was an unwitting interloper, and that Birch's later resentment of him may stem from this early period.
CGV entry 5:352. On 'The Voice of Discord' and Johnson's help.
Describes Johnson's affectionate relationship with Charles Burney's children, particularly Fanny and Susan, using their journals and letters. Hemlow portrays Johnson's kindness, indulgence, and intellectual engagement with them. Fanny's observations capture his mannerisms and conversation, ranging from playful teasing and burlesque humor to fierce intellectual combat and deep melancholy. Hemlow highlights the mutual affection and Johnson's supportive, if sometimes intimidating, presence.
The Brewing Industry in England, 1700–1830
Mathias analyzes the economic instability of the Thrale brewery under Henry Thrale’s management, characterized by aggressive expansion and low liquid reserves. During the financial panic of 1772 and the subsequent 1778 stringency, Johnson provided both moral support and strategic advice, urging Thrale to curb "speculation" and limit production to 80,000 barrels. Piozzi played a crucial role in raising emergency capital from family and friends like Scrase and Lade, while Perkins managed the technical and labor challenges, including saving the brewery from the Gordon Riots. Following Thrale's death in 1781, the lack of a male heir forced the sale of the "Golden Millstone." Johnson, acting as executor, famously presided over the transition to the Quaker Robert Barclay. Perkins, leveraging his technical expertise and marital connection to the Bevan banking family, transitioned from manager to partner, marking a shift toward professionalized, kinship-based corporate structures.
Johnson and Gray: A Study in Literary Antagonism
On the antagonism between Johnson and Gray, two eminent men who never met. Gray's friends launched a vigorous attack on Johnson's severe, carping, and sometimes unfair criticism in the Lives of the Poets. Their personalities clashed: Johnson was boisterous and a professional writer, while Gray was timid, fastidious, and an academic recluse, disdaining to publish much of his vast scholarship. Johnson interpreted Gray's reluctance to write except at "happy moments" as "fantastic foppery," revealing a fundamental contempt for Gray's unmanly reputation and lack of professional drive.
Doctors Afield: Robert Anderson, M.D., and His Life of Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 5:358. On the first Josiah Wedgwood.
CGV entry 10/6:358. On the first Josiah Wedgwood.
Baretti and the Shakespearean Influence in Italy: A Study in Eighteenth Century Polemics in Italy
CGV entry 5:359. Discusses the influence of Johnson. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 20 (1960), page 4664.
CGV entry 10/6:359. Discusses the influence of Johnson. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 20 (1960), page 4664.
Wimsatt's letter to the editor introduces a neglected 1809 reminiscence by Ewing, the first provost of the University of Pennsylvania, who dined with Johnson at Dilly's in 1774 or 1775. The account, quoted from the Life of Ewing, describes Johnson entering a room to general silence, reading a book until dinner, and eating voraciously. Ewing defended the American colonies, prompting a silent, voracious Johnson to sternly challenge him by asking, "What do you know, Sir, on that subject?" and rudely claiming Americans "never read." Johnson was pacified by Ewing's civility in citing the Rambler, leading to an amicable conversation until midnight after the other guests retired. Wimsatt notes this anecdote includes authentic moments of transatlantic literary exchange not previously reported in Johnsonian contexts.
CGV entry 5:360.
CGV entry 10/6:360.
Johnson detailed Shenstone’s life, including his education and poetic compositions. Johnson praised Shenstone’s works as demonstrating elegant praise of rural life. The Lives, praised as magisterial prose, are recognized as sophisticated biographical and critical pieces.
Edmund Southwell, His Sisters, and Dr. Johnson
Powell identifies Edmund Southwell as the figure who introduced Johnson to Malone in 1764. Powell corrects the Yale editors and Chapman, identifying Southwell as the fourth son of the 1st Baron Southwell. The text notes that Johnson was "very helpful" to the second Baron's illegitimate son. Powell highlights the defense of Southwell's character by Malone against Hawkins's "unfavourable representation." He further suggests identities for the "Mrs Southwels" mentioned in Johnson’s letters, identifying them as Frances and Lucy Southwell, who subsisted on a pension procured by Lord Chesterfield.
CGV entry 5:368. On Samuel Johnson, D.D., 1696–1772.
Christian Deelman explores a possible classical source for Garrick's first play, Lethe (1740). A 1749 pamphlet suggested a resemblance to Lucian's Dialogues, which Davies's biography refuted, noting Garrick's lack of classical interest. Deelman notes that Johnson included Lucian (by Leedes) in a reading course for a cousin preparing for Oxford in 1735, when Garrick was a student at Johnson's Edial school. The 1726 edition of Lucian by Leedes contains the dialogue Cataplus sive Tyrannus (The Tyrant), which is very similar to Lethe in its use of Mercury and Charon managing assorted satirical characters en route to the Underworld, suggesting Garrick knew the piece. Deelman speculates, likely wishfully, that Johnson may have seen parts of Lethe in 1736, citing an anecdote from Davies (likely from Johnson) that Garrick was already writing dramatic poetry at school.
CGV entry 5:369.
CGV entry 10/6:369.
James Thomson Callender, Johnson and Jefferson
Congleton presents evidence attributing two anonymous satirical pamphlets, Deformities of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1782) and A Critical Review of the Works of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1783), primarily to James Thomson Callender, later notorious in America for his attacks on Hamilton and Jefferson. The pamphlets ridicule Johnson's Dictionary, Lives, and Scottish tour, defending Gaelic poetry against Johnson's perceived skepticism (linked to William Shaw). Congleton traces the attribution history, noting early suggestions of multiple authors or John Callander, but favors J. T. Callender based on Robert Anderson (1815), D. Nichol Smith (CBEL), and L. F. Powell's discovery of a letter from Callender regarding copies of Deformities. Highlighting Callender's later career—his flight from sedition charges in Scotland, initial support from Jefferson, exposure of Hamilton's affair, attacks on Adams, imprisonment under the Sedition Act, and eventual scurrilous attacks on Jefferson—Congleton suggests Callender's early anti-Johnson writings foreshadow his later role as a virulent political scandalmonger in America.
CGV entry 5:370. Traces the career of Callender from the 'Deformities' in 1782 to his death in America in 1803.
CGV entry 10/6:370. Traces the career of Callender from the 'Deformities' in 1782 to his death in America in 1803.
Dankert examines the complex, often contentious relationship between Johnson and Adam Smith. Smith first reviewed Johnson's Dictionary in 1755, criticizing its lack of grammatical analysis, and later clashed verbally with Johnson in 1761, reportedly exchanging vulgar insults. Although Scott's famous anecdote about a Glasgow quarrel in 1773 contains inaccuracies, a bitter altercation certainly occurred. Despite Johnson's anti-Scots prejudice and their periodic sniping, they eventually treated each other with respect, meeting occasionally at the Literary Club. Smith praised Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare and his knowledge of books, while Johnson defended Smith's credentials for writing The Wealth of Nations.
CGV entry 5:372. On Johnson and Adam Smith.
CGV entry 10/6:372. On Johnson and Adam Smith.
CGV entry 5:374. Discusses Johnson's remark, "He is ... continually attempting wit, but he fails."
CGV entry 10/6:374. Discusses Johnson's remark, "He is ... continually attempting wit, but he fails."
Morning at Streatham: From the Journal of Susannah Elizabeth Burney
CGV entry 5:376. Privately printed for the annual dinner of The Johnsonians. Includes a facsimile.
CGV entry 10/6:376. Privately printed for the annual dinner of The Johnsonians. Includes a facsimile.
Dr. Johnson's Printer: The Life of William Strahan
Cochrane provides a biographical study of William Strahan, the eighteenth-century printer and publisher who served as a central figure in the literary circles of Samuel Johnson, David Hume, and Benjamin Franklin. He argues that Strahan was much more than an "ordinary tradesman," using his role as King's Printer and Member of Parliament to navigate the intersection of "idealism and commercial practicality" in the book trade. Cochrane details Strahan's primary role in printing Johnson’s Dictionary, describing him as a crucial "intermediary" between Johnson and the consortium of booksellers. The study examines Strahan's "talent for friendship" alongside his "propensity to quarrel," particularly regarding his long-term professional and personal relationships with Hume and Franklin. By analyzing Strahan's scrupulous business ledgers, Cochrane illustrates the "formative period" of the British book trade, highlighting the emancipation of writers and the development of efficient publishing organizations. The narrative positions Strahan as a pioneer who "taught printers to emancipate themselves" from booksellers by acquiring copyrights and diversifying into international markets. Critical reception of this biography characterizes it as a skillful and illuminating study that successfully links the world of literature to the mechanics of eighteenth-century trade. Clifford and Ketton-Cremer praise the author’s use of preserved business ledgers to reveal the "canny Scots judgment" and "business acumen" of a figure who rose from an industrious Edinburgh youth to become the King’s Printer and an M.P. The narrative is lauded for its portrayal of the printer’s talent for managing complex friendships with eminent authors, specifically noting his roles as a banker and "remarkable" confidant to figures like David Hume and Benjamin Franklin. Fleeman highlights the work’s "skill and grace," though he joins Daghlian in noting an "untidy atmosphere" and occasional factual errors, particularly a "grave confusion" regarding the accounts for the famous Dictionary. While the volume is celebrated for documenting major publishing successes like the Wealth of Nations and Decline and Fall, Todd identifies significant scholarly omissions, citing a failure to consult definitive editions of correspondence and contemporary studies of the era's major texts. Despite these academic shortcomings and the need for corrections to specific biographical dates, the consensus remains that the biography provides a valuable perspective on the "grand manner" of conducting business in a profession where the printer served as the essential bridge between the writer and the public.
Todd reviews Cochrane’s biography of William Strahan, the prominent eighteenth-century printer for Johnson, Hume, and Gibbon. While acknowledging Cochrane’s professional expertise in book production and his use of obscure trade accounts, Todd identifies significant omissions in the scholarly apparatus. Specifically, he notes Cochrane’s failure to consult the definitive 1932 and 1954 editions of Hume’s letters and the 1955 Sledd-Kolb study of Johnson’s Dictionary. Todd provides corrections to biographical dates from Strahan's ledgers and highlights unused financial records that detail the printer's "grand manner" of conducting business.
CGV entry 5:378 and 10/6:378. Review by William B. Todd of the book by James A. Cochrane.
Ketton-Cremer describes Strahan as a successful Edinburgh printer who came to London and became the King's Printer, an M.P., and the head of his profession. The monograph, enriched by Strahan's preserved ledgers, details his friendships with his authors, including Johnson (who called Strahan's letters full of "tenderness, benevolence, and liberality") and Franklin, and his successful publishing ventures. Notable successes included Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Gibbon's Decline and Fall, both published in partnership with Thomas Cadell in 1776, and works by his compatriots like Robertson and Macpherson.
CGV entry 5:378.
CGV entry 10/6:378.
Fleeman calls Cochrane's biography a work of skill and grace, detailing the rise of an industrious Scot to King's Printer. The book illuminates the link between eighteenth-century literature and the book trade by emphasizing Strahan's close association with contemporary writers. Specifically, Fleeman highlights Strahan's essential role as the printer of Johnson's major works after 1753. The review notes the commercial success of the Dictionary, with 46,000 octavo abridgements sold between 1756 and 1790, and discusses the massive distribution of proposals for the second edition, though no copies survive. Fleeman identifies a "grave" confusion in Cochrane's account regarding the first and second folio editions of the Dictionary and points out a grave confusion in the Dictionary accounts. Additionally, the review emphasizes the discovery of an unidentified five-ream "Pamphlet of Mr. Johnson's" mentioned in Strahan's ledgers from 1755.
CGV entry 5:378. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the book by James A. Cochrane.
CGV entry 10/6:378. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the book by James A. Cochrane.
Daghlian finds the book justifies biographical treatment of the leading printer of his time, noting the author's background gives him a valuable perspective. The book conveys a sense of Strahan as an able and remarkable man, fully deserving the high position he attained, but suffers from a rather untidy atmosphere and occasional factual errors.
Dr. Charles Burney: A Literary Biography
Lonsdale's authoritative 1965 biography, drawing on new Burney correspondence and recovered autobiography fragments, establishes Burney primarily as an author. The study details Burney's admiration for Johnson, dating from 1755, and his consistent presence in the Johnsonian Circle. Lonsdale revealed that Johnson secretly wrote the dedication for Burney’s Handel commemoration book. Burney kept this authorship concealed, as Johnson cheerfully declared his insensitivity to music. Lonsdale suggests that Burney's pursuit of literary and social success limited him.
Lonsdale examines the friendship between Johnson and Burney, which Thrale noted was unique for its genuine affection. Although Johnson initially expressed contempt for the musical profession, Burney’s "simple and unpretentious" personality eventually disarmed him. The bond deepened during their frequent meetings at Streatham and was further strengthened by Johnson’s admiration for Burney’s daughter Fanny and her novel Evelina. Johnson assisted Burney with several literary dedications, while Burney became a fierce defender of Johnson’s reputation after his death. Lonsdale argues that this relationship answered a profound need for Johnson, revealing his capacity for simple affection often missed by other biographers.
CGV entry 5:383. See also New Rambler, June 1964, pages 16–18.
CGV entry 10/6:383.
Fleeman examines Johnson’s political agency through his friendship with Thrale, revealing the extent of Johnson’s contributions to Thrale’s election campaigns in Southwark. The text provides a detailed analysis of the manuscripts and printed versions of election addresses, establishing Johnson’s authorship of several key documents. Fleeman demonstrates how Johnson used his rhetorical skills to support Thrale’s interests, balancing his own Tory principles with the practical needs of a commercial constituency. This relationship allowed Johnson to engage directly with contemporary politics beyond his published pamphlets. Fleeman concludes that Thrale provided Johnson with a vital connection to the active political and business world of London.
CGV entry 5:386. On Johnson's help with election addresses.
CGV entry 10/6:386. On Johnson's help with election addresses.
Edward Embry, identified by Thrale as the clergyman whom Johnson 'destroyed' with a sharp retort in 1778, lived a life far more substantial than previously supposed. Embry served for thirty years as curate and eventually rector of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, surviving the traumatic encounter by nearly four decades. Although Embry was a shy schoolmaster when he initially met Johnson, he later published sermons concerning the preparation for death that were addressed to the passions. These works, though potentially moving to Johnson, would likely have been ranked with those of Dodd. Embry ultimately gained local esteem for his social qualities and charitable work with the children of the clergy, likely dying in a state of forgiveness toward the man who once silenced him.
CGV entry 5:387. On Edward Embry.
CGV entry 10/6:387. On Edward Embry.
Malone first met Johnson in 1764 and maintained a friendly relationship characterized by regular conversation and occasional correspondence until the latter's death. As an acute critic and 'Johnsonianissimus,' Malone served as a vital editorial 'midwife' for Boswell, specifically during the preparation of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and the Life of Samuel Johnson. Without Malone's vision, editorial skill, and thousands of hours of labor, Boswell's biography would lack its current structure. Malone supplied documents, revised drafts, and continued to edit definitive posthumous editions of the Life, preserving Johnson's legacy through rigorous attention to authentic detail and pious regard for his character.
Cochrane entry 593.
Quinlan documents Johnson’s encounters with American figures such as Benjamin West, Benjamin Rush, and William Samuel Johnson. Despite his vocal opposition to the American cause, Johnson maintained amicable relations with these individuals, often engaging them in discussions on "Litterary subjects." William Johnson noted that while the Doctor appeared "as odd a mortal as you ever saw," his "shining abilities" and virtue abundantly repaid the acquaintance. Anecdotes involving Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Cooper further highlight Johnson’s social range and his willingness to dismiss political bigotries in private conversation. Quinlan concludes that these international connections were significant until the American Revolution disrupted further correspondence.
CGV entry 5:389. On Benjamin Rush, William White, William Johnson, Thomas Cooper, and others.
CGV entry 10/6:389. On Benjamin Rush, William White, William Johnson, Thomas Cooper, and others.
CGV entry 5:390.
CGV entry 10/6:390.
CGV entry 5:392. On Miss Williams, Dr. Levet, Francis Barber, etc.
CGV entry 10/6:392. On Miss Williams, Dr. Levet, Francis Barber, etc.
Dr. Parr: A Portrait of the Whig Dr. Johnson
Swinnerton explores the dynamics of paternal authority and "filial piety" within the social framework of the 18th century. The narrative focuses heavily on Burney, detailing his rise from a music teacher to a member of the Johnsonian circle. Swinnerton documents Burney’s "obsequiousness" and dependence on patronage, noting how his social ambitions propelled his daughter into a "servitude" at Court that nearly proved fatal. Johnson is portrayed as a "benign" but formidable mentor whose approval validated the family’s literary merit. Thrale appears as an "alert and vivacious hostess" whose Streatham salon provided the crucial social platform for the Burneys before the relationship fractured over her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. Swinnerton disputes the notion of the era as one of "dreary materialism," emphasizing the intellectual "eagerness" of these domestic circles. The account of Seward highlights the "valetudinarian" lifestyle in Lichfield and the "affected" literary devotion of his daughter, Anna Seward. For Edgeworth, Swinnerton describes a "boisterous bore" whose "utilitarian" educational theories governed a household of "prodigies," including Maria Edgeworth. The text characterizes these relationships as a "single interesting pattern" where paternal vanity both fostered and exploited the genius of the offspring.
CGV entry 5:395.
CGV entry 10/6:395.
Hardy examines Percival Stockdale's Inquiry into the Nature and Genuine Laws of Poetry (1778) as a key, yet overlooked, response defending Alexander Pope against Joseph Warton's critique. Stockdale directly attacked Warton's "process of critical chymistry"—the idea that stripping verse of meter and rhyme exposes prose—by arguing that composition, symmetry, and harmony are intrinsic parts of poetry, indispensable constituents of excellence. Stockdale also defended Pope’s "elegant and sublime" style against Warton’s preference for the "transcendently sublime" of the Gothic and druidical tradition, which Stockdale dismissed as "unnatural" and "extravagant." While Johnson never publicly praised Stockdale’s work, an anecdote suggests he privately endorsed the defense as "incontrovertible."
CGV entry 5:396.
CGV entry 10/6:396.
The Curiosity of William Oldys: An Approach to the Development of English Literary History
]Lipking examines Oldys's pivotal role as a precursor to the formal literary history and biography established by Warton and Johnson. Though Oldys never wrote a definitive history of poetry, his extensive biographical research, manuscript annotations, and encyclopedic collaborations provided the factual foundation for subsequent eighteenth-century scholars. Lipking argues that Johnson and Warton achieved their major works by repudiating Oldys's method of perpetual commentary and exhaustive documentation in favor of critical suppression and narrative synthesis.
CGV entry 5:398. Contains much on the relationship of Oldys and Johnson.
Brown explores the political and intellectual influence of Chatham and Shelburne through the lives of five associates: Richard Price, Isaac Barré, John Dunning, Jonathan Shipley, and William Jones. The text identifies Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, as a "learned friend" of both Benjamin Franklin and Johnson. Shipley hosted Johnson at his London home and met him at the Club alongside figures such as Joshua Reynolds and Edward Gibbon. Boswell also appears in relation to Shipley, specifically regarding a "disgraceful incident" in 1781 involving intoxication, which Boswell omitted from his biography of Johnson. Dunning is described as a distant acquaintance of Johnson; Johnson consulted him on behalf of Piozzi in 1782 regarding legal papers. Boswell’s records of Dunning are noted as sparse, limited to a few anecdotes such as Johnson’s observation of Dunning’s Devonshire accent. The study highlights how these figures intersected through eighteenth-century political circles and "The Club," illustrating the social professional networks connecting statesmanship to the literary world of Johnson and his contemporaries.
CGV entry 5:399. Discusses Johnson's relations with Shelburne, Wesley, John Dunning, Sir William Jones, and Bishop Shipley.
CGV entry 5:400. Includes some of her unprinted jottings about Johnson.
Informal description of HLP materials in the Hyde Collection; items now in the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection at the Houghton Library
Christopher Smart: Scholar of the University
Sherbo emphasizes the significant interactions between Smart and Johnson, tracing their friendship from an initial meeting that 'began with poetry, and ended with fluxions'. When Smart's 'malady' began, Johnson wrote for the Universal Visiter to 'secure his claim to a share in the profits'. Although Johnson never visited Smart during his four-year stay at Bethnal Green, he provided a famous defense of the poet’s 'pious' habit of public prayer, famously telling Burney that Smart 'has partly as much exercise as he used to have, for he digs in the garden'. Sherbo documents Johnson’s support for Smart’s family, specifically his 'kind' treatment of Anna Maria Smart during her husband’s 'misfortunes'. Despite their long association, Johnson notably declined to subscribe to Smart’s translation of the Psalms, favoring James Merrick's version instead. Nevertheless, Johnson remained one of the few friends, along with Oliver Goldsmith, who did not 'weary out' under Smart’s 'eccentricities and imprudences'. Sherbo concludes that Johnson respected Smart’s 'talents, wit, and vivacity' even as he lamented the 'unhappy loss of his senses.'
John Hawkesworth and 'The Treatise on The Arts of Peace'
Abbott investigates an anonymous eighteenth-century manuscript titled "A Dissertation on the Progress of Agriculture, Arts and Commerce" to determine its authorship. Although Hollis’s diary suggests Hawkesworth wrote a dissertation after Johnson declined the commission in 1761, Abbott concludes that internal stylistic evidence and chronological discrepancies disqualify Hawkesworth as the author of the extant Society manuscript. The analysis emphasizes Johnson’s refusal to write the piece due to insufficient information regarding the subject matter.
CGV entry 5:402.
The talented Burney clan maintained a voluminous correspondence with many friends at the center of the artistic and social world during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Hemlow directed the assembly of a comprehensive guide to over 10,000 widely dispersed letters and journals, which offers a history of major literary events and customs. This detailed catalogue identifies letters by date, recipient, and location, bringing together divided or dispersed sheets. The complete index of correspondents reveals significant exchanges between the Burney family and prominent figures such as Johnson and Boswell. The collaborative publication aims to bring this scattered correspondence to the full attention of literary and social historians.
CGV entry 5:403.
CGV entry 5:404. On William Weller Pepys.
Smollett and Johnson, Never Cater-Cousins?
Knapp investigates the relationship between Johnson and Smollett, noting a lack of direct personal records, despite Smollett's claim they were "never cater-cousins" in a 1759 letter requesting Francis Barber's naval discharge. Knapp suggests they likely met by 1749 through mutual friends in Johnson's Ivy-Lane Club, notably the Scottish physician, William McGhie. Despite potential professional envy, they shared many experiences as hardworking hack-writers and held common values (conservatism, moral purpose, charity). Smollett later expressed approval of Johnson's writings in the British Magazine and Critical Review, and Johnson assisted Smollett's cousin with a Latin inscription, suggesting a relationship of occasional goodwill rather than close friendship.
CGV entry 5:406.
Easton Maudit and the Parish Church of SS. Peter and Paul
Gold disputes the hearsay suggestion that Johnson drafted the celebrated 1755 maiden parliamentary address of William Gerard Hamilton. While James L. Clifford used the argumentative and antithetical style of the lost speech to propose a secret collaboration, Gold argues such stylistic traits were natural to Hamilton himself. The study highlights Hamilton’s later intimacy with Johnson, including a 1765 prayer regarding political engagement and the document "Considerations on the Corn Laws," but notes these do not prove earlier authorship. Gold employs appraisals from contemporaries such as Boswell and Piozzi—who rated Hamilton’s scholarship and manner on a numerical scale—to establish his intellectual independence. By examining Hamilton’s "Parliamentary Logick" and his Irish oratory, Gold concludes that while Johnson may have provided factual research, the distinctive "Johnsonian" periods and balanced constructions found in Hamilton’s letters and speeches demonstrate a self-authored rhetorical style.
CGV entry 5:410. Discusses the suggestion that W. G. Hamilton's famous speech may have been composed by Johnson.
John Hawkesworth, Friend of Samuel Johnson and Editor of Captain Cook's Voyages and the Gentleman's Magazine
Abbott outlines the life and work of John Hawkesworth, noting his important literary contributions, including his role as editor and contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine for thirty years. Hawkesworth was a friend of Samuel Johnson, and evidence suggests he may have been a forerunner to Boswell in recording Johnson's conversation. Hawkesworth's later reputation suffered greatly after the controversial publication of Captain Cook's Voyages, due to heresy and issues of sexual morality.
xlix, 452 pages, 6 plates; 453-977 pages, 6 plates
CGV entry 5:414. Contains many allusions to Johnson.
Johnson met Maurice at Oxford in 1775, beginning a friendship characterized by significant literary assistance. Johnson wrote the preface to Maurice’s translation of Oedipus Tyrannus and recommended him for a curacy in Leicestershire. Maurice’s Memoirs include a 1775 letter to Walter Pollard describing a breakfast conversation where Johnson solicited lists of poets to include in a projected 'immortal catalogue.' Keast argues that this account, though possibly edited, proves the Lives of the Poets project was in embryo two years before the standard 1777 date. Despite Maurice’s later failure as a historian and poet, Johnson’s early praise of his blank verse and the nickname 'Johnson's son' underscore the critic’s enlarged philanthropy toward youthful literary aspirants.
The Johnson–Chesterfield Relationship: A New Hypothesis
The severity of the letter to Chesterfield stemmed not just from the Earl's neglect or attempt at patronage, but from an earlier literary and political prejudice. During the years 1741–44, Johnson, as sole author of the Parliamentary Debates, often distorted Chesterfield's speeches, exaggerating his characteristic irony into a self-defeating, destructive mockery. Having previously supported Chesterfield's opposition views (e.g., in A Compleat Vindication), Johnson grew dissatisfied with the opposition Whigs and used his fabricated speeches for Chesterfield to indirectly satirize the faction. This long-standing, tacit satirical disdain nourished the sarcasm in the public repudiation letter years later.
CGV entry 5:416. Discusses the opposing parts the two men played in the politics of the 1737–1744 period.
Leed proposes a revised chronology for the opening of the Johnson–Chesterfield relationship, dating Chesterfield’s accidental receipt of Johnson’s Short Scheme before the decision to address the Plan to him. The Fair Copy, drafted in winter 1746–47 when Chesterfield was Secretary of State, depicts Chesterfield as the patron, a role he tacitly accepted by reading and annotating the draft without demurral. Leed argues Johnson's famous 1755 letter is a reproach to a proclaimed and accepted patron who failed to provide support, not a bid for patronage.
Johnson maintained a cordial relationship with Orrery throughout the 1750s, characterized by intellectual equality rather than traditional patronage. Despite low regard for Orrery's intellect, Johnson used the Earl's Remarks as a source for the Life of Swift and wrote the dedication for Charlotte Lennox's Shakespear Illustrated to him. Orrery also facilitated the presentation of Johnson's Dictionary to the Accademia della Crusca in Florence. This association provides a parallel to the Chesterfield episode, demonstrating Johnson's persistent effort to remain independent of wealthy noblemen during a period of financial hardship. Korshin argues that Orrery prudently avoided promising support, allowing the two men to associate on a familiar basis that honored Johnson's celebrated literary independence.
Johnson and Literary Patronage: A Comment on Jacob Leed's Article
Korshin comments on Jacob Leed's interpretation of Johnson's relationship with Chesterfield, arguing that the booksellers were the true patrons of the Dictionary. The contract for £1575 for the nine-year project provided a very handsome income for the time, a fact Chesterfield was likely aware of. Korshin suggests Chesterfield's "great professions" promised prestige and introductions, a late-stage "small gift" patronage, rather than the substantial financial support Leed conjectures. The financial success of the Dictionary was a business venture and risk taken by the publishers.
CGV entry 5:420. A reply to item 5:417. See Leed's reply in the same journal, volume 13 (1971), pages 2011–2015.
Two Letters from Giuseppe Baretti to Samuel Johnson
McKenzie presents two previously unpublished letters from Baretti to Johnson found in a manuscript commonplace book. The first letter, from 1762, details Baretti's professional disappointments in Milan and his unrequited passion for Rosina Fuentes, providing context for Johnson’s famous reply on the fallacies of self-love. The second letter, from 1765, congratulates Johnson on his Shakespeare edition and discusses Baretti’s work on his dictionary and his troubles with Venetian authorities. McKenzie argues these letters clarify the personal circumstances that inspired Johnson's philosophical reflections on patrons and marriage.
Johnson's disdain for the Ossianic poems led to a deep-seated quarrel with James Macpherson, culminating in the publication of the Journey to the Western Islands in 1775. Metzdorf uses bibliographical evidence, including cancels in the 1779 first edition of M’Nicol’s Remarks, to argue that Macpherson likely interpolated scurrilous attacks on Johnson and Boswell into M'Nicol’s manuscript. The original text contained obscene double-entendres and an intemperate critique of Boswell’s vanity, which were softened in later states of the edition. Although Boswell considered legal action against M'Nicol, he ultimately treated the book with disdain, suspecting Macpherson's hand in its 'malignant abuse.' The study concludes that Macpherson vented his abiding rancor through this friendly embellishment of M’Nicol's clerical critique.
Eighteenth Century Studies Presented to Arthur M. Wilson
Johnson and Foreign Visitors to London: Baretti and Others
Clifford examines the paradox between Johnson’s publicized contempt for foreign nations and his intimate social circle of continental friends. While Boswell and Baretti record Johnson’s xenophobic remarks, Clifford argues that Johnson’s prejudices rarely extended to individuals of merit. The account details Johnson’s role as an adjudicator in a legal dispute involving Baretti, Croker, and a misplaced gold watch, illustrating Johnson's loyalty to his Italian friend. Clifford reconstructs Johnson’s encounters with notable figures such as Paoli, Casanova, and Bošković, noting that these interactions often required Latin as a lingua franca. The text highlights how visitors like Sturz and Holcke reacted to the contrast between Johnson’s boorish exterior and his intellectual stature. Clifford demonstrates that Johnson welcomed any foreigner who satisfied his rigorous standards for scholarship and conversation.
Dr. Johnson and Jeremy Bentham: An Unnoticed Relationship
Korshin investigates Johnson's previously unnoticed connection to the young Jeremy Bentham through an Oxford Latin poem. In 1763, Bentham's father sought Johnson's advice on a suitable subject for a Latin poem celebrating the Peace of Paris. Bentham chose the English capture of Havana and sent a draft to Johnson. Johnson, acting as a "learned reviser," returned hasty, late-arriving grammatical and stylistic criticisms that focused on pointing out errors rather than correcting them. The poem was not accepted for public reading. John Bowring, Bentham's biographer, later falsely attributed Johnson's corrections to Bentham's shorter 1760 ode, possibly to exaggerate Bentham's early genius and connection to Johnson.
Perrett outlines the life and local influence of Gilbert Walmesley, the Registrar of the Lichfield Diocesan Prerogative Court, who served as an early intellectual mentor to Johnson. The article traces Walmesley's lineage, legal career, and residence at the Bishop's Palace in the Lichfield Close. Perrett argues that John Hunter, master of the Lichfield Free School, likely introduced the young, physically handicapped Johnson to Walmesley after recognizing his pupil's classical talents. This connection enabled Johnson to access Walmesley's extensive library and sophisticated social circle, which included David Garrick and Robert James. Perrett emphasizes Walmesley's role in prompting Johnson and Garrick to seek their fortunes in London in 1737. The piece concludes by analyzing Johnson's rhythmic, Latinized prose eulogy for Walmesley embedded within the Life of Edmund Smith, framing this tribute as a lasting manifestation of gratitude that validates Walmesley's profound impact on English literature.
A Proof of Eminence: The Life of Sir John Hawkins
Davis chronicles the complex, enduring relationship between Hawkins and Johnson, beginning with their early 1740s meetings at St. John’s Gate and culminating in Hawkins's role as Johnson’s primary executor. The text details Hawkins’s participation in the Ivy Lane and Turk’s Head clubs, noting Johnson’s characterization of him as "unclubbable" following a dispute with Edmund Burke. Davis examines the friction between Hawkins and Boswell, who are presented as competing biographers for the "palm of anecdote." The narrative justifies Boswell’s eventual biographical supremacy by citing Hawkins’s "digressive" style and the critical "literary death" inflicted by "Boswell and Co." through satirical attacks and negative reviews in the Monthly Review. But Davis records Johnson’s high esteem for Hawkins’s "diligent enquiry," noting that Johnson personally recommended Hawkins’s edition of Walton’s Angler. The biography also illuminates the final days of Johnson’s life, including Hawkins’s successful effort to secure a will and his controversial decision to "pocket" Johnson’s private diaries to prevent them from falling into the hands of George Steevens. Davis concludes by analyzing the hostile reception of Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, which was branded "malevolent" by contemporaries but ultimately preserved significant records of Johnson’s circle.
Quennell’s biographical study focuses on Johnson and his intimate social circle, presenting a profusely illustrated "conversation-piece" that frames Johnson against his social background. The work is positioned as a popular account, not a work of original literary criticism or research. Quennell organizes the narrative by introducing Johnson from the perspective of the Thrales, beginning with a chapter dedicated to "Streatham Park." The study places special emphasis on Johnson's relationships with women, dedicating a chapter titled "The World of Women" to portraits of Thrale, Burney, Delany, Montagu, Carter, and More, among others. A separate chapter, "A Great Infidel," discusses intellectual opponents such as Hume, Sterne, Gibbon, Wilkes, and Walpole. The book handles Johnson's life prior to meeting the Thrales briskly, and Johnson’s death is addressed only in the epilogue. Most reviews are positive, though there is a clear divergence between popular and scholarly reception. In the New York Times, Broyard provides an approving review that praises the humanized focus on personal foibles and simple bravery, while Steegmuller's review in the same publication commends the masterly composition of the social circle. Pritchett, in the New Statesman, applauds the text as a fresh, sympathetic conversation piece that successfully domesticates the central figure. Positive notices in the Chicago Tribune and The Economist celebrate the authoritative, life-sized portrait and its practiced narrative ease, predicting strong commercial appeal. But scholarly reviewers are highly skeptical. Clifford, in South Atlantic Quarterly, views the book as a readable introduction but notes it offers no new insights for specialists. Clifford and Middendorf, writing in JNL, describe it as a handsome volume designed for casual skimming rather than original research. Severe academic criticism comes from Passler (Studies in Burke and His Time), who condemns the disorganized structure, superficial literary criticism, and dated bibliography. Richardson, in the Spectator, dismisses the work as a diffuse coffee-table ornament lacking central focus. In PQ, Schwartz finds the collective biography derivative, factually unreliable, and dependent on caricatured stereotypes, a sentiment shared by Rawson (English), who dismisses the text as a thinly spread effort lacking real understanding. Basney's review in the Western Humanities Review similarly highlights distracting vices, including inaccurate quotations, muddled bibliography, and a reliance on conventional heroism.
Published in the US in 1973 by American Heritage.
CGV entry 5:433. Review by William Kean Seymour of the book by Peter Quennell, alongside another work.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A review by William Kean Seymour of the book by Paul Fussell, alongside another work.
Schwartz finds Quennell’s collective biography derivative and factually unreliable. He notes Quennell relies heavily on secondary sources to reconstruct Johnson’s social circle, including Piozzi and Burney, while perpetuating caricatured "Johnsonese" stereotypes. Schwartz identifies numerous inconsistencies regarding Johnson’s religious fears, alongside critical lapses and misrepresentations of Johnson’s views on human freedom. He concludes that while the volume provides high-quality illustrations, they offer little new material compared to existing pictorial biographies or Boswell’s scholarship.
CGV entry 5:433. A severe review by Richard B. Schwartz of the book by Peter Quennell.
Quennell constructs a "leisurely 'conversation piece'" focusing on the "Streatham society" and Johnson’s most comfortable period. The work features Johnson alongside Boswell, the Thrales, Burke, and Reynolds, while treating enemies like Hume. Basney observes that Quennell investigates the "literary milieu" through analyses of forgotten works by Goldsmith and Burney. Though praised for its "special delights," including eighteen portraits by Reynolds, Basney disputes the book's reliance on a "conventional hero." He identifies "distracting vices" such as inaccurate quotations, misidentification of dates, and a "badly muddled bibliography" within this "John Bullish" portrait.
CGV entry 5:433. A review by Lionel Basney of the book by Peter Quennell, alongside another work.
Passler criticizes Quennell's biography, noting its modest aims as a pleasant ramble and introduction are hampered by a disappointing selection of material and unsound evaluations. Quennell overemphasizes Piozzi and Fanny Burney, omitting essential friends like Burke and Boswell, and neglects The Club and the Hebridean jaunt. Passler finds the book's structure confusing and its judgment flawed by superficial literary criticism and facile summaries, further noting that the lack of documentation, multiple inaccuracies, and dated bibliography frustrate the serious reader.
CGV entry 5:433. A severe review by David L. Passler of the book by Peter Quennell.
Sells presents a detailed biographical and critical study of Oliver Goldsmith, arguing that existing biographies fail to address essential character flaws or Goldsmith’s extensive reliance on French literature. The narrative details Goldsmith's Irish upbringing, his erratic academic career at Trinity College, Dublin, and his subsequent travels across Europe, which Sells characterizes as a "Grand Tour" of "guesswork" and "mystification." Sells documents Goldsmith's arrival in London in 1756, tracing his transition from a struggling "hospital mate" to a prolific "hack-writer" for publishers like Griffiths and Newbery. Central to the work is Goldsmith's integration into the literary elite, particularly his friendship with Johnson, whom Sells describes as a "protector" and "literary champion" despite his "surly" and "imperious" manners. The text provides a critical analysis of Goldsmith’s major works, suggesting The Vicar of Wakefield is a "parody of a romantic novel" and a "satire of the gentlest, subtlest type" rather than a simple idyll. Sells further explores Goldsmith's interactions with Boswell, noting the latter's talent for "reporting their sayings," and mentions Piozzi's marriage to Mrs. Thrale as an event that provoked Johnson’s "outrageous" behavior. Ultimately, Sells concludes that Goldsmith remains a "reactionary" figure who "ignored the writings of Rousseau" and the pre-Romantic trend, yet achieved enduring popularity through his "humorous verse" and "good theatre."
Clifford details Johnson's involvement in the Lauder episode (1747–1751), where William Lauder, a resentful, crippled scholar, falsely accused John Milton of plagiarism in Paradise Lost. Johnson initially supported Lauder out of sympathy for a struggling Jacobite scholar. However, following the sensational exposure of Lauder's forgeries by John Douglas in 1750, Johnson dictated and insisted on Lauder signing a full public recantation. Johnson's action, while self-defensive, was a public atonement for having been deceived by Lauder's fraudulence.
The Uses of Adversity: Soame Jenyns's Debt to Johnson
The Notable Man: The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith
Contents:The portrait -- August 21, 1776 -- The dancing boy -- Fiction -- The philosopher who carries all his goods about him -- Empiric -- An amphibious creature -- Goose-pie and gooseberries -- Comedy of humours -- The good-natured man -- Exiles -- Nobody with me at sea but myself -- Hodge -- Between the comic and the tragic muse -- Aftermath.
Oxford University Press for The Institute of Race Relations
Shyllon chronicles the experiences and achievements of Black individuals in Britain from their arrival in 1555 through the 1834 Emancipation, focusing on the roots of British racism and the subsequent Black response. Shyllon highlights the life of Francis Barber, Johnson’s servant and heir, as a key biographical subject within the larger narrative of community resistance. The work describes the legal and social precarity faced by Black residents, noting that Johnson’s public argument in favor of Joseph Knight attacked the depravity of slaving captains who sold "Princes" entrusted to their care. Shyllon suggests Johnson likely had in mind the specific case of the sons of the King of Annamaboe, who were talk of the town in 1749. By examining the lives of figures like Barber and Olaudah Equiano alongside anonymous thousands, Shyllon challenges traditional humanitarian triumphs, arguing instead that the Black community successfully resisted "British racism" through a collective solidarity as "Sons of Africa."
CGV entry 5:444. Contains a biography of Frank Barber on pages 179–186.
Johnson, Garrick, and the English Theatre
Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale: The Significance of a Thraliana Entry
Johnson, James Harris, and the Logic of Happiness
Johnson expressed hostility toward James Harris, an Aristotelian classicist whose works he considered overly abstract, contrasting Harris's scholastic logic with his own empiricism and emphasis on practical ethics. Despite this antagonism, Johnson’s thought, particularly in Rasselas, exhibits significant parallels with Harris’s work, Concerning Happiness. Both explore the philosophical theme of the Choice of Life and the human inability to achieve lasting happiness due to inherent mental vulnerabilities and external contingency. Johnson’s rigorous separation of secular and transcendental, however, causes him to deny the possibility of free choice, contrasting with Harris's more Platonic vision of transcendental happiness.
Appunti per la storia di un problema critico: I rapporti tra Giuseppe Baretti e Samuel Johnson
Lucy Porter to Dr. Johnson: Her Only Known Letter: Now First Reproduced from the Original
CGV entry 5:450. Edited by James L. Clifford. Includes a facsimile and a note, "In Loving Memory of James Lowry Clifford."
Davis challenges the tradition characterizing Anne Percy as uncultivated by examining her relationship with Johnson. He cites Cradock’s anecdotes of Johnson’s politeness toward her and Farmer’s 1765 letter reporting Johnson’s high estimation of her judgment over her husband's. A transcribed 1769 letter from Percy to her husband reveals her social intimacy with Johnson and Thrale at Brighton, demonstrating a warm, unpretentious character valued by Johnson independently of his friendship with Thomas Percy.
Carbondale & Edwardsville; London & Amsterdam
Southern Illinois University Press; Feffer & Simons
Stone and Kahrl use the Folger Shakespeare Library's extensive holdings and the full edition of Garrick's letters to provide a topical and chronological account of his professional and private life. The text traces his Lichfield origins, his 1737 journey to London with Johnson, and his subsequent rise to dominance at Drury Lane. It details his revolutionary natural acting style, which moved away from the rhetorical conventions of contemporaries like James Quin to emphasize particularized characterization and ensemble performance. The study examines his managerial innovations, his role as a collector of early English drama, and his extensive social network encompassing figures such as Boswell, William Hogarth, and Edmund Burke. Through meticulous analysis of his ninety-six roles and his business correspondence, the authors delineate his efforts to elevate the acting profession to a "liberal art" while maintaining the commercial viability of the patent theatres. The narrative emphasizes his enduring friendship with Johnson, characterized by mutual respect and healthy rivalry, and his later years as a patron of the arts and member of the Club. Appendixes provide statistical data on his performances, health, and theatrical competition, offering a dense informational resource for eighteenth-century studies.
Davis presents a Twayne volume on Thomas Percy (1729–1811), bishop, antiquarian, and editor, best known for his influential collection, *Reliques of Ancient English Poetry* (1765). The study examines Percy’s life, his scholarly pursuits, and the major contribution of the *Reliques* to the development of Romanticism and the ballad tradition. Davis analyzes the editorial methods and the critical reception of Percy's work, which helped legitimize vernacular English literature. This book provides a concise, critical introduction to a figure central to the mid-18th century's interest in the past and the rise of sentimentalism.
CGV entry 5:457. A full biography by Davis was in progress at the time.
Rogers clarifies a misconception regarding Johnson's antipathy toward Henry Fielding recorded in Boswell's papers. During a conversation with William Julius Mickle, Johnson attacked Fielding's moral character and disputed the claim that Fielding founded the Marine Society, calling it the "worst thing he ever did." Rogers points out that the Marine Society was actually established in 1756 by Jonas Hanway, two years after Henry Fielding died. The confusion likely stemmed from the involvement of Henry's half-brother, John Fielding, in the venture.
John Hawkesworth: Eighteenth-Century Man of Letters
Abbott’s establishes Hawkesworth as an important eighteenth-century man of letters, tracing his rise from contributing poetry to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1741, eventually assuming Johnson’s editorial duties. The biography details Hawkesworth's role editing the Adventurer (1752–54) and his successful Swift biography (1755), used heavily by Johnson. Abbott emphasizes Hawkesworth's eventual notoriety compiling Cook's Voyages (1773), a work earning £6,000 but proving disastrous. The ensuing controversy involves accusations of tampering with journals and impiety regarding providential intervention, a public backlash that likely causes Hawkesworth's death.
Rogers presents evidence from the Almon Collection challenging the belief that Johnson assisted Hamilton with his parliamentary compositions. Almon argues that Hamilton, a close friend for twenty years, possessed superior literary talent and viewed Johnson as a "mad Tory" and "slave of faction," making it improbable that he would solicit Johnson’s help. The text identifies an early, unembellished version of an anecdote involving Count Holke’s 1768 visit to Johnson. Holke reportedly found Johnson a "shallow fellow," a story Almon contends Hamilton would not have circulated had Johnson been his preceptor. Rogers suggests these findings necessitate further research into the purported Johnson-Hamilton collaboration.
CGV entry 5:462. A report of a letter by John Almon in 1800. A reply by Donald Greene appeared in the Johnsonian News Letter, volume 43 (September-December 1983), pages 7-8.
Bond scrutinizes the relationship between Johnson and Thomas Hollis, arguing against the simplistic view derived from Boswell. Using Hollis's diary and records from the Society for Promoting Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (S.P.A.C.), Bond details their limited interactions, primarily through the Society and mutual acquaintances like James Stuart. He identifies Hollis as the commissioner of Johnson's preface to the Report on French prisoners (1760), clarifying Johnson's misremembered anecdote about being asked to write for the Society. Bond concludes that divergent temperaments and politics, particularly Johnson's pension and Hollis's Whiggism, precluded a close friendship despite mutual connections and occasional collaboration.
Some New Light on Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson's Servant
Ingledew uses London parish registers to establish that Francis Barber married Elizabeth Ball on 28 January 1773, nearly four years earlier than previously assumed. He identifies the likely Elizabeth Ball among two candidates based on baptismal records and familial naming patterns. The study clarifies the Barber family genealogy, confirming five children rather than four: Elizabeth Ann, Samuel, Ann, James John, and William Alexander. Ingledew notes that most children were likely born in London before the family’s relocation to Lichfield, with naming choices reflecting the influence of Johnson and Boswell.
Middendorf examines the complex relationship between Johnson and George Steevens, placing Steevens in a category of associates with whom Johnson could "compare minds" but not necessarily "cherish private virtues." Despite Steevens's notorious reputation for mischief and quarrelsomeness ("the asp"), Middendorf details their extensive collaboration on Johnson's Shakespeare edition and Dictionary revisions, and Steevens's assistance with the Lives of the Poets. He argues Johnson tolerated Steevens's faults, distinguishing mischievousness from true malignancy, perhaps partly because of gratitude for his valuable scholarly aid, intellectual compatibility, and Johnson's general forbearance, though Steevens's untrustworthiness prevented deeper intimacy.
Johnson and Mrs. Thrale: The Beginning and the End
Riely examines the psychological dynamics of the relationship between Johnson and Hester Thrale, focusing on its inception during a period of Johnson's severe mental distress (c. 1765-68) and its conclusion upon Thrale's marriage to Piozzi. Riely posits that Thrale initially functioned as a mother-substitute, providing crucial emotional support that helped Johnson regain stability, evidenced by his entrusting her with his fear of insanity. Over time, a role reversal occurred, with Johnson assuming a fatherly position. His violent repudiation of Thrale stemmed from feeling betrayed in this quasi-parental role when she acted against his perceived wishes.
Allan examines the professional and personal intersection between Johnson and the painter James Barry. Barry’s 1781 Adelphi portraits included Johnson as a "master of morality," a characterization Johnson reciprocated by praising Barry’s "grasp of mind." Despite their political differences, both men shared common circles involving Burke and Reynolds. Allan describes Johnson’s intervention on behalf of Mauritius Lowe and his participation in the Essex Head Club alongside Barry. The portrait serves as a testament to Barry’s reverence for Johnson’s consistent, manly life.
CGV entry 5:468. On Johnson's association with the painter James Barry.
Samuel Johnson and the Printing Career of Hester Lynch Piozzi
Brownley explores the dual impact of Johnson’s mentorship and literary legacy on Piozzi’s development as a professional writer. She argues that while Johnson provided the initial impetus and generic models for Piozzi’s publications, his overwhelming influence simultaneously hindered her search for an independent authorial voice. The study analyzes Piozzi’s struggle with formal constraints in her major works, contrasted with the stylistic freedom found in her private journals and correspondence. Brownley concludes that Johnson’s encouragement established the foundations of her career, yet his formidable presence necessitated a lifelong effort by Piozzi to define her own literary identity.
CGV entry 5:472. An advertisement, probably by Johnson, in the Daily Advertiser (1757).
Cochrane entry 276. This volume is not reported as held by any library in the OCLC international database, including the Library of Congress.
Fleeman identifies "Miss Fordice," mentioned in Johnson’s 1773 letter to Thrale, as Elizabeth Fordyce, daughter of George Fordyce. Johnson’s acquaintance extended to her brothers, including George, James, and David Fordyce. Fleeman clarifies that the "Banker" who caused the financial ruin of Elizabeth and her husband, Joseph Spence, was her brother Alexander Fordyce, whose bank collapsed in 1772. The account traces Elizabeth's movements from Dunkeld to Durham and Derby, noting her daughter Elizabeth Isabella Spence’s later literary career.
CGV entry 5:474. The lady referred to in Chapman Number 318 was one of the Aberdeen Fordyce family.
N. advocates for a "literary charity" among authors to elevate their collective reputation and resist the "arbitrary tyranny" of booksellers. The text characterizes the Literary Club at the Turk’s Head as "narrow and circumscribed," rejecting its claim to represent the nation's intellect. N. describes Johnson as "pompous and superlative," suggesting he "will not suffer any other fish in the same water." While acknowledging Johnson among the ostensible characters of the age who will "do honour to future ages," N. faults his leadership for provoking "bile and spleen" rather than fostering a broad professional union.
CGV entry 6:1. Contains an attack on the Literary Club.
Rules of Dr. Johnson's Club in Essex-Street
The regulations governing the Essex Head Club, established by Johnson in late 1783 as an imitation of the "Perpetual Club" described in the Spectator. The twelve mandates specify a membership limit of twenty-four, thrice-weekly meetings, and a system of rotating "indispensable attendance" enforced by financial forfeits. Additional rules dictate guest privileges, balloting procedures for vacancies, and the individual adjustment of expenses to avoid general reckonings. Aldebaran identifies the club's motto from Milton and provides historical context regarding the membership status of Scott, Tyres, and Strahan at the time of Johnson's death.
CGV entry 6:3. The author's pseudonym for John Nichols.
Conversation: A Didactic Poem. The 4th edition, revised and enlarged, with Poetical Portraits of the Principal Characters of Dr. Johnson's Club
Cooke significantly contributed to the early biographical discourse following Johnson's death. Cooke, a lawyer and original member of the Essex-Head Club co-founded by Johnson in 1783, was nicknamed "Conversation Cooke" because of the work. The poem reflects the growing recognition that Johnson's "Great Talker" status and conversational abilities—often characterized as dictating and abrasive—were central to his lasting fame, superseding his written works for many readers. The Poetical Portraits depict Johnson as the intellectual "PRINCEPS" and "symposiarch" around whom the intellectual aristocracy revolved. The inclusion of Boswell highlights his dual role as a Club member and the chronicler of the society, whose own biographical enterprise centered on capturing Johnson’s spoken words. Cooke's work thus reinforced the shift toward celebrating Johnson's social and conversational life.
CGV entry 6:4. An earlier title was 'The Pleasures of Conversation'. Contains verse "portraits" of Johnson, Burney, Windham, Garrick, Boswell, Brocklesby, Nichols, and others.
CGV entry 6:5. Appears as Appendix I to Volume 2. A full listing of the membership from its beginning to 1835.
Ladies' Repository: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature, Art and Religion
In an overview of some of the leading London clubs, Thornbury chronicles the evolution of the Literary Club, established by Johnson and Reynolds in 1764. The narrative emphasizes Johnson’s intellectual dominance and his initial refusal to admit Garrick, whom Johnson dismissed as a "player." Thornbury records Johnson’s interactions with Burke and Goldsmith, noting Johnson’s appreciation for Burke’s conversational persistence. The account details Boswell’s defense of second sight and describes Johnson’s final club attendance in June 1784. Salient quotations illustrate Johnson’s private remarks to Piozzi and his verbal sparring with colleagues. The text traces the transition of the society from a small circle of "working authors" into an aristocratic institution while preserving the history of its founding members.
CGV entry 6:7. Reprinted in Littell's Living Age (1868).
Belgravia chronicles the 1764 founding and evolution of the Literary Club, detailing the roles of Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith. It recounts Hawkins’s expulsion for "sour manners" and Johnson’s initial resistance to Garrick’s admission. The narrative captures club dynamics, including Burke’s verbal copiousness and Boswell’s "ludicrous" enthusiasm. Belgravia traces the transition from a small circle of "working authors" to a prestigious body of nineteenth-century statesmen and scholars, culminating in the 1864 centenary celebration.
CGV entry 6:7. Reprinted from Belgravia (1868).
Records the inaugural meeting of a new literary society at Clifford's Inn. Modeled after Johnson’s original Literary Club, the organization intends to critique literature and review publications. Prospective members are directed to communicate with the Bursar, Meredith.
CGV entry 6:8. A notice of its organization.
Norman describes the activities of the Doctor Johnson Club, a London-based group limited to thirty members that conducts bimonthly excursions to locations identified with Johnson. Norman details a recent trip to Rochester where Chesson presented a paper on the associations of Johnson and Dickens with the city. The account highlights Johnson’s rare emotional response to French horns at a Freemason’s funeral in Rochester and quotes a characteristic 1784 letter from Johnson to Jane Langton. Norman notes the club’s informal "good time" involving steak, ale, and long clay pipes.
CGV entry 6:10. Discusses the contemporary Club, with T. Fisher Unwin as president.
CGV entry 6:11. Undated, circa 1889.
The Critic: A Weekly Review of Literature and the Arts
CGV entry 6:12. A query about the London Rasselas society of 1810.
Hill documents the London Johnson Club, an assembly dedicated to honoring Johnson. The club holds meetings in Fleet Street, cherishing the Old Cheshire Cheese despite Boswell's omission of it in his account. Hill recounts a pilgrimage made to Ashbourne, where Johnson often stayed with Taylor, observing that Boswell recorded Johnson as being unusually social, cheerful, and alert there. Johnson's humorous observations on Taylor's famed bull, his manual efforts to clear a cascade of rubbish, and his discussions with Boswell about human existence and Providence are recalled. Hill contrasts Johnson’s admiration of Ilam's soft grandeur with the horror of Hawkestone. The club concludes its journey at Uttoxeter, the site of Johnson’s public filial penance.
CGV entry 6:13. Chiefly an account of a pilgrimage to Lichfield.
The Johnson Club at Bath: Ceremony of the Unveiling of a Tablet Commemorating the Residence of Mrs. Thrale in Bath
CGV entry 6:15. Reprinted from Bladud, June 21, 1899.
A scholarly collection that preserves and celebrates the memory of Johnson, assembling papers read by members of The Johnson Club, a society formed in 1884 on the centenary of his death. The members, including Birkbeck Hill and Birrell, explore various aspects of Johnson’s life, character, writings, and associations—from his personality and politics to his love of London and his friendships—drawing primarily from Boswell's Life to keep his unique character robustly alive for new generations. Critics call this book a significant tribute to an unending fascination with the subject’s personality and genius. Reviewers like Birrell and Barker celebrate the volume for its diverse engagement with the subject's Greek scholarship, library, and London haunts. The Literary World praises the inclusion of fifteen papers that keep the subject’s memory alive through monumental scholarship by Hill. But while the convivial atmosphere and diverse interests are lauded, the work acknowledges that the subject aimed for victory in argument rather than teaching. The South Eastern Advertiser highlights Birrell’s defense of the biographer’s intrepidity in resisting the whittling away of character into dull ineptitudes.
CGV entry 6:17. Stems from 'Johnson Club Papers' (1899).
A Reminiscence of the Johnson Club at Lichfield
The Johnson Club, a literary society counting George Birkbeck Hill and Augustine Birrell among its members, promotes Johnson's memory. The club convened in Lichfield, where Hill opened the Johnson House museum and Birrell delivered an address. The day concluded with a supper, celebrating Johnson's legacy in his historic birthplace.
Grant Duff provides an authoritative account of the society founded in 1764 by Reynolds and Johnson. The text details the initial proposal by Reynolds and Johnson’s immediate concurrence, noting the original membership limit of nine and the early weekly meetings at the Turk’s Head, Gerrard Street. The narrative traces the expansion of the membership and the shift from weekly suppers to fortnightly dinners during the Parliamentary session. Significant attention is paid to the "Johnsonian era," documenting the presence of Boswell, Burke, Goldsmith, and Garrick. The work includes biographical notices of deceased members and a chronological list of the 217 individuals elected through 1905. Grant Duff emphasizes the Club’s "extraordinary continuity," surviving changes in venue from the Turk's Head to the Prince of Wales, Thatched House, and ultimately the Grafton Hotel. Detailed appendices record attendance, the "Presidential" system, and the preservation of the Club’s traditional toast.
CGV entry 6:19. Privately printed.
Dr. Johnson's Club and the Literary Club
Abrahams provides manuscript notes from circa 1810 regarding the naming and meeting habits of the Literary Club. He refutes the claim that the group adopted its famous name only after Garrick’s funeral in 1779, citing Boswell’s record of a 1775 meeting already using the title. The notes further identify Baxter’s in Dover Street as a recurring meeting place during parliamentary sessions and list membership consistent with Malone’s records.
Rules of the Johnson Society, Lichfield, and List of Members for 1910–1911
The authors chronicle the institutional history of the dining society established in 1764 by Johnson and Reynolds. The narrative details the original membership, including Boswell, Goldsmith, and Burke, emphasizing Johnson’s role as the group’s dominant intellectual authority. The authors record the club’s procedural evolution, from weekly meetings at the Turk’s Head to its transition into a fortnightly dinner series during parliamentary sessions. The text incorporates member lists and historical anecdotes that illustrate Johnson’s conversational influence and his desire for a group 'composed of some of the most eminent men.' The authors highlight Boswell’s admission in 1773, noting the initial resistance from some members and Johnson’s firm support. The work serves as a record of 18th-century sociability and the sustained legacy of Johnsonian tradition in London’s elite literary and political circles.
CGV entry 6:25. A limited edition.
Escott surveys the English club system from classical antiquity, asserting Thomas Hoccleve founded the earliest English club, the Court of Good Company. It traces the evolution of London clubs through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, noting shifting political and social allegiances at the Rota, Sealed Knot, and the Treason Club. The narrative highlights the establishment of White's and Brooks's. Johnson's personal engagement with "The" Club is detailed, positioning it as a pivotal society fusing aristocracy and intellect in the Georgian era. The text also covers the development of political and specialized clubs like the Carlton, Reform, and Athenæum.
This second series of papers comprises twelve essays examining various facets of Johnson’s life, character, and literary output. Biron details Johnson’s extensive efforts to save the 'forger' William Dodd from execution, noting Johnson wrote Dodd’s speech before the court, his sermon to fellow convicts, and his last solemn declaration. Clodd contrasts Johnson’s traditionalist views on natural philosophy with the 'fanciful paradoxes' of Monboddo, particularly regarding human descent from apes. Haynes analyzes Johnson’s 'negative ideal' of liberty, emphasizing his aversion to mob violence and his belief in a 'remedy in human nature against tyranny.' Hughes catalogs Johnson’s 'asperities' and linguistic habits, identifying 'scoundrel' as a favorite epithet while maintaining that Johnson was not a 'swearer.' O’Connor explores Johnson’s 'partiality for Irishmen,' specifically his friendships with Murphy, Malone, Goldsmith, and Burke, and his 'spontaneous' bestowal of an LL.D. by Trinity College, Dublin. Radford describes the 'mechanism' of the Dictionary’s production at 17 Gough Square, highlighting Johnson’s use of six amanuenses and his intent to 'fix the English language.' Roscoe argues for the 'legal character' of Johnson’s mind, suggesting his 'robust and logical intellect' fitted him for the Chancellorship. Russell examines Johnson’s 'large and generous' attitude toward the Catholic Church, noting his defense of the Inquisition and the 'reasonableness' he found in doctrines like Purgatory. Scott uses the character of Sober in the Idler as a 'self-portrait' to discuss Johnson’s internal struggle with 'indolence' and 'irresolution.' Thomas portrays Reynolds as Johnson’s 'St. John,' detailing their shared travels in Devonshire and Reynolds’s 'frigid' yet 'peaceful' temper. Walkley surveys Johnson’s forty-year history as a playgoer and his 'ludicrously exaggerated contempt' for the acting profession. Wheatley concludes with a history of the 'mismanagement' and 'dissensions' surrounding the erection of Johnson’s monument in St. Paul’s and Parr’s pedantic struggles over the Latin epitaph. Critics call this book a very pleasant volume of talk that honors its subject through a mixture of pleasant wit and scholarly research. Bailey and Lawrence praise the collection for highlighting the subject's forthright courage and warm heart, specifically noting the prophetic applicability of his views on war. The New Statesman finds the twelve essays full of good things, particularly Hughes’s analysis of expletives as playful terms of endearment. But Pitman describes the work as a superficial, chatty volume that generally lacks exhaustive scholarship. While Lawrence appreciates the examination of the subject's giant humanity, Bailey critiques the editing by Sargeaunt for containing small slips.
Pitman evaluates this second series of papers as uniformly interesting but generally lacking exhaustive scholarship. He identifies Wheatley’s study of Johnson’s monument and Parr’s epitaph as the sole exception, praising its refreshing factual basis. Pitman criticizes Thomas for a one-sided portrayal of Reynolds and faults Clodd for failing to thoroughly examine Monboddo’s works. He concludes that while the collection offers readable excursions for Boswell fans, it remains a superficial, chatty volume.
CGV entry 6:28. Review by James H. Pitman of the book edited by George Whale and John Sargeaunt.
The Forty Years of the Johnson Club, 1884–1924
Objects and Rules of the Johnson Society of London
CGV entry 6:33. An account of the club with a list of members, printed for the members.
CGV entry 6:37. Contains records of the Boswell Club of Chicago.
Esto Perpetua: The Club of Dr. Johnson and His Friends, 1764–1784
This work examines the intellectual aristocracy in eighteenth-century England through the lens of "The Club" (1764-1784), founded by Reynolds and Johnson. Curtis argues this open aristocracy, marked by brains and character over birth, governed Britain's mind. Liebert details The Club's exceptional membership, including Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and Boswell, highlighting the group's mixed social complexity and intellectual meritocracy. The essays contend the intellectual freedom and confidence in the human mind within Johnson's circle contrast sharply with modern over-specialization and cultural fragmentation.
Privately printed for the annual dinner of The Johnsonians
The First American Birthday Party for Dr. Johnson
Published: Privately printed for the annual dinner of The Johnsonians
CGV entry 6:47. An account of a Johnsonian dinner at Four Oaks Farm, Somerville, New Jersey, in 1946.
The Club: Samuel Johnson's Literary Society
Evidence in Literary Scholarship: Essays in Memory of James Marshall Osborn
Established in late 1748 or early 1749 at the King's Head in Ivy Lane, Johnson's first club served as a vital intellectual outlet during the composition of the Dictionary. The original ten members—including physicians Bathurst, McGhie, and Blayne, and 'unclubable' John Hawkins—reflected Johnson's preference for diverse professional company. Meetings facilitated literary collaboration, notably the 'fraternity' behind The Adventurer and the early planning of The Rambler. Johnson used these gatherings to exert intellectual dominance, famously hosting an all-night celebration for Charlotte Lennox's first novel. Despite varying accounts of its dissolution between 1753 and 1756, the club provided Johnson with essential contact with the publishing world and a venue to test controversial topics during a critical period of his creative life.
CGV entry 6:53. On the relationship to the Literary Club.
Shaw provides a comprehensive topographical and genealogical survey of Staffordshire, incorporating manuscripts from predecessors like Huntbach and Wilkes. The text focuses on Lichfield, describing it as a "favourite seat of the muses" and a healthful valley primarily inhabited by gentry. Shaw highlights Johnson as a "venerable countryman" and "illustrious" figure whose acute judgments on epitaphs nonetheless occasionally displayed "petulance and fastidiousness." The local Grammar School is identified as the site where Johnson, along with Garrick and Addison, "received part of their scholastic education." Notable landmarks associated with Johnson include his family residence and a specific willow tree near Stow church. Shaw preserves the "magic letters" of the city's name while noting its traditional interpretation as the "Field of Dead bodies," a designation he characterizes as "chiefly fabulous" despite its role in local identity.
The History and Antiquities of the Church and City of Lichfield
Harwood chronicles the civil and ecclesiastical history of Lichfield from its Saxon origins to the beginning of the nineteenth century. This monograph describes the founding of the see by Oswy, the eremitical life of St. Chad, and the architectural evolution of the cathedral. Harwood identifies Lichfield as the "field of the dead" and quotes Johnson's Dictionary definition to support the etymology. The narrative provides extensive detail on the three sieges sustained by the Close during the seventeenth-century civil wars, including the death of Robert, Lord Brooke. Harwood records the subsequent restoration of the cathedral under Bishop John Hacket and lists various monuments and inscriptions within the church. Significant attention is given to Johnson, a native of the city. Harwood describes the monument erected to Johnson in 1793 and includes the epitaph identifying him as a "distinguished moral writer." Further anecdotes describe Michael Johnson's parchment manufactory and his generous treatment of Elizabeth Blaney. Boswell's biography serves as a source for the account of Blaney’s death. Harwood also mentions the friendship between Johnson and Gilbert Walmesley, quoting Johnson's characterization of Walmesley as a man whose "amplitude of learning" and "copiousness of communication" remained influential.
The House of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (With a view)
Johnson resided at No. 8 Bolt-court, a fabric described as possessing little architectural beauty but respectably finished, until his death. The premises were subsequently incorporated into the printing-office of Bensley. Johnson observes in his biography of Milton that recording an author's residences constitutes a necessary mark of respect. Following this principle, a list of seventeen London habitations is provided, beginning with Exeter-street and Greenwich, and including Gough-square and Inner Temple-lane. The text notes that while the interior of the Bolt-court house underwent significant alteration following a fire at Bensley's warehouse, the front remained unchanged from its state during the life of the lexicographer. Historical context further identifies the parish of St. Dunstan in the West as the former home of the rhetorical leather-seller Barebone.
CGV entry 7:3. The house was in Bolt Court; the article includes a plate.
A correspondent discussing the site of Johnson's Bolt Court house mentions a person who visited the "sublime moralist" during his last illness, whom the author believes to be Mr. Rogers. The article also names Viscountess Keith (the eldest Miss Thrale) as a lady still living who grew up in constant association with Johnson and visited Bolt Court in 1784.
CGV entry 7:5. See also comments by Tee Bee and B. B. on pages 232–233 of the same issue.
Hawthorne visits Johnson's birthplace, Lichfield, drawn by the sturdy English character of the moralist, whom he knew through Boswell as a talker and humorist. He describes a colossal statue of Johnson in the city, detailing the bas-reliefs that illustrate his childhood and the profound incident of his public penance in the Uttoxeter market-place for a past act of disobedience to his father. Hawthorne then makes a pilgrimage to Uttoxeter to see the consecrated spot, concluding the locals remain ignorant of the famous event.
CGV entry 7:6. Reprinted in The Keepsake (1857) and expanded as "Lichfield and Uttoxeter," in Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863).
Haunted London: The Ghost of Samuel Johnson
Reconstructs the nocturnal urban landscape of eighteenth-century London by tracing the perambulations of Johnson through his various residences and social haunts. It details Johnson's domestic arrangements at Bolt-court, highlighting his interactions with Barber, Levett, and Williams, as well as the domestic observations of Piozzi. Particular attention is paid to the topographical history of the Mitre Tavern, the Turk’s Head, and the Essex Head, characterizing these spaces as the primary arenas for Johnson’s conversational dominance. The narrative characterizes Boswell as an industrious but servile biographer whose exhaustive documentation preserved the minutest habits of Johnson for posterity. Descriptions of Johnson's physical presence emphasize his convulsive mannerisms and scarred features, framed against the architectural backdrop of Temple Bar and Fleet Street. The account concludes with a chronicle of Johnson's final days and the subsequent demolition of his residence.
On a factual inaccuracy concerning the fate of Johnson's residence in Bolt-court. It disputes the claim that a "ruthless printer" demolished the structure, asserting instead that Bensley preserved the house with care until necessity required repairs in 1817. A fire in 1819, rather than the earlier conflagration of 1807, caused the total destruction of the rooms where Johnson worked and died. The account notes that the site remained vacant of new buildings following the fire. It further records that the property passed from Allen to the Bensley family in 1783 before its eventual sale to the Stationers’ Company in 1858. Boswell remains the primary source for the internal atmosphere of the vanished rooms.
CGV entry 7:8. Chiefly on the fire which destroyed the house in 1819.
Contradicts published accounts stating that Edial Hall, the site of Johnson's academy, was destroyed in 1809. Reports a personal visit to the building in 1873, identifying the schoolroom and original architectural features which correspond to early engravings, despite some modern alterations.
CGV entry 7:10. See also Johnsonian News Letter, September 1968, page 6.
Transactions, Excursions, and Reports of the Archaeological Section of the Birmingham and Midland Institute
CGV entry 7:11. The transactions were for the year 1876 but published in 1880.
Wheatley chronicles the early life and literary career of Johnson, focusing on his enduring connection to his birthplace. The narrative details Michael Johnson's career as a bookseller and the family's residence in the Lichfield Market Place. Wheatley disputes the accuracy of Boswell regarding the duration of Johnson's residence at Pembroke College, Oxford, asserting poverty forced a return to Lichfield after fourteen months. The article describes Johnson's failed attempt to establish a school at Edial and his 1737 departure for London with Garrick. Wheatley defends Johnson's prose style, particularly in the later works and the Lives of the Poets, which he characterizes as the finest critical work extant. While acknowledging Johnson's success as an essayist in the Rambler and Rasselas, Wheatley notes that his political pamphlets represent a less pleasing side of his genius. The biography emphasizes Johnson's personal integrity, his hatred of slavery, and his acute responsiveness to human emotions.
Hutton provides a topographical guide to the London residences and social haunts of Johnson, tracing his movements from his arrival in 1737 to his death in 1784. The narrative identifies Johnson's first lodgings in Exeter Street and his subsequent tenures in Gough Square, where he "completed the Dictionary," and Bolt Court, noted for its tranquil garden. Hutton details Johnson's early professional struggles at St. John's Gate while working for Cave and records his various residences in the Temple, including Inner Temple Lane where his library was "contained in two garrets." The text highlights Johnson's social life at locations such as the Turk's Head, the Pine Apple, and Tom Davies's shop, where he first met Boswell in 1763. Johnson appears as a figure of "awful approach" and "profound respect" during his 1767 interview with George III at Buckingham House. The work also notes Johnson's interactions with Piozzi, who preserved his childhood recollection of being touched for the "Evil" by Queen Anne, and mentions Boswell as the faithful recorder of Johnson's "firm manly manner."
CGV entry 7:15. A careful tabulation of Johnson's residences and other haunts.
CGV entry 7:16. Includes on page 60 a set of verses by Gerald Thompson, "Dr. Johnson's Centenary (December 13th, 1884)."
On the 1887 public auction and subsequent sale of Johnson's birthplace in Lichfield for £800. It provides Johnson family records from local registers, including his baptism (1709) and the burial of his parents and brother. The house's previous sale in 1785 is also mentioned.
Johnson's Tavern Resorts and Conversation
This five-part narrative tracks Johnson’s movements through London's tavern culture, from the founding of the Ivy Lane Club in 1747 to the sessions of the Literary Club at the Turk’s Head. It details his preference for "the throne of human felicity" over domestic life, documenting his disputes on orthoepy, skin color, and Latinity. The text contrasts Johnson’s conversational condensation with Burke’s expansion and highlights his uncompromising honesty as his primary legacy.
Ward catalogs the metropolitan residences of Johnson, beginning with his 1737 lodgings in Exeter Street and concluding with his chambers at No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. Ward maintains that attempting to rewrite the biography of Johnson is "utterly superfluous" and "hurtful" because it obscures the merit of Boswell’s work. He characterizes Boswell as a "jackal" and "valet de chambre to the wolf," yet credits him with a "miraculous technique of memory" that preserved Johnson's "ipsissima verba." Ward attributes Johnson's preference for conversation over visual observation to a "physical defect" in his sight, noting his anger when Reynolds depicted him as "Blinking Sam." The account details Johnson’s daily subsistence on minimal funds, his composition of the Dictionary in Gough Square, and the writing of Rasselas at Staple Inn. Ward uses testimonies from Percy, Murphy, and Humphry to describe the "uncouth" and "slovenly" state of Johnson’s apartments and dress, emphasizing the contrast between his physical surroundings and his "intellectual superiority."
CGV entry 7:19. In two parts: January, pages 12–15; and February, pages 53-55.
Wheatley records the extensive presence of Johnson and Boswell across the London landscape. Johnson resided in various localities, notably Gough Square, Inner Temple Lane, and Bolt Court, where he died in 1784. Wheatley details Johnson’s social habits, including his preference for the Mitre Tavern and the Old Devil Tavern, and his unique retort to a Thames waterman. The text notes Boswell’s presence during famous encounters, such as the conversation at the Adelphi Terrace rails regarding the loss of Garrick and Beauclerk. For Thrale Piozzi, Wheatley mentions the belief that Johnson’s move to Bolt Court occurred at her or his physicians' instance. The work emphasizes Johnson's devotion to the city, asserting his view that 'London was the only place in the world where a man could really live.'
Winter reflects on the literary and spiritual significance of Lichfield as the birthplace of Johnson, whom he characterizes as the "champion of literature" for vindicating the profession of letters. He provides a detailed physical description of the Johnson birthplace, an antiquated three-story stucco building at the corner of Market Street, noting it remains a "cradle of greatness" that should be protected as a shrine. Within Lichfield Cathedral, Winter observes the commemorative marble busts of Johnson and Garrick by Westmacott, describing Johnson's effigy as "massive, yet graceful" and indicative of "great natural refinement of intellect" despite a countenance that appears "troubled and rueful." He recounts Boswell's narrative of Johnson's 1776 visit to the city and the "Gothic barbarity" of the Gastrells in destroying Shakespeare's New Place. Winter also details the 1838 statue of Johnson in the Market Place, featuring bas-reliefs of the poet's life, including his famous "penance" at Uttoxeter. He concludes that Johnson remains one of the most "massive and majestic characters" whose "immortal legacy" continues to exert an "elemental force of genius."
CGV entry 7:21. On Johnson's birthplace.
Dobson charts Johnson's residences in Bolt Court and the Gough Square garret (1749-1759), where he produced the Dictionary and Rasselas. The author details the sites’ physical history, discussing visits by figures like Carlyle and emphasizing Johnson's personal life—including the loss of Tetty and the Chesterfield letter—as his most enduring legacy.
CGV entry 7:22. Reprinted in 'Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (1892).
Dobson describes the physical and historical landscape of Johnson's London residences, focusing primarily on the garret at Gough Square where the "great Dictionary was compiled." Occupied by Johnson from 1749 to 1759, the house remains the last of his sixteen London residences still standing. Dobson provides a detailed topographical account of the approach through Bolt Court, noting the site of Johnson’s final residence at No. 8, and the preservation of the Gough Square interior, including a "huge chain at the front door" and the original oak-balustraded staircase. The large, well-lit garret served as a workspace for Johnson and his "six companions," including the amanuensis Shiels, who transcribed passages for the "long-suffering Andrew Millar." During this productive decade, Johnson also produced 'Irene,' 'The Vanity of Human Wishes,' and 'Rasselas' while navigating professional struggles, such as his 1756 arrest for debt and his famous rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s patronage. The narrative emphasizes the emotional toll of this period, specifically the 1752 death of Johnson’s wife, "Tetty," and the 1759 death of his mother, events that underscore the "majestic and massive" character of the man behind his enduring intellectual authority.
CGV entry 7:22. Reprinted from Christian Union (1891).
Disputes the notion that Johnson was a non-traveller, demonstrating his "passion for travel" and love for journeys in post-chaises, and arguing that his travels, culminating in his tour of Scotland, were governed by the theory that "A man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge."
CGV entry 7:23. Reprinted from Gentleman's Magazine (1893).
Fitzgerald recounts a devotional pilgrimage to sites central to the "Johnsonian legend" in London, Ashbourne, and Lichfield. He identifies the house in Gough Square as the most significant London relic. In Ashbourne, he details the octagon room in Taylor’s mansion and the "Green Man" inn, where Boswell’s presence remains palpable. Fitzgerald defends Taylor’s reputation against Birkbeck Hill’s editorial speculations regarding a shoeblack heir. The narrative emphasizes how visiting these physical localities transforms "dry bones" of biography into a vital, lived experience for the Boswellian devotee.
CGV entry 7:24. On trips to Lichfield and Ashbourne.
This article, reprinted from the Gentleman's Magazine, details Fitzgerald's visits to Johnsonian shrines to evoke "ghostly memories." He describes surviving London relics, including the Gough Square house and Johnson's pew at St. Clement Danes. Fitzgerald explores Ashbourne, identifying Dr. Taylor’s mansion and the "Green Man" inn where Boswell stayed. He notes the tradition that Johnson modeled the "happy valley" after this secluded neighborhood. In Lichfield, Fitzgerald visits Johnson’s birthplace, the market-place statue, and Lucy Porter’s house. He critiques Birkbeck Hill’s "fanciful" speculations regarding Taylor's heir and the disappearance of a gravestone for Johnson’s parents. The piece concludes with a visit to a Dickens museum, linking the two literary "lands."
CGV entry 7:24. Reprinted from Gentleman's Magazine (1893).
Dobson enumerates Johnson’s London residences, identifying seventeen sites recorded by Boswell in 1779. Focus centers on 8 Bolt Court, 7 Johnson’s Court, and 17 Gough Square. Dobson details the historical significance of the Gough Square house, noting it served as the site for the composition of the Dictionary, Rambler, and Rasselas. He describes the labor of Peyton and other amanuenses in the garret and recounts Johnson’s domestic life, including the death of his wife and mother. Dobson disputes the necessity of the building's demolition, urging preservation of this 'absolutely authentic relic' associated with Reynolds, Garrick, and Burney.
CGV entry 7:25. A plea for the preservation of the Gough Square house.
Reports on the efforts of Lichfield citizens to repair Johnson’s birthplace, a building erected by Michael Johnson. Recounts a "curious incident" from Johnson's residence where a young woman followed him from Leek and died after he offered her marriage. Mentions the statue of Johnson in the market-place featuring bas-reliefs of his life.
Robert Dent and Joseph Hill provide a topographical and biographical sketch of Johnson centered on his native city of Lichfield. The narrative describes the house at the corner of the Market Place where Johnson was born, highlighting its transformation into a site of literary pilgrimage. Dent and Hill trace Johnson's early education at the local grammar school and his abbreviated tenure at Oxford, noting the influence of his Lichfield associations on his intellectual development. The authors recount his unsuccessful attempt to establish a school at Edial and his departure for London in the company of David Garrick. Significant attention is given to Johnson's lifelong emotional connection to Staffordshire, evidenced by his frequent returns to Lichfield to visit friends such as Lucy Porter and the Sewards. The text details the commemorative efforts of the citizens, including the erection of a statue in the Market Place. By linking specific local landmarks to anecdotes from Boswell, Dent and Hill emphasize how Johnson's rugged character and scholarly legacy remain deeply embedded in the history and physical landscape of his home county.
Glimpses of Johnson in Eighteenth Century Oxford
Parry reconstructs Johnson’s residence at Pembroke College beginning in October 1728, describing him as a "raw-boned country lad" plagued by hypochondria and poverty. The narrative details Johnson’s academic independence; he famously insulted his tutor, Jordan, by claiming a lecture was not worth a penny and preferred sliding on the ice in Christ Church meadows to attending. Parry recounts the incident of the "shabby student" rejecting a gift of new shoes, throwing them away in a fit of pride. While at Oxford, Johnson earned University-wide acclaim for his Latin translation of Pope’s Messiah. The text also contrasts Johnson’s experiences with those of contemporaries like the Wesleys and Whitefield, noting that despite Johnson’s later disparagement of Whitefield’s "mountebank" preaching, he maintained a deep affection for Pembroke throughout his life. Parry emphasizes the "intellectual torpor" of the 18th-century University, citing contemporaries like Gibbon and Malmesbury to illustrate the lack of discipline that Johnson overcame through personal study. Johnson eventually left Oxford in December 1729 without a degree because of financial insolvency.
CGV entry 7:28. In two parts: August, pages 651-656; and September, pages 713-719.
Hill and Dent chronicle the history of the Old Square in Birmingham, tracking its development from the thirteenth-century Priory of St. Thomas to its late nineteenth-century demolition. The text provides a house-by-house genealogy of inhabitants, with significant emphasis on the South Angle. This section details the residence of Hector, a surgeon and lifelong friend of Johnson. The narrative documents Johnson’s frequent visits to Birmingham, specifically noting his 1732 residence with the printer Warren and his consultations with his godfather, Swynfen, at No. 3. Hill and Dent also recount Johnson’s later visits in 1776 and 1784, highlighting his interactions with Hector and his early romantic interest, Carless. The work connects Johnson to the industrial efforts of Wyatt and Paul, whose cotton-spinning experiments involved Johnson’s associates, including Cave and James. The book serves as a topographical and biographical record of the social and intellectual circles surrounding Johnson in Birmingham.
Macleane's institutional history chronicles the evolution of Pembroke College from its origins as Broadgates Hall to its nineteenth-century status. The narrative details the academic life of Samuel Johnson, who entered as a commoner in 1728 during the mastership of Matthew Panting. Johnson's residence was marked by financial hardship and a "violent attack of hypochondria" in 1729, yet he maintained a reputation for formidable literary preparation. Macleane describes Johnson's later visits to the college, noting his interactions with scholarly undergraduates and his high regard for the institution's tradition of producing "singing birds." The work records Johnson's 1784 visit to the Master’s Lodgings and his conversations with figures such as William Adams and John Henderson. Brief salient quotations illustrate Johnson's enduring affection for his "renowned Mother." Macleane avoids interpreting Johnson's larger cultural significance, focusing instead on his specific collegiate associations, residential records, and recorded conversations within the college walls. The account emphasizes Johnson's identity as a "tory and high churchman" in his relations with the society.
On Johnson's pew in St. Clement's Danes Church, which is now subject to a shilling tax to fund a memorial stained glass window. It quotes Johnson's Prayers and Meditations for intimate details of his attendance, including his late arrivals (often "at the first of the Psalms"), his prayer for amendment, and his encounter with a "meanly dressed" man whom he later invited home and found to be an "ill-instructed" Methodist.
CGV entry 7:31. In St. Clement Danes.
Dr. Johnson's Residence in Bolt Court, Fleet St.
Addresses the conflicting accounts of Dr. Johnson's residence at No. 8 Bolt Court, Fleet Street. While some sources assert the house was destroyed by a fire in 1819, Pearson confirms that the fire consumed Johnson’s house. Pearson notes that the house was next door to Bensley the printer's, whose premises were destroyed in 1819. The current building was rebuilt in 1820 on or near the original site and was formerly the Stationers' Company's school.
CGV entry 7:32. See also replies from G. Pearson in volume 2 (July 23, 1898), pages 71-72; and W. C. B. (August 13), page 132.
Affirms the traditional belief that Johnson was born in Lichfield in 1709, and discusses how the city shaped his early life and habits, noting his local patriotism and his affectionate, cordial relationship with the friends of his youth and the city's corporation.
Lynn inquires if the house Johnson lodged in at Frognal, near Hampstead, is indeed rebuilt or remodeled, as Walford states. He notes Walford's biographical slips, where Boswell is wrongly credited with stating that Johnson wrote London at Frognal. Lynn corrects that only The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) is believed to have been written there, while London appeared earlier in 1738.
CGV entry 7:34. See also replies by John T. Page (April 29), page 334; and others (May 27), page 415.
Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
Hubbard details the physical and intellectual magnitude of Johnson, contrasting his massive frame and sharp memory with his persistent prejudices. He argues that Boswell’s biography, while more entertaining than Johnson’s own writing, inadvertently damaged Johnson’s literary reputation by overemphasizing his "Johnsonese" prose style. The narrative traces Johnson’s professional struggles, including the legendary repulse by Chesterfield and the eventual publication of the Dictionary. Hubbard emphasizes Johnson’s dominance in conversation and his unique role in English letters, noting that modern readers often prioritize Boswell’s accounts over Johnson’s original works.
Hubbard provides a sympathetic and witty portrait of Samuel Johnson, defining him as a man of "colossal culture" and "dogged honesty." He disputes the common critical dismissal of Johnson’s prose, asserting that while Boswell’s biography "overtops" its subject in entertainment value, Johnson’s own writing is distinguished by a "stately, dignified, splendid" style rather than the convoluted "Johnsonese" often attributed to him. The essay traces Johnson’s life from his "Grind" years at Oxford and his "love-match" with the much-older Widow Porter to his pivotal friendship with David Garrick and his later role as London’s literary dictator. Hubbard emphasizes Johnson's profound humanity, detailing his extensive charity toward a "museum of waifs and strays" in his household. He concludes that Johnson's character was a "battle-ground" of sincerity and wrath, ultimately serving as a source of inspiration for contemporaries like Reynolds and Burke.
CGV entry 7:35. Reprinted from the 1900 publication.
On the sale in 1900 of Johnson’s birthplace in Lichfield, detailing its history with the Johnson family and later purchase for preservation by J. H. Johnson. It mentions Michael Johnson’s civic roles and the house's connection to notable figures like Douce and Reynolds.
CGV entry 7:36. See also a reply by John T. Page in the same journal (June 23), page 505.
The essay examines Lichfield as a “city of ghosts,” focusing on the social and literary circles surrounding Samuel Johnson and Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century. The author delineates Johnson's Lichfield coterie, which included Miss Lucy Porter, Mrs. Cobb, and the ladies at Stowhill, Mrs. Aston and Mrs. Gastrell. Citing Boswell’s Life and unpublished letters, the author explores Johnson’s tender and persistent affection for Miss Porter, despite her reserved manner. The article contrasts Johnson’s genteel, non-literary admirers with Darwin’s circle, which was marked by scientific and radical sentiments, including the presence of the eccentric Thomas Day. The author heavily uses Miss Seward’s anecdotal, though often acrimonious, reminiscences to characterize these figures, concluding that Johnson’s friends were ultimately immortalized primarily by his connection to them.
CGV entry 7:37. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1901).
Sidebotham details the extensive late-Victorian "improvements" to the Strand and Holborn, which threatened many of London’s ancient landmarks but spared St. Clement Danes. The church, rebuilt by Wren in 1680 and later adorned with a steeple by Gibbs, is described as Wren's "magnum opus" among metropolitan churches. Sidebotham highlights Johnson’s profound religious connection to the site, noting his habitual attendance at Divine service in a specific north gallery pew now marked by an 1851 memorial brass. The text recounts Johnson’s affection for the "cheerful scene" of Fleet Street and his practice of filling his pockets with coppers to aid homeless children found sleeping in doorways. Sidebotham also observes the historical transition of nearby Holywell Street (Booksellers' Row) and Clare Market, while documenting the removal of the historic Strand May-pole to Wanstead.
This biographical and topographical study chronicles the various London residences and social venues frequented by Johnson. It provides a chronological record of his homes, including his early lodgings in Exeter Street, the long-term residence at 17 Gough Square where he composed the dictionary, and his final house in Bolt Court. The essay identifies specific sites associated with his literary labor and domestic life, often noting their nineteenth-century condition or disappearance. Beyond private dwellings, the narrative surveys Johnson’s favorite public resorts, detailing his attendance at St. Clement Danes and his reliance on the "throne of human felicity" found in taverns such as the Mitre, the Essex Head, and the Turk’s Head. Social interactions with Boswell, Reynolds, and the Thrales receive mention, alongside descriptions of his club memberships and occasional visits to pleasure gardens like Ranelagh and Marylebone. The study serves to "trace so great a man through all his different habitations," reconstructing the physical environment of his daily existence.
CGV entry 7:40. Reprinted from the 1901 edition of 'The Life of Johnson' edited by Arnold Glover.
A guide to the Lichfield museum, which opened in 1901. It notes increasing interest in Johnson, whose works show industry but whose character is best known through Boswell and his Prayers and Meditations. The book details the history of the 17th-century house: Michael Johnson purchased it in 1707, and Samuel was born in the room over the shop. After 1887, it was purchased, restored, and eventually gifted to the City by Alderman John Gilbert. The guide inventories the museum's contents, including the Hay Hunter Library, Johnson's Rambler desk, his chair, Mrs. Johnson's wedding ring, and autograph documents. It also directs visitors to other local sites like the "Three Crowns" Inn, Edial, the Grammar School, and St. Michael's Church. The text concludes by recounting the history of the annual Johnson Celebrations (begun 1903), the 1909 Bicentenary, and the founding of the Johnson Society (1910).
CGV entry 7:41. A guidebook compiled by the Johnson House committee. Appeared in many later editions.
Hutton chronicles the academic lives and local associations of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Hester Thrale Piozzi within the context of Pembroke College. Johnson entered as a commoner in 1728, though poverty and a rebellious spirit characterized his brief residence. He frequently lounged at the college gate, entertaining peers with wit while strictly discouraging the misuse of the English language. Hutton identifies Johnson's rooms as a small suite over the gateway on the second floor, noted for its narrow staircase where the author clutched the balusters during his final, infirm visit in 1784. Boswell visited the college with Johnson in 1776, observing his companion's deep affection for the institution. Johnson famously characterized the college's poetic legacy by stating, "We were a nest of singing birds," specifically identifying the nest of Shenstone. The college preserves Johnson's teapot in the bursary and his desks in the library, which served as the dining hall during his tenure.
Worsfold provides a comprehensive historical account of Staple Inn, detailing its origins with the Merchants of the Staple and its 1378 transition into an Inn of Chancery. The narrative emphasizes the Inn's 18th-century significance, noting that Johnson moved to No. 2 in 1759 to write Rasselas. Worsfold describes Johnson's "rusty" appearance and his "scantily furnished rooms" where he also composed The Idler. The text further documents the thirty-seven-year residence of "Honest Isaac Reed," whose chambers served as a salon for literary and artistic figures, potentially including visits from Johnson and Boswell. Institutional details cover legal exercises like "moots" and "bolts," architectural features of the hall, and the Society's 1884 dissolution.
Mortimer’s report of a lecture describes a recent visit to Ashbourne to explore locations associated with Johnson and Boswell. Mortimer details Johnson’s frequent visits to the Reverend John Taylor, whom Johnson assisted by writing sermons. The narrative recounts Boswell joining Johnson at Taylor’s residence to record their conversations. Mortimer highlights Johnson’s admiration for Izaak Walton’s "Lives" despite Johnson’s contempt for angling. The account includes Johnson’s reasoning that "flattery pleases very generally" and notes his usual refusal to discuss the weather until ill health during his final Ashbourne visit forced him to "talk of the weather." Mortimer visits the Green Man inn, where the mistress once presented Boswell with an engraved address. The narrative concludes by quoting Boswell’s description of the local church as "luminous" and identifying a house still bearing the name of Boswell.
Sterne and Johnson at 'The Cheshire Cheese'
Reid inquires after an autograph letter by Sterne allegedly mentioning a meeting with Johnson and either Goldsmith or Boswell at "The Old Cheshire Cheese" tavern. He notes that while tradition strongly associates the tavern with Goldsmith and his companions, Boswell remains silent on the matter.
Reminiscences of St. Clement Danes Church, Strand
Pennington provides a historical and descriptive account of St. Clement Danes Church, detailing its origins, architectural evolution, and cultural associations. The text identifies the site as a ninth-century Danish settlement and traces the structural history from a pre-Norman tower to the 1682 reconstruction by Wren. Pennington emphasizes the ecclesiastical life of Johnson, who occupied a specific pew and drew significant religious conviction from the services. The narrative details the 1851 installation of a brass memorial to Johnson and describes his habit of standing near the pulpit to listen to sermons. While Boswell is mentioned as Johnson's occasional companion, the text focuses primarily on the church's role as a "comforting retreat" for Johnson. Pennington further catalogs the 1898 restorations, the history of the "Father" Smith organ, and the church's various memorial windows, including the bicentenary window dedicated to Johnson and his literary circle.
Raby provides a detailed biographical account of Johnson’s early life and connections to his native city. The text examines Michael Johnson’s career as a bookseller and local official, disputing the romanticized "Elizabeth Blaney" legend in favor of Michael’s documented disappointment with Mary Neyld. Raby describes Johnson’s birth and immediate baptism due to physical frailty and his father’s impending "Sheriff’s Ride." The narrative details Johnson’s education under Dame Oliver, Tom Browne, and the "severely" disciplinarian John Hunter at Lichfield Grammar School. Raby highlights Johnson’s "undisputed intellectual monarch" status among peers and his later "desultory" study period after leaving Oxford in "poverty." The text further explores Johnson’s marriage to Elizabeth Porter, the failure of his "village academy" at Edial, and the composition of Irene. Salient details include the deaths of his mother and Catherine Chambers, and Johnson’s enduring "parental tenderness" for Lucy Porter. Raby argues that despite a "rough exterior," Johnson’s life was defined by deep local loyalties and a "humane heart," concluding with the Dictionary’s "Salve, magna parens!" tribute to his "ancient and loyal city."
Boynton explores the social equation of 1775, noting a transition from the aristocratic audiences of Pope and Addison to a more democratic literary republic. While Chesterfield and Walpole exemplify conventional, privileged society, Johnson serves as the primary exponent of a slow, organic development conferring new dignity on the masses. Johnson endured years of "literary jobbery" and penury in Grub Street before achieving intellectual leadership. The establishment of the Literary Club in 1764 marks the "complete emancipation of literature from fashion." Johnson's later fulsome praise for the city, embodied in his assertion that a man tired of London is tired of life, reflects his integration into its cultural fabric. The text identifies Johnson as a "true Builder" whose Dictionary stands as a "great solid square-built edifice."
Geyer outlines the history, layout, and literary associations of the London tavern Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Geyer chronicles the physical preservation of the 1667 structure, detailing specific rooms, historic furnishings, and portraits of long-serving waiters William Stimson and Henry Todd. The account highlights Johnson's frequent patronage, describing his favorite seat, related prints, and preserved relics like his oak armchair. Geyer also records anecdotes involving Oliver Goldsmith, including the sale of "She Stoops to Conquer," and identifies nearby sites connected to Johnson, such as Gough Square. Finally, Geyer reviews Johnson's physical appearance, his pension, and the role of Boswell and Piozzi in preserving his conversations.
CGV entry 7:57. On Johnsonian shrines in London.
Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London
Adcock maps the literary topography of London, focusing significantly on the 18th-century circle surrounding Johnson. Adcock identifies Johnson’s various residences, most notably the house in Gough Square where the Dictionary was compiled. The narrative details the domestic arrangements of Johnson’s household, including his care for Williams and Levett. Adcock also chronicles the 1763 meeting between Johnson and Boswell at Davies’s bookshop in Russell Street and traces Boswell’s subsequent London residences, including Great Queen Street. Brief attention is given to the social intersections of this circle with figures like Reynolds and Garrick. The text emphasizes the preservation of these sites as essential to understanding the personal character and historical presence of these literary figures.
Visits to Uttoxeter, Ashbourne, and Cubley
This story reports on the second spring meeting of the Johnson Society, detailing a commemorative tour of sites associated with Johnson and his family. The narrative chronicles the society's procession to Uttoxeter, the site of Johnson’s 1754 penance for a youthful act of disobedience toward Michael Johnson. It further notes visits to Cubley, the birthplace of Michael Johnson, and Ashbourne, the residence of John Taylor. The account lists the society’s leadership, including Wallace Williamson and Ralph Straus, and describes a public ceremony held at the Uttoxeter market square. Speakers at the event emphasize the town's pride in its "linked" history with the "famous sage" through his celebrated act of contrition.
The chapter recounts a pilgrimage to Lichfield, emphasizing the city's literary associations and the beauty of its cathedral spires, "The Ladies of the Vale." Lichfield's inns, "The Three Crowns" and "The Swan," are linked to Johnson and Boswell's visit in 1776, a journey which Piozzi also chronicled with Thrale in 1774. The author praises the Cathedral's interior, its Flemish stained glass, and its long history of restoration, noting its use for an anthem sung for the entertainment of Johnson's party. The chapter closes with a reflection on Piozzi's second visit with Piozzi and the enduring charm of Lichfield's literary figures.
CGV entry 7:60. On the spires of Lichfield cathedral.
The chapter describes a visit to Johnson's former residence in Gough Square, occupied by Johnson and his wife (Tetty) from 1749 to 1759. Structural repairs had just been completed, saving the house from ruin. The house is one room deep, with two rooms per floor, and features a comely, though commercially altered, staircase. The top-floor attic, thought to be Johnson’s study, is particularly interesting, as he worked on the Dictionary and entertained guests there, including Burney. The author notes the house’s size seems excessive for the couple and observes Johnson’s life there was marked by poverty, melancholia, and grief following Tetty's death. The account ends with the news of Cecil Harmsworth's purchase of the property, ensuring its preservation.
Dobson describes the architecture and landscaping of Streatham Place, characterizing it as a "Sans-Souci" for Johnson during a twenty-year residency. The text details Johnson’s domestic habits, his chemical experiments in the laboratory, and his role in the Streatham circle alongside Murphy and Burney. It examines the literary significance of the library where Johnson "spoke Ramblers" and revised Lives of the Poets. Dobson chronicles the dissolution of the household following the death of Thrale, focusing on Johnson’s methodical farewell to the estate. The narrative recounts the rift between Johnson and Piozzi regarding her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which Johnson labeled "ignominious." It follows the estate’s history until its demolition in 1863.
This article reconstructs the physical and social environment of Streatham Place, the country residence where Johnson spent much of his time between 1766 and 1782. Dobson details the house's architecture, including the sky-blue saloon and the library adorned with Reynolds’s "Streatham Worthies" portraits. The text highlights Johnson’s "best and easiest" moments under Hester Thrale’s care, contrasting this "haven of peace" with his Fleet Street "menagerie." Dobson chronicles Johnson's interactions with Boswell, Burney, and Murphy at the Thrale table, noting his occasional "ferocious frankness" and "latent spring of tenderness." The narrative concludes with Johnson’s melancholy 1782 departure following Henry Thrale’s death and the subsequent "ignominious" marriage of Piozzi, which ended Johnson’s twenty-year soothe of a "life radically wretched."
CGV entry 7:63. Reprinted from National Review (1913).
Privately printed by Yale University Press
Arnot and Allen detail the "comfortable red-brick" residence at 17 Gough Square, navigating the "tangle of lanes" through Bolt Court to reach the site of the Dictionary's composition. Architecturally, the house features a square hall plan repeated across three floors, notable string-courses, and a pine balustrade staircase preserved during the 1911 restoration. The authors describe the "Dictionary Attic," where Johnson's six copyists worked, and the first-floor rooms equipped with hinged partitions to facilitate large social gatherings. Beyond structural analysis, the text populates the house with historical figures, including the blind Mrs. Williams, the negro servant Francis Barber, and the cat "Hodge." The authors associate this period with the production of The Rambler, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Rasselas, the latter written to defray his mother's funeral expenses. The narrative concludes with an account of the "manly firmness" Johnson displayed during his marriage to "Tetty," whose death in 1752 marked the most "tragic event" of his ten-year tenancy in the square.
Visit to Stourbridge, June 23, 1920, by the Johnson Society of Lichfield
CGV entry 7:66. First printed in Stourbridge County Express, June 26 and July 10, 1920.
Visit to Cudworth, Packwood, and Stratford-on-Avon, May 30, 1923
This report details the Johnson Society’s spring meeting excursion to Stratford-on-Avon, emphasizing historical connections between Johnson, Garrick, and Shakespeare. At Curdworth, Lancelot Mitchell discussed Johnson’s maternal ancestry, providing register entries for the Ford family and describing the life of Cornelius Ford at Dunton Manor. Mitchell noted that Johnson’s mother, Sarah Ford, likely met Michael Johnson through her sister, Phoebe Harrison. The narrative follows the society to Stratford, where F. C. Wellstood delivered an address on the literary links between the two towns. Wellstood defended Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare against the criticisms of Macaulay and Rosebery, characterizing the work as a "human document" that established Shakespeare as a national poet. He also recounted Garrick’s role in popularizing Shakespeare and the "Gothic barbarity" of Francis Gastrell, the Lichfield clergyman who demolished New Place and cut down Shakespeare’s mulberry tree. The account includes a description of Boswell’s participation in the 1769 Stratford Jubilee, where he appeared in Corsican dress to promote the cause of Paoli.
The Johnson Society: Visit to Stratford-on-Avon: Links Between Great Men
The Johnson Society: Visit to Leicestershire: Dr. Johnson as Schoolmaster}
The article details the society's visit to the Sir Christopher Wren-designed school at Appleby Magna, where Johnson unsuccessfully applied for the headmastership in 1739. S. A. Grundy-Newman provides a historical overview, citing a letter from Earl Gower to Dean Swift requesting a fraudulent Master of Arts degree from the University of Dublin to qualify Johnson for the post. The narrative shifts to Market Bosworth, where Johnson served as an "usher" or under-schoolmaster in 1732 under the patronage of Sir Wolstan Dixie. The report emphasizes Johnson’s "aversion and even horror" toward this period, attributed to the grueling 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. schedule and his poor relationship with the "dictatorial" Dixie. President Ralph Straus notes that Johnson’s failure as a pedagogue was a fortunate "series of negatives" for literature, as success in Leicestershire might have precluded his move to London and subsequent meeting with Boswell.
Visit to Appleby Magna, Market Bosworth, and Ashby-de-la-zouch
This article reports on the Johnson Society’s excursion to Appleby Magna and Market Bosworth to examine Johnson’s failures as a schoolmaster. Grundy-Newman discusses Johnson’s 1739 attempt to secure the headmastership at Appleby, an effort thwarted by his lack of a Master of Arts degree despite Gower’s intercession with Swift. The report details Johnson’s miserable six-month tenure as an under-master at Market Bosworth in 1732, a period he later recalled with "aversion and even horror" due to the strict statutes and his conflict with Sir Wolstan Dixie. Straus argues that these pedagogical failures were essential to Johnson's development, suggesting that success in the Midlands might have precluded the creation of the Dictionary. The visit concluded at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, site of Michael Johnson’s branch bookshop.
On Foot to Market Bosworth: A Johnson Pilgrimage
On Gissing's walking pilgrimage, undertaken on July 27, 1922 (to align with the calendar date of July 16, 1732, Old Style), tracing Samuel Johnson's route from Lichfield to Market Bosworth. Johnson's original 1732 entry, Bosvortiam pedes peti, referred to his return to Market Bosworth Grammar School, where he served as an usher, a position he "recollected with the strongest aversion and even a degree of horror." Gissing contrasts the picturesque landscape of Lichfield with the "lean, lank, and bony youth" setting forth, heavy-hearted and unheeding of nature's charms. The journey, estimated at 22 or 23 miles, proceeded through Tamworth and Polesworth, with Gissing noting a subsequent stretch of formerly "boggy, unenclosed" land. The author ponders the source of Johnson's misery—attributing it to the "intolerable harshness" of Sir Wolstan Dixie, the school's patron, and the contempt he endured rather than mere drudgery. The essay concludes by recalling Johnson's eventual lifelong friendship with his schoolfellow, Dr. Taylor, who later became Rector of the parish.
CGV entry 7:73. In two parts: July, pages 145–148; and October, pages 213–217.
On Johnson's associations with the Temple and the physical changes to the London area since his time. MacKinnon notes that Johnson lived at No. 1 Inner Temple Lane from around 1760 for several years, describing its later demolition in 1857. The author recalls famous anecdotes tied to these chambers, including visits from Boswell, Madame de Boufflers, and the "two gay young Trinity men." The article explores other Temple figures linked to Johnson, such as Goldsmith (2 Brick Court), Lord Stowell (3 King’s Bench Walk), and Sir Robert Chambers (6 King’s Bench Walk). MacKinnon reveals that William Cowper lived directly beneath Johnson's staircase around 1759-1763, noting that they were neighbors unaware of each other's presence just before Cowper's descent into madness. The author concludes by musing on the unexpected persistence of the Temple's historic atmosphere despite modernization.
CGV entry 7:74. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1924).
CGV entry 7:75. A pamphlet on sale at the house. A revised edition was published in London by Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. in 1947. See also Notes and Queries, volume 172 (May 8, 1937), page 326.
A Sentimental Journey in and About Lichfield
Newton explores Johnson’s literary life and domestic routine during his residence at Gough Square, emphasizing the heroic labor that produced his Dictionary. The article paints a sympathetic picture of Johnson presiding over his chaotic household, managing his collaborators, and navigating financial strain while establishing his intellectual authority. Newton asserts that Gough Square stands as the definitive site for appreciating the genuine magnitude of Johnson's struggle and achievement.
CGV entry 7:78. On Johnson's house.
Newton describes the historical and literary atmosphere of Johnson's residence at 17 Gough Square, where the lexicographer lived from 1748 to 1759. The narrative identifies this house as the site where Johnson compiled his Dictionary, wrote The Vanity of Human Wishes, and composed Rasselas to defray his mother's funeral expenses. Newton visualizes the presence of Johnson's diverse household, including Levett and Williams, alongside illustrious visitors like Reynolds, Garrick, and Goldsmith. He details the physical features of the preserved building, such as the heavy kitchen beams and the attic workroom where amanuenses assisted with the Dictionary. The text also recounts Johnson's 1756 arrest for debt at this location and his subsequent rescue by Richardson. Newton emphasizes the enduring significance of the site as a literary shrine maintained for modern pilgrims.
CGV entry 7:78. Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly (1925).
Phelps recounts visits to John Wesley’s house in City Road and Johnson’s residence in Gough Square, describing the architectural features, interior relics, and historical atmospheres of these sites. The narrative details Johnson’s interactions with Wesley, noting Johnson’s admiration for Wesley’s conversation despite the latter’s lack of leisure. Phelps highlights the Gough Square attic as the site where the Dictionary was compiled by Johnson and his amanuenses. The text includes observations on portraits of Thrale and reflects on Johnson’s disapproval of her marriage to Piozzi. Phelps emphasizes the enduring spiritual presence of Johnson within the preserved London house.
CGV entry 7:79. On the houses of John Wesley and Johnson.
Harper critiques the public memorialization of Johnson, specifically the Bacon statue in St. Paul’s, which he characterizes as a "preposterous" Roman caricature. The text details the contentious four-year process involving Reynolds and Parr to draft a suitable Latin epitaph. Harper argues that while Boswell’s artistry made Johnson a living human figure, Johnson’s own literary achievements—including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and his moral essays—ensure his status as a foundational figure of the eighteenth century. Descriptive focus is given to Johnson’s various residences, notably No. 17 Gough Square and the now-rebuilt Johnson’s Court. Harper also investigates the "Cock Lane Ghost" affair to illustrate Johnson’s inquisitive but non-credulous mind and discusses the questionable historical tradition linking Johnson to the "Old Cheshire Cheese" tavern. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's devotion to London as a center of intellectual pleasure and "the full tide of humanity."
Place: Ashbourne Published: Reprinted from the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Journal
Samuel Johnson and His London: An Appeal to Young People to Come and Conquer His City: A Lecture
Charnwood delineates the topographical and social history of Stowe House, Lichfield, emphasizing its role as a frequent resort for Johnson during his visits to Elizabeth Aston and Mrs. Gastrel. Charnwood confirms the "Gothic barbarity" of Gastrel’s husband in destroying Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, revealing the accidental discovery of a tea caddie made from the tree’s wood within the house. The text provides specific details regarding the 1776 visit by Johnson and Boswell, including Boswell’s initial exclusion from a dinner at the "lower house." Charnwood reproduces and analyzes three letters from Johnson: a 1777 missive to Hester Thrale describing Lichfield society and Gastrel’s aversion to modern dress; a 1779 letter to Thrale expressing a wistful departure from Lichfield; and a previously unpublished 1759 letter to Lucy Porter concerning the debts of Johnson's mother. Additionally, Charnwood records the 1910 discovery of the graves of Lucy Porter and Catherine Chambers in St. Chad’s Church, clarifying their proximity to the Stowe estate.
CGV entry 7:84. On Stowe House, Lichfield. In two parts: November, pages 535-547; and December, pages 664-677.
Dr. Johnson's House, Gough Square, London. Souvenir of Dedication Dinner, Wednesday, 11th December, 1929
The Book of the Cheese: Being Traits and Stories of "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese," Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, London
This volume chronicles the history, traditions, and literary associations of the Cheshire Cheese tavern in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. Rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire, the establishment serves as a "living memorial" to Johnson, who is identified as its most prominent patron. Reid assembles testimonies from individuals such as Cyrus Jay and Cyrus Redding to establish Johnson’s "nightly" presence at the inn, particularly after he moved to Gough Square. The text describes various relics, including a chair used by Johnson at the Mitre and a copy of the Reynolds portrait. Detailed accounts focus on the tavern’s culinary staple, the "Brobdingnagian" rump-steak pudding, and its club life, including the Johnson Club and the Rhymers' Club. Frequenters cited include Goldsmith, Boswell, Dickens, and Thackeray, positioning the tavern as the "Mecca of Anglo-Saxondom" for those seeking the "Johnsonian cycle."
CGV entry 7:86. First published in 1886 under the title 'Traits and Stories of ye Olde Cheshire Cheese'; later revised by William Hussey Graham, R. R. D. Adams, and Frank Banfield.
Sir J. M. Barrie and Mr. Johnson: A Message from J. M. Barrie
CGV entry 7:87. Privately printed. Concerns Gough Square House.
This review of Hollis’s biography explores Johnson’s "enormous influence" through his roles as a Tory, writer, and "dominant figure in the Club." Hollis characterizes Johnson as an "ignorer of all the amenities" who nevertheless practiced "unfailing patience and amiability" as a "generous benefactor" to the indigent. The reviewer highlights Johnson’s "attitude toward death," noting he "loved life and hated death" because he "trembled for his own omissions" before the "Divine demands." The book receives praise for its "illuminating social sidelights" and portraits of friends like Burke and Goldsmith. J. J. R. concludes that Hollis successfully explains Johnson’s continued hold on the English imagination by emphasizing his sincerity and "Christian practice."
Berry surveys literary residences converted into museums, including Johnson’s house at 17 Gough Square. The text describes the attic where Johnson and his amanuenses compiled the Dictionary between 1748 and 1758. Berry notes the presence of Georgian architectural features, an original staircase, and surviving editions of his work. The study emphasizes how these physical spaces preserve the personalities of writers, contrasting the formal museum experience with the intimate historical atmosphere of Gough Square and the Cheshire Cheese.
CGV entry 7:89. On Gough Square House.
Doctor Samuel Johnson and the Sign of the Dolphin in Gough Square London
CGV entry 7:90. Undated, circa 1920s.
CGV entry 7:91. A pamphlet for sale at the Gough Square Johnson House.
CGV entry 7:91. With a foreword by Lord Harmsworth.
CGV entry 7:91. Reprinted from 'Men and Ghosts of Gough Square' (1930).
CGV entry 7:92. On Thrale's brewery.
Gough Square serves as the primary extant residence of Johnson, providing a characteristic architectural record of the Augustan age. Following restoration by Harmsworth and Burr, the interior preserves the "massive staircase" and "Dictionary Attic" where amanuenses transcribed the Dictionary. The house retains original elements, including the "great iron chain" used to bar publishers and duns. Current displays feature portraits of Reynolds and Goldsmith alongside Piozzi’s "tea equipage." Johnson occupied the premises from 1748 to 1759, during which period he composed Rasselas to defray his mother's funeral expenses. The domestic setting facilitates "cheerful parties to drink tea and to talk," avoiding the "repellent aspect of the museum."
CGV entry 7:93. On Gough Square House.
The Heritage of St. Leonard's Parish Church Streatham
A history of St. Leonard's Church, the oldest nucleus of Streatham, and its Thrale family connections. The work details the 1350 church rebuild, Thrale’s funding of 1774-1778 alterations, and the location of the Thrale pew and burials. Johnson attended infrequently, recording his final 1782 departure with a special prayer and the phrase Templo valedixi cum osculo. A 1975 fire damaged Thrale family memorials, which now reside on the north chancel wall.
CGV entry 7:95. On Johnson's connection with Streatham.
Sitwell provides a social history of eighteenth-century Bath, emphasizing the influence of Nash in transforming the city from a primitive, unhygienic outpost into a refined center of fashion and decorum. Sitwell documents the interactions of prominent literary figures within this environment, noting Johnson’s high estimation of Elizabeth Montagu’s intellectual powers and his defense of Thomas Sheridan’s character against David Garrick’s criticisms. The text records Johnson’s 1776 visit with the Thrales, during which he stayed at the Pelican Inn and frequented Mrs. Thrale’s drawing-room, attended by his servant Francis Barber. Sitwell describes Boswell’s observations of Johnson’s physical mannerisms and verbal habits during their Bath residency. The narrative also traces the social life of Hester Thrale, later Piozzi, detailing her eventual residence at 8 Gay Street and her 1784 marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, an event that Sitwell notes drew condemnation from Johnson and social disapproval from the city. Sitwell further contextualizes these figures through their encounters with other notables, including Christopher Anstey, James Quin, and Sarah Siddons.
London's Smaller Museums: V. Dr. Johnson's House
To Think of Tea, and Doctor Johnson (Visit to 17 Gough Square)
Craigie presents a personal narrative of a tea party held at 17 Gough Square, the London residence where Johnson lived from 1748 to 1759. The article describes the house as the site where Johnson wrote The Rambler, drafted the letter to Lord Chesterfield, and compiled his dictionary. Craigie examines Johnson's "abnormal fondness for tea" and his "master mind" for conversation, noting his influence over contemporaries like Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith. Drawing from Boswell, Craigie explores Johnson's complex views on Catholicism, highlighting his defense of the Mass and confession despite his "obstinate rationality". The narrative emphasizes Johnson's "imprudently charitable" nature, specifically his support of Mrs. Williams and Madame Desmoulins. Craigie concludes by praising Johnson's "humility and contrition" and his final refusal of opiates to "render up his soul to God unclouded".
Asserts that Johnson’s fascination intensifies alongside growing scholarly knowledge, attributing this enchantment to a composite of his "superb majesty" of English, sagacious conversation, and robust piety. It cites Wesley’s description of Johnson as a "great man" and invokes Rosebery’s comparison of Johnson’s piety to that of Gladstone. While acknowledging Boswell’s claim to have "Johnsonized the land," Suggests such an assessment was "not presumptuous, only premature," implying a broader, lasting influence.
CGV entry 7:102. Description of two trips to Uttoxeter, Lichfield, etc., by modern admirers.
CGV entry 7:106. Privately printed for The Johnsonians, in honor of R. W. Chapman.
Clifford-Smith chronicles the history, architectural significance, and 1911 restoration of Johnson’s residence in Gough Square. The narrative details the compilation of the Dictionary in the 'Dictionary Attic' and examines the efforts of Harmsworth to preserve the building as a 'national possession for the advancement and encouragement of learning and scholarship.' Clifford-Smith describes the interior’s 'Queen Anne' features, unique 'double fronted' plan, and the survival of the structure despite severe damage during the 1940--1944 air raids. The account surveys the collection’s furniture and iconography, including Carter’s bureau-bookcase, a 'curious mahogany chair' from the Cock Tavern, and portraits by Frances Reynolds, Northcote, and Read. Clifford-Smith emphasizes a furnishing policy that avoids 'museum element' clutter in favor of an 'atmosphere of cheerfulness.'
CGV entry 7:107. On Gough Square. In two parts: November, pages 136–140; and December, pages 165-168.
Hopkins presents a detailed portrait of Lichfield during the eighteenth century, focusing on the social circles and "backgrounds hardly touched upon" by Boswell. The narrative follows Johnson from his "unhappy, poverty-stricken youth" through his frequent return visits as a famous man. Hopkins emphasizes Johnson’s preference for the company of intelligent women, detailing his relationships with figures such as Molly Aston, Hill Boothby, and his step-daughter Lucy Porter. The work explores the "Seward-Saville scandal" and the intellectual clique involving Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward, noting that Johnson’s attitude toward this younger group was often "antagonistic." Hopkins provides a "delicate miniature portrait" of the town’s geography and history, including the Johnson family’s move to the market place and the development of the Cathedral Close. The text reports on Johnson’s penitential journey to Uttoxeter and his interactions with various Lichfield inhabitants, illustrating how the city’s history of "courage, independence, self-confidence and learning" shaped Johnson’s character and social life.
CGV entry 7:109. The London edition was published in 1956.
CGV entry 7:111. Published by the British Travel Association.
Blue Plaque Guide to the Historic London Houses
This reference guide provides brief biographical narratives for 200 notable London residents whose dwellings feature commemorative plaques. Regarding 18th-century literary figures, Burrows details Johnson's tenure at 17 Gough Square from 1748 to 1759, where he compiled his "Dictionary of the English Language" and composed Rasselas to fund his mother's funeral. Boswell is noted for his residence at 122 Great Portland Street, where he finalized The Life of Samuel Johnson in 1791 while suffering from worsening health and melancholia. The guide also documents the residence of Topham and Lady Diana Beauclerk at 3 Adelphi Terrace within the Johnsonian circle.
Johnson's London: Selected Source Materials for Freshman Research Papers
Dr. Johnson's House, Gough Square, London, E.C., 1748–1958: A Brief History
CGV entry 7:119. Published by the British Travel Association.
Dr. Johnson and Birmingham: An Account of the Birmingham Celebrations of the 250th Anniversary of the Birth of Dr. Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 7:122. Designed for high school students and includes a "Teacher's Supplement."
Ehrlich surveys the historical and cultural landscape of Fleet Street and its environs through the lens of Johnson’s residence and literary legacy. The text recounts Johnson’s affinity for London taverns, specifically the Mitre and the Cock, and his role as a "small-town boy" who viewed the metropolis with perpetual wonder. Ehrlich details Johnson's residences at Gough Square, Johnson’s Court, and Bolt Court, noting his financial independence following the publication of his dictionary. The narrative highlights Johnson’s robust wit, exemplified by a satirical exchange with a Thames waterman reported by Boswell. Additionally, Ehrlich documents Johnson's 1783 protest against the relocation of public executions from Tyburn to Newgate, reflecting his belief in the gallows as a necessary crime deterrent. The work also notes Johnson’s burial in Westminster Abbey, despite his lack of a formal monument there.
CGV entry 7:125. A guide to the house and its furnishings.
Johnson Trail Group, Tourist Information Centre
CGV entry 7:131. A brochure describing places in the Midlands with Johnsonian associations. Circa 1980.
Schwartz provides a topical introduction to the social history and physical environment of eighteenth-century London, using the experiences and perspectives of Johnson as a primary, though not exclusive, guide. Organizing material by facets of urban existence—including sensory experiences, economic structures, pastimes, domestic routines, and legal enforcement—Schwartz argues that the period is defined by "contrasts and extremes". The text seeks to move beyond idealized literary or artistic constructs, such as the "Restoration" of comedy or the squalor of William Hogarth, to present a comprehensive "uncensored London". Schwartz details the city's commercial vigor alongside its "savagery," describing a landscape where "civility or brutality can eclipse the other". Key themes include the physical impact of the coal smoke pall, the prevalence of bloodsports like cockfighting and bull baiting, the harsh realities of child labor and prostitution, and the intricate social distinctions between the City and Westminster. By synthesizing primary travelers' accounts and secondary scholarship, Schwartz aims to resuscitate the "texture of daily life" that Boswell's original audience took for granted. The work concludes that Johnson’s unique ability to traverse disparate social spheres makes his life a "life of allegory" essential for understanding the century.
Middendorf reviews Daily Life in Johnson's London by Richard Schwartz, praising the work for sketching contextual details that Boswell properly omitted. The text illuminates Johnson's experience through chapters on sensory details, work, domestic life, and transportation. Middendorf highlights Schwartz's observation that Johnson's emphasis on subordination reflects a society lacking a formal police force, where behavioral controls originated from within. The reviewer notes the volume's lavish illustrations and its utility for anyone interested in the period's extremes. Middendorf identifies the practice of buying carcasses—where tavern keepers sold workmen's debts to employers—as a particularly fascinating new detail. The work supplements classic studies by Dorothy George and Turberville by providing the feel and texture of the world Johnson inhabited.
CGV entry 7:132. Anonymous review of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Schwartz re-evaluates the "inherited characterization" of Johnson as an indolent genius with erratic habits by placing his daily routine within the historical context of eighteenth-century London. He points out that Johnson's pattern of late rising and socializing was typical for the wealthy classes of Westminster, though unusual for the City where he resided. Schwartz contrasts Johnson’s "unique" mobility across social and economic lines with Boswell’s more "representative" and methodical experience as a young man of fashion. He argues that Johnson's "day" is less significant than his "mind" and his imaginative relation to the religious and literary history of Fleet Street. The article suggests that focusing on Johnson’s physical behavior underscores his humanity but often distracts from the breadth of his perspective on "the state of common life."
Cochrane entry 653.
City of Lichfield: 200th Anniversary of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784. Programme of Commemorative Events
City of Lichfield: 200th Anniversary of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784
CGV entry 7:135. A history of Johnson's birthplace from his time to the present.
CGV entry 7:137. On attitudes toward Johnson in Lichfield.
'This Is Taking Prodigious Pains About a Man': A Selective View of the Year
CGV entry 7:138. A summary of bicentenary events, accounts, presentations, exhibits, and conferences.
North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies
CGV entry 7:139. The Earl Lecture at the University of Keele, 1984. Publication expected in 1987.
CGV entry 8:1. A caricature depicting Johnson as a lexicographer and pensioner. It is Number 4068 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires.
An Elegy on the Death of Dr. Johnson's Favourite Cat
Stockdale contrasts the innate innocence of Johnson’s cat, Hodge, with the moral failures of humanity. The poem celebrates Hodge’s domestic virtues, such as gratitude and sobriety, while satirizing the venality of statesmen and the vices of the "articulating race." Stockdale uses Hodge as a reproof to human conduct, arguing that moral actions, rather than speech or status, define true worth. He concludes by urging readers to emulate Hodge’s simple virtue.
CGV entry 8:2. Dated 1764.
An Elegy on the Death of Dr. Johnson's Favourite Cat by Percival Stockdale, with a Note on Dr. Johnson's Cats
CGV entry 8:3. A caricature showing Johnson as a member of the secession from the Society of Artists which founded the Royal Academy. It is Numbers 4217 and 4218 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires.
A satiric print showing Johnson and Boswell dining.
CGV entry 8:4. It is Number 5922 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires and is reproduced in M. Dorothy George's 'Hogarth to Cruikshank'.
CGV entry 8:5. A satiric print depicting Johnson as an owl blinking at busts of Pope and Milton. It is Number 6103 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires and is reproduced in M. Dorothy George's 'Hogarth to Cruikshank'.
Apollo and the Muses Inflicting Penance on Dr. Pomposo Round Parnassus
CGV entry 8:6. A satiric print showing Johnson being whipped for "defaming ... the Beauties of British Poetry." It is Number 6325 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires and is reproduced in M. Dorothy George's 'Hogarth to Cruikshank'.
View Near Lichfield, Including a Most Remarkably Large Willow Tree ['Johnson's Willow']
CGV entry 8:7. Engraved by T. Cook.
CGV entry 8:8. A later edition of the 1786 work.
CGV entry 8:9. A satiric print showing Hester Piozzi, Boswell, and Courtenay. It is Number 7052 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires.
Dr. Johnson in His Travelling Dress as Described in Boswell's Tour
CGV entry 8:10. A satiric print. It is Number 7028 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires.
Frontispiece for the 2nd Edition of Dr. J—n's Letters
CGV entry 8:11. An engraving showing Johnson's ghost returning to haunt his biographers. It is Number 7417 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires.
CGV entry 8:12. Eight engravings based on Johnson's verses to Sir John Lade, "A Short Song of Congratulation."
Urn to the Memory of the Late Dr. Johnson
Records the placement of a "beautiful urn" in the grounds of Gwaynynog, near Denbigh, to honor Johnson’s memory. It notes that Myddelton erected the monument on a spot where Johnson "frequently delighted to sit." The inscription identifies Johnson as a "Professor of Christian Philosophy" whose writings "give ardour to virtue and confidence to truth."
CGV entry 8:13. A plate of the urn at Gwaynynog.
The account reports the introduction of a monument for Johnson into St. Paul’s Cathedral. It notes that Johnson and Howard are the first individuals "admitted to the honor" of such a public memorial in the cathedral. The text includes the Latin inscription dedicated to "Samueli Johnson" and signifies the national recognition of his literary and moral contributions.
CGV entry 8:14. On John Bacon's monument in St. Paul's Cathedral.
[Has seen plaster death mask of Johnson]
Urban describes a plaster impression of Johnson’s face held at Coade’s artificial stone manufactory, taken shortly after the subject's death. Urban argues that distributing copies of this "transcript from the visage" provides greater moral utility than biographical knowledge of Johnson’s life. The sight of the post-obit exhibition offers an "animating sensation" rather than depression, teaching viewers the necessary transition "before he can be happy." Urban asserts that any future publication of the works or life of Johnson remains "defective" without including this plaster stamp to remind readers of their own mortality.
A Series of Engravings, Accompanied with Explanations, Which Are Intended To Illustrate the Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body
Baillie illustrates the principal morbid appearances of the respiratory system and thyroid gland. Baillie details the pathology of "bronchocele," characterized by a gland "enlarged beyond its natural size" and filled with "viscid fluid." Baillie presents the "adventitious membrane" of "coagulable lymph" formed during "croup," and identifies both "tubular" and "solid" polypi coughed from the trachea. Baillie documents "ossification of the pleura" and the "common" formation of "adhesions in the chest." Of particular note is the representation of "tubercles" in the lungs, the "foundation of pulmonary consumption." Baillie includes an illustration of "the lungs of the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson," exhibiting "the air-cells... much enlarged beyond their natural size, so as to resemble the air-cells of the lungs in amphibious animals." Baillie concludes with rare instances of "ossified" lung substance.
CGV entry 8:16.
CGV entry 8:17. A satiric print. It is Number 8281 in the British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires.
Strictures on Dr. Johnson's Monument in St. Paul's Cathedral
This article criticizes the honorary monument erected for Johnson in St. Paul's Cathedral in 1796, arguing that it lacks "propriety of form" and "characteristic truth." The author laments that "idle taste" has destroyed "solemnity" by representing the author in a manner that offends Christian feelings, specifically objecting to the "short hair" and the depiction of Johnson with "bare limbs" and "wrapped in a blanket." The statue depicts Johnson with three bare limbs and one wrapped, an attire he was never seen in publicly. Characterizing these sculptural choices as "palpable bigotry" on the part of artists who disregard modern dress for ancient patterns that have nothing to recommend them but "quaintness," the author argues that sculptors should not disregard established dress norms to follow such patterns. The text questions the taste of the authorities who permitted the memorial and concludes by hoping the "Reverend Body" at St. Paul’s will in the future trust their own judgment regarding the "dress, or no dress" of memorials.
A Catalogue of ... Household Furniture ... Library, Etc., Property of Mrs. Piozzi
CGV entry 8:19. Page 34 describes the furnishings of "Dr. Johnson's Room. Left Wing," at Streatham Park, Surrey.
Describes a newly discovered miniature of Johnson, executed in 1736 during his residence at Edial. It identifies the portrait as a "very striking likeness" of his younger self, predating the more familiar representations by Reynolds. The account traces the provenance of the artifact through contemporary family connections, noting its preservation by descendants of the original possessors. This record serves to authenticate a rare visual representation of Johnson's youth and provides historical context for his appearance during the period he began his literary career in London.
Graphic Illustrations of the Life and Times of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Murray presents a curated collection of engravings and descriptive notices documenting the biographical landscape of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. The volume identifies significant topographical sites, including Johnson's Lichfield birthplace, the Edial Hall academy, and his final residence in Bolt Court. It provides portraits and biographical sketches of paternal figure Michael Johnson and influential contemporaries such as Cave, Oglethorpe, Hastings, and Thrale. Editorial focus is directed toward the preservation of primary documents, featuring facsimiles of correspondence from Walmesley, Savage, and Warton, alongside Hector’s testimony regarding the "sprig of myrtle" verses. The text details Johnson’s professional evolution from an indigent translator at St. John’s Gate to a celebrated figure in the Thrale household. Significant attention is paid to the 1773 itinerary of the Hebrides, including the role of Macdonald in the Prince’s escape and the specific physical characteristics of Johnson’s traveling attire and "large English oak stick." Murray uses these "graphic illustrations" to reconstruct the social and material reality of the Johnsonian circle, offering scholarly descriptions of domestic interiors, editorial methods, and the "potentiality of growing rich" through the Thrale brewery sale. Each plate is accompanied by 1-4 p. of text ; some plates also have blank guard sheets. Eight of the plates signed by the engraver, Charles John Smith.
CGV entry 8:21. The illustrations from John Wilson Croker's 1835 edition of Boswell's 'Life' and from 'Johnsoniana' (1836) published separately.
Johnson's original favorite easy chair currently resides in the author's chambers at No. 2. Churchyard Court, having passed down as an heirloom. The large, old-fashioned, horsehair chair includes an "identical crimson velvet cushion." This cushion is claimed to be the one on which Mary Queen of Scots knelt at her execution, displaying the marks of three drops of blood. The chair's approaching demolition necessitates a new home.
CGV entry 8:22. In two parts: July 23, page 68; and October 29, page 363.
A reader writes to suggest a portrait in his possession, pronounced a "Sir-Joshua" and unengraved, might be the one painted for Johnson's friend, Dr. Taylor. He mentions that it was inspected and later returned by the National Portrait Gallery without explanation. The owner invites interested readers to view the painting.
CGV entry 8:23.
CGV entry 8:24. The drawing is captioned "To a new plum-coloured coat, Dr. Goldsmith ... To S. Filby, Dr."
Pycroft, a relative of George Steevens, confirms he possesses Johnson's watch. He describes it as a metal watch with a tortoiseshell case, lacking a maker's name. The dial is inscribed with the Greek words nux gar erchetai ("for the night cometh"), as mentioned by Boswell. Pycroft notes that the watch also bears the inscription "Samuel Johnson, London, 1784" inside the case.
CGV entry 8:25. The watch was in the possession of the writer, a descendant of George Steevens.
Thoms seeks information regarding the current location and authenticity of two portraits of Johnson formerly owned by Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely. The first portrait, attributed to Joshua Reynolds, depicts a young Johnson with his hands clasped over a book titled Irene. Thoms notes that this identification appears suspect since Johnson only met Reynolds at age forty-three. The second portrait represents Johnson at an advanced age and was believed to be the work of Thomas Gainsborough. Thoms requests the "opinion of competent authorities" to resolve strong doubts regarding the genuineness of both paintings.
CGV entry 8:26. See also further discussion in the same series, volume 1, page 55; volume 3, pages 117 and 156; and 6th series, volume 7, page 213.
This query seeks the current location of Johnson's watch and punchbowl. The author quotes a note by Hugh Pailye from the 1835 Murray edition of Boswell, in which Pailye claims to have purchased the watch from Francis Barber and the punchbowl from John Barker Scott. The author reports seeing a watch in the Lichfield Museum incorrectly attributed to Johnson and another punchbowl with a 1762 inscription bearing Johnson's name. This note reflects the ongoing interest in the physical relics of Johnson and the challenges of verifying their authenticity.
CGV entry 8:27.
Catalogs the various portraits of Johnson executed by Reynolds, identifying at least four distinct types and numerous replicas. He provides a comparative analysis of the Peel Collection portrait in the National Gallery—originally painted for Thrale—and a potential replica in his own possession, noting discrepancies in background details and facial expression. The account traces the provenance of several works, including the Langton portrait, the Duke of Dorset’s version at Knole, and the portrait held at Pembroke College, Oxford. It also examines the "blinking Sam" portrait and two unfinished sketches of a wigless Johnson formerly owned by Piozzi and the Duke of Sutherland. Reference is made to the biographical accounts of Boswell and the artistic critiques of Tom Taylor to establish a chronology of sittings. Emphasizes Johnson's physical gesticulations and his aversion to being depicted with ocular infirmity.
The author explores the history of Johnson's St. Paul's monument, characterizing it as a memorial to "Parr’s littleness" rather than "Johnson’s greatness." The text details Parr's "ridiculous vanity" and his struggle to compose a Latin epitaph that satisfied Reynolds and the "Johnsonians," including Malone and Windham. Parr’s "secret and invincible loathing" of introducing "magnificence" into the description of Johnson's poetry is highlighted.
CGV entry 8:29. Chiefly on Samuel Parr's epitaph.
Portraits in Plaster from the Collection of Lawrence Hutton
Hutton discusses the numerous printed portraits of Johnson, quoting Johnson's own remark on Trotter's painting as an "ugly fellow" yet a "like" original. He provides contemporary assessments of Johnson's countenance from Kearsley and Percy, who suggest the features were not "ill-formed" and potentially "not unattractive" in youth. The text details a mask of Johnson held by the Royal Literary Fund, taken after death under the direction of Cruikshanks. Hutton notes that while Cruikshanks considered it a "remarkably correct likeness," no record of the artist exists. He observes the absence of any reference to this mask within Boswell's Life.
Reproduces a series of Johnson portraits from the collection of R. B. Adam, noted as the "finest Johnsonian collection in the world." It catalogs five specific items: a 1783 oil painting from life by Frances Reynolds; a 1756 portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds engraved by Heath for Boswell; a 1770 mezzotint by Watson after Reynolds; a 1792 engraving by Townley after Opie, dedicated to Boswell; and a 1793 engraving by Doughty after Reynolds. The descriptions emphasize the involvement of Johnson's intimate circle, including the "sister of Sir Joshua" and Boswell, whose "handwriting" appears on one first impression. These portraits document the iconographic history of Johnson, tracking the transition from original life studies to widely circulated eighteenth-century engravings.
CGV entry 8:31. From the Adam collection.
Clayton reports that Johnson's teapot is preserved at Pembroke College, Oxford. Xylographer adds that while Pembroke has a china teapot, Nollekens and his Times records a silver teapot with a specific inscription. The contributors question the current location of the silver version described in Nollekens' account.}
Discusses an unfamiliar sketch by Zoffany, which features portraits of Johnson, Mrs. Johnson, and their female servant. The sketch was Lot 75 in the 1819 sale of Archibald, ninth Duke of Hamilton's property and sold for thirty guineas to a Mr. Taylor. This portrait is reportedly unmentioned in the new edition of Bryan and seems to be very little known.
Maxwell contends that a line of the Greek inscription on Johnson’s monument in St. Paul’s is "sheer gibberish" in many editions of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The correctly translated line is: "Amid the blest may he have a reward commensurate with his labours." Murray and J. S. challenge Maxwell's assertion, noting the correct line is in Croker's edition. The discussion focuses on a persistent printer's blunder, which has appeared unnoticed by the public.
CGV entry 8:34. In two parts: May 14, pages 385-386; and June 4, page 452. On Johnson’s monument in St. Paul’s. See also a reply from John Murray in the same volume (May 21), page 409.
Portraits: Dr. Samuel Johnson, His Friends, Acquaintances and Others, Catalogue 8 of Engravings
CGV entry 8:35.
Dr. Johnson's Monument in St Paul's Cathedral
Morris examines the 1791 controversy concerning the location of Johnson’s commemorative statue. Although Johnson lies in Westminster Abbey, Reynolds and Burke advocated for St. Paul’s Cathedral to initialize the decoration of that fallow space. Boswell and Banks initially supported the Abbey, citing Johnson’s burial location and perceived personal wishes. Reynolds challenged the squeeze of tombs in the Abbey and offered to personally fund any financial deficit to secure the artist's skill in St. Paul's. This maneuver established Johnson as a representative of the literature of England alongside later national heroes. The text clarifies the shifting allegiances within the Literary Club and highlights the disinterested action of Reynolds in finalizing the monument's site.
CGV entry 8:36. On letters from Windham and Banks about the monument in St. Paul's.
Newton describes the iconographic program of a bookplate featuring Johnson and Goldsmith at Temple Bar, an image derived from an anecdote in Boswell’s biography. The narrative details Johnson’s perambulations through the Strand and Fleet Street, noting his physical habits such as the "sudden start" that displaced a porter's load and his ritualistic touching of street posts. Newton identifies specific locales including the Crown and Anchor, the Devil, and the Mitre, characterizing the tavern chair as Johnson’s "throne of human felicity." The text recounts Johnson’s "colloquial prowess" during dinners with Boswell, Reynolds, and various Scotch literati, as well as his ceremonial crowning of Mrs. Lenox with laurel. Newton further documents the typographic origins of the plate, which incorporates fonts from Piozzi’s Anecdotes and the title page of Boswell’s first edition. The study concludes by emphasizing Johnson's lifelong preference for the "animated appearance" of Fleet Street over rural scenery.
CGV entry 8:37. Newton's own bookplate with a quotation from Johnson.
F. H. examines the Greek inscription on Johnson's watch, "The night cometh," noting discrepancies between the New Testament original (John 9:4) and the versions reported by Boswell and Forster. Boswell includes an interpolated "gar" in the Greek text, which the author find unlikely for Johnson to have authored. The note highlights Boswell's observation of the dial-plate in 1768 and Johnson's subsequent decision to remove it to avoid charges of ostentation. F. H. identifies a conflict between Hawkins, who claims this was Johnson's first watch, and the chronological implausibility of Johnson possessing no watch until age fifty-nine. Steevens reportedly took possession of the original dial-plate after its removal.
CGV entry 8:40. A caricature of Johnson and Boswell, drawn for the Johnson house, Gough Square, and exhibited there. It contains a piece of mock dialogue.
On a New York bookseller's offering of an iron knocker described as an original relic from Johnson's house in "Johnson's Court, Fleet Street." The knocker is in a special case with a guarantee of authenticity from the British Museum. The author suspects the cataloguer confuses "Johnson's Court" with the house in Gough Square.
Johnson's Monument and Parr's Epitaph on Johnson
Wheatley provides a 'sad tale of mismanagement' concerning the twelve-year delay in erecting Johnson’s monument in St. Paul’s. The focus is on Samuel Parr’s 'ridiculous pedantry' and 'egregious over-estimate of himself' during the composition of the Latin epitaph. Parr refused to include 'Royal Academy' or Johnson’s poetry as 'probabilis,' leading to 'violent' divisions among the curators (Burke, Malone, and Windham). Parr insisted on a 'lapidary style' based on 'works of antiquity,' initially ignoring Johnson’s poetic status until pressured to use the phrasing 'luminibus sententiarum et ponderibus verborum admirabili.'
Dr. Johnson: Portrait in Hill's Edition of Boswell
Bensly disputes claims of misidentification regarding the frontispiece in Hill’s edition of Boswell. Comparing anatomical features, Bensly distinguishes the image from Reynolds’s portrait of Goldsmith, attributing the perceived lack of resemblance to Johnson’s wigless state. Citing Graves and Cronin, Bensly identifies the work as one of two 1770 Reynolds portraits depicting Johnson without a wig. He confirms the portrait represents Johnson, noting versions held in the Sutherland and Sackville collections.
CGV entry 8:43. See also a reply by A. Sparke in the same journal (April 9), pages 298–299.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: From an Original Portrait in the Johnson Collection of A. Edward Newton
CGV entry 8:44. A Christmas issue.
The Wedgwood Medallion of Samuel Johnson: A Study in Iconography
Hopkins highlights Tinker's study of Johnsonian iconography, specifically the Jasperware cameo designed by Flaxman and reproduced by Wedgwood. Hopkins notes the volume is the first comprehensive investigation of Johnson's portraits, comparing various likenesses to two scarce medallions. He emphasizes the aesthetic quality of the book, printed in Baskerville type by Rogers, and anticipates the limited edition of 183 copies will be "quickly exhausted" due to its appeal to collectors of Johnson and Wedgwood.
CGV entry 8:45. An anonymous review of the book by Chauncey B. Tinker.
Tinker confirms that John Flaxman modelled the Wedgwood medallion of Johnson, based on accounts detailing a charge for "A model in wax of Doctor Johnson" in February 1784. The accounts also mention a charge for "A print of the Dr. for assistance." Tinker hypothesizes this was Watson's engraving of 1770, used to correct the likeness, making the medallion a compromise between a life sitting and an older, more vigorous portrait, accounting for the subject's apparent health.
CGV entry 8:48. On Johnson's teapot.
Scott argues that a portrait exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club depicts Johnson in middle life. He supports this by identifying "abnormal features" consistent with Johnson’s known medical history, specifically blepharitis and "fusiform" arthritic fingers mentioned by Boswell. Scott compares the work to Reynolds's 1770 and 1773 portraits, noting remarkable similarities in the "undulating bridge" of the nose and the vertical forehead furrow. He suggests the painting is a lost Reynolds or possibly a Richard Wilson.
Jackson describes the unexpected discovery of a pair of silhouette portraits (shades) of Johnson and his wife, Elizabeth (Tetty). Jackson argues that the discovery of a profile portrait of Johnson is highly probable given the era's popularity of cheap portraiture and Johnson's affinity for city life. The silhouettes, painted on convex glass, possibly employ the technique of Mrs. Beetham of Fleet Street, though the style is not definitive. Jackson discusses the silhouettes' history, noting their descent from Johnson's friends and their adherence to Johnson's stated criteria for good portraiture: likeness and historically accurate dress.
CGV entry 8:50.
[A caricature of Johnson and Boswell by Samuel Collings]
Waters provides a comprehensive list of eighteenth-century copper tokens bearing Johnson’s head, which passed current as halfpence in Birmingham and Lichfield. The tokens, struck between 1792 and 1797, include "mules" and "half-halfpenny" farthings made for collectors.
Esdaile examines the history of Bacon’s monument to Johnson in St. Paul’s Cathedral, drawing on correspondence between Banks, Malone, Reynolds, and Parr (British Museum Add. MS 22,549). Banks’s 1791 letter details the committee's debate between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s; Reynolds advocated for the latter to prevent a "squeeze of Tombs" and promised to supply any financial deficiency. Bacon’s preference for a "realistic statue" in modern dress was overruled by Reynolds’s "malediction" against such "mean purposes" in sculpture, resulting in a Romanized "figure of a retired gladiator." Parr, task with the Latin inscription, displayed "outraged vanity" by refusing any committee oversight of his text. The reviewer notes that Parr resisted modifying his "pedantic" phrasing—specifically the term probabilis poeta—and insisted on a "Christianized" Greek text from Dionysius for the scroll. The collection includes Boswell’s final letter, dated April 13, 1795, written shortly before his death, in which he supports Malone in a textual dispute with Parr.
CGV entry 8:53. On his monument there.
Powell updates the iconography of Johnson, supplementing previous lists by Croker and Napier for a forthcoming revision of Hill's edition. The survey traces the provenance of several likenesses, including a Reynolds replica once owned by Lucy Porter, an Opie portrait now in America, and a miniature by Humphry. Powell investigates the elusive Zoffany portrait, providing evidence from the Morning Herald and Johnson’s 1782 notebook to confirm sittings took place. The inquiry corrects Hill’s misidentification of a Reynolds painting at Dunvegan Castle as the missing Zoffany work.
CGV entry 8:54. See also 'Saturday Review of Literature', April 22, 1933, page 553.
Loane discusses the uncertainty surrounding Johnson's visit to Tunbridge Wells in 1748, as depicted in Loggan's drawing, which Malone used as evidence. Hill's note in Boswell's Life dismisses the drawing's identification of Johnson because of the "slim and rather dapper figure" and the fact Johnson was not yet a doctor. Loane suggests the visit is apocryphal.
CGV entry 8:60. Argues Johnson is not in Loggan's drawing. In two parts: volume 184 (March 27), page 198; and volume 185 (July 3), page 24.
The Johnson Monument in St. Paul's Cathedral
CGV entry 8:63. Argues that Boswell received them from Hawkins, not from Frank Barber.
This brief descriptive note announces the reproduction of a curious portrait of Johnson by Joshua Reynolds, newly acquired from the Marquess of Lansdowne through Thomas Agnew \& Sons and William H. Robinson for the Johnson Collection at Four Oaks Farm. Engraved by Zobel in 1858 and exhibited twice, the newly cleaned canvas represents "The Infant Johnson" and remains virtually unknown. F. G. Stephens describes the painting as a "good jest" depicting Johnson as Reynolds imagined him in childhood. The piece highlights how the "heavy brow of the adult doctor" is hinted at by the "meditative babe, who sits before us Brahmin-like and quiescent." The text concludes with a detailed provenance tracing ownership from 1796 to its acquisition before 1823.
CGV entry 8:64. On "The Infant Johnson" by Reynolds, now in the Hyde collection. See also comments by E. Rosenbaum and C. Roy Huddleston in other publications.
Letts seeks clarification regarding a reference to Johnson’s cat, Hodge, in a review of Lewis’s translation of the Aeneid. While acknowledging that Hodge was a "fine cat" and "liked oysters," Letts disputes the claim that the cat "walked on three legs." He suggests the reviewer may have confused the animal with Johnson's remark about a dog walking on its hind legs. Letts insists on protecting the memory of Hodge from inaccurate additions to the stock of Johnsoniana.
Garrick, Johnson, and the Lichfield Circle: An Exhibition of Paintings
CGV entry 8:66. Lichfield Coronation Festival. Introduction by K. J. Garlick.
Nuttall confirms the existence of the Septuagint volume with which Johnson reportedly struck Osborne the bookseller. The book, a 1597 Frankfurt edition, is in the library of New College, London, and previously belonged to Harley. Circumstantial evidence for its identification can be found in the Powell-Hill edition of Boswell.
CGV entry 8:67.
Johnson's Head: The Story of the Bust of Dr. Samuel Johnson Taken from the Life by Joseph Nollekens, R.A., in 1777
Samuel Johnson 'On the Banks of the Neva': A Note on a Picture by Reynolds in the Hermitage
Simmons identifies Johnson’s features in Reynolds’s large-scale commission for Catherine the Great, The Infant Hercules slaying Serpents, now housed in the Hermitage. Specifically, Reynolds used Johnson as the model for the figure of the blind Tiresias. The picture, which cost the Empress fifteen-hundred guineas, arrived in Russia after Reynolds’s death and has since survived multiple wars and revolutions. Simmons notes the historical irony that while Johnson’s works were read "on the banks of the Wolga" in the eighteenth century, his physical likeness remains preserved "on the banks of the Neva" today.
CGV entry 8:70. Suggests the figure of Tiresias in the painting "The Infant Hercules Slaying Serpents" has Johnson's features.
Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire
George’s volume on English political caricature, Hogarth to Cruikshank, is a recommended work filled with amusing material. The book includes the print “The Hungry Mob of Scriblers and Etchers,” which depicts Bute dispensing favors. Among the mob is a figure recognized as Johnson, holding a paper marked "300L per Ann.," referencing his pension.
CGV entry 8:72. Discusses Johnson in satiric prints.
Fortune: A Rhapsody: Inscribed to Mr. Garrick
Reflects on authorship, poverty, and fortune, consciously recalling Hogarth’s The Distrest Poet and referring to Johnson's lack of a fortune. The poem explores the condition of merit lost to fortune, beginning: "On the Wave of Fortune tost / See the man of merit lost!" The dedication functions as a traditional appeal for patronage, implicitly contrasting Derrick's literary struggles with Garrick’s eminent success and wealth as the manager of Drury Lane. The piece highlights the theme of financial hardship among authors and the reliance on influential figures in the mid-eighteenth-century literary world.
CGV entry 9:1.
A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M.
Both lavish panegyric and personal satire, following a quarrel with Francklin. The Epistle begins and concludes by apostrophizing Johnson, hailing him as a "Transcendant Genius" and praising his verse for its "nervous phrase" and "energy of thought." Although titled for Johnson, the poem's primary purpose is an "indignant vindication" of Murphy, satirically targeting Francklin and other "Grub Street 'dunces'." The work employs a mixed style, imitating Boileau's Second Satire and Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot. By using these models, Murphy performs a subtle, self-promoting maneuver, positioning himself in parallel with Johnson despite the surface tone of subservient homage.
CGV entry 9:2.
A long, rambling, Shandean poem, published anonymously in parts, satirizing public fascination with the Cock Lane Ghost hoax. Books 1 and 2 appeared in March 1762, Book 3 in October 1762, and the final part in November 1763. The satire quickly gained notoriety for its depiction of Samuel Johnson as "Pomposo," mocking him for alleged credulity regarding the ghost, the long-delayed publication of his Shakespeare edition (for which he took subscriptions), and accepting a pension. Despite the satire, Johnson was actually one of those who exposed the Cock Lane imposture. Johnson predicted the poem's swift obsolescence. Boswell was vexed by Churchill's attack, which cemented the popular image of Johnson's credulity. A third edition appeared in 1763. It was collected in multi-volume series, including Poets of Great Britain from Chaucer to Churchill (Edinburgh, 1779), and later in The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill, edited by Douglas Grant (1956).
CGV entry 9:3.
Verses intended as a description of Johnson, combining both praise and blame. Mellifont was identified as the author and had previously published other, non-Johnsonian verses in the same newspaper. This publication occurred shortly after Johnson was granted his government pension, a period characterized by heightened public scrutiny and increasing literary attacks on him.
CGV entry 9:4.
The Laureat, a Poem: Inscribed to the Memory of C. Churchill
Suggests the satirical tone of Churchill's 1765 posthumous "Dedication." This "masterpiece of ironic praise," attached to sermons, is addressed to Warburton. Using sustained irony, Churchill's work masquerades as flattery but delivers "utter contempt," offering a disturbing picture of venality and character assassination. This vigorous satire against figures like Johnson confirms Churchill's status as a leading poet upon his death.
CGV entry 9:5.
Shaw’s satirical poem whimsically depicts England’s poets contending for fame. The satire describes Johnson as "unblest with outward grace," with "rigid morals stamp'd upon his face." His strenuous intellectual effort is noted, as is his conversational style, where he "roars in pompous strain, / And, like an angry lion, shakes his mane." The narrative concludes that "Virtue" claims Johnson as her son and reserves a chaplet for his brow, upon which he bows and obeys.
CGV entry 9:6. A second edition was published in 1766.
A Rhapsody on the Many Illiberal Invectives Thrown Out against Mr. Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 9:7. A verse comparing Johnson to a lion. It was answered by "One of the Monkies" in the same newspaper, Number 747 (December 14–17).
On Certain Scribblers, Who Are Dayly Cavilling at Mr. S. Johnson
A contemporary tribute to Johnson, emphasizing a tragic sense of his life. A key couplet suggests Johnson’s personal struggles hold greater moral significance than his written work, claiming, "His life, a brighter lesson than his page."
CGV entry 9:9.
CGV entry 9:11. A verse headed "The Helicon Bag."
Gentleman, writing under the pseudonym "Nicholas Nipclose, Baronet," satirizes the contemporary London theatrical landscape, targeting playwrights, actors, and managers. He describes Johnson as a "huge Leviathan of wit" who produced the "turgid, tasteless" tragedy Irene. Gentleman asserts that Johnson, once a critic of "venal pensioners," now "obeys the touch of all-converting gold" by accepting a three hundred pound annual pension to serve as a "court scribbler." The text characterizes Johnson's political writing, specifically False Alarms, as a product of a "sad fit of dotage" that "murders virtue, liberty, and sense" in defense of the ministry. Gentleman further lambastes Garrick for his "pompously absurd" devotion to Johnson and other "doctors," accusing the manager of prioritizing aristocratic connections over theatrical merit. The poem also critiques the dramatic works of Murphy, Cumberland, Kelly, and Goldsmith while lamenting the decline of acting standards at Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
CGV entry 9:12. A verse characterization of Johnson.
Barbauld (then Aikin) opens by asserting that narratives of feigned events, imaginary scenes, and ideal characters enjoy “insatiable avidity” and “universal applause” from the public. The piece contrasts this widespread celebrity with the reputation gained by authors writing in specialized fields. It observes that writers like the geometrician, divine, antiquary, and critic are constrained to please only those readers whose dispositions conform to similar pursuits.
CGV entry 9:13. An imitation of Johnson's Rambler style.
To the Principal and Professors of the University of St. Andrews, on Their Superb Treat to Dr. Samuel Johnson
Fergusson satirizes the academic authorities at St. Andrews for their "superb treat" to Johnson, arguing that such hospitality is wasted on a "lying loan" who insulted Scotland in his Dictionary. The poet proposes an alternative "bill o' fare" consisting of "hamely gear" intended to provoke and challenge the guest’s culinary sensibilities. This menu includes a "haggis fat," "gude sheep's head," "fat brose," and "bloody puddins." Fergusson specifically references Johnson's definition of oats as food for horses in England but people in Scotland, suggesting that traditional dishes like "girdle farl" and "lang kail" are superior to foreign "daintiths." The poem serves as a defense of Scottish national identity and a critique of the "pompous" visitor’s "warlike" stomach, asserting that "ill bairns are ay best heard at hame."
Fergusson satirizes the academic authorities at St. Andrews for their "superb treat" to Johnson, arguing that such hospitality is wasted on a "lying loun" who insulted Scotland in his Dictionary. The poet proposes an alternative "bill o' fare" consisting of "hameil gear" intended to provoke and challenge the guest’s culinary sensibilities. This menu includes a "haggis fat," "gude sheep’s head," "fat brose," and "bloody puddins." Fergusson specifically references Johnson's definition of oats as food for horses in England but people in Scotland, suggesting that traditional dishes like "girdle farl" and "lang kail" are superior to foreign "daintiths." The poem serves as a defense of Scottish national identity and a critique of the visitor’s "surly" disposition, asserting that "ill bairns are ay best heard at hame."
CGV entry 9:14. Reprinted from the Weekly Magazine (1773).
Cloacina, refers to the Roman Goddess of sewers and echoes the satirical tradition used by Gay to link the deity with the city's moral corruption. The play’s chaotic action is shown when a character named Johnsonoddle reacts strongly to a shouting crowd off-stage. This hybrid genre resisted clear definition and allowed for the burlesquing of theatrical conventions concerning the mixture of comic and tragic elements.
CGV entry 9:15.
A Pedestrious Ramble from Hyde-Park Corner, to Farnham: Written for the Encouragement of Johnson's Dictionary
Mimos records a "pedestrious ramble" using "vernacular language" elevated by "scientific unintelligibility" to exercise the "cogitative faculty" of the reader. The author describes the "fumigating pastry" of Brentford and the "incommodiousness" of Hounslow before observing a provincial regiment on the heath. In a satirical nod to Johnson’s Journey, Mimos describes "maypolian erections" hung with "ferruginous coats of mail," which he identifies as trophies of those who "killed their man." The narrative detail includes a night spent in a "peat hut" with a "weird sister" on Bagshot Heath, where the author declines a "charitable donation" of a "moulded fragment of a loaf." Mimos further mocks Johnson’s "philophical" focus on causes by attributing the "annihilation" of his shoe soles to imperfect "vegetable matter" penetration. The ramble concludes with observations on the "proceleusmatick" songs of hop-pickers and the "sacrilege" of the "mouldering walls" of Farnham Castle, damaged by "ruffians of religious and civil reformation."
CGV entry 9:16. A parody of "Johnsonese."
London; or, Part of the Third Satire of Juvenal Imitated
CGV entry 9:17. A jeu d'esprit and an omnibus attack on Johnson.
This verse fable satirizes contemporary literary merit by depicting a divine competition to appoint a poet laureate for the animal kingdom. Jove offers the "spacious ears" of Midas as a prize for the candidate least infected by human genius or sense. The narrative focuses on the rejection of Johnson, represented as "shaggy Bruin," whose "polished sense" and "mental graces" disqualify him for a role requiring total vacuity. The text specifically references Johnson's voyage to the "Hebrides" and his writings on "Ossian and the second sight." Despite his "tracts of politics," the assembly rejects Johnson because his previous works are "stigmatized with sense and wit." An Ass secures the laurel by promising "soul-composing" verses devoid of thought, comparable to the psalmody of Sternhold and Hopkins.
CGV entry 9:18. A verse in which Johnson, as "Bruin," is a candidate for poet laureateship of the animals.
Mason’s Epistle belongs to a series of anonymous satires against Johnson. The work attacks Johnson’s politics, pension, and elevated writing style. The Epistle targets Shebbeare, who was himself known for political pamphleteering. Mason's satirical strategy is notable for his use of anonymity, as he reserves publishing criticism under his own name until after Johnson's death. Mason, who also satirized Johnson in An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, frequently employs the verse epistle for political critique.
CGV entry 9:19. A verse which includes an attack on Johnson's diction and politics. Johnson is also glanced at in Mason's 'An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers' (1773).
The Bustle Among the Busts; or, The Poets-Corner in an Uproar: A Poem Occasioned by the Appearance of Dr. Goldsmith's Monument in Westminster-Abbey
MacGregor employs a mock-heroic narrative to satirize the 1776 installation of Goldsmith’s monument in Poets’ Corner. The poem depicts a midnight "uproar" where the established "bards in the Abbey" confront the ghost of Goldsmith. Goldsmith is portrayed as a defiant and "impertinent puppy" who boasts of his versatility as a "physician, what-not" and challenges the supremacy of Shakespeare, Milton, and Prior. A "London Reviewer" (alluding to the critic William Kenrick) intervenes to mediate the fray, shifting the satire toward a critique of the "tag-rag and bob-tail of modern Parnassus," including targets such as Hugh Kelly and Dr. William Dodd. The First Canto concludes with a dialogue between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; while Shakespeare threatens to abandon the Abbey for Stratford to avoid "vile crew" of modern pretenders, Jonson persuades him to remain, asserting that their own literary merit is ære perennius (more lasting than bronze) compared to the "villainous lumber" of contemporary writers.
CGV entry 9:20. Published under the pseudonym M. Macgreggor, Esq. Johnson appears as "a huge Greenland bear." The article appeared in two parts: February, pages 156–160; and March, pages 233–240.
This imaginary conversation between Addison and Johnson criticizes Johnsonian prose style and moral delivery. Addison censures Johnson for abandoning the "path of occasional essays" to pursue "insipid accounts of Scotch expeditions" and partisan politics. Addison specifically attacks the "uncouth dress" of Johnson's expression in The Rambler, characterizing his vocabulary—including terms such as "tortuosity," "exacerbation," and "frigorific"—as "affected" and "unsufferably absurd" for general readers. Johnson defends his stylistic choices, asserting he has "laboured to refine our language" and "familiarised the terms of philosophy." Addison counters that Johnson conveys precepts through the "harsh lips of reproach" rather than "delicate reproof," arguing that the "rugged veil" of his language obscures the "pure and ray-emitting splendour" of his moral judgment.
The Second Part of the Abbey of Kilkhampton; or, Monumental Records for the Year 1780: Faithfully Transcribed from the Original Inscriptions
The facetious monument for Dr. Johnson commemorates his diverse achievements and recognizes his illustrious, yet "irradiatingly dark" "Genius." The inscription defends him against the charge of burlesquing England's manners, noting his dedication to Amor. But Croft traces his convoluted style to his eccentric claim of being a Cretan, descended from Minos. The epitaph laments his "barbarous Murder," stating the University of St. Andrews, in its vengeance, whipped him and sent him home, an irreparable indignity causing his death.
CGV entry 9:22. Contains a rather insulting "epitaph" on Johnson.
On Reading an Advertisement of a Publication Intitled The Deformities of Johnson
Ode by Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale upon Their Supposed Approaching Nuptials
An anonymous, scurrilous, satirical poem written by James Boswell, originated as a "Song" composed on April 12, 1781, the day after Henry Thrale's funeral. The piece, a bawdy epithalamium parodying Johnson's style, served to express Boswell's strong anxiety that Johnson might marry the wealthy widow. It was first published as a pamphlet by R. Faulder in 1788, intentionally back-dating the imprint to 1784. The published version included brutal prose embellishments and an "Argument" ridiculing Hester Piozzi's recently published Letters. Boswell included a mention of the poem, with quoted stanzas, in a footnote in the first edition of The Life of Johnson (1791), expanding the quotation in the 2nd edition (1793).
An Ode on the Much Lamented Death of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Written the 18th December, 1784
This poem, published in the wake of Johnson's death, represents a genre of effusive mourning often satirized by contemporaries like Pindar. Reviewers find the work highly obscure, noting that though the meter flows melodiously, the language fails to create distinct impressions. The ode employs high-flown metaphors, describing cold Ambition and Cupids mocking specters in Westminster Abbey, and mentions the worm of the tomb twining like Virgil's snake, demonstrating the widespread emotional response to the loss of Johnson.
A Dialogue between the Earl of C—d and Mr. Garrick, in the Elysian Shades
Butt's poem uses the popular genre of the Dialogue of the Dead, a form employed by contemporaries like Lyttelton and Hurd to discuss morals and politics. The dialogue features Chesterfield and Garrick in the Elysian Shades. Such works aim to create the illusion of listening to eyewitnesses to history, allowing for nuanced debates and confrontations between pragmatism and idealism. The selection of Garrick, who embodied the spirit of the theater, and Chesterfield, a noted critic, suggests a discussion centered on aesthetics or fame, mirroring similar structured arguments.
CGV entry 9:28. Contains a tribute by Garrick to Johnson.
Elegy to the Memory of Dr. Samuel Johnson
A poetic lament, published in 4to by Stockdale in London in 1785. The initial price was 6d. The work, signed 'T. H. 1785', was subsequently collected in editions of English poetry. It appeared in Thomas Park's The Works of the British Poets, vol. 37 (1805) and vol. 13 (1808). It was also included in the Chiswick edition of British Poets, vol. 67 (1822), where it served as the first preliminary encomium. Hobhouse's full name was published with the poem in 1785.
One Glass of Helicon; or, A Short Flight to Parnassus
CGV entry 9:31. Contains short poems in English about Johnson, with Latin titles.
The Patriot: A Tragedy from a Manuscript of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson, Corrected by Himself
CGV entry 9:34. The claim of Johnson's authorship is likely fraudulent.
Anecdotes of the Learned Pig, with Notes, Critical and Explanatory; and Illustrations from Bozzy, Piozzi, &c., &c.
A satirical pamphlet capitalizing on the contemporary biographical controversy and the exhibition of the Learned Pig. The work is an "obvious satire on Johnson and his biographers," appearing shortly after Piozzi's Anecdotes. Johnson and his biographers were closely associated with the subject: Johnson told Boswell that the "protracted existence is a good recompence for very considerable degrees of torture"; Piozzi referenced the pig in November 1785 correspondence. The work was listed in the Gentleman's Magazine, June 1786. Excerpts appeared in the Public Advertiser, June 5, 1786, and the piece was reviewed in the Monthly Review (August). A related work, Story of the Learned Pig, appeared around the same time.
CGV entry 9:35.
A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson: With Notes
A critical verse examination composed by John Courtenay, MP and notable wit. The poem contains mocking references to SJ’s Prayers and Meditations, specifically identifying those passages in footnotes. A second London edition appeared the same year. An unauthorized Dublin edition was also printed in 1786. Immediately upon publication, the work was cited in contemporary literary analysis, including Burrowes’s 1787 essay and Colman’s 1787 Prose on Several Occasions. The critique suggested SJ’s dictionary style reflected Sir Thomas Browne's turgid Latin-English. Courtenay advised James Boswell concerning his biography, and Boswell subsequently quoted the Poetical Review in The Life of Johnson. The work was later reprinted in the Augustan Reprint Society series as No. 133.
A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 9:36. A facsimile reprint.
CGV entry 9:38. Inscribed on James Sayers's print "The Biographers." Begins "Three Authors in three sister kingdoms born".
Prose on Several Occasions, accompanied with some pieces in verse
More Last Words of Dr. Johnson, consisting of important and valuable anecdotes ... to which are added, several ... facts relative to his Biographical Executor [Hawkins]
The satirical pamphlet, not actually by Barber, exploits the public curiosity surrounding Johnson after his death. While purporting to offer original and valuable anecdotes of a private nature, the content includes numerous coarse and untrue stories, including an analysis of Johnson’s reputation and intellectual excellence through an examination of his feces. The work was decried by critics, such as the European Magazine, as an "impudent and most abominable imposition on the public."
CGV entry 9:43. A satire, not actually by Francis Barber.
Several editions in 1787.
This satirical vignette presents a series of chaotic meetings among eccentric philosophers and their associates on an island with affinities to England. The narrative centers on the interactions of Suction the Epicurean, Quid the Cynic, and Sipsop the Pythagorean, alongside figures such as the lawgiver Steelyard and the wind-finder Inflammable Gass. These characters engage in absurd debates over Voltaire, mathematics, and the merits of Pindar versus Italian painters. Quid disputes the authenticity of poems attributed to Thomas Chatterton and challenges the poetic stature of Homer and Milton, while Sipsop describes the gruesome anatomical practices of Jack Tearguts. During a drinking session, Suction and Quid perform a ribald anthem mocking Johnson. The verses depict the bat-winged Johnson winking and blinking before an exchange with Scipio Africanus, during which Johnson threatens to kick the Roman and receives a vulgar invitation in return. The manuscript fragment concludes with Quid and an unidentified female companion discussing a plan to publish an illuminated manuscript in three folio volumes, while expressing mutual contempt for the envious hearts of their acquaintances.
CGV entry 9:44. A verse lampoon on Johnson, written circa 1787.
CGV entry 9:45. Inscribed on James Sayers's print "Frontispiece for the 2nd edition of Dr. J–n's Letters."
A visionary dialogue features Warton and Johnson debating literary merit, human nature, and the afterlife. Warton celebrates the completion of Johnson’s Lives but soon engages in a sharp critique of Johnson’s "want of taste" and "subtilty of imagination." Johnson counters by accusing Warton of lacking "sense" and "wit," defending rhyme against Warton’s preference for blank verse. The conversation shifts to Johnson’s experiences in the "shades below," where he encounters a personified Curiosity and learns of Pluto’s political administration. Johnson recounts Pluto’s preference for Pride as prime minister over Pleasure, illustrating the point through speeches by Cupid and Fashion. The narrative concludes with an account of Proserpine’s elopement from hell to Venus, accompanied by a letter from a spirit in Mercury challenging Newtonian physics and describing the "celestial radiance" of the planets. Johnson reflects on his Lives with "harsh dissonance" while finding "ineffable delight" in his Rambler and Devotions.
CGV entry 9:46. An imaginary conversation between Joseph Warton and Johnson.
Dialogues of the Dead: I. Addison, Johnson; II. Socrates, Johnson, and a Fine Gentleman
Two dialogues present Johnson in the Elysian Fields defending his literary style and personal reputation. In the first, Addison challenges the "unwieldy and too uniform a dignity" of Johnson’s prose, specifically criticizing the Rambler for its lack of simplicity and "oratorical rigour." Johnson defends his "sonorous phraseology" as a necessary vehicle for "energetic thought," though he admits he might prefer a style "elegant without constraint" if forming it anew. The second dialogue features Socrates and a Fine Gentleman discussing Johnson's recent arrival in the afterlife. Johnson disputes the accuracy of "blundering biographers" and "anecdotes" published by those who record "fretfulness" or "playful conversation" as "solemn philosophy." He asserts that his true character resides in his writings rather than the "prattle of a gossip." Johnson maintains that while he possessed "infirmities," his heart remained "true to the cause of religion and virtue."
The Pursuits of Literature; or, What You Will: A Satiric Poem in Dialogue: Part 1
A satirical dialogue between the Author and Octavius, critiquing the contemporary state of British letters and the perceived decline of intellectual standards. The Author attacks the "unmeaning range of stone posts" in modern architecture and the "blood-guiltiness" of French revolutionary metaphysics. Specific attention is directed toward the "commentating zeal" surrounding Shakespeare, where Mathias employs a canine metaphor to describe various editors. Within this "black-lettered kennel," the text highlights "Piozzis and Bozzys" alongside other "witlings" and "dunces" such as Mary Robinson and Anthony Pasquin. Johnson appears as a formidable "Huntsman" who "smacks his lash" over the "tainted plain" of literary criticism. The text emphasizes that Johnson avoided "minute explanations of indecent passages" and sought only to "purify the passions." The work functions as a "tribute of regard" to Capell while dismissing the "trumpery" of modern anecdotalists.
CGV entry 9:48. Frequently reprinted and expanded.
This satirical parody of Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI, depicts Mansfield descending into an infernal region guided by a Spey-wife. Treading a "dreary waste," Mansfield encounters Johnson, described as "Old Samuel, shaking his Colossean head" among a "crew of perjur'd dead." The text emphasizes Johnson's physical presence and "Cynic sneer" as he compares the topography of Cocytus to the "lofty banks of Forth" in Scotland. Johnson acts as a "didactic Leech" and "Seer," informing Mansfield that the inhabitants of this "sequester'd vale" live "from hand to mouth" and frequently repair to a "jail." The narrative uses Johnson to mock Scottish landscapes and legal figures, including Bacon, before Mansfield transitions to a "Paradise of Blessed Fools" populated by figures such as George II, Bolingbroke, and Wilkes. Johnson’s interactions underscore a "terrible lesson" regarding divine justice and the "baleful caverns of the law."
CGV entry 9:49. A satire of Johnson.
A Lesson in Biography; or How to Write the Life of One's Friend, Being an Extract from the Life of Dr. Pozz, in Ten Volumes Folio, Written by James Bozz, Esq.
CGV entry 9:50. A clever burlesque of Boswell's 'Life'. Probably appeared in newspapers earlier than 1798.
Privately Printed by the Aungervyle Society Reprints
A Lesson in Biography; or, How to Write the Life of One's Friend: Being an Extract from the Life of Dr. Pozz witeen by James Bozz, Esq., 1798
A Critical Enquiry into the Moral Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson
C. Corrall for Messrs. Cobbett & Morgan, and R. Faulder
Dialogues of the Dead: Boz and Poz in the Shades
In an appendix to a larger critique, Attalus presents a satirical dialogue between the ghosts of Boswell and Johnson in the shades. Johnson aggressively rebukes Boswell for publishing a "monument of ignominy" that exposes his personal follies and "crudities" to the public. He characterizes Boswell as a mere "shadow" who existed only through his proximity to the "substance" of Johnson’s own life. The exchange highlights Johnson’s indignation at being "assassinated" by Boswell's pen. Boswell ultimately confesses that his death resulted from "mahogany," a lethal mixture of gin and treacle consumed to please importunate friends. Johnson ridicules this "bestiality," welcoming the story as a just revenge for Boswell’s biographical excesses.
CGV entry 9:51. Published under the pseudonym "Attalus".
Two New Dialogues of the Dead, the First Between Handel and Braham, the Second Between Johnson and Boswell
The dialogue between Johnson and Boswell takes place in the afterlife, where Boswell expresses anguish over public humiliation regarding his Life and reputation. He is persecuted by the living, especially Piozzi, who perpetuates the jest that his excessive drinking caused a ridiculous death (Mahogany). Johnson shows no sympathy for Boswell's grief or fear of being deemed a "bestiality" by men. Instead, Johnson expresses vengeance, declaring that Boswell's posthumous disgrace is his revenge for the Life of Johnson, vowing to join those who mock him in Erebus.
CGV entry 9:51. Contains "A Dialogue between Johnson and Boswell in the Shades".
Dialogue between Dr. Johnson and William Godwin
Johnson vigorously defends traditional social hierarchies, innate genius, and established institutions against Godwin’s radical assertions of human perfectibility and original parity. Johnson disputes Godwin’s dismissal of inherent talent, citing Milton and Burns as evidence of natural genius independent of education. He labels Godwin’s critiques of the legal, medical, and clerical professions as "school-boy declamation" and "incoherent jargon." Johnson further champions the necessity of the matrimonial institution, contrasting its stability with the "universal depravity" and domestic ruin resulting from French revolutionary experiments in equality. He attributes his awareness of Godwin’s "sacrilegious rhapsody" to the biographical efforts of Boswell, whose "sycophantick adulations" Godwin cites as evidence of Johnson’s dogmatic temperament. The interaction concludes with Johnson’s physical intimidation of the philosopher, asserting the superiority of experience over "wild babblings."
Hamlet Travestie, in Three Acts: With Annotations by Dr. Johnson and George Steevens, Esq. and other Commentators
Poole's highly successful work is a parody of Shakespeare's tragedy, using low humor and exaggeration to ridicule high drama. It includes a mock-scholarly apparatus, which frames the parody within elaborate footnotes attributed to celebrated eighteenth-century editors, including Johnson and Steevens. This parodies the contentious and meticulous nature of the variorum editions of Shakespeare. Poole mocks the scholarly obsession with editorial minutiae and commentary.
A 16-page pamphlet originally printed in 1816 but composed years earlier by Reynolds to illustrate Johnson's habit of considering Garrick his "property," allowing no one else to praise or abuse him without contradiction. In the first dialogue, Reynolds draws out Johnson’s censure of Garrick’s "intellectual energy" and "greatness" through high encomiums. But the second dialogue depicts Edward Gibbon inciting Johnson’s vigorous defense of Garrick’s "unrivalled" acting, social "elegance," and "liberal" principles.
CGV entry 9:55. Two imaginary dialogues. Printed but not published in 1816. Widely reprinted in various magazines and collections, including G. B. Hill's 'Johnsonian Miscellanies' and a 1952 edition of Reynolds's 'Portraits' edited by F. W. Hilles.
Johnson defends night walks with Savage as a method to "aberrate from routine" and observe the "pregnant" workings of the human heart. Johnson characterizes himself as a "harmless drudge" while asserting that intellectual "ratiocination" requires physical support, referencing his own period of poverty. Johnson challenges the necessity of aristocratic patronage, describing his refusal to wait in Chesterfield’s anti-chamber. Johnson maintains that the "love of thinking and conceiving" motivates great minds more effectively than the "love of fame." The text highlights Johnson’s "unaccountable hankering after the marvellous" through his sudden departure for Cock Lane.
CGV entry 9:56. Fictional dialogue among Johnson, Savage, and Derrick.
Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen
Conversation IX: Samuel Johnson and Horne Tooke
Landor depicts an imagined philological and political dialogue between Johnson and the radical linguist Tooke. The text centers on a minute examination of the English language, etymology, and orthography. Tooke challenges the lexicographical authority of Johnson's Dictionary, advocating for analogical spelling reforms such as replacing "island" with "iland" and "cough" with "coff." Johnson defends linguistic stability against what he terms "republican" inconsistency, though he frequently concedes to Tooke’s observations on the "vulgar" origins of idiom. The dialogue critiques the prose styles of Middleton, Addison, and Burke, while debating the merits of Milton and Gray. Tooke argues that "wisdom is founded on words" and uses etymological analysis to support his democratic views, asserting that "identity of speech" binds nations more effectively than laws. Johnson expresses concern that "metaphysics lead to materialism," yet he maintains a rigorous scholarly engagement with Tooke’s "asbestine" mind. The exchange concludes with a discussion on the liberation of Greece and the necessity of state pensions for literary figures, showing a rare moment of "converging" political views between the antagonists.
CGV entry 9:57. Often reprinted.
CGV entry 9:58. Described on a playbill of the St. James's Theatre, London.
An imagined recreation of an incident from the life of Johnson. As a youth, he stubbornly refused to assist his ailing father, Michael, by taking his place at the family book-stall in Uttoxeter. Fifty years later, the now-famous Johnson returned to the market-place. He stood there bareheaded for an hour as a deeply felt act of penance for his youthful unkindness, hoping to gain peace of conscience and forgiveness.
CGV entry 9:59.
Dr. Johnson: A Fairy Tale, Told to My Daughter on New Year's Night
Published: Reprinted from Welcome Guest, January 14, 1860, by the Urban Club.
H. queries the identity of figures and allusions in The Last Masquerade at Mrs. C—y's (1772), a pamphlet satirizing Samuel Johnson. The verses mock Johnson as "Crispin the Second," describe him "talking Latin in English," and mention his "taming his coat" for cash. An editorial note identifies the venue as Carlisle House, managed by Teresa Cornelys, and suggests "Crispin" refers to Johnson's analogy of teaching shoemaking by lectures. The note further identifies Burke and Richard Savage as associated figures in the lampoon.
CGV entry 9:63. Published in parts: January 12, page 30; January 19, pages 52-53; February 2, pages 91-92; March 9, pages 197–198.
Johnson and Blondin: Extracted, by permission, from the latest edition of Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 9:64. Johnson and Boswell go to Blondin's acrobatic performance at the Crystal Palace.
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; or, The Happy Valley
William Brough adapted Johnson's philosophical tale, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, into a verse extravaganza titled Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, or the Happy Valley. The theatrical production premiered on December 26, 1862, and was published by T. H. Lacy in 1863. Brough's version, though "Founded on Dr. Johnson's well-known Tale," took significant liberties with the original narrative, reflecting a popular Victorian trend of reinterpreting classic literary works through spectacle and humor.
CGV entry 9:65. An extravaganza in verse. Dr. Johnson appears as "Chorus."
Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Boothby, Written by Herself
A work of fiction, said to be "edited" by but actually written, Clark Russell, with descriptions of Johnson and Piozzi. The "great moralist" Johnson was celebrated for his colossal genius and works, including Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes. He presented as a massive, burly man with a scarred face, notorious for his disgusting table manners and rolling gait. Johnson preferred to argue while sober, disliked country life, and could be stern and rude in conversation. He notably characterized Garrick's acting as "beneath the dignity of a rational being" and deemed a musician the "lowest species of human being."
CGV entry 9:66. A fictional work containing descriptions of Johnson and Mrs. Thrale.
Nouvelles anglaises: Une aventure de Samuel Johnson
A satirical epitaph on Johnson, written soon after his death, found in George Mason's 1796 edition of Hoccleve's Poems. The epitaph characterizes Johnson as a "snarler general," an "incompetent critic," and a pedantic, verbose writer whose Rasselas was merely tolerated. It alleges he was dishonest in his lexicographical work and a "credulous retailer of calumnies," suggesting the epitaph serves as an "expiatory offering" to the poets he slandered.
CGV entry 9:68. Quoted in George Mason's 1796 edition of Hoccleve's 'Poems'.
Excursions in Criticism, Being Some Prose Recreations of a Rhymer
In this critical fantasy, Johnson reflects on his posthumous reputation and the evolution of English poetry from his dwelling in Elysium. He expresses a "shade of coolness" toward Boswell, lamenting that his talk has been preserved at the expense of his more "matured" writings. The dialogue focuses heavily on Johnson’s disdain for the Romantic shift toward nature-worship, exemplified by Wordsworth, whom he describes as preferring the company of "clowns and hinds" over wits. Johnson subjects Shelley to a rigorous Lives of the Poets style analysis, convicting him of multiple solecisms in Hellas and criticizing the "ineffectual sublimity" of Prometheus Unbound. He similarly dismisses Rossetti's sonnets as "gibberish" and "nonsense condensed," specifically attacking the lack of perspicuity in The House of Life. Conversely, Johnson offers surprising, though qualified, praise for Matthew Arnold, characterizing Thyrsis as the most perfect threnody in the language for its avoidance of "Gothic" irreconcilables. Throughout, Guiney uses Johnson’s characteristic "anfractuosities" of speech to defend Pope’s "knowledge of the stuff of human nature" against the perceived "lachrymosities" of the modern era.
A Postscript to Dr. Goldsmith's Retaliation, Being an Epitaph on Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
This poem, modeled after Oliver Goldsmith’s Retaliation, presents a mock-epitaph for Samuel Johnson. Dobson celebrates Johnson’s legendary conversational prowess, characterized by its "banquet of memory, fact, illustration" and his assertive rhetorical style. While acknowledging Johnson’s "rugged" exterior and occasional argumentative ferocity—famously described by Goldsmith as using the "butt-end" of a pistol when it missed fire—the text emphasizes his underlying kindness, generosity, and steadfast loyalty to King and conscience. Dobson defends Johnson’s prose style against poor imitators, praising his English for being weighty, dignified, and sincere. The poem concludes with a prophecy of Johnson’s enduring and growing reputation, particularly within his academic home at Pembroke College, Oxford.
The deceased set up a floating social club on the Styx, hiring Charon as janitor. Dr. Johnson is a prominent, candid member, debating literary authorship with Shakespeare and Bacon. He criticizes Boswell's biography, mocks Tennyson's poetry, and argues Darwinian theory. Johnson often presides over club events, using his wit to introduce speakers and generally dominating conversations. The book ends with Captain Kidd stealing the House-boat while the members are away.
Revolution in Grubstreet: A Boswellian Fragment
A fictional dialogue between Johnson and an unidentified "Eminent Author" regarding the late nineteenth-century publishing industry. Narrated by Boswell, the account details a debate over the commercial mechanics of fiction, specifically the transition from the mid-eighteenth-century bookselling model to the modern royalty system. Johnson expresses astonishment at the high sales figures of contemporary novels and the profitability of the six-shilling format. He argues against the author's proposal to eliminate the publisher as a "middleman" to benefit country booksellers. Johnson maintains that the publisher remains an essential capitalist venture for distributing diverse literature, particularly works of history and morality that lack the mass appeal of popular romances. The fragment emphasizes the necessity of capital and professional distribution in the literary marketplace.
CGV entry 9:72. Reprinted in Traill, H. D. “The Revolution in Grub Street; an (Imaginary) Boswellian Fragment.” Review of Reviews 12 (July 1895): 61. ———. “The Revolution in Grub Street; an (Imaginary) Boswellian Fragment, by H. D. Traill, and Reply to, by Sir Walter Besaut (The Spirit of Dr. Johnson).” Author 6 (August 1895): 56. Traill, Henry D. “The Revolution in Grub Street.” In The New Fiction, 226–48. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1897.
The Associated Shades' House-boat is stolen by Captain Kidd, who abducts all the women, including Queen Elizabeth and Xanthippe. Sherlock Holmes is hired for the pursuit, often engaging in witty arguments with Dr. Johnson, whose pointed remarks and skepticism fuel much of the club's dialogue. Johnson criticizes literary contemporaries and Boswell, and is a key figure in organizing the pursuit. The women eventually escape their captors.
Lang presents a parodic lost manuscript from Boswell describing an excursion to St. Andrews. Boswell deceives Johnson by misidentifying the local golf links as the site of buried ecclesiastical ruins. The account details Johnson’s physical altercation with a golfer after a ball strikes his wig, his dismissal of Scottish "jargon" such as the term bunker, and his unsuccessful attempt to play the game. Johnson eventually concludes the encounter by critiquing Scottish barbarism and seeking solitude.
CGV entry 9:74.
A novel. Mary Horneck (the "Jessamy Bride") and her sister are introduced to Oliver Goldsmith's famous literary circle. A tender, unfulfilled romance develops between the awkward, "good-natured" Goldsmith and Mary. The plot follows the triumphs (like She Stoops to Conquer) and financial troubles of Goldsmith, alongside the social life of "The Club." It ends tragically with Goldsmith's death. Samuel Johnson is a central supporting character. He is the "Great Cham," the "literary Leviathan," and patriarch of the group. He functions as the group's moral compass and conversational anchor, debating Boswell, defending Goldsmith ("Sir, you must allow Goldsmith to be a very great man"), and treating Mary with gruff, fatherly affection and "ponderous compliments."
CGV entry 9:75.
Life's Anchor: A Tale of the Days of Dr. Johnson and Hannah More
Johnson challenges Coleridge to justify the Romantic Movement within the boundaries of common sense. Johnson disputes the internal logic of "The Ancient Mariner," targeting the lack of causal sequence between the Mariner’s actions and the supernatural consequences. He maintains that poetry, as an imitation of nature, must adhere to an "orderly succession of phenomena." Johnson mocks the "symbolical sequence" used to justify the Mariner’s redemption, asking why one should be "forgiven for shooting a bird because he happens to admire the beauty of a reptile." He identifies the phantom ship as a "faulty image" violating actual truth. Johnson asserts that the poet must choose between sense and nonsense, dismissing Coleridge’s theories as an "insult to the human intelligence."
CGV entry 9:77. An imaginary dialogue.
An imagined dialogue. Johnson debates Boswell on the relative merits of 18th-century "precision" versus Shakespearean emotional capacity. At the "Cheshire Cheese" tavern, Johnson demonstrates coarse dining habits and defensive behavior regarding personal idiosyncratic tastes, such as applying mustard to mutton. Johnson directs severe anti-Scottish rhetoric at McIlwaine, asserting that the Scottish race generally lacks merit unless "caught young" and educated in England. This hostility results in a threatened duel, which Johnson dismisses as evidence of "unnatural stupidity." Garrick satirizes Johnson's conversational dominance through a deceptive performance of offense. The narrative concludes with a reconciliation, highlighting Johnson's capacity for apology despite his aggressive intellectual posture.
CGV entry 9:78. A fictitious dialogue.
The [Restored] Rambler, June 29, 1901, to March 22, 1902
Everett presents correspondence and notes suggesting an authenticated glimpse of Johnson during the obscure Jacobite rising of 1745. A captured British officer encounters a shabbily clothed scholar at a Jacobite dinner who is an aggressive and learned talker. The man, later recognized as a "passionate partisan of the Stewarts," vehemently abuses the Scots, displaying a fierce mixture of grossness and classical erudition. Johnson's known political leanings and lack of biographical documentation for this period support the identification. The unnamed figure speaks French with a poor accent, but correctly and deliberately, "as if printed."
CGV entry 9:80. Imagines Johnson with the Pretender's forces in 1745.
At William Shenstone's ornamental garden, The Leasowes, in 1754, a fictional dialogue sets Samuel Johnson's pragmatic urban philosophy against Shenstone's sensitive, solitary artistic life. The scene opens as Johnson critiques Shenstone's landscape design, questioning if arranging nature's beauty requires "great power of mind," while Joshua Reynolds observes. Emerging from hiding after dealing with creditors, Shenstone greets them and reads a stanza from his Pastoral Ballad to convey his deeply emotional life, confessing his artistic pursuits (poetry and estate perfection) caused financial neglect and "vacillation" regarding a marriage proposal from the lady in the ballad. Showing impatience with the poet's self-doubt and artistic excuses for inaction, Johnson strongly advises Shenstone to "marry and have done with it," citing his own marriage despite poverty, and dismisses Shenstone's rural focus, echoing his famous sentiment about London. Acknowledging Reynolds's charm, Shenstone feels he has "silenced that fellow Johnson for once," and exits to continue gardening and writing, ultimately choosing his artistic life and perhaps to write to the lady, highlighting their divergent characters: Johnson, the realist and man of society, and Shenstone, the sentimental artist and man of nature.
CGV entry 9:82. A fictitious dialogue.
G. P. Putnam's Sons; Cambridge University Press
Doctor Johnson in Cambridge: Essays in Boswellian Imitation
A set of Boswellian imitations that transports the famous literary circle, including Johnson and Boswell, to Cambridge University, a locale Johnson rarely visited. The essays, framed as new biographical discoveries, aim to capture the style, dialogue, and argumentative spirit of the original Life. The narratives showcase Johnson's characteristic pronouncements on scholarship, Latin as the formal language of expression, and academic life, allowing Roberts to pay tribute to Boswell's singular literary achievement through skillful pastiche.
CGV entry 9:84. Essays in Boswellian imitation which appeared originally in the Cambridge Review. The Cambridge University Press edition was published in 1926.
A literary parody written in the style of James Boswell, documenting the fictional life of Samuel Johnson in Elysium (the afterlife). Communicated through 'celestial channels,' the book presents a series of dialogues where Johnson delivers characteristically dogmatic and witty opinions on then-current 1920s topics, including the Irish Question, the Labour Party, the American people, and the rise of the 'Bureaucrats.' Notable episodes include Johnson attempting to play golf, engaging in a debate with Socrates, defending Mrs. Asquith’s memoirs, and mistaking the American prohibitionist 'Pussyfoot' Johnson for a relative. The work satirizes both the political landscape of the post-WWI era and the persistent tropes of Boswell's biographical method.}
CGV entry 9:85. Published as if by “Sam Pepys.” Portions were originally published in periodicals.
Newton presents a four-act dramatic work centered on the life and circle of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi. The text functions as a literary mosaic, using "genuine jewels" of historical conversation and "faultlessly Johnsonian" phrases to reconstruct pivotal 18th-century scenes. Newton admits his own contribution is "attenuated as a piece of thread," serving merely to string together authentic quotations and anecdotes reported by Boswell. The work dramatizes key milestones, including the 1755 completion of the Dictionary in Gough Square, the social heights of the Streatham circle under Thrale, and the eventual dissolution of that group following the death of Thrale and Piozzi's marriage to a "foreigner and a fiddler." The play concludes with Johnson's 1784 death in Bolt Court, emphasizing his "Christian resignation" and the "chasm" left by his passing. Newton aims to present these figures not as "shadows" but as "very real friends," capturing the "high tide of human existence" found in their discourse. Critics are generally favorable, viewing the dramatic adaptation as a successful, albeit loosely plotted, anthology of eighteenth-century conversation. The New York Times reviewer recommends the text to specialists for its delicate rendering of pathos and its adroit stringing of genuine conversational jewels upon a slender thread of original dialogue. Butcher, in the Chicago Daily Tribune, praises the presentation as a scholarly character study, drawing a favorable comparison to contemporary biographical dramas. Writing in the New Republic, P. L. recognizes the adroitness in weaving the authentic dialogue, but points out several minor departures from historical accuracy and argues that the subject's deep spiritual struggles remain unsuited for the stage. Rede's review in the New-York Tribune calls the biographical climax masterly and instinct with pathos, while his commentary in the Christian Science Monitor commends the rehabilitation of the central figure through the use of verbatim recorded speech. Scott (Freeman) approves of the creative synthesis of historical sources, noting that the depiction delivers melodramatic justice by framing the central female figure as vain and self-consequential within an idealized milieu. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews, as mainstream newspaper critics embrace the lively characterization and historical atmosphere, whereas academic reviewers question the theatrical viability of the underlying psychological drama.
Watch Your Thirst: A Dry Opera in Three Acts, with a Preface by Samuel Johnson
Wister presents a three-act satirical opera that burlesques American Prohibition through the lens of Greek mythology. Set on Mount Olympus and in a Grecian grove, the work depicts the immortal gods struggling under the restrictive "uplift" legislation of Juno, who seeks to "amend the Constitution" to ban all intoxicants. The text features a pseudo-eighteenth-century preface attributed to Johnson, dated April 1st, 1923, from "Eternity Place." In this introductory piece, the spectral Johnson delivers a characteristically acerbic "preface from me" despite having been "dead one hundred and thirty-nine years." He describes Wister's work as a "damnable" "hotchpot of the ancient Greek myths" that "will offend the delicacy of the decorous as perfectly as it will disgust the taste of the scholarly." Johnson further asserts that for a people who "can no longer trust itself to drink moderately, an Englishman's esteem must sink among the depths of the minus quantities." The play concludes with Jupiter discovering "hooch" on earth and bringing the bootlegger Ganymede to Olympus to serve as cupbearer, leading to the eventual "return to normalcy" and the repeal of Juno's "senseless and hurtful laws."
CGV entry 9:87. The preface, in "Johnsonese" and dated "Eternity Place, April 1, 1923," twits Americans about Prohibition.
Williams examines various poems written about Johnson during and after his lifetime, illustrating the critical and sometimes satirical poetic response to the great literary figure. Williams opens with a detailed analysis of James Sayer’s 1788 print and accompanying satirical verse, which criticizes his biographers, Boswell, Sir John Hawkins, and Courtenay, concluding with the ghost of Johnson offering Mrs. Piozzi payment to "let me rest." The article quotes Samuel Derrick and Charles Churchill to show contemporary praise and attack (Churchill accused Johnson of accepting a pension while damning the Whigs). Later posthumous works include Dr. Thomas Barnard’s witty lines and John Courtenay’s A Poetical Review, which offered a mixed, yet ultimately favorable, assessment. Finally, the author quotes scandalous verses attributed to Boswell and the sharp satire of Peter Pindar (John Wolcot), which lampooned Boswell's precise biographical methods.
CGV entry 9:88. On contemporary verse satires on Johnson.
Earl Percy Dines Abroad: A Boswellian Episode
Murdock presents a historical reimagining of a dinner held in London on April 24, 1778, hosted by Pasquale Paoli for Hugh, Earl Percy. The narrative centers on a literary stratagem devised by Boswell to reconcile Thomas Percy and Johnson following their heated dispute over the traveler Thomas Pennant. Murdock reconstructs the social interactions and dialogue of the evening using diaries and letters, particularly those of Thomas Hutchinson, to reflect the participants' views on the American Revolution and the Battle of Bunker Hill. The volume functions as a creative extension of the Life of Johnson, exploring Boswell's role as a social arbiter and his obsession with documenting the remarks of the great. It includes an account of the delivery of Johnson's letter praising Thomas Percy, intended to restore the latter's standing in the eyes of his noble patron. Murdock juxtaposes 18th-century literary rivalries with the political tensions of the late 1770s, featuring appearances by Reynolds, Topham Beauclerk, and James Oglethorpe.
Cochrane entry 494.
Thomas Nelson & Sons; Hodder & Stoughton
Midwinter: Certain Travellers in Old England
Buchan constructs a historical romance to account for Johnson’s total literary suspension and personal reticence regarding the years 1745 and 1746. Using a fictional editorial framework, Buchan presents a discovered manuscript attributed to Boswell that details Johnson’s involvement with Alastair Maclean, a Jacobite agent. The narrative follows Johnson as he abandons his role as a sedentary tutor at Chastlecote to pursue Claudia Grevel, a runaway ward entangled with the duplicitous Sir John Norreys. Johnson is portrayed as a figure of "sterling worth" and physical hardihood, eventually aiding Maclean in unmasking the treasonous Nicholas Kyd. Buchan emphasizes Johnson’s moral struggle between his loyalty to the "rightful line of Kings" and his commitment to the peace of the English commonalty. The text highlights a fictional friendship with Maclean that informs Johnson’s later stoicism and philosophical depth. Johnson eventually renounces military ambition to return to his "broad highway of humanity" and his nascent lexicographical labors in London. The critical reception of this historical romance centers largely on the daring fictionalization of Samuel Johnson during the Jacobite rising. The Birmingham Daily Gazette and the Yorkshire Post highlight the "congruous" transformation of the lexicographer into a "sentimentally romantic figure" and man of action, capable of "charging like a bull" or "fisticuffs in an inn" to protect the heroine. Bullett praises the author’s skillful integration of the character, noting that the depiction remains faithful to the "robust, London-centric personality" established by Boswell, while providing "credible Johnsonian aphorisms." Although The Queen suggests the narrative occasionally "stumbles" with inconsistent pacing, it concedes that the "solid shambling figure" of Johnson is a more complete and successful character than the original inventions of the plot. Critics generally agree that the dialogue, reconstructed from biographic passages and "decked out" with famous sayings, lends an air of reality to the romantic fiction, culminating in an emotional climax where Johnson’s reflections on sacrifice and the "harsh nature of love" provide a redeeming conclusion to the adventure.
CGV entry 9:90.
[Wilson], writing as Johnson, evaluates Wylie’s Jennifer Lorn and The Venetian Glass Nephew. The text commends the former for its knowledge of mankind and sustained brilliance, specifically noting the character Gerald as a study in polished cruelty. The critique of the latter work finds the Italian setting less successful than the earlier Persian scenes and objects to the blending of historical figures like Gozzi with fictional paraphrases of Casanova. [Wilson] argues that the copious imagery and supernatural plot of Wylie's second novel are better suited to poetry than prose. The letter concludes with a moral warning against "cynical indifference to virtue" and "reproachful" allegories.
CGV entry 9:91. Signed "Sam. Johnson" and composed in "Johnsonian" prose; a criticism of her novels.
CGV entry 9:91. Reprinted from The New Republic (1925).
An account of Mr. Rumble in William Hayley's Mausoleum, based on "a lost and hitherto unnoticed poem by Johnson."
CGV entry 9:92. In William Hayley's comedy 'The Mausoleum'.
The Judgement of Dr. Johnson: A Comedy in Three Acts
Chesterton dramatizes the intellectual and moral authority of Johnson during the American Revolution, placing him in a fictionalized Hebridean encounter and a subsequent London confrontation with American spies and republican sympathizers. The comedy centers on John Swallow Swift and Mary Swift, Virginian agents whose revolutionary fervor and adoption of French philosophical radicalism challenge traditional social hierarchies. Chesterton uses John Wilkes and the Marquise de Montmarat to represent the era’s libertinism and utopianism, contrasting their cynical or abstract views with Johnson’s insistence on the "domestic virtues" and the concrete reality of human fallenness. The play disputes the consistency of revolutionary "simplicity" by highlighting the hidden sacrifices of the faithful spouse, as Johnson characterizes Mary as a "Patient Grizel" who humors her husband's ideological "masquerade." Martindale’s foreword identifies the work as an "authentic heir" to the apocalyptic tradition, noting that Johnson’s final speeches invoke an "everlasting Right" that transcends shifting political forms. Chesterton admits to scattering real Johnsonian remarks among "inferior parodies" and altering historical chronologies to facilitate the plot, which culminates in Johnson securing a safe conduct for the Swifts despite their political transgressions. The work portrays Johnson as a "sublime ruin" and a "solitary obstacle" standing "dark against the dawn" of a democratic future he predicts will be plagued by disillusionment.
CGV entry 9:93. See also Radio Times (London), May 16, 1952, pages 6, 18.
In this satirical essay Knox applies biblical critical methods challenge the unified authorship of Boswell’s work, characterizing the age as one of "literary patchwork" and pseudepigraphy. He identifies three main sources: a Chronicler (C) providing objective biography, a Diary-author (W) recording intimate encounters, and a Dialogist (D) preserving logia in dramatic form. Knox disputes the reliability of Johnson’s social reputation, noting discrepancies between C’s portrayal of a "shy" recluse and W and D’s "master of social arts." He challenges the historicity of the 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides', labeling it a "fantasia" and a "myth" born of speculation. Knox concludes by ironically suggesting that while the historical facts of Johnson’s life are disputed, the "legend" remains an inspiration, despite his suspicion that the 'Dictionary' was written by amanuenses and 'Rasselas' was an anonymous skit.
CGV entry 9:94. Argues that the 'Life', Journals, etc., are apocryphal.
A play featuring Johnson. A contemporary calls it "an episodical play in six scenes. It covers a great deal of time, and is concerned with the life of Samuel Johnson. An insight into Dr. Johnson's character is given in this play, which has rather an ironical ending."
CGV entry 9:95. A play in six scenes, with Johnson as the chief character.
CGV entry 9:96. On Johnson and Thomas Osborne.
CGV entry 9:96. Reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post (1928).
Lucas presents an imaginary dialogue between Johnson and Shaw. Johnson’s ghost challenges Shaw’s assertion that Johnson "wasted his time" in taverns. Johnson defends his "elegant diversion" with "literary fools," arguing his presence and "the friend of Boswell" matter more than his works. He disputes the value of "propagating opinions," asserting "improvement had best begin at home." Lucas uses Johnson to critique the "Puritan" impulse to attack "innocent and intelligent enjoyment" in favor of political agitation.}
CGV entry 9:97. An imaginary conversation between Johnson and Bernard Shaw.
J. H. Nash for the Book Club of California
Mr. Strahan's Dinner Party: A Comedy in One Act, with Prologue and Epilogue
CGV entry 9:98. With a note by Edward F. O'Day. Reprinted from the Lichfield Mercury (1930).
CGV entry 9:98. Reprinted from the Lichfield Mercury (1930).
CGV entry 9:99. Published with Joseph Addison's 'The Trial of the Winebrewers'. Contains a fictitious dialogue between Johnson and a modern questioner.
The Great Cham: An Episode, Hitherto Unrecorded, in the Life of Dr. Johnson
Lawrence dramatizes the tension between Johnson’s roles as a literary authority and a benevolent protector of the indigent. The episode begins with Goldsmith presenting Johnson with the first copy of The Vicar of Wakefield as a token of gratitude for Johnson’s role in selling the manuscript. Their dialogue quickly devolves into a characteristic debate over the use of humor in fiction, specifically the "Whistonian controversy" passages, leading Goldsmith to exit in a huff. The scene shifts to Johnson’s household pensioners—blind Anna Williams, Poll Carmichael, Mrs. Desmoulins, and Robert Levett—who engage in a vitriolic, petty quarrel that highlights their dependency and lack of gratitude. A "Poor Woman" rescued from the streets serves as a moral foil, expressing sincere gratitude for Johnson’s Christian charity before departing to avoid the toxicity of the other inhabitants. The playlet concludes with a reconciliation between Johnson and Goldsmith, as Johnson reflects on his own inability to manage the "wrathful bulls" of his domestic life despite his public status as the "Great Cham" of literature.
Parodies: Remarks by Dr. Johnson on Certain Writers of the Present Age
This imitation of Boswell writing down the "Remarks by Dr. Johnson on Certain Writers of the Present Age" demonstrates Johnson's opinions on modern authors. Johnson dismisses Shaw's fame as owing to "curiosity," condemning his reform schemes as "licentious" despite his decent life, and critiques his characters for lacking passion and life. Johnson expresses contempt for Wells, whom he calls an "ignorant man" whose heroes have "much lust and little learning." The parody culminates in a violent exchange between Johnson and Boswell over Wells's aeronautics and Belloc's pamphlet on Cromwell, revealing Johnson's strong political biases and his ultimate affection for Boswell.
CGV entry 9:103. On a visit to Trumbull College, Yale University.
Strangers' Gold: An Historical Comedy in One Act
CGV entry 9:104. Johnson and Boswell in the Hebrides.
A Meeting Which Never Took Place: A Play in Half an Act
CGV entry 9:105. A play featuring Johnson and John Hunter.
The Diary of a Surgeon in the Year 1751–1752
CGV entry 9:106. Contains fictitious conversations of Johnson and others.
CGV entry 9:108. A comedy laid in the anteroom of Chesterfield's library.
A four-act play on Burney that dramatizes scenes from her life, focusing on her experiences around the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. It premiered in London in 1937 as "Joy Will Come Back," featuring actress Thea Holme as the lead. It was published in Three Plays, alongside "Suomi" and "The Brontës of Haworth," exploring historical figures and their literary worlds
This fictionalized dialogue, set in 1738, portrays the fellows of Simon Magus College debating the University's shifting loyalties and the perceived decay of traditional scholarship. Thewes, a "heavy man" and former Stuart sympathizer, disputes the "canting Whiggish talk" of his colleagues while fending off "baiting" from the younger, reform-minded Shillett. The conversation examines the "pupil-monger" system and the impact of Whig politics on academic appointments, with Shillett arguing that the King in Parliament should oversee the University as it does the "Mint or the Royal Navy." The chapter is supplemented by a "Note on Chapter V" which presents a dialogue between Johnson and Boswell. In this Note, Johnson praises the "cordiality" of the late Ackroyd while dismissing Shillett as a "pestilent Whig" and an "ignorant fellow." Johnson further disputes the capacity for Whigs to reform their own institutions, asserting that the intrusion of a radical like John Wilkes into a college would not diminish its "emoluments" or change its "statutes."
CGV entry 9:110.
The Raft and Socrates Asks Why: Two Conversations
This volume contains two dramatic dialogues reflecting on the moral and political stakes of the Second World War. The second piece, set in Elysium, features a conversation between Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Voltaire, and Johnson. Linklater presents Johnson as a "vast and sprawling figure" whose speech remains "explosive with puffing and grunting," reflecting the energy of his mind over the perfection of his manners. In the dialogue, Johnson disputes the notion that the world is incapable of learning, arguing instead that mankind is "eminently susceptible to instruction" and that the universal growth of knowledge is accompanied by an increase in sensibility. He offers specific appraisals of contemporary nations, expressing a high opinion of the United States’ progress in learning and authorship while maintaining a skeptical view of modern Britain’s neglect of religion and literature . Johnson defines the Allied cause not through simple patriotism—which he famously dismisses as a "scoundrel's refuge"—but as a necessary effort to stop "intolerable" abuses of power. He identifies conscience and ratiocination as the two champions of the moral sphere, asserting that the natural honesty of common soldiers represents the "voice of conscience" in the struggle against tyranny.
CGV entry 9:111. Johnson is a character in the latter conversation.
Creative Attitude toward the Classics: Dramatization of Macaulay's Essay on Boswell's Life of Johnson
CGV entry 9:113. A sonnet attacking his writing.
Another Letter to Lord Chesterfield from Samuel Johnson and Christopher Morley
Ni chuireann siad siól: nó, 'Poll bocht'
CGV entry 9:115. A one-act play in Irish, with Goldsmith and Johnson as characters. The title translates as "They sow no seed," or "Poor Poll."
This volume of 128 poems uses light verse to examine the "humors of literature and literary characters" alongside vignettes of academic life. Bevington devotes a primary section to Johnson, interpreting his reactions to nature and social ritual. The title poem reconstructs a "nostalgic quest" to a "quiet waterfall" mentioned in a letter to Piozzi, where Johnson found the water simply "doing as it used to do." Other pieces commemorate Johnson's "mighty thirst" for tea—allegedly reaching a "twenty-seventh cup"—and his preference for driving in a post-chaise with a "pretty woman" over his actual duties. The collection further explores 18th-century figures including Boswell, Lord Chesterfield, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, often focusing on their domestic lives or specific eccentricities. Bevington adopts a "classic time" aesthetic, contrasting Johnson’s "tranquil" and "orderly" view of nature with the later Romantic "deluge at Lodore." The work functions as a poetic commentary on literary biography, using salient quotations from primary correspondence to anchor its satirical but "affectionate" observations on figures like Donne, Milton, and Walpole.
CGV entry 9:116. Contains some poems on Johnson.
Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector: Being a Light-Hearted Collection of Recently Reveal'd Episodes in the Career of the Great Lexicographer Narrated as from the Pen of James Boswell
Nine stories feature Johnson as a criminal "detector," using his "quickness and accuracy of perceptions" to resolve puzzles involving historical figures and events between 1763 and 1784. Narrated by Boswell, the tales employ a pastiche of eighteenth-century prose to depict Johnson and Boswell engaging with contemporary phenomena, such as the Cock Lane ghost, the "Flying Highwayman," and the eccentricities of Lord Monboddo. While the solutions and specific criminal circumstances are invented, De la Torre bases each narrative on extensive research into Johnsonian biography and historical records, such as the disappearance of the Great Seal of England and the elopement of Fanny Plumbe. The volume includes an "Advertisement to the Reader" and "Notes on Historical Background" that distinguish historical fact from the author's fictional "Johnsonized" embroideries. De la Torre seeks to "write up" Johnson by placing him in sensational situations where he maintains the "common sense, humour, and sense of human dignity" recorded in his actual life. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics celebrating the collection as an entertaining tour de force that successfully catches the spirit and atmosphere of the eighteenth century. Reviewers focus primarily on the ingenious transformation of the central historical figures into a detective team resembling Holmes and Watson, while praising the successful imitation of period prose. Norton's review in NYTBR lauds the successful blending of authentic biographical quotations with original prose, noting the pastiche is so seamless that members of the literary circle might fail to identify where the author uses the historical record and when she invents. Writing in the New York Herald Tribune, Krutch commends the volume for its atmospheric conversation and its challenge to traditional biographical perceptions. The unsigned review in Newsweek highlights the high artistic nature and historical authenticity of the stories, crediting decades of period study for the seamless incorporation of real anecdotes. Strong, in The Spectator, welcomes the volume as an agreeable entertainment, though he notes some minor reservations regarding the blending of fact with fiction. In the Chicago Daily Tribune, Guilfoil enthusiastically praises the analytical characterization and probability of the plots. Bain, writing in The Tribune, judges the yarns readable and clever, despite noting that the dialogue occasionally lacks the full fire of the historical figure's conversational thunderbolts. The review in The Queen admires the admirable atmosphere but cautions that the pert style might shock traditionalists.
CGV entry 9:117. The author's real name is Mrs. George McCue. Portions were originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Reviews: Bruce Bain, The Tribune (Blackpool), April 9, 1948; T. J. Binyon, TLS, no. 4334 (April 1986): 454; Kelsey Guiffoil, Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1946; Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, November 30, 1985; Joseph Wood Krutch, New York Herald Tribune, September 29, 1946; Newsweek, September 16, 1946; Dan S. Norton, New York Times, September 22, 1946; L. A. G. Strong, The Spectator 180, no. 6248 (1948): 386–; The Gazette (Montreal), October 5, 1946; The Queen, March 31, 1948.
Portrait the Second: Boswell Meets Johnson
A Dish of Tea: A Derbyshire Play in One Act
CGV entry 9:120. Undated, published before 1950.
CGV entry 9:122. Reprinted from the Saturday Review (1951).
Still Raise for Good the Supplicating Voice
CGV entry 9:124. Johnson's lines from 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' set to music by Mrs. Ruby K. de Rodger for the Johnson Society of the River Plate.
Lives of the Poets: If Dr. Johnson Had Lived Rather Longer
"The second of two biographical documents contributed by Mr. Edmund Blunden, their discoverer (of which the first appeared last week)." An imaginary life of Coleridge in Johnsonian style.
CGV entry 9:126. Imaginary lives of Coleridge and Wordsworth. In two parts.
Hart uses iambic verse and periodic choral lyrics to dramatize pivotal moments in Johnson's life, beginning with his departure from Oxford and concluding with his deathbed prayers. The narrative explores Johnson's struggle with "sloth" and the "dread" of losing his intellect, his marriage to Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, and the failed pedagogical experiment at Edial. Hart depicts Johnson's London circle, including his relationships with Richard Savage, David Garrick, and the Thrale family, while emphasizing his transition from a "prosaic man" to a poetic theme. Specific scenes detail the composition of the Dictionary, the rejection of Lord Chesterfield’s patronage, and the 1773 tour of the Hebrides with James Boswell. The work characterizes Johnson as a figure of "Christian widowhood" and intellectual "hardihood" whose heart remained "greater than his mind."
CGV entry 9:127. A play in 11 scenes.
Surveys parodies of Johnson's style. Roberts dismisses early attempts (Thornton, Campbell) as crude accumulations of hard words. He notes Johnson's praise for Aikin's imitation capturing sentiment and diction. Roberts highlights Young's Criticism of the Elegy and Maclaurin's verses as more successful contemporary parodies, along with later examples like Barrett's The Heroine. Roberts concludes successful parody requires deep empathy, capturing spirit not just mannerisms, a quality rare among Johnson's imitators.
De la Torre presents eight historical mystery stories featuring Johnson as a "detector of crime and chicane" and Boswell as his narrator and foil. Set between 1770 and 1784, the collection includes front matter titled "Proem: To the Candid Reader," where de la Torre defines her "probable fictions" as centering on real personalities and events of the Johnsonian age. Individual cases involve authentic figures such as Dr. Charles Burney, Horace Walpole, and the singer Giovanni Battista Viotti. Stories focus on historical curiosities and period details, such as the Orloff diamond, the mechanical workings of St. Paul's clock, and the "Black Stone" of the alchemist Dr. John Dee. De la Torre employs "ratiocination and knowledge of the world" to resolve dilemmas ranging from tontine-related murders to military court-martials and Jacobite conspiracies. While de la Torre uses actual names and places, she acknowledges that her narrative often displaces historical chronologies—such as placing Johnson and Boswell together in Bath—to satisfy the "convenience of a plot". The text concludes with brief authorial notes identifying the factual kernels, such as Newgate Calendar entries or Chambers' Book of Days, that inspired each tale.
CGV entry 9:129. Fictional stories with Johnson as hero.
Berkeley and Dr. Johnson: An Imaginary Dialogue
Carr reconstructs the intellectual confrontation between Berkeley and Johnson regarding the existence of matter. Berkeley challenges the validity of Johnson's physical "refutation" of immaterialism, arguing that the resistance felt when kicking a stone is merely a perception within the mind rather than a quality of an external substance. Johnson maintains that such sensations inform the subject of a "real existing stone" that persists independently of the observer. Berkeley disputes the existence of an unperceived and imperceptible "matter" acting as a cause for sensible qualities like color, weight, and hardness. Johnson avoids further metaphysical speculation by appealing to "common sense," asserting that the stone's presence is a known fact, and "there’s an end on’t." The dialogue illustrates Johnson’s characteristic rejection of ingenious arguments that contradict the perceived reality of the physical world.
CGV entry 9:130. On Johnson's "refutation" of Berkeley.
In this novel for young readers, Beatty and Beatty present a historical narrative centered on Richard Larkin, a fifteen-year-old from the Pennsylvania Colony who arrives in 1752 London and becomes a witness to the Jacobite Elibank Plot. Johnson appears early in the text, rescuing Larkin from footpads near St. Sepulchre's Church and directing him to employment at the Seven Stars tavern. The authors characterize Johnson through his 'whimsical and melancholy temper,' physical tics, and 'fierce' penchant for nocturnal perambulations and charity to homeless children. Later, Larkin seeks counsel at Gough Square, where Johnson details the 'melancholy history' of the House of Stuart and the 'gross German swine' of the House of Hanover. While Johnson identifies as a Jacobite, he expresses concern over the 'hare-brained scheme' led by Alexander Murray. The narrative integrates other historical figures, including William Hogarth and David Garrick, while using period dialogue re-created from eighteenth-century documents. Authors' notes verify that Johnson's depiction rests on historical accounts of his late-night habits and his role as a 'lexicographer' developing his dictionary during this period.
CGV entry 9:131. A novel for young readers with Johnson as a character.
Wain synthesizes historical vignettes and lyrical sequences to examine the human condition amidst twentieth-century totalitarianism and industrialization. Johnson serves as a central figure representing the endurance of the "night-self" and the necessity of compassion. Wain recreates the 1712 journey of the young Johnson to London to receive the "royal touch" from Queen Anne, presenting the event as a foundational moment where an "ancient dogged grace" is transmitted to the future lexicographer. This experience of suffering and "magic rain" informs Johnson's later intellectual life, balancing "bookish urban sight" with a "saving root" of pity. Wain further explores Johnson’s 1773 tour of the Hebrides with Boswell, framing the journey as a quest for "antiquated life" and spiritual wisdom in the face of approaching death. Boswell appears as a "progressive" counterpoint to the searching, "sombre art" of Johnson. Wain positions Johnson's struggle with madness and mortality as a precursor to the modern individual's fight against "homogenization."
CGV entry 9:132.
Boswell's Original Preface, Enlisting the Aid of Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 9:133. A fictional piece.
Cochrane entry 595. An imaginary dialogue written in a satirical style, depicting a conversation between Boswell and Johnson about Johnson's early biographers.
CGV entry 9:134. An opera with libretto by Jill Watt and music by Richard Stoker, first produced in London on July 4, 1967. Described by E. Brophy in 'Opera', volume 18 (July 1967), pages 543-546.
The author examines the textual history and aggressive tone of Jenyns's mock-epitaph on Johnson. While standard editions print a six-line version, this study identifies a ten-line variant in the Gentleman's Magazine (1786) and a manuscript version in a presentation copy of Cole’s Life of Jenyns. These expanded versions include caustic references to Boswell and Piozzi as "retailers of his wit." The author argues that the full ten-line poem, which concludes with a vulgarism, explains the extreme virulence of Boswell’s own poetic retort and highlights the contemporary backlash against early Johnsonian biography.
CGV entry 9:136. An imaginary addition to the 'Lives of the Poets', with Johnson describing his own life.
CGV entry 9:137. An adaptation of Johnson's prayer for his last communion, with music by Sir William Harris. Composed for a Johnson service in Lichfield Cathedral on November 24, 1968.
The Choice of Life: A Poem Addressed to Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 9:138. First printed by Herman W. Liebert for The Johnsonians.
CGV entry 9:139. A children's book with illustrations by David Levine.
Parodies and Imitations of Johnson in the Eighteenth Century
Kenney surveys the parodies and imitations of Johnson in the eighteenth century, distinguishing between playful imitation and satirical distortion. Parodists frequently targeted Johnson's elevated diction, long sentences, and parallelism, often missing the complexity of his thought. Notable examples include Campbell's savage Lexiphanes and Barbauld's good-natured mock-Rambler essay, which Johnson praised for imitating the sentiment as well as the diction. The most popular form of parody involved stringing together polysyllabic words, a technique exemplified by Colman's satirical mock proposals for a dictionary.
An Evening with Mrs. Thrale: Her Life, Times, Friends and Loves
CGV entry 9:142. A two-act play presented September 1978 at Columbia University. See Johnsonian News Letter 38 (Sept. 1978): 3.
A radio play about Francis Barber, produced on BBC radio in 1982.
CGV entry 9:146.
CGV entry 9:147. See Johnsonian News Letter, volume 43 (March-June 1983), pages 4-5.
CGV entry 9:148. A dramatic presentation. See Johnsonian News Letter, volume 43 (March-June 1983), page 8.
CGV entry 9:150. Johnson is the central character. See comments in Johnsonian News Letter, volume 43 (March-June, 1983), pages 6-7.
CGV entry 9:151. A satire of Johnson's "ponderous" prose.
Almighty God, Who Art the Giver of All Wisdom
CGV entry 9:152. Johnson's prayer on "engaging in politics with H[amilton]," November 1765, set to music by Bernard Rose. First performed at the Johnson memorial service in Lichfield Cathedral, 15 July 1984.
Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale: An Imaginary Monologue to Be Read or Acted on Mrs. Thrale's Own Diaries and Reminiscences of Dr. Johnson
Danziger constructs an imaginary monologue depicting Hester Thrale (Piozzi) preparing for her eightieth birthday party in January 1821. Drawing primarily from Thraliana and James Clifford's research, the work presents Thrale reflecting on her life's "joys and tragedies," including her marriage to Henry Thrale, her friendship with Samuel Johnson, and her true love for Gabriele Piozzi. The narrative dramatizes her struggle against social "tittle-tattle" and her role as a 18th-century literary celebrity. Danziger seeks to capture the "fascinating enigma" of Thrale's character through a "wicked distribution of home truths."
CGV entry 9:154. On the Annesley versus Anglesey law suit, 1743. One of her many stories featuring Johnson as "detective".
Reed presents an illustrated, creative, and informative alphabetical taxonomy of Samuel Johnson's life, literary works, and circle. The article is a series of drawings that integrate large capital letters with portraits of key figures, including Johnson, Boswell, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Edmund Burke. It also illustrates significant works and concepts such as Rasselas and Irene. The piece provides a visual and allusive summary of the Johnsonian world.
CGV entry 9:155. See Johnsonian News Letter, volume 44 (March-December 1984), page 7.
'It Is Wonderful, Sir, Comma, How Rare a Quality Good Humor Is in Life, Full Stop'
Wordsworth outlines a poetic theory favoring "the real language of men" and "incidents of common life" over the "arbitrary and capricious" habits of "poetic diction." Wordsworth disputes the necessity of "false refinement" and "outrageous stimulation," arguing instead for the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" tempered by metrical regularity. Addressing potential critics, Wordsworth focuses on Johnson to illustrate the distinction between "prosaisms" and genuine poetry. Wordsworth uses Johnson’s stanza—"I put my hat upon my head"—as a fair specimen of "contemptible" matter rather than a failure of style. Wordsworth argues the "difference" between such trivial verse and admired simplicity arises because the "matter expressed in Johnson’s stanza is contemptible" and lacks "sense," neither originating in nor exciting "sane state[s] of feeling." Wordsworth challenges the "false criticism" popularized by Johnson’s parodies, insisting that poetic merit depends upon a "worthy purpose" and "good sense" rather than a specialized vocabulary.
CGV entry 10/1:1.
Wordsworth delineates the difficulties inherent in establishing the reputation of original poetry, arguing that great authors must create the taste by which they are enjoyed. He directs significant criticism toward Johnson for several perceived scholarly and critical errors. Wordsworth disputes Johnson’s assertion in the Lives of the Poets that Milton’s Paradise Lost was well-received upon publication, citing the higher sales of contemporary works by Cowley and Waller to prove a "paucity of readers" for Milton. He further attacks Johnson for sharing the "flippant insensibility" of Steevens regarding Shakespeare’s sonnets and for his "exertions to make it an object of contempt" the Reliques of Percy. Wordsworth characterizes Johnson’s selection of poets for the deceptive "Trade" collection as including "worthless" writers while excluding Spenser and Chaucer. He challenges Johnson’s "gross mistake" regarding the popularity of Thomson’s Seasons and dismisses Johnson’s preference for the "vicious style" of the eighteenth century over genuine "poetic beauties." Throughout, Wordsworth identifies Johnson as a primary source of the "prejudices of false refinement" that hinder the reception of original genius.
CGV entry 10/1:2. A longer and harsher treatment of Johnson than in the 1800 Preface.
Literaturgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 1, Geschichte der englischen Literatur von der Wiederherstellung des Königthums bis in die zweite Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1660–1770
Hettner identifies Johnson as the central figure of mid-eighteenth-century English letters, characterizing him as a "literary dictator" whose influence stemmed from "monumental earnestness" and "rigid morality." The text emphasizes Johnson’s role in codifying the English language through his Dictionary and his effort to stabilize literary taste against "French influence." Hettner highlights Johnson’s "deeply melancholy" nature and his "sturdy independence," which led him to reject patronage in favor of a "hard-won" professional life. While acknowledging the "heavy, Latinate" quality of his prose, Hettner argues that Johnson’s Lives of the Poets represents the "ripest fruit" of his critical legacy, despite his "limited sympathy" for the "purely imaginative" aspects of poetry. The author notes that Johnson’s "common sense" and "authoritative judgment" created a "school of thought" that dominated his era, influencing figures such as Boswell and Goldsmith, and establishing a "moral standard" that defined the transition toward the late-century return to "nature and truth."
CGV entry 10/1:3. Appears in Book 3, Chapter 3, Section 2. A hostile account.
Campbell defends Henry Fielding against Johnson's famous conversational insults. The author argues that Johnson's branding of Fielding as a blockhead and barren rascal during a dinner with Boswell was a splenetic effusion rather than a settled critical judgment. Campbell highlights Johnson's genuine appreciation for Amelia and his praise for Fielding's characterizations in correspondence with Frances Burney to illustrate a more complex relationship between the two writers.
CGV entry 10/1:5. Argues that Johnson's "loose talk" should not be taken seriously and his higher opinion is found in his writings.
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day
Saintsbury examines the critical preparation and subsequent contributions of Johnson, establishing him as the dominant figure of eighteenth-century orthodoxy . The analysis traces the development of Johnson’s Tory-inflected critical opinions to his early life and environment, emphasizing his characteristic "transcendental scepticism" and "stalk of carle hemp." Saintsbury underscores Johnson’s adherence to established creeds while maintaining independence from mere formulas. The narrative highlights Johnson's insensibility to certain nature-based poetic elements, likely due to physical limitations like near sight. Saintsbury identifies the Lives of the Poets as the zenith of Johnson’s critical achievement, embodying a robust, reasoned approach to literature.
Dr. Samuel Johnsons Verhältnis zur französischen Literatur
On Johnson’s engagement with French literature, a relationship governed by his reactionary stance against 18th-century intellectual movements. Johnson adhered to the literary classicism mediated by France, championing 17th-century writers while opposing his contemporaries. He valued the critical authority of Boileau and modeled his moral essays on La Bruyère. Conversely, he expressed disdain for the French populace, viewing his later journey to Paris as confirming existing prejudices regarding their character. He noted a duality: disrespect for the people contrasting with profound esteem for their literature, a contradiction rooted in the era's critical theory that divorced literary art from national character. The work also details Johnson's polemics against the era's philosophers, including Voltaire and Rousseau, critiquing their influence on politics and letters, though noting specific structural parallels in his work, such as Rasselas. This critical stance was consistently focused on combating perceived French threats to English moral and social order.
English Metrists in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Omond analyzes the trajectory of English prosody, positioning Johnson as the primary defender of a syllabic "orthodoxy" that dominated eighteenth-century thought. Omond identifies Johnson's insistence on the "purity" of the iambic measure and his rejection of "triple time" as a defining limitation of early metric theory. Critiquing the "mechanical" nature of Johnson's rules, Omond observes that Johnson viewed deviations from alternating stress as "discord" rather than legitimate variation. The text highlights how Johnson's Dictionary and Lives of the Poets reinforced a system where "the rationale of verse is equality," specifically equality of syllables. Omond disputes this rigid framework, arguing that Johnson’s influence delayed the scholarly acceptance of "substitution" and rhythmic flexibility. By examining Johnson's specific critiques of Milton and Cowley, Omond demonstrates the friction between Johnson’s prescriptive laws and the actual practice of English poets. "His authority was great, and his dogmas were long accepted" as the standard for correct versification.
A History of English Criticism; Being the English Chapters of A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe
Saintsbury examines the critical preparation and contributions of Johnson, establishing him as the dominant figure of eighteenth-century orthodoxy. The analysis traces the development of Johnson’s Tory-inflected critical opinions to his early life and environment, emphasizing his characteristic "transcendental scepticism" and "stalk of carle hemp." Saintsbury underscores Johnson’s adherence to established creeds while maintaining independence from mere formulas. The narrative highlights Johnson's insensibility to certain nature-based poetic elements, likely linked to physical limitations like near sight. Saintsbury identifies the Lives of the Poets as the zenith of Johnson’s critical achievement, embodying a robust, reasoned approach to literature.
Dr. Johnson, Sentimentalism and Romanticism?
Teggart defends the critical genius of Johnson, advocating for a shift away from nineteenth-century aesthetic criticism toward Johnson’s cool, manly logic. He disputes the characterization of Johnson as a surly despot or a narrow neoclassic, noting that Johnson often appealed from learning to nature and rejected the unities in Shakespeare. Teggart identifies didacticism as the basis of Johnson’s criticism, where poetry must serve as a moral philosophy and a tool for teaching the art of living. While acknowledging Johnson’s occasional laziness, personal prejudices, and lack of appreciation for the sensory details of nature, Teggart emphasizes his independence, sanity, and honesty. He concludes that Johnson remains the tutelary genius of the English people, representing a plain man’s view that poetry must remain intelligible to the general public.
Dr. Samuel Johnsons Stellung zu den literarischen Fragen seiner Zeit
Brown's compilation serves as a concordance to Johnson's aesthetic thought, drawing from his complete written canon—including The Rambler, Lives of the Poets, and recorded conversations from figures like Boswell and Piozzi. The volume is alphabetically organized into Principles of Criticism (abstract concepts like "Nature" and "Imitation") and Authors and Works (specific judgments on figures like Shakespeare). To illustrate the evolution of Johnson's views, entries under subject headings are arranged chronologically, with asterisks distinguishing spoken opinions from formal written criticism. In the Introduction, Brown challenges the traditional view of Johnson as a rigid neo-classicist, arguing that his reliance on nature and experience positioned him with the century's developing aesthetic forces, though he applied these principles conservatively. The work aims for completeness, demonstrating that Johnson's critical tenets were largely established by the time The Rambler was published. Part One, "Principles of Criticism," functions as an exhaustive, alphabetically arranged compendium of Johnson’s aesthetic and theoretical axioms, addressing subjects from the "Aim of Writing" and "Ancient Writers" to "Versification" and "Wit" to illustrate his foundational commitment to "nature" and "general human nature" as the ultimate courts of literary judicature. Part Two, "Authors and Works," provides a similarly organized survey of Johnson’s specific evaluative judgments, arguing through accumulated evidence that his critiques of figures like Milton, Pope, and Shakespeare are not merely products of neoclassical orthodoxy but are rigorous applications of his psychological and moral standards to the historical reality of individual genius. The Introduction addresses the historical milieu of mid-eighteenth-century letters, arguing that Johnson’s criticism served as a vital, rationalizing force that paradoxically both defended classical humanism and facilitated the disintegration of rigid neoclassical dogmatism through a direct appeal to human experience. The Preface identifies the methodology of the work, examining the compiler's intent to preserve Johnson’s "vigour of expression" while distinguishing between his deliberate written pronouncements and his more "lax" conversational dicta. Most reviews are positive. Bailey, in TLS, praises the volume for categorizing the subject's critical pronouncements and reasserting his stature as a critic who appealed directly to life and experience. Chapman's review in RES calls the digest a work worth doing and well done, praising its businesslike execution but warning that students might use it to substitute for the primary texts. In the Yale Review, Pottle frames the compilation as an essential tool for scholars and libraries, though he critiques the lack of a detailed index and the omission of non-literary figures. Crane (Modern Philology) commends the work as unusually intelligent and useful, but he disputes the introductory essay's historical claims regarding a break with neo-classicism, a theoretical reservation echoed by Havens in Modern Language Notes. Havens acknowledges the book as the most elaborate presentation of its kind but attributes its thesis to a rigid misconception of the neo-classic movement. Frost, in SEL, characterizes the reissued text as a long-familiar dictionary-arranged anthology that displays a characteristic wit regarding bad poetry. In the Saturday Review of Literature, Tinker asserts the importance of the text as a reference tool that correctly redirects readers back to the subject's own writings. Finally, an unsigned notice in The Spectator highlights the collection's utility for pundits seeking structured authority on diverse literary and historical topics.
Brown provides a systematic compilation and interpretation of Johnson’s critical thought, divided into general principles and specific opinions on authors and works. The introduction challenges the characterization of Johnson as a mere defender of neo-classical dogma, arguing instead that his criticism is grounded in a "direct appeal to experience" and general human nature rather than blind reverence for antiquity. Brown explains that Johnson’s aesthetic judgments are inextricably linked to his religious and moral convictions, seeking "the betterment of the human race" through literature that both pleases and instructs. The work traces Johnson’s transition from early periodical hack-work to the "mellowness of utterance" found in later biographies. It highlights his independence from contemporary fads, such as the school of sensibility, and his role in disintegrating the "tradition of dogma" by testing literature against the "Supreme Court of Literary Judicature"—life itself. While acknowledging Johnson’s "critical blind spots" in prosody and Greek drama, Brown emphasizes his enduring relevance as a "great Christian humanist" whose sturdy common sense serves as a corrective to modern literary excesses. The text includes an extensive index of terms and authors, marking conversational remarks with asterisks to distinguish them from formal written pronouncements. Part One, "Principles of Criticism," addresses the fundamental theoretical tenets of literature, asserting that the primary end of writing is to instruct by pleasing while emphasizing a direct appeal to nature. It argues for the supremacy of human experience over the "arbitrary edicts" of classical rules, advocating for a critical system grounded in reason and the universal, permanent aspects of human life. Part Two, "Opinions of Authors and Works," applies these principles to specific literary figures, prioritizing original invention and moral utility in its evaluative framework. It highlights how particular writers, such as Shakespeare and Milton, either fulfill or fail the standard of "general nature," often favoring those who successfully bridge the gap between imaginative novelty and recognizable truth.
Crane commends Brown's compilation as "unusually intelligent and useful," praising the accuracy of texts and the convenience of the chronological arrangement. However, Crane disputes the introductory essay's claim that Johnson's appeal to "Nature" over "rules" signifies a "break with neo-classicism." Crane argues that such an appeal remains the "distinguishing feature" of orthodox neo-classicism shared by Boileau and Pope. Crane asserts that Brown fails to thoroughly illuminate Johnson’s historical position relative to earlier critics. Despite these theoretical reservations, Crane labels the work a "rich anthology" for students of aesthetic theory.
CGV entry 10/1:14. Review by R. S. Crane of the book by Joseph Epes Brown.
Havens analyzes Brown's compilation of Johnson's critical opinions, noting it facilitates scholarship by organizing oral and written remarks under thematic heads. While Brown accurately categorizes material into "Principles of Criticism" and "Authors and Works," Havens identifies incomplete cross-references and the necessity of summarizing longer essays. Havens challenges Brown's assertion that Johnson was not a neo-classicist, attributing this to a rigid misconception of the movement. He suggests the introduction lacks the depth found in Houston's scholarship but acknowledges the work as the "most elaborate presentation" of an English writer's critical utterances.}
CGV entry 10/1:14.
Pottle reviews Brown’s digest of Johnsonian criticism, framing it as an essential tool for public libraries and scholars. The reviewer commends the consolidation of dicta previously scattered across multiple indexes but finds the scope unnecessarily restricted to primary literary works. Pottle challenges the omission of Johnson’s views on figures such as Adam Smith and Pascal. Additionally, the review critiques the lack of a detailed index, which hinders access to the mass of useful information contained within the beautifully printed volume.
CGV entry 10/1:14. Review by F. A. Pottle of the book by Joseph Epes Brown.
Chapman calls Brown's digest a work worth doing and well done, gathering Johnson’s scattered critical dicta into two alphabetical series. He praises the execution as businesslike and free from pedantry, but notes the one danger: students might substitute the Digest for the Lives of the Poets.
CGV entry 10/1:14. Review by R. W. Chapman of the book by Joseph Epes Brown.
This review discusses Brown's Critical Opinions as part of a movement to redirect readers from Boswell's biography back to Johnson's own writings. Tinker asserts the book's importance as a reference tool, compiling Johnson's critical dicta on topics and authors for quick consultation, which he claims is a great value. He notes Brown attempts to summarize Johnson's critical principles in the preface, though Tinker argues that applying principles, such as imitating nature, inevitably reduces criticism to personal taste.
CGV entry 10/1:14. Review by C. B. Tinker of the book by Joseph Epes Brown.
Bailey reviews Brown's Critical Opinions of Samuel Johnson, which categorizes Johnson's critical pronouncements. The book confirms Johnson's limitations in judging poetry (especially Milton's music and nature) and his contempt for romantic love, but reasserts his stature as a critic. Bailey praises Johnson's appeal to "common sense and common honesty" and his direct appeal to experience and life, citing his defense of tragi-comedy in The Rambler as an example. The review notes the American origin of much Johnson scholarship.
CGV entry 10/1:15. On his criticism.
Babbitt examines the neo-classical distrust of the imagination as exemplified by Johnson. This hostility stems from a preference for intuitive good sense and a historical recoil from the extravagances of medieval fiction and romances of chivalry. While philosophers like Descartes and Spinoza reject imagination as an obstacle to abstract reasoning, Johnson views it as a "licentious and vagrant faculty" that threatens centrality of point of view. Babbitt argues that Johnson fails to adopt the Aristotelian conception of representative fiction, which seeks truth through illusion, and instead sets imagination and reason in sharp opposition. Johnson's rejection of the "classical myths" and the pastoral tradition reflects a fear that "more or less innocent illusion" might convert into "dangerous delusion." Babbitt notes that Johnson anticipates modern psychology in his analysis of the solitary "dreamer" who retreats into a "land of chimeras," yet suggests that Johnson's emphasis on outer activity neglects the potential for disciplined, humanistic imagination to commune with reality.
The Problem of the Imagination: Dr. Johnson
Babbitt analyzes Johnson's "full neo-classic suspicion" of the imagination, which he characterizes as a "licentious and vagrant faculty." This distrust stems from Johnson's personal struggle with the "extravagant fictions" of his youth and a religious conviction that fiction should not interfere with "ponderous" eternal truths. Babbitt distinguishes between the philosophical use of imagination as "decaying sense" and the Aristotelian conception of "representative fiction," arguing that Johnson failed to reconcile truth with illusion. The text explores Johnson's dread of solitude and "invisible riot of mind," aligning his views with modern psychological concepts of "autistic" thinking. Babbitt concludes that while Johnson rightly attacked the false verisimilitude of the three unities, his mechanical opposition of reason and imagination left him unable to appreciate the "magic of genuine illusion" that the later romantic movement would champion by simply inverting his rationalist priorities.
CGV entry 10/1:16. See also F. B. Kaye in Philological Quarterly, volume 7 (April 1928), page 178.
Legouis identifies Samuel Johnson as the definitive representative of the final phase of classicism, characterized by a transition from aesthetic rules to moral and intellectual doctrine. He argues that Johnson maintains the classical ideal through a robust, common-sense rationalism that rejects both the "Gothic" and the emerging sentimentalism of his era. The text highlights Johnson's role as a linguistic legislator through the Dictionary and his function as a moralist in The Rambler and Rasselas. Legouis concludes that Johnson’s authoritative, Latinized style and his critical judgment in Lives of the Poets preserved classical standards against the encroaching Romantic movement, establishing a period of "doctrinal" stability.
Literary Criticism in the Age of Johnson
Johnson occupies a central position in the transition from neo-classical dogma to a broader historical rationalism. Rejecting the absolute authority of a priori rules, Johnson advocates for principles derived from a "scientific analysis" of human nature and reason. While he maintains a strong commitment to correctness and "generalized nature," his criticism exhibits a "sturdy independence" from the narrow codes of the Augustans. Johnson dismisses the unities of time and place as "accidental prescriptions of authority" and defends tragi-comedy on the grounds that it "exhibits the real state of sublunary nature." Despite these innovations, his reliance on reason as the sole criterion for literary merit occasionally leads to an "incompetent judge" of imaginative qualities, exemplified by his "sweeping condemnation" of Milton's Lycidas. Johnson's critical legacy reflects a "complicated struggle" between unimpassioned reason and the emerging reassertion of emotion and imagination.
CGV entry 10/1:18. See pages 92–106. A second edition was published in 1953. See also R. S. Crane in Philological Quarterly, volume 10 (April 1931), pages 177-178.
Samuel Johnson als Kritiker im Lichte von Pseudo-Klassizismus und Romantik
The author's inaugural dissertation, Munich, 1930.
Christiani categorizes Johnson’s literary, moral, and religious pronouncements using the binary frameworks of pseudo-classicism and romanticism. The study identifies Johnson’s insistence on reason as a pseudo-classical trait while interpreting his reliance on imagination and his acknowledgement of reason's limitations as unconscious romantic inclinations. Crane criticizes the work for its mechanical application of oversimplified categories and its failure to validate the historical or scholarly utility of such labels in interpreting Johnson’s criticism.
CGV entry 10/1:19. Review by R. S. Crane of the dissertation by Ellen Sigyn Christiani.
Powell argues that Thomas Tyrwhitt initially believed the Rowley poems were authentic. Evidence includes Tyrwhitt's notes in his Chaucer edition, where he cites "Rowley," and correspondence in George Catcott's Letter Book confirming his conviction and the poems' purchase. The edition was rushed to press from copies before Tyrwhitt's visit to Bristol in August 1776. This visit, three months after Johnson’s, was the turning point, leading to Tyrwhitt's skepticism. The poem's demonstrated imposture was finally published in his 1778 Appendix and conclusively argued in his 1782 Vindication.
CGV entry 10/1:20. On Johnson and Chatterton.
Stephen outlines Johnson's classical criticism principles concerning poetic form and content. Johnson insisted on "known measures" and "uniform structure" to produce pleasure, defending rhyme as an aid to memory, and demanding that poetic diction be a "noble 'dress of thought'" uncontaminated by vulgar language. Regarding content, Johnson required sincerity, opposing artificiality and lamenting the insincerity of pastoral poetry. His final dictum on poetry's essential content was that its purpose must be moral, elevating the understanding and reaffirming spiritual truths. Stephen applies these criteria to modern poets, criticizing their "lax and lawless versification," lack of memorable lines, and occasional "outlandish imagery."
CGV entry 10/1:21.
Housman distinguishes between the "artifice of versification" and the "peculiar function" of poetry, which is "to transfuse emotion" rather than transmit thought. Housman critiques 18th-century verse as a period of "sham poetry" dominated by the "tyranny of the intellect" and a "pompous and poverty-stricken" poetic diction. While acknowledging Samuel Johnson's "unrivalled" achievement in satire and the "perfect" structure of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Housman asserts that such writing failed to fulfill the true nature of poetry. He argues that Johnson’s "unlucky" dismissal of Lycidas stems from an inability to recognize poetry of an "alien strain," preferring the "intellectually frivolous" discovery of resemblances found in 17th-century "wit". Housman identifies Christopher Smart, William Cowper, and William Blake as the true poets of the age.
CGV entry 10/1:23. The Leslie Stephen Lecture for 1933.
Johnson's Understanding of Chaucer's Metrics
Hooker examines Johnson’s notoriously low estimation of Chaucer’s poetry, noting that Johnson preferred Gower and prioritized modernization. Investigation of the Dictionary reveals that Johnson’s textual selections for his history of the language derived entirely from Urry’s flawed 1721 edition. Hooker argues that Johnson’s interest in Chaucer remained strictly philological rather than aesthetic; consequently, Johnson never advanced beyond a crude, eighteenth-century understanding of Chaucerian metrics and pronunciation, even after the publication of Tyrwhitt’s superior edition.
Johnson's opinions on prose style, consistent with general eighteenth-century critical thought, stressed four main principles: the style must be English in character (opposing "Gallicisms"), clear (condemning obscure or "terrifick" writing), elegant (requiring harmony and rhythm), and suited to its theme (providing specific rules for didactic, historical, and epistolary styles). He defended Latinisms formed on English analogy, viewing them as necessary to elevate the language from "barbarity." Johnson recommended Addison's work as a model of the clear, elegant "middle style." These principles were the foundation for his own compositional "manner."
Johnson on the Sanctity of an Author's Text
Osborn examines Johnson's editorial philosophy regarding the preservation of a writer's original intent. This article highlights newly discovered notes by Edmond Malone from 1782, recording a conversation where Johnson asserts that "an author's disposition of his own works is sacred." Johnson insists that editors have no right to vary the arrangement of letters or suppress controversial pieces if the author concerted the final order. The essay illustrates this principle through Johnson's refusal to alter the sequence of Pope's works and his reluctance to break paragraphs in a proposed edition of Hooker. Osborn identifies Malone as the primary pupil who transmitted these rigid standards of textual integrity to future scholars.
CGV entry 10/1:28. Evidence from Bodleian manuscript Malone 30, folio 64-65.
Watkins assesses the depth of Johnson’s acquaintance with Old and Middle English literature, specifically Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan verse. The study challenges assumptions that Johnson was merely a "dabbler," proving he had a genuine "antiquarian's interest" and had "read and reread his Spenser." Watkins explores how Johnson’s critical dicta were often influenced by his "intense dislike of hyperbolical praise," leading to his notorious censures of Milton’s Lycidas and Chaucer’s versification. The work uses evidence from Johnson’s Dictionary to trace his reading habits, noting his reliance on Farmer’s research and his friendship with Percy and Warton. Watkins identifies Piozzi as a key source for understanding Johnson’s "magnificent" idea of poetry as a talent bestowed by heaven. Chapter 1, "Eighteenth Century Libraries and Johnson's Manner of Reading," details the accessibility of private and university collections that facilitated extensive, albeit desultory and voracious, engagement with early English texts through a method of selective synthesis. Chapter 2, "Johnson and Northern Learning (871–1380)," explores a profound interest in philology and Old English prose, noting a foundational respect for linguistic continuity despite a lack of familiarity with major Anglo-Saxon poetic works. Chapter 3, "Chaucer to Spenser (1380–1579)," evaluates the critical reception of Middle English and Tudor poets, emphasizing a respect for Chaucer’s characterization and a practical, non-antiquarian interest in balladry and early didactic verse. Chapter 4, "Spenser to the Restoration (1579–1660)," analyzes the comprehensive mastery of Elizabethan prose and non-dramatic poetry, highlighting an appreciation for the structural innovations of Spenser and the intellectual vigor of the Metaphysical poets. Critical reception for this study of the subject’s engagement with early English literature has been generally favorable, with scholars characterizing it as an "excellent piece of humane scholarship" that successfully challenges the assumption of the subject's ignorance regarding pre-Restoration verse. Critics from Notes and Queries and Modern Language Review credit the author with constructing a "convincing background" for the subject's "comprehensive learning," specifically highlighting the use of the Dictionary and Shakespeare notes as primary evidence. Tillotson and Rinaker praise the author for moving beyond mere statistics to reveal an "unexpected familiarity" with ballads, lyrics, and the works of John Donne, thereby distinguishing "reasoned critical theory" from "violent prejudices." However, the work has faced significant methodological scrutiny; Rinaker questions the "scientific" accuracy of dating the subject's acquaintance with authors based on their alphabetical appearance in the Dictionary, while Pottle focuses on the limitations of these statistical findings. More pointedly, Saunders identifies "significant omissions," arguing that the author minimizes the subject’s familiarity with early poets by failing to trace quotations to their original sources in Chaucer, Spenser, and Sidney. Furthermore, the failure to use standard editions like Hill and Powell is noted as a complication for scholarly reference. Despite these deficiencies, the consensus remains that the appendix listing sources for the Dictionary is a "definite contribution" that establishes the subject’s acquaintance with early poets as "greater and more appreciative than is commonly supposed."
CGV entry 10/1:29. Reprinted by Gordian Press, New York, in 1965.
CGV entry 10/1:29. Review by R. Stamm of the book by Walter B. C. Watkins.
CGV entry 10/1:29. Review by P. Meissner of the book by Walter B. C. Watkins.
Saunders identifies significant omissions in Watkins’s study of Johnson’s knowledge of pre-Restoration literature. She argues that Watkins minimizes Johnson’s familiarity with early English poets by failing to trace Dictionary quotations to their sources in Chaucer, Spenser, and Sidney. Saunders provides specific evidence of Johnson's awareness of ballad literature and his use of Tottel's Miscellany. She criticizes Watkins’s failure to use standard editions, specifically Hill and Powell, which complicates scholarly reference.
CGV entry 10/1:29. Review by Doris B. Saunders of the book by Walter B. C. Watkins.
Pottle summarizes its statistical findings, sourced primarily from the Dictionary, on Johnson's knowledge of early English poetry.
CGV entry 10/1:29. Review by F. A. Pottle of the book by Walter B. C. Watkins.
Brown analyzes Johnson's complex attitude toward imagination, which he used in two distinct senses. The first, equating imagination with fancy or revery, is the one Johnson opposed, viewing it as a dangerous escape from reality and a "degree of insanity," as suggested by Imlac. The second, which Johnson valued greatly for a poet, refers to a storehouse of images or the combined faculties of observation and memory. This second sense relates to the classic principle of the generalization of particulars, where the poet presents prominent features obvious to all, driven by utility and intelligibility. Brown suggests Johnson overlooked a third, idealizing imagination that improves upon abstractions, which explains Johnson's failure to account for the superiority of ancient poets on rationalist grounds.
Wellek traces the evolution of English literary historiography from Renaissance catalogues to Thomas Warton's systematic narrative. He identifies the eighteenth century as the period when biographical and critical traditions coalesced under a burgeoning historical sense. Wellek highlights Johnson's Lives of the Poets as the culmination of the biographical tradition, noting that Johnson viewed English poetry as a progress toward the 'scientific' refinement achieved by John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Though Johnson applied a relative historical standard to justify the 'shortcomings' of earlier writers, he primarily maintained a neo-classical norm that resisted archaism. Wellek also examines the contributions of James Boswell and Hester Thrale Piozzi's circle to the growth of literary biography, emphasizing their role in shifting focus toward psychological interpretation and the creative process. The text analyzes how eighteenth-century thinkers used concepts of individuality, environment, and 'organic' development to transform literature from a collection of isolated works into a national narrative. Wellek argues that while Johnson's chronological biographies lacked a continuous historical narrative, they provided the critical consolidation necessary for Warton's later achievement.
Johnson and Blair on Addison's Prose Style
Mays compares the formal critiques of Addison's prose style by Johnson and Blair. Both critics placed Addison's style as "middle" or "elegant," distinguishing it from the simple and sublime extremes. Johnson’s analysis defined the middle style through privatives: "familiar but not coarse," and "elegant but not ostentatious." Blair, using a more complex psychological framework, located Addison as relatively loose in precision but high in ornament and praised his ultimate simplicity over affectation. Both considered Addison's style a well-executed model for general, non-specialized prose.
Unconscious Expectations in the Reading of Poetry
Abrams argues that proficient poetry reading depends on applying an intricate set of unspoken expectations and established patterns of response, often of which the reader is unaware. However, skills adapted to one type of poetry can distort another. Using Johnson's criticism as a subject for analysis, the essay demonstrates this limitation. Johnson, whose reading habits were formed on the verse of Dryden and Pope, applied excessively strict demands, such as requiring metaphors to be instantly intelligible and ruling that each line of verse must be a complete metrical unit. This led him to judge much of Shakespeare's language, metaphor, and versification—along with the verse of Milton and Gray—as faulty and obscure. The only remedy for such critical narrowness is constant vigilance and the effort to adjust mental sets to meet a novel mode of communication.
Cites Life: 2:110, 2:111
Argues Johnson's reading habits, shaped by Augustan poetry, limited his appreciation of poets like Milton. Abrams analyzes Johnson's critiques of metaphor (in Dryden, Gray) and meter (Milton's blank verse, sonnets), showing his demand for immediate clarity, logical figures, and line-by-line integrity characteristic of Pope's couplets. These habits explain Johnson's perceived lack of "ear" and led him to undervalue Milton's versification and find Shakespeare stylistically flawed.
CGV entry 10/1:35. Reprinted from ELH (1942).
Johnson's Theory and Practice in Regard to the Didactic Theory of Poetry
Havens examines Johnson's complex relationship with the imagination, a faculty he typically did not distinguish from fancy. Johnson believed imagination merely reproduced and rearranged images from memory, lacking the power to genuinely "create." His deep distrust stemmed from personal experience: he associated it with day-dreaming and a "hunger of the imagination" that leads to inaction, restlessness, and dissatisfaction with truth. It was seen as a "licentious and vagrant faculty" and the source of novelty—a trait Johnson viewed as a concession to human weakness. He praised works like Clarissa and biography for teaching truth, while dismissing romances and novels as "fanciful" and trivial, designed merely to satisfy the appetite for ephemeral pleasure.
H. defends Dryden’s scientific accuracy against Johnson’s critique in the Life of Dryden. Johnson argued that Dryden erroneously "reverses the object" rather than the telescope in a metaphor describing Socinian theology. Hussey contends that Dryden understood the optical principles of the "prospective" or telescope, citing a passage from The Prophetess as evidence. He suggests the confusion lies in Dryden's syntax—confusing the observers with their optics—rather than an ignorance of how a reversed tube diminishes the perceived size of a subject.
Krutch disputes the "romantic estimate" of Johnson as a critic lacking "poetic excellence." Krutch argues Johnson’s "common sense" approach sought to take literature out of the hands of "pedants" and "aesthetes." Krutch notes Johnson judged literature by its "actual treatment of men" and its "instruction," using the same equipment used to "judge men and manners." Krutch emphasizes that Johnson’s criticism is "intensely personal," revealing the play of a "vigorous mind" over "public" truths. Krutch concludes that Johnson's Lives of the Poets represents the work of a man with "wide knowledge of men and manners."
Moore examines Johnson’s scholarly interest in rhetoric and oratory, noting that while he wrote no formal treatise, his work consistently reflects rhetorical principles. The article recounts the revelation that Johnson ghostwrote parliamentary speeches for the Gentleman's Magazine, including a famous address attributed to Pitt the Elder, composed with minimal information in an Exeter Street garret. Moore presents Johnson as a follower of Aristotle who believed truth must be "treated rhetorically" through amplification and adaptation to win general acceptance. Johnson emphasized the necessity of a speaker studying their audience's "feelings and emotions" through "general converse" rather than solitary research. While Johnson viewed moral character as essential to ethos, he was "contemptuous" of physical delivery, arguing that judges and representatives are moved by "cogent argument" rather than "laboured gesticulation" or "violence of contortion". Moore concludes that Johnson’s rhetorical theory was sound, viewing the art as the discovery of all available means of persuasion.
Johnson's critical writings are living classics that compel firsthand engagement, demonstrating the vigor of a powerful mind and a profoundly serious nature. Johnson's significance as a critic is partly defined by his specific, positive Augustan training and the consequent limitations, especially his "defective ear" and taste for "elegance" and "propriety" that made him resistant to certain styles, like Milton's blank verse or Lycidas. However, he transcended these limitations in his appreciation of Shakespeare's "knowledge of the human heart" and his commitment to judging literature by an appeal to "experience" over rigid rules.
This article, reprinted from Scrutiny, characterizes Johnson's critical writings as living literature that demands disinterested reading. Leavis argues that Johnson's value lies in his powerful mind and the weight of ordered experience he brings to criticism. While acknowledging Johnson's limitations, such as his resistance to Milton's blank verse and his dismissal of Lycidas, Leavis interprets these not as mere privations but as products of a positive Augustan training. He examines Johnson's complex reaction to Shakespeare, noting that while Johnson recognized Shakespeare's exploratory linguistic force, his Augustan criteria for generality and decorum led him to prefer the comedies over the tragedies. Leavis details how Johnson's undramatic habit and moralistic bias prevented him from appreciating the way works of art enact moral valuations rather than merely stating them. He concludes that Johnson represents the pinnacle of rational, experience-based criticism prior to the psychological depth introduced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
CGV entry 10/1:41. Reprinted from Scrutiny (1944).
Samuel Johnson: A Collection of Critical Essays
Leavis defines Johnson’s critical writings as "living literature" that operates from within a "positive Augustan tradition." He argues that Johnson’s "defective ear" is actually a disciplined training in a taste that demands a "music of meaning" rather than Spenserian-Tennysonian melodizing. Leavis explores Johnson’s "disability" regarding Lycidas and his paradoxical appreciation of Shakespeare's "exploratory creativeness," despite strictures on "lowness" and "obscurity." He suggests Johnson's "radical incapacity as a dramatist" in Irene correlates with the "undramatic" strength of his moral declamation. Leavis maintains that Johnson’s uncompromising "appeal to experience" over neo-classic authority makes him a classic critic who transcends his own period limitations. He credits Johnson with a "free and powerful intelligence" that corrects sentimental views of figures like Swift.
The Foundations of Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism
Keast reconstructs Johnson's critical theory by analyzing his writings for premises underlying his literary judgments. The central argument posits that Johnson’s criticism, focused on natural causes and effects, is essentially psychological, emphasizing the universal demands of readers for truth and novelty and the poet’s genius in fulfilling them. Keast argues Johnson views art as a tentative activity, necessitating a comparative, empirical method that determines poetic merit by weighing the influence of the poet's abilities and circumstances. The study rejects interpretations of Johnson’s "general nature" as an abstract ideal.
The Background and Development in English Criticism of the Theories of Generality and Particularity
Elledge explores the historical tension between the "grandeur of generality" and the "power of particularity" in 18th-century English criticism. He analyzes Johnson’s famous instruction in Rasselas to "neglect the minuter discriminations" alongside his subsequent admiration for Thomson’s minute descriptions in The Seasons. Elledge traces these concepts through classical rhetoric and the 18th-century doctrine of the sublime, noting how writers like Burke and Reynolds influenced Johnson’s preference for general ideas that fill the imagination. He concludes that Johnson eventually reconciled these theories by acknowledging that well-chosen particulars can effectively summon a complete, general image.
CGV entry 10/1:46. See also W. R. Keast in Philological Quarterly, volume 27 (April 1948), pages 130–132.
The Structure of the 'Concrete Universal' in Literature
Wimsatt investigates the "concrete universal" paradox, where literary works function as both highly particular and widely general entities. The essay traces this concept from Aristotle through neo-classicists to modern theorists like Ransom and Tate. Wimsatt disputes the neo-classic emphasis on the average or species, as seen in the preference for Shakespeare's "general passions" over individual quirks. Conversely, the essay challenges the romantic obsession with pure particularity. Wimsatt argues that poetic beauty arises from "unified concrete complexity," where specific details gain relevance through their organic arrangement. Using characters like Falstaff as examples, the essay defines the poem as an artifact whose maturity and artistic unity depend on a sophisticated, heterogeneous internal structure.
Wimsatt examines the ancient critical paradox that literature is both uniquely individual and broadly universal. He traces this "concrete universal" from Aristotle through Hegel to modern critics like John Crowe Ransom, viewing the poem as a complex artifact whose maturity and depth reside in its structural unity. Wimsatt disputes Samuel Johnson’s neoclassic theory that the poet must forsake the individual for the species, as seen in the famous "tulip" passage in Rasselas. He argues Johnson’s focus on existential generality leads to platitude and an objective standard of the average. Instead, Wimsatt maintains that poetry achieves universality through a "tissue of concrete irrelevance" and metaphoric structure, where specific details like the apple in gravity are made hyper-relevant. He defines the objective critic’s role as providing multiple restatements of meaning to help readers realize the poem as a structure of both wide extension and deep intension.
CGV entry 10/1:47. Reprinted from PMLA (1947).
Johnson's Conception of the Beautiful, the Pathetic, and the Sublime
Hagstrum examines how Johnson employs the aesthetic categories of the beautiful, the pathetic, and the sublime as precise instruments of practical criticism. By mapping these concepts onto the works of Pope, Shakespeare, and Milton respectively, Hagstrum illustrates Johnson's transition from an older rhetorical tradition to a psychological relativism influenced by Edmund Burke. Johnson defines beauty through Pope’s "colours of language" and "splendour of imagery," while identifying the pathetic in Shakespeare’s "effusions purely natural" and domestic distress. Conversely, Hagstrum highlights Johnson’s "recoil of the mind" regarding Miltonic sublimity, arguing that Johnson’s religious fears and dread of a "disease of the imagination" compelled him to isolate the sublime from the milder pleasures of the beautiful and the pathetic. This scholarly article concludes that Johnson’s rigid categorization served as a protective rational barrier against the "poetical terrour" that otherwise threatened his emotional stability.
English Literary Criticism: 17th and 18th Centuries
Atkins examines Johnson's role as a critical liberator who rejected the "tyranny of prescription" inherent in neo-classicism. Johnson disputes the validity of fixed literary "kinds" and rules, such as the requirement for three actors or five acts, identifying them as "accidental prescriptions" rather than laws of Nature. The text explores Johnson's definition of poetry as an art uniting "pleasure with truth" and his insistence on the historical method in judgment. Atkins details Johnson's analysis of "metaphysical" poetry as a discordia concors—a "combination of dissimilar images"—while also noting his limitations, such as the "insensate estimate" of Lycidas based on a dislike of artificial pastorals. Ultimately, Johnson is presented not as a rigid classicist but as a pioneer of the psychological approach who deferred to the "approbation of posterity" as the final test of literary merit.
Moore explores the apparent contradiction between Johnson's harsh dismissal of Fielding and the deep alignment of their critical principles. While Johnson famously preferred Richardson for his "knowledge of the heart," Moore argues that Fielding's novels actually provide better illustrations of the moral and realistic standards found in the Rambler. The article suggests personal bias and Richardson's vanity influenced Johnson's "blockhead" remark. Moore notes that Johnson praised Amelia and used Fielding as a touchstone for character drawing when evaluating other writers. By comparing the fourth Rambler with the ninth book of Tom Jones, Moore demonstrates that both men championed range, learning, and the instructional power of the "comedy of romance."
Surveys the critical history of the allegorical principle, defined as a literary mode that consciously presents a literal, figurative primary meaning and a moralistic, abstract secondary meaning. Critics from Quintilian to the present have debated whether allegory is a lucid agent for truth or a deceptive source of obscurity. Medieval thinkers saw four levels of meaning (literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical), while the Renaissance simplified it to two, largely to serve didactic goals. Neoclassical critics like Hughes codified the form, demanding propriety, consistency, and clarity. With the Romantics, a shift to emotional and esthetic values led to allegory's decline, as it was deemed tedious and a product of mere understanding rather than imagination. Bloom concludes that great allegory must achieve a subtle, intangible union of structure and meaning that does not satisfactorily permit the isolation of the esthetic from the didactic.
CGV entry 10/1:53.
Philological Papers: University of West Virginia
Hagstrum argues that Samuel Johnson’s literary criticism is a coherent, flexible, and deeply humanistic body of thought, refuting the traditional portrayal of Johnson as a rigid and dogmatic "neoclassical" dictator. The book's purpose is to reveal the consistent principles that unify Johnson's critical judgments into an intellectual system founded on three controlling ideas. The first and most important is the mimetic principle: that literature must be a "just representation of general nature," with "nature" understood primarily as universal human experience—the permanent passions, motives, and psychological truths of mankind. The second is the pragmatic and didactic principle: that the ultimate end of literature is "to instruct by pleasing." For Johnson, art must provide both aesthetic delight and moral or practical truth, serving the whole person. The third is the historical and objective principle: that the final test of literary excellence is its ability to stand the test of time, achieving "length of duration and continuance of esteem." A work's enduring appeal serves as an empirical verdict that it has successfully captured general nature. Hagstrum systematically traces how Johnson applies these interconnected ideas throughout his criticism, especially in the Lives of the Poets. He demonstrates that Johnson consistently subordinates arbitrary rules and the authority of past critics to the direct experience of the reader and the unchanging truths of the human condition. Johnson emerges not as a prescriptive rule-monger but as a powerfully empirical and psychological critic whose canons of judgment are rooted in an understanding of how the human mind works. By placing Johnson in a grand critical tradition stretching back to Aristotle and Longinus, Hagstrum concludes that his work is not narrowly "neoclassical" but "classically and centrally humanistic," with its greatness lying in its unwavering focus on literature's relationship to life. Chapter I, "Experience and Reason," addresses Samuel Johnson's empirical commitment to "general nature" and human experience as the primary criteria of literary value, arguing that he used a flexible, rationalist framework to move beyond the rigid dogmas of neoclassical criticism. Chapter II, "Nature," explores the central critical standard of "representing things as they are," contending that Johnson sought a balance between particularized description and the universal truths that resonate with the common observer. Chapter III, "Pleasure," identifies the psychological aim of literature as the communication of "truth by helping the imagination," arguing that aesthetic delight is inextricably linked to moral instruction and the relief of the mind’s vacuity. Chapter IV, "Wit," examines the evolution of this term from mere intellectual ingenuity to "discordia concors," identifying Johnson’s preference for a wit that reflects the complexity of life rather than the "unnatural" conceits of the Metaphysical poets. Chapter V, "The Beautiful, the Pathetic, and the Sublime," addresses the affective dimensions of art, arguing that Johnson valued the "pathetic" power of Shakespeare and the "sublime" vastness of Milton for their ability to stir the deepest human emotions. Chapter VI, "True Wit," argues that the highest form of literary achievement combines novelty with validity, asserting that enduring classics must provide both "the luster of a new world" and the "stability of truth." Chapter VII, "The Language of Poetry," identifies Johnson’s concern for a "middle style" that avoids both the meanness of low diction and the obscurity of pedantic archaism, arguing for a vernacular that remains intelligible across generations. Finally, the "Conclusion" argues that Johnson remains a vital critical force because his judgments are rooted in a profound understanding of the mental faculties and an unwavering devotion to the moral significance of the literary act. Critics are generally favorable, praising the comprehensive treatment of the subject's aesthetic principles. Jack, in the TLS, commends the volume as the first monograph to analyze the critical corpus as a unified whole, highlighting the portrayal of a tentative and skeptical mind rather than a collection of judicial pontifications. Abrams (Kenyon Review) lauds the presentation of an extraordinarily consistent, monolithic figure and celebrates the clarification of a pragmatic, empirical methodology that rejects axiomatic principles. In JNL, Clifford recommends the study for its stimulating approach to central eighteenth-century concepts and its successful documentation of complex intellectual shifts. Writing in RES, Greene offers a more critical perspective, questioning the deductive approach and warning that the text risks losing the individual author by forcing him into Aristotelian and neoclassical patterns. Wimsatt, in Modern Language Notes, finds the analysis of the sublime and beautiful informative but contends that the interpretation exaggerates psychologism by subordinating generality to pleasure. Tracy (Queen's Quarterly) notes that while the volume provides an excellent elucidation of facts, it fails to explicitly champion the subject's title as a great critic. In the Saturday Review, Halsband praises the definition of practical precepts without critical jargon, while Boulton's review in English Studies notes that the text successfully establishes a foundational scholarly framework. Finally, Kramer, in AUMLA, welcomes the monograph as an indispensable companion that avoids imposing an alien logic.
Reviews: M. H. Abrams, Kenyon Review 16, no. 1 (1954): 307–13; James T. Boulton, English Studies 52 (1971): 274–76; Donald C. Bryant, Quarterly Journal of Speech 39 (1953); James L. Clifford, JNL 12, no. 4 (1952): 5–6; Durham University Journal 14 (1969): 121–22; Donald J. Greene, RES, n.s., 5 (1954): 200–203; Robert Halsband, Saturday Review, February 28, 1953; William H. Irving, South Atlantic Quarterly 52 (1953): 473–75; Ian Jack, PQ 32, no. 3 (1953): 274–76; Ian Jack, TLS, no. 2668 (1953): 188; Leonie Kramer, AUMLA 32 (1969): 247; Sister Mary Francis, Thought 29, no. 3 (1954): 440–42; Edwin Morgan, Cambridge Journal 7 (1953): 124; André Parreaux, Études Anglaises 25, no. 4 (1972): 562; Alexander M. Saunders, Books Abroad 27, no. 3 (1953): 305; George Sherburn, Sewanee Review 62 (1953): 344–45; Studia Neophilologica 1969; Clarence R. Tracy, Queen’s Quarterly 60 (1953): 121–22; William K. Wimsatt Jr., Modern Language Notes 69 (1954): 128–30.
Hagstrum challenges the characterization of Johnson as an unsystematic critic, asserting that his evaluative criteria derive from a coherent "neoclassic humanism". By examining the relationship between "nature" and "art," Hagstrum demonstrates how Johnson's insistence on "mimesis" is balanced by a requirement for moral efficacy and "rational pleasure". The study explores Johnson’s psychological approach to literature, specifically the "affective" power of imagery and the role of the "imagination" in engaging the reader's "general nature". Hagstrum emphasizes that Johnson’s preference for "particulars" over "generalities" does not contradict his search for universal truths but serves as a method for achieving "vividness" and "authenticity". The work identifies Johnson’s criticism as a transition from formalist rules to a "psychological and empirical" inquiry into the literary experience.
Hagstrum offers the first comprehensive study of Johnson’s literary criticism, emphasizing its vigor, coherence, and empirical nature. The book is organized by abstract philosophical topics such as "Experience and Reason," "Nature," and "Pleasure," an arrangement Jack finds less effective than a genre-based approach. Jack praises Hagstrum’s close analysis of Johnson’s critical vocabulary—notably his use of the Dictionary to define terms like "energy" and "mean"—which prevents modern misinterpretations of 18th-century aesthetics. However, the reviewer disputes Hagstrum’s attempt to distance Johnson from "generic criticism," arguing instead that Johnson represents the culmination of the Augustan critical tradition rather than its subversion.
CGV entry 10/1:55. Review by Ian Jack of the book by Jean H. Hagstrum.
Wimsatt commends Hagstrum’s compelling case for Johnson as a psychological and empirical critic rooted in Lockean thought rather than rigid classicism. He praises the informative analysis of the sublime, pathetic, and beautiful. However, Wimsatt argues Hagstrum exaggerates Johnson’s psychologism by subordinating "generality" to "pleasure." He contends Hagstrum overlooks the importance of "species" in Johnson’s universalism and finds the neutral, historicist style lacks the energy characteristic of Johnson’s own prose.
CGV entry 10/1:55. Review by W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. of the book by Jean H. Hagstrum.
Greene praises Hagstrum's ambitious attempt to determine Johnson's basic critical concepts for its admirable familiarity with the canon and scholarship. However, Greene is unimpressed by Hagstrum's choice to proceed deductively by starting with philosophy, and suggests most students prefer an empirical, inductive method like Johnson's. Greene questions Hagstrum's reliance on the Dictionary as evidence of Johnson's thought, arguing the book risks losing Johnson in the process of fitting him into Aristotelian and neo-classic patterns.
CGV entry 10/1:55. Review by D. J. Greene of the book by Jean H. Hagstrum.
Abrams praises the book as a timely and good work that takes excellent advantage of the recent reassessment of neoclassic criticism. Hagstrum is commended for showing, for the first time extensively, what Johnson the critic truly looks like when read completely and in the context of his age's critical idiom. The resulting picture is of a man extraordinarily consistent and awesomely monolithic in his critical enterprises. The review stresses Hagstrum's clarification of Johnson’s empirical, pragmatic approach, which sets him apart from rationalistic contemporaries who deduced criticism from axiomatic principles.
CGV entry 10/1:55.
CGV entry 10/1:57. Inaugural lecture as Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature, University College, London. See also The Times Literary Supplement, December 12, 1952, page 819.
Atkinson reviews Johnson’s extensive reading of English prose, excluding the Bible, plays, and poetry. using the 1785 sale catalogue and internal evidence from the Dictionary, the study details Johnson’s use of philological resources, including polyglot, vocational, and etymological dictionaries by Minsheu, Bailey, Skinner, and Junius. Atkinson documents Johnson’s familiarity with classical translations, archaeological treatises, and linguistic works by Holder and Walker. The survey emphasizes Johnson’s "peculiar facility" for rapid information retrieval and his deep engagement with the history and philosophy of language.
CGV entry 10/1:58. Published in parts: February, pages 60-63; March, pages 107–110; May, pages 206–210; July, pages 288-293; and August, pages 344-346.
Johnson's Doctrine of Figurative Language
Baldeshwiler examines Johnson's doctrine of figurative language, situating his critical views in the context of Lockean epistemology and eighteenth-century Cartesian uniformitarianism. The study argues Johnson's theory of language, which favored univocal correspondence between words and simple ideas, inherently predisposed him to distrust metaphor as a linguistic device. Consequently, Johnson equated metaphor with simile, defining both as ornamental tools to illustrate and embellish pre-existing, verifiable "natural" truths for the common reader. This rationalistic framework led Johnson to reject allegorical, mythological, fabulous, and pastoral conventions as inherently "untrue" fictions. An analysis of Johnson's own poetry confirms his adherence to his critical theories, revealing his frequent use of common metaphorical expressions and Latin-derived words to achieve precision over innovation.
CGV entry 10/1:60. Inaugural lecture as Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Uppsala.
Donner asserts that Johnson "carries more weight" than any critic since Aristotle, praising his ability to look always to "essentials." He highlights Johnson's insistence that editing is the "basis of all criticism" and his revolutionary opposition to establishing texts by mere emendation. Donner suggests Johnson's occasional over-emphasis on morality and poetic justice, such as his dissatisfaction with the end of King Lear, resulted from a "religious awe" that made virtue's extinction unbearable. He argues that Johnson's "deep human sympathy" and "tragic view of life" lent authority to his judicial criticism. Donner maintains that Johnson’s mastery of biography allowed him to find "the author in the work," turning the Lives of the Poets into "imperishable works of art."
CGV entry 10/1:60. Reprinted from Edda (1954).
Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century England
Fussell traces the codification and eventual decline of conservative syllabism and stress regularity, identifying Johnson as the period's most distinguished literary sensibility to align with this tradition. Johnson defined versification as the "arrangement of a certain number of syllables according to certain laws" and maintained a rigid distinction between theoretical iambic purity and the "licenses" allowed in practice. Fussell explains how Johnson's brief prosody in the Dictionary (1755) and revisions in 1773 buttressed Edward Bysshe’s earlier work, establishing a stable body of conservative standards that connected prosodic regularity with ethical behavior and universal order. Fussell details the "ethics and aesthetics of stress regularity," showing how Johnson and others viewed "harmony"—synonymous with regularity—as a tool to "shackle attention" and "govern passions". Johnson believed the poet's duty was to "fix" prosodic principles early to "triumph by an effort of the will over his adolescent taste for irregularity". The text further explores the transition toward accentualism through figures like Samuel Say and Joshua Steele, who challenged the syllabic limitation. Fussell concludes that eighteenth-century prosody was a manifestation of a "passion for rhythmical regularity" rooted in an aesthetic of ideality, whereas the emerging nineteenth-century system favored an organic, kinetic relationship between meter and meaning.
CGV entry 10/1:61. See especially pages 24–26 and 41-44.
The Ethical Implications in Samuel Johnson's Critical Theory
The Association of Ideas in Samuel Johnson's Criticism
On Johnson's awareness and casual use of the psychology of the association of ideas in his criticism. Although not a formal associationist like Hume or Hartley, Johnson employs the Lockean concept of ideas becoming connected by custom and accident. He primarily uses this principle, which he also defined in his Dictionary, to re-interpret the neoclassical concept of decorum. Specifically, he applies it to argue against the propriety of certain diction in poetry, as words or subjects associated with low or too-serious contexts can involuntarily evoke inappropriate images, thus impeding aesthetic pleasure.
Havens investigates the eighteenth-century Neoclassicists' ambivalent relationship with solitude. Figures like Hume and Burke denounced absolute solitude as agonizing and unnatural. Johnson consistently attacked it as "dangerous to reason" and an evasion of duty, though he privately yearned for it. Despite this strong theoretical and experiential dislike, the period saw a surge in poems and essays praising solitude and retirement, such as Pomfret's "The Choice." Havens argues that for most writers, "solitude" was conflated with a moderate, rural retirement with friends and books, not absolute isolation. He highlights Whitehead's "The Enthusiast" as one of the few pieces that seriously argues against retirement, stressing the active duty of man to society over passive pleasure in nature.
Johnson occupies a unique position in English neoclassicism, often diverging from established dogma by treating literature as a "mirror of life." This focus on truth and reality motivates his suspicion of fiction, pastoral conventions, and ancient mythology. Johnson prioritizes moral truth, frequently demanding poetical justice and selection from nature to ensure virtuous instruction. While he upholds neoclassical tenets such as the depiction of "general nature" and the universal over the particular, his practical criticism reveals a slip in the grasp of art as a distinct entity. Johnson challenges the rigid unities of time and place, specifically defending Shakespeare's use of tragicomedy as a just representation of the "real state of sublunary nature." Though he remains rooted in the taste of his age, especially regarding versification and diction, his attack on arbitrary rules and his reliance on the "common reader" introduce a liberalizing spirit into eighteenth-century criticism.
Eliot evaluates Johnson as a retrospective critic whose strength lies in his commitment to a common style and the moral edification of literature. Eliot disputes the common perception of Johnson’s insensibility to musical verse, arguing instead that Johnson possessed a specialized sensibility focused on the verbal beauty of his own era. While Eliot identifies lapses, such as Johnson’s praise of Blackmore’s Creation, he maintains that Johnson’s criteria remain permanently relevant. Discussing Johnson’s poetry, Eliot characterizes him as a meditative poet who found his perfect theme in The Vanity of Human Wishes. Eliot observes that Johnson lacked the gift of complex structure but achieved a unique tenderness, piety and wisdom in his shorter work on Dr. Levett. The analysis defines Johnson as a major poet based on the singular testimony of his mastery in The Vanity of Human Wishes.
CGV entry 10/1:69. An attack on Wellek's "Dr. Johnson." A reply by Wellek and a comment by Molin appear in the same journal (June 1958), pages 283–286.
Dr. Johnson and the Writers of Tudor England
Emley surveys the range and intensity of Johnson’s interest in sixteenth-century Tudor literature. He uses the "Dictionary" as a primary source, noting that Johnson intended the work to be a vast anthology of the best authors to "interperse with verdure and flowers the dusty deserts of barren philology." The dissertation documents nearly 2000 quotations from Bacon and hundreds from Spenser, Hooker, and Sidney. Emley defends Johnson against Macaulay’s charges of scholarship failure, demonstrating that Johnson possessed an extensive knowledge of Tudor backgrounds for his edition of Shakespeare. The study analyzes Johnson’s dogmatic views on Spenser’s "vicious" style and his profound respect for Hooker as a "teacher of truth." Emley concludes that Johnson’s Settled principles in his middle years were deeply informed by Tudor writers, who provided the "language of theology" and "diction of common life" necessary for his lexicographical goals.
CGV entry 10/1:70. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 23 (July 1962), page 224.
Bulletin of Kansai University (English Language and Literature)
Dr. Johnson and the 'Intellectual Gladiators'
Gray explores Johnson's critical perspective on Restoration comedy, particularly the works of Congreve. Johnson distrusted drama as a satirical medium, believing comedy's primary business was to please, not preach. He characterized Congreve's characters as "intellectual gladiators" whose constant, sparkling wit, though original, lacked naturalness, emotional depth, or truth to life. Johnson criticized the plays for focusing on "slender conceits" and "superficialities," resembling the metaphysical poets he also dismissed. Johnson's aversion to general comic satire and his emphasis on nature as the foundation for critical judgment shaped his lukewarm appraisal of the genre.
CGV entry 10/1:72. On Restoration comedy.
An Examination of the Literary Prejudices of Dr. Samuel Johnson
This dissertation reevaluates Samuel Johnson's alleged literary prejudices, contending that prevailing notions of political bias influencing his criticism are mistaken. The analysis focuses on Johnson's antipathy toward genres like the pastoral and Pindaric ode, mythological fictions, and the Spenserian stanza. It argues that Johnson's critical stance results from his core doctrines: particularly, his vigorous abhorrence of servile imitation and his championing of invention and originality in composition. Johnson thereby provides aesthetic reasons for what critics considered his unreasonable opinions.
CGV entry 10/1:74. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 22 (April 1962), pages 3643-3644.
Weitz investigates how reasons function in evaluative criticism by examining historical assessments of Shakespeare. Johnson reformulates traditional principles, specifically the requirement that drama provide "just representations of general nature," which he argues satisfies the mind's desire for the "stability of truth." Johnson stresses the judicial side of criticism, weighing evidence and precedents to deliver a balanced verdict on Shakespeare's virtues and faults. He challenges the necessity of the unities of time and place by denying the underlying assumption that they are essential for dramatic credibility. Weitz argues that Johnson and Coleridge attempt to justify their criteria by appealing to necessary or sufficient properties of greatness, a move that erroneously treats praising as describing. The study concludes that good reasons in criticism employ logically unchallengeable criteria that require no further justification.
CGV entry 10/1:76. Johnson is one of the critics discussed.
Two Notes on Johnson: (1) A Suggested Approach to the Criticism
Hardy critiques prevailing approaches to Johnson's criticism. He rejects the Macaulayan tradition (viewing Johnson's judgments as eccentricities derived from Boswell's portrayal) and finds limitations in structuralist approaches (like Keast's) that systematize Johnson's thought but risk obscuring the individual critic. Hardy argues that Johnson's strength lies in the "personally realized quality of his dialectic"—his judgments stem from deeply considered, individual responses as a reader, argued out internally. Understanding Johnson requires grasping why he made specific judgments, recognizing the integration of his "fundamental convictions" into his critical practice. His insistence on the reader's response and his personally grounded reasoning differentiate him significantly from other neo-classical critics. A satisfactory account must focus on describing the "judicial response of Johnson as reader" rather than solely on biographical color or abstract theoretical foundations.
CGV entry 10/1:77.
Tillotson contrasts modern critical solemnity with Johnson’s readiness to acclaim laughter. He highlights Johnson’s abasement before Shakespeare’s comic genius, specifically his paean on Falstaff as a character of perpetual gaiety. Tillotson argues that Johnson, acting as a true critic, rejected nothing in literature and understood that the moralist, politician, and critic mingle even in an airy frolick of genius.
CGV entry 10/1:78. Uses Johnson as the principal example of a critic.
Critics Who Have Influenced Taste: 17. Samuel Johnson
Lascelles examines Johnson’s critical authority, noting its foundation in the "authentic voice of the Rambler" before the Lives of the Poets. Lascelles identifies Johnson as a "pioneer" who brought biography and journalism into the "commonwealth of letters." Johnson's critical approach avoids drawing a "magician's circle" around literature, instead treating it as a "transaction between writer and reader." Lascelles observes that even those who disagreed with Johnson’s specific judgments, such as Reynolds, admitted Johnson "qualified my mind to think justly." The abstract emphasizes Johnson's "original principle of growth" which sustains his modern authority.
CGV entry 10/1:79. On Johnson as a critic.
Dr. Johnson as Critic of the English Poets including Shakespeare
Parnassus Rejected: Dr. Samuel Johnson and the Eighteenth-Century Pastoral
CGV entry 10/1:82. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 27 (November 1966), pages 1342A–1343A.
English Literary Criticism in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: A Reconsideration
Challenging the prevailing scholarly consensus that defines this period as merely 'romantic' or 'preromantic,' Sen argues that its essential attributes---objective scholarly inquiry, historical methodology, and a 'literary conscience' regarding textual integrity---align it more closely with twentieth-century modernism than with nineteenth-century romanticism. Sen identifies Johnson as the "father of English criticism" who successfully bridged the gap between neo-classical tradition and modern historical inquiry. Analyzing the Preface to Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poets, Sen argues that Johnson’s "punctilious truthfulness" and rejection of "unnecessary rules" transformed the critic from a judge of letters into a "responsible" interpreter of an author’s intentions. The text details how Johnson used his "massive eloquence" to defend the integrity of original texts against "licentious" adaptations, insisting that literature must be understood within its specific "historical and linguistic context." Sen emphasizes that Johnson’s insistence on "frequentation of the poetry" rather than "uninstructed experience" provided the scholarly discipline necessary to move beyond Augustan dogmatism. By prioritizing "explanation" over "impressionism," Johnson is presented as the primary architect of an objective critical temper that anticipates twentieth-century modernism.
Samuel Johnson and the Didactic Aesthetic
CGV entry 10/1:87. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 25 (April 1965), page 5934.
Johnson, Arnold, and Eliot as Literary Humanists
CGV entry 10/1:88. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 27 (September 1966), page 745A.
Dr. Johnson on the Emotional Effect of Tragedy
Literary Criticism in England, 1660–1800
Chapman characterizes Samuel Johnson as a realistic critic who provided the most vivid, and perhaps last, apology for the neoclassical tradition in English. The text premise of Johnson's thought is a Neo-Platonist ideal nature, yet his practical working premise is 'general nature'—the stability of truth found by rising through particular realities to permanences. Chapman argues that Johnson shifted the basis of criticism from rigid authority to 'philosophical' or 'moral' inquiry, using a developing psychologism to analyze the human condition and the motives of actions. The text emphasizes Johnson's dual vision, which balanced reason and emotion, and his belief that the ultimate test of literary excellence is the 'common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices' over a long succession of endeavors.
CGV entry 10/1:90. Selections from Johnson are included on pages 397-527.
CGV entry 10/1:91. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 28, number 5 (November 1967), page 1801A.
Dr. Johnson's Concept of Literary Fiction
Misenheimer explores Johnson’s binary classification of fiction, distinguishing "fanciful invention" from the "stability of truth." He argues that Johnson views realistic fiction as a necessary vehicle for moral instruction and the effective communication of human experience. The analysis details Johnson’s hostility toward mythology, allegories, and pastorals due to their inherent improbability and lack of didactic utility. Misenheimer concludes that Johnson’s aesthetic prioritizes "representations of general nature" to encourage self-betterment through probable, life-like examples.
Samuel Johnson's Critical Principles: A Chronological Study
Johnston chronologically analyzes Samuel Johnson's critical career, arguing for the consistency of his critical principles from 1737 to 1784. The study isolates Johnson’s working tenets in his early, largely neglected writings (1737–1765), emphasizing his foundational humanistic belief that art must instruct and please by reflecting nature, which he defined as universal human experience. It demonstrates how Johnson applied these empirical, rational principles in his periodical essays, the Dictionary, the 1765 Shakespeare edition, and the Lives of the Poets, culminating in a defense of Johnson's essential fair-mindedness and enduring sagacity as a critic.
The Poetics of Reason: English Neoclassical Criticism
Marks positions Johnson as the leading critical authority of the eighteenth century, emphasizing that his greatness resides in practical application rather than consistent theory. This chapter argues that Johnson's critical framework rests on three extraliterary pillars: moralism, realism, and generality . Marks documents how Johnson's "constitutional moralism" often led to prescriptive judgments, such as his insistence on poetic justice and his defense of the happy ending in King Lear. Johnson's realism is described as a rigorous literalism that frequently obstructed his appreciation for the fictive, exemplified by his "notorious" rejection of Lycidas and his skepticism toward mythology and pastoral conventions. Furthermore, Marks explains Johnson's preference for "general nature" over particular detail, aligning him with Sir Joshua Reynolds's aesthetic of the species. Despite these "inimical" theoretical biases, Marks asserts that Johnson's actual "critical practice"—particularly in the Preface to Shakespeare and The Lives of the Poets—often transcends his own criteria. Through acute "descriptive evaluation," Johnson achieves a "balanced estimate" of figures like Dryden, Pope, and Milton, ultimately prioritizing "psychological truth" and the "test of time" over the rigid mechanical rules of earlier neoclassical critics.
Ingham analyzes Johnson’s term "elegance" to define its precise, logical application in his criticism, arguing it refers to "the beauty of propriety not of greatness." Challenging the view that Johnson used the term merely as a loose synonym for beauty or a simple antithesis to the "sublime," Ingham grounds its meaning in the "minute," logical standards favored by eighteenth-century grammarians like Priestley. For Johnson, elegance denotes "minute accuracy of thought," "nicety," and literal accuracy in imagery, style, and expression. His editorial notes on Shakespeare frequently use the term to prefer readings that are more logical, coherent, and precisely descriptive, often at the expense of traditional usage. In the Lives of the Poets, this standard evolves into a functional view of poetic diction, where language is refined from "grossness" to transmit thoughts clearly. This logical standard for elegance represents the "beauty of propriety" and signifies the "exactly appropriate" manner, applicable to both literary texts and social conduct.
CGV entry 10/1:99.
On Johnson's complex, paradoxical use of the term "admiration," particularly in the assertion that Paradise Lost is a book the reader "admires and lays down." Johnson departs from tradition by demonstrating that admiration is not solely a response to the sublime. He shows it can be caused by genius, learning, rhetorical beauty, and unnatural novelty (as in metaphysical wit). Because the admiration elicited by devices like unnatural novelty or amplification is deemed insufficient to sustain a successful poem, Johnson links it to Milton's failure.
Cites Life: 2:360
Faculty Psychology and Metaphor in Eighteenth-Century Criticism
Page examines two divergent eighteenth-century critical approaches to metaphor based on faculty psychology. One view treats the mind as a passive recipient of metaphors serving as ornamental "dress," while the other encourages the reader’s creative potential in interpreting figurative language. Page analyzes how concepts of variety, vivacity, and the ut pictura poesis principle shaped these theories. He identifies Johnson and Kames as central figures in defining the psychological equilibrium and cognitive demands placed upon the reader by metaphorical comparisons.
'Characters of Manners': Notes Toward the History of a Critical Term
Sherbo traces the critical history of the term "manners" to contextualize Johnson's 1768 distinction between "characters of nature" and "characters of manners." Reviewing the term's evolution from Dryden and Rymer to Hurd, Sherbo identifies a recurring dichotomy between the general and the particular. Sherbo demonstrates that Johnson's Shakespearean commentary, specifically his analysis of Polonius, clarifies this distinction: "manners" comprise superficial, accidental properties, while "nature" involves the permanent, universal dispositions of the heart. Johnson ultimately values characters that represent a species over those confined to individual or temporary fashions.
CGV entry 10/1:102. Contains sections on Johnson's criticism of dramatic character.
Vanity Fair and the Johnsonian Tradition of Fiction
Thompson argues that Becky Sharp's defiant act of throwing Johnson's Dictionary back into Miss Pinkerton's garden at the beginning of Vanity Fair is Thackeray's symbolic rejection of the Johnsonian tradition of fiction. Johnson advocated for novels to exhibit perfect virtue and make vice explicitly disgusting, a stance Thackeray, as a disciple of Fielding, challenged. Thackeray instead presents mixed characters, especially with Becky, whose ambiguous morality ("Was Rebecca guilty or not") and potential vices are never definitively condemned, thereby undermining Johnson's moralistic dictates and aligning the novel with Fielding's approach to depicting life as it is.
The Rarer Action: Essays in Honor of Francis Fergusson
Writing as Imitation: Observations on the Literary Process
Order and Cruelty: A Reading of Swift (with Some Comments on Pope and Johnson)
Rawson explores Swift's satire, focusing on its stylistic manifestations of impasse and human perversity, relating them to Pope and Johnson. Swift's work, particularly A Tale of a Tub, features brief, "gratuitous" cruelties like the flayed woman, which spill over the stated moral argument, generating unease and implicating the reader beyond specific charges. This effect is achieved through the satirist's close, subversive involvement with his speakers, creating ambiguous interactions, unlike Pope's more cleanly dissociated and rhetorically patterned style. Johnson's style shares Swift's emphasis on psychological impasse, but with compassionate baldness, while Pope's wit often creates aesthetic triumphs of definition, containing chaos rather than immersing the reader in it.
Critical and Logical Concepts of Method from Addison to Coleridge
Alkon analyzes the concept of method in the 18th century, arguing that logical theory, notably Isaac Watts's Logick, deflected attention from sequential order to transitions. Watts's skeptical treatment of method, followed by Johnson, dissociated the pathetic and sublime from explicit regularity, advocating arbitrary method in poetry to achieve the affecting. Alkon contends this theory provided a rationale, like associationist psychology, for the rambling, unconnected styles characteristic of Johnson's age, which Coleridge later vehemently opposed.
CGV entry 10/1:106.
Basney argues Johnson's doctrine of poetic generality stems from John Locke's empiricism, not Platonic or purely moralistic ideals. Generality is defined as a Lockean complex idea, an imaginative organization of particulars, forming a whole object. Johnson rejects "enumeration" (analytic detail) in art, as in counting the streaks of the tulip, because it destroys the intuitive grasp of the work's "lucidus ordo." This generality, or formulated mimesis, aligns with the mind's natural cognitive process.
Johnson possessed the humor, reductionism, and pessimism required for traditional satire but resisted the genre due to a psychological fear of its destructive potential. This tension produced 'satire manqué,' a form that begins with satiric elements—often regarding human vanity and egotism—before moving toward sympathetic reflective analysis. In Rasselas, Johnson uses 'naive strangers' and enthusiasts like the Stoic philosopher or the mad astronomer to present anomalies that he eventually palliates through explanations of human helplessness. Works like The Vanity of Human Wishes and the moral essays transition from reductive tartness to a dialogue of a divided self, where ridicule dissolves into a wider understanding of universal doom. This dialectic between reductive exasperation and charitable reflection defines the matured style of his later career.
This study explores Johnson's use of "beauty" in his speech and writings, concluding that his perception of beauty was not limited by his defective eyesight and hearing, despite Boswell’s assertion. Johnson's usage, particularly in Rambler 92, suggests beauty is vague, comparative, and rooted in experience rather than purely aesthetic theory. Johnson applies the term to various subjects, including women, landscapes, architecture, and literature, often focusing on a "proportion of parts" or "assemblage of graces." In literary criticism, Johnson ties beauty to "conformity to nature" and "just representations of general nature," revealing his standards of approval.
CGV entry 10/1:109.
Bach examines the semantic complexity of wit in the eighteenth century, identifying Johnson’s systematic efforts to stabilize the term. Drawing primarily from the "Life of Cowley," Bach delineates three categories of wit: verbal decoration, the discovery of new truths, and "discordia concors." Johnson challenges Pope’s definition for lacking "strength of thought" and finds the metaphysical poets’ use of "occult resemblances" instructionally sound but lacking in pleasure. Bach argues Johnson’s ideal wit requires an "amalgam" of innovative strength and the arbitrating power of "nature and reason." This conceptualization prioritizes "unborrowed and unexpected" sentiments over the "facile versifiers" of his age. Bach concludes that Johnson’s Dictionary definitions reflect a purist intent to restore wit’s original meaning as mental faculty rather than mere repartee.
Johnson on Conceit: The Limits of Particularity
This article investigates Johnson's critical standard for extended metaphor, focusing on his objections to Denham's Thames conceit and Donne's compasses. Johnson requires that the metaphorical vehicle must simultaneously supply a clear, appropriate sensory image (a "material image") and clearly define the tenor (abstract meaning). Denham fails this standard because the vehicle does not consistently function as a sensory image; the compasses fail, despite successful definition of the tenor, because the image itself is visually irrelevant and distracting, violating Johnson's aesthetic of economy. The article argues that this demanding standard reflects a widespread eighteenth-century critical preoccupation with visual propriety, stemming from ut pictura poesis, empiricist epistemology (idea/image equivalence), and the Ciceronian doctrine of metaphor, an obsession that limited the acceptance of Renaissance metaphysical styles.
Samuel Johnson's Christian Humanism and the Function of Literature
Misenheimer identifies a vital humanistic principle at the heart of Johnson's critical creed, arguing that his literary theory stems from intense religious convictions rather than mere classical learning. Defining Johnson as a Christian humanist, Misenheimer asserts that Johnson views Christianity as the highest perfection of humanity, where man's business involves perfecting characteristics gifted by God. Literature serves as a serious force to redirect conduct and work for moral betterment, contributing to the art of living. Misenheimer challenges previous scholarship for failing to connect Johnson's didactic aesthetic to his personal piety and the tragedy of human existence. The article emphasizes that Johnson's morality remains rooted in experience rather than books, seeking to assuage the pain of being a man by helping readers realize their potential as rational beings. For Johnson, the author functions as a moral guide with an ethical responsibility to communicate truth and unify human experience.
CGV entry 10/1:112. Reprinted in Yearbook of English Studies, volume 3 (1973), pages 148–160.
The Religious Sublime: Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in Eighteenth-Century England
Words and Things: Johnson and the Language of Poetry
Morris disputes the claim that Johnson treats art as life as a defect, arguing instead that this perspective grants art a moral resonance and accession of seriousness. He explores Johnson's view of the poet as imitator and the work of art as the artist's work, which subjects literature to moral judgement as a piece of behaviour. Morris highlights Johnson's lively sense of human limitation and his large charity toward minor poets, while contrasting this with his severity toward the culpable assertion of self in Gray and the metaphysical poets.
The Language of Humanism: Modes of Argument and Self-Authentication in the Literary Criticisms of Johnson and Arnold (Part I of IV Parts)
Wain edits this extensive volume, presenting a selection of Johnson’s critical writings as part of the Routledge Critics Series. The book includes material drawn from Johnson’s early periodical criticism, selections from the Dictionary, excerpts from the edition of Shakespeare, and significant portions of The Lives of the Poets. Wain contributes a substantial introduction that is appreciative and provides suggestive speculations regarding the processes through which Johnson formulated his critical views. Wain argues that Johnson holds a pivotal position in the history of criticism and discusses The Lives of the Poets specifically as a literary history of an epoch. This collection makes a substantial portion of Johnson's critical oeuvre available, supported by an index and a select bibliography.
CGV entry 10/1:118.
Waingrow describes this collection as a representative reader for a general audience, containing forty-seven numbered selections from Johnson’s periodical essays, the Dictionary, Shakespearean criticism, and the Lives of the Poets. While acknowledging the volume's accessibility, Waingrow criticizes Wain's introduction for reinforcing dated views on Johnson’s supposed distrust of imagination and preference for direct statement. He argues that Johnson’s criticism should be understood through dialectical tensions—such as imitation versus originality—rather than as a backward-looking struggle against modernity or emerging Romanticism.
CGV entry 10/1:118. Review by Marshall Waingrow of the book edited by John Wain.
CGV entry 10/1:118. Review by Stanley W. Lindberg of the book edited by John Wain, alongside another work.
Wain's anthology simplifies Johnson’s criticism to three main topics: Shakespeare, Milton, and Augustan poetry. The volume notably excludes reported conversations from Boswell.
CGV entry 10/1:118. An anonymous review of the book edited by John Wain, alongside other works. Prompted extensive correspondence in subsequent issues.
The Proper Language of Poetry: Gray, Johnson, and Others
Greene defends Johnson’s "unreconstructed" opposition to Gray’s assertion that the "language of the age is never the language of poetry." Identifying a persistent "fog" of archaism in English verse, Greene posits that Gray’s Odes represent a decadent retreat into "hieratic" artifice. The analysis demonstrates that Johnson’s preference for "chaste" diction anticipates the Wordsworthian revolution, as both critics rejected "traditional imagery and hereditary similes" in favor of a selection of language used by men. Greene characterizes Gray as an "inhibited, frightened person" whose maudlin self-pity and vicarious violence required the shield of obsolete syntax. Conversely, Johnson promotes a "prosaic" ideal where poetry serves the "common condition of humanity." The study concludes that Johnson’s attacks on "antique ruff and bonnet" were vital efforts to prevent poetry from becoming a "delirious ecstasy" divorced from moral truth.
CGV entry 10/1:120. An anthology of Johnson's criticism.
Triangulating Sensibilities: Johnson, the Metaphysicals, and Us
The Interdependence of the General and the Particular in Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism
Damrosch presents a scholarly defense of Johnson as a critic whose continuing relevance derives from a resistance to abstract theory and a commitment to the "common reader." Damrosch argues that Johnsonian criticism functions not as a body of rigid doctrine but as a "way of reading" that emphasizes the relationship between literature and human life. While noting that the Rambler and the Preface to Shakespeare contain Johnson's most theoretical efforts, Damrosch identifies the Lives of the Poets as his finest achievement, representing a unique union of moral, biographical, and technical analysis. Damrosch challenges the modern perception of Johnson as a censorious "struldbrugg of criticism" by demonstrating how his style—characterized by energy, persuasive eloquence, and "rhetorical wit"—serves to broaden the reader's understanding. The monograph further explores Johnson's complex response to genre, particularly pastoral and epic, and highlights his insistence that poetry must provide pleasure while maintaining truth to nature. Damrosch concludes that Johnson offers a durable model for critical reading by teaching the thoughtful reader to "trust his own responses" and to bridge the gap between aesthetic and moral standards. Chapter 1, 'The Limitations of Theory,' addresses the skeptical nature of critical principles, arguing that resistance to abstract systems allows for more honest and flexible responses to specific literary works. Chapter 2, 'The Common Reader,' explores the democratic appeal to uncorrupted judgment as both a historical test of time and a method of maintaining individual reading fidelity. Chapter 3, 'Style and Criticism,' argues that the energy and persuasive eloquence of idiosyncratic prose enhance critical authority rather than limiting perception through supposed rigidity. Chapter 4, 'Pastoral and Epic: The Implications of Genre,' examines how responses to existing generic theories shaped evaluations of Milton, particularly the preference for rural reality over artificial conventions. Chapter 5, 'Shakespeare and Didacticism,' addresses the tension between mimetic representation and the moral duty to instruct, suggesting that biographical reality provides a more successful framework for ethical judgment. Chapter 6, 'The Greatness of the Lives,' characterizes the biographical mode as a superior union of moral, historical, and technical analysis that transcends mere antiquarianism. Chapter 7, 'Dryden: The Power of Mind,' investigates how a focus on the author’s intellectual strength overcomes the unevenness of individual poems to command constant reader attention. Chapter 8, 'Pope: The Fulfillment of Genius,' compares the regular heat of patient artistry with more impetuous powers, asserting that diligent care can lead to superior poetic achievements. Chapter 9, 'Conclusion,' evaluates the lasting utility of this humanist tradition, which prioritizes the pleasure and moral responses of the reader over specialized, sterile analysis. The critical reception is mixed. McIntosh, in PQ, is impressed by the timely rationalization of critical achievements against modern critics, praising the persuasive analysis of how the lives ally biography and moral essays, though finding the argument too defensive of prose style. Sigworth's review in JEGP supports the shift to practical criticism as an active ideal of agreement with the common reader, but disputes the attempt to force consistency onto the views on Milton and Shakespeare. Curley (Studies in Burke and His Time) offers praise, calling the argument a superior, persuasive defense that successfully positions the subject as an empirical humanist with a profound historical vision. But King, in the Sewanee Review, finds the approach unfortunate, arguing that useless engagement with academic controversy and modern formalism overwhelms the good insights concerning actual practice. Jenkins's review in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism finds the defense unpersuasive, noting a failure to confront theoretical questions regarding aesthetic truth-telling or to defend the subject adequately against charges of misunderstanding metaphor.
Jenkins finds Damrosch’s defense of Johnson’s value unpersuasive because it avoids theoretical questions regarding aesthetic truth-telling. While Damrosch argues that Johnson’s practice is independent of his theory, Jenkins insists that valid judgments must derive from coherent principles. The review notes Damrosch’s useful discussion of Johnson’s techniques of persuasion and his biographies of Dryden and Pope, which demonstrate a unity of moral and aesthetic judgment. However, Jenkins disputes the failure to defend Johnson against charges of misunderstanding metaphor, specifically regarding the Odes of Gray. Jenkins suggests a better defense would demonstrate that Johnson provides the truth about literature.
CGV entry 10/1:123. A review with reservations by Ralph E. Jenkins of the book by Leopold Damrosch, Jr.
CGV entry 10/1:123. A review essay by Leo Braudy on the book by Leopold Damrosch, Jr.
King notes Damrosch had the happy idea of studying Johnson's criticism. Unfortunately, he quickly slides into the quicksands of academic controversy by arguing with those who wrongly codified Johnson's views. The book suffers from treating deviations from modern criticism as failings requiring cautious justification. King argues that useless discussion of Johnson's attitudes toward formalism and generic criticism overwhelms the many good insights concerning his actual practice.
CGV entry 10/1:123. A review of the book by Leopold Damrosch, Jr., alongside other works.
McIntosh is impressed and persuaded by Leopold Damrosch, Jr.'s The Uses of Johnson's Criticism, noting its timely aims to rationalize Johnson's critical achievement against modern critics. The reviewer finds parts of the book intelligent and persuasive, particularly the analysis of how the Lives of the Poets ally moral essay, biography, and literary criticism. McIntosh, however, finds Damrosch too defensive of Johnson's prose style and apologetic for Johnson's subversive contempt for "broken" metaphors in the Lives of Addison and Gray.
CGV entry 10/1:123.
Sigworth supports Damrosch’s shift from theoretical foundations to Johnson’s practical criticism as an 'act in which the reader shares.' Damrosch successfully highlights the 'active ideal of agreement' between the critic and common reader. However, Sigworth disputes the effort to make Johnson’s views on Milton and Shakespeare consistent or 'theoretical.' He argues Damrosch overlooks the 'rhetorical effect' of the Preface to Shakespeare and fails to address the 'simplicities' of 'originality, vigor, and elegance' in Johnson's critical standards.
CGV entry 10/1:123. A review by Oliver F. Sigworth of the book by Leopold Damrosch, Jr.
Curley praises The Uses of Johnson's Criticism (1976), as a superior to Damrosch's earlier Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense, positive, and persuasive argument for the enduring value of Johnson's literary judgments. The second book successfully positions Johnson as an empirical humanist, magnifying his use of the common reader's response and his profound historical vision of British civilization, particularly evident in the Lives of the English Poets.
CGV entry 10/1:123. A review by Thomas M. Curley of the book by Leopold Damrosch, Jr., alongside another work.
CGV entry 10/1:123. A review by Paul D. McGlynn of the book by Leopold Damrosch, Jr.
Humanities Association Review/Association des Humanités Revue
Johnson on Fielding and Richardson: A Problem in Literary Moralism
Graces of Harmony: Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry
Adams argues that eighteenth-century poets, led by Dryden and Pope, used a sophisticated array of alliteration, assonance, and consonance to achieve harmony of numbers, a term denoting the artful collocation of ear-appealing words. The text details how Johnson, though theoretically conservative and critical of excessive alliteration in others, employed a high ratio of stressed vowel echoes in his own poetry to reinforce structural balance and rhetorical emphasis. Adams identifies Johnson's frequent use of vertical sound repetition and notes that his The Vanity of Human Wishes contains over 130 assonances, nearly twice the number of its initial consonant echoes. Brief mention is made of Boswell's role in documenting Johnson's linguistic revisions and Piozzi's identification of Johnson's favorite couplets, which Adams analyzes for their phonic binding. The study concludes that these phonic devices were not merely ornamental but functionally related to representative meter, where sound reinforces the cognitive and emotional meaning of the verse.
CGV entry 10/1:126. Contains references throughout to Johnson's poetical criticism and verse.
Edinger examines Johnson's critical standards by reconstructing the logic behind his stylistic judgments, particularly in the Lives of the Poets. The study situates Johnson as a synthesizer of ancient rhetorical traditions and modern empirical thought, tracing the reemergence of the "problem of fragmentation" from Cicero to Bacon and beyond. Edinger argues that Johnson's deepest affinities lie with liberal critics who reject abstract methodology in favor of an individualistic standard for style. By analyzing Johnson's response to metaphysical poetry and his preference for biography, Edinger demonstrates that Johnson's concept of general nature represents a "concrete universal" rooted in direct perception rather than desiccated abstraction. Johnson's demand for a "natural" style reflects an effort to overcome the divorce between words and things by requiring that poetic language embody authentic sensory experience. Edinger challenges views of Johnson as a rigid neo-Platonist, presenting him instead as a proponent of a "perceptual standard" that anticipates Romantic developments in the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge. This synthesis makes Johnson's thinking "the most intelligent, comprehensive, and flexible of its age." Chapter 1, 'The Problem of Fragmentation,' addresses the emergence of a more perceptual standard for style during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, identifying the neoclassical ideal of simplicity as a reaction against the incoherence of Baroque style. It traces the conceptual roots of this movement to classical rhetorical theory, specifically Cicero's defense of a unified, unspecialized eloquence that prevents the separation of words from things. Chapter 2, 'Empiricism and Literary Realism,' explores how the language arts accommodated the empiricist principles of Bacon and Locke, moving from a conflict between scientific and humanistic inquiry toward a view of their complementarity. It argues that Locke’s nominalism provided a framework for seeing literature as a legitimate mode of moral discovery rather than mere ornament. Chapter 3, 'Literary Realism and Johnson's "General Nature,"' addresses how Johnson’s empirical conception of mimesis establishes a defensible moral and cognitive function for literature by treating fictional particulars as autonomous fields for inductive interpretation. Chapter 4, '"Natural" Style in the Neoclassical Era,' explores the evolution of stylistic standards from Dryden to Wordsworth, emphasizing the shift toward an individualistic standard that requires poetic style to embody direct sensory perception. Chapter 5, 'The Prismatic Glass,' analyzes the classical sources of Johnson’s critical metaphors, describing his liberal neoclassicism as a synthesis that uses ancient principles to support a modern understanding of human perception. Chapter 6, 'Antinomies,' addresses those elements of Johnson’s criticism that remain incompatible with his major achievements, acknowledging the unsystematic but comprehensive nature of his thinking. Critics are generally favorable, praising the ambitious reconstruction of intellectual contexts and the defense against charges of critical contradiction. Greene, in TLS, supports the dismantling of hostile metacritical accounts and highlights the focus on resolute empiricism and the concrete universal. Weinbrot's review in ECS finds the work useful for illuminating mimesis and general nature, though he challenges the assumption of a neoclassical stylistic orthodoxy and a uniform consistency across disparate genres. Writing in PQ, Nussbaum commends the analysis of historical and classical premises, noting the successful clarification of aesthetic standards. Middendorf (JNL) commends the investigation for laying to rest persistent charges that art was conflated with life, emphasizing a pivotal role in the transition toward perceptual standards of criticism. In ECCB, Sigworth considers the volume one of the best studies of the subject's criticism to appear, despite a tendency to search for a consistent theoretical basis rather than accepting a humane, pragmatic outlook. Battersby's review in Modern Philology acknowledges the analytic subtlety but offers a skeptical critique of the historical method, finding the standards of style too imprecise and the unified tradition unpersuasive. Rawson (Sewanee Review) describes the discussion of rhetorical doctrines as intelligent, though noting it is marred by pompous jargon. Jenkins, in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, praises the impeccable scholarship but challenges the conceptual determinism of the historical approach. Marks (Criticism) finds the analysis of empirical premises enlightening, while Peterson (JEGP) delivers a critical evaluation, arguing that the elaboration of context fails to touch the actual text.
Greene's searching review of Edinger's study challenges traditional views of Johnson as a "reactionary abstractionist," supporting the demolition of Wellek's account of Johnsonian imagination and disputing Wimsatt's portrayal of Johnson as a "massive summary of the neoclassical tradition." Edinger places Johnson in the "liberal" wing of Neoclassicism, though Greene emphasizes Johnson's resolute empiricism, "actual practical love of life," and a critical position defined by "concrete universal" where "generality" in Shakespeare is valued as "ubiquity of application" stemming from "general observation" rather than abstract avoidance of detail. While Greene praises the discussion of the "liberal" wing, he regrets Edinger's failure to use the full empirical methodology Johnson recommended and criticizes the heavy reliance on quoting other metacritics. Greene suggests a more thorough exploration of the Johnsonian corpus might reconcile supposed contradictions in his critical positions.
CGV entry 10/1:127.
Peterson offers a critical review of Edinger’s historical search for the foundations of Johnson’s remarks on style, praising the author for his learning and ingenuity, especially in the central chapters. He commends the sections explaining the concrete universal and natural style, where Edinger successfully shows how Johnson’s traditional stylistic vocabulary is animated by a modern sensibility, connecting Johnson's empiricism to his "general nature" standard and making him a genuine transitional figure in criticism. However, Peterson disputes the success of Edinger’s attempt to define philosophical conceptions that Johnson never articulated, such as nominalism or realism, and challenges the book's reliance on inflated language. He further critiques Edinger's failure to distinguish Johnson’s positions from Aristotelian realism and notes that the later sections are obscured by hedging and padding. Peterson also points out that Edinger fails to explain why the study focuses on poetic style given its heavy reliance on prose traditions of rhetoric and logic. Ultimately, Peterson concludes that Edinger’s elaboration of context often fails to touch what Johnson actually said.
CGV entry 10/1:127. Review by R. G. Peterson of the book by William Edinger.
Marks provides an approving review of William Edinger's study of Johnson's critical theory. Edinger treats Johnson's concept of poetic style as a reflection of empiricism rooted in Bacon and Locke. Marks finds the analysis of neoclassical premises ably organized and the survey of classical mentors enlightening. Edinger attempts to reconcile inconsistencies in Johnson's thinking, particularly regarding the particular and the general, by using the concept of the concrete universal. While Marks finds Edinger's effort to dispute charges of naive literary realism less than fully convincing, he praises the book as a fine contribution that accurately examines the historical antecedents of Johnson's thought.
CGV entry 10/1:127. Review by Emerson R. Marks of the book by William Edinger.
Review by Emerson R Marks of Samuel Johnson and Poetic Style by William Edinger.
Nussbaum commends Edinger’s analysis of Johnson’s critical theory and literary taste. She highlights Edinger’s success in reconciling apparent inconsistencies in Johnson’s pronouncements by recovering their historical and classical premises. She notes Edinger’s focus on mimesis and nature, particularly his argument that Johnson synthesizes ancient and modern criticism. Nussbaum praises the thorough examination of the Life of Cowley and the explanation of Johnson’s distaste for total abstraction, concluding that the work significantly clarifies Johnson’s aesthetic standards.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A review essay by Felicity A. Nussbaum on the book by William Edinger.
Weinbrot reviews William Edinger’s reconstruction of Johnson’s literary opinions, which examines the attempt to link Johnson’s standards of "truth" and "general nature" to Ciceronian rhetoric and Baconian empiricism. Edinger argues that Johnson synthesized humanistic and scientific knowledge, or ancient and modern thinking, to clarify the language suitable for literature. While Weinbrot finds the book useful for illuminating aspects of Johnson’s mimesis and general nature, and finds Edinger’s defense of Johnson’s understanding of the nature of art successful against previous detractors, he disputes Edinger’s assumption of a neoclassical stylistic orthodoxy. Weinbrot challenges the notion that neoclassical critics embraced a theory of organic unity to the exclusion of others, citing the additive and associative nature of popular poems by Young and Thomson that lacked such unity. He questions why Johnson must be shown as consistent across disparate genres and time periods and concludes that while learned, Edinger’s method and findings may not gain universal approbation.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A review by Howard D. Weinbrot of the book by William Edinger.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A severe review by Morris R. Brownell of the book by William Edinger, alongside other works.
Review by Morris R Brownell of Samuel Johnson and Poetic Style by William Edinger.
Battersby calls Edinger’s book an impressive, ambitious, and remarkable piece of work that positions Johnson as the major synthesizer of a liberal tradition of rhetorical theory spanning ancient and modern thought. While Battersby praises Edinger’s analytic subtlety and his spirited defense of Johnson against René Wellek’s charges of contradiction, he offers a skeptical critique of the book’s historical method. Battersby argues that Edinger "yokes by violence together" heterogeneous principles to create the appearance of a unified tradition from Cicero to Coleridge, and he finds the argument and method ultimately unpersuasive. Specifically, the review challenges the conclusion that Johnson’s critical thought follows a clear perceptual evolution toward Romanticism, finding Edinger’s standards of style—transparency and flexibility—too imprecise to account for the diversity among neoclassical critics or the complexity of Johnson’s actual views. Despite these reservations, Battersby notes that the book forces readers to reassess their views of neoclassicism and Johnson's significant place in literary history.
Jenkins reviews Edinger’s description of Johnson’s critical achievement within the rhetorical tradition of Cicero, Bacon, and Locke, praising the work for its impeccable scholarship and its usefulness in providing a concise and intelligent description of a rhetorical and critical tradition. The review finds Edinger’s conclusions balanced and sensible, particularly the identification of general nature as the moral and intellectual center of Johnson’s criticism, which consistently demanded "freshness of observation and feeling." However, Jenkins challenges the historical method employed, arguing it relies on the fictional premise that detecting conceptual similarities allows historians to "read the minds of the dead." This conceptual determinism, Jenkins argues, makes the appearance of new ideas mysterious and fails to account for concepts that may originate from immediate experience rather than secondhand borrowing. He disputes the premise that historical context alone determines Johnson’s principles and, while calling the book’s value considerable, maintains that the historical method cannot provide the final word on Johnson’s meaning.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A critical review by Ralph E. Jenkins of the book by William Edinger.
Rawson describes Edinger’s work as an intelligent discussion of Johnson’s literary principles in light of rhetorical doctrines. The review notes Edinger argues Johnson's general nature is that which is richest in particulars. Rawson finds the book a little marred by pompous jargon but credits Edinger for reminding readers of Johnson's preference for factual over fictional genres.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A review essay (“Jobswell: A Short View of the Johnson–Boswell Industry”) by C. J. Rawson on the book by William Edinger.
Sigworth's positive review states that Edinger's book serves as one of the best studies of Johnson's criticism yet to appear. Sigworth notes that the work devotes itself to the epistemological and psychological presuppositions of late Renaissance figures like Bacon, Descartes, and Locke to explore the context of Criticism from Aristotle to Coleridge. The review commends Edinger's treatment of Johnson's concepts of general nature and mimesis, though it finds a fault in Edinger's common critical impulse to search for a consistent theoretical basis instead of accepting Johnson as a humane, pragmatic critic.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A review by Oliver F. Sigworth of the book by William Edinger.
Authors and Authority: A Study of English Literary Criticism and Its Relation to Culture, 1750–1900
Samuel Johnson: The Academy and the Market-Place
Parrinder analyzes Johnson as the primary institutionalizing force in English literature, noting his emergence from Grub Street hack to dominant man of letters. He argues Johnson’s criticism represents a 'normal science' within the neoclassical paradigm, yet remains powerfully iconoclastic in its rejection of an English Academy. Johnson resolves aesthetic problems through standards of verisimilitude and common sense, appealing to the 'common reader' rather than a specialized elite. Parrinder highlights Johnson’s 'constitutionalism,' which balances the hierarchy of the literary academy with the democracy of the competitive marketplace. Johnson treats authors as 'general challengers' responsible for their own merit. The text emphasizes Johnson’s focus on the drudgery of authorship and his definition of genius as 'large general powers' requiring back-breaking labor. Johnson maintains that 'reason wants not Horace to support it,' asserting the independence of critical judgment from antiquity.
The Value of Failure: Johnson on Critical Displeasure
DeMaria examines the concept of the "ideal reader" as a literary "character" that embodies the formal structure of a critic's work. He analyzes Johnson as an epic critic whose ideal reader is the abstract, allegorical "common reader"—a timeless representative of all mankind, uncorrupted by knowledge or prejudice, who serves as the final judge of literary merit. In contrast, Dryden is a dramatic critic whose ideal reader is the plural "most judicious" (a class of cultivated men). Coleridge is a lyrical critic whose ideal reader is an individual, often a "tautegory for the author himself," who collaborates in the creation of what he reads. Frye is a romantic/allegorical critic whose ideal reader is a hero on a quest to redeem cultural history.
CGV entry 10/1:131. Partially on Johnson.
Johnson distinguished sharply between "novelty" and "originality." Novelty's dangerous seduction—"the pomp of novelty"—divorces writing from fidelity to experience, producing distortions readers discard. Originality, conversely, fuses truth with novelty, yielding enduring work. Johnson stressed invention of new plots and events above new images, since "nature itself, philosophically considered" produces uniform effects despite inexhaustibility. Original poets focus on human activities and philosophical approaches to experience's shadowy labyrinth, retaining "general power of gratifying every mind by recalling its own conceptions" while engaging imagination with "new application of those views to moral purposes." This attitude anticipates romantic concentration on inner life, as Wordsworth and Keats recognized, marking Johnson's crucial role in defining poetic originality as philosophical exploration of experience's dark passages.
Piper proposes Johnson's critical practice as a paradigm for critics seeking to engage society and experience. Johnson consistently defers to the "common sense" of the reading public, viewing his role as refining and establishing a literary consensus. His criticism, essentially a public conversation, balances dialogue with fellow critics (Warburton, Theobald) with appeals to the general reader, selecting topics and determining analytical depth based on public needs. This practice sacrifices absolute claims to truth for the ethical and practical advantages of social accountability and shared understanding.
Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Modern Critical Methodologies
Cohen disputes the formalist "rage for order" that reduces eighteenth-century literature to a Ptolemaic cosmology of closed forms and determinate meanings. He argues that modern methodologies can retrieve an active, antagonistic literature from a "literature of conclusions." Cohen uses Johnson as a primary example, asserting that Johnson is not a "Sam Maxim to his own Dick Minim." He contends that the true significance of Johnson lies not in his summary statements, but in the "density and complexity" of his thought and language. By viewing texts as "fields of activity," scholars can move beyond cataloging genres to engage with the problematic meaning-making that animates the period's intellectual life.
CGV entry 10/1:135. Johnson included in a discussion of the "intellectual reorientation at midcentury."
CGV entry 10/1:136. A collection of Johnson's critical statements.
The Term 'Conceit' in Johnson's Literary Criticism
Misconceptions regarding Johnson's use of the term 'conceit' stem from contemporary critical back-projection. Johnson did not equate 'conceit' with 'extended metaphor' or 'metaphysical' imagery; in his Dictionary and practical criticism, he consistently opposed conceit to imagery. While imagery constitutes 'pictures in the mind,' conceit involves 'cerebration' or intellectual word-play. Johnson's censure of the 'metaphysical poets' targets 'mixed wit'—where metaphors are treated with literalizing labor—and the intrusion of 'recesses of learning' that obstruct emotional empathy. He views conceits as 'unaffecting' gimmicks that counteract the 'pathetick' by exercising the understanding rather than the heart. Johnson identifies conceits across classical and Renaissance literature, viewing them as organic failures of poetic 'gaiety of imagination' rather than a distinct metaphysical species.
The Unfurious Critic: Samuel Johnson's Attitudes toward His Contemporaries
Johnson's critical reputation is unfairly based on a few vigorously expressed conversational remarks about his contemporaries, leading to the notion of him as the "Great Cham" with compromised judgment (e.g., his preference for Richardson over Fielding). Johnston contends that Johnson deliberately and consistently avoided judicial criticism of living writers in print, adhering to the principle that a critic cannot objectively assess his own time. His published critiques are typically brief, objective descriptions or assessments of long-dead authors. To be judged fairly, Johnson must be assessed solely on his published works, which reveal an "unfurious critic" who aimed to avoid bias and inflict pain on living authors.
Poetic Presence and Illusion: Essays in Critical History and Theory
'Trying Experiments upon Our Sensibility': The Art of Dogma and Doubt in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Krieger investigates the struggle between rationalist "monomyths" and experiential doubt, using Johnson’s 1757 review of Soame Jenyns as a primary example. Johnson emerges as a "morbid empiricist" who rejects the "unseen and unheard" entities of the Great Chain of Being because they fail to account for the man of flesh and bone. Krieger links Johnson’s distrust of metaphysical abstractions to his broader contempt for literary fictions, such as the mythological allusions in Lycidas. The article suggests that Johnson’s extraordinary capacity to contain both the period’s generalized constructions and a common-sense demystification of them makes him a uniquely representative spokesman. Krieger parallels Johnson’s skepticism with Alexander Pope’s ironic treatment of the sylphs in The Rape of the Lock. Johnson challenges the "hedonic calculus" of his time, insisting that authors who willfully invent amoral cosmological systems are merely "trying experiments upon our sensibility" while neglecting the dignity of human suffering and the endurance required for living.
CGV entry 10/1:140. Primarily on Johnson's literary criticism.
Dr. Johnson, Joseph Warton, and the 'Theory of Particularity'
Rational Praise and Natural Lamentation: Johnson, 'Lycidas,' and Principles of Criticism
Questions critical approaches finding contradiction or polarity in Johnson's thought. Battersby targets critics, including Sigworth, Fussell, Sacks, and Krieger, who impose dialectical patterns, damaging Johnson's intellectual integrity. The analysis insists reasoning must begin from empirically distinguishable events, resisting abstract premises based on bifurcated sensibility. The book establishes Johnson’s theoretical framework for criticism. It examines Johnson’s views on pastoral and elegy genres. Battersby connects Johnson's commentary to his foundational principles. The critique demonstrates Johnson’s severe judgment of Lycidas resulted directly from his critical assumptions. The work argues Johnson's position reflects essential principles, not naive standards of sincerity. Battersby challenges the circular argument that stating Johnson was true to his norms alone justifies his reading.
Stock evaluates Battersby’s critique of modern Johnsonian congeries, including Fussell and Krieger. He supports Battersby’s argument that these "a priorist" critics foist modern tensions onto Johnson while ignoring his principled coherence. Stock finds the book's disentangling of logic tedious but necessary to correct chronological snobbery that shoves Johnson toward modernism. He validates Battersby’s defense of Johnson as a sophisticated neoclassicist. While noting the second half’s theory of criticism is less venturesome, Stock considers it a useful corrective to persistent misconceptions regarding Johnson’s treatment of pastoral poetry.
CGV entry 10/1:142. Review by R. D. Stock of the book by James L. Battersby.
Weinbrot discusses Battersby’s challenge to dialectical approaches that find inconsistency in Johnson’s thought. Battersby argues Johnson remains faithful to his own principles by criticizing Lycidas for using language inappropriate to the pastoral form. Weinbrot disputes the hypothesis that Johnson is a critical monolith, citing instances where Johnson changed his mind on blank verse and imitation. He suggests Battersby ignores important contexts, such as Johnson’s use of Warton’s translations, which inform the critical priorities regarding truth and nature.
CGV entry 10/1:142. Review by Howard D. Weinbrot of the book by James L. Battersby.
Fix's mixed review states that Battersby reads Johnson's criticism accurately but produces a book at once overly ambitious and narrow. Battersby examines commentaries on Johnson by Oliver Sigworth, Paul Fussell, Murray Krieger, and Arieh Sachs, arguing that their dialectical approaches portray Johnson as oscillating between conflicting values rather than adhering to stable principles. Fix praises Battersby as an impressive logician who delivers a useful cautionary tale about reading Johnson in context, yet Fix notes the analysis is laborious. Fix faults Battersby for ignoring relevant contemporary essays by Richard Kelly and Victor Milne, and for failing to engage major scholars like Lawrence Lipking, Walter Jackson Bate, William Edinger, Leopold Damrosch, and Robert Folkenflik. In analyzing the second half of the book, Fix credits Battersby with demonstrating Johnson's critical consistency and rescuing Johnson from charges of a naive attachment to sincerity, showing that the critique of Milton's poem stems from a belief that elegies must convey rational praise and natural lamentation. Fix concludes that Battersby overvalues consistency and avoids exploring the limitations of Johnson's critical tastes.
CGV entry 10/1:142. A critical review by Stephen Fix of the book by James L. Battersby.
Samuel Johnson and Reader-Response Criticism
Johnson's criticism offers a valuable corrective to modern reader-response theory by emphasizing an author-reader relationship founded on a shared apprehension of reality. Johnson's focus lies on the interpretations and evaluations of actual readers, rather than on abstract structural principles of reading or models like Iser's "implied reader" or Fish's "interpretive communities." Johnson views literature as both cognitive and affective, insisting that the reader judges a work against real-world truth. Johnson's criticism affirms a sense of the author as "a man speaking to men," resisting theories that subordinate authorial intent to the reading process or an interpretive community's predetermined "strategies."
Experience, Method and the Task of Johnson's Criticism
Reconciling Johnson's Views on Poetic Justice
Johnson's seemingly contradictory statements on poetic justice are, in fact, consistent when viewed through his critical principles regarding a text's imitation of nature and its resultant affective and didactic powers. Johnson demands poetic justice (reward for virtue, punishment for vice) when characters are natural and credible (like those in Shakespeare's tragedies or Rowe's Jane Shore), thereby engaging his emotions and maximizing the text's moral instruction. Conversely, he dismisses the need for it when discussing unnatural or artificial characters (like those in Addison's Cato or Milton's Paradise Lost), as they fail to evoke emotional investment or provide significant moral guidance.
Some Limits in Johnson's Literary Criticism
Boyd investigates the limitations within Johnson's literary criticism, arguing they stem paradoxically from his strength: his profound commitment to the connection between literature and life. While this humanistic focus grounds his greatest insights (e.g., on Shakespeare, general nature), it sometimes leads to restrictive judgments when distorted by anxiety, rationalism, or specific moral/religious concerns. Boyd analyzes Johnson's critiques of romance, mythology, pastoral, metaphysical poetry, and religious poetry, suggesting these limits arise when Johnson demands factual realism over poetic probability, fears the unruly imagination, or allows personal religious anxieties to override aesthetic appreciation, reflecting a narrower moralism.
Lope de Vega and the Early Conception of Metaphysical Poetry
Heiple explores the origins of the term "metaphysical poetry," noting that Johnson gave it critical weight in his "Life of Cowley" as a critique of seventeenth-century wit. Heiple reveals that Lope de Vega used the term nearly a century before Dryden to describe a style characterized by "overly subtle" discourse and a deviation from "nature." Like Johnson, Lope contrasted "metaphysical" learning with "natural" expression, specifically criticizing the introduction of occult speculation and scholastic subtleties into love poetry. The analysis demonstrates that for both Johnson and Lope, the term carried a derisive connotation of "incredible explanation" that contradicted common-sense observation.
CGV entry 10/1:149. Johnson's views are compared to those of Lope de Vega.
Kinkead-Weekes explores Johnson’s vehement preference for Richardson over Fielding, a stance seemingly contradicting Johnson's own theories. In Rambler 4, Johnson demanded realism and clear morality, warning against mixing vice and virtue. Yet he praised Richardson’s "knowledge of the heart" while dismissing Fielding as "low." Kinkead-Weekes argues this shift is explained by Johnson’s immersion in Shakespeare. His Shakespeare Notes value the same deep "characters of nature" he found in Richardson. Johnson, possessing a highly sensitive imagination, was genuinely "shocked" by Tom Jones, believing its attractive vice was morally corrupting. He failed to perceive Fielding's sophisticated use of irony.
The Antinomy of Style in Augustan Poetics
Marks examines the inherent paradox ("antinomy") in Augustan poetics whereby stylistic features praised as virtues (elegance, ornament, figurative language) are perilously close to corresponding vices (affectation, tumidity, inappropriate decoration). Drawing on classical rhetoricians like Longinus and Quintilian, Marks shows eighteenth-century critics like Pope, Johnson, Hume, and Beattie grappling with this problem. While generally favoring ornamented poetic diction, they recognized its dangers and the power of stylistic simplicity ("easy poetry"), struggling to define the elusive "just medium." This tension reflects an ongoing difficulty in reconciling theoretical ideals of style with the actual experience of poetic effect.
Joel Weinsheimer advocates revitalizing the practice of imitating literature as a mode appropriate for literary critics as well as artists. The book is not only about imitation; it is itself an imitation, specifically of Samuel Johnson. As both the focus and mode of presentation, imitation is presented not merely as a kind of poetry that once flourished in the eighteenth century but also as a kind of criticism particularly relevant today. Applying arguments from philosophy of science, deconstruction, psycho-analysis, literary theory, semiotics and hermene
CGV entry 10/1:152. Johnson is discussed throughout the book.
When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community
Teaching a Language of Morality: Johnson's Rambler Essays
White analyzes Johnson’s Rambler essays as a project in "moral instruction" designed to teach readers how to construct a "language of reason and value." He argues that Johnson is less interested in static moral propositions than in the internal struggle to "hold on to them" against "constant erosion and loss." White describes Johnson’s characteristic rhetorical movement from an unmediated "commonplace" to a deeply felt "principle" achieved through a process of "opposition and complication." By enacting his own involvement in error and self-correction, Johnson avoids being "patronizing" and instead treats the reader as a participant in a "constantly renewed struggle" for stability. Johnson uses his didactic prose to reconstitute inherited Christian morality into a "ground of action" that informs the nature and structure of the self.
Johnson integrates romance elements into his prose and poetry, using Latinate diction to revive "dead metaphors" with concrete etymological roots. His definitions and illustrations in the Dictionary reveal a "network of connections" to romance plots and landscapes. Key motifs include the "way" or journey, treacherous mists, mazes, and snares. Johnson often equates internal moral conflicts with romance combat, as seen in the "quartet of assailants" in the opening of his major verse. He translates realities like debtors' prisons into "noisome dungeons" ruled by "tyrant" Master. This imagery culminates in a full allegory where "Habits" grow from dwarfs to giants, reflecting Johnson's use of romance to express his own state of mind.
English Dramatic Criticism in the Neo-Classical Age: Some Problems
'Give Me Something to Desire': A Johnsonian Anthropology of Imitation
Weinsheimer articulates Johnson's implicit anthropology of imitation, positing that imitation is a universal and necessary human activity, especially in the context of desire. Johnson's characters, like Rasselas in the Happy Valley, experience an unnatural "hunger of imagination" or desire for self-esteem that they cannot satisfy alone. Since specifically human desires are artificial and social, they must be acquired from others (imitation) to gain the "respect" and distinction that all men crave (desire to be desired). Thus, imitation provides the necessary "foreign supplies" to fill the "vacuity of the isolated self."
Johnson, Richardson, and the Audience for Fiction
Johnson’s 1751 letter to Richardson regarding Clarissa contains a veiled critique of the novel’s reach. By describing Richardson’s readers as "the busy, the aged, and the studious," Johnson consciously inverted his Rambler 4 description of the typical novel audience as "the young, the ignorant, and the idle." This parallel suggests that despite his admiration for the work, Johnson believed Richardson failed to instruct the vulnerable demographic most in need of moral guidance.
CGV entry 10/1:158. Johnson's criticism of 'Clarissa'.
Knox suggests Johnson "indulged his spleen" and produced portraits that were less pleasing because they converted "harshness of feature into absolute caricature." Knox laments that with Boswell biography is "descending from its dignity," serving the "gratification of an impertinent, not to say a malignant, curiosity." Biography should conceal blemishes and use "a vein of panegyric" to arouse an "ardour of imitation." He further argues that materials should include manuscript letters and eyewitness accounts.
Johnson intends to compose a biography of Spenser. This prospective work generates significant public interest in the longevity of his biographical contributions. Associates of Johnson further anticipate a continuation of Rasselas.
CGV entry 10/2:2. Claims Johnson was said to be planning a biography of Spenser.
Biographers traditionally viewed their craft as a subset of history or a tool for moral instruction until the eighteenth century. Parr and Boswell represented divergent ideals for representing Johnson; while Parr favored a mental history, Boswell succeeded by interweaving private letters and conversation to create a "lively" and "complete" portrait. Johnson previously revolutionized the form in his own work by abolishing the vice of panegyric, insisting that a biographer's "duty to truth" exceeds regard for the dead. This shift from "vague testimonials" to "faithful soul-portraits" culminated in the publication of the life of Johnson. Boswell adopted and expanded the method of Mason, using chronological narrative to connect Johnson's own minutes and thoughts, thereby making the subject his own biographer. This evolution established biography as an autonomous literary form that transmits personality through the commixture of "greater and smaller" actions.
Cochrane entry 79.
This monograph on biography’s evolution emphasizes the shift from outward facts to inward personality, arguing that supreme examples like Boswell’s Life of Johnson achieve unparalleled lifelikeness. Thayer first surveys ancient models, including Plutarch and Tacitus, noting their focus on external acts and public life, and then reviews medieval forms, such as the lives of saints. He asserts that the art culminated in Boswell, whose unique gifts of transparent receptivity, selection, and unpretentious style created the most complete portrait of Johnson as both a public wit and a private, conflicted man. The essay concludes by assessing nineteenth-century biographies, urging modern practitioners to embrace veracity, shun excessive length, and adopt the scientific method’s thoroughness without sacrificing the essential human element. Thayer advocates for biographical Totality: revealing the individual's essence and place in the universal.
Nicolson positions Boswell's Life of Johnson as the supreme English biography, arguing he invented the technique of actuality. Boswell, despite his perceived personal failings, is credited with the unique genius necessary for gathering minute detail and constructing a cohesive narrative, fusing the subject's actions and conversation into a dramatic portrait. This achievement builds upon Johnson’s own foundational work: the Life of Savage (1744) and the Lives of the Poets (1779–81) established biography as a distinct branch of literature focused on psychological truth and domestic life over mere historical achievement. Piozzi's Anecdotes are acknowledged as charming and illuminating, complementing Boswell’s official portrait.
Brown identifies unnoted parallels between Goldsmith’s 1762 Life of Richard Nash and Johnson’s 1759 Idler No. 84, suggesting Goldsmith borrowed ideas and phraseology regarding the art of biography. Both authors prioritize relations "levelled with the general surface of life" over the "stratagems of war" or "intrigues of courts," which they believe the public reads with indifference. The text demonstrates that Goldsmith adopted Johnson’s view that the domestic and psychological details of a subject—how a man was made happy rather than how he became great—provide the most real improvement to the reader. Brown argues that Johnson exerted a dominating influence on the biographical theories of both Goldsmith and Boswell, promoting an ideal of truth and the significance of "minute peculiarities" over panegyric. These principles, established in The Rambler and The Idler, served as the foundation for The Lives of the Poets and modern biographical methods.
CGV entry 10/2:8. Based on his Clark Lectures, 1928. See pages 81-85. Translated by S. C. Roberts as 'Aspects of Biography' (Cambridge University Press, 1929). Discusses 'Rambler' 60.
CGV entry 10/2:12. On 'Idler' 84.
Britt identifies Samuel Johnson as the individual who "set the pace for the new biography" by bringing an "immovable independence of thought" and a "searching sense of actuality" to his work. Although Johnson was not a research expert, his "Lives of the Poets" established a standard for analytical biography that prioritized critical evaluation over social favor. Britt argues that Boswell, despite being characterized as a "garrulous Scotchman" and "parasite," possessed a "bit of a genius" for recording conversation and observation. By enduring indignities to remain near Johnson, Boswell created a work of "strongest immortality" that serves as the "focal point of English biography." The text emphasizes that Johnson and Boswell together elevated the status of the literary man from a Grub Street "hanger-on" to a recognized creator and "maker of history." Britt disputes the idea that Boswell's success was merely accidental, asserting that only genuine ability could produce such a "fascinating" and "real" portrayal.
Cochrane entry 125.
The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England
Johnson dominates the biographical landscape as a seminal theorist who advocates for the superiority of autobiography based on the subject's unique access to truth. He insists that the value of every story depends on its being true and maintains that a biographer must represent a life really as it was, including faults and minute domestic details. This commitment to veracity often challenges the tradition of dignity and contemporary expectations for panegyric. Stauffer notes that Johnson's own Lives of the Poets frequently roused opposition for exposing the weaknesses of its subjects. Despite a personal horror of death and persistent melancholy, Johnson viewed the truthful presentation of a life as a vital moral document that kept mankind from despondency by demonstrating that even great men are a compound of the great and mean. His theories in the Rambler and Idler established the focus on domestic life over public history, influencing a generation of biographers to seek the individual within the hero.
CGV entry 1/1:30. The corresponding bibliography appears in 2:134-48.
Tracy analyzes the seemingly contradictory position of Johnson, a theorist who championed the general idea in poetry, yet valued anecdotes—"minute passages of private life"—as the most valuable material for biography. This dichotomy reflects a distinction Johnson made between imaginative art, which is free to discover universal truths, and biography, which is tied to recording specific facts about a common humanity. Johnson's biographical practice, especially in the Life of Savage, shows his genius not in assembling facts, but in using his deep psychological penetration and generalizing power to uncover the essential qualities of a man, moving beyond mere anecdotal realism.
CGV entry 10/2:16. On his theory and practice as a biographer.
This monograph surveys the evolution of biography as a distinct historical and literary genre, tracing its development from ancient funerary records to the modern psychological synthesis. Garraty explains the central tension between biography as a scientific reconstruction of facts and as an artistic portrayal of personality. The text details the profound impact of Johnson on the genre, identifying him as the "greatest figure" of eighteenth-century biography for his insistence on honesty, impartiality, and the practical moral utility of describing lives "really as it was". Garraty acknowledges Boswell for bringing together developing elements of accuracy, anecdotal detail, and personal correspondence to create a "great work of art" that marked the maturity of the form. The narrative further examines the "new biography" of the early twentieth century, evaluating the contributions of Lytton Strachey and the application of Freudian psychoanalysis to biographical investigation. Garraty describes the biographer as an "artist who is on oath," tasked with using sympathy, scholarship, and controlled imagination to achieve a three-dimensional truth.
CGV entry 10/2:17. Discusses Johnson on pages 25–28, 79-91 and Boswell on pages 93-96.
Cochrane entry 173.
Clifford anthologizes critical ruminations on life-writing, identifying Johnson and Boswell as the "progenitors of modern biography." The collection highlights Johnson’s insistence that "what is of most use is of most value," emphasizing domestic privacies and "minute details of daily life" over grand historical narratives. Johnson argues that biography facilitates an "act of the imagination" that allows readers to recognize themselves in others, thereby diffusing instruction across all conditions of life. Boswell is credited with establishing a supreme pattern through the "empirical method," characterized by a slow accumulation of evidence including personal letters and recorded conversations. He justifies his "minuteness" by asserting that "minute particulars are frequently characteristic." The volume also includes Roger North’s early eighteenth-century jottings, which anticipated Johnsonian principles by preferring "low history" and "plain truth" to state chronicles. Twentieth-century critics like Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey are presented as shifting the genre toward an artistic synthesis that values selective, "fertile" facts over Victorian "amorphous masses" of documentation.
The Moral and Philosophical Basis of Johnson's and Boswell's Idea of Biography
Tillinghast argues that Johnson's and Boswell's biographical theories align significantly with contemporary empirical philosophy, particularly Scottish Enlightenment thought. Johnson's Rambler 60 grounds biography's power in the Sympathetic Imagination, echoing Adam Smith, whereby readers identify with the subject, deriving moral instruction. This assumes a uniform human nature, a key neoclassical and philosophical tenet enabling general observations. Like philosophers (Locke, Hume, Kames), Johnson valued biography for its utility, focusing on manners and private life ("what comes near to ourselves") over grand events. His preference shifted in Idler 84 towards autobiography, recognizing, like Smith and Reid, the empirical limitation ("conjecture") in knowing another's inner life. Autobiography, especially private journals or letters intended only for self-reflection (the "review"), offered greater certainty, serving philosophical self-analysis and Christian self-examination for moral improvement, aims shared deeply by Boswell.
Cochrane entry 586.
Lives and Letters: A History of Literary Biography in England and America
Johnson and Boswell stand as the most significant events in the history of English literary biography. Johnson established a revolutionary theory and practice of the form, advocating for personal, candid narratives over perfunctory public accounts. He insisted biographers prioritize 'domestick privacies' and minute details that illuminate character and motive, even if such frankness required exposing a subject's vices. Although his own Lives of the Poets often lacked formal structure and reciprocal coloration between a writer’s life and art, Johnson’s use of common sense and skepticism toward biographical myth set a new scholarly standard. Boswell realized a previously unattempted scale of comprehensiveness and intimacy in his life of Johnson. By synthesizing voluminous private journals, eyewitness testimony, and reminiscences from others, Boswell achieved a three-dimensional portrait through 'characteristical circumstances.' While his unsparing realism and 'copia of matter' initially faced critical resistance for violating social decorum, Boswell vindicated the claim of literary men as worthy biographical subjects and established large-scale biography as a respected literary activity.
Cochrane entry 193.
How Much Should a Biographer Tell? Some Eighteenth-Century Views
Clifford traces the development of biographical ethics, identifying Johnson as the first modern critic to grapple with the tension between "strict truth" and personal decorum. While early 18th-century biography favored formal panegyric or scurrilous debunking, Johnson’s "Life of Savage" introduced three-dimensional psychological portraiture. Clifford analyzes the 1780s controversy following Johnson’s death, when the publication of his "Prayers and Meditations" and Piozzi’s "Anecdotes" incited conservative backlash against "new-fashioned biography." He details the specific abuse directed at Boswell for recording "private and unguarded conversation," noting that even Boswell suppressed "Tacenda" regarding Johnson’s sexuality and potential second marriage to avoid contemporary offense. Clifford disputes the notion that a definitive formula for biographical revelation exists, concluding that Boswell and Piozzi established the precedent for wide factual and psychological coverage despite the "idolatry of the public."
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Autobiography and Biography: A Selected Bibliography
The selective bibliography serves as a guide for readers wishing to further pursue the study of biography and its problems within the context of the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 10/2:25. Pages 102–104 discuss Boswell; pages 106-108 discuss Johnson.
CGV entry 10/2:26. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 29, number 6 (December 1968), page 1894A.
The Biographies of Samuel Johnson: A Study of the Relationship of the Biographer to His Subject
Literary Theory and Structure: Essays in Honor of William K. Wimsatt
The Strategies of Biography and Some Eighteenth-Century Examples
Brady examines the formal strategies of biography, arguing that the genre functions as a "stable artifice" designed to impose meaning on the "inchoate flux" of a human life. Johnson serves as the pivotal theorist who moved biography toward the "domestic" and the psychological, famously asserting that the most useful details often reside in private, seemingly trivial moments. Brady analyzes how Boswell implemented this Johnsonian program in the Life of Johnson, creating a "dramatic personification" that balances the subject's iconic status with "minute particularity." The text further explores the "strategies of omission and emphasis" used by Thrale (Piozzi) in her Anecdotes, noting how her perspective provides a necessary counter-narrative to Boswell's "monumental" construction. Brady concludes that eighteenth-century biography established the modern requirement that a life be "not merely recorded, but interpreted" through a deliberate selection of traits that define an individual's "moral and intellectual physiognomy."
CGV entry 10/2:28. Reprinted in 'Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell', edited by Harold Bloom (1986).
Defends Johnson’s use of anecdote in his biographies against criticisms that judge them by a strict Boswellian standard of vivid, scene-by-scene narrative. Johnson's anecdotes often serve a dual purpose: they are both aesthetically pleasing and morally didactic, frequently functioning as "nuggets of knowledge" with independent value to the reader. Johnson masterfully employs anecdote for philosophical biography (highlighting the evanescence of fame and knowledge, as with Dryden's survivors) and for satirical purposes to demythologize false notions.
CGV entry 10/2:29.
Folkenflik establishes Johnson as a highly skilled professional biographer whose work represents a sophisticated reassessment of the literature he loved most. Focusing primarily on the Lives of the Poets, Folkenflik argues that Johnson’s biographical methods are deeply rooted in his conception of the uniform nature of man. This belief led Johnson to emphasize private and domestic affairs and the use of minute particulars and anecdotes to reveal human reality rather than creating idealized panegyrical portraits. Folkenflik contends that Johnson’s biographies serve as memento mori, reminding readers of common human frailty and mortality. The study further explores how Johnson separated life and art to ensure objective critical judgment while simultaneously recognizing the experience, sincerity, and originality of the poet. Folkenflik presents a different Johnson, emphasizing his conscious artistry and moral principles over traditional characterizations of him as lazy or prejudiced. Chapter 1, "Introduction: Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Biography," situates the scholar’s work within the evolving traditions of his time, emphasizing his departure from dry panegyric toward a more nuanced and psychologically penetrating form of life-writing. Chapter 2, "Trifles with Dignity: The Task of Johnsonian Biography," explores the theoretical commitment to "minute details" and "domestic privacies," arguing that the biographer found the most profound moral truths in the ostensibly trivial aspects of a subject's character. Chapter 3, "Johnson's Heroes," examines the criteria for selecting biographical subjects, noting a preference for intellectual and literary figures whose internal struggles offered a more instructive "choice of life" than the exploits of military or political leaders. Chapter 4, "Interpretation," analyzes the biographer’s role as an active commentator who filters factual evidence through a consistent moral and religious framework to derive universal lessons. Chapter 5, "Precedents and Form," investigates the structural models—from Plutarchan parallel to the funeral sermon—that shaped the organization and pacing of the individual lives. Chapter 6, "Art and Life: Discriminations," and Chapter 7, "Art and Life: Connections," explore the complex boundary between a writer’s creative output and their personal conduct, assessing how the biographer used literary works as evidence for psychological profiling. Chapter 8, "A Plainer Tale: Style," evaluates the rhetorical characteristics of the biographical prose, focusing on the use of antithesis and generalization to achieve a tone of magisterial authority. Chapter 9, "The Life of Savage," provides an in-depth case study of this early masterpiece, illustrating how the biographer balanced personal friendship with a rigorous and often critical assessment of a flawed subject. Chapter 10, "Conclusion," synthesizes the findings to confirm the subject's status as the definitive architect of modern biography, whose influence persisted long after the publication of his final prefaces. Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers dividing over the novelty of the comprehensive view and the structural focus on early versus later writings. Rothstein, in SEL, praises the flexible and perceptive scholarship, highlighting the analysis of a specific biographical subject as a selective device, but notes that a narrow definition limits the contextual comparison. In ECS, Bronson commends the fresh and original synoptic survey, particularly the exploration of philosophical anecdotes and the distinct epigrammatic brevity of the prose style. Rogers, writing in RES, provides an enthusiastic endorsement, calling it a direct and sensible study that fills a major scholarly gap, though registering minor protests against specific naming conventions. Middendorf's review in JNL praises the precise analysis of critical imagination but notes it may challenge recent scholarship regarding creative development. Alkon, in ECCB, values the clarity brought to eighteenth-century contexts and style transformations, despite noting a lack of conceptual indexing. Conversely, Schwalm, in Modern Philology, questions the claim of a genuine reassessment, concluding that the analysis of a tragic subject is a disappointment and largely covers familiar ground. In PQ, Kelley praises the synthesis of primary materials but suggests the presentation offers too static a view of stylistic evolution. Noble, writing in BJECS, finds the work attentive and informative but argues it lacks a unifying thesis, appearing as a collection of glimpses rather than a cohesive longer look.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, ECCB 4 (1978): 352–53; Martin Battestin, YWES 11 (1981): 283–84; Mark W. Booth, South Atlantic Quarterly 79, no. 1 (1980): 110; Frank Brady, Yale Review 69 (1979): 118–24; Bertrand H. Bronson, ECS 13, no. 2 (1979): 210–14; John J. Burke Jr., South Atlantic Bulletin 45, no. 3 (1980): 90–93; Choice 1979, 78; William C. Dowling, YWES 11 (1981): 283–84; J. D. Fleeman, N&Q 26 [224], no. 6 (1979): 578; Harlan W. Hamilton, MP 78, no. 4 (1979): 556–59; Robert E. Kelley, Library Journal 103, no. 16 (1978): 1748; Robert E. Kelley, PQ 58 (1979): 498–99; John H. Middendorf, JNL 38, no. 4 (1978): 2–3; Yvonne Noble, BJECS 3, no. 1 (1980): 72–74; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 33, no. 1 (1980): 81; Publishers Weekly, October 27, 1978; Claude Rawson, Sewanee Review 88, no. 1 (1980): 106–20; Pat Rogers, RES 31, no. 121 (1980): 86–89; Eric Rothstein, SEL 19, no. 3 (1979): 557–59; David E. Schwalm, MP 78, no. 3 (1981): 315–17; Robert C. Steensma, Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 34, no. 4 (1980): 277–78.
Rothstein's largely positive review praises Folkenflik as a flexible and perceptive scholar who avoids methodological preconceptions. Folkenflik traces Johnson's biographical practices, offering a fine analysis of the Life of Savage that highlights Johnson's use of the Aristotelian megalopsychos as a selective device to generate character. Rothstein notes that a narrow definition of the subject limits the study, preventing Folkenflik from fully exploring 18th-century empirical realism, the background of critical sincerity, or contextual comparisons with everyday biographers. Nevertheless, Rothstein commends the text for lucidly moving among ideas and alerting readers to subtle details of Johnson's craft.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review essay by Eric Rothstein on the book by Robert Folkenflik.
J. D. F. provides a sound review of Folkenflik's study of the achievement and contribution of Johnson to the genre of biography. Folkenflik examines canonical and uncanonical biographical essays, noting that Johnson moved away from the maxim of de mortuis nil nisi bonum to prioritize moral purpose and accurate details of daily life. The review highlights Folkenflik's analysis of Johnson's focus on the quiet lives of scholars and writers rather than heroic political figures, allowing for domestic moralizing inherited from William Law. J. D. F. notes that Folkenflik distinguishes the biographical style of Johnson from that of Boswell. While praising the mastery of materials, J. D. F. disputes the accuracy of some quotations and the reliance of Folkenflik on George Birkbeck Hill's text of the Lives of the Poets.
CGV entry 10/2:30. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A critical review by Frank Brady of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Folkenflik investigates Johnson’s career as a biographer, analyzing completed projects alongside abandoned and suggested works. He argues that Johnson’s biographical nature derives from a totality of thought regarding Christian and classical conceptions of man. The study identifies areas where Johnson innovated, such as the focus on quotidian life, and where he followed convention, including exemplary death scenes. Kelley praises the synthesis of primary materials but suggests Folkenflik presents too static a view of Johnson’s development by failing to distinguish sufficiently between early lives and the Lives of the Poets.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review essay by Robert E. Kelley on the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Hamilton praises the exhaustive research into Johnson's biographical works, including the Lives of the Poets and earlier pieces. Folkenflik argues that biography for Johnson was a dual study: man in general and the uniquely differentiated individual. Johnson valued anecdotes and homely details as crucial elements to capture the requisite individuality. The study details Johnson's methodology, including his careful separation and relation of life and art. Folkenflik emphasizes Johnson's search for an appropriate biographical style—one less formal or eloquent than other prose, but manifesting "elegance, spirit, and economy" to achieve plainness. The primary purpose of Johnson's biography was "frankly moral," finding significance for all men in the lives of others, appealing to different audiences simultaneously through pervasive irony.
CGV entry 10/2:30.
Bronson praises Folkenflik’s synoptic survey for its fresh and original approach to Johnsonian biography. He commends Folkenflik for examining Johnson’s biographical principles and conscious artistry rather than focusing on a particular Life. The review highlights Johnson’s steady realism and his insistence on representing beings within the reach of emulation. Bronson notes that Folkenflik successfully distinguishes between the handling of anecdotes by Johnson and Boswell, showing that Johnson's anecdotes are philosophically generalized as typical traits of character. Bronson also approves of the analysis of Johnson's style, which Folkenflik proves is distinct from the Rambler style through its epigrammatic brevity. He identifies the chapter on Savage as a telling demonstration of both Johnson's and Folkenflik’s powers.
CGV entry 10/2:30. Review by Bertrand H. Bronson of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Rogers provides an enthusiastic and "thoughtful exploration" of Folkenflik’s monograph, praising it as a "direct, sensible study" and a "direct and sensible" exploration that fills a major gap in scholarship. The work focuses mainly on the Lives of the Poets and the Life of Savage, which Folkenflik considers "a supreme example," to explore biography’s central role in Johnson’s career. Rogers commends the distinction between "character and life," the treatment of childhood and deathbed scenes, and the "use of anecdote, heroism, and the relation of art to life." The review highlights Folkenflik’s conclusion that Johnson avoids "biographic fallacies in creative work" and the fallacy of seeking "straight biographic evidence in a writer's creative work." While Rogers disputes the use of "certain modern analogies" regarding Savage and registers "minor protests" against naming conventions for Burney and Boswell—specifically Frances Burney and Margaret Boswell—he deems the book a "good and knowledgeable" contribution to the field.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review by Pat Rogers of the book by Robert Folkenflik, alongside another work.
Rawson praises this sane and well-ordered volume for expounding Johnson’s whole achievement as a biographer. The review notes the study surveys Johnson’s notions on style, structure, and the balance between factual notation and moral commentary. Rawson finds the work offers lucid exposition and reveals the rich humanity of Johnson, despite a rare lapse in tone regarding Johnson's Oxford years.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review essay (“Jobswell: A Short View of the Johnson–Boswell Industry”) by C. J. Rawson on the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Booth commends Samuel Johnson, Biographer for its careful placement and analysis of Johnson's Lives within the context of classical, eighteenth-century, and modern biographies, finding the study well-executed and impressive in its scope. The book analyzes Johnson's lives in comparison to those of his contemporaries and draws effectively on Johnson’s own writings and sayings. However, Booth finds the work overly dense with quotations and references, which makes for slow reading. The review criticizes the author for being "absurdly out of touch with the living world" regarding his assumption that every schoolboy knows certain anecdotes about Johnson, suggesting a perspective isolated within academic discourse. Booth argues that the book fails to tell readers why they should want to know about Johnson as a biographer and suggests that Johnson’s modern students have become isolated from a broader audience.
Burke offers an approving yet critical review of Robert Folkenflik’s study, noting that a book-length treatment of Johnson’s biographical achievements is overdue. Burke argues that modern generic categories often orphan biography, leading scholars to overemphasize Rasselas or Irene while neglecting the central role of biography in Johnson’s canon. While praising Folkenflik’s graceful writing and insights into Johnson’s commitment to truth regarding the personal lives of Addison and Sir Richard Blackmore, Burke finds the book’s structure disappointing. He critiques the placement of the Life of Savage as the penultimate chapter, arguing it obfuscates Johnson’s development by presenting an early work as a climactic achievement. Furthermore, Burke challenges Folkenflik’s description of Savage as a "tragic hero manqué," asserting that Johnson purposefully avoided the limitations of tragic or heroic genres to focus on Savage simply as a man. He concludes that the work is useful for those unfamiliar with the topic but lacks a satisfying comprehensive view for specialists.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review by John J. Burke, Jr. of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Folkenflik examines Johnson's biographical work, including the Lives of the Poets, discussing Johnson's use of anecdotes, sources, biographical form, and his admiration for figures of intellectual attainment and stoic endurance. The reviewer notes that the book, while attentive and informative, lacks a unifying thesis, appearing as a collection of glimpses rather than a cohesive "longer look." Folkenflik insightfully reminds readers of Johnson's grasp of the worth of recording the minute particulars of even the humblest life.
Folkenflik emphasizes the importance of Christian and classical influences, focusing on Johnson's realism, moral purpose, and truthfulness. The book primarily analyzes the biographies of poets, often discussing Johnson as a literary critic, a choice Folkenflik justifies by the full title of the Lives of the Poets. The reviewer acknowledges Folkenflik's comprehensive culture and erudition in supporting his conclusion that Johnson "was, and was, the greatest biographer England has known."
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review by Albert Pailler of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Alkon's favorable review praises Folkenflik's topical study for clarifying 18th-century contexts and showing how Johnson's style changed with age. Folkenflik tracks Johnson's shift toward simpler diction and his command of a repertoire of styles. The text demonstrates that Johnson separated evaluations of life from works, minimizing moral correspondence distortions. Folkenflik shows that Johnson sought temporal virtues like patience and constancy in his subjects, balancing moral, religious, and intellectual values in a world of flux. The review notes that the book lacks conceptual indexing and references to recent Boswellian structural controversies but stands as an excellent treatment of Johnson's biographical writing.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review by Paul K. Alkon of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
Schwalm reviews Robert Folkenflik’s reassessment of Johnson as a biographer, questioning the book's claim to offer a genuine reassessment of the subject. Folkenflik argues that Johnson’s biographical form results from his conception of man rather than contemporary convention, with goals to show that these biographies are intentional and unique. However, Schwalm finds that these objectives do not differ significantly from previous scholarship and that the book offers little that is new to the squad of scholarly rescuers of Johnson. While the volume serves as a compendium of current thought—arguing, for instance, that Johnson intentionally separated life and work in the Lives of the Poets—the review finds the analysis of the Life of Savage a disappointment. Schwalm identifies the chapter on Johnson's "plainer" style in the Lives of the Poets as the most original and convincing section, yet concludes that the book covers familiar ground rather than providing a fresh scholarly contribution.
Dowling praises Folkenflik's work as an indispensable prelude to future Johnson criticism. It usefully reverses the trend of viewing the Lives of the Poets primarily as criticism, focusing instead on Johnson's biographical methods. Dowling notes Folkenflik manages the material admirably, displaying original scholarship, but he chooses an unabashedly conservative strategy.
CGV entry 10/2:30. A review by William C. Dowling of the book by Robert Folkenflik.
The 'Penury of English Biography' before Samuel Johnson
Halsband analyzes Johnson's critique of the state of English life-writing prior to the publication of the Lives of the Poets. The narrative examines how Johnson defined "penury" as a lack of distinct detail and psychological depth rather than a numerical scarcity of texts. Halsband contrasts the "magisterial" standards of Johnson with earlier biographers, noting his admiration for Izaak Walton’s perfection of the form and his disdain for the "rapacious" Grub Street productions of Edmund Curll. The essay identifies the Life of Savage as a landmark that broke from the tradition of funeral oratory and panegyric by frankly admitting the subject's vices. Halsband argues that Johnson’s tripartite structure in the Lives of the Poets—biographical facts, personal character, and critical analysis—rectified the historical poverty of the genre. By emphasizing "particulars" and the necessity of social intercourse between biographer and subject, Johnson established the foundation for the "opulent future" of English literary biography.
New Perspectives for Goldsmith's Biography
Harp disputes the "sentimental-Romantic bias" that persists in Goldsmith's biographies, contrasting it with the superior treatment received by Johnson. While Bate presents Johnson as a man for both the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, Goldsmith remains trapped in nineteenth-century interpretations. Harp blames Boswell for patronizing Goldsmith and failing to subordinate "personal foibles" to his actual character and talent. He emphasizes that Johnson's failure to write Goldsmith's life in the Lives of the Poets left the field to less objective biographers. Like Johnson, Goldsmith's life represents a "dogged pursuit of ideal goals" despite personal tension. Harp urges a rejection of "pre-Romantic" traditions to recognize the esteem Goldsmith's great contemporaries truly held for him.
CGV entry 10/2:33.
Samuel Johnson: A Writer of Lives Looks at Death
Johnson’s biographical depictions of death represent a transition from traditional moralistic closures to a modern sensibility of disruption and irony. Unlike Bunyan or Pope, who sought revelatory "suitable endings," the mature Johnson emphasizes accidental, unedifying, or farcical details that resist poetic justice. These narratives reveal human subjection to inflexible physical laws rather than destiny, ultimately equalizing subjects through common mortality.
Honan explores Johnson’s development as a biographer, linking his psychological identification with subjects to his own formative years at Lichfield. He argues that The Lives of the English Poets and the Life of Savage succeed through a dialectic of moral inquiry and deep empathy. Honan highlights Johnson’s ability to animate past facts through general comment on human nature, specifically analyzing his treatments of Dryden, Pope, and the "metaphysical" poets as efforts toward intellectual and emotional integration.
CGV entry 10/2:35. A psychological approach.
Johnson dismisses Macpherson's Fingal by asserting that "many men, many women, and many children" could produce such a composition. He expresses a low opinion of Kelly, citing a disparity between the subject's prolific writing and limited reading. Regarding Macklin, Johnson characterizes the comedian's conversation as an "eternal renovation of hope, with an everlasting disappointment," concluding that while nature provided Macklin with some ability, education rendered him a "blockhead."
CGV entry 10/3:1. Three Johnsonian anecdotes. In two parts: January, page 66; and March, page 180.
Johnsoniana; or, A Collection of Bon Mots, Etc.: By Dr. Johnson, and Others: Together with the Choice Sentences of Publius Syrus, Now First Translated into English
This compilation exemplifies the early public appetite for Johnsoniana, featuring "Bon Mots" and collected sayings attributed to Johnson and others. Collections of this nature proliferate in the period, gathering anecdotes and extracts to define his public image as a "sage and moral teacher." The work anticipates later collections like The Beauties of Johnson (1781), which distill his wisdom for mass consumption, often arranging maxims alphabetically for pedagogical use.
CGV entry 10/3:2. A new enlarged edition was published in 1777. Reviewed by William Kenrick (?) in the London Review, volume 3 (April 1776), pages 329-330.
[Echoes of Shakespeare, Fielding, Milton in some of Johnson's quips]
Johnson provides an advertisement for James Bennet’s edition of Ascham, arguing that while original writing earns the highest reputation, "benevolence" belongs to those who retrieve "obscured" learning. Correspondence includes a 1772 letter to Banks regarding a "distich" for a goat and a 1777 appeal to Jenkinson seeking "mercy" for the condemned Dodd. In a final letter to Dodd, Johnson offers spiritual "comfort" before the clergyman’s execution, suggesting the crime "corrupted no man’s principles." The collection reinforces Johnson’s role as a public moralist and private intercessor.
printed by Henry Baldwin; for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry
A Conversation between His Most Sacred Majesty George III and Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Boswell records the February 1767 meeting between Johnson and George III in the library at the Queen’s House. Relying on accounts from Johnson, Barnard, Langton, and Caldwell, the narrative details a wide-ranging dialogue covering the libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, the literary merit of Warburton and Lowth, and the veracity of Hill. Johnson defends his literary inactivity by stating he has 'already done his part as a writer,' prompting the King to counter that he 'should have thought so too' had Johnson 'not written so well.' The text emphasizes Johnson’s 'firm manly manner' and his refusal to 'bandy civilities' with the sovereign, alongside his later praise of George III as the 'finest gentleman.' Boswell further describes the reaction of the literary circle at Reynolds's house, noting Warton’s eager curiosity and Goldsmith’s 'chagrin and envy' at the 'singular honour' bestowed upon Johnson.
Opie reportedly maintained that the "provocation must have been just and irresistible" for any "harsh things attributed" to Johnson, whose "axioms" he considered "worthy to be remembered."
The Table Talk of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Comprising His Most Interesting Remarks and Observations. Collected by James Boswell, Esq. F.R.S.
This collection of anecdotes, drawn from Boswell, records Johnson's opinions on topics including literature, London, religion, and manners. Johnson offers critical assessments of authors, preferring Virgil to Theocritus and praising the "wilderness of thought" in Young’s poetry. He maintains a high estimation of Burke’s "perpetual" stream of mind and defends Goldsmith’s historical writing against the "verbiage" of Robertson. The volume documents Johnson's deep attachment to London, which he views as the intellectual center of the world. On religious matters, he defends the hierarchy of the Church of England, emphasizes the importance of subordination, and discusses the "aweful" fear of death. He challenges the "nugatory" performance of Lord Lyttelton and attacks the French sentence structure used by Hume. Johnson also provides commentary on the theatrical merits of Garrick and Cibber, noting that "foppery was never cured." The compilation presents Johnson's conversational style, emphasizing his belief that "knowledge and virtue may be acquired in all countries" and his insistence on precise truth in narration.
CGV entry 10/3:9. Includes a sketch of the life of Samuel Johnson.
An unpublished anecdote of Johnson, acquired from the late Dr. Abercrombie, a correspondent of Johnson's. On a rainy day, Johnson invites a poor woman and her baby into his carriage but sternly warns her against "baby-talk." When the child wakes and the mother exclaims, "Oh! the little dear, is he going to open his eyesy-pysy?," Johnson immediately orders the driver to stop and makes her leave.
CGV entry 10/3:10.
CGV entry 10/3:11. A collection of unidentified samples.
Johnsoniana: Life, Opinions, and Table Talk of Dr. Johnson
A comprehensive Victorian compendium of Johnsonian lore, extracting and thematicizing Johnson's "deliverances on men and things" from Boswell and other contemporary sources. It aims to provide a "faithful summary" and a "tolerably fair picture" of Johnson's character and intellectual range for a late nineteenth-century audience. Johnson dominates this collection as a figure of singular intellectual penetration and moral fortitude, despite "vile melancholy" and physical infirmities. Montagu organizes the text into thematic sections covering education, knowledge, society, and various "Opinions," while providing a preliminary biography that traces Johnson's trajectory from a "needy and rebellious scholar" at Oxford to the "Great Cham of literature." The editor highlights Johnson’s "Hervey" gratitude and his celebrated rebuff of Chesterfield as defining markers of his independent spirit. Johnson disputes the effectiveness of "by-roads in education," instead advocating for rigorous traditional methods and the use of the rod to "save boys from the gallows." His social philosophy emphasizes the necessity of subordination and hereditary rank, though he asserts his own "native right" to authority within the Literary Club. Conversational wit remains central, with Boswell and others recording his Socratic habit of "clearing the mind of cant." While Johnson displays notorious prejudices against the Scotch and Americans, his profound benevolence toward his Fleet Street household reveals a "largeness of heart." The volume concludes with extensive "Table Talk" and literary criticisms, affirming Lives of the Poets as his supreme effort and a "text-book to literary students."
Johnson's Table Talk: A Selection of His Main Topics and Opinions Taken from Boswell's Life
Bettany compiles and arranges Samuel Johnson’s conversational dicta from Boswell's works, discarding the chronological structure for a thematic synthesis of his philosophy. The text isolates his specific utterances on moral, social, and political conduct, detailing his rigorous standards of veracity and his combative conversational methods used to maintain supremacy in the Club. The compilation highlights Johnson's views on the terror of death, the necessity of social subordination, and his acknowledged prejudices against the Scots and Whigs. Boswell is presented not just as a recorder, but as a deliberate instigator of discourse. Anecdotes involving Piozzi are included to show Johnson’s domestic manner and his censure of her laxity of narration.
A compilation of Johnson's noteworthy sayings. Published as part of "The Bibelots" series, the book opens with an introduction that provides a brief biography of Johnson (1709-1784) and discusses his character, noting that "it is in his spoken wisdom that he lives." In three sections. Part I, "Aphorisms," presents quotations from Johnson's writings and conversations, sourced from works like The Rambler and Boswell's Johnson. These are arranged alphabetically by subject, covering topics such as "Adversity," "Education," "Marriage", and "Wit." Part II, "Anecdotes," recounts well-known stories and quips from Johnson's life, including his famous remark about a woman preaching and his "triumph of hope over experience" comment on a second marriage. Part III, "Estimates of Authors," collects Johnson's critical opinions on other writers, such as Goldsmith, Milton, and Bolingbroke, whom he called "a scoundrel and a coward."
CGV entry 10/3:14. Another edition was published by George Routledge & Sons in 1907.
The structure is topical, with brief quotations grouped alphabetically under headings like "Art," "Boswell," "Food," "Liquor," "Scotland," and "Women," following an introduction by the editor. The book includes his most "terse and dogmatic" conversational "hits," "robust" opinions, and "vigorous prejudices," frequently beginning with his signature "Sir." The quotations are his famous, sharp aphorisms, such as "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs," "Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men," and "Sir, you have but two topics, myself and me; and I am sick of both." Critics say this anthology provides an admirable and accessible arrangement of "jewels of thought" that serves English readers by condensing bulky biographical material into a structured collection. The Spectator describes the work as a presentation of "rough diamonds" in an attractive form, while The Globe praises the use of humorous headings to facilitate quick reference. The Daily Telegraph & Courier notes the selection highlights a "representative voice" characterized by a manly Anglicanism free from superstition. The Weekly Times & Echo finds the examples of wit delightful, though the Irish Times observes that the compiler’s appreciation of the biographer's "personal journalism" is particularly shrewd.
CGV entry 10/3:16. Reprinted by Jonathan Cape in 1932.
Horace Walpole, the Great Letter-Writer: Samuel Johnson, the Great Talker
This chapter argues that Samuel Johnson represents the supreme embodiment of the 18th-century social spirit, where conversation was viewed as a competitive but intellectually creative art. Tinker distinguishes Johnson’s conversational style—characterized by its "mother wit," aphoristic precision, and use of homely illustration—from his more formal written prose. The author contends that Johnson used conversation as a "monarchy" to reach definitive truths and settle principles, often intentionally parading pomposity for humorous effect. Tinker highlights the dynamic, creative force of Johnson’s talk, noting that it served as a primary educational tool for contemporaries like Burke and Reynolds, effectively making Johnson’s spoken word a distinct and vital form of literature.
Hughes clarifies that Johnson was not a 'swearer' but used 'expletives' in the original sense of words used to 'plump his speech and fill up sentences.' Analyzing Johnson’s 'asperities,' Hughes notes a preference for terms like 'scoundrel,' 'dog,' 'rascal,' and 'blockhead.' The essay argues that Johnson used these epithets with a 'greater range of meaning' than modern readers might assume, often employing 'liar' to denote an honest mistake or 'dog' as an 'indication of intimate friendship.' Hughes emphasizes Johnson’s 'mastery of condensed criticism,' such as his description of Chesterfield’s letters as teaching 'the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master.'
CGV entry 10/3:19. On his retorts and invective.
Johnson’s primary literary achievement is his conversation, which serves as a "mutual debt" to his lexicography. He defends Johnson against Taine’s charges of insipidity, arguing that Johnson’s talk represents a "thinking aloud" that manifests a profound sense of proportion and common sense. Biron highlights the "cork in the bottle" anecdote involving Goldsmith as emblematic of Johnson’s ability to reduce life’s effervescence to reality. He disputes Macaulay’s bearish characterization, suggesting instead that Johnson’s social "rudeness" was merely the "gaiety of rhetoric" among intimates. Biron credits Boswell with inventing personal journalism and providing a "cubist" portrait that emphasizes Johnson’s humanity. The essay concludes that Johnson’s fear of death was ultimately mastered by a brave and unclouded end.
Whibley explores the "colloquial conquest" of Samuel Johnson, framing his tavern chair as a throne from which he dogmatized and delighted in contradiction. The text contrasts the various biographical attempts to capture Johnson's speech—including the "pompous prig" Sir John Hawkins and the witty Hester Lynch Piozzi—concluding that while Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes provide a vital record of his social life at Streatham, James Boswell remains the definitive chronicler. Whibley details Johnson’s daily habits, his "unmanly thirst for tea," and his reliance on conversation to escape "the vacuity of life" and morbid melancholy. The article specifically analyzes Johnson’s membership in the Literary Club and his relationships with figures like Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith, illustrating his belief that "no animated conversation" exists without a contest for superiority.
Teall synthesizes Johnson's conversational philosophy, drawing from Boswell, Piozzi, and Reynolds. He outlines Johnson's requirements: knowledge, command of words, imagination, and "pressure of mind." The text disputes Hazlitt's claim that conversation with women is difficult, highlighting Johnson's high regard for Montagu’s "ratiocination." Teall details Johnson's rules against ostentatious "book-talk" and his preference for "calm interchange of sentiments." He notes Johnson's habit of talking as well as possible in all companies to make effort "familiar and easy." Despite Walpole's "hearsay" criticisms of Johnson’s "scurrilous" nature, Teall emphasizes Johnson's "perfectly clear" and accurate language, suggesting his talk was "majestick" enough to be printed without correction.
V. R. records two Johnsonian anecdotes omitted from Birkbeck Hill’s collections. The first, sourced from a footnote in Peter Pindar’s Epistle to James Boswell, describes Johnson’s assessment of George III’s intellect and his multifarious questioning style following their 1767 interview. The second, from Hazlitt’s Table Talk, provides Johnson’s explanation for his lack of social invitations: "Because great lords and ladies do not like to have their mouths stopped."
CGV entry 10/3:25. Remarks, possibly apocryphal, attributed by "Peter Pindar" and Hazlitt.
CGV entry 10/3:27. Quintus Quiz is the pseudonym for Edward Shillito.
On the Talk of Samuel Johnson and His Friends
Krutch analyzes the tradition of social conversation exemplified by Johnson and his circle. Their talk was characterized by conscious virtuosity that avoided triviality, with participants striving to shine but observing traditions that valued substance over mere cleverness. Conversation ranged from literary shop-talk to manners and personalities, the latter achieving seriousness because the eighteenth century believed in the real importance of "Manners" and idiosyncrasy. Discussions of abstract questions were grounded in "common sense" and the dialectic of an educated gentleman, a possibility afforded by a time when knowledge was highly generalized, before the rise of the extreme specialist.
Cochrane entry 541. Uses examples from Boswell's works to illustrate the key qualities of Johnson's conversation, such as broad knowledge, vigorous expression, and imagination.
W. J. H. recovers anecdotal notes from the 1845 diary of painter Benjamin Haydon, detailing Mrs. Gwatkin’s childhood recollections of Johnson at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s house. The anecdotes highlight Johnson’s acute awareness of feminine attire, evidenced by his scolding a young girl for changing her "best frock," and his aggressive skepticism toward scientific anomalies. He notably dismissed a story of a bird turning black from fright as a "lie" and insulted Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander by refusing to credit their account of Icelandic hot springs.
McAdam highlights a coincidence between a famous Johnsonian retort to a Thames boatman and dialogue from the 1723 trial of Elizabeth Angier in The Annals of Newgate. Johnson's successful abusive answer to the boatman was: "Sir, your wife, under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods." The trial record revealed that the defendant, Angier, both admitted to keeping a bawdy-house and was identified by a witness as a receiver of stolen goods, with the defendant not denying the bawdy-house but asserting she "never wronged man, woman, or child."
CGV entry 10/3:35. A counterblast to the waterman.
Greene's letter disputes the authenticity of a famous retort attributed to Johnson by Boswell—that upon being asked how he could plunge his heroine into deeper calamity, Johnson replied, "Sir, I can put her into the Spiritual Court!" This joke appeared in two earlier jest books, The Nut-Cracker and Be Merry and Wise, in 1751 and 1761, suggesting it was public property. Furthermore, the supposed criticism does not apply to the plot of Irene, as no calamity befalls the heroine until the fifth act. Greene notes that Peter Garrick's original testimony to Boswell, recorded in the Note Book, mentions borrowing the Turkish History and Johnson reading his play at the Fountain Tavern, but not the retort. This omission suggests the anecdote, which Boswell records as a response to Walmesley, may have been later foisted on Johnson. Greene urges scholars to maintain more skepticism toward anecdotes Boswell relates only at third hand, particularly those sourced from Langton or Garrick, whose reliability remains unverified.
CGV entry 10/3:36. A retort made to Walmesley about Irene.
Presents a study of Johnson, structuring the essay around direct quotations attributed to him, many drawn from Boswell's Life, The Idler, The Rambler, and Rasselas. Brookes discusses Johnson's views on a wide range of topics, including universities and students, the role of women, the study of history, politics, literary criticism, philanthropy, and the sciences. The essay concludes with Johnson's reflections on life, death, hope, and the importance of religion.
CGV entry 10/3:38. Assembles quotations from Johnson's works and Boswell's 'Life' and renders them as conversation.
Johnson's lasting importance stems from his personality and conversation, preserved by Boswell's biographical portrait. His literary works, including the Dictionary and Rasselas, are largely superseded, but his incomparable conversational powers and sharp wit dominated his intellectual circle. Boswell's frank narrative captures Johnson's ambivalent affection and irritation toward his disciple, detailing their first meeting and various conversational sallies. Johnson's talk, rooted in common sense, conservative values, and a vast stock of reading, was an art of brilliant, competitive, and often caustic exchange, making him the acknowledged master of the eighteenth-century salon.
English Writers of the Eighteenth Century
Milic investigates the linguistic mechanics of Johnson’s conversational performance as recorded primarily by Boswell and Thrale. Milic disputes the common scholarly distinction between Johnson’s 'natural' speech and 'artificial' prose, arguing that Johnson’s conversation was a highly disciplined rhetorical construct. The article analyzes Johnson’s frequent use of antithesis, balanced triads, and aphoristic closures in social settings, suggesting these were practiced habits rather than accidental occurrences. Milic observes that Johnson’s talk often functions as a 'preliminary draft' for his written work, characterized by a 'telegraphic density' and immediate logical rigor. By comparing various accounts of the same anecdotes, Milic demonstrates how Johnson’s stylistic markers—specifically his use of polysyllabic latinate vocabulary—remained consistent across different social registers. Milic concludes that Johnson’s conversational power derived from his ability to impose the 'order of the page' onto the volatility of oral discourse, thereby maintaining intellectual dominance through superior syntactical control.
CGV entry 10/3:41.
Analyzes Johnson's conversation as a distinct genre, functioning as a competitive performance for an audience rather than polite social discourse. Johnson differentiated "talk" (friendly social exchange) from "conversation" (discursive battle involving the mastery of an opponent). Johnson's aggressive, contradictory nature and remarkable promptitude served to establish and maintain his role as a literary lion. However, Johnson's desire to "inform and illustrate" in private conversation balanced his public argumentative prowess.
In Praise of Conversation: Communication Between Disciplines
Clifford challenges the folk image of Johnson as a narrow, insular literary figure uninterested in other arts. The discussion highlights Johnson's broad intellectual interests, including science and history, and emphasizes the interdisciplinary composition of his Club, which included Reynolds, Burke, Gibbon, and Banks. The Club served as a model for widening understanding through relaxed conversation among experts in different fields. The author advocates for forming similar small, interdisciplinary scholarly groups to promote communication and enrich eighteenth-century studies.
CGV entry 10/3:43. Presidential address to the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
CGV entry 10/3:44. The title parodies 'Sayings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung'.
The Compiler of Johnson's Table Talk, 1785
Lustig identifies the anonymous compiler of the 1785 Table Talk, extracted from Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, as David Evans Macdonnel. Drawing on Boswell's journal regarding legal action against publisher George Robinson, the compiler is revealed as a "young man... from Corke." Tracing this figure to a Middle Temple entrant and the later editor of a popular Dictionary of Quotations, the note resolves a bibliographic anonymity regarding this unauthorized extraction of the Tour.
Cochrane entry 316.
Samuel Johnson and the Rhetoric of Conversation
Broadhead examines Johnson's attitudes toward and practice of conversation, arguing that he possessed a distinctive 'rhetoric of conversation.' The essay analyzes Johnson's comments on dialogue, manners, and argument in his essays and recorded sayings, emphasizing his concern for truth, clarity, and ethical engagement in verbal exchange. Broadhead explores Johnson's deployment of wit, disputation, and authoritative pronouncements in social settings, noting how these rhetorical strategies functioned to establish social order and moral guidance. The work treats conversation not merely as social interaction but as a significant intellectual and moral performance for Johnson.
Johnson, Shakespeare and the Barren Rascals
Johnson's description of Fielding as a "barren rascal" derives from Malvolio's criticism of the Clown in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (I. v. 81-2). Johnson's use of this phrase, which appears in his conversation and writings before and after his 1765 edition of Shakespeare, has not been previously noted in critical writings on Shakespeare, Fielding, and Johnson. Fleeman discusses the textual crux of the phrase "pains or pleasure" in Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands (1775) and a similar assymetrical phrase in his Life of Cowley (1779). Hardy and Boswell suggest Johnson wrote the plural "pleasures" in the Cowley manuscript, but Johnson's ambiguous handwriting and his apparent sanction of the singular "pleasure" in the proof stages make the assymetrical phrase a valid and authoritative expression in both works.
CGV entry 10/3:48. The source of the expression is from 'Twelfth Night'.
Two Dialogues: Containing a Comparative View of the Lives, Characters, and Writings of Philip, the Late Earl of Chesterfield, and Dr. Samuel Johnson
A comparative view of the lives and writings of Chesterfield and Johnson, omitting their famous quarrel. The comparison unfolds through a conversation between an Archdeacon, an admirer of Johnson, and a Colonel, an admirer of Chesterfield. They discuss Johnson's biographers and literary works. The Archdeacon praises Rasselas as a noble poem distinguished by elevation and purity of language, while the Colonel argues that Johnson appears unable to sustain assumed characters. Reviewers from the Critical Review and Scots Magazine highlight the text's central tension between an Archdeacon, who defends the subject's "morbid hereditary melancholy" as a physical infirmity rather than a moral failing, and a Colonel who favors the opposition. A recurring focal point across contemporary accounts is the "female perspective" provided by Lady Caroline; she famously characterizes the subject as a "tame monster" and a "hedgehog," criticizing a "splenetic malevolence" and "truth that is delivered with brutality." While the Town and Country Magazine praises the dialogues for their "propriety" and "pointed" language, the General Magazine suggests the author is biased, noting that the Archdeacon too easily surrenders "indefensible" traits that a "sturdy moralist" would have protected. Despite the subject being recognized as a "literary Colossus" and a "being darkly wise, and rudely great," critics frequently dispute the "truth and justice" of his literary judgments.
CGV entry 10/4:1. A later edition titled 'Anecdotes of Philip, late Earl of Chesterfield, and Dr. Johnson' was published in 1800.
A Comparative View of the Writings of Addison and Johnson
Gale contrasts the didactic methods and prose styles of Addison and Johnson, evaluating their respective contributions to British morality. Addison employs a natural, unaffected, and polite address that charms readers into compliance through elegant imagination and humor. Conversely, Johnson uses a nervous, articulated, and dignified style to force conviction through intellectual ascendancy and clear conception. While Addison suffers from occasional inaccuracies due to a flowing manner, Johnson exhibits a visible stiffness in sentence arrangement. Gale prefers Addison’s Cato over Johnson’s Irene in dramatic composition but acknowledges Johnson’s superiority as a critic, particularly regarding Milton. Gale censures Johnson’s treatment of Gray, attributing the critic’s unfavorable remarks to personal prejudice rather than objective assessment. Both writers successfully invigorate virtuous practice through distinct rhetorical modes: Johnson through ardor and Addison through allure.
This article compares Johnson and Hume as contemporary "intellectual champions" who never met. It characterizes Johnson's "headlong pugnacity" as a "spirit of resistance" that favored "truth corrective of error" over substantive truth, possibly hindering his powers of composition. Conversely, Hume is described as a "philosophical spectator" with a "sedate and tranquil" constitution, though one that overlooked the "sentiments" of human nature. The author argues that while Johnson enjoyed more "personal authority" and taught countrymen to "reason luminously," he was often "engrossed by the fermentation of absurd prejudices." Hume's "grace" and "classical intellect" are contrasted with the "clumsy and ungainly conception" of Johnson's Happy Valley in Rasselas.
On the Literary Characters of Bishop Warburton and Dr. Johnson
C. R. compares the intellectual stature and literary dominance of Warburton and Johnson. The analysis attributes Warburton’s character to his irregular education as a provincial attorney, leading to a penchant for paradoxical systems and scurrilous controversy. In contrast, Johnson’s authority rests on universal veneration and a commitment to established truth. The author examines their respective logical powers, critical tastes, and prose styles, noting Johnson’s superiority in refining the English tongue and Warburton’s greater depth of erudition. The comparison concludes that while Johnson excelled as a moralist and critic, Warburton’s fame resides in his original and ingenious theological defenses of the ecclesiastical establishment.
Speculations on Literary Pleasure, No. XIV
Alciphron examines Johnson and Goldsmith as the respective heads of the moral and imaginative departments of classical literature. While acknowledging their dissimilar genius, the text highlights how both authors use human nature as a basis for pictured delineations. Alciphron argues that recent biography and recollections of social eccentricities often bias contemporary judgment of their intellect. The analysis focuses on Rasselas as a transcript of Johnson's vigorous energies and habitual melancholy. Johnson depicts the familiar as sublime, exploring the restless human search for indefinite good. Johnson familiarizes high and dignified truths of philosophy through narrative.
CGV entry 10/4:5. A comparison of Goldsmith and Johnson.
Speculations on Literary Pleasure, No. XV
Johnson functioned as a luminary of the eighteenth century, possessing genius of a giant growth. Although Johnson and Franklin remained strangers of opposite political creeds, both attained distinguished eminence. Johnson built fame upon forensic and philological learning, speculative depth, and an accurate understanding. Johnson traversed the paths of literature with a copious imagination and speculative power. Dicta in literature resulted from independent feeling, yet Johnson maintained a great and enlarged mind despite prejudices. Views of human frailty and the shortness of life reflect a deliberate inspection prompted by classical energies. Johnson commonly pleases and elevates through metaphors drawn from nature. Fame rests on the status of a venerated champion of literature and morals. Voluminous writings maintain an undeviating regard to rectitude of principle. Johnson possesses brightness and solidity of parts, particularly in the Rambler, his Prefaces, and Lives of the Poets. Johnson and Franklin avoid impertinence or dullness, as brilliancy of parts and good taste reign through their writings. Johnson stands as a modeller of the higher beauties of style and an unaffected advocate of letters.
CGV entry 10/4:6. A comparison of Franklin and Johnson.
The reviewer disputes the relative standing of three literary figures, arguing that Boswell and Goldsmith possess superior philosophical insight and authorial skill compared to Johnson. The review attributes the perceived social inferiority of Boswell and Goldsmith to a habit of truth-telling and lack of worldly tact, contrasting this with the hardier, self-possessed nature of Johnson. The reviewer characterizes Boswell's biography as the finest of its kind, combining instruction with conservative values. Goldsmith appears as the greatest English historian and a master of multiple genres, with specific praise for the political economy in the poetry of Goldsmith. Conversely, the reviewer challenges Johnson's economic theories and his arguments for negro freedom, labeling the latter's views on human equality as anarchical and exuberantly fallacious. The review concludes that while Johnson maintained personal dignity, the transparency and genius of Boswell and Goldsmith provide more profound intellectual contributions.
Traces a "wildly comic" story told by Sam Weller, Junior, in Pickwick back to a conversation of Johnson's recorded in Boswell's Life. The story concerns a man who, intending to shoot himself, first indulges in eating a forbidden amount of buttered muffins. Dickens humorously exaggerated the quantity, but the narrative originates with Johnson's discussion of suicide. Croker declared the gentleman in question was Johnson's old friend, Mr. Fitzherbert, who killed himself in 1772.
CGV entry 10/4:8.
Burroughs compares the personal character and literary genius of Johnson and Carlyle, challenging Birrell’s preference for the former. While Johnson prevails through "simple resignation and acceptance of the ills of life," Carlyle demonstrates superior genius and intellectual equipment. Johnson’s struggle against "poverty," "melancholy," and "indolence" appears more child-like and humanly relatable because his religion and politics aligned with his age. In contrast, Carlyle’s "Arctic" imagination and preternatural sensibility forced him to traverse a wilderness where "German thought and modern science" had removed traditional foundations. Carlyle’s gloom is "the most tonic despair to be found in literature," characterized by an "imperial sorrow" that acts as a spur to noble endeavor. Johnson remains "greater as a talker in personal encounter than in his writings," relying on Boswell for his perennial fame. Although Johnson lived on a "lower plane" with less lofty ideals, Boswell provides a "more lovable" image than any record of the isolated and "barren masculinity" found in Carlyle.
CGV entry 10/4:9. Reprinted from The Critic (1886).
Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb: A Parallel
Roose constructs an extensive parallel between Johnson and Charles Lamb, identifying shared traits such as "hereditary madness," a craving for stimulants, and a "constitutional love of idleness" balanced by hard work. Both men lacked an ear for music but possessed a keen sense for "verbal melody." Roose highlights their mutual devotion to London's streets, their prejudices against the Scotch, and their profound "horror of the unseen" regarding death. The article also notes their similar tastes in "old black-letter books" and their unconventional, impulsive charities. Roose concludes that while their physical shells differed, the "kernel of the two natures was the same."
CGV entry 10/4:10.
Fénelon and Johnson: A Parallel Expression
Notes a parallel between an expression used by Johnson and one attributed to Fénelon. Johnson's epitaph for Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey contains the phrase, "Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit." Fénelon, in a comparison of the eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes, is quoted as saying of Cicero, "He adorns everything he touches."
King Samuel and King Ben—with a Eulogy of Boswell
Phelps constructs a comparative critical analysis tracing the architectural lines of conversational dictatorship through English literary history, focusing primarily on Ben Jonson and Samuel Johnson. Both figures established undisputed monarchical control over their respective eras via spoken discourse rather than mere written production, operating out of metropolitan taverns to enforce critical standards. Phelps highlights how each autocrat relied on dedicated historical chroniclers to preserve their legacy for posterity. While Ben Jonson found a precise scribe in William Drummond, Samuel Johnson benefited from the matchless biographical devotion of Boswell. Phelps disputes traditional critical slurs that deprecate Boswell as a sycophantic eccentric, validating him instead as a deliberate artistic genius who revolutionized the biographical genre. The article maintains that Boswell skillfully turned his deep reverence for his hero into an enduring literary monument.
This essay compares Samuel Johnson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes compared his life to Johnson's, noting their births occurred exactly one century apart in 1809 and 1709. Holmes used Boswell to track his progress against Johnson’s age, feeling a sense of mortality in 1884 to match the 'long parallel' of Johnson's death in 1784. While Holmes functioned as a self-recorded Boswell and a dictatorial Johnsonian figure in oral discourse, the two differed in temperament; Johnson was 'ponderous' and 'slovenly' while Holmes was 'sprightly' and 'dapper.' Despite differing social circumstances and educations, both men possessed strong mother-wit, a worship of reason, and a habit of reading books cursorily. They shared an indifference to major political issues—Johnson a Tory defender of taxation without representation, and Holmes slow to join the Abolitionists—and remained dedicated to their respective city literary groups, Johnson's Literary Club and Holmes's Saturday Club. Holmes actively adopted these Johnsonian patterns to frame his own literary identity.
CGV entry 10/4:13. On Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Compares the centenaries of Johnson and Tennyson, positioning Johnson as an apostle of established institutions. The author argues Johnson’s significance rests on his character and conversation rather than his written works, many of which are described as neglected. Johnson is characterized as a mournful pessimist whose social vigor masked a deep-seated fear of death. The text emphasizes his role in providing comfort to those troubled by the ferment of new ideas.
CGV entry 10/4:14.
Waterton applies a scholastic maxim to compare Johnson and Swift, focusing on their shared but distinct modes of despotism. He notes Johnson’s refusal to use spectacles despite praising their monkish inventor. The text contrasts Swift’s "Oriental scrupulosity" in hygiene with Johnson’s "grimy finger-nails" and scarred face. Waterton cites Scott to characterize both as literary dictators. He uses Thackeray’s depictions to differentiate Johnson’s impulsive "thundering quotation" from Swift’s "clerical bully" persona. Waterton references Thrale to demonstrate Johnson’s impatience with "foppish lamentations" and his "sterling tenderness of heart."
CGV entry 10/4:16.
Thompson argues that Dickens modeled the character of Pickwick on the personality of Johnson as depicted in Boswell’s biography. Identifying numerous superficial commonalities—including physical bulk, the founding of clubs, a penchant for taverns and talk, and the role of oracle within a circle of worshippers—the analysis goes deeper to claim internal textual evidence that Dickens possessed a vivid impression of Boswell’s work while writing. Thompson suggests that Snodgrass mirrors the ineptitude of Goldsmith and draws a parallel between the master-servant relationship of Johnson and Frank and that of Pickwick and Sam Weller. The argument posits that Pickwick is a resultant of Dickens’s receptive intelligence influenced by eighteenth-century English novelists and Boswell.
CGV entry 10/4:17. A comparison of the two men and the influence of Boswell on Dickens.
Johnson and Swift—A Study in Comparisons
Waterton identifies "solemnity" as the defining characteristic of Johnson, influencing his "stately merriment" and "majestic utterance" in works like Rasselas. Johnson views the world as "bursting with real sin and sorrow," a perspective shaped by physical disease and a "dread of madness." Conversely, Swift is defined by a "strange severity" and "sourness of aspect." Waterton highlights Swift’s "Spartan rigour" in self-discipline and his "savage indignation" against humanity. The text logic and "graphic precision" of Gulliver's Travels are cited as evidence of this severity. While Johnson faces death with "salutory fear," Swift’s end is a "species of torpor." Waterton concludes that Swift's "seeva indignatio" and "resentment" functioned as a pungent flavor in all his ingredients.
Clodd examines the "intellectual and spiritual" bonds of friendship, contrasting the ancient Greek and Roman focus on common quest and ethics with the early Christian emphasis on spiritual brotherhood. He centers the discussion on Johnson and Cicero, asserting that both moved in circles where friendship was primarily intellectual. Clodd draws parallels between the two men, noting their mutual affection for books, their reliance on constant "repair" of social ties, and their shared regard for young companions. He notes that while Johnson expressed "acuteness" regarding the distinction between universal benevolence and particular friendship, he move on a "somewhat lower plane" than Cicero’s idealistic definitions of virtue. The text explores their respective anxieties concerning the "after-life" and reunion with friends, highlighting Johnson’s dread of "eternal punishment" against Cicero’s more tranquil view of death as either "return to heaven" or "annihilation." Clodd concludes that both figures represent a "constancy" in human nature that values the "charm of books and the value of friendship" as life’s highest consolations.
Samuel Johnson, Goethe och Patriotismen under Sjuttonhundratalet
CGV entry 10/4:20. Published by Vetenskaps-Societeten i Lund.
Roscoe argues that the reputations of Johnson and France rested less on their written catalogs than on their "individual influence in society." Both men possessed an "extraordinary memory" and a "supreme confidence" that allowed them to dictate opinions to an admiring circle—Johnson at Streatham and the literary clubs, and France at the Villa Saïd and La Béchellerie. Roscoe highlights their mutual "avidity for delight" in conversation, often verging on monologue, and their shared habit of "scoring off" foolish interlocutors with epigrammatic wit. While Johnson’s worldview was rooted in Christian "hopes and fears" of salvation, and France’s in a "pagan" lament for the brevity of life, both exhibited a "permanent sense of emotional and intellectual depression." The text further notes their mutual "distaste for exaggeration" and "big words," with France asserting that "les grands mots mènent aux grands maux." Ultimately, Roscoe identifies their "large-heartedness" and "mental candour" as the traits that elevated them from mere men of letters to national personalities whose opinions were "absorption by ordinary mortals."
Roscoe identifies remarkable parallels between Johnson and France as dominant intellectual oracles who attained unique social authority through the dissemination of ideas to ordinary people. Both figures anchored their national reputations in conversational mastery and a supreme confidence that allowed them to dictate opinions to admiring circles, despite frequent errors in political judgment. Roscoe highlights their shared gifts of prodigious memory, a distaste for verbal exaggeration, and a penchant for outspoken, often cynical personal views. Although separated by nationality and centuries, both men exhibited a lifelong habit of mental candour and a large-hearted love for human society. Roscoe concludes that while Johnson operated from a Christian framework and France from a pagan one, both suffered from a permanent sense of intellectual and emotional depression.
CGV entry 10/4:21. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1927).
Roscoe compares the table talk of Johnson with that of the seventeenth-century jurist John Selden, noting that both men possessed an abnormal capacity for absorbing knowledge and a faculty for making hard things easy through clear discourse. The text examines how their respective recorders, Boswell and Milward, methodically preserved spontaneous sayings that revealed the speakers' personalities and the thought of their ages. Roscoe identifies similar intellectual and moral traits in both figures, including a strain of gaiety, strong prejudices, and a rapid penetration to the heart of complex subjects. While Selden was a more detached and cynical observer of the world's follies, Johnson shared his predecessor's dislike for obscurity and his reliance on home truths that live because they permanently apply to human action.
This presidential address compares Johnson and Scott as two pillars of Toryism and Jacobite sentiment. Lovat-Fraser examines Scott’s high admiration for Johnson’s poetry, particularly London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting that Scott frequently recited the latter to his family at Abbotsford. The article highlights the shared connections between the two men, specifically through the "spiteful" Seward, whose pedantry both endured. Lovat-Fraser identifies Robert Levet as a grotesque but essential figure in Johnson's household and quotes Johnson’s elegy as a "beautiful and feeling" tribute that Scott greatly valued. The address concludes that both writers possessed a resolute spirit in facing physical suffering and financial adversity, driven by the biblical mandate to "work while it is day."
CGV entry 10/4:23. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
CGV entry 10/4:23. Reprinted from the Lichfield Mercury (1932).
Alexander draws numerous parallels between Ben Jonson and Samuel Johnson, noting similarities in their names, formidable physical appearance, and mental vigor. Both men were central literary dictators and convivial figures in London tavern life (The Mermaid/Old Devil Tavern and The Club/Turk's Head). They each traveled to Scotland and found Scottish confidants (Drummond and Boswell) who preserved their opinions and characters. The essay discusses their respective literary achievements—Jonson's comedies of humours and Johnson's dictionary and poetry—and notes their common classical influence, which shaped their criticism of Shakespeare.
Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Samuel Johnson
Altick disputes the notion that Doyle suppressed supernatural interests, arguing that the "genial spirits" of Johnson and Boswell hover over the Baker Street chronicles. This comparative study posits that Holmes adopted Johnsonian temperamental traits during his college years, while Watson likely absorbed Boswellian biographical methods while campaigning in Afghanistan. Altick identifies Salient parallels, including acid-charred chemical tables, "intolerable positiveness" in conversation, and a shared susceptibility to praise despite outward coldness. Altick notes that both Holmes and Johnson dissembled regarding their appetites, affecting an indifference to food while remaining "studious" epicures. The article highlights that Holmes explicitly acknowledged the literary model, exclaiming, "I am lost without my Boswell!" Altick concludes that both pairs represent the most devoted of Londoners, whose spiritual affinity is cemented by their "characteristic talk" while watching the "ever-changing kaleidoscope of life" in Fleet Street.
Les dangers du cliché littéraire: Le Dr. Johnson et Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Schinz challenges the literary cliché that Johnson and Rousseau occupied opposite philosophical poles. Despite Johnson’s public hostility toward Rousseau as a "rascal," Schinz demonstrates profound parallels in their critiques of modern civilization, their defenses of moral conscience, and their pragmatic views on religion and political authority. Analyzing correspondence and major works like London and the Premier Discours, Schinz argues that both men adopted the role of Alceste in an insincere age, sharing a fundamental worldview centered on virtue and Providence.
CGV entry 10/4:26. On some resemblances between the two men.
Sewall contrasts Johnson's and Rousseau's approaches to reforming mid-eighteenth-century society. Rousseau offered a radical critique rooted in belief in natural goodness, aiming to fundamentally reshape institutions (education, government) to foster human potential. Johnson, conversely, viewed misery as inherent, advocating palliative measures, individual moral discipline, and adherence to existing social structures, deeply distrusting theoretical reforms ("dangerous prevalence of the imagination") as destabilizing. Though both recognized social ills, their opposing views on human nature, progress, and tradition created an unbridgeable philosophical gap, with Johnson vehemently rejecting Rousseau's ideas as unrealistic and pernicious.
Vanity Fair is considered within the Johnsonian tradition of fiction. Johnson’s literary theories, particularly from Rambler No. 4, advocated that fiction inspire "l’amour de la vertu & l’horreur du vice," emphasizing the accurate depiction of virtue and vice.
CGV entry 10/4:30. References to Johnson by Thackeray.
H. L. Mencken at Seventy-Five: America's Sam Johnson
Manchester identifies biographical and professional parallels between Mencken and Johnson, framing them as "colossi at war over usage" who represent the "right and left sides of the face of philology." Both critics served as periodical essayists, labored as lexicographers under "immense handicaps," and sought to dominate conversation while despising professional politicians. Manchester notes both men suffered apoplectic attacks on their "speech center" in their later years. While Johnson "locked the public speech" into a classical rigidity, Mencken used his scholarship to dissolve such "philological colonialism," yet both remained "literary deans" who mastered the idiom of their respective eras.
CGV entry 10/4:31. See also D. J. Greene in Johnsonian News Letter, volume 18, number 2 (June 1958), pages 5-6.
Chapin examines the basis for Johnson's violent condemnation of Rousseau. While Sewall attributes the outburst to Rousseau's social radicalism, this study finds Johnson distinguished Rousseau's religious heterodoxy from Hume's infidelity. Piozzi's accounts show Johnson acknowledging religious merit in Rousseau. However, Rousseau's social ideas and public popularity, coupled with Boswell's admiration, strongly irritated Johnson. Johnson's ultimate detestation stems from Rousseau symbolizing the dangerous threat to the social order, while Hume represented the greater peril to religion.
West Virginia University Bulletin: Philological Papers
Doctor Johnson and Walter Pater on Stoicism: A Comparison of Views
Samuel Johnson and the Critical Heritage of T. S. Eliot
CGV entry 10/4:36. On the many resemblances between them as critics.
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
The Accords and Resemblances of Johnson and Walpole
Lewis’s study explores the commonalities between Johnson and Walpole. The essay focuses on the accords and resemblances of the two figures, contributing to the body of scholarship that examines Johnson in relation to his contemporaries.
CGV entry 10/4:37. Privately printed for The Johnsonians.
Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
CGV entry 10/4:37. Reprinted from the 1967 standalone publication.
The Rhetoric of Fear and the Rhetoric of Hope
Hagstrum explores the psychological and rhetorical tensions between Johnson and William Blake, positioning them as figures who managed personal terrors through opposing intellectual frameworks. Johnson developed a "rhetoric of fear" to stabilize a mind prone to obsessive fantasies and revolutionary violence, seeking to anchor himself in outside reality. This approach used "holy fear" as a moral discipline to prevent the "dangerous prevalence of imagination" and to discourage illusory ambition. Hagstrum details Johnson's personal struggles with mental anguish, noting his "vile melancholy" and the secret fears he shared with Piozzi, including his request for confinement symbolized by a padlock. In contrast, Blake employed a "rhetoric of hope" that championed internal desire and imaginative expansion over the repressive limits of the establishment. Despite their differing methodologies—Johnson excavating the "rock of outside reality" and Blake burning up universes through creative expression—both sought a stable intellectual order. The analysis concludes that both men, having encountered "tigers of wrath," used their respective "sciences" of the mind to achieve a necessary repose.
CGV entry 10/4:38.
CGV entry 10/4:39. Contains a comparison of George Orwell and Johnson.
Chapman traces the history of Johnson's reputation through his bibliography, noting that while his works were steadily but not greatly in demand during his life, they were frequently reprinted after his death until about 1825. Following the 1787 collected edition by Hawkins and various supplements by Piozzi and Boswell, Boswell’s Life (1791) displaced all rivals and remains in constant demand. However, publication of the Works ceased in 1825 because of public disinterest, as reputation shifted toward the talker over the writer. Chapman argues against the "partial and misleading" tradition popularized by Macaulay and Romantic critics like Hazlitt, Coleridge, and De Quincey, whose "preposterous judgment" dismissed Johnson’s writing as merely artificial. By comparing extracts from Lives of the Poets to his conversation, Chapman demonstrates that Johnson’s "best English" is natural and rhythmic, possessing the same "rugged good sense" found in Boswell. Contending that the best prose is often overlooked, Chapman urges a return to the "truth and beauty" of the Works, asserting that "Johnson is one."
This essay traces Johnson's reputation through his bibliography, noting a demand for his Works until around 1825, after which focus shifted to Boswell's Life. It analyzes contemporary criticisms of his prose style, particularly the charges of using "hard words" and excessive "triplets." The author argues that the Romantic critics, led by Coleridge and Hazlitt, reconciled their admiration for Boswell's Johnson with their dislike of his prose by asserting his talk was superior to his writing. The essay contends that Johnson's best work in the Lives of the Poets is unfairly overshadowed by the Rambler.
CGV entry 10/5:1. Reprinted from The Times Literary Supplement (1921).
Contemporary Criticisms of Dr. Samuel Johnson, His Works, and His Biographers
An anthology collecting 18th-century reviews, letters, and essays, largely from the Monthly Review, reacting to Johnson's works and biographers. The collection is organized chronologically, following the publication of his major writings (Adventurer, Dictionary, Rasselas, Lives of the Poets). Johnson's literary reputation was complex and contested from the start. By compiling these immediate, primary-source critiques, Spittal argues against a simplified posthumous view (like Boswell's or Macaulay's). The book presents the raw, often conflicting, evidence of how Johnson's "contemporaries" judged him, showing his reputation being built and debated in real-time. Critical reaction is mixed. Chapman, in TLS, offers a severe assessment, penalizing the collection for editorial sloppiness, a misleading title, and a reliance on a single source that ignores vital early material. Priestley (The Spectator) similarly finds the volume disappointing, citing excessive quotation and insufficient commentary, though he notes the historical interest of the reviewers' indignation over domestic anecdotes. Writing in NYTBR, Gorman presents a more favorable view, observing that the gathered papers substantiate the subject's status as a towering personality whose individuality fascinated contemporaries. Grattan, in The Nation, notes that the compilation demonstrates an immediate recognition of biographical genius that challenges later depreciation by Macaulay. Spiller's review in South Atlantic Quarterly values the anthology for illuminating the literary atmosphere of the era, tracking the reception of political tracts and Shakespearean commentary. Bracey, in Blackfriars, highlights the utility of the papers in providing evidence of diverse contemporary reactions and pillorying early critics, especially Hawkins. Finally, the reviewer for The Nation and the Athenaeum remains skeptical, disputing that these unvaried reviews constitute a significant scholarly find.
CGV entry 10/5:2.
Chapman offers a severe review of Spittal’s collection of contemporary criticisms of Johnson, a work drawn exclusively from the Monthly Review. The compilation is criticized for editorial sloppiness and a "misleading" title, as it lacks representative breadth and ignores material printed before 1775, omitting reviews of earlier works like Rasselas or The Rambler that would be of greater interest. Chapman identifies numerous editorial failures, including the preservation of original misprints and the addition of new errors such as "drituit" for "defluit" and "revifere." The review specifically mocks a "remarkable index" with serious errors, such as including "strange place-names from Abyssinia" and confusing criticisms of the subjects of Johnson’s Lives for criticisms by the subjects themselves. While Chapman suggests some reviews of biographies by Hawkins and Boswell remain readable, he asserts readers will regret their "sixteen shillings" and find more amusement in "reading Johnson and correcting the Latin."
Ellis examines the sesquicentenary of Johnson, questioning why a figure he characterizes as a narrow-spirited Tory and "estimable literary hack" remains a sanctified national icon. He attributes this phenomenon primarily to the artistic genius of Boswell, whose biography presented a version of Johnson more compelling than the man himself. Ellis argues that Johnson is best understood through a psychological lens as one of the "great eccentrics" with a "chaotic nervous system" and a "fundamentally nervous abnormality." He highlights Johnson's compulsion-neurosis, coarse manners, and inherited melancholy, suggesting that his massive moral character managed to dominate these degenerate elements. Ellis concludes that the continued worship of Johnson serves as evidence of a peculiar vein of eccentricity inherent in the English national character.
Addington presents a contemporary perspective on Johnson from an anonymous 1762 essay on humor. The writer argues that popular preference favors the facetious narratives of figures like Hadsall or Stevens over Johnson's grave and refined conversation. While acknowledging Johnson’s established abilities, the essayist suggests his serious demeanor wearying to general company. Addington further attempts to identify the obscure Hadsall through marriage records in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
CGV entry 10/5:4. From the Royal Chronicle, January 18–20, 1762.
A Brief History of the Criticism of Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 10/5:6. Summary in [Iowa State University], Doctoral Dissertations: Abstracts and References, volume 6 (1953), pages 428-429.
Samuel Johnson and the Journals of the Romantic Period: His Reputation as a Literary Critic
George examines Samuel Johnson's reputation as a literary critic in sixteen representative Romantic-era journals between 1800 and 1832. It challenges the assumptions that Johnson was either universally condemned or passively accepted. Investigating critiques of his work on Shakespeare, Milton, and the Lives of the Poets, the thesis demonstrates that, despite fewer references, Johnson remained the most frequently cited English critic. Periodicals generally assessed the validity of his criticism, accepting praise but meticulously weighing unfavorable comments, leading to an overall balanced, rather than antagonistic or servile, reception.
Contemporary Criticism of the Works of Samuel Johnson
Morgan investigates how Johnson's contemporaries regarded his writings to determine whether his reputation rested on his intrinsic excellence as an author or merely on his conversation and personality. The study finds that while modern scholars have often neglected Johnson's texts in favor of Boswellian anecdotes, his contemporaries generally regarded him as the most eminent writer of his time. Morgan examines the reception of Johnson's poetry, prose essays, and major critical editions, noting that critics like Anna Seward and Arthur Murphy frequently compared his satiric powers to those of Pope. The research explores the widely discussed "pomp of diction" and Latinisms in the Rambler, which some censured as pedantic while others praised for extending the limits of the English language. Morgan argues that Johnson was a transitional figure whose critical dictates, though grounded in neo-classicism, often anticipated later literary attitudes by rejecting obsolete mythology and slavish adherence to rules. The study concludes that the "bulwark of Johnson's literary fame" was established by his major productions, which provided his contemporaries with both "noble and rational entertainments."
CGV entry 10/5:8.
CGV entry 10/5:9. Abstract published as a separate pamphlet by Boston University Graduate School in 1956.
McGuffie's exhaustive investigation examines press attacks on Johnson throughout the final thirty-five years of his life, concluding in 1784. Hostile criticism, initially targeting his play Irene in 1749, intensified considerably after 1762, primarily due to the political and personal assaults by Churchill and Wilkes following Johnson's acceptance of a government pension. The study analyzes critiques spanning his work, including his style (dubbed "Lexiphanes"), his Dictionary, Shakespeare edition, and his political pamphlets, finding that his critics consistently maligned his character rather than providing serious scholarly challenge. Johnson habitually dismissed these critiques as merely evidence of his fame, maintaining a public silence that Boswell recorded as unperturbed amusement.
CGV entry 10/5:10. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 22 (October 1961), pages 1182–1183.
The Reputation of Dr. Samuel Johnson in England, 1779–1835
Johnson's Criticism Criticized: The Contemporary View of Johnson's Later Reputation
CGV entry 10/5:13. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 27 (July 1966), pages 216A–217A.
The Anti-Johnsonians: A Study of the Contemporary Detractors of Samuel Johnson
Fitzpatrick investigates the origins, nature, and evolution of anti-Samuel Johnson sentiment during his lifetime and in the immediate post-mortem period. The analysis identifies key antagonists, detailing how personal, literary, and political disagreements fueled a persistent critical opposition, focusing on Johnson's forceful conversational style and perceived literary conservatism. The work demonstrates that this anti-Johnsonian discourse, often fueled by satire and anecdote, significantly influenced the public's perception of both Johnson's personality and his literary contributions.
CGV entry 10/5:14. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 28, number 10 (April 1968), pages 4125A-4126A.
Dr. Johnson and The Weekly Magazine
Walker chronicles the persistent anti-Johnson campaign conducted by the Weekly Magazine or Edinburgh Amusement between 1769 and 1784, dividing the attacks into two phases: early ridicule of "Johnsonese" in the Dictionary before 1775, and later vitriolic responses to the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Scottish correspondents, motivated by deep-rooted aversion to Johnson's anti-Scottish remarks and "national vanity," unfairly attacked the Journey for stylistic failure and alleged misrepresentation. Walker highlights parodies by Maclaurin and Fergusson, who used Johnson’s own "latinized" vocabulary to satirize his style. The Magazine circle, representing the Scottish commercial and agricultural classes, particularly resented Johnson’s comments on the lack of trees and the decay of St. Andrews. The critics were deemed prejudiced, failing to appreciate the humor or the "shrewd and perceptive" and subtle observations of the Journey. Walker concludes that while the Scots correctly identified Johnson’s political prejudices, their own prejudices prevented them from appreciating the nature of his observations.
CGV entry 10/5:15. On attacks on Johnson between 1769 and 1775.
Boulton's volume presents a good selection of contemporary 18th-century literary criticism on Johnson, including lengthy reviews like William Kenrick's critique of Johnson's Shakespeare edition. The text features Johnson’s own judgments on his works and interesting commentary from non-professional critics like the Reverend Robert Burrowes and John Aikin. Parreaux notes Boulton's tendency to view Johnson as a victim of contemporary prejudices, questioning the dismissal of Johnson’s authoritarian attitude and anti-Scottish bias. Parreaux ultimately aligns with Macaulay, arguing that the modern rehabilitation of Johnson is primarily a scholarly phenomenon, as the general cultivated public still accesses him through Boswell.
CGV entry 10/5:16. Review by André Parreaux of the book edited by James T. Boulton.
Boulton's collection is a very good introduction for students, though Bloom notes the "Posthumous Reputation" section is meager.
CGV entry 10/5:16. Review by Edward A. Bloom of the book edited by James T. Boulton, alongside other works.
Fairer values this collection for its unity, centered on Johnson’s "commanding presence." He notes that the volume effectively illustrates Johnson’s lifelong resistance to the rising "Age of Sensibility," evidenced in critiques by Kenrick, Potter, and Hazlitt. While praising Boulton’s introductory essay and the inclusion of valuable contributions by Burrowes and Mrs. Barbauld, Fairer criticizes the confusing, non-exhaustive index and several minor transcription errors in the texts.
CGV entry 10/5:16. Review by David Fairer of the book edited by James T. Boulton.
Coleman praises Boulton’s collection for illuminating the development of Johnson’s reputation from his lifetime through 1832. He values the chronological organization by work, which distinguishes specific critical responses from general estimates. Coleman highlights Boulton’s analysis of how social prejudices and charges of "literary despotism" shaped contemporary views. While noting the volume's lively documentation of controversies involving Chesterfield, Kenrick, and Webster, Coleman questions the inclusion of easily accessible texts by Johnson and Boswell. He suggests that incorporating period graphics would further enhance the study.
CGV entry 10/5:16. Review by Mark Coleman of the book edited by James T. Boulton.
Thomas updates quantitative data originally compiled by Greene to measure the scholarly popularity of Johnson against his contemporaries. Using entries from ABELL and PMLA between 1964 and 1969, Thomas demonstrates that Johnson remains the most frequently studied English writer of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, excluding Shakespeare and Milton. Although Swift saw a temporary surge in 1967 due to his tercentenary, Johnson's total of 761 items maintains his lead over rivals like Pope and Dryden. The figures indicate a sustained increase in 18th-century studies and confirm Johnson's primary status in the academic canon.
CGV entry 10/5:17. An extension of item 10/5:12.
Garland reference library in the humanities
Samuel Johnson in the British Press, 1749–1784: A Chronological Checklist
Comprehensive documentation of Johnson’s public image during his lifetime. The book encompasses thousands of items published about Johnson in British newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets from 1749 to 1784, including references to him, gossip, and contemporary reviews. The organization is a chronological checklist, providing short summaries of the contents of each item. This work, significantly expanding upon McGuffie’s earlier dissertation, was deemed an "indispensable tool" for all scholars working on Johnson, helping to reconstruct his reputation in the contemporary print culture. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising the reference work's comprehensiveness while noting a few structural limitations. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, praise the volume as an indispensable, heroic tool that justifies its cost through extensive scholarly value. Greene, writing in Studies in Burke and His Time, also labels it indispensable, noting its potential to reveal new biographical facts and attributions. In PQ, McIntosh argues the recorded attacks challenge historical periodization boundaries. Riely's review in ECCB highlights how the volume fills a significant gap in contemporary reputation studies, though Riely regrets the missing index and copy locations. Writing in Library Journal, McLeod asserts the lack of indexing limits the appeal to specialists. Nokes, in New Rambler, tracks how the compilation demonstrates a shift from marginalization to celebrity.
Reviews: James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 36, no. 1 (1976): 3–4; J. D. Fleeman, Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 1 (1978): 209–14; Donald J. Greene, Studies in Burke and His Time 19, no. 3 (1978): 235–38; Carey McIntosh, PQ 56, no. 4 (1977): 551; Colin McLeod, Library Journal 101, no. 13 (1976): 1514; David Nokes and Helen Louise McGuffie, NR, Series D, no. 3 (1987): 56–57; John C. Riely, ECCB, n.s., vol. 2 (1976): 311–12.
CGV entry 10/5:19. A review by J. D. Fleeman (with addenda) of the book by Helen Louise McGuffie.
Greene reviews McGuffie’s Samuel Johnson in the British Press, a chronological checklist expanding her dissertation on the hostile press. The volume contains three times the entries of the original, including friendly and neutral notices, and calendars the content of each item. Greene notes the immense volume of publicity Johnson received, suggesting he became a permanent "celebrity." Greene advocates for sifting the resource for new biographical information and new attributions of his writings, underscoring its value as an indispensable tool for Johnsonian scholarship.
CGV entry 10/5:19.
Riely's positive review praises a chronological checklist containing over 3500 references to Johnson from London, Edinburgh, and provincial publications between 1749 and 1784. The checklist records newspaper accounts of the 1773 Hebridean tour, reports of plans to marry Thrale in 1782, and reprinted extracts of Johnsonian works. Riely notes omissions, such as a 1773 newspaper squib about Johnson and Thrale mentioned by Boswell. Riely wishes McGuffie included an index and copy locations for the rare newspapers. Riely concludes that the checklist fills a significant gap in Johnsonian studies and provides the raw material to study Johnson's contemporary reputation.
CGV entry 10/5:19. Review by John Riely of the book by Helen Louise McGuffie.
John Wilkes and the Writings of 'Pensioner Johnson'
Wilkes repeatedly targeted Johnson's writings in political satire, especially the Dictionary's definitions of "pension," "pensioner," and "excise," to mock the newly pensioned lexicographer as a "slave of state." Wilkes's North Briton and his anonymous Letter to Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., which parodied Johnson's style, revealed a close familiarity with Johnson's earlier works, including London and The False Alarm. Wilkes's literary attacks continued even as the two men dined together and discussed the Middlesex election with good humor.
CGV entry 10/5:20.
'As Fly Stings to a Stately Horse': Johnson Under Satiric Attack
This essay examines Samuel Johnson's role as a frequent victim of satire during his later life and his critical views on the genre. Johnson distinguished sharply between "proper" satire, which portrays universal folly and wickedness to reform society, and lampoon ("personal satire"), which aims to vex a particular person. Though often a victim of tasteless invective, he typically advocated restraint, famously dismissing his critics' attacks as mere fly stings to a stately horse. He understood that being attacked was an "inevitable levy on renown" and believed that notoriety—even through calumny and ridicule—was preferable to being ignored or forgotten. Johnson insisted that ridicule, which he considered a useful talent or "gift of nature," must remain plausible, truthful, and correlative with contemporary manners, never creating "phantoms of absurdity" disconnected from actuality.
CGV entry 10/5:23. Facsimile reprints of eight essays from 1846 to 1920.
Sketches and Characters of the Most Eminent and Most Singular Persons Now Living
A single sentence: "We must confess that when we hear a Man of good sense and learning, is provided for at the public expense, we are glad; and wish that Pensions were bestowed on none other."
CGV entry 10/6:1. A brief paragraph defending Johnson's pension.
CGV entry 10/6:2. A general attack on Johnson, In two parts: volume 1 (April), page 220; and volume 2 (July), pages 17–20.
A Parallel between Diogenes the Cynic and Doctor J—n, by a Very Eminent Hand
This anonymous parallel identifies a "remarkable similarity" between Diogenes and Johnson, despite their separation by age, religion, and government. The author argues that both men attained fame more through their "singularities and oddities" than superior merit, characterizing both as the "filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest" residents of their respective capitals. The essay juxtaposes Diogenes’s tub with Johnson’s garret and compares Diogenes’s midday search for an honest man with Johnson’s search for a tree in Scotland—mocking Johnson’s nearsightedness and the "effuvia" of his person. While Diogenes is praised for a sincere "philosophical indifference" and independence from Alexander the Great, Johnson is condemned as "venal and mercenary" for accepting a pension from George III. The author further contrasts Diogenes’s atheism with Johnson’s "grossest superstitions," including his belief in the Cock Lane ghost and second sight, ultimately suggesting that Johnson’s soul may be a transmigration of Diogenes’s, punished by a transition from believing nothing to believing everything.
CGV entry 10/6:4. The author's pseudonym for George Colman the elder.
Chiaro Oscuro characterizes Johnson as a genius of a "particular stamp" and a premier Latinist. The author argues that Johnson’s "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" establish him as the legitimate successor to Pope, though the latter poem appears "more the fruit of study than observation." While praising Johnson’s "wonderful" sagacity and ability to perceive "nice discriminations" in character, the author identifies a stylistic failure in his prose. In the Rambler and Idler, Johnson’s characters possess an "accurate and minute likeness to nature" yet "all talk one language," specifically Johnson’s own "peculiarity of diction." The author describes Irene as a work of "just sentiment" but lacking "Pathos." Readers are encouraged to study Johnson’s "Strength of Argument" while avoiding the "splendor of his diction" and personal eccentricities.
CGV entry 10/6:4. Reprinted from the London Packet (1775).
A Critical Review of the Works of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Containing a Particular Vindication of Several Eminent Characters
The pamphlet was part of a literary quarrel, intended as retribution because Johnson patronized William Shaw, who had been involved in the Gaelic poetry controversy. Callender's Critical Review ridicules Johnson's works and his literary character. It argues that Johnson’s bulked volumes betray "the melancholy truth, that unwearied industry, devoid of settled principles, avails only to add one error to another." The pamphlet shares a common origin with Callender’s Deformities of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1782); both works exhibit similarity in style and content, and were likely issued from the same press. The Critical Review's "Introduction" states that the author had published "a few remarks on the writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson" the previous year, referring to Deformities of Dr. Samuel Johnson. The Critical Review cites Deformities in its notes and uses the word "deformities" in the text multiple times. The first edition of the Critical Review was published in Edinburgh. A second edition was published in London in 1783. There was also a 1787 issue of the Critical Review. Although often attributed mistakenly to John Callander of Craigforth in catalogs owing to a quoted passage, J. T. Callender confirmed his authorship of the associated Deformities in 1783.
CGV entry 10/6:5.
The Man in the Moon; or, Travels into the Lunar Regions by the Man of the People
The author presents a caricature of Johnson as a "bear-like monster" led by a monkey, representing Chesterfield. The text characterizes Chesterfield as a "dancing-master" who reduced manners to "writhings of the body," while Johnson is depicted as an "unworthy pretender to philosophy" who reduced knowledge to language. The author disputes the possibility of "chaste language" from a dictionary compiler, asserting that Johnson’s style is "stiff, awkward, and pedantic." The text further claims that Johnson’s works contain "not a single idea that is new," but merely old concepts "tortured into fantastic shapes." As a lunar punishment, the author proposes raising Johnson to the "dignity of a school-master" to teach the English language to "three hundred Scots Highlanders." The satire extends to Linnaeus and Solander, mocking the "unnatural classes" of botanical and zoological taxonomy.
CGV entry 10/6:6. Includes a general attack on Johnson. In two parts: volume 57 (September 25), pages 405-408; and volume 58 (October 23), pages 117–118.
Fordyce submits a lengthy commemorative epitaph for Johnson, asserting that the subject's personal humility regarding his grave marker should not preclude admirers from rendering him justice. The inscription characterizes Johnson as a figure who united the qualities of "poets, philosophers, orators, and heroes." Fordyce emphasizes Johnson’s "invincible resolution" in the cause of virtue, noting that he disdained to flatter the affluent or subvert morals for "the favor of an unprincipled age." The tribute highlights Johnson's "illustrious proof" of linguistic mastery in his Dictionary and his intuitive knowledge of nature. Fordyce concludes that Johnson’s greatest distinction was a life devoted to the "improvement of his fellow-creatures" based on a "principle of piety."
Impartial Character of Dr. Samuel Johnson Said to Be Written by Miss Seward
Seward characterizes Johnson as an "illustrious but a very mixed character." She praises his "deep and universal" learning and a prose style defined by "luminous arrangement of ideas." However, she asserts that "literary envy" served as the "bosom serpent" of this "literary despot," leading to "unprincipled misrepresentation" in his criticism. Seward labels his politics as "inimical to liberty" and his religious faith as possessing "bigot-fierceness." While acknowledging his "stupendous reach of understanding," she argues his "over-bearing arrogance" and "party violence" disgraced his fine writing.
This text challenges the application of the title "Great Man" to Johnson, contrasting popular panegyrics with the testimony of intimate acquaintances. While acknowledging Johnson’s "great parts" and "stupendous strength of understanding," the author characterizes him as "the meanest of bigots" and a "slave to the most contemptible prejudices." The text cites Newton and Seward to illustrate how "malevolence predominates" in Johnson’s criticism and how "literary envy" served as his "bosom-serpent." Despite noting his charitable response to "disease and poverty," the account emphasizes Johnson’s "overbearing arrogance," "bigot-fierceness" in religion, and political leanings "inimical to liberty." The author concludes that Johnson’s "disgrace to human understanding" on important subjects renders claims of his "true goodness" absurd.
CGV entry 10/6:9. A hostile piece that has been attributed to Ralph Heathcote. Also published in the European Magazine, volume 9 (May 1786), pages 319-320.
Reply to the Defender of Boswell's Journal
The author attacks Boswell for his "vanity" and "egoism" in the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The critique characterizes Johnson as a "morose overbearing pedant" and disputes the value of recording his "uninteresting minutiae." The author argues that Boswell’s focus on "triviality" debases biography, comparing his efforts to "Grub-street writers" chronicling the "last dying-speech of malefactors." The text challenges the "indiscriminate partiality" of Boswell’s admirers and asserts that Johnson’s own Journey is a "studied palliative" compared to Boswell’s flimsier account. It further notes that Boswell fails to distinguish between "wit and punning" and mocks his "affectation" in using Latin scraps.
CGV entry 10/6:12. A savage attack on Boswell's 'Life' and Johnson.
Observations on the Character of Dr. Johnson
Erica disputes the "inconsiderate partiality" of Johnson’s friends who publish anecdotes that "degrade his character." The text portrays Johnson as an "imperious pedant" whose conversation consisted of "perpetual opposition" and "insolence." Erica argues that Johnson’s religion was "strangely tinctured with incredulity" and "terror," preventing him from examining the "foundation of his faith." The critique describes his charity as "extravagant" but driven by "superstition" rather than compassion, and characterizes him as a "literary despot" whose "illiberal prejudices" against Whigs, Scots, and Dissenters clouded his judgment.
CGV entry 10/6:13. A hostile piece.
Number 13 maintains that biographers of Johnson fairly communicated all they knew, adhering to his own principle that a true and real character requires accurate delineation. It asserts that Johnson’s genius, learning, and strength of his reasonings are not diminished by his personal failings or the pressure of poverty and sickness. The essay frames his reputed superstition as a wish rather to do too much, than too little for God, born from a sensibility of heart. It concludes that while his oddities may be forgotten, his writings will be admired, while Britons shall continue to be characterized by a love of elegance and sublimity.
CGV entry 10/6:15. A thoughtful survey of the various biographies of Johnson.
Winter Evenings, or Lucubrations on Life and Letters
Chapter XII of Book II disputes the 'unreasonable expectation of uniform excellence' in authors, focusing on the posthumous treatment of Johnson. It challenges the 'malignant curiosity' of modern biography that exposes 'minute deformities' and 'private foibles.' The text argues that biographers use Johnson's 'unpolished' manners to 'lower the dignity' of his literary achievement. It maintains that readers should prioritize the 'moralist and the philosopher' over the 'awkwardness of the man,' as the 'biographical abuse' serves only to gratify the 'envy of the idle' and the 'vanity of the superficial.' Chapter V of Book VIII disputes the charge of superstition against Johnson, asserting that his 'Prayers and Meditations' reveal 'true humility' rather than a mind governed by 'right reason.' The text maintains that Johnson’s 'scrupulous regularity' and 'remarkable piety' represent 'the common weaknesses of all human creatures' when approaching the 'mercy-seat of the Almighty.' It challenges the 'dictatorial' persona of the 'Rambler' and prefaces, arguing that Johnson’s devotional style lacks 'affectation' or 'words of unusual occurrence.' The section identifies Sir Thomas Browne as the model for the 'Rambler' style but argues that Johnson’s 'own native vigor' and 'pious intention' ultimately define his literary and religious character.
CGV entry 10/6:16. No. 11 is "On the Character of Doctor Johnson and the Abuse of Biography"; No. 22 is "On Dr. Johnson's Prayers, with a Remark on His Style." Often reprinted.
Mr. Tyrwhitt Vindicated from a Reflection of Dr. Johnson
X. defends Tyrwhitt and Steevens from Johnson's 'peremptory decision' and 'strokes of satire' regarding the Rowley poems. The correspondent argues that Johnson was 'piqued' because they chose to use their own 'eyes and understandings' rather than defer to his decrees. X. disputes Johnson's claim that Steevens was 'not well pleased' to find the poems forged, asserting Johnson was an incompetent examiner of ancient handwriting due to poor eyesight. The text vindicates Tyrwhitt's scholarly caution, noting his judgment only became 'immutably fixed' after examining the original 'Rolles'.
CGV entry 10/6:17. Also a "vindication" of George Steevens, who was likely the author.
The Character of Dr. Johnson Calmly Investigated
T. T. analyzes Johnson’s character, attributing the "backwardness of the nation" in subscribing to his monument to his lack of "conciliatory talents." The text describes Johnson's "supercilious haughtiness" and "rugged coat of forbidding austerity" as barriers to public esteem. T. T. notes Johnson’s "overbearing insolence" alienated the nobility, particularly "one noble Earl." While admitting Johnson’s "exalted abilities," the author argues the public "object of fear" was more regretted as a writer than as a man. The letter defends the Universities against charges of remissness.
Mott [William Mudford] critically examines the moral philosophy and tendency of Johnson's writings, primarily The Rambler, Rasselas, The Idler, London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Mudford argues that Johnson's pervasive melancholy, misanthropy, and prejudiced outlook render his depictions of life false, especially for impressionable youth, promoting undue suspicion and discouraging literary ambition. The work commends Johnson's religious writings and allegories, citing a superior merit in his serious prose compared to his poetry. The Appendix presents a satirical dialogue between Boswell and Johnson in the afterlife, where Johnson excoriates Boswell for his biography's indiscretion.
CGV entry 10/6:21. Published in parts: No. 291 (October 3); No. 296 (October 9); No. 314 (November 2); No. 324 (November 13); No. 326 (November 16).
A Critical Enquiry into the Moral Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, by Attalus ... to which is added ... a Dialogue between Johnson and Boswell in the Shades
Mudford critically examines the moral philosophy and tendency of Johnson's writings, primarily The Rambler, Rasselas, The Idler, London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Mudford argues that Johnson's pervasive melancholy, misanthropy, and prejudiced outlook render his depictions of life false, especially for impressionable youth, promoting undue suspicion and discouraging literary ambition. The work commends Johnson's religious writings and allegories, citing a superior merit in his serious prose compared to his poetry. The Appendix presents a satirical dialogue between Boswell and Johnson in the afterlife, where Johnson excoriates Boswell for his biography's indiscretion.
Published under the pseudonym 'Attalus'. A second edition with the author's name appeared in 1803.
The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper
Hayley compiles a biographical account of the poet William Cowper, primarily using Cowper’s private correspondence and posthumously published poems to illustrate his character. The text notes Cowper’s early acquaintance with Johnson’s literary style, evidenced by a 1765 letter where Cowper humorously adopts a Latinate "Johnsonian" vocabulary to describe his weekly meetings with his brother. Hayley subsequently records Cowper’s engagement with contemporary literature during his retirement at Olney, specifically his reading of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1789. Cowper characterizes both Boswell and Hawkins as "coxcombs" but acknowledges the oracular quality of Johnson’s speech preserved within Boswell’s narrative. The work emphasizes Cowper’s preference for Johnson's conversation over Boswell's indiscriminate inclusion of "trash," while situating Johnson among the eminent authors whose work defined the mid-eighteenth-century literary landscape.
CGV entry 10/6:22. Contains many references to Johnson in Cowper's letters.
Classic Tales, Serious and Lively, with Critical Essays on the Merits and Reputation of the Authors
Prefixed to Rasselas in a multi-volume collection of fiction. Hunt examines the biographical origins and literary deficiencies of Johnson’s Rasselas, attributing the text’s "black and useless melancholy" to the author’s grief following his mother’s death. The study challenges Johnson’s historical and geographical accuracy, noting that his depiction of Abyssinian royalty as "chaste and learned" contradicts the "brutality and ignorance" recorded in history and the accounts of Lobo. Hunt finds a total "want of character" in the narrative, asserting that the speakers are merely "Dr. Johnson rolling forth his profound philosophy" through a "ventriloquist" technique. The astronomer is identified as a vehicle for Johnson’s own "hypochondriacal fancies." While praising the "majestic language" and "profound reflections," Hunt disputes the "idle and impatient philosophy" of the work, arguing that its "degraded picture of human being" offers a "despair, not the patience of philosophy" that fails to encourage active virtue.
CGV entry 10/6:23.
A Comparative Estimate of the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
This prize essay, recited at the Oxford Theatre in 1814, compares the literary characteristics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, positioning Johnson as the central figure and "founder" of a late eighteenth-century school. Burdon argues that while seventeenth-century writers possessed superior "fertility of invention" and "magnificence of general plans," their successors excelled in "precision," "method," and the "delivery of knowledge." He identifies Johnson as the "great champion of English literature in the last century" but disputes the idea that any single monument of his work equals his fame, noting that his "noblest original and insulated work" remains a biographical sketch. Burdon observes in Johnson a "magnanimous contempt of originality," characterized by an effort to "enforce with all the energies of his ponderous diction truths the most beaten and known." The essay explores the "transition" in English prose from the "sweetness" of Addison to the "masculine energy" of Johnson, while also discussing the influence of Milton, Dryden, and Pope. Burdon attributes a perceived decline in modern "grandeur of design" to habits of study and the "unsteadiness and volatility of spirit" caused by the proliferation of periodical writing.
CGV entry 10/6:24. The Oxford English Prize Essay, containing various slighting references to Johnson.
This collection of critical essays and purported conversations, published anonymously in the year following Byron's death, evaluates the poet's legacy through the lens of 18th-century biographical traditions. The text explicitly links Byron to the "Bozzies and Piozzies" of a previous generation, acknowledging the "entertaining Boswell's fate" while presenting Byronic conversations intended to "authenticate themselves" through their "sterling worth." A "Dissertation on Poetry" challenges the "oracular" judgments of Johnson, particularly regarding the "contradiction" between Johnson's praise of Shakespeare as a "poet of nature" and his criticisms of the playwright's "gross" jests and "licentious" pleasantry. Byron's own literary practice is described as a "work of art" rather than pure nature, involving the methodical use of alliteration and the "filching" of "rich expressions" from authors like Young and Shakespeare into a common-place book for later "colouring and enlarging." The "Notes to Don Juan" respond to allegations of plagiarism by identifying specific nautical sources—such as the loss of the Lady Hobart and the Centaur—from which Byron "skilfully chizzled" facts to achieve a "colouring so true" to life. Finally, Byron offers a humorous "costume hint" to the "leaders of fashion," suggesting the adoption of varied historical and national dress to replace the "meaningless" term "blue stocking."
CGV entry 10/6:25. On contradictions in Johnson's criticism.
Letters from the Late Lord Chedworth to the Rev. Thomas Crompton; Written in the Period from January 1780 to May 1798
CGV entry 10/6:26. Contains numerous references to Johnson, chiefly about his criticism.
An imagined dialogue in which Tickler predicts that Croker, in his forthcoming edition of Boswell, will represent the Tory principles of Johnson as "contemptible weaknesses." He views this potential editorial stance as a symptom of the "march of intellect" and the "unbelieving" spirit of the age.
CGV entry 10/6:27. A general appreciation of Johnson, published under the pseudonym "Christopher North." Reprinted in The Works of Professor Wilson (Edinburgh and London, 1855).
Wilson, writing under the pseudonym Christopher North, employs a dramatic dialogue between himself and the Ettrick Shepherd to evaluate the state of contemporary English and Scottish literature. The review centers on a critique of Coleridge, whom North describes as a man of vast oral wisdom and "silver voice" who nevertheless produces "indifferent books" such as Aids to Reflection. The dialogue contrasts Coleridge’s visionary poetic powers in Christabel with his perceived inability to navigate the rational, waking world. North further explores the "Fashionable Novels" of the day, asserting through the Shepherd that true human nature is found only in the extremes of the highest or lowest social estates, dismissing the middle-class "manners" of contemporary fiction as superficial. The piece is notable for its blend of boisterous humor, personal chaff, and a concluding, highly publicized "humanitarian" recantation regarding the talents of Leigh Hunt, signaling a shift from earlier vitriolic Tory criticism to a more balanced appreciation of literary merit.
CGV entry 10/6:27. Reprinted from Blackwood's (1829).
Macaulay's famously severe critique of Croker's edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson is a sweeping denunciation of the editor's competence, asserting that the work is "ill compiled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed." Macaulay acknowledges Boswell’s original text as "a great, a very great work," placing him in the highest echelon of literature: "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists ... than Boswell is the first of biographers." But Croker's editing is a failure of "negligence and an ignorance" that constitutes a "high literary misdemeanour." Macaulay focuses especially on Croker’s inaccuracy, saying his volumes "absolutely swarm with misstatements" regarding established historical and chronological facts. Macaulay details blunders ranging from the simple (mistaking the year of Lord Mansfield's survival and giving conflicting dates for Hester Piozzi's age) to the profound. Croker erroneously claims the Marquis of Montrose was "beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650," when "Every schoolboy knows that the marquis was hanged." He also misstates the year of Derrick’s death by nine years, only for Johnson and Boswell to be found discussing the very much alive Derrick pages later. A significant lapse in both fact and interpretation is Croker's misreading of Johnson's anecdote about Gibbon becoming a "Mahommedan"; Croker's explanatory note alludes to Gibbon's published history, a book that appeared "twelve years after the date of this conversation, and near four years after the death of Johnson." He misidenties Prince Titi as a serious political manuscript rather than a children's fairy tale, missing the point of Johnson's contempt. Macaulay also condemns Croker’s editorial methods for destroying the narrative integrity of the original biography. Croker's insertion of anecdotes from other sources—including Hawkins and Piozzi—into the original text is an act of mutilation: "They differ from the quotations scattered through the original Life of Johnson, as a withered bough stuck in the ground differs from a tree skilfully transplanted with all its life about it." This editorial splicing ruins the charm of the original sources, and Piozzi's lively anecdotes become "as flat as Champagne in decanters" in their edited form. Macaulay concludes by returning to the central paradox of the biography: Boswell, a foolish and vain "man of the meanest and feeblest intellect," succeeded as a biographer not in spite of, but "by reason of his defects." His supreme curiosity and "insensibility" to personal embarrassment enabled him to record the great Johnson’s life with unparalleled fidelity. It is Boswell’s record, Macaulay states, that guarantees Johnson’s own eternal fame, whose published works, ironically, have largely "fallen into general neglect."
CGV entry 10/6:28.
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays
CGV entry 10/6:28. Reprinted from the Edinburgh Review (1831).
Smith’s edition provides a comprehensive apparatus for Macaulay’s "masterpiece of biographical condensation." The introduction traces the evolution of Macaulay's views on Johnson, noting the shift from the "harshness" of his 1831 review of Croker to the "mellowed and more sympathetic" tone of the 1856 biography. Smith emphasizes that while Macaulay’s style remains characterized by "brilliant paradox" and "unsparing antithesis," this later work offers a more balanced appraisal of Johnson’s literary stature. The editorial notes clarify Macaulay’s numerous historical and literary allusions, correcting several characteristic exaggerations regarding Johnson’s domestic habits and the "squalor" of his Grub Street years. Smith also provides a "Chronological Table" and a selection of critical comments by Carlyle, Leslie Stephen, and others to contextualize Macaulay's portrayal of Johnson as a "Titan" of English letters. The volume includes a frontispiece portrait of Johnson and concludes with a bibliography of major 18th-century sources used by the biographer.
Memoirs of Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglas: Written by Himself
Campbell's memoir recounts his military career, beginning with the 51st Regiment during the Seven Years' War, offering eye-witness accounts of Minden and defending Sackville. Following travels, including time with Voltaire, he saw garrison duties and service in the Mediterranean under Nelson, administering Zante during the Ionian conflict. The volume also records anecdotes from late eighteenth-century London's social scene, including Johnson presiding over a club dinner, and concludes with his return to Scotland detailing patrimonial disputes and three marriages.
CGV entry 10/6:29. An unsympathetic sketch of Johnson.
Biography [and] Boswell's Life of Johnson
Carlyle explores the profound significance of biography as a medium for understanding the Problem of Existence through both scientific and poetic lenses. He asserts that biography is almost the one thing needful in art and literature because it reveals the spirit of the creator and the supernatural secrets underlying natural reality. Focusing on Boswell's Life of Johnson, Carlyle defines it as the sole good Biography in England, crediting Boswell’s open loving heart for his ability to mirror the wonders of this ever-wonderful Universe through the character of Samuel Johnson. He disputes the common disparagement of Boswell’s character, arguing that Boswell’s devout Discipleship to Johnson was an act of spiritual heroism and a recognition of genuine Excellence that transcended his own vanity and social prejudices. Carlyle describes Johnson as the Prophet of the English, a man whose courageous, honest spirit served as a transmitter of whatsoever was genuine in a divided age, and whose life remains a victorious Battle of a free, true Man.
CGV entry 10/6:31. The 1832 review broken into two essays.
Histoire critique de la littérature anglaise
Mézières's Histoire critique de la littérature anglaise reviews eighteenth-century figures, including Hume, Smollett, and Sterne. The work recognizes Johnson's preeminent position, examining his essays and Rasselas for their moral gravity and didactic style. Mézières focuses on the expanded Lives of the Poets, praising the Life of Dryden and characterizing the Life of Pope as written "con amore," but noting the political bias in the Life of Milton. The review stresses Johnson's commitment to subordinating all writing to the cause of virtue.
CGV entry 10/6:32. Contains a translation of the original 'Idler' No. 22.
Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge's recorded conversational dicta frequently compare him to Johnson, whom the editor contrasts as "gladiatorial" seeking conversational victory, unlike Coleridge’s pursuit of ideal truth. Coleridge asserted that Johnson's fame largely rested upon Boswell and his "bow-wow manner." While Coleridge praised Johnson’s political pamphlets, such as Taxation no Tyranny, he critiqued his prose for often containing verbal, not substantive, antitheses. Johnson's conversational vigor and social impact exceeded his written philosophy.
CGV entry 10/6:33. Contains comments on Johnson under dates July 4 and November 1, 1833.
Mackintosh characterizes Johnson as a figure of vigorous understanding and inflexible integrity, whose colloquial dictatorship governed London’s literary circles for three decades. He argues that Johnson’s masculine intellect, though occasionally clouded by religious and political prejudices, remained singularly pure in its moral independence. Mackintosh positions Johnson as the founder of the rhetorical school of English style, noted for its nervous dignity and Latinate structure, while identifying his critical limitations in an inability to perceive the higher effusions of poetical sensibility.
CGV entry 10/6:34. Contains severe strictures on Johnson's style and criticism.
Johnson is presented as a quintessential modern hero who embodies "originality, sincerity, and genius." Carlyle argues that the Man of Letters has replaced the ancient roles of Prophet and Priest, tasked with making the "Divine Idea of the World" manifest through the medium of printing. Carlyle focuses on Johnson as a "giant invincible soul" who navigated a skeptical, "godless" eighteenth century with rugged self-help and spiritual fortitude. Despite suffering from debilitating hypochondria and extreme poverty—famously illustrated by his refusal of a pair of shoes at Oxford—Johnson remained "loyally submissive to what was really higher than he." Carlyle highlights Johnson's intellectual honesty, describing him as a man of "truths and facts" rather than mere "formulas." His primary gospel was one of "Moral Prudence" and the imperative to "clear your mind of Cant." Carlyle contends that even Johnson's "buckram style" and grandiloquence contain a genuine substance absent in spurious literature. Johnson is depicted as a "valiant man" who maintained his integrity against a "waste chaos of Authorship," serving as a loadstar for a nation in spiritual paralysis.
Goodrich surveys the life of Johnson, detailing his Lichfield origins, "wonderful memory," and early affliction with scrofula. Narrative traces Johnson’s "miserably poor" tenure at Oxford and subsequent "drudgery" as a school usher and Birmingham translator. Text emphasizes the "eccentric marriage" to Porter, the failure of the Edial school, and the "indigent circumstances" of his arrival in London with Garrick. Goodrich examines the "ceaseless demands" of the Dictionary and the "distressing poverty" that necessitated the rapid composition of Rasselas to fund his mother's funeral. Focus shifts to the 1762 pension and the "literary luminary" status achieved through the Club. Goodrich describes Boswell as a "shadow" who recorded Johnson's "wit and wisdom" and "insatiable appetite." Account concludes with Johnson's residence with Thrale, his "paralysis" and "dropsy," and his final religious "tranquillity." Thrale is noted for her "vivacity" and her later "degraded" marriage to Piozzi. Goodrich argues Johnson's style was "pompous" yet suited to "lofty conceptions," though his "scholastic follies" led to an excessive use of Latin derivatives.
CGV entry 10/6:36. The author is also known as "Peter Parley".
Chasles surveys eighteenth-century English social, literary, and political history through a series of humoristic and political studies. He emphasizes the inherent eccentricity and individual independence of the English character, contrasting this Anglo-Saxon anti-social strength with French Roman discipline. Specific attention is paid to Johnson, categorized as a "severe moralist" and "pedant" nicknamed "the bear," whose personal eccentricities—such as his marriage to a woman whose family history of hangings mirrored his own—typify the national temperament. Chasles further examines the broader intellectual circle including Reynolds, Goldsmith, and Burke, while tracing the political evolution of the era from Shaftsbury to the radicalism of the nineteenth century. The text highlights the cultural significance of the humorist in English letters and the role of historical figures in shaping the progressive movement of the Protestant North.
CGV entry 10/6:37. In the section "Les Excentriques et les Humoristes."
Industrialization and technological advancements like steam power necessitate improved education for the professional and commercial classes. Anderson emphasizes that knowledge must serve moral and religious ends rather than mere curiosity or profit. Focusing on Samuel Johnson, Anderson presents him as a model of moral heroism who resisted the corrupting influence of poverty through devout Christian faith. He defends Johnson against modern critics, arguing that Johnson’s literary judgments remain valid and that his lexicographical labors provided a moral foundation for English literature. Anderson identifies Johnson’s practical benevolence and commitment to truth as his most enduring legacies, urging readers to emulate his disciplined approach to study and his consistent application of religious principles to public and private life.
CGV entry 10/6:38. Address Number 2.
The author responds to De Morgan's claim that a "palpable absurdity" in arithmetic exists in a dialogue between Johnson and Dr. Adams in Boswell's Life. The conversation involves the time required for Johnson to complete his Dictionary compared to the French Academy, where Johnson uses the ratio of 40:1600. The author argues that interpreting the proportion in terms of time rather than power of an Englishman to a Frenchman resolves any perceived error, then queries De Morgan's intended mistake.
CGV entry 10/6:39. A reply to a criticism by De Morgan.
Authors Associated with Places: Samuel Johnson
Mitford recalls her personal acquaintance with Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale Piozzi within the context of their residency in Bath. She describes the 'brilliant circle' that gathered around Thrale, whom Mitford identifies as Johnson’s 'hostess and friend.' Thrale is depicted as a 'slandered, defiant, but not unhappy wife' whose second marriage to Piozzi drew public censure. Mitford highlights Johnson’s critical presence in this social milieu, noting his habit to 'scoff' at contemporary literary revivals like Percy's Reliques. The narrative emphasizes the intellectual vibrancy of Bath during this period, positioning Johnson and Thrale as central figures in its literary society.
Dr. Johnson as a Christian and a Critic [review of Boswell's Life of Johnson, Together with Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell and John Wilson Croker]
Johnson’s Christianity originates in physical temperament and a realistic appraisal of human suffering rather than bigotry. Johnson attacks the "cant of happiness," arguing that earthly existence offers only partial satisfaction relieved by religious hope. This narrative likens Johnson’s perspective to Foster’s while highlighting Johnson’s "clubable" nature and rejection of anchoritic austerity. Johnson’s criticism embodies "gigantic but cramped common sense." Despite a lack of instinct for minute beauties, Johnson displays poetic imagination in Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Johnson provides a "massive" eulogy for Paradise Lost despite personal antipathy toward Milton. Preference for Dryden and Pope results from contemporary fashion and a limited ear for complex versification.
Challenges Macaulay's depreciating memoir of Samuel Johnson in the Encyclopedia Britannica. It champions Johnson's intellect, firm religious faith, independence, and benevolence, arguing that his poverty and disease-induced melancholy led to many of his eccentricities and difficult manners. The author details Johnson's literary successes, including London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Rambler, the Dictionary, Rasselas (written to pay for his mother's funeral), and Lives of the Poets. The piece defends Johnson's character, particularly his relationship with his wife and his treatment by Hester Thrale Piozzi after her husband's death. The author attributes Johnson's fear of death to a profound sense of unworthiness, asserting that his passing was ultimately serene.
CGV entry 10/6:42. On Macaulay's entry on Johnson in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Reprinted from the Literary Gazette, this letter to the editor signed "G. D." defends Samuel Johnson against T. B. Macaulay's recent biographical sketch in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which the author argues is characterized by a "spirit of depreciation" and "gross caricature." G.D. disputes Macaulay's depiction by emphasizing Johnson's integrity of principle, independence of character, lofty intellect, and fervent religious faith, maintained despite physical afflictions, poverty, and melancholy. This biographical narrative follows Johnson's career from his early struggles to his established reputation as the "head of lexicographers," highlighting the success of "sonorous and stately" poems like London, the importance of the dictionary, and his brilliant conversation, piety, and charity. The article details the "green and sunny interval" of Johnson's life at Streatham with his friends the Thrales, where he produced his "crowning work," the Lives of the Poets, and reviews his active club life. G.D. directly addresses Macaulay’s criticisms regarding Johnson’s works, eating habits, wife, and literary judgments, while condemning Mrs. Piozzi for "petulant and perverse" behavior following her husband's death, which led to Johnson's final leave-taking of the Streatham library. The letter concludes by praising Johnson's deep and fervent piety.
CGV entry 10/6:42. Reprinted from the Literary Gazette (1857).
CGV entry 10/6:43. Argues Johnson is a link between Pope and Disraeli.
Extols Dr. Johnson's character, seeing past his rough exterior to his virtue, piety, loyalty, and honor—the essence of a true gentleman, unlike Chesterfield's superficial model. Defends Johnson's occasional rudeness and intolerance as stemming from earnest conviction against error, not personal malice. His life and conversations offer profound moral lessons. While suggesting Goldsmith and Boswell surpassed him purely as writers (Johnson's topics/style less enduring), Johnson remains the greater man, using genius purposefully.
A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language
Craik surveys the development of English letters, focusing on the stylistic evolution and personal influence of 18th-century authors. Johnson appears as a dominant figure whose "career of authorship" spans nearly half a century, producing standard works such as the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets. Craik highlights the "Johnsonian style" as a critical benchmark, suggesting its characteristics influenced anonymous polemicists like Junius. The text emphasizes that Johnson's "intellect, his opinions, his manners, his whole man" remain uniquely visible to posterity because Boswell preserved his "colloquial wit and eloquence" in a "renowned work" that stands without rival in biography. While noting that Piozzi "often delighted his imagination" with reports of Johnson's thoughts, Craik indicates that her "memory had the worst defect" and she often proved "incorrect in her recollections." Boswell remains the primary authority for maintaining Johnson's presence in the "full light of day" while other historical figures remain "shadows, or mere outlines."
CGV entry 10/6:45. The section on Johnson. Frequently reprinted, later as 'A Manual of English Literature and the English Language'.
On Johnson's quotation of an Alexander Pope couplet from his Works (1743) within the 1773 revision of Johnson's Dictionary. In four citations, Johnson introduced twelve errors by omitting words or unjustifiably deviating from the text, thereby destroying the meter. The same errors were repeated in later editions. The author notes that Johnson correctly quoted the same couplets in four other instances in the Dictionary, providing eight quotations from three couplets.
CGV entry 10/6:46.
The Literary Character of Dr. Sam'l Johnson
Whitaker examines Johnson's intellectual development and ultimate status as a literary authority, asserting that his early struggles with poverty served as the "magic secret" of his success by fostering a resilient, virtuous character. Highlighting Johnson's role as a moralist and lexicographer, the discussion focuses on his mastery of the English language and his influence on the literary standards of his age. Johnson emerges as a figure of singular genius whose dedication to "literature and human progress" enabled him to reach the "highest pinnacle of fame" despite significant adversity. The text emphasizes his endurance as a subject of admiration, characterizing his career as a triumphant spectacle of rare virtue.
A History of English Literature, in a series of biographical sketches
Collier's history designates Johnson as the central figure of the Seventh Era (1740–1784), tracing his career from Grub Street to his established position following the 1762 pension. His output, including the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets, is analyzed, though Rasselas is criticized for its lack of local color. Johnson's prose style, termed "Johnsonese," is noted for its Latinity and ponderous balance, yet his letter to Chesterfield is praised for its natural force. The narrative highlights the domestic comfort Johnson found with the Thrales, noting Mrs. Thrale as the recipient of correspondence used in the Journey to the Hebrides. Boswell is depicted as a shallow advocate whose obsessive observation resulted in the photographic Life of Johnson.
CGV entry 10/6:48. See especially the section on Johnson.
Taine positions Johnson as a central figure in the mid-eighteenth-century moral and literary transformation of England. He identifies Johnson as an authoritative layman whose "authority of science and genius" successfully countered the "passagery eruption" of deism and atheism promoted by figures like Bolingbroke and Mandeville. Johnson represents the "sober, reflective, moral spirit" essential to the British constitution and national character. Taine notes that Johnson’s defense of Christianity as a "support of private virtue" helped transition the faith from a popular instinct to an official literary standard. Despite Johnson's intellectual dominance, Taine observes that he remained "confined within morality," using reasoning primarily to provide "motives and means to behave well" rather than pursuing independent speculation. Taine concludes that "no nation in the world cultivates its soil and its spirit better" than Johnson’s England, which prioritized practical moral improvement over the high speculation prevalent in France.
CGV entry 10/6:49. In Book 3, Chapter 6, Section 7. Often reprinted.
Ross defends Johnson against the 'scathing criticism' of nineteenth-century detractors like Macaulay and De Quincey, asserting his status as a first-class intellectual. Tracing his life from a 'staunch Churchman' upbringing in Lichfield to his 'penury' at Oxford, Ross highlights the 'internal war' between Johnson's haughty spirit and his physical infirmities. The text examines Johnson’s 'manual' drudgery for Cave, his 'uxorious' marriage to 'Tetty' Porter, and his legendary journey to London with Garrick. Ross analyzes Johnson's literary evolution, noting that the 'Lives of the Poets' exhibits a 'more natural and graceful' style than the 'voluminous' prose of 'The Rambler'. Central to the essay is a comparison between Johnson and Socrates, whom Ross views as 'cast in the same mould.' Ross maintains that Johnson's true greatness lies in his 'noble heart' and 'invincible integrity,' arguing that 'wisdom without virtue is cunning.' The narrative concludes with a detailed account of Johnson’s final years in the 'refuge' of Bolt Court and his 'uncompromising defence of virtue' unto death.
The Book of Authors: A Collection of Criticisms, Ana, Mots, Personal Desecriptions, Etc. Etc. Etc. Wholly Referring to English Men of Letters in Every Age of English Literature
Russell compiles diverse contemporary and historical commentaries on Johnson, presenting him as both a formidable literary arbiter and a complex personal figure. The collection highlights Johnson's role as a "dictator" of his era’s literature, noted for his "logical precision" and a style that, while sometimes violating prose standards, remained authoritative. Descriptions of his physical appearance and social conduct emphasize his "broad rough-featured ugly face" and a presence often characterized by "caustic satire." His interactions with contemporaries like Foote reveal a man who inspired both "fear" and "irresistible" laughter, while his relationship with Piozzi is depicted through "paternal fondness" and "conscious exultation." The text includes Johnson’s own evaluations of other authors, such as his praise for the "intellectual range" of Gower and his "insulting farewell" to the "wearisome" nature of Milton’s later work, further cementing his reputation as a "learned man" whose "merit is such as the ignorant can take in and the learned add nothing to."
CGV entry 10/6:53. Contains quotations from various sources.
Minto's manual methodically analyzes English prose style to aid students of composition, excluding fiction. He examines prose elements and qualities, focusing on three principal writers. De Quincey used elaborate, periodic sentences for subjective writing; Macaulay favored short, balanced, antithetical sentences for animated narrative; and Carlyle employed a rugged, coined vocabulary and angular structure for intense intellect. Minto notes Johnson's dignified, Latinized style, marked by abstract nouns and epigrammatic brevity, and credits Boswell with great skill in composing the premier English biography.
CGV entry 10/6:54. The section on Samuel Johnson.
Johnson, the celebrated "great moralist" and lexicographer, appears in one section. He was a "massive, rugged" man with disgusting table manners and a rolling gait. He delivered sagacious conversation but could be rude, ridiculing country life as suitable only for fools and dismissing the acting profession as beneath rational beings.
CGV entry 10/6:55.
Portrait Gallery of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America
Duyckinck provides a comprehensive biographical sketch of Johnson, characterizing his life as the "fullest in detail and least likely to be exhausted in interest" in English biography. The narrative traces Johnson’s development from a "sickly and diseased" child in Lichfield to the authoritative "great talker of his time" in London. Duyckinck emphasizes Johnson’s lifelong struggle with "oppressive melancholy" and the "daily goad" of poverty, which influenced his independence and "morbid conscientiousness." The text outlines major literary milestones, including the "stately music" of his Dictionary, the "philosophic reflections" of Rasselas, and the "ripest fruits" of his genius in the Lives of the Poets. Significant attention is given to Johnson’s social circle, describing Boswell as a "necessary" reporter who elicited his master's wisdom, and Piozzi as an "attractive species of Boswell" capable of appreciating Johnson’s mind. Duyckinck portrays Johnson as a "great master of common sense" whose legacy combines "heroic magnanimity" toward the poor with an "unrivalled" impact on English letters.
Hours in a Library, No. VIII: Dr. Johnson's Writings
Article argues Johnson's writings are unfairly neglected in favor of Boswell's Life. It contends that if Johnson were known only by his works, his reputation would be minor, as his true power (humor, fervor) is present but "fatally affected by the faults of the time." The author posits Johnson was a "great force wasted" in literature, as the "fashionable costume" (literary style) and decaying creeds of his age hampered his free expression, which emerged only in talk.
Stephen explores the discrepancy between Johnson’s reputation as a compelling talker and his status as a writer of "unreadable" books. He disputes the "overstrained paradox" that Boswell succeeded because he was a fool, asserting instead that Johnson’s writings, though often marred by a cumbrous "Johnsonese" style, reveal a "genuine man" of deep feeling and "sturdy" independence. While Stephen finds the Rambler suffers from an "amazing turn for commonplaces" and "soporific sapience," he identifies the "ripest fruits" of Johnson's genius in the Lives of the Poets and Rasselas. He argues Johnson was a "giant in fetters," whose "tenacious conservatism" and "rooted contempt for whining" made him a representative of "Greatheart" in a century unfavorable to his "unwieldy intellect." Stephen concludes that while Boswell's biography preserves Johnson’s "vivid expressions of an intuitive judgment," the writings themselves contain a "lofty and tender" moral sentiment that would be "half wasted" without the context of his life.
CGV entry 10/6:58. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1874).
Philosophy of English Literature: A Course of Lectures Delivered in the Lowell Institute
An analysis of the second phase of the eighteenth-century critical period identifies Johnson as the era's dictatorial leader. While characterizing Johnson as the "corypheus of art," the text highlights a "pre-eminence of prose over poetry" during his tenure, marking a relative degeneracy in creative art. Johnson's style, often termed "Johnsonese," is described not merely as a choice of Latinate vocabulary but as a "ponderous quality and gait of mind" driven by an "analytic, discriminating" intellect. His critical authority rested on "common sense" and "sturdy English character," yet he lacked "emotional insight" and "delicate sympathy," often seeking "formal excellence rather than inherent power." His criticism of Shakespeare for a perceived lack of "moral purpose" and his "prejudice" against Milton’s blank verse exemplify a "preponderance of intellectual, formal action over intuitive, spontaneous power." Johnson personified a "stubborn English temper" that resisted the "progressive spirit" of the dawning era. Boswell is noted for his "sincerity of admiration" and for preserving the narrative of Johnson's life despite his "petty faults."
Christian World Magazine and Family Visitor
CGV entry 10/6:60. Hostile and ill-informed.
Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics
Hill rigorously critiques the prevailing assessments of Johnson's life and work, dedicating significant attention to rehabilitating Boswell as a biographer. Hill argues against the misrepresentations put forth by critics like Macaulay and Carlyle, who often disparaged Boswell's character while praising his final work. The book re-examines the authenticity of the biographical narrative and defends Boswell's meticulous research and dedication to truth, placing him firmly within a revered literary tradition. Hill also provides contextual essays on figures like Langton and Beauclerk, offering scholarly illumination on key periods of Johnson's life, including his time at Oxford, to enrich the understanding of Boswell's source material.
Boswell’s overwhelming biographical success has obscured Johnson’s significance as a writer. He evaluates Johnson’s works on their own merits, identifying his primary strength as a multiform logical faculty applied to moral subjects. Cyples critiques Johnson’s failed attempts at humor and drama, particularly the "childish" personifications in The Rambler. He concludes that while Boswell preserved the man’s physical grotesqueness, Johnson’s writings offer a nearly perfect lay working ideal of common-sense morality and polished intellect.
CGV entry 10/6:62. Primarily concerned with the periodical essays.
Cyples argues that Boswell’s "irresistible biography" has "swallowed up" Johnson’s works, trivializing his intellect by focusing on "personal grotesqueness" rather than his "moral disquisitions." Cyples seeks to restore Johnson’s rank as England’s premier moralist, whose prose style arises from a "logical faculty" that thinks ideas into "finer separate parts than anybody." While acknowledging "huge monumental shame of language" in certain inflated passages, Cyples identifies Johnson’s primary defect as an "over-activity of the intellect" that reasons where it should feel. He examines Johnson’s fragmentary output—including the "waste work" of his fictional personations and failed dramas—asserting that Johnson’s true value lies in his "absolutely explicit statement of ordinary beliefs" and his "careful nobleness" as a literary artist. Reprinted from the Contemporary Review.
CGV entry 10/6:62. Reprinted from Contemporary Review (1878).
Samuel Johnson, His Words and His Ways: What He Said, What He Did, and What Men Thought and Spoke Concerning Him
Mason presents a collection of anecdotes and observations to facilitate a "fair estimate" of Johnson’s character. This scholarly edition draws from diverse authorities, including Boswell, Piozzi, and Hawkins, to detail Johnson’s physical appearance, social habits, and intellectual traits. Mason organizes the material topically, covering subjects such as Johnson’s "morbid melancholy," his "horror of death," and his "High-Church zeal." The volume includes extracts from essays by Macaulay and Carlyle, offering nineteenth-century critical perspectives. Mason aims to provide a "clearer view" of Johnson by looking beyond Boswell to records left by a "large circle of brilliant men and women." The text describes Johnson’s "rugged" features, his "convulsive starts," and his "slovenly mode of dress," while also highlighting his "active benevolence" and "retentive memory." Mason emphasizes Johnson’s complex nature, noting he was "prone to superstition, but not to credulity." Reviews are generally favorable, with commentators praising the volume's thematic organization and its utility as a scrupulous, accessible alternative to exhaustive biographical works. An unsigned assessment in the New York Times commends the avoidance of standard biographical conventions in favor of twelve distinct thematic categories that allow readers to construct their own view of the rude philosopher. In the Literary World, an unsigned review highlights the vivid preservation of contemporary testimonies that detail the subject's uncouth appearance, convulsive gestures, and coarse eating habits. Regional daily newspapers provide warm recommendations; an unsigned notice in the Boston Daily Globe celebrates the absorbing interest of the compiled incidents and argues that the sharp relief of divergent traits performs a real service for the reading public, while the Courier-Journal calls the volume a valuable compilation of peculiar historical anecdotes. Finally, educational and religious periodicals reinforce this approval, with the New England Journal of Education welcoming the digest for facilitating a fair estimate of character through contemporary observations, and the Christian Advocate and Journal asserting that the collection effectively enlarges historical understanding by offering additional light beyond traditional chronicles.
CGV entry 10/6:65. A collection of extracts from many sources.
Reviews: Boston Daily Globe, January 19, 1879; Christian Advocate and Journal 54, no. 5 (1879): 74; Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), March 24, 1879; Literary World 10, no. 3 (1879): 39; New England Journal of Education 9, no. 18 (1879): 284; New York Times, January 19, 1879.
CGV entry 10/6:67. Published in parts: volume 8 (May), pages 322-326; (June), pages 391-395; and volume 9 (October), pages 261–264.
Worthies of the World: A Series of Historical and Critical Sketches of the Lives, Actions, and Characters of Great and Eminent Men of All Countries and Times
Biographical sketch traces the professional trajectory of Johnson from his early educational struggles at Lichfield and Oxford to his preeminence as the "central figure among the literary men" of the eighteenth century. Narrative details his initial poverty as a "dinnerless" hack writer for Cave's Gentleman's Magazine and emphasizes the persistence required to overcome "the slough of despond of poverty and neglect." Dulcken identifies the publication of London and the Dictionary as pivotal moments in the transition from anonymous labor to "reputation and fame." Account highlights the moral influence of the Rambler and Idler, positioning Johnson and Addison as "efficacious teachers of virtue" who improved British morality. Treatment includes personal associations with Garrick, Boswell, and the Thrales, noting the caustic wit and social habits that defined his "power of repartee." Sketched highlights include the "Harsh Reproofs of Boswell" and the benevolent character evidenced by his care for "the cat Hodge" and his servant Frank.
Johnson wielded a dominant, autocratic influence over his literary circle for many years, a figure vividly preserved by James Boswell's meticulous biography. Rising from poverty and obscurity to high regard, Johnson's sheer force of character was his capital. His major works include the authoritative Dictionary of the English Language, the popular periodical The Rambler, the critical Lives of the Poets, and the classic story Rasselas. Johnson's efforts notably helped establish literature as an honest, independent profession.
CGV entry 10/6:70. Often reprinted.
Chapter 20, "Samuel Johnson and His Friends," situates Johnson as the dominant moral and literary force of the mid-eighteenth century, a "prophet and sage" whose work serves as a "first introduction to our life-long teachers." Buckland emphasizes Johnson's early struggles with poverty and his eventual rise to literary preeminence through the publication of London and the Dictionary. The narrative underscores his role as an "efficacious teacher of virtue" via the Rambler and Idler, comparing his moral influence to that of Addison. Significant attention is paid to his social circle, particularly his relationships with James Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith. Buckland portrays Johnson as a man of deep contradictions—"harsh reproofs" and "caustic wit" balanced by a benevolent heart that cared for the marginalized, including his servant Frank and his cat Hodge. The chapter frames Johnson’s life as a testament to faithfulness to duty and the pursuit of the "true ideal" amidst personal and professional adversity.
Testard retraces the ascent of Johnson, emphasizing his iron will in the face of physical and financial obstacles. He examines Johnson's literary production, qualifying the Dictionary as mediocre on an etymological level but remarkable for its definitions. Testard severely criticizes the edition of Shakespeare, asserting that Johnson was ignorant of the Elizabethan era, while praising Lives of the Poets as his best work despite biased judgments. Testard attributes the survival of Johnson's fame to Boswell, whose biography compensates for the weaknesses of the original works. Although he echoes Macaulay's critique presenting Boswell as a vain and servile being, Testard recognizes in him a biographer of genius who created a living and faithful portrait of eighteenth-century society. The text concludes that Johnson's death marks the end of a reign without a successor in English literary history.
CGV entry 10/6:72. Section on Johnson.
Development of English Literature and Language
Welsh presents a comprehensive history of the English people and their tongue, focusing on the formative period from the Roman conquest through the Middle Ages. He identifies race, surroundings, epoch, and person as the "four capital agencies" governing literary development. In his treatment of 18th-century figures, Welsh identifies Johnson as a pivotal figure in the transition of English prose, describing him as a "dictator of prose style" whose influence defined a distinct epoch of Latinized English. He characterizes Johnson's solidity as a defining national trait, contrasting it with the "oddity of Swift" and the "grace of Addison." Welsh highlights Johnson's rejection of "original genius" in favor of disciplined industry, quoting his appreciation for "Robinson Crusoe" and noting that "nobody ever laid it down without wishing it were longer." Johnson's style is represented as an essential component of the "eighteenth century, when Johnson, who loved to coin in the Roman mint, was the dictator of prose style." Welsh further asserts that Johnson's "originalities of thought" ensure lasting engagement, positioning him as a "representative author" of his era.
CGV entry 10/6:73.
Nicoll presents Johnson as the central, typical figure of late eighteenth-century literature, whose massive character and 'Tory and High Church prejudices' defined an era of artificial restrictions before the Romantic revolution. Analyzing Johnson's career from his 'desultory' early reading to his 'Grub Street' struggles, Nicoll emphasizes the moral weight of his character over his relative stature as a writer. Boswell appears as the creator of an 'incalculable gain' to literature through his biography, which transformed Johnson into one of the 'best-loved characters' in history and preserved 'many curious and suggestive details' of the period. Piozzi is briefly noted for her 'entertaining gossip' and 'lively' contributions to Johnsonian lore, though Nicoll highlights Boswell's personal dislike of her. The narrative traces Johnson's role as a 'literary dictator' who, despite his 'rough and uncouth exterior,' possessed a 'deep and genuine tenderness of heart.' Nicoll concludes that while contemporaries like Burke or Gibbon may have been greater writers, Johnson remains the indispensable 'nucleus' for understanding the century's intellectual landscape.
English Literature in the Eighteenth Century
Perry examines the transition of English literature from the Restoration to the rise of Romanticism, identifying the period of Addison and Pope as the birth of modern literary consciousness. He highlights the development of English prose and the influence of French classicism, which favored correctness over Elizabethan exuberance. Perry identifies Johnson as a conservative force who used his authority to resist the burgeoning Romantic movement, including the works of Gray and the Ossianic poems. Johnson’s literary judgments, while often viewed as prejudiced, represent the culmination of eighteenth-century formalist thought. Perry also discusses Boswell’s essential role in preserving Johnson’s legacy, noting that Johnson’s modern reputation rests primarily on Boswell’s biography. The study traces how the democratic rise of the middle class informed the development of the novel and eventually overthrew the rigid Aristotelian unities that previously governed the stage.
CGV entry 10/6:75. The section on Johnson.
Our Great Writers; or Popular Chapters on Some Leading Authors
A mid-Victorian reassessment of Johnson, juxtaposing his perceived stylistic obsolescence against the enduring moral and social authority of his character. Johnson functions as a literary monarch whose native right to authority remained undisputed by contemporaries such as Burke and Reynolds. While the prose of Rambler and Rasselas appears cumbrous and rocking to modern sensibilities, Lives of the Poets survives as a masterpiece of masculine intellect and judicious criticism. Johnson disputes the merit of Milton's Lycidas and Sonnets, revealing a manful honesty despite stylistic differences with later schools of poetry. His Dictionary represents a monumental individual achievement, facilitated by a celebrated rebuff of Chesterfield that signaled the demise of literary patronage. Boswell preserves the superior conversational wit of Johnson, whose Socratic habit of clearing the mind of cant defined his social presence. Though Johnson exhibited anti-Scotch prejudices and a gloomy religious temperament, his benevolence toward the destitute in Fleet Street confirms a profound largeness of heart. Piozzi maintained a sixteen-year friendship with Johnson, though her eventual marriage caused a significant emotional ebullition in the moralist.
Offspring of Thoughts in Solitude: Modern Essays
Samuel Johnson: The King of Fleet Street
Hood commemorates the 1884 centenary of Johnson’s death, characterizing him as the sovereign of English letters whose reputation rests as much on his sturdy independence and moral integrity as his scholarship. The narrative celebrates Johnson’s affection for Fleet Street and his religious devotion at St. Clement Danes, where a brass memorial marks his habitual pew. Hood details the "amazing feat" of the Dictionary’s compilation in Gough Square and the subsequent shift in literary history caused by Johnson’s rejection of patronage in his letter to Chesterfield. Boswell receives significant attention as the "first of biographers" who captured Johnson’s imperial conversational style—a sharp, condensed contrast to his sonorous prose. Hood notes the irony that Johnson’s fame remains largely preserved by Scotchmen, including Boswell, Carlyle, and Macaulay. Brief anecdotes include the penance at Lichfield Market, the writing of Rasselas to defray maternal funeral expenses, and the mediation of Goldsmith’s debt through the sale of the Vicar of Wakefield manuscript. The text concludes by noting that both Johnson and his traveling companion Garrick rest in Westminster Abbey.
CGV entry 10/6:78. A centenary tribute.
Russell provides a detailed character study of Johnson, characterizing him as an "imperial talker" of "mountainous" and "gigantic" proportions whose "prodigiousness" extended to his learning, body, and prejudices. The narrative details Johnson's physical peculiarities, including his convulsive "St. Vitus' dance," his "see-sawing" agitation, and his habit of blowing "out his breath like a whale." Russell highlights Johnson's "heroic unselfishness" and "tender heart," noting he housed a "strange assortment of pensioners" and supported the poor despite his own "penury" and "misery." The text underscores Johnson's intellectual dominance, his "voracious reading," and his "prodigious pride," exemplified by the letter to Chesterfield. While documenting Johnson's "violent" prejudices against Americans and the Scotch, Russell identifies him as a "great supporter of the British monarchy and Church." The abstract records Johnson's interactions with Boswell, whom he introduced as a "Scotchman [who] won't hurt you," and mentions Piozzi’s observations on Johnson’s use of arithmetic to quiet his "disordered" fancy.
This scathing article ridicules the aborted centenary celebration of Johnson's death in Lichfield, noting that the Mayor's circular yielded only twenty-one favorable replies and "trivial" financial offers. The author commends the citizens for their "common sense" in avoiding a "ridiculous" festival, drawing a parallel to Johnson's own refusal to participate in the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee. The text offers a sharp rebuke of a leading article in the Times, disputing its claim that Johnson left Lichfield due to unkindness from his fellow citizens. The reviewer further challenges the Times for suggesting Johnson's marriage to Elizabeth Porter took place in Birmingham out of spite for his birthplace, asserting instead that such claims demonstrate a profound ignorance of Boswell's narrative. The author maintains that the greatest honor for Johnson is the study of his works and Life rather than public spectacles.
CGV entry 10/6:81. See also W. T. Lynn in Notes and Queries, 6th series, volume 10 (November 15, 1884), page 384.
Gosse commemorates the centenary of the death of Johnson by examining the paradox of his enduring reputation. While Johnson expressed a frank terror of death throughout his life, his final days in 1784 demonstrate a courageous struggle against physical collapse and solitude. Gosse disputes the idea that Johnson’s literary works sustain his fame, characterizing Irene as unreadable, Rasselas as lumbering, and the Lives of the Poets as often ignorant or prejudiced. Instead, Johnson remains a commanding figure through his potent personality and the anecdotes preserved by Boswell. Gosse maintains that the writings yield to the man, as the public values the autocrat of the Literary Club and the unequalled talker more than the author of stagnant gnomic poems. The article emphasizes that Johnson cleared his mind of cant and faced eternity with a trust in divine mercy. Gosse concludes that distance only makes the merits of Johnson more striking and essential.
Walford calls for a centenary celebration of Johnson, citing his indispensable contributions to English letters and constitutional practice. He credits Johnson with ennobling the literary profession through his rejection of Chesterfield’s patronage and his physical defiance of the publisher Osborne. The text highlights Johnson's early struggles at Pembroke College and his instrumental role in Cave's Gentleman's Magazine, specifically his invention of a method for reporting parliamentary debates. Walford critiques Croker’s edition of Boswell for its distortions and speculative inaccuracies, such as the unfounded suggestion of Johnson's Jacobite involvement in 1745. He acknowledges the decline of Johnson's philological authority in the face of modern etymology while praising the 'Ciceronian' vigor of his prose. The narrative contrasts Johnson’s moral 'wit and wisdom' with the perceived 'bearishness' of Thomas Carlyle and notes his profound influence on the homiletic style of the nineteenth-century Anglican clergy.
CGV entry 10/6:83. A centenary tribute.
The centenary of Johnson's death is observed with a sermon at the Temple Church, where he resided for "porously half his life." The preacher notes that Johnson died in Bolt-court, close to the Temple courts and gardens he frequented. The text scholar records that the sermon emphasizes Johnson's spiritual life and his connection to the legal community of London. This centennial recognition focuses on the enduring relevance of his character and works. The event marks a formal tribute to his status as a "literary man" whose presence in English letters remains significant.
Maintains Johnson remains a powerful literary dictator a century after his death, despite shifting critical standards. Challenges the notion that his fame relies solely on Boswell, arguing his written works possess enduring value. Describes the 'Lives of the Poets' as his greatest achievement, written with 'careless ease' and 'models of terseness.' Defines Johnson’s style not as pedantic, but as a logical choice to avoid affectation. Asserts his 'strong personality' and 'manly and vigorous independence' attract modern readers weary of superficial fashion.
CGV entry 10/6:86. A review of new editions of Boswell, Leslie Stephen's and James Macaulay's books on Johnson, and a facsimile edition of Rasselas.
Birrell provides a comprehensive assessment of Johnson’s character and literary merit, disputing contemporary claims of Carlyle’s superiority. He characterizes Johnson as an "old struggler" who prevailed over "melancholy almost to madness," poverty, and physical disease. The text emphasizes Johnson’s "affectionate nature," "colossal good sense," and status as the "best of our talkers." Birrell surveys Johnson’s literary output, praising his "resonant lines" in poetry and "measured tread" in prose, while dismissing the tragedy "Irene" as "unreadable." He examines Johnson's complex relationships with Burke, Garrick, and Reynolds, noting his specific "smouldering grudge" against Garrick’s Sabbatical habits and book-lending caution. Birrell asserts that Johnson’s fame is "too massy and strong" to be affected by shifting literary fashions, as his work helps readers "either to enjoy life or to endure it."
Birrell champions Johnson as a superior figure to Carlyle, citing Johnson’s victory over "hungry poverty," disease, and melancholia. While Froude’s depiction of Carlyle suggests a "tomb," Boswell’s biography remains an "arch of triumph." Birrell disputes the notion that Johnson goes unread, highlighting the "colossal good sense" of the prose and the "resonant lines" of the poetry. The text emphasizes Johnson’s "narcotic indifference" to politics, his professional respect for booksellers, and his profound devotion to "poor scholars." Birrell defends Johnson’s dialectical "brutality" as a product of wordy warfare rather than malice, noting his frequent apologies to victims. The analysis concludes that Johnson’s fame remains secure because his works help readers "either to enjoy life or to endure it."
CGV entry 10/6:87. Reprinted from the Contemporary Review (1885).
This chapter outlines Johnson's life, distinguishing his early years of poverty and literary struggle from his later era of established authority. It details his major works, including London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the Dictionary, but asserts that his enduring fame rests chiefly on his personality as recorded by James Boswell. The narrative covers the granting of his pension, his subsequent literary dictatorship, and his relationships with the Thrales and the Literary Club, including Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith. Particular emphasis is placed on Johnson's conversational powers, physical peculiarities, and the household of dependents he supported. The text concludes with his death in 1784 and a selection of anecdotes illustrating his wit and prejudices.
Wotton compiles contemporary and historical descriptions to reconstruct the physical presence of British authors. The entry for Johnson characterizes him as initially "very forbidding," noting a "lean and lank" frame, "immense structure of bones," and visible scrofula scars. Witnesses describe his "stiff" hair and "odd gesticulations" alongside a "sufficiently uncouth" morning dress consisting of "rusty" clothes, a "shrivelled" wig, and "unbuckled shoes" used as slippers. Despite a "dirty" appearance and a habit of "waving over his breakfast like a lunatic," his "sententious" and "knowing" conversation soon overshadowed these physical disadvantages.
History of Eighteenth Century Literature (1660–1780)
CGV entry 10/6:92. The section on Samuel Johnson.
Explores Johnson's defining traits, emphasizing his combination of deep-seated gloom and religious terror with powerful common sense, virulent hatred of humbug, and a noble fortitude that allowed him to endure immense physical suffering.
CGV entry 10/6:93. Reprinted from Gentleman's Magazine (1890).
CGV entry 10/6:94. Notices of recent Johnsonian publications.
This causerie discusses Samuel Johnson's death and burial in 1784, noting the passing of the old literary order with him. It corrects the impression of Johnson's dire poverty, detailing his financial stability and respectable income as a writer, asserting that he fared better than he would have in law, medicine, or the Church. The discussion touches upon the general character of the turbulent eighteenth century, contrasting its pervasive benevolence with its profound cruelties, and reflects on Johnson's enduring kindness and deep need for friends.
Besant recounts the solemn funeral of Johnson at Westminster Abbey, suggesting his death marked the "final stop" of an old literary order. The text disputes the "common belief" that Johnson suffered from extreme poverty, noting that his wife’s dowry and steady work for the Gentleman’s Magazine provided a "respectable income." Besant classifies Johnson as a "bookseller’s hack" who produced works like the Dictionary and the "Lives of the Poets" out of "necessity" rather than "free choice." Despite his "prejudice and obstinacy," Johnson’s "great heart" led to inexhaustible benevolence toward friends such as Barber and Levett. Besant contrasts Johnson’s "tender pity" with the "cruelties and brutalities" of the eighteenth century, including the "shameful gallows-tree" and the "Gordon riots." The text also touches upon Boswell’s reputation, preserved through a personal anecdote involving a child’s kiss and a lady’s inquiry into Boswell’s greatness.
CGV entry 10/6:95. Reprinted from Harper's (1891).
Byers curates a selection of pithy maxims and anecdotes attributed to Johnson, illustrating the lexicographer’s characteristic wit and moral philosophy. The text features Johnson’s observations on diverse topics, including the nature of courage, the folly of human vanity, and the necessity of maintaining social order. Byers emphasizes Johnson’s intellectual rigor and his ability to dispense profound truths through conversational brevity. These "good things" serve to demonstrate Johnson’s enduring relevance as a cultural critic and master of the English aphorism.
Hill examines revolutions in literary taste and the role of literature in education, primarily focusing on the shifting reputations of canonical authors across generations. Hill contrasts the failed prophecies of immortality by writers like Southey with the enduring stature of Johnson and Shakespeare. Hill defends Johnson against the charge that he "did not write English" and disputes the notion that his prose style is turgid or unsuitable for familiar topics. The text details Johnson's critical reception of Gray, Milton, and Fielding, noting that Johnson "read Amelia at a sitting" despite labeling Fielding a "barren rascal." Hill highlights Johnson's "rugged strength of his character" as a successor to the classical moralists and asserts that "time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame." Regarding education, Hill aligns with Socrates and Johnson to argue that the study of "external nature" is secondary to "religious and moral knowledge," advocating for the cultivation of imagination through "desultory reading" rather than the "stifling grasp of school-inspectors." Hill emphasizes that "a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind" and promotes the use of "great authors" to withdraw the student from the "power of his senses."
A century after the appearance of the 1791 first edition, the narrative remains the primary vehicle through which the public knows Johnson. While contemporary rivals such as Piozzi and Hawkins rushed into print with "inconsiderate haste" following the death of Johnson in 1784, Boswell produced a "faultless" model of biography. Although Pindar and Macaulay attacked Boswell for sycophancy or inaccuracy, his work "unearthed Johnson and embalmed him," preserving the image of the "sturdy moralist" when the actual writings of Johnson, including the Rambler and various pamphlets, had largely fallen into desuetude. The text highlights the friction between Piozzi and Boswell, noting their mutual accusations of inaccuracy and folly. Despite personal frailties, Boswell used his unique access to reveal the "tender, generous, truthful man" behind the "oracular" reputation.
CGV entry 10/6:98. Adverse criticism of Johnson's writings.
Macaulay provides a commemorative biographical sketch and curated selection of Johnson’s apothegms to mark the centenary of his death. The text defends Johnson’s enduring relevance against shifts in literary taste, arguing that his moral character and conversational brilliance, preserved by Boswell, outweigh the perceived ponderosity of his prose. Macaulay details Johnson’s domestic charities, his interactions with George III, and his leadership within the Literary Club alongside Reynolds and Burke. The collection categorizes table talk by theme, including views on London, Scotland, and the afterlife. Macaulay emphasizes Johnson’s late-life transition toward evangelical faith and his persistent influence on English letters and national character.
CGV entry 10/6:100. In Japanese. Said to be the first single essay on Johnson to appear in Japan.
Jebb examines the literary career and personality of Johnson, noting that his permanent fame rests more upon his conversation and character than his written works. While Jebb disputes the idea that Johnson always wrote in a ponderous style, he acknowledges a lethargy in his prose that vanished during alert verbal exchange. Jebb traces the influence of Addison and Burton on Johnson's style, finding the latter's learned amplitude more congenial to the lexicographer. The review of Johnson's bibliography highlights the Lives of the Poets as his most sustained late achievement, though Jebb suggests Johnson was more successful as a biographer than a critic due to his tendency to judge poetry by logic rather than art. Jebb challenges Macaulay's disparagement of Boswell, characterizing Boswell as a consummate artist who provided a dramatic, living portrait of his subject. The narrative concludes by emphasizing Johnson's profound kindness, his practical benevolence toward the poor, and his robust, sane observation of human nature.
CGV entry 10/6:101. A lecture given at Newnham College, Cambridge, March 3, 1894.
Jowett examines the biographical triumph of Boswell's Life, arguing that its singular excellence lies in the author's combination of intense hero-worship with meticulous accuracy and literary genius. The resulting work is praised as a vivid "picture of life" of the eighteenth century. Johnson is characterized as a mighty intellectual force—a sage, moralist, and wit—whose strength derived from the very limits of his prejudices. The remarkable twenty-year friendship between the physically imposing Johnson and the weak, egotistical Boswell attests to the profound goodness that existed beneath Johnson's often-rough exterior.
CGV entry 10/6:102. Contains "Addresses on ... Boswell and Johnson, and Johnson's own writings and character." Apparently never published; exists only in proof-state.
Charles Scribner's Sons; Sampson Low, Marston
Mitchell chronicles the life and literary circles of Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi within the broader context of eighteenth-century English history. He traces Johnson’s progression from his 'starving and scrimping' early years in London and the failed Edial school to his ultimate status as a 'Leviathan' of English letters. The narrative details the formation of the Literary Club, highlighting Johnson’s relationships with Burke, Reynolds, and Goldsmith. Boswell appears as a 'jaunty Scotch gentleman' and 'toady' whose 'art of easy narrative' and 'free-telling' created a complete portrait of his patron. Mitchell explores the 'kindly protectorate' Johnson enjoyed at Streatham with the Thrales, noting his 'lumbering' coquetry with Hester Thrale and his eventual 'disgust' at her marriage to Piozzi. The account concludes with Johnson’s final days in Bolt Court, where his 'superstitious awe' of death transformed into a 'celestial haze' and 'child-like trust.'
Phillips provides a pedagogical overview of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period through the eighteenth century, situating major authors within their historical and international contexts. Under the section devoted to the Classical Age, Phillips characterizes Johnson as the predominant figure of the late eighteenth century, noting his influence as a moralist, critic, and lexicographer. The manual details Johnson's personal appearance, including his physical robusticity and the idiosyncratic habits often observed by his contemporaries. Phillips presents a collection of critical commentary on Johnson, highlighting his intellectual authority and the unique style of his prose and poetry. Furthermore, the text addresses the literary partnership between Johnson and Boswell, acknowledging the latter's role in documenting Johnson's life and conversation. Piozzi receives mention as a member of Johnson's social circle, contributing to the broader portrait of the era's intellectual life. The work features topical studies of major writings, including "The Rambler" and "The Lives of the Poets," and provides scholarly readers with a synthesized reference for eighteenth-century literary history.
CGV entry 10/6:104. The section on Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Argues Johnson's writings are "the expression of his character." Analyzes his Prose Works (Rambler, Dictionary, Rasselas, Lives) and his Style through the lens of his Character (talk, melancholy, "intense tenderness," religion). The central thesis is that Johnson's "gigantic common-sense" and "vigorous moral feeling" are the "first and most essential quality of his work." While the Rambler is deemed "heavy," his Lives of the Poets is his "greatest work" precisely because "his criticism is the expression of his character." The book concludes with the paradox that Johnson's "greatest Work, the book which most fully reflects the totality of his character, is not written by him," conceding the definitive portrait is Boswell's.
CGV entry 10/6:105. Quain Essay, University College, London, 1898.
Dr. Johnson as Representative of the Character of the Eighteenth Century
Johnson represents the sterling, enduring character of the English people, not the eighteenth century's artificial London society. Johnson's long life and Boswell's biography preserved his legacy, which was initially driven by the financial necessity of the burgeoning literary market. Though his journalistic career fostered carelessness, his reputation rests on his vigorous personality and his exceptional conversational power. Johnson used his commanding monologue to instruct with magnificent common-sense and to denounce the affectation of his decadent age.
CGV entry 10/6:106. Chancellor's English Essay Prize, Oxford, 1899.
This review of Barker’s prize essay challenges the depiction of Johnson as representative of the eighteenth century’s "arid logic and prosaic common-sense." The reviewer argues Johnson’s "deep and fervent piety" and "extreme credulity" align him more with medieval devotees or the later romanticism of Scott and Newman than with the era of Voltaire. While Johnson remains a "typical Englishman" in his "sturdy individualism" and "hatred of all humbug," his "sombre conclusion" on human life and "troubled faith" separate him from the optimistic "pre-established harmony" of Pope. The text credits Boswell's "genius" for sustaining Johnson’s status as an English hero despite his intellectual limitations and elementary Greek.
CGV entry 3:118. See also Book Lover, volume 1 (Winter 1900), pages 221–222.
CGV entry 10/6:106. An anonymous review of the book by W. R. Barker.
Dawson examines the arduous conditions for eighteenth-century authors, characterizing the period as a transition from the age of the patron to the age of the public. He traces Johnson's early struggles in Grub Street and his association with figures like Savage and Boyse. Dawson emphasizes Johnson's rebellion against traditional support structures, specifically citing the letter to Chesterfield as a declaration of independence for authorship where the patron "encumbers him with help." He asserts that Johnson established a Republic of Letters by asserting independence from both wealthy patrons and rapacious booksellers. By resisting the bullying of publishers like Osborne, Johnson secured the liberty and vocation of the modern man of letters.
Augustine Birrell celebrates the unending fascination with Dr. Johnson ("there is no end to Dr. Johnson"), occasioned by a volume of Johnson Club Papers by "various hands" (including Birrell himself). He argues Johnson's appeal lies less in specific theories and more in his profound embodiment of Human Nature, which interests mankind eternally. Birrell mentions specific papers from the volume—J. Gennadius on Johnson's Greek scholarship, A. W. Hutton on his library, George Whale on his London haunts—illustrating the diverse ways Johnson continues to engage readers.
CGV entry 10/6:108.
Johnson dominates the literary landscape of the eighteenth century as a figurehead whose personal character outweighs his written bibliography. His identity as a British Socrates emerges through his adherence to traditional order, hatred of cant, and deep religious convictions. Early experiences with scrofula and poverty at Oxford define his resilient temper. This overview explores the transition from the professional sweating of Grub Street and Edward Cave to literary independence. Johnson secures his reputation through the publication of London, the Life of Savage, and the Dictionary, punctuated by a famous rebuke to Chesterfield. Periodical essays in the Rambler and Idler establish his formal style, while Rasselas provides a sonorous exploration of human disappointment. The text details the establishment of the Club and the critical role of Boswell in preserving Johnson’s conversation. It reviews the success of Lives of the Poets and the editorial effort on Shakespeare. The long domestic security provided by the Thrales precedes a bitter estrangement from Piozzi. Johnson’s legacy survives primarily through the preservation of his complex intellect and personality rather than his formal literary contributions.
Architects of English Literature: Biographical Sketches of Great Writers from Shakespeare to Tennyson
Johnson’s life reflects a persistent struggle between physical infirmity and intellectual vigor. Inherited scrofula disfigured his features and impaired his sight, yet a "singular clearness of mind" ensured academic success. Oxford offered a period of "mad and violent" rebellion fueled by poverty, ending without a degree but marking a religious awakening via Law. Marriage to a widow twenty years his senior provided emotional stability and capital for the failed Edial school. Moving to London with Garrick initiated years of "severest struggle" involving tramping the streets with Savage. Regular work for the Gentleman’s Magazine and the publication of London established a literary reputation. The "sublimated hack-work" of the Dictionary and the moral essays of the Rambler cemented a role as the "Dictator of the World of Letters." A royal pension facilitated a "life of ease" spent cultivating the Literary Club and a devoted circle including Reynolds, Burke, and Boswell. Long residence with the Thrales provided domestic comfort until Thrale’s death and Piozzi’s subsequent marriage caused a painful rupture. Despite a "repellent and sometimes alarming" manner, "transparent honesty" and "sterling goodness" define his legacy.
The Transmission of Dr. Johnson's Personality
Johnson's personality is uniquely and robustly transmitted through Boswell's biography, a masterpiece achieved through the biographer's intense dedication to making his subject live, even to the exclusion of his own vanity and the advice of critics.
CGV entry 10/6:111. Extracts appeared in The Critic, volume 36 (February 1900), pages 140–147, and in Unwin's Chap Book, 1899-1900, pages 17-19.
Wake queries whether Johnson ever spelled his surname "Johnstone," presenting evidence from an old copy of Claudian's works, printed in Cologne in 1612. The title-page bears the inscription "Samuel Johnstone, Market Bosworth, 1733" in a small, upright hand. An appended note, in the same handwriting and dated January 19, 1733, comments on Claudian's poetry, attributing to him the majesty and purity of the Augustan age and noting that poetry revived and again sunk with him. The volume also contains the autographs "E Libris Caroli May" and "Jacob Jefferson, Oxon., Queen's, 1743."
CGV entry 10/6:113. On the spelling of Johnson’s name. See also subsequent issues for further discussion.
Do We Really Know Dr. Johnson?: An Address Recently Delivered Before the Johnson Club at Lichfield on the Opening of the Johnson House as a Museum
Augustine Birrell's address to the Johnson Club argues that "we do know him." He counters the idea that Johnson is known only through Boswell. Birrell asserts Johnson's true, "great" personality is strongly evident in all his own works—the Dictionary preface, Ramblers, poems, letters, and Prayers and Meditations. These, combined with Reynolds's portraits, confirm the accurate "great Johnsonian legend," which is not solely reliant on Boswell's masterpiece.
CGV entry 10/6:114. An address at Lichfield on the opening of Johnson's house as a museum. See also English Illustrated, volume 27 (April 1902), page 47.
Mid-eighteenth-century literature represents a period where reasoning faculties ascend over imagination, primarily through the maturation of prose fiction. Johnson dominates the English landscape as a moralist whose works, such as the Rambler and Rasselas, restore the resources of English prose through a masculine and vigorous style. Johnson maintains a sincere, objective worldview that avoids the heedless optimism of contemporaries, viewing human life as a state of discipline where duty must prevail over idle speculation. Boswell serves as the essential chronicler of Johnson’s philosophy, while his own biographical work demonstrates the shift toward realistic character portrayal. Piozzi and the bluestockings represent the English counterpart to French salons, although they remain more strictly tethered to conventional roles while influencing literary standards. The works of Johnson and his circle are central to the maturation of the English novel and the development of modern prose.
English Literature: An Illustrated Record
Gosse describes Johnson as the dominant intellectual figure of his century, embodying the "common sense" that defined the Georgian period. Described as a "good giant," Johnson used his massive intelligence and "virile hold upon facts" to rule the empire of English letters. Gosse argues that while Johnson's prose often employed "heavy artillery for trifles," his talent was evident across all species of composition, from the "sonorous and ponderous" Rambler to the minor classic Rasselas. His most enduring literary achievement remains the Lives of the Poets, characterized as a "delightful compendium" of dogmatic criticism. Gosse notes that Johnson's actual writing was often occasional, born of a "pressing need for money" rather than professional ambition, yet his character and "formidable and exhilarating" conversation ensured his status as a "massive figure of a man of letters."
Hawthorne analyzes the profound ethical framework undergirding the enduring public fascination with Johnson. The text highlights how Johnson encountered and steadily mastered extreme physical afflictions, absolute penury, and institutional neglect with heroic stoicism and an unyielding spiritual independence. Hawthorne values his active benevolence, noting that Johnson provided structural shelter for destitute individuals within his own household despite his limited means. This behavior demonstrates a practical adherence to the tenets of early Christian charity rather than mere rhetorical display. The article underscores his intellectual honesty, specifically referencing his voluntary abandonment of parliamentary report compilations upon discovering that the public mistook his fabricated narratives for authentic speeches. Hawthorne challenges contemporary societal structures to replace superficial modern conventions with his rigorous criteria of personal accountability and raw integrity.
Parrott details the matchless, absolute literary dictatorship held by Johnson over the late eighteenth-century English literary landscape, comparing his unmatched conversational supremacy to predecessors such as Pope, Dryden, and Ben Jonson. Contemporary evaluations demonstrate that while several peers surpassed his written achievements in structural depth or rhetorical grace, Johnson remains an enduring cultural colossus due to his spoken voice rather than his physical texts. Parrott highlights the serendipitous meeting between Johnson and Boswell as a historic conjunction of opposite yet ideal temperaments. Johnson loved to talk, while Boswell desired to listen. Boswell used his reported conversations to project the true features of his hero to posterity, displaying an absence of self-respect and an inability to maintain resentment. Parrott challenges Macaulay's traditional assertion that a fool could write a masterpiece, arguing instead that Boswell earned his historical reward. The article emphasizes that Boswell portrays Johnson during his declining decades, which leaves his youthful struggles mostly obscured.
Parrott explores the source of the literary dictatorship held by Johnson, disputing the notion that his supremacy rested solely on his written works. Parrott argues that Johnson’s commanding personality and spoken words, preserved through the "imperishable" record of Boswell, secured his immortality. The narrative traces the evolution of this character from a childhood marked by scrofula and poverty through a rebellious period at Oxford and the "grinding toil" of his early years in London. Parrott emphasizes Johnson’s independence, citing his physical encounter with the impertinent bookseller Osborne and his rejection of patronage. While highlighting Johnson’s "strong common sense" and "sturdy good humor," Parrott acknowledges his narrowness, dogmatism, and constitutional melancholy. The discussion covers major milestones including the Dictionary, the Rambler, the "stiff and lifeless" tragedy Irene, and the composition of Rasselas to defray his mother's funeral expenses. Parrott concludes that Johnson’s appeal lies in his role as a "champion of a failing order" and the noble qualities, such as courage and love, hidden beneath a repelling exterior.
CGV entry 10/6:118. Reprinted from Booklover's Magazine (1903).
CGV entry 10/6:120. A talk before the Cavendish Literary Society.
Gwynn surveys the evolution of the English literary canon, identifying "obligatory" authors essential for a general education. He emphasizes that literature transitioned from the social, academic "correctness" of the Augustan age to the individualistic and naturalistic expressions of the Romantic and Victorian eras. Gwynn characterizes Johnson as a man of great talent whose supreme genius was expressed through social intercourse and conversation rather than formal writing. He observes that Johnson dominated the intellectual life of his period, acting as a focal point for a brilliant circle that included Goldsmith, Burke, Reynolds, and Garrick. Gwynn critiques Johnson’s early "academic" and "artificial" prose style, noting its heavy reliance on Latinate vocabulary and balanced, tripartite structures. He argues that this style, while influential as a standard for nineteenth-century academic prose, lacked the "urbane" lightness of Addison or the "trenchancy" of Swift. However, Gwynn credits the Dictionary with providing a necessary standard for the English language and identifies the Lives of the Poets as Johnson’s best work, where his writing became less pedantic. Gwynn asserts that Johnson is known less for his literary output than for the "magical personality" captured in Boswell’s biography, which reconciled his uncouth physical habits and "burly" demeanor with his profound intellectual authority.
CGV entry 10/6:121. The section on Samuel Johnson.
English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century
Stephen analyzes Johnson as the last representative of the Tory literary tradition and the 'acknowledged literary dictator' of the late eighteenth century. Johnson represents a transition from the coffee-house 'Wit' to the formal 'moralist' who addresses a growing middle-class audience with 'massive common sense'. Adopting a style influenced by the Latinisms of Browne, Johnson uses the Rambler to deliver didactic messages that emphasize 'contempt for cant, sentimentalism, and all unreality'. While Johnson maintains the artistic canons of Dryden and Pope, his work focuses on the 'prosaic understanding' and realistic contact with fact, famously observed in his collaboration with Crabbe to ensure poetry remained 'rational and sensible'. Johnson exemplifies a literary period characterized by 'stagnation' in creative genius but high 'speculative and political energy,' where the man of letters functions as an independent professional rather than a dependent of aristocratic patrons.
CGV entry 10/6:122. See Chapter 5.
In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays
Birrell examines the multifaceted nature of Johnson's legacy, contrasting the "awful figure" found in the private Prayers and Meditations with the "social hero" depicted by Boswell. He argues that Johnson’s religious life, while often viewed as "fitful and intermittent," was an "odd compound" of human nature and piety that sustained him through lifelong struggle. Birrell disputes the notion that Johnson was merely a grave philosopher, highlighting a "rollicking King of Society" who was, according to Hawkins, "the most humorous man I ever knew." The text captures the legendary Johnson who hated being the subject of scrutiny yet remains a figure who "will outlive eloquence and outstay philosophy." Birrell concludes that while Johnson’s bargain for the Lives of the Poets was "bad" financially, the resulting work remains a miracle of anecdote and "humorous perception."
The Bookman Illustrated History of English Literature
Seccombe and Nicoll present a biographical and critical account of Johnson, tracing his trajectory from an impoverished scholar at Oxford to the literary dictator of London. The narrative details his early struggles in Grub Street, his work for Cave on the Gentleman's Magazine, and the composition of major works such as the Dictionary, the Rambler, and Rasselas. The authors emphasize that Johnson's unique fame rests as much upon his remarkable conversation and personality as upon his writings. They highlight the role of Boswell in creating a lifelike portrait through unrivalled dramatic insight. The account further describes Johnson's later years, including his friendship with Thrale and his residency at Bolt Court. Seccombe and Nicoll characterize the Lives of the Poets as his most successful critical work, written in a style that avoided the verbosity of his earlier period. While the authors dispute the musical value of his poetry, they acknowledge his mastery of common sense and his role as a champion of the dignity of literature. Brief mentions of Piozzi note her contribution to Johnsonian anecdotes.
CGV entry 10/6:124. The section on Samuel Johnson.
Ranger challenges Macaulay’s assertion that only Johnson’s personality preserves his literary relevance, distinguishing between the interests of the general reader and the student of criticism. While acknowledging that Johnson appears "far greater in Boswell's books than in his own" to the public, Ranger identifies the "Lives of the Poets" and the "Edition of Shakespeare" as indispensable monuments of sagacity and logical deduction. The text emphasizes that Johnson’s critical authority, comparable to that of Dryden or Arnold, remains a "tower of strength" despite shifts in fashion. Ranger highlights the "Grub Street" hardships—privations Boswell did not witness—as the foundation of Johnson’s "Indian summer" of supremacy and his "unostentatious kindness" toward the poor. By stripping away "critical absurdities" with common sense, Johnson established a reliable critical method that Ranger likens to a precise "instrument in the critical observatory."
Macaulay's famous essay on Johnson is highlighted as a memorable gateway to both letters and history, noting its influence and noble gateway. The essay contains a vivid half-paragraph description of Johnson's gigantic body, huge massy face, and characteristic verbal expressions ("Why, sir!," "No, sir!") at The Club. Boswell is discussed as Johnson's humble, much-ridiculed biographer whose clear style and fidelity to detail create a definite picture of Johnson’s person. Boswell is credited with giving Johnson a far broader literary vogue than his writings alone could have achieved.
CGV entry 10/6:127. A general appreciation of Johnson. Originally serialized in Cassell's Magazine in 1906.
CGV entry 10/6:128. Read at the Campden School of Arts and Crafts in February 1906.
To the Immortal Memory of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Shorter proposes a toast at the 1906 Johnson Birthday Celebration in Lichfield, emphasizing Johnson’s enduring status as both a writer and a human figure. Shorter disputes the popular fallacy that Johnson survives only through Boswell, arguing that the accounts of Burney, Piozzi, and Hawkins provide a multifaceted portrait of his humanity. Shorter defends Johnson’s prose, specifically Rasselas, Lives of the Poets, and Prayers and Meditations, noting the latter provides a "breezy, robust" inspiration for moral struggle. Shorter highlights Reade’s genealogical research into Johnson’s ancestry, which connects the family to prosperous Fords and London civic leaders. Shorter praises Lichfield for its unique lifelong recognition of its "greatest Lichfieldian," citing the 1767 grant of a ninety-nine-year lease on his birthplace. Shorter concludes that Johnson’s "great English soul" remains a vital moral inspiration for those fighting the "battle of life."
CGV entry 10/6:129. The Lichfield address of 1906.
CGV entry 10/6:130. Reprinted from The Times Literary Supplement (1907).
Focuses on Samuel Johnson the writer, whose works are often eclipsed by Boswell's famous Life. Raleigh acknowledges Boswell's genius but notes that his portrayal captures the later, established Johnson, leaving the earlier struggles less vivid. He aims to counter the view that Johnson's writings, like The Rambler, are merely dull commonplaces. Raleigh argues that Johnson's essays, while dealing with familiar moral themes, are born from deep personal experience and "dear-bought conviction," making them profound and moving when read with biographical insight. Johnson's prose style, though sometimes overly formal and symmetrical, is capable of complexity and immense vigour, packing significant meaning into his structured sentences, especially evident in The Lives of the Poets. Raleigh highlights the individuality and originality behind Johnson's formal exterior, his passionate nature, and his "fierce resentment" of emotional display, particularly regarding actors. Despite occasional critical errors (like on Lycidas), Raleigh defends Johnson's fundamental good sense and integrity, asserting his greatness lies not just in literature but in his character, wisdom, and profound humanity.
CGV entry 10/6:131. The Leslie Stephen Lecture, Cambridge.
Samuel Johnson: The Leslie Stephen Lecture, Delivered in the Senate House, Cambridge, February 22, 1907
Raleigh identifies Johnson as the archetypal biographer, critic, and moralist whose life remains inseparable from his writings. The text disputes the notion that Johnson is a mere purveyor of commonplaces, asserting instead that his moral precepts grew from "dear-bought conviction" and acute physical suffering. Raleigh analyzes the formal symmetry of Johnson's prose, defending its complexity as a means to exhibit subjects in all their bearings. He highlights Johnson's "magnanimous carelessness" regarding detail in the Lives of the Poets, yet praises his ability to strike a "personal note" devoid of sentimentalism. The text characterizes Johnson as a man who used literature as a means to "the art of living" rather than an end in itself.
CGV entry 10/6:131. Reprinted from the 1907 standalone publication.
Lives of Great English Writers from Chaucer to Browning
Gummere’s biographical narrative presents Johnson as a definitive literary figure who serves as a chronological marker for modern readers, much as Chaucer did for the Elizabethans. The text highlights Johnson’s role as a "sturdy" moralist and critic, comparing his prayerful self-reflection and admission of weakness to that of Francis Bacon. Johnson’s "perpetual tyrannick peevishness" and "childish delight" in accurate observation define his later years, specifically his interactions with servants and his "sly humor" in correcting them. His "tyrannick" discipline and "insatiable pride" exist alongside a genuine "hatred of sham." The narrative emphasizes Johnson's intellectual superiority and the "immense genius" that made him a central figure in his age. Brief mention is made of his kinsman’s failed poetic ambitions and his grave’s inscription regarding the cessation of "savage indignation."
CGV entry 10/6:132. The section on Samuel Johnson.
Raleigh examines Johnson's enduring appeal, arguing that his greatness lies in his character and reserves, not just his literary works like Lives of the Poets or the Dictionary. The public's devotion comes from his unflattering strength and natural simplicity, which embodies the humorous Englishman. Johnson is dearer as a man, full of dogmatic prejudices, stoical courage, and tenderness, who overshadowed his own fame as a writer.
CGV entry 10/6:134. A bicentenary first-page article.
On the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of Johnson's Birth
Raleigh posits that Johnson overshadows his own literary fame because the man is dearer to the English people than his books. He characterizes Johnson's success as a "triumph of character" achieved by a writer who never made advances to the public or sought a patron. The essay focuses on Johnson's "luminous sincerity" and his instinct for the realities of life, which allowed him to avoid the "idle play of theory." Raleigh emphasizes the vital nature of Johnsonian wisdom, noting that his truths cease to be commonplaces when understood in their specific social contexts. He concludes that Johnson remains the "first of all our great men dead" whose commentary on modern events would be most coveted.
CGV entry 10/6:134. Reprinted from The Times Literary Supplement (1909).
CGV entry 10/6:135. On men born in 1709.
Chesterton disputes the common historical characterization of Johnson as a pedantic and overbearing bully. He argues that Johnson used long words only for effect and was the "one thoroughly unpedantic person of a pedantic age". Chesterton highlights Johnson’s intellectual humility, noting that he treated conversational opponents as equals, often "bellowing" precisely because he respected their cleverness enough to fear defeat. The essay contrasts Johnson with typical eighteenth-century figures who demanded sycophantic applause, presenting him instead as a "kind of Irish member in his own Parliament" who was always ready to apologize when wrong. Chesterton asserts that Johnson’s rudeness was merely animal impulsiveness, while his core was marked by "ultimate chivalry and integrity."
CGV entry 10/6:136. Appeared earlier in the Daily Graphic (London), 1909.
Dr. Johnson: An Address Delivered at the Johnson Bicentenary Celebration at Lichfield, September 15, 1909, by Lord Rosebery
Questions Johnson's lasting fame, deeming it less from his works—despite noble poems, Lives, Dictionary—than Boswell's unique biography. Boswell, prince of biographers, captured Johnson through intimate, self-effacing observation, creating an immortal portrait. Johnson was a "big man," intellectually supreme, revered by contemporaries. Possessed profound love for humanity, knowing all social strata; immense charity shown through his "seraglio" and kindness. Embodied John Bull: Tory, London lover, robust commonsense, combative. Conversation vital; brilliant talker, ready for any topic, precise diction, vast knowledge, powerful memory. Hated cant, loved paradox, could be brutal but sought reconciliation. A great Christian soul, High Churchman, lay champion of faith despite fear of death. His human majesty commands reverence.
CGV entry 10/6:137. Presidential address to the Johnson Society, Lichfield.
The reviewer objects to Rosebery’s "John Bull label" for Johnson, arguing Johnson differed from the "typical Englishman" as much as Voltaire from the Frenchman. The reviewer describes Johnson as a "cosmopolitan in the best sense" and a "sceptical" moralist rather than a grumbling farmer. While the reviewer notes Lee’s focus on Shakespeare, he emphasizes that Johnson’s "moral side" outweighs his literary achievements. The text highlights sermons by Beeching and Henson as superior bicentenary tributes, identifying "character" as the reason Johnson remains "widely reverenced."
CGV entry 10/6:137. An anonymous review of the presidential address by the 5th Earl of Rosebery.
Tollemache reflects on Rosebery’s speeches, discussing Johnson as the archetypal "John Bull." He notes Jowett’s belief that Boswell, as a Scotsman, missed Johnson’s humor, despite Jowett’s high regard for the biography. Tollemache cites Pattison’s view of Johnson as a "typical, but not an ideal, Englishman" whose reason was subordinated to his saintly feelings. He challenges Rosebery’s preference for Boswell over Eckermann, arguing that while Boswell is a superior artist, Goethe is a more important subject than Johnson. The text also recounts an anecdote of Johnson’s coarseness, specifically his drinking melted butter directly from a tureen.
CGV entry 10/6:137. Review by Lionel A. Tollemache of the presidential address by the 5th Earl of Rosebery.
Seccombe characterizes Johnson as a "great literary phenomenon" whose enduring personality survives "changes of time and taste." While Hill’s scholarship has superseded earlier editions, the interest in Johnson’s life now "definitely superseded the interest in his works." Seccombe disputes Macaulay’s view of Boswell as an "inspired idiot," asserting that Boswell’s portraiture remains supreme despite the "bigger, more massive" reality of Johnson’s actual life. Though neglect affects the moral writings, Seccombe identifies a revival in the Meditations and Letters, noting Johnson’s "complete mastery of our language" as a "mental athlete." He argues Johnson’s imagination was "commanding" and manifested in "practical human sympathy" for the poor. Despite "egotism" and "unfairness" toward Piozzi, Johnson remains a "counsellor and friend" whose "Christian charity" and "moral grandeur" sustain a unique posthumous vitality. Seccombe concludes that Johnson’s "vast bulk" continues to displace "exhausted reputations" in the English pantheon.
CGV entry 10/6:139. Includes numerous illustrations.
Scott's critical evaluation analyzes the unique power of transmission behind Johnson's posthumous fame and enduring celebrity, arguing it is based on the direct impulse of personality rather than abstract intellect or intellectual influence, while also asserting that a reciprocal relationship exists between Johnson's written works and recorded speech. While acknowledging that the "greatest work" and classic Lives of the Poets and other writings owe much of their enduring reputation to and gain depth from the personal interest generated by Boswell's biography, Scott demonstrates how the writings themselves provide an unmediated encounter with Johnson that allows scholars to effectively distinguish between Johnson when he talked for victory in social settings and Johnson when he had no desire but to inform and illustrate. Scott reviews the classic status and spontaneous biographical strength of Lives of the Poets, noting its "colloquial ease" and focus on the "art of living," and examines the self-reflection and struggles in Rasselas, where the protagonist passes time "resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves." He analyzes the moral trials, pathos, Christian precepts, and "miseries of life" reflected in The Rambler—written during his wife's failing health—and Idler, which reflect Johnson's "reasonable hope of a happy futurity," alongside the relentless satire of his review of Soame Jenyns. Scott counters and defends Johnson’s Shakespeare against Macaulay’s "slovenly" dismissal and slights, emphasizing Johnson's "sound sense," "knowledge of humanity," and historical reassessment. Scott defends political pamphlets like Taxation no Tyranny, highlights Johnson's indifference to barren landscapes in his Scottish tour, defends the powerful lines of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes against minute formal criticisms, and concludes that the lines on Levett "recall a whole history of Johnson’s goodness, tenderness, and charity."
CGV entry 10/6:140. See also 'Johnson Club Papers, Second Series' (1920), pages 159–178.
Thoughts Occasioned by the Bi-Centenary of Dr. Johnson
Trent explores Johnson's legacy, questioning why the "burly doctor’s form fills up... the landscape of my imagination" despite Johnson’s failures in poetry and drama. Trent disputes the idea that Johnson lives only because Boswell "toady him," arguing instead that Johnson’s "mental and moral force" enabled his rise from obscurity. Trent identifies the Staffordshire marketplace penance as a "pathetically impressive act" and labels Johnson one of the few Englishmen worthy of "great real veneration" due to his robust, wholesome personality.
This article, reprinted from The Nation, evaluates Johnson’s legacy on his bicentenary. Trent admits Johnson’s written works bulk small compared to Voltaire and disputes his status as a supreme poet or philosopher. However, Trent maintains that Johnson’s mental and moral force allowed him to overcome physical defects and poverty to become the commanding figure of an exceptionally able group including Burke and Reynolds. Trent challenges the notion that Johnson lives only through toadying by Boswell, arguing instead that Boswell’s biography succeeded because its subject was a robustly impressive man. While acknowledging Johnson as a lazy editor and flawed lexicographer, Trent asserts that his essential greatness lies in his character and role as a "sturdy critic" of unrivaled common sense. Trent concludes that Johnson remains one of the most venerated Englishmen for his sheer humanity and "filial piety."
CGV entry 10/6:141. Reprinted from The Nation (1909).
Doctor Johnson: The Great Cham of Literature after Two Centuries
Thomas Carlyle as a Critic of Literature
CGV entry 10/6:147. On Carlyle's criticism.
CGV entry 10/6:148. Criticizes Johnson's writing.
Matthews advocates for the systematic re-examination of established literary reputations, arguing that the "Devil's Advocate" performs a necessary service by challenging indiscriminate eulogy. Applying this skepticism to Johnson, Matthews disputes his contemporary authority as a critic, noting that his reputation survives primarily through Boswell rather than his own unread works. Matthews characterizes Johnson's critical decisions, particularly his dismissal of Milton's Lycidas, as inept and bigoted. He challenges the "Johnsonese" style as pretentious and inflated, asserting it exerted a demoralizing influence on English prose. While acknowledging Johnson's sturdy common sense and manliness, Matthews highlights his "underbred narrow-mindedness," brutality toward opponents, and political arbitrariness. The analysis concludes that Johnson's glory is significantly diminished when measured by the diminishing utility and readability of his actual literary output.
CGV entry 10/6:148. Reprinted from The Century Magazine (1910).
Macdonald advocates owning books for noble recreation, widening thought and knowledge. He advises the normal reader to alternate genres and praises the enduring intellectual forces within classic texts, arguing that literary Masters secure their title through their work’s essential qualities. He finds the personality of great writers supremely attractive, fostering mystic friendships with readers. The collection discusses various figures, including Goldsmith, Wesley, and Carlyle, noting the varying financial rewards for authors like Milton and Pope. Macdonald dedicates two chapters to Johnson, stressing that his enduring appeal is unique. Johnson's strong, devout, and irascible personality commands affection and survives not through his writings—which are largely unused—but through Boswell's intimate record, making Johnson the foremost literary figure of his era.
CGV entry 10/6:149. Chapter 2 is "Dr. Johnson–Personal and Domestic"; Chapter 3 is "The Religion of Dr. Johnson."
Dr. Johnson: Lexicographer, Scholar, Man of Letters
CGV entry 10/6:150. A lecture to the Parkhead Literary Club.
Wilson provides a retrospective appreciation of Samuel Johnson, emphasizing that Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson made the doctor the best-known literary figure of his age. The text outlines Johnson’s life from his birth in Lichfield to his struggles at Pembroke College, Oxford, and his eventually famous "wit combats" at the literary club founded in 1764. Wilson specifically praises Johnson’s letter to Lord Chesterfield as a masterpiece of satire, quoting the famous definition of a patron as one who "encumbers him with help" only after the recipient has reached ground. While acknowledging Johnson’s force of mind and vigor in talk, Wilson suggests that his poetry and The Rambler are less accessible to modern tastes than his Lives of the Poets. The text concludes by recommending Boswell's biography as an unrivaled reporting feat that immortalized Johnson’s table talk.
Cochrane entry 70.
The Independent ... Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts
This text reports on Cecil Harmsworth’s acquisition and preservation of the Gough Square house where Johnson compiled his "immortal dictionary." It notes that while the work lacks "high philological value," it remains a significant achievement, famously featuring a definition of "patron" used to "revenge himself" upon Lord Chesterfield. The report highlights that Johnson spent eight years and only £1,500 on the project, employing assistants who were primarily "natives of North Britain." The author suggests this "long association with Scottish hacks" might account for Johnson’s "frequent outbreaks against the Scot," unless Boswell’s own personality is the cause. The house is intended to serve as a "Johnsonian museum" for American pilgrims.
Samuel Johnson: An Unbiased Appreciation
Samuel Johnson remains a figure whose personality, preserved primarily through the work of Boswell, overshadows his own literary output. While Johnson attained 'fame' as a poet and scholar, his prose often suffers from 'pompous grandiosity' and 'formal elegance.' The text disputes the idea that Johnson was a 'genius' in the same vein as those who reach a 'heaven' of pure inspiration, instead characterizing him as a 'low-pulsed forthright craftsman' of great talent. Despite these critical reservations, Johnson's role as a 'revealer of light' and his 'heroic' struggle against adversity ensure his continued relevance in English letters. The text focuses on the tension between Johnson's historical status and the aesthetic value of his 'constructed' style.
This review disputes Chesterton’s biographical accuracy and critical judgment in his introduction to a Johnson selection. The reviewer challenges Chesterton’s neglect of Johnson’s early poverty and his psychological claims regarding Johnson’s sociability. While the reviewer agrees with Chesterton’s appreciation of the Lives of the Poets, the reviewer finds the comparison of Rasselas to Candide unfavorable. The reviewer disputes Chesterton’s imaginative depiction of Johnson as a physically destructive figure in drawing rooms, noting a lack of evidence. The review also examines a lecture by Alexander Cross, which the reviewer characterizes as an admiring but critically weak summary of Johnson's life. The reviewer notes that Cross mistakenly identifies London as an imitation of Juvenal’s second satire rather than the third. The review highlights the inclusion of the correspondence between Johnson and Piozzi concerning her marriage. Both Chesterton and Cross receive criticism for failing to bridge the gap between Johnson’s conversational vigor and his mechanical, Latinized prose style.
The reviewer examines Chesterton’s introduction to a Johnson anthology, noting its failure to adequately present Johnson’s early struggles. The text highlights the discrepancy between Johnson’s belief in convention and his physical inaptitude for it. It rejects the caricature of Johnson as a rowdy giant, favoring his role as a detached, sensible dictator of letters. The reviewer argues that Johnson’s writing style, often mechanical due to constitutional indolence, remains inferior to his concise, spontaneous conversational English.
CGV entry 10/6:154. Reprinted from The Athenaeum (1911).
CGV entry 10/6:155. Also appeared in the Lichfield Mercury. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Johnson's "social and club life" was his true "arena" and "achievement," refuting the idea that his fame relies solely on Boswell. The essay's structure contrasts his public dominance with his inner life. Its central argument is that Johnson's character, defined by "patience, but courage, hope, and peace" derived from deep religious faith, allowed him to overcome his profound melancholy and "dreaded" fear of death. Sociable to the last, he told Burke, "I must be in a wretched state indeed when your company would not be a delight to me." As his end neared, "his fears grew fainter, his faith firmer," and "this great and pious spirit passed from this earth" "in complete resignation."
CGV entry 10/6:156. A lecture at the Epsom Literary and Scientific Society.
Posthumous Essays of John Churton Collins
Collins presents a biographical sketch and character study of Johnson, challenging Carlyle's heroic sermon by contrasting Johnson's sincere piety, charity, and struggles with inherited melancholy and fear of death against the potential "littlenesses" of his eulogist. The chapter traces Johnson's life from his birth in 1709 and his unsuccessful career as a schoolmaster to his monumental Dictionary and his final years as a revered talker, a period ignited by meeting Boswell in 1763. Collins emphasizes Johnson's English common sense, abhorrence of cant, and skill in witty repartee, citing numerous anecdotes from Boswell and Piozzi. The work concludes by affirming Johnson's greatness as a moral teacher, though recognizing the dated nature of his prose.
Lee asserts that biography satisfies the commemorative instinct, transmitting character and exploits. Success demands a fit theme—a completed career of "serious, complete and of a certain magnitude"—and fit treatment. The biographer must maintain independence from history or moral instruction and exhibit perfect candour. Discriminating brevity is the law, requiring rigid selection of details that illuminate personality. Boswell's Life of Johnson, though long, remains the best specimen of biography. Its excellence results from Johnson's rare intellectual manliness meeting Boswell's unparalleled dedication to recording his conversation.
CGV entry 10/6:158. The section on Samuel Johnson.
This report chronicles the 1912 commemoration of the 203rd anniversary of Johnson’s birth. Charnwood describes the "acute agitation" preceding the meeting due to the enforced absence of past presidents Williamson and White-Thomson and the late arrival of the presidential manuscript from Adkins. The annual report by Wood details the Society's efforts to foster regional interest through appointments in Uttoxeter and Walsall and a London correspondent. Notable activities include the 1911 opening of the Hay Hunter Library and a 1912 pilgrimage to Cubley to examine parish registers of Michael Johnson’s birthplace. The article highlights O’Kane’s analytical paper regarding the friendship between Johnson and Taylor and outlines plans for a visit to Oxford facilitated by Raleigh. The proceedings conclude with the customary wreath-laying at the Johnson monument by Wigham.
CGV entry 10/6:159. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Johnson’s greatness is best understood through the relationships and conversations recorded by his friends. The central thesis is that Johnson, while a notable author, was primarily a “great social and intellectual force,” a “clubbable” man whose genius flourished in company. The book’s structure supports this by first outlining Johnson's own life and character—his talk, melancholy, and common sense. It then dedicates chapters to the key members of his circle: Boswell, “the most devoted of biographers”; the wise Burke; the amiable Reynolds; and the brilliant but foolish Goldsmith. It also examines the women of his circle and the lesser-known members of The Club. Bailey argues these figures were not mere satellites but essential interlocutors who elicited and preserved the Johnson we know, proving that “the noblest of all his works was his own life.”
CGV entry 10/6:160. A new edition with a bibliography by L. F. Powell was published by Oxford University Press in 1944. Bailey's deficiencies as an interpreter of Johnson are pointed out by Paul Elmer More in the American Review, volume 7 (April 1936), pages 17–19.
Smith traces Johnson's trajectory from his early self-education in Lichfield and abbreviated tenure at Oxford to his emergence as a professional man of letters in London. The chapter details the composition of his monumental Dictionary (1755), which established a standard for English lexicography, and his contributions to the periodical essay via The Rambler and The Idler. Smith emphasizes that Johnson’s greatness resides in his "robust common sense" and his role as a Great Moralist, reaching its zenith in the critical maturity of The Lives of the Poets. Central to the narrative is the transformative impact of James Boswell’s biography, which preserved Johnson’s conversational genius and secured his posthumous status. The text highlights the unique synergy between Johnson’s intellectual authority and Boswell’s reportorial art, while also acknowledging the essential secondary accounts provided by Hester Thrale and Sir John Hawkins.
CGV entry 10/6:161. Chapter VIII. For commentary, see Littell's Living Age, volume 280 (February 14, 1914), pages 432-436.
Benson analyzes Samuel Johnson as the quintessential British figure, balancing robust common sense with a profound, instinctive terror of the unknown. Drawing heavily from Boswell, Benson argues that Johnson’s fear of death was a "disease of the spirit" untouched by his deep Christian faith or rational powers. The text highlights Johnson's gregariousness as a defense mechanism against a "causeless melancholy" that surfaced during solitary hours. Benson identifies a recurring distress in Johnson regarding sensual impulses and moral worthlessness, noting his "habit of ejaculatory prayer" served as a constant combatant against these internal perceived corruptions. Despite physical courage during surgical operations, Johnson viewed the prospect of annihilation as insupportable, famously writing to Taylor that "the approach of death is very dreadful." Benson concludes that Johnson’s struggles prove that no degree of rationality can shield a "black-blooded" temperament from the assaults of imaginative fear.
Chubb provides a biographical and critical overview of Johnson, whom he characterizes as the "typical Englishman" defined by a kind heart, vigorous intellect, and childlike faith. He emphasizes Johnson's personal struggle with poverty and disease, noting that the man is "far more interesting than the product of his pen." The narrative details Johnson's early days in Lichfield, his brief residence at Oxford, and his difficult initial years in London writing for the Gentleman's Magazine. Chubb highlights the historical significance of the Dictionary and the later literary dictatorship Johnson exerted from his "nest of singing birds." The text includes a sentimental account of Johnson's marriage to Mrs. Porter, describing it as a "love match on both sides" despite their disparity in age and appearance. Salient quotations, such as Johnson's remark that "my master whipped me very well," illustrate the rigorous discipline and omnivorous reading habits that shaped his sturdy common sense.
CGV entry 10/6:164. The section on Dr. Johnson and His Time.
CGV entry 10/6:165. The section on Samuel Johnson.
Saintsbury asserts that Johnson embodies the eighteenth century's strength and "limitation," serving as a necessary "achromatic" lens for understanding the era. He disputes Macaulay's "legend" of Grub Street, arguing that Johnson’s penury resulted from constitutional indolence and physical infirmity rather than systemic neglect. Saintsbury characterizes Johnson’s style as a "Palladian architecture" of balanced rhetorical tessellation and identifies his "magnificent common-sense" as a specific antidote to modern "rotting." While admitting Johnson's "clot of minor prejudices" regarding Swift, he defends the critiques of Milton and Gray as logically consistent with Johnson's poetic theories. Boswell is lauded as a "great artist" whose work provides an incomparable "mirror" of the time. Goldsmith is presented as a unique "amuser" whose "standard" quality and perfect naturalness defy analysis. Saintsbury concludes that the Johnsonian circle represents a "refuge" of sanity and steady resignation against the "sweltering land of paradox" found in the twentieth century.
Cochrane entry 80.
The Character and Opinions of Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 10/6:167. An essay written probably while at Oxford, with a preface by T. J. Wise.
Doctor Johnson: His Words and Works: Prospectus of a Lecture
Dobson imagines how Johnson might use modern war-related terminology to address his contemporaries. Johnson informs Hawkins that "objection is your objective," tells Burney that "Nature disdains a camouflage," and advises Seward that he must be "sterilized" to prevent infection. He suggests to Cave that a bad book should be "scrapped" and commands Boswell to return to his "dug-out." Johnson tells Goldsmith they must "standardize" their ideas and informs a mixed audience that they must "get to the periscope" to find their way after a submerging discussion. Finally, he shares with Thrale that a farmer named his twins "Zeppelina and Submarina."
King characterizes the eighteenth century as a transformative era marked by the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Cabinet government, and the expansion of the British Empire. Within this turmoil, Samuel Johnson emerged as the central literary dictator, bridging the gap between the formal constraints of Pope and the burgeoning emotional freedom of the Romantic era. The text highlights Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language" (1755) as his monumental achievement, noting its role in establishing linguistic authority during an age that prized hard and fast rules. King emphasizes Johnson's personality over his written works, pointing to Boswell’s Life of Johnson as the definitive portrait of his robust independence, exemplified by his famous rebuff of Lord Chesterfield's belated patronage. Additionally, the text surveys "The Literary Club," noting the contributions of Oliver Goldsmith, who refined the novel with The Vicar of Wakefield and invigorated comedy with She Stoops to Conquer. Ultimately, King views this period as a transition toward a "second renascence" of beauty and romance.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Anniversary Celebrations Lichfield: Tributes to a Typical Englishman: Growth of the Johnson Society
This report chronicles the 1921 birth anniversary celebrations in Lichfield. The article disputes the characterization of Boswell as a "nincompoop," identifying him instead as an "intelligent gramophone" whose perception made Johnson’s personality permanent. It asserts that while Johnson’s Dictionary is out of date and his writings appeal primarily to cultivated minds, Johnson the man remains a "national hero" and an epitome of the English race due to his sincerity, brusqueness, and conviviality. The report documents the installation of J. Frederick Green as president, establishing a further link between the Lichfield Society and the older London Johnson Club. Notable attendees included Inge, Newton, Roberts, and Swinnerton. Ceremonies included the Mayor laying a laurel wreath on Johnson’s statue and the Cathedral choir performing the Collect from Plant’s Johnson Anthem on the steps of the Birthplace.
CGV entry 10/6:174. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Johnson's fame rests not on his unread works, but on his personality, immortalized by Boswell. Boswell's biography, though the world's greatest, is also unknown abroad; understanding it is key to understanding English character. The book's structure first defines this problem, then analyzes Johnson chronologically (youth, struggle, friends, final years). It shifts to thematic chapters: Johnson's appearance, criticism, authorship, wisdom, and conversation. It then devotes two chapters to Boswell and his authorship, concluding with "Johnson och England." Hirn, initially skeptical, confesses his conversion to the cult: "att Allah är stor och Muhammed hans profet" (God is great and Mohammad is his prophet).
Roscoe identifies Johnson as a teacher of "the art of living," whose authority stems from extensive literary and social experiences. Roscoe highlights qualities of sincerity, lucidity, and vigor in Johnson's writings and conversations, particularly in the Rambler. The text explores the tension between Johnson’s somber realism and his celebration of "vernal flowers" as preparatives for happiness. Roscoe notes that Johnson focuses on general moral truths for the "plain man" rather than speculative psychology. He concludes that Johnson’s individualism and common sense provide a permanent guide, asserting that books teach nothing "but the art of living."
Roscoe defines Johnson as a pre-eminent teacher of the conduct of life who synthesized vast literary knowledge and worldly experience into sincere, lucid, and vigorous maxims. The study highlights Johnson's gift for extracting universal principles from everyday details, presenting moral truths in a form accessible to the 'plain man'. Roscoe argues that Johnson's teaching was spontaneous and characterized by an intellectual honesty that remains valuable for its focus on self-reliance and the mastery of one's own fate. Despite a realistic and often gloomy view of existence, Johnson's sanity and common sense allowed him to recognize the inlets to happiness. Johnson's enduring influence rests on his unique faculty for teaching inferior minds the art of thinking and living.
CGV entry 10/6:176. Reprinted from the National Review (1922).
Murry reflects on the 'ink-pickled' soul of the man of letters, noting how the natural beauty of swallows immediately evokes the image of Samuel Johnson. He traces this association to Johnson’s idiosyncratic (and scientifically incorrect) belief that swallows 'conglobulate together' and sleep through winter at the bottom of streams—a claim famously recorded in Boswell's Life. The essay further connects Johnson to the concept of 'sipping,' noting Johnson's peculiar Dictionary definition of 'sip' as taking 'no more than the mouth will contain,' a definition likely influenced by his own legendary consumption of tea. Murry uses these anecdotes to illustrate the romantic and 'far-fetched' nature of mental associations.
CGV entry 10/6:177. Some random thoughts about Johnson.
Jones recounts his development of "Johnsonitis" and his travels to Johnsonian landmarks like Lichfield and the Cheshire Cheese. The core of the text features two 1910 letters from critics Hamilton Wright Mabie and William Winter addressing a peer's dismissal of Johnson as a "big bluffer." Mabie argues that while Johnson's prose style was heavy and his imagination limited, he survives as a "representative man of letters" and a "great man." Conversely, Winter defends Johnson as "one of the greatest writers that ever wrote," citing the moral courage evidenced by Johnson's "practical Christianity," specifically his rescue of a destitute woman from the streets. Jones concludes that while critics disagree on his literary rank, they are unanimous in regarding his character as colossal.
Literary Digest International Book Review
A Day with Dr. Johnson at the Turk's Head
The presidential address delivered by Cecil Harmsworth to the Johnson Society at Lichfield on September 15, 1923. Harmsworth explores the enduring global homage paid to Samuel Johnson, arguing that while Johnson's own writings (such as "Irene" or the political tracts) are infrequently read today, his personality remains "the typical Englishman" and a "beloved friend" to many. The author attributes this to Boswell’s biography, which portrays a "noble character" defined by "unselfish benevolence," "plain honesty," and "flawless sincerity." Harmsworth acknowledges Johnson's faults—including his "fierce irascibility" and "narrow bigotries"—but contends these "amiable defects" only serve to endear him further to a public that recognizes its own imperfections. The address highlights Johnson’s profound influence on his illustrious circle (Burke, Reynolds, Goldsmith) and his deep devotion to the Church of England, concluding that Johnson’s legacy is defined by his role as a "truth-telling, straight-dealing, God-fearing Englishman."
Published: Reprinted from the Lichfield Mercury, September 21, 1923
CGV entry 10/6:180. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Literary Review of the New York Evening Post
Tinker challenges the characterization of Johnson as an elected monarch whose "verdicts" dictated eighteenth-century taste. Despite the "royal manner," Johnson possessed "shadowy" actual authority, as evidenced by his failure to diminish the reputations of Fielding and Sterne or to elevate Watts and Savage against public inclination. Tinker highlights Johnson's "ineptitudes," including his "grudging estimate of Milton" and "puerile" dismissal of Gray. The value of Johnson’s criticism lies not in "pomp of system" but in the "stimulus to thought" provided by his "vivid hypothesis" and "audacities." His work represents a "trial flight" or "guess masquerading in dogma" that initiates rather than terminates inquiry. Piozzi notes that Johnson praised Addison’s prose as a "model of the middle style" despite lacking personal affection for it. Johnson’s position rests upon a "large humanity" and "unrivaled knowledge" derived from his direct participation in the literary history of his age.
CGV entry 10/6:181. Reprinted from the Literary Review of the New York Evening Post (1924).
Dr. Johnson and Homer: A Paper Read Before the Johnson Club on Wednesday, October 15th, 1924
CGV entry 10/6:182. A Johnson Club paper from October 15, 1924 on Johnson's indebtedness to and use of Homer.
Published: Reproduced from the Clacton Graphic of May 9, 1925
Privately printed for the Cheshire Cheese Club
McCamic examines Johnson’s enduring legacy through the lens of book collecting and Boswell’s biography. He characterizes Boswell as a genius Scotch bur with the faculty of sticking, whose 1791 Life of Samuel Johnson remains the premier biographical source despite contemporary attacks by Macaulay. The text surveys Johnson’s literary circle, including Garrick, Goldsmith, and the Literary Club members, while detailing Johnson’s personal struggles with poverty, scrofula, and the death of his wife, Tetty. McCamic discusses the 1755 Dictionary, noting its eccentric definitions and its status as the death knell of patronage following the rebuke of Chesterfield. He further explores Johnson’s political Toryism, his opposition to American independence in Taxation no Tyranny, and his indiscriminate benevolence toward dependents like Barber and Levett. McCamic argues that while Johnson’s own writings have largely entered the discard, his personality survives as a kind of public oracle.
Address Delivered at St. Clement Danes on 13 December 1926
Collins argues that English authorship (1726–1780) decisively shifted from patronage to a commercial market governed by booksellers and the expanding public, a transition epitomized by Johnson. Johnson notably rejected aristocratic patronage, achieving financial and moral independence through major commercial successes such as his Dictionary, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets. His relationship with the publishing trade was essentially cordial, recognizing its necessary and sometimes generous support. This new professional status is culturally affirmed by the era's biographical impulse: Boswell's enduring Life provided meticulous documentation, while Piozzi’s candid Anecdotes offered a crucial, personal perspective on Johnson's character and domestic circle.
Green examines the paradoxical celebrity of Johnson, noting that while his "pompous" writings are primarily relegated to schoolrooms, his persona dominates the eighteenth century as a "morose god." Green attributes this lasting glory almost entirely to Boswell’s biography, which transformed a man born to say "boring things" into an immortal figure. The text provides a physical and characterological sketch of Johnson—highlighting his scrofula, eccentric dress, and "metronomic" conversational style—while tracing his life from poverty and the composition of the Dictionary to his royal pension and travels. Green emphasizes the "incantation" of Johnson’s speech, which enslaved Boswell and secured Johnson’s place in collective memory despite his social intolerances and "imposture" of fame
Hearn presents Johnson as a uniquely powerful figure in English letters, noting that despite physical infirmities and poverty, Johnson possessed more real power than the King. Hearn emphasizes Johnson's role as a national teacher who instructed the English people on morality, religion, and literary composition. While Hearn praises Johnson’s personal character and his tender treatment of humble associates, he challenges Johnson's legacy as a critic. Hearn argues that Johnson's strong conservatism and reliance on moral conventions rather than aesthetic merit made his literary judgments, such as those in his biographical work on poets, largely worthless for later generations. Hearn characterizes Johnson's critical method as that of a country schoolmaster preoccupied with moral unimpeachability. Hearn concludes that while Johnson’s influence remains in British journalism, a succession of similar figures would have paralyzed English literature through rigid adherence to classical unities and ethical restrictions.
Whibley seeks to restore the perspective of Johnson as a professional writer whose livelihood and identity were rooted in the "humbler craft of prose." He disputes Johnson’s claim of influence from Temple, arguing instead that his style follows the "rock of his own sonority" and the rhetoric of Browne and Donne. Whibley examines the Dictionary as a work of "human and soulless lists" transformed by Johnson's "satisfied malice" in definitions of terms like "pension" and "excise." He further explores Johnson’s "masterpieces of improvisation" in the Rambler and the Eastern moralizing of Rasselas, which he compares to Voltaire’s Candide. Finally, Whibley defends the "impersonal view of biography" in the Lives of the Poets, where Johnson prioritized the "large flowing lines of a living portrait" over the gathering of petty gossip, even when his "violent prejudice" led to the famous denunciation of Milton’s Lycidas.
Links of Empire—Books (4): 'Dr. Johnson'
This report details the annual meeting of the Johnson Society in Lichfield, commemorating the anniversary of Johnson’s birth. The account describes civic ceremonies, including the morning wreath-laying at the statue in Market Square, before transitioning to the society’s formal proceedings. Alfred Noyes, serving as president, delivers a keynote address defending Johnson’s reputation as both poet and critic. Noyes argues for Johnson’s 'literary dominance,' asserting that his critical insights remain foundational despite the shifting tastes of subsequent generations. The report emphasizes Johnson’s refusal to live 'merely in the present' and highlights his enduring intellectual influence as a figure who transcends local sentiment to command national importance.
CGV entry 10/6:197. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Y. Y. analyzes the nature of moral improvement through an examination of Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations. The text traces a sequence of resolutions made by Johnson between ages forty-six and seventy-two, specifically regarding early rising, church attendance, and temperance. Johnson repeatedly resolves to rise at eight or six o'clock to combat idleness, yet frequently records his failure to achieve these goals. The text emphasizes Johnson’s refusal to succumb to cynicism or despair, noting that he "resolved anew" throughout his life. Y. Y. asserts that this continuous cycle of resolution and failure signifies a "grand ideal" that maintains spiritual youth. The persistence of these efforts, despite a "long procession of still-born resolutions," serves as a model for human aspiration.
CGV entry 10/6:198. On Johnson's good resolutions.
Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion M. B. H.
Die englische Literatur von der Renaissance bis zur Aufklärung
The German academic work notes Johnson's commanding role in the Enlightenment. His Dictionary is cited as a monumental work of classicist abstraction that served to standardize and stabilize the English language. Johnson's contribution to literary biography is marked by its emphasis on critical judgment and clear literary standard-setting. The text notes the complementary biographical perspectives that cemented Johnson’s cultural image: the extensive conversational record provided by Boswell, and the intimate, domestic portrait offered by Piozzi, situating Johnson as the defining literary figure of the age.
CGV entry 10/6:200. The section on Dr. Johnson.
George compiles a diverse range of 18th-century primary sources to illustrate the social, political, and cultural landscape of England during the lifetime of Samuel Johnson. The text positions Johnson as a central figure of the era, characterizing him as one of the last "literary dictators" whose career exemplifies the democratization of life and letters. Through various excerpts, the work examines Johnson’s views on contemporary issues, including his conservative stance on school discipline—famously noting that while there was "less flogging in our great schools," there was also less learned—and his surprisingly tolerant attitude toward the "democratization of life." Boswell and Piozzi (referred to as Mrs. Thrale) appear frequently, particularly in sections detailing Johnson's social interactions, travels, and his "rout of the patron." Salient quotations, such as Johnson's observation that London provides "all that life could afford," highlight the intersection of his personal convictions with the shifting values of the Age of Feeling. Editorial policy focuses on modernizing spelling while preserving the authentic voice of contemporary translations for foreign writers, aiming to provide a comprehensive view of a society transitioning toward the modern world.
Lynd provides a collective biography of the circle surrounding Samuel Johnson, examining the paradoxical nature of Johnson’s "emperor" status in society despite his "monstrous grotesqueness" and "abominable" manners. The work details Johnson’s physical disfigurements, convulsive gestures, and voracious table habits while emphasizing his "tender heart" and "genius for the unexpected." Boswell is characterized as an "unsnubbable" artist whose "frenzied conscientiousness" in note-taking created a "prince among biographers," though Lynd notes that Boswell showed only a "crescent of himself" to his mentor. The study also highlights the critical domestic roles of women, particularly the "sensible" Elizabeth (Tetty) Johnson, the "domestic companion" Anna Williams, and Hester Thrale (later Piozzi). Lynd argues that Thrale’s kindness "soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched," despite the "passionate" and "bitter" nature of their eventual estrangement following her marriage to Piozzi. Johnson’s conversation was his "real forte," turning a "life of talk to the level of a life of action." Critics say this study offers a delightful synthesis of old material that successfully recreates the strange appeal of a contradictory character. Bookman and the New York Times praise the work as a readable informal biography that corrects long-standing misconceptions established by earlier biographers. Reviewers like Watson and Larsson highlight the sprightly style used to balance repulsive table manners and a morbid temperament against a pious nature and immense charity. But Larsson notes the book contains no new material, and Roberts observes that the interpretation relies on a pre-Malahide estimate. The general verdict remains positive, favoring the fairer picture of the subject's circle.
CGV entry 10/6:202. Also published by Penguin Books in 1946.
Morley celebrates the initial meeting of Boswell and Johnson at Davies’s bookshop, asserting the event’s significance in literary history. He characterizes Boswell not as a mere notebook, but as a "droll, vain, erring" figure whose servant-like devotion secured his literary mastery. Morley explores the private emotional life of Johnson through Prayers and Meditations, noting his "inner tenderness and tormented virtue." He disputes claims that Johnson’s marriage lacked affection, citing notebook entries as evidence of enduring grief for Tetty. Morley emphasizes the necessity of studying Boswell to achieve a "liberal education" and advocates for a deeper engagement with Johnson's own prose, particularly the preface to the Dictionary.
CGV entry 10/6:203. On Johnson's birthday and the day he met Boswell.
Johnson was pre-eminently a teacher of "the art of living" because of his vast experience, retained knowledge, and ability to express profound moral truths with sincerity, lucidity, and vigour. His teaching, though sometimes spontaneously given in conversation, was based on sound common sense and remains permanently valuable to the "plain man." Roscoe emphasizes the strength of Johnson's intellect for the profession of law, a career he regretted not pursuing, highlighting his robust logic, clear expression, and inherent perception of crucial facts. Johnson's personality had a sombre background owing to a perpetually anxious religious faith that offered him little comfort, focusing on a divine judge and his own shortcomings. Roscoe contrasts Johnson's approach to the Scottish Highlands as an intelligent traveller focused on people and phenomena with Wordsworth's reflective appreciation of nature, and notes his social side, which loved company and travel, despite his famous praise of London. Critical reaction is mixed. Herford, in the Manchester Guardian, praises the skillful collection of salient passages that present a perennial figure through lively sally and epigram. An unsigned notice in the Saturday Review (London) commends the identification of a teacher of the art of living, highlighting a paper on the connection with Windham, but notes some comparisons yield only obvious contrasts. In the English Review, an unsigned notice defends the focus on the surface of life as a deliberate choice, praising the depiction of a moralist of courage and rigid honesty. Lynd's review in the Daily News (London) questions the claim of a deep modern appreciation for the formal literature, maintaining that survival rests on a legend sustained by a currency of aphorisms. Norman (The Nation and the Athenaeum) finds the result of splitting complex completeness into isolated traits disappointing, noting the author remains averse from speculation. Lawrence, in The Bookman, challenges the brief essays as unconvincing and superficial, arguing they fail to offer genuine new light and overlook beautiful applications of charity. An unsigned notice in N&Q delivers a scathing review, labeling the work a conspicuous failure that neglects the true meaning of comparison and questioning how a teacher of life can cut out philosophy. Finally, an unsigned notice in Country Life observes that the vignettes provide unusual freshness by isolating specific attitudes toward law and religion, while A. H. J. (Cambridge Law Journal) examines the exploration of arguments and lucid expression.
Whitman records a very concise biography of Johnson, emphasizing the "physically queer" and "scrofulous" nature of the subject. He notes Johnson's early education in his father's bookshop and his thirty-year struggle with "privations and starvations" in London. Whitman highlights the composition of Rasselas, written in a week to fund his mother’s funeral, and the production of the Dictionary, for which Johnson received £1500. Stylistically, Whitman dismisses Johnson's prose as "latinized" and "pompous," lacking simple or "unlearned instincts" in favor of "polysyllables." The account also touches upon Johnson's marriage to a "vulgar old woman," to whom he remained "faithful and fond," and his eventual receipt of a government pension. Whitman characterizes Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare as "poor" and remarks upon his consistently "coarse behavior."
Gould challenges the literary status of Johnson, asserting that Boswell was a man of very great genius; Johnson was not. Gould maintains that Johnson wrote nothing anybody could be much the better for reading and characterizes the legendary Johnson as a Boswellian invention designed to fill the will to believe in a typical 18th-century Englishman. While acknowledging Johnson as a brutal bully in real life, Gould argues the hypnotic atmosphere of Boswell’s biography creates a miracle of artistic unity that eclipses Johnson’s actual merits.
CGV entry 10/6:206. An attack on Johnson as a writer and as a man. See also his "Seu Jane Libentius Audis" in the same journal (April 28), pages 517-518.
Roscoe examines the journey taken by Johnson and Boswell to Harwich in August 1763, where Boswell was to depart for law studies in Utrecht. The text highlights a "singular scene" at the Harwich church where Johnson compelled Boswell to kneel at the altar in prayer before his departure. Roscoe disputes the "mythical" image of Johnson as a sedentary Londoner, arguing instead that he possessed the "instincts of a traveler"—curiosity, courage, and patience. Citing Mrs. Thrale’s observations, Roscoe notes that Johnson "piqued himself on feeling no inconvenience" during travel, a trait evidenced by his enjoyment of the stage-coach journey despite chronic physical suffering. The author rejects the notion that the trip was motivated solely by "paternal feeling" for a friendship then only three months old. Rather, the excursion served as a successful test of Boswell’s "gaiety of conversation," which effectively counteracted the hardships of the road. Roscoe concludes that this "humble precursor" was the essential prerequisite for the famous tour of the Hebrides ten years later, suggesting that without the Harwich experiment, the later masterpiece of travel literature might never have occurred.
Roscoe evaluates the 1763 trip to Harwich as a significant demonstration of Johnson's innate curiosity and hardihood as a traveler. The narrative follows Johnson and Boswell from London to the busy port, where Johnson characteristically integrated religion into daily life by making Boswell pray at the local altar before his departure for Holland. Roscoe challenges the myth of Johnson as a sedentary Londoner, arguing that his willingness to endure the fatigues of stage-coach travel reveals a spirit of adventure and a thirst for personal knowledge of new places. The Harwich excursion served as a successful experimental test of companionship with Boswell, providing the essential precursor and precedent for their later celebrated journey to the Hebrides.
CGV entry 10/6:207. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1928).
Johnson remains a vital source of spiritual and mental strength against the futility of modern brilliance. Reviewing the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Sampson argues that Boswell possesses no literary existence independent of Johnson, noting that Boswell’s digressions into the Prince’s Odyssey appear dull without the presence of the Doctor. The text highlights the quintessential nature of the Journal, specifically the storm sequence where Boswell’s fussiness contrasts with Johnson’s "philosophic tranquility." Turning to Hollis, Sampson critiques the work as a crude but sincere attempt by a young scholar to reclaim Johnson as a witness for intellectual honesty. While Sampson disputes Hollis’s dismissal of the Lives of the Poets and his slighting of the Dictionary, he commends the effort to present Johnson as an antidote to contemporary cant. The review emphasizes Johnson’s role in teaching readers to "clear their minds of cant," regardless of their personal alignment with his Toryism or Anglicanism.
The Eighteenth Century: Dr. Johnson and His Circle
Groom characterizes Johnson as the most conspicuous English writer between the eras of Pope and Wordsworth, despite arguing that his literary genius was surpassed by contemporaries like Burke and Gibbon. Groom identifies Johnson as a representative figure embodying eighteenth-century common sense whose primary dominance occurred in conversation rather than through direct literary influence. While Groom acknowledges Johnson's significant role as a lexicographer and critic, he suggests the concept of Johnson's 'literary dictatorship' is a delusion, noting that major works of the age were composed independently of his aid. Groom emphasizes that Johnson's enduring vividness is largely a product of Boswell's biographical art. He describes Boswell's work as revealing the qualities of mind and character that elicited profound admiration from the age's greatest figures. Groom concludes that Johnson remains a figure of note whose personality makes the literature of the eighteenth century a 'living thing' for subsequent readers.
Explores the central relationship in English biography. It details Boswell's first meeting with Johnson, noting Boswell's ambition, agitation, and immediate rebuffs. The book analyzes Boswell's independent life: his Grand Tour, pursuit of Zélide, celebrity-hunting (Rousseau, Voltaire, Paoli, Wilkes), and his Corsica book, which brought independent fame. Salpeter asserts Boswell's biographical impulse predated Johnson; he was a "promiscuous" collector of "memorabilia" for many figures. The text examines the interplay between the two. Johnson, fearing solitude and disliking writing, found Boswell's social stimulation essential. Boswell, in turn, found his life's purpose in recording Johnson, serving as a foil and goading the sage into talk. Boswell's reportorial methods—his vigilance, note-taking, and staged conversations (like the Johnson–Wilkes dinner)—are detailed. The book covers Johnson's life, his "seraglio" of dependents, his vast humanity and charity, his role as a conversational "gladiator," his personal eccentricities, prejudices, and "John Bullish" Toryism. Salpeter concludes that Boswell rescued Johnson from literary oblivion, ensuring his survival as history's most intimately-known figure.
Cochrane entry 11.
An Inaccurate Quotation from Dr. Johnson
Jenkins corrects a misquotation of Johnson's definition of a novel that appeared in a scholarly proceeding. He clarifies that Johnson defined a novel as "a small tale, generally of love," rather than the "smooth tale" erroneously cited. Jenkins traces the error to a lapse by Walter Scott in his Essays on Chivalry, Romance and the Drama, which was subsequently adopted without verification. He uses the correction to emphasize the necessity of verifying primary sources to avoid the blind guidance of established literary authorities.
CGV entry 10/6:213. On a quotation by Sir Walter Scott.
This presidential address, reprinted from the proceedings of the Johnson Society, examines Johnson’s lifelong connection to Lichfield. Roberts disputes Macaulay’s claim that Johnson’s philosophy "stopped at the first turnpike gate," arguing instead that Johnson remained an observant, if often bored, visitor to the provinces. The article traces Johnson's early education under Oliver, Hawkins, and Hunter, his desultory years in his father’s bookshop, and his "utter failure" as an under-master at Market Bosworth. Roberts emphasizes that Johnson’s London standard of intellectual conversation often made provincial life seem trivial, yet notes his enduring tenderness for figures like Lucy Porter and Catherine Chambers. The address highlights Johnson’s final 1784 visit, characterized by dropsical infirmity and a "revival of all the tenderness of filial affection" for the city where his "literary comet" first rose.
CGV entry 10/6:214. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield and in item 10/6:216.
Johnson upheld the "selective and universalising" doctrine of Augustanism with specific reservations, notably regarding the dramatic Unities. While observing them in Irene, his "deep admiration for Shakespeare" led him to conclude they were not a sine qua non for excellence. He restated classic theory in Rasselas, asserting through Imlac that the poet must examine the "species" rather than the "individual" and neglect "minuter discriminations" like the "streaks of the tulip." Johnson’s classicism is further evidenced by the Boileau-Juvenalian model of London and his vigorous defense of Pope’s status as a poet. Despite the "portentously solemn" reputation of "Johnsonese," the style conveys a "massiveness and firmness" rooted in ancient scholarship and traditional discipline. Johnson’s refusal to yield to the "spell" of the Highlands illustrates a probity that maintained the "sophisticated man" as the centre of the classic universe against rising romantic "myopia."
Originality in Johnson’s criticism constitutes a 'defence of the true' against the 'heresies of paradox' and 'artificial novelties.' Johnson identifies the 'stability of truth' as the only source of lasting pleasure, a principle guiding his assessments of Shakespeare, Milton, and the metaphysical poets. Despite 'ponderous trappings,' Johnson achieves critical discoveries regarding the 'just representations of general nature' that predate Wordsworth. His personal life reflects a 'lonely rebellion' against the age of Voltaire, marked by private devotion and a 'preoccupation' with death. Affection for 'Tetty' and friends like Boswell informs the 'grave elegiac quality' of his prose. In Rasselas, Johnson anticipates modern themes of aviation and provides 'daylight' imagery that likely influenced Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. Johnson’s 'conservatism' draws strength from permanent realities, culminating in a poetic vision where 'celestial wisdom' provides the happiness 'she does not find.'
CGV entry 10/6:219. On little-known aspects of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 115. Points out the limitations of Boswell's portrait, noting that he knew little of Johnson's early life and failed to capture key aspects of his personality, though the resulting depiction is still fundamentally true.
Johnson's England: An Account of the Life & Manners of His Age
Turberville's object is to depict English life and manners during the "Age of Johnson," defined as the last fifty years of Johnson's lifetime (starting roughly 1734). Contributors include Trevelyan, who cites Burke, Hume, and Smith as animating figures. The work draws on contemporary sources, including Chamberlayne's The Present State of England and Eden's The State of the Poor. Later scholarship notes the volume's omission of topics such as women authors and slavery.
CGV entry 10/6:220. Review by Harry Hayden Clark of the book edited by Arthur Stanley Turberville.
Tillotson reviews this two-volume survey, identifying Johnson as "eponymous" due to his "completest knowledge of books, of men, and of things." The text highlights Johnson's role as an "ingenious and inquiring amateur" in science. Tillotson identifies several errors, including a misidentified plate of Johnson and the Thrales that actually depicts the Garricks. The review notes the inclusion of a newly identified dedication by Johnson for Burney's account of Handel and clarifies that Johnson's "last published work" was the 1808 Tract on the Corn Laws.
CGV entry 10/6:220. Review by A. Tillotson of the book edited by Arthur Stanley Turberville.
A guide to Johnson's life, character, and works, providing a compact compendium of salient data. The book is organized in twelve chapters that move systematically through his literary career. It begins with an examination of Johnson's Biographers and his Character (Chapters I–II), followed by chapters dedicated to his major literary output: Poetical Works (III), Essays (IV), The Dictionary (V), Rasselas and Other Tales (VI), and his edition of Shakespeare (VII). The structure then covers his life experiences and less common writings: Travels (VIII), Letters (IX), Miscellaneous Works (X), and The Lives of the English Poets (XI). The final chapter provides context on Johnson and His Contemporaries (XII).
Tillotson reviews Struble's handbook, which aims to provide a compendium of salient data on Johnson's life, character, and principal works. Tillotson acknowledges the author's enthusiasm and useful bibliography but criticizes the book as uneven and sometimes misleading. Tillotson corrects several errors, including the implication that Johnson initially advised Boswell against publishing his book on Corsica, misrepresenting the cataloguing of the Harleian Library, and stating that the incentive for Johnson's Shakespeare was "chiefly mercenary." Tillotson also finds fault with Struble's stylistic choices and melodramatic tone, concluding the work is marred by carelessness.
CGV entry 10/6:221. Review by A. Tillotson of the book by Mildred C. Struble.
Rendall challenges the depiction of Johnson as a mere scholar, asserting that his 'morbid temperament' necessitated the company of natural, unlearned people over dull academics. Drawing on obscure sources and Johnson’s periodical writings, Rendall highlights Johnson’s vast knowledge of technical processes—such as brewing, tanning, and agriculture—and his genuine interest in the 'man in the street.' The text contrasts Johnson’s broad humanity with Boswell’s relative neglect of the common people in the 'Tour to the Hebrides.' Rendall details Johnson’s interactions with various figures, including tradesmen, a female thief, and children, illustrating his belief that the scholar’s life levels all distinctions of rank. Johnson is presented as a realist who rejected sentimentalism and cant, preferring the 'sedative influence' of leisure and quiet interchange over 'talk for victory.' Rendall concludes that Johnson’s 'English hatred of metaphysics' and focus on 'actualities' make him a perennial patron for those who value wisdom derived from life rather than books.
CGV entry 10/6:223. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
CGV entry 10/6:224. A general appreciation.
Holdsworth focuses on the intersection of eighteenth-century law and social history. He commends MacKinnon’s chapter on the legal profession for its "accurate and picturesque" description of the Inns of Court and the circuit system, though Holdsworth challenges MacKinnon’s characterization of Blackstone as an "incurable optimist." Holdsworth argues that Blackstone’s satisfaction with English institutions was "intelligent and discriminating" rather than blind. The review further examines the Hammonds’ contribution on poverty and crime, noting the lack of central control in Poor Law administration and the harsh realities of debt imprisonment. Holdsworth contextualizes agricultural and industrial transitions, defending the efficacy of the Corn Laws and highlighting the ubiquity of the Private Act of Parliament as a tool for reform. Ultimately, Holdsworth contrasts the individualism and "striving for perfection" of Johnson’s era with the perceived standardization of the twentieth century, asserting that the law of the period reflected a society where "career was open to talent" despite class barriers.
The Voice of England: A History of English Literature
Osgood defines Johnson as the eighteenth century's dominant dynamic genius, whose primary medium for creation was conversation that "cleared the mind of cant". This chapter traces Johnson's ascent from poverty in Lichfield to his role as a literary dictator in London, citing the Dictionary as his greatest achievement for its "pungent, racy wit". Osgood disputes characterizations of Johnson as a mere eccentric, emphasizing his "large heart and frame" and role as a "valiant enemy of social injustice". Analyzing Boswell, Osgood notes an "uncanny" ability to elicit personal aspects of great minds, arguing that Boswell is "essentially a dramatic artist" who used scrupulous accuracy to capture Johnson's "animating" influence. Piozzi is included among the "fascinating personalities" of this "golden age" who provided Johnson with twenty years of domestic comfort, enabling a brilliant period of literary history centered on the Literary Club.
Samuel Johnson after a Century and a Half
Coleman surveys Johnson's life and literary achievements a century and a half after his death. Johnson's personality, rather than his prose, endures, exemplified by Boswell's Life of Johnson, which captures the man's uncouth vigor and wit. Although Johnson excelled in prose, with the Dictionary of the English Language as his "magnum opus" and the Preface to Shakespeare's plays praised for its manly criticism, his Rambler and Idler essays are criticized for a "turgid" and "Gargantuan" style, which Goldsmith dubbed "Johnsonese." Coleman emphasizes Johnson's triumph over adversity, his pension, and his transformation into the conversational "dictator" of the Literary Club.
Every great man has his lighter moments. Dr. Johnson composed the “great whale” periods of the Rambler, made a Dictionary (itself at times very good light reading), edited Shakespeare, and in his old age wrote comfortably mellow and acute Lives of the Poets. He was much concerned about politics and religion. Prodded judiciously at intervals by Boswell, he discoursed wisely and wittily on such diverse subjects as matrimony, methods of shaving, and the wretchedness of a sea-life. He noted, as a traveller with an inquiring mind, the treelessness of Scotland and the grossness of French manners. But he had his undress moments, when he was neither author nor sage nor observer, and some of them were spent in reading novels.
CGV entry 10/6:228. On Johnson's reading of novels.
CGV entry 10/6:229. A general review of the period.
This presidential address argues that Johnson was a pioneer of "de-bunking" and a forward-thinking humanitarian. Stockley emphasizes that Johnson’s opposition to the slave trade and the "substitution of imperialism for morals" placed him ahead of his 18th-century contemporaries. The article cites Johnson’s 1775 inquiry regarding the "yell for liberty" from "drivers of negroes" as a definitive critique of American colonial hypocrisy. Stockley draws parallels between Johnson’s settled belief in reason and the contemporary need to resist European dictators who "empty reason" from the minds of subjects. The report also documents the annual dinner, where McCallum discusses Johnson’s institutional loyalty to Pembroke College, Oxford, and Moseley extols the "wonderful traditions" of the Lichfield Grammar School. Brief mention is made of Seward’s conversion to anti-slavery views via Josiah Wedgwood.
CGV entry 10/6:231. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Dr. Johnson—Idler, Rambler, and Straggler
CGV entry 10/6:237. On Whitman's opinion of Johnson.
Zwischen Traum und Tat: Englische Profile
Williams analyzes Johnson’s intellectual focus on moral philosophy and biography. He defines Johnsonian philosophy as an ethical pursuit, contrasting it with the metaphysical and empirical inquiries of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The text highlights Johnson’s rejection of physical science in favor of "speculations upon life" and moral conduct. Williams examines biographical theories, emphasizing the necessity of personal acquaintance and the revelation of character through "domestic privacy" rather than public achievement. Williams demonstrates how Johnson preserves "trifles with dignity" to instruct readers. Williams also notes Boswell’s fascination with Hume and the subsequent meeting between Johnson and the philosopher.
CGV entry 10/6:239. On philosophy and biography.
Chesterton contrasts the "dead and mechanical" nature of the Dictionary with Johnson's "vital and spirited" soul, noting that conversation reflects a miscellaneous, accurate, and varied truth-telling. He distinguishes between the Works and the Life, characterizing Johnson as a "splendidly sane man who knew he was a little mad." While the Boswellian revelation reveals a kaleidoscope of camaraderie and laughter, Johnson's writings represent his "black hours" and temperamental melancholy. Chesterton asserts that Johnson felt a judicial responsibility when writing, which suppressed the "superb exaggerations" triggered by social collision. Johnson remains the "mighty voice of all flesh" due to his heroic honesty regarding the fear of death and his "ecstasy of impartiality" when viewing the ages.
Perilous Balance: The Tragic Genius of Swift, Johnson, and Sterne
This monograph employs a psychographic approach to examine Johnson’s lifelong battle against melancholia and his "perilous balance" between a "tumultuous" imagination and a disciplined will. Watkins argues that Johnson, unlike Swift or Sterne, achieved a degree of "ripeness" by using self-discipline and reason as a "fortress" against the "dangerous prevalence of the imagination." The text analyzes Johnson’s "defensive pride" and his obsession with death, noting how his fear of annihilation fueled an immense vitality and a "secret horror of the last." Watkins uses Prayers and Meditations to trace Johnson’s relentless self-analysis and his use of "la bagatelle" as a psychological protection against solitude. By comparing Johnson to Elizabethan tragic figures, particularly Hamlet, Watkins highlights a "dichotomy of personality" where intellect serves as both a weapon and a motivating force for moral survival. The study details Johnson’s personal habits, such as his chemistry experiments and "little language," interpreting them as strategies to "escape from himself" and stave off "incipient madness." Ultimately, Watkins contends that Johnson’s "triumphant sanity" was a hard-won heritage maintained through a "vein of iron" and an unswerving devotion to objective truth over subjective delusion.
CGV entry 10/6:242. A later edition was published in 1960.
Established an influential interpretive paradigm for understanding three major authors. The core argument of the book centers on the profound psychological tension and heroic struggle against inner turmoil experienced by its subjects, particularly Johnson, who is specifically given the title's laurel. Watkins emphasized Johnson's "tragic sense of life," presenting his existence as a heroic struggle against the constant "threat of insanity." This interpretive school focused on Johnson's darker side—his acute awareness of evil and horror of death—and his "deep-rooted psychic maladjustment," which required holding powerful inner forces in check. The metaphor of "perilous balance" describes the necessity of maintaining equilibrium against the savage or ferocious (saevus) elements of Johnson’s temperament throughout his life. Watkins demonstrates the crucial link between Johnson's public works and his private psychological conflicts, arguing that his life became a "brighter lesson than his page." Applying this tragic vision to the other authors, Watkins interprets Sterne's signature wit as the desperate "heroism of a dying man," viewing Yorick as both jester and death's head. Perilous Balance is recognized as a pioneering work that began recent scholarship focusing on Johnson's tragic sense of life and psychological complexity.
Pottle accepts Watkins's orthodox portrayal of Johnson’s self-discipline but suggests the study over-ennobles Swift and Sterne to maintain its critical symmetry. He identifies Watkins’s "partial" portraits as a successful impressionistic device for organizing complex biographical evidence. While appreciating the synthesis of Johnsonian sources, Pottle corrects specific biographical errors regarding Johnson’s religious anxieties and clarifies the nature of Hawkins's evidence concerning Johnson's remorse.
CGV entry 10/6:242. Review by F. A. Pottle of the book by Walter B. C. Watkins.
Johnson Without Boswell: A Contemporary Portrait of Samuel Johnson
This collected portrait compiles excerpts from various sources to present a portrait of Samuel Johnson separate from James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, offering a more domestic and less alarming view. The volume, lacking scholarly notes, is targeted at students of English literature and the general public already acquainted with the author and biographer. Sources include Johnson’s letters and autobiographical fragments, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi’s Anecdotes, Sir John Hawkins’s Life, and accounts from individuals such as Fanny Burney, Anna Seward, Hannah More, and Frances Reynolds. The editorially pieced narrative focuses on Johnson’s personality and domestic arrangements—specifically his family-like household—to redress a perceived imbalance caused by Boswell’s alleged "hero-worship," with analysis of Johnson's literary achievements being slight. It offers psychological interpretations, such as the proposition that Johnson’s penance at Uttoxeter was an apology to God. This selection, an early 20th-century biographical attempt, functions as a supplement to Boswell and an example of consolidating Johnson's reputation independent from his biographer. Most reviews are positive. In NYTBR, an unsigned notice describes the edited compilation as an interesting footnote to biography, noting it presents a more human and less static figure. Brodribb, in TLS, observes that the collection of contemporary accounts portrays a true character when the principal biographer was absent. Krutch, in The Nation, finds that the anecdotes confirm a consistent image across different temperamental reporters, capturing a superb sense of fun. In the New Statesman and Nation, Stonier calls the book a successful attempt to offer a more moving portrait, highlighting friendships with female contemporaries. Chew's approving review in the New York Herald Tribune describes the collection as a delightful supplement that fills chronological gaps regarding youth. In the Saturday Review of Literature, Bacon validates the arrangement of non-Boswellian sources but concludes that the text ultimately does more to highlight the invincible abilities of the absent biographer. Evans, in the New Republic, notes the recovery of tenderness, gayety, and loneliness, though he regrets the failure to include major prose works. Two unsigned notices in the Spectator praise the de-Boswellised depiction of profound melancholy and exquisite tenderness. But Vulliamy provides a critique in the Spectator, dismissing the volume as a careless patchwork affair that lacks original research, systematic dating, or scholarly depth. Wecter, in the American Historical Review, concludes that despite the valuable feminine point of view regarding illness and pathos, the traditional portrait remains a compelling reality.
CGV entry 10/6:244. A portrait from non-Boswellian sources.
Knox examines Johnson as a wit who overflowed "common water-courses" to provide a "saline deposit" for future ages. While dismissing Johnson's purely personal "ill manners" and "boisterous" repartee, Knox identifies his unique flavor in the sudden penetration of hackneyed subjects, such as his views on "religious toleration" and "corporal punishment." Johnson’s style often employs a "polysyllable" to act as "ballast," illustrated by his remark on the "labefactation of all principles" in The Beggar’s Opera. Knox disputes that Johnson used long words out of necessity, citing his monosyllabic vigor when discussing "inclination" over "reason" in marriage. Regarding the Scots, Knox suggests Johnson pulls Boswell’s leg with "subtly malicious" humor, such as comparing Scottish learning to "bread in a besieged city." Despite occasional "ferocities in argument," Johnson remained "singularly gentle" with Boswell, as seen in his refusal to teaze him about night-caps or his playful request for a sixpence "not to be repaid."
Knox characterizes Johnson as the 'prince of biographees' whose wit derives from sudden penetration of thought and a revolt against contemporary cant. He challenges the definition of Johnson as a mere producer of 'wisecracks,' arguing instead that his genius lies in generalization and coining ballast-heavy phrases to record a judicial standpoint. Knox examines Johnson's 'subtly malicious' pulling of Boswell's leg and his genuine, if ill-defined, quarrel with the Scots, whom Johnson viewed as a 'real menace' of Presbyterianism and Whiggery. The text highlights Johnson's ready habit of spontaneous illustration—comparing legal recommendations to being 'thrown out of a two-pair-of-stairs window'—and his impish capacity for irresponsible levity. Knox concludes that Johnson's understanding possessed an unexampled range, focusing his fancy on even the most insignificant subjects to illuminate the concrete realities of life.
CGV entry 10/6:245. Reprinted from 'English Wits' (1940).
Noyes, in this address to the Johnson Society, asserts that Johnson's character and intellect were defined by a "true originality" that prioritized the "stability of truth" over "mere novelty." Disputing Macaulay's depiction of Boswell as an "inspired idiot," Noyes contends that Johnson's own personality provided the essential material for the "Life." Noyes highlights Johnson's "ineradicable delight" in "let's pretend" and identifies "Rasselas" as a likely source for Coleridge’s "Kubla Khan." Noyes defends Johnson's critical powers as "great in its grasp of first principles," particularly regarding the "vanity of human wishes" and the dramatic weaknesses of Shakespeare. The text emphasizes Johnson's profound "awareness" of eternity and his "infinite courage" in the face of death, concluding that his formal couplets reflect the "passion of an immortal and unconquerable spirit."
Osgood champions Johnson as an essential literary companion for maintaining mental and spiritual equilibrium. He characterizes Johnson's style not as "ponderous" but as a precise instrument for "truth-telling" and the "unmasking of human pretensions." Osgood argues that Johnson’s greatness stems from a profound "piety" and a tragic sense of life, balanced by a "massive common sense" that provides a bulwark against sentimentalism. He highlights "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and "Rasselas" as foundational texts that offer "solace through reality." The article asserts that Johnson’s physical and mental struggles—his "convulsive starts" and "hypochondria"—only deepen the authority of his moral counsel. Osgood insists that engaging with Johnson’s biography and works fosters a "manly" resilience, concluding that Johnson remains the "greatest restorative" in English letters for those seeking intellectual honesty and "spiritual health."
Kronenberger provides a social chronicle of eighteenth-century England, emphasizing manners, tastes, and personalities over traditional diplomatic history. The text examines the transition from the 'cold wit' and 'malicious tongue' of the age of Anne to the increasingly bourgeois and modern era of the Georges. Central to the narrative are the roles of well-known figures such as Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi in the cultural and social landscape. Kronenberger describes Johnson as a 'complete and obstinate Tory' whose gouty independence and conversational powers dominated his period, despite his aesthetic judgments often being 'neatly and plausibly' wrong. The text details Johnson's long residence at Streatham with Piozzi, whose vivacity as a hostess provided him with a necessary 'soothing' influence. Boswell is characterized as the disciple whose meticulous recording raised Johnson's life of talk to 'the level of a life of action.' Kronenberger argues that while the Augustan writers were often účastníci in a world unworthy of them, Johnson remained a 'repressive force' who preserved the classical tradition against the rising tide of sentiment. The monograph concludes that Johnson's death marked the end of the age that bore his name, transitioning into the revolutionary tremors of the late century.
CGV entry 10/6:251. With a Persian translation by L. Suratgar. A lecture given at the University of Teheran, November 2, 1943, by the British Ambassador.
Wood traces Johnson's life from his impoverished youth in Lichfield and incomplete education at Oxford to his final years as the 'Great Bear' of London's literary scene. Wood emphasizes Johnson’s 'sturdy independence,' particularly evidenced in his 1755 letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, which signaled the shift from private patronage to public support. The article highlights Johnson's monumental achievement with the Dictionary and his influential Preface to Shakespeare, where Johnson successfully challenges the three dramatic unities. Wood also discusses Johnson’s religious devotion and his struggle against melancholia. As a critic, Johnson is described as a 'thoughtful conservative' who valued nature and reason over mechanical rules. Wood concludes that Johnson's personality, marked by kindness to the unfortunate and a 'tender heart,' remains as significant as his written contributions.
Tucker defends Johnson against Macaulay’s "egregious caricature," asserting that Johnson’s "craggy mind" and "colloquial eloquence" represent his truest self-expression. He identifies "The Dictionary," "Rasselas," and "The Lives of the Poets" as Johnson’s most significant works, noting that "Lives" remains the "most popular and the most readable." Tucker credits Johnson with establishing criticism on the "foundation of common sense." While acknowledging Johnson’s "intellectual timidity" in understanding Berkeleian idealism, he emphasizes the subject's "melting charity" and "force of character." Tucker concludes that it is for his "personality rather than for his writings" that Johnson remains a "household word," noting that Boswell’s "faithful" portrayal provides a "verisimilitude" that ensures Johnson's enduring fame.
University of California Publications in English
Bronson challenges the image of Johnson as a "glacial deposit" of expended force, emphasizing instead a lifelong "ferment and tumult" of nature. This article identifies a fundamental opposition between Johnson’s "volcanic" temperament and his intellectual adherence to authoritarian principles. Bronson uses early political tracts like Marmor Norfolciense to demonstrate a youthful radicalism that later evolved into a conservatism defined by active resistance to dominant Enlightenment forces. Johnson avoids metaphysical systems, preferring a "pragmatic ear" for truth grounded in human experience. His religious faith is depicted not as joyous acceptance but as a "strenuous" fight against innate skepticism, driven by a dread of death and a recognition of human misery. Bronson argues Johnson remains a born fighter whose "athletic" style and aggressive mind never cooled with age.
Bronson investigates the "volcanic" nature of Johnson, whose ebullient temperament and aggressive physical courage often contradicted his intellectual commitment to conservative authority. Challenging the image of Johnson as a "glacial deposit" of expended force, the text argues that his later reactionary positions required "more vigorous effort" than his youthful radicalism. Bronson highlights Johnson's deep humanitarianism, evidenced by his "earnest desire" to make the poor happy and his vehement opposition to slavery and imprisonment for debt. Johnson’s conservatism is presented not as passive resistance but as a strenuous, self-contradictory affirmance of order against the "cascades" of eighteenth-century innovative thought represented by Rousseau and Hume.
CGV entry 10/6:254. Reprinted from 'Johnson and Boswell: Three Essays' (1944).
Addresses Made before the Friends of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library of Tulane University
Cochrane entry 542. Asserts that, contrary to Macaulay's judgment, the evidence of the private papers confirms Boswell was both "a considerable literary figure" and "a very great man."
CGV entry 10/6:256. Also issued as a separate pamphlet by Oxford University Press in 1944.
Johnson, though fundamentally a neo-classicist, exhibited traits aligned with later romanticism. He challenged numerous neo-classic canons, repudiating the unities of time and place, mythological poetry, and the five-act structure in drama. Johnson advocated for originality and invention over imitation, placing "Reason's rules" and nature (human nature) above ancient authority. His interests spanned antiquarianism, feudalism, travel, and the minute details of common life, and he valued imagination, genius, and spontaneous expression. His constitutional melancholy and sentimental Jacobitism further suggest a temperament susceptible to romantic feeling.
CGV entry 10/6:257. See also comments by Arthur Friedman and Louis Landa in Philological Quarterly, volume 24 (April 1945), pages 148–149.
This review of Joseph Wood Krutch's Samuel Johnson (1944), reprinted from The Kenyon Review, disputes the middlebrow cult of Johnson as a mere clubman, asserting his status as a serious highbrow writer whose public standards transcended ordinary levels. Leavis uses Krutch's biography to explore Johnson's complex Toryism and his intense hatred of slavery, characterizing his orthodoxy as a functional preference for social unity over bigoted conviction. While praising Krutch's biographical skill, Leavis challenges his failure to appreciate Johnson's poetry, specifically The Vanity of Human Wishes. He argues that Johnson's generalizing style provides a weight of achieved substance that captures profoundly representative experience. Leavis details Johnson's critical limitations regarding Shakespeare, noting that his Augustan training prevented him from fully grasping Shakespeare’s exploratory-creative use of language. He concludes that Johnson's strength lies in his role as a conscious voice of a positive civilization that demanded individual expression exemplify social discipline.
CGV entry 10/6:259. Reprinted from The Kenyon Review (1946).
Boswell survives as a small personality who performed a great task, ensuring Johnson’s reputation through a miracle of appreciation. Without Boswell, Johnson would likely command only a single chapter in literary history. Boswell's genius lies in his infatuation, recording "the grotesque appearance, the uncouth mannerisms, the twenty cups of tea" and other trivia that create a living portrait. While Johnson was a kindly man and wrote excellent prefaces, he was not a great thinker; his renown as a dictator of letters rests on his conversations recorded by Boswell. Krutch’s biography of Johnson offers a cool, witty, and scholarly treatment for modern readers, though it lacks warmth for Boswell.
Cochrane entry 157.
CGV entry 10/6:264. See Transactions of the Johnson Society.
This collection, introduced by G. K. Chesterton, presents Samuel Johnson through key extracts from his works. Chesterton emphasizes that Johnson is more vividly known through Boswell's Life than his own writings, attributing this to Johnson's dislike of solitude and his need for companionship to counter his inherent melancholy. His books reflect his solitary, sadder, but brave inner self. Chesterton identifies a core comedic contradiction in Johnson: a sincere belief in convention coupled with a profound inability to observe it. He defends Johnson against the charge of merely "talking for victory," highlighting his intellectual honesty and "gigantic good sense." Johnson's writings, including the Dictionary plan, Rasselas, Lives of the Poets, essays, and letters, are presented as lucid, forceful, and possessing a timeless relevance, even when seemingly old-fashioned. He faced life's hardships and the fear of death with uncommon courage and deep religious feeling, achieving a detached impartiality.
CGV entry 10/6:266. See Transactions of the Johnson Society.
Radbruch explores the unique cultural status of Johnson, whose literary works are largely forgotten while his personality remains a folk icon in England. This phenomenon results from Boswell’s biography, which Radbruch identifies as a 'gramophone' that preserves Johnson's 'scurrilous' yet representative English character through exhaustive detail and transcribed conversation. Radbruch analyzes Johnson as the 'true-born Englishman' who combined Toryism and rationalism while battling physical and mental illness with 'manly and complainless' fortitude. Boswell’s innovation lies in rejecting idealized hagiography for a fact-based 'description of life and man,' including health and economic foundations. Radbruch highlights Johnson’s opposition to 'cant'—sentimental affectation—and his 'sport-like' discussion style, asserting that understanding Johnson’s complexities, from his 'Schotten-Idiosynkrasie' to his 'talking for victory,' is essential to comprehending the English national character.
CGV entry 10/6:267. Reprinted from 'Gestalten und Gedanken' (1948).
Tribute to Walter De la Mare on His Seventy-fifth Birthday
CGV entry 10/6:268. Discusses Johnson's view of "imagination," fairies, and 'The Fountains'.
Sherburn characterizes Johnson as the definitive representative of his period, balancing his identity as a 'psychological eccentric' immortalized by Boswell with his status as a man of 'typical mind.' The text surveys Johnson’s major literary contributions, beginning with his early Juvenalian satires and the 'marmoreal gloom' of his poetry. Sherburn examines the Dictionary (1755) as a monumental achievement in defining English lexicography and discusses the edition of Shakespeare (1765) for its 'interpretative and historical' depth. Central to Johnson’s intellectual profile is his 'profoundly realistic' moralism, exemplified in Rasselas, and his 'manly sense' of literary judgment in the Lives of the Poets. Sherburn further explores Johnson’s conservative political and religious views, rooted in the principle of subordination, and concludes with a stylistic analysis of Johnson’s prose, which he deems a 'true Palladian' architecture of language—noble, dignified, and structurally precise.
CGV entry 10/6:269. A second edition, revised by Donald F. Bond, was published in 1967.
The Classical Background of English Literature
Thomson surveys the Greco-Roman influence on English letters, positioning Johnson as a primary defender of the Dryden-Pope tradition against emerging romanticism. Johnson used his extensive knowledge of Latin literature to shape a prose style heavily charged with Roman vocabulary and grammatical structure. In his verse satires, Johnson imitated Juvenal to achieve a moral dignity that Thomson argues surpassed his classical model. While Johnson rejected the artificiality of eighteenth-century pastorals and Greek mythological ornament, he maintained a profound belief in the intrinsic value of the classics as models for modern writers. Thomson notes that Johnson's scholarly approach differed from the more accurate Greek learning of Thomas Gray, yet Johnson remained a formidable advocate for classical standards in his critical work. The text highlights Johnson's ability to balance classical bias with independent judgment, frequently ranking English masters like Shakespeare and Milton above ancient poets.
Samuel Johnson: II. The Unaccountable Companion
Tinker disputes the "tendency to regard Johnson" as a "typical Englishman" or a symbol of the eighteenth century, noting his unique Christian faith and lack of "self-possession." Johnson surrendered to "fleeting prejudice" and "picturesque extravagance," openly expressing affection for his "black servant" and "cats." He lacked the "English love of sport," and his indifference to music, plastic arts, and history—famously thinking about "Tom Thumb" during talk of the "Punic Wars"—marks him as an "uncourtly scholar" with narrow interests. Tinker argues Johnson functioned as the "great irritant of his circle," bringing a "continuous stream of ideas" to "humdrum" life. His "enduring fascination" arises because he is a "genius" yet a "fretful, sinful, and hungry creature" who belongs to the same world as his readers, burdened by "disease and disappointment."
McCutcheon presents a comprehensive survey of the "Age of Enlightenment," tracing the evolution of literary forms from the neoclassical dominance of Pope and Swift to the transitional period marked by the rise of the novel and the romantic revival. A central chapter is devoted to Johnson, whom McCutcheon describes as physically and intellectually towering over his generation. The text details Johnson's major literary contributions—including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets—while emphasizing his role as a conversationalist and moralist who preferred "general nature" over local particulars. Boswell is characterized not as an "inspired idiot" but as a diligent artist and irrepressible social observer whose Life of Johnson serves as the ultimate contemporary documentation of the era. McCutcheon also integrates Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale) as a witty and perceptive reporter of Johnson's circle, noting her Anecdotes as a vital source of Johnsoniana. The monograph examines how these figures navigated the transition from "The Town"-centered literature of the early century to a broader interest in the primitive, the medieval, and the rural. McCutcheon argues that the century's literature is defined by a "tolerant and unhurried wisdom" and a "fine sense of form" that remained grounded in human nature even as it moved toward the emotional freedom of the Romantic movement.
Bredvold's chapter on Samuel Johnson presents the writer as an uncompromising realist whose constitutional melancholia, though painful, fueled a tonic moral wisdom. The narrative chronicles Johnson's transition from the poverty of hack work for the Gentleman’s Magazine to his role as a literary sage, highlighting his "manly independence" in the celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield. Bredvold details the production of the Dictionary, the first based inductively on passages from established authors, and describes major poetic works such as London and The Vanity of Human Wishes as chastening contemplations of man's "treacherous phantoms." The chapter explores Johnson's moral essays in The Rambler and The Idler, his philosophical tale Rasselas, and his robust common-sense approach in the 1765 edition of Shakespeare. Bredvold characterizes Johnson's intellectual life as a "losing battle" against the rising tide of sentimental literature and deistic optimism. The account emphasizes Johnson's capacity for friendship within the Literary Club and his role in "sobering the enthusiasts" of the mid-eighteenth century.
Butt places Johnson within the Augustan tradition, noting his reputation was established well before his meeting with Boswell. The chapter details Johnson's early struggles as a bookseller's hack and his eventual mastery of scholarship through the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare. Butt emphasizes Johnson's 'mind always ready for use' and his ability to apply moral generalizations to specific human contexts. The Dictionary is described as a standardizing instrument intended to preserve 'purity' and ascertain 'meaning', though experience taught Johnson that language cannot be embalmed. In his criticism, Johnson moved away from Dryden's artist-centric approach to focus on forming the reader's judgment, appealing to 'the hearts and minds of his readers'. Butt concludes that Johnson's biographical work, including Lives of the Poets, maintains a moral purpose identical to that of Addison, Swift, and Pope: the 'great art' of mending the world through the study of life and manners.
CGV entry 10/6:279.
Wilson reviews Krutch's biography, praising its scholarly independence and use of modern psychology to analyze Johnson. Wilson asserts that Boswell and Thomas Babington Macaulay's caricatures historically supplanted Johnson’s own literary achievements, reducing him to a "grotesque and banal" figure. Krutch successfully restores Johnson as a premier English writer and critic. Wilson disputes Krutch’s undervaluing of Johnson’s poetry, particularly London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting that these works reflect a "scarifying experience of hardship." Wilson identifies Johnson’s preface and commentary on Shakespeare as brilliant English criticism reflecting a mind not "cramped by the taste of its age." The article emphasizes that Johnson’s dolorous and somber tone derives from lived miseries including toil, envy, and want. Wilson concludes that Krutch’s work provides a necessary, lucid analysis that rescues Johnson from his status as a "posthumous" character in Boswell’s diary.
CGV entry 10/6:280. The London edition was published in 1951.
CGV entry 10/6:280. Reprinted from 'Classics and Commercials' (1950).
Wilson reviews Joseph Wood Krutch's biography of Johnson, praising its use of modern psychology and independent judgment to restore Johnson's literary importance. He argues that Boswell and Macaulay have turned Johnson into a "character in an eighteenth century comedy of manners" or a "monster," overshadowing his status as one of the best English writers. Wilson disputes Krutch's underrating of Johnson's poetry, asserting that Johnson's scarifying experience of hardship gives his work emotional depth. He maintains that Johnson’s criticism responds to the "humanity of Shakespeare" and the "wit of Pope" with acute perspective, challenging academic tendencies to undermine great subjects.
Democritus, Arise! A Study of Johnson's Humour
A foundational essay in modern Johnson studies, essential in defining the emerging scholarly consensus by distinguishing between the two competing images of Johnson. Bronson identifies the popular "Boswellian" image of Johnson as an eccentric personality, popularized by Macaulay's caricature, and the "learned" Johnson established through academic study of his own works. He focuses on the tragic sense of life ("Johnson Agonistes"). This essay provides a classic formulation for the challenge facing modern Johnsonians, helping to shift the focus from Johnson's eccentric biography toward his writings. The critical reception was highly positive; the book contributed fundamentally to the necessary shift in attitude toward Johnson in the 1950s, helping to rescue him from neglect, and Bronson’s work served as a model for later critical essays.
Reprinted in Eighteenth-Century English Literature: Modern Essays in Criticism (1959) and Johnson Agonistes (1965).
Eighteenth-Century English Literature: Modern Essays in Criticism
Bronson argues that Samuel Johnson survives through a "double tradition": a learned tradition rooted in his written works and a popular tradition focused on his "habit as he lived." While the learned tradition underwent a "major reorientation" from nineteenth-century deprecation to modern "discriminating" appreciation, the popular tradition remains a "folk-image" of physical bulk, "bad manners," and "weighty speech" largely fixed by Macaulay. Bronson suggests Johnson’s "conservatism" was a positive, "strenuous" effort to preserve the "best elements of English life" against moral "degeneracy." He disputes the view of Johnson as a "stubborn resistance to change," portraying him instead as a man of "radical intemperance" who used "orthodoxy" as a "tight rein" to maintain sanity and "self-government."
CGV entry 10/6:283. Reprinted from ELH (1951).
Bronson examines the bifurcated legacy of Johnson, distinguishing between the popular, anecdotal image fostered by Boswell and the intellectual stature of Johnson as a writer and critic. The essay addresses how Boswell's dramatic portrayal often obscured the "solidity and permanence" of Johnson’s own literary contributions. Bronson argues for a recovery of the "writer Johnson," whose works like 'The Rambler' and 'The Lives of the Poets' provide a more accurate reflection of his philosophical depth than his conversational "tossings and gorings." By analyzing the "double tradition," Bronson seeks to reconcile the colorful character of the 'Life' with the serious moralist and lexicographer whose influence defined the English neoclassical tradition.
Quotes a passage from Willis's Current Notes (1851), which claims George III kept a private notebook of opinions on people and events, often using Shakespearean quotations. The note cites the King's 1778 opinions on Dr. Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Johnson, the latter being a dismissive quotation from Love's Labour Lost about verbosity.
CGV entry 10/6:285.
Macaulay on Croker, Boswell, and Johnson
Boswell’s Life is an assured world classic and portrays Johnson’s character, notably emphasizing his conversations and anecdotes. The Life often reveals Johnson’s use of private papers, such as his journals. Critiques of the Life frequently focus on the relationship between the author and the central figure.
Chapman compiles various essays and reviews that primarily investigate the literary remains and social history of Samuel Johnson and his contemporaries. The collection includes detailed inquiries into the bibliography of Johnson’s writings, the provenance of his letters, and the accuracy of established editions of his work. Chapman examines the reliability of Boswell as a biographer, frequently addressing the challenges of identifying Johnsonian "canons" and the editorial history of the Life of Johnson. Several essays offer critical assessments of Hester Lynch Piozzi, analyzing her editorial liberties and her unique position within the Streatham circle. Through a series of book reviews and scholarly notes, Chapman evaluates the contributions of 20th-century editors and collectors to the field of 18th-century studies. The work is characterized by a commitment to rigorous textual criticism and the elucidation of obscure biographical details concerning Johnson, Boswell, and their associates.
CGV entry 10/6:287. Reprints numerous essays listed separately.
Cochrane entry 567.
De Sélincourt characterizes Johnson as the focal point of eighteenth-century social and literary history, embodying the era's complexities through his unique blend of intellectual arrogance and moral humility. The text traces Johnson's life from his impoverished beginnings in Lichfield and a truncated Oxford education to his eventual dominance as the "monarch of literary London." De Sélincourt emphasizes Johnson’s physical ailments and "constitutional black melancholy" as essential counterpoints to his robust sociability and "divine tenderness of heart." Highlighting major achievements like the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets, the article argues that Johnson's greatness rests less on his writing than on his "sovereign sanity" and refusal of "cant." De Sélincourt maintains that Johnson's uncompromising honesty and practical wisdom allowed him to bring literature to the "test of real life." The narrative concludes by portraying Johnson as an "eminently sane and practical" thinker whose enduring vitality springs from direct experience and a profound, albeit morbid, religious humility.
The Augustan World: Life and Letters in Eighteenth-Century England
Humphreys explores the "Spirit of the Time" through a cross-disciplinary analysis of Augustan literature's social and historical foundations. The study characterizes the era by its "social sympathy" and a divinely ordained sense of subordination that provided stability amidst burgeoning industrial and commercial change. Humphreys emphasizes the centrality of London as the "full tide of existence," while noting that the country remained a vital supplement for both life and letters. Johnson appears as the capital’s "sturdiest admirer," whose work—alongside that of Swift, Pope, and Fielding—reflects a society toughened by "harsh and violent" forces. The text details the rise of the middle-class reader and the transition from aristocratic patronage to a popular market, which fundamentally altered the economics of authorship for writers like Johnson and Pope. Humphreys argues that Augustan literature is "soberly humanistic," focusing on man in society rather than the individual soul. By examining the "intermingling" of social institutions like coffee-houses and the "corporate activity" of the Town, Humphreys describes a world where personality remained significant within a comprehended system of order and balance.
CGV entry 10/6:289. Discusses Johnson passim.
Bate’s critical study won the Christian Gauss Prize for brilliantly synthesizing biography and criticism, focusing on Johnson’s intellectual and philosophical profundity. It provides an "overarching account of his whole oeuvre" and synthesizes Johnson’s intellectual life and psychological complexity. Bate draws on the tradition of the "learned critical essay," citing Bertrand H. Bronson's work as a model. Bate argues Johnson's life itself was a "parable" or a "Life of Allegory," upon which his works served as comments. The argument is psychological and moral, contending that Johnson's immense intellectual achievement stemmed from his struggle against profound inner conflicts, such as unsatisfiable desire, self-deception, and the pervasive "vacuity of life." Bate, focusing on Johnson's own writings (particularly the Rambler, Vanity, and Rasselas), demonstrates that Johnson's moral philosophy was an effort to manage these emotional drives and redirect them toward constructive, altruistic ends, emphasizing self-realization as the goal of activity. The work integrated biography and criticism, establishing Johnson's identity as a serious moral writer and thinker whose thought proceeds "like that of experience itself," distinguishing him from the earlier perception of him as merely an amusing conversationalist. Chapter 1, "A Life of Allegory," addresses the dramatic trajectory of Samuel Johnson’s life, demonstrating how his fierce intellectual triumphs over psychological distress, physical infirmities, and profound poverty served as a poignant model for general human experience. Chapter 2, "The Hunger of Imagination," argues that the human mind suffers from a chronic vacuity born of an inability to stay focused on the present, which relentlessly drives individuals toward illusory secondary pursuits like wealth, travel, or pedantic learning to obtain supplementary satisfaction. Chapter 3, "The Treachery of the Human Heart and the Stratagems of Defense," exposes the subconscious defense mechanisms, such as repression, projection, envy, and self-delusion, that anxious individuals adapt to escape their internal insecurities and pull down competitors. Chapter 4, "The Stability of Truth," outlines the essential psychological struggle between debilitating indolence and the redemptive force of objective reason, emphasizing that a healthy mind manages its anxieties by actively focusing outward onto external reality. Chapter 5, "Johnson as a Critic: The Form and Function of Literature," addresses how Samuel Johnson evaluated literature, emphasizing that enduring writing must avoid artificial rules to mirror universal human nature and help readers endure life. Critical reception of Walter Jackson Bate’s The Achievement of Samuel Johnson is highly favorable, with popular and scholarly critics unified in praising its rehabilitation of Johnson as a profound thinker rather than a mere conversational eccentric. Reviews in prominent publications lead this consensus. Chapman's review in the TLS calls it an ambitious, attractive, and friendly book that maintains a rigorous standard of accuracy. In the NYTBR, Altick praises Bate for demonstrating how Johnson distilled a solution for human frustration from a relentless analysis of motivation. Jordan-Smith's review in the LA Times describes the work as a manual of courage and inspiration, highlighting the tonic message of Johnson’s fight against physical and mental handicaps. Specialized scholarly journals echo this praise while offering technical critiques. Clifford, in the JNL, hails the volume as an essential statement on Johnson’s literary significance that positions him as a supreme prose stylist and profound thinker. In the RES, Bryce enthusiastically calls it one of the most moving contributions to Johnsonian scholarship, praising the exploration of craft and character. However, minor reservations emerge regarding methodology. Kolb, in PQ, praises Bate’s eloquence but notes that the thematic approach subordinates Johnson's versatility and contains several factual inaccuracies. Hagstrum, in MP, offers a more mixed evaluation, disputing Bate's reliance on psychoanalysis over traditional logic and identifying verbal and stylistic confusions that entangle meaning. Similarly, Sherbo, in JEGP, criticizes the biographical chapter for presenting an unbalanced, distorted portrait of Johnson's psychological state and marital life.
Bate's Achievement of Samuel Johnson offers a needed summa of the revised modern estimate of Johnson, moving beyond the distorted nineteenth-century caricature. The book honors Johnson's dual claim to attention: his profound personality and his works. Bate argues that Johnson's conflicts and tensions are synthesized by a "dynamic conservatism" and that his moral writings are rooted in three cardinal axioms of human motivation: "the hunger of the imagination," "the treachery of the human heart," and "the stability of truth." The work highlights Johnson's enduring humanism and utility for contemporary readers.
CGV entry 10/6:291. Review by E. R. Marks of the book by Walter Jackson Bate.
Review by Emerson M Marks of The Achievement of Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate.
Bate's Achievement of Samuel Johnson focuses on the personality and works of Johnson, often drawing heavily on Boswell's Life. Sherbo notes a "confusion" between the voice of the author and Johnson's voice, leading to "patchwork" sentences where Bate's interpretation is interwoven with Johnson's words. Sherbo criticizes Bate’s biographical chapter for presenting an "unbalanced and distorted" portrait of Johnson, particularly regarding his marriage to Tetty and his psychological state. The review contests Bate's assertion that Johnson had little sense of guilt or fright from indolence between 1766 and 1781, citing numerous entries in Prayers and Meditations that belie this claim. However, the book provides "fresh insights" into Johnson's mind, such as his reasons for immoderate laughter and his resolutions to overcome physical eccentricities.
CGV entry 10/6:291.
Bate examines Johnson’s life and work as a unified struggle to overcome a morbid imagination through the "stability of truth." He emphasizes Johnson’s psychological modernity, positioning his insights on the "hunger of imagination" as a precursor to Freudian theory. The study analyzes Johnson’s role as a moralist and literary critic, concluding that his greatness lies in the moral example provided by his writings. Kolb praises Bate’s eloquence and discerning treatment of the imagination but argues that the thematic approach subordinates Johnson’s versatility as a writer. He identifies several factual inaccuracies regarding the composition dates of The Vanity of Human Wishes and the Dictionary.
CGV entry 10/6:291. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the book by Walter Jackson Bate.
Hagstrum offers a mixed review of Bate's book, a "small introduction" and a dedicated work with sincerely sympathetic insights into Johnson's moral and psychological struggles. Hagstrum praises Bate's eloquence and his presentation of Johnson as a subtle moralist and compassionate man who struggled with psychological instability, highlighting Bate's transition from neoclassical generality to an empirical view of Johnson's thought. The central view that Johnson's excellence must be tested by human experience is expressed with considerable eloquence; however, the review notes that the work is pervaded by distressing and pervasive verbal and stylistic confusions of thought and expression that entangle meaning. Hagstrum disputes Bate's attempt to explain Johnson's sympathy for the Augustan period through a theory of historical determinism, calling the reasoning seriously in error. Furthermore, Hagstrum challenges the use of psychopathology to explain Johnson's rationalism and religious beliefs, arguing that Bate abandons traditional logic for a form of psychoanalysis.
Watt praises Bate’s sympathetic, post-Freudian humanist perspective on Johnson’s heroic "precarious fulfillment" amid despair. He values the integration of Johnson’s neurotic manifestations with his moral experience. However, Watt criticizes the "Platonic" thematic organization for lacking logical progression and causing chapters to blur together. He notes that Bate’s refusal to treat literary works as autonomous objects subordinates literary analysis to characterization, leaving the need for a more rigorous evaluation of Johnson’s specific literary achievements.
Bryce provides an enthusiastic review of Bate’s study, calling it one of the most moving contributions to Johnsonian scholarship. He commends Bate’s exploration of the organic relation between craft and character, seeing Johnson’s life as an allegory on which the works serve as comments. Bryce highlights Bate’s revivification of neglected works from the 1750s as majestic prose threnodies but expresses uneasiness regarding the thematic treatment that leaves Johnson strangely isolated from his contemporary context. The review notes Bate’s focus on Johnson’s goal as the mastery of experience and a triumph of sanity. Bryce concludes that the book’s best chapter focuses on Johnson as a critic, enriching the conception of general nature and the common sense of readers.
CGV entry 10/6:291. Review by J. C. Bryce of the book by Walter Jackson Bate.
Modern English Literature: Essays Presented to Professor Rintaro Fukuhara on His Sixtieth Birthday
CGV entry 10/6:294. In Japanese. Contains eleven essays on various aspects of Johnson.
Salute to Sam: U.S. Celebrates 200th Anniversary of Johnson's 'Dictionary'
Johnson's Last Allusion to Mary, Queen of Scots
Lascelles investigates an anomalous blunder in a final letter from Johnson to Piozzi (July 8, 1784), where he likens Piozzi's impending marriage to Mary Queen of Scots crossing the "irremeable stream" on horseback, attended by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, in her flight to England. Johnson, who was well-read in Scottish history, should have known Mary escaped in a fishing-boat. Lascelles traces this error to an image originating in Pierre le Pesant's historical novel, Marie Stuart Reyne d'Escosse (1674), which omitted the sea passage. She concludes that the image, though fictitious, had taken powerful possession of Johnson's imagination, and his uncharacteristic memory lapse reveals the impetuosity and measure of his unhappiness over Piozzi's marriage.
The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell, Goldsmith
Philosophical studies of Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell, and Goldsmith. Lucas advocates a return to foundational eighteenth-century values, emphasizing that there is "No substitute for good sense." The book’s candid discussion of Johnson focuses primarily on his complex persona, specifically commenting upon him as an "eccentric." Lucas attempts to re-evaluate Johnson’s moral and intellectual position within the historical context of rational judgment.
CGV entry 10/6:300. Reviewed by Paul Fussell, Jr., in Philological Quarterly 38 (July 1959): 292.
See esp. 27–128, 177-282
CGV entry 10/6:301. A second edition was published in 1963.
Essays, including previously unpublished pieces like "Pepys and Boswell," "Johnson the Biographer," and the "most important addition," "Max Beerbohm." Roberts addresses Johnson through four key aspects: moralist, churchman, biographer, and poetic imagination. Roberts explores the historical shift in public discourse from political to moral concerns during Johnson's era and engages with contemporary scholarly discussions, such as Johnson's fear of death. The collection also includes a comparative study of Pepys and Boswell. The critical reception of this collection characterizes it as a "companionable and lucid" assembly of essays that successfully presents an "all-round" portrait of the subject without depending exclusively on Boswell. Reviewers for The Times and Notes and Queries praise the "graceful exposition" and "easy scholarship" with which Roberts explores the subject's roles as moralist and churchman, particularly highlighting the analysis of "delicacy and precision" in the Dictionary and the examination of lesser-known works like the fairy tale "The Fountains." Keown and Thomas commend the "perceptive sympathy" and "sympathetic insight" that challenge the image of a "crusted Tory," instead revealing a figure whose religious views eschewed "airy optimism" for a life devoid of cant. However, Collins and Humphreys identify significant scholarly and critical limitations; Humphreys finds the commentary "perfunctory" and "bookish," noting that it barely touches the Lives of the Poets, while Collins disputes Roberts's claims regarding the intent of Boswell's private papers. Furthermore, Collins identifies "numerous transcription errors" and "inconsistent punctuation" in the quotations, suggesting a lack of technical precision. Despite these "disappointing" scholarly lapses, the consensus remains that the volume is an "agreeable and enlightening" contribution that illuminates the subject’s "ethical wisdom" while providing an engaging comparative study between Boswell and Pepys.
Tucker explores Johnson’s complex engagement with the Middle Ages, characterizing him as a serious student of medieval culture who rejected romanticized escapism. While Johnson exposed forgeries by Macpherson and Chatterton, he maintained profound respect for Germanic philology, Saxon laws, and the works of Alfred and Chaucer. Tucker highlights Johnson’s aborted projects to edit Chaucer and write a life of Alfred as evidence of his medievalist interests. Furthermore, Johnson’s religious sensibilities—manifested in his Latin prayers and emotional response to the Dies Irae—reveal a spiritual kinship with medieval devotion. This scholarly focus on historical accuracy and theological continuity transcends 18th-century rationalist stereotypes.
CGV entry 10/6:305. Written for the BBC Children's Hour.
Hilles intended the volume to emphasize the accelerating scholarly interest in Johnson’s actual writings, shifting focus beyond a sole preoccupation with his biographical persona. The contents present a score of essays from distinguished transatlantic scholars, surveying Johnson’s achievements across literary genres. Coverage includes Johnson as poet, lexicographer, critic, biographer, and even reviser, featuring new material and fresh assessments. The contributions follow no single, pre-determined argument, but their deliberate grouping and juxtaposition facilitate reader cross-reference, thereby illuminating the relationships between Johnson's varied theory and practice. The collection includes W. S. Lewis on "The Young Waterman," David Nichol Smith on Johnson’s poems, Mary Lascelles’s "Johnson and Juvenal," William K. Wimsatt, Jr.’s essay on the Dictionary, and Gwin J. Kolb’s analysis of the Rasselas context found in "Johnson's 'Dissertation on Flying.'" Reviews are generally favorable, with reviewers dividing over the analytical depth, stylistic cohesion, and thematic significance of the individual contributions. Halsband's review in NYTBR commends the varied scholarship for successfully correcting historical imbalances and treating the core texts as valuable for their own sake. In TLS, Lucas praises the impressive standard of erudition and the insights into personal lapses, although questioning the use of critical intuition where evidence is thin. Davis, in RES, finds the steadiest illumination in the treatments of biographical details and literary criticism, highlighting the discussion of early social irregularities. Writing in SEL, Greene identifies specific essays on biological composition and biographical methodology as possessing permanent value. Jack's review in PQ lauds the blend of new research and reprinted articles, calling the variety of topics an excellent testament to contemporary scholarship. In MLR, Bloom observes that the anthology demonstrates a clear textual vitality, but notes a distinct disparity of style and significance among the pieces. But Robson, writing in The Spectator, finds the celebratory collection disappointingly marginal and lacking a critical center, arguing that the volume fails to prove broader relevance and focuses instead on biographical odds and ends. Chauvin, in Études Anglaises, praises the essays for offering genuinely fresh perspectives on poetic structure, noting the methodological rigor of the critical commentary. Finally, Rycenga, in Modern Age, views the compilation as an aesthetically beautiful tribute that fuses deep personal affection with scrupulous academic execution.
CGV entry 10/6:306. Individual items are separately listed.
Reviews: Edward A. Bloom, MLR 56, no. 2 (1961): 253–54; Jacques Chauvin, Études Anglaises 13 (1960): 379–80; Herbert Davis, RES, n.s., 12, no. 47 (1961): 302–3; Donald J. Greene, SEL 1, no. 3 (1961): 115–41; Robert Halsband, NYTBR, November 1, 1959; Ian Jack, PQ 39, no. 3 (1960): 333–35; J. H. Leicester, NR (January 1960): 15–16; F. L. Lucas, TLS, no. 3038 (1960): 324; Harold Nicolson, Hindustan Times, March 13, 1960; W. W. Robson, The Spectator 204, no. 398 (1960): 398; John Rycenga, Modern Age 5 (1960): 95–98; Clarence Tracy, Queen’s Quarterly 67 (1960): 311–12.
New Light on Dr. Johnson: Interesting Collection for Manchester
This report announces the acquisition of over 3,000 Johnsonian manuscripts and letters by the John Rylands Library in Manchester. The collection includes diaries, business papers, and notebooks, many featuring Johnson's recognizable handwriting. Librarian Henry Guppy emphasizes that these documents "throw a flood of new light" on the twenty-year relationship between Johnson and the Thrale family at Streatham Place. The report highlights a 117-page notebook containing Thrale’s journal of their 1775 French tour, the only time Johnson visited the Continent. It notes that while Boswell regretted Johnson never wrote an account of this travel, Thrale’s diary provides a "peculiar interest" by documenting the journey. The narrative includes an account of a carriage accident involving Thrale and Baretti, noting Thrale’s shock at Johnson’s "perfect unconcern" for the lives of his companions during the crisis.
CGV entry 10/6:306.
Jack's largely positive review details this collection of essays edited by Hilles, praising the blend of new research and reprinted scholarly articles. The reviewer highlights Hilles's contribution on the composition of the Life of Pope as a particularly significant piece of detective work. Jack commends the variety of topics covered, from Johnson's views on science to his bibliographical practices, noting that the volume serves as an excellent testament to the breadth of contemporary Johnsonian scholarship.
CGV entry 10/6:306. Review by Ian Jack of the book edited by Frederick W. Hilles.
The review of Frederick W. Hilles's collection, commemorating Samuel Johnson's 250th birthday, praises the twenty essays for offering genuinely new perspectives on the writer, particularly focusing on Johnson as a poet. Highlights include Joyce Hemlow's discovery of a tender side to Johnson in the Burney papers, W. K. Wimsatt's analysis of science in the Dictionary's citations, and John Butt's rich reading of Johnson's poetry. Frederick A. Pottle's critical essay on a passage in Boswell's Life concerning Johnson's alleged sexual misconduct is singled out for its methodological rigor.
The Lives of the Poets: The Story of One Thousand Years of English And American Poetry
Untermeyer examines Johnson as the epitome of 18th-century urban brilliance, contrasting his "clippped disposals" of taste with the emerging "suburbanity" of rural poets. The narrative traces Johnson’s career from his failed school at Edial to his dominance in London’s literary scene. Untermeyer analyzes London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting how Johnson’s "tart commentary" and "sardonically urban" perspective break through the Juvenalian framework. The text details major milestones, including the Dictionary and its accompanying rejection of Lord Chesterfield's patronage, the composition of Rasselas to defray funeral expenses, and the final achievement of Lives of the Poets. Boswell is cited to describe Johnson’s "uncouth" physical presence and "inexhaustible mind." Untermeyer concludes that while Johnson’s poetry avoids numbering the "streaks of the tulip," his work remains "affecting" and "meritorious" for its pursuit of general truths.
Johnson represents the supreme exemplar of the "literature of experience," a category transcending traditional antitheses between art and life. Recent scholarship and psychological insights, particularly from Freud and Bronson, clarify Johnson's triumph over melancholia and physical infirmity. Watt contends that Johnson’s greatness derives from his dogged veracity and rejection of romantic fiction in favor of literal, didactic truth. He emphasizes that Johnson’s conversation, recorded by Boswell, and private writings constitute a unified, truthful vision of human existence.
Dr. Johnson and the Literature of Experience
Watt argues that Johnson's primary greatness lies in the "literature of experience"—genres like diaries, letters, prayers, and conversation—rather than purely imaginative or formal art. Modern understanding appreciates Johnson the man, recognizing his triumph over physical and psychological afflictions, and finds his political and psychological realism increasingly relevant. However, this focus obscures Johnson the author. Johnson viewed writing's purpose as helping readers enjoy or endure life, emphasizing moral essays and "dogged veracity." While his poetic output was limited, his genius shone in occasional works like the Dictionary, aphorisms, letters, prayers, and conversation, all displaying formidable analytic power and memorable expression. Judging Johnson requires considering the totality of his utterances, valuing their literal truth and consistent vision of human experience, exemplified by his direct and humane elegy on Robert Levet.
CGV entry 10/6:308. Reprinted from "Dr. Samuel Johnson after 250 Years" in The Listener (1959).
Chamberlin calls Boswell's Life of Johnson the supreme achievement in personality depiction. He portrays Johnson as a staunch conservative who believed in monarchy and hierarchy and disliked Whigs and sentimental reformers. Henry illustrates Johnson’s rough, muscular realism and independent character through anecdotes, including his defense of a natural right to revolution against enormous abuse and his caustic dictionary definitions.
Privately printed by the Société orientale de publicité
Wahba assembles a global perspective on the "Great Cham," featuring contributions that re-examine Johnson’s stylistic innovations and his position within the Enlightenment. The collection emphasizes the "enduring vitality" of Rasselas, with several essays focusing on its orientalism, its "pessimistic" moral structure, and its thematic parallels with Voltaire's Candide. Scholars within the volume dispute traditional views of Johnson’s "prejudices," instead analyzing his "principled skepticism" and his rigorous intellectual honesty. The text also explores Johnson’s "afterlife" in various national literatures, including his reception in the Arab world and his influence on nineteenth-century criticism. Contributors use case studies of the Dictionary and the Lives of the Poets to illustrate Johnson's "methodological shift" toward a more "humanized" biographical and lexicographical approach. Critics call this book a serious workshop for scholars that signals a shift away from antiquarianism toward rigorous analysis of the canon. Bishop commends the international cooperation within the volume and highlights Fleischauer’s study of the critical principles behind the critique of Lycidas. Chauvin praises the contributions of Watt and Humphreys for exploring the literature of experience and tormented faith. Tracy identifies the selective bibliography by Clifford and Greene as the core value of the collection, though he finds the seventeen papers uneven in quality. But, despite these reservations, the collection remains a valuable resource for its fresh insights into the eighteenth-century world.
CGV entry 10/6:316. Distributed outside the United Arab Republic by Oxford University Press. Individual items are separately listed.
Hart contrasts Boswell's experience of London as a realm of fluid identity and possibility with Johnson's steadfast defense of his singular identity against cultural contradictions. Boswell, embodying the "Young Man from the Provinces," explored various selves enabled by the modern city's anonymity but never achieved a stable identity, leading to despair. Johnson, arriving earlier, represented moral heroism, maintaining his principles against melancholy, fear, and societal pressures. His combative nature in conversation and life defended intellectual and moral integrity. Hart traces the shift from 17th-century metaphysical wit, which reconciled contradictions, to Augustan rhetoric (Dryden, Pope), which asserted coherence and excluded dissonance. Johnson, while aligned with Augustan values, passionately engaged with opposing forces (capitalism, psychological depth), holding them in precarious balance, making his defense of order particularly powerful.
Cochrane entry 557.
Pearson examines the intellectual development and societal impact of Samuel Johnson through a biographical lens that emphasizes his struggle with lifelong physical disabilities and psychological melancholy. The text details Johnson's early poverty, his move to London, and the grueling seven-year compilation of his English dictionary, which established his scholarly reputation. Pearson highlights Johnson's complex relationship with contemporary figures, notably his "unaccountable prejudice against Swift" fueled by personal puritanism and social envy. The narrative explores Johnson's dependency on social circles, specifically the Thrales and the Literary Club, and his later-life role as a mentor to James Boswell. Pearson concludes by depicting Johnson's final years, marked by a cooling of his friendship with Hester Piozzi and an intense, fear-driven resistance to his impending death, characterizing his life as one "in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed."
On Johnson as a myth-figure and a great, tragic moral hero. He overcame poverty, poor health, and nervous habits to become a literary dictator. A conservative critic, his powerful prose and critical notes on Shakespeare showcase his brilliance. His life was a struggle against inner darkness and neurotic guilt, making him advocate for fortitude and "palliative" cures against inevitable human misery.
In this positive review of a new edition of Francis Grose’s "Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," Adams highlights the contrast between Grose’s record of 18th-century slang and the formal language found in Johnson’s Dictionary. Adams provides a biographical sketch of Grose, describing him as a "Falstaffian" antiquary and boon companion to Robert Burns. The review praises Eric Partridge’s editorial contributions and notes the historical value of Grose’s "nocturnal sallies" into the London underworld. Adams observes that while Johnson sought to fix the language, Grose preserved its "robust vulgarity," offering a vivid look at the 18th century through terms like "angler" and "pad."
CGV entry 10/6:321. On the revival of interest in Johnson.
Of Books and Humankind: Essays and Poems Presented to Bonamy Dobree
Speculations on Three Eighteenth-Century Prose Writers
Jefferson examines how the Augustan prose style served as an instrument for both conscious artistic purpose and 'unconscious idiosyncrasy' in the works of Tobias Smollett, Oliver Goldsmith, and Johnson. Focusing on Rasselas, Jefferson observes that Johnson’s style is 'more than usually generalized' because of its exotic, specified setting. Jefferson argues that Johnson’s habit of making all characters use the same stately, erudite vocabulary provides a 'gratuitous element of entertainment' by lending distinction to 'learned folly.' He suggests the Johnsonian manner provides an ideal vehicle for both wisdom and the 'crazy reasoning' of characters like the astronomer and the projector. Jefferson identifies a fundamental contradiction in Johnson’s style between moral sobriety and a 'rage for extremes' in describing malignant passions or vacancy. Ultimately, the blend of these polished yet heavy components constitutes the 'unconscious style' of Johnson’s personality.
CGV entry 10/6:322. On Smollett, Goldsmith, and Johnson.
The Place of Samuel Johnson in the History of the Literary Character
CGV entry 10/6:323. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 27 (August 1966), pages 457A-458A.
CGV entry 10/6:324. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 25 (October 1964), page 2523.
Kazin discusses Edmund Wilson as the most satisfactory critic and the greatest living man of letters, honoring his independent imagination as a scholar, diarist, and historian. He contrasts the "moral and historical imagination" of men of letters like Johnson and Emerson with the "creative imagination" of poets. Johnson, embodying intellectual talent, adored his own abstractions and insisted on a pattern in every subject, seeing his Christianity and faith in tradition as a way to secure himself. Johnson's learning, like Gibbon's or Henry Adams's, is imaginative because it tries to hold the recorded achievements of mankind in a single mind.
CGV entry 10/6:325. Johnson is used as an example.
Brown surveys Johnson’s biography from his Lichfield origins and physical afflictions to his "massive" intellectual influence in London. The text highlights major literary milestones, including the "essentially one-man task" of the Dictionary, his edition of Shakespeare, and The Lives of the Poets. Brown emphasizes the significance of James Boswell’s "brilliant" reporting, which granted Johnson a "much richer survival" than his own books. The narrative situates Johnson within "The Club" alongside figures like David Garrick and Edmund Burke, while contrasting the "sumptuous elegance" of Georgian arts—such as the architecture of Robert Adam and the pottery of Josiah Wedgwood—with the "rags and squalor" of London’s prisons and public executions. Brown also examines the era's broader historical shifts, including the loss of the American colonies, the expansion of the East India Company under Robert Clive, the maritime explorations of Captain James Cook, and the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
CGV entry 10/6:326. With numerous illustrations.
The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism
Fussell identifies a self-contained rhetorical world shared by Swift, Pope, Johnson, Reynolds, Gibbon, and Burke, characterizing them as 'humanists' who serve as the period's central nervous system. Fussell focuses on Johnson as the richest representative of this group, exploring how these authors used polemic imagery to express a vision of man as a unique, flawed, and social creature. The study challenges the view of these writers as merely representative of their age, arguing instead that they constitute an anachronistic, reactionary response to eighteenth-century progressivism. Fussell organizes the analysis into two parts: the first defines the humanist conception of man—including premises of human depravity, the uniformity of nature, and the importance of the redemptive will—while the second examines specific recurring image-systems. Through recurring motifs of moral warfare, architectural stability, and the irony of travel, Fussell demonstrates how imagery functions as a live constituent in transmitting 'shaped illumination' from writer to reader. Fussell disputes the perceived discursive 'thinness' of the era, asserting that these writers used traditional symbols to conduct public moral arguments and reinforce a dualistic worldview.
CGV entry 10/6:327. Discusses Johnson passim.
'Pictures to the Mind': Johnson and Imagery
Greene disputes the assertion that Johnson’s style is exclusively abstract or Latinate, revealing a pervasive reliance on vivid sensory metaphors to ground moral arguments. By cataloging diverse images from the periodical essays and the Dictionary, Greene shows how Johnson uses 'pictures to the mind' to illustrate psychological states and social conditions. The text argues that this imagery often draws from Johnson’s personal experiences with urban life, science, and physical suffering. Greene concludes that Johnson’s effectiveness as a moralist depends on his ability to make universal truths palpable through specific, often startling, visual comparisons.
This collection honors Powell's contributions to Johnsonian and Boswellian studies through twenty original essays. Osborn documents the editorial 'midwifery' of Malone, whose thousands of hours of labor structured Boswell's Life of Johnson. Lonsdale explores the unique 'love' Burney felt for Johnson, a devotion that persisted despite Johnson's habitual scorn for the musical profession. Middendorf identifies a consistent economic philosophy in Johnson's works, noting that while Johnson praised the abstract utility of commerce to alleviate poverty, he remained skeptical of the 'moral and intellectual barrenness' of individual traders. McAdam disputes the notion of Johnson's radical Toryism, arguing that his 1753 preface to the Gentleman's Magazine reveals deep admiration for Walpole's peace policy. Lascelles and de Beer analyze Johnson's travels, emphasizing his responsiveness to the 'genius loci' and the successional disappointments Boswell faced regarding corrections to the Journey to the Western Islands. Other contributors use unpublished diaries and letters to illuminate Johnson's obscure middle years and his complex relationship with Enlightenment thought, depicting him as a thinker who accepted Lockean sensationalism while rejecting the atheism of the later philosophes.
Sherbo provides an approving review of a festschrift dedicated to Powell, describing twenty essays covering diverse Johnsonian topics including Malone, Burney, Thrale, Rasselas, and his published writings. The review highlights Fleeman's study of Johnson’s help writing political advertisements for Thrale, Hyde's list of uncollected letters excluded from Chapman’s edition, and Hardy's examination of Johnson's use of "curiosity" and the "limitations of man's curiosity." Sherbo emphasizes Greene's challenge to the view of Johnson's language as abstract or lacking imagery. The reviewer offers supplementary detail for a note on "Wealth and Commerce" regarding the banishment of money and on Johnson's distinction between "images" and "conceits," specifically his pejorative use of "conceit" in his Shakespearean notes. Sherbo concludes the volume effectively addresses "obscure middle years," provides useful documentation for scholars, and represents a "best buy" for its breadth.
CGV entry 10/6:329. Review by Arthur Sherbo of the book edited by Mary M. Lascelles et al.
Boulton reviews this uneven celebratory volume, identifying Greene’s demolition of the view that Johnson’s imagery is vague as the most distinguished contribution. Other significant essays include Pottle’s exhaustive examination of Boswell’s liberal education and Clifford’s detective work on Johnson’s obscure middle years. However, Boulton criticizes trite observations in Jack’s comparison of Boswell and Lockhart and finds Liebert’s piece trivial. Despite some slight or redundant entries, the collection successfully extends knowledge of the circle through substantial archival research and incisive critical insights into Johnson’s prose and poetic imagery.
CGV entry 10/6:329. Review by J. T. Boulton of the book edited by Mary M. Lascelles et al.
Greene differentiates between the "dear old Doctor Johnson" of popular legend and the genuine literary figure revealed in actual texts. He argues that historians and critics often cherish a caricature of Johnson as a "literary dictator" or "reactionary Tory" to shield themselves from his complex intellectual reality. Greene identifies Boswell’s slanting of Johnson's biography as a psychological attempt to undercut a father figure. This collection presents fifteen essays that challenge Macaulayan stereotypes, highlighting Johnson's modern relevance as a poet, critic, and moralist whose political views often align more with social justice than nineteenth-century Toryism.
Clifford analyzes mid-twentieth-century shifts in scholarship, emphasizing the increased realization of the complexity of the Augustan period. Clifford highlights the metamorphosis of Johnson from a Boswellian character to a wise thinker and creative writer whose work offers the closest anticipation of Freud. Clifford discusses the soft and hard schools of interpreting Gulliver’s Travels. Clifford notes that Boswell, as revealed through his archives, emerges as a great creative artist and an outstanding autobiographer independent of Johnson.
CGV entry 10/6:332. On new approaches to Johnson.
Footprints of a Gigantic Cham [review of Johnson, Boswell and their Circle: Essays presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell in Honour of His Eighty-Fourth Birthday, by Frederick W. Hilles; Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol V: The Tour to the Hebrides and the Journey into North Wales, vol VI: Index, by James Boswell, George Birkbeck Hill, and L. F. Powell; Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1773, by James Boswell, Frederick A. Pottle, and Charles H. Bennett; Poems, by Samuel Johnson, E. L. McAdam, Jr., and George Milne; and Selected Writings, by Samuel Johnson and R. T. Davies]
Johnson, Boswell and Their Circle is an enjoyable, specialized tribute to Powell, containing essays that deepen knowledge of the Johnson circle through explorations of untrampled by-ways. Clifford’s essay, detailing the "maddeningly confused trail" of Johnson's obscure middle years, exemplifies the diligent, gap-filling scholarship of the volume. Hilles ably defends Rasselas against charges of structural weakness, and Greene’s illuminating essay emphasizes the inadequacy of calling Johnson's style purely abstract. The revised edition of Powell's-Hill's Boswell's Life of Johnson, encompassing the monumental Tour, is a massive and masterly achievement, inspiring awe for Powell’s "revision of his revision" at age eighty-three. The Pottle-Bennett edited Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides is an illuminating, up-to-date, first-rate travel book combining zest with scholarship. The Yale edition of Samuel Johnson: Poems, incorporating new manuscript discoveries of early drafts of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, suffers from its quest for completeness, making the variant comparisons "hard going." Finally, Davies’s Selected Writings is unsatisfying because of its excessive editorial zeal, constantly interrupting the works with "exasperating" rows of dots indicating omissions, and featuring an introduction that acts like a lecture with a distracting "nervous tic" of cross-references.
CGV entry 10/6:335. Review of various recent Johnsonian books.
Halliday surveys the life of Johnson from his 1709 birth in Lichfield to his 1784 death in London, framing him as a man who "dominated his age" through force of personality despite poverty and "constitutional melancholy." The narrative details Johnson's early education, his "miserably poor" years at Oxford, and his unsuccessful attempts at schoolmastering before moving to London in 1737 with David Garrick. Halliday examines Johnson's emergence as a professional writer through contributions to "The Gentleman's Magazine," the success of "London," and the pivotal publication of the "Dictionary of the English Language" in 1755. The text emphasizes the "sixteen years of luxury" Johnson enjoyed through his friendship with Henry and Hester Thrale at Streatham, contrasting this with his earlier struggles. Significant attention is given to Johnson's relationships with contemporaries including James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, and Fanny Burney, as well as his later major works like "Rasselas," his edition of Shakespeare, and "The Lives of the English Poets." Halliday uses numerous period illustrations, maps, and portraits to reconstruct the "Age of Johnson," concluding with a detailed account of Johnson's declining health and his final break with Piozzi following her marriage to Gabriele Piozzi.
CGV entry 10/6:336. Written primarily for young people. Profusely illustrated.
Felix qui ... Standards of Happiness in Eighteenth-Century England
CGV entry 10/6:338. Largely about Johnson.
Wiltshire contends that Johnson’s strength as a moralist arises not from Augustan certainty, but from a mind divided by profound doubt and agitation. Analyzing Rasselas, Wiltshire illustrates how Johnson’s "tenderness"—an intense imaginative feeling for others—compels him to reject conventional solutions to life’s miseries. This emotionality fuels Johnson's most telling work, including his passionate review of Soame Jenyns, where his fierce sarcasm masks a deep disturbance regarding the incomprehensibility of evil and pain. Johnson understands the perverse actions of others, such as Savage, by exploring the inconsistencies within himself.
Dr. Johnson und Boswell: Begegnung und Freundschaft
CGV entry 10/6:340. An anonymous review of the book by Carl Brinitzer.
A Late Augustan Circus: Macaulay on Johnson, Boswell, and Walpole
Hartley’s article analyzes Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1831 review of John Wilson Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, a piece Macaulay used to "annihilate" Croker while simultaneously denigrating Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi through "parody and caricature." Hartley traces the genesis of Macaulay’s "vicious" caricatures to the prejudices of Horace Walpole and family grievances involving Macaulay's ancestors, noting that Macaulay's portrayal of Boswell as a "sycophant" and "busybody" was heavily influenced by Walpole's correspondence. Walpole maintained an instinctive repulsion for Johnson’s "blind Toryism" and engaged in a "concentrated vilification" of the Johnsonian circle, dismissing Boswell as a "strange being" and ridiculing the dispute between Boswell and Piozzi. Macaulay transforms Walpole’s image of Johnson as an "uncouth idol" into a "hippopotamus" and popularized the paradox that Boswell wrote a great book because he was a "great fool," reducing him further to a "habitual sot" and "impertinent monkey." The study details how Macaulay compounds libels against Piozzi and Boswell, using a rhetorical "circus" to obscure the literary genius of his subjects through a pattern of deliberate falsification and distorted evidence. Hartley concludes that Macaulay’s "superb rhetoric" created images of his subjects that remain "difficult to dispel completely" despite their basis in personal prejudice.
Cochrane entry 606.
CGV entry 10/6:343. In Japanese. Previously appeared in the journal 'Gakuto' from September 1966 to September 1968. Publication was expected in 1970.
The Ogre at the Feast of Life [review of vols. 1–5 of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson]
Mudrick’s scathing review of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson disputes the "deadly" reputation fostered by academic keepers who sanitize Johnson into a "bullying old eccentric" of moral soundness. Mudrick argues that the formal essays often mask an "anarchic desperation" with mechanical structures and "exanimate platitude," failing to capture the "prodigious phenomenon" revealed in the records of Boswell and Piozzi. He characterizes Johnson as an "unhappy ogre at the feast of life" possessed by "unaccommodatable passions" and a "hydrostatic" need to fill the "vacuities of life". Mudrick asserts that Johnson’s true magnitude appears not in his "self-mortifying" prose, but in his "intellectual ardour" and the "vehement lamentations" of his private conversation. The review highlights the tension between Johnson’s "unencumbered straightforwardness" in defending the poor and his "morbid temperament" that feared the "vengeance of God". Mudrick concludes that without the vivid accounts of his social circle, the "lifelong prisoner of himself" would remain an unimaginable figure.
CGV entry 10/6:349. Reprinted as "Johnson" in Mudrick's 'The Man in the Machine' (1977).
Johnson's fear of death and the unknown led to an intellectual timidity that inhibited his creative power, crippling his imagination. Johnson's mind, highly rational on natural subjects, submitted to orthodox Christian authority on religious and moral issues to avoid despair, a conflict Boswell described as a "mighty gladiator" combating "wild beasts of the Arena." This results in a pervasive, anxious pietism and an awkward, illogic shift toward Christian affirmation in works like The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rambler No. 184. Johnson's moral "obsessions" actively interfere with aesthetic quality, as seen in the brutal didacticism that sacrifices the tragic potential of the heroine in his play Irene.
Fussell examines Johnson's career by focusing on his role as a professional writer, noting that he was often harassed by financial difficulties and deadlines. The theoretical framework insists on the significance and utility of literary genres, which Fussell argues fundamentally shaped Johnson's literary output and achievement. The study concentrates on Johnson's major prose works, including The Rambler, the Dictionary, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets. Fussell enumerates the numerous prose and poetic forms in which Johnson worked, such as tragedy, the periodical essay, the oriental tale, the political tract, the critical essay, the sermon, the dedication, and the legal brief. The book views writing as a craft of persuasion and imitation, asserting that Johnson's literary character was constructed by the objective forms of literature, which relieved him of meaningless choices. Fussell argues that Johnson's career demonstrates an intensification of his core perspective rather than a progressive change or development. The volume consists of three primary sections: a biographical sketch, a theoretical essay, and a critical analysis of specific works. Chapter 1, "A Life Radically Wretched," explores the psychological pressures of the author's early poverty and physical suffering, establishing these hardships as the driving force behind his lifelong commitment to the discipline of writing. Chapter 2, "The Images of the Author," analyzes how he constructed multiple authorial personae—from the "harmless drudge" of the Dictionary to the magisterial moralist of the Rambler—to navigate the shifts in eighteenth-century literary status. Chapter 3, "The Mystery of the Periodical Essay," investigates the generic requirements of the essay form, viewing it as a medium for secularizing religious homily and imposing order on the chaotic observations of daily life. Chapter 4, "The Dictionary and the Idea of Literature," focuses on the monumental labor of lexicography, arguing that the project was less a scientific endeavor than a heroic attempt to stabilize the English language against the inevitability of change. Chapter 5, "Writing as Imitation," evaluates the scholar's reliance on classical models and the concept of mimesis, asserting that for him, original genius was always subordinate to the ethical duty of universal representation. Chapter 6, "The Lives of the Poets," concludes the study by interpreting the biographical prefaces as a final synthesis of the author’s themes, portraying the writer as a "representative man" whose individual struggles mirror the collective frailty of the human species. Critical reaction is mixed, with a distinct split between appreciative popular reviews and highly critical scholarly evaluations. Walker, in the TLS, finds the volume disappointing, criticizing its labored attempt to prove the subject insincere and its modish asides. In the NYRB, Wain rejects the isolation of the text from biographical context, arguing that the author fails to recognize historical shifts and applies genre theory carelessly. Wills’s review in the NYTBR labels the structural analysis a procrustean thesis that trivializes religious despair into a puppet theater of linguistic reversals. Writing in PQ, Weinbrot commends the connection to later Romantics but argues the study suffers from condescension, a static view of artistic development, and incorrect stylistic assumptions. Alkon (Modern Philology) warns that the depiction of an irrational critic driven by contract anxieties constitutes a dangerous misrepresentation that renders the canon intellectually trivial. But Coley (SEL) offers a positive appraisal, praising the focus on professional authorship and the tension between conventional genres and sacramental obligations. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, find the observations on marketplace pressures interesting, though they dispute specific claims regarding biographical carelessness. Kirsch (LA Times) praises the restoration of a functioning human being over popular folklore caricatures, while Allen’s review in The Nation calls the volume witty and elegant. Finally, Lamont, in RES, acknowledges the intelligence of the work but faults it for overstating contradictions and mistaking rhetorical devices for mental confusion.
Horowitz calls Fussell's book witty and coherent, intending to reach a wide audience. He praises Fussell's destruction of the Johnsonian cliché and emphasis on writing as a moral obligation. But he finds the book ultimately unsatisfactory for its flawed critical approach. Fussell's argument that the literary career implies intensification, not development or change, is a crucial assumption that Horowitz questions, as it denies the essential human nature to grow and matures. Horowitz concludes Fussell's deterministic approach views the writer as a puppet, stripping literature of relevance by placing it in a conceptual vacuum.
CGV entry 10/6:352.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A critical review by Peter E. Medine of the book by Paul Fussell.
In this largely positive review, Coley commends the effort to shift attention back to Johnson as a writer rather than an anecdotal character. Coley highlights how the analysis examines the contrary forces operating on Johnson, balancing the rhetorical artifice of conventional literary genres against a sacramental obligation to speak the truth from the heart. The review highlights suggestive readings of the Dictionary as a running biography and the Life of Savage as a cumulative portrait of the artist. Coley highlights the book as the suggestive work of a shrewd and gifted teacher, recommending it to instructors of the period.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A review essay by W. B. Coley on the book by Paul Fussell.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A critical review by Robert L. Vales of the book by Paul Fussell.
Fussell examines Johnson’s professional behavior and the literary conceptions governing his career. He analyzes Johnson’s sense of genre, the "sacramental" nature of authorship, and themes of literary irony in the Dictionary, Rasselas, and Lives of the Poets. Weinbrot praises the connecting of Johnson to later Romantics but argues the work is seriously flawed by condescension and a static view of Johnson’s development. He challenges Fussell’s interpretation of Rasselas as a "boy’s book" and disputes the claim that Johnson’s early and late styles remain identical.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A severe review by Howard D. Weinbrot of the book by Paul Fussell. Part of "The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography."
Gold calls Fussell's book provocative, finding the theoretical section on the significance and utility of genres the most valuable. He praises Fussell for altering perspectives and making readers observe new aspects of Johnson. The book's greatest contribution is making readers see Johnson and his works anew.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A review by Joel J. Gold of the book by Paul Fussell.
Alkon notes the book's value in stressing Johnson's use of rhetoric and form, which serves as a useful warning against misreading Johnson's statements outside their persuasive context. Despite this, Alkon argues Fussell's portrayal of Johnson as a "madly irrational" critic with an "untidy" sensibility, whose content is largely reducible to his neuroses and contractual anxieties, is a dangerous misrepresentation. The review concludes that the work unfortuately creates the impression that Johnson's writings are intellectually trivial, and its opposite picture of an almost totally unprincipled Johnson is unpersuasive.
Lamont reviews Fussell’s effort to dispute Macaulay’s claim that Johnson is remembered more for his personality than his works, focusing on the irony of literary careers and the contradiction between writing as rhetoric and as a sincere expression of feeling. While Lamont praises Fussell’s intelligence and liveliness, she faults him for overstating Johnson’s inconsistencies and mistaking rhetorical devices for mental confusion. She notes that Fussell highlights the importance of genre and the assumption of foreign identities in writing, yet she finds his analysis of the Rambler papers weak, as he interprets shifts in argument as evidence of laziness or guilt. Lamont challenges the racy 20th-century portrayal of Johnson as poor, bored, and inconsistent, questioning if such a conformist picture is justifiable.
CGV entry 10/6:352. A review by Claire Lamont of the book by Paul Fussell, alongside other works.
Author's abstract: "A Welsh physician, Zachariah Williams, was one of several who believed that longitude could be found by knowing how magnetic compass variation changed with time and place. He came to London soon after the longitude prize was announced and began working on tables of predicted variation, assisted by his daughter Anna. However, it had long been clear to scientists and seamen that such methods were useless. Williams died in 1755, dependent on the considerable support of friends. These included Dr. Johnson, who cared for Anna when she became blind until she died in 1783. Anna had also assisted her father’s friend, the scientist Stephen Grey."
CGV entries 5:355 and 10/6:355. On the work of Zachariah Williams. In two parts: February, pages 59-66; and November, pages 339-341.
Childs provides a detailed biographical account of Casanova, emphasizing the identification of historical personages masked by pseudonyms in the Memoirs. The text documents a 1763 encounter in London where Casanova was presented to Johnson by Dr. Matthew Maty. Childs reports that the two engaged in an "extended conversation" regarding the etymology of certain words, a subject in which Johnson was "thoroughly proficient" as the author of his Dictionary. Casanova subsequently characterized Johnson as a "walking dictionary". Additionally, Childs suggests a probable 1764 meeting in Berlin between Casanova and Boswell. Boswell's journal entry regarding an Italian named "Nehaus"—a transliteration of Casanova—describes the interlocutor as a "blockhead" who "wanted to shine as a great philosopher".
CGV entry 5:365. Johnson presumably met Casanova in the autumn of 1763. The interview was later described in Casanova's 'A Leonard Snetlage', page 53.
CGV entry 10/6:365. Johnson presumably met Casanova in the autumn of 1763.
Middendorf discredits Sir Walter Scott's apocryphal anecdote of a violent meeting between Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith, arguing that their relationship was an uneasy truce marked by thinly veiled tolerance due to basic temperamental differences and infrequent meetings. Johnson, who loved conversational ability and "clubability," found Smith hesitant and preachy. Smith, in turn, found Johnson's aggressiveness distasteful. Despite an early "unlucky altercation" in 1761, a likely cause of their mutual poor opinion, they remained publicly civil, though neither man fully appreciated the other's intellectual or literary accomplishments.
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s5-XVIII.4.303
The Publication of Henry Fielding's Amelia
Thomas disputes the historical assumption that Henry Fielding's Amelia reached a second edition in January 1752, characterizing the work as a contemporary commercial failure. The study scrutinizes reminiscences provided by Johnson to Piozzi and by Thomas Cadell the elder to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, which claimed the first edition sold out in a single day. Johnson famously suggested to Piozzi that a "vile broken nose" in the narrative ruined the sale of a book that had initially called for a new edition before nightfall. Thomas argues these accounts lack contemporary corroboration and interprets William Strahan’s ledger entries not as a completed second impression, but as potential preparatory work for canceled revisions or new title-page preliminaries for unsold first-edition stock.
CGV entry 5:377.
CGV entry 10/6:377.
Osborn profiles Malone as a “scholar-collector,” detailing his transition from Irish law to Shakespearean editing. The article traces Malone’s acquisition of early English drama through major 18th-century auctions, highlighting his rivalry with George Steevens and agency for Lord Charlemont. Osborn analyzes Malone’s financial records and specific purchases, including the unique 1593 Venus and Adonis, and chronicles the bequest of his collection to the Bodleian Library, establishing his critical role in preserving Elizabethan literature.
Sir William Jones and Dr. Johnson's Literary Club
Cannon provides a comprehensive account of Sir William Jones’s active decade within Dr. Johnson’s Literary Club, where he served as president for three years. The study uses Jones’s correspondence with Viscount Althorp to offer first-hand characterizations of members including Burke, Reynolds, and Garrick. Despite a shared mutual respect for their scholarship, Jones and Johnson experienced a "temporary coolness" following the publication of the Lives of the English Poets, which Jones criticized for its "unjust" treatment of Milton. Jones is credited with rejuvenating the "languishing" Club through his 1780 resolution expanding membership to forty. The text highlights how the Club supported Jones’s unsuccessful 1780 parliamentary candidacy at Oxford and details his role in providing Oriental and botanical sources to fellow members. Cannon demonstrates that Jones’s presence enriched the group’s intellectual discourse while his own neoclassical traditions were shaped by the coterie.
Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Conversation with Boswell, Respecting Players
CGV entry 11/1:1. Answered by "Carlos" in the same journal, new series, volume 6 (September 1809), pages 160–162.
CGV entry 11/10:1. Answered by "Carlos" in the same journal, new series, volume 6 (September 1809), pages 160–162.
CGV entry 11/1:3. Johnson Club paper, March 14, 1892.
Defends Johnson's lifelong dislike and contempt for music, arguing that he consistently viewed it as a "triviality" and even a nuisance, and suggesting that his famed willingness to learn the scale was merely a polite pretense.
CGV entry 11/1:3. Reprinted from the 1892 standalone publication.
White's letter challenges the common misconception and "hackneyed catch-phrase" that Johnson defined opera as an "exotic and irrational entertainment." He clarifies that in the Dictionary, Johnson used Dryden’s more neutral definition of opera as a "poetical tale or fiction." The "irrational" comment appears in the life of Hughes in Lives of the Poets, where Johnson specifically targets Italian opera sung in a foreign language that English audiences cannot understand. White argues that Johnson’s critique was directed at the linguistic barrier rather than the operatic form itself, suggesting that attributing narrow or jingoistic views to Johnson ignores his broad acquaintance with native opera and masques. A separate letter from Graham notes Johnson's own admission in Raasay of being "delighted with the sound of words which I did not understand."
'I'll Come No More Behind Your Scenes, David': A Fresh Look at Dr. Johnson as Theatre Goer
Gray challenges James Boswell's biographical depiction of Samuel Johnson as an irascible pedant who despised the stage. Gray argues that Johnson's anti-theatrical prejudices stemmed from technical rather than moral objections, driven by his desire for naturalness over contemporary theatrical ranting. Gray traces Johnson's early involvement in the theater world from his youth in Lichfield, through his schoolmastering at Edial, to his active participation in London. The study highlights Johnson's text-restoration collaboration with David Garrick on Macbeth, his reporting of the parliamentary debates, and his direct assistance at theatrical rehearsals. Gray uses Johnson's Prologue for the opening of Drury Lane and his later literary criticism to demonstrate that Johnson acted as a deeply committed theater insider.
Backstage with Dr. Johnson: 'Punch has no feelings'
Klingel re-evaluates Johnson's negative remarks about the theater, arguing his censure stemmed not from prejudice but from informed criticism of eighteenth-century practices. Johnson found Shakespeare's plays "the worse for being acted" because they were presented in distorted, "improved" versions by actors often ignorant of the original texts. His ideal, "just gesture and elegant modulation", condemned the prevailing "rant" and excessive gestures, like Garrick's starts. Johnson’s "Punch has no feelings" retort rejected the era’s trend toward internal, feeling-based acting, insisting instead on a studied, externalized representation (mimicry) founded on acute observation.
CGV entry 11/1:10. A paper presented at the Clark Library Seminar, 23 October 1982. With an introduction by Donald Greene.
Johnson's 'Scheme for the Classes of a Grammar School'
The author presents a curriculum designed by Johnson for a grammar school, emphasizing the mastery of Latin syntax through translation and the study of "purest ages" authors like Virgil and Horace. Johnson advocates for a "habit of expression" as the most necessary scholarly attainment. In a 1755 letter to Warton, Johnson describes finishing his Dictionary, comparing himself to a traveler seeing land after wandering a "vast sea of words." He expresses apprehension regarding the "criticks" and a desire to avoid "literary quarrels." The text also includes an editorial note comparing Johnson’s "morose" character to a "literary Ulysses."
A Note on the Probable Source of Provost Smith's Famous Curriculum for the College of Philadelphia
CGV entry 11/2:3. Argues 'The Preceptor' was a source.
Esdaile examines Johnson’s surprisingly sympathetic and influential relationships with young people despite being childless. The author details Johnson’s role as an "unofficial uncle" to figures like Boswell and Burney, noting his belief that the young possessed more virtue and wit than his own contemporaries. Esdaile highlights Johnson's progressive views on the equal education of sexes and his preference for imaginative children's literature over utilitarian morality. While acknowledging Johnson’s acceptance of moderate flogging, Esdaile emphasizes his deep tenderness and "imaginative sympathy" toward the needs and troubles of youth.
This study comprehensively examines Johnson's theories of education, asserting that he emerges as a foremost informal educator of his period. The dissertation integrates Johnson's formal utterances with his conversation, which played a vital educative role in London society. Johnson viewed education as a life-long process, advocating the classical tradition (Latin/Greek) as essential for the "humane tradition"—the moral and religious knowledge of right and wrong. The study details Johnson's support for a "mixed education" (partially at school and home) and popular education, stressing the acquirement of utility and the "dignity of conversation" as primary goals. Johnson's complex views on science and the education of women are also analyzed as essential components of his philosophy.
CGV entry 11/2:6. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 23 (March 1963), pages 3349-3350.
Teaching and Learning in Five Works of Samuel Johnson: A Study of Instruction in the Moral Art of Attention
CGV entry 11/2:8. Dissertation Abstracts International 35: 166A–167A.
Dr. Samuel Johnson on Literary Copyright, 1774
This 1774 letter presents Johnson's detailed recommendations for the equitable regulation of literary property. Johnson balances an author's natural right to the profit of their work against the societal inconvenience of perpetual monopolies. He outlines a multi-tiered framework: authors should retain exclusive printing rights during their lifetime; initial asset alienation should be limited to fourteen years to secure fair pricing; subsequent reversions should permit shorter seven-year sales to incentivize continuous textual improvement; and heirs should inherit exclusive property rights for thirty years after the author's death. Johnson maintains that a total fifty-year duration sufficiently rewards writers before texts become common property requiring annotations.
CGV entry 11/3:2. See also The Critic, volume 25 (November 10, 1894), page 314.
Despite contemplating a legal career and authoring a celebrated prayer for the study of law, Johnson never entered the profession. He maintained a high regard for the law, favoring chancery suits over ecclesiastical cures and praising habeas corpus as a unique British advantage. In discussions with Boswell, Johnson defended the morality of legal advocacy, arguing that lawyers do not know a cause is "bad" until a judge decides it and that professional "affecting of warmth" does not impair personal honesty. He also critiqued judicial life-tenure and the poor state of contemporary English law reporting.
Dr. Johnson's Associations with the Law, the Lawyers, and Legal Haunts
Spokes examines Johnson’s lifelong affinity for the law, noting his early unsuccessful attempts to join Doctors’ Commons and his later legal meditations. The account highlights Johnson’s ability to compose profound legal arguments for Boswell, his friendship with eminent figures like Thurlow and Scott, and his thirty-six-year residence in various London legal districts. While critiquing contemporary practitioners' reliance on precedent over principle, Johnson maintained a reverent view of the profession’s historical role in society.
Johnson expresses a remarkably lucid and just estimation of the legal profession, noting that lawyers possess a practical knowledge of life necessary for bookish men. Despite composing a prayer to sanctify his potential legal studies, Johnson never engaged in the design. He distinguishes between the "plodding blockhead" who excels in the statutory part of law and the man of parts required for its rational application. Johnson advises Boswell that success is uncertain due to the high volume of candidates, recommending constant attendance at Westminster Hall to learn business and demonstrate availability. He defends the ethics of advocacy, arguing that a lawyer must not usurp the province of the judge or jury by determining the justice of a cause beforehand. Johnson justifies the "multiplication of words" in legal argument as a necessity for maintaining the attention of a committee. He also rejects the reciprocal argument for marital infidelity, maintaining that laws serve society and men in general rather than particular cases.
Roscoe argues that Johnson possessed a 'robust and logical intellect' naturally suited for the legal profession, a view supported by Lord Stowell’s claim that Johnson 'might have been Lord Chancellor.' The essay identifies Johnson’s 'inherent perception of the crucial fact' and his ability to dictate masterly legal arguments to Boswell as evidence of a 'legal mind.' Roscoe highlights Johnson’s 'thoughtful statement' on the 'rationale of advocacy,' where he maintained that a lawyer 'has no business with justice or injustice of the cause he undertakes.' Johnson’s 'lifelong regret' at not being 'of the profession' is captured in his 'agitated and angry' exclamation: 'Why will you vex me by suggesting this when it is too late?'
CGV entry 11/3:6. Another version appears in Edward Stanley Roscoe, 'Aspects of Doctor Johnson' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), pages 16-31.
This report details the discovery of a manuscript containing Johnson’s views on copyright, written at age thirty. Johnson argues that book purchasers acquire the right to use texts for their own improvement or the benefit of mankind. The collection also reveals a Bishop Percy list identifying the first twelve members of the Club in 1764, correcting omissions found in Boswell’s account. Additionally, the discovery includes a 1771 quatrain by Goldsmith intended for a theatrical production.
Dr. Johnson and the Administration of Justice
CGV entry 11/3:9. Condensed from the Bulletin of the New Haven Bar Association, May 1934.
Dr. Johnson's Law Lectures for Chambers: An Addition to the Canon
McAdam argues that Johnson collaborated significantly with Chambers in the composition of the Vinerian law lectures at Oxford, later published as A Treatise on Estates and Tenures. Citing Johnson’s lifelong interest in legal studies and his history of dictating legal arguments for Boswell and other friends, McAdam uses correspondence and a suppressed, heavily scored-out diary entry from April 1767—stating "I returned from helping Chambers at Oxford"—to prove Johnson assisted Chambers in person. Evidence includes letters from Johnson urging Chambers to "lock yourself up from all but me." McAdam identifies the Vinerian lectures as the source of the 1824 treatise and detects a "Johnsonian ring" in specifically Johnsonian prose styles and philosophical views on the historical background of feudalism and villenage. The article suggests Johnson provided conceptual frameworks while Chambers managed technical details. McAdam notes Thrale also attributed these lectures to Johnson, reinforcing his inclusion in the legal canon.
CGV entry 11/3:10. In two parts: volume 15 (October 1939), pages 385-391; and volume 16 (April 1940), pages 159–168.
The Douglas Cause: An Unpublished Correspondence
CGV entry 11/3:11. Discusses Andrew Stuart's correspondence concerning his 'Letters to Lord Mansfield' (1773).
McNair examines Johnson’s extensive connections with the legal profession, asserting that the law was a central element in his life and conversation. The text details Johnson’s interactions with and opinions of major judicial figures, including Hardwicke, Mansfield, Blackstone, and Thurlow. McNair highlights Johnson’s preference for the "practical" knowledge of lawyers over that of scholars and clarifies his intimate friendships with Scott and Chambers. Key anecdotes include Johnson’s appreciation for Hardwicke’s self-made success, his skeptical view of Mansfield’s intellectual character, and Thurlow’s attempts to secure Johnson’s financial stability. The account emphasizes Johnson’s "legal quality of mind" and his presence within the Temple and Gray’s Inn societies as a frequent "conviva" among legal practitioners.
McNair includes discussion of individual cases pertaining to Scots law and mentioned Johnson’s connections to Chambers's Lectures on English Law. He suggests that Johnson accepted principles of natural law. The book is a good introduction to the scope of Johnson's non-professional legal knowledge and his sustained respect for the subject. McNair's approach has been criticized for being insufficiently analytical and for not being an exhaustive treatment of the topic, and for being little more than an extraction of Johnson's statements on law found in Boswell's biography. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics praising the detailed investigation into the central subject's legal reading, substantial library, and relationships with eminent jurists. In TLS, Chapman delivers an approving assessment, highlighting the wide learning and sagacity of the legal opinions recorded in the volume, though Sparrow, writing in RES, finds the analysis of consultations on ethical matters and common sense to be the most engaging element. Legal and specialized journals are highly enthusiastic; Gutteridge, in the Law Quarterly Review, commends the successful reconstruction of the eighteenth-century legal atmosphere, while Keeton, in MLR, finds the essays illuminating regarding early collaborations on university law lectures. Plucknett, writing in the Modern Law Review, similarly celebrates the text as a work closely packed with riches that sends readers back to primary sources. However, specialized literary scholars express sharp reservations. Hyde, offering a critical review in PQ, characterizes the volume as an undistinguished, poorly researched work that ignores essential manuscript evidence and modern scholarship. McAdam, writing in Modern Language Notes, similarly objects to the heavy reliance on a single biographical source and the neglect of the author's primary writings. N&Q adds confirmation of the volume's focus on intellectual versatility and secret ghost-writing. There is no divergence between popular and scholarly reception.
Reviews: Norman Birkett, The Spectator 182, no. 6291 (1949): 90; R. W. Chapman, TLS, no. 2451 (January 1949): 58; Cornell Law Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1949): 246; Lester E. Denonn, American Bar Association Journal 35, no. 7 (1949): 564–65; A. Esdaile, English 7, no. 42 (1949): 287; H. C. Gutteridge, Law Quarterly Review 65, no. 259 (1949): 384–85; H. A. H., Cambridge Law Journal 10, no. 2 (1949): 282–83; Harvard Law Review 63, no. 5 (1950): 927–28; Donald F. Hyde, PQ 29, no. 3 (1950): 282–83; G. W. Keeton, MLR 45, no. 4 (1950): 536–536; Law Quarterly Review 63, no. 251 (1947): 302–22; Lichfield Mercury, January 21, 1949; E. L. McAdam Jr., Modern Language Notes 66, no. 1 (1951): 64–66; N&Q 194, no. 4 (1949): 88; C. H. O’Halloran, Canadian Bar Review 27 (1949): 617–; T. F. T. Plucknett, Modern Law Review 13, no. 3 (1950): 398; South African Law Journal 66 (1949): 229; John Sparrow, RES 1, no. 1 (1950): 270–71; University of Toronto Law Journal 8 (1949): 456; F. T. Wood, English Studies 30, no. 6 (1949): 312–13.
Hyde offers a sharply critical assessment of McNair’s study, characterizing it as an undistinguished and poorly researched work by an otherwise eminent legal scholar. He highlights significant omissions, including McNair's failure to consult key articles by McAdam and Chapman that provide essential manuscript evidence regarding Johnson’s legal involvements. Hyde condemns the author's frequent admissions of ignorance and his casual, "amateur" use of language (e.g., "smaller fry," "real Johnson stuff"). While acknowledging the book’s readability and the potential interest of its eighteenth-century legal vignettes, Hyde concludes that an authoritative work on Johnson’s relationship to the law remains to be written.
CGV entry 11/3:13. Review by Donald F. Hyde of the book by Arnold D. McNair.
McAdam identifies McNair’s study as an interesting but limited work that relies heavily on Boswell’s Life while neglecting Johnson’s own writings. He notes several factual errors regarding 18th-century legal practice and criticizes the sporadic use of modern scholarship. Despite these flaws, McAdam praises the lively sketches of contemporary lawyers and agrees with McNair's summary that Johnson possessed a strong grasp of general legal principles rather than a systematic knowledge of specific rules.
CGV entry 11/3:13. Review by E. L. McAdam, Jr. of the book by Arnold D. McNair.
A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750: The Movement for Reform, 1750–1833
Radzinowicz examines the spectacular increase in capital offences during the eighteenth century, noting that while approximately fifty offences carried the death penalty in 1688, this number grew by nearly two hundred by 1819. Radzinowicz analyzes the composite character of statutes like the Waltham Black Act, which broadly framed single provisions to cover numerous variations of an offence, effectively expanding the death penalty's scope beyond the number of individual acts. The text explores the uniformity of punishment that elided distinctions between crimes of vastly different gravity, such as murder and marking the edges of any current coin. Radzinowicz details the intervention of Johnson, who in 1751 appealed for a drastic revision of a system that allowed multitudes to advance toward capital crimes. Radzinowicz further documents Johnson’s active attitude and intervention in the high-profile forgery case of Dr. William Dodd in 1777. The monograph describes how liberal criminal procedure and a lack of effective policing initially favoured severe laws, which were eventually challenged by the social consciousness of reformers like Sir Samuel Romilly. Radzinowicz describes the gradual divergence between law and practice as juries and courts sought to mitigate the barbarity of the code through restrictive interpretations and pious perjury.
CGV entry 11/3:14. Chapter 10, Section 3, discusses Johnson's views on the penal system (pages 336-339). Chapter 14 gives a careful account of Johnson's part in the case of Dr. Dodd (pages 450-472).
Bloom's focuses on the Act of Anne, noting Johnson consistently argued for the author's natural right to their work's profits. However, on a philosophical basis of public good, he opposed perpetual copyright. His proposed copyright duration for a work was approximately fifty years. He maintained that abridgments were not a copyright violation, concluding that the proprietor's damage was less important than the free acquisition of knowledge. Johnson's views were upheld in Donaldson versus Becket (1774), which ended the booksellers' claim to perpetuity. The subsequent decision prompted booksellers to commission Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1777) to protect their property.
Dr. Johnson and the Law by Arnold McNair and A Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson Sent by a Company of Americans Assembled in the Library of Yale University, 18th September, 1948
CGV entry 11/3:16.
McAdam argues that Johnson’s deep and lifelong engagement with the law was not merely a casual interest, as often portrayed, but a serious, scholarly, and practical pursuit that profoundly shaped his thought and career. The book seeks to provide the first "complete picture" of a subject the author argues has been mentioned by biographers like Boswell but never "thoroughly investigated." McAdam contends that previous works on the topic were mere introductions, failing to consult crucial sources. The book's central thesis is that Johnson possessed a sophisticated understanding of legal principles, which he actively applied in his work. A cornerstone of McAdam's study is his significant discovery that Johnson "had actually collaborated with Robert Chambers in composing the Vinerian Lectures on the English Law" delivered at Oxford between 1767 and 1774. This collaboration is presented as definitive proof of Johnson's high-level legal thinking and his direct, practical involvement in the discipline he often wished he had pursued. Beyond this major collaboration, the book traces this legal thread through Johnson's entire life, moving from his early considerations of practicing law to the "thousand references to legal topics" lacing his writings, including the legal definitions in his Dictionary. Furthermore, it provides the first thorough examination of his practical legal work, such as the numerous briefs he dictated for James Boswell. McAdam also speculates on the type of lawyer Johnson might have been, portraying him as a potentially brilliant trial lawyer, formidable in his "quick wit," "powerful physique," and "thundering voice." More importantly, he highlights the moral and philosophical grounding of Johnson’s legal mind, noting his "essential fairness and his basic humaneness," and his progressive, steadfast opposition to slavery, which placed him far in advance of many contemporaries. While McAdam thoroughly documents this passion for law, he ultimately concludes that the world was better served by Johnson's actual career, asking, "who would lose the Rambler in the advocate or judge?" The book thus positions Johnson as a major legal thinker of his time, even if his primary contributions remained in the field of literature. Chapter 1, "Dr. Johnson and the English Law," surveys the eighteenth-century state of legal education to contextualize the obstacles encountered during his lifelong engagement with the profession. Chapter 2, "Johnson's Early Interest in the Law," traces an informal apprenticeship through early local influences in Lichfield, the composition of the Parliamentary Debates, and the lexicographical labor of the Dictionary. Chapter 3, "Johnson's Study of the Law," examines a period of intensive legal research in the 1760s prompted by a professional association with William Gerard Hamilton. Chapter 4, "Johnson and Chambers," details the significant but long-hidden collaboration in which the Vinerian Lectures on English law were composed for Robert Chambers. Chapter 5, "Johnson Advises Boswell on the Law," analyzes the practical application of legal principles through the numerous briefs and ethical counsels provided to his biographer. Chapter 6, "Johnson, the Law, and Lawyers, 1760–1784," documents extensive late-career interactions with prominent jurists and legal themes across major works like the edition of Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poets. The "Conclusion" reflects on how a profound respect for the law and human experience served as a cornerstone for his broader intellectual and political philosophy. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics praising the successful analysis of the central subject's legal thought and the definitive demonstration of a hidden collaboration on the Oxford Vinerian lectures. Kolb's review in PQ commends the volume for identifying authentic text additions that reveal a major role as a secret legal collaborator, though he criticizes the unwieldy chronological organization for obscuring a clear synthesis of ideas. Unsigned commentary in JNL highlights the study's achievement in positioning the central figure as the great lawyer-layman of his era, noting that legal preoccupations shaped his political identity and respect for the established order. Tracy, writing in Queen's Quarterly, agrees that isolating these passages from old manuscripts clarifies the subject's middle years and tracks his shift toward constitutional Toryism, despite finding that the narrative buries important insights under excessive detail. Hornstein, in the Columbia Law Review, delivers an enthusiastic assessment, praising the identification of a distinctive periodic style in analyses of contract law and equity, while celebrating the text for exposing an advanced advocacy for liberty and anti-slavery principles. Denonn's review in the American Bar Association Journal reinforces this consensus, applauding the diligent research that uncovers a prolific career in legal ghostwriting and traces a lifelong humanitarian interest in equitable law.
Reviews: Lester E. Denonn, American Bar Association Journal 38, no. 4 (1952): 305; George D. Hornstein, Columbia Law Review 53, no. 1 (1953): 136–38; JNL 12, no. 1 (1952): 1–2; Gwin J. Kolb, PQ 31, no. 3 (1952): 279–80; Otto Eberhard Majer, Zeitschrift Für Ausländisches Und Internationales Privatrecht 19, no. 1 (1954): 184–85; Clarence R. Tracy, Queen’s Quarterly 61 (1953): 413–14.
Denonn emphasizes McAdam’s identification of Johnson as the "great lawyer-layman" and a prolific legal ghostwriter. He focuses on McAdam’s discovery that Johnson outlined and drafted significant portions of Chambers’s Vinerian lectures at Oxford. Denonn notes McAdam’s success in tracing Johnson’s lifelong humanitarian interest in equitable law through his major literary works. He identifies the text's strength in its "tune detective" research into Johnson’s legal contributions.
CGV entry 11/3:18. Review by Lester E. Denonn of the book by E. L. McAdam, Jr.
McAdam provides a comprehensive study of Samuel Johnson’s legal knowledge and interests, significantly surpassing the earlier work of Sir Arnold McNair. A central contribution of the volume is the first detailed analysis of Johnson’s collaboration with Robert Chambers on the Vinerian lectures, identifying numerous authentic Johnsonian passages. McAdam argues that Johnson was the "great lawyer-layman of his century," supporting this claim with evidence from the Dictionary, the Idler, and his legal counsel to Boswell. While praising the new attributions, Kolb criticizes the chronological organization for obscuring a clear synthesis of Johnson’s legal theories and notes several minor factual errors regarding publication dates and contemporary correspondences.
CGV entry 11/3:18. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the book by E. L. McAdam, Jr.
Hornstein reviews McAdam’s study of Johnson’s legal influence, emphasizing Johnson’s extensive knowledge despite never practicing at the bar. Hornstein details Johnson’s collaboration on the Vinerian lectures of Chambers, identifying the contributions through Johnson's distinctive 'grandiose, rolling, periodic' style. The review highlights Johnson’s historical and political analyses, including his discussions on equity, feudal law, and 'mutuality of contract.' Hornstein notes Boswell’s record of Johnson preparing legal briefs on subjects such as 'vicious intromission' and corporal punishment, often employing a 'commonsense approach' that bypassed precedent. The text contrasts Johnson’s Tory reputation with his 'less-known' advocacy for liberty and denunciation of slavery and debt imprisonment. Hornstein credits McAdam with proving that Johnson effectively assisted and guided Chambers at every turn, acting as a secret successor to Blackstone.
CGV entry 11/3:18. Review by George D. Hornstein of the book by E. L. McAdam, Jr.
Hanbury commemorates the bicentenary of the Vinerian Chair by examining the pedagogical contributions and legal legacies of its successive occupants, beginning with Sir William Blackstone in 1758. The monograph details the transition of English law from a vocational apprenticeship to an academic discipline, highlighting Blackstone’s foundational lectures and his subsequent influence on American jurisprudence. Hanbury provides biographical sketches and critical analyses of immediate successors, notably Sir Robert Chambers, whose career involved significant interaction with Samuel Johnson. Hanbury describes the warm and constant friendship between Johnson and Chambers, noting Johnson’s reported assistance with Chambers' lectures and their humorous dispute over the exclusion of females from land succession. The text identifies Johnson as a student of Pembroke College, where his presence preceded Blackstone's, and reproduces a 1772 letter from Johnson to Chambers. Hanbury further chronicles the nineteenth-century period of eclipse before the second foundation under Albert Venn Dicey in 1882, who revitalized the Chair through his work on constitutional law and public opinion. The narrative concludes with an exhaustive assessment of Sir William Holdsworth’s monumental contributions to legal history.
CGV entry 11/3:20. Discusses Johnson and Sir Robert Chambers.
Dr. Johnson on Abridgment—a Re-examination
Howard challenges Clifford and Bloom regarding Johnson's 1739 Considerations on abridgment. Contrary to claims that Johnson reversed his defense of the practice once established, Howard argues Johnson consistently upheld the legal tradition that bona fide abridgments constituted new works requiring invention. Citing cases like Burnett v. Chetwood, the author demonstrates Johnson's arguments for Cave aligned with early eighteenth-century legal precedents rather than personal economic status. Johnson's later comments to Boswell in 1773 merely restated established legal definitions.
The First Two Vinerian Professors: Blackstone and Chambers
CGV entry 11/3:24. The George Wythe Memorial Lecture.
Curley details the "secret collaboration" between Johnson and Sir Robert Chambers in producing A Course of Lectures on the English Law between 1766 and 1770. Drawing on extensive new primary sources, Curley illustrates how Johnson provided "helpful editorial guidance" and possibly dictated passages to assist the "diffident" Chambers in his duties as Vinerian Professor. The article argues that this partnership deeply influenced Johnson’s mature political thought, particularly his views on "parliamentary sovereignty" and imperial authority seen in Taxation No Tyranny. Curley shows that the lectures’ "realistic historiography" challenged the dominant Whig interpretation of the constitution. He concludes that the collaboration was a "mutual blessing," stimulating Johnson intellectually while helping Chambers solidify a reputation that eventually led to his appointment as Chief Justice in India.
CGV entry 11/3:26. With Robert Chambers in the Vinerian law lectures.
This narrative recounts the 1762 Cock Lane ghost phenomena, where rapping and scratching noises occurred in the house of a parish clerk, purportedly the ghost of Miss Fanny, accusing her former partner, Kent, of poisoning her. The piece details the sensational excitement in London, noting the involvement of clergymen and high-society figures like Walpole. It stresses the near-certainty that Johnson was part of the group that visited the vault and comments on Churchill’s satire of Johnson's participation.
Lang reviews the 1762 Cock Lane mystery, focusing on the alleged haunting of Elizabeth Parsons by "Scratching Fanny." He examines the role of Johnson, who assisted in the 1762 investigation at the house of Reverend Aldrich. Lang notes that Johnson expressed "great indignation" at the imposture and published a newspaper account concluding the sounds were counterfeit. However, Lang disputes the finality of Johnson’s judgment, observing that Johnson was unable to answer Boswell’s subsequent questions regarding the affair. Lang characterizes Johnson’s investigation as inadequate, lasting "rather more than an hour," and argues that such "common-sense" skepticism fails to account for the cross-cultural persistence of identical "Poltergeist" phenomena. The text also mentions Johnson’s later dismissal of Alexander Donaldson as the "Robin Hood of Literature" and his toasting at a 1763 banquet. Lang uses the case to highlight the limitations of eighteenth-century rationalism when confronted with persistent psychological or folkloric anomalies.
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
Prince reevaluates Johnson’s intellectual legacy, positioning him not as a victim of superstition, but as a proto-psychical researcher. Addressing misconceptions popularized by Macaulay, the author demonstrates that Johnson’s interest in phenomena like the Cock Lane Ghost was rooted in a "resolute rationality" and a desire for "well authenticated" instances of the supernormal. Prince notes that Johnson was instrumental in exposing the Cock Lane fraud, rather than being its dupe. The text highlights Johnson's insatiable "appetite for evidence" and his stated willingness to believe in second sight, provided the proof remained "irresistible." Furthermore, Prince underscores Johnson's capacity for self-experimentation—such as testing his faculties via Latin verse during a stroke—as evidence of his commitment to scientific observation. The article portrays Johnson as a man who maintained an even balance between open-mindedness and the "merciless rejection of insufficient proof," embodying the spirit of twentieth-century inquiry into the unknown.
Clodd examines Johnson's views on Second Sight, a phenomenon he defines in his Dictionary and later encounters during his tour of the Hebrides with Boswell. Clodd details the history and nature of Second Sight, noting its Gaelic name, da-shealladh, and connection to primitive superstition, witchcraft, and clairvoyance. The analysis focuses on quotations from Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, documenting Johnson's willingness to believe the stories, which Clodd attributes to his devout Christian temperament and opposition to materialism, despite his rejection of the Cock Lane Ghost. Clodd contrasts Johnson's empiricism with the philosophical skepticism of Hume and Beattie.
Beatty examines Johnson's "rational and open-minded attitude" toward supernatural phenomena, specifically the Cock-Lane Ghost investigation of 1762. The article disputes the contemporary ridicule by Charles Churchill and others, asserting that Johnson's involvement was driven by "intelligent questioning" rather than credulity. Beatty analyzes Johnson's interest in the "second-sight" during his Hebridean tour and explores his desire to find a rational basis for the immortality of the soul. Drawing on testimonies from Boswell and Piozzi, the author argues that Johnson sought "more evidence" for the spiritual world while refusing to accept manifestations without proof. The study presents Johnson as a figure who balanced a philosophical respect for testimony with a determination to detect fallacy, maintaining that "all argument is against" ghosts but "all belief is for" them.
CGV entry 11/4:6.
L. A. R. examines Kingsley’s assertion that Johnson was "superstitious enough himself." The author analyzes Johnson’s definitions of superstition and his desire for evidence of spirits as an opposition to materialism. While acknowledging Johnson's interest in mysterious disquisitions and supernatural appearances, L. A. R. highlights his skepticism regarding the Cock Lane ghost. The text queries specialized Johnsonians to determine if the "great Doctor" truly warrants the superstitious label or if his inquiries remained within the bounds of rational investigation.
Samuel Johnson, the Second Sight, and His Sources
Jemielity examines the relationship between Johnson’s account of the second sight in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and his sources: Martin’s A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland and Macleod's A Treatise on the Second Sight. Johnson actively used Martin's argument on the loadstone and his defense of witnesses' credibility, adopting Martin’s structure while rejecting his specificity. Johnson's personal inquiries and conversations with figures connected to Macleod, such as Macqueen and Mackinnon, supplied anecdotal evidence, but Johnson’s own analysis shows no direct textual dependence on Macleod's treatise, preferring Martin’s concise formulation.
CGV entry 11/4:10. On the journey to Scotland.
Plain acknowledges his identity as a Scotsman and celebrates the "pride and glory" of Scottish pens within the English nation. He critiques a "celebrated literary giant" [Johnson], asserting that this figure has "endeavoured to cast a general obloquy on a nation" that disdains to grant him a place among its "literary worthies." Plain disputes the "imperious pedigree" of critics who stigmatize Scottish phrases without examining their intrinsic grammatical merit or utility. He argues that the English language suffers from a "greater want of precision" and more frequent "grammatical errors" in phrases peculiar to the English than in those of the Scots. Addressing specific criticisms of his own style, Plain distinguishes between "repute" and "reputation," maintaining that "repute" better denotes general estimation in a community. He concludes by urging writers to follow "right reason" rather than the "partial dixit" of any pedagogue.
Evaluates the legacy of Johnson through the perspective of his notorious Scoto-phobia. It characterizes Johnson's linguistic dismissals of Gaelic as "gibberish" as evidence of deep philological ignorance and critiques his Dictionary for allowing personal prejudices to compromise scientific objectivity. While acknowledging Johnson's wit, the account notes his failure to appreciate Scottish scenery and his specific theoretical objections to Scottish culinary staples. It maintains that Johnson's own literary productions, including Rasselas and Irene, lack contemporary vitality, surviving only through the "life-like" portraiture provided by Boswell. The narrative posits that Boswell's meticulous record of Johnson's conversation—rather than Johnson's own writing—secures his place in the literary canon. Finally, it humorously suggests that Johnson's performative animosity may have served to mask his own potential Scottish ancestry.
Examines Johnson's recorded sentiments regarding Ireland and the Irish character, emphasizing his role as an "old Tory." Contrast's Johnson’s "generous and intelligent appreciation" of the Irish with his hostility toward the Scotch. Highlights Johnson's "wholesome and honest hatred of injustice" through his severe reprobation of the British government’s "barbarous debilitating policy" and the penal laws, which he characterized as a "monstrous injustice." Records Johnson's opposition to a Union, famously warning an Irishman, "Do not make an Union with us, sir. We should unite with you only to rob you." Notes his admiration for Swift’s advocacy and his personal kindness toward figures like Goldsmith and Burke.
CGV entry 11/5:5. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
O’Connor discusses Johnson’s 'well-known partiality for Irishmen' despite his refusal to visit Dublin, which he deemed 'only a worse capital.' The focus rests on Johnson’s 'affectionate' and 'confidential' associations with Murphy, Malone, Goldsmith, and Burke. Johnson took a 'deep interest' in Irish literature and language, lamenting its potential 'oblivion.' O’Connor underscores the 'spontaneous' gesture of Trinity College, Dublin, in bestowing an LL.D. on Johnson in 1765, ten years before Oxford. Additionally, Johnson is noted for his 'monstrous injustice' critique of the Penal Laws, declaring, 'let the authority of the English Government perish rather than be maintained by iniquity.'
Doctor Samuel Johnson and the American Colonies
Harvey examines the apparent paradox of Samuel Johnson, a renowned Christian moralist, harboring a violent prejudice against Americans, as evidenced in his 1775 tract, 'Taxation no Tyranny.' The author identifies six primary pillars for this antipathy: (1) Slavery: Johnson despised the hypocrisy of 'yelps for liberty' from slave-drivers; (2) Insubordination: As a staunch Tory, he viewed the American Whigs as successors to the 'first Whig,' the Devil, for their impatience with authority; (3) Aversion to War: Johnson abhorred the bloodshed he believed European instigators were forcing upon the colonies; (4) Cruelty of Colonization: He criticized all European conquest as a gratification of avarice at the expense of native populations; (5) Uncivilization: He believed those who left the intellectual concentration of London for the wilderness chose 'barbarism' over 'intellectual enjoyment'; (6) Constitutional Law: He argued that colonists had voluntarily resigned their right to vote by moving to separate governments. Harvey concludes that while Johnson’s rhetoric was harsh, his private correspondence with Americans like Bishop White suggests he valued individual friendships and intellectual progress across the Atlantic, provided it did not involve 'zealots of anarchy.'
CGV entry 11/5:9. See also Notes and Queries, volume 169 (August 11, 1945), page 45.
Krishnamurti challenges the misconception of Johnson as a provincial Londoner, asserting his profound intellectual curiosity regarding India. The argument highlights Johnson’s aborted 1756 plan to migrate to India with Fowke and his later correspondence with Hastings. Krishnamurti examines Johnson’s scholarly networking with Jones and Chambers, his defense of the caste system via biological analogy, and his advocacy for benevolent despotism to curb colonial corruption. The text concludes that Johnson’s Indian interests reflect his broader commitment to universal knowledge and social justice.
Did Dr. Johnson Hate Scotland and the Scottish?
Brunner challenges the biographical commonplace of Johnson’s alleged Scottophobia. While Boswell preserved numerous anti-Scottish anecdotes, Brunner notes Johnson maintained intimate friendships with Scots and employed five Scottish assistants for the Dictionary. The study demonstrates that Johnson's criticisms in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland—specifically regarding deforestation, educational standards, and social conditions—align with historical reality rather than personal malice. Brunner argues Johnson’s skepticism toward Macpherson’s Ossian was factually grounded, and his hostility was directed primarily at Calvinist iconoclasm rather than the Scottish people. The perception of hatred arose from contemporary Scottish over-sensitivity to the critical observations of a conservative English traditionalist.
Atkinson traces Johnson’s continuous interest in Swedish affairs, citing early writings like Marmor Norfolciense and the "Swedish Charles" passage in The Vanity of Human Wishes. The author explains Johnson’s "ravenous" reading of Sheridan’s Account of the Late Revolution in Sweden as a product of his scholarly interest in the science of government and his agreement with Sheridan’s political principles. Atkinson further explores Johnson’s possible connections with Swedish tutors and Boswell’s once-held intention to write a Swedish history.
Johnson engaged with American topics through reviews, such as an account of Major-General Sir William Johnson's treaties with the Mohawks. His political views are notably expressed in Taxation no Tyranny (1775). Johnson's writings related to travel, such as the introduction to The World Displayed, also involved America. His letters to Americans were sometimes published.
Johnson and London: In Search of a City's Civility
Curley traces Johnson’s evolving response to London, moving from the severe Juvenalian indictment of urban corruption in his early poetry to a mature recognition of the city as a catalyst for human progress. He contends that Johnson’s preference for urban life rests on a via media between primitive savagery and enervating decadence. Curley frames the 1773 tour with Boswell as an empirical investigation that ultimately confirmed the superiority of urban civilization over rural Highland sterility.
Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries
London Transformed: Images of the City in the Eighteenth Century
Byrd argues that Johnson’s London is characterized by a resolutely unsymbolic nature, rejecting the apocalyptic visions of contemporaries like Defoe or Pope in favor of a tribunal for the moral life grounded in secular reality. Examining Johnson's poetry and periodical essays, Byrd identifies a pervasive fear of solitude that drove Johnson toward the full flow of London talk as a means of achieving benevolent community. Byrd contrasts Johnson's voracious urbanity and his pursuit of candidates for renown with the traditional rake's progress, suggesting that for Johnson, the city served as a correcting force against intellectual aridness. While Johnson acknowledges the contagion of vanity and the tumult of hostility inherent in the metropolis, Byrd asserts he finds recompense in the concatenation of society. Johnson's rootedness in the concrete life of the fully human city allows him to perceive London not as a monstrous entity, but as a site for genuine benevolence and mutual beneficence.
CGV entry 11/5:18. See pages 80–118 for Johnson's attitude towards the city and for London and the 'Life of Savage'.
This article, reprinted from the Outlook, examines Johnson's fascination with "air-balloons" during the final eighteen months of his life. Broadley uses correspondence with Thrale to show Johnson's technical interest in the "generation of light air" and his skepticism regarding the practical utility of balloons. The text details Johnson's reactions to Vincenzo Lunardi's 1784 ascent and mentions his financial subscription to a project involving "iron wings." Broadley suggests Johnson is "fairly entitled" to be ranked among the "Conscript Fathers of aeronautics" due to his persistent attention to these "soaring flights" while on his deathbed.
CGV entry 11/6:1.
Thorpe analyzes Johnson’s contribution to the theory of aeronautics, specifically through the 'artist' character in Rasselas (1759). The text highlights Johnson’s remarkably accurate enunciation of the principles of 'heavier-than-air' flight: the necessity of renewing impulse upon the air faster than it can recede. Thorpe contrasts this early theoretical brilliance with Johnson’s later correspondence in 1784 regarding the Montgolfier and Lunardi balloon ascents. In these later writings, Johnson expresses skepticism, dismissing balloons as 'useless for transport' due to a lack of directing power and preferring the practical discovery of a cure for asthma over the repetition of 'the jest' of ballooning. The article also notes Johnson's prescient warnings regarding the military implications of aviation, where 'an army sailing through the clouds' could bypass walls and seas. Thorpe concludes that while Johnson grasped fundamental physical laws, he remained grounded in the practical and moral limitations of his era.
Hodgson examines Johnson’s lifelong interest in mechanical inventions, noting his early association with Wyatt’s spinning machine and his later observations on aerostation. In 'Rasselas', Johnson articulated a theory of flight based on air resistance and power that closely approximated Cayley’s 1809 formula. Following the 1783 Montgolfier and Charles ascents, Johnson’s correspondence with Mrs. Thrale reveals a sophisticated grasp of hydrogen-based lift, though he remained skeptical of balloons as mere "amusements" until horizontal direction could be achieved. The text details Johnson’s interactions with the aeronautical interests of 'The Club' members like Banks and Windham, and his personal gift of a barometer to the pioneer James Sadler. Despite his debilitating asthma, Johnson maintained his curiosity until his death, famously sending his servant Francis Barber to witness Sadler's 1784 Oxford ascent when he was too ill to attend himself.
CGV entry 11/6:3. Reprinted from the London Mercury (1924).
Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Science
Brown explores Samuel Johnson's relationship with eighteenth-century science through an external literary approach, demonstrating that his writings and conversation exhibit significant knowledge of several scientific fields. Johnson possesses competency in medicine, mechanical invention, and chemistry, and an educated layman's knowledge of biology, mathematics, physics, and economic theory. His analytical powers permit brilliant speculations on psychology and aeronautics. The document contends that Boswell's ignorance of science misrepresents the extent of Johnson's scientific interests, which heavily influence his works and prose style.
Samuel Johnson's Interest in Scientific Affairs
Swaine surveys Johnson's "wide interest in scientific matters," ranging from chemical experiments to natural history. Johnson performed "chymical operations" with oil of vitriol and wrote on the transmutation of gold. He defended Priestley's scientific merit despite theological disagreements and reviewed works by Newton and Hales. Swaine highlights Johnson's application of the experimental method to natural phenomena, such as his challenge to Boswell's theory on scorpions. Johnson also engaged in practical science by writing a pamphlet on the longitude at sea for Zachariah Williams and advising friends to "examine all you can by your own senses." His associations with Banks and James further underscore his immersion in the "healing art" and natural philosophy.
Atkinson traces Johnson’s enduring fascination with chemistry and medicine, documenting his laboratory activities at Streatham and his lifelong friendship with practitioners like Levett and James. The study examines Johnson’s scientific contributions to the Dictionary, noting his reliance on seventeenth-century authorities like Bacon and Boyle despite his awareness of contemporary advancements. Atkinson highlights Johnson’s ability to master technical subjects for diverse publications while maintaining a moralistic perspective on scientific inquiry.
CGV entry 11/6:8. On scientists quoted in the Dictionary. Published in parts: August 5, pages 338-341; November 25, pages 516-519; December 9, pages 541-544; December 23, pages 561-563.
Johnson changed his view on swallows. In 1768, he was "certain" that swallows "conglobulate" and submerge in rivers for winter. By 1773, Johnson remained silent when Goldsmith suggested a partial migration, with stronger birds leaving. This change aligns with the scientific argument presented in Pennant's second edition of British Zoology (1768). Pennant accepted migration as conclusive, asserting that only later hatches—young birds—stay behind. Johnson, familiar with Pennant's work, avoided appearing foolish by defending the submersion theory, which Pennant mocked.
CGV entry 11/6:10. On contemporary theories about hibernating swallows.
Atkinson investigates the long-debated question of why Johnson was never elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, despite his immense learning and close friendships with many prominent members like Sir Joshua Reynolds. The author dismisses simple explanations, such as Johnson’s poverty or lack of specialized scientific work, pointing out that many Fellows were amateurs elected for their general intellectual distinction. Atkinson details Johnson’s own ambivalent relationship with the Society; he criticized the "virtuosos" for trivial pursuits but also respected genuine scientific inquiry. The most likely reason for his exclusion, Atkinson argues, was the personal animosity of certain influential figures, particularly the naturalist Sir John Hill, whom Johnson had publicly ridiculed. Furthermore, the Society was undergoing a period of reform aimed at raising its scientific standards, which may have made the election of a man of letters like Johnson more difficult.
Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London
Lawrence investigates the real-life inspirations for the unsuccessful flying experiment in Johnson’s Rasselas. He argues that while Johnson was indebted to John Wilkins’s Mathematical Magick for technical background, the tragic 1740 attempt by Robert Cadman to fly from a church spire in Shrewsbury likely provided the narrative's conclusion. Lawrence notes Johnson's presence near Shrewsbury at the time of the event and suggests it colored his lifelong pessimism regarding human flight. The text further tracks Johnson's later interest in ballooning, where he maintained his skepticism toward the utility of wings.
Pettit explores Johnson's "intellectual energy" and moral passion as antidotes to the modern condition of the "cheerful robot." He examines Johnson's struggle against constitutional "indolence," noting that Boswell and Reynolds emphasize his self-watchfulness over impetuous passions. Pettit analyzes Johnson’s appraisal of science in Rasselas, highlighting "prophetic vision" regarding aviation security and weather control. He describes the astronomer's "misery" over the power to distribute rain, serving as a warning against "pride by innovation." Pettit argues that Johnson's decisive character in creating the Dictionary and his "ceaseless inquiry" into human experience provide a landmark for intellectuals to confront societal problems with personal involvement.
CGV entry 11/6:13. On Johnson's attitude toward science.
Samuel Johnson and the New Philosophy: The Effects of the New Philosophy on Johnson's Thought
Mitchell examines Samuel Johnson's relationship with science, the New Philosophy, and its effect on his thought. Johnson's vast but unsystematic knowledge, particularly of chemistry and mathematics, is discussed, contextualized within the tradition of the virtuoso. Johnson's cosmology is posited as a deliberate counter-system to Newtonian and Cartesian ideas, emphasizing a bipolar universe where human moral concerns and divine Providence counter material uniformity and the dullness of mere matter.
CGV entry 11/6:14. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 22 (March 1962), pages 3203-3204.
CGV entry 11/9:27. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 22 (March 1962), pages 3203-3204.
Samuel Johnson's Attitudes Toward Science
On Samuel Johnson's attitudes toward science, arguing his consistent approval of the Baconian tradition's skeptical, empirical methodology, utilitarian goals, and religious cast. Johnson had minimal sympathy for science's detractors and encouraged all levels of inquiry, from the minute to the grand. He maintained scientific investigation is secondary to man's ethical, moral, and religious concerns, yet acknowledged its importance in alleviating human suffering and enhancing piety. Johnson’s early biography of Hermann Boerhaave established a lifelong scientific model.
CGV entry 11/6:16. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 28, number 8 (February 1968), page 3156A.
Dr. Johnson and the Satiric Reaction to Science
Johnson opposed the satirists of science, including Pope and Swift, consistently criticizing those who ridicule intellectual endeavors and their practitioners. While Johnson employed humor in character sketches of virtuosos and projectors in his periodical essays, he ultimately offered a favorable view. He justified curious pursuits as preferable to idleness or wickedness, arguing that scientific study, even of trifles, can lead to important discoveries, enhance piety, and serve as a wholesome diversion, ultimately setting a greater value on enterprise than on timidity.
Sambrook disputes Richard B. Schwartz's characterization of Johnson as a "modern" sympathetic to science. While acknowledging Johnson's interest in chemistry, Sambrook argues that Johnson's public foray into technology regarding Blackfriars Bridge proved unscientific and obsolete. He contends that Johnson consistently relegates physical science to a peripheral concern, viewing it primarily as a "source of diversion" for those seeking amusement. Drawing on the Life of Milton, Sambrook highlights Johnson's belief that religious and moral knowledge remains the "great or the frequent business of the human mind," whereas scientific speculation is merely voluntary. By aligning himself with Socrates against "innovators" who focus on nature over life, Johnson maintains an "ancient" priority on prudence and justice.
CGV entry 11/6:19. A comment on Schwartz's "Dr. Johnson and the Satiric Reaction to Science." A response by Schwartz follows on pages 1480–1483.
Schwartz investigates Johnson’s attitudes toward the new science and challenges the common view that Johnson was indifferent or hostile to scientific innovations of his age. The book surveys eighteenth-century scientific thought, establishing Johnson's general agreement with Baconianism, provided that reason modulates experimentation. Schwartz demonstrates that Johnson consistently praised Newton and English science and situated him among "scientific philosophers." Johnson is presented as a commentator and Christian empiricist rather than an experimental scientist, welcoming technology and the utilitarian applications of science. The book argues that Johnson rejected the utopian expectation that science could create a secular paradise. Johnson's ideal scientist, exemplified by Boerhaave, coupled achievement with religious awareness. The work includes appendices concerning Johnson's Life of Boerhaave and the Medicinal Dictionary. Chapter 1, 'An Age of Science,' establishes the seventeenth century as a transformative era where empirical methodology permanently altered human conceptions of the physical world. Chapter 2, 'Johnson in an Age of Science,' details extensive personal familiarity with scientific developments through amateur experimentation, medical study, and professional literary projects like the Dictionary. Chapter 3, 'The Baconian Legacy,' argues that the adoption of an inductive methodology based on direct observation and the rejection of dogmatic authority aligns with the core principles of English science. Chapter 4, 'The Satiric Reaction,' analyzes an aversion to general satire that targets scientific pursuits, defending the value of even minute research against contemporary "Wits and Railleurs." Chapter 5, 'The Perpetual Moralist,' examines the primary hierarchy of values where scientific inquiry must ultimately serve a religious framework and facilitate the relief of human suffering. Chapter 6, 'The Utopian Fallacy,' concludes that while man's intellectual achievements are praiseworthy, a secular utopia is impossible due to the inherent limitations and postlapsarian nature of human existence. Critical reception of Richard B. Schwartz’s Samuel Johnson and the New Science is overwhelmingly positive, with scholarly reviewers celebrating its systematic dismantling of the legend that Johnson was hostile or indifferent to scientific philosophy. In ECS, Farber praises the challenge to this perverse legend, explaining that Schwartz shows how Johnson used science for utilitarian and didactic ends while maintaining the supremacy of morality. Farber notes that the work provides a valuable starting point for understanding how scientific ideas filtered across national borders. In PQ, McIntosh deems the documentation rich and the theses convincing, concluding that the study successfully illuminates the mutually illuminating relationships between Johnson's scientific interests, literature, and religion. Greene, in South Atlantic Quarterly, enthusiastically calls the volume a model of scholarship and one of the most brilliant and valuable contributions to Johnson’s thought in many years. Writing for Isis, Rousseau commends the monograph as an impressive and accurate book that fills a significant scholarly gap, though he finds the prose occasionally monotonous and suggests Schwartz remains unaware of contemporary debates regarding the Baconian tradition. In American Historical Review, Jacob finds the work valuable for rescuing Johnson from misapprehension, but critiques the author's failure to integrate this scientific ideology with political and social issues. But Korshin, in JEGP, delivers a starkly negative evaluation, arguing that the book lacks depth, relies on unaccepted attributions, and distorts the inquiry to make Johnson's typical interest appear impressively unique. Boulton, in English Studies, adds a measured caution that the claims for scientific integration are occasionally pressed too hard.
Greene calls Schwartz's book a model of scholarship and one of the most brilliant and valuable contributions to Johnson's thought in many years. Schwartz offers the first full analysis of Johnson's review of Jenyns, showing Johnson closely allied with Milton and Voltaire on some theological points, disposing of hoary, simplistic notions.
CGV entry 11/6:20. Review by Donald Greene of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
CGV entry 11/6:20. Review by A. Rupert Hall of the book by Richard B. Schwartz, alongside another work.
Korshin critiques Schwartz for focusing on Johnson's views on science, a subject Johnson addressed only occasionally. He finds the book lacks depth in Johnson's intellectual development and is hindered by methodological problems. Korshin argues Schwartz's limited survey of science distorts the inquiry, making Johnson appear impressively involved when his interest in applied science was merely typical of his age. Korshin notes the book relies too much on unaccepted attributions and lacks proof of Johnson's thought development, concluding the subject deserves a much better, more substantial book.
CGV entry 11/6:20. A critical review by Paul J. Korshin of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Farber describes Schwartz's effort to challenge the 'perverse' scholarly legend of Johnson's indifference to science. The review notes that Johnson used science as a 'handmaiden' for utilitarian application and physico-theological didacticism. Farber explains that Johnson's seemingly harsh statements toward natural study actually intended to show the 'supremacy of morality.' The text suggests that Schwartz's study provides a starting point for understanding how scientific ideas filtered across national borders to different cultural milieus.
CGV entry 11/6:20. Review by Paul Lawrence Farber of the book by Richard B. Schwartz, alongside another work.
D. A. C.’s approving review of Richard B. Schwartz’s monograph disputes the myth of Johnson’s indifference or hostility toward science. D. A. C. maintains that Schwartz successfully presents Johnson as a mediator between scientific inquiry and the requirements of morality and religion. The review highlights Schwartz’s exploration of the Baconian-Newtonian method, noting that Johnson favored a balance between active theory and observation. D. A. C. observes that Schwartz links Johnson’s Augustinianism—the belief in man as a fallen, inherently unhappy creature—to a rejection of secular utopianism. Johnson finds science helpful for relieving human suffering and uncovering providential evidence, yet he insists on the primacy of self-knowledge. D. A. C. concludes that the work offers a provocative historical background on the acceptance of science by the literati and recommends the study to historians of ideas.
CGV entry 11/6:20. A review by Donald A. Cress of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Schwartz reassesses Johnson’s attitudes toward the "New Science," arguing against the "tired judgment" that Johnson opposed scientific philosophy. The monograph illustrates Johnson’s analytical temperament, curiosity, and integration of scientific methodology with a concern for human suffering. Boulton praises the "measured view" of Schwartz’s "Christian empiricist" but cautions that claims for Johnson’s scientific integration are occasionally pressed too hard.
CGV entry 11/6:20. A review by James T. Boulton of the book by Richard B. Schwartz, alongside other works.
The Uses of Science in the Age of Newton
Tory-High Church Opposition to Science and Scientism in the Eighteenth Century: The Works of John Arbuthnot, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson
Olson challenges the assumption that Tory and High Church affiliations necessitated an anti-Newtonian stance. While Arbuthnot and Swift frequently satirized the perceived uselessness and pride of the scientific community, Olson identifies Johnson as an ardent supporter of Newtonian science who remained well-read in contemporary natural philosophy. Johnson consistently follows Newton's methodology but targets scientism—the reduction of doctrinal, religious, or moral problems to scientific questions. He critiques the excessive pride and apparent insensitivity of practitioners rather than the validity of scientific inquiry itself. Olson argues that High Church Anglicans generally supported Newtonianism while stressing the limitations of human knowledge. The essay concludes that ideological roles in latitudinarian thought were neither necessary nor sufficient to account for the dominance of Newtonian natural philosophy, as Johnson's support demonstrates the compatibility of the system with High Church orthodoxy.
Piozzi's Anecdotes states Johnson rode Thrale's hunter, sometimes following hounds fifty miles without admitting amusement. He enjoyed being with sportsmen; Hamilton praised his riding skills. Johnson defined hunting as "the labour of the savages... but the amusement of the gentlemen of England," finding pleasure in action over rest.
Roscoe investigates Johnson's frequent excursions to rural England, disputing the common perception of his total aversion to the country. Johnson visits locations such as Ashbourne and Lichfield primarily for social intercourse and moral observation rather than aesthetic appreciation. He maintains that "men and women are my subjects of inquiry" and ignores natural prospects, famously remarking that "a blade of grass is always a blade of grass." Roscoe notes Johnson's physical activity during these "annual rambles," including walking and riding, while emphasizing his utilitarian view of rural property as a site for diffusing "civility and happiness." The account contrasts Johnson's "emotional barrenness" regarding nature with the sensitive descriptions provided by Gray.
Roscoe analyzes Johnson's ambivalent relationship with the country, arguing that while Johnson spent significant time out of London, he remained temperamentally unfit for rural life and lacked any aesthetic appreciation for nature. The text contrasts Johnson's emotional barrenness regarding landscapes with the sensitive perceptions of Gray, noting that Johnson viewed a 'blade of grass' as a mere material object without interest. Roscoe details visits to Ashbourne and Lichfield to show that Johnson's rural interest was strictly limited to 'men and women' rather than inanimate objects. Although Johnson valued the country as a 'port of rest' or a source of novelty, his objective temperament and weak sight rendered him insensible to natural beauty, leading him to prioritize urban social intercourse over rural solitude.
CGV entry 11/7:3. Reprinted from the National Review (1928).
Rendall disputes the notion that Samuel Johnson possessed a naturalist’s appreciation for nature, exploring instead his indifference to flowers and the beauties of nature in favor of a view informed by utility, medicine, and poetry. Johnson preferred orchards to gardens because he "wanted fruit to eat" and famously told Boswell that "to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile." The author critiques Johnson’s Dictionary for its "slack," "obvious," and uninformative entries on plants and flowers, noting Johnson’s reliance on authorities like Philip Miller. This lack of botanical interest led Johnson to miss pretty synonyms and sound derivations, resulting in philological errors such as the rejection of the derivation of "pansy" from "pensée" and the confusion of Shakespearean quatrains. While acknowledging Johnson’s interest in "alehoof" and his inclusion of a personal recollection under the entry for "keeksy," Rendall concludes that Johnson viewed landscapes primarily for "what man had made or might make of it."
Dr. Johnson and Nature: English Poets in the Highlands
Gray disputes the common view that Johnson lacked an interest in nature, arguing instead that he demanded "accuracy and truth" in description and "accuracy in natural description." Johnson consistently emphasized the general idea in poetry, famously stating that a poet must focus on "general properties and large appearances" rather than "numbering the streaks of the tulip." Despite this preference, his writings reveal an intense dislike for the unnatural conventions of the traditional Pastoral; he praised Gray's Elegy but criticized Lycidas for its mythological allegory. Gray notes Johnson’s capacity for striking imagery in the Journey to the Western Islands, where he honestly conveyed the Scottish Highlands' "hopeless sterility" and lack of trees. Gray finds that Johnson’s "harshest description" stems from his concern for human comfort and a focus on nature's relation to humanity, showing deep compassion for the "privations of the Highland inhabitants." Comparing Johnson’s reactions with those of later romantic travelers, including Wordsworth and Keats, Gray highlights Johnson’s aesthetic pleasure in the "abundant, clear streams" and "swift, clear streams" of Scotland. Finally, Gray identifies Johnson’s praise for the "freshness, raciness and energy of immediate observation" in Thomson’s Seasons.
Baker challenges the Johnson legend of emotional barrenness toward the natural world. He argues that while Johnson’s physical infirmities hindered mountaineering, the subject was neither unobservant nor insensitive in nature’s presence. Baker demonstrates that Johnson used Longinian distinctions between beauty and sublimity when describing the wild magnificence of rocks and oceans. Although Johnson preferred fruitful English landscapes to naked Highland hills, he expressed turbulent pleasure and dreadful magnificence when encountering awesome natural objects.
CGV entry 11/7:6. On his appreciation of natural scenery.
Johnson possessed a firm grasp of country realities, from the intricate science of forestry to the practical management of farms. Although physical disabilities limited his participation in field sports, he understood agriculture well enough to describe the process of malting or even to thatch a dwelling. He frequently advised friends like Boswell and Thrale on rural economics, demonstrating a stern practicality that prioritized productive gardens over ornamental prospects. In the Hebrides, Johnson observed primitive societies with a critical eye, seriously considering the difficulties of afforestation and the domestic economy of the inhabitants. He found grand natural beauty soothing but viewed the landscape gardening cult as often excessive, maintaining that the best garden produces the most fruit and roots.
CGV entry 11/7:7. See also Transactions of the Johnson Society (December 1961), pages 33-41.
Cricket: A Sport, at which the Contenders Drive a Ball with Sticks in Opposition to Each Other
CGV entry 11/7:8. On cricket as played in Johnson's lifetime.
Doctor Johnson and the Fair Sex: A Study of Contrasts
This monograph examines Johnson’s multifaceted relationships with women, challenging the caricature of the lexicographer as a mere social bear. Craig explores Johnson's early domestic influences before analyzing his interactions with prominent figures such as Thrale, Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, and Fanny Burney. The narrative details Johnson's "extraordinary gallantry" and his preference for the company of intelligent, "literary ladies" over male scholars. Chapters investigate Johnson as a suitor, a husband to Elizabeth Porter, and a "lady's man" in the salon culture of the eighteenth century. Craig analyzes Johnson’s correspondence and conversations to demonstrate a consistent pattern of "exquisite tenderness" and intellectual respect toward women. The study specifically addresses the dynamics of the Streatham circle, the eventual "rupture" with Thrale following her marriage to Piozzi, and Johnson's role as a mentor to young female writers. Craig concludes that Johnson’s social identity remained incomplete without female society, which served as the primary "softening influence" on his rugged temperament. Chapter 1, "Doctor Johnson as a Squire of Dames," addresses the paradoxical affinity between the typically uncouth philosopher and the refined women of his era, asserting that his soul fundamentally delighted in female companionship. Chapter 2, "Dr. Johnson as a Suitor," examines his early romantic attachments and his eventual marriage to Elizabeth Porter, while tentatively evaluating his complicated emotional reliance upon Hester Thrale. Chapter 3, "Dr. Johnson as a Man of Fashion," describes his prominence within the intellectual "Blue-stocking Society" and explores his diverse interactions with contemporary female wits, authors, and actresses. Chapter 4, "Dr. Johnson on Dress and Deportment," addresses his surprisingly meticulous standards for female aesthetics and his insistence upon social restraint as the primary constituent of well-bred behavior. Chapter 5, "Dr. Johnson on Marriage and the Relations of the Sexes," analyzes his conservative views on marital subordination and the social necessity of maintaining gender hierarchies. Chapter 6, "Dr. Johnson as a Knight-errant," concludes by illustrating his profound benevolence toward destitute and afflicted women. Critics call this book a multifaceted analysis of the subject’s many-sided relations with women, characterizing him as a surprising favorite among female contemporaries despite his uncouthness. Reviewers describe the book as a skillful synthesis of anecdotes that portrays the subject alternatively as a squire, suitor, and knight-errant. Public Opinion commends the completeness of the research for those lacking time for deeper study, while the Spectator notes the work addresses a phase of character often overlooked by previous historians. But the Plain Woman observes that the text offers hints on the subjugation of women and contrasts unappealing portraits of Bluestockings with the syrens who enchanted the philosopher.
Reviews: Plain Woman, Hour Glass, March 28, 1896; Public Opinion, December 13, 1895; The Bookman 9, no. 51 (1895): 16; The Spectator 75, no. 3521 (1895): 896.
Le docteur Samuel Johnson et les femmes: D'après une publication récente
Valbert reviews Craig's book on Johnson's extraordinary appeal to women, despite his physical repulsiveness ("géant informe," scrofulous face). Women, including duchesses and actresses, adored the "tyran" and "gladiateur." Johnson, a conservative dogmatist with "brutal common sense," held an inferior view of women. Yet, he was profoundly charitable, sheltering ungrateful, sickly, elderly persons like Williams and Levett in his house. His late-life infatuation with Thrale ended with her marriage to Piozzi.
CGV entry 11/8:2. Begins as a review of Craig's 'Dr. Johnson and the Fair Sex'.
Johnson marries Porter, a widow twenty years his senior, after a courtship defined by "exemplary candour" regarding his background and financial status. Despite perpetual disputes, he relies on her judgment and experiences profound prostration following her death, famously memorializing her as "Tetty." Boswell undergoes numerous unsuccessful courtships with women such as Blair and Zelide before marrying Montgomerie. Boswell neglects Johnson's marital principles, manifesting frequent absences and intemperance during his wife's terminal illness. Piozzi observes their relationship, famously describing Boswell as a man led by a bear. Following the death of his wife, Boswell resumes unsuccessful "heiress-hunting." Hardy emphasizes Johnson’s enduring grief, marked by his preservation of Porter's wedding ring and his continued care for Williams.
Reed chronicles the romantic life of Johnson, detailing his unconventional marriage to Elizabeth Porter and his subsequent intimate association with Thrale. Johnson maintained a paradoxical view of matrimony, suggesting the Lord Chancellor should arrange unions based on character rather than personal choice. Despite satirical critiques from contemporaries, Reed emphasizes the "sincerity and depth" of Johnson's attachment to his wife, evidenced by his singular preserved letter and lifelong "prayers and meditations" following her death. The narrative then shifts to his seventeen-year residence with the Thrales, a period marked by domestic comfort that mitigated his "terrible melancholy." This friendship ended abruptly following Thrale's marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, whom Johnson disparaged as a "foreign fiddler." Reed portrays Johnson's outward "bearish exterior" as a facade for an "unspeakably tender heart" and "stern morality," concluding that his character remains as significant as his literary contributions.
Johnson exhibits a profound understanding of female nature, rejecting ethereal idealizations in favor of realistic appreciation. His early life was shaped by his mother's devoted but financially austere character and a youthful romance with the 'beauty and scholar' Molly Aston. Johnson maintained that women were not improved by folly and advocated for their education, though he remained a pragmatic traditionalist regarding marital authority. His marriage to Elizabeth Porter, based on mutual affection, succeeded through his refusal to be 'the slave of caprice.' Johnson's extensive circle of female friends, ranging from Kitty Clive to the Duchess of Devonshire, underscores his popularity and his belief that marriage, while full of pains, was superior to 'cheerless celibacy.' Analysis of his interactions with Hill Boothby and Mrs. Careless further demonstrates his lifelong susceptibility to 'the sweet solicitude of love.'
Biron characterizes Johnson as a "feminist" who valued women for their actual qualities rather than idealized virtues. He identifies Molly Aston as the "Stella" of Johnson’s odes and the object of his "happiest period." Biron defends Johnson’s marriage to Elizabeth Porter as a sincere love match, noting that Johnson’s "courageous kindness" placed the union on a firm basis despite his wife’s caprice. The text details Johnson’s intellectual appreciation for Fanny Burney and his long-standing dependency on Hester Thrale, whose marriage to Piozzi he "ungenerously" resented. Biron emphasizes Johnson’s charitable treatment of disenfranchised women, such as Bet Flint and the "giddy wenches" of the street. He concludes that Johnson’s final words, a blessing to Miss Morris, encapsulate a life defined by "consanguineous unanimity" with the female sex.
CGV entry 11/8:6. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review (1919).
Bell disputes the common characterization of Johnson as an overbearing and uncivil figure, arguing instead that he was a "great gentleman" in his conduct toward women. Focusing on the period between 1748 and 1759 at Gough Square, Bell reconstructs Johnson's domestic life with Elizabeth ("Tetty") Porter. He challenges the "savage" caricatures provided by contemporaries like Garrick, using Johnson’s private diaries to demonstrate a profound, lifelong devotion to his wife. Bell details Johnson’s extensive "nest" of female dependents at Bolt Court, including Miss Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, to illustrate his "ceremonious civility" toward those in affliction. The text examines Johnson’s friendships with female writers such as Elizabeth Carter and Charlotte Lennox, and offers a humanizing context for his famously harsh letter to Mrs. Thrale regarding her marriage to Piozzi. Bell concludes that Johnson's rigorous adherence to punctilios of courtesy reveals a gentle nature often overlooked by critics focused solely on his conversational "sledge-hammer" style.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: New Light on a Great Character
The Johnson Society’s annual proceedings included a wreath-laying at St. Mary’s Square, a traditional supper at the Guildhall, and an Uttoxeter commemoration of Johnson’s penance. Biron’s presidential address examined Johnson’s character through his social relations, labeling him an 18th-century "feminist." Biron defined this as a man genuinely fond of women and content with them "as they are." The address challenged the "monstrous legend" of Johnson as a misogynist—a myth Biron attributed to men who disliked the sex—and argued Johnson’s philosophy had no place for "ethereal beings" or supernatural womanhood. Biron reviewed Johnson’s romantic and domestic life, covering his mother, Sarah; early romances with Aston and Elizabeth Porter; and friendships with Boothby, Burney, and Piozzi. Citing contradictory evidence from Thrale and a 1768 print, Biron disputed Macaulay's harsh descriptions of Elizabeth Porter. The article cited Johnson’s remark that, absent higher duties, he would spend his time "driving in a post-chaise with a pretty woman" as evidence of realistic affection. The report noted apologies for absence from Green, Williamson, and Adkins, and acknowledged the Society’s practice of requiring a formal address from new members. Additionally, Straus delivered a speech defending Boswell’s genius, while Roberts detailed the Birthplace Committee’s preservation efforts.
CGV entry 11/8:8. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Doctor Johnson as a Squire of Dames: The Great Samuel in Gallant Mood
Dr. Johnson on Marriage, Chastity, and Fidelity
'Tricked Out for Sale': Samuel Johnson's Attitude Toward Prostitution
Gae Brack analyzes the professional careers of Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Fanny Burney, and Hannah More, examining the types of literary work and publication methods available to them as eighteenth-century English literary women. The analysis traces Johnson’s patronage of these women, arguing that his support and assistance were vital to the transition of women writers from ill-repute to public approval by the end of the century, directly contradicting the representation of Johnson in Boswell’s Life for belittling women’s abilities. The work focuses on cultural and literary history rather than critical analysis of the women's writings.
CGV entry 11/8:15. Later Holladay. Dissertation Abstracts International 40: 231A.
'Born to Know, to Reason, and to Act': Samuel Johnson's Attitude Toward Women as Reflected in His Writings
Challenges popular notions of Johnson's attitude toward women, asserting his works reflect an empirical perspective that views women as individuals, not abstract entities. It analyzes his moral essays, letters, and narratives, detailing his views on women's education, marriage, prostitution, and domesticity. The work argues Johnson rejects middle-class ideals of female isolation, exposing the fallacy of equating women's virtue with ignorance. His critique of societal demands for women to only please men provides a radically ironic analysis of their status as moral beings versus their societal vocation as females. Johnson's views contrast sharply with the often-misrepresented portrait in Boswell's Life.
CGV entry 11/8:16. Dissertation Abstracts International 40: 873A.
Nunc scio quid sit amor: The Discovery of Women and Love in Johnson's Life and Writing
Mothering the Mind: Twelve Studies of Writers and Their Silent Partners
'Under the Dominion of Some Woman': The Friendship of Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale
This article examines the maternal elements within the eighteen-year friendship between Johnson and Thrale, asserting that her physical and psychological care catalyzed the intellectual achievements of his final years. Brownley argues that Thrale combined the best traits of Johnson's mother, Sarah, and his wife, Elizabeth, while providing a unique domestic environment at Streatham. By assuming the roles of both a nurturing provider and a stern disciplinarian, Thrale allowed Johnson to surrender self-control to her "Iron Dominion," effectively sparing him the "solicitude of managing myself." Brownley demonstrates that Thrale’s "maternal and domestick" letters and her nursing during his medical and psychological crises provided the stability necessary for Johnson to complete the Lives of the Poets and his Dictionary revisions. The article disputes the notion that Johnson’s death resulted from Thrale's abandonment, concluding that while Henry Thrale provided physical resources, Hester provided the essential emotional sustenance for Johnson's genius.
Johnson and Rousseau on the Woman Question
A History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century
Stephen examines the development of Enlightenment philosophy, identifying the skepticism of Hume as a pivotal turning-point that 'chilled the very marrow of speculative activity.' He addresses Johnson as a literary dictator who failed to grasp the significance of Hume's logic, famously dismissing his speculations as a case of 'milking the bull' and believing him confuted by Beattie. Boswell appears as a primary source for Johnson's reactions to contemporary thought. Stephen highlights Johnson's defense of Toryism and his role as the 'Abdiel' of George III's shadow of divine right. The text contrasts Johnson’s dogmatic contempt for innovation with the underlying shift toward empiricism and the logic of facts. The text emphasizes the transition from ontological certainty to a fragmented common-sense school and the decay of deism.
CGV entry 11/9:1. See especially section 10, "The Tories," and section 12, "General Literature." Often reprinted.
Johnson and Carlyle: Common Sense versus Transcendentalism
Courthope contrasts Johnson’s "common-sense" Toryism with Carlyle’s "transcendental" Radicalism, framing the former as a philosophy rooted in the recognition of human imperfection. While both authors shared a pessimistic outlook, Johnson’s pessimism derived from a belief in the inherent corruption of human nature, whereas Carlyle’s stemmed from dissatisfaction with social institutions. Courthope argues that Johnson’s adherence to established order and religious tradition provided a more stable moral foundation than Carlyle’s pursuit of "Absolute Truth" and "Hero Worship," which Courthope views as a secularized version of the very Christian doctrines Carlyle rejected. The text concludes that Johnson’s focus on individual self-reform offers a more realistic path for human progress than the revolutionary destruction advocated by transcendental critics.
CGV entry 11/9:2. A conservative interpretation of Johnson's thought and morality.
A Study in the Thought of Addison, Johnson and Burke
Brownfield analyzes the moral philosophy, literary canons, and evolving sensibility of Addison, Johnson, and Burke, positioning them as representative thinkers across the eighteenth century. It examines the impact of Lockean empiricism on their religious and ethical thought, noting how the emphasis shifts from Addison's decorous humanism to Johnson's intense moral earnestness and Burke's comprehensive political ethics. The analysis contrasts Addison's taste-based criticism with Johnson's systematized critical principles, demonstrating a progressive deepening of consciousness from the Augustan to the early Romantic temperament.
CGV entry 11/9:3. Privately printed in 1918.
Baumann argues for Johnson's profound and abiding cynicism, defining it as a realist's distrust of unproven human ideals and a preference for simpler, lower motives. The author distinguishes Johnson's cynicism by its lack of humor and his belief in the supernatural. He illustrates this trait with Johnson's remarks on the venality of women in marriage, the minimal effect of sexual immorality on a man's public character, and the suggestion to acquire influence by lending money at smart interest.
CGV entry 11/9:4. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review (1916). See also The Nation (London), volume 18 (January 8, 1916), pages 537-538.
Doctor Johnson: A Study in Eighteenth Century Humanism
Houston chronicles the intellectual life of Johnson, positioning him as the final representative of the humanistic tradition before the romantic era. Johnson represents a massive, conservative spirit that favored established authority, prescription in society, and the acceptance of religious institutions. Houston identifies Johnson and Edmund Burke as the primary humanists of their period, both of whom sought guidance from the total experience of mankind while distrusting innovation and "naturalistic nostrums." Johnson's contribution to critical thought rests upon his background as the "last of a long line of classical scholars" who maintained the neo-classic tradition through his profound knowledge of Latin and Greek literature. Houston disputes the notion that Johnson’s fame should rest solely on personal anecdote, arguing instead for his eminence as a moralist and critic. The monograph analyzes Johnson's reading habits, his relationship with French and classical critics, and his specific critical method in works like the "Dictionary" and the "Lives of the Poets." Houston challenges narrow interpretations of Johnson as a "ruthless neo-classicist," highlighting instead a "liberality of spirit" and a capacity to move freely within established rules. Johnson's "huge common sense" and "sturdy integrity" offer a defense of the older order against the coming revolution, making him a figure of permanent interest to those "groping for permanent standards." Chapter 1, 'A Word of Introduction,' addresses the obscuration of intellectual eminence by biographical anecdote. It argues that the subject represents the massive conservative spirit and moral humanism of the eighteenth-century middle class. Chapter 2, 'An Account of Dr. Johnson's Reading,' details the extensive classical and Renaissance scholarship underpinning the subject's critical authority. It highlights a profound mastery of Latin and a comprehensive, though less intimate, acquaintance with Greek literature. Chapter 3, 'Johnson's Relation to Classical and French Criticism, Except Boileau,' identifies the Aristotelian and Horatian foundations of the subject's thought. It examines the rejection of naturalistic theories, such as climate-driven genius, in favor of human will. Chapter 4, 'Johnson and Boileau,' examines the striking affinities between these two exponents of classicism. Both emphasized reason, nature, and truth while maintaining a flexible, non-slavish attitude toward formal literary rules. Chapter 5, 'Johnson's Relation to Neo-Classicism,' analyzes the subject’s position during the decline of the Augustan age. It highlights a life-long hostility toward lifeless imitation, particularly in pastoral poetry, as his primary critical service. Chapter 6, 'The Preface to Shakespeare,' evaluates the landmark 1765 edition as a turning point in critical method. It defends Shakespeare’s disregard for the unities while applying rigorous humanistic standards to his moral purpose. Chapter 7, 'Criticism of the Drama,' reviews commentary on Restoration and contemporary playwrights. It critiques the heroic drama's romantic excesses and discusses the sententious morality of the subject's own tragedy, Irene. Chapter 8, 'Johnson's Relation to Contemporary Literary and Social Movements,' addresses the opposition to nascent romanticism and sentimentalism. It argues that a distrust of individual sensibility rooted the subject’s preference for general human nature. Chapter 9, 'Johnson's Critical Method,' describes the judicial approach of the Lives of the Poets. It observes that the method remains objective and categorical, focusing on general effects rather than minute analysis. Chapter 10, 'Conclusion,' evaluates the subject as a traditionalist humanist whose message remains relevant. It concludes that his sound judgment and moral eminence provide a necessary antidote to modern intellectual confusion. Reviewers describe the book as a systematic and orderly corrective to the biographical mosaics of Macaulay and Carlyle. Fehr praises the work for depicting the subject as the last great humanist whose reliance on trained judgment serves as a spiritual guide against the romantic turn. Utter and Crawford agree that the study provides a fair-minded analysis of critical genius, particularly in its appraisal of the Preface to Shakespeare and the subject's warfare against the pedantry of classical imitation. Houston receives credit for successfully situating the subject within the scholar-dictator tradition of the Renaissance while tracing intellectual foundations back to Aristotle and Horace. But the critical reception remains divided on the depth of the author's insights. Tupper disputes the central thesis, arguing that the analysis fails to prove an advance beyond Dryden and reveals a defective understanding of the imagination. She characterizes the tone as detached to the point of frigidity. While J. W. Tupper appreciates the focus on the solid foundation of the subject's intellect over personal anecdote, he notes that Houston admits a strong moral bias occasionally compromised the subject's judgment. Crawford identifies further limitations, specifically a tendency toward repetition and the use of an inherited, inaccurate critical vocabulary. Despite these flaws, the general verdict on this study is that it performs a valuable service by emphasizing how the subject used reason to burst neoclassical chains. The volume effectively demonstrates that the subject valued life above literature, making it an essential resource for both specialists and general readers.
CGV entry 11/9:5. Reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, 1963.
Houston identifies Johnson as a conservative and skeptical humanist whose critical standards derived from Renaissance traditions and extensive scholarship in classical and French thought. While Boswell’s biography emphasizes Johnson's personality, Houston focuses on the "solid foundation" of Johnson's intellect, tracing parallels between his work and that of Aristotle, Horace, and Boileau. Houston demonstrates that Johnson rose above his contemporaries by freeing dramatic criticism from the "shackles of the unities" and challenging conventional mythological imitations. Despite bigoted assessments of Lycidas and Gray's odes, Johnson appraised literature by the "total impression" made upon the reader rather than a catalog of faults. Houston notes that a "strong moral bias" occasionally compromised Johnson's judgment, leading him to prefer Tate’s Lear and to value the sentimental morality of Pamela over Tom Jones.
CGV entry 11/9:5. Review by J. W. Tupper of the book by Percy H. Houston.
Utter praises Houston's portrait of Johnson's mind as a necessary corrective to the biographical mosaics of Macaulay and Carlyle. Utter notes that Houston systematically uses Johnson's own writings to examine his critical method, his relationship to classicism, and his work on Shakespeare. The review highlights Houston’s argument that Johnson was a classicist guided by "his own reason, not an empty convention," specifically citing Johnson’s "life-long warfare on the pedantry of classical imitation." Utter emphasizes how Houston distinguishes between Johnson's "sense of fact" and his imaginative shortcomings, while acknowledging that Johnson viewed poetry as a means to "generalize and not to particularize." Although Utter identifies a minor oversight regarding Johnson’s incidental remarks on contemporary drama, he disputes the significance of this omission. Utter concludes that the work is "complete, thorough, and orderly," providing an essential study for both general readers and specialists.
CGV entry 11/9:5.
Fehr praises Houston's systematic study for restoring the "true outlines" of Johnson’s character, presenting him as a powerful personality who transcends neoclassical dogma. Fehr emphasizes Houston’s depiction of Johnson as the "last great humanist" before the Romantic turn, one whose reliance on "human experience" serves as a spiritual guide. The review highlights how Johnson bursts neoclassical chains, particularly through his defense of tragi-comedy and his mockery of critics like Rymer. Fehr notes that while Johnson remains a "pontiff" of his age in his appreciation of Pope, his "moral instruction" in the Lives of the Poets demonstrates that he values life above literature. Fehr concludes that Houston successfully challenges Macaulay’s limited view, proving Johnson is far more than a mere mouthpiece of the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 11/9:5. Review by Bernhard Fehr of the book by Percy H. Houston.
Tupper notes Houston’s attempt to wrest Johnson the critic from 'personal anecdote,' yet she disputes the thesis that Johnson was a 'humanist trying to shake off the fetters of his environment.' She finds Houston 'detached to the point of frigidity' and argues that the analysis of Johnson’s 'neo-classical methods' reveals a 'defective understanding' of imagination. While Houston provides an 'authoritative' exposition of Johnson’s 'fundamental classicism,' Tupper asserts he fails to prove Johnson’s advance beyond Dryden’s critical arguments.
CGV entry 11/9:5. Review by Caroline F. Tupper of the book by Percy H. Houston.
Alexander evaluates Johnson’s qualities as a philosopher in the broader sense, highlighting his powerful intellect, vast knowledge, and unwavering affinity for truth, despite his occasional prejudices. The author focuses on Johnson’s conversational style, noting his argumentative force and celebrated wit, frequently illustrating these points with anecdotes recorded by Boswell and Piozzi. Johnson exhibited a categorical mind, a passion for veracity, and a sturdy sense of social subordination, which informed his views on society and human nature. The author concludes that his enduring appeal stems from his immense character, wisdom, and abundant humor, as captured in the numerous memoirs of the era.
CGV entry 11/9:6. In two parts: October, pages 385-392; and November, pages 513-522.
This article, reprinted from The Cornhill Magazine (1923), disputes Johnson’s status as a professional philosopher while affirming his role as a sage. Alexander argues that Johnson’s 'argumentum ad lapidem' against Berkeley demonstrates a lack of speculative depth, yet he praises the 'observations of a strong mind operating upon life.' Alexander analyzes Johnson’s treatment of free will, evil, and the 'subordination of ranks,' noting that Johnson’s convictions often stemmed from theological and political prejudices rather than metaphysical inquiry. The text contrasts Johnson’s sturdy conservatism with the disruptive skepticism of Hume. Alexander emphasizes the 'consummate art' of Boswell’s biography in preserving Johnson’s wit. He concludes that Johnson’s primary philosophical value lies in his 'wise humanity' and his ability to apply a concentrated intellect to the practical complexities of the human condition, rather than the construction of systematic theory.
CGV entry 11/9:6. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1923).
Die Auseinandersetzung Zwischen Antike und Moderne in England bis zum Tode Dr. S. Johnsons
On the dynamic intellectual confrontation between ancient and modern literary perspectives in the critical work of Johnson. Seeger describes how Johnson reconciles the perceived perfection of classical models with the emerging originality of English authors, focusing specifically on his biographical and critical essays. He explores the tension between Johnson's formal adherence to established neoclassical rules and his profound capacity for appreciating literature's natural genius, arguing that his critiques derive coherence from this dual vision. It investigates the philosophical foundations of Johnson's judgments, tracing how his pragmatic moralism informs his literary evaluations and shapes his role as the era's foremost critical arbiter. Johnson's literary achievements and influence are rooted in his complex, synthetic engagement with the legacy of antiquity and the innovation of the modern.
W. H. J. explores Johnson’s attitudes toward cognitive decline, noting his 1777 assertion to Boswell that memory failure at seventy signifies a diseased or morbid mind. Boswell disputes this, citing the Psalmist's lifespan as a natural point of decline. Despite his public stance and his Idler essay attributing memory to attention, Johnson’s private Prayers and Meditations reveal his personal struggle with forgetting names and occurrences by 1778. W. H. J. contrasts Johnson’s views with Cicero’s recognition of failing memory as a definitive sign of aging.
CGV entry 11/9:8. On Johnson's comments on failing memory.
Johnson: A Crushing Reply to Cynicism: The Man Who Believed in the World: His Unseen Influence on English Thought
This detailed account records the 225th anniversary of Johnson's birth in Lichfield, featuring the presidential induction of Lord Charnwood. Charnwood challenges the 'preposterous' patronization of Boswell by Macaulay and others, asserting that Boswell's 'genius and resolution' created the most living record in literature. Charnwood argues that Johnson's 'overpowering spirit of sanity' and 'devastating common-sense' serve as a corrective to modern cynicism. The report includes an address by Donald Sanders on Johnson's education at Lichfield Grammar School under Hunter, noting the 'stimulus of the birch' in producing eighteenth-century excellence. Roberts describes Johnson as one of history's 'great guests,' while Wood notes the publication of Powell's revision of Hill's edition of the Life.
CGV entry 11/9:9. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Samuel Johnson: An Eighteenth Century Moralist
CGV entry 11/9:10. Abstract of a thesis.
CGV entry 11/9:11. Largely a discussion of the Soame Jenyns review.
Brown disputes the tradition of Johnson as a "wise conservative," arguing that he was a "perplexed transitional figure" caught between the old order and a rising proletariat. He analyzes Johnson's review of Soame Jenyns as a "blunt demolition" of the philosophy of optimism and the "scale of existence." Brown highlights Johnson's "surprisingly realistic view of evil" as something that "must be felt, before it is evil," challenging Jenyns’s use of "ignorance" as an opiate for the poor. He argues that Johnson's contradictions reflect the clash between Christian tradition and naturalistic rationalism. Brown concludes that Johnson's significance lies in being "on both sides" of the eighteenth-century struggle between land and merchant capital.
CGV entry 11/9:11. Reprinted from The Marxist Quarterly (1937).
Chatto & Windus; Columbia University Press
Willey explores the "metaphysical optimism" prevalent in the Enlightenment, which asserted that the world is the "best of all possible worlds" based on Newtonian order. Central to this "Cosmic Toryism" is the "Great Chain of Being," a continuous ladder of existence from the meanest insect to the seraph. Willey focuses on Jenyns’s Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, which argued that imperfection and suffering are necessary for the plenitude of the universe and the pleasure of "Superior Beings." This philosophy served as an apologia for the social status quo, suggesting that the ignorance of the poor was a "cordial" from Providence. Willey contrasts Jenyns’s complacent theorizing with Johnson’s scathing review, in which Johnson rejects these "imaginary" miseries as prideful justifications for "the lust of dominion." Willey shows how this gospel of hopelessness was superseded by the later 18th-century drive toward progress and perfectibility.
CGV entry 11/9:12. The New York edition was published in 1941.
CGV entry 11/9:13. On Poliziano and Johnson, and Johnson on some other Renaissance figures.
Hazard provides a comprehensive bibliography of European intellectual history from the era of Montesquieu to Lessing. Hazard organizes sources into themes including the critique of Christianity, the pursuit of happiness, and the development of natural religion and law. Regarding Johnson, Hazard notes London and The Vanity of Human Wishes as examples of the revival of Juvenalian satire. Hazard further notes Johnson’s opposition to admitting the term civilization into his dictionary, preferring civility to denote the opposite of barbarity. For Boswell, Hazard references his suggestion of this term to Johnson. Hazard examines the broader Age of Johnson through historical surveys and uses Johnson’s Rasselas to contrast constant reason with transitory imagination. The text identifies Johnson’s dismissal of the idea of natural virtue in his critique of Henry Home, Lord Kames.
Dr. Johnson's Refutation of Bishop Berkeley
CGV entry 11/9:17. Defends Johnson's position.
Davies contests Macaulay's charge of Johnson's contempt for history. Johnson opposed ancient history, especially Roman, because it lacked utility for moral instruction. He preferred historians focused on accuracy, like Hailes, and criticized Robertson's verbosity and Hume's lack of principle. Johnson undervalued historical research, believing facts were readily available. Although initially dismissive of history, late in life he recognized its value for acquaintance with mankind's examples of prudence and moral truth. His political biases, especially his Toryism, colored his judgment of figures like Milton.
Bishop Berkeley: Metaphysician as Moralist
Leyburn argues Johnson misjudged Berkeley by focusing on his metaphysics (misinterpreted as denying matter) while overlooking his significance as a moralist. Berkeley's philosophy, particularly in Alciphron, aimed primarily to validate Christian ethics through practical consequences. Alciphron critiques Shaftesbury and Mandeville based on the negative moral and social impact of their ideas and defends Christianity for its beneficial influence on conduct, promoting the general good. Berkeley consistently applied a pragmatic, ethical test ("it works"), emphasizing faith's role in motivating virtue. Leyburn highlights the irony of Johnson, a fellow moralist, failing to appreciate this core aspect of Berkeley's thought.
CGV entry 11/9:19.
Moore discusses Johnson's often-professed indifference to Roman history, arguing that it was due to the strong political associations of classical history during the eighteenth century. References to ancient Rome often connoted a commonwealth, radical reform, and, most objectionably to Johnson, regicide and suicide. Moore cites examples from Swift and Defoe where classical history was linked to republican principles or anti-government rhetoric. This opposition is consistent with Johnson's Tory and anti-tyrannicide views (e.g., his condemnation of "Patriotism"). Johnson's preference for Goldsmith's Roman history is noted, as Goldsmith viewed the Roman Senate as Whig-like.
Hagstrum qualifies the view of Johnson as solely a classical rationalist by exploring the significant empirical strains in his criticism. Hagstrum first summarizes Johnson's traditional rationalism, focusing on reason's role in conveying universal truth and its functions as a mental faculty. He then discusses the crucial empirical basis of Johnson's thought, where reason depends on extensive, firsthand observation of nature and life—a Baconian and Lockean concept that Johnson applies to the mental preparation of the poet. Hagstrum concludes that Johnson's perception of reason's positive energy, fused with imagination, allows him to transcend rigid neo-classical categories.
This article, reprinted from A Journal of English Literary History (1950), disputes the view that Johnson’s critical system rests solely on a "dry and almost mathematical rationalism." Hagstrum argues that Johnson’s dedications to humanistic and ethical rationalism are inextricably linked to a "vitally significant" empirical strain. By analyzing Johnson’s Dictionary and his "character" of the poet, Hagstrum illustrates that Johnson requires the mind to gather data through "empirical observation and search" before the rational faculty can "digest" these materials. This study highlights how Johnson’s reliance on first-hand observations of nature and life—exemplified by his preference for Shakespeare’s "exact surveyor" qualities over Milton’s bookishness—enables him to transcend rigid neo-classicism. Hagstrum concludes that Johnsonian reason is an "active energy" that identifies moral truth with observable reality, asserting that "he who thinks rationally thinks morally."
CGV entry 11/9:21. Reprinted from ELH (1950).
Argues Johnson valued "intellectual history"—the history of the human mind's progress, arts, and learning—despite disliking much contemporary history. Keast cites Johnson's praise of curiosity, support for scholarly projects, and emphasis on authors' mental qualities and the genesis of works in his biographies. Keast contends intellectual history provides Johnson the standard for judging human abilities by establishing human capacity through historical inquiry, forming a crucial part of his critical and moral framework.
Lovejoy explores the historical shift in conceptions of human nature, primarily during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the transition from a theological emphasis on innate depravity to a secular analysis of non-rational motivations. He distinguishes between "terminal values"—the desire for specific ends—and "adjectival values," which represent the self-conscious animal's desire to be perceived through favorable epithets like "brave" or "virtuous." Central to the argument is the role of "approbativeness"—the universal craving for the esteem and approval of others—which Lovejoy identifies as the dominant passion used by Enlightenment thinkers to explain social order in the absence of pure reason or virtue. Lovejoy traces this theme through the works of various figures, noting how "the love of praise" was viewed both as a biological anomaly and as an indispensable mechanism for moral conduct and political stability. The monograph highlights Johnson's observation that "scarce any man is abstracted for one moment from his vanity," positioning such eighteenth-century reflections as precursors to modern psychological theories of motivation and rationalization.
CGV entry 11/9:26. Discusses Johnson on pride and love of praise.
Voitle examines Johnson’s ethical concepts within their eighteenth-century intellectual context, emphasizing that Johnson remains a practical moralist dedicated to individual reformation rather than a systematic theoretician. This study argues that Johnson combines a Lockean empirical epistemology with a traditional humanistic focus on reason as the supreme moral guide. Voitle highlights how Johnson defends freedom of the will against deterministic trends, such as the "ruling passion," and maintains that "pity is not natural to man" but must be "acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason." The narrative frames Johnson’s social and political views as a form of altruistic utilitarianism, where the "common Good is the supreme Law." This principle drives Johnson’s progressive stances on slavery, capital punishment, and debtor laws. Voitle further explores the "vacuity of Life" as a central Johnsonian concern, leading to an emphasis on constant activity and "human solidarity" as defenses against boredom and vice. The study concludes that Johnson’s morality is fundamentally grounded in religious sanctions, asserting that "virtue may owe her panegyricks to morality, but must derive her authority from religion." Chapter 1, 'Reason and Empiricism,' addresses the epistemological foundations of moral thought, identifying a hybrid of Lockean empirical reasoning and traditional Peripatetic faculty psychology. Chapter 2, 'Reason and Freedom,' argues that the emphasis on reason serves to preserve free will against eighteenth-century deterministic trends such as the ruling passion and sentimentalism. Chapter 3, 'The Nature of Johnson's Altruism,' distinguishes a principled, active beneficence from the passive "feeling" of the contemporary sentimental school. Chapter 4, 'Utility and Altruism,' addresses political and social structures, posits an "altruistic utilitarianism" where common good and social stability are maintained through a transcendent law and necessary subordination. Chapter 5, 'Social Theory and Moral Practice,' argues that social distinctions and wealth are justified only through their organic utility and the individual's duty to relieve wretchedness. Chapter 6, 'The Bases of Morality,' identifies the primary moral criterion as the consequences of actions, specifically the happiness of the agent and others. Chapter 7, 'Morality and Religion,' addresses the synthesis of secular utility and divine sanctions, asserting that religious duty provides necessary motivation for virtuous conduct. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics dividing over the secularization of the subject's ethical framework and the precise historical traditions informing his thought. Scholars split regarding whether the core ideas are best understood as a form of utilitarian rationalism or as an extension of transcendent Christian right reason. Morley, in TLS, calls it a valuable and readable study that highlights how a disregard for theoretical consistency earned the subject his contemporary reputation. In MLR, Roberts approves of the reliance on the subject's own sermons to expose a dogged and practical empiricism. Frost, writing in SEL, commends the tightly organized examination of moral ideas for demonstrating how universal social concepts apply traditional precepts of love. Alkon's review in PQ praises the discussion of social and political protests but criticizes the failure to distinguish between the formal requirements of different literary genres when using them as biographical evidence. Conversely, Kirk, in Sewanee Review, disputes the characterization of the subject as a utilitarian or humanitarian, arguing the analysis completely fails to apprehend a mentality of transcendence. Stanlis, writing in the Burke Newsletter, similarly critiques the volume for incorrectly labeling the political theory as utilitarian while neglecting broader classical and Christian traditions. A review in JNL notes that the stimulating discussion inevitably invites major disagreements over how the subject balanced abstract notions with human nature, though Mitchell, in JEGP, still deems the monograph the best scholarly treatment of the topic to date.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, PQ 41, no. 3 (1962): 603–5; Jacques Chauvin, Études Anglaises 15, no. 3 (1962): 287; F. N. Doubleday, NR (January 1962): 32; Scott Elledge, CEA Critic 23 (1962): 604; Medford Evans, National Review 10, no. 28 (1961): 25–26; William Frost, SEL 2, no. 3 (1962): 359–84; James Gray, Dalhousie Review 42, no. 1 (1962): 100; Russell Kirk, Sewanee Review 71 (1963): 332–42; Stephen O. Mitchell, JEGP 61, no. 2 (1962): 416–18; F. V. Morley, TLS, no. 3115 (1961): 806; S. C. Roberts, MLR 57, no. 4 (1962): 624; Peter J. Stanlis, Burke Newsletter 1 (1959): 3; G. Tonelli, Filosofia 16, no. 4 (1965): 698; Clarence Tracy, Queen's Quarterly 69 (1962): 321–322; JNL 21, no. 2 (1961): 4.
Voitle examines Johnson’s moral thought, focusing on the relationship between Lockean empiricism and concepts of reason, free will, and altruism. He argues that Johnson evaluates morality based on the consequences of actions rather than virtuous character. Alkon praises the discussion of Johnson’s social and political protests but criticizes Voitle for failing to distinguish between the formal requirements of different literary genres when using them as biographical evidence. He further disputes Voitle’s suggestion of a disjunction between Locke’s naturalistic psychology and Johnson’s moral affirmations, noting that both thinkers reconcile empirical observation with moral responsibility.
CGV entry 11/9:28. Review by Paul K. Alkon of the book by Robert B. Voitle, Jr.
Kirk disputes Voitle’s characterization of Johnson as a utilitarian, humanitarian, and rationalist. He argues that Voitle fails to apprehend the mentality of transcendence, wrongly aligning Johnson with Locke’s tabula rasa rather than Christian right reason. Kirk asserts that Johnson’s fundamental convictions derived from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer rather than secular intellectualism. He positions Johnson as a champion of the wisdom of our ancestors who viewed politics as the art of the possible and human nature as a constant.
CGV entry 11/9:28. Review by Russell Kirk of the book by Robert B. Voitle, Jr.
Fleeman explores Johnson's profound insistence on veracity as the "basis of all excellence." Johnson viewed truthfulness not just as a virtue but as a practical necessity for social cohesion, arguing that society depends on mutual confidence, which falsehood erodes. Untruthfulness, whether from self-interest (crime, hypocrisy) or vanity (folly, affectation), undermines this trust. He believed deception, even in minor forms like affectation, indicated corrupted values. Johnson practiced rigorous adherence to truth in his own discourse, famously talking as if under oath, and urged constant vigilance against carelessness, which he saw as the primary source of falsehood. His skepticism towards extraordinary claims stemmed from this awareness of prevalent untruth. Ultimately, factual veracity was crucial for reason to proceed towards the universal, immutable truths—especially religious truths—that provided Johnson intellectual and emotional stability.
CGV entry 11/9:29. On the importance of veracity about facts.
Kaul examines Johnson's stance on the matter-mind relationship, positioning him between Berkeley's idealism and Lockean materialism. Johnson famously refuted Berkeley by kicking a stone, demonstrating belief in matter's independent existence through action and reaction, not just sensation. He equally resisted materialism, particularly Locke's suggestion that matter might possess the power of thought, a view Johnson felt blurred the distinction between matter and spirit, potentially undermining the soul's immortality and free will. Johnson maintained a clear dualism: matter is characterized by dimension and resistance, but is inert, senseless, and incapable of thought or self-motion. Mind (soul/spirit) possesses consciousness and rationality. This distinction, supported by contemporary science (Newton, Boerhaave) and Cartesian philosophy (via Malebranche), was crucial for preserving belief in the soul's immateriality, immortality, and distinctness from the mechanical laws governing the physical universe.
Cochrane entry 187. Argues that conversations recorded in the 'Life' demonstrate that Johnson was deeply familiar with the writings and philosophical arguments of David Hume.
Samuel Johnson's Account of Certain Psychoanalytic Concepts
Grange submits that Johnson provided "outstanding contributions" to the psychoanalytic heritage, prefiguring Freudian concepts of the unconscious, repression, and the superego. She argues that Johnson’s "species of vanity" resembles the superego, working irrationally through "imperceptible gradations of guilt" and a fear of losing self-esteem. Grange highlights Johnson’s emphasis on the "reality-principle" and his recognition that "imagination and fancy" can lead to "voluntary delusions." She analyzes a late letter to Piozzi where Johnson refers to the mind’s levels as "strata," suggesting that letters allow the soul to lie "naked." Grange observes that Johnson advocated for regulating imagination by reality to avoid "stagnation of activity" and "withdrawal from reality."
CGV entry 11/9:32. Reprinted from the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1962).
The Moral Discipline of the Mind: A Study of the Method and Intellectual Backgrounds of Dr. Johnson's Moral Writings
Challenges the assumption that "natural law" is central to Johnson's political and moral philosophy, noting the conspicuous rarity of such phrases in Johnson's extensive writings. Johnson, a devout Christian, actually associated the term "laws of nature" with the cant of political factions in works like Taxation No Tyranny. Although Johnson collaborated on the Vinerian Law Lectures, which discuss "natural law," the text defines it in a heavily utilitarian and empirical way: discoverable a posteriori by observing the consequences of actions that promote human happiness in this life. This approach aligns more with the skeptical, Augustinian tradition of Pascal, who distrusted human reason's ability to grasp absolute moral standards, rather than the Thomist tradition.
CGV entry 11/9:36. A comment by Peter Stanlis appears on pages 76-83. See also Francis Oakley in the same journal, volume 4 (November 1964), pages 1-5.
Generality and Particularity in Johnson's Thought
Examines Johnson's famous dictum on generality and particularity in poetry, relating it to his broader moral and religious philosophy, arguing that the aesthetic, moral, and religious spheres were unified in his thought. Johnson defines man by the contradiction between infinite, general desire and finite, particular, temporal fulfillment. Imagination focuses on particular, temporal ends, leading to error, while reason surveys particulars in a general, often religious, context, leading to truth and the recognition of human uniformity. Generality in art, equated with enduring truth and reason, must guide and be exemplified by particular details for moral and aesthetic worth.
Johnson's relationship to the Enlightenment is complex and far from simple opposition. While he decisively rejected the atheistic philosophes of 1770, he shared many attitudes with the movement's earlier representatives. Johnson embraced Lockean sensationalism, the spread of empirical knowledge, and a utilitarian bent in political theory. His lexicographical work closely mirrored the aims of Diderot's Encyclopédie in collecting and classifying knowledge for future generations. Johnson admired Bayle and Fontenelle, yet he refused to let his curiosity encroach upon his religious faith. Johnson aligned himself with the liberal, inquiring mind of the early eighteenth-century abbés, using his prejudices as a safeguard against the materialist extremes he found unthinkable.
Scripta Hierosolymitana: Studies in English Language and Literature
Johnson on Idle Solitude and Diabolical Imagination
Sachs examines Johnson’s rejection of solitary retreat as a manifestation of the sin of sloth and a catalyst for diabolical imagination. Drawing on Christian-humanist traditions, the study argues Johnson views solitude as a dangerous "vacuity" where the mind, detached from social duty and objective reason, turns inward to destructive subjectivity. Sachs traces this conceptual framework through Rasselas, The Rambler, and The Idler, while situating Johnson’s anxieties within a lineage of Renaissance psychology and medieval doctrines of accidie. By comparing Johnson’s warnings with works by Burton, Denny, and Thomson, Sachs demonstrates that Johnson defines imagination not as a creative faculty, but as a source of moral alienation and potential madness. The analysis concludes that Johnson perceives both company and solitude as desperate attempts to escape the inherent misery of self-reflection.
McIntosh argues that Stoicism significantly shaped Johnson's moral thought, despite his explicit rejection of its core ideals like apathy and self-sufficiency. While dismissing "pure" Stoicism as unattainable and inhuman, Johnson adopted its milder principles, such as self-control, limiting desires, and submitting to Providence, as useful palliatives against human misery. His reliance on Christian religion as the ultimate source of patience and consolation, particularly in confronting death, ultimately differentiates his final position from a purely Stoic one.
Alkon examines the psychological and ethical framework of Johnson's moral writings, arguing that Johnson views the mind as a "flux of ideas" requiring constant discipline to maintain stability. The monograph explores how Johnson adapts traditional moral philosophy to account for the "instability of the human mind" and the persistent dangers of boredom, vacuity, and the "hunger of imagination". Alkon demonstrates that Johnson's ethics focus on the "management of the mind," emphasizing the role of external stimuli and internal "moral discipline" in preventing the soul from preying upon itself. By analyzing the Rambler, Idler, and Rasselas, Alkon argues that Johnson's primary concern is not just the definition of virtue, but the practical "preservation of the mind" from the corrosive effects of time and solitary thought. The study concludes that Johnson's moral system provides a "defensive armor" against the psychological miseries inherent in the human condition. Chapter I, "Appetites and Passions," addresses the foundational "anatomy of the mind" by distinguishing between immutable natural passions and variable artificial ones, arguing that this psychological framework allows for a flexible understanding of human character as shaped by social custom. Chapter II, "Higher Faculties," explores the teleological function of reason, memory, and imagination, contending that these uniquely human endowments are intended to help the individual transcend immediate sensory impressions to fulfill a higher religious destiny. Chapter III, "Locke and Johnson," argues against the perceived disjunction between naturalistic and moral viewpoints, demonstrating how the author harmoniously enlists Lockean descriptive psychology in the service of prescriptive ethical instruction. Chapter IV, "Freedom and Voluntary Delusion," examines the causes and consequences of self-deception, identifying it as a primary obstacle to "preserving the balance of the mental constitution" and maintaining moral agency. Chapter V, "Moral Discipline," addresses the purely normative aspects of the author's "dictatorial instruction," illustrating how religious convictions fundamentally shape his approach to psychological self-regulation. Chapter VI, "Pulpit, Press, and the Advancement of Learning," concludes by analyzing the author's rhetorical strategies, arguing that his works successfully avoid the dreariness of typical homilies by integrating rigorous investigative techniques with a profound commitment to moral truth. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the lucidity of the systematic approach and the clarity of the underlying terminology. Critics are split regarding whether the interpretation successfully redefines the subject's psychological framework or merely elaborates the obvious. Ingham, writing in RES, commends the convincing analysis of the anatomy of the mind, highlighting the exploration of natural versus artificial passions and the validation of Lockean psychology. Daghlian's review in PQ praises the thorough examination of moral essays and sermons as a consistent, modern psychological system, though noting occasional irregularities in citation dates. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, approve of the semantic focus on key vocabulary, describing the monograph as a searching study that successfully refutes old-fashioned stereotypes of blind conservatism. Gagen, in Modern Philology, calls the volume a valuable addition that effectively corrects common misconceptions by illustrating a flexible moral outlook. But Brady, in SEL, delivers a severe assessment, characterizing the study as pedestrian and confused, arguing that the analysis blandly details the obvious regarding moral regulation while failing to recognize basic historical and conceptual principles.
Reviews: Frank Brady, SEL 8, no. 3 (1968): 551–72; Choice 1969, 52; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 27, no. 4 (1967): 4–5; Philip B. Daghlian, PQ 47, no. 3 (1968): 390–91; Jean Gagen, MP 67, no. 1 (1969): 80; Patricia Ingham, RES, n.s., 19, no. 76 (1968): 442–44; André Parreaux, Études Anglaises 25, no. 4 (1972): 562; Prairie Schooner 1968, 280–280.
Alkon explores Johnson’s moral writings of the 1750s, including The Rambler, The Idler, and Rasselas, arguing they represent a consistent and modern psychological system. He demonstrates how Johnson synthesized Lockean descriptive psychology with traditional ethical concerns to provide a discipline for regulating inward responses to the world. The study emphasizes Johnson’s focus on avoiding self-deception and achieving voluntary decision through self-examination. Daghlian praises the thorough analysis of Johnson’s sermons and moral essays but questions the occasional use of modern reprint dates in citations and the omission of standard editions for certain references.
CGV entry 11/9:44. Review by Philip B. Daghlian of the book by Paul Kent Alkon.
Passionate Intelligence: Imagination and Reason in the Works of Samuel Johnson
Sachs examines the fundamental polarity of 'Reason and Imagination' in Johnson's thought, arguing this dichotomy informs the religious, moral, political, and aesthetic phases of his work. Johnson identifies 'Imagination' as the 'great overreacher' that 'projects itself beyond presentness' to create delusive obsessions with 'hope and fear' or 'obsessive memory.' Conversely, 'Reason' serves as the 'mainspring of right action' and the 'source of delight and instruction' in art. Sachs challenges the conventional view of Johnson as a 'representative of the English Common Sense School,' instead highlighting strong medieval and Renaissance elements in his thinking. Central to this analysis is Johnson's 'favourite hypothesis' of the 'vacuity of life,' where all human activity is viewed as a 'futile attempt to fill an aching inner void.' The text details how Johnson's 'personal distress of melancholy, guilt, and indolence' was transformed into a 'generalized scheme of morals and religion.' Sachs further explores Johnson's rejection of the 'Great Chain of Being,' his satirical treatment of 'stoic pride,' and his dismissal of the 'Noble Savage myth' as escapist imaginative fantasies. Sachs maintains that Johnson's views 'spring from the primacy of his orthodox Christianity' and the 'insistent awareness' of human mortality. Chapter 1, "The Vacuity of Life," establishes the fundamental premise that the scholar viewed human existence as a state of perpetual emptiness, where the "horror of the vacuum" compels the mind to seek constant engagement to avoid the pains of boredom and self-reflection. Chapter 2, "The Hunger of Imagination," analyzes the insatiable nature of the human fancy, describing it as a potentially dangerous force that, if left unguided, leads to the construction of "airy gratifications" and the eventual "perversion of reality." Chapter 3, "Reason: The Rule of Actuality," defines the intellect's role as a stabilizing agent that must continuously tether the wandering mind to the "sober certainty of maximize truth" and the objective conditions of the physical world. Chapter 4, "The Solitude of the Self," examines the specific psychological dangers of isolation, arguing that without the external "friction of society," the individual becomes increasingly vulnerable to the "tyranny of the imagination" and the onset of madness. Chapter 5, "The Choice of Life," investigates the moral necessity of active pursuit and professional commitment, asserting that the "stabilization of the mind" is best achieved through productive labor and the fulfillment of social duties. Chapter 6, "The Art of the Moralist," evaluates the rhetorical strategies used in the periodical essays to "recall the mind from its favorite delusions" and engage the reader in a shared process of intellectual and ethical discipline. Chapter 7, "Reason and Faith," concludes by addressing the religious dimension of the scholar’s worldview, suggesting that his ultimate defense against the "instability of the soul" lay in a submission to divine authority that transcended the limits of human speculation. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over whether the study forces complex intellectual concepts into a rigid, dogmatic polarity of reason and imagination. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews; while newspaper reviewers offer enthusiastic praise, academic specialists object to severe textual misreadings and a lack of supporting evidence. Walker, in TLS, identifies serious deficiencies, arguing the monograph irons out rich complexity and forces evidence to fit a narrow theological framework. In SEL, Paulson outlines an interior, phenomenological methodology that maps familiar mental topography but offers no original discoveries and relies on an abstraction-ridden style. Writing in RES, Ingham delivers a mixed assessment, praising the vivid demonstration of the limits of reason but finding the central thesis regarding spiritual salvation unconvincing. Ross, in PQ, commends the thematic analysis of the periodical essays but criticizes the polemical identification with religious anxieties. In MLR, Bloom finds the book of limited value and success, asserting it fails to achieve an understanding of an intricate self and lacks perceptible evidence. Alkon, writing in Modern Philology, praises the focus on the preoccupation with time but challenges the hyperbole and the insistence on reading the texts as mere offshoots of neurotic personal experience. Finally, Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, offer a rare, highly enthusiastic scholarly endorsement, praising the shrewd terminology and calling the volume a valuable contribution that illuminates intellectual depth.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, MP 66, no. 4 (1969): 371–73; Edward A. Bloom, MLR 64, no. 4 (1969): 882; James T. Boulton, English Studies 52, no. 1 (1971): 274–76; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 27, no. 2 (1967): 1–2; Gary Geddes, Queen’s Quarterly 74, no. 3 (1967); Donald J. Greene, Studies in Burke and His Time 9, no. 2 (1968): 877–82; Patricia Ingham, RES, n.s., 19, no. 76 (1968): 442–44; Leonie Kramer, AUMLA 32 (1969): 247–48; Ruth Nevo, Jerusalem Post, October 20, 1967; André Parreaux, Études Anglaises 25, no. 4 (1972): 562; Ronald Paulson, SEL 7, no. 3 (1967): 537–38; Ian Campbell Ross, PQ 47, no. 3 (1968): 394–95; Robert Voitle, JEGP 67, no. 4 (1968): 713–14; Keith Walker, TLS, no. 3448 (1968): 318.
Greene’s review critiques Arieh Sachs’ Passionate Intelligence for its basis in dogmatic oversimplification and aprioristic interpretation. Greene disputes Sachs's central thesis of a simple Reason (good) and Imagination (bad) polarity in Johnson’s thought, arguing that Johnson’s views are far more subtle and complex. The review particularly challenges Sachs's claims that Johnson’s moral thought is Stoic-Christian and that he believed in the Great Chain of Being, arguing that these interpretations contradict Johnson's consistent satirical and intellectual condemnation of those concepts, especially in Rasselas and the review of Jenyns.
CGV entry 11/9:45.
Sachs argues that Johnson is a radical "rethinker" of Christian pessimism, linking his concepts of imagination and reason to medieval and Renaissance thought. He identifies a central polarity where imagination distorts reality through perverse desire, while reason evaluates particular objects within a larger, timeless context. Sachs contends that these faculties are ultimately complementary, suggesting that true rationality is prompted by the imaginative ingredient of life. Ross praises the thematic analysis of Rasselas and the periodical essays but criticizes Sachs’s polemical identification with Johnson’s religious fears, arguing that Johnson’s resistance to Humean skepticism marks him as a "faithful witness to the buried past."
CGV entry 11/9:45. Review by Ian Ross of the book by Arieh Sachs.
Edmund Burke, the Enlightenment and the Modern World
Edmund Burke and the Scientific Rationalism of the Enlightenment
Stanlis identifies Johnson as a pivotal figure in an English tradition of intellectual skepticism toward the self-sufficient reason championed by Enlightenment thinkers like Descartes and Hobbes. While Johnson remained more favorably disposed toward practical science than Swift, he maintained a profound skepticism regarding rationalist claims to alleviate human misery or improve institutions through abstract speculation. Stanlis argues that Johnson and Burke shared a fundamental faith in revealed Christianity and the 'right reason' of natural law, viewing historical experience and social custom as superior to logical conjectures. Johnson Utterly rejected the 'ethical calculus' of the Enlightenment, asserting that human nature is too weak and sinful for salvation through reason alone. This shared 'Pyrrhonistic' spirit unites Johnson and Burke in a common defense of the Christian commonwealth against dehumanizing mathematical abstractions.
CGV entry 11/9:46. Contains a discussion of Johnson's attitude as compared to those of Swift and Burke.
CGV entry 11/9:47. Published in 'Essays in English Literature of the Classical Period Presented to Dougald MacMillan', edited by D. W. Patterson and A. B. Strauss.
Studies in the Eighteenth Century: Papers Presented at the David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, Canberra, 1966
The Classical Learning of Samuel Johnson
Austin examines the depth and application of Johnson's classical scholarship, arguing that his "classical learning" was not merely ornamental but central to his moral and critical framework. The text details Johnson's early education at Lichfield and Oxford, emphasizing his "prodigious memory" and "keenness of perception" in Greek and Latin. Austin analyzes Johnson's preference for Latin as a medium for "personal and religious expression," as evidenced in his poetry and diaries. The study identifies a shift in Johnson’s critical stance, where he used classical precedents to "challenge the narrow rules" of contemporary neo-classicism. Austin highlights Johnson's ability to "naturalize the wisdom of antiquity," making it relevant to the "common reader" through his periodical essays and the Dictionary. The text concludes that Johnson’s classical orientation provided the "architectonic principle" for his literary career, balancing traditional authority with empirical observation.
The Classical Vision: The Retreat from Extremity in Modern Literature
Samuel Johnson: The 'Extensive View' of Mankind and the Cost of Acceptance
Krieger identifies Johnson as a model for the mid-eighteenth-century period style, characterized by a direct and unceasing engagement with abstractions. Krieger argues that Johnson uses these "bloodless abstractions" and a lofty, distanced perspective—the "extensive view"—as a psychological and aesthetic bulwark against the "chaos of raging particulars" that threaten rational life. By substituting generic types for specific historical names, Johnson avoids the "awesome flood of individual existences" that might otherwise lead to tragic despair. Krieger notes that while Johnson recognizes the Manichaean face of reality, he willfully chooses a "Christian stoicism" and the "Latin restraint" of period rhetoric to mediate intensities. The text precision of the verse paragraph on history’s "refuse" demonstrates how Johnson "tames" the sublunary muddle. Krieger maintains this retreat is not a failure of nerve but an earned classic affirmation that allows for sanity amidst a "protracted woe."
Philosophical Speculatists: Representatives of the Age of Enlightenment
CGV entry 11/9:50. On Johnson's view of "philosophical speculatists."
Lockean 'Intuition' and Johnson's Characterization of Aesthetic Response
Tarbet establishes a Lockean basis for Johnson’s aesthetic theory, which distinguishes the imaginative order of "possibility" from the scientific order of "principle." Johnson characterizes aesthetic response as intuitive knowledge—immediate, clear, and sensual—analogous to Locke's descriptions of direct sensation, which Johnson contrasts with the "pains and attention" required for demonstrative knowledge. This distinction is critical to Johnson’s preference for true wit over the analytical discordia concors of metaphysical poetry.
Trowbridge defines the "logic of probability" as the central methodological framework for Johnson’s critical, historical, and editorial work. Drawing on John Locke’s epistemology, Trowbridge argues that Johnson rejects demonstrative certainty in favor of a "mediocrity of knowledge" suited to human limitations. In the Preface to Shakespeare, Johnson applies this probabilism to evaluate literary merit through the "continuance of esteem" and to justify editorial decisions in the absence of original manuscripts. Trowbridge emphasizes that Johnson’s refusal to provide certain proofs for his judgments, such as those regarding Dryden’s learning, reflects a deliberate adherence to probabilistic "opinion" rather than a lack of rigor. This ethos of probabilism allows Johnson to balance respect for critical authority with an independent "appeal open from criticism to nature," establishing him as a practitioner of a sophisticated, empirical mode of inquiry characteristic of the 18th-century British intellectual tradition.
CGV entry 11/9:52. First published in Eighteenth-Century Studies, volume 5 (1971), pages 1-38.
Samuel Johnson and Traditional Methodology
Johnson's literary criticism and thought are fundamentally shaped by his frequent and skillful use of traditional Western methodology, a neglected feature of his discourse. Johnson's position is rooted in the Newtonian and Platonic tradition, emphasizing the priority of analysis—the process of distinguishing principles derived from experience from mere hypotheses or received opinion. He focused on achieving procedural certainty by breaking down complicated ideas into simple principles and subjecting claims to rigorous, often linguistic, analysis. Johnson's goal for criticism was to elevate opinion into knowledge by establishing demonstrable principles of judgment.
CGV entry 11/9:54. On the fear of death in Johnson.
CGV entry 11/9:55. On Johnson's pessimism.
Samuel Johnson and the Psychology of War
A Heritage of Sanity: The Transactional Therapy of Dr. Eric Berne and Dr. Samuel Johnson
England traces similarities between Berne's script theory and Johnson's social habits, particularly within the context of The Club. Johnson used "talk as medicinal to his mind" to combat inertia and melancholia, paralleling the goals of group therapy. Berne used literature, including Johnson’s Rasselas, to illustrate psychological dilemmas. The study highlights Johnson's "talking for victory" as a curative transaction that provided essential stimulus and structure hunger. Both men emphasized clearing the mind of "trash" or "cant" to achieve autonomous vitality and social concern. The analysis frames Johnson's life—from childhood illness to his status as a "national monument"—as a foundational myth for transactional sanity.
CGV entry 11/9:58. On Johnsonian attitudes.
Samuel Johnson, the Deceptive Imagination, and Sympathy
Johnson views all sympathy as arising from an imaginative projection that places an individual in the condition of another, a "deceptive imagination" he generally distrusted. However, Johnson found that, when properly directed, imaginative projection is essential for cultivating ready sympathy, which forms the basis for virtue and happiness. He employed analogy and deliberate self-projection, particularly in his periodical essays, to overcome natural human selfishness and envy, encouraging readers to achieve a "rational and just sympathy" with both the pleasures and pains of others.
Johnson, despite his profound classical erudition, lacked emotional commitment to antiquity, effectively engaging in a "war with the classics." Johnson rejected classical cant, posturing, and the worship of fama and gloria because they offered a form of escape, thus failing to relate to common experience. This is evident in his two major poems, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, which, as imitations of Juvenal, omit the specific "particularities" characteristic of classical style to maintain a moral focus. Johnson used the classics as a tool to explore moral significance in the actual world, not as an enchanting ideal.
Johnson did not blindly reject Hume's reasoning in "Of Miracles," despite general antagonism. Johnson applied a Humean-like skepticism in sifting empirical evidence, such as in examining the second sight in Scotland. Johnson conceded Hume's argument against miracles was "right" simply, but pivoted his defense of Christian revelation on prophecies and doctrine, not miracles alone. Johnson also employed Hume's method to satirically discredit Hume's claim of indifference to death, arguing Hume's claim was a miracle itself, or a lie based on vanity.
Hardy questions the uniform interpretation of Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes as a serene affirmation and argues that the poem’s end reveals a more threatened Johnson. He examines Rasselas to show the necessity and persistence of human hope, emphasizing that the final chapter, "The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded," is not pessimistic, but humorously accepts the continued capacity for planning and hoping. Hardy contrasts the moderate Rasselas with the grander, darker, and more hostile world of The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing the poem’s religious conclusion is an assertive, perhaps unresolved, effort to calm the mind amid life's turmoil.
Aeolian Harps: Essays in Literature in Honor of Maurice Browning Cramer
Weitzman traces Johnson’s intellectual maturation from the "anti-urbanist" rhetoric of London to the sophisticated "philurbanism" of his middle years. Weitzman argues that Johnson’s later support for the city, particularly in Adventurer No. 67, counters the "hard primitivism" of John Brown and Arthur Young. Johnson accepts London as a commercial money machine that fosters intellectual leisure and social interdependence. The text analyzes how Johnson reconciles Mandeville’s economic theories with moral necessity, viewing the city as a "melting pot" offering security through specialization. Weitzman further uses Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland to demonstrate Johnson’s skepticism of the "noble savage" myth, contrasting Highland decay with the "prosperous trade" of New Aberdeen. Weitzman presents Johnson as an early urban theorist who justifies the city's "wonderful immensity" despite its inherent vices and poverty.
The Development of Samuel Johnson's Theory of Neurosis, 1709–1759
Gross analyzes the evolution of Johnson's psychological theories, positing him as a pioneer of psychoneurosis study up to 1759, especially in works like Rasselas and the periodical essays. Johnson's core insight, the "dangerous prevalence of the imagination," traces psychological distress to a flight from reality into wishful, isolating fantasies. The study contrasts Johnson's increasingly compassionate, empirical approach—exemplified by Imlac's therapeutic role and the analysis of the mad astronomer—with the acerbic satiric tradition of Swift and Pope, highlighting Johnson’s application of psychological concepts to human nature and behavior.
CGV entry 11/9:66. Dissertation Abstracts International 38: 6141A.
Samuel Johnson and the Scottish Common Sense School
Johnson's thinking, particularly on the mind-body problem and skepticism, aligns with the principles of the Scottish Common Sense School, notably Beattie and Reid. Johnson's rejection of Berkeley's immaterialism and Hume's skepticism hinges on intuitive conviction ("common sense") rather than pure reasoning alone, classifying knowledge of the external world and free will as "irresistible" first principles. He further insists on the immateriality of the soul to argue for immortality, rejecting Locke's speculation that matter might be capable of thought.
'The Fictions of Romantick Chivalry': Samuel Johnson's Attitudes to the Middle Ages
Johnson and Hume Considered as the Core of a New 'Period Concept' of the Enlightenment
Samuel Johnson and the Origin of Morale: A Hypothetical Etymology
The entry of morale into the English language, though formally recognized in 1831 as a Romantic phenomenon, arose from an earlier crisis in Augustan moral discourse localized in Samuel Johnson’s writing. Karanikolas identifies the early nineteenth-century emergence of the word as a response to this crisis, wherein Johnson’s late 1750s works, such as The Vanity of Human Wishes and the Rambler essays, record "extreme states of subjectivity" that mirror later Romantic orientations and foreshadow an absolute estrangement from objective reality. While Johnson maintains a commitment to objective material and moral orders, the article characterizes him as a "complete balance-master" who counteracts hope with fear and reason with skepticism, creating a neoclassic style of parallelism and antithesis that functioned as a "poetry of abstraction" to momentarily fix a chaotic moral universe. Unlike the Romantics’ quest for natural meaning, Johnson’s moral sense was an artifact produced by rhetorical "gestures" that resisted the conclusion that moral expression was subjective; his triumphs, such as finding a moral purpose for the pyramids in Rasselas, exemplified Augustan meaning-making and postponed the need for a word like morale. These Johnsonian investigations of forces opposed to moral sense, alongside Hazlitt’s parodic critique and Johnson’s vacillation, necessitated a new descriptive vocabulary for internal mental states, serving as a "hypothetical etymology" for the term before its formal adoption and highlighting a retreat into a "severe privacy" when common sense failed to resolve moral dilemmas.
The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism
The Inner Structure of Life: Hume and Johnson
Engell compares the empirical psychologies of Samuel Johnson and David Hume, arguing that both figures view the "inner structure of life" as a constant struggle against mental vacuity. He identifies a shared "skeptical" foundation where the mind, found to be inherently empty or "unsettled," relies on the imagination to provide interest and continuity to existence. Johnson characterizes this as the "hunger of imagination," a force that can lead to either creative achievement or destructive delusion. The text highlights that while Hume approaches the "flux" of impressions with philosophical detachment, Johnson treats the same mental instability with moral urgency and "dread." Engell uses salient examples from "Rasselas" and Hume's "Treatise" to demonstrate how both thinkers conclude that the imagination constitutes the primary "power" of the human soul, yet requires the "stability of truth" to prevent the mind from collapsing into madness.
University of Delaware Press; Associated University Press
Folkenflik delineates Johnson's anti-heroic stance toward "vulgar greatness," such as conquerors and monarchs, whom Johnson views as "plagues of men." Drawing on the "Christian Hero" tradition and the "demolition of the hero" by French moralists, Johnson redefines heroism through the lenses of social utility and intellectual capacity. Folkenflik analyzes the portrait of Charles XII in The Vanity of Human Wishes as a critique of heroic evil, influenced by Voltaire’s biography. Conversely, Johnson’s true heroes—Boerhaave, Watts, and Sydenham—are characterized by "comprehensive" minds, "patientia christiana," and the rise of "worth by poverty depressed." Folkenflik argues that Johnson uses heroic imagery to dignify intellectual achievement, ultimately presenting Milton as a supreme hero of the mind whose self-confidence and endurance elevate the "Man of Letters" to heroic status.
The Holy and the Daemonic from Sir Thomas Browne to William Blake
Stock examines the empirical methodologies of Hume and Johnson, identifying them as corivals for the intellectual future of humanity. Although both figures share a mistrust of social innovation and religious enthusiasm, Johnson distinguishes himself through a scrupulous, "reverent" empiricism that accommodates the mystery of human existence. Stock disputes the characterization of Johnson as a reactionary bully, noting his moderate and ecumenical views on Roman Catholicism and his principled investigation of psychic phenomena like the Cock Lane Ghost. Conversely, Hume operates as an "absconding" skeptic whose naturalism seeks to extirpate the sacred from consciousness. Stock analyzes Johnson’s review of Jenyns to demonstrate his rejection of reductive rationalism and the chain of being. Johnson uses the human condition’s inherent pathos to propose a religious remedy devoid of "enthusiasm," whereas Hume treats numinous experience exclusively in its repulsive, "daemonic" aspect.
Johnson, Humanism, and the Last Great Revolution of the Intellectual World
Svilpis examines Johnson's historical and critical perspective on humanism, rejecting ahistorical modern definitions. Johnson defined humanists as philologers and admired their work in reviving classical authors and languages, viewing the movement in the wider context of the Renaissance and Reformation. He acknowledged humanism's early flaws, such as excessive attention to eloquence over truth, but ultimately affirmed its monumental contribution: establishing literacy and disseminating the moral and prudential wisdom of the classical authors. Johnson's biography of Ascham demonstrates his detailed understanding of humanism's social, economic, and educational influence.
CGV entry 11/9:75. Discusses evidence from the "Life of Ascham."
Greene disputes the common characterization of Johnson as a "Christian Stoic," arguing that Johnson vehemently rejected Stoicism as a proud, self-regarding pagan creed incompatible with Christian humility. He demonstrates that Johnson possessed extensive knowledge of early Stoic philosophers like Chrysippus through his own library. Greene challenges modern "tragic" interpretations of Johnson's poetry, such as The Vanity of Human Wishes, asserting they reflect nineteenth-century agnostic biases rather than Johnson's intended message of religious hope. He emphasizes that Johnson saw Stoic apathy as "idolatry of human nature" and preferred the practicable task of "patientia Christiana." The article concludes that Johnson’s ethical focus remained on the transformative power of Christian love as outlined in his fifth sermon.
Johnson and the Concordia Discors of Human Relationships
Hagstrum explores Johnson's application of the principle of concordia discors—the union of opposites—to love, friendship, and marriage. While Johnson demanded a "bedrock" of similitude in faith and manners for lasting bonds, he also valued a "gentle effervescence of contrary qualities" to ensure intellectual vitality and pleasure. Hagstrum notes that Johnson’s ideal of marriage was an "exalted" form of friendship requiring "equality" and the "better education of women." He analyzes Johnson's play Irene to show how Aspasia and Demetrius embody a "new Christian hero" combining "martial virtue" with "soft, yielding love." The article highlights how Johnson’s critical theory of wit—discordia concors—mirrors his view of life, suggesting that both art and human unions rely on the nuanced perception of "similitude in dissimilitude."
Harrison examines Samuel Johnson's underappreciated interest in folkloric materials and concepts, which informs his critical and intellectual work and highlights his role in establishing early folkloristic discourse. This interest is rooted in an "evolutionary view" of cultural development, where oral culture precedes and is eventually "subsumed by written culture," progressing to a superior literate state. Johnson’s involvement in the Ossianic controversy stemmed from his inherent distrust of oral tradition as a reliable preserver of extended literary works, preferring the fixity of written language as a measure of civilization and believing oral transmission leads to degeneration. This skepticism fueled his irascible dismissal of Macpherson's Ossian; Johnson argued the epics were "too long to be remembered" without written records. During his Hebridean tour with Boswell, Johnson questioned Highlanders to "ascertain either the authenticity of the epics or the validity of his own conclusions," making his Journey to the Western Islands effectively an ethnography that recorded customs, foodways, and beliefs like second sight. Despite his ridicule of ballads as "trifling verse," Johnson encouraged collectors like Thomas Percy and Evans, valuing their work as a source of historical and philosophical insight into how people thought in earlier times—a step from the particular to the general. Harrison explores the contradiction between Johnson's personal classical tastes and his active interest in preserving Scottish beliefs, emphasizing his rigorous insistence on written evidence and his speculation on the differences between oral and written traditions.
Greene Centennial Essays: Essays Presented to Donald Greene
Alkon analyzes Johnson’s engagement with the specialized science of chronology, a discipline distinct from narrative history in the eighteenth century. By examining Johnson’s reading lists and editorial contributions, Alkon demonstrates how chronological systems influenced Johnson’s literary and moral perspectives. Alkon argues that chronologists provided a crucial climate of opinion for Johnson’s insistence in the Preface to Shakespeare that time is "obsequious to the imagination." The analysis shows that Johnson used chronological concepts to invest time-reckoning with moral significance, viewing historical cycles as evidence of providential design.
Folkenflik examines the "sheer range" of Samuel Johnson's intellectual scope. Johnson believed "true Genius is a mind of large general powers" and exemplified this by mastering numerous roles: poet, lexicographer, biographer, scientist, and critic. He undertook the Dictionary alone, a task academies took decades to complete, and even planned a comprehensive review of all European knowledge. Despite limitations, like poor eyesight or musical "insensibility," he actively engaged with art, music, and manufacturing. This encyclopedic grasp, Folkenflik notes, cemented his status as a "literary dictator"—a role Johnson himself viewed with suspicion, warning against "dictatorial decisions" in criticism.
Gross identifies Johnson as a significant precursor to modern psychiatry through his clinical observations of the mind’s "recesses." using a psychoanalytic framework, Gross interprets Johnson’s character histories in The Rambler, The Idler, and Rasselas as sophisticated studies in psychopathology. Gross argues that Johnson describes advanced concepts such as psychological determinism, the unconscious, and the "dangerous prevalence of imagination." The analysis highlights Johnson’s diagnosis of narcissism and paranoia in various fictional figures, presenting these social maladies as ruptures in authentic human relationships and self-perception.
Samuel Johnson's Moral Psychology and Locke's 'Of Power'
Locke's moral psychology, particularly chapters "Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain" and "Of Power" from the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, profoundly influenced Samuel Johnson. Johnson's extensive citations in his Dictionary and his consistent moral arguments align with Locke's theory: desire, defined as uneasiness, is the spur to action, and moral freedom depends on suspending desire to rationally compare present gratification with future, eternal happiness. Johnson refines this, stressing memory’s role in moral agency and expressing greater anxiety about the mind's ability to maintain psychological equilibrium and freely choose the remote good.
Johnson and...: Conceptions of Literary Relationship
On the tradition of studying Johnson through his intellectual and personal engagements with numerous contemporaries and associates. Korshin presents an extensive inventory of these literary relationships, illustrating the tendency to pair Johnson with key figures such as Boswell, Chesterfield, Hume, Voltaire, and even detailed couplings like Dr. Johnson and the Ladies of the Lichfield Amicable Society. This critical method falls within the broader category of intellectual history projects which seek to analyze Johnson within expansive, sometimes chronological or thematic, contexts. By investigating these relationships, scholars hope to illuminate Johnson’s thinking, literary practices, and the development of his character throughout his life. This framework allows for enhanced knowledge of well-known writers like Boswell, as well as less frequently studied members of Johnson’s circle, such as Elizabeth Carter or Arthur Murphy, whose interactions with Johnson reveal important reciprocal influences. Korshin examines how these conceived literary relationships help scholars to situate Johnson’s diverse writings and complex intellectual achievements within their proper historical, social, and cultural contexts.
Korshin argues that Samuel Johnson, though often viewed as a generalist, operated firmly within the traditions of European scholarship. Korshin defines this scholarship as encompassing textual authenticity, philology, commentary, and historical compilation. While Johnson’s contemporaries saw him as too diverse to be a specialist, his major works were scholarly endeavors: the Dictionary advanced lexicography; The Rambler resembled scholarly miscellanies; his Shakespeare edition innovated editing; and the Lives of the Poets followed Continental models of learned biography. The scholar Samuel Parr recognized this, planning a biography that placed Johnson among the great polymaths like Bentley and Scaliger. Johnson, Korshin concludes, embodied the role of the productive Renaissance-style scholar.
Lipking explores why modern readers hesitate to seek the meaning of life in Johnson, addressing perceptions of Johnson's supposed dogmatism and the modern distrust of definitive answers. He analyzes Johnson's complex understanding of "life," referencing his Dictionary definitions and allegorical writings like Rambler 102. Lipking argues that Johnson views life not just through books but through lived experience, acknowledging the tension between the two. For Johnson, the meaning of life lies in the constant struggle to reconcile individual conduct with universal truths and moral principles, a process demanding both reason and action, viewing life from both inside and outside.
Vance challenges the long-standing misconception that Johnson lacked interest in history. By examining his library, writings, and recorded conversations, Vance demonstrates that history occupied a central place in his intellectual and moral framework. Johnson understood history not as a mere collection of facts, but as a vital tool for understanding human nature and providing a comparative perspective on the present. Vance details Johnson's extensive knowledge of historical literature, his objective and often skeptical analysis of the Stuart monarchs, and his profound engagement with the legacy of the English Civil War. The study explores how Johnson integrated historical insight into his literary criticism, biographical works, and political pamphlets, using past events as "Rosetta stones" for contemporary problems. Vance argues that Johnson’s historical sense was shaped by his youth in tradition-rich Lichfield and his later travels to ruins and historic sites. The work presents him as one of the most sophisticated and advanced historical thinkers of the eighteenth century, aligned with the emerging scientific and rationalist historiography of his era. Chapter 1, 'Learning about the Past: The Development of Johnson's Historical Sense,' addresses the early evolution of his interest in antiquity and the intellectual influences that shaped his unique approach to historical inquiry. Chapter 2, 'Looking at the Past: Personalities and Events,' addresses his specific interpretations of historical figures and major occurrences, arguing that he prioritized the moral lessons derived from individual lives over grand political narratives. Chapter 3, 'Observing the Visual Record of History: Johnson and Antiquarianism,' explores his engagement with physical artifacts and ruins, arguing that he valued antiquarian research only when it provided tangible evidence of human progress or suffering. Chapter 4, 'Johnson as Historian: Looking at Literature, Lives, and the Law,' addresses his application of historical methodology to his biographical and legal writings, arguing that he viewed these fields as essential branches of historical study. Chapter 5, 'Johnson as Historian: Looking at the Modern World in the Light of History,' addresses his use of historical precedents to analyze contemporary political and social issues, arguing that the past provided him a necessary lens for understanding the present. Chapter 6, 'Thinking about the Philosophy and Presentation of History: Johnson on Historiography and the Historians,' addresses his critical views on how history should be written, arguing that he demanded a synthesis of factual accuracy and narrative elegance. Chapter 7, 'The Significance of History: Conclusions,' addresses the central role history played in his overall philosophical outlook, concluding that his historical sense was fundamental to his moral and literary achievement. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics praising the successful correction of long-standing misconceptions regarding an aversion to historiography, though some reviewers express reservations about overstatement and methodology. In TLS, Nokes commends the volume for challenging historical claims of contempt and demonstrating a deep interest in fair judgments, but notes the subject's primary concern remained morality. Alkon, writing in ECS, agrees that the study persuasively establishes the discipline as a major focus rather than a marginal interest, but argues that ranking the subject alongside prominent contemporary historians is overly generous. In SEL, Korshin delivers a mixed assessment, crediting the originality of the text but criticizing a flawed methodology that produces a list of readings rather than a rigorous analysis of thought. Tomarken, writing in ECCB, praises the control of detail and sharp delineation of intellectual dimensions, but notes that enthusiasm occasionally leads to minor speculations. Unsigned commentary in JNL highlights the useful analysis of a providential framework that treats the past as a moral record. Schwartz, writing in the South Atlantic Quarterly, views the work as a vital contribution that places opinions into richer, more sophisticated contexts. But Clingham, in Essays in Criticism, objects to the equation of a traditional mindset with modern analytical recording, arguing the author isolates historical knowledge from broader political and moral positions.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, ECS 19, no. 2 (1985): 300–303; John J. Burke Jr., CLIO 14, no. 3 (1985): 346–49; Choice 22 (1985): 1387; Greg Clingham, Essays in Criticism 36, no. 3 (1986): 255–63; H. T. Dickinson, History 71, no. 231 (1986): 160; History and Theory 25, no. 3 (1986): 359; Nalini Jain, Rajasthan Studies in English 17 (1985): 151–54; JNL 41, no. 4 (1981): 9–10; Paul J. Korshin, SEL 26, no. 3 (1986): 571; Steven Lynn, South Atlantic Review 51, no. 1 (1986): 128–31; David Nokes, TLS, no. 4313 (November 1985): 1351–52; Richard B. Schwartz, South Atlantic Quarterly 85, no. 3 (1986): 314–15; Serge Soupel, Études Anglaises 39, no. 2 (1986): 219–20; Edward Tomarken, ECCB 10 (1984): 648–49.
Vance's Samuel Johnson and the Sense of History challenges Macaulay's claim of Johnson's contempt for history, arguing he had a deep interest and strove for fairness in historical judgments, though Nokes notes Johnson's primary concern remained morality.
CGV entry 11/9:88. Review by David Nokes of the book by John A. Vance, alongside other works.
CGV entry 11/9:88. A review with reservations by John J. Burke, Jr. of the book by John A. Vance.
Review by John J Burke of Samuel Johnson and the Sense of History by John A. Vance.
CGV entry 11/9:88. Review by Nalini Jain of the book by John A. Vance.
Alkon agrees that Vance’s book persuasively demonstrates that Johnson's scattered remarks on history amount to far more than a superficial view, effectively correcting the long-lasting legend—fabricated from amusing anecdotes like Thrale’s story about Tom Thumb—that Johnson despised history or thought it was "bunk." The review highlights Vance’s survey of the historical vein in Johnson’s journalism, criticism, and political commentary, showing how Johnson used the past as a "Rosetta stone" of human experience. While Alkon finds Vance’s ranking of Johnson alongside major historians like Gibbon and Hume to be overly generous since Johnson wrote no major historical work, he credits Vance with showing Johnson’s keen sensitivity to the present as history and his consistent application of historical analogues to "judge rightly of the present." Ultimately, Alkon views the work as a necessary study that establishes history as a major, rather than marginal, interest for Johnson.
CGV entry 11/9:88.
Vance challenges the nineteenth-century misconception that Johnson disliked history. Following Donald Greene's rehabilitative model, Vance arranges evidence thematically to cover Johnson’s attitudes toward seventeenth-century monarchs, the English Civil War, and historiography. He disputes previous interpretations of Johnson's comments on Robertson and Gibbon, asserting that Johnson's alleged antihistorical prejudice was actually rooted in personal or religious disagreements rather than a distaste for the discipline.
CGV entry 11/9:88. A review by Steven Lynn of the book by John A. Vance, alongside other works.
Clingham reviews Samuel Johnson and the Sense of History, a study that argues against the misconception that Johnson disliked or could not think historically. Clingham praises Vance's comprehensive survey of Johnson's historical knowledge in works from the early poems to the Lives of the Poets but criticizes the study for equating Johnson's historical sense with the modern ability to record and assess events accurately. Clingham argues that Vance fails to define the fundamental nature of historical thinking for Johnson, isolating historical knowledge from his political, moral, and critical positions.
CGV entry 11/9:88. A critical review by G. J. Clingham of the book by John A. Vance.
CGV entry 11/9:88. Review by H. T. Dickinson of the book by John A. Vance.
Soupel reviews Vance's revised thesis, which counters the prevalent critical view, often traced to Macaulay, that Johnson was hostile to history. Vance argues that history played an essential role for Johnson, citing Arthur Murphy as a reliable witness and demonstrating the extensive influence of history across Johnson's work, including his biographies, lexicography, criticism, and legal ideas. Vance successfully reviews historical figures Johnson admired and highlights his attachment to cultural traditions. The reviewer concludes that while the argument is logical, more attention could have been paid to the literary themes marked by this "sense of history."
CGV entry 11/9:88. Review by Serge Soupel of the book by John A. Vance.
Schwartz’s review of John Vance’s work highlights its importance as a corrective to Boswellian reports. He observes that Vance defends Johnson against the charge of disliking history, arguing instead that Johnson merely rejected the "modish" use of history as "parlor chitchat." Schwartz notes that Vance catches Johnson's unique ability to navigate between " skeptical, enlightenment views" and the worlds of legend or fantasy without distorting the truth. The review concludes that the book successfully places Johnson's opinions of historical figures, such as the Stuart monarchs, into "richer, more sophisticated contexts," providing a vital contribution to Johnsonian scholarship.
Reason, Bias and Faith in the Mind of Johnson
Wharton documents Johnson’s persistent concern with hope and fear, finding Johnson's near-obsession with the irrational his central theme. The study uses psychology to interpret Johnson’s entire career. Wharton argues creative compositions, such as his poems and essays, functioned as commentary on scholarly works, focusing on "phantoms of hope." Wharton posits Johnson avoided religious inquiry, explaining his dislike for Hume. The Idler culminates this theme by addressing fantasy and imagination's power. Wharton contends Rasselas was written instead of visiting Johnson’s dying mother, serving as a repudiation of death and an exploration of life’s beginning. The Happy Valley appears womb-like. Wharton concludes the tale finds happiness in resisting the drive to create, defying life's vacuity, and choosing inaction. This approach is judged narrow but effective. Chapter 1, "Life: 'vain imaginations'," addresses the subject's lifelong struggle with "vile melancholy," arguing that his passion for reason was a necessary response to his profound acquaintance with fantasy and delusion. Chapter 2, "Work: the 'scheme of life'," explores the delayed start of the subject’s creative career, contending that the monumental labor of the Dictionary was required to appease an oppressive work-conscience before other creative impulses could be released. Chapter 3, "Irene: 'gleams of reason' and 'clouds of passion'," examines the subject's only tragedy, arguing that it serves as an early record of his obsession with the "clouds of passion" that obscure human judgment. Chapter 4, "London: 'surly virtue' and 'pleasing dream'," addresses the subject’s use of Juvenalian satire, arguing that the poem reveals a tension between a "pleasing dream" of a heroic past and the grim reality of modern degeneracy. Chapter 5, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," argues that the poem uses a dense texture of verbal suggestion to convey a sense of mortal life crushed into inevitable patterns of defeat. Chapter 6, "The Rambler: 'those that aspire to the name of authors'," explores the subject's empathetic engagement with the miseries of the literary life, identifying authorial pride as a legitimate yet dangerous form of hope. Chapter 7, "The Idler: the 'voluntary dream'," examines the more relaxed handling of the theme of vacancy, arguing that the essays provide a "voluntary dream" of occupation to relieve the mind's essential emptiness. Chapter 8, "Rasselas: the 'phantoms of hope'," addresses the "Choice of Life," contending that the fable preaches against the hunger of the imagination and the "phantoms of hope" that lead only to disappointment. Chapter 9, "A Journey to the Western Islands: 'imagination' and 'idea'," explores the tension between empirical observation and the imaginative reconstruction of a declining Highland culture. Chapter 10, "The Literary Criticism: 'propriety of thought'," examines the subject's critical standards, arguing that he celebrated refined progress while remaining deeply suspicious of "unnatural" original inventiveness. Chapter 11, "Levet: 'hope's delusive mine'," concludes by analyzing the subject’s elegy for Robert Levet, arguing that the poem presents a model of heroic, automaton-like virtue that leaves no "void" for the "phantoms of hope" to enter. Critics call this book a work of vigour and originality that successfully examines the psychological vacillation between despair and hope. Hawtree and Walker praise the study for its welcome focus on poetry and sprightly reading of major works, suggesting the analysis offers deep insights into a complex mind. Lynn notes the provocative interpretation of prose fiction as a repudiation of death. But Jemielity finds the imaginative-academic framework unconvincing, arguing that Wharton relies on blurry terminology for concepts like fantasy and insanity. The Times Higher Education Supplement observes that the analysis effectively highlights a recurring vocabulary of gleams, clouds, and phantoms.
Wharton argues that Johnson's literary work is shaped by his "near-obsession with the irrational" and the theme of vain hope. Wharton asserts that the Dictionary's completion released Johnson's latent creative talent, and that his later fear of imagination led to a "near-complete silence" in creative work. Jemility critiques Wharton's tidy, imaginative-academic framework as unconvincing, arguing that it fails to explain discrepancies in Johnson's creative output and uses blurry terminology for key concepts like fantasy and insanity.
CGV entry 11/9:90. A severe review by Thomas Jemielity of the book by T. F. Wharton.
CGV entry 11/9:90. A critical review by Prem Nath of the book by T. F. Wharton.
Engell contends that the seemingly uninhibited Johnson possessed a surprising capacity for inhibition and restraint, evident in a "dialectical play of mind." This internal contradiction, such as alternating between extremes in drink or debate, suggests that inhibition for Johnson was often a conscious rejection of something he knew he could do to excess. Examples include his abstention from strong liquor, his later circumspection regarding women, and his violent refusal to discuss a dream. His critical inhibitions—condemning Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Dryden for impiety or indecency—stemmed from a powerful awareness of literature's formative effect on the young and a moral minority stance. Johnson's humility in the Preface to Shakespeare is cited as an outsider's voice questioning critical authority. This internal contradiction, or "higher common sense," makes Johnson's conversation and criticism unpredictable and less dogmatic than commonly perceived.
CGV entry 11/9:91.
Johnson and the Eighteenth-Century Theory of Friendship
On a (questionable) encounter between Johnson and William Beckford senior.
Dr. Samuel Johnson as a Temperance Witness and Moralist
Bouchier presents observations from his grandfather's 'Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words' regarding Johnson's speech. The glossary argues that Londoners are ill-qualified to judge dialects and that Johnson's own pronunciation retained Lichfield peculiarities. Despite Boswell's praise for Johnson's accuracy in distinguishing dialects, the note suggests Johnson was often mistaken in practice. Boucher claims that Johnson's speech differed little from that of educated residents of Lichfield. The note concludes that those who learn to speak in London rarely achieve accuracy in provincial linguistics. This contribution explores the intersection of Johnson's regional identity with eighteenth-century standards of 'correct' English. It emphasizes the persistence of Staffordshire influences in the speech of the great lexicographer.
Auld questions the accuracy of R. L. Stevenson's claim that Johnson drank twenty-seven cups of tea on his Highland tour. Auld believes this figure is an exaggeration, a "small romance," as he has only read accounts of the doctor consuming up to twenty-four cups at a single sitting. He points out this discrepancy to prevent further embellishment of Johnson's famed consumption.
CGV entry 11/10:6. See 9th series, volume 2 (October 1, 1898), page 265 and volume 3 (March 18, 1899), page 215. See also replies by George Clulow and R. B.
Howard examines Johnson's lifelong, yet ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to rise early, primarily through analysis of his Prayers and Meditations. Howard details Johnson’s repeated resolutions, beginning on his fifty-first birthday in 1760, to rise "early," successively lowering the target time from "as early as I can" to "eight," noting the frequent admissions of failure, such as lying in bed until two o'clock. The discussion cites relevant passages from Boswell’s Life of Johnson to illustrate Johnson's defensive posture about his indolence and his discomfort with discussing his birthday, an occasion marking renewed, failed vows. Howard concludes by questioning Boswell's accurate portrayal of the sage, suggesting the Meditations reveal a more troubled Johnson than his biographer captured.
Repplier recounts Johnson's robust defense of tea against Jonas Hanway’s 1756 'Essay on Tea,' which blamed the beverage for English physical and moral decline. Repplier identifies Johnson as a 'hardened and shameless tea-drinker' who used the infusion as a vital stimulant to counteract a 'constitutional sluggishness' and 'vile melancholy' inherited from his father. Johnson's reliance on tea facilitated his 'incredibly hard' labor and provided a necessary 'refuge in human companionship' during long, fearful nights. Repplier notes that while Johnson recognized tea lacked the nutritive value of beef or ale, he maintained its essential role in clearing his mind and fortifying his spirit. The text details Johnson's 'singular habit' of midnight tea-drinking at the homes of Mrs. Williams, Boswell, and Piozzi, where he used the beverage to detain companions and 'shake laughter out of any man.' Repplier emphasizes that tea served as a 'ballast' for Johnson’s brave spirit, allowing him to maintain 'honourable decency' without the intoxicating risks of wine or brandy.
CGV entry 11/10:11. This is Chapter 5.
Coleman questions the historical basis for the common depiction of Johnson as a habitual snuff-taker. Noting that Boswell’s Life mentions Johnson’s distaste for smoking but contains no references to snuff, Coleman seeks scholarly authority for the popular "legend" of Johnson’s snuff-stained clothing. He cites a 1932 speech by Chesterton and contemporary costume portrayals as evidence of this pervasive image, suggesting the habit may be a biographical myth similar to the exaggerated details found in Macaulay's essays.
CGV entry 11/10:12. See also volume 186 (March 25, 1944), page 168.
TCC critiques Johnson’s commentary on a passage in King John regarding a tailor’s slippers. While Johnson argues that any shoe or boot will admit either foot, the contributor suggests this observation lacks its usual precision. TCC distinguishes between modern fitted footwear and the loose, shapeless slippers or hunting boots described by Shakespeare and later by Surtees. The note suggests that Johnson’s refusal to acknowledge right- and left-specific footwear reveals a potential oversight regarding historical or contemporary clothing refinements.
The Dress of Words: Essays on Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature in Honor of Richmond P. Bond
Barber investigates Johnson's practical and intellectual engagement with the culinary arts, challenging the trope of the author's indifference to food. By examining Johnson’s involvement with the publication of cookery books and his specific critiques of recipes, Barber demonstrates that Johnson viewed cookery as both a chemical science and a marker of civilization. The text details Johnson's editorial contributions to Mrs. Glasse’s "The Art of Cookery" and his belief that he could "write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written." Barber cites Boswell’s observations to illustrate Johnson's "discriminate" palate and his desire to apply philosophical principles to domestic tasks. Ultimately, the article positions Johnson's interest in cookery as an extension of his broader commitment to utility and the improvement of human life through structured knowledge.
Johnson and the Brute Creation: An Account of the Animals He Knew and His Attitude Towards Them
CGV entry 11/10:19. Aphorisms as relating to Johnson's personality.
CGV entry 11/10:20. On Johnson's indolence.
CGV entry 12:1. A feeble burlesque of the Rambler style.
printed for, & sold by J. Knox, in the Strand
Lexiphanes: A Dialogue Imitated from Lucian, and Adapted to Present Times ... Being an Attempt to Restore the English Tongue to Its Ancient Purity, and to Correct, as Well as Expose, the Affected Style, Hard Words, and Absurd Phraseology of Many Later Writers, and Particularly of Our English Lexiphanes, the Rambler
A satirical prose dialogue, derived from Lucian, targeting Samuel Johnson's literary style, attacking the "affected Style, hard Words, and absurd Phraseology" of Johnson's prose, particularly in The Rambler and Rasselas. Campbell, a Scottish naval purser, published the work anonymously in 1767. The work ridicules Johnson (Lexiphanes) by applying his "words of large meaning" to trivial subjects. The plot depicts Lexiphanes being purged of his excessive language. Campbell dedicated the work to Lord Lyttelton. A second London edition, "corrected," appeared in 1767. A Dublin edition followed in 1774, and a third London edition in 1783. SJ refused to notice the satire, maintaining silence. Sir John Hawkins originally misattributed the work to Dr. Kenrick in the first edition of his Life of Johnson but correctly assigned authorship to Campbell in the second edition (1787).
CGV entry 12:2.
The Sale of Authors: A Dialogue, in Imitation of Lucian's Sale of Philosophers
Imitates Lucian's Sale of Philosophers, aiming to expose affected style and literary frailties. The work especially satirizes the poet Thomas Gray, presenting him for sale on an imaginary auction table as "the sweetly plaintive G----." Published anonymously in London 1767, a second London edition followed the same year. The dialogue suggests Gray's Elegy was "admirable, simple and elegant," yet proposes borrowing from Allan Ramsay. The preface offers criticism of Gray and Mason, arguing they were perhaps "celebrated more than I think they deserve."
CGV entry 12:3. An attack on the prose style of Johnson, Garrick, and others.
CGV entry 12:4. An attack on Johnson's prose style.
Anti-Empiricus defends reviewers from accusations of bias, asserting that Johnson's status does not exempt him from critiques of "incorrectness of style." Text identifies several instances of "false grammar" within Journey to the Hebrides, specifically citing subject-verb agreement errors such as "here was no eggs" and "so small the particles." Anti-Empiricus further disputes the logic of Johnson's prose regarding English markets, comparing his "profound sentences" to the nonsensical phrasing found in Don Quixote. The argument maintains that Johnson's reputation is "invalidated" by these defects in sentiment and language.
CGV entry 12:5. Published in parts: October 11, 13, and 16.
An Idea of Dr. Johnson's Mode of Writing
This article, reprinted from Blair's Lectures, critiques Johnson's prose style. Blair credits Johnson's writings with a "good moral tendency" and describes his style as "copious" and "smooth," yet labels it "all affectation." He objects to the abundance of "latinized words" such as "salubriety" and "cogitation." Blair further characterizes the style as a "perfect monotony" resulting from an imitation of Isocrates. He censures Johnson's excessive use of antithesis, noting an "elegance destitute of simplicity" and a "stateliness that is only a burlesque on dignity."
CGV entry 12:6. A brief, hostile quotation.
A Tour to Celbridge, in Ireland (Written in Imitation of the Style of Dr. Johnson)
An anonymous narrator adopts a Johnsonian persona to describe a journey from Dublin to Celbridge. After expressing satiety with the "metropolis of Ireland," the narrator joins Greville and Jephson for a rural excursion to the seat of Marlay. The narrative describes the Irish landscape, contrasting "stately mansions" with the "tattered mendicants" of mud hamlets. Upon arriving at Celbridge, the narrator explores the "Island," once the residence of Mrs. Vanhomrigh. He notes the abundance of laurels, allegedly planted by Vanessa for every brilliant couplet composed by Swift. The account concludes with a farcical episode in which the narrator falls into the Liffey and achieves "problematical deliverance" by grasping the tail of a swimming cow, eventually dining in borrowed "camlet" garments secured by the ladies' pins.
CGV entry 12:8. Published in the "Polite Literature" section.
Two essays analyzing Johnson's style, heavily influenced by his writings in 'The Rambler'.
Essay on the Style of Doctor Samuel Johnson
Johnson’s style frequently incurs the "awful sentence" of neglect due to an over-reliance on polysyllabic Latin derivatives, which effectively excludes unlearned readers and women from his moral instructions. While Johnson defends his "hard words" as necessary for the "nice discrimination" of subtle thoughts, the author argues that such pedantry is often unnecessary, citing Addison as a model of familiar expression. The "Johnsonian distemper" is most absurd when attributed to correspondents in the Rambler, such as Victoria or Misocapelus, whose supposed letters mirror Johnson’s own "barometrical pneumatology." The author traces this stylistic bias to Johnson’s work as a lexicographer and his deep immersion in the writings of Sir Thomas Browne. Despite these faults of "wantonness of habit" and "ostentatious learning," Johnson's words are credited for their "exact analogy" to English and their "forcible" precision, ensuring that his meaning, once decoded, is never misunderstood.
CGV entry 12:8. Reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (1787). In two parts: volume 11 (June), pages 300-309; and volume 12 (September), pages 32-42.
Contrasts the prose of Johnson with that of Addison and Swift, focusing on the "energetic form" of the sentence structures in the Rambler. Rejects the claim that frequent "triplets" disgust readers, arguing instead that such periods effectively "inculcate moral truths" by rousing attention. Distinguishes between didactic writing and the narration of facts, noting that Johnson employs a simpler style in his biographies, including the life of Savage and the later lives of the poets, because "vigorous periods are fitted only to the weight of Johnson's thoughts." Asserts that the best style "leaves the most lasting impression" on the memory and imagination rather than merely conveying unknown information.
CGV entry 12:9. Part of the entry on "Samuel Johnson".
An Essay on the Variations of English Prose to the Present Time
Wallace traces the evolution of English prose from the Revolution of 1688 to the late eighteenth century, arguing that linguistic improvement mirrors national intellectual progress. He characterizes the prose of the late seventeenth century, including that of Tillotson and Burnet, as negligent, inaccurate, and burdened by "superfluous verbiage." A significant variation occurs with Addison, who introduced "uniform and correct neatness" and a refined use of metaphor. Swift further advanced the medium by establishing a standard for purity and eliminating "subsidiary words." Wallace identifies a later, major shift initiated by Johnson, the "colossus of English literature." Johnson varied prose through abstract phraseology, complex sentence construction involving inversion and parallel triads, and a "nice selection and correct use of words." While noting Johnson’s adoption of Latinate terms, Wallace defends the practice as enriching the language. The text concludes that while subsequent writers like Burke and Reynolds have achieved great excellence, they have largely cultivated the principles established by Johnson and his predecessors rather than introducing new variations.
CGV entry 12:11.
Reprinted from Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1797.
A Manual of English Prose Literature, Biographical and Critical, Designed Mainly to Show Characteristics of Style
Minto provides a comprehensive analysis of Samuel Johnson's literary character and style, identifying him as a master of the "pompous, musical, and oratorical manner" of composition. He disputes the popular notion that Johnson lacks perspicuity, arguing that although the diction remains abstruse and scholarly, the underlying structure is exceptionally clear and free from ambiguity. The biographical sketch presents Johnson as a "vigorous" writer who avoided personal despondency in his prose, maintaining a "buoyant and hopeful" outlook that Minto contrasts with the "sickly sentimentality" of other authors. Minto notes that Johnson's "elements of style" are characterized by a "profuse employment of the balanced sentence," which occasionally leads to tautology. The text also includes a section on James Boswell, grouping him with Robertson and Gibbon under history, and noting his "Boswellian minuteness" in observing human character. Minto uses Boswell as a standard for detailed observation, comparing De Quincey's vigilant attention to individuals to that of "a Boswell." While Hester Thrale Piozzi is not the subject of a dedicated section, the manual emphasizes the importance of the Johnsonian circle in the history of English prose.
Representative English Prose and Prose Writers
Hunt provides a comprehensive examination of the historical development and stylistic evolution of English prose from its origins to the late 19th century. Hunt divides the history into four primary modern periods—Formative (1560–1660), Transition (1660–1700), Settlement (1700–1760), and Expansion (1760–1860)—to analyze how political agitation, philological study, and foreign influences shaped English letters. He categorizes prose into five literary forms: historical, descriptive, philosophical, oratorical, and miscellaneous. The text features detailed stylistic analyses of representative authors, including Samuel Johnson, whose prose style Hunt investigates for its Anglo-Latin elements, lack of flexibility, and 'Johnsonianism' or strong individuality. Hunt explores how Johnson’s role as a lexicographer and critic influenced his literary gravity and substantial clearness.
Hill challenges the assertion that Johnson’s style underwent three distinct periods of laboured development. He argues that the "pomp of diction" in the Rambler essays resulted from Johnson’s character as a "majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom" rather than an permanent shift in his prose. Hill finds that Johnson’s miscellaneous writings, such as his review of Jenyns, remain free from "Brownism." He attributes the diffuseness of the periodical papers to the "temptation" of filling a specific space for Cave, whereas Johnson’s letters to Piozzi and others show "ease and vigour." The text concludes that Johnson never "forced foreign idioms" into English, maintaining a style that "would have given dignity to a bishop."
Hill disputes the theory of three distinct periods in Johnson's style, arguing that the "pomp of diction" in the Rambler arose from Johnson's role as a "majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom." Hill attributes the perceived "hardest and most labored state" between 1750 and 1760 to the constraints of periodical writing, where Johnson filled space with "sonorous phrases" and "superabundance of language." Conversely, Hill finds the Lives of the Poets easier not due to lost mannerisms, but because the subject lacked didactic "slavery of copy." He notes that in letters and miscellaneous works like the Life of Sir Thomas Browne, Johnson maintained a "model of simplicity." Hill identifies Johnson as a precursor to Macaulay’s own stylistic "peculiarities."
CGV entry 12:14. Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine (1888).
Lewis identifies the historical development of the paragraph from its origins as a marginal mark in Greek manuscripts to its status as an organic structural unit in English prose. Lewis traces a shift from the excessive, involved periods of Latinized writers like Hooker and Milton toward the more unified, rhythmic paragraph structures established by Temple. While Lewis observes a significant historical decrease in average sentence length, he demonstrates that the word-length of the paragraph remains relatively constant across centuries, with writers increasingly using a larger number of sentences to develop a single stadium of thought. Lewis highlights Johnson’s role in fixing the loose, deductive paragraph order as a standard model and emphasizes Johnson's skill in maintaining paragraph coherence through logical structure rather than a reliance on formal connectives.
Clarifies Johnson's journal entry recording he had "palfrey for dinner," often misidentified by critics as a small horse or a clerical error for pastry. Identifies the term—sometimes "pamfrey"—as a provincialism current in Scotland and Northern Ireland signifying young cabbage or greens not yet hearted. Suggests Johnson acquired this vocabulary from Boswell or other Scottish acquaintances, refuting the notion of a scribal error or gluttonous feat.
CGV entry 12:16.
A Study of English Prose Writers: A Laboratory Method
Clark provides a detailed biographical outline of Johnson, tracing his progress from Lichfield to London. The narrative emphasizes his early poverty, his failed school at Edial, and his eventual success with the Dictionary and the Rambler. Clark highlights Johnson's friendship with Boswell, noting their meeting in 1763 and subsequent journey to the Hebrides. The text also explores Johnson's long intimacy with the Thrales, describing his twenty-year membership in their family and his eventual loss of a home following Thrale's death and Piozzi's second marriage. Critical analysis focuses on Johnsonian style, characterized by Latinized diction, balanced antithesis, and a tendency toward didactic moralizing. Clark argues that Johnson's sturdy conservatism and religious superstition coexisted with deep-seated kindness and a profound sense of human misery. The account concludes with Johnson's death in 1784 and his burial in Westminster Abbey.
Dawson identifies Johnson as the pivotal force in the transition of English literature from state-subsidized patronage to an independent, public-facing profession. He frames the mid-eighteenth century as a period of stagnation and moral decay where Johnson and Wesley acted as "conservative moral saviours" who prevented social collapse. The text highlights Johnson's "Mission" as the establishment of a "Republic of Letters" through his bold defiance of aristocratic patrons and his physical resistance to the "bullying" of booksellers. Dawson emphasizes that while Johnson's own writings possess merit, his enduring reputation relies upon Boswell’s unique biographical method. He characterizes Boswell’s observation as possessing "photographic exactitude," capturing the "uncurbed and fearless individuality" of a man who applied blunt common sense to all subjects. The work presents Johnson as the "last great Englishman who endured the contempt associated with authorship" and the first to cast himself upon public appreciation, thereby securing the "liberty and vocation of the modern man of letters."
Saintsbury identifies Johnson as a central figure in the transition toward standard Georgian prose, emphasizing his role in refining the plain style inherited from the Augustan age. He examines Johnson's prose through its relationship to the ornate traditions of Browne, noting how Johnson adapted these complex cadences into more structured, balanced arrangements. The analysis highlights Johnson's characteristic use of antithesis and his specific method of elevating the vernacular through a latinized vocabulary and periodic sentence structure. Saintsbury argues that Johnson's style achieved a distinct "middle" quality, maintaining dignity and clarity while avoiding the mechanical rigidity often attributed to his imitators.
Studies by Members of the Department of English, University of Wisconsin
Gosse examines the relationship between Johnson’s persona and his literary output, noting that Boswell’s "dazzling light" previously eclipsed the "Works." Gosse identifies the 1735 preface to "A Voyage to Abyssinia" as the origin of Johnson’s stylistic idiosyncrasies, including his characteristic contrast between solemnity and familiarity. While acknowledging the "pompous language" of "The Rambler," Gosse defends it as a deliberate attempt to infuse the lay-sermon with aesthetic grace. He characterizes "Rasselas" as a masterpiece of balanced music and "The Lives of the Poets" as a juvenile, sprightly departure from earlier didacticism. Gosse concludes that Johnson’s influence on English style was twofold: a beneficial legacy of order and discipline, and a disastrous legacy of elephantine pomposity among his imitators.
An Analysis of the Stylistic Technique of Addison, Johnson, Hazlitt, and Pater
Chandler's quantitative analysis of Johnson's style, derived from the Life of Pope, challenges the focus on Latinity, instead locating his distinctive power in architectural symmetry and intellectual precision. Johnson's vocabulary, while extensive, is characterized by Classical derivatives and a high percentage of verbs. The study found his sentence length comparable to Addison's, but distinguished his technique by the relentless use of balanced, synonymous clauses and parallel-duplicate structure. Johnson prioritized dignity and exactness over sensory appeal, using uniformity to achieve strength and establish a necessary foundation for later prose variations.
Reynolds defends Johnson’s use of the triplet against charges of "pompous" tautology by Walpole and Macaulay. Statistical analysis of The Rambler, The Idler, and the Lives of the Poets demonstrates that triplets are relatively infrequent and typically serve to express three distinct, exhaustive ideas subordinate to a main thought. Reynolds argues that Johnson used this Middle English prose tradition not as an affectation, but to provide triple support for statements and to add vivid imagery. The text also includes Muddiman’s investigation into the 1668 death of the Earl of Shrewsbury following a duel with the Duke of Buckingham.
CGV entry 12:24. On his so-called triple tautology.
The reception of Johnson’s prose style was sharply divided, especially regarding The Rambler. Critics like Walpole and Campbell attacked it as pompous, affected, full of Latinisms, and marred by monotonous balance. Conversely, admirers like Hawkins and Towers praised its strength, dignity, and elegance, asserting it was perfectly suited to Johnson's profound thought and was a model for English prose. Later critics, including Chalmers and Drake, acknowledged both the faults (Latinisms, monotony) and the merits, noting that his later works (like The Lives of the Poets and Rasselas) exhibited a more accessible and easy manner. The style was nonetheless a significant influence on later writers.
Wimsatt defines the characteristic elements of Johnson’s magnificent rhetoric through a detailed analysis of verbal style as a medium of expression for the mind. This monograph identifies the basic patterns of Johnson’s continuous discourse as a "formal exaggeration" of mental drives to collect and separate ideas. Wimsatt explores several rhetorical categories, most notably parallelism and antithesis, to show how Johnson uses these forms to lend the abstract a "particularity and thickness." By comparing Johnson’s practice with that of Addison and William Hazlitt, Wimsatt demonstrates that Johnson prefers emphasis over range and employs "philosophic" or scientific diction to establish authority and generality. Wimsatt also examines Johnson’s theory of composition, noting a persistency in pronouncement that generally squares with his practice. Chapters on antecedents suggest that Johnson formed his style partly on the "rhetoric of the neoclassic couplet" and the diction of "natural philosophy" found in the works of Sir Thomas Browne and Francis Bacon. Wimsatt observes that while Johnson’s later writings in the Lives exhibit a "colloquial ease" due to narrative subject matter, the fundamental structural devices remain consistent. The study concludes that Johnson’s style "reduces all things to the same artificial and unmeaning level" when the habit of parallel meaning asserts itself at the cost of variety. Chapter 1, 'Parallelism,' explores the structural and semantic equality of phrases, emphasizing that formal symmetry serves to amplify meaning rather than merely provide decorative balance. Chapter 2, 'Antithesis,' addresses the role of negative definitions and formal distinctions, arguing that oppositional structures refine conceptual precision by delineating what a subject is not. Chapter 3, 'Diction,' examines the preference for abstract, non-sensory, and "philosophic" terminology, which elevates specific observations to the level of universal truth. Chapter 4, 'Other Qualities,' analyzes secondary rhetorical features such as sentence length, imagery, and inversion, noting how these contribute to a sense of logical density. Chapter 5, 'Consistency of Johnson's Style,' addresses the relative stability of these stylistic habits across different genres and periods, disputing the notion of a radical late-career simplification. Chapter 6, 'Johnson's Theory—I,' investigates articulated principles regarding generality and the grandeur of universality as the primary goals of literary expression. Chapter 7, 'Johnson's Theory—II,' focuses on the rejection of "low" or technical "terms of art" in favor of broadly comprehensible scientific and moral vocabularies. Chapter 8, 'Antecedents of Johnson's Style,' addresses historical influences, including seventeenth-century religious writers and the rigid structures of the neoclassic couplet. Chapter 9, 'Effects of Johnson's Style,' argues that this unique rhetoric significantly shaped the subsequent course of English prose through widespread imitation and critical reaction. Most reviews are positive. In TLS, an unsigned notice notes that the work provides useful, though demanding, dissections of particular sentences under specific rhetorical headings. Chapman, in RES, calls it an admirable treatise with a mastery of terminology, praising the cogent evidence used to support its departures from orthodoxy. In MLR, Tompkins values the book for reclaiming neglected rhetorical schemes, noting that it successfully traces sentence structures to neo-classic couplets. Congleton's review in MLQ praises the important contribution to scholarship, highlighting the analysis of complex rhetorical devices functioning as the source of meaning. In MLQ, Friedman commends the demonstration of stylistic consistency but finds the proposed origins in scientific vocabulary and couplets unconvincing. An unsigned review in N&Q characterizes the volume as a difficult text that provides strenuous delight through its rigorous text and rich quotations, while Maxwell's later review in N&Q welcomes its reappearance as an established standard study. Croll (Modern Language Notes) characterizes the inquiry as a rigorous, theoretical, and remarkably readable discourse that successfully justifies itself through a philosophic framework. Morgan, in the CEA Critic, records pleasure at the reissue of this seminal work, noting it establishes itself as a classic study that thoroughly analyzes style as an expressive medium.
CGV entry 12:26. Reprinted in 1966.
Friedman reviews Wimsatt's analysis of Johnsonian rhetoric, including parallelism, antithesis, and diction. He credits Wimsatt for demonstrating stylistic consistency between the Rambler and the Lives of the Poets but questions the conflation of "philosophic" diction with the critical concept of general nature. Friedman finds the proposed stylistic origins in scientific vocabulary and the heroic couplet unconvincing and defends Johnson against charges of inconsistency regarding Shakespearean tragedy and comedy.
CGV entry 12:26. A review by Arthur Friedman of the book by William K. Wimsatt, Jr. A reply by Wimsatt appears in the same journal, volume 22 (January 1943), pages 71-76.
Congleton praises Wimsatt's analysis of the complex rhetorical devices that characterize Johnson's prose. The study argues that Johnson's use of parallelism, antithesis, and abstract diction serves a neo-classic uniformitarian ideal. Johnson used these structures for emphasis and generality rather than range, often stating one meaning at the cost of another to reach a universal truth. Congleton notes that while some may attribute this style to Johnson's education or schoolboy drills, Wimsatt successfully demonstrates how these devices function as the source of unique qualities in Johnson's meaning. The review identifies the work as an important contribution to Johnsonian scholarship.
CGV entry 12:26.
Tompkins highlights Wimsatt’s analysis of Johnson’s rhetoric as a medium of expression rather than mere ornament. He notes Wimsatt’s findings that Johnson’s antitheses stem from a preference for abstract diction. The work successfully traces Johnson’s "philosophic" diction to scientific reading and his sentence structure to neo-classic couplets. Tompkins values the book for reclaiming neglected rhetorical schemes but notes Wimsatt must look behind Johnson’s own "ornamentalist" theories.
CGV entry 12:26. Review by J. M. S. Tompkins of the book by William K. Wimsatt, Jr.
Chapman calls Wimsatt's book an admirable treatise, urging readers not to be deterred by the formidable apparatus of the opening chapters. He praises Wimsatt’s mastery of his terminology and ability to sustain the relevance of the parts to the whole. The book's most notable departure from orthodoxy—the rejection of the view that Johnson's later style is less ponderous than The Rambler—is supported by cogent evidence. Chapman notes Wimsatt is fair and discriminating in his consideration of Johnson's critics, demonstrating they do homage by unwitting imitation of Johnson's rhythms.
CGV entry 12:26. Review by R. W. Chapman of the book by William K. Wimsatt, Jr.
The reviewer identifies an echo of Johnson’s "manly style" in Richard Crawley’s preface to his translation of Thucydides. Comparing the text to Johnson’s letter to Chesterfield, the author highlights Crawley's dignified persistence despite initial public indifference.
Some Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Prose
Sutherland traces the shift in English prose from the conversational "middle style" of Addison to the learned, "alluvial" style of Johnson, highlighting the influence of social decorum and audience on literary form. Abstract: Sutherland describes eighteenth-century prose as a merging of two distinct streams: the clear, conversational "middle style" championed by Addison and the later, more formal tradition associated with Johnson and Edward Gibbon. He argues that Addison’s dominance stemmed from an ability to convey instruction easily, using a "neutral quality" that allowed for personal idiom while maintaining a "familiar, but not coarse" tone. Sutherland contrasts this with Johnson’s tendency to transmute small talk into the language of schools and colleges. The article emphasizes that the period's prose was fundamentally social, rooted in the art of pleasing conversation and a desire for clarity, even when addressing the "Vulgar." Sutherland maintains that while the earlier style achieved a balance between the foreseen and the fortuitous, the later transition toward more studied amplitude reflected a significant shift in the century's intellectual and social engagement.
Frequency-Distribution of Nouns in Dr. Johnson's Prose Works
Krishnamurti applies G. U. Yule’s statistical methods to analyze Johnson’s vocabulary, comparing samples from The Rambler and The Lives of the Poets against works by Macaulay and Bunyan. Data reveal Johnson maintains a lower concentration of vocabulary than his contemporaries, using a more extensive and varied diction. Nouns such as "man," "time," and "life" dominate Johnson’s prose across disparate decades, reflecting an unchanging focus on the moral aspects of human nature. The study demonstrates that Johnson’s lexical choices remain consistent throughout his career, bridging his earlier didactic essays and later biographical criticism.
Vocabulary Tests Applied to (Dr. Johnson's) Authorship of the 'Misargyrus' Papers in The Adventurer
Vocabulary Tests: Applied to the Authorship of the 'New Essays' Attributed to Dr. Johnson
Krishnamurti evaluates the authorship of three essays from The Weekly Correspondent (1760) by applying Yule’s statistical vocabulary tests. Although the small sample size of 301 noun occurrences limits statistical reliability compared to longer works, the data reveal the high frequency of the "Johnsonian triad": "man," "life," and "time." These lexical patterns, alongside external evidence of Johnson’s interest in the coronation and Blackfriars Bridge, support McAdam’s attribution of the texts to Johnson. The study concludes that the essays display the characteristic habits of thought and moral focus consistent with Johnson’s authentic prose.
The Ironic Tradition in Augustan Prose from Swift to Johnson
The Case for Internal Evidence (5): The Uses and Abuses of Internal Evidence
Sherbo asserts that internal evidence constitutes the "essentials" of canonical scholarship, while external evidence provides mere "accidentals." He details stylistic criteria, including sentence structure, vocabulary, and imagery, alongside the consonance of ideas, to facilitate authorial attribution. Sherbo specifically applies these methods to the Johnson canon, proposing the reinstatement of a review of Hawkesworth's Oroonoko and the inclusion of an anonymous 1767 "Essay on Elegies." Conversely, he disputes Johnson's hand in the Preface to Hampton's Polybius, citing the presence of phrases like "the former" and "the latter," which Johnson notoriously detested. The discussion emphasizes the need for prose concordances to increase the statistical precision of such attributions.
CGV entry 12:37. Attacked by Ephim G. Fogel and replied to by Sherbo in the same journal (May, June, July).
Evidence for Authorship: Essays on Problems of Attribution
Sherbo disputes the prevailing scholarly skepticism toward internal evidence, arguing it deals with essentials while external evidence addresses accidentals. He maintains that cumulative minor parallels or "coincidences" gain probative strength in juxtaposition. Sherbo applies this methodology to Samuel Johnson, reinstating a review of Oroonoko and proposing a 1767 "Essay on Elegies" for the canon. He argues that even when prose lacks obvious Johnsonian "nervousness," uncommon agreements in thought—such as the distinction between passion and fiction—identify the author. Conversely, Sherbo challenges Johnson's hand in the Preface to Hampton's Polybius, citing the presence of "the former" and "the latter," phrases Johnson reportedly detested. He concludes by urging that attribution by internal evidence be moved from private intuition to public, impartial discussion.
CGV entry 12:37. Reprinted from the Bulletin of the New York Public Library (1959).
The Description of Style: Dr. Johnson and His Critics
CGV entry 12:39. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 21 (1960), pages 338-339.
Addison, Johnson, and the 'Energetick' Style
CGV entry 12:42. Describes a project for the statistical differentiation between Johnson's and John Hawkesworth's prose styles.
Greene challenges the assumption that specific prose characteristics in middle and late eighteenth-century Britain correlate directly with Tory political attitudes. Focusing on Johnson, Greene demonstrates that a single author uses multiple styles—from 'mandarin' rhetoric to straightforward business prose—depending on the literary genre and occasion. He disputes the lumping together of Johnson, Hume, and Gibbon as practitioners of a singular Tory style characterized by periodicity and Latinity. By presenting passages where Johnson’s style resembles radical sentiment or practical instruction, Greene argues that genre requirements, rather than political sensibilities, dictate linguistic behavior. He concludes that isolating a 'Tory' prose style is impossible in practice and analytically misleading.
CGV entry 12:45. On plans for further computer analysis of the style of the Parliamentary Debates.
A Stylistic Touchstone for Johnson's Prose
Bernard proposes the sparing use of the word "also" as a distinctive stylistic marker for identifying Johnson's prose. Quantitative analysis across the Rambler, Idler, Savage, and Rasselas reveals that Johnson consistently avoided the term, likely viewing it as redundant. Bernard uses this touchstone to distinguish Johnson’s writing from that of imitators like Hawkesworth, who used the word frequently. This internal evidence further questions Johnson’s authorship of specific sections in the parliamentary debates.
CGV entry 12:46. Argues that Johnson rarely uses "also." See also a reply by E. G. Stanley in the same journal, August 1964, pages 298–299.
A Quantitative Approach to the Style of Jonathan Swift
Milic challenges impressionistic descriptions of Swift’s style—characterized by critics since the eighteenth century as "clear, simple, [and] direct"—by substituting precise numerical measurements of grammatical categories. Postulating that style is an "unconscious reflection" of a writer’s mind, Milic uses electronic data-processing to analyze "seriation," "connection," and "word-class" frequencies. Milic distinguishes Swift’s "undisciplined" use of long series (four or more items) from the balanced doublets and triplets favored by Johnson and Addison. The study argues that while Johnson’s "energetick" style relies on formal rhetorical structures, Swift’s style is defined by a high frequency of "introductory connectives" and a unique "Swift Profile" based on stable grammatical statistics. These quantitative discriminators are applied to the contested "Letter of Advice to a Young Poet" to provide a measure of "certainty" regarding its attribution. Milic concludes that Swift’s "syntax," rather than his "vocabulary," constitutes the "heart" of his literary effectiveness, as the former remains beyond the conscious control of the "rhetorician" and serves as a "stable style statistic" across his mature canon.
CGV entry 12:48. Johnson is used as a control.
Protean Shape: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Vocabulary and Usage
Tucker analyzes the dynamic nature of eighteenth-century English through the lens of contemporary linguistic theory and practice. Dividing the work into two parts, Tucker first explores how the period viewed its own language, using critical journals like the Gentleman's Magazine and the Monthly Review to document reactions to neologisms, Gallicisms, and shifting usage. The study highlights Johnson as a central figure whose Dictionary and prose style both established and challenged linguistic norms, noting his "hobby-horse" for Latinate diction and his "forthright" definitions of terms like 'patron' and 'distiller'. Tucker documents Boswell's sensitivity to Scotticisms and his observations of Johnson's conversational metaphors, such as comparing the lexicographer to an "ox in a china shop". The text further examines Piozzi's British Synonymy as a primary source for understanding the nuances of "vogue words" and her critique of feminine linguistic affectations. The second part shifts to a modern retrospective, examining how the meanings of eighteenth-century terms have developed, fossilized, or inverted. Tucker argues that the period is an "ideal training ground" for observing the historical development of English, emphasizing that the "Protean shape" of the language reflects the minds of those who used it.
CGV entry 12:49. Discusses Johnson passim.
King performs a linguistic analysis of Johnson's prose to explain why the author often seems "ponderous and dull" to modern readers. Examining an essay on sleep from The Adventurer, King identifies structural faults such as excessive sentence length, a high ratio of polysyllabic words, and a "tangled series of clauses" that separate subjects from their verbs. King contrasts this "Johnsonian ponderosity" with the lighter, more rapid narrative style found in Johnson's novel Rasselas. The analysis focuses on the ratio of monosyllables and the closeness of simple subjects to their verbs, using Johnson's varying styles to instruct readers on becoming more critical of their own writing.
JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
CGV entry 12:50. Medical Writing, No. 10.
A Transformational-Generative Approach to Style: Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon
CGV entry 12:52. On Johnson's aphoristic style.
The Uses of Argument in the Prose of Samuel Johnson
On the manifestation of Johnson’s argumentative disposition throughout his prose, linking it to John Locke’s empirical epistemology and James Beattie's common sense philosophy. The study describes argument as an indispensable epistemological tool, analyzing how Johnson uses logic, definition, and evidence to pursue truth and expose error. It details the argumentative structures in his legal briefs, political pamphlets, and biographies, especially the Lives of Milton and Swift, concluding that argument forms a paradigm of his rational process.
Sorensen analyzes the stylistic influence of Johnson on Jane Austen, focusing on Northanger Abbey. The article demonstrates how Austen adopts "Johnsonese" rhetorical patterns, such as oratio trimembris and the use of abstract diction, to obtain burlesque effects. Sorensen identifies specific parallels in sentence structure, including the placement of dependent clauses before main sentences and the emphatic use of prepositions. While Austen shares Johnson’s moralizing strain, Sorensen argues she often deliberately creates a clash between formal Johnsonian moulds and trivial content to satirize Gothic and sentimental fiction. The study concludes that Austen’s style is a "mixed style" that combines these Augustan features with vivid, speech-based elements to characterize her speakers, rather than being a "slavish" imitation of Johnson’s prose.
Johnsonian Irony: The Theory and Practice of Irony in the Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 12:55. Dissertation Abstracts International 30: 2534A.
Johnsonian Metaphor and the 'Adamant of Shakespeare'
On the metaphorical dialectic leading to the "adamant of Shakespeare" image in the Preface to Shakespeare. Johnson's style achieves a "real synthesis," mediating critical dualisms. The metaphor initially evokes a pre-Newtonian "true colors" theory, challenging the primary/secondary quality distinction and uniting form and content in art. It then shifts to a Newtonian language of "primitive qualities," but the contrasting views are reconciled through metaphor. The adamant symbolizes an objective, permanent standard of value that affects the perceiving mind, embodying the irreducible unity of quality and substance that defines the idea of art.
Parallelism of Sound in Samuel Johnson's Prose
Stuart and Georgian Moments: Clark Library Seminar Papers on Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century English Literature
This article, reprinted from a 1956 Clark Library seminar, analyzes the shift in ironic modes between the early and late eighteenth century. Watt argues that while Swift uses irony as a weapon of communal exclusion and shock, Johnson employs it as a tool for moral stability and individual resilience. Johnsonian irony functions not to deceive but to manage the "hunger of imagination" and the discrepancies between human desire and reality. Watt identifies Johnson’s prose as the culmination of the Augustan tradition, where irony becomes a "defensive armor of the mind." He notes that Johnson rarely seeks the total structural irony of a persona, preferring localized, antithetical structures that balance skepticism with piety. This transition reflects a broader cultural movement toward internalizing the ironic conflict within the individual consciousness rather than using it for external social satire.
CGV entry 12:58. A Clark Library seminar paper.
Folkenflik disputes the inclusion of "An Essay on Elegies" within the Johnson canon. Using an examination of Augustan diction and syntax, Folkenflik argues that the essay relies on rhetorical commonplaces prevalent among eighteenth-century writers rather than Johnson's unique stylistic fingerprints. This intervention challenges previous attributions based on perceived thematic similarities. The analysis focuses on the limitations of using internal evidence to expand the bibliography of anonymous works. By tracing the provenance of specific "commonplaces" bearing on the essay, Folkenflik demonstrates that the text's stylistic features do not align sufficiently with Johnson's established prose to warrant attribution.
CGV entry 12:59.
'Ah ha!—Sam Johnson!—I See Thee': Johnson's Ironic Roles
Basney challenges the archetype of Johnson as a "monolithic," defensive figure by exploring his "instinctive penchant for playing unfamiliar roles." The article identifies role-playing and irony as central to Johnson's "practical epistemology," an "imaginative escape" and "corrective check of imagination" that allows him to transcend his own preoccupations and experience the world from diverse perspectives. Through "sympathetic" role-playing, Johnson tests attitudes toward politics, trade, and social status, maintaining a "liberating irony" and "consciousness of fiction" that allow him to assume a role—such as the "republican" convert or "Plymouth-man"—while using judgment to judge the role and himself. Basney analyzes Johnson's use of parody in letters to Piozzi and his "theatrical" social behavior, such as his mimicry of Lady Macdonald and his "impromptu skits" about drinking. The study argues that Johnson's irony, directed both at himself and at political cant, was not merely a defense against melancholy but an intellectual instrument used to "tear out the heart" of personalities and events. Basney concludes that Johnson’s "heroic," "complicated, pragmatic irony" enables him to explore experience rather than merely defend the commonplace.
Cochrane entry 238.
Nussbaum criticizes Vesterman’s attempt to trace a progressive maturation in Johnson’s written style. She finds the selection of texts, including Savage and Rasselas, poorly justified and notes a significant failure to engage with recent scholarship. Nussbaum identifies stylistic awkwardness, frequent misprints, and repetitive arguments typical of a revised dissertation. She concludes that while Vesterman’s goal of separating Johnson’s literary voice from Boswell’s records is valid, the critical methodology remains obscure and the resulting arguments lack substance.
CGV entry 12:61. A critical review essay by Felicity A. Nussbaum on the book by William Vesterman.
CGV entry 12:61. A severe review by Robert G. Walker of the book by William Vesterman.
Johnsonian Prose and the Musical Baroque
Style or Styles: The Problem of Johnson's Prose
McCrea addresses the critical controversy over whether Johnson possessed a single prose style or multiple styles, linking the debate to broader interpretations of his character (systematic vs. flexible). Wimsatt argued for a consistent style characterized by parallelism, antithesis, and general/abstract diction, reflecting a systematic mind. Fussell countered that Johnson had prose styles adapted to different occasions, suggesting genre determines the message. McCrea tests Wimsatt's definition against Johnson's varied works: Plan of a Dictionary (1747): Uses Anglo-Saxon diction and parallelism without antithesis to establish a tone of humble, tedious labor, subverting the genre’s expectation of dictatorial authority. A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (1739): Uses long parallel sentences without antithesis to satirize the "doltish Walpole supporter" persona, whose simplistic style betrays his mindlessness. The False Alarm (1770): Employs Latinate, abstract diction and paragraphs broken by "but's" or "yet's" that introduce qualification and opposition to raise the political argument to a general, philosophical level for an elite audience. Life of Savage (1744): A blend of didactic tract and personal tribute, it features a style rich in antithesis (e.g., Savage's poverty vs. his stipend) to convey his ambivalent feelings and balance his moral judgment with sympathy for Savage's circumstances. McCrea concludes that Johnson varied his fundamental elements (parallelism, antithesis, diction) based on context, audience, and purpose (e.g., antithesis can be balanced, unbalanced, or absent). He argues that Johnson's style is "another and the same"—flexible but built upon core elements—refusing to be determined by genre, thus rejecting the extremes of both Wimsatt's single style and Fussell’s genre-determines-message thesis.
The Philosophical Context of Johnson's Prose Style
An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, Son of the Earl Rivers
Not a formal review but high praise published immediately after the book's release. The author is presumed to be James Ralph.
CGV entry 13:1. This is an informal but enthusiastic review, likely by James Ralph, of the first edition of the book by Samuel Johnson.
Connolly identifies the short novel as a neglected English form, distinguishing it from the play and the prolix Victorian novel. He designates Johnson's Life of Savage as the premier example of a straight biography possessing the "magic trio" of style, growth, and intensity. Connolly argues that Johnson’s prose in this work remains "ponderous yet agile and unaffected," guided by a personal affection for Richard Savage that surpasses the "polished effort" found in Rasselas. The text traces the formation of Savage’s character through cycles of injustice and poverty, highlighting the increasing intimacy between the subject and Johnson. Connolly concludes that the work succeeds because the "stern moralist" Johnson learns to forgive his subject, thereby enriching the reader's understanding of existence through a subterranean exploration of character interaction and spiritual deepening.
CGV entry 13:1. Available on microfilm from the University of Chicago, Department of Photoduplication.
This authoritative edition provides a reliable text of the author's first major biography. The copy-text is the first edition published in 1744, which appeared without the author's name. This edition records variants in all previous editions containing the life of Savage. The textual introduction describes the descent of the text, noting that the biographer performed one thorough overhaul of the text in 1748 for the second edition, but subsequently left it alone except for occasional tinkering, such as revisions found in the Glasgow copy. The text's history is characterized by minor adjustments in later editions and reissues (1767, 1769, 1775, 1777, 1781). The 1744 first edition was printed in Caslon English Roman, set to approximate Great Primer type, resulting in a number of characters per page greater than Great Primer but fewer than English Roman. The notes were printed in pica type. The editorial policy aims to provide the text in definitive form with a helpful apparatus. Supplemental materials include a textual introduction, a list of abbreviations, and extensive notes. The copious notes identify sources, clarifying the biographer's reliance on materials such as the anonymous Life of Mr. Richard Savage (1727), Giles Jacob's Poetical Register (1719), the Gentleman's Magazine files, The Plain Dealer, Savage's Miscellaneous Poems, and a printed account of his murder trial. The notes provide details of persons and places, discuss Johnson's sources and handling of them, and point out discrepancies between this account and others. The editor suggests that the biographer modified the second section of the 1744 edition after gaining access to new material from a Popean source or suppressing information about Pope. The editor previously published a detailed biographical study of Savage, serving as a comprehensive background resource for this edition. Scholarly reception found this edition valuable, noting it relieved readers from relying on unreliable nineteenth-century texts. It is cited as the standard edition of the text. Literary critics considered it an essential resource for analyzing the biography's art and narrative complexities.
O'Flaherty praises Tracy's edition of Johnson's Life of Savage for its authoritative text and assured scholarship. Tracy corrects Johnson's "staggering" factual errors, such as misdating The Bastard and repeating the falsehood about Lady Macclesfield's public confession. However, O'Flaherty criticizes the introduction's failure to defend convincingly the Life of Savage's uniqueness, finding the appraisal of Johnson's reasons for the work's distinction conventional. The book's merit lies in the prose quality—its surprising delicacy, maturity, flexibility, and poise.
CGV entry 13:1.
Folkenflik praises Tracy’s old-spelling edition of Savage for its accuracy and scholarship. While Tracy prioritizes the 1748 revisions over later versions, Folkenflik questions the inclusion of marginalia from the Euing copy. He finds the footnotes informative but critiques Tracy’s claim that anecdotes regarding Steele are irrelevant, arguing they illustrate Savage's lack of frugality. Overall, the edition serves as an excellent precursor to the Yale Lives, benefiting from Tracy's deep expertise as Savage's biographer.
CGV entry 13:1. Review by Robert Folkenflik of the edition by Clarence Tracy. Part of "The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography."
Dussinger calls Tracy's edition beautiful and essential for students. He praises Tracy's collation and documentation for revealing Johnson's artistic choices, but questions Tracy's claim that Johnson sought an impartial account. Dussinger suggests Johnson's partiality for Savage’s story stemmed from Johnson’s own maternal anxieties, making the biography an inscrutable blend of art and human sympathy.
CGV entry 13:1. Review by John A. Dussinger of the edition by Clarence Tracy.
Greene praises Tracy for his quiet competence, necessary scholarship, and detailed annotation correcting and supplementing Johnson's facts. Greene emphasizes that Johnson's Life of Savage is a surprising production, and possibly the first "modern" biography due to its psychological analysis and the biographer's deep emotional involvement. The review highlights the autobiographical nature of the Life, noting the strong similarities between the "injustice collector" Savage and the young, self-pitying Johnson.
Boulton welcomes Tracy's definitive edition of the 1744 biography, noting that the original text’s distinctive quality is often obscured when published within the later Prefaces. He commends the editorial choice of the first edition, first state, as the copy text and the inclusion of emendations from the revised 1748 edition and Johnson’s handwritten notes in the "Euing" copy. Boulton highlights the work's success in balancing general and particular truths.
CGV entry 13:1. Review by James T. Boulton of the edition by Clarence Tracy.
CGV entry 13:1. A facsimile reprint of the second edition of 1748.
Johnson recounts the life of Ascham, emphasizing his role as a foundational figure in English prose and a vital link between the academic rigors of Cambridge and the Elizabethan court. Carlisle’s introduction provides critical annotations on Johnson's style, characterizing it as a "good specimen" of his "peculiar" and "instructive" biographical approach. Johnson explores Ascham's major works, notably Toxophilus and The Scholemaster, while addressing the financial precarity of 16th-century scholarship through a detailed analysis of royal pensions.
CGV entry 13:2. With an introduction by James H. Carlisle.
Two Great Teachers: Johnson's 'Memoir of Roger Ascham'; Stanley's 'Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold of Rugby'
Johnson provides a historical account of Roger Ascham, tracing his progression from a Yorkshire childhood to his tenure as tutor and Latin Secretary to Queen Elizabeth. Johnson emphasizes Ascham's mastery of Greek and the mechanical art of writing, noting his "neatness of hand" and "elegance of style." He defends Ascham’s Toxophilus as a "salutary, useful, and liberal diversion" despite contemporary criticism of his leisure pursuits. Johnson highlights Ascham's resilience during the shifts of the Reformation, observing how his "innocence and usefulness" preserved his standing across successive reigns. Johnson presents Ascham as a pioneer who "roused them from ignorance" and kindled the "light of literature" in the English tongue.
CGV entry 13:3. A college textbook.
Academicus provides bibliographic emendations to recent memoirs and catalogs. Academicus identifies Johnson as the author of the life of Francis Cheynel in the second volume of The Student, or the Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany. Academicus attributes the character of William Collins, previously appearing in the 1764 volume of the magazine, to the same "inimitable biographer."
CGV entry 13:20. Attributes the 'Life of Cheynel' to Johnson and corrects the attribution of "Character of Collins" to Joseph Warton, attributing it instead to Johnson.
The Nonconformist's Memorial; Being an Account of the Ministers Who Were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration
[Reprint and comment on Life of Cheynel]
Palmer provides a biographical sketch of the nonconformist divine Francis Cheynel, highlighting his education at Oxford, his defense of conscience during the Restoration, and his military service under the Earl of Essex. The text incorporates a critique of Johnson's 1775 biography of Cheynel, characterizing it as a "satire both upon Dr. Cheynel and the times" shaped by Johnson’s "avowed principles in religion and politics." Despite this perceived bias, Palmer extracts Johnson's admissions of Cheynel’s "intrepidity which was never to be shaken by any danger" and his "hospitality and contempt of money." Johnson notes that Cheynel possessed qualities that "would have given him a claim to some distinction" if employed in a better cause, while acknowledging Cheynel’s complex relationship with Chillingworth, whom he treated with "great kindness to his person, and veneration for his capacity" despite theological disputes.
Receipt of Johnson for the Life of Savage
The article preserves Johnson’s 1743 receipt for fifteen guineas, paid by Cave for the copyright of the Life of Savage. It establishes the specific terms of the "absolute property" transfer for the work's first edition. The document identifies Johnson’s signature and the role of contemporary witnesses in verifying the transaction.
Whitehead frames the narrative as an autobiographical memoir written by Savage during his final imprisonment in Bristol gaol. The text attempts to reconcile the historical facts documented in Johnson’s Life of Savage with a romanticized, first-person psychological study of the poet’s turbulent life. Whitehead acknowledges his heavy reliance on Johnson, citing him as an "illustrious biographer and friend" who provided an "admirable Life" and pleaded for a "charitable construction" of Savage's conduct. The narrative focuses extensively on Savage’s discovery of his alleged noble parentage as the son of the Countess of Macclesfield and Earl Rivers, and his subsequent obsession with maternal recognition. It details his interactions with Ludlow (a fictionalized steward), his entrance into the Myte household, and his eventual confrontation with Mrs. Brett. Throughout the work, Whitehead uses the fictional Savage to comment on the "incurable selfishness of mankind" and the "common artifice of pride," while maintaining a focus on the "sorrows" and "misfortunes" that Johnson famously chronicled.
CGV entry 13:23. A novel, based on Johnson's 'Life of Savage'. Reprinted several times.
Johnson emerges from obscurity as a bulky, vehement conversationalist who wanders St. James's Square at night with Savage to compensate for their shared indigence and lack of lodging. Johnson maintains a loyal, affectionate friendship with Savage, finding his companion an intense observer of society despite a life marked by coarse vices, unbridled excesses, and professional ingratitude. While Johnson produces a sympathetic biography that reflects the indignation of a partisan, he eventually acknowledges the desperate faults darkening the character of his friend. Boswell records the peripatetic habits of the pair during this period of mutual poverty. The narrative traces Savage's descent from the height of aristocratic patronage under Tyrconnel to a destitute death in a Bristol jail, surviving primarily through the literary preservation afforded by Johnson's prose.
Thomas questions Savage's claims of parentage, correcting multiple errors in Johnson's and other biographies based on manuscript depositions from the Macclesfield divorce. Evidence confirms the Countess of Macclesfield was separated from her husband for years before her two illegitimate children, including the supposed Richard Savage, were born. The birth of the male child, Richard Smith, took place in Fox Court, and he was immediately placed with a nurse and later removed by the Portlocks, disappearing from the historical record. The author's research characterizes the Countess as unfairly treated by her husband.
By Arrangement with Mr. Daniel Frohman, Messrs. Wagenhals & Kemper Present Mr. Henry Miller in Richard Savage, a Play in Five Acts
CGV entry 13:27. A play performed in New York in February 1901.
A two-part biography-novel hybrid that re-examines the life of Richard Savage, treating Johnson's Life of Savage as a central precursor. The book follows Savage’s narrative, scrutinizing motivations and psychological responses to events like his controversial claim of parentage, which Makower gives suppositious psychological significance. Makower rejects strict factual demands and embraces speculation to pursue a larger psychological truth obscured by historical accounts. He uses an impersonal narrator to achieve psychological depth for Savage and his antagonists, contrasting with Johnson's subdued observations. The insufficiency of facts makes Savage's complex identity solely a matter of conjecture, licensing the novelistic treatment and achieving a Modernist contentment with indeterminacy about Savage's life.
Jones presents a fictionalized narrative of the life of Richard Savage, focusing on his claim to be the illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield. The text portrays the central conflict between Savage's aspirations to aristocratic recognition and his reality of penury and social instability. A significant portion of the narrative details Savage’s friendship with Johnson during their shared period of destitution in London. Jones depicts the pair wandering the streets of the city at night, unable to afford lodging, yet engaged in vigorous conversation regarding politics and literature. The account follows Savage through his trial for the murder of James Sinclair at Robinson’s Coffee-house, his brief period of patronage by Lord Tyrconnel, and his eventual decline into debt. The narrative concludes with Savage’s imprisonment and death in Bristol in 1743, an event recorded as occurring "without a mourner" and funded by the charity of the gaoler, Dagge. The work serves as a creative expansion of the biographical facts originally documented by Johnson.
McAdam identifies a pamphlet in the Yale Library, The Life of Admiral Blake (1740), as a separate reprint of Johnson's life from the Gentleman's Magazine (June 1740). The pamphlet was printed for E. Cave and likely appeared in the first fortnight of July 1740. It contains about sixteen textual changes from the magazine text. The pamphlet was an attempt to capitalize on current naval interest, but subsequent reprints of the Life (in the London Chronicle 1757, and appended to Savage 1767) used the Gentleman's Magazine text, suggesting the pamphlet was not widely known or used.
A brief letter from E. L. McAdam on the Life of Blake.
CGV entry 13:30. On the life of Admiral Blake.
Johnson's Life of Richard Savage omits the poet's early Jacobite leanings. Government informer Girling wrote to the Secretary's office, alleging Savage wrote five seditious poems around 1716, including "Britannia's Miseries," which attacked George I and his family. Girling claimed he copied the verses from Savage's originals. The informer also noted Savage had previously been pardoned for treasonable pamphlets, possibly a 1715 incident. Had Savage published the highly treasonable poems, he likely would not have survived to meet Johnson, who later omitted these youthful indiscretions from the biography.
Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine
Hazen attributes the biography of the Dutch anatomist Ruysch in James’s Medicinal Dictionary to Johnson. He identifies the text as an eminently Johnsonian translation of Fontenelle’s Éloge. Hazen argues that characteristic elaborations, such as reflections on real Merit triumphing over Arrogance and Ignorance, confirm Johnson’s authorship. The article reprints the biography, asserting Johnson used the translation to explore the pursuit of truth and Decorum.
Richard Savage, the First Poet of Colour
CGV entry 13:34. A modern interpretation of his poetry.
CGV entry 13:35. Contains excerpts from the 'Life of Savage' and Boswell's 'Life', with comments.
Atkinson contextualizes Johnson's 1739 biography of Herman Boerhaave, noting its origins as a translation of Albert Schultens's Latin eulogy supplemented by "Johnsonian reflections." The narrative traces Boerhaave's transition from divinity to medicine following a self-cured leg ulcer and a false accusation of "Spinosism" that blocked his clerical career. Johnson highlights Boerhaave's "insatiable curiosity" for chemistry, botany, and anatomy, emphasizing a "rational and mathematical enquiry" into nature over "airy dreams" and hypotheses. Boswell records that this project initiated Johnson's lifelong "love of chymistry." The account concludes by detailing Boerhaave's "patientia Christiana" during a terminal illness, portraying him as a man "guided by religion in the exertion of his abilities."
CGV entry 13:36. Contains a short preface and the text of the life.
Johnson's Lives of Sarpi, Blake, and Drake
Johnson's earliest biographies, of Sarpi, Blake, and Drake, demonstrate a consistent method: they are primarily condensations and paraphrases of a single main source, suggesting they were treated as hackwork or journalism. Johnson rigorously abridged factual details while selectively adding material from other, often obvious, sources. Most distinctively, he interpolated many of his characteristic generalizations and interpretive comments, elevating these popular narratives beyond mere historical compilation into a realm closer to literature.
Poet and Interloper, Richard Savage: 1698–1743
Savage claimed he was the illegitimate son of the 4th Earl Rivers and the Countess of Macclesfield. His alleged mother, Mrs. Brett, repudiated him. Savage wrote for sustenance, publishing poems including "The Bastard" (1728). After killing a man in a 1727 brawl, Queen Caroline spared him the death sentence. He later lived with his mother's nephew, Lord Tyrconnel. Savage died in a Bristol debtor's prison in 1743. Johnson's biographical essay makes Savage's troubled life unforgettable.
Carrigan cites a holograph letter that substantiates Johnson’s statement regarding financial aid extended to Savage by Anne Oldfield. The letter, dated no later than 1712, characterizes Savage’s misfortunes as unbounded and unmerited. Carrigan identifies Oldfield as a well-wisher who sought further support for Savage through her associates.
CGV entry 13:39. On Mrs. Oldfield's aid to the poet.
Samuel Johnson's 'Life of the Poet Richard Savage'—A Paradigm for a Type
Bergler psychoanalyzes Richard Savage based on Johnson's Life of Savage, calling the poet a "masochistic parasite." He rejects Johnson's premise that Savage's misfortunes stemmed from his mother's late-discovered rejection, arguing that childhood psyche is formed much earlier. Bergler contends that Savage's life is a perfect description of a psychic masochist who is an "injustice collector," unconsciously seeking to be refused rather than to get, despite his conscious "pension-mania." Savage repeatedly provokes and alienates benefactors like Steele, Wilks, Mrs. Oldfield, and Lord Tyrconnel, thereby ensuring their refusal or withdrawal of support, fulfilling his unconscious desire to repeat the fantasy of the "Bad mother refuses." His squandering of money, cheerfulness in distress, and insolent rejection of gifts further demonstrate this masochistic pattern. Bergler outlines the "mechanism of orality" triad: unconscious provocation of refusal by a mother-figure representative, repression of the provocation followed by righteous indignation, and conscious self-pity enjoyed through unconscious psychic masochism. He classifies Savage as an orally regressed neurotic and a "Schnorrer," or parasitic type, who believes the world/benefactor owes him. Bergler interprets Savage's forgiveness of the women who testified against him as a "magic gesture," a defense mechanism of psychic masochists demonstrating how they wish to be treated.
CGV entry 13:42. On a planned life of John Scott of Amwell.
Johnsoniana: An Obituary Notice and an 'Abstract' from the Life of Savage
Sherbo identifies an unrecorded 'abstract' of Johnson’s Life of Savage published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in November 1753. The text analyzes how the magazine's owner, Edward Cave, used the death of the Countess of Macclesfield to advertise a forthcoming edition of Savage’s works. By comparing the 'patchwork' style of the anonymous abstract with Johnson’s 1744 original, the author concludes the summary was a commercially driven editorial product rather than a piece of Johnson’s own authorship.
The Artificial Bastard: A Biography of Richard Savage
Boyce reviews Tracy's biography of Savage, noting its assembly of fragmentary evidence regarding Savage’s disputed noble parentage. He observes that Tracy generally adopts Johnson's conception of Savage’s character while correcting factual errors in Johnson’s account, such as Tyrconnel’s role in Savage’s pardon and the duration of their friendship. Boyce criticizes the speculative treatment of Savage’s early childhood and the inconsistent characterization of Mrs. Brett. He also notes Tracy’s failure to recognize that Johnson’s later editions of the biography omitted mawkish and indelicate material, thereby toning down Savage’s outrageousness.
CGV entry 13:44. Review by Benjamin Boyce of the book by Clarence R. Tracy.
Clifford evaluates Tracy’s biography as a much-needed, factual account of Savage that avoids fictionalization. He notes Tracy’s cautious support for Savage’s claims of noble birth and his alignment with Johnson regarding Savage’s character. Clifford commends the research into primary records but regrets the lack of direct quotations from manuscript letters. He identifies inconsistencies in Tracy's editorial policy for modernizing quotations and finds little new information regarding the specific details of the friendship between Savage and Johnson.
CGV entry 13:44. Review by J. L. Clifford of the book by Clarence R. Tracy.
The Artificial Bastard is an authoritative study that avoids a definitive stand on Savage's parentage but shows a slight bias in his favor. Hodgart praises Tracy's coverage of Savage's politics, relationship with Pope, and the social scene. However, the reviewer criticizes Tracy for failing to test and deepen Johnson's "astonishing insights" into Savage's character, instead deferring to a "standard half-baked analysis" from an American psychiatrist.
CGV entry 13:44. Review by M. J. C. Hodgart of the book by Clarence R. Tracy.
Schneck presents a striking verbal portrait of physician Hermann Boerhaave drawn by Johnson in 1739. Originally published in four parts in the Gentleman's Magazine shortly after Boerhaave's death, Johnson's biographical sketch serves as a "panegyric" that emphasizes the physician's robust constitution, majestic air, and "veneration"-inspiring genius. Schneck suggests that Johnson identified with Boerhaave’s characteristics and experiences. The text includes Johnson's observations on Boerhaave's patience, his "athletick constitution," and his ability to combine "physick to divinity, chymistry to the mathematicks." Schneck argues that Johnson's account supplements the medical history of Boerhaave by focusing on the personality attributes that helped form the medical ideal of the time.
Johnson's Life of Savage and Its Literary Background
Boyce places Samuel Johnson's *Life of Richard Savage* within the context of the numerous printed accounts of Savage's story that preceded it. He traces the evolution of the narrative from its first appearance in 1715 through various biographies and fictionalized versions, including Aaron Hill's sentimental pieces in *The Plain Dealer* and a 1727 criminal life from which Johnson borrowed language verbatim. The author argues that Johnson's work is a masterful synthesis that combines the narrative style of criminal biography, the psychological focus of the *histoire scandaleuse*, and literary criticism. While Johnson drew heavily from this tradition, he transformed it by adding his own moral reflections, a fuller depiction of Savage's flawed character, and a consistently damning—and likely fictionalized—portrait of Savage's mother. The essay concludes that while Johnson's biography is superior to its sources, it is also deeply dependent upon them for its details and its emotional framework.
Comments on Samuel Johnson's Biography of Sir Thomas Browne
On Johnson's brief biography of Browne, appended to the 2nd ed. of Christian Morals (1756), noting that it relies heavily on Whitefoot's prospectus and is more "replete with the opinions of Johnson" than facts about Browne's life. Johnson is shown to praise Browne's breadth of knowledge but criticize him for resisting "new positions" like the Earth's motion and for his antiquarian interests, such as in Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall. Johnson omits Browne's involvement in a 1664 witch trial. The authors highlight Johnson's complex critique of Browne's literary style, calling it "vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantick," while acknowledging Browne's significant influence on later English literature, including possibly Johnson's own prose.
Morgan examines Johnson’s 1744 biography of Richard Savage, identifying it as a distinct masterpiece within the later Lives of the Poets. He highlights Johnson’s personal intimacy with Savage during their period of shared destitution in London. Morgan argues that Johnson’s compassionate yet penetrating analysis of Savage’s flawed character serves as an eloquent defense. The text notes Boswell’s skepticism regarding Savage’s claims of noble birth and his disapproval of Johnson’s association with the dissipated poet.
Black provides an abridged version of Samuel Johnson's 1739 biography of the Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave, highlighting the qualities that Johnson admired in the celebrated professor. He recounts Johnson's narrative of Boerhaave's life, from his initial intention to enter the ministry to his turn toward medicine after a false rumor of heresy blocked his clerical career. The summary emphasizes Johnson's praise for Boerhaave's immense learning and self-directed study across medicine, botany, chemistry, and mathematics, which he pursued with tireless industry. The author also includes Johnson's depiction of Boerhaave's character: a man of great genius who was also humble, deeply religious, and firm in his principles, and who believed that a learned man must also cultivate an elegant style in order to "please while they instruct."
Dr. Samuel Johnson's Medical Biographies
McHenry examines eighteen medical biographies authored or assisted by Johnson, primarily between 1739 and 1743. The article catalogs Johnson’s contributions to Robert James’s Medicinal Dictionary, identifying lives such as Aesculapius, Ruysch, and Boerhaave as distinctly "Johnsonian" due to their "interspaced comments and elaborations." McHenry analyzes biographies from Lives of the English Poets—including Akenside, Garth, Blackmore, and Cowley—alongside standalone lives of Sydenham, Morin, and Browne. McHenry argues that Johnson’s "sterling common sense" and "prodigious memory" would have ensured his eminence as a physician, noting that his medical knowledge was largely "obtained by ear" through his long association with Robert Levett.
Some Uncollected Authors, XXXVI: Richard Savage, d. 1743
Tracy compiles a descriptive bibliography of the separate printed works of Richard Savage, prefaced by a biographical and textual introduction. Tracy challenges previous assumptions about the poet's parentage, noting that Savage consistently claimed to be the natural son of the late Earl Rivers despite a lack of solid evidence. The introduction highlights Savage's chaotic writing habits, showing that he frequently wrote on scraps of borrowed paper and proved to be a careless proofreader. Tracy also discusses Savage's interactions with contemporary publishers, noting that Samuel Johnson reported Savage as a scrupulous reader of proof, which contradicts the physical evidence of his error-ridden texts. The checklist contains 28 entries detailing titles, collations, and known library locations.
Samuel Johnson's The Life of Dr. Sydenham
McHenry reprints Johnson's 'Life of Dr. Sydenham,' originally published in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' in 1742. The text notes that Johnson wrote this piece during his early years in London, a period marked by his unusually varied medical and scientific interests. McHenry highlights Johnson's defense of Sydenham against reports that he practiced without preparatory study, emphasizing that Sydenham spent several years at university before beginning his London practice. The text explains that Johnson, a fellow sufferer of gout, was likely familiar with Sydenham's classic treatise on the disease and followed his principles of 'physick and fasting' during his own attacks. McHenry concludes that Johnson's biography is valuable for its comments on Sydenham's character and his restoration of medical principles based on sound reason and experience.
Louis Morin, M.D., Botanist, and Dr. Johnson
Examines Johnson's 1741 translation of Fontenelle’s "Eloge" of Morin, a French physician and botanist. Notes Johnson's "rather limited" personal interest in botany, famously remarking that his nearsightedness would require him to "turn myself into a reptile" to study it. Highlights Johnson's contributions to the field, including his advice on "botanic language" for Linnaeus's System of Vegetables and his authorship of botanical sections in James's Medicinal Dictionary. Focuses on Johnson’s critical footnotes in the Morin panegyric, where he disputes the "monastic" dietary exactness of Morin by citing the Venetian Cornaro. Observes Johnson's skepticism toward biographers who "exalt every common occurrence" into wonders. Provides biographical details on Morin, for whom the genus Morina was named, a gesture Johnson described as a monument "of more durable nature than a medal or an obelisk."
Dr. Johnson, Fontenelle, Le Clerc, and Six 'French' Lives
Six brief biographies for Dr. James's Medicinal Dictionary—Ruysch, Tournefort, Aesculapius, Archagathus, Aretaeus, Asclepiades—are based on French works of Fontenelle and Le Clerc. Cursory comparison might suggest Johnson acted more as translator than biographer. Closer analysis reveals while properly described as translations, term requires qualification. Johnson paraphrases throughout, adds phrases or lines, occasionally omits passages. His primary aim was not simply translating French biographies but creating fairly original articles based on French sources. Johnson's freedom and flexibility in working with French demonstrates loose treatment of sources. He intrudes Johnsonian commentary, expressing own feelings about material. In life of Tournefort, Johnson expands and intensifies Fontenelle's prosaic commentary, particularly describing botanist's wanderings. For Aesculapius, Johnson condenses forty-eight pages into five columns, drastically rearranging sequence and extracting material. "French" lives in Medicinal Dictionary, if not Johnson's substantively, are often his in style, arrangement, expression, and spirit.
Cites Life 1:355, 2:247.
Dr. Johnson and the Making of 'The Life of Father Paul Sarpi'
Abbott analyzes Johnson’s 1738 biography of Sarpi as a creative reworking of Le Courayer’s French source. The article argues that Johnson’s version is a condensation that imposes his own personality and stylistic preferences on the text. Abbott counters previous scholarly charges that Johnson’s omissions perverted historical facts. Comparison of parallel passages demonstrates Johnson’s method of paraphrasing rather than literal translation to maintain the substance of the original.
Richardson, Aaron Hill, and Johnson's Life of Savage
Day uses unpublished correspondence between Richardson and Hill to establish Richardson's early esteem for Johnson. In 1745, Richardson recommended Johnson’s biography of Savage as "well written," despite his usual reluctance to read for pleasure. Day argues that Richardson’s subsequent "hint" advising Hill not to read the work was motivated by a desire to shield Hill from painful memories of his volatile relationship with Savage rather than a critique of Johnson’s style.
Samuel Johnson's 'A Panegyric on Dr. Morin'
Abbott contends Johnson's "Panegyric on Dr. Morin" was a personal biography or "characteristic adaptation" of Fontenelle's Eloge, rather than a simple translation. Although generally faithful, Johnson added distinctive, critical footnotes—including one deriding biographers who "exalt every common occurrence and action into wonders." Abbott sees it as demonstrating Johnson's thesis that translations should be literal, yet offering a sequel to Johnson's Boerhaave sketch. Authorship of the "Panegyric," however, has been questioned by Brack and Kaminski.
Cites Life: 3:36
The Making of Johnson's Life of Savage, 1744
Fleeman analyzes the bibliographical structure of the first edition of Johnson’s Life of Savage, noting it was printed in two distinct sections with different typographical characteristics. He suggests the second section was hastily rewritten and reprinted, possibly due to new information regarding Pope. Examining a copy with Johnson’s marginalia, Fleeman posits the existence of a lost original version of the biography’s latter half. He calls for a search for copies that might contain this earlier, uncancelled text.
A Possible Source for Johnson's Life of the King of Prussia
Bernard determines Johnson likely used the "Foreign History" section of the Gentleman's Magazine, which he edited, as the major source for his 1756 "Memoirs of Frederick III, King of Prussia." The "Foreign History" provided a compendious account of European political and military affairs, which Johnson condensed and revised, often retaining the original language. Johnson's work on the "Memoirs" concludes in 1745, possibly coinciding with the end of his editorship and the period for which he was personally familiar with the source material.
On the apparent contradictions in the conclusion of Johnson's Life of Savage, where he simultaneously defends Savage's conduct against conventional judgment and lists the consequences of his lack of prudence. Vesterman argues that Johnson's unique style and refusal of melodrama resolve these tensions, transforming the biographical material into a dramatic embodiment of moral rigor. Johnson's prose, through rhetorical control, transcends the world's binary of benevolence and resentment, offering a "dramatization of love" that provides complex knowledge over simplistic judgment.
Style and Intention in Johnson's Life of Savage
Examines the prose style of the Life of Savage, rejecting claims of its unevenness. Argues the style is an intentional rhetorical device, with its "alternating rhythm" of panegyric and satire reflecting the author's complex, ambivalent attitude toward his subject. The narrative's unresolved tensions are a deliberate expression of the author's internal moral conflict between loyalty and judgment.
Pope and Johnson's Life of Savage
Folkenflik examines an anonymous 1745 poem in the Gentleman’s Magazine to clarify a detail in Johnson’s Life of Savage. The poem supports Sherburn’s theory that Pope sent a particularly harsh letter to Savage. A footnote in the poem identifies Pope as the "friend" whose "resentment" wounded Savage, specifically alleging that Pope used the term "scoundrel." This contemporary evidence suggests that staff members at the magazine, potentially including Johnson, had direct knowledge of the letter's specific contents.
Early Biographical Writings of Dr. Johnson
More than twenty-five pieces, from the life of Sarpi (1738) to the life of Thirlby (1784). These compositions were generally scattered contributions to magazines or served as introductory pieces for others' books. The volume totals 524 pages and presents facsimile reprints of the earliest printed editions. It also includes facsimiles of Rambler 60 and Idler 85. The volume makes versions of these biographies accessible, particularly those overlooked in standard collections or found only in rare publications. The introductory material incorporates a helpful catalogue of dates and facts. The editor provides a brief summary of the textual history for each work, explaining the selection of the copy-text. Although the printing technique sometimes rendered passages unreadable, a ten-page appendix contains clear printings of these difficult passages. This compilation is valued by scholars as a necessary tool for studying Johnson's ideas and development as a biographer. Only the Life of Savage, included in this collection, had great reputation during Johnson's lifetime.
CGV entry 13:67. A facsimile printing with an introduction by J. D. Fleeman.
Contents: Life of Sarpi -- Life of Boerhaave -- Life of Drake -- Life of Blake -- Life of Morin -- Life of Burman -- Life of Confućius -- Lives of: Actuarius, Aegineta, Aesculapius, Aetius, Alexander, Archagathus, Aretaeus, Asclepiades, Oribasius, Ruysch and Tournefort -- Life of Barretier -- Life of Sydenham -- Life of Savage -- Life of Roscommon -- Life of Cheynel -- Life of Cave -- Life of Browne -- Life of Frederick the Great -- Life of Ascham -- Life of Collins -- Life of Mudge -- Life of Thirlby.
Weinbrot reviews Fleeman’s compilation of Johnson’s pre-1779 biographies, which includes lives of Sarpi, Savage, and Frederick the Great. He notes Fleeman’s editorial preference for textually interesting versions, such as the revised 1784 text of Cave, over standard critical editions. Weinbrot critiques the omission of disputed attributions like Pearce and Khouli Khan and cites poor photographic reproduction in certain sections. He concludes the collection remains a valuable interim resource for scholars pending the Yale edition.
CGV entry 13:67. Review by Howard D. Weinbrot of the facsimile edition by J. D. Fleeman.
The Intention and Reception of Johnson's Life of Savage
Alkon applies an aesthetics of reception to the Life of Savage, analyzing century-long responses ranging from contemporary reviews to Whitehead's 1841 novel. He identifies a significant indeterminacy in the text: readers must choose between the moral warning of the concluding paragraph or Johnson’s nobler invitations to compassionate identification with Savage. Alkon argues that subsequent biographers distanced Savage by emphasizing his singularity, whereas Johnson used psychological analysis to bridge the gap between protagonist and reader. The reception history reveals how readers’ moral priorities dictated whether they perceived Savage as a warning against imprudence or a saint of complicated virtue.
Cites Life: 1:165
Samuel Johnson's Sources for The Life of Roscommon
Batten investigates the sources for Johnson's three versions of "The Life of Roscommon": the 1748 Gentleman's Magazine essay, the 1779 Prefaces, and the 1783 Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. Batten argues that the immediate biographical source for both the 1748 and 1779 "Lives" was The Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscomon, and Dorset (1731, 1739 reissue), not Fenton's notes on Waller. This anthology contained Sewell's "Memoirs" and an altered Fenton note, sharing unique errors with Johnson's early life (the Aubrey's Miscellanies quote on Roscommon's father's death) and the misidentification of Dr. Hall. The 1783 version's new information came from a footnote supplied by an anonymous "gentleman" in Nichols's Select Collection of Poems (1782). Johnson's research was relatively careful and thorough.
The Discourse of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Johnson's Life of Savage: The Displacement of Authority
Dussinger analyzes the "inter-subjectivity" of the narrative process in the Life of Savage, arguing that Johnson abandons the distance of the moral censor to represent the "momentary consciousness" of his subject. The text functions as a "displacement of authority" where the narrator's omniscience yields to a "sympathetic identity" with Savage’s anxieties. Johnson represents the mind in the act of perceiving and ordering the signs of reality, mirroring the "binary thought structure" of the Enlightenment. By focusing on Savage’s "vile melancholy" and "strange oblivion," Johnson underscores the existential anxiety of a self disappearing from memory. The biography operates as a "therapeutic" regulated consciousness, save for moments where the subject and object become confused. Dussinger maintains that Johnson’s narrative reflects the "Landscape of Uncertainty" inherent in eighteenth-century empiricism, portraying a mind "tortured by the pangs of uncertainty" while seeking a "new metaphysics of authority" through the creative power of memory.
Satire and Sympathy in Johnson's Life of Savage
Johnson's Life of Boerhaave in Perspective
The Impossible Observer: Reason and the Reader in Eighteenth-Century Prose
The 'Equipoise' of Johnson's Life of Savage
Uphaus argues that Johnson's criticism and prose attend to the modest possibility of virtuous action in an imperfect world, rejecting both 'sudden conversions' and uncompromising tragic rigor. This article focuses on 'equipoise'—the moral state of man straddling good and evil. In The Life of Savage, Johnson uses the 'uniformity in the state of man' to move readers from detached observation to imaginative participation, requiring they practice 'a laborious virtue' to judge Savage compassionateley. Similarly, Rasselas serves as a paradigm of reason where characters must act 'without demonstrative reasoning' in the face of uncertainty. Johnson demonstrates the limitations of reason not to paralyze the will, but to urge activity within the 'flux' of time. Uphaus concludes Johnson is more important as a reader who debunks objective expectations than as a systematic theorist.
CGV entry 13:75. First published in Studies in Burke and His Time, volume 17 (1976), pages 43-54.
Johnson's Life of Savage: The Transformation of a Genre
The Author in His Work: Essays on a Problem in Criticism
Johnson and Savage: Two Failed Tragedies and a Failed Tragic Hero
Ellis examines the intersection of biography and drama in the relationship between Johnson and Savage, centering on the failure of Irene and The Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury. Savage fascinated Johnson by possessing "Knowledge of Life" and aristocratic grace, qualities Johnson perceived as lacking in himself. Johnson’s protective instincts toward the "injured Nobleman" influenced the rhetorical structure of An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, which Ellis identifies not as traditional biography but as a tragic scenario. Johnson portrays Savage with "steady Confidence" and hubris, yet Savage’s hamartia—a "pleasing Intoxication" of self-deception—prevents the Aristotelian anagnorisis necessary for true tragic stature. Ellis asserts that Johnson’s limited "talent for personation" caused Irene to fail as a drama, as its characters speak only in the "voice of the moral essayist." Johnson presents Savage as an "absurd" hero, an "Augustan Don Quixote" whose life becomes a "grotesquely overgrown Rambler" demonstrating that "apostasy does not pay."
CGV entry 13:78.
Samuel Johnson's Case History of Richard Savage
Chance, Discipline, and Dynamism in Johnson's Biographies of Boerhaave and Savage
Svilpis analyzes the contrasting biographical portraits of the Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave and the English poet Richard Savage to explore Johnson's thematic concerns with personal agency. The study examines how Johnson employs narrative to weigh the roles of external *chance* versus internal *discipline* in determining life's outcome, contrasting Boerhaave's earned success with Savage's destructive dependency. Svilpis also discusses the *dynamism* in Johnson's biographical style, which shapes the moral lesson of each life. The analysis reveals the consistency of Johnson’s moral philosophy across his early biographical writings.
The Making of Johnson's 'Life of Collins'
On the complex texual history of the Life of Collins, noting its evolution from a 1763 "Character" partly written by Johnson and partly by Hampton, to the expanded 1781 version for the Lives of the English Poets. Johnson's later revision, which relied on a corrupt and incomplete printed text of his earlier "Character," inadvertently led to the omission of biographical details from Hampton's account, which Nichols then incorrectly supplied with unverified information, such as the date of Collins's death and the inclusion of his first poem.
CGV entry 13:83. On its complicated textual history.
Was Savage 'Thales'?: Johnson's London and Biographical Speculation
On the persistent claim that Johnson modeled the character Thales in London after Richard Savage. The identification relies on Hawkins's unfounded biographical speculation and an alleged chronology contradicted by Johnson himself. The supposed parallels—Savage's retreat to Wales and their shared romanticized view of nature—are weak coincidences. Moreover, critics misread the text by translating Johnson's figurative language into clumsy, obscure allusions, ignoring his poetic intentions and the poem's basis in Juvenal's Third Satire. Kaminski concludes that accepting the Thales-Savage association is a disservice to Johnson's poetic precision and distorts both the poem and his early life.
The Life of Savage, Voltaire, and a Neglected Letter
Erwin identifies a third, previously neglected letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1744) signed "Sertorius" that defends Johnson’s Life of Savage. The letter uses a translation of Voltaire to support Johnson’s moralizing biographical method. Erwin argues that Johnson himself likely authored the letter. This attribution suggests a deliberate effort by Johnson to publicize his anonymous biography and indicates a connection between Voltaire's royal biography of Charles XII and the Life of Savage.
A Lesson in Futurity: Johnson's Life of Sir Thomas Browne
Lill analyzes Johnson’s 1756 Life of Browne, arguing that it represents a "convergence of two remarkable minds" with profoundly different propensities. Lill observes that while Johnson initially analyzes Browne’s "mercurial imaginative flights" with cool objectivity and rational skepticism, he gradually shifts toward a "favorable and respectful" final assessment. The essay highlights how Johnson’s "empathy with his subject" eventually transcends his characteristically pragmatic restraints, particularly regarding Browne's assurance of a future state. Lill concludes that by the end of the biography, Johnson finds "exemplary conviction" in Browne’s life, transforming what was meant as a "testy" introduction into a profound "lesson in futurity."
Brack and Kaminski re-evaluate the extent and nature of Johnson's contributions to Robert James's Medicinal Dictionary. They reject most of Allen Hazen's attributions, which relied on the dubious assumption that Johnson's tendency to deviate from his sources (a common 18th-century translation practice) was a unique stylistic marker. The four lives translated from LeClerc, along with large portions of the preface, are shown to share a distinctive, non-Johnsonian style marked by convoluted syntax and excessive wordiness, possibly James's own. Similarly, the lives of Ruysch and Tournefort, translated from Fontenelle, contain un-Johnsonian colloquialisms and insensitive observations. The authors accept only the dedication to Dr. Mead, the revised Life of Boerhaave (without the thirteen added paragraphs), and the life of Alexander (without the bibliography) as clearly Johnsonian. They suggest he only contributed opening sections to the lives of Actuarius and Aegineta and "helped" with the proposals. The rejection is based on rigorous stylistic criteria, including Johnson's characteristic nervous style and balance.
CGV entry 13:87.
The Life of Savage and Traditional Psychology
Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage and the Language of Reprieve
Johnson's Life of Savage: Biography as Argument
The Life of Savage is a unified and coherent argument, despite its apparent conflicting strategies of vindication and exposé. Facing an audience already familiar with Savage's faults, Johnson's rhetorical strategy is to take a stand on the issue of equity, shifting responsibility for Savage's conduct to "others" whose crimes caused his misfortunes, which in turn caused his faults. Johnson's candor and moral rigor are necessary to establish the narrator's credibility and moral orthodoxy, making the narrative's exposé a functional part of the overall defense, which aims to earn Savage compassion.
Poems of Dr. Samuel Johnson: To Which Is Prefixed a Life of the Author by F. W. Blagdon
The Poems of Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins
Smith and McAdam present a comprehensive edition of poetical works by Johnson, established through a collaboration that merged independent research and recently available manuscripts, including the Thraliana and materials from the Huntington Library. The edition departs from the traditional mechanical separation of English and Latin verse, adopting a chronological arrangement to provide a clearer picture of Johnson’s intellectual development. The editors describe their editorial policy as an attempt to fulfill James Boswell's uncompleted project of a "complete edition" with verified authenticity and illustrative notes. The volume includes the major satires, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, the tragedy Irene alongside its first draft, and shorter poems, prologues, and contributions to other writers' works. Extensive introductory notes and textual apparatus document the occasion, composition history, and provenance for each poem while addressing long-standing problems of doubtful authorship and erroneous attribution. Most reviews are positive. Brodribb, in TLS, calls it the definitive collection, praising the inclusion of every scrap of verse sourced directly from original texts and noting that Latin verses capture the author's more intimate thoughts. In MLR, Tillotson welcomes the substantial and splendid presentation that obliges scholars to view the subject as a poet rather than a mere cinematic character, though he criticizes the insufficient tracing of borrowed phrases. Hutchinson's review in RES characterizes the volume as a happy example of wise collaboration, lauding the thorough annotation, illuminating discoveries, and the inclusion of twenty new poems. Roberts, in The Observer, notes that this is the first volume to assemble all English and Latin poems, confirming that abiding fame rests on the major satires. In the LA Times, M. M. approves of the first complete collection, crediting the editors with a difficult pioneer task that contributes to a fuller understanding of the great moralist. Friedman (PQ) commends the learning and chronological arrangement, but critiques the inconsistent application of editorial principles regarding capitalization. In the New Statesman and Nation, Mortimer highlights the restoration of minor pieces, but argues that the verse lacks musicality and emphasizes the strength of the author's prose over poetry. Hazen's review in Modern Language Notes lauds the concise notes but criticizes the conservative textual treatment of the satires, suggesting that the elaborate apparatus might deter general readers while providing a revealing scholarly record.
CGV entry 14:5. Reprinted in 1962.
The reviewer describes this complete, scholarly edition as a "proper monument" to Johnson, fulfilling a project originally conceived by Boswell. The text disputes the tendency to view Johnson as a "minor poet" or a mere "creation of Boswell," asserting that his "authentic voice" and "blazing sincerity" are evident throughout his verse. While acknowledging a "consistently weighty" style, the reviewer highlights the "warmth and colour" produced by Johnson’s intense passions and "felicity of phrase." The edition is lauded for its "careful editing" and for restoring Johnson’s status as a major poet of the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 14:5. An anonymous review of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
This approving review of Smith and McAdam's edition of Johnson's poems highlights the inclusion of every scrap of his verse in any language, sourced directly from original texts and previously unpublished material, including some Thraliana. The reviewers emphasize that Johnson now appears as a Latin poet as well as an English one, noting he often reserved Latin for his more intimate thoughts, such as the "grave hexameters" written upon completing his dictionary revision. Presented as the definitive collection and the final edition for the near future, the work includes every known poem and verse fragment. Each poem is introduced with details on its manuscript, lifetime printings, and variant readings, providing "backgrounds necessary for a full understanding of the composition circumstances" and fresh investigations of fountainheads. The review identifies the "Vanity of Human Wishes" as his best English poem but characterizes his drama Irene as a "grandiose failure." The editors also catalog poems of doubtful or incorrect attribution. The reviewers acknowledge Sparrow's anthology, which includes Johnson’s "self-examining hexameters." This thorough editorial work establishes the text as the "definitive collection."
CGV entry 14:5.
Hutchinson provides an enthusiastic review of this scholarly edition, characterizing it as a "happy example of wise collaboration" and an edition as complete and well annotated as a reader could wish. The editors include twenty new poems previously uncollected—including the first printing of a schoolboy poem celebrating St. Simon and St. Jude—and provide the first full draft of Irene. The full annotation is praised for its thoroughness and illuminating discoveries, giving help for understanding political and literary allusions in London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, recording variant readings, and supplying probable reasons for Johnson's emendations. Hutchinson highlights the editors' valuable claim that Johnson's Latin verse, which he used as a natural medium of expression, provides an intimate insight into his mind and character, particularly regarding the original prayer written after his 1783 stroke. While Hutchinson identifies minor omissions regarding classical references and index pagination, he concludes the editing is all that can be desired.
CGV entry 14:5. Review by F. E. Hutchinson of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
CGV entry 14:5. Review by F. R. Leavis of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
Tillotson's approving review of the David Nichol Smith and Edward McAdam edition welcomes the substantial and splendid presentation of Johnson's poetry, noting that the volume obliges scholars to pay proper attention to Johnson as a poet rather than a mere character in Boswell's cinematography. Tillotson approves of the new chronological arrangement, which abandons the mechanical division between English and Latin poems to provide a vivid picture of the intimacy of Johnson's mind. The review highlights the inclusion of twenty new pieces, the rigorous use of revised manuscripts, and the opportunity to compare the draft of Irene with the final text. While Tillotson praises the exquisite learning of the annotations, he criticizes the editors for providing insufficient tracing of borrowed phrases and echoes from predecessors like Pope and Addison. Tillotson argues that this omission makes Johnson appear more "completely original" than he was, and he wishes for a more detailed account of how Johnson assimilated the language of those who came before him.
CGV entry 14:5. Review by G. Tillotson of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
Friedman commends this first scholarly edition of Johnson’s poems for its learning and chronological arrangement, including previously uncollected Greek and Latin verses and the draft of Irene. He identifies minor unrecorded textual variants and critiques the inconsistent application of editorial principles regarding the collation of non-authoritative editions and silent regularization of capitalization in Irene. However, Friedman praises the concise, erudite commentary and the rigorous section on wrongly attributed poems.
CGV entry 14:5. Review by A. Friedman of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
Hazen evaluates the long-awaited Smith-McAdam edition of Johnson’s poetry. He lauds the concise, apposite notes and the successful handling of complex typographical problems in Irene. However, Hazen criticizes the conservative textual treatment of London and finds the choice of title-page facsimiles unimaginative and redundant. While he suggests the volume’s elaborate apparatus might deter general readers, Hazen affirms that these pages provide a revealing scholarly record of Johnson as a witty companion, devout Christian, and sophisticated scholar.
CGV entry 14:5. Review by A. T. Hazen of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
Mortimer notes the restoration of the "Ode on Friendship" and corrects several historical misattributions. Mortimer compares Johnson to Pope and Dryden, arguing that Johnson’s verse lacks musicality and remains "rarely musical." The critique highlights the "primitive blank verse" of Irene while commending the "Short Song of Congratulation" written for Lade. Mortimer identifies a Latin epigram involving Piozzi and emphasizes the strength of Johnson's prose over his poetry.
CGV entry 14:5. Review by Raymond Mortimer of the edition by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr.
CGV entry 14:6. Review by A. W. Rudrum of the Yale Edition volume edited by E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne.
Bradner reviews the Yale Edition. The most significant changes include a chronological arrangement, thoroughly rewritten notes, and a condensed introduction reflecting the Yale editorial policy. New manuscripts, primarily from the Boswell and Hyde collections, yielded a large portion of juvenilia and the rough drafts of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. The editors give more weight to the attributions made by Nichols and his son. Johnson’s poems are noted for their classical and Latin forms and their expression of personal feelings.
CGV entry 14:6.
Bateson provides a largely negative review of this Yale Edition volume, criticizing its irrational compromise in editorial practice despite acknowledging it as a formidable example of collaborative scholarship that aims for almost absolute Johnsonian accuracy and inclusiveness. While he recognizes the value of newly recovered manuscripts—such as the draft of The Vanity of Human Wishes—Bateson disputes the decision to modernize capitalization and italics while retaining original spelling and punctuation, a policy he argues obscures functional meanings and sacrifices the "functional part" of Johnson’s meaning, such as his use of capitals for generic personification. The review critiques the edition for failing at the higher levels of scholarship, finding a parochialism that borders on philistinism and a lack of consistent policy. Furthermore, Bateson charges McAdam and Milne with failing to provide adequate explanatory annotation for the classic poems, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, noting they neglected to identify significant Augustan echoes and failed to include necessary Latin texts and translations for Johnson’s Juvenalian imitations. Bateson concludes that the explanation for the new edition is "lame," and because of these failures in critical discrimination, the edition falls short of truly definitive status.
King welcomes the edition, as Johnson's poetry is still neglected. The chronological ordering allows observation of a major development in Johnson's versification and generalized vocabulary in the late 1740s. The critical comments, however, are criticized for harking back to old ideas.
CGV entry 14:6. Review by Bruce King of the Yale Edition volume edited by E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne.
London: A Poem and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Features a substantial introductory essay, which initiated the modern critical reassessment of the author’s poetry. Eliot pronounces both compositions among the greatest verse satires in English or any other language, asserting that Juvenal, the model, was no better. This assessment placed the author's poetry nearer in spirit to the Latin than the satires of Dryden or Pope, crediting the author with a seriousness appropriate to a true moralist. The book provides aesthetic, rather than scholarly, notice to the poems, and helped rehabilitate the author as a poet, a task largely continued by academic critics. The poems were deemed pure satire.
Clutton-Brock’s enthusiastic review of an edition of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, featuring an essay by Eliot, examines the place of Johnson in the transition from the style of Pope to a more prose-like poetic diction. Clutton-Brock praises the poetry of Johnson for achieving quality through minute differences of phrasing within the accepted manner of Pope, illustrating the point by Eliot that originality can be found in the "minimum of alteration." Eliot classes Johnson among poets who revivified poetry by purging it of "too poetic phrasing" and returning to the language of prose, yet Clutton-Brock notes the poems retain a precise, emphatic style more akin to the recorded speech of Johnson than his formal prose. The review emphasizes that the use of disillusionment by Johnson in his satires gives them an intensity and severity that surpasses their model, Juvenal, and suggests Eliot may be wrong in implying the poems are disinfested of desires and natural emotions. Clutton-Brock concludes that the poems are not merely skilled versification but possess a genuine poetic intensity rooted in the character of Johnson and his reflections on life.
CGV entry 14:8.
The Late Augustans: Longer Poems of the Later Eighteenth Century
Davie provides critical commentary on Johnson’s 1749 poem, emphasizing its status as an imitation that must be understood through Johnson’s own theories on the form. He quotes T. S. Eliot's appraisal of the work as "purer satire" than that of Dryden or Pope, noting its proximity to the Roman spirit of Juvenal. The notes clarify historical references to Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Wentworth, and Edward Hyde, while also tracking Johnson’s significant textual revision of "garret" to "patron" following his disappointment with Lord Chesterfield. Davie analyzes Johnson’s use of verbs to create "felt percussion," such as the description of tramping legions. The commentary further details Johnson's biography, including his move to London with David Garrick and the later influence of Boswell on his public image.
CGV entry 14:10. A facsimile of an English translation in Johnson's hand.
Privately printed for Donald & Mary Hyde
CGV entry 14:11. A facsimile of the original manuscript in the Hyde collection.
Selected Poems of Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith
'London,' 1738 and 1748; 'The Vanity of Human Wishes,' 1749 and 1755
Facsimiles of London, originally published, London, R. Dodsley, 1736, and in A collection of poems by several hands, London, R. Dodsley, 1748; The vanity of human wishes, originally published, London, R. Dodsley, 1749, and in A collection of poems, London, R. Dodsley, 1755.
CGV entry 14:13. Facsimiles with an introductory note by J. D. Fleeman.
Fleeman edits The Complete English Poems, published both in the Penguin English Poets series and by Yale University Press. This comprehensive volume adheres to the series' aim of providing complete texts, incorporating all of Johnson's known English poems. The collection also includes a selection of Johnson's Latin poetry, pieces he contributed to the poems of other authors, and a reprint of the first draft of The Vanity of Human Wishes. This edition contains a complete scholarly apparatus, including a substantial introduction, a chronological table of dates, explanatory notes, a dictionary of proper names, and both title and first-line indexes. The volume's editorial policy provides a truly critical text that preserves Johnson's own practices in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, while incorporating his final authoritative substantive revisions. Furthermore, this inexpensive paperback edition is noted for its close observation of original spelling.
CGV entry 14:14. Also contains much of Johnson's Latin poetry. The Yale University Press edition was published in 1982.
Rudd provides a scholarly edition of Johnson’s two major Juvenalian imitations, featuring parallel Latin texts of Juvenal’s third and tenth Satires with en face English translations. The introduction explores the tradition of imitation, Johnson’s specific affinity for Juvenal’s castigation of poverty and corruption, and the historical context of his opposition to the Walpole administration. Rudd identifies the Delphin and variorum editions as Johnson’s likely scholarly sources, noting his reliance on memory during composition. Editorial policies prioritize Dodsley’s 1748 text for London and the 1755 text for The Vanity of Human Wishes, while maintaining a selective apparatus that records variants from Hawkins and the younger Boswell. Detailed commentaries address linguistic nuances, classical allusions, and the evolution of the poems from their original drafts, which are included in the volume. Rudd argues that while Johnson’s imitations remain independent eighteenth-century poems, they are best understood through the "direction of Greece and Rome," reflecting Johnson’s own intellectual path.
CGV entry 14:15. With notes and draft versions.
Samuel Johnson: 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' and 'Rasselas'
[Affirms verses on Lovat's execution to be Johnson's; general defense of Johnson]
Protoplastides disputes the "best of criticks" cited by Boswell who argued the word "indifferently" in verses on Lord Lovat precluded Johnson’s authorship. He produces a passage from Johnson’s letter to Chesterfield using the word in an identical sense to prove consistency. Protoplastides defends Boswell’s "Magnum Opus" against "little barking curs" and critiques Seward’s "prevarication" regarding her sources. He characterizes Boswell as an "amiable, charitable, and good-natured biographer" whose "strict regard for truth" remains invulnerable despite the "impudence" of opponents like L.X.
CGV entry 14:43. Further remarks appeared in volume 65 (January 1795), pages 6-8.
Letters to a Young Lady on a Course of English Poetry
Aikin identifies Johnson as the "master of the modern school of English versifiers" (7), praising the melody and "sacred" loftiness of his juvenile productions like the Messiah (9). He credits Johnson with the definitive commendation of Dryden’s "Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew," though he personally disputes Johnson’s high assessment of the piece (30). In a dedicated section on later poets, Aikin characterizes Johnson as a writer of strong sense and cultivated taste rather than "truly poetical genius" (273). He provides a scholarly analysis of Johnson's didactic works, describing his imitations of Juvenal (London and The Vanity of Human Wishes) as the most "manly" and vigorous examples of the genre in English (273-74). Aikin further identifies Johnson as the author of the language’s finest prologue—that written for the opening of the Drury-lane theatre in 1747—and concludes by praising the stanzas on the death of Levett as a masterpiece of "humble utility" rendered with "admirable finishing" (275-77).
"The Vanity of Human Wishes" may have borrowed a key phrase from Thomas Warton's "Universal Love of Pleasure" (1748). Specifically, the parallel lines refer to surveying mankind "from China to Peru." Johnson may have unfortunately borrowed prosaic lines from Warton, though both writers also allude to Charles of Sweden. A separate reply points to Boileau as the original source for the allusion to Peru.
CGV entry 14:45.
Trench examines a perceived "Johnsonian blunder" in the couplet: "Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye, / Nor sell for gold what gold can never buy." Following Edgeworth’s Practical Education, Trench identifies a logical fallacy in the poet's command. Trench asserts that if gold cannot buy a specific object, it is impossible for a seller to dispose of it for gold, as the transaction requires a willing purchaser capable of making the acquisition. The note critiques the inaccuracy of the sentiment while acknowledging the moral intent of the lines. This brief philological observation serves to illustrate the rigors of logical scrutiny applied to Johnson's verse by nineteenth-century readers.
CGV entry 14:46. On the line "Nor sell for gold what gold can never buy" from 'London'.
Johnson’s poetry, particularly his satires modeled after Juvenal, exhibits a unique combination of sonorous, grandiose verse and intense moral earnestness. While modern poetic theories often exclude the eighteenth-century style, Johnson’s work remains essential for its resonance of feeling and felicity of word choice. Although his verse lacks flexibility and variety, it surpasses the works of Pope and Dryden in its portrayal of a majestic mind navigating human suffering. Johnson diverges from Juvenal by replacing deadly scorn with genuine compassion and pity, especially regarding old age and the vanity of human wishes. His strongest passages address the hardships of the scholar’s life and the inexhaustible force of creative genius. Johnson’s poetry succeeds by concentrating the pressure of human self-abnegation and vigorous piety into pithy, powerful expressions of faith and resignation.
CGV entry 14:47. A general appreciation.
Spectator examines Johnson’s satires, specifically his recasts of Juvenal’s third and tenth satires, noting their recent academic selection. It argues that while modern poetic theories often exclude Eighteenth-century grandiose verse, Johnson’s work achieves essential poetic status through resonance of feeling and forceful word selection. Spectator differentiates Johnson from Juvenal by highlighting Johnson’s inherent pity and moral indignation, which temper his satirical edge. It identifies the expression of vigorous piety and the "concentrated pressure" of human experience as Johnson’s supreme poetic contributions.
CGV entry 14:47. Reprinted from The Spectator (1876).
Courthope and Pattison analyze Johnson primarily as a critic and poet, emphasizing his role as the transitional 'dictator' of English letters between the classical school of Pope and the burgeoning Romantic movement. While Nichol highlights Dryden's skepticism of Swift's poetic potential, Pattison describes Johnson as the last champion of the 'classical period' who maintained 'homage' to the 'brilliant qualities' of Pope's Messiah. Swinburne notes Johnson's 'ready and generous' recognition of Collins, an 'eminent and exquisite' faculty Johnson supposedly 'refused to recognise in Gray.' Churchill's Ghost serves as the source for a 'description of Johnson' that underscores his pervasive presence in eighteenth-century literary debates. The text preserves Johnson's 'London' and 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' as primary examples of his 'pure though not vigorous' versification. The editors present Johnson as a figure who detested 'cowardice and cant' while upholding the 'symmetry and keeping' of the didactic tradition.
Latin verses titled "Verses wrote on a Window of an Inn at Calais" that appear in a manuscript believed to be in Johnson's autograph, with the words "From Mr. Langton" added in Boswell's hand. The verses are associated with Johnson's only visit to France with the Thrales, during which Boswell noted Johnson was "generally very resolute in speaking Latin." The verses describe an impatient traveler wishing for the wind to come, looking towards Dover cliffs and the English shore, but blocked by the "inimica Hyems."
CGV entry 14:49. MS of verses written on a window of an inn at Calais.
Notes a textual parallel between a line in Johnson's London—"Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd"—and a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Suggests that Johnson, known to be an admirer of Burton, may have derived inspiration for the imitation of Juvenal from the earlier author's Latin phrasing.
CGV entry 14:50.
Inquires about the authorship and source of an eight-line poem inscribed on a cottage at Gwaenynog, which some guidebooks attribute to Johnson. The poem, dated 1768, celebrates the virtue and competence of a modest dwelling over the grandeur of a king’s estate. Another correspondent later notes the lines' style is "Johnsonese" but that they do not appear in The Poetical Works of Dr. Johnson published in 1858.
CGV entry 14:51.
Examines the controversy surrounding the verses "On a Sprig of Myrtle" and whether Johnson addressed them to Lucy Porter. It compares the differing accounts of Seward, Piozzi, and Hector, arguing that Hector's and Piozzi's statements do not conclusively disprove Seward's assertion. The author suggests the verses may have been reused, and cautions against prematurely accepting Hector's version as a final settlement.
CGV entry 14:52.
Through an imagined dialogue between Johnson and Boswell at Lichfield, Minchin explores eighteenth-century critical principles. Johnson disputes the merits of Wordsworth’s "mischievous and revolutionary" poetical principles and dismisses blank verse, asking why the "rascal" could not rhyme. He uses Pope’s works as the ideal pattern, asserting that "English poetry will not often please" without rhyme. The text emphasizes Johnson’s insistence on "lucidity" and "common sense" in literature, while acknowledging his "gigantic loftiness" in praising Milton’s Paradise Lost. Minchin concludes that while Johnson’s "classical prejudices" often blinded him to romantic poets, his criticism remains valuable because it "most loved to expatiate" upon reality and fact.
Hayes seeks to authenticate four lines of verse found in a copy of Murphy’s Life of Garrick, purportedly written by Samuel Johnson for a lady named "Jane." The manuscript note suggests the verses were composed using a pen provided by "M. W. D." and concludes with "Adieu." An editorial note cautions that the ascription to Johnson requires further corroboration and suggests "adieu" is likely a closing salutation rather than a proper name.
CGV entry 14:54. From a copy of Murphy's 'Life of Garrick'.
Describes a card containing Johnson's Latin verses In Theatro and Piozzi's English paraphrase, both in Piozzi's hand. The manuscript, gifted to Boswell in 1775, contains slight variations in the paraphrase from the published version in Piozzi's Anecdotes. It also attempts to identify two of the obscure figures mentioned in the poem, Betts and Coulson, as scholars from University College, Oxford.
Courthope examines the evolution of national taste through the constitutional compromise of the eighteenth century and the rise of early romanticism. He explores the Whig victory's impact on panegyrical verse and identifies Johnson as a pivotal figure in the ethical school of poetry. The narrative frames Johnson's works as a reflection of "the social forces operating in England" and praises his ability to adapt classical examples to modern surroundings with "impressive solemnity." Courthope analyzes the specific influences of Johnson's biography on his verse, noting the "impressive soleminity" and occasional obscurity of his style. The text also investigates Johnson's critical interactions with contemporaries, documenting his skepticism toward Macpherson and his disapproval of the "Pindaric" styles used by Gray and Collins. Additionally, Boswell receives mention regarding his biographical contributions, while the literary landscape includes the shifting social standards of taste championed by figures like Addison and the later emergence of romantic elements in the works of Chatterton and the Wartons.
Strachan investigates the authorship of a well-known paraphrase of the opening couplet of 'The Vanity of Human Wishes.' The paraphrase, 'Let observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind extensively,' has been variously attributed. Strachan notes that Birkbeck Hill cites De Quincey, who in turn quotes 'some writer.' Caroline Spurgeon attributed a similar version to Goldsmith. The article also mentions that Alfred Tennyson made merry over Johnson's original couplet during a 1869 tour, questioning why Johnson did not use more concise language. Strachan further cites Lord Byron's record of 'Conversation' Sharp's criticism of the first line as superfluous.
CGV entry 14:57. Conjectures on opening lines. See also a reply by E. M. Layton in the same journal (January 27), page 78.
Brown disputes the claim that Kearsley’s 1785 edition represents the only separate issuance of Johnson’s verse. Brown identifies a "new edition" published in 1785 by Osborne, Griffin, and Mozley, noting its 152 pages and "Table of Contents" despite the absence of a preface. Flood identifies a further "charming edition" printed by Whittingham in 1805. Flood notes the irony regarding Henry Flood, who "liberally contributed to Johnson’s monument" and composed a "rhyming epitaph" for Johnson, yet remains in an "obscure grave" without memorial.
CGV entry 14:58.
Lane responds to prior correspondence regarding the rarity of separate editions of Johnson's poetical works. Referring to an edition published by Kearsley in 1785, titled The Poetical Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Now First Collected in One Volume, Lane provides a comprehensive bibliographical description and a full table of contents. He observes that the 1785 collection includes Johnson’s Latin translation of Pope’s Messiah, performed at Pembroke College, and notes that "some other publisher had gaily collected the scattered poems" in the same year as the first posthumous edition, indicating a disregard for contemporary "author’s, editor’s, or publisher’s copyrights." Lane seeks to facilitate the preparation of a new edition by identifying salient works such as The Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene, and various odes to Stella. He requests scholarly assistance in identifying the original editor of the 1785 volume and locating Husbands’s Miscellany (1731).
CGV entry 14:59. On bibliographical points. See also a reply by W. H. Grattan Flood in the same journal, Number 4273 (September 18), pages 329-330.
Muir and Bensly investigate the attribution of a poem addressed to "Mr. Urban" in the Gentleman's Magazine. While the Earl of Buchan asserted Johnson’s authorship, Bensly argues against it based on the poem’s derivative nature and technical flaws. Specifically, the writer treats "Mathesis" with an incorrect vowel quantity, a mistake unlikely for Johnson. The correspondence suggests the verses were more likely written by a contributor like "Phil-Urban" and merely reflected a contemporary imitation of Pope’s style.
CGV entry 14:60. From 'The Bee', March 9, 1791.
Horace in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century
Goad examines the extensive influence of Horace on major eighteenth-century English authors, identifying him as the most frequently quoted classical authority of the era. The study identifies Horace’s three primary roles as a teacher of social and political morality, a master of poetic art, and an arbiter of refined elegance. Goad argues that Horace’s emphasis on correctness, perfection of form, and practical ethics aligned closely with the spirit of the Augustan age. Detailed analysis focuses on individual writers, including Johnson, whom Goad characterizes as a "Ciceronian" who nevertheless held a deep personal fondness for Horace’s Odes and frequently deferred to his authority in conversation and literary criticism. The work notes that Boswell and Piozzi both testify to Johnson’s habit of reciting Horatian odes with such skill that "whoever once heard him repeat an ode of Horace would be long before they could endure to hear it repeated by another." The volume includes an extensive appendix documenting specific Horatian allusions and quotations across the collected works of the featured authors.
CGV entry 14:61.
Hudson examines the lives and poetic output of Johnson and Goldsmith, positioning the biographical method as the key to literary appreciation. The introduction surveys Johnson's early life, focusing on his intellectual development, struggles with poverty and melancholy, and his eventual literary success with works like "London" and The Vanity of Human Wishes. The analysis of the latter emphasizes Johnson's didacticism and pessimistic philosophy, distinguishing his poetic output from that of Goldsmith, whose poetry, particularly The Traveller and The Deserted Village, reveals a more personal and sentimental nature. The volume concludes with a discussion of Johnson's later life, particularly his relationship with Boswell.
A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day
Saintsbury examines the evolution of English verse from the Elizabethan era through the eighteenth century, identifying Johnson as a pivotal figure in the stabilization of the decasyllabic couplet. He argues that Johnson championed a "decasyllabomania" that emphasized strict syllabic regularity and specific pause-variation at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllables. While Saintsbury acknowledges Johnson's mastery of the "single-mould" line, he critiques Johnson's rigid resistance to the "triple time" of trisyllabic feet and his distaste for the varied pauses of the Miltonic verse-paragraph. Saintsbury posits that Johnson’s prosodic theories functioned as a necessary, if restrictive, corrective to the perceived metrical anarchy of earlier seventeenth-century poetry.
CGV entry 14:64. On Boswell's manuscript of a minor change in 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
Poetic Diction: A Study of Eighteenth Century Verse
Analyzes the stylistic evolution of eighteenth-century English poetry, focusing on the development and eventual decline of "poetic diction." Quayle disputes the notion that this diction originated solely with Pope, tracing its roots instead to Miltonic influence and the seventeenth-century interpretation of Aristotelian "imitation." The text examines specific linguistic features, including "stock" descriptive terms, Latinisms, archaisms, and compound epithets. Quayle notes that Johnson championed a "system of words at once refined from the grossness of domestic use," attributing the birth of such diction to Dryden. The study observes that while Johnson praised the "poetically elegant" combinations in Pope’s "Homer," Wordsworth later targeted these same "extravagant and absurd" constructions. Quayle highlights how the "pseudo-Miltonic" style dominated descriptive verse until the Romantic reaction, led by Wordsworth, sought to restore "the real language of men." The work also addresses the use of personified abstractions, which Wordsworth rejected as failing to keep "the reader in the company of flesh and blood."
Walker identifies Johnson and Boswell as pivotal figures in the evolution of eighteenth-century satire and its historical recording. Johnson elevates the genre through his imitations of Juvenal, specifically in his poems regarding London and the vanity of human wishes. These works mirror Johnson's "sombre view of life" and employ the heroic couplet with a precision that avoids the "absurd view" of Elizabethan harshness. Walker highlights Johnson's "massive sense" in defending intellectual pursuits against the trivialities of virtuosi, while also noting his "well-grounded hatred and scorn of patronage." Boswell provides the "inexorable testimony of dates" and critical observations that preserve the period's literary context. Though Johnson's satirical touch occasionally appears "heavy" in prose, his verse achieves a moral gravity where "every line rings true." Walker concludes that Johnson’s struggle against the "ills the scholar’s life assail" informs a satire rooted in hard experience rather than mere "smartness."
On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet—A Note on the Text
Johnson’s poem "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet" first appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1783), followed by versions in the London Magazine and Annual Register. Subsequent collected editions and biographies by Hawkins and Boswell introduced variants like "caverns" for "cavern's," "freed" for "forc'd" (line 36), and different phrases for "throbbing fiery pain" (line 33). Roberts argues the Gentleman’s Magazine text is the most authoritative, as Johnson likely saw only this one. He suggests restoring this text, correcting "cavern's" (line 17) as a probable misprint and possibly changing "forc'd" to the more natural "freed," likely a printer's error.
CGV entry 14:67. See also a reply by W. H. Grattan Flood in the same journal, volume 4 (January 1928), pages 88-89.
Published: 219th Lichfield Birthday Celebration pamphlet
Chapman disputes the assertion by Bridges and Hollis that Johnson possessed an "unpoetic mind" and was "incapable of esthetic appreciation." Chapman argues that Johnson’s dislike of Lycidas stemmed from a prejudice against pastoral conventions and the mixture of "trifling fictions" with "sacred truths," rather than a lack of sensibility. Chapman cites Johnson’s emotional response to poetry and his "splendid generosity" in praising Paradise Lost as evidence of a "more than ordinary poetic sensibility." The text notes that Johnson’s criticism often "sinks in admiration" when confronted with true poetic power, suggesting his failures to appreciate contemporaries were "intelligible delusions" or "wanton petulance" rather than stark insensibility.
CGV entry 14:68. Reprinted from the 1928 Lichfield pamphlet.
Chapman disputes the claim, repeated by Hollis, that Johnson was "incapable of aesthetic appreciation" or possessed an "unpoetic mind." While critics debate this "aesthetic appreciation" and point to a notorious dislike of "Lycidas," blank verse, and heathen mythology, Chapman argues such failures resulted from "intelligible delusions" regarding pastoral conventions rather than "dense insensibility." Johnson’s discerning analysis of Cowley and his delight in Dryden and Pope coexist with a "genuine admiration" for the genius and originality of Thomson. Furthermore, Boswell, Thrale, and Chapman assemble evidence of a deep sensibility, noting Johnson often wept when reading moving poetry, such as Beattie’s Hermit, or when repeating the Dies Irae. Chapman emphasizes that the praise by Johnson of Paradise Lost rings with the "delight and undying astonishment" that greets poetic greatness, representing a spiritual conflict where the "young Royalist" surrendered to "Milton’s poetic victory." This analysis suggests the critical discrimination of Johnson was "independent of fashion and frequently just," contradicting the notion of an unpoetic mind through documented emotional responses and his recognition of true poetic genius.
Quiller-Couch continues his exploration of the elegiac form, tracing its development from the seventeenth century through the Victorian era. The text identifies three primary channels of the elegy: the classical pastoral, the metaphysical "conceits" associated with Donne, and the direct stream of personal grief. Quiller-Couch analyzes Johnson’s own elegiac contribution, On the Death of Mr Robert Levet, noting its reliance on "robust common sense" which he characterizes as "about the last quality anyone should require of an Elegy." The lecture observes how Johnson punctually observed the anniversary of his "plain wife’s" death while maintaining a pragmatic philosophy that "friendship should be continually renewed." Quiller-Couch details how the classical form revived in the nineteenth century with Adonais and In Memoriam, contrasting these with the simple West-country accents of William Barnes’s poetry.
Johnson's suggested epitaph for Hogarth, "The Hand of Art here torpid lies," is analyzed. The second line of the epitaph, which was a jingle in Hill's collection, did not appear that way in Johnson's writing. Johnson's manuscript read "traced," not "drew" (as in Piozzi's quote), for the second line, referring to "the essential form of Grace," which is Hogarth's S-shaped Line of Beauty, a "curve" figured on the title-page of his Analysis of Beauty.
CGV entry 14:70. On Johnson's corrections.
The Juvenalian and Persian Element in English Literature from the Restoration to Dr. Johnson
English Critical Essays: Twentieth Century
Eliot examines the limits and purposes of literary criticism, arguing that it must ultimately "promote the understanding and enjoyment of literature" rather than merely providing causal explanations or psychological conjectures. He uses Samuel Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" as a benchmark of a critical masterpiece, contrasting its historical tradition with the psychological and philosophical breadth introduced by Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria". Eliot warns against "the lemon-squeezer school of criticism," which over-analyzes texts without regard for the author's intent or the reader's spontaneous appreciation. He asserts that while scholarly knowledge is a necessary preparation, true understanding requires a direct, unclouded contact with the poetry as "creation," independent of its origins or the poet's biography.
Eliot characterizes the eighteenth century as the closest English literature has come to a 'classic' age, defined by maturity of mind, manners, and language. He identifies the 'common style' of this period, exemplified by Pope, as a pinnacle of stability and order where the 'predecessors behind his work' are honoured as continuous traditions rather than oppressive influences. Eliot notes that while the era's prose was 'more mature' than its predecessor, its poetry achieved a unique refinement of standard vocabulary and sentence structure. He maintains that one cannot see English literature as a whole without a 'critical appreciation' of this period, specifically noting that Johnson and Landor rightly criticized Milton's style for being 'not quite English' in comparison to the eighteenth-century standard. Eliot concludes that while England has no single classic age or poet, the eighteenth century provides the essential 'classic ideal' necessary for maintaining the 'standard' of the English language.
CGV entry 14:73. Reprinted from 'English Critical Essays' (1933).
Johnson's Translation of Addison's 'Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies'
Moody discusses the anecdote about Johnson's youthful (1725 or 1726) translation of Addison's Latin poem, Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies. The anecdote, possibly from Steevens, recounts Johnson's youthful error in the couplet: "Down from the guardian boughs the nests they flung, / And kill'd the yet unanimated young." The problematic word "kill'd" was later changed to "crush'd." The discovery of a fragment of the manuscript among the Malahide Papers confirms the anecdote's authenticity, though the notorious couplet is missing. The extant fragment, fifty-two lines corresponding to forty-three lines of Addison's poem, is presumed to be part of what Boswell acquired from Johnson’s schoolfellow, Hector, but chose not to publish due to its length and the fact that it was a translation of a modern writer. The translation is described as a free rendition of the Latin original and, despite occasional ungainly phrases, is praised for its vigor, graphic description, and surprising dignity in depicting the mock-heroic subject.
English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century
Leavis disputes the rehabilitation of the eighteenth century through 'romantic precursors,' asserting instead that its true power resides in the Augustan tradition of Pope and Johnson. He characterizes the mid-century meditative-melancholic mode, represented by Gray and Collins, as a 'by-line' that substituted literary taste for creative vitality. While exempting Gray's Elegy due to its 'social substance' and 'Augustan strength,' Leavis argues that the period's poetic tradition generally developed unluckily by losing touch with the seventeenth-century's expressive range. He focuses on Johnson as a 'living classic' who used a 'high Johnsonian decorum' and 'generalizing weight' to invest abstractions with the pressure of representative human experience. Leavis uses Johnson's 'On the Death of Mr. Robert Levett' to illustrate a 'conscious neatness' and 'precision of statement' that informs verse with prose virtues. He concludes that later figures like Crabbe maintained this eighteenth-century strength, whereas Byron, despite his admiration for Pope, lacked the moral and social order necessary to sustain the Augustan mode.
Some Observations on Eighteenth Century Poetry
Smith analyzes the versification of Pope and Johnson, challenging the "fallacy" that the heroic couplet is inherently monotonous. While Pope varies accents to ensure the "sense controls the movement," Johnson produces a "weighty and massive" music that demands slow reading. Smith identifies The Vanity of Human Wishes as a masterpiece of "declamatory grandeur" where Johnson faces facts "unflinchingly" with the "wisdom of acceptance." Although Johnson was "normally a prose man," Smith argues his verse reveals a profound command of pathos, particularly in descriptions of "unperceiv'd decay" and "lacerated friendship." The article defends Johnson’s "very good ear," citing his revisions to reduce sibilants and his sophisticated critique of Milton’s elisions. Smith highlights Johnson's preference for general truths over particular instances, noting that his "deep and pathetic morality" extracts tears through "sublime" intellectual control. Ultimately, Smith asserts that Johnson’s "depersonalized" emotion provides a security derived from "looking at things as they are."
CGV entry 14:78. The Alexander Lectures.
A manuscript note signed J. R. (likely John Ryland) resolves the issue of six poems often removed from Johnson's writings. The note confirms Johnson wrote the six poems published under asterisks in the May 1747 Gentleman's Magazine, including "The Winter's Walk." Ryland stated he provided Johnson's original poems to the magazine for publication.
CGV entry 14:79.
Pottle advances a theory of critical relativism, maintaining that literary judgments are relative to the age producing them because the 'basis of feeling' or sensibility undergoes periodic historical shifts. Using analogies from physical science and linguistics, Pottle disputes the existence of an absolute standard of taste, asserting instead that poetry is 'whatever has been called poetry by respectable judges at any time'. Pottle identifies the eighteenth century as a period where sensibility was 'tied to the general,' making its poetry—such as that of Pope—misunderstood by later Romantic and Victorian critics who attempted to apply a subjective, physical standard of 'high poetry' to an idiom they could no longer access. The text distinguishes between aesthetic and moral judgments, advocating for relativism in the former while subscribing to an 'unchanging measure' for moral content. Pottle defines the critic's primary responsibility as recognizing and defining the 'emergent idiom' of their own time. The revised edition includes three additional essays addressing the moral evaluation of literature and the relationship between poetry, dogma, and science, further refining the 'philosophy of discontinuity' between naturalistic aesthetic judgments and absolute moral values.
CGV entry 14:81. Discusses Johnson passim.
Baretti's 1779 translation of the Carmen Seculare contains a seven-page introduction titled "Hints Written by Baretti to the English Reader." Johnson may have written or revised the introduction, as his unmistakable style marks the first paragraph. The work also includes an English verse epilogue, which critics attribute to Johnson. The translation's title page features only the words "The Horace," which is unusual for a published work.
CGV entry 14:83. On echoes of Johnson in Housman's verses.
G. G. L. analyzes Johnson's Latin epigram for a goat that circumnavigated the globe with Sir Joseph Banks. The author argues that the reading perpetui—found in a 1816-17 Dublin edition—is superior to the perpetua recorded by Boswell, as it more appropriately describes the goat's unfailing milk. The text critiques Johnson's excessive brevity in the two-line version, which omits the specific nature of the goat's reward, and provides an explicit English translation to clarify the fosterling-Zeus motif found in the Greek Anthology.
Smith discusses the increase in knowledge about Johnson's poems following the accessibility of the Boswell and Thrale-Piozzi papers, noting the emergence of previously unknown works and the survival of various manuscripts. This discussion, prompted by a recent Clarendon Press edition, explores the recovery of manuscripts that shed light on Johnson's poetic development. Smith highlights the discovery of the early, fervently styled poem "Upon the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude," which displays an "extatick fury" Johnson later held in control. The core argument is that Johnson, despite being a "prose man," wrote verse throughout his life, offering a picture of his mind as "true and vivid" as his prose. Smith emphasizes Johnson's power of improvisation and his "gay and jovial side," often preserved in minor pieces written for Thrale. He notes that Johnson used Latin for personal, intimate, or "romantic" confessions—such as his death-bed poem or musings on the Dictionary drudgery—while using English for his more public or "classical" works. Smith maintains that The Vanity of Human Wishes demonstrates Johnson's mastery of pathos and that the "strong mind" in the verse never overshadows its emotional resonance.
Argues Johnson's verse offers as vivid a mental portrait as his prose, revealing hidden facets. Nichol Smith stresses the importance of Johnson's Latin poems for understanding his personal feelings and religious devotion, suggesting Latin as the medium for more intimate expressions. The essay covers the range of Johnson's poetry, from early passionate verse to light pieces for Piozzi and the profound pathos of The Vanity of Human Wishes, where intellect and emotion balance perfectly.
CGV entry 14:85. Reprinted from Review of English Studies (1943).
Smith argues that Johnson's verse provides "as true and vivid a picture of his mind" as his prose, noting that Johnson wrote English verse for the public but used Latin for "intimately personal" confessions of depression and humility. He highlights the "extatick fury" of the early poem on St. Simon and St. Jude as a rare exception to Johnson’s mature control. Smith maintains that *The Vanity of Human Wishes* demonstrates Johnson’s mastery of pathos and "resonant music," distinct from Dryden or Pope. He notes that Johnson was "frolicsomely gay" in the company of Piozzi, producing light improvisations like the verses on Sir John Lade. Smith identifies the elegy on Levet as a warm record of "natural sentiment."
A new edition of Johnson's Poems, edited by Smith and McAdam, prompts an assessment of his literary presence in the twentieth century. Johnson, a figure who retained Queen Anne's conventions in the Augustan Age, conveyed profound melancholy in verse like The Vanity of Human Wishes, placing him among profound psychologists of his era. The essay dismisses the claim that Thales in his poem London is Richard Savage, suggesting a classical reference to the wandering philosopher. Johnson's essay on Swift, while showing a lack of natural rapport, is praised for its judicious balance, similar to his Life of Richard Savage.
The Shield of Achilles: Essays on Beliefs in Poetry
Gregory examines the 1941 edition of Johnson’s poems, edited by David Nichol Smith and Edward L. McAdam, as a luxury that prompts a reconsideration of Johnson’s eighteenth-century authority during global conflict. Johnson’s radical conservative convictions and "integration of personality" offer stability in times of crisis. Gregory challenges the traditional identification of "injur'd Thales" in London with Richard Savage, noting Boswell’s dissent and the figure's classical roots. He analyzes Johnson's psychological depth in the Life of Savage, finding his moral judgments both vital and contemporaneously relevant. Gregory argues that Johnson's "tragic sense of life" in The Vanity of Human Wishes aligns with northern epic traditions. While noting Johnson's mistrust of the metaphysical poets, Gregory posits that his mature verse development parallels his critical prose, culminating in the "manly attitudes of religious devotion" found in his elegy for Robert Levet and late adaptations of Horace.
CGV entry 14:86. Reprinted from the Saturday Review of Literature (1943).
Suggests Behn's Oroonoko and Bacon's New Atlantis may be sources.
CGV entry 14:87.
Godishnik na Sofiisknia Universitet: Istoriko-filologicheski Fakultet
CGV entry 14:88. Annuaire de l'Universite de Sofia: Faculte Historico-Philologique.
Eliot uses Johnson to qualify the distinction between major and minor poets. He classifies Johnson as a major poet based on the single testimony of The Vanity of Human Wishes. Eliot argues that a major poet possesses a significant unity in his whole work, where a knowledge of the whole enhances the understanding of any one part.
CGV entry 14:89. Mentions 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
Addresses the historical "shift of sensibility" that led critics to decry personification as frigid and lifeless, arguing this position is an aesthetic limitation rooted in egocentricity. Bronson begins by using Johnson's critique of Milton's Lycidas (that "where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief" ) versus Johnson's own sincere but highly generalized elegy on Levett to illustrate a historical preference for expressing deep personal loss through general statement. He argues that the eighteenth century found its deepest aesthetic satisfaction in lifting particulars to the plateau of the general, often through personification, a mechanism that simultaneously humanized abstractions and allowed poets to transcend merely private experience. Bronson contends that personification is a radical impulse of the human psyche, and at its best, it is a highly civilized mode that conveys ideas with precision and economy of statement.
CGV entry 14:90. On Johnson's poem on Levet. See also Earl R. Wasserman, "The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century Personification," PMLA, volume 65 (June 1950), pages 435-463.
Defends eighteenth-century personification against later depreciation, contrasting Johnson's criticism of Lycidas with his Levet elegy. Bronson argues the eighteenth century valued general statement embodying particular emotion. He analyzes personification as metaphor, distinguishing "restrictive" and "non-restrictive" types. Bronson refutes dismissals by Ruskin and Lewis, asserting personification's potential for intellectual maturity and aesthetic tension by uniting abstract and concrete, a key neo-classical strength.
CGV entry 14:90. Reprinted from ELH (1947).
Bronson challenges the post-Romantic "insensitivity to the emotional appeal of a general statement" by defending the 18th-century preference for the abstract over the particular. Using Johnson’s critique of Lycidas and his elegy on Levet as a baseline, Bronson argues that the "generalized style" was not a failure of imagination but a deliberate aesthetic choice to elevate personal emotion to a "plateau of the general consensus." He distinguishes between "restrictive" and "non-restrictive" personification, suggesting that the former imposes specific imagery while the latter allows the reader imaginative freedom. Bronson posits that personification is a "radical tendency of the human psyche" and that the 18th-century "abstractive correlative" provided a sophisticated, objective means of "objectifying the emotional life."
Brown challenges the critical assumption that Johnson used only a feeble left hand when writing poetry. He argues Johnson is a master of the heroic couplet poem. Brown examines the four prologues and one epilogue, noting that while some exhibit heavy-handed humor, the prologue to A Word to the Wise and the prologue to Comus reveal a mature style characterized by metrical variety and latinate polysyllables. The analysis extends to London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, where Brown disputes the charge that Johnson possessed a bad ear. He identifies a unique pathos in isolation created through the fusion of didactic and lyrical elements. Brown asserts that Johnson's generalized vocabulary states immensely with minimal suggestion, using abstract words to denote emotion and thought. He concludes that the Swedish Charles and Wolsey passages demonstrate dramatic tensions through sharp contrasts in meaning and syntax.
Brown challenges nineteenth-century and modern dismissals of Johnson’s verse, asserting that Johnson represents one of the few poets who mastered the couplet form rather than being mastered by it. Analyzing the prologues and major poems, Brown identifies a "solemn stateliness" and "organ-like music" achieved through latinate polysyllables and the strategic suppression of metrical stresses. He explains that Johnson’s didacticism uses a generalized vocabulary to state truths "immensely," creating a powerful fusion of the personal and the universal. In The Vanity of Human Wishes, Brown argues that Johnson forces the didactic-satiric poem into "lyrical territory," using rhythmic pyrrhic substitutions to communicate a tragic awareness of human limitations. Brown concludes that the resulting "pathos in isolation" secures Johnson’s position as a chief master of the heroic couplet.
CGV entry 14:91. Revised and reprinted from Modern Language Quarterly (1947).
Moore defends the realism of the line "Here falling houses thunder on your head" in Johnson's "London." Often dismissed as a mere imitation of Juvenal, Moore provides evidence from Defoe’s Mercurius Politicus (1719) listing dozens of houses that suddenly collapsed in London due to "slight building." Moore argues these catastrophes were frequent enough during Johnson's youth to constitute personal observation rather than conventional city-hating. The file also includes James E. Cronin’s argument for Shelley’s subconscious use of Herrick’s "The Hag" in "The Cloud."
CGV entry 14:93. A line in 'London'.
The 'Choice of Life': Johnson and Matthew Prior
Jack argues that Johnson's appreciation for Matthew Prior's Solomon on the Vanity of the World was "autobiographical," as the poem significantly influenced Johnson’s thematic and stylistic work. Both Solomon and Johnson's Rasselas are elevated narrative fictions conveying the theme of the vanity of human wishes and emphasizing resignation to Providence. Both feature a great prince (Solomon/Rasselas) to demonstrate that the failure to find happiness is universal. Both use a panoramic method to survey the common paths of life—Knowledge, Pleasure, and Power—within a remote setting. Johnson's poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes, also displays Prior's stylistic influence, notably in employing general statements over particulars for clarity and using aggregation (a series of Latinisms, abstractions, and personifications) to achieve weighty seriousness.
CGV entry 14:94.
Williams identifies parallels to the opening couplet of Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes in the works of Sir William Temple. He notes that Temple uses the conjunction of 'China and Peru' in both his essay Of Poetry (1690) and the posthumously published Of Popular Discontents (1701). Williams suggests that these specific geographical references in Temple’s essays may have suggested the opening thoughts of Johnson’s poem.
Springer-Miller identifies a near-translation of Boileau’s Satire I in Johnson’s London. While Juvenal refers to Artorius and Catulus, Johnson’s line 50 ('Let — live here...') mirrors Boileau’s reference to 'George.' Springer-Miller argues Johnson intended readers to supply the name 'George,' specifically targeting George II, whom Johnson elsewhere satirizes as a conducter of disreputable public monopolies.
CGV entry 14:96. On the use of Boileau's First Satire in 'London'.
Davie defines "pure diction" as a selection from the common language characterized by economy in metaphor and a sense of "words thrusting to be let into the poem, but fended off from it." Using Johnson as a primary exemplar, Davie argues that this "bourgeois-pious" diction serves a moral function by correcting spoken usage and "purifying the language of the tribe." He analyzes how Johnson enlivens dead metaphors by shifting metaphorical force from nouns to verbs, achieving a "prosaic strength" that exhibits sentiment with more "weight than bulk." Davie contrasts this with the "impure" diction of the Romantics, noting that while Johnson's style remains central and urbane, Wordsworth and later poets committed to a "determined provincialism" that abandoned the social and linguistic stay of "common use." Significant attention is paid to how the generalizing habit and personification in Johnson and his contemporaries—such as Piozzi's drawing-room circle—functioned as "concretions of discourse" rather than the "concretions of nature" favored by later novelists. Ultimately, Davie proposes that the perfection of a common language, found in "good" poets like Johnson, Cowper, and Wesley, offers a model of urbanity and "civilized moderation" superior to the eccentricities of the "egotistical sublime."
'Tragical Satire': The Vanity of Human Wishes
Jack identifies the generic shift in Johnson's verse from the mock-heroic mode to a moral-didactic species modeled on Juvenalian declamatory grandeur. Unlike the personal and autobiographical satires of Pope, Johnson adopts an impersonal, pulpit-like stance to address universal human conditions. Jack argues that the frequent use of abstract personifications and the "generic article" serves a philosophical basis, aiming for a "grandeur of generality" and "impressive sententiousness." By using the verse-paragraph as the primary unit of composition, Johnson achieves a "massive accumulation of sombre statements" that contrasts sharply with Augustan optimism. Jack concludes that Johnson preserves the dignity and "tragical" weight of the original Latin model while imbuing the work with a Christianized affinity for the contemptus mundi tradition.
Leavis identifies a satisfying classical standing for Johnson in his inclusion in the Oxford English Texts, yet admits the body of verse deserving current currency remains small. He argues that Johnson’s poetry possesses the virtues of his prose, characterizing it as a poetry of statement, exposition, and reflection that remains radically undramatic. Leavis notes that Johnson's essential bent is undramatic, which explains the failure of his play Irene. He contrasts Johnson's use of language with the Shakespearean mode, stating that Johnson does not capture significant particularities of sensation but instead enforces general propositions through discussion. The article highlights how Johnson adapts Latin qualities into a natively English style. Leavis observes that Johnson's concern for poetic justice and his inability to appreciate how works of art enact moral valuations are central to his critical habit. He concludes that without the rhymed movement of the couplet and its inherent wit, Johnson's blank verse lacks his characteristic weight.
CGV entry 14:99. Reprinted from Scrutiny.
Dr. Johnson's Latin Poems: A Translation and Commentary
The Text of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Sherbo critiques the 1941 Oxford edition's 368-line reconstruction of Johnson's poem, which selectively restores one couplet while omitting another based on editorial aesthetic judgment. Sherbo argues for a 366-line definitive text, matching the length of the 1755 Dodsley revision. He notes that Juvenal’s Tenth Satire, which Johnson imitated, contains exactly 366 lines—a count Johnson is known to have performed. Sherbo concludes the omission of the Wolsey couplet in the revised edition was a deliberate authorial decision to align the imitation's length with the original Latin, rather than a printer's error.
CGV entry 14:102. On the recovery of a note recording an emendation to 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
Schoff analyzes the profound thematic shift between Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes and its source, Juvenal’s tenth satire. While Juvenal employs mordant mockery and comic exaggeration to ridicule human stupidity and excessive desire, Johnson converts this tone into abstract, universal gloom. Schoff demonstrates that Johnson removes Juvenal’s emphasis on personal error, replacing it with a fatalistic view where even virtuous wishes meet afflictive ends. By comparing the portraits of Sejanus and Wolsey, and Xerxes and Charles XII, the study highlights how Johnson’s Christian stoicism and persistent melancholy transform a satire on folly into a pessimistic meditation on the inescapable misery of the human condition.
CGV entry 14:103. On 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
CGV entry 14:104. By Samuel Madden.
Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes
Emslie examines submerged allusions and verbal patterns to reveal moral decay. He links the judge/ruffian parallel in lines 23–26 to a degenerate personification of Justice, who retains her sword but loses her balance. Analyzing lines 99–102, Emslie argues Wolsey serves as a perverted Moses figure who prioritizes fortune over law. He notes that Boswell’s suggested revision of line 138 evokes the shirt of Hercules, confirming that contemporary readers were expected to recognize such classical and biblical archetypes.
Johnson's Satires and 'The Proper Wit of Poetry'
Personification in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry
Chapin analyzes two distinct types of 18th-century personification: the allegorical type, which emphasizes visual description and "fiction," and the rhetorical type, which exerts metaphorical force within the "poetry of statement". Chapin argues that Johnson employs personification as a sophisticated rhetorical tool to invest abstract truths with "concrete force" derived from representative human experience. Unlike mid-century poets who treated the personified abstraction as a "sensible object" or a statuesque visitant from a spirit-world, Johnson uses specific human traits to create an interaction between image and idea. Chapin highlights Johnson's "masterly use" of the figure in works like the Vanity of Human Wishes to achieve "epigrammatic force" and "economy of expression". By grounding abstractions in the "actualities of life," Johnson avoids the "pretentiously statuesque" failures of his contemporaries, instead using the figure to impel "a strong sense of the real world". The text concludes that while romantic critics like Wordsworth dismissed such language as artificial, Johnson's practice demonstrates the figure's vitality when serving meanings of serious concern to the poet.
Chapin distinguishes between two primary modes of eighteenth-century personification: the visualized, allegorical figure derived from Lockean empiricism—best exemplified by Collins—and the rhetorical personification used by Pope and Johnson to animate general truths. McKillop notes that while the former often descends into sterile decoration in later writers like Darwin, the latter draws its power from moral earnestness and social values, particularly in The Vanity of Human Wishes. He praises Chapin’s independent analysis of Augustan rhetoric, which demonstrates how personifications became "real" to the contemporary mind through their dramatic relation to empirical human activity rather than isolated visionary projection.
CGV entry 14:108. Review by A. D. McKillop of the book by Chester F. Chapin.
Wasserman finds Chapin instructive regarding Johnson’s 'rhetorical' personifications, which function as 'dramatizations of the values' relating to human activity. However, he disputes Chapin’s 'muddled' critical procedures and the 'sharp discrimination' between 'allegorical' and 'rhetorical' types. Wasserman argues these categories fail to account for the 'total structure' of poems. While Chapin uses Johnson to highlight the 'ideological properties' of abstractions, Wasserman asserts that the functioning of such figures must be examined within the 'total context' of individual works.
CGV entry 14:108. Review by E. R. Wasserman of the book by Chester F. Chapin.
Bronson analyzes Chapin’s distinction between "allegorical" and "metaphorical" personification. He focuses on Chapin’s argument that Johnson and Pope practiced a metaphorical type that Generalized particulars with "concrete force," specifically in the Vanity of Human Wishes. Bronson challenges Chapin’s reliance on contemporary reader-interest for satirical success. He suggests a different categorization based on restrictive and non-restrictive abstract personifications. Bronson concludes that Johnson's personifications carry conviction because they represent ethical concepts in which Johnson and his readers fundamentally believe.
CGV entry 14:108. Review by B. H. Bronson of the book by Chester F. Chapin.
The Vanity of Human Wishes is far more than an imitation of Juvenal's Tenth Satire, moving the reader as an original poem with a different emotional register. Gifford contrasts Johnson's moral fervor and tragic sense of life with Juvenal's "superb scorn" and sarcasm. Johnson corrects Juvenal's pagan sentiment and replaces his derision with a more sombre and compassionate vision, evidenced in the poem's unique imagery, themes of downfall, and focus on man as a victim.
CGV entry 14:109. See also a reply by Christopher Ricks in the same journal, new series, volume 11 (November 1960), pages 412-413.
Johnson's On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet
Tucker and Gifford analyze the Horatian structure and imagery of Johnson’s elegy for Levet. They trace the "penal mine" metaphor from the opening stanza through the "caverns" of the fifth, interpreting Levet as a humble laborer against "Hope’s delusive" toil. The authors highlight Johnson’s use of Latinate virtues to define Levet’s character and argue that the poem’s conclusion reverses the Parable of the Talents. They conclude that Johnson abstracts Levet’s "merit unrefin'd" to rebuke social arrogance and celebrate a life of useful care.
Tucker and Gifford analyze Johnson's Latin poetry, which alternates with his English work and is often neglected. They divide his Latin verse into four groups: 1) school and college exercises; 2) personal poems from the early 1770s (e.g., the Sapphics at the Opera, poems to Lawrence, and the Ode on Skye); 3) devotional poetry from his last five years; and 4) exercises for distraction. The poems often integrate Stoic themes and classical phrases to convey modern sentiments, such as the weariness of life and the mind's inner turmoil, as seen in Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself), written after revising the Dictionary. His devotional poems, such as those based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, show urgency and draw on Christian hymns, reflecting his profound personal faith.
The Vanity of Human Wishes, lines 15–20
Fussell challenges the traditional interpretation of Johnson’s imagery regarding Fate. While Smith and McAdam argue the "afflictive dart" is feathered with wishes, Smith contends "wings" functions as a verb meaning "hurls." This reading identifies the missile as a heavy spear, aligning with military motifs throughout the poem. Fussell suggests Johnson portrays Fate as an active agent of retribution, punishing immoderate desire by turning the specific benefits individuals pray for into the direct instruments of their eventual ruin or disgrace.
Tucker and Gifford challenge Boswell's assessment that Johnson's poetry lacks vivid imagery. Examining The Vanity of Human Wishes, they argue that his poetry is characterized by an incessant, compact use of metaphor, often contained in a single powerful verb, as in 'Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy'. Johnson's imagination is consistently metaphorical, drawing on Latinisms and avoiding "broken metaphor" he criticized in others. He favors 'pointed sentences' and couplets over extended allegories. The authors identify recurring thematic image groups—such as devouring predators, disease as military invasion, and the constant flux of growth and decay, epitomized by the "stream of time"—which provide a unified tone and reveal the profound struggle at the core of Johnson's sensibility.
The Steeps of Fate: The Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 125.
Tucker elucidates the phrase "steeps of fate" in line 125 of Johnson’s poem. Drawing on Johnson’s Dictionary and his prose, Tucker demonstrates that "steep" denotes a precipice viewed from above as a point of descent rather than an upward slope. This interpretation clarifies the imagery of Wolsey’s fall. By comparing the passage to Pope’s Iliad translation, Tucker argues Johnson envisioned Wolsey building on the unstable brink of a chasm, resulting in a catastrophic ruin into the gulfs below.
CGV entry 14:114. On line 125 of 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
Bernard identifies Richard Savage as the likely model for Thales in Johnson's "London." Parallel biographical details include their shared status as profligate, single men older than Johnson. Bernard highlights an overlooked allusion to Thales being "dreaded as a spy," correlating this to contemporary accusations that Savage provided private intelligence to Pope. The absence of this specific spy imagery in the original Juvenalian source suggests Johnson intentionally incorporated Savage’s unique personal reputation into the poem.
CGV entry 14:115. An allusion to Savage in 'London'.
Wolsey in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Ricks suggests that Johnson’s portrait of Wolsey in The Vanity of Human Wishes contains delicate allusions to Sir Robert Walpole. He documents a decade of opposition rhetoric in The Craftsman and Pope’s satires that habitually paired Walpole with Wolsey and Sejanus. While disclaiming a cryptic intention to rewrite the poem as a political manifesto, Ricks argues that Johnson’s contemporary readers would have recognized the historical parallel. He concludes that this political subtext enriches the poem’s thematic focus on the fall of powerful statesmen.
Compares Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Wishes with their Juvenalian originals. Lascelles argues Johnson adapts Juvenal's tone and specifics significantly. In London, Johnson captures indignation towards urban corruption but misses Juvenal's irony regarding country life. In The Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson transforms Juvenal's nihilistic satire into a work of tragic grandeur, analyzing substitutions (Wolsey for Sejanus) and tonal shifts resulting from Johnson's Christian perspective.
Identifies Johnson's revisions to Hannah More's Sir Eldred of the Bower, comparing its first (1776) and second (1778) editions based on More's account. Liebert details changes from single words to rewritten stanzas, analyzing them via Johnson's critical principles. The revisions show Johnson's preference for generality, avoidance of "mean" diction, correction of errors, concern for cadence and termination, and infusion of moral seriousness and balanced structure.
CGV entry 14:118.
Kolb identifies parallels between Dryden’s opera The State of Innocence and Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes. He notes that lines describing old age as a "melting" and "unperceived decay" in Johnson’s poem closely resemble Eve’s speech in Dryden’s work. Kolb demonstrates Johnson’s familiarity with the play through his subsequent use of the same lines to illustrate definitions in the Dictionary. He concludes that Johnson likely remembered these passages during his initial labor on the Dictionary between 1746 and 1749.
CGV entry 14:119. On an echo from 'The State of Innocence'.
Pope and Johnson in Their Handling of the Imitation
Butt analyzes Johnson’s method in his verse imitations, notably London, arguing that Johnson is less successful than predecessors like Oldham in discovering apt parallels between Roman imagery and English contemporary manners. Butt notes that Johnson himself later complains about the irreconcilable dissimilitude between Roman themes and English contexts. This early essay, originating as a lecture, forms part of Butt's broader criticism of Johnson’s style, acknowledging that Johnson’s imitations nevertheless register detailed and lively responses to Juvenal’s caustic Latin.
Johnson's Practice in the Poetical Imitation
Examines Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Wishes within the context of eighteenth-century poetical imitation, comparing his practice to Pope's. Butt notes Johnson's deliberate choice of Juvenal, reflecting a different temperament. Johnson's imitations exhibit less contemporary detail and favor generalization, a style suited to his genius. While London applies Juvenal to political satire, The Vanity of Human Wishes achieves a powerful "grandeur of generality."
CGV entry 14:120. Reprinted from "Pope and Johnson in Their Handling of the Imitation" in New Rambler (1959).
Earisman challenges the common view of Johnson’s writing as solely gloomy or austere by identifying a rich vein of humor and satire in the "Rambler" and "Idler" essays. He defines satire as an expression of disapproval marked by detachment and indirection, arguing that Johnson uses distinctive satiric masks and ironic self-revelations in his epistolary papers. The study highlights Johnson's skill in depicting character types like "Quisquilius" the aimless collector and "Prospero" the arrogant wealthy man. Earisman analyzes how Johnson's "sonorous prose" often masks a "comic spirit" that functions as a moral agent. He examines the "Rasselas" narrative as an ironic exploration of the "choice of life," noting its stylistic similarities to the satirical vignettes in the periodical essays. Ultimately, Earisman demonstrates that Johnson’s authoritative ethos and colloquial awareness of "hard words" allowed him to excel in grave humor.
CGV entry 14:122. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 21 (1960), page 620.
CGV entry 14:123. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 21 (1960), page 615.
The article offers two brief textual observations. First, Swift’s famous opening couplet in Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, a translation of La Rochefoucauld, is shown to also be a literary borrowing from a song by George Granville, sharing phrases like "Nature, kind, bent" and the rhyme of "ease us | please us." Second, Ricks notes that Johnson's line "Unnumber'd suppliants croud Preferment's gate" in The Vanity of Human Wishes is adapted from Swift. By omitting the word "about," Johnson converts the verb "crowd" from an intransitive to a transitive use, which increases the line's overall energy.
Variations on Elegiac Themes: Dryden, Pope, Prior, Gray, Johnson
Mell investigates the development of the English elegy through the works of five major neoclassical poets, including Johnson. He focuses on how these authors used traditional elegiac conventions to explore themes of mortality, time, and the restorative power of art. The study provides a detailed analysis of Johnson’s "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet," contrasting its restrained style and focus on "useful" virtue with the more ornate traditions of the genre. Mell examines Johnson's critical views on earlier elegies, specifically his famous attack on Milton's "Lycidas" for its perceived lack of sincerity and use of "remote" pastoral imagery. The dissertation highlights Johnson's preference for moral truth and "sublunary nature" over the "whispers of fancy." By situating Johnson within this poetic lineage, Mell illustrates the poet's unique synthesis of Augustinian Christian morality and neoclassical formal rigor.
Aden identifies Pope’s translation of Horace’s Second Epistle of the Second Book as a significant linguistic influence on Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes. He argues that Johnson’s phrasing and rhyme in the "year chases year" couplet derive more directly from Pope’s English mediation than from Juvenal’s Latin original. Aden further notes parallel imagery regarding domestic sorrows and the loss of friends to support this stylistic debt.
CGV entry 14:127. On 'The Vanity of Human Wishes', lines 305-306.
CGV entry 14:128. On 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
Imitation and Satire: A Study in the Tradition and Poetry of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Weinbrot analyzes the satiric and imitative traditions shaping Johnson's major poems. The dissertation identifies the English "Imitation" as a post-Restoration genre that reached its qualitative peak with Pope and its last major display in Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes. Weinbrot disputes earlier scholarship that confuses imitation as copying with the genre of modernized adaptation. He argues that Johnson's critical attacks on the genre in his later "Life of Pope" and "Life of West" stem from the form's appeal to "local and temporary" knowledge rather than "rational nature." Despite these theoretical strictures, Johnson used the form to achieve his greatest poetic success. Weinbrot demonstrates that London fails as a satire because of the "unsympathetic character" of its speaker and a "fuzzy" satiric focus, whereas The Vanity of Human Wishes succeeds by strictly adhering to a pattern of "laus et vituperatio." This structure allows Johnson to counteract "vain human wishes for earthly success" by praising "divine wishes" and piety. The study traces the genre's genesis to free translation theories and Restoration burlesque, emphasizing that the "beauty of the performance" in Johnson's poems depends upon the reader's recognition of Juvenalian parallels.
Johnson’s "London" contains a dual-level satire, mocking both the city and the transparent follies of Thales. Identifying Thales with Savage, Bernard highlights parallels in their planned retirements to Wales and eventual returns. The poem also celebrates Elizabeth Carter through the character Eliza. Bernard suggests that Johnson’s use of a wherry for Thales’ departure ironically underscores the character’s poverty and extravagance, a compassionate yet critical treatment mirrored in Johnson’s later biography of Savage.
CGV entry 14:130. Argues that Thales is Richard Savage.
'The Fierce Croatian' in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Rothenberg identifies the historical basis for Johnson’s allusion to the fierce Croatian in The Vanity of Human Wishes. The reference concerns the War of the Austrian Succession, where Maria Theresa used troops from the Military Border along the Croatian-Ottoman boundary. Johnson, familiar with continental events through his work for the Gentleman's Magazine, likely read Trenck’s 1747 memoirs describing the bloody exploits of these irregulars. Rothenberg argues reports of their ferocity shocked Johnson, leading to their characterization as sons of ravage.
CGV entry 14:131. See also a reply by F. V. Bernard in the same journal, November, pages 432-433.
Hilles challenges the view that Johnson lacks artistic art and emotion, arguing that his poetry, particularly the powerful Vanity of Human Wishes, possesses a distinct "poetic fire." Analyzing the poem’s structure, Hilles demonstrates how Johnson establishes a detached, elevated point of view to observe the "habitable world" before shifting to a humble, prayerful close. He examines the pervasive up-and-down patterns in the biographical sketches and explains how Johnson employs rhetorical balance and auditory effects to instill a sense of stability and poise in the reader. Johnson’s mastery of the couplet and his evocative use of specific emblems and personifications provide a fresh, magnificent phrasing of "familiar things."
The Vanity of Human Wishes, line 73: A Parallel from Swift
Rawson identifies a textual parallel between Johnson's line "Unnumber'd suppliants croud Preferment's gate" in The Vanity of Human Wishes and a similar phrase in Swift's 1730 poem To Doctor D-l---v, where clergymen "croud about Preferment's Gate." He notes that both poems employ epigraphs from Juvenal. Additionally, Pettit disputes the Hill–Powell edition's annotation regarding Boswell's allusion to Young’s Night-Thoughts, arguing that Boswell refers to the "gradual death" of Lucia in Night VI rather than the sudden death of Narcissa in Night III.
The Vanity of Human Wishes: Reason's Images
Bloom analyzes the coherent and functional image patterns in Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes to strengthen the case for its poetic originality. He argues that the sequence of visual images, which include patterns of military and animalistic metaphors, integrate with the poem's central theme: the irrationality of human passions unchecked by reason. Bloom distinguishes Johnson's dramatic and rhetorical irony from the style of Juvenal's Tenth Satire, noting Johnson's deliberate, methodic imagery and his shift to religious affirmation in the conclusion, contrasting with Juvenal's Stoic fatalism.
Studies in the Eighteenth Century: Papers Presented at the David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, Canberra 1966
Johnson's London: The Country Versus the City
Hardy analyzes the rhetorical structure and social critique of Johnson's poem, London. The text disputes the view that the poem is a "mere imitation" of Juvenal, arguing instead for its "intense topicality" and engagement with the "political and commercial corruption" of the 1730s. Hardy emphasizes Johnson's use of "indignant satire" to target the Walpole administration and the erosion of "traditional British virtues." The study highlights the tension between the "rustic ideal" of Wales and the "multifarious vices" of the metropolis. Hardy notes that Johnson’s "vigorous and concise style" elevates the poem beyond partisan polemic into a "profound meditation on human vanity." The abstract concludes that London serves as a "definitive statement" of Johnson’s early political commitment and his emerging "moral authority" as a social critic.
Johnson's 'Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes'
Ricks analyzes Samuel Johnson's youthful translation of Addison's Latin poem, Proelium inter Pygmaeos et Grues (Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes), arguing it foreshadows the poetic strategy of his mature work. Johnson repeatedly employs clichés and amplifies Addison's Latin, but he renovates the dead metaphors by bringing them to life in relation to the poem's subject of battle and birds. This technique, consistent with his general literary view that men need to be reminded rather than informed, demonstrates a continuity in Johnson's habits of mind and creation, foreshadowing the successful revivification of cliché found in later poems like The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Variant Readings in Johnson's London
Allen describes a copy of the first edition of SJ's London (1738) held in the Nickell collection at the University of Illinois, which contains four previously unrecorded variant readings in sheets B and E. Comparisons with copies in the Murdoch, Tinker, and Adam collections, as well as the Hyde manuscript, indicate these variants—such as "Cain" for "Gain"—are unique. The evidence suggests this copy was likely not intended for public sale, possibly representing an early proof state or a volume gathered from residue materials in Cave's printing shop.
Samuel Johnson and Certain Poems in the May 1747 Gentleman's Magazine
Sherbo disputes the authenticity of six poems in the May 1747 Gentleman's Magazine, which the Yale edition and McAdam accept as Johnson's based on a note by Ryland. The poems, including "Epitaph on Sir Thomas Hanmer" and "To Miss... On Her Gift of a Net-Work Purse," are signed with three asterisks. Sherbo challenges Ryland's testimony, arguing it only confirms Johnson handed over the poems, not that he wrote them. Pointing to Boswell's doubts and the contradiction between the flattering epitaph and Johnson's low opinion of Hanmer, Sherbo further notes the piece violates Johnson’s own rules for epitaphs. He provides evidence that the two "Miss" poems were likely the work of Hervey, as they address Miss Carpenter, a subject of Hervey’s known verse and exist in his transcripts; this makes other asterisk-signed poems suspect. Sherbo identifies a parallel between Johnson's "The Winter's Walk" and the work of Hawkesworth, suggesting Johnson may have collected stray pieces from friends to assist Cave. He concludes these poems cannot be ascribed to Johnson without "more impressive evidence." Conversely, Sherbo argues the poem on Lord Lovat's Execution, often doubted, should be restored to the canon due to Johnson’s "energetic recollection" of it years later.
The Honest Muse: A Study in Augustan Verse
Trickett identifies Johnson as the final figure of the Augustan age to whom the traditions of the Honest Muse functioned as more than a literary pose. Analyzing "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes," Trickett explores how Johnson adopts Pope's technical precision while infusing it with an intense, personal preoccupation with absolute truth. Johnson's unique contribution lies in his acute response to mortality and the elegiac mood, which Trickett traces through his "Lives of the Poets." These biographies serve as memorials to human achievement and inevitable decay, encompassing subjects in "fate and gloomy night." Trickett emphasizes Johnson's authoritative, monumental tone, which avoids the personal discourse of Pope in favor of a shared, common language of humanity. Johnson's verse retreats into a timeless world of abstract truth, establishing a coherent philosophy that remains authoritative and realistic. Trickett concludes that Johnson's style, while conservative, remains instinct with dignity.
Johnson as Satirist: A New Look at The Vanity of Human Wishes
The Vanity of Human Wishes is ultimately a failure as satire because of Johnson's unsuitability for the genre. The poem's introduction, closely imitating Juvenal, establishes a pose of scornful anger and cynicism. However, the subsequent character portraits, such as Charles XII and the scholar, are instead infused with deep compassion and self-identification, which fundamentally undermines the satiric tone and purpose. Johnson's profound pessimism and Christian resignation preclude the humanistic hope and impetus for reform essential to true satire. The poem's conflicting intentions result in a "distressing uncertainty or ambiguity of tone."
CGV entry 14:142.
CGV entry 14:145. A comparison of 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' and Robert Lowell's recent rendering of Juvenal.
Press of Case Western Reserve University
Johnson organized poetic thought through massive couplet paragraphs, a practice allowing for a looser internal couplet order than Pope while maintaining an impression of command and control. Analysis of The Vanity of Human Wishes demonstrates how Johnson subdivided larger sections into specific vignettes, such as the failure of the senses in old age, using couplet breaks to define shifts in subject matter. While individual couplets often display inner irregularities—such as misplaced repeated terms or asymmetrical parallelisms—the large-scale arrangement of these segments creates a dense discursive texture. Johnson typically related new segments to preceding material in ways that cast earlier statements in a different light, augmenting the weight and relevance of each part. This method reflects a diminished version of the couplet form compared to earlier masters, as Johnson transitioned the medium toward a more Orphic, non-interactive style of address.
Thorpe challenges the critical equation of unity with greatness, asserting that Augustan poetry often lacks design. Regarding The Vanity of Human Wishes, Thorpe highlights structural flaws such as fragmented remarks on wealth and an unbalanced section on learning. He argues that Johnson regresses toward the satura arrangement of Roman satire. Thorpe attributes this nonstructure to the self-contained nature of the couplet and the influence of Horace. He suggests that the informed reader's awareness of Johnson’s personal agonies empowers the poem's fragmented emotional intensity.
CGV entry 14:148. 'The Vanity of Human Wishes' is discussed.
Johnson's London and its Juvenalian Texts
Bloom and Bloom analyze Johnson's London, arguing that his poetic and scholarly mastery of Juvenal's Third Satire and its contemporary annotations shaped the poem. Johnson wrote his Latin text from memory, using the Farnaby-Prateus tradition as his base, but his understanding was guided by the comprehensive 1684 Schrevelius variorum edition. This scholarship informed his characterization of Thales and the thematic intensification of London's vice, enabling him to achieve a "translation with latitude" by adapting Juvenal's themes (e.g., crime, foreigners, poverty) to Georgian England with moral and political force.
Johnson's 'Mournful Narrative': The Rhetoric of 'London'
Johnson adapts the Roman satiric tradition by transforming the persona of Umbricius into Thales, a character defined as a 'rhetorician-philosopher.' Unlike the passionate and often hysterical Umbricius, Thales employs an articulate, coherent, and hortatory style that emphasizes moral realism and social action. The poem uses a 'double-barreled' classical proposition, where the depiction of urban depravity necessitates the speaker’s exile. Johnson replaces Juvenalian black humor and slapstick imagery with a cerebral wit and a religious dedication that tempers pessimism with hope. The linguistic framework includes archaisms and generalized poetic diction to establish a visible antithesis between a virtuous 'golden age' and a corrupt present. This rhetorical shift forces the audience to examine personal ethical principles, moving beyond mere translation to create a uniquely Johnsonian verse satire.
The Demythological Mode in Augustan Verse
Introduces the "demythological mode" as the process by which Augustan poets, serving as heralds for their society, stripped away obsolete myths to proclaim a new mythic authority. This mode drew equally on the classical heraldic tradition and the biblical prophetic tradition of "kerygma" (proclamation). The central action is not merely rejection (demythology) but also reconstitution (proclamation) of a sustaining social myth. For instance, Juvenal demythologized Greek myths by replacing them with contemporary, yet fictionalized, Roman vices ("wrath and tears"). Dryden, viewing himself as Augustus's poet, perfected this mode in political satires like The Medall, exposing false myths (Shaftesbury's medal) to proclaim the myth of inherent monarchical right. Pope, who became disillusioned with the throne, shifted the source of authority, proclaiming a purified, virtuous shadow authority to whom poets should be loyal. Includes a discussion of The Vanity of Human Wishes.
CGV entry 14:151.
Sodalitas Florhofiana: Festgabe für Professor Heinz Haffter
Samuel Johnson's 'London' und Juvenal's dritte Satire
Declamatory Grandeur: Johnson and Juvenal
Kupersmith argues that Johnson successfully captured the stylistic elevation and declamatory grandeur of Juvenal through ornate diction and disciplined versification, improving upon John Dryden's less stately translation. While neo-classical critics focused on style and modernized sentiments, Johnson used distinct rhetorical schemes, latinisms, and personification to match the expressive effects of Latin hexameters in the heroic couplet. Kupersmith challenges the view that Johnson completely Christianized the stoical conclusions of the original Roman satires, demonstrating that the text of The Vanity of Human Wishes relies on monotheistic and pagan framing rather than explicit Christian theology. Johnson aligned Juvenal with Christian ethics primarily by presenting more accessible moral advice and softening rigorous stoic demands.
Langford explores the parallels between Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rasselas and the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes. The works share a focus on life "as a man" rather than as a Christian, with a central concern on finding a "choice of life" in this world. Langford identifies Solomon's and Rasselas's quests for happiness through mirth, wisdom, and prosperity as structurally similar, all concluding in vanity. Furthermore, both the poem and Ecclesiastes shift from a pessimistic outlook to a final note of hope, recommending prayer and duty.
The Journey Down the Great Scale Reflected in Two Neoclassical Elegies
CGV entry 14:157. One of the elegies discussed is Johnson's on Levet.
Samuel Johnson's 'Short Song of Congratulation' and the Accompanying Letter to Mrs. Thrale: The Huntington Library Manuscripts
Weinbrot discusses Johnson's unpublished manuscript notes on Lawrence's Latin lecture, De Natura Animali Dissertatio, written in 1782. The manuscript corrections relate to three parts of the lecture (pages 1–6, 23–32, and 40–43). Johnson's observations, which Lawrence's son, Sir Soulden Lawrence, pasted below his own note on the most perfect copy of the treatise, address style, grammar, and scientific concepts. Weinbrot shows how Johnson suggested clearer Latin terms, employed parallel construction, and enhanced a metaphorical passage, demonstrating his knowledge of medicine, classical skill, and distinctive prose style. The author suggests these notes were a pedagogical supplement for George Strahan's preparation for Oxford.
An Echo of Parnell in Johnson's 'London'
Woodman identifies a literary parallel between Thomas Parnell and Samuel Johnson. He observes that lines 216–217 of Johnson’s poem 'London,' which describe pruning walks and supporting flowers, echo a similar couplet by Parnell. The verbal similarity suggests Johnson’s familiarity with and potential borrowing from Parnell’s imagery regarding the cultivation of garden spaces.
CGV entry 14:160. An echo of Parnell's "Health: An Eclogue."
Johnson's London and the Tools of Scholarship
Bloom and Bloom argue that Johnson's London and its theme of "sudden fate" were profoundly shaped by the scholarly apparatus and popular translations of Juvenal's Third Satire. Johnson's persona, Thales, is presented as a man of science and philosophy, adapting Umbricius' exile to a Christian (not Stoic) resolve. Johnson uses secondary sources like Holyday and Oldham to amplify Juvenal's obscenities (e.g., turning the Saburra into a "common shore"). The Roman's catalog of vices is intellectualized in London, focusing on moral crimes (e.g., perjury, plagiarism) rather than material theft, and culminates in an appeal to conscience.
Reinterpretations: Essays on Poems by Milton, Pope and Johnson
Hardy disputes the dismissal of Johnson's London as a mere "Latinist's exercise," arguing instead that the poem possesses a "distinctive theme" and "original" rhetorical validity. The text explores how Johnson adapts Juvenal’s third satire to create a "political satire" specifically targeting the "corruption" of Walpole’s administration. Hardy identifies the figure of Orgilio as a representation of Walpole, noting that "whoever shares Orgilio's crimes, his fortune shares." The abstract contrast between city and country is used to position the country as the "logical home" for the "true Briton" against a "degenerate" metropolis "overrun with foreigners." Hardy emphasizes Johnson's "poet's sense of history," contrasting a "glorious past" under Alfred and Elizabeth with an "inglorious present" of excise and "slavish tenets." The study concludes that the poem’s contrapuntal organization successfully links "social and political immorality" to a causal relationship with a "corrupt administration."
Extemporaneous Verses by Johnson and Baretti
McKenzie provides the full text of Baretti's Italian verses and Johnson’s poetic response, "Rispossa," located in a commonplace-book in the Furness collection. He dates the exchange likely after Baretti’s 1866 return to London and notes that Johnson’s lines play with and distrust the spontaneity and stimulants praised by Baretti. The text settles a query dating back to 1858 regarding the location and content of these manuscripts.
The Creative Critic: Johnson's Revisions of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Moody examines Johnson’s critical impulses not in the abstract formulations of his prose but through the revisions of his two major poems, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. Despite Johnson's self-portrayal as a hasty writer driven by "necessity," textual evidence, particularly the manuscript drafts of Vanity and London, reveals careful and thorough revision. For Vanity, Johnson made changes in over a hundred of 368 lines between the manuscript draft (November 1748) and the first edition (January 1749). The surviving London manuscript sheet shows about thirty alterations in 76 lines. Johnson's revisions generally work for greater strength, precision, and a "decorum of sense." Changes in London range from political expediency (e.g., Sejano to Orgilio) to profound poetic invention, often achieving a fuller rendering of implications with greater economy of means. The revisions in Vanity, conversely, show a more direct moral sense at work, aligning the reviser with the author of The Rambler. Moody argues that while Vanity is superior in its possession of life-like contrasts, the revisions mostly reflect the exercise of judgment rather than the "combating" genius evident in the initial creation, suggesting the poem’s essential life was perfected before it was written down.
Johnson's Poems: Textual and Critical Readings
Moody argues against the authority of textual emendations adopted by modern editors for Johnson’s London and The Vanity of Human Wishes. These readings derive from annotations by Boswell the younger in a 1789 edition, supposedly transcribed from Johnson. Moody analyzes specific variants, demonstrating that the "corrections" are inferior to Johnson’s known revisions and likely originated with Hawkins or others. He concludes that the 1748 text for London and the 1755 text for The Vanity of Human Wishes should remain authoritative.
Johnson's London: The Ironic Framework
Notes on the Prosody of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Vanity and Vacuity: A Reading of Johnson's Verse Satires
On Johnson's verse satires, London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing they subvert conventional satire through Johnson's inherent ontological insecurity. Boyd argues Johnson views mankind as trapped between two infinities ("being and nothingness"), a Pascalian vision where the finite world is inevitably a "clouded maze of fate." Consequently, the fine moral distinctions required by satire blur: the self-condemned "vanity" of human pride constantly merges with the unavoidable "vacuity" of the human condition. In London, Johnson's inability to separate moral evil (man's perversity) from physical evil (nature's miseries) makes satiric discrimination an impossible task. The later, more universal The Vanity of Human Wishes systematically subverts the promises of empirical observation, leading the reader to the ultimate conclusion that vacuity can only be transcended by religion's supplicating voice.
Johnson, Elizabeth Carter and Pope's Garden
Hampshire presents a newly discovered 1738 letter from Elizabeth Carter describing Alexander Pope’s garden at Twickenham. Carter praises the garden’s "artful wildness" and lack of "tedious regularity," confirming the site’s influence on contemporary aesthetic ideals. This correspondence provides biographical context for the Latin epigram "Ad Elisam Popi Horto Lauros carpentem," published in the Gentleman’s Magazine. Evidence from Nicolas Carter’s letters supports the attribution of the epigram to Samuel Johnson, dating the composition to July 1738 and illustrating the burgeoning literary friendship between Johnson and Carter.
CGV entry 14:170. Regarding the Latin verses "Ad Elisam Popi," supposedly by Johnson.
A Poetics of Augustan Elegy: Studies of Poems by Dryden, Pope, Prior, Swift, Gray, and Johnson
Johnson's Moral Elegiacs: Theme and Structure in 'On the Death of Robert Levet'
Mell disputes the assumption that Johnson's "Levet" poem is a simple "poetry of statement." Instead, he identifies a total commitment to artifice that mediates between the idealization of art and the facts of mortality. Johnson transforms the actual "obscure practiser in physic" into a symbolic man of good works, drawing on a literary ancestry that includes Pope and Gray. Mell argues that Levet's "narrow round" of virtue is challenged by the "ironic road" of mortality, where the "vital chain" of life is broken by nature. The speaker achieves a "moment of reality redeemed from time" through imaginative idealization. Mell describes the poem as a "drama of sincerity," where the formal ordering of experience depends on a constant presence of critical intelligence, providing a release from the tragic necessity of time.
CGV entry 14:171. First published in Genre (1972).
Neoclassical Defensive Techniques in the Verse of Swift and Johnson Dealing with the Theme of Christianus perfectus
A Reading of the Basic Images in The Vanity of Human Wishes
A Concordance to the Poems of Samuel Johnson
Naugle and Sherry present a computer-generated word index based primarily on the 1941 Oxford edition of Johnson’s poems by Smith and McAdam, supplemented by the 1964 Yale edition. The work is divided into three distinct concordances: English poems (including transliterated Greek and a French distich), Latin poems, and poems of doubtful attribution. Each section is followed by a frequency table listing vocabularies in descending order of occurrence. Naugle’s preface highlights the "familiar style" of Johnson’s poetic vocabulary, noting that his twenty-five most frequent nouns are predominantly monosyllabic and of Anglo-Saxon origin, such as "love," "life," "hand," and "heart." The editorial apparatus includes cross-references for eighteenth-century variant spellings and excludes thirty-four "nonsignificant" English particles from context listings. Latin poems are indexed to reflect Johnson’s "high moral seriousness," with "vita," "pater," and "deus" appearing with high frequency. The concordance uses a modified PL-1 program to manage variants and line repetitions.
"It is hard to see what purpose is served by a concordance to a body of poetry that can be read through at a sitting. However, Helen Naugle's Concordance ... is undeniably accurate, having been put together by an IBM 360 'using PL-1 programming language to take advantage of a number of improvements now available with this equipment.'"
CGV entry 14:176.
Wain disputes the traditional view that Johnson was primarily a prose-writer, arguing instead that he was a natural poet whose imaginative power often found freer expression in prose than in verse. Wain examines London and The Vanity of Human Wishes as 'imitations' that demonstrate Johnson's solidarity with 18th-century literary culture through complex allusiveness. He notes that while Johnson lacked the soaring imagination of a novelist, he possessed a concentrated 'moral imagination' that distilled personal truth into universal statements. Wain highlights the elegy on Robert Levet as a unique instance where Johnson speaks with 'entire directness' without a controlling persona. The essay maintains that Johnson's strength as an artist derives directly from his character and his ability to represent 'general nature' through a weighty, generalizing style that manages to 'blend a high degree of concreteness and visuality.'
White disputes the common critical description of Rasselas as "a Vanity of Human Wishes in prose," arguing the poem and tale are strikingly contrasted in theme and language. The Vanity of Human Wishes focuses on the personal ambitions and afflictions of political, military, and intellectual prowess, motivated by a sense of bitterness and frustrated ambition. The verse is emphatic and definitive, creating an atmosphere of oppression with its driving force of irresistible power and subsequent overwhelming destruction or disease. By contrast, Rasselas is concerned with the universal search for understanding and fulfillment, employing haunting and inconclusive rhetoric that leaves the reader ready for the perpetual experiment of life. The exceptional treatment of Charles XII in the poem, however, is noted as a passage that more closely resembles the detached and inward spirit of Rasselas.
CGV entry 14:178.
Poet and Moralist: Dr. Johnson's Elegiac Art and 'On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet'
The Style of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Amis analyzes the style of The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing that its unique emotional power, or pathos, stems from a rigorously controlled style that functions as a defense against despair through courageous manliness. The poem's structure, relying on episodic examples and rhetorical closure, creates a sense of detachment, while the verse exhibits extreme metrical "correctness" that surpasses Dryden and Pope in its consistent patterning. Amis demonstrates that Johnson employs a higher concentration of certain prosodic traits, such as specific caesura locations and stress patterns, suggesting directness and art without decor. Furthermore, the diction is notably non-Germanic and highly Romance, and this high lexical density and Romance etymology contribute to a formal, elevated language akin to "heroic speech" that creates a formality of detachment and distance. This controlled, authoritative voice generates a tragic irony against the futility of the world and disputes optimistic readings of the conclusion. The final paragraph offers a psychological remedy rather than a solution, suggesting that the poem culminates in an austere acceptance where celestial wisdom makes the happiness she does not find within the mind.
Poetry of Civilization: Mythopoeic Displacement in the Verse of Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson
Budick examines Samuel Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes" as a definitive Augustan exercise in mythopoeic displacement. Following the tradition of Juvenal and Persius, Johnson uses a dialectical strategy to dismantle false human myths—specifically the self-deluding vows and ambitions of mortals—and replace them with "celestial wisdom." Budick argues that while Johnson's poem is modeled on Juvenal's Tenth Satire, it radically shifts from Stoic prudentia to a Christian framework, influenced heavily by the "Pisgah-sight" and redemptive archetypes of Milton's Paradise Lost. Johnson's "extensive view" functions as a prayer for unobstructed vision, superimposing a divine perspective onto the "clouded maze of fate." By substituting figures like Wolsey for Sejanus, Johnson illustrates the catastrophic results of choosing temporal over spiritual foundations. Ultimately, Johnson redirects the "hunger of imagination" from "hasty greatness" toward a "happier seat" found through faith and resignation to divine power. The poem concludes not with a rejection of myth, but with the proclamation of an "indwelling spirit" that restores the "bond of true conviction" essential to civilized existence.
Goldberg disputes the assertion that Augustan literature lacks tragic capacity, specifically challenging Leavis's claim regarding the age's "utter incapacity" for the tragic. Focusing on Johnson and Pope, Goldberg argues that Augustan forms and "social and rational conventions" do not preclude tragic realization but rather provide a medium for it. He posits that Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and "Rasselas" enact a tragic sense of life by struggling with the "hunger of imagination" and the "universal fatality" of human wishing. Goldberg concludes that Augustan poetry finds tragic realities within its ordered social modes through an "exploratory-creative" use of language.
CGV entry 14:182.
On Johnson's funeral writings, including his epitaphs and the elegy "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet," in the context of his critical views on the genres. Johnson valued epitaphs for their moral function—to perpetuate imitable private virtue and rouse emulation—and insisted they, and elegies, should avoid paganism and excessive artifice, emphasizing real passion and simplicity. Griffin argues that the Levet elegy, Johnson's finest, successfully combines the simplicity and directness of elegy with the moral restraint and focus on unpretentious virtue characteristic of epitaph. This blend reflects Johnson's own ambivalence about death: acknowledging natural grief while asserting Christian fortitude.
CGV entry 14:183.
Mell analyzes the unique characteristics of Augustan elegiac poetry, focusing on the inherent conflict between the idealizing power of the imagination and the sobering reality of time and mortality. This monograph asserts that for Augustan poets, the creative act serves as a defense against temporal loss, creating an "internal ordering" that rescues reality from the destructiveness of death. Mell identifies a "miniaturization" in the mode, where complex human emotions are reduced to a small scale while simultaneously pushing toward larger universal entities. Specifically, the chapter on Johnson examines how the "moral elegiacs" in his tribute to Robert Levet transform a humble general practitioner into a symbolic "man of good works." Johnson's "critical intelligence" and total commitment to artifice reconcile conflicting oppositions through the "permanence of form." Mell disputes the notion that Johnson avoids fictions, arguing instead that Johnson uses literary convention to achieve a "moment of reality redeemed from time." The volume also explores elegiac strategies in the works of Dryden, Pope, Prior, Swift, and Gray, maintaining that the Augustan elegy is "its own subject" and a medium for scrutinizing the validity of art.
Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, 79–90
Siebert identifies the central image of falling in lines 79-90, connecting the statesman’s decline to the broader theme of fortune’s wheel and the Christian Fall. He argues that Johnson reduces the fallen politician to a mere "painted face" on a portrait, symbolizing superficiality and false worship. Through an analysis of puns on "smoke" and "sold," Siebert demonstrates how Johnson exposes the statesman's loss of agency. The shift from human subjects to synecdochic objects like "growing names" illustrates how false ambition conditions and devalues individuals.
CGV entry 14:185. Entry number 63.
Donaldson examines the rhetorical strategies of Augustan satirists in representing London, focusing on the manipulation of detail to establish credibility rather than literal truth. He compares Juvenal's third satire and Johnson's imitation, London, noting the deliberate exaggeration and the poet's ambiguous stance on the city's vices and virtues. Donaldson analyzes how poets like Oldham, Pope, Smollett, and Blake select and present facts about city crowds, falling houses, and the Thames, demonstrating that the satirist's skill lies in making the presented case, whether idealized or sordid, appear believable.
CGV entry 14:186. Includes a discussion of 'London'.
Johnson's Corrections of Lines 137–138 of The Vanity of Human Wishes
'More like an Orator than a Philosopher': Rhetorical Structure in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes possesses a sophisticated rhetorical structure, countering claims of mere enumeration. Johnson closely follows and refines the design of Juvenal's Tenth Satire, which derives from classical rhetoric. The poem uses a tri-partite structure for each "vain wish": a general statement of the folly, a major historical example (e.g., Wolsey, Charles XII), and a concluding summation with minor examples. Johnson employs rhetorical techniques like the enthymeme (maxims) and example (narratio) to prove that all human desires, except virtue, lead to misery.
Rhetoric as Metaphor in The Vanity of Human Wishes
McGlynn examines the rhetorical style of The Vanity of Human Wishes as a microcosm of Johnson's larger moral and philosophical structure. The poem is viewed as essentially a catalog of vain human wishes (wealth, preferment, learning, military power, long life, beauty), serving the rhetorical purpose of suggesting exhaustiveness and proving the general truth that human wishes are vain. Johnson's philosophy, characterized by a focus on general truths and a scorn for puny exceptions, aligns with his rhetorical choice of cataloging. The poem's fundamental rhetorical units, often individual lines or couplets, function as little catalogs or "rhetoric as metaphor," where the list or series is emblematic of the general truth (e.g., wealth involving "the knowing and the bold," linking the "hireling ruffian" and the "hireling judge"). McGlynn argues that this catalogic rhetoric stems as much from Johnson's moral purpose—to survey a spectrum of general moral possibilities—as from the conventions of the closed heroic couplet, which naturally inclines toward parallels and antitheses. The structure of the poem's major sections (e.g., "Preferment") mirrors the whole: anatomy of a general cycle, dismissal of idealism, detailed exemplar (Wolsey), and admonitory conclusion. This approach demonstrates how Johnson's moral purpose and sense of general truth drive the poem's constant use of suggestion diversity, where an abstract pattern (the rhetoric) unifies diverse manifestations of human folly (the moral view).
A Festschrift for Edgar Ronald Seary: Essays in English Language and Literature presented by Colleagues and Former Students
O'Flaherty challenges contemporary critical views of Johnson's London by asserting the authenticity of its emotional energy. Disputing Howard D. Weinbrot's assessment of the poem as a vigilante's conscious exaggeration for social reform, O'Flaherty argues that Johnson transforms Juvenal's Third Satire into a focused political indictment of the Walpole administration. By replacing the cynical Umbricius with the idealistic Thales, Johnson realigns the narrative perspective to emphasize the neglect of merit and the displacement of rustic English virtues by urban corruption. O'Flaherty maintains that the poem's perceived aesthetic flaws, such as redundant phrasing and impetuous transitions, actually reflect the artless outrage and personal anguish of the young provincial writer. Ultimately, the article defines London not as a contriving satire using a mask, but as a sincere expression of indignation that transcends its topical origins through passion and stubborn individuality.
Ex Alieno Ingenio Poeta: Johnson's Translation of Pope's Messiah
Johnson's Latin translation of Alexander Pope's Messiah (1728) reveals the young author's emerging critical and poetic sensibilities. Johnson expanded Pope's couplets into hexameters, demonstrating an organizing principle based on the heroic couplet, unlike Virgil. He consistently used clarifying and concretizing detail and adjusted Pope's epithets to eliminate "florid epithets, and useless circumlocutions," thereby correcting the original's perceived weaknesses. Furthermore, Johnson modified Pope's treatment of non-Christian deities and the Messiah's relationship to nature, introducing a more martial and apocalyptic tone consistent with orthodox Christianity.
The Roles of Swift and Marlborough in The Vanity of Human Wishes
In Vanity Johnson implicitly alludes to Marlborough in the opening section on war (lines 175-90), with details drawn directly from Swift's political tracts, particularly The Conduct of the Allies. Johnson compresses Swift's arguments concerning the immense cost of Marlborough's fame to the nation, which is impoverished by the National Debt. This contemporary political element enhances the poem's immediacy. The explicit naming of Marlborough and Swift in the section on old age and death links their shared fate of senility, transforming the poem from Juvenalian satire into a Christian tragedy by emphasizing the dread pathos of their ends and Johnson's personal identification, particularly with Swift.
Lipking argues that Johnson's favorite allegory, "The Vision of Theodore" (1748), serves as an "entrance into the science" of reading his later works, especially The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749). "Theodore," composed for a primer, uses explicit Stoic-Christian allegory (derived from Prodicus and Cebes) to instruct the fledgling scholar in making the "Choice of Hercules" for Virtue over Pleasure. The vision's gloomy climax—Theodore trapped by Habit in the Caverns of Despair—reflects Johnson's fear of indolence and the fragility of human resolve, despite instruction. Both "Theodore" and the Vanity present life as a hard, allegorical journey filled with seductive "phantoms," demonstrating that Johnson's literary vision, while demanding instruction, remains steeped in irony and the self-revising lessons of experience.
Sherbo cites John Noorthouck's New History of London and the Gentleman's Magazine to assert that the danger of "falling houses" mentioned in Johnson's poem was a known, real threat to Londoners in 1738 and 1751, challenging the idea that the historical truth is unimportant. Sherbo argues that London readers knew the falling houses reference to be true, and suggests focusing on Johnson's witty exaggerations like the "female atheist" for non-factual dangers.
CGV entry 14:196. On 'London'.
Weinbrot dsputes the modern critical view that Juvenal's praise of the country in the Third Satire is ironic, and that Johnson missed this irony in his imitation, London. He argues that the country in Juvenal's poem is consistently presented as a positive norm, an emblem of old Roman values, contrasted with the corruption of Rome. Weinbrot cites the textual evidence that makes the "mastery of a single lizard" and hospitality to "one hundred Pythagoreans" morally superior to urban servitude. He also confirms a unanimous 200-year tradition among Latin, French, and English commentators, translators, and imitators who all read the country sections as nonironic. Johnson's own revisions to London and his later comments, where he praises his friend's retirement to Cumae, indicate he regarded the country's appeal as clear and positive.
Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, lines 285–290
Becker examines the essential originality of Johnson’s addition of avarice to the old age section of The Vanity of Human Wishes, a theme absent from Juvenal’s Tenth Satire. Johnson likely suppressed Juvenal's graphic descriptions of disease and social satire for reasons of taste, substituting a moral lesson on the Christian sin of avarice. Becker suggests Johnson’s "Dotard" counts himself to death due to unconscious recollections of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, which saw frequent London productions during Johnson's early career.
'And Swift' Expires a Driv'ler and a Show'
Duthie provides evidence from the Gentleman's Magazine supporting the historical basis for Johnson’s claim that Swift was exhibited for money during his final years. A 1743 poem note asserted that Swift’s servants showed him to spectators for a penny, leading his friends to seek a Commission of Lunacy. Duthie argues Johnson likely encountered this rumor while contributing to the magazine, noting the report was current and publicly denied even before Swift's death.
To The Vanity of Human Wishes through the 1740s
Sitter explores the shift in Johnson's voice from the "harsh satire" of London to the "solemnity" of The Vanity of Human Wishes as a response to broader poetic changes in the 1740s. He argues the later poem's voice is prophetic and impersonal, driven by an invoked personification, "Observation," a move away from the conversational/epistolary mode. The poem reflects five key contemporary shifts: Epistle to Ode, Persona to Personification, Clarity to Obscurity (syntactic difficulty, misty settings), Conversationalist to Solitary, and Aggression to Solace. This new voice, avoiding Popean aggression and courting argument, is more focused on an inexorable message of consolation, sharing obscurity with the reader.
The Opening of 'The Vanity of Human Wishes': Johnson's Observation and the Elevated Manner
Horne argues that the opening couplet of The Vanity of Human Wishes is not tautological, as criticized by Coleridge and Byron, but effectively establishes the poem's quality through a blend of elevation and precision in concept and style. The personification of "Observation" functions as an "enquiry" rooted in the new epistemology of scientific observation, demanding the reader actively "survey" mankind from a detached, elevated stance. The geographical sweep "from China to Peru" updates Juvenal's scope and carries specific cultural and historical weight for contemporary readers: China representing ancient civilization and a philosophical ideal, and Peru representing a utopian society destroyed by European greed. Horne contends that the poem's vision and depth are deeply Miltonic as well as Juvenalian, drawing on the "Mount of Wisdom" topos found in Milton's epics and a long tradition of philosophical and religious writing. The structure proceeds by an alternation of abstraction and concrete image, moving towards an increasingly informed and personal understanding for the reader.
Democritus Laughs for Samuel Johnson: A Plain Reading of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Echoes of Pope in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Pope’s Epistle to Robert Earl of Oxford served as a primary model for The Vanity of Human Wishes. Beyond established borrowings, Downie identifies numerous verbal and thematic echoes concerning death, friendship, and the "follies of the wise." He suggests Johnson’s poem reflects a deep awareness of Pope’s communication rather than mere allusion. Separately, Woodruff analyzes an ironic echo of Dryden’s "To Congreve" in Johnson’s Drury Lane prologue.
Johnson's Affirmation of Faith through the Vehicle of Time in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Hart argues that in The Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson uses the omniscient present tense as a "vehicle of time" to affirm Christian faith. The poem's opening invites a "panoramic view of time and space" where human actions are instantly seen as complete, leading to inevitable affliction. This "forever present" creates a dynamic tension: the past wish is inexorably linked to the future disappointment ("A causes B"). The culmination of this bleak secular vision is the climactic couplet asking if helpless man must "Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate." The final lines deny this nihilism, asserting that right, Christian wishes for faith, patience, and a resigned will resolve the tension, yielding happiness as their inevitable, eternal consequence.
Life in the Maze: Johnson's Use of Chiasmus in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Macandrew analyzes Johnson's use of chiasmus in The Vanity of Human Wishes to express the poem's central paradox: that all worldly aspirations, whether virtuous or vicious, inevitably lead to defeat. By extending this inverted parallelism across entire passages, Johnson structurally constructs the "clouded maze of fate," forcing the "Inquirer" to despair. The conventional chiasmus in the final Christian coda provides an antithetical structure, resolving the worldly paradox by offering spiritual peace and trust in God rather than demanding an impossible change in the world's conditions.
On the Literary Value of Samuel Johnson's Latin Verse
Aden suggests Alexander Pope’s Windsor Forest (lines 283 ff) serves as an analogue for this passage. Specifically, Aden points out verbal parallels, noting Johnson's use of "scenic" corresponding to Pope's "Scenes," and Johnson's "radiance" relating to Pope's "Lustre" (vv. 62; 290).
CGV entry 14:212. In 'London'.
The Eagle and the Arrow: Reading the Preamble of The Vanity of Human Wishes
Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
CGV entry 14:215. On Johnson's poem 'Festina Lente'.
Johnson's London: An Unrecorded Criticism by Mrs. Piozzi
Johnson's use of questions in The Vanity of Human Wishes is a central rhetorical strategy rooted in ancient rhetoric, contemporary psychology, and pedagogy. This method, a "generous poetics of reciprocity," engages the reader in a self-schooling dialogue, moving them through various roles and wishes to ultimately dismiss worldly ambition and seek celestial wisdom. Weinbrot contrasts Johnson's benevolently guided search for religious truth with Juvenal's stoic, democritean mockery and self-reliance, which he notes culminates in a final looking inward rather than upward.
The Printing and Publishing of Johnson's Marmor Norfolciense (1739) and London (1738 and 1739)
Barker investigates the printing history of Marmor Norfolciense and London. Challenging previous attributions to John Brett or Edward Cave, Barker uses typographical evidence—specifically ornaments and house styling—to identify Thomas Gardner as the printer of Marmor and the first four editions of London. The article explores the business relationship between Gardner and Cave, suggesting that political caution and workload distribution prompted Cave to delegate these projects to Gardner while retaining a publishing interest.
CGV entry 14:219.
Finch disputes Bate’s dismissal of London as a breezy money-spinner, suggesting instead that the poem suffers from immaturity and ill-defined feeling. The work reflects Johnson’s insecurity as an alien with a rustic tongue facing city sophistication. Finch identifies a conflict between Johnson the talented writer seeking success and Johnson the moralist who views virtue as renunciatory. While the Thales persona allows Johnson to reject the city in theory but stay in practice, the poem remains demonstrably uneven. Finch concludes that the work mirrors Augustan uncertainties regarding the personal cost of achievement.
The Use of Personified Abstractions in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Cohen argues for a "personal reading" of The Vanity of Human Wishes, interpreting the poem as a tragic work rather than a strictly satiric imitation of Juvenal. He posits that the text aligns with the de casibus virorum illustrium tradition—the fall of great men—while emphasizing that human suffering is an inevitable consequence of natural aspiration rather than mere folly. By comparing Johnson’s "uniform stateliness" and compassion to Juvenal’s flippancy and "unholy relish," Cohen suggests the poem occupies the tragic end of the literary spectrum, where man is viewed more as a victim of complexity than an agent of vice. He concludes that the final Christian consolation does not negate the preceding 342 lines of "tragic loss" but serves as a palliative for the inherent disappointments of the human condition.
CGV entry 14:224. On the influence of 'Samson Agonistes' on 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
'To His Very Faults': Notes on Dryden, Johnson, and Juvenal's Third Satire
London and the Fundamental Problem of Hermeneutics
Weinsheimer offers a theoretically informed analysis of the poem London, examining it as an occasional imitation of Juvenal's third satire to explore the hermeneutic concept of application. The essay positions the poem within the philosophical debate between E. D. Hirsch and Hans-Georg Gadamer regarding whether interpretation can exist independently of application. Weinsheimer challenges Hirsch's separation of invariant meaning from changing significance, using Johnson's poem to demonstrate that interpretation and application occur simultaneously through analogy. The essay argues that Johnson did not merely reconstruct a dead past but validated the truth-claim of the original satire by applying it directly as a critique of his own historical situation, thereby illustrating Gadamer's fusion of horizons.
More Echoes of Pope in Johnson's Poetry (?)
Battersby proposes new instances of Pope’s influence on Johnson’s verse, arguing for the "unpremeditated assimilation" of Popean rhythms. He identifies a parallel between the conclusion of Eloisa to Abelard and Johnson’s lines on Claudy Phillips. Furthermore, he compares Pope’s description of "bubbles on the sea of Matter" in An Essay on Man to Johnson’s depiction of ambitious suppliants in The Vanity of Human Wishes who "mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall." Battersby analyzes "evaporate" as a polysemous term in Johnson’s Dictionary, suggesting the line conflates fire and water imagery to illustrate the transience of wealth and greatness.
Cullum argues that Johnson's "Augustanism" is an elusive quality, as his creative work is more questioning and unsettling than the period's fixed abstractions. Johnson's art does not "accept" or endorse the finality of categorical order. He repeatedly rejected philosophizing, seeing life as neither ordered nor neatly regular. The retort to Boswell to "clear your mind of cant" exemplifies his rejection of merely notional views. In Rasselas, Johnson explores the tension between an irreducible need to hope ("hope itself is happiness") and life's frustrations, offering a critique of naive attitudes toward life. The tale avoids dogma, acknowledging the mind's capacity for self-delusion, and finds a cure for "madness" in the return to the varied business of society. The final choices of the travelers are re-dressings of their previous imaginings, highlighting the impossibility of a final choice or conclusion.
CGV entry 14:228. On Vanity and Rasselas.
Sherbo substantiates the historical accuracy of Johnson's poetic imagery regarding urban decay. Examination of the Gentleman's Magazine between 1751 and 1800 identifies seventeen specific instances of structural collapse in London and provincial areas. Findings confirm fifty-two fatalities resulting from these incidents. Analysis reveals a high concentration of collapses in impoverished districts, including Southwark and Whitechapel, though new constructions also failed. Sherbo argues Johnson's descriptions reflect a pervasive, documented danger rather than mere poetic license.
'On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet' in Context
Wiltshire situates Johnson's elegy for Robert Levet within its late eighteenth-century social and medical context to investigate the specific experiences compacted in the poem's abstractions. Contrasting Mrs. Thrale's class-based disdain for Levet with Johnson's warm designation of him as a "friend," Wiltshire argues that the poem actively subverts contemporary social and intellectual hierarchies. Johnson specifically praises Levet’s lack of professional "show" and his alacrity in serving the poor, thereby leveling a subdued critique against the exclusive, Latinate monopoly of the College of Physicians.
Johnson's Intentions in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Chapin defends Johnson's conclusion to Vanity, arguing the final assertion, "Secure whate'er he gives, [God] gives the best," is a logical statement of Christian faith and not a naive or weak response. Chapin contends this assertion contrasts with the secular, man-made values rejected throughout the poem, including the self-reliance of Stoicism. Johnson chose the "imitation" mode to explicitly express the difference between ancient philosophy and the "modern fact" of Christianity.
The Vanity of Human Wishes: Satire Foiled or Achieved?
Vanity succeeds as satire, directly opposing the "satire manqué" theory of Bate and the criticisms of others. The poem's satiric tone is established by the presence of Democritus and theatrical imagery, which diminish human vanity. A secondary satiric attack is directed at the malicious retainers and sycophants who seek personal gain from others' downfalls. The major examples of vain human desire (for power, fame, glory, long life) are presented in diminishing portraits, underscoring the poem's relentless, unextenuated censure of human folly.
The Poet and the City: A Study in Urban Perspectives
Johnston explores how eighteenth-century poets depicted the emerging commercial metropolis through the lens of the topographical and georgic traditions. While Pope's Windsor-Forest presents London as an idealized, conceptual "city of light" devoid of physical grit, Swift's "Descriptions" sardonically invert georgic conventions to focus on "mundane realities" like gutter debris and "lowly drudges." Johnston highlights Gay's Trivia as an extended georgic parody that captures the "wonderfully multifarious imperfections" of street life with affirmative warmth but lacks a unitive moral principle. In contrast, Johnson's London is analyzed as a strictly Juvenalian imitation that serves as a "formalized illustration of moral depravity." Johnston notes that while Johnson's prose reveals a deep awareness of London's "wonderful immensity," his poetry employs a generic scale of vice to characterize the city as the historical counterpart of decadent Rome. Thales's departure for Wales is identified as an early instance of "urban alienation."
Means identifies a parallel between Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes and Oldham’s Satire III: Loyola's Will. He notes verbal similarities in descriptions of senile, moribund men and argues that the echo results from Johnson’s retentive memory rather than conscious borrowing. Means observes that Boswell previously noted Oldham’s influence on Johnson’s adaptations of Juvenal, though Boswell emphasized Johnson’s relative originality.
CGV entry 14:235. An echo in 'The Vanity of Human Wishes'.
A Poem of Joy: On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet
Vance argues against the critical tendency to focus on Johnson’s personal grief in On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet, contending that this is an unwarranted and diversionary reading. Instead, the poem is an expression of joy and hope, presenting Levet not as a dying old man but as a spiritual force and moral exemplar. Johnson, through the vivid metaphor of the "delusive mine" of human existence, uses Levet's life of selfless toil and virtue to demonstrate a means of escaping or being reconciled to life's misery. Levet's single talent was well employed, and his death is presented as an ascension to a rightful, eternal reward, reinforcing the virtuous themes of The Vanity of Human Wishes.
The Prophetic Strain: The Greater Lyric in the Eighteenth Century
Satire into Lyric: The Vanity of Human Wishes
Williams argues that Johnson's poem is fundamentally a lyric organized to trace the "subtle movements of a particularized and precisely located consciousness." The article disputes the view of the work as a mere "poetry of statement," instead highlighting a "complex, unobtrusive metaphorical harmony" that provides formal coherence. Williams identifies the poem as an "impersonal, rhetorical" lyric where the speaker plays "Virgil to our Dante," guiding the audience through an "Inferno" of earthly experience. The text emphasizes Johnson's departure from Juvenal in the final twenty lines, which Williams describes as a "revisionary ratio" that completes the precursor's work through Christian revelation. By "reshaping certain materials by a new and palpably distinct consciousness," Johnson produces a work of "secular prophecy" that achieves the "prophetic strain" envisioned in Milton's Il Penseroso. Williams concludes that we accept Johnson's voice as prophetic because it is "so obviously the voice of human experience."
Johnson's Use of Oldham in His Version of Horace, Odes IV. VII
Clingham argues that Johnson used Oldham’s poem Bion as a primary model for his translation of Horace’s Ode 4.7. While Johnson transforms Oldham’s specific pastoral lament into a broader meditation on human mortality, he retains the linguistic "accent" and structural juxtaposition between nature's renewal and man's finality. Clingham asserts that this creative fusion of Horatian epicureanism and Christian gravity reflects Johnson’s personal confrontation with death at the end of his life, shifting the focus from individual loss to universal experience.
Satire and the 'Tragic Quartet' in The Vanity of Human Wishes
Kniskern argues against the dominant critical view that Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes is a "tragical satire" eliciting pity. He contends the poem functions as a successful satire from beginning to end, using an elaborate ironic structure to expose the moral culpability and irrationality of worldly ambition. The "tragic quartet"—Wolsey, Charles XII, Xerxes, and Charles Albert—are not admirable heroes but figures whose feverish pride, impiety, and military destruction are satirized through irony, submerged images, and humiliating reversals. Kniskern argues they illustrate the folly of pursuing temporal power and wealth (Wolsey's reliance on kings, Charles XII's desertion, Xerxes' madness) when judged against the true, spiritual value expressed in the poem's conclusion.
Perkins explores the influence of Johnson and Augustan poetry on modern poets, particularly Eliot and Yeats. The perception of Johnson as part of a continuous Augustan tradition (Dryden, Pope, Johnson) is common among modern poets. Yeats derived a certain type of occasional, reflective, and commemorative poem from this tradition, passed on to Auden. The Movement poets (Larkin, Davie, Gunn) gravitated toward Augustan values—rationality, common sense, and responsibility to an audience—as a reaction against Romanticism. Augustan satire, especially Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, influenced Modernists like Pound and Lowell. Eliot's early work, including deleted sections of The Waste Land, was deeply influenced by Pope and Goldsmith. Eliot himself, whom critics called "The Harvard Sam Johnson," saw a continuity of "wit" and a "prose tradition in poetry" running from Donne through Dryden to Johnson. Eliot valued Johnson as both a critic and a "dangerous person to disagree with."
CGV entry 14:243.
Johnson's Proper Irony in London and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Johnson's philosophical irony, which demands transcendence, distinguishes his work. It contrasts the "analytical irony" of London, which is undermined by an inconsistent normative design, with the superior "philosophical irony" of The Vanity of Human Wishes. The poem successfully integrates satirical and philosophical irony, moving beyond normative judgment to explore human fate, error, and the insufficiency of reason. Johnson's conclusion in Vanity offers faith as the sole transcendence for the bleak truths revealed by ironic apprehension, transforming, but not denying, them.
Thales's Departure in Johnson's London
Varney analyzes the logistical and symbolic implications of Thales’s departure in Johnson's poem. Unlike the later overland journey of Savage to Wales, Thales departs from Greenwich via a wherry on an ebb tide to board a coasting vessel. Varney argues Johnson’s choice of an easterly, sea-bound route—typically used for transporting coal or agricultural goods—underscores Thales’s extreme social and financial degradation. This dismal coastwise voyage contrasts with the relatively more comfortable stagecoach journey undertaken by Savage in 1739.
Irene: A Tragedy: As It Is Acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane
Johnson’s first lengthy original work, begun around 1736 at Edial. Drawing primarily on Richard Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turks, Johnson completed the play in Lichfield by summer 1737. After revisions through the 1740s, Mahomet and Irene opened at Drury Lane on February 6, 1749, running for nine nights. Johnson published the work as Irene: A Tragedy on February 16, 1749, anonymously. Johnson sold the copyright for £100. An unauthorized Dublin edition, printed by S. Powell, appeared in 1749. The title was changed to Mahomet and Irene on playbills, and the onstage strangulation was moved offstage after the second or third night because of audience reaction. Johnson's first draft contained 161 new blank verse lines, which were added during revisions starting no earlier than 1746. The second edition appeared in 1754. A new edition, printed for J. Dodsley, appeared in 1781. The play was subsequently reprinted in John Bell's British Theatre, volumes 14 (1796) and 25 (1797), and Modern British Drama, volume 2 (1811). Johnson’s earlier manuscripts and notes for Irene survive. Irene is contained in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, volume 6, Poems (1964), which reflects manuscript discoveries, including drafts.
CGV entry 15:2. A second edition was published in 1754. The play was reprinted in various editions of Johnson's Works and elsewhere.
Samuel Johnson's Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-Lane in 1747 with Garrick's Epilogue
CGV entry 15:4. A facsimile of the first edition, with a preface by Austin Dobson and introduction and notes by A. S. W. Rosenbach.
The Drury-Lane Prologue by Samuel Johnson
A type-facsimile of the first edition with a one-page introduction.
CGV entry 15:5.
CGV entry 15:6. A type-facsimile.
Prologue Written by Samuel Johnson and Spoken by David Garrick at a Benefit Performance of Comus, April, 1750
CGV entry 15:7. A type-facsimile.
This tragedy, reprinted from the 1749 first edition, depicts the fall of Constantinople and the moral dilemma of the Greek captive Irene. Booth argues that Johnson’s rejection of potentially theatrical elements in favor of dramatizing stern morality contributes to the play’s lack of stage success. The mechanical verse and lack of dramatic movement reflect an uncompromising adherence to the unities and didactic purpose. Johnson disputes the validity of art lacking moral aim, a stance reflected in this pedagogical drama.}
CGV entry 15:9. A facsimile reprint with an introductory note by J. D. Fleeman.
CGV entry 15:20. Praise of 'Irene'. Dated "Kent, Feb. 17."
An Essay on Tragedy, with a Critical Examen of Mahomet and Irene
The author, tentatively identified as Hippisley, grounds his critique of Irene in Aristotelian principles, championing the didactic function of tragedy to impart "sublimest lessons of virtue and morality." The Essay concedes the play's moral merit, noting its encouragement of virtue, but finds its aesthetic execution deficient, characterizing it as a "heap of splendid materials, rather than a regular structure." The central critique asserts that the play lacks Pathos and fails to reach the audience's emotions, concluding that the verse is "non-dramatic." The author strongly objected to Garrick's staging choice of having the catastrophe occur off-stage, finding it a "flagrant absurdity."
A critical examination of Johnson's play 'Irene'.
printed & sold by W. Reeve, in Fleet-Street; and A. Dodd, opposite St. Clement's Church, in the Strand
A Criticism on Mahomet and Irene, in a Letter to the Author
A short quarto pamphlet appearing five days after Johnson's tragedy opened. A swift, anonymous, and harsh critique, written in colloquial style, arguing the play was unrealistic and amateurish, displaying lack of variety in characterization and timidity of expression. The critic targeted Mahomet's characterization and included a heavy-handed spoof of inflated passages, showing unsympathetic opposition to the heroic drama tradition.
[Extract from The Theatres, a Poetical Dissection]
CGV entry 15:23. A verse which includes an attack on 'Irene'.
Cook chronicles the development and failed production of Johnson’s tragedy. Identifying Johnson’s Edial school as a "strange" academy, Cook notes the early relationship between Johnson and his pupil Garrick. Johnson commenced the play in 1736, using Knolles’s History of the Turks as a source. After moving to London, Johnson struggled for ten years to stage the work, while Garrick achieved rapid fame as an actor and manager. Cook describes Johnson’s "envy" and "jealousy" regarding Garrick’s prosperity, leading to frequent "abuse of the actors." Though Garrick produced the play in 1749 with a strong cast including Pritchard and Cibber, it proved "undramatic" and "uninteresting." The audience notably rioted at the onstage strangulation of Pritchard, forcing the "bowstring business" behind the scenes. Despite Garrick’s efforts to keep it on the boards for nine nights to secure Johnson’s benefits, the play was a "decided failure." Cook concludes by noting Johnson’s subsequent withdrawal from the green room to preserve his "philosophical serenity."
Molloy chronicles the composition and production of Johnson's only tragedy, tracing its development from early drafts at Edial to its 1749 premiere at Drury Lane. The narrative details Johnson's arrival in London with "unfinished manuscript" and "twopence-halfpenny," his subsequent labor on the play in Greenwich Park, and its decade-long neglect following initial rejection by Fleetwood. Molloy emphasizes the complex relationship between Johnson and Garrick, noting Johnson's "abuse and jealousy" toward his former pupil's theatrical success. The account records the "anger and alteration" accompanying rehearsals, particularly Johnson’s fury at being "dictated to by a player." Despite Garrick’s efforts to "new dress" the production and provide a "magnificent" Turkish setting, the tragedy failed to achieve permanent success, lasting only nine nights. The text highlights the opening night's near-riot during the onstage strangling of Irene, Johnson's gaily attired presence in a side box, and his eventual philosophical acceptance of the play's "comparative failure." Molloy concludes by noting Johnson's permanent abandonment of dramatic writing and his continued, albeit wary, friendship with Garrick.
CGV entry 15:26. Paper read at Chingford, September 25, 1886.
Criticizes the astronomical accuracy of Johnson's Irene, specifically the lines placing the Pleiades in the "frozen north." Attributes the error to a confusion between the Pleiades and the Great Bear (Ursa Major), noting Gibbon's earlier censure of the passage.
CGV entry 15:27. See also a reply by W. F. in the same journal, volume 5 (February 24, 1894), page 156.
Birrell traces the development of Irene from Johnson’s residence in Lichfield to its 1749 production. He notes Johnson carried three acts to London in 1737, finishing the work while walking in Greenwich Park. Birrell details the plot's focus on the apostasy of the Greek captive Irene and her interactions with the Sultan Mahomet II and Aspasia. He recounts the difficulties in propitiating managers Fleetwood and Garrick, the latter of whom demanded stage alterations that sparked a quarrel. The text records the first-night failure in February 1749, where the audience protested the onstage strangulation of Irene. Birrell emphasizes that while the play "crawled through nine nights" and failed to gain popularity, it earned Johnson nearly £300, facilitating his move to Gough Square.
Zeitschrift für vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte
Die Geschichte der Schönen Irene in der französischen und deutschen Literatur
About the Theatre: Dr. Johnson as a Playwright
Loane discusses Johnson's couplet on Shakespeare from the Prologue for Garrick's theatre: "Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, / And panting Time toiled after him in vain." Loane notes the criticism from Fox and Garrick. He suggests that the obscurity comes from the previous line, but finds the immediate source for the metaphor in Cowley's Davidcis, where "The wings of Time flagged dully after it" describes David's wit. Johnson's intention may have been to provide sonorous, "mouth-filling" lines.
CGV entry 15:31. On lines in the Drury-Lane prologue. Published August 9, page 381, and August 23, page 406. See also replies from J. W. Joynt, S. Butterworth, and J. H. Jagger in subsequent issues.
Boswell's chronicle of Johnson as a playgoer remains fragmentary, requiring scholars to supplement direct evidence with inference. Johnson frequented the theatre for over forty years, yet his physical infirmities, specifically his 'defective sight and hearing,' hindered his enjoyment of performances. He often expressed contempt for the acting profession, famously 'musing' or 'talking' during shows rather than attending to the stage. Despite this, his circle included prominent theatrical figures, and his 'precious privilege' of critical observation allowed him to maintain a lifelong, albeit detached, connection to the dramatic arts. The text suggests that while Johnson was a persistent playgoer, he remained an outsider to the theatrical illusion.
Walkley examines Johnson’s fragmented history as a 'playgoer,' from his early 'passion' for Mrs. Emmet to his authorship of Irene. The play is characterized as a product of 'meditation' rather than 'sensibility,' following the 'classical model' with 'stout pack-thread' dialogue. Walkley discusses Johnson’s 'exaggerated contempt' for actors as 'dancing dogs,' despite his intimacy with Garrick, Mrs. Clive, and Mrs. Siddons. Johnson stopped frequenting Green Rooms to protect his 'rigid virtue' from 'white bosoms' but continued to attend first nights for friends like Goldsmith. The text notes Johnson’s confusion between 'judgment of reality' and 'aesthetic judgment' in his evaluation of theatrical naturalness.
CGV entry 15:32. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review (1919).
CGV entry 15:33. Reprinted from Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, volume 14 (1929), pages 35-53. In part incorporated in 'The Poems of Samuel Johnson', edited by D. Nichol Smith and E. L. McAdam, Jr. (1941).
Johnson's 'Irene': Variations on a Tragic Theme
This article, reprinted from University of California Publications in English (1944), examines the "radically untheatrical quality" of Johnson's imagination through an analysis of his only tragedy and its primary source, Knolles's Historie of the Turks. Bronson uses the play's first draft to reveal Johnson's creative techniques, noting how he prioritized arguments against apostasy over dramatic action. The text suggests that the character Aspasia serves as an idealized "lover's portrait" of Elizabeth Porter, embodying the "masculine intellect" Johnson valued. Bronson attributes the play's failure not to its "pseudoclassical" construction but to a "tumidity of diction" and a style lacking roots in the "rhythm of speech." Johnson is seen as a moralist who sacrificed the "exigencies of the dramatist" to ensure that Christian virtue and the "awful despair of the apostate" were clearly decided for a scholarly audience.
Knapp presents a prologue preserved in the Garrick papers at the Folger Shakespeare Library, endorsed by Garrick as "Prologue by Mr. Sam Johnson for Lethe" (1740). The playbill for Lethe on April 15, 1740, mentioned a prologue and epilogue. Garrick's revisions of Lethe (first published 1749) do not include the prologue or epilogue. The epilogue was in Kearsley's The Poetical Works of David Garrick (1785). The prologue has not been printed as Johnson's before.
CGV entry 15:35.
A Newly Recovered Criticism of Johnson's Irene
Metzdorf reports on the newly recovered anonymous pamphlet, A Criticism on Mahomet and Irene (1749), which critiques Johnson's first and only play. The play, originally titled Irene, ran for nine nights but was not popular. The critic, whose identity remains unknown, uses a "slangy style" to expose faults, including lack of credibility (Greek heroes entering a seraglio), poor characterization of Mahomet, and a heavy-handed burlesque of inflated passages. A censure of Sir William Yonge's epilogue and a detailed reference to the opening-night scandal of Irene's strangling on stage are included. Johnson is not known to have publicly responded to the critique.
Chronicles the thirteen-year history of Johnson's play Irene, from inception (c. 1736) to its 1749 production by Garrick. Metzdorf details Johnson's staging struggles, Garrick's alterations, and the play's moderate nine-night run. The essay introduces a rediscovered contemporary critique, outlining its objections to plot, characterization, and the originally staged ending. Metzdorf concludes Irene lacked popular appeal, a fact Johnson accepted realistically.
CGV entry 15:36. Reprinted in revised form from the Harvard Library Bulletin (1950).
Box, Pit and Gallery: Stage and Society in Johnson's London
Lynch analyzes the London theatrical world between 1737 and 1777, framing this period as the Age of Johnson. Lynch argues that while the era was prolific in dramatic composition, the resulting new plays were largely mediocre, leading the repertory to depend heavily on Shakespearean revivals and stock pieces from the Restoration and early eighteenth century. Johnson appears as a central figure whose professional circle and critical standards influenced the stage; however, his tragedy Irene (1749) failed to achieve lasting success because it lacked the pathos demanded by contemporary audiences. Lynch observes that Boswell and other contemporaries prioritized emotional impact over the intellectual rigor found in Johnson's verse. The text explores how managers like David Garrick and actors like James Quin shaped theatrical taste, often through the "possession of parts." Lynch also discusses Piozzi's milieu by detailing the social composition of the audience, noting that the middle class increasingly dictated the repertory's moral and sentimental tone. Lynch uses the theater as a "social yardstick" to measure the humanitarianism and imperial self-consciousness of Johnson’s London, concluding that the period's greatness lay in its national theater rather than its new dramatic literature.
CGV entry 15:37. On stage and society in Johnson's London.
The Irene Story and Dr. Johnson's Sources
Moran argues that Johnson used the anonymous 1664 play Irena as a source for his tragedy Irene, contradicting earlier views that he relied solely on Knolles. He identifies structural parallels, including an identical subplot involving two Greek noblemen attempting to rescue captive Greek girls by ship. Moran details striking textual similarities in scenes where heroines mourn supposedly dead lovers in a palace garden. He also notes the common addition of a regicide plot against the Sultan.
Othello and Johnson's Irene
Maxwell identifies specific lines from the draft of Johnson’s Irene that confirm a 1780 report by Steevens regarding accidental plagiarism. Johnson admitted to Steevens that a speech in his tragedy closely resembled Cassio’s description of Desdemona in Othello, despite Johnson not having read the play at the time of composition. Upon discovering the coincidence, Johnson deleted the imagery of 'insidious sands' and 'rough rocks' calming for a 'sacred freight.' The final version was reduced to a more general description of the 'raging main' to avoid the appearance of theft.
Waingrow explores the complex moral and dramatic structure of Johnson’s tragedy, moving beyond the conventional reading of Irene’s death as simple punishment for apostasy. He argues that the play's action complicates the "mighty moral" of poetical justice by enmeshing personal virtue with political necessity. While Aspasia serves as the passive, pure moral exemplar, Irene functions as a sacrificial surrogate whose submission and subsequent death distract the Turkish threat and enable the liberation of the virtuous Greeks. Waingrow suggests that Johnson’s imagination uncovers a complicated reality where the salvation of the virtuous is inextricably bound to the actions and destruction of the guilty, revealing a "double moral standard" where evil means may lead to a providential end.
Wolper re-evaluates Johnson's lifelong association with the drama, challenging the prevalent biographical view that he lacked interest in the theater. The analysis details Johnson's composition of Irene, noting the significant time and emotional energy invested in the play's argument against apostasy. It documents Johnson's long-term friendships with actors (including Garrick, Davies, and Clive) and playwrights (including Goldsmith and Murphy), concluding that the number and intimacy of these relationships dispel the notion of personal antipathy toward the profession, though Johnson expressed contempt for the theatrical profession generally. The study also catalogues Johnson's extensive, though often qualified, knowledge of classical, Restoration, and eighteenth-century drama, highlighting his major influence on dramatic theory through his condemnation of the unities and defense of tragicomedy.
CGV entry 15:42. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 26 (July 1965), page 361.
Wolper identifies a "neglected dimension" of Johnson’s poetic output, focusing on his comic, occasional, and light verse. The text challenges the "predominantly somber" image of Johnson established by The Vanity of Human Wishes. Wolper analyzes poems such as the "Short Song of Congratulation" and "The Ant," arguing that they use "playful irony" and "wit" to convey moral insights. The study examines how Johnson used "colloquial language" and "burlesque" to satirize contemporary social types and literary pretension. Wolper highlights the "social function" of these poems in maintaining "liaison and fellowship" among his friends, including Thrale. The text concludes that Johnson’s comic muse reveals a "versatility and lightness of touch" that complements his more "Colossal" philosophical works.
Samuel Johnson's Irene: 'An Elaborate Curiosity'
Mahomet and Irene: More Tragedy Than Triumph, Part I
A Dryden Echo in Johnson's 'Drury-Lane Prologue'
Woodruff identifies a previously unnoted echo of Dryden's 'To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve' in Johnson’s 'Drury-Lane Prologue'. He argues that Johnson uses Dryden's language to establish an ironic relationship between the two poems. While Dryden offers an optimistic vision of the Restoration, Johnson uses the parallel to criticize the period's 'perversion' of self-knowledge and the surrender of the stage to sexuality at the expense of moral rigor.
Johnson's 'Drury-Lane Prologue' and Dryden's To Sir Godfrey Kneller
Woodruff identifies verbal and structural similarities between a couplet in Johnson's 'Drury-Lane Prologue' and Dryden's 'To Sir Godfrey Kneller'. Both poets trace the history of an art form, note the decline of patronage, and use the antimetabole figure regarding the necessity of 'living to please'. Woodruff argues that these echoes, combined with previously noted Dryden parallels, suggest Dryden's verse epistles were a significant shaping influence on Johnson's imagination.
Suggests Alexander Pope’s Windsor Forest (lines 283 ff) as an analogue for Johnson's concluding exhortation (lines 57-59 ff). Aden highlights parallels between Johnson's call for "rescu'd Nature" and Pope's lines to Lord Bathurst, noting shared words like "scenic/Scenes" and "radiance/Lustre."
Edwards identifies a direct verbal parallel between the opening lines of Pope’s prologue to Sophonisba and Johnson’s 1747 Drury Lane prologue. While Johnson’s account of the composition suggests a rapid, internal process, the striking resemblance in phrasing indicates a subconscious reliance on Pope’s historical formula. Additionally, Bonnell traces Johnson’s depiction of Charles XII in Adventurer No. 99 to Voltaire’s History of Charles XII, noting shared motifs regarding Peter the Great’s military education.
CGV entry 15:49. In the Drury-Lane Prologue.
Samuel Johnson's Criticism: A Dramatist Writes on the Drama
Adams argues that the 1749 production of Irene served as the primary catalyst for the shift in Johnson's critical career toward his mature dramatic theory. While Johnson initially defended the neoclassical regularities of his play, including the unities and elegant diction, the mixed reception at Drury Lane forced him to reevaluate these standards. Adams traces how Johnson's subsequent work for the Gentleman's Magazine and the Rambler began to prioritize a rapid succession of events and natural dialogue over rigid adherence to accidental prescriptions. This evolution led to the theory presented in the Preface to Shakespeare, where Johnson celebrates the mirror of life and daily speech while challenging the frigid caution of rules. By examining Johnson's reviews of contemporaries like William Shirley and Philip Francis, Adams demonstrates that Johnson applied the lessons learned from his own theatrical failure to his later assessments of Dryden and Smith.
Cites Life: 1:196
Echoes of Milton in Johnson's Irene
Contains Johnson’s essays for The Idler (1758–1760) and The Adventurer (1753–1754). Johnson wrote 29 essays for The Adventurer, a series edited by John Hawkesworth. The Idler essays are generally of a lighter and brisker nature than those in The Rambler. The vol. includes contributions by others, such as Mr. Langton (No. 67) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (Nos. 76 and 79 on painting) in The Idler, and Catherine Talbot, Samuel Richardson, and Elizabeth Carter in The Rambler. The volume supersedes the poorly established text found in the 1825 Oxford edition of Johnson’s Works. Editorial policy largely followed the Greg-Bowers schema. The policy for The Idler copytext was criticized as vague, failing to clearly explain the choice. The general editorial policy employed partial modernization: capitalization, possessives, and typography were modernized. This was applied despite evidence that variations in spelling and capitalization in early Idler editions stemmed from "the caprice of the compositor," not Johnson's own policy. R. W. Chapman, a member of the Advisory Committee, opposed this textual approach. The inconsistent capitalization in original texts, especially for abbreviated titles, supported the modernization of capitalization. The edition adopted a minimalist or "lean" policy toward annotation. The editors aimed to provide material necessary for intelligent understanding, avoiding elaborate commentary. As a result, the volume is considered "seriously under-annotated" by some scholars. But the Adventurer portion, prepared under L. F. Powell’s direction, was regarded more favorably, seen as being more rigorous. The vol. was criticized for textual reasoning aimed toward a non-scholarly audience and adherence to "provinciality of twentieth-century American usage" in modernization. Chapman objected to the "leanness" of annotation. The volume was an early publication in the Yale series when editorial policies were still evolving. Critical reaction is mixed. In The Times, the reviewer welcomes the collected periodical essays for demonstrating that the writing is as diverse and lively as the conversation. Mutter's review in the TLS notes that the shorter papers occasionally feel ponderously unbalanced compared to the longer essays. Halsband, in SEL, praises the impeccable edition for its spacious format, factual introductions, and restrained annotations. But severe academic criticism focuses on textual decisions. Bond, in MLR, disputes the minimal introductory matter, the choice of essay pairings, and an incompetent index. In Modern Philology, Bowers delivers a severe review attacking inconsistent textual policies and a faulty textual theory, arguing that partial modernization sabotages the virtues of a scholarly edition by misleading the reader and concealing authorial intention. Todd (PQ) finds the recovery of historical allusions commendable but similarly criticizes silent decapitalization for obscuring intended personifications and falsifying the historical text. Rawson, in N&Q, praises the physical presentation but repeats the critique of textual inconsistencies and calls the critical introductions unbelievably lifeless. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews. Dubuque (Thought) finds the volume essential, praising the authoritative study on authorship problems and the comprehensive index. Tracy (Queen's Quarterly) commends the first-class editing and meticulous identification of misattributed quotations. Jacobson, in the New Statesman, provides a mixed assessment, acknowledging ample evidence of greatness but noting that the fanatical recording of minor textual alterations can be distracting.
Reviews: R. P. Bond, MLR 59, no. 2 (1964): 275–76; Fredson Bowers, MP 61, no. 4 (1964): 298–309; Remi G. Dubuque, Thought 38, no. 2 (1963): 300–302; Robert Halsband, SEL 3, no. 3 (1963): 445–46; Dan Jacobson, New Statesman, August 30, 1963; Moray McLaren, The Scotsman, June 1, 1963; R. P. C. Mutter, TLS, no. 3207 (1963): 626; Claude Rawson, N&Q 12 [210], no. 12 (1965): 471–74; Roland Sawyer, Christian Science Monitor, July 3, 1963; The Times, June 27, 1963; William B. Todd, PQ 43, no. 3 (1964): 368–69; Clarence R. Tracy, Queen’s Quarterly 71 (1964): 140.
Bond's severe review says the second volume of the Yale edition "falls below... normal expectations." He disputes the editorial decision to keep introductory matter to a minimum, which he argues is a virtual professional obligation to meet for this authoritative edition. While he finds the text accurate and the preservation of original spelling commendable, he notes that the volume has insufficient introductions and laments that the editors make little effort to set the essays securely in their genre or the Tatler-Spectator tradition. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of The Idler and The Adventurer is noted as an inconvenience, as chronology and character suggest The Adventurer belonged with The Rambler. Bond also challenges the "casual" approach to critical distinctions, such as labeling a newspaper a periodical, and highlights the "quite incompetent index" which omits significant references to the Dictionary and the Rambler and is so poor as to baffle explanation. He concludes that the volume features satisfactory texts and capable annotations but suffers from a failure to meet professional obligations to the scholarly community.
CGV entry 16:1. Review by R. P. Bond of the Yale Edition volume edited by W. J. Bate, J. M. Bullitt, and L. F. Powell.
Bowers delivers a severe review of this Yale edition volume, primarily attacking its inconsistent textual policies and the "faulty textual theory" applied to The Idler. While he praises Powell’s use of the first edition as copy-text for The Adventurer, he disputes the Harvard editors’ choice of the 1761 revised edition for The Idler, noting it is not a definitive text because it incorporates substantive variants in papers not written by Johnson. Bowers characterizes the general editorial policy of partial modernization as a "mishmash" that effectively sabotages the virtues of a scholarly edition, arguing that the decision should have been either to modernize throughout or to offer a definitive, trustworthy, old-spelling text. He contends that the silent reduction of capitals and the alteration of italics to quotation marks mislead the reader and conceal authorial intention, whereas the mythical popular reader could likely have handled eighteenth-century capitalization. Furthermore, Bowers finds the accuracy of Powell’s text inferior to that of Bate and Bullitt. The review concludes that because of these arbitrarily imposed modernizations and inflexible policies, the scholar is short-changed, leaving no definitive edition of Johnson available for trustworthy reference and leaving the specific audience of the edition open to query.
CGV entry 16:1.
Todd’s review of the second volume of the Yale Johnson edition, edited by Bate, Bullitt, and Powell, praises the work as a solid contribution to scholarship and a service to the common reader. He commends the recovery of historical allusions and facts, the lean annotations, the use of Johnson’s Dictionary for definitions, and the useful introductions by Bate, Bullitt, and Powell, who specifically handled the Adventurer essays. However, Todd criticizes the decision to modernize the text, particularly the "silent decapitalization" of personifications, which he argues "obscures Johnson’s intended personifications and theological declarations" and "falsify the historical text." He further disputes the editorial choice to derive the Idler text from the 1761 book edition without evidence and identifies minor historical inaccuracies in notes concerning contemporary fires and tavern locations. Despite these objections, Todd views the edition as a commendable procedure that successfully repaired the "mutilation of ancient history" found in previous publications.
CGV entry 16:1. Review by W. B. Todd of the Yale Edition volume edited by W. J. Bate, J. M. Bullitt, and L. F. Powell.
Rawson reviews Volume II of the Yale Edition of Johnson's works, praising its physical presentation while criticizing textual inconsistencies and "lean" annotation. He notes Fredson Bowers’s attack on the editorial policy for the Idler, which adopted a revised edition for accidentals rather than the first. Rawson finds the critical introductions "unbelievably lifeless" and regrets the absence of references to modern monographs. He also reviews Cochrane’s biography of William Strahan, noting Strahan’s role as the printer of Johnson's Dictionary and his friendship with Franklin and Hume.
CGV entry 16:1. Review by C. J. Rawson of the Yale Edition volume edited by W. J. Bate, J. M. Bullitt, and L. F. Powell.
This edition compiles representative essays from Johnson’s major periodical ventures, offering a comprehensive view of his development as a moralist and critic. Reid’s introduction details the hardships of Johnson’s early career in London, his "reverent loyalty" toward his mother, and his complex social circle, including Boswell, Thrale, and Reynolds. The selected papers from The Rambler underscore Johnson’s "majestic teacher" persona, addressing themes of literary eminence, the utility of biography, and the regulation of sorrow. The Adventurer contributions focus on the business of letters and the vanity of human wishes, while The Idler displays a lighter, more varied tone, touching on the "terrifick diction" of contemporary scholarship and the character of the news-writer. Brief biographical sketches of Boswell and Piozzi highlight their roles in documenting Johnson’s "extraordinary powers" and domestic life. This collection emphasizes Johnson’s consistent dedication to "rectifying the heart" and challenging the system of patronage through professional authorship.
This anthology (following S. J. Reid's 1888 edition) began the modern scholarly practice of defining Johnson’s literary canon for a serious audience. By omitting most allegories and imaginary correspondence, Hill selectively highlighted the "professedly serious" moral and critical essays, such as Rambler 4 (novel) and Rambler 60 (biography), fundamentally shaping twentieth-century perceptions of the periodical's essential content.
CGV entry 16:4. With etchings by Herbert Railton.
Perry's curated selection focuses on the periodic essays, lexicographical plans, and the posthumously published 'Prayers and Meditations.' The edition showcases Johnson's 'sterling traits' and 'vigorous personality' to counter the dominance of Boswell's biographical portrait. Essays from the Rambler and Idler address themes of biography, criticism, and the 'miserable state' of idleness. The inclusion of the 'Plan of an English Dictionary' and the letter to Chesterfield illustrates Johnson's 'pride, indignation, and pathos.' Annotations and front matter emphasize the 'essential character' revealed in Johnson's private resolutions regarding early rising and religious observance. Perry aims to demonstrate that Johnson's 'literary reputation' remains as instructive as his recorded table-talk.
The Great English Essayists: With Introductory Essays and Notes
The Dawsons position Johnson as a pivotal figure who bridged the gap between the "Classic Essay"—modeled on the didactic, sermonic tradition of Bacon—and the modern critical form. The text identifies Johnson’s Lives of the Poets as the first successful fusion of criticism and biographical detail, noting that despite his "pontifical air of omniscience" and "turgidity of language," Johnson initiated a school of literary interpretation that persisted through the nineteenth century. The anthology includes Johnson’s "The Advantages of Living in a Garret" from The Rambler as an example of the classic mode and his analysis of Milton as a representative critical work. The editors contrast Johnson’s "sturdy common sense" and "laborious magniloquence" with the more delicate touch of Goldsmith and the scientific sympathy of Matthew Arnold. Furthermore, the collection incorporates significant nineteenth-century appraisals of Johnson, including Thomas Carlyle’s depiction of him as a "Literary Hero" and "Prophet" of sincerity, and Thomas Babington Macaulay’s focus on his "uncouth form" and social habits.
CGV entry 16:7. Contains 'Rambler' 117 and an excerpt from the 'Life of Milton'.
CGV entry 16:8. Undated, circa 1920s.
Fifteen of the best-known numbers of The Idler.
CGV entry 16:9. Reprinted in 1932.
Published: Augustan Reprint Society Publication No. 22
CGV entry 16:12. Selections, with an introduction by S. C. Roberts.
An Essay from the Rambler of April 3, 1750
Samuel Johnson and Periodical Literature
V. 2. The student, or The Oxford and Cambridge monthly miscellany; The inspector v. 3. The adventurer v. 4. The universal visiter, and memorialist v. 5. The literary magazine: or universal review v. 6. The test; the Con-test v. 7. The Gray's-Inn journal v. 8. The universal chronicle, and weekly gazette
CGV entry 16:16. A 9-volume collection.
Rawson examines Eddy’s reprint series, noting its value in providing photographic reproductions of early editions with minimal editorial tampering. The review highlights the inclusion of a complete run of the Adventurer and rare sets of the Universal Visiter. Rawson observes that these volumes allow for a study of Johnson’s contributions alongside the political journals he reviewed, such as the Test and the Con-Test. He credits Eddy for introductions that update information found in the Yale edition.
CGV entry 16:16. A review essay (“Jobswell: A Short View of the Johnson–Boswell Industry”) by C. J. Rawson on the collection edited by Donald D. Eddy.
To the Author of the Rambler: On Reading His Allegories
Laudatory verses addressed "To the Author of the Rambler" and focused "On Reading His Allegories." The Rambler frequently features moral allegories, which Rider notes contain the "noble enthusiasm" evident in Johnson's "oriental compositions." The verses were subsequently reprinted as a public tribute to the essay series within the Gentleman's Magazine for October 1750, on page 465.
CGV entry 16:40. Celebratory verse.
A panegyric poem and editorial praise for Johnson’s ongoing periodical. The verses credit Johnson with reconciling learning and wit to restore truth to the world. The imagery suggests Johnson creates new worlds, new beings rather than merely copying, positioning him as a creative genius independent of patrons. Accompanying remarks from The Student claim the work exceeds nearly everything in the English language, including the Spectator. The critic lauds the masterly diction and the way the style ennobles the sentiments. The text characterizes Johnson as a potential favorite of Augustus had he lived in the first century, emphasizing his high-wrought yet perspicuous prose.
CGV entry 16:40. Reprinted from the Daily Advertiser (1750).
CGV entry 16:41. A highly complimentary 28-line poem.
The Student; or, Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany
An early published tribute to The Rambler, believed to be by Christopher Smart. At the time of publication, Smart was a key contributor and editor of The Student, which ran from 1750 to July 1751. The essay was subsequently reprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine for October 1750. The Gentleman's Magazine used this reprinted section to promote Johnson’s work, acknowledging praise from an "ingenious and disinterested writer" and confirming that The Ramblers were being published from St. John’s Gate.
CGV entry 16:42. High praise of the style of 'The Rambler'.
Smart highlights the "noble and rational entertainments" provided by Johnson in the Rambler. The text asserts the work exceeds any similar publication in the kingdom, with some exceptions for the Spectator. The writer praises Johnson’s "high-wrought" diction and "masterly" sentiments, describing the style as one that "familiarizes the sentiments." The piece concludes with a poem celebrating the combination of "Learning and Wit" in Johnson’s allegories.
CGV entry 16:42. Reprinted from The Student (1750).
Have at You All, or the Drury-Lane Journal
CGV entry 16:43. An extended burlesque.
The article offers scholarly emendations and additions to Boswell's narrative, focusing on Johnson's interactions with contemporary literary figures. It disputes specific anecdotal details regarding Johnson's domestic habits and his relationships with members of the Literary Club. The analysis uses brief salient quotations to illustrate Johnson's characteristic "oaken sceptre" of conversational dominance and his "grizzle grace." Key passages address the accuracy of Boswell's reporting on Johnson's opinions of Dryden and Pope, while providing additional context for his visits to Greenwich. By refining the biographical record, Emphasizes the absolute value of minute details in preserving Johnson's legacy.
CGV entry 16:44. A reprint of criticism from Clement's 'Les Cinq Années Littéraires' (1754).
A.B. challenges an "injurious insinuation" appearing in Johnson’s Idler 67. Johnson suggested that Hale’s work suffered from the "frauds of unfaithful guardians" during editing. A.B. defends the editor, Emlyn, asserting that the edition was printed "faithfully from the author's original manuscript." The writer demands that Johnson "point out in what instances the editor had misconducted himself" rather than relying on groundless freedoms.
CGV entry 16:46. Defends Emlyn, editor of Hale's 'Pleas of the Crown'.
Anningait and Ajutt; a Greenland Tale: Inscribed to Mr. Samuel Johnson, M.A.
A versification of Samuel Johnson’s moral story, which originally appeared as The Rambler numbers 186 and 187 (1751). Penny published the poem anonymously ("by a lady") with Robert Dodsley, Thomas Davies, and John Newbery as publishers. Johnson was the dedicatee of the poem, inscribed to him as "Mr. Samuel Johnson A.M." The text recounts the tragic courtship of Anningait and Ajutt amidst the "eternal frost" of Greenland. It emphasizes Johnson’s original themes of constancy and the universal nature of human passion, regardless of climate. The poem follows Anningait’s departure for the whale hunt to satisfy Ajutt’s "further proof" of his affection and his subsequent disappearance. It details Ajutt’s rejection of the wealthy suitor Nornfuck and her eventual decision to "boldly plough the main" in search of her lover. The narrative concludes by presenting various local superstitions regarding their fate, suggesting they either remain "prisoners in coral caves" or shine as "bright stars" representing "constancy and love." The work serves as a sentimental expansion of Johnson's Arctic "moral tale," preserving his focus on the "transient dream" of life and the "sovereign pow’r" of love. Penny included the poem in her subscription collection, Poems, with a Dramatic Entertainment, by **** **** (1771). It was later reproduced in an anonymous edition of her poems (1780).
CGV entry 16:47.
The essay disputes Johnson's critiques of Pope's versification, specifically challenging the strictures found in the Rambler. Text maintains that Johnson fails to acknowledge the "imagery of sound" inherent in Pope's technical execution. While Johnson asserts that certain lines lack softness or labor under jarring consonants, the argument here maintains that phonetic arrangements and pauses create a "panting" effect that paints pictures for the "mind's eye." Text specifically defends the representative harmony in Pope's descriptions of Ajax and Camilla, which Johnson previously dismissed as ineffective. By emphasizing the "mechanical part of poetry," the response affirms Pope's mastery against Johnson's "learning and abilities."
CGV entry 16:49. Disagrees with criticism of Pope in 'Rambler' 92.
Seton attacks the "horrid portrait" of humanity found in Johnson’s Journey to the Hebrides and Idler No. 89, characterizing the author as a "pseudo-philologist" whose erudition masks a cynical and "dissatisfied" disposition. The correspondent disputes Johnson's formal declaration that physical evil is the primary catalyst for moral good and that religion is merely the effect of hope and fear. Seton rejects the notion that mankind is naturally prone to "idle sensuality" and "beastly" excess, instead aligning with Miss Carter’s description of such thinkers as "screech-owls of society" who seek to crush hope. Drawing a sharp contrast, Seton invokes Rousseau’s "fundamental principle" that man is naturally good and that vice is an adventitious deviation rather than an original perversity. The letter concludes by accusing Johnson of "affectation" and suggesting that his propagation of the system of human depravity poses a dreadful consequence to the moral fabric of society.
CGV entry 16:50. Attacks the "frightful caricatura" of human nature found there.
The Fatal Effects of Luxury and Indolence Exemplified in the History of Hacho, King of Lapland: A Tale of Dr. S. Johnson's Versified
The poem is based on Idler 96, though we now know that number was written Warton, not Johnson.
CGV entry 16:51.
Knox criticizes the style of The Rambler and calls The Adventurer an "imitation of the Rambler." Boswell considered Knox's essays "much superior" to his own Hypochondriack papers, noting that Knox appeared to be of the "Johnsonian School." Knox's work was originally published on Johnson’s recommendation.
CGV entry 16:52.
Historical and Biographical Preface to the Rambler / the Adventurer / the Idler
CGV entry 16:53. Prefaces to 'The Rambler' (Vol. 16), 'The Adventurer' (Vol. 19), and 'The Idler' (Vol. 27). Often reprinted.
Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess
Of Periodical Essay Writers, Particularly Addison and Johnson
Johnson stands as the highest exemplar of "undeviating moral purity" among periodical essayists. His works remain "invariably delicate," allowing preceptors to entrust his voluminous output to pupils without "caution, limitation, or reserve." Even in his dictionary, Johnson maintains "moral rectitude," selecting authorities with "extreme conscientiousness" to avoid "contaminating the mind of the student." While Addison provides "exact delineations of character," Johnson exhibits vice and virtue "in the abstract," employing "elaborately carved figures" who converse in "academic language" and "measured solemnity." Despite a "forbidding stateliness" and "inflated style" in the Rambler, the "inexhaustible fund of pleasure and profit" found in the Lives of the Poets secures his reputation. Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides represents the "intellectual traveller" extracting "beauty from barrenness," while Rasselas serves the royal pupil by addressing the "unattainableness of human happiness" through a moral lens. Although Johnson "never loses sight of religion," his devotional expressions remain "soundly, indeed so sublimely excellent," despite their "scantiness" compared to Addison’s theological focus.
CGV entry 16:54.
The Ruminator, No. 58: On the Reception Originally Given to Dr. Johnson's Rambler
Brydges investigates the initial public and critical indifference toward Johnson’s periodical, noting it experienced "general coldness, discouragement, and even censure and ridicule." By reproducing correspondence between Carter and Talbot from 1750 to 1752, Brydges documents the "unjust prejudices" and "formidable enemies" Johnson faced. Talbot critiques Johnson’s style as "a little excessive, a little exaggerated in the expression," specifically regarding the "Screech-Owl" imagery. Carter defends Johnson against the "stupidity or ingratitude of mankind," noting his indifference to "honours and emoluments." Brydges argues Johnson’s refusal to use "temporary and personal descriptions" or "comply with temporary curiosity" ensured the work’s longevity despite early neglect. He contrasts Johnson’s "heavy and laborious hand" with the "exquisitely nice touches" of Addison, concluding that the work’s "essence of thought" eventually overcame the "vulgar minds" of his contemporaries.
Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical, Illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler ... and of the Various Periodical Papers Which ... Have Been Published Between the Close of the Eighth Volume of the Spectator and ... 1809
Drake delineates Johnson's literary trajectory, framing his contributions as the primary successor to the tradition of Steele and Addison. Drake emphasizes Johnson's 'Literary Character' over mere biographical anecdote, analyzing his varied roles as poet, biographer, and critic. The text underscores the 'uncommon vigour and logical precision of intellect' displayed in the Rambler, asserting that its uniform dignity and moral weight established a new era in English composition. Drake defends Johnson’s prose style against charges of excessive Latinity, arguing that his verbal precision and 'masterly intimacy' with the English language provided necessary 'correctness, dignity, and harmony' to the literature of the age. Despite noting Johnson’s 'relentless prejudices' in later critical works, Drake maintains that Johnson’s influence as a moralist and lexicographer remains 'unparalleled in the powers of impression.'
CGV entry 16:56. Volume 1 contains "The Literary Life of Dr. Johnson" (pages 111-488) and a bibliography (pages 489-499).
Enquiries Respecting the Insolvent Debtor's Bill, with the Opinions of Dr. Paley, Mr. Burke, and Dr. Johnson, upon Imprisonment for Debt
CGV entry 16:57. Reprints 'Idlers' 22 and 38. A second edition was reprinted separately in 1816.
Hazlitt contrasts the periodical essay's "experimental" focus on "morals and manners" with the "dogmatical method" of formal philosophy, tracing the genre from Montaigne to the early nineteenth century. While praising Steele for "original spirit" and Addison for the "inimitable nameless graces" of Sir Roger de Coverley, Hazlitt disputes the merit of Johnson's Rambler. He argues Johnson lacks "original thought or genius," asserting his "pomp and uniformity of style" reduces "all things to the same artificial and unmeaning level." Hazlitt maintains Johnson "is always upon stilts" and describes Rasselas as a "debilitating moral speculation." Conversely, Boswell's Life of Johnson provides a "triumphant record" where the subject appears "superior to the author." Hazlitt emphasizes Johnson’s colloquial vigor, noting he was "as blunt, direct, and downright" in person as he was "circuitous" in print. The text characterizes Boswell’s "inventory of all he said" as essential for revealing Johnson’s "hearty and determined" nature.
CGV entry 16:58. Often reprinted.
Piseitraut evaluates Johnson as a dual figure in the history of the English essay, contributing significantly to both the moral-didactic and critical-biographical genres. Examining the Rambler and Idler, Piseitraut argues that Johnson revived the periodical form by shifting focus from the social foibles typical of Addison and Steele toward a profound, often melancholy, investigation of human nature and practical religion. Johnson's unique 'Johnsonese' style—characterized by Latinate diction and a preference for abstract generalities—is defended as a natural outgrowth of a powerful mind seeking to refine the language from colloquialisms. While acknowledging the 'dictatorial dogmatism' noted by contemporaries like Boswell, Piseitraut highlights Johnson's intellectual integrity in challenging 18th-century skepticism. The text also reviews the Lives of the Poets, noting that Johnson’s critical judgments, though occasionally colored by Tory prejudices as seen in his treatment of Milton, established a new standard for literary biography.
CGV entry 16:59. From 'Realschule erster Ordnung zu Nordhausen'.
Hill argues against the modern neglect of the Rambler, a work Johnson described as "pure wine" compared to his other "wine and water" productions. The text emphasizes Johnson’s role as a "great moralist" who used the periodical to address "lonely wisdom and silent dignity" during a period of personal hardship and "laborious youth." Hill highlights Johnson’s "pity for the rebellious and the cruel," particularly his early advocacy against the "periodical havock" of excessive capital punishment for minor thefts. While acknowledging the "pompous" reputation of the style, Hill argues the essays reveal Johnson’s "noble and pious" heart and his capacity for "solemn yet pleasing humour." The text notes that Boswell found the Rambler too "grave," yet Hill maintains it remains a vital memorial of Johnson’s intellectual and moral force.
CGV entry 16:60.
Analyzes Johnson’s status as a "personality probably the most familiar to us of all dead men" who nonetheless remains "one of the Great Unread." It contrasts Johnson’s "heavy" hand in essay-writing with Addison’s "inimitable grace," noting that Johnson’s attempt to "dissect the manners of a society" often lacked lightness. However, the text identifies Johnson’s "capital distinction" as his "common sense" and his unparalleled knowledge of the "strange sad story of Grub Street." It focuses on Johnson’s critique of the "Terrific Diction"—a style intended to "terrify and amaze"—using Swinburne’s exuberant prose as a modern example of the "bugbear style" Johnson once sought to dispute.
CGV entry 16:62. Prefaced by a discussion of 'Idler' 36.
CGV entry 16:63. On revisions of 'The Rambler'.
Bowen defines the essay using Johnson’s description of a loose sally of the mind. He details Johnson’s attempt to revive the genre through the Rambler and Idler. Bowen notes that Johnson’s sonorous grandiloquence often hindered the grace required for the form, though his character sketches, such as Dick Minim, remained successful. He observes that Johnson eventually used a less Latinized style in his later biographical works.
The English Essayists, 2: Johnson and Goldsmith
Ranger evaluates Johnson’s contributions to the Rambler and Idler, characterizing him as a "majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom" whose prose often lacked the wit of his conversation. The text argues that Johnson’s essays were frequently grandiose and insipid imitations of Steele and Addison, succeeding only when informed by passion, as in the letter to Chesterfield. In contrast, Goldsmith is presented as the superior essayist, possessing a "freakish humour" and a natural style that avoided cynicism despite personal hardship. Ranger notes that Johnson’s characters fail to achieve the vitality of Goldsmith’s Beau Tibbs or the Man in Black. The review concludes that while Johnson’s style is easily parodied due to its mannerisms, Goldsmith’s prose remains an inimitable standard of elegance.
The Periodical Essayists of the Eighteenth Century
Johnson occupies a central position in the development of the eighteenth-century periodical essay. Despite the initial difficulty in naming The Rambler, Johnson produced over two hundred moral essays characterized by a melancholic temperament and a heavy, "Latinised" style. This prose contrasts sharply with the variety and irony of the Spectator; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu likened Johnson’s pursuit of Addison to a "pack-horse" following a "hunter." Johnson used The Rambler to "inculcate wisdom or piety," though he recognized the "severity of dictatorial instruction." His critical papers on Milton and Spenser reveal a mind both bound by neo-classicist prosody and capable of "great critical flashes of insight." In The Idler, Johnson adopted a shorter, lighter tone, incorporating character sketches and Eastern tales such as Ortogrul of Basra. While Johnson lacks the detachment of Addison, his work remains a "notable bundle of moral and didactic reading" that carries lessons with "impressive force." Revised drafts kept by Boswell demonstrate the minute verbal alterations and thoroughness of Johnson’s composition process.
Johnson the Essayist: His Opinions on Men, Morals and Manners: A Study
Christie's study is one of the few that privileges Johnson's "pictures of life" and his role as a periodical essayist. The bulk of the work is devoted to Johnson as an "observer of manners," consisting almost entirely of quotations from Johnson’s writings. Christie structures the book around Johnson's style, criticism, moral philosophy, and reforming activities. The volume emphasizes how Johnson uses his prose to penetrate the subtleties of human motivations. The critical reception of this study is defined by its effort to revive interest in the subject’s periodical works—The Rambler, The Idler, and The Adventurer—as a means of moving beyond his conversational persona. Christie argues that the subject "wrote as he talked," and reviewers for the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times applaud the demonstration of "progressive humanity" and "epigrammatic power" found in his stances against slavery, capital punishment, and social injustice. However, Jerrold and the New Statesman acknowledge the "stylistic heaviness" and "sesquipedalianism" of the prose, noting that it lacks the humor of Addison’s Spectator and often obscures simple narratives with "sounding words." Zeitlin offers a particularly sharp critique, dismissing the work as a "digest of opinions" that resembles "Boswell’s Johnson with all the life squeezed out of him." While Zeitlin disputes Christie’s claims of "rhythmic harmony," arguing instead for a "mechanically precise balancing of members," he joins the New Statesman in acknowledging that the essays remain significant for the "weight of character" and "sincere conviction" born of the subject’s "varied life experiences" and economic hardships. Ultimately, while Christie’s method of using isolated excerpts is viewed by some as unfortunate, the consensus is that the volume provides a valuable service by grouping the subject’s moral and religious opinions into an accessible, albeit "ponderous," scholarly framework.
Reprinted in 1966.
The Athletic Lady of the Eighteenth Century
CGV entry 16:68.
Newmark identifies a "ludicrous misapprehension" in a German bookseller's catalogue (c. 1922) that describes the first translation of Johnson’s Rambler (Der Schwärmer) as a work of "erotica" representing "John Bullish wit." Newmark notes that the cataloguer mistakenly associated Johnson's periodical with Rabelaisian humor.
CGV entry 16:69. A German misapprehension about 'The Rambler'.
On Johnson's contributions to The Adventurer, addressing his reticence about his role and the controversy over the authorship of the Misargyrus papers. External evidence, including a newly discovered letter from publisher Payne to Warton, conclusively proves Johnson wrote the last two Misargyrus papers (Nos. 53 and 62) and supplied two essays for Hawkesworth. This confirms Johnson's authorship of all twenty-five papers signed T. The article details Boswell's confusion, Hill's objections to the Misargyrus papers, and the initial arrangement where Johnson and Warton each agreed to contribute one-fourth of the essays to aid Hawkesworth.
CGV entry 16:70. Reprinted from Review of English Studies (1927). A revised version appears in Volume 2 of the Yale Edition of Johnson's Works (1963).
Smith challenges the prevailing belief that Johnson did not revise his prose works, particularly The Rambler, Rasselas, and The Idler, after their initial hasty publication. Boswell's and later Johnsonians' assumption of no revision, except for The Lives of the Poets, is questioned. Smith argues that Johnson belonged to the class of authors who corrected their work after publication if it was hastily written. Evidence of thorough revision is presented: The Rambler underwent multiple revisions, with corrections totaling in the thousands for one collected edition, made after the original periodical issue. Rasselas was revised for its second edition shortly after the first, suggesting that Johnson viewed immediate revision as part of the complete act of authorship for hurried works.
CGV entry 16:71. Chiefly on the essays.
The Contributors to The Rambler and The Idler
Murphy identifies Rambler 191 as a significant exception to Johnson's claim that his essays remain strictly conformable to Christian precepts. She argues the issue, composed of a letter from the sixteen-year-old "Bellarial," contains immoral suggestions and lacks the typical moral resolution found elsewhere in the series. Murphy suggests that Johnson, facing the impending end of the periodical and the death of his wife, may have lowered his standards to bid for increased circulation. She links the "trinkets" mentioned in the text to the contemporary popularity of Letitia Pilkington's memoirs.
Pratt presents and analyzes Leigh Hunt's marginalia, written in 1859, from his copy of Johnson’s The Rambler, reflecting the consistent Romantic attitude toward Johnson's essays. Hunt, an optimist, found little sympathy for the essays' moroseness and perceived pessimism, frequently marking gloomy passages with exclamation points and condemning Johnson’s "magniloquent commonplaces." As a critic, Hunt objected vehemently to Johnson's strictures on his favorite poets—Spenser, Milton (especially Samson Agonistes), and Shakespeare—attributing the criticism to Johnson's lack of "ear" and political bigotry. Hunt's personal and literary sensibility proved incompatible with Johnson's austerity, limiting his capacity to appreciate Johnson's wisdom beyond the style.
Johnson's Revision of The Rambler
A systematic collation of the various editions of Johnson's The Rambler to illustrate his method of composition and textual revision. Johnson executed two complete revisions, one for the 1752 collected edition and a final one in 1754 for the fourth edition (1756). He primarily attempted to improve expression through "putting out, adding, or correcting," avoiding alteration of his original ideas. The extensive 1754 revision simplified syntax through cutting adjectives and removing parallelisms, especially in essays giving moral advice.
CGV entry 16:75. From his dissertation, Yale University, 1937.
This note discusses James Elphinston's Edinburgh edition of The Rambler, which ran concurrently with the original London publication from 1750 to 1752. Elphinston's edition, sold at half the London price, was published in eight pocket volumes and was intended to improve taste, expose vice, and set forth virtue, avoiding politics. Elphinston acted as a real editor, providing tables of contents and translations of the Greek and Latin mottoes for the first 158 numbers. Johnson, who later adopted many of these motto translations, corresponded with Elphinston and received presentation volumes. The Edinburgh edition is valuable as it exhibits The Rambler text in an intermediate state due to corrections Johnson sometimes sent to Edinburgh.
The Translations of the Mottoes and Quotations in The Rambler
Examines the history of the translations of Latin and Greek mottoes and quotations in Samuel Johnson's The Rambler. Establishes that the Edinburgh edition, managed by James Elphinston, was the first to include translations, beginning the practice later adopted by Johnson for the collected London edition. Details the chronology of the two editions and Johnson's subsequent manipulation of the mottoes. Shows Johnson retained thirty-six of Elphinston's translations, but frequently revised them, often to their improvement, while still allowing the revisions to be ascribed to the original writer. In contrast, Johnson quoted translations from well-known poets like Dryden and Pope with scrupulous exactness, demonstrating a differential standard of scholarly accuracy based on the writer's renown.
Samuel Johnson's Idler: A Critical Study
Green examines Johnson’s Idler as an independent work, distinguishing its motives and characteristics from the Rambler. The analysis details the Idler's publication history, textual revisions, and contributions from collaborators like Reynolds, Warton, and Langton. It contrasts the periodical’s literary essays and oriental tales with Johnson’s earlier work, highlighting the Idler's congenial satire, sympathetic portrayal of the middle classes, and urban focus, which reflect the "whimsical and lovable" Johnson familiar from Boswell’s biography. The study also proposes five political articles for inclusion in the Johnson canon.
CGV entry 16:78. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 25 (December 1964), page 3554.
V. R. identifies a factual error in Johnson’s Adventurer No. 58, where Johnson misattributes Tibullus’s mistress Delia to Cynthia, the mistress of Propertius. Despite this slip, Johnson repeated the lines from Ovid’s elegy on Tibullus to Langton and Boswell on his death-bed in 1784.
CGV entry 16:79.
[Johnson's idea of a submarine: Rambler 105]
Chapman re-evaluates Newbery’s account for Johnson’s Idler, previously cited by Hill and Forster. While Hill suggests the sale was slow, the author argues that the lack of a date on the account renders this conclusion uncertain. Furthermore, the address to "Dr. Johnson" implies the document refers to the 1767 edition rather than the 1761 first book-form edition, as Johnson did not receive his doctorate until 1765.
Samuel Johnson and the Essay in the Second Half of the Century
A Bibliography of the Theophrastan Character in English with Several Portrait Characters
Hawthorne's Use of a Pattern from The Rambler
Davidson argues that five sketches in Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse derive their tripartite structure from Johnson’s Rambler. He identifies Rambler No. 82 and No. 105 as specific structural models for "A Virtuoso’s Collection" and "The Intelligence Office," respectively. While acknowledging Hawthorne’s preference for Johnson’s poetry over his prose, Davidson cites Boswell and Hawthorne’s own notebooks to prove his familiarity with the Rambler. He notes that Hawthorne maintains his own philosophical focus on human remorse rather than Johnsonian knavery.
Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia and Ramblers 204 and 205
Sherbo demonstrates that Johnson used his translation of Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia as a source for Rambler numbers 204 and 205. The article traces four proper nouns in the story of Seged, Lord of Ethiopia, directly to Lobo's work, including the name Seged from Sultan Segued and the island of Dambea. Sherbo also links the name of Seged's daughter, Balkis, to a dissertation in the Voyage identifying Belkis as a name for the Queen of Sheba. These findings emphasize the tenacity of Johnson's memory and his reliance on earlier translation work for later fictional narratives.
The Translation of the Motto for The Adventurer No. 126
Sherbo identifies an error in the attribution of a translation from Lucan's Pharsalia used in Adventurer No. 126. While Birkbeck Hill and L. F. Powell attributed the English lines to Johnson, Sherbo proves they are taken from Nicholas Rowe’s translation. The author suggests that despite this subtraction from the Johnsonian canon, further examination of unattributed Adventurer mottoes will likely lead to more definitive attributions to Johnson.
The Translations of Mottoes and Quotations in Johnson's Rambler
Johnson's Rambler translations, mostly assigned to him because they were unsigned and Percy noted they were by "the Author himself," require scrutiny. He likely did not compose the Lucan translation for Rambler 168; it nearly duplicates Rowe's version, differing by a single word substitution. Johnson also often adapted or revised translations previously done by Elphinston for the Edinburgh Rambler. Furthermore, his version of a Horace line seems an "imperfect recollection" of Francis's established translation. Therefore, we should not automatically credit unsigned Rambler translations to Johnson.
CGV entry 16:88. See also a reply by W. H. J. in the same journal, July 19, 1952, page 328.
The Making of Ramblers 186 and 187
Johnson constructed the Greenland setting and local color for his fictional Ramblers 186 and 187 by extensively borrowing from the Danish missionary Egede's A Description of Greenland (1745). Johnson's close familiarity with Egede’s work likely stemmed from his time as editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, where accounts of the book appeared. The borrowing includes details about the native's flora, fauna, tools, customs, and superstitions, with many proper names like Anningait and Ajut also taken directly from Egede, demonstrating Johnson's practical method of composition for his periodical essays.
CGV entry 16:89.
Symbolic Names in Johnson's Periodical Essays
Bloom analyzes Johnson's use of metaphorical proper names to delineate typical character traits in The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler. Following classical traditions from Terence and Plautus, Johnson applies "symbolic names" to types rather than individuals to enforce value judgments and experiential responses. Bloom argues that these appellations synthesize general truths through concrete signs, such as Dicaculus for the biting wit or Gelasimus for the misguided scholar. The names reflect Johnson's philological learning, with Latin and Greek derivations tailored to his audience's intellectual level. Bloom demonstrates how Johnson's practice fulfills his premise that the poet's business is to examine "the species" rather than the individual. These names help bring contemporary social foibles into focus, leavening the didactic nature of the essays with "ironic or semi-comic intent."
Graham surveys the didactic moral substance of Johnson’s The Rambler, noting its initial unpopularity compared to the lighter essays of Addison and Steele. He highlights Johnson’s views on marriage, biography, and the inevitability of "futurity." Graham observes that Johnson’s valedictory message emphasizes his effort to refine the English language and maintain Christian precepts. He credits Boswell’s later biographical success with validating Johnson’s literary labors, which the essayist’s wife, "Tetty," had also praised during their publication.
Hawthorne's 'Mrs. Bullfrog' and The Rambler
Cohen argues that Hawthorne’s "Mrs. Bullfrog" serves as a satirical synthesis of several Rambler essays. He identifies thematic parallels regarding the search for marital perfection, blind contracts, and marriage for money. Cohen notes that Hawthorne uses Johnsonian devices, such as the stage-coach journey in Rambler 34, to reveal character defects. He suggests that Johnson's descriptions of Furia in Rambler 18 provided the model for Hawthorne’s caricature of Mrs. Bullfrog.
Sherbo identifies sources for previously unidentified mottoes in the Idler. He traces the motto for No. 88 to a Latin adaptation of Pythagoras’ Golden Verses, noting Johnson also used the Greek original in Adventurer 137 and Rambler No. 8. For No. 101, Sherbo finds the source in Johnson’s own Latin translation of William Oldys’ poem The Fly. Sherbo notes that Johnson told Piozzi he initially omitted mottoes to preserve his anonymity. These findings illustrate Johnson’s habit of repurposing his own translations and favorite classical passages when revising his periodical essays for permanent publication.
The first note demonstrates that Johnson extensively revised his 29 essays in The Adventurer between the first (1753-4) and second (1754) editions, contrary to Birkbeck Hill's claim. Sherbo's collation reveals changes ranging from punctuation and spelling ('solicit' to 'sollicit') to word substitution ('trivial' to 'trifling,' a known Johnsonian pattern in The Rambler revisions) and sentence shortening. These revisions suggest Johnson's concern with the "right word" and elegance. The second note addresses Boswell's claim that Johnson "revised" and "illuminated" Masters's 1755 Poems. Sherbo compares magazine versions of two of Masters's poems with the revised 1755 collection. He lists changes, noting improvements in expression that align with the tradition of Johnson's editing, and speculates Johnson may have been the unacknowledged reviser.
CGV entry 16:94.
Louisiana State University Studies, Humanities Series
Magazine Serials and the Essay Tradition, 1746–1820
CGV entry 16:95. Contains a discussion of Johnson's periodical essays.
Samuel Johnson, Editor of Shakespeare, with an Essay on The Adventurer
Translation of the Mottoes and Quotations in The Adventurer
The Eighteenth Century Allegorical Essay
CGV entry 16:97. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 17 (1957), page 1763.
Dr. Johnson, Bishop Wilkins, and the Submarine
Identifies Bishop John Wilkins’s Mathematicall Magick (1648) as the source for Johnson’s submarine inventor in Rambler No. 105. Johnson’s list of underwater benefits—secrecy, safety, and expedition—parallels the first four advantages cited by Wilkins. The text argues that Johnson’s use of "expedition" likely refers to Wilkins’s discussion of naval warfare and martial voyages rather than mere speed. This connection demonstrates Johnson’s early engagement with technical speculations on underwater navigation, predating his more famous discussion of flight in Rasselas.
CGV entry 16:98. On 'Rambler' 105.
Greany delineates striking similarities in content and style between Johnson’s Rambler essays and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. Comparisons focus on Johnson’s warnings against "recluse speculation" in Rambler 116 and the distinction between true and false praise in Rambler 136, finding direct antecedents in Quintilian’s Books X, XI, and XII. Greany positions both authors as precursors to modern communication theory through their shared emphasis on the animation of delivery and the actualization of abstract thought.
Johnson began this venture with unusual solemnity, including a specific prayer for assistance. The essays established his reputation as a great moral teacher who provided a comprehensive body of ethics. The work was frequently reprinted.
Elder challenges the traditional view of The Rambler's overwhelming gravity, arguing for a significant presence of irony and humor. Johnson frequently employs self-mockery regarding his role as a periodical essayist and Mr. Rambler's gloominess. He uses literary devices, such as seemingly serious openings leading to humorous subjects, and the ironic condemnation of correspondents' pursuits. The humor, often rising from apt phrasing and Johnson's distinct prose style, predominantly focuses on the irony of disappointed human hopes and is tempered by his fundamental moral seriousness.
A Study of the Adventurer (1752–1754)
CGV entry 16:102. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 22 (1962), pages 3662-3663.
The Imaginary Submarines of Dr. Johnson and Richard Owen Cambridge
Fox notes the coincidence that both Samuel Johnson and Richard Owen Cambridge published works featuring imaginary submarines on the same day, March 19, 1751, an oversight missed by submarine historians. Johnson's submarine appears in Rambler No. 105, while Cambridge includes a submarine race and battle in Book IV of his Scribleriad. The article posits that contemporaneous discussions of submarine experiments in The Gentleman's Magazine (1747-1749), likely read by both Johnson and Cambridge, stimulated their imaginations and led to this simultaneous invention in their respective works.
CGV entry 16:103. On 'Rambler' 105.
Elder examines Johnson’s use of an anecdote regarding a philosopher’s hidden cloak in Rambler No. 10. Comparing versions in Plutarch, Burton, and Taylor, Elder argues Johnson’s specific phrasing closely mirrors Addison’s Spectator No. 221. Despite Johnson’s public assertions against imitation in Rambler No. 23 and Rasselas, Elder concludes that Mulso’s references to Addison in her correspondence likely triggered an unconscious, unintentional borrowing from the Spectator.
CGV entry 16:104. On 'Rambler' 10 and 'Spectator' 221.
Knieger argues that Johnson's essays in the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler do not form a rigid system but serve as "footnote reflections" on practical morality. Johnson emphasizes that humans require reminders of general truths more than new instructions. A central theme in these works is the destructive power of vanity, which Knieger identifies as a "self-deception based upon an inaccurate knowledge of the nature of man." This vanity manifests as an emotional compulsion to be right in arguments, the betrayal of secrets for reflected glory, and "conspicuous consumption." Affectation is particularly scrutinized; Johnson notes that counterfeiting qualities yields only ridicule and "nothingness" while wasting a limited existence. To combat these follies, Johnson advocates for "stated intervals for self-examination," though he admits the difficulty of following through with resolutions when temptation is present. Knieger concludes that Johnson’s power lies in his "sympathy for human limitations" combined with a high ideal of virtue, making his moral wisdom universally valid.
The Authorship of the Papers signed 'A' in Hawkesworth's Adventurer: A Stronger Case for Dr. Richard Bathurst
The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740–1815
Mayo traces the evolution of magazine fiction from seventeenth-century origins in the Athenian Mercury and Gentleman's Journal through the dominance of the Spectatorial essay tradition. The study identifies a "pivotal" shift around 1740, when miscellanies began favoring original fiction over reprints. Mayo examines the contributions of major figures, noting Johnson's influential role in establishing the "orthodox position" of moralistic novel criticism and his use of "pictures of life" and oriental tales. Boswell is cited for his anonymous "Hypochondriack" series in the London Magazine. Mayo also analyzes the feminine audience's impact, highlighting Piozzi’s contemporary, Eliza Haywood, whose Female Spectator bridged common taste and essay-serial conventions. The work challenges the "elegiac view" of the common reader by demonstrating the heterogeneity of the eighteenth-century audience and the fragmentation of taste into specialized species of periodicals. A central thesis posits that the "hundred-years spell" cast by Addison and Steele delayed the emergence of the full-length magazine novel until the nineteenth century by prioritizing short narrative forms. The volume concludes with an exhaustive catalogue of 1,375 novels and novelettes, categorizing them by length, author, and publication history.
CGV entry 16:108. Discusses 'The Rambler', 'The Adventurer', etc.
Samuel Johnson's Idlers: A Study of Satire, Humor, and Irony
CGV entry 16:109. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 24 (December 1963), page 2461.
Fleeman identifies a reprint of the first issue of The Rambler through typographical analysis of head-ornaments and colophons. By tracing the progressive damage to woodblock ornaments and variations in the title lettering across the series, he dates the reprint to approximately May 1751. Fleeman provides a table of variants to distinguish the original from the reprint. This study refines the bibliography of Johnson’s periodical essays by establishing precise criteria for identifying the true first edition.
Samuel Johnson and the Art of Moralizing: A Study of the Periodical Essays and Rasselas
The Dull Duty of an Editor: On Editing the Text of Johnson's Rambler
CGV entry 16:112. Published by the Friends of the University of North Carolina Library.
Thematic Patterning and Development in Johnson's Essays
This article classifies and analyzes the themes across Johnson's 322 essays in the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, seeking an underlying thematic structure. The core is identified as seven major, closely related themes: Contributing to Society (the most frequent, forming the connective tissue), Literary, Fitting into Life, Promotion and Seeking of Virtue, Filling Life Usefully, Seeing the World as it is, and Being True to One's Qualities. Minor, concentrated themes include Marriage, Parental Relations, Dependence on Others, Humanitarianism, and War. The themes are often interwoven, with Johnson expertly shifting emphasis and presenting varied material. A primary pattern emerges as a consistent and regular focus on the dominant theme, Contributing to Society, which is an exhortation to action, reflecting Johnson's belief that man's duty is to serve society through useful work in this life.
Howes examines the enduring appeal of Johnson’s periodical essays despite their initial lack of popularity and "overwhelmingly wordy" style. The article attributes the limited circulation of The Rambler to its didactic solemnity and use of "outlandish" scientific terminology. Howes suggests these "hard words" served as a "track whereon to exercise" vocabulary from Johnson's contemporary work on the Dictionary. However, the author argues that these perceived weaknesses facilitate precision and "fine discriminations of sense". Howes identifies the work’s true strength in Johnson’s "intimate knowledge of the human condition," portraying the essays as a "written conversation between a man and his highest principles". The piece concludes by noting that Johnson’s wife, Tetty, championed the work as a "moral wrestler" rather than a spectator.
Reviews Rom Harre's Anticipation of Nature, which argues against the idea that natural laws and physical facts can be discovered a priori or from arguments based on pervasive generality. While Harre may be scientifically correct in siding with Newtonian empiricism against Descartes's a priori method, scientific theory, which has proceeded by framing hypotheses to test, could not have developed otherwise. It also cites Johnson's declaration: "Natura enim simplex est."
CGV entry 16:115. On Johnson's revision of Richardson's 'Rambler'.
Idler No. 24 and Johnson's Epistemology
Rhodes argues Johnson did not simply accept Locke's empiricism but gave allegiance to the Cartesians by prioritizing the act of thinking over the fact of thought. Johnson believed the mind's energy allows it to transcend experience. He considered thinking, composition, and conversation to be a fusion of the empirical and rational, requiring active attention to encompass both the "natural and new." This active use of the mind counteracts "torpid insensibility" and vacuity of life.
Kto avtor 'vostochnoi' povesti 'Obidag'?
CGV entry 16:118. In Russian. Demonstrates that this tale is an eighteenth-century translation of 'Rambler' 65.
Privately printed to commemorate Johnson's birthday
Place: New Haven Published: Printed to commemorate Johnson's birthday
The 'A' Papers in the Adventurer: Bonnell Thornton, Not Dr. Bathurst, Their Author
Bonnell Thornton authored the eight "A" papers in Hawkesworth's Adventurer, dismissing claims for Bathurst. External evidence includes Murphy's definitive attribution to Thornton and Warton's identification of Thornton as "A," though naming Hawkesworth and Bathurst as Johnson's two "particular Friends." Internal analysis demonstrates strong thematic and stylistic parallels, as well as shared devices (proposals, specimens) and common names, between the "A" papers and Thornton’s Connoisseur essays. Furthermore, the timing of the first three "A" papers coincides directly with the publication run of Thornton's Spring Garden Journal.
The Contemporary Distribution of Johnson's Rambler
Wiles demonstrates that although Johnson’s Rambler had a low initial circulation of about 500 copies in London, it achieved a far wider audience through immediate, free reprinting in at least 16 provincial newspapers. Between March 1750 and March 1752, these papers circulated at least 142 of the 208 essays to readers across the South, West, Midlands, and North of England, often with little delay. Johnson, who felt unpopular, was more widely read than he knew.
Johnson's Idler: The Equipment of a Satirist
O’Flaherty contends that Johnson’s Idler essays (1758-1760) mark a shift to a more fully realized satiric stance, using a detached persona. The Idler contains savage, concrete critiques of social and political evils. However, Johnson's profound compassion and self-awareness compel him to continuously soften, explain, or undermine his own satire, showing a deep discomfort with the satirist's aloof, omniscient pose. This blend of the satiric and the merciful, often turning to self-mockery, transcends pure satire, reflecting the tragicomic vision of Rasselas.
Frozen Words: A Note to Idler No. 46
Rawson provides annotations for a passage in Johnson’s Idler No. 46 concerning sounds congealed by frost in Zembla. He traces this 'vulgar notion' through several eighteenth-century and classical sources, including Tatler No. 254, Chesterfield’s letters, and Butler’s Hudibras. Rawson notes the idea appears earlier in the works of Plutarch, Rabelais, and Castiglione, illustrating the wide literary tradition behind Johnson’s allusion.
Aspects of Rhetoric in Johnson's 'Professedly Serious' Rambler Essays
Rewa argues that Johnson's "essays professedly serious" in the Rambler find their source and form in the "progymnasmatic rhetorical composition" of eighteenth-century grammar school training. Specifically, Rewa identifies several essays as "chreiai"—a classical form where a brief maxim is expanded through specific topical requirements such as praise, paraphrase, cause, contrast, and analogy. Using Rambler 11 as a "paradigm perfect" example, Rewa demonstrates how Johnson develops a quotation from Periander by moving through these rhetorical stages to provide a "second view of the familiar". The study explores how Johnson’s generalized persona, the Rambler, functions as a persuasive "ethical" proof by embodying the "good man skilled in writing" rather than a fictionary character with biographical detail. Rewa concludes that Johnson’s formal and "tense amplitude" of expression enacts a need for moral order, transforming the essay into a discipline for right living.
The Pattern of Imagery in Johnson's Periodical Essays
Riely explores the pattern of imagery in Samuel Johnson's periodical essays (The Rambler, The Idler, The Adventurer), arguing that it reveals his "obsessive habits of mind." Johnson consistently draws heavily on images from "Nature" and "Daily Life," particularly those depicting warfare, sickness/medicine, imprisonment/slavery, and the journey of life. These frequently occurring and often spontaneous images—such as the mind as an "empty receptacle" or life as a struggle against "shackles" and "tempests"—reflect Johnson's profound, personal anxieties concerning indolence, guilt, and the constant struggle against a "diseased imagination" and the vanity of human wishes.
Leed analyzes the extensive commentary on patronage in Johnson’s Rambler essays, written during the period between addressing Chesterfield in the Plan of a Dictionary and composing the famous letter of 1755. Johnson offers a comprehensive, though primarily adverse, study of the support system for learning and literature. The two main criticisms focus on the corruption of the client into vicious flattery and the patron's neglect and insolence after raising expectations. Leed argues that the most frequent criticism is of patrons who break professions, confirming the likely nature of Johnson's grievance against Chesterfield.
CGV entry 16:129.
Johnson's Manner of Proceeding in The Rambler
Damrosch defines two basic rhetorical modes in Johnson's Rambler essays: the "dismantling of commonplaces," which exposes weaknesses before reassembling them into a positive statement, and the mode of "amplification," which surrounds a subject with reflections that deepen understanding without advancing an argument. Damrosch closely analyzes the first two Ramblers to illustrate the dismantling mode, followed by Rambler 155 to demonstrate the fusion of both techniques. Damrosch argues that Johnson deliberately sought to encourage a more rigorous critical thinking in his audience than the Spectator had accustomed them to. The essays, therefore, function as discrete, self-contained parts that collectively offer a profound, rather than merely conventional, moral achievement.
Johnson's 'Mr. Rambler' and the Periodical Tradition
The Tatler Revived, 1750: A Competitor of The Rambler
Woodruff documents the history of a short-lived periodical that was a contemporary and rival of s The Rambler. The Tatler Revived began on March 13, 1750, one week before The Rambler. It was a half-sheet, stamped paper periodical published three times a week for twopence. After 24 issues, because of poor sales, it transformed into a weekly octavo pamphlet of a sheet and a half, called The Christian Philosopher and Politician, costing threepence. The pamphlet ran from May 12 until at least September 1, 1750, completing a first volume and starting a second. Boswell claimed the periodical was "born but to die," but it lasted nearly six months. Its original numbers heavily depended on the original Tatler's ideas, with its author using the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff. The new title reflected its broad, commercial focus on religion, reflection, and politics. The journal's contents show a tendency to attach discussions to topical and contemporary particulars, such as the recent earthquakes. The Rambler, in contrast, avoided politics, did not contain specific Christian doctrine, and avoided contemporary particulars, establishing a much more rigorous conception of the essay genre and a more unified purpose. The change in the Tatler Revived's format was an effort to circumvent the halfpenny-per-copy stamp duty by converting to a less-taxed pamphlet format, a move that allowed it to halve its weekly price. The Rambler, published unstamped, took a leading position in establishing a distinction between taxable newspapers and untaxed essay periodicals.
CGV entry 16:133. Presidential address.
The Receding Narrator: The Spectator, the Rambler, and Hawthorne's Shorter Fiction
The Writer as Hero in Johnson's Periodical Essays
Knight argues that Johnson discards the Addisonian eidolon to universalize his moral position. Johnson presents the writer as an emblematic figure struggling against vanity and the fallacy of great expectations. By framing the Rambler with essays on the writer’s relationship to the moral life, Johnson connects professional authorship to general human choice. Knight emphasizes that Johnson speaks to his audience as individuals rather than a collective society. The writer functions as a moral teacher who penetrates superficial appearances to study human nature, eventually finding justification in his own conscience.
Johnson's Characters: 'The Stubborn Choice'
CGV entry 16:136. On the imagined characters in his works, particularly the periodical essays.
Samuel Johnson's Rhetorical Stance in The Rambler
Towards an Understanding of Johnson's Rambler
O'Flaherty analyzes the structure and purpose of Johnson's The Rambler, arguing against critics who attribute the essays' inconsistencies to hasty composition or deliberate rhetorical strategy. Johnson's overriding purpose is to inculcate wisdom and piety by exposing the complexities of human motivation and moral life. The apparent "reversals" or contradictions stem from Johnson's determination to present intricate truth and his compassionate recognition of man's imperfection, rather than an attempt to impose a neat system. His moral vision relies on a Christian perspective that ultimately supersedes reason.
CGV entry 16:139. Characters in the 'Rambler'.
Rambler Mottoes from Horace's Odes: Consciousness of Impending Death
On the Letter to the Idler (No. 41) from X.Y.Z.
CGV entry 16:141. Suggests the same letter appears in another journal signed "A W", possibly for Anna Williams.
The Allusions in Johnson's Idler No. 40
On the contemporary and literary allusions in Idler 40, focusing on the subject of advertising. Woodruff shows that Johnson drew directly from specific advertisements appearing in the Public Advertiser around the time of the essay's composition. The piece highlights Johnson's adaptation of the topic from Addison's earlier Tatler 224, transforming it into a critique that explores the ethical and rhetorical implications of advertising. Johnson uses allusions, such as those to the Mohawk Indian Warrior and the camel and dromedary notices, to satirize commercial motives and to discuss the philosophical concept of the sublime.
The Background of Adventurer 95: Johnson, Voltaire, Dubos
Edinger argues that Johnson's critical position, particularly in Adventurer 95, mediates between the conservative neoclassical principles represented by Voltaire and the empiricist ideas of Dubos. Voltaire adhered to a conservative tradition based on neo-Aristotelian rules, believing that successful mimesis must employ a limited set of "primary colors" or universal character types that were exhausted by earlier writers. Dubos, however, sketched an empiricist theory: artists find novelty by observing the infinite diversity of individuals in nature, choosing details that realize a unique conception, leading to a "plain and ingenuous description." Johnson, using Voltaire's color metaphor, expands Dubos's view by arguing that novelty is found in the "combinations of circumstances" and the "surface of life" where universal passions are made manifest. Johnson thus argues for the concrete universal, where the adequately comprehended individual portrait becomes a general truth.
Samuel Johnson and the Illusions of Popular Culture
Johnson, despite being mischaracterized as an elitist, was intensely aware of and interested in popular culture, which he viewed as a legitimate source of pleasure and a necessary alleviation supplied by Providence in a difficult world. His Christian humanism taught that temporal pursuits are finite, not springs of perpetual happiness, a lesson frequently illustrated in his Rambler and Idler essays through fictitious readers caught up in fads. Johnson's writing bristles with contemporaneity and vivid popular details, leading to the conclusion that he is a fitting patron saint of popular culture studies, so long as they maintain a proper moral and philosophical perspective.
Nath identifies a previously overlooked textual parallel between Johnson and Jane Austen. The celebrated opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice regarding a single man in possession of a fortune derives from Rambler 115. In that essay, Johnson’s character Hymenaeus states he was known to possess a fortune and to want a wife. Nath notes that while scholars document Johnson’s general influence on Austen, editors and critics have missed this specific linguistic origin.
CGV entry 16:145.
Johnson's Idler and the Anatomy of Idleness
Woodruff analyzes the Idler, focusing on his sustained examination of idleness. The essay explores Johnson's moral and psychological 'anatomy' of idleness, which he views not merely as a lack of employment but as a pervasive condition of human lassitude, procrastination, and misdirected energy. Woodruff discusses the varied characters and narrative structures Johnson employs to illustrate this theme, contrasting he Idler's more relaxed tone with the gravity of he Rambler. The study reveals Johnson’s insightful, nuanced critique of human inertia and self-deception in contemporary life.
Did Johnson Name the Hero of Rambler 179 N or M?
The name of the affected mathematician in Johnson's Rambler 179 should be "Gelasinus" (from the Greek for dimple) rather than the printed form "Gelasimus." The author suggests the difference is due to a printing error, possibly stemming from Johnson's handwriting. "Gelasinus" not only has a closely relevant lexical meaning for the character, who mistakes a grin for a smile, but it is also a nickname for Democritus, the laughing philosopher, who is invoked in the essay's motto. The suggested correction enhances the complexity and irony of Johnson's comic portrait.
Logic and Lexicography: The Concern with Distribution and Extent in Johnson's Rambler
McKenzie analyzes how Johnson employs the logical principles of "distribution" and "extent" from Aristotelian logic in The Rambler. These mechanisms, which define the range and attribution of terms, allow Johnson to manage abstractions and construct arguments, often with an exact moral and rhetorical effect. Johnson's dual role as moralist and lexicographer informs his precise measurement of abstract terms (e.g., envy, fame) and his assessment of their application to human nature, thereby structuring his sentences to reflect the spatial relationships inherent in syllogistic logic.
Some Theoretical Foundations of Johnson's Periodical Essays
Olson investigates Johnson's "metamorphosis" of Ovidian texts used as mottoes for his Rambler essays. He argues that Johnson systematically strips Ovid’s verses of their libidinous and "overt sexuality," transmuting light-hearted amorous poetry into matter for "serious literary and moral concerns." For instance, Johnson uses a jealous complaint from the Heroides to stimulate young writers toward achievement and transforms a confession of sexual madness into an argument for intellectual regimen. Olson concludes that Johnson uses his understanding to "defend himself against his imagination and his appetites," treating Ovidian sex as "vice" to be reformed through "sincere confession."
CGV entry 16:150. On the 'Rambler'.
Johnson's Rambler and Its Contemporary Context
Charles XII in Adventurer No. 99: Johnson and Voltaire
Bonnell demonstrates that Johnson’s discussion of Charles XII in Adventurer No. 99 relies heavily on Voltaire’s The History of Charles XII. Johnson adopts Voltaire’s "art of war" motif regarding Peter the Great’s military education and follows the historian’s geographical outline of Charles’s failed grand designs. Bonnell argues Johnson used Voltaire’s text because its concluding aphorism on success and failure perfectly matched the moral focus of the essay.
The Essayist, 'Our Present State,' and 'The Passions'
Cunningham explores Johnson's use of the phrase "our present state" in his essays. The phrase has a dual meaning: the essential, infelicitous nature of temporal human life (contrasted with a "future state"), and the immediate, fluctuating condition of the individual. Johnson argues that our immediate state, agitated by "passions" like envy, often distorts our understanding of the essential human condition. Cunningham notes Johnson's fluctuating views: sometimes "misery is the lot of man," yet at other times "every state of life has its felicity." Johnson's treatment of the "passions" is similarly ambivalent: they are "disturbers of our happiness," yet also "lawful... guides" that "assist" reason.
Grundy examines Samuel Johnson's reputation as a "man of maxims." While critics often view maxims as restrictive, Grundy argues Johnson used them not as rigid formulas but as versatile tools for exploration. He frequently employed axioms as starting points, only to test, modify, or even contradict their common application. Johnson also mocked the oracular or foolish use of general truths. His reliance on established wisdom stemmed from a humble belief in the "hereditary stock" of human knowledge, which he sought to rescue from the "impotence caused by... universal admission." For Johnson, Grundy concludes, aphorisms were not final conclusions but part of an ongoing process of intellectual discovery.
Motto, Context, Essay: The Classical Background of Samuel Johnson's 'Rambler' and 'Adventurer' Essays
Olson examines the function and significance of the classical mottos Johnson selected for his periodical essays, arguing that these quotations serve as integral thematic frameworks rather than mere decorative headers. The monograph explores how Johnson's deep immersion in Greek and Latin literature, particularly the works of Horace, Juvenal, and Martial, informed his moral philosophy and rhetorical strategies. Olson demonstrates that Johnson frequently expected his readers to recognize the original context of a motto, using the tension or harmony between the classical source and the modern application to deepen the essay's impact. The study categorizes the mottos into thematic groups—such as social conduct, literary criticism, and religious reflection—and provides close readings of specific Rambler and Adventurer papers to illustrate how the classical subtext guides the reader's interpretation. Olson further investigates Johnson's translation practices, noting his occasional modification of classical texts to better suit his didactic purposes. By situating Johnson within the humanist tradition, the work clarifies his role as a Christian moralist who harnessed the authority of antiquity to address the contemporary anxieties of eighteenth-century life. Chapter 1, 'Introduction,' addresses the literary relationship between Samuel Johnson and classical authors by detailing his extensive use of mottoes in The Rambler and The Adventurer, arguing that these allusions served as essential structural and moral catalysts for his compositions. Chapter 2, 'The Rambler,' provides an exhaustive reexamination of 208 periodical essays, meticulously linking each classical motto to Johnson’s themes and presenting a dense analysis of how he adapted or refuted ancient wisdom to address eighteenth-century morality. Chapter 3, 'The Adventurer,' examines twenty-nine essays contributed by Johnson to Hawkesworth’s periodical, focusing on the continuity of his critical and moral thought through classical frameworks within a collaborative literary enterprise.
The Language of Reasoned Rhetoric in The Rambler
Trowbridge investigates Johnson’s use of empirical reasoning and inductive logic in The Rambler. By analyzing the linguistic properties of Johnson's prose, Trowbridge demonstrates how the essays move from specific observations to probable generalizations. Trowbridge argues that Johnson’s "rhetoric of probability" reflects his commitment to the Royal Society’s motto, nullius in verba, rejecting authority in favor of verified experience. The analysis shows that Johnson uses a vocabulary of "reasoned rhetoric" to engage with human nature, presenting moral truths derived from facts rather than abstract speculation.
Georgics of the Mind: An Aspect of Johnson's Periodical Essays
Muirhead proposes Jean Philippe Baratier, a Huguenot savant whose life Johnson wrote between 1740 and 1744, as the primary model for Polyphilus in Rambler 19. While previous editors suggested Floyer Sydenham or Zachariah Williams, Muirhead argues that Polyphilus’s specific failures—deciphering Chinese, studying military tactics, and forming schemes for longitude—closely mirror details from Formey’s Vie de Baratier, Johnson’s source. Muirhead demonstrates how Johnson transformed Baratier's intellectual inconstancy, treated tactfully in the biography, into a moral warning against "misdirected genius" in the periodical essay.
CGV entry 16:160. Jean Philippe Baratier (in 'Rambler' 19).
Johnson addresses the long-standing foreign censure of the English language as impure and uncertain by providing a comprehensive dictionary deduced from original sources and illustrated by the best writers. The reviewer extracts significant portions of Johnson's preface, wherein Johnson describes the perplexity of a speech previously copious without order and energetic without rules. Johnson details his approach to settling orthography by following derivation, noting that he chose enchant after the French and incantation after the Latin. He acknowledges the sacrifice of uniformity to custom in words like convey and inveigh. The dictionary includes anomalous plurals, irregular preterites, and a vast collection of verbs modified by subjoined particles, such as to put off or to set out. Johnson admits that some words remain unexplained due to his own lack of understanding, citing the term smectymnuus as an example. He emphasizes a preference for authorities from the Elizabethan era to the Restoration, viewing them as the "wells of English undefiled." The reviewer concludes by praising the work as a prodigious success achieved by a single person amidst sickness and distraction, noting its potential to facilitate a competent knowledge of the tongue’s genius.
CGV entry 17:1. This is a review, possibly by Sir Tanfield Leman, of the book by Samuel Johnson.
Smith acknowledges the extraordinary merit of Johnson's "very extensive" undertaking, noting it succeeds where previous attempts to define the English language failed. He praises the collection of meanings "justified by examples from authors of good reputation" and expresses astonishment that a single person completed a work usually requiring a "numerous society of learned men." Despite this praise, Smith identifies a "not sufficiently grammatical" plan. He disputes the lack of "general classes" for word significations and notes that Johnson fails to distinguish "synonymous" words. To illustrate, Smith reproduces Johnson's entry for "But," which lists eighteen disparate senses ranging from "except" to "interjection." Smith challenges this arrangement, arguing that the particle serves as four distinct species of conjunction—adversative, alternative, conductive, and transitive—alongside uses as an adverb and preposition. He applies a similar critique to "Humour," tracing its transition from "moisture" to "temper of mind." Smith argues that "humour" represents the "disease of a disposition" rather than a mere synonym for temper. While Smith views Johnson’s work as a necessary "standard of correct language," he maintains that its value lies in providing a "full collection of examples" from which a more "regular and artificial" grammatical system might be constructed.
CGV entry 17:1. Review by Adam Smith of the book by Samuel Johnson.
CGV entry 17:1. Review by M. Maty of the book by Samuel Johnson.
This German review from 1758 focuses on the publication of the folio edition. It reflects the substantial continental interest in the work following the appearance of the Plan in 1747. German lexicographers like Adelung later establish the work as a standard, with his own dictionary being principally derived from Johnson's. The Preface is specifically excerpted and disseminated in foreign press.
CGV entry 17:1. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
Fitz-Adam (Chesterfield) announces the forthcoming publication of Johnson’s English Dictionary, expressing long-held regret over the lack of a "lawful standard" for the English tongue. He reviews the failed attempt by Swift to establish a literary academy and argues that while a body of scholars might typically undertake such a work, Johnson is uniquely qualified to execute it singly. Characterizing the current state of the language as one of "anarchy" overwhelmed by "foreign ornaments," the author calls for the Roman expedient of a dictator, formally giving his "vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post." He asserts that English has spread across Europe based on the merit of authors like Milton, Locke, and Newton, but requires Johnson’s labors to provide the stability of a formal grammar and history. The text concludes with a playful warning to Johnson regarding the "genteeler part of our language" managed by women, advising against the rash proscription of their "happy redundancies."
CGV entry 17:2. In two parts, November 28 and December 5.
A Letter from a Friend in England to Mr. Maxwell Complaining of His Dilatoriness in the Publication of His so-Long-Promised Work: With a Character of Mr. Johnson's English Dictionary, Lately Published
Provides contemporary criticism of Johnson's recently published Dictionary while aggressively attacking a rival lexicographical project. The Letter primarily contrasts Maxwell's long-promised but non-existent New Dictionary of the English Language with the reality of Johnson's completed work. The pamphlet criticizes Johnson's Dictionary, listing omissions and offering specific comments on certain words, but its main purpose is to diminish Maxwell's credibility by capitalizing on his repeated failure to deliver his elaborate, religion-focused dictionary project. This document exemplifies the intense commercial and critical rivalry surrounding Johnson's definitive lexicon.
A criticism of the 'Dictionary', containing a list of omissions.
[Attack on the Dictionary and the pension]
This piece represents the most "vigorous and penetrating attack" leveled by John Wilkes against Samuel Johnson. The entire number of the North Briton focuses on Johnson's acceptance of a government pension. Although many contemporary readers mistakenly believed the article was written by Charles Churchill, Wilkes later acknowledged his authorship. The article satirically references Johnson's career by including "numerous references to his Dictionary quotations." This attack appeared while Johnson was staying in Devonshire with Sir Joshua Reynolds. Wilkes’s periodical later continued the offensive, referring to Johnson explicitly as "Pensioner Johnson."
[Mock 'explications' of simple words in 'Johnsonese']
CGV entry 17:6. Published under the pseudonym "Lexiphanes". Reprinted in Colman's 'Prose on Several Occasions' (1787). A mock reply by "Academicus" in the same journal (December 11–13) continues the attack.
A verse parody published anonymously. Maclaurin criticizes the "pedantic jargon" introduced by Johnson’s lexicon. The author warns young poets to use the dictionary with "caution," distinguishing between Greek, Latin, and English words. The article includes a "trifling specimen" of verse written in a highly Latinate style, using terms such as "anthropopathy," "fulgid," "depauperated," and "pedestrious." This "burlesque piece" mocks the difficulty of reading modern songs without the "gift of tongues" or Johnson’s help. A later note indicates that when Johnson saw this caricature in Edinburgh, he called it the "best" but remarked he could caricature his own style "much better."
To Dr. Samuel Johnson: Food for a New Edition of His Dictionary
Great pedagogue! whose literarian lore, With syllable on syllable conjoined To transmutate and varify, hast learned The whole revolving scientific names That in the alphabetic columns lie, Far from the knowledge of mortalic shapes; As we, who never can peroeiilate The miracles by thee miraculized...
CGV entry 17:8. Reprinted from the Weekly Magazine (1773).
Horne Tooke, writing from prison, refers to Samuel Johnson three times: first, to quote him as the only person who attempted to explain the word "AN" (a supposed conjunction) in his Dictionary, defining it as a contraction of "AND IF." Horne Tooke rejects this, calling it an unlucky instance and asserting that Johnson should have quoted the clowns (like Bottom the Weaver) from whom the expression was borrowed. Second, he quotes Johnson's definition of "ELSE" as both a pronoun and an adverb. Finally, he notes that Johnson "even... attempted AND" (the conjunction) and would have no difficulty with "THEREFORE," implicitly critiquing the limited success of Johnson's etymological efforts on these particles.
CGV entry 17:9. Included in his 'Epea Pteroenta, or, The Diversions of Purley' (London: J. Johnson, 1786). Contains occasional criticism of Johnson's Dictionary.
[The milliner discouraged by the definition of 'network']
A Censure of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and of the Other Dictionaries of the English Language
The writer complains about the omission of participles and compound adjectives in Johnson’s Dictionary, arguing that many possess "modes of meaning" distinct from their infinitive roots. Using examples such as "interested," "superannuated," and "collected," the text demonstrates that these forms often function as common or classical words while their parent verbs remain rare or obsolete. The critique identifies a logical inconsistency in Johnson's methodology: the Dictionary omits the primary participles yet includes obscure derivatives like "deformedness" or "afflictedness." Furthermore, the author highlights "compound participles" such as "good-natured" and "self-interested," alongside present participles like "promising" and "provoking," asserting that their specific received senses necessitate precise definitions that cannot be deduced from simple verb entries.
Neues grammatisch-kritisches Worterbuch der englischen Sprache für die Deutschen; vornehmlich aus dem grossern englischen Werke des Hrn: Samuel Johnsons nach dessen vierten Ausgabe gezogen, und mit vielen Wortern, Bedeutungen und Beyspielen vermehrt
Adelung's Wörterbuch (1783–96) is fundamentally an expansive critical edition of Johnson's Dictionary, designed according to the English work's 1773 fourth edition. Adelung, a "kind of German Johnson," uses Johnson's work as his foundation, popularizing it in Germany. His preface provides a nuanced assessment, praising Johnson's "excellent" status labeling and his material on combinations and phraseology, while deeming his definitions "extremely well expressed." Conversely, Adelung finds the wordlist lacking technical terms, and severely criticizes Johnson’s etymology, stating he "proves himself a shallow etymologist," partly because of his lack of German knowledge. Adelung criticizes Johnson for being a "splitter" in subdividing senses. Adelung's focus on etymology and technical vocabulary signals a shift toward the philological and comprehensive standards that would define nineteenth-century lexicography.
CGV entry 17:12. Volume 1 was published in 1783, Volume 2 in 1796. Adelung's preface was translated by Anthony F. M. Willich and printed in Willich's 'Elements of the Critical Philosophy' (1798).
A. B. C. attacks the reputation of the Dictionary, marveling that the work has been 'endured for so many years' despite significant defects. The contributor argues that readers incorrectly judge the work based on Johnson's 'great general eminence' rather than its own merit. A. B. C. identifies 'instances of defect' in the smaller edition, noting the inclusion of hundreds of Anglicized Latin words never used by writers of taste. The critique challenges Johnson's reliance on 'least respectable' and 'obsolete' authorities and pities foreigners attempting to learn English style from the text.
CGV entry 17:14. A critical article, replied to by "Indignant" in volume 59 (July 1789), pages 613-614.
British Synonymy; or, An Attempt at Regulating the Choice of Words in Familiar Conversation
Piozzi’s philological work provides a guide for choosing precise vocabulary in colloquial English, specifically intended for foreign students of the language. Arranged alphabetically by clusters of similar terms, the text defines the nuances of synonyms through illustrative anecdotes, social observations, and literary examples. Piozzi frequently incorporates sentiments and definitions from Johnson, whom she describes as a "most eminent logician." She records Johnson’s specific definition of "fondness" as an "injudicious attribution of excellence" and recounts his fascination with the storytelling of Samuel Foote. The narrative also captures Johnson’s characteristic wit and intellectual rigor, including his humorous dismissal of a Welsh river and his hatred of a "fool-born jest." Piozzi reflects on the works of contemporary writers such as Addison, Pope, and Burke while offering her own perspectives on gendered education, the social utility of "notable" women, and the political upheavals in revolutionary France. She highlights Johnson’s "Rambler" allegories, particularly "Rest and Labour," as masterpieces of the English language. The work functions as both a linguistic manual and a collection of personal and historical reminiscences. Piozzi produced the work anonymously; G. G. and J. Robinson published it in London. It discriminates 1180 words across 315 entries, expanding upon its acknowledged precursor, Gabriel Girard’s Synonymes françois. It is the first genuinely English synonymy book, surpassing John Trusler's 1766 translation of Girard, whom Piozzi never mentions. Some critical accounts view the work as paralleling, or parodying, Johnson’s lexicographical career. A Dublin edition followed in 1794. Large portions were subsequently reprinted in Paris (1804) in 5 installments by Parsons and Galignani for their British Library collection. The book's focus on propriety and usage made it an ancestor of modern linguistic etiquette manuals. William Perry’s Synonymous, Etymological, and Pronouncing English Dictionary (1805) specifically attempted to "Synonymize" Johnson's Dictionary shortly thereafter.
CGV entry 17:15. Contains occasional Johnsonian anecdotes. Excerpts were reprinted as "Piozziana" in the Gentleman's Magazine from 1849 to 1850. A Scolar Press facsimile appeared in 1968.
Stuart served as an amanuensis for Johnson at Gough Square, managing financial negotiations with booksellers and contributing specialized definitions for gambling terms and "low cant." The production of the Dictionary involved a tripartite division of labor across the alphabet to maintain efficiency. Johnson provided definitions on quarto paper, leaving lacunae for clerks to insert literary authorities. While Grose suggests Johnson engaged in manuscript duplication to secure double payments, Stuart’s role in correcting manuscript errors suggests clerical oversight rather than authorial fraud. Stuart also corroborates the account of Johnson dining behind a screen at Cave’s house due to his impoverished appearance, where he overheard Harte’s praise for the anonymous biography of Savage.
CGV entry 17:16. On Francis Stuart, Johnson's amanuensis, and the making of the Dictionary.
[Attack on Johnson's Dictionary and style quoted and rebutted]
The author counters efforts to undermine Johnson, asserting that his works will endure as long as the English language. Johnson's dictionary remains the primary authority in philology and gains increasing admiration despite the assertions of an "invidious assailant." The defense maintains that the eagerness for Johnson's writings contradicts the critic's predictions of his decline.
Anecdotes of the English Language; Chiefly Regarding the Local Dialect of London
Pegge defends the Cockney dialect against charges of corruption, arguing that Londonisms represent "the remains of a more antient mode of speaking" rather than modern vulgarisms. Using a "genealogical history of a language," Pegge traces various provincial and local expressions to their radical existence in Saxon, Norman, and other historical sources. He identifies Johnson as a primary antagonist who treated these ancient modes of speech with "contempt as mere colloquial barbarisms." Pegge challenges Johnson's lexicographical authority, asserting that Johnson was "scarcely at all aware of the authenticity of antient dialectical words" and consequently "blundered in his etymologies." Frequent references to Johnson’s Dictionary and Boswell’s anecdotes appear throughout the disquisition. The 1814 edition includes a "Postscript" by the editor explaining the posthumous expansion of the work from Pegge's original papers.
CGV entry 17:19. Criticism of Johnson as a lexicographer on pages 250–253 is quoted in a review in the Gentleman's Magazine, volume 73 (February 1803), pages 148–149.
A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language
Webster uses Johnson’s Dictionary as a guide, and Webster acknowledges Johnson's excellence, especially in his arrangement and definition of words. But he highlights Johnson's deficiencies to justify the new American publication, claiming Johnson’s overwhelming authority inhibited linguistic progress and required correction for the American people.
CGV entry 17:20.
Savage evaluates the merits of Webster’s lexicographical labors, asserting that the English language should not be undermined by a single writer's "hurtful innovations." Savage defends Johnson against Webster’s criticisms, particularly regarding grammatical cases and technical definitions. While Webster claims to correct Johnson’s errors through Saxon research, Savage maintains that the "appropriate sense" of words is better learned through standard literature than through Webster’s new compend. The review disputes Webster’s radical orthography—such as the removal of u in honour—labeling these efforts "idle speculations." Savage further critiques Webster’s admiration for vulgar pronunciation and his inclusion of five thousand additional words, many of which are dismissed as unnecessary technicalities or "Americanisms." Savage argues that the Augustan age of literature, epitomized by Addison and Pope, remains the ultimate standard for the language, warning that Webster’s departures from Johnsonian precision threaten to corrupt the speech of "young scholars."
CGV entry 17:20. An anonymous review offering a sturdy defense of Johnson against Webster's strictures.
A Letter to Dr. Ramsay, of Charleston, (S.C.) Respecting the Errors in Johnson's Dictionary, and Other Lexicons
Webster addresses David Ramsay to dispute the perceived perfection of Johnson’s Dictionary, which he characterizes as a standard authority that nevertheless perverts and corrupts the English language. Webster identifies thousands of illegitimate words anglicized from Latin and used only by pedantic authors like Sir Thomas Brown, alongside a "multitude of words" that belong to no oral or written tradition. He challenges Johnson’s etymological accuracy, noting that Johnson lacked a profound knowledge of the Teutonic and Celtic origins of English. Furthermore, Webster disputes Johnson’s power of discrimination, providing examples where the lexicographer confuses synonyms or provides incorrect legal and physical definitions. He describes the vast collection of literary quotations as a "gross imposition" that swells the size of the work without providing clarity. Webster argues that Johnson’s reliance on Shakspeare, whom he describes as a man of "little learning," introduces numerous barbarisms and improprieties. The letter concludes by asserting that every page of the work requires amendment and that American scholars must cast aside servile reverence for such European authorities to advance philological knowledge.
Illustrations of English Philology; consisting of I. A Critical Examination of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
A harsh, 200-page attack arguing that Johnson's Dictionary was "wholly unsuccessful" and insisting that scholars must "entirely desert the steps of Johnson" to succeed. Influenced by Horne Tooke, Richardson contends that Johnson mistakenly focused on context, aiming "to interpret the import of the context, and not to explain the individual meaning of the word." Words hold a "uniform, unvarying, and invariable" meaning derived strictly from etymology. Consequently, Johnson’s distinct definitions—such as listing twenty-five supposed meanings for the word by—were wrongly attributed to the word itself, rather than correctly identified as differences in "application and subaudition" (context).
Proposta di Alcune Correzioni ed Aggiunte al Vocabolario della Crusca
Parallelo del Vocabolario della Crusca con quello della lingua inglese compilato da S: Johnson
CGV entry 17:23. Contains extensive passages translated from the preface to Johnson's Dictionary.
Considering Johnson's Dictionary the standard of the English language debases and dishonors the tongue. Johnson likely viewed the work only as a monument to the wretched state of the language during his era. The singular scheme of including every word used by selected authors necessitates learning definitions by heart, as evidenced by the inclusion of the French voiture and thousands of Latin and Greek terms. Johnson belongs to the second of three Augustan ages of English literature, extending from the Restoration to the French Revolution. This era, which includes Johnson alongside Dryden, Pope, and Addison, equals the literary achievements of Louis XIV's France. An impartial comparison of Johnson and his contemporaries with French literary heroes proves favorable to the British. Johnson remains a distinguished writer within a host of brilliant producers who define the intellectual wealth of this epoch.
CGV entry 17:24. Against Johnson's Dictionary.
The appearance of Webster’s "rival" Dictionary prompts a reassessment of Johnson, whose 1755 work, while original and felicitous, is deemed incomplete by modern philological standards. Critics like Tooke and Coleridge are cited to highlight Johnson’s failure in etymology and his exclusion of genuine English words from the Elizabethan period. Webster is praised for expanding the vocabulary to 70,000 words, including technical terms and Americanisms like "savings-bank" and "lengthy," though he is cautioned against "vile" formations such as "Co-bishop." A significant portion of the review examines Webster’s "Procrustes-bed" of orthography, specifically his removal of the 'u' in "labor" and the 'e' in "blamable." While Webster’s orthoepy is lauded for its simplicity, his greatest contribution is identified as the "higher etymology," where he traces Saxon roots to their Teutonic and Oriental origins. Despite these merits, the reviewer notes a lack of historical systematicity, suggesting that a truly "Atlantean" dictionary must still be compiled to bridge the gap between ancient Saxon and modern English.
On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries
Trench criticizes Johnson's dictionary for several deficiencies. Johnson is charged with failing to observe his rule on including obsolete words and omitting hundreds of others. He is faulted for ignoring the historical lifespan of words and presenting their latest meaning first, obscuring their true history. Furthermore, his inclusion of lengthy descriptions and technical terms violated the clear boundary between a dictionary and an encyclopedia, though the author reserves high respect for his pioneering labor.
CGV entry 17:27. A second edition was published in 1860. Contains various small strictures on Johnson's Dictionary.
This report chronicles the Philological Society meeting where Henry Parker presented a folio volume of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Hale's Pleas of the Crown containing Johnson's original marginalia. These markings, consisting of scores and initialed catchwords, guided dictionary clerks in extracting passages for the Dictionary of the English Language. Evidence suggests Johnson reviewed multiple potential extracts before selecting the best examples. The report also details James Manning’s paper on the English genitive, which challenges Johnson’s theory that the possessive s derives from the Anglo-Saxon genitive es. Manning proposes an autochthonous origin for the use of his as a genitival marker, a theory that scholars present at the meeting hotly opposed.
Transactions of the Philological Society
Chronological Notices of the Dictionaries of the English Language
A chronological survey of bilingual and English dictionaries from the fifteenth century through the seventeenth century, with little on Johnson.
A Desultory Denunciation of English Dictionaries
White attacks the redundant and unscientific methods of contemporary lexicographers, specifically targeting the expansionist policies of Webster and the Imperial Dictionary. He argues that Johnson initiated a flawed system of "copious" definition that mistakes metaphorical applications for distinct meanings. White illustrates this by critiquing Johnson's definition of "wooden" and Webster's treatment of "fall" and "run." He advocates for a vernacular word-book that excludes obvious compounds and prefixes while including all simple English words since 1250. White demands a return to objective, non-encyclopedic lexicography, stripping dictionaries of pictorial illustrations and superfluous etymological data.
CGV entry 17:30. Johnson's dictionary is included.
Draws a parallel between Johnson's famous definition of "oats"—"a grain which in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"—and a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The Anatomy notes that oat bread was defended by John Mayor, but called "horsemeat" by Wecker.
CGV entry 17:31.
CGV entry 17:32. A review of the 1866–1870 Johnson-Todd-Latham Dictionary and others.
Includes an inquiry seeking a comprehensive list of words in the first edition of the Dictionary that contain 'petulant expressions' or 'indefensible significations' driven by party prejudice. Referencing Hawkins, the note identifies 'Excise' and 'Pension' as primary examples of definitions influenced by Johnson's personal biases. The author asks for other instances where Johnson used his lexicographical work to voice political or personal opinions.
CGV entry 17:33. Particularly on the definition of "excise."
The Story of Johnson's Dictionary
Wheatley traces the development of Johnson’s Dictionary from Dodsley’s initial suggestion to the publication of the 1755 folio. The text highlights the Plan (1747) as a masterly production and details Johnson’s use of an interleaved folio of Bailey’s dictionary to record notes. It describes the labor of six amanuenses in the Gough Square attic and Johnson's method of marking authorities with black lead for transcription. Wheatley addresses the Chesterfield controversy, labeling the "respectable Hottentot" attribution a blunder. The text notes Johnson’s specific definitions for "excise," "pension," and "oats," and his refusal to include "civilization." While admitting etymological weaknesses, Wheatley maintains that Johnson’s definitions remain superior to those of his successors. The narrative concludes with Johnson receiving his Oxford MA just prior to the work's completion.
Leisure Moments in Gough Square; or, The Beauties and Quaint Conceits of Johnson's Dictionary
Saunders chronicles the composition of Johnson's Dictionary, noting its origin in a suggestion by Dodsley. The account emphasizes Johnson's intellectual independence, highlighting the scathing and medicinal letter to Chesterfield that demolished the patronage system. Johnson appears as a figure of heroic industry who completed the colossal task in eight years despite his gloom of solitude and physical infirmity. The text records his wonderful rapidity in composing The Vanity of Human Wishes and his retentive memory, which allowed him to finish essays before committing them to paper. Saunders also notes the small talk and gossip of Boswell's biography as the essential element of a true portrait, preserving Johnson's asperities and eccentricities.
This letter to the editor signed by F. N. discusses a copy of Johnson’s Dictionary once owned by John Horne Tooke. The volume contained marginal notes and an autograph letter to Major James. The letter notes that Henry John Todd used these materials while editing his own edition of the Dictionary but derived no great assistance from them. The library of Major James, including this annotated Dictionary, was sold by Sotheby in 1819 for 105 pounds to a purchaser identified only by the initial H.
CGV entry 17:38. See also C. A. Ward, in the same journal, May 24, 1890, page 406.
CGV entry 17:39. For commentary, see Notes and Queries, 9th series, volume 4 (December 2, 1899), pages 451-452; and volume 5 (January 27, 1900), pages 71-72.
Gennadius argues Johnson’s Greek was "robust" and "profound," not merely academic. He read Greek "for its matter," valuing it for "copiousness" and "precision." Though not a "finished" scholar, he drew heavily on "the fountains of ancient learning," using Greek to fortify his "gigantic common-sense."
CGV entry 17:39. Reprinted from the 1898 standalone publication.
Radford details the 'mechanism of dictionary making' at 17 Gough Square, where Johnson and six amanuenses spent seven years 'marshalling the whole language.' The account covers the 1747 Plan, the £1,575 contract, and Johnson’s use of 'ragged' book collections to select quotations. Radford examines the 'sovereign' tone Johnson used with his publishers during 'blockade' threats and his famous 1755 letter to Chesterfield, which rejected the 'dream of hope' regarding patronage. While acknowledging Johnson’s 'wretched' etymological work on 'Teutonick' roots, Radford praises the definitions as 'astonishing proofs of acuteness' that cemented Johnson's place among the 'Immortals.'
Murray praises Johnson for "contribut[ing] to the evolution of the modern dictionary" and for his pioneering practice of illustrating word usage through selected literary quotations, which necessitated a "more delicate appreciation and discrimination of senses." Murray elsewhere dismisses Johnson’s etymological scholarship, asserting that one does not look to Johnson for etymology, since that discipline only truly began in England around 1850. Murray and his team nevertheless profited from Johnson's definitional innovations.
Skeat attributes a quotation in the Dictionary to Addison's Spectator 311.
CGV entry 17:43.
Long traces English lexicography from Cawdrey to Webster, identifying four evolutionary types: hard-word lists, elementary guides, comprehensive collections like Bailey's, and the selective, standardizing model epitomized by Johnson. Johnson's primary innovations were illustrative quotations and a focus on literary usage over the encyclopedic or scientific scope of predecessors. While Johnson sought to fix the language, the article notes this ideal eventually yielded to Webster's comprehensive recording of actual usage. Johnson's indebtedness to Bailey and Martin is also examined.
Lexicography underwent rapid development during the eighteenth century, rising to a respectable academic position by 1800. Johnson produced a landmark standard in 1755, aiming "to fix the language" and permanently establish modern English. This effort, inspired by Italian and French academies, resulted in two folio volumes that introduced the use of illustrative examples from "best writers" to clarify definitions. Though Johnson exhibited "personal animus" in some entries and remained at the mercy of poor etymological sources, his work achieved unprecedented excellence in linguistic precision. Subsequent eighteenth-century orthoëpists like Kenrick, Sheridan, and Walker built upon this foundation by adding phonetic indicators for pronunciation. These English developments provided the essential framework for the first American dictionary in 1798. Later American lexicographers, notably Webster, frequently cited Johnson as the standard against which they measured their own innovations in orthography and etymology.
The Reader and Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
A report on a blundering review in The Reader regarding Samuel Latham's edition of Johnson's Dictionary chronicles the journal's demise. The reviewer, mistaking Johnson's famous preface for Latham's own writing, scathingly criticized the style and urged the publishers to substitute it with one doing more justice to Johnson's work. The resulting embarrassment led to the immediate end of the publication.
CGV entry 17:46. See also further discussion by W. P. Courtney, A. E. Bateman, and Thomas White in subsequent issues.
Kirkland examines the presence of Johnson within his Dictionary, contrasting the personal nature of eighteenth-century lexicography with the impersonal modern scholarship of the twentieth century. The narrative highlights the romance of word-conquest found in the Plan and Preface, noting how Johnson uses vivacious symbolism and military imagery to describe his linguistic labors. Kirkland argues that the work serves as a record of its maker's character, evidenced by his candid admissions of ignorance regarding certain definitions and his idiosyncratic etymologies. Specific examples include Johnson's humorous definitions of "pastern," "giggle," and "oats," alongside his caustic dismissal of Scottish terms and his moral circumspection in selecting citations. The account emphasizes the "sturdy fiber of moral purpose" throughout the volumes, as Johnson frequently assumes the role of preacher to protect readers from improper words. By analyzing the frequency of citations from contemporaries like Goldsmith and Garrick, Kirkland concludes that the Dictionary functions as an intimate autobiography, capturing the "burly honesty" and spiritual devotion of its author.
A Dictionary to Read: Johnson's Dictionary
Parry investigates Johnson’s subscription to a 1773 collection of Welsh poetry despite his inability to read the language. He attributes this purchase to Johnson’s general philological interest in preserving the Welsh and Irish languages, as evidenced by his 1774 North Wales journal. Parry identifies Daines Barrington as the likely intermediary who induced Johnson to subscribe. He concludes that Johnson’s support for the republication of Welsh grammars and texts reflects a broader scholarly commitment to Celtic literature and linguistic preservation.
Gordon provides a comparative history of dictionary-making, contrasting the institutional academies of Europe with Johnson’s solitary achievement. He argues that Johnson sought to establish a "standard of classical English" to prevent the linguistic mutability feared by Swift and Pope. By selecting authorities from Sidney to the Restoration, Johnson created a "well of English undefiled" that successfully bridled innovation for two centuries. Gordon examines failed challenges to Johnson’s primacy, such as Richardson’s etymological revisions based on Horne Tooke, and identifies the advent of the Oxford English Dictionary as the definitive transition to a scientific, inventory-based lexicography. The text also notes Johnson’s influence on modern errors, specifically the definition of "internecine," and discusses his biographical presence within his definitions, such as the famous entries for "oats" and "excise."
Chronicles the bicentenary history of the Longman publishing house from its 1724 inception through its 1924 operations. The text traces the firm's lineage across six generations of the Longman family, beginning with Thomas Longman's acquisition of William Taylor’s business at "The Ship" in Paternoster Row. Details the expansion of the firm through partnerships and the acquisition of rival houses, including Joseph Cottle and Rivington. Highlights the firm’s participation in major eighteenth-century literary ventures, specifically the 1746 formation of a syndicate to publish Johnson’s "Dictionary of the English Language," for which Johnson received 1575 pounds. Notes the firm held shares in the syndicates for Johnson’s "Rasselas" and "Humphrey Clinker." The narrative further outlines the nineteenth-century success of the firm with figures such as Macaulay, Moore, and Disraeli, and concludes with the 1887 establishment and subsequent growth of the American branch in New York. Features salient mentions of the firm’s connection to "many notable enterprises" and its role in the "advancement of education."
Johnson's Dictionary Reviewed by His Contemporaries
Examines contemporary reviews of Johnson's 1755 Dictionary. He highlights a long, favorable critique from the Edinburgh Review (likely Adam Smith), which praised Johnson for extending the dictionary's scope far beyond previous "hard word" lexicons to include common words and their usage. Rypins also notes "picayunish criticism" and "ridicule" from others. The article concludes by quoting the famous, melancholy final paragraph of Johnson's preface ("I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquility...").
Cottison-Morley examines Johnson's complex and often contradictory attitude toward modern languages and foreign cultures. The text establishes Johnson's renowned insularity, exemplified by his candid prejudice against foreigners, yet simultaneously documents his regret over his inability to speak French and his persistent eagerness to acquire new linguistic knowledge. Johnson frequently read French literature, holding high opinions of Boileau, and demonstrated some familiarity with Italian, notably Petrarch and Tasso. The author details Johnson's preference for speaking Latin when conversing with foreigners and his critical yet informed assessments of French and Italian literary figures, ultimately showing a mind eager for foreign knowledge despite its deep-seated prejudices.
Pocock provides a whimsical yet appreciative examination of Johnson through the lens of a first-edition copy of Boswell's biography. Identifying the text as a collection of familiar essays, the chapter titled The Lexicographer's Chair details the physical and behavioral idiosyncrasies of Johnson, including his convulsive movements, superstitious walking rituals, and distinctive laughter described by contemporaries as rhinoceros-like. Pocock argues that Boswell possesses a specific artistic genius, claiming that his lack of reticence and occasional folly enable a portrait of unsurpassed intimacy. The narrative highlights Johnson's humanity by recounting his tenderness toward children and his cat, Hodge. By situating Johnson within the atmosphere of eighteenth-century London coffee-houses, Pocock emphasizes the enduring power of Boswell's work to render the subject as a solid and monumental presence rather than a shadowy historical figure.
Cochrane entry 96.
This note examines the bibliography of Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, printed in 1747 in quarto and octavo forms. The 8vo is later and corrects an erratum in the 4to. The 4to exists in two states of sheet A: the Chesterfield state, which contains the dedication superscription on page 1, and the non-Chesterfield state, where this space is blank. The entire sheet A is from two distinct settings of type. Chapman details five differences between the two varieties, noting the non-Chesterfield typically offers the superior reading, though the Chesterfield is followed by the 8vo in three variations. The note discusses which setting might be earlier and also addresses large-paper copies, concluding that while evidence for size variation is weak, Mr. Wise's copy is definitively on thick paper and, along with two other copies, is numbered, suggesting they were presentation copies.
Powell notes that the Encyclopédie's article "Anglois" is largely a French translation of Johnson's running commentary in the introduction to his Dictionary. Although the Encyclopaedist does not explicitly credit Johnson as the author of the commentary, the article concludes with an extensive and effusive encomium on Johnson’s Dictionary, praising its comprehensive scholarship, philosophical depth, and judicious choice of quotations to illustrate varying word meanings.
CGV entry 17:57. On borrowings from Johnson.
Much Loved Books: Best Sellers of the Ages
Johnson transformed the landscape of English letters by producing a dictionary that served as a standard for lexicography, emphasizing the use of literary quotations to illustrate word meanings. His work represents a triumph of individual scholarship over the antiquated system of literary patronage, most notably asserted in his dignified and scathing letter to the Earl of Chesterfield. This correspondence signaled the independence of the author and a new reliance on the reading public. Johnson labored for seven years in a London attic, overcoming personal grief and financial distress to define sixty thousand words. His definitions and etymologies provide a rich mine of history, revealing the social and cultural origins of daily speech. By injecting his own personality and moral precision into the text, Johnson ensured that the dictionary remained a vital, human document rather than a mere list of terms. His achievement paved the way for future lexicographers, such as Webster, to continue the refinement of the English tongue with similar devotion to accuracy and social utility.
A Copy of Shakespeare's Works Which Formerly Belonged to Dr. Johnson
Cuming describes an eight-volume 1747 edition of Pope and Warburton's Shakespeare, now at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, containing extensive pencil notations by Johnson. These markings confirm Bishop Percy's account of Johnson's lexicographical methods for compiling the Dictionary. Johnson underlined words and entered initial letters in the margins to guide copyists in transcribing authorities; he occasionally altered spellings, such as "gate" to "gait," to ensure proper alphabetical placement. The copy, which lacks volume six in one account but is described as an eight-volume set in another, contains longer comments and variant readings that Johnson incorporated into his 1765 Shakespeare. While most volumes contain Johnson's hand, volume six features annotations by Thirlby and a note signed by Walpole, who lent the annotated copy to Johnson. Cuming suggests Johnson used this volume to complete a deficient set while preparing his own edition and traces the provenance through the sales of Steevens and Heber.
CGV entry 17:59. Used in the making of the Dictionary.
The Pathos and Humor of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Newton recounts the composition and publication history of Johnson's Dictionary, noting its origin in a suggestion by Dodsley and the subsequent involvement of Millar and Strahan. Johnson completed the work single-handedly over seven years at 17 Gough Square, famously responding to the French Academy's slower progress by asserting the "proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman." Newton details the conflict with Chesterfield, characterizing Johnson's 1755 letter as a "Declaration of Independence" against patronage. The text emphasizes the "humor and pathos" found in definitions such as "excise," "lexicographer," and "oats," while acknowledging Johnson's "pure ignorance" regarding "pastern." Newton also discusses his own bibliophilic interest in Johnsoniana, describing copies of the Dictionary previously owned by Piozzi, Vesey, and Dickens. He highlights the "architectural nobleness" of the work and its enduring influence on subsequent lexicography, including the New English Dictionary. Quotations illustrate Johnson’s "defensive pride" and his view of the booksellers as the "true patrons of literature."
CGV entry 17:60. Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly (1927).
Some Medical Words in Johnson's Dictionary
Burr analyzes Johnson’s Dictionary to illustrate the eighteenth-century public’s attitude toward medical thought. He highlights how the nomenclature of Johnson’s era, dominated by humoralism, has been largely superseded by modern disciplines like bacteriology and biochemistry. Johnson’s definitions often reveal the period’s scientific limitations: he omits biological functions in his definition of "physiology," neglects "hygiene" entirely, and defines "occult" without its modern spiritualist connotations. Burr notes Johnson’s inclusion of terms now considered obsolete or "low," such as "leech" for physician and "mullgrubs" for intestinal distress, while also observing the author's Tory prejudices in favoring "chirurgeon" over "surgeon." Burr further explores Johnson’s definitions of mental ailments—including "melancholy," "lunacy," and "epilepsy"—which he attributed to "viscid blood" or the "nervous fluid." Burr concludes that the evolution of these definitions reflects a broader transition from empiric therapeutics to rationalistic medicine.
Der Gedanke einer englischen Sprachakademie in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart
Flasdieck traces the three-century history of the proposal for an English language academy, identifying its peak during the neoclassical era with Swift’s 1712 proposal. The study highlights Johnson as the pivotal figure whose 1755 Dictionary provided a functional substitute for an academy while he simultaneously dismantled the rationalist illusion of linguistic stabilization. Johnson argued that language, as a living organism, resists "legal restraints" and that an academy contradicts the "spirit of English liberty." While figures like Chesterfield and Orrery continued to advocate for academic authority to "fix" the language, Johnson’s empirical observation that "no dictionary can enbalm" a living tongue became the dominant scholarly position. The text notes that later figures like Piozzi and Boswell are situated within this post-Johnsonian context where the Dictionary itself exercised a "kind of vicarious jurisdiction" over English usage, effectively ending serious institutional efforts toward a formal British Academy of letters.
CGV entry 17:62. The chapter "Das Zeitalter Johnsons".
Samuel Johnson's Reading for the Dictionary
This report details the 1927 sale of a highly significant, though incomplete, set of Dictionary proof sheets for the record sum of £3250. Bound in three volumes from the library of Colonel Ralph Sneyd, the sheets contain approximately 1630 illustrative slips and numerous unpublished marginalia by Johnson and his amanuenses. The text compares these volumes to an annotated third edition in the British Museum and the fourth edition (1773) held at the John Rylands Library, which Johnson bequeathed to Reynolds. The account highlights the physical composition of the Sneyd copy, noting missing sections such as "Oary-Pack" and all preliminary matter. It concludes by quoting the Preface to the first edition, emphasizing Johnson’s reflections on completing the monumental task amidst "sickness and in sorrow," without the benefit of academic retirement or aristocratic patronage.
Reproduces the 1755 legal case submitted by the Commissioners of Excise to Attorney-General Murray concerning Johnson's inflammatory definition of "EXCISE" in his Dictionary ("A hateful tax..."). Murray's opinion judged the definition a libel but advised threatening Johnson with a legal information rather than immediate prosecution, suggesting they first offer him an opportunity to alter the definition.
McGovern records the 1927 sale of the proof sheets for the first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary for £3,200. He notes that the collection included over 1,500 slips, many in Johnson’s handwriting, previously held at Keel Hall. McGovern further mentions that Johnson’s corrected copy of the fourth edition is located in the Rylands Library.
CGV entry 17:66. On the sale of proof sheets of the first edition.
The Preface to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Wood characterizes the 1755 text as a masterpiece of clarity and "delightful imagery" rather than the ponderous Latinate prose often attributed to Johnson. The address examines Johnson's psychological state during the work’s seven-year composition, noting his self-identification as a "harmless drudge" and his initial, unfulfilled hope to permanently stabilize the English tongue. Wood underscores Johnson’s wisdom in acknowledging that a living language remains in a constant state of flux. The article also describes the methodology of the Dictionary, including Johnson’s use of Bailey's earlier work as a base and his strategic selection of "primitives and derivatives" from Roman and "Teutonick" sources to augment the national vocabulary.
CGV entry 17:68. On Johnson's copy of Bacon's 'Works'.
Samuel Johnson and His Dictionary of the English Language
Johnson completed the "vast undertaking" of his lexicon in 1754 after seven years of "single-purposed drudgery" at Gough Square. Using an interleaved copy of Bailey’s dictionary, Johnson marked authorities in a "miserably ragged" book collection, while assistants Stewart, Maitland, Peyton, Shiels, and the Macbeans transcribed definitions onto "accursed slips of paper." The text recounts the "far-famed blast of doom" delivered to Chesterfield, whom Johnson defined as a patron who "encumbers him with help" only after the struggle is won. Significant attention is paid to Wilkes’s critique of Johnson’s grammar, specifically the "unhand-some be-haviour" toward the letter H, and the subsequent "perfectly easy sociality" observed between Johnson and Wilkes at the Dillys' table in 1776. Technical discussion addresses the alphabetical integration of U and V, the weight of the original folio volumes, and the bibliographical value of the 1747 Plan and early editions.
This article, reprinted from Winterich’s Romance of Great Books (1929), recounts the seven-year drudgery of Johnson and his assistants in Gough Square. Winterich describes Johnson’s methodology, which involved marking words in Nathan Bailey’s standard lexicon for clerks to transcribe onto slips. The text emphasizes the "blast of doom" letter to Lord Chesterfield, where Johnson rejected late-offered patronage, defining a patron as one who "encumbers him with help" only after reaching safety. Winterich also notes the role played by Boswell’s later recording of these events while highlighting contemporary jabs by John Wilkes.
CGV entry 17:69. Reprinted from 'Books and the Man' (1929).
Vernon's letter to the editor inquires about a 1785 prospectus for a Genuine Edition of Johnson's Dictionary. The prospectus describes a two-volume work containing numerous additions, corrections, and alterations bequeathed by Johnson to Joshua Reynolds. Vernon asks if this edition, intended for weekly delivery in eighty-four numbers by Longmans, ever reached publication. He specifically questions whether the 1785 sixth edition published by Rivington embodied the manuscript alterations found in the Reynolds copy of the fourth edition now held at the Rylands Library.
CGV entry 17:70. On the quarto edition by Longmans, 1785. See also a reply by J. Gordon Hayes in the same journal, July 11, page 558.
Chapman defends Johnson against Bridges's claim that Johnson imposed the pronunciation medicínal through his Dictionary, and in doing so "faked the quotations." Chapman argues that Johnson's well-known misquotations were due to his amanuenses and carelessness, not craft. Furthermore, Johnson explicitly warned that his quotations might not match his preferred pronunciation, and the quotes were for definition, not pronunciation. Finally, Chapman disputes Bridges's claim that Johnson substituted medicinal for medicinable in a line from Othello.
CGV entry 17:71. On Latinisms, etc.
Dictionary Making in the Early Eighteenth Century
Segar details dictionary projects predating Johnson’s work. Joseph Addison planned a dictionary using Archbishop Tillotson’s sermons as a standard of language, collecting examples until he abandoned the project in 1717. Ambrose Philips subsequently issued "Proposals" for a folio dictionary, focusing on comprehensive linguistic details, including etymology, figurative senses, idioms, and archaic words. Segar suggests Philips's project may have been based on Addison's earlier, unpublished work. These ambitious proposals by Addison and Philips illustrate a significant intellectual movement toward standardizing the English language that preceded Johnson's renowned achievement.
Haight details the Yale Library acquisition of a 1740 edition of Bacon used by Johnson to collect examples for his Dictionary. The third volume remains in pieces, reflecting Johnson's habit of tearing the heart out of books. Johnson marked words and phrases in the margins for his amanuenses to transcribe, a process that defaced the text. Haight identifies thousands of Baconian examples in the Dictionary, though many suffer from hasty detruncation or modernized spelling. Johnson frequently revised Bacon's prose to save space, stripping persons in anecdotes of their titles and changing verbs. Despite these casualties, Haight honors Johnson's achievement in illustrating the history of words through authorial quotation, noting the Bacon set provides an intimate view of the lexicographer at work.
CGV entry 17:73. On the copy used in making the Dictionary.
Newmark identifies an instance in the Dictionary where Johnson quotes his own poem "London" to illustrate the word "prowl." Johnson attributed the line to "Anon.," effectively concealing his authorship for decades. The quotation was later omitted in the 1799 quarto edition and by Todd. Newmark notes Garrick’s objection to the use of "low" authorities like Richardson, to which Johnson replied that he had also cited Garrick himself.
CGV entry 17:74. On 'London' and the 'Dictionary'.
Mathews chronicles the development of the English-only dictionary, beginning with Cawdrey’s Table Alphabetical (1604), which aimed to explain "hard words" to the unlearned. This tradition continued through the works of Bullokar, Cockeram, and Blount, whose Glossographia (1656) introduced crude etymologies and citations of authorities. Mathews notes that eighteenth-century lexicographers, such as Kersey and Bailey, expanded these efforts by attempting to include common words and increasing emphasis on etymology. The narrative culminates in Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755), which established a new scholarly standard through its "prodigious" reading of standard authors and the use of illustrative quotations to delineate various word senses. Mathews argues that Johnson’s work "dominated the field" for a century, while late eighteenth-century successors like Kenrick, Sheridan, and Walker made further advancements primarily in orthoepy. Ultimately, Mathews positions this period as one defined by a transition from helping readers understand difficult terms to "correcting and purifying" the national tongue.
The Preface to Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Boddey suggests Johnson's famous definition of oats likely stemmed from reading Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Burton, in discussing diet, quotes Mayor's defense of oaten bread for Scots, Welsh, and a third of England, juxtaposing it with Wecker's (from Galen) calling oats "horse-meat." Boswell printed a letter from a Scot urging Johnson to read Mayor as an answer to the definition. This context supports the definition's implied insult to the Scots.
CGV entry 17:78. On the definition of "oats." See also a reply by Donald Dorian in the same journal, September 13, page 620.
The History of Dr. Johnson's Definition of 'Oats'
Johnson's famed "oats" definition, calling the grain horse food in England but people's support in Scotland, was a conscious expression of anti-Scottish prejudice, not an impromptu creation. The article documents historical and literary precursors to the taunt. Scottish responses ranged from Lord Elibank's witty retort to Adam Smith's empirical critique, suggesting the gibe may have influenced subsequent diet and attitudes.
The Contemporary Quotations in Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson was reluctant to quote contemporaries in his Dictionary, preferring the "wells of English undefiled" and aiming for impartiality. He only made exceptions for rare merit, convenience, or friendship. Edmund Malone's list documents the few authors included, such as Mrs. Lennox (an American writer), Richardson, and David Garrick. Johnson quoted himself from London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene, and The Rambler, and sometimes composed his own illustrations. The limited inclusion of contemporary authors, though criticized by some at the time, was a step toward a more historical principle in lexicography, moving beyond sole reliance on a few established masters.
J. notes Johnson's admission in the Dictionary Preface to relying on memory for illustrative examples, resulting in several inaccuracies. The author highlights a mangled Shakespearean stanza under "Daisy," where Johnson substitutes "much bedight" for "with delight." J. attributes such errors to Johnson’s lack of interest in botany, noting that Mason's later supplement failed to rectify these palpable botanical mistakes.
CGV entry 17:81. On misquotations in the 'Dictionary'.
Dr. Samuel Johnson and Some Musical Definitions
An Injustice of Human Memory: A Defense of the Greatest English Lexicographer
Purcell questions the argument that Johnson's Dictionary definition of "oats"—"in Scotland supports the people"—was purely scientific and devoid of anti-Scottish sentiment. Citing the contemporary Scottish author Tobias Smollett's novel Humphrey Clinker, Purcell notes Matthew Bramble's comment on the English "contempt for Scotland" and his desire for Scottish peasants to afford "good wheaten loaves, instead of such poor, unpalatable, and inflammatory diet" as oats. This suggests that the reliance on oatmeal in Scotland was widely considered a misfortune and a source of contemporary derision.
T. C. C. examines Johnson’s linguistic precision and the occasional contradictions found within his Dictionary. The text analyzes a dialogue between Johnson and Garrick concerning the word "concoction," noting Johnson’s reliance on physiological definitions despite broader metaphorical usage. Further discussion covers Johnson’s early distaste for the word "prodigious," his legalistic inclusion of "stultify" during the Hebrides tour, and the contemporary evolution of "civilization" versus Johnson’s preference for "civility" in his lexicographical work.
CGV entry 17:88. See also volume 177 (July 15), page 50.
CGV entry 17:90. Published in 'Cornell University Abstracts of Theses, 1939' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1940), pages 31-34.
Notes on Serialization and Competitive Publishing
CGV entry 17:91. On Johnson's and Bailey's dictionaries, 1755.
CGV entry 17:93. On the plan of the Dictionary, 1747.
Samuel Johnson and the Authoritarian Principle in Linguistic Criticism
Allen examines Johnson's linguistic judgments in his Dictionary through the lens of authoritarianism in linguistic criticism. It argues that Johnson's prescriptive and often arbitrary standards for English usage derived from two centuries of critical forces, including neo-classicism and the rising middle-class demand for linguistic correctness. Johnson adopted the censorious practices of earlier lexicographers but innovated by using explicit critical labels and literary quotations to illustrate and condemn words deviating from etymological, logical, or elegant usage. His work, in turn, became a powerful precedent, shaping authoritarian methods in subsequent English lexicography and language criticism.
CGV entry 17:94. Abstract included in Microfilm Abstracts, volume 4, number 1 (1942), pages 34-35.
Wall examines the aphorism "Words are the daughters of earth, and deeds are the sons of Heaven" used in Johnson’s preface to his Dictionary. He notes its appearance in Sir William Jones’s works as a Hindu proverb but demonstrates that Johnson could not have quoted Jones, given the publication dates. Wall traces the phrase's earlier origins to George Herbert and Florio.
CGV entry 17:95. On possible sources for Johnson's quotation in the preface to the Dictionary.
Johnson's Dictionary and Its Maker
Quotations from Pope in Johnson's Dictionary
The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 1604–1755
Starnes and Noyes provide a systematic historical account of the English dictionary’s evolution during its first 150 years, tracing its growth from Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall in 1604 to the arrival of Johnson in 1755. The authors establish that while Johnson is often credited with modernizing the form, his work was the culmination of a long tradition of bilingual lexicons and hard-word dictionaries. Although the study ends at 1755 and explicitly excludes a primary analysis of Johnson’s Dictionary to avoid doubling the work's length, it positions his achievement as a definitive and authoritative milestone informed by predecessors like Nathan Bailey and Benjamin Martin. The text details how earlier compilers introduced innovations such as etymology, biographical sketches, and technical terminology that Johnson eventually perfected. By examining the interrelationships between texts, Starnes and Noyes demonstrate that the slow growth toward a standard English vocabulary was a collaborative, centuries-long process involving schoolmasters and hack-writers alike.
Wimsatt calls attention to a group of twenty-seven anti-Scot quotations Johnson used from Cleveland's satirical poem "The Rebel Scot" in his Dictionary. These jibes are often irrelevant to the word being defined, like the joke about oats and Scotland. Examples include definitions for laird, proselyte, twilight, gallowtree, scratch, and epidemical. This humorous indulgence is an example of what Boswell called Johnson's "capricious and humorous indulgence" of his own opinions.
CGV entry 17:99. See also a reply by Vincent B. Hudson in the same journal, April 13, page 175.
Noah's Ark: New England Yankees and the Endless Quest
Leavitt chronicles the hundred-year history of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries, positioning Samuel Johnson as the primary intellectual precursor and model for Noah Webster. During Webster's formative years, Johnson remained a living author whose Dictionary provided the authoritative standard for the language and whose style influenced every young writer. Leavitt explains that while Webster frequently cited Johnson in support of his own work and shared a similar ambition to provide celebrity to national authors, he ultimately sought to 'root out and extirpate' the Johnsonian influence to foster American linguistic independence. The narrative details how Webster challenged Johnson's 'all-too-casual etymology,' inexact definitions, and exclusion of commercial and scientific terminology. Leavitt further describes the 'War of the Dictionaries' between Webster's successors and Joseph Emerson Worcester, noting that even British courts eventually cited the American work as an authority on points not covered by Johnson. The text concludes by asserting that Webster's 'Ark' avoided the 'gradual obsolescence' of Johnson's work through continuous editorial revision and the eventual dominance of the Merriam-Webster brand as an international institution.
a brief overview of Johnson's life and work, with a particular focus on the creation of his Dictionary. It also includes an appended section on Johnson’s schoolmaster at Lichfield Grammar School, John Hunter. The anonymous author recounts Hunter’s reputation as a severe disciplinarian who used flogging extensively, a practice Johnson famously defended later in life. Despite the brutality, Johnson expressed a grudging respect for Hunter, acknowledging that his harsh methods were effective in driving students to learn. The article notes that Johnson believed his own scholarly diligence was partly a result of Hunter's rigor. Hunter, for his part, recognized Johnson’s extraordinary abilities but worried about his idleness and "unconquerable" spirit. This early relationship is presented as a formative experience, shaping Johnson's enduring views on education, authority, and the necessity of strict discipline in intellectual development.
CGV entry 17:101. A revised edition was published in 1948. See also The Times Literary Supplement, May 17, 1947, page 239.
Wimsatt's article addresses the criticism by Callander and the assertion by Barfield that Johnson's Dictionary definition of electricity was obsolete upon its publication in 1755. Both critics focus on Johnson's initial, brief definition, which was borrowed from John Quincy's Lexicon Physico-Medicum and described electricity as a property only of rubbed bodies. Wimsatt reveals that Johnson himself recognized the definition's obsolescence and added a long, original paragraph. This paragraph sketched the major advances in electrical science, including experiments by Stephen Gray, the danger of electrical vapor, and the philosophical attempts to intercept lightning strokes following Franklin's work on the identity of electricity and lightning in 1752. Johnson's engagement with the modern science is further demonstrated by his use of the newly popular word "electrify" in Rambler 118, published in 1751, soon after Franklin's work.
Philosophic Words: A Study of Style and Meaning in the 'Rambler' and 'Dictionary' of Samuel Johnson
Wimsatt explores the stylistic and linguistic evolution of Samuel Johnson's prose by examining the "philosophical" or scientific diction prevalent in the Rambler and the Dictionary. The monograph argues that Johnson persistentley applies terminology from seventeenth-century natural philosophy—such as chemistry, mechanics, and medicine—to moral and psychological contexts through metaphoric transfer. By tracing the origins of these "hard" words to writers like Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and John Arbuthnot, Wimsatt demonstrates how Johnson's immersion in lexicographical labor informed his creative style. Johnson "familiarized the terms of philosophy" by using them as abstract schemata to analyze the human soul, creating a "grandeur of generality" that distinguishes his prose from that of his predecessors. The study highlights specific scientific motifs, including medical analogies of "peccant humours" and mechanical images of "equipoise" and "attraction," asserting that Johnson's use of these terms provides a "physico-philosophical core" to his style. Wimsatt concludes that the Dictionary serves as a vital record of the linguistic history and private experience that shaped Johnson's authoritative voice. Chapter 1, "Philosophic Words: Bacon to Johnson," addresses the evolution of "hard words" in English, tracing scientific vocabulary from Francis Bacon’s experimentalism through seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy to their eventual naturalization as literary metaphors. Chapter 2, "Johnson’s Dictionary," argues that the Dictionary serves as a monumental record of scientific reading, where technical definitions and physico-theological illustrations provide the foundation for an authoritative, expanded English vocabulary. Chapter 3, "The Rambler," addresses how scientific concepts from physics, chemistry, and medicine are systematically integrated into moral essays through pervasive, dense metaphors that analyze human nature using the language of natural philosophy. Chapter 4, "The Relation Between Rambler and Dictionary," argues that the essays acted as a testing ground for the Dictionary, with both works drawing on a common fund of seventeenth-century scientific sources. Chapter 5, "Some Stylistic Values," addresses the epistemological underpinnings of this style, where corpuscular theories and mechanical principles are extended to soul-analysis and even leveraged for sophisticated philosophic humor. Critical reception of this study is sharply divided, presenting the work as a sophisticated but controversial exploration of how scientific vocabulary informs literary style. Saunders and Stauffer praise the author for refining the traditional understanding of Latinate diction by demonstrating how the subject assimilated technical terms from natural philosophy—acquired through his work on the Dictionary—into the moral analysis of the Rambler. Notes and Queries and Spears highlight the author's demonstration of "philosophic words" like "acrimonious" and "repulsion" moving from physical to psychological meanings, effectively matching mechanical imagery to the inner workings of the soul. However, Keast disputes the central thesis, arguing that the actual frequency of such words is too low to constitute a focal point of style and questioning the direct influence of a "rationalist" worldview. Hatcher offers a more fundamental linguistic critique, accusing the author of failing to recognize universal semantic developments and confusing general Latinate phenomena with specific characteristics of the eighteenth century. Despite these challenges, Stauffer and Spears conclude that the work successfully unites erudition with an imaginative awareness of critical problems, proving an interdependence of style and meaning that reveals a "poetic and apperceptive mind."
CGV entry 17:104. Reprinted by Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut, in 1968.
Keast analyzes Wimsatt’s study of Johnson’s style, which argues that the scientific and "philosophic" vocabulary of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—found in writers like Bacon and Browne—serves as the core of Johnson’s metaphorical richness in the Rambler. Wimsatt contends that Johnson domesticates technical terms of physics and mechanics to analyze the human soul. While acknowledging the study’s meticulous documentation and insights into Johnson’s humor, Keast disputes Wimsatt’s central thesis. He argues that the actual frequency of these "philosophic words" is too low to be the focal point of Johnson’s style and questions the direct influence of a "rationalist" world-view, noting Johnson’s frequent opposition to predictable, analytic systems in human affairs.
CGV entry 17:104. A review by W. R. Keast of the book by William K. Wimsatt, Jr. Wimsatt’s appears in vol. (January 1950): 84-88.
Hatcher criticizes Wimsatt for failing to grasp the linguistic commonplace that abstract words root in concrete exterior reference, leading him to seek special, complex explanations for normal semantic development. She argues Wimsatt confuses universal linguistic phenomena, such as the spatial reference latent in most Latinate verbs, with characteristics peculiar to Johnson's style or the 17th century. Hatcher also notes a dearth of specific remarks about Johnson's personal art of writing, but concedes the book's pages often "shine with a faint and lovely light," revealing a poetic and apperceptive mind.
CGV entry 17:104. Review by Anna Granville Hatcher of the book by William K. Wimsatt, Jr.
McCue analyzes the statistical coverage of the English language in Johnson’s Dictionary. By comparing Johnson’s entries with the New English Dictionary, McCue finds that Johnson captured approximately 80% of words current in 1750. He observes a steady decline in the inclusion of archaic or obsolete terms from A to Z, suggesting Johnson shifted focus away from antiquarianisms as the project progressed. McCue concludes that Johnson’s deliberate omission of certain technical, French, or "indecent" terms from Bailey’s earlier work reflects a conscious editorial policy of linguistic refinement.
Johnson's Treatment of Bolingbroke in the Dictionary
On Johnson's personal and literary animosity toward Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. Johnson disapproved of Bolingbroke's Gallicism and, more deeply, his deistic philosophical and religious views. Following the appearance of Bolingbroke's posthumous Works in 1754, Johnson condemned the deistic essays and the "beggarly Scotchman" (Mallet) who edited them. Johnson quotes Bolingbroke sparingly in his Dictionary, only ten times in total, often from his non-philosophic writings and sometimes from memory. Seven of the ten quotations come from Bolingbroke's correspondence with Jonathan Swift, which Johnson was reading for his dictionary work. Johnson uses passages from Swift's letters to put Bolingbroke in a dubious light, such as under sophistically, where the accompanying quote from Swift labels Bolingbroke's argument "most sophistically" about his financial decline, which Johnson defines as "With fallacious subtilty." Johnson also inserted original comments, most famously under irony, defining it as: "A mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words: as, Bolingbroke was a holy man." Johnson also censures Bolingbroke's French linguistic inclinations under the entry for Gallicism.
Self-Quotations and Anonymous Quotations in Johnson's Dictionary
The Wimsatts examine Johnson's practice of quoting his own works in his Dictionary of the English Language. They list thirty-two acknowledged self-quotations from his poems (London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene) and prose (Rambler, Life of Savage). Furthermore, they identify sixteen "anonymous" quotations that are also from Johnson's works, including London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, suggesting he occasionally chose not to claim authorship. The authors note that Johnson often quoted from memory, resulting in misquotations (e.g., in the entry for "dog") and even the creation of a line from his first draft of Irene that did not appear in the published text. One anomaly is the misattribution of a couplet from Pope's Essay on Man to "Johnson" under the word "island" in the first edition.
CGV entry 17:108. See also a reply by T. O. Mabbott in the same journal (May 1949), pages 7-8.
Johnson and Scaliger on Dictionary-Making
V. R. identifies the source of Johnson’s Latin poem Know Yourself as Joseph Justus Scaliger’s eight-line Arabic lexicon complaint. Johnson expanded Scaliger’s brief grievance into 54 lines to detail his own "vexatious toil" and financial prospects.
Atkinson defends the Dictionary as a masterpiece of analytical thinking, countering common focuses on its ponderous or idiosyncratic definitions. Boswell’s praise for Johnson’s "art of thinking" is validated through an examination of the mathematical clarity and succinctness found in entries like "needle" and "distinction." Atkinson highlights the "fine excess" of illustrative quotations, where Johnson’s personal taste for Shakespeare, Milton, and various prose anecdotes transforms the work into a diverse treasury of English literature and cultural history.
CGV entry 17:110. Published in parts across volumes 194 and 195.
'Sooth' in Keats, Milton, Shakespeare, and Dr. Johnson
Greene argues that Keats’s idiosyncratic use of "sooth" as "pleasing" derives from the authoritative influence of Johnson’s Dictionary. While scholars previously attributed Keats's usage to garbled reminiscences of Milton or Shakespeare, Greene demonstrates that Johnson’s Dictionary explicitly defined "sooth" as an adjective meaning "pleasing" and a noun meaning "sweetness." This interpretation originated from Johnson’s own questionable gloss of Richard II. Keats was merely following the accepted linguistic authority of his era, which had its roots in Johnson's back-formation and semantic conjectures.
CGV entry 17:111. Explains a crux in 'The Eve of St. Agnes' by Johnson's definition in the Dictionary.
Greene identifies Sir Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus as the source for Johnson’s polysyllabic definition of "network" in the Dictionary. Noting the frequent occurrence of "decussation" and "reticulate" in Browne’s quincuncial treatise, Greene argues that Johnson’s phrasing reflects Browne’s exotic terminology rather than Johnson’s own stylistic indulgence. The study documents the parallel occurrences of these derivatives to establish Browne’s direct influence on Johnson’s lexicographical method.
CGV entry 17:112. Suggests echoes of Johnson's reading of Sir Thomas Browne's 'The Garden of Cyrus'.
Samuel Johnson and Dryden's 'Du Fresnoy'
Wimsatt describes Johnson’s extensive and selective use of Dryden's prose translation of Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy’s De Arte Graphica for his Dictionary, yielding at least 415 quotations. Although Johnson sourced a few technical painting terms, the quotations primarily illustrate a complete grammar of neo-classic aesthetic principles. Key themes include the kinship between poetry and painting (ut pictura poesis), the imitation of nature and ancient models, the doctrine of decorum, and the celebrated principle of ideal and general beauty. Johnson’s incorporation of this doctrine, even while appearing to mock art, highlights his profound engagement with graphic art theory.
CGV entry 17:113. On the use of Dryden's translation of 'The Art of Painting' in the Dictionary.
Whitaker's Attack on Johnson's Etymologies
Hudson investigates Whitaker's 1775 attack on Johnson's etymologies, which claimed over three thousand English words derived from Celtic, contrary to Johnson's belief in few Celtic loan words. Whitaker's "Specimen" challenged Johnson's derivations for words in the first three letters of the alphabet. Modern analysis finds only about seven corrections and two additions that favor Whitaker over Johnson, indicating Whitaker's etymological extravagance. Johnson ignored the challenge, an exercise of good judgment given the implausibility and strained nature of Whitaker's many fanciful derivations.
CGV entry 17:114. In his 'History of Manchester' (1775).
Michell queries the meaning and quantity of "arrack" mentioned by Johnson in Rambler No. 16. Johnson describes providing fifteen gallons of the spirit for his admirers. Michell asks if Johnson used the term for any "ardent spirit" or specifically East Indian "Toddy," and wonders if Johnson adopted the word from Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. The page includes several unrelated queries regarding genealogy, ninety-nine-year leases, and the identity of "Tadur."
CGV entry 17:115. On the use of the word in the 'Dictionary' and 'Rambler' 16.
On Johnson's use of Isaac Newton's Opticks in his Dictionary by examining Newtonian quotations for optical terms. Johnson relied most heavily on Newton, with 75 of 200 technical quotations derived from Opticks, all found in later editions of the text (not the first). Johnson's quotations often involve minor alterations and omissions for brevity. The last 68 pages of Opticks (the Queries) supplied 37.5% of the total quotations, suggesting Johnson's particular interest in Newton's philosophical speculations.
Donne Quotations in Johnson's Dictionary
Atkinson examines discrepancies in Johnson's quotations of Donne within the Dictionary. The analysis identifies several instances where Johnson apparently misquoted or abbreviated the poet, specifically under entries such as "anguish," "correction," and "habitable." Atkinson notes that where Johnson uses "anguish" or "correction," Donne's original text reads "aguish" and "corrective." The study suggests these discrepancies may arise from the specific edition of Donne Johnson used rather than simple printer error, noting Johnson's general tendency to abbreviate his authors.
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: A Preliminary Puff
Sherbo proposes that the letter "The signification of WORDS how varied," signed "W.S." in the Gentleman's Magazine (February 1749), functioned as an advertisement for Samuel Johnson's forthcoming Dictionary. The letter and Johnson's Dictionary share the same idea regarding the mutation of word senses over time, using identical illustrative quotations for words like "trull," "wench," "knave," "villain," "pedant," "leech," and "dame." The author suggests three possibilities for this duplication, with the most likely being Johnson allowing his printer, William Strahan (W.S.), to use the material for a promotional "puff."
CGV entry 17:118. By "W. S." (William Strahan?) in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1749.
Dr. Johnson and Some Physico-Theological Themes
Atkinson analyzes Johnson’s extensive use of Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth and Woodward’s geological treatises within the Dictionary. The study demonstrates how Johnson extracted hundreds of quotations to illustrate terms related to the Deluge and the earth’s dissolution. Atkinson argues that Johnson’s interest in mountain formation and the final conflagration reflects a deep engagement with physico-theology, balancing scientific curiosity with a theological focus on the world’s transient nature.
CGV entry 17:119. On the use of Burnet's 'Sacred Theory of the Earth'. Published in parts across several issues.
Altercations of Thomas Edwards with Samuel Johnson
Gilbert details the literary quarrel between Thomas Edwards and Johnson, primarily over orthography in Johnson's Dictionary (1755). Edwards's initial criticisms, provoked by Johnson's notes on Edwards's Trial of the Letter Y (1753), concerned word derivations, the Old English yogh, and the spelling of least and farther. Edwards's later opinions, voiced in private letters, attacked Johnson’s choice of authorities (e.g., L'Estrange, Peacham), the inclusion of "monstrous" dictionary words (e.g., adespotick), partisan political examples (e.g., abdicate), and numerous printing faults. While Johnson's choice of authorities is defended (as reflecting his inclusion of technical and trade diction), Gilbert concedes Edwards was justified regarding the typographical errors and "monstrous words." The article frames the exchange with Johnson's view of Edwards as a "fly" compared to the "stately horse" Warburton.
CGV entry 17:121. Over the 'Dictionary'.
Sledd and Kolb analyze Johnson's definitions of "Whig" and "Tory" in his Dictionary to challenge the "personal heresy" that sees Johnson's personal political bias reflected in them. While Johnson defines "Tory" favorably ("adheres to the antient constitution... opposed to a whig") and "Whig" briefly, the authors argue this is not an invention of malice but a modification of established traditions in English lexicography. They show earlier dictionaries (Boyer, Kersey-Phillips) were more openly contemptuous of "Whig." Johnson follows the common practice of presenting the moderate "Tory" position and the lexicographical tradition of defining by opposition, as seen in Chambers's Cyclopædia, which was cautious about etymologies.
Dr. Johnson's Revision of His Dictionary
Sherbo analyzes the thoroughness of Johnson’s 1773 revision of the Dictionary by examining the letter "M." He identifies approximately 16,000 total changes, including 127 added quotations, corrected etymologies, and methodized definitions. Sherbo observes that Johnson frequently abridged Miller’s botanical definitions to create space for new material. Finally, he argues the revision served as vital therapeutic employment to stave off Johnson’s "constitutional melancholy" during a period of spiritual unrest.
Atkinson examines the intersection of eighteenth-century landscape gardening and poetic vocabulary through the lens of Johnson’s Dictionary. The analysis demonstrates how concepts of order, propriety, and "creative equilibrium" informed the period's aesthetic definitions. Atkinson traces the usage of terms such as "enamel," "chequer," and "promiscuous" in the works of Milton, Pope, and Thomson. These linguistic choices reflect the transition from formal regularity to the early romantic appreciation for the "horrid" and "shaggy" elements of the picturesque.
CGV entry 17:124. In two parts: October 11, pages 452-454; and October 25, pages 475-477.
Sherbo examines pencil marks next to certain titles in a list of "Books Printed for R. Dodsley" found at the end of the last volume of Johnson's copy of Warburton's Shakespeare. The marks are possibly Johnson's and appear beside: Pitt's translation of The Æneid of Virgil and Vida's Art of Poetry; The Sailor's Companion; A Journey through Russia into Persia; and Baker's The Microscope made easy. While Pitt's Virgil appears in Johnson's sales catalogue, the others do not. Johnson's interest in travel and science makes the marks on A Journey Through Russia and The Microscope plausible, though his interest in The Sailor's Companion is puzzling given his dislike for the sailor's life.
The Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language: Johnson's Revision and the Establishment of the Text
Keast examines the four folio editions of the Dictionary published during Johnson’s lifetime to track authorial revisions in the Preface. The study reveals that Johnson revised the text twice—for the second edition (1755-56) and the fourth edition (1773)—making independent sets of alterations each time. Keast identifies thirty-one variants in the second edition and thirty-eight in the fourth, noting that the fourth edition was set from the first, thereby failing to incorporate the second edition’s improvements. Substantive changes include the correction of "fair" to "pioneer" and "synonimous" to "synonymous," as well as stylistic refinements to the famous closing passage. Keast argues against the traditional editorial practice of using the 1773 text as a copy-text, demonstrating that it excludes half of Johnson's total revisions. The article advocates for a composite text based on the first edition that integrates both sets of Johnsonian emendations to reflect the author's complete final intentions.
Keast examines the textual history of Johnson's Preface across four folio editions (1755--1773) to distinguish authorial revisions from typographical errors. He demonstrates that the fourth edition was printed from the first, rather than a corrected second or third, necessitating a careful collation to recover Johnson's intended refinements. Keast identifies thirty-one departures in the second edition, concluding that while accidental variants were likely compositor "normalizations," sixteen substantive changes—such as substituting "united" for "affixed"—reflect Johnson's fastidious pursuit of "elegant simplicity" and precise balance. He notes that Johnson’s revisions often focused on removing "spots of barbarity" and inaccurate compounding. Keast argues for editorial principles that incorporate both independent sets of authorial changes to establish a definitive text reflecting Johnson at his most deliberate.
CGV entry 17:126. Reprinted from Studies in Bibliography (1952–1953).
Some Emendations in Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary
Keast proposes three emendations to the received text of Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary, arguing the persistent errors make a sort of sense but obscure the author's original intent. First, "full" in the list of indeterminate verbs is likely a compositor's error for "fall," a verb Johnson himself analyzes as difficult to ascertain. Second, the phrase "words of which I have reason to doubt the existence" should be emended to "words of which I have no reason to doubt the existence," as the original phrase contradicts Johnson's argument that such unauthenticated words are genuine. Third, "in a search like this" should read "in a work like this," referring to the task of writing the dictionary, not gathering the material. Keast also argues that "fair" should be deleted from the list of compounded words, suggesting the original word was "semi."
Johnson's Dictionary and Lexicographical Tradition
Kolb and Sledd challenge traditional accounts of the Dictionary that isolate Johnson as a radical innovator. They argue that Johnson functioned as a "laborious compiler" who satisfied the demands of eighteenth-century booksellers by realizing a long-established lexicographical ideal. The article demonstrates that Johnson’s techniques—including his history of the language, grammar, and divided definitions—draw heavily from European traditions and specific predecessors like John Wallis, Ephraim Chambers, and Benjamin Martin. While they praise the Dictionary as a "standard and standardizing" work, they characterize its grammar and etymologies as mediocre and dispute the theory that Johnson exerted significant influence on the development of the English language. They conclude that Johnson’s achievement lies not in technical originality but in his ability to unite contemporary theory and practice to produce an outstandingly good dictionary single-handedly. By placing the work in its historical context, they provide a balanced revaluation that highlights how Johnson "did what others merely hoped to do" without inventing new methods for European lexicography.
Dr. Johnson's Definitions of 'Tory' and 'Whig'
Boyce and Boyce trace the lexicographical lineage of Johnson’s partisan definitions of "Tory" and "Whig." While Sledd and Kolb identified precedents in Boyer and Kersey-Phillips, further evidence from Gazophylacium Anglicanum, Defoe, and Bailey reveals a long tradition of defining these terms through religious bias and historical conflict. Johnson’s Dictionary reflects these established patterns, though his phrasing remains milder than the virulent rhetoric found in late seventeenth-century broadsides and pamphlets.
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary and Warburton's Shakespeare
Sherbo examines Johnson’s use of Warburton’s Shakespeare as a source for Dictionary entries. He reveals that Johnson often underlined and incorporated words from Warburton's notes rather than first-hand readings of primary texts, such as Donne's letters. Sherbo identifies numerous instances where Johnson’s amanuenses incorrectly attributed quotations from writers like Manwood and Fairfax to Shakespeare. He concludes that these errors persisted through the revised 1773 edition.
Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary: A Textual Crux
Keast investigates a textual breakdown in Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary, arguing that three paragraphs using the example word "ground" were intended for deletion but remained in the 1747 text by error. Comparison of the original draft with the amanuensis-prepared fair copy reveals Johnson replaced these with paragraphs using "arrive" to illustrate word senses. Keast demonstrates that the retained "ground" paragraphs disrupt the established enumerative pattern. This textual crux indicates Johnson failed to notice the redundant material during final manuscript revisions.
A Note on Samuel Johnson and the Rise of Accentual Prosodic Theory
Fussell identifies Johnson's tacit retreat from his conservative syllabist position in the fourth edition of his Dictionary (1773). The first edition (1755) mandated extreme stress regularity in iambic verse, reflecting Edward Bysshe's influence. However, in response to critics like John Rice, who argued for variations in stress to achieve "harmony", Johnson conceded, adding that "The variations necessary to pleasure belong to the art of poetry, not the rules of grammar." This revision suggests Johnson's growing, if chilly, acceptance of early accentual prosodic theory.
CGV entry 17:133.
An Exhibition in Honor of the 200th Anniversary of the Publication of Johnson's Dictionary, 15 April 1755
CGV entry 17:134. With an introduction by John R. Turner Ettlinger.
Liebert commemorates the bicentennial of the Dictionary of the English Language, asserting that the "magnitude of his achievement still remains" despite modern linguistic advances. The text outlines a Yale exhibition featuring manuscripts of Johnson's initial scheme, his prospectus, and books he used during the work’s execution. Liebert highlights Yale's role as a center for research, noting that the Dictionary earned Johnson "supreme authority over the world of letters." The exhibition displays contemporary criticism and various editions to establish the work’s "commanding position for a hundred years." Liebert concludes that the Dictionary remains the "subject of more study than any other of Johnson’s works".
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: Essays in the Biography of a Book
A foundational study in the scholarship of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. The book's provides a definitive account of the Dictionary's composition, publication, and early reception, serving as a critical examination of accounts by Boswell and Hawkins. It argues the Dictionary was a "booksellers' project" successfully realizing the ideal of a national dictionary. The organization is thematic, focusing on the pre-publication history and immediate aftermath. A central contribution is the detailed analysis of the shift in attitude and style between The Plan (1747), which showed Johnson's belief he could "fix" the language, and the 1755 Preface, which reflected his subsequent realization of the impossibility of perfection. The Preface was likely written in summer or autumn of 1754. The work provides an authoritative discussion of the Chesterfield Controversy (concerning the February 1755 letter) and the commercial nature of the original patronage. Publication details include the price of 90 shillings for the two folio volumes and an initial printing run of 2,000 copies. A substantially identical second edition was issued in weekly numbers starting June 14, 1755. The method is rigorously empirical, challenging myths, including the belief that Johnson compiled the work by interleaving Nathan Bailey’s Dictionary. The book incorporates discussion of specific manuscripts, such as the Sneyd-Gimbel interleaved first edition, and corrected biographical errors perpetuated by Boswell. The work is a standard reference cited for its accuracy and thoroughness, forming the core intellectual history of the Dictionary. Chapter 1, 'Johnson's Dictionary and Lexicographical Tradition: I,' addresses the Dictionary as a culmination of established European ideals, arguing its techniques and linguistic theories were rooted in traditional precedents rather than radical innovation. Chapter 2, 'The Composition and Publication of The Plan of a Dictionary,' examines the document's evolution from a rapid draft into a polished prospectus, highlighting extensive revisions and the complex history of its physical printing states. Chapter 3, 'Lord Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson,' analyzes their fractured relationship, asserting the famous "celebrated letter" was a defensive response to Chesterfield’s tactical attempt to claim undeserved credit for the work's completion. Chapter 4, 'The Early Editions of the Dictionary,' traces the bibliographical history of seven authorized editions, noting that numerous improvements in corrected copies remained unprinted due to commercial pressures or editorial oversights. Chapter 5, 'Johnson's Dictionary and Lexicographical Tradition: II,' evaluates the work’s subsequent influence, demonstrating how it remained a dominant yet contested model through decades of evolving philological standards. Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with commentators agreeing that the studies successfully clear away hoary nonsense and place a landmark achievement within the broader tradition of European lexicography. Reviewers applauded the meticulous use of archival manuscripts to clarify patronage disputes and early editions, though some debated whether the technical framework overemphasized external circumstances at the expense of internal textual analysis. Chapman, in the TLS, gives an approving account, praising the use of newly acquired manuscripts to defend the unsurpassed quality of the definitions and validate historical claims about aristocratic neglect. Bryce's review in RES similarly commends the well-documented disposal of widespread misconceptions, highlighting the minute detail tracking the publication history of early editions. Spencer, in the MLR, and Moore, in the MLQ, offer favorable assessments, though Moore notes that an analysis of the correspondence with an aristocratic patron is slightly less convincing than competing scholarship. In the LA Times, Kirsch provides an enthusiastic notice, celebrating the restoration of a professional context that shows how the labor established enduring linguistic standards. Wimsatt, writing in PQ, lauds the technical research into proof sheets but critiques the peripheral focus, arguing that the effort to level off individual genius by embedding it in existing traditions leaves the vast content of the lexicon itself unexamined. Finally, Greene, in JEGP, delivers a highly favorable review, praising the volume as a fine piece of demolition that establishes an empirical continuity between the compiler and his predecessors.
CGV entry 17:136. Chapter 3 on Chesterfield is CGV entry 5:335.
Reviews: Walter Jackson Bate, South Atlantic Quarterly 52, no. 4 (1953): 473–75; Bertrand H. Bronson, American Oxonian (January 1956): 48–51; J. C. Bryce, RES, n.s., 9 (1958): 219–20; R. W. Chapman, TLS, no. 2784 (1955): 382; Richard Eliel, Chicago Review 9, no. 2 (1955): 118–21; Donald J. Greene, JEGP 55 (1956): 331–34; William H. Irving, South Atlantic Quarterly 55 (1955): 120–21; Robert Kirsch, LA Times, October 13, 1963; John Robert Moore, MLQ 17, no. 4 (1956): 368; Gertrude Moyes, Anglistisches Seminar 30 (1955): 277–80; Gertrude E. Noyes, American Speech 30, no. 4 (1955): 277–80; T. J. B. Spencer, MLR 52 (1957): 456–57; De Witt T. Starnes, Modern Language Notes 71 (1956): 309–11; G. H. Vallins, English 10, no. 60 (1954): 233–34; William K. Wimsatt Jr., PQ 35, no. 3 (1956): 308–10; Donald J. Winslow, Quarterly Journal of Speech 31, no. 4 (1955): 306.
Starnes identifies Sledd and Kolb’s study as a pioneer work that uses modern philological insights to re-evaluate Johnson’s Dictionary. He emphasizes the new evidence clarifying Johnson’s composition methods and his complex relationship with Chesterfield. Starnes highlights the startling discovery that many of Johnson’s intended revisions never reached print, meaning the published work often differed from his final manuscript intentions. He concludes the volume is essential for understanding eighteenth-century lexicography.
CGV entry 17:136. Review by D. T. Starnes of the book by James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb.
Greene judges Sledd and Kolb's book a fine piece of demolition of hoary nonsense about the Dictionary, calling a halt to pervasive distortions. The book successfully rescues the Dictionary from the imputation of capriciousness and frivolity, establishing the continuity between Johnson's methods and those of his predecessors. Greene urges scholars to apply the book's methodology to Johnson's writings generally, noting Johnson's genius lay in his magnificent eclecticism and empiricism, not in irrational prejudice or philosophic originality.
CGV entry 17:136. Review by D. J. Greene of the book by James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb.
Sledd and Kolb present a "biography" of Johnson’s Dictionary, focusing on its professional context, publication history, and historical influence. The study analyzes the evolution of Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary, the role of Lord Chesterfield's patronage, and early editions, incorporating evidence from Strahan’s ledgers and corrected sheets in the Gimbel and British Museum collections. Wimsatt commends the technical research—particularly regarding the lexicographical tradition—but criticizes the book’s "peripheral" focus, noting that it explores the circumstances around the book while leaving the vast content of the Dictionary itself largely unexamined. He also disputes the authors' attempt to "level off" Johnson’s achievement by presenting it as an inevitable product of existing traditions.
CGV entry 17:136. Review by W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. of the book by James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb.
Bryce approves of Sledd and Kolb’s well-documented essays, which dispose of widespread misconceptions regarding the Dictionary. He notes their success in stressing the derivativeness of Johnson’s lexicographic method while identifying his decisive influence on later dictionaries. Bryce highlights the minute detail with which the authors trace the history of the Plan of a Dictionary and their authentication of Johnson's account of how Chesterfield failed him. The review also notes the discussion of the first seven editions, confirming the fourth as the best representation of Johnson’s mature views. Bryce regrets that the authors lacked access to the Sneyd set of sheets, which contains additional quotations and Johnson’s corrections.
CGV entry 17:136. Review by J. C. Bryce of the book by James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb.
Assesses Johnson's Dictionary, arguing its unique greatness stems from extensive illustrative quotations drawn from English authors. Wimsatt details Johnson's method—reading authorities first, marking passages, using amanuenses—highlighting his reading capacity and judgment. Wimsatt contends the Dictionary reflects Johnson's personality and intellectual development, serving as a vast repository of literary, scientific, moral, and religious thought, often structured by metaphorical links between physical and psychological meanings.
CGV entry 17:137. Includes a facsimile of a page of Bacon's 'Essays' marked by Johnson.
The Critical Reception of Johnson's Dictionary in the Latter Eighteenth Century
Noyes surveys the critical reception of Johnson's Dictionary in the fifty years following its publication in 1755. Early magazine reviews hailed the work as epochal, although Adam Smith criticized the definition arrangement . Johnson's lives and independent works by rivals and critics often offered mixed views, attacking the word list, etymology, and biased definitions, exemplified by Maxwell and Campbell's malicious criticisms. Succeeding lexicographers, including Kenrick, Sheridan, and Walker, paid tribute by using the Dictionary as the indispensable basis for their own works, particularly for orthography and definition.
Congleton surveys the critical history of the Dictionary, addressing definitions, etymologies, and the dispute with Chesterfield. He disputes the "pernicious idea" that Johnson intended to "fix" the English language. By comparing the "Plan" to the "Preface," Congleton demonstrates that Johnson’s seven years of labor shifted his stance from neoclassical authoritarianism to an empirical recognition of linguistic mutability. The text details how Johnson derided the idea that a lexicographer can "embalm his language," aligning his mature views with his defense of Shakespeare’s neglect of the unities. Congleton identifies Johnson as the central, though often misunderstood, figure in lexicography.
The Reynolds Copy of Johnson's Dictionary
Kolb and Sledd trace the history and reproduction of annotations in Johnson’s personal copy of the Dictionary's fourth edition. They examine the 1785 "booksellers’ war" following Johnson's death, where rival publishers exploited the Reynolds copy to market new editions. The study vindicates the authority of the fourth edition while identifying specific revisions incorporated into the sixth and seventh editions. They conclude that Longman’s claims of using the Reynolds copy were justified, though often exaggerated, and provide a detailed list of Johnson's manuscript corrections and additions.
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: A Memorable Achievement of the Mind
CGV entry 17:141. Reprinted from the New York Times Book Review (1955).
Tillotson argues that Boswell’s biography provides a "lopsided" representation of Johnson, favoring his personality over his intellectual depth. He contends that while Boswell depicts a mind at play, Johnson’s writings, particularly the Dictionary, reveal a mind responsibly concerned with truth. Tillotson highlights the Plan and Preface as supreme intellectual merits, showing Johnson viewed language as a "living tongue" where word meanings depend on context. He notes Johnson abandoned the dream of fixing the English language, realizing it could not be enchained anymore than the sea. The Dictionary is presented as an anthology of "beauties" and great literature.
This article, reprinted from the Spectator (1955), characterizes Johnson as a responsible intellectual whose Dictionary functions more as a study of living language than a mere word list. Tillotson argues Johnson viewed words as gregarious entities whose meanings derive from context, or "shades of meaning." Johnson's rejection of linguistic fixity demonstrates a realistic understanding that "to lash the wind" is futile. The text emphasizes the Dictionary's dual role as a scientific instrument and a literary anthology, featuring "beauties" of great literature to honor "true, evident and actual wisdom." Tillotson highlights Johnson's active role in registering rather than forming the language, concluding that Johnson's orthographical works maintain the scholarly standard of adding delight to instruction.
CGV entry 17:142. Reprinted from The Spectator (1955).
CGV entry 17:143. On the bicentenary of the 'Dictionary'.
Self-Quotation in Johnson's Dictionary
Keast identifies two additional instances of Johnson quoting his own work within the Dictionary. Under the entry for strife in the 1765 edition, Johnson includes a couplet from his poem To Miss —, erroneously attributed to B. Johnson by the compositor. This entry marks the earliest explicit attribution of the poem to Johnson. Additionally, Johnson uses his 1739 translation of Crousaz's commentary on Pope to illustrate the word consoler. Keast notes that Johnson later deleted the self-quotation under strife in the 1773 revision, replacing it with a definition regarding natural contrariety.
CGV entry 17:144. See also the same journal, June 1956, page 262.
Johnson Lexikográfiai Modszere [Johnson's Lexicographical Method]
CGV entry 17:145. In Hungarian. Commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Dictionary. Summaries in Russian and English are on page 339.
Das englische Worterbuch in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart
A corrective update regarding the location of a significant primary source for Johnson’s lexicographical work. Following a previous report that a volume containing Burton’s Anatomy (1676) and Hale’s Primitive Origination of Mankind (1677)—both featuring Johnson's editorial marks for the Dictionary—was untraceable, Fleming confirms its survival. Information provided by Kolb identifies the Bodleian Library as the location of this annotated volume.
CGV entry 17:147.
The Two Clarissas in Johnson's Dictionary
Keast investigates the unusual frequency (97 quotations) of Clarissa references in Johnson's Dictionary, violating his policy against contemporary authors. While a few quotations illustrate linguistic novelty, a large group of 78 moral sentiments, which convey Richardson’s "knowledge of the human heart," are not from the novel itself. Johnson, a great admirer who urged Richardson to create an index, actually drew these quotes from the appended "Ample Collection of Such of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments" in the fourth edition of Clarissa (1751). This collection's compiler, not Johnson, edited the novel's text to create universal maxims.
Tucker details the significant influence of Isaac Watts on Johnson's Dictionary. Johnson drew nearly 700 illustrations from Watts's works, often adopting his definitions for terms like colour, nothing, and passion to distinguish between vulgar and philosophical meanings. Watts’s emphasis on precise definition and his acceptance of evolving common usage provided Johnson with a handy and familiar source for both abstract and technical vocabulary. Although Johnson included Watts in the Lives of the Poets, he quoted his verse sparingly compared to his logical and philosophical prose.
CGV entry 17:149. On indebtedness to Watts in the Dictionary.
Rawson argues that the OED fails to provide an applicable definition for "bibliothèque" as used in Johnson’s 1755 letter to Warton. Johnson intended the term to describe a periodical review or anthology of continental literature, similar to Maty’s Journal Britannique. Rawson traces the English use of "bibliothèque" and "bibliotheca" in the sense of a compendium or digest back to 1687. The text posits that Johnson’s "Bibliothèque" was a serious, projected monthly review evidenced by the collection of journals found in his parlour by Adams.
CGV entry 17:150. On the meaning of the word.
Dr. Johnson's Use of William Law in the Dictionary
Balderston argues that Law's influence on Johnson was formative and permanent, extending beyond the famous conversion by A Serious Call to a Holy Life at Oxford, possibly contributing to his subsequent depression. Scholars like Brown and Bate had already suggested a pervasive influence, particularly on Johnson's moral writings. Balderston finds specific Law-like psychological insights in Johnson's works, such as the exposure of self-delusion and the fear of a discovered heart. Johnson adopted Law's use of self-improvement rules and charity to the undeserving poor. The author concludes that Johnson’s disagreement with Law’s perfectionism and total rejection of the world may have been the impetus for Johnson's own realistic and balanced moral philosophy.
The History of the Sneyd–Gimbel and Pigott–British Museum Copies of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Kolb and Sledd reconstruct the provenance of two critical annotated Dictionary copies: the Sneyd-Gimbel and Pigott-British Museum sets. Evidence confirms both originated in the 1785 sale of Johnson's library (Lots 644 and 649), purchased by Charles Marsh. Passing through the Heber and Thorpe collections in the early nineteenth century, the sets were separated; one moved via the Sneyd library to Gimbel, the other to Pigott and eventually the British Museum, establishing their textual authority for future study.
Tucker examines Johnson's treatment of the term forsooth in his Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare. Johnson suggests the word originated as a compellation or honorific address for women, which eventually degraded into a mere exclamatory interjection. Tucker provides historical evidence supporting Johnson’s theory that forsooth functioned as a title of respect among the bourgeoisie and meaner sort in London, eventually becoming a City word mocked by the gentry. References in Pepys, Shenstone, and the Gentleman's Magazine corroborate its use as a specific form of address for women, including senior nuns.
CGV entry 17:154. On Johnson's definition of the word "forsooth."
Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection
McAdam and Milne present a modernized selection of the first edition of Johnson's Dictionary, chosen to reflect the work's "unique quality" as a literary landmark. The editors prioritize entries that are personal, eccentric, or obsolete, while omitting etymologies and parts of speech names except where necessary for clarity. The selection includes Johnson's original 1755 Preface, which the editors characterize as a "noble piece of English prose" that elucidates his lexicographical philosophy. Editorial policies involve normalizing author names and silently correcting typographical errors, though original spellings in definitions and illustrative examples are largely preserved. By retaining a comprehensive selection of literary examples and the entire "Z" section, the editors aim to provide a vivid "mirror of the language and literature" of the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 17:157.
Reissued by Modern Library in 1965.
Formal and Informal Spelling in the 18th Century
Osselton disputes the claim that Johnson fixed British spelling for the "-our" class of words, noting significant inconsistencies between his correspondence and the Dictionary. Analysis of printers' usage suggests Johnson codified obsolescent conventions from his youth rather than contemporary trends. Osselton identifies a double standard in eighteenth-century orthography, where informal "polite" spelling in private letters favored "-or," while formal "pedantic" printing maintained "-our," independent of Johnson’s lexicographical authority.
Johnson's Dictionary Reconsidered
Some of Dr. Johnson's Preparatory Notes for His Dictionary, 1755
The Actual and the Ideal in the Making of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
The analysis explores the dichotomy between Johnson's prescriptive, neoclassical aim to fix the English language and his empirical recognition of its mutable, organic nature. Johnson’s lexicographical method, particularly his four categories for schematizing word meaning and his focus on primitive acceptation, anticipates modern contextual and semantic theories. Johnson's dictionary work reflects a realist's acceptance of linguistic flux, yet his moralistic impulse often intervenes, revealing a complex partnership between his roles as lexicographer and didactic moralist in his attempt to establish a flexible standard of usage.
Tucker investigates a potential lexicographical misunderstanding by journalist Charles Stuart, who in 1789 applied the epithet immaculate to William Pitt, claiming the term signified improper as well as pure. While Werkmeister notes that the O.E.D. does not support this definition, Tucker observes that several editions of Johnson's Dictionary—including the 1755 folio and subsequent octavo abridgments—list improper as a usage stigma for Shakespeare’s application of immaculate to mean limpid. Stuart likely derived his vituperative wordplay directly from Johnson's entry.
CGV entry 17:163. On the word "immaculate".
Variants in Johnson's Dictionary, 1755
Todd details twenty-three unrecorded textual and press variants in the 1755 edition of Johnson's Dictionary based on an examination of thirteen copies. The analysis focuses primarily on two sheets with variant settings: sheet 19D and sheet 24O. Todd establishes the printing sequence for these sheets by analyzing press figures and tracking progressive truncations in bibliographical references to authors like Milton, Shakespeare, and Bacon. Todd attributes seven variant states to deliberate actions by the printing shop overseer, such as renumbering entries or correcting catchwords, while attributing other variants to pressman errors, missing semicolons, or displaced press figures. A comprehensive table outlines all twenty-three points of variance, cross-referencing specific sheets, readings, and copy locations.
The English Language: Essays by English and American Men of Letters, 1490–1839
Bolton's collection gathers essays from English and American men of letters covering the period from 1490 to 1839. The anthology includes Johnson's "Preface to the Dictionary."
CGV entry 17:165. Includes Johnson's preface to the Dictionary, pages 129–156.
Volume V in Alston's extensive bibliography series covering the English Language up to 1800. It is described as a very useful scholarly tool for those interested in language and lexicography. The work includes 117 pages of facsimile illustrations, featuring Johnsonian materials such as a leaf of Johnson's original manuscript and pages showing his manuscript corrections in the British Museum copy of the first edition of the Dictionary. Alston is praised for undertaking this significant bibliographical project, which covers early English dictionaries.
CGV entry 17:166. A bibliography.
An Historical Assessment of Johnson's Dictionary
CGV entry 17:167. Continued in number 4 (1968), pages 20-34.
Studies in Criticism and Aesthetics, 1660–1800: Essays in Honor of Samuel Holt Monk
The Naked Science of Language, 1747–1786
CGV entry 17:169. Contains the essay "Dr. Johnson's 'Diction of Common Life' and Swift's Directions to Servants."
CGV entry 17:170. An inaugural lecture.
The Mutual Debt Between Johnson and Lowth
CGV entry 17:171. On their treatment of English grammar.
Studies in the Foreign Languages and Literature
Backgrounds of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Sir Herbert Croft on Revising Johnson's Dictionary
McCracken analyzes Johnson's debt to Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum in A Dictionary of the English Language. Using the letter 'L' for comparison, McCracken determines that Johnson was not a mere copyist, transferring only thirteen complete definitions word-for-word, and exhibiting recognizable debt in only fifty-nine of 1,126 entries (about 5%). The study demonstrates Johnson's independence as a definer, despite using Bailey's interleaved dictionary as a repository and organizational guide for his compilation work, continuing the tradition of borrowing in lexicography.
Poetic Theory/Poetic Practice: Papers of the Midwest Modern Language Association: Presented at the Annual Meeting for 1968, October 17, 18 and 19, in Cincinnati, Ohio
Dr. Johnson and Metaphysical Wit; or, Discordia Concors Yoked and Balanced
Huntley examines the apparent contradiction in Johnson’s use of "discordia concors" to criticize metaphysical poetry while Augustan poets like Pope employed identical principles. Proposing a distinction between two modes of imitating "world harmony," Huntley identifies a classical, Pythagorean pattern of balance in Denham and Pope, contrasted with a Platonic-Christian mode of "systasis" or "yoking" found in Donne and Herbert. Johnson, a neoclassical critic, preferred the "prospects of nature" and "scenes of life" expressed through symmetrical balance over the "laborious" act of forcing order through will. Huntley disputes that Johnson ridiculed metaphysical poets, noting instead that Johnson’s "Life of Cowley" introduced them as a "new planet in the poetical atmosphere." Ultimately, Johnson found metaphysical wit "violent" because it prioritized struggle and process over the stability and middle rungs of the classical ladder of being.
Lexicography and Biography in the Preface to Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary achieves its power by closely fusing his linguistic project with his personal, autobiographical struggles. Johnson's original hope to "fix" the English language and give words "permanence and immutability" is continually qualified by his acute, lifelong awareness of human fallibility and mortality. For Johnson, the inevitable decay and death of words mirror the decay and death of man. Therefore, the very act of striving toward lexicographical perfection became a necessary, though ultimately futile, struggle against transience. The final, poignant paragraphs detailing the hardships of the work are not gratuitous but are the natural conclusion to an essay that portrays the monumental effort as a vital but humanly limited attempt to achieve stability in an unstable world.
English Collection of Facsimile Manuscripts 223
Establishing the Text of Dr. Johnson's 'Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language'
Kolb examines five primary sources for the Plan, including Johnson’s holograph 'Short Scheme' (1746), a fair copy with authorial revisions, and various states of the 1747 first edition. Although the fair copy served as printer's copy, a collation reveals that Johnson carefully revised the proofs, introducing over one hundred substantive changes in phraseology. These revisions focus on improving rhythms, sharpening parallel constructions, and avoiding repetition. Furthermore, the first edition demonstrates greater conventional correctness in spelling and punctuation than the fair copy. Kolb argues that the 'Chesterfield' state of the first edition most accurately reflects Johnson's 'maturest wishes' and should serve as the basic text for modern editions, with substantive corrections incorporated from the 'Non-Chesterfield' cancel sheet.
McAdam traces the linguistic debate over pedantic Latinate terms from the sixteenth century through the early eighteenth century. Early lexicographers like Blount and Phillips offered 'rough treatment' to such words, often refusing to acknowledge the validity of contemporary usage. While Bailey and Chambers engaged in professional disputes over their inclusion, Johnson eventually granted these terms a 'kind of reluctant acceptance' in his Dictionary. He favored the 'practical test' of utility, recognizing that many supposedly obscure terms like autograph, holograph, and pugnacity filled genuine expressive needs. By recording these words, Johnson moderated the strictly purist stance of his predecessors and acknowledged the evolving nature of the English vocabulary.
Dr. Johnson and Noah Webster: Two Men and Their Dictionaries
Kupersmith describes this limited edition as a "coffee-table book" featuring original dictionary leaves. While offering no new data, Littlejohn provides a graceful defense of antique dictionaries. He contrasts the wise Johnson with the provincial Webster, though Kupersmith notes errors regarding Littlejohn's definition of "barbarism" and an attributed quote on thunder.
CGV entry 17:183. Review by William Kupersmith of the book by David Littlejohn. Part of "The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography."
Untersuchungen zur Sprachauffassung Dr. Johnsons
CGV entry 17:184. On Johnson's ideas on language.
Johnson's Dictionary and The World: The Papers of Lord Chesterfield and Richard Owen Cambridge
Johnson's famous letter rebuking Lord Chesterfield stemmed from three offenses beyond the issue of patronage. Chesterfield's papers in The World (Nos. 100 and 101) misrepresented Johnson's mature lexicographical opinions by insisting the Dictionary could fix the language and equated his immense labor with trivial matters of fashion. Furthermore, the papers elicited an equally demeaning continuation (No. 102) from Richard Owen Cambridge. These factors compounded Johnson's resentment, explaining his reluctance to acknowledge the seemingly favorable publicity.
The Selection and Use of the Illustrative Quotations in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Kolb and Kolb analyze Johnson's lexicographical methodology through an examination of surviving volumes marked for the Dictionary, including works by South, Watts, and Hale. Johnson established systematic procedures for marking passages, using underlining and marginal notations to guide amanuenses. While Johnson initially collected over 4,000 quotations from eight specific authors, the published Dictionary retains less than half. Selection criteria emphasize the "diction of common life" and "refreshment or instruction" for the reader. Johnson frequently used a principle of "lexicographical economy" by choosing single passages to illustrate multiple headwords. Editorial treatment involved significant "mutilation" or "hasty truncation" to fit space constraints. Analysis of internal deletions and recasting reveals Johnson’s "deftness" in maintaining original sentiments while creating pithy, epigrammatic maxims. The study concludes that Johnson’s adherence to his stated principles in the Preface remains consistent, though his editorial labor enhances the perceived magnitude of his achievement.
Samuel Johnson's Plan and the Preface to the Dictionary: The Growth of a Lexicographer's Mind
Weinbrot contrasts the rhetorical strategies and linguistic theories of Johnson’s Plan (1747) and Preface (1755). The Plan, addressed to Chesterfield, employs "adulatory" language and reflects a "brash confidence" in the possibility of fixing the English language. Weinbrot argues that Johnson was "betrayed" by pride into seeking noble patronage, joining a "dedicating mob" of inferior writers like Madden. By 1755, however, Johnson abjured Chesterfield and the notion of external authority. The Preface adopts the persona of the "pioneer drudge" and "slave of science," replacing the social pose of the client with a "terrifying insight" into personal isolation and the "insurmountable distresses of humanity." Johnson rejects the "dreams of a poet" regarding linguistic permanence, acknowledging that "to enchain syllables" is an undertaking of pride. Weinbrot concludes that the transition from Plan to Preface demonstrates Johnson’s growth into a mature moralist who recognizes the "infinite irrelevance of human achievement" amidst the "gloom of solitude."
Hall investigates the transmission of Locke's prose from Johnson’s Dictionary to the OED. Johnson included approximately 3,000 Lockean quotations without specific citations, leading OED compilers to adopt these excerpts as second-hand evidence, often marked with a bracketed "J." Hall identifies 67 such quotations, tracing them primarily to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and Two Treatises of Government. The study validates the accuracy of Johnson's amanuenses and establishes several antedatings for terms such as "consumer," "float," and "low-spirited."
CGV entry 17:188. See comments by Anthony W. Shipps on page 184.
Collins recounts the eight-year labor leading to the 1755 publication of Johnson's Dictionary. The author analyzes Johnson’s pioneering use of literary quotations to stabilize English usage and his departure from previous useful-only glossaries toward a cultural lexicon. Discussion includes the role of amanuenses—many identified by Boswell as Scots—and Johnson’s famous rejection of Chesterfield's belated patronage. The work concludes that the Dictionary established Johnson as the central moral and intellectual figure of his century.
Johnson's Dictionary directly relates to the methods of Renaissance lexicography, not merely English tradition. Johnson's classical training and possession of numerous Renaissance lexicons, evidenced by his Sale Catalogue and work on the Harleian Library Catalogue, suggests direct influence. His methodology, including copious illustration, terse definitions, treating the dictionary as an intellectual history, and lamenting the monumental task, parallels practices found in works by Constantine, Buxtorf, and Golius. This challenges the view limiting the Dictionary's background to preceding English works.
Johnson no 'Jisho' to Shakespeare no Inyoku
CGV entry 17:191. On Johnson's Dictionary and quotations from Shakespeare.
A Glimpse of Eighteenth-Century Prescriptivism
A Bibliographical and Critical Analysis of Johnson's Dictionary, with Special Reference to Twentieth Century Scholarship
Vestnik Leningradskogo universiteta. Seriia istoriia, iazyk, literatura
Slovari S. Dzhonsona (1755) i N. Uebstera (1828) kak vyrazhenie idei predpisyvaiushohego slovaria
CGV entry 17:196. An English summary concludes that both dictionaries were "authoritarian works based on their own tastes, puristic notions and ideas of 'good' English."
The Computer in Literary and Linguistic Studies
CGV entry 17:197. On Johnson's Dictionary.
Leigh Hunt's Annotations in Johnson's Dictionary
Todd describes a copy of the first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary containing extensive marginalia by Hunt. While Hunt elsewhere expressed limited interest in Johnson’s poetry, he frequently consulted and annotated this reference work to supply additional definitions or note contemporary usage and pronunciation. Todd catalogs specific entries where Hunt corrected or expanded upon Johnson’s philology, such as the origins of "nunchion" and "scaramouch." The study highlights Hunt’s habit of reading with "pen in hand" and identifies his doodles and pen pricks throughout the volumes.
The Day of the Leopards: Essays in Defense of Poems
Wimsatt characterizes the Dictionary as a monumental act of linguistic "fortification" and a unique fusion of philological effort and moral meditation. Wimsatt observes that Johnson's definitions and selection of illustrative quotations serve not only as a record of the English language but as a repository of Anglican and royalist values. The essay highlights Johnson's struggle with the "instability" of language, noting that his approach to lexicography shifted from a hope of "fixing" the tongue to a realization of its inevitable flux. Wimsatt emphasizes the subjective presence of the lexicographer, whose personality emerges through sardonic definitions and the selection of "philosophic" or moralistic examples. Wimsatt disputes the view of the work as merely a mechanical compilation, arguing instead for its status as a "literary achievement" that mirrors the "Johnsonian moral vision" and its corrective influence on eighteenth-century letters.
Review of the Faculty (Humanities and Social Science Section) of the Electro-Communications University (Japan)
On Samuel Johnson's Definition of 'Oats'
The Bear and the Phoenix: John Wilkes' Letter on Johnson's Dictionary Newly Printed in Full: With a Note on Johnson and Wilkes
Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Archibald A. Hill, IV: Linguistics and Literature; Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics
Samuel Johnson: Originator of Usage Labels
Allen identifies Johnson as the primary innovator of usage labels in English lexicography, establishing a 'descriptive or prescriptive' precedent for future dictionaries. The text argues that while earlier lexicographers like Bailey and Blount refrained from evaluating word choice, Johnson introduced overt 'editorial attitudes' to mark linguistic features as 'vulg.,' 'low,' or 'cant.' Allen demonstrates that these 'usage labels' were not based on 'quantitative evidence' but reflected Johnson's 'subjective attitudes' and 'whimsical' judgments. The study credits Johnson with creating the 'battle of usage labels' that continues in contemporary lexicons like the American Heritage Dictionary. Allen concludes that despite the lack of 'external evidence' in his 1755 Dictionary, Johnson's method provided the 'influential precedent' that eventually evolved into the scientific labeling practices found in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Papers on Lexicography in Honor of Warren N. Cordell
Dictionary Society of North America, Indiana State University
Pronunciation in Johnson's Dictionary
Johnson's Dictionary and The Vanity of Human Wishes: Notes for Readers
Doherty advocates for a more thorough application of Johnson's Dictionary to his poem The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing that contemporary editions, while helpful, are insufficient. He notes that several editors (Rudrum, Kinsley, Boulton, Nichol Smith, McAdam, Fleeman) use the Dictionary to gloss words like hind, darkling, and patron, and to track Johnson's numerous self-quotations. Doherty demonstrates how consulting the Dictionary's full definitions, illustrations, and source quotations (especially from Milton and Pope) reveals layers of allusion and dense meaning in words such as dreary, snare, maze, tainted, and pours. This method clarifies potentially ambiguous words like motley and sycophant and confirms the dramatic rightness of later emendations like steeps of fate.
Some Annotations by Samuel Dyer and Edmund Burke in a Copy of Johnson's 'Dictionary'
Johnson and Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy and the Dictionary of the English Language
On Johnson's engagement with Anatomy of Melancholy in the Dictionary and his heavily annotated working copy of the Anatomy. Few explicit references exist, but Johnson used fifteen quotations from Burton to illustrate words in the Dictionary, often selecting old-fashioned or recondite terms and condensing Burton’s verbose prose. More significantly, the chosen passages reveal a moral affinity between the two authors, particularly on Johnson's favorite themes, such as the oppression of the poor by the rich. The annotated copy shows Johnson intended to use 52 passages and suggests his interest extended to Burton's analysis of melancholy, which he apparently found therapeutic. This evidence refutes the idea that Johnson excluded the work and presents Burton as a moral instructor whom Johnson took seriously.
CGV entry 17:206. On the use of the 'Anatomy' in the 'Dictionary'.
Coherence Betrayed: Samuel Johnson and the 'Prose of the World'
Knoblauch explores the epistemological crisis in Johnson’s Dictionary, Plan, and Preface, identifying a "divorce between things... and words." Johnson initially seeks to "fix" language to recover an ancient stability of truth, yet his lexicographical practice reveals coherence as a mechanical, post hoc fabrication rather than an inherent worldly feature. This conflict between the "poet" who values linguistic vitality and the "lexicographer" who demands regulation culminates in the Preface, where Johnson concedes that "fixing" language equals "embalming" it. In Rasselas, Johnson dramatizes this instability through narrative strategies that sabotage formal declarations of order. He concludes that modern textual integrity depends not on absolute truth, but on the "vitality and scope" of signifiers that engage readers in a cooperative, if unfinalized, pursuit of meaning.
boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture
A Sketch of the History of the Dictionary of English Usage
George Mason's Supplement to Johnson's Dictionary in Manuscript
Describes the Folger Shakespeare Library manuscript of Mason’s Supplement to Johnson’s Dictionary. The manuscript, containing three-fourths of the published work, reveals Mason’s lexicographical process and his pervasive hostility toward Johnson. Mason targets Johnson’s perceived inaccuracies and omissions, particularly regarding nautical terms and Spenserian vocabulary. Analysis shows Mason softened his intemperate criticisms during revision, though the manuscript retains stronger censures of Johnson’s "hebetude" and "illiberal" judgment.
Papers of the Dictionary Society of North America
Callender's Attack on Johnson's Word-List
CGV entry 17:210. On Callender's 'Deformities of Samuel Johnson'.
Johnson's Attitudes toward French Influence on the English Language
Gilmore examines Johnson's attitudes toward French influence on English by comparing his Dictionary's Preface and Plan with the dictionary proper. The Preface expresses vehement anti-Gallicanism, especially condemning "frequency of translation" as a "great pest of speech" that risks reducing English to a French dialect. However, the Dictionary itself reveals a less hostile, more pragmatic, and empirical approach. Johnson only explicitly censures 41 French words, often based on their uselessness or lack of general adoption, and frequently includes or condones French derivatives (especially specialized terms in arts, sciences, and professions) if they were in actual use or filled a linguistic gap. Most surprisingly, a comment in the Dictionary implicitly condemns a large number of French derivatives used by pre-Restoration writers like Spenser and Shakespeare, contradicting their unqualified praise in the Preface as "wells of English undefiled." Johnson also criticizes gallicisms in Dryden, Temple, and possibly Bolingbroke, but his overall lexicographical practice favors observed usage over purist prejudice.
Dr. Johnson's Treatment of English Particles in the Dictionary
English Literature in History, 1730–1780: An Equal, Wide Survey
'The Language Properly so-Called': Johnson's Language and Politics
Barrell analyzes eighteenth-century linguistic debates through a political analogy, comparing the common law of English usage to the national constitution. He examines Samuel Johnson's Dictionary as a conservative effort to civilize and settle a language he viewed as licentious and wild. Johnson rejects the Lockean model of language based on the consent of the governed, preferring instead a model where the customs of the polite are converted into law without consulting the laborious and mercantile classes. Barrell highlights Johnson’s exclusion of technical cant as a means of protecting the durable materials of language from the mutability of the vulgar. He further explores how dissenting grammarians like Joseph Priestley challenged this hierarchy by advocating for a more rational, egalitarian approach to usage. The chapter demonstrates that linguistic correctness served as a primary instrument of social discipline and political authority.
CGV entry 17:213. Reprinted in 'Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell', edited by Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986), pages 189–205.
Johnson no Eigo Jiten: Sono Rekishiteki Igi
CGV entry 17:214. Title translates as "Johnson's Dictionary: Its Historical Significance."
Johnson's Dictionary, A Bibliographical Survey: 1746–1984
Earlier Uses of Bibliography and Related Terms
Shapiro provides antedatings for library terminology, while Fleeman details Johnson’s redefinition of "bibliographer." Initially defined in the Dictionary (1755) as a transcriber, Johnson’s manuscript revision in his fourth edition copy redefines it as "a man skilled in literary history and in the knowledge of Books." This revision, likely executed in a few hours, first appeared in the 1785 sixth edition. Fleeman notes the term is absent from Johnson’s published writings.
CGV entry 17:217.
Mason observes that although Johnson omitted 'bacchanalian' from his Dictionary, he employed the word in Rambler No. 71. The author argues that Johnson was likely recalling a passage from Dryden’s preface to Sylvae, which similarly classifies certain odes as 'bacchanalian.' This source connection is further supported by Johnson’s use of the phrase 'lay hold on the present hour,' which mirrors Dryden’s translation of Horace.
Jisho Hensansha, Gogakusha to shite no Johnson
CGV entry 17:219. On Johnson as a lexicographer and philologist.
Johnson's Dictionary: Being an Account of Certain Facts Concerning Its Author; Method of Preparation; Significance; and Containing References to Various Interesting Definitions and an Attempt to Relate Certain Aspects of That Great Work to the Contemporary Philological Debate
CGV entry 17:220. A talk given at the Book Collectors Club of Los Angeles.
Johnson's Dictionary and Attempts to 'Fix the Language'
Hughes explores the "wonderfully imperious confidence" with which Johnson undertook the Dictionary, positioning him as an "Augustan Renaissance man" who sought to impose order on a language he perceived to be in decline. The article details Johnson’s "linguistic xenophobia," specifically his "Francophobia," which led him to exclude or censure fashionable French terms like "coterie" and "ennui" as "useless foreigners." Hughes analyzes Johnson’s use of labels such as "low" or "ludicrous" to combat "verbicide" and feminine affectation. Ultimately, Hughes describes how Johnson moved from a prescriptive stance to a "clairvoyant pessimism," recognizing that language is "capricious, socially determined and uncontrollable," and that no lexicographer can "embalm his language" against the "mutability" of time and chance.
Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth Century Ideas of Language
Ruml investigates the specific Pope editions Johnson used for his Dictionary citations. Johnson did not use the 1751 Warburton, as compilation predated it. Sources were heterogeneous: early poems often came from the 1722 Lintot's Miscellany and later Works editions (1736-1743 for the Preface and Pastorals). Moral Essays derived from the 1739/1740/1743 Works, Vol. II. The Memoirs of Scriblerus came from the 1742 octavo Works. Johnson blended versions, sometimes quoting inaccurately from memory, suggesting he knew Pope's works well but lacked a single, consistently authoritative text. The 1722 Miscellany might have been his earliest owned volume.
CGV entry 17:223. On the identification of texts of Pope that Johnson used in the Dictionary.
Johnson's Use of Synonyms in the Dictionary and Prose Style: The Influence of John Locke?
Johnson’s prose style features pairs of conjoined synonyms used to show "distinction, rather than similarity." This practice follows Locke’s model that words represent "complex ideas" which cannot be "tied fast" by a single name. While critics like Wimsatt claim parallelisms merely provide "emphasis," Johnson argues they reveal "different shades of the same meaning." In the Dictionary, Johnson provides a "greater number of sense divisions" than his predecessors, using synonyms to characterize "true" conceptual meaning. His prose often forces the reader to see subtle differences between words like "despotick" and "dictatorial." This educational process illustrates the "arbitrary relationship" between language and thought, emphasizing the components of an idea to achieve "rigorous exactness."
Dr. Johnson and the Accademia della Crusca: A Conjunction of Anniversaries
Woodhouse details Johnson's 1755 gift of his Dictionary to the Accademia della Crusca. Archival documents reveal the Academy's formal thanks and the draft of a reply praising the work as a 'noble model'. However, Vice-Secretary Martini's private correspondence was less gracious, claiming Johnson's work followed the Academy's own 'taste'. Woodhouse traces the presentation copy to the Magliabechiana library, where it was damaged in the 1966 floods and remains unrestored.
'The Boundless Chaos of a Living Speech': Johnson and Structural Linguistics
First published anonymously by Thomas Cadell and William Strahan on April 19 or 20, 1759. Johnson quickly composed the text in the evenings of one week, sending it to the printers in portions. The initial publication consisted of two small octavo volumes, sold for five shillings. Johnson received £100 for the copyright of the first edition and an additional £25 for the second. The first print run totaled 2,000 copies. The immediate demand led to three editions within the first year. The second edition, which included approximately sixty variants, appeared just two months after the first, in 1759. Johnson executed his final revisions for subsequent editions, seeing ten English editions appear during his lifetime. By the 1790s, all editions generally included Rasselas in the title. Unauthorized dissemination began immediately, including three Dublin editions. The first American edition appeared in 1768 in Philadelphia, published by Robert Bell, and titled The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. An Asiatic Tale. This edition omitted Johnson's name from the title page but was described by him in 1773 as having the honor of an American printing. The extensive foreign reception began in 1760 with French and Dutch translations. Mme Octavie Belot produced the first French translation in 1760, which was the first edition to name the author as "M. Jhonnson, Auteur du Rambler." Nine French editions circulated before 1800, and John David Fleeman's bibliography lists fifty-six entries for French versions. The Dutch translation appeared in 1760, published by Dirk onder de Linden, but failed to credit Johnson. The first German translation, by Elieser Gottlieb Küster, was published in 1762, followed by three more German versions before 1800. The first Italian translation, by Cosimo Mei (Mimiso Ceo), appeared in 1764. Russian versions followed in 1764 and 1795. A Spanish version, translated by Ines Joyes y Blake, appeared in 1798. Johnson’s tale has been translated into at least eighteen languages, including Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, and Japanese. The Amharic translation was a bound manuscript edition dating to 1945. Overall, approximately fifty editions (English and non-English) circulated between 1759 and 1800, with about 400 English editions published in the nineteenth century. The work appeared in posthumous collections, including Arthur Murphy's Works (1792) and the Oxford Works (1825). J. D. Fleeman's bibliography records 527 main forms of the book. The modern critical edition is found in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, volume 16, Rasselas and Other Tales (1990), edited by Gwin J. Kolb, which uses the first edition as copy-text and also includes The Vision of Theodore and The Fountains.
CGV entry 18:1. Later known as 'Rasselas'.
The critique is censorious, contrasting with the generally favorable English reception. It expresses mild strictures, stating that the author seems better suited to essays or dialogues. The reviewer suggests that the title page acts as a "decoy" leading readers to knowledge they do not wish to acquire. It is one of the two most prestigious review organs attacking the work for its skill as a novelist and moral ideas.
CGV entry 18:1. An anonymous review of the first edition of the book by Samuel Johnson.
The critique is largely negative, possibly reflecting authorial knowledge of Johnson's identity and professional rivalry. Ruffhead brands the style as "tumid and pompous" and faults the dialogue and imagination. This appraisal exemplifies the strain of negative criticism appearing in the major reviewing organs. Ruffhead may harbor a grudge because of Johnson's previous wish that his journalistic paper, The Contest, fail.
CGV entry 18:1.
The review, likely written by Edmund Burke, is highly favorable, positioning the work as a technology of instruction. It praises the tale for inculcating "purer or sounder morality" and offering a "just estimate of human life." The critique commends the style as "lively, correct, and harmonious," and the descriptions as "rich and luxuriant," evidencing a poetic imagination. It adopts the view that the narrative successfully cloaks the moral in pleasing form. This notice appears soon after Johnson and Burke meet.
Hill’s edition features a "Brief Life of Johnson" and a detailed introduction documenting the composition of Rasselas. The biography traces Johnson’s journey from his birth in Lichfield through his "long disease" of ill health, persistent poverty, and eventual literary dominance. Hill emphasizes that Johnson wrote the narrative in "hot haste" over the evenings of one week in January 1759 to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral and settle her small debts. The introduction characterizes the work as a "song of sadness" reflecting Johnson’s own "loneliness, poverty, and ill-health" during his residence in a Gough Square garret. Editorial features include extensive "Notes" (pp. 159–203) that provide linguistic definitions from Johnson's Dictionary and parallel passages from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the Idler, and the Rambler. Hill also provides a chronological table of "Chief Events in the Life of Samuel Johnson" and discusses the "dramatic power" of characters like Imlac, whom he suggests Johnson used to paint a version of himself. The edition concludes with "the conclusion in which nothing is concluded," which Hill frames as a "sad picture of the life of man" that remains "unequalled" in its genre.
CGV entry 18:1. One of many later editions.
This work served as a significant step towards modern textual scholarship, offering a carefully edited text that superseded older popular editions. Chapman's textual decisions formed the foundation for later definitive editions, and his principles were largely followed by subsequent Oxford editors and by Kolb in the Yale edition.
Crane praises Chapman’s edition for its typographic beauty and editorial sobriety. The text follows the second edition (June 1759), restoring first-edition readings where inadvertent errors occurred. Chapman provides an appendix of textual variants between the 1759 editions and the 1766 fourth edition. Crane offers supplementary bibliographic data regarding Strahan’s printing ledgers and publication advertisements. He further disputes Chapman’s suggestion that Johnson imitated Voltaire's Candide, citing evidence that the French work was not available in England until after Rasselas entered the press.
CGV entry 18:1. Review by R. S. Crane of the edition by R. W. Chapman.
Published in the Oxford English Novels series, this is recognized as a widely used, reliable, moderately annotated reading text. It is based on the first edition but carefully incorporates all authorial revisions made for the second edition, providing a sound text for non-specialist study. Introduction; Samuel Johnson: a brief chronology; A note on the text The history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia; Appendix A: Other writing by Samuel Johnson. 1. From Father Jerome Lobo, A voyage to Abyssinia, translated by Samuel Johnson (1735) ; 2. The vanity of human wishes (1749) ; 3. Rambler no. 4 (1750) ; Rambler no. 204 (1752) ; Rambler no. 205 (1752); Appendix B: Contemporary responses to Rasselas. 1. From the Monthly review (1759) ; 2. From Sir John Hawkins, The life of Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. 2nd ed. (1787) ; 3. From James Boswell, The life of Samuel Johnson (1791) ; 4. From Ellis Cornelia Knight, Dinarbas (1790) ; 5. Elizabeth Pope Whately, The second part of the history of Rasselas (1835); Appendix C: Orientalism in the eighteenth century. 1. Joesph Addison, The spectator no. 159 (1711) ; 2. From Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish embassy letters (1763)
CGV entry 18:1. Reprinted in 1977.
Phillips reviews the Oxford English Novels edition of Johnson's Rasselas, edited by Tillotson and Jenkins. He praises the edition's textual precision, based on the first edition with revisions from the second, and its insightful introduction. Tillotson places Rasselas within the tradition of the literary essay. Phillips highlights the explanatory notes as a major virtue, finding they effectively illuminate Johnson's ideas on subjects like harmless pleasures and the universality of human nature. He concludes the edition is authoritative and generally useful until the Yale edition appears.
Donaldson's skeptical review of the Oxford English Novels edition of Rasselas, edited by Geoffrey Tillotson and Brian Jenkins, questions the necessity of the volume. The reviewer compares it unfavorably to J. P. Hardy's 1968 edition, noting that Tillotson provides only six pages of notes against Hardy's fifty-eight. Donaldson criticizes the introduction for saying little about the text itself and finds the editorial decisions regarding which specialist studies to cite as "puzzling." The reviewer identifies the list of variant readings as the edition's only useful feature.
CGV entry 18:1. A severe review by Ian Donaldson of the edition by Geoffrey Tillotson and Brian Jenkins.
CGV entry 18:1. An Italian translation.
CGV entry 18:1. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the Italian translation by Goffredo Miglietta.
Limited to 510 copies, of which 500 are for sale.
CGV entry 18:3. With a preface by H. V. M. Reprinted by Harmsworth in 1978.
"These aro two very charming books in a new 'Baskerville Series,' printed in t.he small Bask erville type; and bound in brightly coloured marbled papers. ... 'The Foutains' is really not so much a work of fiction as some of the papers in the Rambler, since it is rather an allegory."
CGV entry 18:3.
A young girl who rescues a fairy is given perpetual access to two magical fountains. The Spring of Joy grants Floretta's wishes for beauty, wealth and wit, while the Spring of Sorrow is able to remove the painful consequences of these wishes - if she can bear it's bitter taste.
CGV entry 18:3. Illustrated by James Hunt, with a foreword by Hannah Carter. Reprint of the 1927 edition.
Proofs, from Pictures, Painted by Robert Smirke, R.A. and Engraved by A. Raimbach. The Subject Taken from the Rasselas of Dr. Johnson
The British Novelists, with ... Prefaces, Biographical and Critical
Serves as a preface to Rasselas. Johnson exhibits the "touch of genius" and "stronger marks of his peculiar character" in a philosophical romance characterized by "solemn, melancholy" themes. Johnson draws upon his translation of Lobo to construct the "happy valley," a setting that allows for a "bird's-eye view" of human existence. Johnson finds that "marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures," leading to a conclusion where "nothing is concluded." While Johnson exaggerates life's miseries similarly to Voltaire, he provides "solid consolations of a future state" rather than satire. The narrative's "pompous flow of diction" and "measured harmony" suit the Eastern costume. Johnson displays a "morbid melancholy near akin to derangement" in his description of the astronomer's "unprofitable abstractions." Johnson forms a new style, decking "philosophy with the ornamented diction and the flowers of fancy" while maintaining moral purity.
CGV entry 18:22.
[Letter attributing to Johnson Book 9, Chapter 11, of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote]
Attributes the penultimate chapter of Lennox's work to Johnson, asserting that his "pencil" is clearly discernible in the philosophical discourse on the nature of truth and the "imitation of nature." It argues that the chapter's "deceptive imitation" of a scholarly dialogue betrays Johnson's characteristic tone, which differs from Lennox's primary narrative style. The reviewer notes that while Lennox founded her own school of fiction, Johnson's intervention provided a "new direction" to the novel's moral conclusion.
Eirionnach investigates potential literary and historical sources for Johnson’s "Happy Valley." The author notes that while Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia is often cited, Lobo actually describes a "barren Mount of Misery" rather than a paradise. The article suggests Johnson likely followed Milton’s Paradise Lost or earlier Portuguese writers like Tellez. The abstract details Eirionnach's identification of the name "Rasselas" as deriving from Lobo's mention of "Ras Sela Christos," a seventeenth-century viceroy. Additionally, the name "Imlac" is traced to an Abyssinian emperor from approximately 1300 or the Ethiopian eunuch baptized by St. Philip.
The Bibliography of Johnson's 'Rasselas'
This bibliographical history traces the production and reception of Johnson’s most characteristic work. Written in one week to defray his mother's funeral expenses, Rasselas (1759) reflects Johnson’s deep meditations on providence and human vanity. The text surveys critical reactions from the contemporary Monthly Review to Scott, Hazlitt, and Boswell, while detailing the book’s extensive global diffusion. It further explores the work’s genesis in Johnson’s 1735 translation of Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, identifying specific geographical and historical inspirations for the "Happy Valley" and the royal princes' seclusion.
CGV entry 18:27.
In a brief note M.C. challenges a statement claiming the Longmans were the original publishers of Johnson’s Rasselas. Transcribing the title-page of the 1759 first edition of The Prince of Abissinia, M.C. identifies R. and J. Dodsley and W. Johnston as the actual publishers. M.C. traces the publication history through the second edition of 1759, the third of 1760, and the fifth of 1775, noting that T. Longman does not appear in the imprint until 1783, over twenty years after the initial release. The note also observes a spelling change to Abyssinia in the 1801 edition.
Raleigh identifies Rasselas as a "moral apologue" and defends its place in the history of the novel despite its didacticism. He notes that Johnson wrote the work in 1759 to defray his mother's funeral expenses, possibly drawing on earlier labors translating Lobo. Raleigh argues the prose in Rasselas represents a superior middle ground between the "monotonous sentences" of the Rambler and the hammer-like "dogmatic ring" of the Lives of the Poets. He praises the "masterly" plot structure and the "skilful climax" involving the mad astronomer. Raleigh emphasizes Johnson's rejection of "unthinking optimism," noting the personal melancholy reflected in the sage's lack of a mother or wife to share in his reputation.
Emerson challenges long-accepted Boswellian traditions regarding the composition and textual history of Johnson's Rasselas (1759). He disputes three primary assertions: that Johnson wrote the tale to defray his mother’s funeral expenses, that he sent it to the press in unread portions, and that he never revised the work. Through a rigorous collation of the first and second editions, both published in 1759, Emerson identifies exactly sixty-one textual variations. These include material changes to chapter headings, the omission and addition of clauses, and significant shifts in word choice and sentence construction—alterations Emerson argues only the author could have performed. Consequently, Emerson concludes that Johnson did indeed revise the second edition, debunking the legend of the "unread" text and suggesting the second edition, rather than the first, best represents Johnson's final intent.
CGV entry 18:30. On revisions of the text.
Anti-Cant: Candide; Rasselas
Whittuck examines the simultaneous publication of Rasselas and Candide as a significant literary phenomenon. Whittuck argues that Johnson uses a grave, reflective tone to challenge contemporary optimism, contrasting this with the bitter satire of Voltaire. The study asserts that Johnson focuses on the internal disappointments of human nature and the illusiveness of apparent pleasures rather than external cruelty. Whittuck emphasizes that Johnson avoids despair by directing human hopes toward eternity through the character of the Princess. The text notes Johnson's rejection of the "state of nature" theory and his insistence that knowledge must remain connected to the contemplation of man's moral estate. Whittuck concludes that Johnson finds relative happiness in domestic realities and "work-a-day" aspects of life.
CGV entry 18:31. A thoughtful comparison.
Challenges the "venerably dubious" claim made by topographers such as Besant, Mitton, and Worsfold that Johnson wrote Rasselas at Staple Inn. Examining a letter dated March 23, 1759, the day Johnson moved from Gough Square to Staple Inn, the account notes Johnson’s statement: "I am going to publish a little story book." Because the work was written in the evenings of a single week and published shortly thereafter, the timeline precludes its composition during the turmoil of a residential move. The text asserts that Johnson wrote the narrative at Gough Square to defray the costs of his mother’s funeral. It concludes that topographers propagate this error to satisfy a public desire for sentiment, neglecting the more "picturesque" truth of the work's actual origin in Fleet Street.
CGV entry 18:32.
The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century
Conant identifies Samuel Johnson as a central figure in the orientalizing tendency of eighteenth-century English fiction. Within the moralistic group, Johnson emulates the earlier methods of Addison, employing the oriental tale in the Rambler and Idler to inculcate right living and present serene ideals of conduct. Although his manner appears clumsy and his characterization remains thin, Johnson uses sonorous, Biblical imagery and "pompous language" to elevate his narratives. These moralistic efforts, such as the story of Hamet and Raschid, use abstract types to demonstrate the vanity of worldly ambitions. Within the philosophic group, Johnson’s Rasselas represents the culmination of this serious genre. Conant argues that Rasselas expresses Johnson’s somber philosophy of the "Vanity of Human Wishes" through a slender thread of narrative broken by extensive conversations on government, morality, and the impossibility of terrestrial happiness. Johnson purposely abstains from concrete local color, preferring a vague, remote setting to heighten the effect of universality. His narrative concludes that virtue and knowledge offer the only consolation in a world of endured misery.
Rasselas: The First Italian Translation
Collison-Morley provides details on the first Italian translation of Rasselas, published in 1764 by G. A. Volpi. Translated by Cavalier Mei under the pseudonym "Mimiso Ceo," the version was described by Baretti as the work of a "foolish fellow." The article notes that this version is often omitted from English bibliographies. Baretti’s harshness may stem from the fact that Mei’s translation anticipated and rendered useless Baretti’s own French version, despite Johnson having dictated the first sentence to Baretti. The abstract mentions that Professor Piccioni found no evidence that Mei relied on Madame Belot’s French translation for assistance.
CGV entry 18:35. See also a reply by Robert Pierpoint in the same journal (June 18), page 497.
Rasselas functions as an extended moral apologue rather than a traditional novel. This prose counterpart to The Vanity of Human Wishes prioritizes philosophical wisdom over the determining differentiae of fiction, lacking substantive plot, individual characterization, or realistic description . Despite these structural deficiencies, Johnson’s adoption of the prose narrative to communicate complex thought reflects the mid-eighteenth-century struggle toward novelistic production . While Johnson initially judged Fielding shallower than Richardson, his own later fiction, specifically Amelia, won his approval, possibly due to its handling of moral temptation. Johnson’s critical influence also extended to endorsing contemporary female novelists like Lennox and Sheridan.
Howells examines the literary longevity and rhetorical character of Johnson’s Rasselas. By contrasting Johnson's "towering expressions" with the "actuality" of early twentieth-century realism, Howells explores how a "school of diction" persists despite shifts in psychological language and narrative taste. He argues that Johnson uses the "hardest words of his lexicon" to articulate "humaner" reflections on marriage, solitude, and the "tyranny of reflection." Howells highlights the influence of Johnsonian prose on Burney and notes that the work’s "conclusion in which nothing is concluded" offers a modern, ironic treatment of human desire. The dialogue emphasizes that while "antiquity" remains distant, Johnson’s ideas regarding the "immateriality" of the soul and "connubial infelicity" remain "indescerptible."
CGV entry 18:37. A conversation about 'Rasselas'.
Markland notes a striking similarity between the famous conclusion of Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry and a sentence from chapter ten of Johnson’s Rasselas. Where Shelley describes poets as 'unacknowledged legislators of the world,' Johnson’s Imlac asserts the poet must write as the 'legislator of mankind.' The author questions whether Shelley consciously recalled Johnson’s phrasing, though both may have been echoing classical sentiments found in Horace’s Art of Poetry.
CGV entry 18:38. On 'Rasselas', Chapter 10, and the end of the 'Defence of Poetry'.
Armstrong identifies thematic parallels between Johnson’s definition of a poet in Rasselas and Emerson’s concept of the scholar. Despite stylistic differences, both authors demand that the intellectual transcend national prejudices, master diverse knowledges, and interpret nature. Armstrong notes that both figures advocate for a life of high purpose that disregards contemporary applause in favor of long-term wisdom. He suggests that both Johnson and Emerson describe a general seeker of knowledge rather than a practitioner of verse.
CGV entry 18:39.
Powell reports on Voltaire's previously unfamiliar appreciation of Johnson's Rasselas from a letter to Madame Belot (May 16, 1760), where he praised its "philosophy" and good writing. The letter alludes to the famous play Les Philosophes, first produced on May 2, 1760. Powell provides details on the first French translation of Rasselas by Madame Belot, titled Histoire de Rasselas, Prince d'Abissinie, published in 1760. The preface notes the analogy in theme and structure between Rasselas and Voltaire's Candide. A contemporary comment by Boswell notes Johnson claimed there was insufficient time for one to have imitated the other, despite the structural similarity.
CGV entry 18:40.
Tinker examines the reception and publishing history of Johnson’s Rasselas in America, documenting the text’s transformation from a British moral philosophical narrative to a staple of the American literary landscape. The work tracks the earliest American editions, beginning with the 1768 Philadelphia printing by Robert Bell, and analyzes how colonial and post-revolutionary readers engaged with Johnson's themes of the "choice of life." Tinker identifies various early American publishers who adapted the text, often appending moralizing prefaces that aligned with contemporary religious and social values. The study highlights Johnson’s continued cultural authority in the "New World" through the 19th century.
CGV entry 18:41. Separately printed by Yale University Press in 1925.
Belloc describes Piozzi's annotated copy of Johnson's Rasselas from 1818, an edition annotated near the end of her life. He values the book as a unique historical artifact, combining living contemporary witness and the intimate experience of the original document. Piozzi's marginalia offers insights into her state of mind in old age, particularly her reflections on life, death, and happiness, such as her annotation to Johnson's discontent passage. Belloc interjects his own philosophical arguments on conscience and diseases of virtue, contrasting them with Piozzi's notes.
Belloc advocates for the regular study of Rasselas, asserting that its social and moral impact surpasses that of Voltaire’s Candide. The text compares the styles of both writers, likening Johnson’s prose to the "rhythmical swell of deep water" and "strong soup" due to its concentration of meaning. Belloc maintains that the antithetical form serves as an ideal medium for condensing considered judgments into lucidity. The analysis highlights Johnson’s observations on marriage and celibacy, noting their "good moral effect" and accuracy. Belloc further discusses the rapid composition of the work and the financial compensation Johnson received, identifying with Johnson’s professional status as a "hack writer."
CGV entry 18:43. See also Catholic World, volume 171 (June 1950), pages 212–213.
A critical and personal appreciation of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, contrasting its moral depth with Voltaire's Candide. The text emphasizes the 'beefy' solidity of Johnson’s prose and the value of first editions as vessels of immediate contact with the author. It concludes with an analysis of Hester Thrale Piozzi’s personal, late-life marginalia in her 1818 copy of the work, highlighting her continued engagement with Johnson's wisdom nearly sixty years after the book's initial publication.
CGV entry 18:43. Reprinted from the New Statesman (1925).
Hilaire Belloc: An Anthology of His Prose and Verse
This article, reprinted from Short Talks with the Dead, presents an appreciation of Johnson's Rasselas. Belloc argues for the work's greatness based on its moral utility and "noble" effect on the reader, contrasting it favorably with the "poisonous" nature of Voltaire's Candide. He praises Johnson’s style for its "rhythmical swell" and effective use of the antithetical form to condense profound truths regarding marriage and celibacy. Belloc also reflects on the bibliographic history of the text, describing a unique Sharpe’s Edition of 1818 annotated by Piozzi in her eightieth year. He highlights the historical intimacy of Thrale’s marginalia, written as she revisited the work of her youth shortly before her death. The text underscores Johnson’s professional efficiency, noting he composed the "concentration of nourishment" in under seven days to meet financial needs.
A Commentary & Questionnaire on the History of Rasselas
Collins's historical survey of English fiction positions Samuel Richardson as the first psychological novelist and examines the essential originality of major figures. Johnson appears as a natural moralist whose intellectualism in Rasselas taught the novel to be a vehicle for philosophy. Collins details the writing of Rasselas as a sublime competence achieved under financial duress following the death of Johnson’s mother. Boswell's contributions are noted primarily through his reports on Johnson's critical opinions, including his preference for Richardson's sentiment over Henry Fielding's technical watch-making and his dismissal of Laurence Sterne's longevity. Piozzi is situated within the circle of flatterers surrounding Fanny Burney, contributing to the bouquets of praise that defined Burney's early reception. The work further explores the transition from the Epic of the Open Road to the Lyric of the Closed Room, tracing the influence of eighteenth-century styles on the modern consciousness and the evolving role of women in literature.
Rasselas: The Testament of a Romantic
Warner defends Rasselas as a work of art possessing form, beauty, and permanence, moving beyond its reputation as a text written in haste to fund a funeral. He describes the work as a "philosophic conte" where ideas dictate the narrative of a voyage of exploration. Warner outlines the journey of Johnson’s characters from the "Happy Valley" to Cairo, emphasizing the central theme of the "choice of life." He highlights Johnson's treatment of human dissatisfaction, noting that the text exposes the failure of morality, wealth, and marriage to provide lasting happiness. Warner asserts that the dissertation on poetry remains the simplest exposition of the Poetics in English. He identifies a "romantic" and "tender" interior to Johnson, suggesting that while Boswell presents the "splendid husk," the "man himself" exists within this romance. Warner concludes that the work reflects the "hunger of imagination" and remains a fresh, passionate testament to Johnson's mind.
The History of the English Novel, Vol. 5: The Novel of Sentiment and the Gothic Romance
The Oriental Story from Rasselas to Vathek
Baker examines the "exotic genre" of pseudo-Oriental tales used primarily for "satire or edification" rather than accurate cultural representation. He analyzes Johnson's "Rasselas" as a "sustained sermon on the vanity of human wishes," noting its contemporaneous publication with Voltaire's "Candide." Baker argues that Johnson uses the Oriental convention to demonstrate that happiness is "a mirage" and that life is made tolerable only through "having something to do." The chapter also traces the development of social satire through Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," where a Chinese philosopher's "double perspective" exposes Western "social anomalies." Baker highlights the shift from these didactic frameworks to the "grandiose horror" of Beckford's "Vathek," which he describes as a "Gothic story" in essence. He concludes that the Oriental craze was an "ephemeral vogue" that provided a malleable medium for eighteenth-century writers to critique their own society.
CGV entry 18:47. Reprinted by Barnes and Noble, New York, in 1957.
Barnouw confirms the accuracy of a 1773 statement by Johnson regarding a Dutch translation of Rasselas, correcting the belief that such a version was lost or non-existent. While previous bibliographers like Courtney and Hill could not find a translation earlier than 1824, Barnouw identifies a 1760 Amsterdam edition titled De Historie van Rasselas, Prins van Abissinien. The translation was published anonymously, and its title-page attributed the work to "De Hollandsche Wijsgeer" (The Dutch Philosopher), who attempted to take credit for the work. Barnouw notes that the plagiarism was exposed in a 1761 review in De Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, which correctly identified the book as a translation despite the title page's silence on Johnson's authorship.
Tillotson argues for Johnson's debt to Ambrose Philips's 1714 English translation of Pétis de la Croix's Mille et Un Jours (Persian Tales) for the subject and outline of Rasselas. Bedreddin Lolo's search for a happy man, accompanied by the skeptical Vizier Atalmulc, parallels Rasselas's quest and Imlac's role as the wiser chorus. Both narratives employ stories within the story and conclude with the protagonists accepting the inevitability of human unhappiness. Johnson, however, improved the darkness of the skepticism, broadened the philosophical scope, and avoided the prevalent magic found in the Tales, as seen in the failure of the flying-machine inventor, reflecting his deprecation of marvels in fiction.
CGV entry 18:49. See also a reply by R. H. Griffith in the same journal, November 16, page 752.
This presidential address examines the topicality of Rasselas and Johnson's 1735 translation of Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia. Squire identifies the etymological origins of the name Rasselas, noting that "Ras" signifies a fugitive chief. The article recounts how Hector and a Birmingham printer induced Johnson to translate Lobo’s work for five guineas to avert the printer's bankruptcy. Squire suggests that Rasselas contains prophetic passages regarding aerial warfare and represents Johnson's first significant stylistic development. The report also highlights the dedication of the W. A. Wood Room at the Johnson House and includes Squire’s defense of Johnson’s occasional brusqueness, arguing that his harshest rebukes were typically reserved for Boswell’s persistent provocations.
CGV entry 18:50. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Rousseau's Second Discourse in England from 1755 to 1762
Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality received more varied and favorable English attention before 1762 than previously recognized. Smith praised Rousseau’s moral philosophy and republican spirit, integrating the concept of pity into his own theories. Sewall suggests Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society and Johnson’s Rasselas constitute early, deliberate attacks on Rousseau’s primitivism. Johnson specifically satirizes Rousseau’s "life according to nature" as a visionary delusion contradicting human experience and social necessity.
CGV entry 18:51. Shows satire on Rousseau's ideas in 'Rasselas'.
Studies in English, in Honor of Raphael Dorman O'Leary and Selden Lincoln Whitcomb
Some Aspects of the Background of Rasselas
Jenkins reconstructs the geographical and historical sources for Johnson's Rasselas, emphasizing the influence of Father Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. While Boswell previously noted the connection, Jenkins identifies specific parallels between Lobo's descriptions and Johnson's narrative, such as the lieutenant general Rassela Christos and subterranean Nile sources. Jenkins argues that Johnson transformed Lobo's account of barren mountain prisons for blood royals into the luxurious Happy Valley. He suggests Johnson used accounts by C. J. Poncet and Ludolphus to supply the palace’s elegance, feasting, and arts, which Lobo's realistic narrative lacked. Jenkins further traces the Cairo setting to Richard Pococke's Description of the East. The article details how Johnson used realistic elements of travel literature to provide his philosophical tale with a specific local habitation.
A New Source for Shelley's A Defence of Poetry
Cameron challenges the long-held scholarly belief that Sir Philip Sidney served as the primary source for Shelley's A Defence of Poetry. He identifies the discourse of the poet Imlac in Johnson's Rasselas as a major influence, arguing that Shelley uses Johnson's critical principles as the base for his philosophy. Through a series of structural parallels and verbal echoes, Cameron demonstrates how Shelley follows the sequence of Imlac's arguments regarding the "divine" nature of poetry, the role of the poet as a "legislator," and the rejection of contemporary prejudices. While noting that Shelley transforms these Augustan foundations into romantic and mystical concepts, Cameron maintains that the "indebtedness there is unmistakeable."
CGV entry 18:53.
Rasselas and Alastor: A Study in Transmutation
Cameron identifies Samuel Johnson's Rasselas and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan as significant, unrecognized sources for Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor. The article argues that Shelley uses Johnson's discourse on the education of a poet and Imlac's observations on solitude to provide the intellectual framework for the poem's preface. Cameron demonstrates how Shelley transmutes the "mundane conceptions" of Johnson into a romanticized narrative, specifically linking the imagery of the Happy Valley to the exotic landscapes in Alastor and The Assassins. By comparing parallel passages, Cameron shows that Shelley blends Johnson's descriptions of subterranean caverns and kingly treasures with Coleridgean motifs. He concludes that Shelley’s later fragment, Prince Athanase, maintains this structural indebtedness to Johnson.
CGV entry 18:54. On Shelley's use of 'Rasselas'.
A Commentary on Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Kolb provides detailed annotation for Johnson's Rasselas, intending to augment R. W. Chapman's edition. It examines the work's rhetorical structure, arguing that the narrative functions as an apologue to enforce a moral thesis. The study explores Rasselas's debt to earlier Oriental tales and extensively details parallels within Johnson's previous writings, including The Rambler and The Idler. It also resurrects eighteenth-century philosophical and geographical ideas pertinent to the text, illuminating Johnson's pervasive opinions on happiness and the vanity of human wishes.
Johnson's 'Dissertation on Flying' and John Wilkins' Mathematical Magick
Kolb argues that Johnson constructed the "Dissertation on the art of flying" in Rasselas using specific mechanical and theoretical details from Wilkins’s Mathematical Magick. He identifies parallels between Johnson’s "artist" and Wilkins’s descriptions of "sailing chariots," "volant automata," and "wind-mills." Kolb demonstrates that the objections Rasselas raises—regarding human limits, the law of gravity, and respiration in the upper air—mirror the "queries" and "resolutions" found in Wilkins’s work.
Argues chapter VI of Johnson's Rasselas draws significantly on John Wilkins' Mathematical Magick (1648). Kolb demonstrates parallels between Johnson's narrative—the artist's skills, the sailing chariot idea, Rasselas's objections to flying, the counterarguments, and the bat's wing model—and specific sections in Wilkins' work on automata and flight. Kolb suggests Johnson adapted Wilkins' material for logical progression within his philosophical tale.
CGV entry 18:56. Reprinted from Modern Philology (1949).
J.-J. Rousseau en Angleterre au xviiie siècle
CGV entry 18:58. On a sequel by Elizabeth Pope Whately in 1835. Separately printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950.
Il 'Candide' Inglese: 'Ras Selas' di Samuele Johnson
Kolb argues against the prevailing critical view that Johnson's Rasselas is structurally deficient, chaotic, or merely episodic. He proposes that the work is a highly methodical didactic apologue whose structure is determined entirely by its moral purpose: to demonstrate the futility of seeking permanent earthly happiness. Johnson achieves this through an exhaustive, two-part survey: first, revealing the unhappiness of an earthly paradise (the Happy Valley), and second, systematically exploring various supposedly happy modes of life in the outside world. The quest ends with the recognition that true happiness lies only in the prospect of eternity, making the characters' final decision to return to Abissinia a logical, structural conclusion.
Crusoe, Rasselas, and the Suit of Clothes
Conan Doyle, Tennyson, and Rasselas
The Use of Stoical Doctrines in Rasselas, Chapter 18
Kolb identifies the precise background for Johnson's treatment of the stoical sage in Rasselas, chapter 18. Johnson's depiction of the philosopher's lecture on the "government of the passions" closely reflects positions found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English translations and adaptations of classical stoic philosophy. The sage's rhetoric, including the "government" metaphor and the comparison of reason to the sun, is paralleled in works by Senault, Stanhope, Le Grand, and Seneca. The sage's final inability to practice his precepts when faced with his daughter's death affords the supreme test of stoicism, a subject close to the heart of earlier stoics.
The First American Rasselas and Its Imprint
Metzdorf analyzes the 1768 Philadelphia edition of Rasselas published by Robert Bell, which bears the unusual imprint "America: Printed for every purchaser." Identifying the edition within the context of the colonial non-importation movement following the Townshend Acts, Metzdorf argues the imprint was a calculated appeal to local manufacturing patriotism rather than publisher eccentricity. He notes that Johnson, upon receiving a copy in 1773, failed to recognize the revolutionary political implications inherent in the domestic production of his work.
Rasselas and the Early Travelers to Abyssinia
Moore identifies geographical and historical sources for Johnson’s Happy Valley, arguing Johnson drew from Alvarez and Tellez rather than Lobo. Moore notes Johnson’s idyllic pictures had no foundation in fact, as travelers described the princes' confinement as bleak and tyrannical. Moore explains how Johnson accepted the high mountain valley of Alvarez while investing it with some of the fabulous charm derived from Urreta's fictions. Moore links Imlac’s tunneling method to narratives by Correa and Castanhoso.
Osgood identifies a likely source for a celebrated passage in the eighth chapter of Rasselas. He connects Johnson’s description of the scholar’s business—talking in public and thinking in solitude—to a sentence from Macrobius’s Saturnalia that Johnson famously quoted upon entering Pembroke College. Osgood argues that these words echoed in Johnson’s mind for decades, ultimately informing the autobiographical reflections of Imlac and reflecting Johnson’s own lifelong dedication to learned conversation and solitary inquiry.
CGV entry 18:67. On Chapter 8 of 'Rasselas'.
'No Romantick Absurdities or Incredible Fictions': The Relation of Johnson's Rasselas to Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia
Rasselas is fundamentally linked to his translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. Johnson was initially drawn to Lobo's work because it eschewed "Romantick Absurdities," focusing instead on human motive and action. The Voyage provided Johnson with specific details: the name "Rasselas," the custom of imprisoning princes, the presence of an idyllic region, a digging episode, and the Nile's importance. The geographical setting of the Voyage gave Johnson the necessary distance to discuss the human condition without limiting the discussion to Englishmen.
Rasselas and the Miscellanies of John Norris
Bredvold identifies a compelling analogue to the Happy Valley in Rasselas within John Norris's A Collection of Miscellanies. He cites a story Norris recounted regarding an Eastern Emperor who sequestered his son in magnificent apartments, removing all notions of misery to test the limits of worldly felicity. Like Rasselas, the prince eventually falls into "extreme Melancholy and Despair" upon realizing his desires remain unfulfilled despite his affluence. Clifford adds support to Bredvold’s suggestion by noting that a copy of the Miscellanies used by Johnson in compiling the Dictionary is currently held in the Yale University Library, confirming that Johnson had read Norris’s work prior to writing his own narrative.
Whitley argues that Johnson's Rasselas is mistakenly viewed as a tragic, incoherent work, but is actually a carefully planned, satiric, and ironic "moral fable." The central approach is destructive, an exposé of philosophical errors through dramatic irony and the contrast between illusion and common sense. The two main sections, the Happy Valley and the world of men, are shown to be structurally similar perspectives of human folly. The characters, especially Rasselas, are often objects of ridicule due to their self-indulgence and impracticality, exemplified by the would-be Aeronaut and the Stoic philosopher. Even Imlac, the wisest character, is subject to gentle satire, particularly in his "Dissertation upon Poetry." The later chapters shift to "dark comedy," with the pathetic example of the mad Astronomer, before ending with the travelers returning to the Valley, still clinging to their utopian "wishes," highlighting that "Nothing Is Concluded."
Barnett traces a specific passage in chapter 13 of Rasselas to Cicero's De Senectute. When Imlac encourages the Prince during their excavation of the escape tunnel, he remarks that "Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance." Barnett demonstrates that this sentiment, and its specific phrasing, mirrors Cicero's assertion that "Non viribus aut velocitate ... res magnae geruntur, sed consilio, auctoritate, sententia." The article argues that Johnson's use of "perseverance" serves as a translation for the Latin concepts of reflection, character, and determination found in the original classical source.
Pakenham investigates the historical reality of the Abyssinian royal prison on Mount Wehni, the geographic inspiration for Johnson's "Happy Valley." The narrative details a 1955 expedition to the summit, confirming the existence of the medieval civilization at Gondar and the custom of sequestering royal heirs. It evaluates the impact of Johnson’s fictionalized account on European perceptions and contrasts the literary narrative with the archaeological and historical evidence of the Ethiopian monarchy’s decline.
CGV entry 18:73. On where Abyssinian princes were imprisoned. See also his book 'The Mountains of Rasselas' (1959).
Rasselas and The Vicar of Wakefield
Barnett identifies a parallel situation in Rasselas, The Vicar of Wakefield, and Joseph Andrews involving a mentor whose advocacy of rational fortitude collapses under personal affliction. In Rasselas, a philosopher mourning his daughter rejects the inefficacy of his own rhetoric. Barnett compares this to Parson Adams in Fielding and the Vicar in Goldsmith, noting that while the disaster details differ, each narrative exposes the failure of moral teachers to practice the patience they preach.
Johnson's Rasselas after Two Centuries
Rasselas and the Quest for Happiness
Whispers of Fancy; or, The Meaning of Rasselas
Joost analyzes Rasselas as a moral and religious parable that denies the efficacy of rationalism. He identifies five levels of meaning, including a Freudian birth allegory and a moral discovery of the vanity of sublunary things. Joost argues that the novel’s conclusion is specifically Christian and fideistic, as Johnson demonstrates that reason fails to secure perfect happiness. Consequently, the soul must rely on faith, Revelation, and higher authority to find an optimistic solution to the human condition.
Father Jeronymo Lobo's Writings Concerning Ethiopia, Including Hitherto Unpublished Manuscripts in the Palmella Library
CGV entry 18:78. Discusses Johnson's translation of Lobo-Legrand and the sources of 'Rasselas'.
The Pattern of Conservatism in Johnson's Rasselas and Hawthorne's Tales
Fisher demonstrates a parallel pattern of conservatism in Johnson's Rasselas and Hawthorne's tales. Both writers reacted strongly against the optimism and insurgence of their respective ages, particularly the faith in human perfectibility and external reform. They opposed Rousseau, Benevolism, and Transcendentalism, insisting instead that misery is inherent in human nature and that true happiness is found only in eternity, not earthly pursuits. Both authors prioritized individual moral discipline, shared a head-heart psychology, and distrusted single-minded zealots like scientists and reformers.
The 'Paradise' in Abyssinia and the 'Happy Valley' in Rasselas
Kolb investigates the non-Lobo sources for the "Happy Valley" in Johnson's Rasselas. He argues that Lobo's realistic description of the royal prison as a "Barren summit" does not account for Johnson's paradisaical vision. Kolb documents a pervasive "paradise" tradition in earlier English travel literature about the Abyssinian Hill Amara, notably in the "Incredible Fictions" of Urreta and Baratti. These accounts portray Amara as a luxurious, beautiful place where royal children (sons and daughters) receive instruction and treasure is kept. Johnson, aware of both the harsh reality (from Lobo and Ludolph) and the pervasive romantic legend, deliberately chose the fictional "paradise" convention for Rasselas to set the stage for his moral tale about the futility of searching for earthly happiness.
Wahba compiles twelve essays from international scholars to commemorate the bicentenary of Johnson’s Rasselas. The collection includes James L. Clifford’s comparison of Candide and Rasselas, Robert F. Metzdorf’s bibliographic study of the first American edition, and Geoffrey Tillotson’s analysis of time in the apologue. Kolb provides a rigorous critique of the contributors, particularly challenging Tillotson on factual grounds regarding the travelers' supposed return to the "Happy Valley." Other essays explore the influence of the oriental tale tradition, the role of Imlac as a spokesman, and the journey’s geographical realism. The volume underscores the global and enduring critical appeal of Johnson’s "little book."
CGV entry 18:81. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the collection edited by Magdi Wahba.
Some Remarks on Candide and Rasselas
Some Remarks on a Second Reading of Rasselas
Rasselas' Journey from Amhara to Cairo Viewed from Arabia
CGV entry 18:85. Translated by Barbara Arnett Melchiori.
Grand Cairo and Philadelphia: The Frontispiece to the 1768 Edition of Johnson's Rasselas
CGV entry 18:90. On Cornelia Knight's 'Dinarbas'.
This article, reprinted from Bicentenary Essays on Rasselas (1959), analyzes Johnson’s treatment of temporal progression and slow decay. Tillotson argues Johnson's prose order reflects a strong sense of continuity, where men "glide along the stream of time." The text highlights Johnson’s preoccupation with the "wearing-away of time" and the automatic continuity of human existence. Tillotson suggests Johnson’s verbs are most powerful when expressing this gradual erosion. The analysis connects the structural design of the narrative to eighteenth-century concepts of related but separate units. Tillotson concludes that Johnson’s acute consciousness of time differentiates his work from the more static designs of his contemporaries, emphasizing the relentless, inescapable movement from youth to age.
CGV entry 18:91. Reprinted from 'Bicentenary Essays on Rasselas' (1959).
A Note on the Manner of Concluding in Rasselas
Zadig and Rasselas Considered
Rasselas and the Theme of Diversification
Rasselas (1759) develops the theme that life can be made tolerable through the diversification of activities, which allows one to avoid satiety and unhealthy solitude. Though absolute happiness is unattainable, Johnson proposes that a blend of intellectual pursuits (study, travel, conversation) and emotional bonds (friendship, marriage) can provide necessary pleasure. The eventual return to the Happy Valley signifies not mere resignation, but the application of acquired knowledge through orderly diversification, using the familiar home as a stable center.
CGV entry 18:95. On 'Rasselas', Chapter 35, and 'The First Anniversary of the Government Under Oliver Cromwell', lines 337-340.
Johnson's article explores the ultimate literary, structural, and philosophical sources for Rasselas, citing Boswell’s observation that the work seized the useful substance of Johnson's existing knowledge and acknowledging the influence of Prior’s Solomon and Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia—which Johnson translated in 1735. While Solomon provided thematic reminders, these works primarily served to direct Johnson back to the "Hebrew source," the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes. The text establishes structural and thematic indebtedness and parallelism between the Prince’s inductive picaresque quest and that of the Jewish sage, noting that both move from sensual pleasure to the respect for learning before concluding with the vanity of human wishes and the contemplation of death. Finally, Johnson suggests the work's ending equates the "pagan cynicism" of the Preacher with his own theological faith, transforming Oriental cynicism into an assertion of theological faith and the "Choice of Life" into a "Choice of Eternity."
Man and the World in Johnson's Rasselas
Sherburn disputes the interpretation that the travelers in Johnson’s Rasselas return to the Happy Valley with improved or hopeful prospects. He argues such a reading is unwarranted and contradicts Johnson’s intent, as the "iron gate" of the Valley permanently excludes those who leave. Citing Imlac’s own "barren return" as prophetic, Sherburn contends the group returns to Abissinia in a state of almost complete frustration. He asserts the travelers must fortify themselves with memories rather than the forbidden delights of their former home, emphasizing Johnson’s inherent pessimism.
Rasselas o il mito della felicità
Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes
Challenges the critical commonplace that Rasselas is merely a prose version of The Vanity of Human Wishes. John M. Aden argues that the two works differ fundamentally in tone and target. The poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes, is somber and focuses on the constitutional inadequacy of the world, emphasizing the overwhelming influence of fate in the destiny of mortal man. In contrast, Rasselas is subtly wry and satirical, focusing on a psychological cause or fallacy: the human naïveté and self-delusion ("credulity" and "fancy") of the characters who fail to engage with the world. The tale ultimately repudiates the poem's pessimism, showing that the world is wanting not because of an external, fatal disability, but because the characters lack the capacity to understand it. Johnson's conclusion is not one of hopeless retreat, but an implicit assertion that life is an adventure worth running for the resolute man.
Cites Life: 1:341, 1:342
The Philosopher of Nature in Rasselas 22
Rasselas: Purchase Price, Proprietors, and Printings
Kolb examines William Strahan's ledgers to clarify the publication history of Rasselas. The records confirm Boswell's assertion that Strahan, Johnston, and Dodsley purchased the first edition for £100, later paying Johnson an additional £25 for the second edition. Ledger entries prove these three men were equal partners rather than Strahan acting as the sole publisher with agents. Kolb also identifies the changing proprietors across nine editions through 1793, noting the transition from original partners to firms like Rivington and Longman. Additionally, variations in press figures suggest a specific printing sequence between royal-paper and coarse-paper copies.
Kolb examines three passages in Rasselas subject to recent critical misinterpretation. (1) Regarding the sentence "those, on whom the iron gate had once closed, were never suffered to return," Kolb argues contextually (supported by Chapter V) that "those" refers to permanent residents barred from leaving the Happy Valley, not escapees barred from re-entry, thus not precluding Rasselas's potential return. (2) Analyzing Imlac's apparent contradiction in Chapter XII—warning Rasselas about the world's dangers, then advising him not to despair if determined to escape—Kolb clarifies that the first remark addresses the reality outside the Valley, while the second addresses the physical difficulty of escaping the Valley itself; there is no contradiction in Imlac's hope versus his experience. (3) Addressing the final chapter's statement that "none" of the group's wishes "could be obtained," Kolb contends this applies only to the specific, unrealizable desires of Rasselas, Nekayah, and Pekuah, not to Imlac and the astronomer, whose wish was merely contentment with life's flow, not a specific unobtainable goal.
The Publication Date of the First Edition of Rasselas
Eddy disputes the generally accepted publication date of April 19, 1759, for the first edition of Rasselas. By examining advertisements in the Public Advertiser, London Chronicle, and Daily Advertiser, Eddy tracks a series of postponements from the initial projected date of April 5. He argues that because the Daily Advertiser and Public Advertiser announced on April 18 that the book would be published "On Friday next," the actual date was April 20. Eddy maintains that publishing earlier than an advertised date would be "most unusual and an unsound advertising practice," concluding that the Public Advertiser’s "This Day is published" notice on April 19 was a staff error.
Dr. Samuel Johnson's Account of a Schizophrenic Illness in Rasselas (1759)
Grange argues that Johnson's character-study of the astronomer in 'Rasselas' served as a model for later psychiatrists, marking an advance in eighteenth-century understanding of insanity. The text highlights Imlac's speech on the 'disorders of intellect,' where Johnson asserts that 'all power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity' and emphasizes the thin thread dividing normality from abnormality. Grange focuses on Johnson's use of the word 'repress' to describe a mental process, a term that predates modern psychological usage. The text explains that the astronomer's cure is effected through social interaction with the Princess and her companion, illustrating Johnson's belief in the necessity of significant human relationships to maintain mental health.
CGV entry 18:107. The episode of the astronomer.
Two Allegorical Treatments of Man: Rasselas and La Peste
Leyburn identifies a fundamental affinity between Johnson and Camus based on their intellectual honesty and compassion in the face of human suffering. Comparing the allegorical methods of Rasselas and La Peste, Leyburn observes that while Camus employs relentless realistic detail, Johnson uses stylized generality to survey mankind. Both authors structure their works as inevitable stage-based progressions—a journey for Johnson and a temporal evolution for Camus—to reveal the "shape of content." Both texts acknowledge the fleeting nature of happiness and posit interpersonal trust as the sole alleviation for the inherent misery of life.
Halsband identifies an early contemporary mention of Rasselas in the correspondence of Andrew Mitchell, British Ambassador to Berlin. A letter from Robert Symmer dated May 18, 1759, describes the work as "the Prince of Abissinia, a pretty little Novel." Symmer observes that the book "happens to be somewhat of a Counterpart to Voltaire's Candide" and suggests it might afford Mitchell amusement while in camp. The note includes a brief editorial interjection regarding the ongoing scholarly debate over whether the publication date was April 19 or 20.
CGV entry 18:109. A letter of Robert Symmer to Andrew Mitchell, May 18, 1759.
Powell describes the 1960 discovery of the first Dutch translation of Johnson's Rasselas (1760), entitled De Historie van Rasselas, Prinz van Abissinien, found by Wreden and now in the Hyde Collection. This edition was issued in conjunction with a collective work, De Hollandsche Wysgeer. A 1761 Dutch reviewer criticized the omission of the statement that the book was a translation, an error the anonymous translator apologized for in a postscript in 1762. Powell notes that neither the translator nor the reviewer mentioned Johnson as the author, although his authorship was stated in Mme. Belot's French translation of Rasselas also published in Amsterdam in or before May 1760. Powell also mentions other Johnsonian pieces in De Hollandsche Wysgeer.
CGV entry 18:110.
'The Fourth Son of the Mighty Emperor': The Ethiopian Background of Johnson's Rasselas
The Ethiopian background of Johnson's Rasselas is drawn from multiple sources, suggesting specific documentation research rather than casual recollection. The names Rasselas and Imlac come from Ludolf, while the valley setting and inherited offices likely originated with Álvares. The overhanging mountains, idyllic natural descriptions, treasure-filled palace, and exclusion of beasts of prey are found in the fabulous account of Urreta. References to the Nile's thunderous falls, crocodiles, and tritons derive from Telles, and palace details and the theme of corrupt governors from Poncet.
Price traces the breakdown of the idea of universal Order into discontinuous orders of flesh, mind, and charity, a framework used to analyze Restoration and eighteenth-century English literature. He identifies Johnson as a central figure who maintains Augustan balance by accepting the limitations of reason while rejecting dogmatic infallibility. Price argues that Rasselas represents a comedy of incomprehension where characters remain frustrated but scarcely educated, trapped by the hunger of imagination. Boswell is presented as a deliberate artist whose journals exhibit a metaphysical passion for intimately observing the working of the human mind. Through a self-conscious theatre of mind, Boswell embodies the native dignity of a mind simultaneously turned upon the world and upon itself. Price characterizes this period as a great age of irony, using the mock form and dialectic to explore the conflicts within Augustan literature.
Fiction and the Shape of Belief. A Study of Henry Fielding, With Glances at ... Johnson
Sacks proposes a taxonomic framework categorizing all coherent prose fiction into three mutually exclusive types: satire, apologue, and action (or novel). Using Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as the paradigm for satire, Sacks argues that its informing principle is the ridicule of external objects, requiring a versatile, often inconsistent narrator to facilitate varying satiric relationships. Johnson’s Rasselas serves as the model for the apologue, defined as a fictional example illustrating the truth of a "formulable statement". Sacks contends that the artistic success of Rasselas depends on subordinating character consistency and probability to the central theme: that "earthly happiness does not exist" but its absence "does not result in unbearable misery" for the virtuous. Finally, Sacks defines the "action" as a structure of unstable relationships among characters whose fates the reader cares about, resolved by the removal of that instability. Through a detailed study of Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Sacks demonstrates that a novelist’s beliefs are embodied not as explicit themes but through "devices of disclosure"—evaluative signals that control the reader’s moral response to characters and events. This study concludes that ethical content is a formal necessity of the novel, as the creator must "mark" characters with "proper characters of blame and disapprobation" to achieve a coherent comic or serious effect.
CGV entry 18:114. 'Rasselas', pages 49-60, is used as a major example of an apologue.
CGV entry 18:116. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 26 (December 1965), pages 3299-3300.
In s Rasselas, the chapter "A Dissertation on the Art of Flying" shows an intuitive grasp of physics, drawing on Wilkins’s ideas. The text correctly asserts that flying resembles swimming and that gravity decreases with height. The essay foreshadows a synchronous satellite by describing a philosopher floating in orbit, watching the earth turn beneath him. Johnson transformed older ideas into a coherent account, though he failed to solve the problem of breathing in space.
CGV entry 18:117. See also a reply by A. J. Meadows in the same journal, December 2, page 1112.
Rasselas, an 'Uninstructive Tale'
Hilles challenges the traditional classification of Johnson’s work as a purely didactic or instructive narrative. By examining the structural failure of the characters to find lasting happiness, Hilles argues that Johnson intentionally subverts the happy ending common to the oriental tale genre. The text emphasizes that Johnson provides no final answers to the 'choice of life,' instead using the narrative to illustrate the 'vanity of human wishes' through the repeated frustrations of the protagonists. Hilles asserts that the significance lies in the recognition of universal human limitations, suggesting that the 'conclusion, in which nothing is concluded' serves as the ultimate moral lesson.
Before Jane Austen: The Shaping of the English Novel in the Eighteenth Century
Steeves defines the 18th-century oriental romance as an imitative genre used primarily for moral, philosophical, or satirical purposes. Johnson’s Rasselas stands as a premier example, written with relative ease and plainness compared to his standard decorative rhetoric. Steeves argues Johnson uses the "Happy Valley" setting to illustrate the inevitability of human restlessness and the futility of seeking perfect happiness. While the narrative contains juiceless notations of fact and naive animism, the imagery becomes flexible as the prince escapes to experience the world. Steeves contrasts Johnson’s didacticism with the "pure literature" of Beckford’s Vathek, noting that Johnson targets a sophisticated audience with a "massive, well-rounded Johnsonian sentence" that underscores his domineering moralism. The chapter emphasizes that Johnson’s Abyssinian setting serves as an "otherwhere" platform to critique Western society and evaluate Eastern versus Western values.
This article investigates the structural unity and symbolic plot of Johnson's narrative, defending its episodic and incomplete nature as a compromise between dramatic and thematic techniques. Sutherland differentiates Rasselas from Voltaire's Candide, noting that Johnson does not express disapprobation of his seeker's ignorance but rather portrays him as a rational Everyman experiencing 'Faustian dissatisfaction.' The plot is characterized by ironic failure as characters seek happiness according to principles that prove wanting. Sutherland identifies a shift between satiric and non-satiric modes, noting that while Imlac often speaks didactically, other adventures are unequivocally satiric. He concludes that the 'Conclusion in Which Nothing Is Concluded' represents a definitive intellectual realization that the search for happiness is a cycle each generation must learn for itself.
CGV entry 18:121. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 27 (October 1966), page 1029A.
A Textual Crux in the Concluding Chapter of Rasselas
William Law's A Serious Call and Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Law's Serious Call served as the primary source material, both spiritual and literary, for Johnson's Rasselas. The study demonstrates that Johnson borrowed extensively from Law for the tale's theme, particularly the vanity of human wishes, as well as its structure, character prototypes (Rasselas/Flatus and Nekayah/Serena), and specific imagery. Johnson consistently universalized Law's localized, didactic arguments, transforming them into a broader allegory of human existence, which accounts for the lasting and worldwide success of Rasselas.
CGV entry 18:123. Dissertation Abstracts 27 (August 1966), page 461A.
Candide, Rasselas and Optimism
Essays in English Neoclassicism in Memory of Charles B. Woods
Rasselas: Psychological Irony and Romance
Samuel Johnson's Principles of Criticism and Imlac's 'Dissertation upon Poetry'
Summarizes Johnson’s critical theory through Imlac’s "Dissertation upon Poetry" in Rasselas, which presents a neoclassical synthesis of literary principles. The theory posits that literature’s essence is imitation of general nature ("just representations of general nature," embodying transcendental truths, and avoiding slavish copying of ancients). Its dual function is to instruct the mind with moral truths and delight the emotions (pity and terror), combining didactic and hedonistic purposes. Kallich notes that Johnson's emphasis on reason and generalization over individual, concrete particulars creates an internal dilemma by requiring novelty while adhering to fixed, universal ideas.
Tillotson explores Johnson’s complex relationship with the concept of the sublime, noting his initial conservatism in the "Dictionary" definitions of 1755. He argues that although Johnson’s formal definitions were "grossly conservative" and ignored contemporary shifts toward aesthetic emotion, his other writings reveal a profound grasp of sublimity. Tillotson cites Johnson’s discussion of Dover Cliff in "King Lear" and passages in "The Vanity of Human Wishes" as achieving the eighteenth century’s fullest expression of the sublime style. The article suggests Johnson recoiled from the sublime when it required a surrender of "godlike reason," preferring the "full tide of humanity" at Charing Cross. Tillotson concludes that Johnson’s preference for the "grandeur of generality" ultimately aligned him with a unique, rationalized version of the sublime.
Jones argues that the artistry and structural organization of Rasselas are insufficiently recognized due to a traditional focus on its "philosophical pessimism." Disputing the view that the work is merely an "expanded essay" or a series of "Rambler-type papers," Jones insists it must be viewed as a deliberately shaped work of art following a tripartite structure of three equal sixteen-chapter movements. The first movement covers the Happy Valley, setting the scene and stating Rasselas's "choice of life" theory; the second details "experiments upon life" through a survey of mankind in Cairo; and the third demonstrates the breakdown of theory when the travelers are buffeted by real circumstances and actual experience, such as Pekuah's abduction, the astronomer's madness, and his subsequent cure. This structure demonstrates the collapse of untested theory against nature's "multiplicity of complication" and life's "multifariousness." Johnson's final, conclusive-yet-inconclusive chapter, "in which Nothing is Concluded," then serves to fracture and fulfill this neat form. Jones compares this "inconclusive conclusion" to the ending of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, suggesting that Johnson uses the form to meet the demands of both literary art and life's endless flow while functioning as a critique of closed systems that resist neat literary or philosophical systems.
Imagined Worlds: Essays on Some English Novels and Novelists in Honor of John Butt
In Praise of Rasselas: Four Notes (Converging)
Wimsatt provides a structural and genetic analysis of Johnson’s Rasselas, arguing that its composition was marked by significant afterthoughts and inconsistencies. Wimsatt demonstrates that the character Pekuah was likely a late addition, evidenced by her abrupt appearance and Johnson’s retroactive insertions of her name in later editions. He challenges traditional views of the book's unity, describing its structure as episodic and accumulation-based, resembling laboratory reports rather than Aristotelian drama. Wimsatt further explores the "thin" local color of the oriental tale, noting that Johnson uses exotic names and a "Grand Style" to compensate for a lack of descriptive luxuriance. The article posits that Johnson’s preference for general properties over individual "streaks of the tulip" creates a "strangely fit incongruity" in the work. Wimsatt concludes that the story’s merit lies in its accumulation of moral reflections rather than causal progression.
The Hermit of Paris and the Astronomer in Rasselas
Bernard argues that Johnson used his own 1741 translation of the Life of Lewis Morin as a model for the astronomer in Rasselas. Both figures are 'learned recluses' who spent decades in 'unwearied attention' to observations and 'endless calculations' that came to nothing. The astronomer’s meteorological powers reflect Morin’s 'forty-year record' of weather. Bernard notes that both recluses find relief from 'seclusion' through the visit of a 'princess.' He concludes that Johnson modeled the astronomer’s 'monastic' habits and 'folly' on Morin’s life in a 'great city.'
The Pessimist's Helpers in Rasselas
In Johnson’s Rasselas, the prince and his sister Nekayah, while ostensibly searching for happiness, function as unwitting allies for Imlac's pessimism. Their flawed, restrictive investigation of life in Cairo, focusing on extremes and misfortunes, repeatedly confirms Imlac's doctrine that happiness is unattainable. Rasselas habitually defers to Imlac's interpretations. Nekayah, acting as Imlac’s proxy, delivers a bleak account of middle-class life with a confidence and sweep that gives the pessimism a deceptive authority. The princely optimists, through their comic ineptitude, inadvertently turn the pursuit of happiness into a folly, supporting the novel’s argument for the insufficiency of human enjoyments.
More Light on Rasselas: The Background of the Egyptian Episodes
Weitzman investigates the Egyptian setting of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (the second half of the tale), arguing that his accurate use of details, such as descriptions of the pyramids and catacombs, invalidates Boswell's claim that the tale was composed in the evenings of one week without prior preparation. Johnson likely consulted contemporary travel accounts by Aaron Hill, John Greaves, and Richard Pococke. The episode of Pekuah's abduction, possibly drawn from an adventure in Hill's book, and the depiction of the bored Arab's seraglio also serve Johnson's thematic purpose of destroying the popular romantic illusions of life in the Orient.
'This Tasteless Tranquility': A Freudian Note on Johnson's Rasselas
Giuseppe Baretti e la sua traduzione del Rasselas di Johnson
The Johnsonian Influence: Rasselas and Poe's 'The Domain of Arnheim'
Johnson's Feathered Man: 'A Dissertation on the Art of Flying' Considered
Johnson uses the 'Dissertation on the Art of Flying' in Rasselas to reject the scientific optimism of natural philosophers in favor of humanist moral values. Drawing on the 'Daedalus' section of John Wilkins's Mathematical Magick, the narrative presents the failed inventor as an emblem of prideful man attempting to transcend his biological nature. Johnson adopts a skeptical stance rooted in the Ancients versus Moderns controversy, aligning with writers like Pope and Locke who argued that man's proper study is himself rather than the physical mechanisms of the universe. The artist's failure reinforces the theme of delusive hopes and mirrors contemporary satires like the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, which linked human flight to visionary folly. The episode affirms that true self-knowledge requires recognizing the limitations imposed by the cosmic scheme.
CGV entry 18:140. Reprinted in Landa's 'Essays on Eighteenth-Century English Literature' (1980).
Lascelles enters the critical controversy surrounding the structure and tone of Rasselas, responding to studies by Kolb, Whitley, and Hilles. She disputes the view that the work is a "futile journey in a circle" or a mere satire on moralism, reaffirming that the "oriental tale" was a reputable form for Johnson. Lascelles addresses recent diverse interpretations to reaffirm her view that the work is composed of several distinct, well-articulated "phases" that demonstrate a progression, culminating in the final phase which provides the answer to the tale's questions. Defending the biographical context, she insists that Johnson wrote the work in "deep dejection" but achieved equanimity through composition; by examining letters to Porter, she attempts to show the "weather of his mind" changed during composition, making the final chapters a sincere exploration of moral philosophy. Lascelles supports a multi-part structure, aligning with Hilles and Jones, and tentatively suggests a four-part division, beginning the final phase with the Astronomer. She argues the Astronomer's cure—possible because his delusion is rooted in imagination, not guilt—is a crucial element, showcasing Johnson's modern faith in human solidarity and reason's power against mental disorders, contrasting with the bleak inevitability of the preceding old man's death.
CGV entry 18:141.
Dr. Johnson as Equivocator: The Meaning of Rasselas
Rasselas, written following his mother's death, dramatizes the uncertainty and fear characterizing his religious perception. The narrative rejects contemporary "positive" interpretations, including Boswell's reading, by depicting an absurd and bleak human existence governed by chance, which paradoxically coexists with the assumption of a benevolent Providence. The text's humorous detachment hides a deeply disturbed outlook, revealing Johnson's desperate hope in God against his suspicion of life's essential insignificance.
De Proprietatibus Litterarum, Series Practica
Einbond examines the entire corpus of Johnson’s allegorical writings to challenge modern neglect of a form that was "among the most popular" during the eighteenth century. He argues that Johnson found allegory uniquely suited to satisfy the moral and aesthetic requirement that art "instruct by pleasing." The analysis highlights Johnson’s masterful use of the "allegorical pun," where words function simultaneously in literal and metaphorical contexts to maintain "dogged veracity" while controlling the "hunger of the imagination." Einbond provides detailed readings of the Mountain of Existence in "The Vision of Theodore" and various Rambler essays, identifying the threat of Habit as the central message. He distinguishes between purely allegorical figures and non-allegorical characters, such as those found in the Garden of Hope or the Happy Valley. The study identifies the Happy Valley as an "allegorical metaphor" for a state of childhood confinement that cannot satisfy the human need for "adding knowledge to vivacity." Einbond concludes that Johnson’s use of the concrete to depict the abstract creates a consistent and truthful vision of human experience. Chapter 1, "Johnson and Poetic Form," contends that allegory uniquely satisfied the aesthetic and moral requirement to instruct by pleasing, allowing for the representation of human qualities in a state of general purity. Chapter 2, "Allegory and Allegorical Metaphor," defines allegory as a structured system of metaphors where specific abstract concepts are fixedly embodied in arbitrary figures. Chapter 3, "Johnson on Allegory," examines the demand for literal truth and internal consistency in allegorical vehicles to ensure clarity and avoid the absurdity of ascribing material agency to non-entities. Chapter 4, "The Allegorical Pun," identifies the restoration of dead metaphors to their etymological roots as a distinctive technique that collapses the traditional interpretive time-lag. Chapter 5, "'The Vision of Theodore'," analyzes this early work as a Cebesian journey where the omnipresent figure of Habit serves as the central psychological and moral focus. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the analytical rigor and structural necessity of the brief monograph, while generally appreciating its early chapters on theory and clarify-seeking approach to figurative language. Rogers and Ramsey, writing in SEL, observe an attempt to gain favor for these allegorical writings but doubt whether the framework makes them more aesthetically pleasing to modern readers, noting the major propositions remain generally known. In PQ, McIntosh notes insights on etymological puns and imaginative prose, but criticizes the work as brief and miscellaneous, arguing it lacks a controlling thesis. Bloom, in Yearbook of English Studies, applauds the ultimate purpose of proving the skill behind the allegories, but he criticizes the isolation of the subject from the historical and intellectual context of its age's traditions. Boulton's review in English Studies praises the theoretical foundations but finds the analysis of specific texts lacks rigor, suggesting the modest objectives could have been more efficiently achieved in a substantial article. Finally, an unsigned review in JNL describes the study as succinctly reasoned and convincing, praising the discussion of poetic theory and the effective analysis of the Happy Valley metaphor.
Reviews: Edward A. Bloom, Yearbook of English Studies 2 (1972): 287–89; James T. Boulton, English Studies 54, no. 1 (1973): 177–81; JNL 31, no. 1 (1971): 4–5; Carey McIntosh, PQ 51, no. 3 (1972): 701; Robert Rogers and Richard N. Ramsey, SEL 12, no. 3 (1972): 567–90.
McIntosh notes insights on etymological puns and imaginative prose. While praising its clarity, McIntosh criticizes the work as brief and miscellaneous. He concludes that the book lacks a controlling thesis and requires deeper analysis to improve its scholarly impact.
CGV entry 18:144. Review by Carey McIntosh of the book by Bernard L. Einbond. Part of "The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography."
Bloom finds the monograph's ultimate purpose—to prove Johnson's allegories are skillfully wrought—is applauded. But he criticizes Einbond for tendentious one-upmanship and for setting Johnson apart from his contemporaries by ignoring the historical and intellectual context of his age's allegorical traditions.
CGV entry 18:144. A severe review by Edward A. Bloom of the book by Bernard L. Einbond.
Einbond investigates Johnson’s poetic theory and the function of allegory in works such as The Vision of Theodore, the Rambler, and Rasselas. While the early chapters on theory receive praise, Boulton finds the analysis of specific allegories lacks rigor and fails to gallop. The reviewer suggests the modest objectives of this short monograph could have been more efficiently achieved in a substantial article.
CGV entry 18:144. A review by James T. Boulton of the book by Bernard L. Einbond, alongside other works.
Structural Patterns of Control in Rasselas
Pagliaro disputes the view of Rasselas as a loosely organized series of moral episodes, identifying instead a rigorous 'structural control' based on dialectical movement. Pagliaro argues that Johnson uses the repetitive pattern of the 'search' and subsequent 'disillusionment' to demonstrate the futility of seeking earthly perfection. The article explores how Imlac serves as a structural pivot, mediating between the innocence of the Happy Valley and the systemic frustrations of the outside world. Pagliaro highlights Johnson’s use of parallel characters and subplots—such as the astronomer and the hermit—to reinforce the theme of psychological confinement. By examining the narrative's 'conclusion, in which nothing is concluded,' Pagliaro maintains that the work’s circularity is a deliberate artistic choice reflecting Johnson’s belief in the static nature of human desire. Pagliaro observes that the 'steady pressure of the narrator’s voice' provides a formal stability that prevents the characters' recurring failures from descending into total pessimism.
The Reader, the General, and the Particular: Johnson and Imlac in Chapter Ten of Rasselas
Weinbrot argues against the traditional equation of Johnson's critical principles with Imlac's discourse in Rasselas Chapter 10, asserting Johnson disagrees with Imlac's views on condemning present applause and the poet as legislator of mankind. Weinbrot clarifies Johnson’s concept of normative generality, showing it is empirically based on the particular species, not the abstract genus. This generality prompts the reader to recall a conformable particular, making the audience a necessary partner in the creative act.
Brinton argues that Rasselas overtly addresses the origin of evil by fictionally dramatizing Johnson’s earlier refutation of Jenyns’s Optimism. Johnson rejects the notion that poverty or ignorance are providential compensations, using the Happy Valley and the astronomer to illustrate the vanity of such rationalizations. While Boswell feared the story might encourage despair, Brinton asserts that Johnson maintains a balance between tragedy and hope. The conclusion in which nothing is concluded reflects the philosophical impossibility of answering why evil exists. Johnson forces the reader to fix hopes upon another state rather than temporal satisfaction.
The Astronomer in Johnson's Rasselas
Korte critiques Thomas Preston's argument that Rasselas promotes a "cheerful enjoyment of those good things present," akin to the "reformed" interpretation of Ecclesiastes. Korte finds little evidence of this philosophy of enjoyment in the text. She argues that characters like Nekayah and Rasselas are predominantly pessimistic or too preoccupied with the search for happiness to enjoy life. Korte points out that Imlac's "commitment-to-life" is ambiguous, often connoting passivity as he is "driven" along the stream of life. The story's circular structure and the penultimate sentence, which states the travelers' wishes "none could be obtained," further undermine any positive reading, suggesting instead an undeniable weariness of life and a lack of earthly purpose.
CGV entry 18:150. See rejoinder by Thomas R. Preston in PMLA, volume 87 (1972), pages 312-314.
White disputes reductive interpretations of "Rasselas" as a simple hedonistic trial or a work of "gloomy rhetoric." The analysis positions the "happy valley" as a childhood Eden incompatible with maturity, focusing on Johnson's critique of the "choice of life." White explores the "hunger of imagination" through the mad astronomer episode, which serves as a hypothetical case for the relation between will and the world, and emphasizes Johnson's endorsement of knowledge and social companionship.
The Spiritual Journey Moralized in Rasselas
Curley disputes recent theories of premeditated composition, arguing instead that Johnson used Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress as a "narrative and thematic blueprint" to rapidly draft his moral apologue. The study demonstrates how Johnson "secularized" Bunyan’s theological pilgrimage, transforming spiritual states into internalized psychological conditions or outward ethical actions. Curley identifies extensive structural parallels: the happy valley functions as the City of Destruction, Cairo serves as Vanity Fair, and the pyramids correspond to Hill Lucre. While Johnson appropriates Bunyan's "mythic journey of life pattern," he replaces Puritan "dogmatic sense of unqualified evil" with a "neoclassical mind" characterized by "compassion for human limitations" and a "somber order of disappointments."
The Choice of Life: Samuel Johnson and the World of Fiction
McIntosh analyzes Johnson’s extensive output as a writer of fiction, demonstrating that he produced approximately 143 fictional pieces throughout his periodical essays, including The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler, in addition to longer works like Rasselas. The central organizing theme identified across this body of work is "the choice of life." Johnson views fiction as a "useful luxury" that entertains fancy and adds a necessary flavor to the "insipidity of truth." The book integrates Johnson's use of satire, allegory, and oriental tales within this fictional framework. McIntosh contextualizes Johnson's preoccupation with the theme of choice in a century focused on the pursuit of happiness and the possibility of individual fulfillment, themes explored despite Johnson's critique of popular romances, which he blamed for his own "unsettled turn of mind." The book ultimately evaluates Rasselas, which concludes "in which nothing is concluded," as an artistic triumph. Critics are generally favorable, praising the patient, well-informed analysis of how the moralist used fictional techniques across his narrative corpus. Baker, in MP, calls the book thoroughly interesting, noting it convincingly places the writer's fictive theory into historical context while reminding readers of the sheer volume of his narrative output. In JNL, Clifford and Middendorf evaluate the study as an insightful analysis that captures the essence of a bleak yet heroic body of fiction, praising the defense of a major tale as an artistic triumph. Lamont's review in RES highlights the exploration of structural patterns and an anti-romance voice that avoids conventional early novel realism, finding individual stylistic discussions especially valuable despite an occasionally uncertain organization. Walker, in the TLS, commends the learned study for demonstrating that the fiction avoids realism to consistently focus on moral choice, arguing the author approved of the emerging novel genre more than previously assumed. Tave, writing in MLQ, characterizes the monograph as a sensible study that effectively conveys a characteristic largeness of mind, though he notes it lacks a unified central argument and tends toward a discursive catalogue. Finally, Baridon's review (Dix-huitième siècle) finds the paradox of focusing on an author better known for lexicography to be both interesting and instructive, noting a logical structure that spans major moral themes, allegory, and the clear generic influence of oriental tales.
Schwartz explores Johnson’s deep engagement with eighteenth-century science, emphasizing his adaptation of Baconian induction to connect experience with general truth. Though not an experimenter, Johnson defended scientific inquiry as "occupational therapy" that reveals divine wisdom. McIntosh finds the documentation rich and the theses convincing, despite some rhetorical overkill. He notes that the study successfully illuminates the "mutually illuminating" relationships between Johnson’s scientific interests, literature, and religion.
CGV entry 18:155. Review by Robert E. Kelley of the book by Carey McIntosh.
CGV entry 18:155. Review by Stanley W. Lindberg of the book by Carey McIntosh, alongside another work.
Tave reviews Carey McIntosh's The Choice of Life: Samuel Johnson and the World of Fiction, a sensible study of Johnson as a writer and critic of fiction, focusing on Rasselas and periodical fiction. Tave finds the book best in its discussion of Rasselas and its conveyance of Johnson's "largeness of mind." He notes the book lacks a central argument, becoming a discursive catalogue due to its varied, topical approach.
CGV entry 18:155.
CGV entry 18:155. Review by Leo Braudy of the book by Carey McIntosh, alongside another work.
This approving review of Carey McIntosh's study highlights Johnson's role as a writer of fiction, particularly within his periodical essays and Rasselas. Lamont notes that McIntosh identifies the "choice of life" as a central theme and "the vanity of human wishes" as the dominant mood across Johnson's narrative work. The review praises the discussion of Johnson's structural patterns and his voice as one of "anti-romance" that avoids typical early novel realism. Lamont finds the analysis of Rasselas especially valuable, specifically the treatment of its "strenuous ambiguities" and the "choice of eternity." She observes that while the book's structure is occasionally uncertain, McIntosh provides high-quality stylistic discussion of individual passages and effectively places Johnson within the context of the eighteenth-century periodical tradition.
CGV entry 18:155. Review by Claire Lamont of the book by Carey McIntosh.
Boucé's approving review of McIntosh's monograph examines Johnson's use of fictional techniques. While Johnson often appears to avoid the imaginary, McIntosh identifies fiction in 143 of Johnson's 325 periodical essays. The review highlights McIntosh's analysis of "the choice of life" as an Imlacian expression for choosing a profession to subjugate the "tyranny of desire." Boucé notes McIntosh's subtle exploration of Johnson's contributions to the satire, allegory, and oriental tale genres. McIntosh situates Johnson's practice between the Spectator and the Rambler. Although the reviewer finds the final chapter's attempt to prove Rasselas is an affirmative and committed work less than convincing, he praises the book's tight argumentation and brilliant style.
CGV entry 18:155. Review by Paul-Gabriel Boucé of the book by Carey McIntosh.
Baker calls the book thoroughly interesting, well-informed, and informing. McIntosh is praised for convincingly putting Johnson's fictive theory and practice into context, especially his preoccupation with the choice of life, a new and current theme culminating in Rasselas. The book reminds readers how much fiction Johnson actually wrote.
Scouten agrees with Howard Weinbrot that Imlac’s pronouncements in Rasselas Chapter Ten must not be read as Samuel Johnson's own views. Scouten argues Johnson strategically uses a rhetorical pattern of trajectory from endorsement to comic repudiation to deflate the poet's profession, preventing it from escaping the theme that all secular choices fail to bring happiness. This pattern, also seen in Dick Minim and the Dictionary Preface, demonstrates Johnson's suspicion of all generalizations.
Siebert contests the interpretation that Imlac’s dissertation on poetry is unreliable due to exaggerated language, as argued by Scouten and Weinbrot. He notes Johnson’s own Preface to Shakespeare uses equally demanding language to describe the qualifications of a true editor. Siebert argues that Imlac's "enthusiastic fit" is a solipsistic rapture which Johnson qualifies with the comic scene, not by negating the truth of Imlac's high standards. The primary point is that Imlac's grandiloquence betrays him, paralleling the folly in Rasselas's other choices of life.
CGV entry 18:158. Argues Imlac's views on poetry are Johnson's.
Johnson, Reynolds, and the Notorious Streaks of the Tulip Again
Hartly explores the complexity of interpreting Imlac's "Dissertation on Poetry" in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, challenging the monolithic view that Imlac and Johnson are identical. It argues that Imlac's critical commonplaces, particularly the statement about not numbering the streaks of a tulip, are closer in specific details to the aesthetic principles of Sir Joshua Reynolds, especially as articulated in Idler No. 79 and the Discourses. The author suggests that Johnson deliberately distances himself from Imlac's "enthusiastic fit," introducing comic irony into the dissertation by aligning Imlac's specifics with Reynolds's views on painting.
The Intellectual Background of the Discourse on the Soul in Rasselas
Kolb examines the philosophical sources and historical context of the conversation on the soul in Chapter XLVIII of Johnson’s moral tale. The text traces resemblances between Imlac’s arguments for immateriality and works by Cudworth, Locke, Clarke, and Watts. Kolb demonstrates that Johnson’s defense of the soul’s natural immortality, based on its status as an unextended, indiscerptible substance, aligns with contemporary orthodox rebuttals to materialists like Coward and Dodwell. While acknowledging the limits of human reason, Johnson relies on revelation to confirm eternal duration.
Not in Timon's Manner: Feeling, Misanthropy, and Satire in Eighteenth-Century England
Preston defines Johnson as a "benevolent misanthrope" whose conviction of human malevolence coexisted with active charity. This vision is grounded in a religious framework where the "vanity of human wishes" serves to direct the soul toward a future state. Analyzing Rasselas, Preston identifies the Happy Valley as a "false paradise" and a place of "imprisonment" that prevents the acquisition of essential experience. Imlac serves as the "philosophic satirist" and Johnsonian surrogate, guiding the Prince from a futile "choice of life"—the search for a perfect earthly condition—to a "choice of eternity." Preston links the apologue to the "reformed" school of Ecclesiastes interpretation, specifically Bishop Patrick’s Paraphrase, which suggests that realizing the world’s vanity allows one to enjoy limited earthly goods with "submission" and "contentment." The work concludes that Johnsonian misanthropy is not Timonian rejection but a religious discipline that promotes happiness by "promoting within his circle... the happiness of others."
CGV entry 18:161. Chiefly on 'Rasselas'.
Systems of Order and Inquiry in Later Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Rothstein disputes the perceived simplicity of Johnson’s text, arguing that its richness derives from absolute authorial control through systems of order and inquiry. Rothstein analyzes the Happy Valley section as an equilibrium of logical incompatibles where Johnson uses modification to affirming and deny progress simultaneously. Johnson treats moral lectures and received ideas with skeptical probing, evidenced by the fallible guidance of Imlac and the comic failure of the flyer. Rothstein identifies a rhythmic, seven-group structural blueprint that moves the prince through observation, practical reason, and imagination. The journey to Egypt functions as a trial of modes of life, leading to theodicy in the catacombs. By reinterpreting the pyramid and the mad astronomer's delusions, Johnson directs human hopes from worldly vanity toward eternity. Rothstein concludes that Johnson employs "Hartleyan" analogy and "Butlerian" probability to create a scientifically cautious book held in precarious equilibrium.
Johnson's Rasselas: Implicit Contexts
Johnson's Rasselas is a work of "constructive formal damage," subverting the literary expectations of its contemporary audience. Johnson invokes and then systematically frustrates traditional formal designs for narratives about the "choice of life," such as the moral dichotomies of Prodicus and the spiral plot of the secularized Fortunate Fall. The famous inconclusive ending violates the expectation of a closed plot, redirecting the reader’s focus from a search for earthly happiness to the religious imperative of the "choice of eternity."
Readings of Rasselas: 'Its Most Obvious Moral' and the Moral Role of Literature
Rousseau and the Background of the 'Life Led according to Nature' in Chapter 22 of Rasselas
Kolb re-examines the intellectual context of the "life led according to nature" in Chapter 22 of Rasselas, traditionally attributed solely to Rousseau's Discourses. Kolb argues that Rousseau must be ruled out as the sole source, noting the climactic part of the philosopher's explanation is entirely absent from Rousseau's works. Neither Johnson nor Boswell ever linked the chapter to Rousseau. Instead, the chapter is a mosaic of hazy cant and philosophical gibberish derived from heterogeneous sources, including expositors of natural law, natural religion, and neostoicism like Tindal, Le Grand, and prominently, Samuel Clarke. A contemporary reviewer suggested a passage was a direct translation of Cicero's oration for Milo.
Johnson's Philosopher of Nature: Rasselas, Chapter 22
Schwartz analyzes the philosopher in Rasselas as a satire on generic rationalist ethical commonplaces, particularly the notion of "living according to nature." This idea, though linked to Rousseau by some, was ubiquitous, including among Stoics and Shaftesbury. Johnson's critique hinges on the philosopher’s neglect of utility and the religious context for morality. Schwartz suggests Johnson's philosophical norm is implicitly drawn from his approved review of Jenyns's Free Enquiry, which, tracing back to John Gay, asserts that the criterion of virtue must be the happiness of mankind as determined by God's will.
Confinement and Flight: An Essay on English Literature of the Eighteenth Century
Carnochan examines Samuel Johnson’s life and work as a sustained resistance against the 18th-century's burgeoning fantasies of "escape to America" and pastoral release. Identifying Johnson as a "modern" figure akin to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Carnochan argues that Johnson viewed the "captivity of common forms"—particularly linguistic ones—as a secular necessity. Through a critique of Johnson's dismissal of "too refined" primitive speech and his rejection of the "remote allusions" in Lycidas, Carnochan demonstrates how Johnson sought to ground the abstract in the substantiality of "variety of company" and "conveniences of life." The chapter further analyzes the "pleasing terrour" of Imlac’s boundless prospects in Rasselas and the "clouded maze of fate" in The Vanity of Human Wishes, concluding that Johnson’s achievement lay in carving out a "working relationship with the new world" by accepting the "vital chain" of human captivity. Johnson ultimately finds strength in enclosure, portraying life in chains not as a defeat but as a "natural joy."
CGV entry 18:168. Focuses especially on Rasselas.
A Succession of Amusements': The Moralization in Rasselas of Locke's Account of Time
Johnson's moral admonitions about time, particularly in Rasselas, are rooted in Locke's coherent theory of time, especially Locke's distinction between "succession" and "duration." The text demonstrates how the Happy Valley represents a life of mere succession, blocking moral awareness, while Rasselas's journey to a consciousness of "duration" is essential for moral living. The concept provides a conceptual framework for the novel, where characters—including the astronomer—struggle to reconcile personal experience with the larger, limited span of life, ultimately seeking a virtuous existence over a succession of transient pleasures.
Sanity, Madness and the Family in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas
Conflict and Declamation in Rasselas
Analyzes the conflict and competition between Rasselas and Imlac in Johnson's Rasselas, arguing that the tale possesses greater fictional and rhetorical force than commonly acknowledged. Rasselas's struggle with his mentor, spanning over a third of the narrative, develops the prince's character as he resists Imlac's generalizations and didacticism. This internal drama is crucial to the work's meaning, suggesting the value of companionship and self-knowledge as a form of mediation, subtly shifting the narrator's judgmental authority onto the more human Imlac.
Parke examines the function of Imlac’s five-chapter narrative in Rasselas through the lens of Johnson’s preference for autobiography. Johnson challenges the distinction between biography and autobiography, favoring the latter for its superior veracity and moral utility. Parke argues that the length of Imlac's story asserts its importance as a model for instruction, addressing the convergence of secular happiness and the difficulties of teaching. The narrative dramatizes the natural friction between a teacher and student, seen through the interruptions of Rasselas and Imlac’s subsequent corrections of his own pedagogical errors, such as making the difficult appear impossible. Parke disputes critical tendencies to focus solely on the "Dissertation upon Poetry," suggesting that the form of the autobiography itself embodies the relational nature of happiness Johnson describes elsewhere. The article concludes that the students' sharing of their own histories in the final chapter serves as a moral sequel to Imlac's earlier performance.
Eighteenth-Century Arguments for Immortality and Johnson's 'Rasselas'
Walker situates Johnson’s Rasselas within the framework of eighteenth-century metaphysical, moral, and psychological proofs for the immortality of the soul. Tracing the shift from metaphysical arguments—undermined by John Locke’s "incidental remark" on thinking matter—to proofs based on moral retribution and human desire, Walker contends that Rasselas addresses the "unsatisfactory nature of things temporal" to redirect hope toward "things eternal." The study analyzes the "choice of life" motif and the prince’s initial discontent as an "embryonic argument from desire," suggesting that man’s unique sense of time and "insatiable appetite" for the future distinguish him from brutes and imply a celestial destination. Walker challenges the "Johnson Agonistes" archetype of a skeptic plagued by doubt, asserting instead that Johnson’s treatment of evil and the "choice of eternity" in the penultimate chapter reinforces orthodox Christian consolation. The monograph concludes that the work’s "Conclusion, in Which Nothing Is Concluded" is a deliberate "path to the same end," emphasizing the "perpetual discontent" that necessitates a timeless state. Chapter 1, "The Metaphysical Argument," traces how Locke’s skepticism regarding thinking matter undermined traditional proofs of the soul's immateriality, forcing apologists to defend human immortality against emerging materialist and deistic challenges. Chapter 2, "The Moral Argument and the Argument from Desire," examines the transition from the failing moral argument, weakened by Shaftesburian optimism, toward the psychologically grounded argument from desire popularized by Young and Gastrell. Chapter 3, "A Reading of Rasselas," contends that the apologue functions as a structured theological argument, using human insatiability and the inevitability of death to redirect focus from temporal choices toward the necessity of eternity. Critical reception is generally favorable, with reviewers commending its "cogency" in contextualizing a famous apologue within eighteenth-century theological debates. Critics praise the author’s "clear account" of contemporary philosophical arguments, particularly the "argument from desire," which posits that earthly dissatisfaction proves a future state. This framework is seen as a "logically consistent" explanation for the narrative’s conclusion and the characters' ultimate "choice of eternity." By integrating the subject's "orthodoxy" with the "moral complexities" of the text, the author is credited with "enhancing the comprehension" of the work’s structure. However, some scholars offer "skepticism," challenging the "narrow focus" and "limitation" of the work to a strictly Christian purpose. These critics dispute the attempt to explain the "entire apologue" through theological frameworks, arguing that the story's greatness stems from its "concrete generalization about human experience" and the "general human condition." While the author’s command of scholarship is lauded, some reviewers remain unconvinced by the emphasis on "desire" over other proofs, noting that this specific longing remains "embryonic" within the text. Despite concerns about this specific application of theory, the study is largely validated as a successful extract of the theme of immortality.
Walker’s monograph contextualizes Rasselas within eighteenth-century philosophical debates regarding the human soul. Nussbaum explains Walker’s focus on the failure of metaphysical arguments and the rise of the "argument from desire," which posits that the impossibility of earthly satisfaction proves a future state. Nussbaum highlights Walker’s defense of the book’s conclusion, arguing that Nekayah’s "choice of eternity" in the catacombs is a logically consistent resolution to the "choice of life." The reviewer praises Walker’s cogency, thoroughness, and command of existing scholarship, noting his successful integration of Johnson's orthodoxy with the narrative's moral complexities.
CGV entry 18:175. A review essay by Felicity A. Nussbaum on the book by Robert G. Walker.
Burke acknowledges Walker’s success in extracting the theme of immortality from Rasselas but challenges the limitation of the work to a Christian purpose. Walker argues that Johnson employs the "argument from desire" to show that human "choice of life" must be a choice for eternity. Burke disputes this narrow focus, asserting that Johnson creates characters as "species" to address the general human condition. He argues that the greatness of the work stems from its "concrete generalization about human experience."
CGV entry 18:175. Review by John J. Burke, Jr. of the book by Robert G. Walker.
Kolb praises Walker’s monograph for enhancing the comprehension of the purpose and structure of Rasselas through contemporary theological contexts. He values the clear account of eighteenth-century arguments for immortality but questions Walker’s emphasis on the "argument from desire" over metaphysical proofs. Kolb remains skeptical of Walker’s attempt to explain the entire apologue through these frameworks, noting that development of man’s longing for eternity remains embryonic.
CGV entry 18:175. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the book by Robert G. Walker.
CGV entry 18:175. Review by Paul D. McGlynn of the book by Robert G. Walker.
Fables of Knowing: Melodrama and Related Forms
CGV entry 18:176. On 'Rasselas'.
Die Enttäuschung der Lesererwartung als erzählerisches Prinzip in Johnson's Rasselas
CGV entry 18:177. The title translates as "Disappointment of the Reader's Expectation as a Narrative Principle in Johnson's Rasselas."
The Tulip and Its Streaks: Contexts of Rasselas X
Folkenflik examines Chapter X of Rasselas ("A Dissertation upon Poetry"), arguing its complexity has led to misinterpretation of Imlac as Johnson's sole mouthpiece, especially given the chapter's undercutting in the next. Imlac's description of the poet as "legislator of mankind" derives from Renaissance theory, but Johnson critiques this self-aggrandizement as a form of hubris seen in other characters who aspire to be "superior to time and place." The famous "streaks of the tulip" comment opposes descriptive particularity in nature to the comprehensive focus on human nature, satirizing the triviality and artificiality associated with the exotic flower in seventeenth and eighteenth-century literature, including the metaphysical poets.
Criminal Pursuit of Happiness: Dictionary Johnson's Dark Fable Rasselas
The Image of the Good Man in Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses
CGV entry 18:180. Discusses the relationship of the 'Discourses' to 'Rasselas'.
Imlac and the Poets of Persia and Arabia
Imlac's "dissertation" on poetry in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (Chapter X) should be analyzed in the context of his fictional identity as an Eastern poet, not merely as a reflection of Johnson's critical views. The first half of the chapter substantially concurs with eighteenth-century knowledge of Persian and Arabic poetry, specifically alluding to the Mu'allaqat suspended in the mosque of Mecca. Johnson used his research to invest Imlac's experiences with an exotic illusion, employing a comparative method to make Imlac's profession both alien and universally familiar through Biblical and literary parallels.
Hansen examines the literary relationship between Johnson’s Happy Valley and Milton’s Eden, identifying verbal parallels that suggest Paradise Lost informs the philosophical structure of the tale. The argument defines Johnson’s brand of humanism through its divergence from Milton’s neo-Platonic synthesis, emphasizing Johnson’s empirical skepticism and realistic worldview. Analysis focuses on the shared themes of the paradise myth, the nature of the soul, and scientific speculation. Hansen suggests Johnson presents a darker vision of the human condition, where the boredom and isolation of the characters approach the Satanic predicament rather than the Adamic ideal of self-knowledge. The text concludes that the narrative’s greatness lies in its unresolved tension between static ultimate truths and the dynamic, often absurd, reality of human experience.
Mrs. (Thrale) Piozzi and Dr. Johnson's The Fountains: A Fairy Tale
International Library of Phenomenology and Moral Sciences
Reflection, Time and the Novel: Toward a Communicative Theory of Literature
CGV entry 18:185. As evident in 'Rasselas'.
Samuel Johnson and the Fiction of Activity
Sklenicka explores the discrepancy between the depressing paraphrasable content of Rasselas and the energized, pleasurable experience of reading the work. This fiction of activity issues from Johnson's investment in fictional form, which provides an illusion of movement that distracts readers from the inherent miseries of life. Sklenicka argues that the characters, specifically Imlac, Nekayah, and Pekuah, form a chance-formed family whose constant debate and travel enact a remedy for their melancholy. By giving voice to unhappiness, the characters distance themselves from it, much as Johnson found delight in the conflict of opinions in a tavern chair. The plot demonstrates that the choice of life remains secondary to the noble pleasure of friendship.
CGV entry 18:186. On 'Rasselas'.
The Journey and the Stream: Space and Time Imagery in Johnson's Rasselas
Desire and the Structure of Eighteenth-Century Fiction
A shared paradoxical conception of "desire" shapes the structure of diverse eighteenth-century prose fiction. Protagonists' escape from the confining "earthly paradise" in works like Rasselas, Clarissa, and Amelia is prompted by ungratified desire for self-extension. The indulgence of this desire, often narcissistic, invariably leads to a more restrictive form of confinement, frequently solipsism. Authors like Johnson and Swift do not permit restoration to a fixed, desire-free state, which signifies to them an unrealistic escape from the self.
CGV entry 18:188. Includes a discussion of 'Rasselas'.
A Herodotean Source for Rasselas, Ch. 6
Arieti identifies a classical source for the mechanic's speech in chapter 6 of Rasselas. When the mechanic tells the Prince that "Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome," he echoes the words of Xerxes in Herodotus's Persian Wars. Arieti compares the context of the mechanic's flying machine to Xerxes's reflection on his attack on Greece, noting that Johnson likely recalled the Herodotean passage because both enterprises were presented as similarly disastrous.
Rasselas and Some Meanings of 'Structure' in Literary Criticism
Ehrenpreis uses Johnson's *Rasselas* as a case study to interrogate the varied and often problematic definitions of "structure" in literary criticism. The essay challenges critics who impose predetermined structural models on the narrative, arguing for a more fluid and thematically driven understanding of its organization. It analyzes how the tale's episodic nature and use of repeated motifs (e.g., the Happy Valley, the debate on choice of life) constitute a structural integrity based on a philosophical quest rather than a conventional plot. Ehrenpreis advocates for critical terms that accurately reflect the work's rhetorical intentions.
The Structural and Thematic Importance of the Astronomer in Rasselas
Candide and Rasselas Revisited
Prison-Paradise: A Point of Departure in Rasselas
The Chain of Becoming: The Philosophical Tale, the Novel, and a Neglected Realism of the Enlightenment: Swift, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Johnson, and Austen
Conflict, Declamation, and Self-Assessment in Rasselas
Keener identifies the central significance of Johnson's tale as the hero's transition from passive observation to "realism of psychological self-assessment." Initially, Rasselas and his companions act as spectators, but the abduction of Pekuah forces them into "living in earnest." Unlike his sister Nekayah, who recovers via external chance, Rasselas moves toward "recovery from potential solipsism" by examining the "mechanism of mind" that produces "maddening delusion." Guided by Imlac, who serves as a fallible mediator rather than an absolute mentor, Rasselas learns to "regulate" his dangerous desires and recognize his own "secret, dangerous fantastick delight." The "inconclusive conclusion" signifies Rasselas's independent capacity for "moderate contentment" achieved through historical knowledge of his own mental forces. Johnson promotes "concords not unisons," where self-knowledge enables the governing of one's mind under a "mute sky."
Rasselas Redux, or Back to Abyssinia
CGV entry 18:195. Primarily on Ellis Cornelia Knight's 'Dinarbas'.
Illustrations of Rasselas and Reader-Response Criticism
CGV entry 18:197. A paper presented at the Clark Library Seminar, 23 October 1982. With an introduction by Donald Greene.
Rasselas and Gaudentio di Lucca in the Mountains of the Moon
CGV entry 18:198. On parallels with Simon Berington's novel of 1738.
Kolb surveys the critical and publishing history of Rasselas from its 1759 publication through the end of the eighteenth century. The analysis examines contemporary reviews, periodical extracts, and the proliferation of editions and translations. Kolb observes that despite early criticism regarding the work's lack of traditional narrative structure, it garnered significant attention in British and American serials. Kolb argues that Rasselas became a "pivotal novel" and a "touchstone" of Johnson’s art, maintaining a steady presence in print due to its "striking pictures of life" and disquisitions on truth.
The Vision of Theodore: Genre, Context, Early Reception
Kolb analyzes Johnson's The Vision of Theodore, Hermit of Teneriffe, placing it within its original context in Dodsley's The Preceptor (1748) alongside classical allegories The Choice of Hercules and Cebes' Picture of Human Life. Kolb identifies The Vision as a fable or allegory, specifically a dream vision, highlighting its similarities (guidance figure, ascent motif, emphasis on habit) and differences with its classical and English predecessors, including Addison's Vision of Mirzah. Kolb notes the contemporary popularity of the genre and the high praise The Vision received from figures like Thomas Percy and early biographers, tracing its frequent reprintings.
Toward a Theory of Common Sense: Beckford's Vathek and Johnson's Rasselas
Liu develops a "Theory of Common Sense" by contrasting Beckford's Vathek (representing "bad sense") with Johnson's Rasselas (representing "common sense"). Liu argues that "bad sense" is an "immanental transcendentalism": an atomistic, excessive, and oral hunger to swallow the world and transcend the self. Vathek's architectural forms (e.g., the endless, oral halls of Eblis) and plot (a ceaseless deferral of meaning) embody this self-canceling regression. Rasselas shares an identical, ambiguous signified ("Do not wish"), but its common sense is a "minimalist" posture of public denial and private hunger, exemplified by the hollow "embalmed bodies." Both works' "morals" are finally identical in their function: they are Stoic responses to the gap of meaning between signifier and signified in a world where profound truth is inaccessible.
Espaces et représentations dans le monde anglo-américain aux XVII et XVIII siècles
The Hell of Paradise: A propos of Rasselas
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (1759): Bibliographie sélective
This selective bibliography on Johnson's Rasselas (1759) includes sections on bibliographies, biographies, editions of Johnson's works and Rasselas, general works on Johnson, his style, and critical studies/reflections on the tale. The list ranges from early works (Stock, 1884) to mid-century studies (Clifford, Krutch) and then to the date of publication. Critical perspectives noted include Krutch's view of Rasselas as tragedy, Bate's work as the best biography, and discussions of the happy valley, deism, Orientalism, structure, and characterization (Imlac, the Astronomer). The bibliography also registers continuations and French translations of the tale.
Rasselas and the Traditions of 'Menippean Satire'
Woodruff argues that Rasselas should be classified as a "Menippean satire." This classical genre, defined by critics like Frye and Bakhtin, features a "mock-romance" structure, stylized characters representing "mental attitudes," and the testing of philosophical ideas in "extraordinary situations." Rasselas fits this model by ironically exposing "human delusions" through its "choice of life" quest. Johnson knew the tradition well, owning works by Menippean authors like Lucian, Boethius, and Burton. Woodruff identifies specific parallels with Lucian’s dialogues, which also feature "choice of life" surveys and would-be flyers, and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, which shares Rasselas’s themes of imprisonment and the search for happiness in a Christian context.
Johnson's Rasselas: Limits of Wisdom, Limits of Art
Damrosch argues that Rasselas represents a self-defeating turning point in Johnson's thought, serving as a farewell to the dream that wisdom can be taught through didactic essays or fictions. Analyzing the work as an apologue rather than a novel, Damrosch explores how Johnson uses ironic distancing to underscore the limitations of moral precept. The narrative subverts the "choice of life" by demonstrating that wisdom remains ineffective until validated by individual experience. Damrosch suggests that the book's "conclusion in which nothing is concluded" reflects a profound doubt regarding the power of imagination to master reality. By juxtaposing the Olympian narrator's aphorisms with human irrelevance, Johnson insists on the gulf between art and the "bitterness of truth." This recognition explains Johnson's subsequent abandonment of fiction in favor of biographical and conversational modes, as seen in the work of Boswell, which prioritize immediate context over structured invention.
Dr. Johnson's Practice: The Medical Context for Rasselas
Rasselas is a valuable document in the history of psychiatric thought, deeply informed by Johnson's interest in medical psychology and contemporary disputes, particularly between "mad-doctors" Monro and Battie. Rejecting Monro's moral-punitive approach to madness as "vitiated judgment," Johnson aligns with Battie's more enlightened view of "deluded imagination." Johnson's narrative breaks with the traditional literary convention of punishing characters for mental aberrations; instead, he uses Rasselas, Nekayah, and the astronomer to provide sophisticated, compassionate, and clinically accurate analyses of severe psychological impairment and the struggle for contact with reality.
Sex and Love, Marriage and Friendship: A Feminist Reading of the Quest for Happiness in Rasselas
Fiction and Purpose in 'Utopia,' 'Rasselas,' 'The Mill on the Floss,' and 'Women in Love'
CGV entry 18:208. Pages 83–153 are on 'Rasselas'.
Fugal Technique in Johnson's Rasselas
Norman explores the structural technique of Johnson's most famous fiction through an analogy to the fugue, a baroque musical form characterized by repetition, balance, and counterpoint. While acknowledging Johnson's reputed distaste for music, Norman argues that the circular, rather than linear, development of themes in the narrative mirrors fugal procedures. The article demonstrates how Johnson establishes motifs in the Happy Valley exposition and explores them through statement and elaboration during the pilgrimage, specifically analyzing the treatment of grief, solitude, and the imagination. Norman highlights that Johnson's own Dictionary definition of fugue emphasizes various parts following each other, a technique Norman identifies as peculiarly suited to Johnson's rhetorical habits. Though likely an unconscious structural choice, Norman contends this fugal pattern provides a rewarding framework for the work's play of contrasting ideas.
Soupel analyzes the dynamic of movement in Rasselas, arguing that the characters' metaphorical and physical restlessness is shaped by the book's circular structure. This dynamic rests on a geometry of symmetries and homologies, with the pyramid serving as a central, pivotal image. The plot moves between ascensions and descents, mirroring a vertical oscillation and the recurrent theme of disappointed hope. Structural and linguistic symmetries, particularly the chiastic balance, reveal Johnson's "persistently symmetrical world" and his binary, contradictory critical thought.
His and Hers: Essays on Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
Choices of Life: Samuel Johnson and Ellis Cornelia Knight
This article, reprinted from the Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society of the Northwest, analyzes the literary relationship between Samuel Johnson and Ellis Cornelia Knight through a comparison of Rasselas and its sequel, Dinarbas. Messenger disputes the common critical dismissal of Knight’s work as merely derivative or contradictory to Johnson’s pessimistic philosophy. Instead, Messenger argues that Knight uses the sequel to provide a "Choice of Life" that Johnson famously withheld, shifting the narrative focus from philosophical inquiry to active participation in civic and social duties. The text examines how Knight adapts Johnsonian themes of vanity and restlessness into a framework of heroic action and domestic stability. Messenger highlights Knight’s role as a scholarly bridge between the Augustan moral tradition and the emerging sensibilities of the late eighteenth century, asserting that Knight’s contribution validates the mainstream literary world she shared with Johnson. The analysis emphasizes the complementarity of the two texts in exploring human fulfillment.
The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators
Johnson's editorial work aimed to correct what was corrupt, explain what was obscure, establish a sound text, and provide interpretive and historical glosses. He proposed a variorum edition, printing all textual variants and valuable notes from predecessors like Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, and Warburton. His own edition, generally considered the first modern edition of Shakespeare, restored many passages from the First Folio (1623), which he recognized as having primary authority, although he did not collate all earlier texts. Johnson had issued his first proposal, "A New Edition of the Plays of William Shakespeare," as a single leaflet attached to his Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745). The Observations acted as a specimen of his editorial abilities. The 1745 proposal was abandoned because of copyright difficulties, but Johnson published new Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare on June 1, 1756. The work was promised by December 1757, but Johnson fell behind schedule. The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) was finally published anonymously in eight octavo volumes on October 10, 1765. Johnson’s name appeared on the title page as "Sam. Johnson." The first edition of 1,000 copies sold out in less than a month. A second impression (750 copies) appeared in November 1765. Johnson was paid 250 sets free for the subscription and received between £262 10s. and £375 from the first edition. His total income from the venture was estimated at £475 for the first two editions or £1,312 10s. for the venture. Johnson's edition contained about 6,025 notes; the accompanying Preface was also issued separately the same year as Mr. Johnson's Preface to his Edition of Shakespear's Plays. Unauthorized Dublin editions circulated, including one in 10 volumes in 1766. A separate authorized London edition followed in 1768. In 1773, Johnson's edition was revised and published as The Plays of William Shakespeare. In ten volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators; To which are added Notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. This edition included about eighty new notes by Johnson and extensive new material by George Steevens. Johnson added a paragraph to his Preface, crediting Steevens for his work. This edition was followed by a second edition of the Johnson–Steevens collaboration in 1778, which also included contributions from Edmond Malone. Steevens later revised the edition in 1785 and 1793. The work was subsequently included in major collected editions of Johnson's Works, such as Sir John Hawkins's 11-volume edition (1787), and Arthur Murphy's 12-volume edition (1792). The critical comments following each play were generally reproduced in subsequent editions. In 1795–96, the first American edition of Johnson's Shakespeare was published in Philadelphia by Bioren & Madan in 8 volumes, titled The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare. Corrected from the latest and best London editions, with notes, by Samuel Johnson, L.L.D.. This was traditionally considered the first edition of Shakespeare published outside Great Britain. This American edition contained no notes except one by Johnson at the end of each play. The Preface was translated into Italian (partially, in 1819), German (partially), and Spanish (excerpted in Pasatiempo crítico). The French novelist Stendhal incorporated portions of the Preface into Racine et Shakespeare (1822). The Preface and notes were translated into Japanese. The Johnson-Steevens work formed the basis of Edmond Malone's Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare (10 volumes, 1790), which was later revised by James Boswell the younger (21 volumes, 1821) and served as the standard complete edition throughout the nineteenth century. Modern scholarly editions include Sir Walter Raleigh’s selections in Johnson on Shakespeare (1908), which reprinted the Proposals, the Preface, and some Notes. The modern collected edition is The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, volumes 7 and 8, Johnson on Shakespeare (1968), edited by Arthur Sherbo. The Yale Edition includes Johnson's critical writings concerning Shakespeare, such as the Miscellaneous Observations, Dedication to Mrs. Lennox's Shakespear Illustrated, Proposals, Preface, and the notes to the 1765 edition. The Yale volumes reprint the 3,550 notes of the 1765 edition in sequence, incorporating textual variants and added comments from later Johnson-Steevens editions. However, the Yale Edition omits the Shakespearean text and much of the annotation by predecessors that Johnson included in his original volumes.
CGV entry 19:1.
A highly antagonistic, thirty-page critique by professional rival William Kenrick. It catalogs perceived imperfections and exposes the editor's alleged scholarly incompetence, seeking to dismantle Johnson's reputation. Kenrick singles out numerous "trite and commonplace expressions" in the Preface. He argues Johnson proves unequal to defending Shakespeare's disregard for dramatic unities because of his limited understanding of the drama's nature.
CGV entry 19:1. Review by William Kenrick of the 1765 edition edited by Samuel Johnson. In two parts: October, pages 285-301; and November, pages 374-389.
Two review articles on Johnson's edition of Shakespeare. The same volume also contained a lengthy notice of Kenrick's attack on Johnson.
The Plays of William Shakespeare, with the Corrections and Illustrations of various Commentators; to which are added Notes by Samuel Johnson
This review concludes an assessment of Johnson’s eight-volume Shakespeare edition. The reviewer frequently challenges Johnson's classical and philological expertise, disputing his claim that "predestination" was exclusively Stoic and correcting his definitions of terms like "Lethe," "nag," and "batch." The reviewer dismisses several of Johnson's interpretations, such as the cosmetic "mends" in Troilus and Cressida, as "ridiculous beyond credibility." Despite these "defects" and a tendency to be "too much of a Martinet in learning," the reviewer credits Johnson with rescuing Shakespeare’s meaning from the "pragmatical efforts" of previous editors. The review concludes that Johnson’s edition presents Shakespeare "more himself" than any version since Rowe's.
CGV entry 19:1. An anonymous review of the 1765 edition edited by Samuel Johnson. Published in three parts: volume 20 (November 1765), pages 321-332; (December 1765), pages 401-411; and volume 21 (February 1766), pages 81-88.
Generally positive, confirming the importance of the edition. It observes the long delay in publication and the public's initial disappointment. The review praises the accompanying observations and the concluding short strictures on each play for their vigor. It highlights the Preface as a composition of great merit, containing original, acute, and rational remarks, especially concerning the unities of time and place. It notes, however, the editor's harsh treatment of Theobald and perceived partiality toward Warburton.
CGV entry 19:1. An anonymous review of the 1765 edition edited by Samuel Johnson.
Annotations by Sam. Johnson and Geo. Steevens and the Various Commentators
CGV entry 19:2. On the individual plays of Shakespeare. A separate volume was published for each play. Reprinted by George Cawthorn in 1797, and by John Offor in 1819 (2 volumes).
Doctor Johnson's 'Short Strictures' on the Plays of Shakespeare
CGV entry 19:3. Selected passages of criticism.
Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare
Smith contends that the 19th-century dismissal of 18th-century Shakespearian criticism as "discreditable" is an historical error. The volume highlights how figures like Pope and Johnson viewed Shakespeare as a "glory of English letters" and an "instrument of Nature," despite pointing out perceived faults. Smith traces the century’s interest through four phases: the debate over dramatic rules, the extent of the poet’s learning, textual treatment, and character analysis. Central to the argument is the rehabilitation of Johnson’s 1765 Preface, which Smith describes as a "sturdy common sense" rejection of neo-classical dogmas that preceded the Romantic revival. The collection includes reprints of Rowe, Dennis, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Farmer, and Morgann to demonstrate the century's high "information density" regarding the bard.
CGV entry 19:4. A second edition, completed by Herbert Davis and F. P. Wilson, was published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1963.
Raleigh presents a selection of Johnson's Shakespearian criticism, featuring the 1756 Proposals, the 1765 Preface, and extensive notes on the plays. Raleigh’s introduction traces the "history of Johnson's dealings with Shakespeare," beginning with the 1745 Macbeth pamphlet and concluding with the 1765 edition. Raleigh defends Johnson against Macaulay’s "worthless" designation, asserting that Johnson's "sound sense" and "wide knowledge of humanity" allow him to solve textual obscurities where philological commentators fail. The collection highlights Johnson’s "punctiliously truthful" editorial method, specifically his ultimate "settled principle" of prioritizing ancient readings over "specious emendations." Raleigh notes that the annotations reveal Johnson’s "private heretical opinions," such as his "contempt for tragic acting" and his protest against "physiological experiments on live animals" in the notes for Cymbeline. The edition includes a 1925 bibliographical note clarifying the status of the 1745 Proposals and distinguishing between the two 1765 impressions. Raleigh argues that Johnson’s informal, fluent prose offers a "sober and vigorous guidance" that serves as a necessary corrective to the "insincerity" of later romantic criticism. By removing the "intervention of Boswell," Raleigh aims to bring the reader closer to the "dictator" in a sensible and friendly vein.
CGV entry 19:5. Frequently reprinted.
Reprints Johnson's proposals, preface, and notes on the plays.
Johnson's Proposals for His Edition of Shakespeare, 1756
Chapman provides a 250-copy limited reprint of the original 1756 Proposals, accompanied by a brief postscript on the document's bibliographical history. The text outlines Johnson’s methodology for correcting the "depravations" of Shakespeare’s text, emphasizing the necessity of collating early editions and providing historical context for obsolete customs and expressions. Johnson asserts that the poet’s "extravagant and licentious" genius requires a critic who balances "conjectural criticism" with a rigorous respect for the first folio. Chapman’s postscript traces the rarity of the original eight-page pamphlet, noting its omission from early collected works by Davies and the London Chronicle. The editor identifies several persistent misprints introduced in Sir John Hawkins’s 1787 edition—such as "arguments" for "argument" and "convince" for "conceive"—which this facsimile edition corrects by returning to the primary source. The work serves as a foundational text for understanding Johnson’s transition from lexicographer to Shakespearian editor.
CGV entry 19:6. A type-facsimile.
CGV entry 19:7. Published in three volumes: Volume 1, Comedies (1956); Volume 2, Histories (1957); Volume 3, Tragedies (1958).
Preface to Shakespeare, with Proposals for Printing the Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare (1756)
Samuel Johnson: Preface to Shakespeare e altri scritti Shakespeariani
Lombardo provides a collection of Johnson’s Shakespearean criticism for an Italian audience, including the Proposals (1756), the Preface to Shakespeare (1765), and various notes and essays. Sherbo severely criticizes the volume for significant biographical inaccuracies and a lack of familiarity with modern scholarship by Clifford, Reade, and Bronson. He specifically disputes Lombardo’s "naïve" claim that Johnson’s defense of the unities delivered the "death blow" to neoclassicism. Despite these scholarly failures, Sherbo acknowledges refreshing insights in Lombardo’s appraisal of Rasselas and the "mingled drama" of Shakespeare.
CGV entry 19:9. Review by Arthur Sherbo of the edition by Agostino Lombardo.
Johnston argues that the Yale edition reveals Johnson's substantial and undervalued contributions to Shakespearean scholarship. She highlights his 'editorial benignity' toward predecessors and his pioneering work in bibliographical criticism, such as distinguishing between quarto versions. Johnston disputes the notion that Johnson viewed the plays only as 'ethical poems,' pointing to his numerous stage directions and concern for dramatic action. The review emphasizes Johnson's 'encyclopedic memory' in the notes and his mastery of Renaissance literature, which he used to explain obscurities rather than to promote a 'perfection myth.'
CGV entry 19:11. Review by Shirley White Johnston of the Yale Edition volumes edited by Arthur Sherbo.
Extracts from the Preface to Mr. Johnson's Edition of Shakespeare (published this morning), with Remarks
An unsigned notice written by Colman in response to the long-delayed publication of Johnson's Shakespeare edition. The commentary satirizes the delay, observing that Johnson had adhered to Horace’s rule of nonum in annum, suggesting the work had been kept for nine years. Colman notes that a friend had originally subscribed to the project in 1756. This piece contributed to the immediate and widespread scrutiny and disappointment that greeted the 1765 edition.
CGV entry 19:40. Published in three parts: No. 718 (October 8–10); No. 719 (October 10-12); and No. 720 (October 12-15).
Fifty Words on Johnson's Edition of Shakespeare
CGV entry 19:41. The same writer, signing as "Goodman Dull," continued the attack in No. 732 (November 9–12, 1765).
[Criticism of Johnson's comment on Claudius's drinking in Hamlet]
[Attack on Johnson's treatment of the text of Henry V]
CGV entry 19:43. Published under the pseudonym "Christopher Dennis".
The Interview; or Shakespeare's Ghost: Occasioned by the Review of Dr. Johnson's Edition of that Poet
CGV entry 19:44. A hostile jeu d'esprit in verse; the "Review" is Kenrick's.
A work of literary scholarship published contemporaneously with Johnson's Shakespeare (1765). In his Preface, Johnson severely characterizes Heath’s Revisal as a biting and dangerous critique of the editorial tradition, comparing it to a "viper" when contrasted with Edwards’s less severe criticism. Despite this contemptuous dismissal, Johnson demonstrates editorial vigilance by quickly integrating notes derived from Heath’s Revisal into the appendix of the eighth volume of his 1765 edition of Shakespeare.
printed for J. Payne, at the Feathers, in Pater-Noster Row
A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare, in which the ignorance, or inattention of that editor is exposed, and the poet defended from the persecution of his commentators
Kenrick, a professional reviewer reportedly jealous of Johnson's critical standing, attacks the editor for "ignorance, or inattention," and frames the work as an excoriation of scholarly failings. The Review attacks Johnson's 1762 royal pension, derisively nicknaming him "his Majesty's pensioner," and accuses him of literary tyranny. Kenrick criticizes the edition for its perceived scholarly incompetence, paucity of notes, and alleged plagiarism of Edwards and Heath. Despite the virulence of the attack, which Johnson advised Boswell to ignore, the edition proves commercially successful.
CGV entry 19:46. Reprinted by AMS Press, New York, in 1968.
A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare
The reviewer censures Kenrick for a "more than barbarous" assault on Johnson, characterized by personal malice and a "rage of hypercriticism." While the text admits Johnson occasionally produces "vile" notes or displays "inattention," it defends his restoration of original readings against Kenrick’s "paultry" conjectures. The reviewer disputes Kenrick’s emendations in The Tempest and As You Like It, particularly mocking Kenrick’s pseudo-scientific explanation of the word "warp." Kenrick’s preoccupation with Johnson’s government pension and his "illiberal" reflections on Johnson’s "belief of witchcraft" receive sharp rebuke. The reviewer asserts that Kenrick understands "at least as little of Shakespeare as Johnson" and maintains that a critic should prefer being "chronicled to all eternity for a dunce" over employing Kenrick’s "illiberal personal abuse." Both Kenrick and Johnson fail to grasp the historical philology necessary to fix Shakespeare’s language.
CGV entry 19:46. An anonymous review, which serves as a defense of Johnson against Kenrick's book.
The reviewer censures Kenrick for a work written with "malignity" against Johnson. The text defends Johnson's literary honor and marks of distinction received from the sovereign. It disputes Kenrick's substituted conjectures on The Tempest, specifically regarding the terms "soul," "foil," and "spirit." The reviewer characterizes Kenrick's ill will as envy of Johnson's reputation.
CGV entry 19:46. An anonymous review of the book by William Kenrick.
Kenrick attacks Johnson for perceived ignorance and inattention in his recent Shakespeare edition. Using a tomahawk-and-scalping-knife approach, Kenrick charges Johnson with failing to master any science or language and objects to Johnson's interpretation of death as sleep in Measure for Measure. While the reviewer deplores Kenrick's personal enmity and lack of urbanity, he admits Kenrick explains the "moving image" of the sails in Midsummer-night's Dream better than Johnson. Kenrick challenges Johnson's criticism of the dramatic conduct in Merchant of Venice, asserting Johnson lacks the requisite skill to "censure the foremost man of all this world." The reviewer urges Kenrick to abandon his "rage for massacre" of a brother author's reputation.
CGV entry 19:46. A review by Ralph Griffiths of the book by William Kenrick.
CGV entry 19:47. A defense of Kenrick's 'Review' against an attack in the Gentleman's Magazine of November 1765.
CGV entry 19:48. A discussion of Warburton, Johnson, and Edwards on Shakespeare.
[Strictures on Johnson's reading of two passages in Julius Caesar]
[Attack on the Johnson–Steevens edition of Shakespeare, 1773]
Remarks, Critical and Illustrative, on the Text and Notes of the Last Edition of Shakespeare
Joseph Ritson's anonymous Remarks attacks the 1778 Johnson–Steevens edition. The publication serves as a vehicle for Ritson to denounce almost all other Shakespeareans, published in hopes of establishing himself as an authority. Ritson focuses on textual corruption and editorial negligence, arguing that Johnson "never collated any of the folios" and had left the text in the "same state of corruption as was in the time of Rowe." He accuses Johnson and Steevens of superficial collation practices, despite having improved ideas on textual collation. His critique mocks Steevens's claim that the text was finally settled, asserting that "nothing is to be expected" from republishing the edition. Driven partly by jealousy toward the established Johnsonian circle, the Remarks were described as high provocation.
CGV entry 19:53. On the Johnson-Steevens edition of 1778.
Reprinted by AMS (1973).
Comments on the Last Edition of Shakespeare's Plays
Mason’s Comments criticize the Johnson and Steevens edition of Shakespeare published in 1778, which Malone later supplemented. Mason’s preface asserts that the plays subsequently published by Malone are either spurious or too incorrect to warrant commentary. This work contributes to the continuous scholarly dialogue defining Shakespeare’s canonical works, textual accuracy, and emendations, which was essential to establishing the great texts of the English literary tradition.
Notes upon Some of the Obscure Passages in Shakespeare's Plays: With Remarks Upon the Explanations and Amendments of the Commentators in the Editions of 1785, 1790, 1793
Chedworth provides a series of philological and critical annotations on Shakespeare’s dramatic works, primarily responding to the editorial decisions of Johnson, Steevens, and Malone. Johnson appears frequently as a central authority whose interpretations Chedworth validates or disputes. In The Tempest, Chedworth supports Johnson's proposed arrangement regarding Prospero’s assurance of "no harm done" and considers his emendation on Miranda's memory. In Measure for Measure, Chedworth agrees with Johnson's objective judgment of the "serious part" of the play and adopts his explanations of "baseness" and "moral" meaning. He disputes Johnson’s categorization of "blessed" in the same play and rejects his emendation of "peers" for "fears" in 1 Henry IV. Throughout the volume, Chedworth defends Shakespeare’s artistic choices against what he identifies as Johnson’s occasionally "harsh" or "hypercritical" censures, such as those regarding the "nature of the people" or specific similes. The work functions as a scholarly dialogue with the late Johnsonian tradition, seeking to clarify "obscure passages" through contextual and linguistic evidence.
CGV entry 19:56.
Remarks, Critical, Conjectural, and Explanatory, upon the Plays of Shakespeare; Resulting from a Collation of the Early Copies with That of Johnson and Steevens
Seymour's work is founded on the authoritative Johnson and Steevens edition. Seymour directly critiques or affirms Johnson's interpretations on specific lines, such as whether "indifferently" means "without preference" (Johnson) or "serenely" (Seymour). Although Johnson called Julius Caesar "cold and unaffecting," Seymour dissents, finding Brutus powerfully affecting. This engagement highlights Johnson's earlier work as the foundational text for ongoing critical debate.
CGV entry 19:57. Incorporates material by Lord Chedworth.
Hazlitt examines the dramatic output of William Shakespeare, focusing on the psychological depth and distinct identity of his characters. The text specifically disputes the critical judgment of Johnson, whose "general powers of reasoning overlaid his critical susceptibility." Hazlitt argues that Johnson "reduced every thing to the common standard of conventional propriety" and failed to grasp the "rapid flights of fancy" or "strong movements of passion" inherent in Shakespearean drama. While acknowledging Johnson’s "strong common sense and practical wisdom," Hazlitt maintains that Johnson’s "cumbrous phraseology" and "rhyming prose" were ill-suited to evaluate a poet who is "high fantastical." The work characterizes Johnson as a "didactic reasoner" who sought the "general species" rather than the "individual traits" of characters, making his criticism a "Procrustes' bed of genius" where he might "cut down imagination to matter-of-fact." Mentions of Boswell occur as a recommendation for readers to "read Boswell's Life of him" to mitigate prejudice against Johnson’s character.
CGV entry 19:58. Often reprinted.
Stendhal paraphrases Johnson in challenging the classical Aristotelian unities of time and place, identifying them as pedagogical obstructions to dramatic emotional efficacy. He disputes the necessity of such unities for theatrical "illusion," arguing that audiences never mistake performance for reality but rather engage in a fluctuating state of imaginative sympathy. Stendhal prioritizes the "painting of the human heart" over formal constraints, citing the superior impact of Shakespeare and Schiller on modern sensibilities. He asserts that the nineteenth-century "thirst for strong emotions" requires a national Italian tragedy modeled on romantic principles rather than the "effeminate" courtly system of Racine. The text characterizes Alfieri as a victim of classical pedantry who "thinned" the French system rather than capturing the "Italian soul." Stendhal maintains that dramatic pleasure proceeds from the audience’s knowledge that the action is "fiction" that "vividly presents realities to the soul."
CGV entry 19:59. Pseudonym for Marie-Henri Beyle. Often reprinted.
Johnson dominates mid-eighteenth-century Shakespearean criticism through the forceful language and absolute authority of the Preface. However, Johnson promulgates paradoxical opinions that often refute one another, combining unapproachable excellence with charges of mediocrity. Johnson suggests that tragic scenes lack felicity, declamations are cold, and narrations are encumbered by circumlocution. These censures constitute "bold assertions not susceptible of proof." Johnson fails to exemplify his objections with quotations, leaving readers unable to detect alleged faults. Analysis of the orations of Brutus and Antony demonstrates that Shakespeare avoids the "trivial sentiments" and "unmeaning redundancy" charged by Johnson. Shakespeare uses these speeches to reflect distinctive character traits rather than to "show the stores his knowledge could supply." The durability of the Shakespearean column survives the "dogmatical denunciations" of Johnson.
CGV entry 19:60. An attack on the Shakespeare criticism. Published in three parts: August, pages 113–123; September, pages 209–223; and October, pages 317-336.
Pollock defends Shakespeare’s metaphoric complexity in Hamlet, specifically the Osric scene, against the diffidence of editors Clark and Wright. He critiques Johnson’s commentary on the play, characterizing Johnson’s judgment as narrow and pedantic for its failure to appreciate the subordination of incident to character. Pollock argues that Johnson's preference for rigid "poetical justice" and a more active hero ignores the fine-drawn compunctions central to the prince’s career. The text explores the play’s origins in Saxo Grammaticus, suggesting that the source material accounts for inconsistencies in Ophelia’s character and the awkward exchange of foils, points which previously troubled Johnson. Pollock concludes with an overview of European adaptations and translations, noting various departures from the original text.
CGV entry 19:61. A typical Victorian point of view.
The Editors of Shakespeare: VII. Dr. Samuel Johnson
Examines Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare, characterizing the preface as the "best part of the work." Norris outlines the edition’s history, citing delays caused by Johnson's "indolence" and his controversial use of Garrick's library without acknowledgement. The editorial policy prioritized the "reading of the ancient books" over "conjectural criticism," which Johnson famously labeled a "perilous and difficult" art. While Norris finds Johnson’s text often "not a good text" and containing "ludicrous" emendations, he notes the edition’s significance as the first to adopt a "variorum character" by printing notes from Pope, Theobald, and Warburton entire. Johnson’s harsh critique of Cymbeline as "unresisting imbecility" is specifically noted.
Informs enthusiasts of an upcoming sale from the Aylesford Library at Christie’s starting March 6, including a copy of the Shakespeare Second Folio (1632) previously owned by Theobald, then by Johnson, which contains numerous manuscript notes by both scholars. Johnson's uncle's autograph memorandum is also mentioned in a history of Lichfield.
CGV entry 19:63.
Shaksperian Criticism Textual and Literary from Dryden to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Walder traces the transition of Shaksperian commentary from the restrictive French neoclassical influence toward a philosophical Romantic framework. Johnson occupies a pivotal position in this trajectory, effectively dismantling the arbitrary authority of the Aristotelian unities of time and place through the application of robust common sense. While Johnson acknowledges Shakspere's occasional "sacrifice of virtue to convenience," he defends the poet's "mixture of comic and tragic scenes" as a faithful mirror of "sublunary nature." The text further details how Johnson’s editorial work, though based on a corrupt textual lineage, initiated a more rigorous scholarly engagement with the Folios and Quartos. Walder emphasizes that Johnson’s rejection of "mechanical rules" allowed for an appreciation of Shakspere as an "instrument of nature" whose characters represent the "genuine progeny of common humanity."
Famous Introductions to Shakespeare's Plays
Warner presents a critical collection of 18th-century Shakespearean prefaces, centering on Johnson’s 1765 edition. Warner characterizes Johnson’s Introduction as the most valuable critical estimate of the era, noting its defense of Shakespeare’s violation of classical unities and its focus on the poet’s adherence to "general nature." Warner identifies significant areas of disagreement, specifically challenging Johnson’s assertions regarding the weakness of Shakespeare’s tragic scenes and the limited influence of love in the dramas. The text situates Johnson within a contentious lineage of editors, including Pope, Theobald, and Warburton, highlighting his role in transitioning Shakespearean study from capricious innovation to rational explanation. Warner validates Johnson’s approach of surveying the whole work before examining individual parts and advocates for reading the text primarily without the interference of commentators.
Shakespeare on Johnson [review of Johnson on Shakespeare, by Samuel Johnson and Walter Raleigh]
This mixed review of Walter Raleigh’s edition of Johnson’s Shakespearean criticism praises Johnson’s "breadth and sanity of outlook" while identifying significant aesthetic limitations. The reviewer celebrates Johnson’s "admirable style" and his ability to clarify obscure text through "sound sense" rather than pedantic learning. However, the review argues that Johnson’s "common-sense" approach fails when addressing the poetic and supernatural elements of Shakespeare’s work, such as the lyrics of Ariel or the "appalling climaxes" of the tragedies. Describing Johnson as a "critic of life" rather than literature, the reviewer concludes that while Johnson’s praise of the "mirrour of life" remains valid, it remains "quite insufficient" to capture the inaccessible "topmost peak" of Shakespeare’s genius.
CGV entry 19:66.
Charles Johnson examines the evolution of the English and American literary world's attitude toward the plays of Shakespeare, moving from the rigid classicism of the seventeenth century to the psychological and aesthetic analyses of the nineteenth. Johnson characterizes Johnson as the typical eighteenth-century critic whose robust common sense and moralistic bias initially limited his appreciation of Shakespeare's poetic depth and female characters. Despite these limitations, Johnson's defense of Shakespeare's violation of the unities, based on the nature of dramatic illusion, destroyed slavish adherence to ancient rules and established a more rational foundation for future criticism. The study further notes that Johnson's 1765 edition, while lacking in technical divination, maintained an influential presence throughout the nineteenth century by providing an honest, if literal, interpretation of the poet's work. Johnson positions the critical contributions of Johnson as a necessary bridge between the amateurism of early editors and the scientific scholarship of the later era.
Raleigh traces the nine-year history of the Shakespeare edition, framing it as a professional author’s struggle against "indolence and retardation." He disputes Macaulay’s dismissal of the work, arguing that Johnson’s grasp of human nature allowed him to see "straight to Shakespeare’s meaning" where antiquarians failed. The text analyzes Johnson's defense of Shakespeare’s neglect of the unities, noting how this positioned him as a precursor to romanticism. Raleigh highlights Johnson’s "settled principle" against unnecessary emendation and his insistence that Shakespeare be judged as the "mirrour of life." He further examines Johnson's personal aversions, such as his protest against physiological experiments reflected in his notes on Cymbeline.
Die Wiederbelebung Shakespeares und der Volkpoesie
Transactions of the Bibliographical Society
Shakespeare's Editors, 1603 to the Twentieth Century
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare: One Aspect
Young examines Johnson's application of the historical or genetic method in Shakespearean criticism, specifically focusing on the comparison of plays with their source materials. The monograph traces the rise of source study from Dryden and Langbaine through eighteenth-century editors, highlighting Theobald's pioneer contributions and Lennox’s Shakespear Illustrated. Young argues that while Johnson’s 1756 Proposals promised a rigorous comparison of "copies with their originals," the 1765 edition largely fails to fulfill this commitment. Young explores Johnson’s personal and scholarly relationship with Lennox, suggesting he abandoned detailed source analysis due to indolence or a desire to avoid publicly contradicting her rigid pseudo-classical judgments.
Dr. Samuel Johnson and the Shakespearean Drama
Johnson's 1765 edition of Shakespeare, delayed nine years by his habitual indolence and reliance on subscriptions, represents his most considered critical labor. While Boswell correctly identifies the "Preface" as the work's primary merit, the general reading public continues to neglect Johnson's writings in favor of his biography. Johnson approached the text with conservative judgment, avoiding speculative emendations and confessing ignorance where passages remained obscure. Though a moralist who lamented Shakespeare's sacrifice of virtue to convenience, Johnson lauded the dramatist as the "poet of nature" who held a faithful mirror to human life. He moved his "heaviest artillery" to defend Shakespeare’s disregard for the Unities of time and place, arguing that dramatic fables are never mistaken for reality by spectators. Johnson’s critique of the tragedies, however, was colored by his physical infirmities and a deep-seated prejudice against actors. He maintained that many plays, including Macbeth, are "the worse for being acted," preferring the "unimitated, unimitable Falstaff" and the comic instinct over Shakespeare's tragic skill. The "Preface" stands as a testament to Johnson’s intellectual honesty and "manly independence" against the "on the knee" panegyrics of later centuries.
Raysor disputes Lounsbury’s claim that Lessing first demonstrated the inapplicability of the dramatic unities to modern theater. He argues that English criticism, culminating in Johnson’s 1765 Preface to Shakespeare, provided the definitive blow to neo-classical dogma. Raysor traces a lineage of liberal thought through Farquhar, Kames, and Webb, asserting that Johnson’s prestige finalized a transition already well-supported by theatrical practice. He concludes that eighteenth-century Shakespearean criticism deserves more credit than German theory for liberating the English stage from formal restrictions.
Smith examines the evolution of Shakespearian criticism and performance during the 1700s, identifying Samuel Johnson’s 1765 edition as the century's critical peak. The study argues that Johnson's Preface remains the most balanced defense of Shakespeare's "general nature" against the rigidities of neoclassical "unities." Johnson is credited with shifting focus from Shakespeare as a "wild" untutored genius to a poet of "common life" whose characters represent universal types. The text also notes Boswell’s records of Johnson's specific Shakespearian preferences and his interactions with Garrick, whose acting restored the "living" Shakespeare to the stage. Smith highlights how Johnson’s editorial labor provided a transition from the anecdotal appreciation of early editors like Rowe and Pope to a more rigorous, historically grounded scholarship, effectively establishing the framework for modern Shakespearian study. Chapter 1 addresses the evolution of Shakespeare’s reputation from the seventeenth-century eulogies of Jonson and Dryden to the eighteenth-century theatrical adaptations. It argues that while structural rules were often debated, Shakespeare’s truth to nature ensured his continued supremacy despite bad stage versions. Chapter 2 addresses the development of Shakespearian scholarship through the work of editors from Rowe to Malone. It argues that this period established the fundamental principles of textual criticism, including the authoritative status of the First Folio and the importance of historical research. Chapter 3 addresses the transition from general judicial criticism to the detailed analysis of individual characters and motives. It argues that the century’s critical journey culminated in the interpretive studies of Morgann and others, which treated dramatic creations as historical beings.
The Source of a Note in Johnson's Edition of Macbeth
Small identifies a potential source for Johnson’s commentary on Macduff's line "He has no children" in his 1765 edition of Shakespeare. She notes that Johnson’s summary of the "anonymous critick"—attributing the remark to Malcolm rather than Macbeth—parallels a letter signed "C. D." published five years earlier in Charlotte Lennox’s The Lady’s Museum. Small argues that Johnson, who frequently used Lennox's research without acknowledgment, likely encountered the interpretation through her periodical. This evidence further demonstrates Johnson's reliance on Lennox to alleviate the laborious study of Shakespearean sources.
This selection from Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare presents the 1765 text with select 1778 additions, offering a seminal defense of Shakespeare as the "poet of nature." Johnson argues that Shakespeare’s characters represent universal species rather than mere individuals, allowing his drama to serve as a faithful mirror of human life across generations. While Johnson identifies significant defects—including a lack of moral purpose, loose plotting, and an irresistible addiction to "quibbles"—he disputes the necessity of the classical unities of time and place. Johnson challenges critics like Voltaire and Dennis, asserting that dramatic delusion is never absolute; spectators always recognize the stage as a stage. The edition includes footnotes on Johnson’s sources, contemporary critics, and his metaphorical characterization of Shakespeare’s work as a "forest" or a "mine" of inexhaustible wealth despite its impurities.
The Genesis of Shakespeare Idolatry, 1766–1799
Babcock traces the rise of Shakespeare idolatry in England from Johnson's 1765 Preface to the century's end, positioning this period as the essential foundation for early nineteenth-century Romantic criticism. The study documents how late eighteenth-century critics systematically dismantled traditional neo-classic objections regarding the unities and decorum. Johnson led the rejection of the unities by arguing that "Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination," while Farmer’s 1767 essay "completely finished" the controversy over Shakespeare's learning by proving his reliance on translations. The text highlights a shift toward psychologizing characters, led by Morgann and Richardson, who treated Shakespeare’s figures as "ideal realities." Historical criticism also flourished as scholars like Malone and Steevens sought to "By indirections find directions out" through rigorous textual and biographical investigation. The volume contends that the "super-idolatry" of Coleridge and Hazlitt merely echoed developments already matured by these predecessors.}
Shakespeare Criticism from the Beginnings to 1765
Ralli provides a comprehensive historical overview of the evolution of critical perspectives on Shakespeare, tracing the development from early seventeenth-century tributes to the more structured aesthetic and moral inquiries of the late eighteenth century. The narrative highlights the gradual shift from viewing Shakespeare as an inspired but lawless barbarian to recognizing his profound mastery of human nature and universal passions. Ralli analyzes the contributions of prominent figures such as Johnson, who championed Shakespeare as a poet of nature while noting his moral casualness, and Morgann, whose revolutionary analysis of Falstaff suggested a far-reaching and complex dramatic art that operates through secret impressions rather than literal understanding. The text further explores the influential role of female critics like Montagu and Griffith, who emphasized the psychological and moral depth of the plays, and notes the persistent tension between classical formalist rules and the moving power of Shakespeare's imaginative world. By documenting these diverse critical responses, Ralli demonstrates how Shakespeare's reputation was consolidated through a growing appreciation for his unique ability to mirror life and create an autonomous reality that transcends traditional generic boundaries.
English Shakespearian Criticism in the Eighteenth Century
Robinson surveys the evolution of Shakespeare’s reputation, dedicating significant space to Johnson’s role as a critic and editor. He highlights Johnson’s "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth" as a landmark in historical criticism, defending Shakespeare’s use of witches by appealing to the beliefs of the Elizabethan age. Robinson describes Johnson’s "Preface" to his edition of Shakespeare as a masterpiece that recognizes the dramatist’s "transcendent and unbounded genius" while acknowledging his disregard for the unities. The book also mentions Piozzi (referred to as Mrs. Thrale) as a member of the literary circle at Bath and a lifelong lover of the city. Robinson argues that the century’s criticism was not a rejection of Shakespeare but an enthusiastic attempt to explain his genius despite his departure from classical rules.
CGV entry 19:81. The section on Samuel Johnson.
The Treatment of Shakespeare's Text by His Earlier Editors, 1709–1768
Der persönliche Gehalt in den Shakespeare-Noten Samuel Johnsons
University of Pennsylvania Library Chronicle
Shakespeare as a Poet of Realism in the Eighteenth Century
Lovett examines the eighteenth-century critical movement that championed Shakespeare as a poet of realism. Critics like Pope, Armstrong, and Johnson were impressed by the "aliveness" of Shakespeare's characters, viewing them as genuine portrayals of human nature and passions rather than artificial classical "types." Johnson, in particular, stressed that Shakespeare's characters belonged to a new universal class: "men." This critical shift toward realism defended Shakespeare's tragi-comedy and seemingly indecent low-life scenes. The characters' individuality and their language—seen as highly characteristic and distinct—were celebrated, leading ultimately to the overthrow of neo-classic dramatic rules and preparing the way for the Romantic critics' full acceptance of the playwright.
Bronson argues that Ritson’s career was defined by a series of high-stakes "logomachies" with leading literary figures, most notably over the editing of Shakespeare and the authenticity of ancient poetry. Ritson’s scholarly output is categorized into three primary fields: romances, early popular poetry, and Shakespearean commentary. Each field centers on his aggressive opposition to established authorities: Thomas Warton in romance, Bishop Thomas Percy in popular poetry, and the group of late eighteenth-century Shakespearean editors including Samuel Johnson, George Steevens, Isaac Reed, and Edmond Malone. Bronson examines Ritson's Remarks on the Shakespeare of Johnson and Steevens (1783), noting that Ritson condemned the work as fundamentally faulty and incapable of proper "reincarnation" . The text details how Ritson's insistence on "scientific methods" and literal accuracy—often delivered via "gross scurrility and personalites"—eventually revolutionized scholarly standards. Beyond literary disputes, the biography covers Ritson’s early life in Stockton, his legal career as a conveyancer and Bailiff of the Savoy, his radical republicanism during the French Revolution, and his fanatical commitment to vegetarianism. Bronson emphasizes that while Ritson was a "minor figure" in his own time, his "strenuous and unyielding effort" established the principles of modern scholarly editing.
CGV entry 19:86. Contains a discussion of Johnson's Shakespeare.
Dr. Johnson's 1745 Shakespeare Proposals
Hart challenges the assumption that substantial portions of Johnson’s Shakespeare edition were set in type by 1745. He analyzes the pagination of the Macbeth specimen included in the Proposals, noting that the passage from Act III would logically appear much later than pages 11 and 12. Hart argues that these page numbers were chosen at random for illustrative purposes rather than indicating continuous progress in printing. He concludes that no other pages were likely set up during this initial attempt at the edition.
Johnson's Shakespeare: A Study in Cancellation
Hazen, using Percy's preserved cancellanda (discarded leaves) and a list from Chapman, identifies sixteen cancels in Johnson's 1765 edition of Shakespeare, proving that a last-minute decision to prepare two sheets of cancels caused the two-month publication delay. The cancellations, identifiable by thinner paper and press numbers, were intended by Johnson to soften the asperity of his dissenting notes, which had been directed at Warburton's conjectures. The majority of the revisions, which removed phrases like "this commentator" and "waspish remark," aimed to mitigate the polemical tone of his commentary.
A Note on Dr. Johnson and Sebastien Mercier
Saer argues that the French "iconoclast" Mercier used Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare to justify his own revolutionary dramatic theories. He notes striking resemblances between Johnson’s arguments against the unities and Mercier’s Nouvel Essai. Saer concludes that Johnson’s "classic" authoritative judgments paradoxically helped inspire Mercier’s "national" drama, illustrating the reach of "anglomanie" in eighteenth-century France.
CGV entry 19:90. On Mercier's indebtedness to Johnson's Preface.
Wilson identifies Samuel Johnson as a primary critical ally, noting that Johnson’s 1765 editorial perspective avoids the "myopia" of subsequent romantic critics. Johnson characterizes Falstaff as a "compound of sense and vice" whose faults naturally produce contempt, yet whose "perpetual gaiety" makes him necessary to the Prince. Wilson disputes Andrew Bradley's influential 1902 lecture, which he argues sentimentalizes Falstaff. He contends that romantic critics succumb to a "fallacy of omniscience," treating dramatic characters as historical figures rather than serial dramatic constructs. By neglecting the structural unity of Parts I and II, these critics misinterpret Hal's rejection of Falstaff as a betrayal rather than a planned dramatic necessity. Wilson aligns with Johnson’s view that the play conveys a moral lesson: "no man is more dangerous than he that with a will to corrupt hath the power to please."
A History of 'Hamlet' Criticism, 1601–1821
Eastman reconstructs the timeline of Johnson's final editorial work on his 1765 Shakespeare edition, identifying a significant period of inactivity followed by a flurry of productivity in its publication year. Internal textual evidence—including a shift from Roman to Arabic numerals for source variants, the disappearance of unnumbered notes, and the normalization of Theobald’s orthography after volume VI—strongly suggests a "lengthy interruption" in Johnson's labors. In 1765, Johnson was still editing Othello as late as March, influenced by contemporary publications like Percy's Reliques and Benjamin Heath’s Revisal of Shakespear's Text. Eastman argues the Preface was composed after February 1765, followed by the Appendix, with final revisions to contentious notes on Warburton occurring in August and September prior to the October 10 publication.
CGV entry 19:93. From his dissertation, Yale University, 1947.
The Text of Johnson's Shakespeare (1765)
Evans determines that Samuel Johnson based the text for his 1765 edition of I Henry VI on the neglected 1757 issue of Lewis Theobald's Shakespeare, not William Warburton's 1747 edition as commonly accepted. The 1757 text, which featured modernized spelling conventions, served as the textual source for twenty-five plays in Johnson's edition. Assigning thirty-two new readings in I Henry VI to the 1757 reviser, not Johnson, significantly alters the assessment of Johnson's contribution to Shakespeare's text.
The Texts from Which Johnson Printed His Shakespeare
Eastman disputes the long-held scholarly consensus that Samuel Johnson printed his 1765 edition of Shakespeare solely from William Warburton’s 1747 text. Through detailed collation of agreements in error, spelling, and punctuation, Eastman demonstrates that Johnson used both Warburton and Lewis Theobald’s 1757 edition as base texts. The findings indicate that Johnson used Theobald (1757) for twenty-three plays, Warburton for two, and a combination of both for eleven others. Eastman argues these "transfers" between sources often occurred at act or scene changes and likely stemmed from "expediency" rather than deliberate editorial evaluation. This procedural inconsistency, which Eastman labels as "rare if not unique," reflects Johnson's attempts to meet publishing deadlines and his occasional lack of specific volumes during the editing process.
Johnson's Shakespeare and the Laity: A Textual Study
This article examines Johnson's much-maligned 1765 edition of Shakespeare's plays, arguing that its numerous (over 14,000) textual alterations—in punctuation, capitalization, emendation of "particles," dash usage, and stage directions—were motivated not by scholarly ambition, but by a deliberate effort to achieve clarity and bring the "living Shakespeare" to the untrained reader or "laity." Johnson's edition, unlike those of his predecessors, prioritized making the complex texts immediately accessible, lively, and easily comprehensible, avoiding the scholarly obscurity and pedantic argument of copious notes. This goal of clarifying and illuminating the drama for the unlearned mind—to keep the reader's "fancy... aloft"—explains the editor's preference for standardized grammar, syntactic adjustment, clear sentence division, and copious dramatic punctuation over meticulous collation or sensational emendation, a choice that led to the text's rapid supersedure but fulfilled Johnson's populist aesthetic.
Dr. Johnson's Editing and Criticism of Shakespeare's Lancastrian Cycle
The Proof-Sheets of Dr. Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare
Sherbo examines incomplete proof-sheets of Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare held at the John Rylands Library. He identifies corrections in Johnson’s hand across two signatures, noting evidence of his concern for punctuation and stylistic precision. Sherbo demonstrates that these sheets represent an intermediate stage of revision by comparing them with the published first edition. He catalogs verbal substitutions and spelling changes, arguing that Johnson maintained close attention to the compositor even during the final stages of this significant work.
Johnson's Additions to His Shakespeare for the Edition of 1773
Monaghan examines the large number of new notes Johnson contributed to the 1773 edition of Shakespeare (co-edited with Steevens), correcting the impression that Johnson was largely uninvolved. The 1765 edition had been criticized for its paucity of annotations. Johnson's 1773 additions, many textual and explanatory, include characteristic critical observations. Johnson responded to criticisms from pamphlets like Kenrick's Review and Tyrwhitt's Observations and Conjectures. Against Kenrick's technical explanation of "warp," Johnson offered a lexicographical one—"to turn is to change." When answering the abler critic, Tyrwhitt, Johnson defended his original readings, for example, of "vomit emptiness" in Cymbeline, with patient explanations. Johnson's textual criticism became more conservative, advocating less emendation and more explanation: "It were to be wished that we all explained more and amended less." New material was often a by-product of revising his Dictionary, yielding lexicographical notes on words like "informal" and "importable." Johnson also added illustrative passages from Elizabethan and Jacobean authors. His judgment on the canon is seen in his defense of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and his rejection of Meres's testimony on Titus Andronicus in favor of internal evidence. The additions include a paraphrase of Macbeth's "If it were done" soliloquy, demonstrating his method of interpretation.
CGV entry 19:101. See also Arthur Sherbo in Philological Quarterly, volume 33 (July 1954), pages 283–284.
Liebert corrects the statement in the Rothschild catalogue review that only two copies of Johnson's Proposals for Shakespeare, 1756, were known. He notes that the catalogue's quotation was from a 1915 bibliography when no copy had been recorded. The Supplement of Chapman and Hazen cites five copies, and since then, at least two others have appeared, making the minimum number known seven.
Illinois Studies in Language and Literature
Samuel Johnson, Editor of Shakespeare: With an Essay on The Adventurer
Sherbo worked to redirect critical attention from Johnson's Preface to his editorial notes, arguing these annotations constituted Johnson’s "criticism in operation" and provided the "precise indicators" of his assessment of Shakespeare’s art. This was the first extensive study of Johnson's edition, and demonstrated his heavy and often unacknowledged reliance on earlier editors. Sherbo shows Johnson’s indebtedness to figures like Edwards, Heath, and Grey, concluding that Johnson’s work was "far less original than he acknowledged or others generally realized." Seven appendices detail evidence such as "Johnson's Borrowings" and a "Numerical Analysis of Notes in the 1756 Edition." Critics call this book a rich harvest of detail that offers a thorough statistical demonstration of the subject's editorial habits and his heavy reliance on the Dictionary. Miller praises the scholarship for recovering neglected notes as criticism in operation, while Ridley commends the analysis of critical vocabulary. But the volume faces significant censure for its narrow focus. Eastman objects to the niggling disapprobation and the indictment of plagiarism, arguing the item-by-item analysis overlooks the unity of the editor's intelligence. Wimsatt describes the study as a dreary compilation lacking imaginative context, suggesting the author overrates the novelty of the findings.
Miller examines Sherbo’s study of Johnson’s editorial process, which analyzes 3,600 notes from the 1765, 1773, and 1778 editions. Sherbo documents Johnson’s heavy reliance on predecessors like Heath and Edwards, claiming the Preface merely restates contemporary thought. While Miller praises Sherbo’s thorough scholarship and his recovery of the neglected Notes as "criticism in operation," he questions the study’s focus on unoriginality. Miller suggests that Johnson’s synthesis of traditional ideas forms a distinct critical system and warns against ignoring the literary merit of Johnson’s prose.
CGV entry 19:103. Review by H. K. Miller of the book by Arthur Sherbo.
Eastman describes Sherbo's "rich harvest" of details concerning Johnson's "halting editorial progress." One-fourth of the notes derive from Johnson's Dictionary, which also provided the foundation for his critical terminology. Eastman censures Sherbo for failing to analyze the "totality" of Johnson's "eminently sensible outlook," arguing Sherbo's "item-by-item analysis" and "niggling disapprobation" overlook the unity of Johnson's intelligence. Eastman particularly objects to the "indictment of Johnson for plagiarism" found within the study.
CGV entry 19:103. Review by Arthur M. Eastman of the book by Arthur Sherbo.
CGV entry 19:103. Review by G. A. Bonnard of the book by Arthur Sherbo.
Ridley reviews Sherbo's monograph, acknowledging the industry in statistically demonstrating Johnson's use of his Dictionary and his indebtedness to previous editors in his Shakespeare notes. Ridley questions the value of the demonstration if Johnson's clarity of explication remains the primary goal. Ridley finds the argument that Johnson's work is more derivative than supposed persuasive but possibly unnecessary, as it does not disturb Johnson's status as a critic. Ridley commends the chapter on Johnson's critical vocabulary but finds the appended essay on The Adventurer marred by misprints and errors in Greek quotations.
CGV entry 19:103.
Wimsatt characterizes Sherbo’s study as a useful but dreary compilation of bibliographical facts and tabulations. He values the appendixes for guiding readers to Johnson’s reading and critical resemblances but finds the discursive chapters lack imaginative context. Wimsatt criticizes Sherbo’s claims of novelty and his failure to adequately acknowledge previous scholars like Young and Hagstrum. While appreciative of the recorded details, he suggests Sherbo overrates the originality of Johnson's notes at the expense of the Preface.
CGV entry 19:103. Review by W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. of the book by Arthur Sherbo.
Tucker analyzes Johnson’s 1751 critique of Lady Macbeth’s 'dun,' 'knife,' and 'blanket' terminology in Rambler No. 168. By comparing Johnson’s own Dictionary definitions with contemporary usage in works by Dryden and Pope, Tucker demonstrates that Johnson viewed these words through the 'dusty spectacles' of eighteenth-century associations with stables and kitchens. Tucker asserts that while Johnson’s strictures have historical justification, his preoccupation with 'low' vocabulary prevented a full surrender to the poetic force of the passage.
This article, featuring observations by Frederick V. Bernard, examines Johnson’s famous claim that he could not bring himself to reread the final scenes of King Lear until editing them. Bernard challenges the interpretation that Johnson suffered a "lapse of memory" or remained unfamiliar with the text due to emotional trauma. He demonstrates that Johnson had read the play "thoroughly" for the Dictionary. Bernard points out that the final meeting of Lear and Cordelia and the play's last hundred lines provided numerous quotations for the Dictionary, including terms such as "fall," "incense," "brand," and "ghost." He argues that these accurately recorded quotations prove Johnson possessed a detailed, technical knowledge of the tragic conclusion, suggesting his earlier remarks about enduring the text should be viewed with scholarly skepticism.
Sanguine Expectation: Dr. Johnson's Shakespeare
Sherbo addresses the discrepancy between Johnson's promise to complete his edition of Shakespeare by Christmas 1757 (from the 1756 Proposals) and its eventual publication in 1765. He posits that Johnson's "sanguine expectation" was likely based on a substantial body of editorial work completed much earlier, possibly before the 1745 Miscellaneous Observations on Macbeth. Sherbo supports this hypothesis by citing nineteen notes across fourteen plays in the 1765 edition where Johnson discusses or retracts early, pre-1756 conjectural emendations (e.g., "When I was younger and bolder I corrected it thus..."). This suggests Johnson had studied and provided commentary for much of the canon long before the 1756 proposals.
Donner provides a linguistic re-evaluation of Macbeth’s "Tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech, specifically challenging Samuel Johnson’s famous interpretation of the opening lines. Johnson argued that the speech reflects Macbeth’s regret over the inopportuneness of the Queen’s death; however, Donner asserts that in Elizabethan English, "should" frequently denoted inevitability ("would certainly have") rather than obligation ("ought to"). By comparing the passage to contemporary usage in Sidney’s Arcadia and the Authorized Version of the Bible, Donner argues that Macbeth is expressing a profound apathy. The central argument is that Macbeth views death not as untimely, but as a mathematical certainty in a meaningless existence where "such a word" (the message of death) was bound to arrive eventually.
Adler disputes the modern critical tendency to view Johnson's statement "he that imagines this may imagine more" as an endorsement of the imagination. Adler argues the context reveals a rationalistic attack on the unities where Johnson employs the phrase to reduce the opposition's argument to a "palpable absurdity." Johnson limits "dramatic illusion" to a minimum, asserting spectators remain "always in their senses" and aware that "the stage is only a stage." Adler maintains Johnson equates uncontrolled imagination with a "calenture of the brains" and "delusion," concluding that Johnson views the imagination as a "necessary evil" rather than a faculty to be exalted in the theater.
CGV entry 19:110. In the 'Preface to Shakespeare'.
Samuel Johnson's Editions of Shakespeare (1765)
Eddy distinguishes the two editions of Johnson's Shakespeare published in 1765, identifying a partial third edition. Using press figures and title-page variations—specifically the addition of T. Longman—the author clarifies the chronology following the October 10th publication. The study analyzes cancels in the first edition and the printing of the separate Preface. Crucially, Eddy rejects the assumption that the second edition lacks revisions, citing specific textual corrections in Johnson's notes which future editors must address.
Maxwell identifies an occurrence of the word 'prescriptive' in Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare (1765) that antedates the O.E.D.'s earliest citation from 1775. Johnson refers to the 'prescriptive veneration' claimed by ancient authors. This usage also precedes the first legal citation of the word by Blackstone in 1766.
Samuel Johnson as a Critic of Shakespeare
His Infinite Variety: Major Shakespearean Criticism Since Johnson
This article, reprinted from the 1765 preface to Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare, identifies the dramatist as a "poet of nature" who provides a "faithful mirrour of manners and of life.
The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare
Clifford provides a detailed overview of Johnson's extensive engagement with Shakespeare, from his early 1745 Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth to the monumental eight-volume edition of 1765. Johnson used Shakespeare as the most-quoted author in his Dictionary, incorporating nearly 8700 citations to illustrate definitions. Although his textual collation lacked the rigor of later scholars like Edmond Malone, Johnson’s Preface and notes remain critical landmarks. Clifford argues that Johnson's "shrewd common sense" allowed him to provide succinct, accurate explications that avoided pedantry. Johnson famously defended Shakespeare's violation of the classical unities, asserting that "the mind is refrigerated by interruption" and that chronological consistency was less vital than psychological truth. While acknowledging Shakespeare’s excellence, Johnson frankly detailed faults, such as a perceived willingness to sacrifice virtue to convenience and a tendency toward "wordy and cumbersome" narration. Clifford concludes that Johnson's practical, lay-reader-oriented approach established a standard for appreciative criticism.
Hardy investigates Johnson's lifelong fondness for romances of chivalry, a passion Johnson himself attributed to causing his "unsettled turn of mind." Citing Boswell's record of Johnson reading Felixmarte of Hircania, Hardy focuses on Johnson's specific engagement with the Spanish romance Don Bellianis of Greece. By comparing Johnson’s 1745 Miscellaneous Observations on Macbeth and his later comments on Absalom and Achitophel with Percy’s manuscript notes, Hardy demonstrates that Johnson quoted the romance from memory, specifically a line about "grating harsh Thunder" that Milton was thought to have borrowed. Percy's note confirmed the source as J. Shurley’s 1683 translation. Hardy reveals that Johnson likely mentally conflated separate episodes from the romance—the horn-blowing knight and the vanishing enchanted castle—an association that influenced his literary criticism and inspired his "memorable comment" on the ending of Dryden's work.
CGV entry 19:122.
The Intellectual Background of Dr. Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare
CGV entry 19:123. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 28, number 9 (March 1968), pages 3649A-3650A.
Shakespeare, Johnson, and the Dramatic 'Unities of Time and Place'
The 'Poet of Nature' and Self-Knowledge: One Aspect of Johnson's Moral Reading of Shakespeare
Hardy explores Johnson's moral reading of Shakespeare, specifically his belief that the drama provides valuable self-knowledge. Johnson, along with contemporaries, valued Shakespeare as the "poet of nature" for his "faithful mirrour of manners and of life," which revealed the "motives of action" and the workings of the human heart. Johnson's notes and his Preface suggest that Shakespeare's work offered a therapeutic antidote to the "dangerous prevalence of imagination," guiding readers to human sentiment and enabling moral self-scrutiny.
The Ghost of Dr. Johnson: L. C. Knights and D. A. Traversi on Hamlet
Grover compares Johnson’s moral criticism, which censured Shakespeare for lacking a clear moral purpose and insisted on showing perfect virtue, with the modern moral criticism of Knights and Traversi on Hamlet. He argues that the contemporary approach focuses on the "maturity" and "sensibility" of the protagonist, making the play an implicit criticism of Hamlet’s mind. Grover contends this method, by focusing on Hamlet's alleged failure to achieve an "adult consciousness" and to face life with affirmative attitudes, transforms tragedy into a study of emotional failings and desires a play Shakespeare did not write.
Bronson examines Johnson's 1765 edition of Shakespeare, disputing the traditional view that the nine-year delay in its completion resulted from "indolence." He argues that Johnson had performed much of the preparatory work while compiling the Dictionary, which served as a "diffused" Shakespeare glossary. The text traces Johnson's editorial principles—historical illustration, reliance on early texts, and restraint in conjecture—while acknowledging his failure to fulfill the promise of a complete textual collation. Bronson situates Johnson's criticism within a "living, working" neoclassicism that prioritized "truth to nature" over rigid adherence to the unities. Johnson's "inspired common sense" justifies Shakespeare's "mingled drama" as a reflection of "sublunary nature." Despite criticizing Shakespeare for sacrificing virtue to convenience, Johnson concludes that the poet's skill in characterization provides a "map of life." Bronson ultimately defends the Preface as an indispensable work of "highest and most difficult originality."
CGV entry 19:127. A reprint of Bronson's Introduction to Volumes 7 and 8 of the Yale Edition.
A Short History of Shakespearean Criticism
Johnson describes Shakespeare as the 'poet of nature' whose drama serves as a faithful 'mirror of life.' He argues that Shakespeare's characters represent 'common humanity' rather than idealized types, which accounts for his enduring relevance across generations. However, Johnson provides a twelve-point indictment of Shakespeare's faults, most notably his 'essential amorality.' He disputes Shakespeare's lack of moral purpose, careless plotting, and addiction to the 'quibble.' Johnson famously vindicates Shakespeare’s use of tragicomedy as a just representation of 'sublunary nature' and rejects the classical unities of time and place, asserting that theatrical spectators remain conscious of the fiction. The text further highlights Johnson's pioneering character analysis, noting his specific observations on figures like Polonius, Falstaff, and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Johnson values Shakespeare for his ability to engage and entertain the mind, providing 'pleasure' even where he fails to 'instruct.'
Fiction, Nature, and Literary Kinds in Johnson's Criticism of Shakespeare
This article, reprinted from Eighteenth-Century Studies, identifies a fundamental contradiction in Johnson’s 1765 Preface to Shakespeare between rationalist universalism and a subterranean nominalism. Krieger explores how Johnson’s early axiom regarding "just representations of general nature" conflicts with his later defense of Shakespeare’s "chaos of mingled purposes and casualties." This tension reveals a transition from a causal system of objective universals to a celebration of the "sublunary" and casual variety of life. Krieger argues that Johnson’s dismissal of "bookish" fictions in favor of immediate observation previews Wordsworth’s naturalism. By examining Johnson’s attack on the unities, Krieger demonstrates how Johnson mediates between art and reality, ultimately finding a "unity in variety" that clears a path for the Coleridgean imagination. Johnson appears as a figure at a critical crossroads, balancing a willed commitment to order against a fearful suspicion of alien, disorderly forces in nature.
CGV entry 19:130. First published in Eighteenth-Century Studies, volume 4 (1970), pages 184–198.
Harrison identifies Johnson as the critic of inspired common sense. He analyzes Johnson’s Preface as a doctrine of just representations of general nature. Harrison notes that Johnson raises intelligible issues, such as the rejection of poetic diction in Macbeth. He argues that Johnson’s approach to Hamlet remains accessible to common sense because he treats the materials as intelligible rather than clinical or pathologically introspective.
CGV entry 19:131. Praises Johnson's "intelligibility" in his commentary on Shakespeare.
Ideas vs: Words: Johnson, Locke, and the Edition of Shakespeare
Middendorf examines the influence of Lockean empiricism on Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare. Middendorf argues that Johnson’s editorial methodology reflects a struggle between 'ideas' (universal truths) and 'words' (arbitrary linguistic signs), a tension central to Locke’s 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding.' The article demonstrates how Johnson uses Lockean principles to justify his preservation of 'vulgar' or common language in Shakespeare, viewing such words as more accurate reflections of human experience than refined, aureate diction. Middendorf highlights Johnson’s distrust of 'speculative emendation,' showing how Johnson prioritizes the 'material evidence' of early texts over the subjective 'judgments' of previous editors like Warburton or Pope. By analyzing the 'Preface to Shakespeare,' Middendorf illustrates Johnson’s conviction that Shakespeare’s greatness lies in his 'adherence to general nature.' Middendorf concludes that Johnson’s editorial work serves as a practical application of his linguistic philosophy, where the lexicographer’s duty is to bridge the gap between abstract concepts and the messy reality of living speech.
Farrelly examines Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare, focusing on how the "judicial and emendatory" notes on Othello reveal his "criticism in operation." Farrelly argues that while the Preface offers general neoclassical views, the specific notes demonstrate Johnson's rising concern for a "reliable text" and "common-sense delineation of character." The essay analyzes Johnson’s defense of Shakespeare against the "abusive criticism" of Rymer and Voltaire, noting his willingness to bend the unities of time and place. Farrelly concludes that Johnson’s "caution, not conjecture" in his notes established a landmark in Shakespearean commentary by prioritizing "naked reason" over pedantic learning.
Sherbo documents Johnson's extensive revisions in the 1773 editions of his Dictionary and Shakespeare. Sherbo estimates the Dictionary contains approximately 16,000 revisions and notes the influence of George Steevens's research on both works. The article highlights Johnson's numerous additions to the Grammar and General Observations. Sherbo concludes that the intellectual labor of revision kept Johnson productively occupied and protected him from the melancholy he feared.
CGV entry 19:135.
Weinbrot acknowledges Stock’s effective placement of Johnson within a mediating role between traditional and innovative Shakespearean criticism. He credits Stock for reconstructing the intellectual milieu through English and French dramatic theory, noting the emphasis on Johnson’s rejection of subjective taste in favor of external consensus. However, Weinbrot criticizes the reliance on rigid "neoclassical" terminology and the neglect of relevant texts like the Drury Lane Prologue. He suggests that Stock’s methodology overlooks the long-standing history of affective aesthetics and commonplaces, ultimately finding the evaluative judgments of eighteenth-century critics somewhat reductive.
CGV entry 19:136. Review by Howard D. Weinbrot of the book by R. D. Stock.
Damrosch calls the book learned and valuable, praising Stock's method of tracing convoluted ideas to establish context rather than hunting out influence. Stock convincingly shows Johnson's attack on decorum rests on the principle of general human truth rather than a post-neoclassical demand for realism.
CGV entry 19:136. Review by Leopold Damrosch, Jr. of the book by R. D. Stock.
Hnatko praises Stock's book as an excellent study for its scrupulous and exhaustive examination of the critical context for Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare. Stock's conclusions affirm the work's established value. Hnatko offers minor criticisms on the rigidity of Stock's categories and the discussion of Johnson's use of "Nature."
CGV entry 19:136. Review by Eugene Hnatko of the book by R. D. Stock.
CGV entry 19:136. A review with reservations by Arthur H. Scouten of the book by R. D. Stock.
Edinger finds Stock's book largely successful, offering a valuable overview supported by firmer scholarship, but he makes four major criticisms. He argues Stock misinterprets Johnson, finding difficulties where none exist, and he criticizes Stock's use of crude categories which distort Johnson's subtle, synthetic thought.
CGV entry 19:136.
Dircks faults Stock's dual objective of using the "Preface" both as a subject of exploration and an interpretive instrument. Dircks acknowledges the strength of Stock's documentation in recreating the critical vitality of the period and his perceptive suggestions regarding Johnson's stance on acting and moral design. But the review concludes that the work fails to engage with the central issues of the "Preface" or respond to provocative modern Johnson scholarship, leaving essential views unchanged.
Some Aspects of Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare
Shakespeare, Pattern of Excelling Nature: Shakespeare Criticism in Honor of America's Bicentennial from the International Shakespeare Association Congress
Johnson, Shakespeare, and the Dyer's Hand
Black examines the "convergence in the styles" of Johnson and Shakespeare, investigating why Johnson's extensive professional connection to the dramatist rarely surfaced in his own creative prose or conversation. Although Johnson used several thousand Shakespearean quotations in his Dictionary, his Rambler and Idler essays contain remarkably few direct citations. Black identifies "opportunities missed" where Johnson's moral essays parallel Shakespearean themes—specifically regarding Angelo in Measure for Measure—without explicit acknowledgement. He argues that Johnson viewed Shakespeare not as a source of "specimen bricks" for literary display but as a complete "well of English" to be grappled with in his editorial work. Black concludes that while Johnson often echoes Shakespearean thought, he consciously avoided "literary gabble" and pedantic quotation to maintain his own persona as a man of practical wisdom rather than a mere "literary man."
CGV entry 19:139. First published in Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society of the North West, volume 8 (1975), pages 5–28.
The Scholar as Satirist: Johnson's Edition of Shakespeare
Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare functions as a satirical apologia and self-defense for his editorial work. Johnson's satirical style, particularly through burlesque, exposes preceding editors as contemptible "Petty Critics" engaged in a mock-heroic battle over minutiae. By contrasting their pride and contention with Shakespeare's sublime genius and his own professed humility and detachment, Johnson elevates his own position as a qualified, true critic, implicitly sharing Shakespeare's eminence and vision.
'Swear by My Sword': A Note in Johnson's Shakespeare
Gray analyzes a unique note in Johnson's edition that explicitly mentions Garrick. Johnson rejects the authority of Warburton and Upton, citing a passage in Brantome suggested by Garrick to explain swearing on the "cross which the old swords always had upon the hilt." Gray finds no such reference in Brantome and suggests Johnson's "remarkable memory was for once at fault," perhaps confusing talking to swords with swearing upon them. Gray observes Johnson's editorial process remained "highly selective" and often relied on "vague recollection."
Samuel Johnson's Text of King Lear: 'Dull Duty' Reassessed
Johnson's edition of King Lear was fully conscientious, despite earlier critics' dismissals. By meticulously comparing his text and notes with his predecessors' and modern editions, the analysis shows Johnson undertook the "dull duty of an editor" seriously. Johnson was judiciously conservative in conjecture, restored numerous quarto lines omitted in the folio, and was the first to accurately and fully annotate the restorations. His work, superior to his contemporaries', established a precedent for textual conservatism and critical insight that advanced Shakespearean scholarship.
Johnson's Shakespeare and the Dramatic Criticism in the Lives of the English Poets
Sherbo argues that Johnson’s reputation as a literary critic rests primarily on his 1765 edition of Shakespeare and his subsequent Lives of the English Poets. He asserts that Johnson’s earlier work on Shakespeare provided a "ready-made body of opinion and a fully tried critical vocabulary" which he applied to lesser dramatists. Sherbo identifies consistent moral criteria in Johnson’s evaluations, noting he censures works by Otway and Gay for lacking "moral purpose," a phrase identical to his critique of Shakespeare. The article traces verbal similarities in Johnson’s assessments of Dryden’s "comprehensive" mind and Congreve’s "clash of wit" across both major projects. Sherbo highlights Johnson’s evolving stance on poetic justice and the unities, concluding that the Shakespeare edition "bridged the gap" between his initial inspections of English drama and his final biographical essays. Johnson maintained his "smaller prejudices" and larger critical issues throughout his career.
Johnson and the Pythagorean Scale of Numbers
The author critiques existing editorial annotations for Johnson’s reference to the "Pythagorean scale of numbers" in the Preface to Shakespeare. Previous editors, including Bronson and Sherbo, cite Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but the author finds no relevance in the Greek text or English translations to Johnson's specific phrasing. The text highlights the lack of clarity regarding Johnson’s intended meaning of the "scale" as an illustration of absolute, demonstrable knowledge versus relative literary knowledge.
CGV entry 19:144. On Johnson's references in the Preface to his Shakespeare edition.
Psychoanalysis and the Question of the Text
How Can Dr. Johnson's Remarks on Cordelia's Death Add to My Own Response?
Holland applies a transactive model of literary response to analyze Johnson's rejection of Cordelia's death in Shakespeare's King Lear. Using third-phase psychoanalytic identity theory, Holland defines Johnson's "identity theme" as a precarious balance between an "ebullient temperament" and a "compelling need for order and finality." The article argues that Johnson's preference for Nahum Tate's happy ending stems from a psychological defense against "chimeras" of insanity and unreality that threatened his own mental stability. Holland interprets Johnson's critical stance as a judicial performance, where the "publick" acts as a jury to stabilize "empirical behavior" against the "uncontrolled thought" of the imagination. By comparing his own "absurdist" reading with Johnson's "neoclassic" requirements for poetic justice, Holland demonstrates how discordant responses enrich textual understanding. The analysis concludes that Johnson's "shock" reveals a functional relationship between his fear of madness and his demand for a "centering authority" in both literature and life.
Coursen examines Johnson's objection to Macbeth's classical allusion to Mark Antony and Caesar ("My Genius is rebuk'd; as it is said, Mark Antony's was by Caesar"), which Johnson initially suspected was a player's insertion. Coursen ultimately agrees that the line, though possibly genuine, is out of character for Macbeth, a warrior not characterized as well-read. He argues that this specific reference illuminates deeper affinities between Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, noting that both Macbeth and Antony are great warriors who fall from an heroic context, possess profound self-knowledge of their fate, and are maneuvered by their women in conscious defiance of their world's rules.
CGV entry 19:146.
CGV entry 19:147. Distributed through Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands. A second edition was published in 1985.
Viola: Dr. Johnson's 'Excellent Schemer'
CGV entry 19:148. In 'Twelfth Night'.
Some Semi-Apocryphal Additions to Johnson's Notes on Hamlet
Lill examines the striking kinship and provocative differences between Johnson and Hamlet, noting that while both share concerns for futurity and procrastination, Johnson maintains a disconcerting editorial restraint in his Hamlet commentaries. The analysis contrasts Johnson’s neutral gloss of the 'To be, or not to be' soliloquy with his vigorous, fearful responses to death recorded by Boswell. Lill argues that Johnson’s reserve stems from an antipathy toward Hamlet’s character, particularly the prince’s feigned madness and his 'too horrible' desire to contrive the damnation of Claudius. By taming imagination with reason, Johnson distances himself from Hamlet’s 'extravagant imagination' and destructive casuistry to uphold a steady moral path.
Whitehead suggests that a remark attributed to Johnson by Nichols—telling girls they could 'stroke' him because he was 'tame'—is an unperceived reference to Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2. In the play, Falstaff describes Pistol as a 'tame cheater' whom one may 'stroke... as gently as a puppy greyhound'. Whitehead posits that Johnson was consciously or unconsciously echoing Falstaff’s language.
The Completest Mode: I. A. Richards and the Continuity of English Literary Criticism
Complexity and the Doctrine of Propriety in Johnson's Shakespeare Criticism
Needham examines the "continuity" between Samuel Johnson and modern critics like I. A. Richards by focusing on the psychological depth of Johnson’s Shakespearean analysis. He disputes the view of Johnson as a literal-minded moralist, arguing instead that Johnson’s demand for "propriety"—language and behavior suited to nature—is a measure of organic complexity. Johnson values Shakespeare for providing "just representations of general nature" and "the stability of truth," yet Needham highlights Johnson's keen awareness of Shakespeare's "complexity of sentiment." He notes that Johnson’s critique of the "unities" emphasizes the "lived experience" of the audience over abstract rules. The text features salient analysis of Johnson’s remark that "Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men," illustrating a preference for psychological realism over stylized drama. Needham demonstrates that Johnson’s insistence on "moral purpose" is not a call for simple didacticism but a requirement that literature reflect the intricate moral architecture of reality.
The Comedy of the Graveyard Scene in Hamlet: Samuel Johnson Mediates Between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries
From Preface to Practice: Samuel Johnson's Editorship of Shakespeare
Johnston evaluates Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare, arguing that his editorial performance aligns with the principles of "candour" established in his Preface. By comparing Johnson’s treatment of King Lear and The Tempest with earlier editors, Johnston shows that Johnson avoided the "pompous nastiness" of predecessors like Warburton. Johnston demonstrates that Johnson protected earlier commentators from their own errors and prioritized the reader’s immersion in the drama over intrusive annotation. The analysis concludes that Johnson’s objective scholarship and professional etiquette fundamentally improved the standards of Shakespearean editing for subsequent generations.
The Witches in Macbeth: Samuel Johnson's Notion of Selected Empathy
Johnson’s commentary on the witches in Macbeth provides a neglected psychological interpretation centered on the tragic protagonist's enchantment. Johnson's notes stress the witches’ power to exploit Macbeth's courage and conscience rather than his ambition, making the play a psychological study. This view stems from Johnson's concept of selective empathy, where the audience never fully suspends disbelief but rather imagines an analogue to the feigned evil, remaining at one remove from the play's events.
'Several Persons Tossed and Gored': Johnson and Early Editors of Shakespeare
Review of the Faculty (Humanities and Social Science Section) of the Electro-Communications University
A Note on Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare
Samuel Johnson and Nahum Tate: Adaptation or Analogue?
Weinbrot explores potential links between Johnson’s "Dissertation on Poetry" in Rasselas and Nahum Tate’s preface to The Loyal General. He identifies conceptual parallels regarding the poet's need for comprehensive memory, knowledge of statecraft, and technical sciences. While acknowledging these may be accidental resemblances, Weinbrot suggests Johnson's sympathetic view of Tate and his own wide reading likely facilitated the transmutation of Tate's ideas. The note emphasizes Johnson’s ability to recall and rearrange Congenial materials from minor literary figures.
Introduction; proposals for printing, by subscription, the dramatick works of William Shakespeare, 1756; Preface, 1765; Notes on Shakespeare's plays; The tempest; A midsummer-night's dream; The two gentlemen of Verona; Measure for measure; The merchant of Venice; As you like it; Love's labour's lost; The winter's tale; Twelfth night; The merry wives of Windsor; The taming of the shrew; Much ado about nothing; All's well that ends well; King John; Richard II; 1 Henry IV; 2 Henry IV; Henry V; 1 Henry VI; 2 Henry VI; 3 Henry VI; Richard III; Henry VIII; King Lear; Timon of Athens; Titus Andronicus; Macbeth; Coriolanus; Julius Caesar; Antony and Cleopatra; Cymbeline; Troilus and Cressida; Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet; and Othello. Samuel Johnson's Proposals for an edition of Shakespeare, his 'Preface to Shakespeare, ' and selections from his notes to Shakespeare's plays are here reprinted from Johnson on Shakespeare (The Yale edition of Works of Samuel Johnson, VII-VIII, ed. Arthur Sherbo, 1968)
The History and Proceedings of the House of Commons from the Restoration to the Present Time
A compilation marketing collected accounts of Parliamentary Debates. This work and its companion, The History and Proceedings of the House of Lords, From the Restoration in 1660, to the Present Time (1742–43), edited by Ebenezer Timberland, drew upon magazine coverage to produce collected accounts purporting to be official versions. Caesar Ward and William Sandby announced plans in 1744 for a similar Parliamentary History of England to run from "the first Institutions" to the Restoration. A Collection of the Parliamentary Debates in England, from the Year 1668 to the Present Time (1741–42), produced by John Torbuck, was a rival version. The multi-vol. work The Parliamentary History of England (1806–20), edited by William Cobbett, covers the period up to 1803.
CGV entry 20:2. A multi-volume work covering various years. Volume 12 was published in 1742 by Chandler. Subsequent volumes covering 1741–1742 (published 1743 by Chandler) and 1742-1743 (published 1744 by Sandby) followed.
The History and Proceedings of the House of Lords, from the Restoration ... to the Present Time
The History and Proceedings of the House of Lords, from the Restoration in 1660, to the Present Time (1742–43), edited by Ebenezer Timberland, is a multi-vol. compilation of collected Parliamentary Debates. The work was part of a commercial rivalry among booksellers to publish accounts of Parliamentary proceedings, and Timberland’s compilation appeared alongside Richard Chandler's counterpart work covering the House of Commons (1742–44), and rivaled John Torbuck’s A Collection of the Parliamentary Debates in England (1741–42). Reports in such works generally exhibited great caution, sometimes identifying speakers vaguely, such as "A noble Duke stood up, and said." Johnson contributed to reporting of the Lords’ proceedings indirectly: he wrote the "Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia" for the Gentleman's Magazine (1738–44), which covered both Houses, and these magazine accounts served as source material for collected works like Timberland's. Johnson was the sole reporter for the Gentleman’s Magazine from 1741 until approximately the end of 1743. William Cobbett's The Parliamentary History of England (36 vols., 1806–20) later compiled debates from various sources, superseding earlier collections.
CGV entry 20:3. Volume 7 was published in 1742. A subsequent volume covering 1741–1742 was published in 1743.
A Collection of the Parliamentary Debates in England from the Year MDCLXVIII to the Present Time
A Collection of the Parliamentary Debates in England, from the Year 1668 to the Present Time (1741–42), produced by John Torbuck, is a multi-vol. rival compilation of collected Parliamentary Debates. The compilation drew upon magazine coverage, including reports containing Johnson’s material published in the Gentleman's Magazine (1739–42), and marketed them as ostensibly official versions of parliamentary history. This collection was one of several contemporary rival efforts to compile these historical proceedings. Torbuck's publication preceded and was superseded by extensive later collections, notably William Cobbett's 36-vol. Parliamentary History of England (1806–20), which compiled debates from various sources
CGV entry 20:4. An 'Impartial History' covering 1741–1742 was published by B. Cowse in 1743.
[Cobbett's] Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Year 1803
CGV entry 20:5. Volume 11 covers 1739–1741; Volume 12 covers 1741-1743.
Published anonymously in London on January 17, 1770. Cadell brought out four editions in 1770. An unauthorized Dublin edition also circulated. Johnson’s political pamphlets were frequently criticized immediately upon publication. In 1776, Cadell and Strahan collected the work into Political Tracts, a volume for which Johnson performed authorial revisions. The False Alarm was included in subsequent posthumous collected editions of Johnson’s writings, such as the 1787 Works by Sir John Hawkins and the 1825 Oxford Works. The piece is contained in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, volume 10, Political Writings (1977).
Views Johnson as marching against the "Goliah of sedition," employing the "simple, but impenetrable, armour of truth and philosophy." He praises Johnson's keen and irresistible reasoning, noting he avoids relying on legal precedents. This favorable assessment of the text, which is considered respectfully, aligns with the periodical's general support for the Tory administration during this time.
CGV entry 20:6. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
Observes that Johnson, a "genius of the highest eminence in the science of morals," breaks his lengthy silence to enter the field of political controversy. The critique obliquely references his controversial pension, noting he is gratefully supported by the government he defends. The review positions the work among competing pamphlets discussing the contentious Wilkes case and the Middlesex election. It implies a divergence from his moral writings, though it affirms his strength of style.
On the Notorious Ingratitude of Pensioner J—n
An Enquiry Whether the Principles of Hobbs Are Not Adopted by the Present Administration
CGV entry 20:8. Johnson is censured as a Hobbesian.
The Crisis: In Answer to the False Alarm
One of three direct responses to Johnson’s The False Alarm. The publication offers a constitutional argument against Johnson's defense of the ministry, asserting that electors' liberty is antecedent to the Commons' power. The author fiercely challenges Johnson’s legal philosophy of "political necessity," arguing it endangers liberty. The tract also castsigates the government's stance toward America and rebukes Johnson for calling Montesquieu "fanciful." This pamphlet contributes to subsequent radical publications, preparing the way for Moore's 1776 tract.
CGV entry 20:10. Attributed to Philip Rosenhagen.
This political poem defends the British monarchy and Samuel Johnson against the "pretended patriotism" of John Wilkes and William Beckford. The author characterizes the contemporary political climate as a "delirium" driven by "Self, the grand mover," rather than true Roman virtue. A significant portion of the text is a panegyric on Johnson, describing him as a "nobly singular, immortal man" who remained steadfast in "virtue’s plan" despite "cruel straits" and the "snarl" of envy. The poet explicitly supports Johnson’s The False Alarm, asserting it flowed from his conscience, and justifies his royal pension as an "equal honour" to both subject and King. Conversely, Wilkes is depicted as an "impious mind" and a "venal knave" whose followers are "insects" and "babbling parrots." The work warns of the "dire effects of civil arms" and "modern Cromwells," urging Britons to return to a "reason's happy plan" and respect for the sovereign.
CGV entry 20:11. Anti-Wilkes, pro-Johnson. Sometimes attributed to Percival Stockdale.
printed for E. & C. Dilly in the Poultry, and J. Ridley in St. James's-Street
The Constitution Defended, and Pensioner Exposed; in Remarks on the False Alarm
Responds to Johnson's False Alarm. Scott's Defence challenges Johnson's position on the Middlesex election, arguing that the electors' liberty is antecedent to the power of the Commons. The title page explicitly targets Johnson's royal pension, quoting London. Scott registers astonishment at Johnson's degrading depiction of petitioners. The pamphlet, published by the Dilly brothers, adopts a tone of "respectful regret."
Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
CGV entry 20:14. A hostile anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
CGV entry 20:15. Political attack on Johnson.
A Refutation of a Pamphlet called Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
This pamphlet, published anonymously in 1771, was written to answer Johnson's Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands. The author, an Opposition sympathizer who calls himself "A Patriotick Author," ironically dedicates the work to Johnson. It attacks Johnson, labeling him "the literary drudge of a faction." The author argues that Johnson's anti-war sentiments could only be defended by a Tory or Jacobite. The pamphlet attempts to clearly refute Johnson's principal arguments concerning Britain's conduct in the Falkland Islands crisis.
CGV entry 20:17. A general condemnation of Johnson (called "the Idler"), but principally political.
[Attack on Johnson as author of 'Tullius' letters in Public Advertiser]
[Anecdote of Lord Lyttelton and Johnson]
Highlights the work's critical focus on popular political claims, reflecting Johnson's general political principles. Johnson advises against credulity and warns against allowing oneself to be "disturbed by incredibilities." The core argument insists that a "true 'Lover of his country' . . . sounds no alarm when there is no enemy."
CGV entry 20:20. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
Judges the author's political writings as "injurious to the interests of truth, and to the common rights of human nature." The review only commends the writing for its "style." The appraisal implies that Johnson sacrifices his scholarly impartiality for political partisanship.
Causes of the Present Discontents and Commotion in America
Johnson asserts in his pamphlet that "he is no Patriot who justifies the ridiculous claims of American usurpation." He argues that those accepting protection must stipulate obedience and that Parliament may establish taxation as it may enact capital punishment. The text disputes these positions as suiting "the most arbitrary government" and likens them to the exactions of the Stuart monarchs. The writer dismisses Johnson's argument on representation as "unworthy of notice" and characterizes the pamphlet as a "task" lacking the "masterly strokes of genius" found in his genuine works.
CGV entry 20:21. Attacks 'The Patriot'.
A 1775 pamphlet by Macaulay appears at the outbreak of the American War of Independence. Aligned with her radical republican principles, the pamphlet engages the crisis of 1775. Macaulay, known for her ultra-Whig History of England, is a prominent supporter of the American colonists. Johnson, in his 1775 tract Taxation no Tyranny, directly references her political activity, describing her as "a female patriot."
CGV entry 20:23.
Highlights the severe, yet legally sound, endorsement of absolute parliamentary sovereignty. The text insists that government is absolute, defining privileges and benefits that trickle downward. It focuses on the pamphlet's eloquence and reasoning, positioning it among competing political discussions.
CGV entry 20:25. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
This vitriolic critique assails Johnson for his defense of the British administration against the American Congress. It describes his work as a hasty production born of political corruption and Jacobitism. The reviewer disputes Johnson's claim that parliamentary interest seldom injures the public and mocks his reduction of American colonial legislatures to the status of parish vestries. The text alleges that Johnson has abandoned his previous commitment to liberty in exchange for his government pension.
The reviewer, likely Edward Bancroft, stated Johnson's "great abilities" were misapplied to this political controversy, describing the work as a hireling effort supporting the administration. The review lamented Johnson’s betrayal of "candour, of justice, and of truth," using terms found elsewhere that criticized his language as "grossly indecent" when discussing Americans and Congress. This review articulated the prevailing harsh criticism.
CGV entry 20:25.
The reviewer identifies the anonymous pamphlet as Johnson’s based on his "decided mannerism" and "rotundity of period." The critique characterizes Johnson’s style as a "monotony of cadence" that uses "monstrous finery of diction" to express simple truths. Specifically, the author mocks Johnson’s opening axioms as a "parade of words" and a "wretched fee-saw" of antithesis. Turning to the political argument, the reviewer disputes Johnson’s claim that denying the right of taxation is equivalent to denying all legislative authority. Most severely, the text condemns Johnson’s suggestion that "notorious" crimes require no formal trial, arguing that such a principle strikes at the root of the "Grand Palladium of British Liberty," the trial by jury. The reviewer suggests this "pompous politician" maintains such dangerous maxims merely to justify the "wages of prostitution" received through his government pension.
"From amongst a Multitude, who, when they oppose, may hope to foil you in political Engagements, there infinitesimal Champions will be certainly arise, whose Entrance within the venal Lists will be succeeded by your Defeat. To that Mercy which ought to follow Victory, it is not possible that you are entitled, yet you will find it amidst the Warmth which is so inseparably united with the Detestation of the Man, who having once appeared with Public Virtue at his Side, is now rejoiced to wield a feeble Weapon in the Cause of Public Vice!"
CGV entry 20:26. A comment on 'Taxation No Tyranny'. Reprinted in many newspapers.
[Letter attacking Taxation No Tyranny]
To the Printer of the London Evening Post
Tribunus presents a scathing review of Johnson’s Taxation no Tyranny, characterizing the work as a monstrous offspring of bigoted Jacobitism and audacity. The reviewer disputes Johnson’s political arguments, labeling him a pensioned slave and literary cannibal who uses turgid phraseology to subvert established principles of freedom. Tribunus takes particular issue with Johnson’s dismissal of colonial grievances as a yelp of liberty, arguing instead that such rhetoric merely serves the interests of a despotic administration. The review challenges Johnson’s call for coercive vengeance against the Americans and mocks his status as an implacable advocate for state violence. By identifying Johnson as a savage snarler and a morose Caliban, Tribunus frames the pamphlet not as a serious legal defense, but as an insolent affront to law, justice, and humanity.
Taxation No Tyranny, Candidly Considered
Regulus offers a scathing review of a pamphlet that supports the doctrines found in Taxation No Tyranny. This critique attacks the anonymous writer for praising the character of the Scottish nation while simultaneously admitting that nineteen out of twenty Scots oppose America and approve of every ministerial measure. Regulus disputes the notion that Scottish support for royal power constitutes a minor drawback to their national character, instead labeling it a gross defect of public principle. The review identifies Johnson as a "Scotch patriot" and "the Thrale" to suggest he and his supporters use flattery to curry favor with the crown while betraying British freedom. Regulus concludes that the Scottish nation treacherously acquiesces to tyranny for the sake of government emolument.
CGV entry 20:30. An attack, continued in the issue of May 2-4.
Casca delivers a scathing indictment of the British government, specifically targeting Lord North’s administration as a "Banditti" in confederacy against national liberty. The text characterizes the current parliament as a corrupt body governed by "Treasury bribes" and the "dictatorial nod" of Lord Bute. A significant portion of the poem is dedicated to a critique of Johnson, whom the author labels a "vile Tory" and a "hired knave." Casca specifically attacks Johnson’s pamphlet Taxation no Tyranny, mocking his assertion that "whatever They [Kings] and Heav’n inflict, is right." The author disputes Johnson’s "impudence" in suggesting that subjects are bound to submit even to "wanton slaughter" or "famine." Furthermore, the text defends the Americans against the "Bill of Famine" (the Restraining Acts) and warns the ministry that continued tyranny will result in the "stern Lion" of England rising to treat "pale Tyrants" as they have treated men.
CGV entry 20:32. A verse which includes a long reply to 'Taxation No Tyranny'.
[Mock news report of Johnson's being hanged in effigy at Salem, Mass.]
CGV entry 20:33. After the receipt of 'Taxation No Tyranny'.
An Answer to a Pamphlet, entitled Taxation no Tyranny: Addressed to the Author and to Persons in Power
One of several hostile replies. It represents the immediate and “explosively hostile” public reception to Johnson’s political tract, appearing within a few weeks of its publication. Almon later labels Johnson and others who defended the government's measures as "hired pens" who mislead the nation into supporting the "war of felony and suicide" in America.
printed for J. Donaldson, Corner of Arundel Street, in the Strand
An Appendix to a Letter to Dr. Shebbeare. To which are added, Some Observations on a Pamphlet, entitled, Taxation no Tyranny: In which the Sophistry of that Author's Reasoning is detected
Towers' Appendix (1775) attacked Johnson's ally, Dr. John Shebbeare, a "pensioned parasite." It defended Whig supporters of liberty (like King William and Algernon Sidney) and Protestant Dissenters against Shebbeare's critiques, highlighting the era's fierce political and religious pamphlet wars.
The review weaponizes the work to allege the author's political apostasy and inconsistency. The satire, originally attacking the Hanoverians and Walpole, is reprinted with an ironic dedication. The underlying focus is the apparent conflict between the satire's Jacobite politics and the author's pension.
CGV entry 20:37. A savage review, possibly by William Kenrick, of the 1775 edition of the book by Samuel Johnson.
The Pamphlet, entitled 'Taxation no Tyranny,' Candidly Considered, and it's Arguments, and Pernicious Doctrines, Exposed and Refuted
This anonymous critique regretted Johnson’s involvement in political controversy. It stated his style was improved, but his arguments were delivered with an "excess of confidence" unsupported by "any fact or authority." The work suggested Johnson merely repeated dangerous, fundamental positions previously advanced by other writers.
Resistance No Rebellion: In Answer to Doctor Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny
This pamphlet counters Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny, but its primary focus is demonstrating that John Wesley's pro-government tract, A Calm Address to the American Colonies, plagiarizes Johnson's work. This argument highlights the immediate, extensive, and controversial political impact of Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny upon its publication, confirming it serves as the foundation for arguments defending British colonial policy.
Resistance No Rebellion: In Which the Right of the British Parliament to Tax the American Colonies Is Fully Considered
Tthis pamphlet joins the intense backlash against Johnson’s political tract, Taxation No Tyranny, which defends the constitutional right of Parliament to tax the colonies. The author explicitly disputes Johnson’s argument, asserting that resistance is not rebellion when people face oppression. This work is part of the nearly eighty attacks launched against Johnson's pamphlet, challenging his foundation of "parliamentary omnicompetence."
"Sincerus" addresses the King to criticize the Ministry's harsh American policy, arguing it is bungling, weak, and will hasten the Colonies' inevitable independence. The writer asserts that taxation without representation is unconstitutional and that the Americans are justified in their resistance, as they act upon the natural human principle of self-preservation against oppression. Sincerus challenges the notion of absolute supreme power (Johnson's argument), arguing that government is only legitimate if it promotes the people's happiness, and resistance is right when it prevents greater misery. He urges the King to make a dignified, necessary retraction.
CGV entry 20:41. In part, a reply to 'Taxation No Tyranny'.
Taxation, Tyranny: Addressed to Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
This rebuttal to Taxation No Tyranny rejects Johnson’s assertion of Parliament’s absolute authority to tax unrepresented American colonies, equating his defense of taxation with tyranny. The pamphlet was part of a swift "flood of attacking pamphlets" representing the anti-ministerial, pro-American opposition viewpoint, directly challenging Johnson's political alignment and personal integrity.
printed for the author; & sold by W. Flexney, Holborn
Tyranny Unmasked: An Answer to a Late Pamphlet entitled Taxation No Tyranny
This anonymous attack denounced the pamphlet's core assertion—"Taxation is no Tyranny"—as "absurd," "daring," and insulting to common understanding. It accused Johnson of attempting to disseminate "Tory-doctrines." The author feared Johnson’s great authority would grant unwarranted influence to these "straggling thoughts," confirming opponents that America was "unjustly dealt with."
Wesley's argues in favor of the English government's legal right to tax the American colonies, intending to calm the "flame of malice and rage against the King." The work extensively borrows, or plagiarizes, arguments almost verbatim from Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny. Though critics like Toplady accused Wesley of "gross plagiarism," Johnson did not complain, noting that Wesley's support confirmed his own opinion. Wesley later addressed charges of political fickleness by issuing a revised edition.
CGV entry 20:45. Largely "cribbed" from 'Taxation No Tyranny'.
An Old Fox Tarr'd and Feather'd: Occasion'd by What Is Called Mr. John Wesley's Calm Address to Our American Colonies
A fierce excoriation of Wesley, who had recently published a work targeting the American colonies. Wesley's piece was copied, almost verbatim, from Johnson's political treatise, Taxation No Tyranny, which argued against the colonies. This controversial use of Johnson's material led critics to link Wesley with Johnson in the press.
CGV entry 20:46. By "an Hanoverian".
printed for W. Strahan; & T. Cadell in the Strand
Political Tracts: Containing, The False Alarm; Falkland's Islands; The Patriot; and, Taxation No Tyranny
Published in 1776 by W. Strahan and T. Cadell. It collected Johnson’s four major pamphlets: The False Alarm (1770), Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’s Islands (1771), The Patriot (1774), and Taxation no Tyranny (1775). Johnson performed authorial revisions for this volume, which featured a Claudian epigraph on the title page. Priced at four shillings in boards, the collection was used by Johnson for gift-giving in 1776. The tracts were later collected in Sir John Hawkins's 1787 Works and the 1825 Oxford Works. The Political Tracts are contained in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, volume 10, Political Writings, edited by Donald J. Greene (1977).
CGV entry 20:47.
The Sixteenth Ode of the Third Book of Horace Imitated: With a dedication to ... the Lord N—h [North]
This imitation of Horace is a political satire that targets Johnson's Toryism and his relationship with the government led by Lord North. The pamphlet features a dedication, signed S—l J—n, which impersonates Johnson, suggesting he is a government hireling dependent on a pension. Such satires were common, often contrasting Johnson’s early radicalism with his later defense of the Hanoverian monarchy.
CGV entry 20:48. A political satire; the dedication is signed "S–l J–n."
An Essay Upon the King's Friends, with an Account of Some Discoveries Made in Italy, and Found in a Virgil, Concerning the Tories
Addressing Johnson as the "greatest personage in the literary world," this text employs a satiric, Montaignesque style to defend the monarch and his supporters against colonial rebellion. The writer aligns with the "sentiments" expressed in Taxation no Tyranny, asserting that Johnson "clearly demonstrated" the delegate's supremacy over the constituent. The work frames the American colonies as "damnatis" or "convicts" and advocates for the King to "draw the sword of empire" to "stab rebellion to the heart." Through a series of philological "discoveries" in a purported Herculaneum manuscript of Virgil, the writer parodies classical scholarship—specifically the work of Trapp and Dryden—to mock political opponents. The narrative characterizes the "petulant" Gordon and "libertine" Locke as distributors of "poisons" while positioning Johnson as a "very great friend to his King."
CGV entry 20:49. To Dr. S–l J–n, a burlesque of 'Marmor Norfolciense'. First published in 1776.
[Report of John Wilkes's speech in House of Commons attacking Johnson and other pensioned writers]
Plain Dealer’s polemical letter disputes the legitimacy of arbitrary coercion and the "Scotch doctrine" of rapine and murder allegedly infecting the British government. The letter identifies an unnamed "Tory slave" and "Caliban of the Scotch junto" as a "man of letters" who sacrifices public liberty to the will of administration. This figure's promotion of subjection rather than law betrays a lack of "dignity of human nature." The political commentary links the loss of America and the West Indies to the influence of these "slaves of this complexion" who view liberty as a "mere fantastical idea." By asserting that "Gunpowder and bayonets can never make good subjects," the letter advocates for a return to government founded on "justice and kindness" rather than the "butcher's task" of violent repression.
CGV entry 20:52. An attack on Sandwich, Shebbeare, Johnson, etc.
The Flames of Newgate; or, The New Ministry
This mock-heroic political satire depicts Jupiter summoning a celestial synod of British "Gods," including Chatham, Alfred, and Elizabeth, to address Britain's decline under "Boreas" (Lord North). Upon Chatham’s intercession, Jupiter sends the Apostle Paul and a female angel to London to install a new ministry. The celestial messengers endure various indignities: the angel is decoyed into a brothel by "Twitcher" (Lord Sandwich), and Paul is arrested for debt by "Shylock" and imprisoned in Newgate by "Minos" (Lord Mansfield). Paul eventually incites the "Demon of Superstition" to burn Newgate, facilitating their escape. The poem concludes with the Holy Ghost inspiring George III to dismiss the North administration in favor of Rockingham and Fox. The text offers scathing critiques of contemporaries, describing Johnson as a "Magog of Critics" and "learned brute" whose "memory must stink to future times" for his "sacrilegious" treatment of Milton and his "literary tricks."
CGV entry 20:53. Badini's authorship is stated in the European Magazine, volume 2 (July 1782), pages 51-53.
B. C. examines a passage in Boswell’s Life of Johnson where Boswell enters a 'solemn protest' against Johnson’s opposition to the slave trade. Boswell attributes Johnson’s views to 'prejudice, and imperfect or false information' and defends the trade as a 'status which in all ages God has sanctioned.' B. C. highlights Boswell’s 'overweening confidence' and 'short-sightedness,' noting that the abolition Boswell termed a 'wild and dangerous attempt' became an 'historical fact.' The text links Boswell’s rhetoric to contemporary opponents of emancipation who use 'the same weapons' to 'mislead the mind' and 'harden the heart.'
CGV entry 20:56. See also a reply by "An Abolitionist" in the same journal (May 1825), page 293.
Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan
[Notes and fragments of an unpublished reply to Taxation No Tyranny]
Moore records several significant interactions and points of comparison between Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Samuel Johnson. The text notes that Sheridan's 1771 translation of Aristaenetus was initially "fathered on Mr. Johnson" by critics who believed they recognized his distinct style. Moore highlights Sheridan’s refusal to allow his wife to perform in public, an act of "pride and delicacy" that earned Johnson’s specific praise. Most notably, Moore examines Sheridan’s 1775 plan to write a political answer to Johnson’s Taxation no Tyranny. Although the response remained unfinished, Moore preserves fragments of Sheridan’s critiques, which describe Johnson as a "learned man" who became an "eleemosynary politician" whose pamphlets were "trifling and insincere" due to his government pension. Sheridan particularly disputes Johnson’s "slavish doctrine" that subjects are born consenting to their government. Despite this intended hostility, Johnson later proposed Sheridan for the Literary Club, consistently praising his character and genius.
CGV entry 20:57. Additional extracts from the manuscript are given in Walter Sichel's 'Sheridan' (1909).
[Report by Thomas Cooper, of South Carolina, of a conversation with Johnson concerning his political views]
A biographical notice of Thomas Cooper preserves his reminiscence of a political conversation with Johnson. Challenging a characterization of Johnson as a bigot, Cooper reports Johnson's explicit rejection of the "jure divino of kings." Johnson identifies himself as a monarchist based on his belief that monarchy is "the most conducive to the happiness and safety of the people," while simultaneously asserting that "every people have the right to change their government" if it fails to serve the public interest. The text also includes a brief mention of Johnson in relation to the Chevalier Taylor.
Identifies a strongly marked vein of Radicalism underlying Johnson’s High Church and monarchical principles. Hill assembles evidence of Johnson’s opposition to slavery, his pity for Ireland, and his hatred of war and conquest. Johnson argued that a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization and maintained the lawfulness of rebellion against enormous abuse. The text highlights his inflexible dignity and assertion of the natural equality of mankind, proving that Johnson's humanity consistently superseded his Tory prejudices.
Sargeaunt disputes Macaulay’s characterization of Johnson as a 'bigoted Tory,' arguing his political stance was 'too abstract and too conventional to be quite genuine.' The text demonstrates that while Johnson supported Tory theory, his practice—such as his admiration for Walpole, his friendship with Whigs like Taylor and Burke, and his respect for Non-conformists like Baxter—often aligned with Whig principles. Sargeaunt identifies Johnson’s profound 'disbelief in the power of government' to cure human endurance as the root of his apparent indifference. He characterizes the pamphlet Taxation no Tyranny as 'hopelessly beside the mark' due to this indifference rather than bigotry. Johnson is presented as a 'consistent' figure whose life transcended rigid party labels.
Johnson’s Toryism was based on skepticism of "political quacks" and "political nostrums." He was a practical Tory, not a sentimental Jacobite, valuing "social order" above abstract "political liberty." He viewed politics with "profound disbelief" in reformative theories, prioritizing stability, common sense, and subordination.
CGV entry 20:60. Reprinted from Bookman (1898).
CGV entry 20:62. On Johnson as a pacifist, etc.
Haynes explores Johnson’s 'negative ideal' of political and individual liberty, which reposed on a 'distaste for flatulent verbiage and catchwords.' Johnson viewed liberty as 'good only in so far as it produces private liberty' and remained largely indifferent to forms of government, believing that 'mankind will not bear' the long-term abuse of power. The text highlights Johnson’s 'violent prejudice' against American settlers—asking 'how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?'—and his conviction that 'every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has the right to knock him down for it.'
Russell disputes the biographical assumption that Johnson remained a passive observer during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. He highlights a "singular and unexplained gap" in Johnson’s correspondence and literary output between 1745 and 1746, noting that the Gentleman's Magazine contains nothing from his pen during this interval. Russell argues that Johnson's aggressive physical nature, his "bitter animosity for the Hanoverians," and his recorded praise of the rebellion as a "noble attempt" indicate a likely personal involvement. He analyzes Johnson's mysterious acquisition of a Stewart letter and his lifelong protective surveillance of Levet, a former Paris waiter, as efforts to suppress "dangerous knowledge" of treasonable activities. Russell cites the testimony of Croker and Hazlitt to support the theory that Johnson's possession of a musket, sword, and belt were not for the militia but were "sacred relics" of his service to the Stuart cause.
O'Brien examines Johnson’s sporadic engagements with economic theory, contrasting a lack of formal study with the revolutionary work of Smith. Despite personal animosity, Johnson defended the philosophical necessity of trade theory while remaining largely ignorant of the Wealth of Nations. O'Brien analyzes Johnson’s defense of the corn bounty and Mandeville-influenced justifications for luxury as drivers of industry. The text highlights Johnson’s preference for agriculture and Malthusian observations on population. O'Brien characterizes Johnson’s economic utterances as journalistic responses rather than systematic contributions, reflecting an intellectual climate prior to the formalization of political economy.
Langenfelt analyzes Johnson’s use of politically charged language and his famous dictum, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Johnson, a conscious Tory, was a vehement anti-Whig, using terms like "rascals," "sad dog," and "cursed Whig" in daily conversation, and proclaiming "the first Whig was the Devil" for impatience of subordination. This prejudice extended to Americans, whom he called "Rascals Robbers Pirates." The word patriot itself had dual meanings: an upholder of the state and a critic/reformer. Johnson's dictum was aimed at pretended patriotism used as a cloak for self-interest, but the author concludes it was a fit of bad humor and a partisan equivalent to saying "Radicalism is an evil which only Whigs can embrace." Johnson's Dictionary defined a patriot positively as one whose "ruling passion is the love of his country," revealing a conflict between his party bias and his philological integrity.
CGV entry 20:66. On Johnson's political beliefs. In two parts: October 1931, pages 32-41; and January 1932, pages 117–125.
Doctor Samuel Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny and Its Half Title
Samuel Johnson's Political Ideas and Their Influence on His Works
CGV entry 20:69. Abstract of thesis.
Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research
The Reliability of Contemporary Reporting of the Debates of the House of Commons, 1727–1741
Sypher explores the literary and ideological construction of "the Negro" in eighteenth-century Britain, documenting a fundamental divergence between the "noble" savage of fiction and the "ignoble" figure described by contemporary travelers. This study identifies five stages of the anti-slavery movement, beginning with seventeenth-century religious objections and culminating in the rise of egalitarian theory and institutionalized abolitionism. Sypher highlights the contributions of Johnson, who consistently affirmed natural rights and maintained a "monumental" contempt for the savage state while exempting the Negro from such categories through personal benevolence toward Francis Barber. Boswell, conversely, is presented as a staunch defender of the slave trade, viewing its abolition as "robbery" and "extreme cruelty" to Africans. The text traces legends like Oroonoko and Yarico, arguing that anti-slavery verse often functioned as "ornamental" propaganda that addressed sentiment rather than authentic humanity. Sypher analyzes how writers like Grainger and Beckford reconciled their practical interests in slaving with "picturesque" aestheticizations of plantation life. The work contends that the literary crusade relied on "illegitimate" symbols and a "pseudo-African" tradition to reconcile "ugly fact with idyllic fancy".
CGV entry 20:71. On Johnson's attitude toward slavery.
P. C. compiles various recorded statements by Johnson to verify a pithy attribution made by Patmore regarding the necessity of social hierarchy. The collected remarks, spanning from 1763 to 1776, demonstrate Johnson’s consistent belief that subordination and inequality are essential to human happiness and the orderly functioning of society. Johnson argues that a general state of equality would preclude the refined enjoyments of civilization, leaving mankind with only base animal pleasures.
Johnson's profound interest in the military stemmed from his era's constant warfare, his admiration for courage, and his personal connections to fighting men. He defended Admiral Byng and planned both a military dictionary and a history of war. Johnson enjoyed visiting military settings, such as the École Militaire and Warley Camp, demonstrating his curiosity about military life. Though he held contempt for the peacetime soldier, he highly valued the soldier's courage, attributing to it the "dignity of danger." Despite admiring military men, Johnson hated war, viewing it as the "extremity of evil," which statesmen must strive to avoid.
CGV entry 20:74. With a preface by F. N. B.
Johnson on a Free Press: A Study in Liberty and Subordination
This article explores Samuel Johnson's views on freedom of the press, tracing them to his fundamental philosophy of human liberty and the necessity of subordination to established authority. Johnson, distrusting democratic privilege and the irresponsible "rabble," believed that human rights must be closely defined and safeguarded by an authoritarian, benevolent government. He feared that an unrestrained press, dominated by the masses, would inevitably lead to sedition, disorder, and ultimately tyranny. Thus, the government must impose restraints on expression for the good of the whole society. Johnson drew from classical philosophers in advocating a cautious spirit that rebuked radical departures from established order. Although he recognized the theoretical right to think freely, he insisted no member of society had the right to teach doctrines contrary to what society (via the magistrate) held to be true. He saw his support for the constrained British press as a necessary compromise in an age of order.
CGV entry 20:76. On Johnson's ideas adumbrating those of Henri Dunant, inspirer of the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross.
University of California Publications, English Studies
Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting: Debates in the Senate of Lilliput
Hoover investigates the history and literary status of the 'Debates in the Senate of Lilliput,' identifying Johnson as the sole composer of reports for the Gentleman's Magazine from November 25, 1740, to February 25, 1743. The study traces the transition from Abel Boyer's 'Political State' to the rivalry between Edward Cave's 'Gentleman's Magazine' and the 'London Magazine,' noting that legal restrictions against reporting prompted the 'Lilliputian' allegory. By comparing Johnson's texts with collateral evidence like Secker's diary and Fox's notes, Hoover demonstrates that Johnson frequently worked from 'slender materials' to produce speeches more characterized by Johnsonian moral philosophy and forensic skill than by historical accuracy. The work highlights the debate on removing Robert Walpole as a pinnacle of Johnson's reporting. Hoover analyzes the prose's neoclassical qualities, including parallelism and antithesis, concluding that these 'poor relations' of Johnson’s canon are genuine creative works that relate specific political disputes to 'general and transcendental truths.' Chapter 1, 'Historical Backgrounds: Samuel Johnson and Parliamentary Reporting in the Eighteenth Century,' addresses the evolution of illegal debate reporting from seventeenth-century newsletters to the imaginative Lilliputian disguises of the 1740s. Chapter 2, 'The Debates During Two Centuries: The History of the Document,' argues that the reports transitioned from being accepted as historical fact to being recognized as original Johnsonian compositions. Chapter 3, 'The Debates as Fact: A Comparison with the Collateral Evidence,' addresses the tension between journalistic reporting and independent creation by comparing Johnson’s texts with parallel records like Secker’s journal. Chapter 4, 'The Debates as Art: Their Place in the Literary Career of Samuel Johnson,' addresses the literary value and rhetorical significance of the reports within the broader context of Johnson’s early professional authorship. Critics call this book a useful and imaginative addition to scholarship that successfully fills a significant gap in the understanding of the subject's early literary career. Benham and Boyce praise the laborious and patient comparison of the reports against surviving records, such as Bishop Secker’s shorthand notes, which reveals a complex relationship between fact and fiction. Reviewers like Clifford and Sherbo emphasize that the study disputes the traditional notion of partisan bias, showing the arguments to be balanced and fair.
Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting
Hoover fills a gap in knowledge of Johnson's early literary career. Hoover rightly insists that the Debates are important for understanding Johnson's style and thought. He concludes there is no trustworthy published text after their original appearance in the Gentleman's Magazine, and that stylistically, the Debates are distinctly Johnsonian "moral essays." The reporting, devoid of "intentional bias," reveals Johnson's concern for the people, liberty, and representative government. The review completes Hoover's incomplete list of Johnson's Debates found in John Torbuck's Collection of the Parliamentary Debates.
CGV entry 20:77.
Boyce reviews Benjamin Beard Hoover's Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting, which studies the "Debates in the Senate of Lilliput," Johnson's longest work. Hoover addresses pre- and post-1741 Parliamentary reporting, the fidelity of Johnson's reports to actual speeches, and the style and artistic intent. Boyce praises the valuable and laborious work in comparing Johnson's reports with Secker's notes, which shows Johnson invented Whig speeches and wove moral considerations into political issues.
Butt praises the book as an imaginative and businesslike full-scale study of Johnson's first large single body of prose. Hoover assembles evidence to support the traditional view that Johnson was the sole composer of the Debates from 1740 to 1743. Comparison with Bishop Secker's shorthand notes suggests Johnson's reports recorded the order of speakers and details of the argument but varied in fullness and showed an interest in larger moral aspects over speakers' main points. Hoover concludes the Debates are essays that shape miscellaneous arguments into a unified form.
CGV entry 20:77. Review by John Butt of the book by Benjamin B. Hoover.
Todd uses press figures, advertisement sequences, and paper varieties to identify previously unrecognized impressions of Johnson's early political pamphlets, focusing on False Alarm and Taxation No Tyranny. William Strahan's ledger accounts confirm four distinct issues of False Alarm from early 1770 and challenge previous bibliographic assumptions regarding the scarcity of a second edition. For Taxation No Tyranny, Todd traces text alterations forced by political censorship, revealing how a compositor adjusted line counts to accommodate the sudden deletion of an controversial paragraph on page 66. This textual analysis reconstructs the printing timeline, exposes the author's vacillations, and clarifies the relationship between early variants.
CGV entry 20:78. On 'The False Alarm' and 'Taxation No Tyranny'.
Metzdorf highlights the previously unremarked German translation of Johnson's political tract, Taxation No Tyranny, which appeared in Julius August Remer's Amerikanisches Archiv in Brunswick, 1777. The translation is a straightforward attempt to capture the substance of Johnson's arguments, though it fails to reproduce his sonorous style. The publication, edited by the American-sympathizing Remer, is a testament to the great quarrel's international reverberation and adds to knowledge of Johnson's reputation in Europe, where his rhetorical and stylistic abilities were noted.
CGV entry 20:79. On an early German translation of 'Taxation No Tyranny'.
Graham examines Johnson’s complex relationship with British monarchs, tracing his interactions from Queen Anne to George III. He argues that Johnson transitioned from early Jacobite sympathies to a firm supporter of the Hanoverian establishment. Graham highlights Johnson’s reverence for the institution of monarchy over individual figures, noting his harsh criticisms of William III and George II contrasted with his deep admiration for George III’s patronage of learning and personal character.
On the rational basis of Johnson's political thought, arguing his views stem from a theoretical position grounded in moral and political principles, rather than solely on personality or contemporary events. Sidney analyzes the functions of government, the necessity of obedience, and the inherent limits on political authority. The study emphasizes the inconsistency of critics who classify Johnson as a "radical" or "conservative," advocating instead for a balanced view of his devotion to authority and his support for constitutional liberty, exemplified in his complex stance on the British Constitution and political reform.
Dr. Johnson, Mandeville, and 'Publick Benefits'
Miner examines the assertion by Kaye, Hill, and others that Johnson's economic views were significantly influenced by Mandeville's doctrine of "private vices, public benefits." The essay argues that Johnson's agreement with Mandeville was limited to recognizing the depravity of society and that vice might sometimes have ancillary good effects. Miner contends that Johnson's Christian orthodoxy and humanitarianism fundamentally opposed Mandeville's freethinking, egoistic, and rigoristic views on virtue and charity. Evidence from Boswell's Life shows Johnson's nuanced defense of luxury against simplistic condemnation, and his writings consistently stress Christian duty and moral rectitude, rejecting Mandeville's doctrine.
Greene challenges the 'Whig interpretation' of history that characterizes Johnson as a 'blind, bigoted, reactionary Tory.' He argues that Johnson was a 'hard-headed, skeptical, perfectly independent observer' of the political scene, rather than a partisan tool of the administration. Investigating Johnson’s Midlands background, Greene traces a 'vivid awareness' of the Civil War’s legacy and a 'Puritan and Parliamentarian tradition' that informed his early thinking. The study examines Johnson’s early 'opposition Whig' pamphlets, his 'sole writer' status for the Parliamentary Debates, and his later collaboration with Chambers on the Vinerian law lectures. Greene emphasizes that Johnson’s Toryism was a 'harmonious and even logical blending' of High Church establishment and 'Evangelical humanitarianism.' Central to Johnson’s politics is a 'rational egalitarianism' and a 'radical' insistence on analyzing the concrete consequences of policy for the individual, rather than relying on the 'cant' of 'patriotism' or 'liberty.' Greene concludes that Johnson was 'one of the most effectual propagators of democracy in the eighteenth century' by educating the public as 'secondary legislators.' Chapter One, "Introduction," addresses the "Whig interpretation" of 18th-century political history, arguing that traditional views of Johnson as a blind reactionary are based on anachronistic party models and that his "Toryism" was actually a form of skeptical, independent intellectual rebellion. Chapter Two, "The Midlands Background," explores the historical and cultural topography of Johnson’s youth, contending that the vivid local legacy of the Civil War and the complex political rivalries of Staffordshire provided the essential laboratory for his emerging worldview. Chapter Three, "The Young Johnson (1709–1737)," examines the foundational influence of family connections and early associations, illustrating how his early social circle—largely composed of intelligent, mildly fashionable Whigs—fostered a radical, humanitarian empathy that transcended simple party labels. Chapter Four, "London and Walpole (1737–1739)," addresses Johnson’s early professional years in the capital, arguing that his participation in violent "patriot" opposition to Sir Robert Walpole was a temporary, somewhat naive seizure of current political cant used to project personal and professional frustrations. Chapter Five, "The Parliamentary Debates (1740–1743)," examines Johnson’s role as a legislative reporter for the Gentleman’s Magazine, contending that the arduous task of recreating parliamentary dialogue served as a rigorous schooling in political analysis and helped shift his admiration toward the practical efficiency of Walpole’s administration. Chapter Six, "The Secondary Legislator (1744–1760)," addresses Johnson’s transition to a mature political commentator, identifying his anti-imperialist "theory of colonies" and his defense of aboriginal rights as central to his critique of the Seven Years’ War. Chapter Seven, "The Reign of George III (1760–1784)," explores Johnson’s late political pamphlets and his collaboration on the Vinerian lectures, arguing that his defense of British sovereignty was rooted in a sophisticated, secular theory of the omnicompetent state rather than bigoted authoritarianism. Chapter Eight, "A Recapitulation and Some Reflections," concludes by arguing that Johnson’s political legacy is defined by a consistent moral realism that prioritized individual responsibility and the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" over abstract constitutional forms. Critics are generally favorable, praising the revisionist dismantling of the traditional, bigoted reactionary stereotype in favor of a pragmatic, skeptical conservative portrait. Carswell, in TLS, describes the study as thoughtful, learned, and stimulating, noting that it successfully relates the subject to eighteenth-century political structures. Writing in SEL, Richetti offers a more skeptical review, warning that the reissued text is a dated landmark that continues to tilt at long-vanished windmills and requires cautious reading in light of modern historiography. Peake's review in RES commends the systematic demolition of the blind reactionary fallacy, but he identifies faults of over-enthusiasm and sophistry in the legalistic defenses of the later pamphlets. In JNL, Clifford provides an approving assessment, finding the grasp of complex material remarkably convincing and predicting it will remain a center of serious discussion. McAdam (PQ) underscores the strength of the refutation of youthful Jacobitism, though he questions the modern political parallels and the interpretation of subordination as mere social organization. Colmer's review in MLR praises the readability and exemplary scholarly apparatus, noting the successful integration of a tough-minded realism into the contemporary context. Finally, Scherwatzky, in ECL, examines the second edition within a broader review essay on eighteenth-century political frameworks, while Lurcock (N&Q) criticizes the newer introductory material as polemical, repetitive, and ultimately unsatisfactory.
CGV entry 20:83. A revision of his Columbia University dissertation from 1954.
Reviews: T. S. Blakeney, NR (January 1961): 25–26; Asa Briggs, Science & Society 25, no. 3 (1961): 285–87; John Patrick Carswell, TLS, no. 3052 (August 1960): 543; James L. Clifford, JNL 20, no. 1 (1960): 1–2; John Colmer and Donald J. Greene, MLR 56, no. 4 (1961): 625; The Economist (September 24, 1960); Medford Evans, National Review 8, no. 19 (1960): 306–7; Milton Hindus, New Leader 43, no. 33 (1960): 26–27; Robert Kinsman, LA Times, September 25, 1960; Russell Kirk, Kenyon Review 22, no. 4 (1960): 679–86; Herman W. Liebert, New York Herald Tribune, May 29, 1960; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 38, no. 4 (1991): 545–46; E. L. McAdam Jr., PQ 40, no. 3 (1961): 401–2; Caroline Moorehead, TLS, no. 4560 (August 1990): 905; Patrick O’Flaherty, Dalhousie Review 72, no. 3 (1992): 382–98; C. H. Peake, RES 14, no. 55 (1963): 305–6; J. H. Plumb, Saturday Review, 1960; Publishers Weekly (January 25, 1960); John Richetti, SEL 30, no. 3 (1990): 517–54; Caroline Robbins, Journal of Modern History 33, no. 3 (1961): 322–23; John A. Rycenga, Modern Age 5 (1960): 95–98; Steven D. Scherwatzky, ECL 15, no. 3 (1991): 113–24; The Times, July 28, 1960; Magdi Wahba, Cairo Studies in English, 1962, 233–43; W. R. Ward, Parliamentary Affairs 14 (1960): 125–26; Robert Ziegler, Papers on Language & Literature 28, no. 4 (1992): 457–75.
Evans analyzes Greene’s study of Johnson’s political thought, disputing the simplistic Tory label. Greene highlights Johnson’s anti-Whig outbursts as a hoax, noting his predominantly Whig social circle. Evans challenges the association of Johnson with skeptics like Hume, asserting that religious conviction remains the decisive force. The review emphasizes Johnson’s deference to established institutions and his consistent opposition to intellectual cant, specifically regarding American claims of liberty.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by Medford Evans of the book by Donald J. Greene.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by Milton Hindus of the book by Donald J. Greene.
Greene's study aims to definitively disprove the persistent myth of Johnson's reactionary Toryism. Greene examines the subject thoroughly, combining knowledge of Staffordshire politics with a study of Tory ideology to place Johnson's views within their contemporary political context. Greene analyzes Johnson's political works, including Taxation no Tyranny, and concludes that he was a "sceptical conservative" who advocated for realistic improvement based on individual judgment. The text presents Johnson as a rationalist, deeply humanitarian, and a believer in individual rights, whose political attitudes included a form of liberalism.
CGV entry 20:83. An anonymous review of the book by Donald J. Greene.
Greene employs a rigorous inductive method to challenge the nineteenth-century "Whig interpretation" that labeled Johnson as a reactionary dogmatist. He highlights Johnson’s fundamental concern for individual moral responsibility, characterizing him as a "radical egalitarian" and "skeptical conservative." Rycenga finds the solution to Johnson’s political "absurdities" satisfying but criticizes Greene’s description of Johnson as a Hobbist or hedonist. Such labels are deemed crudely naïve for ignoring the compelling influence of Johnson’s Christianity on his views of power and human dignity.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by John A. Rycenga of the book by Donald J. Greene.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by W. R. Ward of the book by Donald J. Greene.
Briggs reviews Greene’s scholarly reassessment of Johnson as a rational or skeptical conservative in the tradition of Hobbes and Hume. He credits Greene for challenging the conventional stereotype of Johnson’s politics as merely prejudiced toryism. Briggs notes that Greene detects a Marxist flavor in Johnson’s account of British foreign policy and highlights Johnson’s humanitarian views on the poor. However, Briggs disputes Greene's claim that Johnson’s thought was in advance of his time. He argues that Greene presses too hard on the interpretation of subordination, which Briggs maintains must be related to older theories of social order ordained by providence. Briggs concludes that the industrial revolution effectively sealed off Johnson's thought from the nineteenth century.
CGV entry 20:83.
Robbins provides an approving review of Donald Greene’s study, which seeks to dispel the legend of Johnson as a "blind reactionary." Robbins highlights Greene’s examination of Johnson’s Midlands background, his early "Lockean" traces, and his consistent opposition to restrictions on the press. The review notes Greene’s convincing argument that Johnson’s politics were individualistic rather than strictly Tory, characterized by a hatred of military force, a loathing of colonialism, and an egalitarian impulse. Robbins observes that Johnson excluded supernatural considerations from his concepts of government, believing instead that "a remedy in human nature" keeps men safe from tyranny. The review concludes that Greene provides excellent political analysis for students of eighteenth-century history, effectively digesting recent scholarship to re-read the Johnsonian opera.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by Caroline Robbins of the book by Donald J. Greene.
McAdam underscores Greene’s revisionist argument that Johnson was a rationalistic, skeptical conservative rather than a blind Tory. He highlights Greene's successful refutation of Johnson’s alleged youthful Jacobitism and the influential Whig interpretation of his politics. The review identifies the analysis of Johnson's views on "omnicompetent sovereignty" and the American colonies as particularly strong. However, McAdam questions Greene's interpretation of "subordination" as mere social organization and criticizes the use of modern American political parallels as potentially dating the work. He also finds the inclusion of impressionistic attributions in the appendices to be a relative weakness.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by E. L. McAdam, Jr. of the book by Donald J. Greene.
Peake commends Greene Politics of Samuel Johnson, commending the work for effectively and systematically demolishing the persistent fallacy of Johnson as a "blind reactionary" or a forerunner of "Colonel Blimp." Greene provides the first coherent picture of Johnson's politics by chronologically considering the evidence, arguing that Johnson’s early work supported the Opposition Whigs against Walpole, while his later pamphlets represent a skeptical conservative without specific party attachments. While Peake credits Greene for this coherent picture, he identifies faults of "over-enthusiasm" and "sophistry" in Greene’s justifications, particularly regarding the pamphlets of the 1770s. Peake disputes the legalistic defense of Taxation no Tyranny, which he argues turns a "great moralist into a cold-blooded lawyer," and challenges Greene’s reluctance to admit or recognize that Johnson's political attitudes hardened in his later years. Specifically, Peake disputes Greene’s attempt to shield Johnson from charges of harboring a "contemptuous disregard for the social wretchedness of the mob" during the Wilkes affair. The review concludes that while Johnson’s legal arguments against American colonists were sound, the pamphlets manifest a lack of sympathy that Greene fails to acknowledge; nevertheless, Peake concludes the book represents an important step forward in Johnsonian studies.
CGV entry 20:83. Review by C. H. Peake of the book by Donald J. Greene.
The False Alarm and Taxation No Tyranny: Some Further Observations
Greene provides textual evidence to supplement Todd's bibliographical study of Johnson's political pamphlets. Analysis of The False Alarm suggests its actual publication date was January 17, 1770, rather than the 16th. Minor editorial improvements justify the second edition label for issues that were primarily reimpressions. Regarding Taxation No Tyranny, Greene disputes the charge of authorial vacillation. While many variants represent compositorial practices, a number of substantive changes in the third edition, such as removing repetitive descriptors or clarifying quotations, must be attributed to Johnson's correcting hand. These observations clarify the level of Johnson's engagement with his texts during rapid reprinting.
CGV entry 20:84. On variant issues.
The Hostile Reaction to the American Views of Johnson and Wesley
Lyles analyzes the vituperative contemporary responses to Johnson’s Taxation No Tyranny and Wesley’s A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. He details how opponents used satire and ridicule rather than logical refutation to discredit Johnson’s pensioned advocacy and Wesley’s unacknowledged use of Johnsonian arguments. Lyles concludes that the intense hostility signaled the effectiveness of their conservative defense of British sovereignty, as critics sought to frame both men as defenders of tyranny and Jacobite partisans.
Middendorf examines Johnson's complex relationship with mercantilism, the dominant economic philosophy of his era. Johnson accepted many mercantilist ideas, including the value of trade, the need for a favorable balance, and the importance of a rapid circulation of money. However, his strong individualism and moral sense led him to reject the "doctrine of the utility of poverty" and the purely commercial view of colonies. He prioritized agriculture for national independence and believed the ultimate goal of government was to foster conditions for individual virtue, a priority lost in mercantilism’s pursuit of state wealth.
While Greene provides a useful, factual overview of Johnson's political views, his liberal and logical positivist biases lead to problematic interpretations. that Johnson was a reasonable, moderate champion of Christian social order and custom, grounded in religious faith and a sense of human fallibility—a "skeptical conservative." Greene incorrectly attempts to portray Johnson as a utilitarian, rationalist, or proto-liberal, thereby misrepresenting Johnson’s fundamental Tory principles, which were rooted in a transcendent moral order and were philosophically closer to Burke's Whiggery than to the atomism of Locke or Hobbes.
Political Writers of Eighteenth-Century England
Hart provides an introductory essay and a curated selection of primary texts to illustrate the conflict between Lockean and Hobbesian views of human nature. Johnson is situated among the traditionalist conservatives who viewed social order as precarious and reliant upon religious and cultural sanctions. The edition includes Johnson’s 1774 pamphlet, The Patriot, which Hart describes as a critique of "radical cant" and an attack on the contemporary "patriot" Opposition. Johnson’s commitment to tradition is emphasized through his rejection of individualistic systems in favor of those "built upon the discoveries of a great many minds." The volume identifies Johnson as a monarchist and a Tory whose interests in literature and morals carry profound "political significance." Hart also highlights Johnson’s role in the Literary Club alongside figures like James Boswell and Oliver Goldsmith, noting the "elegaic strain" present in his later work. The editorial apparatus includes brief biographical headnotes and a select bibliography for further scholarly inquiry.
Politics and Literature of Samuel Johnson
Sullivan’s dissertation reconstructs Johnson's political theory through an analysis of pamphlets, essays, and sermons, then demonstrates how these principles inform major imaginative works. Sullivan identifies a consistent political doctrine rooted in an empirical and skeptical temper that prioritizes practical experience over "untested hypothesis." This study argues that Johnson views the state of nature as a persistent threat of "anarchy and savagery" that only lawful government can prevent. Sullivan emphasizes Johnson's insistence on subordination as a "natural condition" necessary for social order and explores the "crucial distinction" between temporal and eternal happiness. Detailed readings of Irene, Rasselas, and various allegories illustrate how fictional characters embody political beliefs regarding "lawful authority," the "abuses of power," and the role of chance in history. Sullivan disputes the legend of Johnson as a "blind reactionary" by placing his rationalism within the context of eighteenth-century intellectual movements like deism and primitivism. The analysis concludes that for Johnson, "polity being only the conduct of immoral men in publick affairs," effective government relies more on individual moral consciousness than on specific external structures.
CGV entry 20:90. Concentrates on 'Irene', allegories, and 'Rasselas'.
McAdam analyzes Johnson’s 1753 Preface to the Index of the Gentleman's Magazine, where he describes Walpole as a statesman "as able perhaps as any that ever existed." This indicates that Johnson’s earlier opposition to Walpole, seen in London and Marmor Norfolciense, ceased when the minister was forced into war. McAdam argues that Johnson’s mature politics prioritized "common sense" and public order over factional labels. He points out that Johnson’s apparent quiescence during the "45" rebellion reflects an aversion to the "intrusion of obsolete claims" into a settled social order rather than secret Jacobite sympathy. Johnson viewed the government through the lens of a sensible citizen who valued peace and stability above all.
Johnson maintained a persistent interest in economic problems, believing that the production of wealth via manufacture and agriculture provides essential freedom for the cultivation of virtue. While he praised commerce in the abstract for enhancing national liberty and fluid social situations, he often viewed individual traders with suspicion, fearing the 'meanness' and sterile nature of the profession. To Johnson, the consumption of wealth serves as a moral test: it must be used to exempt the poor from want rather than to satisfy increasing desires for luxury. He preferred viable contradictions over forced synthesis, accepting the necessity of a commercial society while regretting the substitution of the cash nexus for traditional human bonds and the potential loss of military spirit in a totally commercial nation.
Johnson and the Authorship of Four Debates
Bernard re-examines the authorship of four early parliamentary debates from the *Gentleman's Magazine*, using stylistic analysis to argue that Samuel Johnson wrote three of them and his predecessor, William Guthrie, wrote one. He first establishes Guthrie's distinct vocabulary and then shows that a debate on "Buttons and Button-holes," previously attributed to Johnson, matches Guthrie's style. Conversely, he confirms Johnson's authorship of the "Registration of Seamen" debate by identifying multiple parallel passages that reappear in a later, known Johnsonian report. The author also attributes a heavily revised debate on the "Navy Estimates" to Johnson, pointing to its sophisticated irony and Latinate prose, which he used to satirize the weak arguments of Whig politicians. Finally, he assigns the previously unattributed "Corporation Bill" debate to Johnson, citing his legal knowledge, characteristic arguments about equity, and a direct link to a line in *The Vanity of Human Wishes*.
The Political Writings of Dr. Johnson: A Selection
Selections from Johnson’s writings on politics, offering an inexpensive compilation of material often difficult to obtain in modern print. It was published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback formats. The volume confines its contents to two periods: 1756 and 1758, and the 1770s. The selection includes the four major political pamphlets, such as Marmor Norfolciense, along with four selections from the Literary Magazine (1756) and the Universal Chronicle (1758). Totaling 152 pages, the resource is not a comprehensive collection of Johnson’s political prose. Supplemental materials incorporate introductory commentary outlining Johnson’s moral, political, and religious standpoints, plus concise notes that clarify precise details of persons and historical incidents mentioned within the texts. The publication gained recognition as an accessible text for general readers and students seeking acquaintance with Johnson's non-literary compositions, particularly those appearing in periodicals like the Literary Magazine. Scholars regarded the compilation as necessary until the appearance of the complete scholarly edition of Johnson’s political works.
CGV entry 20:96.
Politics and Experience: Essays Presented to Professor Michael Oakeshott on the Occasion of His Retirement
Samuel Johnson: Defender of Admiral Byng
Plumb praises Greene's scholarship, particularly on Johnson's Toryism, which is presented as a populist, anti-Whig, anti-war force that championed the common people against the powerful and special interests of big money and government. Johnson's political writings, including Taxation No Tyranny, are highlighted for their trenchant arguments, compassion, and exposure of hypocrisy, such as the colonists' stance on liberty while maintaining slavery.
CGV entry 20:99.
King praises this Yale edition for correcting the Tory buffoonery often associated with Johnson’s politics in Boswell’s Life. He outlines Johnson’s opposition to Whig imperialist policies, slavery, and the mistreatment of the poor. Greene’s commentary clarifies that Johnson’s defense of established institutions stemmed from a fear of repeating the anarchy of the mid-seventeenth century. King notes that Johnson was often categorized as a political rather than literary writer by his contemporaries.
CGV entry 20:99. A review essay by Bruce King on the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
G. W. N. reviews Donald Greene's compiled edition of Johnson's political texts, praising the chronological framework and explanatory commentaries. The reviewer notes the shock of encountering obscure or previously un-republished works from The Gentleman's Magazine and The Literary Magazine, which emphasize Johnson's lifelong fascination with the American colonies. G. W. N. disputes Greene's unyielding enthusiasm for the uncompromising, rigid tone of Taxation No Tyranny, expressing a strong preference for Johnson's earlier, more conciliatory journalism from 1756. The piece explores Johnson's profound belief in the intersection of public affairs and morality, highlighting his fierce hatred of censorship and his willingness to use statistical evidence to inform the public. G. W. N. values the critical apparatus but questions the inclusion of minor occasional pieces over more substantive historical reviews.
CGV entry 20:99. Review by Graham Nicholls of the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
McKenzie argues the book's proper use is correcting comforting misconceptions, forcing a better understanding of Johnson's complex conservatism, skepticism, and loyalties, as previously dictated by Greene. Although Johnson's eloquence seems squandered on "merely occasional" pieces, his wisdom and forcefulness remain in evidence. McKenzie highly praises Greene's work in reconstructing the occasions and providing lucid headnotes, especially his summary of the Byng case and Falkland Island business, saying they are "more than splendid in their lucidity." McKenzie suggests a non-expert might be better served by a collection of Johnson's essays.
CGV entry 20:99. Review by Alan T. McKenzie of the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
Nussbaum describes Greene’s edition of Johnson’s political corpus, noting the inclusion of annotated tracts, articles from the Literary Magazine, and previously unreprinted miscellaneous pieces. She observes that Greene retains original italicization and prioritizes politics as public morality, though she finds the editorial tone contentious and occasionally subjective. Nussbaum criticizes Greene’s frequent comparisons to twentieth-century politics and his dismissive attitude toward nineteenth-century historiography. However, she acknowledges Greene’s formidable learning, particularly in reconstructing complex arguments and historical contexts, resulting in a zesty and scholarly, if idiosyncratic, volume.
CGV entry 20:99. A review essay by Felicity A. Nussbaum on the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
Boulton provides an approving review of this Yale edition volume, describing it as an excellent work that serves as a full vindication of Donald Greene’s thesis. He credits Greene for the representative shift in scholarly opinion that recognizes Johnson as a serious political thinker, moving scholarship away from the persistent legend that he was not politically minded. Boulton highlights Greene's conviction that Johnson belongs to a tradition of "skeptical" or radical conservatism and observes that this volume effectively ends any excuse for ignorance regarding the intellectual content of Johnson's political contributions. The review notes that the edition includes hitherto inaccessible pieces, such as Considerations on Corn, printed directly from Johnson’s manuscript. Boulton emphasizes that while some of Johnson’s contemporaries viewed these writings as a misapplication of talent, the volume proves their importance to the canon and will not suffer from comparison to his other major works.
CGV entry 20:99. Review by James T. Boulton of the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
Langford reviews Greene's edition of Johnson’s political tracts, praising the shrewd selection and full annotation while noting a failure to incorporate recent historical literature. He disputes the notion that Johnson warrants a place among major political theorists like Locke or Burke, characterizing works such as Taxation No Tyranny as competent but lacking in originality. Instead, Langford argues Johnson’s political significance lies in his embodiment of Georgian Toryism, specifically an empirical concern for the use and abuse of authority rather than theoretical limits. He concludes the volume successfully highlights Johnson's consistent belief in the rule of law based on prescription and his robust distaste for abstract political logic.
CGV entry 20:99. Review by Paul Langford of the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
Greene's Yale edition of Johnson's Political Writings provides a collection of previously hard-to-access texts with an extensive critical apparatus. Greene's introduction challenges the notion that Johnson lacked political acumen by laying out the bases of his political thought. While the editorial work is meticulous, the reviewer notes that the collection is organized by content rather than by form, scattering Johnson's political writings across multiple volumes of the Yale edition. This arrangement necessitates a long wait for a complete, integrated view of Johnson's political expression.
CGV entry 20:99. Review by Albert Pailler of the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene.
Crane examines the Yale volume of Johnson’s political tracts, criticizing Greene’s enthusiasm for pieces of marginal interest. He argues that the volume suffers from the comprehensive nature of the Yale project, omitting major political works like London found in other volumes. Crane asserts that Johnson’s commitment to eighteenth-century politics was minimal, often "arguing for victory" rather than conviction. He finds early pieces like Marmor Norfolciense inferior to Swift and questions the exclusion of value as a criterion for selection.
CGV entry 20:99. Review by David Crane of the Yale Edition volume edited by Donald Greene, alongside other works.
Johnson as Rhetorician: The Political Pamphlets of the 1770s
O’Flaherty examines Johnson’s three major political pamphlets—The False Alarm, Thoughts on Falkland’s Islands, and Taxation No Tyranny—as rhetorical pieces, not calm expositions of political philosophy. The analysis contends that Johnson consistently functions as counsel for a vulnerable position, employing a strategy of dwarfing the crisis to deny its urgency. Rhetorical methods include establishing an authoritative persona, using abuse and innuendo against opponents, and aligning his arguments with fundamental, common-sense truths about sovereignty. The essay concludes that despite brilliant rhetoric, Johnson’s arguments often rely on weak reasoning, especially in Taxation No Tyranny, and exhibit tactical inconsistencies.
CGV entry 20:101. See replies by Donald Greene and a rejoinder by O'Flaherty in subsequent issues.
Samuel Johnson's Anti-Enlightenment Theory of Government and Law
Samuel Johnson and the Great War for Empire
Greene explores Johnson’s vehement opposition to the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), which Greene characterizes as a 'one-man crusade' against the prevailing British 'war effort.' Greene argues that Johnson’s hostility was rooted in a radical Christian belief in the essential equality of all human beings, leading him to denounce the war as a quarrel between 'two robbers' (Britain and France) over lands belonging to 'natural lords,' the indigenous Indians. The article details Johnson’s editorial work in the 'Literary Magazine,' where he challenged the rationale of imperial expansion and mocked 'patriotic' fervor. Greene highlights Johnson’s empathy for marginalized groups, noting his defense of Admiral Byng as a scapegoat for ministerial incompetence and his later celebration of the 'plebeian magnanimity' of common soldiers. Ultimately, Greene asserts that Johnson’s anti-colonialism was not merely political but a profound moral rejection of the 'manifest destiny' that sought to exploit non-European peoples for commercial gain.
The Politics of Samuel Johnson: A Reconsideration
This reconsideration traces the ascendant authoritarian bent in Johnson's political thought, arguing against Donald Greene’s estimate of Johnson as an effectual propagator of democracy. Johnson’s earlier democratic sympathies, expressed during his Grub Street years, shifted toward an increasing hostility to popular participation and a distrust of the common people in his later years. Examining the political pamphlets of the 1770s, including The False Alarm and Taxation No Tyranny, Johnson’s arguments demonstrate an implicit defense of inequitable representation and a preference for omnicompetent sovereignty over popular will, making him an apocalyptic democrat who only concedes the people’s right to overthrow oppressive authority by force.
CGV entry 20:105. See a reply by Donald Greene and a response by Ramage in subsequent issues.
Mathias challenges the literary focus on Johnson by analyzing him as a perceptive observer of the animated economic scene. He argues that Johnson's devastating sanity and talent for reporting life details stem from his passion for the business world. Johnson favored a commercial society over the material poverty of subsistence farming, defending specialized middlemen and luxury as drivers of industry and employment. Mathias notes Johnson’s moral economic criteria, which led him to oppose slavery and trade based on exploitation.
An Allusion to The Conquest of Granada in Taxation No Tyranny
King examines Johnson’s satirical use of Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada in the political pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny. Johnson mocks American claims of original rights and independence by echoing Almanzor’s boast, I alone am King of Me. By associating the Continental Congress's resolutions with Dryden’s famously hyperbolic character, Johnson characterizes the colonists' rhetoric as comical and absurd. King argues this allusion supports an ironic interpretation of Dryden’s heroic plays, suggesting Johnson viewed Almanzor’s speech as a subject for ridicule rather than straightforward admiration.
Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-Century Journalism
West Virginia University School of Journalism
Dr. Johnson and the Little Dogs: The Reaction of the London Press to Taxation No Tyranny
McGuffie examines the vitriolic reception of Johnson's 1775 political pamphlet, which challenged the American revolutionary slogan regarding representation. The London press, particularly anti-Administration papers, reacted with "total war," using personal insults and professional mockery to delegitimize his arguments. Critics frequently referred to him as "Pensioner Johnson" or "Pomposo," a nickname originating from Charles Churchill, to suggest his supporting the government was merely the result of financial venality. Despite receiving a "barrage of criticism" from newspaper correspondents and anonymous pamphleteers, Johnson remained unruffled, observing that a man "whose business it is to be talked of, is much helped by being attacked." McGuffie concludes that while the "Little Dogs" of the press barked loudly, Johnson's literary reputation and "exalted height of reputation" remained largely undiminished.
The Mind in the Marketplace: Commercial Imagery in Samuel Johnson's Prose Works
Johnson uses imagery and vocabulary from commerce, manufacturing, trade, and wealth to explain the literary process, evaluate aesthetics, and provide moral instruction. The work examines commercial imagery in Johnson's Debates in Parliament, prefaces, reviews, political writings, periodical essays (Rambler, Idler, Adventurer), and Lives of the Poets (specifically Dryden, Pope, and Addison). Johnson places the mind in the marketplace to examine literature and life, revealing a constant interest in commercial affairs due to their relationship with human happiness.
CGV entry 20:111. Dissertation Abstracts International 41: 3598A.
The Political Character of Samuel Johnson
Erskine-Hill challenges Donald Greene's dismissal of Johnson's Toryism. Using post-Namier historiography that revives the Whig/Tory/Jacobite divide, Erskine-Hill argues Johnson was a consistent Tory, and Boswell's Life is largely accurate. Boswell’s portrait of Johnson’s Jacobite sympathies—such as calling the 1745 rebellion a "noble attempt" and implying he was a Non-Juror—is presented carefully, not exaggerated. Pre-Boswell evidence confirms this: Marmor Norfolciense (1739) is "Jacobite sedition," and Richard Farmer’s 1762 letter recommending Johnson for a pension identifies him as a Non-Juror. The Vanity of Human Wishes also contains specific topical allusions to Walpole (Wolsey) and the defeated Jacobite lords.
The Fall of Orgilio: Samuel Johnson as Parliamentary Reporter
Robert Giddings analyzes Johnson's Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia, which he wrote for the Gentleman's Magazine. While Johnson’s poem London satirized Sir Robert Walpole as the corrupt "Orgilio," his parliamentary reports present a surprisingly sympathetic portrait. Johnson, Giddings argues, depicts Walpole's 1741 fall from power with "dramatic grandeur," casting him as a "tragic hero." This may reflect Johnson’s artistry or his Tory disdain for the Whig faction that ousted Walpole. Johnson heavily shaped the speeches, "constructing" Walpole's final defense against corruption charges into a masterful, arrogant performance. Giddings concludes that Johnson’s reporting transcended journalism, contributing significantly to Britain’s political consciousness.
The American Revolution and Eighteenth-Century Culture
Faction Detected: Ideological Consequences of Robert Walpole's Decline and Fall
Goldsmith argues that the decline of Robert Walpole’s ministry (1739–1742) fostered a transition from idealistic "Country" party ideology toward a more disillusioned, skeptical political realism. Goldsmith identifies Johnson as a significant voice in this ideological shift, noting his early "spirit of liberty" in the anti-ministerial polemics London, Marmor Norfolciense, and the Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage. However, Goldsmith posits that Johnson’s later editorial work on the "Debates in the Senate of Lilliput" for the Gentleman’s Magazine reveals a waning "passionate conviction." By improving Walpole’s own parliamentary defense and suggesting that "politics may be said to usurp the mind," Johnson exemplifies a broader mid-century movement toward partisan detachment and the "philosophic" moderation later epitomized by David Hume.
CGV entry 20:116.
Published anonymously as a one-volume octavo pamphlet in January 1775 by Thomas Cadell and William Strahan. Johnson sold the copyright for fifteen guineas. The manuscript reached the press in June 1774, and printing overlapped with the first edition production. The first edition included an errata leaf correcting eleven readings. Public demand led to two impressions in 1775, along with three unauthorized Dublin editions. The book was not republished separately during Johnson's lifetime, but a second London edition appeared in 1785. Six further editions appeared before 1800. It was included in Sir John Hawkins's 1787 Works, volume 10, and in John Stockdale's supplementary volume 15 in 1789. An unauthorized French translation appeared in 1775, and another French translation, Voyages dans les Hébrides, by Huchet, was published in 1804. Modern scholarly editions include R. W. Chapman’s edition (1924), the Yale Edition, volume 9 (1971), edited by Mary Lascelles, and the Clarendon Press edition (1985), edited by J. D. Fleeman, which details variants from the first three London editions. An integrated edition (2007), edited by Ronald Black, alternates Johnson's text with Boswell's manuscript journal. Reviews are generally favorable, praising the work's critical penetration, philosophical observation, and representation of human character. There is a sharp divergence between popular and scholarly reviews, as the volume triggered intense public debate and newspaper ridicule over its controversial positions while gaining academic acclaim. An unsigned review in Monthly Review initiates the positive appraisal, praising the author's sagacity and profundity of reflection while noting how the text's stance on the authenticity of Ossian's poetry stirred public interest. A subsequent piece in Monthly Review reinforces this approval, celebrating the writer as a respected moralist and keen observer. In Critical Review, an unsigned commentary labels the narrative's conception a fortunate event in literary annals, applauding the inquiry into the genius of the people and defending the author's judgments on Gray. An unsigned assessment in Gentleman's Magazine highlights the work as a major literary event that faithfully represents men and manners, later noting that topics like second sight and the denial of Ossian's authenticity caused extensive public railing. Unsigned reviews in London Review and Town and Country Magazine further contribute to the acclaim, with the former categorizing the writer among the best contemporary moralistes and the latter celebrating the capacity to investigate remote human resources. Finally, London Magazine supports this widespread English approval by utilizing extensive extracts to disseminate the travel account to a broad reading public.
CGV entry 21:1.
Reviews: Critical Review 39 (January 1775): 33–44; Edinburgh Magazine 3 (March 1775): 154–62; Gentleman’s Magazine 45, no. 1 (1775): 35–38; Gentleman’s Magazine 45, no. 2 (1775): 83–86; London Magazine 45 (February 1775): 88–89; London Review 1 (January 1775): 32–42; Monthly Review 52 (January 1775): 57–65; Monthly Review 52 (February 1775): 158–62; Town and Country Magazine 7 (January 1775): 27–29.
The critique is highly enthusiastic, labeling the narrative’s conception a "fortunate event in the annals of literature." It approves the author's critical penetration, asserting that the traveler must be "conversant in moral speculations." The appraisal supports the inquiry into people's genius and character, affirming the author unites every talent required to dignify narration. The review notes the reported drowning of Mr. Maclean of Coll, an event occurring while printing proofs were underway. It asserts the author's judgements concerning Thomas Gray are correct.
This initial, positive appraisal contributes to the generally favorable English reception. The review highlights the importance of the work as a literary event, giving "sanction to any work," and offering quotations ("specimens") to the public. It confirms the narrative provides a "faithful representation" of "men and manners." The critique reports the author's late inclusion of Mr. Maclean of Coll’s death, an event which happened during the trip's aftermath.
CGV entry 21:1. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson, In two parts: January, pages 35-38; and February, pages 83-86.
The appraisal is largely positive, focusing on the author's philosophical observations and detailed travel account. The critique categorizes the author as one of the best contemporary "moralistes." The magazine, generally considered hostile to Johnson later, participates here in the initial wave of acclaim.
CGV entry 21:1. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
This appraisal is favorable, recognizing the author's "sagacity of remark, and profundity of reflection." It praises the author as "able and entertaining." The critique acknowledges the author and Pennant as precursors who make Highland tours fashionable for "virtuosi." It notes the intense public interest stirred by the controversy over the author's opinion on the authenticity of Ossian's poetry.
CGV entry 21:1. A review by Ralph Griffiths of the book by Samuel Johnson, In two parts: January, pages 57-65; and February, pages 158–162.
Confirms the work’s importance to a broad audience, reflecting the general English approval. The periodical helps disseminate the narrative to the heterogeneous reading public. The appraisal contributes to the immediate status of the work as significant travel literature by an eminent author. The focus is on the author's capacity to investigate the "remote resources of the genius and character" of the people.
This review, appearing in an imitator of the Gentleman’s Magazine, includes extracts of the text. It contributes to the broad dissemination of the work to the expanding reading public. The appraisal generally aligns with the highly positive assessment found in the majority of the English press. It focuses on excerpting material, following the "abstract/extract method" common to contemporary review periodicals.
Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland: Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Contains Johnson’s account of the 1773 Scottish tour alongside Boswell’s memoir. Chapman performed extensive editing work on the text while serving in the Royal Garrison Artillery in Salonika during World War I. This scholarly edition providies new levels of textual collation and rigorous attention to detail for both accounts of the 1773 tour. The arrangement prints Johnson’s and Boswell’s texts together, facilitating the comparison of their differing narratives. For Johnson’s Journey, the editorial policy preserved the spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation of the 1775 first edition (the copy-text), while modernizing capitalization and typography. Chapman’s work became a key resource for Johnsonian scholars. The edition was reprinted in London in 1948, 1970, and 1974. The edition was subsequently superseded by J. D. Fleeman’s 1985 edition of the Journey. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics focusing on the editorial accuracy, the collation of text, and the structural utility of the indices and supplementary material. Bailey, in TLS, praises the volume as the first critical edition to join the two complementary texts, highlighting the textual corrections, the discovery of multiple first-edition impressions, and the double index. Smith, writing in MLR, similarly commends the accuracy of the text achieved through the collation of early editions, noting the high scholarly quality of the preface and maps. Wright, in the New Statesman, offers an enthusiastic assessment of the scholarly accuracy, the bibliography, and the classified index, while challenging common criticisms of the stylistic prose. An unsigned review in N&Q welcomes the convenience of the combined volume, noting the inclusion of corrections never made in the original second edition. Later notices in N&Q and Powell in RES examine subsequent affordable reprints, noting the omission of the original specialist notes and appendixes to accommodate future textual modifications following the recovery of original manuscript material. Non-scholarly assessments in the broader press, including the Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Yorkshire Post, emphasize how the publication rescues the text from public neglect and allows a clearer understanding of the individual narratives, though the Observer notes a preference for the lighter diary style over the formal prose segments.
Reviews: John C. Bailey, TLS, no. 1174 (1924): 447; Beiblatt zur Anglia (1932); H. Doerries, Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 78, nos. 7–8 (1932): 203; E. F. H, Christian Science Monitor, August 20, 1924; Robert Lynd, Daily News (London), July 4, 1924; N&Q 146, no. 5 (1924): 91; N&Q 160 (1931): 126; L. F. Powell, RES 8, no. 31 (1932): 349; Publishers Weekly, October 26, 1970; G. C. Moore Smith, MLR 20 (1925): 372; The Observer (London), July 20, 1924; F. T. Wood, Englische Studien 67 (1932): 132–34; Ralph Wright, New Statesman, July 19, 1924; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, August 20, 1924.
Alkon reviews Lascelles’s Yale edition of Johnson’s Journey, noting its modernization of capitalization despite controversy. He praises the rigorous textual scholarship and Lascelles’s innovative introduction. She argues the Journey is unique in Johnson’s canon, functioning as a "time-travel" narrative that captures a disappearing Highland culture through historical imagination.
CGV entry 21:1. Review by Paul K. Alkon of the Yale Edition volume edited by Mary Lascelles.
Tracy evaluates Lascelles’ edition of the Journey, noting her use of a canceled copy of the first edition as copy-text. Lascelles incorporates variants from Johnson’s errata list and posthumous editions only when convinced of their authenticity. Tracy questions the committee’s rule on modernizing italicized quotations, which he finds produces inconsistent results. However, he praises the concise explanatory notes and the inclusion of contemporary prints and maps. The edition provides a reliable text that accounts for corrections promised to Boswell, establishing it as a definitive resource for scholars.
CGV entry 21:1. Review by Clarence Tracy of the Yale Edition volume edited by Mary Lascelles.
Lascelles's edition of the Journey is praised for challenging the preference for Boswell's account and for its masterly introduction setting the work in context.
This volume provides an authoritative text based on the 1775 first edition, featuring economical annotation and a sensitive introduction. Lascelles emphasizes Johnson’s sense of discovery during his Scottish tour, challenging the assumption that his mind was fully stocked before the journey. Boulton notes the introduction successfully conveys Johnson’s "amalgam" of detailed observation, personal reflection, and moral intention, though he finds the index lacks completeness.
CGV entry 21:1. Review by James T. Boulton of the Yale Edition volume edited by Mary Lascelles, alongside other works.
Rogers reviews Lascelles’s Yale edition of Johnson’s Journey. He approves the use of the 1775a copy-text and the incorporation of Todd’s printing history findings. However, Rogers critiques the annotation for its excessive brevity and reliance on cross-references to Powell’s edition of Boswell’s Tour. He notes that serious research on Johnson’s work still requires consulting Boswell. Rogers emphasizes that Johnson views culture as a defiant human creation and topography as a metaphor for moral being.
The standard modern scholarly text. The volume provides a scholarly supplement to Lascelles’s 1971 Yale edition, superseding Chapman’s earlier effort. Fleeman’s work represents a monumental scholarly achievement and continues the tradition of refinement in Johnson studies. Fleeman’s editorial method is rooted in the conviction that a literary text is not a single entity but reflects a process. The edition seeks to recover Johnson’s original manuscript, reconstructed from surviving printed versions by assessing Johnson’s irregular attention to proof correction for the first edition. Although the edition presents no significant textual changes relative to Lascelles’s and Chapman’s editions, it provides full rationales for all textual decisions. Fleeman uses information from Johnson’s letters to Thrale to work back toward the lost manuscript, concluding the letters were consulted when the narrative was written but functioned as collateral descendants from the notebooks rather than intermediate sources for the manuscript itself. The edition has a wealth of explanatory apparatus and meticulous documentation. Annotation is much richer than that supplied in the Lascelles edition. Introductory material details circumstances of composition, printing, publication, and reception. The volume incorporates a series of appendixes offering substantial factual material, including a register of variants detailing those found in the first three London editions, a list of works Johnson consulted, and a comprehensive register of hyphens. Analysis of hyphens leads Fleeman to suggest medial hyphenations in the printed text might reflect end-of-line breaks in the missing manuscript. An important contribution is the appendix titled Chronology and Typography, which lists dated entries detailing locations and routes for each day of the journey. The edition also includes extensive pedigrees for fifteen Scottish persons mentioned in the narrative. Fleeman used the edition to document and correct biographical and textual histories; for instance, he corrects an earlier error concerning the recipient of a presentation copy, tracing the book’s subsequent history. The book includes a facsimile of a rare leaf illustrating its printing history. Fleeman’s notes address contentious historical and literary matters surrounding the journey. He documents Johnson’s intense opposition to Macpherson’s Ossian poems. Regarding Macpherson’s claim that part of the epic was received in “Saxon character,” Fleeman notes Johnson meant Old English letter forms, a usage Johnson rightly deemed implausible for any Gaelic writing. Fleeman also noted that earlier scholars, such as Lascelles, failed to observe that the term “Irish” in the Scottish context denoted Scottish Gaelic. The edition documents Johnson’s regard for Highlanders, but records scholarly disagreements regarding Johnson’s politics; for example, Clark suggested the narrative represented expiation for Jacobite guilt, a view Fleeman contrasts with M’Nichol’s suggestion that Johnson feared Jacobites. Fleeman identified an allusion Johnson made in the travelogue to Tacitus’s Agricola, specifically citing Fleeman's editorial work as the source for the allusion’s location in the text. This edition serves as the foundation for subsequent scholarly engagement with the work. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics focusing on the exhaustive critical apparatus, the textual collation, and the historical methodology of the editorial work. Korshin's enthusiastic review in SEL praises the superiority of the extensive genealogical tables and bibliography over earlier versions. Womersley, in RES, commends the fine volume for its intelligent tact and restraint, highlighting how the detailed tracking of proofreading illuminates the shifting nature of the narrative process. Writing in AJ, Vander Meulen praises the publication as a landmark of scholarly editing, particularly lauding the historical approach that avoids excessive conjecture and the innovative register of variants that allows readers to track substantive changes. In BJECS, Grundy emphasizes the enduring value of the exhaustive scholarship, specifically pointing to the useful additions of daily itineraries and pedigree charts that refine the biographical context. Middendorf provides highly positive assessments in both ECCB and JNL, celebrating the definitive nature of the textual apparatus and the extensive explanatory notes regarding composition and printing. Jannetta, in The Library, deems the work a model of editorial scholarship with a clean textual presentation, while Pailler, in Études Anglaises, notes that the immense critical density targets a highly specialized audience. Lurcock, though, writes a more qualified review in N&Q; although he praises the expansive commentary as a monument of erudition, he criticizes the lack of intertextual commentary and identifies numerous printer's errors that make the text less reliable than previous editions.
Reviews: Isobel Grundy, BJECS 10, no. 1 (1987): 103–5; Mervyn Jannetta, The Library 8, no. 3 (1986): 284–85; Paul J. Korshin, SEL 26, no. 3 (1986): 570; Claire Lamont, Durham University Journal 79, no. 2 (1987): 389–90; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 34 [232], no. 3 (1987): 399–400; John H. Middendorf, ECCB, n.s., 11 (1985): 582–83; John H. Middendorf, JNL 46, no. 2 (1986): 5–6; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 39, no. 4 (1986): 458–59; David L. Vander Meulen, AJ 3 (1990): 442–52; David Womersley, RES, n.s., 38, no. 149 (1987): 82–83.
Diary of a Journey into North Wales in the Year 1774
Duppa provides the first publication of Johnson’s private 1774 diary, documenting an excursion through North Wales with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. The text fills a biographical "chasm" left by Boswell, who mistakenly claimed Johnson kept no notes of the tour. Duppa includes extensive "illustrative notes" and an appendix to clarify "minute particulars" and identify figures such as Lucy Porter and Elizabeth Aston. The record captures Johnson’s private observations of landscapes, industrial works, and architecture, including visits to Hawkestone and Caernarvon. Duppa notes the journal reveals "how the mind of such a man as Johnson received new impressions" when removed from his usual social circles. Mrs. Piozzi assisted with factual explanations of the entries. The volume also contains Johnson’s remarks on various "opinions and observations" and his first interview with Paoli. "There is nothing, sir, too little for so little a creature as man."
CGV entry 21:2. Included in many later editions of Boswell's 'Life' and in Volume 1 of the Yale Edition of Johnson's Works (1958).
The French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson
Tyson and Guppy edit the original manuscripts of the 1775 French tour undertaken by the Thrales, their daughter Queeney, and Johnson. This compilation brings together Johnson’s 26-day notebook (10 October to 5 November 1775) held in the British Library and Thrale’s (later Piozzi) 58-day journal (18 September to 11 November 1775) held in the John Rylands Library. Thrale’s record "differs from that of Dr. Johnson in that it is much fuller," emphasizing her impressions of French convents, churches, and social life, while Johnson’s brief notes focus on libraries and manufacturing. The edition includes selections from unpublished letters, character sketches of Thrale’s correspondents, and an editor's note regarding a fragment of Johnson's conversation Thrale preserved. The volume also contains Thrale’s previously unpublished 1784 journal of her journey with Gabriele Piozzi, which includes "personal information" omitted from her 1789 published account. The introduction provides biographical sketches of the travelers and reassesses Johnson’s fitness for travel using testimony from Baretti and Thrale. Critics say this book is a vast treasure that transforms the brief, skeletal jottings of a 1775 tour into a graphic and finished account. Bracey and Charlton emphasize that while one traveler’s diary remains incomplete, the accompanying journals provide a lively, witty narrative that reveals an engaging artlessness. Reviewers praise the volume for highlighting neglected subjects, such as interactions with monastic communities and religious houses. The Scotsman notes the contrast between one traveler’s boorish behavior and the other’s keen social observation. But Dobrée observes that memory occasionally fails the narrator to her companion's disadvantage. The general verdict finds these manuscripts offer an intimate, palpably honest look at baroque France.
CGV entry 21:3.
Reprinted Haskell House, 1973.
The Critic, No. 1: On the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, by the Author of the Rambler, in Letters to a Friend
To Dr. Samuel Johnson, on His Tour through Scotland
Ixion addresses Johnson regarding his Scottish tour, parodically adopting the "pompous" and "technical" language of the Rambler to challenge the author’s motives. The letter likens Johnson’s perambulation of a country he "despises and detests" to a naturalist using a microscope to study "loathsome vermin." Ixion argues that the "purity of dictum" in the Journey is ill-suited to its subject, asserting that describing Highland huts and "horn spoons" in technical vocabulary is as preposterous as "dancing in jack-boots." While acknowledging that Johnson’s recent account is more favorable than his previous "stigma of contempt," Ixion labels the compliments "frigid and awkward." The text concludes by characterizing Johnson’s style as a "scientific unintelligibility" and suggests the tour was a failed attempt to mitigate former "calumny" without mortifying the author's pride.
CGV entry 21:22. A hostile piece.
Hater of Impudence, Pedantry and Affectation
The writer challenges Johnson’s "scantiness of trees" thesis, arguing that the author’s "ordinary phraseology" masks a fundamental ignorance of Scottish land use. While Johnson suggests that planting is merely a matter of dropping a seed, the writer identifies the "sudden and violent" gusts of wind in the Scottish valleys as a physical barrier requiring clumped rather than detached planting. The text refutes the "stupidity" charged by Johnson, explaining that the abundance of coal in Fife removed the necessity for fuel-wood, which accounts for nine-tenths of English plantations. Furthermore, the writer provides specific evidence of "millions of trees" planted by Sir Archibald Grant and Colonel Gordon of Fyvie, suggesting that the "instability of property" during civil wars, rather than indolence, hindered earlier efforts. The critique concludes that Johnson's observations were limited by his "sitting in a chaise" rather than engaging in "laborious inquiry."
CGV entry 21:23. In two parts: February 16, pages 225–228; and February 23, pages 257-260.
A short poem, reading, in full, "Samuel says 'he could not find / In all our land a single tree,' / Methinks it would be no bad joke, Sir, / To try to cure o' the spleen the DOCTOR, / By speaking to his sense of feeling, / And thus his absurd notions healing. / Let’s take a good old Scottish birch, / And lay it smartly to his breech; / Perhaps 'twill make the Sieur Pomposo / Some less sarcastic and verbose—O!"
Anecdote of the Last Hebridean Traveller
CGV entry 21:25. A satire on Johnson's alleged attitude toward the Scots.
Philoaletheios asserts that Johnson’s journal justifies Chesterfield’s severe characterization of the author, suggesting Johnson traveled with "spleen and jaundice" that distorted his judgment of North Britain. The letter disputes Johnson’s rejection of Ossian’s authenticity, arguing that an author "entirely ignorant of the Gaelic tongue" cannot validly dismiss oral tradition. Philoaletheios further critiques Johnson’s observations on St Andrews, noting he ignores the city's commercial history to lament the loss of the primacy. Regarding the murder of Cardinal Beaton, Philoaletheios defends Knox’s account and challenges Johnson’s "insolent rant" against the Scottish Reformer. The text concludes by identifying errors in Johnson's survey of Scottish trees and his imperfect understanding of the ruins at Aberbrothock, characterizing the journal as a "dash of satire" suited only for illiterate or prejudiced readers.
A Recruiting Officer’s severe review challenges the integrity and observations of Johnson in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. The reviewer contrasts Johnson’s "illiberal prejudices" and "malignant sourness" with the "agreeable" and "useful" travelogue of Thomas Pennant. This letter disputes Johnson’s critique of Scottish poverty and manners, questioning why Johnson blames the "untutored savage" for a lack of refinement while he himself retains the "barbarism of the desart." The reviewer concludes that Johnson should remain within his "proper sphere of derivations and definitions" rather than engaging in social criticism, predicting that while Johnson’s work will be forgotten, Pennant’s will remain in "veneration."
Remarks on Some Passages in a Late Performance, Intitled A Journey Through Scotland, Letter I: Containing Some Strictures on Dr. Johnson's Characters and a Vindication of the Scots Reformers
Urbanus presents a severe critique of Johnson’s character and literary style, asserting that Chesterfield’s "respectable Hottentot" description accurately captures a man devoid of "familiar graces" and "liberality of heart." While acknowledging Johnson’s merit as a lexicographer, Urbanus characterizes his prose as a "sonorous pomposity" designed to mask common ideas in "studied obscurity." The letter specifically challenges Johnson’s account of the Scottish Reformation, particularly his description of Cardinal Beaton’s killers as "ruffians of reformation." Urbanus argues that Johnson uses the term "Knox’s reformation" as a "highest expression of contempt" and disputes the implication that the religious movement was merely a personal project of Knox. Defending the reformers' "warlike fierceness" as a necessity of the age, Urbanus concludes that Johnson’s "cynical" observations breathe only the "spleen and asperity of a mere churchman."
CGV entry 21:28. Attributed in the British Museum copy to "Dr. Geddes."
This polemical letter challenges Johnson’s recently published A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, characterizing it as a "laboured invective" designed to undermine James Macpherson. The writer, signing as Impartial Observer, defends the authenticity of the poems of Ossian by citing the testimony of Highland gentlemen and the existence of ancient manuscripts. The letter portrays Johnson as a "malignant" critic and a "butchering" dissector of character who lacks the liberality of sentiment expected of a man of letters. By contrast, it praises Macpherson’s integrity and his service to the "Republic of Letters" in rescuing a "valuable Work of Genius" from oblivion. The writer posits that Johnson’s "obstinate incredulity" cannot shake the established moral character of Macpherson or the international acclaim for the Ossianic translations.
The Druid characterizes Johnson as a 'surly pedant' and a 'narrow-minded bigotry,' challenging his failure to include vocabulary from the Earl of Shaftesbury or Bolingbroke in his Dictionary. The author suggests Johnson’s 'conceit' led him to ignore Bailey’s earlier work, which contains many valuable words. Focusing on the Journey, the letter ridicules Johnson’s inclusion of a 'trifle' concerning the price and construction of Highland 'brogues.' The Druid argues that Johnson uses a perceived contradiction in the cost of these shoes to justify a 'most unjust and illiberal reflection' against the integrity of all Highlanders. The text accuses Johnson of maintaining that 'laxity of Highland conversation' leads to an 'intellectual retrograde motion' for the inquirer. To refute Johnson's charge of 'fearless assertion,' the author provides a detailed classification of three distinct types of brogues, asserting that more diligent inquiry would have corrected the doctor’s 'stupidity.'
A Second Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson, in Which His Wicked and Opprobrious Invectives Are Shown, Etc.
Henderson continues his public criticism of Johnson. The title advertises that it will show Johnson’s "Wicked and Opprobrious Invectives." This work, along with the First Letter, contributes to the extensive critical response Johnson received regarding his depiction of the Highlands and Highlanders. Johnson typically adhered to a policy of declining engagement with such critics, regarding them as unworthy of a response.
Remarks on a Voyage to the Hebrides, in a Letter to Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
This text challenges the veracity and objectivity of Johnson's account of his journey to Scotland. The anonymous author disputes Johnson's assertions regarding the lack of trees, the prevalence of "kail," and the nature of Scottish ecclesiastical and educational institutions. The author characterizes Johnson's work as "a barren work, covered with a thin layer of merit; not only void of truth, but very fertile of prejudice." The text defends the antiquity of Ossian's poems against Johnson's skepticism, suggesting that to "ascribe the poems of Ossian to Macpherson, is to sin against the clearest light." Furthermore, it criticizes Johnson's "antipathy to Presbyterianism" and defends the character of the Highlanders, noting that Johnson’s "bare-faced insinuations" are "equally illiberal and contemptible." The author maintains that Johnson traveled with a predetermined desire to "discover the nakedness of a sister" country rather than to report findings honestly.
Strictures on Travellers, and Observations on Some Scots Manufactories Lately Established
A Lover of Scots Manufactures disputes Johnson’s assertion that Dundee contains "nothing worthy of observation." The author characterizes Johnson as a "licentious traveller" and "frothy pedagogue" who prioritized "good eating and drinking" over a diligent investigation of national wealth. In opposition to Johnson’s indifference, the writer describes a week spent surveying Dundee’s extensive colored thread manufactories, which employed thousands of spinners and used advanced machinery to rival Dutch and French competitors. The text argues that the "useful fabrics of trading manufactories" are superior to the "useless receptacles" of ancient monasteries and cathedrals. Furthermore, the author critiques the local magistracy for a "whimsical" legal attempt to divert a watercourse essential to the industry, warning that such actions threaten the livelihood of the "laborious poor" and the navigation interests of the town.
CGV entry 21:34. Censures Johnson for ignoring them.
On Reading Dr. Johnson's Tour to the Western Islands of Scotland
Bruce employs a satirical zoomorphism to depict Johnson as a "huge old English bear" exhibiting "guttural lingo" and beastly nature during his 1773 tour. She characterizes Boswell as a "Corsican droll" who deceptively presented Johnson to the "grave doctors" of St. Andrews as a philosopher. The poem ridicules Johnson’s complaints regarding Scottish accommodations, specifically his mention of a "puddle" by his bedside; Bruce asserts this was a "drain from himself" caused by intemperance during a meal with a "hearty old buck." Furthermore, the text mocks Johnson’s "wonder-struck" reaction to the perceived lack of trees in Scotland, which he reportedly desired only as "rubbing-posts." Bruce concludes by contrasting the "impudence" and "national slandering" of the "purblind old beast" with the genuine politeness and virtue of the Scottish people, whom Johnson unfairly consigned to "the devil."
The Fingal of Ossian, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books: Translated from the original Galic language, by Mr. James Macpherson; and now rendered into heroic verse
This verse rendering of Macpherson’s prose translation of Fingal includes a 72-page attack on Johnson's pronounced skepticism and belligerent public denunciation of the Ossian poems as a total "imposture." The text directly engages with the intense "battle of the books" sparked by Johnson's insistence that Macpherson provide the original Gaelic manuscripts.
CGV entry 21:36.
Letters from Edinburgh; Written in the Years 1774 and 1775
Topham’s popular collection contains severe criticism of Johnson's 1775 Journey to the Western Islands. Letter XVII, on the tour's reception in Edinburgh, attacks Johnson directly. Topham's account documents the immediate and widespread Scottish indignation towards Johnson's observations and perceived Scottophobia. The work serves as a record of the emotional response to Johnson’s published commentary on Scotland and its culture.
A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland: With Occasional Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Tour
Hanway’s travelogue includes a critique of Johnson's Journey. The author, a rare female voice in the masculine-dominated public debate, uses her own tour to offer "Occasional Remarks" on Johnson's observations. Hanway implies Johnson’s derogatory observations are distorted by his prejudice against Scotland. The critique demonstrates the widespread indignation in the press directed toward Johnson’s publication and his apparent Scottophobia.
Da Oran Oirdheirc, do'n Olla Shasgumnach; agus son Oran do Mhinisdeir Liosmoir, Mr. Domhnul Macneacail, le fior Gaidheal Albannach
This collection of Gaelic verse constitutes a vigorous cultural defense of Scotland against the "insolent lexicographer" Johnson. The primary text, "Song of Alarm to Scotland against the English Doctor," characterizes Johnson as a "haughty," "imperious," and "sanguine" monster who traveled west to "tear asunder" the reputation of the Highlanders. The poet disputes Johnson’s claims of Highland ignorance and the non-existence of the "Fian" (Ossianic) heroes, asserting that Gaelic is a "fluent," "copious," and "generative" language that Johnson failed to understand. A second "Ratiocinating Song" contrasts Highland integrity with the alleged "barbarity," "unchastity," and highway robberies prevalent in England, citing the insecurity of London roads as proof of Southern moral failure. The final panegyric to Donald McNicol praises the minister for "suffocating" the "open-mouthed brawling" of Johnson through his published Remarks. The work functions as a scholarly and nationalist manifesto, employing "scientifical" Gaelic terminology to validate Highland intellectualism against Johnsonian "defamation."
CGV entry 21:40. Contains "A Song to the English Doctor, Samuel Johnson" (pages 5-9) and "Ratiocinating Song with the English Doctor" (pages 12–17).
An Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems Ascribed to Ossian
Johnson's involvement in Shaw's Enquiry was rooted in their shared commitment to exposing Macpherson’s literary fraud, which Johnson had denounced in his 1775 Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Johnson took Shaw, a Gaelic scholar, "under his protection" around 1774, providing patronage by writing "Proposals" for Shaw's earlier linguistic projects and assisting his career advancement. Johnson's direct assistance to the 1781 Enquiry included providing "advice and assistance in conducting the argument," approving the final publication, and personally dictating the crucial 1775 letter of defiance to Macpherson for inclusion. The pamphlet served as an energetic vindication of Johnson's anti-Ossian stance, focusing heavily on the lack of original manuscripts. This 1781 alliance was a critical precursor to Johnson's final, substantial contribution to the controversy the following year, which involved ghostwriting for Shaw's Reply to Mr. Clark's Answer.
CGV entry 21:41. A second edition was published in 1782.
Extracts from the Publications of Mr. Knox, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Pennant, and Dr. Johnson; Relative to the Northern and Northwestern Coasts of Great Britain
This compilation aggregates observations from prominent 18th-century travelers and scholars concerning the economic potential and social distress of the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides. The text highlights the "natural advantages" of these regions, particularly the vast maritime resources of herring, cod, and ling, which are contrasted with the "distressful situation" of the inhabitants who lack salt, casks, and markets. Johnson’s contributions emphasize the stagnation of pastoral life where "life knows nothing of progression," and no man can eat meat without "killing a sheep" due to the absence of commerce. The volume argues that establishing fishing stations and small towns would create a robust nursery of seamen for the Royal Navy—potentially providing 120,000 men—and generate significant national revenue. It calls for public subscriptions to support maritime colonization and mitigate the "calamitous" effects of famine and emigration to America.
CGV entry 21:42. Proposals for the Scottish fish industry.
The Critic Philosopher; or Truth Discovered
Sinclair's polemical treatise on the errors and follies of eighteenth-century society addresses perceived failures in religion, law, and medicine. The text critiques the superstitious dreams of governors and the jumble of intricacies characterizing contemporary human knowledge. Sinclair attacks Johnson, describing his account of the Hebrides as totally void of truth, and fertile of prejudice, ill-nature and falsehood. He ridicules Johnson’s observations on Scottish poverty and the lack of trees, asserting that the silly Doctor was either blind or very near-sighted. The work further disputes Johnson’s definitions of political terms and sneers at his academic credentials, suggesting his degree reflects little honour on those who gave it him.
CGV entry 21:43. An attack on 'Journey'.
H. P. R. requests the source of a poem describing Johnson and Boswell touring Scotland.
CGV entry 21:44.
Hill retraces the 1773 Highland tour taken by Johnson and Boswell. He compares 18th-century Scotland with the Victorian era by using Johnson’s Journey, his letters to Thrale, and Boswell’s Journal. The narrative follows the pair from Edinburgh through St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and Inverness before reaching the Hebrides. Hill emphasizes Johnson’s focus on human life over natural scenery during a period when the clan system collapsed following the 1745 Rebellion. Exploring sites on Skye, Raasay, and Mull, Hill records traditions regarding the "Sassenach mohr," noting that Johnson endured physical hardships and "sullen fuel" without complaint. Although Johnson criticized the treeless landscape—an observation that later spurred Scottish reforestation—he praised the hospitality of hosts like Flora Macdonald. Hill also examines the Ossian controversy and Johnson’s dispute with Macpherson. The book concludes with the return through Glasgow and Auchinleck. Hill portrays the tour as a transformative experience where Johnson faced real dangers during sea crossings but gained a deeper understanding of the Highlands, eventually softening his prejudices through personal interaction with the Scottish people.
CGV entry 21:45. With illustrations by L. Speed.
Announces the discovery of the original manuscript notebook used by Johnson during his 1775 tour of France with the Thrales. Records the item's provenance from Malone and Boswell to the papers of Samuel Rogers. Corrects several transcription errors made by Boswell in the 'Life,' specifically regarding French locations and bibliographical references such as 'Martene' and 'Badius.' Disputes Boswell's claim of depositing the MS in the British Museum, suggesting Malone’s inscriptions prove the notebook was merely a loan from Scott. Argues for a full, accurate publication of the text to rectify long-standing editorial blunders.
CGV entry 21:46. On the manuscript of the journal of Johnson's French trip in 1775. Published in parts: No. 3693 (August 6), pages 191–192; No. 3694 (August 13), pages 226–227; and No. 3696 (August 27), page 291.
Johnson was a "reluctant traveller" who "hated sight-seeing." He journeyed to see "semi-civilised society" (Hebrides) or "the works of man" (France), not nature. His travel diaries display "shrewd sagacity" and strong "local prejudices," focusing on people, industry, and manners, not picturesque landscapes.
This note provides clarity on the identity of 'Mr. Janes,' a naturalist met by Johnson and Boswell in Skye in 1773. While previous editors suggested the name was a misprint for John Innes, the author identifies him as John Jeans of Aberdeen, a notable 'adept in the mineral kingdom.' The identification relies on a 1780 reference in Gough’s British Topography describing Jeans' annual walking tours to collect minerals and gems in Scotland.
CGV entry 21:48. See also a reply by P. J. Anderson in the same journal (August 20), pages 155–156.
Johnson and Boswell commenced their Highland journey in August 1773, traveling from Edinburgh to the Western Islands. While Boswell sought to exhibit Johnson to his countrymen, Johnson used the tour to observe a society in transition from feudalism to modern commerce. The pair encountered diverse Scottish figures, from university professors to Highland chieftains, often testing Johnson’s patience and prejudices. Boswell recorded Johnson's conversational "reflexions" and physical endurance during the rugged trek. Despite Johnson’s known "anti-Scottish bias," he expressed admiration for the hospitality of the islanders. The excursion produced two distinct narratives: Johnson’s philosophical observations and Boswell’s detailed journal of their daily interactions.
Marks describes Johnson’s 1774 Welsh tour with Piozzi and her family, challenging Macaulay's portrayal of Johnson's attitude toward travel. Johnson, often disdainful of Welsh rivers and towns, judged places based on size and utility . His journal reveals he found industry and majestic castles, notably Carnarvon, impressive, but little else . Piozzi's ancestor, Catherine de Berain, lived in Llewenni Hall, which Johnson visited . Johnson received an unwelcome monument before his death from Mr. Myddleton of Gwaenynog, to which he responded, "Mr. Myddleton's intention looks like an intention to bury me alive" . The author argues Johnson's journal reflects a critical English prejudice and an eighteenth-century focus on power.
CGV entry 21:50. The Welsh tour of 1774.
D. J. conveys an anecdote regarding Johnson originally recorded in Thistlethwayte's 1853 biography of Bathurst. The account, attributed to Chalmers during an 1833 visit to Gurney, describes Johnson’s visit to St. Andrews. During a formal dinner provided by the university professors, Johnson reportedly maintained a silent demeanor before responding to an inquiry about his meal with a caustic remark. He asserts that his purpose in Scotland involved observing savage men and manners rather than seeking entertainment. Thistlethwayte characterizes Johnson’s retort as a display of barbarism exceeding that of his hosts.
CGV entry 21:51. An apocryphal anecdote from 'Memoirs of Bishop Bathurst' (1853).
Johnson possessed an English prejudice against Wales, leading him to criticize its landscape, rivers, towns, and inns as "mean" due to his preference for size, utility, and power. Johnson's enthusiasm centered exclusively on the immense medieval castles like Carnarvon. Piozzi's recollections provide context to Johnson's indifference to Welsh culture and his preoccupation with industrial mechanics. The chapter concludes Johnson failed to appreciate the distinctive Celtic qualities of the Welsh people, a failing partly attributable to the contemporary intellectual decline among the Welsh gentry.
Dr. Johnson in the Hebrides: A Bibliographical Paper
Johnson's influence on Scotland was significant, particularly in promoting the translation of the Scriptures into Gaelic and shaping the literary landscape through his English Dictionary.
CGV entry 21:54.
Chapman describes the Journey as a unique book of travel, full of philosophical views and polished thoughts, written in a characteristic, sometimes pedantic, but sincere style. It highlights Johnson's candid descriptions, his thoughts on emigration, the decay of feudalism, and Highland traditions. It details Johnson's views on scenery, climate, and a cancelled passage condemning his native Lichfield's dilapidation.
The Portrait of a Scholar and Other Essays Written in Macedonia, 1916–1918
Chapman disputes the popular preference for Boswell’s diary over Johnson’s more formal narration, arguing the latter possesses a "capacious style" that avoids both verbosity and languor. Analyzing the 1773 expedition, Chapman demonstrates that Johnson’s observations on Highland depopulation and the decay of feudalism arise from an "eager curiosity" and genuine "sympathy with all that affects human happiness." The text defends Johnson against the Scottish "ignorant and malignant prejudice" regarding his remarks on timber, noting his constructive "philosophy of planting." Chapman maintains that Johnson’s Latinized vocabulary reflects a "rare power of intellectual discrimination" rather than pedantry. By examining the suppressed passage regarding the Lichfield Dean, Chapman illustrates Johnson’s "generous temper" and professional integrity. The text concludes that the Journey provides a "passionate sincerity" regarding the "gloom of desolation" in the Hebrides.
CGV entry 21:55. Reprinted from The Times Literary Supplement (1918).
Bell examines Samuel Johnson's personal engagement during his 1773 "Tour to the Hebrides," arguing that his interactions with individuals of intermediate rank, particularly those adhering to Jacobite loyalties, profoundly affected him. The author uses three primary sources—Johnson’s published Journal, his Letters to Mrs. Thrale, and James Boswell’s Journal—to differentiate Johnson’s public and private responses. Focusing on the visit to Kingsburgh and Flora Macdonald, the discussion highlights the congruence between Johnson's lifelong Jacobite leanings and Macdonald's principled fidelity. Johnson’s private writings, including his letter to Thrale and his penciled Juvenalian quotation, reveal deep admiration for Macdonald’s virtue over worldly gain, suggesting he considered writing a Latin poem in her honor. The piece contrasts Johnson’s formal public prose with the warmth and sincerity expressed in his intimate correspondence regarding figures like Macdonald.
CGV entry 21:56. In two parts: January, pages 106–120; and February, pages 244–256.
Johnson and Wordsworth: A Contrast in Travel
Johnson and Boswell commenced their 1773 Scottish journey with imperial affectation, using post-chaises and seeking cultivated society among lairds and scholars. Boswell acted as a chief of staff, ensuring Johnson found conversational equals to mitigate the rigors of the Highlands. Despite his urban prejudices, Johnson displayed physical perseverance, riding horses with foxhunter-like tenacity and remaining unperturbed during a dangerous Hebridean transit. In contrast to the later Wordsworthian immersion in nature, Johnson viewed mountainous terrain through a social lens, maintaining that wild country extends knowledge of human experience rather than stirring the heart. He focused on traces of patriarchal life and traditional history, though he briefly yielded to the "spell of place" in a rare moment of creative solitude. Boswell often struggled with boredom and Johnson’s melancholic undertones, yet their mutual forbearance sustained the thirteen-week expedition. Johnson later claimed the journey constituted the happiest period of his life, producing a narrative characterized by nakedly unadorned, rhythmic prose that reflects the starkness of the landscape.
CGV entry 21:57. First published in the London Mercury, volume 3 (January 1921), pages 269–278.
Roscoe contrasts the Highland tours of Johnson (1773) and Wordsworth (1803), characterizing Johnson as an "intelligent traveller" interested in social systems rather than aesthetics. Roscoe observes that Johnson found the Scottish landscape "repulsive" and "bleak," prioritizing "solid talk" and human hospitality at locations like Inverary and Streatham. The text notes Johnson's composition of Latin odes to Piozzi while in Skye, interpreting this as a preference for London culture over natural scenery. Roscoe identifies Johnson’s "incapacity to understand the aesthetic value" of the Highlands, attributing this to an 18th-century "urban" mindset that viewed nature as a "sealed book." Boswell’s role in documenting Johnson’s "courageous energy" during the arduous journey remains central to the comparison.
Roscoe contrasts the mental attitudes of Johnson and Wordsworth during their respective Highland tours, identifying them as representatives of the intelligent and the reflective traveler. Johnson is presented as an urban observer focused on social systems and human life, viewing the bleak landscape as merely repulsive or dreary. In contrast, Wordsworth possessed a mystical sense that found profound meaning and emotional resonance in natural objects. The study follows their impressions of the Pass of Glencroe to illustrate how Johnson's unimaginative mind remained on the surface of things while Wordsworth's brooding memory transformed the same scene into reflective poetry. Roscoe concludes that Johnson's incapacity to understand the aesthetic value of the Highlands reflects the general intellectual limitations of his age regarding the appreciation of nature.
CGV entry 21:58. Reprinted from The North American Review (1921).
Notes on Eighteenth-Century Bookbuilding
Chapman outlines technical aspects of 18th-century book production to aid bibliographical analysis. He examines methods of folding sheets, particularly the imposition of duodecimos, and the resulting effects on chain-lines and watermarks. The article discusses the utility of signatures and pagination, the function of half-titles, and the prevalence of cancels, providing methods for their detection. Chapman also touches upon historical paper sizes, emphasizing that understanding these physical properties is essential for textual criticism.
CGV entry 21:59. Discusses cancels in Johnson's 'Journey'.
Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow
Matheson examines Johnson’s character in the comprehensive light of his "experiences and impressions as a traveller," a perspective the article identifies as previously under-explored. While acknowledging Johnson’s status as a quintessential Londoner, Matheson emphasizes that his "insatiable desire to learn" prompted extensive and adventurous journeys, most notably the 1773 tour of the Hebrides undertaken at age sixty-four. The article defends the necessity of studying Boswell to understand Johnson, arguing that Johnson’s personality was greater than his writings and is best manifested through Boswell’s minute documentation. The proceedings included the opening of two new exhibit rooms at the Birthplace, featuring Tildesley’s collection of engravings and autograph letters. Bridgeman’s wreath-laying ceremony highlighted Johnson’s moral legacy, specifically his "tenderness to those in distress" and his "deep Christian sincerity."
CGV entry 21:62. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Proceedings of the Liverpool Philomathic Society
CGV entry 21:65. Separately printed by D. Marples, Liverpool, in 1927.
Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness
Records of the Scottish Church Historical Society
Scottish Ministers as Seen by Dr. Johnson
Rendall investigates Johnson’s 1774 note in his Journey into North Wales regarding the discrepancy between the Latin heading "Dixit injustus" and the English text of Psalm 36. Rendall finds that Johnson’s observation is supported by older Vulgates, such as a 1545 Paris edition, which contained two rival versions of the Psalm before the "Dixit injustus" rendering eventually displaced the other.
CGV entry 21:70. A note on an entry in the 'Diary of a Journey to North Wales'.
Lovat-Fraser retraces the 1773 itinerary of Johnson and Boswell on the Isle of Coll. He contrasts Boswell’s gossipy narrative with Johnson’s formal prose, detailing their interactions with local residents like the MacSweyns and "Young Col." The author identifies surviving landmarks, including the ruins of Grishipol and Breacacha. He argues that the journey highlights Johnson’s resilience in "wilderness" settings and records the tragic end of their guide, Donald Maclean, shortly after their departure.
Roscoe investigates the location where Johnson conceived the thought of writing A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, identifying a discrepancy between the accounts of Johnson and Boswell regarding a "rich green valley" where the travelers rested on September 1. Johnson's account places the rest stop "towards noon" in Glen Clunie, describing the entry into a narrow valley before passing "Loch Chinie" (Loch Clunie) where the guides said grass was available. Boswell’s account, however, places the rest later in the day in Glenshiel, with no mention of the loch or river. Roscoe argues that the description by Johnson is more probable, suggesting Boswell likely misrecorded the location while composing his Tour from jotted notes and misplaced the account after jotting down the sayings of Johnson in his notebook, failing to verify the details against the narrative of Johnson.
CGV entry 21:72.
Records of the Glasgow Bibliographical Society
Some Notes on Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands
CGV entry 21:74. Reprinted from the Inverness Courier, December 26-30, 1930.
CGV entry 21:75. Reprinted from the Inverness Courier.
Hindle records topographical and biographical details from Johnson and Boswell’s 1773 visit to Tobermory. The residence of Dr. Maclean, where the travelers were entertained, survives as Erray Farm, though partially converted for agricultural use. Hindle details the impoverished later life of Maclean’s daughter following her marriage to an innkeeper. Additionally, the note tracks the provenance of the 1667 spinet mentioned by Boswell, confirming its destruction by recent owners.
The Case of Scotland vs. Dr. Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 21:77. On Donald M'Nicol's attack on Johnson.
Chapman distinguishes three separate editions of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, all dated 1775, which booksellers often incorrectly refer to as 'issues.' The editions are designated a, b, and c. Edition a has two cancel-leaves and a 12-line errata page correcting eleven errors. Edition b was almost entirely reset, retained the eleven errors and the 12-line errata, but introduced authorial corrections in the earlier sheets and used starred signatures. Edition c followed b's revised text, was largely printed from b's type, but detected and corrected five of the persistent errors, resulting in a 6-line errata page. Chapman suggests b is rare but likely described by booksellers as the "first issue." He conjectures the printing numbers were approximately 2,000 for a, 500 (or less) for b, and 1,500 for c, totaling the four thousand copies Johnson mentioned.
Watkin-Jones examines the parallel Scottish tours of Johnson, Boswell, and Percy during August 1773. Percy breakfasted with Boswell in Edinburgh on 10 August, narrowly missing Johnson's arrival on 14 August. Watkin-Jones suggests Boswell may have concealed Johnson's impending visit to avoid sharing his company. The text contrasts Percy's enthusiastic response to the scenery near Loch Lomond with Johnson's preference for cultivated landscapes. Drawing on 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland' and 'Tour to the Hebrides,' Watkin-Jones compares the travelers' accounts of primitive sleeping conditions. Despite discussing Percy's suitability for a hypothetical college at St. Andrews during the tour, Boswell never records their recent meeting in his published journals.
Bracey discusses the 1932 release of the French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson, emphasizing the "vast treasure" of manuscripts acquired by the John Rylands Library. While Johnson’s diary of the 1775 tour remains a "skeleton" of jottings, Thrale’s journal provides a finished, graphic account characterized by "liveliness of style" and "wit." Bracey focuses on the party’s frequent visits to English religious houses abroad—a subject often neglected by eighteenth-century travelers. Assisted by the Catholic Mrs. Strickland, the group visited Benedictines, Austin Nuns, and Poor Clares across Calais, St. Omer, Rouen, and Paris. The journals record Johnson’s theological discussions in Latin, his prayers at Notre Dame, and his interactions with figures like the niece of Pope's Belinda. Bracey concludes that Thrale’s irrepressible interest in "Persons" over "Things" elucidates Johnson’s personal piety and his sympathetic engagement with monastic life.
Skye High: The Record of a Tour Through Scotland in the Wake of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Pearson and Kingsmill recount their 1936 journey through Scotland, deliberately retracing the 1773 itinerary of Johnson and Boswell. The narrative, structured primarily as a series of witty dialogues, juxtaposes the authors' modern travel experiences with historical reconstructions of Johnson and Boswell's adventures. The authors use recent publications, such as the 1936 discovery of Boswell's original journal, to challenge established biographical narratives and highlight discrepancies between the published Tour and Boswell’s private records. Discussions focus on Johnson's intellectual vigor, his physical endurance during the Highland tour, and his complex relationship with his biographer. The authors analyze Boswell's social anxieties and his "tender uneasiness" regarding his family, while providing commentary on other literary figures like Wordsworth and Hazlitt. This 2001 Common Reader edition includes a new introduction by Richard Ingrams that contextualizes the professional friendship between Pearson and Kingsmill and explores the book's initial commercial failure despite critical praise from contemporaries like Evelyn Waugh. Chapter 1, 'The Journey Planned,' details the project's inception in 1936 to retrace Samuel Johnson and James Boswell’s 1773 tour through Scotland. Chapter 2, 'The Journey Begins,' contrasts modern railway travel with historical itineraries while noting the unchanging nature of specific locales. Chapter 3, 'The Street Fight Test,' evaluates historical literary figures by their perceived physical toughness and moral character in hypothetical street brawls. Chapter 4, 'Immortality,' analyzes secular and religious arguments regarding the afterlife through the distinct temperaments of the travellers. Chapter 5, 'Scotland and Whisky,' examines the socio-economic significance of the distilling industry and the public persona of Ramsay MacDonald. Chapter 6, 'Scottish Wars of Independence,' contrasts modern commemorative attitudes with the historical reality of Robert Bruce's victory at Bannockburn. Chapter 9, 'Along the Canongate,' reconstructs eighteenth-century Edinburgh’s urban environment through Johnson’s documented physical reactions to its perceived squalor. Chapter 11, 'Evening in Edinburgh,' addresses the theatricality of modern historical commemoration through the floodlighting of Edinburgh Castle. Chapter 12, 'The Route to St. Andrews,' contrasts Boswell’s performative social enthusiasm with his documented domestic anxieties during the expedition's outset. Chapter 13, 'Are Poets Born?,' debates the distinction between general intellectual vigor and the necessity of innate creative genius. Chapter 14, 'St. Andrews,' addresses the ethical ambiguity of historical courage and the preservation of academic and ecclesiastical ruins. Chapter 15, 'Happiness,' critiques the projection of personal melancholia onto universal human experience through Johnsonian and Wordsworthian perspectives. Chapter 16, 'The Route to Aberdeen,' explores the logistical limitations of contemporary travel when attempting to adhere strictly to historical itineraries. Chapter 17, 'The Glories of Aberdeen,' examines the psychological impact of industrial urban landscapes on historical and modern visitors. Chapter 18, 'The Top of the Tap,' satirizes the shared mechanical incompetence of intellectual figures across different centuries. Chapter 20, 'How to Yarrow,' establishes the selective omission of geographic locations as a strategic element of literary travel. Chapter 21, 'Shakespeare in Scotland,' argues for a northern influence on the dark imagery and climate found within the Macbeth country. Chapter 22, 'Pearson Rebukes Johnson,' critiques the dehumanizing potential of religious orthodoxy regarding the destruction of historical ecclesiastical structures. Chapter 27, 'Inverness,' examines Johnson’s performative high spirits and his defense of physical vigor over sedentary academic pursuits. Chapter 28, 'Scottish Nationalism,' outlines the pragmatic aims of the contemporary nationalist movement against centralized administrative bureaucracy. Chapter 29, 'Another Refuge for Pearson,' satirizes the search for idealized pastoral isolation amidst the reality of rural decrepitude. Chapter 32, 'Johnson on Scenery,' analyzes the care and discrimination Johnson applied to natural observations despite his urban reputation. Chapter 37, 'Highland Hospitality,' examines historical and modern standards of reception through the lens of early Highland encounters. Chapter 40, 'Glenelg,' reconstructs the visceral discomfort experienced by Johnson and Boswell at their historical Highland accommodations. Chapter 46, 'Sir Sawney,' analyzes historical Scottish stereotypes and their impact on Johnson and Boswell’s perceptions. Chapter 48, 'Coirechatachan,' reconstructs Johnson’s social interactions in Skye and his performative displays of regional adaptation. Chapter 54, 'Dunvegan Castle,' details the historical lineage of the MacLeod clan and the enduring influence of Johnson’s advice. Chapter 55, 'Property and Sex,' critiques Johnson’s arguments regarding female chastity and its relationship to the preservation of property. Chapter 56, 'The House of Stuart,' evaluates the romanticization of the Stuart monarchy against the reality of its historical governance. Chapter 62, 'Mull and Coll,' analyzes the psychological impact of specific Hebridean islands on historical figures like Keats and Johnson. Chapter 65, 'Drink,' examines the role of intoxicants in historical and modern social lubrication and philosophical debate. Chapter 66, 'Auchinleck,' reconstructs the return to Boswell’s family estate and the reception by his collateral descendants. Chapter 67, 'Boswell's Home,' details the superb architecture and grounds of the Auchinleck mansion as a historical refuge. Chapter 69, 'Not Without Honour,' addresses the delayed recognition of Boswell’s literary genius within his own native land. Chapter 70, 'The Clan Spirit,' examines the endurance of familial and regional loyalties in the contemporary Scottish Highlands. Chapter 71, 'Interest in People,' argues for the necessity of candid biography and the frequent societal dread of such truthfulness. Chapter 81, 'The Return Journey,' summarizes the final transit and the reflection on retracing the steps of Johnson and Boswell. Chapter 82, 'Boswell's Bedside Book,' reconstructs the history and content of Dr. Ogden’s sermons for a modern audience. Chapter 86, 'Boswell Preaches,' examines the principle of divine love within Ogden’s sermons as adopted by Boswell. Chapter 87, 'The Efficacy of Prayer,' debates the formal journalism of prayer against the rarity of genuine spiritual impetus. Chapter 94, 'On Writing Biography,' details the differing temperaments and iconoclastic motivations of the project's two biographers. Chapter 95, 'In Retrospect,' summarizes the journey's conclusion and the enduring presence of historical and contemporary figures in the Scottish landscape. Critics are generally favorable, praising the travelogue as an entertaining, humorous conversational romp rather than a scholarly study. Murray, in the TLS, characterizes the work as a light-hearted, personal account notable for its amusing dialogue and inventive vocabulary, despite factual inaccuracies. In the New York Times, Jack describes the text as a delightful literary exercise, noting that while it has a bad beginning, the exaggerated raillery and Falstaffian imagery remain highly entertaining for fans of literary biography. Garnett's review in the New Statesman and Nation highlights the biographical dynamic between the writers, identifying one as a modern proxy for Johnson and the other as a malicious Boswell, while praising the volume's specific historical investigations. Mac Fall, in the Chicago Daily Tribune, approves of the brilliant commentary and devastating candor, noting how the publication of newly recovered original eighteenth-century manuscripts served as an effective guidebook. Similarly, an unsigned review in the Scotsman labels the volume a witty jeu d'esprit that prioritizes speculative discussion over a purely pious pilgrimage. A reviewer in the Christian Science Monitor commends the original, discursive style for effectively connecting the historical landscape with modern reflections. But Clarke, in the Daily News, offers a critical perspective, arguing that the modern travelers rely too heavily on guidebooks and public transport, resulting in set discussions that fail to establish genuine contact with contemporary Scottish life..
CGV entry 21:81. Republished the following year by Oxford University Press.
Cochrane entry 290.
Cochrane entry 289. Reconstructs Johnson's visits to Edinburgh using Boswell's account and other sources, and provides brief profiles of the local figures Johnson met there.
V. R. disputes Boswell’s assertion that Johnson’s poem London demonstrates an early prejudice against Scotland and Ireland. The author argues that Johnson’s lines follow Juvenal’s third Satire, favoring rural poverty over the dangers of the city rather than attacking specific nations. The mention of "hunger" reflects the notorious contemporary poverty of Ireland and post-1715 Scotland rather than personal bias. Additional sections include Avery’s compilation of 1730s theatrical performances in Richmond and Twickenham, MacPike’s genealogical notes on the Halley, Pyke, and Smith families, and Hibernicus’s analysis of "liquid lines" in English poetry.
CGV entry 21:85. On a copy of 'Journey' sent to the Laird of Raasay.
Fergusson provides a scholarly biography of William Nairne, whom Boswell frequently termed "Worthy Nairne." The narrative focuses on Nairne’s early legal career and his inclusion in the literary and legal circles of 18th-century Edinburgh alongside figures such as George Dempster and Adam Fergusson. A significant portion of the text examines Nairne’s interaction with Johnson during the 1773 tour of Scotland; Nairne accompanied the pair to St. Andrews, where he engaged in classical discourse with Johnson. Fergusson details the 1765 scandal involving Nairne’s niece, Katharine, who was convicted of poisoning her husband; the author provides evidence of Nairne’s complicity in her subsequent escape from the Tolbooth. The latter part of the abstract covers Nairne’s elevation to the bench as Lord Dunsinnan in 1786, his succession to the family baronetcy, and his dedicated efforts toward agricultural reform in Perthshire. Fergusson concludes by evaluating Nairne’s character as a quiet, upright scholar who fulfilled Johnson’s mandate of social duty before his death in 1811.
CGV entry 21:86. On William Nairne, met in 1773.
Notes on Johnson's Movements in Scotland: Suggested Attributions to Boswell in the Caledonian Mercury
Murray identifies several anonymous contributions in the Caledonian Mercury (August–November 1773) as the work of Boswell. These notes provide precise dates for Johnson’s and Boswell’s movements in Scotland, clarifying visits to Lord Elibank, Principal Robertson, and Sir Adolphus Oughton. The author argues that Boswell used these newspaper notes to supplement his later Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, specifically regarding the arrival in Edinburgh and the excursion to Hawthornden.
CGV entry 21:87. In two parts: January 6, pages 3-5; and March 16, pages 182–185.
Cochrane entry 466.
Powell addresses the long-standing dispute regarding the authorship of The History of St. Kilda (1764), originally attributed to Kenneth Macaulay. Johnson and Boswell both doubted Macaulay's capacity to write the book, which they suspected was a collaboration; Johnson famously called him a "crassus homo." Drawing on unpublished letters in the National Library of Scotland, Powell confirms a collaboration between Macaulay and Macpherson. The correspondence reveals that Macpherson, a classical and antiquarian scholar, deemed Macaulay’s initial draft "careless" and undertook to "retouch" and enlarge it, intending to use Macaulay’s name. Macpherson added extensive antiquarian reflections and classical illustrations in the "critical and etymological way." A comparative analysis confirms the work is a joint production: Macaulay wrote the descriptive, topographical, and eye-witness portions concerning the islanders and birds, while Macpherson contributed the numerous antiquarian, scholarly, and conjectural sections filled with classical references and theories on Druidism and the first inhabitants, frequently using a style identical to his acknowledged Critical Dissertations.
Cochrane entry 296.
Presents an undated note from the chemist Joseph Black, inviting "Mr. Johnston" to dinner on Thursday, requesting any evidence that Samuel Johnson dined with Black during his 1773 visit to Edinburgh. It also notes that the name on the address leaf was originally "Johnston," with the "t" later crossed out.
CGV entry 21:89.
The Cancels in Johnson's Journey, 1775
Hazen investigates the reasons behind the D8 and U4 cancels in the first edition of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. The D8 cancel (pp. 47–48) replaced a direct attack on the clergy of Lichfield Cathedral with a milder, general censure of the neglect of sacred monuments, primarily because the Dean had shown Johnson a kindness decades earlier. Hazen argues these alterations show the "sobering effect of reflection" on Johnson's "volcanic temperament." The second cancel, U4 (pp. 295–96), resulted from forgetfulness rather than indiscretion; Johnson inadvertently included a redundant telling of the Eigg islanders' suffocation by Macleod, an episode already narrated on pages 154–55. Using an offset discovered in a Yale copy, Hazen reconstructs the deleted passage regarding the island of "Egg," proving Johnson told the story twice. To "fill up the vacuum" created by excising the second account, Johnson wrote new observations on the relationship between "Popery, ceremony, and tradition" and how the Popish Islands preserved tradition.
Behold the Hebrides! [review of A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, by Martin Martin Arithmetic, by Cocker; Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by James Boswell; A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson]
De Blacam calls the two works a perfect complement, which should be bound together as a masterpiece. Johnson’s book is praised as lovely and full of information, while Boswell’s Tour is judged even better than the Life in many ways because of its livelier material. Both are valuable for recording the olden Gaelic social life.
Chapman challenges Boswell's interpretation of a 1774 letter in which Johnson asks, "Shall we touch the continent?" While Boswell interpreted this as a reference to a projected voyage to the "Baltick," Chapman argues Johnson used "our travels" to refer to his book, Journey to the Western Islands. He suggests Johnson actually wrote "reach the continent," inquiring if the work would achieve a European reputation. Chapman notes that in Johnson's hand, "touch" and "reach" are easily confused.
The Tour to the Hebrides: Its Value to the Social Historian
CGV entry 21:93. See Transactions of the Johnson Society.
Cochrane entry 299. Praises the travelogues of both Johnson and Boswell as invaluable historical records of Highland society during a period of great social transition.
Mossner investigates whether Johnson unwittingly stayed in Hume’s Edinburgh apartment while visiting Boswell in 1773. Previous commentators noted that Boswell leased Hume’s James’s Court property, suggesting Johnson may have toasted his host in the home of the "Great Infidel." By examining Baillie Court legal records concerning a 1774 lawsuit, Mossner clarifies that Boswell moved to a different ground-floor apartment on the same stair before Johnson’s arrival, effectively placing the moralist outside Hume’s specific "infidel regions."
CGV entry 21:94. On Boswell not being in Hume's house in 1773.
Cochrane entry 19.
Dr. Johnson at Fort Augustus: Captain Lewis Ourry
Cornu identifies Captain "Urie," Johnson's breakfast companion at Fort Augustus, as Captain Lewis Ourry, an officer who served in the American colonial wars and Pontiac's Conspiracy. Ourry's conversation, noted by Boswell, was likely engaging due to his wit, flair for writing, and experiences as a Quarter Master General at Fort Bedford, a key position requiring extensive administrative and logistical work. Cornu outlines Ourry's military career, highlighting the competence and equanimity that impressed figures like Colonel Bouquet and likely entertained Johnson and Boswell.
Berkeley’s philosophy, particularly his immaterialism, is often linked to Johnson through the famous anecdote of Johnson refuting it by kicking a stone to demonstrate the reality of matter. Berkeley's philosophical contributions, including his views on education, were significant in the 18th century. Johnson often engaged with complex philosophical and religious doctrines in his writings.
The Historical Authenticity of Dr. Johnson's 'Speaking Cat'
Cornu investigates the factual basis of an anecdote recorded by Boswell in 1778, in which Johnson characterizes a white woman who refused to leave her captors after the French and Indian War as a "speaking cat." By cross-referencing Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with military records and the letters of Henry Bouquet, Cornu identifies Captain Lewis Ourry as the likely informant who met Johnson and Boswell at Fort Augustus in 1773. Ourry served as Assistant Deputy Quarter-Master-General during Bouquet's 1764 expedition to the Muskingum River, which successfully compelled the delivery of white captives from Ohio Indians. Eyewitness reports and contemporary newspaper accounts, including William Smith's 1765 Historical Account, confirm that captives often parted from the Indians with "the greatest reluctance"; specifically, one young woman was "carried off tied by her friends" to prevent her return to savage life. This investigation confirms the historical authenticity of Johnson's "speaking cat" remark, which emphasized the gulf between civilization and savagery and illustrated his rhetorical practice of turning the surrender of humanity into an argument for the superiority of civilization over the "noble savage."
CGV entry 21:98.
Johnson's account records his observations of the landscapes and inhabitants of the Hebrides. It describes the compelling encounter between his disciplined 18th-century mind and the region's "half-barbarian civilization."
The Text of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland: 'Bayle' or 'Boyle'?
Sherbo challenges R. W. Chapman's editorial preference for "Bayle" over "Boyle" in a passage concerning second sight. Argument rests on the frequent coupling of Bacon and Boyle in Johnson's other works and his extensive familiarity with Boyle's scientific writings. Sherbo demonstrates that Bayle’s references to the supernatural concern apparitions rather than second sight, whereas Boyle’s papers specifically included reports on the phenomenon. Citing potential orthographic confusion between Johnson’s "a" and "o," Sherbo advocates restoring "Boyle" to the text.
Mrs. Piozzi on Boswell and Johnson's Tour
On the marginalia and annotations by Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi in her copy of the second edition of Boswell's Journal, now at Harvard. The notes, which are typical of Johnson's "lively lady," offer additional context and personal recollections, often challenging or correcting Boswell's account or his representation of Johnson. Examples include identifying the source of a story Johnson told (Scrase, Baretti), questioning Boswell's wonder at Johnson's ease of writing, and contradicting Boswell's assertion about her inability to finish Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare. Her annotations also include personal anecdotes, often to illustrate a point Johnson made, and witty, often skeptical, commentary on Boswell's narrative.
CGV entry 21:101.
Cochrane entry 302.
The Printing of Johnson's Journey (1775)
Todd's bibliographical study confirms that Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) consists of two separate editions (Edition 'A' and Edition 'B'), rather than one with multiple states. Based on the original printing ledger and Johnson's correspondence, Todd speculates that the publisher, Strahan, anticipating high sales, decided to increase the run from 2000 to 4000 copies (2000 for each edition) before the final proofs for the first edition were returned in November 1774. The paper, collation, type settings, and press figures differentiate the two editions. Edition 'B' was printed partially simultaneously with and immediately after 'A' and was corrected for five of the eleven errata listed for 'A'.
The Highland Jaunt: A Study of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson upon their Highland and Hebridean Tour of 1773
McLaren evaluates the 1773 Scottish tour by synthesizing eighteenth-century accounts with a personal mid-twentieth-century retracing of the itinerary. McLaren disputes traditional views of Boswell as a 'sot, lecher and buffoon,' arguing instead for his professional competence as an advocate and his 'essential likability.' The narrative contrasts the 'high thinking and high stinking' of Edinburgh with the 'patriarchal life' found in the Highlands, documenting the deterioration of Gaelic culture and the impact of the Highland Clearances following the 1746 Jacobite defeat. Significant attention is directed toward the travellers' interactions with local figures such as Flora Macdonald, the 'pompous' Sir Alexander Macdonald at Armadale, and the hospitable Mackinnons at Coirechatachan. McLaren identifies the visit to Dunvegan Castle as the 'climax' of the Skye journey, where Johnson was at his most 'luminous' and 'exultant.' The text highlights Johnson's intellectual curiosity regarding second sight and the Ossian controversy, noting his 'barbarous' dismissal of the Gaelic language. McLaren uses his own travels on horseback and foot to illustrate the physical hardships of the original journey and to reflect on the 'vanishing race' of Raasay and other Hebridean societies. The work concludes by observing Boswell's late-life melancholy in London, suggesting his time in Scotland with Johnson represented a rare period of 'peace with himself.'
CGV entry 21:103. The New York edition was published in 1955. See also his "Dr. Johnson's Island" [Coll] in the New Statesman and Nation, January 24, 1953, pages 88-89.
Cochrane entry 303.
Yeats's Byzantium and Johnson's Lichfield
Greene identifies a parallel between Yeats's "monuments of its own magnificence" and Johnson's description of cathedrals as "monuments of sacred magnificence" in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. While Gibbon is a proposed source, Greene argues Johnson's phrasing more closely aligns with the Yeatsian spirit and rejection of "despicable philosophy." Greene suggests Gibbon may have been influenced by Johnson. The note emphasizes the poetic quality of Johnson's prose.
Analyzes Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as a "revelation of the man's mental and physical stature" and a "self-portrait" of his reactions to Highland society. Disputes the notion of Johnson’s "real hostile feeling" toward the Scotch, arguing his "light satire" masks a "warm admiration" for feudal Highland life. Contrasts the "sonorous sententious prose" of the published Journey with the "personal tone" of his correspondence with Thrale. Details Johnson's encounters with Highland hospitality, his skepticism regarding the authenticity of "Ossian," and his observations on "Second Sight." Concludes with Johnson’s humble admission that his thoughts on national manners are those of one who "has seen but little."
Quaintance traces a specific anecdote concerning Johnson’s 1773 interview with Mrs. Blacklock in Edinburgh to its likely sources in Harold Thompson’s biography of Henry Mackenzie and the 1802 Public Characters. The anecdote features Johnson advising that grown children should live apart from parents to maintain harmony, a sentiment Quaintance finds consistent with Johnson’s known opinions. However, Quaintance and Herman Liebert express skepticism regarding the narrative’s authenticity, citing common fictionalizing tropes such as precise but varying counts of teacups and exaggerated rudeness. While Mackenzie’s own records verify a meeting occurred at the Blacklock home, Quaintance concludes that the specific details of the conversation remain unauthenticated and potentially fabricated by subsequent narrators.
CGV entry 21:107. On a comment on Henry Mackenzie.
Greene criticizes Robson's praise of Hart's essay on Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, arguing Hart's interpretation relies on misreadings and perpetuates the "Johnson of legend." Greene disputes Hart's claim that Johnson's major themes are the destruction of pre-Reformation Christian and Highland culture and the rise of middle-class society. He asserts Johnson had no quarrel with "increasing opulence," and his balanced perspective on the clan system's disadvantages far outweighed his limited approval. Johnson's true seriousness as a sociological observer is misrepresented by Hart's sentimentalized view.
CGV entry 21:110. An account of his trip to the Hebrides.
Some Reflections on Johnson's Hebridean Journey
Lascelles reflects on the Journey, suggesting it holds a distinct advantage over Rasselas. She argues the work requires reading on its own philosophical terms, independent of supplemental material. She praises Johnson’s "grasp of the whole" of Highland life and views Pennant as Johnson's primary intellectual opponent, emphasizing Johnson's critical focus on cultural evaluation over antiquarian fact.
Fleeman establishes the exact location in Glen Cluanie where Johnson sat to rest on September 1, 1773. By computing the travel speed of Johnson and Boswell at approximately two miles per hour from Anoch, Fleeman identifies the site as a narrow valley seven miles from Anoch and sixteen and a half miles from Fort Augustus. The text identifies this specific rivulet-bottomed valley as the place where Johnson first thought of writing his Journey to the Western Islands.
CGV entry 21:112. See also G. F. Sleigh in the same journal, December 15, page 897.
CGV entry 21:113. On where he decided to write 'Journey'.
Mitchell analyzes the bibliographical context of Johnson’s gift of Cocker’s Arithmetic to a Highland girl in the Tour, a gesture Boswell found ludicrous. Examining Cocker’s bibliography, Mitchell notes the author was a seventeenth-century writing master and the Arithmetic a posthumous, likely spurious, pedagogical hack work intended for small merchants. The humor lies not merely in the subject matter, but in the learned Johnson presenting a young woman with a vapid, century-old commercial manual suited only for the "meanest capacity."
Cochrane entry 305.
A Journey to the Western Isles Reconsidered
Johnson in Scotland: New Life amid the 'Ruins of Iona'
Journal of the Rutgers University Library
The Barren Years: A Further Consideration of Johnson's Prejudice against Scotland
Durkee investigates Johnson’s antipathy toward Scotland, locating its source in his religious and political commitment to hierarchy and his profound aversion to sloth. She argues that the primitive conditions of the Highlands, documented during the tour with Boswell, mirrored Johnson’s internal struggle against indolence. Durkee characterizes Journey to the Western Islands as a "sermon" urging the Scottish nation toward cultivation and diligent use of God-given faculties, reflecting Johnson’s own persistent fear of "barren years."
Johnson's Journey (1775) and Its Cancels
Fleeman provides the full text of the original, uncancelled leaf U4 (pages 295–96) from the first edition of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), found in a copy in the Hyde Collection. This uncancelled leaf contained a second telling of the story of the Eigg islanders being suffocated in a cave, a story that first appeared on pages 154–55. The redundant account was removed, with the cancel leaf (cancellans) featuring new commentary on the "Popish islands." Fleeman notes that the decision to cancel U4 rather than the earlier pages L5 and L6 was likely for the simpler and cheaper expediency of replacing a single leaf. He also confirms the provenance of the known cancellandum of D8 (pages 47–48), containing Johnson’s invective against the Lichfield Cathedral clergy, which is also in the Hyde Collection.
A Note on Johnson's Journey (1775)
Kendall analyzes the Lewis copy of Journey to the Western Islands (1775), identifying it as edition A, first state, with a probable John Nichols signature. Offset evidence suggests "pressman number four" began work on substitute leaves earlier than Todd’s printing history allows.
Notions and Facts: Johnson and Boswell on Their Travels
Lascelles explores the genesis of Johnson’s Journey and Boswell’s Tour, focusing on their differing priorities during composition. While Boswell diligently gathered information and corrected Johnson’s errors regarding names and Highland genealogies, Johnson prioritized "notions" and reflections on human life over mere "enumeration of particulars." The text analyzes specific editorial disputes, such as the misinformation regarding the chieftainship of the Macleods, for which Johnson ultimately apologized. Lascelles identifies Boswell’s frustration with Johnson’s failure to use his proffered notes, suggesting that Boswell eventually realized his vivid narrative gifts required the fuller scope of a separate publication.
Cochrane entry 306.
Philosophy as Art: A Study of the Intellectual Background of Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Jemielity analyzes the intellectual background of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, relating his observations to the historical context of Highland life and to his established assumptions and attitudes. It places the Journey within the genre of travel literature, assessing arguments regarding Johnson's alleged prejudice against Scotland. The study presents the Journey as a philosophical work defined by an artistic use of historical and social analysis. It then examines Johnson's views on the Highlands' economic, social, and cultural conditions, including his defense of the tacksman and his definitive refutation of Macpherson's Ossianic claims.
CGV entry 21:123. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 26 (April 1966), pages 6022-6023.
'Savage Virtues and Barbarous Grandeur': Johnson and Martin in the Highlands
Samuel Johnson and the Literature of Travel
Moore documents Johnson's extensive and critical engagement with travel literature, compiling over 130 related works. It examines how Johnson's moral, psychological, and aesthetic convictions shaped his opinions, particularly his defense of the genre's utility for the traveler, reader, and countrymen. The study analyzes the traces of this reading in Johnson's works, including his translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, Rasselas, and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, arguing that his literary practice used travel themes according to strict canons of truth and usefulness.
CGV entry 21:126. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 28, number 1 (July 1967), pages 237A–238A.
Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland: A Reconsideration
Pattern in Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands
Johnsons Kritik des Primitivismus in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
'More in Notions than Facts': Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands
Jemielity identifies the 'philosophical quality' of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands as its defining characteristic. Unlike Boswell’s chronological and anecdotal record, Johnson’s text focuses on 'reflection on Highland society' and 'notions' over mere facts. The study explains that Johnson analyzes the transition from a 'semi-barbaric, feudal, and patriarchal society' to one increasingly defined by the 'cash nexus' following the 1746 defeat at Culloden. Jemielity details Johnson’s 'unequivocal, unrelenting denunciation' of the Ossianic hoax and his suspended judgment regarding the 'second sight.' The work presents Johnson as a 'philosophical traveller' whose cause-and-effect analysis of emigration, isolation, and the role of the tacksman offers a moral evaluation of social change.
This letter discusses an incident recorded in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1773), where the Laird of Lochbuie "bawled out" to Johnson asking if he was one of the Johnstons of Glencoe or Ardnamurchan. The letter corrects the transcription of "Glen Croe" to Glencoe. It explains that Lochbuie was asking if Johnson was connected to the MacDonalds who had taken the name Johnston. Campbell includes a confirmatory account of the incident from W. Otter's Life of Edward Daniel Clarke (1825), which quotes Clarke's own journal of 1797. The Clarke account records a sharper exchange, ending with the Laird calling Johnson a bastard. Campbell suggests that if Clarke's account is accurate, Boswell did not record the conversation accurately because Johnson's pride was hurt.
CGV entry 21:135. See also correspondence from J. D. Fleeman, Mary Lascelles, and Frank Brady in subsequent issues.
Dr. Johnson and the Cucumber: The Question of Value
Easson challenges the assumption that the cucumber was universally deemed worthless in the eighteenth century. While Johnson famously dismissed the vegetable as fit only for hogs or for disposal after dressing, the author cites Evelyn, Cowper, and period broadsides to demonstrate a more nuanced cultural standing. Easson argues that Johnson’s low opinion reflects a culinary prejudice rather than a general consensus. The text highlights the high rarity value of out-of-season cucumbers, exemplified by a New Year's gift to George II, contrasting Johnson's metaphorical use of the plant with contemporary social and economic realities.
CGV entry 21:136.
Samuel Johnson's Journey (1775) with Uncancelled U4 Leaf
Landon identifies a unique copy of SJ's Journey to the Western Islands (1775) preserving the cancelland leaf U4. Examination reveals a printer's error where the original leaf was pasted onto the stub of the intended cancel. Distinct from the four copies previously noted by Fleeman, this volume's provenance is traced to Sir William Robert Sydney. The note contributes a new physical variant to the study of the book's cancellation history.
Schwartz argues that Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands is vital for correcting the static, entrenched "popular" images (like Boswell's enlightened despot or Macaulay's caricature). The Journey uniquely illustrates the dynamic process of Johnson's thought, portraying the "transition from experience to literary statement." Johnson's methodology is that of a "skeptical empiricist" and intellectual adventurer, relying on concrete observation, testing evidence, and only forming generalizations when possible, often with qualification. He consciously employs a fragmented style to mirror the difficulties of sifting evidence and forming reflections from particulars. The book emphasizes Johnson's conscious affinity with the skeptical empiricism and methodology of the philosophical "Moderns."
Johnson in the Hebrides: Philosopher Becalmed
O'Flaherty argues that A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland reveals Johnson as a static, not a dynamic, thinker, whose deep-seated prejudices prevented genuine intellectual expansion. Johnson's English, Anglican, and class biases resulted in a tone of condescension and irony, overlooking the Highland culture's significance. His focus remained largely on topographical minutiae and self-conscious philosophical display, leading to a superficial understanding and reactionary analysis of major social issues like the role of the tacksmen and the problem of emigration.
CGV entry 21:139. See responses by Arthur Sherbo and O'Flaherty in subsequent issues.
On Johnson's extensive, lifelong interest in travel literature as a stimulating, rational, and imaginative exercise. Recognizing the limitations of his own travels, Johnson turned to others' accounts (like Father Lobo's or Martin's Description), dedicating many works to the genre. For Johnson, the ultimate value of travel lies in acquiring new knowledge and images to establish a sounder comparative judgment of "human life" and the "progress of the human mind." His aim was "to regulate imagination by reality."
A Verbal Echo: Humphry Clinker and Johnson's Journey
Ford highlights a specific verbal parallel between Smollett’s Humphry Clinker and Johnson’s Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. While no external evidence confirms Johnson read Smollett's novels, his description of the Highlands as "rudeness, silence and solitude" closely mirrors Smollett’s earlier phrasing of "sublimity, silence, and solitude." Ford posits that Johnson may have unconsciously recalled Smollett's vocabulary when confronted with the same Scottish landscape, suggesting a subtle intertextual influence between the two writers.
Much Entertainment: A Visual and Culinary Record of Johnson and Boswell's Tour of Scotland in 1773
Maclean reconstructs the 1773 itinerary of Johnson and Boswell through Scotland and the Hebrides, integrating historical narrative with eighteenth-century culinary practices. The text organizes the journey chronologically, identifying specific hosts and residences, such as Lord Monboddo's estate and Dunvegan Castle, while documenting the travelers' documented reactions to local hospitality. Maclean supplements the geographical account with recipes adapted for modern use from period sources, including McLintock, Cleland, and Dods, to represent the dishes encountered or available during the tour. The volume features contemporary illustrations, cartoons by Thomas Rowlandson, and portraits by Allan Ramsay and John Kay to provide a visual record of the era. Editorial policies include modernizing spelling and punctuation in quotations from Johnson’s Journey and Boswell’s Journal while maintaining traditional terminology for Scottish items. The work serves as both a historical guide and a culinary study, focusing on the domestic details of the famous expedition and proving Johnson's assertion wrong that 'women... cannot make a good book of cookery.'
CGV entry 21:147.
Cochrane entry 311.
Samuel Johnson and James Boswell: First Tourists to Iona and Their Successors
CGV entry 21:148. An eight-page pamphlet.
Philosophic Art and Travel in the Highlands: Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Johnson and Miss Dashwood at Braidwood's Academy
Jenkins identifies the anonymous young lady Johnson encountered at Braidwood's Academy in Edinburgh during his 1773 tour. Using annotations in a copy of the Journey owned by William Ambler, Jenkins establishes the student as Sarah Dashwood, niece of Sir Francis Dashwood. Sarah was a direct descendant of Anne Milton, the sister of John Milton. Jenkins argues that Johnson, who deeply respected the living remains of great men like Milton and Grotius, would have found his admiration for the school's success even more poignant had he known a descendant of Milton required education in a barbaric nation he frequently mocked.
Johnson as Satirical Traveler: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Johnson and the Geographical Revolution: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland exemplifies 18th-century scientific travel by replacing grand tour preconceptions with empirical observation. Johnson used codified topics of inquiry, reflecting Royal Society standards, to study Highland life. His journey, motivated by a desire to regulate imagination by reality, became a sobering intellectual process that revised his initial romantic expectations and softened his prejudice against Highlanders. The narrative structure, moving from specific details to moral and cultural generalizations, illustrates his inductive method for discovering moral universals amid cultural diversity.
Curley explores Johnson's life and literary achievement through the geographical movements and travel themes of the eighteenth century. He argues that travel served as a 'central vehicle and symbol of intellectual growth' in Johnson's life, morality, and society. The study examines Johnson's preoccupation with travel literature, his 'philosophical' journeys of scientific inquiry, and his use of travel metaphors to dramatize human behavior as a 'universal pilgrim-Ulysses of Quixotic travel.' Curley analyzes how Johnson synthesized Renaissance moral ideals with modern empirical methods to promote a reliable study of the human family. The volume provides detailed abstracts of Johnson's tours of Wales, France, and the Hebrides, presenting his A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as the 'culmination of his varied interests in travel.' Curley concludes that Johnson's 'soaring curiosity' about the globe reflected a moral vision of man as a restless inquirer seeking truth in a 'geographical epoch of exploration and discovery.' Chapter 1, "Johnson's Lifetime, 1709-1784: The Age of Travel," addresses the geographical revolution of the eighteenth century, arguing that the expansion of the British Empire and the influx of empirical data from global exploration profoundly reshaped Samuel Johnson's intellectual milieu and challenged traditional assumptions about moral uniformity. Chapter 2, "Johnson and the Tradition of Travel Literature," examines the immense popularity and intellectual significance of the travel genre, identifying how Johnson synthesized Renaissance humanist ideals with modern scientific inquiry to establish rigorous literary and empirical standards for geographical reporting. Chapter 3, "Habits of Travel in Wales and France with the Thrales," addresses Johnson’s late-life excursions as the realization of a long-deferred moral imperative to witness human diversity firsthand, arguing that while these tours often reinforced his national prejudices, they simultaneously facilitated a therapeutic and intellectual engagement with the objective world. Chapter 4, "Morality and the Metaphor of Travel," establishes that the concept of movement is the central structural principle of Johnson’s ethics, contending that he metaphorically cast mankind as an archetypal pilgrim-Ulysses whose restless earthly journey serves as a necessary psychological and spiritual probation for eternity. Chapter 5, "Mythic and Historic Travel in the Creation of Rasselas," explores the creative synthesis of travel archetypes and authentic geographical sources, arguing that Johnson used his expert knowledge of oriental exploration to ground his mythic fable in historical reality and communicate an antiromantic survey of human unhappiness. Chapter 6, "Philosophic Art and Travel in the Highlands," addresses A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland as the culmination of Johnson's varied interests, identifying it as a sophisticated experiment in scientific humanism that chronicles cultural decay and tests moral assumptions against the immediate evidence of a primitive society. Chapter 7, "The End of a Journey," concludes by identifying Johnson as a representative figure of an inquisitive age whose noble life of disciplined exploration served as its own metaphor for a tireless pursuit of truth and peace. Critics are generally favorable, though a consensus emerges regarding stylistic flaws and overextended arguments. In prominent trade and news publications, Sutherland, in TLS, finds the analysis of fiction relevant and perceptive but critiques the repetitive nature and overuse of commonplace travel metaphors. Jones, in Library Journal, commends the thorough investigation of how travel fascination influenced a single moral vision, deeming it a significant scholarly contribution despite occasionally graceless prose. Specialist reviews in scholarly periodicals mirror this division. Bloom, in ECS, praises the development of a reasonable travel theory but censures the bewildering composite imagery and omission of contrary evidence. In JNL, Clifford and Middendorf praise the careful, thoughtful, and frequently illuminating framework that demonstrates how travel structured human existence. Connors's review in Studies in Burke and His Time commends the expert detail regarding humanist and empirical traditions. But Gold, in JEGP, offers a largely negative assessment, attacking the later chapters for irresponsible speculation that bends books to fit nonexistent parallels. Fleeman, in MLR, notes useful insights on empiricism but labels the volume an inflated footnote marred by a strident tone and factual errors. Danchin, in English Studies, notes a valid core thesis but argues that speculative claims and dense vocabulary weaken the material. Doig, in N&Q, praises the demonstration of global exploration themes but targets the reliance on academic jargon, while Weinbrot's review in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography finds the psychological grounding successful despite unconvincing claims regarding primary mentors and historical context.
Gold provides a largely negative review of Thomas M. Curley’s study, judging the early chapters "sensible" and "sound" in their effective documentation of Johnson’s reading in travel literature. However, he criticizes the rest of the book for "irresponsible" speculation and a confusion of the fictional world with the real one. Gold disputes Curley’s attempt to draw biographical parallels between Johnson and his characters, such as attributing Johnson’s abstract descriptions to myopia. He specifically challenges the "dazzling bit of legerdemain" Curley uses to link the plot of Rasselas to historical Jesuit misfortunes in Abyssinia, asserting that the argument for Rasselas as an inverted prototype of Lobo’s Voyage relies on premises that are wispy and distorted. Gold concludes that Curley "has bent each book to his purposes" to create parallels that do not exist for readers familiar with the original works.
CGV entry 21:153. A critical review by Joel J. Gold of the book by Thomas M. Curley.
Bloom praises the book for developing a reasonable theory of travel and relating it to Johnson's artistic achievement, including an acute analysis of The Life of Savage. However, she criticizes the thematic immoderation, quavery scholarship, and omission of contrary evidence. Bloom finds Curley's composite "Quixote-Ulysses-pilgrim" image for Johnson bewildering and illogical.
CGV entry 21:153.
King highlights Curley’s perspective on Johnson as a man who longed for exotic travel to mitigate the insufficient happiness of life. Curley argues that Johnson viewed human morality through the lens of a Quixote-Ulysses-pilgrim seeking certitude in a chaotic universe. The review emphasizes how Curley contextualizes Johnson’s writing within an era of scientific curiosity and imperial expansion. King notes the book is occasionally encumbered with long repetitive lists of travel literature.
CGV entry 21:153. A review of the book by Thomas M. Curley, alongside other works.
CGV entry 21:153. A review essay by Leo Braudy on the book by Thomas M. Curley.
Connors reviews Curley's Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel, praising it as a valuable study of Johnson's mind and his profound, though often frustrated, curiosity about distant lands. The book expertly details the humanist and empirical traditions shaping Johnson's travel theories. Curley explores how Johnson's moral essays, including Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, manifest his view of life as a pilgrimage. Connors notes the book’s effectiveness and its respect for Johnson's unfailing honesty.
Adams's review disputes Lillian Bloom's harsh assessment of Thomas Curley's Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel. Adams argues that Bloom mischaracterizes Curley's work as a book about Johnson the traveler rather than an analysis of Johnson's deep literary and conversational fascination with travel literature. The review challenges Bloom's reliance on Hester Thrale Piozzi's suspect claim that Johnson rarely read travel books to the end, countering with a list of travel authors Johnson studied carefully. Furthermore, Adams rejects Bloom's dismissal of Curley's composite Quixote-Ulysses-pilgrim metaphor, demonstrating that Curley accurately traces how Johnson used these archetypes to depict human mortality in a chaotic universe.
CGV entry 21:153. A review essay by Percy G. Adams on the book by Thomas M. Curley.
Doig evaluates Curley’s examination of travel as a formative influence on Johnson’s thought and literary corpus. The reviewer credits Curley with successfully demonstrating how Johnson’s interest in global exploration informs works ranging from the Lobo translation to Rasselas. However, Doig identifies significant stylistic defects, citing a reliance on dense academic jargon. Doig further questions Curley’s claims regarding the historical inspirations for the ending of Rasselas and notes specific bibliographic inaccuracies concerning Scottish historical sources and Sacheverell.
CGV entry 21:153. Review by Ronald P. Doig of the book by Thomas M. Curley.
Weinbrot's mixed review evaluates a monograph on travel themes in the biography and writings of Johnson. The monograph successfully demonstrates how travel metaphors and verifiable external details ground the psychological reality of Rasselas and the philosophical focus of the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Curley establishes that travel defined the means for psychological health and moral virtue in Johnson's life. The review, however, identifies several flaws, including a confusion of English and British geography, an inaccurate claim that Augustus expanded rather than consolidated the Roman Empire, and an unconvincing assertion that James Howell served as Johnson's principal travel mentor. Weinbrot also disputes the claim that Rasselas contemplates the murder of his own family, counterable by textual evidence that the fictional prince merely imagines his family dead of natural causes during youthful daydreaming.
CGV entry 21:153. Review by Howard D. Weinbrot of the book by Thomas M. Curley.
In this mixed review, Fleeman acknowledges Curley's diligent survey of travel literature's influence on Johnson's writing, particularly regarding Rasselas and pervasive metaphors of life as a journey. However, Fleeman disputes the central significance Curley assigns to the journey image, noting it lacks the structural function found in works like the Odyssey. Fleeman identifies numerous factual errors, inaccurate quotations, and an assertive, "strident" tone that diminishes the work's authority. While Fleeman labels the book an "inflated footnote," he admits it provides useful insights into the influence of James Howell and the foundational role of Locke in Johnson's thought.
CGV entry 21:153. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the book by Thomas M. Curley.
Danchin evaluates Curley’s study of Johnson’s interest in travel, noting its focus on Johnson as both a reader of travel literature and a traveler in Scotland. While acknowledging the validity of Curley’s thesis regarding the "pervasive metaphor of travel" in Johnson’s moral fables, Danchin criticizes the text for repetitive phrasing and exaggerated claims. He argues that Curley loses a sense of proportion by characterizing Johnson as a "heroic" explorer and "pilgrim-Ulysses," concluding that the work’s speculative nature and abstract vocabulary weaken an otherwise impressive compilation of information.
CGV entry 21:153. A severe review by Pierre Danchin of the book by Thomas M. Curley.
Johnson's Journey and the Theatre of Mind
Meier defends Johnson against Patrick O’Flaherty’s claims of objective failure and "insulting condescension" during the Scottish tour. He argues that Johnson’s superior tone is a general stylistic trait rather than specific anti-Scots bias. Meier distinguishes between Johnson's prejudice against Lowlanders and his fascination with Highlanders, citing Boswell to suggest Johnson’s views actually underwent "rethinking." Furthermore, Meier demonstrates Johnson’s compassionate involvement with Highland social crises, including emigration and the displacement of tacksmen.
Johnson and Boswell: On the Survival of Culture
Cochrane entry 317. Contrasts Johnson's and Boswell's perspectives on Highland culture, with Johnson taking a reform-minded, historical view and Boswell taking an aristocratic, present-focused approach interested in preserving individual character.
Fleeman defends the asymmetrical phrase "pains or pleasure" found in Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands (1775). Despite editorial suggestions to pluralize "pleasure," Fleeman provides evidence from the proofs of the "Life of Cowley" where Johnson manually inserted the same singular form. Analysis of the Journey proofs suggests Johnson carefully reviewed these sections. Fleeman concludes the phrase is an idiosyncratic but authoritative Johnsonian expression, sanctioned by the author in two separate works.
CGV entry 21:160. In 'Journey'.
Love, Accuracy, and the Power of an Object: Finding the Conclusion in A Journey to the Western Islands
Parke explores Johnson’s conversion of biography and autobiography into a "paradigm" for moral and pedagogical development. She argues that Johnson views biography as the "collecting of knowledge" in youth, while autobiography functions as the "distribution" or teaching of knowledge in maturity. The article contrasts the "incomplete learning" of Richard Savage with the "accurate hope" found in Johnson’s Scottish journey. Parke describes the Journey as a "sequel to the Dictionary," where Johnson moves from defining words to "examining things" and their biographical significance. By "conjoining the biography of a nation" with his own autobiography, Johnson uses a "methodology of personal knowledge" to mediate between the world of objects and communication. The study suggests that for Johnson, "only a life can make sense of other lives."
Houghton Mifflin; Oxford University Press
In the Footsteps of Johnson and Boswell: A Modern Day Journey Through Scotland
Shenker recounts a contemporary retracing of the 1773 Highland tour undertaken by Johnson and Boswell, using their primary accounts as a geographical and investigative framework. Through interviews with descendants of eighteenth-century hosts and consultations with local experts in Gaelic poetry, history, and medicine, Shenker examines the evolution of Scottish mores, education, and religion. The narrative tracks the travelers from Edinburgh through St. Andrews, Aberdeen, and across the Hebrides to Skye, Mull, and Iona. Shenker observes the "disappearance of the class" of minor gentry that entertained his predecessors and notes the "decline of Gaelic" in favor of English as the dominant community language. Specific attention is given to the physical state of landmarks such as Slains Castle and Dunvegan, and the legacy of the nineteenth-century clearances on modern Highland identity. Shenker explores the persistent influence of Johnson’s literary authority while documenting the "changes effected by two centuries" in infrastructure and social stratification. The text concludes by weighing Johnson's "majestic assertiveness" against the complexities of contemporary Scottish life, characterizing the journey as an inquiry into the "development of human instinct" rather than a search for grand scholarly conclusions. Critical reception of this contemporary travelogue is largely appreciative, framing it as a "congenial mission" that successfully bridges the gap between eighteenth-century journals and the modern state of western Scotland. Winks and Kendall characterize the work as a "charming," "quirky," and "excellent guide" for travelers, praising the author’s "verve and authority" in documenting landscape shifts and the decline of the Gaelic language. Reviewers such as Andreae and Morris highlight the book’s strength in "objective reportage" and "diligent observation," noting that the author functions as a "good listener" who captures an "intriguing cross-section" of the local populace rather than focusing on mere scenery. While Altick commends the use of "historical imagination" to recreate the "ancient Gaelic society" and the "flavor of the period," Morris offers a more playful critique through a parodic dialogue, suggesting the work possesses "quick stabs of wit" and a style more reminiscent of a "Boswell than a Johnson." Osmun and Kendall particularly enjoy the contrast between historical sites like Slains Castle or Loch Ness and modern amenities, noting the "petulant" plaques and "tolerable inns" that mark the original 1773 itinerary. Although Andreae observes that the narrative lacks the specific "laconic and expansive duality" found in the original accounts, the consensus, as reflected by Winks, is that the volume serves as a "charming informal commentary" that provides a "valuable" encounter with the past for both armchair and on-the-road travelers.
CGV entry 21:163. The New York edition was published in 1984.
Cochrane entry 324.
CGV entry 21:165. Annotated and lavishly illustrated.
Johnson, Traveling Companion, in Fancy and Fact
Bronson contrasts Johnson's portrayal of travel and life's possibilities in the fictional Rasselas with his actual experiences recorded in his Journey to the Western Islands and Boswell's Tour. While Rasselas, colored by Johnson's disillusionment, emphasizes the vanity of human wishes, the Scottish journey reveals Johnson's enduring zest for experience, observant nature, and imaginative engagement with unfamiliar environments and societies. Bronson highlights Johnson's fascination with the (disappearing) patriarchal Highland culture and his playful, sometimes challenging, interactions with Boswell and others, demonstrating a vigor and imaginative capacity often obscured by the somber tone of his moral writings.
Cochrane entry 325.
Johnson and James as Writers of Travelogues
CGV entry 21:169. Argues that Johnson is superior to Henry James.
Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
The collection of biographies and criticism now known as The Lives of the Poets originated in 1777 as a project commissioned by 36 London booksellers and 6 printers to counteract John Bell's rival Scottish collection, The Poets of Great Britain. Johnson agreed to write "little Lives, and little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets" for 300 guineas, subsequently receiving an additional 100 guineas for revisions. The poems covered the period from approximately 1660 forward, beginning with Cowley (d. 1667). The booksellers selected most of the 52 poets, though Johnson requested the inclusion of five others, including Blackmore, Watts, and Pomfret. because of Johnson's delays and expansion of the content beyond the intended short "Advertisements," the biographies were published separately from the 56 volumes of poetry. The first installment, 22 lives in 4 small octavo volumes, appeared in March 1779, titled Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets. The remaining 30 lives followed in 6 small octavo volumes in 1781. Unauthorized dissemination began quickly, including a 3-volume Dublin reprint (1779–1781) titled The Lives of the English Poets; and a Criticism on their Works. The London booksellers issued a second edition in 4 octavo volumes in June 1781, largely a reprint with minor corrections likely by John Nichols. This edition introduced the title The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works. The third edition, containing Johnson’s substantive revisions (completed September 1782), was published in February 1783 in 4 octavo volumes. Nichols issued a supplement, The Principal Additions and Corrections, gratis to 1781 purchasers. The work saw circulation in collected sets, including Sir John Hawkins's 1787 Works, volumes 2–4, and Arthur Murphy's 1792 Works. A second collected edition of the English Poets (75 volumes) was published in 1790. The Lives also appeared frequently in anthologies and compilations thereafter, often repurposed as poet introductions. French translations of parts of the work were reviewed as early as 1779. Major subsequent scholarly editions include George Birkbeck Hill's 3-volume edition of Lives of the English Poets (1905), which provided numbered paragraphs and served as a standard for decades, and the 4-volume Roger Lonsdale edition (2006). The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson contains the essays in volumes 21, 22, and 23 (The Lives of the Poets, 2010), using the first edition (1779–1781) as copy-text but adjusting the order to the sequence established in the subsequent editions.
CGV entry 22:1.
Written by a known adversary, this assessment is hostile and dismissive, branding the prefaces as "Tory prefaces." It asserts the work was "cobbled up, as a bookseller's job." The critic implies Johnson uses the prefaces to vent "spleen against characters" rather than focusing strictly on literature. Only the "Life of Dryden" receives praise for its excellence.
CGV entry 22:1. A hostile anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
The review offers robust approval of Johnson’s ability to execute this laborious, entertaining account of poets. It supports the author's critical judgments concerning Thomas Gray, concurring that his poetry is "much over-rated." The critique non-committally quotes Johnson’s political severity on figures like Milton. It generally praises the quality of the publishing enterprise, though noting the type is "rather too small" for older eyes.
CGV entry 22:1. An anonymous review published in several parts across volumes 47, 48, and 52.
This periodical contributes to the general reception of Johnson's critical writings. It addresses the biographical series as a major literary event upon publication. Johnson’s prominence ensures that the individual "Life" sections attract critical and anecdotal attention immediately.
CGV entry 22:1. An anonymous review of the book by Samuel Johnson.
This appraisal is enthusiastic and favorable, applauding Johnson for elevating literary biography. It affirms that Johnson’s name alone gives "sanction to any work." The author states Johnson retains his mental abilities "in their greatest perfection." The review confirms the importance of the work as a major literary event.
CGV entry 22:1. An anonymous review published in several parts across volumes 49 and 51.
This review of the initial volumes is highly laudatory, praising Johnson’s precision, vigor, and critical penetration. It deems the criticism of Milton's work worthy of Aristotle and Longinus. The critique affirms the biographies dignify the genre by imparting "maxims of prudence or reflexions on the conduct of human life." It expresses skepticism toward the inclusion of certain minor poets, labeling them the "mob of Gentlemen."
CGV entry 22:1. A review by Edmund Cartwright of the book by Samuel Johnson, published in several parts across volumes 61, 65, and 66.
The critique views the biographical series as continuing Johnson’s work of stabilizing English language and taste. It argues Johnson’s task is to form the nation's judgment on the same solid basis he established the vocabulary. It focuses on categorizing critical types, defining Johnson as a "man of taste." The appraisal notes the essential benefits English literature derives from Johnson’s labors, giving English "precision and stability."
Important as one of the many Lives editions that appeared during the period 1835–1950, when the focus of scholarly attention largely shifted from Johnson's own writings to Boswell's biography.
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; with Critical Observations on Their Works
Evaluates Cunningham's edition of Johnson's biographical work. Asserts that Johnson lacked poetical insight and was "mischievously restricted" by booksellers, resulting in a "hack" treatment of certain subjects. Credits Johnson with a "giant" grasp of human character despite significant inaccuracies in dates and facts. Enumerates numerous errors identified by Cunningham in Johnson's accounts of Cowley, Milton, Dryden, and Pope. Disputes Cunningham's defense of Johnson's treatment of Milton, particularly the "exploded" claim that Milton suffered corporal punishment at college. Concludes that while Johnson's bigotry persists, Cunningham's industry provides necessary corrective value to the text.
Cunningham presents a corrective edition of Johnson’s biographical work. Johnson asserts that truth constitutes the basis of all excellence. He defines the metaphysical style in the life of Cowley and defends the poetic merit of Paradise Lost despite personal antipathy toward Milton’s politics. Johnson argues against the efficacy of sacred poetry and analyzes the relative strengths of Dryden and Pope. Cunningham’s notes support Johnson’s "bluntly honest" observations on the English poetic tradition.
CGV entry 22:1. An anonymous review of the edition by Peter Cunningham.
Hill's monumental edition, published posthumously and overseen by his nephew Harold Spencer Scott, constituted a crucial landmark that established the critical, scholarly standard for the work for over a century. The edition treats Johnson’s biographical and critical prefaces as Johnson's finest literary achievement, affording his criticism the thorough attention and erudition it truly merited. Hill uses the 1783 edition of the Lives, the last version to incorporate Johnson’s revisions, as its copy-text. Hill assigns numbered paragraphs. Hill’s annotations are voluminous and highly discursive, reflecting his dedication to documenting Johnson’s milieu. His commentary directs the reader's attention comprehensively to related ideas expressed elsewhere in Johnson’s writings, or ideas articulated by his contemporaries, providing a "thoughtful compendium" of Johnson's opinions. Hill placed these annotations—which were often subjective, sometimes including personal anecdotes or expressions of indignation—at the bottom of each page. This style led to criticism that the notes were "profuse" and garrulous. Despite Hill’s general commitment to textual scholarship, his 1905 text was later deemed textually unreliable by modern standards, having incorporated numerous silent changes and errors, but his immense undertaking provided the "backbone of the commentary" for future scholarly generations.
CGV entry 22:1. A facsimile reprint was published by Octagon Press, New York, in 1967.
Long the standard edition, seen through the press by Hill's nephew, Harold Spencer Scott. Since superseded by Lonsdale and the Yale Edition.
The Six Chief Lives of Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets,' with Macaulay's 'Life of Johnson'
Arnold selects the biographies of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray to establish a "fixed centre" for the study of English life and literature between 1650 and 1750. The preface defines these lives as the "kernel and quintessence" of Johnson's work, providing an essential timeline for the development of modern English prose. Arnold argues that Johnson, though sometimes "warped and narrowed" in his poetical judgments, remains the "greatest power in English letters" of his century. The volume includes Macaulay’s biography of Johnson to offer a matured, sympathetic portrait of the author. Johnson's narratives combine "shrewd and profound" remarks on human nature with vigorous critical evaluations. While the text records Boswell’s role in preserving Johnson’s "colloquial talents," it also details Johnson's long friendship with Piozzi, noting her "angelic sweetness of temper" during his illnesses.
CGV entry 22:2. Contains the lives of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray. Reprinted in 1892 and other years.
The six lives are Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray. A school edition with some notes was published in 1886.
CGV entry 22:2. Contains the lives of Savage, Pope, Collins, and Gray, with excerpts from others. A revised edition was published in 1964.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets: A Selection
Seven biographies: Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Collins, and Gray. Hardy provides a robust scholarly apparatus, featuring an introduction that frames the texts and extensive notes on the critical arguments and historical context. Hardy foregrounds Johnson’s capacity for realizing high critical expectation and idealism in texts focused on poets of importance, rather than the minor writers commissioned by the booksellers.
Folkenflik reviews J. P. Hardy’s selected Lives of the Poets, finding it offers the best available texts for the chosen biographies (Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Collins, Gray). Hardy’s collation and streamlined annotation are accurate and precise, surpassing G. B. Hill’s edition. However, Folkenflik questions the modernization of accidentals, which diminishes the oral quality of Johnson's prose, and points out the confusing note format. He praises the introduction for properly acknowledging Johnson's scholarship but criticizes the dismissal of Johnson's critique of Lycidas.
CGV entry 22:2. A review with reservations by Robert Folkenflik of the selection edited by J. P. Hardy.
Lives of the English Poets (A Selection)
Contents: Abraham Cowley -- John Milton -- Earl of Rochester -- John Dryden -- Joseph Addison -- Richard Savage -- Alexander Pope -- Jonathan Swift -- James Thomson -- William Collins -- Thomas Gray.
Ryland provides an annotated edition of Johnson's biographies of Prior and Congreve for Bell's English Classics series. The text includes a substantial introduction detailing Johnson's biography, critical methods, and prose style. Ryland traces Johnson's diverse sources and quotations back to original authorities, providing "chapter and verse" where previous editors remained silent. The edition includes chronological tables of the poets' lives and lists of recommended scholarly works. Johnson's assessment of Prior emphasizes the poet's "correctness and industry" while noting a lack of inventive "compass." Regarding Congreve, Johnson highlights the "intellectual gladiators" of the comedic dialogue and the "blaze of admiration" attending his early success. Ryland's notes correct factual errors in the original "Lives" and supplement the previous work of Cunningham. Ryland prioritizes utility for both students and veteran readers of eighteenth-century literature.
Ryland works to establish an editorial framework designed to bridge the gap between 18th-century prose and late-Victorian scholarship. The front matter includes a detailed chronological table and a critical essay on Johnson's methods, defining the biographer's decision-making as that of a 'lawyer' rather than a 'legislator.' Ryland's annotations focus heavily on correcting Johnson's factual lapses regarding Swift's Irish livings and the 'speciali gratia' degree, while also exploring the socio-political nuances of the Drapier's Letters and the First Fruits controversy. He uses the notes to provide linguistic analysis of Johnson’s Latinate style and to adjudicate between conflicting accounts of Swift’s alleged marriage to Johnson. The apparatus emphasizes the 'personal dignity of literature' that Johnson maintained, while providing the scholarly reader with the necessary tools to evaluate the biographical veracity of the text.
Anecdote Concerning the Celebrated Dr. J—n
The anecdote records a verbal exchange between Johnson and Thomas Sheridan regarding the literary merits of Swift. Johnson characterizes the Dean of St. Patrick’s as a "shallow fellow," an assertion that Sheridan challenges by defending Swift’s clarity as a writer. Johnson delivers a laconic and "vociferated" rebuttal, stating, "All shallows are clear." The account emphasizes Johnson’s perceived air of intellectual superiority and his "despotic" manner in social discourse.
CGV entry 22:40. Johnson is reported to have said that Swift was "a very shallow fellow."
Eugenio disputes Johnson's claim that the couplet on Kneller lacks grammatical construction, arguing the use of "dying" is clear as an ablative absolute. He notes Johnson failed to observe that the lines translate an epitaph for Raphael. Eugenio also challenges Johnson's lack of candor regarding the epitaph on Gay, defending Pope's "nice discrimination" in praise. While thanking Johnson for the remarks, Eugenio suggests the world would have preferred a full continuation of his annotations on Pope over those of current prelates.
CGV entry 22:41. On the essay appended to Johnson's 'Life of Pope'.
[Additional information concerning lives of Hammond, Prior, etc.]
Eugenio shares lines by M. Hopkins from 1694 that confirm Johnson's observation that the nation viewed Dryden's "Virgil" as an arduous work of high interest. He contrasts Sir William Dugdale's harsh view of Milton with Johnson's account of the "Icon Basilike" controversy, where Johnson suggests the regicides may have forged the prayer interpolated into the King's book. Finally, Eugenio identifies a poem beginning "What hopes, what fears" as the work of Johnson, noting it was wrongly ascribed to Hammond in "The Union."
[Critique of Johnson's treatment of Milton's religious position in Life of Milton]
[Comment on Johnson's account of Milton's being whipped at Cambridge]
T. T. challenges Johnson’s assertion in Lives of the English Poets that he is the first to record Milton’s corporal punishment at Cambridge. The author traces the anecdote to Warton’s Life of Bathurst, published sixteen years prior. T. T. notes that Warton used a manuscript life of Milton from the Ashmolean Museum to establish that Milton was "severely whipped" by Bainbridge. The text argues that this historical context renders previously "unintelligible" lines in Milton’s Latin elegies clear, as they allude to this "illiberal treatment."
CGV entry 22:44. Further discussion by other correspondents appears in subsequent issues.
A correspondent writing under the pseudonym "Before-Mentioned" disputes Johnson’s "dictatorial positiveness" regarding English poetry. The author challenges Johnson’s assertion that Dryden’s "Ode on the Death of Mrs. Killigrew" is the noblest in the language, arguing that Milton’s "Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity" and Gray’s "The Bard" are "infinitely superior." The author further contests Johnson’s claim that "poetical devotion cannot often please" and criticizes the lexicographer’s own prose style as "unintelligible" and "awkwardly expressed." Additionally, the correspondent demands an explanation for the omission of several significant figures from the Lives, including Shakespeare, Spenser, and contemporary poets such as Gray, Goldsmith, and Churchill. The letter concludes by inviting a response from Johnson to these "juvenile" strictures through the medium of the London Review.
To the Editor of the Westminster Magazine
B. S. R. challenges Johnson’s characterization of Walmsley and the subsequent eulogy of Garrick, labeling the performance "absurdly recommended." The letter disputes Johnson’s claim that literature procured him Walmsley’s friendship "very early," arguing such an assertion betrays unbecoming vanity or presumption regarding his childhood attainments. B. S. R. further censures the "disgusting pomp" of Johnson's style and accuses him of prioritizing self-compliment over the memory of his friend. Specifically, the letter ridicules the metaphorical failure of "a stroke" that "eclipses" and challenges the "hyperbolic" assertion that Garrick’s death "eclipsed the gaiety of nations," noting that many regions and even parts of "Albion" remained indifferent to the actor’s life and decease.
Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton. To Which Are Added, Milton's Tractate of Education and Areopagitica
Blackburne's Remarks, republished from his Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, anonymously attacks Johnson's Life of Milton. Blackburne, a Whig, condemns Johnson as a friend of "despotism" and an "exemplar of literary prostitution," contrasting him sharply with Milton, the "patron of public liberty." He recounts Johnson's previous support of Lauder's Milton plagiarism hoax. The work criticizes Johnson’s attempt to divide Milton the poet from Milton the prose-writer, using the attack to further Whig political ideology.
CGV entry 22:48.
Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets
W. B. offers a series of "desultory remarks" on the second volume of Johnson's biographical work. The reviewer challenges Johnson's definition of genius as a mind "accidentally determined to some particular direction," arguing instead for a "natural bent of the mind." W. B. provides a commentary on the lives of Dryden, Smith, Addison, and Hughes, often defending the poets against Johnson's "severe" or "ironical" strictures. The letter disputes Johnson's claim that Addison reclaimed a loan from Richard Steele by an "execution," expressing hope that the account is a "misrepresentation." W. B. praises the "wonderful variety of style" in Addison's prose while suggesting that Johnson's "turn" on certain lines regarding Cromwell was "never intended" by the poet. The review concludes by ranking Hughes among "the best second rate geniuses" despite Johnson's reliance on the "slight foundation" of correspondence between Swift and Pope to fix the poet's character.
CGV entry 22:49. Published in five parts across volumes 51 and 52.
The Art of Criticism: As Exemplified in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
The author challenges Johnson’s definition of genius as "large and general powers, accidentally determined," arguing instead that "natural bent of the mind" and early indications are "to be regarded." Johnson’s critique of Milton’s Il Penseroso is disputed as "throwing dirt at that which breathes the very soul of simplicity," while the author defends blank verse against Johnson’s preference for "gingle" and "rhyme." The text characterizes Johnson as "cynical," "censorious," and "wayward," particularly regarding his "savage manners" toward Gray, Shenstone, and Lyttelton. While the author admits Johnson’s "strong sense" and "accurate observation," he maintains Johnson’s "precepts of morality" are "vulgar, worldly, and warped." The author disputes Johnson’s "unreasonable predilection" for didactic poetry and "affected contempt" for players like Garrick.
CGV entry 22:49. An expanded reprint of his "Remarks" from the Gentleman's Magazine.
Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets
An Account of the Life and Writings of John Scott, Esq.
Hoole’s introductory narrative details David Barclay’s failed attempt to engage Johnson as Scott’s biographer. Johnson expressed a willingness to "do justice to his memory" and "loved Mr. Scott," despite Scott having "controverted the Doctor's opinion in several instances" within the essays. Barclay initially hesitated to involve Johnson for this reason, but Johnson maintained that "authors would differ in opinion" and that "good performances could not be too much criticised." Johnson’s declining health prevented the collaboration, though he sent a final message affirming his affection for Scott. The subsequent biographical account traces Scott’s life in Amwell, his retired habits due to fear of smallpox, and his literary development. Hoole notes Scott’s introduction to Johnson circa 1766, observing that despite "great difference of their political principles," Johnson "delighted with equal complacency in the amiable qualities of Scott."
CGV entry 22:51. Replies to Johnson's critiques of 'Lycidas', 'Cooper's Hill', etc.
Devotional Poetry Vindicated, in Some Occasional Remarks on the Late Dr. S. Johnson's Animadversions upon That Subject in His Life of Waller
Turner disputes Johnson's "animadversions" against sacred and devotional poetry, as expressed in the "Life of Waller." He rejects Johnson's claim that "poetical devotion cannot often please," arguing that while subjects of divinity cannot be "exalted" in essence, the poet can improve human ideas of them through "elevated and striking forms of expression." Turner maintains that the "richness and majesty" of Christian truths supersede the need for the "ornaments of fiction" that Johnson deems essential to poetry. Contradicting Johnson's assertion that "repentance... is not at leisure for cadences," Turner cites the example of David's penitential psalms. He defines poetry as the "language of passion" and asserts that it serves as a "useful handmaid" to piety, channelling a "constitutional" or "special gift of God" back toward its celestial source.
'A short essay .. ' has separate titlepage and pagination; the register is continuous The introduction dated: Abingdon, Oct. 20, 1785
Wakefield presents a critical edition of Thomas Gray’s poetry, explicitly positioned as a corrective to Samuel Johnson’s biographical and critical assessment of Gray. Wakefield argues that Gray's imagination and accuracy exceed his contemporaries, while Johnson's "severity" and "malignant influence" threaten to injure public taste. Throughout the notes, Wakefield challenges Johnson's specific critiques of poems like the Ode on Spring, disputing Johnson's objections to Gray's "luxuriant" language and his use of adjectives like "honied." Wakefield characterizes Johnson's Lives of the English Poets as a noble specimen of criticism corrupted by "unmanly prejudices" and an "unrelenting antipathy to cotemporary merit." He further suggests that Johnson's detestation of Gray's political "tribute of praise" to freedom in the Elegy may have fueled his critical animosity. While acknowledging Johnson's "vigorous understanding," Wakefield asserts that his "frigid churlishness" and "inelegance of taste" rendered him incapable of fully appreciating Gray's lyrical genius.
CGV entry 22:53. Professes to provide an "antidote" to the "severity of Dr. Johnson's strictures."
Elegia scripta in sepulchreto rustico ... Latine reddita: To which other poems are added
Wright positions Gray as a poet capable of reaching Pindaric heights while maintaining the "charming elegance" of the elegiac form. Wright disputes the "petulant" strictures of Johnson, arguing that the critic’s political biases led him to "rage" against writers who favored liberty or challenged "tyrannous power." While Wright acknowledges Johnson as a "great critic" worthy of "great praise" and whose virtues deserve imitation, he laments that Johnson’s "obstinacy of perverse opinions" caused him to "stumble" in his assessment of Gray. Wright asserts that the Elegy serves as a moral corrective to the "insolence of the powerful" by elegantly detailing the "tranquil pleasures" and "many goods" of a humble, country life. He further emphasizes the responsibility of the wealthy to act as "fountains" of beneficence for the poor, suggesting that true happiness remains nearly equal across both conditions of life.
CGV entry 22:54. The preface defends Gray against Johnson.
Poems Written While the Author Was at College
Strictures upon Dr. Johnson's Remarks on the Poetry of Gray
This collection of juvenile poetry includes a significant prose section defending the works of Thomas Gray against the critical strictures of Samuel Johnson. Smith characterizes Johnson’s prose as lacking plainness and simplicity. Smith challenges Johnson’s censure of Gray’s "luxuriant" language by quoting Johnson’s own "strutting dignity" and "unnatural violence" in the Rambler. He defends Gray’s use of the "attic warbler," "velvet green," and alliteration, arguing that Johnson’s ear often guided him toward similar expressive devices despite his judgmental interference. Smith further critiques Johnson’s "disingenuity" and "unfortunate manner" in evaluating the Progress of Poesy and the Bard, asserting that Johnson’s demand for moral or political truth in legendary tales is an inconclusive form of censure.
[Johnson's own character revealed in Lives of the Poets]
Amerus disputes the value of "corkscrew anecdotes" in Boswell’s and Piozzi’s biographies. Amerus argues that Johnson’s "perfect consciousness of his failings" constitutes his brightest feature, evidenced in his Prayers and Diary. By selecting passages from the Lives of the Poets, Amerus demonstrates that Johnson depicted his own mind when praising or censuring others. The resulting "cento" characterizes Johnson as a "monarch but the tyrant of literature" with "rigid stateliness."
CGV entry 22:57. Possibly by Alexander Chalmers.
This edition of the 1675 original catalogs English poets from Henry III to the end of Elizabeth I's reign. The editor, Brydges, critiques Johnson's biographical methods, accusing him of "usual acrimony" and "passing by" Phillips's work in his own literary histories. Brydges challenges Johnson's view that "art and industry" are primary to the formation of a poet, citing Chaucer’s genius as evidence that native power transcends labor. While Brydges acknowledges the "acuteness of investigation" in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, he maintains that Johnson possessed a "degraded taste" and lacked "feeling for the higher kinds of poetry." The text primarily focuses on early English poets, including More, Spenser, and Shakespeare, using chronological entries supplemented by Warton's scholarship.
CGV entry 22:58. Contains a correction to the account of Cibber's 'Lives of the Poets' in Boswell's 'Life' (pp. liii-lvi) and criticism of Johnson's 'Lives' (pp. lvi-lviii).
Lectures on the Truly Eminent English Poets
Stockdale identifies a fundamental discord between Johnson's critical dictates and his personal conduct, particularly noting the "dictatorial, and insolent pride" that marred Johnson’s humanitarian impulses. Stockdale disputes Johnson’s disparagement of Gray’s poetry, characterizing Johnson’s strictures as the result of "envy, and resentment against a superiour." He specifically challenges Johnson’s preference for rhyme over blank verse, asserting that Johnson "merely rails" against the latter without fair argument. Stockdale further defends Gray against Johnson's charge of "cumbrous splendour," retorting that such a description better fits Johnson’s own "scholastick, and heavy" prose. Throughout the lectures, Stockdale presents Johnson as a "unequal, and inconsistent Christian philosopher" whose "monastick superstition" and "gloomy fears" regarding death contrasted sharply with the "unappalled, and serene" end of contemporary infidels. Stockdale maintains that Johnson’s critical authority rests more on "the imperious authority of a name" than on "just, and regular analysis."
CGV entry 22:59. Contains frequent references to Johnson's 'Lives', especially in Lectures 19 and 20 on Gray.
"An Admirer of Milton" challenges a note in a published sermon, which references Johnson's Life of Milton to assert that Milton lived without visible signs of worship. The author quotes a passage from Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton which questions Johnson's conclusion. Johnson is noted to have destroyed his own hypothesis by acknowledging Milton had conviction of Christianity’s truth and venerated scripture, though he associated with no particular church. The author concludes that Johnson’s assertion of a lack of worship came from unreliable sources, and that the poet of Paradise Lost was unlikely to neglect secret or family devotion.
CGV entry 22:61. Challenges Johnson's view.
D'Israeli preserves an original memorandum by Johnson containing preliminary research notes for the biography of Alexander Pope. The text presents these "hints" as a "literary curiosity" to illustrate Johnson's "art of seizing on those general conceptions" during the research process. Johnson records observations on Pope's poetic habits, noting "nothing occasional" and "no haste" in his production, while observing a "facility from use" in his verse. The memorandum includes cryptic remarks on Pope's personality, such as his "affectation of despising poetry," his "ostentatious benevolence," and the fact that he "never laughed." Johnson also notes Pope's physical ailments, specifically "ill-health, headaches," and his frugality regarding a "pint of wine." Further entries examine the Essay on Man and the Dunciad, documenting the influence of Bolingbroke and Warburton. D'Israeli provides these fragments to exhibit the "gradual labours of research" employed by Johnson in constructing his critical narratives.
CGV entry 22:62. With a facsimile of Johnson's notes.
A Review of Johnson's Criticism on the Style of Milton's English Prose; with Strictures on the Introduction of Latin Idioms into the English Language
A detailed engagement with Johnson's controversial assertions regarding Milton's prose diction in the Life of Milton. Johnson condemned Milton's distinctive style as a "Babylonish Dialect," claiming it resulted from a "pedantick principle" and a desire to introduce foreign linguistic structures, specifically Latin idioms, into English. Johnson argued that this complexity made Milton's style too far "removed from common use," thus defeating the purpose of a writer. White's Review, which included "strictures on the introduction of Latin idioms," represented a highly focused, technical continuation of the critical debates following the Lives of the Poets. Historically, White’s work challenged Johnson’s critical authority, seeking to re-evaluate Milton’s linguistic choices against charges of pedantry.
Continuation of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets
A prefatory note establishes a series continuing the biographical and critical work of Johnson. It asserts the necessity of extending the collection to include poets flourishing since the birth of Akenside. The series adopts the methodology of Johnson to document figures such as Goldsmith, Churchill, and Burns. It identifies Johnson as a central figure for future inclusion within the updated canon of English poets.
CGV entry 22:64. A series of short lives, including “The Life of Thomas Warton,” “The Life of Sir William Jones,” and “The Life of Oliver Goldsmith,” beginning in this issue.
Cary provides a biographical and critical account of Samuel Johnson, tracing his development from an "obscure family" in Lichfield through his academic struggles at Oxford and early literary hardships in London. The narrative emphasizes Johnson’s moral integrity and "filial tenderness" alongside the production of major works such as the Dictionary, Rasselas, and The Lives of the Poets. Cary characterizes Johnson’s prose style as possessing an "awkward stateliness" and "irksome uniformity," while acknowledging his "vigour of intellect" and "punctilious" regard for truth. The account includes salient details of Johnson's domestic life, his "seraglio" of dependents, and his eventual death in 1784, noting that he "rendered up his soul to God unclouded." Boswell is frequently referenced as a primary source for anecdotes and the "faithful biographer." Piozzi is mentioned regarding her marriage to an Italian and her recollections of Johnson’s "petty annoyances."
[Review of Milton's Treatise on Christian Doctrine]
CGV entry 22:65. Attacks Johnson's 'Life of Milton' on pages 54-56.
Animadversions upon Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton
Ivimey disputes Johnson's biographical treatment of Milton, charging the lexicographer with "malignity," "wilful and deliberate defamation," and an inability to comprehend the principles of civil and religious liberty. Ivimey challenges Johnson's specific allegations regarding Milton's refusal to enter the church, his supposed "Turkish contempt" for women, and his "servile" flattery of Cromwell. Regarding the Langton family, Ivimey records Johnson's "social interactions and physical vigor" during visits to Langton Hall in Lincolnshire. He describes Bennet Langton's skill in reciting Shakspeare and Johnson's insistence on performing a "roll down" a steep hill after emptying his pockets. The text details Johnson's teasing of Mrs. Brooke and Mrs. Digby concerning the omission of "naughty words" from his dictionary and relates Langton's observation of Burke's rudeness in dispute. Ivimey uses these anecdotes to counter Johnson's portrayal of Milton and to provide a "full-length portrait" of Milton as a patriot and non-conformist, while simultaneously documenting Johnson's own eccentric social history.
CGV entry 22:66. A blistering attack.
Dr. Johnson's Recommendation of Burnet's Life of Rochester
Disputes Cunningham's editorial notes in the third volume of Johnson's collection. Challenges Johnson's claim that Pope purchased a five-hundred-pound annuity from Homeric profits, citing evidence for a smaller sum. Incorporates a 1780 letter from Steevens to Johnson regarding the state of Fenton's manuscripts and Pope’s limited revisions. Corrects Johnson's biographical details concerning Pope's relatives and financial status while defending previous findings against Cunningham's interpretations. Maintains that Steevens’s observations on Fenton provide necessary clarity on the collaborative translation process described by Johnson.
A series of three articles reviewing Peter Cunningham's edition, published on Oct. 28, 1854; Nov. 25, 1854; and April 14, 1855.
CGV entry 22:68. Reprinted in his 'Papers of a Critic' (1875).
Literary Leaflets, by Sir Nathaniel: No. 27. Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Sir Nathaniel examines the 1854 edition of Lives of the Poets. Sir Nathaniel acknowledges shifting 19th-century critical sensibilities but maintains the value of Johnson’s masculine mind and clear intellect. Sir Nathaniel details Cunningham’s corrections of biographical inaccuracies regarding Milton and Dryden. The text highlights the inclusion of minor figures like Sprat and Pomfret. Johnson’s prose style appears less grandiose in these biographies than in earlier writings.
CGV entry 22:69. A review article based on Cunningham's 1854 edition.
Challenges Johnson's assertion in the Lives of the Poets that Dryden's plays were printed in the order of their composition, citing Dryden's own advertisement in King Arthur as evidence that the poet himself arranged them differently. The author also defends Johnson's commentary on the "bounty" Lord Dorset provided to Dryden upon the latter's ejection from the Laureateship. Although Cunningham's recent notes correct the specific sum Dryden lost, the author argues that Dryden's personal correspondence and public dedications—in which he complains of poverty and the burden of a family—justify Johnson's conclusion that the poet felt the loss of his "little fortune" acutely, notwithstanding Dorset's generosity.
CGV entry 22:70.
Burns, with Notices of Johnson's Lives of the Poets
A critical examination of the "literary dictatorship" of Johnson characterizes his Lives of the Poets as an "unimaginative" work that has "beyond all question been injurious to the cause of our imaginative literature." Johnson’s "incurable defect" remains an "utter absence of imagination," rendering him "physically, intellectually, and morally unfit" for poetical criticism. He is described as "stone-deaf to the finest metres" and prone to "harsh and scornful judgments," particularly regarding Milton, Gray, and Collins. His biographical work is dismissed as a "tissue of unbroken dogmatism" fueled by "overweening self-love" and a "recklessness of truth" in social disputation. In contrast, Burns is presented as a "genuine birth of poetry" who restored "freshness" and "nature" to a system made "monotonous" by Pope and his imitators. While acknowledging Burns's "tumultuous passions" and "thoughtless follies," the text emphasizes his "masculine good sense" and "perfect Christian humility" as evidenced in "The Bard's Epitaph."
CGV entry 22:71. Lecture 10. Extremely hostile.
The Logic of Political Economy and Other Papers
De Quincey defends Milton’s reputation against biographic distortions, focusing particularly on a "rectification" intended to achieve the "effectual prostration of Dr. Samuel Johnson." Characterizing Johnson as Milton’s "worst enemy" and a "malicious, mendacious, and dishonest man," De Quincey disputes Johnson’s ridicule of Milton’s return from Italy to open a boarding school. He challenges the logic of "vulgar yells of merriment" at "great promises and small performances," noting Milton made no such promises. De Quincey further disputes Johnson’s dismissal of Paradise Lost as "wearisome," arguing that what is "ideally grand lies beyond the region of ordinary human sympathies." He asserts Johnson’s "insulting farewell" to the poem reflects a "pure defect in the capacity for excitement" rather than a failure in the work itself, which he believes will be "called for more and more" as human sensibilities develop.
CGV entry 22:72. To the "Life of Milton." Later retitled "Postscript Respecting Johnson's Life of Milton."
Symonds disputes the eighteenth-century critical tradition, personified by Johnson, which attempted to impose a "fixed canon" of regularity upon English blank verse. Johnson characterized Miltonic cadences as "remarkably inharmonious" and "licentious" because they deviated from the iambic ideal. Symonds argues that Johnson’s ear, accustomed to the "sing-song of the couplet," suffered from a "want of intelligence" regarding the organic harmony of sustained periods. By prioritizing a "monotonous cadence" over the "subtle laws of melody" found in Milton, Johnson remained ignorant of the "precious privilege" of complex metrical variation. The text frames Johnson as a "magisterial" but misguided figure whose restrictive definitions of "pure" measure failed to account for the "shifting of the pause" essential to the "national" music of English poetry.
CGV entry 22:73. Contains a lengthy criticism of Johnson's views.
Johnson characterizes the metaphysical poets as a race of writers appearing in the early seventeenth century who used their learning to achieve singularity rather than poetic truth. He defines their unique brand of wit as a discordia concors, a combination of "dissimilar images" and the "discovery of occult resemblances" through which the most heterogeneous ideas are "yoked by violence together." Johnson maintains that these poets failed to represent or move the affections, writing as "beholders rather than partakers of human nature" and sacrificing the sublime for analytical subtlety. While he credits them with possessing "great labour directed by great abilities," he disputes their status as true imitators of nature. Through a series of examples from Cowley, Donne, and Cleveland, Johnson highlights the movement’s tendency toward "enormous and disgusting hyperboles," remote philosophical allusions, and "ingenious absurdity," concluding that their pursuit of something new and strange failed to provide lasting pleasure or rational admiration.
CGV entry 22:74. On the metaphysical poets.
Curry identifies an error in Adams’s Dictionary of English Literature regarding Johnson’s critique of Cowley. He notes that Johnson inaccurately attributes Cowley’s translation of Horace to the Davideis without clarifying its origin as an essay. Johnson fails to recognize the verses as a translation of Epistles 1.2.40-43, despite commending Cowley’s alexandrine for its representative versification. Curry restores the original 1674 text and critiques subsequent editorial variants by Hurd, Nevile, and Morley.
CGV entry 22:76. A review of Hill's edition of the 'Lives'.
Strachey analyzes Lives of the Poets as a primary record of Johnson's mind rather than a source of reliable aesthetic instruction. He notes that while Johnson’s judgments are ingenious and witty, they are "never right" by modern standards due to inherent deficiencies in imagination and ear. Strachey contrasts the Johnsonian method of judging authors as "criminals in the dock" against the modern school of sympathy and understanding. He attributes "preposterous" critiques of Gray and Milton to a dead critical tradition that prioritized "searching sense of actuality" and "sanity" over the mysterious and infinite suggestions characteristic of Romantic poetry. Strachey concludes that while Birkbeck Hill’s erudite edition offers scientific efficiency, the work’s true value remains the intimate, conversational brilliance of Johnson’s independent thought.
CGV entry 22:76. Reprinted from The Independent Review (1906).
This article, reprinted from the Independent Review (1906), evaluates Johnson’s critical legacy through his final major work. Strachey argues that while Johnson’s aesthetic judgments are almost invariably wrong due to inherent deficiencies in ear and imagination, his wit and intellectual independence preserve the text’s vitality. Johnson represents a dead tradition of judicial criticism that prioritized adherence to established canons over sympathetic understanding. Strachey contrasts this with the modern school of Sainte-Beuve, noting that Johnson viewed authors as 'criminals in the dock.' Despite rejecting Johnson's dismissals of Lycidas and Gray, Strachey maintains that the mountain which is Samuel Johnson remains a familiar object of reverence. The text emphasizes Johnson’s role in transforming English prose by adopting the 'Corinthian order' of Sir Thomas Browne. Strachey concludes that Johnson’s brilliant sentences reach the reader with the 'friendliness of a conversation.'
Bayne corrects an error in Gregory Smith's Everyman edition of The Spectator regarding Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Smith mistakenly attributed high praise of Edmund Smith’s translation of Longinus and his tragedy Phædra and Hippolitus to Johnson. Bayne clarifies that Johnson explicitly presented these eulogies as "declamation" transcribed from an earlier memoir by Oldisworth. Johnson's own assessment of the play was far more critical, characterizing it as a "scholar's play" with little acquaintance with real life.
Raleigh explores the genesis of the Lives, noting that Johnson wrote "too much" for his modest fee of two hundred guineas out of a "honest desire of giving useful pleasure." He argues that the prose represents Johnson at his zenith, characterized by a "pedestrian" style that finds foothold in experience. The text defends Johnson's "strain" of criticism against Milton, Cowley, and Gray, asserting that his focus on "natural sentiments" was a necessary corrective to outworn poetic traditions. Raleigh analyzes Johnson's aversion to blank verse and pastoral allegory as a quest for sincerity in communication. He concludes that Johnson's greatness lies in his "generosity of temper," which allowed him to judge the "friend of goodness" in Savage without bitterness or satirical intent.
CGV entry 22:83. Regarding 'Eikon Basilike'.
Aphorisms on Authors and Their Ways: With Some General Observations on the Humours, Habits, and Methods of Composition of Poets—Good, Bad, and Indifferent: Diligently Collected from Johnson's 'Lives'
Birrell presents a curated collection of literary maxims and critical observations extracted from the biographical prefaces of Johnson. The work organizes Johnson's insights into thematic sections covering the nature of poetry, the "disease of biographers," and specific critiques of figures such as Milton, Dryden, and Pope. Birrell includes Johnson's challenge to the utility of blank verse and his famous dispute regarding the tediousness of Paradise Lost. Notable inclusions feature Johnson's characterization of Dryden as the "father of English criticism" and his complex appraisal of Pope's Homeric translations. Birrell supplements the primary text with editorial notes that offer contemporary literary parallels, such as comparing Pope's habits to those of Byron or Charles Lamb. An appendix reprints Dryden's account of Shakespeare, which Johnson uses as a model of "encomiastic criticism". The collection serves to illustrate Johnson's robust, independent critical style and his focus on the moral and practical realities of the literary life.
CGV entry 22:84.
The Term 'Metaphysical Poets' before Johnson
Nethercot challenges the assumption that Johnson invented the term "metaphysical poets" in his Life of Cowley. He traces the evolution of the phrase through seventeenth- and eighteenth-century critics, including Dryden, Oldmixon, Pope, and Joseph Warton. Nethercot argues that the association of "metaphysics" with the styles of Donne and Cowley was common before 1779. He concludes that while Johnson popularized the designation, he drew upon a well-prepared critical tradition primarily established by Dryden's earlier comments on Donne’s philosophical speculations.
The Reputation of the 'Metaphysical Poets' during the Age of Johnson and the 'Romantic Revival'
Nethercot traces the fluctuating reputation of poets like Donne and Cowley, focusing on Johnson's pivotal "Life of Cowley" (1779). Before Johnson, these writers faced "Neo-Classical hostility" for their "laboured and unnatural conceits," though figures like Hurd and Wesley maintained a "newer type of appreciation." Johnson’s "Life of Cowley" popularized the term "Metaphysical Poets" and subjected their "fantastic wit" to rigorous "analytical scrutiny." Nethercot demonstrates how Johnson influenced later Romantic attitudes by framing the school's "neglect of the graces of composition" as a "corruption of taste." The article highlights Boswell’s records of Johnson’s opinions and the "conflict of the old and the new literary principles" during the late eighteenth century. Ultimately, Johnson’s authority determined the critical framework through which subsequent generations viewed the seventeenth-century metaphysical style.
Bridges defends the use of specialized poetic diction and conventional "properties" against contemporary demands for a more rationalized, common-speech vocabulary. Drawing a lineage from Milton to Shelley and Arnold, Bridges identifies Johnson as the primary historical antagonist to the "poetic magic" found in Lycidas. Bridges disputes the "common-sense" of Johnson, which led the latter to condemn the poem’s pastoral conventions and "meaningless invocations" as frigid. Johnson’s inability to appreciate the harmonization of diverse imagery—such as the appearance of Camus alongside St. Peter—stems from an "unpoetic mind" rather than a lack of education. Bridges asserts that Johnson’s literalism blinded him to the "keeping" that allows a poet to transmute memories into a "dreamy passionate flux." By contrasting the simplified diction of Arnold with the more conventional style of Milton, Bridges argues that a higher command of diction permits a wider field of imaginative properties, suggesting that children often possess a keener sense for the beauty Johnson missed.
CGV entry 22:87.
The Profession of Poetry and Other Lectures
Cowley, Johnson, and the 'Metaphysicals'
Garrod explores the paradox of Cowley’s seventeenth-century fame against his subsequent neglect, identifying Johnson as the only major critic to actively depreciate him. Garrod disputes the notion that Johnson’s critique in Lives of the Poets destroyed Cowley’s standing, noting that Boswell viewed the essay on Cowley as Johnson’s best and most effective work. The text traces how Johnson derived the metaphysical style from Marino, famously defining its wit as the violent yoking of heterogeneous ideas. Garrod observes that while Johnson found Cowley’s thoughts singular and his diction careless, he nonetheless acknowledged Cowley’s ‘first-handness’ and ‘capacious’ mind. Special attention is paid to the elegy on Harvey, which Johnson praised over Lycidas for its lack of pastoral convention. Garrod concludes that Cowley’s humanity and role as a precursor to the plain English style merit a reassessment of his position relative to the more masculine technique of Dryden or the neatness of Pope.
Quiller-Couch examines the tradition of the English elegy, centering the discussion on a critique of Johnson's famous dismissal of Lycidas. Quiller-Couch disputes Johnson’s assertion that "where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief," arguing instead that the elegy serves a commemorative rather than purely expressive function. The text analyzes Johnson’s definitions of "passion" and his failure to recognize that "hopeless grief is passionless." Quiller-Couch defends the use of classical artifice as an inherent part of the elegiac tradition, noting that Johnson’s "notorious criticism" was often "sinning against his own knowledge" of literary history. The lecture explores the roots of the form in Sicilian pastoral poetry and its evolution through Virgil, ultimately maintaining that the function of the elegy is to "perpetuate, even to decorate our dead" through formal structures that Johnson’s "robust common sense" failed to appreciate.
English Biography in the Eighteenth Century
Longaker analyzes "Lives of the Poets" as the culmination of Johnson's biographical theory, which prioritizes the "minute details of daily life" over "barren panegyric." Johnson rejects the formal, idealized accounts of his predecessors, arguing instead that the true value of biography lies in its power to reflect human nature through "domestick privacies." Longaker details Johnson's methods of gathering information, noting his reliance on memory, personal acquaintance, and scholarly investigation, while acknowledging his occasional "indolence" regarding primary sources. The text explains Johnson's "judicial" approach, where he balances critical evaluation of a poet's work with a "searching and faithful" portrait of their character. Longaker emphasizes that despite Johnson's personal prejudices and "misanthropic" touches, his work established the standard for "analytical biography" by treating poets primarily as men struggling with universal human experiences. The text underscores Johnson's influence in shifting life-writing from a "tribute to the dead" to a "scientific study of man."
Johnson and Swift and Fuller on De Dominis
Beckingham notes a textual parallel between Johnson’s criticism of Swift in Lives of the Poets and Thomas Fuller’s earlier assessment of Marcus Antonius de Dominis. Johnson’s observation that Swift "always understands himself, and his readers always understand him" closely mirrors Fuller's remark in Church History of Britain that de Dominis, "first understanding himself, he could make others understand him." The note suggests Fuller as a potential, previously unnoticed source for Johnson's famous phrasing.
CGV entry 22:92. On a similarity between two sentences.
CGV entry 22:93. Johnson's criticism is analyzed.
Lord Hailes and Dr. Johnson: The Lives of the Poets
Osborn describes a seven-page manuscript of remarks by Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, on Johnson's Lives of the Poets. This paper, once in the possession of Boswell and later Malone, contains over seventy "illustrations and corrections." Hailes defends Scottish merchants in Poland against Johnson's description of them as "itinerant traders" and provides anecdotal evidence regarding the Duchess of Monmouth and Mary of Modena. The manuscript includes a notable anecdote from an acquaintance of Ford, asserting that "no liquor could fluster him" and that he prohibited irreligious conversation. Osborn notes that although Hill anticipated many of these corrections through intuition, the manuscript remains the "chief souvenir" of the literary friendship between Johnson and Hailes. Malone's Life of Dryden revealed that Johnson incorporated at least one anecdote from Hailes into his Lives of the Poets, specifically the story about Doddington snatching a poem from Thomson because of his poor reading. Hailes originally obtained this account concerning the poet's elocutionary deficiencies from Lady Murray.
CGV entry 22:94. In two parts.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets: Their Origin, Text, and History, with Remarks on Sources and Comment on his Life of Cowley
CGV entry 22:95. Abstract in 'Cornell University Abstracts of Theses for 1938' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1939), pages 36-38.
An Afterthought in Johnson's Life of Addison
Chapman examines a scrap of correspondence from Johnson to John Nichols requesting Steele’s original preface to The Drummer. By analyzing non-authorial notes on the verso, the author links the request to the preparation of the Life of Addison in Johnson’s 1781 Prefaces. He concludes that Johnson likely incorporated a late-minute quotation from Steele regarding Addison’s humor into the final sheets of the volume.
English Criticism of Pope's Poetry, 1744–1793
Alms for Oblivion: Books, Men, and Biography
Samuel Johnson and The Lives of the Poets
Carver identifies Johnson as the ideal choice to execute the literary biography of England, a task proposed by George III and realized in his most significant work. The work assesses how Johnson’s neoclassical principles and didactic genius matured the genre, moving it beyond "funeral oratory" to the "useful pleasure" of recording individual humanity. Carver argues that Johnson's unique Equipage—his "omnivorous reading," his empathy for "the blind, the weak and suffering," and his belief that "the proper study of mankind is man"—established a grammar for life-writing. While examining the fifty-two sketches, Carver highlights the "Savage" as the superior biographical achievement, illustrating how Johnson's "loving heart" reclaimed a maligned friend from "scandal mongers" to create an "interesting narrative" of moral and psychological reality.
Johnson asserts Cowley's prose and verse maintain a distinct distance, praising the essays for a smooth, natural equability that avoids being far-sought or hard-laboured. He notes Cowley rivalled the ancients in every poetic genre except tragedy, bringing extensive learning and book-supplied ornaments to his work. Johnson credits Cowley as the first to introduce the enthusiasm of the greater ode and the gaiety of the less to English numbers. He further observes Cowley's role in freeing translation from servility, walking beside the author rather than following at a distance. Although Johnson suggests Cowley's versification remained improvable, he argues the poet provided specimens of excellence that enabled later poets to refine the craft. The Chronicle is singled out as an unrivalled composition, while the elegy on Crashaw is noted for containing beauties beyond the ambition of common authors.
Pope and His Contemporaries: Essays presented to George Sherburn
Williams surveys the primary biographical accounts of Swift, evaluating works by Mrs. Pilkington, Lord Orrery, Patrick Delany, Deane Swift, and Thomas Sheridan. He examines the evolution of Swiftian biography before Johnson embarked on "Lives of the Poets." Williams notes that Johnson's "Life of Swift" (1781) appeared before Sheridan's 1784 account, prompting a lengthy castigation from the latter. Sheridan denounced Johnson's attempt to "scratch out a Life of Swift" as miserably executed and reflecting disgrace upon the biographer rather than the subject. Williams observes that Johnson held a poor opinion of Sheridan, claiming "vanity and Quixotism obscured his merits." The article highlights how Johnson's "malignant censures" drew immediate fire from contemporary defenders. Williams argues that while Johnson used information from predecessors like Hawkesworth, his critical approach often clashed with those who had known Swift personally.
Tate investigates Johnson’s critique of Metaphysical poets, focusing on his preference for systematic abstraction over complex figurative language. He argues that Johnson’s "positive training" in neo-classicism led him to reject the "vicious" deviation from nature found in Donne’s metaphors. Tate explores how Johnson’s piety influenced his views on religious poetry, which Johnson found unsuitable for poetic invention. The text explores the tension between Johnson’s rationalistic conceptions of reason and the intellectual semi-rationality of Metaphysical verse.
This article, reprinted from the Kenyon Review, investigates the contrast between Johnson's neoclassical standards and the Metaphysical style. Tate argues that Johnson's positive training in a stable culture rendered him incapable of appreciating poetry that cracked the solid object in the dynamic stream of time. Johnson displays a provincial complacency toward past styles, rejecting Metaphysical metaphors as analytic and fragmented. Tate disputes Johnson's dogmatic rejection of religious poetry, noting that Johnson incorrectly suggests contemplative piety cannot be poetical. While Johnson famously defined Metaphysical wit as heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together, Tate observes that Johnson's own static psychology of perception prevents him from engaging with a poetry of experience. Tate situates the Metaphysical tradition as part of a great modern lineage that includes William Shakespeare and John Milton, bypassing the neoclassical interlude.
CGV entry 22:102. Reprinted from The Kenyon Review (1949).
This article analyzes Johnson's critique of the Metaphysical school, specifically his Life of Cowley. Tate challenges the view that Johnson's objections stem from mere prejudice, arguing instead that Johnson operated within a positive culture and disciplined his mind through neo-classical sensibility. Tate disputes Johnson's theory of metaphor, which requires the "tenor" to be translatable into abstract language. Using Denham and Donne as examples, Tate asserts that Johnson's rationalistic epistemology ordered objects in fixed relations, leading him to reject the Metaphysical "conceit" as a "voluntary deviation from nature." Tate also challenges Johnson's claim that contemplative piety cannot be poetical, noting the existence of great devotional poetry by figures like St. Thomas Aquinas. Tate concludes that Johnson's insistence on invention and instruction as the ends of poetry forced a rejection of the imaginative act of returning religious paraphrase to the hazards of new experience.
Johnson's Criticism of the Metaphysical Poets
Keast analyzes Johnson's criticism of the Metaphysical Poets in the Life of Cowley, arguing that his censure stems from applying an extensive set of universal poetic principles rather than unique aesthetic biases. Johnson judged poetry primarily by its power to please the common reader through truth (uniform human sentiments) and novelty (the stimulation of wonder). The Metaphysicals failed this test because they prioritized exciting admiration over moving emotions, and their excessive use of detailed, idiosyncratic imagery prevented them from achieving the sublime and the pathetic. Johnson's criticism is not unique to this school; he applied the same standards to others, criticizing poets who were either too particular (like Cowley) or too general (like Rowe). He insisted that lasting excellence demands a blend of the permanent and the unexpected.
Tillotson traces an intellectual link between Arnold and Johnson, noting the former's consistent admiration for the latter as a critic. She focuses on the phrase "leisure to grow wise" from Arnold's Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann (1849). Tillotson demonstrates that this phrase is an allusion to a passage in Johnson's "Life of Pope" (Lives of the Poets), where Johnson describes a time when emerging nations "gain leisure to grow wise, and feel the shame of ignorance." She argues the context of Johnson's comment, which concerns different periods of civilization and the progress of literature, would have been particularly engaging to Arnold, especially given Arnold's contemporary preoccupation with Homeric translation and the Zeitgeist.
CGV entry 22:104.
Horsman tests Johnson’s assertion that Dryden displayed an unworthy vanity by introducing French words into English, most of which failed to be incorporated. Horsman finds that while Dryden was the first recorded user of a handful of terms (like fougue), the majority of his Gallicisms (such as coquette, dupe, and those in Marriage à la Mode) were likely already current in the fashionable court dialect, evidenced by their use in other writers of the time. Dryden also employed existing English words with new French senses (e.g., shock, violence). Johnson is corrected on one point: most of Dryden's French-derived words and constructions that Johnson was concerned with, in fact, proved useful and were retained in the language, contrary to Johnson’s prediction that they would remain perpetual warnings.
CGV entry 22:105.
Some New Sources of Johnson's Lives
Hart establishes John Nichols as a significant contributor of biographical data for the Lives of the Poets. By comparing Johnson's texts with Nichols' earlier notes and miscellanies, the article identifies Nichols as the immediate source for the lives of Duke, Hammond, Broome, Fenton, West, and King. Hart shows that Johnson frequently adapted Nichols' factual details, often adopting his chronological sequences or specific anecdotes, such as the account of Fenton's schoolmaster. The essay argues that while Nichols provided the "accuracy and completeness of detail," Johnson supplied the "elegance of style." This collaboration transformed raw biographical fragments and death notices into lasting literary portraits that the learned and the public could enjoy.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets and Currents of English Criticism, 1750–1779
Carroll identifies the late-eighteenth-century shift in English criticism from neo-classical dogma toward a psychological approach rooted in the authority of feeling and experience. Although Johnson represents the zenith of the classical tradition, Carroll argues that Johnson’s earlier criticism and subsequent evaluations in his final major work demonstrate a complex negotiation between these competing currents. Carroll presents Johnson as a critic who uses common sense to separate classical principles from pedantry, yet frequently adopts the terminology and concerns of the "new" criticism, such as the emphasis on the effects of art upon the imagination and the passions. Johnson acknowledges the importance of genius, invention, and original nature, while maintaining that study and learning must complement native ability. The biographical narratives further illustrate Johnson's belief that literature serves a primarily ethical and didactic purpose by teaching "the art of living." Carroll challenges earlier assessments by Leslie Stephen and Percy Hazen Houston, which categorized the work as purely traditional, instead aligns it with the historical methodologies of Joseph Eppes Brown and Joseph Wood Krutch. The study concludes that Johnson occupies a unique position outside categorical romanticism or neo-classicism, using a "rational science" of criticism to balance universal truth with individual sensory perception.
CGV entry 22:107. Microfilm Abstracts, volume 10, number 4 (1950), pages 208–209.
CGV entry 22:108. Concerned with Johnson's criticism of Milton.
Joseph Warton's Reply to Dr. Johnson's Lives
Allison argues that Warton intentionally published the second volume of his Essay on Pope as a 'reply to Dr. Johnson's Lives.' Warton used an 'oblique' method of attack while Johnson was alive, but after Johnson’s death, he 'named names' to refute 'strange animadversions' on Milton’s Lycidas and Gray’s odes. Warton challenged Johnson’s 'overornamented style' in the Rambler, wishing the 'rising generation' would form themselves on the 'chaster model of Addison.' Despite quoting Johnson’s 'solid and judicious' observations on Cowley, Warton sought to prove that Johnson 'wanted a just relish for true poetry.'
CGV entry 22:110. Warton's 'Essay on Pope', Volume 2, 1782.
Johnson's Lives: An Unrecorded Variant and a New Portrait
Rowan announces the discovery of a copy of the Dublin edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779–81) containing a previously unrecorded cancel title-leaf dated 1795 and an unrecorded engraved portrait of Johnson. This volume reissues the 1780 Dublin edition with its cancels, but adds the 1795 cancel title printed on wove paper. Rowan notes the chronological impossibility of the imprint, which claims R. Dodsley sold the book in Pall Mall in 1795. The volume also features an inserted frontispiece engraving of Johnson, signed and published by J. Pegge on 1 November 1795. Rowan notes this portrait does not appear in standard iconographies or reference lists of late eighteenth-century engravers.
A Literary Chestnut: Dryden's 'Cousin Swift'
Maurice Johnson investigates the origin and veracity of the famous literary chestnut: "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet," attributed to Dryden. The quote, which concisely frames Swift's turn to prose, was first recorded in Cibber's Lives (1753) as a toned-down, friendly admonition. It was Johnson who perfected and hardened the phrase in his 1781 Life of Swift, making it a memorable, devastating denunciation. Johnson's version of the quote is taut and Olympian, resembling his own style. Johnson's assertion that the pronouncement motivated Swift’s "perpetual malevolence" against Dryden remains the popular view, despite limited textual evidence and the possibility that the quote was merely a popular wisecrack that Johnson adopted and refined.
CGV entry 22:112.
Perkins argues that Johnson's famous critique of Metaphysical Poetry in The Life of Cowley is not a neo-classic attack but an important effort to define and value wit. Johnson rejected the Augustan notion of wit as mere "propriety," preferring a more dignified, older conception as "Intellection"—something "at once natural and new." He praised the Metaphysicals for their intense "thinking" and originality in conceits (discordia concors), finding these qualities, despite their lack of "propriety," superior to the hollow "stock devices" of much contemporary 18th-century verse.
Samuel Johnson's Criticism of Pope in the Life of Pope
Boyce disputes the common notion that Johnson wrote the Life of Pope easily from memory and matured principles, arguing it is not a wholly original work but deeply indebted to earlier critics like Warton, Dennis, and Ayre. A paragraph-by-paragraph examination demonstrates that Johnson's commentary was often a direct response to points raised by his predecessors, from whom he borrowed ideas, phrases, and even the structure for his analysis. Johnson frequently used Warton's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope as a prompt, either tacitly accepting or disputing its ideas; for instance, his praise of Eloisa to Abelard borrows three of four reasons from Warton. The essay contends that the quality of Johnson's criticism is highest when he is provoked by these earlier writers and that his energy flags when he discusses Pope's later works not covered by them. Even the famous comparison between Pope and Dryden is shown to be an adaptation of similar comparisons by other critics like Shiels. Johnson often chose minor points to comment upon and ignored larger questions to ensure his work remained marketable and fresh. While the Life remains impressive for its clarity and authority, Boyce concludes Johnson's role was less that of an originator and more that of a final adjudicator in a long-standing critical conversation, writing a "critique of the critics" to have the last word rather than providing a source of original literary analysis.
Samson's Middle: Aristotle and Dr. Johnson
“All [Milton's] originality,” wrote Professor A. S. P. Woodhouse recently, “—and it is great—is revealed in his adaptation of traditional poetic forms, never in wilful departure from them ...” Yet the student who assumes that Samson Agonistes is a classical tragedy, and attempts to follow the suggestion made by William Riley Parker and F. Michael Krouse that it be studied in the light of Aristotle's Poetics, cracks his head immediately against the stone wall of Samuel Johnson's resounding dictum, that while it has a beginning and an end which Aristotle himself would have approved, Samson has no middle. Since Johnson's time, a host of critics have ranged themselves on one side or the other of the argument concerning Samson's allegedly absent middle. Krouse added to the controversy an illuminating survey of seventeenth-century and earlier conceptions of the biblical story. Parker's special contribution was to measure Milton's play against classical Greek tragedies. Both, however, suggested the possibility of further analysis in terms of the Poetics.
CGV entry 22:116. On Johnson's critique of Milton's 'Samson Agonistes'.
Johnson’s critique of Paradise Lost in Life of Milton employs the structural logic of a scholastic disputation. By presenting absolute praise alongside total condemnation, Johnson acts as a moderator, forcing the reader to balance contradictory assessments of Milton's epic. The author contends that Johnson’s balanced, antithetical style reflects a mind perpetually weighing evidence, a method also visible in his treatment of Cowley and Shakespeare, where personal bias is offset by a rigorous pro-and-contra framework.
CGV entry 22:118.
CGV entry 22:119. On alterations in the 'Life of Pope'. Includes facsimiles of a page from Johnson's manuscript and two pages of his proof sheets.
Reconstructs the composition of Johnson's Life of Pope using manuscript, proofs, memoranda, and correspondence. Hilles establishes the timeline (late 1780-early 1781), details sources (Ruffhead, Warburton, Spence, oral information), and analyzes Johnson's method. Johnson relied heavily on Ruffhead initially, later incorporating other sources. The critical section reacts heavily to Warton and Ruffhead. The manuscript reveals hasty composition, corrected extensively in proof with input from Nichols.
Keast investigates textual issues in editing Johnson's biographies. He argues that in one Life, the manuscript reading "consolation" is the true text, although printed editions contain "congratulation," demonstrating Johnson’s potential inattentiveness to proofs. Keast confirms Johnson’s contribution to the problematic 1753 Lives of the Poets, ostensibly by Cibber, emphasizing the complexity of establishing the biographical canon.
An attempt to use Greek etymology to deduce why Johnson called such poets as Cowley and Donne “metaphysical.”
CGV entry 22:123. On Thomas Gray.
Johnson, Lycidas, and the Norms of Criticism
Fleischauer defends Johnson's controversial critique of Milton's Lycidas by arguing it consistently applies Johnson's established critical norms, norms largely shared by his contemporaries who registered little protest. Johnson found the diction "harsh" (a term encompassing strained syntax, figures, and unusual word usage, fitting Milton's deliberate "Dorick" style), the rhymes "uncertain," and the meter "unpleasing" because of their irregularity, violating expectations of poetic form. He condemned the pastoral conventions ("trifling fictions") as artificial and insincere for an elegy ("where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief"). Most importantly, Johnson found the mingling of pagan mythology with sacred Christian truths ("the grosser fault") indecent and approaching impiety, violating his conviction that poetry must imitate nature, not confuse distinct orders of reality or pollute religious solemnity with fable. Johnson's critique was principled, not merely prejudiced.
Johnson's Life of Shenstone: Some Observations on the Sources
Leicester meticulously examines the sources Johnson used for his Life of Shenstone, demonstrating heavy reliance on T. R. Nash's account in The History... of Worcestershire (1781) and, to a lesser extent, Robert Dodsley's preface and description of The Leasowes in Shenstone's Works (1764). Johnson likely accessed Nash's work just before completing the Lives, borrowing extensively for biographical facts, including errors, often paraphrasing rather than transcribing directly. He selectively used Dodsley's more eulogistic material, particularly on Shenstone's character and appearance, but omitted passages defending Shenstone's economy or criticizing Dodsley's editorial practices. Johnson incorporated anecdotes, sometimes controversially (like the Lyttelton rivalry or the leaky roof), to illustrate character but filtered all material through his pre-existing, often critical, assessment of Shenstone's life devoted to rural elegance over productive utility or broad intellectual engagement, largely ignoring Shenstone's Letters as a potential source for a more nuanced view.
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
University of Chicago Press for Rice University
Johnson and 'Cibber's' Lives of the Poets, 1753
Keast examines the 18th-century compilation The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753), traditionally attributed to Cibber but largely compiled by Shiels. Keast establishes that the collection functions as a significant precursor to Johnson’s own Lives of the Poets and documents Johnson’s active role in its creation. Comparison of texts reveals that Shiels used extensive portions of Johnson's biography of Savage and his account of Roscommon, often through literal transcription or abridgment rather than original compilation. Keast identifies the inclusion of a Johnsonian prologue and multiple references to the Rambler and the Drury Lane Prologue within the five-volume work. Analysis suggests that Johnson provided Shiels with oral traditions, such as the anecdote regarding Shakespeare holding horses and Dryden’s critique of Swift’s poetry. Keast concludes that many seemingly original passages in the 1753 Lives likely originated with Johnson, who later repossessed this information for his own definitive biographical series.
Coleridge's 'Debt' to Dryden and Johnson
CGV entry 22:128. On their similar view of metaphysical poetry.
Johnson and Hazlitt on the Imagination in Milton
Hardy analyzes Johnson’s use of Raphael’s warning to Adam in Paradise Lost as a framework for understanding his views on intellectual inquiry. While Johnson praised scientific disciplines like astronomy, he consistently warned against curiosity that distracted from 'the duty which Providence assigns.' The text examines periodic essays where characters like Gelidus or Vivaculus exemplify the 'unprofitable and culpable abstraction' resulting from such misdirected interests. Hardy argues that Johnson’s frequent self-reproach for 'indolence' informs his advocacy for 'busy-ness' as a safeguard against vice. Johnson views self-knowledge and the performance of daily duties as the primary goals of human endeavor.
Autobiographical Reflections in Johnson's Life of Swift
Samuel Johnson's 'Life of Addison': Sources, Composition and Structure
CGV entry 22:134. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 26 (March 1966), page 5409.
The Relevance of Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Johnson's Lycidas: The End of Renaissance Criticism
Johnson's criticism of Milton's Lycidas marks the end of Renaissance criticism because Johnson rejected the poem's pastoral form and demanded real passion and new matter in poetry, which aligned with a modern, "romantic" point of view. Johnson's stance stemmed from his move toward empiricism and an appeal to nature and the heart, rather than the neo-classic reliance on abstract literary forms and received tradition. He had forgotten or set aside the Renaissance understanding of the pastoral as an established, instructional kind of poetry.
CGV entry 22:140. See comment by Victor Milne and reply by Sigworth in the same journal, volume 2 (Spring 1969), pages 300-302.
Richardson and Johnson: Critical Agreement on Rowe's The Fair Penitent
Samuel Johnson on Swift: The Life of Swift and Johnson's Predecessors in Swiftian Biography
Samuel Johnson's dislike of Jonathan Swift has provoked a continuing interest among scholars and critics. Commentators on the subject have described the attitude as an inherent prejudice and have questioned its possible causes. From James Boswell's repeated comments that Johnson apparently had an unaccountable prejudice against Swift and his pointed question to discover the source ("I once took the liberty to ask him, if Swift had personally offended him, and he told me, he had not") to Walter Raleigh's facile summation that an essential difference in their characters separated them, speculation has been persistent, if not always rewarding. Perhaps the final statement of explanation is set forth in W. B. C. Watkins's essay, "Vive la bagatelle," where Watkins maintains that though Johnson had "a residue of sheer, inexplicable prejudice" against Swift, much that appears prejudice can be made understandable. That understanding comes largely from Watkins's well-documented theory that Johnson and Swift were more alike than different: "Curiously, his antagonism is intensified by certain similarities between the two men in circumstance and personality." Watkins's theory convincingly explains the source of a behavioral trait clearly revealed in Boswell's record of Johnson's conversation. Yet the character of Johnson's biography of Swift has its own peculiar problem. Most of Johnson's attacks on Swift came at impromptu moments when conversation led Johnson to lash out hastily at the Dean. Boswell indicates that Johnson's behavior was habitual: "He attacked Swift, as he used to do upon all occasions." Watkins explains this in part by referring to Johnson's belief that Swift was overpraised; thus Johnson voiced his irritation whenever excessive acclaim prompted a reply.
The Reputation of Samuel Johnson's The Lives of the Poets in England and America
Ohlman analyzes the reception and reputation of Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets from its initial publication in 1779 through the mid-twentieth century. It details the work's origins, publication history, and critical principles, discussing contemporary reviews and private responses, including those of Montagu, Walpole, and Seward. The study tracks nineteenth-century responses, focusing on Johnson's transformation into a literary character via Boswell and the subsequent twentieth-century scholarly resurgence of interest in his critical work. The analysis contrasts Johnson's humanistic and judicial criticism with the evolving tastes of successive literary eras.
CGV entry 22:145. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 29, number 9 (March 1969), page 3160A.
CGV entry 22:155.
Patterns of Significant Action in the Life of Addison
Johnson and Shiels: Biographers of Addison
Battersby examines the biographical accounts of Addison by Shiels (in The Lives of the Poets, 1753) and Johnson. Shiels primarily relies on Campbell's life of Addison in the Biographia Britannica (1747), but his original additions and critical commentary often anticipate remarks in Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Due to Shiels's known association with Johnson and the consistency of the added opinions with Johnson's established critical judgments, Battersby concludes that Shiels likely incorporated material originating from Johnson, suggesting Johnson reclaimed his own material when writing his later account.
Johnson and Swift: A Study in the Genesis of Literary Opinion
Korshin disputes the prevalent theory that Johnson's dislike of Swift stemmed from personal animosity or a failed attempt to secure a Dublin degree, citing Boswell’s testimony that Swift never personally offended the Doctor. Instead, Korshin identifies three formative stages in the evolution of Johnson's opinion, beginning with early exposure in the 1720s and culminating in the "Life of Swift", which crystallized decades of steady prejudice. The essay highlights a fundamental ethical divergence: while Swift’s "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms" provoked Johnson’s "disgust" due to its "savage misanthropy" and theriophilic debasement of mankind, Johnson maintained a more benevolent, moderate belief in man's capacity for improvement through reason and religion. Korshin observes that although Johnson imitated Swiftian irony in early political works like "Marmor Norfolciense", he later abandoned the mode, perhaps due to a "growing disenchantment" with Swift’s perceived "offense to mankind". Furthermore, Korshin notes Johnson's reliance on prejudiced biographical sources, such as Orrery, which reinforced his view of Swift’s character as "repugnant" despite a lingering respect for Swift’s poetic utility in the "Dictionary".
Samuel Johnson and William Lauder: Malevolence in the Criticism of Milton
Lacy examines the Lauder controversy surrounding the false plagiarism charges against Milton, exploring the role of malice in the criticism. Johnson initially supports Lauder's claims but later helps draft his recantation after Douglas exposes the fraud. The episode highlights Johnson’s complex attitude toward Milton, revealing his political distaste for Milton's republicanism alongside his goal to promote true, objective literary criticism.
Johnson's Criticism of Milton's Scheme of Education
Eade examines Johnson’s inclusion of Dryden’s "Heads of an Answer to Rymer" in the Life of Dryden. While George Watson argued Johnson was unaware of previous publications, Eade cites Johnson’s 1779 "Advertisement" acknowledging he had been told the remarks were printed before. Ironically, Johnson possessed a 1750 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher from which the "Heads" had been omitted, though they appeared in other editions. The original manuscripts, once in Johnson’s hands, were later destroyed by fire.
The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England
Johnson establishes the permanent value of eighteenth-century criticism by adapting Renaissance principles to a definitive survey of the English poetic tradition. Initially conceived as modest biographical advertisements modeled after French miscellanies, his project expanded into a massive individual solution to the problem of writing about the whole of an art. Johnson employs a three-part structure—biography, character, and criticism—to evaluate poets on his own terms. He often suppresses his heavy reliance on predecessors like Oldys or Bayle to present conclusions with the "full authority" of his own person. The work functions as "wisdom literature," plucking "intellectual gold" from the mass of literary history to enable readers to better enjoy or endure life. By tracing "intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind," Johnson provides a "fixed and thoroughly known centre of departure" for all subsequent literary study.
Johnson as Editor: Some Proofs of the 'Prefaces'
Examination of the proof sheets for thirty of the fifty-two Lives demonstrates that Johnson revised his work extensively in proof, despite his reputation for rapid composition. While he left typographical minutiae to Nichols, Johnson remained alert to errors resulting from misread manuscripts and often added factual details or biographical anecdotes late in the process. Most revisions are stylistic, characterized by the breaking of long sentences and the substitution of precise synonyms to avoid repetition. Middendorf argues these changes reflect a 'lexicographer's instinct' for achieving exactness of meaning and cadence. Johnson's proofreading was a 'steady, solicitous' process that sought to ensure precision of thought and structural symmetry in his final major literary undertaking.
Samuel Johnson's Criticism of the Works of Edmund Spenser
Johnson's critical dissatisfaction with Spenser's work stems partly from his distaste for the pastoral form and Italianate verse, but was primarily exacerbated by his work on the Dictionary. To illustrate early English usage, Johnson frequently consulted Spenser's deliberately archaic works, such as The Shepheardes Calender and early books of The Faerie Queene. This constant encounter led to a growing impatience with Spenser's "licentious" and unnatural diction, which Johnson felt was often strained for the sake of rhyme, confirming his belief that poetic form should be functional rather than ornate.
Research Studies of Washington State University
Johnson's Lives of the English Poets in the Nineteenth Century
Subjectivity in the Art of Eighteenth Century Biography: Johnson's Portrait of Swift
Shiels and Johnson: Biographers of Thomson
CGV entry 22:168. Argues that Johnson borrowed "fairly heavily" from Robert Shiels.
Swearingen examines Johnson's Life of Gray to clarify its polemical nature and critical justice. Johnson's strictures targeted the growing cult of Gray's "idolaters" and the perceived threat of romantic innovation to Augustan standards of reason and truth. Johnson's criticism of Gray's language and lack of novelty stemmed from his commitment to rational decorum and the progress of poetry, contrasting with Gray's emphasis on imaginative effect. Johnson's measured evaluation of Gray's life and poetry demonstrates critical integrity despite deep personal antipathy.
Reflections on Johnson's Life of Milton
Wain examines Samuel Johnson's critical engagement with Milton, distinguishing between the younger Johnson’s strictly technical verbal analysis in the Rambler and his later, comprehensive verdict in the Lives of the Poets. Wain disputes Peter Quennell’s characterization of Johnson as cynical or hostile to freedom, highlighting instead Johnson’s egalitarianism and anti-imperialism. Johnson viewed Milton as a Protestant, regicide, and radical whose humanistic pride challenged Johnson’s own intellectual positions. Wain asserts that Johnson used Milton’s biography to combat the 'Miltonic vogue' and warn against the 'totalitarian mind'—a mindset Johnson identified by its intolerance of bad faith in adversaries and its tendency to view all aspects of life through a partisan lens. Ultimately, Wain credits Johnson for his ability to see good in an adversary, noting Johnson’s observation that Milton’s life was an 'habitual prayer.'
Johnson on Metaphysical Poetry and Semantic Change
Johnson's views on language and semantic change illuminate his critique of metaphysical poetry. Drawing from Locke, Johnson views language as arbitrary and human-driven, with semantic change progressing from "primitive" to metaphoric meanings. Johnson condemns metaphysical poetry for voluntary deviation from nature, arguing that its conceit and innovation detach language from common experience, making words draw attention to themselves rather than to things. He associates metaphysical wit with burlesque style, which creates an "unnatural" and ultimately trivial distortion of language's communicative purpose.
Dr. Johnson on Swift's Last Years: Some Misconceptions and Distortions
Hilles defends Johnson against charges of malice and rumor-mongering regarding Swift’s cognitive decline. Hilles argues that the famous line from The Vanity of Human Wishes reflects the "bald truth" of contemporary accounts rather than personal hostility. Hilles demonstrates that Johnson’s "Life of Swift" relies on authoritative printed sources—primarily Hawkesworth, Orrery, and Delany—rather than the "crooked inventions" of Birch. Hilles concludes that Johnson’s narrative of Swift’s "rage and fatuity" accurately synthesized the best evidence available in the eighteenth century.
Johnson and the Honeysuckle Lives of Milton
The Making of Croft's Life of Young for Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Pettit details the composition and reception of Herbert Croft's Life of Edward Young, the single non-Johnsonian biography in the Lives of the English Poets. Croft, a young law student and friend of Young's son, wrote the Life at Johnson's request. The Life was met with spirited public and private discussion, largely due to its perceived bias toward Young's son and its subtle derogation of Young's character, despite Croft's original research. Johnson praised the work but also suggested it be shorter.
John Clarke's Essay on Study and Samuel Johnson on Paradise Lost
Weinbrot examines Johnson’s unacknowledged reliance on Clarke’s Essay on Study for his critical assessment of Milton in the Lives of the Poets. While Johnson explicitly cites Clarke regarding Satan’s "impiety," Weinbrot demonstrates that Johnson also adapted Clarke's arguments concerning the inconsistent materiality of angels and the prose-like quality of blank verse. Although Johnson rejects Clarke’s purely moralistic literary judgments, he uses Clarke’s specific examples to illustrate Milton’s "absurdities." Weinbrot concludes that Clarke served as a significant, though often hidden, catalyst for some of Johnson’s most famous observations on Paradise Lost.
Johnson's Critical Judgments in The Lives of the Poets
Booth argues that Samuel Johnson's criticism in the *Lives of the Poets* consists of a series of short, independent, and continuously evaluative judgments whose primary purpose is corrective. He demonstrates that Johnson's method is to survey literary works with brisk appraisals, applying non-specific terms of praise and blame to adjust what he perceives as the prevailing public opinion about a poet or poem. The author contends that these judgments are not structured to build a cumulative argument but rather stand as individual pronouncements designed to raise or lower the "quantitative scale of tribute" accorded to a work. This corrective approach explains why the essays can seem disjointed or end with surprising verdicts. The essay concludes that Johnson's critical activity in the *Lives* is fundamentally educational, aimed at schooling the reader's taste by directing it toward good examples and away from bad ones.
The Structure of Johnson's Lives: A Possible Source
The tripartite structure of Johnson's major Lives may be modeled on Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers. Earlier biographies in English did not follow this form, but Diogenes's ancient serial biographies present a distinct four-part structure of life, anecdotal character, list of writings, and discussion of doctrines, which could logically be condensed into Johnson's three sections.
The Biter Bit: Johnson's Strictures on Pope
On Johnson's use of allusion in his "Life of Pope" to rebuke Alexander Pope's personal failings and quarrels with other authors. Horne identifies two instances where Johnson employs Pope's own words or techniques against him, creating a "biter bit" effect. The first involves the dispute with Aaron Hill, where Johnson adapts Pope's famous line on Addison. The second concerns the quarrel with Addison over Homer, where Johnson combines Pope's wording with a summary of Addison’s Cato.
Cowper on Johnson's Life of Milton
Copley presents marginalia from Cowper’s personal copy of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. The notes record Cowper's vehement reactions to Johnson's treatment of Milton, characterized by sharp rebuttals of Johnson's critical and political biases. Cowper defends Milton’s character and poetic innovations, particularly blank verse, against Johnson’s "petulant" and "insolent" assertions. The edition transcribes these remarks alongside the corresponding passages of Johnson's text, documenting a significant eighteenth-century poet's resistance to Johnsonian criticism during an aborted Milton project.
Forster uses a postscript in Croft’s Love and Madness to clarify the timeline of his collaboration with Johnson. Evidence suggests Croft first attracted Johnson’s attention through his diligent research on Chatterton, rather than a long-term apprenticeship. Croft likely met Johnson no earlier than March 1780, completing the biography of Young within six months. Forster argues that Croft’s speed, primary source research, and successful imitation of Johnson’s prose style secured his unique role as a contributor.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets is an achievement of moral art, using the biographical genre as a stage for the tragicomic exploration of human destiny and frailty. Influenced by the English tradition of "brief life," Johnson shaped his materials, often derived from "humdrum journalism," into exemplary narratives that point a moral. He employs thematic gestures like the commemoration of virtue, the failure of misspent talents, and the pervasive fragility of the human enterprise, frequently using irony and drawing on the poets' own works to structure their life stories.
A Possible Dryden Echo in Johnson's Life of Dryden
Walker identifies a potential literary debt in Johnson's defense of Dryden's prolific output. Johnson argues that while poverty may have lessened the excellence of Dryden's works, it increased their number, asserting that writing less does not guarantee writing better. Walker suggests this rationale echoes Dryden's own "Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire," where Dryden tells Dorset that he has not written better because Dorset has not written more.
Proportion and Value in Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Booth analyzes the scale of the fifty-two biographies to determine Johnson's historical emphasis. Pope, Dryden, and Milton receive the greatest "order of magnitude," but Booth distinguishes prominence from merit. He argues Johnson uses Dryden and Pope to trace a "coherent tradition" of progressive refinement in English verse. Conversely, Johnson treats Milton as a "great lonely monument" whose idiosyncratic style offered a "bad example" for successors. Booth concludes that the superior length of the Pope biography validates the "heritage" of craftsmanship, positioning Pope as the most significant figure in Johnson’s historical structure.
Brink challenges the commonplace assumption of Johnson’s deep antagonism toward Milton, arguing that recent scholarship provides a more accurate perspective on Johnson’s critical and biographical approach. The study suggests that Johnson’s perceived hostility was unfairly cemented by his involvement with William Lauder’s forgeries, despite evidence that Johnson held Milton in high personal esteem and supported a subscription for Milton’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Foster. Brink analyzes the Life of Milton as an exercise in "balanced and judicious" criticism, where Johnson employs an antithetical framework to correct contemporary "Milton idolators" and defend the public taste against critics like Dick Minim. While Johnson remained a "social realist" skeptical of Milton’s "visionary idealism" and revolutionary politics, he nonetheless concludes his biography by describing Paradise Lost as "not the greatest of heroick poems, only because it is not the first." The text asserts that Johnson’s critiques, including his rejection of Lycidas, are rooted in rational arguments rather than mere political or religious prejudice.
Samuel Beilby alias Herbert alias A Yorkshire Freeholder
Fleeman identifies the anonymous author of Remarks on Dr. Johnson’s Lives... By a Yorkshire Freeholder (1782) as Samuel Beilby, later known as Samuel Herbert. By cross-referencing auction records and Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses, Fleeman establishes Beilby’s identity as a rector in Yorkshire who assumed the name Herbert to honor a female ancestor. This identification clarifies the authorship of a contemporary quarto pamphlet attacking Johnson’s biographical series.
CGV entry 22:189. On the identity of the author of a 1782 attack on Johnson's 'Lives'.
Johnson's Life of Pope: Fact as Fiction
Johnson's Lives of the Poets and the Biographic Dictionaries
On Johnson's use of biographical sources for his Lives of the Poets, excluding the major lives like Milton and Pope. He categorizes sources into "single," "authorial," and "general" lives, challenging the assumption that Johnson relied primarily on single lives. Instead, a minute examination of the text, particularly for the lesser-known poets, reveals that Johnson habitually employed collective biographies (like Biographia Britannica and A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical) for the basic framework and factual material, often integrating notes from these secondary sources into his narrative even when primary single lives were available.
Johnson's Life of Pope and Pope's Preface to the Iliad
Smallwood identifies Pope’s Preface to the Iliad as the structural and conceptual model for Johnson’s comparison of Dryden and Pope in Lives of the Poets. Johnson adapts Pope’s distinction between Homeric invention and Virgilian judgment to evaluate the relative poetic vigor of his subjects. By echoing Pope’s language regarding "fire" and "constancy," Johnson frames Pope’s genius through the same criteria Pope once applied to Virgil.
Samuel Johnson and Dryden's 'Contempt' for Otway
This note investigates Johnson’s claim in the Life of Dryden that Dryden viewed Otway with "contempt." While G. B. Hill traced this to Charles Gildon’s The Laws of Poetry (1721), the author suggests Johnson likely encountered the reference in a 1753 Dublin edition of Dryden’s Poems and Fables. The inclusion of Gildon’s remarks in an earlier biography of Dryden provided the immediate context for Johnson’s assertion. Johnson’s misquotation of Dryden’s own preface further strengthens the link to Gildon’s intermediary text.
CGV entry 22:193. Noted in Scriblerian 14, no. 1 (1981).
Progressive Refinement: Johnson's Literary History
The Composition of Johnson's Lives: A Calendar
McCarthy constructs a detailed calendar of the composition of Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets between March 1777 and May 1781. By coordinating Johnson’s "little billets" to printer John Nichols with his more emotionally candid correspondence to Hester Thrale, McCarthy identifies the writing dates for thirty-four of the fifty-one lives. McCarthy challenges previous dating by G. B. Hill and E. L. McAdam, particularly regarding "Cowley" and "Waller." The study highlights Johnson’s "scholar's conscience," noting his impulse to perform original research despite commercial pressures to "crib" from the Biographia Britannica. McCarthy concludes that while Johnson worked "dilatorily and hastily," his progress was often retarded by fitful scholarly ambitions and the burden of proofreading.
Johnson's Life-Writing and the Life of Dryden
Johnson's life-writing, exemplified by the Life of Dryden, is essentially polemical and oratorical, prioritizing moral instruction over objective reporting. Johnson manipulates context and employs subtle rhetorical strategies, such as double meaning and disproportionate negative detail, to create an authoritative perspective that guides the reader's judgment. He consistently portrays Dryden as inconstant, venal, and peevish, using the biography as a cautionary fable. Berland contends that Johnson's selectivity, including the use of damaging rumors and errors, subordinates factual relation to his predetermined moral and critical framework.
An Echo of Addison on Lee in Johnson on Thomson
Hardy examines Johnson’s assessment of James Thomson’s poetry, noting that Johnson’s critique of Thomson’s "cloud of words" in the Life of Johnson echoes Addison’s Spectator No. 39 comments on Nathaniel Lee. He observes that Johnson’s later Life of Thomson combines this Addisonian influence with imagery from Butler’s Hudibras. Hardy argues these echoes demonstrate Johnson’s deep immersion in Addison’s works and suggests the Lee comparison signals a more nuanced, complex critical evaluation of Thomson than typically recognized.
Johnson, Dryden, and the Wild Vicissitudes of Taste
Novak defends Johnson’s stature as a reliable literary historian of the Restoration, specifically examining his treatment of John Dryden. He argues that Johnson understood the period's social and political "otherness" better than modern critics often allow, despite minor chronological errors. Novak highlights the "clear affinity" between Johnson and Dryden in their shared struggle to evaluate Shakespeare’s "unique genius" without abandoning critical judgment. He notes that Johnson identified with Dryden's need to "write for pay" and his "dislike of labour." The article analyzes Johnson’s condemnation of Restoration "immorality" as a deliberate judgment against the "corruption of the times" rather than historical ignorance. Novak concludes that Johnson’s Life of Dryden remains a "masterful" integration of biography and the history of "common life."
Johnson's Lives of the Poets and Earlier Traditions of the Character Sketch in England
Brownley situates Johnson's character sketches within the Lives of the Poets against earlier English traditions, including biographical sketches appended to lives, historical portraits (influenced by Tacitus and Clarendon), and Theophrastan characters. While acknowledging Johnson's use of the established tripartite structure (life, character, works), Brownley argues Johnson transcends his predecessors. He rejects hagiography and typological simplification, infusing his sketches with particulars to highlight individual complexity and contradiction. By manipulating details inductively and juxtaposing different accounts, Johnson uses the character sketch form to reveal both human individuality and the genre's inherent limitations in capturing it fully.
Distant Genius: Johnson and the Art of Milton's Life
Johnson’s Life of Milton connects Milton’s life and art, contrary to the traditional critical defense that Johnson scrupulously separates his views of the man and his work. Johnson depicts Milton as a man of great independence and self-sufficiency, perpetually "set apart from others" in his education, social life, marriages, and politics. This cultivated remoteness is presented as both the source of his failure in the minor poems (which lacked "human manners" and "vigour of sentiment") and the condition of his success in the "extra-ordinary" epic, Paradise Lost. The epic's elevated subject matter and non-human characters suited Milton's "unbounded imagination," enabling him to achieve a "distant genius" that is to be admired, though not imitated, because of its separation from common human experience.
The Biographer as Parodist: Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Thoughts on Prior: John Wesley's Distortions of Johnson
Rogal chronicles John Wesley's 1782 essay Thoughts on Prior, identifying it as an anonymous opposition piece responding to Johnson's Life of Prior. The Wesley family highly esteemed Matthew Prior as a model of Tory Christian perfection, which prompted John Wesley to defend the poet against Johnson's critical strictures. Rogal analyzes Wesley's textual methods, demonstrating how the Methodist leader altered and misquoted eleven distinct passages from Johnson's work. Wesley omitted Johnson's complaints about classical imagery to satisfy his own religious tastes and stripped Johnson's prose of its balanced rhetorical structure. Rogal argues that Wesley intentionally obscured Johnson's identity as the "ingenious writer" to avoid a public controversy with him, using the piece instead to assault Alexander Pope's moral propriety.
A Critique of Dr. Johnson's Essay on Addison
Johnson and the 'Duty' of Reading Paradise Lost
Fix reinterprets Johnson's notorious comment that the perusal of Milton's Paradise Lost is a "duty rather than a pleasure." Fix argues this statement is not a criticism of the poem's quality, but a logical consequence of its religious preeminence. Johnson views the epic as a holy text, akin to Scripture or prayer, intended to "vindicate the ways of God to man" and enforce a consciousness of human subservience. The poem’s dominant quality is the sublime, which functions as a rhetorical tool to "astonish," "harass," and "overburden" the reader, forcing submission. This intense, spiritually taxing experience, which is devoid of the comfortable elements of "human interest" or the "beautiful" (pleasure), makes the reader "forget to take up again" and wish it no longer. The experience of reading is thus a duty because it is a severe, corrective, moral, and religious act, analogous to prayer, which men naturally wish to escape.
Greene compares Johnson's Lives of the Poets to Boswell’s Life of Johnson, arguing that the latter is irreparably damaged by major defects. He contends that the Life fails to do justice to Johnson’s subtle thought and work, offers a distorted perspective, and focuses disproportionately on Johnson’s later years. Greene views biography as history, asserting that the Life functions merely as an edited diary, thereby preventing a true appreciation of Johnson's extensive writings.
CGV entry 22:207. Argues for the retention of the original title, 'Prefaces, Biographical and Critical'.
A Stylistic Analysis of Johnson's Life of Milton
Regaining Paradise: Milton in the Eighteenth Century
CGV entry 22:210.
The Celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D. to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Now First Published, with Notes, by James Boswell, Esq.
Johnson addresses Chesterfield to decline belated overtures of patronage following the completion of the Dictionary. He recounts a seven-year interval of neglect, during which he pushing on my work through difficulties without external encouragement or financial assistance. Johnson characterizes a patron as one who encumbers him with help only after a scholar has reached safety unaided. He expresses indifference toward Chesterfield's recent public recommendations, noting that the delay renders the notice useless to one who is now solitary, and cannot impart it. The text asserts Johnson’s reliance on Providence rather than aristocratic favor. Boswell includes a note regarding a minor ten-pound gift and remarks on the wonderful extent and accuracy of Johnson’s memory in reproducing the letter’s contents years later.
First published as a standalone work, with notes by James Boswell.
Mixed review of Birkbeck Hill’s edition of Johnson's correspondence characterizes the editor as a "laborious annotator" who often provides superfluous explanations for well-known Scriptural quotations. The reviewer objects to Hill's inclusion of Baretti’s "stupite and spiteful" remarks concerning Piozzi. While acknowledging the "strong common sense" and "elevated reflections" in the letters, the reviewer finds Johnson's habitual strain of gallantry toward Piozzi distasteful, likening his efforts as a "beau garçon" to a "wretched attempt." The review highlights Johnson’s "overweening attention" to his physical maladies and his enduring "fear of death" as central psychological themes. The reviewer notes significant parallels between Johnson and Walter Scott, particularly their shared interest in the "real business of life" over mere literature.
CGV entry 23:3. An anonymous review of the edition by G. B. Hill.
Eighteenth Century Letters contrasts Johnson and Chesterfield to illustrate the period's divergent social spheres and philosophies. Chesterfield, known for his polished, elegant style and vain pursuit of social applause, offered letters, chiefly to his son, that taught manners but included immoral advice. In contrast, Johnson, the uncouth moralist, wrote letters—primarily to Thrale and Boswell—characterized by familiarity and minute daily detail, fulfilling the criteria of absent conversation. The editor defends Johnson's correspondence against criticisms of being mundane, despite Johnson's famous dismissal of Chesterfield's letters as teaching "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master." The collection emphasizes the writers' stylistic differences and their shared keen observation.
CGV entry 23:4. Contains selections from Johnson and Chesterfield, with an introduction by G. B. Hill.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Some Unpublished Letters
CGV entry 23:5. A limited edition of 20 copies.
A selection of Johnson's correspondence, reflecting scholarly advancements preceding the subsequent complete edition. The selection draws on the editor's intense research into Johnson's private papers. The primary editorial approach establishes textual accuracy, seeking original manuscripts to avoid reliance on previous, often corrupt, printed sources. This corrected numerous errors found in earlier versions. The editor's study demonstrated that published letters were frequently over-pointed by printers, indicating alterations from Johnson's manuscript style. The editor previously noted that a collection of Johnson’s correspondence complements his published writings and oral wisdom. The effort proved instrumental in setting rigorous standards for editing Johnson's texts. A later comprehensive edition by the same scholar collected hundreds more letters than earlier gatherings. Subsequent work found the edition highly authoritative and valuable for scholarship.
Samuel Johnson's Celebrated Letter to the Earl of Chesterfield and His Interview with King George III as Published in 1790 by James Boswell
Johnson and Queeny: Letters from Dr. Johnson to Queeny Thrale: From the Bowood Papers
CGV entry 23:10. Contains letters from Johnson to Hester Maria Thrale.
Lansdowne's discovery of thirty-two letters from Johnson to Hester Maria Thrale ("Queeney") in the Bowood Papers is a major addition to Johnsonian scholarship that outshines previous recoveries. Queeney, who refused to give these letters to her mother (Piozzi) for her collection, preserved them until they passed to the Lansdowne family. Written between the time Queeney was not quite seven and twenty, the letters are "nicely accommodated" to her age and tastes, full of tenderness and a "communion of wisdom with innocence." Chapman praises the serenity of the collection, noting Johnson does not insult his young correspondent by departing from his "natural modes of thought." The volume includes "good advice on reading, activity, and arithmetic," featuring moving praise of arithmetic and "spirited dissuasions against idleness." Edited by Lansdowne, the book includes illustrations of relics such as portraits and the cabinet Johnson gifted to Queeney. Chapman addresses the controversy surrounding the second marriage of Piozzi, noting the "severe condemnation" by Lansdowne of her as "essentially vain and vulgar."
CGV entry 23:10.
The Queeney Letters: Being Letters Addressed to Hester Maria Thrale by Doctor Johnson, Fanny Burney and Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi
Correspondence addressed to Hester Maria Thrale, commonly known as Queeney. The contents include letters written to Thrale by Johnson, Burney, and Piozzi. Piozzi's correspondence spans the years 1780 to 1821, with materials are drawn partly from the Bowood Papers. The publication also contains an extensive study in the introduction that focuses on Piozzi's life during her widowhood and second marriage, using carefully marshaled arguments to scrutinize her reputation as viewed by contemporaries. The editor aimed to offer a detailed account of Thrale's life during those "troubled years." Lansdowne’s arguments intended to validate the negative assessment of Piozzi held by her contemporaries. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics celebrating the volume as an important, valuable contribution to understanding the internal dynamics and marriage crisis of a famous literary coterie. Murray, in TLS, finds the collection full of charm, arguing the maternal correspondence effectively answers historical cavillings. Sherburn, writing in PQ, offers a different interpretation, validating the editorial stance that the maternal letters demonstrate a near-pathological state of mind and vindicate the protective, firm interventions of friends. Jack's review in NYTBR suggests the text reveals prejudice on the part of the older patriarch rather than justifiable forebodings, while Walton, also in NYTBR, emphasizes the domestic tenderness and gentle guidance visible in the early correspondence. Charlton, in the Manchester Guardian, strongly defends the mother's character against charges of neglect, noting that decades of cohabitation yielded no contemporary evidence of bad motherhood. Kingsmill, writing in The Bookman, similarly critiques the editor's harsh, warped attitude toward female autonomy, contrasting the daughter's hard, cold rectitude with the mother's essential humanity. Quennell, in the New Statesman and Nation, praises the lively, picturesque flood of the correspondence, highlighting the deep sadness of the domestic fracture. Unsigned reviews in the London Times commend the restoration of a slippered domesticity absent from earlier biography and praise the vital evidence of family dynamics. Dobree, in The Spectator, appreciates the exposure of rigid eighteenth-century social structures regarding caste, while appraisals in the Illustrated London News and The Observer validate the fresh anecdotes and playful interactions.
Reviews: C. E. B., Illustrated London News, May 5, 1934; H. B. Charlton, Manchester Guardian, April 19, 1934; Peter Monro Jack, NYTBR, September 16, 1934; Hugh Kingsmill, The Bookman 86 (1934): 11; Joseph Wood Krutch, The Nation, October 10, 1934; D. L. Murray, TLS, no. 1677 (March 1934): 211; Frederick A. Pottle, Yale Review 24 (1934); Peter Quennell, New Statesman and Nation, March 24, 1934; S. T. S., Times of India, June 15, 1934; Samuel Scott, Nineteenth Century 116 (September 1934): 308–18; George Sherburn, PQ 14, no. 3 (1935): 177; New York Herald Tribune, September 23, 1934; The Age, August 11, 1934; The Observer, June 17, 1934; The Scotsman, March 22, 1934; The Spectator 152, no. 5520 (1934): 584, 586; The Times, March 17, 1932; The Times, March 23, 1934; Vancouver Sun, June 9, 1934; Eda Lou Walton, NYTBR, April 24, 1932.
CGV entry 23:12. Contains selections from Johnson.
The Letters of Samuel Johnson, with Mrs. Thrale's Genuine Letters to Him
Chapman’s edition surpassed George Birkbeck Hill's edition of 1892. Hill’s earlier scholarly effort provided texts for 687 letters and notably excluded those printed by Boswell, whereas Chapman gathered approximately 1,500 Johnson letters—an increase of nearly fifty percent—and, crucially, included over a hundred letters from Hester Thrale to Johnson, many hitherto unprinted. Chapman’s paramount editorial policy was achieving rigorous textual accuracy, necessitating the verification and correction of texts that Hill had often derived from notoriously "corrupt printed sources," such as Piozzi’s 1788 edition. Hill had relied on Piozzi’s texts reluctantly, even speculating they might be forged, but Chapman, relying on three decades of determined archival work, was able to clear Piozzi’s name while confirming the inaccuracy of her versions. Chapman meticulously transcribed dozens of letters directly from original documents, asserting his "prime ambition has been to furnish an accurate text," despite noting that Johnson's often puzzling handwriting had misled "almost all copyists, printers, and editors, Boswell and his careful printer not excepted." Chapman mandated preserving Johnson's "occasional inadvertences, such as the omission or repetition of small words," arguing this afforded insight into Johnson's health or state of mind. Although Hill’s original annotation style was often criticized for being garrulous and conjectural, Chapman diligently maintained and enhanced this scholarly apparatus, viewing his edition as a "Supplement to Hill–Powell." Chapman’s organization included voluminous critical notes, multiple appendixes providing specialized "editing lore" (such as details on the postal service), and seven separate indexes for comprehensive navigation, covering elements like persons, places, Johnson's own works, and word usage. Chapman's achievement instantly established the authoritative textual foundation for Johnson's correspondence, a standard text that, despite later textual supersession by Redford’s Hyde Edition (1992–94), remains highly valued for its rich commentary and inclusion of Mrs. Thrale's correspondence. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers celebrating this three-volume collection as a monumental and definitive achievement that transforms the understanding of a major literary figure's private character and emotional life. In TLS, Sparrow lauds the humanly speaking definitive text and its remarkable indexes, which expose a different, more introspective man than the caricature of tradition. Writing in RES, Lascelles compares the collection to a triumphant lighthouse, noting how its vast scale enables candid critical judgments. General interest and literary periodicals share this enthusiasm; Ferguson, in NYTBR, praises the graphic record of a highly human side, while Krutch, in the New York Herald Tribune, commends the establishment of an authoritative text freed from previous transcription errors. Bronson's review in the Saturday Review emphasizes the revelation of a deep emotional dependency on a central female friend. In MLR, Williams applauds the brilliant textual emendations and the ingenious inclusion of contextual correspondence, though he warns that the heavy use of abbreviations may hinder general readers. Specialized scholars express minor reservations about the technical arrangement; McAdam, in PQ, praises the superior transcription of a difficult hand but criticizes the complex system of separate indexes and inconsistent editorial brackets. Shepperson, writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review, similarly critiques the confusing abbreviations but concludes that the work remains an indispensable collection of facts.
Reviews: American Scholar 22, no. 3 (1953): 379; Bertrand H. Bronson, Saturday Review, May 15, 1954; James L. Clifford, JNL 13, no. 1 (1953): 1–2; Lillian De la Torre, New Republic 128, no. 11 (1953): 19–20; Charles Duffy, Thought 28, no. 4 (1953): 621–22; Arundell Esdaile, Quarterly Review 291 (1953): 94–104; Delancey Ferguson, NYTBR, February 15, 1953; W. H. Graham, Contemporary Review 182, no. 1042 (1952): 222–26; Joseph Wood Krutch, New York Herald Tribune, March 1, 1953; Mary M. Lascelles, RES 5, no. 17 (1954): 88–93; Manchester Guardian, December 19, 1952; E. L. McAdam Jr., PQ 35, no. 3 (1956): 304–6; V. S. Pritchett, New Statesman and Nation, January 3, 1953; S. C. Roberts, The Spectator 189, no. 6495 (1952): 850; W. W. Robson, The Observer, January 18, 1953; Roland Sawyer, Christian Science Monitor, February 19, 1953; Archibald B. Shepperson, Virginia Quarterly Review 29, no. 3 (1953): 463–66; John Sparrow, TLS, no. 2694 (1953): 589–91; The Bookseller, January 24, 1953; The Scotsman, January 22, 1953; Clarence R. Tracy, Queen’s Quarterly 60, no. 1 (1953): 267–68; Robert Wieder, Études Anglaises 9 (1956): 350–52; Harold Williams, MLR 48, no. 3 (1953): 339–41.
Williams emphasizes Chapman’s addition of nearly 500 letters to the Hill canon, including many previously unpublished. He highlights the "ingenious" inclusion of Mrs Thrale’s letters to provide necessary context. While praising Chapman’s "brilliant" textual emendations and meticulous indexing, Williams warns that the heavy use of abbreviations and restricted footnotes may hinder less instructed readers. He notes the volumes reveal little of Johnson’s interactions with Garrick or Goldsmith.
CGV entry 23:14. Review by Sir Harold Williams of the edition by R. W. Chapman.
Chapman provides a three-volume edition comprising 1515 letters, significantly expanding the 1043 entries previously recorded by Hill. The collection includes genuine letters from Thrale and eight extensive appendixes analyzing Johnson’s correspondences with figures such as Boswell, Taylor, and Williams. While praising Chapman’s superior transcription of Johnson’s difficult hand, McAdam criticizes the complex system of eight separate indexes and the inconsistent use of editorial brackets. He notes that the text’s accuracy varies due to hurried copying of certain originals and suggests that Hill’s annotations remain necessary for correcting Johnson’s occasional factual errors.
CGV entry 23:14. Review by E. L. McAdam, Jr. of the edition by R. W. Chapman.
Wieder reviews Chapman's three-volume collection, noting that Chapman adds 472 letters to the 1043 published by Birkbeck Hill in 1892, primarily drawing on the Boswell papers discovered at Fettercairn and Malahide. Chapman aims to create a complete catalogue, including a two-hundred-page appendix of letter fragments, and highlights that Boswell had access to much of this now-published correspondence, including two newly found letters to Edmund Burke. The edition presents a more nuanced image of Johnson as a guide to others, a sick man, and a man who struggled with solitude, adding new objective details about his character and ambitions.
CGV entry 23:14. Review by Robert Wieder of the edition by R. W. Chapman.
Littlejohn selects and arranges correspondence to trace the "dynamic, dramatic arc" of Johnson's life from early struggles to his final decline. Littlejohn intersperses the texts with commentary to create a continuous narrative. The edition categorizes letters into genres such as moral essays, journalistic reports, and letters of condolence. Littlejohn highlights Johnson's varied tones when addressing different correspondents, including Boswell, Piozzi, and Hill Boothby. The collection presents Johnson as a "human phenomenon" whose documented life constitutes his greatest work. Littlejohn emphasizes the "stark pattern of a life with its lights and deep shadows." Specific attention falls on the 1780 Gordon Riots, the tour of the Hebrides, and the final break with Piozzi. Littlejohn maintains that the letters offer an "intimate self-portrait" of a man struggling against disease and melancholy.
On Signora Piozzi's Publication of Dr. Johnson's Letters
Baretti launches a scathing attack on Piozzi for her publication of Johnson's correspondence, accusing her of "mere avarice" and betraying the "confidence of friendship." He disputes her characterization of his conduct during their 1776 journey to Bath following the death of her son. Specifically, Baretti challenges Piozzi’s claim that he "tried to irritate a wound so very deeply inflicted." He details a confrontation regarding her administration of "tin-pills" to her daughter against medical advice, asserting his "indignation" was a necessary attempt to save the child’s life. Baretti notes that neither Johnson nor Henry Thrale ever rebuked him for this supposed cruelty, further questioning Piozzi's honesty and "tortuosities of her disposition."
CGV entry 23:40. In three parts: "Stricture the First," volume 13 (May), pages 313-317; "Stricture the Second," (June), pages 393-399; and "Stricture the Third," volume 14 (August), pages 89-99.
Eboracensis charges Johnson with "philological" inconsistency, noting that his letters to Piozzi exhibit the "tediousness and unimportant observation" Johnson ridiculed in other travelers. He contrasts the "solid sense" of the Rambler with the "puerility" and "inanity" of his private remarks on rocks and rivulets. The text disputes Boswell’s "hyperbole" in clashing Johnson with "illustrious characters," asserting Johnson was "no phoenix." Eboracensis finds the published correspondence "tedious and soporific," lacking the "strength and harmony of period" characterizing Johnson’s public canon.
Condemnation of Johnson's epistolary style.
Simeon presents a series of letters from Johnson to Taylor, spanning 1742 to 1790, which elucidate Johnson's "private and social character." Simeon argues Johnson’s friendship was "arbitrary and exacting," requiring "docility and elasticity" from recipients who endured advice delivered with "insolent superiority." Johnson describes Cardinal Fleury’s "absolute" actions in France and Carteret’s role in the peace between Prussia and Hungary. Later letters offer Taylor detailed "help or counsel" regarding a "strange revolution" in his domestic life: the elopement of his wife. Johnson advises Taylor to "wear an appearance of complete indifference," avoid "tyrannical or violent" reprisals, and maintain a "manly" stance against legal threats while using diversions to restore his "weakened" spirits.
CGV entry 23:42. Letters to John Taylor.
E. A. D. and J. H. I. Oakley provide the source for Johnson's allusion in his letter to Lord Chesterfield, identifying it as lines 43–45 of Virgil's Bucolica, Eclogue viii. E. A. D. also compares it to Theocritus, Idyl iii. 1. 15. Oakley notes that Croker found the allusion's object and meaning unclear, but Oakley interprets Johnson's meaning as having "grown at last acquainted with a patron, and found him as unfeeling as a flint-stone."
CGV entry 23:43.
Johnson displayed consistent susceptibility to female charms, from juvenile attachments to Olivia Lloyd and Miss Hickman to his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. His pivotal introduction to the Thrale household, facilitated by Murphy, provided domestic stability and intellectual stimulation. Correspondence with Thrale reveals Johnson’s views on the epistolary art as a mirror of the heart. Following Thrale’s death, Johnson’s influence waned as she pursued a controversial union with Piozzi.
Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Edition of Johnson's Letters Examined and Criticised, Part 1
The unknown reviewer analyzes Birkbeck Hill’s two-volume collection of Johnson’s correspondence, noting that these letters reveal the "strength, distinctness, and reality" of Johnson’s personality. The reviewer argues that while Boswell’s biography prioritizes Johnson’s talk, this edition establishes his "high rank" as a letter writer. The text highlights Johnson’s "tenacious fidelity" to old friends like Taylor and his "deeply pathetic" dependence on Piozzi. While praising Hill’s "indefatigable assiduity," the reviewer challenges Hill’s editorial "individuality" and "ignoble" sneers regarding Johnson’s religious convictions. The text focuses on Johnson’s "life radically wretched," his horror of death, and the "eternal mercy" that eventually brightened his final days.
This critical review of Birkbeck Hill’s edition of Johnson’s letters recognizes the "strength, distinctness, and reality" of Johnson’s correspondence. The reviewer notes that Hill’s collection, which includes many letters previously published by Piozzi, secures for Johnson a "far higher rank among letter writers." However, the reviewer offers a severe critique of Hill’s editorial style, charging him with "dragging in" personal reminiscences and "vapid" sneers regarding Johnson’s religious beliefs. The text highlights Johnson's "tenacious fidelity" to old friends like John Taylor and his "superficial affectionateness" in correspondence with Hester Thrale. Despite the "ignoble" editorial notes, the reviewer acknowledges the volumes' value in revealing Johnson's "playfulness and lightness of touch" and his "rich and full mind."
CGV entry 23:46. Reprinted from the Church Quarterly Review (1892).
Birrell celebrates the "healthy and commendable disposition" of readers to recognize Johnson's merits apart from Boswell's biography. Analyzing the "Letters of Samuel Johnson," Birrell notes that Johnson wrote over three hundred letters to Piozzi despite his loathing for writing. The text constructs a "noble gospel" according to Johnson, emphasizing independence through money, the rejection of "cant," and the "solace in talk." Birrell highlights Johnson's "glorious ease" in quotation and his profound fear of death. A 1783 letter to Piozzi illustrates Johnson’s struggle with the "black dog" of melancholy following the deaths of Levett and Allen and the decline of Williams. Despite this "melancholy picture," Birrell finds humor in Johnson's suggestion that a "cheerful female" might exclude his solitude. The text concludes that Johnson’s letters reveal an "ardour of affection" and a "playfulness of humour" essential to understanding his character.
Bailey analyzes Johnson through his correspondence, asserting that the letters reveal a more sincere and consistent moral character than the conversational records in the biography. The text examines Johnson’s role as a counselor to Taylor, emphasizing his loyalty and practical wisdom. Bailey challenges characterizations of Boswell as a mere fool, highlighting the "noble attachment" and mutual reverence between the two men. The letters to Thrale exhibit a unique "lightness of touch" and gallantry, incorporating numerous classical and literary citations. Bailey concludes by contrasting Johnson’s profound religious anxiety and unfinished moral struggles with the "cheerful optimism" of Gibbon, positioning Johnson as the quintessential representative of the English character and scholarly tradition.
On Johnson's letters and their various, often delightful, styles from "monumental to the utterly frivolous," highlighting their friendliness and playfulness, and emphasizing that they fully reveal his personality and capacity for tenderness.
The hitherto unpublished letter of Dr. Johnson which is printed below is undoubtedly genuine. The original is the property of Lieut.-Col. Congreve, V.C., D.S.O., who is a direct lineal descendant of Dr. Johnson's correspondent, and who has very kindly allowed me to transcribe it for publication.
CGV entry 23:51. A letter to Charles Congreve. Other letters are described in subsequent issues.
[Letter to Robert Chambers, April 11, 1772]
Published: R. B. Adam Christmas Greeting
CGV entry 23:53. A facsimile of an unpublished letter.
[Letter to Robert Chambers, April 19, 1783]
The Decision upon the Court of Sessions [Boswell] ... and a Letter from Dr. Samuel Johnson to William Strahan upon the Subject, March 7, 1774
Published: Privately printed for R. B. Adam
Chapman announces the availability of twenty Samuel Johnson letters to John Perkins, seen by R. W. Chapman but not by Hill, from which Boswell selected only five. Most of the unpublished letters are brief, friendly notes concerning domestic topics like the purchase of coal. A letter from Boswell to Perkins confirms his practice of sending original letters to the printer, as he apologizes for a note written on one of the originals, a practice also followed by Piozzi.
This note addresses the difficulty of tracing all of Johnson's letters to Dr. John Taylor because of Taylor's dislike of publicity. Chapman, reports inspecting a collection of letters owned by Mr. A. T. Loyd, which revealed that Taylor numbered the correspondence chronologically. A table is provided, correlating Birkbeck Hill's letter numbers, the date, the source/location, and Taylor's corresponding serial number (where known or conjectured). The purpose of the list is to determine, with some certainty, which letters remain untraced and unrecorded by making the chronological gaps apparent. The gaps indicate at least twenty missing letters. The author also notes that Taylor did not number Hill's Nos. 798 and 918, and that Hill's number 1028 (the last letter) was numbered 108 by Taylor, increasing the number of missing letters.
CGV entry 23:57. A series of notes published across several volumes and years.
Critical Opinion in the Eighteenth Century English Personal Letter
Johnson identifies his primary motivation for writing as financial necessity rather than the pursuit of literary reputation. Letters to Cave regarding the publication of London reveal a youthful lack of certitude, contrasting with the later image of the imperious scholar. While Johnson expresses modest views of Rasselas and The Rambler, contemporaries like Richardson and Gower recognize his genius early. The development of the Dictionary and The Lives of the Poets illustrates his painstaking method, yet Johnson remains silent on the critical value of these works in personal letters, focusing instead on the "laborious job" of completion. Contemporary critics offer divergent views: More praises his moral discernment, while Walpole attacks his "crabbed phrases" and "bombast nonsense." Cowper provides the most balanced analysis, defending Prior’s style against Johnson’s strictures and disputing the "unmerciful" treatment of Milton. The correspondence of the period confirms that Johnson's "individuality" and "robust character" weighed as heavily as his publications in establishing his dictatorial status in English letters.
CGV entry 23:58. A dissertation from the University of Virginia, 1923.
Proposals for a New Edition of Johnson's Letters
R. W. Chapman presents a rigorous proposal for a new scholarly edition of Samuel Johnson’s letters, emphasizing the necessity of re-examining original manuscripts to correct pervasive textual corruptions. He highlights the complicated editorial history beginning with Hester Thrale Piozzi’s 1788 collection, which, while preserving the majority of Johnson's private correspondence, suffered from unjustifiable liberties such as reduced conclusions, deliberate suppressions of names, and chronological errors. Central to Chapman’s argument is the fallibility of previous editors, including George Birkbeck Hill, whose lack of access to certain manuscripts led to a reliance on conjecture. Through a detailed analysis of Johnson’s deceptive cursive—noting the confusion of the long s with f, open e with o, and re with w—Chapman demonstrates how minute palaeographic misreadings have fundamentally altered the sense of the text. Chapman advocates for a scientific approach to English textual criticism, calling for a prolonged and vigilant search for extant holographs across two continents to establish an authoritative record of Johnson’s unstudied and private voice.
A Letter of Dr. Johnson and Some Eighteenth-Century Imprints of the House of Longman
Place: London Published: Printed for private circulation
CGV entry 23:60. On a letter to Thomas Longman, circa 1746.
Chapman reveals an expurgated passage from Johnson's letter to Piozzi of June 10, 1775, which she had tried to suppress in her printed text by heavy erasure and pasting over. The original, at the Birthplace in Lichfield, was skilfully recovered by Chapman. The suppressed text concerns Boswell's journal: "Do you send Boswel's Journals? He moralized, and found my faults, and laid them up to reproach me." It also mentions Boswell's successful settlement of the chieftainship of Raasay and quieting commotion in the Hebrides.
CGV entry 23:62.
Letters of Dr. Johnson to Sir Robert Chambers
Roscoe presents a series of twenty-three previously unpublished letters from the R. B. Adam collection. He details the life of Chambers (1737–1803), a Newcastle native and Vinerian Professor of Law who eventually served as Chief Justice in Bengal. The correspondence establishes that their intimacy began in 1754 when Chambers was a seventeen-year-old undergraduate at Lincoln College. Johnson’s letters reveal him acting as an editorial mentor for Chambers’s contributions to The Literary Magazine, providing professional counsel on academic solicitations, and collaborating on East India Company affairs. Notable inclusions are Johnson’s 1772 description of Boswell’s "noisy benevolence" and a poignant 1783 missive written a year before Johnson’s death. In this final letter, Johnson provides a "history of myself," detailing his failing health—characterized by "spasms in the breast" and "intumescence"—and the "deductions from human happiness" caused by the deaths of Levett, Goldsmith, and Thrale. He urges Chambers to study "Asiatick Literature" and "Malabarick Books" while maintaining "purity of character" in the East. Roscoe concludes that the correspondence transforms a mere biographical name into a vital figure who provided Johnson with reliable "friendly intercourse" and a sanctuary at New Inn Hall.
CGV entry 23:64. Johnson's letter to Charles O'Conor, April 9, 1757, about ancient Irish culture.
Some Unpublished Letters to and from Dr. Johnson
Wright prints twenty-eight letters from the Rylands archive, including nineteen from Johnson to Piozzi. The collection features a significant amount of valetudinary correspondence detailing Johnson’s medical struggles with asthma, sarcocele, and stroke. Wright provides a commentary linking these texts to the published records of Johnson’s life. One notable item is an unsigned French letter by Johnson requesting that Piozzi exercise strict authority over his daily routine.
Johnson's cryptic letter of 30 November 1782 to Hester Thrale discusses a financial dispute between them. L. F. Powell suggests Johnson referred to raising money for Thrale's marriage settlement with Piozzi, possibly involving borrowing from her daughters. This interpretation illuminates the letter's meaning, indicating Johnson challenged the financial rationale behind her proposed actions.
CGV entry 23:66. See also a reply by L. F. Powell in the same journal, June 2, page 408.
Chapman discusses two points in Johnson's letters. First, he prints an Oct. 9 letter from Johnson to Griffith Jones, editor of the Daily Advertiser, asking him to "dig twelve lines of common sense out of this strange scribble" and insert it three times at Johnson's expense, and to return the paper. Second, he suggests emending the ungrammatical Latin phrase extrema ventura in a letter to Mrs. Thrale about his sarcocele to extrema tentare ("to attempt the last hazard").
CGV entry 23:67. For other miscellaneous references, see The Times Literary Supplement and Notes and Queries for various dates.
An Unpublished Johnson Letter concerning Percy's Reliques
Metzdorf reveals an unpublished 1760 letter from Johnson to Percy discovered in the University of Rochester library. The letter contains detailed financial calculations regarding the publication of Percy's Reliques, with Johnson advising on Dodsley’s offer and payment per sheet. Metzdorf reconstructs the early publishing history of the work, demonstrating that Johnson’s involvement was more direct and personal than previously recognized. This correspondence provides a rare glimpse into Johnson’s role as an intermediary between Percy and booksellers like Millar and Dodsley.
Clifford describes a 1931 acquisition of Piozziana including three letters addressed to Johnson. These letters document Johnson’s benevolence toward S. J. C. Pratt, a destitue young man, and Carter, a riding master seeking an Oxford appointment. A third letter from Johnson’s cousin Phoebe Herne reveals his long-term financial support for his insane cousin Elizabeth Herne. The article argues that these manuscripts provide significant evidence of Johnson’s compassionate nature often obscured by his conversational force.
CGV entry 23:69. From Hester Piozzi's collection.
Cochrane entry 126.
Johnson exhibits considerable merit as a letter-writer, employing both a monumental style "suggestive of the chisel" and a domesticated style for personal tidings. Boswell provides numerous illustrations of this ability, including the "polite and urbane" correspondence with Burney and the "sternly defiant" rebuke of Macpherson. Correspondence with Piozzi serves as a primary source for the domesticated style, conveying affection, wit, and fancy. The letter to Chesterfield represents the parallel-less monumental style, using "studious irony and reticent indignation" to dismantle the pretensions of patronage. This letter signaled a shift for literary men to stand in their own strength, establishing Johnson’s thirty-year reign among intellectuals.
Chapman presents an exploratory check-list of Johnson's extant correspondence to facilitate a new scholarly edition and prompt librarians to identify previously unrecorded documents. This "chart of Johnson's life" reveals that over two-thirds of surviving letters date from Johnson's final decade, as his fame ensured their preservation. The article details the publication history starting from 1784 and catalogs major gaps. Chapman details Boswell's "considerable, yet incomplete, success" in gathering letters for the Life, noting the absence of letters to Boswell himself and the withholding of "over a hundred letters" by Taylor. While the second abstract identifies letters to "Hester Thrale Piozzi" as a major gap, the first notes she published "about 320 letters to herself and her family," possessed "nearly five hundred letters," and secured the letters to Miss Boothby. Chapman traces the descent of manuscripts through collectors and auctions, noting the recent discovery of Fettercairn House documents. The list provides dates, recipients, and current owners or auction records for hundreds of items.
CGV entry 23:71. A check list published across several volumes and years.
Johnson's letters to Percy, mostly sold in 1870, were dispersed to various collections. The surviving extracts document their friendship and literary collaboration. In 1763, Johnson proposed visiting Percy to "strike a stroke" at Shakespeare with his help, and in 1773, he expressed hope of seeing Percy at Alnwick Castle.
A newly found letter from Johnson to Mrs. Burke, the wife of Edmund Burke, provides insight into his friendships. The letter, dated October 12, 1775, addresses Mrs. Burke's grief after Dr. Nugent's death, who was both her father and a close friend of Johnson. Johnson offers sincere condolences, acknowledging the deep loss of Nugent's counsel and the "delight of his conversation." Nugent was a founding member of the Literary Club.
CGV entry 23:73.
A Dr. Johnson Discovery at National Library
Charles reports the discovery of a previously unpublished letter from Johnson to Margaret Owen of Penrhos, found among manuscripts deposited by Lord Harlech at the National Library of Wales. Writing from Bolt Court on March 8, 1781, Johnson offers "pity" and "tender sympathy" regarding undisclosed family disgraces and the "waste of an ancient estate." He advises Owen to manage her distress through "reading, work, and conversation" and "trust in God." The letter also provides a status update on Henry Thrale, noting that while his "apoplexy has much weakened him," Johnson optimistically but incorrectly predicts he may live many years; Thrale died less than a month later. Charles identifies Owen as a member of the Thrale circle at Streatham and notes her presence at social gatherings involving Boswell, Reynolds, and Burney, despite Burney’s somewhat dismissive description of her as a "sort of butt."
CGV entry 23:74. On the Margaret Owen papers at Aberystwyth.
A Note on Dr. Johnson's Letter No. 34 to the Rev. Dr. Taylor
Ettinger announces the discovery of a previously missing letter from Johnson to Taylor, dated March 23, 1775, which fills a lacuna in the numbering established by Taylor and later noted by Chapman. Found in the George Allison Armour collection, Letter No. 34 was written from Southwark and is notable for its allusion to Johnson's recent political activity. In the letter, Johnson mentions the publication of his pamphlet Taxation no Tyranny, which he promises to send to Taylor, and urges Taylor to take his residence at Westminster in April so they might travel together to Derbyshire in May. Ettinger and Boswell's records confirm that Taylor likely acceded to the request; subsequent correspondence to Thrale shows Johnson remained in Ashbourne from July to August, and he was away from London from May to August of that year.
Dr. Johnson's Letters: Notes on Boswell's Text, I
Chapman examines the quality of Johnson's letters published by Boswell in his Life of Johnson. He affirms that Boswell's text is remarkably good for the time, largely because Boswell, an accurate man familiar with Johnson's difficult handwriting, often sent the original manuscripts, not copies, to the printer. This contrasts with earlier editions by Piozzi, Croker, and others, which contained many errors. While Boswell's text of letters he possessed is generally reliable, comparison with surviving originals, such as those to Warren Hastings, shows minor demonstrable errors, like "wonders" for "remains" or "wine" for "time."
CGV entry 23:76. In two parts: February 25, page 128; and March 4, page 140.
Cochrane entry 132. This appeared in two parts: Feb. 25, 1939 (p. 128) and Mar. 4, 1939 (p. 140).
CGV entry 23:77. A letter from Johnson to Dr. Robert Lowth.
Chapman offers numerous textual conjectures for Johnson’s letters where originals are untraced or defective. He corrects several errors in Birkbeck Hill’s 1892 edition, such as misreadings of "integrity" for "ingenuity" and "works" for "books." Chapman also restores the reading "not unworthy" from a photostat, confirming Johnson’s use of "curiosity" in an active sense. The analysis highlights how Johnson’s handwriting—particularly his "minims" and ligatures—frequently misled previous editors.
CGV entry 23:79. In two parts: March 28, pages 174–176; and April 11, pages 201–202.
On the provenance of Johnson's letters to Boswell, noting that almost all the originals printed in the Life were sent to the printer and subsequently recovered by Boswell, with the exception of the letters to Boswell, which were conspicuously absent from later finds. The piece discusses possible explanations for this "yawning chasm," including a traditional account of a fire, leakage, or deliberate destruction by anti-Johnsonian family members. Analyzing Boswell's journals, Chapman finds that Boswell was a meticulous record-keeper and did not record the receipt of any letter from Johnson that he did not later print, suggesting that he neither lost nor suppressed any letters he had actually received.
CGV entry 23:80. A calendar of the letters.
Cochrane entry 427.
Chapman identifies common errors in transcriptions of Johnson’s letters, specifically the confusion of the letters "t" and "n" due to his handwriting style. Comparing published versions of letters to John Douglas and Mrs. Montagu against manuscript evidence, the author argues for reading "erection" instead of "credit" and "that" instead of "then." These corrections aim to restore the formal tone and intended meaning of Johnson’s correspondence.
CGV entry 23:81. In Johnson's handwriting.
Chapman argues that posthumous texts of Johnson's letters likely contain a high proportion of errors due to Johnson's rapid, sometimes ambiguous, handwriting, which could mislead even trained Johnsonians like Hill. The original printers of Johnson's Life and Letters generally served him well, but editors like Boswell and Lysons often relied on printed sources or were inexact collators. Chapman pioneered the classification of ascertained textual corruptions in Johnson's letters by their source (vowels, consonants, letter shapes) to aid classical critics in applying their methods to English writers.
CGV entry 23:82. Classifying various misreadings of Johnson's hand.
Chapman proposes several textual emendations to Johnson’s correspondence with Piozzi. He suggests reading "have" instead of "leave" in a letter from August 1777, arguing that Johnson intended to stay with Mrs. Aston rather than desert her. The author also identifies potential quotations within the letters, including lines from Dryden and Young, and questions a reference to "Genius" changing sex, suggesting it may predate the known 1779 anecdote.
CGV entry 23:83. Conjectural emendations.
Did Johnson Destroy Mrs. Thrale's Letters?
The author evaluates Fanny Burney’s claim that Johnson destroyed Piozzi’s letters in late 1784. By tabulating extant correspondence, the author observes a significant paucity of letters from 1782–1784 compared to earlier years, supporting the theory of selective destruction. The author posits that Johnson, driven by anger over their estrangement, likely burned recent correspondence within easy reach while sparing older accumulations. This analysis suggests the "holocaust" of papers was real but incomplete.
Chapman examines the attempts by Piozzi to restore suppressed names in her copy of Johnson's letters. He dates her supplemental notes to between 1803 and 1813, suggesting she relied on a failing memory rather than consulting the original manuscripts. Chapman compares her supplements with those made by Samuel Lysons, the de facto editor of the 1788 edition. He argues that the supplements of Lysons are more accurate and closer to the idiom of Johnson. Through an extensive table comparing the 1788 text, Piozzi's notes, Lysons's notes, and the original manuscripts, Chapman demonstrates frequent inaccuracies by Piozzi. For example, he notes she incorrectly identified Baretti as being present at Brighton in 1777 and often guessed names that do not fit the physical evidence of erasures in the manuscripts.
CGV entry 23:86. On her attempts to restore suppressions in Johnson's letters. See also Philological Quarterly, volume 23 (April 1944), pages 172–173.
Vulliamy surveys the development of English correspondence, defining the "English Letter Writer" as one whose literary reputation rests primarily upon published epistles characterized by "wit and ability" and "imprudence." In a chapter dedicated to the eighteenth century, Vulliamy characterizes Johnson as a "great man" who remained "immovable" amidst the "involved elegance" of his age. Vulliamy contrasts the "obtuse ferocity" and "ponderous" style of Johnson's prose with the "social grace" of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, specifically defending Chesterfield’s letters against Johnson’s "brutal and entirely inappropriate" denunciations. Regarding Boswell, Vulliamy examines the correspondence with the Reverend William Temple, arguing that these letters display the "squalor, follies, vanities, mawkish regrets and futile resolutions" of a life marred by "habitual drunkenness." The text further identifies Hester Thrale as an "appalling" and "exasperating friend" of Johnson, whose letters to her daughter are described as "revealing (and revolting)."
CGV entry 23:89. A letter from January 31, 1740.
In this letter, Chapman identifies a literary reference in a letter from Johnson to Piozzi dated 3 August 1771. Johnson writes of two months which as Doodle says, you never saw before. Chapman challenges George Birkbeck Hill's identification of the character as the alderman from Ravenscroft's The London Cuckolds. Instead, Chapman suggests the reference comes from the opening lines of Tom Thumb by Henry Fielding, where a character named Doodle remarks, Sure such a day as this as was never seen! The letter also mentions an unlocated reference to Jean de La Bruyère used by Johnson in the same correspondence.
CGV entry 23:90. A passage in the letter to Mrs. Thrale of August 3, 1771.
Mrs. Piozzi's Omissions from Johnson's Letters to Thrales
Chapman investigates the "editorial discretion" and wide discretion Piozzi used in her 1788 publication of Johnson's letters to the Thrales. He identifies three classes of omission: suppression of proper names, total withholding of whole letters—notably the one in French and the "ignominiously married" letter—and the silent omission or excision of specific passages. While many deletions protected privacy, reputation, or domestic details concerning illness, childbirth, the brewery, the price of malt, and domestic finance, Chapman argues some "silent omission" amounted to malice, distortion, or "perversion" through interpolation, creating wholes that were "not Johnson's whole." A key example involves Piozzi's removal of Johnson's praise of Boswell in a 1775 letter (Hill 408) by pasting a fragment of another letter over the text; Chapman describes uncovering erased text by removing these paper scraps. Other omissions concern unflattering gossip involving Taylor or Streatfield. Despite these "crimes" by modern standards, Chapman observes that Piozzi spared Boswell by omitting references to his visits to "Mrs. Rudd." Chapman concludes that while Piozzi's actions were not always malicious, she requires "tardy justice through full inquiry," and is, at worst, "indifferent honest."
CGV entry 23:92. A letter to Mrs. Thrale from August 3, 1771.
Mrs. Thrale's Letters to Johnson Published by Mrs. Piozzi in 1788
Chapman examines the authenticity of the letters Piozzi published as her own correspondence with Johnson, noting that while she sent Johnson's originals to the printer, she used "copies made for the printer" for her own side of the exchange. This practice, atypical for the time, suggests Piozzi was "driven to transcription" to facilitate heavy editing and "embellishment." Comparison with surviving originals in the John Rylands Library reveals "fresh flights of fancy" and significant anachronisms, such as Piozzi responding to sensational family news before it occurred. As a definitive example of this editorial liberty, Chapman analyzes the six letters Thrale wrote to Johnson during his 1773 Scottish tour. He finds she "cut the knot" of this voluminous correspondence by "telescoping" five or six historical letters into two "letters" for publication. By comparing these published versions with Johnson's replies, Chapman discovers they are both defective and redundant versions of the lost originals. Chapman concludes that while "substantially genuine," these documents function more as editorial transcripts than faithful historical records.
Presents a previously unpublished letter from Piozzi, dated June 15, 1782, from Streatham. Tweney provides a facsimile and transcription of the manuscript, which originated from the A. Edward Newton collection. The text expresses gratitude for a recipient's assistance regarding a position for Burney, noting that "Mrs. Brudenell has promised her assistance very heartily." Tweney posits that the unnamed recipient is Johnson, citing the "Dear Sir" salutation and the shared "inner circle" at Streatham as evidence. The letter concludes with Piozzi's "best good wishes" for one who "willingly and sweetly" studies to make others happy.
CGV entry 23:95. Possibly to Johnson.
New Letters from Dr. Johnson to Dr. Taylor
Liebert presents transcripts of three previously unpublished letters from Johnson to Taylor, written between 1772 and 1779. These documents supplement the correspondence chronologies established by R. W. Chapman and George Birkbeck Hill. Two letters from October 1772 coordinate Johnson’s travel plans for his annual visit to Lichfield and Ashbourne. Liebert uses these exchanges to analyze the shifting emotional distance between Johnson and his stepdaughter, Lucy Porter, noting Johnson’s "shrewdly objective" view of her "hoary virginity" alongside his genuine affection. The 1779 letter focuses on the declining health of both correspondents, with Johnson advising "moderate use of the weights" while cautioning "nequid nimis" to avoid dangerous fatigue. The correspondence also mentions Richard Greene’s acquisition of natural history specimens from Sir Ashton Lever and touches upon Taylor’s unsuccessful lawsuit against Ralph Wood. Liebert provides context for these social and legal intersections, illustrating the domestic and physical anxieties occupying Johnson's later years.
Dr. Johnson and Topsel on Animals: A Conjecture
Sherbo proposes a literary use for the book Topsel on Animals requested by Johnson in an undated letter to Edward Cave. Sherbo argues that Johnson likely consulted the 1607 work while writing Marmor Norfolciense, specifically for its accounts of 'scarlet reptiles' (adders) and 'horses' used in his mock-prophecy. The author concludes that since the satirical pamphlet appeared in April 1739, the letter must have been written by early 1739, supporting Boswell’s 1738 dating.
Three letters and three notes from Johnson to Mrs. Benjamin Way, a hitherto unknown correspondent, have recently been discovered and published. Mrs. Way, who was the daughter of the Dean of Ely and married to a "Gruff Squire", became friends with Johnson around 1782, possibly through her sister-in-law, Lady Sheffield. The letters show Johnson apologizing for missing an appointment due to a cough in May 1782 and writing from Oxford in June 1782. The correspondence, which includes a thank-you note for an "elegant pocket book" and a final note reporting his ill health, ended shortly before his death in 1784, adding Mrs. Way's name to Johnson's list of younger female friends.
CGV entry 23:98.
Graham evaluates Chapman's edition of Johnson’s correspondence, emphasizing how these letters reveal the man’s "naked soul" and varied interests. He details Johnson’s business acumen regarding the Thrale brewery, his persistent health anxieties, and his deep affection for young women, particularly the Thrale daughters. Graham argues the collection underscores Johnson’s humanitarian nature, noting his kindness toward correspondents like Taylor and Boswell despite occasional outbursts against figures such as Macpherson or Piozzi.
Viets identifies the sources for three references to George Cheyne in Johnson’s letters, collected by Chapman. The first is advice to Boswell to read Cheyne's treatise on hypochondria, The English Malady. The second quotation, "All is best, says Cheyne, as it has been, excepting the errours of our own free will," is traced to the Preface of Cheyne’s An Essay of Health and Long Life. The third quotation is found in the preface of Cheyne's The Natural Method of Cureing the Diseases of the Body.
CGV entry 23:101. Identification of quotations in Chapman Nos. 338, 426, 493.
Crosbie discusses the discovery of Johnson's letters to Queeney Thrale, which she withheld from Boswell and Piozzi for over a century. Found among the family papers of the Marquess of Lansdowne, these letters bring the formidable Johnson within the clasp of a child's friendship. Queeney, described as "cold and reserved," lived among eighteenth-century immortals like Burke and Reynolds but left no personal memoirs. The letters reveal a side of Johnson that was tender and indulgent with children, contrasting with his overbearing manner with men. The earliest letters, received before age seven, fit into a child's world by discussing black cats, young bulls, and a plot to "tye" Mama to a tree. Johnson gave her a cabinet for "natural curiosities," while later letters were for a "very thinking Lady." The letters survive intact, unlike some published by Piozzi, whom modern critics find capable of self-serving editorial adjustments.
CGV entry 23:102. Part of the Children's Book Supplement.
The Providence of Wit in the English Letter Writers
Privately printed for Dorothy & Halsted Vander Poel
To Honor the Two Hundred and Eighteenth Anniversary of the Departure of Samuel Johnson and David Garrick to Try Their Fortunes in the Great Metropolis, 2 March 1737
Place: New Haven Published: Privately printed for Dorothy and Halsted Vander Poel
CGV entry 23:104. With a facsimile of a letter to George Huddesford, February 26, 1755.
CGV entry 23:105. Johnson's letter to F. A. Barnard, May 28, 1768; with facsimile.
The Address of Dr. Johnson's Last Letter to William Windham
Kolb identifies the location of the address leaf for Johnson’s letter to Windham dated October 2, 1784. He reconstructs how Windham drafted his reply on the blank half of Johnson’s sheet and subsequently cut it off, leading to the separation of the letter from its address. The letter eventually reached the Hyde Collection via Fettercairn, while the address leaf remained among Windham’s papers in the British Museum. Kolb confirms the connection through matching watermarks on the two halves of the "J Whatman" paper.
Notes on Four Letters by Dr. Johnson: Addenda to Chapman's Edition
Kolb adds details and corrects errors concerning four Samuel Johnson letters not fully or accurately recorded in R. W. Chapman's edition. One lost letter to Catherine Talbot likely sought aid for Anna Williams's benefit performance. Another lost letter advised a college steward on educating his son. The manuscript of the letter to Hester Thrale (June 2, 1777) is fully transcribed, confirming the reference to Johnson's prologue for Mrs. Kelly. Finally, collation of the Viscountess Southwell letter manuscript corrects a key corruption in the printed text, changing "and" to "or."
Comyn provides transcriptions of two Johnson letters to Burney, noting Boswell printed them incorrectly. The first, dated September 20, 1783, describes Johnson's return to a "desolate house" following the death of Williams. The second, from November 1, 1784, discusses the difficulty of "adjusting narratives" and the importance of truth, warning that "if little violations are allowed, every violation will in time be thought little." Comyn identifies these as being among the latest letters Boswell printed from Johnson's final visit to Lichfield.
Eaves provides a corrective analysis of Johnson's correspondence with Richardson, specifically addressing nine letters discussed by previous editors. The article uses internal evidence to redate an undated letter concerning Grandison to 1751-1752, suggesting Johnson read the novel in manuscript notebooks rather than printed volumes. Eaves disputes the attribution of a 1753 letter to Richardson, arguing its content regarding subscriptions does not match the novelist's practices. Additionally, the essay identifies an "untraced" letter from 1751 as a message to Richardson regarding the printing of the Rambler and the "generous concern" for Charlotte Lennox. These clarifications refine the timeline of the professional and personal relationship between the two authors.
Dr. Johnson and 'The Great Epistolick Art'
CGV entry 23:111. With a facsimile of a letter to Mrs. Thrale, October 27, 1777.
Fleeman presents a previously unrecorded letter from Johnson to Mrs. Gastrell dated September 22, 1783. The letter, held by Pembroke College, Oxford, escaped the notice of Chapman during the preparation of the 1952 edition of Johnson’s Letters. Fleeman provides a physical description of the quarto leaf and transcribes the text, in which Johnson acknowledges Gastrell's "kind enquiries" and laments the "solitary house" left by the death of Mrs. Williams. Johnson expresses his hope for a future meeting despite his "pain of body." Fleeman suggests the letter be numbered 883.2 in the Chapman sequence.
CGV entry 23:112. A letter of September 22, 1783, in Pembroke College.
Notes on R. W. Chapman's Edition of Johnson's Letters
Knox provides extensive textual corrections and contextual queries for the first three volumes of Chapman’s edition of Johnson’s correspondence. Knox identifies probable misprints, suggests emendations for doubtful words such as ingenious or inferiour, and disputes Chapman’s editorial notes regarding Johnson's travel schedules and Sunday letter-writing habits. The notes clarify Johnson's relationships with Thrale, Chambers, and Boswell, while questioning Chapman’s interpretations of Johnson's tone, particularly his jocular references to Mrs. Boswell. Knox also defends the authenticity of Johnson’s agonised reply to Piozzi and examines 18th-century linguistic nuances like the use of serious regarding illness.
Ryskamp publishes a single-sentence letter from Johnson to Strahan, dated January 14, 1775, requesting thirty-six copies of Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland 'in boards' for distribution to friends. The article centers on a rare 'private etching' of Johnson by Mary Turner, based on an elusive 1773 chalk drawing by Ozias Humphry. Ryskamp details the portrait's complex provenance, involving William Upcott—Humphry’s natural son—and the likely theft of the original drawings by Charles Hampden Turner. The etching is described as a 'superb study' that complements Humphry’s 1764 verbal description of Johnson as a 'sententious' man in a 'dirty brown coat' who 'sat waving over his breakfast like a lunatic.'
Link presents a previously unknown letter from Johnson to Taylor dated March 26, 1774, discovered in the Massachusetts Historical Society.
CGV entry 23:115. A letter to Taylor, March 26, 1774.
Oresents a newly discovered letter from Johnson to his schoolfellow, John Taylor. Johnson refers to an affair of Taylor's with a "Mr. Broderic" and advises him to write again, likening the process to "playing live Chess by messages," which is noted as one of the earliest references to correspondence chess, though Johnson's expertise in the game is doubted. The original number "90" falls between Johnson's letters of November 22, 1783, and January 24, 1784. The letter's reference to the "penny post" suggests Johnson was in the London area when he sent it.
CGV entry 23:117. On Chapman No. 1156.
Irwin disputes the reviewer of Dr. Johnson's Printer, suggesting Johnson’s letter of 4 September 1784, which the reviewer used to praise Strahan, was more likely written to George Nicol, the King's bookseller, not to Strahan. Irwin notes that the eulogy of the recipient—praising his "tenderness, benevolence, and liberality"—is unlike Strahan’s "talk of trade," and that the letter refers to "researches," which the elderly Strahan was unlikely to be engaged in, unlike the younger Nicol. Furthermore, Johnson was usually punctilious about paying compliments to "dear Mrs. Strahan" in his letters to the couple, but this letter lacks a mention of her.
CGV entry 23:118. Argues that letter 1006.1 was probably not to William Strahan.
Isles discusses the discovery and summary of fourteen letters in a Scottish bank related to Johnson’s circle, comprising the Lennox Collection. The correspondence includes thirteen unpublished letters from Johnson to Charlotte Lennox and one from Richardson likely to Johnson, spanning circa 1750 to 1784—with the wider collection dating to 1798. These letters reveal Johnson’s extensive efforts to aid Lennox’s literary career by interceding with printers and booksellers, offering editorial advice, and writing proposals for her collected works, including The Female Quixote. One letter from 1752 contains a unique mention of his wife's final illness, stating, "Poor Tetty Johnson's illness will not suffer me to think of going any whither." The documents also record personal quarrels, reconciliations, and apologies for accidentally giving offense, illustrating the "fundamental strength and sincerity" and the supportive, yet occasionally tumultuous, nature of their thirty-four-year friendship.
CGV entry 23:119. From the Charlotte Lennox collection.
The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century
Dr. Johnson in His Letters: The Public Guise of Private Matter
Daghlian examines the distinct literary character of Johnson's correspondence, emphasizing how Johnson used the personal letter to maintain a public moral identity even within private contexts. Daghlian argues that Johnson viewed epistolary intercourse as a 'calm and deliberate performance' rather than a spontaneous overflow of emotion, citing Johnson’s own warning in the Life of Pope that 'surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character.' The essay highlights Johnson's supreme confidence in his power to put 'proper words in proper places' across various moods, from formal solicitations to the intimate Journal to Stella. Daghlian notes that while Johnson's public performances often appear stern, his letters reveal a 'gentleness and warmth' that balances his more celebrated role as a misanthropic vexer of the world.
Hyde chronicles the incremental growth of the Johnsonian epistolary canon, from initial eighteenth-century collections by Thrale and Boswell to the exhaustive thirty-year search by Chapman. Acknowledging that no edition of letters remains final, Hyde presents a descriptive list of letters that continue to appear in the wake of Chapman’s 1952 edition. The checklist includes significant items such as Johnson's 1784 gift note to Barber and a 1782 account of his health sent to William Bowles. By categorizing these "missing" letters, Hyde facilitates further exploration of Johnson's biography and encourages the scholarly community to uncover additional manuscripts.
Samuel Johnson as Letter Writer: Some Versions of His Personae
Johnson's Correspondence with Nichols: Some Facts and a Query
Hilles provides a chronological arrangement of Johnson's "little billets" to Nichols, correcting errors found in Chapman’s and Hill's editions. He argues that Chapman misdated letters regarding the Lives of the Poets and erroneously combined independent notes. Hilles identifies Nichols as the source for specific biographical information on Thirlby and provides evidence that Johnson's revisions to the life of Pope stemmed from Nichols's Anecdotes of Bowyer.
CGV entry 23:123. Corrections to Chapman's account.
Battersby evaluates Chapman's hypothesis that an undated letter from Johnson to John Nichols prompted a last-minute addition to the Life of Addison. In the letter, Johnson requests a copy of Steele's preface to The Drummer. While Chapman linked cryptic markings on the letter's verso to a specific quotation from Steele in the Addison volume, Battersby demonstrates that the relationship is spatial rather than causal. Analysis of the handwriting identifies the note as belonging to Nichols, but its content refers to the production of the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of the Prefaces generally. Battersby disputes the integral connection between the request and the markings, noting that Nichols's note does not align with the Addison text's signatures.
Johnson to Baretti: New Evidence for the Text of 21 December 1762
Maxwell proposes emending a clause in Johnson’s letter 946.1 by inserting the verb 'give,' arguing that Johnson likely intended the phrase 'give account of' to mean 'account for.' He cites a 1774 letter to demonstrate Johnson’s usage of the phrase 'fill up' a 'Form' eighty years prior to the earliest O.E.D. citation. Additionally, Maxwell notes the discovery of Baretti’s commonplace-book, containing an authentic text of Johnson’s 'Rispossa' to Baretti’s improvised Italian verses.
Harris proposes a new date of late April 1753 for Johnson's undated letter to Samuel Richardson regarding Sir Charles Grandison. Rejecting Chapman’s 1753 and Eaves’s 1751–52 datings, Harris argues Johnson was reviewing early proof sheets of the narrative rather than bound volumes or manuscripts. This explains why Johnson had not yet seen the preface—which was printed last with the final signatures—and accounts for Richardson’s request that the "precious" proofs be returned. The timing aligns with Richardson’s known printing schedule and Johnson’s April 1753 encouragement for Richardson to "go on."
Letters of Samuel Johnson at the Boston Public Library
Weinbrot describes three autograph letters by Johnson held at the Boston Public Library, providing corrections to the standard Chapman edition. He provides a full transcript of a 1782 letter to Taylor, noting previously unrecorded variants and editorial oversights regarding oversight. The text includes details of a note to Burney endorsed by Fanny Burney. Doherty discusses a fragment of a lost letter by Richardson, clarifying his relationship with Highmore during the composition of Sir Charles Grandison.
Samuel Johnson's 'Queries on the Latin Language': A Possible Lesson for George Strahan
Weinbrot suggests Johnson's manuscript "Queries on the Latin Language" (1763) was a pedagogical tool for George Strahan, his printer's son, to prepare him for Oxford. The Queries address Latin prosody, specifically the length of the first syllable in Italas, using examples from Virgil and Horace. Johnson’s text includes a brief history of Greek metrics and Roman borrowings, connecting grammar and meter. The manuscript is in Johnson's mature hand, is concerned with rudimentary Latin linguistic matters, and shares concerns with Johnson’s contemporaneous letters to Strahan.
Advice on the Formation of a Library by Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 23:131. A reprint of Chapman No. 206.
CGV entry 23:132. Johnson's letter to Chesterfield as a source for Shaw's letter regarding the Nobel Prize.
Weinglass provides an excerpt from an unpublished 1781 letter by Hannah More, which praises Johnson's piety and morality while acknowledging his "ill manners" and "singularities." These documents illustrate the complex social demands Johnson placed on his circle.
'The Converse of the Pen': Letter Writing in the Age of Johnson
Redford analyzes the ascendancy of the familiar letter in the mid-1700s, attributing its prominence to an efficient postal service and a relaxed prose style modeled after Addison. Although Johnson expressed a distaste for "epistolary intercourse," his letters to Piozzi reveal a rare "unforced delight" in the medium. Redford positions Johnson as "Ursa Major," a central figure connecting diverse social circles like The Club and Streatham Park. The text examines letters by Boswell that showcase his "chameleon-like adaptability" and gift for self-dramatization, particularly in his correspondence with Voltaire. Redford argues that these letters transmit the "very texture" of England's social and intellectual life.
CGV entry 23:135. A catalogue of an exhibition at the Beinecke Library. Also published as a separate pamphlet.
The Convict's Address to His Unhappy Brethren, Delivered in the Chapel of Newgate on Friday, June 6, 1777
The sermon, The Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren, delivered by William Dodd on June 6, 1777, was published anonymously shortly afterward. Dodd's name was added in the second edition. The text was quickly disseminated, with excerpts appearing in the Gentleman's Magazine (GM) in May 1777 and July 1777. Four years later, in 1781, authorship was first attributed to Johnson. Despite its popularity, Sir John Hawkins excluded it from his 1787 edition of Johnson's Works. It was included in the supplementary volume published by Stockdale and the Robinsons in 1788. Arthur Murphy's 1792 Works omitted the text, as did the 1823 edition. R. W. Chapman published an edition of the associated manuscripts in 1926. A scholarly edition was produced by O M Brack, Jr., in 2004. The Convict's Address is contained in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, volume 14, Sermons (1978). Manuscript materials for the work are preserved in the Hyde Collection and are slated for inclusion in Yale volume 20.
CGV entry 24:1. Actually written by Samuel Johnson.
The Convict's Address to His Unhappy Brethren
The reviewer characterizes Dodd’s address to his fellow prisoners as "proper and pathetic," yet observes that the "regularity of composition" and "propriety of expression" in both the sermon and the subsequent speech to the court far exceed the quality of Dodd’s previous writings. The text reports that these pieces were "actually written by one of the greatest masters of stile and composition now living," an implicit reference to Johnson. The review further critiques the "meanness of spirit" and "inconsistency of thinking" displayed in Dodd's plea for life, arguing that a true Christian should remain proof against the fear of death. The reviewer concludes that while the address is effective, it reflects the intellectual intervention of a superior author rather than the natural abilities of the unfortunate Dodd.
CGV entry 24:1. An anonymous review of the book by William Dodd (actually Samuel Johnson).
Prayers and Meditations: Composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D. and Published from His Manuscripts
First appeared eight months after Johnson's death, announced August 13, 1785. The first edition's print run was 750 copies, followed by a second edition of 1,000 copies in November 1785. Strahan, the editor, later published a third edition in 1796 and a fifth edition in 1817. In total, thirty-two editions or reprints have been published in English. Strahan claimed Johnson intended to revise the manuscript for publication, but ultimately directed its unrevised committal to the press. Strahan sold the profits of the first edition to Dr. Bray's Associates (£47 7s 2d) and distributed profits from the second edition to Johnson's relations. Strahan censored the text, deleting passages. Sir John Hawkins included excerpts in his 1787 Works, volume 11, but omitted the full collection. G. B. Hill collected the work in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897). Elton Trueblood published a selection, Doctor Johnson's Prayers, in 1947 and Harper & Brothers later issued an inexpensive reprint. The Yale Edition contains the text in volume 1, Diaries, Prayers, and Annals (1958).
CGV entry 24:2.
CGV entry 24:2. Later editions published by Harper and Brothers (1947) and Student Christian Movement Press (1948).
A Sermon, Written by the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. for the Funeral of His Wife
Johnson composed this sermon for his wife’s funeral shortly after her death, expressing his profound grief. He asked his friend Taylor to deliver the text, but Taylor refused, reportedly citing the deceased’s low esteem or amplified praise within the sermon. Johnson was provoked to tear the manuscript, yet the text was saved and copied. Decades later, following Taylor’s death, Hayes acquired the sermon and arranges its separate publication. Hayes later included it as an appendix in the second volume of sermons suspected to be written by Johnson for Taylor.
Published posthumously from a manuscript that came into the editor's possession after the death of Dr. John Taylor.
Sermons on Different Subjects, Left for Publication by John Taylor, LL.D.
Hayes presents thirteen sermons composed by Taylor, former Rector of Bosworth and Prebendary of Westminster, published posthumously for the benefit of the Duke of Devonshire. Although the text identifies Taylor as the author, scholarship widely attributes many of these discourses to Johnson. The sermons address moral and social obligations, emphasizing the "lowest subdivision of society" found in private families and the "sacred obligation" of domestic duties. Taylor defines marriage as a "perpetual and indissoluble friendship" and warns against the "rancour and hatred" of religious disputes within the home. Subsequent discourses examine the nature of repentance, the "hardness of heart" resulting from "sensual pleasures," and the necessity of charity to "soften the miseries of life." Taylor identifies pride as an "immoderate degree of self-esteem" that "hardens the heart against compassion." The collection underscores the "vanity and vexation of spirit" inherent in human pursuits, arguing that "virtue alone is the parent of felicity" and urging readers to "ask for the old paths" to find rest for their souls.
CGV entry 24:4. Volume 1 was published in 1788, Volume 2 in 1789. Often reprinted and included in Volume 9 of the 1825 Oxford edition of Johnson's 'Works'.
Selections from Johnson's Diary and Other Papers
A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, Before the Sons of the Clergy
CGV entry 24:6. Actually written by Samuel Johnson. Originally preached in 1745.
Includes Johnson’s personal devotional record, encompassing prayers, resolutions, and penitential diurnal entries dating from 1738 to 1784, along with the Annals (an autobiographical account). The work is noteworthy within the Yale series for its heavy reliance on manuscript sources as copy-text, standing apart from other volumes in the edition. Much of the material had been previously printed, but not during Johnson’s lifetime or with his authority. The Hydes, through assiduous collecting, brought several largely unknown manuscripts of Johnson’s prayers and diaries to light. This contrasts with the practice in other volumes of the Yale Edition, where manuscript sources are admitted sparingly, if at all. McAdam used original MSS from Pembroke College for the Prayers and Meditations, noting issues such as Johnson’s poor handwriting. The text contains the longest and fullest of Johnson’s diaries, kept from 1765 until his death year, printed for the first time. It also includes restorations of passages in the Prayers and Meditations that had been heavily deleted by the original editor, George Strahan, some recovered through infrared light examination. Editorial policy was subject to external criticism. Fredson T. Bowers condemned the textual scholarship, arguing that transcriptions and notes were unreliable for scholarly use. J. D. Fleeman also found numerous errors in the transcriptions and published critical findings on obliterated or illegible words in the MSS using strong light. The rearrangement of the text in the volume, which prioritized a narrative strain, was sometimes emphasized at the expense of its devotional quality. The volume was controversial at its inception; R. W. Chapman urged the Hydes not to publish it as part of the Yale Edition because of the personal nature of the material. The editors provided detailed introductions and context. For instance, the editors provided discussion regarding the extent of Johnson's journal entries. The editors are characteristically honest about the difficulties, acknowledging that the text had to be partially constructed or reconstructed. The text of the Annals begins with Johnson's birth in 1709 and ends with his recent proposal to edit Politian’s poems. Supplemental materials include facsimiles of the Pembroke College MSS, published separately. The volume used British spelling for a time, following a specific editorial mandate for the series. The Prayers are paired with the Annals. The Yale editorial policy in this volume was later criticized for being "overpopularized." In TLS, Lucas calls the collection dull and colorless compared to contemporary accounts, criticizing the chronological arrangement and faulty classical translations. Collins and Humphreys, writing in RES, offer more approving assessments, praising the inclusion of suppressed manuscripts that reveal a deep psychological interest, though they note the text remains flat. Specialized journals express mixed reactions; Bowers, in JEGP, commends the intimate presentation but critiques the lack of source notation and warns that the transcription is insufficiently trustworthy for scholarly use. In MLQ, Quinlan identifies the volume as an indispensable correction to common stereotypes of arrogance, whereas Spencer, in MLR, finds the fragmentary manuscripts disappointing for focusing on biographical data rather than literary energy. Bailey's review in PQ praises the fresh transcriptions but faults the lower-page commentary format for causing repetition and confusion. Popular and general interest publications are highly enthusiastic. Poore, in the NYTBR, praises the scrupulous scholarship and extensive annotations that expand the newly uncovered diaries. Hodgart, in the Manchester Guardian, notes the private records make the subject appear more real and admirable than ever, while the review in The Economist applauds the definitive narrative of extraordinary fortitude and piety. There is no divergence between popular and scholarly reception.
CGV entry 2:8. A second, revised edition was published in 1960.
CGV entry 24:7. A second edition was published in 1960.
Reviews: Claude Colleer Abbott, The Listener 61, no. 1567 (1959): 643; Margery Bailey, PQ 38, no. 3 (1959): 331–33; Fredson Bowers, JEGP 58, no. 1 (1959): 132–37; John M. Bullitt, Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 1958; P. A. W. Collins, RES, n.s., 12, no. 46 (1961): 212–14; Walter M. Crittenden, The Personalist 41 (1960): 403–4; The Economist, January 10, 1959; Matthew Hodgart, Manchester Guardian, January 2, 1959; A. R. Humphreys, RES, n.s., 12, no. 46 (1961): 212–14; Joseph Wood Krutch, New York Herald Tribune, July 6, 1958; Joseph Wood Krutch, American Scholar 28, no. 1 (1958): 114–16; F. L. Lucas, TLS, no. 2975 (March 1959): 121–22; Lee Morgan, Books Abroad 34, no. 4 (1960): 400; Charles Poore, New York Times, June 19, 1958; Anthony Powell, Punch, December 24, 1958; Maurice J. Quinlan, MLQ 20, no. 3 (1959): 287–88; T. J. B. Spencer, MLR 54, no. 4 (1959): 597–98; R. George Thomas, Western Mail, December 20, 1958; Kenneth Young, Hindustan Times, December 28, 1958.
Bowers finds this inaugural Yale volume of particular interest, providing an intimate and coherent presentation of Johnson's records of himself, his health, and his mind. He praises the admirable running account replacing formal notes. But he critiques the method, particularly the lack of source notation and the arbitrary dispersal of material, which makes the book less authoritative for scholars who must backtrack to verify the source of each item. He warns that the textual notes are frequently misleading and the transcription itself is insufficiently trustworthy for scholarly use.
CGV entry 24:7.
Lucas calls the collection dull, highlighting the immense gulf between Johnson in public and in solitude. Johnson is seen as an anguished, neurotic soul who viewed journalizing as a task, not a pleasure, resulting in colorlessness and lack of vivid detail compared to Boswell. The editors are criticized for inaccurate Greek and Latin translation and chronological arrangement.
This volume serves as the first in the definitive Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, collecting his most intimate writings, including previously unprinted diaries from the Malahide papers. The editors employ a chronological arrangement that mingles autobiographical sketches, travel notes, medical records, and prayers to provide a comprehensive view of Johnson’s inner life. Bailey praises the fresh transcriptions and the correction of previously bowdlerized texts but criticizes the experimental page format, where a continuous narrative commentary on the lower half of the page often repeats or confuses the main text. Additionally, the reviewer finds the annotations uneven, noting a lack of depth regarding Johnson’s tastes in landscape and architecture despite meticulous attention to his verbal usage and the Dictionary.
CGV entry 24:7. Review by Margery Bailey of the Yale Edition volume edited by E. L. McAdam, Jr., Donald Hyde, and Mary Hyde.
Quinlan's approving review of the inaugural volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson highlights the detailed, personal portrait of Johnson in the privacy of his study. The collection of diaries, memoranda, and jottings approaches autobiography, revealing the older Johnson's profound humility and religious scruples. Quinlan notes that the prayers follow a penitential formula, emphasizing Johnson's feelings of guilt and his struggle for contrition. While the records of physical suffering and illness are extensive, they correct common stereotypes of arrogance derived from Boswell. The review identifies the volume as indispensable for eighteenth-century scholars.
Twenty-eight of Johnson’s compositions, composed across several decades, generally between 1745 and 1777. The contents encompass Johnson’s homiletic writings, which frequently served as ghost-written discourses for others, principally his friend John Taylor. Johnson is recorded as having written approximately forty sermons in total. The vol. includes Johnson’s funeral sermon for his wife. The writings were originally published posthumously under Taylor's name as Sermons on Different Subjects, Left for Publication by John Taylor, LL.D. (1788–89). Taylor's apparent attempt to present the sermons as his own failed, as they were quickly recognized as Johnson’s. This vol. superseded earlier collections; the sermons were not included in Johnson’s collected works until the 1825 edition. The vol. is noteworthy for the editors' efforts to distinguish compositions considered "flawlessly Johnsonian" from those that display Taylor's obscuring additions. One textual source is a manuscript sermon held at Yale Library, presenting Taylor's transcription text alongside Johnson's corrections. Editorial policy emphasized providing heavy, generous annotation to supply necessary historical context for the works and Johnson’s political involvement. Textual policy adheres to the Yale series standard: the copy-text’s original spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation are retained, while capitalization and typography are modernized. The vol. was received as a landmark, praised for its scholarship, providing essential textual grounding for scholarly understanding of Johnson’s political and moral character. The publication was subsequently reissued in paperback by the Liberty Fund. Critics are generally favorable, praising this authoritative, meticulously annotated edition for illuminating a neglected segment of the moralist's oeuvre. Boulton, in RES, deems the volume of major importance, praising the skillful use of internal evidence to validate attributions and an introduction that connects the texts to the seventeenth-century Anglican tradition. Schwartz, in Modern Philology, commends this scrupulously prepared first serious edition for illustrating a central importance to religious and moral thought, emphasizing the effective tracking of parallel comments across the canon. Curley, in The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, enthusiastically notes that the footnotes and parallel passages help readers verify authorship, while Rothstein's appreciative review in SEL describes it as the best available text, highlighting an excellent historical introduction and a style suited for oral delivery. But Battestin, in the Yearbook of English Studies, offers a more critical view; although grateful for the order introduced into a vexed area of the canon, he faults the critical apparatus for failing to place the immediate themes into historical context. Crane, in English Studies, observes a contraction of personality, suggesting the transition to the pulpit sacrifices modern relevance for social obligation. Downey, in the University of Toronto Quarterly, praises the intelligent editing but disagrees with the editors' low estimation of one specific discourse, while Nicholls, in Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), welcomes the expansion of the canon but criticizes footnotes that compare the homilies unfavorably to the periodical essays. Finally, Rawson, in the Sewanee Review, highlights the thorough annotation, noting the thematic focus on common personal distresses.
The Yale edition of Johnson's Sermons (Volume XIV) contains twenty-eight sermons, with one printed for the first time. Hagstrum and Gray's introduction examines the composition, publication, and different editions of the sermons, while also discussing Johnson's collaboration with John Taylor. The editors define the qualities of the sermons, comparing them to 17th-century Anglican preachers who influenced Johnson's style and thought. The accompanying notes draw numerous parallels with Johnson's other works, especially The Rambler, which is referred to as a collection of lay sermons.
CGV entry 24:8. Review by Albert Pailler of the Yale Edition volume edited by Jean H. Hagstrum and James Gray.
Schwartz praises this scrupulously prepared first serious edition of the sermons, noting their consistently high literary quality and central importance to Johnson’s religious and moral thought. He highlights Hagstrum and Gray’s effective use of notes to provide parallel comments from the Johnson canon and references to divines like Taylor and Law. Schwartz concurs with the editors’ editorial policies, including the rejection of sermon twenty-one and the challenges to sermon eighteen. He emphasizes the recurring themes of charity and wakeful conscience, asserting that the sermons are basic to understanding what Boswell termed the "predominant object" of Johnson’s thoughts.
CGV entry 24:8. Review by Richard B. Schwartz of the Yale Edition volume edited by Jean H. Hagstrum and James Gray.
This notice describes the fourteenth volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, which contains twenty-eight sermons. The editors include the canon left for publication by John Taylor and add two printed sermons: one published in 1745 by Henry Hervey Aston and another titled The Convict's Address delivered by William Dodd in 1777. The volume also features a previously unpublished manuscript sermon found at Bradley, Derbyshire, which Taylor wrote and Johnson corrected. The text notes that while Johnson claimed to have composed forty sermons, only these twenty-eight are currently known. It mentions failed attempts by Boswell, John Douglas, and John Nichols to locate additional missing sermons.
CGV entry 24:8. Review by J. D. Fleeman of the Yale Edition volume edited by Jean H. Hagstrum and James Gray.
Nicholls reviews volume fourteen of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, welcoming its appearance after a consecutive year of publication. The review stresses that Johnson's sermons constitute a professional, neglected segment of his oeuvre that is rarely anthologized. Nicholls attributes this critical oversight to dating difficulties; twenty-four of the twenty-eight compiled pieces were written for John Taylor and exist in a temporal vacuum. However, Nicholls lauds the inclusion of the newly discovered Manuscript Sermon 26, which expands the canon. The review criticizes editorial footnotes that compare the sermons unfavorably to the Rambler essays, arguing that Johnson successfully adapted his style to distinct audiences, such as Aston's cathedral congregation or Dodd's condemned prisoners in Newgate. Nicholls concludes that while the volume reveals little mystical spirituality or memorable theology, it stands as an eloquent testimony to Johnson's belief in Christianity as an orderly, ethical force for easing worldly misery.
CGV entry 24:8. Review by Graham Nicholls of the Yale Edition volume edited by Jean H. Hagstrum and James Gray.
Rawson identifies this volume as one of the better, more thoroughly annotated examples in the Yale series. The review discusses Johnson’s defense of the right of a repentant fornicator to be ordained. Rawson notes the sermons emphasize that personal distresses and concupiscible sins are more common than large-scale disasters. He observes the work confirms Johnson’s belief that spectacular evils are uncommon.
CGV entry 24:8. A review essay by C. J. Rawson on the Yale Edition volume edited by Jean H. Hagstrum and James Gray.
Battestin is grateful to the editors for introducing order into a vexed area of the canon and making the sermons readable. He notes that few familiar with Johnson's thought will doubt their attribution. But he critiques the critical apparatus for failing to place the sermons' themes in their immediate historical context.
CGV entry 24:8.
Boulton's approving review of this authoritative edition of twenty-eight sermons deems the volume to be of major importance. He commends Hagstrum and Gray for including a previously unpublished sermon and for their skillful use of internal evidence—specifically thematic parallels and diction analysis—to validate the attribution of Johnson’s sermons, such as Sermon No. 26, while wisely rejecting others like No. 21 as the work of John Taylor. Boulton praises the editors' skepticism regarding sentence-length dating methods and highlights the excellent introduction, which illuminates the genre’s significance by relating the sermons to the seventeenth-century Anglican tradition. The review notes that the finest sermons handle themes explored in The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rasselas, offering a searching analysis of intellectual pride and Johnson's characteristic wisdom. Boulton concludes that the volume captures the essential Johnson, including his compassion and psychological penetration, and successfully presents the sermons as a significant part of his literary and moral achievement.
Crane evaluates the Yale edition of Johnson’s sermons, noting a contraction of personality compared to his private devotions. He observes that Anglican orthodoxy replaces Johnson's characteristic pathological doubts with certainty. While the editors provide meticulous cross-referencing to the Rambler and Idler essays, Crane finds the sermons less engaging than Johnson’s more complex religious statements. He highlights the vigor of the prose but suggests the transition to the pulpit sacrifices the moralist's modern relevance for social obligation.
CGV entry 24:8. Review by David Crane of the Yale Edition volume edited by Jean H. Hagstrum and James Gray, alongside other works.
Place: Oxford Published: Facsimiles of the MSS at Pembroke College
CGV entry 24:9. Compiled by J. D. Fleeman.
Parr earnestly recommends Johnson’s "Prayers and Meditations," stating they provide "unequivocal and vivid proofs" of his religious sincerity. The text claims these writings show "the weakness and the strength of Dr. Johnson’s mind." X. Y. addresses Johnson’s "foibles," noting that for the last thirteen months of his life, he rejected all intercourse with a former acquaintance. This "no-notice" extended to Johnson’s will and funeral. The text also mentions a detached publication of Johnson's "Life of Dr. Watts" with added notes.
CGV entry 24:40. Discusses praise of Dr. Johnson's 'Prayers and Meditations' in the Norwich Chronicle, attributing it to Dr. Samuel Parr.
Address 6. On the Death of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Fordyce eulogizes Johnson as a "master in Israel" whose writings combined grave counsel with attractive entertainment to reform a frivolous age. He records Johnson’s late-life transition from intellectual pride to holy self-abasement and a newfound commitment to religious moderation. Fordyce emphasizes that Johnson’s final peace derived not from literary fame but from a humble, penitent reliance on divine mercy.
CGV entry 24:42. Reprinted in 'Johnsoniana; or Supplement to Boswell' (1836).
A Letter to Samuel Johnson, LL.D., on the Subject of a Future State
CGV entry 24:45. Includes three letters from Johnson to Taylor.
R. G. K. disputes the excellence of Taylor’s argument on a future state, specifically the claim that God concealed the nature of future bliss to prevent "premature extinction" of life. The correspondence addresses Johnson’s "doubts and fears" regarding his salvation, characterizing them as the product of humility rather than "unrepented guilt." R. G. K. records Johnson’s late-life declaration that he would endure severe illness for a few more years "to perfect his repentance." Johnson reportedly attributed his potential salvation to the "sermons of Dr. Clarke".
CGV entry 24:46. On Johnson's "doubts and fears" before his death.
A Vindication of the Modern Dissenters Against the Aspersions of the Rev. William Hawkins, M.A. ... Intended as a Supplement to Dr. Johnson's Life of Dr. Watts, with Notes
Palmer offers a defense of 18th-century Dissenters against charges of heresy and political disloyalty leveled by William Hawkins in his Bampton Lecture Sermons. Originally intended as a supplement to Samuel Johnson’s "Life of Dr. Watts," the work addresses Johnson’s "narrowness of mind" in excepting Watts’s non-conformity from his otherwise high characterization. Palmer disputes Hawkins’s claim that modern Dissenters are "Arians, Socinians, [or] Materialists," asserting that the majority remain closer to the original Calvinist articles than many Anglican clergy. He argues that the diversity of opinion among the clergy of the established church—ranging from Arminians to Unitarians—renders their mandatory subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles hypocritical. Palmer advocates for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, maintaining that a "civil establishment" of religion is anti-scriptural. The text includes an address to a "Right Reverend Author" (likely Bishop Samuel Horsley) and excerpts from the Dissenting scholar John Abernethy to demonstrate that re-granting full civil rights to Dissenters would strengthen, rather than endanger, the British constitution.
CGV entry 24:47. A reply to criticism of his 1785 edition of the 'Life of Watts'. A second edition was published in 1791.
On Some of the Causes by Which Evangelical Religion Has Been Rendered Unacceptable to Persons of Culture and Taste
Foster identifies a significant divergence between the "flattering estimate" of human nature found in polite literature and the "degraded" condition described by Christian revelation. Foster specifically examines Johnson, noting that despite his "majestic mind" and "masculine works," he failed to align sufficiently with "evangelical truth." Foster highlights a passage from the Rambler wherein Johnson suggests "Sorrow" may act as an "atonement" for crimes, an idea Foster disputes as a "defect of conformity" to the New Testament. He further laments that Addison and various poets have historically preferred the "love of glory" and "human applause" over the "humility and submission" required by the gospel. Foster concludes that these influential writers have "counteracted the Saviour of the world" by employing their genius to foster an "aversion to Christianity" among cultivated readers.
CGV entry 24:49. Letter 9 of Essay 4 contains strictures on Johnson's writings.
Dr. Johnson on the Propagation of the Gospel
Anglus transcribes correspondence from Johnson to Drummond regarding the 1766 controversy over translating the Bible into Gaelic. Johnson disputes political motives for withholding the Scriptures, labeling the intentional continuation of ignorance a crime against humanity and God. He compares those who suppress revelation to the "planets of America," a reference to West-India colonists. The text highlights Johnson’s "abhorrence of slavery," citing Boswell to recall his toast to the "next insurrection of the negroes." Anglus applies Johnson's rhetoric to contemporary debates involving the Bible Society and missions in India.
CGV entry 24:51. Calls attention to his letters to William Drummond advocating a Gaelic translation of the Bible.
This text presents two competing accounts of a 1778 conversation at Mr. Dilly’s regarding the conversion of Jenny Harry to Quakerism, highlighting Johnson’s views on religious apostasy and female agency. Johnson expresses "anger and contempt" toward Jenny Harry, a young woman who forfeited a large fortune to join the Society of Friends. In Seward’s report, Johnson characterizes Harry’s conversion as "impudence" and "apostacy," asserting that her youth disqualified her from judging complex theological points. He disputes Knowles’s defense of conscience, famously remarking that he is "not fond of meeting fools" in this world or the next. The second report, attributed to Knowles, depicts a more direct theological debate. Johnson initially argues that individuals owe "implicit obedience" to the religion of the state, a position Knowles challenges as poetical nonsense. While Johnson labels Quakers "little better than Deists," he eventually grumbles an assent to Knowles’s summary of their biblical faith, though he remains unforgiving of Harry’s "presumption." Boswell observes the "mighty lion" in a state of unprecedented agitation during these exchanges.
CGV entry 24:52. Reprints Anna Seward's version of the dispute.
Johnson's belief that the deceased might benefit from the prayers of the living finds support in respectable, albeit few, Protestant authorities. I. identifies Bishop Isaac Barrow of St. Asaph and Herbert Thorndike as proponents of this sentiment, noting their respective self-authored epitaphs which explicitly request readers to pray for their mercy and repose. The text further discusses Archibald Campbell’s 1721 treatise on the "Middle State," which uses patristic sources like Tertullian to argue for the necessity of purification between death and resurrection. I. disputes the characterization of such views as "popish," a charge leveled by Kippis and other nonconformists. Instead, I. suggests that a conscious intermediate state proposes a "worthy use" of the time preceding resurrection, provided the doctrine is held as a "pious Christian" faith rather than a "trade of a crafty priest." The author concludes that while Johnson and these divines remained strictly Protestant regarding the merits of Christ, they recognized the spiritual utility of an intermediate purification.
CGV entry 24:53. Includes comment on Johnson's views on purgatory.
Johnson's religious distress was a merciful chastisement for life inconsistencies and a late conversion, illustrating the inadequacy of works-based piety. His biographer's accounts confirm a marked change in Johnson’s final language, which emphasized the necessity of faith in Christ’s sacrifice beyond all good works. Johnson's case is not exempt, as other eminent, moral men—including Hooker, Jewell, and Sidney—ultimately found peace only in the free mercy of God in Christ and not in their own virtues. The four classes of death-beds are false tranquility from ignorance/unbelief, distressed death of the true Christian, unhappy death of the unscriptural, and well-founded, happy death.
CGV entry 24:54. On Johnson's conversion and death.
Johnson's late-life spiritual distress resulted from a fatherly chastisement for habits and companions that did not conduce to spiritual improvement. His uniform respect for religion was insufficient because he lived in the world without being sufficiently dead to it. In his dying hours, Johnson prayed for God to pardon his late conversion, revealing a consciousness that his heart had not previously been right with God. This decisive change produced a marked improvement in his spiritual graces. His final repose illustrates that true peace in death follows a cordial self-dedication to God and reliance on Christ Jesus.
CGV entry 24:54. Reprinted from 'Christian Essays' (1817). In two parts: October, pages 581-592; and November, pages 649-657.
On a Prevailing Mode of Reading Certain Passages of the Liturgy
Challenges Johnson's suggestion to emphasize the word "not" in reading the Ten Commandments: "The rule is evidently wrong."
CGV entry 24:55. See reply by Liturgicus in the same journal, volume 28 (January 1828), pages 30-32.
Original Memorials of Dr. Johnson's Religious Friends
J. L. uses original manuscripts to examine the 'human sources' of Johnson’s spiritual knowledge, specifically his intimacy with Mrs. Fitzherbert and Hill Boothby. While Boswell and Hawkins obscured Johnson’s religious character to avoid 'suspicion of... enthusiasm,' private letters reveal Johnson’s reliance on the 'good example' of Boothby. Johnson characterized Mrs. Fitzherbert as having the 'best understanding' he ever met, and he was 'almost distracted with... grief' at Boothby’s death in 1756. J. L. argues that Johnson’s religion was gathered 'in part at least' from Boothby, whose 'plain and saving truths' influenced him despite his occasional jealousy of her 'spiritual excess.' The text also quotes from Piozzi’s anecdotes regarding Boothby’s 'majesty' and piety.
CGV entry 24:56. On Hill Boothby and the Fitzherbert circle. Continued in subsequent issues.
The Last Days and Religious Character of Dr. Johnson
Hoole and Windham provide unsatisfactory reports of Johnson's final interview and religious state, showing a mind not yet "irradiated by the pure light of the Gospel." Johnson likely preferred the "spiritual assistance" of the Moravian La Trobe over clergymen Strahan and Hoole. Seeking "Christian instruction" beyond "ecclesiastical prejudice," Johnson attempted to domesticate Wesley's sister, Mrs. Hall, for her "spiritual discernment." A letter from Winstanley urging reliance on the "Lamb of God" led Johnson to a "complete renunciation of self" and "simple reliance on Jesus".
CGV entry 24:57. Replies to Croker's strictures in his 1831 edition of Boswell's 'Life'.
Croker and La Trobe on Dr. Johnson's Deathbed
Johnson sought spiritual assistance from La Trobe during his last illness, sending daily inquiries regarding his return to town. When La Trobe arrived, he found Johnson speechless but sensible, responding to religious exhortation through manual signs of gratitude. This narrative disputes Croker's claim that the visit occurred three days prior to death and that no meeting took place. The account asserts that Johnson panted for more spiritual instruction than his clerical friends offered. La Trobe's conversations, alongside communications from Winstanley, brought Johnson to a complete renunciation of self-righteousness and a simple reliance on the Redeemer.
This letter to the editor, signed E. T., analyzes the "perpetual, and sometimes even agonizing, bondage and fear" that characterized Johnson’s spiritual life. Examining Rambler No. 110, the author argues that Johnson’s "unhappy hypochondriasm" resulted from "defective" religious views rather than Christianity itself. E. T. asserts that Johnson mistakenly sought salvation "as by works of law" through "corporeal austerities" and "penance," remaining ignorant of the "wholesome doctrine" of justification by faith. The author describes Johnson as an "awakened penitent" who lacked the "consciousness of pardoning mercy" until his final illness, when a friend "preached the Gospel to him." The article concludes that had Johnson understood the "evangelical plan of salvation," he would have found the "strength" to overcome secular temptations and achieve "sacred cheerfulness."
Last Days of Dr. Johnson—The Quarterly Review and Hannah More
Johnson experienced a profound spiritual change during his terminal illness, moving from gloomy legalism to evangelical reliance on the atonement. Despite long practical forgetfulness of Boothby's early instructions, her example and prayers served as primary human means of his eventual salvation. The narrative identifies La Trobe as a wise counselor whose assistance Johnson preferred over the less spiritual guidance of Strahan or Hoole. A letter from Winstanley, emphasizing the Lamb of God, catalyzed a complete renunciation of self. Johnson's late-life struggles between conviction and practice yielded to a simple reliance on Jesus.
CGV entry 24:60. In two parts: January, pages 51-62; and October, pages 620-629.
CGV entry 24:61. A letter from Wilberforce affirming the tradition of Johnson's "death-bed conversion."
CGV entry 24:62. Supplemented by G. C. G. and Zenas in subsequent issues.
H. challenges the critical theory of Johnson regarding the limitations of sacred verse. The article argues that sacred poetry serves as an effective vehicle for sublime conceptions, splendid imagery, and exquisite pathos. H. asserts that Johnson lacked a highly spiritual mind and failed to appreciate the beauty of holiness due to a preference for the social pleasures of Greece or the Mitre tavern. The author claims that nature, natural affections, and domestic life remain open to the Christian poet, who merely avoids impure passions. H. cites John Milton, William Cowper, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Robert Pollok, James Montgomery, and Felicia Hemans as evidence that the perceived inferiority of sacred poetry stems from the artist rather than the subject matter. The text requires piety, simplicity, and pathos in religious verse, criticizing an unnamed modern poet for lacking unforced simplicity. H. transitions into a review of an anonymous lady's volume of poems titled Home, contrasting its hopeful Christian death scenes with the morbid gloom of George Gordon Byron's Conrad and Medora. The text also includes an anecdote about the late Archdeacon Irwine Whitty, who requested the hymn "Weep not for me" days before his murder.
CGV entry 24:63.
Doctor Johnson: His Religious Life and His Death
Armitage argues that Johnson’s Anglican faith was best proven by his practical benevolence, like supporting Williams and Levett. His spiritual life, tracing from his mother and Law to rigorous High Churchmanship, included a tension between his constitutional fear of death and his vast charity. The text uses Boswell for conversational evidence, often correcting his theological interpretations, and notes Johnson’s dependence on the Thrale household. Johnson’s final days saw a transition from legalistic dread to evangelical composure, influenced by simpler trust in the propitiatory sacrifice. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over the volume's historical accuracy, structural coherence, and hagiographic presentation of its subject's piety. Croker, in the Quarterly Review, launches a severe attack, denouncing the compilation as a bulky publication of worthless scraps, hackneyed sentimentality, and deceptive book-manufacture marred by flagrant anachronisms. An unsigned review in Littell's Living Age echoes this condemnation, lambasting the method of tumefaction that reduces a great intellectual figure to a mere peg for irrelevant reading and ludicrously trivial stories. Writing in the Gentleman's Magazine, Hunter provides a brief, neutral evaluation, framing the text as a collection of illustrative notes derived from broad reading before pivoting to unrelated philological inquiries. An unsigned piece in the Morning Chronicle offers high praise, commending the author's extensive research and judicious reflections on high-church principles and the physical causes of the subject's dread of death. In contrast, an unsigned commentary in The Athenaeum rejects the volume as a long lay sermon that attempts to uncritically canonize a complex individual whose physical peculiarities and self-consciousness preclude simple saintship, while an assessment in The Examiner labels it an odd and laborious exhibition of irrelevant learning. In the Dublin University Magazine, an unsigned critique praises the exploration of practical benevolence but questions the biographer's credulity regarding unauthenticated traditions of an evangelical conversion. Finally, popular notices in Bentley’s Miscellany, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and the Southern Quarterly Review provide favorable recommendations, celebrating the narrative as a readable Christian biography of intense spiritual struggle.
CGV entry 24:65. A second, revised edition was published in 1851.
Reviews: John Wilson Croker, Quarterly Review 87, no. 91 (1850): 59–68; Joseph Hunter, Gentleman’s Magazine 34 (October 1850): 408; Bentley’s Miscellany 27 (1850): 397–99; Dublin University Magazine 36, no. 214 (1850): 477–89; Farmer and Mechanic (1850): 322; Graham’s Magazine 37, no. 4 (1850): 264; Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 1, no. 1 (1850): 71–72; Hogg’s Instructor 5 (1850): 200–203, 214–17; Littell’s Living Age, August 24, 1850; Morning Chronicle, December 25, 1850; Quarterly Review 87, no. 173 (1850): 59–94; Southern Quarterly Review 2, no. 3 (1850): 257–58; The Athenaeum, March 1850; The Examiner, April 13, 1850.
Severe review of a work by the author of "Dr. Hookwell" denounces the book as a "bulky publication" of "worthless scraps" from a commonplace book. The reviewer identifies numerous anachronisms, such as the claim that Johnson wrote a paper with the 1777 fate of William Dodd in view, despite the "Rambler" ending in 1752. The review condemns the author's "twaddle and rigmarole," particularly a chapter on superstition that rambles through trivial anecdotes before concluding Johnson was not superstitious. The reviewer accuses the author of "conceit and effrontery" for using Johnson's name as a "peg on which to hang up" hackneyed sentimentality and borrowed learning. The review concludes that the work "intentionally misrepresented" important circumstances of Johnson's life to facilitate "deceptive species of book-manufacture."
CGV entry 24:65. A savage review by J. W. Croker of the book by Robert Armitage.
Praises a work detailing Johnson's powerful, lifelong religious influence, his faith, spiritual struggles, and the pious example he set for others.
CGV entry 24:65. Published anonymously.
This topographical biography traces Johnson’s career through his various London residences, from his 1737 arrival with "twopence halfpenny" to his death in Bolt Court. The narrative details his early poverty in Exeter Street, his labor on the dictionary in Gough Square, and his social dominance at the Literary Club. It characterizes Boswell as an "idolatrous" follower who endured "the rudest treatment" to record Johnson’s "evening's colloquy." The text documents Johnson’s domestic circle, including the blind Williams, the medical practitioner Levett, and the servant Francis. Special attention is given to Johnson’s eccentric habits, such as his ritualistic touching of street posts and his "gymnastic" threshold crossings. Finally, the account highlights a late shift in Johnson’s religious outlook, noting that his "dreaded death" was mitigated by a final "trust in the merits and propitiation of Christ," culminating in his declaration that "there is no salvation but in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God."
CGV entry 24:66. Largely on his religious attitudes.
Letters of James Boswell, Addressed to the Reverend W. J. Temple
Letters addressed to Temple reveal a "flagrant exhibition of continued licentiousness" and "unblushing history of folly and vice." Boswell appears "vain, froward, and foolish," exhibiting "ignorance of religion." These documents illustrate the "superiority of Johnson to those with whom he associated". Johnson maintained "severe morality" and "practical religion" despite a society marked by "low-caste moral essays" and religious apathy. Johnson's High Church tenacity and constitutional melancholy prepared him to "welcome the Gospel," a transition fully realized during his "last illness".
CGV entry 24:67. A slashing review with much reference to Johnson's religious position. Reprinted in Littell's Living Age, volume 60 (1859), pages 353-360.
Explores Johnson’s spiritual state, opening with Cowper’s 1785 epitaph which claims Johnson found "faith at last." It argues that despite Johnson’s lifelong adherence to the Church of St. Clement Danes and his public defense of Christianity, his religion lacked peace because of a "legal spirit" and a preoccupation with expiatory penance, exemplified by his barefoot vigil in Uttoxeter market. During 1784, Johnson expressed profound horror at the prospect of death to Hawkins and Adams. However, during his final days, Johnson experienced a "great change," calming his fears through trust in the "propitiation of Jesus Christ." Key influences included the Moravian bishop Latrobe and the Rev. Thomas Winstanley of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East. Winstanley’s correspondence, specifically directing Johnson to "Behold the Lamb of God," is cited as the primary instrument of his consolation. The narrative includes Brocklesby’s account of Johnson’s refusal of opiates to render his soul "unclouded" and his dying plea to Brocklesby to embrace the sacrifice of Christ. A sermon by Winstanley, recorded by the poet Crabbe in 1780, is provided to illustrate the minister’s evangelical character.
Ryder examines religious dimensions in Johnson’s conversation, asserting that verbal expressions possess more 'pointedness' than formal writings. The text compiles Boswellian extracts to illustrate defenses of Catholic tenets, including purgatory, confession, and the invocation of saints. Johnson characterizes conversion to Protestantism as 'laceration of mind' and views the Church of Rome as providing superior 'helps to get to Heaven.' The narrative details a constitutional 'fear of death' and a 'supernatural' understanding of the communion of saints. Johnson disputes Protestant intolerance in Ireland, labeling penal laws 'monstrous injustice.' Final hours demonstrate a transition from 'uneasy apprehension' to 'perfectly resigned' silence. Ryder emphasizes an 'obstinate rationality' as the primary barrier to formal conversion.
CGV entry 24:69.
Van Dyke analyzes Johnson’s religious life, identifying a "solidity of faith" that persisted despite a "hypochondriac and irritable humor." The text explores Johnson’s "sturdy" commitment to Christianity, fueled by a "casual reading" of Law’s Call to the Unconverted. Boswell provides evidence of Johnson’s candid fear of death, which Johnson countered through trust in "the merits of Jesus Christ." Van Dyke highlights Johnson’s private Prayers and Meditations as evidence of his inner struggle against "perplexing thoughts." The account details Johnson’s expansive charity, including his support for "broken-down pensioners" and his deathbed requests to Reynolds regarding Sabbath observance. Van Dyke concludes that Johnson’s final refusal of opiates ensured he rendered his soul to God "unclouded," leaveing behind an "unshaken testimony of faith."
Church Eclectic: An Anglo Catholic Monthly
Samuel Johnson; Churl, Champion and Churchman
Ringwalt argues that Johnson remains a vivid, living figure to modern readers despite a general decline in the popularity of his essays and dictionary. While some critics emphasize his churlishness, Ringwalt disputes this characterization, noting that Johnson exhibited true courtesy toward his wife, his step-daughter, and the impoverished dependents in his household. The article highlights how Johnson used conversation and debate as a defense against melancholy, remorse, and a painful disease. Ringwalt defends Johnson's sobriety in an intemperate century and praises his steadfast devotion to the Church of England. Though Johnson suffered from religious dread and skepticism, he governed his life by the principle that he remained responsible to God for the use of his intellectual powers. Ringwalt concludes that readers seeking the real man must rely on Boswell, who recorded the powerful intellect and pure soul behind the irritable exterior.
Johnson’s convictions and sympathies demonstrate a "Catholic spirit" inconsistent with "genuine Protestant" sentiment. Johnson defends doctrines such as purgatory, the mass, and confession, characterizing conversion to Protestantism as a "laceration of mind." He performs public penance at Uttoxeter and approaches death with a "Catholic ring," focusing on the uncertainty of salvation and conditional grace. Fitzgerald suggests Boswell, a former Catholic, used his biography to apologize for an "uncertain conscience." While Johnson describes Piozzi’s second marriage as involving "sad specimens" of Catholicism, he maintains a rigorous, self-probing piety. He admits, "I would be a Papist if I could have fear enough," yet lacks the "bending of his will" for conversion.
Potts identifies Johnson’s 1783 Latin prayer in Anderson's British Poets; Maxwell notes Johnson’s own critical assessment of the verses to Thrale.
Burford Papers: Being Letters of Samuel Crisp to His Sister at Burford; and Other Studies of a Century (1745–1845)
Hutton examines the deeply personal and "representative" character of Johnson's religious life, primarily through the lens of the posthumously published Prayers and Meditations. Disputing the satirical claims of John Courtenay and the labels of "mere formalism" by later editors, Hutton argues that Johnson's rigorous adherence to fasts, church-going, and liturgical structure was an expression of "robust common sense" and sincere penitence. The narrative highlights Johnson's exceptional skill as a composer of prayers, noting his ability to navigate acute melancholia and a lifelong terror of death through continued renewal of resolution. Hutton identifies Johnson's faith as uniquely English—solemn, reticent, and ordered—and emphasizes that his devotion was rooted in the ancient ways of experience rather than religious amateurism. The text concludes by affirming Johnson's exemplary Christian death, surrounded by those he had strengthened through his faith and charity.
CGV entry 24:79. Reprinted from Ave Maria, July 14, 1906.
An Eighteenth Century Witness to Catholicism
Walsh traces the religious evolution of Johnson, emphasizing an affinity for Catholic theology and liturgy. Walsh argues that translating Lobo’s account of Jesuit missions provided Johnson with foundational knowledge of Catholic doctrine. Johnson defended Purgatory as a "harmless doctrine" and maintained that the Mass contained "no idolatry." Boswell recorded these defenses alongside Johnson’s personal practices, including Lenten fasts and petitions for the deceased. Walsh identifies "obstinate rationality" and Tory political loyalties as the primary barriers preventing Johnson’s formal conversion. The text highlights Johnson’s public defense of the Jesuits and his refusal to reaffirm Anglican affiliation on his deathbed. Walsh concludes that Johnson’s spirituality functioned as a bridge toward the Catholic Church.
A sermon preached in Lichfield Cathedral.
CGV entry 24:81. Reprinted from The Guardian, September 22, 1909, page 1478.
On Johnson's complex relationship with Catholicism and his religious views, noting his early devotion based more on fear of hell than love of God. It details Johnson's numerous Catholic friends, including Hussey, Nugent, Burke, and Sastres, acquired through his social circles and proximity to embassy chapels. Johnson's literary connection to Catholicism began with a translation of Lobo, a Jesuit's work. Discussions with Boswell revealed his deep knowledge and rational defense of Catholic doctrines such as Purgatory, Masses for the Dead, and the Invocation of Saints. Though an Anglican, he was tolerant and nearly became a convert himself.
Russell characterizes Johnson as a 'High Churchman of the old school' who maintained a 'large and generous' attitude toward Catholicism. Johnson’s religious life was 'gloomy and fearful,' favoring the 'Miserere' over the 'Te Deum,' yet he 'honestly tried to understand the Catholic point of view.' He defended the Inquisition as a means to check 'false doctrine,' found Purgatory a 'very harmless' and 'reasonable' doctrine, and regularly prayed for the dead. Russell notes Johnson’s numerous Catholic friendships—including Hussey, Murphy, and the Benedictines—and suggests that Johnson 'was at some time in his life very nearly becoming a convert himself,' deterred only by an 'obstinate rationality.'
CGV entry 24:85. Reprinted from Studies (1919).
Some Eighteenth Century Churchmen: Glimpses of English Church Life in the Eighteenth Century
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; Macmillan
May argues that popular conceptions of Johnson as a merely uncouth, tea-drinking lexicographer ignore his status as the greatest scholar and conversationalist of his age. This article highlights Johnson’s nobility of character, specifically his "sturdy independence" and "extraordinary sanity," as his true legacy to the English nation. May examines Johnson’s religious life, noting that despite an inherited melancholia and a vivid fear of death, his character remained grounded in a sincere, prayerful, and "more Catholic" Anglicanism than was fashionable in the eighteenth century. May illustrates Johnson’s profound "love of humanity" through his tenderness toward children, beggars, and dependents, concluding that his self-disciplined life and "self-less tenderness" served to raise the level of English faith. "He has made a chasm which not only nothing can fill up but which nothing has a tendency to fill up."
A Leaf from the Private Note Book of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 1773
This report chronicles a 1921 commemorative service at Lichfield Cathedral where Inge delivered a sermon on Johnson’s fulfillment of social and religious duties. Inge argues that Johnson’s morality was rooted in a "proud human sympathy" and a recognition of the "common life" of the nation. The article emphasizes Johnson’s active benevolence, citing Boswell’s account of Johnson carrying a destitute woman to his home, and his vocal opposition to slavery. Inge distinguishes Johnson’s social views as an "equality of morals" and praises his maxim to "clear your mind of cant" as a permanent intellectual safeguard. The text further examines Johnson’s religious temperament, identifying his morbid fear of death and damnation as evidence of a genuine, if painful, spiritual life. The service included a performance of Plant’s Johnson Anthem, which the article asserts successfully illustrates the varied phases of the lexicographer's life.
CGV entry 24:88. Reprinted by the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
Van Dyke examines Samuel Johnson as a 'Tory-Democrat' and a sincere Christian whose faith was forged in a life-long struggle against 'hypochondriac' melancholy and poverty. The text acknowledges Johnson’s notorious prejudices—such as his dismissal of Americans as a 'race of convicts' and his 'brusque' intolerance toward Quakers and Presbyterians—but argues these were the 'growls' of an honest soul rather than a cruel heart. Van Dyke highlights Johnson’s private 'Prayers and Meditations' as evidence of a humble inner life and a profound sense of reverence. He contrasts Johnson’s deliberate, clear prose with modern 'slipper-shod' English and commends his 'clubbable' nature. The text concludes by detailing Johnson’s composed death, noting his final requests to Sir Joshua Reynolds to read the Bible and avoid Sunday painting, framing his life as a victory of unclouded soul over 'the last skirmish of mortality.'
Eighteenth Century Studies and Other Papers
Johnson’s literary activity included the composition of at least forty sermons, which he considered the absolute "property of the purchaser." Notable examples include the "Funeral Sermon" for his wife, characterized by "uncommon excellence," and "The Convict's Address," written for the forger William Dodd. The latter illustrates Johnson's "imaginative sympathy" as he interpreted the "bursting of a contrite heart" for a man facing the scaffold. A collection of twenty-five sermons published after Taylor's death reveals Johnson’s "High Tory" sentiments and his anticipation of Tractarianism, particularly in his discourse on the Eucharist. Unlike the "cold reasoning" typical of eighteenth-century pulpit oratory, Johnson’s sermons breathe "genuine emotion" and reflect a deep sense of responsibility to a higher power. His style is described as majestic and "clear as crystal," serving as a "noble vehicle for very noble thoughts."
Primrose traces the development of Johnson’s religious convictions from his youthful indifference to the transformative impact of Law’s Serious Call to a Holy Life. Johnson adopts Law’s definitions of devotion and charity, manifesting these through indiscriminate almsgiving and the support of a "heterogeneous quarrelling company" at Bolt Court. While Johnson disputes the mystical "reveries" of Law’s later years, he maintains a rigorous adherence to dogmatic theology, specifically regarding the Trinity and a propitiatory view of the Atonement. Primrose details Johnson’s persistent dread of death and future judgment, noting his favorable views on the "harmless doctrine" of Purgatory, the invocation of saints, and auricular confession. Despite these Roman Catholic leanings, Johnson remains a staunch defender of the Church of England on political grounds. The text concludes by surveying Johnson’s practical piety, including his observation of fasts, his use of "conditional" prayers for the dead, and his eventual calm at the approach of death.
Esdaile characterizes Johnson’s spirituality as a "religion of reality" defined by sincerity and charity. He argues that Johnson’s intellectual integrity and sense of fact shattered contemporary shams and political utopianism. Esdaile details Johnson’s compassionate treatment of the destitute, his internal struggles recorded in the Prayers and Meditations, and his capacity for deep human affection toward his mother, his wife Tetty, and the Thrales. He concludes that Johnson’s greatness stems from his rejection of "opium" in favor of truth.
CGV entry 24:93. Reprinted from the 1926 standalone publication.
Mackay analyzes the dichotomy between Johnson’s social "complacency" and the "tremulous earnestness" of his private devotions. He traces Johnson’s religious development from a childhood distaste for the Whole Duty of Man to a conversion sparked by Law. Mackay characterizes Johnson’s faith as a sense of personal responsibility to a Divine Judge, which produced a lifelong terror of death. He details Johnson’s charitable acts toward the poor, his rigorous Sunday observances, and his "adamantine commonsense" in theological debate. While noting Johnson’s devotion to the Church of England, Mackay highlights his defense of Roman Catholic doctrines against "smug Protestantism" and his intense antipathy toward Presbyterianism. He concludes that Johnson’s fear of death was ultimately "calmed and absorbed" by trust in Christ’s propitiation.
CGV entry 24:96. Address delivered at St. Clement Danes.
Some Unidentified Writings of Dr. Johnson
Paull examines two primary areas of unidentified Johnsonian authorship: his early collaboration on Dr. Robert James’s Medicinal Dictionary (1744) and his extensive production of sermons for other preachers. Regarding the Dictionary, Paull notes that while Johnson composed the Proposals and several articles, their specific identification eluded even Boswell. The text characterizes the Dictionary as a repository of eighteenth-century medical prejudices, including James’s defense of his controversial fever powder. The second half of the study addresses Johnson’s "casuistry" regarding literary ethics; despite his reputation as a moralist, Johnson composed approximately forty sermons for a guinea each, relinquishing all claims to them once sold. Paull details the history of the posthumous volume Sermons Left for Publication by John Taylor, which critical consensus attributes to Johnson. The text highlights Johnson's refusal to enter the Church despite a 1756 offer of a living at Langton, citing his conscience regarding the practical duties of a country parson.
CGV entry 24:97. The sermons, etc.
Roscoe explores the central role of religion in Johnson's life, characterizing it as a distressing factor that produced constant mental gloom and uncertainty. The study analyzes Prayers and Meditations to illustrate how Johnson viewed the Deity as a rigorous judge, leading to a life of perpetual repentance and futile resolutions. Roscoe argues that Johnson's religion brought him little consolation, as he focused on a divine code of conduct he frequently felt he transgressed, especially regarding idleness and lack of diligence. This physical and mental condition was exacerbated by chronic ill health, which reacted on his faith to create a narrow, propitiatory system devoid of mysticism. Roscoe emphasizes that Johnson's simplicity and humility in religious matters formed a sombre background to his otherwise robust social and intellectual life.
Kingdon compares Johnson and Wesley as the dominant 18th-century English figures, noted for their "intellectually voracious" minds. He highlights Boswell's "meticulous" reporting and his greatness in Detecting genius. The text analyzes Johnson's "dignified" Methodism and his respect for "regulated piety." Kingdon cites Johnson's appreciation for Methodist preaching as "plain and familiar," though Johnson critiqued their "bitterness" against other Christians. He details Johnson's interactions with Wesley, noting his praise of Wesley's "good" conversation despite its lack of "leisure." The abstract emphasizes Johnson's fairness toward the movement, including his letter of recommendation for Boswell to Wesley, while noting Johnson's caustic views on Whitefield's "oratory which is for the mob."
CGV entry 24:100. Discusses visits of Goldsmith and Johnson to the vicarage of Easton Maudit, and their religious views.
Notes the Latin phrase appears on a monument of John Hacket in Lichfield, which may have inspired Johnson.
CGV entry 24:101. On Johnson's prayers from Easter 1777. See also a reply by J. J. B. in the same journal, March 13, page 214.
Transcribes conversations between Boswell and Johnson regarding the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Johnson defends the theological "harmlessness" of purgatory, the validity of the mass, and the invocation of saints while expressing a preference for "the popish" over the Presbyterian religion due to the lack of "apostolical ordination" in the latter. He criticizes the practice of withholding the cup from the laity as "criminal" but maintains that conversion from Protestantism to Popery is more likely sincere than the reverse, as the former merely "superadds" to existing belief. An introductory excerpt by Chesterton applies Fascist command theory to the British coal crisis, imagining Mussolini compelling owners to pay miners.
Chapman investigates a manuscript recently acquired by Gabriel Wells for Yale University, which potentially contains a sermon by Johnson. The document, found in the library at Bradley by Gifford and given to him by Meynell, is in an eighteenth-century hand featuring corrections attributed to Johnson. Chapman notes that Johnson frequently wrote sermons for others, notably Taylor, but identifies suspicious circumstances in this manuscript, such as the heavy erasure of Johnson's interlineations. The text, based on Proverbs 20:8, discusses the 'imperfections of vindicative justice' and the 'horrours of inquisitory torture.' While the 'hand is that of his maturity' and the prose appears 'not un-Johnsonian,' Chapman suggests further research into the works of Kennedy, Rector of Bradley, to determine if the piece is an imitation.
Wallace chronicles Johnson’s religious development from a period of early indifference to a lifetime of profound devotion. This spiritual shift originated during Johnson's university years at Oxford after he encountered William Law’s Serious Call, a text he initially intended to ridicule but found intellectually "overmatch" for his skepticism. Wallace emphasizes that Johnson was an "essentially" and "profoundly religious man" whose piety lacked priggishness or sanctimoniousness. The text details Johnson’s adherence to revealed religion and Christian doctrine, noting his dislike for "light-minded speculation" on death and the mysteries of existence. Evidence of his practical faith includes his enthusiastic study of Ogden’s Sermons on Prayer and his insistence that Boswell seek "the protection of your Creator and Redeemer" before traveling. Wallace provides excerpts from Johnson's private diaries and letters, such as a 1776 entry petitioning for "steadiness of purpose" to do God’s will and a letter to his mother seeking forgiveness and "everlasting happiness". Ultimately, Johnson is presented as a figure whose "piety was constant and fervent," viewing labor as a divinely ordained means to achieve "good effect" in both temporal and eternal life.
Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society
CGV entry 24:109. Available via University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
This editorial note reports the discovery of a diary in Johnson's handwriting at Malahide Castle. Ralph Isham, the owner of the Boswelliana collection, identifies the manuscript as a long narrow book bound in green vellum mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson. The diary contains entries from January 1, 1765, to November 8, 1784, filling roughly one-third of the volume. The note indicates the diary was found alongside Boswell's letters and leaves from the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. It also mentions a sketch of Letitia Pilkington by Lord Ponsonby in the magazine English, describing her as a figure possible only in the eighteenth century.
CGV entry 24:113. On his prayer for April 6, 1777. The author is Edward Shillito.
Baker compares the spiritual journals of Samuel Johnson and the Quaker physician John Rutty. He argues that Johnson’s ridicule of Rutty’s meticulous self-condemnation was hypocritical given the similar introspective anxieties and physical complaints recorded in Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations. The text analyzes the moral and psychological implications of such diaries, contrasting the "tremulous piety" and constitutional sloth of Johnson with the social perceptions of his character as an overbearing dictator of learning.
CGV entry 24:115. On the diary of the Quaker, John Rutty, etc.
Dr. Johnson and a Friend: Help for Hervey: A Sermon Preached in St. Paul's
Powell identifies a 1745 sermon preached by Henry Hervey Aston as the work of Johnson. Thrale provided the "clue" in her Thraliana, listing sermons for "Strahan and Hervey" as Johnsonian. Powell highlights the "eminently Johnsonian" style of the text, noting its "precision and weight." The attribution expands the known canon of Johnson’s ghostwritten ecclesiastical works. Powell acknowledges the assistance of Chapman and the Huntington Library in accessing the "vital entry" that facilitated this discovery of the "admired Preacher" in London.
CGV entry 24:116. A sermon for Henry Hervey Aston.
An address to the Johnson Society of London.
Dr. Johnson and the Works of the Bishop of Sodor and Man
Gove identifies a missing testimonial letter written by Johnson to Thomas Wilson, son of the Bishop of Sodor and Man, regarding the 1781 or 1782 folio edition of the Bishop's Works. In the preface to the 1782 folio, Johnson, described as "the most eminent literary character of this kingdom," expresses "veneration" for Wilson and states his intent to read the books "not only to write, but to live better." Gove argues that the "books" refer to the posthumous edition and uses advertisements in Jackson’s Oxford Journal and the publishing history of the serialized folio edition to date the letter between the spring of 1781 and the late summer of 1782. The article suggests the letter was an acknowledgment of a gift set from the Bishop's son, which appears as item 281 in the sale catalogue of Johnson’s library.
Drummond analyzes the internal religious life of Johnson, contrasting his "roaring" public authority with a private existence "dark with low, gathering clouds." He argues that Johnson’s fear of death was a rational consequence of his belief in the necessity of obedience and repentance for salvation. The text disputes Boswell’s suggestion that Johnson’s anxiety resulted from youthful sexual indiscretions, instead identifying "sins of omission" and sloth as the sources of his disquiet. Drummond explores Johnson’s "obstinate rationality" regarding Catholicism, noting his envy of its spiritual "helps" despite his inability to embrace them. Johnson’s final refusal of opiates represents a heroic desire to "render up my soul to God unclouded."
CGV entry 24:119. On Johnson as a moral teacher and religious man.
Hagstrum analyzes the canon of Johnson's sermons, focusing on the twenty-four sermons "left for publication" by John Taylor. Based on stylistic analysis (Johnsonian doublets/triplets, long noun clauses) and thematic parallels to the Rambler and Rasselas (e.g., charity, penal reform), he confirms twenty-three sermons for Taylor are Johnson's. The exceptions are Sermon XXI and the conclusion of Sermon XVIII, which are attributed to Taylor owing to their ungrammatical, loose style, and Sermon XXI's espousal of naturalistic optimism and the Great Chain of Being, an idea Johnson refuted. Hagstrum also confirms a previously unpublished manuscript sermon on Proverbs 20:8, written in Taylor's hand but corrected by Johnson, is genuinely Johnsonian and an addition to the canon. Critics are generally favorable, praising this authoritative, meticulously annotated edition for illuminating a neglected segment of the moralist's oeuvre. Boulton, in RES, deems the volume of major importance, praising the skillful use of internal evidence to validate attributions and an introduction that connects the texts to the seventeenth-century Anglican tradition. Schwartz, in Modern Philology, commends this scrupulously prepared first serious edition for illustrating a central importance to religious and moral thought, emphasizing the effective tracking of parallel comments across the canon. Curley, in ECCB, enthusiastically notes that the footnotes and parallel passages help readers verify authorship, while Rothstein's appreciative review in SEL describes it as the best available text, highlighting an excellent historical introduction and a style suited for oral delivery. Rawson, in the Sewanee Review, highlights the thorough annotation, noting the thematic focus on common personal distresses. But Battestin, in the Yearbook of English Studies, offers a more critical view; although grateful for the order introduced into a vexed area of the canon, he faults the critical apparatus for failing to place the immediate themes into historical context. Crane, in English Studies, observes a contraction of personality, suggesting the transition to the pulpit sacrifices modern relevance for social obligation. Downey, in the University of Toronto Quarterly, praises the intelligent editing but disagrees with the editors' low estimation of one specific discourse, while Nicholls, in Transactions of the Johnson Society, welcomes the expansion of the canon but criticizes footnotes that compare the homilies unfavorably to the periodical essays.
CGV entry 24:120. See also Hagstrum's unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1941.
Reviews: Martin C. Battestin, Yearbook of English Studies 11 (1981): 281–83; James T. Boulton, RES, n.s., 32, no. 125 (1981): 86–87; Choice 1979, 547; David Crane, English Studies 62, no. 1 (1981): 387–89; Thomas M. Curley, ECCB, n.s., 4 (1978): 355–56; James Downey, University of Toronto Quarterly 49, no. 4 (1980): 421–23; J. D. Fleeman, N&Q 26 [224], no. 6 (1979): 578–79; Graham Nicholls, Transactions of the Johnson Society (Lichfield), 1979, 61–67; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 33 (1980): 356–57; Claude Rawson, Sewanee Review 88, no. 1 (1980): 106–20; Eric Rothstein, SEL 19, no. 3 (1979): 557–58; Richard B. Schwartz, MP 78, no. 2 (1980): 187–89; Miklos Vetö, Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 113, no. 1 (1981): 82–83.
The Influence of John Wesley on Dr. Johnson's Religion
Beshaw examines the intersection of Johnson’s religious anxieties and Wesley’s evangelical influence, centering on their significant two-hour meeting in December 1783. Although both men attended Oxford during the formation of the "Holy Club," Beshaw contends they likely never met as students, noting that Johnson’s early piety was shaped primarily by Law’s Serious Call. For much of his life, Johnson’s religion remained a "tortured" asceticism characterized by broken resolutions and a predominating fear of divine judgment. Beshaw traces a shift in Johnson’s final years, facilitated by his friendship with Wesley, wherein the Doctor moved away from a reliance on "good works" toward a Methodist-aligned emphasis on the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. The text concludes that Johnson’s deathbed serenity, marked by a transition from "fear to faith," represents the successful influence of Wesley’s message of "Final Succour" over Johnson’s earlier conception of God as "Absolute Demand."
The Religion of Dr. Johnson and Other Essays
Cairns examines the religious life of Samuel Johnson, positioning his "profound and humble" faith as the central influence on his character and literary output. The study analyzes Johnson’s lifelong struggle with spiritual anxiety and the "fear of death," interpreting these not as pathological, but as evidence of a deeply serious moral accountability. Cairns details Johnson’s adherence to the doctrines of the Church of England, his regular use of the Book of Common Prayer, and his private "Prayers and Meditations" as essential components of his intellectual discipline. The work also explores Johnson’s relationships with James Boswell and various clergy, noting how his religious views shaped his political Toryism and his compassionate treatment of the poor. By surveying Johnson's sermons and essays, Cairns argues against contemporary views that characterize Johnson’s religion as merely superstitious, asserting instead its rational and foundational role in his life.
CGV entry 24:123. The title essay was reprinted from the Evangelical Quarterly, January 1944, pages 53-70. The collection was reprinted by Books for Libraries Press in 1969.
CGV entry 24:123. Review by M. Quinlan of the book by William T. Cairns.
Clifford’s mixed review focuses on this essay by a deceased Scottish minister, noting its contribution to the controversial study of Johnson’s later religious experiences. The reviewer challenges the assertion that Johnson became a convert to Evangelical enthusiasm on his deathbed, a rumor propagated by nineteenth-century sources. He argues that Johnson's reference to a late conversion in his final prayer most likely refers to his earlier experience at Oxford after reading Law's Serious Call, rather than a surrender to fanaticism. While the reviewer finds the piece lacks thorough analysis, he acknowledges the author provides a useful service by highlighting the increase in Johnson’s religious fervor near the end of his life.
CGV entry 24:123. Review by J. L. Clifford of the book by William T. Cairns.
CGV entry 24:125. On Johnson's prayers.
Johnson's conspicuous fear of death resulted not from psychological neuroses or skepticism, but from a rational and necessary consequence of his religious beliefs. Johnson consciously rejected the consolations of monastic Catholicism and Calvinist predestination, choosing an Anglican position centered on conditional salvation and accountability at the Last Judgment. This theological framework, combined with Johnson's insistence on moral vigilance and his profound feeling of unworthiness, made fear a central and rational sanction of his personal religion. Johnson advocates the contemplation of death to others, placing his preoccupation within the long tradition of Christian memento mori.
CGV entry 24:126. See also M. Quinlan in Philological Quarterly, volume 27 (April 1948), pages 146–147.
CGV entry 24:128. Johnson's last prayer, set to music.
CGV entry 24:129. See also a reply by E. L. McAdam, Jr. in Philological Quarterly, volume 30 (July 1951), pages 275–276.
Some Aspects of the Religious Problem in Haller
Stamm examines the religious failure of Albrecht von Haller, attributing his inability to achieve personal faith to the rationalistic and utilitarian influences of the Enlightenment. The article contrasts Haller’s "vitiated religiousness" and sentimental illusions with the "sunlike clarity" and objectivity of Johnson. While Haller complicates his religious interest with social moralism and pseudo-scientific justifications, Johnson maintains a clear distinction between the ethical and the religious. Stamm argues that Johnson’s great sense of the actual allows him to acknowledge human selfishness and misery without the "abstract reasoning" of philosophical optimism. This comparison highlights how Haller’s concessions to fashionable theory distract him from the fundamental act of faith that Johnson’s realism leaves free to operate.
CGV entry 24:130.
El Doctor Johnson y la Obsesion de la Muerte
Poetry and Belief: Fideism from Dryden to Eliot
The Reaction to Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations
Quinlan examines the intense controversy that followed the posthumous publication of Johnson's Prayers and Meditations (1785), a text he had entrusted to George Strahan. Three main issues dominated the reaction. First, the intimate and candid nature of the text, detailing trivial, bodily, and self-critical elements, violated the Augustan sense of propriety by exposing Johnson "in a state of undress." Critics and friends, including Dr. Adams, censured Strahan for the indiscretion. Second, critics like Anna Seward questioned Johnson’s reputation as an exemplary Christian, accusing him of hypocrisy, malevolence, and lacking charity. Third, Johnson's repeated practice of praying for the dead, explicitly noted, led to accusations of superstition and adherence to "Romish observance."
De Beer examines Johnson's use of the Greek letter Theta in Prayers and Meditations to denote deceased friends. He supports Jackson’s 1887 theory that the symbol derives from the Greek "thanatos" (death), a practice used by ancient physicians and Roman military clerks. De Beer provides a sixteenth-century parallel in Pighius’s Hercules Prodicius, where Theta is identified as the "nigrum theta" of Persius. He concludes that while Johnson likely understood the symbol through classical sources like Casaubon, Martial, or Isidore of Seville, his specific usage strips the character of its ancient judicial associations of condemnation, focusing solely on memorialization.
CGV entry 24:138. On 'Prayers and Meditations'.
CGV entry 24:139. A restoration of passages in Johnson's diaries erased by George Strahan; includes facsimiles.
Sutherland explores the surprising absence of the Collect form in Johnson's Prayers and Meditations. Johnson's prayers, though influenced by the Book of Common Prayer, model the longer prayers at Matins and Evensong rather than the highly compressed, four-part Collect. Johnson's wordiness, lack of interest in music, and possible Nonconformist influence prevented him from adopting the classic, disciplined Collect pattern, which aims for precision with brevity and has a fixed musical background.
Graham explores the profound religious influence William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life exerted on Johnson during his tenure at Oxford. He examines how Law’s racy wit and rigid precepts provided the foundation for Johnson’s lifelong piety and his adoption of character-study techniques in the Rambler. Graham also links Law to the Gibbon family, noting Johnson’s shared Jacobite sympathies with the author and the lasting impact of Law's "counsel of perfection."
Broderick analyzes Johnson’s 'essential sanity' as a hard-won compromise between empirical realism and a 'secret horror' of death. Johnson’s Christianity focuses on the corruption of man and the terrifying prospect of 'eternal annihilation' at the Judgment. The discussion links Johnson's persistent guilt and 'suicidal' self-analysis to a possible transgression of sexual incontinence during his early years in London. Broderick maintains that Johnson’s eventual leap to faith in Divine Grace represents a sane acceptance of 'doubts impossible to be solved,' taming a lifelong struggle between skeptical self-awareness and religious fear.
True Lights: Talks on Saints and Leaders of the Christian Church
Samuel Johnson's Central Tension: Faith and the Fear of Death
Johnson the Moralist: Friend and Critic of the Clergy and Hierarchy
Johnson’s deep piety and fear of sin are often noted in biographical accounts of his life. The collection was edited by George Strahan and published posthumously. These private papers, including his diaries, offer critical insight into Johnson’s inner life and reputation as a moralist.
Balderston argues that William Law's *A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life* exerted a formative, permanent, and complex influence on Samuel Johnson's thought and personal piety. She posits that Johnson's initial reading of the book was an "overmatch" that not only sparked his religious awakening but also likely contributed to the severe depression that forced him from Oxford, stemming from a failure to meet Law's rigid standard of perfection. The analysis identifies numerous positive debts, showing that many of Johnson's key psychological insights into self-delusion, his unique practice of composing prayers for specific life events, and his principle of giving charity to the "undeserving" poor originated with Law. However, the essay also contends that Johnson's mature moral philosophy developed in direct opposition to Law's idealism. He rejected Law's ascetic denial of "the world," his demand for universal love over particular friendships, and especially his perfectionism, which Johnson viewed as a self-defeating "counsel of despair." Ultimately, Law's work is presented as having provided Johnson not only with specific ideas to adopt but also with a rigid, theoretical worldview against which he forged his own brand of moral realism.
On Johnson's extemporaneous deathbed prayer for his friend Kitty Chambers, noting that a significant portion of the prayer was taken verbatim from the Service for the Visitation of the Sick in the Book of Common Prayer. The direct quotes from two distinct prayers within the service demonstrate Johnson's thorough and practical assimilation of the Prayer Book's phrasing, indicating a near "total recall" of its language, which could be drawn upon spontaneously.
Johnson's intense fear of death, while rooted in his strong Christian faith, was compounded by an "uneasiness" about the "proofs" of revelation. Johnson, who admitted that religious truth lacked the same "conviction" as common affairs, wished for "more evidence for spirit" to secure the "revelation of immortality." This internal dissatisfaction manifested as hatred and anger toward David Hume, whose attacks diminished Johnson's "confidence" in his faith, illustrating that doubt was an element in Johnson's ultimate commitment.
Bloom argues that Samuel Johnson possessed a "divided self," characterized by a tension between his public, social persona and a private self tormented by religious anxiety and an obsessive sense of guilt. He contends that this inner turmoil was most acute on birthdays and religious anniversaries, which prompted intense fears about death, judgment, and his own perceived sinfulness. The essay presents Johnson's private prayers as a psychological coping mechanism, a form of "submissive entreaty" through which he could confess his failings and re-establish a connection to God. The author identifies the root of Johnson's guilt not in a specific transgression but in his recurring obsession with "wasted time," which stemmed from a Puritan-like conviction that he was a steward of God-given talents and that any idleness was a sin. This created a neurotic cycle where his melancholy paralyzed his will, and the resulting lack of productivity intensified his guilt and fear of damnation.
Chapin analyzes a significant religious experience Johnson underwent during a severe illness in February 1784, arguing it strengthened his faith without constituting an Evangelical conversion. Following a period of deterioration from asthma and dropsy, Johnson faced imminent death, expressing deep fear and resolving on a day of intense devotion. Subsequently, he experienced sudden, unexpected relief from dropsy, discharging twenty pints of water. Both Johnson and his confidant Hawkins viewed this recovery as a special act of divine mercy, "wonderful, very wonderful." Johnson regarded this not as proof of adopting Evangelical doctrines (like faith alone for salvation or ecstatic assurance) but as potential evidence of supernatural "contact," reinforcing his orthodox beliefs and offering a reprieve for heartfelt repentance, which he felt was achieved during his devotional exercises, leading to greater serenity in facing death.
Doubleday asserts that Johnson was profoundly religious throughout his life, countering claims that his faith stemmed merely from pessimism. Johnson clearly distinguished right from wrong, emphasizing Revelation and divine sanctions as necessary guides because of the uncertainty of human foresight regarding ultimate happiness. His religion manifested in humility before God, regular worship, a keen sense of personal sin, and extensive charity towards the poor, exemplified by his household dependents. He valued religion particularly in times of distress, like the death of friends or the prospect of one's own dissolution, finding philosophy insufficient for providing true patience and tranquility. Prayer and meditation were central practices for Johnson, reflecting a natural human impulse and providing focus, solace, and a connection to the divine, lifting the soul beyond earthly concerns.
Dr. Johnson's 'Late Conversion': A Reconsideration
Greene argues against the interpretation that Johnson's phrase "late conversion," found in his final communion prayer but omitted by editor George Strahan and subsequently Boswell, signifies an adoption of specific "Evangelical beliefs." Greene contends that Strahan's motive was likely to suppress perceived Evangelical sympathies. He demonstrates that "conversion" (a turning from sin to God) was a standard concept in Anglican theology, citing theologians like Hammond whom Johnson respected. Johnson's experience in February 1784, marked by intense repentance followed by unexpected physical relief, fits the classic pattern of conversion. Greene refutes the idea of distinct "Evangelical" doctrines regarding justification by faith (which was standard Anglican belief) or absolute "assurance of salvation" (which Wesley himself nuanced). Johnson used "conversion" in its established theological sense, referring to his profound spiritual awakening in early 1784.
Humphreys examines the core elements of Johnson's religious life: his deep knowledge of the Book of Common Prayer, constitutional melancholy, "obstinate rationality" preventing easy faith, profound terror of death, and deep charity. Johnson's Anglicanism was inclusive, respecting Catholicism and Wesley, while detesting materialism and facile optimism. His faith grappled with the mysteries of suffering. Despite intellectual doubts ("No man has the same conviction..."), Prayer Book phrases anchored his passionate nature. Anguished self-scrutiny coexisted with profound compassion for the poor and suffering, demonstrated by his charitable household and acts of kindness. Physical ailments and mental terrors were met with resolution, not self-pity, grounded in a belief in the soul's endurance. His fear stemmed from rationally comparing religious demands with his perceived failures, particularly regarding sensuality and sloth, leading to constant resolutions and relapses, yet sustained by hope in God's mercy.
The Phenomenon of Religious Distress in Cowper and Johnson and Its Relationship to Their Theological Milieu
CGV entry 24:159. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 24 (June 1964), page 5417.
Quinlan examines the broader aspects of Johnson's religious convictions, emphasizing his status as an orthodox but intensely fervent member of the Church of England. The monograph argues that Johnson's faith was fundamentally shaped by two contrasting clergymen: William Law and Samuel Clarke. Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life instilled a lifelong dedication to the doctrine of Christian perfection, which manifested in Johnson's rigorous self-examination and persistent scruples regarding sloth and spiritual progress. But Quinlan demonstrates that reading Clarke's sermons later in life provided a tranquillizing effect on these scruples. A central thesis explores Johnson's shifting interpretation of the Atonement; he initially viewed Christ's death as an exemplary sacrifice but gradually moved toward a firm belief in a propitiatory or vicarious sacrifice that atones for human inadequacy. This theological evolution, alongside his distinctive combination of Catholic and Protestant views on repentance, significantly impacted his fear of death and sense of charity. Quinlan uses Johnson's diaries, prayers, sermons, and the Dictionary to reconstruct a religious life characterized by stubborn rationality struggling with profound spiritual tension. Chapter 1, 'Johnson and William Law,' addresses Law’s dual influence in awakening Johnson to a lifelong religious intensity while simultaneously instilling unreachable standards of Christian perfection that exacerbated his native scrupulosity. Chapter 2, 'Johnson and Samuel Clarke,' argues that Clarke’s rationalistic sermons eventually provided Johnson with vital intellectual satisfaction and a tranquilizing alternative to his agonizing doubts regarding personal salvation. Chapter 3, 'The Atonement,' addresses Johnson’s pivotal theological shift from an early belief in Christ’s sacrifice as merely exemplary to a late, profound acceptance of its vicarious and propitiatory nature. Chapter 4, 'Repentance,' argues that Johnson maintained a rigid, eclectic view of penance, emphasizing that true forgiveness required an almost impossible degree of moral reformation and personal self-atonement. Chapter 5, 'Johnson’s Sermons,' addresses the intellectual tone of Johnson's homiletic writings, which used terse, memorable precepts to prioritize reason over emotion in moral instruction. Chapter 6, 'Johnson’s Sense of Charity,' argues that Johnson's extensive philanthropy was motivated by a theological conviction that active, non-judgmental benevolence constitutes the highest expression of religious excellence. Chapter 7, 'The Fear of God and the Love of God,' addresses the tension between Johnson’s predominating dread of divine judgment and his subtler, deeply reverent petitions for the grace of divine love. Chapter 8, 'Johnson as a Church of England Man,' argues that despite sympathies for various Catholic practices, Johnson remained a staunch Anglican who valued the Establishment’s liturgy and collective tradition. Chapter 9, 'End of the Journey,' addresses Johnson's final months, during which he achieved a newfound serenity by intensifying his preparations for death through a firm reliance on Christ's merits. Critical reaction is mixed, with some reviewers offering praise and others raising serious theological and factual objections. Chapin, in Modern Philology, gives a mixed appraisal, praising the insights into specific doctrines but rejecting the central thesis regarding the lifelong influence of William Law's asceticism. Severe criticism comes from Greene in South Atlantic Quarterly, who disputes the competence of the analysis, claiming it fails to grasp fundamental Anglican theology and relies on incorrect historical texts. Conversely, Roberts's review in MLR approves of the methodical study and its use of sermon analysis, though noting omission of the subject's views on liturgy. Hart, in Essays in Criticism, validates the exploration of how fear of death shaped the subject's view of the Atonement. Voitle, in JEGP, provides a positive summary, noting how the text successfully lays to rest any notions of religious skepticism by focusing on the tension between rigorous perfectionism and spiritual solace. Nourse, in Thought, and Spacks, in SEL, both find the volume to be a well-balanced and convincing exploration that eliminates common misconceptions about spiritual commitment. Winnett's review in New Rambler deems the work a notable contribution, focusing on the debate over an alleged evangelical conversion and concluding that the volume offers exhaustive scholarship. Finally, Dubuque, in Renascence, and Williams, in Hartford Courant, applaud the detailed analysis for dissolving oversimplified views and repositioning the subject as a sincere seeker.
CGV entry 24:162. Review by D. J. Greene of the book by Maurice J. Quinlan.
Voitle reviews Quinlan’s study of Johnson's religious thought, which argues that Johnson's faith was a "layman's religion" derived primarily from his own writings and personal struggle, rather than formal theology. Quinlan finds that William Law's early nonmystical work, which emphasized perfection, excited Johnson’s intense scrupulosity and fear. Conversely, Samuel Clarke’s belief that Salvation was attainable served as an antidote, offering tranquility. Quinlan argues that Johnson held rigidly to the necessity of self-atonement and performance of works, disputing the notion of an Evangelical conversion based solely on justification by faith. The book lays to rest the ghost of Johnson's religious skepticism by showing his beliefs stemmed from the Bible and Law, emphasizing deeds over contemporary benevolism.
CGV entry 24:162.
Chapin offers a mixed review of Quinlan’s study, praising the sections on repentance and Christian charity and noting that they clarify Johnson’s sense of man’s weak nature and the duty of caritas. He agrees with Quinlan that Johnson’s view of the Atonement moved toward emphasizing Christ’s merits to save. However, Chapin takes issue with and challenges Quinlan’s central thesis that Johnson accepted and lived under the lifelong influence of William Law’s ascetic ideal of Christian perfection. The review argues that Johnson’s engagement in many secular pleasures and pursuits, such as attending the theater and fox-hunting—activities Law fiercely condemned—proves he did not renounce the world as Law demanded. Chapin suggests that the biblical parable of the talents, reflecting Johnson's anxiety over not fully using his God-given abilities, provides a better explanation for his religious tension than Law’s perfectionism. Chapin concludes that while Quinlan’s chapters on specific doctrines are valuable, the book presents a one-sided picture of Johnson as a Christian humanist.
CGV entry 24:162. Review by Chester F. Chapin of the book by Maurice J. Quinlan.
Johnson's religious outlook underwent a significant "Evangelical" change shortly before his death, departing from his earlier, more "rational" interpretation of the Atonement. His earlier view, as described in a 1773 conversation, minimized the expiatory aspect of Christ's death, seeing it primarily as an "exemplum" to impress on men the heinousness of sin. Johnson's "late conversion" in February 1784, following an extraordinary deliverance from illness, was felt as a comforting divine "intimation of acceptance," leading him to stress the "necessity of faith in the sacrifice of Jesus, as necessary beyond all good works whatever."
Reason and Unreason in Johnson's Religion
Sachs explores the tension between Johnson's rational faith, aligned with figures like Clarke and the early Law, and his deeply pessimistic, guilt-ridden temperament. Johnson championed reason in religion but was tormented by the fear of damnation and annihilation, an intensity characteristic of an earlier religious age. His attraction to Roman Catholic practices (e.g., prayers for the dead Tetty, confession) and rejection of amiable optimism (e.g., Adams's infinite goodness) stemmed from his rational belief in God’s justice and the conditional nature of salvation. For Johnson, the fear of death was a rational conquest over imagination, a necessary stimulus for virtue.
Robert South, William Law, and Samuel Johnson
Alkon contrasts Samuel Johnson's moral essays with the homiletic tradition concerning the role of habit. Robert South and William Law, following Aristotle, emphasized cultivating good habits for virtuous character and spiritual growth. Johnson, however, focused more on the pernicious effects and dangers of bad habits, exhibiting reluctance to recommend a systematic cultivation of external good habits. Johnson's approach shifts towards the "moral discipline of the mind" for controlling conduct, aligning with Lockean concepts and reflecting a move away from the Aristotelian doctrine.
Cites Life 1:68
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters
Samuel Johnson's Earliest Instruction in Religion
Chapin examines the evolution of Johnson’s religious convictions from early childhood instruction to his mature theological positions. Taking Johnson’s essential orthodoxy as a premise, Chapin investigates why this orthodoxy appealed to him and how it functioned as a "rational solution to the problem of human life". Part I traces Johnson’s training under his mother, his adolescent indifference, and the pivotal "rediscovery" of religion at Oxford through William Law. Chapin distinguishes Johnson’s faith from Evangelical Anglicanism, noting his rejection of "felt" conversion in favor of a "rational hope". Part II analyzes specific themes, including the use of Christian "evidences" against the skepticism of David Hume, the integration of ethics and eschatology, and Johnson’s views on free will and church-state relations. Chapin argues that a "hunger of immortality" was the primary driver of his faith, providing a motive for virtue that secular systems like Stoicism could not offer. The study concludes that Johnson’s skepticism regarding human reason served to confirm his religious commitment by highlighting the limitations of finite existence and the necessity of supernatural revelation. Chapter 1, 'Johnson's Earliest Instruction in Religion,' addresses the formative influence of maternal teaching, emphasizing that young Samuel received a foundation in basic Anglican orthodoxy rather than specifically Jacobite or Evangelical doctrines. Chapter 2, 'Childhood and Adolescence,' explores the transition from adolescent skepticism and psychological rebellion to a submerged religious consciousness shaped by a literary education and traditional devotional readings. Chapter 3, 'Oxford,' argues that the encounter with William Law’s Serious Call served as a decisive turning point, initiating a lifelong commitment to religious inquiry and moral self-reform. Chapter 4, 'Johnson's Correspondence with Hill Boothby,' analyzes the mature rejection of Evangelical "enthusiasm" in favor of a rational Anglicanism that emphasized social duty over internal spiritual assurance. Chapter 5, 'Johnson and the Christian Evidences,' examines the reliance on historical testimony and comparative credibility as rational supports for revelation against contemporary deistic and skeptical challenges. Chapter 6, 'Ethics and Eschatology,' posits that the supreme value of Christianity lies in its supernatural promise of immortality, which provides the essential motive and proper basis for human morality. Chapter 7, 'Evil, Free Will, and "Necessity",' addresses the assertion of free will based on human experience, rejecting deterministic theories while acknowledging the gratuitous nature of existence and the presence of existential evil. Chapter 8, 'Church and State,' outlines the defense of an established church and the Test Act as necessary instruments for maintaining social stability and protecting the religious welfare of the people. Chapter 9, 'Johnson and the non-Christian World,' addresses the attitude of peaceful coexistence and curiosity toward Islam, while maintaining that divine revelation remains the only certain path to religious truth. Chapter 10, 'Conclusion: A Religious View of Life,' concludes that a religious framework is the only rational response to the inherent limitations and infinite yearnings of the human condition. Critics generally describe this study as an excellent spiritual biography that successfully rescues its subject from nineteenth-century stigmas of "morbidity" and narrow-minded bigotry. Alkon and Greene commend the author for correctly situating the subject's religious outlook within the tradition of "rational" Anglicanism, praising the "informed and judicious" handling of the subject’s well-known "terror of annihilation" without resorting to Freudian analysis. Clifford and Middendorf highlight the work’s value in exploring why Anglican orthodoxy was personally satisfying for the subject, noting that the thematic treatment of free will and evil is both clear and undogmatic. However, the reception includes notable critiques regarding historical depth and theological nuance; Stromberg finds the discussion of the broader deistic and philosophical debates "too thin," while Chiasson criticizes the book’s "episodic structure" and argues that the author misunderstands the consistency of the subject's skepticism with traditional orthodoxy. Furthermore, while Walker appreciates the challenge to "grotesque misunderstandings" of the subject's temperament, he disputes the author’s "absolute flatness" in dismissing Puritan influences such as Bunyan. Despite these disagreements, Wright and other reviewers conclude that the volume offers a sensitive and succinct revision of the subject's faith, providing a necessary corrective to the characterizations previously established by Boswell.
Some Notes on Johnson's Prayers and Meditations
Fleeman provides a technical and editorial analysis of the manuscripts of Johnson's Prayers and Meditations held at Pembroke College, Oxford, offering supplementary readings for the text. He explains the methods used by the first editor, Strahan, to censor passages using Indian ink and physical abrasion or scraping. Because Indian ink is a dense surface deposit of carbon-based ink and the original iron-tannin ink soaked into the paper, the two are visually distinct under incident light, allowing for partial recovery of the erased text. Fleeman's corrected readings predominantly concern words related to Johnson's characteristic mental distresses: "scruples," "doubts," "terrour," "perplexity," "vain terrours," "troublesome thoughts," and references to melancholy, including his use of the Greek abbreviation for the condition. The recovered text, which includes details on Johnson’s physical health and his recording of weights and daily activities, validates the earlier Yale editors' conclusion that the censored material was "innocuous" and generally "innocent of sensationalism."
CGV entry 24:170. On new manuscript readings.
The Faith of Samuel Johnson: 'From Curiosity to Conviction'
Bernard identifies the word "relaxity" in a sermon written by Johnson for John Taylor around 1752. He notes that the term, used to describe the opposite of "rigour" in a moral and temporal context, remains unrecorded in the O.E.D. Bernard provides the specific usage from the 1825 edition of Johnson’s Works, offering it as a candidate for inclusion in the dictionary as a uniquely Johnsonian contribution to the English vocabulary.
CGV entry 24:173. On the use of the word in Sermon XIII.
On Johnson’s understanding of eloquence, which Boswell connected specifically to pulpit speaking. Johnson defined eloquence as the power of speaking with fluency and oratory, or elegant language uttered with fluency. Elegance, for Johnson, constituted beauty of art that was soothing rather than striking, pleasing with minute beauties, and achieved pleasure without elevation.
Gray examines the twenty-eight extant sermons attributed to Johnson, primarily those within the Taylor collection, to demonstrate that the sermon was for Johnson a significant species of literary art. Gray defines the canon, including the Yale manuscript sermon and the 'Address' written for William Dodd, while exploring the nature of the collaboration between Johnson and his lifelong friend John Taylor. The study identifies William Law, Samuel Clarke, and Richard Baxter as primary homiletic models, noting how Johnson adapted Law's 'Serious Call' into a more social, practical Christianity. Gray argues that Johnson's sermons are characterized by a 'wedding of religion and morality,' emphasizing 'dogged and practical empiricism' over metaphysical speculation. Central to the corpus is the theme of happiness, which Gray categorizes into six aspects, ranging from domestic bliss to the 'perfect peace' of a mind stayed on God. Gray challenges earlier scholarly neglect of these texts, concluding that the sermons contain Johnson’s religious views in their most 'concentrated form' and use a style of 'eloquence, dignity, and masterful emphasis.' The volume includes a reprint of Taylor's 'Letter on a Future State,' which Gray identifies as a joint composition illustrating their collaborative method. Chapter 1, ‘The Composition of the Sermons,’ explores the authorship and collaborative history of the Taylor collection, establishing that most of these homilies were written or dictated by one hand. Chapter 2, ‘Johnson’s Homiletic Sources and Models,’ analyzes how diverse theological traditions were synthesized into a plain, direct, and practical prose style. Chapter 3, ‘The Main Themes and Ideas of Johnson’s Sermons,’ identifies happiness as the central motif, arguing that religion and morality are inextricably joined in the rational pursuit of eternal felicity. Chapter 4, ‘The Form and Style of the Sermons,’ evaluates these discourses as a distinct species of literary art, emphasizing their formal structure, poetic imagery, and authoritative, pedagogical tone. Critics are generally favorable toward this examination of homiletic texts, praising its insights into theological influences but dividing sharply over its stylistic analysis. In MLR, Mackerness applauds the illumination of debt to figures like Law, Clarke, and Baxter, alongside successful handling of complex bibliographical problems. Lamont (RES) respects the precision and moderation displayed in redressing the scholarly balance, though she questions specific evidence regarding collaboration on a future state text. Writing in N&Q, Midgley finds the work honest and restrained concerning authorship, yet he critiques the closing chapters on style as dull and over-reliant on demonstrations of the obvious. In MLQ, Ong uses the study to explore how print culture alters the relationship between the preached word and the psyche, noting how text delivery undercuts spontaneous apostolic tradition. Clifford and Middendorf, in JNL, evaluate the volume as a valuable supplement that fills an essential gap in the canon regarding anxieties about death. However, some reviewers express strong reservations. Rawson (English) critiques the book for pedestrian wordiness and a mechanical stylistic analysis, suggesting the material suits a shorter article. Similarly, Lovejoy, in Queen's Quarterly, disputes the formal methodology, arguing that the mechanical breakdown isolates the reader from the true semantic vigor of the language. Finally, Tracy (Dalhousie Review) challenges the likelihood of fundamental intellectual collaboration with patrons, concluding that the sermons lack compassionate knowledge due to a lean, official style dictated by the pulpit.
Gray analyzes the composition, themes, and stylistic elements of Johnson’s sermons, focusing on the collaborative relationship between Johnson and John Taylor. He argues that Johnson found spiritual relief for his doubts regarding the afterlife in the writings of nonconformist Richard Baxter and the steady faith of Taylor. Chapin commends the study of Johnson’s religious tolerance but questions Gray’s emphasis on a specifically Puritan homiletic tradition. The work asserts that happiness serves as the unifying theme of the sermons, achieved through the inseparable wedding of religion and morality.
CGV entry 24:176. Review by Chester Chapin of the book by James Gray.
Mackerness applauds Gray for demonstrating how Johnson’s homiletic practice facilitated a unique synthesis of morality and religion. He credits Gray with illuminating Johnson’s extensive theological knowledge and his indebtedness to figures like Law, Clarke, and Baxter. While Mackerness finds the claim of Johnson’s "obstinate rationality" compelling, he especially praises the stylistic analysis of rhetorical devices and imagery. He notes Gray’s successful handling of complex bibliographical problems and the sympathetic treatment of Johnson's collaboration with Taylor.
CGV entry 24:176. Review by E. D. Mackerness of the book by James Gray.
CGV entry 24:176. Review by James Downey of the book by James Gray.
CGV entry 24:176. Review by Alan Harding of the book by James Gray.
This review provides an approving assessment of James Gray's study of the neglected corpus of Johnson's sermons. Smyth notes that Johnson composed approximately forty sermons, often for a fee, including one for the funeral of his wife. Gray's research identifies Johnson's collaboration with John Taylor, whose worldly habits stood in contrast to Johnson's devout Anglicanism. The review highlights Gray's success in establishing the canon of twenty-eight surviving discourses and exploring Johnson's homiletic sources. Smyth appreciates the analysis of poetic imagery and leading themes, such as the pursuit of happiness. While Boswell characterized Taylor as a cattle-breeding pluralist, Smyth finds Gray's explanation for the tenacious friendship between the two men convincing. The review concludes that Gray's monograph contributes significantly to understanding the mind of an important eighteenth-century layman.
CGV entry 24:176.
{Tracy identifies Gray’s study as an attempt to establish the sermons of Johnson as an 'important place in the canon of his works.' The reviewer explains that Johnson, as a layman, wrote these texts for others to preach, often for pay or out of friendship, particularly for Taylor. Tracy notes that Gray argues for a 'closer collaboration' between Johnson and his patrons, illustrated by Johnson’s tact in writing a sermon for the 'vile Whig' Taylor without betraying his own 'Tory' sentiments. However, Tracy challenges the likelihood of fundamental intellectual collaboration with Taylor, whom he describes as more interested in 'breeding cattle' than 'abstract thought.' The review concludes that while Gray successfully draws parallels between the sermons and the Rambler and Idler essays, the sermons often lack the 'compassionate knowledge of the human heart' found in Johnson’s other writings due to the 'lean' and 'official' style dictated by the pulpit.
CGV entry 24:176. Review by Clarence Tracy of the book by James Gray.
Lovejoy reviews Gray's volume on Johnson's homiletic texts, finding the analysis of limited interest to general critics. Gray fails to contextualize the sermons within the broader Johnsonian canon and offers no entry points for recognizing the prose achievements. Lovejoy disputes the book's formal methodology, noting that Gray treats style as a mere taxonomy of rhetorical structures and imagery classifications. This mechanical breakdown isolates the reader from an intelligent response to the text, turning them away from any full appreciation of the energetic, precise articulation of Johnson's language. Gray identifies a volcanic-meteorological scientific analogy in a specific phrase to argue that Johnson converts scientific vocabulary into poetic idioms. However, Lovejoy questions this poetic label, counter-arguing that Gray fails to capture the true semantic vigor and weight derived from Johnson's deeply serious character. The review concludes that the study fails to unveil Johnson's genuine canonical achievement.
CGV entry 24:176. A severe review by R. B. Lovejoy of the book by James Gray.
Ong examines James Gray's study of the sermons of Johnson alongside Gale H. Carrithers Jr.'s work on John Donne to explore how the evolution of media alters the relationship between the preached word and the human psyche. Ong notes that Johnson, a layman, ghost-wrote roughly forty sermons for pay, a practice that highlights a shift toward a print-dominated culture where writing authenticates the spoken word. Unlike Donne's existential engagement with immediate actuality, Johnson's sermons often involve a prefabricated, lapidary rhetoric designed for delivery by others. Ong observes that by the eighteenth century, the speaker-audience relationship had changed as oral interaction was downgraded in favor of texts read at audiences. He finds that while print reinforced the orderly, triumphant nature of Johnson's orality, it simultaneously undercut the spontaneous apostolic tradition. Ong concludes that Johnson occupies a pivotal historical point where the oral, chirographic, and typographic modes interact intensely, requiring the Gospel to be uttered in different cadres to reach an evolving psyche.
CGV entry 24:176. A review by Walter J. Ong, S.J. of the book by James Gray, alongside another work.
Lamont reviews Gray’s study for redressing the scholarly balance by presenting the devout Johnson, earning her respect for his precision, moderation, and insight into Johnson’s theological and stylistic concerns. Gray explores how religious convictions found expression in the genre of the sermon, dealing with the baffling problems of dating and collaboration with John Taylor; however, Lamont questions Gray’s use of Taylor’s Letter on a Future State as evidence of collaboration, noting the Johnsonian presence there is not collaboration in the usual sense. Gray provides a painstaking account of the themes and homiletic influences of Law, Clarke, and Baxter, and his treatment of authorship and influence strikes Lamont as balanced and dependable. Finally, Lamont observes that Gray’s analysis of style proves Johnson made no concessions to the aural nature of the genre, treating sermons as written literature.
CGV entry 24:176. Review by Claire Lamont of the book by James Gray, alongside other works.
Korshin's review notes the book's focus on the sermons as a "species of literary composition," finding its raison d'être in Johnsonian studies rather than broader homiletics. The study's main contribution is its intellectual history of Johnson’s homiletic sources. Gray identifies William Law, Samuel Clarke, and Richard Baxter as strong influences on Johnson's religious outlook. The book includes a study of Johnson’s difficult collaboration with John Taylor, a friend who exemplified the unattractive qualities of the eighteenth-century Church. Johnson's rigorous rationality led him to reject doctrines like transubstantiation. He transfers traditional Christian typology from the Bible to an emphasis on the perfect Christian and proper religious behavior, effectively secularizing it to the concerns of common life.
Midgley finds Gray’s study of Johnson’s homiletic work honest and restrained regarding the "inconclusive evidence" of authorship. He praises the examination of theological influences from Law, Clarke, and Baxter, which shaped Johnson’s rational and moralistic creed. However, Midgley critiques the closing chapters on form and style as dull, lacking in structural clarity, and over-reliant on "solemn demonstrations of the obvious" regarding poetic imagery. He concludes the work feels like an "over-expanded introduction" to the then-forthcoming Yale edition.
CGV entry 24:176. A critical review by Graham Midgley of the book by James Gray.
The Balanced Mind: Johnson's Christian Empiricism
Samuel Johnson's Struggle with His Personality as Revealed in His Prayers
Proper Words in Proper Places: The Prayers of Swift and Johnson
Schwartz chronicles the development of Johnson’s responses to theodicy and the existence of suffering within an eighteenth-century context. Schwartz identifies Johnson’s 1757 review of Soame Jenyns as a "classic" and a "literary and philosophic colosseum" that reasserts Christian orthodoxy against the "heterodoxy and vapid superficiality" of contemporary metaphysical systems. Schwartz argues that Johnson denies the possibility of a complete human solution to the problem of evil, instead characterizing it as a mystery and shifting focus toward "human responsibility and triumph". The monograph details how Johnson challenges the "great chain of being" and "principle of plenitude" by arguing that privation only constitutes evil when "felt" by a conscious being. Schwartz illustrates that Johnson’s perspective is "personal and individualistic rather than olympian," prioritizing the alleviation of domestic and psychological distress over abstract speculation. Schwartz concludes that Johnson uses eighteenth-century epistemology to dispute the "neat, comfortable world" of theodicy writers and emphasize the "literature of experience". Chapter 1, "Problem or Mystery?," establishes the intellectual milieu of eighteenth-century theodicies, outlining prevalent attempts to reconcile divine goodness with human suffering. It contrasts these popular "design" arguments with a more skeptical view that regards evil as an insoluble mystery rather than a solvable philosophical problem. Chapter 2, "Critique," executes a rigorous analysis of Soame Jenyns's theodicy, identifying its derivative nature and logical fallacies. It highlights the rejection of the "great chain of being" and critiques the social implications of using cosmic hierarchy to justify poverty or ignorance. Chapter 3, "Alternatives," presents an orthodox Miltonic perspective, emphasizing free will and human responsibility as the primary explanations for moral and natural evil. It argues that much perceived suffering is subjectively manufactured by the imagination or through domestic discord. Chapter 4, "Implications," examines how these philosophical convictions shape literary practice and structural choices in major works like Rasselas and the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. It asserts that the focus shifts from abstract speculation toward pragmatic strategies for enduring life and alleviating the distress of others. The general verdict on this study is that it provides a searching scrutiny of the subject’s role as a practical moralist who integrated post-Newtonian currents into an orthodox faith. Reviewers describe the book as an expert approach to fundamental problems, specifically the subject's 1757 review of Jenyns. Greene and Rompkey laud the destruction of simplistic Tory stereotypes, identifying a vigorous argument that aligns the subject with Voltaire against the Great Chain of Being. Owen and Walker note the thorough documentation of refutation tactics and the subject's focus on domestic pain and psychological distortion. But the reception was not without dissent. McIntosh finds the effort to frame the subject as a model modern intellectual unconvincing, suggesting he is better understood through his prejudices. Walker critiques the work for weak documentation regarding sermon editions and errors in attribution. Similarly, Clayborough disputes the claim of complex epistemological skepticism, arguing the subject’s position rests on common-sense benevolence and patience. While Clifford and Middendorf view the inclusion of a rare facsimile as a strength, Greene regrets its reproduction. Despite these mixed reactions to the later chapters, the consensus highlights the study's success in clarifying how the subject viewed evil as a mystery insolvable by reason but answered by Scripture. By contrasting the subject's compassion for the poor with the shallow theodicies of the era, the work serves as a well-documented examination of a stern moralist facing the tedium and frustration of common life.
CGV entry 24:180. Includes a facsimile, from the 'Literary Magazine', of the review of Soame Jenyns.
Nicholls reviews Richard B. Schwartz's fine study of Johnson's intellectual alignment with contemporary thought regarding suffering. Schwartz examines Johnson's anti-speculative insistence on the reality of evil, highlighting his sharp rejection of the Great Chain of Being optimization popular among eighteenth-century theodicists like Soame Jenyns. Nicholls outlines Schwartz's central argument that Johnson viewed evil as a mystery rather than an abstract metaphysical puzzle, tying its nature directly to individual human consciousness and the tragedies of daily life. This perspective underpins Johnson's preference for domestic focus in literature, including the novels of Samuel Richardson and Shakespeare's Othello. The study counters views of Johnson as a philosophic philistine by emphasizing his active, Baconian commitment to practical charity, legislative reform, and technological advancement to alleviate human misery instead of accepting it as part of a deterministic, beautifully arranged balance.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by Graham Nicholls of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Walker discusses Schwartz’s examination of Johnson’s empirical outlook and his rejection of the Great Chain of Being. Schwartz argues Johnson’s indignation toward Jenyns stemmed from a pragmatic sympathy for the poor. The review underscores that Johnson and Hume shared a post-Newtonian milieu, though they were divided by faith. Walker notes Schwartz’s thesis that the most important 18th-century philosophical issues are central to Johnson’s art. The study clarifies that while Johnson viewed evil as insolvable by reason, he found a definitive answer in Scripture.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by John M. Walker, Jr. of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by John L. Mahoney of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
The book is the first written on Johnson's review of Soame Jenyns's Free Enquiry. Walker finds the first two chapters, discussing the problem of evil as a mystery and analyzing Johnson's critique of Jenyns, the strongest. He critiques the later chapters for lacking sufficient new insight and a misplaced emphasis on domestic evil. Walker faults Schwartz for weak documentation, including errors concerning Piozzi's attributions and a failure to disclose the edition of Johnson's sermons used.
CGV entry 24:180.
Greene lauds Schwartz for a brilliant analysis of Johnson’s review of Jenyns and the underlying theological complexities. He credits Schwartz with destroying the myth of Johnson as a "reactionary" thinker by demonstrating his alignment with Milton and Voltaire against the "Great Chain of Being." Greene emphasizes the work’s lucid style and its successful destruction of simplistic "Tory" stereotypes, though he regrets the facsimile reproduction of the Jenyns review.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by Donald Greene of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Rompkey identifies Schwartz’s monograph as a study of the 'stern moralist' Johnson’s disparate opinions on theodicy and the vindication of divine justice. The reviewer highlights Schwartz’s 'searching scrutiny' of Johnson’s review of Jenyns’s Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, which Rompkey characterizes as a 'common-sense if unusually vigorous argument' against bizarre metaphysical claims and works like Pope’s Essay on Man. Unlike Enlightenment philosophers who relied on the 'Great Chain of Being' to explain cosmic order, Johnson focuses on 'sufferings which concern us all,' including the 'tedium, frustration and aggravation of everyday life.' Rompkey notes that Johnson’s mastery of the 'ills which afflict common life' informs his sermons and periodical essays, suggesting that formal theodicies often 'exaggerate the problem of evil' while minimizing the 'possibility of alleviating it.'
CGV entry 24:180. Review by Ronald Rompkey of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by Thomas R. Preston of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Clayborough examines Schwartz’s study of Johnson as a practical moralist. He focuses on the critique of Jenyns’s theodicy, particularly Johnson's rejection of poverty and sickness as subjective or necessary for universal felicity. While acknowledging Schwartz’s effort to challenge perceptions of Johnson’s "philosophic philistinism," Clayborough questions the alignment of Johnson with original thinkers like Hume or Berkeley. He argues Johnson’s unique position rests on standard Christian themes of patience and benevolence rather than complex epistemological skepticism.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by Arthur Clayborough of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Stock's critical review argues that Richard Schwartz provides a diffuse monograph that contributes little to specialist knowledge regarding Johnson's religious and philosophical stance. Schwartz traces Johnson's orthodox skepticism against theodicy builders like Leibniz, Pope, and Soame Jenyns, examining the review of Jenyns and the Life of Pope. Stock faults Schwartz for repetitive excerpts, a lack of briskness, and analytical obscurities, such as failing to reconcile Johnson's views on affliction in Adventurer 120 with an alleged refusal to view suffering as a trial. Stock notes that Schwartz avoids controversial areas like fideism, overlooks connections to Pascal, and papers over Johnson's inconsistencies regarding witchcraft.
CGV entry 24:180. Review by R. D. Stock of the book by Richard B. Schwartz.
Basney examines the popular, non-scholarly image of Johnson's religious convictions. From the mixture of sentimentality and criticism that followed his death, Macaulay distilled an image of Johnson's faith as an emotional, psychological aberration, separate from his intellectual life. This popular image, perpetuated by modern critics, depicts Johnson as a skeptical, prejudiced, and superstitious figure tormented by neurotic guilt and fear of damnation. Scholarship, in contrast, establishes Johnson's fundamental orthodoxy, viewing his struggles not as irrational neuroses but as feelings reasonably expected in facing religious justification.
Brantley explores Johnson's intellectual and spiritual affinity with John Wesley, arguing Johnson’s temperament and works show definite Wesleyan influence. Johnson's later years included acquaintance with Wesley and an admiration for his unpretentious faith. Johnson's conversion, his charity, his devotional writings, and his tolerance for Dissenters align with the Arminian, pietistic, and Establishmentarian mainstream of the Evangelical Movement. Brantley suggests this Evangelical context is crucial for understanding the continuity of Johnson's faith and his role in literary history.
On the Locus of Faith in Johnson's Sermons
Siebenschuh analyzes Johnson’s sermons as biographical documents, arguing that the constrained form and language mirror a profound inner tension between the need to accept Scripture on faith and the impulse to rely on sensory-verified human experience. The sermons employ two stylistic "voices": a bland, abstract "voice of orthodoxy" and a concrete, dramatic voice. Rhetorical power concentrates on depicting negative conditions—pain and temptation—demonstrating that the more powerful reality for Johnson is the necessity of accepting Christian precepts proven by the harsh facts of life, rather than accepting them on duty alone.
Johnson and Religious Evidence: A Note on the 'Wonderful Experience'
Smitten examines Johnson's preoccupation with sloth, arguing that it must be understood within both a traditional Christian context and a specific psychological framework. While previous critics like W. J. Bate and Arieh Sachs focus on the "hunger of imagination," Smitten demonstrates that Johnson adheres to the Anglican and medieval conception of sloth as a neglect of religious and social duties. This "traditional concept" appears frequently in Johnson's private devotions, sermons, and periodical essays, where he treats labor as a divine mandate. Smitten further analyzes the psychological causes Johnson attributes to idleness: the desire to avoid pain, the maintenance of a "neurotically inflated ego," and a "thirst for perfection" that paralyzes the will. By exploring characters such as Dick Linger and Sober, Smitten shows how Johnson views sloth as an "anesthetic" or "opiate" used to deaden the pain of psychic conflict. The analysis concludes that Johnson perceives sloth as the fundamental enemy of Christian caritas because it facilitates an "egocentric withdrawal" from the external world and the "purposes of life."
Johnson, Tillotson, and Comparative Credibility
Walker identifies a likely source for Johnson’s 1763 argument to Boswell regarding the comparative credibility of Christian evidences. While scholars often link Johnson’s hypothetical denial of the conquest of Canada to Whately or Hume, Walker traces the rhetorical structure to John Tillotson’s The Rule of Faith (1666). Tillotson similarly defended religious certainty by challenging the absolute demonstrability of America’s existence to those who have not traveled there. Johnson’s quotation of a specific sentence from Tillotson’s preface in his Dictionary confirms his familiarity with the text at least a decade before the conversation with Boswell.
Sternbach explores Johnson's engagement with Pascal's argument of the "wager" for religious belief. Johnson derived the argument through sermons by seventeenth-century English divines like Richard Bentley and Robert South, whose works he extensively excerpted for his Dictionary. Both divines framed the choice of religion as a rational "venture" based on self-interest and probability, leading to infinite gain with minimal risk, a strategy Johnson's frequent citations suggest he embraced as a prescription for his own religious life.
The Articulated Evil of Augustan Humanism
McKenzie disputes the claim that the eighteenth century lacked a profound sense of evil, arguing instead that Augustan humanists managed and clarified evil through a process of linguistic and psychological articulation. This system, rooted in traditional faculty psychology, treated evil as a social and psychological phenomenon rather than a cosmic or individualistic one. McKenzie examines how writers used specific, inherited names for passions—such as hatred, fear, anger, and sorrow—to categorize responses to evil and render them manageable through reason and corporate agreement. The study analyzes representative passages from several authors to demonstrate this technique. Fielding uses the certainty of discovery and the force of conscience to structure his presentation of villainy. Johnson weighs internal motivation against external consequences, famously distinguishing between the instantaneous violence of desire and the "frigid villainy" of "studious lewdness." Gibbon employs the system to ascribe motives to historical figures, while Hume uses a detached process of supposition to analyze the probability and effects of various evils. McKenzie concludes that these writers relied on a rich, distinct vocabulary to communicate and control the complexities of the human condition.
CGV entry 24:188.
Walker examines Johnson's position within the "Age of Evidences" (Christian apologetics). Walker argues that Johnson favored traditional "external" evidences—prophecies and miracles—and employed probabilistic reasoning developed in the seventeenth-century Rule of Faith controversy by figures like Tillotson and Leslie. Johnson's famed analogies (e.g., comparing the evidence for Christ's death to Caesar's death in the Capitol) are shown to be part of a conventional apologetic pattern. Johnson was less enthusiastic about the emerging "internal" evidences of the later century (e.g., Jenyns's focus on unique Christian virtues).
CGV entry 24:189. On the use of external evidences in Christian apologetics.
CGV entry 24:192. On the fear of damnation.
The Conflict of Faith and Fear in Johnson's Moral Writings
Johnson's great moral writings, culminating in Rasselas, explore the central conflict of his religious life: the hope that religion provides solace versus the fear that it inspires doubt and terror. In The Vanity of Human Wishes, the religious conclusion is asserted but unconvincing, constrained by Juvenal's Stoicism and poetic considerations. The periodical essays then focus on self-mastery and religious incentives like contemplating death. However, Rasselas presents an absurdist view, where the quest for happiness is inevitable but unattainable, born from the fear of an uncontrollable mind and uncertain afterlife, representing an emerging crisis in Johnson’s faith despite his simultaneous reaffirmation of Christian solace elsewhere.
Alkon analyzes "The Convict's Address," the sermon Johnson ghostwrote for the forger William Dodd, within the generic conventions of eighteenth-century "condemned sermons." He explores how the work collapses the distance between preacher and audience, as Johnson adopts the persona of a doomed prisoner to create a powerful "interior monologue." Alkon identifies the "Johnsonian touch" in the sermon’s "audacious turns," such as the aphoristic claim that "It is easier to forgive than to reason right." He argues that Johnson used the "ritual nature" of the Newgate chapel setting to offer Dodd "the greatest comfort" possible—the sense of voluntary participation in affirming social and religious values. The article asserts that the sermon’s eloquence reflects Johnson’s "width of humanity" and his ability to adapt his outlook to a "doomed prisoner's perspective."
CGV entry 24:194.
Samuel Johnson and the Campaign to Save William Dodd
Barker details the vigorous but ultimately unsuccessful campaign led by Johnson and others to save William Dodd from execution for forgery in 1777. Johnson wrote Dodd's compelling last speech, three petitions (to the King, Queen, and City of London), and his final Solemn Declaration. Despite Johnson's efforts, the Privy Council, led by Lord Mansfield's intransigence, denied clemency. The campaign generated massive public support, fueled by newspaper reports that portrayed Dodd as an improvident victim of a cruel legal system and avaricious bankers. However, the unprecedented scale of the petitions likely hardened the administration's resolve to enforce the law as a public example against crimes involving property. Though the campaign failed to save Dodd's life, it focused attention on the severity of Britain's "Bloody Code" and contributed to later legal reform.
Johnson's Emergency Sermon: The Convict's Address to His Unhappy Brethren
Gray examines Johnson's role as ghostwriter for William Dodd's "condemned sermon" delivered at Newgate Prison in 1777. Johnson largely composed the sermon, "The Convict's Address," and other pieces, including a petition to the King, to assist Dodd, who was convicted of forgery. Johnson ensured Dodd's address included an honest confession of guilt, contrasting with Dodd's attempts at self-justification. The essay notes Johnson's internal conflict, as he opposed capital punishment for forgery yet wrote an address accepting the "justice" of Dodd's sentence. Gray highlights the contrast between Johnson's public assistance and his private contempt for the "Macaroni parson."
Hudson criticizes Pierce for offering a trite, psychologically reductive analysis of Johnson’s spiritual anxieties. While Pierce argues that Johnson’s character and major writings evolved as defenses against despair, Hudson finds the thesis unoriginal and marred by textual inaccuracies. He censures Pierce’s reliance on Boswellian anecdotes over recent scholarship by Gray and Greene, as well as the anachronistic application of existentialist terminology to Johnson’s orthodox eighteenth-century religious framework and philosophical struggles.
CGV entry 24:197.
Holtz provides a coolly distanced review of Pierce's study. Holtz explains Pierce's argument that Johnson was a rationalist by nature who became religious out of psychological need to allay fears of death, madness, and a misspent life. Holtz notes that Pierce reads the moral writings of 1749-1759 as a record of religious doubt. While Holtz finds the scholarship accurate and responsible, the review describes the account as disappointingly cool. Holtz disputes the ease of Johnson's final triumph of faith as presented by Pierce, arguing that the style of the biography betrays the actual turmoil and resistance that characterized Johnson's emotional life and his approaching death.
CGV entry 24:197. Review by William Holtz of the book by Charles E. Pierce.
Pierce's book presents Johnson's spiritual life by structuring it around the apparent antinomy between his intense faith and the anxiety, remorse, fear, and doubt that plagued him before his final appeasement. The study combines a diachronic analysis of his religious life with thematic chapters on his melancholy, devotional practices, and "terrors." It examines three major works (The Vanity of Human Wishes, the periodical essays, and Rasselas) as a transition to the final chapters. The book provides a coherent overview, detailed analyses, and new insights into Johnson's religious life, despite the reviewer's regret over numerous typographical errors.
CGV entry 24:197. Review by Albert Pailler of the book by Charles E. Pierce.
Dr. Samuel Johnson and the Dixie Professorship of Ecclesiastical History
Johnson, Socinianism, and the Meaning of Christ's Sacrifice
Hudson disputes arguments by Quinlan and Pierce that Johnson’s theology shifted from an "exemplary" to a "propitiatory" view of Christ's sacrifice. He demonstrates that Johnson consistently adhered to the "Rectoral theory" of atonement, a Grotian middle path between Socinianism and rigid satisfaction theory popular among Latitudinarian divines like Clarke and Tillotson. This model interprets Christ’s death as a demonstration of divine justice intended to promote virtue and repentance rather than a literal substitutionary punishment necessitated by divine revenge.
Chadwick characterizes Johnson as a member of the Church of England with the skeptical intelligence of a theologian. Though Johnson published no theology under his own name, his sermons and private collects reveal a serious commitment to the structure of Christian thought. Chadwick identifies Johnson as a staunch Arminian who emphasized moral liberty over Calvinist predestination, a stance that contributed to his somber religious outlook. Johnson often composed formal Latin collects during crises, such as his 1783 stroke, preferring ordered liturgical language over personal ejaculation. Chadwick disputes the notion that Johnson suffered from religious unbalance, instead viewing his self-accusations of idleness as a natural sense of moral load. The essay explores Johnson's dismissal of the link between poetry and prayer, his fear of divine judgment, and his eventual modest assurance of faith as he faced death.
Williams petitions the Earl of Halifax and the Lords of the Admiralty to examine his method for determining longitude through magnetic needle variations. Williams claims this secret technique improves navigation and requests a formal reward under the act of parliament. Correspondence includes a directive from Clevland to Bradley to investigate these claims and report an official opinion. Williams seeks an interview with Bradley to present his calculations and secure patronage. Johnson provided editorial assistance for several of the included letters.
CGV entry 25:2. The author is John Nichols.
Johnson distinguishes between the "first degree of literary reputation" accorded to original authors and the "benevolence" of editors who retrieve neglected texts. He justifies a new edition of Ascham by emphasizing the necessity of inquiring into "what we have left behind in the progress of knowledge." In a 1776 advertisement for the Spectator, Johnson credits Addison as a benefactor of mankind whose work provides "principles of speculation and rules of practice." His correspondence includes a Latin distich for Banks's circumnavigating goat and a formal appeal to Jenkinson advocating for the "obscurity of perpetual exile" rather than public execution for Dodd. Johnson argues that executing a clergyman harms the "interest of religion" and urges Dodd to focus on repentance for an injury he deems "temporary and reparable" prior to his execution.
CGV entry 25:3. Contains miscellaneous small attributions to Johnson.
A Conjecture on the Early Writings of Dr. Johnson
E. E. A. identifies two anonymous letters published in the 1737 periodical Common Sense and subsequently reprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine as the earliest original writings of Johnson. The correspondent challenges Boswell’s assertion that Cave was Johnson’s first London employer, suggesting instead an early connection with the bookseller Lintot. Citing internal stylistic evidence—including specific lexical choices such as "incatenation" and "effeminates," alongside an authoritative rhetorical mode—E. E. A. argues these moral and political essays reflect Johnson’s nascent style. The text includes excerpts describing the characters Fatuus, Canidia, and Flavia to illustrate the purported Johnsonian prose.
Dubious attribution of essays in Common Sense, 1737.
On William Oldys, arguing for his vindication against the biography published by I. D'Israeli. Oldys was a prominent figure in the history of literature, collaborating closely with Johnson on the Catalogus Bibliothecæ Harleianæ and The Harleian Miscellany. Corney aimed to accurately portray the scholarly efforts of Oldys in abstracting rare books.
CGV entry 25:6. Attributes the dedication to Payne's 'An Introduction to Geometry' to Johnson.
Johnson's prefaces and dedications deserve to be collected for their peculiar rhythm. The Dedication to the Marquis of Abreu in Baretti's 1760 Dictionary is ascribed to Johnson, as it exhibits the same rhythm as the famous opening sentence of Rasselas. The writer argues that the sophisticated English prose style in the dedication is unlikely to have been written by Baretti himself.
CGV entry 25:7. Suggests they be collected and attributes the dedication of Baretti's 'Italian Dictionary'.
On early Birmingham newspapers, information sought by Macray, dating to when Johnson resided there translating Lobo's Abyssinia. The earliest known is a solitary copy of the Birmingham Journal, No. 18, published Monday, May 21, 1733, by Thomas Warren, Johnson's friend. However, the scarcity makes it impossible to know if Johnson assisted Warren in this newspaper.
CGV entry 25:8. Part 1 in the September issue, part 2 in the October issue.
Only a partial reprint of Johnson's translation. This edition omits the lengthy Continuation (Sequel) of the history and the fifteen Dissertations originally appended to the narrative.
Wheatley examines Johnson's prolific activity as a writer of dedications, characterizing him as the "dignified spokesman of others" rather than a "beggar for himself." The narrative highlights Johnson's willingness to compose courtly compliments for friends' works, provided the subjects were "innocent," while remaining too proud to seek such patronage for his own later productions. Wheatley identifies Johnson's 1755 letter to Chesterfield as a pivotal moment in literary history that "demolished" the traditional system of patronage by defining a patron as one who encumbers a survivor with help. Key examples discussed include Johnson’s dedication for Burney's History of Music, described as the "perfection of courtly compliment," and his contributions to works by Dr. James, Mrs. Lennox, and William Payne. The text notes Johnson's claim to have dedicated books to the "Royal Family all round," illustrating his mastery of a genre he personally helped to render obsolete. James Boswell is cited as the primary collector of these "success[ful]" executions of a "special gift."
An Essay on the Origin and Importance of Small Tracts and Fugitive Pieces
CGV entry 25:11. From the 'Harleian Miscellany'.
Dr. Johnson and the 'Gentleman's Magazine'
Johnson's early "hackwork" for Cave's Gentleman's Magazine formed his professional career. He wrote prefaces, poems, and the Parliamentary Debates. This "drudgery" established his reputation as a versatile "miscellaneous" writer and solidified the "dogged honesty" of his literary character.
CGV entry 25:12. Reprinted from English Illustrated Magazine (1899).
Axon describes a rare 1777 pamphlet, Occasional Papers, printed under Johnson's direction to benefit Mrs. Dodd but suppressed at her request. He identifies Johnson as the author of several petitions and the Convict's Address to His Unhappy Brethren attributed to the forger William Dodd. Axon highlights Johnson's strenuous efforts to obtain a pardon for Dodd, citing Hawkins’s biography for confirmation of these events.
Johnson, Goldsmith and The History of the Seven Years' War
Oliver's correspondence concerns the "Preface and Introduction to the History of the Seven Years' War," typically included in Goldsmith's works based on an Isaac Reed manuscript. Oliver shows that this piece is a "re-casting" of articles from the Literary Magazine (1756-1758), specifically "An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain" and "Observations on the Present State of Affairs." Both are works included in Johnson's collected works, leading Oliver to suggest a possible collaboration between Goldsmith and Johnson predating their known meeting in 1761.
CGV entry 25:14.
Chapman investigates the bibliography and authorship of Johnson’s writings for William Dodd, the "Macaroni Parson" convicted of forgery in 1777. Johnson wrote Dodd's speech to the Recorder, petitions to the King and Queen, a petition from the City of London, and The Convict's Address to his Unhappy Brethren. Johnson also compiled a collection of Occasional Papers for Dodd's wife, which was suppressed save for two or three copies. Chapman clarifies which parts of these papers were by Johnson but disputes the Johnsonian authorship of Dodd’s Account of Himself, citing Johnson’s statement that the account was Dodd’s "effusion." Boswell received a series of these writings from Johnson in 1777 and enumerated them in the Life. The article highlights Johnson’s "imaginative sympathy" and his ability to interpret the "bursting of a contrite heart" while remaining "unhoodwinked" by Dodd's "life-long canting."
Johnson’s literary career began in Birmingham following a period of "painful and irksome drudgery" as a school usher. Invited by Edmund Hector, Johnson translated Jerome Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia from a French version by Abbé Le Grand. The translation was completed under physical duress; Johnson dictated the text from his bed while Hector transcribed and corrected the proofs. Published anonymously in 1735, the work earned Johnson five guineas. Johnson’s preface, admired by Burke, emphasizes Lobo's commitment to "scientific investigations" over "incredible travellers' tales." The narrative describes the Jesuit missions to a country "enslaved by the Monophysite heresy" and provides detailed accounts of the Nile’s cataracts and Abyssinian marriage customs. Gleig re-issued the work in 1789 to capitalize on James Bruce’s travels, eventually leading to its inclusion in Johnson's canon. The text suggests that Johnson's early immersion in Lobo’s work influenced the setting of Rasselas and fostered his lifelong "appreciative" attitude toward Catholicism.
CGV entry 25:16. On the translation of Father Lobo.
On Johnson's philanthropic work assisting Zachariah Williams, father of Anna Williams, with his attempts to win a reward for discovering a method to ascertain the longitude at sea. Johnson wrote the 1755 pamphlet, An Account of an Attempt to Ascertain the Longitude at Sea.... The note highlights a newly noticed series of letters in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1787, offered as Williams's original letters, "Some of them corrected, and others written, by Dr. Samuel Johnson." These letters, purchased at Anna Williams's sale, are petitions to various officials like Lord Halifax and the Lords of the Admiralty. While not all were written by Johnson, they contain passages highly characteristic of his "sentiment and in diction," lending strong external and internal evidence to the attribution.
CGV entry 25:17.
Powys examines Johnson’s participation in a 1759-1760 public correspondence regarding the architectural designs for Blackfriars Bridge. Writing in the Gazetteer, Johnson defended the plans of John Gwynn against competitors like Chambers and Dance. Johnson argued for the superiority of the semi-circular arch over the elliptical arch, asserting that 'the first excellence of a bridge built for commerce... is strength.' He contended that elliptical arches, by 'approaching nearer to a straight line,' exert a pressure that is 'almost perpendicular' toward the vacuity below, whereas semi-circular arches direct pressure laterally toward the piers. Although Johnson employed 'geometrical examination' and 'common reason' to demonstrate the structural weakness of the elliptical form, his 'weighty arguments' failed to secure the commission for Gwynn. The text emphasizes Johnson’s conviction that beauty is secondary to durability in civic engineering.
CGV entry 25:18. On letters in the 'Gazetteer' (1759–1760) about designs for Blackfriars Bridge.
Papers Written by Dr. Johnson and Dr. Dodd in 1777, Printed from the Originals in the Possession of A. E. Newton
Proposals for Printing ... Bibliotheca Harleiana
CGV entry 25:20. A facsimile of the 1742 original, with an introductory note by R. W. Chapman.
Father Jerome Lobo Missionary to Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson
Walsh presents Johnson’s translation of Lobo’s adventures, noting that Johnson undertook the task for five guineas while residing in Birmingham in 1735. Despite "hypochondriac despondency," Johnson completed the work, reducing the original French source to one-fifth of its length by Excising extraneous dissertations. In the included preface, Johnson praises Lobo’s "modest and unaffected narration," contrasting it with the "romantic absurdities" typical of other travelers. Johnson asserts that Lobo "consulted his senses, not his imagination," providing a realistic view of human nature as a "mixture of vice and virtue." The subsequent narrative details Lobo’s 1622 voyage, his encounters with "man-eaters" near Pate, and his eventual discovery of the Nile’s source in Sacala. Johnson’s translation emphasizes the physical reality of the river's cataracts and inundations, challenging ancient "airy fabrics of renowned hypotheses" regarding the Nile’s geography.
Johnson's Contributions to Other People's Works
Squire disputes the perception of Johnson as inactive, attributing this reputation to Boswell’s late-life perspective and Johnson’s own self-reproaches. During his early and middle periods, Johnson demonstrated "prodigious" industry by providing prefaces, dedications, and revisions for numerous authors. Squire subdivides these into commercial efforts, such as the preface to Rolt's Dictionary, and acts of "illimitable generosity" for friends like Reynolds, Goldsmith, and Crabbe. The text identifies Johnson as the true author of numerous dedications to the Royal Family, including those in Hoole’s Tasso and Gwynn’s London and Westminster Improved. Squire details Johnson’s interventions in verse, specifically marking his contributions to Goldsmith’s The Traveller and The Deserted Village, and his late-career revision of Crabbe’s The Village. The article also examines Johnson’s "virtuous forgeries" for the condemned Dodd and his editorial support for female authors like Lenox, Masters, and Williams. Squire argues that Johnson’s collaborative efforts link the literary traditions of Pope to those of the Victorian era through his mentorship of Crabbe.
CGV entry 25:22. Reprinted from the London Mercury (1928).
Powell details the bibliographic history of Percy’s Reliques, from its inception to the third edition. He highlights the encouragement Percy received from Johnson and Shenstone, noting Johnson’s role in writing the dedication. The article traces the printing process by Hughes for publisher Dodsley, identifying specific cancels and textual alterations made to sanitize or "improve" the ballads. Powell compares the typography and arrangement of the 1765, 1767, and 1775 editions, establishing the extensive revisions Percy undertook for each.
CGV entry 25:23.
Roberts examines the "literary underworld" inhabited by Johnson from 1737 until the 1762 pension, defining Grub Street as a professional necessity rather than a topographical location. Johnson, arriving with "twopence-halfpenny" and a half-written tragedy, rejected the distinction between "literature for literature’s sake" and "writing for bread," famously asserting to Hawkins that necessity was the only genuine motive for composition. Roberts details Johnson’s apprenticeship under Cave at The Gentleman’s Magazine, where he reconstructed Parliamentary debates from a garret and associated with contributors like Browne and Webb. While acknowledging the "res angusta domi" that compelled Johnson to write, Roberts disputes Macaulay’s depiction of unmitigated squalor, arguing that Johnson’s earnings were statistically fair for the period. The text posits that Johnson’s radical wretchedness stemmed more from his "constitutional" melancholia and "inertia" than from poverty. Grub Street provided Johnson with an "immense knowledge" of humanity and a sense of "clubable" fellowship in the Ivy Lane Club, including friends like Bathurst and Hawkesworth. Roberts suggests that without the pressures of creditors and "printer’s devils," Johnson's monumental contributions—including the Dictionary and The Vanity of Human Wishes—might never have been completed.
Roberts reconstructs Johnson's early professional life in London following his arrival in 1737. Though Johnson 'deemed himself to be more competent than anyone else to write a history of Grub Street,' he confessed to Burney that he never actually visited the physical locality. The narrative details Johnson's transition to a 'professional author,' driven by 'necessity' rather than 'natural impulse,' and his subsequent work for Cave's Gentleman's Magazine. Roberts analyzes Johnson's 'oratorical reconstruction' of Parliamentary Debates and the publication of works such as London, Marmor Norfolciense, and the Life of Savage. The essay challenges Macaulay's 'brilliant' but exaggerated depiction of Johnson’s misery, arguing that Johnson’s distress was rooted in 'his own constitution'—specifically ill-health and melancholia—rather than economic exploitation by booksellers. Roberts concludes that Johnson owed his immense knowledge of 'all sorts and conditions of men' to this period, noting that it was the royal pension, not literary success alone, that 'rescued Johnson from Grub Street.'
CGV entry 25:24. Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine (1928).
This note clarifies the editorial role of Johnson in James Bennet's 1761 edition of Ascham's English Works. It has always been known that Johnson wrote the Life in the volume. However, the author confirms that Johnson was, in fact, the editor, having written many of the notes as well. This information will be further supported by external and internal evidence in the new edition of Birkbeck Hill's Boswell. Bennet himself is noted as an obscure figure and one of Johnson's "humble pensioners." The text also identifies two distinct issues of the book: the first printed in 1761 for R. and J. Dodsley and J. Newbery, and a later, undated issue for T. Davies and J. Dodsley, which omits the list of Additional Subscribers but adds a half-title.
CGV entry 25:26.
CGV entry 25:27. Now reprinted in facsimile and for the first time ascribed to Samuel Johnson. Note by R. W. Chapman.
Johnson's Works: A Lost Piece and a Forgotten Piece
Chapman argues that the Johnsonian canon remains incomplete, particularly for the years 1745–1746. He presents Proposals for Printing... The Publisher (1744), a recently discovered folio leaf, as a work of Johnson. Chapman cites the text's "eminently Johnsonian" argument regarding the preservation of small tracts and the retrieval of literary "flowers" from brambles. He links the project to Crokatt, a bookseller known to Johnson through the Universal History. Additionally, Chapman examines Johnson’s collaboration with Derby on the posthumous works of Pearce. While Boswell acknowledged the dedication to the King, Chapman demonstrates that Johnson also wrote significant portions of the Life of Pearce, intercalating his own commentary into the Bishop's autobiography. These additions include a critique of Pearce’s edition of Longinus and an analysis of the Bishop's controversial attempt to resign his preferments, which Johnson attributes to a genuine desire for retirement rather than vanity.
CGV entry 25:28. The pieces are proposals for 'The Publisher' and the life of Pearce.
[Johnsoniana—selections from Vol. 4 of The R. B. Adam Library]
CGV entry 25:29. Discussed in The Times Literary Supplement, January 29, 1931, page 84.
Hazen identifies Johnson as the author of the preface to Thomas Flloyd's 1762 translation of Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy's Chronological Tables of Universal History. Hazen argues the style is unmistakable, quoting a characteristic sentence: "History is little more than romance to him who has no knowledge of the succession of events." The booksellers advertised Johnson's recommendation, and the text declares history useless without knowledge of event succession. While the book is common in old libraries, the translation was never reprinted. Hazen further observes that Johnson's own copy of this work was sold in 1785 in a lot that included Warton's observations on Spenser.
CGV entry 25:30. On du Fresnoy's 'Chronological Tables'.
Johnson contributed the dedication to Charles Burney's Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey... in Commemoration of Handel (1785). A full text of Johnson's letter to Burney (August 2, 1784) reveals Boswell omitted the section in which Johnson promises his aid. Johnson's letter of August 23 (998.1) refers to his "trouble" in finding a "remote track of thought," indicating the dedication was difficult to write without repeating ideas from Burney's 1776 History of Music dedication.
CGV entry 25:31. On two dedications written by Johnson for Burney.
Dr. Johnson and Burney's History of Music
Balderston attributes the dedication of Burney's History of Music to Johnson, citing evidence from Piozzi’s Thraliana. She notes the prose exhibits Johnson’s characteristic sentence balance and "weighty dexterity." Although music was personally meaningless to Johnson, Balderston argues the work reveals his conversion to a philosophical defense of the art based on the universality of its appeal. She contends Burney’s concealment of Johnson’s authorship was a deliberate attempt to protect his own professional reputation from suggestions of excessive literary assistance.
Powell's discovery for the Life of Johnson was a Johnson translation of Crousaz on Pope, published by Cave in 1742. This find confirmed Johnson's claim of translating six sheets in one day, though bibliographical evidence suggests the 1742 book was a re-issue of a distinct 1739 edition.
CGV entry 25:33. On Johnson's translation.
Samuel Johnson's Prefaces and Dedications
Gathers Johnson’s fugitive writings, focusing specifically on his professional introductions and dedicatory epistles. Contents include texts generally scattered or difficult to locate, such as those written for booksellers, friends, and minor literary practitioners like Anna Williams and John Hoole. The volume compiles pieces produced both as acts of generous homage and those created with expectation of monetary reward. Examples of included writings are roughly twenty dedications, the dedication for George Adams’s Treatise on the Globes (1766), and the dedication for Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Seven Discourses. Other contents include the introduction to The World Displayed (1759), the preface to Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, the opening sentence of Baretti's Guide through the Royal Academy (1781), and dedications associated with six works by Mrs. Lennox. The collection presents the initial version of the preface written for Lauder’s Essay on Milton (1747) and the Introduction to the Harleian Miscellany. This compilation supersedes earlier informal gatherings and provided accurate, clear texts of these compositions. The editorial policy emphasizes attribution through internal stylistic evidence, corroborated by known facts regarding Johnson's interests and professional acquaintances. This method results in the inclusion of several texts whose authorship subsequently faced rigorous challenge from later scholars, notably attributions concerning Robert James’s Medicinal Dictionary, where most biographies Hazen ascribed to Johnson were later deemed spurious. The groundwork laid by this resource was essential to the planning and conception of the later complete scholarly edition of the author’s works.
This review examines Allen Hazen’s collection of prefaces and dedications written by Johnson for his friends. The reviewer describes the editorial arrangement as alphabetical by author, supplemented with biographical notes and bibliographies. The review disputes Hazen’s attribution of the Proposals for Baretti’s Poems to Johnson, arguing the use of the word embolden is insufficient evidence. It highlights the inclusion of unpublished letter fragments to Charles Burney and James Burney. The reviewer also questions Hazen’s attribution of the dedication in James Lindsay’s Evangelical History, suggesting the piece has another sound than that of Johnson's particular trumpet. The collection is praised for illustrating Johnson's curious dignity in the administration of flattery and his combination of thorough-going reflection and rapid composition."
CGV entry 25:35. An anonymous review of the book by Allen T. Hazen.
CGV entry 25:35. Review by P. Meissner of the book by Allen T. Hazen.
Rinaker reviews Hazen's Prefaces & Dedications, a book dominated by bibliographical minutiae concerning Johnson's contributions to works not his own. Hazen favors descriptive bibliography over broader literary analysis, showing a preference for details like the presence of a cancel in a book, which he used to support Boswell's attribution of the concluding paragraph in Kennedy's Chronology. The book, organized alphabetically by author/editor, transcribes titles and contextual information but excludes the texts of many major prefaces (including those to Johnson's own works and most Gentleman's Magazine prefaces) to save space or because they lack textual problems. The selective omissions lead the reviewer to conclude that the book provides "too little of Johnson" and may not please students.
CGV entry 25:35.
Chapman calls Hazen's book a notable contribution to scholarship and a critical edition of texts conveniently collected. Hazen is praised for his bibliographer's zeal, which led to important, obscure discoveries. The review confirms that external probability and the test of style remain the key criteria for Johnsonian attribution.
CGV entry 25:35. Review by R. W. Chapman of the book by Allen T. Hazen.
Note on the English Translations of Crousaz' Two Books on Pope's 'Essay on Man'
CGV entry 25:37. An unlikely attribution to Johnson of an essay in Boddely's Bath Journal, December 20, 1762.
The First Magazine: A History of the Gentleman's Magazine
CGV entry 25:38. Contains an account of Dr. Johnson's editorial activity. See also D. Bond in Modern Philology, volume 38 (August 1940), pages 85–100.
Johnson declined Thomas Hollis's 1761 request to write a dissertation for the Society of Arts on the polite and liberal arts, stating he lacked sufficient information. Publisher John Payne sought five guineas for the task, which Johnson was to receive. After Johnson and John Hawkesworth refused the project, a 1763 work, A Concise Account..., appeared. Though its authorship remains contested between Thomas Mortimer and William Shipley, evidence suggests Shipley provided the factual notes for the final publication.
CGV entry 25:39. On the 'Concise Account of the Society of Arts'.
Johnson, Smart, and the Universal Visiter
Botting uses manuscript notes in the British Museum copy of The Universal Visiter, owned and annotated by Ann Gardner (possibly a relative of the publisher, Thomas Gardner), to re-evaluate Johnson’s contributions to the periodical. Gardner's notes, made after 1770, suggest Johnson contributed to every issue from January through June 1756. This chronology supports the idea that Smart's malady began gradually but early, requiring Johnson's aid from the first number. If accepted, Gardner's ascriptions would add three essays—"The life and writings of Chaucer," "Reflections upon the state of Portugal," and "The rise, progress, and perfection of architecture among the Ancients"—to the Johnsonian canon, which Boswell rejected based on internal evidence.
McAdam, Hazen, and Talbot identify a newly recognized prose piece by Johnson: part of an address written for the establishment of the Hereford Infirmary in 1776. A hint in Thrale's Thraliana led to the discovery that Johnson contributed to Dr. Thomas Talbot's third published Address (October 1774), which was essentially a project proposal. The authors italicize four paragraphs in the Address that they argue are unmistakably Johnson's style, demonstrating Johnson's involvement in early provincial hospital charity, an activity previously unknown for Herefordshire.
Boylston Green argues for the attribution of five "Observations" published in Payne's Universal Chronicle between August 19 and September 30, 1758, to Samuel Johnson. The Chronicle is primarily remembered as the journal that published Johnson’s Idlers. Although no external proof exists, circumstantial evidence—Johnson's known relationship to the paper and its profits, plus an earlier attribution by Hazen—makes it plausible. Internal evidence strongly supports the attribution through resemblances in style (generalized openings, logical conclusions, extended parallelism, aphoristic expression, and Latinate vocabulary) and ideas. Specifically, the Observations echo sentiments on the Seven Years' War, Minorca, Louisbourg, and Frederick the Great found in Johnson's Idlers and Memoirs of Frederick. The fourth Observation, criticizing excessive celebration of the Louisbourg victory, drew an anonymous rebuttal, to which the final Observation provided a reply, ending the series. The texts of the five Observations are reprinted for examination.
CGV entry 25:42.
McAdam attributes three newly identified essays to Johnson—the "Weekly Correspondent" series published in The Public Ledger on December 2, 9, and 16, 1760—based on external evidence from Percy's unpublished list of Johnson's writings. These pieces comprise the first and third installments of the series; the second was previously known but attributed to Goldsmith. McAdam argues for Johnson’s authorship based on Percy's reliable testimony and internal stylistic evidence, asserting that the essays "may take its place among the Ramblers and Idlers without fear of comparison." The first essay discusses the proper role of an essayist and the author's persona. The second examines the paradox of wartime luxury and the extravagance of paying high prices for coronation seats, exhibiting parallels to Johnson’s pamphlet on the coronation of George III. The third essay employs the character "Tom Stucco" to satirize the architectural destruction of London’s heritage and the mania for building and demolishing, particularly city gates and the Mansion House, echoing Johnson's letters on the Blackfriars Bridge. Furthermore, McAdam cites internal evidence to argue that Johnson corrected and revised the preliminary address to the public for The Public Ledger.
CGV entry 25:43. On the "Weekly Correspondent" essays in the Public Ledger.
An Addition to the Canon of Johnson's Writings
CGV entry 25:44. Attributes the Preface to the first index of the Gentleman's Magazine (1753) to Johnson.
A Literary Controversy over Tea in 18th Century England
The author examines a letter from Johnson to William Jessop regarding the literary remains of George Abraham Grierson. Johnson expresses a willingness to assist with a proposed publication intended to complete Grierson's unfinished work, noting a deficiency in the English language that Jessop's project might fill. Despite Johnson's offer of an introduction or similar support, the author finds no evidence in Nichols or other bibliographical records that Jessop eventually published the book, suggesting the project was abandoned.
CGV entry 25:46. On possible help with George A. Grierson's literary remains.
Dr. Johnson and Francis Fawkes's Theocritus
Hazen and Mabbott attempt to identify Johnson's contributions to Francis Fawkes's 1767 translation of the Idylliums of Theocritus. Although the Preface acknowledges that Johnson corrected part of the work and "furnished many judicious remarks," specific contributions were previously unidentified. Focusing on Johnson's style and bibliographical probability while excluding material that may be from Joseph Warton, Hazen and Mabbott confidently attribute four specific annotations to Johnson. These include a "new and noble thought" comparing the "protuberant muscles" of a giant to "rocky shelves" under water and a comment labeling a sentiment in Ovid as "puerile." The authors note that the "vigorous exactness" of words like "protuberant" identifies Johnson's hand. Other remarks concerning epitaphs and Milton's "improvements" over Theocritus are listed as "dubious" but "possibly Johnsonian" observations, with a total of six further passages suggested as possible.
The Text of Dr. Johnson's Dedication of Hoole's 'Tasso'
Mabbott examines a textual discrepancy in the third paragraph of Johnson's 1763 dedication to John Hoole's translation of Tasso. While the first two editions use 'Princes of Ferrara,' the third edition changes this to 'Princess,' a variation preferred by Malone. Mabbott supports Prof. Hazen's retention of 'Princes' based on manuscript evidence and historical propriety, noting that Tasso received patronage from both male and female members of the ruling family, making the singular 'Princess' inaccurate.
Provides a comprehensive interpretation of Johnson's journalistic career, defining "journalism" broadly to include all periodical writing. Examines contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, the Rambler, Idler, Adventurer, and miscellaneous periodicals. Positions him within eighteenth-century journalism, showing his development from hackwork to influential essayist and critic. Explores his views on copyright, press freedom, and patronage, shaped by his early experiences.
CGV entry 25:51.
Selections from Johnson's Translation of Father Lobo
Ley provides a scholarly introduction tracing the rise and fall of Portuguese imperial expansion from Prince Henry the Navigator to the seventeenth century. Ley argues the Portuguese were the first nation to attempt making Christianity a world religion, using sea power to build an empire wider than Alexander the Great's. The text highlights the 'human record' of discovery through contemporary accounts, specifically noting that Francisco Alvares's sixteenth-century description of Abyssinian royal imprisonment supplied the central theme for Johnson's Rasselas. Ley details Johnson's first prose work, a 1735 condensed translation of Father Jeronimo Lobo's travels, which Johnson originally suggested to Birmingham bookseller Warren in 1733. Included in the collection is Johnson's lively preface to Lobo, which Ley asserts serves as a salient example of the author's developing style, while Boswell observes the translation itself remains 'insensibly' following the cast of the original thoughts.
An Addition to the Bibliography of Samuel Johnson
Liebert attributes the revision of Henry Lucas's tragedy The Earl of Somerset, published in Poems to Her Majesty (1779), to SJ. Lucas's preface acknowledges the collaboration, and JB's journal confirms SJ's admission that he "revised it" and marked the manuscript, although he claimed not to have struck out much. This identification corrects Hill's previous hypothesis regarding a "poor performance" mentioned in a letter to Taylor, shifting the attribution from Joseph Reed to Lucas.
CGV entry 25:53.
The Johnsonian Canon: A Neglected Attribution
On the "Observations" appended to "A Letter from a French Refugee in America to his Friend a Gentleman in England." This piece on colonial grievances and economic theory was ascribed to Johnson in an addendum to his works published in 1788. Greene argues for its authenticity based on Johnson's apparent role as the magazine's chief political commentator that year and the political and economic views expressed, which are consistent with Johnson's known anti-Whig principles, including a general dislike of restraints.
CGV entry 25:54. "Observations" in the Literary Magazine or Universal Review, June 1756.
Dr. Johnson's First Book: An Account of the Variant Issues of the First Edition of A Voyage to Abyssinia, with a Facsimile of Their Title-Pages
Liebert examines the 1735 translation of Voyage to Abyssinia, identifying a previously unrecorded issue containing the names of J. and J. Marshall in the imprint. Liebert analyzes typographical errors and paper quality to determine the relationship between variant states. The study concludes that the use of a cancel title and price reductions indicate a failed commercial venture, despite the text’s importance as a precursor to Rasselas.
McLeod attributes an anonymous 1738 Gentleman's Magazine article signed "Pamphilus" to Johnson, citing his employment by Cave and the pseudonym's lexicographical associations. The text also identifies the earliest hint of The Beggar's Opera in a 1716 letter from Swift to Pope and argues for Gay’s authorship of a 1718 letter regarding two lightning-struck lovers, despite Pope’s competing claims. Additionally, McLeod explores Gay's deliberate imitation of Congreve's comedic style and character-naming conventions in The Distressed Wife, suggesting Congreve may have assisted in its composition.
CGV entry 25:56. On a letter by Pamphilus in the Gentleman's Magazine, October 1738.
Liebert rejects McLeod’s attribution of a 1738 letter signed "Pamphilus" to Johnson. He criticizes McLeod’s misrepresentation of the original text and corrects historical inaccuracies regarding Johnson’s early career and the publication date of the Dictionary. Liebert argues that the letter’s suggestion that "Knowledge ceases with Existence" contradicts Johnson’s well-documented belief in personal survival after death. He maintains that the prose style lacks uniquely Johnsonian characteristics and urges the exclusion of this "pseudo-Johnsoniana" to protect the integrity of the scholarly canon.
CGV entry 25:57. On the Pamphilus letter of October 1738.
Johnson and Dodsley's Preceptor, 1748
Was Johnson Theatrical Critic of the Gentleman's Magazine?
Greene speculates on whether Johnson was the theatrical critic for the Gentleman's Magazine in the early 1750s. The magazine began featuring a new, "laborious literary criticism," characterized by generalizations rather than playhouse impressions, which C. H. Gray noted. Greene points out a long-overlooked attribution by Chalmers of the 1751 review of Moore’s Gil Blas to Johnson, whose highly balanced and scathing style seems parodic of "high Johnsonian style." If genuine, this suggests Johnson may also have written other highly "Johnsonian" reviews from that period—like those for Mason's Elfrida, Moore's The Gamester, and Francis’s Constantine—which similarly contain characteristic stylistic flourishes and elevated critical judgment, such as the critique of the Greek chorus in the Elfrida review.
Sherbo seeks to admit two new prose pieces into the Johnson canon based on external and internal evidence. The first is an unsigned "Letter to the Authour, etc." published in the Daily Advertiser (April 13, 1739) and the Gentleman's Magazine (April 1739). John Nichols, a later editor, attributed the piece to Johnson. The Letter defends Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine against rivals, particularly applauding its conciseness and originality. Sherbo cites stylistic features, like the "things-words" antithesis and a Johnsonian phrase anticipating later dicta, as supporting evidence. The second piece is an "abridgement of Foreign History" in the Gentleman's Magazine (November 1747), which a correspondent attributed to Johnson. Sherbo argues the style of this abridgement is unmistakably Johnsonian, differing radically from other contemporary accounts in its general, reflective approach.
CGV entry 25:61.
Johnson, Percy, and Sir William Chambers
A Note on the Publication of Johnson's 'Proposals for Printing the Harleian Miscellany'
Kolb corrects the publication date of Johnson's Harleian Miscellany Proposals to December 30, 1743, citing advertisements in the Daily Advertiser. Comparison with a text in the London Evening Post reveals variants from the folio edition described by Hazen, indicating the existence of multiple early states of the text. This bibliographic correction suggests the circulation of two distinct editions of the Introduction. The file also contains unrelated notes on Caxton and American sporting periodicals.
A Possible Addition to the Johnson Canon
Sherbo proposes the review of Keysler's Travels Through Germany... in the Literary Magazine (Sept. 1756) as a possible addition to the Johnson canon. He cites Johnson's known active participation and supervision of the periodical. The attribution is based on internal evidence: Johnson's fondness for travel literature and Keysler's work, a decidedly Johnsonian turn of phrase ("he has visited only those countries which every man visits, and therefore has seen only what every man sees"), his love of biographical material, and the reviewer's thematic interests (hermits, Charles of Sweden, universities) which mirror Johnson's own. Sherbo notes the use of the editorial "we," but counters that Johnson used it elsewhere in the periodical. The review ends with extracts reflecting Johnson's interests, a practice he used in other confirmed reviews.
CGV entry 25:65.
McAdam corrects the misapprehension that Johnson used material from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry to illustrate Shakespeare’s knowledge of balladry before the Reliques was published. The Reliques appeared in February 1765; Johnson's Plays of Shakespeare (1765) appeared in October. The two-and-a-half column note in the Appendix (Vol. VIII) cited as evidence is not Johnson's, and its contents are probably not Percy's. Johnson correctly ascribed the note to Thomas Warton, who wrote it before the Reliques was published and included a "pleasant puff" for Percy's forthcoming "curious collection of antient ballads." Warton used materials (e.g., from the Ashmolean) available to him at Oxford. Johnson's own references to the Reliques elsewhere in the Appendix are unambiguous, citing "Mr. Percy's collection of ballads." Johnson was scrupulous about not raiding the unpublished work of living authors, especially his friends.
CGV entry 25:66.
Johnson's Contributions to the Literary Magazine
Greene re-examines Johnson's contributions to the Literary Magazine (1756-58), arguing that the existing Boswell-Courtney canon is incomplete and haphazardly compiled. By scrutinizing the first five numbers, Greene finds evidence to tentatively attribute a dozen additional articles and reviews to Johnson, based on his distinctive style and consistent anti-expansionist, anti-Pittite political views. Greene notes that during the first few months, Johnson was likely the magazine's almost sole "staff writer," handling political, literary, and scientific matters. He hypothesizes that Johnson's abrupt cessation of regular contributions after November 1756 was due to a political disagreement: the magazine's ownership shifted its editorial stance to a more violently patriotic and pro-war, Pittite line, directly contradicting Johnson's "old Tory" principles.
Tracy's largely positive review details the career of Johnson in Grub Street, noting his work as editor, compiler, and parliamentary reporter for the Gentleman's Magazine. While the reviewer praises the thoroughness of the study, he argues that the work overstates the influence of this period on the later Lives of the Poets. Tracy highlights several small inaccuracies concerning Johnson's biographical work on Savage, specifically dates and financial arrangements, yet concedes that the volume contains useful information, a complete survey of scholarship, and a helpful appendix on the journalistic canon.
CGV entry 25:69. Review by C. R. Tracy of the book by Edward A. Bloom.
Roberts provides a mixed review of Bloom’s survey of Johnson’s early periodical contributions, welcoming the emphasis on Johnson as a professional writer facing the facts of the literary adventurer’s life rather than just a "clubman." He values the study of Johnson’s periodicals and the refusal to distinguish between journalism and literature; however, Roberts finds the study lacks "substantial illustration" of Johnson’s prose and amusing essays. The review disputes Bloom’s heavy focus on Johnson as a solemn moral philosopher, arguing this perspective warps the analysis of the periodical essays and poetry. Specifically, Roberts contends that Bloom fails to recognize the amusing qualities of the Idler papers and misses the power of the poem on Robert Levet, misidentifying its importance as a mere biographical reflection of moral traits rather than a simple, sincere record of affection.
CGV entry 25:69. Review by S. C. Roberts of the book by Edward A. Bloom.
Greene rejects Bloom’s study of Johnson’s journalism as a failed contribution to the field. He criticizes the misleading title and Bloom's reliance on outdated scholarship, specifically nineteenth-century historical readings. Greene disputes Bloom's handling of the Johnsonian canon, arguing that Bloom shows undue reverence for Boswell’s attributions while lacking consistency. He documents numerous factual errors regarding Johnson's bibliography and theology, ultimately characterizing Bloom’s prose as a pseudo-learned jargon that mangles English idiom.
CGV entry 25:69. Review by D. J. Greene of the book by Edward A. Bloom.
Gifford reviews Bloom’s exhaustive and accurate study of Johnson’s journalistic career, extending into his middle years, describing the work as patient and particularly attentive to Johnson’s contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Literary Magazine. While Gifford finds the book estimable and accurate, he argues that its scale is "out of proportion to its uses," noting that its design leads to much compilation of material previously treated by others or a repetition and amplification of what is already familiar. Bloom adds new points, such as an essay leaning on Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, and highlights Johnson’s independence in politics; Gifford specifically praises the "excellent" chapters on the copyright question and the freedom of the press. However, the reviewer notes a "certain limpness" in the critical judgment of poems and concludes that while the book provides a "convenient survey" of the workshop side of Johnson’s life, it lacks vigor.
CGV entry 25:69. Review by Henry Gifford of the book by Edward A. Bloom.
Bloom’s title misrepresents the content, as the study focuses on Johnson’s journalism rather than the initial decade of his London career. Bloom examines Johnson’s contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, associates at Cave’s shop, and editorial work on the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler. Analysis covers Johnson’s views on copyright, press liberty, and book reviewing. Bonnard identifies inaccuracies in evidence interpretation and stylistic flaws but credits Bloom with providing a detailed, modern synthesis of Johnson's journalistic activities.
CGV entry 25:69. Review by Georges A. Bonnard of the book by Edward A. Bloom.
Two New Pieces by Johnson in the Gentleman's Magazine?
Leed proposes two anonymous Gentleman's Magazine pieces as new additions to the Johnsonian prose canon. First, the July 1738 answer to a political query, signed "Pamphilus," is suggested by a letter from Johnson to Cave offering to write "another Query" answer. The answer's style—a blend of political comment, moral essay, and stylistic criticism—is distinctly Johnsonian. Second, "Remarks on Mr. Gay's Monument" (October 1738), also signed "Pamphilus," shows striking similarities to Johnson's "Essay on Epitaphs" (1740) in structure, themes (didactic function, solemnity, impiety), and phrases. These parallels suggest Johnson, rather than a separate author, was reworking his own material.
CGV entry 25:71.
Dr. Johnson and 'An Authentic Account of the Present State of Lisbon'
Greene provides evidence to eliminate a specific text regarding the Lisbon earthquake from the Johnsonian canon. The piece, originally appearing in the Literary Magazine in 1756, was previously attributed to Johnson by Hill and Courtney based on the caustic nature of its concluding commentary. By examining a recently acquired copy of the pamphlet A Satirical Review of the Manifold Falsehoods and Absurdities, Greene demonstrates that the magazine article, including the commentary, is a verbatim reprint of work by an anonymous "Man of Business."
CGV entry 25:72.
Dr. Johnson and the Public Ledger: A Small Addition to the Canon
Kolb attributes a short notice in the Universal Chronicle (January 1760) to Johnson, adding to his known work for the Public Ledger. Supporting evidence includes stylistic similarities and Johnson's contemporary contributions to Newbery's World Displayed. The notice uses characteristic balanced phrasing to argue that a man who serves others with equal advantage to himself creates a reciprocal obligation. Kolb notes that Johnson's Idler essays appeared in the same numbers of the Chronicle. This attribution reinforces Johnson's role as a commercial writer for Newbery, a proprietor of the Universal Chronicle who also published Johnson's major periodical work.
Samuel Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine: Studies in the Canon of His Miscellaneous Prose Writings, 1738–1744
Leed investigates the canon of Samuel Johnson's miscellaneous prose contributions to The Gentleman's Magazine between 1738 and 1744, excluding his poems and parliamentary debates. The work argues for the attribution of several pieces, presenting evidence that strongly supports Johnson's authorship of two essays signed "Pamphilus" and the "Eubulus" letter. It also concludes that Johnson almost certainly wrote the continuations of the "Essay on Du Halde's China" and was likely the primary editor and contributor to the "Foreign Books" section, suggesting that he probably also translated "The Art of Deciphering." The study revises the canon by showing that his essay on the Duchess of Marlborough's memoirs consists of only the first installment.
Johnson and the Harleian Miscellany
Greene challenges the scholarly consensus limiting Johnson’s contribution to the Harleian Miscellany to two introductory essays. By identifying ten prefaces in Volume III signed "J," "J—," or "JO," Greene argues for Johnson’s active editorial role alongside Oldys. Stylistic analysis of these specimens suggests Johnson provided temporary assistance to meet production deadlines. This discovery supports Hawkins’s claim of Johnson’s senior editorship and clarifies the extent of his collaboration with the bookseller Osborne.
CGV entry 25:75. Attributes ten short prefaces signed "J."
Some Notes on Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine
Greene investigates Johnson's extensive and often anonymous contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine during the 1730s and 1740s. He defends the attribution of the "Pamphilus" letters to Johnson based on internal evidence of his sensitivity to insincerity in the language of grief. Greene also identifies Johnson’s hand in various editorial projects, including parliamentary reporting, mercantilist dissertations on wool, and monthly commentaries on foreign history. He argues for expanding the Johnsonian canon by recognizing his "nervous" prose style and moralistic digressions within otherwise trite reports.
Gibbs argues that Johnson, at age 22, translated the first eight sheets of Hermann Boerhaave's Elementa Chemiae, published anonymously on January 10, 1732, as Elements of Chemistry. The translation's self-description, "a Gentleman of the University of Oxford," fits Johnson, who recently left Pembroke College. The publishers John Clarke, Stephen Austen, and bookseller James Roberts connect to Johnson's known circle and his 1744 Life of Savage. Christie's 1785 auction catalogue confirms Johnson owned two copies of this 1732 Leyden edition. Textual analysis shows the translator adapted definitions from Ephraim Chambers's 1728 Cyclopaedia, a work Johnson used as a literary model. Gibbs notes the translation's dedicatory letter to James Boerhaave contains a distinctive "nobility of expression" and an original concluding thought, "we never once thought it tedious," which aligns with Johnson's lifelong passion for chemistry.
CGV entry 25:78. An attribution of a translation of Boerhaave's 'Elementa Chemiae' (1732).
Two Notes on Johnson and The Gentleman's Magazine
Leed presents two notes arguing for Johnson's strong connection to The Gentleman's Magazine (GM) in the 1740s. The first note supports the attribution of the "Foreign Books" section (1741–43) to Johnson as editor and chief contributor. Leed demonstrates a striking verbal and thematic similarity between a Foreign Books note in 1742 and a passage in Johnson's "Account of the Harleian Library" on the veneration of the Northern Nations as "Authors of our Constitution." The second note argues for Johnson's authorship of "The Art of Deciphering," a translation published in the GM (1742). Leed cites Johnsonian phrases and word patterns in the introduction and suggests this work provided the source for Johnson's famous, erroneous remark in his Dictionary about the placement of the letter H.
CGV entry 25:79.
Kolb presents six new candidates for probable or possible inclusion in the Johnsonian canon, stemming from Johnson's prolific years as a writer for hire (1738–1762). Kolb argues for the probable attribution of articles on "Foreign History" in the Gentleman's Magazine (GM) for February 1749 and December 1750, a review of The Reduction of Louisbourg (GM, December 1758), a notice of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1759), a review on Agriculture (GM, July 1760), and the opening paragraph of Foreign History (GM, September 1760). He bases these claims on pervasive Johnsonian style, thought, and parallels. Kolb also explores a puzzling essay, "The Mask" (GM, June 1760), which heavily plagiarizes Johnson's Rambler essays and Boerhaave biography, but ultimately doubts Johnson's authorship due to an explicit self-acknowledgement.
CGV entry 25:81. On short items in the Gentleman's Magazine and elsewhere.
Samuel Johnson's 'Epitomizing' of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia
CGV entry 25:82. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 23 (May 1963), page 4357.
Samuel Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine, 1750–1755
Sherbo argues, through internal stylistic evidence and contextual links, that Johnson's involvement with the Gentleman's Magazine (GM) was significantly greater between 1750 and 1755 than previously acknowledged, possibly including periods of editorial supervision, particularly following Lauder's Milton controversy and surrounding Cave's death. Sherbo proposes numerous attributions, including theatrical criticism (The Black Prince, The Gamester, Boadicea, Creusa), "Foreign History" sections, prefaces, and, crucially, many brief book reviews and summaries appearing in the monthly "Register of Books." He notes a marked increase in such notices and the introduction of critical remarks from December 1750. Specific attributions include reviews of works by Lennox, Moore, Mason, Grey, Richardson, Hogarth, Welch, Fielding ("Pudica"), Scott, Toldervey, and others, suggesting Johnson substantially shaped the GM's critical content during this period before likely withdrawing by early 1756.
CGV entry 25:83. Attributes many short items.
Dr. Johnson's Translations from the French
CGV entry 25:84. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 25 (July 1964), page 449.
Johnson's 'Little Pompadour': A Textual Crux
Kolb disputes the traditional interpretation of Johnson's 20 January 1759 letter to Strahan regarding the composition and sale of Rasselas. Focusing on the phrase "little Pompadour," Kolb challenges Chapman's view that Johnson was reducing his financial demands. Instead, Kolb hypothesizes that Johnson refers to a specific published work, The History of the Marchioness de Pompadour (1758), as a bibliographic model for the physical dimensions of Rasselas. Detailed textual analysis reveals stylistic affinities between the English translation of the History and the Johnsonian mode, including specific vocabulary like "infrigidation" and "vacuity." Kolb suggests Johnson may have translated or revised the History for the bookseller Johnston, using this prior financial arrangement to set terms for his new prince's tale. The study concludes that while the hypothesis remains unproved, the exact physical and chronological correspondences between the two texts support Johnson's intimate involvement with the Pompadour biography.
Samuel Johnson's Proposals for Printing the History of the Council of Trent
Chapple describes the discovery of Johnson’s 1738 Proposals for translating Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent. He establishes Edward Cave as the likely printer through typographical analysis and identifies a rival translator previously misidentified by Hawkins and Boswell. The study analyzes the year-long delay between Johnson's initial 1737 proposal and the commencement of work. Chapple reproduces the preserved quarto leaves and manuscript annotations, detailing Johnson’s early career in London and his relationship with Cave at St. John's Gate during his involvement in this abandoned project.
CGV entry 25:86. On the 1738 proposals.
Bernard supports the attribution of two 1738 Gentleman’s Magazine letters signed "Pamphilus" to Johnson. He identifies stylistic and thematic parallels between the first letter’s remarks on grief and passages in Rasselas and Marmor Norfolciense. Bernard further correlates the second letter’s classical citations and Dryden references with Johnson's known interests and reading habits. He concludes that internal evidence and correspondence with Cave establish both letters as authentic components of the Johnsonian canon.
Johnson's 1735 translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia is not a literal rendering, despite claims by Boswell and Hawkins that it lacks his distinctive style. A collation with the French source, Le Grand's edition, reveals Johnson took "great Liberties"—epitomizing, omitting the non-essential or implausible, and expanding material for clarification, moral instruction, or editorial comment. Crucially, Johnson imposed his own opinions, employing a more structured syntax and formal diction, and shaping the text to subtly express his anti-Portuguese, anti-Patriarch Mendez, and anti-Jesuit biases. This active "creative reshaping" of the source, particularly seen in the introduction of balanced structures, proves that Johnson's style is indeed evident and reveals much about his mind during those early years.
Abbott establishes that "A Dissertation on the Amazons" was a condensed and freely rendered translation of Guyon's lengthy French work. Johnson, who reduced Guyon's three hundred pages to less than twelve columns, infused the text with an ironic, anti-feminist tone, targeting women who challenged the patriarchal social order. He augmented the source by adding details, such as Amazonian mothers condemning their sons to perpetual slavery. Though the existence of the Amazons offered a potentially subversive challenge to male superiority, Johnson countered this by affirming traditional feminine charms in his conclusion.
CGV entry 25:90. On the translation of an essay by Guyon.
Cites Life 1:36.
English Literary Periodicals and the Climate of Opinion during the Seven Years' War
A reference work for studying the critical atmosphere during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). The work analyzes thirty-nine widely read periodicals, providing detailed evaluations and illustrating how differing political and aesthetic orientations influenced the treatment of various topics. This study offers valuable evaluations for both political and literary historians, addressing a long-standing need for systematic analysis of mid-eighteenth-century periodicals.
CGV entry 25:92. Discusses Johnson and the 'Literary Magazine'.
Samuel Johnson's 'Essay' on Du Halde's Description of China
Sherbo proves Johnson’s authorship of an essay in the Gentleman’s Magazine through a sentence-by-sentence comparison with Du Halde’s text. Johnson expands the original preface to defend travel writers and Jesuit veracity. He introduces eminently Johnsonian sentiments, such as the observation that one who resists pleasure easily supports pain. Sherbo highlights Johnson’s skillful abridgment and his use of characteristic diction like glutinous and cohesive. The study reveals how Johnson transformed journalistic hackwork into a vehicle for his own moral interests and biographical insights into Confucius.
No 'Dialect of France': Samuel Johnson's Translations from the French
Johnson viewed translation as a means of commentary and interpretation rather than a literal transmission of text. Johnson frequently took great liberties with his sources, often extensively rewriting them through condensation, abridgement, and rearrangement. Examples, including Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia and "The Life of Father Paul Sarpi," demonstrate Johnson's frequent interpolation of his own biases and attitudes, such as an anti-Catholic stance. The numerous doublets used in Johnson's English renditions often give his text a balance and symmetry absent in the French originals.
Cites Life 1:86, 1:87, 3:7
Common and Superior Sense: A New Attribution to Johnson
Bernard attributes the December 1738 "Observations" in the Gentleman's Magazine to Johnson. Internal evidence includes stylistic parallels to Johnson’s heavy-handed Swiftian irony and specific grammatical strictures later codified in the Dictionary. Bernard identifies characteristic linguistic preferences, such as the rejection of "aversion to" and "was owing," and matches the "open and artless confession" phrasing to Johnson’s Rambler No. 31. These parallels suggest Johnson served as Cave's primary defender against the rival publication Common Sense.
CGV entry 25:98. From the Gentleman's Magazine, December 1738.
Samuel Johnson and Giuseppe Baretti: A Question of Translation
Sherbo investigates the extent of Johnson's contribution to Baretti’s Introduction to the Italian Language (1755) by analyzing the English and Italian versions of the preface. While previous scholars like Hazen and Powell suggested Johnson revised the entire preface, Sherbo argues Johnson wrote only the first two paragraphs. He identifies these as general and introductory remarks written by Johnson in English and subsequently translated into Italian by Baretti. The remaining five paragraphs, which Sherbo identifies as awkward and "uncharacteristic of Johnson's style," were written by Baretti, likely as a literal translation from his own Italian original. Sherbo bases this conclusion on numerous infelicities, double negatives, and awkward prepositional uses in these sections. He further notes that Baretti used terms such as "tumorous" and "puerility" in ways that differ from Johnson's documented usage. Sherbo concludes that Johnson provided the general opening and then handed the task back to Baretti, whose poor prose quality accounts for the remainder of the piece.
CGV entry 25:100.
CGV entry 25:101. Suggests Johnson was probably the author of the last public speech of Dr. William King on July 8, 1763.
The History of Nadir Shah: A New Attribution to Johnson
CGV entry 25:103. On the "Essay on Epitaphs" (1740) and catches in the form of epitaphs.
Doctor Samuel Johnson and the Principal of St. Mary Hall
CGV entry 25:105. Argues that Dr. William King, not Johnson, was the author of the oration at Oxford on 8 July 1763.
Some Observations on Johnson's Prefaces and Dedications
Sherbo analyzes the prefaces, dedications, and introductions Johnson wrote as a literary 'hack' for friends and colleagues. Sherbo disputes the notion that these were merely perfunctory tasks, demonstrating instead that Johnson used these smaller forms to articulate significant critical theories and moral positions. The article categorizes these writings into those providing historical context, those offering moral defense, and those primarily serving as social or professional introductions for less famous writers. Sherbo observes that Johnson's unique 'magisterial' prose remains evident even when writing on behalf of others, yet he maintained a strict standard of 'accuracy and truth' without excessive flattery. Key examples include Johnson's work for William Payne’s 'Introduction to the Game of Draughts' and various medical and theological texts, which reflect his deep intellectual range and commitment to the 'utility of knowledge.'
CGV entry 25:106. Contains some new attributions.
Dr. Johnson's Advertisement for The Spectator, 1776, and the Source of Our Information about Johnson's Receipts from Irene: Two Notes on a Volume of Johnsoniana Once Belonging to Isaac Reed
Woodruff reports a unique copy of Johnson's 1776 proposals for The Spectator found in a volume of Johnsoniana once owned by Reed. The attribution to Johnson is supported by Reed’s manuscript note and Reed's connection to the European Magazine where it was later reprinted. Woodruff also identifies that the primary source for Johnson's financial receipts from Irene is a manuscript note by Reed in the same volume, correcting Murphy’s acting-night count.
Translation and Annotations of Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man
CGV entry 25:108. A facsimile reprint.
Samuel Johnson, George Cheyne, and the Cone of Being
Johnson, attacking the philosophic optimism based on the "Great Chain of Being" in his review of Jenyns' A Free Enquiry, strategically employed a new metaphor. He substituted George Cheyne's "cone of being" to argue that infinite vacuities exist between any two points in the scale of existence. Johnson achieved this reductio ad absurdum by focusing on the cone's parallel planes and applying Cheyne's concept of infinitesimals, which Cheyne himself did not use for the gaps, while deliberately omitting Cheyne's notion of connecting "Lineaments."
CGV entry 25:110. On the review of Soame Jenyns.
Samuel Johnson's Unpublished Manuscript Notes to Dr. Thomas Lawrence's 'De Natura Animali Dissertatio'
Weinbrot presents Johnson's previously unpublished manuscript notes correcting Lawrence's Latin treatise, De Natura Animali Dissertatio, written in 1782. Lawrence, known for elegant Latin, held Johnson's classical skills in high esteem. Johnson's notes, covering three sections, largely address matters of style, grammar, and word choice. They show Johnson enhancing clarity (e.g., advising parallel construction) and precision (e.g., clarifying "all things" to "everything that exists"). Critically, Johnson revises a generalized statement about death into a poetic, martial metaphor ("Guardian of Life is leaving his post") and reveals scientific curiosity.
Bernard offers evidence that Johnson wrote the preface for J. Elmer's rare Tables of Weights and Prices (1758), published by John Newbery. The preface's lucid, concise, witty style, along with its Johnsonian diction, intellectual distinctions (like between the hundred and commercial hundred), and consistent thematic interest in trade and computation, supports this attribution. The opening formula, asserting the usefulness of tables is "too well known to require Proof," aligns with Johnson's customary prefatorial style. Johnson was known to write prefaces for volumes of tables for Newbery.
CGV entry 25:113. A 1758 Preface to J. Elmer's 'Tables and Weights and Prices, On a New Plan'.
Greene disputes the pejorative classification of Johnson's periodical work as mere "Grub Street" production, asserting that Johnson was a foundational figure in modern journalism. Examining Johnson's fifty-year association with the Gentleman's Magazine, Greene details his roles as Parliamentary reporter, book reviewer, and editorial theorist. Johnson's "Senate of Lilliput" reports and his anti-war crusades in the Literary Magazine demonstrate a commitment to informing a "serious and intelligent middle-class audience." Greene highlights Johnson’s ethical formulations in the Universal Chronicle, where he defined the journalist as a fallible yet truth-bound historian. By addressing "women, shopkeepers, and artisans" and insisting on the public's right to national information, Johnson implemented a "democratic" mode of communication. Greene concludes that Johnson’s ability to "disentangle confusion" and his professional stamina in meeting deadlines make him perhaps the first modern journalist.
CGV entry 25:114. First published in the Humanities Association Review, volume 27 (1976), pages 441-457.
Johnson's Criticism of the Foundling Hospital and Its Consequences
McClure examines Johnson’s criticism of plays like Edward Moore’s The Foundling (1748) and Goldsmith’s poem The Deserted Village (1770), arguing Johnson judged art by a universal standard emphasizing the general truths of life. In the prologue he wrote for The Foundling, Johnson dismisses the play's reliance on specific, improbable events and calls for drama to present an enduring "universal image" of human behavior, thus urging the audience to transcend sensationalism. Similarly, concerning The Deserted Village, Johnson’s famous contribution of the last four lines transforms the poem’s lament over a specific, localized social ill into a universal moral lesson on the destructive power of luxury and wealth, demonstrating his consistent critical demand for general, instructive application.
CGV entry 25:115. Concerning Johnson's reply in the 'Literary Magazine' to Jonas Hanway.
The Lauder Controversy and the Jacobite Cause
Marcuse connects William Lauder's attack on Milton's Paradise Lost to the Jacobite movement, arguing Lauder's motive was political propaganda, not mere literary fraud. Drawing on newly discovered letters and a misdated contemporary biography, Marcuse establishes that Lauder’s career change in 1745 coincided with the "Forty-Five" rebellion, and he solicited support from Jacobite Secretary John Murray for his work. Lauder suppressed the political animus in his London publications to court patronage but later revealed his Jacobite motive in King Charles I. Vindicated, finding favor with Jacobite dedicatees for his subsequent, limited publications.
Johnson and the Penultimate Chapter of Lennox's The Female Quixote
Samuel Johnson: Book Reviewer in the 'Literary Magazine: or, Universal Review'
Eddy chronicles the nature, scope, and duration of Johnson's association with the Literary Magazine from 1756 to 1758. This bibliographical study establishes a total output of thirty-nine book reviews written by Johnson, validating twenty-seven traditional attributions from James Boswell and William Prideaux Courtney, while introducing six additions discovered since 1940 and six new attributions. The text charts how political differences, small circulation figures, and a bitter public controversy with Jonas Hanway over the Foundling Hospital prompted Johnson to quit the periodical in June 1757. Analysis of editorial techniques highlights a unique skill in making faithful extracts, contraction, and purposeful abridgement, demonstrating how Johnson preserved substantive meaning while ruthlessly excising structural verbiage. The monograph details transcripts of every reviewed text's title page, press figures, and library holdings to provide an exhaustive resource for studying eighteenth-century journalism. Chapter I, "Johnson's Contributions to the Literary Magazine," addresses the extensive nature and duration of Samuel Johnson’s professional association with the periodical, arguing that he functioned in an editorial capacity and analyzing the publishing syndicate that financed his multi-genre submissions. Chapter II, "The Books Johnson Reviewed for the Literary Magazine," outlines a detailed bibliographical catalog of the thirty-nine texts that Samuel Johnson reviewed, using transcription data, copy locations, and historical publication contexts to define his specific reviewer canon. Chapter III, "Johnson's Techniques as a Reviewer," argues that Samuel Johnson was an exceptionally skilled reviewer because his distinctive methods of textual extraction transformed convoluted books into densified, well-written prose epitomes that preserved exact core arguments.
Rawson examines this three-volume reprint, which provides the only complete run of the journal available. The review notes the inclusion of Johnson’s reviews of political journals like the Test and Con-Test. Rawson observes that Johnson’s work here exhibits examples of sarcasm and sophistry characteristic of his later political writings. He credits Eddy for providing discreet editorial introductions that incorporate information postdating the Yale editions.
CGV entry 25:118. A review essay (“Jobswell: A Short View of the Johnson–Boswell Industry”) by C. J. Rawson on the book by Donald D. Eddy.
Curley calls the book a worthwhile production of painstaking research. Eddy successfully clears up knotty questions about Johnson's precise role in the periodical, but Curley criticizes the volume for failing to exploit opportunities to relate the reviews' artistry and commentary to Johnson's larger literary career.
CGV entry 25:118. Review by Thomas Curley of the book by Donald D. Eddy.
Kuist's mixed review outlines Eddy's study of Johnson's contributions to the Literary Magazine, noting that Eddy attributes all or part of eight articles and reviews of thirty-nine books to Johnson. Kuist praises the book's accuracy, thoroughness, and utility, particularly the detailed information regarding individual copies and locations of extant texts. However, Kuist finds the book frustrating because of its form, criticizing the proliferation of lists, the placement of endnotes between the final chapter and appendixes, and the insistence on calling the group of printers a syndicate. Kuist asserts the book remains a real contribution despite these structural flaws.
CGV entry 25:118. Review by James M. Kuist of the book by Donald D. Eddy.
Holtz analyzes Johnson's visceral rejection of Jenyns's metaphysical theories, arguing that Johnson’s satiric fury stems from a constitutional empiricism and private psychological distress. Holtz links Johnson's fear of damnation to a classic case of neurotic guilt and an unquenchable need for punishment, potentially rooted in his relationship with his mother. The article explores the triad of angel, man, and beast in Johnson's imagination, noting his fear that descending to a quest for pain constitutes a secular version of damnation. Holtz identifies a cosmic paranoia in Johnson's work, terming the vision of a universe exploiting human pain for divine utility the abominable fancy.
CGV entry 25:119. On the review of Soame Jenyns.
Beckingham traces the bibliographical history and travels of the Portuguese Jesuit Jerónimo Lobo. He focuses on the relevance of Lobo’s accounts to the origins of Johnson’s Rasselas. The study examines the 1669 English translation of Lobo’s treatise on the Nile and Johnson’s 1735 translation of Le Grand’s French version. Beckingham details the complex manuscript tradition of Lobo’s Itinerário and highlights Johnson’s early prose style. He establishes the significance of Jesuit missionary records in shaping 18th-century British perceptions of Ethiopian topography and culture.
Samuel Johnson's 'Soame Jenyns Review': The World Experienced
A Note on Samuel Johnson's Latin School and College Exercises
CGV entry 25:124. For the Members of the Johnson Society of Southern California as a Memento of its First Meeting. With a facsimile, transcription, and translation of a school exercise.
Dr. Johnson, Zachariah Williams, and the Eighteenth-Century Search for the Longitude
Kuhn explores the relationship between Johnson and Zachariah Williams, an elderly inventor seeking a solution for determining longitude at sea. Johnson assisted Williams for years, writing letters to the Board of Longitude and the Admiralty, and ghostwriting a 1755 pamphlet recording Williams’s magnetic variation theory. Kuhn highlights Johnson’s compassionate friendship for Williams and his daughter Anna. Despite the eventual failure of Williams’s instrument, Kuhn argues that Johnson’s involvement reflects a shared sense of solitude and intellectual curiosity within the eighteenth-century scientific landscape.
Lascelles explores Johnson's theory and practice of commemorative writing. Theoretically, Johnson demanded that epitaphs be didactic, solemn, and truthful, famously rejecting "heathen mythology." Lascelles, however, focuses on Johnson's "occasional" tributes. His memoirs, such as the Life of Savage, served as "guardianship" of a friend's reputation. His elegies, like that for Levet, express deep personal loss through "language so general." Johnson seized opportunities to honor fellow craftsmen, inserting a warm tribute to Goldsmith in the Life of Parnell and revising Garrick’s epitaph for Hogarth. Lascelles concludes with Johnson's most heartfelt tribute: the spontaneous, grateful remembrance of his benefactor Gilbert Walmsley.
Liebert identifies a 1761 address by the painters, sculptors, and architects to George III as a work written by Johnson. Appearing in the London Gazette, the address exhibits a "manly" style that distinguishes it from routine loyal petitions of the era. Despite Johnson's "poor eyesight" and general lack of interest in the graphic arts, he served as an adjutant for the Society of Artists. Liebert notes that while Johnson's 1762 preface for the Society is well-known, this earlier address had not been reprinted since its original publication. The text provides a transcript of the address, highlighting Johnson's "stately vision" for the flourishing of the arts under the new monarch.
CGV entry 25:127. The Address of the Society of Artists to George III.
Dr. Johnson, Charlotte Lennox, and the Englishing of Father Brumoy
Gray examines Johnson's contribution to Charlotte Lennox's 1759 team translation of Père Pierre Brumoy's Le Théâtre des Grecs. Johnson, who enjoyed translating French for both professional and amusement purposes, was asked by Lennox to collaborate, contributing the dedication, "A Dissertation upon the Greek Comedy" (an epitome of Brumoy's text), and "The General Conclusion." The translation generally adheres to Johnson's stated principle of striving for a compromise between literalness and freedom. Although Johnson's portions are often highly literal, he injects a "special flavor" through Johnsonian sonority and doublets, particularly when addressing themes of satire, licentiousness, and the corruption of government in Athens, anticipating his later critical views.
This Yale Edition volume presents Johnson's translation and abridgment of Lobo's travel account, his first published work. Boswell recounts the work, dictated by Johnson to Hector, was undertaken partly to help Johnson's mental state. The translation is described as an "epitome" where Johnson took liberties, expanding, altering tone, and changing diction. Gold indicates all changes in footnotes. Johnson manipulated the text to undercut the Jesuit's claims of special knowledge and disparage the Portuguese attitude toward native Abyssinians.
CGV entry 25:129.
The chapter narrates a pilgrimage to Lichfield, focusing on Johnson's birthplace and its subsequent preservation as a memorial, funded by James Henry Johnson and Alderman John Gilbert. The travellers inspect Johnson's house, noting its Jacobean structure and former use as a shop for Michael Johnson. They visit the Market Square, examining the marble statue of Johnson and a small bronze statue of Boswell, which features a panel seemingly depicting the pair at the Three Crowns inn. The tourists also visit St. Chad's Church to see the grave and tablets commemorating Lucy Porter and Catherine Chambers, reflecting on Johnson’s affection and sorrow for them. Finally, the travellers inspect the Roman ruins of Etocetum near Wall, Staffordshire.
Dawson attributes the survival of Johnson's reputation to Boswell's unique biographical method. He notes that while Johnson's own writings possess classical merit, the man remains the primary object of interest. Dawson identifies Boswell's gift for recognizing greatness and his willingness to endure insults as central to the biography's success. He describes Boswell's observation as possessing photographic exactitude, capturing Johnson's prejudices, superstitions, and "uncurbed and fearless individuality." Dawson highlights Johnson's role as a typical Englishman who applied blunt common sense to all subjects. The record preserves the essential genius and "great kindly-beating heart" of Johnson for posterity.
Masson details the "irremediable break" between Johnson and Piozzi following Thrale's death in 1781. As Johnson’s temper became "captious, fretful, and extortionate" in old age, Piozzi sought "independence" through her relationship with Gabriel Piozzi. The text describes Johnson’s "stern, though dejected" reaction to the loss of Streatham and his eventual "ignominious" quarrel with his former hostess. Johnson joined the "midge swarm" of critics who despised the marriage, though Masson suggests he might have "silenced the whole" swarm had he chosen to support her. The text concludes with the "ugly" exchange of letters in 1784, where Johnson’s "flagrant egotism" and the couple’s mutual suffering ended a twenty-year alliance.
A Study of the Melancholy in Doctor Johnson
This sonnet praises Johnson as an "intellectual sage" and "Monarch of mind." The poet celebrates Johnson's "sterling sense" and "treasures of wisdom." His enduring virtue is contrasted with the superficiality of "vain Chesterfield," who is dismissed as a "silken slave" and "trifler" at fashion's shrine.
Doctor Samuel Johnson's Views on Originality
A Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to James Boswell, Esq. on His Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with the Celebrated Doctor Johnson
The Shamrock; or, Hibernian Cresses: A Collection of Poems, Songs, Epigrams, &c.
Lines, Written in a Blank Leaf of Johnson's Works
This occasional poem celebrates the presentation of Johnson’s collected works to Margaretta, Countess of Louth. It distinguishes between the "vulgar Lips" of indiscriminate public praise and the "just Applause" offered by a reader of "Taste" and "Elegance." The text asserts that true genius, embodied here by Johnson, draws "Instruction" from "Reproof" and inspires "generous Emulation" in others. By comparing the effect of the Countess’s patronage to the "all-chearing Sun" striking "Memnon’s Statue," the poem suggests that Johnson’s writing gains renewed vitality and "congenial Fire" through the attention of an intellectually refined auditor.
A Critical Edition of Samuel Johnson's 'Taxation No Tyranny' with Introduction
Lougnot provides a scholarly edition of Johnson’s 1775 political pamphlet, contextualizing it within the debates over American resistance and the high-handed policies of Lord North. The introduction explains that Johnson was chosen by the ministry to refute the arguments of the First Continental Congress, resulting in a text that the government subsequently revised and curtailed for political safety. Lougnot chronicles the history of the pamphlet, including Johnson’s reactions to these "evidences of timidity" and his insistence on printing uncorrected copies for his own use. The study identifies significant omitted passages, such as a direct attack on Lord Chatham and a ridicule of Benjamin Franklin’s views on American population growth. Lougnot uses contemporary criticism from figures like Boswell and Anna Seward to illustrate the hostile reception the work received, even among Johnson’s friends. The editorial notes clarify the legal and political arguments Johnson employed to demonstrate that taxation without representation was not a violation of natural rights but a necessary function of national sovereignty.
King Lear in the Eighteenth-Century
The Prose of Dr. Johnson, Its Techniques, Characteristics and Forms (With Special Reference to Its Latin Elements and Johnson's Personality)
Three main approaches to Johnson are biographical, generic and historical criticism. Passages from his works, his distrust of fiction, and his love of biography recommend the first. His original readers' ignorance of him, his works' failure to represent fully what we now know of him, and the counter claims of context and genre challenge it. The generic method, which emphasizes the role of the writer as a disinterested barrister, is supported by Johnson's recognition of genre lore and the bulk of personation in his work, but Johnson was devoted to the moral imperative of truth, incompetent in role-playing, and consistent in his expressed opinions. Historical criticism, which notes Johnson's artistic aim of instruction by delight, over-values didacticism, and is aesthetically incomplete. Each method is pertinent only as it clarifies the appeal of his texts to an ideal untutored reader. The biographer may use Johnson's works to explain his life, the critic should use his biography to interpret his works. Despite their different dispositions and their historical inaccuracies, the main authorities for Johnson's life and character concur about his personality. They admit his remarkable aggression, but also insist on his almost indiscriminate charity, Johnson's aggression is the mark of a man critically insure of his worth. Johnson was essentially solitary, and hostile, even in dealings with his mother and wife. Freudians give the best descriptive elucidation of his behaviour, that he suffered from an obsessional neurosis. This view of Johnson's character suggests what to expect in his prose; a controlled use of language, which avoids authorial inferiority, and employs an almost ritually prescribed recurrence of devices. Although Johnson's Latin learning is impressive, he was, like many Augustans, selective in his veneration of the ancients. His imitations of Juvenal suggest that moral caution made him perceive imperfectly Juvenal's ironic tone. Macaulay's view of Johnson's Latinate diction as a defensive public gesture is not fully satisfactory, nor is Nichol Smith's view of Johnson's Latin poetry as a protected means of expressing private feelings, but clearly Johnson does use Latin as a defensive measure. Johnson is in practice a linguistic conservative. His English prose is Ciceronian. His age fostered intellectual conservatism, a belief in human uniformity, and the invariability of moral values. Latin contributes to Johnson's vocabulary, effecting dignity and generality by abstraction and scientific imagery, and to his rhythm where the fixed stress in polysyllables enforces that disciplined formality which the analysis of his personality might lead one to expect. Johnson's images are to be judged not by the standards of an Academy, but by his own five criteria; propriety, generality, coherence, parallelism, and tradition. Johnson's written images are impeccable in propriety, less excellent in generality, and more than adequate in coherence. In parallelism he is seldom to be censured, and his respect for tradition is indubitable. Inconsistency does obtain between his criteria, but he adheres to them closely and pleases our reason without indulging our fancy to excess. By observing these limits he achieves the power of narrow splendid clarity. Johnson's use of and feeling for rhythm has been generally disapproved, perhaps partly because of his critical attitude towards rhythmical effects, his scepticism about the accommodating of sound to sense, and his firm disbelief in literary inspiration, perhaps partly because he excelled in a particular type of rhythm which corresponded to his obsessional personality, but which, in its isochronism, and its use of amplification and expansion contradicts the modem idea of English style. The pleasure given by Johnson's rhythms may be analysed in, terms of novelty, beauty, and greatness, but is particularly located in our perception of a tension between his hard words and rhythms and his easy images and sentiments. He is read with effort, but pleasure. Johnson is to be judged not by his beliefs, which are hardly peculiar to him, but by his manner of expressing them. The age of Johnson revered decorum, and he is justified by a decorum which is neither dramatic nor generic but a common internal verbal fitness, or interior propriety of parts in a sentence. Textual explication of Rambler 145 suggests how Johnson power reveals itself. Ultimately he is to be judged and justified only in our experience of reading him.
Johnson's Life of Lyttelton: A Study of a Literary Quarrel
'Know Thyself': A Translation into English Alliterative Metre of the Latin Hexameters Written by Samuel Johnson on Completing His Revision of the Dictionary, 1772
Wain provides a translation into English alliterative metre of the Latin hexameters Samuel Johnson composed in 1772 upon completing his revision of the Dictionary. The poem begins by referencing Joseph Scaliger’s own lexical drudgery, which Scaliger proposed as a punishment for hard prisoners. Wain captures Johnson’s profound post-labor melancholia, describing a state where the dull doom of doing nothing is harsher than the original task. The text depicts Johnson as still fettered to myself, tormented by vile dreams and the fear that his mind’s strength is merely an illusion. Johnson reckons his resources and finds a conspicuously absent harvest of reasoning, ultimately wondering if he should let his declining years go down to the dark or hurl himself at a new task huge enough for a hero.
John Wilkes and the Repercussions of The False Alarm
McCarthy explores John Wilkes's contentious political career, focusing on his expulsions from Parliament, his re-elections for Middlesex, and his ultimate success in having the expulsion resolution expunged in 1782. It examines the repercussions of Johnson's pamphlet, The False Alarm (1770), which defended the Ministry's actions and claimed Colonel Luttrell was the duly elected member. The study details the fierce attacks on Johnson's pamphlet, criticizing him for his apparent change in attitude regarding government and pensioners. It concludes that Wilkes's controversial actions resulted in precedents securing constitutional rights like the illegality of general warrants and the electorate's right to representation.
The Significance of Dr. Johnson's Irene
Dircks examines Johnson's only tragedy within the context of early eighteenth-century dramatic traditions, specifically focusing on the influences of French neo-classicism and the works of Addison and Rowe. The study identifies a transition in the treatment of love from the Cornelian "love and honor" conflict to the more violent, irrational passions characteristic of Racine . Dircks argues that Johnson incorporates the prevailing "she-tragedy" tradition by using two heroines, Aspasia and Irene, to demonstrate the reactions of virtue and weakness to temptation. While the play adheres to neo-classic rules such as the unities of time and place and the principle of poetic justice, Johnson's execution reveals a non-localized approach that anticipates his later critical rejection of these formal constraints. Dircks highlights the structural tension between Johnson's practice as a young playwright and his mature views as a critic, noting that while the play uses love as a primary motivation, the elder Johnson later dismissed love as a weak foundation for tragedy . The study concludes that although the play effectively delivers "noble sentiments," it ultimately fails as a dramatic piece because Johnson was unable to fuse his moral arguments into successful theatrical action.
Alfred the Great: 'England's Darling' Through the Ages [and] 'The Dress of Thought': Johnson's Theory of Language
Johnson's French Tour: Some Biographical Notes
This inclination for travel had been typical of the Eng- lish for at least a hundred years prior to the dawning of the eighteenth century. It was during this century that the in- clination grew into a passion.2 Englishmen were seen travel- ing in all the leading countries of Europe, whether they were young men making the Grand Tour under the direction of their tutors, or persons of maturity who had come abroad for busi- ness or pleasure.
Some Observations on Samuel Johnson's Theory of Poetry in the Light of Our Present Critical Sensibility
At first sight, only divergency is evident between the seeming regularity, even rigidity of the critical pronouncements of Samuel Johnson upon poetry, and the apparent flexibility, even vacillation of the standards of our modern critics on the subject. In method and outlook alike there seems to be a wide discrepancy. We do not mean to suggest that deeper probing will reveal that the ideas held by the keenest and most influential critic of the eighteenth century are identical with those expounded today: such a forced and false accordance between the two is out of the question. But we are eager to adjudge from a new viewpoint the breadth and soundness of Johnson's theory of poetry. Adequate and enlightening evaluations of his achievements have been made many times in the past, though these have generally regarded him almost exclusively in terms of his historical importance.
An Analysis of the Stylistic Techniques of Addison, Johnson, Hazlitt, and Pater
Gaudet investigates the extent of Johnson's proficiency in the French language and the specific literary influences of French moralists and critics on his work. This study disputes the common perception of Johnson as a purely insular British figure by documenting his lifelong engagement with French texts, beginning with his college years and his first publication, a translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. Gaudet provides a detailed comparison between Johnson and La Bruyère, arguing that the French moralist served as a primary model for the ethical observations found in the Rambler and Idler. The analysis further explores Johnson's complex relationship with Boileau, noting that while Johnson frequently used Boileau as a critical authority in the Lives of the Poets, he also challenged the Frenchman's views on the use of mythology and the structure of the ode. Gaudet uses parallel passages to demonstrate how Johnson adopted French arguments regarding the vanity of wealth, the social habits of the elite, and the nature of friendship to fashion his own critical and moral judgments. The thesis concludes that La Bruyère and Boileau represent the only two substantive French influences on Johnson, as he generally dismissed his French contemporaries, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, for their perceived lack of intellectual honesty and religious faith.
Doctor Johnson and the Philosophical Background of His Age
O'Gorman examines the relationship between Johnson’s thought and the intellectual climate created by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The study identifies the eighteenth century as a period of "naturalistic revolt" that saw the end of religious fighting and the substitution of trade for the pursuit of the good life. O'Gorman maintains that Johnson was not a formal philosopher but a "man of the world" who used common sense to "filtrate" personal notions and arrive at clear ideas. The research analyzes Johnson’s views on the nature of knowledge, which he believed to be natural and valuable because it "perfects the knowing subject." Johnson’s ethical and critical principles are presented as a reaction against the skepticism and "affected style" of his contemporaries. O'Gorman highlights Johnson’s belief that literature should serve a moral purpose, leading him to choose the biographical method to promote piety. The study concludes that Johnson’s intellectual nature "abhors a vacuum," using study and reflection to balance the disparate and often antagonistic doctrines of his era.
Tarmey assesses the influence of Greek and Roman classics on Samuel Johnson's thought, focusing on the extent of his acquaintance and reaction to classical antiquity. It reviews the poor state of eighteenth-century Augustan education, emphasizing its unprogressive and classic-heavy curriculum, and argues that Johnson, a self-made classicist, attained his great knowledge through avid personal study. It examines his preference for Roman over Greek philosophy and his strong interest in epic poetry, social satire (especially Horace and Juvenal), and moral, didactic literature, while noting his comparative indifference to Greek philosophy, lyric, and dramatic poetry.
Samuel Johnson and the Romance of Chivalry
Henson challenges the traditional perception of Johnson as a reductive opponent of the imagination by demonstrating his lifelong "immoderate fondness" for romances of chivalry. This study identifies romance as a significant, though often submerged, influence on Johnson’s sense of identity, his literary criticism, and his creative writing. Henson examines Johnson’s early reading of chapbooks like the "Seven Champions of Christendom" and tracks romance-linked vocabulary and imagery through the "Dictionary". The work explores Johnson's professional connections with "mediaevalist" revivalists and argues that his engagement with Shakespeare and Dryden often responds to their romance elements. Henson presents the Scottish journey as a "vindication" of Johnson's reading, where he encountered the historical basis for gothic fictions among ruined abbeys and feudal castles. Throughout his periodical essays, Johnson identifies with the "northern adventurer" or the deluded Quixote, reflecting his profound anxieties regarding the "dangerous prevalence of the imagination". Henson argues that Johnson’s most abstract prose often contains "vivid, physically concrete" revivals of dead metaphors drawn from romance landscapes and chivalric ordeals. Chapter 1, 'Johnson's Engagement with the Romance of Chivalry,' addresses the development of his "immoderate fondness" for fables and explores whether his primary imaginative influences were classical or romantic. It argues that Johnson’s early reading of chivalric narratives shaped his later authorial identity and critical metaphors. Chapter 2, 'The Dictionary and the Romance,' addresses how the definitions and illustrations in his Dictionary reveal a significant network of meanings connected to romance literature. It argues that these linguistic choices reflect a deliberate alignment with the "heroes of literature." Chapter 3, 'The Quixote Pattern,' addresses the structural dominance of the mock-romantic cycle of enthusiasm and reversal in his major poems and essays. It argues that Johnson’s sympathy for the "errant imagination" links him closely to the figure of Don Quixote. Chapter 4, 'The Power of the Marvellous,' addresses Johnson’s attraction to the "illustrious depravity" and "licentious variety" found in Dryden, Pope, and Shakespeare. It argues that he valued the "enchantresses of the soul" that captured the heart in defiance of rigid critical rules. Chapter 5, 'The Gothic Quest,' addresses how his journeys through Scotland and Wales allowed him to enact the role of a chivalric adventurer. It argues that these travels provided empirical evidence for the real feudal manners underlying Gothic fictions. Chapter 6, 'Conclusion,' addresses the pervasive influence of romance constructions and vocabulary throughout the entire Johnsonian corpus. It argues that the "dance of airy images" remained a central preoccupation of his moral and critical vision.
Milton's Paradise Lost: An Analysis of Representative 17th and 18th Century Criticism with Reference to Johnson
Hart traces the critical reception of Milton’s masterpiece from the personalized judgments of seventeenth-century biographers to the original evaluations in Johnson's Lives. The survey highlights how early commentators like Hume, Dennis, and Addison moved Milton criticism from political and religious condemnation toward serious literary analysis. Hart presents Johnson as the culmination of this critical tradition, applying his own unique standards to a work he regarded as England's most discussed classic. The study explains that while Johnson famously criticized Milton as a "surly republican" and dismissed the pastoral form, his analysis of Paradise Lost was distinguished by its focus on "sublimity" and "great gigantick loftiness." Hart chronicles how Johnson’s biographical method integrated the morality of the author with the merit of the performance, seeking to promote piety through criticism. The work concludes that Johnson’s estimate of the poem remains outstanding for its originality, balancing neo-classic rules with an appreciation for the mysterious elevations of the imaginative mind.
This dissertation falls into two parts. The first is concerned with the data surrounding the preparation, authorship, writing, delivery (never by Johnson himself), and the venue of the preaching of the sermons "left for publication" by Johnson's close friend, John Taylor, and of other sermons printed under others' names in the eighteenth century and since then thought to be Johnson's. The dissertation attributes all but one of these to Johnson, and argues that a manuscript sermon, with corrections in Johnson's hand, be added to the canon of his works. The hand of the main body of that manuscript text is identified as that of Taylor. The second part of the dissertation is concerned with the philosophical, homiletical, and theological context for these sermons, as revealed in the author's other writings and also in his intellectual patrimony. The dissertation analyzes Johnson's religious thought in three categories--the naturalistic, the rational or humanistic, and the specifically Christian.Some of the material of the first part appears in the introduction and notes to the sermons published in the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 14, edited Jean Hagstrum and James Gray (Yale University Press, 1978).
Treatment of external nature in the works of Johnson and Voltaire
An Introductory Study of The Adventurer
McMahon provides a detailed examination of the literary periodical issued between 1752 and 1754, focusing on the collaborative efforts of John Hawkesworth, Joseph Warton, and Samuel Johnson. The study identifies Hawkesworth as the project's director, who wrote approximately half of the essays, while Johnson and Warton each contributed about thirty papers. McMahon presentation of the work emphasizes its success in reflecting the interests, tastes, and customs of the age, noting that it reached six separate editions within twenty-one years. The study investigates Johnson's role as a "majestick teacher of moral and religious wisdom," whose contributions to this venture were close in both time and tone to his earlier work in The Rambler. McMahon analyzes the discrepancies in signatures within various editions and provides a bibliographical account of library holdings and variants of the concluding essay. The work concludes that a study of these essays is essential for a complete understanding of Johnson’s reputation as an essayist and moral philosopher during the mid-eighteenth century.
The Rhetoric of Conversation: Essays on Eighteenth-Century English Criticism of 'Familiar Discourse'
Broadhead surveys the eighteenth-century rhetoric of conversation through three paradigms: Cicero's practical ethics, Castiglione's elegant discourse, and Montaigne's mode of self-discovery. These traditions permeate conversation manuals, logic treatises, rhetoric books, and sermons, focusing on norms like polish, sense, correctness, and virtue. A discussion of major literary figures examines Shaftesbury's gentlemanly discourse as a moral emblem, Chesterfield's emphasis on conversational graces for success, and Johnson's view of conversation as a Christian discipline of the human heart. The study suggests applications to non-discursive works such as Johnson's Rasselas and Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
Clarke provides a detailed account of Johnson’s epic thought during the decline of neo-classicism, challenging the view that Johnson had nothing new to offer to epic theory. The study examines Johnson’s clarification and evaluation of prevalent ideas, such as the success of Milton’s Paradise Lost and the nationalistic desire for heroic poems after the Revolution of 1688. Clarke argues that Johnson’s conservatism in literary theory was not inalterable, as he balanced objective neo-classic principles with an interest in the "original nature" of epic poets like Homer and Virgil. The investigation analyzes Johnson’s incidental remarks on minor English epic poets and his specific epic criticism in the Life of Milton. Clarke demonstrates that while Johnson’s Dictionary defined the epic as a "heroic" narration, his broader critical practice focused on the psychological effect of art on the reader. The study concludes that Johnson used common sense to navigate between formal neo-classic constraints and the emerging subjective elements that would later characterize the Romantic movement.
This enthusiastic review launder Bate's biography as a compassionate, "dead-center" study that treats Johnson's life as a "reassuring lesson in the hard job of living." While noting that Bate adds few new facts to the accounts of Boswell, Piozzi, and Hawkins, the reviewer highlights Bate's use of scholarship and empathy to explore Johnson's psychological struggles, including his "fight against sloth," fear of insanity, and "stratagems of self-defence." The review notes that Bate identifies Johnson as an intuitive precursor to Freud, particularly in his understanding of envy and the non-rational mind. Bate connects formal literary critiques, such as analyses of "The Vanity of Human Wishes," to the real issues of human experience. The reviewer contrasts Bate's warm, personal approach with the "cool, sharp study" produced by John Wain.
Murray proposes a retrospective diagnosis of Tourette's syndrome for Johnson's lifelong movement disorders. Drawing on descriptions by Boswell, Piozzi, and Frances Reynolds, Murray identifies a "symptom complex" of involuntary muscle jerks, vocalizations, and compulsive rituals. Observers noted Johnson’s constant "convulsive starts," whistling sounds, and complex antics when crossing thresholds. Reynolds described Johnson's extraordinary gestures, such as whirling the blind Mrs. Williams about on the steps or making "gigantick straddles" in the middle of a room, which often drew ridicule from onlookers. Murray argues these behaviors were not mere "bad habits" but clinical manifestations of a neurological condition characterized by sudden repetitive muscle twitching and complex motor acts. The article identifies specific behaviors like Johnson's tendency to touch every post in the street, his repetitive "pious ejaculations" or fragments of the Lord's Prayer, and his echolalia as documented by Thrale. Murray notes that while Johnson's intellect remained unaffected, his appearance—often featuring an awry wig and facial distortions—led many to mistake him for an "ideot" or madman. The article concludes that Johnson’s symptoms fit the diagnostic criteria for Tourette's, stating that "had Johnson lived at a later date science would have been able, if not to cure his oddities at least to name them."
James Boswell and the Heroic Ideal: A Study of the 'Corsican Journals and Memoirs' and the 'Private Journals'
Cochrane entry 339. Argues that Boswell uses Paoli as the embodiment of a heroic ideal and employs fictional narrative techniques in 'Corsica' to frame his own quest for greatness.
Margaret Montgomerie: Her Influence on the Life and Writing of James Boswell
Foster examines Margaret Montgomerie's profound influence on the life and work of Boswell during their twenty-year marriage, a crucial period when he wrote The Life of Samuel Johnson. Montgomerie, Boswell's cousin and confidante, provided the stabilizing force that counteracted his erratic temperament, melancholia, and excesses in drinking and gaming. Her patience, understanding, and unselfish encouragement enabled Boswell to attain the peace of mind necessary to complete his major biography. The study details the progression of their relationship, Montgomerie's acceptance of Boswell's proposal and faults, and her role as a capable wife and mother despite her husband's constant struggles and frequent absences.
Cochrane entry 31.
Grant praises Hill's meticulous, literary-focused notes, which elucidate obscure phrases with contemporary literature. The edition corrects a misprinted Latin quotation found in all prior editions of Boswell. The review highlights Boswell’s boundless capacity for enjoyment, derived even from misfortune (hypochondria) and sin (drunkenness and love of executions). The reviewer notes that Hill avoids the "gossip" favored by Croker, focusing instead on identifying obscure quotations and contemporary references. Specific examples of Hill's successful annotations include the explanation of "loplolly" via Smollett and the tracing of a quote regarding Apelles's Venus to Plutarch. The review acknowledges the inclusion of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales. The reviewer concludes that the work fulfills the high expectations of the scholarly community.
Boswell as a Critic of Johnson's Literature
Cochrane entry 221. Lauds Boswell's critical abilities and describes his method of blending biography with literary criticism in the 'Life' as a refinement of Johnson's own practice.
The Miscellaneous Correspondence of James Boswell, 1774–75
Murphy edits 115 letters to and from Boswell during a period of transition in his legal and literary life. The introduction identifies a growing tension between Boswell's Scottish duties as an advocate and his London aspirations as a man of letters. Murphy notes that while Boswell served as a husband, father, and son in Edinburgh, he increasingly sought the "liberty and whim" of London. The collection details Boswell's involvement in the landmark John Reid sheep-stealing trial, which Murphy argues forced Boswell to recognize his inability to thrive within the rigid Scottish legal system. Furthermore, Murphy chronicles the emergence of Boswell's public image as Johnson's companion following their Hebridean tour. The editorial policies preserve original spelling and capitalization while expanding common abbreviations. Murphy records that Highlanders met during the tour, such as Sir Allan Maclean and Donald Macqueen, frequently used Boswell as an intermediary to Johnson to transmit antiquarian artifacts and historical narratives.
Cochrane entry 450.
This approving review of Croker's revised edition commends the abandonment of his previous "objectionable" plan of inlaying external extracts into Boswell's text. The reviewer highlights the inclusion of Boswell's "Tour to the Hebrides" as a necessary part of the biography. The review details a "pretty quarrel" between Croker and Macaulay over small facts and Greek scholarship, specifically disputing the meaning of θνητοί φίλοι. Croker defends his interpretation of "dead friends" by citing Euripides, challenging Macaulay's allegations of a "grossly corrupt" passage. The reviewer also notes the correction of a blunder regarding the publishing history of "Prince Titi." A salient letter from Johnson to Jane Langton is quoted to illustrate his "artist's view of human knowledge" and his concern for his godchild's religious and practical education.
The Literary Nature of Boswell's Journals
Cochrane entry 397. Analyzes Boswell's journals within the 18th-century tradition of the diary as a tool for self-discovery, exploring his use of novelistic techniques and his self-portrayal as a hero of sensibility.
Cochrane entry 227. Examines the complex, often combative friendship between Boswell and Johnson, characterizing the 'Life' as the ultimate literary expression of that relationship.
Studies in Johnson and Education: The Themes of Rasselas and Other Prose
Nussbaum analyzes Boswell's literary opinions, arguing they represent a tension between his admiration for Johnson's neoclassical and didactic principles and his own leanings toward emotion, imagination, and particularity. It examines Boswell's views on drama, finding a preference for pathos and verisimilitude; on history and biography, favoring authenticity and minute detail; and on poetry, where he valued fancy and sensibility over pure reason. The study concludes that Boswell, the Life's author, was an innovative biographical theorist who valued the immediate, personal experience in art and life.
Cochrane entry 609.
On Johnson's reflections on the past, focusing on his views on ruins, classical literature, history, antiquarianism, and customs. Vance argues that Johnson viewed an appreciation of history and tradition as essential for moral strength, self-knowledge, and a successful society. Johnson's journeys, particularly his tour to Scotland with Boswell, reveal his indignation at decay, which he saw as symptomatic of political and moral decline. The work complements scholarship that dispels the "Tory reactionary" stereotype by showing Johnson's regard for the past as a foundation for future progress.
Boswell's Concept of Liberty in the Era of the American Revolution
Null analyzes James Boswell's writings, including his work on Corsica, legal cases, and Life of Johnson, to determine his views on individual rights and the obligations of authority figures. Boswell envisioned an ideal government with a strong, benevolent central power and mutual respect between leader and follower, considering this balance essential for liberty. His support for a strong monarchy, often seen as Tory, paradoxically coexisted with sympathy for rebelling Corsicans and Americans, stemming from his belief that subjects were justified in resisting an authority figure who abused their power or disregarded their rights. The work argues that Boswell agonized over issues of authority and liberty, basing his stance on principles he believed benefitted both ruler and ruled.
Cochrane entry 672.
Samuel Johnson on the 'mental anatomy' of man
The Foundations of Dr. Johnson's Political Thought
Critical Perspectives: A Study of 'Rasselas' and Other Works of Samuel Johnson
Boswell of Scotland: The Importance of the Years Among His Countrymen in Developing His Character
Ansdell explores the formative familial and environmental influences of Scotland on Boswell, arguing that his character was conditioned by a country in social and intellectual transition. The study identifies the lack of harmony between Boswell and his rational, strong-willed father, Lord Auchinleck, as a primary determinant of Boswell's emotional and impulsive nature. Ansdell maintains that Boswell’s religious insecurity and preoccupation with death stemmed from the shifting spiritual climate within the Scottish Kirk, where traditional denunciations were being replaced by the milder "common-sense" sermons of Dr. Hugh Blair. The biographical narrative traces Boswell’s lifelong conflict between his zest for life and his yearning to lead a sensible life worthy of his father's respect. Drawing from private journals, the study concludes that Boswell’s inability to achieve emotional maturity or inner serenity resulted from his early upbringing, which left him perpetually dependent on the qualities of others to compensate for his own perceived deficiencies.
Cochrane entry 22.
Samuel Johnson's Allegiance to Generality: Judgment by Effect
Style in Johnson's 'Rambler' Papers: Through Syntax to Discourse Analysis
Authentic Speech: An Essay with Investigations of the Rhetoric of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and William Blake
Classical Allusion in the Rambler Essays of Samuel Johnson
Nunes examines Samuel Johnson's use of classical allusion in The Rambler, asserting that the classical contexts provide pertinent information essential for a thorough reading of the essays. The study argues that Johnson's rigorous selection, particularly of didactic and moralistic material, reflects both psychological motivation and mental discipline, as he consciously subordinates his classical inclination to Christian belief. By comparing The Rambler's allusions with those in The Spectator, the analysis demonstrates the distinctive cleverness and relevance of Johnson's technique, revealing its function in his creative process and expression of a moral vision.
Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Poetry of Samuel Johnson: His Relation to the Tradition of Neoclassical Imitation
Analyzes Samuel Johnson’s use of ambiguity and ambivalence in his heroic couplet poetry, particularly the imitations London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, by comparing his techniques with those of Dryden and Pope. The analysis determines how Johnson manages the heroic couplet and imitation, identifies sources of ambiguity, and establishes whether these qualities expand the poetic message or are inherent in the couplet form. By examining Johnson’s approach to classical imitation, rhetoric, and syntax, the work assesses his development as a poet and his relationship to the neoclassical tradition.
A study of Samuel Johnson's Irene
This dissertation reassesses the merit of Johnson's Irene, challenging the dismissal of the play's sole 1749 production as an undramatic failure, a judgment largely propagated by Boswell. The study identifies specific influences from earlier dramas—including Barksted's Hiren and Swinhoe's Tragedy of the Unhappy Fair Irene—on character development, plot, and themes of apostasy and divine judgment. It argues that Irene integrates fully with Johnson's literary canon, embodying themes and concepts found in his early poems and later prose. Furthermore, the experience of composing and staging the tragedy directly shaped Johnson's critical principles articulated in The Rambler and The Preface to Shakespeare.
The Imaginative Composition of James Boswell's Grand Tour Journal
Cochrane entry 394. Analyzes Boswell's Grand Tour journal using the conventions of narrative fiction, interpreting the journey as a young protagonist's progression from innocence to experience.
Cochrane entry 611.
Immortality and Rasselas: a study of the idea behind Johnson's apologue
The Tension Between Indolence and Activity in the Works of Samuel Johnson
This dissertation explores the tension between indolence and altruistic activity as the core ethical motivation in Samuel Johnson's works. Johnson's private meditations and moral essays document his lifelong struggle to subdue his "sensual predilection for sloth" and "general sluggishness." The pervasive theme is the necessity of utilitarian labor and steady perseverance, mandated by Christian duty, to avoid spiritual and psychological danger. This personal conflict informs his literary didacticism and connects directly to the moral climate of his age.
The Poetry of Samuel Johnson: A Biographical and Critical Reading
The Language of Humanism: Modes of Argument and Self-Authentication in the Literary Criticisms of Johnson and Arnold
James Boswell: The Imagination of a Biographer
This study analyzes the origins of Boswell's imaginative conception of Johnson's character, arguing that this complex image forms the selective and controlling principle of The Life of Johnson. It examines how Boswell's lifelong struggle with melancholy and skepticism led him to seek a model for a "free, rational, and powerful" man, finding this figure realized in Johnson. Boswell's philosophical detachment, combined with his imaginative faculty (memory), allowed him to record "minute particulars" and conversation to create a living, circumstantial portrait. The resulting dynamic view depicts Johnson's essential piety and intellectual vigor in heroic conflict with his faults, a struggle the biographer believed demonstrated the human potential to master oneself.
Cochrane entry 225.
The Mind of Their Country: A Study of Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt
This Series of Trifles: A Study of the Religious Imperatives of Samuel Johnson's 'Idler'
Capossela explores Johnson's adaptation of the spiritual journal, prayer, and sermon traditions in his religious writings, positing a creative unity between his religious and literary principles. Johnson's personal engagement with these forms results in modifications like the spiritual diary's shift from a collective to a highly individual genre, emphasizing specific self-examination and concrete resolutions over traditional vague reform. He approaches his own prayers with careful literary revision, adapting Common Prayer imagery and phrases to his personal concerns, while his sermons adhere to a dual function as a homiletic and literary form.
Samuel Johnson and the Idea of Originality
Johnson's lifelong preoccupation with originality is essential for understanding his mature literary conception. It demonstrates this interest's evolution across his non-critical writings, particularly the periodical essays, and his principal critical work, Lives of the Poets. The dissertation connects Johnson's views on originality to the "Baconian succession" and the idea of intellectual progress, emphasizing his distinction between originality (improvement, instruction) and mere novelty (amusement). It asserts that Johnson's conception of literary progress, though subtle, extends beyond merely technical advancement in prosody.
CGV entry 10/1:85. Dissertation Abstracts, volume 27 (August 1966), pages 462A-463A.
Samuel Johnson's Essay-Craft and the Formulary Rhetoric of 'Progymnasmata'
Farrokh explores the theme of duality in Samuel Johnson's persona and poetic voice, particularly focusing on the tension between his public moralism and his private emotional life. The analysis details Johnson's poetic technique, examining how his Augustan style is frequently disrupted by personal expressions of anxiety and melancholy, thus revealing a "double-form'd" sensibility. The work demonstrates that this internal conflict informs Johnson's approach to the sublime and the pathetic, ultimately shaping his unique contribution to eighteenth-century poetry and his critical aesthetic.
Explorations: Samuel Johnson as a Moral Psychologist
Samuel Johnson and the Tradition: A Critical Study of His Poetry
The Correspondence of James Boswell and James Bruce
Cochrane entry 442. Presents a collection of mostly unpublished letters between Boswell and his estate overseer, James Bruce, revealing Boswell's life and responsibilities as a landowner and providing a window into his family life and contemporary farming.
Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland' and the Idea of Progress
Eastman analyzes the editorial practices and critical contributions of Johnson in his eight-volume 1765 edition. This dissertation identifies the text of Lewis Theobald as Johnson’s primary printing source while documenting extensive consultation of the first folio and various quartos. Eastman presents Johnson as a stabilizing force who introduced a "precedent of restraint" against the "uninhibited textual revision" of precursors such as Pope, Hanmer, and Warburton. The narrative details the nine-year production delay, noting how the satire of Charles Churchill forced a conclusion. Eastman argues that Johnson's unique recognition of the first folio’s authority over subsequent folios and his "unparalleled candor" in admitting editorial ignorance advanced the "ideal of authenticity." The text highlights Johnson's rejection of poetic justice in favor of viewing plays as mirrors of "human experience." Detailed comparisons show Johnson preserved the "integrity of his text" by rejecting "false glosses" and clarifying obscurities through "lucid notes" and revised stage directions. Eastman concludes that Johnson’s Preface stands as a masterly composition that synthesizes "moral and aesthetic criticism." Chapter 1, 'Preparation and Reception,' outlines the twenty-year history of the edition's development and its mixed contemporary reception, which increasingly distinguished between the inadequate editor and the brilliant critic. Chapter 2, 'The Text,' argues that while the text is technically poor and inherits many unauthorized modifications, it remains superior to predecessors by rejecting most radical departures from authority. Chapter 3, 'Editorial Principles,' addresses the conflict between textual authenticity and perfection, asserting that a return to source materials and a belief in Shakespeare’s fallibility provided a necessary discipline. Chapter 4, 'Criticism,' analyzes formal and informal critical components, highlighting how the synthesis of moral and aesthetic judgment in the Preface and notes identifies Shakespeare as a fundamental mirror of life.
The Process of Definition in Dr. Johnson's 'Dictionary': The Poet, Philosopher, and Moralist as Lexicographer
Larsen explores the lives and significance of the neglected individuals whom Johnson housed, a group Boswell termed Dr. Johnson's ménage. Focusing on Francis Barber, Anna Williams, Elizabeth Desmoulins, and Robert Levett, the study provides comprehensive biographical detail for these "walk-on players" in Johnson's life. It examines the personal and charitable compulsions underlying Johnson's decision to support this heterogeneous assembly, contrasting his domestic privacies with his more famous "Johnson Circle" associates.
The Themes and Techniques of Johnson's 'Rambler'
Worden analyzes the literary artistry and rhetorical strategies of the "Rambler" essays, challenging the view that they are merely grave moral discourses. He argues that Johnson uses "Mr. Rambler" as a fictitious dramatic persona to enlist reader sympathies and create rhetorical distance. The study classifies the essays into "economical" and "literary" categories, examining Johnson's use of irony, paralipsis, and dramatization. Worden demonstrates Johnson's versatility in representing fictional characters and varying his tone to advance empirical explorations of morality. The dissertation highlights how Johnson uses the "technique of more and less" to break down complex ethical issues into manageable proportions. Worden concludes that the dramatized interaction between Mr. Rambler and his correspondents proves Johnson's skill as a literary artist, moving beyond the legend of the literal-minded logician.
Dr. Johnson's Debt to Seventeenth-Century Anglicanism
Some Sources of Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism
Johnson on Shakespeare: A Study of Samuel Johnson's Practical Criticism
On Johnson's profound attachment to and intellectual engagement with younger associates, arguing that these relationships significantly influenced Johnson's thought and perpetuated his legacy. Johnson cultivated connections with figures of varied backgrounds and talents, including Boswell, Garrick, Reynolds, Burke, and Hester Thrale. Examining his role as mentor and surrogate father to numerous young people, including his servant Francis Barber, the work demonstrates that Johnson's circle provided him with continuous intellectual stimulus and affection, alleviating his profound loneliness.
Cochrane entry 652.
Samuel Johnson on Scotland and the Scots
This dissertation examines Samuel Johnson's paradoxical attitudes toward Scotland and the Scots, concluding his animosity primarily resulted from Scottish clannishness, the betrayal of the Stuarts, and the excesses of Presbyterianism. The study analyzes anti-Scottish definitions in the Dictionary and argues Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands prolonged the Ossian controversy. It confirms, however, that Johnson judged individual Scots objectively, often holding individuals like Hugh Blair, William Robertson, and Lord Hailes in high esteem, despite his national prejudice.
Giuseppe Baretti: The Unity of His Italian and English Work
Classical and Neoclassical Background to Samuel Johnson's Criticism of Poetic Style
Generality and Empiricism in the Work of Samuel Johnson
Boswell in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of His Reputation in Britain, 1795–1900
Hubbard determines the literary reputation of Boswell from his death in 1795 to the turn of the twentieth century. He challenges the axiomatic assumption that the biographer received a thorough critical drubbing from Romantic and Victorian critics. Ranging over editions, reprints, and over eighty journals, Hubbard identifies explicit reactions to Boswell’s character and artistry. He notes that while Macaulay and Carlyle supplied the centerpiece of nineteenth-century criticism, their influential attacks did not lessen the commercial demand for Boswell’s works. The study highlights how Boswell's reputation remained intimately linked to Johnson's, with many critics viewing Johnson’s stature as dependent upon the biography. Hubbard documents a late-century shift where Victorians began to see Boswell as a "skillful and conscious workman" whose artistic respectability increased as editors like George Birkbeck Hill superseded earlier, more intrusive editions. Ultimately, the dissertation demonstrates that Boswell's reputation, when separating judgments of character from literary achievement, was substantially better than previously assumed.
Cochrane entry 232.
Samuel Johnson's Journey in the Context of Eighteenth-Century Economic Theory
Irwin analyzes Johnson's economic observations in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, situating his views between the mercantilism of The Preceptor and the liberal economics of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Johnson demonstrates a competent grasp of economic development principles, departing from mercantile dogma, particularly concerning the labor quantity issue of emigration. He advocates for internal economic improvements, including land use, afforestation, and entrepreneurial activity, often showing a humanitarian, moral concern that aligns him more closely with Smith's social vision. Johnson's Journey serves as a detailed economic survey of an underdeveloped Hebridean economy.
Johnson's career featured extensive satire, including London (1738), The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), and numerous periodical pieces in The Rambler, Idler, and Adventurer. This dissertation refutes critics who claim Johnson wrote no "true" satires or that his attacks were always "foiled." It argues Johnson wrote many intensely passionate satires and analyzes their tonal spectrum from humorous teasing against Scots to hostile indignation against Americans. The study examines Johnson's use of various literary forms—or "fictions"—like the beast fable and epistolary style, to structure his satiric strategy.
The Design of Johnson's Rambler: A Rhetorical Study
Johnson's oral remarks, recorded primarily by Boswell, represent a candid, lucid body of eighteenth-century criticism. Johnson often used a literary facade in the Lives of the Poets when writing about esteemed figures like Pope and Dryden, but his oral criticism provided nuance or superior praise, valuing Dryden's imagination above Pope's diligence. Conversely, his severe oral comments on poets like Young and Gray reveal the underlying irony or satire in his more guarded written critiques.
The Aesthetic Basis of Johnson's Criticism
Cochrane entry 645. An analysis of Boswell's prose technique, focusing on his use of visual elements to create memorable portraits, scenes, and dramatic moments.
The Homiletic Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Attribution and Dating from Biographical and Religious Sources
The Poetry of Samuel Johnson: A Study of His Poetic Theory and Works with an Emphasis on the Imitations
Critical Biography from Its Origin Through Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Maddox traces the development of critical biography in English from its hagiographical origins through Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. It surveys early biographers like Bede and Roper, but finds that the promise of the sixteenth century did not fully materialize in the seventeenth. The study presents Johnson's Lives as the first masterwork in the genre, noting his unique combination of biography, character delineation, and extensive literary criticism. Johnson's methodology, particularly his examination of the Metaphysical Poets and Dryden, establishes his pre-eminence as the "Father of Critical Biography."
This presents a sketch of Boswell's life, incorporating new material from his published letters to Temple and the newly revealed Boswelliana notebook. The work defends Boswell's literary reputation against contemporary critics who disparaged his character, arguing his weaknesses paradoxically contributed to the brilliance of the Life of Johnson. Boswell's correspondence reveals his chronic idleness, social vanity, and shifting matrimonial pursuits, contrasting them with his deep reverence for Johnson. It also offers Macaulay’s Encyclopædia Britannica article on Johnson, which analyzes his work as a poet, critic, and lexicographer.
Johnson's 'Brief Lives': Biographies for The Gentleman's Magazine 1738–1742
A Comparative Study of Rasselas, Jacques le Fataliste and Koxkox and Kikequetzel
Challenges the conventional view that Johnson’s literary criticism lacked influence from 1825 to 1910, arguing that his Lives of the Poets, and even his Shakespeare criticism, retained an active, vigorous minority following, enjoying a mild revival from 1875 to 1910. Conversely, it asserts that his reputation declined significantly between 1910 and 1940, primarily due to critics preoccupation with his role as a transitional figure relative to Romanticism, culminating in a critical nadir during the 1920s and 1930s. The current revival dates from 1944, making Johnson a dominant force in modern literary scholarship.
A Shared Way of Thinking: Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and Gibbon on Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics
Samuel Johnson's Fiction: Theory and Practice
A Study of Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism, with Special Emphasis on the Lives of the English Poets
Sir John Hawkins' Life of Johnson: A Reappraisal
IT is said that Johnson, when he heard that Bozzy intended to write a life of him, threatened that he would prevent it by taking Boswell's! This rage of Johnson was doubtless caused by the lamentable manner in which so many great English lives have been strangled by their biographers. For good biographies are even rarer than well spent lives; and many great men have been strangled after death by little men, who have attempted to delineate them, but succeeded only in drawing their own pictures.
Bow Bells: A Magazine of General Literature and Art for Family Reading
A Critical Examination of the Themes of Retirement and Solitude in Selected Prose Works of Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson's Epistolary Essays: His Use of 'Psersonae' in 'The Rambler', ‘The Adventurer', and ‘The Idler'
A Parable of Talents: Samuel Johnson's Criticism of Milton
The Literal Imagination: Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Literature
Cochrane entry 240. Views the 'Life' as a product of its time's demand for objective, verifiable truth, noting how Boswell emphasizes facts while downplaying his own interpretations.
An Epistle to James Boswell, Esq; occasioned by his having transmitted the Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson to Pascal Paoli, General of the Corsicans.
In this review of Kenrick's verse epistle, the reviewer describes how the author "cuts and flashes away" at both Boswell and Johnson. Kenrick censures Boswell for sending Johnson's writings to Pascal Paoli, labeling the gift a "sentimental pestilence" capable of corrupting the simplicity of the Corsican people. The review details Kenrick’s "shocking representation" of Johnson as a moral philosopher, specifically attacking the sentiments found in the 89th number of the Idler. Kenrick suggests that if Paoli truly possesses the virtues Boswell claims, he will "commit the moral works of Dr. Samuel Johnson to the flames." The reviewer also notes Kenrick's strictures on Boswell's "Scotticisms" and his orthography, as well as a "whimsical parallel" drawn between Paoli and John Wilkes. The reviewer remains neutral, referring the "curious and intelligent reader" to the pamphlet itself to decide on the justice of Kenrick's "very disputable premises."
The Great Epistolick Art: Rhetorical Elements in the Letters of Samuel Johnson
'Action' for Johnson, Burke, and Schiller: An Approach to the Unity of Romanticism
Barnouw evaluates Johnson's Rasselas as a thoroughgoing comic and moral satire directed against a priori expectations, detached speculation, and the dangerous self-sufficiency of the isolated imagination. The critique focuses on how both Prince Rasselas and his mentor Imlac maintain an abstract, visual stance toward experience, converting the active life of human hope and desire into static mental constructs that permanently delay engagement with the real world. By analyzing parodic variations of withdrawal, including the Stoic and the philosopher of nature, Barnouw demonstrates that the narrative continually penalizes attempts to evade the temporal, shifting constraints of human action and limited choice. Barnouw disputes traditional views that categorize the text as a morose or debilitating statement on human vanity, validating it instead as a constructive endorsement of practical virtue achieved solely through empirical striving, participation, and social interaction. The chapter positions Johnson's underlying theory of moral imagination as an essential catalytic link to the developing tenets of European Romanticism.
This text validates the authenticity of Boswell’s correspondence with Temple, recovered from a Boulogne shop. It emphasizes Boswell’s total lack of reserve concerning his chronic intoxication, debauchery, and hypochondria. The narrative details his persistent egotism and failed attempts to gain political influence from Pitt. Boswell’s religious inconsistencies and his "Asiatic multiplicity" receive scrutiny. The text affirms Boswell’s unique biographical methodology while documenting his interpersonal friction with Gibbon and his reverence for Paoli.
An Account of Corsica: The Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoir of Pascal Paoli
Boswell’s 1765 arrival in Bastia represents the first British visitation to Corsica, an event motivated by a desire to encounter Paoli and understand the island’s struggle for independence. Boswell records the hospitality of the islanders and the sophisticated culture of Paoli, whose democratic government and personal charisma left a profound impression. During their interactions, Paoli expressed a strong interest in the Johnsoniana related by Boswell. Through subsequent publications, Boswell sought to dispel English ignorance and generate sympathy for the Corsican cause against Genoese and French aggression. He highlights the absolute but popular authority of Paoli and the specific cultural traits, such as the vendetta and clan loyalty, that define the Corsican character. Boswell’s efforts document the intersection of Corsican aspirations with British Mediterranean policy.
Midwestern Journal of Language and Folklore
Boswell, Johnson and a Proverbial Candlestick
Cochrane entry 258. Suggests that Boswell mistook Johnson's allusion to an old proverb ("Tace is Latin for a candle") for a literal anecdote about his schoolmaster.
Purposeful Contrarieties in Boswell's 'Tour to the Hebrides' and in Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands'
Kay examines the relationship between Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands and Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, arguing that the two works serve as complementary components of a unified literary experience. He disputes the practice of valuing one text over the other, noting that Johnson provides a grave, philosophical study of Scottish manners while Boswell offers an invaluable and dramatic look at Johnson himself in an alien environment. The article traces the critical history of both texts, citing scholars like W. P. Ker and Jeffrey Hart to establish the Journey as a highly wrought work of art with a complex organization. Kay explains that the differences in tone and content are purposeful contrarieties that, when read concurrently, provide a complete picture of the 1773 expedition. He concludes that Johnson provides the shrewd reasoning and grave observation while Boswell adds the necessary color, life, and picaresque incident.
Cochrane entry 315.
The Boswell Papers: A Legend of Impropriety
This essay chronicles the improbable history of the Boswell Papers, from their initial suppression by the family due to Boswell’s notorious reputation to their eventual acquisition by Yale University. Boswell ensured their preservation by naming Malone as one of his trustees. The essay details the discovery of the Temple Letters in Boulogne, the influential detraction of Macaulay’s essay, and the crucial roles played by Tinker and Colonel Isham in locating and purchasing the bulk of the papers from Malahide Castle.
Cochrane entry 56.
Boswell and Johnson's Principles of Biography
Boswell's Life of Johnson applies the principles of biography articulated by Johnson in Rambler 60. Boswell adheres to the mandate for an instructive narrative focused on minute details and domestic privacies, gathering data from personal experience and journals. By featuring Johnson's candid conversation and frankly detailing his hero's prejudices and rudeness, Boswell fulfills the crucial admonition against writing a mere panegyric, thereby proving the soundness of Johnson's theory.
Cochrane entry 199.
Johnson and Boswell: The Not So Odd Couple
Sawyer challenges the parasitic view of the Johnson–Boswell relationship, arguing it was symbiotic and interdependent. Despite striking differences in age, class, and temperament, the pair shared Toryism, moral seriousness, and acute melancholy. Johnson acted as a surrogate father and moral guide for Boswell, while Boswell offered admiration, agreeable companionship, and potentially vicarious sexual stimulation to the celibate older man. The relationship successfully culminated in the Life, mined from Boswell's compulsive journal-keeping.
Cochrane entry 616.
A Critical Study of the Transmission of the Texts of the Works of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Boswell at Work: The Animadversions on Mrs. Piozzi
Lustig examines the manuscript of the Life of Johnson to trace Boswell’s systematic revision of his attacks on Piozzi. She argues that Boswell, assisted by Courtenay, deliberately softened his first draft to project professional detachment and protect his own credit. The study reveals how Boswell transitioned from personal scurrility to a more effective critique of Piozzi’s "extreme inaccuracy." Lustig demonstrates that Boswell’s primary goal was to disqualify Piozzi as a rival biographer while maintaining an objective tone to safeguard Johnson’s reputation.
Cochrane entry 226.
Lonsdale provides definitive identities for two figures mentioned in Boswellian correspondence that were previously left unidentified by Waingrow. First, he identifies Mr. Poltinger—referenced in Malone's notes on Piozzi's Anecdotes—as Richard Pottinger (d. 1794), a Clerk of the Privy Seal. Second, Lonsdale identifies Mr. Warltire, who provided an anecdote about Johnson to William Bowles, as John Warltire, a lecturer in natural philosophy and chemistry active in Lichfield around 1770. The text notes that Warltire's published essays on experimental philosophy confirm his historical presence in Johnson's circle.
Cochrane entry 222. Corrects two vague identifications of minor figures in Marshall Waingrow's edition of Boswell's correspondence (item 214).
Reading and Writing: Johnson's Dictionary
Broyard discusses Johnson's Dictionary, arguing that Johnson created the work for "His glory" and for the pleasure of making distinctions, which he considered a major obligation of civilization. Broyard emphasizes Johnson's near-perfect pitch in language and his understanding that language is the "nerve of a nation." He notes that Johnson took on the "blinding" task almost single-handedly, without official institutional support, positioning himself as the English Academy. The *Dictionary* was necessary to address the slackness in English, which Johnson complained had spread "under the direction of chance" and was "exposed to the corruptions of ignorance." Broyard states that Johnson's self-appointed task was to rescue words "on the brink of utter inanity" and restore them to the " blessedness of definition," underscoring Johnson's belief that a society needs a language behind it. The article concludes by recommending E.L. McAdam Jr. and George Milne's modern selection of the Dictionary, providing examples of Johnson's strongly-flavored definitions.
Curtain-Raising Set for 'Samuel Johnson'
Very brief notice, beginning, "Martin Dell, the actor who plays William Shakespeare at Orlando's Shakespeare's Tavern, will play 18th-century author Samuel Johnson, a one-man show to be presented at Shakespeare's during ArtsFest '85. The 45-minute play [was] written by Orlando attorneys Clay Townsend and Steve Johnson."
Donald and Mary Hyde bought Johnson's Bible and other works.
Boswell Helping to Sell an Island: Hebrides Journal Recounts Johnson's Spending 'Most Agreeable' Time There
This report details the sale of Inch Kenneth, a 200-acre Scottish island owned by author Jessica Mitford, which is being marketed using testimonials from Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The narrative recounts the 1773 visit where Johnson declared the "little desert" one of the most agreeable scenes to strike the imagination. Boswell recorded his own enjoyment of oysters and a desire to purchase the "pretty little island" as a summer retreat. The article describes the property’s features, including a Victorian house and a ruined chapel where Boswell prayed and buried scattered bones. It also mentions a Latin verse written by Johnson during the visit. The report provides context on the island's history, naming it after a follower of Saint Columbia, and notes its proximity to Staffa and Fingal’s Cave.
Yale Holds Bicentennial of Johnson's Dictionary
Yale University's Sterling Library marked the two-hundredth anniversary of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language with a bicentennial "birthday party." The observance, arranged by the Yale Library Associates, featured every showcase in the library containing material related to the dictionary. Richard Gimbel, Curator of Aeronautical Literature at the library, lent a set of page proofs illustrating corrections made by Johnson and his six assistants, some of which had never been publicly exhibited before.
Yale University announced today it would sponsor the publication of a new edition of the works of Samuel Johnson. Included would be writings identified as his during the last twenty-five years.
Subscription for the God-Daughter of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Describes Lowe as a "venerable old person" living in Deptford surrounded by "numerous memorials of Johnson." Lowe recounts being carried to Johnson shortly before his death to receive his blessing, recalling her "awe and terror" at his presence. The report mentions efforts by Carlyle and Dickens to support Lowe. The text also notes Johnson’s earlier efforts to "relieve the grand-daughter of Milton," drawing a parallel between Johnson’s historical generosity and the needs of his own descendants.
Tanner examines the tension between Johnson’s moral grandeur and his intellectual refusal to confront the paradoxes of Christian orthodoxy. While praising Johnson’s lapidary style and psychological insight in his essays, Tanner argues that Johnson lacked the courage to apply his own morality to his inherited beliefs. He highlights Johnson's irrational terror of death and his dismissive attitude toward Hume’s skepticism as evidence of a 'willed gloom.' Tanner concludes that Johnson’s inability to integrate sexual and passionate affection into his worldview limited his potential as a novelist and forced a pathological fear of solitude.
The Death of James Boswell, Esq., 1740–1795
Boswell's Account of Corsica 1768: an Edinburgh cancel in a Glasgow book
Carnie demonstrates that a cancel for leaf D2 (pp. 51–2) in the first edition of Boswell's Account of Corsica was printed by Neill & Co. in Edinburgh rather than Robert and Andrew Foulis in Glasgow. Newly discovered printing ledgers from the Edinburgh firm reveal that London bookseller Edward Dilly was billed on 19 February 1768 for printing 1,500 copies of the cancelled leaf. Physical examination confirms that the long primer type used for the quotations on this leaf is a Bain typeface purchased by Neill, distinct from the Wilson type used by the Foulis press. The cancel corrected a misattribution of a quotation from Crebillon to John Home and added Home's name to a later quotation.
Cochrane entry 337. A bibliographical study of the first edition of 'Corsica', pointing out that although printed in Glasgow, it contains a cancel leaf originating from an Edinburgh press.
Andrews details Boswell's 1764 visits to Rousseau and Voltaire during his Grand Tour, portraying the Scotsman as a scalp-hunting seeker of intellectual celebrities. The narrative tracks Boswell's meticulous preparation, including his solemn vow of temporary asceticism before meeting Rousseau at Môtiers. Andrews reconstructs their dialogues on religion, kingship, and cats, noting Rousseau's initial guardedness and subsequent elegant cordiality. The article then shifts to Ferney, where Boswell engaged a sickly but brilliant Voltaire in serious discussions regarding natural religion and the immortality of the soul. Andrews emphasizes Boswell's role as a persistent interlocutor who challenged Voltaire's sincerity and reported Johnson's disdain for the Frenchman. The account concludes by tracing the dissolution of these relationships into farce, highlighted by Boswell's liaison with Thérèse Le Vasseur and his design of the satirical print 'The Savage Man'.
Cochrane entry 634. Describes Boswell's famous interviews with the philosophers Rousseau and Voltaire in 1764.
The Unities Again: Dr. Johnson and Delusion
Hardy explores the influence of George Farquhar on Samuel Johnson’s critique of the dramatic unities in the Preface to Shakespeare. He suggests Johnson’s references to Alexander the Great and the "bank of Granicus" echo Farquhar’s examples from Lee’s The Rival Queens. Hardy analyzes Johnson’s subtle argument regarding theatrical "delusion," contending that Johnson does not entirely reject imaginative engagement. Instead, Johnson posits that while spectators remain "in their senses"—aware that the stage is merely a stage—they participate in a voluntary transference of attention that renders strict adherence to the unities of time and place unnecessary.
Johnson and the State of Common Life [review of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson and Mary Lacelles; Johnson: The Critical Heritage, by James T. Boulton; Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, by Paul Fussell; Samuel Johnson's Sermons: A Study, by James Gray; Samuel Johnson: A Personality in Conflict, by George Irwin; and Samuel Johnson: His Friends and Enemies, by Peter Quennell]
Walker's comprehensive review article examines new Johnsonian scholarship, including Mary Lascelles's Yale edition of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Walker characterizes Johnson's account as "philosophical, generous in spirit, and shot through with a delicate irony." Lascelles's introduction highlights Johnson's "deliberate counterpoise of evidence" and "intensity of concern" regarding the breakdown of feudal Highland society. The review also discusses Paul Fussell's Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, which Walker finds disappointing for its "modish asides" and "laboured" effort to prove Johnson insincere. In contrast, Walker praises George Irwin's Samuel Johnson: A Personality in Conflict for its "persuasive and carefully argued" theory that Johnson's "vile melancholy" was a neurosis caused by repressed feelings toward his mother. Walker notes that Irwin presents Johnson's writing as a "heroic effort at self-analysis."
CGV entry 10/6:352. An anonymous review of the book by Paul Fussell, alongside other works.
Vivies discusses Boswell’s efforts to correct historical inaccuracies in Smollett’s History of England regarding the Corsican struggle for independence. In his Account of Corsica, Boswell notes that Smollett confused Pascal Paoli with his father Giacinto, erroneously attributing an age of over eighty to the younger leader. Boswell further identifies a fictional oath of Saguntine-style self-immolation that Smollett had accepted as genuine. Correspondence from March 1768 reveals Boswell’s diplomatic attempt to reassure Smollett that these corrections were not intended as personal slights. Despite Smollett's reported generous warmth for the Corsicans, his private letters suggest skepticism regarding their ability to resist Genoese and French forces.
Cochrane entry 341.
Bernard supports Boswell's attribution of the May 1739 Gentleman's Magazine address "To the Reader" to Johnson. He identifies a specific Roman military anecdote regarding soldiers practicing with javelins against posts, used as an analogy in the 1739 address. Bernard notes that Johnson recycled this same analogy in Idler No. 2, tracing the source to Vegetius. This recurring use of a distinct classical analogy provides the internal evidence Boswell initially failed to specify for the attribution.
CGV entry 25:91. From the Gentleman's Magazine, May 1739.
Hayes characterizes Boswell as an "ace reporter" whose aggressive and chemical nature extracted "the very best out of a great variety of human beings." He details Boswell’s "remarkable triumph" in uniting Johnson and Wilkes. The article explores the "pathos of his last sad years" marked by "acute loneliness" following the loss of Reynolds. Hayes examines Boswell’s "impetuosity of his amours," his "devoted and loyal wife" Margaret Montgomerie, and his lifelong struggle with "recurrent hypochondria" and excesses.
Phillipson's review of Reed and Pottle's edition of Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck describes the volume as the most important in the series since the London Journal. The highly praised editorial work on this "monumentally chaotic" diary offers a seamless presentation and scholarly nuance exploring Boswell's attempt to use his diary to cope with the onset of middle age and his inexorable confinement to Edinburgh. Boswell likened this suffocating atmosphere to the "Grotta del Cane," contrasting it with the "millennial prospects" London once offered. The review details the "epic portrait" of the dying Lord Auchinleck and the "profoundly unsettled" relationship between father and son. While the text notes Boswell's dependence on his wife, his portrayal of her remains "heavy with guilt," shadowed by his father's influence, and provides a sad portrait of a "homely woman" without the "capacity to say or do the sort of things" that would impress him. Phillipson concludes that the loss of Johnson, his father, and his wife left Boswell's later life increasingly chaotic.
James Boswell's Introduction to Voltaire: An Unpublished Letter from Boswell to Constant d'Hermenches
Courtney presents an unpublished 1764 letter from Boswell to d'Hermenches requesting a letter of introduction to Voltaire. He traces the social connection through Belle de Zuylen and clarifies the timeline of Boswell’s departure from Utrecht. Courtney notes d'Hermenches’s subsequent annoyance at Boswell’s lack of acknowledgment despite the successful use of the introduction at Ferney. The account details how this correspondence facilitated Boswell’s celebrated meeting with Voltaire during his Grand Tour.
Mickle, Boswell, Liberty, and the 'Prospects of Liberty and of Slavery'
Letzring traces the literary collaboration between Mickle and Boswell concerning an unfinished poem on liberty. She examines how Boswell’s enthusiasm for Corsica and Paoli influenced Mickle’s "Prospects," which eventually included tributes to the House of Auchinleck. The study explores why Mickle abandoned this descriptive-didactic work for his translation of The Lusiad, arguing that the epic offered a more prestigious platform for his themes of commerce and freedom. Letzring uses Mickle’s correspondence and manuscript fragments to illuminate his development of the "Epic of Commerce" and his interactions with Boswell and Johnson.
Cochrane entry 336.
Cochrane entry 29. Explores Boswell's family connections, tracing his lineage to the Montgomeries in Ireland and his links to several other prominent families.
The Vanity of Human Wishes as Tragic Poetry
Needham claims The Vanity of Human Wishes is a great tragic poem, arguing against critics who see it as merely "detached" or deny it a "tragic view of life." Using Leavis's criteria of "complexity" and "exploratory-creative language," Needham analyzes the poem's linguistic and rhythmic complexity, particularly in the episodes of Wolsey and Charles XII. The language, often a mixture of "gaiety and stateliness," is not deflating but intensifying, with neither the grandeur nor the irony neutralizing the other. This complexity—or "tragic irony"—reflects Johnson's dual response of insight and sympathy for the characters. The poem's "generality" and "declamatory grandeur" reflect Johnson's belief that poetry should involve the reader and be true to human nature. The conclusion, with its focus on "the willing adhesion of the individual self to something other than itself," is fully implicit in the tragic body of the poem.
Davies presents a previously unreprinted anonymous epigram regarding Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, originally published in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on September 8, 1787. The three-stanza poem satirizes Boswell’s reverent recording of Johnson’s every utterance, regardless of quality. The verses suggest that had Johnson survived to read the account, he would have reacted with the same physical violence he famously directed at the bookseller Osborne.
Cochrane entry 308.
Reprints of Warton's History of English Poetry and a Study of Johnson's Criticism
Lonsdale notes the 1967 reissue of Hagstrum's Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism, originally published in 1952. He describes the work as a useful, if somewhat theoretical volume that remains a significant book-length study of the subject. The text highlights Hagstrum's new preface, which surveys Johnsonian scholarship since the original publication and proposes future directions for investigating Johnson’s critical methodology. The text also briefly mentions the 1968 facsimile reprint of Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry, a pioneering work contemporary to Johnson.
Cochrane entry 388. Identifies a third, more "histrionic" type of role-playing in Boswell's journals, where he would masquerade in one social role to hide another, conflicting one.
The contributor notes that Johnson used his Dictionary to teach linguistic decorum. Although Johnson defined too as likewise, also, he failed to list too as a meaning under the entry for also. This suggests an arbitrary selection of examples and definitions in his lexicographical work.
Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784: Rescuing Johnson from Caricature
Scholars evaluate Johnson’s enduring reputation on the bicentenary of his death, emphasizing a 20th-century shift from viewing him as a Boswellian caricature or a Dickensian grotesque to recognizing him as a profound intellectual and tragic figure. Ricks synthesizes perspectives on Johnson’s psychological depth, his "darker side" involving neurotic fears, and his heroic endurance. Experts discuss Johnson’s lexicographical stability, his poetic affinities with Eliot, and his political integrity as a Tory who challenged colonialism and slavery.
Gregory examines Johnson’s ambivalent relationship with the 18th-century "landscape garden movement." While Piozzi asserted Johnson "hated to hear about prospects," Gregory identifies instances of "positive sympathy," particularly for the "romantic beauties of Ilam" and the "terrific grandeur" of Hawkestone Park. Johnson generally favored "old-style formal" designs, once telling Thrale that "a blade of grass was always a blade of grass; men and women were my subjects of inquiry." However, his "special affection for trees" led him to torment the Scots over their "neglect... of reafforestation." Gregory suggests Johnson’s "defective eyesight" and "distaste for rural sentiment" hindered his appreciation, yet he recognized landscaping as an "innocent amusement" when executed with Shenstone’s judgment.
Johnson's Interest in Mechanical Spinning
Harrison explores Johnson’s technical engagement with eighteenth-century industrial innovation through his mediation for Lewis Paul and John Wyatt. He argues that Johnson possessed a sophisticated understanding of mechanical principles, specifically the power-driven cotton spinning machines developed decades before Arkwright. Johnson acted as an arbitrator in financial disputes involving Cave and James, and he later drafted proposals to implement mechanical spinning at the Foundling Hospital. Harrison emphasizes Johnson’s lifelong respect for the "projector" or technical entrepreneur.
Pains and Remedies: An Aspect of the Work of Samuel Johnson
Wiltshire argues that Johnson's lifelong physical suffering and morbid temperament deeply color his literary imagination, which predominantly conceives of the world through physiological images of pain. Johnson rejects the Romantic notion of enlivening senses, instead viewing the body as a vulnerable avenue for assault. Through a series of startling analogies in the Rambler and his review of Jenyns, Johnson translates social transactions—such as dependence on a patron—into intense physical torments like thirst or mutilation. These metaphors reveal a quintessentially Johnsonian sensibility that identifies human life as a state of endurance.
Brownley analyzes Gibbon’s silence during Johnson’s attacks on the didactic value of history. While Boswell attributed Gibbon's reticence to a fear of Johnson’s combative style, Brownley argues for a conceptual alignment. Evidence from The Decline and Fall and Gibbon’s early journals suggests he shared Johnson’s skepticism regarding humanity’s ability to profit from historical instruction. Gibbon’s silence likely stemmed from basic agreement with Johnson’s view that private passions often extinguish the lessons of the past.
Olson demonstrates how Gibbon borrowed phraseology from Johnson’s Life of Cowley for the fourth volume of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon describes ecclesiastical controversialists as ransacking art and nature for comparisons, mirroring Johnson’s famous description of metaphysical poets. The author concludes that Gibbon either deliberately cribbed or vaguely remembered Johnson's words to critique the poverty of ideas in religious debate.
CGV entry 22:175. On a borrowing from the 'Life of Cowley'.
Samuel Johnson and The Life of Dr. Richard Mead
Abbott argues for the tentative attribution of a 1754 biography of Richard Mead in the Gentleman's Magazine to Johnson. He analyzes Johnson's fascination with scientific lives and his characteristic method of translating and adapting French sources, specifically the Journal Britannique. The study collates the French and English versions, demonstrating stylistic hallmarks such as the doubling of modifiers. Abbott explores Johnson's connection to Mead through the dedication to James’s Medicinal Dictionary and suggests that the biography should be added to the Johnsonian canon as a creative recreation.
CGV entry 13:64.
The Ailments and Physicians of Dr. Johnson
Chase provides a comprehensive medical history of Johnson, tracking his health from birth through autopsy. Chase disputes the notion that Johnson’s physical defects stemmed solely from scrofula, suggesting instead that a combination of bovine tuberculosis, smallpox, and severe birth anoxia caused his deafness, visual impairment, and skin scarring. The narrative details Johnson’s middle-age vigor, including his travels with Boswell, while identifying a large gallstone as the source of his chronic indigestion. Chase interprets Johnson’s late-life convulsions and breathlessness as symptoms of cardiorenal disease, hypertension, and emphysema rather than simple asthma. The account reviews the roles of various physicians, such as William Heberden and Richard Brocklesby, and highlights Johnson’s own medical judgment and stoicism. Regarding Johnson’s psychic troubles and compulsive mannerisms, Chase challenges purely erotic psychological interpretations, proposing that these behaviors likely resulted from neurological damage caused by prolonged anoxia at birth. The study concludes that while Johnson’s physical disabilities hindered a career in teaching, they ultimately freed him to develop his talents as a scholar and philosopher by insulating him from the distractions of the gay world and the social circles frequented by Boswell and Piozzi.
Rawson examines the Yale Edition of Johnson's The Rambler, noting its strong introduction which lucidly sets the work in its biographical context and relates it to essay traditions. However, the review expresses concern over the edition's inconsistent editorial policy, particularly the professed "leanness" of its annotation, which sacrifices necessary information for the sake of avoiding academic pedantry or an archaic style. The reviewer argues that the omission of sources for quotations, explanations of scientific and classical allusions, and consistent cross-references to other Johnsonian works like The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rasselas makes the volumes less useful for the specialist scholars who will primarily use them.
Howard reviews the publication of a facsimile edition of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, characterizing it as a "treasury of English literature" and an "armoury of ideas." Although Howard disputes its utility as a contemporary reference book, citing Johnson’s "unscientific" entries and "fanciful" etymologies, he identifies Johnson as a "writer of the first rank" whose personality permeates the text. The review highlights Johnson’s subjective definitions, such as his attack on the "Commissioners of Excise" and his use of "Irony" to insult Bolingbroke. Howard notes that while the work is "prescriptive, chauvinist, [and] pedantic," it remains a "great anthology" containing over 116,000 quotations. Burchfield, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries, contributes a preface suggesting that Johnson's rejection of "modish vocabulary" set standards to which future lexicographers might return.
Christian explores the 'essentially timeless quality' of the English Midlands locations associated with Johnson, noting that while the region underwent industrialization, the specific sites he frequented remain largely recognizable in character. The narrative traces Johnson's life from his birthplace in Lichfield—described as a 'place of literary pilgrimage'—through his unhappy tenure as an usher at Market Bosworth to his frequent stays with Taylor in Ashbourne. Christian emphasizes Johnson’s lifelong 'Staffordshire speech,' noting his determined retention of guttural vowels and his belief that Lichfield residents spoke the 'purest English.' The text highlights the preservation of Georgian Lichfield, the enduring landscape of Dovedale, and the physical penance Johnson performed at Uttoxeter.
Bernard strengthens the case for attributing the "Remarks" on the corn embargo and the translation of "The Jests of Hierocles" to Johnson. He identifies a unique anecdote regarding Dutch merchants selling ammunition to enemies, appearing in both the "Remarks" and a 1742 Johnsonian debate. Additionally, Bernard provides evidence that Johnson integrated the Hierocles "pedant and brick" analogy into his Preface to Shakespeare, confirming his long-term familiarity with and likely translation of the jests.
CGV entry 25:87. In the Gentleman's Magazine. In two parts: February, page 64; and May, pages 190–191.
Keynes traces the history of an anonymous 1788 letter written by Bishop Berkeley's younger son, George Berkeley, which challenges the attribution of a memoir of the bishop to Johnson. While Boswell famously recorded Johnson's physical dispute of Berkeley's immaterialism, Keynes demonstrates that Johnson respected Berkeley as a profound scholar. The newly surfaced letter, written to John Stockdale, reveals that George Berkeley refused to provide biographical materials to Johnson's biographers to keep Johnson humble. This document proves that Johnson did not write the controversial memoir published in Stockdale's fourteenth volume of Johnson's works, and reveals Johnson's hidden, deep respect for Berkeley's family and legacy.
CGV entry 5:458. Suggests Johnson may have planned to write a memoir of Berkeley.
This book review by Greene enthusiastically praises Wain's Samuel Johnson for retrieving the "real Johnson" from the "Boswellian overlay." Greene argues Boswell created a "Great Cham" archetype that obscured Johnson's deeply humanitarian nature and his life among the poor, labeling Boswell's Life as "hopelessly obsolete" in early sections and "haphazardly connected" later. The review challenges Boswell's reliability, citing his "heavy editorial hand" and his own description of his Collectanea for Johnson's later years as a perfunctory effort to fill gaps. Greene details Boswell's admission of total cessation of correspondence and contact with Johnson in 1770, which necessitated reliance on anecdotes from others, a section Greene calls irresponsible. He attributes Boswell's inflated reputation partly to Macaulay's claptrap ("Eclipse is first, the rest nowhere") and scholars invested in editing private papers. Greene commends Wain for presenting Johnson as a "dedicated professional writer" and for using a contemporary, "current" prose style reflecting the spirit of Johnson's own exuberance.
Pottle requests biographical and genealogical data to clarify references in Boswell’s writings. Inquiries focus on the baronetcy succession of Halkett, the military and landholding status of Becher, and the marriage of Woodfall. Further queries seek identities and dates for Miss Edwards, Lady Knight, and the family of McAdam. Pottle specifically questions the accuracy of existing records regarding Halkett’s title and the marital history of McAdam’s daughters, Margaret and Jean.
Cochrane entry 139.
Sen compares Malone’s 1790 edition of Shakespeare with the 1821 posthumous edition completed by Boswell. He argues that while the 1821 edition contains Malone’s mature revisions, it is compromised by Boswell’s editorial interference. Sen demonstrates that Boswell silently modernized spelling and punctuation and occasionally substituted his own readings against Malone’s notes. The author concludes that neither edition perfectly represents Malone’s ideal text, necessitating a careful collation of both to discern Malone’s true editorial intent.
Vickers disputes the authenticity of anecdotes regarding George Steevens’s Shakespearean rivals that Steevens attributed to Johnson. He demonstrates that a "brutal and fictitious" anecdote in the European Magazine, which mocks an editor’s ability to "select the black hairs from the white ones," actually originates from Steevens’s own anonymous 1770 review of Charles Jennens. Vickers asserts that Steevens "re-furbished two caustic witticisms" to discredit Capell and Collins. This exposure calls into question the veracity of other "coarse and heartless" anecdotes Steevens published as Johnsonian observations.
When Dr. Johnson Revised Terms: Publishing the Dictionary
This chapter examines the career of William Strahan and the evolving structure of the eighteenth-century book trade. Cochrane argues that the roles of printer, publisher, and bookseller were frequently interchangeable, noting Strahan’s strategic acquisition of copyrights to 'emancipate' himself from the 'Slavery' of the booksellers. The text analyzes Johnson’s 1776 letter to Wetherell regarding the Oxford University Press, which details a sophisticated distribution chain involving primary agents, wholesalers, and retail booksellers. Johnson’s proposed profit margins—recommending a 30% to 35% distribution of the ultimate price—serve as a case study for contemporary trade disputes. Cochrane identifies James Dodsley as a pioneer in the modern publishing idiom for selling only his own publications. The account highlights the collaborative nature of the Dictionary enterprise involving five major booksellers and clarifies the historical distinction between a 'Bookseller’s' and a 'Publisher’s' management of literary property.
Cochrane entry 416. Publishes the text of four letters from Boswell to Rousseau that were discovered among Rousseau's papers at the Public Library of Neuchatel.
Boswell's Journal: Source of Quotation Wanted
Pottle seeks the origin of a phrase in a reflective entry in Boswell's journal for 7 November 1775. The passage records Boswell’s self-reproach regarding his habit of employing "coarse raillery" and "lessening ridicule" against others. He identifies the phrase "that uses it" as a quotation and requests assistance in locating its source.
Cochrane entry 355.
See response from M. Letts, 3 Feb. 1940.
Richardson criticizes Quennell’s work as a "diffuse and disorganized" study that functions more as a "coffee-table" ornament than a scholarly dissertation. He argues the text lacks central focus, oscillating between Hester Thrale, Hume, and Fanny Burney while treating other significant figures as mere "bit players." Richardson finds Quennell’s treatment of Johnson’s literary fame perfunctory and his choice of "friends and enemies" arbitrary, noting the virtual exclusion of Boswell. Despite being "elegantly produced" and "profusely illustrated," the book is dismissed as a "pleasantly camp canter through Johnsonian anecdotage."
Johnson and Goldsmith: The Mid-Augustan Norm
How Doctor Johnson Lost His Frown: Alterations to Reynolds's Portrait by Later Artists
'Nobody Loves Me as Johnson Does at Last'
Davis details the eighteen-year intimacy between Johnson and Hester Thrale, emphasizing her role as his primary domestic support and confidante. He describes Johnson’s reliance on Thrale to manage his dread of insanity, noting her possession of padlocks used to restrain him during breakdowns. Davis addresses the social scandal of Thrale’s second marriage to Piozzi, which caused a permanent rift with Johnson and London society. He highlights Thrale’s "Thraliana" diary as a vital record of their circle and concludes that her maternal devotion was essential to Johnson’s well-being until his death.
'Beyond the Reach of Art': Reason and Nature in Some Augustan Verse Images
Cochrane entry 521. Details Boswell's meetings with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and provides the text of their conversations as recorded by Boswell.
Price found a contemporary reference to Boswell in the Fenton MSS. at Cardiff Central Library. The note, in Richard Fenton's hand, describes calling on Boswell in 1772, finding him a polite, well-looking man. Fenton later saw Boswell altered, of a "quizzish appearance," and so abstracted during his work on Johnson's Life that he suspected Boswell had lost his reason. A Welsh Circuit Judge, Potter, told Fenton that Boswell was fond of drinking before his death, leading to intoxication and "disgraceful situations," such as being confined to the round house.
Cochrane entry 550.
S. N. requests information regarding a Gavin Hamilton painting of Mary Queen of Scots commissioned by Boswell. A 1775 letter from Boswell to Reynolds discusses exhibiting the work. S. N. seeks the current location of the painting and clarifies the Latin inscription provided by Johnson for the engraving. The query notes possible misprints in the transcription of Johnson’s text.
Cochrane entry 532. A query seeking information about a painting of Mary Queen of Scots that the artist Gavin Hamilton created for Boswell.
Cochrane entry 511. Prints five letters written by Lord Mountstuart during the time he and Boswell were together in Italy, noting that the letters make no mention of Boswell.
Morgan critiques Macaulay’s 1831 review of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, arguing that Macaulay’s assessment suffers from psychological and logical inconsistencies. Morgan rejects Macaulay’s famous antithesis—that Boswell wrote a great book because he was a fool—as a preposterous failure of analysis. He asserts that Boswell’s success stems from industrious research and a unique capacity for total, "warts and all" portraiture. Morgan concludes Macaulay’s malicious distortion of Boswell’s character damaged his own critical reputation.
Cochrane entry 175. Condemns Thomas Babington Macaulay's famous attack on Boswell's character as both malicious and without justification.
Foster’s letter confirms Boswell's authorship of the poem "Piozzian Rhimes," originally signed "Old Salusbury Briar." Foster notes that Pottle previously suspected Boswell wrote the poem, which appeared in The London Chronicle on April 18–20, 1786. The poem was printed on the same page as Boswell's letter attacking Piozzi’s postscript to her Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. This side-by-side publication, along with an entry in Boswell's journal for April 20, 1786, recently published in his private papers, verifies the statement by Lysons and Pottle that Boswell was the author.
Cochrane entry 464.
Pottle confirmed Boswell's connection to Observations on the Minor. Boswell's personal copy, sold in 1893, contained his inscription: "This was an idle performance and written inconsiderately, for I disapprove much of the Minor as having a profane and illiberal tendency." This pamphlet may be Boswell's first published work. The other possible attribution is A View of the Edinburgh Theatre.
Cochrane entry 457.
Cochrane entry 14. Outlines Boswell's life and character as a continual quest for identity and self-control, praising the monumental effort behind the 'Life' and his biographical technique. In three parts, February 1942, June 1943, and July 1943.
Clifford reviews Pottle's James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740-1769, and Walker's edition of the correspondence between Boswell and John Johnston of Grange. Pottle successfully captures Boswell's irredeemable aliveness and energy, focusing on his identity as a Scot of family and his devotion to the law. The review anticipates discussion regarding Pottle's metaphorical characterization of Johnson as a great sullen rock that is hard, massive, fixed, prejudiced. Clifford suggests that while Pottle credits Adam Smith with teaching Boswell the value of characteristic detail in biography, Johnson's influence might appear in the next volume. The Johnston correspondence reveals Boswell's characteristic bounciness and need for self-revelation, counterbalancing the popular portrait of Boswell as a superficial rakehell.
In this letter to the editor, Bennett identifies the source of an anecdote Boswell used in the Life regarding Beaumont and Fletcher being suspected of treason. The playwrights were overheard in a tavern saying, "I'll undertake to kill the King," while planning a tragedy, but an explanation saved them from a charge of treason. Bennett traces this reference to a note by J. Sympson in a 1750 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's work, which in turn cites Winstanley's Lives of the Most Famous English Poets. The letter provides a specific literary provenance for an exchange where Boswell defended the ability of two people to collaborate on a poem.
Cochrane entry 134.
Profile of an Old Independent: Oglethorpe as Seen in the Papers of James Boswell
Spalding examines the Boswell-Oglethorpe connection through notes and fifteen letters held in the Boswell Papers at Yale. Boswell sought guidance from Oglethorpe as a paternal figure, despite often ignoring his counsel on temperance. Although Boswell abandoned a planned biography of the General, his surviving interview notes from 1779 and 1781 reveal Oglethorpe's clandestine service in the Seven Years' War. The correspondence highlights Oglethorpe's whimsical humor and his sharp opposition to the North ministry during the American Revolution. Boswell initially sympathized with the Americans but later questioned the cause, while Oglethorpe remained a staunch critic of British government corruption. Spalding credits Boswell's tact for drawing out the reserved General, providing a flesh-and-blood portrait of a determined leader whose opinions mellowed with age.
Cochrane entry 640.
The Part Played by Horace Walpole and James Boswell in the Quarrel between Rousseau and Hume
Pottle makes accessible previously uncollected newspaper items to clarify the roles of Horace Walpole and James Boswell in the Rousseau-Hume quarrel of 1766. Walpole's sarcastic jeu d'esprit, a purported letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau, precipitated the quarrel. The article also reprints three other satirical French letters, likely written by Walpole, which intensified Rousseau's paranoia, leading him to accuse David Hume of complicity. Boswell's involvement included escorting Rousseau's mistress to England and writing letters to newspapers defending Rousseau and attacking Walpole.
Cochrane entry 501. Prints several letters, possibly written by Boswell, that defend Rousseau during his famous public quarrel with David Hume and Horace Walpole.
Pottle reconstructs the 1760 meeting between Boswell and Sterne in London, drawing upon a 1761 letter in the 'Scots Magazine' and a Bodleian manuscript titled 'A Poetical Epistle to Doctor Sterne.' Pottle demonstrates that Boswell, then nineteen, sought out Sterne during the latter’s first 'Shandian' triumph in the capital. The manuscript reveals that Boswell intercepted Sterne in the Mall to read 'The Cub at Newmarket,' eliciting Sterne’s playful approval and a comparison to Prior. Pottle uses these documents to illuminate Boswell’s early social strategies and his overlapping circles with Sterne, including shared patronage from the Duke of York. The account emphasizes their mutual passion for London's 'beau monde' and explains their subsequent lack of intimacy through a detailed chronological analysis of their conflicting travel schedules between 1762 and 1768.
Cochrane entry 500.
Pottle identifies the shorthand system in Boswell's 1762–63 memoranda as Thomas Shelton's Tachygraphy, the system Pepys used. This discovery, aided by a longhand translation key Pottle found in the Utrecht Memoranda for September 13, 1763, disputes Boswell's claim in The Hypochondriack of an "invented alphabet" or personal "character" and his later denial of knowing shorthand in the Life of Johnson. Pottle believes Boswell never mastered the complex abbreviations of the system and used ordinary script characters as substitutions when he forgot proper signs. While Boswell used Tachygraphy for his cryptographic alphabet, Pottle suggests a different, non-shorthand sentence in the 1761 North Circuit journal represents the only surviving specimen of a truly "invented" secret alphabet and might be the "invented alphabet" Boswell referenced.
Cochrane entry 344.
Pottle examines Boswell's private file of the London Chronicle, noting meticulous markings that distinguish "fact" from "invention" in his journalistic output. Boswell used these prints to orchestrate a sophisticated publicity campaign for his Account of Corsica, even creating the mythic "Signor Romanzo" to stir British sympathy for Paoli. During the Douglas Cause, Boswell employed similar tactics, inventing shorthand writers and puffing his own pamphlet, Dorando, through anonymous reviews. These activities demonstrate Boswell's "fertile fancy" and his penchant for "pure joy of lying" to achieve literary and political ends. Pottle highlights Boswell’s role as a pioneer of media manipulation, using "extraordinary compositions" to fix himself and his interests in the "public consciousness."
Cochrane entry 460.
Parsons explores the apparent paradox of Boswell's social standing, describing him as a gate-crasher who secured lasting invitations through a "balsamic elixir" of intelligent worship. She details his European travels (1763–1766), specifically his calculated self-introduction to Rousseau at Motiers and his "insidious inquiry" to Voltaire at Ferney. The text highlights Boswell's role as a "showman-conductor" for Johnson, particularly during the 1773 tour of the Hebrides, where he managed the aging sage's moods with "reverential flattery." Parsons draws upon recent scholarship, including the Malahide Private Papers and Professor Tinker's 1924 edition of the Letters, to contrast the "arduously sober" biographer with the "frankly animal" private individual. She concludes that Boswell's success rested on a core of "sympathetic sagacity" and an ability to turn even awkward encounters into triumphs of diplomacy.
Cochrane entry 514.
Boswell as a Correspondent; Boswell as Letter-Writer
Redford disputes the status of Boswell as a major Augustan letter-writer, arguing that the correspondence primarily serves as a "documentary source" rather than an "autonomous verbal universe." While acknowledging the historical value of letters to Burke and Johnson, Redford finds Boswell’s style lacks the ironic flexibility and audience awareness seen in Walpole or Gray. The text concludes that Boswell’s primary energies remain in the journal, with the letters serving as "fillips to friendship" rather than formal art.
Cochrane entry 452.
Boswell's Observations on The Minor
Cochrane entry 459. Confirms Boswell's authorship of a self-published, Shandean-style commentary on Samuel Foote's farce 'THE MINOR,' which appeared in Edinburgh in 1760.
Tucker disputes the "grossly unfair" contemporary and Victorian assessments of Boswell, specifically challenging Macaulay’s depiction of him as a witless pedant. He asserts that the Life of Johnson proves Boswell possessed a "superb sense of unity" and the artistic talent to reproduce observed reality. The text highlights Boswell’s "intellectual chemistry," which allowed him to separate good qualities from evil in his companions. Tucker defends Boswell’s persistent questioning of Johnson as a calculated "ingenuity" necessary for biographical accuracy, rather than innate servility. While acknowledging Boswell’s "amours" and "intemperance" revealed in his correspondence with Temple, Tucker emphasizes Boswell’s unfeigned affection for Johnson and his unsurpassed appreciation of character. The biography is presented as a deliberate, laboriously polished "portrait of a soul."
Cochrane entry 156.
Proposes Malone's footnote should read not "burned in a mass of papers" but "buried in a mass of papers," which allows us to question "the (mythical) holocaust of Boswell's manuscripts."
Cole presents a newly identified pseudonymous letter by Boswell, "A Free Hibernian," in a Dublin newspaper (June 1769), appealing for Corsican contributions. Cole's evidence rests on the letter's thematic similarity to Boswell's Account of Corsica and its dual appeal to humanitarian and political motives. Crucially, the letter directs funds to "Mr. Boswell's Advertisement," a self-promotional technique common in Boswell's extensive anonymous newspaper propaganda for the Corsican cause.
Cochrane entry 472. Attributes to Boswell the authorship of a letter published under a pseudonym in a Dublin newspaper in 1769, which solicited aid for the Corsican cause.
Boswell and the Descendants of Venerable Abraham
Lustig examines Boswell's dualistic response to Jewish synagogues in London, observing both detached disapproval of the perceived lack of solemnity and spontaneous sympathy for the "outcast state" of the "descendants of venerable Abraham." This reaction mirrors the contradictory strains in English society towards the Jewish minority, which, despite rising economic success and assimilation, still faced legal and social discrimination. Boswell's empathy reflects his own status as a Scotsman and his natural inclination to defend the oppressed, an attitude consistent with his character.
Cochrane entry 667.
Autobiography: The Changing Structure of a Literary Act
Reed details Boswell's final legal effort: the defense of James Semple, a swindler and military adventurer. Writing to under-secretary King, Boswell sought to remit Semple's sentence of transportation to Botany Bay in favor of "desperate service." The text captures the encounter between the aging biographer and the self-possessed confidence man. Reed explores how Semple appealed to Boswell's fascination with criminals and prisons. The narrative also references Johnson’s receipt of David Boswell and his polite treatment of the Spanish merchant.
Boswell, Major James G. Semple, and Edmund Burke. Also printed as "Boswell and After," in English Biography of the Nineteenth Century: 1801–1838, pp. 3-26. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.
Cochrane entry 598.
Some Obversations on Boswell's Early Satiric Ambitions
Rewa examines Boswell's early literary failures, particularly his unsuccessful satirical ambitions articulated in the London Journal. Focusing on the attempt to damn David Mallet's play Elvira, Rewa argues Boswell's lack of self-knowledge and literal execution resulted in mock epic, unconsciously satirizing his own efforts. Rewa contrasts this failure with Boswell's later success in the "Celebrative mode" of An Account of Corsica and the Life of Johnson, suggesting Boswell achieved literary and personal satisfaction through honoring virtue rather than attempting satire.
Cochrane entry 637.
Proof-Sheets of Boswell's Johnson
This note discusses R. B. Adam's facsimile publication of over sixty pages of original proof-sheets for Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, including an introduction by A. Edward Newton. The proofs, which show Boswell's painstaking revisions (e.g., in the dedication to Reynolds), are identified as final revises. They were acquired by Adam Sr. in 1893 after being sold from Auchinleck. The article highlights Boswell's interaction with the printer's foreman, Mr. Selfe, and notes late additions by Boswell, such as the quote about Smollett.
Cochrane entry 93.
Cowie identifies a persistent error in the motto Stevenson prefixed to Apology for Idlers from Boswell's Johnson. The quotation lacks an "all" after the second "we" in Johnson's line: "That is, Sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another." The misquotation distorts Johnson's meaning and originated in the first printing of the essay in the Cornhill Magazine in 1877.
Cochrane entry 127. Identifies and corrects a misquotation from the 'Life' used by Robert Louis Stevenson in his essay "An Apology for Idlers."
Fifer examines the troubled relationship and eventual rupture between Boswell and Thomas Percy. Fifer rejects the theory that Boswell initiated the break due to Percy's opposition to Johnson. Instead, Fifer argues Percy initiated the estrangement due to Boswell’s "violating the primary law of civil society" by publishing unguarded conversations and correspondence, thus demonstrating his disapproval of Boswell's biographical methodology. Percy emerges from the Life of Johnson pages unappealingly, described disagreeing with Johnson and exposed for worrying about the impression he made on an acquaintance. Percy repeatedly tried, through letters to Boswell, to insist on anonymity for his contributions, suppress unseemly anecdotes about friends (Grainger, Rolt), and stop the publication of Johnson's censures on private character. Fifer concludes that Percy’s demand for decorum, though often rigid, ultimately increased the Life's value by forcing a multiple viewpoint.
Cochrane entry 185.
Watson details a hitherto unnoticed parody, "Momus," that attacked Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides shortly after its 1785 publication. The parody's fictional correspondent, T. Trifler, records anecdotes of his subject, Nicodemus Humdrum, who, like Johnson, is an incessant talker expressing prejudices against Scots. The essay implicitly censured Boswell’s biographical technique for its trivial anecdotes, verbose style, and insipid wit, which failed to prove Humdrum's purported greatness. "Momus" focused its severest satire on Boswell himself, characterizing Trifler as a vain young Scot intent on puffing his subject. Watson concludes that "Momus" was the first contemporary piece to publicize intelligent criticism of Boswell's work for its "violations of good taste and sound biographical theory."
Cochrane entry 300.
Pottle and Bennett review Clifford's biography of Hester Lynch Piozzi, arguing against Clifford's implication that Boswell deliberately falsified his Life of Johnson to attack her. They maintain that Boswell, despite his bias and jealousy, was scrupulously honest with his facts. Piozzi, in contrast, is an inaccurate anecdotist who prioritized the story's "point" over circumstantial truth. They conclude that while Boswell's commentary was unmagnanimous, his historical record was faithful, distinguishing him from Piozzi's biographical method.
Cochrane entry 144. Defends Boswell against the charge that he deliberately falsified material to discredit Mrs. Piozzi, arguing that while biased, Boswell never tampered with facts and that Piozzi's own writings were often inaccurate.
Bryson queries the origin of the tradition that Boswell's family destroyed his papers after his death. He identifies the first known appearance in print of the statements that Boswell's literary executors never met, and that Sir William Forbes alone administered the trust, leaving the manuscripts to the family for destruction, as the Rev. Charles Rogers' Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell (1874). Bryson seeks earlier records to confirm or deny the tradition's genesis.
Announces the forthcoming publication of Boswell's private papers. The collection contains correspondence with Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and others ; love letters ; literary drafts ; and diaries with vivid conversations. Editors Geoffrey Scott and Colonel Ralph Isham plan a twelve-volume set from William Edwin Rudge, intended primarily for collectors and prioritizing an authentic, chronologically-classified text with facsimiles over extensive commentary. Contents include Johnsoniana additions, the diary of a tour in France with material on Therese Le Vasseur and conversations with Goldsmith, and separate volumes dedicated to the courtship letters with "Zelide" (Belle de Zuylen), and Boswell's conversations with figures like Voltaire, Hume, Lord Mansfield, and King George III.
A history of the Boswell papers' recovery by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Isham. The first cache, the Malahide Papers, was purchased from Lord Talbot de Malahide in 1926. Subsequent discoveries at Malahide Castle occurred in 1930, 1940, and 1946. The Fettercairn Papers were discovered by Abbott at Fettercairn House in 1931, comprising about one-third of the total recovered. Litigation in Scottish courts led to Isham purchasing only one-half of the Fettercairn papers, with the other half going to the Cumberland Infirmary; Isham later bought that half as well. The combined collection was announced and displayed at the Grolier Club in New York in November 1948, tripling the total. Isham is now ready to sell the main body of the collection, possibly to a U.S. learned foundation. The material includes over one hundred Johnson letters and his diary, a mass of Boswell's scrap notes, and correspondence with figures like Garrick, Burke, Voltaire, and Rousseau.
Cochrane entry 52. Offers contemporary speculation about the future of the recently discovered Boswell papers and how the collection might be handled.
Abbott calls Pottle’s edition of Boswell’s London Journal a literary masterpiece. The account highlights Boswell’s artistic self-consciousness, psychological complexity, and precocious skill in recording conversation. Abbott emphasizes the London setting, noting Boswell’s pursuit of a Guards commission and his interactions with figures like Wilkes, Garrick, and Goldsmith. Central focus rests on the developing friendship with Johnson, whose presence strengthens Boswell’s principles. While Abbott praises the journal’s vividness and honesty, he criticizes Pottle's decision to modernize spelling and punctuation.
Notes on the Importance of Private Legal Documents for the Writing of Biography and Literary History
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Cochrane entry 585. Demonstrates the value of private legal documents to biographers by using an unregistered deed of Boswell's as a key example.
Goldsmith and Miss Lockwood: Boswell and Oglethorpe's matchmaking
Woods discusses a newly discovered 1773 correspondence between Boswell and General Oglethorpe regarding a marital "plan" for Goldsmith. Boswell proposed a union with a wealthy "nymph" named Miss Lockwood to place Goldsmith in a "comfortable situation for life." Oglethorpe responded that "cruel Fates" denied the match, lamenting Goldsmith's failure to comply with invitations to meet the lady. Woods notes that Boswell omitted Miss Lockwood from his published account of dining at Oglethorpe's with Johnson. The text identifies the "benevolent plot" as a joint effort to mitigate Goldsmith's financial distress. Woods argues that these letters illuminate Boswell's active, though ultimately unsuccessful, matchmaking for his friend.
Cochrane entry 654.
Vagabond Impressions: Rousseau and Boswell
Lucas analyzes the 1764 interaction between Boswell and Rousseau at Môtiers, using correspondence published by Tinker. Lucas highlights Boswell’s self-introductory letter, in which Boswell presents himself as a "man of unique merit" to gain Rousseau’s confidence. The narrative details how Boswell used Rousseau’s recommendation to secure an audience with Paoli in Corsica, an experience that deeply influenced Boswell’s later literary output. Lucas notes that while Boswell eventually focused his attentions back on Johnson, his "rage for literature" and persistent interviewing style allowed him to secure insights from Rousseau that others were denied. The account also contrasts the "comic" nature of Boswell’s social climbing with the "tragic" decline of Rousseau’s mental health and subsequent flight to England.
Cochrane entry 491.
James Boswell and Alexander Fraser Tytler
Lamont uses Tytler’s papers to clarify two specific literary interactions. First, the author details Boswell's decision to alter an "unflattering reference" to Tytler in the second edition of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). Second, the text explores the "projected" life of Lord Kames, which Boswell originally intended to write but which Tytler eventually completed. Lamont quotes correspondence between Tytler and Kames's son, George Home, revealing their "relief" that Boswell had not published a "very indiscreet farrago" of anecdotes about Kames. The article describes how Boswell "frequented" Kames to "pump" him for information, though Tytler concludes that most of Boswell's voluminous notes on the subject were likely destroyed.
Bibliotheck; a Scottish Journal of Bibliography and Allied Topics
Cochrane entry 614.
Tinker analyzes the complexities of Boswell's unconventional pursuit of a wife suitable to be mistress of Auchinleck. Boswell's correspondence reveals a romantic vacillation between the wealthy Miss W-t and the intellectual Zélide. He approaches the issue with calculated philosophical distance, despite his emotional agitation. Although Boswell rejects Zélide, deeming her unsuitable for a quiet Scottish life, his love letters demonstrate a self-conscious arrogance, seeking validation even as he confessed his complicated love-life to friends like Temple.
Chapman provides a progress report on the revision of Hill's edition of Boswell's Life. He notes the usefulness of the revised commentary in the already-published Life volumes and acknowledges the delay in the full publication, which was greater than expected due to the necessity for "more drastic revision and supplementation" of the Tour commentary. This revision was complicated by the discovery and communication of the Tour's original manuscript. The fifth volume is "almost all in the printer's hands," with the work expected to be completed in 1940.
Cochrane entry 528.
Warnock uses newly discovered Boswell journal notes to reconstruct his 1765 interactions with John Wilkes in Turin, Rome, and Naples. The persistent, celebrity-seeking Boswell, a self-described "steady Royalist," pursued Wilkes, the witty, exiled republican "Heroe of Liberty," in a triumph of persistence. Their often-indecorous conversations covered Wilkes's politics, literary plans, and profligate life. Wilkes complimented Boswell as an "Original Genius" and "most liberal man," leaving the young Scotsman deeply impressed, which he reflected upon wistfully years later.
Cochrane entry 522.
Whibley treats Boswell's letters to William Temple as evidence of his life and character, giving us insight into his legal and literary careers and personal matters like his search for a wife.
Cochrane entry 419.
The Face in the Mirror of Boswell's London Journal
Kay interprets Boswell's London Journal through the lens of Freudian psychology, arguing that the theatrical mode of the autobiography stems from Boswell's immature ego and adolescent conflicts. The authors contend Boswell's narcissism and underdeveloped sense of self, possibly rooted in his relationship with his mother, compelled him to create a public, dramatic persona. Boswell uses the journal as a mirror to validate his self-esteem, constantly seeking external reinforcement from an admiring audience for his staged adventures.
Cochrane entry 412.
Boswell and His Ego: Some Bicentenary Reflections
Murray marks the bicentenary of Boswell by tracing his development from a prolific child correspondent—beginning with a childhood letter—to a world-class diarist and biographer. This article describes how the emergence of the immense mass of the "Private Papers" places Boswell in the "first rank of diarists," revealing an "unparalleled intimacy" and early "intimacy of self-revelation." Murray explores Boswell's "natural timidity of personal danger" and his early legal career in Scotland, noting the "cub period" ended in 1763 with the "formative influence" of his meeting with Johnson and the Grand Tour, which gave him "confidence in society." After returning in 1766, Boswell pursued a successful law career and published his Account of Corsica, placing him "upon a rock." His marriage to Margaret Montgomerie was a steadying, though "damping," influence. While acknowledging Boswell's "bouts of intemperance" and "veering amorous affections," Murray disputes Macaulay's claim that Boswell lacked intellect, arguing that the construction of the Life of Johnson required "intellect of no mean order." He characterizes Boswell's self-exposure not as "diseased exhibitionism" but as a deliberate urge for the "complete transcription of life."
Cochrane entry 535.
Strachey characterizes Boswell’s life as a triumph of instinct over conventional morality, achieved through a unique combination of psychological perspicacity and a total lack of dignity. He commends Tinker’s editorial exactitude but criticizes the "barbarous prudery" of remaining textual mutilations. Strachey traces Boswell’s trajectory from youthful exuberance and his vow to Johnson to his later years of hypochondria, alcoholism, and social humiliation under Lonsdale. He concludes that the same insatiable appetite for life that destroyed Boswell’s personal happiness enabled the persistent creation of his masterpiece.
Cochrane entry 8.
See also New Republic, 25 March 2025, p. 127.
A master's thesis that argues Boswell's primary motivation was a "desire to probe the recesses of his own soul, to know all sorts and conditions of men, and to taste each possible experience."
Cochrane entry 526.
Boswell and the Copyright of the Life
This letter to the editor uses contemporary newspaper advertisements from April 1791 to identify the publication dates and motives behind Boswell's separate printing of the "Letter to Lord Chesterfield" and the "Conversation with George III." Willing-Denton challenges the conclusions of Frederick Pottle, arguing that Boswell did not print these extracts to forestall newspapers but to protect his literary property from other biographers. Evidence from the Public Advertiser and Morning Chronicle suggests Boswell successfully secured these "two valuable articles" by entering them separately at Stationers' Hall four days before the Life appeared. Willing-Denton notes that Boswell delayed reprinting these pieces in the London Chronicle and Gentleman's Magazine until January 1792, after the first edition of the Life was exhausted.
Cochrane entry 120.
Pottle presents three inquiries regarding potential literary echoes in Boswell’s private journals. He suggests the phrase "seriously afraid" in the 1762 "Jaunt" introduction may be a quotation, specifically linking the accompanying mention of a "microscopic eye" to Pope. Further questions concern the source of the term "repudiated" in a 1762 entry and the origin of the verse "By chace our long liv'd fathers earn'd their food" cited during Boswell's 1764 German tour.
Cochrane entry 349.
MacPhail examines the psychological contradictions of Boswell, addressing the disparity between Macaulay’s depiction of a "servile" fool and the "wiser" reality of the celebrated biographer. Boswell’s character featured an "incredibly conceited" vanity and a "pure love of make-believe" that led him to ape Johnson's gestures and parade a cultivated "hypochondria." MacPhail highlights Boswell’s "avidity for delight" and his "art of interesting people without incurring their respect," qualities that made him an ideal companion for Johnson. The text notes Boswell’s "unblushing candour" in recording his own "fits of narrowness" and "impetuous folly," such as his pursuit of Miss Blair or his mimicry at Streatham. Despite his "complete lack of seriousness" and eventual "tragedy" of decline after the deaths of Johnson and his wife, Boswell’s "selfless" enthusiasm for greatness is identified as the engine of his biographical genius. MacPhail concludes that Boswell’s "good-humoured" vanity stood as an "impersonal study" of himself, fueled by a "warm-hearted, generous reverence" for his hero.
Cochrane entry 507.
Thoughts on Family and Friends: Some little-known Anecdotes and Random Reflections by James Boswell
Cochrane entry 342. Presents a selection of anecdotes taken from James Boswell's personal notebooks.
Rogal examines the religious habits and search for stability of Boswell through a chronological survey of his church attendance between 1762 and 1776. Challenging nineteenth-century views of Boswell as a mere dissipater, Rogal uses private papers to reveal a man anxious to feel the temper of his age and find religious order. Boswell's quest involved Scots Presbyterianism, Methodism, Roman Catholicism, and the Church of England. Rogal provides a detailed table of services Boswell attended in London, Edinburgh, and during his travels with Johnson. These records illuminate late eighteenth-century liturgical practices and pulpit oratory. Rogal highlights Boswell's interactions with various clergymen, such as Hugh Blair and Alexander Webster, and notes his reactions to different worship styles, ranging from his gloom at Presbyterian extempore prayers to his divine happiness during Roman Catholic high mass. The article also documents instances where Johnson accompanied Boswell to service, specifically noting their time in Lichfield and the Hebrides.
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church
Cochrane entry 666.
Boys recovers Boswell’s defense of his orthography from the preface of the Account of Corsica. Boswell advocates for the retention of 'k' after 'c' and 'u' in 'our' endings, citing Johnson’s Dictionary as a model for preserving Saxon and French etymological origins. Boys notes that despite Boswell’s rigid rules for future printers, errors persisted in the third edition. He identifies these remarks as an omission from existing bibliographies of English language writings.
Cochrane entry 527.
Hunt adds a footnote to a TLS article concerning the Malahide and Fettercairn Papers, detailing the history of a slip of paper on which Johnson wrote a correction for The Vanity of Human Wishes. Boswell recorded that he had deposited the slip in the Bodleian Library for "perfect authenticity," but he did not do so. Colonel Isham last year generously repaired Boswell's omission, presenting the slip to the Bodleian Library.
Cochrane entry 554.
Bennett analyzes the dispute between Boswell and his father, Lord Auchinleck, over the entail of the Auchinleck estate, which produced Johnson's famous letters. Lord Auchinleck, fearing his son's dissipation, initially wanted to entail the estate upon "heirs whatsoever" (heirs general) to prevent its sale, and to cut off the male heirs of a dancing-master Boswell. Boswell opposed this, adhering to a "family honour" principle that only a male could properly represent the family. Boswell yielded to a compromise—entail on male heirs descended from his grandfather, then to heirs general—which still excluded the dancing-master. Boswell later discovered his father's threat to disinherit him may have been a bluff, and the initial "entail" on heirs general was not legally recognized in Scots law as restrictive.
Cochrane entry 523. Uses Boswell's journal to explain his opposition to his father's legal plan to entail the family estate of Auchinleck.
Boswell in Love: His Private Papers and Correspondence with Zélide
Four Unpublished Letters from Boswell to Burke
Wecter presents four newly discovered letters from Boswell to Burke, dating from 1779 to 1782, found at Wentworth Woodhouse. The correspondence reveals Boswell’s persistent, though largely futile, attempts to secure political preferment through Burke’s influence during the Rockingham Administration. Wecter notes Boswell’s "Tory soul" navigating Whig connections and his advice to Burke regarding the Catholic Question in Scotland. The letters also offer insight into Boswell’s domestic anxieties regarding his wife’s failing health.
Cochrane entry 425.
Mackinnon queries a biographical detail about Boswell found in Sir Herbert Croft's anonymous book, Love and Madness, a Story too True (1780). Hackman, the fictional narrator, refers to Boswell as "Paoli's friend and historian," who would "hire a window by the year, which looks upon the Grass-market at Edinburgh" to watch executions. Mackinnon notes that while Boswell's interest in executions and his trip with Hackman to Tyburn are well-known, this specific detail of him hiring a window in Edinburgh cannot be found in the works of Birkbeck Hill or Rogers. Mackinnon questions whether Croft invented the detail.
Cochrane entry 4.
Greene challenges the long-standing canonical status of Boswell’s Life of Johnson by applying rigorous modern biographical standards. He argues that Boswell’s work fails to meet contemporary requirements for evidentiary hardiness, skeptical evaluation, and scrupulous honesty. Greene identifies significant gaps and distortions, particularly noting how Boswell neglects Johnson's early years and relies on "rumor or legend" rather than "hardest available evidence." He highlights the "Macaulayan Boswell" as a "brilliant construct" that should be "discredited and abandoned" in favor of historical accuracy. Greene suggests that while Boswell created a "fictional character" of "artistic excellence," this artifact often comes at the "neglect of the historical Johnson." He concludes that modern scholarship must move beyond Boswellian "biografiction" to reconstruct the "historical Johnson" through primary research, such as Clifford’s investigation into the "sanitary arrangements in Gough Square."
Cochrane entry 245.
Un biographe anglais du XVIIIe siècle, James Boswell
Pottle identifies "M.H." from Boswell’s 1768 poem as Matthew Henderson, an Ayrshire gentleman and associate of Burns. Responding to a decades-old query, Pottle explains the poem's early appearance in provincial press as a reprint from the London Chronicle dated 22 December 1768. He cites Rogers’s Boswelliana for biographical details on Henderson and notes that while Boswell's personal file of the Chronicle recently arrived at Yale, the specific issue containing this poem is missing.
Cochrane entry 458.
Belle de Zuylen et James Boswell: une amitié littéraire
Hutchinson's letter states the informal Hebridean breakfast reminded Boswell of a mess-table, not "Garrick discipline." The party, including Johnson and Boswell, assembled in the Laird of Col's disfurnished home, where young Col provided hospitality. Boswell found the lack of ceremony refreshing; "Everybody was master" meant no one presided.
A suggested emendation.
Cochrane entry 382. Catalogs the personal resolutions Boswell recorded in his 'London Journal', sorting them into those he managed to keep and those he repeatedly broke.
James Boswell and Dr. Kennedy's Lisbon Diet Drink
Cochrane entry 644. Recounts an episode in which a gonorrhea-afflicted Boswell sought treatment from a Dr. Kennedy, only to become dissatisfied with the famous "Lisbon Diet Drink" and conclude the doctor was "a babbler."
This letter to the editor examines the epitaph of the bookseller Edward Dilly in Southill Church, Bedfordshire, to illuminate his final illness as recorded by Boswell. Dilly, the bookseller who arranged Johnson's famous meeting with Wilkes, died in 1779. Esdaile points out that Hill and Powell omitted a portion of Boswell's May 1779 letter to Temple describing Dilly's deathbed piety and final, reflective moments. The full epitaph includes a quotation from Young describing the grave as the "subterraneous road to bliss," or "The Grave the Subterraneous Road to Bliss," a phrase Boswell noted Dilly repeated while "fast a-dying." Esdaile argues that the surviving brothers, including Charles Dilly, placed these specific words on the monument to honor Edward's "thinking in literary terms upon his deathbed," an intimate detail Boswell shared with both Johnson and Temple.
Cochrane entry 525. Provides the complete text of publisher Edward Dilly's epitaph, along with Boswell's own account of his final meeting with Dilly.
A New Chapter of Boswell: Unpublished Letters to Rousseau and Voltaire
Tinker publishes and analyzes Boswell’s previously unknown letters to Rousseau and Voltaire, written during his youthful Grand Tour. The article establishes that this correspondence reveals Boswell's early and persistent ambition for literary fame and illuminates the development of his biographical method. Tinker uses the letters to detail Boswell's strategic self-introduction to celebrated figures, arguing that these interactions shaped the unique self-consciousness and literary strategy later manifest in the Life of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 415.
Boswell and the 'Abt Jerusalem': A Note on the Background of 'Werther'
Hegeman provides historical context for Goethe's Werther by examining Boswell’s 1764 journal, which reveals a brief but cordial intimacy with Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem, father of Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. This helps offset Goethe's accusations that the elder Jerusalem, a rationalist theologian, was culpable for his son’s suicide. Boswell reports that "Abt Jerusalem" was a "learned agreeable man" and, importantly, confessed he had suffered severe episodes of hypochondria and feared suicide, noting that reason was ineffective against the imagination. Jerusalem’s admission confirmed for Boswell that hypochondria was a "pandemic" issue among northern Europe's educated classes in that era, often being the reaction to rationalist optimism.
Cochrane entry 545.
Critical Worlds [A View of Literary Criticism as an Artistic and Literary Form]
Despite an old legend claiming their destruction, many of Boswell's papers survived in the Talbot de Malahide family. Recently acquired by Lieutenant-Colonel Isham, these documents, including a diary and letters, are vital for any new Boswell biography, confirming little of material importance was destroyed.
Pottle proposes that Boswell's "Miss W—l," the first object of his affections mentioned in a 1758 letter to Temple, was Miss Martha White (or Whytt), who married the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine in 1759. Pottle notes that she was a wealthy London merchant's daughter, matching the reported £30,000 fortune. Boswelliana, the commonplace book of James Boswell, includes an anecdote about her father, Thomas White, recorded on the authority of Sir David Dalrymple, an intimate of Boswell, which helps confirm the identification. Pottle seeks to confirm if Lady Elgin had a Scottish connection to Dalrymple and if she was in Edinburgh in the summer of 1758.
Cochrane entry 418.
Johnson and the Romantics: The Continuity of Major English Shakespearean Criticism
Bailey challenges the argument that Boswell's The Hypochondriack essays (1777–1783) were merely an exercise for the Life of Johnson. Bailey contends this view minimizes Boswell’s individuality and prior biographical methods applied to figures like Paoli and Voltaire. The essays are a "delightful cento of Boswell's recollections," including material from Johnson's circle, other figures, and, crucially, Boswell himself, often masking his own faults like narrowness and indolence. Bailey rejects Brown's claim that Johnson's paralytic seizure caused the series' abrupt end, showing the last essay appeared in August 1783, after the worry was over, and suggests the true cause was an editorial upheaval at the London Magazine, where Boswell was a proprietor. Bailey argues that Boswell began the Life as a new work and later culled phrases and instances from the finished essays.
Cochrane entry 456.
On the contemporary reception of James Boswell's An Account of Corsica, noting it was his first large publication, appearing early in 1768, and enjoyed a wider circulation in his lifetime than his later great works on Johnson. In little more than a year, it was translated twice into German, twice into French, and once into Dutch and Italian. Pottle notes that the translations are now rare and highlights Yale's acquisition of the second part of the Italian translation ("Giornale") and the first part of the Dutch translation, the latter of which may have been made with Boswell's knowledge and closely follows the English text.
Cochrane entry 330. Announces that Yale University's library has acquired Italian and Dutch translations of Boswell's 'Corsica'.
Johnson and Coleridge on education: transitions from the classic to Romantic perspective
Boswell's Temple and the Jane Austen world
Crawford examines the lifelong friendship between Boswell and Temple, framing Boswell as 'Temple's confessor' based on a massive corpus of rediscovered correspondence. He details Boswell’s role in Temple’s 'amatory campaigns,' including Boswell’s 1766 visit to Anne Stow, whom he found so engaging he 'kist her little finger.' The study reveals how Boswell supported Temple’s marriage despite the latter’s periodic 'revulsion' and 'neurotic frenzy' regarding domestic life. Crawford analyzes the 1792 visit of Boswell and his daughters to Temple’s Cornish vicarage, quoting Nancy Temple’s letters which describe Boswell as a 'curious genius' whose 'extraordinary whims' and perpetual 'falling in love' invited ridicule rather than respect. The correspondence serves as a 'remarkable record' of two men of 'intense sensibility' navigating the sexual and social constraints of the late eighteenth century.
Cochrane entry 453.
Bolingbroke in Johnson's Dictionary
Greene directs attention to a caustic, previously unnoted reference to Bolingbroke in Johnson's Dictionary that reflects his bitter antipathy toward him. Johnson used the word IRONY to include the definition: "A mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words: as, Bolingbroke was a holy man." This satirical entry should be noted alongside Johnson's other famous caustic definitions for oats and excise. Greene then cites the one place where Gibbon makes considerable use of Johnson, in the Critical Observations on the Design of the Sixth Book of the Aeneid (1770), quoting the penultimate paragraph of The Rambler 176 to define "CRITICAL TELESCOPE" used to attack Warburton's interpretation of the Aeneid.
'Pray, lend me Topsel on animals': Johnson's dual view of beasts
Using the Mind Well: The Moral Life in Jane Austen's Novels and the Heritage of Johnson and Locke
McDowall contrasts the 1773 Scottish tour of Johnson and Boswell with the 1803 journey of the Wordsworths and Coleridge, delineating the shift from Augustan rationalism to Romantic perception. Johnson and Boswell traveled as personages of rank, using post-chaises and seeking cultivated society, whereas the later party moved as "obscure vagabonds" on a more primitive level. While Johnson viewed the Highlands through a social and historical lens, often finding the landscape "dismal" or "insipid" due to urban prejudices and poor eyesight, his prose in the Western Islands narrative achieves a "majesty" through its "nakedly unadorned" style. Boswell functioned as a "busy chief of staff," orchestrating meetings with lairds and scholars to sustain Johnson's habits. Despite Johnson's occasional impatience with the "rigours" of the Hebrides, McDowall emphasizes the "genial forbearance" between Johnson and Boswell, contrasting it with the eventual separation of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The text concludes that Johnson's reactions to Iona and patriarchal traditions reflect a mind fed by facts and "principles of reasoning" rather than the "shaping spirit" of Romanticism.
Hayes confirms that the sixth edition of Johnson's Dictionary in two quarto volumes was published in 1785. He also notes that his copy is accompanied by a third volume: A Supplement to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language; adapted both to the Common Editions and to that of the Rev. H. J. Todd. By the Rev. John Reager, B.A., printed in 1819.
On the Warren N. and Suzanne B. Cordell Collection of Dictionaries at Indiana State University. The collection, comprising over 8,000 volumes, focuses primarily on pre-1900 English and American lexicography, with a "clean sweep" objective to acquire every edition of key works. The collection includes over 200 editions and issues of Johnson's Dictionary and every known edition of Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary. The authors describe collector Cordell's approach, emphasizing his "inveterate love of books" and his determination to assemble the finest collection globally, which now serves as an extraordinary resource for scholars.
Rhodon seeks a copy of The Crisis, an anonymous 1770 reply to Johnson’s The False Alarm attributed to Philip Rosenhagen. The pamphlet concludes by referencing Johnson’s own Dictionary definition of a "pensioner." The issue also contains M. U. H. R.’s query on the origins of the phrase "not at home," noting that Johnson and Boswell discussed its use, with Johnson refusing to employ it as a courteous denial of access.
A brief query: "In 'London City,' by Sir Walter Besant (1910), under the heading 'St. Mildreds Church, Bread Street,' it is stated (p. 58): 'here too was buried Sir Nicholas Crispo [sic] the devoted adherent of Charles I, who is greatly eulogised for his loyalty by Dr. Johnson.' In what work relating to Dr. Johnson does this eulogy appear?"
Epokha Prosveshcheniya: Iz istorii mezhdunarodnykh svyazei
Angliiskaya prosvetitel'skaya zhurnalistika v russkoi literature XVIII veka [English journalism of the Enlightenment in Russian 18th century literature]
Eighteenth-century British thought extensively used the logic of probability, a non-demonstrative method derived from Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding. This method relies on analogical reasoning, observation, and experience to achieve sufficient assurance for belief and action in fields like natural science, politics, and criticism. The essay analyzes Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare as a prime example, showing the method's application in critical, historical, and editorial judgments that seek "general and predominant truth."
Greene examines an overlooked instance of Gibbon using Johnson’s writing. In "Critical Observations on the Design of the Sixth Book of the Aeneid," Gibbon attacks Warburton’s allegorical interpretations by quoting a lengthy passage from Johnson’s Rambler 176. Gibbon uses Johnson’s caustic description of obsessive critics as a "stick with which to beat Warburton." This maneuver highlights Gibbon's awareness of Johnson's strained relationship with Warburton, whom Johnson felt compelled to propitiate despite critical disagreements.
Report announces the discovery of a diary in Johnson's handwriting among the Boswell papers at Malahide Castle. Isham brought the "newly discovered diary" to New York, noting it fills approximately one-third of a green vellum-bound book. The first entry dates to November 8, 1784. Isham states that while some items interest only collectors, the find contains sufficient material to "warrant publication in book form." The manuscript provides a "long, narrow" record of Johnson's final weeks.
Maxwell identifies an earlier instance of 'talk dead' in Pope’s Essay on Criticism than the 1738 usage in Johnson’s London. Noting the absence of this specific phrase in the O.E.D., Maxwell argues that the expression is not a stock idiom. He concludes that Johnson’s line regarding a female atheist is likely indebted to Pope’s original construction.
Jane Austen's fiction assimilates Samuel Johnson's moral norms, demonstrating that the purported conflict between her art and morality is illusory. Johnsonian principles, including self-knowledge, sensible realism, rational self-control, and the importance of duty and discipline, thoroughly integrate into and govern the thematic exploration of her novels. The study examines how this traditional ethos resolves critical questions in works like Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion, serving as the essential measure of Austen's ironic genius.
Chapple reports Tyson’s discovery of a copy of Johnson’s 1738 proposals for printing a translation of Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent. Chapple notes that although 6,000 copies were originally dispersed, no other copy was known to have survived. Chapple announces plans to publish a detailed article on the discovery and related matters.
Costerus: essays in English and American language and literature
I. Johnson on Colonization. II. A Study of Transcendent Moments in the Poetry of Eliot and Yeats. III. Wyatt and the Court of Henry VIII
Scholes explores the unexamined intellectual connection between Samuel Johnson and Jane Austen, focusing on their shared views on manners, morals, love, and marriage. Both writers stress the importance of principle (a tenet on which morality is founded) over mere constitutional goodness or ceremony. They present politeness as the opposite of selfishness, arguing that good manners derive from the moral principle of consideration for others. Furthermore, both view marriage as a "strict tie of perpetual friendship" based on esteem and reason, not merely romantic passion.
Kenney explores the conflicting critical views of Johnson: the typical Englishman versus the eccentric and abnormal figure. He notes that modern scholarly opinion compromises, seeing Johnson as a "psychological eccentric" but fundamentally a man of "typical mind." Kenney criticizes critics following Macaulay who distort Johnson's character by overemphasizing his oddities, often without reading his work. The article focuses on psychiatrists' clinical approach, arguing it's flawed due to incomplete historical records, reliance on secondhand reports (like Boswell's, which differs from Burney's or Thrale's), changes in terminology (e.g., "insanity"), and the difficulty of interpreting facts. Psychoanalytic views are varied: Ladell suggests an "anxiety hysteria" and sexual impotence resulting from an overemphasis on intellect; MacLaurin links Johnson's tic to an affront to "childish masculinity"; Hitschmann attributes his behavior to an "oral and anal aggression" restrained by a "very severe Superego," preventing murderous and incestuous acts. Brain offers a more balanced view, exploring how Freud (Oedipus complex, search for a mother-substitute in older women like Tetty and Mrs. Williams), Adler (inferiority complex from physical ailments), and Jung (conflict between rationality and emotions) might explain his neurosis, but hesitates to commit to one theory. Kenney contrasts this with literary-psychological scholarship, citing Watkins, who sees Johnson maintaining a precarious balance, and Bronson, who emphasizes the paradox of Johnson's emotional violence and conservatism, resulting in his "taut" genius. Balderston's suggestion of masochism, based on references to padlocks, fetters, and a submissive letter to Thrale, is found unconvincing. Bate's work is presented as the "best scholarly use of psychology," unifying Johnson's life and writings through the concept of the humanist struggling to develop his potential; his eccentricities are seen as a mirror of his drive for control and order. Kenney concludes with a caution against divorcing Johnson from his period and making him into a modern neurotic.
Morris provides a quotation from Johnson's Dissertation on the Art of Flying in Rasselas (Chapter VI, 1759). Johnson states he would teach men to fly "with great alacrity" if "men were all virtuous," but fears the security risk if the bad could "at pleasure invade them from the sky" using an "army sailing through the clouds."
A quotation from Rasselas.
Bradbury describes a large oil painting in his possession featuring Johnson and Reynolds. The scene depicts the two men taking tea, served by Reynolds’s niece. Bradbury highlights the colorful costume of the niece and the detailed depiction of the tea service. He suggests the porcelain reflects the craftsmanship of the Crown Derby or Worcester factories rather than Chelsea production. The description focuses on the material culture and visual representation of Johnson’s domestic interactions with the Reynolds circle.
See the response by Hilda Finberg on 29 July 1944.
1. Textual and Contextual Revision in Herbert's 'The Temple'. 2. Criticism as Dialectics: Johnson and the Example of Dryden. 3. 'Life and Death, Sanity and Insanity': A Reading of Mrs. Dalloway
The Colors of the Imagination in Swift, Pope and Johnson
The Meeting of Bos̆ković with Dr. Johnson.
CGV entry 5:371. Evidence is contained in unpublished correspondence of Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich. The first meeting was June 29, 1760.
CGV entry 10/6:371. Evidence is contained in unpublished correspondence of Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich. The first meeting was June 29, 1760.
Chapman analyzes several issues in Boswell's text of Johnson's letters, offering suggested corrections. In one instance, Johnson referred to a letter with "negligent lines written," which Chapman claims is structurally incorrect, suggesting negligencies instead of lines. He also proposes that Johnson's advice to Boswell, "Never impose tasks upon mortals," incorrectly transcribes the word intervals, as the surrounding context requires a meaning related to timing rather than people. Chapman finds that Johnson used the word support oddly twice in a letter to Joseph Simpson about enduring difficulties.
Wecter addresses a chronological discrepancy in the Life regarding a "pretty smart altercation" between Johnson and Barnard over whether a man can improve after age forty-five. Using the original manuscript of a letter from Richard Burke to William Burke located in the archives at Wentworth, Wecter corrects a date previously supplied in pencil by an editor. Richard Burke recorded Johnson's retort: "a man may improve: and you yourself have great room for improvement." By identifying a reference to "Twelfth-day" festivities, Wecter determines that Richard Burke wrote on "Friday evening," January 5, 1776. This dating indicates the encounter between Johnson and the Dean of Derry occurred in late December 1775 or early January 1776, resolving a long-standing chronological problem noted by Boswell and his editors and aligning with an account by Walpole to correct the 1773 date found in the Burke correspondence.
CGV entry 3:169. On the date of the altercation with Dr. Barnard.
Taylor corrects a misquotation in an article on James Thomson's library, stating he wrote that Johnson was said to have had about 650 works, not books. The writer emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between "works" and "volumes," noting that Thomson's library was divided into 261 lots with about 540 volumes, suggesting that Johnson's reported 3,000 volumes could indeed contain only around 650 works. The article writer expresses gratitude for corrections on the authorship of two books.
Greene responds to Hart’s charge of attempting to assimilate Johnson to the tradition of "Hobbes and Locke," questioning Hart's meaning for this antithetical pairing. Greene argues that Hart’s claim that Johnson’s developing religious opinions, involving a heightening of his religious position and a "Roman Catholic coloration," give Greene "little comfort" is baseless. Greene asserts that Kaul and he established Hart's misreading of Johnson’s plain words in the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, a misreading necessary for Hart's narrow interpretation.
Loane examines a specific entry in Boswell's Life from April 17, 1778, where Johnson transitioned from praising a remark by Mrs. Knowles to "angry abuse" of the Americans. He argues the "why" of this sudden behavioral shift, which Boswell claimed not to understand, was actually a reaction to Boswell "rubbing in" Johnson's failure to think of a specific fine application himself. The text suggests that while Johnson could generously praise the ingenuity of others, his ego could not tolerate the public highlighting of his own oversight.
Johnson and Donne: A Problem of Authorship
Samuel Johnson and 'The Sovereign of the Drama'
Chapman, a scholar famed for his editions of Johnson and Jane Austen, achieved acclaim for his magnum opus, the three-volume edition of Johnson's letters, published in 1952 after being started in 1919. His editorial work, which also included a second edition of Jane Austen's Letters, has been praised for its tact and persuasiveness. Chapman believes his role is to use "delicate tools of editorial scholarship." The piece notes his work at the Oxford University Press on lexicography, his marriage to Katharine Metcalfe, a tutor at Somerville, and his reading of Boswell's Johnson while serving in Salonika during World War I.
I. The Lives of the Poets: Johnson's Essay on Man. II. Stories from The Secret Rose by W. B. Yeats: A Critical Variorum Text. III. The Continuity of Milton's Sonnets
Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes, 133–138
Partridge challenges the standard reading of lines 137–138, arguing that "future labours" refers to the young scholar's ambition to encompass all knowledge within the Bodleian, rather than merely populating the library with his writings. He links the "trembling" of Bacon’s mansion to the legend of Roger Bacon, suggesting the novice aims to rival Bacon’s intellectual comprehensiveness. This Herculean pursuit of universal scholarship underscores the central theme of the vanity of human wishes.
Nekotorye voprosy angliiskoi orfografii i slovar' S Dzhonsona (Some questions of English orthography and S. Johnson's dictionary)
An Application of Erik Erikson's Eight Ages of Man to the Lives of John Stuart Mill, Samuel Johnson and George Herbert
Samuel Johnson's Part in the Swiftian Tradition: A Study of Johnson as Swift's Biographer, Critic, and Associate Moralist
Richman assesses Johnson's role in the Swiftian tradition by examining his Life of Swift and his own satire, finding his criticisms consistent with his literary principles. Johnson's portrayal indicates that Swift's genius stemmed from an inability to renounce childish impulses. The dissertation argues that Swift and Johnson share a basic moral framework, striving to reconcile "nature" to "reason." This philosophical alignment appears in their moral assumptions regarding individual conduct, their views on marriage and women (exemplified by Stella), and their conservative political and religious attitudes, especially as expressed in their sermons.
Young seeks to reconstruct the scene where the young Johnson, accompanying his father to Pembroke College, quoted Macrobius to the Master. The elder Johnson was promoting his son’s literary promise, but the Master would have been guiding him toward a profession, likely the Church. The quotation Johnson supplied in Greek, "I pity Diotimus, who sits among the rocks/Teaching theta and alpha to the children of Gargara," is offered as the probable epigram that served as Johnson's clever, literary interjection.
Limitless Curiosity: Some Thoughts on The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rasselas
The Universal Visiter, 1756, and Samuel Johnson
Cochrane examines the marriage of Johnson to Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, challenging the traditional caricatures of her as a "painted puppet" or an opium addict. Cochrane analyzes Johnson’s Latin epitaph for her at Bromley, which describes her as "formosa, culta, ingeniosa, pia," and notes Johnson’s lifelong grief as evidence of a "love marriage on both sides." Despite their age difference and Johnson’s uncouth habits, the union remained stable, supported by Tetty’s critical faculty and her praise of The Rambler. Cochrane suggests that Johnson’s devotion was a "true and enduring" calf-love that persisted thirty years after her death, concluding that she was "passionately held in Johnson's heart."
Johnson, Chesterfield, and Patronage: A Response to Paul Korshin
Leed challenges Paul Korshin's assertion that Lord Chesterfield's "great professions" to Johnson excluded substantial financial support for the Dictionary. Citing numerous examples of considerable mid-century patronage, Leed refutes the notion that Chesterfield's patronage was merely confined to the prestige of his name. Leed argues Johnson's anger stemmed from Chesterfield’s prolonged neglect after a general commitment to support the project, not a breach of specific promises. The professions included countenance of the project, which Chesterfield failed to uphold, especially during Johnson’s financial difficulties.
Supplementary Note on Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary
Metzdorf provides supplementary findings regarding Johnson’s Plan of a Dictionary, expanding on previous research. He notes that uncorrected misprints exist in ordinary paper copies, suggesting they may have been trial pulls. Examining a copy at University College London, Metzdorf discusses its physical dimensions and press numbers, identifying it as a potential Chesterfield variant. This brief note clarifies specific bibliographical points regarding the printing variants and physical states of the surviving copies.
CGV entry 17:87. In two parts: September, pages 198–201; and December, page 363.
Lessing, Johnson und die tragische Figur
Johnson, Du Halde, and The Life of Confucius
Leed provides evidence to attribute the 1738 'Life of Confucius' in the Gentleman’s Magazine to Johnson. The analysis identifies Johnson as the translator and editor of material drawn from Du Halde’s Description de la Chine. Leed demonstrates that the English version contains characteristic stylistic traits and moralizing expansions absent in the French source. Specific parallels in vocabulary and sentence structure link the text to Johnson’s known early writings. The study highlights Johnson’s role in shaping the magazine’s content during his first year in London and suggests that his interest in Chinese ethics reflects broader themes of social and moral order found in his later works. These findings clarify Johnson’s early professional relationship with publisher Edward Cave.
'No Warbler He': A Contemporary Tribute to Johnson
Greene recovers an obscure 1766 poem by Daniel Hayes titled "The Authors," which presents an extravagant eulogy of Johnson. Hayes depicts Juvenal introducing Johnson to Apollo, praising Johnson's refusal to flatter "titled knaves" and his moral courage in "fortune’s worst extreme." The tribute characterizes Johnson's life as a "brighter lesson than his page," reflecting early commonplace views of Johnson’s arduous character. Greene provides biographical details on Hayes, an Irish poet who died shortly after the work's publication.
Powell seeks to update the "meagre and imperfect enumeration" of Johnson's portraits provided by Boswell, Croker, and Napier. He requests assistance in locating specific missing items, including a Reynolds replica once owned by Lucy Porter, an Opie painting, and miniatures by Humphry and Harwood. Powell provides "confirmatory evidence" of a 1782 meeting between Johnson and Zoffany via a diary entry, though the existence of a resulting portrait remains "uncertain."
Sherbo defends his attribution of the 1767 anonymous "An Essay on Elegies" to Johnson. He responds to Folkenflik's stylistic and syntactic analysis, which disputed Johnson's authorship. This text continues a "literary skirmish" involving Sherbo and Ephim G. Fogel regarding the use of internal evidence to identify anonymous Johnsonian prose. Sherbo maintains his position against Folkenflik's use of Augustan commonplaces to distance the essay from the Johnson canon.
A response to Folkenflik’s “Johnson and ‘An Essay on Elegies.’”
The Rhetoric of Substantiality: Johnson and the Later Eighteenth Century
Bogel analyzes The Rhetoric of Substantiality in later eighteenth-century literature, focusing on Samuel Johnson's tension between metaphysical and substantial modes of apprehension. Bogel argues Johnson's rhetorical style converts empirical experience into quasi-metaphysical principles by insisting on a distinction between heavenly and earthly realms. Johnson uses language of solidity, weight, and variety to value common life (the substantial) on its own terms, refusing to collapse it into mere metaphysical categories, which is a tension characteristic of his age.
Sorelius argues that Johnson's famous argument against dramatic delusion in the Preface to Shakespeare was closely modeled on Dryden’s 'Epistle Dedicatory to Love Triumphant.' By juxtaposing both texts, Sorelius highlights striking similarities in their triumphant tone and the insistence that spectators always know 'the stage is only a stage.' Sorelius concludes that Johnson had deeply studied his predecessor's criticism when formulating his rejection of the dramatic unities.
Flood calls attention to the 1805 edition of Johnson's Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Park, which contains the poem "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet." The poem's text in this edition, found on pages 85 and 86, is noted as being identical to that of the Gentleman's Magazine version (August 1783), with the exception of a few minor variations in spelling and punctuation (e.g., "Hope's" for "hopes," removing apostrophes in contractions like "ev'ry") and a word transposition in line 33 (changing "throbbing fiery pain" to "fiery, throbbing pain"). Flood's note documents these trifling textual changes between the commonly cited texts and this somewhat rare edition.
Dr. Johnson and Juvenal: A Problem in Critical Method
Selden examines Johnson’s imitations of Juvenal within the "liberal" assimilative tradition of translation. He argues that Johnson consistently heightens Juvenal’s style, replacing "deflationary wit" with "tragic dignity" and pathetic imagery. Selden demonstrates how Johnson transforms Juvenal’s "half-ironic stoicism" into an "other-worldly Christian consolatio." The analysis illustrates that Johnson holds a "Miltonizing tendency" in check while using generalizing diction to deepen the moral ambience of his verse, particularly in the conclusion of The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Hussey examines Johnson's idiosyncratic interpretation of the Petronian phrase curiosa felicitas in the Life of Pope. While the term traditionally denotes "studied ease," Johnson links it to a "fruitful soil," suggesting a derivation from the Latin felix meaning "fertile." Hussey notes that Johnson applies a similar definition to Akenside’s genius, emphasizing the "amplitude of acquisitions" and mental storage rather than mere stylistic grace. The query seeks evidence of other scholars adopting this specific agricultural metaphor for the Latin phrase.
On the value of various early biographers of Johnson.
A two-sentence query: "Does Johnson record any slang in his Dictionary? And does he include any words which may be taken to be of trans-Atlantic origin?"
Personae and Characters in the Essays of Addison, Steele, Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith
Johnson and the Common Reader: The Roy M. Wiles Memorial Lecture for 1976
Tracy explores Johnson’s relationship with the 'common reader,' a non-specialist audience emerging from the eighteenth-century 'cultural explosion.' Identifying the common reader as a 'critical norm,' Tracy argues that Johnson viewed literature as a public service intended to provide 'allurement and delight' to a broad spectrum of society rather than a literary elite. The study details how this inclusive intent influenced the 'encyclopaedic entries' of the Dictionary and the helpful, stage-oriented annotations in Johnson's edition of Shakespeare, which were 'designed to clarify and illuminate the drama's highest pleasure to the untrained reader.' Tracy emphasizes that while Johnson deferred to popular favorites like Gray and Thomson in his Lives of the Poets, he remained a 'good schoolmaster,' using criticism to 'interpret the verdict of the common reader' while correcting temporary fads or political biases.
Short query: "It will be remembered that Johnson's Dictionary was welcomed by some of the learned (vide Boswell) as likely to stabilise, clarify and so on the English language, which was regarded as being in a confused ſort of state. Has any recent writer attempted to estimate what effect, if any, the Dictionary has had from that point of view? I should be glad to know."
Style and Sense in Three Augustan Satires: 'Mac Flecknoe', Book I of 'The Dunciad Variorum', ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes'
Amis analyzes style elements—stress patterns, caesura, endstopping, parts of speech, etymology, artificial word order, and rhyme—and their relation to meaning in Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, Pope's The Dunciad Variorum, and Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes. The analysis focuses on differentiating the internal structure of the couplet, relating it to logical organization and satiric strategy. Johnson’s verse exhibits "hyper-Augustan" regularity, distinctively consistent placement of prosodic elements, high word density, and greater use of Colloquial French diction, contributing to a tone of formality and detachment.
Schwartz challenges James Sambrook's critique, asserting Johnson's alignment with the "moderns" is undeniable, citing Hagstrum and Johnson's praise for Richard Bentley and scientific methodology. He dismisses the relevance of Johnson’s unscientific notions in the Blackfriars Bridge letters, arguing Johnson acted on behalf of friends, not as an experimental philosopher. Schwartz interprets Johnson’s famous statement in the Life of Milton as placing science within a moral hierarchy of values, not opposing it entirely, highlighting its utilitarian aspects and role in physico-theology.
This supplement updates the list of Johnson's letters published in 1937, recording new discoveries from sales and research. The author acknowledges assistance from friends, facilitated by the earlier list. The note identifies the dates and recipients of several new letters, including ones to Percy, Joseph Smith, Sir John Hawkins, and a new series to Richard Clark. Previously untraced letters are now confirmed as seen, such as those numbered 211.1, 217, 262, 286, and 1027.1. A letter to an unknown correspondent is identified as Johnson's announcement of Vesey's election to The Club on April 3, 1773. Furthermore, the correct dates or recipients are given for several other letters, including a correction that letter 1028 is to Taylor, not Brocklesby, and the dating of a series of eight letters to Mrs. Thrale that were sold in 1918.
'Strong Lines' and Strong Minds: Reflections on the Prose of Browne and Johnson
CGV entry 12:32. On Browne's and Johnson's prose.
Preston argues that the main theme of Rasselas is a commitment to life, not a negative view of earthly joys. The contentment of Imlac and the astronomer to be "driven along the stream of life" signifies submission to "vanity" but also active engagement with life itself. This is reinforced by the water imagery symbolizing life's eternal flux, which, along with the immortality of the soul, directs man to an "eternal choice" that depends on making the "choice of life."
Hume and Johnson on Prophecy and Miracles: Historical Context
Force disputes Siebert’s claim that Johnson did not "blindly reject" Hume's reasoning on miracles, arguing Johnson's reliance on prophecy as proof of Christianity reveals ignorance of Hume’s explicit attack on prophecy in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Johnson's pivot from miracles to prophecy aligns him with other eighteenth-century apologists who considered prophecy the core defense of revealed religion against Deist attacks. Hume, however, defined prophecy as a miracle—a violation of natural law—thus subjecting it to the same criteria of historical incredibility as miracles.
Hazen examines the publication history of The Beauties of Johnson (1781-1782) and identifies its probable compiler. The anthology, published by George Kearsley, was an immense success, inspiring a "deluge" of similar anthologies for other writers. Kearsley created a rapidly successive series of editions, but Hazen determined that most were simply reissues with canceled title-pages to suggest high popularity, a deceptive trade practice. Hazen establishes that William Cooke, a writer employed by Kearsley, was the probable compiler. Cooke is the known author of Kearsley's Life of Johnson (1785), which heavily borrowed its "Memoirs" directly from the earlier Beauties, suggesting a single author for both works.
Uphaus argues that the symbolic force of Johnson’s Life of Savage derives from the reader’s act of imagination, which forges a psychological kinship with Savage's experiences. Drawing on Rambler No. 60, Uphaus demonstrates that Johnson strips away Savage’s "adventitious and separable decorations and disguises" to reveal a shared human nature characterized by an "equipoise" between good and evil. The biography challenges readers to practice a "laborious virtue" in judgment, resisting detached skepticism or sentimentality, and instead working to distinguish moral boundaries in a life defined by complementary virtues and defects.
Discourse: Essay on English and American Literature
Dr. Johnson: A Modern Example of Christian Constancy
Byron and Johnson: The Dialectics of Temerity
Blackstone identifies "temerity" as a recurrent pulse in the lives of Johnson and Byron, defining it as a "rashness" that enhances life in "noble and generous minds." The article traces a shared pattern of rebelliousness, maternal domination, and "compulsive" religious orthodoxy. Blackstone compares Johnson’s "gloomy wanderer" persona, wrung from the "anguish of Tetty's death," with Byronic heroes. The text examines how both men used travelogues—Johnson’s Journey and Byron’s Pilgrimage—to explore "extra-personal values." Blackstone concludes that Johnson’s "inner conflicts" are projected through horrific landscape imagery of "peaks and abysses," establishing both figures as archetypes of "dialectical temerity" in the European mind.
'Dear Ally Croaker': A Note on Boswell's Life of Johnson
Bailey identifies the Irish song mentioned by Ramsay in Boswell’s Life of Johnson as "Ally Croaker." The tune, traced to 1729, gained popularity after adaptation by Foote in 1753. Bailey provides the first verse and details an anecdote from Boswelliana involving Barnard playing the air on a Düsseldorf organ. The tune’s distinctive staccato notes and refrain later served George Colman for his "Unfortunate Miss Bailey."
Swift Expires: Johnson's 'Life of Swift' as Moral Exemplum and Psychological Study
An Emendation to Johnson's Life of Pope
Horne identifies a textual corruption in Johnson’s Life of Pope, specifically in Pope’s account of his quarrel with Addison. Johnson’s text omits the word "not," inadvertently making Pope claim he would act in a "dirty way," whereas the original source confirms Pope intended the opposite. Horne criticizes modern editors like Hill and Hardy for retaining this error by adhering too strictly to the first edition copy-text, arguing that the missing negative is essential for the sentence's logic.
This note reports a newly traced Samuel Johnson letter to John Taylor, dated March 9, 1779. Chapman confirms that the letter, bearing Taylor's endorsement and numbered 56, further narrows the gap in the sequence of their correspondence. It remains probable that the handful of letters missing from the meticulously numbered collection are still held by private collectors.
A Letter from the Swan of Lichfield Introduced and Annotated
On Anna Seward.
One of the so-called tenets of good writing in English is to write nervous English in the sense of employing mostly those Germanic words native to the language, as compared with the artificial lace-work of unnecessarily added Romance embroidery. Samuel Johnson has from time to time been accused of doing just that: wallowing in the froth of vague Romance abstractions. Obviously this simplified vision of Germanic English being good and Romance English bad has long since been abandoned, to be replaced by a new approach of balance: not too many Germanic and not too many Romance words. It will therefore now prove interesting to cite a passage from Ras-selas by Samuel Johnson followed by a translation of it in which some underlined Romance words have been translated into their roughly Germanic equivalents, and then to try to determine whether differences in style cause differences in meaning.
Eastman disputes Sherbo's charge that Johnson plagiarized from Heath's Revisal. Eastman argues the "78" agreements between the two are "indisputably coincidental," arising from a shared policy of rejecting Warburton's "notoriously wild glosses." Eastman characterizes Johnson as a man of "large, impatient mind" whose "occasional trespasses" result from "mechanical forgetfulness" or "dormant seeds" of recollection rather than "plain thievery." He maintains Johnson's "irregular and uneven work" explains these lapses, which Johnson would have "handsomely confessed" had he known them.
Charles Brockden Brown's Copy of Johnson's 'Dictionary' (1783)
Loane discusses the much-criticized couplet from Johnson's prologue written for Garrick: "Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, / And panting Time toiled after him in vain." The metaphor, which suggests Shakespeare outran Time in a race, is noted for its obscurity, contradicting Johnson's own statement in Rasselas that the poet "must write as a being superior to time and place." Loane suggests Johnson's line is indebted to Cowley's Davideis, where David's wit is described as so swift that "The wings of Time flagged dully after it." Johnson's use of the past tense "toiled" precludes the meaning of poetic immortality asserted by Landor's similar phrase on Dryden.
Brown proposes a Shakespearean origin for Johnson’s expressed desire to visit the University of Padua. While Boswell records the resolution as evidence of Johnson's interest in foreign universities, and Powell notes Johnson’s general approval of international study, Brown argues the specific choice of Padua derives from The Taming of the Shrew. The allusion to the city as a nursery of arts suggests that Johnson’s academic ambitions were filtered through his deep familiarity with Shakespearean drama rather than solely a practical interest in Italian pedagogy.
The Independent Boswell and the Capricious Dr. Johnson
CGV entry 4:117. Argues that in specific criticism, Boswell was a better literary critic than Johnson.
Cochrane entry 518. Argues that Boswell was the superior literary critic, possessing an independent judgment free from Johnson's personal prejudices and "extreme classicism," especially regarding authors like Swift and Gray.
Rawson identifies a Johnsonian subtext in Malcolm Bradbury’s novel Eating People is Wrong, where a joke regarding writing more than one reads mirrors Johnson’s 1769 refusal to meet playwright Hugh Kelly. Rawson suggests the memory "welled up" from the subconscious of the hero, an eighteenth-century specialist.
Two 'Heads Weel Pang'd wi' Lear': Robert Fergusson, Samuel Johnson, and St. Andrews
McKenzie explores the 'literary confrontation' arising from Johnson’s 1773 visit to St Andrews, where the university faculty entertained him with 'lettered hospitality.' He focuses on Fergusson’s poetic scolding of his former teachers, arguing that Fergusson uses the 'nomenclature of cuisine' as a polemical tool to strike 'a linguistic blow' for Scottish independence. The analysis highlights how Fergusson’s resentment of Johnson’s 'lexicographic jibe' regarding oats and his 'polysyllabic' style informs the satire. McKenzie notes the personal piquancy of the occasion, as Fergusson had been an 'irreverent student' at the university and maintained a strong attachment to the 'outspoken' Professor William Wilkie. The study characterizes the poem as a 'triumph of nationalism' that challenges Johnson’s 'general attitude toward language.'
Requests information on six lost letters from Johnson to Taylor.
Some Proofs of Johnson's 'Prefaces to the Poets'
On the surviving proof-sheets of Johnson’s Lives, specifically for the "Preface to Cowley" and "Preface to Dryden," containing manuscript corrections in Johnson's hand. They reveal at least four developmental stages for the text, demonstrating the care and diligence with which Johnson prepared his work, contrary to Boswell's emphasis on his rapid composition. The changes are largely stylistic, focusing on achieving "correctness" and avoiding repetition, with few made for factual accuracy.
Robinson quotes Johnson's 1773 conversation with Boswell regarding superfetation, the fertilization of a second ovum while a previous one is still in the uterus. Johnson, applying a principle of analogy, argues against the possibility of superfetation based on the observed closure of the uterine mouth in other viviparous creatures post-conception. Boswell challenges this analogy with reports of superfetation in women, prompting Johnson to concede the possibility while emphasizing the unreliability of anecdotal evidence.
Samuel Johnson's Character—A Psychoanalytic Interpretation
Ritchie contrasts a Johnson letter to Mrs. Thrale with Johnson's view in the Life of Pope: most people cannot lay their hearts open even to themselves, so they certainly do not reveal them to friends in letters.
Dr. Samuel Johnson's Letters to Peter Jay
Hughes requests information regarding the existence and location of portraits for various figures in Johnson’s biography. The list includes Swinfen, Mrs. Desmoulins, Nathaniel Johnson, and schoolmasters such as Hunter and Wentworth. Hughes also identifies a need for likenesses of early associates like Walmsley, Warren, and the poet Richard Savage. The author notes that these individuals are notably absent from the illustrated edition of Boswell’s Life edited by Ingpen. This inquiry highlights the continuing scholarly effort to document the visual history of the Johnsonian circle beyond the most famous members of the Literary Club.
The Implications of Inconsistency in Critical Practices: A Preliminary Note on Samuel Johnson's Epistemology
In a letter to the editor, Fleeman disputes a previous approving review of a facsimile reprint of Hill’s 1897 Johnsonian Miscellanies, arguing the work is "out-of-date and defective." Fleeman asserts Hill's claim to have collated the manuscripts of Prayers and Meditations is "untrue" because his text followed Strahan's and ignored substantive variants in Murphy’s Essay. The letter highlights the inadequacy of the annotation, the superseded editions of included works like Campbell's Diary and Windham's Diary, and an incomplete selection of biographical material that ignored many contemporary accounts. Fleeman lists numerous recent scholarly editions of Johnsonian biographies and anecdotes that supersede Hill’s commentary, warning that the reprint is inhibiting the preparation of a new, comprehensive compilation. An editorial response defends the reprint for general readers, citing the "abundant information" and "helpful cross-referencing" of Hill’s work, which remains accessible where massive scholarly editions like the Yale Johnson may be too expensive for individuals.
1. Samuel Johnson and William Lauder's Milton Forgeries; 2. Poetry in Space: Disjunction in Language and Stage Action in Jonson's 'Sejanus'; 3. Jane Austen's Endings
Johnsonian Generality and Philosophic Diction, I
Wimsatt defends the idea that Samuel Johnson's literary theory, centered on "the grandeur of generality" and the requirement for "just representations of general nature," directly relates to his style's abstract and philosophic diction. Johnson's aesthetic demands that the poet represent the species, not the individual, leading to a style where general qualities displace specific examples (e.g., "beauty" instead of "tulip"). The use of parallels and antitheses in Johnson's writing accommodates this generalized thought, demonstrating the style as a practical manifestation of the theory.
Suggests the disagreement between Johnson and Mrs. Knowles may have prompted the title of Austen’s novel.
Critchley examines the apoplectic, paralytic stroke Johnson sustained in June 1783, which caused a transient loss of speech. Using letters to Allen, Taylor, and Piozzi, plus accounts from Boswell, Critchley assembles a clinical history of what resembled Broca’s aphasia. The condition manifested as mild, non-motor dysphasia characterized by "asthenolalia," writing errors, and difficulty finding words. To verify his mental integrity, Johnson immediately composed a Latin prayer as a self-administered intelligence test. Heberden and Brocklesby prescribed stimulants and blisters, a common but likely ineffectual treatment. Recovery progressed rapidly over one week; Johnson returned to social clubs within weeks despite lingering vocal fatigue and speech weakness. Critchley attributes the vascular accident to the left cerebral hemisphere. The unusually benign recovery suggests a small, non-hemorrhagic lesion or the protective influence of Johnson's immense linguistic capacity, evidenced by the high-quality vocabulary in letters written shortly after the stroke.
The Gove-Liebert File of Quotations from Johnson's 'Dictionary'
Liebert describes the provenance and organization of a file containing approximately 57,000 cards transcribing illustrative quotations from the 1773 edition of Johnson’s Dictionary. Philip Babcock Gove initiated the project during the 1930s using Works Progress Administration labor to copy citations onto index cards. Liebert and his wife later arranged the cards by author, facilitating scholarly access to the diverse literary sources Johnson used. Liebert warns that the file is "only as accurate as the untrained copyists" and reflects Johnson’s own habit of omitting names for contemporaries or his own works, such as the Rambler. The collection serves as a "useful tool" for identifying Johnson’s source material.
The Classical Retirement Theme in the Fiction of Defoe, Fielding, Johnson, and Goldsmith
Popytka uchrezhdeniya literaturnoi akademii v Anglii (Prichiny poyavleniya slovarya S. Dzhonsona) (An attempt to establish a literary academy in England: reasons for the appearance of S. Johnson's dictionary)
Samuel Johnson's Tics and Gesticulations
McHenry provides a neurological and psychiatric evaluation of Johnson’s movement disorders, challenging earlier suggestions of cerebral palsy or birth anoxia. Drawing on accounts by Boswell, Frances Reynolds, and Frances Burney, McHenry classifies Johnson’s "convulsive starts" as a complex "neurological entity" involving simple, coordinated, and psychic tics. The article describes Johnson’s "seesawing," ritualistic post-touching, and "vocalizations"—such as "too, too, too" and whale-like blowing—as manifestations of a "severe obsessive compulsive neurosis" exacerbated by his "vile melancholy." McHenry concludes that Johnson’s tics were not involuntary organic spasms but "habits" tied to his "inner need to perform ceremonials correctly" to escape mental distress.
A lament over the degradation of Johnson's native city, Lichfield, following the 1974 local government reorganisation, which stripped it of its city status and administrative autonomy. Wilson expresses a desire for a "truly Johnsonian outburst" of rage at the loss of a municipal charter dating back to 1548 and county status since 1553. Lichfield is now governed by the larger District Council, a change that the author views as casting the city into "Limbo, the haunt of lost souls." The article acknowledges the District Council’s success in attracting modern industry to balance the area's high unemployment while preserving the city's historical character, but finds this industrial distinction insufficient to offset the "indignity" of losing self-governance. The piece concludes by noting the ongoing effort by Charter Trustees to regain a Parish Council, though its powers would be minimal for a place of such ecclesiastical and historical eminence.
Levy translates a 1768 account by Helfrich Peter Sturz of a visit, with Colman, to Johnson at the country house of Thrale, whose wife, Hester Thrale, "reads and translates Greek as a mere pastime." Sturz describes Johnson's rustic manners, cold eyes, and solemn, theatrical conversational style. Their discussion covers the English language's rapid change and the use of Latinisms, with Johnson arguing that living languages must be slavishly formed on classical models to endure. Johnson tactlessly deflects a question about the best edition of Shakespeare and, though fond of Boswell, calls him a fiery youth and "firm believer in hero-worship."
CGV entry 5:262. See issues for February 10, page 80, and July 13, page 339.
Johnsonian Generality and Philosophic Diction, II
Friedman challenges Wimsatt’s reduction of Johnson's critical theory to an "ideal of generality." He contends that Johnson’s requirement for "just representations of general nature" balances universal truths with fidelity to "real life." Using the Preface to Shakespeare, Friedman demonstrates that Johnson praises Shakespeare for reconciling these contrary ideals. He concludes that Johnson’s preference for common intercourse over "terms of art" contradicts the pursuit of philosophic diction.
The review of R. W. Chapman's article "Johnsonian Bibliography" in The Colophon notes its importance in supplementing the earlier Courtney-Smith bibliography with newly observed "points" for collectors. For example, Chapman records two states of Life of Mr. Richard Savage and Plan of a Dictionary, and addresses issues with The Rambler. More importantly, he records early Johnsonian "plans" and "proposals" unknown or only vaguely known to Courtney-Smith. Among these are proposals for Dr. James's Medicinal Dictionary (recently found in the Bodleian) and for Bibliotheca Harleiana (found in 1926). Proposals for the Harleian Miscellany are newly found in complete and incomplete copies. Chapman also attributes Proposals to the Publick to Johnson based on style. Perfect copies of books previously only imperfectly described, like Gustavus Vasa Vindication, are now on record. The review notes that much still remains to be done, which it offers as the only reason to accept Chapman's refusal to publish a definitive bibliography.
On the article by R. W. Chapman in the Colophon.
The Latin Poetry of the English Augustans
Comment on Patrick O'Flaherty, Johnson as Rhetorician: The Political Pamphlets of the 1770s
Greene disputes Patrick O'Flaherty's critique of Johnson's political pamphlets, arguing that O'Flaherty relies on circular reasoning rather than historical or legal fact. Greene defends the constitutionality of the positions Johnson takes in The False Alarm and Taxation No Tyranny by citing established precedents that O'Flaherty dismisses as immoral. The argument addresses O'Flaherty's claims regarding the Middlesex election and the taxation of unrepresented colonies, noting that Johnson's extensive experience with parliamentary proceedings and English law informs his writing. Greene challenges the notion that Johnson's private reflections on the limits of political power render his public political works insincere or meaningless. He characterizes O'Flaherty's approach as a repetition of outdated Macaulayesque criticisms that fail to engage with the actual arguments Johnson presents.
Ball commemorates the anniversary of the death of Johnson through a poetic tribute that aligns the lexicographer with the character of Valiant-for-Truth. Ball emphasizes the enduring vitality of Johnson in contrast to contemporary Londoners, asserting he remains "more alive to-day" than the "torpid" populace. The text highlights the dichotomy between Johnson's "surly" speech and "soft" heart, specifically citing Goldsmith’s observation regarding the "Bear" and his skin. Ball focuses on Johnson's compassion, noting "countless charities" toward the marginalized and his affection for Hodge. The narrative concludes by framing the passing of Johnson as a spiritual triumph, where "Trumpets sounded on the other side" as the pilgrim reached his "Heavenly resting-place."
Johnson's Dictionary Categorized: A Selection for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Miller argues that the sheer magnitude of the original two-volume folio has contributed to its continued neglect among students and scholars, necessitating a judicious selection that avoids the idiosyncratic focus of previous abridgments. The text provides a comprehensive historical background of English lexicography, tracing the tradition from Cawdrey to Bailey, and defends Johnson against modern linguistic charges of plagiarism and rigid authoritarianism. Miller delineates the physical and philosophical methods Johnson employed, emphasizing his empirical approach in deriving definitions from a vast range of authorities. The core of the work consists of introductions to ten thematic categories—such as Language, Literature, Science, and Religion—analyzing Johnson's sources and intellectual interests in each field. Miller includes 903 complete word-entries under the category of Literature, preserving original etymologies and illustrative quotations to reflect the "intellectual and ethical overhaul" provided by the original text. Appendixes provide simple word-lists for the remaining nine categories, totaling 3,833 entries.
Proceedings of Conference of College Teachers of English of Texas
Johnson's Criticism of Paradise Lost in the Life of Milton
On three core claims in the Preface to Shakespeare, highlighting their profound theoretical inconsistencies. The first claim praises Shakespeare's universal appeal via "just representations of general nature," aligning with neoclassicism. The second, defending the mixing of genres, lauds Shakespeare's imitation of "sublunary nature"—a "chaos of mingled purposes and casualties" that is "without design," thus challenging universal order and championing particularity. The third claim, defending the neglect of the unities of time and place, emphasizes the audience's "consciousness of fiction" and the indispensable unity of action. This final stance mediates the extremes, advocating for a fictional unity that embraces, rather than suppresses, reality's variety, thus foreshadowing the Romantic organic aesthetic.
Who Was Johnson's 'Pretty Voluminous Author'?
Boswell records Johnson describing a "pretty voluminous authour" who wrote anonymous books, then subsequent books commending them—a practice Johnson called "rascality." The author may be Swedenborg, whose initial works were anonymous, followed by later works, like Heaven and Hell, extensively quoting and promoting the earlier ones.
The Thrales of Streatham Park: II, The 'Family Book'; III, The death of Thrale and remarriage of his widow; IV, The Thrale daughters and their children
Hyde offers a chronicle of the lives of the Thrale family at Streatham Park, using extracts from Hester Thrale's "Family Book" and correspondence, primarily from January 1777 to December 1778. The entries detail her pregnancies, the births and development of her children (Hester Maria or "Queeney," Susan, Sophy, Cecilia Margaretta, and Henrietta Sophia), domestic life, and her complex relationships with her husband and circle of friends, including Johnson. Johnson's physical ailments, such as breathlessness, and emotional dependence on Mrs. Thrale are frequently mentioned, as is Henry Thrale's hydrocele, and later, his financial panic due to over-speculation. The Thrales' lavish entertaining and social activities are documented, featuring figures like Reynolds, Murphy, Burney, and the new favorite, Sophia Streatfeild. A key event is the discovery of Fanny Burney's authorship of Evelina and her subsequent welcome into the Streatham circle. Financial troubles lead to Johnson intervening to persuade Thrale to limit his brewing. The entries conclude with Mrs. Thrale's persistent anxiety, fear of dying in childbirth, and renewed hope for a son.
Forms of Humanistic Arguments in Arnold and Johnson
In this letter to the editor, the treasurer of the Johnson Society of London, Lloyd-Jones, solicits assistance for an American scholar compiling a bibliography of Dr. Samuel Johnson covering the period from 1895 to 1945. Lloyd-Jones seeks titles and details of privately printed books, pamphlets, and reviews containing accounts of or allusions to Johnson published during those years. The appeal for similar items aims to complete the volume, which is part of a series of bibliographies on eighteenth-century writers.
Byron and Dr. Johnson, 'That Profoundest of Critics'
Brogan examines the intellectual debt Byron owed to Johnson, whom the poet labeled the 'profoundest of critics.' Byron consistently used Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets as foundational templates for his own literary theory. The analysis demonstrates how Byron adopted Johnsonian skepticism and moral realism to challenge the 'wrong-headed' tendencies of his Romantic contemporaries. Brogan identifies specific linguistic and thematic parallels between Johnson’s London and The Vanity of Human Wishes and Byron’s satirical masterpieces, particularly Don Juan. Byron defended Johnson’s 'classic' standards against the Lake Poets, viewing Johnson as a 'tower of strength' for traditional poetic discipline. The study highlights Byron’s lifelong adherence to Johnson’s critical principles as a means of grounding his own creative practice in empirical reality and moral seriousness.
Thompson corrects Woudhuysen's review, pointing out that Thrale did not marry Piozzi until 1784, eighteen years after Johnson is supposed to have written The Fountains with her in mind in 1766.
The Critical Review's reception of Dr. Johnson
Ordinary Providence: Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, Johnson's Life of Savage, and Fielding's Tom Jones in Relation to the Renaissance Tradition of Historical and Psychological Mimesis
On Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, Johnson's Life of Savage, and Fielding's Tom Jones as continuations of the Renaissance literary tradition of historical and psychological mimesis. The analysis argues that these authors evaluate and critique polarized ideas, such as Fortune and Providence or imagination and reason, by representing dynamic, circumstantial narratives. It posits that Johnson's Life of Savage, in particular, draws upon the Renaissance psychology of melancholy, as seen in Burton, to depict Savage's fragmented psyche and the narrator's process of psychological reintegration for the reader.
K voprosu o poryadke raspolozheniya znachenii slov v tolkovom slovare Na materiale slovarya angliiskogo yazyka S. Dzhonsona
“On the question of the order of the arrangement of the meanings of words in an explanatory dictionary. On the basis of S. Johnson's dictionary of the English language.”
Chapman proposes that a letter from Johnson to Dr. Taylor, dated April 20, 1778, in Hill's edition, should actually be dated 1780, as Hill noted it must be. Chapman introduces another unknown letter to Piozzi, also dated April 20, 1778, which is certainly from 1780. Reasons for the 1780 date include: references to Henry Thrale's illness, Johnson's friendship with Burney (which began in August 1778), and a schedule that matches Thursday, April 20, 1780, based on other letters.
Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Dr. Johnson
“Not every Boswell has his Johnson.”
Samuel Johnson's 'Wonderful' Remission of Dropsy
Fee investigates the spectacular remission of dropsy experienced by Johnson at age seventy-four in February 1784, which he attributed to divine intervention following a day of prayer. The event has spiritual and religious significance, but the medical mystery remains largely unexplored. Johnson was suffering from dropsy, a symptom of underlying heart failure and possibly kidney disease. Hawkins and Boswell documented the event, noting Johnson's fear of death and his subsequent sudden and massive diuresis of twenty pints of water. Johnson's letters consistently ascribed his recovery to God's mercy. Given Johnson's meticulous documentation of medical details, the absence of mention of medical treatment in connection with the diuresis suggests non-medical causes. Previous hypotheses for the remission included spontaneous diuresis (which physicians of the time and modern doctors have supported), surgery (scarification or blisters), fear, and fasting, most of which are rejected as primary causes. The mystery centers on the drug squill, which Johnson had taken in powdered form just before the remission, causing severe nausea, leading to its intermission. The delayed and massive diuresis occurred five days after the medicine was stopped, which Brocklesby was unable to definitively attribute to medicine or "spontaneous effort." Modern pharmacology suggests that the delayed effect could be due to the drug's decline from a toxic to a therapeutic level, or a psychological factor, such as the calming effect of prayer, may have been the decisive element. The incident remains "wonderful, very wonderful!"
Comic Sense: Madness and Satire in Eighteenth-Century England
Dorian offers an alternative source for Johnson's oats definition, suggesting Fuller's Worthies of England (1662), which refers to "Pease or Oates, our horse-grain (and the latter mans-grain also generally in the North for poor people)." Johnson's extensive reading in similar works makes this not improbable. The exact timing of Johnson's reading of Worthies (by 1755) is uncertain.
History vs literature: Dr. Hawkesworth and the making of Captain Cook's 'Voyages'
Rhedecynian requests biographical information, poem titles, and portraits of Miss Jones, an Oxford poetess whom Johnson called "the Chantress" in correspondence and Boswell’s Life.
A revision of the author's 1926 list of known letters from Johnson to John Taylor, a necessary undertaking because Taylor numbered his letters chronologically, and a significant number remained missing. Taylor's final letter was confirmed to be number 102, correcting the previous assumption of 108. The article announces the recent acquisition of letter number 34, dated March 23, 1775, in which Johnson mentions writing his pamphlet, Taxation no Tyranny. Through a combination of recent sales and old catalogue records, several missing numbers have been filled in, and the number of letters still to seek has been reduced to approximately fifteen. The note concludes by listing texts that are still unavailable to an editor for verification, despite their existence being recorded.
'Sooth' in Johnson's Dictionary and in Keats
Luttrell disputes the claim that Johnson’s definition of "sooth" as "sweet" was a mere error, suggesting instead that Johnson was influenced by his familiarity with Staffordshire dialect. The text provides dialectal evidence for "sooth" meaning "soft" or "gentle" and traces the sense-association back to the verb "soothe." Luttrell argues that Keats may have been influenced by Johnson's authority or his own exposure to Galloway dialect during his 1818 tour.
This article reports on an "interesting literary relic" unearthed by the Johnson Club: an original sale catalogue of Johnson's library. The document details an auction conducted by Christie in February 1785, featuring 662 lots sold over four days. The report notes that no copies of this catalogue exist in the British Museum or the Bodleian Library, making the facsimile reprint produced by E. J. Leveson particularly significant. The announcement follows a club dinner at Pembroke College, where librarian Mr. Hutton presented a paper on the library's contents based on the catalogue. Copies of the rare reprint have been distributed to major libraries in England and America.
Shuckburgh examines Boswell’s initial foray into "the art of note-taking" during his 1765 visit to Corsica. The text highlights Boswell’s persistent use of his "tablets" to record the words of Pascal Paoli, a method that initially made Paoli suspect Boswell was an "espy." Paoli later developed a "curious liking" for Boswell, describing him as "so cheerful! so gay!" Johnson, who noted Paoli's "loftiest port," later remarked that Paoli spoke of language as if he had "never done anything else but study it." The account illustrates Boswell’s characteristic "naïveté and self-exposure" and demonstrates the "unscrupulous persistence" in reporting that would later define his biography of Johnson.
Reprinted in Living Age, CXCV (Dec. 3, 1892), 605-612.
Johnson; the Johnson Club and Staffordshire, Johnson-Land
James Boswell: The Prince of Biographers
Sillard establishes Boswell as the founder and first master of a new biographical form, asserting his Life of Johnson surpasses prior obituaries and panegyrics by offering an unprecedented, perfectly realized portrait. The essay argues that the initial, momentous meeting between Johnson and Boswell transformed the younger man from a rake toward sobriety and serious aspiration. Boswell's genius enabled him to efface himself, making the reader a direct comrade to Johnson in his existence, capturing the man's essence beyond his public titles.
Cochrane entry 63.
Critic: An Illustrated Monthly Review of Literature, Art and Life
Birrell explores the mechanics of how Johnson's character remains a dominant presence in English letters. While other authors are kept alive by their books, Johnson keeps his books alive through a personality that "bursts from the pages of Boswell like the genii from the bottle." Birrell credits this transmission to the "post-pension" period of Johnson’s life, where ample leisure facilitated the famous Boswellian logomachies. He identifies Johnson’s letters as critical secondary vessels of character, revealing a "dominating personality" defined by comradeship and moral vigor. Johnson’s poetry, while characterized by monotonous versification, achieves the "moral sublime" by chaining sound sense to sombre feeling.
The author agrees with Macaulay that Croker’s translation, thnetoi philoi (mortal friends), is grammatically incorrect. Instead, the author proposes a symbolic meaning. The letter theta represents thanatos (death). Evidence from Galen and Rufinus shows that doctors and Roman military officers used theta to mark the names of the deceased in records. Johnson likely learned this symbol from Casaubon’s commentary on Persius. Under this interpretation, the abbreviation means "dead friends." Johnson’s 1781 diary supports this view, as he recorded praying for his "theta friends" during communion.
Birrell challenges the suspicion that the modern understanding of Johnson is merely a literary invention of Boswell. While acknowledging Boswell as a superb artist who only saw Johnson on 276 days, Birrell disputes the idea that the portrait is inaccurate. He argues that an unusual number of independent, first-class sources, including the memoirs of Burney and Piozzi, produce a unified impression of the man. Birrell highlights a neglected anecdote from the autobiography of Mary Martha Sherwood involving Johnson at Lichfield, where he threw a copy of his Rambler into the grass. The article further maintains that Johnson's own writings, from the translation of Lobo to the Dictionary and his prayers, possess a constant habit of mind that confirms the biographical legend. Birrell concludes that the collective evidence from literature, personal letters, and the portraits of Joshua Reynolds ensures that the public truly knows the actual Johnson.
Johnson demonstrates a deep interest in forensic matters, noted by his prayer before legal study and his preference for chancery suits over clerical duties. Johnson expresses strong constitutional views, praising habeas corpus while criticizing the impolitic measure of establishing life tenure for judges. He argues that the Crown should retain the power to remove unfit jurists. On legal ethics, Johnson defends the professional dissimulation of lawyers, likening a barrister’s affected warmth to a tumbler’s performance. He maintains that an advocate must argue even bad causes to assist the judge’s determination. Boswell records Johnson’s practical advice on achieving success through constant attendance at Westminster Hall and his defense of judges engaging in trade. The text also contrasts Johnson’s vigorous defense of the peers' appellate jurisdiction with contemporary criticisms.
Literary World: A Monthly Review of Current Literature
Denounces this text as an 'audacity of book-making' by an author who uses Johnson merely to 'spin out' worthless scraps from a commonplace book. Accuses the author of 'intentional misrepresentation' regarding Johnson’s religious life. Mocks the 'heterogeneous' and 'ludicrously trivial' anecdotes on superstition and epitaphs that have no relevance to Johnson. Concludes that the work displays 'morbid excess of vanity' and 'ignorance,' including such blunders as quoting Johnson predicting the celebrity of figures who lived long after his death.
James Boswell and His Practice at the Bar
Henderson challenges the assumption that Boswell had a merely nominal connection to the legal profession, asserting that law provided essential material for his later literary imagination. Following studies at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Utrecht, Boswell was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1766, initially displaying high professional enthusiasm and earning eighty guineas in his first months. Henderson’s examination of the Faculty Decisions reveals Boswell was engaged in approximately fifty reported cases in the Court of Session and six in the House of Lords. This activity is corroborated by Boswell's own consultation book, which confirms his early earnings despite a later decline in diligence as the attractions of London and his pursuit of Johnson took precedence.
Dr. Johnson and Lichfield: A Provincial Letter
The essay explores Lichfield as a "city of ghosts," focusing on the contrasting social circles of Samuel Johnson and Erasmus Darwin. Johnson's group was non-literary and genteel, including ladies like Lucy Porter (his stepdaughter, to whom he wrote affectionately) and Mrs. Aston, who were noted for their hospitality. The author contrasts this with the intellectual and radical circle of Dr. Darwin, which featured the poet Miss Seward and the experimental philosopher Thomas Day. The author heavily quotes Miss Seward's often-malicious accounts to characterize the figures, confirming Johnson's deep but sometimes frustrated affection for Porter and detailing Day's eccentric attempts to train an ideal wife.
This review in Church Quarterly Review surveys the editorial history of Boswell’s biography of Johnson, evaluating editions by Croker, Napier, Morley, Fitzgerald, and Hill while chronicling the sequence of Johnsonian biography from Cooke, Tyers, and Piozzi. The reviewer critiques Croker for "vandalism" and vandalizing the narrative through foreign interpolations and arbitrary chapter divisions, but praises Fitzgerald’s loyalty to the original text and Napier’s removal of editorial snubs. Hill receives credit for "unprecedented" industry and exhaustive indexing, though the reviewer notes a "concatenated" scholarly process that "seriously inclines" toward excessive, sometimes irrelevant, annotation. Despite the "verbal artillery" of past critics, the review acknowledges Hill's edition as a masterpiece of 18th-century scholarship and concludes that Boswell’s unique faculty for communicating impressions accurately ensures the work's status as an "imperishable" monument.
Henderson analyzes Boswell's professional activity by examining contemporary law reports. Contrary to views of Boswell as a nominal lawyer, Henderson finds a substantial volume of work, including appearances before the House of Lords and the General Assembly. The text details specific cases, such as Lord Monboddo’s litigation against a farrier. Henderson discusses Johnson’s influence on Boswell's legal reasoning and the ethics of advocacy, emphasizing Boswell’s reliance on his father’s judicial influence.
Cochrane entry 673.
The author evaluates the perceived discrepancy between Johnson’s vigorous conversational presence in Boswell’s biography and the "sesquipedalian verbiage" of his written corpus. The text defends the Rambler and Rasselas as genuine expressions of Johnson’s profound moral sentiment and "Greatheart" fortitude against prevailing optimism. Analyzing Johnson's critical shortcomings in the Lives of the Poets, particularly the assault on Milton’s Lycidas, the author attributes these to an honest, albeit misplaced, hatred of affectation. The study concludes that Johnson’s writing, while hampered by the monotonous classicism of his era, reveals a radical identity with his spoken wit.
Reprinted from Cornhill Magazine.
Loves and Marriages of Great Men, of Famous Men: James Boswell
Fitzgerald disputes the "conventional platitudes" that characterize Boswell as a sycophantic "butt," asserting that his social reception among the "solid men" of his era and his "wonderful book" demonstrate significant shrewdness and technical skill. Fitzgerald suggests that Boswell’s association with Johnson served as a "guarantee of sense" and a retort to those inclined to "bait" him. While acknowledging Boswell’s "devouring vanity" through a discussion of his self-caricature in The Cub at Newmarket, Fitzgerald focuses primarily on Boswell's erratic amatory history. He details Boswell’s romantic pursuits of Miss Wilmot, a "dear infidel" at Moffat, the "Circean charmer" Zélide, and the "canny lassie" Miss Blair. The narrative concludes with Boswell's failed pursuit of the Irish Mary Anne Boyd and his eventual marriage to Margaret Montgomerie, framing these episodes as evidence of a romantic, albeit inconstant, nature similar to that of Sterne.
The Johnson Club, founded 1884: a Literary Club of London
Two octavo volumes of the Letters of Samuel Johnson, collected and annotated by George Birkbeck Hill, the editor of the Clarendon Press edition of "Boswell's Johnson," are a welcome and valuable addition to English literature. Between three and four hundred letters have already been published in the "Life," but Mr. Hill is an enthusiast about everything connected with Johnson, and it was a happy thought to collect and edit as much of the correspondence as could be obtained by appeals to the possessors of the originals, as well as by his own able and zealous research.
This review, from Chambers's Journal, examines the 1857 publication of Boswell's letters to the Rev. Mr. Temple. It characterizes the correspondence as a "singular revelation of personal character," exposing Boswell's deficiency in "prudence, dignity, and suitableness." The review focuses on Boswell's "frivolous gayety" in youth, his volatile love affairs—specifically with Miss Blair and Miss Montgomerie—and his eventual "melancholy" decline. It details his professional failures at the English bar and his "slothful dependence" on the Earl of Lonsdale. The review concludes that the letters provide an impressive lesson on the "futility of all hopes of happiness based on the mere gratification of vanity and sensual appetites."
The review explores the "fortuitous" and "characteristical" likeness between Boswell and Pepys, noting that both men recorded their own absurdities for posterity. While acknowledging Boswell’s literary genius in documenting Johnson, the review focuses on the "buffoonery" revealed in his private letters. These documents provide an account of Boswell’s various failed amours, particularly his "romantic expedition" to woo the "princess" Miss Blair of Adamtown, for which he drafted ridiculous formal instructions for Temple to act as his proxy. The reviewer observes the paradox of Boswell’s character: a man capable of genuine hero-worship and intellectual labor who nonetheless succumbed to vanity, sensuality, and habitual intemperance. The correspondence reveals Boswell’s "undress heaven," showing him escaping his master's chair to indulge in drinking and egoistic displays. Following the death of his wife, Margaret Montgomerie, in 1789, the letters reflect a state of "despair" and remorse, illustrating the disintegration of Boswell's personal stability without his "anchor."
On Robert James's Medicinal Dictionary. Critiques the past's blind reverence for old, flawed ideas, contrasting it with the modern era's openness to innovation. The central exhibit for this critique is a 150-year-old medical dictionary. Samuel Johnson is an assistant in creating this book, which Twain describes as a "deadly" relic filled with barbaric and absurd "cures" (like bleeding for a headache). Johnson is thus presented as a contributor to the "majestic literary fossil," a symbol of the dangerous, antiquated knowledge that Twain's era had thankfully superseded by embracing new ideas.
Boswell maintains a lifelong correspondence with Temple, revealing a lack of reticence regarding his various debaucheries and domestic anxieties. While critics often emphasize Boswell's sycophancy, these letters suggest he operated as a man of the world whose interest in Johnson stemmed primarily from a relish for wit and convivial entertainment. Johnson provides a species of moral accommodation for Boswell, who frequently pairs religious observance with intemperance. Following the death of Johnson, Boswell suffers a decline in social importance, struggling with debt, failing health, and the fragility of political promises. He eventually focuses his remaining energy on completing his biography of Johnson, finding his spirits temporarily invigorated by its success. Boswell dies in his chambers in 1795, having existed as a creature of a bygone age unable to adapt to the shifting social order of the late eighteenth century.
Boswell identifies as a "gentleman of ancient blood" whose predominant passion remains the pride of his ancestry, a self-assessment the text uses to illustrate his profound vanity and "self-sufficient" nature. While acknowledging the immortality of his biographical work, the text focuses on the ridicule Boswell invited through his habitual "imitative irony" and egotism. A significant portion of the material consists of a parody involving "Dr. Pozz" and "Bozz," which satirizes the characteristic "vivid exertion of intellect" found in Johnson’s recorded conversations. In these satirical exchanges, Johnson dismisses Boswell’s verses on breeches and offers absurdly profound reflections on green spectacles, indigestion, and the "technicals" of dyspepsia. The text also recounts an anecdote concerning Johnson’s courtship of Elizabeth Porter, in which Johnson confesses his "mean extraction" and the fact that he had an "uncle hanged," only for Porter to reply that she had "fifty who deserved it." Boswell and Croker reportedly dispute the veracity of this account.
Life of James Boswell (of Auchinleck): With an Account of His Sayings, Doings, and Writings
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The reviewer identifies Napier’s edition as the best in existence, citing its loyalty to the "pure text" as Boswell wrote and left it. Napier removes Croker’s arbitrary chapter divisions and restores the Tour to the Hebrides to a separate volume, ending its interpolation into the Life. The reviewer disputes Macaulay’s paradox that the Life achieved greatness only because Boswell was a "contemptible" fool, arguing instead that Boswell was a "great and admirable artist" who employed "persistent application" and deliberate "selection, composition, and design." The edition includes significant Johnsoniana in its fifth volume, featuring Piozzi’s Anecdotes, Hawkins’s apothegms, and Campbell’s Diary. Napier is credited with correcting the "blundering of Croker" and the "illiberality of Macaulay," finally granting Boswell his rightful status as a conscious master of biography.
This article, reprinted from the Leisure Hour, chronicles the spiritual transformation Johnson experienced during his final months. Although Johnson long maintained outward Christian observances, a legalistic spirit and a profound fear of death burdened him. He even attempted to atone for past filial disobedience through a self-imposed penance in the Uttoxeter market-place. This anxiety continued until 1784, when Johnson confessed his horror of death to Adams and Hawkins. The narrative credits Thomas Winstanley, rector of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East, with guiding Johnson toward evangelical peace. Through correspondence, Winstanley directed Johnson to the sacrifice of Christ rather than personal austerities. Consequently, Johnson abandoned his physics and opiates to meet his Maker with an unclouded mind. Brocklesby and Burney provide accounts of Johnson’s final days, describing him as composed, devout, and trustful in divine propitiation. The article also includes a summary of a sermon by Winstanley, originally recorded by the poet George Crabbe, which emphasizes that human depravity causes the rejection of the universal divine call. Johnson’s dying words to Brocklesby insist that salvation exists only through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God.
The author examines Johnson as a profound moral teacher whose personal struggle with hereditary melancholy led him to adopt a rigorous practice of abstinence from fermented liquors. The text traces Johnson's history with drink from his early poverty in London to his later years in the Thrale household, noting that for the last twelve years of his life, he left off all fermented liquors entirely. The essay highlights Johnson’s role in reporting the 1743 parliamentary debates on the Gin Act, where he assigned the strongest oratorical arguments to those opposing the poisonous use of spirits. Johnson’s famous confession to Hannah More—I can’t take a little, child, therefore I never touch it—is analyzed as a rare example of moral courage. The author argues that Johnson’s refusal to drink was not merely medical but deeply ethical, rooted in his belief that there is more happiness in being rational. Furthermore, the text explores Johnson’s skepticism toward the social benevolence of drinking, famously describing wine not as a key to conversation but as a picklock that injures the door of the mind.
The essay defends Johnson's religious views against charges of gloom and bigotry, attributing his melancholy to temperament and a profound view of human misery rather than his Christian faith. It asserts his theology centered on a profound feeling of human suffering, which drove him to find solace only in Christianity's hope of a better life. The author assesses Johnson's critical reputation, classifying his criticism as "gigantic but cramped common sense" and analyzing his Lives of the Poets, particularly his treatment of Milton, Pope, and contemporary poets.
Arnold identifies Johnson’s Lives of the Poets—specifically the lives of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray—as an "admirable point de repère" for students of English literature. These lives document the nation's "passage to prose and reason" during a century of "regularity, uniformity, precision, [and] balance." While Arnold admits Johnson’s judgments on poetry are often "warped and narrowed" by his role as a "man of an age of prose," he maintains that the "freshness, fearlessness, and strength" of Johnson’s criticism remains instructive. Arnold advocates for a "reduction and simplification" of education, recommending these six lives as a "compendious story" of a vital literary epoch told by a "man of letters of the first class."
Carlyle's review of Croker's edition of Boswell's Life is a powerful defense of both the biography and the biographer, launched through a scathing attack on the editor. Carlyle immediately dismisses Croker’s edition as a disaster, complaining that Croker has, "in the placidest manner, — slit the whole five into slips, and sew these together into a sextum quid, exactly at his own convenience, giving Boswell the credit of the whole!" This act of "mangling" contaminates Boswell’s narrative, turning the seamless work into a perplexing mixture, leaving the reader unable to ascertain "what liquor is it you are imbibing." Carlyle contrasts the book’s noiseless original birth with the loud clamor surrounding the edition, lamenting that the trivial nature of the editorial conflict has overshadowed a work of immense importance. The heart of Carlyle’s review essay is the elevation of Boswell, a figure of sublime paradox. He fiercely disputes the prevailing critical view—which claimed Boswell's success stemmed from his personal vices—as a fundamental spiritual error: "Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say, never rose in human soul. Bad is by its nature negative, and can do nothing; whatsoever enables us to do anything is by its very nature good." Boswell's devotion to Johnson was not mere "Sycophancy, which is the lowest, but Reverence, which is the highest of human feelings." It was this genuine, though oddly expressed, capacity for Hero-worship and his "open sense" that enabled his genius. The deepest value of the Life lies in its commitment to Reality and Truth, making it superior to conventional history. "Boswell's Book will give us more real insight into the History of England during those days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled 'Histories,' which take to themselves that special aim." He also defends Boswell's notorious habit of recording private conversations against critics who deemed it a breach of social privacy, countering that "Not that conversation is noted down, but that conversation should not deserve noting down, is the evil." A dishonest speaker deserves the punishment of having his empty words preserved. Finally, Carlyle turns to Samuel Johnson, portraying him as a heroic figure whose great moral quality was Courage. Johnson’s successful struggle for Truth and subsistence in the chaotic world of eighteenth-century letters resulted in a life of paramount national significance. Carlyle famously concludes that, through Johnson's steadfast, conservative moral influence, "England has escaped the blood-bath of a French Revolution," a testament to the powerful reality captured in Boswell's unique literary accomplishment.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: His Opinion of Shakespeare
Johnson occupied a position of literary fright and despotism in the eighteenth century, shattering reputations with reckless partiality. His editorial approach to Shakespeare reflects an oracular ponderousness common to a period that patronized the dramatist. Johnson asserts Hamlet causes much mirth through pretended madness and critiques the catastrophe as an expedient of necessity. He dismisses Macbeth for lacking nice discriminations of character and famously describes Cymbeline as unresisting imbecility. In conversation with Boswell, Johnson maintains Shakespeare never wrote six lines without a fault, comparing those who find minor beauties to a poring man seeking stray fruit in an empty orchard. While Johnson and Shakespeare shared Tory political values and a reverence for existing social hierarchies, modern readers relish Johnson’s critiques as relics of a passed era of literary dictation.
A traveler from New Zealand remarks on Johnson's broken tombstone in Wesminster Abbey.
In two parts, 10 April and 11 April.
A response to the previous day's notice.
This report chronicles the auction of building materials from the chambers formerly occupied by Johnson at No. 1, Inner Temple-lane. While the Benchers of the Inner Temple withdrew the "celebrated 'Dr. Johnson staircase'" and its external carved doorway from the sale to ensure their preservation, other structural elements were sold to the public. The auction included the boarded and timber floors, windows, and doors of the first-floor rooms. These materials, noted for their association with the learned doctor and his literary circle, sold for £10 5s. The Benchers expressed a commitment to retain the wainscoting and banisters as long as the Temple existed, despite the necessity of their removal from the original site.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: The Doctors of Bolt Court
Gordon traces the architectural history of Bolt Court to correct popular misconceptions regarding Johnson's residence. Detailed accounts specify that Johnson inhabited No. 8 from 1776 until his death in 1784. This structure burned in 1819 and was replaced by a modern building used by the Stationers’ Company’s School. Gordon distinguishes this site from No. 3, often misidentified by tourists, which Lettsom donated to the Medical Society of London. The narrative recounts a dinner at Dilly's where Johnson, Wilkes, and Lettsom met, and quotes Boswell's verse regarding Lettsom's Camberwell villa. Correspondence from Lettsom to Boswell reveals medical advice urging moderation in liquor to avoid "mental languor." Gordon further identifies surviving Johnsonian sites, specifically the house in Gough Square where the Dictionary was compiled, while providing a chronology of Johnson’s residences in Staple Inn, Gray’s Inn, and Inner Temple Lane.
Samuel Johnson: Gone but Never Forgotten
In this commemorative article marking the bicentenary of Johnson's death, Tivy reflects on the enduring legacy of the lexicographer. Tivy highlights Johnson's monumental English dictionary, his diverse literary output as an essayist and poet, and his political opposition to British imperialist wars. Drawing on Boswell's biography, the piece details Johnson's complex physical presence, his intense tea consumption, and his early financial hardships as a schoolmaster. Tivy notes that while modern readers often focus on Johnson's eccentricities rather than his texts, his cultural reputation remains secure due to Boswell's vivid portraiture.
Arnold proposes a curated edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets to serve as a central point of reference for students of English literature. While the original collection contains many insignificant figures chosen by booksellers, Arnold argues that the biographies of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray constitute the kernel of the work. These six lives span more than a century of intellectual history, marking the national transition from the cumbersome prose of the seventeenth century to a modern, serviceable style characterized by regularity and precision. Johnson himself represents the greatest power in eighteenth-century letters, and his biographical sketches offer a sense of the real men behind the names. Although Johnson's exclusive focus on the establishment of prose occasionally produces defective poetical criticism, such as his disparagement of Lycidas, his judgments remain instructive. Arnold disputes the utility of over-annotated editions like Croker’s Boswell, which encumber masterpieces with trifling details. Instead, he advocates for a simplified discipline that brings readers face to face with Johnson’s original text to foster genuine experience and discernment. This article presents Johnson as an admirable type of English integrity whose writings provide a compendious story of a vital literary age.
Argues that the physical form of his letters—layout, "displayed conclusions," handwriting—is integral to their meaning, a point noted in his Rambler essay. Explores his compositional style as spontaneous ("immanent") rather than drafted. Discusses his use of "significant space" for social deference, his mock-epistolary and allusive style (especially with Hester Thrale), and his ambivalence toward the era's growing "epistolary fame."
Greene's monograph challenges the Victorian-Macaulayan view of Johnson as a mere conversationalist and eccentric personality. The organization reflects Greene's central thesis: he dedicates only 30 pages to "The Man and His Life" (Chapter I), and nearly 180 pages to the systematic analysis of Johnson's extensive and varied writings. The book covers Johnson’s wide literary career, emphasizing his productions in various genres, contrasting markedly with earlier biographical assessments like Leslie Stephen’s (1878). The s central thesis is that the primary purpose of studying Johnson must be to understand what he wrote, providing an essential introduction to his literary canon. This work was a powerful expression of the new assessment of Johnson the writer, rather than Johnson the talker.
CGV entry 10/6:346.
Contents: Chronology -- The man and his life -- The poet -- The journalist and occasional writer -- The biographer -- The moralist -- The political writer -- The student of language and literature: lexicographer and critic -- The modernity of Samuel Johnson: a recapitulation.
Twentieth Century Interpretations of Boswell's Life of Johnson: A Collection of Critical Essays
This collection served to consolidate modern critical thinking on the biographical masterpiece, reflecting a shift in how scholars viewed Boswell's work—as a complex work of art rather than merely a transcript of fact. The contents include a substantial introduction by Clifford discussing Boswell's methods of keeping a journal and his technique in constructing the biography from surviving manuscripts. The organization features essays divided into sections like "Boswell's Materials and Techniques" and "The Great Biography," including Geoffrey Scott's seminal "Making of the Life of Johnson as Shown in Boswell's First Notes" and Frederick A. Pottle's influential, specially commissioned essay, "The Life of Johnson: Art and Authenticity." The central thesis running through the essays is that Boswell shaped his material through rhetorical maneuvers and conscious artistic control, using his journal notes to build the narrative and articulate the main theme: the significance of Johnson's character as it emerged through his hardships and achievements.
CGV entry 4:216. Includes previously published pieces.
Cochrane entry 216. A collection of important 20th-century critical essays on Boswell's 'Life', containing reprints of items 6, 82, 105, 109, 115, 135, 166, 189, 193, 209, 214, 217, and 219.
Passler argues that Boswell's masterpiece is not a chaotic, artless compilation of facts but a highly self-conscious, complex, and innovative literary construction. The book's central thesis is that Boswell was an "assiduous" literary artist who deliberately confronted and solved the immense problems of biographical form, particularly the challenge of representing a life in time. Passler analyzes the "temporal restlessness" of the narrative, demonstrating how Boswell strategically abandons strict chronology to create a more dynamic and psychologically accurate portrait of Johnson. He argues that Boswell’s form is a successful reaction against the static, "monumental" biographies of the period; instead of creating a fixed "monument for posterity," he creates a "living" portrait. The study also explores the crucial relationship between Boswell's private Journals and the public Life, examining how his journal-keeping, an attempt to "live double," provided the raw material and the thematic concerns—such as his own melancholy, explored in his Hypochondriack essays—that he skillfully shaped into his final, coherent narrative. Passler presents Boswell as a sophisticated stylist who consciously used time, form, and style to capture the full, contradictory, and vital essence of his subject. Chapter 1, "The Temporal Restlessness of Boswell's Narrative," examines how the biography uses a "whirl of time levels"—the historical moment, the period of material collection, and the time of authorial composition—to create a narrative that rarely tells a story straight. Chapter 2, "Johnson and Form: A Monument for Posterity," argues that Boswell portrays Johnson as a static, monolithic entity and organizes the work's diverse materials into a "sinuous" form, resembling Hogarth’s "line of beauty," to balance meticulous detail with an overall monumental design. Chapter 3, "Boswell and His Journals: 'Let Us Live Double,'" explores the "double portrait" nature of the biography, detailing how Boswell’s volatile personality and his theatrical, dialogue-driven journalizing methods are inextricably wedded to the presentation of Johnson’s life. Chapter 4, "Boswell's Style: Like Curious Pieces of Unmatched Porcelain," analyzes the stylistic polarities of the text, noting a persistent tug-of-war between the loose, conversational rhythms of Boswell’s journals and a more formal, periodic prose influenced by the moralizing rhetoric of his age. Finally, Chapter 5, "Boswell's Image of the Past," situates the work within eighteenth-century "uniformitarian" historiography, explaining how Boswell spatializes the past as a collection of "building blocks" or "brushstrokes" to reconcile the mystery of human complexity with the search for permanent truth. The general verdict on this monograph is that it offers an ambitious aesthetic defense of the biographer as artist, though many scholars find its specific theoretical frameworks unconvincing. Boulton and Damrosch find merit in the exploration of the text's "temporal restlessness" and the "composite" portraits that emerge from Boswell’s shifting points of view, noting that the study successfully links the narrative’s dramatic style to the author's search for personal identity. Lamont similarly highlights this connection between biographical theory and practice. But the reception is tempered by significant skepticism regarding the author's use of spatial models. Boulton and Schwartz both question the "dubious ingenuity" of linking the biography’s structure to Hogarth’s "line of beauty," while Kelley contests the central thesis that the work presents a static portrait based on the ut pictura poesis tradition, arguing such a view divorces the content from its kinetic effect. Furthermore, Bloom finds the presentation "cramped" and the insights inadequately developed due to an extreme economy of style. Lonsdale and Renner are particularly critical of the evidence provided; Lonsdale argues the biography remains restricted by historical fact rather than the "variable time levels" proposed, and Renner describes the book as "feeble," asserting that the generalizations about style are not useful and the explanations for editorial choices are gratuitous. Schwartz concludes with a call for a cautious reading, citing an uneven level of discussion and the intrusion of peripheral issues that leave the book’s core arguments about chronological stability unresolved.
Cochrane entry 223.
Bronson explores the dynamic tension between Johnson's ebullient, "volcanic" temperament and his intellectual commitment to conservative authority. Rejecting the image of Johnson as a "glacial deposit," Bronson argues that his later reactionary stances required "more vigorous effort" than his youthful subversions. The text details Johnson's aggressive physical courage, his imaginative empathy with Shakespeare, and his profound humanitarian concern for the poor, debtors, and the enslaved. Bronson further examines Boswell's "double consciousness," characterizing his genius as an "adolescent" and histrionic faculty that sought external leadership in figures like Johnson to provide the stability his mercurial nature lacked. The collection positions the Life of Johnson as the "involuntary tribute of a great human weakness to a great human strength." Reviewers describe the book as a superior work of contemporary scholarship that offers a "new and good" portrait of a subject traditionally viewed as a mere authoritarian pedant. Most critics, including Esdaile and Grant, applaud the thesis that the subject’s rigid Toryism was actually a defense mechanism against a "turbulent and impulsive" poet’s mind and an ebullient temperament. Ashe and Jordan-Smith specifically highlight the "delightful" and "witty" analysis of the subject’s neglected tragedy, Irene, which the author reinterprets as a deeply personal marriage-offering to his wife. This shift in perspective allows for a "scholarly study" of the conflict between conservative opinions and a "radical" nature, an idea Ashe characterizes as a form of "inverted socialism." But the reception also focuses heavily on the treatment of the legendary biographer, whose character is reassessed through the lens of the Malahide Castle papers. Hubble and Wagenknecht note that the work rejects previous diagnoses of congenital insanity, instead framing the biographer’s "chameleon" personality as a "cyclothymic" struggle for emotional anchors. While some readers might find the volume’s focus limited due to its small number of essays, the consensus among reviewers like Notes and Queries is that the work maintains a high degree of "biographical objectivity" and psychological depth. Although the author avoids minimizing the absurdities of the biographer, he is praised for recognizing the "genius in self-portrayal" that enabled the creation of a masterpiece. Overall, the collection is celebrated as a "penetrating" inquiry that clears away "dusty cobwebs" to reveal a more complex, ebullient character.
Reprinted 1965.
Hardy provides a comprehensive interpretation of Johnson’s major literary works, arguing that his strength as a writer derives from a "genuine and fundamental humanity" coupled with a "deeply spiritual nature." The study explores how Johnson’s personal struggles with "guilt and a very real fear of insanity" influenced his rhetorical aim to "remind" readers of human limitations. Hardy examines the biographies, the Dictionary, political pamphlets, and the edition of Shakespeare, emphasizing Johnson’s ability to "feel enormous compassion" while grappling with existential problems. The text analyzes the "variety and interest" of the corpus, from significant poems to the periodical essays, situating Johnson as a critic remarkable for "range and shrewdness." Hardy contends that Johnson’s work centers on the belief that "the proper study of mankind is man," maintaining a balance between a recognition of human frailty and the "dignity and importance of human aspirations."}
Bloom argues that Johnson's early, formative years as a professional author for hire were not a mere prelude but were absolutely essential to his eventual literary and moral greatness. The book provides a detailed analysis of Johnson's career during the 1730s and 1740s, rejecting any portrait of him as an isolated genius and instead grounding him firmly in the commercial, political, and often precarious world of London publishing. Bloom's thesis is that Johnson, while forced by poverty to become a "hack," did not succumb to the trade but fundamentally transformed it, bringing profound integrity, immense learning, and a deep moral purpose to the "common drudgery" of writing. The study examines his work for periodicals like the Gentleman's Magazine, his complex relationship with his employer Edward Cave, his politically charged writings against the Walpole ministry, and his formative friendship with Richard Savage. Bloom demonstrates that Johnson used these "Grub Street" assignments—from translation and miscellaneous essays to the Parliamentary Debates—as a crucible to forge his characteristic prose style and solidify his moral framework. Bloom contends that Johnson's later, canonical works, including the Rambler and the Dictionary, were not a break from this early career but a direct and ambitious extension of it. Johnson's "triumph" was in single-handedly elevating the "author by profession" from a figure of contempt to one of profound cultural authority and dignity. Chapter 1, "Journalism at St. John's Gate: The Gentleman's Magazine," addresses Johnson's entry into the London press as an editor and contributor under Edward Cave, highlighting his foundational role in shaping the miscellany and his prolific, if often anonymous, output in prefatory essays, biographies, and the Parliamentary Debates. Chapter 2, "'The Dignity of Literature': Journalistic Associates," examines the social and economic conditions of the mid-eighteenth-century book trade, detailing Johnson’s interactions with a diverse circle of Grubean hacks and more reputable figures like Elizabeth Carter and Richard Savage. Chapter 3, "The Grub Street Historian," argues for Johnson’s significant editorial influence on mid-century periodicals such as the Literary Magazine and the Universal Visiter, noting how his political essays and reviews increasingly reflected his mature critical voice. Chapter 4, "'The Anxious Employment of a Periodical Writer,'" analyzes the production and reception of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, emphasizing Johnson’s evolving theories on the moral responsibilities and psychological miseries of professional authorship. Chapter 5, "Critic of the Learned: Johnson as Book Reviewer," evaluates Johnson’s contributions to the developing genre of the literary review, showcasing his ability to blend rigorous analysis with idiosyncratic moral concerns across a wide array of scientific and belletristic texts. Chapter 6, "Piracy, Copyright, and the Encouragement of Learning," explores Johnson’s practical and philosophical engagement with the legal disputes over literary property, where he advocated for limited copyright as a necessary compromise between an author’s natural rights and the public’s access to knowledge. Chapter 7, "Johnson on a Free Press," addresses his complex stance on press freedom, asserting that while he cherished British liberty, he maintained a conservative insistence on legal restraints before publication to prevent the potential for social licentiousness and sedition. The consensus on this study is that it provides an exhaustive, modern synthesis of the subject's professional journalism, though it is frequently criticized for a misleading title and repetitive content. While Gifford and Dulck praise the estimable research into the copyright question and press liberty, Greene rejects the monograph as a failed contribution marred by pseudo-learned jargon and factual inaccuracies. Roberts and Bonnard find the thematic arrangement useful for highlighting the "workshop side" of a writer's life. But critics, including Thomson and Tracy, argue the analysis prioritizes familiar ideas over deep historical context, noting a limpness in critical judgment regarding poetry.
Roberts provides a scholarly edition of Piozzi’s Anecdotes, first published in 1786. The work compiles memories of Johnson's life during his twenty-year intimacy with the Thrale family at Streatham. Roberts’s introduction evaluates the contemporary controversy regarding Piozzi’s treatment of Johnson after Henry Thrale's death and her subsequent marriage to Gabriele Piozzi. The text captures Johnson’s "wit, his sagacity, or his temptation to sudden resentment" through a series of "ill-strung" but authentic recollections. Roberts uses the introduction to summarize evidence regarding the Streatham household's internal dynamics, including a "tabular character sketch" rating members of the Johnson circle. The edition highlights Piozzi’s role as a primary, if controversial, source for Johnson's domestic character. Murry, in TLS, characterizes the impressionistic sketch as a primary source illustrating a contradictory character and profound religious belief. In the Yale Review, Pottle praises the attractive, readable format for the non-specialist, identifying the informal style as a source of narrative vitality. Chapman's review in RES calls the volume an attempt suitable for desultory reading, but contends the chronicler was a bad historian whose book suffers from bias and inaccuracy. Haggerty (SEL) welcomes the reprint as a delightful volume that remains less imposing than alternative accounts. Defending the editor's subject against the ridiculous prejudice of historical commentators, H. I’A. F., in the Manchester Guardian, argues that a feminine critical sense provides a useful antidote to conventional idolatry. In the Saturday Review (London), an unsigned notice deems the text essential for its portrayal of independence, a hatred of cant, and brilliant powers of talk within a comfortable domestic environment. An unsigned notice in N&Q praises the introduction and notes that the narrative gives a vivid picture of personal peculiarities despite its loose structural style. In the New Statesman, an unsigned review credits the work with preserving extraordinarily good talk and a vast range of knowledge. Finally, an unsigned notice in The Bookman maintains that the recorded tattle rarely lacks consequence, while an evaluation in The Nation and the Athenaeum describes the reprint as the most truthful of all books about the subject.
Wimsatt investigates the structural and lexical components of Johnson's writing, arguing that style is an inseparable 'detail of meaning.' He identifies parallelism and antithesis as the primary rhetorical figures through which Johnson organizes abstract thought, categorizing these into types based on whether they prioritize 'range' of ideas or 'emphasis' of a single concept. Wimsatt differentiates Johnson's 'implicit parallels' from the more varied styles of Joseph Addison and William Hazlitt, noting Johnson's reliance on nearly identical syntactic weights. The study explores diction by distinguishing between particular, general, and 'philosophic' terms, the latter being scientific or learned vocabulary used to invest moral discourse with 'authority' and 'certainty.' Wimsatt challenges the notion of a late stylistic 'improvement,' asserting that variations in 'lightness' between the Rambler and the Lives of the Poets result from changes in subject matter rather than a shift in underlying theory. He traces the antecedents of this 'magnificent rhetoric' to seventeenth-century divines, Sir Thomas Browne’s scientific prose, and the structural closure of the Augustan couplet. Wimsatt concludes that Johnson's style is a 'formal exaggeration' of mental drives to assimilate and distinguish ideas, creating a 'poetry of abstraction' that remains a distinct 'prodigy' in English prose history. Chapter 1, 'Parallelism,' addresses the structural deployment of balanced clauses to amplify meaning through emphasis rather than range, distinguishing between explicit syntactic repetition and implicit formal parallels. Chapter 2, 'Antithesis,' examines the functional role of contrast in defining meaning by negation, arguing that generality and abstraction provide the essential conditions for such formal oppositions. Chapter 3, 'Diction,' explores the preference for abstract, 'philosophic' vocabulary over sensory terminology, asserting that this learned lexicon functions to achieve authoritative emphasis. Chapter 4, 'Other Qualities,' discusses secondary features like sentence length and inversion, noting that these frequently adopt unidiomatic Latinate structures to maintain logical texture. Chapter 5, 'Consistency of Johnson’s Style,' evaluates the perceived evolution of the prose, arguing that variations in lightness result from changes in subject matter rather than fundamental stylistic shifts. Chapter 6, 'Johnson’s Theory—I,' analyzes formulated preferences regarding the grandeur of generality and the necessity of elaboration in artistic representation. Chapter 7, 'Johnson’s Theory—II,' focuses on the distinction between offensive 'terms of art' and approved scientific diction, which is valued for its inherent validity and metaphorical potential. Chapter 8, 'Antecedents of Johnson’s Style,' investigates historical sources, specifically seventeenth-century religious prose and neoclassic couplet rhetoric, which were integrated into a unique structured method. Chapter 9, 'Effects of Johnson’s Style,' surveys the widespread influence on English prose, concluding that the logic of this style compelled critics to adopt its very structures.
Samuel Johnson: A Personality in Conflict
Irwin argues that Johnson's life was defined by a profound "neurosis," or what Johnson himself called the "general disease of his life." The book's central thesis is that this "vile melancholy," which caused Johnson "great perturbation" for decades, was not an abstract affliction but a specific personality conflict rooted in his earliest experiences in a "House of Discord," particularly his unresolved and deeply conflicted relationship with his mother. Irwin's primary argument, however, is not just to diagnose this conflict but to trace Johnson's remarkable and "unique experience in self-fulfilment": his late-life "recovery" from this neurosis. The book posits that this recovery was not the result of any formal "pre-Freudian" therapy but was a "triumph of courage and endurance" achieved through his later relationships. The study identifies the "wounds of the mind" inflicted by his early life and then focuses on his time with the Thrale family, particularly with Hester Thrale's mother, Mrs. Salusbury. Irwin argues that Johnson transferred his unresolved feelings for his own mother onto Mrs. Salusbury, experiencing a similar conflict of "sullen indifference" and "counterfeited sympathy." By consciously working through this relationship to a state of "honest sorrow" and "a new principle of concord," Johnson, in resolving his conflict with Mrs. Salusbury before her death, was "finally resolving the conflict between himself and his own mother." In doing so, he was able to "exorcize forever her disrupting spirit," thus freeing himself from the "general disease" that had plagued him and achieving a final, hard-won integration of his personality. Chapter 1, "The House of Discord," examines how Johnson’s early domestic environment, characterized by parental incompatibility and maternal disapproval, fostered a foundational sense of unworthiness and a lifelong, ambivalent struggle with filial duty. Chapter 2, "The Wounds of the Mind," analyzes the symptomatic manifestations of his chronic neurosis, exploring how involuntary terrors and a fear of insanity necessitated rigorous, though often unsuccessful, self-management through intellectual exertion. Chapter 3, "Dearest Dear Lady," argues that Johnson’s profound intimacy with Hester Thrale functioned as a successful psychotherapeutic transference, allowing him to relive and eventually resolve childhood traumas, leading to his late-life emotional stabilization. Critics are generally favorable, though they frequently express reservations regarding the study’s speculative psychoanalytic approach. Walker, in the TLS, praises the theory that a maternal neurosis caused the subject's profound melancholy, calling the argument persuasive and well-evidenced. Damrosch’s review in PQ similarly finds the psychoanalytic framework illuminating and well-supported, despite a narrow focus on personality over public art. In ECS, McHenry labels the work a masterful psychological examination, particularly concerning maternal dynamics, but cautions that some clinical conclusions remain questionable and overly negative. An unsigned review in JNL considers the pathography thoughtful and convincing in many respects, though it notes that scholars might dispute the claims of a complete emotional recovery. Other reviewers are significantly more skeptical about the biographical evidence. Rogers and Ramsey (SEL) characterize the diagnosis as merely an interesting hypothesis, warning readers against accepting such remote speculation as definitive fact. Boulton, in N&Q, provides an approving summary of the mother-substitute argument but notes the lifelong struggle with guilt. Writing in RES, Lamont calls the psychological portrait vivid and readable but ultimately unconvincing, arguing that it is difficult to substantiate and inattentive to religious dimensions. Weinbrot (Studies in Burke and His Time) also questions the non-Freudian interpretations, arguing that lasting spiritual fears transcended mere neurosis and that the text does violence to public art. Finally, Rawson (English) views the biographical sketch as a tactful, attractive tribute, though slight as a contribution to knowledge due to its narrow perspective.
Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations The house of discord The wounds of the mind Dearest dear lady Appendix A Appendix B
Published between 1929 and 1930, this monumental, multi-volume catalogue is a three-volume work that details an extensive collection of primary eighteenth-century materials centered on Samuel Johnson and his circle. Its scope is comprehensive, documenting R. B. Adam's vast collection of Johnsonian materials, Johnsoniana, and Boswelliana, serving as an essential resource for bibliography and tracing the history of Johnson's texts. This publication was an elaboration and continuation of Adam's earlier, privately printed catalogue from 1921, functioning as a physical reconstruction of the Johnsonian era by documenting holdings and providing photographic reproductions of crucial manuscripts and rare printed items. Volume I contains correspondence from Johnson, Boswell, Burke, Reynolds, and Garrick, including previously unpublished letters and a facsimile of Johnson’s manuscript "Life of Rowe." Volume II provides a comprehensive bibliography of Johnsonian editions, citing contemporary descriptions and variant imprints; it also includes a photographic reproduction of Johnson's "Short Scheme for Compiling a New Dictionary" manuscript, showing the versos, and facsimiles of Sheet 43 of the Plan of a Dictionary. Volume III compiles miscellaneous autograph letters from a vast array of figures mentioned in Boswell's Life or Birkbeck Hill's annotations. Collectively, the volumes document the social and literary network surrounding Johnson, providing scholars with access to rare manuscripts, proof sheets, and association copies, including Piozzi’s annotated works. Specific high-value contents include a facsimile of Baretti's transcript of the celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield, incorporating Johnson's manuscript corrections, and a facsimile of Johnson's letter to Macpherson. Boswellian materials documented include the manuscript notebook (1776–1777), acquired from the Morrison sale, and revised proof sheets of the Life of Johnson. Additionally, the catalogue provides scholarly details such as Alexander Chalmers' autograph note regarding Johnson's prose works and the earliest list of textual variants for Johnson’s London, some of which were previously unrecorded.
CGV entry 1/4:19. Volumes 1-3 were published in 1929; Volume 4 in 1930.
Essay on the Stile of Doctor Samuel Johnson (1787)
Tragedy in the eighteenth century is often said to have expired or been deflected into nondramatic forms like history and satire, and to have survived mainly as a "tragic sense" in writers like Johnson. Damrosch shows that many readers were still capable of an imaginative response to tragedy. In Johnson, however, moral and aesthetic assumptions limited his ability to appreciate or create tragedy, despite a deep understanding of human suffering. This limitation, Damrosch argues, derived partly from his Christian belief, and more largely from a view of reality that did not allow exclusive focus on its tragic aspects. Chapter 1, "Introduction," addresses the traditional scholarly assumption of a "sterility of the tragic sense" in the eighteenth century, arguing instead that this sense was not absent but rather displaced into non-dramatic forms such as satire and biography. Chapter 2, "Tragic Theory and Its Limitations," identifies the constraints of neoclassical criticism—specifically the dogmas of poetic justice and catharsis—arguing that these theoretical frameworks often hindered a formal engagement with the metaphysical depths of tragedy. Chapter 3, "Tragedy Perceived: Other Evidence," examines the era’s reception of Greek and Shakespearean drama, arguing that despite the restrictive "rules," contemporary readers and actors maintained a capacity for genuine tragic appreciation through a focus on naturalistic psychology. Chapter 4, "Johnson's Tragic Sense of Life," addresses the "Johnson Agonistes" archetype, arguing that his private struggle against melancholy and his religious dread of "implacable Omnipotence" constitute a profoundly tragic worldview. Chapter 5, "Irene," addresses the failure of the only formal tragedy written by the subject, arguing that the play is "tediously instructive" because the author prioritized providential moralizing over the exploratory nature of true tragic action. Chapter 6, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," argues that the poem achieves the status of "tragical satire" by replacing Juvenal's detached mockery with a sympathetic, Shakespearean irony regarding the inevitable "waste" of human ambition. Chapter 7, "A Johnsonian Theory of Tragedy," addresses the subject's critical resistance to formal tragic structures, identifying his preference for the "domestic" over the "imperial" as an attempt to find tragic resonance in common experience. Chapter 8, "Shakespeare," argues that the subject’s Shakespearean criticism represents a landmark shift toward character-based psychological analysis, which effectively liberated the playwright from the "frigid caution" of neoclassical rules. Chapter 9, "Conclusion," argues that the subject’s profound consciousness of the tragic ultimately led him to a "straightforward facing of life" that sought moral stability rather than the open exploration of the irrational in art. Critical reaction is mixed. Clifford and Middendorf (JNL) praise the study for its wise caution, calling the insights delightfully fresh and identifying a deep understanding of human suffering. In the TLS, the reviewer finds the critique of the subject's criticism to be the strongest section but faults the muddled structure and the tendency to blame the subject for lacking twentieth-century insight. Alkon, in PQ, notes conceptual ambiguities in the definitions of tragedy and challenges the assertion that the subject was unfit to understand world masterpieces. Boulton (N&Q) praises the analysis of why the subject remained resistant to the formal medium of tragedy despite lapses in tact. In ECS, Weinbrot disputes the hostile assessment of the subject's critical feebleness, arguing that the modern theoretical underpinnings are inappropriate to eighteenth-century practice. Greene delivers a scathing review in Modern Philology, accusing the author of flagrant misreading and a breathtakingly arrogant methodology that willfully alters textual meaning to fit modern secular preferences. Chapin, writing for JEGP, questions whether the metaphysical definition of tragedy used in the study is merely a modern product rather than a valid measure of the historical period. Conversely, Rawson, in English, praises the monograph as a valuable examination, highlighting the insights into how anti-tragic elements and pragmatic common sense qualified the subject's pessimism. Finally, Curley, in Studies in Burke and His Time, views the work as limited and negative due to its focus on how faith hampered literary appreciation.
Reviews: Paul K. Alkon, PQ 52, no. 3 (1973): 529; James T. Boulton, N&Q 22 [220], no. 1 (1975): 38–39; Leo Braudy, English Language Notes 11, no. 3 (1974): 224; Chester Chapin, JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology 72, no. 3 (1973): 447–49; Choice 1973, 454; James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf, JNL 33, no. 1 (1973): 4–5; Thomas M. Curley, Studies in Burke and His Time 19, no. 3 (1978): 244–49; Donald J. Greene, MP 71, no. 4 (1974): 443–48; John A. Hay, AUMLA 41 (1974): 87; Library Journal 1972, 3912; Claude Rawson, English: The Journal of the English Association 22, no. 113 (1973): 75–78; Southern Humanities Review 1974; TLS, no. 3717 (1973): 613; Howard D. Weinbrot, ECS 7, no. 4 (1974): 505.
The second and concluding volume of a scholarly biography, covering Samuel Johnson’s middle years from 1749 to 1763 and chronologically succeeding Young Sam Johnson. Intended for both scholars and the general reading public, the book provides an authoritative, cohesive narrative focusing on the period during which Johnson completed The Rambler, Rasselas, and his Dictionary of the English Language. This fourteen-year span was the most obscure period of Johnson's life, requiring arduous research into seemingly minor biographical details. Clifford applies rigorous scholarly standards and meticulous attention to detail, integrating the groundwork of Aleyn Lyell Reade with Clifford's original discoveries made over more than twenty years of research. The contents detail Johnson's lexicographical work (including his dependence on amanuenses), his The Rambler essays, his Literary Magazine, The Idler, and Rasselas. The volume features a Prologue summarizing his first twenty-nine years, detailed notes, and illustrations, including a ceiling painting by Felix Kelly depicting Gough Square. The work was recognized with the Gottschalk Prize in 1980. Chapter 1, "The New Playwright," addresses the highly anticipated 1749 theatrical premiere of the neo-classical tragedy Irene at Drury Lane, analyzing its reasonable box office success despite mixed aesthetic reviews from contemporary critics. Chapter 2, "Life in Gough Square in 1749," details the architectural layout and domestic economy of the writer's primary London residence, while exploring mid-century metropolitan infrastructure, taxation, and a fractured marital relationship. Chapter 3, "The Ivy Lane Club and a Few Old Friends," describes the 1749 formation of a weekly tavern society, delineating the diverse professions and ideological leanings of its ten founding members. Chapter 4, "Lexicographer at Work," examines the meticulous, multi-stage editorial methodology in sorting quotations and drafting definitions, alongside a complex forgery scandal involving a disabled Milton scholar. Chapter 5, "The Rambler," chronicles the 1750 launch of a biweekly moral essay periodical, noting its challenging reception, high-wrought diction, and the psychological depth underlying its thematic focus. Chapter 6, "The Last of Tetty," records active literary collaborations with female writers and agonizing personal distress surrounding the deteriorating health and subsequent rural burial of a beloved spouse. Chapter 7, "The Widower and the Adventurer," examines a period of profound grief and social withdrawal that led into collaborative planning for a new, lighter periodical series. Chapter 8, "The Harmless Drudge," outlines the arduous compilation of the dictionary's secondary volume amidst mounting physical ailments and volatile professional associations. Chapter 9, "The Dictionary," celebrates the landmark 1755 publication of a monumental philological achievement, analyzing its critical evaluations, idiosyncratic definitions, and enduring cultural impact. Chapter 10, "Still the Hack," follows the immediate aftermath of financial overpayment, which forced a return to anonymous journalism, essay contributions, and commercial proposals. Chapter 11, "Speaking His Mind—The Literary Magazine," probes the 1756 launch of a new monthly journal featuring fiercely anti-imperialist political reviews and a long-deferred Shakespeare editorial agreement. Chapter 12, "The Idler," presents a lighter, more contemporary weekly newspaper series created during a time of persistent procrastination and diverse prospective historical schemes. Chapter 13, "Rasselas," captures the rapid composition of an Ethiopian philosophical tale to fund maternal funeral expenses, comparing its static narrative style with Voltaire's Candide. Chapter 14, "Struggling to Keep Alive," traces nomadic movements through various London inns alongside a poignant public campaign to relieve institutionalized prisoners of war. Chapter 15, "Friend and Talker," illustrates late-career conversational prominence within an expanding network of artists, theater figures, and highly admired female writers. Chapter 16, "Pensioner," charts the receipt of a secure royal bounty that alleviated financial desperation while igniting complex controversies with rival dramatists. Chapter 17, "Trip to Devon," narrates an extended summer journey to the countryside featuring extensive local dining, swimming, and relaxed interactions with regional gentlefolk. Chapter 18, "Secure But Not Settled," marks a legendary 1763 introduction to a youthful Scottish biographer, previewing critical domestic stability subsequently provided by an affluent brewing household. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Haley, in the TLS, commends the restoration of authentic details and background to the subject's pre-Boswell years. Simon's review in the NYTBR praises the accumulation of obscure details and anecdotes, though he notes the work succeeds through its prodigious inclusiveness rather than deep literary analysis. In the Washington Post, Bronson praises the detailed account of the period that established the subject's reputation, making these middle years vivid and compelling. Middendorf (JNL) emphasizes the solidity of specification derived from decades of archival research, establishing the work as the standard biography for these years. Writing for The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, Hardy offers a largely positive assessment, praising the balanced perspective and lucid narrative, but notes omissions in critical discussions of major writings. Hunter, in Studies in English Literature, finds the power of the volume resides in its unique angle of vision and tone. But some scholars identify distinct narrative limitations. Lipking, in the American Scholar, argues that the external perspective fails to analyze the writings, leaving the inner life absent. Similarly, Wiltshire (Quadrant) finds the biography hollow, asserting that it treats the intense inner life with perfunctoriness and focuses on outer trivia rather than the source of the subject's moral authority. Popular reviews, including those in The Times and the Daily Telegraph, mirror the scholarly praise, focusing on the readable narrative and fascinating historical minutiae.
Cochrane entry 43. An updated, revised, and expanded version of the author's earlier bibliography from 'Cairo Studies in English' (item 41).
Bibliographical series of supplements to British book news on writers and their work
Published for the British Council & the National Book League by Longmans, Green
This introductory monograph, a revised 1965 reprint of the 1956 original, surveys the life and literary output of Boswell. Collins organizes the study into a biographical narrative, an analysis of the journals and correspondence, and a critical evaluation of the major published works. The text characterizes Boswell as a "unique figure in English literature" whose "self-revelation" and "manic-depressive" temperament informed his artistic achievements. Collins details Boswell's "pursuit of Great Men," specifically the foundational relationship with Johnson and encounters with Rousseau and Voltaire. The study examines the "vast book-keeping operation" of the private papers, recovered in the twentieth century, and their role in the "Great Art of Biography" manifest in the Life of Johnson. Collins argues that Boswell’s "sensationalism" and "extraordinary faith in the written word" allowed him to surpass his own subject by exhibiting Johnson "more completely than any man who has ever yet lived." The volume includes a select bibliography of Boswell's separate works and relevant Johnsonian scholarship.
Vulliamy interprets Boswell's life through the lens of his obsessions with fame, women, wine, and celebrity. He argues that Boswell was not a genius but a man with a good memory, and that his relationship with Johnson was a calculated, exploitative strategy for self-validation. He drew on recent materials but infused his narrative with hostility and “unflagging vivacity.” The biographer described Boswell’s private accounts, including his journals and letters to Temple, as a "garbage-pile of the most extraordinary dimensions" marked by “disordered vanity.” Vulliamy concluded the subject was afflicted by “congenital insanity,” which drove his excesses, justifying a closing note of pity from “ordinary, normal persons” who appreciated the "delight" his work brought. The book was criticized for being sensational and based on prejudice. Reviews are split, with commentators dividing over whether a pathological clinical diagnosis of congenital insanity undermines or explains a supreme literary artistry. Adams, in NYTBR, disputes the biographical claim of mental deficiency, arguing that the attempt to diminish genius remains unconvincing. Krutch, in The Nation, notes the challenge of explaining how a silly fop produced a masterpiece, attributing the success to a highly developed sense of social character rather than mere blockheadedness. Writing in New Republic, Josephson uses archival manuscripts to link habitual drunkenness and moral degradation directly to the foundation of that genius. In The Spectator, Fleming credits the approach for exploding the theory of dog-like devotion, replacing it with a portrait of a calculating opportunist. MacCarthy, in the Sunday Times, argues that fatuity and humility were essential to biographical success, emphasizing a lovable delicacy of character. In the New Statesman and Nation, Miles describes the portrait as vivacious and scholarly, suggesting that a lack of independent opinions allowed for a usefully parasitic relationship. Conversely, Kingsmill, in the English Review, criticizes the focus on a victim of life, asserting that the biographical genius stems instead from an impersonal interest in life and honest self-portrayal. In The Listener, M. finds a paradox of incurable egotism and genuine humility, praising the vivid reconstruction of the era. Finally, the Scotsman notes that while the study exposes contemptible features and highlights a crucial editorial collaboration, the miracle of how such a degraded creature produced a masterpiece remains a deepened mystery.
Cochrane entry 12.
Reviews: J. Donald Adams, NYTBR, April 30, 1933; American Mercury 29, no. 4 (1933): 4; Dundee Courier, January 5, 1933; Peter Fleming, The Spectator 149, no. 5449 (1932): 796; Yvonne French, London Mercury 27 (1933): 276–78; M. Josephson, New Republic 76 (August 1933): 80–81; Matthew Josephson, New Republic 76 (1933): 80–81; Hugh Kingsmill, English Review 56, no. 3 (1933): 340–43; Joseph Wood Krutch, The Nation, May 11, 1932; M. M., The Listener 8, no. 203 (1932): viii; Desmond MacCarthy, Sunday Times (London), November 13, 1932; Hamish Miles, New Statesman and Nation, December 10, 1932; The Nation, April 1933; The Scotsman (Edinburgh), November 28, 1932.
Kerslake organizes this illustrated survey to coincide with the National Portrait Gallery's 1963 exhibition tradition, linking Boswell’s "autobiography" to portraits of contemporary associates and sites of his travels. The catalogue draws significantly on the "now celebrated finds at Malahide Castle" and the subsequent scholarly undertakings at Yale University. Kerslake traces Boswell's development from his "Early Years" in Edinburgh and London to his Continental Grand Tour, where he sought audiences with Rousseau and Voltaire before "falling in love" with Corsica. Central to the text is the "intimacy" between Boswell and Johnson, documented through their 1773 tour of the Hebrides and Boswell's eventual "hard-wrung achievement," The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Kerslake further examines Boswell’s social circle at Streatham and "The Club," detailing his complex interactions with Thrale, Joshua Reynolds, and David Garrick. The work concludes by addressing Boswell’s "last years" in London, marked by professional struggle and the "gathering clouds of sadness" following the deaths of his wife and Johnson.
A catalog of an exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery.
CGV entry 4:205.
Cochrane entry 603.
The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale
Hyde argues that the complex relationship between James Boswell and Hester Thrale (later Piozzi) was not a true friendship but a strained, "impossible" bond held together solely by their mutual devotion to Samuel Johnson, who served as the exclusive prize in their lifelong rivalry. Hyde’s thesis is that this relationship can be understood only by tracing its evolution through four distinct stages, which form the structure of the book. The first, "Rivalry," begins with their introductions to Johnson in the mid-1760s and details their immediate and intense competition for his time, attention, and affection. Boswell saw Thrale as his chief rival for the role of Johnson’s primary intimate, while Thrale viewed Boswell as a disruptive interloper in her domestic circle at Streatham, which she had established as a refuge for Johnson. The second stage, "Restraint," covers the years when their competition was managed through a tense, formal courtesy, forced upon them by their necessary interactions within Johnson's social world. During this period, Hyde shows, their correspondence and meetings were polite but superficial, masking a deep-seated jealousy as both were actively gathering the biographical materials—the stories and conversations—that would become their respective claims to posterity. The third stage, "Estrangement," begins after the death of Henry Thrale, which dissolved the social center of Streatham. Their relationship completely fractured when Mrs. Thrale announced her intention to marry Gabriel Piozzi, a move Johnson himself condemned, and which Boswell saw as an unforgivable betrayal and abandonment of their ailing friend. With Johnson's death in 1784, the only link connecting them was severed, and the final stage, "Enmity," commenced. This period details their public battle for Johnson’s legacy, as they became literary rivals. Hyde frames the publication of Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes (1786) and Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791) as the final shots in this war, arguing that Boswell’s Life was, in significant part, a direct and combative response intended to supplant and discredit Piozzi’s portrayal, thus ending their "impossible friendship" as an open literary feud. Chapter 1, 'Rivalry (1763 Through 1775),' addresses the competitive struggle between James Boswell and the Thrale family for the primary affection and biographical access to Samuel Johnson. It charts Boswell's 1763 introduction to Johnson and the Thrales’ 1765 meeting, framing their early connection through their shared, often jealous, dedication to the "Great Cham." Chapter 2, 'Restraint (1776 Through 1781),' examines a period of guarded civility and increasing social distance following the death of Henry Thrale's son and the cancellation of an Italian tour. This segment highlights Boswell’s persistent attempts at intimacy, which were frequently met by Mrs. Thrale’s brief, formal, and non-committal correspondence. Chapter 3, 'Estrangement (1782 Through 1786),' addresses the total collapse of their social connection following Henry Thrale’s death and Hester Thrale's controversial marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The narrative frames this period as a transition from private rivalry to public biographical warfare as both parties prepared competing accounts of Johnson's life. Chapter 4, 'Enmity (1787 Through 1791),' argues that the final years of their relationship were defined by bitter public hostility and literary disparagement. It details how their respective publications—most notably Boswell's Life of Johnson—served as vehicles for mutual character assassination and the final destruction of any remaining friendship. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. An unsigned review in NYTBR praises the successful presentation of a dramatic story of mutual suspicion, emphasizing that sympathy rests with Piozzi despite Boswell's biographical victory. Wain, in NYRB, highlights the elegant narrative skill and unobtrusive scholarship, noting fresh insights into Boswell's psychological agony during composition. In TLS, Walker emphasizes the minute deduction of the central quarrel, highlighting Boswell's callous brutality and the snobbish reaction of their social circle. Frost (Studies in English Literature) commends the work as a creative contribution to biography that offers detailed, reliable investigation. Alkon's review in MLQ describes the text as a revolution of understanding that provides sufficient background on the interpersonal dynamics, though noting a thin narrative framework before 1781. In PQ, Waingrow commends the narrative skill but questions the reliance on conjecture regarding internal feelings, disputing the characterization of the subjects as primary biographical rivals. Nicholls (Transactions of the Johnson Society) praises the objective empathy and inclusion of rare illustrations, though criticizing the intrusive structural formatting. Hamilton, in Country Life, finds the biographical account effective even as Boswell appears poorly as a man, while Seymour (Contemporary Review) underscores the success in rendering life-size portraits of the competing biographers.
Cochrane entry 32.
Portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds: Character Sketches of Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, and David Garrick, Together with Other Manuscripts of Reynolds Discovered Among the Boswell Papers and Now First Published
CGV entry 5:317. Volume 3 of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell.
Publication Title: Boswell in search of a wife
An audiobook ready by Anthony Quayle.
Artful Memory: The Journals of James Boswell
Cochrane entry 408. A study of Boswell's journals as a landmark in autobiography, focusing on his candid record of identity conflicts and his skill as an interviewer.
Thesis--Rutgers University. Dept. of English.
Daiches examines Boswell’s life as a continuous search for identity, framed by a struggle between his Scottish heritage and his ambition for London success. The biography details Boswell’s legal training in Edinburgh and Utrecht, his early literary forays in verse and pamphlets, and his significant interactions with prominent figures including Rousseau, Voltaire, and Pasquale Paoli. Central to the narrative is Boswell’s relationship with Johnson, described as a "transubstantial" father-figure who provided the moral guidance and intellectual stimulation absent in his biological father, Lord Auchinleck. Daiches describes Boswell’s "chameleon element" and "Caledonian Antisyzygy," the tendency to yoke together extreme contraries in his personality, such as his sincere religious devotion and recurring "mean profligacy". The text analyzes Boswell's meticulous habits as a diarist and biographer, arguing that his "uncannily gifted" observation was the true destination of his lifelong search. Daiches follows Boswell's professional practice as a Scots advocate, his unsuccessful political aspirations under the patronage of Lord Lonsdale, and the arduous composition of the Life of Johnson following his wife's death. The volume concludes that Boswell’s "extraordinary self-documentation" ultimately created his most enduring legacy. Critics call this book an economical and attractively illustrated life that successfully distills an embarrassment of riches into a concise, insightful narrative. The Bookseller and Sutherland highlight the portrayal of the subject as a likeable yet contradictory figure, hounded by anxiety and seeking fatherly approval to replace a disapproving parent. While McIntosh notes the text passes up chances for deep analysis, Moulton and Scott commend the energetic focus on the subject's professional life as an advocate and his hybrid Scottish-English identity. But Scott identifies the illustrations as predictable. The consensus favors this study as a fresh, pleasing introduction to an extraordinary personality.
Cochrane entry 628.
Atlantic Monthly Press; G. P. Putnam's Sons
Young Boswell: Chapters on James Boswell, the Biographer, Based Largely on New Material
Tinker presents detailed chapters on the early life of Boswell, the biographer, using much new material from the R. B. Adam collection. Tinker's objective was to present Boswell as a conscious artist whose biography of Johnson was written "to defy the very powers of oblivion." He shows Boswell's youthful ambition to associate with people of genius and influence, actively seeking out older, prominent men like Hume and Johnson, and cultivating relationships with figures like Wilkes and Paoli. The narrative covers Boswell's legal studies in Scotland and Holland, his European travels, and his encounters with philosophers Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell's complicated love life, including unsuccessful courtships of "Zélide" and Kate Blair before marrying Margaret Montgomery, reveal his candid personality. Tinker defends Boswell’s often-criticized social genius and chronic melancholy, arguing these traits were inseparable from his creative power. Finally, the book examines the rigorous work behind the creation of his Life of Johnson, establishing Boswell's meticulous approach to biographical writing. Chapter 1, 'Young Boswell,' addresses the foundational ambition of James Boswell to associate with literary genius, arguing that his perceived folly and desire for reflected glory were deliberate components of a creative strategy to move within the highest intellectual circles. It further details Boswell’s aristocratic lineage and his early, albeit inept, poetic endeavors, such as "An Ode to Tragedy," which he genially dedicated to himself to court public notice. Chapter 2, 'In Holland and Germany,' contends that Boswell’s legal studies in Utrecht were more substantial than critics allow, while highlighting his strategic use of continental travel to cultivate "universality" through social intercourse with scholars and aristocrats. The narrative follows his departure from England under the escort of Samuel Johnson and his subsequent travels with the Earl Marischal, where he began practicing the art of character-sketching. Chapter 3, 'With the French Philosophers,' analyzes Boswell’s calculated pursuit of Rousseau and Voltaire, using a mask of naive vulnerability and "dire need of spiritual counsel" to penetrate their retreats. These encounters are presented as pivotal moments where Boswell refined his interviewing techniques, seeking to extract philosophical dissertations on subjects like dueling and the nature of the soul. Chapter 4, 'Boswell and Wilkes,' examines the unlikely but enduring intimacy between the Tory biographer and the radical outlaw John Wilkes, established through a shared "social genius" and mutual relish for wit. Their association in Italy, characterized by political banter and classical conversation, provided Boswell with a "common fund of memories" that he later leveraged to orchestrate the famous meeting between Wilkes and the strictly moralistic Johnson. Critics are generally favorable. Bailey, in TLS, praises the volume for using new material from the Morgan collection to reveal a conscious artist rather than a shorthand reporter, highlighting parallel columns that illustrate the transformation of notes into dramatic narrative. Writing in the New Republic, P. L. lauds the scholarly quietus given to Macaulay's crude caricature, emphasizing the deliberate industry and comic perception behind the biographical art. Bracey's review in New Blackfriars commends the sympathetic study for establishing a creative genius who possessed a unique power to create life. In The Independent, More acknowledges the success in proving native genius through continental interviews, but he challenges the conclusion that these talents alone account for the final biography, arguing the greatness relies on a unique phenomenon wherein the subject's spirit was transfused into the recorder. Snyder, in Modern Language Notes, finds the clear narrative an essential survey, but he criticizes the limited new readings in the correspondence and disputes the treatment of domestic life for suppressing humiliating marital terms. Abbott's review in the Yale Review explores the character apart from the famous association, praising the movement beyond traditional moralizing to focus on an incorrigible vitality. Finally, Hurlbut (Atlantic Monthly) commends the illumination of early character, but critiques the failure to grasp a complex psychological duality, arguing the new letters reveal a personality more contradictory than allowed.
Cochrane entry 6.
Reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1969.
Watkins’s study gathers material from Johnson's Dictionary, his notes on Shakespeare, and other works to define the nature and extent of Johnson's knowledge of English poetry predating 1660. The evidence shows that Johnson likely had a reading knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Johnson relied heavily on scholars like Junius and Skinner for Teutonic etymologies in the Dictionary and quoted Old and Middle English writers in his History of the English Language.
New dimensions in history: Historical cities
Marshall reconstructs the metropolitan environment of mid-eighteenth-century London, using the life and observations of Johnson as a focal point for exploring the city's complex development. The text details the topographical growth of London following the Great Fire, emphasizing the emergence of the West End's planned squares and the persistent congestion of the City. Marshall examines the economic foundations of the capital, describing the specialization of industries, the dominance of the sugar and tobacco trades, and the rise of financial institutions like the Bank of England and Lloyd's. The work further analyzes the City’s self-governing structures—including the roles of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council—and the volatile interaction between municipal and national politics, particularly during the Wilkes era. Marshall contrasts the "elegant living" of the nobility with the "abject and desperate poverty" of the substratum, detailing the prevalence of crime, the inadequacy of the "trading justices," and the emergence of organized policing under Henry Fielding. Finally, the narrative surveys the city’s intellectual and artistic life, centered on the Literary Club and the Royal Academy, alongside the philanthropic efforts of the voluntary hospital movement and the Foundling Hospital. Marshall argues that London was not merely a background but a "living entity" that shaped the behavior and culture of its inhabitants.
Reprinted from the first edition of 1924.
The Profane Virtues: Four Studies of the Eighteenth Century
Quennell examines the "fertile and abounding genius" of the eighteenth century through four representative figures: Boswell, Gibbon, Sterne, and Wilkes. The narrative primarily focuses on Boswell’s development from an insecure youth at Auchinleck to the celebrated biographer of Johnson. Quennell details Boswell’s early travels, his relentless "thirst for information," and his complex dependence on mentors like Paoli and Johnson. The text explains that Boswell lived "intensely and excitedly" through others, using his journals to establish a personality that often eluded him. Quennell describes the interactions between Johnson and Boswell as a blend of "veneration" and "observation," noting that Boswell’s "Magnum Opus" provided the spiritual justification he sought despite a life marked by hypochondria and dissipation. The study also contrasts Gibbon’s "ironic detachment" and "smooth and steady" vital spark with Boswell’s revolutionary, introspective mode of literature. Quennell portrays Johnson as a "fixed star" and "embodiment of conscience" for Boswell, while also highlighting the role of Thrale as a rival for Johnson’s dependence. The work argues that Boswell’s "complete candour" and " insect-leaps" of scrutiny across the landscape of Johnson’s character set a new standard for modern biography. Quennell concludes that these figures represent the "harmonious civilisation" of the Augustan Age before its dissolution into more ambitious but "deadly" nineteenth-century virtues.
A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1785
The introduction analyzes Reynolds's Dialogues as a masterful transcription and mild parody of Johnson's famous conversational style. Johnson's propensity to oppose the stated opinions of his friends, sometimes through apparent verbal abuse, is attributed to his love of contradiction and intellectual combat. However, this combative nature did not preclude deep affection: Reynolds deliberately portrayed Johnson's genuine warmth toward Garrick by dedicating more space to the sage's praise than his mockery of the actor. The essay confirms Johnson’s intense, proprietary interest in Garrick's fame, maintaining that Johnson considered the actor his own, allowing no one else to either praise or blame him unduly.
The Lives of Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson, Together with Essays from the Gray's-Inn Journal
printed for A. Cleugh, 14, Ratcliff-Highway. by J. Skirven, Ratcliff-Highway
Anecdotes of Philip, late Earl of Chesterfield, and Dr. Johnson; a comparative view of their lives, characters, and merit, and Extracts from their Writings. By a student at Cambridge.
The "Cambridge Scholar" (Hayley) records a series of dialogues between an Archdeacon and a Colonel concerning the relative merits of Johnson and Chesterfield. The Archdeacon defends Johnson as a "second Socrates" and a "heaven-defended" moralist, emphasizing his triumph over poverty and "surly grandeur." Conversely, the Colonel challenges Johnson’s critical integrity, citing his "detractive malevolence" toward poets such as Milton, Gray, and Prior. The Colonel offers a spirited vindication of Chesterfield, arguing that his parental "tenderness and anxiety" in his letters have been "basely degraded" by "hypocritical pretenders to goodness." While acknowledging Johnson's "massive intellect," the dialogue concludes with Lady Caroline's assessment of Johnson as "darkly wise, and rudely great," and Chesterfield as "too slippery to be held." The text provides a comparative scrutiny of Johnson's "rigid stateliness" against Chesterfield's "sportive urbanity."
A student at Cambridge = William Hayley After imprint: Three Shillings and Six-Pence sewed Originally published as 'Two dialogues; containing a comparative view .. ' in 1787
Roberts collects revised and expanded essays that interpret the eighteenth-century ethos through its literary and social figures. The title essay characterizes George Lyttelton as the quintessential English gentleman whose career served as a microcosm of eighteenth-century society. A substantial section, Johnsoniana, focuses on Samuel Johnson's professional struggles in Grub Street, his scholarly identity as revealed by his personal library, and his complex emotional ties to his native Lichfield. Roberts includes Two Imitations—fictionalized accounts of Hester Lynch Piozzi and James Boswell—to further illustrate contemporary literary personalities. The volume concludes with an analysis of Lord Macaulay, whom Roberts describes as the pre-eminent Victorian whose works, despite their later date, offer a rosy faith in the progress and standards rooted in the preceding century. Ultimately, Roberts uses these diverse figures to challenge conventional historical generalizations, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of the bulwark of morality and sense of duty that defined the period.
CGV entry 10/6:216. Contains four essays concerned with Johnson.
Vulliamy argues that Thrale was the medium through which Johnson achieved his greatest conversational eminence, providing him with a 'hospital for his illness' and a 'retreat for his indolence.' The narrative traces Thrale’s life from her Welsh childhood and 'unsuitable marriage' to the brewery owner Henry Thrale—characterized by Vulliamy as a man of 'pompous nullity'—to her scandalous second marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. The text details the 'Streatham coterie,' a domestic group including Baretti, Murphy, and Burney, where Johnson was 'virtually incorporated' as a family member. Vulliamy uses newly assembled evidence, including the 'Queeney Letters,' to offer a critical view of Thrale’s character, describing her as an 'indifferent' and sometimes 'cruel' mother whose 'tough and insensitive egoism' allowed her to navigate societal reprobation and personal tragedy with 'unconquerable vivacity.' While acknowledging her literary contributions like the 'Anecdotes' and 'Letters,' Vulliamy dismisses her independent scholarly excursions as 'tedious and absurd,' asserting her primary significance remains her role as Johnson’s 'Dear Mistress' and most perceptive contemporary source. Critical reaction is mixed, with reviewers dividing over whether the biographical narrative successfully balances historical impartiality against a disparaging, censorious tone. Williams, in the TLS, gives an approving account, arguing that the study successfully rehabilitates the subject's character and offers an amusing, almost likeable depiction of her later years. Conversely, Quennell, writing in the New Statesman and Nation, finds the biography cantankerous and consistently censorious, though he praises the narrative of her escape from a heavy moral dominion. Hayward's review in The Spectator describes the narrative style as lively and unbigoted, noting that it helpfully challenges traditional Boswellian perspectives, even if the subject's significance remains tethered to her famous companion. In The Observer, Roberts disputes the claim that her companion lacked widespread fame before the relationship began, concluding that specific evidence is missing to prove he considered himself a suitor. Lynd, in the Daily News, critiques the application of modern psychology to the relationship, arguing that spontaneous love, rather than mere physical comfort or neurosis, was its essential element. Tyson, in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, challenges the biography on archival grounds, asserting that the failure to use key manuscript collections produces a distorted, one-sided picture. Finally, the Scotsman notes that the account utilizes new correspondence but ultimately views the subject's literary influence as negligible, siding with historical detractors who documented her harsh behavior after her first husband's death.
Reviews: Sir C. Biron, Sunday Times (London), May 1, 1936; Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 20 (1936): 183–84; John Hayward, The Spectator 156, no. 5626 (1936): 758; Irish Times, May 2, 1936; Sylvia Lynd, Daily News (London), April 24, 1936; E. H. W. Meyerstein, London Mercury 34 (1936): 74–75; Peter Quennell, New Statesman and Nation, April 25, 1936; S. C. Roberts, The Observer (London), April 26, 1936; The Scotsman (Edinburgh), May 4, 1936; Moses Tyson, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 20, no. 2 (1936): 183; Iolo Aneurin Williams, TLS, no. 1786 (1936): 350.
Roach's beauties of the poets. No. VI. Owen of Carron, by Dr. Langhorne. The four seasons, By Samuel Johnson LL.D. The temple of fame, by Alexr. Pope Esqr. Grongar Hill, by John Dyer. The soul of sorrow, by Dr. Parnell.
Four of Johnson's poems are gathered to discuss the four seasons. In "Spring," Johnson describes the transition from winter's "long-continued strife" to the "gales of life," though he notes the personal "beds of pain" caused by "Arthritie tyranny." He seeks "venerable bow'rs" for "cool meditation" to learn "the use of life" and "shun the crime" of political factions. "Summer" shifts to a pastoral scene where Johnson invokes "gentle eve" and "Stella, queen of all my heart," finding solace in "mirth and wine" against the "burning ray" of the sun. "Autumn" introduces a more somber tone as "impatient time rolls on the year," stripping trees and drenching fields in rain; Johnson characterizes the grape as the "friend of wit" to cheer the "darkening hour." Finally, "Winter" portrays a world of "usurping darkness" and "frozen rills" where "the driving tempest roars." Johnson concludes with a memento mori, observing that "man a flow'r" soon dies, and neither "love, nor wine" can restore the "Spring" of life once the "dreary winter" of age arrives.
The Self Observed: Swift, Johnson, Wordsworth
Golden argues that the literary imagination of Swift, Johnson, and Wordsworth is fundamentally shaped by a dual sense of the self as both a representative actor on the world stage and an evaluating observer. In Swift, this division manifests as a tension between mad, fragmented personae and a sane, aristocratic norm based on classical-Christian tradition. Golden explains that Swift uses these "blown-up fragments of himself" to expose society's chief vice: the corruption of right discrimination through self-serving group clichés. Johnson’s "doubleness" is characterized as a psychological struggle where the striving self grapples with chaos and "hunger of imagination," while a compassionate observing self—the "majestic teacher"—seeks to order experience into valid generalizations. Golden posits that Johnson’s work reflects a middle-aged sympathy for human delusiveness, viewing the idiosyncratic not as perverse but as a distinctively human principle of learning. For Wordsworth, the duality evolves into an "integrating, unifying self" where the imagining poet becomes the high archetype of the species, fusing idiosyncratic sensations with universal truth. Golden highlights how Wordsworth transcends the "separated selves" of his predecessors by creating a fused consciousness that incorporates loss and guilt into a "grand consolation" of immortal relatedness. The study demonstrates that the writer’s private "reveries about the self" provide the individuality and universal application of their literary visions.
This volume collects influential contemporary critiques of Johnson’s 1765 edition of Shakespeare, which includes both Kenrick's Review of Dr. Johnson’s new edition of Shakespeare and Barclay’s subsequent Examination of Kenrick's critique. Kenrick’s Review appeared in the Monthly Review and accused Johnson of ignorance or inattention while defending the poet. Kenrick also published A Defence of his review and An Epistle to Boswell in 1768. These works constitute important early critical responses to Johnson's edition.
Johnson's first published book, originating as a partial abridgment. The contents include Lobo's account, Dissertations on Abyssinia by Abbé Joachim LeGrand, and a section of "Various other tracts" attributed to Johnson. The copy-text is the first edition of 1735. Editorial policy established the text through modern principles. The compilation's scholarly depth stems from meticulous documentation of Johnson’s interventions: the editor carefully records every time Johnson deviated from Le Grand's source text, Voyage historique d'Abissinie. Johnson interpolated interpretations while erasing portions of the previous text. The translation often compressed literal passages into condensed presentations. Textual notes record variants from later editions. Supplemental materials include appendices containing geographical content derived from a gazetteer. Historically, the work was excluded from the 1787 collected Works. Johnson is recorded as having thought little of the book in later life. The vol. superseded the poorly established text found in the 1825 edition of Johnson's Works. Reviews are generally favorable, with critics celebrating the volume as an authoritative and meticulously documented addition to a major university series, though some reviewers express minor reservations regarding the geographical aids and specific textual interpretations. Korshin, in SEL, delivers a highly positive assessment, praising the reliable text, exemplary annotation, and the inclusion of a memorable preface suitable for travelers. Writing in LRB, Rawson commends the volume as excellent, highlighting the consistent stylistic threads of curtness and deflation visible from this early prose to later masterworks, but he questions the editorial handling of the translator's anti-Portuguese bias. Lamont's review in RES acknowledges that the volume fulfills all scholarly requirements and serves as a valuable resource for tracing subsequent Eastern themes, but she criticizes the omission of a modern map and notes that the editorial apparatus can feel uncharitable to the reader. In AJ, Adams evaluates the edition as a compelling travel book that exposes early anti-Portuguese and anti-Catholic prejudices, while Brophy, writing in BJECS, applauds the meticulous documentation of crucial shifts in vocabulary and tone that transform raw factual content into creative prose. Lurcock, in N&Q, finds the text of great interest but notes that the editorial policy yields a hybrid, sometimes irritating punctuation layout. Finally, Parke, in ECCB, praises the authoritative historical contextualization of the copy text, which successfully isolates substantive emendations and captures the translator's early ideological interventions.
Reviews: Percy G. Adams, AJ 2 (1989): 486–92; Abdussamad H. Ahmad, Canadian Journal of African Studies 21, no. 1 (1987): 121; Elizabeth Bergen Brophy, Albion 18 (1986): 286–87; John J. Burke Jr., CLIO 14, no. 3 (1985): 346–49; Donald Crummey, International Journal of African Historical Studies 19, no. 2 (1986): 373–74; Isobel Grundy, BJECS 10, no. 1 (1987): 103–5; Paul J. Korshin, SEL 26, no. 3 (1986): 569–70; Claire Lamont, RES, n.s., 38, no. 149 (1987): 81–82; A. F. T. Lurcock, N&Q 34, no. 3 (1987): 398–99; Graham Nicholls, Transactions of the Johnson Society (1985): 29–31; Albert Pailler, Études Anglaises 39, no. 3 (1986): 346; Catherine N. Parke, ECCB 11 (1985): 583–84; Claude Rawson, LRB 13, no. 15 (1991): 15–17; History Today 36 (1986): 58.
The papers brought together in this volume bear witness to the growing vigour and diversity of eighteenth-century studies. The seminar at which they were presented was held to honour the memory of a literary scholar, David Nichol Smith. It is therefore understandable and fitting that the majority of the contributions should be concerned primarily with literature. History, art, and philosophy, however, are also dealt with; and the collection as a whole offers a widely ranging and illuminating survey of the period.
This monograph, reprinted from Fraser's Magazine (1832), evaluates the life and legacy of Samuel Johnson while providing a critique of John Wilson Croker’s 1831 edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Carlyle dismisses Croker’s editorial interventions—specifically the "clipping" of multiple sources into the text using brackets—as a "conglomeration" that disrupts the literary whole. But the text elevates Boswell’s original work to the status of a "Heroic Poem," praising Boswell's "open sense" and "childlike open-mindedness" for capturing a "sunlit" likeness of reality that exceeds the value of conventional histories. Carlyle frames Johnson’s existence as a "victorious Battle" against the "heterogeneity" of his circumstances: a "ruler-soul" imprisoned in a diseased, unsightly body and hindered by "Forlorn Hope" poverty. Central to the argument is Johnson’s role as the "Prophet of the English," who preserved the "genuine spirit of Toryism" by preaching the "Doctrine of Standing still" and "heart-devoutness" in a chaotic era of "quackery" and "infidelity." The essay concludes by contrasting Johnson’s "piously expectant" end with the "factitious gaiety" of David Hume, asserting that Johnson's "valour" and "talent of silence" offered a necessary spiritual anchor for the British nation.
Anderson added extensive notes from Percy in 1815 to correct chronological errors and flesh out critical accounts. These additions reflect Anderson's effort to integrate fresh biographical research and commentary collected in the twenty years following the first publication.
Johnson's criticism is a coherent system, not random prejudice, based on fundamental principles by which he lived. His theory rests on Truth (fidelity to nature), Common Sense, and Morality ("The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing."). The book's structure first establishes these principles. It then analyzes Johnson as a Neo-Classicist who valued reason, didacticism, and genre rules. A key section details his "Departure from Neo-Classicism," where he broke rules (like the unities) for nature. Subsequent chapters apply this framework to his criticism of poetry, fiction, and drama. The conclusion posits Johnson as a transitional figure, "conservative in all matters which seemed to him of secondary importance," who "never allowed these rules to interfere with...principles which he considered fundamental."
Uses Boswell to profile medical men in Johnson's circle. Johnson himself wrote medical biographies (Boerhaave, Sydenham, Browne). The first doctor at "The Club" was Oliver Goldsmith, M.D., who studied at Edinburgh and Padua, practiced briefly, wrote The Traveller, and "talked like poor poll." Johnson's close friend Richard Bathurst died in Havana. Surgeons included William Cruikshank and Percival Pott. The famed anatomist brothers William Hunter (Queen's accoucheur, described lymphatics) and John Hunter (pioneering surgeon, naturalist) were central figures. Others detailed are William Heberden (described angina); John Radcliffe (witty, wealthy founder); the "universal genius" John Arbuthnot; and Richard Brocklesby, Johnson's loyal last physician. Quacks like "Spot" Ward and "Chevalier" Taylor are also discussed.
Reprinted from the Medical Library and Historical Journal, 1907.
Johnsoniana: A Collection of Miscellaneous Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Gathered from Nearly a Hundred Different Publications
Croker presents a vast "sequel to all editions of Boswell's Life of Johnson," aggregating "Ana" from approximately one hundred sources to complete the lexicographer's "intellectual portrait." The editor argues that these miscellaneous materials, if included as notes in the Life, would have "overloaded and perplexed" the text, yet they remain "essential" for scholarly study. The collection is organized by contributor, featuring significant sections by Hester Lynch Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, Thomas Tyers, and others. Piozzi’s contributions focus on Johnson’s domestic habits, his "superiority to the common forms of common life," and his interactions at Streatham, including his views on education and "sentimental miseries." Hawkins provides more formal observations on Johnson’s gesticulations and professional conduct. The volume serves as a "portable" manual of "Materials for Thinking," preserving the "relics" of Johnson's wit and conversational power for a Victorian audience.
Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784: A List of Books with References to Periodicals in the Brooklyn Public Library
This bibliography, issued for the bicentenary of Johnson’s birth, catalogs the library's holdings of Johnson’s works and associated scholarship. It organizes materials into sections covering bibliographies, primary texts—including various editions of the Dictionary, Rasselas, and the Lives of the Poets—and critical biographies. The list identifies significant 19th-century commentary by Macaulay, Carlyle, and Hill, while specifically noting resources related to the personal lives and literary contributions of Boswell and Piozzi.
Dr. Samuel Johnson and His Birthplace: A Retrospect and Guide
Printed by R. Cruttwell; Sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown
Original Letters from Richard Baxter, Matthew Prior, Lord Bolingbroke, Alexander Pope, Dr. Cheyne, Dr. Hartley, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Montague, Rev. William Gilpin, Rev. John Newton, George Lord Lyttleton, Rev. Dr. Claudius Buchanan, &c, &c. With Biographical Illustrations
Warner is the first to publish three letters involving Johnson. One letter, from Johnson to Samuel Richardson (1754), discusses Johnson’s work on his Dictionary, noting that while external scholarly help arrived late, he values the pursuit of "settling a language." Two letters from 1776 and 1783 are addressed to Francis and Joseph Fowke. In the former, Johnson declines to publish a narrative concerning Joseph Fowke's trial due to his own civil relationship with the adversary, Warren Hastings, insisting a "common friend must keep himself suspended" until hearing both sides. In the 1783 letter, Johnson reflects on his declining physical health and the death of his friend Robert Levet, while expressing concern for the blind Anna Williams. He asserts that "there is yet provision to be made for eternity" and questions Joseph Fowke on his life in India, trusting he has avoided "pillaging or oppressing." Warner’s biographical sketch highlights Johnson’s "colossal intellect" and his famous dismissal of Lord Chesterfield’s late-offered patronage as an attempt to "gild a rotten post."
Hubbard's Johnson is both "large" and "great," arguing he was "most unfortunate in his biographer." "Boswell ruined the literary reputation of Johnson," as the public now reads Boswell instead, and refutes the idea of "Johnsonese", calling Johnson's own style "stately, dignified, splendid" and "profound, but always lucid." He describes Johnson as an awkward "Grind of the pure type" who married the 49-year-old Widow Porter. His friendship with pupil David Garrick was a pivotal "flint"; they went to London, where Johnson struggled, eventually writing Garrick's epitaph: "eclipsed the gaiety of nations." The biography highlights Johnson's gruff, sparring character through famous quips, such as calling a woman "a dunce!" and describing a female preacher as "like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." Despite this, his "charity knew no limit", and his home was a "museum of waifs and strays." Hubbard concludes that the basis of Johnson's character was "a great Sincerity" and that "In his spirit Socrates and Falstaff joined hands."
The Antipathies of Samuel Johnson: A Study of Them as an Aid to the Definition of English Romanticism
Bell argues that Johnson acted as a "classical watch-dog" whose deep-seated aversions provide a precise boundary for identifying Romantic traits. The text organizes Johnson's documented dislikes into three primary groups: lack of conformity, lack of order, and lack of restraint. Specific "antipathies" identified include a religious abhorrence for deism and "fanatick" reformers ; a political detestation of Whiggism and "rascally" Republicanism ; and a social rejection of "savage life" and the "levelling doctrine" of equality. In literature, Bell documents Johnson’s scorn for the "marvellous," "puerilities of obsolete mythology," and innovations such as blank verse and Spenserian imitations. The dissertation concludes that Romanticism constitutes a re-assertion of individual impulses against the very "beaten paths" and "monarchial institutions" that Johnson defended, while noting that his critiques accurately highlight Romanticism’s inherent danger of "excess."
Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life
The Works of Samuel Johnson Together with Those of James Boswell and Oliver Goldsmith and Others of Their Group
Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. during the last twenty years of his life. By Hester Lynch Piozzi
Satire contre le vice, ou tableaux satiriques et épisodiques de moeurs au commencement du XIXe siècle, suivie de Londres, poëme traduit de l'anglais du docteur Samuel Johnson, par Hugue-Nelson C
Gleanings from God's Acre; Being a Collection of Epitaphs: With an Essay on Epitaphs, by Samuel Johnson, and a Copious Index
Briscoe's collection features existing tombstone epitaphs, aiming for a representative selection with dates, places, and a comprehensive index. The work Johnson's "Essay on Epitaphs," which defines the form as an inscription honoring the deceased to perpetuate virtue. Johnson challenged the neglect of these sepulchral inscriptions, stressing the necessity of solemnity appropriate to their setting. He asserted that the most perfect epitaphs showcase virtue without excessive detail, suggesting a short, unadorned character is best. Johnson criticized inclusions contrary to Christian doctrine, such as heathen mythology, and warned that epitaphs, while conveying panegyric, must adhere to truth and focus on private virtue for genuine imitation.
Contains 'An Essay on Epitaphs' by Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Bi-Centenary of the Birth of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Commemoration Festival at Lichfield, September 15th to 19th, 1909
The official guide to celebrations at Lichfield, September 15-19, 1909, reprinted from the Staffordshire Advertiser. Describes the extensive public commemoration festival for Johnson's bicentenary in his native city, detailing a five-day program organized by the Johnson Birthplace Committee and local officials, including Morgan, Wood, and Raby. The events featured a memorial exhibition, a performance of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, and multiple scholarly addresses, including a major oration by Rosebery, who was also granted the Freedom of the City. Lee lectured on Johnson, Garrick, and Shakespeare. The volume includes unpublished letters from Johnson, particularly regarding a boarding school scheme in Lichfield and financial matters with Congreve. A guide details local sites such as the Birthplace Museum, Dame Oliver's School, and Johnson's Willow, highlighting the enduring civic pride in the city's eminent citizen. The publication marks the beginning of the Johnson Society of Lichfield.
CGV entry 6:21.
Printed for T. Cadell & W. Davies, Strand
Sermons on Different Subjects, Attributed to Samuel Johnson, and Left for Publication by John Taylor ... Published by the Rev. Samuel Hayes
Sir Thomas Browne's Christian Morals: With the Life of the Author by Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
This scholarly edition of Browne's posthumous work, edited by S. C. Roberts, reprints the 1756 second edition which first featured Johnson's biographical narrative and annotations. The volume includes an introduction by Roberts, Johnson’s Life of Sir Thomas Browne, the original 1716 preface by John Jeffery, and the text of Christian Morals with supplemental notes. Roberts’s introduction analyzes the stylistic and temperamental relationship between Browne and Johnson, disputing the simplistic claim that Johnson merely imitated Browne’s "Anglo-Latian diction". Instead, Roberts highlights their shared insatiable thirst for "out-of-the-way knowledge," their mutual interest in medicine, and their somber contemplations of mortality. Johnson’s biography chronicles Browne’s education at Winchester and Pembroke College, Oxford, his medical travels through Europe, and his eventual settlement in Norwich. Johnson offers a critical assessment of Browne’s major works, describing Religio Medici as a collection of "novelty of paradoxes" and Vulgar Errors as an encyclopedic aggregation of knowledge. While Johnson characterizes Browne’s prose as "vigorous, but rugged" and often "pedantick," he ultimately defends Browne against charges of deism, asserting his status as a "zealous adherent to the faith of Christ". The text of Christian Morals itself provides a series of gnomic exhortations on virtue, humility, and the "mysterious" nature of human conduct.
CGV entry 13:4.
American Art Association, Anderson Galleries
The Splendid Library of the Late Edward Dean Richmond: A Remarkable Collection of Oscar Wilde Manuscripts, First Editions and Association Items, Also First Editions of James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, George Moore, Rupert Brooke, Aubrey Beardsley and Other Authors ... Unrestricted Public Sale, November 2 and 3
Printed by C. & R. Baldwin, for Thomas Payne, Pall-Mall
Parliamentary Logick: To Which Are Subjoined Two Speeches ... With an Appendix, Containing Considerations on the Corn Laws, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Never Before Printed
Johnson addresses the severe grain scarcity and civil unrest of 1766, arguing that the legislative priority is national subsistence over typical political concerns. Johnson defends the corn bounty for exportation, asserting that it promotes agriculture by guaranteeing profitability, which is a "physically good and morally certain" effect. He contends that the bounty did not cause the shortage, as demonstrated by the continuing high demand and price after the bounty ceased; rather, a "failure of the harvest" caused the scarcity. Johnson states that the bounty's secondary effect, potential domestic deficiency, is always subject to government restraint and is thus "avoidable." The author warns against withdrawing the profitable law, which France now imitates, cautioning that limiting agricultural incentives could lead to greater, long-term famine.
Includes an appendix containing 'Considerations on the Corn Laws, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., never before printed,' which was written in 1766.
The Synonymous, Etymological, and Pronouncing English Dictionary; in Which the Words Are Deduced from Their Originals, Their Part of Speech Pointed Out, and Their Synonyms Collected, Which Are Occasionally Illustrated in Their Different Significations, by Examples from the Best Writers; Extracted from the Labours of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson; Being an Attempt to Synonymise His Folio Dictionary of the English Language, to Which Is Prefixed an English Grammar
This dictionary is "extracted from the labours of the late Dr. Samuel Johnson" and represents an attempt to synonymize his folio dictionary. The front matter includes an English grammar and a preface where William Perry acknowledges Johnson as a "luminary of learning" whose work remains a standard for the language. The text focuses on the pronunciation and synonymous use of words, providing examples from best writers. Perry maintains that Johnson's authority is the foundation for the selection and disposition of these terms, preserving the moralist's philological contributions for a new generation of readers.
Wright presents a revised and enlarged compilation of "Ana" originally intended as a sequel to Croker's edition of Boswell's Life. The work aggregates anecdotes from approximately one hundred sources, including substantial sections by Mrs. Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, Thomas Tyers, and Madame d'Arblay. Wright argues that these scattered materials, if integrated as notes into Boswell’s text, would have "overloaded and perplexed" the narrative, yet they remain "essential to the completion of the intellectual portrait of Johnson." The 1859 edition features steel engravings, including a portrait of Mrs. Piozzi by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The text provides detailed accounts of Johnson’s domestic habits, his "superiority to the common forms of common life," and his opinions on topics ranging from "sentimental miseries" to "historical fact." Volume II includes a chronological catalogue of Johnson's prose works and a comprehensive general index to the ten-volume series.
The First Japanese Biographer of Samuel Johnson
CGV entry 3:233. Published by the English Literary Society of Japan. Not seen.
Johnson's account of Donne and the 'metaphysical' poets, in the Life of Cowley, was long taken as a definitive dismissal and his analysis of the 'metaphysical' style is still sometimes offered for received truth. Recent commentators have argued that far from lacking sympathy with Donne's poetry and dismissing it, Johnson knew it intimately, admired it, and was trying to establish new criteria for its appraisal. (See W. B. C. Watkins, Johnson and English Poetry before 1660, Princeton, 1936, pp. 7, 78-84, 96-9; W. R. Keast, 'Johnson's Criticism of the Metaphysical Poets', ELH, xvii, 1950, pp. 59-70; A. D. Atkinson, 'Donne Quotations in Johnson's Dictionary', NQ, September 1951, pp. 387-8; W. J. Bate, Criticism: The Major Texts, New York, 1952, pp. 204 and 217-19; D. Perkins, 'Johnson on Wit and Metaphysical Poetry', ELH, xx, 1953, pp. 200-17.)
Samuel Johnson on Milton and Shakespeare
CGV entry 10/1:31. In Japanese. Argues that Johnson owes much to Dryden and Addison in his criticism of Milton and Shakespeare.
In this balanced review, McIntosh evaluates John Wain’s biography of Samuel Johnson as a "highly respectable" work by an accomplished writer, despite some "crypto-romantic" biases. McIntosh notes that Wain occasionally allows theory to "jump the fence of fact," such as endowing Tetty with "greatness of soul" or characterizing Johnson’s mind as "hungry for wildness." However, the reviewer praises Wain’s evocative prose regarding Johnson’s struggle with poverty and his "inertia." McIntosh concludes that while the book is "weak as intellectual history" and short on research, it remains a fine, appreciative biography.
Seccombe characterizes Johnson as one of the most typical and popular figures in English literature, whose physical presence and moral fortitude have become part of the national identity. The article traces Johnson’s life from his childhood in Lichfield and his interrupted education at Oxford to his grueling years in London's Grub Street. Seccombe details the production of the Dictionary, the Rambler, and the Lives of the Poets, noting Johnson's movement away from a verbose style toward more direct expression. The text highlights Johnson’s wit as his differentiating force and praises Boswell for transmitting a personality that serves as a "criticism of life." Seccombe concludes that Johnson’s legacy is defined by his large humanity, his hatred of humbug, and his devotion to duty and piety.
CGV entry 10/6:119. The entire number is dedicated to Johnson, and 42 illustrations from the Adam collection are included.
Baridon reviews Wain's 1974 biography of Johnson, which Wain admits he wrote without reading his predecessors to preserve the freshness of his impressions. The reviewer notes that despite Wain's unconventional method, the book is engaging due to the author's memory, flair, and evocative style. Baridon characterizes Johnson as a literary force driven by humor and sarcasm rather than a systematic aesthetician. The biography succeeds in creating an intimate, insular, and tender portrait of Johnson, which will appeal to readers familiar with English culture but is unlikely to broaden Johnson’s appeal outside his country.
The reviewer’s positive assessment focuses on Bate’s monumental 646-page biography of Johnson. The review's opening anecdote by Hogarth recounts initially mistaking Johnson for an "ideot" due to his "strange ridiculous manner" of rolling himself about. While much of the text discusses Price's book on Nixon, the reviewer's use of Johnson provides a contrast for Price’s "Boswellian intimacy." The review's highlight of Johnson as a "magnificent gargoyle" commends Bate for capturing the complexity of the man beyond his outward eccentricities. The piece presents the biography as a significant contribution to understanding the "Great Sam."
Review by Ian Campbell Ross of Samuel Johnson by W. J. Bate.
Pritchett reviews Quennell's study of Johnson and his social circle, praising the work as a "conversation piece" that successfully domesticates the "old bear" within the eighteenth century. The book is commended for its critical discursiveness, pin-pointing contrasts, and use of well-chosen illustrations and caricatures. Pritchett observes that Boswell had to "invent the art of biography" to contain a figure as large as Johnson, whose paradoxes include a "fear of madness" and "terror of death" contrasted with his charitable nature and love of street wandering. The reviewer notes Johnson's opposition to new manners, a trait stemming from his early life and his efforts to conceal those existential fears. Quennell is praised for his fresh and sympathetic depiction of Johnson's long intimacy with the Thrales, noting that Johnson mistakenly believed Piozzi put herself "beyond the pale" by marrying Gabriel Piozzi.
Samuel Johnson: The Life of Samuel Johnson
Sir John Hawkins is remembered for the most part only as Johnson's "very uncluabble man" and the arch-enemy of Boswell, who lost no opportunity to score off him and impugan his reliability. Now, great biographer though Boswell was, he was by no means the most estimable of then himself, and where his own interests were vitally involved he was unlikely to be too nice in his dealings with rivals, so one would not on the whole take his estimate of these rivals as finals seems
Johnson's complex and contradictory nature, ranging from profound moral rigor and morbid fears of damnation to coarse wit and great compassion for the needy, makes him an unbelievable but historically real figure. Fuller emphasizes the "gallant magnanimity" with which he overcame immense personal pain and burdens. The article juxtaposes memorable anecdotes—such as his fierce retort to a scamp on the Thames, his tender love for his cat Hodge, and his withering dismissal of an unfortunate clergyman—to illustrate his singular character. Johnson's greatness lies not in being an ideal figure, but in his "mortal being altogether of clay," demonstrating a height of human potential despite his flaws and struggles against melancholy and indolence.
Johnson occupies a "secure and unique position" as the "tutelary genius of the English people," embodying national character more than Shakespeare. His reputation rests on the man rather than his "laborious" works; he represents a "wonderful triumph of character." He never sought "public approbation" or a patron, eventually enslaving the opinion he did not conciliate. Boswell succeeded as both "combatant" and "disciple," capturing the "commentary on the events" that makes Johnson's wisdom vital. The text identifies Johnson as the "public trustee" of English virtues.
Burke evaluates Bate’s biography as a comprehensive view of the "inner man" intended for readers seeking the figure behind Boswell’s "trove of quotation." He commends Bate’s "sensible conjecture" regarding the psychological impact of Johnson’s childhood physical pain and his "lifelong struggle with fits of deep depression." Burke notes that Bate successfully unites biography and criticism by analyzing major writings as reflections of this internal struggle. He concludes that Johnson remains significant because his life and work are "all of a courageous and moral piece," providing "immense reassurance" to human nature.
Il 'Candide' inglese: 'Ras Selas' di Samuel Johnson
In this enthusiastic review of Clifford, the reviewer argues the work fills a "bad gap" in the knowledge of the first fifty years of Johnson’s life before his 1763 meeting with Boswell. Characterizing the work as a success story and a "human narrative" of a clumsy young man "lumbering into greatness," the reviewer praises Clifford for using research by Hill and Reade to correct Boswell’s "occasional mistakes." Clifford gives "shape and colour" to figures Boswell casually dismissed, such as Ford and Walmesley, and explores Johnson’s uncomfortable relations with his parents and brother, Nathaniel, alongside his suffering under an intemperate wife. By examining Johnson’s Lichfield years and his time as a melancholy hack journalist, Clifford adds depth to the stereotyped portrait of the tyrant of letters. The review concludes that the book "rivets our love" and reinforces esteem for Johnson by detailing his courageous battle against "ill-health, indolence and penury," squalor, and beggary.
In this approving review of W. Jackson Bate’s biography of Johnson, Hodgart praises the work's scholarship and "seriousness, charity, insight and style," specifically Bate's emphasis on Johnson’s heroism and rare ability to evaluate literature as a human activity. Hodgart disputes Bate's characterization of Johnson's Toryism, arguing that Bate misses the "ancient constitution," Jacobite components, and the "apostolical hierarchy" of the scholar’s politics. Additionally, Hodgart finds Bate’s "ingenious defence" against Johnson's alleged masochism unconvincing; he disputes the dismissal of this behavior, asserting that the padlock and chain evidence involving Thrale and Piozzi indicates more than infantilism and that "common sense" suggests the man was a masochist. Despite these objections, the review concludes that Bate writes extremely well on the "greatness of mind and heroism" of the Great Moralist. The article also mentions Piozzi’s habit of marking her acquaintances on a scale for "humour," where Johnson scored second only to Garrick, and highlights Bate's conclusion that Johnson gave his friends the most precious of all gifts: hope.
Damrosch reviews Irwin’s psychological study of Johnson, which analyzes how childhood trauma and maternal hatred fueled the subject’s neuroses. Irwin argues Johnson sought mother-substitutes in women like Boothby and Thrale to achieve emotional recovery. Damrosch finds the psychoanalytic approach persuasive, well-evidenced, and illuminating despite its narrow focus on personality over public works.
Hodgart finds Wain's biography of Johnson "unsatisfactory," "dropsical," and "massively padded with picturesque detail," noting a lack of new material or explanations. This scathing review characterizes the work as a "labor of love" but challenges Wain’s attempts to make Johnson relevant to modern life, particularly regarding the "ordering intellect" versus modern irrationality. While Hodgart praises Wain as an academic literary critic who knows the Dictionary, Shakespeare, and essays thoroughly—offering "sound" and lucid opinions on works like Rasselas and The Rambler—he criticizes the biographical approach. The review even corrects Wain on the historical size and strength of eighteenth-century port bottles to contextualize Johnson’s "alcoholic feat" of drinking three bottles. Hodgart concludes that while Johnson remains the most "available" great mind for inspection, his true character is better found in the records of Boswell, which contain all the necessary information, than in Wain’s "massively padded" narrative.
Neurological Disorders of Dr. Samuel Johnson
McHenry summarizes the congenital, developmental, and vascular diseases of the nervous system that afflicted Johnson. Analysis of portraits from age 27 to 75 reveals a persistent head tilt toward the right shoulder, which McHenry identifies as "congenital ocular torticollis" resulting from paralysis of the fourth cranial nerve. The article disputes the diagnosis of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, arguing instead that Johnson's tics and gesticulations were voluntary "bad habits" used to accompany his thoughts or "reprobate some part of his past conduct." McHenry chronicles Johnson's 1783 stroke, noting his composure in testing his "integrity of my faculties" by composing Latin verse. Although Johnson suffered from aphasia and temporary agraphia, making "wrong letters" in a note to Edmund Allen, he recovered significantly before his death. The study concludes that Johnson's cardiovascular complications likely caused a "lacunar infarction" in the left middle cerebral artery.
Thomas examines Joyce's attempt to isolate Johnson from the "Boswellian varnish." While acknowledging Joyce's use of Johnson's letters and meditations to illuminate "inner conflict," Thomas labels the interpretation of Johnson as an "unwilling writer" who longed for action a "strange interpretation." The text disputes Joyce's "direct assertion" that an "obsessive fear of death" was a constant factor. Thomas finds the study an "admirable guide" for general readers but argues that the "irrepressible Boswell" remains central to the portrait.
This short article contains a poem and an accompanying song about love. The poem is a character sketch of Samuel Johnson, identical to the one in Article 9. It portrays his physical power and loud voice alongside his learning and firm, bright genius, despite a trembling frame and distorted sight. He is characterized by his humble devotion, kindness, and deep melancholy, being both prepared to die and afraid of death.
Lawrence's enthusiastic review of the second series or volume of Johnson Club Papers emphasizes Johnson's inexhaustible appeal and outstanding character as a figure of "forthright courage" and "warm heart" whose practical sympathy wins an abiding affection that accommodates his bad manners, passing tempers, physical tics, and indifference to clean or clean-looking linen. The review welcomes the rich variety of interest discovered in the collection, detailing how individual essays illuminate different facets of Johnson's circle, intellect, and professional interests, examining his relationships with figures such as Dodd, Monboddo, and Reynolds, alongside his view of the stage. Lawrence highlights contributions regarding Johnson's attraction to the law or legal profession, his sympathy for the dogmatism of the Catholic Church, and his practical Christianity as an example for later figures. Additionally, the review notes a study of Johnson's expletives, which underscores his moral character by demonstrating how he maintained a clean vocabulary in a vulgar age, characterized by the absence of "dirty oaths" despite his "passing tempers." Lawrence concludes that Johnson remains a giant of humanity whose very defects hearten his admirers.
This text examines Johnson’s character and social habits, specifically his decision to collect a strange household of companions. It details Johnson's rejection of Chesterfield’s patronage upon discovering its insincerity and mentions his occasional acts of penance. The text also notes his tender humanity toward animals, his aggressive conversational style, and his curious blend of superstition and skepticism.
Liberty (Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order)
Liberty hears with regret of the death of Samuel Johnson. Of the religious radicals who, since the death of Parker, have come into notice as apostles of Reason in Religion, Mr. Johnson, less widely known than many others, easily stood foremost. In breadth of view, clearness of thought, he had among the radical writers no superior. His many and carefully prepared contributions to the "Radical" show the vigor and temper of his mind.
Wain's biography achieves a triumph by challenging the popular, pseudo-Dickensian image of Johnson as a reactionary bully. Wain presents Johnson as a great literary figure and Christian humanist, defined by his selflessness, stoicism, and defense of reason and moderation. The text provides a new account of Johnson's life and works, arguing that his character is irreconcilable with the Boswellian stereotype and must be understood in the context of the Late Augustan era. The critic praises Wain for contextualizing Johnson's life with the English eighteenth century's physical realities and for revealing Johnson as a profoundly good man.
Samuel Johnson: From Carlyle's 'Heroes and Hero Worship'
Carlyle argues that while Johnson's opinions are "fast becoming obsolete," his "style of thinking and of living" remains vital. He characterizes Johnson's prose as a "wondrous buckram style" and "measured grandiloquence," yet emphasizes that these sincere words always mean things. Carlyle identifies the Dictionary as a "great solid square-built edifice" demonstrating "architectural nobleness" and successful method. He contends that if Johnson had left nothing but the Dictionary, it would suffice to prove him a "genuine man" and a "great intellect." Carlyle contrasts Johnson's "tumid size of phraseology" against modern books that possess style but contain "nothing in them."
Meynell and Chesterton present an abridgment of Johnson's varied writings, designed for school use and time-limited readers. The reviewer notes that the volume allows the reader to experience Johnson "booming out his most sonorous periods." Chesterton provides an introduction written in "true Johnsonian fashion." This scholarly selection serves as a "Pocket Doctor Johnson" while maintaining the philosopher's characteristic "sonorous periods" and intellectual depth.
In this letter to the editor, Davis expresses shock at a filler item in a previous issue that attributed a defense of smoking to Johnson. Davis argues that such content is incongruous for a publication dedicated to public health, given the mortality and economic costs associated with tobacco. An editorial note follows, clarifying that Johnson died nearly a century before cigarettes arrived in England and dismissing the objection by stating that zealots can be dangerous to your health.
The Great Highbrow: Samuel Johnson After Two Centuries
Greene denounces the persistent "licensed comic butt" or "quaint" joke figure of Johnson, an image cultivated by "brilliant image-creators" Boswell and Macaulay. This caricature focuses on physical eccentricities, "emphysematous puffings," and "careless table-talk" at the expense of Johnson's vast writings. Greene contends that Macaulay's influential essay and Boswell's biographical methods—including "bold substitutions," heavy editing, and the "Joe Miller syndrome" of attaching generic jests to Johnson—promoted an ersatz "Great Clubman" or "grotesque figure" over the true "great highbrow." Greene argues that Victorian "backwoods" academic traditions institutionalized this "big-word fame" to shield students from Johnson’s complex thought. Challenging Boswell’s accuracy, Greene advocates for a renewed focus on Johnson’s extensive prose, poetry, and scholarly work, which demand knowledge of subjects from jurisprudence to theology. He champions the revisionist scholarship of Clifford and the critical praise of Eliot and Leavis. Greene urges a rediscovery of the "authentic" Johnson: a versatile professional writer and formidable intellect with a "vigorous reasoning intelligence" and a sophisticated baroque prose style.
Chauvin assesses Voitle's Samuel Johnson the Moralist, which attempts to construct a coherent Johnsonian moral philosophy from beyond Johnson's collected maxims, focusing on the question of what the reasonable, wise, and prudent man must do to act morally. Voitle effectively demonstrates the limitations of Johnson's philosophy in the abstract while underscoring its concrete richness and depth, convincing the reader that Johnson merits the title "the first moralist of his age." The reviewer praises Voitle's analysis of Johnson's political, social, and religious thought, particularly concerning his conservatism and faith. The reviewer also mentions M. Hodgart's book, noting its strong literary criticism but weak historical context.
Samuel Johnson, Histoire de Rasselas, Prince d'Abissinie
From A History of the Language included in 'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1755), I, p. 9, by Samuel Johnson (1709-84), the poet, critic and lexicographer.
This report, excerpted from the Life of Johnson (1791), records an April 1776 dialogue between Boswell and Johnson regarding the Aristotelian definition of tragedy. Johnson defines "purging" in its original physical sense, as the expulsion of impurities, and applies this concept to the human mind. He argues that passions, the primary movers of action, are inherently mixed with impurities and require refinement through terror and pity.
The intense public interest in Johnson's death stemmed from his celebrity as the "man of letters" defining his age, the era's fascination with death scenes as a moral test for great men, and the drama surrounding his well-known terror of damnation. Above all, people cared because he was the "expert on life" whose wisdom—focused on life's shortness and death's inescapable reality—they wished to see vindicated in his final hours. Conflicting accounts from biographers like Boswell and Hawkins reflect the public's need for a dignified end that aligned with their own beliefs.
Brown examines Murphy’s account of finding Johnson "making aether" in a soot-filled room. He identifies the substance as likely sulphuric or nitrous ether, noting that instructions for its amateur preparation appeared in the Literary Magazine in 1756. Brown refutes Hill’s assertion that Johnson was making "elixir" rather than ether. He explains that the "intolerable heat" and pungent smell Murphy described were characteristic of the distillation process. Brown concludes by noting the toxic and explosive nature of these chemical experiments.
Fleeman reviews a collection of essays edited by John J. Burke, Jr. and Donald Kay, applauding the high standard and variety of the contributions which ensure Johnson will be yet better known. While Fleeman says the essays will certainly enlighten the student of Johnson, he criticizes the "dispirited title," which he calls ridiculous and disputes for its suggestion that Johnson remains unknown. The review highlights Donald Greene’s robust rejection of Johnson’s alleged "stoicism," Jean Hagstrum’s stimulating work and survey of antithesis in Johnson's language, and Paul Alkon’s discussion of the Condemned Sermon. Fleeman praises other contributors for showing the act of composition was a dynamic process for Johnson, specifically John Radner’s demonstration of how composition modified Johnson's thoughts during his Scottish journey. Although Fleeman confesses unease over and questions Richard Schwartz’s observations on social class, he concludes the collection is pleasing and ensures the high standard of the contributions will make Johnson better known.
The Death of Samuel Johnson: Was It Hastened by Digitalis Intoxication?
Van Der Weele calls Bate’s biography a seasoned, monumental, and vigorous work that continues the trend of using Boswell more sparingly while incorporating new information. The reviewer praises Bate's contributions, particularly his use of psychology to analyze the split in Johnson's mind and the tension between self-mortification and indolence. Bate excels in correcting the view of Johnson as a quaint reactionary, showing instead that his Tory principles were rooted in compassion for the poor and oppressed, while further highlighting his aptitude for law and his enormous literary achievements, such as the Lives of the Poets and the Dictionary. While Van Der Weele notes a defect in Bate's scholarly detachment regarding the crucial role Christian truths and religious faith played in Johnson's thought, he concludes that Bate has used recent scholarship to expose the limitations and condescension in Boswell’s earlier account, producing a fresh portrayal of one of England’s moral luminaries.
In this sensitive review, Stock identifies Bate’s biography as a "gentle iconoclast" that "subtilizes" stereotypes of Johnson. Stock explains Bate’s central thesis: Johnson’s lifelong battle with an "internalized self-demand" fueled his "oppression by sloth and guilt." The reviewer notes that Bate’s originality lies in "psychological dissections" rather than new factual disclosures, contrasting Bate’s "singular intimacy" with the subject to the more "entertaining" approach of John Wain. While Stock questions Bate’s "ingenuous" use of a minor riot to soften Johnson’s conservative image, he praises the work for capturing a complex figure who "despises dogmatism" and remains "always compassionate" despite his legendary eccentricities.
A troubled genius, his immortality has now had 200 years of trial; the verdict is secure
Chauvin reviews the re-issue of R. W. Chapman's 1954 anthology, Selections from Samuel Johnson, which is presented in a smaller, affordable format. The collection is highly representative of the multiple aspects of Johnson, including the entirety of The Vanity of Human Wishes, a strong choice of extracts from his other poems, a good selection of essays from The Rambler and The Adventurer, and excerpts from his biographies, political writings, letters, and criticism.
THERE is, perhaps, no man named in literary history, of whom more of anecdote and gossip has been preserved. His peculiarities provoked criticism, and his celebrity on other accounts has immortalized even his failings. A recent publication-that of Mrs. Piozzi's (Thrale's) "Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains"-brings all these things freshly before the public mind. During many years Johnson was a constant inmate of Mrs. Thrale's family; and nowhere else did he so completely throw off all restraint.
Recounts a version of the anecdote about Johnson's antipathy to music. In this version, Johnson and Boswell attend a concert featuring an "elaborate 'variation'" by a celebrated violinist, possibly Giardini. To Boswell's comment, "Is it not wonderful, sir?," Johnson replies, "Sir, I wish it were impossible!" The author notes that the mot's characteristic features naturally cause it to be attributed to Johnson, even if it is not definitively his.
The reviewer characterizes Clifford’s biography of Johnson’s early years as a disturbing study that challenges idealized perceptions of the subject. While acknowledging the shock of Johnson’s 'contented worklessness' and 'morbid melancholy,' the reviewer highlights Clifford’s use of The Vision of Theodore to analyze Johnson's indolence as a struggle against despair rather than mere self-indulgence.
A review of the Everyman reissue of Boswell’s two-volume biography, noting Johnson’s growing stature in British mythology as the quintessential 'great talker' in an age where conversation has allegedly died. The reviewer finds Johnson’s bon mots somewhat wearying and expresses curiosity regarding Boswell’s endurance as a 'patient amanuensis.' The narrative is said to reveal Johnson as a clumsy and painful person characterized by fear of solitude and manic depressions. The reviewer likens Johnson's presence in England to that of a 'bull in England’s china shop.'
Stokes commends Bate for restoring the "massive and intricate mind" of Johnson, moving beyond Boswell’s "anecdotes" to explore the moralist. He highlights Bate’s central theme of "Faith in some proportion to Fear," particularly Johnson’s dread of "nothingness" and collapse. Stokes notes that Johnson’s "dogged reticence" in spiritual matters reflects an "Augustinian tradition of interiority." He argues that Johnson’s prayers are "the best in our language" precisely because they are "stark" and "nervously concise." While Stokes regrets Bate’s omission of Johnson’s sermons, he praises the work for presenting a "spiritual pilgrim" whose "accepted tragedy" repeatedly transforms into love.
Review by D. Stokes of Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate.
This review examines Archibald Marshall's abridgment of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. While acknowledging Marshall's conscientious effort to make Johnson vivid for younger readers, the reviewer disputes the necessity of shortening a "literary masterpiece." The review characterizes the abridgment as a concession to the "impermanent" spirit of the age. Despite Marshall's "reverent and intelligent" touch, the reviewer maintains that the original work is best experienced in its full length as a book to "dip into anywhere."
The author reports a manuscript note found in a copy of the 'Gentleman's Magazine' at Trinity College, Dublin. The note asserts that the University of Dublin conferred the degree of LL.D. on Johnson, which he 'never condescended to acknowledge.' The author inquires as to the year this degree was granted. This query touches upon Johnson's relationship with academic institutions and contemporary perceptions of his character. It highlights the anecdotal history surrounding Johnson's honors and the potential for biographical misconceptions. The inquiry seeks to establish a factual timeline for Johnson's professional accolades. This note serves to prompt further research into Johnson's correspondence with the University of Dublin.
"Very various and contradictory accounts are given of Dr. Johnson's ways and words in the presence of the fair sex."
Life of Samuel Johnson, &c.; printed for G. Kearsley, &c., 1785
An inquiry about the author of the 1785 Life of Samuel Johnson, &c., printed for G. Kearsley, which is prefaced by a portrait etched by T. Trotter. An editorial note follows, confirming a previous inquiry and citing another anonymous 1785 memoir by the Reverend William Shaw.
Davies reviews the Yale Edition of Johnson's poetry. He describes it as a handsome piece of book-making that adopts an eclectic copy-text policy to print the last text approved by Johnson. Davies questions the editorial policy of modernizing capitalization and italics while preserving original spelling. The review finds the annotation minimal and better suited for general use than specialists, suggesting there remains a place for a more thoroughly annotated edition. Davies acknowledges the value of new manuscripts from the Boswell Papers that clarify textual readings in the Vanity of Human Wishes.
Bronson characterizes Wimsatt's collection as a judicial and factually informative introduction to Johnson's criticism, aimed at a specialized audience. Wimsatt catalogs Johnson's editorial deficiencies in collation and source study while praising his common-sense elucidation, restrained emendation, and independent judgment. Bronson highlights Wimsatt's focus on Johnson's dissent from neoclassic rules and the "emotional personality" emerging from the text, which creates a sense of "latent conflict" and "self-contradiction." The volume includes the 1765 Preface, the 1756 Proposals, and selected notes from twenty-eight plays, updated with modern spelling and explanatory footnotes.
Reproduces Johnson’s 1755 letter to Lord Chesterfield regarding the "Dictionary." Describes Chesterfield’s "courtly manner" in attempting to win a dedication after years of "cold indifference." Johnson rejects the "delayed" notice, famously defining a patron as "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the ground, encumbers him with help." He asserts his independence, having brought the work to publication "without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor."
A positive review. The reviewer notes the difficulty facing any biographer following the acknowledged "model memoir" (Boswell's). Grant is commended for producing a life that is simultaneously condensed and ample, with judicious criticism, a graceful style, and acute research.
A response to a query on the timing and acknowledgment of Johnson's LL.D. from the University of Dublin. The degree was conferred in 1765, information readily available in Boswell's Life of Johnson. The response also confirms that Johnson's letter of acknowledgment is inserted at full length in Boswell's work, correcting the previous claim that he never acknowledged it.
Humphreys commends Clifford as an exact biographer who successfully marshals facts to bring Johnson's early years in Lichfield and London to life. Humphreys appreciates the use of unpublished resources from the Yale Boswelliana and Hyde collections. While Humphreys values the substantial merit of the research, the review finds Clifford's manner less effective than his matter. Humphreys criticizes the use of interior monologue and a familiar air that feels a shade cosy, particularly the habit of referring to the hero as Sam. Humphreys concludes that while Clifford provides a readable sequence of facts, the work lacks the wit and stimulus to thought found in other contemporary biographies.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: His Talking Was the Toast of the Town
This biographical sketch profiles Johnson as an unrivaled conversationalist whose immortal eloquence, preserved in the records of Boswell, transcends his ponderous literary output. The narrative details the 1764 formation of the Literary Club at the Turk's Head, where Johnson dominated a circle of luminaries including Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith. While acknowledging the historical interest of the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets, the account emphasizes Johnson’s physical eccentricities, legendary generosity toward London’s waifs, and obsessive fear of death. The piece characterizes Boswell as a man of absurd vanity whose meticulous documentation captured the essence of Johnsonian wit, such as the observation that "no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
FOR most of us the only clear view of the later Eighteenth Century in London was provided by a Scottish wise man and fool named James Boswell. Lazy, rakish, cocky, he was at the same time diligent, serious and reverent. He never deserved the scorn of Carlyle and Macaulay for there was a strain of truth in the man which forbade him to be a toady, and sufficient learning to draw him into the company of learning.
Krutch's review of Norman’s biography describes it as a "vivid and readable" introduction that focuses more on Johnson's personality than his writings. Krutch criticizes Norman’s "glib psychological explanations," specifically the "rash" attempt to explain Johnson’s "fear of damnation" through a childhood "trauma" involving his mother. While Krutch finds these claims to be "plausible guesses" stated as facts, he acknowledges that the book avoids caricature and successfully captures the "drama, comic or tragic," of Johnson's life. The review notes Norman's use of Katherine Balderston’s evidence regarding Johnson’s mental illness but maintains that Johnson’s convictions resulted from "rational processes" rather than "fixations."
Sheldrake disputes Wilson’s account of Johnson’s death, characterizing the suggestion of suicide as an "unmerited stigma." Sheldrake asserts that while Johnson punctured his own legs with a lancet in a "paroxysm of anger," the act resulted from a desire to relieve dropsical swelling rather than a "fit of insanity." Cruikshank had previously refused to perform the operation, leading Johnson to take the instrument himself. Sheldrake further critiques the post-mortem examination's thoroughness, noting a "very great enlargement of the scrotum" from water accumulation that Wilson ignored. Drawing on his own attendance of Johnson and testimony from Lowe, Sheldrake maintains Johnson survived several days after the scarification and died from natural progression of dropsy.
A query investigates a listing for A History and Defence of Magna Charta by a "Dr. Samuel Johnson" in a 1776 catalogue. The response confirms the book's 1772 first edition was not written by the lexicographer, citing Johnson's own comment to Boswell that he would not be angry because the work was by a "much cleverer fellow."
Quinlan reviews Paul Kent Alkon's Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline, which examines Johnson's intellect on moral questions, psychology, and religion, drawing heavily from Rasselas, essays, and the Dictionary. Quinlan praises Alkon's elucidation of Johnson's subtle distinctions, such as in his usage of "imagination" and his views on men's similarities versus differences in society. He finds the discussion of Johnson's sermons, however, less convincing.
Review by Maurice J Quinlan of Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline by Paul Kent Alkon.
Hodgart's concise study, which inaugurates a new series of short biographies, offers a just and well-defined overview of Johnson's contribution as a lexicographer and moralist to English letters and British culture. The dictionary is deemed to have had a social effect comparable to the introduction of standard weights and measures. Hodgart is a literary critic first, comfortable with the texts, and offers concise, insightful remarks on biographical matters like his sexual obsessions, the Chesterfield quarrel, and the Piozzi rupture, yet the historical background is lightly treated.
CGV entry 3:246. A review by Lawrence Lipking of the book by W. Jackson Bate, alongside another work.
On Johnson's acknowledged insensitivity to music, contrasting a well-known anecdote with a similar remark attributed to William Lamb, Lord Melbourne. The story—where Johnson, after being told a performance is difficult, wishes it were "impossible"—is cited from Mark Lemon's Jest-Book, but the author fails to find it in Boswell's index. The piece questions the original authority for the famous mot and mentions a parallel sentiment expressed by Madame du Deffand.
Gilbert identifies Johnson as a 'lay-minister' based on the spiritual quality of his 'Prayers and Sermons.' He analyzes twenty-five discourses, noting their 'rugged candor' and 'homiletical skill' in treating themes such as repentance, hardness of heart, and government. Gilbert emphasizes Johnson’s reliance on the 'help of the Holy Spirit' in his studies and his insistence that 'faith in the sacrifice of Jesus is necessary, beyond all good works whatever.' He argues that Johnson’s 'spiritual studies' reveal a 'strong character' often overlooked in purely literary assessments.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: An Incident in His Early Life
Recounts an episode of Johnson’s youth involving his refusal to attend his father’s bookstall at Uttoxeter market. Attributes the refusal to "foolish pride" and resentment over his "shabby clothes" and "scrofulous humor." Describes the father’s subsequent illness and death, which left Johnson with a "small voice" of lifelong remorse. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's "stubborn, violent temper" as a greater defect than his "seamed and distorted" face, framing the event as a pivotal moral crisis in the "old struggler's" early life.
A collection of anecdotes from Boswell, Piozzi, Cumberland, Percy, Langton. Snippets describe Johnson's uncouth appearance, convulsive gestures, poor eyesight, rapid reading, mental composition, coarse eating habits (oyster sauce on plum pudding), and extreme poverty.
This text provides a clue to the history and authenticity of the fragment of Gilbert Walmesley's letter to the Rev. Mr. Colson, describing the joint departure of Johnson and Garrick for London. The letter's precise portion is available as a lithographic fac-simile at page 228 of the 1836 London edition of Johnsoniana; or, Supplement to Boswell: being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson. The lithograph may furnish a clue to the history of the document, as the querist's fragment may be part of the original letter, separated for the lithographer, or a print.
Daniels’s largely negative review challenges Sigyn Christiani's summary of Johnson’s critical position. The reviewer disputes the author's attempt to categorize Johnson as a neo-classicist with romantic tendencies, calling the treatment too summary and the particulars inadequate. Daniels argues that Christiani relies on outmoded theories and fails to use recent scholarship. The review concludes that the dissertation sets up neo-classicism and romanticism as mutually exclusive opposites, resulting in a limited and unhelpful conception of Johnson’s critical doctrines concerning nature, imagination, and form.
Kelly reviews James Clifford’s biography of Johnson’s early years and Walter Jackson Bate’s study of his literary achievement. He praises Clifford for unearthing an "Ur Johnson" through a "plain objective life" that chronicles Johnson from birth to the age of forty, concluding with the publication of The Vanity of Human Wishes. Clifford details the formative years in Lichfield, examining the social standing of Johnson’s father and its role in facilitating contact with the local gentry, identifying early teachers, and reconstructing the physical and psychological impact of smallpox and melancholy on Johnson’s youth. By documenting the early London period, including the production of extensive hack work and the praise received from Pope, Clifford presents a factual narrative that incorporates archival material missing from the account by Boswell and corrects Boswell's sketchiness regarding Johnson's youth. Turning to Bate, Kelly explains the argument that Johnson's experience served as both the "criterion and the corrective of all he wrote." He finds that Bate successfully challenges the view of Johnson as a "verbose and involved" moralist, instead presenting his judgments as massive in content and "learned in the school of life."
Lorenzo provides a biographical narrative and appreciation of Johnson, focusing on his achievement in producing the Dictionary of the English Language. He describes the Literary Club, founded by Joshua Reynolds, where members like Burke, Goldsmith, and Garrick met under Johnson's "unquestioned authority." Lorenzo examines Johnson’s physical appearance and character, noting his "clumsy, corpulent" frame and his struggle with indolence despite his massive productivity. The article details Johnson’s definitions, including his sarcastic entry for "pension," and notes his inclusion of "hispanisms" such as "panado," "querpo," and "matadore." Lorenzo defends Johnson's fame against those who attribute it solely to Boswell, arguing that his prestige was secured by 1755. He compares Johnson’s solitary eight-year effort to the forty-year labors of the French Academy, concluding that Johnson remains the "maximum exponent" of British common sense.
Samuel Johnson and the Composing Process
Johnson's view of the writing process is defined by a deep-seated skepticism about the integrity of the Book as a cultural artifact, rooted in the empiricist epistemology of his age. Johnson sees writing as an arduous, flawed process that yields tentative coherence and is inevitably superseded by advancing knowledge. He rejects prescriptive classical rules (logic, rhetoric) as artificial limitations, favoring instead an inferential, process-oriented composition where ideas are connected in a "chain of reason" to reflect the tentative associational groping of the mind. The process of searching for significance is more valuable than the limited, ephemeral significance achieved in the finished product.
In this mixed book review of Hill's two-volume collection of Johnson's letters, Minto praises the editor's exhaustive, independent, and entertaining annotations but disputes Hill's claim that the correspondence entitles Johnson to a "high place" among English letter-writers, characterizing the letters by a "meagreness" and "monotony" of matter. Minto notes that Johnson frequently complains of having nothing to write about, prefers reading gossip to writing it, merely relates bare facts, and fails to embrace the "true spirit of a letter-writer" by refusing to record the "little things" of daily life. While acknowledging the "humorous tenderness" in letters to Piozzi and noting that the business letters are models of "brevity" and clear understanding, Minto argues that Johnson maintains his "literary habit" and "Johnsonese" even in private, challenging Macaulay's theory that Johnson wrote simple English in private correspondence and translated thoughts into formal prose for publication. Minto emphasizes that the "fascination" of the volumes derives primarily from Hill's industrious scholarship and notes, which successfully clothe and elevate otherwise "dry" factual scraps and fragments into a significant record of Johnson's "magnanimity" and social circle by elucidating references to a jar of orange marmalade from Mrs. Boswell, bristles from a hearth-broom, institutional histories of the Clarendon Press and an Oxford riding-school, Miss Burney, the "Lives," and an "eccentric figure" in literary society.
The text reproduces an argument Johnson drafted for the defense in a Scottish legal action involving Dr. Memis of Aberdeen. Johnson disputes Memis's claim that being titled 'Doctor of Medicine' rather than 'Physician' in institutional regulations constituted a defamatory injury. Johnson asserts that the title signifies the highest professional attainment and carries the legal authority to practice and instruct others. He maintains that 'Doctor' implies requisite skill, citing the axiom 'nemo docet quod non didicit.' Johnson highlights that the doctorate provides an inherent license, whereas non-doctors must practice by specifically granted permissions. The article presents Johnson as a 'celebrated moralist' whose analytical capacity clarified professional nomenclature. It further notes that before finalizing his argument, Johnson consulted Dr. Lawrence, President of the London College of Physicians, to ensure his definitions aligned with established medical hierarchy and legal standing.
Samuel Johnson on Sterne, 1773, 1776, 1781
Johnson and Sterne, men of nearly opposite personalities and talents, might well be called the two most influential writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century. (See No. 89.) It was perhaps inevitable that Johnson should disapprove of Sterne. His antipathy arose in part from a different set of critical principles, perhaps in part from Sterne's Whig politics. But his disapproval of Sterne as a clergyman probably contributed most to his attitude. Johnson admitted reading Sterne's Sermons in a stagecoach but said, 'I should not have even deigned to have looked at them, had I been at large' (Joseph Cradock, Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs (1826), i. 208), and felt they contained only 'the froth from the surface' of the cup* of salvation {Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. George B. Hill (1897), ii. 429). The brevity of his recorded comments on Sterne is itself an indication that he failed to think of Sterne as a serious literary artist. (For an earlier comment attributed to Johnson see No. 34a.)
This approving review of R. W. Chapman's anthology argues that readers can learn from Johnson how to use words accurately and think justly. The reviewer highlights passages that support Johnson's use of short words to achieve clarity, disputing the notion that he preferred long words. The selection includes extracts from a funeral sermon for his wife and an apologia for the circle surrounding Boswell and Johnson.
Attempts to "rescue" Johnson from the criticism of Gilbert Wakefield regarding a sentence in Johnson's Life of Gray. Wakefield's 1786 edition of Gray's Poems includes a note that censures Johnson's remark about an awkward rhyme in Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Cat." The author conjectures that the word "how" was accidentally omitted during printing, clarifying Johnson's intended meaning and resolving the perceived impropriety.
Une nouvelle édition de la 'Vie de Samuel Johnson'
Bibliothèque universelle et Revue suisse
Greene's volume in the Oxford Authors series is a collection of Johnson's most significant texts, offering an introduction, chronology, notes, and bibliography. Though not aiming to rival the complete Yale edition, this anthology surpasses previous ones by including less-known texts and offering quasi-integral versions of major works like The Life of Savage, the Preface to the Dictionary, and Rasselas. The volume dedicates important space to Johnson's early essays and poetry, includes facsimile pages of the Dictionary and Shakespeare edition, and contains three useful indexes.
McNally’s very good review of James Clifford’s Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle Years focuses on the period from age 40 to 54. The reviewer describes a harrowing narrative of poverty, profound procrastination, and physical pain, including Johnson's habit of making his home an unofficial refuge for the infirm. Despite these adversities, the period saw the completion of the Dictionary and the publication of The Rambler. McNally questions Clifford’s lack of selection in using every available piece of information, such as details on copyists and eighteenth-century waste disposal. However, he concludes the biography successfully captures the triumph of spirit over the pathological doubts and financial bankruptcy that plagued Johnson until he met Boswell.
Samuel Johnson on Dermo-optical Perception
Brief letter to the editor noting Boswell and Johnson discussed whether it was possible to distinguish colors by touch.
Haskell provides a study plan for teaching Macaulay's essay, "The Life of Samuel Johnson," focusing on three main phases: preliminary study of Macaulay, a rapid and then detailed reading for facts and analysis of Johnson’s literary career, and suggested composition topics. The core of the plan involves a systematic survey of Johnson's works and their value: poetry, drama, essays, criticism, biography, the Dictionary, and Rasselas. It also mandates attention to the human element, Johnson's character, his literary position in his own time, and the definitive effect of Boswell's biography on his fame. A detailed study of Macaulay's essay focuses on explaining allusions and analyzing the characteristics of his highly rhetorical prose style.
Theat-re or Theat-er: Samuel Johnson or Noah/Merriam Webster?
When The New York Times on September 16, 1962 changed its official spelling from theatre to theater, it jumped headlong into a controversy actively alive since Shakespeare's day. On the day before, on Sunday, the Drama section showed a single face to the public as it reported and advertised an institution called theatre, but from the next day forward it looked as if the muse wrote in two languages because both spellings were used. The change was made without editorial comment, without a single letter to the editor, without any indication whatsoever that anyone cared. If a few noticed it, they undoubtedly concluded that The Times had fallen victim to an American spelling rule that must have long plagued its copyreaders and thus forgave the change.
Details Johnson's marriage (age 20 to widow 46) as a "love match," not for money, and his profound, lasting grief at her death. Cites his "infinite tenderness" as a key trait, exemplified by carrying a destitute woman home and giving pennies to sleeping children. It recounts his final illness (1784), his touching farewells to friends like Burke and Reynolds, and his "heroic courage" in refusing opiates to "render up his soul to God unclouded."
A correspondent sends us an excerpt from one of the various essays of the famous Samuel Johnson, the great doctor of literature and philosophy, of whom Boswell was the reverent laureate and celebrant.
Johnson, a "decided critic," anticipated a science of criticism through an empirical and historical method focused on general human nature, distinguishing between essential and accidental aspects of experience. Johnson posited that poetry provides pleasure through variety, expectation, and sympathy, expanding the reader's comprehension. His personal limitations, including deafness and a fear of emotional excess, influenced his judgments, leading him to favor regularity, rhyme, and classical diction. Martyn concludes that modern poetic theory, which emphasizes intellectual emotion and complex meaning, is moving toward a modified version of Johnsonian principles, citing Bridges' The Testament of Beauty and Eliot.
Discusses a short play by Dr. William B. Howells that imagines a fictional meeting between Samuel Johnson and the surgeon John Hunter, two prominent contemporaries who never met. He notes the play uses the "dialogues of the dead" literary method, which is uncommon in medical history. The summary explains that the play's scene is a tavern where Johnson, having fallen asleep over Hunter's book on teeth, is awakened by Hunter himself. Johnson, unaware of his companion's identity, dismisses the book and its author, leading to a disagreement and an insult that causes Hunter to have an "anginoid attack." The play concludes after Johnson provides first aid, leading to a more amicable conversation in which the two men finally reveal their identities to each other.
This short anonymous article commemorates the 150th anniversary of the brewing firm Barclay, Perkins and Co., Ltd., by reviewing a special historical edition of the company house organ, The Anchor Magazine. The text focuses on the 1781 sale of Henry Thrale's Southwark brewery following his death. As an executor of the estate, Johnson conducted the auction and famously remarked, Sir, we are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Robert Barclay and John Perkins purchased the business for £135,000. The reviewed commemorative book outlines the brewery history over several centuries and includes 150 pictures of public events spanning 1781 to 1931.
The correspondent J. L. requests the original sources for two literary references involving Samuel Johnson and Ben Jonson. The first concerns a quote attributed to Samuel Johnson by a reviewer regarding "vitality sufficient to preserve them from putrefaction." The second involves a claim by Carlyle that Ben Jonson described a certain degree of soul as "indispensable" to keep the body from destruction and save the "expense of salt."
Hutchison surveys Johnson's high regard for the medical profession and his extensive personal relationships with physicians. Johnson often stated that doctors "did more good to mankind without a prospect of reward than any profession of men whatever." The article chronicles his friendships with various practitioners, including the unfortunate members of the Ivy Lane Club—William McGhie, Edmund Barker, and the beloved Richard Bathurst—as well as successful figures like Thomas Lawrence and William Heberden. Hutchison characterizes Johnson as a "great dabbler in physic" who possessed extensive and accurate medical knowledge, often favoring modern views such as the avoidance of routine bloodletting. He frequently prescribed for himself and others, once recommending powdered orange peel in port to Elizabeth Boothby. Despite his own chronic ailments, including asthma and dropsy, Johnson remained a "good hater" of medical snapshot diagnosis and insisted that patients always receive the truth about their condition.
Comment on Samuel Johnson and 'Natural Law'
Stanlis addresses the confusion regarding Johnson's stance on Natural Law, arguing that it requires distinguishing between "Nature" as an ethical norm and "nature" as the physical universe, and between "Right Reason" and analytical reasoning. He contends that Johnson's criticism of thinkers like Jenyns and Pope stems not from a rejection of moral Natural Law, but from his rejection of applying scientific reasoning or physical analogies to ethics. Johnson strongly affirmed Natural Law principles, which are evident to "Right Reason" and support rights like life and liberty, as exemplified in his argument for a West Indian slave.
Fleeman’s severe review disputes the editorial policy governing this three-volume edition of Johnson's first major prose work, criticizing the "simple and straightforward" Yale policy of reprinting the 1756 fourth edition as a mechanical, practical "best text" rather than employing a truly critical procedure. Strauss prints this text following the policy of reprinting the last authoritatively revised version, a decision Fleeman challenges for ignoring important accidentals—such as punctuation, italics, and initial capitals—found in the original folios. The review asserts that modernizing accidentals and ignoring folio variants conceals shifts that reveal Johnson’s habits of personification, his tendency to attribute agency to abstractions, and his semantic and etymological development. By uncritically following the 1756 text—a choice Fleeman suggests was easier because it relies on a commercial venture rather than the original folios—the editors preclude a whole range of interesting linguistic questions regarding Johnson's stylistic development and usage. Fleeman finds the annotations inadequate and the editorial policy inflexible, arguing it limits the editor to "mechanical drudgery" and leads to a low standard of textual scrupulosity. While the volumes are physically pleasing, Fleeman concludes that this inadequate approach allows an expensive edition of a major author to fall far short of recognized scholarly standards and fails to provide a definitive critical text.
Samuel Johnson on 'The Art of Forgetfulness'
Sachs explores Johnson's observation of memory's distortions, which he considered the temporal inverse of the mind's "tragic transcendence" through hope or desire. Johnson defined both expectation and memory as projections of Imagination, the faculty that increases the incompatibility between the mind's conceptions and the body's temporal reality. Obsessive retrospective memory, like Nekayah's fixation on Pekuah in Rasselas, is a psychological danger, intensified by guilt, that interferes with rational attention to the present "business of life." Johnson consequently recommended cultivating "the art of forgetfulness" —the power of Reason to gain lucidity and control over obsessive impulses—which is necessary for sanity, action, and the Memento Mori that points to salvation.
Thomson’s mixed review of Edward A. Bloom’s monograph acknowledges its merit in assisting the compilation of the Johnsonian canon through the inclusion of less accessible writings. However, Thomson argues the work’s success is limited because it prioritizes Johnson’s ideas over the history of journalism itself. Thomson maintains that by focusing strictly on periodical contributions, Bloom debars himself from an effective treatment of Johnson as a thinker, as such a study must account for his books and recorded conversation. Thomson suggests that while more direct information on Johnson the journalist is unlikely to be found, a broader study of mid-eighteenth-century journalism would better illuminate his activities. The review concludes that Bloom’s commentary fails to reveal a deep knowledge of eighteenth-century history.
Samuel Johnson and John Hunter: Feuilleton
Narrates a "Hogarthian picture" of the 1749 premiere of Johnson’s tragedy Irene, where a young Hunter allegedly led a gallery mob in "fearful ululations." Contrasts Johnson as a "man of books" and "strumous dogmatist" with Hunter’s "clear Scotch sagacity" and contempt for definitions. Details the theatrical failure of the bowstring scene, which Hunter’s "uncompromising plainness of speech" forced Johnson to move behind the scenes. Relates an anecdotal later encounter at a soirée hosted by Hunter's wife, where Hunter "pushed into the drawing-room" and ordered the distinguished guests to retire. A. Z. posits that Johnson likely viewed Hunter as a "Scotchman" deficient in civility. Notes that while Johnson wrote lives of Boerhaave and Sydenham, he and Hunter remained largely unacquainted.
This text critically assesses Carlyle's essay on Johnson, first published in Fraser's Magazine twenty-one years prior. The critic finds Carlyle’s treatment, whether focusing on Boswell or Johnson, an “exaggeration,” accusing Carlyle of hypocrisy for preaching truth while employing hero-worship and "cant" that amounts to falsehood. Specifically, the critique refutes Carlyle's assertion that Johnson was England's greatest man, who made "Waterloo victories possible." The critic argues that Carlyle overestimates literary influence compared to that of inventors like Watt or Arkwright. The text praises Carlyle for illuminating Johnson's "affectionate and kind heart" but concludes that his enormous exaggeration of individual virtues serves mainly to condemn the general populace.
This review of A. M. Broadley's Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale highlights new material concerning the friendship between Johnson and Piozzi. The book champions Piozzi, arguing the end of her twenty-year friendship with Johnson resulted from his testiness and impatience regarding her second marriage. The work includes Piozzi's previously unpublished journal of a 1774 Welsh journey taken with Johnson and her family. The reviewer notes the journal reveals Piozzi as a conscientious mother and lively intelligence, contrasting with the guide-book briefness of Johnson's own diary of the trip.
This review of Hill’s edition, comprising over 1043 letters, praises the editor’s comprehensive scholarship and minute annotation. Johnson's 300-plus letters to Mrs. Thrale are most important, revealing an occasional sarcasm and love of gossip alongside his "shrewd matured judgment." The letters demonstrate Johnson's conspicuous charity towards the poor and his keen interest in medical topics.
In this positive capsule review of two illustrated editions of Boswell's Life of Johnson, the reviewer compares Roger Ingpen's two-volume edition with Arnold Glover's three-volume edition. Ingpen's edition features nearly six hundred portraits, facsimiles, and photogravures that set Johnson in the larger life of his time, though it remains too heavy for travel. Conversely, Glover's edition, featuring line drawings by Herbert Railton and an introduction by Austin Dobson, provides a lighter page ideal for a journey or bedside reading.
Shepperson describes the collection of over fifteen hundred letters as a "desideratum" for students. Although Johnson found letter-writing an "unpleasant duty," Shepperson observes that his soul lies "naked" in famous letters to Chesterfield and Macpherson. He critiques Chapman’s "appalling" scholarly apparatus for its confusing abbreviations and errors regarding Paradise and Lennox, but concludes the work is an indispensable "collection of facts" about Johnson.
Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin: An Imaginary Conversation
Scudder constructs an imaginary dialogue between Johnson and Franklin, set in London through the artifice of Strahan. Johnson expresses "violent hostility" toward Americans as "robbers" and "rebels," while Franklin defends the colonies' financial contributions during the late war. The conversation contrasts Johnson's demand for submission to "English government" with Franklin's "lesson of manly freedom." Franklin notes his admiration for Rasselas but finds Johnson "so beholden to the government" that reasoning is impossible. Scudder includes a fictionalized letter from Franklin to Mrs. Sarah Bache, where he describes Johnson as a "sagacious reasoner" on morals who lacks care for politics.
The reviewer evaluates J. Sharpe’s duodecimo edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, characterizing it as "one of the most readable and entertaining books in the language" and recommending it for those seeking "instruction and amusement for ten days." The biography is praised as an entertaining, detailed portrait that captures the "Sage" with the "precision and detail of miniature" and the "vigour of a full-length," despite the work not being written in a "compact and condensed spirit." Johnson is characterized as a "colossal weight of wit" and a figure of contradictions: "sensual and moral," "sagacious and absurd," "capricious and candid," and possessing "sarcastic bitterness" alongside "unbounded benevolence." The text notes the transition of the work from an expensive four-volume octavo to this portable, twelve-shilling edition. Furthermore, the reviewer anticipates Croker’s forthcoming "splendid edition," which promises "curious original matter" regarding Johnson’s Scottish tour obtained from Sir Walter Scott and other "northern literati." The reviewer expects Croker’s "searching spirit" to significantly enlarge and illustrate the existing narrative.
Watson reviews Lynd’s Dr. Johnson and Company, noting Lynd’s balanced view of Johnson’s virtues against his "repulsive table manners" and "morbid" temperament. Lynd positions Johnson as a "great comic figure" akin to Falstaff, emphasizing his insatiable curiosity and conversational mastery. The text details Watson’s summary of the Johnsonian circle, including the jealous nature of Johnson’s friendships with Garrick and Reynolds. Watson highlights the section on Johnson and women, where Lynd identifies Johnson as singularly "happily married." Regarding Boswell, the review rejects the "happy fluke" theory of his genius, instead portraying him as a calculating artist—a "picador" who goaded Johnson into brilliance and remoulded his dialogue for dramatic effect. The text specifically mentions the rupture with Piozzi following her second marriage, illustrating the volatility inherent in Johnson’s intimate associations.
Spinning edits this classic biography which allows readers to "walk and talk and think" with Johnson. The reviewer asserts that Boswell brings the eighteenth century to the modern reader, providing an intimate view of Johnson’s "kind heart beneath the bluster." The text portrays Johnson in his "ill-fitting brown clothes" and "bluish wig," making his "genuine soul" more familiar than contemporary figures.
The new edition contains many previously uncollected or unprinted letters, forming an indispensable supplement to Hill's Life of Johnson. The text discusses Johnson's own estimate of his epistolary powers, quoting a letter to Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi Letters, ii. 14). The reviewer finds Johnson's letters weighty but occasionally "elephantine" in humor, not placing him with Walpole or Cowper. The publication is commended as handsome, scholarly, and featuring exemplary full notes and a noble index.
CGV entry 23:47.
The reviewer identifies Hill’s collection as a significant addition to Johnsonian literature, notably for including nearly one hundred previously unpublished letters, such as a tender communication to his wife, "Titty," and rare correspondence with Frances Burney and Dr. Taylor. However, Hill is criticized for a "redundant" and "exuberant" editorial style that provides encyclopedia-like notes on trivial eighteenth-century topics while repeating basic facts, such as the identity of Francis Barber. The reviewer specifically disputes Hill’s decision to exclude letters found in the Life of Johnson, forcing readers to consult separate volumes. Furthermore, the text rejects Hill’s "strange animosity" toward Mrs. Thrale, defending her against accusations of "clumsy fabrications" by attributing her errors to poor chronology rather than fraud. Despite these flaws, Hill is credited with elevating Johnson’s status as a letter-writer through his exhaustive energy and unrivalled knowledge of the period.
The Death of Samuel Johnson and the Ars Moriendi Tradition
Brack explores the tension between Johnson's well-known fear of death and the efforts of early biographers to portray his end as an exemplary Christian exit. Drawing on the ars moriendi tradition, Brack demonstrates how writers provided a formulaic end to promote virtue, often suppressing unpleasant details. Brack disputes the accuracy of Boswell’s account of Johnson’s last words, arguing that Boswell chose the phrase God bless you for its hagiographic value over more documented alternatives like jam moriturus. The study concludes that Boswell manipulated the death scene to ensure Johnson remained an object of admiration and reverence for posterity.
Samuel Johnson Waits Fifty Years to the Day to Expiate a Breach of Filial Piety Committed as a Boy
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), an eccentric, of ungainly appearance and sometimes savage manner, was the foremost conversationalist of his day and chief dictator of its literary taste. A touching aspect of his life is revealed in this little known confession of an episode that took place when he was a boy. During the last visit which the Doctor made to Lichfield, the friends with whom he was staying missed him one morning at the breakfast-table. On inquiring after him of the servants, they understood he had set off from Lichfield at a very early hour, without mentioning to any of the family whither he was going. The day passed without the return of the illustrious guest, and the party began to be very uneasy on his account, when, just before the supper-hour, the door opened, and the Doctor stalked into the room. A solemn silence of a few minutes ensued, nobody daring to inquire the cause of his absence, which was at length relieved by Johnson addressing the lady of the house in the following manner: ‘Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of the departure from your house this morning, but I was constrained to it by my conscience. Fifty years ago, Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety, which has ever since lain heavy on my mind, and has not till this day been expiated. My father, you recollect, was a bookseller, and had long been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall for the sale of his books during that day.
On an observation on Johnson's style from Boswell's Life, where Johnson replaced "It has not wit enough to keep it sweet" with a more formal sentence about the comedy's lack of "vitality." Bensly provides classical and literary sources, including Ben Jonson's plays, for the proverbial saying that the soul functions as salt to keep the body from putrefaction.
How to Die: The Example of Samuel Johnson
Reid presents a narrative of Johnson's lifelong courage, culminating in his "frigid tranquility" in the face of death. Drawing heavily from Boswell, the article traces Johnson's "jealous independence of spirit" from childhood anecdotes to his pugnacious street encounters. Reid emphasizes Johnson's intellectual courage, particularly his loud and repeated declarations that Macpherson's Ossian was a fraud. When Macpherson threatened violence, Johnson defied the "menaces of a ruffian" in a famous letter, refusing to retract his opinion of the "imposture." The article explores Johnson's endurance of poverty, ill health, and a "vile melancholy" that he feared made him "mad all his life." Johnson's resistance to indolence through concentrated work on the Dictionary and Lives of the Poets illustrates his principle that "virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life." Reid portrays Johnson's final days as a "noble example," showing him rendering up his soul "unclouded" by refusing opiates to the end.
Reed argues that lexicography is a discipline of "borrowing," where Webster used Johnson’s compilation while simultaneously criticizing his "want of discrimination" and "vulgar words." The author demonstrates how Webster "improved" Johnson’s work by widening the scope of definitions, yet remained an "author of a lexicon" in the Johnsonian tradition. The text details how Webster’s work eventually recognized Johnson’s "partial oblivion" while creating its own monument through "toil." Reed concludes that Webster’s primary contribution was shifting lexicography from a "one-man job" to a systematic office-based endeavor, even as he relied on the "acquisitions of his ancestors" to establish American linguistic authority.
American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage
Additional remarks by Johnson on insanity, sourced from Croker’s edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Johnson holds a high opinion of smoking's ability to tranquilize the mind, suggesting insanity became more frequent after smoking went out of fashion. Johnson discusses the poet Christopher Smart, confined in a madhouse, noting that his deviation was his "unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world" rather than a true danger to society. Johnson also observes that madmen love to be with people they fear and, in lower stages of the distemper, seek sensual gratifications, but later seek pain. Boswell adds an anecdote of a retired tradesman whose mind preyed upon itself until the pain of the stone offered relief, confirming Johnson's observation.
Samuel Johnson: A Closet Post Keynesian?
W. identifies Johnson as a precursor to post-Keynesian economic thought, noting that the literary figure offers insights into expectations, uncertainty, and the informational basis for investment. Although Adam Smith famously insulted Johnson and Schumpeter ignored him, Johnson's writings in the Rambler and Rasselas mirror the Keynesian concept of animal spirits. W. argues that Johnson's observations on the mind’s tendency to lose itself in schemes of future felicity and the power of magnifying expected advantages predate modern theories of economic decision-making. The article highlights Johnson's recognition that the present is a never-never land filled by recollection and anticipation. Furthermore, Johnson's descriptions of agriculture and authorship illustrate how optimism and anticipated change drive human effort despite the inherent hazards of the future.
Reprinted from the Glasgow Medical Journal.
An Imaginary Conversation between Samuel Johnson and Gilbert Chesterton
Woodruff examines Samuel Johnson's art as a moral essayist within the eighteenth-century periodical tradition, particularly defining its character through Johnson's adoption and adaptation of the genre for didactic ends. The analysis focuses on Johnson's views of the periodical essay, establishing Addison as his principal model and precursor, particularly in developing the form as a vehicle for practical morality, centered on "common life." The work analyzes the rhetorical strategies inherent in the structure of The Rambler and The Idler, emphasizing their use of the eidolon (persona), thematic inter-relatedness, reliance on generalized observations, and adaptation of narrative forms (fiction and letters) as teaching devices. Johnson's practice, rooted in rational moral philosophy, prioritizes coherence and didactic effectiveness over popular appeal, distinguishing his unique contribution to the periodical form.
Samuel Johnson, edition of Shakespeare 1765
From The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators; To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnson (1765).
This first volume of the Yale Edition of Johnson's works aims to rectify the lack of a modern, satisfactory edition. It collects Johnson's sporadic, often cryptic diaries, prayers, and annals, including a previously unpublished diary section. The editors provide extensive scholarship, decoding cryptic references and identifying names and events, often using cross-quotations from Boswell and Thrale. The diary text is expanded into a continuous record, occupying the lower half of each page, providing the specialist and hobbyist with comprehensive material.
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 4
Although Fielding's name is not mentioned, he is clearly the writer Johnson has in mind when he refers to those who 'mingle good and bad Qualities in their principal Personages' and 'confound the Colours of Right and Wrong', Chalmers stated that this Rambler was occasioned by the popularity of Roderick Random, and Tom Jones' (The Works of Samuel Johnson, 1816, iv, 24).
Curley explores Johnson’s travel writing within the context of eighteenth-century empirical inquiry and political geography. Curley identifies travel as a central ethical duty and moral metaphor for Johnson, linking his journeys to the traditions of the Christian pilgrim and the Lockean empiricist. McIntosh praises the study's extensive erudition and its analysis of Johnson’s focus on the "true state" of common life. However, McIntosh notes that the book's complex ideas lack logical concatenation and structural cohesion.
The Benevolent Tyrant: Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition: A Study in English Usage and Lexicography
Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition
Wells traces the evolution of English lexicography from early descriptive techniques to the authoritarian influence of Johnson. Wells argues that while early lexicographers like Bullokar and Coles introduced field labels and dialect words, Johnson established the dictionary as a standard for 'purifying and fixing' the language. In his 1747 'Plan,' Johnson expressed hope to stabilize English, though by his 1755 'Preface,' he moderated this to 'retard what we cannot repel.' Wells details how Johnson’s use of contextual quotations from 'writers of the first reputation' provided unprecedented authority. Despite Johnson’s later skepticism regarding linguistic permanence, Wells notes that contemporary reception viewed his work as a substitute for a national academy. Wells further examines Webster’s complex relationship with Johnson’s legacy, noting that while Webster challenged Johnson’s authority and promoted American linguistic independence, he remained fundamentally authoritarian, adopting many of Johnson’s definitions and prescriptive editorial practices to regularize American orthography.
Fussell's book is not intrinsically more valuable than Quennell's, but complements it by focusing on Johnson as a writer. The text provides necessary analysis of Johnson's literary achievements—including his critical, poetic, and scholarly works—which the public often overlooks.
Rousseau reviews Schwartz’s monograph on Johnson’s attitudes toward science, describing it as an "impressive and accurate book" that fills a significant scholarly gap and effectively places Johnson as a "Perpetual Moralist" within his age. The review outlines Schwartz’s organization, which traces Johnson’s thinking from intellectual history to his "Baconian legacy" and his "Augustinian view of human nature," a perspective that precluded a belief in a utopia-on-earth. While Rousseau finds the prose occasionally monotonous and notes that Johnson's predictable views on science—that it must aid man's moral and religious life and serve technology over abstract theory—make the subject unexciting, he commends the chapters on the satiric reaction and the "Utopian Fallacy." Rousseau disputes Schwartz’s analysis of Bacon’s influence, suggesting Schwartz remains unaware of contemporary debates regarding the "Baconian tradition," and he concludes that Johnson's relation to science is a lesser branch of scholarship. Despite these criticisms, he concludes that Schwartz successfully demonstrates how Johnson "moralized" science, viewing it as a weapon to prove God’s wisdom rather than a force inimical to religion.
Ladell diagnoses Johnson's constitutional melancholy, tics, and obsessive habits—such as counting steps—as anxiety hysteria manifesting in obsessional acts. Tracing this neurosis to his early life, Ladell argues that his facial disfigurement and defective vision created an inferiority complex, which Johnson compensated for by establishing intellectual superiority. The acute onset of his "horrible hypochondria" in 1729 is theorized to stem from the discovery of sexual impotence. This condition shaped his personal life, influencing his marriage to the much older Porter and symbolizing itself in his novel Rasselas, whose unconclusiveness Ladell terms "impotent."
Dunn reviews Paul Fussell's Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, praising the study for its focus on Johnson as a professional writer rather than a mere subject of reportage. The review highlights Fussell's analysis of the "dynamics" of the Rambler and Idler, noting how Johnson's "Holy Deadline" of Easter dictated the completion of his essays and the Lives of the Poets. Dunn commends Fussell's examination of the Dictionary, specifically the "tender" and "appropriate" definition of a mouse as an animal "haunting houses and corn fields, destroyed by cats." The review concludes that the Lives remain essential "martyrologies" for anyone attempting to live by their pen.
Ramsay describes the work as a 'sight-seeing tour' through 150 years of linguistic development preceding 1755. The reviewer notes an 'unfortunate self-denying ordinance' wherein the authors restricted their scope strictly to dictionaries published before Johnson, omitting systematic comparisons with 'great modern dictionaries.' Despite this restriction, Ramsay praises the 'useful survey' for laying the foundation for 'penetrating investigation' into a 'long neglected field.' The text likens the authors to 'spies sent out by Moses' to provide an 'incentive and guide' for future scholarly expeditions. Ramsay concludes that the work successfully identifies the 'traditional forms' that shaped the dictionary before it reached its famous 'eminence' under Johnson.
Allen reviews Fussell’s Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, which presents Johnson as the "archetypal writer." Allen questions Fussell’s emphasis on genre and the "pre-existing form," arguing that original writers create the taste by which they are relished. The review highlights the contrast between Johnson’s "violent appetites" and the "formal order of his writings." Allen notes Johnson’s sexual masochism in relation to Piozzi, though Fussell omits it. Allen finds the book witty and elegant, teaching readers to use Johnson's prose with greater understanding.
CGV entry 10/1:127. A review by Lawrence Lipking of the book by William Edinger, alongside another work.
James Boswell, the Biographer of Samuel Johnson
JOHN CLARE, the "Northamptonshire poet," when recovering from one of his severe attacks, brought on by hunger, though he never allowed his family to want, crept out into the woods and fields to get a mouthful of the fresh air, and visit the beloved haunts of his
Chesley’s approving review commends Charles E. Pierce, Jr. for presenting a convincing case that Johnson's life, art, and ideas are inseparable from his Christian beliefs. Chesley highlights how Pierce interprets Johnson’s faith as a dynamic process of "progressions and regressions" rather than a static artifact. The review notes that Pierce successfully uses Johnson’s religious fears and expectations of piety to explain his mid-life nervous breakdown and his specific views on imagination and salvation. Chesley finds particularly valuable the comparison of Johnson to Kierkegaard as a forerunner of "uneasy but unextinguished faith." The review concludes that while the study offers few new facts, it provides a readable and necessary interpretation of Johnson's spiritual disquiet as reflected in Rasselas and The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Fleeman calls the book's performance far from satisfactory despite a good purpose. He criticizes the editors for failing to investigate the origins of errors and discrepancies in biographical facts and for relying uncritically on published sources for canonical information. Fleeman also notes a complete lack of textual investigation and an uncritical reliance on Courtney's bibliography, marring the bibliographical notes. He concludes the book suffers from an incoherent editorial policy and a lack of thoroughness, making the volume a disappointment to students.
Graves reviews the Yale Edition of Johnson's writings on Shakespeare, edited by Arthur Sherbo. The review characterizes Johnson's "urbane and precise language" as proceeding from a "judicial bench." While noting that Johnson's "unscientific" criticism lacked modern textual methods, Graves argues his shrewd common sense remains valuable. The review highlights Johnson's defense of the playwright despite his complaints regarding "loose and carelessly pursued plots," "pomp of diction," and "hurried endings." Graves identifies the Preface as a definitive work that "subsumes and supersedes" earlier Shakespearean scholarship.
D'Evelyn provides a warm and enthusiastic review of Donald Greene’s Oxford Authors edition of Johnson’s works, a "comprehensive 840-page collection" timed for the bicentenary of Johnson’s death. Describing the volume as accessible to both students and general readers, the reviewer praises the "wealth of material" included, such as over a hundred pages of early and late prose, a selection of poems, the preface to the Dictionary, the complete "Rasselas," the preface to the plays of Shakespeare, and facsimile annotations. The edition also features selections from the journey to Scotland and the lives of the poets. D'Evelyn highlights Johnson’s "awesome power" of prose and his ability to link practical concerns to vast realms of knowledge, making his moral writings a necessary corrective for a "troubled generation." Specifically, the text emphasizes Johnson’s relevance to modern journalism through his 1758 essay, "Of the Duty of a Journalist," where Johnson established the cornerstones of responsible journalism: telling the truth, injuring no man, and avoiding the representation of wickedness as frequent. D'Evelyn argues that Johnson’s robust humanity and his ability to free himself from delusions and sectarianism serve as a corrective to "shameful" contemporary linguistic practices, commending the edition for demonstrating that "genius and humanity once dwelled together" in Johnson.
Walker examines Chapin’s "basic Anglicanism" label for Johnson’s faith, emphasizing personal knowing through faith and obedience. Chapin explores Johnson’s distrust of direct mystical vision and his opposition to the Evangelical revival until his final months. Walker disputes Chapin’s "absolute flatness" in separating Johnson from Puritan influence, noting his love for Bunyan and Baxter. The review highlights Johnson’s use of Christian evidence and his human approach to death as a distraction from illusory pleasures. Walker finds the book helpful in challenging "grotesque misunderstandings" regarding Johnson’s religious temperament.
Review by John M Walker of The Religious Thought of Samuel Johnson by Chester F. Chapin.
Presents the conclusion of a series of Johnson’s correspondence to Taylor, spanning 1783 to 1784. The letters articulate Johnson’s opposition to equal parliamentary representation, labeling it a dangerous experiment lacking the stability of antiquity. Johnson describes his 1783 paralytic stroke, detailing his loss of speech, medical consultations with Heberden and Brocklesby, and use of opium. Later correspondence reflects on his profound solitude following the death of Williams, his physical weakness, and his anxiety regarding the approach of death. The collection includes a brief mention of a portrait sitting for Opie and the text of Johnson's rebuff to Macpherson. Mayor advocates for a comprehensive reprint of all scattered Johnsonian letters.
Dr. Samuel Johnson in Another Edition: Boswell's 'Life,' Edited by Arnold Glover Contains Valuable Notes
This review describes the three-volume reprint of the 1901 Arnold Glover edition of Boswell’s biography. The reviewer identifies the work as a "celebrated classic" featuring a picturesque introduction by Austin Dobson and one hundred pen-and-ink drawings by Herbert Railton. The edition includes scholarly notes and end-papers featuring street maps of London areas intimately connected with Johnson. The review notes the publication’s attractive binding and its status as a "satisfying reissue" of the 1791 original and its 1811 revision.
McLeod's review identifies this work as a checklist of material about Johnson appearing in the London and Edinburgh press during the final 35 years of his life. The listing includes items alluding to reprints of Johnson's own works. While the author admits the checklist is not exhaustive and excludes most provincial publications, the large number of entries demonstrates a "consistent interest" in Johnson among the contemporary British press. McLeod notes that the items are briefly annotated but lack indexing, concluding that the volume's appeal is primarily limited to specialized Johnson scholars.
More details Johnson’s 'dying seal' to Christianity, including a prayer for Brocklesby and a public confession in his will. Johnson admits to living 'too much like other men' but takes consolation in never writing 'in derogation of religion or virtue.' More recounts Johnson’s characteristic roughness, such as refusing to shake hands with Raynal, calling him an 'infidel,' and declining to speak in favor of a 'Sabbath-breaker.' Johnson died 'without a groan' after a twelve-hour sleep.
Hazen identifies Johnson’s contributions to James’s Medicinal Dictionary, noting Boswell’s failure to isolate the specific texts. He demonstrates that Johnson translated and expanded biographies of Boerhaave and Tournefort, incorporating characteristic reflections on unassisted Merit. Hazen ascribes several other biographies, including those of Actuarius and Aegineta, to Johnson based on internal evidence and James’s preface. The study includes Johnson’s previously lost 1777 advertisement defending James’s fever powder.
CGV entry 13:31. On contributions to Dr. James's 'Medicinal Dictionary'.
Spector’s review of the revised Yale Edition of Johnson’s poetry notes that the collection reinforces his position within the Augustan tradition. Spector observes that the chronological presentation highlights a lifelong interest in verse and demonstrates that his strength lay in the heroic couplet rather than blank verse. The review explains that the editors used the Boswell papers and recent research to clarify texts and provide new attributions. Spector characterizes the volume as an important contribution to fixing the canon and providing reliable texts for a major writer whose poetic reputation rests largely on London and The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Damrosch examines the presence and limitations of tragic elements in Johnson’s biography, drama, and criticism. He contrasts the successful "muted" tragedy of the Life of Savage with the "untragic" failure of Irene, arguing that Johnson’s deep understanding of human suffering often failed to translate into traditional dramatic forms. Alkon identifies conceptual ambiguities in Damrosch’s definitions of tragedy and criticizes the assertion that Johnson was critical-minded but unfit to understand great world tragedies. The study concludes by evaluating Johnson’s thought against modern tragic theories.
Macaulay's and Carlyle's Essays on Samuel Johnson
Strunk presents two major essays regarding Johnson, emphasizing his status as a romantic figure in English literary history. The text offers these complementary perspectives in an affordable, elegant format suitable for secondary education. Strunk addresses a perceived lack of engagement with classic English literature. By pairing Macaulay and Carlyle, the edition facilitates a comparative study of Johnson's life and character through the lens of nineteenth-century criticism.
Warbasse explores the medical figures mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson, noting that "nothing that touched humanity was alien" to Johnson's interests. This first part of the study discusses medical members of the Literary Club, such as Oliver Goldsmith, whom Johnson noted "wrote like an angel, and talked like poor poll." Warbasse outlines Johnson's role as a medical biographer, citing his lives of Boerhaave, Sydenham, and Sir Thomas Browne. The article profiles several of Johnson's physicians and friends, including Richard Bathurst, whom Johnson deeply admired. Warbasse details Goldsmith’s struggles with medical practice and his eventual turn to literature, concluding with Johnson’s Latin epitaph for his friend in Westminster Abbey.
Post-Mortem Examination of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Wilson records the December 15, 1784, autopsy of Johnson conducted for Cruikshank. Wilson attributes the immediate cause of death to a "trifling loss" of blood after Johnson used a lancet to deep-cut his own legs to relieve dropsy. Anatomical findings include distended lungs with enlarged air-cells, an "exceedingly large and strong" heart with ossifying aortic valves, and a gall-stone "the size of a pigeon’s head." Wilson notes significant renal damage, observing that the right kidney was "almost entirely destroyed" by hydatids. Wilson also details an enlarged pancreas, peritoneal inflammation, and varicose spermatic veins.
Clifford celebrates the completion of Powell’s monumental revision of the Hill edition. He highlights the Hebrides volume as a significant improvement due to Powell’s firsthand geographical knowledge and use of original manuscripts. Clifford particularly emphasizes the value of the new inclusive index in Volume VI, which incorporates recent discoveries and corrects earlier commentary. While noting the omission of Johnson’s collected sayings, he concludes that the set remains a definitive reference work for scholars.
Review by J L Clifford of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. by James Boswell.
The abridgment, about half the length of the original, makes the book accessible for the first time since 1787. Davis's editorial choices generally omit or abridge historical background (e.g., Irene), summaries (e.g., Father Lobo), or specialized remarks (e.g., medical profession). Sherbo notes that while the omissions are often understandable, the cumulative loss detracts from "that flavor that is Hawkins' own." The reviewer regrets the abridgement of Hawkins' unique comments on Johnson's political feelings, such as those concerning The Patriot and Taxation no Tyranny.
Stromberg agrees that Chapin successfully rescues Johnson from the stigma of being a narrow-minded bigot, affirming him as a serious and profound thinker. However, the review finds Chapin more comfortable with personal and literary aspects than with the broader historical setting. The book’s discussion of religious disputes, including the deistic debate and philosophical issues, is too thin, prompting the reviewer to wish for a longer book with a more extensive and deeper examination of these historical topics.
The volume offers a much fuller, more accurate, and better-annotated chronological text than Hill's edition, with about half the text resting on previously unavailable manuscripts. Earlier editors, including Strahan and Boswell, suppressed or altered content for prudence, taste, or orthodoxy, such as entries on Johnson's projected second marriage, his medical issues, and his piety. Collins notes that although the new texts add detail, they do not modify the core understanding of Johnson, whom he finds a poor diarist compared to Boswell or Piozzi.
Mayerson analyzes Johnson’s skepticism regarding the strange distemper reported to strike the inhabitants of St. Kilda upon the arrival of strangers. Johnson challenged the account of Macauley, demanding a physical cause for the phenomenon. The text recounts Boswell’s attempts to convince Johnson of the island's unique epidemiology. Mayerson uses modern studies from Spitzbergen to validate Macauley’s observations, providing the physical cause Johnson required.
This review praises John Wain for his profound empathy and "inside" feeling in depicting Johnson's life as a narrative of "unremitting struggle." Hoover notes that while Wain acknowledges Boswell as indispensable, he correctly identifies Boswell's limitations, such as his caricature of Johnson’s politics and superficial treatment of his darker psychological states. The review commends Wain's ability to make Johnson’s marriage understandable and his analysis of major writings as "windows into Johnson's soul." Although Hoover notes minor factual errors and occasional flat prose, he characterizes the work as a racy, moving critical biography intended for a general audience.
Abstract of a conference paper based on the article in the British Journal of Medical Psychology (1929).
Digby's review notes that Pierce's study follows the tradition of James Clifford by emphasizing Johnson's attempt to make faith central to daily life. Pierce suggests that Johnson’s psychological breakdowns, persistent anxiety, and obsession with productivity stem from a perceived failure to achieve this spiritual centrality. The work identifies Johnson's fears of madness and death as forms of religious anxiety, linking them to his reading of William Law and Richard Baxter. Digby observes that while much of the material is familiar to specialists, Pierce argues effectively that a quasi-mystical experience in Johnson's final months helped him retain Christian faith despite the "absurdist conclusions" reached in earlier works like Rasselas.
The review summarizes Quennell's new portrait of Johnson, described as a "masterful job" of balancing the subject's literary virtues and vices. It depicts Johnson at home, conversing with friends such as Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Burke, while "attacking" enemies like Gibbon and Hume. The account emphasizes the "ring of authority" in Quennell's presentation of Johnson's social and literary world.
Rolleston's Medical Aspects of Samuel Johnson
Summarizes Rolleston’s analysis of Johnson’s morbidities and the 1784 necropsy report by Wilson. Documents Johnson’s lifelong struggle against "morbid melancholy," phobias, and neurasthenia, which he countered through "walking, work, and other forms of distraction." Details the terminal complications of "asthma, a dropsy," and renal disease. Notes Johnson’s self-inflicted surgery, where he "cut deep into his legs" with a lancet hours before death to evacuate fluid. Correlates autopsy findings, such as an enlarged heart and "pigeon's egg" gallstone, with modern diagnoses of high blood pressure and chronic interstitial nephritis. Mentions Johnson’s recommendation of Cheyne’s English Malady to Boswell, a fellow sufferer of depression.
Many reprints of Boswell's famous life of Dr. Samuel Johnson have been made since its first publication in 1791, but none so fitted for the shelves of a reader of very moderate wealth as the edition in three volumes which the Macmillan Company have just added to their handsome Library of English Classics.
Explores the intimate friendship and professional relationship between Johnson and his physician, Lawrence. Highlights Lawrence’s pedigree as a descendant of Milton’s associates and his status as a "profound Latin scholar." Details Johnson’s increasing medical reliance on Lawrence beginning in 1777, specifically regarding treatment for dyspnea and asthma through bloodletting and "physic." Chronicles their mutual infirmity, noting a "pathetic" 1782 encounter where the two, both suffering from respiratory distress and palsy, communicated by writing "questions and answers to each other in Latin." Records the recent arrival in America of eleven autograph letters from Johnson to Lawrence and the manuscript of a Latin ode. Concludes that Lawrence remained a "friend whom long familiarity has much endeared" until his death in 1783.
Hibbert presents a compilation of Johnson's personal history, drawing material from diverse sources, including Boswell, Piozzi, and Burney, to form a vivid impression of the man. Hibbert’s portrait, unlike Boswell's, emphasizes the more disturbing aspects of Johnson's eccentric and deeply melancholy personality, particularly his constant fear of insanity. The text explains that Piozzi knew of these terrors intimately, informing Johnson's "abominable" treatment of her when she married Piozzi. Hibbert successfully integrates these aspects, ultimately creating a somber, though deeply touching, character study of the man’s fundamental goodness.
Clouston's selection from Johnson's prose writings garners praise as an excellent addition to "The Library of Thoughtful Books." The volume features a concise, well-arranged timeline of principal events in Johnson's seventy-five-year life, emphasizing that his LL.D. degree from Oxford was conferred only nine years before his death. The reviewer deems the resulting volume a handy and handsome collection of Johnson's wisdom and genius.
Cosgrave characterizes Hibbert’s biography as a delightful and rewarding amateur work that redresses the balance of previous biographical compilations. He praises Hibbert’s openness of mind, arduous research, and gentle devotion to the subject, which result in an endlessly fascinating collection. While noting that Hibbert does not replace Boswell, Cosgrave suggests the work assists in isolating the character of Johnson from the influence of his primary biographer. The text identifies this study as a successful attempt to disinter Johnson from the weight of the 'Boswell industry.'
Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson: With a Selection from his Essay on Johnson
Hanson provides a "well-prepared edition" of Macaulay’s biographical and critical work on Johnson for the Standard English Classic Series. The volume includes an introduction to Macaulay, a chronology, and a selection from the essay on Croker’s edition of Boswell. The notes feature Johnson's "famous letters to Chesterfield and Macpherson." Hanson’s editorial work assists students in navigating Macaulay’s perspective on Johnson as a stylist and philosopher.
Boasting no new facts and using many anecdotes that, however good they may be in themselves, might have been thought to have long since lost their freshness, Peter Quennell has nonetheless produced a remarkably good book on Johnson and Johnson's world.
A brief note, reading, in full, "Francis Faragoh is writing an original based on the life of Dr. Samuel Johnson which Kenneth Macgowan will supervise for Radio under the title of 'Dr. Johnson.' Faragoh recently completed the script on 'The Return of Peter Grimm' for the same studio."
Warbasse chronicles the lives of various medical men associated with Johnson, beginning with John Turton and William Butter. The article details Johnson's admiration for George Cheyne's "English Malady" and his life of the poet-physician Mark Akenside, whom Johnson considered superior to Gray despite Akenside's medical "indifference." Warbasse explores Johnson's close friendship with Robert James, noting that Johnson wrote the dedication to Richard Mead for James's "Medical Dictionary." The narrative includes an account of Johnson's involvement in the legal case of John Memis, for which he provided an opinion on the distinction between the titles "Physician" and "Doctor of Medicine." Warbasse also describes Johnson's interactions with Joseph Priestley, noting Johnson's interest in "the new kind of air" despite Boswell's invective against Priestley's "pernicious doctrines." The article concludes with a tribute to Richard Mead, of whom Johnson said, "He lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man."
Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine
This review of the American reprint of Croker’s edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson argues that American critics serve as "umpires" of "abstract taste," free from the "mists of prejudice" and "political bias" found in British reviews. The author contrasts Macaulay’s "keen satire" in the Edinburgh Review with the Quarterly Review’s "unqualified panegyric," attributing both to party animosity rather than literary merit. While praising Croker’s "unwearied assiduity in research," the reviewer acknowledges that Johnson's "systematically vicious" style was "forgot" once the "spell of his name" faded. The text concludes that Johnson’s "reputation of those writings... is every day fading," while his "careless table-talk" remains his most durable legacy.
Kelly examines the inaugural volume of the Yale edition of Johnson, which compiles personal papers, journals, and prayers. These documents reveal a private aspect of Johnson often obscured by the biography by Boswell. The volume uses a chronological arrangement supported by biographical commentary to integrate disjointed fragments into a narrative of the subject’s life. Kelly focuses on the prayers, noting they document Johnson’s struggles with indolence and his deep religious humility. The text records intimate moments, such as the death of Catherine Chambers, while providing insight into Johnson’s health and travel interests. This collection provides unposed, sincere self-reflections that complement existing biographical accounts.
In this critical review of the two-volume historical survey Johnson's England, edited by A. S. Turberville, Lindsay disputes the appropriateness of the title. Lindsay argues that the true setting of Johnson never reached far beyond London, specifically the urban stretch from St. Paul's to Charing Cross. While praising the scholarship of the individual chapters on gaily colored fashions, filthy central street gutters, gambling, and crowded playhouses, Lindsay contends that the broader, brutal eighteenth-century landscape belongs to Henry Fielding or Horace Walpole rather than Johnson, whose massive masculine presence blocks out the typical courtly scene of patches and curling-irons.
Hobson’s approving review of the biography by Christopher Hibbert emphasizes the book's value in detailing Johnson’s formative years prior to his acquaintance with Boswell. Hobson highlights Hibbert’s treatment of Johnson’s "insatiable desire to be in company" and his "sledgehammer habit of controversy," including his complex social interactions with figures like Mrs. Montagu. The review specifically praises the depiction of Johnson’s "bizarre" but sincere "love-match" with his wife, Tetty, who was nearly twenty-five years his senior. Hobson finds Hibbert’s work well-documented and "exceedingly readable," noting that it maintains a better sense of proportion than Boswell’s often "ludicrous" adoration.
Center compiles a "well chosen abridgment" of Boswell’s original biography. The reviewer describes the work as a "gateway to eighteenth century life and letters." It aims to represent an era where "conversation and letter-writing were numbered among the fine arts." The text focuses on providing students with a manageable entry point into the life of Johnson and the scholarship of his period.
In this brief, positive capsule review, Pugh defines the volume as a distinctly interesting find for Johnsonian scholars. The publication compiles eighteenth-century critiques regarding Johnson, his specific writings, and the early works produced by his various biographers. Pugh notes that the collection offers essential, worth-having primary source material for any serious student of the period.
McIntosh offers a mixed review of Richard Schwartz's monograph. The reviewer commends the first half of the book for its "astute analysis" of standard theodicies and Johnson's humiliation of Soame Jenyns. However, McIntosh argues that the latter half of the work struggles to "disentangle new insights" from well-known ideas, particularly concerning Johnson's vehemence. McIntosh expresses reservations about Schwartz's attempt to project Johnson as a "model of the modern intellectual," preferring to leave Johnson his "prejudices" rather than seeing him as perfectly open-minded and up-to-date.
In this concluding installment, Warbasse examines the "apostles of medicine" mentioned by Boswell. The article highlights Johnson's biographies of Thomas Sydenham, Herman Boerhaave, and Thomas Browne, emphasizing Johnson's respect for Sydenham's "classical learning" and Boerhaave's "love of chymistry." Warbasse details Johnson's final illness, during which he consulted Alexander Dick, who offered him rhubarb from his own garden. The narrative contrasts respectable physicians like George Fordyce with "irregular" practitioners and "quacks" whom Johnson knew. Warbasse recounts Johnson's disparaging views on Joshua Ward—the "dullest man" he ever knew—and the itinerant oculist John Taylor, whom Johnson called "the most ignorant man I ever knew, but sprightly." The article concludes that these diverse figures, ranging from Royal College presidents to "nostrum mongers," all shaped the medical world of Johnson's time, reflecting his own "inexhaustible curiosity" regarding the healing arts and the "playthings of fortune" who practiced them.
Chapman’s review of Hibbert’s The Personal History of Samuel Johnson describes the work as a homiletic moral manual that gigantizes features to delineate Johnson as a man "more mythical and more heroic than ever." Praising Hibbert’s fine judgment and distillation of primary materials, Chapman notes a refusal to explore psychoanalytic "musky scents" such as masochism or "the musky scent of sex perversion," focusing instead on the quiet deployment of facts. The study depicts a sick giant whose substantialness and virtue command admiration, presenting Johnson as the "myth of screwed-up man with an instinct for truth" and an "absolute charity" that filled his house with outcasts, despite being born more diseased than most. Chapman concludes that the work successfully displays the man "where exterior appendages are cast aside."
Samuel Johnson, LL.D., on Law, Lawyers, and Judges
Rice surveys Johnson’s lifelong engagement with the law, noting his aborted attempts to enter the profession in 1738 and 1765. He uses Boswell’s records to detail Johnson’s views on legal ethics, advocate preparation, and the selection of judges. Rice emphasizes Johnson’s collaboration with Chambers on the Vinerian lectures as a peak moment of influence. He argues that Johnson’s practical wisdom regarding professional conduct and merit remains valuable for modern practitioners.
The 'Psychoanalysis of Doctor Samuel Johnson as a Volcano'
Dr. Samuel Johnson: A study in psychosomatic symptoms
George Steevens and Samuel Johnson, edition of Shakespeare 1773
From The Plays of William Shakespeare. In ten volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators; To which are added notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. With an Appendix (10 vols, 1773).
Richelet, Forerunner of Samuel Johnson, and de Lormes
Pitou identifies Pierre Richelet, rather than Johnson, as the first lexicographer to infuse a dictionary with extensive personal bias. Focusing on the case of Thomas de Lormes, Pitou details how Richelet used forty-six entries to systematically assault de Lormes’s legal and poetic incompetence. The study highlights Richelet’s use of definitions to ridicule contemporaries, establishing a precedent for the subjective and idiosyncratic lexicographical style later associated with Johnson’s own dictionary.
Bracey's approving review of Joseph Wood Krutch’s biography acknowledges the "bold and unnecessary" nature of attempting a new "full-dress Life" in competition with Boswell. Bracey finds that Krutch successfully avoids "quite hopeless competition" by writing from a "new angle" and using an original plan. The review highlights Krutch's thorough study of the "vast field" of Johnsonian scholarship, including contemporary criticism and Boswell’s own voluminous notes. Bracey notes the "bracing" effect of the work and commends the "large, well produced" volume for its contribution to understanding Johnson through a modern lens without seeking to displace the "Laird of Auchinleck."
Edwards, Dr. Whedon, and Samuel Johnson on the Will
This biographical narrative examines the theological debate over free will, comparing the "unanswerable" logic of Jonathan Edwards with the "sure and easy method" of Johnson. The author details his struggle to reconcile the "forensic" arguments in Edwards's "The Freedom of the Will" with the counter-arguments of D. D. Whedon. The text provides a "collocation" of Johnson's recorded conversations from Boswell, emphasizing his experiential approach to the subject. Key quotations include Johnson's famous retort, "Sir, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't," and his observation that "all theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it." Johnson further asserts that "no man believes himself to be impelled irresistibly" and likens those who deny free agency to "a tiger."
A Response to John D. Ramage: The Politics of Samuel Johnson: A Reconsideration
Greene responds to Ramage’s reconsideration of Johnson’s politics, clarifying that he defined Johnson as a propagator of democracy by facilitating public participation, not by propagating specific "democratic ideals." Greene criticizes Ramage's "naive Victorian liberal" faith in an inerrant "popular will" and defends Johnson's suspicion of mob violence and mass petitioning. He defends his previous argument that the constitutional issue in the Wilkes affair remains unsettled by the courts and stands by his analogy between Lincoln's preservation of the Union and Johnson's defense of the empire against the American colonists.
Kirsch’s approving review of W. Jackson Bate’s "Samuel Johnson" commends the biography for restoring the "whole Johnson" and the "human being behind the monument" and "virtuoso conversationalist" depicted by Boswell. The article highlights Bate’s use of early and late life evidence to reconstruct Johnson’s inner struggle against a "demon" of despair and fears of insanity, emphasizing his commitment to taking personal responsibility for his mental health. Kirsch details Johnson’s physical afflictions, including scrofula-induced blindness and deafness, and his "amateur psychologist" approach to "management" techniques for the mind through physical activities like swimming and walking, chemical experiments, and "knotting." The review notes that while Boswell focused on the celebrated talker and shared Johnson’s anxieties, Bate provides a deeper assessment of the character informing Johnson's monumental literary achievements, such as the "Dictionary" and "Lives of the English Poets," by successfully reconstructing the "impoverished" early years and the "poignant" final days. Kirsch concludes that Bate brings the essential "inner Johnson" to life, successfully capturing his moral sincerity and immense courage while portraying a man who refused to "capitulate" to illness and maintained his dignity until his death in 1784.
Plumptre's letter supplements an earlier communication by citing Johnson's comment on the line, "Shall from this practice but make hard your heart," from Cymbeline. Johnson's note expresses indignation against experimenters who "practised tortures without pity and related them without shame." Plumptre frames this "utterance of indignation" as characteristic of the "grand, old Samuel" while clarifying that he, Plumptre, advocates for the existing Vivisection Act, with the possibility of more stringent regulations, rather than the "lynching" process implied by Johnson's Latin quotation.
Selections from James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson
Welcomes Chapman's selection, which should encourage readers to seek out the full biography. Chapman's preface justly corrects false views, such as Macaulay's and Carlyle's critiques, of Boswell. The notes are expert, and the volume includes portraits of Johnson by Reynolds and Boswell by Dance.
Curley contrasts Damrosch's two studies on Johnson's criticism, viewing the earlier Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense (1972) as limited and negative in its focus on how Johnson's Christian faith hampered his appreciation of literary tragedy.
Review by Thomas M Curley of Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense by Leopold Damrosch, Jr..
Links between Dr. Samuel Johnson and the Rev. Gilbert White
Notes the surprising number of friends and acquaintances shared by Johnson and White, including Chapone, the Wartons, Collins, and Barrington. Although no proof exists of a meeting, the common social and literary circles of the eighteenth century suggest their introduction was not improbable.
Impossible Interview: Dr. Samuel Johnson versus Alexander Woollcott
Wecter notes the ongoing feud between Johnsonians and Boswellians. Kingsmill pieces together non-Boswellian sources (like Thrale and Burney) to present a more "feminine point of view" of Johnson's pathos, illness, and craving for female companionship, suggesting he "died of a broken heart" after Thrale's marriage. However, Wecter concludes that the result is a noble fragment, and Boswell's portrait remains magnificent and "compelling reality."
Sharpe publishes a compressed, single-volume edition of Boswell’s biography totaling 622 pages. The text uses double columns to maintain completeness while enhancing portability for the general reader. This publication provides a cheap and convenient alternative to multi-volume sets, reflecting the enduring popularity of Johnson's life and character. The issue also details the establishment of the Geographical Society of London, highlighting the importance of hydrographic knowledge to maritime safety.
Book Reviews: Doctor Johnson Re-Examined: Samuel Johnson: In for a Penny [review of Samuel Johnson, by Walter Jackson Bate]
Laski reviews Bate’s biography of Johnson, highlighting its "deeply involved pity and admiration" for Johnson’s struggles against poverty and the "fear of madness." She describes Johnson as a "man of heroic moral stature" and a "middle-class English hero." Laski identifies structural flaws in Bate’s work, including "unconquerable difficulties" with the arrangement of material and a "maddeningly uncertain policy" regarding dates. She notes the omission of significant material, such as the visit of Wesley, and concludes that Johnson still awaits the "great biographer he deserves."
Untitled item [Sir, Perhaps the late Dr. Samuel Johnson might be...]
Howard cites a 1768 conversation at Oxford to illuminate Johnson's perspective on the contemporary practice of soliciting "puffs" or favorable book reviews. Johnson distinguishes between unsolicited, honest praise and the unreliable flattery an author extract by direct request. The correspondence applies Johnson’s eighteenth-century moral standards to address concerns about the integrity of modern literary criticism and promotional tactics.
Samuel Johnson Was Actor's Friend and Severest Critic: In His 'Life of Johnson,' Boswell Recounts Close Attachment Between Johnson and David Garrick and Former's Influence on Player's Career
This biographical narrative traces the lifelong friendship between Johnson and David Garrick, beginning with Garrick's enrollment as a pupil at Johnson’s short-lived academy at Edial. Boswell’s records show that the two traveled to London together in 1737 to seek their fortunes. Throughout Garrick's theatrical career, Johnson acted as a severe critic whose suggestions improved the actor's interpretations, yet he remained a staunch defender against outside detractors. Upon Garrick's death, Johnson famously remarked that the event "eclipsed the gaiety of nations," later praising Garrick as a master of both tragedy and comedy.
The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson: The Lives of the Poets
Morgan’s approving review describes this first volume of the Yale Edition as a meticulous labor of love. Morgan notes that the collection includes diverse autobiographical writings, ranging from laundry lists to significant documents like the Welsh Diary and a previously unpublished diary covering 1765-84. The review observes that the prayers and meditations confirm the image of Johnson as a religiously tortured and melancholy spirit. Morgan finds it puzzling that Johnson wrote brilliantly about others while remaining workmanlike regarding himself. The review praises the eminent editors for their thorough notes and index, identifying the volume as a major contribution to the Johnsonian canon.
Spittal collects extracts from the Monthly Review that provide a contemporary abstract of Johnson's life and his biographers. The reviewer observes that these early critics often thwack Piozzi with heavy classical quotations while treating Boswell better than expected despite his record of Johnson's levity. Modern scholarship supports Piozzi in her quarrel with Johnson and values his gift for talk over his moral sentiments. The collection highlights Johnson as a dominant talker whose wider human sympathies and simple emotional style contrast with the ponderous balance of his written long words.
The Religious Opinions of Dr. Samuel Johnson with Special Reference to the Problem of Free Will
The English-speaking world has no character today holding the role of undisputed czar of literature. Not even George Bernard Shaw can dominate his era as did "The Great Cham" -- hero of Boswell's indefatigable pen.
Criteria for Evaluating the English Neoclassical Imitation of Classical and Foreign Verse Satire, 1600–1750 (Alexander Pope, Horatian Satire, Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, Boileau-Satires)
The goal of this study is to discover the conventions governing the English neoclassical imitation of Horatian, Juvenalian, and Bolevian satire, and to articulate reasonable standards of judgment regarding this genre. Important precursors include Harold Brooks and Howard Weinbrot, who agree in defining the imitation as an English poem using only one other poem as a model. Chapters I-IV examine previous criticism; the liberal theorists Denham, Cowley, and Dryden; the experimental imitators Oldham, Rochester, and Prior; and the influence of Boileau. The process of refining imitative form is examined in Chapters V-VIII, on Swift, Pope, and Johnson. In Chapter VI, Weinbrot's attribution of a progressively Juvenalian ethos to Pope is disallowed. A brief conclusion follows. The sustained ironic parallel to one model emerges as dominant; it draws its inspiration from Rochester's "An Allusion to Horace." Such a poem sustains a structure parallel to the model while ironically inverting its theme. Unlike the parodist, the ironic imitator attempts to strike a stylistic level corresponding to that of the model. In this manner he becomes more conspicuously a rival poet in the same genre while suggesting that he and his predecessor may hold certain values in common. This study develops aesthetic principles congenial to those informing T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and G. C. Fiske's Lucilius and Horace. Emphasis falls upon the ethos of the satirist and the normative values he communicates as the conventions affording the genre its greatest potential sophistication. The highest examples of ironic imitation exhibit a correlation of values, grounded in respect for the foreign author and his work even when the English writer is most conscious of leaving his model behind him.
Samuel Johnson, John Hawkesworth, and the Rise of the Gentleman's Magazine, 1738–1773
The Voyages of Jerónimo Lobo, Joachim Le Grand, and Samuel Johnson
Most eighteenth-century travel books combined narrative with facts in a first-person account that tried to avoid - at least in the early part of the century - too much that was personal or egotistical. One recent study of such books, Charles L. Batten Jr's Pleasurable Instruction, emphasizes the "generic blending of factual information and literary art," and argues persuasively that travel books provided "the kind of mimetic entertainment more often associated with narrative literature than with merely philosophical studies" and "joined pleasure with instruction in what became, perhaps, one of the most characteristic forms of the century." 1 What has not been examined, as far as I know, is how a single book of travel can go through a series of versions produced by shifts in the period of publication, in the political or religious climate, in the nationality of translators and publishers, and in the conventions and appeals of different literary forms. Such a book grew out of the travels and missionary work of a seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit priest, Jerónimo Lobo, who lived and worked in Abyssinia, or Ethiopia, between 1625 and 1635. Perhaps the best-known version of his text is the translation or "epitome" from the French by Samuel Johnson, which appeared in 1735.
Shaw examines Stock's thesis that Johnson was a "traditionalist and classicist" who rejected the "schematic rigidity" of neoclassical orthodoxy. Stock argues Johnson identifies Shakespeare as a "poet of nature" while dismissing the "rigidity" of decorum when it becomes synonymous with "particular manners." Shaw notes Stock successfully demonstrates that Johnson's defense of tragicomedy relies on an "appeal from criticism to nature," prioritizing "general nature" over formal rules. Though finding Stock "somewhat uncomfortable" with Johnson's moralizing, Shaw praises the assessment of the "Preface to Shakespeare" as a neoclassical work of art that promotes Shakespearean understanding through traditional values.
Review by Catherine M Shaw of Samuel Johnson and Neoclassical Dramatic Theory by R. D. Stock.
Samuel Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine: An Adjustment of the Canon
Leed challenges the inclusion of the April, May, and June 1742 sections of "A Review of the Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough" in the Johnsonian canon. While accepting the March 1742 essay as Johnson's, Leed demonstrates that subsequent installments are actually an abridgment of a book by "Britannicus." He highlights inconsistencies in person and the repetition of material Johnson had not previously used. Although Johnson may have performed the abridgment, Leed argues the lack of firm evidence warrants its exclusion from future editions of Johnson's works.
Philosophic Words: A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson
The book argues that Johnson's "philosophic words" are technical terms from natural and moral philosophy. Wimsatt uses the Dictionary and the Rambler to demonstrate the historical trend of these terms becoming generalized through metaphorical application. He observes that Johnson, in contrast to earlier lexicographers, often made the scientific or physical meaning the primitive, with the psychological meaning secondary. The review highlights Wimsatt's demonstration of how Johnson popularized words like "acrimonious" and "repulsion" in their transferred senses and praises the book for stressing the precision in Johnson's style.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: His Medical History as Recorded by James Boswell
East traces the medical history of Johnson through the accounts provided by Boswell, identifying a progression of high blood pressure and cardiac failure. The narrative follows Johnson from early childhood scrofula to the onset of gout at sixty-five and a transient paralytic stroke at seventy-four, likely caused by cerebral arteriospasm. East argues that the asthma Johnson experienced in his final years was cardiac rather than bronchial, noting that the development of nocturnal dyspnea and dropsy indicated left ventricular failure. The study incorporates findings from the autopsy performed by James Wilson, which revealed an enlarged heart, ossifying aortic valves, and emphysema. East concludes that Johnson died during his third bout of heart failure, noting that the clinical accuracy of Boswell's observations provides a model case history of hypertensive disease.
A Study to Determine Possible Resources Dr. Samuel Johnson Utilized When Writing Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Ingham's mixed review of Arieh Sachs's study explores the wholeness of Johnson's thought through the antithesis of reason and imagination. Ingham praises the vivid demonstration of how Johnson approves reason while recognizing its limitations, such as describing memory as "the temporal inverse of hope." However, Ingham challenges Sachs's central thesis that Johnson portrays a balance between these faculties for salvation. The review finds the discussion of the relationship between feeling and imagination unconvincing and too brief, leaving unanswered questions regarding where reason ends and morbidness begins. Ingham further disputes the lack of external evidence for Sachs's claim that Johnson's worldview depends on a universal scale of being.
McIntosh's book paradoxically focuses on fiction in the work of Johnson, a figure more known for his Dictionary, critique, and moralism. The study, constructed on the narrow bases of periodical stories and the tale Rasselas, proves interesting and instructive. The structure is logical, moving from Johnson's views on fiction, through the major moral themes, to the essay and tale forms, and including the influence of oriental tales. The final chapters discuss Johnson as an essayist and storyteller and explore the relationship between Candide and Rasselas.
Roberts validates Davis’s decision to abridge Hawkins’s biography by removing "doubtfully relevant digressions" and lengthy excerpts from Johnson’s works. He finds the resulting narrative successful, allowing for continuous reading while preserving Hawkins’s solemnity and "pleasant, first-hand details" of Johnson’s life. Roberts notes that while Hawkins remains a "melancholy" observer of Johnson’s behavior, the edition performs a "real service" to Johnsoniana.
Review by S C Roberts of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by John Hawkins.
A Study and Estimate of Sir John Hawkins' 'Life of Samuel Johnson'
Analyzes Sir John Hawkins' 1787 Life of Samuel Johnson. Reviews earlier Johnson biographies (Cooke, Tyers, Piozzi, Towers). Details Hawkins' life, relationship with Johnson (clubs, executorship), rivalry with Boswell. Evaluates Hawkins' portrayal, considering inaccuracies and criticism to assess its biographical value.
'A Review of Soame Jenyns' Enquiry Into the Nature and Origin of Evil' by Samuel Johnson
This edition reproduces Johnson's 1757 review of Jenyns's Enquiry from the Literary Magazine, with an introduction examining Johnson's anti-rationalism. Quilty argues that Johnson rejected the chain of being and optimistic theodicy prevalent in eighteenth-century thought, displaying instead a pessimistic realism rooted in fideism and distrust of reason. She traces these attitudes through Johnson's other works, including Rasselas and the Rambler, and identifies pyrrhonistic influences from Pascal, Browne, Dryden, Law, and Watts. Quilty contends that Johnson's temperamental melancholy reinforced his conservative authoritarianism and skepticism toward human perfectibility, positioning him against rationalist currents despite traditional interpretations emphasizing his reasonableness.
Roberts reviews Curwen’s collection, which draws on thirty years of schoolmaster experience to present extracts "boys would pick out and linger over." He notes the inclusion of a large proportion of Johnson’s own writings beyond Boswell. While Roberts describes it as a "perfect item" for general readers, he points out a factual error where Richard Bathurst is confused with the first Earl Bathurst.
This review notes the 1805 publication of Johnson’s genuine, self-written annals of his life to age eleven, saved from the fire by his servant, Barber's widow, and bought by Wright. The largest part (32 pages) was destroyed. A remarkable passage recalls his mother informing him of Heaven and Hell in his third year, a memory so clear his mother later wondered how she could have begun "such talk so late." The volume also prints Hill Boothby’s letters.
On Logorrhea, Outer Space, Samuel Johnson, Emma Goldman, and the Rejection of Intimacy
This letter to the editor corrects a misquote attributed to Samuel Johnson in a previous review of John Wain's biography. The correct statement is: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," not the contrary. The author suggests the maxim functions as a "reversible literary raincoat," suitable for different stages of life, whether in youthful ambition or later disillusionment with achievement.
Kemp notes that these collected writings reveal Johnson as a formidable controversialist who used law and history to explode the myths of patriots and Whigs. The volume challenges the low rating previously given to Johnson's political works. Kemp describes the commentary as a valuable resource for eighteenth-century terminology and praises the meticulous editing, despite finding some bibliographic elements old-fashioned.
This review introduces the first volume of the Murray edition, aiming to provide a "complete memoir of the great lexicographer" in eight portable volumes. The author notes that the edition incorporates Croker’s "admirable annotations" and presents Johnson "in his habit as he lived." The text shares two "circumstances" related to Johnson: that "Rambler" papers not written by him sold best, and that his "hatred to excise" originated from his father being fined for a "breach of the law in the sale of parchment." The reviewer concludes that the "bare mention of such a design is a sufficient recommendation" for the publication.
Voitle explores Sachs’s thesis that Johnson’s observations are 'explicable in terms of the basic tension' between reason and imagination. Sachs freshly handles 'traditional speculations' on the 'vacuity of life' and 'diabolical imagination.' While Voitle finds the 'intensely illuminating generalizations' striking, he disputes the underrating of 'hierarchal thought' and the restrictive analysis of Rasselas as an 'anti-utopian satire.' He concludes that Sachs successfully arrange Johnson's 'unsystematic' ideas from 'recorded conversation' and diverse writings into meaningful patterns.
Announces the publication of the first part of Graphic Illustrations of the Life and Times of Samuel Johnson. The work features six plates intended to enrich Boswell's biography, including a notable portrait of Michael Johnson, the father of the moralist. The reviewer notes the strong paternal resemblance and the visible traces of a hereditary tendency toward melancholy. Other illustrations include portraits of Richard Owen Cambridge and Thomas Warton, alongside topographical views of Kettel Hall and the residences of Catherine Clive and Thomas Davies. The publication aims to provide visual context for Johnson's literary and social milieu.
The Politics of Samuel Johnson: An Introductory Study of His Political Milieu, Activities, Attitudes, and Ideas
Greene disputes the traditional view of Johnson as a "blindly conservative" reactionary, identifying it as a product of nineteenth-century "Whig interpretation." This study re-examines Johnson's political ideas within their eighteenth-century context, emphasizing that "Tory" and "Whig" labels often denoted power struggles rather than rigid principles. Greene presents Johnson as an independent thinker whose fear of anarchy and rebellion, rooted in his Lichfield upbringing, led him to favor strong central government while maintaining fundamentally Lockean principles of national sovereignty. The biographical narrative traces Johnson's shift from anti-Walpolian opposition in his early writings to a more utilitarian theory of the state in his later Vinerian Lectures and political pamphlets. Greene argues that Johnson’s politics were inseparable from his humanitarianism and religious habit, particularly his "Evangelical" concern for social morality and the alleviation of human suffering. The study concludes that Johnson's skeptical conservatism aligns more closely with the empirical traditions of Hobbes and Hume than with the later idealist conservatism of Burke.
Dunkel commends Krutch for providing a "retouched features and the fuller figure" of Johnson for the general reader. The review emphasizes Johnson’s opposition to abstractions and his maintenance that "reason could not explain the existence of the Living God." Dunkel observes that Johnson found faith the "hard way," which fostered his tolerance for transgressors. The text notes how Johnson’s wit and vigor combat "stupidity, hypocrisy, and intolerance." Dunkel suggests the biography successfully recreates the "literary dictatorship of London" through liberal use of Johnson's own words.
Review by Wilbur Dwight Dunkel of Samuel Johnson by Joseph Wood Krutch.
Carruthers presents a valuable edition of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, enhanced by his extensive knowledge of the visited locations, their history, and inhabitants. Carruthers' notes enliven the narrative by contextualizing the individuals encountered by Johnson and Boswell, and provide significant details on the Hebrides' past and present state. This edition includes Boswell's original introduction, supplying necessary background on the book’s genesis. Reviewers consider this publication the most valuable edition of the Journal available due to its editorial quality and affordable, illustrated format.
A brief notice.
Medicine in the Life and Letters of Samuel Johnson, II. Dr. Johnson's Personal Ailments
Samuel Johnson: Book Reviewer in the 'Literary Magazine; or, Universal Review' (1756–1758)
Eddy investigates Samuel Johnson's role as a book reviewer, particularly within the context of the burgeoning book trade and changing professional landscape for writers in the mid-eighteenth century. The analysis details Johnson's contributions to the Literary Magazine and other periodicals, examining his criteria and methods for evaluating diverse works, thereby distinguishing his systematic approach from contemporary reviewing practices. The work establishes that Johnson prioritized moral and intellectual utility, using reviews to assert his critical authority and guide the reading public's taste toward lasting moral and literary values.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and the Journal of His Tour to the Hebrides
Morley follows Napier in restoring Boswell’s original text and removing Croker’s chapter divisions. The reviewer, however, identifies several inaccuracies in Morley’s "Dated Index" and notes, including errors regarding the publication dates of Rasselas and The Traveller, and a misunderstanding of Johnson’s 1745 political activities. The review disputes Morley's omission of "pleasant" anecdotal details, such as the survival of Johnson’s letter to Jenny Langton. Morley is praised for his analysis of the "equal brotherhood" between Johnson and Reynolds, contrasting it with Johnson’s fatherly or oracular ties to Goldsmith and Boswell. The text further discusses Boswell’s jealousy of Piozzi and his "absurd" pretension in writing Royal Academy acceptance letters in multiple languages. Finally, the reviewer critiques the illustrations as worn "spectres" of original mezzotints, unsuitable for an otherwise high-quality typographical production.
The quotations are admirably chosen, with exact references, and the compiler is a keen Johnsonian. Bell loses urbanity only when accusing Hester Piozzi of lying. Johnson is emphasized as a moralist who practiced his doctrines.
This brief notice reviews the third part of Murray's publication. The installment features portraits of Richard Owen Cambridge, Topham Beauclerk, and Thomas Warton. It also includes topographical views of the residences of Catherine Clive and Thomas Davies, as well as Kettel Hall in Oxford. The reviewer describes these illustrations as "pleasingly executed." Included in the same issue is an obituary for Francis Freeling and a poem titled "I’ve Lived Too Long," though these do not directly concern Johnson.
The Critical Opinions of Samuel Johnson: With Particular Reference to Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace
This very brief review of Roberts’s edition of Piozzi’s Anecdotes notes that the "dominating, gracious, ungracious, bullying, kindly personality" of Johnson remains consistent with Boswell’s portrayal. Piozzi provides a "miniature" to Boswell’s "full-length portrait," using lively wit to record conversations and anecdotes that illuminate Johnson’s "many-sided character." Although the reviewer describes Piozzi as occasionally garrulous, the text maintains that her gossip rarely lacks consequence. Roberts contributes a "brilliant and sympathetic" introductory study of the Thrales and Johnson, enhancing the completeness of the volume.
Stauffer's enthusiastic review describes Wimsatt's study as a successful exploration of how scientific and philosophic vocabulary from the seventeenth century informs Johnson's prose. Johnson acquired this specialized terminology through extensive reading for the Dictionary, later assimilating mechanical and physical metaphors into moral and psychological themes in the Rambler. Stauffer notes that Johnson used these philosophic words to achieve a tone of dignity and abstraction, turning mechanical imagery inward to analyze the soul. The review concludes that Wimsatt proves the interdependence of style and meaning, showing that Johnson's generic and abstract diction conveys a specific philosophic tone.
Chapman's edition collects all of the 1,515 known letters from Johnson (and Thrale), superseding previous editions. The letters were recopied from originals whenever possible and edited with meticulous attention to textual accuracy. Although the completely new letters are not of major significance, the edition's value as a scholarly tool is very great. It is uniform with the Hill–Powell edition of Boswell's Life and is considered an indispensable accompaniment to it.
A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
This is a comely and well-printed reissue of a book which is less known than the famous biography, but ought to rank with it.
This review of Croker's five-volume edition praises the editor as one of the "ablest and most delightful annotators." Croker provides new evidence regarding Johnson's father, Michael Johnson, who was prosecuted by the excise board in 1723; this "personal animosity" purportedly informed Johnson's later "violence of language" against excise in his Dictionary. The review also includes a 1735 letter from Henry Geast rejecting Johnson for a schoolmaster position due to his "haughty ill-natured" character.
Collins calls Davis a zealous and learned champion for Hawkins, whose book was "unjustly" hooted down by contemporary reviewers prejudiced against the "unclubable" author. Davis argues that Hawkins's Life of Johnson is "much more reliable and important" than generally recognized, and Collins praises the work for successfully showing Hawkins's portrait is "identical in nearly all essentials" to other records. The study provides sole evidence for certain periods of Johnson's life and possesses considerable independent value. Collins notes that Davis retorts gleefully against Boswell's "dark hints" of Johnson's infidelities, siding with Clifford to exonerate Johnson. While Davis is "less persuasive" regarding Hawkins's digressions, he claims for the biography only its proper position as a standard work, second only to Boswell's.
Sept. 18, 1709: The Two-hundredth Birthday of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Some Pictorial Johnsoniana from Lichfield and Other
Photographs of portraits, buildings, MSS, and so on, associated with Johnson and Lichfield.
Spencer finds this inaugural volume disappointing as it focuses on Johnson as a "biographical subject" rather than a writer. He notes the text consists of fragmentary manuscripts and "sporadic diaries" that are difficult to read continuously. While the commentary provides valuable elucidation, Spencer critiques the editors’ "imperfect sympathy" with the classical education of Johnson’s era. He observes that the "melancholy" collection emphasizes Johnson’s weaknesses over his immense literary energy.
English Satirical Poetry from Joseph Hall to Percy B. Shelley
Samuel Johnson: The Vanity of Human Wishes: In Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal
Fischer includes Johnson's 1749 poem as a primary exemplar of neo-classic imitation and formal verse satire. The text follows the transition from the seventeenth-century political satires of Dryden and Marvell to the moral and philosophical scrutiny characteristic of the mid-eighteenth century. Johnson adapts Juvenal's Tenth Satire to a Christian context, replacing Roman historical figures with modern counterparts to illustrate the futility of worldly ambition, the instability of political power, and the inevitable disappointments of scholar, warrior, and beauty alike. The poem functions within this collection as a bridge between the sharp, topical wit of Pope and the later, more politically radicalized satirical modes of Byron and Shelley. Fischer presents the poem without annotations to facilitate direct student engagement with Johnson’s rhetorical structures and his somber, dignified heroic couplets.
The Theme of Separation from Reality in Charles Dickens' 'Our Mutual Friend' [and] Samuel Johnson on Comedy
Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Works of Samuel Johnson Marking the 200th Anniversary of His Death
Reddick reviews Liebert’s catalogue for the Beinecke Library exhibition marking the bicentennial of Johnson’s death. The exhibition focused on Johnson’s career as a professional writer, displaying a vast array of prefaces, dedications, translations, and sermons alongside major works. Reddick commends the catalogue for its detailed contextual information and bibliographical descriptions of Yale’s holdings, though he notes a potential disagreement regarding the description of a cancelled leaf in the Dictionary. The work serves as a guide to the extensive Yale collection.
Leslie describes Adam's three-volume catalogue as the best Johnson collection extant, featuring bibliographical descriptions and facsimiles of letters from Johnson, Boswell, Burke, and Reynolds. The volumes include Johnson's correspondence with Piozzi, his Latin Sapphics from Skye, and rare Boswellian letters. Leslie notes the inclusion of the corrected copy of the Plan of a Dictionary and proof sheets from the Life. The collection preserves manuscript treasures by making them available to scholars through American resources, serving as a Golden Book of Johnson that modern commentators must consult.
When they landed on Iona Island on October 19, 1773, James Boswell, Esq., shook Dr. Johnson cordially by the hand. It was an episode which Boswell had long pictured in imagination; he felt he had practically introduced to each other, the Rambler and St. Columba!
Calling on the Ghost of Dr. Samuel Johnson in His Famous Old Fleet Street Residence
Gibbs recounts a visit to Johnson's recently purchased memorial house in Gough Square. After observing the empty rooms where Johnson compiled his dictionary, wrote Rasselas, and mourned his wife, Gibbs experiences an imaginary encounter or vision involving the ghost of Johnson. The spectral figure of Johnson appears in an upper room, wearing a rusty brown suit and a shriveled wig, and delivers a sonorous critique of the modern machine age. Johnson laments the frantic pace of contemporary Fleet Street, condemns the proliferation of mass-produced periodicals that conceal a "paucity of ideas," and contrasts the superficial comforts of the twentieth century with the intellectual giants and hard thinking of his own era before disappearing through a wall.
Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies, &c
Critic of Books, Society, Pictures, Music and Decorative Art
Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
The reviewer questions the intended audience for Constable's reprint of the 1786 third edition of Boswell. The production lacks editorial apparatus and relies on antiquated notes from Croker’s 1831 edition of Johnson’s Life. A punctuation error on the title-page mistakenly suggests a commentator named Croker Chambers. While the green silk covers offer prettiness, the lack of modern investigation or original 1785 curiosity status renders the information an assorted condition neither quite old nor quite new.
Bracey's review of John Ker Spittal’s collection examines eighteenth-century critiques of Johnson, particularly those by John Hawkins. Bracey describes Hawkins’s biography as a "vast commonplace book" and a "maze of superfluous notes" that lacks unity and shows "malevolence of mind." The review notes that Johnson "lies buried under the load" of Hawkins’s "tedious" writing and "little egotisms." Bracey highlights the "sharp criticism" Johnson aimed at the "Monthly Reviewers," whom he described as "dull men" with "as little Christianity as might be." The review emphasizes the value of Spittal's collection in "pillorying" early critics and providing evidence of the diverse contemporary reactions to Johnson.
Hester Lynch Piozzi on Goldsmith's relations with Johnson in the 'Literary Club,' printed in Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: T. Cadell, 1786, 119–22, 178–81, 245
It has never been made perfectly clear precisely why Dr. Johnson so direly wanted Goldsmith to become and remain a member of his Club. Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741-1821), later Mrs Thrale and a friend of both Johnson and Goldsmith, provides a few clues in these anecdotes published shortly after Johnson's death.
Further Comments on the Relation Between Goldsmith and Johnson as Writers and in the Club, from Arthur Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: 1792, 96–7
Arthur Murphy (1727-1805) was one of the leading playwrights and actors of the age. Like Sir John Hawkins (see No. 54) he wrote an early life of Johnson in which he explicated Johnson's beliefs about Goldsmith.
The Works of the English Poets, with Prefaces, biographical and critical, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Re-edited, with new biographical and critical Matter
The reviewer describes this "very elegant" republication of Johnson's poets, which features engravings by James Heath and new biographical material by John Aikin. The edition incorporates Edmund Spenser into the collection for the first time, using the text of John Upton and a new life written by Aikin. While praising the execution, the reviewer laments that the Spenser volume preceded the superior editorial labors of Henry John Todd. The work is noted for its "accessions" and "some change in the selection" from Johnson’s original series.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, Who Was in His Youth an Excessive Drinker of Wine, Became in after Years a Total Abstainer
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: Tale by Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Embellished with illuminations and engravings in tint, from original designs
Seventy and more years ago the classic author of this work ironically said, when speaking of the Americans, whom, as rebels, he heartily condemned, "By Dr. Franklin's rule of progression, they will, in a century and a quarter, be more than equal to the inhabitants of Europe. When the people of America are thus multiplied, let the princes of the earth tremble in their palaces.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Containing a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons, and Various Original Pieces of His Composition
Reviews a new, affordable, and well-printed edition of Boswell’s Life, based on the superior 6th ed. last published under Malone's supervision. The review affirms the widely held high esteem for the biography, quoting Macaulay’s characterization of Boswell as "the first of biographers" with "no second." The publisher is Routledge, and the note expresses hope for the work’s wide circulation among readers.
Rawson describes Irwin's work as a biographical sketch focused on Johnson’s tormented inner life, using a chronological survey to map his psychological character. The reviewer finds the use of psychoanalytic concepts tactful and sensible, though he notes the book remains slight as a contribution to knowledge due to a narrow perspective and lack of engagement with recent critical discussion. Ultimately, Rawson views it as an attractive, quiet tribute rooted in deep devotion to the subject.
This brief notice welcomes a digest of Johnson’s life and writings. Mason provides a concise record of biographical incidents and contemporary observations to facilitate a "fair estimate" of Johnson's character. Mason includes various "sayings and writings" of the subject, alongside "gleanings from his contemporaries" regarding his actions and reputation.
A brief notice announces a new edition of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edited by R. W. Chapman for the Oxford Standard Authors series. The preface indicates Chapman planned the edition in Macedonia in 1918 while in charge of a six-inch gun. This version omits the specialist notes and appendixes found in the 1924 edition but remains an accessible, inexpensive form for general readers. Another review discusses F. A. Cavenagh's edition of James and John Stuart Mill on education, noting its significance in the history of English educational theory.
Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Welcomes Chapman's edition of Johnson's Journey and Boswell's Tour, noting the convenience of having both works in one volume. The edition includes helpful notes, appendices, and an excellent subject-index. Chapman incorporates Boswell's corrections to the Journey that were never made in the second edition. A pleasant affinity between the two authors characterizes the volume.
The Johnson Calendar; or, Samuel Johnson for Every Day in the Year, Being a Series of Sayings and Tales, Collected from His Life and Writings
R. R. provides a favorable review of Bell’s pocket-sized collection of Johnson’s sayings and anecdotes. The text is dedicated to Mr. Asquith, noted as a rare contemporary figure who quotes Johnson with accuracy. The reviewer praises Johnson’s "passion for accuracy combined with his courage and judgment," echoing Carlyle’s placement of the lexicographer in the pantheon of hero worship. Salient quotations included in the review touch upon Johnson's political definitions—contrasting the Tory’s "prejudice for establishment" with the Whig’s "prejudice for innovation"—and his infamous comparison of female preachers to dogs walking on hinder legs. The review suggests that Johnson’s pragmatic philosophy serves as a necessary "counteract" to the mundanity of modern life and recommends the volume’s inclusion in the scientist’s library to foster a more grounded philosophical outlook.
A Critical Enquiry into the Moral Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, in Which the Tendency of Certain Passages in the Rambler, and Other Publications of That Celebrated Writer, Is Impartially Considered
"Attalus" charges Johnson's moral writings with a partial tendency to the deterioration of mankind. The Rambler's gloomy view represses "industry," checks "enterprise," and fosters distrust of society. Rasselas is seen as prejudicial to youth, presenting man as a "mass of fraud, malevolence, and deceit" instead of "just and equitable." The reviewer notes Johnson's intentions were good, censuring Attalus for calling Johnson a misanthrope.
This largely negative review challenges Attalus's examination of Johnson's works. The reviewer disputes the author's attempt to prove Johnson possessed a "misanthropic disposition" and that his writings fail to represent real life. While the reviewer admits some of Johnson's descriptions may have a "gloomy tendency," unnumbered acts of benevolence demonstrate his true character. The reviewer also notes the author's preference for the Idler over the Rambler but concludes the author fails to make his case against Johnson's moral character.
Carlyle's major biographical essays, notably his review of Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, established Samuel Johnson as the definitive "Hero as Man of Letters." Carlyle frequently laments the "low state" of the biographical art but praises Boswell's Life as the highest-worth product of the eighteenth century, arguing that it offered "the best possible resemblance of a Reality." He portrays Johnson as a profound and "noble man" who struggled valiantly with disease, poverty, and the pervasive "Sceptical Century" of "spiritual paralysis," finding Johnson’s life a powerful example of heroism. Carlyle defends Boswell against Macaulay's strictures, attributing the biographer’s genius to his "open loving heart."
Often reprinted.
The key image of The Vanity of Human Wishes is the image of the portrait in the golden frame. It comes in the section which concerns itself with the vain wish for political success (ll. 73–120). The section includes a description of the rise and fall of a generalised ‘statesman'; and then a brief narrative of the career of Wolsey; the historical narrative closely echoing the pattern of the general, fictitious one.
A supplement to Johnson's English dictionary: of which the palpable errors are attempted to be rectified, and its material omissions supplied
Mason identifies pervasive inaccuracies in Johnson’s lexicographical work, attributing these defects to Johnson’s admitted dislike for the task and a lack of intellectual clarity in comprehending authorities. While acknowledging Johnson’s commendable plan, Mason seeks to rectify specific failures, including the omission of proper names, legal terms, and compounded words. The supplement provides additional articles and corrections to existing definitions, particularly addressing etymological errors and inconsistencies in grammatical classifications. Mason advocates for preserving Johnson’s original work while offering this third method of improvement to enhance public utility.
Official Guide [to the Celebration at Lichfield] 15th to 19th September, 1909
The Salon and English Letters: Chapters on the Interrelations of Literature and Society in the Age of Johnson
Tinker argues that the "English Salon" emerged as a deliberate effort to refine English manners and literature through the social influence of women, specifically the "Blue-stocking" circle. The text explores the transition from the tavern-based, masculine "Club" culture to the mixed assemblies hosted by Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, and Fanny Burney. Tinker identifies Johnson as the "grandest figure" of these circles, whose conversational authority provided the salons with intellectual weight while the hostesses provided the necessary social polish. The narrative examines how this environment fostered new literary genres, notably the "intimate biography" perfected by Boswell and the epistolary vivacity of Piozzi and Burney. Specific chapters analyze the influence of the Parisian salons on English visitors, the "craze for the private diary," and the eventual decline of the salon into mere "fashionable assemblies." Tinker concludes that the salon served as a vital "clearing-house" for ideas, where the ruggedness of Johnsonian thought was mediated by the social constraints of the drawing-room.
The Supernatural in English Prose of the Eighteenth Century
Eighteenth Century Voyagers to the Pacific and the South Seas and the Rise of Cultural Primitivism and the Noble Savage Idea
Although not a lawyer himself Dr. Johnson had a large impact upon law and lawyers in 18th Century England and Scotland.
Bertell Ollman is entitled to his opinion of President Reagan, but I object to his trotting out Samuel Johnson's epigram about patriotism without reference to the attendant remarks of the man who preserved the oft-misused quotation.
The Ocular Troubles of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Pepys
Beattie examines Johnson’s medical history, noting that "sore eyes" described by Boswell suggest chronic blepharo-conjunctivitis, likely originating from a childhood "scrofulous infection." Despite a useless left eye, Johnson retained enough alignment to avoid strabismus in portraits. Beattie disputes the assumption of simple myopia, noting Johnson’s precise distance observations at Versailles and during his Hebridean tour with Boswell. He suggests Johnson suffered from "diffuse, shallow and invisible" corneal scarring or high myopic astigmatism uncorrectable by eighteenth-century optics. The study details two severe inflammatory attacks successfully treated with "copious bleedings," concluding that Johnson’s adequate vision in his right eye enabled his "prodigious labours" on the Dictionary.
The Crescent and the Cross: Islam and the Muslims in English Literature from Johnson to Byron
Asfour analyzes the depiction of Islam and Muslims in English literature, focusing on major works from Johnson to Byron. It establishes the persistence of a distorted image, rooted in medieval Christian polemics that characterized Muhammad as an imposter, sorcerer, and sensualist. The discussion emphasizes Samuel Johnson's early, conventionally biased Orientalism in Irene but notes his later, more objective approach in Rasselas, which avoids religious confrontation for moral inquiry. The work then traces the Oriental tale genre through Beckford’s imaginative, yet inauthentic, Faustian narrative in Vathek and Southey's bookish, prejudiced epics, Thalaba and Roderick. The author ultimately praises Byron’s firsthand observation of the Levant for generating a more authentic, albeit still conventionally themed, imaginative Orient in the Turkish Tales.
The Three Unities: Their History and Application in the Development of Dramatic Criticism and Technique in England and France Before 1800 (volumes I and II)
For over two hundred years scholars, critics, and playwrights debated the theory of the unities of time, place, and action. These arguments figured prominently in critical literature during the time when French and English writers were developing principles of dramatic criticism and playwriting. Writers of the French neoclassical period provided the impetus toward establishing a system in which the rules of the unities became important and valid criteria. Influential literary figures, as well as minor writers, joined in arguments over the unities, and thousands of pages were written to develop, defend, or attack the theory and its attendant rules. This study documents the history and application of the unities by examining dramatic criticism and practice between 1550 and 1800, the years during which critics and dramatists recognized the importance of the theory. The examination of criticism includes the initial statements of Aristotle and Horace which later writers codified into the theory as seen in the comments of twenty-four sixteenth-century Italian writers. The study cites the theories of forty-seven French and thirty-five English scholars, critics, and dramatists to trace the history of the theory from its introduction to its decline in those countries. An examination of the application of the unities in a total of 2103 French and English plays demonstrates the relationship of theory to practice. The history of the unities in the two countries is generally similar, with developments in France preceding those in England. After, approximately, 1635 French dramatists consistently applied the unities in their dramas, and they modified their application of the rules to follow the changes in requirements proposed by critics and theoreticians. French writers narrowed their interpretation of the unities to require that the time of the dramatic action be equal to that of the stage representation, the place be unchanged and confined to the area of one or two rooms, and all parts of the action be essential to the denouement of the play. English writers did not discuss the unities until after 1660. The critical interpretation of the unities did not narrow, and English writers understood the rules to permit a time of up to twenty-four hours for the dramatic action, a place limited to a small area, but which could change within that area, and a dramatic action which related the main and subplots in some manner. The advocates of the unities in France outnumbered the opponents, while in England opinion was more equally divided. Between the years 1550-1800 approximately seventy percent of the French plays observed two or three unities, as compared with fifty-six percent of the English plays. In the eighteenth century French and English dramatists completely accepted the unities: ninety-nine percent of the French and ninety-six percent of the English plays observed two or three unities as they were understood in each country. However, during this century of acceptance, the importance of the unities began to decline. Changes in critical emphasis, the recognition of individual genius, and the continuing popularity of Shakespeare forced reevaluation of the validity of the unities. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the critics rarely mentioned these rules, and dramatists no longer felt obliged to follow the requirements of the unities.
This review examines Edward T. Mason's Samuel Johnson: His Words and His Ways, which organizes anecdotes and criticisms from Johnson's contemporaries into twelve thematic heads, such as "Appearance, Manners, and Peculiarities." Mason avoids the "folly of attempting another biography" by providing material for readers to construct their own portrait of the "rude philosopher." The reviewer notes the inclusion of testimony from Miss Reynolds, Frances Burney, Piozzi, Hawkins, and Boswell. It emphasizes Johnson's struggle with poverty, his "pronounced opinions" on the American Revolution, and his "predilection for London," where he believed one could see "as much of life as the world can show."
This biographical sketch recounts an early indication of Johnson’s "poetic genius." After accidentally treading on a duckling at age three (or five), Johnson purportedly prompted his mother to write an epitaph: "Here lies good master duck, / That Samuel Johnson trad on; / If it liv’d ’twould have been good luck, / For then, there’d been an odd one." The piece attributes the story to Hawkins and Piozzi.
Author's abstract: The roly-poly image of Doctor Johnson, the avuncular figure whose bluster conceals a heart of gold is proving remarkably resilient. Despite the labours of modern scholarship, the toby jug figure is still as much a part of the imagination of the general reader as "mad"
N. W. B. presents Johnson as a "fine example of moral heroism" for his lifelong struggle against "severe physical maladies" and "poverty." The text emphasizes Johnson’s "spirit of independence," citing his refusal of a gift of shoes at Oxford. It highlights his "magnificent" charities and "liberal spirit" despite a "sternness of manner." N. W. B. notes that Johnson wrote Rasselas in one week to "pay the expenses of his mother’s funeral." The account concludes that his "firm Christian faith" provided the "causes of his fortitude" and characterizes him as the "moralist of the age."
British History in Stone, No. 5: Dr. Samuel Johnson
Cruelty, wit, courage, dirt, patriotism, corruption, a good eye for colour and a strange assortment of sovereigns were all milestones of eighteenth century England.
The Age of Reason, we now know, was a fake; it was in fact the age of repression and restraint. The once vaunted peace of the Augustans has been revealed as no more than a temporary armistice between agonizing bouts of psychomachia. Recent scholars of the eighteenth century have elbowed aside the old harmonious concepts of politeness, decorum, rationality and the golden mean, replacing them with images of confinement, concealment and flight.
"An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs should not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing room, or the factions of a camp."
Dialogue: Between Dr. Edwards, and Dr. Samuel Johnson
This brief dialogue recounts a conversation between Dr. Edwards and Dr. Johnson. Edwards wishes he had become a "parson" for an "easier life." Johnson strongly disagrees, stating a "conscientious clergyman's" life is not easy. He compares the "cure of souls" to a father maintaining a family he cannot afford, concluding, "I do not envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life."
The ghost of lovable old Sam Johnson has been well and truly laid. Within the last generation his image has been transformed as layer after layer is stripped off his portrait. The crusty Tory has been effaced; the full-time conversationalist has been brushed away.
Walter Jackson Bate has written what will surely prove to be the standard biography of Johnson: it is founded on a mastery of earlier scholarship, it adds notably to our understanding, especially of the early life, and offers a sympathetic, balanced and penetrating account of this strangely tormented yet exemplary career.
This approving review welcomes a new edition of Boswell’s journal, edited by T. Ratcliffe Barnett and illustrated by W. H. Caffyn. The reviewer praises the edition for appearing as a "fresh book" rather than a scholarly text buried under learned notes. The review highlights Barnett’s modest introduction, which asserts that the journal stands supreme in capturing the atmosphere of late 18th-century Scotland. It commends the production as an admirable balance between expensive and cheap editions, focusing on the book’s accessibility to the general reader interested in Johnson and Boswell’s travels.
Dialogue: Between Dr. Edwards and Dr. Samuel Johnson
Spring's positive review praises Samuel Johnson by M. J. C. Hodgart as an admirable biography that successfully condenses a long story into 124 pages. Spring notes that Hodgart holds a very high opinion of Johnson, framing him as a "maker of Britain" who founded English lexicography and literary criticism. The abstract highlights Johnson's role as a teacher of wisdom who cleared minds of cant, balancing his dead past prejudices with his enduring tolerance and energy. Spring emphasizes Hodgart's effective outline of an extraordinary, uncouth creature whose precious gifts made him resemble "Prospero speaking through the corporeal frame of Caliban."
This approving review describes Kingsmill’s edited collection of contemporary portraits as an interesting "footnote to biography." The volume compiles accounts from Johnson, Thrale, Hawkins, Seward, and Burney to present a more "human" and less "static" figure than the one found in Boswell. The reviewer highlights Johnson's "singular generosity" toward his household of "odd lame ducks" and his enduring devotion to his wife. Kingsmill suggests that a "reluctant admirer" like Hawkins often provides a more convincing portrayal than a "slavish disciple" like Boswell.
AAC: The Journal of the RN Anti-Aircraft Corps
What Would They Have Done in a Raid?: Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–1795)
A short paragraph imagining Johnson (and other writers) in a German air raid. "Take cover? Why no, sir: a man cannot tell à priori what may be safest for him to do. Nay, sir, I will advance further; it is only by reasoning a posteriori that a man may be sure of his facts. Why, sir, the conglobulation of rain-drops in the higher atmosphere is alone sufficient to …"
How a Few Famous Personages Might Have Apologized: Lord Chesterfield to Samuel Johnson
A short humor piece. Features "Lord Chesterfield" writing a fictional letter of apology to Dr. Johnson regarding the Dictionary patronage. Chesterfield "apologizes" by explaining he was too busy writing letters to his son and implies Johnson's work was "Dictionary drudgery."
This brief notice introduces Leslie Stephen's biography of Johnson, the first volume in the "English Men of Letters" series. The reviewer describes the work as an "admirable example of condensation" that provides a compact narrative for readers with "scanty" leisure. While acknowledging Boswell's exhaustive treatment as the "end of the law," the reviewer maintains that Stephen's work does not conflict with the earlier biography and offers a profitable summary of Johnson's life and literary masters.
Watts evaluates the restored text of Boswell’s Hebridean journal, noting its significant expansion over the traditional bowdlerized version. He identifies Pottle and Bennett's editorial work as revealing Boswell’s original focus on physical comforts, libations, and candid political observations previously suppressed for respectability. Watts highlights the manuscript's portrayal of Boswell’s psychological complexity, specifically his blend of carnal lapses and superstitious devotion, while arguing that the restoration clarifies the eighteenth-century social landscape.
David Wright on Samuel Johnson's bicentenary
Letters of Mrs. Piozzi: On the Publication of Her Anecdotes of Dr. Samuel Johnson
This article, which reproduces correspondence between Piozzi and publisher Cadell from various Italian cities between 1785 and 1786, notes that while her second marriage originally "decryed" her literary reputation, later generations regard her contributions with "gratitude and esteem." The letters reveal that Piozzi completed Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson in Florence, arranged for a "clean transcript" to be shipped via Leghorn, and expressed concerns regarding manuscript security, transcription errors, the "Reception" of her work, and Boswell's "strange things" and "arrows" directed at her. Asserting that her intimacy with Johnson for "sixteen or seventeen years" provided the happiest hours of his life, Piozzi explicitly requests that Cadell contradict Boswell's reports that she disliked Montagu’s work, asserting her "veneration" for that lady and requesting that Cadell present bound copies of her successful "little book" to specific friends. The text confirms the financial arrangement of dividing profits "equitably" after expenses and reprints these letters from Gentleman's Magazine.
Considering how often he's I quoted in speeches, articles, is, even in conversation it's (rising what neglect Dr. Johnson suffered. The man has over- lowed the writer. Nearly everyone, terns, knows what he was like, the raty dictator of England's Augustan a great shambling bear of dread- aspect, a scrofulous cyclops given to drinking, collecting orange-peel putting down adversaries with ses- pedalian jawbreakers of Latin deri- on. And addressing everyone tire- ... as "Sir" or "Madam."
McPartlin provides an approving review of Joseph Wood Krutch’s biography of Johnson, a work designed for the general public and the general audience that remains "deliberately inclusive." While written for a broad readership, McPartlin predicts the book will cause a "literary tempest" and a stir among the "Johnsonian cult" because of Krutch’s critical "weighing" and assessment of Boswell as a biographer. Highlighting Krutch’s willingness to find Boswell wanting, the review describes the work as witty and perceptive, presenting a study of the "solar system" formed by Johnson and Boswell. McPartlin, who characterizes Krutch as a scholar who doubles as a play reviewer, particularly recommends the chapter on Johnson's "The Lives of the Poets" as a "notable critique" on criticism and a critical estimate of Johnson’s writings. Throughout the review, McPartlin emphasizes Krutch’s protective and affectionate approach to his subject, noting that the biography was written "con amore."
Levine's enthusiastic review of Bate's "massive" biography commends the author's psychological depth in presenting a "moving parable" of Johnson's life as a man who "got through the strange adventure of life" despite overwhelming physical and psychological odds. Challenging distortions in Boswell's famous portrait, Bate disputes the myth of Johnson as a crusty conservative, portraying him instead as a Tory who supported small landowners against the nobility and correcting the "romantic Toryism" Boswell projected onto his subject. Levine notes that Boswell's habit of changing "Mr." to "Dr." and adding "Sir" to dialogue created a "misleading impression of pomposity." The narrative traces Johnson's triumph over scrofula, which left him partially blind and deaf, his "desperate" poverty at Oxford, his "phenomenally retentive memory," and his 20-year career as a London "hack writer" to support his wife, Tetty. Levine highlights Bate's analysis of Johnson's "superego," "bizarre compulsive movements" or involuntary tics, and "unflinching grasp of reality" despite chronic disease. While Boswell focused on conversational "zingers," Levine emphasizes that Johnson's most significant intellectual and moral contributions appeared in written work, such as the Dictionary.
Scott's positive review commends Samuel Johnson: His Friends and Enemies by Peter Quennell, arguing that ample room exists for this timely volume despite an immense bibliography. Scott notes that Quennell frames the work as a "literary conversation-piece" with Johnson at the center of a homogeneous, compact London world. The review praises Quennell's playwright skill in structuring the narrative, particularly the opening scene at Streatham Place. Scott concludes that while the book offers no significant new facts, Quennell successfully sustains a majestic figure, allowing Johnson to emerge with great force and freshness.
Laycock reviews the fifth volume of Boswell’s journals, "Boswell for the Defense: 1769-1774," edited by William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Frederick A. Pottle. This enthusiastic review examines Boswell’s life as a married man and lawyer, highlighting his "amazing naivete" and "fascinatingly honest" self-recordings regarding his marital unfaithfulness, gambling, and overdrinking. The volume details Boswell’s defense of a sheep stealer and his visits to London to associate with Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, while also noting the presence of historical figures like Lord Cornwallis and Major Pitcairn. Laycock emphasizes that the editors replaced sections of the "Life of Johnson" into the journal format, including material Boswell later removed, which allows readers to observe his editorial process and see how he used his diary entries. The review concludes that the work offers an intimate revelation of a "man all too human."
Describes Johnson as a "permanent character in literature"—grotesque and gruff yet essential to London literary circles. The book compiles descriptions and anecdotes from numerous writers, including but not limited to Boswell, to create a rounded portrait. Material is grouped thematically under Johnson's characteristics (melancholy, superstition, arrogance, gallantry, wit, etc.). Reviewer finds it enlarges understanding of Johnson and his era, offering additional light beyond Boswell.
Approving review of James L. Clifford’s biography, Young Samuel Johnson. Fane praises Clifford’s sound and scrupulous research, noting the absence of psychological speculation. The review summarizes Clifford’s account of Johnson’s childhood in Lichfield, his work in his father’s bookshop, his undergraduate years at Oxford, his failed period as a schoolmaster, and his marriage to a widow twenty years his senior.
A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Prescott's approving review of the Yale edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1773 notes that while many claim to have read Boswell, few actually read this classic. Edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, this seventh volume in the series uses plates from the 1936 first printing, which restored the original manuscript text. Prescott observes that the 1785 version contained significant revisions. The new edition adds a preface, illustrations, and revised index. Prescott highlights Boswell's uncharacteristic "good behavior" during the 1773 journey, noting he remained pious and avoided "Highland lassies." The narrative captures Johnson's "majestic conversation," Tory convictions, and his dismissive view of maritime life as "being in a jail with the chance of being drowned." Prescott also details Boswell's sharp observations of Highland poverty and the lingering influence of the Jacobite rebellion.
Halsband reviews a new edition of Boswell’s "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett. The review praises the restoration of the "raw" manuscript journal, first published in 1936, which contains passages suppressed in the original 1785 edition. Halsband contrasts the intimate, day-by-day narrative of Boswell with Johnson’s more selective and generalized "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland." He describes the 1773 tour as an arduous venture where Johnson, at age 64, endured primitive conditions. The review criticizes the publisher for using 1936 plates instead of resetting the text to incorporate new corrections.
In this mixed review of Hesketh Pearson’s dual biography of Johnson and Boswell, Halsband criticizes the work for its "superficiality" and "pedestrian summaries." He notes that Pearson stays on the surface of the subjects, often extracting large portions from the Life of Johnson and Boswell’s journals without offering fresh literary or historical insights. Halsband challenges Pearson’s "delightfully simple" explanation that the melancholia and tragic views of the subjects resulted from their "livers" being out of order. While acknowledging the book as a rapid survey of two dissimilar lives, the review directs scholarly readers toward more profound studies by Joseph Wood Krutch and W. J. Bate.
Prescott reviews F. L. Lucas’s The Search for Good Sense, which examines the characters of Johnson, Boswell, Lord Chesterfield, and Oliver Goldsmith. Lucas argues these figures represent the Age of Reason through their search for good sense despite personal handicaps. Prescott highlights Lucas’s analysis of Johnson as an extraordinary dramatic character whose memory is treasured for both wisdom and brutal wit. The review describes Boswell as a self-recording narcissist who invented a biographical technique based on recording conversation. Prescott praises the book’s wit and elegance but finds the technical literary analysis of Goldsmith disproportionate.
The Yale Edition of James Boswell's autobiographical Quennell's enthusiastic review of the third volume of the Yale Edition of Boswell’s works, edited by Frederick Pottle, follows Boswell through Germany and Switzerland in 1764. The narrative describes Boswell assuming the title of Baron to navigate German courts, his hunting expeditions with Prince Dietrich, and his professional hero-worship. Boswell records a vivid encounter with Frederick the Great, noting the monarch's air of iron confidence, though he fails to break the King's resistance. The volume culminates in detailed portraits of Rousseau and Voltaire, who receive the traveler with sympathetic, if overwhelmed, interest. Quennell commends Pottle's scholarly presentation but disputes the editorial decision to translate every French sentence and simple word, arguing such notes lose the original pith and pungency of the prose.works is a project that, when it is complete, will be one of the most impressive and interesting monuments of its kind in the whole of English literature. This third volume of the hero's adventures opens on June 18, 1764.
Clifford reviews the fifth volume of the Yale editions of Boswell's journals, covering the years 1766 to 1769. The volume details Boswell’s "sentimental hunting" for an heiress, his support for Corsican independence, and his frequent conversations with Johnson. Clifford describes the narrative as a combination of "unbelievable naivete and conscious art," focusing on Boswell’s courtship of various women before his eventual marriage to his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. The reviewer characterizes Montgomerie as a "perfect heroine" who understood Boswell’s recurring melancholy and instability. Clifford notes that even Johnson recognized the young advocate’s depth beneath his "wild young rake" persona.
To the priggish, the character of James Boswell is contemptible–superficial, trivial, profoundly ignoble: he does not have the qualities that make a good scoutmaster. But his journals are not read to be emulated; they are like a strong beam of light that illuminates one man's thoughts, feelings and actions. It is enough to comprehend all; We are not required to pardon.
Gregory reviews the Yale edition of Boswell’s journals from his travels in Italy, Corsica, and France. He characterizes Boswell at age 25 as a "zany" and "impossible" figure whose "entire being shriveled into nothingness" without the presence of the great or the "grace of pen, ink and paper." The review details Boswell’s encounters with Wilkes, Rousseau, and Voltaire, noting that his "bold candor" marks him as one of the "greatest diarists of all time." Gregory emphasizes that Boswell’s pursuit of the "great" and his sexual conquests were efforts to prove the "immortality of his soul" against a "vision of his nothingness." The text notes that this period was crucial in Boswell’s transformation into the man who would eventually convince Johnson of his worth.
Daiches reviews Frederick A. Pottle's biography of Boswell's early years (1740–1769). He identifies Pottle as the preeminent authority on the "Boswell factory" at Yale. The review examines Boswell's "scrupulously low-pitched" journal style and his genius for dramatic selection. Daiches explores the conflict between Boswell and his father, his pursuit of European celebrities like Rousseau and Voltaire, and his eventual meeting with Johnson. While praising Boswell as a skilled artist, Daiches finds his treatment of women "selfish, arrogant and cruel," and notes that his obsessive vanity overshadows his early marriage and Corsican fame.
Quennell reviews Bertram H. Davis's abridged edition of John Hawkins's biography of Johnson. He disputes the traditional view of Hawkins as a merely peevish or inaccurate biographer, arguing that his perspective as a London magistrate provided a "critical distance" often lacking in Boswell. Quennell notes that Hawkins met Johnson in 1749, well before Boswell, and provides a vivid, if less entertaining, account of Johnson's morbid melancholy and his final days. The review praises Davis for removing Hawkins's digressions and suggests this version earns Hawkins a place on the same shelf as Boswell.
Recently this department has been regaling itself with Boswell's accounts of his interviews with Rousseau and Voltaire. They are to be listed among the most extraordinary encounters of which we have a first-hand record.
On conversations between Boswell and Rousseau.
This approving review of the first volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, edited by E. L. McAdam Jr. with Donald and Mary Hyde, describes the collection as a "storehouse of autobiographical bric-a-brac." Kronenberger notes the volume includes minor fragments and personal diaries that reveal Johnson’s preoccupation with physical ailments and food. He highlights the "deeply felt" prayers and meditations, which showcase Johnson’s characteristic phrasing. While criticizing the running commentary for its lack of exact footnoted correlation to the text, Kronenberger praises the editors' "superb equipment" and the volume’s value in confirming Johnson’s status as a great writer independent of Boswell.
Ferguson's enthusiastic review of R. W. Chapman's three-volume edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson describes the collection as a "graphic record" of Johnson's "most human side." Ferguson explains that Chapman restored suppressed and deleted text by tracing "six-sevenths of the letters in manuscript," enlarging the canon by nearly 50 percent. The review emphasizes that Thrale, not Boswell, is the "central figure" of the correspondence, which includes over one hundred of her "gossipy, vivacious and shallow" letters. Ferguson highlights how the letters reveal Johnson's "infinitely flexible" style, his "ceaseless struggle" with asthma and dropsy, and his "unclouded" mind during his final stroke. The review praises the "scholarly thoroughness" of the international enterprise and its comprehensive indexes.
Lehmann-Haupt enthusiastically reviews Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate. He argues Bate successfully challenges the "somewhat specialized" view of Johnson provided by Boswell, who spent less than a year and a half in his subject's presence. The review highlights Bate’s "revised view" of Johnson's politics as resembling "liberalism" and his religion as a private "inner struggle." Lehmann-Haupt praises Bate's "speculative psychologist" approach, which explains Johnson's indolence and working habits as a flight from the "hell of subjectivity" and a fear of insanity.
Halsband reviews the scholarly edition of Boswell's journals and letters from 1769 to 1774, edited by William Wimsatt and Frederick Pottle. The volume depicts Boswell's life as a husband, father, and Edinburgh advocate. While domestic life offers some satisfaction, Boswell remains restless, making jaunts to London where he secures membership in the Literary Club and visits Paoli and Johnson. A central focus is the 1774 case of John Reid; Boswell engages in frenzied activity to save the condemned man, even plotting to revive the corpse after the hanging. Halsband notes that while the editors perform a complicated job accurately, the promised research edition remains an ever-retreating mirage. The work reinforces Boswell's own claim to a genius for particular history.
Halsband reviews a collection of twenty essays edited by Frederick W. Hilles, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Johnson's birth and the 200th anniversary of Rasselas. He finds the volume provides a "satisfying grab-bag" of varied scholarship that successfully illuminates Johnson as a massive literary figure. Halsband highlights contributions by W. S. Lewis, Donald and Mary Hyde, and James M. Osborn that employ informed imagination and new documentation to explore Johnson’s personal life and social encounters. He notes that the collection helpfully corrects a long-standing "imbalance" by treating Johnson’s writings—including poetry, biography, and his dictionary—as works readable for their own sake rather than viewing him merely as a conversational "character." While Halsband praises the solid literary studies by M. H. Abrams and Bertrand H. Bronson for elucidating neo-classic poetry, he suggests Bronson’s technical essay is too long. The review concludes that the contributors succeed in shedding "new light" on Johnson through fresh documents and insights.
Broyard provides an approving review of Peter Quennell's study of Johnson and his associates. He disputes the traditional image of Johnson as a merely rhetorical bully or a machine for making aphorisms. Broyard emphasizes Quennell's focus on Johnson's foibles and failings, including contemporary accounts of his physical tics, awkward garb, and dread of loneliness. The review discusses Johnson's happy marriage to a woman twenty years his senior and his later complicated relationship with Piozzi. Broyard highlights the simple bravery of Johnson's final days, specifically his refusal of opiates to confront his Maker with a perfectly unclouded vision.
Boswell's Life a Thriving Industry at Yale: Boswell's Life Provides a Thriving Industry at Yale
Shenker's report on "The Boswell Factory" at Yale University describes the scholarly efforts to edit the private papers of Boswell. Directed by Pottle and Brady, the project uses infrared light and "cryptanalysis" to decipher original manuscripts obscured by descendants with "India ink." The article details the complex history of the papers, from their discovery at Malahide Castle by Tinker and Isham to their acquisition by Yale. It outlines editorial policies for the research and trade editions, including the decoding of "primitive code" regarding Boswell's "libidinous" excesses. The narrative also mentions "The Extraordinary Johnsonian Tacenda," which documents Johnson's sexual life as recounted by Mrs. Desmoulins.
Krutch’s review of the third volume of the Yale Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell focuses on fragmentary writings by Joshua Reynolds discovered among Boswell’s effects. The reviewer describes an "acid" prose portrait of David Garrick, whom Reynolds depicts as a man so enslaved to his public reputation that he remained incapable of private friendship. Krutch notes that Boswell likely preserved these fragments because he intended to write a biography of Reynolds as a sequel to his life of Johnson. The review identifies an "hilarious skit" by Reynolds demonstrating Goldsmith’s poor storytelling abilities. While praising the editorial work of Frederick W. Hilles, Krutch suggests the volume may be "spreading things a bit thin" for the general reader compared to earlier releases like the London Journal, as the primary new Reynolds material occupies only a few pages.
Adams's review of volumes 15 and 16 of the Malahide Castle papers, edited by Pottle, examines the "inexorable march of Greek tragedy" in Boswell's later years. The narrative focuses on Boswell's failed "English experiment" at the bar, his struggle to manage the Auchinleck estate after the death of his unfeeling father, and his deepening "mental agonies." Adams highlights Boswell's "childlike" dependence on the advice of others and his inability to reconcile youthful dreams with adult responsibilities. The review notes the "complete candor" of Boswell's reaction to Johnson's death in 1784, recorded as a "large expanse of Stupor," and his subsequent unease at being omitted from Johnson's will. Adams also describes Boswell's domestic life, including his "very deep affection" for his wife, Margaret Montgomerie, whose declining health he documented with clinical precision. Pottle’s editorial work is praised for providing a rational psychological interpretation of Boswell as a man who lived in "castles in the air."
Ricks provides an enthusiastic review of Wain’s biography, describing it as a vividly humane and noble achievement. He emphasizes Wain’s technique of "reminding" the reader of known facts to cast them in new light, such as Johnson’s physical defense against an insolent employer or his non-Whiggish parliamentary reporting. Ricks highlights the imaginative congruity between Wain and Johnson, particularly regarding their shared connections to Oxford and their roles as men of letters. The review commends Wain for capturing Johnson’s range, unexpected gentleness, and "profound considerateness." Ricks identifies Johnson as a "great memento vivere" who combined personal awareness with a drive toward universality.
Simon reviews James Clifford’s Dictionary Johnson, a biographical study that chronicles Samuel Johnson’s life from 1749 to his 1763 meeting with Boswell, a period including the production of the tragedy Irene, the publication of the Rambler and Rasselas, and the completion of the dictionary. Simon describes Clifford’s work as "unreconstructedly uncritical," a biography that succeeds through its "prodigious inclusiveness" rather than deep literary analysis, noting it fails to provide an "indelible overview" of Johnson’s critical compulsion or a deep analysis of his prose style and conversation. The narrative details Johnson’s "Grub Street" existence, characterized by "poverty and ill health," including his eviction from Gough Square and the "tics and tremors" that led observers to mistake his genius for idiocy. Simon notes Clifford’s inclusion of Johnson’s "dilatory work habits," his grief over the death of "Tetty," and his bitter political opposition to the war with France. While Simon finds Clifford’s treatment of Johnson’s sexuality murky, he praises the accumulation of obscure details and anecdotes, characterizing Johnson as a man peculiarly divided—a Tory too liberal for his times and an authoritarian who hated authority.
Prescott reviews Joseph Wood Krutch’s biography of Johnson. While Boswell’s shadow is intimidating, Prescott finds that Krutch provides a better-balanced narrative and objective understanding. The biography portrays Johnson as a great man despite being melancholy, dirty, and arrogant. Krutch depicts Boswell as a neurotic with a fabulous memory rather than a genius or a fool. The review also notes Krutch’s defense of Hester Thrale. Although Prescott calls the work meticulous and judicious, he quotes Johnson to suggest that its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure.
Campbell reports on Johnson's bicentennial events, including a scholarly gathering at Yale in September 1984. The article explains Johnson's rising reputation, distinguished from Boswell’s portrayal, revealing a more serious writer whose religion and complex Toryism are central. Scholars like Bate and Greene offer contrasting biographical approaches: Bate’s psychological perspective emphasizes Johnson’s melancholy and guilt, while the Columbia school favors a factual approach less reliant on Boswell. Campbell notes a major exhibition of Johnson's printed works, "Samuel Johnson, Writer," at Yale, which holds Boswell's papers and edits Johnson's works. Scholars continue to restore Johnson's literary status, previously overshadowed by Boswell's biography.
This enthusiastic review of the first unexpurgated edition of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, describes the 1930 discovery of the manuscript in a croquet box at Malahide Castle. Jack explains that the original notebooks contain "added candor" and details previously suppressed or "prettified" by Edmond Malone to suit eighteenth-century tastes. The review highlights Boswell’s personal admissions of fear during a storm and his "verbal realism" regarding food and drink. It notes Johnson’s close involvement in reading and approving the original entries.
Clifford describes Marshall Waingrow’s edition as a "superb" documentary history that reveals Boswell was no "mere stenographer" but a creative artist. The review explains how Boswell’s research techniques—including questionnaires and systematic appeals for anecdotes—allowed him to rework raw material into a "smooth version" for the Life. Clifford highlights Boswell’s "imaginative reconstruction," noting instances where he censored details, such as Johnson’s youthful drinking, to protect his hero’s image. The text concludes that witnessing the "birth of a masterpiece" through these documents provides an absorbing insight into the "excitement and agony" of eighteenth-century biography.
Wills provides a mixed review of Fussell’s Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, challenging the "procrustean thesis" and the application of "new critical" tools to Johnson's literary career. While Wills praises the "moving" final chapters on Lives of the Poets and Fussell's successful tracing of "black humor" in Johnson’s moralism, he disputes the focus on "buts and yets" as dramatic agents in the prose. The review rejects Fussell’s "camp" treatment of the oriental tale in Rasselas and his analysis of Johnson’s views on pastoral poetry and Lycidas, arguing these distort rhetorical norms. Most significantly, Wills rejects the trivialization of Johnson’s religious despair into a "puppet theater" of linguistic reversals or a rigid rhetorical framework. Instead, Wills argues that Johnson’s faith bordered on nihilism, characterized by an "obliterative chasm" and an existential struggle that Fussell’s systematic analysis fails to capture.
This biographical assessment examines Boswell’s character through the lens of eighteenth-century portraiture and contemporary accounts by Burney, More, and Goldsmith. The author contests the "toadyism" charges leveled by Macaulay, Irving, and Carlyle, arguing that Boswell’s persistent inquisitiveness served a necessary diplomatic function in recording Johnson’s conversation. By highlighting Boswell’s ancient lineage and hypochondriacal temperament, the text positions his "Johnsonian ether" as a unique biographical asset. The author concludes that Boswell’s unparalleled ingenuousness and tactical devotion rescued both himself and associates like Langton from historical obscurity.
Begins by praising Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare as unparalleled and then challenges the recent assertion in The Times that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson. The argument posits both were "old strugglers" with difficult lives and temperaments, but Johnson emerged victorious, while Carlyle did not, making Boswell's Life an "arch of triumph" and Froude's Carlyle a "tomb." Highlights Johnson's fortitude by quoting his composed letter to Hester Thrale describing a paralyzing stroke. Concludes that the reader of Boswell cannot help but love Johnson due to his overflowing human kindness and reasonableness.
Analyzes Johnson's political thought, dismissing his classification as an "old-world Tory" and defining his stance as indifferentism. Johnson values private liberty and public order, believing tyranny is either bearable or subject to mob overthrow. Critiques Macaulay's caricature of Johnson, emphasizing the latter's affectionate nature and eminent reasonableness, despite his dialectical "brutality." Asserts Johnson's unparalleled claim as the best recorded talker. Finally, defends Johnson's personal character, addressing minor criticisms regarding his marriage and the payment of small debts, and praises his friendships with Garrick and Burke.
Augustine Birrell refutes the cliché that "nobody reads Johnson," arguing "lovers of letters" do, not the "general public." Praises the Lives of the Poets as his best work, noting Johnson is equally interesting on minor poets (like Sprat) as major ones (Milton). Highlights Johnson's amiable trait of treating poorer poets kindly.
Morgan examines Hill’s six-volume edition, asserting that while Johnson the author is as dead as Caesar, his rugged, ponderous, honest personality remains magnificent. He defends Boswell against the charge of flunkeyism, citing his dexterous stratagems, such as the Wilkes dinner negotiation. Morgan identifies Johnson’s Latinity of speech as the source of his oracular ponderousness, which kept literary London in abject terror. He argues the biography serves as a deathless transcript of a society forever disappeared, noting that Johnson’s mission was to approve of the past, not to foresee the future.
A detailed biographical sketch by Leslie Stephen. It covers Johnson's origins (Lichfield, 1709), physical afflictions (scrofula, Queen Anne touch, poor sight, convulsions), immense strength, and early education. Recounts his voracious reading, the Uttoxeter penance, and poverty at Oxford. Details his marriage to "Tetty," failed school, move to London with Garrick, Grub Street struggles, friendships (Savage), key works (London, Vanity, Irene, Dictionary plan), famous Chesterfield letter, Rambler, wife's death, and receiving the royal pension.
Few Queries Called Secret of Manners: Samuel Johnson Said 'Gentlemen Do Not Question': Best Conversationalists Always Stay Clear of Disputes
Vincent opens this etiquette column by invoking Johnson to support the principle that questioning disrupts polite conversation among gentlemen. The column notes that Johnson became taciturn immediately after offering this advice, leaving subsequent rules unexplained. Vincent defines a model conversationalist as an individual who steers discussions toward subjects pleasant to others, avoids political or social debates, and eschews personal gossip. The text advises listeners to maintain a balance between excessive talk and complete silence. Vincent also answers specific queries regarding the proper placement of wedding invitations, etiquette for multiple hostesses, the use of family crests on place cards, and the social implications of long engagements.
Bronson reviews the posthumously published second volume of James L. Clifford’s biography, which covers the period from 1749 to 1763. The article highlights Johnson’s labor on the Dictionary and the publication of The Vanity of Human Wishes and The Rambler. Bronson commends Clifford for providing a detailed "pre-Boswell" account of the years during which Johnson earned his reputation as the "Great Cham." The review notes the growing scholarly interest in the eighteenth century and praises Clifford’s ability to make Johnson’s middle years as vivid and compelling as the better-known later period.
Freedman’s enthusiastic review of W. Jackson Bate’s Samuel Johnson argues that the work supplants John Wain’s 1974 biography to become the new standard in the field. The article notes that while Boswell’s Life remains the "greatest biography ever written," it only covers a fifth of Johnson's first fifty years and focuses primarily on conversation rather than narrative biography. Freedman emphasizes Bate’s deep expertise, drawn from thirty years of teaching at Harvard, to present a comprehensive life of the "Great Lexicographer." The review describes Johnson as a "hack of genius" and a "total professional" who conquered nearly every literary genre despite a lifelong struggle with severe writer's block. Freedman concludes that Bate's "magnificent" account provides the necessary depth and scholarly rigor to understand Johnson’s character beyond the limitations of Boswell’s personal acquaintance.}
Every Man Has a Lurking Wish to Appear Considerable in His Native Land: At Home With Samuel Johnson
Koenig reports on the efforts of Lichfield officials to enlarge the tourist trade surrounding Johnson’s birthplace. The article describes the restoration of Michael Johnson’s bookstore and the various mementos housed in the four-story family home. Koenig recounts historical anecdotes of Johnson and Garrick leaving Lichfield to seek their fortunes in London, noting that despite his fame, Johnson never forgot his native place. The narrative includes Boswell’s reverent 1776 visit to the house and quotes Johnson’s defense of Lichfieldians as the genteelest people in England. The report also mentions the presence of statues of Johnson and Boswell in the Market Square.
Thompson heartily welcomes Chauncey Brewster Tinker's scholarly edition of James Boswell's collected letters, including over one hundred previously unpublished items. The volumes reveal Boswell as his friends knew him, illuminating his vanity, good judgment, and central conflict between desiring "steady and sensible" conduct and his "love of pleasure." The collection underscores that Boswell's life was lived with Samuel Johnson, a conviction that motivated him to complete his Magnum Opus, the Life of Johnson.
Williams examines Tinker’s edition of Boswell’s correspondence, highlighting how the collection presents Boswell as an autonomous figure independent of Johnson. He observes the letters' revelation of Boswell’s emotional volatility and "deep roots of affection" for friends like Temple. The text describes Tinker’s editorial decisions regarding punctuation and spelling. Williams asserts that the volumes provide a comprehensive record of Boswell’s life, including his profound mourning following the death of Johnson.
Lawrence welcomes the reissue of Boswell’s neglected account of Corsica, arguing that the work’s enduring interest resides in its reflection of Boswell’s own personality rather than its historical subject. The review identifies the young Boswell as already possessing the "hero-worshipping" and "patient" reporting skills that defined his later biography of Johnson. Lawrence recounts Boswell's successful use of flattery to win over General Paoli, despite initial suspicions of espionage. The text highlights Boswell’s delight in being mistaken for a British plenipotentiary and his use of Scottish airs to charm the Corsican peasantry. Lawrence concludes that the work illustrates Boswell’s rapid ascent as a literary artist and his ability to transcend the reductive caricatures of earlier critics.
Tinker provides comprehensive annotations, biographical data, and political context for Boswell's correspondence, including nearly one hundred previously unpublished letters and an appendix of communications to overseer Andrew Gibb. The reviewer finds the collection confirms existing impressions of Boswell’s vanity, humility, and periodic melancholy rather than altering his scholarly estimate. While noting Boswell’s genius, the reviewer characterizes the letters as perfunctory "dregs" compared to his social intercourse but acknowledges their value in documenting his shrewdness and occasional superior judgment of Johnson.
Lubbock challenges the "idle notion" that Boswell was only capable in Johnson’s presence. In Roberts’s edition, Boswell "stands on his own feet" in Corsica. Lubbock compares Boswell to Pepys as one to whom "the gift of experience is always new," yet notes Boswell’s "faculty of veneration" required a hero like Paoli. The review praises Boswell’s "happy descriptive skill" and "inquisitive interest," concluding he is "admirable company unsupported and alone," even when the "cold and prudent world" rejected his Corsican political efforts.
Royce’s review of Roberts’s edition of Boswell’s journal—out of print for over a century—illustrates the "buoyancy and alertness" Boswell displayed before meeting Johnson. This volume maintains ancient spelling, provides a compendium for uninitiated readers, and contains the narrative of Boswell’s 1765 "tour of Europe" and his perilous journey to Corsica to seek the "worthy patriot" Pascal Paoli. Royce’s praise commends Boswell’s candor, veracity, and enthusiasm for meeting figures like Rousseau and Voltaire, arguing that his "unrealistic truthfulness" and "inspiriting presence" recorded and catalyzed the "fine things" and "uniquely truthful bodying forth of life" described. The journal records daily life and reactions, demonstrating characteristics later seen in the Life of Johnson and showing how Boswell’s quest made events "occur or react agreeably."
The reviewer praises Chapman’s presentation of these "sister works" together for the first time. He commends the accuracy of the text, achieved through the collation of all previous editions and successful conjectural emendations. The edition includes facsimile title pages, full indices, and maps. The reviewer notes Chapman’s bibliographical mastery and the high scholarly quality of the preface.
The reviewer describes this reprint of Piozzi’s 1786 text as the most truthful of all books about Johnson. Unlike Boswell, Piozzi merely put down what she heard, benefiting from sixteen years of intimacy. The text shows Johnson in the country busied with Thrale’s beer and riding as a hunting man. The reviewer disputes Macaulay’s account of Johnson’s farewell to Streatham, noting he accompanied Piozzi to Brighton. The review follows Piozzi’s life through her happy marriage to Gabriel Piozzi and her lively old age in Bath.
Bailey’s enthusiastic review of Chapman’s edition of Johnson’s Journey and Boswell’s Tour praises it as the first critical edition to bring these two "immortal works," which "belong to each other," together in one volume. The editor's work, begun during wartime leisure and military service in Macedonia, features an accurate text, valuable textual corrections, and a "double index" praised for its utility to both scholars and ordinary readers. Novelties include Boswell’s previously unused "Remarks" on Johnson’s manuscript, sourced from Adam’s MS; the discovery of two impressions of the Journey's first edition; and the identification of Malone as the editor of the Tour's second issue. Bailey admires Chapman's ability to detect nearly all errors from a lost leaf of errata, proving that the "art of the textual critic is not mere vanity."
Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Chapman reviews a ten-volume luxury edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Tour to the Hebrides, published by Wells and edited by Shorter. While the review acknowledges the "luxury" of the large type, "admirable" facsimiles from the Adam collection, and "eminent" mechanical production, it severely criticizes Shorter's claim of "superior accuracy." Chapman finds Shorter failed to perform a complete collation with the first and second editions, opting instead to follow the third edition. Consequently, the reviewer identifies multiple textual errors, such as "There" for "They" and transposed lines. Shorter’s "Bibliographical Introduction" is further challenged for "numerous inaccuracies" regarding lifetime editions and early "Johnsoniana," including misdating Hawkins's Life and misattributing an anonymous Life to Cooke. Despite these editorial failings, the review praises the illustrations and highlights Chesterton’s introduction for its "wise," "novel," and "eminent" analysis of Johnson’s prejudices.
The Life of Samuel Johnson and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., During the Last Twenty Years of His Life
Roberts provides an approving review of a new edition of Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson During the Last Twenty Years of His Life. The review highlights the inclusion of a tabulated list of marks from Thraliana, where Piozzi weighs the merits of her friends across nine categories. Roberts notes that while Boswell corrected Piozzi with asperity and claimed she had a "mistaken notion of Johnson's character," her narrative successfully captures the man through twenty years of intimacy compared to Boswell's three. The review credits Piozzi with preserving Johnson's "extraordinarily good talk" and range of knowledge, even while observing that her stories occasionally lack detail or veneration. Roberts concludes that the work exhibits the gaiety and range that Boswell frequently sought to document.
Woolf examines the "myth-making quality" of Johnson, attributing his enduring personal ascendancy to a rare, majestic tolerance and sympathy for humanity. She argues this personal power transcends his intellectual contributions, allowing his legend to survive even among those who have not read his works. Woolf notes that while the "Johnsonian incubus" suggests a pompous, Latinate style, Johnson’s actual prose in Lives of the Poets remains brief, vivacious, and elastic. She ultimately identifies his coarse yet profound love for mankind as the source of his immortality.
Lewis reviews Morley’s abridgment of the Life and Tour to the Hebrides, noting Boswell’s current celebrity exceeds that of Johnson, Burke, or Goldsmith. He attributes this "triumph" to the recovery of the Malahide Papers and scholarly revaluations by Tinker and Pottle, which replaced Macaulay’s caricature with a complex portrait. Lewis criticizes Morley’s removal of "dead wood," such as Johnson’s interaction with Thrale at the harpsichord, and finds Shepard’s illustrations ill-suited to Boswell’s character. Despite these flaws, he concludes the volume serves the general public well through its substantial 640-page text and useful index.
Bailey provides the first accessible edition of seventy essays contributed by Boswell to The London Magazine between 1777 and 1783. Bailey disputes the characterization of these texts as "uninspired imitations" of Johnson's Rambler, arguing instead that they reveal Boswell’s "eager zest for ideas" and "indescribable relish of human affairs." The commentary elucidates the relationship between the essays and Boswell's personal experiences and reading habits. This edition establishes Boswell's significance as a journalist, independent of his association with Johnson, and highlights his "clear vivid wording" and intellectual curiosity.
Brown commends Bailey's edition for emphasizing Boswell as a "serious student of the art of living." He argues these essays represent exercises in moral and literary self-discipline, solving the paradox of the "volatile" Boswell's persistence in producing his magnum opus. While Brown identifies a shared "obstinate rationality" between Boswell and Johnson, he finds Bailey’s notes "unnecessarily full" and disputes her historical definition of eighteenth-century hypochondria as emotional self-indulgence.
Bates disputes the conventional view that a mediocre writer produced a masterpiece by accident. While acknowledging Johnson as a "great man" whose "inner qualities" exceeded his "heavily learned style," Bates credits the success of the biography to the "acuteness of observation" and "mastery of style" of Boswell. He argues that Boswell is "inferior to none" among novelists in descriptive power and tenacity. Bates concludes that the work functions as a "transcript of life" where Boswell's artistic agency, rather than Johnson's conversation alone, secures its status as a "literary masterpiece."
The Conversations of Dr. Johnson, Selected from the 'Life' by James Boswell
Postgate’s book extracts Johnson's conversations from Boswell's Life. The Johnsonianisms are not spoiled by the abridgment, but the editor's rationale is criticized. Postgate asserts Johnson's early years are "almost impassable" and some works are "unread." The reviewer suggests printing neglected verse or deploring ignorance of Shakespeare rather than simply excerpting. The reviewer defends the "dead wood" excised by Postgate, saying all is sound to educated Boswellians or Johnsonians.
Chapman calls Bailey’s work important and meritorious, finding she successfully rescues the essays from virtual oblivion. He notes the essays are good, honest journalism, showing Boswell to be an independent and vigorous mind. However, Chapman critiques the formidable mass of annotation that diligently compiles parallels, as it makes the book not easily digestible. He asserts the zeal for accuracy led to extremes; for instance, punctiliously recording original Greek accent errors that Boswell himself knew and cared little about, while failing to correct more serious errors. Chapman concludes that a shorter, cheaper book with less annotation might have won more readers.
Crane commends the first collected edition of seventy essays written by Boswell for the London Magazine. He asserts that these works reveal a capacity for independent judgment and a "strenuous effort to perfect himself" often overlooked in favor of his relationship with Johnson. While Crane finds the editorial commentary by Bailey excessively detailed and occasionally prone to "irrelevant erudition," he praises the textual accuracy and the illumination of Boswell's multifarious allusions. He concludes that the edition successfully rescues these "vigorous" and "picturesque" productions from the obscurity of periodical files, establishing their significance for students of eighteenth-century literature.
Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle
Pottle reviews the edition of Boswell's Private Papers edited by Scott, noting the volume's focus on the methodology behind the composition of The Life of Johnson. Scott disproves the tradition of Boswell habitually using a notebook, demonstrating the main source was his personal journal with abbreviated, hurried nightly entries later expanded. The analysis details Malone’s indispensable and uncredited role in editing and encouraging Boswell, providing moral support during a period of mental anguish and paralysis.
Saintsbury evaluates Bailey's edition, noting the high quality of paper, typography, and binding. He identifies a significant critical effort in Bailey's collation of the essays with Boswell’s major works and letters, though he notes omissions in exhaustive cross-referencing. Saintsbury characterizes the essays as largely lacking the characteristic self-revelation found in Boswell's biographies, observing that the author’s deliberate seriousness often results in water-downed Johnsonian wisdom. He concludes that while the collection completes Boswell’s corpus and features expert editorial labor, the intrinsic value of the essays remains limited due to their derivative nature and occasional lack of vitality.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, a Tale
McKerrow describes Chapman's edition of Rasselas as the "last word in Johnsonian scholarship." Chapman provides a literatim reprint of the 1759 second edition, incorporating textual variants from the first, third, and fourth editions. The introduction challenges the notion that the work lacked its title during Johnson's life, noting the first-page heading in all authorized editions. McK. emphasizes the volume's "readable and convenient form" as a remedy for the "unpleasant appearance" of prior editions.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: A Tale
This positive review of the Clarendon Press edition of Rasselas, edited by Chapman, praises the physical quality of the volume, including its "tint of ink and paper," and its introduction, which details the history of the work, including its composition to "defray the expenses of his mother's funeral." Chapman provides a text based on the second edition, restoring select readings from the first and documenting variations through the fourth. The reviewer disputes the perceived difficulty of Johnson's rapid composition, suggesting that the work emerged from the "surface of his thought" in a single week and the "mere flow of words." Although the reviewer identifies "inconsistency" and contradictions between the characters' experiences in the Happy Valley and their subsequent behavior, the text's enduring value derives from the "incommunicable something" of Johnson's unique persona. Finally, a document signed by Johnson for payment of the second edition, from the collection of Shorter, confirms Boswell’s account that Johnson received an additional twenty-five pounds beyond the initial hundred agreed upon with the publishers.
Hansen examines a condensed edition of Boswell and Johnson, featuring drawings by Shepard. He notes that Morley provides a full selection from the original life and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Hansen emphasizes that Shepard avoids caricature, presenting Johnson and Boswell as serious individuals rather than comical figures. The inclusion of a character list facilitates reader engagement with this eighteenth-century circle.
Bradley's mixed review of the first publication of the original manuscript of the Hebrides Journal praises the "unexceptionable judgment" of editors Frederick Pottle and Charles Bennett. The review chronicles the "literary resurrection" of Boswell's papers, acquired by Ralph Isham in 1927, and the subsequent 1930 discovery of the original 1773 journal. Bradley notes that this version restoration reveals the "many and striking variations" from the previously known text, which had been "drastically revised by Edmund Malone." While acknowledging the "formidably intricate labors of editorship," Bradley asserts that the recovered pages "teem with the proofs, in Malone's own hand, of Malone's participation" in the original redaction.
This editorial note announces the first complete publication of Boswell’s "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Dr. Samuel Johnson" by Viking Press. Based on the 1930 discovery of the manuscript at Malahide Castle, this edition, edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles E. Bennett, restores material previously deleted for "economy" or "discretion." The note explains that the publication includes approximately fifty percent more content than the original version and will be released in both a limited edition and an unlimited public edition.
The Great Cham, Dr. Johnson: Being an Abridgment, Partly Rearranged, of James Boswell's 'Life of Samuel Johnson' and 'The Tour to the Hebrides'
Graves compresses Boswell's Life and Tour into roughly 250 small pages, a process potentially appealing to new readers seeking the unabridged text. The execution is generally competent, though telescoping sentences and excisions occasionally obscure meaning. Graves omits Walmsley and Edwards and a mention of Johnson's Parliamentary reporting. Separate chapters for Garrick and Goldsmith are a good idea.
Kilbourne praises Powell’s thorough revision of the standard Hill edition, noting the incorporation of fifty years of research and new Boswell papers. He highlights the retention of original pagination to preserve scholar references and the systematic collation of early editions to produce a superior text. Kilbourne finds the new appendixes, identifying anonymous characters and adding to the Johnson canon, indispensable. He concludes that this synthesis of recent scholarship serves to bring both Johnson and Boswell into clearer view.
CGV entry 4:14. Review by R. Kilbourne of the Hill–Powell edition.
Powell revises and expands Hill’s 1887 edition of the Life, incorporating global scholarship and new discoveries. The first four volumes cover Johnson’s life from 1709 to 1784, following the chronological catalogue of Johnson's prose works. Powell retains Hill’s elaborate commentary but supplements it in hundreds of instances, particularly in the appendices regarding Johnson’s Parliamentary Debates, his views on Americans, and the inhabitants of his house. The text commends the Oxford printers for matching the old pagination exactly to facilitate scholarly reference. It identifies Johnson as one of the most commanding literary figures in history and notes the forthcoming inclusion of the Tour to the Hebrides and an exhaustive index.
In this enthusiastic review of the original Hebrides manuscript, Young celebrates the restoration of Boswell's "mental nakedness" previously excised by Malone. Young argues that Boswell possessed an "idiomatic ease" and an "innocent and effervescent gregariousness" that allowed him to capture situations with "Homeric precision." The review highlights recovered passages involving Boswell's religious devotions at Iona and his candid descriptions of the "bad dinner" and social friction at Armadale. Young disputes the necessity of Malone's stylistic improvements, noting that Johnson himself found the original journal written in "very good English."
The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle: A Catalogue
Powell outlines the 600 documents in the Isham collection, documenting Boswell from 1761 to 1794. Pottle categorizes journals, letters, and manuscripts, including a fragment of the Life of Johnson that "enables us to state with perfect certainty what Boswell’s method was in preparing his book for the printer." Powell challenges specific genealogical and chronological errors while noting the work provides a "conspectus of Boswell’s vast Journal" and a view of his whole life.
Dobree analyzes Lansdowne’s edition of correspondence involving Piozzi, her daughter Queeney, and Johnson. Dobree finds the volume illuminates the social scandal surrounding Piozzi's marriage to a foreign musician. He notes the hard-heartedness of Queeney’s opposition and finds Piozzi’s lively letters more sympathetic than Burney’s. Dobree observes that while Johnson’s letters are mostly familiar, the collection effectively reveals eighteenth-century rigidities regarding caste and guardianship.
Bell’s largely positive review of The Queeney Letters examines the correspondence between Johnson and Hester Maria Thrale. Bell notes the "engaging" nature of the letters, which range from playful interactions to stern moral counsel. The review focuses on the "family feud of the first order" triggered by Thrale’s marriage to Piozzi, describing Johnson’s written reaction as a "masterpiece in the sledge-hammer style." While Bell acknowledges that Thrale often appeared "a trifle wrong," he defends her as a "charming lady on paper" whose reputation suffered from the "incoherent twitter" of Fanny Burney and the lack of common sense among her contemporaries.
Dobree reviews Tyson and Guppy’s edition of the journals kept by Thrale and Johnson during their 1775 French tour. The volume includes the first printing of Thrale’s full journal and previously unpublished correspondence, including her reply to Johnson’s final letter. Dobree finds the journals provide an intimate look at baroque France and the travelers' interactions with figures like Madame du Boccage. He notes Thrale’s sharp eye for character and records her observations on French nunneries and manufacturing, though he observes she occasionally misremembered stories to Johnson’s disadvantage.
Powell notes this reprint in the Oxford Editions of Standard Authors series corrects "textual errors and misprints" from the 1924 edition. Chapman omits the original "Notes and Appendixes" because the recovery of Boswell’s "original Hebridean journal" necessitates future modifications. The reviewer observes that Chapman retains references to these materials for "the benefit of the curious" while awaiting the full availability of the recovered journals.
Tate uses Eliot’s edition to argue that Johnson’s poetry represents a "pure poetry" of precision and maturity, distinct from the "pure sensation" of Romanticism. He laments the decline of public taste and literary education, suggesting modern readers lack the settled social framework necessary to appreciate Johnson’s classicism. Tate asserts that Johnson’s verse is for those who seek stay for their vanity rather than daydreams. He praises the lucid, pure quality of the couplets in The Vanity of Human Wishes, maintaining that Johnson’s honesty and intelligence offer a necessary corrective to contemporary eclecticism.
Cameron examines the publication of Boswell’s manuscript of the Hebridean tour, comprising 600 surviving leaves. He notes that the editors Pottle and Bennett integrated the manuscript with printed editions to restore passages suppressed by Malone for reasons of taste. These inclusions detail Highland hospitality, dietary habits, and the "rarity of clean bed linen." Cameron emphasizes that while the new material reinforces Johnson’s "warm personality" and "genius," it significantly expands the record of Boswell’s own moods. He maintains that the edition demonstrates the "sincerity and competence" of Johnson’s biographer despite the editors’ decision to omit a full critical apparatus in favor of a readable narrative for a general audience.
Barrett discusses the 'extraordinary treasure-trove' of Boswell papers found at Malahide Castle, specifically the original manuscript of the 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'. While the published editions were revised by Boswell and Malone to focus on Johnson, this manuscript restores Boswell’s personal moralizings, sentimental reflections, and topographical notes. The original text offers a 'cumulative effect' of atmosphere, revealing Johnson’s moments of harsh irritation—referring to one host as a 'grossest bastard'—and his humorous imitations of Lady Macdonald. Boswell’s own lapses, including drinking bouts and emotional outbursts regarding his father, are reinstated, having been previously excised as irrelevant to the portrait of Johnson. Barrett notes that these restored passages enhance Boswell's own personality and right to a 'place in the sun' independent of his famous subject.
The reviewer describes Pottle and Bennett's preparation of Boswell’s original, unedited notebooks found in a croquet box. The text emphasizes that the friendship between the young barrister and the elderly sage rested on a mutual respect for religion. It notes Boswell’s habit of flirting with Catholicism and Johnson’s practice of uttering pious ejaculations. The reviewer identifies the publication as a thoroughly agreeable book that provides a full description of their stay on Skye, including study of the Macdonalds and Macleans, restored from the edited eighteenth-century version.
Dobrée welcomes the publication of the original version of Boswell’s Hebridean journal, noting its transition from the previously known Malahide Edition to a more accessible format. He observes that this unedited record provides a clearer view of Boswell's 'detached intellectual attitude' toward his own oddities of character. The review suggests the work serves as a testament to Boswell’s obsession with self-analysis and his delight in moralizing about his own impulses. Dobrée posits that the public's continued delight in 'anything new' about Boswell would have greatly rejoiced the biographer himself.
Rinaker reviews the definitive edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., published directly from the original manuscript discovered at Malahide Castle. The editors rescued "pure Boswell" from the earlier "elegant revision" of Edmond Malone. Although Boswell revised some pages, Malone's hand appeared suddenly and performed much of the subsequent revision. The published text restores Boswell's "fresh, intimate, and unpolished record," including discreet material and keen self-analyses that reaffirm Johnson’s prediction: "the oftener you are seen, the more you will be liked." Because some portions of the manuscript were missing or defective, substance was supplied from the first or third editions, the last revised by Boswell.
Shepperson lauds the publication of Boswell’s original manuscript, which restores "inelegant" and "indelicate" details suppressed by Malone. The edition provides a "vivid reporting" of Johnson’s "thwacking Anglo-Saxon" monosyllables and "hypothetical" seraglios. Shepperson argues that these restorations outline the "man of conscious genius" with "higher lights and deeper shadows," portraying Boswell not as a fool, but as an "incomparable interlocutor" and inspired observer.
Hoskins praises Pottle's edition as the first popular installment of the Yale Boswell papers, highlighting its origin in the Fettercairn House discovery. The text documents Boswell’s transition from a provincial youth to a self-conscious stylist and chronicles his initial meeting with Johnson.1 Hoskins emphasizes Boswell’s imaginative detachment in recording both his moral struggles and his interactions with figures like Goldsmith and Wilkes. Pottle’s editorial apparatus, including maps and biographical notes, receives commendation for lucidity.
Irving traces the provenance of this journal to Abbott’s discovery of papers at Fettercairn House and acknowledges Pottle’s competent editorial work, though he expresses mild impatience with the volume of Boswellian scribblings currently being published. In a mixed review of the London Journal, Irving disputes the claim that the work holds a "high place of honor" as a work of art equal to the Life of Johnson, characterizing its interest as "ancillary" in documenting Boswell’s stylistic development and his enthusiasm for the "art of writing." However, he identifies Boswell’s experiments in dramatic portrayal, dialogue, dramatic scenes, and character analysis as extraordinary, showing "the beginnings of the miracle unfolding." The review observes that the journal allows readers to know Boswell intimately, revealing him as an epitome of "Everyman" who unintentionally conceals his strengths while exposing his weaknesses. The text preserves Boswell’s re-creation of town life through an intimate view of the subject's character.
This enthusiastic review praises L. F. Powell's revision of George Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson as a work of first-rank scholarship. The reviewer details Powell's exhaustive text collation to correct Hill's corruptions, his adherence to the original pagination, and his placement of extensive new material into substantial appendixes. The review highlights the inclusion of information from the Boswell Papers, the correction of errors made by Boswell, and the addition of nine new writings to the Johnsonian canon. It describes the expansion of the volume five commentary and notes the complete rearrangement of the volume vi index, which now fills 416 pages and features a full bibliography and a table of anonymous persons.
De la Torre analyzes Pottle's edition of the diary kept by Boswell at age twenty-two. The text documents Boswell’s pursuit of a Guardsman’s commission and his introduction to the 'wisdom of Samuel Johnson.' She commends Pottle for using 'tact, irony, and tenderness' to display the 'brash young diarist.' While De la Torre praises the technical editing and index, Torre disputes the success of Morley’s preface, specifically the 'foolhardy attempt' to write imaginary comments for Johnson.
Wright lauds the London Journal for its perceptive, uninhibited, and magically alive qualities. He notes that while Boswell displays callow vanity and pathological self-importance, the journal reveals an author who knew himself astonishingly well. Wright highlights Boswell's ability to transform trifling occurrences into adventures and finds the account of his early association with Johnson mildly disappointing only because the incidents are already well-known from the Life.
Clifford’s enthusiastic review of Boswell's London Journal, 1762-63, edited by Frederick A. Pottle, celebrates the first popular publication of manuscripts recovered from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House. The review characterizes the journal as a "gaudy and revealing self-portrait" of a twenty-two-year-old "wild colt" tasting every side of London life. Clifford notes that conversations with Johnson constitute only ten percent of the record, which primarily focuses on Boswell’s pursuit of a commission in the Guards, his sordid sexual adventures, and his "hypochondriac vacillations." The review emphasizes Boswell’s "scrupulous" dedication to truth and his masterful use of suspense in narratives like the affair with Louisa. Clifford praises Pottle’s scrupulous editorial accuracy and identifies the journal as a classic of candid self-revelation that balances eighteenth-century rationality with romantic sensibility.
Halsband reviews Pottle’s edition of Boswell’s 1762–1763 journal, characterizing the work as objective autobiography marked by unabashed naivete. The text covers Boswell’s search of a personality through roles ranging from the Great Moralist Johnson to the debauched Captain Macheath. Pottle’s editorial policy normalized spelling and punctuation while minimizing annotations for a general reader. The journal reveals Boswell’s mania for introspection and his ability to capture the vagaries of the human mind. This publication establishes Boswell as one of literature's greatest diarists.
Kolb reviews Richard Garnett's Goldsmith and Mona Wilson's Johnson, both published in the Reynard Library. He identifies Garnett's volume as perhaps the best edition of Goldsmith in print, praising the careful editing and useful chronological table despite minor errors in transcription and attribution. Conversely, Kolb criticizes Wilson and her assistant John Crow for failing to produce a similarly excellent edition of Johnson. While he approves the selection of major works like the Preface to Shakespeare and Rasselas, he regrets the decision to excerpt the periodical essays and Lives of the Poets. Kolb challenges Wilson's editorial philosophy that readers must know the man via Boswell before reading the works. He also documents numerous chronological inaccuracies in the front matter and characterizes Crow's textual notes as disconcertingly brief.
CGV entry 2:33. Review by Gwin J. Kolb of the selection by Mona Wilson.
This review of Wilson's representative collection of Johnson’s works praises its scholarly text selection and compact Reynard Library format. The volume includes the full text of Rasselas and the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, alongside liberal selections from the Rambler, the Lives of the Poets, and the Preface to Shakespeare. The reviewer notes the inclusion of minor poems and an elegy on Levet, while criticizing the omission of dictionary definitions and the inclusion of the "overpraised" Life of Savage in its entirety. Editorial choices are noted for highlighting the "solid wisdom" and independence of Johnson’s critical voice.
In this enthusiastic review, J. B. celebrates the completion of L. F. Powell's monumental revision of George Birkbeck Hill's six-volume edition. Volume V incorporates primary manuscripts discovered in the 1930s and 1940s, enabling Powell to establish anonymous identities, correct the text of Boswell's Journal, and provide the first satisfactory text of Johnson's North Wales diary. The reviewer questions Powell's logical decision to use the third edition as copy-text rather than correcting the first edition, but heavily praises the extensive genealogical and topographical commentaries compiled via Powell's personal fieldwork. J. B. finds Volume VI exceptionally useful, highlighting the functional typography of the index and a valuable table identifying or correcting numerous anonymous figures from the text.
Roberts describes Powell’s revision as a "major editorial achievement" enhanced by the recovery of Boswellian manuscripts now at Yale. These documents allow Powell to correct the text and supplement notes on suppressed passages in the Tour. Roberts highlights the expanded "Table of Anonymous Persons" and emphasizes that Powell’s index serves as a "masterly encyclopaedia" of Boswellian detail, prioritizing truth over typography or sentiment.
Johnson's sermons are short, simple in format, and similar in style and subject to The Idler and The Rambler, featuring balanced prose and themes like human vanity and the brevity of life. Johnson composed approximately forty sermons, mostly selling them to beneficed clergymen like Taylor. The text praises the meticulous and intelligent editing by Hagstrum and Gray, including the comprehensive introduction and informative annotation, though Downey disagrees with the editors' low estimation of Sermon 9, asserting it is one of the collection's best.
Tracy praises Greene's work, which sets Johnson’s writings into their contemporary political context, an essential service since Johnson was not a systematizer but a commenter on current events. Greene's introductions explain Johnson's political principles, arguing for a nuanced "toryism" closer to modern liberalism, a position consistent with Johnson's humanitarian opposition to imperialism. The review acknowledges that Johnson's most memorable contributions remain his individual moral and humanitarian reflections, such as those found in Taxation no Tyranny.
The book demonstrates that Johnson's seventy-plus biographical pieces, from the Life of Father Sarpi to the Lives of the Poets, possess a "unity of form and purpose" deeply influenced by classical, Christian, and skeptical views of man. Folkenflik argues that Johnson elevated English biography beyond mere adulation by applying critical and moral standards, ultimately validating Boswell's praise of his friend as excelling all mankind in writing the lives of others.
Portraits of the Author: Lifetime Likenesses of Samuel Johnson
In this review of Chauncey Brewster Tinker's Young Boswell, Herbert Vaughan Abbott explores the character of James Boswell apart from his relationship with Samuel Johnson. Abbott characterizes Boswell as a "sedulous ape" and mimic who sought to experience life through the minds and mannerisms of others. He praises Tinker for providing a perspective that moves beyond the typical moralizing seen in Johnsonian studies, instead focusing on Boswell's "incorrigible" vitality and his pursuit of "rich experience of life" as the summum bonum. The review highlights Tinker's definitions of naivety and priggishness as they relate to Boswell, suggesting that Boswell’s zest for life and his association with his elders allowed him to enjoy the fruits of experience while maintaining the "avidity of youth." Abbott concludes that the book offers a refreshing view of the eighteenth century as a vibrant era filled with individuals who were highly responsive to new impressions.
Van Doren presents Tinker’s edition of Boswell’s letters as a document of genuine importance that establishes Boswell as a genuine and important human being. He challenges the traditional interpretation of Boswell as a man of trivial traits redeemed only by hero-worship. Instead, the letters reveal an adult intelligence and original powers driven by a raging ambition to be somebody. Van Doren notes that Boswell sought in Johnson a bulwark against the forces of dissolution and peace of mind.
Explores the unstable critical standing of James Boswell, asserting he is a unique, often comic, figure in literature. It lists figures like Carlyle, Macaulay, and Leslie Stephen who contributed to the conflicting portrayals of his character. The ongoing nature of the debate—whether he was a fool, genius, or cunning rascal—makes his figure an unfailing source of critical entertainment.
P. L. praises Tinker for providing a scholarly "quietus" to Macaulay’s crude caricature of Boswell as a mindless sycophant. Tinker uses new material, including accounts of Boswell's "adroit stalking" of Rousseau and his numerous romantic affairs, to reveal the deliberate industry behind the biographer's art. P. L. argues Boswell possessed a unique "comic perception," allowing him to document his own ridicule and the blemishes of those he loved without diminishing their greatness. This psychological complexity, rather than Macaulay's "infinite capacity for taking the count," explains the vitality of the Life of Johnson. The review concludes that Boswell’s persistence and interviewing talents would have made him the "perfect interviewer" in a modern journalistic context.
Tinker disputes the generally held negative view of Boswell, seeking to ameliorate the reputation of a man often ridiculed by critics. This review of Tinker's work highlights the discovery of fresh correspondence, including letters to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The reviewer, E. R., emphasizes Boswell's conscious artistry and quicksilver sensibility in adapting to varied company, from the reverence shown to Johnson to the impudence displayed toward John Wilkes. The review notes that Boswell's accuracy in the Life of Johnson stems from a hidden, cold-blooded purpose and a passion for the intellect. E. R. concludes that Boswell's genius lies in imbedding salient phrases into living matter, a feat requiring his unique, complex, and sensually alive personality.
Murry disputes Macaulay’s paradox that Boswell’s greatness as a writer stemmed from being a "great fool." Murry argues Boswell possessed a "unique" talent and a "sense of human values." Tinker’s evidence demonstrates Boswell understood his "mode of biography" as "the most perfect that can be conceived." Murry asserts Johnson’s greatness survives primarily through Boswell’s "Rembrandt portrait," noting Boswell was "certainly no fool in the things that mattered to him," particularly in capturing the "vivacity" of human conversation.
Tinker disputes the enduring, unfavorable characterization of Boswell popularized by Macaulay. He presents Boswell as a talented, industrious, and essentially good-natured figure rather than a mere sycophant. The work details the "Boswell method" of biographical documentation through an examination of his strategic interviews with Rousseau and Voltaire. Tinker provides a corrective portrait that emphasizes the deliberate artistry and phenomenal industry behind the creation of the Life of Johnson.
Tinker disputes the Macaulayesque paradox of Boswell as a "simpleton" who produced a masterpiece by accident. Tinker uses new material from the Adams collection to demonstrate Boswell’s lifelong training, "strength of purpose," and "penetrating glance into human nature." More acknowledges Tinker’s success in proving Boswell’s "native genius" through his pursuit of Rousseau and Wilkes, yet challenges the conclusion that these talents alone account for the Life. More argues that while Boswell possessed "literary adroitness," the biography's greatness relies on a "unique psychological phenomenon" wherein Johnson's spirit was "transfused into the very soul of the recorder." More maintains that the work’s "greatness of conception" belongs more to Johnson than to Boswell’s "mediocre mind."
P. L. reviews Newton’s dramatic pastiche of Johnson's life, noting its skillful accumulation of authentic dialogue. The critic identifies several "minute departures" from verbatim accuracy, such as altered quotations and reattributed speeches, specifically the reassignment of Edwards’s famous line on cheerfulness to Murphy. While praising Newton’s adroitness in weaving the "Johnsonian noise," P. L. argues the inner drama of Johnson’s spiritual struggle against sloth remains fundamentally unsuited for the stage.
Scott reviews Newton's dramatic compilation, noting its departure from traditional academic treasuries through its creative synthesis of Boswell and Burney. Scott emphasizes Newton's realization of Johnson in diverse settings, including Gough Square and Bolt Court, alongside figures such as Reynolds, Burke, and Goldsmith. Scott highlights the inclusion of Johnson’s "fall from grace" regarding his affection for Piozzi, then Thrale. The reviewer approves of Newton's portrayal of the scene where Piozzi announces her intent to remarry, suggesting it delivers "melodramatic justice" by framing her as a vain and self-consequential figure. Scott identifies the play's appeal in its ability to present Johnson’s honesty and tender-heartedness within an idealized, wayward eighteenth-century milieu.
This approving review examines Newton’s play, Doctor Johnson, characterizing it as an "anthology rather than a play" that uses a "co-operative method" of writing. The reviewer notes that Newton strings together "genuine" jewels of 18th-century conversation—largely reported by Boswell—upon a "slender thread" of original dialogue. The review details the appearance of figures such as Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and the Thrales, noting Newton’s delicate implication of a "pathos" regarding Johnson’s unrequited love for Piozzi. While finding the plot "attenuated to the vanishing point," the reviewer recommends the work to "Johnsonians" for its successful evocation of the lexicographer’s "thumping phrases" and his "brave" death in the final act.
Spiller examines an anthology of eighteenth-century reviews from The Monthly Review concerning Johnson and Boswell. He highlights the reviewers' supreme tolerance and their method of extensive quotation paired with mild critique. The collection tracks the reception of Johnson's Shakespeare and the political tracts, alongside the controversial reaction to M’Nichol’s attack on Johnson. Spiller observes that these contemporary writers viewed Johnson as a sage requiring pardon for uncouth manners, while recognizing Boswell as a "consummate artist" despite his indiscretion. He asserts the value of these secondary criticisms for understanding the literary atmosphere of Johnson's era.
Christie demonstrates the value of Johnson’s journalism despite its stylistic heaviness. Comparisons between the Rambler and Addison's work attribute Johnson’s prose style to personal melancholy and economic hardship. Johnson achieves greater simplicity in Lives of the Poets following the stimulus of Boswell and the hospitality of Thrale. Christie characterizes Thrale’s management of the brewery through classical allusion while noting Johnson’s improved spirits during his later years. Johnson’s wisdom derives from varied life experiences.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part IV: The Doctor's Boyhood
Reade re-creates the social landscape of Lichfield during Johnson's youth through exhaustive genealogical research and archival recovery. Appendices document the family histories of the Fords, Hickmans, Howards, and Martens, using wills and Chancery proceedings to map Johnson's "ascendants, descendants, collaterals and alliances." Reade demonstrates that the "encroachments" Michael Johnson leased from city authorities comprise two strips of land integrated into the house built shortly before Johnson's birth. The volume includes a letter from Phoebe Ford to Johnson regarding her grievances as a housekeeper and clarifies the pedigree of Joseph Ford. By mingling "gentle and simple" figures, Reade provides the background and color of the "little world" Johnson inhabited.
Crawford describes Houston's study of Johnson as a fair-minded and necessary analysis of his critical genius. Houston successfully demonstrates the breadth of Johnson's classical reading and draws an effective parallel between Johnson and Boileau to situate him within contemporary movements. Crawford identifies a significant contribution in Houston's appraisal of the Preface to Shakespeare. However, Crawford notes limitations in Houston's stylistic tendency toward repetition and the inheritence of an inaccurate critical vocabulary that occasionally hinders precise thinking.
Spittal compiles eighteenth-century critiques of Johnson sourced solely from the Monthly Review. The collection highlights contemporary reactions to Johnson’s religious views and his Tour to the Hebrides. Despite noting Johnson’s "literary pre-eminence," the reviewers label certain reflections as "hasty and bigoted." The text disputes the claim that these collective reviews constitute a significant "Johnsonian find." It notes Johnson’s favorable opinion of the periodical’s writing standards while observing the reviewers' lack of variety.
Priestley finds Spittal’s collection of contemporary criticisms disappointing due to its reliance on a single source. He argues the volume contains excessive quotation and insufficient critical commentary. Priestley notes the reviews confirm Boswell as a contemporary favorite while Hawkins and Piozzi receive severe treatment. He highlights the reviewers' indignation over Piozzi’s domestic anecdotes as a point of interest.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part III: The Doctor's Boyhood
While Boswell lacks typical epistolary grace, his letters are invaluable for their naked self-revelation. He highlights the correspondence with Temple as the "heart" of the collection, comparing it to the confessions of Pepys or Rousseau. Havens notes that the letters demonstrate Boswell’s habit of condensing or altering Johnson’s words when quoting them. He praises Tinker’s extensive collection and annotation but regrets the high price of the two-volume format.
Simpson describes Pottle’s work as a 'substantial and enduring monument' to Boswell’s literary energy. The 'bibliobiography' examines the 'pertinent facts' of everything Boswell wrote, including thirty-four 'projected works.' Simpson highlights the transition from Macaulay’s 'uninviting sot' to the modern view of 'Boswellians.' He notes the surprise regarding the 'amazing quantity' of Boswell's writings in book and periodical form, which Pottle catalogs with 'unfailing scholarship' and 'tremendous literary energy.'
Wilks praises Pottle for applying scientific bibliography to Boswell’s entire career to illuminate his character. He highlights Pottle’s identification of Boswell as the author of the scandalous Ode to Mrs Thrale and notes evidence of Boswell’s relentless self-promotion. Wilks validates Pottle’s accuracy in recording cancels and misprints while noting a failure to identify certain translators. He emphasizes the energy revealed in Boswell’s enormous journalistic output.
Stuart praises Pottle’s bibliography for correcting the focus on Boswell, who she argues is still "wronged" by being viewed merely as a "Scots zany" led by Johnson’s "shaggy bulk." The review notes Pottle’s industry in amassing raw materials that reveal a Boswell "intensely alive" and driven by "curiosity" and "conceit." Stuart highlights Boswell’s "questing nose" for notoriety, seen in his pursuit of Paoli, Johnson, and the "Brave Corsicans." She identifies a "staggering mass" of unstudied Auchinleck manuscripts as the necessary next step for a definitive biography. The reviewer maintains that Boswell’s zeal for liberty was as "genuine as Byron’s."
Samuel Johnsons liv till Svenska, med bibliografi, inledning, anmärkningar, och register
Benson reviews the Swedish translation by Harald Heyman, the first complete rendering of Boswell's masterpiece into a foreign language (appearing in five parts), a task previously considered too difficult. The translation is based on Edmond Malone’s third edition (1799). Malone's original notes are reproduced at the bottom of the page, while Heyman’s own copious comments, drawing on commentators like Hill, are placed at the end of each chapter, aiming for completeness. The first volume dedicates nearly two hundred pages to biographical and bibliographical introductory material, including a selective bibliography noted for its value to scholars. Heyman conscientiously tried to reproduce all phases of the original, with only a few minor omissions like Johnson's Latin poetry renderings.
Winship characterizes Pottle’s work as a landmark for the Yale bibliographical school, noting its successful application of scientific principles to Boswell’s career. He highlights the demonstration that eighteenth-century bibliography requires different criteria than earlier periods. However, Winship criticizes Pottle's inclusion of redundant technical details and facsimiles that increase production costs without providing proportional utility. He acknowledges the volume's immense value for understanding Boswell's prolific output.
Pottle presents a bibliography of Boswell designed as foundational material for a future biography. The work includes facsimile title-pages and a manuscript index of Boswell’s contributions to the London Chronicle. Pottle identifies previously unrecorded publications, including the broadsides "Verses in the Character of a Corsican" and "The Grocer," and reprints the 1791 European Magazine memoirs. The reviewer suggests the compiled intellectual output dispels Victorian-era distortions of Boswell as a mere parasite of Johnson. The text highlights Boswell’s early European reputation and notes his authorship of coarse verses regarding the potential marriage of Johnson and Thrale. Pottle argues that an author's bibliography provides a more accurate psychological profile than external biographical facts.
This review of Francis Henry Skrine’s edited collection of Laetitia Matilda Hawkins’s memoirs describes an entertaining, if disjointed, volume of eighteenth-century tattle. The reviewer notes that Hawkins, daughter of Sir John Hawkins, inherited a paternal grudge against Boswell yet possessed the justice to admit Boswell wrote the better life of Johnson. While the reviewer criticizes the original memoirs for being ill-arranged and padded, Skrine's edited volume is found entertaining for its personal anecdotes regarding the Johnsonian circle, Reynolds, and Horace Walpole. The review concludes that Miss Hawkins, despite her lack of literary tact, was a prosaic, sensible, and clear-sighted lady whose malice was tempered by an absence of ubiquitous censoriousness.
Nichol Smith demonstrates Johnson's diligence in revising his printed work, including Rasselas and Idler. Chapman's essay uses the R. B. Adam proofs to reveal Boswell's meticulous care in revising the Life of Johnson, particularly over phrases and press-reader queries. Powell explains the editorial principles for his revision of Birkbeck Hill's standard Boswell, confirming that the "magnificent monument" is being treated with the requisite "thorough care and research."
O. H. D. reviews Hollis’s biography of Johnson, criticizing the author's adoption of Johnsonian "illiberalities" and Tory truculence to preach rigid orthodoxy, male dominance, and corporal punishment. Despite these "warped" sentiments, the reviewer credits the book for its energy and for reassembling Johnson’s repartees to expound his philosophy.
These indispensable essays clarify that Johnson extensively revised The Rambler, Rasselas, and The Idler shortly after publication. Smith establishes that Johnson considered revision an integral part of authorship. Chapman offers an illuminating account of Boswell’s virtues as a meticulous author and proofreader of the Life of Johnson. Revised proofs from the Adam collection reveal names and passages, such as those involving Percy and Reynolds, which Boswell initially suppressed using cancel leaves. Boas commends the volume for providing new evidence that contradicts Boswell’s indications regarding Johnson’s lack of interest in his own published texts.
Brewster reviews Salpeter’s Dr. Johnson and Mr. Boswell, noting how the privately printed Boswell papers reveal Boswell as a "vivid and various personality." Brewster highlights the 1763 meeting as central to the epoch and notes that Boswell’s questioning helped create Johnson’s "best talking." The review acknowledges the book offers a "rich background" but finds little new information beyond existing accounts by Thrale. Brewster credits Boswell with making the era "the golden age of biography."
Norman notes that while Roscoe attempts to illuminate Johnson’s character, the result of splitting the complex completeness into isolated traits is disappointing. Norman observes that Johnson is fixed as a rare personality striking with closer reality than many encountered in the flesh. Roscoe demonstrates Johnson’s insensitiveness to natural beauty and his fear-driven religion, which he compared to the British Constitution. Norman concludes that Roscoe remains averse from speculation, leaving the isolated fragments to be fitted together by the reader.
Clark explores the shift in Boswellian scholarship, noting that Salpeter uses the Isham edition of private papers to present Boswell as an "important personage" rather than a "boor" or "shadow." Salpeter reviews the "high point" of the lives of Johnson and Boswell with "nice use of anecdotes," emphasizing Boswell’s interactions with Voltaire and Rousseau. Clark disputes the "overstatement" that Johnson would be forgotten without Boswell, asserting that memoirs by Piozzi, More, and members of The Club provide "sufficient" evidence to maintain the reputation of Johnson as a "giant on the horizon of literary history." Clark praises the "candor" of the recital of these "two eccentrics" and the high quality of the volume’s format.
oberts reviews Lynd’s study, which presents Johnson as a "perfectly natural human being" in an age of "artificial code," portraying him as a man avid for company whose defects were counterbalanced by his virtues. Lynd recites Johnson’s social defects—his "disgusting table manners" and "irascible" nature—only to argue they were "counterbalanced by a corresponding virtue" and to emphasize his "passionate liking for his fellow-creatures." The review highlights Johnson’s "avid" pursuit of company, especially that of younger people like Boswell and Burney, and Roberts asserts that Johnson's popularity resided in a simpler secret than his prestige, noting that his gloom and morbidity were relatable. Lynd defends Goldsmith against charges of "imbecility" in conversation, suggesting he was an "alien" in the circle whose jokes were misunderstood. The reviewer commends Lynd for devoting a chapter to Johnson's female friends, correcting the fallacy that Johnson was "essentially a man's man," and Roberts notes that women had more leisure to listen to his discourse. While the interpretation emphasizes this "feminine companionship," Roberts argues against portraying Johnson primarily as a comic figure, concluding that his "central gravity" prevents such a characterization.
The reviewer emphasizes Roscoe’s depiction of Johnson as a moralist who viewed books primarily as tools for "the art of living." Eschewing psychological analysis, Johnson addressed the "plain man" through a gospel of courage, rigid honesty, and the maintenance of friendships. The review notes Roscoe’s argument that Johnson’s lucid intellect would have suited him for a legal career, supported by his written statements on the duties of a lawyer. Johnson is described as essentially urban, seeking the country only for change rather than aesthetic inspiration, yet capable of drawing moral lessons from the seasons. While acknowledging Roscoe's occasionally loose logical connections, the reviewer defends Johnson against Hawthorne’s criticism of superficiality, arguing that Johnson’s focus on the "surface" of life was a deliberate and vital choice. The text presents Johnson as a master of fortitude and truth standing against the irony of modern critics.
The reviewer commends Roscoe for identifying Johnson as a "teacher... of the art of living" while noting that some comparisons, such as those with Anatole France or John Selden, yield only obvious contrasts. The article highlights a "new" paper on the connection between Johnson and William Windham, which illustrates Johnson’s fondness for "the fine gentleman." Roscoe characterizes Johnson’s religion and reserve as typical of "John Bull," yet notes his unique capacity for varied friendships, ranging from the social elite to the disreputable Bet Flint. The review acknowledges Johnson’s "restricted enjoyment of scenery," comparing his urban preference to that of Socrates, and discusses the racial archetypes presented in the "Englishman and the Irishman" dynamic between Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part V: The Doctor's Life, 1728–35
The reviewer analyzes Reade’s intensive biographical research, which Reade characterizes as the application of scientific method to historical study. Reade serves as a "hod-carrier" for future scholars by elucidating obscure passages in Johnson’s early life through the examination of primary records. A significant portion of the text focuses on Reade’s investigation into Johnson's residence at Pembroke College. By transcribing and analyzing 15,000 weekly entries in the Pembroke buttery books and consulting meteorological diaries from 1728, Reade confirms the veracity of Boswell’s anecdote regarding Johnson sliding on ice in Christ Church meadow. Furthermore, Reade disproves previous theories by Croker and Fitzgerald, establishing that Johnson’s residence was shorter than the traditionally cited three years. Reade also challenges the assumption that poverty necessitated Johnson's departure from Oxford, suggesting instead that intermittent melancholia played a central role. The reviewer notes that while the focus on minutiae is extreme, Reade’s work makes a new edition of Birkbeck Hill’s scholarship necessary.
Johnson, Boswell, and Mrs. Piozzi: A Suppressed Passage Restored
Roscoe examines Johnson's character and "art of living" as his primary distinctions. Roscoe analyzes Johnson's religious beliefs, characterizing him as a non-mystic devoid of modern theological subtleties. The text explores Johnson's limitations, including his indifference to music and scenery, while highlighting his preference for human society. Roscoe disputes interpretations of Johnson's Latin quotations and investigates his interactions with Windham. Roscoe emphasizes Johnson’s moral integrity relative to his eighteenth-century contemporaries.
Pryce-Jones examines Hollis's biographical treatment of Johnson, noting that the work functions as a vigorous supplement to Boswell rather than a replacement. The review highlights Johnson's unique ability to dominate any social context or era through a conversational style that forced interlocutors to think clearly and "gave confidence to truth." While Pryce-Jones disputes Hollis's dismissal of the tragedy Irene, he supports the high estimation of The Rambler. However, Pryce-Jones argues that the biography neglects The Lives of the Poets, which serves as the primary justification for Johnson's literary status beyond his reputation as a mere "character." The critique identifies the absence of an index and occasional facetiousness as minor flaws in an otherwise "excellent supplement" to the Johnsonian canon.
A scathing review of E. S. Roscoe's Aspects of Dr. Johnson challenges the author's theory that Johnson was a teacher of the conduct of life who was averse from speculation. The reviewer questions how Johnson can be a qualified teacher of life if he cuts out philosophy and remains concerned only with ordinary people. The reviewer also mocks Roscoe's comparisons of Johnson to Anatole France and William Wordsworth, labeling the work a conspicuous failure that neglects the true meaning of comparison. A separate review of Byron's letters, edited by V. H. Collins, praises the selection for presenting the poet at his best and successfully tracing his variegated quotations.
Windle commends Skrine for sifting the "wheat" from the voluminous memoirs of Hawkins, daughter of Sir John Hawkins. The text highlights Hawkins’s "acid" but "interesting" anecdotes concerning Johnson and his circle. Windle notes that despite her dislike for Boswell, Hawkins admits his biography surpassed her father’s "official life" of Johnson. Significant inclusions involve a literary "jeu d’esprit" by Reynolds—two dialogues mimicking Johnson’s habit of arguing both sides of a debate regarding Garrick. Windle emphasizes the value of these "spiteful" yet informative records for the "Johnsonian" scholar, asserting that the rescued Reynolds skit demonstrates genuine literary capacity independent of Johnson.
"A Boswell Who's Who may prove a useful additfon to Johnson literature and keen interest and long and wide reading have made Mr. Smith-Dampier well fitted for the task. ... He gives a page to each day of a leap-year, and that he is able to assign a separate life to all but a few of them, gives some idea of the ramifications of the subject." But it sometimes gives disproportionate attention to minor figures.
Kingsmill criticizes Vulliamy for focusing on Boswell as a "victim of life" rather than a "spectator of life." Kingsmill argues that Boswell's genius for biography stems from his "impersonal interest" in his own life and his capacity for vivid, honest self-portrayal, even at the cost of his dignity. Kingsmill refutes Vulliamy's interpretation of Boswell's weaknesses as "inverted egoism" or a "malady of the mind," asserting that such candour provides a necessary contrast, as seen in the episode of the storm at sea, to bring Johnson's "philosophick tranquillity" into sharper focus.
Krutch reviews Vulliamy’s James Boswell, the first account since the Isham papers. Krutch identifies Boswell as the "best self-documented man in all history" and a "beastly drunkard." The review explores the problem of how a "silly fop" wrote the greatest biography. Krutch disputes Macaulay’s "blockhead" theory, crediting Boswell’s "highly developed sense of social character" and "catholic taste for strength." Krutch concludes that Boswell’s mania for publicizing his follies suggests a pathological exhibitionism "more or less masochistic in character."
Josephson assesses Vulliamy’s biography of Boswell, using Isham’s manuscripts to detail the subject's habitual drunkenness and moral degradation as foundational to the genius of the "Life of Johnson."
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part VI: The Doctor's Life, 1735–40
Reade's sixth installment of Johnsonian Gleanings covers the period of Johnson's marriage, his attempts at being a schoolmaster, and his first literary ventures in London. Reade disputes Boswell's exaggerated account of Johnson's poverty in London and his life with Savage, arguing Johnson generally earned enough to live. Johnson's statement about fasting being an incident of a literary life, not pennilessness, supports this. Reade also presents Johnson's marriage and Midland associations as less bizarre than traditionally assumed. The volume includes valuable new genealogical information and announces the discovery of a portrait of Johnson's admired beauty, Molly Aston.
This item examines Chapman’s edition of a 1775 letter in which Piozzi "pasted over a passage" to suppress Johnson’s "praise of Boswell’s Highland journal." The publication includes a "collotype facsimile" of the original manuscript and the "pasted-on scrap." The text notes the restoration of the "unrelated" fragment to its proper context at Johnson’s Birthplace. It characterizes the work as an "interesting Johnsonian item" providing both transcripts and physical evidence of Piozzi’s editorial intervention.
This review of W. B. C. Watkins's study analyzes Johnson's knowledge of early English literature using the Dictionary and the Shakespeare notes as primary evidence. The reviewer credits Watkins with constructing a convincing background for Johnson's comprehensive learning while acknowledging its deficiencies. The review notes that Johnson's criticism was shaped by his dislike of imitations and his detestation of over-praise. Watkins defines Johnson's discriminating appreciation of ballads and his views on John Donne. The reviewer observes that Johnson maintained intellectual vigour by refusing to occupy himself with studies he did not like, except to further a specific end. An appendix listing sources for the Dictionary is highlighted as a definite contribution to the understanding of Johnson.
An Eighteenth Century Gentleman and Other Essays
H. O. W. examines Roberts's collection of papers, highlighting three essays dedicated to Johnson and two "amusing imitations" written in the styles of Boswell and Piozzi. The text notes Roberts's "ease and distinction" and "unaffected felicity" of language. H. O. W. identifies the Johnsonian studies as a "labour of love" and suggests the volume serves as a companion to the vignettes of Austin Dobson.
Samuel Johnson als Kritiker im Lichte von Pseudoklassizismus und Romantik
Crowley praises the emphasis on development, which presents Johnson as an "intelligible" human being rather than a perpetually "old and famous" figure. Kingsmill uses "rare tact" to reconstruct early life stages despite scant evidence. Crowley highlights the "well-substantiated guess" regarding Johnson's desire to marry Piozzi. While noting "glaring omissions," Crowley asserts that the "stern objectivity" and "detachment" of Kingsmill provide a necessary outline of physical traits and manners, making the work a significant addition to scholarship.
Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie
Krutch examines Kingsmill’s biography of Johnson, arguing Johnson created himself as an artistic achievement. He notes Boswell revered his Doctor but used a systematic technique to provoke Johnson into uttering striking copy and monstrous judgments. Krutch maintains Johnson’s dogged, unreasoning orthodoxy served as a palliative for his underlying skepticism and intellectual doubts. He concludes Johnson exists as a vivid character of vitality akin to figures of fiction.
Wecter identifies a "generous kinship of spirit" between Ben Jonson and Johnson, noting their shared honesty, classical erudition, and "downright simplicity." Kingsmill portrays Johnson as a man battling "incipient madness" and existential fear, which forced him to become "the most honest of men." While noting that Kingsmill ignores the Malahide Papers, Wecter highlights the value in marshaling minor biographers like Piozzi and Hawkins against the "dominant authority of Boswell."
West's approving review of Hugh Kingsmill's biography describes the work as an amiable, entertaining chronicle suitable for readers new to the subject. West notes that Kingsmill identifies the limitations of Boswell while failing to provide total liberation from the traditional Boswellian image. The review highlights Kingsmill’s argument regarding the unresolved conflict between Johnson’s imaginative and moral elements, which prevented Johnson from achieving consistent poetic greatness. West observes that while Johnson’s prose occasionally achieves nobility when passion melts his didacticism, the public continues to value Johnson more as a social character and talker than as a writer. The review concludes that Kingsmill provides a sympathetic portrait of a man who remained a victim of ill-health and his century, never finding a perfect medium for his powers. West acknowledges Johnson as a great spirit who frequently talked for victory rather than truth.
Kilbourne’s critical review characterizes the manual of Struble as a collection of chatty essays rather than a rigorous handbook. While Struble offers salient data on the life and works of Johnson, Kilbourne disputes her superficial account of his critical vagaries. He notes that Struble levries unduly upon the defective sense faculties of Johnson to explain his insensibility to poetic excellence. Kilbourne argues that a substantive chapter on neo-classicism is necessary to ground the critical theory of Johnson. Although he finds the section on miscellaneous works valuable for its inaccessible matter, Kilbourne states that students will require sound classroom guidance to arrive at a just appraisal of Johnson through this text.
A Catalogue of Papers Relating to Boswell, Johnson and Sir William Forbes, found at Fettercairn House
Powell and Abbott detail the discovery of a massive collection of papers at Fettercairn House, the home of Lord Clinton. These documents belonged to Sir William Forbes, one of Boswell's executors, and complement the Malahide Papers. Characterized as a find of great value, the collection comprises over a thousand letters to Boswell, nearly three hundred drafts of Boswell's own letters, a long series of letters to Forbes, and major manuscripts including Boswell's "London Journal" from 1762 to 1763. Most notably for Johnsonian scholars, the find contains "119 holograph letters from Johnson" to various correspondents, which Boswell collected for use in the "Life." Powell notes that "some of these Johnson letters remain unpublished." Powell expresses hope for their immediate publication or accessibility to researchers.
S. reviews Pottle's book, assessing the case of Boswell's client, Mary Broad. Broad escaped from a Botany Bay penal colony, traveling to England, where Boswell represented her appeal for a royal pardon. Pottle uses the case to illustrate Boswell's deep-seated passion for justice and his capacity for compassion, particularly toward the oppressed and unfortunate. The review highlights the successful blend of legal detail, political backdrop, and personal insight into Boswell’s character.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part IX: A Further Miscellany
Reade continues his industrious research into Johnson’s kindred and obscure biography, establishing himself as a pre-eminent commentator. This miscellany illuminates the 'gay dog' of the family, Parson Ford, through a memoir found in the Hyp-Doctor, and traces Johnson’s involvement with the Miss Colliers and their claims against an estate. Reade employs logical inference to establish Charles Skrymsher as a first cousin and links Johnson to the fox-hunter Thomas Boothby. The reviewer notes that while Reade leaves some genealogical queries unsolved, his work remains a vital addition to the study of Johnson’s early life, a period where Boswell is weak.
Perilous Balance: The Tragic Genius of Swift, Johnson and Sterne
Williams examines Watkins's thesis that Johnson maintained a "precarious balance" against melancholia through "discipline of will-power." The text notes the "integrity of Johnson's personality" as being "grounded upon the austere love of truth." Williams disputes the comparison of Johnson's desire for existence against Swift's "disillusion and despair," questioning Johnson's "very questionable affirmation" that any unhappy existence is preferable to non-existence. Williams highlights Watkins's "discerning" argument but regrets the absence of an index.
The First Magazine: A History of the 'Gentleman's Magazine'
Graham describes Carlson’s work as a 'valuable' examination of the 'most substantial and important' eighteenth-century periodical. The text focuses on 'Johnson's relation to it' and the 'genesis of the Parliamentary debates.' Carlson agrees with Powell in giving Johnson credit for the 'precise nature' of the 'Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia.' However, Graham notes that Carlson offers little new evidence regarding Johnson’s 'editorial supervision' between 1738 and 1745, leaving the matter 'as uncertain as it was before.'
Edward Cave launched The Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, creating and standardizing the periodical form. Cave's success stemmed from his ability to elude the 1725 Stamp Act by publishing monthly and reprinting news from other sources, thereby avoiding the penny-per-sheet tax. This strategy, aimed at provincial readers, established the magazine's commanding position before his 1754 death, making it a crucial eighteenth-century publication.
This enthusiastic review praises David Nichol Smith and Edward L. McAdam’s edition of Johnson’s poetry as a "monument of exact and mature scholarship." The reviewer notes that Boswell previously failed to assemble a complete edition, leaving subsequent scholars with faulty or incomplete texts. The review commends the volume's excellent planning, its chronological arrangement, and the inclusion of more than twenty new poems. The reviewer emphasizes that these verses serve as a log of Johnson’s life, making the edition essential to a full understanding of his character and literary career.
Krutch examines Kingsmill’s collection of Johnsonian anecdotes not recorded by Boswell, finding they confirm a consistent image of Johnson across different temperamental reporters like Piozzi and Burney. Krutch argues Boswell, a furious rake, overemphasized Johnson’s moralizing pontification while underemphasizing his superb sense of fun. He notes that Piozzi’s accounts better capture Johnson’s belief in palliatives like fun and food. The text demonstrates that Johnson remains recognizably the same man even in accounts by notoriously unfriendly sources.
Cowie examines Watkins’s analysis of how "disease, melancholia, tragedy" influenced the genius of Swift, Johnson, and Sterne. He finds the discussion of Johnson "fighting idleness and fearing hell" plausible but notes the text "reaches few new or significant conclusions." Cowie finds the work "negligent in failing to define terms" and burdened by "quotation-mongering," yet acknowledges the chapter on Sterne successfully establishes a "direct effect" of temperament on prose.
Tillotson finds Watkins successful in using the Dictionary to establish the depth of Johnson’s knowledge of early English poetry. He identifies the discovery of Johnson’s unexpected familiarity with ballads and lyrics as a primary strength. Tillotson credits Watkins with moving beyond statistics to draw competent conclusions about eighteenth-century scholarship. However, he notes Watkins fails to account for the estrangement between Johnson and Warton.
Kingsmill's Johnson Without Boswell collects contemporary accounts to portray Johnson when Boswell was absent, validating the biographer's general impression. Drawing heavily on Mrs. Piozzi's (Mrs. Thrale) intimate anecdotes and recollections, the book confirms Johnson's true character, including his physical awkwardness and strange, involuntary nervous gestures. The volume provides a welcome collective testimony from Johnson's friends, adding dimension to the well-known portrait.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part VIII: A Miscellany
Rinaker identifies Watkins’s study of Johnson’s knowledge of early English poetry as an 'excellent piece of humane scholarship.' Watkins distinguishes 'reasoned critical theory' from 'violent prejudices' and demonstrates that Johnson’s acquaintance with early poets was 'greater and more appreciative than is commonly supposed.' The study traces sources through 'friendship and the exchange of encouragement.' However, Rinaker questions the 'scientific' accuracy of dating Johnson's acquaintance with authors based solely on their alphabetical appearance in the Dictionary.
Wimsatt analyzes Johnson's writing under headings like Parallelism and Antithesis. Wimsatt also discusses Johnson's theory of writing and its historical antecedents, providing useful, though demanding, dissections of particular sentences.
Evans assesses Kingsmill’s anthology of non-Boswellian sources, which aims to correct Boswell's "distortions." He highlights aspects of Johnson—tenderness, gayety, and loneliness—often obscured by Boswell's preference for a "majestick" philosopher. Evans criticizes Boswell for goading Johnson into irritable responses for literary effect. While endorsing the recovery of Johnson’s "reactionary" political views against the new economic morality, Evans regrets Kingsmill’s failure to let Johnson speak more directly through his own major prose works.
Bacon validates Kingsmill’s arrangement of non-Boswellian sources, including Hawkins, Thrale, and Burney, as a "beautifully articulated story." He disputes the "inexpensive heresy" that Johnson was a mere "empty pomposity" sustained by Boswell’s genius, asserting Johnson’s status as a "very great poet." While praising the "creative" and "ingenious contrasts" of the editorial work, Bacon concludes the text "does more for Boswell than for Johnson" by highlighting the "invincible abilities" of the absent biographer.
Bradford examines Watkins’s analysis of Johnson’s lifelong fight against sloth and his fear of a diseased, morbid imagination. He notes that Johnson maintained a perilous balance of sanity through rigid control. Bradford observes that Johnson’s writing seldom reflects the seething imagination found in his personality. He suggests that Johnson’s work becomes most interesting when this underlying tension is visible.
Shepperson examines Boswell’s Inviolable Plan for self-improvement during his 1763 residency in Utrecht. He notes Boswell’s constant self-admonition to be retenu (reserved) and his attempts to emulate Johnson and Dalrymple. Shepperson find Boswell’s conduct in Holland almost exemplary compared to the London Journal, highlighting his law studies and chaste behavior. He remarks on Boswell's delightfully naïve nature, evidenced by his request that Belle de Zuylen’s father decide if she would make a suitable wife.
Boswell: The Robert Spence Watson Memorial Lecture for 1945–46, Delivered Before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, 29 October 1945
Hazen reviews Abbott’s lecture on the survival and discovery of Boswell’s manuscripts. He notes the "odd coincidence" of major findings appearing immediately after scholarly publications by Tinker, Pottle, and Abbott himself. Hazen praises the strange, Gothic quality of the Fettercairn discovery and the resulting portrait of Boswell as a "pathetic genius" rather than a fool. He suggests that the new evidence vindicates Boswell’s accuracy and fairness against Macaulay’s influential negative verdict.
This review examines a miscellaneous reconstruction of Boswell’s Dutch residency, necessitated by the early loss of his primary 500-page quarto journal. The text describes Boswell’s attempt at a "regular plan of life" under Johnson’s influence, characterized by rigorous study and a rejection of "dissipation." While noting that this pursuit of rectitude results in "dullness for the reader" and clinical depression for Boswell, the reviewer highlights the significant correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (Zelide). The collection reveals Boswell’s anxiety regarding "marital supremacy" and his struggle to reconcile his natural liveliness with a self-imposed, "firm and noble" persona.
Plumb finds the reconstruction of Boswell’s lost Dutch journal skillfully executed, despite the lack of Boswell’s finished literary dexterity. He argues the text’s primary value lies in its insight into the human heart, particularly through Boswell’s relationship with Belle de Zuylen (Zélide). Plumb describes Boswell as a character of conflicting temperaments struggling for moral and emotional harmony. He notes Zélide’s remorseless realism and her eventual rejection of Boswell’s evasions. Plumb concludes that the alliance illuminates the characters of both individuals, providing deep psychological insight.
Krutch examines an edition of Boswell’s papers covering his 1763–1764 law studies in Utrecht. Krutch notes the volume consists of brief diary jottings and correspondence rather than an artful narrative, offering an unguarded view of the man. The text details Boswell's determined but dubious attempt to discipline his ebullient nature through methodical study and admonitory injunctions. Krutch highlights the genuinely seizures of melancholy resulting from the denial of strong impulses, including frantic sexuality. Krutch argues these records increase one’s opinion of Boswell’s sincerity and sternly resolute character.
The reviewer characterizes these mature essays as acts of self-discipline intended to combat Boswell's fear of madness and establish settled principles. While noting the essays' stilted and sententious style compared to the journals, the account acknowledges Boswell's extensive classical learning and original thinking on subjects such as death, drinking, and diaries. The text distinguishes this pruned, accessible reprint from Bailey’s more elaborately annotated 1928 Stanford edition.
Irving challenges Lewis’s 'expressionist' biography for ignoring scholarly research and underestimating Boswell’s artistic conscience and capacity for hard work. The review also summarizes Clifford’s edition of Campbell’s diary, which records meetings with Johnson at the Thrales'. Irving notes that Campbell’s anecdotes often exaggerate the 'rougher sides' of Johnson’s nature, depicting him as a 'Hottentot.' He concludes that while Lewis writes with vigor, the resulting portrait of Boswell lacks sufficient focus on his unusual perseverance.
Askwith reviews The Hooded Hawk, an apologia defending Boswell against moralistic critics like Macaulay. Lewis’s work is a notable contribution to Johnsonian literature, lauded for its brilliance, vivid depiction of eighteenth-century London, and balanced appraisal of Boswell’s character. Lewis successfully portrays Boswell as a very human and lovable being without resorting to idealization or demoting Johnson. The book maintains a keen appreciation for the grace and gusto of the Johnson era.
Dinkins reviews Lewis’s biography of Boswell, arguing that Lewis uses lately available private papers to reconstruct the real Boswell through an orthodox Christian lens. While acknowledging that Boswell drank to excess and pursued women, Dinkins asserts that Boswell recognized these actions as sins and longed for goodness. The text disputes the conception of Boswell as merely foolish or dissolute, a view attributed to the malice of Piozzi and various critics. Dinkins notes that Boswell admired the "goodness of Doctor Johnson" as much as his greatness, suggesting the Life resulted from a focused heart and mind rather than a "fortuitous accident." Lewis uses the Boswell family crest, the hooded hawk, to symbolize Boswell’s perpetual attempts to "soar into the empyrean" before falling back to earth.
Roberts describes Chapman's lecture as a model of erudite yet accessible scholarship. He highlights Chapman’s provocative defense of Croker’s editorial methods, which intercalated extraneous Johnsoniana directly into Boswell’s text. Roberts questions this preference, arguing for the preservation of Boswell’s uninterrupted narrative. He supports Chapman's call for a "Clavis Johnsoniana" to provide a chronological chart of Johnson’s life. The review commends Chapman’s clear depiction of Boswell’s literary workshop and his authoritative application of textual criticism to modern Johnsonian works.
J. A. R. praises Bronson for illuminating a dualism in Johnson's character, highlighting the "everlasting struggle" between his intellectual conservatism and his forceful, violent nature. The review outlines how Boswell recognized this tension and derived spiritual strength from Johnson's constant battle against his own morbidities and delusions. J. A. R. highlights recent manuscript discoveries at Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House that prompt a complete revaluation of Boswell as an intellectual, competent literary figure rather than a mere pathological case. J. A. R. disputes the contemporary relevance of Johnson's play, which remains dead despite Bronson's biographical links. The review notes that Johnson successfully gave others a "sense of spiritual security and a philosophical calm" that he could never fully win for himself.
Sisson highlights Fan’s examination of Johnson’s contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine concerning China and his involvement with Cave’s translation of Du Halde. The work surveys literary chinoiserie and provides an engraving of Confucius from Cave’s Description of China. Sisson notes the text fulfills its promise to stimulate interest in a subject not yet thoroughly investigated by scholars.
In this positive review, Clarence R. Tracy outlines the scholarly arguments presented in W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.'s study of style and meaning in the writings of Johnson. Tracy notes that Johnson the writer has long been overshadowed by his personality due to the spell cast by Boswell. Tracy asserts that Wimsatt successfully defends Johnson against the legendary complaint regarding his use of hard words, which critics traditionally viewed as the tactless outpourings of an overweighted mind. Wimsatt demonstrates that these hard words derived from physical sciences, representing philosophic terms in the older sense. Tracy emphasizes that the study highlights Johnson's unexpected lay acquaintance with scientific literature, such as his original entry on electricity in the Dictionary. Tracy concludes that Wimsatt provides an important investigation into how a powerful, original mind exploited a newly discovered world of science vocabulary to apply it metaphorically to the analysis of the soul.
Wimsatt refines the traditional idea of Johnson's Latinate diction by expounding the "philosophical implications of his diction." Wimsatt contends that Johnson was unusually familiar with the literature and vocabulary of science, drawing his knowledge from cataloguing the Harleian Library and translating lives for the Medicinal Dictionary. The review highlights Wimsatt's analysis of "philosophic" or "scientific" words moving from a physical to a psychological meaning, which permeates the style of The Rambler.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part X: Johnson's Early Life: The Final Narrative
Chapman examines Reade's condensation of thirty years of Johnsonian research into a final narrative. Reade uses buttery books from Pembroke College to dispute previous residence claims and demonstrates Johnson's early intimacy with "good" families in Lichfield. Chapman notes Reade corrects the "jejune" account provided by Boswell, particularly regarding Johnson's years of "moody idleness" and "usherdom." He highlights Reade's "shrewd judgment" and "unfailing accuracy" in constructing a picture of Johnson's early life that Boswell "would have rated high."
Wood evaluates McNair’s exploration of Johnson’s legal interests and associations. He highlights the investigation of Johnson’s library catalogue to estimate his reading of jurists like Grotius. Wood notes McNair’s evidence regarding Johnson’s consultations with English and Scottish lawyers on specific cases. The review emphasizes Johnson’s views on professional ethics, property rights, and capital punishment. Wood identifies the work’s strength in its methodical arrangement and unlearned style despite a perceived lack of systematic continuity.
Metcalf commends Krutch for moving beyond the "popular mind" focus on Johnson’s eccentricities to emphasize his "critical acumen." Using "Thraliana" and recent discoveries, Krutch integrates Johnson's life with a "thorough examination" of his works, particularly the "Preface" to Shakespeare. Metcalf notes that Krutch portrays Johnson as a "figure better rounded" than Boswell’s version, emphasizing his identity as a timeless humanist whose tavern chair was "the throne of highest felicity."
Chapman's approving review of McNair's Dr. Johnson and the Law highlights this anthology of the recorded links between Johnson and lawyers or legal studies. McNair explores Johnson's two periods of legal study in 1738 and 1765—the latter marked by his "Prayer before the Study of Law"—including his tutoring by Ballow and his assistance with Chambers's Vinerian lectures. Chapman and McNair emphasize the surprise of Johnson's extensive legal library, which the sale catalogue reveals included a "surprising bulk" of legal works for a layman. The review discusses Johnson's failed attempts to qualify for the bar, though the reason for this failure remains uncertain. Johnson's legal opinions and arguments on English and Scots law, such as his defense of a lawyer pleading a cause he believed wrong, exhibit "sagacity and wide learning" in applying general principles and serve as excellent examples of his "compact and forcible English."
Sparrow reviews McNair's work, which explores Johnson's legal connections and views. McNair surveys Johnson's legal friends, including Stowell and Sir William Jones, and discusses Johnson's nearly pursuing a legal career, which he felt he missed due to lack of money. The most engaging section explores Boswell's practice of consulting Johnson on legal and ethical matters, revealing his views on topics such as a schoolmaster's authority and conjugal infidelity. Sparrow notes that McNair's book illustrates Johnson's common sense and shrewd perception, reflecting a time when the division between lay and legal thinking was less clear.
Evans reviews Krutch’s biography, which synthesizes recent scholarship from Reade, Isham, and Pottle. Krutch identifies a basic congeniality with Johnson’s tragic sense of life and "Gargantuan gusto" amidst melancholia. Evans notes Krutch’s annoyance with Boswell’s "pathological nature" and his defense of Thrale against charges of cruelty. The study successfully bridges the gap between professional Johnsonians and general readers, portraying Johnson as a "superlatively good hack" whose critical paradoxes remain vital.
Roberts reviews A. L. Reade's Johnsonian Gleanings, specifically the tenth part covering Johnson's early life. He details Reade's highly pertinent research that establishes Johnson’s residence at Oxford after December 1728. The text credits Reade with meticulous gathering in of the past to present the man Milton and Johnson. Roberts asserts Reade's labor provides vivid scraps of history that supplement the foundational narratives provided by Boswell.
Clifford’s positive review praises this volume as a valuable contribution to Johnsonian scholarship. Reade gathers evidence from forty years of research, discarding the scholarly scaffolding of his previous volumes to provide a succinct chronological narrative of the first fifty years of Johnson's life. While the reviewer notes that the book lacks the color and dash necessary to attract a popular audience, he commends Reade’s rigorous weighing of evidence. The work corrects previous myths, sifts contradictory versions of anecdotes, and establishes facts about Michael Johnson’s career, Samuel's school years, and his residence in Birmingham. Clifford emphasizes that despite the excessive genealogical material, this volume serves as a reliable reference for serious scholars.
Esdaile commends Bronson’s essays as superior contemporary scholarship that presents a "new and good" portrait of Johnson. The reviewer highlights Bronson’s depiction of Johnson as a "turbulent and impulsive" poet and rebel, challenging the traditional view of him as merely authoritarian. Esdaile also notes Bronson’s analysis of Irene, where the character Aspasia is interpreted as Johnson’s ideal woman and a marriage-offering to his wife. Conversely, the reviewer criticizes Cairns’s memorial selection for its lack of depth and reliance on improbable accounts of Johnson’s death-bed conversion.
Nicolson's mixed review of Boswell on the Grand Tour takes issue with Pottle's editorial decision to alter the original wording established by Geoffrey Scott in earlier editions. While praising the "valuable additional material," Nicolson argues that the volume may cool the "exaggerated affection" for Boswell by revealing his "insufferable" vanity and "prodigious effort" to seek out Rousseau and Voltaire. The review characterizes Boswell as a man of "singular awareness" caught between "diffidence and bounce," whose "total unlikeness" to others earned him the tolerance of the great men he pursued through Germany and Switzerland.
Praises the continuation of Boswell’s self-revealing writing, even in the absence of the formal journal (which is currently lost). The text is compiled from letters and essays, showing Boswell's struggle to maintain resolutions of frugality and studiousness. The review notes the change from the "wayward theatrical enchantress Louisa" to the "loveliest of Boswellian bluestockings, Zélide."
Hartley highlights Pottle's skill in reconstructing the lost 1763–64 journal from memoranda and themes. He describes Boswell's Dutch residence as a "prolonged morning after the night before," marked by a "tremendous act of will" to remain decorous. Hartley focuses on the "Benedick and Beatrice relationship" with Zélide, noting Boswell's "persistent arrogance." He finds the "spontaneously" written memoranda particularly revealing, allowing readers to eavesdrop on the author "talking to himself in dishabille."
Shepperson explores Boswell’s insatiable interest in human conduct, particularly his own singular being. He describes Boswell as a scientist in self-analysis who lived a triple life as actor, self-observer, and observer of others’ perceptions. Shepperson details Boswell's social dexterity in securing interviews with Voltaire and Rousseau while noting his major failure in pursuing Frederick the Great. He concludes that Boswell’s early subtlety and finesse mark his maturation as the incomparable interlocutor of Johnson.
Mortimer reviews Margery Bailey's edition of seventy essays written by Boswell for the London Magazine between 1777 and 1783. He observes that while Boswell's genius typically lies in "recollecting and staging dialogue," these essays reveal his views through "distinguished prose" and "characteristically candid" self-revelations. Mortimer notes Boswell often "disagreed with Johnson" on points of rational modesty. He finds the work illuminates an "idiosyncratic mind" despite the nineteenth century's failure to value these specific contributions.
Mortimer examines the second instalment of the Boswell Papers, focusing on the mosaic of the Utrecht period. He notes Boswell's exorbitance of his candour and the manic-depressive nature of his double personality. The text contrasts the work of art found in the Life of Johnson with the unshaped material of Boswell's autobiographical journals. Mortimer emphasizes Boswell’s appetite for self-dramatisation and his use of the journal as a confessional to avoid psychological collapse.
Cecil's largely positive review of Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764 describes the reconstruction of Boswell's Dutch sojourn following the loss of the original journal. Cecil notes that Pottle uses a "heterogeneous mixture" of correspondence and "strange telegraphic" notes to reveal Boswell's attempts at self-discipline under the influence of Johnson. The review highlights Boswell's struggle to attain a "fixed and consistent character" while battling melancholia and navigating a complex relationship with the "brilliant, cold" Zélide. Cecil concludes that despite the fragmentary nature of the records, the work successfully captures the same "extraordinary and fascinating phenomenon" seen in the London journals.
Irving reviews Boswell’s experiences in Germany and Switzerland, characterizing the tour as a 'delectable sight' of a Scottish Baron at large. The text follows Boswell as he seeks the attention of Frederick of Prussia and visits Rousseau and Voltaire. Irving highlights a specific scene of Boswell flat on his belly on the tomb of Melanchthon writing to Johnson. He concludes that Boswell’s journal is a 'rich treasure' of sublime egoism that offers diagnostic interest into the man.
The fifth volume of the Yale Edition of the Private Papers features "waste-paper basket material"—rough notes, fragments, and letters—which editors Brady and Pottle organized into a handsome volume. This record of Boswell’s Grand Tour through Italy, Corsica, and France depicts him having "no business nor settled way of employing time." While the reviewer praises the "superb" editing, the material is labeled "small beer" that lacks the vitality of the London Journal or the climax of the Voltaire interviews. The text highlights the reprinted Corsican journal and mentions the "extraordinary episode" of Boswell's affair with Rousseau's mistress, Thérèse Le Vasseur; however, the climax is missing because twelve pages of the original manuscript were destroyed. The volume includes Johnson's "noble and merited tribute" to the Corsican journal as a narrative by which "curiosity is better excited or better gratified," a reminder of better material found elsewhere.
Chapman reviews a reprint of seventy essays Boswell published under the pseudonym "The Hypochondriack." He challenges the lack of an index and the quality of abridged notes in this edition. While the essays demonstrate Boswell's capacity for "sustained effort" and an "independent and vigorous mind," Chapman argues they cannot be placed in the "same class with his private record" or the Life of Johnson. He concludes the essays throw significant light on Boswell's character as both author and man.
The third Yale volume chronicles Boswell's final stages of travel, exhibiting his self-described "superhuman gusto" for life. In Italy, he pursued language study and lovemaking, his impetuous advances often rebuffed. His journal details philosophizing and cultivating friendships. The book's greatest coup is his six-week visit to Corsica, gaining the friendship of General Paoli and material for a popular book, thereby "jumping into the middle of life." The reconstructed "Reprehensible Passage" detailing his journey with Rousseau's mistress adds depth to the portrait.
Krutch’s approving review of the fourth volume of the Yale "reading edition" of the Boswell Papers, edited by Frederick A. Pottle, focuses on Boswell’s 1764 travels through Germany and Switzerland. Krutch observes that Boswell’s accounts of encounters with Rousseau and Voltaire represent a "high point" of the papers, even though they lack the expansion found in the Life of Johnson. The review highlights Boswell’s "mania for discussing his own misdeeds" and his use of Johnson’s reputation to navigate continental society. Krutch concludes that these private papers disprove Macaulay’s "silly paradox" by showing Boswell had recognized his special talent and pondered his verbal portrait method long before his success in London.
Clifford's enthusiastic review examines the reconstruction of Boswell's lost Dutch journal through surviving daily memoranda, French themes, and correspondence. Clifford notes that under the influence of Johnson and a desire to please his father, Boswell attempted a "heroic effort" to be "modest, studious, frugal, reserved and chaste." The review praises Pottle's "skillful" editorial weaving of manuscripts into a continuous narrative. Clifford emphasizes the "pure high comedy" of Boswell's "rapier-like fencing with words" during his flirtations with Mme. Geelvinck and Zelide. He concludes that the book reveals a "very serious moral struggle" where recurring melancholy stems from the "conflict of his will and his passions."
Nicolson's enthusiastic review praises Moray McLaren’s The Highland Jaunt as a "worthy companion" to Boswell’s original journal. Nicolson commends McLaren for retracing the 1773 route on horseback and for using "oatmeal words" to provide an authentic Scottish "tang." The review highlights McLaren’s insight into the "humane melancholy" of Johnson and the "genius" of Boswell, noting that the work successfully balances the comedy of their travels with the "solemn beauty" of a vanishing Highland culture. Nicolson particularly appreciates McLaren’s sympathetic judgment of Boswell’s vanity as a "necessary stimulant" and his portrayal of Johnson’s "sympathetic intuition" toward a race vanquished and dispossessed.
Abbott examines the maturation of Boswell’s journal-keeping during his continental travels. He emphasizes Boswell’s uninhibited curiosity, his ease in engaging with the great, and his pursuit of sexual adventures in Italy. The narrative follows Boswell from Rome to his famed meeting with Paoli in Corsica. Abbott praises the editors for their skillful marshalling of diverse materials, including letters and memoranda, to elucidate Boswell’s character.
Pottle's edition of Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764, the second Yale volume, compiles Boswell's fascinating notes, themes, letters, and dialogues from his civil law studies at Utrecht. It details his maniac melancholy upon arrival, his recovery influenced by Johnson's essays and an "Inviolable Plan" for conduct, and his complex interactions with Belle de Zuylen (Zélide). The collection includes an attractive letter from his father and a jubilant entry following a letter from Johnson. The work closes with Boswell leaving for Berlin, having found Zélide an object of interest.
Baker explores Boswell’s 1764 tour of Germany and Switzerland, characterizing him as one of the ablest eyewitnesses who reports all and invents nothing. He highlights Pottle’s editorial work in tracing Boswell’s transition to full maturity while battling a Werther-like Weltschmerz. Baker emphasizes Boswell’s social aplomb in securing interviews with Rousseau and Voltaire, serving as a conversational catalyst. Though noting some diffuse German chapters, Baker finds the Swiss encounters close to the level of pricelessness.
Rolo’s enthusiastic review of Boswell in Holland describes the young Scotsman’s struggle to "live up to his father's stern ideas and the moral precepts of Dr. Johnson." The review identifies the book as an "admirable replacement" for the lost 1763-1764 journal, compiled by Frederick Pottle from memoranda and correspondence. Rolo describes Boswell as "priggish," coping with "fits of the blues" by writing copious "good resolutions" and "meticulous" daily plans. The reviewer presents Boswell’s relationship with "Zélide" and his correspondence with her as "one of the oddest series of love letters ever written." Rolo concludes that this "unretouched" self-portrait adds a "fascinating new dimension" to the diarist's legacy, even if it lacks the "literary quality" of the London Journal.
Altick's mixed review of the Pottle edition of Boswell’s Dutch journals finds the record of a "reformed debauchee" less engaging than the profligate "London Journal." The volume reconstructs Boswell's 1763–1764 residence in Utrecht through letters and memoranda, documenting his struggle with severe "hypochondria" and his "ferocious devotion" to a regimen of self-improvement. Altick notes that while the book lacks the presence of Johnson and the scandalous charm of Louisa, it offers a "delight to watch" in Boswell’s cautious, "serio-comic" pursuit of Belle de Zuylen. Though praising Pottle’s editorial skill in splicing fragmented sources, Altick argues the volume "rides low in the water" due to excessive trivia and suggests more "drastic cutting" was necessary to sustain the interest of the common reader.
McLaren retraces the 1773 tour of the Highlands and Hebrides by Johnson and Boswell. McLaren is praised for his intimate knowledge of the travelers and for providing a background that illuminates their own accounts, Journey to the Western Islands and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The book is described as a contemplation of the travelers and the changing human values of the Highlands, written in a stately and beautiful prose, with vivid descriptions of places like the island of Coll. The author notes the abundance of Boswellian revelations from the newly discovered journals and the possibility of a general boredom with Boswell's personality, suggesting McLaren's book is an ideal modern companion to the masterpieces.
Morley provides an approving review of "Boswell in Holland," the second volume of the Yale trade edition, which depicts a "reformed Boswell" who, inspired by Johnson, adhered to his "Inviolable Plan" and studied law six hours a day. This reformed persona makes the day-by-day account "prodigiously dull" and lacks the "pornography" and "tensions" that made the London Journal popular. Morley describes Pottle's "masterly compilation" of "bits and pieces" from a waste-paper basket, as Boswell's actual Dutch journal was lost. The review highlights Boswell's correspondence with Belle de Zuylen, or Zélide, where he unsuccessfully attempts to speak "in the manner of the Great Cham." While the correspondence with Zélide is overrated, her retort, when Boswell adopted Johnson's manner, is amusing. The review asks the nagging question: "Is the world to have too much of Boswell?"
Hutchens's approving review of James L. Clifford's "Young Sam Johnson" explores Johnson's life up to age forty. The biography depicts Johnson as a "gangling boy," provincial teacher, and "London hack" struggling with poverty, morbid fears, and a sense of guilt over his brother Nathaniel. Hutchens observes that Clifford uses Boswell's notes and other early records to provide details unknown to Boswell, including an instance of Johnson's intoxication. The review emphasizes that while Johnson was a "kind Tory," his dislike of Whiggery was rooted in its "vagueness" rather than its benevolence.
Tracy reviews Jean H. Hagstrum's systemic exploration of Johnsonian critical frameworks. Tracy underscores Hagstrum's demonstration that Johnson acted not as an unyielding dogmatist but as a psychological critic notable for his freedom from preconceptions and healthy common sense. The review emphasizes Johnson's concern with literary communication, validating his reliance on the common reader over modern formalist strategies that isolate poems from historical context. Tracy commends Hagstrum's practice of using Johnson's Dictionary to eliminate lexical ambiguity when defining critical terms. However, Tracy objects that Hagstrum fails to transform his convictions into a creative faith or explicitly champion Johnson's title as a great critic. The review notes that while the work offers an excellent elucidation of facts to comfort dedicated Johnsonians, it will not win over the unconverted.
Halsband reviews Charles Norman's Mr. Oddity: Samuel Johnson, LL.D., noting the text's intelligence, reliable sources, and clean style, but finds it fails to deepen understanding of the subject. Norman’s work sketches Johnson's life, from his humble beginnings to his social and intellectual eminence, as a classic "Horatio Alger myth" with tragicomic counterpoint. Halsband notes that the biography, which reads like a "superior book for superior juveniles," should be followed by the works of Boswell or Joseph Wood Krutch to fully appreciate Johnson's "dynamic intellect" and moral sincerity.
Johnson's prose style, though not yet mature, already contained the Ramblers' hallmarks: parallelism, antithesis, and philosophic diction. Johnson tried to be factual despite scant materials, showing interest in individual and public morality over party rivalry, without a Tory bias. An editor must return to Gentleman's Magazine for the text.
Clifford provides a scholarly reconstruction of Johnson’s life from his birth in 1709 to the 1749 publication of The Vanity of Human Wishes. The account details Johnson's early physical disabilities, the influence of his bookseller father, and his intellectual development under the guidance of Cornelius Ford and Gilbert Walmesley. Clifford uses local records and family histories to clarify the enigma of Johnson’s brother, Nathaniel, and the circumstances of his marriage to Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter. While the reviewer questions Clifford’s high estimation of Johnson’s early hackwork for The Gentleman’s Magazine, the biography is commended for its vivid perspective on Johnson's bitter apprenticeship to letters and his struggle against poverty.
Saunders’s review of Jean H. Hagstrum's study describes the work as the first comprehensive examination of Johnson’s literary and critical canons. The review notes that Hagstrum relates Johnson’s criticisms to his massive common-sense and his rebellion against neo-classical dicta. Saunders highlights the book's success in connecting Johnson’s beliefs to the broader history of criticism from the Greeks to the present. Although the review mentions that the inductive approach sometimes makes comprehension difficult due to excessive qualifications, Saunders praises the specific chapters on nature, wit, and the pathetic as outstanding contributions to the field.
Wilcox’s review of Walter Jackson Bate’s monograph describes the book as a compact and illuminating revelation of Johnson’s philosophical and psychological depth. The review notes that Bate unifies Johnson’s observations to present him in the round as a wise and fascinating personality. Wilcox emphasizes that the study complements Johnson’s well-known reputation as a writer and talker by highlighting the wholeness of his thought. The reviewer identifies the work as a successful effort to illuminate a formidable thinker whose aphorisms stand as the finest in the English language.
The author demonstrates deep knowledge of Italian intellectual circles but a less thorough understanding of Johnson and his Literary Club. The study details the friendship between Johnson and the cosmopolitan Baretti, from their 1753 meeting until their quarrel in 1784. Johnson held a strong admiration for Italy. The reviewer regrets that the author, despite sufficient material, including three of Johnson's letters to Baretti, failed to offer a compelling synthesis of their relationship.
Krutch includes Clifford’s Young Sam Johnson among his selections for the year's best books. Baker also lists Clifford’s work as a preferred title. This compilation of lists by various contributors identifies repeaters such as Clifford’s biography as "a remarkably broad guide to the best expressions of the events, ideas and insights of our day."
Chapman reviews Clifford's Young Samuel Johnson, noting that the biography artfully compiles recently discovered evidence to address the gap in Boswell's Life, which primarily focuses on Johnson as an older man. Boswell and earlier biographers knew little of Johnson before his fame at age forty-six, as much evidence for those early years (before 1750) has only recently been found—notably in the Malahide archives and Boswell's suppressed Tacenda notes. Clifford uses these newly available materials, including fragments of early diaries and letters unknown to Boswell, along with Piozzi's Anecdotes, Hawkins's Life, and Reade's extensive Gleanings, to trace the rudiments of Johnson's later character in his chequered career as a schoolboy, undergraduate, and schoolmaster. Chapman praises the book's industry and accuracy, finding the portrait consistent with the older man known to history and creating a complete "Flemish picture" of the great scholar from his youth.
In this largely positive review of the three-volume correspondence edited by R. W. Chapman, Clarence Tracy outlines the complex epistolary habits of Johnson. Tracy highlights an anomaly in Johnson's personality: despite a longing for friendship, Johnson relied little on letters, often writing out of a sense of duty, and he ordered his correspondence burned at the end of his life. Tracy notes that the collection reveals Johnson's humanity and deep interest in people better than his public writings. While observing that wartime editorial conditions and sequential discoveries of the Boswell papers caused some disorder, Tracy lauds Chapman's comprehensive collection of 1515 letters, corrected texts, and cross-references as an achievement of the highest quality.
Sledd and Kolb analyze the bicentenary of the 1755 publication of the Dictionary, examining its history, quality, influence, and evolution through two manuscripts recently acquired by Hyde: an early 1746 draft and a copy of the expanded "Plan." The authors use these documents to challenge "strange and shocking doctrines" regarding Johnson's relations with Chesterfield. While one analysis suggests Johnson recognized Chesterfield's generosity despite the "celebrated letter," the distinction between the manuscripts shows Johnson’s later claim of being "repulsed from your door" was accurate. The text defends Johnson's lexicographical innovations, specifically his definitions and use of quotations to reflect the "best usage of his time." Sledd and Kolb conclude that Johnson’s achievement remains unsurpassed by nineteenth-century rivals, noting his predominance caused subsequent lexicographers to focus on specialized inquiries.
Irving explores Clifford’s account of Johnson as a 'prentice journalist' struggling against the 'maelstrom' of Grub Street. The review emphasizes Johnson’s strength of character and learning, which allowed his 'worth' to rise despite the depressions of poverty. Irving notes that without the Dictionary project, Johnson’s powerful mind might have been 'frittered away' on unattached trivia. He concludes that the book successfully chronicles the uncertainties and discouragements that preceded Johnson's great works of criticism.
Johnsonian Gleanings, Part XI: Consolidated Index
Chapman reviews Reade's consolidated index to the ten parts of Johnsonian Gleanings. He characterizes Reade as an "austere practitioner of scientific biography" whose selfless labors resolved the difficulty of navigating multiple indexes. The volume proves most valuable for identifying minor figures in Johnson's Lichfield circle, including nearly fifty individuals named Johnson. Chapman suggests the index serves as an "invaluable key" to the massed information produced by Reade's patient assiduity.
Tracy reviews McAdam's study, emphasizing the discovery that Johnson significantly assisted Robert Chambers with his Oxford Vinerian lectures on law starting in 1767. Tracy notes that while Boswell highlighted Johnson's legal interest, readers historically dismissed it as eccentricity. McAdam alters this perspective by isolating Johnsonian passages from Chambers's manuscripts, which focus on general legal principles, morals, and constitutional concepts. Tracy argues that this evidence tracks Johnson's movement away from early radical discontents toward constitutional Toryism, concluding that the law rather than religion shaped his political identity. Tracy praises the work as an important book that contributes the largest share to the knowledge of Johnson's middle years published in a long while, despite an unwieldy organization that buries key insights under detail.
Halsband praises Hagstrum's clarification of Johnson’s critical methodology, acknowledging that Johnson never presented a unified theoretical system of criticism. Hagstrum topicalizes Johnson’s pivotal concepts, such as nature, pleasure, and wit, within his applied, practical criticism. The study emphasizes the empirical approach and layman's view of art in Johnson's criticism, asserting Hagstrum's success in comprehensively defining Johnson's precepts and practices without critical jargon.
The reviewer examines Hoover’s analysis of Johnson’s Debates in the Senate of Lilliput, praising the establishment of Johnson as an imaginative author rather than a literal reporter. Hoover compares the Gentleman’s Magazine texts with contemporary accounts, concluding that Johnson transformed surreptitious, fragmented notes into balanced "moral essays." While the reviewer notes that specific authenticities remain inconclusive, Hoover provides an indispensable guide for historians regarding Johnson's creative methods.
Joyce's short book attempts to depict the whole of Johnson, drawing on established sources. Rejecting the view that Johnson's writings are neglected, Joyce ranks Johnson's talk and personality higher. He praises the Life of Savage and the best Ramblers, but dismisses Rasselas as dull and finds fault with the Lives of the Poets.
Chapman delivers a scathing review of Norman's Mr. Samuel Johnson, challenging it as an "unnecessary book" and an inaccurate anthology of quotations and anecdotes marred by "too many mistakes." He points out specific factual errors, such as misidentifying the King's librarian, and misquotations, including Johnson's use of "axle." Chapman disputes Norman's claim that Johnson’s survival is not entirely due to Boswell, calling the sequel to that assertion "depressing" and noting the book fails to substantiate this central claim. The review criticizes the "clumsy arrangement of anecdotes," the lack of references, and the "grossly inaccurate bibliography" of Johnson's major works. Chapman notes that Norman fails to mention The Adventurer and dismisses A Journey to the Western Islands as "not a remarkable composition." The review concludes that while the book may stimulate curiosity, its shallow treatment offers a "travesty of Johnson as a writer."
Irving labels Hagstrum’s study of Johnson a courageous effort to address a subject often resistant to sane interpretation. Irving supports the thesis that Johnson’s mind is "tentative and skeptical" and his critical method "fundamentally Lockean and empirical" rather than a mere collection of "judicial pontifications." Johnson held that criticism lacked the stability of an "established intellectual discipline," necessitating the "accumulation of specific data" through the examination of individual works. While Irving acknowledges that Johnson’s thought occasionally suffered distortion or inconsistencies when reacting to disliked opinions, Irving finds Hagstrum "most illuminating" regarding Johnson’s theories on literary pleasure and wit.
Winslow’s enthusiastic review presents Clifford’s biography as a "landmark in eighteenth-century literary studies" and an essential prologue to Boswell. The work uses extensive research to recover lost details of Johnson’s early life, from his Midlands upbringing to his 1749 emergence as a professional author with The Vanity of Human Wishes. Winslow notes Clifford’s success in correcting misconceptions regarding Johnson’s poverty at Oxford and his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. The review highlights Clifford’s discussion of Johnson’s "Debates in the Senate of Lilliput," noting that while they lack "oratorical quality," they represent a milestone in Johnson’s intellectual maturation. Winslow concludes that Clifford provides a factual, non-psychological interpretation that reveals the man before he became Boswell's "glorious subject."
Bronson assesses R. W. Chapman’s three-volume edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson, arguing that the collection reveals the private Johnson often obscured by Boswell's focus on his conversational prowess. Reading the letters separately, especially the substantial correspondence with Hester Thrale, showcases Johnson's mastery of compliment and the central importance of Thrale to his emotional life. Chapman’s editorial work augments the collection with five hundred letters and includes the genuine letters of Thrale to Johnson, offering a truer picture of their two-decade-long friendship.
Krutch's enthusiastic review of Chapman’s three-volume edition of Johnson’s letters praises the establishment of an "authoritative text" freed from "impertinent commas" and "careless" previous transcriptions. Krutch argues these volumes redress the balance against "Boswelliana" by showing Johnson "standing on his own feet." The collection includes 1,515 items, featuring 472 previously unpublished or uncollected letters. Krutch emphasizes Johnson’s stylistic adaptability, noting he speaks with "avuncular tenderness" to Hester Thrale and "conversational lightness" to her mother. The review disputes the "pompous" stereotype, finding instead "dignity, strength, courage and manliness" in Johnson's sincere, non-literary correspondence.
Hutchens's review examines Boswell's life as an Edinburgh lawyer and husband. The reviewer notes that while Boswell initially attempted to be "exemplary," he eventually returned to his "old ways" involving gaming and drinking. The volume covers Boswell's legal defense of criminal underdogs and his 1772 visit to London to see Johnson. Hutchens highlights the "incomparable artistry and candor" of the journals and notes that many entries were later adapted for the Life of Johnson, though sometimes edited to spare friends like Dr. Burney from public humiliation.
Pritchett reviews Boswell for the Defence, praising the latest volume of the Yale edition for its eventful revision of Boswell's life and finding it close in standard to the London Journal. Boswell, now married and a lawyer in Edinburgh, turns from hero-worshipper to "villain-worshipper" as he zealously takes on hopeless criminal cases and struggles against the Scottish bench. The volume focuses on the case of John Reid, a sheep-stealer, where Boswell's frantic human-interest reporting, morbid curiosity, and self-destructive behavior are fully displayed. Pritchett highlights Boswell’s actor's gift for reporting, noting how he capitalized on his own fear of death during Reid's execution and asserting that Boswell writes best when driven by his own unstable, extreme emotions. The review also covers more genial London scenes, including Boswell's observation of Burke's oratory. Pritchett concludes that Boswell's fluid personality was held together by an inveterate Scottish conscience and a phenomenal will to find an ideal hero.
The review introduces Hesketh Pearson's dual biography, a welcome change from studies focusing on Samuel Johnson or James Boswell individually. Given the thirty-one-year age difference, the book dedicates its first nine chapters to Johnson alone, culminating in a portrait of the man before addressing their joint story. This combined approach presents an interesting study of the two inseparable literary figures.
Quennell reviews the sixth volume of the Yale Edition, which covers Boswell's life and pursuit of a wife from 1766 to 1769. The text details Boswell's various romantic entanglements—including the gardener's daughter at Auchinleck, Mrs. Dodds, and 'La belle Irlandaise'—before he finally chooses his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. Quennell emphasizes that the volume functions as a comprehensive autobiographical record, depicting Boswell as a diligent barrister and a devoted friend to Johnson, while noting that the candid self-portrait remains a 'passionate devotion to Truth.'
Norman reviews The Search for Good Sense by Lucas, which profiles Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell, and Goldsmith as personalities rather than for their writings, viewing them through a modern lens. Johnson is the major exhibit, presented as a person far more virile than his writings, with his conversational magnificence and talk surpassing his prose in style and matter. Lucas captures Johnson's rich magnificence, including his Bear-like habits, his virtues and faults, and his violent oscillations between gaiety and gloom during a lifelong struggle for sanity. Chesterfield, the second exhibit, is portrayed cynically as a cold, self-satisfied man whose letters to his son are unlovable. Goldsmith's grace and humor are defended, rescuing him from charges of over-sweetness. Boswell is depicted as the "people's darling" who, despite his vanities and "journalizing," skillfully recorded conversations. Lucas uses these figures to contrast the Age of Reason with the present "demented period," and the entertaining essays emphasize the superiority of reason over enthusiasm.
Abbott reviews Wimsatt and Pottle’s volume, which compiles journals, letters, and legal documents to illustrate Boswell’s life as a husband and Edinburgh advocate. The account emphasizes Boswell’s struggle with parochial Scottish society, his recurring alcoholism, and his restorative visits to London to see Johnson. Abbott focuses on the 1774 capital trial of John Reid, noting Boswell’s obsessive, bizarre efforts to save the sheep-stealer from execution. The reviewer commends the composite editorial approach for providing a comprehensive view of Boswell’s professional and domestic complexities.
Congleton examines Boswell during his 'marvelous years' as he balances a burgeoning legal career with a chaotic personal life. The text documents Boswell 'blending philosophy with raking,' detailing his pursuit of various women alongside his frequent visits to bawdy-houses and struggles with venereal disease. Congleton notes that Johnson accurately viewed Boswell as his own 'tormentor.' The review praises the editors for providing coherence to materials from seventeen sources, though it identifies the volume as expendable for non-specialists.
Ferguson notes the journals tend to lapse at interesting moments. He praises the Johnsonian portions as perennially good reading, but finds the rest monotonous in large doses. Ferguson criticizes the editorial policy, arguing the hard-core readers are annoyed by reprinted material and general readers will be "overawed" by the bulk.
Lucas's The Search for Good Sense analyzes four eighteenth-century figures—Johnson, Boswell, Lord Chesterfield, and Oliver Goldsmith—as gallant seekers after reason, not as reasonable men. Johnson and Boswell are portrayed as struggling with passion and unreason, but striving for intellectual honesty and good sense in others. The reviewer notes that Lucas, a former Cambridge avant-gardist, favors Goldsmith for his astringent good sense, comparing him favorably to Jane Austen and modern novelists. Lucas acknowledges the era's self-sufficiency, concluding that its figures underestimated the difficulty of being rational.
Kolb analyzes Boswell's transition into a busy advocate and father in Edinburgh. He focuses on Boswell's emotional involvement in the case of John Reid, a client convicted of sheep-stealing, which reveals the author's macabre realism. Kolb notes that the editors fill chronological gaps with miscellaneous papers, sometimes creating an unbalanced view of Boswell's thirties. He questions if the massive scale of the Yale research edition might ask Boswell to carry more than he can bear.
Quennell praises Lucas's portrait of Walpole for highlighting his roles as social historian and artist, contrasting this with nineteenth-century views of his frivolity. Quennell notes the successful depiction of Hume’s secular resignation, which distressed Boswell. However, Quennell identifies weaknesses in the treatment of Burke and Franklin. Quennell criticizes the conversational style as disjointed and finds the inclusion of lengthy, unpruned digressions excessive.
The reviewer disputes Boswell’s ability to command 'the attention of posterity by his own powers,' characterizing him as a seeker who 'captured Doctor Johnson' to ensure his own survival. While acknowledging the 'tedious' nature of Boswell’s personal vices, the reviewer credits him with a 'tremendous gift' for presenting compelling figures. This edition of the private papers provides 'recovered pages from Boswell’s full journal' used for the Life of Johnson, including Boswell’s entry into the Literary Club and the death of Goldsmith. The reviewer highlights the narrative of John Reid, the sheep-stealer, as the volume’s dominant feature, noting that the tragedy forces Boswell to 'heights of descriptive power.' Despite a 'reaction against Boswell' and a revival of interest in Hawkins, the reviewer concludes that Boswell’s luck in attaching himself to fascinating subjects remains his sustaining feature.
Halsband explores Boswell's burgeoning reputation as an autobiographer, emerging through the Yale edition of his journals and letters. During the period between 1766 and 1769, Boswell establishes his legal practice in Edinburgh while pursuing literary notoriety through his account of Corsica. Despite Johnson advising him to "mind your own affairs," Boswell maintains his campaign for Corsican independence and renews his friendship with Johnson in London. The text highlights Boswell's "rare gift of looking fearlessly into his own heart" and his deliberate artistry in recording personal sentiments. Halsband notes Boswell's struggle for self-control alongside his continued role as a "man of pleasure," particularly during his appearance at the Shakespeare Jubilee.
This volume constitutes the third installment of Boswell’s Grand Tour journals, spanning 1765–1766. Editors Brady and Pottle arrange various documents—journals, notes, letters, and An Account of Corsica—chronologically and skillfully. The text reveals Boswell's maturing from an apprenticeship, yet shows his characteristic egocentrism, hypochondria, and need to venerate a great man. The period covers his relationships with Rousseau, Wilkes, and his enchantment with Paoli, whom he curiously links to Johnson, marking a capital phase in his formation.
Pritchett reviews Boswell in Search of a Wife, a compilation of material from 1766 to 1769 that includes old and new material from the Journals and letters to Temple, featuring Temple’s replies and notes on Johnson conversations. The review highlights Boswell's burgeoning maturity alongside his "laborious, self-improving" nature, though Pritchett argues he remains absurd, with recurring lapses into drunkenness and "fatuitous" passions. Boswell's vivid self-dramatization is seen as arising from a non-egoistic curiosity about human nature and the valuing of "the colourings of fancy," despite his prophetic realization that a "perfect account" of a single day is impossible due to those fleeting impressions. The marriage to his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, achieved through long friendship and her "tolerant, candid affection," demonstrates a capacity for serious love unexpected from his earlier journals and served to stabilize him. Pritchett finds Boswell's "constitutional meanness" regarding money a significant character flaw redeemed by his profound seriousness as a writer.
Roberts assembles ten papers, including five focused on Johnson and a comparative study of Pepys and Boswell. The reviewer praises Roberts’s flair for unfamiliar approaches and graceful exposition. Specifically addressed are Johnson’s roles as moralist, churchman, and biographer, alongside an analysis of his rarely discussed fairy tale, 'The Fountains'. The reviewer finds the collection agreeable and enlightening, noting that the volume maintains the sound taste characteristic of the Cambridge University Press.
This mixed review of Sherbo’s monograph finds the work "less satisfactory" than the author's previous scholarship. The reviewer disputes the "misleading" title, noting that Sherbo focuses only on narrow aspects of Johnson’s editorial work rather than the whole. While praising the "careful and detailed" attribution of translations in The Adventurer, the reviewer describes the central chapter on critical vocabulary as an "anticlimax" that sheds little "new" light. The reviewer concludes that Sherbo is "more at home with the trees than with the wood," lacking the "larger view" necessary to assess the Preface to Shakespeare.
The contributions vary, including tracing parallels between Rasselas and Candide (Clifford), Vathek (Mahmoud), and Zudig (Willard). The book also features a geographical dissertation on Rasselas's journey to Cairo (Goodyear), a discussion of the frontispiece of the first American edition (Metzdorf), and an essay on Knight's continuation, Dinarbas (Rawson).
Bloom’s Samuel Johnson in Grub Street is a "painstaking and exhaustive survey" of Johnson’s journalistic career, arranged by genre—periodicals, reviews, and essays—rather than chronologically. Chapman notes the arrangement presents a drawback by requiring readers to pass the parliamentary Debates before reaching the Rambler. The work covers Johnson's contributions to The Gentleman's Magazine, including his writings on piracy and the freedom of the press. Johnson's poem on Levet is admitted because it was first printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, though the reviewer challenges Bloom’s claim that the poem is "more about Johnson than Levet." The review also disputes Bloom’s "strange divagation" of attributing "profligate habits" to Johnson and Goldsmith.
Voitle's book is a valuable and readable study that examines Johnson as the "first moralist of his age" in the context of eighteenth-century ideas. The book focuses on Johnson's rationalism and his opposition to contemporary moral and religious extremes. Voitle concludes that Johnson's disregard for theoretical consistency and his continual adaptation of moral notions to human reality earned him the title of the age's leading moralist.
Plumb reviews Donald J. Greene’s The Politics of Samuel Johnson, calling it vigorous and dogmatic. Greene’s book examines Johnson's political statements throughout his life, challenging the accepted view of him as a die-hard, corruptible Tory. Greene demonstrates that Johnson, though politically conservative, maintained a socially radical attitude, evidenced by his detestation of slavery and disapproval of the treatment of American Indians. Plumb finds the book exciting, arguing that Greene explodes the myth of Johnson as the arch reactionary and gives Johnsonian studies a new dimension.
Collins analyzes Roberts's biographical essays, noting that one-third of the volume focuses on Johnson. Collins praises the "excellent illustration" of Johnson's ethical wisdom but finds the "Biographer" essay disappointing. The text disputes Roberts's claim that Boswell's private papers were intended for total publication, citing a discovered codicil where Boswell warns Malone not to "divulge anything... which ought to be concealed." Collins further identifies numerous transcription errors and inconsistent punctuation in Roberts's quotations.
The review explains that the volume draws from sixteen sources, including a diary from Malahide Castle running from 1705 to 1784. Krutch notes that the text reveals Johnson's "troubled mental and physical health" and "masochistic fantasies," contrasting his "cryptic jottings" with Boswell's "revealing gossip." He commends the editorial narrative for expanding the "crabbed notes" and clarifies Johnson’s use of the word "conversion" as a change from "reprobation to grace" rather than a deathbed Methodist turn.
Humphreys describes Roberts’s collection of biographical essays as companionable and lucid, though lacking in critical novelty. He observes that the studies focus on Johnson’s discourse and biographical methods but barely touch the Lives of the Poets. While appreciating the pleasant accounts of Gray and Boswell, Humphreys finds the critical commentary perfunctory and the treatment of Johnson’s Shakespeare "bookish" rather than theatrical.
Robson finds this 250th-birthday commemorative collection "disappointingly marginal" and lacking a critical center. He highlights Lascelles’s study of Johnson’s Juvenalian imitations as the only contribution with significant depth, dismissing theoretical pieces by Bronson as "dull." While acknowledging the utility of Wimsatt’s work on the Dictionary, Robson argues the volume fails to demonstrate Johnson’s relevance as a great writer to the "intelligent reader," instead focusing on "odds and ends" and "dark hints" regarding his potential second marriage.
Thomas notes that Roberts places Johnson at the center of this collection, exploring his roles as moralist, churchman, and biographer. The reviewer highlights Roberts’s analysis of Johnson’s rigorous religious views, which eschewed "airy optimism" for a salvation earned through effort and lack of cant. Thomas praises the volume’s sympathetic insight and Roberts's ability to illuminate the commonplace while effortlessly transitioning between grave and gay subject matter.
Abbott examines the inaugural volume of the Yale Edition, which establishes a definitive text for Johnson's surviving autobiographical documents. The collection introduces the 1765–1784 diary from the Boswell Papers and includes the Welsh journal and Prayers and Meditations. Abbott describes the editorial policy of providing a continuous running commentary to identify persons and books. While praising the physical production, Abbott warns that the extensive use of parallel texts from Piozzi risks over-elaboration and excessive cost.
The Politics of Samuel Johnson is an ambitious and respectable work, the first to consider Johnson in relation to the eighteenth-century political structure as established by Namier. Greene highlights Johnson's affinity with the independent country gentleman and his distaste for professional "whigs." The book is a thoughtful, learned, and stimulating, though over-academic, study, which labels Johnson a "sceptical conservative" and suggests he was a powerful propagator of democracy.
Bloom notes that this anthology, though comprising essays mostly published before, testifies to Johnson’s increasing vitality and hints at a long, fruitful course for Johnsonian studies. The editor, Hilles, is credited with judiciously selecting pieces, resulting in a generally high level of accomplishment. The volume is deemed permanently available in a single volume for containing several distinguished essays, such as those by Bronson, Abrams, and Pottle. However, Bloom notes the disparity of style and depth and that the interest provided is not necessarily always significant.
Lask enthusiastically reviews the first installment of Frederick Pottle's biography, James Boswell: The Earlier Years 1740–1769. He argues that Pottle's work "crowns a remarkable reversal" in Boswell's reputation, moving him from a mere "satellite" of Johnson to a figure of immense psychological interest. Lask maintains that a full-length biography remains necessary to "marshall" the vast archives discovered at Malahide and Fettercairn into a coherent portrait. He praises Pottle for acting as a "helpful Cicerone," clarifying legal nuances of Boswell's brief Catholic conversion and contextualizing his Corsican adventures. Lask concludes that Pottle successfully preserves the "essentially Boswell" while maintaining scholarly scale.
Carswell says the title is a misnomer since Boswell's political career never took place, violating one of Namier's celebrated theses. Brady details Boswell's desperate, lifelong ambition to gain a seat in the House of Commons, despite being politically unsuitable and holding contradictory views, as evidenced by his opposition to the American war while calling himself a Tory. Boswell's efforts with numerous patrons, including Lonsdale, were met with unanimous refusal. Carswell concludes that Brady successfully chronicles this failure, which was partly motivated by Boswell's jealousy of his contemporary, Henry Dundas.
Boulton notes Brady's book shrewdly organizes material to prove the centrality of Boswell's lifelong political ambitions, which reveal a failure of self-analysis. But the title is oddly chosen because Boswell never achieved a political "career," remaining on the outside edge of the political world.
Ross reviews Pottle's biography of Boswell, commending the author for synthesizing Boswell's voluminous journals and public life using the structural themes of Family, Law, and Authorship. The review notes the biography’s insightful portrayal of Boswell’s conflict with his father and his relationship with Johnson, while suggesting other potential father-surrogates like Hume and Kames deserved more attention. Ross praises the skillful narrative of Boswell's Grand Tour, his advocacy in the Douglas Cause, and his stylistic appeal to modern readers.
Mullett queries whether Brady's book is an instance of an article-worthy subject expanded unnecessarily. The review deems Boswell's political failure, his inability to secure a parliamentary seat, lacks sufficient general interest for lengthy examination. It characterizes Boswell as a temperamental "Tory with Whig principles" who unsuccessfully courted figures like Dundas and Lonsdale, concluding that his failure ultimately preserved his role as "The Biographer."
Hodgart reviews Pottle's exhaustive biography as monumental and terminal, noting that Boswell has begun to sink into a second death after the peak of the London Journal and urging that the sleeping Boswell be left alone. He praises Pottle's focus on Boswell's family pride, competence as an advocate, and legal expertise, showing he was a competent professional rather than a layabout, alongside his literary skill demonstrated in Corsica. However, Hodgart finds Pottle's portrait lacking, suggesting that Boswell's compulsive whoring and fascination with public executions point to an infantile and narcissistic personality; yet, he argues this very childishness drove his need to capture every fleeting moment. The review also praises the Yale-edited The Correspondence of James Boswell and John Johnston of Grange.
Trevor-Roper reviews the Yale edition of Boswell's journals covering 1774 to 1776, exploring Boswell's transformations as a "chameleon figure" oscillating between his life as a bored Edinburgh lawyer with a feudal identity and his persona as a "literary flibbertigibbet" in London. The review details Boswell's interactions with his moral oracle, Johnson, including their shared approval of college luxury and their mutual dislike of Adam Smith, whom Johnson viewed as a "dull dog" and a "most disagreeable fellow." Trevor-Roper describes Boswell's social maneuvering to arrange the meeting between Johnson and John Wilkes and notes his difficult relationship with his father and his wife, Margaret Boswell, who lacked "feudal enthusiasm" and disliked Johnson. The journal records Boswell and Johnson competitively insisting that Lady Macleod remain at Dunvegan Castle for the sake of feudal principles. Trevor-Roper notes that while the Scottish Enlightenment largely passed Boswell by, his devotion to the literary world of Reynolds and Garrick secured his immortality.
Greene summarizes the biography as a detailed and relentless account of Boswell's "depressing, squalid, and often farcical" attempts to enter politics, a career that failed miserably over thirty years. Boswell's ambition was merely to gain a respectable seat in Parliament to enhance his family's reputation, not for national service. He was consistently incompetent, always doing the wrong thing or acting ineptly. Brady judges his involvement in the Douglas case as demonstrating "Boswell's lack of restraint." Despite his failures, Boswell remained bewildered, believing his exclusion was an anomaly of the governmental system. Greene notes the contrast between Boswell's "romantic," or soft-boiled, conservatism and Johnson's "skeptical," or hard-boiled, conservatism, but agrees that Boswell's political attitudes were likely too superficial for serious theoretical analysis.
Edel reviews Pottle's Earlier Years, the first volume drawing on the Yale Boswell archive. The substantial work explores Boswell's character, detailing his cycles of self-indulgence, guilt, and self-punishment as psychological responses to a harsh Calvinist upbringing and fear of his father. Edel questions Pottle’s assertion that Boswell is the peer of Scott and Dickens in imaginative power. The book presents Boswell as a self-fashioning figure who pieced together his personality from the illustrious, becoming in life and letters a "precursor of press-agentry."
Littlejohn reviews Pottle’s biography of Boswell, focusing on the "absolute mania for veracity" and self-absorption that defined Boswell’s journals. He identifies the Journal, rather than the Life of Johnson, as Boswell’s primary creative achievement during his earlier years. Littlejohn praises Pottle’s analysis of Boswell’s "manic-depressive" personality but finds Pottle’s constant defensiveness against "ghostly" Boswell-haters and his intrusive biographical presence disturbing. The text explores Boswell’s dual identity as a rampantly athletic "wencher" and an ardent celebrity hunter.
Wimsatt and Pottle's volume covers five years, 1769-1774, including the "dull" happy years and the richer journals from 1772 onward. The book details Boswell’s renewed ambition in London, his election to The Club, and Johnson’s visit to Scotland in 1773. The material chronicles Boswell's resurging weaknesses—drinking, gambling, and misconduct—and his despair over the John Reid case. The editors are praised for the substantial introduction on Boswell’s modern virtues and for surrounding the journals with a wealth of documents, including a description of the 18th-century Scottish judiciary system.
Kingsmill reviews the newly discovered Malahide Castle manuscript of the Hebridean tour, describing it as an event of interest rivaled only by Pepys' Diary. He notes that the original journal is far more "vivid and amusing" than the familiar 1785 edition, which was sanitized by Malone to suit eighteenth-century taste. Kingsmill highlights restored details regarding Johnson’s "Rabelaisianism," Boswell’s religious fervour during storms, and the comic depiction of their host, Sir Alexander Macdonald. The reviewer asserts that the original text offers a less guarded and more immediate portrayal of both travelers.
Rea reviews Frank Brady’s account of Boswell’s unsuccessful attempts to secure a seat in the House of Commons. The review outlines Boswell’s failed pursuit of patronage from the Earl of Bute, Henry Dundas, and William Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale. Rea notes that Boswell lacked the wealth and social status necessary for success and "painfully swallowed his proud independence" in a futile effort to win a pocket-borough seat. While the review finds that Brady provides relatively little on Boswell’s views regarding major issues, it praises the "remarkable clarity" and "refreshingly unsentimental sympathy" with which the local complications and delays of Georgian politics are presented. Rea concludes that the work serves as an illuminating manual on the practical procedures of the unreformed political scene.
In this positive review, Cruttwell evaluates Pottle’s biography as an essential study that presents its subject primarily as an author. Cruttwell suggests a "useful fraud" by reading Boswell’s life as a picaresque novel to analyze the "unreliable narrator" created by the "novelist." He argues that Boswell’s low-pitched style and photographic rapidity of notation produce an effect analogous to the integrity of a novelist. The review highlights Boswell’s "remarkable battery of literary talents," including his gift for empathy and his "sinewy narrative drive." Cruttwell concludes that Pottle’s work justifies the massive scholarship at Yale by treating the subject as a "major genius in the art of writing."
Cochrane entry 601.
This first volume of the "Research Edition" of Boswell's archives provides an authoritative publication of the surviving correspondence between Boswell and John Johnston of Grange, spanning three decades. The review praises the superlative editorial scholarship, including faithful reproduction of texts, helpful headings, and rich footnotes. The correspondence offers information on Boswell's private life and his capacity for friendship with a man of radically different temperament, finding its value in the revelation of Boswell’s complex character and loyalty.
Pearson critiques the title The Ominous Years, arguing Boswell’s chronic behavioral patterns, including drunkenness, gambling, and domestic destruction, were predictable, not uniquely ominous. The volume exhibits Boswell as a living parody who exposes what others conceal, maintaining a consistent character despite dramatic shifts in emotion and activity. The work documents his tumultuous life in Edinburgh as an advocate, his perpetual financial and moral struggles, and his fleeting periods of virtuous intention.
Furbank reviews Pottle’s biography of Boswell’s early years, examining Boswell’s innovative "writing to the moment" as a debt to Richardson’s epistolary technique. The reviewer highlights Pottle’s argument that Boswell was a writer of genius prior to meeting Johnson and a successful lawyer despite his public eccentricities. Furbank explores the tension between Boswell’s everyday "foolishness" and his artistic originality, suggesting his mimicry and parasitism were essential to his pioneer work in intimate biography. The account commends Pottle’s rigorous organization of the extensive Yale papers as a masterly technical achievement in modern scholarship.
Boswell's Journal covers a period when he was deeply dependent on Johnson, whom he saw as his "great SUN." The journal reveals Boswell's almost perpetual worries about a duel, his father, drink (getting intoxicated at least three dozen times), gaming, religion, potential madness, and his promiscuity, which resulted in a bout of "venereal mischief." The Journal is a looking-glass for Boswell's struggles, with the Yale edition praised for its lively, thorough annotation and translations.
Speck describes Brady’s book as a 'meticulous and sober' analysis of Boswell’s unsuccessful attempts to enter the House of Commons. While acknowledging the author’s scholarly erudition and use of the Boswell papers at Yale, Speck argues that Boswell's 'woolly political thinking' barely constitutes a true career. The reviewer finds the volume overly detailed for general readers, maintaining the text retains the dense academic quality of the doctoral dissertation from which it originated.
Abbott highlights Boswell’s growth as a diarist, noting his integrity in self-portrayal and vivid economy in recording others. He details Boswell’s struggles with hypochondria, excessive drinking, and sexual obsessions. Abbott questions the editorial choice of "ominous" for these years, suggesting "decisive" instead. He identifies the accounts of Boswell's interaction with Johnson as the book's core, including a significant London tour.
Altick reviews the McGraw-Hill edition of Boswell’s "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett. He summarizes the "real-life odyssey" of the Boswell papers, suppressed by "strict Presbyterian heirs" before being recovered from Malahide Castle. Altick argues the 1773 tour was a "brilliant coup" for Boswell, who induced a reluctant Johnson to leave London. The review emphasizes that the "uncensored version" of the journal, first made public in 1936 and reprinted here, is "more intimate and graphic" than the 1785 publication. It highlights the inclusion of eighty pages of new appendices and a "topographical supplement" designed for those wishing to retrace the original route.
Boulton evaluates Davies’s compilation as an introduction for the "general reader," praising its fluent overview of Johnson’s life and prose style. However, he critiques the editorial policy of including truncated "pieces of writings" rather than complete works, noting that the removal of twenty-four chapters from Rasselas destroys the text's organic form and thematic comprehensiveness. Boulton further characterizes the annotation as excessively generous and occasionally "absurd," suggesting Davies lacks faith in the reader’s intelligence and memory.
Miller provides a mixed review of Henry Curwen's anthology of Johnsonian sayings and a new edition of Boswell's journal of the Hebrides tour edited by Pottle and Bennett. Miller evaluates this selection of Johnsonian writings by questioning the utility and futility of samplers, suggesting Johnson's brief sayings often embody a promise which his writings "seldom altogether fulfil." While observing that modern recognition of Johnson's formal work has increased, Miller notes many admirers remain unaware of the "defects of brevity" in his output. Regarding the Boswell "workings at Yale," the reviewer suggests they now produce "more slag than coal," though the discovered appendix includes a lively anecdote about an injured hostess. Miller characterizes Johnson's antipathy toward the Scots as a "classic case of social prejudice" and "humorous pretence," asserting that Johnson was "quite often wrong" in his observations during the Scottish tour beyond mere rhetorical "talking for victory." He concludes that Johnson's aggressive comedies often served as "instruments of sadism" and warns that the wisdom of Johnson is not unalloyed.
Gray evaluates Littlejohn's epistolary biography, which compiles a generous selection of private and public correspondence from Samuel Johnson. Gray notes that the letters, including prominent missives to Lord Chesterfield and descriptions of bodily ailments written to Hester Thrale, are carefully arranged and connected by clear narrative commentary. Gray challenges Littlejohn's promotion of Johnson's total mastery of the epistolary art, arguing that the letters generally lack the kinetic steam of talk reported by James Boswell because Johnson without company is Johnson disarmed. Gray finds that while the distance dulls his typical lightning, the letters serve as documented evidence of his humanness. Gray particularly underscores a category of letters written to children, which reveals a remarkable gentleness and understanding that complicates the Great Moralist persona.
Wimsatt translates Buffon’s definition of style as the 'order and movement' given to thoughts, yet the reviewer suggests Wimsatt prioritizes scientific word-pattern classification over demonstrating how this order reflects Johnson himself. The reviewer characterizes the work as a difficult text that employs a scientific approach to accumulate and categorize linguistic structures. Included are detailed analyses of antithesis and complex triplets of doublets found within Johnson’s prose. While the reviewer admits defeat by some of Wimsatt's structural breakdowns, the book is noted for the strenuous delight provided by its rigorous text and rich quotations.
Tracy identifies the core value of this collection in its 100-page selective bibliography covering 1950–1960. He notes a shift in Johnsonian studies away from antiquarianism toward serious analysis of his thought and canon. Tracy highlights Donald Greene’s "learned" paper on Johnson’s Augustinian religious thought as the most important contribution. However, he finds the overall quality of the seventeen papers uneven and suggests the book could have been shorter.
Bishop notes a trend toward seriousness in recent studies, replacing the image of Johnson as a literary Falstaff with "grave Sam" or "Johnson Agonistes." Bishop highlights Sherbo’s research into Johnson’s journalism in the Gentleman's Magazine and Leicester’s parallel between Johnson’s sources and his final writings. Bishop praises Fleischauer’s analysis of Johnson’s critical principles regarding Lycidas, which shows his onslaught resulted from carefully considered outcome rather than splenetic aberration.
Tracy reviews the second volume of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, containing the Idler and Adventurer essays. Tracy praises the first-class editing, meticulous identification of misattributed quotations, helpful cross-references, and the absence of the editorial prolixity that marred the first volume. However, Tracy notes that the non-chronological release order of the volumes is a pity. Tracy argues that Johnson was not entirely at his ease in writing periodical essays, noting that his stooping to introduce fictional character sketches often failed because his natural element was the deep sea of moral reflection where he always has something to say that is true and moving. Tracy concludes that if Johnson had tried to make little fishes talk, they would have talked like whales.
Dubuque commends Quinlan's detailed study, Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion, for presenting a complex Johnson. It praises Quinlan’s use of various sources, including Johnson’s Dictionary and Latin prayers, to demonstrate the influence of Law and Clarke on Johnson’s religious development, especially his shift toward accepting Christ's sacrifice as expiatory. Quinlan successfully dissolves oversimplified views, arguing Johnson was not morbidly afraid of death, attracted to Roman Catholicism, or given to despair. The reviewer values the book's background on 18th-century personalities and its clear summaries.
Mutter's review compares the Yale edition of Johnson's Idler and Adventurer with the Heinemann edition of Boswell's journals from 1774 to 1776. The review uses Thrale's comparison of Johnson's mind to an elephant's proboscis, strong to buffet tygers yet pliable to pick up pins. Mutter argues Johnson was a middle-distance man rather than a sprinter, noting that the shorter Idler papers often feel ponderously unbalanced compared to the Adventurer essays. The review also describes the Boswellian journal as a looking-glass for a man in a state of perpetual worry over drink, sex, and his relationship with his father. Mutter emphasizes Boswell's view of Johnson as the fixed star and great sun around which he wandered erratically.
Raddon reviews Davies’s chronological selection of Johnson’s writings, commending it for amplifying rather than supplanting previous editions by Chapman and Wilson. The volume is divided into Poems and Prose, including rare extracts such as the Life of Sir Thomas Browne and twenty-six essays from The Rambler. Raddon highlights the "brilliantly done" biographical introduction and the useful head-notes that provide the background for each passage. The review particularly praises the inclusion of Johnson’s Dictionary definitions as footnotes to explain archaic phrases. Raddon concludes that the book’s scholarship and attractive printing make it a worthy companion to the World's Classics selection, offering both "piquant flashes of comment" and a deep understanding of Johnson’s literary theory and prose style.
Johnson's Lives of the English Poets
Jacobson provides a mixed review of the Yale edition of The Idler and The Adventurer edited by Bate, Bullitt, and Powell. Although the review acknowledges the essays as ample evidence of Johnson's greatness, Jacobson asserts that only scholars will read them, as the volume is encumbered with a set of "copious and distracting" textual notes that are a constant source of irritation due to the "fanatical recording" of minor, trifling alterations. Jacobson explores the theme of indolence, noting how Johnson used "The Idler" as a pen-name to circle around his own sloth, chemical experiments, and aversion to work. The review highlights the humane and modern nature of Johnson's attitudes on topics such as slavery and the dispossession of American Indians. Jacobson concludes that Johnson’s sincerity and sense of engagement give these essays force, allowing him to explore immediate experience to buttress established social and religious virtues.
Wills reviews Littlejohn’s selected and edited collection. The review contends the volume is easy to assemble but difficult to justify, as Johnson addicts will seek the full collection, while others know the key parts from standard biographies. Wills argues Johnson’s letters are the least revealing part of his output, a result of his laziness, his busy schedule, his superior conversational ability, and his practice of writing primarily for pay.
Geddes challenges recent scholarship by Ariah Sachs and Jean H. Hagstrum that attempts to enforce a strict, management-oriented consistency on Johnson's concepts of reason and imagination. Geddes argues that Johnson understood human reason's limitations too well to settle for rigid intellectual coherence, using traditional critical terms flexibly to capture psychological nuances. Examining Johnson's responses to Shakespeare, Milton, Cowley, and Pope, Geddes demonstrates that Johnson viewed imagination as a vital, animating force inseparable from creative genius rather than as a merely dangerous or suspect faculty. Geddes traces a significant pre-Wordsworthian distinction in Johnson's writing where fancy collects and combines sensory imagery while imagination amplifies and animates these materials to move human affections. Geddes details how Johnson balanced this creative energy with judgment to ensure that poetry preserves its power to connect directly with general human nature.
Rawson reviews a collection of essays edited by Wahba, which includes a bibliography of Johnsonian studies from 1950–1960 by Clifford and Greene. He highlights contributions by Powell on anniversary exhibitions, Watt’s BBC appraisal of Johnson, and Greene’s "aggressive" reconsideration of Johnson's late conversion. Sherbo provides evidence of Johnson’s connections as editor and advisor to the Gentleman's Magazine. Rawson criticizes Fleischauer's essay on Lycidas as "cocky" and hectoring, finding his logic regarding Johnson’s "real criticism" to be quaint. The volume also covers Johnson’s interactions with Burney, Shenstone, and the metaphysical poets.
Ricks reviews a brief biography of Johnson by M. J. C. Hodgart, alongside a reissue of John Hawkins’s Life of Samuel Johnson edited by Bertram Davis and R. W. Chapman’s Selections. Ricks praises Hodgart’s ability to propose "emphatic clarities" despite the book’s brevity, which contrasts with Boswell's weighty volume. Hodgart resists creating a "new" Johnson, instead including famous and central details such as Johnson's anti-slavery sentiments and his attempt to save the forger Dodd. However, the reviewer challenges Hodgart's speculation regarding Johnson’s physical tics, calling it distracting, and suggests the treatment of his literary criticism is overly brief; nonetheless, Hodgart is praised as one of the most humane editors of the Yale Johnson. The review further highlights the value of reclaiming Hawkins from Boswell’s shadow, characterizing Hawkins’s account as a good idiosyncratic biography that speaks directly about Johnson’s fear of madness and death. Ricks identifies the description of Johnson’s last illness as the superior passage of the Hawkins biography.
Nixon reviews the Yale edition of Johnson’s poems, identifying it as the "supreme authority" on the subject. He notes the inclusion of early juvenile poems, such as "On a Daffodil," which reveal a "romantic religious emotion" and a level of feeling absent in Johnson's mature works. The review values the presentation of rough drafts for Irene, which illuminate the development of Johnson’s mental processes. Nixon addresses the "Thales" controversy in London, discussing the conflicting views of Hawkins and Boswell regarding Richard Savage. He concludes that while Johnson is often viewed primarily as a writer of monumental prose who produced "occasional" verse, this volume proves that had he focused exclusively on poetry, he might have achieved a higher emotional character in his literary output.
Halsband reviews David Littlejohn’s selection of letters, Dr. Johnson: His Life in Letters, drawn from R. W. Chapman’s 1952 edition. Halsband notes the difficulty of crafting a biography solely through Johnson’s correspondence, especially before his middle-aged fame. He argues against Chapman’s restricted view of Johnson’s style, finding the selection a lively anthology that encompasses varied tones, from formal challenge to dignified insolence, and complex emotional expression in letters to Hester Thrale.
Hart reviews Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion, a careful examination of Johnson's Christian faith. Hart explains that Quinlan demonstrates how Johnson’s fear of death and melancholy were fundamentally involved with his interpretation of the Atonement. Johnson shifted from William Law's exemplary view to Samuel Clarke’s expiatory interpretation after a religious experience in 1776, which eased his anxieties. Hart notes Quinlan shows that as Johnson aged, his religious attitudes tended towards a "Roman Catholic coloration," modifying Protestant positions on issues like deathbed repentance and the Eucharist.
Curtis argues that The Club, with its mixed membership of aristocrats, lawyers, and men of letters, epitomized the "open aristocracy" of eighteenth-century England. Liebert provides a lively account of The Club and its members, noting its tolerance of talent did not extend to "unclubbable" candidates like Bentham and Byron, and includes unpublished details from Boswell's Life manuscript. Liebert also observes that virtually all celebrated eighteenth-century philosophers and men of letters were childless.
This review assesses Carl Brinitzer's German-language popular biography, Dr. Johnson und Boswell. The reviewer acknowledges the book's value as virtually the only German resource on Johnson beyond Boswell's London Journal, given the lack of a full German translation of Life. However, the book is noted for significant inaccuracies and problematic psychological speculation, such as errors in literary facts, a flawed discussion of the Johnson–Piozzi relationship, and an inadequate bibliography. Despite its flaws, the book is ultimately deemed better than nothing, potentially serving as a gateway to more genuine Johnson scholarship for German readers.
Alkon praises the volume and Waingrow’s excellent introduction as a major contribution to Boswellian criticism. Waingrow is commended for persuasively arguing that the Life of Johnson is a structural synthesis and work of art, achieved through Boswell's active, artistic editing of his source material.
Hart finds Brady's book a meticulously documented record of Boswell's political failure, calling the title "sadly ironic." The book's biographical method gives a partial view of Boswell's nature, leading to suspended judgment on his character. Hart deems the book's achievement remarkable and an authoritative ancillary volume for scholars.
Cruttwell reviews the ninth volume of the Yale editions of Boswell’s private papers, noting the author's "uncontrollable volatility of temperament" and "lightning transitions" between sensual indulgence and high-minded piety. The review details Boswell's 1776 experiences in Edinburgh and his "eternal longing" for London conversation. Cruttwell highlights Boswell’s "passionate observant fascination with humanity," including a grimly accurate description of a contemporary cancer victim. Additionally, the volume reveals Boswell’s "intemperate" support for the American revolutionary cause, recording his "dismay" and "regret" at British victories over the "Ministerial Army."
The reviewer outlines the significance of Waingrow’s research edition in revealing Boswell’s meticulous biographical method. The volume collects letters from various correspondents providing information on Johnson’s early life. The reviewer argues that the collection proves Boswell’s “genius for selection” and his commitment to factual accuracy.
Hyde uses unpublished material to detail the deterioration of their relationship, intensified by their competitive efforts to produce biographies of Samuel Johnson. The reviewer confirms that Hyde successfully portrays a dramatic story of mutual suspicion, jealousy, and hard work stemming from their intimate, but ultimately rivalrous, devotion to Johnson. The reviewer concurs with Hyde’s final judgment: Boswell achieved the biographical victory, but sympathy rests with Piozzi.
The "extremes" refer to Boswell’s sullen melancholy in Edinburgh, where his law career struggled against his father's expectations, and his excited visits to Johnson in England. The journal entries detail Boswell’s life: drinking, gambling, financial worries, and frequent sexual "lapses," often recorded in Greek for concealment. The most significant passages recount his meetings with Johnson and his memorable, unsettling conversation with the dying Hume about mortality and skepticism. Comparison of the journal with Boswell's Life of Johnson reveals his subsequent shaping or suppression of details, notably his omission of Johnson's condescending side remark about Boswell’s argument for the Americans. The editors' learned annotations are essential to navigate the complex text.
Halsband evaluates the editorial success of the Yale volume covering Boswell’s most active journalistic and personal period, noting the meticulous arrangement and commentary by Weis and Pottle. The volume presents a Boswell oscillating between periods of dissipation and guilt and periods of focused legal and social activity. It further details his relentless recording of his inner and outer life, maintaining candor despite the extreme nature of his behavior.
The volume compiles letters between Boswell and about 100 correspondents, including Burke, Burney, and Thrale, detailing his efforts to gather, edit, and revise material for the Life. The correspondence reveals Boswell's scrupulous attention to detail, but also his habit of adapting sources and occasional omission of details about Johnson's "disordered mind" or financial troubles, a point Waingrow discusses in his introduction.
Wilson reviews J. P. Hardy’s compact selection of Johnson’s political prose. He argues the collection reveals Johnson’s "fine legal—one might almost say legalistic—mind." The review highlights the inclusion of Taxation no Tyranny and Thoughts on the Falkland Islands, noting the latter's "topical ring." Wilson asserts that Johnson’s political tracts, though often based on contemporary incidents, convey a "message for all time" through their focus on the "immutable in man." He recommends the book to those tempted to dismiss Johnson’s politics, urging them to re-read these "impressive prose pieces."
This review covers F. E. Halliday's profusely illustrated pictorial biography, Doctor Johnson and his World. The book is intended as a visual introduction to the Johnsonian scene, presenting the story through economical, anecdotal text and extensive quotations from Johnson and his contemporaries. While praised as a handsome visual aid with 154 black-and-white illustrations, the text suffers from compression, leading to oversimplification and loss of nuance in certain passages. A key example is the treatment of Johnson's famous sentiments regarding the ruins of Iona, which is significantly reduced from his original, emotional account. The book is recommended for its visual appeal and introductory aim.
Kramer's positive review welcomes the Phoenix Books reissue of Jean H. Hagstrum's 1952 monograph, calling it an indispensable companion to the study of the critical thought of Johnson. Kramer praises Hagstrum for elucidating the main lines of reasoning under broad headings without imposing an alien logic. The review notes the addition of a new preface and a two-page list of post-1952 studies, highlighting Hagstrum's suggestions for future research into the chronological development of the ideas of Johnson and the establishment of his sources.
Hagstrum provides a comprehensive analysis of Johnson’s critical corpus, treating his literary theories as a unified whole. Drawing on extensive primary evidence, the work examines Johnson’s views on art as illusion and the potency of literary pleasure, while noting his resistance to the "willing suspension of disbelief" when it threatens rational control. This second edition maintains the original’s pioneering status as a foundational study of Johnson’s aesthetic principles. The text establishes the scholarly framework within which more specialized inquiries into Johnson’s intellectual integrity and critical methodology function, emphasizing the systematic nature of his responses to imaginative literature.
Olsen expresses disappointment that Marshall's book offers neither new facts nor fresh interpretation, functioning more as a collection of essays on eighteenth-century English life than a history of London. Olsen notes significant editorial and publishing issues, including factual inaccuracies, misspellings, and an inadequate map. While the chapters on poverty, crime, and philanthropy are considered more worthy, the book is ultimately found to be of limited value for both specialists and students.
James Gray reviews Morris Golden's thematic study, which attempts to explore the distinct observing and observed versions of the self within literary creations. Gray disputes the methodology, noting that these historic figures pale before the sudden onslaughts of modern psycho-literary frameworks. Gray challenges Golden's assertion that this split-persona perspective opens an additional interpretive path for scholarship, demonstrating that critics have explored these concepts for a very long time. The review highlights Golden's characterization of Samuel Johnson's literary selves as psychologically deficient yet capable of moral enlightenment and structural improvement. Gray asserts that Golden's framework allows Johnson's vision to generalize human situations toward archetypal models while excluding personal idiosyncrasies. Gray notes that the book introduces dizzying generalities and that Golden's rigid psychological theory obscures the genuine artistic vision of the subjects.
Bate's selection of seventy-nine periodical essays, a by-product of the Yale edition, is a test of Bate's claim that Johnson's "greatness as a critic is inseparable from his greatness as a moralist." The essays illuminate the moral foundations of Johnson's literary criticism.
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Bate's edition presents a "solid selection" of 79 of Johnson's periodical essays from The Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, sourced from the Yale Edition. Bate credits this period as Johnson's "most fertile decade," showcasing him as a great moralist. The collection features both Moral Essays and pieces on literary criticism.
Fussell’s work analyzes Johnson's commitment to the literary life amidst struggles with poverty, hypochondria, and melancholy. Fussell asserts Johnson overcame these obstacles through his dedication to writing and his profound moral convictions. The review highlights Fussell's examination of Johnson's various works, including the Dictionary and The Rambler, emphasizing writing as a therapeutic and moral necessity for Johnson.
Lascelles’s letter to the editor responds to a review of her book, expressing gratitude for its generosity and thoroughness. Lascelles acknowledges an implicit, unspoken reference to Austen and Johnson. She notes that, similar to Johnson, she believes she has "dealt more in Notions than Facts" throughout her work. Lascelles explains that she originally refrained from making these associations explicit to avoid appearing "overweening" by comparing her own writing to that of such established authors.
Kramer's critical review describes Arieh Sachs's study as an unsatisfactory whole that misses the temper and flavor of the mind of Johnson. Kramer objects to Sachs's style, labeling it an uncomfortable mixture of colloquialism, jargon, and philosophical abstraction. Though Kramer notes interesting sections examining Imlac in Rasselas, the review states that Sachs imposes conflicting forms of expression on the ideas of Johnson. Kramer especially censures Sachs for restricting his exploration by ignoring the Shakespearean criticism of Johnson and omitting his core definition of poetry.
This review of Christopher Hibbert’s biography of Johnson describes the work as a skillful tessellation of known facts and anecdotes. Cruttwell explores the history of Johnsonian gossip, noting that Boswell exercised discretion by softening certain details. He discusses the darker aspects of Johnson’s relationship with Mrs. Thrale, including allegations of masochistic behavior. Cruttwell praises Hibbert’s accuracy and readable style while noting one minor error regarding Johnson’s use of previous dictionaries. The review concludes that Hibbert provides a compelling narrative without attempting a concentrated analysis of the evidence.
Atteridge disputes Golden’s hypothesis that Johnson and his contemporaries split their 'reveries of the self' into struggling and observant elements. The analysis finds the 'procrustean apparatus' of the study vitiates perceptive observations by treating external events as negligible. Atteridge argues the work relies on 'simplistic psychology' and 'plain bad reading,' failing to cast light on the authors or the age. He concludes the mannered prose further obscures any insight into Johnson’s identity.
Buchanan's The Treasure of Auchinleck is essentially the story of Ralph Isham's twenty-five-year quest for the Boswell papers. Buchanan, whose father was Isham's Scottish lawyer, provides a detailed, objective, and well-documented account of the legal battles and personal struggles involved. Reviewer Hilles praises Buchanan's thorough research and his lively, fair-minded portrayal of Isham, whose "patience, perception, and skilled strategy" ultimately secured the collection.
Updike's largely positive review of the trade edition of Boswell's journals from 1778 to 1782 describes the text as an unorganized, unstable chronicle of a stagnant provincial life marked by professional discontent, heavy drinking, and sexual infidelity. Updike argues that Boswell kept this running inventory out of a religious, Calvinist desire for self-scrutiny and self-preservation against nihilism, rather than mere self-memorializing. The review details Boswell's troubled relationship with his cold, ungenerous father, Lord Auchinleck, who refused to discuss religion or death, and contrasts this void with the "benignant indulgence" and theological reassurance Boswell received from Johnson. Updike notes that Boswell's "plain honesty" and willingness to appear foolish establish the ethical genius of his journalism. The review also praises the immense labor of editors Joseph W. Reed and Frederick A. Pottle, while questioning whether the massive financial and academic resources of the Yale Boswell Factory are entirely justified for a "second-rater."
Ross's positive review praises Charles N. Fifer's editorial acumen in compiling 268 letters documenting the personal networks of the Johnson circle. The review details the recovery of numerous letters by Boswell and fellow members of The Club, including Reynolds, Langton, Beauclerk, and Percy. Ross outlines Boswell's high personal satisfaction regarding his enrollment in the society. The review notes that Fifer's extensive biographical sketches usefully supplement the texts, particularly the accounts of Thomas Barnard, Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, and Percy. Ross notes some biographical errors concerning Adam Smith but lauda the recovery of newly found materials. The correspondence illuminates Percy's involvement in the Ossian controversy, Barnard's political activities, and Langton's pedantic conversational habits. Ross underscores the volume's multi-faceted revelation of Boswell's exultation and anxieties during the composition of his biographies.
In this enthusiastic review of Joseph Foladare’s monograph, Mudrick praises the work as a "fine, necessary, and moving book" that restores Paoli to his proper place in European history. Mudrick emphasizes that Paoli served as one of Boswell's "surrogate fathers," fulfilling a "prodigious need to admire and be acknowledged." He highlights the "electrifying effect" Boswell had on the General, noting their 1769 reunion where Paoli ran to Boswell and "held me there for some time." While acknowledging Foladare’s observation of Boswell’s "appalling obtuseness" regarding Paoli’s political struggles in 1793, Mudrick argues the term is excessive for a man simply "pouring out his heart." He values the account for showing Boswell’s capacity to attract the affection of "the great and good." Mudrick concludes that the meeting between Johnson and Paoli, mediated by Boswell as an "isthmus," represents a "triumph to human nature."
King describes Lane’s work as an objective presentation of Johnson’s life in relation to his period, focusing on his anguished and painful later years. Lane explains the context of the letter to Chesterfield and Johnson’s emotional attachment to Hester Thrale. She accepts the view that Johnson’s masochism resulted from repressed erotic feelings rather than being erotic in itself. King characterizes Lane’s portrait of Johnson as lonely, sick, angry, emotionally wounded, and filled with despair.
Middendorf praises Folkenflik’s study as a thorough and precise analysis of Johnson’s biographical theories and practices. The book argues for a consistent "monolithic" view of Johnson's critical imagination across forty-five years, a stance Middendorf notes may challenge recent scholarship emphasizing a changing imagination. Folkenflik examines Johnson's Christian and classical concepts of man, his use of anecdote compared to Boswell, and his skeptical view of letters as evidence. The reviewer highlights the chapter on the Life of Savage and the discussion of Johnson’s "pervasive irony" in the Lives of the Poets. Middendorf concludes that the work serves as an ideal resource for both students and scholars, effectively laying to rest doubts about the depth of Johnsonian biographical theory.
Mudrick criticizes Hardy for prioritizing Johnson's lugubrious commonplaces and Augustan quota of cant over the incandescent Johnson found in conversation and Boswell's biography. He argues that Boswell and Johnson are two of a kind, linked by their dreary terrour for death and a shared need to commemorate life through beautiful models of rational discourse. Mudrick finds Hardy's summaries useful but limited, as they neglect the indispensable presence of the Johnson who reacts with a bang when confronted with the mass of particulars.
King notes the book's continued relevance, as it shows travel provides warnings against escaping human limits. Johnson's conclusion in the novel, that no undiscovered Edens exist, reinforces that humanity's pleasures and frustrations are everywhere the same.
The review discusses Bate's biography, emphasizing its definitive status and comprehensive scale in presenting Johnson’s life. Bate moves beyond the eccentricities often highlighted by earlier biographers, focusing instead on Johnson's formidable intellect, his moral struggles, and his deep psychological complexity. The work successfully integrates Johnson’s major literary contributions with his personal history, providing a profound, sympathetic, and insightful portrait of the man and his era.
In this positive review, Bogel praises Frederick A. Pottle's historical monograph for its lucid, absorbing narrative of the retrieval and preservation of Boswell's archives. Bogel outlines how Pottle charts the provenance of Boswell's private papers from 1776 legal mandates to late twentieth-century trade publications. The review highlights the central role of Ralph Heyward Isham in reassembling scattered manuscripts from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House. Bogel notes that family secrecy protected the archives because descendants felt equally troubled by Boswell's sexual exploits and his deferential attitude toward Johnson. The review details the herculean editorial labors of Frederick and Marion S. Pottle in managing the Yale Editions. Bogel concludes that the book demonstrates a first-rate scholarly intelligence governed by a passion for completeness and an awareness of the necessary incompleteness of individual human labors.
Leicester reviews Finlayson’s biography, which draws "copiously and dextrously" on Boswell’s journals to preserve the subject's tone. The title references Johnson’s prophetic remark identifying Boswell as his own "tormentor." Leicester notes the book’s focus on Boswell as a man existing "in his own right" beyond his role as Johnson’s adjunct. The reviewer praises the "colourful and colloquial" prose and the inclusion of twenty-seven illustrations.
Dowling welcomes Foladare's Paoli as mature, important scholarship superseding a former source. He finds Foladare's story absorbing and broadly focused, but notes the book demands patience from its readers. Dowling praises the work for exposing deficiencies in previous accounts and revealing how Palmer's treatment of Paoli was a caricature.
Beasley calls the book a convincingly revisionary study, authoritative, and often deeply fascinating. Foladare, drawing on Boswell’s private papers, successfully corrects the prevailing view of Paoli, revealing his personal side, unceasing optimism, and tireless political efforts that enhance the general’s great reputation.
Core finds Pottle has successfully Boswellized Boswell by drawing a remarkably full account of his subject and his times. Pottle convincingly argues that Boswell’s unique genius was his almost neurotic regard for fact combined with an honest writer's self-revelation, producing the prototype of the non-fiction novel.
Quinton evaluates the twelfth volume of the Yale Boswell editions, covering the death of Johnson and the publication of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. He notes the editorial disclosure of "tacenda," or suppressed details from the Life of Johnson, including ribald anecdotes of Johnson’s domestic life and Boswell’s own "genially erotic" adventures. The review highlights Boswell's persistence despite professional failure, his social interactions with figures like Burke and Smith, and his "external" writing style. Quinton concludes that Boswell’s frankness and accuracy as a recorder provide a vital, unvarnished commentary on Johnson’s final years.
Daiches's review of Finlayson's biography of Boswell describes the subject as a "bundle of contradictions," "self-describer," "poseur," "effective interviewer," and "obsessive self-describer." Finlayson uses material from the Yale Journals and other sources sensibly to evoke Boswell's "kaleidoscopic consciousness," providing a "modern presentation" with "verve." Daiches finds Finlayson's presentation of Boswell's contradictions convincing but notes the biographer appears "not fully at home in eighteenth-century literature," evidenced by a "limited grasp" and "inaccurate or inappropriate allusions and quotations." The review corrects a "nonsense" claim regarding Johnson's "moral aspect" as a fascist and argues Boswell's relation to Hume was more complex than indicated. Daiches concludes that while the book shows skill in observing the subject's consciousness, it lacks a "sophisticated awareness of the intellectual climate of the period."
Ehrenpreis provides a scholarly assessment of Brady’s biography of Boswell, noting its accuracy and "compact closing sentences." The text details Boswell’s chronic sexual misconduct, "postgonorrheal infection," and uremia, alongside his dependencies on alcohol and "hellfire religion." Ehrenpreis examines Boswell’s psychological makeup, highlighting a "guilt-ridden sense of unworthiness" and a compulsive need to test the devotion of figures such as Margaret Boswell, Johnson, and Piozzi. The reviewer identifies Boswell’s journals as a "therapeutic instrument of self-definition" and argues that his representation of himself as "frank and artless seduces the reader." While praising Brady’s insights into Boswell’s "crippled" self-confidence, Ehrenpreis faults the book’s organization, "lustreless" typography, and occasional "defensive sympathy" toward its subject.
Johnson reviews Brady’s completion of the definitive Boswell biography, focusing on the subject’s final twenty-five years. He examines the "extraordinary mixture of earnestness and frivolity" in Boswell, citing his professional failures at the bar and his degrading subservience to the boroughmonger Lord Lonsdale. Johnson credits Boswell with inventing modern biography through the innovative use of verbatim conversation and meticulous research. Despite Boswell's personal dissolution, clinical melancholy, and eventual death from venereal disease, the review affirms his achievement in preserving Johnson’s "sense and humanity" for posterity.
Essays in Grundy's New critical essays examine Johnson's aphoristic style and political impartiality, with Erskine-Hill scrutinizing Boswell-recorded Jacobite sympathies.
Pollard offers a mixed review of Keener’s "interesting and lucid" analysis of the philosophical tale genre. Pollard notes that Keener identifies a "realism of psychological assessment" in the works of exponents like Johnson and Voltaire. However, Pollard challenges Keener's "downgrading" of imaginative romance, arguing that Keener over-rationalizes fiction. The review suggests that while psychological assessment fits neoclassical texts, it fails to capture the "inexplicable" artistry that gives the novel life. Pollard concludes that Austen's radical success stems from her ability to surpass these rationalized methods.
Rosbottom examines Keener’s argument that the Enlightenment supplanted the metaphysical chain of being with a causal chain of becoming. Keener identifies Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding as a master text for understanding current debates on cognition. In analyzing Johnson’s Rasselas, Keener argues that the author seeks a realism of self-assessment by exploring the seeker’s internal and external reality. Rosbottom praises the substantiation of connections between English and French traditions but questions Keener’s methodological discrepancies in the rhetorical analysis of Voltaire.
Rogers reviews Fleeman's list of books with a definite connection to Johnson, such as those he signed, presented, or marked for the Dictionary. Johnson was not a voluminous annotator, so the list primarily records association links. Examples include his marked copy of Drayton's Poly-Olbion and Boswell's inscribed copy of Hammond's Elegies. Fleeman's list is full, prompting quests for "unlocated" items, such as the translator's copy of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia.
This collection of papers seeks to further the revaluation of Johnson as a writer, moving beyond the Boswellian focus. Highlights include Curley's essay on Johnson's collaboration with Sir Robert Chambers on A Course of Lectures on the English Law. Alkon's best essay analyzes "The Convict's Address," demonstrating Johnson's modification of the condemned sermon ritual to evoke sympathy, which one Bounty mutineer read to his fellow-prisoners before execution.
Probably few would contest the notion that "Johnson's interpretations of the human condition invariably turn on the theme of hope"; and the chapter sub-headings in T. F. Wharton's book, a series of phrases extracted from the works under discussion, remind us of the prevalence of a certain kind of vocabulary in Johnson-- of gleams, clouds, dreams, phantoms, wishes, imaginations, and "hope's delusive mine."
Wiltshire analyzes Wain's collection of Johnson's personal writings, including the "Annals," letters, and excerpts from "Prayers and Meditations." The review notes that the chronological arrangement highlights the scarcity of early biographical material relative to Johnson's high literary production in the 1740s and 1750s. Wiltshire challenges the common biographical assumption that "intensity" in fictional passages equates to personal testimony, specifically regarding Johnson's accounts of the "tyranny of the understanding."
Dussinger outlines Keener’s argument that the philosophical tale is notable for a 'realism of psychological self-assessment.' Keener identifies a 'causal interaction' between Enlightenment psychology and fiction, showing how Rasselas outgrows Imlac’s 'grandiloquence.' Dussinger supports the 'exemplary rhetorical criticism' but notes that Johnson never dealt with 'mental depression associated with an exaggerated feeling of inferiority.' The study traces an affinity between the 'spirit of the philosophical tale' and the 'secularity of vision' in later novels.
Robson evaluates Rudd's edition of "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes," which provides parallel Latin texts to aid students. The review challenges Leavis's claim that Johnson's poetry is "radically undramatic," arguing that the Wolsey passage demonstrates significant "theatrical effect." Robson praises the publication for offering economical aid to readers and identifies the closing of "The Vanity of Human Wishes" as a superior imitation of its "Pagan original."
The letters, largely social arrangements and gossip from members like Barnard, Beauclerk, Langton, Percy, and Reynolds, are of limited intellectual interest as the major correspondents (Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Malone) are reserved for other volumes. The volume's interest is primarily biographical adjustment, detailing the making of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The notes reveal Bishop Barnard’s anti-Boswellian attitude and his Tory politics.
Stewart analyzes Fifer’s chronological arrangement of letters involving Boswell and associates like Langton and Barnard. The collection demonstrates Boswell’s persistent search for information regarding Johnson to enhance the Life. Stewart notes the volume reveals the social and public Boswell, particularly his craving for political advancement and his role as a mediator. Fifer provides the first factual account of Langton’s life, while the letters from Barnard suggest he became a replacement for Johnson in Boswell’s later years.
Buchanan recounts the history of the Boswell Papers acquisition by Isham, who is presented as the hero for his foresight and persistence despite financial and legal strains. The paper's peregrinations started after Boswell's death, with a portion going to Kincardineshire (Fettercairn papers) and the main batch to Malahide Castle in Ireland. The saga involved initial discouragement from Murray, the eventual sale of the Malahide portion to Isham, the discovery of the Fettercairn papers in 1930, and subsequent litigation which eventually awarded half the property to Isham (for Lord Talbot de Malahide) and half to the Cumberland Infirmary. The entire collection was eventually purchased by Isham for Yale University Library in 1949. The book also contains sidelights on literary scholarship, American university rivalry, and Wall Street finance.
Walker critiques Werner's defense of publishing Boswell's "bad" early poems, which are now in the Bodleian, on the grounds that they add to the picture of Boswell, without specifying the nature of the additional information. The verse itself is described as vacuous and unmemorable, with the publication warned against due to its "grindingly, rather than entertainingly, bad" quality. The amateur-scholarly apparatus is characterized as preposterous, elaborately glossing common words, noting indifferent variants, and providing chatty and sometimes misinforming details, with excessive use of exclamation marks.
This review criticizes Wain's biography of Johnson, citing the author's arrogant dismissal of Boswell and inconsistent arguments regarding Johnson's character and politics. Moss points out Wain's "shoddy thinking" and poor style, yet recommends the book for its moving animation of Johnson’s life stages. Wain successfully defends Johnson’s Tory conservatism as rooted in a sense of human fallibility and highlights his opposition to colonialism and slavery. Wain's greatest service is his vivid, dramatic portrayal of Johnson's personality, balancing his conversational autocracy with his deep compassion and inner turmoil.
Boulton evaluates Damrosch’s exploration of the eighteenth-century tragic context and Johnson’s personal "tragic sense." While noting critical inconsistencies and lapses in tact, Boulton praises the analysis of why Johnson remained receptive to the tragic elements of human misery yet resistant to the formal medium of tragedy. The study examines the failure of Irene, the generic complexity of The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Johnson’s preference for Shakespearian wisdom over heroic exaggeration. Boulton concludes that Damrosch successfully demonstrates how Johnson’s preoccupation with the human predicament often superseded his interest in the sources of tragic feeling.
Wain presents a compelling Johnson, far beyond the caricature often drawn from Boswell’s Life. Wain emphasizes Johnson’s lifelong struggle against poverty, depression, and a terror of losing his reason, arguing that his moral earnestness is a courageous affirmation, not a smug reflection of a rationalist's mind. The review notes Wain's intimate, celebratory tone and his view that Johnson embodies attributes—common sense, moral courage, intellectual self-respect—that modern culture has unwisely discarded.
Chapman recommends Wain’s biography of Johnson for its authoritative voice and "sober, reasonable style." Chapman argues that Wain successfully shifts the focus from "stereotyped misconceptions" of Johnson as a reactionary to Johnson as the "last towering bulwark of European humanism." While criticizing the plainness of Wain’s tone initially, Chapman concludes the style fits a subject whose "perfect memory served perfect tact." Chapman finds Wain effective in foregrounding the "combined power and delicacy" of Johnson’s mind.
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Boulton provides an approving review of George Irwin's study of the psychological conflict in the life of Johnson. Irwin investigates the discrepancy between the reverential affection described by Boswell and Johnson's failure to visit his mother during the last nineteen years of her life. Boulton highlights Irwin's argument that Johnson's mother was an impossible woman to love, leading to Johnson's lifelong need for commendation and his struggle with guilt. The review notes that Johnson only achieved psychological poise through his friendship with Piozzi, who acted as a mother-substitute before assisting his development of emotional maturity and independence.
Gannon provides an approving review of Bate's biography, asserting that no previous biographer was as well prepared as Bate to understand Johnson and convey his experience to the modern reader. She praises the book's central purpose of charting Johnson's "emotional, moral, and intellectual development," finding the narrative gracefully written and scholarly without being fussily pedantic. Gannon highlights Bate's focus on Johnson's life as a "painful but triumphant struggle" against mental instability, aggressive pride, and the "paralyzing grip of self-expectation." The review notes that Bate's Freudian approach clarifies Johnson's relationship with his parents and wife while effectively communicating the "immense reassurance" Johnson gives to human nature. Gannon concludes that Bate's greatest achievement is successfully passing on Johnson's "gift of hope"—derived from his struggle with his own vices and weaknesses—to the rest of us by showing how the author reached out to the "stability of truth" to steady himself through this judicious and faithful narrative.
Bloom's well-documented study explores Johnson's journalism, beginning with his work for Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine and concluding with his own periodicals, The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler. The work includes a portrait of Johnson as a journalist and insights into 18th-century English life as seen from Grub Street. The final chapters, the greatest strength, analyze Johnson's role in defending professional journalistic interests, particularly concerning protection against plagiarism and the freedom of the press.
Clifford's biography, structured in two parts, focuses on the young Johnson by setting aside the Johnson of Boswell. Part one covers 1709 to 1737, examining his life in Lichfield and the Midlands and exploring the roots of his originality, including family life, childhood illnesses, and his nervous condition. The second part extends to the publication of The Vanity of Human Wishes in 1749, arguing that Johnson's convictions were already formed. Clifford offers a detailed analysis of the formation of Johnson's political ideas, emphasizing his toryism as a revolt against corruption, not a conservative conformity.
Review by Wilhelm Gauger of The Rambler by Samuel Johnson.
Boucé reviews Curley's analysis of the theme of travel in Samuel Johnson's work, which stresses the profound thematic unity across writings from Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia to A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Curley argues that the metaphor of travel underpins much of Johnson's output, influenced by Locke's empiricism, providing opportunities for moral meditation. Johnson's travels, especially in Scotland, Wales, and France, become poignant rhapsodies on the inevitable decline of civilization. The reviewer highlights Johnson's extensive preparations for his travels, concluding he was perhaps the greatest "immobile traveler" in English literature.
Review by P G Boucé of Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel by Th. M. Curley.
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Review by Nicholas Dewey of Samuel Johnson and the New Science by Richard B. Schwartz.
Booker challenges the 'academic industry' dedicated to replacing Boswell’s 'partial immortalization' of Johnson with a 'real Johnson,' noting that recent biographies lack the readability of the original. While finding Bate’s prose 'turgid' and his use of 'psychoanalytic jargon' embarrassing, Booker identifies a 'supreme merit' in the work’s emphasis on Johnson’s 'lifelong inner struggle.' He highlights Johnson’s determination to 'fight out the great battle of life inside himself' rather than externalizing suffering, a stance in 'precise and mighty opposition' to the emerging philosophies of Rousseau and Bentham.
Ehrenpreis examines the challenge of reconciling Johnson’s personal anecdotes with his literary achievements, reviewing Wain’s biography and Buchanan’s history of the Boswell papers. Ehrenpreis characterizes Johnson as a moralist whose "intellectual rhythm" relies on testing propositions through refutations and cross-examination. The reviewer highlights Johnson's capacity to transform utilitarian genres into independent art and notes his "deepest sympathy" for scientific discovery and urban civilization despite a fundamental skepticism toward progress. While praising Wain’s "noble attempt" to situate Johnson within English culture, Ehrenpreis identifies significant "carelessness" and factual inaccuracies regarding economic history and Johnson’s literary interests. Buchanan’s work is lauded as an "elegant piece of original research" detailing the recovery of Boswell’s manuscripts. The text notes Johnson’s paradoxical nature, citing his "charity cases" alongside his "furious emotions" and "abuse" of Piozzi following her remarriage. Ehrenpreis concludes that Johnson’s greatness stems from his "direct acquaintance with the really good" and his refusal to simplify the chaotic reality of human experience.
Review by Irvin Ehrenpreis of Samuel Johnson by John Wain.
Wain presents a commodious, discursive biography of Johnson, arguing that the subject has yet to achieve his rightful reputation. Gale initially finds the work irritating due to Wain's bizarre claims of identifying with Johnson’s life 'from the inside' and occasional historical ignorance. However, Gale ultimately welcomes the text as a substantial work of synthesis and intuitive understanding for the general reader. The biography notably addresses Johnson’s sexuality, his masochistic need to submit to Thrale, and his terrifying struggles with mental concentration. Gale concludes that Wain successfully establishes Johnson’s heroism and stature, justifying the biography's weighty seriousness.
A mixed assessment, noting Hardy’s knowledge and readable prose, but finding the work uneven and not sufficiently penetrating. The review criticizes Hardy’s generalizations, such as the dubiousness of Johnson being less concerned with fame than most, and points out a lack of focus on Johnson’s theoretical principles in his criticism. While Hardy excels at bringing particulars (like Dictionary definitions or thumbnail sketches of contemporaries) to bear on his readings, the work is seen as a solid introduction that ultimately lacks depth and intellectual ambition.
Boyce identifies the nine essays in this volume as scholarly expansions of 1980 symposium papers. Burke’s introduction challenges legends of Johnson derived from Boswell’s reporting, while Schwartz places Johnson’s habits within the social patterns of London life. Curley and Alkon highlight Johnson’s "benign and laborious deception" regarding his secret collaborations with Chambers on legal lectures and his authorship of a sermon for the condemned Dodd. Radner and Tomarken analyze Johnson’s ambivalence toward the Scots, and Greene disputes the label of "Stoic" applied to Johnson. Hagstrum examines Johnson’s views on "concordia discors," and Novak defends Johnson as a literary historian. Boyce finds the collection informative, though only four essays significantly modify the "popular notion" of Johnson.
Greene's severe review disputes Maurice Quinlan's competence to analyze Johnson’s religious life. While Greene commends the rejection of "ignorant judgments" regarding Johnson’s "morbidity" and "neurotic fear of death," he argues that Quinlan fails to grasp fundamental Anglican theology. He points out that the book relies on the 1789 American Prayer Book rather than the texts Johnson knew and misidentifies Johnson's friend John Taylor. Greene claims that Quinlan's focus on Samuel Clarke and William Law distorts the theological background, ignoring more influential figures like Pascal. He concludes that those who accept Quinlan’s arguments about Johnson’s religious beliefs do so "at their own peril."
Gagen calls the book a valuable addition to Johnson studies, providing a closer study of his moral outlook that corrects misconceptions. She praises Alkon for showing Johnson's moral essays are less hortatory and more flexible than supposed, presenting his ideas clearly and persuasively with effective documentation.
Greene provides a meticulous account of political activities and milieu to dismantle the myth of the archetypal Tory reactionary. The study accurately identifies the origins of tough-minded realism in Staffordshire politics and correctly rejects the traditional picture of a Romantic Jacobite circle. Greene persuasively demonstrates that deep personal feelings, rather than mere convention, motivated Johnson’s early political works. While the analysis of later pamphlets highlights a disparity regarding colonial interests, the work successfully relates Johnson's views to a post-Namier eighteenth-century context. Colmer praises the readability and exemplary scholarly apparatus.
Review by John Colmer of The Politics of Samuel Johnson by Donald J. Greene.
Greene reviews Chapin's The Religious Thought of Samuel Johnson, deeming it the best book yet on the subject and an advancement in correcting nineteenth-century notions of Johnson's religious "morbidity." Chapin takes Johnson’s essential orthodoxy for granted, instead focusing on why orthodox eighteenth-century Anglicanism appealed to him. Greene praises the book's informed and judicious handling of topics, including Johnson's biography and his views on free will, necessity, and eschatology. Greene does, however, question Chapin's speculation regarding the theological point of difference between Johnson and Hill Boothby.
Hodgart reassesses Johnson’s achievement by situating him within the eighteenth century while asserting his contemporary relevance. The study identifies "poetic imagination" as the defining trait of Johnson’s personality, prose, and conversation. Hodgart explores Johnson’s ability to synthesize abstract concepts with concrete imagery, particularly in his spoken wit and moral wisdom. While Boulton disputes certain political generalizations regarding Lichfield's Tory traditions, he praises Hodgart’s analysis of Johnson’s "contribution to wisdom" and his comparison of Johnson's distilled poetic images to Biblical literature. The work presents Johnson as a vigorous moralist whose insights into taedium vitae and human experience remain pertinent to modern readers.
Review by James Gray of Samuel Johnson the Moralist by Robert Voitle.
Boulton offers a mixed review of the Yale edition volumes of the Rambler, finding that they contribute to the critical tradition by providing readers with the full evidence of Johnson's rigorous self-criticism. He acknowledges Bate’s introductory essay for delineating the "Christian and humanist tradition of wisdom" and commends Strauss’s textual apparatus for revealing Johnson’s search for "precision and economy" through revisions. However, Boulton notes the annotation is marred by serious inconsistencies and insufficient information, specifically identifying inconsistencies in the annotation and indexing. He disputes the accuracy of several index entries and notes the absence of guidance on Johnson’s linguistic innovations, such as the first use of "unideal." Boulton also points out overlooked allusions to John Locke and Publilius Syrus, suggesting that the editors and student assistants were not sufficiently alert to matters where a scholarly reader expects guidance.
The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia: A Tale
Barlow reviews Chapman’s edition of Rasselas, noting the inclusion of letters that confirm Johnson wrote the work to pay for his mother’s funeral expenses. The review highlights Chapman’s decision to follow the second edition text, which contains Johnson’s authorial changes, while rejecting punctuation changes attributed to the printer. Barlow confirms the edition’s textual authority based on the collation of multiple early editions.
Greene delivers a scathing review of Leopold Damrosch’s monograph, arguing that the title is deceptive because the book investigates the "tragic sense" of critics, not Johnson’s, by accusing Damrosch of "flagrant misreading" and "selective reading" to impose a tragic quality the author did not intend. Focusing on the analysis of The Vanity of Human Wishes, Greene disputes Damrosch’s claim that Johnson presents man as a helpless victim "without a guide," and he criticizes the "breathtakingly arrogant" critical methodology of willfully changing a work’s meaning or reinterpreting literature to fit modern secular preferences if one does not share the author’s premises. He argues that Damrosch ignores Johnson’s explicit Christian conclusions and the etymological meanings of eighteenth-century terms like "still" and "elpis." Greene challenges this approach, asserting that Johnson lacked a nineteenth-century "tragic sense" because of his fervent belief that "the ways of God are just."
Bloom praises Tracy's edition for restoring the self-contained work and for the editor's sympathetic understanding and authority. He finds the editing is good as far as it goes but regrets the editor chose not to introduce more critical opinion, arguing the edition fails to fully signpost the work as a passionate self-portrait of Johnson.
Pinto welcomes this definitive edition as a monumental achievement of twentieth-century scholarship, fulfilling plans once held by Boswell and Birkbeck Hill. The reviewer praises the inclusion of manuscript poems and the first draft of Irene, noting that the integration of English and Latin verse reflects Johnson’s use of Latin as a living medium. While Pinto ranks Johnson as a potentially great poet who lacked adequate form, the collection is noted for its surprising anticipations of modern cadences.
Review by Leo Braudy of Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense by Leopold Damrosch, Jr..
Sachs explores the coherence of Johnson’s thought across religion, morality, and aesthetics, identifying a central preoccupation with the contradiction between infinite human craving and finite experience. The argument centers on the tension between the imagination, viewed traditionally as a source of delusion and "luscious falsehoods," and reason, which enforces realistic estimates of human limitation. Sachs demonstrates how this polarity governs Johnson’s critical preference for general truths over particulars and his political skepticism toward Utopian perfectibility. By analyzing the mind as an "empty receptacle" requiring rational discipline, Sachs illuminates the integration of Johnson’s psychological insights with his religious presuppositions.
Review by J T Boulton of Passionate Intelligence: Imagination and Reason in the Work of Samuel Johnson by A. Sachs.
In this positive review, Croll characterizes the study of Wimsatt as a rigorous, theoretical, and remarkably readable discourse. Croll notes that while a mere description of the style of Johnson contains nothing new, Wimsatt successfully justifies his inquiry through a philosophic framework that defines style as meaning. Croll praises the clarity with which Wimsatt discusses the parallelism and diction of Johnson, though he expresses slight skepticism regarding the propriety of Wimsatt’s term general science of verbal style. Croll finds the analysis of the philosophic diction of Johnson especially enlightening and notes that Wimsatt concludes the study with a light-hearted imitation of the Johnsonian style.
Furtwangler presents a mixed review of the Yale edition of the Rambler. While he appreciates the availability of a complete, elegant presentation of Johnson as a periodical writer, he finds the editorial thoroughness lacking. He disputes the choice of copy-text, noting that the modernized accidentals and variants distort the tone of the formal prose. Furtwangler also challenges the sparse annotation and general introduction, which he claims neglect the technical details and contemporary circumstances of periodical form in favor of viewing Johnson as a "systematic moralist." He argues that the Rambler reveals Johnson poised between "intellectual precision and popular appeal" and that the edition fails to sufficiently mediate between these two poles.
Boulton commends the compilation of chronologically arranged autographs. Boulton highlights the concentration of items in the Hyde collection and analyzes trends in 19th-century collecting through the provenance data provided. He notes the fluctuating market value of Johnsoniana over time. While acknowledging the list as “preliminary” and dependent on future location of missing items, Boulton welcomes the publication as a significant contribution to Johnsonian scholarship.
Alkon praises Sachs for rightly asserting that Johnson was not merely a "Common Sense School" representative and for providing a high estimate of his achievement. Sachs is deemed most original and persuasive in suggesting that Johnson’s main preoccupation is always with time. However, Alkon questions the insistence that the "full meaning" of Johnson's works can only be discovered by reading them as offshoots of his "desperately neurotic" personal experience, arguing this implies something strange about orthodox Christianity. The review criticizes Sachs for hyperbole, which leads to misleading generalizations, and for ultimately disparaging the literary merit of Johnson's writing as "ponderous."
Bell's generally favorable review of this collection of symposium papers notes that the volume extends understanding of Johnson without challenging established paradigms. Donald Greene argues against labeling Johnson a Stoic, while Jean Hagstrum analyzes antithesis as an organizing principle in Johnson's human relationships. Paul Alkon provides an outstanding synthesis of criticism regarding the sermon Johnson wrote for William Dodd. Bell highlights Richard Schwartz's imaginative description of Johnson's daily routine and Thomas Curley's contribution to understanding Johnson's collaboration with Robert Chambers on legal lectures. The review concludes that the essays rescue Johnson from Boswellian stereotypes by emphasizing his identity as a writer.
Allen calls the edition highly instructive, praising it more for its informative scholarship in the introductions and notes than for its textual practices. The undertaking is justified by the list of manuscripts, including rough drafts of major poems, recovered since 1941. However, Allen criticizes the high threshold of editorial silence in reporting emendations, which impedes learning about Johnson or editing. Allen suggests the partial modernization complicates the text and laments the editors' disinclination to fully report accidental and substantive variants to show eighteenth-century printing practices.
Brown critiques Christiani’s dissertation for over-simplifying Johnson’s critical positions into binary categories of "pseudo-classical" and "romantic." He argues that Johnson’s rejection of dramatic rules stems from common sense rather than romantic leanings. Brown finds the work’s sociological links between class and literary style confusing, specifically noting that middle-class figures like Richardson shared Johnson’s didacticism. Although he acknowledges the study’s conscientious effort, Brown maintains that Johnson’s nature is better understood through a middle-class compromise than through Christiani's restrictive labels.
Bloom finds Sachs's book of limited value and success, asserting that despite the author’s ingenuity in applying the polarized principles of reason and imagination, he fails to achieve a better understanding of Johnson’s intricate self. The critique notes a lack of perceptible evidence for Johnson as the innovator Sachs asserts.
Chapin notes Damrosch aims to argue that intelligent people appreciated earlier tragedies and to explore the limitations of Johnson's tragic sense. Chapin finds Damrosch is on firmer ground arguing Johnson's greatest weakness as a critic is his failure to notice tragedy's "metaphysical" nature. However, he questions whether this metaphysical perception is not largely a product of the post-Johnson era and its World Wars, and finds Damrosch has not successfully shown Johnson's deficiencies owe more to his personal assumptions than to his age, which brought "lower" and different expectations to high art.
Alkon considers the work an excellent spiritual biography, which successfully avoids the danger of making Johnson seem theologically or psychologically idiosyncratic. Chapin is commended for correctly placing Johnson's religious outlook within the tradition of "rational" Anglicanism, rather than Evangelical Anglicanism. The discussion of Johnson's personality, including his well-known "terror of annihilation," is found to be sound, avoiding Freudian analysis. Chapin is also credited with performing an important service by showing the neglected influence of works like The Whole Duty of Man on Johnson's religious thought.
Fleischauer reviews Greene’s anthology focused on Johnson as a writer, not merely as "the companion" of Boswell and Macaulay’s stereotype. The collection emphasizes Johnson's worth as a critic, poet, and editor of Shakespeare. Fleischauer praises Donner's re-assessment of Johnson the critic and Grange's psychoanalytic study for revealing Johnson's profound comprehension of universal human psychology. He concludes the anthology offers a definitive starting-line for a new era of Johnsonian scholarship, moving beyond old stereotypes.
Derolez evaluates the Cornell concordance of Johnson’s poetry, noting the technical challenges of a multilingual corpus. He criticizes the arbitrary exclusion of "nonsignificant" words, such as third-person masculine pronouns, while first-person and feminine pronouns remain listed. Derolez highlights a major editorial oversight regarding the base text: the concordance uses the 1941 Clarendon edition and the 1964 Yale edition, rendering its page references obsolete following the near-simultaneous release of a revised chronological Clarendon edition.
Dinnage evaluates a commemorative collection of thirty-six essays by students of Tinker, focusing on figures surrounding Johnson. Dinnage characterizes the volume as a series of specialized burrowings that offer significant factual depth for connoisseurs of the eighteenth century, despite an occasionally impersonal academic tone. Key contributions include MacLean’s study of Cowper’s neurotic terror, Pottle’s analysis of Boswell’s dramatic journalistic style, and revaluations of Sterne’s comic irony and Radcliffe’s good taste. Dinnage also notes a new edition of Boswell’s Life featuring an introduction by Roberts that refutes Macaulay’s dismissal of Boswell’s talent.
Grigson dismisses Lane’s illustrated volume as an "ugly job" and a "ghost book" characterized by drab, pointless illustrations and a "soft-slippered shuffle" through familiar biographical facts. He argues the elongated essay offers no fresh insights into Johnson’s poetry, criticism, or judgment, serving as an "exercise without aim." Grigson criticizes the physical quality of the publication, noting its "grey paper" and lack of distinctive typography or design unison between text and image.
Review by Geoffrey Grigson of Samuel Johnson and His World by Margaret Lane.
Review by G Tonelli of Samuel Johnson, the Moralist by R. Voitle.
Smith reviews W. Jackson Bate’s biography of Johnson, praising it as the quintessential presentation of his life and a monument of its genre. The review explores Johnson’s relevance to the legal profession, particularly his use of reason to apply God-given values to concrete situations. Smith identifies Johnson as a jurisprudential thinker who provided a brilliant model for Christian lawyers. The essay connects Johnson’s methodology to modern constitutional debates between Raoul Berger and Robert E. Knowlton, asserting that Johnson would favor applying principles through the fullest use of reason and experience. Smith also situates Johnson within a renaissance in the comparative study of law and literature, suggesting that Johnson’s works serve as essential vehicles for students coordinating positive law with larger considerations.
Review by J. Allen Smith of Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate.
Alkon's study focuses on the moral principles in Johnson's periodical essays, The Rambler, The Adventurer, The Idler, and Rasselas, emphasizing the complexity of Johnsonian thought. The analysis suggests that Johnson's philosophical debt to Locke is greater than commonly assumed, while his rejection of the "ruling passion" doctrine distances him from Pope and his refusal to accept the "Great Chain of Being" separates him from most contemporaries. The respective roles of reason and imagination form the central focus of the analysis.
Review by A Parreaux of Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline by P. K. Alkon.
In this enthusiastic review, Koeppel commends Oliver Farrar Emerson's carefully prepared edition of Samuel Johnson's Rasselas. The introduction challenges James Boswell's widespread tradition that Johnson wrote the tale solely to cover his mother's funeral expenses, proving through a January 20, 1759, letter to William Strahan that the work was virtually complete before her death. Emerson contextualizes Johnson's choice of an Abyssinian setting by linking it to his 1735 translation of Jeronimo Lobo's voyage, while tracing the "happy valley" imagery to Samuel Purchas, John Milton, and James Thomson. Koeppel notes that Emerson compares the narrative to Voltaire's \textit{Candide} to highlight their shared protest against boundless optimism, though Johnson maintains a distinct religious hope in an afterlife. The volume also examines stylistic features like balanced phrase structures and alliteration while providing modernized text based on the first edition.
Review by E Koeppel of History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson.
Sachs highlights the coherence of Johnson's thought, centered on the opposing poles of imagination and reason. The book analyzes concepts such as the danger of solitude, the primacy of the general, and the absurdity of utopia. Johnson's critical reappraisal remains an academic phenomenon, as the general public still approaches him primarily through Boswell. The reviewer asserts that critics will struggle to defend Johnson's critical judgment, given his failure to recognize the value of major 18th-century works like Tom Jones, Gulliver's Travels, and Tristram Shandy.
Review by M Vetö of The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson by S. Johnson.
Seymour-Smith evaluates Davies’s anthology as a useful selection of Johnson’s writings, specifically praising the inclusion of pieces from the Idler, Rambler, and Adventurer. He observes that while the introduction is penetrating regarding Johnson's psychology, Davies’s commentary on the works themselves tends toward an academically stilted tone. Seymour-Smith critiques the editorial decision to modernize spelling and punctuation, calling the practice unnecessary. He further notes that the collection’s letters, including a notable French correspondence to Thrale, provide vital clues to the masochistic nature of Johnson’s sexual fantasies. Seymour-Smith expresses disappointment at the inexplicable omission of the Life of Savage, a work he considers essential for introducing Johnson’s moving prose to new readers.
Wain reviews the Yale edition of the periodical essays, identifying them as the most urgently needed of the new Johnsonian texts. Bate and Strauss provide an authoritative text, replacing the amateurish 1825 edition. Bate observes that Johnson's satire in these papers often shifts toward sympathy as he "participates and shares" in the human condition. Wain finds the heavy apparatus of explanatory and textual notes occasionally distracting but recognizes the volumes as essential for reference. These essays cannot be isolated from the "entire tradition of Western moral thought." The work demonstrates Johnson's inability to remain a mere observer, drawing the reader into a "Johnsonian bear hug" that makes it impossible to separate the man from his writing.
Review by David Lodge of Samuel Johnson by John Wain.
Irving praises Krutch's biography for its valuable critical analysis and interpretation of the facts, a process Boswell had left largely undone. Krutch's work is deemed independent and keen, providing a finality to the emergence from romantic criticism regarding Johnson's moralist and critic roles. Irving asserts that Krutch makes expert use of contemporary materials, including the Private Papers of Boswell and Thraliana, to provide a shrewd estimate of Johnson's work, such as Life of Savage and the Shakespeare edition. Krutch’s work maintains the "grotesque physical disabilities" but interprets Johnson’s domineering pose as a shrewd defense mechanism against ridicule.
Wilson reviews the facsimile edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, focusing on the work as a monument to its author's "preternatural indolence" and psychological struggles. The review highlights the squalor of Number 17 Gough Square and the personal tragedies, including the death of "Tetty," that attended the publication. Wilson argues that the dictionary’s greatness lies in its subjectivity, reflecting Johnson's prejudices and his massive appetite for life. The text notes that Johnson’s definitions serve as a record of the English language at a specific historical moment, captured by a man who found it nearly impossible to regulate his own sleep.
Review by F T Wood of Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings by Samuel Johnson.
Vance reviews a significant collection of nine essays originating from a 1980 symposium, emphasizing John Burke’s argument that the "unknown" Johnson is Johnson the author, whose writings have been obscured by the personality of the talker. The collection suggests that Johnson’s works offer deeper insight into his true essence and philosophical strength than the often-recounted anecdotes of the conversationalist. The review highlights Donald Greene’s challenge to the image of the stoical Johnson and Jean Hagstrum’s analysis of concordia discors in Johnson’s relationships, including his advocacy for this balance and his attitude toward women in Irene. Vance further identifies Richard Schwartz’s context for Johnson's unglamorous daily habits in London and Thomas Curley’s contribution regarding the likely secret collaboration on the Vinerian law lectures. Additionally, the collection explores Paul Alkon’s study of the humanitarian ideals in the condemned sermon for William Dodd, "The Convict's Address," as well as John Radner’s portrayal of Johnson's shifting historical perspectives on Hebridean emigration. Vance concludes that this exploration of lesser-known aspects of Johnson's work and thought constitutes a significant contribution to Johnson studies.
Mitchell acknowledges the ambitious and useful nature of the preliminary study, aiming for a comprehensive view of Johnson's moral notions within the eighteenth-century context. Voitle ties Johnson's rationalism to a Lockean background, discussing the issue of freedom of will as restrained by human weakness and external circumstance. The essence of Johnson's moral life is identified as the insistence on action (based on reason) over mere feeling. The concept of altruism is explored, noting similarities with Richard Cumberland's De legibus naturae. Voitle also links Johnson's morality to his political thought, examining key terms like poverty, charity, and subordination. His morality is characterized by this constant activity, contrasting with moralists who stress character and passive virtue. The book is deemed the best scholarly treatment of Johnson's morality to date.
Lock's mixed review recommends J. P. Hardy's introductory study to students as a detailed supplement to Donald J. Greene, praising its focus on the works rather than the life of Johnson. However, Lock finds Hardy diffuse and unnecessarily defensive, preferring Greene's more inclusive approach. Lock challenges Hardy's piecemeal comparisons of Johnson with John Locke and the philosophes, as well as his idiosyncratic interpretations of Orgilio in London and Charles XII in The Vanity of Human Wishes. The review faults Hardy for critical ingenuity regarding Macbeth and for allowing personal preferences to color his analysis of the Lives of the Poets.
Wain notes the publication of the Oxford edition of Rasselas as part of a surge in new scholarly editions of Johnson's major works. The text observes that the work, written when Johnson was fifty, exemplifies the "oriental tale" genre. Wain identifies the work as a central opportunity for contemporary readers to observe Johnson's intellectual qualities "in motion." While the provided text lists the edition among the items reviewed, it offers no specific commentary on Tillotson's editorial policy or the edition's particular strengths beyond its presence in the broader "crowding in" of new Johnsonian scholarship.
Review by John Wain of The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson.
The reviewer provides an approving review of the 1925 illustrated reissue of Courtney and Nichol Smith's bibliography. The text emphasizes the addition of thirty-nine facsimiles, primarily title pages, which the reviewer notes 'make a very interesting set' despite format scaling. Special attention is given to a 'cancelled page' from A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland containing a 'piety to Lichfield' prompted remark where Johnson suggests those longing to melt cathedral lead 'should swallow' what they melt.
McHenry calls Irwin's a masterful psychological examination, especially regarding Johnson's relationship with his mother, although the psychological conclusions are sometimes questionable. Irwin's reading is too negative, often failing to accept Johnson's mother's loving care despite his early illnesses.
Review by James B Misenheimer of Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion by Maurice J. Quinlan.
Review by Oliver F Sigworth of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D by James Boswell.
Weinbrot disputes Damrosch’s hostile assessment of Johnson’s "feebleness" as a literary critic. Damrosch argues Johnson’s Christian providential view and didacticism "vitiate" his understanding of tragedy, particularly regarding Shakespeare and the Greeks. Weinbrot challenges Damrosch’s reading of The Vanity of Human Wishes as a tragic universe where man is a "helpless victim," noting the solution is actually internal to the poem’s religious conclusion. He finds the theoretical underpinnings of Damrosch’s argument inappropriate to Johnson’s practice and critiques the book's derision of 18th-century intellectual efforts.
Review by Howard D Weinbrot of Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense by Leopold Damrosch.
Weinbrot critiques Irwin's psychoanalytic biography of Johnson, finding its tracing of Johnson's neurosis from childhood to a "cure" by the mid-1770s persuasive but with some defects. Weinbrot questions Irwin's medically and psychologically "un-Freudian" interpretations, noting that Johnson’s lasting fears of damnation suggest Christian feelings beyond neurotic symptoms, and arguing that the psychological readings of Johnson’s works do violence to his public art, which consistently transcended his personal needs.
Review by F T Wood of Young Samuel Johnson by J. L. Clifford.
Low critiques Clifford’s biography for its humorless, over-earnest accumulation of information and its tendency toward confident speculation without evidence. The reviewer finds that Clifford fails to grasp essentials, often obscuring important points with irrelevant social background.
Review by D M Low of Young Samuel Johnson by James L. Clifford.
The review notes Voitle's effort to discuss Johnson's moral, rational, and political ideas within the context of his own century. The review critiques Voitle for limiting the historical context primarily to the Renaissance, Hobbes, and Locke, largely neglecting the Classical and Christian traditions. A major flaw is Voitle’s ambivalence in distinguishing normative "right reason" from Cartesian "discursive reason," leading him to incorrectly label Johnson's morality and political theory as Utilitarian. The reviewer credits Voitle for sound chapters on Johnson's free will and rejection of sentimental morality.
[Brown University Studies, Vol. XXI] (Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Press, 1957. Pp. 309. $6.00.)
Review by Raymond H. Reno of Samuel Johnson in Grub Street by Edward A. Bloom.
Wain notes Tracy's edition of the biography written during Johnson's thirties. The text identifies this work as part of a significant influx of new scholarly editions. Wain places the work within the category of biography, a genre Johnson used to explore "what life is like at ground level." While the source provides the publication details for Tracy's Oxford edition, it offers no specific discussion of the editorial policy or Tracy's scholarly contributions. Wain emphasizes that such early works allow the reader to see Johnson's intellectual and empathetic qualities "in motion."
Review by John Wain of Life of Savage by Samuel Johnson.
Roberts provides a supportive summary of Krutch’s biography, which aims to reconcile Johnson’s conversational fame with his literary output. The biography assesses The Dictionary, Rasselas, and the periodical essays, while analyzing Johnson’s political views. Krutch argues that Johnson’s acceptance of social subordination did not preclude an active concern for social abuses, specifically his early protests against debtors' prisons and slavery. Roberts finds the book successful in presenting a comprehensive account of Johnson’s life and character in the light of contemporary knowledge.
Hay addresses the perceived failure of the eighteenth century to achieve the tragic, a concept highlighted by Leavis. Damrosch's book aims to show that intelligent people still appreciated earlier tragedies and to explore the nature and limits of the tragic sense in Johnson. The study examines neo-classical discussions of tragedy, John Hughes's defense of Othello, and the tragic elements in Johnson's life, including his inscription of John 9:4 on his watch. Chapters analyze Johnson's play Irene and the tragic aspects of The Vanity of Human Wishes. The third part explores Johnson's criticism of tragedy, noting his focus on "truth to life," which leads him to view tragedy as a selection from life, making him "receptive to the tragic, but not to tragedy."
Roberts provides an approving review of Quinlan’s methodical study, which emphasizes the influence of religious figures like William Law and Samuel Clarke on Johnson’s theology. He credits Quinlan for using an analysis of the Dictionary and sermons to show how Johnson’s view of Christ’s death evolved into a belief in "perpetual propitiation," a concept that provided spiritual comfort on his deathbed. While Roberts finds the discussion of Johnson’s "late conversion" relevant, he notes that Quinlan fails to emphasize Johnson’s fundamental criticism of Dissenters regarding their lack of an ordered liturgy. Additionally, Roberts questions Quinlan’s claim that Johnson never explicitly stated his views on the Eucharist, suggesting that Sermon IX provides such evidence. The review also briefly commends Curwen’s sampler as a "perfect item for the spare room bookshelf," noting its intelligent selection of extracts from Johnson’s own writings rather than relying solely on Boswell.
Review by S C Roberts of Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion by Maurice J. Quinlan.
Review by Clyde S Kilby of Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion by Maurice J. Quinlan.
Williamson analyzes Wain's enthusiasm for Johnson as a "humane Tory" whose thinking was rooted in "bedrock common sense." Wain disputes the modern stereotype of Johnson as a typical conservative, emphasizing his hatred of the slave trade and pleas for a merciful penal system. Williamson notes Wain's distinction between Johnson's Toryism and Boswell's "sentimental Romantic" version. The review highlights Johnson's "bruising contact with the realities of existence" in Grub Street as the source of his intellectual clarity. Williamson finds the study successful in presenting Johnson as he "actually was" rather than an abstraction.
Halsband notes that the collection of essays modifies the established image of Johnson rather than revealing new information. John Burke's introduction asserts that Johnson’s true character is best revealed in his own writings, not solely the partial portrait offered by Boswell. Donald Greene argues in depth that Johnson was not a capital-'S' Stoic but merely advocated a lower-case 'stoicism,' meaning the patient endurance of pain and hardship, which is compatible with his Christian faith. Jean Hagstrum demonstrates the pervasive binary structure of Johnson's thought. Richard Schwartz proposes reconstructing Johnson’s daily life by analyzing the known social, historical, and literary environments of London. Other essays cover Johnson’s condemned sermon for Mr. Dodd and his evolving views on Scotland.
Review by Samuel E. Longmire of Samuel Johnson and the Problem of Evil by Richard B. Schwartz.
Longmire reviews a collection of nine essays focused on Johnson's writings outside Boswell's Life. Donald Greene argues that the Christian Johnson deeply distrusted Stoic ethics, while Jean Hagstrum analyzes the concordia discors of human relationships in the Rambler and Irene. Maximillian Novak defends Johnson's role as a literary historian in his Life of Dryden, and Paul Alkon argues for the imaginative power of the Condemned Sermon written for William Dodd. Longmire finds Thomas Curley's look at the Vinerian law lectures fails to provide sufficient evidence to challenge previous scholarship on Johnson's dominance in the collaboration. He concludes that despite some mediocre pieces, the volume assists greatly in discovering Johnson's mind.
Schwartz argues that Johnson applauded the new science and subscribed to its ideology of empirical, cautious methodology, drawing knowledge from popularizers like the Boyle lecturers. Jacob finds the book valuable for rescuing Johnson from the misapprehension of being anti-science. However, the review critiques the narrow definition of "scientific ideology," asserting that the author fails to integrate Johnson's adulation of science with his understanding of social and political issues.
Wain reviews Lascelles's meticulous edition of Johnson's travel narrative, noting that Johnson sought "a fold in the web of time" to study a way of life isolated from progress. The text observes that Johnson's style maintains a generalizing dignity while remaining perpetually alert to the particular and the concrete. Wain asserts that Johnson brings the observant eye of a realist novelist to the scene, focusing on "what life is like at ground level." The volume provides rich opportunities to witness Johnson's intellectual qualities "in motion." Lascelles's editorial work redresses the skimpy treatment of the work found in other contemporary scholarship.
Rawson dismisses the text as a "thinly spread" coffee-table book lacking real understanding, though he praises the delightful and varied visual illustrations of Johnson's social period.
Rawson praises Damrosch for a valuable examination of the "tragic sense" in an age primarily focused on order. The reviewer highlights Damrosch’s insight into how Johnson’s pessimism is qualified by pragmatic common sense and "anti-tragic" elements.
Fussell attempts to treat Johnson "wholly as a writer" by isolating his work from biographical context. Wain disputes this "either/or" approach, arguing that Johnson’s immediate physical presence is inseparable from his prose. Fussell emphasizes the "force of genre," viewing Johnson’s output as a series of objective exercises in established literary "kinds." However, Wain challenges Fussell’s "slaphappy" application of genre theory, particularly the classification of the Lives of the Poets as merely ironic-elegiac. Wain asserts that Fussell fails to see Johnson as a man reacting to historical shifts from the Renaissance to the Romantic epoch, ultimately providing an impoverished view by neglecting the "participation and share" inherent in Johnson's writing.
Review by John Wain of Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing by Paul Fussell.
Low praises Chapman’s chronological selection of Johnson’s writings for capturing his wit, humanity, and learning in a compact form. The reviewer suggests that for accuracy regarding Johnson's early life, the reader is better served returning to Boswell.
Review by D M Low of Selections from Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784 by Samuel Johnson.
Watmough identifies Clifford’s biography as a readable, non-pedantic account of Johnson’s first forty years. He emphasizes Clifford’s success in portraying Johnson as an essentially decent, modern figure who remains relatable to contemporary audiences. The reviewer asserts that the work provides a necessary completion to the literary portrait of Johnson, which is often limited to his later years. The scholarship is noted for its clarity and ability to bring the world of young Johnson to life.
Roberts reviews Chapman’s definitive three-volume edition of Johnson’s correspondence. He emphasizes Chapman’s "intensive labour" in providing accurate texts through the study of original manuscripts. The edition adds 470 previously uncollected letters, including the Queeney letters and the Fettercairn find, while maintaining Hill’s original numbering system for scholarly consistency. Roberts highlights Chapman’s meticulous indexing, which serves as a guide to Johnson's personality, and notes the "epistolary style" displayed in letters to Chesterfield, Macpherson, and young Jenny Langton.
Wiltshire offers a mixed review of R. T. Davies's edition of Johnson's work. Wiltshire finds the selection presents an original view but criticizes the introduction for failing to justify its unusual emphasis. He disputes the decision to devote more space to the moral essays than to the Lives of the Poets, assuming the latter remain more readable today. Wiltshire argues that Davies wastes pages on allegories and facetious letters while neglecting the struggle with style evident in the early Rambler essays. He further challenges the biographical introduction for using modern psychological terms like manic-depressive personality, which Wiltshire claims offer no real insight and risk romanticizing the subject. While appreciating the inclusion of diaries and letters, Wiltshire concludes that the neglect of the bracing and self-disciplinary nature of the early work undermines the portrayal of the courage found in the final letters.
Review by John Wiltshire of Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings by Samuel Johnson.
Price's balanced review commends Fleeman’s "caution" in labeling the work preliminary, noting that manuscripts are "maddeningly elusive" and often appear just after a census is asserted as complete. The reviewer highlights that of the 265 entries, 83 items remain "unlocated," including significant "Adversaria" containing Johnson’s essay outlines. Price identifies the work as a "good example" for other authors, serving as a vital index for literary historians and biographers. While praising the "enormous amount of very hard and tedious work," Price notes the inexpensive "photo-offset" reproduction method and urges the continued tracing of provenances for documents that frequently migrate to public repositories.
Review by F T Wood of Samuel Johnson, Poems by Samuel Johnson.
Sherwood analyzes Stock’s placement of Johnson within the "traditional humanist conception" of normative reason. He emphasizes Johnson’s defense of Shakespeare through the consensus gentium, arguing that value arises from rational consideration rather than mere sentiment. Sherwood identifies inherent contradictions in Johnson’s doctrine of imitation, where a preference for "general nature" conflicts with occasional lapses into realism. He disputes Johnson’s "desperate line of defense" regarding the lack of distinct genres in Shakespeare.
Johnson’s Business [review of A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson; and Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson’s Middle Years, by James L. Clifford]
Walker welcomes the full-size facsimile reprint of the 1755 Dictionary, noting its historical significance as one of the most commented-upon and influential dictionaries ever published. Walker argues that the Dictionary is frequently misunderstood—as by Mencken and Murray—and should be seen as part of the 18th-century intellectual drive to order accumulated erudition. The reviewer asserts that the Dictionary has not been entirely superseded by the OED, praising Johnson's two innovations: ordering the senses of words and using illustrative quotations from English literature. Walker criticizes the reprint's production quality ("mock-leather binding is extremely nasty") and Burchfield's introduction for betraying little acquaintance with the Dictionary itself and treating Johnson’s work as merely "whimsical and licentious." Walker wishes Burchfield had instead highlighted Johnson's delicacy and precision in defining words. Walker finds Clifford's Dictionary Johnson to be a definitive work of meticulous detail concerning the period of the Dictionary's creation. Clifford's focus is on the "life" rather than the "life and letters," adding small facts from unpublished research. The reviewer notes that Clifford concentrates heavily on the minute biographical and domestic aspects of Johnson's life, even giving more space to the privies in Gough Square than to his philosophical writings, and ends the narrative when Johnson received his royal pension in 1762.
See also the letter from Roger Kojecky, 2 October 1980, on the role of the amanuenses in copying quotations from George Herbert, and Walker’s reply in the same issue.
The Measure and the Choice: A Pathographic Essay on Samuel Johnson
McHenry finds Verbeek's book peculiar, poorly written, and confusing because of obscure psychiatric terminology and a lack of clear definitions. McHenry strongly rejects Verbeek's central, poorly supported argument that Johnson suffered from various forms of epilepsy, including "epileptic depression."
Reddick praises the handlist as a significant contribution that synthesizes scattered, unpublished information. Though modest in its claims, it offers fuller information than expected. Its greatest value is for scholars investigating Johnson's work and thought process.
Davis argues against the long-accepted notion that Sir John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson is a poor performance. Davis examines and refutes charges leveled against Hawkins, including plagiarism, malevolence, inaccuracy, and literary obtuseness. The book ultimately offers a "judicious summary of faults and merits," concluding that Hawkins' Life is a valuable work judged against the biographical standards of its time. Davis demonstrates that Hawkins consciously avoided the riches available in Boswell and Piozzi, working independently. Hawkins' book is praised for providing non-available information, partaking of Johnson's own biographical principles, and speaking with authority on Johnson's early political feelings.
Mossner calls Davis's abridged edition of Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson a "good book" that provides the non-hero-worshipping counterpoint to Boswell's biography. The abridgement, achieved by removing the "life and times" aspects, concentrates on Johnson himself. Mossner notes Hawkins, unlike Boswell, lets unflattering details stand, such as Johnson's opium use. All Johnson students and admirers, Mossner asserts, will benefit from Hawkins’s account of his old friend.
Wimsatt investigates the intersection of natural science vocabulary and prose style. Spears notes that Johnson uses philosophic words to create a special kind of metaphor, matching the mechanical outer realm and the psychological inner. The study identifies the Rambler as a concentrated use of mechanical imagery turned inward to the analysis of the soul. Spears acknowledges that while specialists challenge the statistical and historical definitions provided, Wimsatt successfully unites erudition with imaginative awareness of critical problems.
Letters of Samuel Johnson, With Mrs. Thrale's Genuine Letters to Him
Review by George Sherburn of Letters of Samuel Johnson, With Mrs. Thrale's Genuine Letters to Him by Samuel Johnson.
Robson reviews the inaugural volume of the Yale Edition of Johnson's works, containing diaries, prayers, and annals. Robson acknowledges the meticulous American scholarship and the notes’ value as a continuous life commentary. He argues these private documents reveal a serious, tragic spirit distinct from the legendary "clubman" persona. However, Robson notes a sense of unease in reading such intimate self-communings, which he identifies as reflecting neurosis and a painful sense of weakness.
Kramer's mixed review outlines the contents of this volume edited by E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne, noting the inclusion of eleven school exercises, a translation of Addison, eight early poems, and manuscript drafts for London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Irene. Kramer praises the scholarly virtues and concise editorial machinery but expresses disappointment with the introduction, which offers no new perspectives to the modern reader. The abstract argues that the edition adds nothing substantial to the knowledge of the poetry of Johnson and challenges the editors' claim that a textual change in The Vanity of Human Wishes proves his keen ear for musical verse.
In this mixed review of James Clifford's Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle Years, Wiltshire praises the diligent research and new anecdotes concerning Johnson's eating habits and social interactions with figures like Henry Fielding and Benjamin Franklin. However, Wiltshire finds the biography essentially incomplete and hollow because it focuses on outer life while treating Johnson's immense inner life with perfunctoriness. Wiltshire argues that Clifford fails to illuminate the life by the works, specifically regarding how Johnson's self-analysis in the Rambler and Rasselas enabled him to survive emotional isolation and fears of insanity. The review disputes Clifford's superficial characterization of the period as footloose, asserting instead that Johnson lived as a survivor through clinical introspection.
Review by John Wiltshire of Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate.
The reviewer commends Morley’s "Sir Joshua Reynolds edition" of Boswell’s biography, which includes extensive notes and numerous portraits. The reviewer argues that Boswell’s inclusion of Johnson’s "frailties" and "less agreeable qualities" adds to the work’s verisimilitude rather than diminishing his memory. Morley is criticized for suggesting Boswell was "low-minded" in documenting certain faults, with the reviewer maintaining that Johnson’s charity does not disprove the existence of those personal struggles. The edition is described as a credit to both publisher and editor, aimed at bibliophiles.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., together with the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The reviewer describes Napier’s five-volume edition of Boswell’s biography as a "liberal education." The edition restores Boswell’s original chronological text, abridging or removing Croker’s previous editorial interventions. Key additions include the first publication of Thomas Campbell’s diary, which contains a vivid, unflattering description of Johnson's physical tics. The reviewer defends Piozzi’s second marriage to an Italian musician, characterizing Macaulay’s traditional condemnation of the union as "unjust and unreasonable."
This review details the accidental discovery of Boswell’s lifelong correspondence with William Johnson Temple at a shop in Boulogne, where the manuscripts were being used as wrapping paper. The reviewer argues that these letters offer a raw, unedited view of Boswell’s character, documenting his legal failures, political disappointments, and chronic financial anxieties. The text notes Boswell’s own account of his latter years passed in comparative penury, receiving only £350 a year after failing to succeed at the London Bar or enter Parliament.
A review of a collection of correspondence, focusing on Johnson’s letters to Chesterfield, Warton, and his parents. Johnson uses direct prose that eschews the artifice of seventeenth-century models or contemporary pseudo-letters. The reviewer highlights Johnson’s stylistic shift toward epigrammatic brevity, notably in his critiques of Chatterton and Ossian. Johnson maintains an orthodox religious perspective, emphasizing prayer over labor. The descriptions of the Hebrides exhibit a modern eloquence fueled by suppressed resentment. Johnson demonstrates significant emotional interiority, particularly regarding virtue.
Meynell selects poems, letters, and essays to represent Johnson’s multi-faceted literary activity. Chesterton provides a preface defending Lives of the Poets against modern critical trends. He characterizes Johnson as a sane individual aware of his own mental instabilities. The text emphasizes the clarity of Johnson’s critical judgments over the elusive styles of contemporary reviewers. It excludes Johnson’s conversation, noting its specific relevance to Boswell.
Meynell presents selections to provide a sound judgment of Johnson's work independent of the life Boswell made a "living possession." While Boswell links Johnson with "genial sociability," Meynell connects him with "loneliness, composure and deep solemnity." Johnson's language, described as "copious without order, and energetic without rule," deeply impressed the national tradition. This volume justifies the series by providing pertinent material for those lacking time to navigate the "solemn and weighty sentences" of his full corpus.
This review of Stephen's monograph analyzes his acute pieces of criticism on Johnson's ponderous but transparent style. The reviewer challenges Stephen's assertion that the Dictionary was material and destined to be soon superseded, arguing instead for its enduring acuteness of thought. The text corrects Stephen's biographical errors regarding the age of Johnson's wife and the location of his burial. The reviewer identifies the work as primarily for those who know Boswell and notes Stephen’s defense of Boswell’s accuracy of portraiture against Macaulay.
The reviewer examines Stephen's biography of Johnson, noting its thematic division into chapters covering his early life, literary career, social circle, and final years. The reviewer characterizes the work as a skillful manipulation of existing chronicles, including those by Boswell and Thrale, intended for a general audience rather than as a product of original research. It argues that while Stephen provides a readable and picturesque narrative, such condensations risk discouraging readers from the necessary study of Boswell's full account. The critique notes minor inaccuracies regarding the phrasing of Walmsley's correspondence and a recurring typographical error misnaming Francis Barber as 'Francis Barker.' The text laments the brevity of recorded Johnsonian conversation, asserting that the biographical record requires further amplification rather than abridgment.
Reviews the re-issue of Courtney and Nichol Smith’s Bibliography, noting its utility for students. It highlights a celebrated sentence from Johnson's Journey and recalls the scholarly work of former correspondent Courtney. The piece also includes an anecdote from Raleigh illustrating Carlyle’s dislike of Lamb, contrasting the two writers' personalities.
Raleigh analyzes the "felicitous relation" between Johnson and Boswell, emphasizing the "essayist Johnson" often obscured by Boswell's biography. Raleigh highlights Johnson's "playful" nature in his review of Soame Jenyns and asserts the "greatness of the man" silences criticisms of his "pompous style" or "narrow political outlook." The reviewer notes that while the world passes over the Rambler, Boswell's work remains a text one may "take down from its shelf whenever one pleases." The review insists Johnson's character serves as an "excellent test of a man's head and heart."
McGuffie provides a chronological record of Johnsoniana published during Johnson’s peak notoriety, cataloging parodies, reviews, anecdotes, and encomia. The checklist highlights the period between 1770 and 1779, dominated by political controversy and the "Pensioner Johnson" persona. McIntosh observes that the volume of contemporary attacks on Johnson’s character and style documented by McGuffie suggests a need to re-examine the traditional designation of this era as the Age of Johnson.
Bate argues that Johnson’s moral and critical writings stem directly from personal experience rather than scholarly abstraction. He positions Johnson as a moralist whose insights provide a "criterion and corrective" for life. The text challenges the perception of Johnson’s style as a barrier to personal expression, asserting that his assertions remain massive in content. Bate emphasizes the integration of experience into every medium, from poetry to biography. He underscores the practical nature of Johnson’s intellect, highlighting the rejection of Berkeley’s idealism as a defining moment in his philosophical approach to reality.
This re-issue of Sir John Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson, abridged by Bertram Davis, is praised as a good idiosyncratic biography not annihilated by Boswell's great work. Hawkins, an old friend and executor of Johnson, provides a valuable perspective, willing to discuss Johnson's deepest fears, particularly of madness and death. The biography is commended for its simple, compassionate dignity in describing Johnson's final illness. The reviewer notes Hawkins's shock at Johnson's "excess of indiscriminating benevolence," especially toward his servant Francis Barber.
Cronin provides an approving review of John Wain’s biography of Johnson. He praises Wain’s ability to communicate the emotional and intelligent responses of Johnson’s world while acknowledging an indebtedness to Boswell. Wain characterizes the relationship between the two men as a dialogue between epochs, specifically Romantic Europe speaking to Renaissance Europe. Cronin highlights Wain’s success in exposing misconceptions regarding Johnson’s poetic sensitivity and his aesthetic responsiveness to place. The review emphasizes Wain’s use of recent scholarship to construct a fresh narrative and commends the extended discussions of Johnson’s published works, particularly the Preface to the Dictionary. Cronin concludes that Wain’s respect for language allows him to reach the heart of his subject.
This review examines John Ker Spittal's collection of eighteenth-century articles from the Monthly Review concerning Johnson's works and early biographies. The reviewer notes the inclusion of contemporary critiques of Boswell, Hester Lynch Piozzi, John Hawkins, and Arthur Murphy. While admitting the collection preserves stories that escaped Boswell, the reviewer finds the book overlong and observes that contemporary verdicts do not differ startlingly from modern ones. The review highlights the "imposingly" rolling verbiage of the period and notes that even by the late eighteenth century, Johnson was already viewed as a "giant" and a subject for comedy.
The reviewer identifies Chapman’s selections as a "pleasure" to read, noting the book is "admirably printed." The volume includes portraits of Johnson and Boswell and a photograph of the "round-robin" concerning Goldsmith's epitaph. The text highlights Johnson’s refusal to "disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription." The reviewer notes that while many "good things" are omitted due to space, the edition remains a high-quality summary of Boswell’s larger work.
Dickinson evaluates a collection of essays originating from a 1980 conference that challenges the "popular stereotype" of Johnson as a "sternly commonsensical Doctor of legend." H. T. Dickinson highlights contributions regarding Johnson’s rejection of Stoicism, his sophisticated insight into Restoration politics, and his collaboration with Robert Chambers on Oxford law lectures. Dickinson notes the volume's success in shifting focus from James Boswell's conversational reports to a "full appreciation" of Johnson's own diverse prose, including the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. The reviewer describes the emerging figure as a "flexible, compassionate thinker" with "frequently uncommon" insights.
Hibbert provides a readable, sympathetic biography that is light on serious discussion of Johnson's writing.
Boulton questions the necessity of its publication given its cost. Greene disputes misapplications of Stoicism to Johnson, while Hagstrum analyzes his views on domestic relationships. Novak, Schwartz, and Alkon examine Johnson’s literary criticism, urban environment, and homiletics. Radner and Tomarken evaluate the Scottish journey. Boulton singles out Curley’s research on the Chambers collaboration as the volume's most significant discovery.
This reference volume compiles Johnson’s oracular pronouncements on diverse subjects ranging from the Renaissance to Scotch writers. The reviewer highlights the collection's utility for pundits seeking Johnsonian authority on literary and historical topics. The text records Johnson's conversations with Piozzi and his defenses of modern times against the praises of antiquity, providing a structured resource for navigating his vast critical legacy.
Ricks reviews the Yale edition of Johnson’s poems edited by E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne, questioning the basic decision to produce a distinct edition instead of revising the 1941 Oxford edition. While the Yale edition incorporates new findings and manuscript variants, Ricks finds it problematic, noting it possesses "more bulk than weight" and severely cuts necessary annotations. He argues it fails to supersede the Oxford text, which remains the "better buy" for all but pure Johnsonians. The review discusses the "vitality and wit" of the verse, as demonstrated in London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and asserts these remain best understood through the criticism of Eliot and Leavis. Ricks highlights how Johnson's "sardonic relish" and "taut sobriety" prevent his use of "metropolis" and medical metaphors from becoming flabby pomposity, noting how he "subdued the metaphor gracefully" in the epitaph for Claudy Phillips. By using the "language of medicine" to achieve poetic heights, Johnson ensures his work maintains a strength that the reviewer concludes is poorly served by the Yale edition’s lack of annotation.
Ingham's approving review commends Paul Alkon's analysis of Johnson's anatomy of the mind. Ingham highlights Alkon's method of making distinctions, such as showing Johnson as both a descriptive and prescriptive moralist who separates natural passions from artificial ones. The review finds Alkon's thesis convincing when he argues that Locke's descriptive psychology provided the strongest confirmation of Johnson's thinking. Ingham notes that Alkon illuminates specific details ranging from the novel to human solitude. Although some elements like compassion remain a divinely irrational impulse that defies Alkon's system, Ingham concludes that this complex, less tidy account accurately mirrors the reality of Johnson's thought.
Eisentrant’s study explores the literary significance of Johnson’s prose, specifically his work as an essayist. The reviewer notes that while Johnson’s poetry exhibits greater intelligibility than certain contemporary prose theories, his prose remains original and functional. The review discusses the effectiveness of Johnson’s style, highlighting lines on Shakespeare written in the manner of 'Lablere' as particularly successful. It addresses the serious implications for prose writers if poetry is considered the primary interpretation of truth.
Miller provides an approving review of a new edition of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, 1773, edited by Pottle and Bennett, alongside a brief notice of Henry Curwen’s A Johnson Sampler. This edition reprints the original draft and adds an appendix of material discovered since the 1930s; however, Miller finds the new material of limited interest to non-specialists, though he notes a detail about Johnson washing his own handkerchiefs. The review highlights the contrast between Johnson's formal, solemn account and Boswell's "gay, colloquial, confessional" narrative, which Miller asserts outfaces Johnson's own version. Miller characterizes the work as a magnificent "belligerent, grumbling comedy" where Johnson frequently "bites the hands that fed him," exemplified by his humorous suggestion to name a "mere black barren rock" "Inch Boswell." Highlighting the aggressive and occasionally sadistic nature of Johnson’s wit, Miller disputes the "unalloyed" wisdom of the sage, pointing instead to his "social prejudice" against the Scots and his tendency to use aggressive comedy as an instrument of sadism.
Hill provides an edition of Rasselas characterized by a thorough appreciation of Johnson. The volume includes a brief biography and a detailed account of the pathetic circumstances surrounding the book's composition to fund his mother's funeral. Hill treats the work as a labor of love, though he adopts a harsh tone toward Thrale. The reviewer notes the speed of Johnson’s penmanship and confirms the edition's suitability for school use.
American Journal of Urology and Sexology
Abstracts and Extracts: Dr. Johnson on Sex Equality
This brief extract highlights Johnson's views on the relative importance of sexual infidelity in husbands versus wives. The text records Johnson's argument that while a husband's infidelity is 'only a crime,' a wife's unfaithfulness constitutes 'a dissolution of the principles of society.' Johnson maintains that the primary necessity for certainty in property inheritance justifies a stricter moral standard for women. He asserts that a man who 'generously brings home his money to his wife' should not be heavily censured for occasional 'distractions' elsewhere. Conversely, Johnson posits that an unfaithful wife 'imposes a spurious offspring' upon her husband, which he characterizes as the ultimate social injury.
A Dialogue in the Shades: Churchill and Dr. Johnson
In this imagined dialogue, Churchill, offended by Johnson's physical and boorish qualities, demands an explanation for his exclusion from British Poets. Johnson initially claimed the work's merit was only "temporary and local." He later confessed he was seeking revenge for Churchill's former chastisement and had dishonestly preferred Pomfret's "flimsy rhymes."
A Sonnet: Written in a Copy of Dr. Johnson's 'Prayers and Meditations'
Hill presents a Petrarchan sonnet reflecting on the strange great soul of Johnson as revealed in his private devotional writings. Hill employs the biblical metaphor of Moses striking the rock at Horeb to contrast Johnson’s proud high front with the diviner springs of his inner life. The poem argues that while thirsty worldlings perceive only barren stone in Johnson’s outward appearance, his deeper character remains brimmed with love and unfathomed.
Massachusetts Magazine; or, Monthly Museum
Anacreon's Dove: A Translation from the Greek, the Completion of Which Employed Dr. Johnson 52 Years
A verse translation from the Greek, attributed to the labor of Johnson over a fifty-year period. Narrated from the perspective of the bird, the poem describes the dove's role as a courier bearing "vows to Myrtale the fair" on behalf of "soft Anacreon." The dove recounts its "blissful bondage," preferred over the hardships of roaming "without a home," citing the comforts of "sweet repast and soft repose" provided by its master. Specific interactions include the bird snatching bread from Johnson’s fingers and sleeping upon his lyre. The piece concludes with the dove's self-deprecating remark regarding its own loquacity, noting it has "chattered like a pie."
Anna Seward and Dr. Johnson: 'To Miss Seward on Her Monody on Major Andre'
Lichfield is an ancient cathedral town in a picturesque region of England. In its grammar school Addison, Dr. Johnson, and Garrick were educated, and in Lichfield Johnson was born.
A Page of Impromptus: Dr. Young's Happy Impromptu. Ready Wit of Queen Elizabeth; Dr. Johnson's Promptness in Repartee; Argumentum Ad Hominem; Prior; Clerical Wit; Impromptu, Addressed by a Priest to the Legislature of Connecticut; Difficult Rhyming; Extempore Poets of Italy
Perhaps one of the happiest and most elegant impromptus ever uttered was the following, by Dr. Young, author of the "Night Thoughts," when walking in his garden with two ladies, one of whom he afterwards married. On being called away by his servants to speak to a parishioner on some pressing business, he was very unwilling to leave the ladies, and, on being almost driven into the house by their gentle violence, he thus addressed them:
This collection of anecdotes highlights Johnson’s rigid religious zeal and characteristic social roughness. In one instance, Johnson refuses to shake hands with the Abbe Raynal, declaring, "Sir, I will not shake hands with an infidel!" Another account describes his silence when asked about the Dean of Derry, whom he later labels a "Sabbath breaker" unworthy of praise. The anecdotes present Johnson as a "departed genius" whose blunt moral convictions dictated his social interactions.
Smith expresses a contemptuous opinion of Johnson, characterizing his habit of spontaneous prayer in mixed company as "madness" rather than hypocrisy. The text notes Smith’s disapproval of Johnson’s tendency to patronize "scoundrels" such as Savage. Smith recounts an instance of Johnson’s financial improvidence, describing him wearing an expensive scarlet cloak trimmed with gold lace while his "naked toes" showed through his shoes. These anecdotes emphasize the perceived incongruity between Johnson's public status and his private eccentricities.
A comic snippet: "A gentleman once observed to Dr. Johnson that there were fewer vagrant poor in Scotland than in England, and adduced as a proof of it that there was no instance of a beggar dying in the street there. 'I believe you are very right there, sir,' cried Johnson, 'but that does not arise from the want of beggars but from the difficulty of starving a Scotchman to death.'"
Portsmouth Weekly Magazine: A Repository of Miscellaneous Literary Matters in Prose and Verse
Eglintoune and Baretti characterize Johnson’s lack of social refinement as ursine, though Goldsmith maintains Johnson possesses "nothing of the bear but the skin." Boswell records Johnson’s rare "jocularity," noting a laugh Davies likens to a rhinoceros. Conversation with Kemble reveals Johnson’s skepticism toward immersive acting; he argues that if Garrick truly believed himself to be Richard III, he would deserve hanging for the character’s crimes.
Many years have elapsed since Dr. Johnson walked into a hole in the horizon, so to speak, and was lost to human view. As a result, he has been for some time far beyond the reach of praise or cavil. It is, indeed, saddening to reflect how utterly impossible it is to get at him now with a little well-meant advice.
Butterworth details Johnson’s early life and "peculiar" temperament, noting that "scrofulous affection and a constitutional melancholy" accompanied his genius. Drawing on Boswell, Butterworth recounts Johnson’s childhood poetic precocity, including an epitaph for a duck written at age three. The text focuses on Johnson’s education under various instructors: Dame Oliver, who praised him as her "best scholar," and the "wrong-headedly severe" Mr. Hunter. Hunter reportedly used unmerciful floggings to "save you from the gallows." Johnson credit's Hunter’s discipline for his accurate Latin knowledge, famously stating, "My master whipped me very well; without that, I should have done nothing."
Blankenhorn describes a 1925 memorial service at St. Clement Danes marking the 140th anniversary of Johnson's death. The event, organized by the Johnson Club, featured an address by J. C. Squire, who discussed Johnson’s "Christian virtues" and his early poverty with Savage. Blankenhorn notes the "comic ponderosity" of a new Johnson bust and the laurel wreath placed on his statue. The text highlights Johnson's lasting impact on the English language through his "Dictionary," which "fixed our language" and slowed the rate of change. Squire observes that unlike Milton or Lamb, Johnson's nature "aroused awe and admiration" without inviting pity.
Collection of anecdotes focusing on the relationship between Johnson and Lord Chesterfield during the preparation of the Dictionary. The account repeats the tradition that Johnson, after being kept waiting in Chesterfield's antechamber while Colley Cibber was admitted, left the house in a passion and never returned. It details Johnson's refusal of Chesterfield's later patronizing letters in The World, quoting his remark to Boswell that the Earl "fell a-scribbling" only when the work was famous. Johnson eventually divulged his private letter of rebuff to Boswell for inclusion in the biography.
New York Magazine; or, Literary Repository
An Attempt to Imitate Dr. Johnson's Latin Ode, Addressed to Mrs. Thrale from the Isle of Sky
This poem, signed by "The Drone," is an English verse imitation of the Latin ode Johnson composed for Thrale during his 1773 tour of the Hebrides. The verses translate Johnson's observations of the "inhospitable land" and "craggy rocks" of Skye into conventional eighteenth-century English stanzas. The imitator emphasizes the contrast between the "savage manners" of the north and the "sweets of social life" found in Thrale's company. The poem captures Johnson's "fond regret" as he turns from the "waste and wild" scenery to recall Thrale’s "charming image" and the "friendship's charm" that beguiled his cares. It concludes by reflecting on how the absence of friends strengthens the "ties of soul" and the "soft congenial sympathy" of affection.
Johnson recounted to his hostess a youthful filial disobedience: a refusal, because of pride, to attend his book-selling father's stall at Uttoxeter market fifty years prior. To atone, Johnson traveled to the market, and stood bare-headed before his father's former stall for an hour, exposed to the elements and the sneers of standers-by, hoping this penance propitiated heaven.
J.P. shares an anecdote illustrating Johnson's willingness to assist "modest merit." Adams, an optician to the King, sought to dedicate a book on the use of the globes to his majesty but lacked the skill to compose a proper address. Johnson reviewed the work and provided the dedication. Upon the book's presentation, the King recognized the style and remarked that the dedication was not Adams's own. When Adams credited Johnson, the King praised Johnson as a "great man" and expressed a personal dislike for flattery. The issue also includes reports on vaccination progress in France and Nantes.
New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register
Johnson writes to Porter concerning the financial settlement of his deceased mother’s estate and business. He directs the prioritization of payments to Chambers, the family servant, and various London booksellers. Hill provides annotations, clarifying that Johnson financed these payments with profits from Rasselas. Johnson expresses profound grief following his mother’s death and details arrangements for Chambers to maintain the Lichfield bookselling business. He maintains a distance from the commercial "trade" while fulfilling outstanding filial and professional obligations.
Hill compiles a diverse array of Johnsonian documents, including Prayers and Meditations, childhood memoirs, and Murphy’s 1792 essay. The collection features Piozzi’s Anecdotes, which the review notes for its "pointed petulance" and record of Johnson's social retorts. The second volume aggregates scattered criticisms from forty-seven authors, including More, Percy, and Smith. Hill provides first-time publications of letters to Richardson and Strahan, the latter discussing literary copyright. The text observes that while Walpole and others found Johnson’s manners "antipathetic," the miscellanies reinforce the "solid and versatile wisdom" of his character. Hill includes a concordance of sayings titled Dicta Philosophi.
National Observer, and British Review of Politics, Economics, Literature, Science, and Art
This article reproduces a satirical epitaph written by George Mason following the death of Johnson in 1784. The text characterizes Johnson's prose as 'pedantic verbosity' and labels Rasselas an example of 'matchless stupidity.' Mason attacks Johnson's political tenets as 'long-exploded absurdities' and his critical work as the product of 'hebetude.' Defining Johnson as the 'Snarler General,' the epitaph accuses him of being a 'credulous retailer of calumnies' and 'illiberal in his censures.' The piece concludes by offering the epitaph as an 'expiatory offering' to the 'manes of poets august' whom Mason claims Johnson slandered.
An Essay on the Elements, Accents, and Frosody of the English Language: intended to have been printed as an Introduction to Mr. Boucher's Supplement to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
Odell attempts to purify the English language and establish a standard of 'uncontaminated' prosody. The review notes that Johnson 'swelled the English vocabulary' beyond its necessary bounds but successfully 'fixed its standard.' Despite Johnson’s efforts, the language remains vulnerable to 'republican jargon' and foreign idioms. The text also mentions Boswell’s assertion that Johnson 'was a better scholar than he has been named.'
A Supplement to the Dictionaries of the English Language, particularly those of Dr. Johnson and Dr. Webster
This review examines the first part of Boucher’s posthumous supplement, edited by Joseph Hunter and Joseph Stevenson. The reviewers note that while Boucher differs from the "colossus of English lexicography," Johnson, by placing etymologies after definitions, the work serves as a valuable corrective and expansion to Johnson’s Dictionary. The review highlights the incorporation of early English learning and provincialisms—such as "arvel-bread" and "Auld Nick"—that were absent from Johnson's original work. The editors are praised for bringing the text up to the level of modern philological literature while maintaining a structure that complements the "laborious" record of old English words.
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language: With Numerous Corrections, and the Addition of Many Thousand Words
This brief, enthusiastic review announces the publication of seven out of twelve parts of Todd's edition of the Dictionary. The reviewer describes Todd as "accurate and intelligent," possessing the "strong natural abilities" and "powers of investigation" required to "wield the bow of Ulysses." Characterizing the revision as a task of "national importance," the reviewer emphasizes Todd’s fitness for the work due to his "sound learning" and "happy retentiveness of memory." The review prefaces a larger section of "Review of New Publications" which includes anecdotes regarding the Irish clergyman Philip Skelton and a catalogue of Count Borromeo’s library.
Independent ... Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts
Stoddard asserts that Johnson is remembered only by his conversation, as his written works have no circulation now. He maintains that Johnson was constitutionally unfitted to understand his betters and lacked the critical faculty, particularly regarding Milton, Gray, and Shakespeare. Stoddard attributes Johnson’s immortality solely to Boswell, the autochthon of the new world of biography, who supplemented the humility of the devotee with the pertinacity of the reporter. He describes Johnson as a dogmatic, testy, choleric figure whose conversation was better than his books, though devoid of beauty or charm.
The reviewer identifies Hill’s six-volume edition of Boswell’s biography as the "standard library edition" of an English classic. The account attributes the work’s permanence to its "photographically realistic picture" of the eighteenth-century literary world and Boswell’s "minute accuracy." It praises Hill’s "painstaking labor" and "persistence of enthusiasm," noting that he verified quotations by examining originals rather than his own manuscript. The reviewer highlights the exhaustive index and "hitherto unpublished letters," concluding that the edition’s scholarly minutiae "rival the text of Boswell" itself.
Stoddard examines the "affection as well as subjection" in the bond between the "despot" Johnson and the "helot" Boswell. The text recounts Johnson’s early "struggle with want" and his "literary drudgery" for Cave’s Gentleman's Magazine. Stoddard describes Boswell as a "rattle-brain and a rake" whose "toadyism" immortalized his hero. The text covers Johnson’s "vile melancholy," his marriage to "Tetty," and his success with "London." Stoddard emphasizes Boswell’s "insatiable curiosity" and "insensibility to sarcasm" as essential requirements for his biographical achievement.
Praises its sumptuous production, scholarly rigor, and Hill's long dedication. Details the editor's extensive research, meticulous verification, added notes. Highlights the massive, comprehensive index as its crowning achievement.
Reviews two 1897 editions of Boswell's Life of Johnson. One is a 6-volume "Temple Classics" set (Macmillan), edited by Arnold Glover, noted for taste and portability. The other is a single large volume (Whittaker), edited by Percy Fitzgerald, including the Tour, notes, index; praised for compactness.
Reflects on the death of Johnson one hundred years prior, noting their shared birth-year century (1709 vs. 1809) established a close bond of relationship. The author states he has continuously tracked Johnson's life against his own, learning about changes in body, mind, feelings, and companionship at twenty, fifty, or seventy years old. Conveys a personal sense of loss upon the centenary of Johnson's death, likening the event to following his hearse at Westminster Abbey.
Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
A highly favorable review of Croker's 1831 Boswell, celebrating the editor's parallel rise as a top parliamentary debater and literary scholar. Commends his "unwearied diligence" in annotations, extensive research (manuscripts, oral sources like Scott), and "piercing, strong, and liberal understanding."
The Albion: A Journal of News, Politics and Literature
This article, written as a dialogue between North, James, and Tickler, exposes inaccuracies in a hostile review of Croker's edition published in the Edinburgh Review. North demonstrates that the reviewer falsely accused Croker of errors that were actually present in Boswell's original text, such as the birth date of Allan Ramsay. The text argues that the reviewer's ten pages of caviling are contemptible given that Croker made over two thousand additions to the work with only a handful of minor misprints or inaccuracies.
Daguerreotype: A Magazine of Foreign Literature and Science
Collectanea: The Useful and Ornamental Character of Learning: What Would Dr. Johnson Say? The Skating Regiment: A Good Example
"Who can estimate the difference between civilization and savageism–between the refinement of a European city and the crepuscular light of an African horde between the American nation, as it now stands in all its splendor and its power, and the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent, as they gazed with wonder at the appearance of Columbus?
This collection of anecdotes contains two brief satirical vignettes featuring Johnson. In the first, titled "Hotch Potch," Johnson returns from Scotland and informs a lady that her "Hotch Potch" is "very good, for hogs." The second, titled "Author of the Rambler," describes a French gentleman in London who, attempting to show respect, mistakenly toasts Johnson as "Mr. Vagabond," a literal translation of "Rambler." The pieces highlight Johnson's reputation for bluntness and the linguistic confusion surrounding his famous pseudonym.
This biographical narrative includes a consolatory letter from Johnson to James Elphinston dated September 25, 1750, regarding the death of Elphinston's mother. Johnson reflects on the "tribute of nature" and the "useless grief" that follows such a loss, noting that his own mother is eighty-two years old. He suggests that Elphinston preserve the memory of his mother's "useful, wise, and innocent" life by writing down minute recollections of her. Johnson characterizes the continuation of virtuous friendship as a "pleasing dream" or a "just opinion of separate spirits" and emphasizes the importance of acting under the eye of God.
This article, reprinted from Carlyle’s Miscellany, evaluates Johnson as a "conservator" who wisely stemmed the "flood of Time." Carlyle identifies "courage" and "valor" as Johnson’s primary qualities, defining them as the bravery to "live manfully" rather than merely to "die decently." He describes Johnson’s "shaggy exterior" and "roaring" as a defense mechanism for a heart as "soft as a little child’s." Carlyle highlights Johnson’s "openness of love" toward his cat Hodge and his "lazaretto" home for the unreasonable. He credits Johnson’s Toryism and loyalty to the old for delaying revolution in England, allowing the nation to transition "calmly into a new era."
When a friend told Johnson was much blamed for having the weakness of Pope, Sir," sad he "if one man undertakes to write the life of another, he undertakes to exhibit his true and real character; but this can be done only by a faithful and accurate deliniation of the particulars which discriminate hat character.
This review of Croker’s five-volume edition of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson acknowledges Croker’s skill in incorporating materials from Piozzi, Hawkins, and Windham into a consistent work. The reviewer praises Boswell’s happy memory and accuracy but notes his vanity and occasional barrenness. While expressing a lurking dislike for Croker’s merciless critical style, the reviewer admits Croker has doubled the positive worth of the original text. The account describes Johnson’s unrivaled illustration and his empire over the minds of literary friends, asserting that his manly vigour crushed the fine diplomatic language of Chesterfield like a gourd beneath the tread of a lion.
Fitzgerald defends the editorial integrity of his edition of Boswell against recent criticism regarding title-page inaccuracies and the removal of previous annotations. Fitzgerald asserts that Croker interpolated extraneous quotations into Boswell’s original notes, thereby compromising the primary text. He argues that appending an author’s name in capitals to their own notes to distinguish them from modern commentary constitutes an "affront" and forces the author to become "one of the crowd." Fitzgerald maintains a "theory of arrangement" where Boswell’s notes remain inseparable from the text while external annotations occupy a distinct department. He promotes the edition as a "complete description" that presents "the whole Boswell, and nothing but the Boswell."
Croker provides extensive illustrations for his edition of Boswell’s biography. The text scrutinizes the breach between Johnson and Chesterfield, citing Chesterfield’s deafness and ill health as potential excuses for his neglect. It refutes Boswell’s claim that Chesterfield’s indifference was mere dissimulation. Additional notes detail Johnson’s culinary preferences, including his fondness for boiled beef and his habit of pouring oyster sauce over plum pudding. Observations from a Welsh tour describe Johnson’s social interactions and his sharp remarks on a "Lady of Quality." The section concludes with Courtenay’s description of the irregular, motley, and convivial dinners hosted by Reynolds, where guests scrambled for food amidst a deficiency of utensils.
This installment concludes a series of notices and the review of Croker’s edition of Boswell, focusing on the monument to Johnson in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The reviewer characterizes the statue of Johnson as a "colossal figure leaning against a column" that does not strongly resemble him, and both Croker and Malone criticize the colossal figure and the pedantic Latin epitaph by Dr. Parr. Echoing Croker’s regret that the committee did not insist on an English epitaph for a man who was a "great and very peculiar benefactor" to that language, the text suggests an English inscription would better honor Johnson’s contribution and provides a literal translation of the Latin text. The review further criticizes the "tedious and confused" use of Roman numerals and Latin dates in the inscription as "contemptible" on the principles of common sense, noting the clumsy treatment of dates. In addition to these critiques, separate travel accounts by Pearce describe Abyssinian superstitions, including the "Buda" or evil eye attributed to ironworkers and potters, and a king’s fearful reaction to a church organ, mistaken for a snake or devil, which illustrates local cultural perceptions. Finally, the review briefly mentions a new dictionary of agricultural knowledge by Baxter.
These reviews of John Wilson Croker’s volumes examine Johnson’s "moral anatomy," asserting that his "foibles" endear him to the reader while revealing his "extreme pecuniary distress" in 1756. The text highlights a specific instance of this penury—an arrest for a debt of five pounds eighteen shillings—and his subsequent relief by Samuel Richardson; yet, even in such poverty, Johnson shared his "mite" and resources with dependents like Anna Williams and Robert Levett. The account further details Johnson’s failed interest and missed opportunity in entering Parliament due to Lord North’s fear of his "embarrassing" assistance, as well as his visit to Auchinleck, where his Toryism clashed with the rigid Whiggery of Boswell's father. Additional anecdotes recount a "brute" confrontation in Glasgow where Adam Smith resented Johnson's verbal attacks, alongside Burke’s illustration of Goldsmith’s simple vanity and envy of attention paid to women in Leicester Square. The reviewer also notes the "temerity" of Boswell stopping Lord Thurlow in the street to ask if he had read his book—to which Thurlow replied with a curse that he "could not help" himself—and mentions the eccentric Samuel Johnson, a dancing-master and stage actor.
Reproduces a 1717–18 sale catalogue and address by Michael Johnson, father of Samuel Johnson. In the preface to his Worcester auction, the elder Johnson adopts a tone of bonhomie to invite patronage from the local gentry and "others," including women. The text details his professional method of traveling to market towns like Gloucester and Tewkesbury to sell common books for families alongside specialized works in law, mathematics, and divinity. Notably, the elder Johnson marketed fine French prints and paper hangings to female customers, ensuring these items were displayed by noon for daylight viewing. The document reveals the humble yet enterprising origins of the Johnson family's literary involvement, highlighting Michael's role as a "good fellow" and a dedicated bibliopole who executed faithful orders for those unable to attend his sales in person.
Did Dr. Johnson Die in the Faith of a Christian?
Contests the "equivocal" religious character often ascribed to Johnson, arguing that he occupied a higher place in Christian biography than Boswell recorded. It details Johnson's philanthropic efforts, including his support for the destitute and his remarkable "filial affection" expressed through "Rasselas." The narrative focuses on a "decided revolution" in Johnson's religious views on his deathbed, precipitated by humble clerical advice to "Behold the Lamb of God." It describes a "scene in a sick chamber" where a dying Johnson fervently prayed for his physician’s salvation, testifying that "there is no salvation but in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God." The account emphasizes that Johnson’s lifelong terror of death vanished through trust in the "propitiation of Jesus Christ," allowing him to leave the world with unclouded reason and firm faith.
Gospel Advocate and Impartial Investigator
Dialogue: Between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Knowles
A heated debate between Johnson and the Quaker Mary Knowles regarding the "apostacy" of Jenny Harry. Johnson expresses "silent contempt" and hatred for the young woman's decision to leave the established church, asserting that girls are not "accountable creatures" and must remain in the religion of the state. Knowles challenges this "heavy charge," arguing for the right of private judgment and the "sexless" nature of souls. The dialogue captures a "chafed" Johnson repeating that Quakers do not deserve the "honorable title of Christians." Despite his "pride and prejudice," the exchange ends with the Doctor joining in a laugh and becoming "very cheerful" over coffee. Boswell is noted as a witness to the scene, observing the "mighty lion" in a rare state of agitation.
Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines
This article, reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, critiques John Wilson Croker's edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. The reviewer provides a "graphic" sketch of Johnson's physical appearance, insatiable appetite, and "tempestuous rage," noting that while his old age is well-documented by Boswell and Piozzi, his early years in London remain obscure. The reviewer argues that Johnson was the "last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks," whose "harsh and despotic" demeanor resulted from a life of "bitterest calamities." While praising Johnson’s "homely wisdom" and "acute" reasoning, the reviewer identifies a "strange narrowness" in his intellect, fueled by "low prejudices" and an "unjust contempt for foreigners."
Recounts an anecdote regarding Johnson’s preference for large social gatherings over small companies. Challenged by a hostess who feared "convivial mirth" would incommode him, Johnson asserts that "large parties" contain the "quintessence of society." He defends the "economical" nature of such events, noting that "the same fire, the same lights, and nearly the same attendance" suffice for increased guest counts. Johnson expresses delight in "seeing happy faces" and argues that "intellectual companionship" is more easily found in numerous assemblages of "age and youth."
As a political thinker Johnson has not had justice. He has been lightly dismissed as the last of the old-world Tories. He was nothing of the sort. His cast of political thought is shared by thousands to this day. He represents that vast army of electors whom neither canvasser nor caucus has ever yet cajoled or bullied into a polling-booth. Newspapers may scold–platforms may shake–whatever circulars can do may be done, all that placards can tell may be told; but the fact remains that one third of every constituency in the realm shares Dr.
The author poses a query regarding a story attributed to Johnson concerning a predicament with a mad bull. Johnson is quoted as saying he was once in a "tight place" where holding the bull's tail would drag him to death over a stubble field, but letting go would result in the bull goring him to death. The author's query asks what Johnson did in that situation: "hold on or let go?"
Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture
S. P. J. asserts that Johnson remains great in spite of his biographer, whose unfortunate zeal employed the arts of sinking while endeavouring to exalt him. The text characterizes Johnson's mind as Cyclopian architecture, prioritizing strength over beauty, and notes a lack of quick sensibility or sympathy for minor sufferings. S. P. J. identifies strong common sense as the governing principle of Johnson's intellect, enabling him to strip subjects of technicalities to reveal the naked soul of the matter. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's constitutional indolence and his view of conversation as a contest or war of the giants. While censuring Johnson's ultra monarchical toryism and his violent animosity toward American taxation, S. P. J. maintains that Johnson’s honesty remains indubitable. The account concludes by examining the habitual depression and unaccountable terrors regarding death that shadowed Johnson's final years.
There is the faith which rests exclusively on the atonement of Christ. This has produced perfect peace in minds awakened in every family to truth, and in consciences the most tenderly alive to sin. This, and this alone, ever did produce peace in death in a mind and heart which was alive to ihe reality of things around it.
Johnson experienced profound mental distress during his final illness, rejecting friends' attempts to comfort him with his past defenses of virtue. Johnson questioned, "how can I tell when I have done enough?" Seeking spiritual guidance, he sent for Winstanley, who declined an in-person visit due to nervous exhaustion but provided counsel via correspondence. Winstanley addressed Johnson's "mountains of guilt" and "self-despair" by directing him toward the "Lamb of God." More records that reading this letter led Johnson to a "renunciation of himself" and a "simple reliance on Jesus," providing him peace in the "valley of the shadow of death."
It is related of Dr. Johnson, that when on his death bed he was in great distress of mind, his friends tried to comfort him by speaking of his writings in defence of virtue and religion. He replied:–"Admitting all you urge to be true, how can I tell when I have done enough?
Examines Johnson's domestic habits and eccentric behaviors, particularly focusing on his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. It recounts their journey to church where Johnson "resolved to begin as I meant to end," asserting dominance over his wife’s "caprice." Despite frequent quarrels, the account notes Johnson’s constant and vehement grief following her death. The narrative details Johnson’s "gross manners" at the table, where he "gorged" on salted beef and poured oyster sauce over pudding with uncontrollable energy. It describes his "surprise" street behaviors, including his superstitious habit of touching street posts and his "excessive" gesticulations that caused "general confusion" in social settings. Boswell is characterized as a "slave" drawn about by the "monarch" Johnson, echoing the subservience Johnson demanded since his school days.
This biographical sketch outlines Johnson’s early life and physical afflictions, noting that scrofula disfigured his face and nearly blinded him. In 1712, his mother took him to London to be touched by Queen Anne, whom Johnson later remembered as a lady in diamonds, with a long black hood. The narrative details his education under Dame Oliver and Thomas Brown, noting that Johnson learned by intuition despite a natural indolence. It records an amusing, though likely unfounded, anecdote of a three-year-old Johnson composing an epitaph for a trodden duckling. The text describes Johnson’s youthful authority over peers who carried him to school and his later period of miscellaneous reading in his father's bookshop. It briefly mentions his graduation to literary fame, his odd appearance, and his death in London on December 13, 1784.
The republic of letters is a community exposed to constant changes of government. It presents at different times the appearance of a wild democracy, of a stern oligarchy, of a stringent despotism. When the minds of men in general are awake and active, when they are hurrying headlong into new fields of knowledge, and are engaging in fresh pursuits without concert or subordination, literature is a democracy, exhibiting all the energy and vices of that form of polity–adventurous, original, independent, but at the same time rash, extravagant, unchastised, and always rapidly tending to the repose offered by more settled rule.
If we should ever take occasion to say of Dr. Johnson's preface to Shakespeare what he himself said of a similar production of the poet Rowe's, "that it does not discover much profundity or penetration," we ought in common fairness always to add that nobody else has ever written about Shakespeare one-half so entertainingly.
Johnson experienced a lifelong "fear of death" and spiritual "bondage" until his final days. Correspondence from Winstanley, an evangelical clergyman, provided the "main instrument" for resolving Johnson’s anxieties regarding salvation. Upon hearing Winstanley’s exhortation to "Behold the Lamb of God," Johnson shifted from a "slight impression" of scripture to a "quiet trust" in vicarious atonement. The narrative details Johnson’s emergent evangelical zeal, including his "fervent prayer" for his physician’s conversion and his insistence that the doctor acknowledge the "sacrifice of the Lamb of God" as the sole means of salvation.
This letter to the Earl of Hertford contains a request for apartments at Hampton Court. Johnson describes himself as a man who had the honor of vindicating his majesty's government and suggests that a retreat in a royal house constitutes a worthy allowance. He seeks such room as the Earl deems proper. The accompanying endorsement and reply indicate that Lord Hertford, having many unsatisfied engagements, declined the petition.
Johnson was known for his literary assistance (prefaces, sermons, dedications). When joked about writing Dodd's sermon and Kelly's prologue, he replied, "Why, sir, when they come to me with a dead stay-maker, and a dying parson, what can a man do?" Johnson also expressed a principle of not giving away literary work, stating: "I hate to give away literary performances, or even to sell them too cheaply."
Upon completing his Dictionary (1754), Johnson received the final payment from principal proprietor Millar. Millar's accompanying note expressed joy that he was "done with him." Johnson's witty reply was a brief, good-humored observation: "Samuel Johnson returns his compliments to Mr. Andrew Millar, and is very glad to find... that A. Millar has the grace to thank God for any thing."
When Mr. Hogarth was on a visit one day at the house of Mr. Richardson, "the ingenious author of 'Clarissa,'" he perceived a huge figure standing in the recess of the window, rolling grotesquely about, drumming fiercely on the panes, shaking his head, puffing loudly with inflated cheeks, and behaving altogether in a very uncommon aad surprising manner. Mr. Hogarth, who was aware that Mr. Richardson was a very good man, imagined that this uncouth being at the window was an idiot, who had been placed under the care of his friend.
CGV entry 10/6:56. In two parts: May, pages 376-384; and June, pages 432-440.
Johnson critiques Addison's use of mixed metaphors, specifically the image of "bridling" a muse that "launches." Johnson argues that launching is an act never hindered by a bridle. The text counters this severity by noting that similar mixed metaphors appear frequently in classical poetry, citing Virgil as a precedent. The surrounding entries include astronomical tables for a lunar eclipse in September 1820, an enigma by Pontanus, and translations of Persian poetry by Jones and Carlyle.
There is no name in English letters which has a more particular claim upon the affection of literary men than Johnson's. No man has been more severely censured as the corruptor of our language; but has he been enough praised for what he did for our literature? He was undoubtedly the first who dealt to the patron-that abominable nightmare whose presence darkens the refulgence of the genius of our Augustan period-its death-blow. The celebrated question he put to Lord Chesterfield, was the one mortal stab from which the patron never recovered.
Dr. Johnson and the Margravine of Anpach
Johnson defended drunkenness as the most innocent vice. He argued a drunkard poses little threat because a single finger can repel him. This anecdote likely served to compliment the Margravine of Anspach on the smallness of her hand.
Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
Dr. Johnson, thanks to Boswell, is as familiar a character as any in English literature. His foibles and his virtues are represented with singular honesty in the most attractive biography in the language. Boswell admired his hero too much to conceal any of his defects; and while in his pages Johnson's faults and eccentricities are freely exposed, we see also the nobility of his nature, his profound reverence, his large charity, his tenderness of heart, and his ardent love of knowledge.
Albany Law Journal: A Weekly Record of the Law and the Lawyers
It must always be interesting to lawyers to hear the opinions of an intelligent layman on them and their profession, especially when the layman is one with the robust good sense of a Dr. Johnson, for too many laymen talk sad trash about the law and its professors. Even a man like the poet Wordsworth, himself the son of a country solicitor, could write like this in "A.
The Friend: A Religious and Literary Journal
Dr. Johnson and Mary Knowles: Extract of a Letter from Anna Seward to Boswell, on the subject of Dr. Johnson
In Boswell's Life of Johnson, there is a brief notice of a conversation between the Doctor and M. Knowles, relative to a young woman–whose name is not there given–who had changed her religious opinions, which called out the Doctor's usual overbearing dogmatism and ill manners. As narrated by Boswell, the assertions of Johnson show that knew very little about the spirit and true character of the christian religion, and that with all his learning, he had failed to discover that persons may be rightly guided by a Light, far clearer and more certain than human reason.
Dr. Johnson at Lichfield: Illustrated with Drawings by Alden Peirson
Mabie characterizes Johnson as a 'great man of letters' rather than a 'great writer,' noting that posterity remembers him primarily as a 'great personage.' He traces Johnson’s early life in Lichfield, where 'the cathedral, the book-shop, and the tavern stand for the great interests' of his career. Mabie argues that Boswell’s 'unblushing passion for detail' and Reynolds’s faithful painting have made Johnson the 'most distinctly realized figure' among his contemporaries. He highlights Johnson’s 'sturdy independence' and 'honorable career,' which remain a 'great tradition of English literary history.'
Dr. Johnson at the Feet of Mrs. Thrale: An Impromptu
An impromptu poem by Walter Thornbury addressed to Hester Thrale on her thirty-fifth birthday. The playful verses highlight the wisdom, vitality, and intellectual charm of Thrale at that age, while playfully suggesting life begins or declines at thirty-five. It notes that "grave lexicographers" like Johnson found inspiration in her "charms of beauty and Intellect."
Examines Johnson’s role as the "master architect" of a British, rather than merely London-centric, literary age. Argues that Boswell was an "industrious accident" and that Johnson's reputation was "all settled" before their meeting. Analyzes how Scottish and Irish writers transformed the English literary mart, with Johnson standing as the "greatest Englishman" at its center. Highlights Nichol Smith's contributions to Johnsonian scholarship, calling them "notable excellence." Contends that while provincial thinkers like Hume and Smith entered the "world of Europe," they remained "no higher than his knees" in Johnson's presence. Asserts that the "silence of the Scotch professors" served as a tribute to Johnson’s national representation.
Dr. Johnson on Modern Poetry: An Interview in the Elysian Fields, A. D. 1900
A fictional interview with Dr. Johnson in the Elysian Fields (A.D. 1900). Johnson discusses modern poetry, finding much "alien." He praises Matthew Arnold, particularly "Thyrsis," calling it the "most perfect threnody in our language," superior in form to "Lycidas" and "Adonais."
Reprinted from the National Review.
Dr. Johnson on Modern Letters: From the Westminster Gazette, September 17 (Old Liberal Weekly)
An imagined Johnson presents his list of the ten best novels for a competition, which includes Tom Jones, Clarissa Harlowe, The Vicar of Wakefield, Ivanhoe, Pride and Prejudice, Esmond, David Copperfield, The Cloister and the Hearth, Middlemarch, and The Little Minister. Johnson defends Austen's limited scope, praising her rare, supreme gift for vividly narrating common things. He selects Thackeray's Esmond over Vanity Fair due to the former's comparative freedom from the author's obtruding identity and its faithful reproduction of the period's manner.
Philadelphia Repository and Weekly Register
This brief notice records a four-line epitaph reportedly dictated by Johnson at age three after accidentally killing a duckling. The verse laments the death of "good master-duck". It concludes with the observation that had the bird lived, it would have been "good luck" by maintaining an "odd one" in the brood of eleven.
An advertisement which appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine" fro June and July, 1736, and set forth that "at Edial, near Lichfield, in ... young gentlemen were boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by ... did not attract very much attention, certainly did not produce many pupils Captain Garrick, residing at Lichneld, placed two of his sons, George and David, a the new academy Another ... was a Mr. Oftely, "a young gentleman of good...
Burroughs contrasts Johnson and Carlyle to determine which was the "greater and more helpful force as a human being." While Carlyle possesses superior "intellectual equipment," Johnson’s "earthiness" and struggle against "hungry poverty" and "morbid melancholy" render him more "kin to all the world." Burroughs argues Johnson lived as a "typical Englishman" within the "ready-made highways" of his age’s religion and politics, whereas Carlyle remained "adrift in the wilderness" of modern thought. Despite Johnson’s lower "plane" of ideals, he remains a "more innocent and child-like" figure. Burroughs concludes that through the "wonderful Boswell," a "more lovable and more real image" of Johnson survives than of Carlyle.
CGV entry 10/4:9. On Birrell's claim of Johnson's superiority to Carlyle.
Extracting from Boswell, this text records Johnson’s analysis of Methodist success in proselytization. Johnson attributes their efficacy to 'expressing themselves in a plain and familiar manner,' a technique he asserts 'clergymen of genius and learning' should adopt as a 'principle of duty.' He contrasts abstract theological arguments with practical, visceral warnings; for instance, he argues that describing drunkenness as 'debasing reason' fails to move 'common people,' whereas warning that they 'may die in a fit of drunkenness' produces a lasting 'impression'.
A brief extract from Boswell's Life says Johnson attributes the success of Methodist preachers to their use of plain and familiar language.
Household Journal of Information, Amusement and Domestic Economy
This burlesque of Boswell mimics the biographer’s style to recount a fictional visit to the Crystal Palace to witness the French acrobat Blondin. Johnson initially rebukes Boswell for "cowardice of the mendacity" regarding his desire to see the exhibition, dismissing the event as a vulgar attraction for the multitude. He eventually consents to attend because Boswell already purchased the tickets, though he maintains that contributing to such a spectacle bribes a "fellow creature... to risk the loss of his life." At the venue, Johnson engages in characteristic verbal sallies, acknowledging Punch as a "great authority" for naming the Crystal Palace. The piece concludes with Johnson improving Boswell’s mind through sharp jests and "good-humored gibe" over a bottle of Scottish ale.
This article cites Boswell's Life of Johnson to claim that Johnson, despite being a "violent High Churchman" and a champion for the establishment using sprinkling for baptism, provided testimony favoring Baptist sentiments. In a discussion on the Church of Rome, Johnson reportedly suggested that "deviations from the primitive mode" based on convenience warranted the substitution of "sprinkling in the room of the ancient baptism." Specifically, Johnson argued that the Church of Rome was "as well warranted" to alter the sacrament by giving only bread to the laity as the Church of England was "to substitute sprinkling in the room of the ancient baptism." The writer emphasizes Johnson's authority as a "giant of literature" and a Greek scholar who never exerted "such steady application as he did in the study of Greek," viewing his admission as significant because he had studied the "ancient mode" of the sacrament.
Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion
This brief notice, reprinted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, argues that Johnson's fame rests primarily on Boswell's reporting. The account suggests that Johnson's manner and his tendency to say sharp, short things made him easier to report than Edmund Burke. Although Burke was a great and universal talker, his discursive and continuous style prevented him from being captured as effectively in conversation.
A comic snippet: "DR. JOHNSON CORRECTED. 'Slow rises Worth by Poverty depressed.'—Not while the fair seek Paris to be dressed."
Features a dialogue between Johnson and Boswell regarding the merits of female writers, specifically the author of Lovey Mary. Johnson expresses a staunchly "heretical" view, dismissing sentimental fiction as "puling" and "sentimental nonsense" that prostitutes common sense. He asserts that women attain eminence only by writing "like men" and signing male names. When Boswell cites the high financial value of the work, Johnson rejects profit as a "proof of excellence," comparing the author to a "rascal" who sells sea water as gold. The text highlights Johnson's refusal to "allow merit to a female writer" in the popular sphere.
This historical survey examines Johnson’s "generous and intelligent appreciation" of Ireland, noting his role as an "old Tory" who detested the "barbarous debilitating policy" of the British government. The author highlights Johnson’s opposition to the Union, his defense of the "monstrous injustice" of the penal laws against Catholics, and his support for Charles Lucas. Johnson’s hostility toward American colonists is reconciled with his Irish sympathies by citing his "pity for the slaves" and his "constitutional pedantry." The text concludes that Johnson’s "generous sympathy" represents a wiser policy than modern "opportunism," portraying him as a "friend of Ireland and of peace."
Reprinted from the Westminster Review.
Surveys Johnson’s "remarkably lucid and just" opinions on the legal profession, noting his early desire to study law to "prevent wrong and terminate contention." Attributes the preservation of Johnson’s legal dicta to the "inquisitive Boswell," who sought advice while preparing for the English Bar. Explounds Johnson’s defense of the "ethics of advocacy," arguing a lawyer is "not to tell what he knows to be a lie" but must do for a client "all that his client might fairly do for himself." Addresses Johnson’s views on professional etiquette, the necessity of "solemnity in the manner," and his use of "diffuser graces of rhetoric" to fix the attention of juries.
This article, reprinted from Belgravia, collects anecdotes regarding Johnson’s habits and opinions on gastronomy. It contrasts his masterly essay against "gulosity" in the Rambler with his own "fierce" appetite, noting that while eating, the veins of his forehead swelled and he became "totally absorbed." The narrative records Johnson’s critical discanting on cookery, including his preference for "Gordon’s palates" and his vehemence against a nobleman’s French cook. It details his "eclectic" tastes, such as boiled leg of pork, and his habit of pouring melted butter into chocolate. The article quotes Johnson’s assertion that "a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner," and links his studious attention to his "belly" to his general discernment. Boswell serves as the primary source for these observations on Johnson's lack of moderation and his "nice discernment in the science of cookery."
Examines Johnson's "extraordinary reputation" in remote Scotland, noting that his renown preceded Boswell’s biography. Compares Johnson and Goldsmith across multiple genres, arguing that while Johnson authored substantial works like Rasselas, he lacked Goldsmith's "magic pen." Asserts that simply as a craftsman, Goldsmith was "Doctor Major" and Johnson "Doctor Minor." However, the text maintains that the "palm was rightly given to Johnson" based on his combination of moral and intellectual merits. Highlights the view of Highlanders who saw Johnson as an "honor to mankind" and "honor to religion." Concludes that the weight of the Dictionary balances the scales of their literary legacies.
This whole remarkable affair must have happened, I am sure, by one of those beauteous mischances which can be brought about by the erratic and perverse logic of fairy law. At all events, one evening just at dusk I found myself entering a dingy but respectable little tavern in the heart of the city where I live.
Dr. Johnson in Lord Chesterfield's Anteroom
This brief notice characterizes Boswell's Life of Johnson as an "English classic" and a "compendium of wit, humor, information, and amusement." The author maintains that no library is fully satisfactory without this "wonderful work." It describes the biography as a "little library" capable of entertaining cultivated households.
Reprint of excerpts from Bancroft's History of the United States scathingly reviewing Johnson's 1775 Tory pamphlet, Taxation no Tyranny. Bancroft attacks Johnson's "unparalleled insolence" and "grotesque extravagance" in arguing against American claims. He contrasts Johnson's personal charity toward the poor with his "implacable malice" toward Benjamin Franklin and the colonists. The historian disputes Johnson's logic, particularly his mockery of American population growth and his suggestion to arm Indians and remodel colonial charters. Bancroft concludes that Johnson, as a government pensioner, acted as a "bravo" for his taskmasters, failing to feel for an injured people despite his own history of indigence.
Johnson toured North Wales with the Thrales from July 28 to September 9, 1774. The journey began at Chester and included the Vale of Clwyd, Carnarvonshire, Anglesey, and Montgomeryshire. Johnson made notes, published in 1816, detailing observations on sites like Lleweny library and Bach y Graig. He praised St. Asaph Cathedral's stalls, remarked on the "mighty ruin" of Carnarvon Castle, and noted the prevalence of Methodism and neglected churches in Bodvil. He returned to London via Shrewsbury.
Johnson's mother provides an instance of his remarkable childhood memory. As a boy in petticoats, Johnson was tasked with learning a specific collect from the Prayer-book. Before his mother could reach the second floor of their home, he followed her to demonstrate that he had already mastered the text, repeating it distinctly and perfectly. This anecdote is presented alongside a serialized retelling of Rip Van Winkle's return to his village after a twenty-year absence.
I felt uneasy at the Doctor's announcement that he would drink a "dish" of tea, as I had gnawing doubts whether there would not he some friction with Messrs. Bertram's wait rs, as the Doctor was certain to insist on having a "dish" of tea, and nothing else. However, I hoped it would be all right.
M.E.W. challenges Hill’s claim in the Contemporary Review that Johnson was a Radical of a pronounced type. The letter argues that Hill illegitimately attempts to claim Johnson for a political heritage that belongs elsewhere. M.E.W. contends that Johnson’s refusal of new shoes at Oxford and his letter to Chesterfield reflect the dignity of a man of letters rather than radicalism. The author asserts that Hill’s thesis ignores seventy years of sonorous Toryism and Johnson’s consistent habit of fearing God and honoring the King. M.E.W. concludes that Hill’s data fails to illustrate a radical tendency and suggests Johnson would have viewed such an interpretation as a degrading enthusiasm.
This approving review of Hill's Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland) defends Johnson against critics who view him as a figure of "dry and narrow pedantry." The reviewer argues that Hill’s work appeals to those who recognize Johnson's "boundless sympathy," rapid intellect, and formal humor. It characterizes Johnson's prose as a rare synthesis of simplicity, precision, and dignity, refuting the notion that his style consists merely of formal constructions and "sesquipedalian words." The review emphasizes the value of tracing Johnson’s 1773 journey to observe how he perceived 18th-century social problems and the "romantic shadows" of fading clanship, contrasting his perspective with that of contemporary "Cook's tourists."
Presents an imaginary dialogue in which Johnson critiques nineteenth-century verse, expressing jealousy that Boswell's biography ensured his fame while his own writings are "forgotten." Challenges the merits of Rossetti and Shelley, labeling the former’s sonnets "gibberish" and the latter’s work "ineffectual sublimity." Johnson defends the "assured perfection" of Pope's versification against modern "diversity of numbers." He disputes the "passion for natural scenery" in modern poetry, preferring the "elegant society" and human nature depicted by the eighteenth-century school. While finding Browning's style a "terror," he acknowledges the poet "could read men." Watson’s Johnson expresses a "reluctant respect" for Matthew Arnold’s "Thyrsis" as a "perfect threnody."
Reprinted in Eclectic Magazine and Littell’s Living Age.
This anonymous article draws an extensive parallel between the personal lives and temperaments of Johnson and Ludwig van Beethoven. Identifying Beethoven as the Dr. Johnson of music, the piece highlights their shared experience of early poverty, morbid disease, and shocking personal slovenliness. The author compares Beethoven’s piteous deafness to Johnson’s scrofula and equates Beethoven’s relationship with the Lichtnowskys to Johnson’s connection with the Thrales. Describing both men as having the surly virtue of an Ursa Major, the article details Beethoven’s eccentricities, such as picking his teeth with snuffers and throwing food at servants, to mirror Johnson’s famously bearish table manners. While acknowledging Johnson's profound piety versus Beethoven's vast horse-humour, the comparison emphasizes their mutual status as conscientious artists who triumphed over physical and social adversity.
This satirical vignette defends Johnson from contemporary critics by validating his famous, cynical definition of angling as "a worm and a fool." The piece responds to a disgruntled angler who complained in a daily newspaper about the "totally unnecessary hordes of swans" disrupting the Thames. Labeling the angler's grievance an expression of class prejudice, the piece likens his complaint to a huntsman shouting against "them stinkin' woilets" that ruin a fox's trail. The text concludes that disciples of the "gentle craft" are far less amicable than they profess, vindicating the lexicographer's famous skepticism regarding the art of angling.
That sensible and public-spirited majority of the British people which takes Fun in regularly (and here be it noted that Fun never takes his readers in) will remember that I was suddenly separated from the Great Lexicographer. For some time I never set eyes again on my revered friend, though I was constantly on the lookout for him in Fleet Street.
I did not venture to speak any further about the delinquencies of the Whopper, and the Doctor and I pursued our walk in silence. I noticed that he seemed to be looking round in rather a bewildered way, as if he missed some specially familiar object, and as we drew near to the Law Courts he said inquiringly, "Mr. Boswell, I fail to see the City Gate." "The City Gate, Dr. Johnson," I repeated in a helpless way, "I do not know what erection you are ref-. Oh! you mean Temple Bar?"
After the fiasco with the models, we went on a little way and sat down on three chairs which happened to be vacant, my revered friend occupying rather more than two, while I modestly utilised the remaining space. The Doctor seemed rather displeased with the noise of the crowd, and of the seven show pianos that were all being played on fortissimo at the same time by fourteen young ladies.
Presents newly-available original correspondence from James Macpherson to William Strahan and Mr. Cadell, which fills a gap in the history of Johnson's famous quarrel over Macpherson's alleged Ossian poems. Macpherson's letters demand that Johnson cancel "injurious expresions" like "insolence, audacity, and guilt" from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and threaten further trouble. The documents include Macpherson's draft of a public advertisement of retraction for Johnson to issue.
The anonymous, positive review commends Craig's volume for its "completeness" in addressing a subject previously treated only in fragments, examining Johnson's "many-sided" relations and varied interactions with women as a "squire," "suitor," "critic," "knight-errant," advisor, and friend. Craig explores the "inconsistency" of Johnson's attitudes, which shifted between "innocent gallantries," "revolutionary outbursts," and "alternate rudeness and courtesy" that defined his social intercourse with the "fair sex." The text pleasantly uses historical materials and synthesizes anecdotes drawn from Boswell, Horace Walpole, Hannah More, and d’Arblay or Fanny Burney to illustrate Johnson’s "whimsical humours" and "human charity," tracing the sudden outbursts and gallantry marking his circle. Craig includes a series of portraits of significant figures, including Piozzi or Thrale, Burney, More, Montagu, and Chapone.
In his pursuit of a grammatical acquaintance with out own language, the bard stumbled on a singular interview with the most redoubtable literary giant of that period. He was in the habit of calling on a bookseller, who had been kindly attentive to him in giving him a sight of many new books, and supplying him with any information he desired. He was occupying a leisure hour and quiet corner in this mental banqueting-room, when a large ungraceful man entered the shop, and, seating himself abruptly by the counter, began to inspect some books and pamphlets lying there.
London Society: An Illustrated Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation
Molyneux explores the "goodness and tenderness of heart" underlying Johnson's rough exterior through an analysis of his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. The article disputes Garrick's "uninviting" description of Mrs. Johnson, noting that Johnson viewed her as a "pretty charmer" and a "pretty wifely compliment" to his intellect. Molyneux discusses Johnson's views on marriage as the "best state for man" and his insistence on religious principles in a spouse. The text highlights Johnson's lifelong grief following her 1752 death, evidenced by the preservation of her wedding ring and his "Prayers and Meditations." Molyneux concludes that Johnson possessed a "gentle heart" and deep capacity for "lasting affection."
Dr. Johnson and the Celebrated Hannah More
Piozzi recounts an interaction between Johnson and Hannah More during their initial introduction. While More offers increasingly effusive praise of Johnson’s literary contributions, Johnson initially maintains a practiced silence. He eventually rebukes More for her persistent adulation, commandingly stating, "Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether his flattery is worth his having."
This note addresses Johnson's inaccurate quotation of Sir Thomas Browne, citing a passage from Browne's Vulgar Errors that states devils must practice truth for Hell to subsist. Johnson's remark, recorded in Boswell's biography, appears in Adventurer 50. The author observes that an omission in a 1686 folio of Browne's work may have contributed to confusion, while noting that a critic previously questioned the quotation's authority.
Dr. Johnson justly observes, 'The business of life...'
Reynolds's Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, Science, and Art
Dr. Johnson's Birthplace: 'A Lichfield House of Call'
Describes the 1887 sale of Dr. Johnson's birthplace in Lichfield. It reflects on Johnson's character, contrasting Adam Smith's "He's a brute" with Carlyle's "genuine manhood" and Goldsmith's defense: "nothing of the bear but the skin." The author emphasizes Johnson's deep humanity, citing his actions: feeding his cat Hodge, relieving beggars, putting pennies in sleeping children's hands, and mourning his mother and friends.
Dr. Johnson's Reputation: From the London Times, Literary Supplement, September 1 (Northcliffe Press)
The history of Johnson's reputation is accurately reflected in his bibliography. In his lifetime, when once the Dictionary had secured his fame, his books were in steady though never in great demand. Of the Rambler some eleven editions were printed between 1752 and 1784.
Dr. Johnson's Silver Cup: A Veritable Incident in the Life of That Eminent Writer
Bicentennial sketch of Johnson. Describes him as a man of contradictions: noble qualities (courage, wisdom) mixed with "unworthy prejudices" and "questionable" indulgences; indolent yet capable of strenuous labor (Dictionary). Rough-mannered but tender-hearted. His fame relies heavily on Boswell.
Describes Dr. Johnson's personal Bible (a 1772 quarto), which surfaced in New York. The author, "PAX," analyzes Johnson's handwritten pencil and red-ink marginalia. Dates (1779, 1782, 1783) and cryptic signs (m, mM, mB, mL) indicate constant, methodical study, read through "at least thrice every year." PAX argues this diligent study is what finally "calmed and absorbed" his lifelong fears of death, allowing him to find peace in faith.
The unknown author presents Johnson’s 1755 letter to Chesterfield, characterized as the "celebrated letter" that "arrested any further advances of a would-be patron." The text explains the historical context: Chesterfield "stood aloof" during the Dictionary’s development, only offering "two articles" of praise when publication was imminent to secure the work’s dedication. Johnson’s prose highlights seven years of being "repulsed" from the nobleman's door while "pushing on my work through difficulties." The author identifies the letter as a definitive rejection of delayed assistance, famously defining a patron as "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he reached ground, encumbers him with help."
Stephens challenges the "unreadable" reputation of Johnson's prose by analyzing the "essential identity" between his celebrated conversation and his formal style. While acknowledging the "cumbrous form" of the Rambler, Stephens disputes Macaulay's claim that Johnson's style resulted from "deliberate literary theory," arguing instead that "Johnsonese" was a "natural expression of certain innate tendencies." He highlights Rasselas and the Lives of the Poets as revealing Johnson's "deep moral sentiment" and "sturdy prejudices." Stephens posits that Johnson's "rooted contempt for whining" and his "sacred love of truth" unify his written and spoken words, asserting that without Boswell's biography, Johnson's genuine "humour and the fervour of mind" might have remained obscured by the "faults of the time."
Shakespeariana: A Critical and Contemporary Review of Shakespearian Literature
As an authority about anything, Dr. Samuel Johnson has faded slowly and silently away. His moral essays are dead and forgotten, his Dictionary has been an hundred times superseded, his poetry is unrecognized, his bibliographical and historiographical labors defunct, and the mass of his prefaces, lectures and discourses and dissertations lost in the dust of generations. But in his own day he held London in a sort of literary fright. He made reputations or shattered them with a bull as ponderous as it was always reckless or partial or bent by his own personal mood or interest at the time.
Dr. Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and Boswell
This fictitious conversation, supposedly written by "Bozzy," imagines Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and Boswell in a Boston inn, where the characters are portrayed as being aware of events since their deaths. Johnson offers a benevolent critique of America, remarking on its revolutionary principles and coal while likening the nation to a "boy in man's apparel." The group discusses William Cobbett, whom Burke describes as an "English Farmer, not an English Statesman," and comments on American prosperity and the press. The dialogue features typical banter, including Goldsmith's failed attempt at a pun involving a porter named Brown; Goldsmith suggests he be called "Strong Beer," only for Johnson to provide the correction that "he meant to say—Brown Stout." Johnson, asserting he is "Dictionary Johnson" and full of words "with meanings," also defends the poetry of Wordsworth, acknowledging a "womanish head" but praising his "wonderful" language and his role as a benefactor who finds happiness in solitude. The vignette concludes with Johnson praising Goldsmith's "exquisite polish and flow."
Appletons' Journal: A Magazine of General Literature
Dr. Johnson: His Biographers and Critics
Critiques Johnson and his "worshippers" (Boswell, Stephen). Argues adulation strengthened Johnson's worst traits: vanity, coarseness, ferocity. Compares his "imposing aspect" to Lord Thurlow's. Concludes that such a "literary monarch" is an anachronism and "impossibility" in modern society.
This letter, written by Johnson to Dr. William Dodd on the day before the latter's execution, offers spiritual counsel and consolation. Johnson urges Dodd to disregard "outward circumstances" and the "thoughts of men" as he prepares to face the "Supreme Judge of Heaven and Earth." He characterizes Dodd's crime as having "no very deep dye of turpitude" since it corrupted no principles and attacked no life. Johnson encourages earnest repentance through Jesus Christ and requests that Dodd include a petition for Johnson’s own "eternal welfare" in his final devotions.
This short religious letter records the text of the prayer Johnson "composed and fervently uttered" a few days before his death in 1784. In this solemn petition, Johnson asks for "mercy upon me, and pardon the multitude of my offences" while commemorating his last reception of the Holy Sacrament. The prayer reflects his "imperfect repentance" and his hope for "everlasting happiness" through Jesus Christ. He also includes a blessing for his friends and "all men." This brief document provides a "history of Johnson's goodness, tenderness, and charity" in his final hours, serving as a testament to the "ancient and inbred integrity" and piety that defined his character toward the end of his life.
It is easy to laugh at Boswell's weaknesses; but it is impossible to excel his work. Small as he may have been, it would appear that the biographer to whom we are so immensely indebted was too sensible of his besetting Fins and predilections–of those vulerable points in his character which would sure to be assailed by a ruthless criticism–to justify our setting him down as the utter simpleton he is generally supposed to have been.
Reprinted from an English quarterly, this biographical narrative illustrates Johnson's "intellectual ardor" and his lifelong pursuit of diverse information. The text notes that Johnson attempted to learn knitting, studied the scales of music six months before his death, and read the "Aeneid" in twelve nights during his old age. It cites Boswell's observation that Johnson "devoured books" and preferred to learn Greek and Italian even late in life. Johnson's philosophy regarding the two types of knowledge—personal mastery or knowing where to find information—serves as a central theme, alongside his advice to Boswell on maintaining a library for immediate reference.
Dr. Johnson's First Interview with Oliver Goldsmith
Answers to Correspondents on Every Subject under the Sun
Dr. Johnson's Hatred of Scotland and All Things Scotch Is Well-Known
Wolcott attacks Johnson's literary aesthetic in a fourteen-line satirical poem, characterized by a series of grand, contrasting metaphors. The verse condemns Johnson's "turgid style" and "pompous art" for artificially elevating trivial matters while debasing grand themes. Wolcott asserts that Johnson gives "an inch the importance of a mile" and metaphorically equates his prose to using a "waggon-load" of manure to "raise a simple daisy from the ground." The piece challenges the utility of Johnson's structural density, arguing that his writing creates a "whirlwind" merely to "exalt a straw" and creates a "clatter / To force up one poor nipperkin of water." Ultimately, the satire positions Johnson's stylistic gravity as an undifferentiated failure, treating "Heaven's awful thunder" and a "rumbling cart" with identical, misplaced rhetorical weight.
Home Friend: A Weekly Miscellany of Amusement and Instruction
Reprinted from Monthly Magazine (1813).
McCheane describes a manuscript notebook used by Johnson during his travels to Paris with the Thrales. Originally consisting of a single sheet of foolscap folded into 24mo or 32mo size and stitched in brown paper, the item was later bound in gilt-tooled morocco by collector George Daniell. McCheane notes that Johnson "had not used it much," as the volume contains only "two or three pages" of writing. The text records the sale of the notebook at Sotheby’s for nine guineas, more than triple the expected price of three guineas. McCheane confirms the identification of the artifact through personal examination in the Sotheby’s strong-room and reference to the Daniell catalogue.
At Lichfield, in St. Mary's Square, I saw a statue of Dr. Johnson, elevated on a stone pedestal, some ten or twelve feet high. The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a good deal of pathos. It shows Johnson in the Market-place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of disobedience to his father, committed fifty years before.
A brief note documents the removal of the house where Johnson resided from 1760 to 1765. It identifies this location as the site where Johnson assisted Goldsmith during his arrest for debt by negotiating the sale of a manuscript to Newbery for £60. The Benchers of the Temple intended to preserve the staircase, while the oak fittings were acquired for reconstruction at the Crystal Palace.
National Magazine; Devoted to Literature, Art, and Religion
Hill announces his engagement with the Delegates of the Clarendon Press to collect and edit Johnson's letters, many of which are scattered in print or remain in manuscript. He appeals to collectors and owners of Johnson's autographs for copies or originals of unpublished letters, requesting that spelling and punctuation be exactly followed. Hill intends to follow this work with a similar edition of Boswell's letters.
New Universal Magazine; or, Miscellany of Historical, Philosophical, Political and Polite Literature
Scrutator notes Johnson's "remarkable instances of propriety" in his published letters to Thrale (1788). Extracts from letters (Ashbourne, July 1775, and September 1777) mention Taylor's purchase of a looking glass, a bull-bitch, the racehorse Shakespeare (later dead), and Taylor's preoccupation with mating his animals. The correspondent expresses astonishment at both Johnson's writing and Thrale's publishing.
Criticizes Mrs. Meynell’s too-ready approval of Ruskin's judgment of Johnson's style, specifically the simile of "symmetry... as of thunder answering from two horizons." The author argues that Johnson's style possesses a perceptible trace of artifice, making the image of "answering salvoes of artillery" more apposite than elementary nature. It suggests that Johnson's "manly" style often contained "blank cartridge."
Hill collects over one thousand of Johnson’s letters, including material previously published by Boswell and Piozzi alongside previously unprinted manuscripts. The review finds the editorial commentary excessive and irrelevant, distracting from an "epistolary style at once powerful and attractive." Johnson uses "choice and vigorous English" that improves with age, shedding earlier pomposity for "unerring tact and skill." The correspondence documents Johnson's medical symptoms, his extensive advice to Taylor, and his "severe but richly merited reprobation" of Piozzi’s second marriage. While Boswell remains the definitive biographer, these letters illuminate Johnson’s "worldly wisdom" and "never-ending round of kindnesses" toward dependents like Williams and Desmoulins.
Glover disputes McCheane’s identification of a manuscript as the note-book used by Johnson during his 1775 visit to Paris with the Thrales. Glover asserts that the "identical note-book" of the Paris journey, characterized by close and careful writing, was published in its entirety by Boswell. Upon examining George Daniel's sale catalogue at Sotheby's, Glover finds no record of a Paris-related manuscript, but identifies the item seen by McCheane as a green morocco-bound "Portion of the Memorandum Book" for 1783. This later fragment contains "classical and familiar entries" in Johnson's hand but consists of only "two or three pages scribbled over," distinguishing it from the more substantial document used by Boswell.
-Dr. Parr at one time intended to have written the life of Johnson: "Sir," said the eminent scholar to a friend, "it would have been, with two exceptions, the most learned work ever offered to the world. Instead of the droppings of Johnson's lips, I would have given a history of his mind.
Thornbury’s poem dramatizes a historical anecdote from Boswell regarding Johnson’s act of contrition at Uttoxeter Market. The narrative depicts a burly, weathered Johnson journeying through a bleak, rain-swept landscape to reach the market cross. He stands bareheaded and motionless for an hour in the spot where he once refused to assist his father at a bookstall. Thornbury portrays Johnson beset by internal gloom and spiritual anxiety, imagining "black and open graves" and "God’s great wrath." Despite the mockery of local farmers and marketwomen who mistake him for a "crazy priest" or "Popish beast," Johnson remains steadfast. The poem presents this penance as a "brave act" intended to purge a fifty-year-old sin of pride and disobedience. Thornbury emphasizes Johnson’s emotional vulnerability, noting his wet eyes and the physical toll of the "churlish winds" and rain on his scorched wig and frayed cuffs.
This review of a biography by the author of Dr. Hookwell offers a mixed assessment of the work's "formal divisions" and its reliance on "meteor light" from other critics. The reviewer emphasizes Johnson’s "humanity" by detailing his support for indigent housemates, including blind Anna Williams, Robert Levett, and Francis Barber. While the book explores Johnson’s High Church principles and his "fear of death," the reviewer challenges the "family stories" suggesting Johnson underwent a deathbed evangelical conversion via correspondence with a Mr. Winstanley. The review concludes by praising Johnson's eventual "religious hope" while questioning the biographer's credulity regarding undocumented traditions.
CGV entry 24:65. A review with mild praise of the book by Robert Armitage.
A brief extract from Percy. Johnson identifies Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and Pilgrim’s Progress as the unique secular works readers wish longer. He ranks Cervantes' text second only to the Iliad.
Dr. Johnson's Character, by Mrs. Barbauld
"Johnson, I think, was far from being a great character; he was continually sinning against his own conscience, and then afraid of going to hell for it. A Christian and a man of the town; a philosopher and a bigot; acknowledging life to be miserable, and making it more miserable through the fear of death; professing great distaste to the country, and neglecting the urbanity of towns; a Jacobite, and pensioned; acknowledged to be a giant in literature, and yet we do not trace him, as we do Locke, or Rousseau, or Voltaire, in his influence on the opinions of the times.
Shakespeare is, above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions:
This brief notice reports the proposed demolition of Johnson's residence in Gough Square and advocates for the preservation of London sites associated with his literary career.
The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills.
In the course of our perambulations during the week, we have taken our stout and cigar at the above tavern. The Concert is very much improved by the addition of some new singers:
The reviewer characterizes this work as a "long ‘Lay Sermon’" intended to canonize Johnson. While the author of Dr. Hookwell presents Johnson’s sayings and doings as an object of "honest faith and love," the reviewer refuses to join the "chorus" of implicit subscription required by such "worship." Identifying Johnson as the "Boanerges of Bolt Court," the reviewer recognizes his noble and generous qualities but maintains that his character remains too complex for saintship. The text argues that a distinction must be made between Johnson’s "physical peculiarity" and his "indulged self-consciousness." The reviewer disputes the popular "De mortuis" adage in favor of a critical analysis that prioritizes the needs of the living over the uncritical veneration of the dead.
This critical review examines Leo Trevor's dramatic sketch, Dr. Johnson, playing at the Strand Theatre. The anonymous reviewer challenges the historical accuracy of the plot, noting that the playwright takes unfair liberties with Thrale, whom Boswell followed about like a dog. The narrative invents a melodramatic friction in Edinburgh where Boswell's young wife protests against her husband's infatuation with the lexicographer. Though criticizing the plot mechanics, the reviewer praises Arthur Bourchier's vigorous, oddity-filled characterization of the title role and Fred Thorne's cringing depiction of Boswell. The critique describes a scene where Johnson, though insulting Scotland, is partially softened by a favorite cup of tea, rendering the sketch harmonious and entertaining.
Dr. Johnson, in His Life of Pope, Records an Epigram
Mentions a famous epigram on Pope's Odyssey translation: "Pope came off clean with Homer, but they say, Broome went before, and kindly swept the way." It questions if this is plagiarism, noting a century-earlier ode by Randolph to Ben. Johnson with a similar sentiment involving a person also named Broome.
This satirical biography, part of an "English Worthies" series, humorously skewers Johnson. It highlights his inherited scrofula, early poverty ("left Oxford... without a degree or a receipt for board"), and marriage "through defective eyesight." It lampoons his social habits: eating "with his knife," consuming a "dozen schooners of cold tea," boycotting his laundry-woman, and presenting a belle with mince-pie from his bandana. The author jokes his works have "lapsed into innocuous desuetude."
Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)
This enthusiastic review of Hayward’s biographical volumes examines the friendship between Johnson and Thrale at Streatham. The reviewer credits Thrale with soothing the "morbid irritability" of Johnson, a task that required her to endure his ravenous feeding habits and uncertain temper. The article includes previously unpublished correspondence regarding Thrale’s marriage to Piozzi, allowing her to speak for herself against Johnson’s "unmerited severity." It disputes Macaulay’s exaggerated account of the estrangement between the two friends, using Hayward’s research to prove that Johnson remained an inmate of her house long after the supposed break. The review praises Thrale’s devotion to her first husband’s business interests despite his public flirtations, characterizing her as a woman of significant talent and energy.
It is said that Johnson, when he heard that Bozzy intended to write a life of him, threatened that he would prevent it by taking Boswell's. This rage of Johnson's was doubtless caused by the lamentable manner in which so many great English lives have been strangled by their biographers. For good biographers are even rarer then wellspent lives; and many great men have been strangled after death by little men, who have attempted to delineate them, but succeed only in drawing their own pictures.
American Publishers' Circular and Literary Gazette
Extracts from New Books: Dr. Johnson and Some of His Friends. From Macaulay's 'Life of Johnson'; Encyclopoedia Britannica, Vol. XII
Among Johnson's associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket, who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk; Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the board where he sate cross-legged; and the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all
Select Reviews, and Spirit of the Foreign Magazines
Hamlet Travestie; in Three Acts, with Annotations by Dr. Johnson, and George Stevens, Esq. and Other Commentators
Reprinted from the Monthly Review, this review examines a burlesque parody of Hamlet featuring mock annotations attributed to Johnson, George Steevens, and other commentators. The reviewer praises the "humorous blackguardism" of the work, which converts "affecting scenes into broad farce" through the use of "modern slang" and songs substituted for soliloquies. The text includes a parody of the "O that this too, too solid flesh" speech, rendered as a song to the tune of "Derry Down." The reviewer suggests the parody is so effective it would have "delighted" Shakespeare himself and recommends the book for "dissipating the effects of November and December fogs."
How Dr. Johnson Wrote His Dictionary
Dobson details the composition of the Dictionary of the English Language at 17 Gough Square between 1749 and 1759. He describes the architectural layout of the upper-floor garret where Johnson oversaw six amanuenses—notably five Scotchmen—tasked with the mechanical transcription of illustrative sentences onto separate slips of paper. Dobson outlines the lexicographical process: Johnson marked selected texts with pencil lines and marginal letters before transcribers copied the passages for subsequent arrangement under definitions. The text recounts the project's financial origins involving a congeries of booksellers, the protracted eight-year execution despite Johnson’s three-year estimate, and the legendary dispute with Chesterfield, characterized by Johnson’s disdain for a patron who looked with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water and encumbers him with help when he has reached ground.
Evening Fire-Side; or, Literary Miscellany
The diligence with which you endeavour to cultivate the knowledge of nature, manners, and life, will perhaps incline you to pay some regard to the observations of one who has been taught to know mankind by unwelcome information, and whole opinions are the result, not of solitary conjectures, but of practice and experience.
This article, an extract from Johnson’s Rambler, consists of a letter to the editor signed by "Amicus" regarding the plight of "the women of the town." The author describes a state of "unusual pensiveness" triggered by a visit to a hospital for "deserted infants," which prompts a reflection on the "hopeless wretchedness" of their mothers. The text argues that many women are driven into a "dreadful course of life" through the "arts and insinuations" of men of superior rank and fortune, only to be forsaken and reduced to prostitution for bread. Amicus condemns the "tyrants" and "bawds" who profit from this bondage and criticizes the "gay and thoughtless" for their lack of pity. The letter appeals to the public for the "alleviation of misfortunes," suggesting that those depraved by "passion or interest" still possess a claim to compassion from "beings equally frail and fallible with themselves."
This brief biographical sketch identifies the birthplace of Johnson as a three-story house in Lichfield, located at the corner of Sadler Street. It describes the building’s ancient style, featuring a projecting upper part supported by pillars and a French-style roof. The text notes Johnson’s humble origins among day-laborers and his father’s emergence as a poor bookseller whose estate totaled only one hundred dollars. It summarizes Johnson’s education at Lichfield and Oxford, emphasizing how his great mind triumphed over poverty until he became the pride of his nation. The account concludes with his burial in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in 1784, predicting his fame will outlast the physical structure of his birth home.
This collection of anecdotes and literary fragments includes a "curious account" of Johnson’s marriage journey. Johnson recounts that his bride, influenced by "old romances," attempted to use him "like a dog" by complaining of his riding pace. To suppress this "caprice," Johnson rode "briskly till I was fairly out of sight," waiting for her to catch up, at which point he found her "in tears." The article also features Lord Orford’s praise of Milton’s "impeticous and sublime" genius and his preference for blank verse over the "mechanism of rhyme." Additionally, the text includes a letter from Orford to Hannah More regarding the slave trade and a description of her residence at "Cowslip Green." Other sections offer a statistical "dissection" of the Bible, Petrarch’s views on books, and a character sketch of the French.
In September 1831 Lord Macaulay published, in the Edinburgh Review, an article upon Mr. Croker's edition of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' and in the course of that article he attacked the character and abilities of Boswell in the most unsparing way. We do not propose to make any lengthy extracts from Lord Macaulay's review, but in order to remind our readers of its character we shall quote here a few sentences from it.
Boswell acts as a strategic showman and bear-leader during the 1773 Scottish tour, orchestrating social encounters to maximize the impact of Johnson’s personality and intellect. Boswell secures invitations from Scottish elites and scholars, ensuring Johnson faces audiences at Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and the Hebrides. Johnson displays polymathic knowledge on topics ranging from gunpowder production to brewing and coining, earning the admiration of figures like M‘Queen and Watson. The narrative captures Johnson in varied states, from a "magnificent Triton" in a boat to a "venerable Senachi" in a blue bonnet. Boswell’s editorial tactics and sense of "réclame" define the work as a "hugely entertaining, and artistic, performance." This edition incorporates notes by Scott and Croker, maintaining uniformity with Birrell’s edition of the Life.
Hill captures Scotland as Johnson saw it by supplementing the three records upon which he mainly depends with accounts from other travelers and anecdotes Johnson loved. Hill prefers focusing on the working-day world of forefathers over military conquests. While the fervent reviewer praises Speed’s illustrations, particularly the full-page heliogravures, the text raises concerns regarding market saturation. Hill’s extensive Johnsonizing through numerous editions and notes risks glutting the market and occupying excessive space on scholarly shelves.
Handel and Dr. Johnson one Christmas Eve
The following interesting account of a meeting between Handel and Dr. Johnson has never been printed. The style would at once indicate that the author was Boswell, even if he did not explicitly say so.
One of the worst faults of human nature is that hostility, or, in gentler bosoms, that indifference, to the excellences of others, by which we selfishly seek either to obtain a preference for our own, or to avenge our want of them. In some, the defect arises from insensibility to every kind of good in which they have no share; in others, it is conscious jealousy and sullen mortification at witnessing a superiority they deem unattainable. In either form, it constitutes one of the serious ills of life.
Hannah More, Her Sisters, and Dr. Johnson
Having had repeated occasions to refer to Mrs. Hannah More, in his very interesting Recollections of William Wilberforce, Dr. Harford says, I cannot quit this subject without giving a brief sketch of that eminent lady, and of her sisters, such as they were on my first acquaintance with them.
Epitaph, Intended for Dr. Johnson, Author of the English Dictionary
A four-line epitaph intended for Johnson's grave suggests that neither Latin nor Greek is needed to honor his memory. It states that his "native language claims this mournful space, / To pay the immortality he gave." The poem emphasizes his contribution to the English language over classical accomplishments.
This brief anecdote records Johnson’s interaction with Mrs. Sheridan regarding her daughter's reading habits. When Mrs. Sheridan claims to restrict her child to 'unexceptionable' works like Johnson's Rambler, Johnson retorts, 'turn your daughter loose into the library.' He argues that a well-inclined child will 'choose only nutritious food' regardless of parental caution.
Compiles anecdotes from Boswell detailing the lifelong relationship between Dr. Johnson and David Garrick. It covers their shared 1737 journey to London ("I came with two-pence half-penny..."), Johnson's failed school (where Garrick was a pupil), and Garrick's subsequent rise to fame, which sometimes irked Johnson. It includes Johnson's "cracks" at the actor's profession ("harmless pleasure") and Boswell's query about the famous eulogy ("his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations"), to which Johnson replied with a quip about Scotland.
A review of Hill’s edition of Johnson’s letters, noting the collection’s value as an "addendum to Boswell’s Life." The author highlights the "colossal" nature of Johnson revealed through his correspondence with Thrale, even where he sinks to "silliness" or "obese vulgarity." Hill is criticized for a "shrill falsetto" defense of Johnson against Seward. The letters demonstrate Johnson’s "rare versatility" and "optimism," particularly his advice to young writers that "scribendo disce scribere." The collection is presented as a "wholesome, virile" breeze from the literary past.
Corsair: A Gazette of Literature, Art, Dramatic Criticism, Fashion, and Novelty
Milton; or, A Reply to Dr. Johnson's and Addison's Notions
The author challenges 'malignant' criticisms by Johnson regarding Milton’s use of technical terminology and the blending of Pagan and Christian imagery. The text disputes Johnson's charge of 'pedantry,' arguing that Milton uses 'lurking antagonism' between art and nature to vivify the solitude of Paradise. Furthermore, it defends Milton’s 'Paganism' by explaining his 'creed' that heathen gods were actually fallen angels, thus making them 'no less real' than Christian spirits. The author asserts Johnson failed to penetrate the 'latent wisdom' of Milton’s poetic theory.
Letters and the Arts; Three New Plays in Paris Book Week in Spain Dr. Johnson on Copyright What Price Barcelona? the End of the 'Edinburgh'
A manuscript containing Johnson's views on copyright, written at age thirty, was recently sold at auction. Johnson argued that the book's buyer acquires the right to use it as they see fit for their improvement or amusement, or the benefit or entertainment of mankind. The document was written to defend Edward Cave, Johnson's friend and benefactor, after he was sued for reprinting an abridged sermon. The sale also revealed an authentic list of the twelve original members of Johnson's Club.
Mrs. Thrale: The Friend of Dr. Johnson: Part II. — 1780–1781
Masson chronicles the dissolution of the long-standing intimacy between Johnson and Piozzi following the death of Henry Thrale in 1781. The account details Johnson’s increasing physical infirmity and "captious, fretful, and extortionate" temper, which clashed with Piozzi’s need for "comfort for the present distress." Masson examines the societal and personal outcry against Piozzi’s marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, noting that Johnson "joined the midge swarm" of detractors, regarding the union as an ignominious forfeiture of "fame and country." The text traces Piozzi’s subsequent life in Italy and Wales, her publication of anecdotes to "impatience" from the King, and her eventual reconciliation with her daughters. Masson concludes that while Boswell captured Johnson's talk, Piozzi’s "sweet temper" and "vivacity" in her later years provided a stark contrast to Johnson’s "hypochondriacal decay."
Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine.
Life, Letters, and the Arts; Marie Claire Again Irish Glass La Malheureuse Epitaphe Pour la Tombe D'emma Bovary Swinburne and Hugo The Late Mr. Williamson Interior Decoration Dr. Johnson's Portrait by Reynolds Dickens in New York
This section reports the recent sale of a portrait of Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds for a high price, despite indifferent cataloguing. It notes the portrait is familiar from James Watson's mezzotint of 1770, showing the lexicographer in profile without a wig, demonstrating an argument. The author emphasizes the sale's importance in demonstrating the continuing value of Johnsoniana.
This collection of anecdotes and letters, reprinted from the Methodist Magazine, includes a letter from Johnson to William Drummond dated August 18, 1766. Johnson "generously indignant" at the "selfish policy" of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, argues for the translation of the Bible into "Erse or Gaelic." He asserts that "to obscure the light of revelation, upon motives merely political, is a practice reserved for the reformed." Johnson maintains that "knowledge always desires increase" and that providing the Scriptures in the native tongue will eventually encourage the Highlanders to learn English. He characterizes Christianity as the "highest perfection of humanity" and claims that withholding such knowledge is a "crime."
Life, Letters, and the Arts; a Critic on Mechanical Music Mr. Wells's Pertinent Suggestion Tabulating Dr. Johnson's Virtues Recent Productions of Aeschylus Old English Music Meredith on the Stage
This miscellany reports on Hester Thrale Piozzi's virtue tabulation system in the Thraliana, formulated while living at Brynbells. Her rating system scored Johnson at 110, Boswell last among the men with 72 points, and her husband Thrale with 88. Johnson's low score is partially due to zeroes in the categories for General Knowledge and Person and Voice. Thrale also received three zeroes in the tabulation.
Letter from Dr. Samuel Johnson to a Young Cleargyman, now a Fellow of a College in Cambridge
Johnson’s letter of 30 August 1780, reprinted from the European Magazine, offers counsel to a young clergyman concerning the "labour of composition," pulpit duties, and the reformation of "savage" parish manners. He advises the recipient to record the authors of borrowed discourses to prevent memory lapses and encourages occasional original composition, defining the "act of greater energy" as the initial invention of matter. Johnson warns against attempting "propriety of thought and elegance of expression" simultaneously, recommending instead that the writer "set down diligently your thoughts as they rise" in "the first words that occur" before attempting to "embellish" or "decorate." He remarks that the "composition of sermons is not very difficult" because structural divisions assist the "memory of the hearer," the "writer’s invention," and the "judgment of the writer." Regarding parish life, Johnson emphasizes that a clergyman’s diligence and "frequent conversation" on religious subjects render him "venerable," increase the laity's willingness to learn, and civilize the parish. He cites the successful use of "holy artifices" by his friends the Dean of Carlisle and Wheeler of Oxford; the latter cared for a parish for an unpaid fifteen pounds a year, yet valued the "convenience" of being compelled to write weekly sermons.
Collection of anecdotes describing a "spirited argument" between More and Johnson regarding the motivations of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Johnson maintains with "deep-toned emphasis" that Reynolds paints only for money. More disputes this, arguing that the pleasure of artistic creation provides a more "luxuriant" source of inspiration than financial gain. Johnson responds with the skeptical query: "Did Leander swim across the Hellespont, merely because he was fond of swimming?" The anecdote illustrates Johnson's insistence on professional pragmatism over the idealization of artistic disinterestedness.
This biographical installment covers Johnson's literary activities from 1756 through his introduction to the Thrale family. It records his contributions to the Literary Magazine and Universal Review and the 1756 proposals for his edition of Shakespeare, which was delayed for seven years. The account details the 1758 commencement of the Idler and the 1759 composition of Rasselas, written in the evenings of a single week to defray his mother's funeral expenses. It describes Johnson's move from Gough Square to the Inner Temple, where he lived in total idleness and the pride of literature. The narrative notes the turning point in 1762 when the King granted Johnson a pension of 300 pounds per annum. Following this independence, Johnson moved to Johnson’s Court, formed a new weekly club with Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and began his long intimacy with Boswell in 1763.
This account details Johnson's spiritual state and final requests during his terminal illness. After overcoming a profound 'dread of death' through 'trust in the Redeemer,' Johnson secures three promises from Reynolds: to avoid painting on the Sabbath, to provide funds for a 'distressed family,' and to read the Scriptures. The text recounts Johnson’s exhortation to Brocklesby regarding the 'sacrifice of the Lamb of God' and his own deathbed confession. Despite a life of pious writing, Johnson admits he 'lived too much like other men' and finds final peace only in 'humble penitence' rather than personal merit.
This article, from Croker's edition of Boswell, extracts William Windham's journal entries from December 1784. It documents Johnson's final advice to Windham to "set apart every seventh day for the care of his soul" and his request for Windham to protect his servant, Francis Barber. The account details Johnson’s physical decline, his refusal of "inebriating sustenance," and his desperate attempt to relieve his dropsy by scarifying his own legs with a lancet. It highlights Johnson's insistence on the "doctrine of an expiatory sacrifice" as the essence of Christianity and records his final blessing to Windham "through Jesus Christ" before his death on December 13.
This first part covers the life of Hester Lynch Salusbury to 1780. It details her Welsh descent, marriage to Thrale at 22, and the beginning of her 17-year friendship with Johnson. Thrale, influenced by Johnson, transitioned to politics, which elevated his wife’s public role. Describes the Streatham social circle and Thrale's financial and marital difficulties.
Lighter Literature; With Dr. Johnson at Liehfleld
Herrick describes a visit to Lichfield, identifying Johnson's birthplace and the site of Michael Johnson’s bookshop. The article recounts anecdotes of Johnson’s precocity, including his insistence on hearing the "clerical Tory" Dr. Sacheverell preach at age three. Herrick details his early education at Dame Oliver's school and the grammar school under the "unmerciful" Mr. Hunter. The sketch notes Johnson's childhood "king's evil" and his "solemn recollection" of being touched by Queen Anne. Herrick identifies local sites like "Dr. Johnson's walk" and the bust in the cathedral nave, noting his final interment in Westminster Abbey.
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts
Characterizes the newly recovered letters to Temple as a vivid autobiography of a "vivacious tumbler," equal in interest to the Life. Traces Boswell's erratic courtships, from Zelide to Miss Blair, and his ultimate marriage, highlighting the interplay of vanity, dissipation, and genuine affection. Documents his strained relations with Lord Auchinleck and his deep grief following his wife's death. Commends the editor's judgment in presenting these revelations of Boswell's "motley" character without diminishing the entertainment value of his transparent egotism.
Widely reprinted.
This approving review disputes claims that the letters are forgeries. Bentley's preface explains that a clergyman discovered the manuscripts in 1769 as wrapping paper in a Boulogne shop. The reviewer challenges the theory that Boswell was merely a conceited idiot or a fawning cur who tolerated being kicked by Johnson. Instead, the letters present Boswell as a man of kindly heart and social accomplishments who served as an excellent listener and conversationalist. The reviewer notes that Johnson not only tolerated but loved and sought after the society of Boswell. The correspondence details Boswell's youthful passions, including his pursuit of a Miss Blair and his eventual marriage to Margaret Montgomerie. It also records his interactions with Hume and his 1763 meeting with Johnson. The reviewer concludes that the letters throw a new light upon the character of Boswell, revealing a clever, good-natured man whose worst fault remains his frankness.
The reviewer disputes Fitzgerald’s claim of presenting substantial new details, finding the biography "heavy" and deficient in the "finish and point" characteristic of Boswell’s own style. Fitzgerald is censured for his "reckless employment" of French vocabulary—using terms like niais, banalité, and épanchement de cœur—and for bibliographic carelessness, such as misattributing an Edinburgh Review article to Elwin. The text argues that Fitzgerald fails to supplant Macaulay’s "caricature" of Boswell, offering instead a portrait that lacks judicial depth. Conversely, the reviewer defends Boswell as a "great wrestler with life" whose "popular and pleasant talents" allowed him to cultivate friendships with figures as diverse as Hume, Wilkes, and Johnson. Drawing on Boswell’s commonplace book and letters to Temple, the review emphasizes Boswell’s "frankness" and "persistent literary ambition," suggesting that his social success and the "imperishable monument" he built for Johnson prove him to be a conscious artist rather than a "frivolous personage."
A correspondent (X.) suggests a new life of Dr. Johnson is a literary desideratum. Hitherto, the subject has been "exhibited in portions, by his friends," but a philosophical biographer is needed to paint a comprehensive view of the man, intellectually and physically. Although little new factual information is expected, such a work would offer a valuable appreciation of Johnson's character and his decided change on English literature.
Letter from Dr. Johnson to Mr. Elphinston
Johnson condoles with Elphinston on the death of his mother. He mentions his own 82-year-old mother, whom he expects to lose soon. Tears are useless once the "tribute of nature has been paid." He asserts a friend's benefit is to guard and elevate virtue, which Elphinston's mother will still do through the memory of her wise and holy life/death. He suggests minutely writing down her recollections as a future source of comfort.
Letter from Dr. Johnson to a Friend on the Death of his Wife
Johnson writes a friend on his wife's death. He reflects that calamity always strikes suddenly because people "turn our eyes away" from unavoidable loss. The passing of "the life that made mine pleasant" leaves only "emptiness and horror." Philosophical precepts (Epicurus, Zeno) can only silence or conceal sorrow. Real alleviation, patience, and rational tranquility can only come from religion and the "assurances of another and better state."
American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record
Pharmacists in Literature: Samuel Johnson
Sclater explores the intersection of pharmaceutical practice and 18th-century letters, focusing on figures within the Johnsonian circle. Boswell identifies Richard Green, a Lichfield apothecary and relation of Johnson, as a meticulous collector whose museum Johnson praised for its diligence. The text highlights the professional interdependence between authors and the Newbery family, noting that John Newbery provided essential financial relief to Johnson and Goldsmith. Sclater details the role played by Johnson in the sale of The Vicar of Wakefield to Francis Newbery, which relieved Goldsmith from the threat of arrest. The account emphasizes the benevolent yet commercially astute nature of these apothecaries and booksellers who served as indispensable friends to Johnson. By surveying the pharmaceutical backgrounds of literary figures, Sclater positions the apothecary as a vital fixture in the social and economic fabric of 18th-century authorship.
Notices of English Grammars; No. IV Joseph Priestley, LL.D., F. R. S. London; 1762 Robert Lowth, D. D., F. R. S. London; 1763 Samuel Johnson, LL.D. John Ash, LL.D. London William Ward, M. A. London; 1765 John Burn, Glasgow; 1766 James Buchanan, 1767
Priestley's Grammar is a production of little merit, and much of its celebrity is to be attributed to the literary fame of the author.
Pilgrimages in London, to Old Houses; Old Haunts, and Old Monuments. Residence of Dr. Johnson
This survey of London’s literary geography identifies the "pleasantest associations" as those involving Johnson, Goldsmith, and Burke. It documents the conversion of Johnson’s residences in Johnson’s-court and Bolt-court into taverns. The author describes the "sedate and respectable" appearance of No. 7 Johnson's-court and the preservation of an arm-chair and pipe in Bolt-court, where Johnson’s library became a bar. The text highlights Johnson’s "insatiable thirst" for tea and his kindness toward Williams. It observes an elderly gentleman who continues to dine where the "literary Colossus" once sat, maintaining a connection to the "sovereign" of the city's choicest spirits.
Monthly Repository and Library of Entertaining Knowledge
Notice of the Life of the Late Dr. Johnson: With a View of His Retreat in Streatham Park
Provides a biographical sketch of Johnson, focusing on his literary career from "Irene" to the "immortal" Lives of the British Poets. Highlights the "stupendous labor" of his Dictionary and the moral utility of "Rasselas." Emphasizes Johnson's residence at Streatham Park with the Thrales, describing it as a "hospitable asylum" where his "melancholy was diverted." Mrs. Thrale's "literary talk" is noted for rousing Johnson to "cheerfulness and exertion". Concludes that Johnson's character was defined by "benevolence, charity, and piety," setting an example of a "good man".
Poetry and Religion: No. VII. Additional prejudices considered–False impressions, as to the moral aimlessness of poetry, as a mere art; and the separate province of Christianity–Sources of prejudice–Inferiority of devotional poetry–Dr. Johnson's opinion examined–Influence of Ancient Classics–Relation of the Bible to literary taste–Elements of Christian character supposed unpoetical
An enlightened Pagan might become familiar with a large portion of our polite literature, without forming a clear conception of the distinctive character of our religion. And yet that literature professes to portray our best thoughts and purest sentiments–our noblest virtues and highest interests. Or could we imagine such a Pagan to be the shade of some ancient poet of Greece or Rome, permitted for a time to revisit the earth, he would perhaps conclude, while reviewing that portion of our literature, which gives no intimation of a higher and holier faith, that an obscure fragment of his own once gorgeous mythology was perpetuated in the belief of a degenerated people.
On the Writings and Conversation of Dr. Johnson
F. N. asserts that Johnson often defended "a bad cause" in conversation to "display his ingenuity" or seek "victory than truth". This article characterizes Johnson’s conversational sophistry as a "favourite amusement" that frequently deceived his readers. F. N. specifically attacks a passage in the "Life of Milton" wherein Johnson claims the "knowledge of external nature" is not the "great or the frequent business of the human mind". Citing James Thomson’s "Summer" as a refutation, F. N. argues that agriculture, manufactures, and commerce—the foundations of "civilized society"—depend entirely upon the "knowledge of the powers of nature" which Johnson dismissed as "voluntary and at leisure".
Missionary Herald, Containing the Proceedings of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
Opinion of Dr. Johnson with Respect to Missions and Translations
This extract from Boswell’s Life of Johnson details Johnson's support for the propagation of Christian knowledge through the translation of "Holy Books" into native languages. Johnson challenges the withholding of such knowledge, equating voluntary ignorance with the "calamities of shipwreck" caused by extinguishing a lighthouse. He asserts that "Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity" and defines the wish for others to receive "the largest measures of the greatest good" as an essential component of goodness. Johnson characterizes the omission of efforts to advance Christianity as a significant crime.
There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Johnson's original letter, noted as "now first published" and described as largely illegible in the source, introduces Miss Williams's plan for a work and mentions Mr. Adam, under whom he studied at Oxford. The letter relays the life and passing of his deceased friend, a man of benevolent disposition and powerful, "retentive memory" who was particularly fond of astronomy and knew the Bible and its verses intimately. Accompanied by a biographical sketch of a medical practitioner, likely the recipient or communicator, the introductory text highlights Johnson’s own interest in astronomy and his habit of pointing out "celestial phenomena" on moonlit evenings, specifically noting his ability to quote scripture and provide precise chapter and verse references. His friend died at age seventy-six, a year after his first sickness, from water accumulation in the chest, meeting death with "gentleness and equanimity." This correspondence is presented alongside a discussion of poetic resemblances between the works of Norris and Blair’s "The Grave."
On an Unpublished Letter by Dr. Samuel Johnson
The Rev. Dr. Taylor to whom the following letter is addressed, was for many years an intimate friend of Dr. Johnson. In 1740 he was presented to the valuable living of Market Bosworth, and in 1745 was installed a Prebend of Westminster.
Relinquary: Quarterly Archaeological Journal and Review
Two anecdotes about Johnson. The first, recounted by Sheridan, describes Johnson’s strange, "awkward sort of measured step" and his compulsive habit of "deliberately laid his hand" on every stone post as he walked. If he missed one, he would backtrack to perform the ritual. The second anecdote recalls a dinner party where Johnson, in a moment of abstraction, grabbed Mrs. Chamberlaine's dangling foot and "drew off her shoe," an "involuntary" and "not intentionally rude" action.
Pontius recounts meeting Johnson, the "literary bear," in Scotland. Johnson claimed a man "softened by the tender solicitations of a sweet amiable female" deserves not to be transported to a desert. When a playful girl mocked his gait, he challenged her to a race for a pot of coffee. Johnson won because his opponent was running barefoot: "I' the costume of your country, dearie, without shoes or stockings."
Reprinted from The Literary Journal, Nov. 1818.
Scraps: 'Perusal of the Profession of Faith: Mr. James Boswell
Recounts the "ridiculous credulity" surrounding William Henry Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries. Upon reading the fabricated "Profession of Faith," Dr. Parr allegedly declared the work surpassed the church service. The article also depicts James Boswell's inspection of the manuscripts: after consuming "warm brandy and water," he knelt before the volume, kissed the "invaluable relics," and declared, "Well, I shall now die contented."
Hill presents a six-volume edition of Boswell's biography characterized by scholarly dignity and solidity. The work includes fifteen unpublished letters, Johnson's Latin prose college composition, a manuscript diary extract, and a suppressed passage from the Journey to the Western Islands. Hill includes a chart of contemporaries and a concordance of sayings, noting Johnson is next to Shakespeare quoted and misquoted the most frequently. The edition features facsimiles of handwriting and the round-robin regarding Goldsmith’s epitaph. Hill displays a conscientious eye that winces at false work and loves the true.
Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery
Details an argument penned for the defense in Dr. Memis's lawsuit concerning the titles "physician" versus "Doctor of Medicine." Posits that declining the title "Doctor" implies either self-disgrace or disgrace to the title itself. Argues the doctorate is the highest professional designation, legally authorizing practice and implying the ability to teach. Since obtained through effort (solicitation/fees), refusing the title is untenable.
Reprinted from the Law Times. Sibley examines Johnson's "bigoted" appreciation for law, including his admiration for habeas corpus and his preference for "chancery suits" over clerical duties. The article details Johnson’s views on judicial independence, criticizing Lord Bute’s policy of life appointments for judges. Regarding legal ethics, Sibley quotes Johnson’s defense of the advocate's role: "you do not know a cause to be bad till the judge determines it." Johnson argues that professional "dissimulation" or affected warmth is not dishonest, as it is a known paid service. The article also records Johnson's practical advice to Boswell on success at the bar, emphasizing constant attendance at Westminster Hall and the necessity of a "kind of solemnity" in professional conduct.
Phrenological Journal and Science of Health
This article compiles various aphorisms and maxims attributed to Johnson. Key observations include the "bitter" nature of scornful jests, the efficacy of example over precept, and the necessity of maintaining acquaintances to avoid loneliness. Johnson compares dictionaries to watches, noting that "the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true." Other topics addressed include the limited utility of reading by task rather than inclination, the value of public amusements in preventing vice, and the distinction that wealth "excludes but one evil—poverty."
Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: The Dawning of Greatness
This article focuses on Johnson's "miserably poor" years in London, particularly his 1738–1739 intimacy with Savage. It notes the "deep, dark silence" surrounding his domestic life and addresses the mystery of Johnson wandering the streets at night despite having a wife in town. The author praises the "Life of Richard Savage" as a masterpiece that established Johnson's reputation through its "imperial dignity" of style and "profound moral" maxims. It recounts the anecdote of Johnson dining "behind the screen" at Cave's due to his "shabby" dress. The article also examines Johnson's "low estimate" of the moral character of players and his role in preparing the Harleian Miscellany.
Sparks from Old Anvils: Samuel Johnson, Poet
Reprinted from Piozzi, this biographical sketch recounts an incident on the morning of her thirty-fifth birthday. After Piozzi laments that "nobody sends me any verses now," Johnson immediately improvises a sixteen-line poem. The verses reflect on the milestone of age thirty-five, noting that "life declines from thirty-five" and advising that those who wish to thrive or "wisely wish to wive" must look to the example of Piozzi. Johnson concludes by observing that his rhymes "run in alphabetical order," characterizing the effort as the work of a "dictionary-maker."
This brief quotation, reprinted from Heathcote's Sylva, or the Wood, presents a scathing assessment of Johnson's intellect. While acknowledging that Johnson possessed great parts, Heathcote characterizes him as the meanest of bigots and a dupe to contemptible prejudices. He asserts that Johnson held opinions on important subjects that are absolutely a disgrace to human understanding.
Sentiments of Dr. Johnson on War: Exemplified in Napoleon's Russian Expedition
This article, reprinted from the Connecticut Mirror, contrasts Johnson’s philosophical denunciations of war with the historical realities of Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Quoting Johnson’s description of the Falkland Islands, the text highlights his observation that war possesses "means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and sword," specifically disease and neglect. Johnson argues that the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war" masks a reality where the majority of soldiers perish from "damps and putrefaction" rather than combat. He further condemns the economic imbalance of conflict, noting that while the nation is impoverished and the brave suffer, "paymasters, and agents, contractors and commissaries" accumulate wealth without "virtue, labour, or hazard". The article aligns these sentiments with the American experience of the "late war," asserting that contractor profits and public debt outweighed military glory.
Remarks; on the Merits and Defects of Dr. Johnson, as a Critic
This review, reprinted from Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, examines Johnson’s limitations as a literary critic. The author acknowledges Johnson’s "vigour of expreſſion" but asserts he authorized a "degraded taste" because he lacked feeling for the "higher kinds of poetry". The reviewer cites Johnson’s dismissive views of Milton's Lycidas, Gray’s Odes, and Collins’s work as evidence of his "unpoetic feeling". The review argues Johnson too often preferred a "witty thing in preference to a wife one" due to an unchastised temper.
Reprinted as "Remarks: On the Merits and Defects of Dr. Johnson, as a Critic." Philadelphia Repository and Weekly Register 5, no. 1 (January 5, 1805): 6; "Remarks: On the Merits and Defects of Dr. Johnson, as a Critic." The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review Containing Sketches and Reports of Philosophy, Religion, 1, no. 4 (February 1, 1804): 174.
Random Readings: English and American Manners. Manners of the English Upper Classes. Manners of the Lower Classes. Dr. Johnson's View
The last number of Blackwood's Magazine contains another article on American affairs,–"Democracy teaching by Example,"–studiously contemptuous and insulting towards the loyal people of the United States, who are now struggling to maintain their government. The spirit of this and kindred utterances in the London Quarterly, and all the Tory organs, is not to be mistaken. It is a bitter hatred of republican institutions and manners, and hence the premature exultation in the belief that republican institutions are a failure.
Remarkable Instances of Poverty: Homer. Cardinal Bentivoglio. Milton. Samuel Boyse. Louis De Boissi. Otway. Dr. Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson
Though the blessings of life, and a competency of temporal favours, are every way desirable, yet they who are in a measure deprived of them should remember that poverty in itself is no real disgrace, though considered as such by those whose minds are influenced by custom and prejudice, more than truth and benevolence.
New-York Mirror: A Weekly Gazette of Literature and the Fine Arts
Selections from New Works: Farther Extracts from Dunlap's Forthcoming History of American Arts and Artists. Copley's Tediousness. a Ruinous Good Speculation. Dr. Johnson and Stuart. West, Stuart, and the King's Picture. Washington's Enjoyment of the Ludicrous. Charles Wilson Peale. An Agreeable Incident. Parissiens
"Stuart used to tell me, that no man ever knew how to manage paint better than Copley. I suppose he meant that firm, artist-like manner in which it was applied to the canvas; but he said he was very tedious in his practice. He once visited Copley in his painting-room, and being a good deal of a beau‼" (by these notes of admiration we suppose Mr. Sargent to allude to Stuart's slovenly, snufly appearance when he knew him,) "Copley asked him to stand for him, that he might paint a bit of a shirt-ruffle that stuck out of his bosom.
Chronicles the final year (1784), detailing physical collapse, anxiety, and loneliness. Contrasts his frank terror of death with his lifelong courage. Assesses his literary works as largely obsolete, finding Rasselas pedantic and Irene memorable only for the anecdotes surrounding it. Concludes his enduring legacy is guaranteed by his broad humanity, honesty, and unique personality, which eclipsed his actual writings.
CGV entry 10/6:82. Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review (1884).
Stephensiana, No. I: Fredrick, Prince of Wales. Mr. Gibbon. Sir Francis Burdett. Dr. Johnson. Gen. Charles Lee. J. H. Tooke. Tooke's Opinions of Locke. The British Constitution. Stanzas to the late Duchess of Gordon. Lord Chief Justice Saunders. Governments. Influence of Liberty. Baths. Military Regimen. French Police. Lady Hamilton. Ear-Rings. Napoleon. Dutch and French. Legion of Honour. Education in France. Aerial Gardens. Wilton. Dr. Smollett George Rose
Fredrick, Prince of Wales, father of his late Majesty, was a man of vey elegant manners, but Walpole exhibits him in a point of view peculiarly unfavourable. He was particularly addicted to reading French memoirs, and had written those of his own time, under the name of "Prince Titi."
Euterpeiad: An Album of Music, Poetry & Prose
In pleading not guilty to Dr. Johnson's peremptory arraignment of me in THE EVANGELIST–an arraignment which is characterized by his usual rhetorical intensity–I seem to be called upon to show why his sentence against me as a perverter of the truth should not stand.
Macaulay characterizes Johnson’s passion for Elizabeth Porter as a product of strong impulses and defective eyesight. While ordinary observers saw a short, coarse, and gaudily dressed widow, Johnson perceived his "Tetty" as the most beautiful and accomplished of women. Macaulay notes that Johnson’s weak vision prevented him from distinguishing "ceruse from natural bloom" and observes that his lack of experience with "women of real fashion" sustained his illusions. Despite the disparity in their ages and occasional "wranglings," Macaulay admits the union proved happier than expected, with Johnson maintaining his unfeigned admiration until her death. The text concludes by highlighting Johnson’s enduring tenderness, citing the personal monument he erected and his late-life exclamation, "Pretty creature!" as evidence of a devotion that remained "half ludicrous, half pathetic."
London Reader: Of Literature, Science, Art and General Information
The reviewer assesses this deluxe edition of Rasselas as a significant but flawed attempt to continue the English tradition of fine printing established by William Morris. Bound in vellum with "Mazarin" type, the work explicitly models itself on the Kelmscott and Vale presses. The reviewer disputes the technical success of the new fount, suggesting it derives from distorted photographs of Morris’s "Golden" type and censuring its "hideous" ornaments and poorly executed serifs. While the presswork is satisfactory, the "decorated" elements—including woodcut borders and initials—are criticized as unoriginal imitations of Morris’s "vine" patterns. The reviewer argues that the Vincent Press fails to grasp that a printed page is beautiful primarily through typography and legibility rather than derivative ornamentation. The critique concludes that the "virile inspiration" of Morris is absent, advising the press to seek a truly original decorator before attempting further sumptuous works.
Prideaux challenges Burton’s assertion that the name "Rasselas" derives from "Ras Salasah" (Chief of the Trinity) or "Ras el-Asad" (Head of the Lion). Contending that Johnson used his 1735 translation of Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia as a primary source, Prideaux traces the name to "Ras Sela Christus," the brother of the Abyssinian Negus. He explains that "Se’ela Krestos" signifies the "image or picture of Christ," whereas naming a man after the Trinity alone would "savour of blasphemy" in Abyssinian culture. Prideaux maintains that while "Ras" became a common title in later centuries, it historically designated a high-ranking officer in the period described by Lobo. The correspondence serves to correct Burton’s commentary for a projected second edition of The Lusiads.
Remarks on a Leading Sentiment in Dr. Johnson's Rambler
Writing under the initials C. A., the author critiques the "gloomy representations of human life" prevalent in Johnson's Rambler. While acknowledging the "solidity of remark" in the essays, the article disputes Johnson’s "leading sentiment" that "man was born to mourn and to be wretched." The author argues this outlook stems from Johnson's "morbid melancholy" rather than general experience. The piece asserts that happiness is more equally distributed among social orders than Johnson suggests and warns that such "untrue and unjust" depictions of existence may improperly impress young readers. The author advocates for a more "cheerful" observation of life based on social affections and "honourable pursuit" rather than Johnsonian despondency.
This article disputes the authenticity of a conversation recorded in Boswell's biography wherein Johnson compares players to "dancing dogs." The author, identified as Martin, argues that "down-right nonsense" rarely escaped Johnson's lips and that such "vulgarity and ignorance" contradicts Johnson's known friendship with David Garrick. The piece suggests Boswell may have misrepresented a dispute where Johnson "contended more for victory than truth." Martin contrasts Johnson’s supposed "vulgar" conversation with the "splendour, grandeur, and magnificence" of his written works, specifically citing the Rambler to suggest the private talk of great authors often disappoints compared to their literary output.
Reply to M. M. Respecting Lord Orrery and Dr. Johnson
P. P. informs M. M. that Johnson was wrong and Lord Orrery was right: the laurel-tree does bear both flowers (white) and fruit (a small red berry). P. P. surmises Johnson's error was not figurative but because of his defective vision, metropolitan life, and lack of interest in nature. The information is offered to correct Johnson's error, presuming he wrote from books rather than observation.
Retrospections on the Character and Tendency of the Moral Speculations of Dr. Johnson and M. Helvetius
In the second part of this series, E. P. contrasts the "wide dissimilarity in thinking" between Johnson and Helvetius. E. P. argues that Johnson’s strength lies not in "metaphysical sagacity" or the framing of hypotheses, but in his "singular promptitude and felicity" in descanting upon human weaknesses. The article praises the "purity and elevation" of Johnson’s ethics, contrasting them with the "frigid and inhospitable tenets" of Hobbes and the paradoxes of Rousseau found in Helvetius’s work. While acknowledging that Helvetius analyzed human capacities with "metaphysical subtlety" and political insight, E. P. asserts that Johnson’s "masculine and impetuous eloquence" more effectively promotes the "moral elevation" of the species. The article claims Johnson purposefully avoided abstract experimental studies, believing they "stifle the more amiable passions," and instead used "agreeable fictions" and "beautiful similitudes" to illustrate life. E. P. concludes that Helvetius’s system promotes "universal licentiousness" by teaching that man is a "mere creature of chance" motivated solely by self-interest.
In the final installment of the series, E. P. concludes that Johnson was a far "greater benefactor of the human race" than Helvetius. The article contends that Helvetius’s philosophy, which reduces all "perceptions and sentiments" to "sordid and sensual influences of matter," cast a "lasting stain on humanity." In contrast, E. P. asserts that Johnson’s writings demonstrate the human mind is capable of recognizing "claims incomparably higher"—including "virtue, the dictates of noble philanthropy, and the pure emanations of devotion and piety." Despite Johnson’s "despondent views" on the "vanity of human enjoyments," E. P. argues his speculations "lean... to the side of noble thinking" and correct manners in "associated communities." The article further suggests that the differences between the two authors are "indigenous with the national literature" of England and France, linking Johnson’s gravity and solemnity to the tradition of Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, while associating Helvetius with the "flippant and undue levity" of Montaigne.
The Right Hon. J. Wilson Croker, LL.D. F.R.S: Editor of 'Boswell's Johnson'
This biographical article profiles the "retired statesman" Croker, focusing on his transition from a "successful parliamentary and official career" to a life of "severer study." The author highlights Croker’s 1831 edition of Boswell’s Johnson as a "valuable contribution to the literature of our country," noting that his "character and station" granted him access to "new and most interesting sources of information." The text describes Croker’s "empassioned boldness" in argument and his social circle, which included Scott and Canning. The author expresses hope that Croker’s "magnum opus" is yet to come, characterizing his current state as a "civil death" preceding his natural decease.
The Science of Health; Second Sight. Dr. Johnson's Opinion–Cases in 1773 in the Hebrides–The Profound Hypnotic Trance–The Clairvoyant Faculty–Kant's Account of Emanuel Swedenborg's Clairvoyance in 1767
This article uses Dr. Johnson's 1773 inquiry into "second sight" during his Hebrides tour as a starting point. Johnson argued against dismissing such phenomena merely because they lacked a known principle, comparing it to magnetism. The author connects 18th-century accounts of visions (like those involving fainting fits) to the modern understanding of the "deep hypnotic trance," discussing related states like clairvoyance. It includes brief hypnosis case studies and retells Immanuel Kant's famous account of Emanuel Swedenborg foreseeing a distant Stockholm fire in 1759.
The Old English Essayists: Continued: The Rambler
Many other works besides those enumerated in our last paper, were attempted between the close of the Guardian, and the commencement of the Rambler by Dr. Johnson. Much ability appeared in occasional papers, but none maintained that preeminent character for humor, accurate delineation of human nature, style, and moral sentiment, which has conferred immortality on the Tattler,
Relates two anecdotes concerning Johnson and his circle. The first describes a social gathering at Reynolds's where guests toasted pairings of "ugly women" with "ugly men." When a guest matched Williams with Goldsmith, Johnson expressed displeasure at the ridicule of his friends, comparing the reconciliation of the women involved to the "quarrels of ancient kings" where "there is always an animal sacrificed on the occasion." The second narrative details Lowe's account of Boswell's aggressive pursuit of a letter written by Johnson. Boswell employs "overstrained and insinuating compliments" to secure a copy of the document at Peele’s Coffee House, only to resume a cold and "proud" indifference toward Lowe immediately thereafter.
This biographical narrative provides a chronological summary of Johnson's life and works, from his birth in Lichfield to his death in London. The text describes his departure from Oxford due to poverty, his unsuccessful private academy, and his move to London with David Garrick. It lists major works including "The Vanity of Human Wishes," The Rambler, the "Dictionary of the English Language," and "Rasselas." The author characterizes Johnson as "superstitious, prejudiced, often coarse," and a "tea drunkard," yet finds him an "admirable personality" due to his religious spirit and "kindness itself toward the poor." The note identifies Boswell's biography as the "greatest biography ever written" and includes a week-long "Portrait Calendar" of Johnson's maxims on religion, equality, and poverty.
The Thinker: Literary Portraits: III, Dr. Johnson
This portrait characterizes Johnson as a "colloquial magistrate" who exercised a "dictatorship" over 18th-century literary taste. The text attributes Johnson’s influence to "vigorous understanding" and "inflexible integrity" rather than profound erudition. While the Dictionary is described as a "noble monument," the author argues Johnson’s fame rests on the Lives of the Poets. The analysis highlights Johnson’s "unpoetical character," noting his "insensibility to the higher poetry" and his "monstrous" critical injustice toward Gray. Despite these defects, the text maintains that Johnson’s "rugged benevolence" and "pure conscience" established him as an "efficacious teacher of virtue."
The English Classic, No. 10: The Rambler, No. 67
This reprint of Johnson's essay provides "serious reflections" on mortality and the "vanity of life." Johnson argues that "riches, authority, and praise lose all their influence" in the "chamber of disease." He explores the "painful occurrence" of the death of one "whom we have injured without reparation" and the regret following the loss of a "competitor." The text urges readers to "make haste to do what we shall certainly at last wish to have done" by returning the "caresses of our friends."
The Literary Circles of the Last Century: Mrs. Montagu and Her Friends, Dr. Johnson, Lord Lyttleon and Others
Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine, this article profiles Elizabeth Montagu as the "Queen of Literature" and "Queen of the Blues" who centered the "Blue-stocking Society." The author describes the "motley collection" at Portman Square, including Elizabeth Carter, Beattie, Boswell, and Johnson, highlighting Montagu's wit, high breeding, and her ability to "obliterate those barriers of rank" through intellectual eminence and refined social intercourse. The text details the "stately" Montagu’s conflict with Johnson over his "malignant life" of Lord Lyttelton, noting she "publicly declared that she would never speak to him again." An account of their "diverting" encounter at Streatham reveals Johnson "surveyed her like a setter" and eventually bullied her into civility; the narrative explores their mutual respect despite Johnson’s occasional rudeness and Beattie’s observations that Johnson "could not bear that any one should be thought to have wit but himself." Emphasizing Montagu's role as a "patroness of letters," the piece contrasts her social brilliance with the gravity of her husband and chronicles Johnson's presence at Streatham alongside his eventual reconciliation with Montagu.
The Last Hours of Dr. Johnson; to the Editor of the Christian Observer
Latrobe corroborates accounts of Johnson’s 'conversion' and final days. He testifies that Johnson became 'a child of God, by faith in Christ Jesus,' discarding the 'formalist' reliance on his own merits. Latrobe details his father’s frequent visits where Johnson 'delighted to hear' of salvation through the 'atonement of the Redeemer.' Upon his father’s return to London, he found Johnson 'speechless, though quite sensible.' Johnson expressed understanding and thanks when directed to the 'only Saviour' and expired the next morning, having found 'mercy through faith.'
The Bulls of the Poets; Dr. Johnson Dryden Pope Thompson Home Cowley Milton Shakspeare
Collects instances of literary blunders and logical contradictions, or "bulls," found in the works of eminent writers to demonstrate that "Genius is occasionally caught napping." The text identifies a specific "bull" in Johnson’s writings where he asserts that Shakespeare exhibited human nature as it "would be found in situations in which it cannot be exposed." It also quotes Johnson's dictum that "every monumental inscription should be in Latin" to ensure longevity as a "dead language." Other examples of "modern instances of literary somnolency" include paradoxes from Pope, Milton, and Cowley.
American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts
The Atlantis: Chapter VIII. Dinner with Dr. Johnson
This fictional narrative and short story, part of a continuing series, depicts a "Great Festival" in the celestial republic of Saturnia, a society where historical figures interact based on their earthly virtues. In this afterlife, Johnson appears as a venerable sage "escorting Miss Hannah More, to whom he had been married a short time before." Engaging in a detailed library dialogue with the narrator regarding the decline of literary taste since the age of Addison and Swift, Johnson attributes this decay to the superficiality of diversified reading and excessive decoration in modern style. He specifically attacks Gibbon’s "artificial style and excessive embellishments," preferring the research of the former to the "absolutely detestable" metaphysical works and shallow penetration of Hume. Additionally, Johnson and Richardson debate the merits of Sir Walter Scott; while Pope acknowledges Scott’s imagination, Richardson and Johnson argue that Scott's novels lack the essential moral model required for the improvement of mankind. Johnson asserts that "every novel should exhibit one hero, who is a model of virtue" and praises Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison as a "noble production," a work in which they find the moral excellence they believe modern novels lack.
Pennsylvania Magazine; or, American Monthly Museum
To the Publisher of the Pennsylvania Magazine: Thoughts on Agriculture. Extracted from a late Work by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Description of a New Treshing Instrument. Explanation of the Plate. for the
As far as the power of words can excite a spirit of emulation, and industry, I think the following encomium upon agriculture, (which I have extracted from Dr. Johnson's late publication) is very happily adapted. If you should have a piece on that subject, or leaning that way, in your Magazine for this month, I recommend it as a preface thereto; fully persuaded that no gentleman will think his productions dishonoured, by being introduced by the elegant pen of that writer.
An anecdote involving Johnson and Gastrel critiques the imposition of 'fashionable education' on precocious children. When a young girl recites 'Cato’s soliloquy' perfectly but fails to define 'bane and antidote' or state the number of pence in a sixpence, Johnson identifies the pedagogical failure. He characterizes the instruction as 'ridiculous,' arguing against teaching complex literary works to children who lack basic practical knowledge.
Talk of Europe; Switzerland and the League a Tale of Two Tongues the German Navy Protests a Note on Dr. Johnson 'Zoos' in War Time His Beautiful Voice
Switzerland's attitude to the League of Nations, which may be summed up in the words, participation, provided Switzerland's permanent neutrality is guaranteed, has been, according to an S.P.T. message in Der Bund, the subject of discussion between Lord Robert Cecil and M.
Talk of Europe; Germans Discuss the Kaiser's Responsibility the Attack That Was Never Made Rosa Luxemburg Britain Aids Vienna Dr. Johnson and the Air Raids an Election Story a Consul Baffles the Bolsheviki
This letter to the editor recalls Johnson's foresight concerning the military use of aviation, citing a passage in Rasselas. The artificer in Rasselas declines to share the secret of flight, worrying about the security of the good if the bad could invade them from the sky. He states that an army sailing through the clouds would bypass the security of walls, mountains, or seas, and a "flight of northern savages" could violently assault the capital of a fruitful region.
Schweikert challenges Macaulay’s dismissal of Boswell as a "fool," presenting him instead as a man of "contradictory nature" whose faults were balanced by "literary taste" and "veneration" for genius. The text details Boswell’s struggles with intemperance, his vanity regarding his Bruce ancestry, and his "servility" toward high office. Schweikert emphasizes that the 1763 meeting with Johnson was the "great crisis" of Boswell's life, leading to a friendship that transcended national and personal differences. He concludes that Boswell’s "perfect" biographical mode succeeded through "felicitous presentation" of dramatic conversation and an unyielding commitment to being a "man of truth."
The Poudoir: Chataubriand–Southey's Roderick–Beattie's Essay on Morality-Simplicity–Dr. Johnson–Stanzas, Beloved, When I am Dead–Fashion-Harmond–Society–Amusements–Panorama–Mr. Saubert–Sutton the Ventriloquist–The Calabrian Brothers. Beloved! When I am Dead
Medora. It is refreshing to turn to one's library and take down a few books which seem to be growing old, and renew either old associations or awaken those which the progress of feeling and lapse of years may have utterly changed. I have been reperusing some works which twenty years ago, I read as a task or a pastime.
During the leisure of Opposition, Lord Malmesbury has followed up his publication of the "Political Diaries and Correspondence" of his grandfather, the first Earl, by that of a second series of letters, on topics social as well as political, from amongst his family papers, it having been, he tells us the habit of his house during three generations "to preserve and arrange almost all the letters which they received from their relations and acquaintances.
Continental Monthly: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Bernard de la Roche Bernard leaves home seeking glory but encounters a man, the Count de C—, who believes he sold his life years to a negro, Juba, for fame. When the man's story is revealed as insanity, Bernard forsakes ambition, concluding such pursuits are "ten years lost," and returns to his family and Henrietta, mirroring Johnson's Rasselas.
Dr. Johnson's case is, in the main, that of a personality transmitted to us by means of a great biography. It comes down to us through Boswell. To praise Boswell is superfluous. His method was natural and, therefore, I need not add, intensely original. He had always floating through his fuddled brain a great ideal of portraiture.
Robinson attributes Johnson's personal power to the "strength of his moral character" and his "sincere Christian experience." She highlights his "continual philanthropic services" to the poor and his open reproval of profanity and Sabbath-breaking. The text recounts Johnson's deathbed requests to Reynolds, including a promise to read the Bible and abstain from Sunday painting. Robinson emphasizes Johnson’s "imperfect repentance" and humble reliance on divine mercy, noting that despite his "dogmatical roughness," he remained a "sincerely devout" layman who commonly prayed with his servant.
How solemn are the closing scenes of this dying man! He is styled tho Moralist. Justice, truth, virtue, were the pillars of his character; at all times and in all places he was loyal to his convictions of duty, and reverent toward God. It the wide grasp of his clear, calm, comprehensive mind, he everywhere discerned a moral government, and recognized a righteous Governor; his conscience, unseared by passion or self-indulgence, spoke solemnly, and was heard; the fear of God was upon him; but now, as the curtains of death close around his brave heart and unclouded intellect, he lies helpless, wrestling for hope, panting for peace, raising his eyes with a fearful looking for of judgment into the eternal world.
The Game of Draughts: Dedication by Dr. Johnson
This item presents Johnson’s 1756 dedication for William Payne’s Introduction to the Game of Draughts. An introductory note praises Johnson’s courtly style, claiming he unites the elegance of Joseph Addison with the politeness of Philip Stanhope. In the dedication to the Earl of Rochford, Johnson argues that a wise man sees events in their causes and that the mind is inured to cautious foresight through even a harmless game. He asserts that the same degree of skill is often use in great and little things, thereby imparting dignity to an otherwise trifling subject.
Two Original Letters from James Boswell to William Julius Mickle
Boswell details his ongoing role as Mickle’s "faithful advocate" in negotiations with Garrick regarding the staging of Mickle’s tragedy. Boswell counsels Mickle to maintain composure and avoid "impatience and fretfullness" while awaiting a decision from the "Roscius" of the London stage. He suggests that if Garrick rejects the play, Mickle should consider publishing it by subscription as a "Dramatic Poem" or attempting a production in Edinburgh through Digges, though he notes the prior engagement of Mackenzie’s Prince of Tunis. Boswell further discusses his efforts to promote Mickle’s translation of the Lusiad in Scotland through the booksellers Kincaid and Creech. Additionally, he recounts a visit to Auchinleck by the "illustrious" Paoli, correcting a previous Celtic etymology of the river Lugar from "black" to "short" water, and requests a copy of an Oxford prize poem honoring the Corsican general.
Reviewer critiques Boswell’s memoir for being "ridiculously minute" and "wholly devoid of good taste." The review argues Boswell was "neither a man of genius nor of erudition," instead playing "gravedigger to a Hamlet." Boswell is accused of "worming" himself into "unsuspecting confidence" to publish "failings incident to humanity" that should have been "scrupulously shielded." The reviewer "protests" against such biographical methods, contrasting them with the "delicate" lives written by Moore and Scott. Despite these "outrageous faults," the review acknowledges the Murray edition's "elegant" presentation, featuring "exquisite plates" by Finden. The text asserts that Johnson’s "great luminary of learning" ensures the work will be read as long as the "English language shall retain its present strength."
Boswell advises Mickle on navigating the professional and social complexities of the London literary scene, specifically regarding David Garrick and the production of Mickle's tragedy. Boswell emphasizes the necessity of deferring to Garrick as a 'theatrical monarch' and offers his continued interest as an intermediary. The correspondence details Boswell's pride in his family history at Auchinleck, citing the death of Thomas Boswell at 'Flowden Field,' and provides his aesthetic impressions of the 'romantick scene' of his ancestral estate. Regarding Mickle's translation of the Lusiad, Boswell offers practical support by promising to secure a Scottish bookseller and provides critique on Mickle's poetry. He briefly mentions his acquaintance with Goldsmith and concludes with a personal account of his wife’s illness and the death of his infant son.
Two Original Letters of James Boswell, and one of William Julius Mickle
Boswell urges Mickle to accept Garrick’s rejection of The Siege of Marseilles, defending the manager’s "oracular response" as a professional judgment on dramatic "form" rather than a slight against Mickle's "poetical genius." Citing John Home, Boswell argues that stage success requires a specific mechanism distinct from pure poetry and warns Mickle that a failed production would damage his literary reputation. In response, Mickle disputes the "infallibility of Garrick’s judgment," citing the success of Douglas and Elfrida as evidence that "manly passion" outweighs Garrick’s "nick nack Jeu du Theatre." Mickle accuses Garrick of social duplicity regarding the Lusiad subscription and threatens to attack his taste in a "new Dunciad." The exchange highlights Boswell’s role as a mediator and Mickle’s frustration with the "Cerberus of Drury," while Boswell continues to solicit a mention in Mickle's "prospects" at Auchinleck.
This fierce critique denounces Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Johnson as "ill compiled, ill arranged, ill expressed, and ill printed" because of numerous factual and chronological blunders. It refutes Croker's claim that Piozzi erred about the sale of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, citing evidence it was published after The Traveller. The author condemns Croker's interpolation of excerpts from other biographers, including Piozzi, which destroys Boswell’s original style.
This notice of the second volume focuses on the aesthetic 'gems of art' provided by engraver Finden after Stanfield's designs, specifically views of Lichfield Cathedral and Pembroke College. The reviewer asserts that 'even the frivolities of a man like Johnson have an interest,' justifying the minute detail preserved in the letter-press. The arrangement and 'getting up' of the volume receive high praise for professional execution and clarity.
The reviewer evaluates the initial volume of John Murray’s definitive edition of Boswell’s biography, noting the "earnest" application of talent and influence to honor the great lexicographer. The text highlights the volume’s physical and artistic merits, including an "excellent" frontispiece of Johnson in the act of asseveration and a vignette by Finden depicting Johnson's birthplace in Lichfield. Boswell’s narrative is characterized as a "pleasing piece of biographical tittle-tattle" that skillfully secures affection for the biographer while commanding admiration for the subject. The review commends the work for successfully integrating supplementary material from Hawkins, Piozzi, Murphy, Tyers, and Reynolds, framing it as an essential acquisition for both the scholar’s desk and the gentleman’s library. The reviewer predicts certain success for this periodic series.
Very brief notice of the appearance of the fourth volume of "this splendid edition."
Notes the improvement resulting from the inclusion of the final two supplementary volumes. The ninth volume features twenty sections of anecdotes and reminiscences, with Piozzi's contributions receiving particular focus. The volume includes engravings by the Findens, specifically a frontispiece portrait of Piozzi after Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a vignette of Mrs. Thrale's house at Streatham after Stanfield. The reviewer commends the overall quality of this augmented edition.
The eighth volume provides an engraving of Boswell after Reynolds and a view of Johnson's Fleet Street residence. Murray announces an expansion of the work from eight to ten volumes due to an accumulation of materials. The additional volumes are designated for "Johnsoniana," separating miscellaneous anecdotes from Boswell's main narrative to ensure comprehensive coverage.
SINCE Disraeli coined his patriotic phrase about the banner of Saint George, very little has been heard of Abyssinia unto this day. So little has Europe heeded it that Italian encroachments were dismissed good-humouredly as a harmless piece of megalomania, like the antics of a national child trying to follow the prevailing fashion among nations and crying for Africa.
The review of The Johnson Club Papers discusses the continued veneration of Johnson's personality, citing Augustine Birrell's argument that Johnson's social talk, recorded by Boswell, defines his genius. The reviewer highlights the club's convivial atmosphere and Johnson's wide-ranging interests. Johnson is compared to Socrates as a great talker, though Johnson aimed for victory in argument rather than teaching. The volume offers essays on various facets of Johnson's character and work, acknowledging Dr. Birkbeck Hill's monumental scholarship.
Very brief notice of the appearance of the third volume.
This review of the Letters of Benjamin Jowett identifies Jowett as the Victorian successor to Johnson, comparing the personal influence and conversational power of the two men. The author argues that while their habits differed—Johnson being a "slovenly Bohemian" and Jowett a model of precision—their mental attitudes were identical, sharing a "virtue of incredulity," a contempt for the "cui bono" school of philosophy, and a duty to repress intellectual pretension and loose talk. Both moralists influenced their generations more through spoken conversation than written words, acting as moral constitution braces for their associates; the article notes that while Johnson's Rambler might not brace a reader's moral constitution, his personal company invariably did. Jowett possessed a worldly intuition similar to the advice Johnson gave Boswell regarding the bar, and his letters to Morier and Lansdowne illustrate a Johnsonian insight into human character and the realities of political life. The text concludes that Jowett’s fame, like Johnson's, rests upon his table talk and his ability to synthesize Greek spirit with English style in his translations.
From the manner in which the centenary of Dr. Johnson's death has been observed it is plain that the interest inspired by the great moralist still survives. All who have recently written on the subject agree that this interest is in the man and not in the writer.
The Auction Catalogue of Dr. Johnson's Library
F.G. challenges the perceived significance of the "unearthing" of the auction catalogue for Johnson’s library, which was sold by Christie on February 16, 1785. The pamphlet is "not extremely rare" and notes its existence in several collections, including those of H. G. Reid and the bookseller Harding. Comparing it to the significantly rarer auction catalogue of Goldsmith’s library, F. G. argues that the document is well known to seasoned collectors. The text refers to an 1836 engraving in Croker’s Johnsoniana depicting General Oglethorpe attending the sale and holding the catalogue. F. G. concludes that various other volumes related to Johnson remain far more obscure than this reprinted sale record.
The Church of St. Clement Danes and Dr. Johnson
Angels' visits are "few and far between;" so at least we are told, and we must receive the statement as generally true. But there is one exception: an angel is always to be found in the Strand, not far from Temple Bar. What is his special mission? There is, truly, abundant work in that place for the sword of judgment; but the Strand angel is ever engaged in a work of mercy, always offering a supply of clear water to all.
Why It Is Well to Read Boswell's 'Johnson'
The Life is valuable for depicting Johnson's wholly original character, a blend of immense intellect and startling prejudices. It documents his complex religious views, his association with John Wesley, and the moral landscape of rising Methodism. Johnson's supremacy lies in his conversation, serving as a "hogshead of common sense" yet often displaying inconsistency, making the record of his table talk the book's chief excellence.
Unpublished Letters of Dr. Johnson: To Mr. Hector, in Birmingham (Address)
Johnson expresses gratitude for financial support from Hector and reflects on the importance of maintaining friendships and communication.
This small collection of anecdotes, reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer, recounts a verbal exchange during Johnson's trip to Scotland. When a hostess asks for his opinion on the national dish of Scotch broth, Johnson asserts the food fit only for pigs. The hostess's quick retort invites the guest to have some more.
Wolcot ridicules Johnson for a "turgid style" characterized by linguistic over-investment in trivial topics. This verse satire characterizes Johnson’s literary method as giving "an inch the importance of a mile" and equates his prose to the "pompous art" of using "Heaven's awful thunder" to describe a "rumbling cart." Wolcot employs a series of hyperbolic metaphors—uplifting the "club of Hercules" to "brain a gnat" or creating a "whirlwind" to "exalt a straw"—to illustrate a systemic lack of rhetorical economy. The poem asserts that Johnson applies the same laborious "tremendous roar" to every theme, regardless of its inherent significance.
This editorial note disputes Johnson's "old-fashioned" pedagogical view that the study of "external nature" is secondary to "religious and moral knowledge." The text quotes Johnson's criticism of Milton for teaching "physical subjects" instead of the "moral truth" found in poets and orators. Johnson argues that "we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance." The author challenges this "immutable decree," asserting that paying attention to nature does not lessen interest in life and actually quickens poetry by "opening up new worlds to the imagination." While acknowledging the value of "moral and prudential character," the author advocates for a "wise compromise" in education that includes the fundamentals of physical knowledge, noting that Darwinian doctrine now assists in understanding the "psychological and the spiritual."
Johnson expresses profound dejection and physical decline in a letter to Ryland dated November 4, 1784. Addressing Ryland as a source of "first felicities" during a time of "weakness either of body or mind," Johnson describes his struggle with dropsy and asthma, noting the use of "uncommon" doses of squills to expel the "water" invading his system. The correspondence focuses on the delayed installation of a funerary stone for Johnson’s wife at Bromley. Johnson identifies a chronological error in the draught of the stone, asserting the date "should be 52," and arranges for the reimbursement of fifteen pounds through Payne. He questions his emotional capacity to "bear the sight" of the monument, requesting Ryland’s companionship during the eventual visit.
Yesterday Was Dr. Johnson's Death-Day (Dec. 13, 1784), and the Johnson Club Drank to His Revered Memory in Solemn Silence
This day a hundred and fourteen years ago London was in mourning– that is, the London of Fleet Street, the London that is alive, that had lost on the previous day its greatest panegyrist; and the old brigade turned sorrowfully to the second floor of the "Cheshire Cheese," for the chair in the corner that tradition tells us has often supported the great frame of Dr. Johnson was empty; the Doctor was no more.
Johnson's Last Years with Mrs. Thrale: Facts and Problems
Riely examines the final years of Johnson’s relationship with Hester Thrale, focusing on the period following Henry Thrale’s death in 1781. He challenges Boswell’s portrayal of Johnson as primarily motivated by creature comforts and suggests a deeper psychological dependence. Riely argues that Boswell’s hostility and literary rivalry with Piozzi distorted the historical record. The study investigates the lack of concrete evidence for a marriage proposal and details the mutual resentment leading to their final 1784 rupture.
The Critique of Freethinking from Swift to Sterne
Battestin places Rasselas within a tradition of fiction critiquing freethinking, like Swift's and Fielding's. Johnson meant to direct man's hopes to "things eternal," showing the futility of seeking earthly happiness. Three episodes expose the "uselessness of mere reason" as a moral guide. The discourse on the soul (chapter 48) reveals the weakness of the materialist argument against the soul's existence and immortality, which Johnson affirmed is the privilege of divine revelation.
The Lichfield Murals at Four Oaks Farm: Situated in the Carriage House on Said Estate and Painted by the Hand of Frances Starr
Boswell's Column: Being His Seventy Contributions to the London Magazine Under the Pseudonym the Hypochondriack from 1777 to 1783, Here First Printed in Book Form in England
This edition, prepared with an introduction and notes by Margery Bailey, presents the complete text of Boswell’s seventy essays originally printed in The London Magazine between October 1777 and August 1783. Written under the pseudonym "The Hypochondriack," these monthly contributions represent a "measured distillation" of Boswell’s journals, using a "self-administered therapy" to defeat inertia and depression through the discipline of regular composition. Bailey describes the contents as a "secret history" of Boswell’s mind, detailing symptoms of melancholy and exploring a variety of topics including "fear, war, excess, love, death, and drinking." The editorial policy preserves original "irregularities of spelling, punctuation and structure," though Greek quotations are corrected. Bailey's introduction identifies the essays as a bridge between Boswell’s voluminous private papers and his major biographical works, noting that while the essays appeared anonymously, Boswell confirmed his authorship in private correspondence. The front matter includes a "Publishers’ Note" acknowledging the abridgment of Bailey’s extensive footnotes from her earlier Stanford edition, a list of seventy essay titles with their original publication dates, and illustrations after Samuel Collings. The series concludes with a "defensive and wistful" final essay necessitated by a shift in the magazine's editorial policy. The general verdict on this edition is that it provides essential biographical value by showcasing a vigorous and independent mind through seventy essays originally published under a pseudonym. The Edinburgh Evening News praises the work as grand reading, noting a fine command of English prose despite evidence of haste in thematic clusters concerning love and death. Spender highlights the text as crucial for understanding private struggles with melancholy, while Mortimer finds the prose distinguished and characteristically candid. But Chapman identifies technical failings, specifically challenging the lack of an index and poor abridgment of notes. While Chapman argues the work falls below the quality of the subject's private records, Glassey contends the collection successfully establishes the author as a significant literary figure in his own right.
Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
Foladare documents Paoli's life, challenging earlier biographies that questioned his leadership or devotion to liberty. Paoli was Boswell's friend, counselor, and hero. The study uses Boswell's private papers, rich with correspondence and numerous references to Paoli. Boswell’s records portray Paoli as a cultivated man, a political genius, and a determined advocate of liberty. The book chronicles Paoli's public life: struggles against France, exile in England (1769–1790), return to Corsica (1790–1795), and final years in England. Foladare shows Paoli constantly focused on his patria during exile. Boswell’s initial 1768 travelogue transformed Paoli into a mythic hero. Foladare used other sources, including Choiseul's papers, to fill gaps in Boswell’s information. Paoli associated with figures like Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds.
Cochrane entry 338.
Three essays examine the textual history of Johnson and Boswell. David Nichol Smith argues that Johnson consistently revised works like The Rambler and Rasselas soon after hurried publication to achieve perfection. R. W. Chapman details Boswell's corrections and use of cancel leaves on the proofs of the Life, showcasing his commitment to accuracy. L. F. Powell outlines the forthcoming critical edition of Hill's Boswell, which will integrate vast new research and correct textual errors against earlier, more accurate editions. The critical reception is overwhelmingly positive. Boas, in MLR, commends the indispensable essays for providing new evidence that demonstrates an extensive post-publication revision process, highlighting how the collection illuminates the textual care of both authors. In The Library, Pollard notes that the volume effectively clarifies meticulous proof-correcting habits and outlines vital editorial principles for correcting textual errors. The review in the New Statesman praises the detailed examination of revision methods, observing how the individual contributions trace the patience evident in the early corrections and identify several previously obscured individuals in the texts. Writing for the English Review, R. accepts the research as a demonstration of diligence and thorough care, emphasizing the value of using early proofs to reveal the specific phrases and press queries that shaped the standard biography.
Reviews: Frederick S. Boas, MLR 25, no. 3 (1930): 354–55; O. Doughty, English Studies 11, no. 5 (1929): 207; New Statesman, January 19, 1929; N&Q 156, no. 10 (1929): 179; A. W. Pollard, The Library 10, no. 1 (1929): 111; V. R., English Review 48, no. 3 (1929): 361–62; TLS, January 24, 1929, 65.
The Robert Spence Watson Memorial Lecture for 1945-1946
Literary & Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne
Cochrane entry 357. Argues that Boswell's journals reveal not only his attractive personality but also his considerable skill as a writer, evident in his honesty, vigorous style, and powerful memory.
Corsica Boswell: Paoli, Johnson and Freedom
Cochrane entry 335. A travelogue in which the author retraces Boswell's journey through modern Corsica, blending his own observations with an appreciation for Boswell's book and its historical context.
Roberts clarifies the size of Johnson's library, noting that his earlier estimate of 3,000 volumes was an underestimate, and that the Sale Catalogue indicated far more than 650 "works." He uses lots from the catalogue to illustrate the cataloguer's practice of listing a "lot" by the first item followed by "etc.," which grouped numerous "works" into fewer lots, thus obscuring the true number of titles. Roberts points out that the catalogue has been printed in facsimile, and its description can be found in Dobson and his own essays.
Levy identifies H. P. Sturz as the anonymous German traveler and "gentleman" mentioned in Piozzi's Anecdotes who visited Johnson at Streatham in 1768 and attacked his knowledge of Greek literature. Levy provides an addendum to an earlier translation of Sturz's account, noting that Powell discovered an older 1800 translation in the Monthly Magazine which later appeared as an "anonymous translation" in Murray's 1836 edition of Johnsoniana. Johnson famously laughed at the encounter, thanking Thrale's Xenophon for his triumph over the "poor, innocent foreigner." This low opinion of Sturz contrasts with Garrick's high praise of the writer's "critical accuracy." Levy also mentions meeting Count Holke, another member of King Christian's train who encountered Johnson, though not at Streatham.
Chapman apologizes for an error in a previous letter regarding the dating of a Johnson letter, where he "hastily assumed" that an engagement list was for the past. His main point remains that the Johnson letter dated April 20, 1778, was correctly identified as being from 1780. He corrects a misprint in Hill's edition of Boswell: "Johnson appearing to me in a reverie" should be "Johnson appearing to be in a reverie," an error introduced in the third edition, which Hill followed.
"Mr. Edmund Blunden has been fortunate in discovering at the Universily of Hongkong two documents of some biographical interest, which he has made available for publication here." An imaginary life of Wordsworth in Johnsonian style.
Osborn and other accounts investigate whether Johnson incorporated anecdotes from Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, into the Lives of the Poets. Johnson's biographies, "The Lives of the English Poets," included materials from acquaintances, and Hailes provided over seventy items of correction and illustration, many now known through Boswell's and Malone's notes. Although Boswell elicited several documents from Hailes, Osborn uses Malone's 1800 biography of Dryden to prove Johnson used at least one "paper concerning Thomson" communicated by Hailes. This specific instance in the "Life of Thomson" concerns the poet's poor elocution during a reading to Dodington. Hailes often challenged Johnson, such as when he disagreed with Johnson's description of Scottish peddlers or his assertion that Young was a licentious man. The letter also notes that Boswell supplied three letters from Thomson to his sister for the project, though Johnson chose to print only one. Though some notes did not immediately reach publication, these contributions established the intellectual core of a significant literary friendship, and Osborn suggests further evidence of Hailes's influence may exist in papers that passed through Malone's hands.
Korshin's letter addresses an allusion in Rambler 93, regarding Johnson's mention of "Borrichius" alongside Langhaine and Rapin. The review of the Yale edition noted the lack of annotation for this reference. Korshin clarifies that "Borrichius" is a misspelling of Olaus Borrichius (Oluf Borch, 1626–90), a Danish humanist, physician, and polymath. Johnson was likely familiar with his writings on language, having helped catalogue the Harleian Library which held Borrichius's works. Korshin suggests the uncorrected error implies that Johnson was less careful as a proof-reader than his editors would like to believe, or that he only prepared a corrected copy-text for later editions.
Rawson's letter follows up on Korshin's correction of the "Borrichius" misspelling in Johnson's Rambler 93. Rawson notes that his own copy of Johnson's Works (1816) and the Oxford edition (1825) both give the correct "Borrichius." He concludes that the error is not still uncorrected in standard editions, and it is "poor" that the Yale editors failed to take obvious steps to check the mysterious name.
Rawson's letter again addresses the "Borrichius" issue in Johnson's Rambler 93. He states that an earlier edition, Scott and Ljunger's Eighteenth-century Critical Essays, had the name correctly printed and annotated. Rawson, writing from the University of Warwick, states that the Yale editors' failure to consult a standard modern work like this adds further confirmation to the review's criticism of the lean annotation.
Fleeman's letter is a rejoinder regarding the textual history of Johnson's The Rambler, spurred by an earlier letter which noted that variants between early numbers suggest the author took great care of his text. Fleeman, of Pembroke College, Oxford, states that variants between the first two editions (1750, 1752) and the later collected editions (1752, 1756) are sufficient evidence of the author's attention to the text. He mentions that Alexander Chalmers restored the correct reading of 'way of life' in Macbeth in his 1823 edition of Johnson's Works, correcting the common error 'May of life'. Fleeman refers to an error in The Rambler 82, where Johnson, writing as Quisquilius the collector, refers to "a glove of Lewis, and the thimble of Queen Mary." Fleeman notes that the Yale edition's index was reduced, and without a note, it is hard to identify the Lewis. An attractive solution suggests that the Lewis is Joyce Lewis, a Protestant martyr, to create an opposite pair with Queen Mary I.
Skye High records a light-hearted tour through Scotland, loosely following the footsteps of Johnson and Boswell. The book is a personal account, not a scholarly work, notable for its amusing dialogue and for inventing the verb "to yarrow," meaning to omit historically significant places from an itinerary. Despite its omissions and inaccuracies, the book is considered a pleasant record that praises Johnson's manners and provides plenty of humor.
Johnson and His Age, edited by Engell, features several "Johnson and..." essays, including Riely's Freudian-tinged view of Thrale as a mother-substitute.
Larsen's Dr. Johnson's Household is a non-scholarly work on Johnson's domestic life.
This book review of Fleeman’s Handlist welcomes the survey as a "thoroughly workmanlike" tool for Johnsonians. Produced by a scholar whose training came from Four Oaks Farm, the largest repository of the known manuscripts, the handlist is a chronological (232 pieces) and title-alphabetized (33 pieces) catalog of Johnson's papers that excludes letters and some marginalia. Carter notes that over eighty of the 265 entries remain "unlocated" and suggests researchers pursue leads through auction records, such as Strahan’s receipt for the copyright of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. The review highlights that very few known manuscripts remain in private hands. Carter emphasizes that Fleeman designed this "thoroughly workmanlike list" as a tentative survey intended to inform and encourage additions and amplifications from other Johnsonians and researchers to the census of Johnson’s papers.
Carswell discusses the first separate reissue of Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson since 1787, an abridged and valuable shortened text edited by Davis. This biography, written by Johnson's executor, appeared four years before Boswell’s and was quickly superseded. Although Hawkins wrote with an attorney’s "narrow minded," "crabbed," "rambling," and "intolerant" perspective and was sometimes inaccurate, he knew Johnson longer than Boswell and provided a poignant first-hand account of the deathbed and final scenes. Davis’s skillful shortening of the "wildly wandering text" allows Hawkins’s observations of marginal figures like Cave and the Ivy Lane Club members to shine. The article also notes Boswell's strictures on Hawkins's work, including an incorrect accusation that Hawkins wrongly ascribed a satire on Johnson to Kenrick, which Hawkins correctly ascribed to Campbell. Carswell concludes that there is ample room for both Hawkins and Boswell to stand side by side as essential records and that Hawkins’s work serves as a valuable supplement to Boswell.
Johnston highlights Clark's investigation into Johnson's relationship with oaths of allegiance and Kaminski’s analysis of Johnson’s Latinate diction, where terms like animate mean to give life to. Johnston argues that while the historian's approach fleshes out sense of locality, it may fail to do justice to Johnson's belief that laws or kings cause or cure only a small part of human endurance.
Mutter observes that Johnson and Goldsmith "often walk in step as poets." While acknowledging the high standard of the new English Texts series, Mutter argues that the Johnson-Goldsmith volume should have been "more generous" given its shorter length compared to other series entries. Mutter regrets the omission of Johnson's translation of Addison's "Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes," "The Winter's Walk," and his Horatian parodies.
Heyman has accomplished the first complete translation of Boswell's Life of Johnson into any language (Swedish). The scholarly two-volume edition follows Hill's text, adds extensive notes, and includes a comprehensive bibliography. The translation, despite minor errors, enables Scandinavians to read a major English work.
Donald Greene (d. 1997) was a legendary Johnsonian scholar, known for his ferociously fought academic campaigns. He strongly opposed Boswell's depiction of Johnson, arguing scholars should focus on Johnson's own writings. Greene also challenged the misrepresentation of the eighteenth century as "neoclassical," terming it the "Age of Exuberance." The Selected Essays of Donald Greene collects his often polemical papers, where he attacked academic orthodoxy, advocating for direct engagement with literature and viewing "theory" as an avoidance of the text.
Darcy's approving review of Hitchings's book praises the author's ability to provide a fresh re-evaluation of Johnson's aphorisms as "distillations of his experience rather than impersonal bons mots." Darcy notes the work revisits familiar Johnsonian material—such as his relationship with Porter and his "aggressive aphorisms"—to present Johnson as both uncompromising and warm, a profound thinker who relishes the ordinary despite his melancholy. The review emphasizes the genuine love in Johnson's marriage despite others' distaste and highlights Hitchings's nuanced accounts of Johnson's political opinions, specifically his "skewering of slave-owner hypocrisy," and his radical view of marriage as a "perpetual friendship." While Darcy commends the book's "serious moral purpose," she critiques the view of his mental disturbances as an "uncomplicated learning curve toward self-exploration," reminding readers of the "dire professional diagnosis" Johnson received at age twenty and questioning specific "Jungian interpretations." Darcy concludes with an account of Beckett's "strong identification with Johnson's bleakness," finding inspiration for his tragicomedy in Johnson's persona and his thoughts on pain and suffering.
Morley reviews Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, edited by Pottle. The review describes Boswell as a "tuft-hunter" who obsequiously courted people of rank and title throughout German courts, though he failed to impress them. Morley notes that while Boswell's "butterfly-motions" are recorded with "disproportionate trouble," the volume, which lacks Boswell's personal journal for the period, is considered "overpowering" because of Boswell's "continuous, inauthentic happiness." The text highlights Boswell's absurdities, including his use of the pseudonym "Baron Boswell" and his "suit of velvet of five colours," while acknowledging his "miraculous" ability to make friends. The climax of the previous London Journal involved Johnson, whereas this volume centers on the "Swiss savants" and the interview with Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell charmed these French savants, whose company he sought after failing to obtain the Margrave's Order of Fidelity; they showed more courtesy to Boswell than the German royalty did.
Chapman's approving review of Reade's Johnsonian Gleanings, Part IX, describes the work as "severely genealogical." The review notes Reade summarizes unsolved problems, such as the identity of the "cousin Tom" or Thomas Johnson to whom Johnson wrote in 1784 and Johnson’s connection to Boothby. Chapman highlights the story of "Dr. Taylor's clerk" or Flint and his stepdaughters, which illuminates the relationship between Johnson and Taylor and describes Johnson’s efforts to establish "the facts and law" in their grievances. The review emphasizes that Reade has drawn a "new picture of the Midland background" and Johnson’s origins, praising Reade's "untiring industry" in pursuing the bypaths of local history. Chapman asserts that Reade’s industry "lightened the labors of future editors" or "lightens the labor for future editors of Johnson’s letters."
Flanders's review of Baruth's literary thriller The Brothers Boswell describes a work that imagines a third, hidden version of Boswell stalked by his younger brother, John, a victim of family "melancholia." Baruth neatly intertwines episodes from the London Journal and Life of Johnson, such as the meeting with Garrick, the friendship with Johnson, and the Greenwich day trip, into a suspenseful narrative. The novel highlights a secret sexual life given to Johnson that Baruth makes surprisingly plausible and suggests the entire London Journal might be a fabrication built to disguise a "shocking incident" or "shocking events." Flanders praises the deepening characterization of Boswell as both brave and cowardly, noting that Baruth brings the man to life while maintaining a firm grip on eighteenth-century biographical details and making readers want to return to the original biographical works.
Scott essay discusses the primacy of Johnson's personal character over his writings in his posthumous reputation, noting the dependence of his fame on Boswell. His verse legacy rests on the Juvenal imitations and the elegy on Robert Levet, the latter being an exception of direct feeling. The contrast between the Augustan prose of Rasselas and the poignant simplicity of the Prayers highlights the "enormous" distance between the inner and outer Johnson.
Alkon's essay traces reader-response evidence in Rasselas illustrations, despite the risibly low standard of draughtsmanship. Folkenflik's "Samuel Johnson and Art" systematically catalogues Johnson's comments on art, demonstrating a coherent underlying attitude. The essay highlights Johnson's appreciation for the pictorial and his misgivings about its power, despite his myopia.
Walker’s review of the photo-lithographic reprint of George Birkbeck Hill’s Johnsonian Miscellanies praises the decision to make these essential source materials available. The collection includes Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations, his Annals, and various accounts by contemporaries including Murphy, Reynolds, and Piozzi. Walker notes that while Hill was a "scrupulously exact" editor, his prejudices against Piozzi were unfortunate, as she possessed unique insight into Johnson’s "diseases of the imagination." The review criticizes Hill’s reliance on Boswell for estimates of Shakespeare and Milton, noting that modern readers prefer Johnson’s own words. Despite these flaws, Walker concludes the volumes remain the only available source for many "minor anecdotes" and narratives that supplement Boswell’s Life.
Harrison reviews Theroux's novel Strange Bodies, featuring an academic commissioned to examine letters possibly written by Samuel Johnson. The novel's central conceit involves "the Procedure," a scientific conspiracy to cheat death by harvesting a person's personality through a data-encoding process. Harrison highlights the novel's thematic core: the idea that a person is made of the words they use, and that encoding "enough of Samuel Johnson's texts and you encode Samuel Johnson." The reviewer calls the idea of reconstituting Johnson's "consciousness" from his texts "flimsy and wilful," but finds the thriller entertaining.
This mixed review of Broadley’s Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale criticizes the book’s padding, poor editing, and Seccombe’s excessively long, hyperbolic introductory essay. Seccombe overstates Thrale’s literary significance by placing her near Montagu and the Carlyles, a comparison Bailey disputes, specifically regarding Jane Welsh Carlyle. While the work dedicates space to minor figures and common letters, it includes Thrale's previously unpublished 1774 Welsh Diary. The diary offers a pleasant, unpretentious account of the tour with Johnson, focusing on domestic details and country manners; though it lacks significant "Johnsoniana," it provides valuable intimacy with Johnson’s circle. The review censures Seccombe’s harsh judgment of Johnson and friends for disliking the Piozzi marriage. Bailey challenges Macaulay’s "caricature" of the union, arguing there was "nothing particular to be said against it," while defending the friends who could not understand the marriage in a "pre-revolution world."
Grant praises Clifford's scholarly new edition of Campbell's diary, based on a thorough examination of the original manuscript. Campbell, an incipient biographer and modest rival to Boswell, recorded impressions of Johnson that were distinctly unfavorable, describing him as a "Hottentot" and an "awkward pedant." Macaulay enthusiastically welcomed the diary's publication in 1854 because Campbell's views supported his own criticism of Johnson as an "ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant" and Boswell as small. Conversely, Hill approached the diary with hostility, realizing it threatened to undermine Boswell's idealized portrait. Grant concludes that such accounts are essential to "rescue the humanity of Johnson" or the "humane Johnson" from the haze of Boswell’s "sentimental idolatry."
The selected essays, drawn from the seven most important of Johnson's ten tracts, will surprise those who consider him a reactionary. The collection showcases Johnson's political prose, containing some of his "best prose," notably the sections on a petition's progress in The False Alarm and his description of war. Hardy rightly stresses Johnson's solicitude for the American Indians and Negro slaves, and his horror of war, arguing that his mind moved confidently in discussing general principles.
Wilson’s mixed review of Chisholm’s Wits and Wives examines Johnson through the perspectives of his female circle, including Thrale, Burney, and Reynolds, who provide a Beckettian view of him as a figure consumed by the horror of madness and a "mental monster-ridden swamp" rather than Boswell’s "wit and wisdom machine." Chisholm explores Johnson as a neutral being between the sexes who countered misogyny with self-analysis, focusing on Sarah Johnson’s influence and Johnson’s complex relationship with Thrale, characterized by his request for her to confine him if he lost his reason. The review discusses Johnson's living arrangements, noting he spent weeks at the Thrales' home while his London house was occupied by outcasts like Carmichael, Desmoulins, and the blind Williams. Wilson suggests the stories largely cover ground already established by biographers or Clarke and concludes the book’s primary interest lies in the wracked figure of Johnson himself rather than his female coterie.
Sparrow's enthusiastic review of Chapman's three-volume edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson praises the work as "humanly speaking definitive." This collection, which includes Johnson's letters embedded in Boswell's Life, presents an accurate and complete text, adding 472 unpublished or uncollected letters to Hill's count, including about 100 unpublished letters from Piozzi or Thrale. Sparrow highlights Chapman's "diligent scrutiny" of manuscripts and the creation of seven remarkable, comprehensive, and intelligently organized indexes that serve as a commentary on Johnson's character, health, and habits, including a detailed index of autobiographical elements under "Character." The letters reveal Johnson's "vita senis" (life in old age), exposing a different man than the "Great Bear" of tradition—one who was "melancholy, introspective, neurotic" and "radically wretched" but constant in his "offices of kindness," while detailing his everyday life and health struggles.
CGV entry 23:14.
Clark argues Johnson's life was intellectually shattered at Culloden and that his major projects, like the Dictionary, were second-bests. Clark contends that Johnson was a Tory, Nonjuror, and defining Jacobite, suggesting Johnson's failure to graduate was due to a principled objection to the oath of allegiance.
This approving book review of the one-hundred-dollar AMS Press facsimile of the 1755 two-volume folio first edition of Dictionary praises the fine binding, the quality of the reproduction, and the enterprise of reproducing the "legitimate progenitor" of English lexicography and all subsequent great English dictionaries. The reviewer notes that Johnson began using Bailey’s dictionary as a base but achieved unprecedented authority and originality, pioneering the principle of illustrating words through context and word meanings with quotations. Although Johnson focused on a "best period" rather than a historical approach and missed the principle of historical illustration, the review lauds his "usually excellent, often superb" definitions and the principles in the Preface, which remain central to lexicography. Johnson realized that language should be recorded rather than fixed, and while the reviewer commends this reproduction, they suggest private collectors might still prefer an original folio edition, which can occasionally be acquired for a price comparable to this reprint.
Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale's Tour in North Wales, 1774
The book provides a corrected version of Hester Thrale's lively and gossipy journal alongside Johnson's less engaging diary. The editorial commentary and notes are described as thorough, though the introduction is criticized for factual errors regarding Johnson's career, Thrale's birthplace, and the Johnson–Thrale friendship. The book's chief merit is making Mrs. Thrale's text available and serviceable for travelers.
Greene argues that Boswell permanently fastened the stigma of "Doctor" upon Johnson. He notes that Johnson himself was little pleased to be called Doctor and never assumed the title of Doctor, preferring Mr Johnson. Johnson, in his Life of Swift, refused to call Swift "Doctor Swift" because he believed the honorary title added no honour to a great writer's name. Greene suggests this concern for the dignity of authorship pioneered the modern usage and that Boswell's choice to use the title heavily may reflect his unconscious motives to "put down" Johnson.
An exchange with David Pole.
Chisholm's enthusiastic review of Samuel Johnson: The Art of the Pendulum, edited by Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone, examines sixteen essays that seek to return to Johnson’s written texts rather than Boswell’s anecdotal Life. The review highlights Isobel Grundy’s argument that Johnson’s tortuous sentences represent an exhilarating pursuit of complex truth and Philip Davis’s claim that Johnson’s work offers a pathway to sanity for those in mental trouble.
Carnochan reviews several books on Johnson, positioning him as uniquely imprinted on the later eighteenth century, capturing the power and crisis of modernity. Kaminski's Early Career is praised for demythologizing the young Johnson, especially correcting Boswell's fictional account of his poverty-stricken friendship with Savage.
The final volumes of Johnson's Letters chronicle the last three years of his life, filled with illness like dropsy and gout, the loss of friends, and a stroke that caused a loss of speech. Despite this accumulating misery, Johnson stoically followed his principle that preserving health was a religious duty. He cataloged his physiological war—employing strong remedies and detailing emissions like blood-lettings and copious urine output—as a form of Christian heroism. Nokes praises Redford’s Hyde Edition for its scholarly diligence and comprehensive indexing.
Chapman's approving review examines Sir Joshua Reynolds: Portraits, a collection of manuscripts edited by Hilles. Found among Boswell's private papers at Malahide Castle in 1940, these short, unfinished sketches, published for the first time, were likely given to or acquired by Boswell for his planned biography of Reynolds. The review praises the "affectionate but clear-sighted" character sketches of Goldsmith and Garrick; the Goldsmith sketch confirms the portrait given by Boswell. Chapman highlights two dialogues, including "Johnson against Garrick" between Johnson and Reynolds and another between Johnson and Gibbon. The review notes that Reynolds’s representation of Johnson’s manner is so accurate it suggests "verbal quotation," and the manuscripts enhance Reynolds' reputation as a wit and man of letters. Chapman commends the tactful editorial work and the inclusion of facsimiles.
Suarez’s enthusiastic review of DeMaria’s exploration of Johnson’s "silent life of reading" praises the study for making that life "audible" by focusing on the psychological and theological dimensions of his literacy. Suarez highlights DeMaria's four-part taxonomy—"study, perusal, mere reading, and curious reading"—a framework used to categorize diverse materials ranging from the Greek New Testament to eighteenth-century newspapers and romances. The review notes how Johnson used books like Grotius’s De Veritate Religionis to occupy his mind and reassure himself of its proper functioning during physical illness. DeMaria contrasts Johnson’s devotional reading with more secular habits to illustrate a complex relationship with the stability of truth. Commending DeMaria’s exegesis, Suarez observes that the book "instructs by delighting," effectively reaching both the "common reader" and the "eighteenth-century scholar."
Walker's review of the Arts Council bicentennial exhibition Samuel Johnson 1709-84 examines the intellectual dominance of Johnson over his painters, emphasizing images of his "tormented intellect" and displaying manuscripts showing his "painstaking work." The exhibition features portraits by Reynolds, including one showing Johnson in a "moment of terrible intensity holding a book," and a plaster-cast bust by Cruikshank and Hoskins incorporating a death-mask. Walker contrasts the "tortured and uncompromising features" of Johnson with the "insipidity and stillness" found in portraits of his friends, including Boswell and Thrale. The associated book is a hybrid containing a catalogue by Yung and essays by Wain, Robson, and Fleeman; additionally, Ingrams's selection of Piozzi's anecdotes from Thraliana is noted as superior to the published Anecdotes.
The Introspective Doctor [Review of Johnson on Johnson, by John Wain, and the Facsimile Edition of Prayers and Meditations]
Walker’s approving review of Wain’s Johnson on Johnson and a facsimile of Prayers and Meditations highlights Johnson as a profoundly autobiographical writer. Wain’s book compiles a life of Johnson primarily from his own writings—including letters, autobiographical fragments, and implicit self-revelations in the notes to Shakespeare. The facsimile reproduces the fourteen notebooks given to Strahan, providing an unexpurgated view of Johnson’s inner life between 1738 and 1784. Walker notes the contrast between the assurance of Johnson’s published "I" and the "baseness of character" recorded in private devotions, which reveal a "heroic struggle for self-improvement" against guilt, "waste of time," and a "reigning sin" of "general sluggishness" often caused by "morbid melancholy." While Johnson might not have intended these private entries for publication, they remain essential for scholars.
The book contains Piozzi's diary of her 1775 visit to Paris; Johnson's diary of the same visit, corrected from the British Museum manuscript; and Piozzi's diary of her 1784 second visit with her second husband. Piozzi's second journal was previously published, expanded, and rewritten as Observations and Reflections (1789), but her 1775 journal is new and spontaneous. Her 1775 journal is comparable to Boswell's journal of the Hebrides, but Thrale keeps herself central rather than Johnson. Her Parisian story is notable for good humor, keen social observation, and engaging artlessness, making it more attractive than her later published works. The editors are partial to Piozzi in long-standing controversies.
Scott reviews reprints of Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia and Prayers and Meditations. The essay discusses the primacy of Johnson's personal character over his writings in his posthumous reputation, noting the dependence of his fame on Boswell. His verse legacy rests on the Juvenal imitations and the elegy on Robert Levet, the latter being an exception of direct feeling. Rasselas, a prose tale, stands as a literary exception. Prayers and Meditations reveals the man free from the public persona, showing his devoutness, humility, and struggles with weakness. The collection was compiled posthumously by Strahan from Johnson's private notebooks.
This book review examines recent scholarly approaches to Johnson’s thought, focusing on Sachs’s Passionate Intelligence and Hardy’s edition of Political Writings. Walker identifies "serious deficiencies" in Sachs’s monograph, which examines Johnson's sense of life's vacuity and the "polarity of reason and imagination" underlying all phases of his thought. Although the goal of demonstrating the unity of Johnson's thought is laudable, Walker argues Sachs restricts terms like imagination and pride in a way that irons out the "rich complexity" of Johnsonian thought, displaying a tendency to force evidence to fit his "orthodox Christian heritage" idea. Sachs is criticized for misreading Johnson's text, particularly on the Great Chain of Being and the meaning of the word "artist" in Rasselas, and Walker disputes the claim that Johnson maintained a medieval view of sloth and despair. Conversely, Walker praises Hardy’s selection of seven political tracts, noting it will surprise those who view Johnson as an extreme reactionary by highlighting Johnson’s solicitude for the oppressed and his "deadly" attack on Junius. Walker suggests a second edition should restore the original mottoes and full titles to Taxation no Tyranny and The Patriot.
Swimming with Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale: Sport, Health and Exercise in Eighteenth-Century England
Chisholm calls Allen's book an interesting volume where she reproduces a collection of curious goblets to illustrate the physical activities Johnson and his contemporaries enjoyed, and the opportunities for exercise that they had, from skating to swimming to climbing. Her aim is to depict Johnson in a different light than the caricature of a stout elderly man in a wig, and despite his physical awkwardness, depressive tendencies and many hours devoted to writing he managed to exercise frequently. In a way Johnson was a very modern man who adopted fast days and vegetarian diets and strongly believed that exercise had beneficial effects on mood and motivation.
Carnochan reviews several books on Johnson, positioning him as uniquely imprinted on the later eighteenth century, capturing the power and crisis of modernity. Kernan's Printing Technology argues Johnson's success stemmed from his understanding of the new print age, although Carnochan questions if print also generated his need for order.
Carnochan reviews several books on Johnson, positioning him as uniquely imprinted on the later eighteenth century, capturing the power and crisis of modernity. Korshin's Johnson After Two Hundred Years is described as methodologically traditional.
Carnochan reviews several books on Johnson, positioning him as uniquely imprinted on the later eighteenth century, capturing the power and crisis of modernity. Page's collection of Interviews and Recollections supplements Boswell, revealing Johnson's less appealing side, such as his brutal reaction to a friend's memorial urn.
Walker praises Wharton for his sprightly reading of Johnson's major works, arguing for him as a poet and scholar.
Walker reviews Hyde’s account of the rivalry between Boswell and Piozzi, noting how Boswell slowly came in some ways to supplant her as Johnson’s confidant. The text explores Boswell’s detailed animadversions on Piozzi's inaccuracies following the publication of her Anecdotes. Additionally, Walker examines McIntosh's study of Johnson’s didactic fictions and Wain’s anthology of his criticism, which notably excludes reported conversations from Boswell to focus on Johnson's interest in the process of literary creation.
Grant surveys the development of the English dictionary, culminating in Johnson’s "triumphant" 1755 work. Grant notes that while Johnson’s Dictionary surpassed earlier efforts, it did not supersede them. The text highlights how Johnson’s predecessors, such as Bailey and Martin, provided essential material for his advances. Martin’s 1749 work particularly "looked forward to Johnson" through its emphasis on definition. Grant argues that earlier dictionaries contain wisdom and knowledge that Johnson’s "peculiar ambitions" forced him to exclude. The study frames Johnson as the successor to "pioneers" like Cawdrey and Blount who civilized the English tongue.
Hagstrum's is the first monograph to treat Johnson's criticism as a unified whole, defining key terms such as Nature, Pleasure, and the Beautiful, and making good use of the Dictionary. The book sheds light on Johnson's disputed judgments, like his dislike of blank verse, which he felt required unnaturally artificial subject and diction due to its intrinsic plainness. Hagstrum's overall view emphasizes that Johnson's criticism was tentative and skeptical, not a series of judicial pontifications. Modern critics, including Eliot and Wilson, acknowledge Johnson's greatness and still find guidance in his work.
Bottrall's mixed review of McLaren's Corsica Boswell examines the author's retracing of the 1765 Corsican journey, undertaken on the two-hundredth anniversary of the original trip. The book is divided into three parts: the journey to Corte and General Pasquale Paoli; Boswell’s travels and return to England; and Boswell, Paoli, and Johnson in Britain. While Bottrall notes McLaren's repetitive style and his relishing enumeration of Boswell's medical afflictions, he praises the excellent pages regarding the varying attitudes of Boswell, Paoli, and Johnson toward religion. The portrait of Boswell is favorably painted, and McLaren depicts Paoli as a learned, high-principled patriot who was Boswell's "first and greatest father figure, his confessor and counsellor," understanding the subject's frailties better than Johnson. McLaren quotes extensively from the Yale edition of Boswell's works and furnishes new material, including a previously unpublished letter from Boswell to Coutts.
Bailey reviews the new, handy modern edition of Boswell's Corsica. The Tour is noted as the first place Boswell's unique gifts found their opportunity, full of his characteristic vanity, enthusiasm for heroes, and biographical genius. The work was a great success upon its original publication, going through three editions in a year and being translated into French and Dutch. The new edition is praised for making the delightful book readily accessible.
The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle, in the Collection of Lieut.-Col. Ralph Heyward Isham
Chapman reviews the progress of publishing the private papers of Boswell from Malahide Castle, highlighting how Isham's discovery of an unexpected wealth of material enriched the collection. This find, which included manuscripts accidentally discovered in a croquet box in 1930, contained Johnson's letters to Boswell, almost the entirety of the long-lost "Hebridean journal," and a substantial portion of the manuscript of the Life. These documents dramatically revise knowledge of the life of Boswell and significantly supplement the original content of the Life. Chapman notes the new fragments confirm the conjectures of Scott regarding the assembly methods of Boswell, which involved the physical excision of journal pages for use as printer's copy. The review discusses the role of Malone as an "effective editor" of the Tour and provides a new explanation for the "misleading footnote" by Boswell regarding his revisions. Chapman praises Pottle for "accurate performance" and "literary skill" in continuing the editorial enterprise, noting that the subsequent Isham Collection catalog was printed privately to ensure the preservation of these "essential literary treasures."
Lucas reviews Hilles’s New Light on Dr. Johnson, a collection of twenty essays by experts commemorating the 250th anniversary of Johnson’s birth. Sponsored by The Johnsonians, the volume maintains an impressive standard of erudition, though Lucas notes the irony of American devotion to a man who described them as a "race of convicts." The collection addresses Johnson’s bibliography, his sexual lapses, and his relationship with contemporaries like Franklin and the Burneys. Specific contributions highlighted include Lewis’s portrait of a young waterman, evaluations of Johnson’s poetry by Smith and Butt, and Smith’s work on Johnson’s verse. The essays also explore Johnson's failures to appreciate Milton’s blank verse and Clifford’s discussion of biographical intuition. While Lucas questions some biographers' use of intuition where evidence is lacking, he acknowledges the value of these devoted pages for the erudite reader, labeling the work a fine volume.
Bishop reviews the one-volume synthesis of Johnson's lives and the Boswell Papers. The book is praised for Pearson's readability and skill in organizing vast material, serving as an excellent introduction for beginners. However, the reviewer disagrees with Pearson's assertion that Boswell's Life is "twice as long as it ought to be," arguing that the "longueurs" are necessary for rest between highlights. Pearson is noted for explaining Johnson's hilarity as a response to the inherent absurdity of human beings.
On Johnson's enduring literary significance beyond Boswell's widely-known portrayal, emphasizing his stature as a biographer, critic, and moralist. Johnson's literary legacy, though overshadowed, lives in works like The Rambler, which, despite containing general truths, derives its power from the author's intense, suffering, personal experience. Raleigh explores Johnson’s incisive prose, noting its rhetorical complexity and profound psychological insight, as exemplified by his satire of Jenyns's facile optimism on the origin of evil. His biographical mastery is highlighted in The Life of Savage, revealing a unique blend of firm moral judgment and broad human sympathy.
CGV entry 10/6:130. A review of books by Ingpen, White, and Raleigh.
Morley provides an approving review of the sixth volume of the Yale trade edition, edited by Brady and Pottle, which covers Boswell's return to Scotland between 1766 and 1769, his publication of Corsica, his legal career, and his "wife-hunt." While the "wife-hunt" is largely told through "dull reading" in the "interminable correspondence" with Temple, the highlight is the development of real affection for Margaret Montgomerie. Her "natural and loving letters" are described as the best part of the volume. Morley notes that the publication of these private papers, which include frequent entries of Boswell catching or suffering from venereal disease, has replaced the old image of an "amiable" Boswell with a sharper picture involving "touches not of coarseness merely, but of cruelty." The review questions if Boswell is a large enough figure to justify the massive editorial undertaking but highlights the "abiding tributes" found in the affection shown to him by both Montgomerie and Johnson.
Hitchings's approving review of Bainbridge's novel According to Queeney describes the work as an intimate portrait of Johnson's life with the Thrales between 1765 and 1784, partially told through Queeney's letters. Hitchings notes that Bainbridge achieves a "satisfying blend of exactitude and invention" by plundering sources such as Boswell and Piozzi and using Dictionary entries to set the mood. The review observes that the novel explores the disjunction between Johnson's scholarship and the stratified domesticity of his surroundings, contrasting his eccentricities and scholarship with the "desperate fragility," domestic decay, and morbid imagery of "death and disintegration" within the Thrales' turbulent marriage. Hitchings concludes that Bainbridge's research and psychological sensitivity, which present a "compassionate but blundering" version of the lexicographer, set a standard for historical fiction.
Rogers's review of the fourth volume of the Research Edition of The Correspondence of James Boswell notes that this installment has less to command attention than previous ones. Rogers observes that the correspondence with David Garrick and Edmund Burke reveals Boswell's difficulties in maintaining steady relationships; Garrick's letters are described as "scrappy," while Burke kept Boswell at arm's length and remained reserved to defend against his patronage bids and "mania for leaking items to the press." The correspondence with Edmond Malone dominates the volume, documenting Malone's role as "midwife" to the Life and Boswell's "self-upbraiding." Rogers finds that these letters "rein in the dangerous surges of imagination found in the journals." Boswell's letters also contain "bitchy asides" on Piozzi, such as comparing her to "venomous insects" and finding her Anecdotes of Johnson lacking "true zest."
Murray reviews the second appearance of The Queeney Letters, edited by the Marquis of Lansdowne, which includes Johnson's letters to Hester Maria Thrale (Queeney), and adds letters to her from Fanny Burney and her mother, Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi. The volume focuses on the crisis of Mrs. Thrale's second marriage to Piozzi. The reviewer finds the hostility of family and friends (including Johnson's magnificent but harsh rebuke) difficult to understand, feeling Mrs. Thrale gets the better of the exchange with her dignified retort. The reviewer appreciates Mrs. Piozzi's good-natured travel letters and notes her charm outweighs all cavillings.
Craik’s fond, well-illustrated account of Boswell's life in Scotland, an aspect often neglected by biographers, notes that Boswell maintained his Scottish base much longer than commonly supposed, practicing at the Scottish Bar until 1785 and residing at the family seat of Auchinleck until 1789. Although Boswell has never been fully accepted as a man of letters in Scotland, Craik addresses his snobbery regarding his Scottish accent and his struggles with intemperance, heavy drinking, and extensive licentiousness. The review by J.C. describes the work's tone as "folksy" but indulgent toward Boswell's various indiscretions.
Wallis illuminates Johnson's original, grander plan for the Dictionary. Johnson initially intended the book to be a magnificent anthology, a "manual for the civilized man," extracting principles of science, remarkable facts, striking exhortations, and beautiful descriptions from various writers. His practical method of marking source books is shown in a surviving volume of Dr. South's sermons at Lichfield Cathedral. Johnson was forced to cut this extensive design because the sheer bulk would "fright away the student." Nevertheless, the existing Dictionary serves as an incomparable schoolmaster on language and moral philosophy.
Boswell: The Robert Spence Maxwell Memorial Lecture for 1945–46
This report of a lecture by Claude Colleer Abbott examines Boswell's creative performance in his journals and the Life of Johnson. Abbott, an admirer who discovered the Boswell papers at Fettercairn House, regards the version of Johnson known to the public as much Boswell’s creation as Falstaff is Shakespeare’s. The lecture summarizes the history of the Fettercairn archives, the work of Isham, and the Journal. Blunden notes Abbott's observation that the private journals afford a view of literature and literary men for near half a century or "almost fifty years." Abbott contrasts Boswell's life of failure with the Journal's eagerness, which captures things so they "rise into the living air" through the author's passion for recording details.
Milne’s severe review of Johnson’s Dictionary, edited by E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne, finds the American selection inadequate for scholarly use. While praising the inclusion of the Preface, Milne identifies many omissions despite editorial claims to provide all Johnsonian entries under Z. The review criticizes the lack of physical description of the original volumes and the absence of measurements or page reproductions. Milne objects to the typographical arrangement, noting that failure to italicize authors’ names obscures the distinction between quotations and identifiers. The selection focuses on "funny-peculiar" or "funny-ha-ha" meanings, portraying Johnson as a precursor to Eric Partridge rather than a serious lexicographer. Milne disputes the value of a version that omits bread-and-butter etymologies and common words like bear, break, and come.
Mary Hyde Eccles: A Miscellany of Her Essays and Addresses
The collection commemorates Mary Hyde Eccles, a notable book-collector and patron of scholarship. The volume, drawn from her collecting life, focuses on Samuel Johnson, with Boswell in a secondary place, but also includes her other interests. The strength of the collection lies in its evocative recollections of earlier Johnson scholars and enthusiasts.
Nokes's mixed review of the Hankins and Caudle research edition of Boswell’s correspondence from 1757 to 1763 disputes the necessity of its extensive annotation and inclusion of 235 "not reported" (non-existent) letters, which are editorial reconstructions based on extant scraps or hints. Nokes notes the volume contains 155 letters, including the reinstatement of vainglorious letters dropped by Tinker, which he argues creates a non-existent, "non-reported" world. He criticizes the "faux pedantry" of the editors—citing two pages of commentary for a six-line letter—and contrasts this "otiose" research edition with the more accessible "trade" edition of Boswell’s London Journal. The review details Boswell’s "extravagantly vain" letters to Erskine and his "self-conscious vanity" in describing himself as one of the greatest geniuses in Europe, while noting his catching of gonorrhoea from "Louisa" (Anne Standen) and the fathering of an illegitimate child.
Rogers's review of the sixth volume of The Piozzi Letters chronicles the final years of Piozzi, describing correspondence vigorously maintained until her death in 1821 that shows her "old vivacity," "characteristic vivacity," "wide-ranging allusions," and "frequent reverts to Johnson for sententious thoughts." The review explains how the edition enables reassessments of Piozzi as a "key literary figure" who outlived Austen, highlighting her 80th birthday party, dwindling finances, family estrangement, and literary interests, such as her "disapproval of Frankenstein" and "perceptiveness about the Waverley novels." Rogers notes her loyalty to the memory of Johnson and Piozzi alongside her "controversial, affectionate relationship" with the young actor Conway. Although Rogers finds the "over-annotation fussy at times" and labels it a "fussy over-annotation," the review concludes the project is a "remarkable scholarly achievement" presenting her life as an "exemplary case of female authorship."
Clutton-Brock praises Piozzi's letters as a source for an "original point of view to modify or extend traditional estimates" of her contemporaries, particularly Johnson. The reviewer notes that Piozzi's distinctive "rattling" or inconsequent style was a conscious art form, adopted for self-expression and to command attention in an "age of reason." It also served a social function, pleasing her husband and Johnson, and played into the male-imagined role of woman as an "inconsequent child."
The Anecdotes are a primary source for both Johnson and Piozzi, presenting a Johnson who is a more intolerable housemate than Boswell's portrait suggests. Piozzi's impressionistic sketch highlights Johnson's contradictory character and profound religious belief, which stemmed from a childhood crisis of infidelity and a realization of the fact of conscience. Roberts's introduction discusses the complexity of Johnson's affection for Thrale and Piozzi's handling of her second marriage.
This approving brief notice presents a new edition of Boswell’s journal, part of the Macdonald Illustrated Classics series. Werner bases the text on the third edition of 1786 but uses his notes to incorporate findings from the original manuscript discovered in 1930, indicating where the printed version departs from Boswell’s initial writing. The edition features twenty rare caricatures by Thomas Rowlandson, originally published in 1786 as "Picturesque Beauties of Boswell." Werner provides an introduction that includes a descriptive catalogue of these satirical plates, which portray various incidents from the journey taken by Boswell and Johnson.
Clarke examines volumes 17 and 18 of the annual, noting its status as the leading journal for studies of Johnson, whose primary influence remains unquestioned. Clarke highlights Scherwatzky on Johnsonian Augustinianism, Arthur and Galt on Johnson’s opium addiction, and Cash on meetings with monarchs. Clarke notes Curley’s 100-page defense of Johnson’s detection of forgery in the Ossian controversy, though Clarke challenges Curley’s dismissal of Groom. Clarke observes that absolute truth matters to Johnsonians.
Mutter calls Pottle's biography a masterly feat that confronts the difficulty of balancing Boswell's self-dramatized "scrappy, furtive, gross, and unlovely" private record against his professional strengths and genial public persona. Pottle's conviction of Boswell's genius guides the narrative, setting him firmly as a solid, hardworking lawyer rather than the idiot Macaulay scorned. The reviewer praises the book's vivid style, contrasting Pottle's prose with Boswell's excessive self-exposure.
The R. B. Adam Library, relating to Dr. Samuel Johnson and his Era
On the three-volume catalogue of the world's richest Johnsoniana collection, which includes more than 200 letters by Johnson (printed in full), manuscripts, and works by Johnson and his circle (Boswell, Burke, Garrick, Reynolds). Volume I highlights new Johnson letters (especially to Sir Robert Chambers) and the importance of two drafts of the Plan of a Dictionary. The review details Lord Chesterfield's autograph comments on the later draft and Johnson's revisions. Volume II focuses on Johnsonian books, including rare association copies. Volume III features autograph letters from figures in Boswell's Life and Miscellanies. The catalogue is a generous resource for scholars, illustrated with facsimiles of title-pages and documents.
"Besides this [complete Yale] edition it is good to welcome Mr. Bate's selection [which] contains seventy-nine essays, sixty-nine of them complete. Preference has been given to the 'moral' essays and to the essays containing literary criticism. The textual notes which disfigure the otherwise handsome pages of the parent edition are omitted and the annotation is a shade more portly."
Roberts finds Vulliamy’s study uninspiring, noting the author’s obsession with the notion that lovers of the eighteenth century are sentimentalists. Vulliamy argues that knowing Johnson requires knowing his friends, yet he dismisses the eighteenth century's poetry as artificial and believes few read Johnson's poems for pleasure. Although Vulliamy admires the Dictionary and Letters, he advises readers to skip the critical parts of Lives of the Poets. Vulliamy maintains a low opinion of Thrale and supports Macaulay's view of Boswell, denying him the title of artist while crediting him only with an "unusual facility in writing."
Sherbo reprints Johnson's most significant writings on Shakespeare: Miscellaneous Observations on...Macbeth (1745), the proposals for his edition (1745 and 1756), his dedication to Lennox's Shakespeare Illustrated, and the Preface and most notes from his 1765 edition onward. The bulk of the review focuses on Warburton's edition, which Johnson's notes form a "Dunciad" against, exposing his reckless emendation and darkening of the text. Johnson is praised as the "first great restorer of Shakespeare's text" by conservatively retaining the Folio text often emended by his predecessors (Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and Warburton). The core editorial policy is defended: to reprint Johnson's text and all his notes, excluding only obvious factual glosses for Shakespearean words/phrases due to cost. Johnson's profound knowledge of Elizabethan English (gained from his Dictionary and other editions) is noted. Johnson's critical judgments are discussed; he disliked frigid conceits, punning, and "low" words in Shakespeare but was praised for the profundity of his insight into tragicomedy. Johnson's sense of decorum led him to misunderstand Shakespeare's bawdy and wordplay, and he had difficulty accepting the ending of Lear without a moral order. Johnson's honesty in admitting his lack of full comprehension is highlighted, along with his admission of a blunder in an earlier work. The editorial policy of modernizing capitalization and punctuation is mentioned, with the reviewer unable to guess the reasons.
CGV entry 19:11. See ensuing correspondence in the same journal.
Grant and Bronson examine Johnson's character as a conflict between conservative opinions and an ebullient temperament. The young Johnson initially opposed the established order, but his 1762 pension marked a formal shift to conservatism, prioritizing "subordination" for social possibility and independence. Grant's review of Bronson's Johnson Agonistes highlights this struggle, noting Johnson’s passionate imagination and turbulent temperament, especially in religion, reflected a "poet's mind." Both accounts analyze the tragedy Irene, which failed on stage because it recorded a "mind pondering topics" rather than creating "living dialogue." Bronson suggests this failure was "owing to its composition method"—pondering chosen topics rather than "dramatic sketching"—and attempts to distill his preoccupations, including his view of his wife. A separate essay praises Boswell for his "volatility" and ability to "identify with" and record others, emphasizing that his journals remain essential to the creation of the Life.
Sutherland’s approving book review of Daiches’s biography praises the portrayal of Boswell as a mass of "strange contradictions" and an "eighteenth-century Walter Mitty" or "mixed-up kid" who sought father-figures like Johnson to replace Lord Auchinleck. Daiches uses Boswell’s journals to show a "modern habit of introspection," "sympathetic curiosity," and "total awareness" of self-conflict, challenging Macaulay’s "vitriolic description" of Boswell as a "man of the meanest and feeblest intellect," "dunce, parasite, and coxcomb" which excluded him from the "Scots pantheon." The "excellently written" work for the general reader avoids "arch and unfortunate neglect" by applying Daiches’s "critical intelligence" to Boswell’s ability to "draw people out" and model himself after figures like Rousseau and Voltaire.
Krutch's Samuel Johnson offers the general reader a sound and unpretentious account of Johnson's life and work, designed to counter the image of an ill-mannered eccentric. Krutch presents him as the greatest literary figure of his age, focusing on his writings like the Dictionary and The Rambler. While praising his treatment of Johnson's relationship with Thrale as fair and wise, the review notes a failure of sympathy concerning his personal life and criticizes the description of Boswell as an "over-coloured" "neurotic drunkard and victim of satyriasis."
This approving review of C. E. Vulliamy's biography of Piozzi disputes Vulliamy's claim that Johnson lacked significant popularity before 1765. Williams cites the multiple editions of the Dictionary, The Rambler, and Rasselas to demonstrate Johnson's established fame. The review traces the Streatham years, noting that while Johnson gained comfort and a social platform, Piozzi gained intellectual status and the company of eminent men like Reynolds and Burke. Williams describes Vulliamy’s depiction of the marriage to Gabriele Piozzi as an amusing and almost likeable portrayal of her later years in Bath and Clifton. The review concludes that while Vulliamy's style is occasionally unbalanced, the work successfully rehabilitates Piozzi's character.
Gee's review of Smallwood's Critical Occasions examines the "occasional" nature of eighteenth-century criticism practiced by Dryden, Pope, and Johnson, arguing it responds to "local circumstances" and "intellectual accidents" rather than anticipating a future audience. Smallwood contends that critics must actively and creatively reconstruct the original "critical occasion" to keep the old work vital and in dialogue with the present, trapped in its moment. Johnson is celebrated for his gifts in sense-distinction and cited as a central figure through his five-fold definition of "occasion." While Gee finds Smallwood's defense of Augustan critics eloquent, the review notes the difficulty of selling Pope's Essay on Criticism to modern readers. Gee concludes that Johnson is the most eloquent practitioner among the three, sharing with Dryden and Pope the quality of asserting personal taste and quoting Johnson's praise of Dryden's "gay and vigorous" arguments as a standard for great criticism.
Darcy says Damrosch treats the Club, founded in 1764, as the book's "virtual hero," though Boswell was not elected until 1773. The book aims for accessibility, offering snappy diagnoses of the mental sufferings of Johnson (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and Boswell (bipolar disorder). Darcy notes the book minimizes the role of women, such as the Thrale Streatham circle, and omits significant attention to Johnson's servant, Francis Barber. Johnson himself ultimately found the Club "spoiled" and heterogeneous by 1776, attending only as a "publick dinner."
See also a letter in which Darcy agrees with a previous letter about the Club's elusive presence in the book. She takes issue with the retrospective use of the modern medical diagnosis of OCD for Johnson's well-documented mental and physical suffering, which Boswell referred to as "morbid melancholy" and "horrible hypochondria." Darcy reminds the reader of Wiltshire's warning against using medical terms transhistorically, noting that Boswell attributed Johnson's compulsive movements to St Vitus's dance.
"The author of this study is an associate professor (presumably therefore a youngish man) at Harvard. He maintains the rigorous Harvard standard of accuracy, but his book is rather general than particular. ... Mr. Bate has written an ambitious but also an attractive, friendly book, which all lovers of Johnson will wish to read with pleasure and profit."
Hyde minutely deduces the quarrel between Johnson's friends and biographers, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale (later Piozzi), using the Hyde Collection of Johnsonian manuscripts and scholarship. The relationship was initially a rivalry for Johnson's affections. After Johnson’s death, they became rival biographers. Boswell was shattered by Piozzi's Anecdotes and responded by reporting Johnson's criticisms of her inaccuracy. Hyde details Boswell's callous brutality toward Piozzi, including a satirical Epithalamium, and highlights the snobbish reaction of their circle when Piozzi married her Italian music master.
Clarke’s approving review of McIntyre’s biography describes an absorbing and frequently surprising narrative of Piozzi’s "remarkable" life defined by money, property, status, and difficult family relationships. McIntyre leans heavily on Thraliana, the six volumes of diaries given to Piozzi by Thrale, to let her speak without taking sides in a sympathetic account. Piozzi possessed an active whirling mind and vivacity and venom that led Johnson to refer to her as "rattlesnake." Her first book, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, sold out within hours, yet her second marriage to Piozzi—while bringing her sexual happiness—was abhorred by her daughters and friends like Johnson. While Clarke praises the work, he disputes the lack of context regarding her formal literary formation and passionate interests in politics and language.
The Wisdom of Dr. Johnson: Being Comments on Life and Moral Precepts Chosen from his Writings
Maxwell's Wisdom of Dr. Johnson is a collection of Johnson's comments and moral precepts chosen from his writings and conversation. Boswell's comment that Johnson's precepts are practical and based on "common sense" and a "minute survey of real life" is cited. Johnson's ideas lacked metaphysical pretensions, were based on his experience, and were tinged with melancholy, yet his philosophy provided faith and courage as antidotes to defeat and despair. The best poem that summarizes his speculations is The Vanity of Human Wishes. The work aims to offer a store of worldly wisdom.
Tinker’s Young Boswell, a book based partly on "new information" from Morgan’s collection and dedicated to Adam, reveals Boswell as a conscious "artist" rather than a mere "shorthand reporter." The work contains many Boswellian delicacies, including "new material" derived from letters to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Wilkes, as well as a previously unprinted facsimile letter to Goldsmith on the success of She Stoops to Conquer in which Boswell notes the coincidence of his daughter’s birth. Bailey praises Tinker’s insight into Boswell’s "exuberant appetite for all kinds of experience" and his unique gift for "drawing people out." In the "Journal Keeping" chapter, Tinker prints parallel columns comparing a passage from the Life to its original note from Adam’s material, illustrating Boswell’s artistic method in transforming notes into "dramatic narrative" and "dramatic element." This comparison shows how Boswell added "transitions" and "expansions" to give "the very truth an intenser life," even omitting personal feelings when they did not advance the narrative.
Cannon offers an interpretation of Johnson's life to explore the "ambiguities, contradictions, and uncertainties of Hanoverian England." Cannon questions whether politics was ever of central concern to Johnson and argues Johnson's views were complex and varied, not static, as shown by his contradictory positions on parliamentary debate, mass politics, and empire.
Damrosch investigates Johnson's awareness of tragedy and the tragic quality in his life and writing. The book finds Johnson’s formal tragedy, Irene, untragic, and views The Vanity of Human Wishes as partly satirical. The best section critiques Johnson's criticism of tragedy, noting his difficulty in accepting his own criteria that literature should be both true and moral. Damrosch is criticized for his muddled structure, attempting too many themes, and finding fault with Johnson for lacking twentieth-century critical insight.
Chapman reviews the abridged and rearranged edition of the memoirs of Miss Lætitia Matilda Hawkins. He is skeptical of the text's fidelity, noting variations from the original 1822 and 1824 editions, possibly through Skrine's "compression." Most Johnsonian anecdotes are familiar from Hill's Boswell or Johnsonian Miscellanies and finds Hawkins's judgments (e.g., calling Johnson "brutality") negligible but her facts probably reliable.
"Mr. Bailey has not very much to add to our knowledge of the relations between Johnson and the Scotsman to whom, after all, we owe most of the sallies against his countrymen. Perhaps there is not much new to write down, but there is much to speculate on concerning the relations of the two men and as to what Johnson really thought of his tied biographer."
Sutherland's mixed review of Curley's Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel disputes the effectiveness of the "catch-all" title, finding it "too broad" for a work covering travel literature, its impact on Johnson, and his own travels to Wales and Paris with the Thrales. While Sutherland finds the discussion of Rasselas "relevant and perceptive" in the context of "mythic and historic travel," he notes much ground has been "trodden hard by others." The review criticizes the "repetitive nature" of the book and Curley's "tendency to use many words for little matter," particularly the "overuse of commonplace metaphors" of movement, such as life as a journey, as if they "demand extended examination." Although Curley connects the 1773 tour of the Western Isles to "contemporary global explorations," Sutherland concludes the "promise of better things" in those chapters is not sustained in the final sections.
James Boswell's 'Book of Company' at Auchinleck, 1782–1795
Inheriting Auchinleck in 1782, Boswell spent his final years struggling with financial problems, distance from London's social life, and his family's ill health. He documented this melancholy period and his constant stream of visitors by maintaining the Book of Company, meticulously recording guests and their copious consumption of alcohol—a disciplined act offsetting his own aversion to writing. The publication of his Life of Johnson in 1791 provided a highlight, though his life was marked by being absent during the deaths of both Johnson and his wife.
Raleigh’s selection of Johnson’s essays and notes on Shakespeare provides a welcome vindication of Johnson’s critical writings, challenging Macaulay’s negative assessment and dismissal of the work as slovenly and worthless. Bailey agrees that the Preface remains the best introduction to the poet, arguing for a twentieth-century revival of Johnson’s critical reputation. The review praises Johnson’s manly sobriety, his supreme gift of combining a knowledge of books with a knowledge of life, and his superior common-sense and knowledge of human nature over contemporary critics. Bailey acknowledges Johnson’s limitations regarding romantic elements, such as his characterization of Macbeth and views on the ending of King Lear, but emphasizes his honesty, sense, and absence of pretentious learning. These qualities allow Johnson to cut through the tangle of conceits that defeat less insightful commentators.
"The pasture of the Boswell biographer is very rich and very extensive; but Mr. Mallory knows his way about every part of it. With not less with than discretion he takes the part of moderator between the contending analysists."
McIntosh's book, a learned and patient study, analyzes Johnson's fiction, which is found to avoid realism and constantly move to focus on moral choice. McIntosh argues Johnson approved more of the new novel than previously thought.
Lewis’s book, written with enjoyment and gusto, retells Boswell’s life using the Letters and Isham papers, communicating a gaiety of narrative and essentially defending him from critics. The review challenges Vulliamy’s dismissal of Johnson’s poetry, noting that modern readers derive significant pleasure from "The Vanity of Human Wishes." While Lewis quotes from the Journal, he overlooks Boswell’s defense of Protestantism. Roberts concludes that although Boswell was often ridiculous, his serious motive for literary fame shaped his extraordinary life.
The new edition is the first complete one since 1807 and includes a scholarly apparatus. Walker notes the decline in the periodical's reputation, attributing it to being considered moralistic, commonplace, and difficult to read. The essays are characterized as part of a classical-Renaissance tradition of moralists, closer to Plutarch, Seneca, Erasmus, and Montaigne than to Addison and Steele. The most characteristic essays are the "generalized moral essays, sombre in tone and weighty in thought" (e.g., "The vanity of human wishes," "Labour necessary to excellence"), forming less than half the total. Many essays deal with literary criticism and fundamental questions about literature. The satire, where present, is against various types of pedantry, arguing against neglecting life for study. A significant portion of the essays (nearly a third) are letters from various contributors (all written by Johnson himself), which is where he moves closest to the social observation found in Addison and Steele, though he seems impatient with detail. A key theme of The Rambler is the nature of human failure, with Johnson's view being ambivalent and aware of complexities. He employs a dialectical method, making the appearance of a logical march often illusory. The review details the edition's contents: it uses the fourth edition of 1750 as the copy-text (the last substantially revised by Johnson) and modernizes capitalization and italics. Annotation focuses on identifying quotations (a staggering range) and cross-references within The Rambler. The review criticizes the editors, Bate and Strauss, for "lean annotation," omitting glosses for many allusions and not translating all classical quotations, which obscures the text and leads to indexing errors. A selection of essays edited by Bate is also noted.
This book review characterizes Pottle’s James Boswell as a "masterly feat of selection" and a valuable supplement to Brady's biography. Mutter explores the difficulty of writing about a subject who already shaped his own image as "scrappy, furtive, gross and unlovely," yet praises Pottle for using candor and sympathy to present the "humdrum or quotidian" Boswell—the hardworking lawyer—alongside the better-known whoring voyeur. The correspondence with Johnston, described as a record of "mutual dependence" and a lifelong friendship where Johnston served as an "anchor," "mirror" for romantic aspirations, and comforter, provides a record of Boswell's fidelity. Mutter concludes these works deepen the understanding of Boswell’s genius and charm, providing a rebuttal to Macaulay and challenging the Macaulayan view of him as a fortunate idiot.
This letter follows up on Frank Brady's argument in a previous issue, who suggested that Lochbuie would not have insulted Johnson as a guest of his own chief and brother-in-law, Sir Allan Maclean. Campbell asserts that the antediluvian Lochbuie would not have been restrained by feudal loyalty to Sir Allan. He cites historical sources, including a MacDonald historian, which state that Lochbuie's family had always claimed to be the senior branch of the Macleans, meaning he would not have recognized Sir Allan Maclean as his chief.
Powell corrects his previous correspondence regarding the death of Edmund Southwell, noting that Johnson reported visiting Southwell's sisters in February 1773. He concludes that Southwell likely died in November 1773 rather than 1772 as stated by Malone. Powell also addresses a 1782 diary entry regarding the death of "Mrs. Southwel," but adopts the caution of the Yale editors by refraining from further conjecture on her identity.
A letter defending the reprinting of scholarly works like G. Birkbeck Hill's Johnsonian Miscellanies and arguing against J. D. Fleeman's objections. Spector, as co-editor of a reprint series, states that reprints assist scholarship by making works available to libraries that lack them, thereby preventing scholarship from being limited to a few universities. He contends that older scholarly works retain virtues (like Hill's special qualities) even when superseded by later, standard authorities. Furthermore, reprints serve as an interim publication that keeps a work alive, brings it public attention, and thus helps create a market for new scholarly editions.
This letter to the editor regarding a textual crux in Johnson's preface to Shakespeare challenges a previous reviewer’s dismissal of the word "deliberately" (second edition, 1765) versus "deliberatively" (first edition, 1765). Ricks notes that while seven of the eight wording changes in the second edition are corruptions not retained in the 1773 and 1778 editions, "deliberately" uniquely persists. He argues that since the 1778 text includes important changes and was personally revised by Johnson, the retention of this specific word suggests authorial intent rather than a "printer's blunder." Ricks accuses the anonymous reviewer of misrepresenting facts by failing to mention the appearance of "deliberately" in trustworthy, lifetime texts and advocates for a more nuanced textual analysis accounting for variants Johnson chose to preserve.
Meadows analyzes the debt of the all too prophetic passages on flying in Rasselas to the Mathematical Magick of Bishop John Wilkins. The study examines how Johnson used these seventeenth-century scientific theories to construct his narrative. Meadows identifies the specific intellectual currents that informed Johnson's treatment of flight, highlighting the intersection of technical curiosity and moralizing fiction in his early career.
A letter from Reade provides two facts about Johnson's circle. Firstly, Oliver Edwards, Johnson's old college friend, was admitted as a Sworn Clerk in the Six Clerks' Office in 1736-37 and surrendered his office around 1763. Secondly, Edmund Bateman, recommended by Johnson as a tutor, was the son of Thomas Bateman, Wren's assistant-surveyor, and the stepson of Erasmus Lewis, a friend of Swift and Pope. This connection suggests Bateman may have helped bring Johnson's translation of Pope's Messiah to the notice of Pope.
A follow-up to Reade’s piece on Oliver Edwards on 26 April.
'On the Profession of a Player': Three Essays by James Boswell, Now First Reprinted from the London Magazine for August, September, and October, 1770
This volume reprints three essays Boswell originally published in the London Magazine during August, September, and October 1770. Boswell challenges historical prejudices that dismissed stage-playing as contemptible buffoonery or morally odious, arguing instead that acting ranks among the learned professions. He asserts that an universal player requires more genius and knowledge than practitioners of law, physic, or divinity because the performer must alternately represent characters from every walk of life. Boswell cites Garrick as the primary exemplar of this excellence, noting that the actor uses constant study and observation to enrich his performances. The essays explore the mysterious power of the player to become the character in a certain sense through a double feeling, where the actor assumes a fictitious persona while retaining a consciousness of his own. Boswell compares this mental operation to the temporary varnish used by a barrister or the social complacency adopted by the French. He disputes claims by Collier and Rousseau that the profession corrupts morals, maintaining that the labor of study and the representation of virtuous characters provide a counterpoise to vice. The collection includes references to Johnson and a plea for Garrick to write a technical treatise on the art of acting.
Limited edition of 600 copies.
Supplies the correct reading from Hacket's monument in Lichfield Cathedral.
Reade addresses the long-standing controversy over the duration of Johnson's residence at Oxford, building on his previous letter from a year prior. Using the buttery books of Pembroke College, he confirms that Johnson never returned after December 1729. The later small charges against his name are explained as an extra charge for all "live" men on the books, whether in residence or not, and fines for non-attendance on college feast days. This completes the inquiry, perfecting the evidence for Reade's conclusion regarding Johnson's absence and the nature of the college's record-keeping.
Bettany corrects a mistake in a recent paper regarding the "The Making of Boswell's 'Johnson'." The paper declared that evidence of correspondence between Temple and his co-executors would probably not be found in the diaries. Bettany states that evidence of such correspondence is found in Temple's diary entry for July 19, 1796, which records: "Reed a long letter from Sir Wm. Forbes respecting my dear Boswell's letters and Papers." Bettany adds that his introduction to the 1796 diary comments on this entry and Rogers' statement that Boswell's literary remains were burned by Robert Boswell. Bettany notes that Temple was in London in the autumn of 1795 and had a "threefold interest" in meeting with Malone and Forbes, as Boswell's correspondent, would-be biographer, and a literary executor, but whether he actually met them and recovered and destroyed his own letters is an open question, as those letters seem to be lost.
Cochrane entry 46. Highlights the importance of the correspondence between William Temple and Sir William Forbes concerning what to do with Boswell's papers after his death.
Shorter’s letter to the editor defends his ten-volume edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson against charges of careless editing. He dismisses a reviewer’s criticism regarding the transcription of the original title page as "pedantry," stating he deliberately omitted the Latin motto—a quotation from Horace—and "Volume the First" as non-essential to his purpose. Shorter objects to five printer’s errors across ten large volumes being used to suggest poor scholarship or careless editing, preferring the positive assessment of another editor. He maintains the value of his work, citing editorial opinions that characterize it as an "epoch-making edition of an epoch-making book."
Chapman, in response to Shorter's letter, gives the correct transcription of the title page of the first edition of Boswell's Life as: THE / LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. / IN TWO VOLUMES. / BY JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. / Quo fit ut omnis / Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella / VITA SENIS. / VOLUME THE FIRST. / LONDON: / PRINTED BY HENRY BALDWIN, / FOR CHARLES DILLY, IN THE POULTRY. / M DCC XCI. He also notes Shorter's transcription was incorrect.
Shorter asserts that his presentation of contemporary Lives of Johnson is accurate and denies the reviewer's claim that the title-page of the first edition of Boswell's Life is wrongly transcribed in his work. He protests against the "malignant distortion" of facts and undue emphasis on trivial printer's errors, maintaining his edition of Boswell has fewer misprints than the Hill, Napier, and Oxford India Paper editions, with which he has collated it.
Joynt comments on the logical analysis of Johnson's Shakespeare couplet, "Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, / And panting Time toiled after him in vain." He argues that the lines should not be subjected to a "severe logical analysis" as the second line supplements the first, expressing the fundamental thought that Shakespeare's thought transcended the ordinary conditions of existence as manifested in Time. He compares it to parallelism in the Hebrew Psalms.
Loane discusses Johnson's literary criticism, noting its trenchant and logical nature, and suggests it could be applied to Johnson himself. He cites Johnson's critique of Addison's lines for mixed metaphors. Loane also provides a passage from Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes" ("When statutes glean the refuse of the sword...") which he notes is improved from Cowley's original.
Whitten defends Johnson from Joynt regarding Johnson's lines on Shakespeare ("Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign..."). He argues the lines are clearly faulty, as Shakespeare explored existence within bounds and "panting time" is an alien concept to time itself. He defends Shakespeare's "Brevity is the soul of wit" from Joynt's "logical analysis," calling it absurd. He cites Johnson's preface to his Shakespeare edition as an example of associating Shakespeare's fame and Time's flight discreetly and magnificently.
Butterworth addresses the discussion of Johnson's lines on Shakespeare, "And panting Time toiled after him in vain." He provides a more definite citation than Loane's, quoting Crabb Robinson's Diary entry from 1811, where Lamb attributes the line to Johnson referring to Shakespeare's anachronism in having Hector speak of Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida.
Jagger suggests that the idea behind Johnson's Shakespeare couplet, "Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, / And panting Time toiled after him in vain," is a precise piece of classical dramatic criticism. He proposes that Johnson is referring to Shakespeare's disregard for the dramatic unities of place and time, where a play should represent only one location and time should not exceed the time of representation, citing Sidney's Apology for Poesy for a full critique of this practice.
J.D.A. reviews volumes 13 and 14 of Boswell’s private papers, edited by Geoffrey Scott and Frederick Albert Pottle. The journals cover 1777–1781 and reveal Boswell’s waning resilience and frequent descent into drunkenness. The reviewer highlights Boswell’s disinterested love for his family, specifically his tenderness toward his mentally ill brother John and his candid, respectful correspondence with his son Alexander. Notable entries include Boswell’s final interview with David Hume regarding the afterlife and a 1779 entry where his six-year-old daughter, Veronica, expresses atheistic doubts. The review notes Boswell’s anxiety about the potential discovery of his journals and his subsequent desire to consult Johnson on the matter.
Atkinson reviews G. K. Chesterton’s play The Judgment of Dr. Johnson, identifying it as a "curiosity piece" better suited for the "armchair playgoer" than the stage. Chesterton uses many of Johnson’s own "words and declamations" to depict him intervening in the "marital relations" of a pair of American revolutionists. The review notes that Johnson’s "morality and chivalry" eventually overcome his "slothful personal habits" as he "sirs" the couple out of their "loose habits" and sends them back to America. Atkinson also reviews Oscar W. Firkins’s Two Passengers for Chelsea, which features "subtle, temperamental tilting" between Jane Welsh Carlyle and Lady Harriet Baring. The review describes the "crackling" wit of the Carlylean dialogue, where Jane’s "stinging tongue" provides "delightfully lively" entertainment. Atkinson argues these "recumbent dramas" succeed in the "reader’s imagination" despite heavy-footed scene manipulation.
It is as a wit that Dr. Samuel Johnson is most appreciated today His satire and his witty sayings repeated more often than those any one English writer. At one his writings were much read, have fallen greatly neglect in our day.
Kolb's enthusiastic review of Frederick Pottle's biographical study of Boswell's early years (1740–1769) praises the author's "scrupulous, absorbing, incisive, sympathetic treatment." Kolb emphasizes how Pottle uses the extensive collection of private papers to present a rounded portrait that challenges previous estimates of Boswell as a mere buffoon. The review notes Pottle's absolute control of data and compelling psychological insights in explaining the forces that shaped Boswell. Kolb highlights Pottle's characterization of Boswell as a "weak good man" with an "enormous zest for living" whose private journal, rather than the biography of Johnson, constituted his central literary creation.
Colley’s approving review of Brady’s biography emphasizes Boswell's "fundamental conventionality" despite his extensive "sexual revelations" and rakehood. The narrative explores the tension between Boswell's rebellion and his shared values with his "dour and legalistic" father, Lord Auchinleck. Colley highlights Boswell's "childish vulnerability," which allowed him to dissolve the reticence of his friends, most notably Johnson. The review discusses the 1773 Highland tour, where Boswell coaxed "dogmatic pronouncements" from Johnson. Colley notes Boswell's political paradoxes—identifying with American revolutionaries while fearing French social upheaval—and his rigid views on virtuous versus non-virtuous women. The account credits Brady with a "sturdy refusal to moralise" and an absolute understanding of Boswell as a "gifted criminal lawyer" with "dazzling prose" who transformed literary lambs into lions with the 1791 publication of the Life of Johnson.
Macabre Sidelight on James Boswell: Fantastic Scheme to Raise the Dead
Ramsay recounts Boswell's 1766 defense of John Reid, a sheep stealer, characterizing the legal effort as a "mixture of genius and buffoonery." Following the guilty verdict, Boswell unsuccessfully plotted to resuscitate Reid after the hanging using coarse salt and straw. The narrative highlights Boswell's "unbelievable callousness" in commissioning George Keith Ralph to paint Reid's portrait while the prisoner wore "grave's clothes." Ramsay speculates that this lost portrait of Reid may still exist, hidden or unidentified, in a private collection.
Eder reviews Brady’s biography of Boswell’s later years, a sequel to Pottle’s work. Brady explores the unresolved conflict between Boswell’s roles as a London wit and a Scottish laird. Eder praises Brady’s brilliant analysis of Boswell’s literary genius, particularly the determination to report Johnson's discourse with dramatic concreteness. While noting that Boswell remains his own best source through his journals, Eder credits Brady for shaping external details into a narrative that justifies Boswell’s status as a great author.
This selection of extracts from Boswell's unpublished writings details his year of study in Utrecht following his departure from Johnson in London. The journals record Boswell's rigid daily plan involving Latin, French, and law, alongside his struggle to rid himself of spleen and become a man. A letter to William Johnson Temple reveals Boswell's impetuous fancy for marrying the sister of his friend Stewart, whom he describes as a sensible, amiable woman of fashion. Boswell reflects on his previous dissipation as a horrid dream and seeks Temple's advice on whether to pursue a rational plan for marriage or continue his travels through Europe.
Jack’s review of Hesketh Pearson and Hugh Kingsmill’s travelogue describes the authors’ efforts to retrace the 1773 Highland tour. Jack characterizes the book as a "delightful literary exercise" despite a "bad beginning" involving the authors' pursuit of free travel passes. The narrative compares the "glory and discomfort" of the original journey with the modern travelers' experiences. The review notes the authors' visits to Auchinleck and their discussions of Johnson's imaginative "seraglio" scene at Dunvegan. Jack observes that "Boswellites will like it better than Johnsonians" but finds the "exaggerated raillery" and "per-Falstaffian imagery" regarding Johnson and Boswell entertaining for fans of literary biography.
Rawson's approving review of the two-volume biography of Boswell by Frederick Pottle and Frank Brady, focusing specifically on Brady’s The Later Years 1769–1795, describes the work as a "double achievement of high authority and notable grace." Rawson observes that the biography manages a massive amount of detail to present a truthful portrait of a "silly little genius" and "complaisant neurasthenic" characterized by unfulfilled ambitions and a "compulsive showmanship." The review explores Boswell's "febrile" drive and compulsion to record his life in journals, which served as a form of stage-managed showmanship, as well as his complex attitudes toward slavery and social hierarchy. Rawson examines the relationship between Boswell’s private papers and the Life of Johnson, arguing that the published biography functions as an extension of the journals' "vanity and abasement" and allowed a public form of aggression through an "oblique talent for 'nettling people'" such as contemporaries like Piozzi and Burke. The account highlights the posthumous rivalry between Johnson and Boswell, observing that while Johnson is the superior writer, the "relentless" publication of the Yale Edition of Boswell's papers has granted him a "cunning ultimate victory." Rawson concludes that while Brady occasionally lapses into "strident protest," both volumes maintain a "fine thoroughness" and high readability while providing a complete self-portrait of the writer navigating a massive archive of Boswellian detail.
Boswell Among the Philosophes: In 1764 James Boswell, 'a Scots Gentleman of Ancient Family' Took It Upon Himself to Make the Acquaintance of Two of the Most Revolutionary Writers and Thinkers of the Day, Rousseau and Voltaire
An extract from the forthcoming book The Moth and The Candle: A Life of James Boswell.
Gorman reviews John Ker Spittal's collection of eighteenth-century critiques of Johnson, his works, and his biographers, originally published in the Monthly Review. The review highlights contemporary reactions to Boswell, Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, and Arthur Murphy. Gorman notes that while the "preponderance of opinions" favored Johnson, the collection reveals "forgotten attitudes" and "small enmities," including a reviewer’s "indignation" at Piozzi’s anecdotes regarding Johnson’s personal habits and "unparalleled ingratitude." Conversely, the Monthly Review treated Boswell’s biography with "utmost friendliness." Gorman concludes that the collected papers substantiate Johnson’s status as a "pachyderm of personalities" whose "abounding individuality" interested contemporaries more than his actual writings, such as Irene or the Rambler.
This brief report from the Associated Press notes that the house of Johnson in Gough Square, London, will soon undergo repairs. The structure suffered damage from German bombs and rockets during the war. The report anticipates the return of tourists to the attic where Johnson wrote his dictionary.
Walton’s approving review of "Johnson and Queeney," edited by the Marquis of Lansdowne, describes the publication of letters from the Bowood Papers that had remained private for 150 years. The review highlights a "gentler guise" of Johnson, appearing as an "adoring and very gentle guardian" and teacher to Hester Maria (Queeney) Thrale. Walton notes that the correspondence fills a gap in Johnsoniana by clarifying Johnson's reasons for repudiating his friendship with Mrs. Thrale following her marriage to Piozzi. The review critiques Mrs. Thrale for "self-glorification" and inaccuracy, contrasting her behavior with Baretti’s dedication to Queeney and Johnson’s "domestic tenderness." Walton concludes that the volume, which includes reproductions of Reynolds’s portraits, successfully illuminates the Streatham coterie and Johnson’s "delight in daily study and daily gossip."
Schwartz's approving review of Frank Brady’s James Boswell: The Later Years, 1769–1795, alongside Frederick Pottle’s reissued earlier volume, praises the completion of this definitive biography. Schwartz notes that Brady successfully avoids subordinating Boswell’s actual life to his relationship with Johnson, portraying him instead as a "sad but powerful model of what it means, in part, to be human." The review details Boswell’s later activities, including his legal career, his election to the Club, and the publication of the Tour to the Hebrides and the Life. Schwartz highlights Brady's ability to navigate the "pathetic and tedious" record of Boswell’s bouts with wine and women while maintaining reader respect for his subject’s limited but "great talent." The narrative stresses the universality of Boswell’s experience, characterized by a constant desire for recognition and a desperate struggle against "desolation" and compulsive behavior.
Sawyer's enthusiastic review marks the conclusion of the Yale editions of Boswell’s private journals. Sawyer chronicles Boswell’s relocation from the ancestral estate at Auchinleck to London, an "experiment" driven by his desire for intellectual stimulation and his proximity to Johnson. The review details the professional and personal failures of this period, including Boswell's struggle to adapt to English civil law, his shrinking income, and the terminal illness of his wife. Sawyer highlights Boswell’s interactions with the wealthy politician Lord Lonsdale and his ongoing correspondence with William Temple. Despite these hardships, Sawyer notes that the volume captures Boswell’s persistent social ambitions and his work on the Life of Johnson under the editorial pressure of Edmond Malone. The review concludes that while this final volume of journals portrays a period of "affliction" and decline, it serves as a vital record of the biographer's life during the years leading up to the publication of his 1791 masterpiece.
Samuel Johnson Provided the Inspiration for The Idler with His Declaration: 'Every Man Is or Wants to Be, an Idler'
This brief notice describes a modern periodical titled The Idler, which draws its name and spirit from Johnson’s eighteenth-century essay series. Baker characterizes the magazine as a "gentler, more cuddly" version of the Modern Review, boasting Umberto Eco among its subscribers. It serves as a contemporary tribute to Johnson’s identity as a journalist and his enduring influence on the format of the literary periodical.
Quennell’s mixed review of John Wain’s Samuel Johnson questions the author’s claim that Johnson is "virtually unknown" or undervalued. While Quennell disputes the necessity of Wain’s "documentary interest" based on shared regional origins, he praises the biography as a "readable and sympathetic" retelling of the "familiar story." The review highlights Wain’s defense of Johnson’s "deeply humanitarian" side against Boswell’s perceived "snobbery." Quennell notes Wain’s "shrewd" judgments on Johnson’s "dark depressive crises" and his analysis of works like Rasselas, which Wain describes as a "fast-moving" narrative of "astonishing variety." Despite criticizing Wain’s "uneven" style and "old-fashioned slang," Quennell characterizes the book as an affectionate and devoted tribute to the "greatest and strangest" of eighteenth-century figures.
Samuel Johnson: Lichfield Celebrates 229th Anniversary of Birth
Lichfield celebrated the 229th anniversary of Johnson's birth, its "most illustrious citizen." The Mayor laid a laurel wreath on Johnson's statue, which James Thomas Lane presented to the city one hundred years prior, and the Cathedral choir sang. Canon Anthony Charles Deane was elected president of the Johnson Society, and the day concluded with a supper of Johnsonian fare, with candles and churchwarden pipes, in the Guildhall.
Gray challenges the notion that Boswell was only famous through Johnson, asserting that Boswell achieved a European reputation before meeting the Great Cham. Boswell, a "great journalist," wrote prolifically for the periodical press, as evidenced by Professor Pottle's fifty-page bibliography of his articles. Boswell also contemplated writing the lives of four Scotsmen—Thomas Ruddiman, Lord Kames, Lord Pitfour, and Sir Alexander Dick—before commencing the Life of Johnson, demonstrating his early interest in biography.
Incredible Journey: John Sessions and Robbie Coltrane Have Teamed up as James Boswell and Samuel Johnson to Recreate Their Famous Tour of the Highlands
Pendreigh discusses the BBC film adaptation of the tour of the Hebrides, written and directed by John Byrne. Starring Robbie Coltrane as Johnson and John Sessions as Boswell, the film uses the original travel journals as a "starting point" but includes "hilarious embroidery" and a narrative "delightfully at odds with the visuals". The production features Leo Sho-Silva as a "black manservant" and veteran of the Black Watch, a role Byrne created based on Johnson’s historical ownership of a black servant. Sessions describes the relationship between the leads as akin to an "old married couple" and notes that the film portrays Boswell as an "unreliable reporter" and a "foreigner" who resembles a "Yank tourist" in his own land. The film aims to "prick" the subjects' "pomposity," notably showing Johnson’s "noblest prospect" as the road to the Isles rather than the road to England.
James Boswell: A Profligate Prig and Unstable as Water
This book review from Blackwood's Magazine challenges Macaulay's conception of Boswell as a contemptible fool, analyzing him through his "unsatisfactory" relationship with his father, Alexander Boswell, or Lord Auchinleck. While the elder Boswell possessed stoic Whig virtues, the reviewer describes the son as a "profligate prig," "philandering drunkard," and "unstable as water" who showed "too little affection" and a tendency to "sponge" on his father. Despite Boswell's early desires to become a Catholic priest, his "self-pity," "self-praise," "insensitiveness to ridicule," and imperturbable insensitiveness, his devotion to his ideal enabled him to produce the "most brilliant biography in the language." The review suggests Boswell used his friendship with Johnson as a "great opportunity to secure fame" and secure immortal fame despite his personal vices.
La memoria del sabio bebedor: Acantilado publica por primera vez al completo en castellano «Vida de Samuel Johnson», de James Boswell, en edición y traducción íntegras de Miguel Martínez-Lage
Doria’s approving review marks the first complete Spanish publication of James Boswell’s "Vida de Samuel Johnson" by Acantilado, translated by Miguel Martínez-Lage. The article describes the work as the "biography of biographies" and a "monument of British moralism," noting its reliance on the 1887 canonical edition by George Birkbeck Hill. Doria commends Boswell’s ability to unify ethical and anecdotal traditions, capturing Johnson’s conversations, letters, and articles from the "Gentleman's Magazine." Despite his admiration, Boswell includes "unfavorable traits" such as Johnson’s nervous convulsions, gluttony, and bouts of depression. The review highlights Johnson’s intellectual role as an "oracle of liberal-conservative thought" who disputed the "political illusionism" of Rousseau and the theories of Hume. Doria concludes that this edition restores a major work of human knowledge to the Spanish-speaking world, preserving the "sharp image" of Johnson’s spiritual maturity and common-sense pessimism.
Campbell’s approving review of Peter Martin’s A Life of James Boswell characterizes Boswell as a "manic depressive" and "sex-addict" driven by melancholia and a persistent fear of the supernatural. Campbell highlights Boswell's self-loathing, his "buffoonery," and his various personal failures in military, legal, and romantic pursuits. The review notes Martin’s focus on the influence of Calvinism on Boswell’s psyche and his complicated relationship with his wife, Margaret, and the novelist Zélide. Campbell emphasizes that Boswell’s journals are often more engaging than the Life of Johnson because the author serves as his own "object of superhuman fascination." The review also notes Johnson’s habit of baiting Boswell about his Scottish origins, which Martin describes as "thistle barbs."
Moulton describes David Buchanan’s narrative of the Boswell papers as a masterly account of one of the "most extraordinary" stories in literature. The review details the efforts of Colonel Ralph Isham to acquire the manuscripts from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House, overcoming legal hurdles and financial strain. Moulton notes that the papers were long presumed burned because descendants were allegedly "ashamed" of Boswell’s debauchery and his deference to an "uncouth" Johnson. The review concludes that the collection's eventual sale to Yale ensures the survival of Boswell’s "treasure," though Moulton laments the "woeful state of Scottish culture" that allowed the archive to leave its home.
Clifford reviews J. A. Cochrane's biography of William Strahan, the printer of Johnson's Dictionary. The review highlights Strahan's talent for managing complex friendships with Johnson, David Hume, and Benjamin Franklin. Clifford praises Cochrane's use of Strahan's business ledgers to illuminate 18th-century book production and costs. The review notes Strahan's "canny Scots judgment" in printing works by Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith, and his role as Johnson's banker and friend. Clifford concludes that the biography successfully reveals Strahan's business acumen and material success.
This approving review of Frank Brady’s Boswell: The Later Years 1769–1795 notes the completion of the definitive biography begun by Frederick Pottle. The reviewer emphasizes that while Boswell is often linked to Johnson, his "prime interest, surpassing all others, was himself." Brady distinguishes between Boswell the narrator and Boswell the character, though the reviewer suggests these roles often merged in Boswell's self-regarding nature. The review details Boswell’s domestic struggles, particularly his relationship with Margaret Montgomerie and his "sins" toward her. Despite personal failures in law and politics, and the rival publications of Thrale and Sir John Hawkins, Boswell worked "meticulously" with Edmond Malone to complete the Life of Johnson. The reviewer likens the resulting biography to a "Michelangelo sculpture" emerging from stone, providing Boswell with both personal pleasure and financial relief.
This short article reports that Reginald Wright discovered an unrecorded eighteenth-century newspaper essay on vanity attributed to Johnson. Wright identified the piece, titled "An Essay on Vanity," while indexing the Bath Journal from 1748, noting its distinct "Johnsonian touch." The piece also details Wright's discovery of the residence Johnson occupied during a 1776 visit to Bath with Thrale. Furthermore, Wright recovered a satirical poem welcoming Johnson and Thrale to the town, a piece that amused readers but provoked Johnson's dislike of Bath.
James Boswell: University Acquires Private Papers: Bought by Yale
This report, reprinted from the Times, announces the acquisition by Yale of the private papers of Boswell from Ralph Isham. The collection, comprising over 4,000 documents, provides the most complete documentation of any literary figure. The narrative details the romantic discovery of the papers, beginning with Isham's 1926 visit to Lord Talbot de Malahide, Boswell's great-great-grandson. Significant finds include the contents of an ebony cabinet, a neglected croquet box found in 1930 containing a diary by Johnson, and a 1946 discovery in an outbuilding that yielded 1,300 pages of the original manuscript of the Life of Johnson. The article also mentions the 1931 discovery of papers at Fettercairn House by Claude Abbott. While expressing regret that the treasure left Britain, the report acknowledges Isham's persistence and the expertise of Frederick Pottle, who will chair the editorial board for the publication of the archives.
Review of Fitzgerald’s two-volume Life of James Boswell. The reviewer critiques the tendency of Boswell’s editors to "meddle with the text" but finds Fitzgerald’s application of Boswellian methods to Boswell himself "certainly interesting." The review notes Fitzgerald's theory that the Life of Johnson illuminates Boswell’s own character, specifically his "boundless vanity" and "insatiable curiosity." While the biography reveals Boswell as a "frailer and worse man" than previously shown, it also challenges the "inherent preposterousness" of Macaulay’s theory that Boswell was a "complete fool." The reviewer argues that the author of such an "admirable and delightful book" possessed a "genius of a rare kind." It describes Boswell’s "patient, humble subserviency" as a necessary trait for his twenty years of observation. The review also touches upon Boswell’s drinking habits, his "uneasy conscience," and his indomitable nature in the face of Johnson’s "irascible" outbursts.
At Large with the Doctor: The Stark Poverty and the Miserable Hovels May Have Disappeared, but When Paul Johnson Retraced the Famous Journey Through the Highlands and Islands Undertaken by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell 200 Years Before, He Found a Surprising Amount That Had Remained Unchanged
Paul Johnson recounts a journey through the Highlands and islands taken with George Gale to retrace the 1773 tour of Boswell and Johnson. The author recommends visiting sites such as Fort George, which Johnson and Boswell found impressive, and Iona, where Johnson experienced a warmer sense of piety among the ruins. The narrative records an evening at Portsonachan where Johnson, though drenched by a storm, discoursed eloquently on literature and called for a gill of whisky to discover what makes a Scotsman happy. Johnson notes that while the poverty of the hovels has disappeared, the atmosphere of peace and historical association remains largely unchanged.
James Boswell, a Scottish Demosthenes: Noteworthy Bicentenary
This brief narrative commemorates the bicentenary of the first encounter between Johnson and Boswell in London. The text invokes Macaulay’s 1831 assessment to elevate Boswell’s biographical achievement to the level of "Shakespeare, Homer and Demosthenes." Much of the account examines Johnson’s "anti-Scotch" reputation, reproducing his retort regarding the many Scots who "cannot help" leaving their country. The narrative cites Maxwell’s observation that while Johnson considered the Scots a "crafty, designing people," he did not exclude individual "natives of that respectable country" from his esteem. The piece explores Johnson's "jocular" sallies on Scottish nationality, including his refusal to credit Scotland for Lord Mansfield’s education and his comparison of Cornish "Mahogany" to "Athol Porridge." The author concludes that Johnson’s prejudices were of the "head and not of the heart," noting his "fearless confidence" during the 1773 Scottish tour.
Scott reviews Hugh Milne’s edition of Boswell’s Edinburgh journals and Marshall Waingrow’s edition of the correspondence regarding the Life of Johnson. The review details Boswell’s transition from an Edinburgh advocate to the first of biographers, noting his systematic questioning of Johnson and his exhaustive research through roughly 400 letters from acquaintances such as Francis Barber and Warren Hastings. Scott discusses Boswell’s secret of biographical success, attributing it to an insatiable curiosity and a talent for verbatim conversation. While noting Boswell’s occasional toning down of Johnson’s boorishness and prejudice against the Scots, Scott praises these research editions as a great enlargement of literature.
This enthusiastic review of Leask’s biography of Boswell defends the biographer against traditional charges of being a "sorry parasite" or a "tipsy fellow" who wrote a masterpiece by accident. The reviewer praises Leask for perceiving the "man behind" the frequent fatuities and for demonstrating that Boswell was a "man of genius" with an "extraordinary intelligence." The narrative emphasizes Boswell's "intensely human" nature, his "shrewdness," and his "inexhaustible sympathy" which allowed him to understand Johnson and his contemporaries. While acknowledging Boswell’s moral deficiencies and his "pathetic vacillation" after Johnson's death, the reviewer concludes that the biography successfully refutes the "inanities" of earlier critics like Macaulay and Walpole.
Lichfield Remembers: Tribute to Dr. Samuel Johnson
Lichfield commemorated the 223rd anniversary of Johnson's birth with a tribute in the market place, where the Mayor placed a laurel wreath on his statue. The Cathedral choir sang at his birthplace. A representative assembly elected Mr. J. A. Lovat-Fraser, M.P., as the new president of the Johnson Society. The day concluded with a supper of Johnsonian fare, including punch for toasting the "Immortal Memory."
Kirsch reviews de la Torre’s fictional cases featuring Johnson as a detective and Boswell as his recorder. He describes the collection as "probable fictions" that capture Johnson’s intellectual vigor and Boswellian locution. The review praises the suspenseful integration of real historical personalities and settings. Kirsch asserts the stories avoid outraging the "inner truth" of their subjects, providing a perfect combination of eighteenth-century learning and crime fiction.
De la Torre’s enthusiastic review of the Lewis biography defends Boswell against a "century of calumny," specifically targeting Macaulay’s "waspish" attacks. The book portrays Boswell as a "man of sensibility" whose "avidity for life" drove him to record his experiences with "passionate eagerness." de la Torre highlights Lewis’s "Hogarthian" depictions of eighteenth-century London and Boswell’s interactions with Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli. The review explains the title's reference to the Boswell crest and his "frustrated struggles to soar above himself." Lewis argues that Boswell’s "self-revelation without reticence" is the source of his genius, presenting him as a "lovable and fascinating human being" and a "literary artist in his own right."
Three Men's Prayers: Applications of Dean Swift, Dr. Samuel Johnson and of Stevenson, the Novelist
The prayers of three great men of letters are strikingly illustrative, says the Independent. We scarce need to be told that these words came from the grief-stricken heart of Swift, writhing in agony over the painful illness and approaching end of Stelia:
Dr. Samuel Johnson: His Savage Manners: His Brutality: His Great Physical Strength
This collection of anecdotes, edited by E. B. Mason, portrays Johnson as a "singular compound of strength and weakness" characterized by "savage manners" and "brutality." The article catalogs instances of Johnson’s insolence, including his "roar[ing] down" opponents and physically assaulting the bookseller Osborne. It details his "eminent disregard of the courtesies" of life, such as his rebuke of Piozzi regarding her marriage and his "presumption" at a firework exhibition. Conversely, the text notes Goldsmith’s defense of Johnson as having "nothing of the bear but his skin" and describes his "great physical strength" used to repel four street attackers.
Lalley reviews Joseph Wood Krutch’s biography, asserting that Johnson’s survival in the twentieth century is due more to Boswell’s "definitive" biography than to Johnson’s own works. The article analyzes Johnson’s "pontifical nature" and the authority of his pronouncements, such as "there’s an end on’t." Lalley notes that Johnson founded a dynasty of critics who use the vocabulary of authority to make or blast reputations. The review commends Krutch for exploring the malice and wit that powered Johnson’s social dominance and for providing a human alternative to Boswellian tradition.
Translated by Dr. Samuel Johnson: Another Impromptu
The article presents two brief poems, an "old fogie" hint and an impromptu, on the theme of skating. The "old fogie" hint, on the dangers of the sport, is attributed as translated by Johnson. The poems both use the metaphor of skating over thin ice to convey a cautionary message about hidden dangers.
Reprinted from the Scotsman, this article discusses Aleyn Lyell Reade's genealogical research into Johnson's ancestry. Reade challenges Johnson's own claims of mean extraction and anecdotes of beggary, showing that on his mother's side, Johnson descended from respectable yeoman and professional classes with connections to the county gentry. The research identifies marriage connections to the Fords and reveals that Michael Johnson was engaged to a young woman from Derby in 1696, an engagement abandoned at the eleventh hour, which Reade suggests may have accentuated Michael's morbid tendencies.
Hutchison's approving review of the Tinker edition of Boswell's correspondence explores the dichotomy between the "born" greatness of Johnson and the "thrust" greatness of his biographer. While Boswell's independent literary efforts like the account of Corsica remain obscure, his letters reveal an "extraordinarily human" character often hidden by previous expurgated editions. Hutchison highlights Boswell’s candid self-revelations to William Johnson Temple, noting the "comedy" in his unsuccessful courtships of Isabella de Zuylen and Catherine Blair. The review details Boswell’s financial anxieties during the composition of his "Magnum Opus" and his unfailing "urbanity and courtesy" even while facing death. Ultimately, Hutchison finds that the letters portray Boswell as more than a mere recorder, revealing a "live, and occasionally lively, human being" whose personal qualities earned Johnson’s enduring friendship.
The Press in 1740: Samuel Johnson as a Reporter of Parliamentary Debates
This article, reprinted from the New York World, chronicles the evolution of British parliamentary reporting, identifying November 1740 as the commencement of a new era when the Gentleman's Magazine intrusted its reports to Johnson. Before this period, records of the House remained unsatisfactory and confused. Johnson likely possessed only the rudiments of the crude stenography then in use and frequently substituted his own eloquence for the actual utterances of speakers. While his versions remained less true to the letter than those of his predecessors, they provided a more living representation of the real debates. The article details the legal struggles of the era, noting a 1738 resolution by the House of Commons that challenged the right of the press to publish proceedings, labeling such acts a notorious breach of privilege and a daring act of illegality.
On the Quest for Happiness: In Samuel Johnson's novel 'Rasselas,' he explores his view of life
Pierce's appreciative review of "Rasselas" (1759) characterizes the work as a masterpiece of moral conviction and psychological depth. Written in a single week to fund his mother's funeral, Johnson's philosophical tale uses the journey of the Abyssinian prince Rasselas to explore the "tragic cycle" of human desire and the impossibility of terrestrial happiness. Pierce highlights the role of Imlac, whose worldly pessimism serves as a counterpoint to Rasselas's naive optimism, famously observing that "life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed." The review argues that the abrupt ending in "The Conclusion in Which Nothing Is Concluded" reflects an absurdist view of the human predicament, anticipating the insights of Freud and Beckett. Pierce laments that Johnson is now more famous as the hero of Boswell's "Life of Johnson" than for his own writings, including "The Vanity of Human Wishes," "The Lives of the Poets," and his critical edition of Shakespeare.
Hidden History: Samuel Johnson Way Born on This Day in 1709
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Lichfield's Famous Son Anniversary Celebrations
Lichfield celebrated the 217th anniversary of Johnson's birth. Mr. Arundell Esdaile, British Museum Secretary, became the new Johnson Society president. Esdaile praised Johnson as one of England's greatest scholars and the first to apply classical scholarship principles to the English language in his Shakespeare edition and Dictionary. The evening concluded with a Johnsonian supper in the Guildhall featuring punch, candles, and traditional fare.
Samuel Johnson and Some Other Immortals: Lecture by Professor C. F. Johnson at Trinity College
This report of a lecture by Charles F. Johnson at Trinity College examines the unique nature of the eighteenth century. The lecturer discusses Johnson’s early education under a master named Hunter, who favored "corporal punishment." He explores whether Johnson’s learning resulted from this "rod-and-book method" and suggests that modern educators may underrate the "rod as a dynamic educational force." The lecture also characterizes most public men of Johnson’s period as "historical bores" and contrasts the "commonplace" nature of modern political figures like William McKinley with the genius required for public life.
Grand Old Men of the Past: Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson the famous English and author and the being who caused to write the most interesting biography in the English was past seventy years of age when he finished his dictionary and when he wrote his "Laves of the.
Samuel Johnson: His Honesty and Truthfulness Independence and Generosity
This sketch, the third in a series, explores Johnson’s moral character, specifically his "stickler" reverence for truth and his immense physical courage. The article details his personal independence and generosity, citing his provision for destitute people in his own home. It recounts anecdotes of his bravery, such as separating fighting dogs and swimming in dangerous waters. The text also touches on his final days, noting his refusal of opiates to keep his mind "unclouded" and his famous declaration, "I will be conquered; I will not capitulate." The author concludes that Johnson’s deep compassion and sincerity ultimately fortified the esteem of all who knew him.
Watt quotes a letter from Dr. Samuel Johnson to William Drummond (Edinburgh, 1766) regarding the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Gaelic. Johnson condemns those who, for political reasons, withhold or delay religious instruction. He argues that omitting the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity is a crime, citing the practices of American planters as a comparable example. Boswell noted that this letter shamed the opponents of the "pious scheme."
A Daily Lesson in History: April 5, 1758: Samuel Johnson Published the First Number of 'The Idler'
This biographical sketch summarizes Johnson’s literary career, asserting that his fame persists largely due to Boswell’s "minute and voluminous record." The article traces Johnson’s path from poverty and scrofula-afflicted youth to his tenure as the "literary lord of London." It chronicles major milestones, including the publication of The Idler, The Rambler, Rasselas, and the Dictionary, as well as his friendship with David Garrick and the formation of the "literary club." While noting Johnson’s "harsh and slovenly" manners, the text emphasizes his "kindest heart" and lifelong support of "beggars and imposters."
Ames praises Wain's biography of Johnson for its "ring of authority" and "passionate identification" with the subject. Wain avoids modern studies, preferring "18th-century sources" to present Johnson "as he actually was." Ames notes Wain's challenge to Boswell's "sentimental-romantic" portrayal, emphasizing instead a "deeply humanitarian" figure rooted among the "poor and outcast." The review highlights the book's "unfailing stimulating and readable style" and its success in depicting Johnson's "robust and good" character despite his "terrifying" melancholia.
Purdie explores the lack of interaction between Boswell and Robert Burns, despite their shared origins in Ayrshire and common acquaintances. Purdie regrets that Boswell, with his "quasi-photographic memory," never recorded Burns's conversations. He notes that both men held a "unrequited passion" for Wilhelmina Alexander, the sister of a local nabob. Boswell recorded 20 meetings with her in a separate sub-journal, while Burns immortalized her in "The Lass o' Ballochmyle." Purdie identifies only one mention of Burns in the Boswell papers: an annotation on a letter from Burns to Bruce Campbell, where Boswell refers to Burns as "the poet" and "Mr.," suggesting a degree of flattery. Purdie attributes their "decisive" lack of social contact to radical differences in politics and social standing; Boswell was a "high Tory" who likely viewed the "radical Whig" Burns as a subversive threat to the established order.
The Corsican connection: etcetera; In 1765, shortly before the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte in Corsica, Scottish diarist James Boswell travelled to Corsica to meet patriotic hero. General Pasquale di Opaoli. But was Napoleon himself a third generation Scot?
Was Napoleon's grandfather a Scottish hedgecutter who was shipwrecked on Corsica in 1745?
Dr. Johnson Anniversary: His Rudeness Defended
Lichfield celebrates the 222nd anniversary of Johnson's birth, featuring a laurel wreath placed on his statue and a choir performance. Sir Anthony Hope-Hawkins, the new president of the Johnson Society, defends Johnson's rudeness, characterizing it as instant indignation against triviality and twaddle.
A priced catalogue from the second sale of Thomas Rawlinson's collection, circa 1721-22, shows that Dr. Johnson was a purchaser. The catalogue revealed that a Shakespeare Third Folio had fetched three shillings. The exhibition also included rare books like the 1487 Tractatus de micatione Cristi and Adamo of Andreini, a possible source of Milton's Paradise Lost.
Oscar Wilde Manuscripts: First Editions of Critic and of Moore, Boswell and Samuel Johnson to Be Sold
This brief notice describes the upcoming auction of the library of Edward Dean Richmond. The collection includes first editions of Johnson’s satirical poem London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), the latter being the first work to bear Johnson’s name. The sale also features various first editions of Boswell’s works alongside significant Wilde manuscripts. Proceeds from the auction are designated for the Kips Bay Boy’s Club of New York.
How a Girl Silenced Dr. Samuel Johnson: A Story Told by Sir Joshua Reynolds's Niece and Preserved in Mary Bagot's Diary
This biographical narrative, preserved in Mary Bagot’s diary and attributed to a niece of Joshua Reynolds, recounts a dinner party involving David Garrick and Richard Cumberland. The narrator, initially terrified of Johnson, challenged his "violent philippic" against music. When Johnson asserted that no man of talent would devote time to such a "frivolous" pursuit, she asked what he thought of King David. Johnson reportedly stood rebuked, thanking her and promising never to talk "nonsense" on the subject again. The anecdote highlights a rare instance of the "sage" being silenced by a young contemporary.
WERE IT NOT for the Yale hallmark on this delectable romantic comedy, and the scholarly footnotes appended to every page, one might suspect fraud, of that deft variety which produces our best historical fiction.
This brief notice, reprinted from the August 13, 1937, issue of the Irish Times, reports on the discovery of a sale-bill at Christie's for "Dr. Johnson's Tavern and Music-Hall" in Bolt Court. The document reveals the establishment closed in 1860, auctioning off forty mahogany tables and 150 chairs. The report notes the "strange" absence of other topographical records for this venue, despite its location near Johnson's famous haunts and the likelihood that it flourished while Johnson's name remained in living memory. The author speculates that the tavern's proximity to Fleet Street made it a probable gathering place for notable press figures and early nineteenth-century performers.
Theatre Royal: 'Dr. Johnson' and 'The Duel'
Some Recent Books: Dr. Johnson and His Times
This largely positive review of the new edition of Campbell's diary describes the Irish clergyman’s 1773 visit to England and his veneration for Johnson. The reviewer highlights Campbell's independent recollections, which show Johnson through a lens that often recalls Boswell but maintains a valuable autonomy. The review notes that Campbell originally perceived Johnson as having the "aspect of an Idiot," yet he later recorded "typical Johnsonian sentiments" with "truly Johnsonian ferocity."
Dr. Johnson's Rules: The Art of Conversation
Campagnac identifies four Johnsonian rules for conversation: knowledge, command of words, imagination, and "presence of mind." He cites Johnson’s warning that "superior ability or brilliance" often "exasperates" others. Johnson defines the "happiest conversation" as one leaving a "general effect of pleasing impression" rather than distinct memories.
Dr. Johnson's Letters: A Manchester Library's Acquisition
The John Rylands Library, Manchester, acquires approximately 3,000 manuscripts. The purchase includes letters, notebooks, deeds, and family papers relating to or written by Johnson. The unpublished material includes 20 letters from Johnson to Piozzi and over 100 letters from Piozzi to Johnson.
Bits of Byplay: Dr. Johnson's Modest Ambition
While compiling his Dictionary, Johnson explained his goal with self-deprecating humor. He said he was "merely trying to collect a few words for the Boston baby to lisp," suggesting that he viewed the comprehensive work as merely a modest, humble "kindergarten aid."
In the London Salerooms: A Dr. Johnson Relic
Thrale's six-volume manuscript diary, Thraliana, sold for £600 at Messrs. Sotheby's. Johnson originally advised Thrale in 1775 to start the journal and record little anecdotes, observations, and unpublished verses. Thrale's first entry, dated September 15, 1775, records that Mr. Thrale bought the repository and gave it the pompous title of Thraliana.
Dr. Johnson's Birthday: Churchwardens and Punch
Lichfield celebrated the 212th anniversary of Dr. Samuel Johnson's birth. J. F. Green, M.P., was elected President of the Johnson Society. Celebrations included a laurel wreath laying at his statue and the famous Johnson Supper at the Guildhall, which featured a beef-steak pudding menu, earthenware mugs for ale, and "churchwardens and punch" served by servitors in eighteenth-century dress. Dean Inge's sermon cautioned against taking Johnson's saying "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" out of context.
Muir characterizes Kingsmill’s Johnson Without Boswell as a necessary "unBoswellian biography" that reveals Johnson as a "human being" rather than a mere "oracle." Muir notes that the collection—drawing from Piozzi, Anna Seward, and Johnson’s own Prayers and Meditations—presents a "more moving and intimate" figure. Key anecdotes cited include Johnson’s "apparent agitation" when advising Piozzi to monitor her son's dreams and his "quarrelsome debate" with a Quaker lady. Muir observes that while Seward's records make Johnson "ponderous" and Piozzi's make him "light," the compilation successfully captures the "richness and complexity" of his character. He concludes that the work serves as a vital companion to Boswell by highlighting Johnson’s internal struggles, "frustration," and "eager humanity" through diverse perspectives.
Dr. Johnson's Birthday: His Attitude Towards Milton
R. W. Chapman's discourse at the Johnson Society birthday celebration argued that Dr. Johnson's apparent dislike of Milton's Lycidas did not signify an impoetic mind. Chapman countered that the beauties of Paradise Lost overcame Johnson's dislike of Milton's sour Republicanism, eliciting generous praise that showed Johnson read Milton's poetry with real sensibility. The Mayor placed a laurel wreath on Johnson's statue in the Market Square.
Academics Fete the Scrofulous Dr. Johnson: London, Dec. 13
Dr Samuel Johnson, litarary giant and scourge of foreigners, found new life in his beloved London today on the 200th anniversary of his death.
Dr. Johnson's Insult Revered: Birmingham Marks 25th Anniversary
On Birmingham's observance of the 250th anniversary of Dr. Johnson's birth, which Birmingham celebrated with an exhibition of books, manuscripts, and portraits at its Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition, described as the "finest collection of Johnsoniana ever gathered together," featured every published work Johnson ever wrote, including his first published volume, A Voyage to Abyssinia. Birmingham's reverence for Johnson is noted despite the fact that Johnson had once insulted its inhabitants, calling them "boobies" compared to the "philosophers" of Lichfield. The celebration included lectures, dramatic readings, and a discussion of Johnson's Dictionary.
Roberts reviews the David Nichol Smith and Edward L. McAdam edition of "The Poems of Samuel Johnson." The review notes that while Boswell promised a complete edition, this 400-page volume is the first to assemble all English and Latin poems. Roberts discusses Johnson's labor on the play "Irene" and his "dread of the sleepless night" reflected in the Latin poem "Gnothi Seauton," written after revising the "Dictionary." The reviewer highlights the "noble" Latin elegiacs regarding Lichfield and confirms that Johnson's "abiding fame" rests on "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The review emphasizes the collaboration between Oxford scholarship and Yale enthusiasm.
Men and Affairs: Dr. Johnson's Rasselas
A correspondent provides a letter to the editor regarding Johnson's 1759 work, Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. The letter quotes a passage where an artist discusses the dangers of human flight. Johnson warns that if "the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky," no walls or seas could provide security against an "army sailing through the clouds." The correspondent uses this passage to illustrate early literary foresight regarding aerial warfare and the vulnerability of capitals to "northern savages" hovering in the wind.
Dr. Johnson: An Interesting Sketch of His Peculiarities
Reprinted from Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, this biographical sketch outlines Johnson’s physical and behavioral eccentricities from childhood through his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. It depicts a man driven by a "posture of superiority" who treated associates, including Boswell and Goldsmith, with "rude" dominance. The article details his "singularly gross" table manners, such as pouring oyster sauce over plum pudding, and describes uncontrollable gesticulations that caused "general confusion" in social settings. It further notes his "superstitious precision" in touching street posts and his "surprising" behavior in public, where his burly, "elephant"-like form often intimidated passersby.
Dr. Johnson Anniversary: Service at St Clement Danes
A service at St. Clement Danes Church commemorated the 140th anniversary of Johnson's death, featuring prayers composed by Johnson. J. C. Squire's address said Johnson was one of the greatest lay Christians in the Church of England's records, deserving commemoration for his life of Christian charity and admirable public character. Members of the Johnson Club placed a laurel wreath on Johnson's statue in the churchyard.
"The greatest single disservice to Johnson as a mind--as a guide to the human spirit to whom posterity could turn for courage and wisdom--was his own fame, after his death, as a talker.... The result, however engaging and picturesque, was to impoverish immensely his meaning and value as a fel-...
The Swan of Lichfield: Being a Selection from the Correspondence of Anna Seward
Roberts reviews Hesketh Pearson's selection of Anna Seward's correspondence. The review outlines Seward's "inevitably linked" relationship with Johnson in Lichfield literary history, noting her grandfather, John Hunter, was Johnson's "brutal" schoolmaster. Roberts disputes Pearson's claim of Seward's "absolute sincerity," citing her "typically wild" and inaccurate description of Elizabeth Johnson's life in a "half-famished" garret. The review details Seward's 1786 assertion that "Johnson hated me," a sentiment Roberts suggests was mutual. The narrative covers Seward's interactions with Boswell, her attachment to John Saville, and her literary success with "Louisa" and "Elegy on Captain Cook," the latter of which Johnson commended.
In Defence of Johnson: In the Bicentenary Year of Samuel Johnson's Death, the Legendary Litterateur and Lexicographer, A. S. Padmanaban Re-Assesses His Works
Padmanaban provides a re-assessment of Johnson in the bicentenary year of his death, challenging the reputation of his style as "sesquipedalian verbiage." The article argues that while some "ponderous definitions" in the Dictionary—such as those for "network" and "cough"—lent credence to popular criticism, Johnson was "humble enough" to admit his own limitations. Padmanaban highlights the "acuteness of thought" found in Rasselas, noting a chapter composed almost entirely of monosyllables to demonstrate that Johnson’s prose is not always "fussy and high-falutin." The piece discusses Johnson’s "icy rebuke" of Lord Chesterfield, whose "delayed" help led Johnson to redefine a patron as one who "encumbers" a man with help once he has "reached ground." Padmanaban concludes that Johnson’s mind was so "comprehensive" that only his specific, formal language could adequately express its contents.
Scottish Ministers: As Seen by Dr. Johnson
The Rev. Dr. M'Kinlay presented a paper on Johnson's views of Scottish ministers, noting some doubt about the strength of his anti-Scottish antipathies. Johnson, who cherished a rooted dislike for the Scottish Church for lacking Bishops and a Prayer Book, initially considered its ministers uneducated. However, his travels led him to admit, in his Journey to the Western Isles, that the ministers possessed both learning and character. Johnson's appreciation for Blair's Sermons also demonstrated his impartial literary judgment.
Dr. Johnson's Bible: U.S. Collectors Purchase
Gabriel Wells, an American collector, purchased Dr. Samuel Johnson's Bible and Prayer Book, an eight-volume set, for a large sum. The books contain Johnson's indubitable handwritten comments in the margins. The set was found by an itinerant bookseller and bore an inscription in a writing master's hand: "Thomas Johnson, ejus liber, August 12th, 1773, the gift of his cousin, Dr. Samuel Johnson."
Dr. Johnson: Today Is the Sesquicentennial of His Death
This letter to the editor, signed by "A Johnsonian," commemorates the 150th anniversary of the death of the "literary dictator." The author praises Boswell for presenting Johnson as a man, lexicographer, and artist whose life provides the "warp and woof" for modern speculation. The letter wonders what Johnson would think of modern America or the current state of global politics, specifically his view that a "country governed by a despot is an inverted cone." The author concludes that Johnson’s "native language" is his best monument, as he bridged the transition period of English single-handedly.
Kirsch's approving review of John Wain's "Samuel Johnson" argues that the biography restores Johnson’s "humanity" and "deep humanitarianism," which were previously obscured by Boswell’s sentimentalized portrait. The article notes that while Boswell focused on Johnson's eccentricities and middle-age table talk, Wain uses his subject's own writings to provide a denser context for his character. Kirsch highlights Johnson’s active concern for history, law, and politics, disputing the "arch-conservative" caricature by citing Johnson’s defenses against tyranny and his opposition to the slave trade. The review details Wain’s empathetic approach, noting his shared background with Johnson in Lichfield and Oxford, and commends the biography for depicting Johnson’s lifelong struggle against poverty, hunger, and a "vile melancholy" inherited from his father. Kirsch concludes that Wain successfully draws a "convincing human being" whose insights were derived from direct experiences of emotional and nervous malaise.
Dr. Johnson's Style: A Suppressed Criticism: Sentence Blair Rewrote
The Edinburgh Bibliographical Society heard Dr. H. W. Meikle read extracts from a manuscript of student notes for Professor Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The manuscript contains what is believed to be the only record of Blair's suppressed strictures on Johnson's style, including a paragraph where Blair re-wrote a polished sentence by Addison in the "Affectation" of the Rambler style. This criticism, of which Boswell quoted only the last sentence, was omitted from the 1783 publication.
Dr. Johnson and Reynolds: The Friendship Between These Eminent Men
In this largely positive review of a piece originally published in an illustrated magazine, the reviewer examines the warm and enduring relationship between Johnson and Joshua Reynolds. The item demonstrates that Johnson's familiar characterization of Reynolds as the most invulnerable man he knew expands beyond negative judgment into deep, genuine affection. The reviewer highlights an 1781 letter from Johnson offering companionship during Reynolds's illness, alongside Johnson's observation that the painter remained free from melancholy and was the same all the year round. The item notes that brief friction between the two men provoked humility from Johnson, as documented by Boswell. Finally, the review describes Johnson's dying request that Reynolds forgive a thirty-pound debt so the funds could benefit a poor family.
In the London Salerooms: £1120 for a Dr. Johnson Letter
A record price of £1,120 was paid by Quaritch for what seems to be the only extant letter written by Johnson to his wife. In the epistle, Johnson sympathizes with his very ill wife, assuring his "dear girl" that his "esteem and affection" for her is stronger than ever. Additionally, £850 was paid for Hester Thrale's letter announcing her marriage to Piozzi, and Johnson's answer.
This review of Mrs. Thrale of Streatham by C. E. Vulliamy examines a biography of Piozzi that uses the "Queeney Letters." The reviewer notes Vulliamy's attempt at an "impartial" adjustment of Piozzi’s reputation, though he ultimately sides with Boswell and Baretti in viewing her literary influence as negligible. The review describes Johnson’s incorporation into the Thrale household, noting he was "Thrale’s rather than Mrs. Thrale’s friend." It details her "harsh and unfeeling" treatment of Johnson after Thrale's death and her defiant second marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which caused society to turn against her.
Irishman's Diary: Dublin Bridges: Dr. Johnson's Journey: Windmills : Holly
The Dublin edition of Johnson's "Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland," published by Thomas Walker, is discussed. The original London edition and several unauthorized reprints appeared in 1775. Johnson's Journey was read in manuscript by King George III, who was displeased with the author's Jacobitical leanings. The work also stirred up an acute controversy over the poems of Ossian.
Love Affairs of Great Men: Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Porter
"IF I had no duties and no reference to futurity would spend my life driving briskly in a postchais with a pretty woman." said Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Dr. Johnson's Shoes: A Young Englishman's Experiment with Them
This article, reprinted from the New York Tribune and featuring particulars from the London Star, reports on Vivian’s revival of the periodical The Rambler. The new publication uses a typographic style closely referencing Johnson’s original enterprise and features his portrait on a red cover. Vivian claims a mission to return to the literary graces displayed by Johnson, though the reviewer questions how Johnson would react to the inclusion of a modern lucubration by Richard Le Gallienne. The piece characterizes Vivian as an inveterate poseur and eccentric who exhibits small concern for the verdicts of the vulgar. Brief biographical details of Vivian’s career in journalism and politics accompany the description of his Johnsonian experiment.
The Judgment of Dr. Johnson: A Comedy in Three Acts
I. B. reviews a London production of Gilbert Keith Chesterton's play concerning Johnson. The drama features a dialogue-heavy encounter where Johnson expounds on the endurance of realities like marriage over the transience of revolutions to an American devotee of equality. The reviewer finds that while the play contains seasoned Chestertonian sentences and verbal tennis between characters like John Wilkes and Edmund Burke, Johnson's grandeur diminishes in this corporeal realization. While the performance by Francis Sullivan captures the Doctor's sentiments, the character of Wilkes often dominates the theatrical action.
Dr. Johnson's Birthday: 'Anthony Hope' Defends Great Man's Rudeness
Lichfield celebrated the 222nd anniversary of Johnson's birth with the Mayor placing a laurel wreath on his statue and the Cathedral choir singing. Sir Anthony Hope-Hawkins succeeded Mr. A. Edward Newton as president of the Johnson Society, delivering an address that defended Johnson's rudeness as intellectual indignation with triviality. At the celebratory supper, Hawkins commented on Johnson's wisdom in being born in Lichfield.
Dr. Johnson: Tourist Finds Sam Too Dear to Cure Him
An American tourist in Fleet Street asks a local for a doctor and is directed to a house in Gough Square. The tourist finds a nameplate reading "Dr. Samuel Johnson," with smaller letters indicating: "Author. Lived here. Born 1708, died 1784."
This article, which reproduces particulars from the London Star, describes Herbert Vivian's revival of the Rambler. The new periodical consists of eight pages and mimics the typography of Johnson's original enterprise, featuring a portrait of Johnson on a red cover. Vivian proclaims a mission to return to the literary graces displayed by Johnson while exhibiting small concern for the verdicts of the vulgar. The narrative questions whether Johnson would approve of the project, specifically noting the inclusion of a skit by Richard Le Gallienne. The text characterizes Vivian as an inveterate poseur and eccentric who previously conducted the Whirlwind and challenged Dr. Andree to a duel over a signature dispute.
The John Rylands Library in Manchester acquired approximately 3,000 manuscripts related to or written by Johnson, including notebooks, deeds, and family papers. The acquisition contains 20 unpublished letters from Johnson to Hester Thrale and over 100 unpublished letters from Thrale to Johnson. The collection also includes nearly all the letters published in the 1788 volumes, Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
The Loose-Leaf Library: John Hawkins on Clubable Dr. Johnson
This article, excerpted from Bertram H. Davis’s 1961 edition of Hawkins’s biography, describes Johnson’s "versatility of temper" in club settings. Hawkins observes that Johnson often contended for victory over truth, contradicting himself to maintain the office of "symposiarch." Despite this, Hawkins highlights Johnson’s talent for humor and his contributions to the "mirth of conversation," disputing the notion that Johnson was merely a dictatorial reasoner. The excerpt portrays a convivial Johnson who used witty sayings and excellent stories to alleviate his melancholy within the Ivy Lane Club.
Dr. Johnson's Wife: Justice to a Neglected or Misrepresented Character
In this positive review of an essay originally appearing in Collier's Weekly, the reviewer defends the memory and character of Elizabeth Porter Johnson against historical deprecation. The item disputes Thomas Babingon Macaulay's severe assertion that the widow's readiness to accept a much younger, penniless suitor did her little honor, arguing instead that her decision did her incalculable credit. The reviewer highlights her initial recognition of Johnson's unmatched intellect, her financial independence, and her ability to bring genuine happiness to his somber life. The review emphasizes that Johnson remained under the devoted illusions of their wedding day until his own death, outliving her by twelve years while maintaining a constant, backward-looking devotion.
This review of W. A. Bradley's edition of the prayers of Johnson highlights the sane spirituality found in the collection. The reviewer contrasts Johnson's piety with the affected literary invocations of modern authors, asserting that Johnson rang true. The edition includes an introductory essay and notes characterized as apposite, helpful, and in excellent taste. The physical volume features handsome type, effective decorations, and a frontispiece reproduction of the profile portrait of Johnson by Joshua Reynolds. The review also briefly mentions Johnson in the context of Isobel Strong and Lloyd Osbourne's Memories of Vailima, noting Robert Louis Stevenson's admission that he would write trash to save his family from starving, just as Johnson might have done.
Jordan-Smith reviews Mary Alden Hopkins’s study of Litchfield, praising its informal and gossipy approach to Johnson. The review details how Hopkins introduces readers to Johnson’s birthplace and his contemporaries, including Erasmus Darwin, James Watt, and Anna Seward. Jordan-Smith highlights the use of newly discovered letters and family gossip to reveal the social fabric of the town. The review specifically mentions the divisions within Litchfield families regarding Johnson’s marriage to Elizabeth Porter and recounts a witty rebuke she gave him during dinner. Jordan-Smith finds this indirect biographical method delightful for approaching the giant of letters through his neighbors and friends.
'G. K. C.' and Dr. Johnson: Memorial at the Old 'Pelican'
G. K. Chesterton unveils a mural tablet on the Three Cups Inn in Bath (formerly the Pelican), where Johnson once stayed. Chesterton, in a subsequent address, states Johnson showed characteristic sagacity and common sense by staying in Bath and at a public house. Chesterton also credits Johnson with knowing how to be rude and, importantly, how to apologize.
Journals of Two Fellow Travellers: This Year Marks the Bicentenary of One of the Most Famous of All Literary Tours: That by Samuel Lohnson and James Boswell to the Western Isles. Here I. D. McCowan Looks at the Background to and Some of the Highlights of the Tour, and Compares the Two Books It Produced
McGowan's biographical narrative compares the two accounts produced by the 1773 tour of the Hebrides. The article explains that Johnson was motivated by a desire to see a way of life different from the South and to investigate the authenticity of the Ossian poems. McGowan characterizes Johnson's book as a work of meditation on broad themes of social change, while Boswell's journal focuses on concrete human detail and the character of Johnson. The narrative records their visits to Flora MacDonald and the Duke of Argyll, as well as the resentment Johnson's forthright criticisms caused among the Scots. McGowan concludes that the works complement each other by offering diverse perspectives from two acute minds.
This critical review challenges the conversational reputation of Johnson, characterizing his verbal abilities as narrow in compass. The reviewer states that Johnson relied sturdily upon natural powers rather than artistic skill, displaying a greater defect in his somnolent want of interest in humanity and a desponding taint in his blood. This permanent gloomy temperament proved fatal to brilliant conversation. The reviewer notes that Johnson possessed no brooding or naturally philosophic intellect, contributing nothing to weightier interests and failing to expand any important truth. The review contrasts Johnson with Thomas De Quincey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, concluding that Johnson remained ignorant of the monumental cultural shifts occurring during his era.
In Dr. Johnson's Memory: An Appreciation by Mr. J. C. Squire
A service at St. Clement Danes Church commemorated the 140th anniversary of Dr. Samuel Johnson's death. J. C. Squire delivered an address, asserting that Johnson was one of the greatest lay Christians of the Church of England. Squire praised Johnson's intellectual defense of the Christian faith and his monument of Christian charity. He also suggested making the celebration an annual event.
Lord Birkenhead's 14,000 Books: Dr. Johnson's Letters Sold to America
Lord Birkenhead tells the First Edition Club that he sold two small shelves of books for £5,000 because of taxation. This included a volume of thirty-two letters written by Johnson and Piozzi, which was sold to the United States of America. Birkenhead, who still possessed 14,000 volumes, expresses hope his son may one day retrieve the Johnson letters.
Dr. Johnson's House: Where Dictionary was Compiled Generous Gift to Nation
Johnson's house at 17 Gough Square, London, the only one of his many London residences still extant, is being preserved for the nation. Cecil Bisshopp Harmsworth, who purchased and endowed the property, formed a body of governors to hold it in trust. The trust deed stipulates the name "Dr. Johnson's House" cannot change and its architectural features must be preserved intact. The attic, where Johnson compiled the Dictionary, is intended for social gatherings, not a dreary museum.
Cheshire Cheese Pudding: Austerity Interferes with Dr. Johnson's Favourite London, Apr. 16
This report by a United Press correspondent describes the impact of post-war austerity on the famous pudding at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. The author notes that the dish, which Johnson described as containing beefsteaks, oysters, larks, and mushrooms, currently lacks the necessary larks and light crust due to government rationing. Head cook Dolly Pinney expresses regret over the inferior pastry and the prohibition against combining multiple meats and seafood. The author sits in Johnson's traditional seat, observing the blackened walnut paneling and bubbly glass windows while noting the repairs following German fire bombs.
The London Salerooms: Barrie as Envelope Maker Dr. Johnson's Last Letter
Dr. Rosenbach, an American bookseller, purchased what is likely Dr. Johnson's last letter for £445. The holograph letter, dated December 7, 1784, and addressed to his lawyer Strahan, inquires about his pension, while a signed receipt for £88, 15s. is dated December 10, 1784. The letter is firmly written in a legible hand, contrasting with the signature on the receipt just three days later.
Dr. Johnson's House: Historic Place Presented to the Nation London, Dec. 9
This brief British Wireless report announces that Cecil Harmsworth presented the house at 17 Gough Square to the nation. Johnson occupied this residence from 1748 to 1759. The notice emphasizes the historical significance of the site as the location where Johnson compiled the majority of his dictionary.
This enthusiastic review of John Ker Spittal's compilation examines critical material from the Monthly Review between 1775 and 1795. F. M. notes Spittal’s use of contemporary sources to sharpen impressions of Johnson and his circle. The review details the inclusion of six full book reviews, including Sir John Hawkins’s "vagrant" and "diffuse" biography and Piozzi's anecdotes. F. M. highlights Piozzi’s collection of Johnson’s letters and his "great epistolic style." The review also mentions the contemporary reception of Boswell’s biography, which reviewers at the time found to be a "plenteous entertainment." F. M. concludes that Spittal successfully demonstrates that Johnson’s contemporaries fully recognized his "intellectual power" and "gentle nature."
Dr. Johnson's House: Gifts to the Nation; Historica Features to Be Preserved
The famous house in Gough Square, London, which Dr. Johnson occupied for over ten years, and in which he compiled the greater part of his dictionary, is to be preserved for the nation.
Dr. Johnson: Memorial Unveiled: The Doctor and Fleet Street: Our Intellectual Sovereign
This report, reprinted from the Penny Choosey, describes the unveiling of Percy Fitzgerald's statue of Johnson at St. Clement Danes. Whitten reflects on Johnson's physical presence in Fleet Street, noting his "heavily headlong" progress and his habit of escorting lady visitors to their coaches. The article identifies the Cheshire Cheese and Gough Square as primary Johnsonian shrines, asserting that popular tradition values what Johnson said at tavern tables more than what he wrote in books. Whitten also clarifies that George Augustus Sala invented the famous phrase "take a walk down Fleet Street."
Time Yourself Reading This: 1/2 Minutes with Great Men: Dr. Johnson on Hope
Johnson writes on hope, asserting it is necessary in every condition, even the happiest lot of terrestrial existence. Without hope, miseries would be insupportable. Though hope is fallacious and promises what it seldom gives, Johnson concludes its promises are more valuable than the gifts of fortune.
All about Tea: The Beverage of Sages and Philosophers: Dr. Johnson's Eulogy
This article discusses Agnes Repplier's collection of tea lore and highlights the legendary devotion of Johnson to the beverage. It recounts an episode where Johnson allegedly consumed 25 cups at one sitting. When Joshua Reynolds attempted to count his intake at Richard Cumberland's home, Johnson took affront, asking why Reynolds should number his cups when Johnson did not count Reynolds's glasses of wine. The narrative notes that tea helped Johnson clear a dull head and pass whole nights in study without suffering ill effects from heavy indulgence.
Three Men's Prayer: Supplications of Dean Swift, Dr. Johnson and Stevenson, the Novelist
The prayers ot three great men of letters are strikingly Illustrative. We scarce need to be told that these words came from the griefstricken heart of Swift, writhing in agony over the painful illness and approaching end of Stella:
Poverty of Letters: An Authentic Page from the Life of the Great Dr. Johnson
It is a brisk midwinter afternoon. In of Button's Coffee House a man and meet She gently details him by of his rusty coat as he would endoor. At this he turns in a fashsurprise, for, with his week eyes. not noticed her approach.
New Light on Dr. Johnson: Miss Reynolds Describes His Queer Person and Habits
In this exploratory review of Frances Reynolds's recollections, Stephen outlines the physical eccentricities and behavioral oddities of Johnson. The reviewer highlights Reynolds's perspective that Johnson possessed a mild affection but inverted the common forms of civilized society, resembling a sage or saint confined within the exterior of a Caliban. The item details Johnson's dramatic corporeal contortions, such as forming geometrical diagrams with his feet, whirling the blind Anna Williams at thresholds, and performing extraordinary antics in Twickenham meadows. The review notes Thomas Campbell's observation that Johnson appeared idiotical while engaged in these paroxysms. Stephen concludes that Johnson's severe physical impairments and intellectual force combined to darken his perceptions of general conversational propriety.
Letters to the Editor: Dr. Johnson and Dr. Burney Again the Metric Unit
In this letter to the editor, J. S. disputes a previous claim that Johnson only apologized once in his life. Citing the Oxford edition of Boswell’s "Life of Johnson," J. S. argues that Johnson was "ready to make an apology when he had censured unjustly." The letter recounts an instance where Johnson, after a passionate outburst regarding the arrangement of a proof-sheet, apologized "again and again" to his compositor, Mr. Manning. J. S. presents this evidence to challenge the characterization of the "redoubtable doctor" as someone whose convictions admitted "no retraction of any assertion or apology."
Dr. Johnson and Bozzy: The Letter on Patronage is Recalled for Timely Reasons
Rose's letter to the editor offers a "word of praise" for Boswell, asserting that despite being a "drunkard" and a "foolish inflated creature," he wrote the "world's greatest biography" through "love and reverence toward superior wisdom." Rose suggests that Boswell's heart saw farther than his head. The letter also highlights Johnson's "stinging rebuke" to Lord Chesterfield regarding patronage, quoting the famous passage where Johnson describes a patron as one who "encumbers" a man with help only after he has reached ground. Rose concludes by noting that the Mitre Tavern remains a "shrine" for those wishing to experience the atmosphere where Johnson and Boswell once socialized.
Butcher reviews Edward Newton’s literary play, noting its composition from Johnson’s famous sayings and Boswell’s biography. The review describes the work as a "series of conversations" rather than a traditional drama, meticulously assembled from half-sentences of recorded speech. Butcher details the four-act structure, including the arrival of Mme. de Bouffleurs, a dinner at the Thrales' residence, Piozzi’s decision to marry a musician, and Johnson’s death. Butcher compares the scholarly character study favorably to John Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln.
Dr. Johnson's House Hit: Custodian Saves Relics In Recent Fire Raid London, Jan. 14
This British Wireless report details damage to the Gough Square residence of Johnson during a fire raid on London. Although the interior and historic furniture suffered severe burns, the stone walls remain standing. The custodian preserved many relics by storing prints, paintings, and first editions in waterproof trunks in the basement at the start of the war. During the raid, she returned to the burning site to retrieve a trunk that had begun to catch fire.
Review of the journal Kiryath Sepher, highlighting a study of Johnson's 1735 translation of Jeronimo Lobo's History of Ethiopia. Lask finds Johnson's preface "almost prophetic" regarding the nature of humanity. He quotes Johnson's observation that "wherever human nature is to be found there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason." The reviewer characterizes Johnson as a "clear-headed" man who avoided the "cant" often found in contemporary discussions of race. The text notes that Johnson’s first published work remains relevant to the political situation in Ethiopia and Geneva in the 1930s.
Dirda's approving review of Richard Holmes's "Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage" describes the work as a "biography of a biography" that explores the relationship between Johnson and the notorious Richard Savage. The review details how Johnson's "Life of Savage" transformed the biographical genre by incorporating elements of scandal romance and legal drama. Dirda notes that Savage served as a "mentor and guide" to the London night-world for a young Johnson. The review argues that Johnson’s empathy for his flawed friend became a "central tenet of modern biography" and helped Johnson find his own literary voice.
Dr. Johnson in Fleet-St: Landmarks in the London Life of the Great Bear of English Letters
Reprinted from the London Tatler, this article surveys Johnson's associations with Fleet Street residences and taverns. Dobson traces Johnson's movements from 17 Gough Square, where he completed the "Dictionary," to his final home in Bolt Court. The author identifies various "houses of call," noting that while Boswell omits the Cheshire Cheese, local tradition places Johnson and Goldsmith there. The piece concludes with an account of Johnson's death and his funeral procession to Westminster Abbey.
Prints of Old London: Contrasts in Dr. Johnson's Day Two Fashionable Resorts All the Church Steeples
Rutter reviews an exhibition of eighteenth and nineteenth-century prints at the Parker Gallery, focusing on the topographical accuracy of London during the era of Johnson and David Garrick. The review highlights how these "rare reminders" preserve the "face and aspect of the town" familiar to Johnson, contrasting historical sites like the old London Bridge and Vauxhall Gardens with modern "utilitarianism." Rutter suggests the prints allow the viewer to "join in fancy the busy throng" known to Johnson and his contemporaries.
Irishman's Diary: A Costly Comma: Dr. Johnson and Ireland: Gaeltc in Hyde Park: Sights of Dublin Gaelic Religious Ceremony
Johnson relates Swift settled in Ireland unwillingly, but insisted on being served in plate. Johnson states Swift was married to Stella, whom he refers to as Mrs. Johnson. Johnson approves of Swift generally, but deplores his morbid mind.
A Polynesian Buck in Dr. Johnson's England: The Illuminating Story of Omai, Who Represented Hawaii in Eighteenth-Century London
Tinker’s positive review of Thomas Blake Clark’s biography of Omai describes the arrival of the first Polynesian ambassador in eighteenth-century London. The review highlights how Omai’s social intuition and refined manners challenged Johnson’s skepticism toward the Rousseauian ideal of the noble savage. Tinker notes that while Johnson growled against the notion that savages equaled civilized men, he admitted that Omai lacked the typical ignorance of the untutored. The account details Omai's interactions within the Johnson circle, including a reception held by Thrale and observations by Burney. Tinker concludes that Clark’s gay tale uses sound scholarship to illustrate how Omai captivated the English haute monde before returning to his native island.
Jordan-Smith reviews Mr. Oddity by Norman, an informal biography of Johnson that incorporates recent discoveries like the Malahide papers. He praises Norman for brushing away the "veil" of scholarly footnotes and "excessive scholarly apparatus" to reveal Johnson's "characteristic best" as a conversationalist for the general reader. Norman emphasizes Johnson’s relationships with women—including his mother, his wife Elizabeth Porter, and Thrale (Piozzi)—as essential to understanding his character. The work presents Johnson’s dogmatisms, humility, and sentimentality. Jordan-Smith finds "quite convincing" Norman’s appendix regarding Johnson’s stylistic and poetic influence on Housman. He concludes that Norman successfully captures the "secret of his profound influence and undoubted charm."
This brief notice in the Boston Daily Globe describes a collection of incidents and anecdotes concerning Johnson, compiled by E. T. Mason. The work does not attempt a full biography but instead gathers material primarily from Boswell’s biography to illustrate the "divergent traits" of Johnson's character. The reviewer notes that Mason arranges anecdotes to show Johnson’s "detestable brutality," "inordinate vanity," and "wit" in sharp relief. The review states that the reader is left to decide whether Johnson's "evil traits overbalance his good ones," but acknowledges the book's "absorbing interest." It concludes that the volume performs a "real service" for those who wish to understand Johnson without reading Boswell’s voluminous work.
Kingsbury offers a soundly planned and judicious review of Kingsmill’s biography of Johnson. He appreciates Kingsmill’s effort to present Johnson beyond the familiar image of the ample, rugged ancient, highlighting his leaner youth and early struggles. The review notes Kingsmill’s coverage of Johnson’s relations with figures like Richard Savage and the Thrales, including his "toadying" to the elder Thrale and his eventual break with Piozzi. Kingsbury questions Kingsmill’s claims regarding Johnson as a concealed Rabelais but finds the book fresh and rich in suggestion. He details anecdotes of Johnson’s physical vigor, such as rolling down hills and beating a girl in a race.
Dr. Johnson's Famous Pudding at the Original Cheshire Cheese: A Genuine Yorkshire Pudding Beguilingly Described by an Englishman Who Knows the Secret of Its Making
IT WAS Oscar Wilde who facetiously said that all good Americans go to Paris when they die, but there are a great many who go there during their lifetime and who take in London either going or coming. But none of these fail to visit "Ye Olds Cheshire Cheese" in Fleet Street and there taste of Dr.
Pudding Day In Fleet Street: An American version of how best to prepare the famous pastry of Dr. Johnson's time.
As a needle to its pole, so the American to the famous sign "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese" in London. The sign is all there is of it in Fleet street. We dive into a narrow passage off the thoroughfare and find the old tavern deeply embedded among structures more modern.
Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: Balzac Got His by Eating Dry Coffee Powder, Rossini Fuelled His Opers-Writing with It, Samuel Johnson Drank 40 Cups of Tea Daily to Get His Fix: Humanity Has Had a Long Affair with Caffeine
On the history and effects of caffeine. It notes humanity's long affair with the drug, citing historical figures like Balzac and Rossini. Samuel Johnson is mentioned for reportedly drinking 40 cups of tea daily to get his caffeine fix.
In High Talk Goldsmith Never Shone, but 'Wrote like an Angel': The Great Dr. Johnson Discovers the Manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield
This article marks the bicentennial of Oliver Goldsmith by examining his relationship with the Johnsonian literary circle. The account details Johnson’s intervention in Goldsmith’s financial distress, specifically his discovery and sale of the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield to satisfy a debt to a landlady. While peers like David Garrick mocked Goldsmith’s conversational ineptitude, Johnson maintained a deep affection for him despite their intellectual disputes over royal authority. The narrative characterizes Goldsmith as a "philosophic vagabond" whose literary "polish and restraint" contrasted with a turbulent, "irresponsible" personal life. It also notes the presence of a bust of Goldsmith in the Trinity College library alongside statues of him and Edmund Burke.
Dr. Johnson and the Computer: The Trials and Tribulations of an Elderly Blind Lady Learning to Use the Machine of the 'Future'
This humorous biographical narrative describes an elderly blind woman's struggle to learn computer technology. Bat Haim imagines that Johnson would have "paraphrased his famous saying" to suggest that "he (or she) who doesn't use a computer is leading a deprived life." The author suggests Johnson would have been "ecstatically happy" at the "prospect of so many new words, new meanings and new concepts" the digital age provides for his dictionaries. The account details her confusion with a "mouse," which she finds an inappropriate term, and her frustration with an email program that removes the "u" from the word "favour."
Herrick's Drinking Pig, and Other Stories: Why Did Dr. Johnson Go up the Hill? Why Did Burne-Jones Fall down It?
This review of The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, edited by John Gross, discusses the value of anecdotes in revealing the "person behind the author's name." Mullan notes that anecdotes often "contradict a public image" to provide a more authentic portrait. He cites an example of Johnson, the "great cham" of literature, who once walked to the top of a steep hill with a friend and "took a roll down" to the bottom. Johnson justified the undignified act by simply stating he "had not had a roll for a long time." The review also mentions Boswell as an "angler for anecdote" whose presence often made Horace Walpole sit "mute as a fish."
Lark Pie in London for U.S. Tourist: 'Cheshire Cheese' Fosters Charm of Dr. Johnson's Day
Rhodes describes the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese tavern as a London shrine for American tourists seeking the "ghosts of Fleet Street." Legend associates the seventeenth-century hostelry with Johnson and Boswell, though the connection is noted as traditional. The tavern preserves a chair, pipe, and a copy of the dictionary used by Johnson. Rhodes mentions that Johnson supposedly sat there night after night "stuffing himself with heavy English meats." The article details the "lark-and-oyster" pudding, a dish said to be a favorite of the lexicographer, and notes the presence of other literary figures like Charles Dickens.
Forrest's approving review examines Arthur Sherbo’s scholarly edition of two contemporary memoirs of Johnson. William Shaw's 1785 account, though occasionally inaccurate, provides details of Johnson’s early life and his "magnificently original" mind. Piozzi’s "Anecdotes," covering the final twenty years of Johnson’s life, offers a feminine perspective on her "hero" and his social circle, including Burke and Reynolds. Forrest notes that while Piozzi’s style previously upset critics, her work abounds with "shrewd observations." Sherbo’s editorial contributions are lauded for providing explanatory notes that clarify "hidden references" and correct historical inaccuracies within both primary texts.
Dr. Johnson was Not Rude or Pedantic: He Was Exactly the Opposite, a Worshiper Claims in His Hero's Defense
Report of an essay by Chesterton defending Johnson against popular charges of pedantry and rudeness. Chesterton defines pedantry as the "worship of dead words," whereas Johnson’s language was "always alive." He argues that Johnson's frequent loud or unscrupulous behavior in debate stemmed from a "fundamental modesty" and a sense of "democracy of debate" where he viewed opponents as his intellectual equals. Chesterton disputes the notion that Johnson was a despot, suggesting instead that his bellowing was the act of a "heroic fellow" fighting against what he perceived as superior force. The essay maintains that Johnson's use of long words was an intentional and effective artistic choice rather than a sign of pedantry.
Van Doren reviews Malahide Castle papers volumes fifteen and sixteen, covering Boswell’s life from 1781 to 1786 and the deaths of his father and Johnson. He characterizes Boswell as a "bohemian and an incurable man of letters" and a "dipsomaniac" whose primary thirst was for "interesting" companionship. While the idea of a lairdship stimulated Boswell, the reality bored him. The journals record Boswell’s "Stupor" at Johnson’s death and his "ridiculous resolutions" to honor Johnson’s memory. Van Doren emphasizes Boswell’s "extraordinary, simple candor" in exposing his personal vices and weaknesses. These volumes also detail a near-duel with Macdonald over hospitality accounts in Boswell's account of the "Tour to the Hebrides."
ANW reviews a Penguin edition of the London Journal, 1762-1763, edited by Frederick Pottle. The review describes the volume as a vivid portrayal of eighteenth-century life and a record of the first meeting between Boswell and Johnson. ANW highlights the preface by Christopher Morley, which details the 150-year suppression of the private papers by descendants who viewed Boswell as disreputable. The reviewer notes that American scholars and an unnamed collector spent 20 years searching for these documents. ANW defends the acquisition of the papers by Yale, arguing that Americans view the heritage of English literature as rightfully theirs. The review praises Pottle for his scholarly editing, profound knowledge of history and politics, and an introduction covering the family and life of Boswell through 1762. ANW characterizes Boswell as a lively diarist whose style captures observations, pleasures, depression, and uninhibited amorous intrigues.
Latest Literary Hoax Has Precedents: Irish Girl's Imaginary 'Diary' of 1764 Is Likened to Defoe's And Chatterton's Productions: How Dr. Johnson Exposed a Scottish 'Translator'
John Carter chronicles historical literary hoaxes, citing Johnson as the "Grand Cham of Criticism" who exposed James Macpherson’s "Ossianic" poems as forgeries. Carter describes how Johnson, in his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," proved Macpherson’s claims were fraudulent. When Macpherson challenged him to a duel, Johnson replied that he was "not to be deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menace of a ruffian." The article also mentions the "inevitable Boswell" and notes Johnson's observation on "dancing dogs" to satirize the "puerile fiction" of youthful authors. Carter uses these eighteenth-century precedents to contextualize a contemporary hoax involving Magdadon King-Hall.
Hurst provides information on James Boswell's Edinburgh residence in 1773. Hurst believes the villa "at the back of the meadow" was a separate house, surrounded by a garden and a field. This house was later demolished to provide the site for West St. Giles' Church. The original field was eventually built up with tenements.
The Messenger Boy Forgets His Message: The Messenger Boy Obliges Dr. Johnson in a Taxi
This satirical vignette uses a contemporary scene at Boston’s South Terminal to explore Johnson’s observations on human interest. The author invokes Johnson’s dictum that "description only excites curiosity; seeing satisfies it" to explain why crowds gather to view celebrities. The narrative imagines the "celerity" with which readers of Boswell would pursue a glimpse of Johnson himself "as he went by in a taxi." While acknowledging the triviality of such visual satisfyings, the piece suggests that seeing serves as an assurance that historical figures are "sober reality and not imaginative fiction."
Mallon offers a mixed review of Beryl Bainbridge’s novel concerning the relationship between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale Piozzi, describing the work as an exploration of the Johnsonian circle through the eyes of the Thrales’ daughter, Queeney. Bainbridge depicts Johnson as a large, complicated, and petulant man with a strong odor and variable moods rather than an idealized figure, focusing on domestic tensions, mother-daughter conflict, and Queeney's cold-natured disapproval. The novel explores the controversial psychoerotic speculation concerning Johnson and Thrale, as well as the heartbreak Johnson suffered after Henry Thrale’s death when Hester Thrale decided to marry Gabriel Piozzi. While the reviewer concludes the novel is not Bainbridge’s best, he notes it retains her signature sharp perceptions and grotesque comic elements. However, Mallon critiques the novel's inconsistent narrative strategy, which shifts between epistolary and third-person perspectives, suggesting the third-person strategy fails to deliver the promised subjectivity.
Massie's approving review of this novel, which centers on the relationship between Johnson and Henry and Hester Thrale, describes the work as a masterpiece and a superlative portrait. The narrative, interspersed with letters from the Thrales' daughter Queeney, depicts Johnson's residence at Streatham and his struggle with profound depression, his oddities, and his emotional dependence on the contrary Hester. Massie asserts that Bainbridge successfully navigates the paradox of a man who was disordered, neurotic, and frequently given to irrational outbursts of fury yet remained sane in judgment and generous to the distressed. The review highlights the authenticity of the dialogue and characterizations, noting that Boswell appears only in a walk-on part. Massie concludes that the novel achieves a living marriage between the eighteenth century and the modern era.
Commemorating Boswell's bicentenary, the article details several Edinburgh residences associated with him. After his marriage, Boswell resided at Chessel's Land, Canongate, from 1770 before moving to James's Court by 1773, where Johnson visited in 1773. While in James's Court, he rented a country house near the Meadows from his uncle, Dr. John Boswell. After moving to London, Boswell owned a house in St Andrew Square in the New Town. Boswell repeatedly expressed his dislike of Edinburgh society.
Hitchings's approving review of Liza Picard's survey of mid-eighteenth-century London describes a city defined by "theatricality," "tortuous splendours," and "profound murkiness." While noting that Johnson does not "loom especially large" in the narrative, Hitchings observes that Picard uses definitions from the 1755 Dictionary as thematic "goads" for her chapters. The review highlights Picard's focus on the "economics of daily life" and the visceral, often "insanitary" realities of the capital that Johnson so shamelessly advocated. Hitchings lauds Picard’s use of primary sources, such as the journal of Pehr Kalm, to anatomize the "different worlds" of the populace. The review concludes that Picard vividly brings the era to life with "great verve and originality."
Cecil's enthusiastic review of "Boswell’s London Journal" (1762–1763) celebrates the first publication of the diary. Cecil describes Boswell as a "first-rate diarist" possessing a rare combination of "subtle and unselfconscious" qualities. The review highlights Boswell’s arrival in London to seek a commission in the Guards and his subsequent encounters with Goldsmith, Chatham, and Johnson. Cecil emphasizes Boswell’s "extraordinary naiveté" and his willingness to pour out "details of his sordid amours" and "moments of snobbishness." The reviewer argues that Boswell’s "quenchless zest for life" and "enthusiastic power of admiration" for Johnson make him a "lovable" and "typical example" of humanity.
A correspondent, "M," confirms through title-deeds that Boswell owned the house at 20 St Andrew Square, which he inherited from his father, Lord Auchinleck. The correspondent expresses doubt that Boswell ever occupied the property. The note also inquires about the current status of the house Boswell rented near the Meadows from his uncle, Dr. John Boswell.
Dawes' Hideaway Is Found in Famous Cheshire Cheese: Ambassador Lunches Daily on Meat Pudding at Dr. Johnson's Favorite Restaurant: Americans Come by Swarms to See Him
Douglas reports on the frequenting of the Cheshire Cheese restaurant by American Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes. The restaurant, a famous Fleet Street landmark, is cited as a regular eating place for Johnson and Goldsmith. According to local claims, Johnson performed a significant portion of the "heavy work" on his dictionary within the establishment. The article describes how the restaurant has become a "tourist season" destination where American visitors gather to view relics of the period and stand where Johnson and his contemporaries consumed steak and kidney pudding. The presence of the Ambassador has added a contemporary draw to the historic site, which continues to be "magically linked" to Johnson's literary legacy in London.
This approving review of Fitzgerald's two-volume biography disputes Macaulay's characterization of Boswell as a witless fool. While acknowledging Boswell's "prodigious vanity," "strange buffooneries," and "childish traits," the reviewer highlights his "exquisite" sense of humor and scientific "devotion to facts." The narrative details Boswell's "novel method" of biography, which sought to show Johnson as "gay Sam" and "agreeable Sam" rather than a mere "solemn" figure. It recounts Boswell's literary projects, his sincere "veneration" for Johnson, and his lack of gentlemanly feeling in ridiculing hosts. The reviewer notes that the work includes three likenesses of Boswell and an enumeration of editions, though it suffers from being "unconscionably padded."
This article reviews a new exhibition on James Boswell, detailing his life, his Grand Tour encounters with Rousseau and Voltaire, and his relationship with Johnson. The reviewer praises the exhibition's catalogue but sharply criticizes Hester Thrale's Anecdotes as "pitiful stuff" and "inaccurate" compared to Boswell.
Kirsch welcomes a new edition of Boswell's journal documenting the 1773 Hebrides tour with Johnson. The review explains that while 18th-century editors like Edward Malone removed "minute particulars" and references to the biographer to meet neoclassical standards of art, 20th-century readers prefer the unexpurgated "heart and brain" of Boswell. Kirsch details the recovery of manuscripts from Malahide Castle and the editorial work of Frederick A. Pottle. The article notes specific anecdotes from the tour, including Johnson's decision to leave his pistols and a "curious Diary" with Boswell's wife. Kirsch argues the focus has shifted from the subject to the complex, introspective character of Boswell himself.
Kennedy states that the house where James Boswell lived still stands at No. 15A Meadow Place, behind West St Giles' Church. A 1903 newspaper clipping is cited, identifying the home Dr. John Boswell and subsequently James Boswell occupied as "Boisville." The location is further described as situated immediately behind West St Giles' Church and adjoining No. 1 Meadow Place, though much altered.
Om March 31, 1772, the newly wed, newly sedate young Scot barrister James Boswell sat down to tea with his revered elder friend, Sam Johnson, during a pause in the exhausting social round of a provincial visitor to 18th-century London.
Dr. Johnson's Letters Are Sold at Auction, an American Paying $420 for One
Readers of George Meredith's famous novel. "Diana of the Crossways." will be interested in hearing that two youthful half-American descendants of the original of its heroine have been doing quite a sizable "bit" ever since the war began.
James Boswell's Home Threatened with Decay
Boswell's ancestral home, Auchinleck House, is falling into ruin. Restoration efforts funded in the 1960s were abandoned, and the house has since been heavily vandalized, with windows broken and lead stolen. The Historic Buildings Council is willing to offer a new grant.
Life of Diarist James Boswell Explored on PBS Miniseries
Endrst profiles a three-part PBS miniseries produced by Yale University Films based on the journals of Boswell. Director William Peters explains the project's goal to translate scholarly material into film to reach wider audiences. The series, co-produced with the BBC, employs chromakey technology to place actors within eighteenth-century paintings. The first two episodes present a spirited romp of Boswell's youth in London, while the final installment, Boswell for the Defence, adopts a more serious tone. The production emphasizes historical accuracy, detailing the bawdy underpinnings of Boswell’s life as recorded in his private papers.
James Boswell's Historic Home to be Restored to Former Glory
Gray reports on the £2.2 million restoration of Auchinleck House, the 18th-century family seat of Boswell. Acquired by the Landmark Trust from the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust, the 1760 mansion is identified as one of Scotland's most significant houses. Gray highlights Boswell’s dual legacy as the biographer of Johnson and a sharp observer in his own journals. The text details the architectural involvement of John Adam and the estate’s decline into near-derelict status after 1960. The restoration programme, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Scotland, aims to preserve the interior as a single holiday residence, including the repair of pavilions and obelisks. Gray notes that Johnson frequently visited the estate, which Boswell inherited as the ninth Laird in 1782.
When James Boswell's 'Scotch Blood Boiled with Indignation'
AT night I went to Covent Garden and saw Love in a Village, a new comic opera, for the first night. 1 liked it much. I saw it from the gallery, but I was first in the pit.
Cheshire Cheese Sold: Old London Hostelry Bought by Sybndicate: Inn Once Frequented By Dr. Johnson Goes Under Hammer and is Secured for Less Than $50,000
The Fleet street hostelry in which thousands of American visitors in London have eaten somewhat stodgy pie and have sat in the chair where Dr. Johnson was said to have been wont to deposit his ponderous person has changed hands.
The Cheshire Cheese: Four Hundred Skylarks Concealed in a Single Pudding: Corner of Curious Memories Where Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith Used to Eat Beefsteak Pudding
Sarah Morton chronicles an unconventional visit by an American woman to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a historic Fleet Street tavern traditionally frequented by men. Morton describes the physical space, noting the specific corner seats and wall stains left by Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith. The travelogue details the serving of the tavern’s signature beefsteak pudding, a biweekly ritual unchanged for two centuries. Morton observes the regular clientele, describes the dramatic presentation of the pastry, and details the pudding's ingredients, which include beef, kidneys, and hundreds of skylarks.
This review of O. F. Christie’s "Johnson the Essayist" argues for a revaluation of Johnson’s literary merit beyond his role as a conversationalist in Boswell’s biography. Christie challenges the view of Johnson as a "ponderous pedant" by showcasing the "truth and beauty" found in "The Rambler" and "The Idler." The review emphasizes Johnson’s role as a social critic and a "hater of injustice," particularly his opposition to slavery and vivisection. It highlights the "unrivaled stateliness" and epigrammatic power of his prose style, which Christie illustrates through numerous quotations from the essays.
In this positive review of Hesketh Pearson’s edited correspondence of Anna Seward, Southron highlights the sturdily tenacious nature of Seward, particularly her opposition to Johnson. Southron argues that the letters furnish a lively first-hand picture of the age while illustrating Seward’s view of Johnson as a figure composed of opposite and contradictory material. The review praises Pearson for stripping away ephemeral twaddle to reveal Seward’s real value and her courageous refusal to tell what she deemed the whole truth about Johnson according to Boswell. Southron details Seward’s exasperation with the old elephant Johnson and her defense of literary figures against his strictures, concluding that the volume brings a neglected minor poetess to life.
This review of H. C. Biron's Johnsoniana praises Biron's shrewd appreciation of Boswell, noting his jealousy of Goldsmith causes people to disparage him. Biron argues Boswell was the "inventor of personal journalism" and would have been an ideal editor of a halfpenny newspaper. Johnson's rudeness was of word rather than manner, softened by a kindliness of tone.
Woods reviews James L. Clifford's biography of Hester Lynch Piozzi, noting it follows her from the cradle to the grave. The review highlights Piozzi's twenty-year friendship with Johnson and the controversy surrounding her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. Woods describes the work as a patient assembling of material rather than a portrait-narrative, observing that the mass of detail is inclusive rather than selective. The review notes that Piozzi's character emerges as a real figure through the availability of her personal manuscripts, despite earlier belittling by Boswell and Macaulay.
Opening: "Dear Sir-- Dr. Samuel Johnson was one of the remarkable men of the 18th century. In that famous coterie of conversationalists--the greatest In English history--among whom were Burke, Thurlow, Willkes, Gibbon, Parr, Beauclerk, Garrick, Reynolds, Langton, Manslield, et at., he ..."
Haynes, Mayor of Lichfield, announces that the house where Dr. Samuel Johnson was born is now city property through a citizen's munificence. The Town Council plans to open the birthplace at Whitsuntide, similar to other famous birthplaces. The Mayor appeals to the public for donations of books, prints, manuscripts, and other objects related to Johnson's life and personality to display at the house.
A letter to the London Times relays a complaint from a New Zealand traveler about the "broken state" of Johnson's gravestone. The stone has a transverse crack that dates back beyond the memory of man. Authorities, including the present Dean, prefer to preserve the venerable stone despite this partial disfigurement.
The reviewer regards Hollis as an admirer of Johnson’s conversational skills rather than his writing, though Hollis maintains Johnson triumphed as a master of words. The reviewer notes that the book brings forward nothing substantially new and criticizes Hollis for sharing Johnson’s misappreciation of "the Scotch," only excepting Boswell as a truth-speaker.
This enthusiastic article characterizes Boswell’s Life of Johnson as the "king of biographies" and a "true mirror" of a man with the "soundest intellect." Gregory argues that Johnson's "rock-ribbed and uncompromising" independence is best exemplified by his letter to Lord Chesterfield. He describes Johnson as a "wise man" who could not be fooled by the "tricksters of the world" because he "looked through appearances to the reality." The sermon-like piece emphasizes Johnson's "sterling honesty of purpose" and his refusal to "crawl or cringe" before the powerful. Gregory concludes that Johnson’s ability to conquer his own "weaknesses" makes his life an "immortal sermon" for the world.
Herford reviews Walter Raleigh's Leslie Stephen lecture on Johnson. Raleigh seeks to vindicate the Johnson of the pre-Boswellian years, specifically challenging the critical doctrine that the prose in the Rambler and Idler consists merely of commonplaces. Herford notes that while Johnson's essays appear full of oft-repeated truths, they remain rich in conclusions gathered from life and suffering. The review highlights Raleigh's emphasis on the romantic mind and imaginative power within Johnson, particularly in his review of Soame Jenyns. Herford compares Johnson's preference for generalities to the naked speech of Wordsworth, noting that both men used simplified styles to convey deep apprehensions of life while rejecting the traditional apparel of literature.
Cheshire Cheese Sold: Famous Old London Hostelry Bought by Syndicate: Frequented by Dr. Johnson
This report chronicles the sale of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a prominent Fleet Street hostelry, to a financial syndicate for less than sixty thousand dollars. The narrative highlights the establishment's association with Johnson, noting that the tavern remains a destination for tourists seeking to sit in the chair supposedly frequented by him. After years of litigation in the Court of Chancery, the property moved from the Moore family to a small company led by an unnamed nobleman. The account also details the pending sale of Holly Lodge, the former Georgian residence of Baroness Burdett-Coutts on Highgate Hill, and mentions the upcoming disappearance of the nearby Ben Jonson Tavern. It describes the historical significance of the Holly Lodge grounds, including their legendary connection to Dick Whittington and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators.
Wilmer argues that Johnson remains more interesting as a personality than as an author, noting that the modern percentage of those who actually read his work is 'very small'. He defends The Rambler against charges of being 'dull' or 'moralising about commonplaces,' asserting that the essays are 'on fire with conclusions gathered from a life of toil and suffering.' Wilmer distinguishes between the 'Boswellian Johnson,' whom he views as a creation of Boswell's biography, and the 'non-Boswellian Johnson' found in the primary texts. He identifies a 'similarity of spirit' between Johnson’s Life of Savage and Boswell’s portrayal of Johnson, emphasizing Johnson’s 'wisdom and experience.'
This review of a life of Joshua Reynolds notes his intimate association with Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith. It describes the 1752 London literary scene where Johnson was in his prime and Reynolds began attracting the nobility to his studio. The text details the friendship between Johnson and Reynolds, mentioning that Reynolds presented a portrait of Johnson to Boswell, which served as the basis for the engraving in the Life of Johnson. Reynolds, a member of the Literary Club alongside Johnson, lived to see his friend pass to the life beyond. The review also briefly mentions that Johnson presented definitions and etymologies for his dictionary while working in his Gough Square attic.
'Samuel Johnson' Drama Had Absorbing Moments
Crosby provides a mixed review of the Omnibus television production of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. While praising the casting of Peter Ustinov as Johnson and Kenneth Haigh as Boswell, Crosby criticizes the script for being an "incessant string" of famous wisecracks that lacked humanizing moments. He describes Ustinov's performance as "goutiest" and "snivelliest," comparing it unfavorably to a museum visit. However, Crosby notes a deeply moving scene where Johnson recounts the physical toll of his father's penury. The review also mentions the production's attempt to recreate eighteenth-century London, including visits to Bedlam and the Thrales.
Wilson reviews Hitchings' account of the creation of Johnson's Dictionary, noting its 42,773 entries were primarily the work of "one man." The text highlights how Johnson's "preferences, predilections, quirks and prejudices" appear in his definitions, such as the "custom-designed" description of a patron aimed at Lord Chesterfield. Wilson describes how Johnson's work was consulted in modern legal disputes regarding constitutional language. The narrative illustrates Johnson's celebrity status, noting his comment to Boswell that "hardly a day" passed without him appearing in the newspapers.
In this letter to the editor, John J. Eddy challenges a previous Travel section article that labeled Johnson a "conceited old bore." Eddy argues that Johnson was a "gripping conversationalist" whose "years of desperate poverty" instilled a permanent empathy for the poor. The letter highlights Johnson's "large, generous, great-souled" nature, citing his devotion to Elizabeth Porter and his advice to "cling to those who cling to you." Eddy defends Johnson’s wit and common-sense approach to life, asserting that the author wrote nearly as well as he spoke.
Gilder summarizes the early life and professional trajectory of Boswell as presented in Percy Fitzgerald’s two-volume biography. The account details Boswell’s upbringing at the family seat in Auchinleck, his education in Edinburgh, and his early tendency toward dissipation and eccentricity that troubled his father. Gilder notes Boswell’s brief interest in Catholicism and his subsequent move to London, where he sought entry into fashionable society. The narrative covers Boswell's 1761 efforts to refine his "uncouth brogue" under Thomas Sheridan and his eventual 1763 introduction to Johnson, whom he made a "friend for life" within two months. Gilder also discusses Boswell's marriage to Peggy Montgomery, characterizing the union as unhappy due to Boswell’s "love for 'wine, women, and song'" and Johnson’s frequent, taxing presence as an unexpected guest. The article concludes by describing Boswell’s final years spent preparing his "great life" of Johnson before succumbing to "long-continued dissipation."
The instalment covers Johnson's schooldays at Lichfield and Stourbridge. Reade documents Johnson's parents and notes the intriguing detail that Lichfield contained Lochmaben people named Johnston (potentially his ancestors) and a James Boswell in his father's time.
Dr. Johnson's Home Is Given to Britain: Cecil Harmsworth Presents the Famous Old House at 17 Gough Square, London
Selden reports on the ceremony transferring Johnson's house at 17 Gough Square to the British nation. Cecil Harmsworth, who originally purchased the building to save it from wreckers, presented the deed to Augustine Birrell and a board of governors. The Georgian house served as the site where Johnson wrote his Dictionary, the Rambler, and Rasselas. Selden describes a commemorative dinner held in the attic where Johnson's Scottish copyists once worked. Notable attendees included Lord Chief Justice Hewart, Sir William Orpen, and A. Edward Newton. The article recounts historical events at the house, such as the 1752 death of Johnson's wife and his arrest for a debt of $25, which Samuel Richardson eventually paid.
This article, reprinted from the London Telegraph, commemorates the ninety-ninth anniversary of Johnson's death. It contrasts the financial success of David Garrick with the "worst hardships and degradations" Johnson suffered before receiving a literary pension in 1762. The account details Johnson's early poverty in London, including nights spent walking St. James's Square without food. It describes the "strange assemblage" at his Bolt Court residence, including Anna Williams, Robert Levett, and Francis Barber. The author emphasizes that while the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare secured his fame, Johnson remains best known as a man rather than an author due to Boswell's biography. The narrative concludes by praising Johnson's "noble" character and his practice of charity toward the poor.
This report announces an exhibition of Johnson's works at Yale University, featuring a lecture by Charles G. Osgood titled "Turning to Johnson." The exhibition emphasizes Johnson's own contributions as a lexicographer, novelist, essayist, and poet, specifically excluding material related to his biographer, Boswell. Osgood advocates a return to the "sanity and good sense" of the 18th century.
McIntyre reviews Beryl Bainbridge’s historical fiction, which depicts Johnson in his declining years through the perspective of Queeney, the eldest daughter of Henry and Hester Thrale. The novel explores Johnson’s breakdown at Bolt Court, his refuge at Streatham, and his eventual savage break with Piozzi following her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. McIntyre notes that Bainbridge "steeped herself in Johnsoniana" to present a narrative of "love thwarted by circumstance." The review highlights the contrast between Queeney’s childhood perceptions and her adult memories, suggesting that all characters reshape their past. McIntyre praises the sharp focus of the characters, specifically Johnson’s quirkiness and Piozzi’s "flightiness and pretentiousness."
Perucho’s biographical narrative discusses the 1773 journey of Johnson and Boswell to Scotland and the Hebrides. The author examines the "chronological galimatias" of Johnson's travels and works, including the writing of Rasselas to defray his mother's funeral expenses. Perucho highlights the "acid humor" of the Lives of the Poets and the "ingenuity and malice" found in Boswell’s biography. The narrative details a French edition of the Highland tour, featuring caricatures by Thomas Rowlandson. Perucho recounts specific anecdotes from the trip, including Johnson’s antiescotés sentiments in Edinburgh, his interactions with Boswell’s daughter Veronica, and his refusal to eat "speldings." The account concludes with a dialogue regarding ghosts and David Garrick’s stage acting, where Johnson asserts that a ghost would be the one to flee from him.
Allen’s review of John Wain’s Samuel Johnson: A Biography describes the work as a "revisionist approach" intended to replace the "touchy literary dragon" of tradition with a more human, "gregarious" figure. Allen notes that Wain, despite doing no original research, successfully charts Johnson’s "Pilgrim’s Progress" from Lichfield to Westminster Abbey. The review highlights Wain’s focus on the "Dictionary years," the tour of Scotland with Boswell, and Johnson’s "devout Christian" faith which often triggered "cankerous" guilt. While Allen finds Wain’s prose sometimes "cloying" and his speculations on "sexual torments" bathetic, he praises the "shred analysis" of Boswell’s role and the convincing comparison drawn between Johnson and George Orwell.
Samuel Johnson, Born 18th September 1709
Johnson's life proved that ability, knowledge, and courage could achieve destiny, evidenced by his struggles with disease and poverty, and his eventual pension of £300 per annum. His pension allowed him to escape his definition of a State hireling and rise from his attic existence. His immortal letter to Lord Chesterfield is recalled, complaining of neglect during the seven years he spent working on the Dictionary.
This brief notice describes a New Penguin Shakespeare Library compilation edited by H. R. Woudhuysen. The edition gathers Johnson's authoritative writings on Shakespeare, including the celebrated Preface to Shakespeare. It further incorporates miscellaneous materials such as relevant entries from Johnson's Dictionary, conversational remarks recorded by peers, and various essays.
This excerpt from the Life of Johnson recounts an excursion to Greenwich. Boswell describes reading Johnson’s poem "London" aloud and recording Johnson’s criticisms of Greenwich Hospital’s architecture. The narrative covers Johnson’s praise for the Latin verses of George Buchanan and his advice to Boswell on a "grand scale of human knowledge," suggesting he "excel in" one branch while acquiring "a little of every kind." The account concludes with a walk in Greenwich Park where Boswell admits he prefers the "busy hum of men" in Fleet Street to the beauties of nature, a sentiment with which Johnson agrees.
Leaving Samuel Johnson One Up on a Physician
This brief anecdote recounts a sharp exchange between Johnson and a foppish physician. When the physician attempts to remind Johnson of a previous meeting by citing the fine quality of the coat he wore that day, Johnson dismisses the claim of acquaintance. He asserts that even had the man been dipped in the gold-bearing waters of the Pactolus, he still would not have noticed him.
This article reviews a "hero's lunch" at the Library of Congress honoring Johnson on the 200th anniversary of his death. The event featured scholars like Burchfield, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Wain, Johnson's biographer. The attendees discussed Johnson’s legacy, focusing on his dictionary, his reputation for idleness despite his achievements, and his unique style of wit and prose. The discussion featured anecdotes about Johnson’s coinages, his anti-American remarks, his humor, and his famous letter to his patron, Lord Chesterfield. The article underscores Johnson's enduring appeal as a great wit and stylist.
Samuel Johnson and the Virtue of Capitalism
Gray characterizes Johnson as a proto-capitalist whose observations on commerce and human nature remain relevant. Gray draws from Rasselas to argue that Johnson viewed human happiness as a product of striving and "motion" rather than stagnation. The account highlights Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, where he contrasted the "desolation" of feudal Hebridean lands with the "prosperous trade" of New Aberdeen. Gray notes that Johnson’s 1753 essay in The Adventurer 67 preceded Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in celebrating the division of labor and the variety of occupations in London. The narrative emphasizes Johnson's belief that a system of commercial cooperation brought individuals together in mutually beneficial ways. Gray asserts that while the term "capitalism" was unknown to Johnson, his Dictionary defined a "capitalist" as one possessing a capital fund. The narrative concludes that Johnson’s insights into man’s "desirous" nature provide a moral defense of the market system against modern critics.
Dr. Samuel Johnson's New Year's Resolutions
Johnson's New Year's Resolutions for multiple years consistently focused on regulating his sleep and rising early. His resolutions, spanning from 1760 to 1774, show a recurring, persistent goal: to rise as early as he could, and specifically, to rise at eight, which he noted was "much earlier than I now rise, for I often lie till 2."
Samuel Johnson Diary Is Found in New York
Colonel Ralph H. Isham, a Boswell authority, discovered Johnson's diary in a chest of papers in New York. The diary, covering 1765 to 1784, is sketchy and contains intermittent entries about small things, sometimes leaving months blank, confirming a work Boswell frequently referenced.
Carrion provides an approving review of a one-volume selection of Johnson’s Dictionary, edited in 1982. He describes the work as a "personal and ambitious" adventure that avoids the "boredom" of institutional academies. The review highlights Johnson’s "amenity of concept" and use of humor in definitions, such as describing a politician as a "man of artifice" and a lexicographer as an "innocuous slave." Carrion notes Johnson’s reliance on writers like Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope for support citations, creating a dialogue between the lexicographer and the reader. He observes that Johnson remained a "pensioner" despite his own disparaging definition of the term. The review emphasizes that Johnson’s work served as an obligatory reference for over a century, offering a "lexical treasure" that reflects the beauty and irony of the English language.
Gray notes that Boswell commented on the curious fact that Johnson chiefly contracted with Scotsmen for his literary labors. William Strahan printed the Dictionary, and Andrew Millar conducted its publication. Johnson's retort to Millar's "Thank God I have done with him" was: "I am glad that he thanks God for anything." Johnson and Strahan were close friends who offered mutual assistance, including Johnson's literary judgment helping Strahan publish Hugh Blair's Sermons.
Nye’s review of John Wain’s biography describes the work as a "popular book" that maintains a high level of informativeness for the general reader. Nye questions Wain’s claim that his similar geographical and social origins provide a unique "inside" view of Johnson, yet he praises the sensitivity with which Wain addresses Johnson’s "mixture of normality and neurosis". The review notes that Wain presents a version of Johnson more complex than the "creature of Boswell's recording," while acknowledging that Boswell’s work remains indispensable. Nye concludes that Wain successfully conveys the "circumference" of eighteenth-century reality, although he finds Wain’s authorial style occasionally "hectored".
Archer presents a satirical vignette imagining Johnson reborn into twentieth-century London, specifically the technological marvels of 1909. Walking down Fleet Street, Johnson encounters modern marvels such as bicycles, motor vehicles, steam locomotives, and trains, which Archer suggests he would find as miraculous as would Caesar or Aristotle. The narrative depicts Johnson's hypothetical bewilderment at newspapers containing global news from New York and Peking—which Archer speculates Johnson would view as an invention similar to his own fabricated parliamentary speeches—as well as the gramophone, the telephone, and wireless telegraphy. Archer posits that Johnson would view a photograph of a man flying across the Straits of Dover, or the modern world in general, as a "dream probably invented by the devil" while struggling to understand new social concepts like "socialism," a word unknown to his dictionary. The piece uses Johnson as a measure of change, concluding that he remains the man we know best despite never having met him.
Johnson's penchant for youthful escapades is narrated through two examples. First, he ceremoniously emptied his pockets and deliberately rolled down a steep hill, pleading "I haven't had a roll for such a long time!" when Langton tried to dissuade him. Second, upon being roused at 3 a.m. by Beauclerk and Langton, Johnson aggressively greeted them, then joined their "frisk," which included a drinking bout and bantering watermen while traveling by boat to Billingsgate.
Library Is Given Samuel Johnson's Walking Stick
This brief news report details the donation of Johnson's walking stick to the Library of Congress. Florence Bayard Hilles presented the 37.5-inch cane, which features a polished black oryx horn shaft, a black carrying cord, a dark tassel, and a silver snuffbox handle, in memory of her father, Thomas Francis Bayard. The account notes that the term "walkingstaff" from Johnson's own Dictionary best describes the object. The report traces the provenance of the artifact from Canadian-born jurist Thomas Chandler Haliburton in 1860, to his son Baron Arthur Lawrence Haliburton, who gifted it to Ambassador Thomas Francis Bayard in 1893.
This review examines Hill’s collection of nearly 700 letters, noting that many were previously published by Hester Lynch Piozzi. The reviewer finds the "new letters" addressed to Dr. Taylor inferior to the old, though they display Johnson’s "practical and sound" advice on marriage and his "heterographic freaks" in spelling. The review highlights the "playful abandonment" in letters to Piozzi, contrasted with the "gossip of one old valetudinarian" found in the Taylor series. Hill is credited for "conscientiously" revising and annotating the existing correspondence.
Oxford Professor to Speak at U. of C. on Samuel Johnson
Former Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, D. Nichol Smith, served as the Frederic Ives Carpenter visiting professor of English at the University of Chicago. While there, Smith delivered a free public lecture on Samuel Johnson and conducted an informal seminar for philosophy doctorate candidates in the English department.
Dr. Samuel Johnson on the House of Peers
A letter to the editor reminds legislators of Dr. Johnson's favorable opinion of the House of Peers, expressed in 1773 during his tour to the Hebrides. While a guest at Slaines Castle, Johnson told Boswell that "We know the House of Peers have made noble stands, when the House of Commons durst not."
Last Chapters in Tribute to Samuel Johnson Spell Out His Words' Worth
This Associated Press report chronicles the bicentenary commemorations of Johnson's death held at the House of Commons and in Lichfield. Led by the Very Rev. Edward Carpenter, the Johnson Society honored the "dictionary-maker" whose work raised him from "wretched poverty to fame." The report includes commentary from the Daily Telegraph and The Times, suggesting Johnson's "boorish behavior" and "slovenly dress" would suit modern England. The Times describes Johnson as a "writer of genius" and a more suitable patron saint for the English than St. George because he shaped the "glory" of the English language.
Hutchison's enthusiastic review describes this two-volume compilation as a storehouse of information that functions as a cyclorama of eighteenth-century British civilization. Hutchison emphasizes how the twenty-seven contributors portray a period of transition, noting that while Johnson witnessed significant social and political changes before his death in 1784, the era maintained a manifest solidarity and unity of idea. The review highlights the specific focus on the evolution of manners, the development of the British inn as a repository for temporarily wearied human flesh, and the harsh realities of legal and medical practices. Hutchison praises the eight-score illustrations for providing a profitable understanding of the era's muddy roads, costumes, and amusements.
U. of C. Scholar Called Top Samuel Johnson Expert
This obituary records the life of Kolb, a pre-eminent University of Chicago scholar and authority on Johnson. Kolb edited nine books, including six on Johnson, and served as chairman of the English department and co-editor of Modern Philology. The text highlights parallels between Kolb's humble background and Johnson's rise as a "poor country boy" who conquered British literary society. DeMaria describes Kolb as the "leading authority in the world" on the eighteenth-century lexicographer and essayist.
This approving review of Charles Norman’s biography provides an account of Johnson that challenges the "ogre" often depicted by Boswell. While acknowledging Boswell’s record of Johnson as a "great writer" and an "Oddity," the reviewer notes that Norman incorporates contemporary records unknown to Boswell to produce a more human portrait. The review maintains that Norman avoids focusing solely on "eccentric aspects" or "grotesque and rude" characteristics, choosing instead to explore Johnson’s complex emotions. The reviewer concludes that Norman’s erudite approach serves as an excellent introduction to Johnson.
This article discusses how Dr. Johnson combated melancholy. Rather than calling a physician, he would go to an inn and talk in an exaggerated way to "divert distressing thoughts." The author interprets this as a positive, active way to "brave the enemy."
Corrects a common error: Johnson performed his famous filial penance (bareheaded in the rain) in the Uttoxeter market-place, not Lichfield.
A correspondent notes that Johnson is said to have revised the Latin epitaph for mathematician Colin Maclaurin's tombstone in Greyfriars' churchyard. Written by Maclaurin's son, Lord Dreghorn, the revision suggests the epitaph was composed Johnsono ipso adjuvante. The letter also mentions a rare 1785 edition of Johnson's poems published by a bookseller named Osborne, whom Johnson once physically assaulted.
This review analyzes G. K. Chesterton’s play, The Judgment of Dr. Johnson, performed at the Arts Theater. Chesterton uses Johnson’s "authentic sayings as recorded by Boswell" to construct a story involving an American spy and John Wilkes. The reviewer notes that while the first two acts use Johnson's words verbatim, the third act sees Chesterton "give his collaborator the slip" to invent original dialogue. Francis Sullivan portrays a "thundering, explosive and resonant" Johnson. The reviewer compares Johnson’s "forthright common sense" with Chesterton’s "fantastic flights of logical fancy," observing that although Johnson’s methods change during the play, the production remains entertaining and contains "wise words on the foundations of politics."
Fairgrieve cites a passage from Johnson's philosophical romance, Rasselas, which prophetically describes the perils of aviation. In the passage, a mechanician refuses to teach men to fly because walls, mountains, and seas would not secure the good against an invasion by a "flight of northern savages" descending upon a fruitful region, a concept Fairgrieve finds relevant to current world events.
This approving review of Hugh Kingsmill's Samuel Johnson praises the work as a "very readable" condensed alternative for those lacking patience for Boswell. The reviewer notes Kingsmill’s effective use of "copious material" to present a "lovable character" defined by sympathy and understanding rather than merely a triumph over suffering. It highlights Kingsmill's argument that Johnson did not share the typical English "horror" regarding financial dishonesty and observes that Boswell emerges from the study "much more favourably" than expected.
In a letter to the editor, T. B. Robertson, an "ardent Johnsonian," expresses pleasure at The Scotsman's recent republication of an 1866 item about Dr. Johnson and the Mitre Tavern. The writer states that Scotland hears too little of the "great man and his biographer."
Haskell’s inquisitive letter directs readers to Hawthorne’s "Our Old Home" for an account of an American’s visit to Uttoxeter. Haskell’s notes track Hawthorne’s regret that the market place lacked a memorial to Johnson’s celebrated act of "Memory and Remorse." Haskell’s highlights emphasize Hawthorne’s observation that local inhabitants appeared ignorant of the historical event. Haskell's letter requests a complete list of paintings and sketches depicting this penance to document the occurrence.
Madame Sarah Grand, Mayoress of Bath, expressed the opinion that Dr. Johnson's remark that he liked a good hater was the most stupid statement ever made by an eminent man. She urged schoolgirls to eliminate the word "hate" from their vocabulary and cultivate kindness toward others.
P. K.'s approving review of Christopher Hollis's "Dr. Johnson" highlights the author's effort to explain Johnson's "strange diversity" of friendships and his "hard-headed" Toryism. Hollis explores how Johnson, despite his own prejudices and sensory limitations—such as being unable to distinguish the "top from the bottom of a picture" or having no "note of music in his heart"—maintained deep bonds with Joshua Reynolds, Charles Burney, and James Boswell. The reviewer lauds Hollis's moving tribute to Johnson's "tolerance for human weakness" learned during the "ordeal of Grub Street." Hollis defines Johnson's Toryism not as a form of government, but as a "belief... that people are happiest in a society which provides for each a settled station."
The article quotes Johnson's decided opinion that French should not be used on a menu card. He declared that perusing a French menu "obfuscated" his brain. Johnson supposedly told Boswell to have the waiters bring him a "dish of hog's puddings, a slice or two from the upper cut of a well-roasted sirloin and two apple dumplings" instead.
The French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Doctor Johnson
This review of The French Journals of Mrs Thrale and Doctor Johnson, edited by Moses Tyson and Henry Guppy, describes the 1931 recovery of Thrale's notebook recording a 1775 journey. The review notes that Thrale’s accounts are more comprehensive than Johnson’s own "brief and incomplete journal" previously published by Boswell. While Thrale was often absorbed by Parisian sights and Marie Antoinette, she records that Johnson generally "disliked the French" and exhibited behavior ranging from boorish to gracious depending on his company.
Evans reviews the scholarly edition of The Poems of Samuel Johnson, edited by David Nichol Smith and Edward McAdam. The reviewer praises the volume for its finality and the excellence of its critical apparatus. The edition clarifies obscurities in The Vanity of Human Wishes and includes a large quantity of Latin poems, which Evans finds often superior to Johnson’s incidental English verse. While the review notes that the play Irene remains a failure in dramatic structure, it asserts that London and The Vanity of Human Wishes are essential parts of the English literary heritage. Evans commends the editors for using brief, simple statements to elucidate complex textual perplexties.
Young's positive review of the Yale edition of Johnson’s diaries and prayers argues that these private records show a whole man rather than a diseased hypochondriac. The review highlights Johnson’s deep interest in mechanics and his meticulous recording of medical details in Latin to maintain decent obscurity. Young notes that the diaries reveal Johnson’s abiding melancholy and his desperate loneliness after the death of his wife. The reviewer praises the editors for providing a running commentary that clarifies the difference between Johnson’s public persona and his private reflections. It concludes that the diary demonstrates how little Boswell actually knew of his subject’s internal life.
Reade's sixth installment of Johnsonian Gleanings, covering 1735–1740, deals with Johnson's life, his marriage to "Tetty," and his short-lived school at Edial. The volume discusses Tetty's relatives and the journey Johnson and David Garrick made to London in search of fortune, which Gilbert Walmsley smoothed. The work includes previously unreproduced portraits of Walmsley, his wife Magdalen Aston, and her sister "Molly" Aston.
This report describes the dilapidated state of the Johnson statue near St. Clement Danes. The author details physical damage including a puncture from wartime bombing, soot accumulation, and bird disfigurement of the bronze book. Although a member of the Johnson Society of London provided £300 for restoration, the architect delayed the cleaning until the rebuilding of the church. The account notes that even daffodils planted at the base failed to bloom due to "bronze secretions." Given the success of a recent memoir by Boswell, the author suggests moving the memorial to a cleaner site.
Mohuan’s letter to the editor highlights Johnson’s "characteristic energy" and "great compassion" regarding the historical distresses of the Irish nation. Relying on records provided by Boswell, Mohuan chronicles Johnson’s severe reprobation of the "barbarous, debilitating policy" of the British government toward Irish Catholics, which Johnson identified as a "detestable mode of persecution". The letter notes that Johnson’s humanity often superseded his Toryism, leading him to dispute the necessity of English authority if maintained by "iniquity". Mohuan further cites Johnson’s 1779 warning against a Union with England, in which Johnson bluntly asserted that such an alliance would serve only to rob the Irish people.
Glendinning’s approving review of Adam Sisman’s "Boswell's Presumptuous Task" focuses on the technical and emotional labor behind the composition of the "Life of Johnson." The review highlights Boswell’s "guileless" and socially ambitious nature, noting how his journals captured Johnson’s "bizarre behaviour" and table manners to create a dramatic series of "scenes." Glendinning emphasizes the significant, often overlooked role of the Irish scholar Edmund Malone, who acted as a methodical editor, suppressing indiscretions and refining Boswell’s verbosity to ensure the work's completion. The article details Boswell’s distress upon reading Piozzi’s rival memoir, which revealed an intimacy with Johnson that Boswell had not previously realized. While Glendinning suggests Sisman may overstate the revolutionary nature of Boswell’s verbatim methods by ignoring precedents in biographies of Swift, she praises the book's account of Boswell’s final years. The narrative concludes with Boswell’s death at fifty-four, following a period of depression and public drunkenness, and notes the 20th-century discovery of his papers at Malahide Castle.
This editorial essay reflects on Johnson's observation that spring "affords to a mind free from the disturbances of cares and passions almost everything that our present state makes us capable of enjoying." The anonymous author contrasts the peaceful, philosophical enjoyment of nature described by Johnson with the "artificial wants" and political anxieties of the 1930s. While acknowledging Johnson's own penchant for "twenty cups of tea" rather than acting as a "faun," the piece suggests Johnson possessed a "purer pleasure" than modern New Yorkers. The narrative laments that contemporary society, preoccupied with "important" fashion, professional sports, and the "bombers" of dictators, fails to achieve the "Johnsonian sense" of the season. The author questions whether Johnson was "infantile" in his pronouncement or if modern life has simply drifted too far from the "primary desire" for sunshine, soft grass, and "gayety."
This travel narrative, excerpted from Boswell, describes a journey through the Isle of Skye. Johnson remains in his chamber writing letters, causing a delay in the party’s departure. Upon emerging, he reflects on their "confined situation" by quoting a song comparing islands to prisons. The account details their interactions with local figures like Donald M'Queen and Young Col, including Johnson’s affectionate parting from M'Queen. Boswell records Johnson’s observations on the "solemn" and "black coast of Sky" during a night boat journey to Strolimus, where they received hospitality from local residents.
This enthusiastic review describes Contemporary Criticisms of Dr. Samuel Johnson, His Works and His Biographers, a four-hundred-page volume edited by John Ker Spittal. The collection aggregates reviews and critiques originally published a century and a half earlier in approximately fifty volumes of the Monthly Review, a periodical Johnson reportedly praised for its impartiality. The review notes that the reprinted materials include opinions published during Johnson's lifetime, extracts from his diary, and various accounts of his personal tastes, prejudices, and literary activities. The reviewer highlights the "alluring opportunity" the book provides to glimpse contemporary assessments of Johnson's character and the work of his early biographers. Brief biographical details of Spittal are provided, noting his previous career in cotton, cattle, and mining in Texas and Mexico before turning to this editorial project.
This brief notice, reprinted from Galignani, describes Johnson’s "very shabby" wigs, which were often singed at the front because his short-sightedness required him to read close to candles. The text details a daily "ludicrous ceremony" at Streatham where Piozzi’s butler kept a fresh wig ready. As Johnson moved from the drawing room to dinner, the servant would remove the singed wig and replace it with a newer one to ensure the Doctor appeared presentable at the table.
Documents sold at Christie's refer to "Dr. Johnson's Tavern and Music-Hall" in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. The tavern closed in 1860, but experts in London topography have found no other record of its existence. Johnson's name on the signboard reflected his pride in being a "clubbable man" and his praise for "the felicity of England in its taverns and inns."
Dr. Robert Hutchison's lecture on Johnson and Medicine noted that Johnson's knowledge of the field was extensive and accurate, and his views were more modern than those of most contemporary physicians. Johnson disapproved of habitual bleeding and polypharmacy. He also praised and practiced teetotalism for many years in a hard-drinking age.
Reviews an "unsensational" exhibition of early 18th-century furniture from the Claude Rotch Bequest at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The reviewer describes the chairs and chests as "Johnsonian in character": "orvaceous, momentous, dark but polished."
The piece presents an anecdote from Boswell's Life (1769) to illustrate Johnson's commentary on technology. Johnson responds to Mr. Ferguson's description of a newly invented "machine, which went without horses" by observing that the person operating it merely substitutes one labor for another, moving either himself alone or himself and the machine.
This enthusiastic review covers A. Edward Newton’s play, Dr. Johnson. The reviewer praises Newton for making Johnson "take on again... the verisimilitude of life" across four pivotal scenes: the completion of the dictionary in Gough Square, a dinner at Streatham, the sale of the Thrale brewery, and Johnson’s death in Bolt Court. It describes the climax as "masterly" and "instinct with pathos," noting the inclusion of a "richly pleasurable" cast including Reynolds, Goldsmith, and Burney. Rede observes only one "slight hiatus of time" in Boswell’s dialogue but forgives it for the work’s "very great excellence."
An agitation has begun in Lichfield to acquire Johnson's birthplace for a museum or club, with local residents offering to donate Johnson relics.
The Lennox recalls that Dr. Johnson assisted in composing the lengthy Latin epitaph for Tobias Smollett's monumental pillar in Renton, Dunbarton. Local chronicler Joseph Irving states that Johnson furnished several lines at the request of his host, James Smollett of Bonhill, when Johnson passed a night at Cameron House on his return from the Hebrides. Johnson contemptuously dismissed an English inscription by Lord Kames.
A reader recalls Johnson predicting Union with Ireland would result in robbery, stating, "We should unite with you only to rob you."
Reprinted from the "British Quarterly Review," this biographical narrative explores how Johnson’s "long struggle with fortune" shaped his character and empathy for the destitute. The text describes Johnson's extreme poverty, noting he wrote "Rasselas" in one week to pay for his mother’s funeral. Despite his own financial difficulties, Johnson "loved the poor" and shared his home with marginalized figures like Robert Levett and the blind Mrs. Williams. The narrative attributes Johnson's "roughness" to his early associations with "Bohemians" like Savage, while asserting that his heart remained "open as day to the demands of friendship."
The reviewer commends Smith and McAdam for their authoritative edition of The Poems of Samuel Johnson, a project decades in development and interrupted by the First World War. This volume achieves Boswell’s unfulfilled ambition of a complete poetical record, incorporating over twenty new pieces and the editio princeps of "On St. Simon and St. Jude." While maintaining the prominence of "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes," the editors adopt a chronological arrangement for minor works, interspersing Latin and Greek translations within the English sequence. The review emphasizes the exhaustive nature of the editorial apparatus, which includes introductory notes on composition and comprehensive lists of textual variants, rendering the volume indispensable for eighteenth-century scholarship.
Altick's approving review of Walter Jackson Bate's monograph emphasizes the inseparability of Johnson's biography and his ethical generalizations. Altick notes that Johnson's moral philosophy in "The Idler," "The Rambler," "Rasselas," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" was "hammered out of concrete experience" rather than abstract study. The review highlights Johnson's "heroism of his spiritual purgation" in the face of lifelong physical ailments, poverty, and a "deep sense of guilt." Altick credits Bate with increasing Johnson's stature by demonstrating how he distilled a solution for human frustration from a "relentless analysis of human motivation."
Laments the sale of Johnson's birthplace in Lichfield, fearing its demolition, and notes that public indifference prevented a centenary celebration in 1784.
Hill appeals to the public for copies of unpublished letters by Johnson and Boswell to include in a new Clarendon Press edition of their correspondence.
This brief excerpt presents Johnson's views on the necessity of hope in every human condition. Johnson argues that without hope, the miseries of poverty, sickness, or captivity would be insupportable. Furthermore, he asserts that even the happiest terrestrial existence requires hope, which elevates life with the expectation of some new possession or enjoyment. Though fallacious, hope's promises hold more value than fortune's gifts.
This review discusses John Ker Spittal's Contemporary Criticisms of Dr. Johnson, a collection of reviews from The Monthly Review. The original reviews show Johnson established his fame in his lifetime. The collection praises works by Piozzi, Anderson, and Murphy, but the review's contemporary author praises the forceful style of the eighteenth-century criticism, noting the Monthly Review's strong censure of Sir John Hawkins's Life.
Sir -- May I clarify a point in my recent letter on Scottish Independence which seems to have been misunderstood?
This positive compilation of vignettes highlights the quick wit, moral rectitude, and conversational dominance of Johnson. The item recounts multiple interactions, including Johnson comparing writing for pleasure to Leander swimming the Hellespont, detailing his arduous view of a conscientious clergyman's life, and humorously describing courting Elizabeth Porter. Additional accounts feature Johnson delivering a cynical retort about trees to a bishop in St. James' Park, deploying grandiloquent vocabulary to describe carriage noise, and using a beverage analogy to defeat a Cambridge student's literary argument. The item further outlines his absolute intolerance for swearing, an Italian prince's humorous linguistic blunder regarding the Rambler, a firm rejection of suicide during a conversation with Boswell, and a sharp retaliatory riddle used to silence a persistent young lady at dinner.
W. Clement Shorter appeals in a letter for the preservation of Johnson's house in Gough Square, which identifies Johnson domestically with a district he loved. Shorter states the freehold could be purchased for £5,500 and that its destruction would be a tragedy. The attics remain as they were when Johnson and his assistants compiled the Dictionary.
This review discusses a new edition of Johnson's Prayers and Meditations, noting its publication fulfills Johnson's wishes, conveyed to Dr. Strahan, for its publication after his death for charity. The prayers reveal the clarity, definiteness, and intense piety of Johnson's religious views, presenting a different image of the man than the one left by Boswell.
Chapman’s descriptive report commemorates the sesquicentennial of Johnson’s death by detailing a Bodleian Library exhibition of books and manuscripts. The display features "precious loans" and "domestic treasure," including the manuscript of "Prayers and Meditations," a letter to "little Jenny Langton" written in a large hand for a child’s perusal, the "Round Robin" remonstrance regarding Goldsmith’s epitaph, and a famous caricature of Boswell by Lawrence. The review identifies the publication of the Hill edition of the Life, revised by Powell, as the "greatest event of a Johnsonian year," predicting the revision will "itself take rank as a classic" among scholarly editions. The article further details recent acquisitions at Pembroke College and progress at the Bodleian, which Johnson once honored as "Bodley’s dome."
This collection of anecdotes, reprinted from the China Press, highlights Johnson’s "true practical delicacy" through his treatment of his cat, Hodge. Hunt recounts Johnson personally purchasing oysters for the animal because his servant, Francis Barber, felt the task beneath his dignity. The narrative contrasts Johnson’s lack of "condescension" with his peers, asserting that David Garrick was "too grand" and Sir Joshua Reynolds would have "shrunk" from such a task, while Edmund Burke would have "reasoned himself out" of the propriety of the act. Hunt characterizes Johnson as a "Christian philosopher" who acted out of "virtue as well as humility."
This letter to the editor quotes Dr. Samuel Johnson from Boswell's "Journey to the Hebrides" (1773). Johnson discusses the "problem for politicians" that raising wages for laborers (who provide life's necessaries) would raise provision prices, suggesting charitable contributions as a temporary alternative.
Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square has been purchased by Mr. Cecil Harmsworth. The house will be dedicated as national property as soon as suitable arrangements are made.
This positive historical article examines Johnson's overlooked fascination with aviation and early ballooning. The item opens by connecting this interest to the flying machine failure depicted in Rasselas. Despite suffering from gout, rheumatism, and dropsy toward the end of his career, Johnson caught the ballooning infection sweeping England following the 1783 Montgolfier experiments. His letters to Piozzi demonstrate this curiosity, which she noted was natural given his early writing. Beyond sympathy, Johnson contributed to a new balloon from his scarce funds and anticipated the aeroplane, describing a wing-and-tail contraption designed to master balloons. The article contrasts Johnson's, William Windham's, William Pitt's, and Burke's enthusiasm with Horace Walpole's skeptical dismissal of balloons as childish kites, applauding Johnson's superior insight.
This article identifies Johnson as a prophet for his 1759 work Rasselas. The narrative describes a "mechanic-artist" who proposes "the swifter migration of wings" over ships and chariots. The mechanic warns Rasselas that flight would compromise safety, as "the bad could at pleasure invade" the good from the sky. The author notes that neither "walls nor mountains nor seas" provide security against an "army sailing through the clouds." This fanciful work, written in the evenings of a single week, positions the lexicographer as a theoretical inventor who foresaw the dangers of aerial warfare.
It's simply amazing to read the Boy-Scoutish list of resolutions Samuel Johnson wrote down in 1760, on his 51st birthday.
Johnson, an admirer of fine cooking, asserted that poor dinners result from poverty, avarice, or stupidity. Thrale once asked him if he ever "huffed" his wife about his dinner, to which Johnson replied that his wife eventually asked him to stop "mak[ing] a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest is not eatable."
A letter to the editor asserts that Samuel Johnson never visited Ireland. "Historicus" states that the article about Johnson's Celbridge tour was a skit intended to ridicule Johnsonian language. The writer suggests that had Johnson visited Ireland, he would likely have visited Celbridge, where his friend, Dr. Thomas Barnard, Bishop of Killaloe, lived.
R.'s approving review of Christopher Hollis's study of Johnson suggests the work provides a sympathetic insight into a man still widely misunderstood as a mere "buffoon figure" or "subsidiary and historical member of the Pickwick Club." R. highlights Hollis's exploration of Johnson's paradoxical social circle, noting his deep friendships with individuals whose interests or politics he seemingly loathed, including Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Burke, and Garrick. The review emphasizes Hollis’s analysis of Johnson’s "sane" prejudice in favor of the Irish, whom Johnson supported against English secession from Europe, contrasted with his better-known prejudice against the Scotch. While R. maintains that Hollis does not supersede Boswell, he credits the author with providing vivid character sketches of Johnson’s companions—such as Goldsmith and Mrs. Thrale—and the "strange assortment of human beings" in his household, while acknowledging Boswell’s enduring portrait of the "Great Cham of Literature."
This text recounts the anecdote of Johnson purchasing oysters for his cat, Hodge, to spare the pride of his servant, Francis Barber. Hunt contrasts Johnson’s "true practical delicacy" with the perceived vanity or social rigidity of his contemporaries, including Garrick, Gibbon, and Reynolds.
This article, reprinted from the Indianapolis News, collects anecdotes illustrating the "rough old author's" eccentric but humane character. It recounts Johnson’s sharp rebukes to Hannah More regarding flattery and his general tendency to look upon women as "inferior beings." Conversely, the narrative emphasizes his charity, comparing him to a "good giant" who helped the poor. One story describes Johnson carrying an infirm woman of the "worst type" home on his shoulders and paying for her care. The author suggests Johnson "meekly submitted to the tyranny of grey hair and bad temper" while remaining a "magnet to the ladies."
A satirical letter to the editor from Major WS Cruickshank, written in response to the paper's printing of a 1763 letter from Dr. Johnson. The author humorously mocks the "postal delay" and Johnson's anti-Scottish sentiments, inviting him to visit Scotland.
"Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfled with seeing its great strects and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes nd courts.
Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville American
John Oskison outlines Johnson’s philosophies on personal finance, frugality, and the psychological burdens of financial liability. Drawing from James Boswell’s biography and personal correspondence, Oskison highlights Johnson's warnings against the accumulation of financial obligations. The account details Johnson’s metaphorical distinction between small debts, which act like rattling small shot that wounds from all sides, and large debts, which resemble loud but less immediately dangerous cannon fire. Oskison uses Johnson's advice to advocate for the systematic clearance of petty liabilities to maintain peace of mind and secure long-term financial stability.
Because of high taxes and cost, Johnson's famous tea-cups were minute; contemporaries like Cowper and Bishop Burnet also indulged in excessive tea-drinking.
North-China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette
A letter to the editor inquires about a meal mentioned by Boswell, stating that Dr. Johnson once breakfasted on "palfrey," and asks what the great man ate. A second letter questions the source, but asserts that Johnson was both a gourmand and gourmet, and would not have begun his day with horse, citing his indignant refusal of cold sheep's head for breakfast.
H. M. W. corrects Charles A. Salmond's letter, referring to Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides for the incident where Dr. Johnson threw a drink out of a window in Edinburgh. Boswell states explicitly that Johnson was drinking no fermented liquor and asked for his lemonade to be made sweeter. A waiter, using greasy fingers to add sugar, provoked Johnson's indignation, causing him to throw the drink out of the window.
Smellie criticizes Dr. Johnson's "strictures" on Scottish parsimony regarding trees, arguing that the deforestation was largely due to the "ruthless devastation" of English kings and armies. Smellie quotes Fraser Tytler's History of Scotland describing how Edward I and the Duke of Lancaster used fire and hatchets to destroy immense forests, making it senseless for Scots to plant new timber.
Zeitlin’s mixed review of O. F. Christie’s study of Johnson as an essayist commends the effort to revive interest in the Rambler but disputes Christie’s critical judgment regarding Johnson’s prose style. Zeitlin challenges Christie’s claims that Johnson possessed "picturesqueness of phrase" or rhythmic harmony, arguing instead that Johnson lacked an ear for verbal melody and produced a "mechanically precise balancing of members" rather than true music. The review characterizes Christie’s work as a "digest of opinions" that presents Johnson’s views on religion, morals, and society like "Boswell’s Johnson with all the life squeezed out of him." While Zeitlin finds Christie’s method of using isolated excerpts and topical discussions unfortunate, he maintains that the Rambler remains an important piece of literature due to the "weight of character" and "sincere conviction" found in its pages. He suggests that while Christie’s volume may fail to revive Johnson’s reputation, the original essays offer valuable observations on the hardships of scholars and the "painfulness of combating a natural inclination to indolence."
Hill announces his engagement with the Clarendon Press to collect and edit Dr. Johnson's letters, many of which remain in manuscript or are scattered across volumes. Hill appeals to collectors for copies or originals of Johnson's letters and asks owners of already-published letters to collate and report inaccuracies. He intends to follow this project with a similar edition of Boswell's letters.
Ross’s brief letter to the editor presents a "suggestive" quotation from Boswell regarding the economic views of Johnson. Citing the third edition of the Life, Ross records Johnson’s assertion that raising the wages of day laborers is "wrong" because such increases fail to improve their living standards. The letter highlights Johnson’s belief that higher pay only makes laborers "idler" and his subsequent claim that idleness is "a very bad thing for human nature".
An American tourist asked a street boy for a doctor, who directed him to a house in Gough Square. The tourist found a name plate reading: "Dr. Samuel Johnson," with smaller letters beneath stating: "Author, lived here. Born 1700, Died 1784."
J. W. R.’s brief letter challenges the common attribution of the proverb "To spare the rod and spoyle the child" to Solomon, tracing its phrasing to Butler's Hudibras and an earlier author of "Mysteries and Revelations." J. W. R.’s correction quotes Johnson’s nostalgic preference for the "gentle practice of flogging," noting his belief that declining discipline decreased learning. J. W. R.’s highlights emphasize Johnson’s observation that "what the boys get at one end they lose at the other."
Telford recounts the life of Margaret Eliot, the curator of Dr. Johnson's House in London from the mid-sixties until her death in 1993. Eliot, a daughter of a ship's captain, was born in 1912 and worked for the Admiralty during the war, sharing her flat with a cat named Hodge. Her scholarly appreciation for Johnson's writing and personality shaped her work as curator, where she was highly appreciated by friends and colleagues. Eliot also published a monograph on trees after the war.
This satirical vignette presents an imaginary conversation where Johnson defends Boswell against critics who view the biographer as a mere "excellent reporter." Johnson disputes the notion that Oliver Goldsmith would have been a superior choice, arguing that the "greatest dramatist of the day" could never subordinate his ego to the subject. He describes Boswell as an "isthmus separating two continents" whose depth was often concealed by his narrowness. Johnson also discusses his own literary legacy, admitting his works are "comparatively little known" while Boswell’s biography flourishes. He characterizes his style as suited to "inexpressible" ideas and notes his transition from a poet to a "lexicographer."
In this letter to the editor, Fisher responds to a previous correspondence regarding Margaret Boswell's dislike of Johnson. Fisher defends Johnson's "illustrious" character while criticizing Margaret Boswell's "finicking housewifery" and "unladylike diatribes." The letter mentions the "regrettable but surely forgivable" incident of spilled candle grease on the Boswell carpets and suggests that Johnson's poor eyesight contributed to his clumsiness during the 1773 tour of Scotland.
Chapman corrects the belief that the only known letter from Johnson to his wife, set for auction at Sotheby's, is unpublished. The letter is No. 12 in Birkbeck Hill's 1892 edition of the Letters and is described as "the gem" of his collection. Chapman notes the letter does not contain the word "millionaires," and Johnson hoped his "misfortunes" had not deprived him of his wife's "tenderness and affection."
Babbitt's review of Joseph Epes Brown's The Critical Opinions of Samuel Johnson offers a mixed assessment of the compilation. While Babbitt praises the accurate presentation of Johnson's "humanistic wisdom," he disputes Brown’s thesis that Johnson was a "force behind that tidal wave of revolt" against neo-classicism. Babbitt argues that Brown fails to distinguish between different periods of the neo-classic movement and incorrectly aligns Johnson with Edward Young’s "romantic" views on imagination. The review maintains that Johnson, like Boileau, distrusted the "chimerical imagination" in favor of "sober probability." Babbitt concludes that Johnson remains a "majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom" rather than a literary rebel.
Lord Harmsworth memorializes Bertha (Betty) Phyllis Gathergood, the curator of Dr. Johnson's House, who died at age 80. Gathergood was the third generation of her family to serve as curator, succeeding Margaret Eliot in 1993. She grew up in the house, where Johnson compiled his Dictionary, and was married there. Gathergood and her mother, Phyllis Rowell, were instrumental in saving the house from destruction during World War II, aided by auxiliary firemen who used the house as a club.
Mathur chronicles Johnson’s "intemperate use" of tea, noting he often consumed sixteen cups each morning and once claimed to have drunk twenty-five at a single sitting. Johnson describes himself as a "hardened and shameless tea drinker" who uses the beverage to solace his midnights and welcome his mornings. The narrative details how Hester Thrale complained of staying up until four in the morning to satisfy his demands. Despite contemporary criticism from Jonas Hanway, Johnson wrote a strong defense of the "fragrant leaf." The article also mentions a two-quart teapot used by Johnson, which was preserved by a hunter as a relic.
Wain's wide-ranging article disputes the two-dimensional popular image of Johnson as merely an intellectual John Bull who contradicted every remark. Presenting Johnson as a great, tragic figure full of paradox, Wain defends his literary power against Victorian slander, praising his dense prose style and his moving verse in "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The piece highlights Johnson's conservative literary criticism and positions his notes to Shakespeare as his most delightful writing, demonstrating the fresh force of his intelligence. Wain concludes by detailing Johnson's heroic internal struggle against melancholia, neurotic guilt, and the dread of everlasting punishment.
Compares Milton and Johnson, suggesting Milton's character "repelled" while Johnson's "simple force" made an indelible impression on Englishmen.
A series of satirical definitions in the manner of Johnson's dictionary. Definitions include "Antiquarian" (a man who won't let us exercise the useful faculty of forgetting) and "First Edition" (something that may bring more a copy than the author got for the whole work). "Husband" is defined as a male who pretends not to admire a décolleté dress because he fears others will.
D. J. O'Donoghue lectures on Johnson's "Irish Circle" at the National Literary Society. Extracts from the diaries of Irishmen, including the Rev. Dr. William Maxwell, indicate Johnson had great compassion for the distress of the Irish and condemned the British Government's conduct. Johnson also wished to see Irish literature cultivated.
Report of an exhibition at Charing Cross Underground Station regarding the London County Council's campaign to move industry and residents to expanding country towns. A. E. Samuels, chairman of the L.C.C., challenges Johnson's famous dictum that "the man who is tired of London is tired of life." Samuels suggests that had Johnson witnessed the modern urban sprawl from Putney to Poplar, he might have been "a little less forthright" in his praise of the city. The display uses photographic backgrounds of slum dwellings to encourage movement toward cleaner air and less crowded surroundings in places like Bletchley and Swindon.
The restoration of Johnson's house in Gough-square, enabled by Mr. Leicester Harmsworth's generosity, is complete and will soon open to the public. The garden, previously hidden by a wall, now features railings and paving, though a narrow flower bed suggests its original purpose. The staircase has been replaced, and a dilapidated partition removed to create one large room on the top floor where Johnson compiled his Dictionary.
This poem, originally read at the Johnson Society dinner at Pembroke College on June 22, 1896, and subsequently published in The Pageant, offers a rhythmic character study of Johnson. Dobson portrays Johnson as a "giant" with a "rugged" exterior who dominated conversation with a "torrent of sound." While acknowledging his "knock-me-down" answers and pugnacious debate style—noting he would use the "butt end" of a pistol if it missed fire—the verses emphasize his internal "generosity" and "fine feeling." Dobson concludes that despite his "anfractuosity," Johnson remained true to his "conscience, his King, and his duty."
This letter to the editor, signed by A Lover of Truth, disputes an anecdote recently published in the Edinburgh Review regarding an alleged hostile meeting between Johnson and Adam Smith in Glasgow in 1773. The author notes that Smith's name does not appear in Boswell’s Journal for that period and that no mention of the meeting exists in Dugald Stewart’s biography of Smith. Furthermore, the letter argues the account is anachronistic, as it depicts Johnson interrogating Smith about a characterization of David Hume that Smith did not write until after Hume’s death in 1776. The author concludes the encounter is likely fabulous and requires authentication before being accepted as genuine.
A story told by Sam Weller in Pickwick about a man who killed himself after eating muffins to disprove his doctor is traced back to a conversation in Boswell's Life of Johnson.
Johnson was an excessive tea-drinker, sometimes consuming as many as twenty "dishes" in a sitting. Boswell noted that Johnson enjoyed the "fragrant leaf" with great relish, asserting his nerves must have been "uncommonly strong" to avoid being "extremely relaxed" by such intemperate use.
This anecdote depicts a lunch at a Fleet Street chop-house involving Johnson, Boswell, and Oliver Goldsmith. It highlights the contrast between Johnson’s "enthusiastic praise" for The Vicar of Wakefield and Goldsmith’s painful modesty. When a man named Rob Robinson approaches the group, Johnson boisterously introduces Goldsmith as the celebrated author. Overcome with "shame," Goldsmith attempts to hide behind a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and stutters a denial of his authorship, much to the astonishment of his companions.
Hobson reviews G. K. Chesterton’s play, The Judgment of Dr. Johnson, at the Arts Theater. The production features Johnson haranguing an American spy in the Hebrides before moving to a London setting involving John Wilkes and Edmund Burke. Hobson disputes the work’s effectiveness as a drama, characterizing it instead as an ingenious pasting together of brilliant remarks and familiar paradoxes. While the dialogue covers topics like the Middlesex election and the sanctity of marriage, Hobson finds the talk lacks the suppleness of Shaw. The review notes that Julien Mitchell, portraying a scruffy and near-sighted Johnson, struggled to remember his lines.
An anecdote is shared of a Scottish hostess's witty retort to Johnson, who claimed her Scotch broth was "only fit for pigs."
Jowett analyzed Johnson's literary life into pre- and post-Boswell periods, noting his foreign unpopularity, dramatic weakness, but unmatched conversation and character.
Mr. Francis Raikes le Blanc Newbery is to be married in the Charterhouse chapel. He is the great-great-grandson of John Newbery, the philanthropic bookseller and friend of Dr. Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith. John Newbery purchased the manuscript of Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield.
Muggeridge provides an enthusiastic review of Patrick Cruttwell’s "Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings." He identifies the volume as ideal for travel, praising the inclusion of Johnson’s sincere prayers and his "magnificently humane" "Life of Savage." Muggeridge specifically admires the "Dictionary" preface and the poem "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet." While generally approving of Cruttwell's "judicious and comprehensive" choices, Muggeridge expresses a preference for Johnson’s "personalia"—letters, journals, and "Lives of the Poets"—over the "Rambler" and "Idler" essays. He characterizes Johnson as the "most admirable Englishman who ever lived," citing his inexhaustible charity, his hatred of "seemingly harmless deviations" from the truth, and his practice of gathering a "weird little company of the outcast and the poor" at his table.
G. J. recommends Johnson's Prayers and Meditations as a devotional work for the New Year while cautioning readers about its idiosyncratic composition. Compiled by George Strahan from unrevised manuscripts, the volume juxtaposes solemn petitions with trivial details regarding diet and physical ailments. The article characterizes Johnson's spirituality as the faith of a servant rather than a son, marked by a tremulous earnestness and fear of judgment. Despite these somber qualities, G. J. highlights Johnson's persistent efforts to cleanse his spirit through humble acknowledgments of idleness and earnest prayers for future amendment.
Finds Main's biography over sentimental and critical of Johnson's literary works, arguing a useful new life must instead focus on Johnson's ideas and philosophical significance.
Kaylan uses an apocryphal remark by Johnson regarding women preachers to analyze the public phenomenon of Ann Coulter. The "startling" nature of seeing a dog walk on its front legs serves as a metaphor for Coulter's survival as a conservative figure in mainstream media. Kaylan argues that, much like the spectacles Johnson observed, Coulter’s defiance and longevity surprise and delight her audience regardless of the quality of her "harsher utterances." The article posits that Johnson would have appreciated Coulter’s "fierce raillery" and her ability to speak directly to the American heartland.
In St. Andrews, workmen renovating a property unearthed an old well believed to have supplied water for the still at the historic "Black Bull" hostelry, which once stood on the site. Dr. Johnson stayed there one night during his travels. Although he arrived at midnight, he was reportedly so eager to explore the town's historic places that he immediately set out with a stable lantern.
"Excelsior" responds to a previous article, offering a saying that is "not an utterance of that eminent man" but contains equal sound philosophy. The suggested "saying" is: "To work for low wages and thus help employers to speedy fortunes is wrong... only makes them idler," arguing idleness is bad for human nature.
In an extract from "The Rambler," Johnson characterizes critics as a "race of men" who hinder the reception of new works. He compares critics to Argus and Cerberus. He suggests authors must find a means of recommendation to soften these "persecutors," noting that some have been placated with claret and a supper or "soft notes of flattery."
This letter to the editor, signed by a writer using the pseudonym "James Boswell," draws parallels between the contemporary invasion of Abyssinia and the sixth chapter of Johnson's Rasselas. The author quotes the "prophetic remarks" of the artist in the novel, who warned against the "art of flying" because it would allow the "bad" to invade the "good" from the sky. The letter notes that Johnson’s warning regarding "an army sailing through the clouds" against which "neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security" has been "terribly disregarded and horribly fulfilled" by modern aerial warfare. The author maintains the persona of Boswell writing from the "Regions Inferae" to call attention to his friend's "forcible observations."
An interesting and uncommonly readable skimming of the cream from Miss Hawkins's rare Anecdotes. The collection successfully immerses the reader in the social life of the eighteenth century, with observations on figures like Johnson, Garrick, Walpole, and Thrale-Piozzi, providing excellent "tea-table-tittle-tattle."
During the 1773 Tour, Dr. Johnson found a congenial companion in Donald Macqueen, minister of Bracadale, whom Boswell described as "candid, sensible, and well-informed—aye, learned!." Johnson remarked that Macqueen showed "great vigour of mind to cultivate learning so much in the Isle of Skye, where he might do without it." A terrible sailor, Johnson declared, "A ship is worse than a jail."
In this enthusiastic address delivered at St. Clement Danes church, Squire celebrates Johnson's legacy on the 140th anniversary of his death. The speaker advocates for an annual commemorative service, praising Johnson as an exceptional lay Christian who integrated spiritual practice and robust Christian morals into a highly secular life. Squire disputes the notion popularized by Boswell that Johnson was merely an indolent talker, emphasizing instead his courageous early struggles against poverty and his unwavering sanity at Oxford. Though acknowledging that Boswell's biography somewhat obscures Johnson's own writings, Squire maintains that Johnson's twelve-volume body of work remains inspiring, amusing, and profoundly vital.
This article, reprinted from the Manchester Guardian, disputes the common characterization of Johnson as a figure representing a "divorce between literature and music." While Johnson famously admitted a lack of musical depth beyond distinguishing a drum from a trumpet, the narrative suggests he might have approved of modern syncopated music. To support this, the author recounts an instance where Dr. Burney took Johnson to Ranelagh to hear a "burlesque ode to St. Cecilia's Day." The performance featured eccentric instrumentation, including Brent the fencing master on the salt-box, Skeggs on a broomstick bassoon, and a Jew’s harp. Johnson reportedly "enjoyed it immensely," demonstrating an appreciation for musical humor and bizarre acoustic novelties.
Daniel Greenberg disputes Johnson’s 18th-century assertion that dogs lack the "power of comparing" food portions. Greenberg chronicles scientific and domestic experiments with Labrador retrievers to demonstrate animal intellect and communication. Through behavioral observations, Greenberg challenges traditional skepticism regarding canine cognition, showing that dogs select larger food portions at equal distances, distinguish between food types, and alter their behavior around children or illness. Greenberg concludes that animal thought is a settled matter, shifting the relevant inquiry from whether animals think to what they think.
Johnson arrived at Boyd's Inn in Edinburgh on August 14, 1773, immediately sending a note to Boswell in James's Court. Johnson nearly pitched the waiter out the window after throwing the contents of a glass of lemonade, which the servant had tried to sweeten with greasy fingers. Boyd's Inn, also called the White Horse, had stables, bed-chambers, dining rooms, and a writing closet.
This editorial note discusses the discovery of Boswell manuscripts at Malahide Castle and the subsequent censorship by a descendant of the Talbot family. Lord Talbot reportedly treated a purchase offer from Dr. Paul Rosenbach with Victorian disdain, refusing to correspond with an unintroduced stranger. Upon acquiring the papers, Ralph Isham discovered that a lady of the family had used fresh ink to delete various passages, including a quote where Johnson promises the "naked truth." The note argues that Johnson's own writings suffer from a "plethora of moral platitudes" and remain widely enjoyed only through the "lighter hand" of Boswell, whose indiscretions likely shocked Victorian sensibilities but not modern youth.
This article reprints excerpts from Boswell's Life of Johnson detailing a 1777 visit to the seat of Lord Scarsdale. Johnson critiques the architecture of the house, suggesting it would function better as a town hall, and remarks that such magnificence "excludes but one evil—poverty." The narrative records Johnson's affection for Bennet Langton and his delight in "driving fast in a post chaise" with a companion capable of intelligent conversation. Margaret Montgomerie provides a celebrated rejoinder to Johnson's assessment of wealth.
The 140th anniversary of Johnson's death was commemorated with a special service at St. Clement Danes Church, where the lexicographer often worshipped. The service featured an address by J. C. Squire. Celebrations also included the customary silent toast at "Ye, Old Cheshire Cheese" and a meeting of the Johnson Club at 17 Gough Square, where Johnson compiled the Dictionary.
The closes referred to in a previous article lay eastward from the Canongate head. The original writer confirms that Boyd possessed other subjects behind his inn, to the south, used in connection with his hostelry. The "small building" a correspondent referred to was likely a part of these premises.
Valentine’s enthusiastic examines the shifting reputation of the two figures, noting that modern scholarship now recognizes Boswell as a "vivid and various personality" rather than a mere appendage. Salpeter argues that most of Johnson’s written works merit "the dust that has gathered on them," asserting that his "truest claim to genius" lies in the talk that Boswell "devoted himself to provoking." The review details Johnson’s "constitutional indolence" and his "motive of humanity," citing his translation of Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia and his habit of providing shelter to "nondescript" individuals like Williams and Desmoulins. Valentine highlights Salpeter’s psychological analysis of Boswell as a "conveniently religious man" whose "impulses were inconveniently strong," finding the biography a praiseworthy, balanced portrait derived from the Life and newly unearthed private papers.
Opera Diminishes Dr. Johnson's Brilliance [review of Johnson Preserv’d, by Richard Stoker]
Reviewing Richard Stoker’s opera Johnson Preserv’d, Grier argues that operatic representation "tends only to diminish" the perennially vivid members of the Johnson circle. The libretto by Jill Watt centers on the 1784 assembly at Streatham following Thrale’s engagement to Gabriel Piozzi. Grier finds that Stoker’s failure to "characterise musically the various personalities" was a mistake. While the production by Opera Piccola used Boswell as the primary narrator and retained Johnson's "resounding remarks," the reviewer concludes the material functions better as a play script than an opera.
This article discusses a British Library exhibition marking the bicentennial of Johnson’s death. It highlights Johnson’s hostility toward American colonists, whom he termed a "race of convicts." The text surveys his prolific output, including his dictionary, sermons, and Lives of the English Poets, while noting his guiding principle that "no man but a blockhead... ever wrote except for money." It emphasizes that Johnson is primarily remembered through Boswell’s "deathless" biography. The article also recounts Johnson’s varied interests in chemistry, mechanics, and his charitable habit of filling his home with the impoverished.
Johnson famously defended tea as a delightful beverage for which he was a "hardened and shameless tea-drinker"; his teapot reportedly held two quarts.
Pamiles recalls a conversation during Dr. Johnson's 1775 visit with the Reverend Kenneth M'Aulay, minister of Calder. When M'Aulay "began a rhapsody against creeds and confessions", Johnson countered that a Church has the right to require a voluntary declaration of agreement to articles of faith, just as any society insists on rules. Johnson concluded by calling M'Aulay "a bigot to laxness."
A previously unknown fragment of Johnson's writing has been discovered at the John Rylands Library. The text is Johnson's "Proposals" soliciting subscriptions for a translation of Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent," a project he abandoned in 1739.
Roberts provides a review of two paperback releases marking the bicentenary of the death of Johnson and the publication of Captain Francis Grose’s dictionary. The review focuses on a modern selection of Johnson’s Dictionary edited by E.L. McAdam and George Milne, noting that the work remained the chief authority on English for a century before being replaced by the Oxford English Dictionary. Roberts describes the inclusion of the original preface, which highlights the methods and attitudes of Johnson toward science and standard English. The review details the lexicographical philosophy of Johnson, specifically his prescriptive approach in labeling certain terms as low words or barbarous. Roberts notes that despite these rigid categories, Johnson accepted the inevitability of linguistic change. The piece further contrasts this work with Grose’s guide to low language and slang, documenting how several vulgarisms have since entered standard English.
Gray corrects the Oxford English Dictionary's editor by confirming that the word "suicide" does appear in the 1755 folio edition of Johnson's Dictionary. Gray consulted the first edition and found the word with its initial definition and accompanying quotations from Richard Savage's verse and Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe.
Research Links Dr. Johnson, Ben Franklin
This report details discoveries by John L. Abbott linking Johnson to Benjamin Franklin through their shared activities in the Royal Society of Arts between 1757 and 1762. Abbott’s research indicates Johnson served on committees with Franklin during these years. The article also mentions Abbott’s broader biographical work on John Hawkesworth, a friend of Johnson and biographer of Jonathan Swift. The findings, supported by the American Philosophical Society, result in a series of articles titled "Dr. Johnson and the Royal Society of Arts."
Johnson joked that his weight determined the guilt of stealing apples: when the branch broke under him, it was called a "Judgment."
Hammond reads a paper on Johnson's supposed "Tour to Celbridge" based on an article in Walker's Hibernian Magazine (November 1782). The paper recounts Johnson receiving his first honorary LL.D. from Trinity College, Dublin, and being saved from drowning in the River Liffey at Celbridge by a cow's tail.
This brief report announces the acquisition of the Lichfield house where Johnson was born on September 18, 1700, by the local municipality. The city plans to transform the quaint structure into a museum dedicated to his memory, following the precedent established by the Carlyle House at Chelsea.
This report, reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, announces that Cecil Harmsworth purchased Johnson's house in Gough Square for presentation to the nation. Johnson resided in this stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house for ten years, using an upper room fitted like a counting-house for amanuenses to transcribe dictionary authorities. The site witnessed the publication of the dictionary, the death of Johnson's wife, and the composition of the Rambler and the Idler. The account suggests inscribing Johnson's scathing letter to Chesterfield upon the walls to commemorate his blow to the patronage of literature.
A cyclist retraces Johnson and Boswell's difficult 1773 Highland tour, vividly describing the rugged landscape and Johnson's famous indifference to nature.
Taylor urges modern diplomats to consult Johnson's 1771 pamphlet concerning the Falkland Islands before engaging in military conflict. Johnson's prose reveals a strong conviction that launching war at the behest of a military lobby constitutes a calamity. The 18th-century text characterizes the islands as a bleak and gloomy solitude thrown aside from human use. Taylor argues that Johnson possessed a firmer grasp on the meaning of warfare than contemporary hawks who evoke national pride. While Johnson could not foresee oil interests, he understood the price of resources computed in blood. The text nature of modern soldiering often masks the reality of putrefaction and miserable deaths in tents and ships. Taylor notes that Johnson's intervention successfully challenged earlier assertions regarding the islands' strategic necessity, leading to recognized Spanish sovereignty despite British colonization.
Watt quotes Johnson's famous response to an author who sent him a book : "Your book contains some things which are true and some things which are new. / But the things which are true are not new, and the things which are new are not true." Watt suggests Johnson would say the same about contemporary political speeches.
This report, reprinted from the London Examiner, compares the dietary habits of the Akhoond of Swat to those of Johnson. While describing the Akhoond’s career as a religious leader and his "austere habits," the piece notes his preference for "strong tea." The Akhoond reportedly consumes thirty-five cups per day, nearly doubling the eighteen cups where Johnson allegedly "drew the line."
London Letter: Dr. Johnson's House Revisited
This report describes a visit to the Johnson house in Gough Square during roof restorations. The custodian, Mrs. Rowell, provides historical details about the "Dictionary garret" and the discovery of pre-Johnsonian artifacts. The account mentions recent additions to the collection, including a portrait believed to be a copy of one by Frances Reynolds and a carving presented by the Firemen's Rest Club in recognition of the house's use during wartime bombing.
This report of a lecture details a pay claim hearing before the Labour Court involving the Irish Seamen's and Port and Dock Workers' Union. Desmond Brannigan quotes Johnson's caustic remark that "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail" to challenge the "illusory" and glamorous conception of seafaring. Brannigan argues that Johnson's comparison of a ship to a jail with the "chance of being drowned" remains justified given the risks to health, social isolation, and physical discomfort inherent in the profession. Conversely, John O'Brien of the Federated Union of Employers characterizes Brannigan's use of Johnson’s comments as "most disloyal and unfair."
The trustees of Dr. Samuel Johnson's house in Gough Square received a £5,000 bequest. The money was left by Cecil James Croydon Tildesley of Staffordshire, an honorary member of the Johnson Club, to be used for the general maintenance of the house.
Anderson asks for the author of a four-line verse that criticizes new but untrue statements: "Some things that you have said are true, / And some things you have said are new; / But what are true, alas! they are not new, / And what are new, they are, alas! not true." The verse is said to be based on Lessing's criticism of Voltaire.
Dr. Johnson's House Presented to England
Cecil Harmsworth presented Johnson's famous Gough Square house, where the lexicographer lived from 1748 to 1759, to the nation for preservation. Johnson took the house to be near William Strahan, the printer of his Dictionary, and completed the greater part of the immense work there.
Johnson's house in Gough Square, City of London, will be repaired after being badly damaged by bombs and rockets during the war. The repairs will reopen the famous attic where he wrote his dictionary. The Johnson Museum, near the Cheshire Cheese, was a place of pilgrimage for thousands of GIs.
Yoder’s syndicated column critiques the populist editorial strategy of the forthcoming fourth edition of Webster's Unabridged, which invites public comment via the Internet. He contrasts this with Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, which used the works of noted writers like Shakespeare as touchstones for usage. Yoder laments the abandonment of labels indicating preferred usage, a trend he traces back to the controversial 1961 third edition. He argues that the new approach ignores considerations of quality and the winnowing process of genius. The column evokes Johnson’s impish definition of oats to illustrate a lost era of lexicography that prioritized the artful use of language over statistical frequency.
This article, reprinted from the Scotsman, reports on the reconsecration of St. Clement Danes as the official church of the Royal Air Force. The report notes that while the church was destroyed by bombs in 1941, the statue of Johnson and his memorial plate remained unharmed. The restored building incorporates R.A.F. unit badges in the floor and ten shrines of remembrance. A salvaged notice board identifies the site as the Church of Dr. Samuel Johnson. The account describes the presence of the Queen at the ceremony and the restoration of the bells to ring the traditional tune of Oranges and Lemons.
Cecil Harmsworth donated Johnson's famous house in Gough Square, London, to the nation for preservation. A committee, including Sir James Barrie and Max Beerbohm, holds the property in trust. Johnson resided there from 1748 to 1759, completing the greater part of his dictionary while living near the printer, William Strahan.
This report of a lecture by Frank MacKinnon to the Johnson Society at Lichfield characterizes Johnson as a "fun-maker" whose humor was obscured by Boswell. MacKinnon disputes the traditional view of Johnson’s "awful melancholy," suggesting Boswell’s "artificial cultivation of 'awful reverence'" distorted the portrayal of his subject. The lecture highlights Johnson’s harsh rhetoric regarding Americans, whom he called a "race of convicts," while noting that eighty percent of his surviving manuscripts now reside in America. MacKinnon urges readers to "clear your mind of cant" regarding Boswell’s somber interpretations, favoring accounts by Fanny Burney and Arthur Murphy that emphasize Johnson’s love of nonsense and buffoonery.
Clark’s positive review of Margaret Ashmun’s biography, The Singing Swan, examines the life of Anna Seward and her persistent animosity toward Johnson. The review characterizes Seward as a provincial "Preciéuse" whose intellectual energy fitted her for the role of a modern woman despite the restrictive social traditions of the eighteenth century. Clark details Seward’s "acidulous spirit" and her efforts to discredit Johnson’s reputation in The Gentleman’s Magazine following his death, noting that her personal grievances often clouded her judgment. The review further highlights her interactions with Boswell, who found her "unreliable" as a source and eventually used vigorous public rebuttals to compel her silence. Clark praises Ashmun for discovering new information and recreating the "old charm" of the Lichfield coterie.
Dr. Johnson Published His Dictionary 161 Years Ago
Few people really appreciate of what value to them is a dictionary and under what a serious handicap people were compelled to labor barely more than a century and a half ago, for until Dr. Samuel Johnson published his dictionary in 1755 there was no complete English dictionary in existence.
Kevin Fitzgerald, speaking to the Dublin Rotary Club, speculated that had Johnson visited Ireland, he would have preferred it to the Hebrides. Adapting Johnson's famous quotation, Fitzgerald claimed he would have said, "when a man was tired of Ireland he was tired of life."
On the 136th anniversary of Johnson's death, members of the Johnson Society, including Mr. W. A. Wood of Lichfield, assembled at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Sir Sidney Lee laid a large laurel wreath on Johnson's tomb as a token of the nation's respect. Attendees signed the visitors' book and decided to take steps for the better preservation of the tombstone's lettering.
Brief notice recounting the production of the Dictionary of the English Language. The narrative describes Johnson as a learned London writer who undertook the project after Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope challenged the adequacy of Nathan Bailey's earlier work. Supported by London booksellers who provided expense money for assistants, Johnson spent several years organizing thousands of words and definitions. The account notes the financial "ups and downs" of his career, mentioning that he occasionally struggled to pay for lodging. The resulting work held top rank in Great Britain for a century.
In this approving review of Mary Alden Hopkins’ Hannah More and Her Circle, Cromie notes More’s standing within the Johnson circle. The review highlights Johnson’s description of More as the "most powerful versificatrix in the English language." Cromie praises Hopkins for a "refreshing account" that maintains "pleasant detachment" while depicting More’s life as a playwright and author of moral tracts amidst a gay panorama of her times.
Dr. Johnson and the Study of the Irish Language
A correspondent presents a 1757 letter from Johnson to Charles O'Connor supporting the cultivation of Irish literature and language study, noting Ireland's ancient reputation for learning. Johnson suggests inquiry into the relation between Irish and other languages like Welsh and Biscay. The correspondent also questions the fate of Mr. Flood's bequest to the University of Dublin for professors of the Irish language and antiquities.
Disputes Johnson's favorable opinion of Irish literature by citing John Wesley's 1785 journal entry. Wesley, having studied Major Vallaney's Irish grammar, judged the language worse than any ancient or modern European language, criticizing its "intolerable" difficulty, "insufferable number of mute letters," and "trifling and childish" poetry.
This report, reprinted from the Courier-Journal correspondence, chronicles the preservation of Johnson's former residence in Gough Square, London. Shorter, ex-president of the Johnson Club and editor of an illustrated weekly, secured the house to prevent its demolition. The property contains numerous associations with Johnson and the history of English printing and bookbinding. The building will be presented to the nation for use as a museum.
Mr. Asquith and Mr. Birrell on Dr. Johnson
A lecture and introductory speech praised Johnson's unique, enduring personality, which was transmitted by Boswell, and discussed his paradoxes: common sense mixed with superstition.
Longfellow on Dr. Johnson's Visit to Edinburgh
Salmond shares a conversation with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow concerning Dr. Johnson's visit to Edinburgh. Longfellow recounted seeing a house in the Canongate where Johnson had flung a bowl of porridge out of the window. This version contrasts with a published account claiming Johnson flung out "lemonade." The incident is linked to Johnson's famous, self-written dictionary definition of oatmeal as "food for horses in England and for men in Scotland."
Chance to Save the House Where Dr. Johnson Lived
Johnson's house in Gough Square, London, faces the risk of being destroyed or converted to commercial purposes unless a benefactor guarantees the $17,500 purchase price. Johnson lived in the house from 1748 to 1758, a decade during which he compiled the famous Dictionary and experienced the death of his wife. The purchase offers the "last chance" to preserve the building as a memorial.
'Emotional Incontinence' Disease Suggested in Mozart and Dr. Johnson
Mihill reports on research by Benjamin Simkin suggesting that Johnson and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart shared the rare genetic condition Tourette’s syndrome. Simkin identifies a striking similarity between the two men, noting that Johnson displayed many manifestations of the disorder, including involuntary bodily movements and verbal peculiarities. This medical hypothesis links Johnson's well-documented physical tics and eccentric social conduct to a disruption of neurotransmitters. The article posits that an incontinence of the emotions serves as the connecting link between these intellectual giants, potentially explaining the association between their neurological conditions and their profound creative drives.
Dr. Johnson's Opinion of the Irish Question
Johnson generously warned an Irish gentleman against Union with England, fearing English intentions: "We should unite with you only to rob you, sir."
Johnson's Court Was Not Named After Dr. Johnson
This editorial note clarifies that Johnson's Court in Fleet Street takes its name from a forgotten lexicographer rather than Johnson, who lived there in 1765. The text records that the newspaper started by Theodore Hook to slander Caroline of Brunswick was published from this location in 1820. Hook and Daniel Terry collaborated on the periodical, which was known for abuse and satire.
London Letter: Dr. Johnson and the R.A.F.
This report details the restoration of St. Clement Danes as the official church of the Royal Air Force. It notes the survival of Johnson's memorial plate in his gallery pew despite the 1941 bombing. The church now serves as a shrine of remembrance, featuring pews of dark oak and a white and gold ceiling. Salvaged elements include the pulpit attributed to Grinling Gibbons.
Cole describes the museum at No. 17 Gough Square, where Johnson compiled his dictionary. The article notes the restoration of the house following World War II and the display of artifacts including Johnson’s silver teaspoons and Boswell’s China coffee cup. Cole details portraits of the Johnson circle, including Francis Barber and Tetty, and provides information on admission fees and visitor hours for the "sparsely furnished" garret and rooms.
On Poetry, Diplomacy, and Fiction—The Other Life of Dr. Johnson
On the lesser-known aspects of Johnson's career, including his contributions to poetry, diplomacy, and fiction. The discussion moves beyond his dictionary and biographical works, presenting an alternative perspective on the man of letters by examining his diverse literary output.
A Book Guaranteed to Make Dr. Johnson Eat His Words
Cromie highlights Maclean’s use of contemporary 18th-century sources to disprove Johnson’s claim that women "cannot make a good book of cookery." The text describes a "Visual and Culinary Record" of Johnson and Boswell’s 1773 tour of Scotland. Cromie finds the selection of passages "pertinent and often amusing," detailing an incident where Johnson rebuked Boswell for suggesting they carry lemons to Skye. The work provides updated recipes for dishes the pair "probably ate" during their journey.
Dr. Johnson's House in Gough Square Becomes British National Landmark
This report, reprinted from The Christian Science Monitor, announces Cecil Harmsworth’s presentation of Johnson’s Gough Square house to the British nation. The deed ensures the preservation of architectural features, including the Dictionary attic where Johnson and six copyists compiled the 1755 work. The narrative describes the sturdy red brick structure and the heavy chain on the front door used to bar duns during Johnson's periods of financial embarrassment. The house serves as a memorial to Johnson's residence from 1748 to 1759, a period marked by both the publication of the Dictionary and his arrest for debt.
Did Jamie Boswell Blush, Change His 'Life of Dr. Johnson'?
This article, reprinted from the New York Times, reports the discovery of an uncut copy of the first edition of the second volume of Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson containing a canceled, uncensored page. The volume includes remarks on "conjugal infidelity" that Boswell and his editor, Malone, deemed too indelicate and potentially damaging to the book, despite Boswell describing the excised material to Malone as "mighty good stuff." Wells purchased the copy for transport to New York.
Moscow Writer Vies with Dr. Johnson in Humorous Russian Dictionary
This report compares a Soviet satirist’s work in the newspaper Crocodile to Johnson’s practice of "giving highly subjective definitions in a dictionary." It cites Johnson’s definition of patriotism as "the last refuge of the scoundrel" as the precedent for humorous, politically charged lexicography. The article then presents various definitions from the Russian writer that satirize Soviet daily life, including critiques of Moscow streetcars, housing cooperatives, and failing utilities.
McAdam, Hyde, and Hyde edit a collection of Johnson’s diaries, prayers, and annals, incorporating material recovered from Malahide Castle. The text includes a diary spanning 1765 to 1784 and records of a journey to North Wales undertaken with Piozzi to settle an estate in Flintshire. Notes clarify Johnson’s moral resolutions, specifically interpreting reclaim imagination as an effort to suppress sexual fantasies directed toward Piozzi. The journal details daily health observations in Latin and the physical hardships of Welsh travel. Powell observes that while Johnson meticulously documented his travels, his interactions with Piozzi regarding financial loss reveal his sensibility of money and complex social attitudes.
Selections from Samuel Johnson (Book Review)
This brief notice reports on Johnson's reflections regarding his authorship of parliamentary debates. Drawing on an account provided by John Nichols to Boswell, the piece highlights Johnson’s compunction over "imposing upon the world" through accounts often written from "slender materials" or "the mere coinage of his own imagination." It details his rapid composition speed, noting he produced three columns of the Gentleman’s Magazine per hour. This rate of 1,350 words an hour exceeded the transcription speed of most people and identifies Johnson as an exceptionally fast writer of original material.
Pierce's The Religious Life of Samuel Johnson is a study of Johnson's piety and spiritual life, arguing that his faith was forged by existential anxiety, positioning him as a psychologist first and a moralist second. Pierce minimizes doctrinal implications, prioritizing the psychological roots of Johnson's struggle, which aligns with Bate's interpretation. The book examines key themes like fear and charity, building upon earlier scholarship by Quinlan and Chapin. Rogers notes an embarrassing dedication and blurb involving Bate and questions Pierce's reliance on Bate's contested "facts," particularly regarding the meaning of the padlock Johnson gave to Hester Thrale, suggesting a possible Freudian subtext involving masochism and esclavage.
Wain finds Pottle’s biography of Boswell free from the "suffocating" minutiae often present in long-term academic research, though he notes the volume only covers Boswell’s life through 1769. Wain argues that Boswell’s literary genius stems from an "infallible instinct" for drama, positioning himself as an "anti-Johnsonian hero" to create a novelistic tension of opposites. While Johnson represents the "last intact specimen of pre-Romantic European man" committed to "general nature," Boswell aligns with the emerging Romantic focus on "singularity" and idiosyncrasy. Wain highlights Boswell’s relationships with Rousseau and Voltaire, noting Boswell’s specific utility as a "Doppelgänger to men of genius" who could "tune" himself to the tone of others. The review emphasizes that Boswell used his own "defenseless temperament" to showcase Johnson’s character, making the biography a "major" work of literature rooted in the psychological interplay between the two men.
Caricature and pastiche of "Johnsonese."
Bloxsome explores Johnson's deep and lifelong association with the medical profession, detailing his friendships with numerous physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, including Dr. Robert James, Dr. Thomas Lawrence, and the apothecary Robert Levett. The text documents Johnson's keen interest in medical matters, his frequent self-dosing, and the professional attention he received throughout his life due to persistent ill-health. Bloxsome cites accounts from Boswell and Piozzi to illustrate Johnson's views on doctors, medical practice, and his final illness, emphasizing his high regard for the character and liberality of many practitioners.
Hall’s comic poem provides an additional four-line stanza to a well-known quatrain attributed to Johnson. The original verses describe a speaker putting on a hat and encountering a man in the Strand who carries his own hat in his hand. Hall’s supplemental stanza introduces a surreal reversal, noting that while the encountered man walked "swinging both his arms," his "head was in his hat." This addition maintains the simple meter and whimsical tone of the original Johnsonian fragment while shifting the focus toward the absurd.
Queen Victoria opens the new Blackfriars Bridge in 1869. Johnson, appearing from history, explains his presence: he wrote letters in 1760 criticizing the design of the first bridge by Mylne. The Queen confirms the old structure failed, proving Johnson's foresight. Johnson offers a moral on diligence before escaping to a tavern with Punch.
Strachey challenges conventional morality by framing Boswell's success as the product of his vices rather than despite them. Using Tinker’s edition of the letters, Strachey highlights Boswell's innate lack of shame and his "amazing aptitude for self-revelation" as the essential conditions of his art. He traces the "extraordinary zigzag" of Boswell's career, from his vows to Johnson and Rousseau to his later struggles with alcoholism and the "stormy darkness" following the death of his wife. Strachey asserts that the same insatiable appetite for life that led to Boswell's ruin enabled the persistent energy required to complete the Life of Johnson. He concludes that Boswell’s immortality is inextricably linked to his absurdities and his failure to conform to the sobriety of a country gentleman.
Yoder reviews Wain’s biography of Johnson, praising its attempt to humanize Johnson and rescue him from the image of an "alabaster pedant." The review emphasizes Johnson's early struggles with poverty and scrofula, his religious faith as a defense against despair, and his pragmatic and humane views on issues. Yoder notes Wain successfully portrays Johnson's noble strengths and human weaknesses, making him more believable to the contemporary reader.
Doody praises Redford's edition for being clear-headed and rational, asserting that it successfully presents Johnson's epistolary development, particularly noting how his friendship with Hester Thrale turned him into a true letter-writer. Doody contends that Redford’s introduction is the first to properly credit Thrale's role, arguing that their correspondence lent flexibility to Johnson’s later works. However, Doody strongly criticizes the edition's sparse annotation, deeming the lack of detail on key figures and events—like the conversion of John Taylor from attorney to clergyman, or the context of Reynolds's "splendid benefaction"—irritating and insufficient for the reader. She also tires of editor Clifford's occasional editorializing.
Roberts challenges the characterization of Johnson as a "crusted Tory" through a sympathetic re-examination of the subject’s life and thought. The text identifies unexpected similarities between Boswell and Pepys, suggesting shared personality traits or habits in their respective journals. Roberts provides a fresh perspective on Johnson and his circle by focusing on "perceptive sympathy for men as men."
Hutchinson’s biography, pleasantly-written and often perceptive, is praised for recognizing that Boswell’s seductive power was directed almost entirely toward men and for shrewdly observing his London Journal as a travel book and an euphoric escape from his marginal status and Lowland upbringing.
Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, 1773
Dr. Johnson at the Derby (Hitherto Unpublished in Boswell)
The narrator took Johnson to the first Derby in 1780. Johnson rejected the idea of social climbing, tolerated the poor, and playfully gambled. He frequently issued sharp, witty pronouncements and classical quotes, often mocking the narrator for his trite observations or Scottish heritage. The day ended with Johnson winning money and later reproving the narrator for drunken behavior.
Writing from Elysium, Johnson thanks the Temple Benchers for naming new buildings after him, where he once lived. However, he sharply criticizes their execution, specifically condemning the sign DR. IOHNSON'S BUILDINGS. He declares the substitution of "I" for "J" and the use of the English possessive case false and ridiculous. The name confuses the public, contrasting the classical pretense with common understanding.
Boswells 'private papirer' og Samuel Johnson-forskningen i nye amerikanske udgaver
Ascherson reviews the culmination of the Yale-Pottle biography, arguing that new evidence replaces myths (Carlyle’s parasite view, Thrale’s notes claim) with a complex portrait. Brady asserts Boswell’s excessive drinking and “inconsistencies” stemmed from “hypochondria” rooted in his tormented Scottish identity, specifically the agonizing patriarchal struggle with his father over the Auchinleck entail. His interest in executions and death-beds, including cross-examining Hume and Kames, was a desperate search for Christian assurance against the terror of predestination and extinction. The biography chronicles Boswell’s attempts to find solace in London, his Life of Johnson's success, and his failure to resolve the tension between duty and delight.
This brief poem employs the figure of Dr. Johnson as a surreal or anachronistic cultural marker within a landscape of urban and regional decay. Ochester populates the work with disparate imagery, including cats sliding around "corners of the ruins" and the "last cow in New Jersey" sniffing the "Palisades." The mention of Dr. Johnson eating a modern breakfast cereal serves to juxtapose 18th-century intellectual authority with the mundane and deteriorating realities of 20th-century American locations like Canarsie and Skaneateles. Ochester observes "four well-meaning bureaucrats" looking on in "utter dismay" as the "ship of the savior" settles, while a "tiger tom" slinks by looking for "charity." The poem uses Johnson to ground a series of vignettes that evoke a sense of exhaustion and misplaced salvation in the American landscape.
Two friends write letters asserting men defined language and dictionaries. They propose a ladies' dictionary to redefine words like "curiosity" and "monopoly," which they humorously rename "manopoly." They suggest establishing a sentimental exchange, complete with settling-days for relationship commitments.
The Night That I Didn’t Get Drunk [review of Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785–1789, by James Boswell, Irma Lustig, and Frederick A. Pottle; The Converse of the Pen, by Bruce Redford; and Printing Technology, Letters and Samuel Johnson, by Alvin Kernan]
Rawson finds The English Experiment a scholarly triumph despite minor editorial quibbles, praising the meticulous annotation and the wealth of information provided. However, he criticizes the overall series' tendency to impose a quasi-novelistic "artistry" on Boswell's daily flow of circumstance through thematic titles and layout, arguing that this obscures the chaotic reality of his life and career vacillations. Rawson notes the book chronicles Boswell's unabated self-absorption, his flagging energies, and his continuing erotomanic bizarrerie, seen in the affair with M.C. Redford's Converse of the Pen is briefly mentioned, with Rawson noting the trend of critics like Redford to assimilate Boswell’s personal writings to the conventions of formally crafted rhetoric, a tendency which he subtly criticizes. Kernan is discussed for comparing Boswell's accounts with other sources (like the Caldwell Minute), highlighting how Boswell rewrote events—such as the meeting with George III—to convert them into what he wished they had been, driven by his needs and art. Rawson agrees with Kernan's premise that Johnson was manipulable by the social impresario Boswell but argues that Kernan goes too far in claiming Boswell created Johnson.
At the Revivals: The Judgement of Dr. Johnson
Dent compares the dramatic skill of Boswell to Chesterton, arguing that Boswell’s account of the meeting between Wilkes and Johnson demonstrates superior dramatization. Chesterton’s play, The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, intersperses authentic remarks by Johnson with parodies that remain difficult to distinguish. Despite its wit, the production fails to capture the ease found in the historical encounter between Johnson and Wilkes. The narrative involving Johnson and Republican spies lacks engagement, while the portrayal of Boswell appears inadequate. Johnson remains a figure too expansive for successful stage impersonation.
Alexander assesses Johnson’s claim to philosophical status, arguing he functions as a sage or wise man rather than a systematic philosopher in the strict sense. The author contrasts Johnson with Hume, a first-rank philosopher, and explores Johnson’s lack of speculative gift, citing his famous argumentum ad lapidem against Berkeley’s idealism as evidence. Johnson’s theological beliefs and political prejudices, such as his condemnation of Rousseau, consistently precluded deep metaphysical probing. The author notes that while all theory resists free will, all experience supports it, reflecting Johnson’s preference for practical life over abstract thought. Johnson’s strong mind, however, yields sound judgment on topics like the origin of evil, exemplified by his critique of Jenyns’s facile optimism.
Ralph De Toledano Muses on the Words We Share with Dr. Johnson
De Toledano explores the linguistic vitality of Johnson’s Dictionary by examining eighteenth-century definitions that mirror modern slang or have undergone radical semantic shifts. He lists contemporary colloquialisms found in the 1755 text, such as "bamboozle" and "hush money," while highlighting archaic definitions for "conservative," "modern," and "proletarian." De Toledano argues for the "refocillation," or refreshment, of the English language through the recovery of Johnson’s precise, often whimsical, vocabulary.
Postgate presents a "nosegay of conversations" extracted from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, based on the premise that Johnson’s vitality resides exclusively in his "careless table-talk" rather than his formal publications. Wain disputes Postgate’s assertion that the Dictionary has been "superseded" and the Rambler and Rasselas remain "unread" by the public. Postgate characterizes the living Johnson through his oral repartee, assuming the written Works have "vanished" from relevance. Wain identifies this as a "trifling performance" that misses the "fruit of [Johnson's] meditation and deep wisdom" found in the prose. The text reflects a mid-twentieth-century tendency to prioritize the "biographical interest" of the Johnsonian circle over the "self-sufficiency of Johnson the author."
Rare Boswell MSS Reach New York: Letters of Goldsmith, Burns and Other Great Figures of the Time in the Collection: His Own Love Notes Too
This article, reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, examines Johnson’s complicated relationship with the theater and his "instinctive bad taste" in acting. Walkley draws on Boswell and other authorities to describe Johnson’s early years at Edial, his failed tragedy Irene, and his interactions with 18th-century stage figures like Garrick, Kitty Clive, and Mrs. Pritchard. The narrative highlights Johnson's visual and auditory limitations, his "wrong" theories on elocution, and his tendency to "suffer nobody but himself to abuse Garrick." It concludes by reflecting on the "undying charm" of these historical figures, whose names evoke a London more living than that of 1919.
This review of Chauncey Brewster Tinker's Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney describes the volume as the first complete collection of Johnsonian material found in the diaries and memoirs of Frances Burney. Tinker argues that Johnson's greatness rests not on his writings but on a transcendental force of personality that he imposed on the eighteenth century. The review notes Johnson's rapturous approval of Evelina, which led him to quote the book by the page and imitate its characters. Tinker draws an analogy between the enduring fame of Johnson and Byron, asserting that both men remain masculine effigies in literary memory despite the declining readership of their formal works. The collection includes twenty-five pages rescued from the memoirs of Dr. Burney.
This enthusiastic review examines Roger Ingpen’s bicentennial edition of Boswell and George Paston’s biography of Pope, specifically Mr. Pope: His Life and Times. The reviewer praises Ingpen for making a judicious selection from the commentaries of Malone, Croker, and Burney, while incorporating material from Piozzi and a vast collection of illustrations, portraits, and maps of London as Johnson knew it. Characterizing eighteenth-century English literary society as a "mutual admiration society" defined by gossip and letter-writing, the piece argues that the era reached its climax in the club idea, where literature was "inextricably entangled" with national life. The reviewer asserts that Boswell and Horace Walpole express the true spirit of the age better than the "admired Mr. Addison" or Johnson himself because Boswell preserves his subject's foibles as clearly as his virtues. Although the reviewer characterizes Boswell as the most insulted of biographers but admittedly nearly the greatest, he laments that many modern readers only know Boswell at second-hand. While modern tastes have shifted toward the romantic, the reviewer recommends these volumes for capturing the whole canvas of an era where Johnson and Pope remain essential to understanding English life.
A letter to the editor advocates for preserving James Boswell's authority on language, alongside Johnson's. Boswell, in his Life, declared a hope that Johnson's authority would stop the curtailing innovation that replaces "critick" and "publick" with "critic" and "public." Furthermore, Boswell's Corsica implored future publishers to preserve his original spelling. The letter laments the loss of the silent "k" and the threat to the silent "ugh" in words like "though."
The London Globe challenges the statement that Johnson wrote Rasselas in a court at Staple Inn, asserting that Boswell's Life demonstrates the claim cannot be true. The Globe also rejects the description of Rasselas as "unreadable," arguing that the work is still read for its own sake and remains essential as the only expression of its kind of Johnson's mind. The character of Pekuah in Rasselas may have been drawn from Mrs. Nollekens, the sculptor's wife, of whom Johnson once remarked he would have married her himself.
Hill, editor of the most esteemed edition of Boswell's Johnson, was the foremost authority on Johnson. Hill, educated at Bruce Castle School and Pembroke College, Oxford, served as head master at Bruce Castle for nearly twenty years. After 1876, Hill dedicated himself entirely to literary pursuits.
Hill, born June 7, 1835, died in London on February 25. Hill, son of the headmaster of Bruce Castle School, was educated there and at Pembroke College, Oxford. After serving as head master from 1859 to 1876, Hill devoted himself to letters. He was the foremost living authority on Johnson, and his definitive edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson is his most celebrated work. Hill's other works include Dr. Johnson: His Friends and Critics, Footsteps of Dr. Johnson in Scotland, and Wit and Wisdom of Dr. Johnson.
In a letter to Dr. Taylor, Johnson discusses his improved health and treatment, offers encouraging words for Taylor's own ailments, and defines exercise as "labor without weariness."
Dirda reviews Leo Damrosch's The Club, a book about the dining society where Johnson, Boswell, Burke, Gibbon, and Smith met regularly for 20 years starting in 1764. Dirda notes that the book, a lively introduction to late 18th-century English thought, expands the club's membership to include notable women excluded by the all-male society, such as Johnson's benefactor, Piozzi, and the novelist Fanny Burney. Dirda praises Damrosch for his unsentimental portrait of the members: Johnson is depicted as ugly, palsied, obsessive-compulsive, and anti-American; Boswell is a feckless, vain alcoholic living on handouts who sought solace in drink and women. Dirda states that the book, though not as deep as Damrosch's earlier biographies, seamlessly mixes learned exposition with striking facts and observations, successfully presenting an exceptionally entertaining group portrait.
Walter Jackson Bate: Portrait of a Scholar
"I really must leave at 11:30 to go to the library," apologized Walter Jackson Bate, Lowell professor of the humanities at Harvard and author of the award-winning biographies, John Keats (1963) and Samuel Johnson (1977). A trim, white-haired man of 61, about six feet tall, Bate wore a pale blue shirt and what can generously be called a loud purple-and-green madras sport jacket. We sat in his office at Warren House - a dull yellow wooden building overshadowed by the Harvard Union nearby - and talked about his career as a scholar and teacher.
Valentine reviews Bailey’s two-volume edition of seventy essays contributed by Boswell to the London Magazine between 1777 and 1783. The review argues these essays dispute the "cliché estimate" of Boswell as a "trivial," "quaint and comic figure" merely reporting Johnson’s talk. Valentine notes that Bailey’s editorial work demonstrates how Boswell's mind remained independent of Johnson's, often expressing ideas on religion and politics that served as a "covert attack" on the doctor's views. The essays, written to "cure his own melancholly," reveal Boswell’s classic knowledge and "spiritual schooling" through topics such as death, suicide, and executions.
Undeleted Boswell Brings Big Price Here: A. E. Newton Gets Only Known Perfect First Edition of Life of Johnson
This report chronicles the sale of a unique, unexpurgated first edition of the Life of Samuel Johnson to A. Edward Newton by rare book dealer Gabriel Wells. Found in England, this copy contains the original text Boswell deleted immediately after publication for being "indiscreet." Specifically, pages 301 and 302 in the second volume include passages regarding "conjugal fidelity" that do not appear in other known copies. Previous editions often signaled these changes via bracketed page numbers or leaves pasted on stubs. While the exact purchase price remains undisclosed, the sale likely exceeds the $5,250 record set at the Jerome Kern auction. The item also mentions W. H. P. Faunce of Brown University.
Script, Not Johnson, Disliked by Laughton: Actor Denies Slur on 'Great Man': Says Role Was Unsuitable
The reason Charles Laughton rejected an offer to play Doctor Samuel Johnson in a motion picture is not because Johnson is not a sympathetic character who "never did anything but sit down on his fat rump and make cruel remarks about other people," as the actor was reported to have said of Johnson, but because the movie script is unsuitable.
Norton reviews Lillian de la Torre’s Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector, a collection of nine stories that cast Johnson as a detective and use Boswell as the narrator. De la Torre blends authentic quotations from the Life and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with her own prose. Norton notes that while Johnson previously acted as a literary detective by exposing the forgeries of Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton, these stories turn him into an amateur sleuth of criminal puzzles. The reviewer finds the imitation of Boswell’s style successful, noting that a member of the Johnsonian circle may not be able to tell where de la Torre is using Boswell and when she is inventing. Although the mysteries are not fast-paced or shocking, Norton suggests they will entertain readers who enjoy the movement of Johnson’s mind.
Clifford reviews Louis Kronenberger’s The Portable Johnson and Boswell, noting it reflects a twentieth-century revaluation of Johnson’s writing beyond his reputation as a mere "eccentric personality." Clifford finds the condensation of Boswell’s Life "excellent" and praises the inclusion of Hebridean anecdotes from the original journals discovered by Ralph Heyward Isham. However, the review expresses disappointment regarding the limited space allotted to Johnson’s own works, noting the omission of the Rambler essays and Rasselas. Clifford highlights Kronenberger’s "shrewd remarks" on Johnson’s "apparent bigotry," which the editor attributes to a "tendency toward disbelief" rather than passionate conviction.
'Life of Johnson' Headed for Stage: James Lee Will Adapt His 'Omnibus' TV Play: 'Salad Days' Due in September
Cheryl Crawford and Joel Schenker have signed James Lee to write the stage version of his television play, "The Life of Samuel Johnson," which drew good notices from the critics when it was done last December as a presentation on "Omnibus."
Lask reviews a sound recording of Boswell's London Journal. He argues that while Johnson is largely the creation of Boswell, the publication of private papers allows Boswell to assume independence. The recording focuses on the pursuit of the actress Louisa and the "ignoble aftermath." Lask finds that Boswell's "unblinkingly confessional" style and honesty in depicting himself as a young gallant require a certain genius. He concludes that the reading by Anthony Quayle reveals the "engaging and mercurial character" of the biographer through his contradictory and amusing self-portrayal.
In our day the 18th‐century biographer James Boswell appears to have become inextricably entangled in the career of a suave American collector named Ralph Heyward Isham.
Edwards’s approving review of W. Jackson Bate’s biography of Johnson praises the author’s "magisterial" interweaving of life and work, characterizing the biography as a work that successfully integrates Johnson's personal history and writings. Bate uses "psychoanalytical categories" with sensible directness to explore Johnson's "introspective melancholy," his fear of insanity, and his "massive superego." The narrative covers Johnson's provincial origins, his physical afflictions—including "habitual physical convulsions"—and his early failures as a schoolmaster before achieving "public honors" in London. Edwards highlights Bate's treatment of Johnson's complex relationship with his mother, whom he felt "love without much respecting," and his "immense tenderness" toward friends. The review notes that Bate’s version of Johnson’s relationship with Richard Savage offers a more grounded alternative to the theories of John Wain, arguing that Bate demonstrates how Johnson’s resolute prose style was an active effort to "absorb, examine and endure" his internal struggles and universal human follies. Edwards concludes that Bate manages to show our "kinship" with Johnson more effectively than even Boswell, positioning the work as the greatest biography of its subject since the 1791 original.
Index to the Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham
CGV entry 4:20. An index to item 4:19, sometimes considered its 19th volume.
Cochrane entry 49. Serves as a complete index for the multi-volume edition of Boswell's private papers edited by Geoffrey Scott and Frederick Pottle.
This edition reprints Boswell’s first major literary success, originally published in 1768, which documented his 1765 expedition to Corsica. Boswell departs for Corsica in 1765 to observe a people "actually fighting for liberty." Seeking an experience beyond the common tour of Europe, he secures an introduction to Paoli from Rousseau. Boswell describes his journey through the island’s rugged terrain and his reception by the inhabitants, noting their hospitality and spirited character. He records several days in the company of Paoli at Sollacaro, documenting the General's opinions on government, morality, and the Corsican people. Paoli expresses a desire to form a firm constitution and emphasizes the personal bravery of his troops over regular army structures. Boswell highlights Paoli’s classical learning and his total devotion to the patriotic cause. The narrative includes Boswell’s efforts to advocate for a British alliance with Corsica and his eventual departure from the island following a period of illness in Bastia. The text serves as an early example of his biographical technique, focusing on the remarkable sayings and character of his subject. Critics call this book a delightful recovery of a neglected masterpiece that proves the author's biographical genius existed independently of his later, more famous subjects. Bailey and Lawrence praise the modern edition for making the text's characteristic vanity and bubbling enthusiasm accessible once more. Reviewers like Gosse and W. J. forcefully dispute the fallacy of the author as a simpleton, instead highlighting his adroit resources and extraordinary instinct for moral grandeur. Lubbock notes that the work allows the writer to stand on his own feet, displaying a happy descriptive skill comparable to Pepys. But, the Saturday Review suggests the author's motives were driven more by a desire for novelty than by genuine political sympathy.
R. & W. Carr for Inskeep and Bradford, and William McIlhenny
Adam's 1919 edition makes a historically significant manuscript available before later major discoveries. The Note Book is a condensed diary, vital because it contains the "original raw material" Boswell collected for the early, non-personal sections of the Life of Johnson. It chronicles Johnson’s boyhood and Oxford life, gathering anecdotes from people like Miss Porter, Adams, and Hector during Boswell’s 1776 visit to Lichfield. It also includes conversational tidbits, demonstrating Boswell’s methodology for gathering retrospective biographical data.
A facsimile edition, limited to 50 copies.
CGV entry 4:18. A facsimile edition with an introduction by A. Edward Newton.
A scholarly edition compiled from R. B. Adam's unique MS. It records James Boswell’s notes detailing Samuel Johnson's early life and conversations collected 1776 and 1777. The notes begin at Lichfield, March 1776, and resume at Ashbourne, September 1777. It served as raw material for Boswell’s biography. Boswell significantly expanded memoranda, often transforming indirect discourse into direct dialogue for the Life. Content includes biographical facts gathered from SJ's friends, Dr. Adams and Edmund Hector. It records SJ discussing Dictionary composition, specifying six amanuenses and extensive paper usage. Portions appear in G. B. Hill's 1897 Johnsonian Miscellanies and the Yale Reading Edition journal vols., such as Boswell in Extremes.
CGV entry 4:18. A facsimile edition with an introduction by R. W. Chapman.
Printed from material in the R. B. Adam collection.
printed for W. Flexney, near Gray's-Inn, Holborn
Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch
Adopting the orthography used by Johnson and Dalrymple to refer to Malloch, Boswell, Erskine, and Dempster attack the lack of original genius in a production they term a "puddle of the moderns." They dismiss the drama as a "tedious composition" of "petty larceny" pilfered from Shakespeare, Otway, and Dryden. They mock the "mushroom" rebellions that arise and vanish in a moment and ridicule the manipulative introduction of children to "double the distress." Malloch appears as a "culprit" driven by "dire necessity" to "dishonest shifts," producing a work colder than "Nova Zembla." While praising the "energy" of performers like Garrick and Cibber, the authors conclude that even their talents cannot redeem such "uninteresting characters" and "stupidity."
William A. Clark Memorial Library, University of California
Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira Written by Mr. David Mallock, 1763
A facsimile reprint of the 1763 pamphlet attacking Mallet (originally Malloch). Pottle's introduction details the collaborative efforts of Boswell, Erskine, and Dempster to "damn" the play during its Drury Lane premiere.
With an introduction by F. A. Pottle.
A short, anonymous allegorical novella, characterized as James Boswell’s only extended foray into fiction. Composed by dictation in May 1767, it transposes the characters and events of the contemporary Scottish Douglas Cause trial into a Spanish setting. The text, a biased account intended to favor the Douglas side, was published as a 50-page pamphlet on 15 June 1767. The first edition, published in Scotland, was enormously successful, selling out quickly. A second edition followed 20 June, a third 29 June, and a fourth in London later that year. The publication created a sensation, resulting in publishers being cited for contempt of court, where Boswell secretly served as counsel. Boswell also wrote anonymous, flattering reviews of his own work. A modern reprint was issued in 1977, and it appeared in a 1930 edition.
The Hypochondriack: Being the 70 Essays by the Celebrated Biographer, James Boswell, Appearing in the London Magazine from November, 1777, to August, 1783, and Here First Reprinted
This seventy-essay series, originally published monthly in the London Magazine from 1777 to 1783, presents Boswell’s self-criticism and intellectual development during his middle life. Bailey’s scholarly edition provides the first reprint of these anonymous papers, maintaining original irregularities in spelling and structure. The front matter includes a detailed history of the series, an analysis of Boswell as an essayist, and an examination of his audience. Bailey’s extensive annotations and editorial policies clarify Boswell’s use of sources and identify parallels between the essays and his other works, such as the Life of Johnson and his private correspondence. The essays function as a "monthly task" of mental and moral discipline, allowing Boswell to settle his ideas on recurring topics including death, marriage, drinking, and hypochondria. He frequently adopts a persona of independent thought, incorporating the "best thoughts" of Johnson while exploring subjects Johnson often refused to discuss. Salient quotations illustrate Boswell’s struggle with "mercurial" inconstancy and his desire to "manage the mind" through "habitual reflection and animated exertions." The edition includes several illustrations and a comprehensive index. Most reviews are positive. In TLS, Chapman praises the independent, sincere, and knowledgeable nature of the essays but notes that the extensive commentary overloads the text. Chapman, writing in Modern Language Notes, adds that the collection is important and meritorious, rescuing the pieces from oblivion, though the mass of annotation is not easily digestible. In the Yale Review, Crane commends the volumes for establishing the author's significance as an independent journalist, a position echoed in his review for Modern Philology where he praises the textual accuracy despite some irrelevant erudition. Saintsbury's review in The Dial notes the expert editorial labor and critical collation with major works, but finds that the intrinsic value of the essays remains limited due to their derivative nature. Valentine, in the New York Times, argues that the publication disputes the cliché estimate of the writer as a trivial figure, demonstrating an independent mind. In the Sunday Times, MacCarthy notes the sociological value of the text and the underlying motive of self-discipline. Writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, Pottle praises the valuable service and critical prefaces, highlighting the autobiographical worth of the series. Squire (The Observer) values the publication as a necessary reference but finds the edition elephantine and too big for daily use. In the Sewanee Review, Brown commends the emphasis on the writer as a serious student of the art of living, while a notice in the Christian Science Monitor praises the thorough introduction and exhaustive commentary detailing fashionable melancholy.
CGV entry 4:11. The full text was later reprinted with less annotation as 'Boswell's Column' by William Kimber, London, in 1951.
printed by Samuel Chandler; for W. Flexney, near Gray's-Inn-Gate, Holborn
Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq.
This collection of forty-two letters documents the witty and high-spirited correspondence between James Boswell and his friend Andrew Erskine from 1761 to 1763. The authors use a "pleasant spirit" and the maxim "Vive la Bagatelle" to explore various literary and personal themes, often employing verse to "knock down" one another's arguments. Boswell discusses his "volatility" and Normandy ancestry, his "amorously pensive" moods, and his ardent desire to join the guards in London, which he describes as a "gay scene of life." Erskine contributes humorous odes, including "On the Death of Three Kittens" and an "Ode to a Jew's Harp," while Boswell responds with an "Ode to Gluttony" and an "Ode on an Engagement between the Right Honourable Lady B— and a Turkey-Cock." The letters contain significant commentary on contemporary literature, including praise for the "noble works of Ossian" and Kames’s Elements of Criticism, alongside satirical views on local Scottish clubs and figures. Boswell's "tender imagination" and Erskine's "prosaic poetry" combine to create a "mirality of mirth" intended to entertain the public through a display of "genuine humour" and "genuine jest."
Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica
Reprinted from original editions, this volume contains the 1761-1763 correspondence between Boswell and Erskine, alongside the narrative of Boswell's 1765 visit to Corsica. Hill provides a preface detailing Boswell's character, noting his "appetite for knowing great men" and his struggle with intemperance. The correspondence reveals Boswell's youthful volatility, his "ardent desire for literary fame," and his early fascination with London. The Journal records his interactions with Pascal Paoli, whom Boswell presented to Europe as a heroic figure, a feat that established his reputation as "Corsica Boswell" long before the publication of his biography of Johnson. Salient details include Boswell's use of Paoli's influence to gain social standing and his eventual decline in health following his literary triumphs.
Greenough & Stebbins for W. Andrews and L. Blake
The first American edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1807, a joint publication by W. Andrews & L. Blake of Boston and Cushing & Appleton of Salem, Massachusetts. The three-volume set reflected the format of the corrected London second edition of 1793 and the unauthorized Dublin edition of 1792, distributing the popular work in a compact size. American publishers frequently appropriated Johnson's popular writings as commercial property. The 1807 publication came when Boswell's biography had already established a reputation in Britain as an immortal work and sold widely.
Boswell's grosse Reise, Deutschland und die Schweiz, 1764
Tagebuch Einer Reise nach den hebridischen Inseln mit Doctor Samuel Johnson
Esperienza e vita morale: Conversazioni con Boswell
CGV entry 4:15. An Italian translation of conversations from Boswell.
CGV entry 4:15. Abridged Norwegian translation.
Leask offers a chronological account of Boswell's life, covering his education, his relationship with Samuel Johnson, his significant travels to Corsica and the Hebrides, his legal career, and his personal affairs. The work takes an explicitly revisionist approach. Its central thesis is to correct the "brilliant but totally misleading" portrait of Boswell famously painted by Lord Macaulay. Rather than presenting Boswell as a mere sycophant or fool who stumbled into greatness, the biography argues for a more complex and nuanced understanding of his character. It uses Boswell's personal letters and journals to portray him as a man of substance and talent, arguing that his specific personality traits were essential to his literary achievements, especially his celebrated Life of Johnson. The book thus seeks to elevate Boswell's reputation, positioning him as a significant Scottish figure in his own right. Preface, 'Preface,' addresses the author's intent to provide a biography of James Boswell that offers new insights to scholars while correcting the misleading, though brilliant, historical perspectives established by Lord Macaulay. Chapter 1, 'Early Days—Meets Johnson. 1740–1763,' addresses Boswell’s ancient Norman lineage and high-society Scottish connections, detailing his early education and the formative influence of his father, Lord Auchinleck, alongside his initial 1763 meeting with Samuel Johnson. Chapter 2, 'The Continent—Corsica. 1763–66,' addresses Boswell’s grand tour through Europe, highlighting his legal studies in Utrecht and his celebrated excursion to Corsica, where he interviewed the patriot Pascal Paoli. Chapter 3, 'Edinburgh Bar—Stratford Jubilee. 1766–69,' addresses Boswell’s admission to the Scottish bar and his active role in the famous Douglas Cause, while also detailing his eccentric appearance as a Corsican chief during the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford. Chapter 4, 'Love Affairs—Literary Club. 1766–73,' addresses Boswell’s numerous and often simultaneous romantic pursuits leading to his marriage to Margaret Montgomerie, as well as his prestigious election to the Literary Club under Johnson's sponsorship. Chapter 5, 'Tour to the Hebrides. 1773,' addresses the landmark journey through the Scottish Highlands and Western Islands, focusing on the social interactions between the sophisticated travelers and the local inhabitants. Chapter 6, 'Edinburgh Life—Death of Johnson. 1773–1784,' addresses the professional and personal tensions in Boswell’s life, including his struggles with inebriety and his final, poignant departure from Johnson in London shortly before the latter's death. Chapter 7, 'The English Bar—Death. 1784–1795,' addresses Boswell’s unsuccessful attempts to establish a legal and political career in England, his deep grief following his wife's death, and the painstaking completion of his Life of Samuel Johnson before his own passing in 1795. Chapter 8, 'In Literature,' argues that Boswell revolutionized the biographical genre through his uncompromising commitment to authenticity and his unparalleled dramatic skill in reconstructing character and conversation.
Abbott recounts finding the Fettercairn Papers between 1930 and 1931 at the residence of Lord Clinton. He describes the intensive work of indexing these documents relating to Boswell and Johnson and laments the legal actions that halted his editorial progress. Abbott details his unsuccessful requests to Isham to continue editing specific documents. He emphasizes that the catalog of these papers, though initially intended to facilitate scholarship, became the basis for litigation over their ownership.
This report chronicles the "literary treasure hunt" for the scattered manuscripts of Boswell, noting the sixth major find of Boswelliana. Discovered by Lord Talbot de Malahide, these 500 items were sold to Lieutenant Colonel Ralph H. Isham and subsequently to Yale University. The find includes over 1,000 manuscript pages from the Life of Johnson and Tour to the Hebrides. Notable "tidbits" include a report to Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Boswell's love affairs and his verdict on Hester Thrale Piozzi, whom he claims was repaid for her care of Johnson by the "gratification of her vanity". The cache also contains a page of Boswell's "soul-searching" in which he describes his brilliant qualities as "embroidery upon gauze".
Why Did We Sell This 'Great Literary Find' for £2,250?
Basso chronicles the provenance and discovery of the Boswell papers, beginning with Major Stone’s 1840 encounter with Madame Noel in Boulogne. He disputes the nineteenth-century assumption that Boswell’s archives perished at Auchinleck. The narrative follows Tinker’s 1925 visit to Malahide, where he viewed the ebony cabinet, and Isham’s subsequent negotiations with Lord and Lady Talbot. Basso details the recovery of journals and letters from a croquet box, a stable loft, and the Fettercairn House find by Abbott. He emphasizes Boswell’s meticulous recording of 18th-century life, his 1764 interview with Voltaire, and his relationship with Johnson. The account concludes with the 1949 transfer of the collection to Yale University, ensuring the publication of the journals and an unexpurgated Life of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 55.
Birrell traces the posthumous reputation of Boswell, noting that the Life of Johnson only gradually displaced Hawkins's biography to reign supreme. He examines the contemptuous contemporary reactions of Walpole and Gray, contrasted against the later paradoxical critiques of Macaulay and Carlyle. Birrell details the 1850 discovery of letters to Temple in Boulogne and the 1920s recovery of the Malahide Castle manuscripts. He argues that Boswell intentionally sought notoriety through self-exposure, beginning with his early Ode to Tragedy and correspondence with Erskine. He maintains that "delicacy and Boswell have nothing to do with one another." The text justifies the publication of these private papers by asserting that Boswell was never a hypocrite and intended to "Johnsonize the world" while remaining "naked and unashamed" before posterity. Birrell concludes that because Boswell was "a character without reserve," these revelations merely confirm his "unfailing candour."
CGV entry 4:113. On the new Boswell papers.
Cochrane entry 515.
This article reports on Yale University's acquisition of the private papers of Boswell, which were transported to the library in armed-guard chests. Purchased from collector Ralph H. Isham with funds from McGraw-Hill and the Old Dominion Foundation, the collection contains 1,300 unpublished pages of the Life of Johnson, Boswell’s diary, and the manuscript of Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. A team of scholars led by Frederick A. Pottle is editing the material, which includes correspondence with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick. Scholars anticipate the collection will yield a "new Life of Johnson," a definitive Boswell biography, and previously unknown poems by Johnson.
Announces the discovery of Boswell’s papers at Malahide Castle, inherited by Lord Talbot de Malahide. This find refutes Birkbeck Hill’s earlier claim that the archives were lost. Isham acquired the collection, which Scott describes as surpassing expectations despite the damp-induced destruction of most of the Life of Johnson manuscript. The cabinet contained materials involving Rousseau, Voltaire, Pitt, and Burns, specifically documenting Boswell’s visit to Ferney and his escorting of Rousseau’s mistress. The account notes the "Teutonic order" of the files and Isham’s plan for serial publication. It contrasts the discovery with the 1857 Temple correspondence find and predicts the collection will provide a "searchlight" on 18th-century figures.
The reviewer disputes the characterization of Boswell as a "comparable fool," asserting instead his undeniable status as the author of an "incomparable biography." While noting that Johnson's own writings have fallen out of common favor, the text credits Boswell with making the subject a permanent fixture of a "liberal education" through his "marvelous" verbal reporting and depiction of manners. Boswell followed his notes closely, discriminating between the "Great Bear" in earnest and in "ursine humor." The text reports the acquisition of the Malahide Castle papers by Isham, noting that while Boswell's descendants neglected the manuscripts—leaving the "Life" in a "hopeless condition"—the collection includes letters from Burns, Goldsmith, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Pitt. These newly acquired materials, including Boswell's marriage proposal to Peggy, remain intact for future publication.
Reports on the legal resolution of ownership claims to the Boswell manuscripts discovered at Fettercairn House in 1931. The collection includes the London Journal, over one thousand letters to Boswell, and 119 letters from Johnson. Lord Stevenson ruled that while Boswell intended Auchinleck as the permanent repository for his papers, the right to the Fettercairn discovery passed through the residue of the estate of James Boswell’s widow. Consequently, the court awarded equal shares to Isham, as assignee of Lord Talbot, and the Cumberland Infirmary.
Bronson analyzes Boswell's "double consciousness," characterized by a "histrionic element" and an "abnormally indistinct" sense of identity. The text argues that Boswell’s genius was rooted in an "adolescent" and "mercurial" temperament that sought external authority—principally in Johnson—to compensate for his own lack of stability. Bronson explores the psychological distance in Boswell’s journals, where the observer recorded the actor’s vagaries with "naked frankness" and "appalling candour." The Life of Johnson is defined as the "involuntary tribute of a great human weakness to a great human strength," serving as a clinical record of Boswell’s lifelong effort to "adjust his character" through the mirror of his mentors and his own writing.
Cochrane entry 47. Investigates Boswell's will and family correspondence to determine his intentions for his private papers. Concludes that Boswell only ever planned for the publication of his Johnson-related material, not his entire personal journal.
This report describes the public display of a new stack of Boswelliana in Manhattan, asserting that recent rediscoveries have reversed Lord Macaulay's "colossal misjudgment" of Boswell as a "servile and impertinent" toady. Ralph H. Isham acquired the vast cache from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House, including 1,300 pages of working manuscript for the Life. Among the papers is Boswell's first impression of Johnson as a man of "dreadful appearance" troubled by "the King's evil". The article notes Boswell's 1772 letter to David Garrick expressing his determination to write Johnson's life and an interview regarding the Doctor’s "amorous propensities". It concludes with Boswell's dream of a returned Johnson discussing the "terrible" nature of death.
Designing and Manufacturing the Boswell Papers
Boswell Redivivus [review of Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764, by James Boswell and Frederick A. Pottle; Boswell's Life of Johnson, by James Boswell, George Birkbeck Hill, and L. F. Powell; and The Letters of Samuel Johnson, by Samuel Johnson and R. W. Chapman]
Cochrane entry 568. Praises the newly published journals, arguing they establish Boswell as a major literary figure in his own right and a diarist on par with Pepys for his honesty and fascination.
Cochrane entry 434. Describes the challenge of editing Boswell's correspondence, noting that a major task is simply locating the hundreds of letters scattered among libraries and private collections.
Haslam recalls Scott's involvement with Isham's first collection of Boswell papers in 1927. Scott, who had achieved distinction with Architect of Humanism and Portrait of Zélide, was contemplating a life of Boswell when he was called to meet Isham. He spent two days handling the unlisted collection, confirming his inference about the missing correspondence between Boswell and Belle de Zuylen. Scott then agreed to edit the documents, planning the set-out and typography of the first 18 volumes, though he only saw the first few volumes through the press before his death in 1929.
Isham provides a posthumous tribute to Scott, detailing their "fatalistic" meeting in 1927 and Scott's subsequent role as editor of the Malahide Boswell papers. Isham describes Scott's "prodigious" mental activity and his labor-intensive writing process driven by a quest for perfection. The account chronicles Scott's relocation to Long Island, where he completed the first six volumes of the Boswell Papers over twenty-one months. Isham characterizes Scott as a genius of "vivid conversation" and "boundless sympathy" whose work was cut short by his death from pneumonia on August 14, 1929.
This report chronicles Ralph Heyward Isham's acquisition and publication of the Boswell papers from Malahide Castle. Identifying Boswell as a writer of "talent" despite his "lurid" reputation, the article notes that his descendants suppressed his manuscripts for generations to protect the family name. Isham, a wealthy American collector, succeeded where others failed by personally visiting Lord Talbot de Malahide and concluding the deal "over the teacups". The "backbone" of the find is Boswell's journal, supplemented by letters from figures such as Voltaire and Goldsmith, and fragments of the Life of Johnson. The report details Lady Talbot’s attempts to "ink out" passages she considered "indelicate," a labor that required experts eighteen months to reverse. Originally edited by Geoffrey Scott and completed by Frederick A. Pottle, the 15-volume set was nearly sold out by the date of publication.
New Boswell Papers Bought by Yale Library
Hopkins reports on Isham’s acquisition of Boswell’s private papers from Malahide Castle, termed the "greatest literary discovery of the century." He notes the collection includes the manuscript of the Corsica study and correspondence with Voltaire, Rousseau, and Johnson. Hopkins details the discovery of these materials in an "ebony cabinet" and a "disused lumber room" at Auchinleck. He records Isham’s intent to keep the collection intact for students and the appointment of Scott to edit the material for publication.
Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle
This exhibition catalogue documents the first public display of the extensive "Malahide Papers" acquired by Ralph Heyward Isham, organized into sections covering Boswell’s journals, letters, and manuscripts. Editorial policy, overseen by Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, prioritizes the preservation of Boswell’s original records, including "loose" leaves and fragments previously thought lost. The entries detail Boswell’s meticulous biographical process, such as his habit of using original journal leaves as "copy" for the printer, resulting in significant physical gaps in the manuscripts of the Life of Johnson and the Tour to the Hebrides. The catalogue emphasizes Boswell’s relationship with Johnson, featuring the "Ashbourne Journal" and the "Tour to the Hebrides" as foundational texts that reveal Johnson’s unvarnished opinions on contemporaries like Hume and Sir Alexander Macdonald. Mentions of Piozzi focus on the competitive literary landscape following Johnson’s death, particularly Boswell’s "Ode by Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale," published anonymously to retaliate against her collection of Johnson’s letters. The collection further documents Boswell's domestic life, his legal career in Scotland and at the English bar, and his lifelong struggle with melancholy.
Cochrane entry 38.
Scott edits the first unexpurgated edition of Boswell's private papers, recently recovered from Malahide Castle by Isham. The publication, designed by Bruce Rogers, provides a "vivid revelation" of Boswell's egoism and his "strenuous effort" to preserve a complete self-revelation for posterity. Scott organizes the sixteen-volume set to include journals from Germany, Italy, and the Hebrides, alongside materials documenting the "Making of the Life of Johnson." The text highlights how these documents, long suppressed by heirs who feared Boswell "lowered himself" through his "deferential suit and service to Johnson," will necessitate a rewriting of eighteenth-century literary history. Scott focuses on maintaining the interrelationship between original letters, journals, and memorandums used for the biography of Johnson.
On vols. 17 and 18 of the Boswell Papers.
Tinker announces his plan to publish the collected letters of Boswell, biographer of Johnson. He requests assistance from readers regarding the existence of any published or unpublished letters held in private collections, expressing a desire to make the proposed edition as complete as possible. This notice serves as a formal call for scholarly collaboration and primary source material for his forthcoming biographical and editorial work. Tinker provides his temporary address in London at 123 Pall Mall and his permanent address at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
More Boswell [Review of The Boswell Papers of the Isham Collection, Volumes 7, 8, 9, edited by Frederick A. Pottle]
This reviews volumes seven, eight, and nine of the Boswell Papers, covering 1765-1774, including Boswell’s rise to fame as the champion of Corsica. Pottle maintains the high editorial standard set by Scott, printing the journals in their entirety. The content confirms Boswell’s distinction independent of Johnson, particularly through his effective support of Corsican chieftain Paoli. The journals reveal Boswell’s conflicting motives, including his ingenuous vanity alongside his genuine idealism, fidelity to his wife, capacity for work, and deep religious consciousness.
Whittlesey House to Publish Boswell Collection
Yale Acquires New Group of Boswell Works
Yale Appoints Committee to Advise on Boswell Papers
Of Out-doors Proceedings in the Douglas Cause
A. addresses the legal and social controversies surrounding the Douglas Cause, specifically responding to previous extracts and reviews. While the author maintains neutrality on the central question of filiation, he defends the publication of summaries favoring the plaintiffs to counter widespread public bias for the defendant. He identifies Boswell’s Dorando as an artful, eloquent, yet manipulative performance designed to influence the judges through popular pressure and prejudice rather than reason. The text further criticizes the logic of reviewers regarding filiation laws and defends the integrity of the deciding judge against partisan attacks.
Author may be Hugo Arnot. Discusses Dorando.
Academicus cites Boswell’s biography to relay Johnson’s disapproval of Hailes for modernizing the language of John Hailes of Eton. Johnson argues that "an author's language, Sir, is a characteristical part of his composition." Academicus uses Johnson’s sentiment to caution a "very respectable gentleman" against changing original wording, noting that "when the language is changed, we are not sure that the sense is the same."
Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts
Pascal Paoli: An Inspiration to the Sons of Liberty
Anderson examines the significant "long-distance hero worship" of Paoli among American colonial radicals, particularly from 1766 to 1770. The narrative demonstrates how Paoli’s resistance to Genoese and French tyranny provided a militant model for the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Anderson credits Boswell’s Account of Corsica with popularizing the general’s character, leading to the naming of merchant ships, children, and towns in his honor. The text emphasizes that Paoli’s popularity peaked just as colonial resentment toward British policy shifted from protest to a "mood to shed blood." Special attention is given to the naming of Paoli, Pennsylvania, and the subsequent "Massacre of Paoli" in 1777, which remains the most enduring American monument to the Corsican leader. Anderson concludes that while Paoli remained a passive witness to the Revolution from London, his earlier career fundamentally shaped the American concept of defiant liberty.
Over the Alps: Reflections on Travel and Travel Writing with Special Reference to the Grand Tours of Boswell, Beckford, and Byron
Reviews the posthumous publication of Seward’s poetical works and correspondence. It details Seward’s testamentary bequests to Constable and Scott, including her specific instructions for the chronological arrangement of her letters. Scott provides a biographical preface correcting Seward’s age and describing her physical appearance and conversational talents. The review notes Seward’s literary relationship with Darwin, specifically her claim to verses in the Botanic Garden, and her admiration for Southey. Included extracts from Seward’s juvenile letters offer observations on the nature of love, friendship, and the moral utility of Rousseau’s Eloisa for masculine purity. The text concludes with clerical opinions on Rousseau’s romance.
Vindication of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Boswell
A defense of Johnson's Prayers and Meditations and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
CGV entry 10/6:10. Contains an important footnote by the editor, John Nichols, on page 22.
Yale University Press; Oxford University Press
The Singing Swan: An Account of Anna Seward and Her Acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, Boswell, and Others of Their Time
Ashmun’s biography of Anna Seward attributes the "Swan of Lichfield’s" persistent hostility toward Samuel Johnson primarily to a family grievance involving Johnson’s rejected courtship of Lucy Porter and his marriage to Elizabeth Porter. Seward viewed Johnson with aristocratic disdain for his humble origins and uncouth manners, which fueled her public attacks on his character, notably her "Benvolio" letters. Her relationship with Boswell deteriorated into public vitriol after he dismissed her Johnsonian anecdotes. Seward also had a guarded rivalry with Piozzi, defending her second marriage against Johnson’s judgment while privately criticizing her writing style.
Cochrane entry 516.
Malone disputes a "very unjust character" of Boswell published in a daily paper, attributing its hostility to Scottish prejudice against Boswell’s candor. Malone corrects the timeline of Boswell's associations, noting he met Johnson in 1763, two years prior to meeting Paoli in 1765. The text clarifies that Boswell maintained a twenty-year intimacy with Johnson until 1784 and never meditated a life of Reynolds. Malone refutes claims that Boswell was "convivial without being social," citing his "liberal and indulgent" nature as a father who prioritized his children’s education at Eton and Westminster over personal expenses. Malone argues that the Life of Johnson resulted from "laborious task" and "veneration" rather than mere fame-seeking. He asserts Boswell possessed "great strength of mind" and a "picturesque imagination," rather than being a "mere relator" of others' wit. Finally, Malone identifies Boswell’s "The Hypocondriack" as evidence of an innate melancholy independent of Johnson’s influence.
B. preserves an anecdote intended for Boswell regarding Johnson's frustrated visit to Chesterfield's levee during the preparation of the Dictionary. After being kept waiting while another visitor engaged the lordship, Johnson departed "in a fret." He later explained his agitation to Dodsley, dismissing the bookseller's excuses for the nobleman's neglect. Johnson characterized his previous efforts to court Chesterfield's favor as "only gilding a rotten post." This account provides internal evidence of the "humiliation" Johnson felt regarding his "fancied" mistreatment by Chesterfield.
On Johnson and Chesterfield.
The Conversation Between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Knowles
Boswell excludes the conversation between Johnson and Knowles on Quakerism from the Life of Johnson because of a lack of corroborating evidence in his personal memorials. While a manuscript in Sael’s catalogue suggests "sinister motives" behind this omission, Boswell prioritizes "strict fidelity" as an "honest chronicler" over the inclusion of unverified narratives. The text also disputes the merit of George Mason’s epitaph on Johnson, characterizing the verse as "contemptible and common-place scurrility" lacking in wit or genius.
Malone moved to London to join the intellectual circle of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds after retiring from the Irish bar. His rigorous research for a new edition of Shakespeare caused a permanent rupture with Steevens over the retention of controversial notes in the 1790 edition. Malone distinguished himself as a foe to literary imposture, proving the Rowley poems were the work of Chatterton and exposing the Shakespearian forgeries of Ireland. Beyond his editorial work on Dryden, Malone provided biographical sketches for Reynolds and other associates. He maintained a reputation for urbanity and mild temperament until his death in 1812.
Includes a query about the earliest appearance of the phrase "curtain lecture," citing examples from an anonymous 1693 text and Addison's 1710 Spectator. The author questions whether the phrase predates Stapylton, 1647, and notes the claim of originality by the recently deceased author of Mrs. Candle's Curtain Lectures. A separate query seeks information on a set of caricatures relating to Boswell's Tour in the Hebrides, published in May and June 1786 by E. Jackson.
'Evening in Great Portland Street': James Boswell Speaks to His Son Alexander: A Poem
Johnson and Boswell in the Highlands: Abridged from Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands' and Boswell's 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides'
Bailey analyzes Boswell's activities as a self-appointed press agent for the Douglas Cause, illustrating his non-legal, emotionally driven approach. Boswell's anonymous campaign, launched in 1767, included hoaxes, satirical verses, and the novel Dorando, all designed to create a favorable public opinion and influence the courts. He shrewdly used the press, employing slogans and inviting excitement about potential censorship to rally public support for Archibald Douglas, whom he viewed as a victim of a suit that threatened domestic peace. Bailey suggests this highly emotional, journalistic advocacy, which prioritized salus populi suprema lex, explains Boswell's limited success as a lawyer.
Cochrane entry 463.
Barfield examines the self-conscious sensibility and fatuity of Boswell as revealed in the Life. The article disputes the fashionable view of Boswell as a mere butt, arguing instead that he used supreme art to dish up his own personality. Barfield analyzes Boswell's epidermal sensibility during a musical evening at Ashbourne and his behavior at the Literary Club. The narrative presents Boswell as a man who half-feigned his own foolishness to create fun he could enjoy. Barfield concludes that Boswell's cheerful folly and sincere reverence for Johnson endeared him to the unhappy sage, making him a unique comic self-creation.
Cochrane entry 490.
Pottle should have mentioned that Boswell was unable to transcribe some of Johnson's dictated speech, even when it was slow and clear. "It seems probable that Boswell learned or invented a shorthand less with a view to expediting his handwriting than as a means of concelaing his notes from inquisitive eyes." Boswell thought Johnson himself learned a system of shorthand.
Cochrane entry 343. Proposes that Boswell used shorthand not for speed, but as a form of code to keep his notes private.
Baumann defends Boswell against Macaulay’s caricature, asserting that Boswell’s devotion to Johnson was a "singular merit" rather than "mean spanielship." He notes that Boswell sacrificed his legal career and familial peace—facing the contempt of his father, Lord Auchinleck, and the "hatred" of his wife—to record Johnson’s mind. Baumann highlights Boswell’s intellectual independence, noting his superior political judgment regarding the American colonies and his acute ethical arguments. The text recounts various "delightfully human" anecdotes, including Johnson’s rebuff of Lord Marchmont’s assistance, his ferocity toward Boswell at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s dinner, and his angry reaction to Langton’s bedside reading of Scripture. Baumann concludes that the statue in Lichfield represents a just debt paid to the man whose appreciation of another’s brains preserved the 18th century for posterity.
Les derniers moments d'après les papiers intimes de Boswell
Cochrane entry 534. Characterizes Boswell as a man absorbed by a "fundamental human need–worship," and describes his prose style as remarkably natural and unself-conscious.
Boswell creates an unflaggingly vivacious portrait of Johnson, presenting a narrative that functions as both a personal history and a cross-section of an entire era. By documenting Johnson’s daily habits, social interactions, and distinctive turns of phrase, Boswell provides a comprehensive view of a man who combined immense geniality with a fierce intolerance for cant. Johnson is depicted as a figure of moral authority who navigated deep-seated spiritual doubts and physical infirmities with stoic dignity. The work transcends the limits of conventional biography by recording the brilliant pageantry of the eighteenth century, from the corridors of royal palaces to the tables of local taverns. Johnson's conversational brilliance and pithy apothegms serve as an enduring guide for conduct, emphasizing the necessity of clear thinking and social responsibility. Boswell demonstrates that the study of a great mind is an essential exercise for understanding the complexities of human nature.
Cochrane entry 99.
The Lamp: A Record and Review of Current Literature
Bergengren surveys the history and appeal of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English chapbooks, noting their decline into rare collector's items housed in institutions like the British Museum and Harvard College Library. The essay highlights Boswell's personal collection of eighty-five well-selected chapbooks, bound in three volumes titled "Curious Productions," which contains a handwritten note reflecting Boswell's boyhood affection for these popular stories. Bergengren describes the physical and thematic characteristics of chapbooks, which traveling peddlers distributed to the masses on cheap paper with crude woodcuts. The content spans religious, supernatural, historical, and criminal themes, including titles like "The History of Jack and the Giants" and "The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram." The analysis concludes that these small volumes offer an invaluable mirror of their historical age.
Cochrane entry 478. Highlights a collection of chapbooks at Harvard that Boswell himself had bound under the title "Curious Productions," which includes a personal note about his childhood enjoyment of them and his ambition to write his own stories.
Reprinted from Boswell’s Journal as part of his Private Papers, this chapter documents the persistent and strategically engineered encounters between Boswell and Rousseau in December 1764. Reconstructing the interviews through "playlike dialogue" and descriptive "biographical sketches," Biancolli emphasizes Boswell’s "impudence" and "indifference to snubs" as essential traits that facilitated his access to the ailing, reclusive philosopher. The text describes Boswell’s elaborate preparations, including a "flamboyant note" and a letter of introduction, which eventually secured him entry to Rousseau’s cottage despite the latter’s protestations of ill health. The resulting dialogues cover a diverse range of topics, from "melancholy apprehensions" and the "certainty" of moral systems to Boswell’s candid inquiries regarding "singularities" of lifestyle and the "Oriental usage" of women. Notably, the narrative includes Rousseau’s forceful reaction to Boswell’s characterization of Johnson, with Rousseau admitting he would "respect him" but preferred to view him "from far off, for fear he might deal me a blow". Biancolli observes that these interviews reveal Boswell’s unique ability to portray himself in a "frankest and most foolish light," a quality that served as a precursor to his later work with Johnson. The chapter concludes with Boswell reflecting on his "felicity" at having successfully stalked one of the "immortal names" of the eighteenth century.
Cochrane entry 551. See pp. 67–80, 106–136.
Biographicus disputes the "contradictory accounts" regarding Boswell, specifically challenging Malone’s claim that Boswell possessed a "considerable share of melancholy." This temperament did not exist prior to the "virtuous attachment" formed with Johnson. The text defends Boswell against the "wise and worldly maxims" of prudent friends, suggesting that his alleged failings were often virtues misunderstood by those possessing "arrogance and hypocrisy." Boswell maintained a unique "vanity and candour" while merely pretending to admire the rigid social complaisance encouraged by his associates. Biographicus intends to provide a "faithful account" of the life of the deceased to balance the views of admirers and enemies.
Birrell identifies Boswell as the creator of the "greatest biography" in English literature, rejecting Macaulay’s paradox that a "great fool" could produce a masterpiece by accident. Instead, Birrell presents Boswell as a deliberate artist who aimed for success with "dramatic sense" and "artistic biographic treatment." While acknowledging Boswell’s personal failings as a "wine-bibber and good liver" who lived in "boisterous imbecility," he argues that Boswell’s work is a "spirit-speaking likeness" of Johnson inspired by more than simple discipleship. The text emphasizes that Boswell "epitomizes nightly the words of Wisdom" through a unique creative faculty that differentiated him from common men. Birrell concludes that regardless of Boswell’s "low, almost brutish" character, humanity remains his debtor for a work that "cannot be disputed" in its literary supremacy.
Cochrane entry 65.
Birrell examines a recent edition of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to Corsica, noting how Boswell’s early notoriety as an armed Corsican Chief at the Shakespeare Festival preceded his fame with Johnson. The text details Boswell’s 1765 meeting with Paoli, who initially suspected Boswell of being an impostor or an espy. Birrell highlights the favorable impression Paoli made on the Johnsonian circle, including Johnson’s admiration for the general’s port and bearing. He observes that Boswell’s conversations with Paoli possess much of the charm found in the Life of Samuel Johnson, despite Boswell’s status as a complete interloper in Corsican affairs. The summary concludes by noting the representation of both Johnson and Paoli in Westminster Abbey.
Votive Tablets; Studies Chiefly Appreciative of English Authors and Books
Cochrane entry 117. Corrects a minor error in the 'Life', noting that the young girl who questioned Johnson about his strange gestures was the daughter of Christopher Smart, not Miss Hunter as Boswell claimed.
A Commentary and Questionnaire on Selections from Boswell's Life of Johnson
Cochrane entry 103. Serves as an introductory guide to the 'Life' designed for students.
Boswell's Court of Session Papers: A Preliminary Checklist
Boswell authored over 100 printed legal papers between 1766 and 1785, primarily for arguments before the Court of Session in Edinburgh. These documents, produced in editions of twenty to thirty copies, cover diverse civil cases including debt recovery, marriage legitimacy, and political enfranchisement. Johnson contributed to the canon by dictating legal arguments for the 1772 schoolmaster defense in Campbell v. Hastie and the property dispute in Wilson v. Smith. While professional in form, the papers reveal Boswell’s irrepressible high spirits and occasional use of scatological humor. The check-list documents his transition from a fledgling advocate to a practitioner cleared of '80 guineas,' using the language of the bar with increasing ease and boldness.
Cochrane entry 682. Provides a bibliography of Boswell's printed legal papers related to his cases before the Court of Session.
Booth's satirical vignette is written from the perspective of Sedworth Sippsom, a disgruntled academic who challenges the authenticity of the recently discovered Boswell papers. Sippsom claims that the London Journal and subsequent volumes are complete forgeries masterminded by Christopher Morley and an advisory committee of 28 scholars. The narrative details Sippsom's personal professional frustrations, including his exclusion from the Yale University Library cache, and outlines his pseudo-scholarly external and internal proofs of fraudulence. Sippsom bases his argument on the impossibility of the survival of the manuscripts and the alleged stylistic imitativeness of the prefaces, concluding with a dramatic renunciation of his ambition to teach at Yale.
A. E. Klausing's Translation of Boswell's 'Corsica' with Four Facsimiles
A Letter to James Boswell from His Son Alexander, a Schoolboy, Relative to the Life of Samuel Johnson, then in Progress
Challenges Macaulay's assertion that Boswell wrote a masterpiece through foolishness, arguing instead for the biographer's distinct intellectual powers, observation, and dramatic skill. Examines the newly recovered correspondence with Temple to illuminate Boswell's complex character, acknowledging his vanity and weakness while asserting his essential truthfulness and reverence for genius. Sketches Johnson's early career, contrasting his moral dignity and intellectual rigor with the degradation of contemporary literary hacks. Analyzes the reception of London and Johnson's translation of Lobo to illustrate his developing style and independence.
Pottle's book recounts the early adventures of Mary Bryant, transported in 1787 for street robbery. Bryant, along with her children and husband, William, escaped Botany Bay in 1791 and sailed to Timor. The Dutch apprehended the family and returned them to England. Boswell interceded on Bryant's behalf, securing her final discharge and providing for her return to Cornwall.
The author contrasts the characters of Boswell and Goldsmith, using Moore’s biography to highlight Boswell’s "incredible meanness of nature." It describes Goldsmith as a "beloved vagabond" whose "childlike goodness" earned him the love of contemporaries like Reynolds and Burke. Conversely, it depicts Boswell as a "boor and a bore" who "systematically misrepresented Goldsmith" through suppression and malicious falsehood to ensure no rivals in Johnson’s affection. The account argues that Boswell’s "colossal vanity" blinded him to the "generous, easy-going Celtic way" and that he acted as a "merciless reporter of unscrupulous mind."
Cochrane entry 67. Alleges that Boswell's depiction of Oliver Goldsmith in the 'Life' is a malicious distortion, stemming from a failure to appreciate Goldsmith's wit and charm.
Boswell addresses Smollett regarding potential offense taken at remarks in the recently published account of Corsica. He denies any intent to impeach Smollett's authority, explaining that corrections concerning Paoli’s age and a disputed oath merely aim to rectify historical inaccuracies. Boswell emphasizes his appreciation for Smollett's "generous warmth" toward the Corsican cause. He seeks to maintain their professional friendship and requests a meeting in London to ensure mutual understanding.
Bibliotheca Boswelliana: A Catalogue of the Entire Library of the Late James Boswell
Reports the 1908 unveiling of a Boswell statue in Lichfield, gifted by Fitzgerald. Nicoll’s unveiling speech characterizes Boswell as a "gentleman of ancient blood" whose "faults seem to have contributed as largely to his success as his virtues." The statue’s pedestal serves as a "pictorial record" of the "common life" of Johnson and Boswell. The report notes that while contemporaries might have found Boswell a "bore" or a "cad," his biography remains "incomparable in its minute report and completeness of detail."
Boswell died 19 May 1795 at age 55. His funerary insignia includes the initials J. B. flanked by laurel sprigs and a crest featuring a hooded hawk with the motto "Vraye Foy." The arms, confirmed by a 1780 Scottish grant, consist of a quarterly shield. The first and fourth quarters display three cinquefoils on a fess with a galley in a canton; the second and third quarters combine a lion rampant with a saltire and chief under a cross engrailed.
This article, reprinted from the Spectator, reviews the discovery and publication of Boswell’s correspondence with William Johnson Temple. The reviewer details the recovery of the manuscripts from a shop in Boulogne where they were being used as wrapping paper. The review disputes Macaulay’s "monstrous exaggeration" of Boswell’s character, arguing that a man so "ineffably foolish" could not have written the biography he did. The article highlights Boswell’s "sound" judgment and clear style while noting his "want of reticence" regarding "immorality" and "excesses in wine and women." It describes the letters as a "Life of Boswell," covering his "matrimonial projects," "constitutional melancholy," and financial dealings. The text includes Boswell’s account of meeting David Hume in Edinburgh and details his "labor," "perplexity," and "vexation" during the final revision of his biography of Johnson with Edmond Malone.
The reviewer notes the rapid appearance of the octavo edition of Boswell's life of Johnson. Boswell exults in his "literary fame," claiming to have "Johnsonised the land." The text features a 1755 letter from Johnson to Langton, where Johnson expresses an "earnest desire" to mature their friendship. Johnson mentions his delay in visiting was due to his "mother more than eighty year old" awaiting the publication of his book. He describes the "uncommon degree of pleasure" expected from residing with Langton's family.
Comments on the third edition of the Life of Johnson
Every Man a Phoenix: Studies in 17th Century Autobiography
Bottrall argues that autobiography emerged as a distinct literary genre in seventeenth-century England, driven by an introspective climate and the collapse of traditional social structures. Bottrall examines representative texts including Browne's Religio Medici and Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Autobiography, noting that the latter remained in manuscript until Horace Walpole published it in 1764. Bottrall emphasizes that 18th-century readers found Herbert’s combination of moral philosophy and 'Don Quixote'-like bravado incongruous and comic. Bottrall differentiates between 'memoirs' based on external facts and 'self-analytical' works, arguing that the century’s unstable conditions favored the assertion of individual personality. Bottrall concludes that these early experiments in self-portraiture established the precedent for the modern fascination with private lives, effectively bridging the gap between Renaissance ideals and the more rigorous biographical standards established in the late 18th century.
Personal Records: A Gallery of Self-Portraits
Gray applied the "two thousand years" phrase to Paoli, not Boswell. He agrees with Gray and Macaulay that Boswell was contemptible—a "dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb"—despite being the greatest biographer. Boswell's genuine love for his heroes saved him from degradation.
Compares Boswell to Lockhart as biographers, arguing that Boswell is superior due to Johnson being a better subject whose "colloquial powers" were superior to Scott's. Boswell's keen observation and less sophisticated style render his book a "treasure-house of wit and wisdom" and his scenes as skillfully arranged as comedy. Other topics include an anecdote on cataloguing errors and a query on the Devonshire word "cherry-cob."
On the comparative merits of Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Lockhart’s Life of Scott. Argues that while Boswell portrays a unique subject, Lockhart achieves greater narrative continuity and completeness. Highlights Lockhart's depiction of Scott's catholic literary criticisms and relationships. Contends that Scott's letters, noted for courtly grace and pictorial power, effectively balance Johnson's conversation, offering a distinct literary charm. Concludes that the inclusion of Scott's autobiography enriches Lockhart’s work, establishing it as a worthy rival to Boswell.
Presents a letter from Gray to Horace Walpole (1768) as a remarkable, prophetic critique of Boswell's later biography of Johnson. Gray, reacting to Boswell's Account of Corsica, asserts that "any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity." Gray's comment, "a Dialogue between a Green-goose and a Hero," anticipates Macaulay's later analysis of Boswell's unique literary genius.
Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Architect Vanbrugh: A Footnote to Boswell
Cochrane entry 547. Provides documentary evidence to support Joshua Reynolds's admiration for the architecture of Sir John Vanbrugh, an opinion first recorded by Boswell in the 'Life'.
Bridgett details the 1765 expedition of Boswell to Corsica, highlighting his objective to secure intimacy with the patriot Paoli. Boswell uses his Journal of a Tour to Corsica to establish his own literary reputation and advocate for the Corsican cause. The narrative emphasizes Boswell's idiosyncratic behaviors, including his notebook-keeping, his performance of Scottish tunes on the German flute, and his visits to local prisoners. Bridgett notes the influence of Johnson on Boswell’s development and records Johnson’s favorable reception of the Tour. The account further explores Boswell’s interactions with Corsican clergy and his respectful observations of Catholic religious practices. It concludes by linking Boswell’s Corsican fame to his later achievement with Johnson.
Cochrane entry 329.
Bradley examines Boswell's 1765 expedition to Corsica and his relationship with Paoli. Bradley asserts that Boswell sought fresh intellectual ground after a period of neglect from Johnson. The text details how Boswell, using introductions from Rousseau, navigated the island to document the Corsican struggle for independence. Bradley notes that the resulting publication garnered praise from Johnson but ridicule from Walpole. The narrative follows Paoli’s 1769 arrival in London, where Boswell facilitated a meeting between Paoli and Johnson. Bradley highlights Paoli’s integration into the Johnsonian circle, noting his presence at the Thrale residence. The text emphasizes Boswell’s role as an "isthmus" connecting the two men and concludes with the 1889 repatriation of Paoli’s remains.
Cochrane entry 327.
Bristolensis criticizes a previous disparaging portrait of Henderson. Bristolensis characterizes the opponent as a "disciple of Boswell" who mistakenly believes "the smallest of his peculiarities" must be known, such as "shoe-strings" or breakfast times. Philanthropos joins the defense, accusing the original biographer of "treachery" and "malicious insult" for misrepresenting Henderson’s heart and understanding despite professing friendship.
Bronson disputes Macaulay’s paradoxical view of Boswell as a genius-fool, proposing instead a complex personality marked by an "abnormally indistinct" sense of identity. The article explores Boswell’s "divided vision," wherein an objective observer-self records the erratic conduct of an actor-self. Bronson suggests these journals were essential for Boswell to "adjust his character" and achieve a sense of continuity. His relationships with figures like Johnson and Jean Jacques Rousseau are interpreted as attempts to find a "congenial mentor" to replace his rigid father, Lord Auchinleck. Boswell’s talent for mimicry and his "insatiable desire" to subject human nature to stresses through social experiments—such as visiting condemned criminals—provided the "clinical record" necessary for his biographical masterpieces. Ultimately, Bronson credits Boswell’s "romantic folly" and creative zest for life as the sources of his unique literary achievement.
Cochrane entry 540.
The Literary and Intellectual Foundations
Brooks examines Boswell's Scottish education, noting that despite a solid classical foundation at Edinburgh and Glasgow, Boswell felt a "fundamental deficiency." His training included pre-college instruction, University studies in Latin and rhetoric under Smith, and a home life that emphasized classical memorization. Brooks argues that Boswell underrated his actual intellectual growth, which, combined with travel and conversation, produced the solid, independent critical judgment essential for his biographical work, even as he yearned for more traditional erudition.
Cochrane entry 596.
Pleasure and Spiritual Turmoil in Boswell
Cochrane entry 25. Argues that Boswell's lifelong spiritual crisis stemmed from his core belief in pursuing intense sensations, which he could not square with his religious faith, leading to a deep-seated fear of death and oblivion.
James Boswell: An Episode of His Grand Tour (1763–1766)
Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society
Cochrane entry 489. Prints a long 1764 letter from Boswell to Zélide and suggests that Boswell would have married her if her father had approved the match.
Brown examines a collection of seventy essays Boswell contributed anonymously to the London Magazine between 1777 and 1783 under the title The Hypochondriack. Brown argues that these essays, written during a period of enforced suspension of his biographical work, served as a sharpening of the pencil for the Life of Johnson. The essays clarify points discussed between Boswell and Johnson over fourteen years and derive largely from journals and notebooks containing memoranda of these discussions. Brown demonstrates how Boswell used the essays to trial anecdotes and refine his thoughts on subjects like diaries, conversation, and the purging of passions through tragedy. By comparing specific passages from The Hypochondriack with the Biography and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Brown highlights the documentary value of the essays. The study concludes that the periodical series allowed Boswell to strengthen his faculties and prepare for the execution of his masterpiece by providing a portable soup of notes expanded from his private records.
Cochrane entry 455.
The Youth and Early Manhood of James Boswell
Cochrane entry 2. Frames the decade from 1758 to 1768 as a crucial period of Boswell's artistic growth, viewing his early travels, meetings, and legal career as foundational steps toward his ultimate achievement, the 'Life of Johnson'.
Everyman's Dictionary of Literary Biography
Boswell, born in Edinburgh and son of Lord Auchinleck, studied law but sought literary fame in London. His 1763 introduction to Johnson became the defining event of his life. After traveling the Continent and meeting Pasquale Paoli, Boswell published An Account of Corsica, gaining immediate recognition. He practiced law in Scotland but maintained close ties with Johnson, joining the Literary Club in 1773. Following Johnson's death, Boswell published The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and his masterpiece, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. This biography revolutionized the genre through its meticulous detail and vivid dramatic reconstruction of Johnson's conversation. Although Boswell struggled with personal dissipations and legal disappointments, his literary achievement remains unparalleled. His private papers, discovered in the twentieth century, reveal a complex, highly observant artist whose narrative skill transcends mere stenography.
Corrects errors in the pagination and Greek quotations found in the first edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson (2 vols., 1791). The author lists specific numbering errors in Volume II, noting that pages 585 and 586 are numbered 587 and 588. The author also points out uncorrected misprints in Volume I, including an uncorrected Greek error on page 284, condescente for candescents on page 275, and Harvey for Hervey on page 291. No notice of these pagination errors appears in the "Corrections and Additions" section of Volume I.
Biography in the Hands of Walton, Johnson, and Boswell
Butt's book contains three Ewing Lectures focusing on the biographical methodologies and approaches of Walton, Johnson, and Boswell. Butt highlights Boswell’s method of writing biography, noting Boswell's strategy of gaining acceptance for his work by asserting that he followed Johnson's precepts regarding life writing. Butt's work is considered a starting point for modern study of Johnson's biographies.
CGV entry 10/2:18. The Ewing Lectures from 1962.
Delivered at the University of California, Los Angeles, on Mar. 20-22, l962
University of Edinburgh Inaugural Lecture
CGV entry 4:169.
Cochrane entry 177. Warns against letting Boswell's eccentric personality overshadow his profound skills as a biographer, including his innovative narrative techniques and gift for recreating conversation.
A Politician Plays Truant: Essays on English Literature
Boswell’s 1791 biography reveals the multidimensionality of Johnson, whose own writings often obscure his intensely human character. Boswell records Johnson’s physical eccentricities, early struggles with poverty, and social benevolence alongside his intellectual dominance. The text preserves Johnson’s flexible, spontaneous conversation, contrasting his informal wit with his grave, polished literary style. Boswell establishes Johnson as a champion of common sense and human dignity despite significant intellectual limitations regarding contemporary art, philosophy, and politics.
Cochrane entry 107.
Querens repeats the request for a description of the academic costume worn by "Mus. Doc. Cantuar.," claiming the original lengthy reply was elusive. C. addresses the statement that Lady Keith was the last survivor mentioned in Boswell, clarifying that she herself is not mentioned and her family connection does not make her a "Boswellian personage." C. suggests that Lady Keith's acquaintance avoided soliciting anecdotes because of her relationship with Piozzi. C. believes Miss Jane Langton, who died in 1854, was the last "Boswellian personage."
C. commemorates Boswell by outlining his genealogy, legal career, and literary output. The narrative highlights the mentorship of Johnson, quoting a 1782 letter regarding the death of Lord Auchinleck which distinguishes between parental kindness and fondness. C. defends the publication of the account of Corsica and the Life of Johnson, citing Johnson’s own praise for the former's "internal experience and observation." The text addresses criticisms of Boswell’s vanity and the perceived indiscretion of his biographical method, asserting that his attachment to Johnson represented a "meritorious perseverance in the desire of knowledge." C. concludes by attributing Boswell’s occasional lack of prudence and constitutional melancholy to the same lively imagination and social dependency that facilitated his fascination as a companion.
A contributor questions Boswell’s criticism of Johnson’s Latin metre in a 1784 letter to Brocklesby, where Johnson describes Windham as "inter stellas Luna minores." Boswell claims Johnson mistakenly wrote "stellas" instead of "ignes" from Horace's Odes (1.12.45-48). The contributor suggests that both Boswell and the suggested correction are incorrect, proposing that Johnson was actually recalling the meter of Horace's 15th Epode, line 7, which contains the phrase "Inter minora sidera."
W. C. mentions a Boswell caricature from 1786 depicting him as a monkey preparing the tail of a bear (Johnson) for the Scotch Professors to kiss.
Addresses Macaulay's comments on Boswell's behavior during the Douglas cause and his alleged subsequent impertinence towards the Duchess of Argyle. The author references Scott, who stated, on uncertain authority, that Boswell headed the mob that broke the windows of the judges and his own father, Lord Auchinleck, during the Douglas cause. The author suggests this action might justify the Duchess's later cold conduct toward Boswell. The text also notes Boswell's "objectionable and silly vein" around this time and mentions a previous visit with Johnson to the Rev. J. M'Aulay, Lord Macaulay's grandfather.
Definitions, Essays in Contemporary Criticism, Second Series
Canby reviews a new edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, characterizing the work as an essential medical tonic for the modern reader. He asserts that Boswell’s spotlight captures a sharp-edged world where conduct, religion, and wit held immense significance, contrasting this with the modern loss of character resulting from the substitution of conviction with pragmatic experiment. Canby describes Johnson as a free, self-controlled spirit who gripped opinion like a man to shake out falsehood, even when his specific views on science or politics were wrong. He notes that while the social order Boswell depicts rested upon illusory foundations and mass suffering, the text remains invaluable for its demonstration of individuality. Canby observes that Johnson trembled with apprehension over insanity yet roared with gusto, concluding that whoever reads Boswell gains not only knowledge and delight but also spiritual strength.
Cochrane entry 92.
Canby defends Tinker’s edition of Boswell’s letters against Strachey’s charge of "barbarous prudery," asserting that "unprintable" phrases were omitted only when truly unprintable.
Cochrane entry 417.
Carnie traces the development of Boswell’s uncompleted topographical and genealogical account of Ayrshire. using journal entries from 1776 and correspondence between Paton and Gough, the text suggests Boswell’s research moved beyond mere meditation to include significant collections of materials. Dalrymple’s influence is highlighted, specifically his irritable 1776 response to Boswell’s queries regarding the Battle of Largs. Carnie evaluates the potential extent of these lost collections within the context of eighteenth-century Scottish antiquarianism.
Cochrane entry 470.
Carver identifies Johnson and Boswell as the pivotal figures who matured the genre of English biography. Johnson serves as the primary theorist, establishing the 'grammar' of life-writing by insisting that biographers must have 'lived in social intercourse' with their subjects to capture 'the general surface of life.' Boswell’s contribution represents the 'crystallization of the autobiographical method,' interweaving minutes, letters, and conversations to allow readers to 'live o'er each scene' with the subject. Carver argues that Boswell’s work ensures Johnson is seen 'more completely than any man who has ever yet lived.' The work also notes Piozzi’s testimony regarding Johnson’s deep-seated love for human nature as the root of his biographical interest.
Cochrane entry 154.
This biographical compendium documents the lives of distinguished Scottish figures, including an extensive entry on James Boswell (1740–1795). Born in Edinburgh to a legal family, Boswell initially pursued law under paternal pressure but developed a consuming passion for London’s literary society. Chambers details Boswell’s seminal 1763 meeting with Samuel Johnson, a relationship that defined his literary legacy. The narrative traces his continental travels, particularly his visit to Corsica, which resulted in his 1768 publication on the island’s struggle for independence. Despite his professional legal career in Scotland, Boswell’s fame rests on his unprecedented biographical method. Chambers highlights the 1791 Life of Samuel Johnson as a masterpiece of "faithful and minute" portraiture, noting that Boswell’s "habit of recording the conversation and manners" of his subject created a work that remains unrivaled in the English language. The entry also addresses Boswell's personal eccentricities and his later professional disappointments at the English bar.
Chamber's Cyclopedia of English Literature
Chapman argues Boswell's editors are responsible for the abrupt introduction of Johnson's first letter to Langton in 1755. Hill's editing, deficient in historical method, took the 1799 third edition as definitive. Malone saw the third edition through the press, inserting fresh pieces but failing to add a suitable opening for the Langton correspondence, which Boswell included late, as a supplement to the second edition's second volume. Powell pointed out that these posthumous insertions create two discrepancies, such as contradicting Boswell's statement about no 1760 letters.
Cochrane entry 155.
Chapman continues his study of the R. B. Adam proof-sheets, identifying numerous textual revisions and the motives behind Boswell’s 'cancel' leaves. Significant findings include Boswell’s careful dating of Johnson's contributions to 'The Adventurer' and the gradual building of descriptions regarding Johnson's physical 'singularities.' The proofs reveal suppressed names in sensitive anecdotes, such as Lord Charles Spencer’s cook and the muffin-loving suicide Mr. Delmis. Chapman highlights the diplomatic challenges Boswell faced with contemporaries, noting how pressure from Sir Joshua Reynolds and Bishop Percy led to the removal of specific mentions regarding Johnson’s hand in their dedications. The article also recovers deleted passages concerning William Gerald Hamilton and Gibbon, and documents Boswell’s occasional softening of Johnson’s harsher pronouncements. Chapman concludes that these proof-sheets expose the 'nerves' of 18th-century literary society and Boswell's meticulous navigation of its social boundaries.
Cochrane entry 282. Reports on the discovery of a cancel leaf in the first edition of Boswell's 'Hebrides' that had not been previously identified.
Chapman disputes the dates Boswell assigned to letters written by Johnson from Ashbourne in 1784. Using Boswell's unpublished "Register of letters," he argues that a "long melancholy letter" from Boswell reached Johnson in August, not July. Chapman uses the death of Edmund Allen and Johnson's habit of writing on post-days to propose corrected dates for these exchanges. He concludes that Boswell likely misdated the series in the Life of Johnson by referring back to a previous letter from July 26.
Cochrane entry 430. An attempt to establish a clear timeline for the letters exchanged between Johnson and Boswell during the summer of 1784.
This edition restores a previously suppressed passage from Johnson’s letter to Thrale dated 19 June 1775. Chapman explains that Piozzi, when preparing Johnson’s correspondence for publication, attempted to hide certain sections from the printer by pasting paper scraps over the original manuscript. One such "superposititious scrap" obscured a passage where Johnson praises Boswell’s Highland journals, noting that "Boswel’s narrative is very natural, and therefore very entertaining" and describing him as a "very fine fellow." The edition provides a collotype facsimile and a literal transcript of the restored letter, which includes Johnson’s observations on Lichfield small talk, the health of Lucy Porter, and the "Dissertation upon Queeney." Chapman’s editorial notes detail the "mixture of simplicity and guile" Piozzi employed in her erasures and the subsequent technical removal of these "blinds" to reveal the underlying text.
CGV entry 23:61. See also The Times Literary Supplement, January 24, 1929, page 62.
Cochrane entry 284.
Cochrane entry 669. Reprints a 1785 letter from Boswell in which he argues that the Act of Union had been harmful to Scotland and warns that a similar union would be detrimental to Ireland.
James Boswell and the Irish Press, 1767–1795
Cole investigates Boswell’s visibility in Irish print culture from the publication of the Corsican journal to the aftermath of the Life of Johnson. Irish newspapers and magazines, such as the Dublin Gazette and Hibernian Magazine, frequently pirated Boswell’s writings, often appearing within weeks of London releases. Boswell maintained active interest in these Irish reprints, recognizing their role in cementing his international reputation. The study highlights how Irish editors used Boswell’s accounts of Johnson to satisfy local demand for literary gossip and intellectual debate. Cole demonstrates that the Irish press served as a primary vehicle for Boswell’s literary "empire," ensuring his and Johnson’s enduring presence in the Irish eighteenth-century consciousness.
Cochrane entry 471.
The Sitwells and James Boswell: A Genealogical Study
Cochrane entry 600. Traces the shared ancestry of James Boswell and the 20th-century literary family, the Sitwells.
Pottle introduces an excerpt from the forthcoming Yale edition of Boswell on the Grand Tour, focusing on Boswell’s 1764 visit to Rousseau at Môtiers. Pottle notes that Boswell recorded these conversations in French, resulting in a "perplexed and huddled state" less polished than the Life of Johnson. However, Pottle argues they provide the most "detailed and authentic" portrait of Rousseau as a talker ever recorded. The text shows Boswell’s "intense and at times oppressive subjectivity" as he seeks advice on his moral and religious anxieties. Rousseau advises Boswell to "do your duty as a citizen" and avoid the "rigmarole" of books, emphasizing that there is "no expiation for evil except good."
Cochrane entry 374. A piece that excerpts material from Boswell's journal detailing his conversations with Rousseau (item 369).
The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to C. B. Tinker
Copeland explores why Boswell's depiction of Burke in the Life seems muted compared to Burke's contemporary fame. Factors include Burke's discursive speaking style, harder to capture than Johnson's epigrams, and Boswell's complex relationship with Burke: initial awe, unsuccessful pursuit of patronage, political differences, and later anxieties about Burke's perceived coldness, possibly linked to Boswell's note-taking. Consequently, Boswell's portrayal often relies on Johnson's quoted praise rather than sustained, vivid scenes, failing fully to convey the brilliance attested by others. The conversation recorded on April 3, 1778, stands as a notable exception.
Cochrane entry 158. Investigates why Edmund Burke appears as such a "cloudy and unimpressive" figure in the 'Life', attributing it to the difficulty of capturing Burke's rapid speaking style and the strained nature of his friendship with Boswell.
Corney provides an account of the early editions of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, starting with its announcement in 1785 and its 1791 publication. He details the subsequent octavo editions (1793–1811) under the editorship of Edmond Malone, with assistance from James Boswell the younger. Corney praises the 1811 sixth edition as the most correct and ample, noting Malone’s significant additions and corrections, and questions its omission as the standard for Croker’s stereotype impression.
The author clarifies Johnson's calculation of the area enclosed by a garden wall, which he assumes costs a thousand pounds per mile, noting Johnson meant "44 yards square" (1936 square yards) for 100 pounds, not "44 square yards." An additional 100 pounds for the wall (a total of 200 pounds) would yield four times the area (7744 square yards) because of mathematical progression.
Cochrane entry 332. Traces the literary influence of Boswell's 'Corsica' on the 19th-century Italian novelist Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, particularly on his historical novel about Pasquale Paoli.
Epistle to James Boswell, Esq. Occasioned by His Long-Expected, and Now Speedily-to-Be-Published, Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson
The reviewer dismisses an "Epistle to James Boswell" as the work of a "poetaster." The critique asserts that Boswell will "receive little benefit" from the verses, which merely versify Sir John Hawkins’s memoirs and Boswell's own journal. The review describes the rhymes as "ill-chosen" and the subject "ill-executed." It identifies the poem as being occasioned by the "now speedily to-be-published" life of Johnson.
Answers to Mr. Macaulay's Criticism in the Edinburgh Review on Mr. Croker's Edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson
This polemical collection, selected from Blackwood's Magazine, provides a systematic refutation of Macaulay's 1831 review of Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. The text argues that Macaulay’s criticism was "originally levelled less against Mr. Croker the editor than Mr. Croker the politician," characterizing the review as a product of "hot passion and party vindictiveness" rather than objective scholarship. The compilers assert that the charges of inaccuracy and "bad taste" raised by Macaulay were "refuted long ago" and no longer apply to recent, revised editions of the work. Supported by testimonials from the Athenæum, Literary Gazette, and Quarterly Review, the publication frames Croker’s "admirable annotations" and "industrious researches" as essential contributions that have transformed Boswell's biography into a "dictionary of wit and wisdom" more accessible than ever before. Particular emphasis is placed on the value of Croker’s "well-digested Index," which is described as a "treasure of its kind" and the first adequate finding aid for the work. The volume functions as a defense of the "BEST EDITION of an English book" against the "bitter and unjust" influence of a rival critic, asserting the scholarly permanence of Croker's editorial labor over Macaulay's ephemeral "bad feeling."
Revised and reprinted from "Nocte's Ambrosianae," Blackwood's Magazine, XXX (Nov., 1831), 802-846.
An Outline of Biography from Plutarch to Strachey
Cross traces the historical evolution of biographical literature from classical antiquity to the early twentieth century, identifying major shifts in the genre's focus and methodology. Cross identifies Boswell as the definitive figure who established the life of a man of letters as a subject of profound public interest. Before the publication of the life of Johnson, biographical focus remained largely restricted to statesmanship, theology, or art. Johnson himself advanced the genre by composing lives of British poets from fragmentary records, but Boswell perfected the form through dramatic representation and the record of conversation. Cross argues that Johnson and Boswell together shifted the biographical center toward the professional writer, ensuring that every detail of a literary career remains open to scrutiny. Boswell’s success relies on a unique conjunction of Johnson’s idiosyncratic personality and Boswell’s own acute memory and perceptive powers. The text asserts that Boswell’s work remains the most complete verbal portrait in English, surpassing later efforts by Forster or Froude.
Reprinted from Yale Review, XI (Oct., 1921), 140–157.
Reports that the anecdote of Boswell riding to Tyburn with the murderer Hackman, the Ordinary of Newgate, and a Sheriff's Officer, originated in the St. James's Chronicle of April 20, 1779. The account details Hackman's final morning, his trip in a mourning coach, and his execution. A pre-execution letter in the Chronicle signed "J.B.," evidently Boswell, expresses sympathy for Hackman and praises a related passage from Boswell's own Hypochondriack. Boswell mentioned attending the trial in his Life of Johnson but omitted the execution, merely relating Johnson's solemn hope for Hackman's mercy. A parallel account in the Town and Country Magazine did not name Boswell, listing "another Clergyman" instead. The article also discusses the tradition of St. Patrick using the shamrock to explain the Trinity, noting that tradition is orally transmitted and that wild sorrel, not white clover, was likely the original plant.
A. H. D. inquires about the source and authorship of Boswell's "Matrimonial Thought." Set to music by Dibdin at Garrick's request in 1770, the piece drew a reproof from Johnson for swearing. The poem, addressed to "M. H.," appeared in the Leeds Intelligencer on December 27, 1768, two years before Boswell repeated the lines to Johnson. The author seeks to identify "M. H." and explain how the lines appeared in a provincial newspaper before Boswell's known recounting.
A Critical History of English Literature
Daiches explores Johnson's development of the heroic couplet for moralizing description, noting it provides a strength and balance distinct from Pope. Analysis focuses on "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes," where Johnson uses antithesis and rhetorical questions with "grim effectiveness" to explore human delusions. Daiches highlights Johnson's ability to concentrate ironic force into single lines, as in his depiction of political corruption and the "mournful truth" of poverty's impact on worth. The text nature of Johnson's personification is identified as a tool to conjure concrete imagery, such as seekers after office at "Preferment's gate." Daiches disputes the idea that Johnson's satires are typical of the period, characterizing them instead as moral inquiries into universal human frailties. The chapter also mentions Johnson's investigation of the Cock-Lane Ghost and his appreciative criticism of George Crabbe's early work.
De Castro presents excerpts from the autograph diary of Hawkins (1824–27) describing a 1827 visit to Lichfield. The diarist details documents held by the bookseller Lomax, including letters from Boswell to Francis Barber. These letters reveal Boswell’s attempts to secure Johnson's papers by drafting correspondence for Barber to sign, which demanded the manuscripts from Sir John Hawkins. De Castro requests scholarly verification of these biographical facts.
Cochrane entry 146. Cites a diary entry from Laetitia Hawkins describing a scheme by Boswell to acquire Johnson's private papers.
Deelman provides a detailed narrative of the first Shakespeare Jubilee organized by David Garrick at Stratford-upon-Avon in September 1769. The text traces the event's genesis to the Stratford Corporation's efforts to obtain ornaments for their new Town Hall by flattering Garrick with the town’s freedom. Deelman describes the transformation of Shakespeare’s reputation from a popular dramatist to a 'god,' fueled by Garrick’s naturalistic acting and his strategic identification with the bard. The account details the three-day festival's transition from a well-planned cultural celebration into a 'gigantically comic fiasco' due to torrential rain and flooding. Deelman documents the experiences of notable attendees, noting that Boswell appeared in an armed Corsican dress and published enthusiastic reports, while Johnson remained 'conspicuously uninterested' and absent. The narrative covers the destruction of the New Place mulberry tree by Francis Gastrell and the subsequent commercialization of Shakespeare relics by Thomas Sharp. Deelman also details the festival’s aftermath, including Garrick’s recovery of financial losses through a successful stage pageant at Drury Lane titled The Jubilee. The work uses primary documents, including the correspondence of William Hunt and contemporary newspaper reports, to correct long-standing legends. Deelman concludes that the 1769 Jubilee set the template for all subsequent Shakespeare festivals and fundamentally established Stratford as a site of literary pilgrimage.
The author critiques Croker's 1847 edition of Boswell's Johnson, specifically pointing out a mathematical error made by Boswell and retained by subsequent editors. The discussion focuses on a passage where Johnson calculates the cost of building a garden wall, noting Boswell's error of stating "forty-four square yards" instead of "forty-four yards square." De Morgan refers to a prior correction he made regarding a mistake Boswell attributed to Johnson and questions why editors perpetuate such numerical mistakes. The Bishop of Ferns' attempt to correct the error, which worsens the confusion, is also mentioned.
A short query: "Could any correspondent, who knows the neighbourhood of Lichfield, tell me what was, and what is, the common mode of measuring fence work in that part of the country?"
A reference to Boswell's unidentified French servant "Martin" is clarified. A 1766 letter mentions an art student named "Martin" leaving Rome for Montpellier to recover. This may be Guillaume Martin, a painter admitted to the Paris Academy in 1771.
Cochrane entry 372.
Dilworth identifies the early American reception of Boswell via Bickerstaff's Boston Almanack for 1769. The publication featured extensive pirated excerpts from An Account of Corsica, specifically focusing on the life of Pascal Paoli and Boswell's personal visit to the leader. Dilworth argues that New England interest stemmed from contemporary political enthusiasm for "Liberty" following the Stamp Act rather than literary prescience regarding Boswell’s future fame.
Cochrane entry 333.
Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides: A Misquotation
Dixon corrects a misquotation by Boswell in his Tour to the Hebrides. Under the date of August 17, 1773, Boswell provides a line he claims are the "very words of Virgil": "Ubi luctus et pavor et plurima mortis imago." Dixon points out that these words do not belong to a single hexameter line and provides the correct lines from the second book of the Aeneid, 368-369: "Crudelis ubique / Luctus, ubique pavor et plurima mortis imago."
Boswell’s biography provides a vivid yet imperfect portrait of Johnson, emphasizing the social, "clubbable" persona at the expense of the lonely artist. While Boswell captures the witty, fearless interlocutor with genius, his professional acumen fails to reveal the solitary meditation and intellectual vigor central to Johnson’s experience. These "lonely contemplations" and emotional sources remain shadowy, suggesting a depth of character and spiritual sureness beyond the reach of the biographer’s social observations. Relationships with Piozzi or Goldsmith likely involved an intimacy and understanding that Boswell could not perceive or record. Johnson achieved eminent distinction in the school of good sense through imaginative voyages that escaped the unadventurous mind of Boswell. Despite the pontifical manner and political prejudices documented in the biography, a "gentle and wistful spirit" represents the truest aspect of Johnson.
CGV entry 4:100.
Cochrane entry 496.
Duke examines Boswell’s legal career, contrasting his professional diligence with his personal dissatisfaction and "gust for London." Cradled in the law as the son of Lord Auchinleck, Boswell served as a Scottish advocate from 1766, frequently seeking Johnson's assistance with legal arguments for cases such as the defense of schoolmaster Hastie and the "vicious intromission" petition. The text details Boswell's involvement in the Douglas cause and the Joseph Knight negro freedom suit, where he lauded Henry Dundas’s oratory despite their personal rivalry. Duke traces Boswell’s persistent, though largely unsuccessful, pursuit of the English Bar, his admission to the Inner Temple in 1786, and his brief tenure as Recorder of Carlisle. Ultimately, Duke portrays a man whose legal ambitions were often thwarted by his own "flighty imagination" and social indiscretions, yet whose legal papers and correspondence remain vital to understanding his complex personality.
Cochrane entry 676.
Cochrane entry 138. Commemorates the 200th anniversary of Boswell's birth, recommending the 'Life' particularly to ministers for its frequent engagement with religious topics.
Dunn identifies John Wolcot, known by the pen name Peter Pindar, as the contemporary satirist Boswell disliked most. The article explores how Wolcot’s lampoons of the Tour to the Hebrides and the Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson stung Boswell, leading to the increased reserve and wholesome discipline evident in the Life of Johnson. Dunn examines Wolcot’s career as a physician and clergyman before he turned to coining his gift of satire into money. The narrative details Wolcot’s specific parodies, including A Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to James Boswell, Esq. and Bozzy and Piozzi, which ridicules the rival biographers. Dunn notes that while Wolcot treated Johnson as a leviathan deserving respect, he viewed Boswell and Piozzi as pigmies and jackals.
Cochrane entry 512.
A reprint of Krutch's spoof, item 374.
Boswell, Soame Jenyns, Lyttelton, and Smollett
A series of queries and editorial replies identifies the sources of several literary works associated with Johnson and Boswell. It locates the "Ode to Obscurity" and "Ode to Oblivion," parodies by George Colman and Robert Lloyd praised by Johnson. The note also identifies the publication containing Soame Jenyns's petulant epitaph on Johnson and Boswell's subsequent retaliatory verse, as well as Smollett's burlesque of Lyttelton's monody.
'Mr. Kristrom' in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Elovson identifies "Mr. Kristrom," mentioned in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, as the Swedish philologist Pehr Chriström. He details Chriström’s academic background at the University of Lund, his move to London in 1744, and his role as a tutor. Elovson suggests Chriström and Johnson shared linguistic interests, potentially linking Chriström to the Finnish dictionary mentioned in Johnson’s correspondence and the notice of Johnson’s Dictionary in Sweden.
Cochrane entry 118.
A Survey of English Literature, 1730–1780
Boswell’s 1791 biography reveals the multidimensionality of Johnson, whose own writings often obscure his intensely human character. Boswell records Johnson’s physical eccentricities, early struggles with abject poverty, and social benevolence alongside his intellectual dominance. The text preserves Johnson’s flexible, spontaneous conversation, contrasting his informal wit with his grave, polished literary style. Boswell establishes Johnson as a champion of common sense and human dignity despite significant intellectual limitations regarding contemporary art, philosophy, and politics.
CGV entry 10/6:199.
Esdaile analyzes the transformation of Boswell from a mere satellite of Johnson to a central figure of literary industriousness. The discovery of the ebony cabinet papers enables a revaluation of Boswell as the inventor of the modern interview. Esdaile traces Boswell’s persistent pursuit of celebrity through his interactions with Voltaire, Rousseau, and Paoli, noting that Johnson represents only one chapter in Boswell's broader project of self-documentation. The narrative highlights the romantic, often unstable nature of Boswell’s psyche, characterized by hypochondria and a "gross appetite for intoxication." Esdaile details the domestic tensions with Montgomery and Boswell’s internal struggle regarding concubinage. Finally, the text demonstrates Boswell's technical methodology in transforming abbreviated notebook entries into the vivid, expanded scenes of the Life, proving his "native genius" for biographical reconstruction.
Cochrane entry 347. Compares Boswell's private papers to Pepys's diary for their vitality and candor, exploring themes of ambition and melancholy and tracing how Boswell transformed his raw notes into finished scenes.
Esdaile reviews three volumes documenting Boswell's European travels from 1763 to 1766, praising the editorial reconstruction of fragmented memoranda and correspondence. Esdaile emphasizes the 1763 departure from Harwich, noting Johnson's role as a "worthiest mentor" whose "affectionate regard" supported Boswell's journey. The narrative follows Boswell to Utrecht, where he balanced legal studies with "vile melancholy" shared by Johnson. Esdaile details Boswell’s interactions with Keith, his failed attempt to meet Frederick the Great, and his successful encounters with Rousseau and Voltaire. The reviewer underscores the historical significance of the Corsican journal, depicting Paoli as an "incorrupt" leader who provided Boswell "the middle of life." Esdaile concludes that the journals reveal a "talented and versatile" figure whose "reservoir of ideas" remains a vital scholarly resource.
Cochrane entry 375. Traces Boswell's European travels, emphasizing the personal charm and versatility that gained him access to famous figures like Voltaire and Rousseau.
Boswell reports on the Corsican descent upon Capraya, an island where stress of weather previously detained him for six days. He provides a minute detail of the island, describing it as a rocky but fertile territory inhabited by 3000 hardy sailors. Boswell validates the news of the descent through "authentic intelligence" and expresses anxiety regarding potential French interference. He predicts Genoa will attempt to reclaim the island to avoid the shame of losing territory to those they dismiss as "disorderly malecontents." Boswell declares his personal connection to the "brave fellows" involved and offers a prayer for their success. He notes that "unavoidable occupations" delayed his account of Corsica but confirms he is currently "very busy with it" for a winter release.
Cochrane entry 57. Groups Boswell with other writers who only achieved fame after death and creatively frames the story of his papers' discovery as a three-act drama.
Faulkner submits a 1752 letter from Johnson to Taylor regarding the "dreadful shock of separation" following the death of Johnson's wife. Boswell previously noted the existence of this letter in his biography but "laments as lost" its specific contents. The text reveals Johnson's "deepest sorrow" and his philosophical reflections on "irreparable privation." Johnson argues that "happiness is not found in self-contemplation" but must be "reflected from another." He concludes that while philosophy might "infuse stubbornness," only religion provides the "rational tranquility" necessary to endure the loss of friends.
Filiolus defends Boswell against Parr, asserting that Boswell’s "bluntness" regarding Johnson’s social conduct constitutes "downright plainness." The argument justifies Johnson's right to "reprobate, and even to shun" figures like Priestley, Price, and Hume based on religious principle. Fidiolus links Johnson’s "inflexibility" to the apostolic example of St. John avoiding the heretic Cerinthus. While Johnson favored "excommunication" for certain persons, he did not advocate physical violence for heresy. Filiolus rejects Lackington's apology for Johnson's behavior toward Hume, maintaining that avoiding "the enemy of the truth" prevents moral defilement. The text concludes that mankind benefits from the "narrow minds" of men like Johnson who prioritize religious principle in the "discrimination of companions."
Boswell, during his 1764 law studies in Utrecht, engaged in a complex flirtation with the intellectually gifted and socially unconventional Isabelle van Tuyll, known as Zélide. Despite being nearly loved by her, Boswell maintained a 'virtuous and honest prig' persona, regulating his life by self-imposed rules and a 'System' that prioritized his independence over marriage. He viewed Zélide as a 'peril' to his Scotch notions of a wife and resisted an early engagement to pursue other celebrities like Voltaire and Rousseau. Their correspondence, including a seventeen-page letter from Berlin, reveals Boswell as a 'man of form' whose disciplined life according to a 'Plan' often put him at odds with Zélide’s wilful nature. This period highlights Boswell's burgeoning curiosity for study and his fundamental refusal to be 'domesticated' by a woman.
Cochrane entry 1.
Boswell's true objective in writing The Life of Samuel Johnson was not merely biography but the creation of an "Autobiography of James Boswell, Esq." and an elaborate form of self-exaltation. Boswell's twenty years of "steady attendance" on Johnson was less about genuine attachment than a calculating strategy to gain a fixed public position and notoriety as the great man's intimate "follower." The Life is thus a skillfully constructed self-portrait and a "vindication" of Boswell's character, using Johnson as his advocate while simultaneously exposing Johnson's own failings, such as his gross and insulting attacks.
Cochrane entry 68.
Boswell, a man of "most consummate vanity" and an "egoist," never wrote a formal autobiography because his entire literary output was one. The book's structure is thematic, not chronological, dissecting Boswell's works to prove this thesis. It has chapters on his "self-advertisement," his letters (especially to Temple), his journals, and even his major biographies—An Account of Corsica and the Life of Johnson. Fitzgerald's central argument is that Boswell's "whole aim and purpose was to get himself talked of," making himself the true "hero" of every narrative. He is presented as a "strange, grotesque" exhibitionist whose primary subject was always "I, James Boswell, Esquire." The Life of Johnson is thus framed not just as a biography of its subject, but as a massive, intricate stage for its author's own self-portraiture and "morbid" craving for notoriety. The book is a critical character study arguing that Boswell's life's work was the unconscious, or conscious, creation of his own story. Chapter 1, 'Boswell's Character Analyzed,' addresses the hypothesis that James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson serves primarily as a carefully constructed autobiography intended for self-exaltation. It argues Boswell used Johnson's authority to vindicate his own character. Chapter 2, 'First Motor Force—Strong Religious Feeling,' explores Boswell’s profound, albeit inconsistent, piety and his suppressed history with Roman Catholicism. It posits these religious undercurrents deeply influenced his interactions with Johnson. Chapter 3, 'Second Motor Force—Levelling Down Johnson,' examines Boswell’s subtle efforts to minimize Johnson’s intellectual authority through persistent corrections and disagreements. This tactic established Boswell as a superior, more accurate observer. Chapter 4, 'Third Motor Force—Animosities,' addresses the use of the biography as a tool for personal retribution. It demonstrates how Boswell systematically disparaged rivals and critics to assert his social and literary dominance. Chapter 5, 'Fourth Motor Force—Wein Und Weib,' discusses Boswell’s habitual intemperance and romantic pursuits. Chapter 6, 'Fifth Motor Force—Humour,' analyzes Boswell's sophisticated irony and his ability to dramatize the absurdities of his contemporaries. It emphasizes how his comedic instincts frequently positioned him as the central narrative figure. Chapter 7, 'Sixth Motor Force—Reporting,' investigates Boswell's creative reconstruction of conversations, suggesting he actively "Johnsonized" dialogue to highlight his own contributions. This process transformed raw talk into polished literary art. Chapter 8, 'Seventh Motor Force—Final Quarrel,' addresses the tragic dissolution of the protagonists' friendship. It argues Boswell’s resentment led to his abandonment of Johnson during the latter’s final illness. Chapter 9, 'Eighth Motor Force—Johnson Assailed,' addresses Boswell’s retrospective attacks on Johnson's moral character. These late-stage slanders were intended to justify Boswell’s own behavioral lapses through comparative defamation. Chapter 10, 'L'Envoi,' addresses the pervasive nature of Boswell’s self-advertising throughout his entire literary corpus. It concludes that his body of work consistently prioritized personal notoriety over biographical objectivity. Critics say the book presents a preposterous theory that Boswell used his biography of Johnson as a secret, self-exaltating autobiography. The Morning Post disputes this thesis, noting that Boswell’s candid disclosures of his own absurdities contradict a calculated design of self-promotion. While the Yorkshire Post acknowledges the author's praise for Boswell’s artistic scene reconstruction, the reviewer finds the characterization of Boswell’s motives despicable. Truth labels the work scrambled and scrappy, pointing out incoherent arguments and a forced parallel between Johnson and Pickwick. The Globe, however, notes the text addresses the paradox of Boswell’s reputation but maintains Boswell remains the definitive source.
Cochrane entry 71.
Editing à la Mode: An Examination of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's New Edition of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson'
Concise Biographical Dictionary of Famous Men and Women
Fitzhugh and Fitzhugh describe Boswell as a "masterly" writer and the "greatest biographer" in the English language. The authors detail his early literary ambitions, including his "exact journal" and his pivotal 1763 meeting with Johnson. The sketch recounts his travels through Europe, his interactions with Voltaire and Rousseau, and his authorship of the Account of Corsica. Despite his succession to a significant estate and a brief political stint as the recorder of Carlisle, Boswell is depicted as a man of "weak character" plagued by "vanity, intemperance and other follies." Fitzhugh and Fitzhugh emphasize that the Life of Samuel Johnson was written during a period of financial distress and hypochondria following his wife's death. The text highlights the "minute and loving care" Boswell applied to the biography, asserting its status as an English classic that reveals Johnson's character through subtle and vivid means.
A note on Boswell's recently published letters to Temple, confirming their authenticity and seeking to identify Boswell's "La belle Irlandaise." The woman is identified as the charming Mary Anne, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Archibald McNeil Montgomery, a wealthy Irish barrister and cousin to Boswell's Ayrshire relations. Boswell's love for her was fleeting, like his passions for other women, before he married his cousin Margaret Montgomerie. The text also traces the remarkable history of the discovery of Temple's papers in a shop at Boulogne.
W. H. Q. refers to a notice in the daily papers about the imminent demolition of the house in Gough Square once occupied by Johnson, suggesting that the event warrants a note in Notes and Queries. Johnson resided in the house (then No. 17) from 1748 to 1758, completing his Dictionary there in 1755 and beginning The Rambler in 1750. His wife died in the house in 1752. W. J. F. separately provides an account of Boswell and "La Belle Irlandaise" from Notes and Queries in 1857, and cites a Freeman's Journal entry of Boswell dining with the Viceroy near Leixlip in 1769.
Forbes corrects an earlier article concerning Boswell's note on a Latin quotation used by Johnson in a letter to Brocklesby. The issue revolves around Johnson's use of the line "inter stellas Luna minores" to describe Windham. Forbes affirms the accuracy of the original observation that Johnson was inattentive to metre by using "stellas" instead of the correct "ignes" from Horace's Odes (1.12.45-48).
Annali Istituto Universitario Orientales, Napoli: Sezione Germanica
Two Notes on Giuseppe Baretti in England: Baretti and Boswell
Cochrane entry 580. Attributes the scarcity of references to Giuseppe Baretti in the 'Life' to Boswell's jealousy and personal hostility toward Johnson's friend and translator.
Responding to a query regarding a satirical ballad about the Scottish Bench and Bar, this note attributes the authorship to James Boswell. The work, titled "The Court of Session Garland," is characterized as "refined doggrel" containing humorous touches. The author notes its publication in Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh and corrects the querist regarding the judicial titles held by Lord Pitfour.
Cochrane entry 517. Suggests Boswell was drawn to Laurence Sterne's scandalous reputation, seeing an acquaintance with him as another way to defy the values of his father.
The author laments the "vandalism" of historic London, specifically the destruction of Boswell’s residence in Great Queen Street, alongside other Charles II and Elizabethan dwellings. While acknowledging Macaulay's harsh judgment of Boswell as a man—citing his lack of self-respect, childish egotism, and role as a "doormat" for Johnson—the author contends that these very flaws enabled the creation of a biography without parallel. The text provides a poignant example of their relationship, quoting an exchange where Boswell expresses his distress over being "tossed" by Johnson in front of enemies, only to be mollified by the sage's praise of his "happy image." The author concludes that while Boswell's physical house is falling to dust, his "miracle" of a book remains the finest thing of its sort in literature, destined to last as long as the English speech is spoken.
Cochrane entry 81.
Inquires about the publication status of specific manuscript notes on John Milton by Boswell and Edmond Malone. Specifically, the query seeks information regarding Boswell's manuscript notes on Milton's Poems, edited by Thomas Warton, and Malone's manuscript notes on Milton's Letters of State covering the period between 1649 and 1659.
Gosse credits Boswell with introducing a new species of literature to England through his revolutionary approach to biography. By adopting the "formulas of the anti-romantic novelists," Boswell allowed his subject to "paint his own portrait" through letters, anecdotes, and recorded conversation. Gosse characterizes Boswell as a "consummate artist" whose "measureless devotion" to Johnson overcame his own social inadequacies and the jealousy of contemporaries. The resulting biography is described as the "most interesting" ever published, preserving Johnson's "tyrannous ascendency" for posterity. Gosse emphasizes that Boswell's success was not accidental, but the result of a deliberate effort to create a "lifelike and true" figure. Boswell's "imperturbable enthusiasm" for his sitter allowed him to note the "singularities" and "salient points" of Johnson's genius with unprecedented exactitude, making the great man perennially accessible to readers.
Garton challenges the long-held assumption in editions of the Life of Johnson that John Gordon, whom Boswell met in Lincoln in May 1778, served as the Chancellor of Lincoln. Drawing upon the episcopal register in the Lincoln archives, Garton demonstrates that Gordon never held this office, remaining instead the Archdeacon of Lincoln until his death in 1793. Garton reveals that George Stinton actually occupied the chancellorship during Boswell's journey. Garton suggests that Boswell's error stems from a dinner five weeks prior at Bennet Langton's house, where the presence of multiple clerical gentlemen, including Stinton and the Bishop of Chester, likely confused Boswell regarding their specific ecclesiastical titles.
Cochrane entry 569. Provides a biographical sketch of Reverend Dr. John Gordon, correcting Boswell's minor error about his title and confirming he hosted Boswell in 1778.
Gaselee and Senex evaluate the Latinity of an inscription and translation provided by Johnson for Boswell’s historical picture of Mary Queen of Scots. They address inaccuracies in Boswell’s transcription, specifically the reading of "minis" versus "minio." Senex defends the use of the ablative "regno" with "cedit," citing Horace to prove it correctly signifies "departing from the realm" rather than resigning a kingdom. The discussion clarifies Boswell’s occasional carelessness as a Latinist and confirms Johnson’s authorship of the English translation.
Cochrane entry 531. A reply to item 532, which explains the meaning of a Latin inscription on a painting by Gavin Hamilton.
General State of Affairs Abroad and at Home
The report discusses military conflicts in the East Indies, Poland, and Africa. The text notes that Boswell, a "Scots gentleman," issued a "well-timed manifesto" to encourage financial generosity among the British public for the "brave Corsicans." The writer expresses hope that these contributions will support the Corsican struggle for liberty against French subjection. The remainder of the piece focuses on the "defection" of North American colonies and debates regarding parliamentary taxation.
Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, pour l'an 1768
The work, Relation de l'Île de Corse, Journal d'un tour fait dans cette Isle, & Mémoires de Pascal Paoli (published 1768) is dedicated to Pascal Paoli, General of the Corsicans. Gibbon warns the reader not to expect cold or impartial observations. Boswell traveled to Corsica in the autumn of 1765, where he was impressed by the landscape but frequently encountered armed Corsicans. Boswell met Paoli in Sollacoro, who received him with polite reserve. The conversation touched upon the fate of the island, and Boswell expressed his admiration for Paoli by saying he had come from seeing the tomb of one free nation (Rome) to the cradle of another. Boswell noted that Paoli, a man of forty years, was educated, conversational, and active. Boswell praised Paoli’s virtue and felt liberated from servitude to worldly greats after meeting him. He also reported, with some skepticism, that Paoli was said to have prophetic dreams. Boswell's journey inspired him to write this highly successful work, which contributed to generating support for the Corsicans among private individuals in England and Scotland.
Gibbon discusses Boswell's Corsica narrative at 2:164–67.
Glover explores the biographical trajectory and character of Boswell, tracing his development from an ambitious youth in Edinburgh to the intimate companion of Johnson. The narrative underscores Boswell's "faculty of sticking" and his ability to cultivate relationships with luminaries such as Hume, Paoli, and Rousseau. Particular attention is paid to the 1773 tour of the Hebrides, illustrating the contrast between Boswell’s romantic enthusiasm and Johnson’s robust Toryism. Glover disputes contemporary characterizations of Boswell as a simple fool, arguing instead that his "unfailing good humour" and "indomitable devotion" were essential to his literary success. The text scholar notes that while Boswell struggled with "melancholy" and "drunken manners" in his later years, his commitment to truthfulness remained absolute. Glover maintains that Boswell realized a "highest idea" of human nature through his subjects, securing Johnson’s legacy while revealing his own complex, unstable, yet ultimately "kindly" personality.
Cochrane entry 3.
James Boswell on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres
Golden disputes the nineteenth-century view of Boswell as a shallow entertainer, presenting him instead as a competent student of human nature, rhetoric, and literary criticism. Drawing on Boswell’s journals, legal career, and essays, Golden explores his theories on style, oratory, and belles-lettres. Boswell favored a style characterized by accuracy, simplicity, and naturalness, though he defended Johnson’s "gigantic" vocabulary as suitable for his "gigantic thoughts." In oratory, Boswell emphasized the three Aristotelian proofs, particularly the necessity of sincerity and preparation for effective ethos. Unlike Johnson, Boswell championed the power of delivery and action, arguing that reasonable beings possess fancies and passions that must be amused and aroused. His literary criticism applied standards of moral instruction and emotional pathos to drama and poetry, leading him to praise Goldsmith’s natural humor while criticizing the lack of "delicate power" in Johnson’s Irene. Golden concludes that Boswell’s commitment to accuracy and objectivity in historical writing and biography established the "masterly" standards realized in his Life of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 589. Argues that while not an original theorist, Boswell was a well-informed and insightful student of rhetoric whose writings offer a valuable window into 18th-century literary beliefs.
Boswell's Brother Confessor: William Johnson Temple
Cochrane entry 441. Portrays William Johnson Temple as the patient "confessor" in his lifelong correspondence with Boswell, a perceptive friend who grasped Boswell's many contradictions, from pious to profane and from joyful to depressed.
Cochrane entry 544. Catalogs the many literary projects that Boswell considered but never completed, including several biographies, a Scottish dictionary, and an edition of Walton's 'Lives'.
Gray examines the shifting scholarly reputation of Boswell, moving from Macaulay's dismissive "great fool" characterization to his recognition as an "incomparable literary artist." Drawing on then-recent discoveries at Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House, Gray elucidates Boswell's domestic life and "non-literary interests." The text details Boswell's role as an "affectionate father" to Euphemia, Veronica, and Elizabeth, his commitment to their education, and his interactions with his brothers John and David. Gray also highlights Boswell's legal and social networks in Edinburgh, featuring correspondence with Lord Hailes and Sir William Forbes. These documents confirm that Hailes encouraged Boswell's early interest in Johnson and influenced the production of the "immortal biography." Additionally, Gray identifies various Edinburgh residences and notes a missed connection between Boswell and Robert Burns, despite the poet's deliberate attempts to secure an introduction in 1788.
Cochrane entry 48.
This survey of the "revival of interest" in Boswell focuses on Tinker’s two-volume edition of the correspondence. It highlights Strachey’s argument that the letters provide a "shattering refutation" of conventional morality by demonstrating how an "idler, a lecher, a drunkard and a snob" achieved supreme literary success. The narrative follows Boswell from a "bumptious youth" to a "broken-spirited man," emphasizing his "absolute ingenuousness" and his "eternal attachment" to Johnson. Strachey identifies hero-worship of figures such as Wilkes, Paoli, and Rousseau as Boswell's dominating strain. Despite personal ruin and humiliation by Lonsdale, Boswell’s "insatiable" appetite for life fueled the completion of the biography of Johnson, resulting in a work that outlasted its author's desperation.
Cochrane entry 497.
Green identifies Boswell’s first London publication, "The Cub at Newmarket," issued in 1762 by Dodsley. Green notes Boswell used the work to characterize himself as a "curious Cub" caught on "Scotia’s mountains." The text credits Lord Eglintoune with introducing Boswell to elite social circles. Green reveals Boswell’s intended quarto volume concerning the controversy of the Beggar’s Opera, a project involving recent research visits to Newgate prison. Boswell is described as a "good judge of human nature" whose late designs followed the patronage patterns of Johnson.
Cochrane entry 414. Identifies Zélide, a figure from Boswell's letters, as Belle Van Zuylen, and provides a biographical sketch of her life and their epistolary relationship.
This article, identified as the work of Parr, serves as a fervent recommendation for the recently published Prayers and Meditations of Johnson. Parr argues that these private writings provide the most authentic evidence of Johnson’s sincere Christian faith, deep devotion, and inherent benevolence. He posits that the work reveals both the intellectual strength and the human vulnerabilities of the subject, simultaneously inspiring veneration and compassion in the reader. According to Parr, any individual who values integrity and religion will find themselves improved by studying Johnson's internal dialogues and appeals to the divine. The correspondent who provided the text notes that Johnson’s executors missed a significant opportunity by not engaging Parr to produce the official biography. The author suggests Parr possessed a unique capacity to comprehend and describe the complexities of Johnson’s character and intellect.
Hall depicts Boswell as an "able" courier and "self-forgetful" guide during the "ceremonious tour" of the Hebrides. The text portrays Boswell recording "pithy lore" by "wavering candle-light" while his "idol" sleeps. Focusing on the physical hardships of "greasy" taverns and "verminous beds," Hall highlights Boswell’s devotion in "cloaking with artifice his schemes" to find Johnson comfort, ensuring the world remains at the young man's shoulder.
Harrison discusses the greatest biographies, citing Plutarch's Lives and Boswell's Johnson as the supreme masters of the genre. He notes Plutarch's aim was to provide a living portrait of a man's inner nature, not simply annals of his external acts, a principle Boswell followed in his miniature art. Harrison urges a rereading of both, emphasizing that Johnson's portraits are models for insight into human nature. He argues later writers like Goethe failed to achieve veracious autobiographies. He critiques laborious annals like Coxe's Walpole and Masson's Milton, favoring Southey's Nelson and Carlyle's essays on literary figures. Harrison also advocates for contrasting lives, moving from Asser's Alfred to the Byzantine Empire's magnificent complexities under rulers like Basil II. He concludes that a biographer's goal is to give a living portrait of the man as he was, exemplified by Lockhart's memoir of Scott.
Cochrane entry 72.
Boswell's Interviews with Gottsched and Gellert
Hegeman compares Boswell's and Goethe's personal accounts of the prominent Leipzig professors, Gottsched and Gellert, to contribute to definitive portraits of the men. Boswell, in 1764, found the influential critic Gottsched to be a "big, stately, comely Man" of the world who received him with politeness and praised Johnson's Dictionary Preface. In contrast, Boswell dismissed the famous fabulist Gellert as a "poor, sickly creature" with "hardly any science" and a "Mushroom reputation," attributing his aversion to Gellert's hypochondria mirroring his own emotional instability. Goethe, who studied in Leipzig a year later, also noted Gottsched’s massive physical size and pompous self-praise, but, unlike Boswell, recognized the innate kindliness and moral influence that made Gellert highly esteemed among the German students.
Cochrane entry 548. Contrasts Boswell's recorded impressions of two German professors, Gottsched and Gellert, with the opinions held by their students, including the young Goethe.
Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation
Henley disputes the traditional view of Boswell as an "inspired Faddle" who produced a masterpiece through mere accident or "disease." He challenges the "brilliant and picturesque misrepresentation" of Macaulay and the editorial "corruption" of Croker, who treated the text with "scandalous" license. Henley argues that Boswell was an "original master of selection, composition, and design" who fully understood his own "darling work." While acknowledging Boswell’s personal reputation as a "busybody" and a "sot," he maintains that the biography's success relies on a deliberate "genius for biography" and a "matchless" ability to reproduce conversation. Henley asserts that Boswell’s "artistic faculty" was highly self-conscious; he "knew very well what I was about" when displaying his own follies to highlight Johnson’s wit. The text concludes that Boswell should take his rightful place as an "artist" whose work is as "solidly built" as the Great Pyramid.
Henn disputes the geographic attributions by Boswell and Pope regarding the school head-mastership sought for Johnson in Earl Gower's 1739 letter. Comparing the letter's timing and statutory requirements with school records, Henn identifies Appleby as the institution in question. He cites the school minute-book and statutes requiring a Master of Arts degree to confirm the vacancy during Johnson's "day of obscurity." Henn provides evidence that the trustees' residence and the specific election deadline of September 11 match Appleby's annual audit cycle, proving his "conjecture was not ill-founded."
On Johnson and Appleby School.
CGV entry 4:75. Privately printed. From the Illustrated London News, May 25, 1895, pages 646-647.
This article, reprinted from 1948, characterizes Boswell as a psychopath whose personality was shaped by an inability to identify with his 'vain, cold and egotistical father.' Hitschmann interprets Boswell's devotion to Johnson as an unconscious search for a superior father figure. By chronicling Johnson's life without reserve, Boswell followed Johnson's own recommendation to include a subject's 'frailties' in biographical accounts. The text argues that Boswell's relationship with Johnson qualified him as a biographer specifically because they shared 'social intercourse' and daily life. Hitschmann uses Boswell's life to illustrate how the search for a better father drives the selection of biographical subjects, ultimately resulting in 'the most famous biography in the English language.'
Reprinted from Psychoanalytic Quarterly, XVII (1948), 212-225.
This posthumous autobiography, edited and completed by William Hazlitt, recounts the diverse career of Thomas Holcroft from his impoverished childhood as a pedlar and stable-boy at Newmarket to his eventual success as a London dramatist and novelist. Holcroft provides a detailed "Narrative of Facts" regarding his 1794 indictment for high treason and his subsequent voluntary surrender to Chief Justice Eyre, emphasizing his commitment to public accountability and principles. His diary entries from the late 1790s document his literary labor, theatrical engagements, and social circles, which included figures such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and William Godwin. The text contains a specific reference to reading Boswell on January 17, 1799, noting that the "thirst of dominion" exhibited by the French at Turin was "insatiable" and required a calculation of moral consequences. Holcroft's account highlights his self-education in music, arithmetic, and languages, as well as the financial and professional instability of provincial acting companies. The narrative concludes with a record of his final illnesses and temporary involvements in the book and art trades.
Cochrane entry 435. Presents the annotated texts of eleven letters exchanged between Boswell and Sir David Dalrymple, which were discovered in 1937.
Hoover uses a newly discovered letter from March 1760 to clarify Boswell’s first, somewhat obscure London sojourn. The correspondence reveals Boswell’s secret conversion to Roman Catholicism as the prime mover for the trip. Hoover disputes John Ramsay’s account of an elopement with an actress, noting instead Boswell’s rapid shift from religious fervor to entirely worldly pursuits under the patronage of Lord Eglinton. The text emphasizes Boswell’s early search for identity through models like Dalrymple.
Cochrane entry 21.
Horne identifies a sharp retort by George Steevens in the St. James's Chronicle (1791) regarding Boswell's praise for Edmond Malone. In the Life of Johnson, Boswell commended Malone's disinterestedness in refusing payment for his Shakespeare edition. Steevens, motivated by scholarly rivalry and personal malice, publicly asserted his own refusal of pecuniary reward for similar work. Horne suggests Steevens's intervention was intended both to diminish Malone's reputation and to subtly criticize Boswell’s own commercial interests in his biography.
Cochrane entry 559.
Alexander Boswell's Copies of The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621 and 1624
Hunter and Macalpine identify Alexander Boswell, first Lord Auchinleck, as the owner of the 1621 and 1624 folio editions of Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy." Marginal inscriptions written by the elder Boswell in 1728 and 1750 explain how he compared textual differences and the missing epilogue between the quarto and folio versions. A subsequent 1804 manuscript note by James Boswell the younger corrects his grandfather's mistaken attribution of "Contemplatio Mortis et Immortalitatis" to Burton, assigning authorship instead to the Earl of Manchester. The bibliographic lineage demonstrates that Boswell the biographer inherited these working copies, which directly influenced his self-professed fondness for Burton and his specific monthly columns in "The London Magazine."
Cochrane entry 576. Describes two copies of 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' owned by Boswell's father, suggesting he may have shared his son's admiration for Robert Burton's work.
Inge shares details of two previously unpublished letters from Boswell to his great-grandfather, Ralph Churton. The letters, part of a private family collection, are from 1792 and 1793. The first letter thanks Churton for his favorable opinion of the Life of Johnson and for his "strictures," particularly a suggestion that Johnson's gloomy view of life was due to his temperament, which Boswell incorporates as a note in the second edition of the Life. The second letter accompanies a gift of the second edition and mentions Boswell's confinement due to a mugging, whose discreditable circumstances were not candidly revealed. Boswell repeatedly expresses a desire to meet Churton, a wish that, Inge believes, was not fulfilled.
Cochrane entry 423.
Cochrane entry 440. Differentiates between Boswell's stilted, public letters with Erskine and his authentic, clever correspondence with Temple, showcasing Boswell's ability to tailor his authorial voice to the recipient. See pp. 300–306, et passim.
Voltaire's Letter Written from the Chateau de Ferney, Feb. 11, 1765
A transcript of a radio discussion by Ralph Isham, J. W. Krutch, and Mark Van Doren.
CGV entry 4:132.
Isles continues the summary of the Lennox collection, detailing letters from Richardson, Garrick, Colman, Reynolds, Hawkesworth, the Earl of Corke and Orrery, and Boswell. Richardson's (1751) details securing a place for one of Lennox's writings in The Gentleman's Magazine. Garrick (1753) criticizes her Shakespear Illustrated. Colman (1769) discusses the stage failure of her play The Sister and the promised Epilogue from Goldsmith. Reynolds's letters (1775-1776) involve a proposed illustrated Female Quixote and a portrait sitting. Boswell's letter (1793) agrees to write proposals for Lennox's new Shakespear Illustrated edition, a project that eventually failed.
Cochrane entry 445.
Boswell Argues a Cause: Smith, Steel, and 'Actio Redhibitoria'
Ives examines the 1767 civil case Smith v. Steel, in which Boswell served as advocate during his early career at the Scots bar. The dispute involved the Roman legal principle of actio redhibitoria, relating to the rescission of a sale due to defects in the goods. In his printed legal papers, Boswell enlivens the technical argument with 'accents unmistakably his own,' moving beyond the standard verbiage to include 'irrepressible high spirits.' This stylistic flare sometimes amused the bench but also drew contemporary criticism for 'ribaldry' and 'scatological' humor in related enfranchisement cases. The study highlights how Boswell's literary personality frequently intersected with his professional legal duties, using the language of the bar as a school for his emerging narrative voice.
Cochrane entry 683.
Notes a parallel between a complimentary remark made to Johnson in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and a passage in Shakespeare's King Lear. The compliment arose when Boswell clumsily suggested that Lady Eglintoune adopted Johnson as her son the year after his birth, implying he was her "natural son." A young lady's witty reply, "Might not the son’s presence justified the fault?" parallels a line by Kent in King Lear.
Boswell the Novelist: Structural Rhythm in the London Journal
Cochrane entry 389. Argues that the 'London Journal' has a novelistic structure, with Boswell using dramatic irony and shifting perspectives to explore his quest for happiness through a rhythm of hope and despair.
The Croker Papers: The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honorable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830
Croker proposes a new edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson to Murray, arguing that earlier editors like Malone and Chalmers failed to elucidate obscure allusions to Johnson’s circle. Croker advocates for the systematic identification of anonymous persons, such as Burke and Langton, and the integration of supplemental anecdotes from Hawkins and Piozzi to remedy Boswell’s omissions during his absences from London. He emphasizes that the lapse of forty years has rendered many contemporary details obscure, necessitating immediate annotation while historical memory persists. Croker identifies Boswell’s personal enmities with Hawkins and Piozzi as the cause of significant gaps in the biographical record, which he intends to fill by incorporating their authenticated extracts into the main text. The resulting project aims to provide a more comprehensive and social view of Johnson's life by synthesizing disparate 18th-century sources into a singular scholarly framework.
One Mighty Torrent: The Drama of Biography
Edgar Johnson examines the revolutionary biographical standards established by Johnson and perfected by Boswell. Johnson emphasizes absolute truth over panegyric, advocating for the inclusion of domestic privacies and minute details to reveal individual character. His 'Life of Savage' serves as a primary example of his integrity, as he refuses to suppress the vices of a friend while maintaining a tone of 'philosophic generalization.' In his 'Lives of the Poets,' Johnson uses trenchant description to humanize figures, such as describing Pope's 'stiff canvas' bodice. Boswell applies these principles to create a monumental record of his friendship with Johnson, using a 'firm sweep of design' that incorporates letters and unrivaled conversational anecdotes. Johnson argues that Boswell was a man of 'true genius' whose simplicity and quick intelligence allowed him to pierce 'cant.' This chapter highlights how their combined efforts moved biography from psychological stereotypes toward realistic, individualized portraiture.
Cochrane entry 128. Contends that the 'Life' is a product of immense skill and labor, not luck. Praises Boswell's dramatic ability and his masterful handling of Johnson's early years, for which he had scant material.
Lionel Johnson analyzes Boswell's character, arguing his literary greatness stemmed from an "invincible vivacity" and insatiable curiosity, compelling him to seize upon the liveliest aspects of life. His acquisition of Johnson was Boswell's crowning social achievement, feeding his love for rare and savory experiences. The author argues against critics like Macaulay who deny Boswell the merit of his literary art, asserting his meticulous selection, dramatic instinct, and feeling for piquant reality distinguish his masterpiece. Boswell is portrayed as a preposterous and undignified, yet shrewd and genuinely discerning, friend and biographer.
Cochrane entry 73.
Biography: The Literature of Personality
Johnston argues that biography should be treated as a distinct literary department defined as "the literature of personality," where the primary aim is to "transmit personality" rather than merely chronicle events. He identifies Boswell’s Life of Johnson as the "high-water mark of biographical literature," crediting Boswell with perfecting the use of conversation and "illuminating correspondence" to re-create a subject's moral world. Johnson himself is presented as a "professional biographer" whose Lives of the Poets established critical biography as a legitimate genre. Piozzi (as Mrs. Thrale) is recognized for her early and significant use of "anecdotage" in her 1786 collection, which helped establish the anecdote as a standard point of biographical method. Johnston positions these 18th-century figures as the architects of modern life-writing, shifting the focus from objective history to the "spiritual facts" and "secret springs" of character.
Cochrane entry 102.
The Father: Letter to Sons and Daughters
Boswell Is Summoned Home from Europe on His Mother’s Death
This collection of paternal correspondence includes a January 1766 letter from Alexander Boswell to his son, James Boswell. Writing from Edinburgh following the death of his wife, the elder Boswell summons his son home from Paris. He describes the deceased as a "true practical Christian" whose "end was peace." The father expresses a sense of being in a "most desolate state" and urges the younger Boswell to provide the "aid and comfort an affectionate son can give." The letter serves as a formal reprimand, challenging the son's "unstayed state" and "strange" proposals made from abroad. Boswell warns that he will provide no further financial allowance if his son pursues improper schemes instead of returning to Scotland to fulfill his filial duties. The volume also quotes Johnson, who observes that "in a man's letters his soul lies naked."
On the enduring wisdom of Samuel Johnson as conveyed through Boswell, emphasizing the relevance of his insights on fear and happiness in the context of soldiers facing battle.
Cochrane entry 149.
Keith argues for a reassessment of Boswell on his bicentenary, rejecting the "marionette" caricatures of Macaulay and Carlyle. using discoveries from Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House, Keith defends Boswell as a courageous, resolute, and honest biographer whose candor ensures reliability. He highlights Boswell's genius in recording Johnson, his shrewdness as a businessman, and his irrepressible cheerfulness, asserting that Boswell's literary achievements transcend his personal instabilities.
Cochrane entry 536.
The Republic of Letters: Essays on Various Writers
This chapter, reprinted from 1947, examines the symbiotic celebrity of Johnson and Boswell, identifying the former as a premier social talker and the latter as a revolutionary artist in biography. Kronenberger disputes the perception of Boswell as an 'inspired idiot,' asserting that his Life of Johnson succeeds through creative arrangement and a dramatic sense for dialogue rather than mere stenography. The text analyzes Johnson's complex nature, describing him as a prejudiced Tory and religious bigot whose external bullying masked deep physical suffering and profound melancholy. Kronenberger defends Johnson's critical legacy, particularly the 'Preface to Shakespeare' and 'Lives of the Poets,' despite the author's occasional 'wrongheaded' didacticism. Additionally, the essay explores Johnson's interactions with Hester Thrale, characterizing their eventual estrangement as a result of his domestic dependence and her pursuit of personal happiness with Piozzi.
Cochrane entry 170.
Krutch presents an imaginary dialogue in the Elysian Fields between Johnson and Thoreau. Johnson attacks Thoreau’s "natural" life at Walden Pond, asserting that "no man need be a fool, but in civilized company it is often proper that he should behave like one." Johnson defends London as the "great metropolis of palliatives" for the "evils of existence," while Thoreau maintains that "all Africa and India are within me." The dialogue highlights the contrast between Johnson’s reliance on ancient wisdom and human nature and Thoreau’s "extravagant" individualism. Johnson concludes that existence is "mediocre" and requires distraction, while Thoreau argues that "life is too short as it is" and finds his existence "inexpressibly sweet."
Corrects a statement in the Illustrated News that the late Viscountess Keith was the last survivor of all persons mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson. This correction notes the error without specifying the details or providing the names of other survivors mentioned in Boswell's work. The discussion highlights the continuing interest in and accuracy of biographical information related to the circle of Samuel Johnson.
B. H. L. notes that the house at No. 122 Great Portland Street is scheduled for demolition and is believed to be Boswell's last London residence, where he died in May 1795. An older letter suggests he died at No. 47, but the thoroughfare was renumbered and renamed. The house, which also served as home to Hungarian patriot Kossuth, has no marking tablet, leading the author to suggest that a central authority, such as the County Council, should assume responsibility for marking London's historical landmarks.
Lee draws on his work editing the Dictionary of National Biography, stressing that biography satisfies the commemorative instinct by preserving the memory of distinguished individuals. A successful biography demands both a fit theme and fit treatment. The theme must be a completed career that is "serious, complete and of a certain magnitude," necessitating the subject's death. Treatment requires candour and truthfulness, avoiding suppression or extenuation, and must remain independent of ethical instruction, history, or science. The biographer must focus on the individual, subordinating the historical environment. Discriminating brevity is key, demanding rigid selection of details that illuminate personality. Boswell's Life of Johnson is the exceptional, superior work thanks to the unique subject and the biographer's unparalleled focus on recording Johnson's conversation.
Cochrane entry 69.
Leigh analyzes Boswell’s complex relationship with Rousseau, tracing his evolution from second-hand interest in London to personal worship at Môtiers. He argues that Boswell sought in the philosopher a mentor to resolve deep-seated religious doubts and sexual anxieties. The study details Boswell's subsequent disillusionment following the Rousseau-Hume quarrel and his secret affair with Levasseur. Leigh demonstrates how Boswell eventually integrated Rousseau’s primitivist ideas and focus on memory into his own writings, despite Johnson’s vehement opposition and Boswell's eventual move toward orthodoxy.
Cochrane entry 564.
Libra characterizes the escalating controversy between Seward and Boswell as an epic conflict involving various pseudonymous correspondents. Boswell faces challenges from contributors regarding his claims of auxiliary support, while the scale of the dispute fluctuates over trivialities such as a "myrtle-sprig and a dead duck." Libra depicts Boswell as an "uncourteous" combatant "smiling scorn" at his antagonist. The narrative concludes by praising the editorial intervention that suppressed the "rage of war" surrounding Boswell’s biographical veracity and his treatment of Seward.
The author challenges Macaulay: Boswell had flaws, but was also honest, generous, and a good friend. Johnson was both Boswell's "hero" and his life's "vocation."
Cochrane entry 481.
The Scots Household in the Eighteenth Century
Reviewing 1950's publications, the article celebrates the appearance of James Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763, drawn from the Boswell Papers. The reviewer emphasizes the journal's remarkable candor regarding Boswell's early social and romantic ambitions, including an affair with "Louisa." A significant segment quotes the earliest recorded dialogue between a twenty-two-year-old Boswell and Johnson, featuring Boswell's apology for being a Scot and Johnson's sharp retort. The journal is compared to those of Pepys and Rousseau.
Longaker frames Boswell’s biography as the "pinnacle of the art," attributing its success to Boswell’s unprecedented "aggressiveness in gathering data." Drawing on the Malahide Collection manuscripts, the chapter evaluates Boswell’s "appreciation of biographical values" and his ability to construct a "full-length portrait" through the accumulation of minute detail. Longaker views Boswell as the definitive practitioner of eighteenth-century realism, who moved life-writing away from panegyric toward a faithful representation of "the demi-god a man." The chapter argues that Boswell’s unique psychological access and deliberate investigative methods established a standard for modern biography that eclipsed contemporary rivals.
Cochrane entry 116.
James Boswell, Scots Advocate and English Barrister
Cochrane entry 680. Portrays Boswell's legal career as a "plodding failure" and uses it as a case study to demonstrate that the life of an 18th-century lawyer was filled with drudgery, routine, and a disheartening search for clients.
Lucas's review of Letters of James Boswell, Addressed to the Reverend W. J. Temple: Now First Published from the Original MSS. (1857), reprinted from The Times, 3 Jan. 1857 and 8 Jan. 1857.
The Case of Dr. Memis v. Managers of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. With Reference to Boswell's Life of Johnson and with New Material Concerning the Case from Boswell's Legal Diary and the Minutes of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary
Lyall examines the legal action brought by John Memis against the managers of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary over the translation of his title as 'Doctor of Medicine' instead of 'Physician' in the institution's Royal Charter. The text details Boswell's role as counsel for the managers and his 1775 request for Johnson's opinion on the matter of medical etiquette. Johnson's dictated response argues that 'Doctor of Medicine' is a legitimate and superior title, as it implies both a physician and a teacher of physics. Lyall notes that Boswell's involvement in the case occurred as he was beginning to collect 'authentic materials' for Johnson's biography. The text highlights Johnson's argument that verbal injury must comprise a false position, and since Memis was indeed a doctor, no defamatory truth was uttered.
Cochrane entry 681.
MacCarthy contrasts the biographical perspectives of Vulliamy and Wyndham Lewis regarding Boswell’s psychological state. She challenges Vulliamy’s diagnosis of hereditary insanity and schizophrenia, asserting Boswell’s status as a conscious artist who achieves "sympathetic identity with the object." MacCarthy emphasizes Boswell’s ability to reconstruct the "peculiar aroma of each personality" through documentation. She highlights the Dilly’s dinner with Wilkes as evidence of Boswell’s subtle humor and creative method. MacCarthy maintains that Boswell’s journals provide raw material for artistic synthesis rather than mere symptoms of lunacy. She identifies Johnson’s company as a necessary relief for Boswell's "mental disequilibrium."
Cochrane entry 549.
Cochrane entry 519. Characterizes the Boswell revealed in the private papers as a "transparently honest man" whose hypochondria was a form of acute self-consciousness, which he sought to relieve through sociability and drink.
Johnson was likely psychasthenic. His childhood experiences, including a father prone to gloom and the trauma of being "touched" for scrofula by Queen Anne, contributed to his nervous temperament. The author speculates Johnson might not have had scrofula but a glandular swelling. This condition is cited as the source of his eccentric behavior in adulthood, such as frightful jerkings and grimaces, and his compulsive need to touch horse-posts on Fleet Street. These acts are seen as manifestations of the unconscious mind, where imperative ideas formed from early anxieties evolved into obsessions. This psychological lens profoundly shapes the understanding of Johnson's character and legacy.
Macphail reviews the first volumes of the privately printed Isham Collection, asserting that these papers provide a state of finality for passing judgment on Boswell. He disputes the traditional Victorian view of Boswell as an "inspired idiot," tracing the origin of this "spate of calumny" to Macaulay’s 1831 review. By examining the 270 meetings and nearly one hundred letters between Johnson and Boswell, Macphail demonstrates Johnson’s deep esteem for his friend, whom he held in his "heart of hearts." He evaluates Boswell across six criteria: his literary achievement, his capacity for friendship, his financial integrity, his personal character, his conjugal fidelity, and his role as a father. He concludes that Boswell was a "supreme humorist" and a meticulous researcher who deliberately created an "ideal Johnson" while maintaining his own social status as a Scottish Laird.
CGV entry 4:111.
Cochrane entry 513.
Cochrane entry 86. Recommends the 'Life' as the perfect book for casual dipping, praising Boswell's skill in capturing all of Johnson's contradictions—his piety and superstition, his sociability and his melancholy.
Mastigophoros challenges Seward's "mistake" regarding the chronology of Johnson's literary career. He disputes her assertion that Johnson "first appeared before the world in the character of a poet," noting his 1733 translation of Lobo preceded his major poetic works. The text mocks Boswell's self-consequence as a "little cock-boat" following Johnson's "majestic first-rate" vessel. Mastigophoros concludes that Johnson's fame rests on his prose rather than his poetry. He urges an end to the "ridiculous extent" of the public controversy between the biographer and Seward.
McCutcheon reviews the major literary contributions and personal interactions of Johnson, Boswell, and Oliver Goldsmith. Johnson, described as a figure towering physically and intellectually over his generation, authored works across numerous genres, including the Dictionary, Rasselas, and The Lives of the English Poets. Boswell, Johnson’s official biographer, achieved fame through his Life of Johnson, which McCutcheon characterizes as great for its subject and authorship. The chapter highlights Johnson's reputation as a talker and his fear of insanity, alongside Boswell's insatiable curiosity and social skill. Hester Thrale Piozzi appears as a witty hostess and reporter of Johnson’s talk. McCutcheon concludes by discussing Goldsmith’s diverse output and his status as a "very great man" despite personal frailties.
Cochrane entry 555.
Cochrane entry 462. Offers a chronological bibliography and overview of Boswell's minor and miscellaneous published works over a thirty-year period.
Ralli challenges the prejudices of Gray and Macaulay, asserting Boswell possesses the emotional complexity and universality of a poetic genius. Ralli disputes the notion that the Life is a mere transcript of reality, arguing instead that subconscious processing and imaginative insight allowed Boswell to realize the inner character of Johnson. Ralli emphasizes the sincerity of the bond between the two men, citing Johnson’s dependence on Boswell’s company to alleviate hypochondria. The text frames Boswell's social eccentricities and perceived vanities as manifestations of a delicate, poetic temperament unfit for a utilitarian age. Ralli concludes that Boswell’s literary achievement stems from an extensive capacity for feeling, which enabled him to "Johnsonize the land" through a record of essential truth.
Reeves corrects inaccuracies in a previous review regarding the popular edition of the Boswell Papers. He clarifies that the trade edition of Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides will be published on November 23, 1936, and will be the fifth of a five-volume popular edition of the entire Boswell Papers. Publication in this popular format is a joint undertaking between William Heinemann, Limited, London, and the Viking Press, New York.
Cochrane entry 348. Outlines the publication plan for the Boswell papers as undertaken by the publishers Viking and William Heinemann.
James Boswell's Personal Correspondence: The Dramatized Quest for Identity
Reiberg analyzes Boswell's extensive correspondence as a 'dramatized quest for identity' centered on his favorite subject, 'Myself.' The essay categorizes Boswell's letters into social, artificial, and spontaneous modes, arguing that the bulk of his writing functions as a series of actions where Boswell serves as actor, stage manager, and critic. Reiberg notes that Boswell's 'unrelenting assiduity' in exploring his own personality often tried Johnson's patience, leading to the famous rebuke: 'Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.' Despite lacking the controlled perspective of contemporaries like Horace Walpole, Boswell's letters engage the reader with an 'immediacy and vitality' that Reiberg characterizes as a 'thrusting forward of an emotion-laden ego.' The abstract concludes that Boswell’s correspondence provides a record unmatched in its completeness of the internal and external elements of a human life.
Cochrane entry 446.
Reilly challenges the traditional view of Boswell as a "dunce" or "parasite," a perspective famously advanced by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Instead, Reilly aligns with the scholarship of Chauncey Brewster Tinker to present Boswell as a man of "high genius" despite his personal follies. The article traces Boswell's life from his Edinburgh origins and his 1763 meeting with Johnson to his continental travels, where he sought out Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Reilly highlights Boswell's "insatiable curiosity" and his adroit use of conversation to "peer into other men's minds." He argues that Boswell’s unique method of reporting Johnson's "hidden weaknesses" and "abundant riches" created the "greatest biography ever written." Ultimately, Reilly asserts that while Johnson was a "Great Cham" in his own right, his enduring celebrity is inextricably linked to Boswell's skillful and patient documentation of his life.
Cochrane entry 119.
Corrects a story about Hoppner and Porteus (not Porteous) and suspects it may have been fabricated by Farington. Includes information on the portrait of Hoppner.
A Commentary and Questionnaire on a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (Boswell)
Cochrane entry 285. Offers an introductory guide with study questions designed to help students better understand and appreciate Boswell's 'Hebrides'.
Rogers provides a biographical memoir of Boswell, tracing his development from an "idle fellow" and "Jacobite" youth to his status as the "first place" biographer of Johnson. The narrative details Boswell's persistent efforts to secure Johnson's acquaintance, culminating in their 1763 meeting at Davies's bookshop where Johnson initially retorted to Boswell's Scottish origins. Rogers emphasizes Johnson's role as a "faithful monitor" who attempted to cure Boswell's "distemper" of idleness and "vortex of pleasure" through study and religious discipline. The memoir chronicles their 1773 "Hebridean journey," noting that while contemporary critics viewed Boswell as a "monomaniac" pinned to the tail of an "auld dominie," his "mental harmony" with Johnson enabled a "signal fidelity" in reporting. Editorial policy involves depicting Boswell’s history "in his own words" via letters and journals, while omitting entries that "transgressed on decorum." Rogers characterizes Boswell's legacy as a "composite creation" of master and disciple that keeps the "noble image" of Johnson fresh.
Boswell and Walter James: Goethe and Daniel Malthus
A series of anonymous 1785 pamphlets attacking and defending Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides originated from the literary circle of Richard Graves and Walter James. Ryskamp identifies W. James of Stanstead, a correspondent of Boswell and an executor for Piozzi, as the 'Defender' who countered the 'Verax' attacks written by Graves. James also authored imitations of Goethe’s Sorrows of Werter, while the first English translation of Goethe’s novel is ascribed to Daniel Malthus, a friend of Rousseau. These publications transmit Continental Romantic ideas to England through a network of minor writers. While Boswell lacked an eye for nature, his social connections to the James family and Piozzi’s bluestocking circle facilitate the transmission of these significant late eighteenth-century literary works.
Cochrane entry 610.
Sergeant chronicles the lives of four notorious impostors, categorizing Oates and Thomas Dangerfield as "venomous" and Psalmanazar and William Henry Ireland as "harmless" varieties of deceptive "snakes". Sergeant details the fabricated Popish Plot of 1678, noting Oates’s physical repulsiveness and his collaboration with Ezreel Tonge to produce the "colossal lie" of the eighty-one articles. The monograph details the mysterious death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, which Sergeant suggests "actually made the Plot" by providing a Protestant martyr. Sergeant examines Psalmanazar’s transition from a fraudulent "Japanese heathen" to a penitent scholar who earned the deep respect of Johnson. Johnson allegedly "sought after" Psalmanazar more than any other man and refused to contradict him out of reverence for his uniform piety. The final section analyzes Ireland’s Shakespearean forgeries, including the spurious play Vortigern and a letter from Queen Elizabeth, which famously duped Boswell. Boswell allegedly knelt to kiss the "invaluable relics" and declared he could "die contented" after witnessing the discovery. Sergeant concludes that these literary jests, while less deadly than Oates's perjuries, ultimately ruined the lives of the perpetrators.
Cochrane entry 502.
Sherman disputes the traditional characterization of Boswell as a mere satellite of Johnson. Boswell possesses a master passion for self-realization and an extraordinary faculty for capturing the richness of life. His success as a biographer stems from artistic competence rather than hero-worship. Sherman emphasizes Boswell's inner conflict between his Scottish Tory heritage and a natural inclination toward radicalism and Rousseauvian expansion. Despite personal dissolutions, hypochondria, and the domestic grief following his wife's death, Boswell maintains a commitment to his "Life of Johnson" as a means of personal survival. The text asserts that Boswell would have produced masterpieces even if Johnson had never lived.
Cochrane entry 420.
Gossip about Dr. Johnson and Others, Being Chapters from the Memoirs of Laetitia M. Hawkins
The Johnson Circle: Goldsmith, Percy, Boswell, Davies...
Hawkins details the social and moral characteristics of Johnson's primary associates, specifically Goldsmith, Percy, and Boswell. Hawkins characterizes Goldsmith as possessing limited practical knowledge despite his literary productivity and recounts instances of his financial irresponsibility. Percy is depicted as a refined scholar whose clerical dignity eventually eclipsed his interest in his Reliques. Hawkins directs substantial critique toward Boswell, characterizing him as a vain, thick-skinned interloper whose biographical methods involved persistent "earwigging" and social intrusion. The text also examines the domestic sphere of Bolt Court, describing the blind Williams’s household management and the perceived insolence and extravagance of Barber. Furthermore, Hawkins notes the professional friction between Sir John and the actor-bookseller Davies, framing these relationships within the broader context of Johnson’s varied and often "uncouth" friendships.
Cochrane entry 505.
Self-Harvest: Study of Diaries and the Diarist
Cochrane entry 361. See esp. pp. 36–38, 84–87. Hails Boswell's journal as being as remarkable as Pepys's, and sees Boswell's desire to record life as he lived it as the quintessential diarist's impulse.
Stevenson provides a comprehensive survey of the methods used to realize the personality of eminent historical men. In his chapter on 'Biography,' he explicitly addresses the legacy of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, using their relationship to illustrate the merits of contemporary observation. He analyzes Johnson's famous dictum that only those who have 'eat and drank' with a man can write his life, contrasting this with the necessary 'sifting of documents' performed by later historians. Stevenson identifies the 'Life of Johnson' as the preeminent example of how minute personal details—often 'volatile and evanescent'—can rescue a subject from the 'iniquity of oblivion.' He further characterizes 'Boswell's Life of Johnson' as the language's best example of both biography and 'table-talk,' noting that Boswell’s 'correct transcript of conversations' provides a reality that formal history cannot match. The work also examines how the personal element in history, though sometimes subordinate to general causes, remains an irresistible charm for the thoughtful mind seeking to resuscitate the 'mighty spirits of the past.'
Garrick's Folly: The Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 at Stratford and Drury Lane
Stochholm reconstructs the 1769 Stratford Jubilee, identifying it as the first national Shakespeare festival and a pivotal moment in the history of bardolatry. The narrative details how David Garrick, motivated by his election as an honorary burgess of Stratford-upon-Avon, organized a three-day celebration featuring an oratorio, a dedicated ode, and various social entertainments. Boswell features prominently as a participant who arrived incognito to debut a Corsican chief costume, later publishing 'Verses in the Character of a Corsican'. Johnson is noted for his 1765 edition of Shakespeare and his social connections to the Rev. Francis Gastrell, whose destruction of New Place exacerbated local tensions prior to the Jubilee. Stochholm highlights Johnson's absence from the festival, though his poetry was used to market Jubilee ribbons. Piozzi appears briefly through her association with Johnson during his visit to Brighton during the festivities. Despite 'hateful drizzling rain' that forced the cancellation of the central pageant, Stochholm argues the event was a personal triumph for Garrick, who subsequently adapted the material into a successful afterpiece at Drury Lane. The study uses contemporary newspapers, correspondence, and the rediscovered Huntington Library manuscript of 'The Jubilee' to evaluate the festival's complex reception among critics and rival managers.
Strachey disputes the nineteenth-century view of Boswell as a fortunate fool, arguing that the biographer possessed a conscious and masterful artistic method. This article, reprinted from The Nation and The Athenaeum (1925), characterizes Boswell as an individual of "extraordinary spirits" whose apparent absurdities masked a "profound and passionate" dedication to truth. Strachey highlights the paradox of Boswell's personality, noting that while contemporary society mocked his eccentricities, he was creating a "supernatural" masterpiece through his unique ability to dramatize Johnson. The text emphasizes Boswell's "natural gift of style" and his "unfailing eye for what was interesting," concluding that his technique of elaborate accretion revolutionized the biographical genre. Strachey posits that Boswell's success stemmed not from idiocy, but from a "perfectly integrated" artistic vision that remains unparalleled in English literature.
Strachey presents James Boswell's life as a "shattering refutation of the lessons of cheap morality," arguing that one of history's greatest literary successes was achieved by a man characterized as an idler, lecher, and snob. Reviewing Chauncey Brewster Tinker's edition of Boswell's letters, Strachey emphasizes that Boswell's genius was inextricably linked to his lack of dignity and reserve. He analyzes Boswell's "passion for personalities" and his "amazing aptitude for self-revelation," particularly in his correspondence with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his friend William Temple. Strachey contends that Boswell's "insatiable" appetite for life, while ultimately self-destructive and leading to a "sordid" end marked by alcoholism and professional failure, was the exact force required to produce the "Life of Johnson." The essay concludes that Boswell reached immortality precisely because he was the absurd figure who refused to retire to a quiet, conventional life.
A Hebridean Journey with Johnson and Boswell
Cochrane entry 304. Recounts the author's own journey following in Johnson and Boswell's footsteps, including visits with descendants of their original hosts.
The Salon and English Letters: Chapters on the Interpretations of Literature and Society in the Age of Johnson
Boswell and the Art of Intimate Biography
Tinker analyzes James Boswell’s revolutionary contribution to literature: the invention of "intimate biography." He posits that while Johnson provided the theory of biography (focusing on domestic privacies and "trifles"), Boswell alone achieved the practical perfection of the form. The chapter details the public shock and controversy that greeted the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which violated contemporary standards of "consecrating" a hero by instead revealing Johnson’s woollen night-caps and drunken lapses. Tinker defends Boswell against charges of being a mere "memorandummer," asserting that his "pagan joy in life" and scrupulous fidelity to fact allowed him to preserve a great man with a completeness previously unknown in history.
Cochrane entry 78.
Tinker examines the "enduring fascination" of diarists, arguing that the true journalist is never dull regardless of the triviality of the subject. Boswell rivals Pepys in his "gusto" and "passion" for recording life, though he suffered from "recurrent melancholia." Both men were collectors who gathered relics to preserve the "ipsissima verba" and atmosphere of their experiences. Tinker emphasizes that a diary’s value relies on "truthfulness" and a "respect for the moving finger of time." Johnson observed to Thrale that "a man loves to review his own mind," which Tinker identifies as the primary "spur" for the diarist. Unlike Burney, who indulged in "fine writing" for an audience, Boswell and Pepys maintained a "sense of fact" and "childlike simplicity." Despite the "terror" of the plague or "blindness," these writers record a "triumph of a human soul" and a conviction that "life was worth having."
Cochrane entry 358.
This letter, translated from French, records Boswell’s 1764 attempt to secure a private interview with the reclusive Rousseau at Val de Traver. Boswell presents himself as a 'man of unusual worth' and 'sensibility' from an ancient Scottish family. He challenges Rousseau's insight into human nature, arguing that a letter of recommendation is unnecessary for a philosopher of such caliber. Boswell promises 'simplicity' and 'cordiality' that will not disturb the philosopher’s retreat. He insists on a solitary meeting, claiming, 'I would rather give up seeing you for ever than see you for the first time in company.' The text highlights Boswell’s characteristic mix of 'pride,' 'enthusiasm,' and tactical 'dissimulation' used to cultivate the acquaintance of the great. Boswell appeals to Rousseau’s charity, seeking advice on his 'varied life' and complicated 'circumstances at once serious and delicate.'
De la Torre investigates the mid-eighteenth-century legal mystery of the Douglas Cause, a dispute over the inheritance of the Duke of Douglas's massive estate. The narrative centers on Lady Jane Douglas and her husband, Colonel John Steuart, who produced twin heirs in Paris in 1748 under suspicious circumstances. After Lady Jane's death, the Hamilton family challenged the claimant's legitimacy, leading to an exhaustive international investigation led by Andrew Stuart. Stuart uncovered evidence suggesting the children were 'Pretenders' kidnapped from French families, specifically identifying the Mignon and Sanry families as the probable biological parents. De la Torre details the subsequent legal battles in the Court of Session and the House of Lords, highlighting Boswell's role as a passionate partisan for Douglas and Johnson's more skeptical view. The text employs diverse historical materials, including 'La Marr' letters, inn registers, and contemporary legal memorials, to reconstruct the controversy. De la Torre argues that while Lady Jane was likely a dupe, Steuart probably perpetrated a 'vulgar fraud' to secure the inheritance. The monograph examines how character testimony and emotional appeals in the 'Letters of Lady Jane Douglas' influenced the final verdict in favor of the claimant. De la Torre concludes that the heir was likely the son of a French glass-worker, despite the legal victory that 'made Jacques Louis Mignon the heir of Douglas.'
Cochrane entry 566.
Boswell and Johnson: Their Companions and Contemporaries
Waller provides a collective biography of the literary circle surrounding Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The narrative focuses on the formation and influence of "The Club" (later the Literary Club), characterizing it as a formidable tribunal in the eighteenth-century commonwealth of letters. Waller profiles Johnson’s companions, including Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, and Edmund Burke, while examining the broader progress of literature during the period. The text presents Johnson as a literary monarch whose reign ended without a clear successor. Waller describes Johnson’s social interactions at the "Turk's Head" Tavern and his experiences in bluestocking assemblies hosted by Elizabeth Montagu. The study concludes with a reflection on Johnson’s place in literature, emphasizing his undying fame and his role as a faithful mirror of his age's prejudices and achievements. Chapter 1, 'The Club,' depicts the formidable intellectual authority of the Literary Club in 1773, characterizing its members as the preeminent critics and conversationalists of the eighteenth-century London literary commonwealth. Chapter 2, 'Boswell,' defends the biographer's intellectual capacity and dedication, arguing that his unique blend of persistence and reverence enabled the creation of an unparalleled, mirror-like portrait of his subject. Chapter 3, 'Johnson,' traces the subject’s early struggles with poverty and hypochondria, detailing his rise from a parliamentary reporter to the celebrated author of the first great English dictionary. Chapter 4, 'Landed at Last,' examines the later years of financial security and social dominance, highlighting his conversational prowess, his diverse circle of dependants, and his final masterpiece, the lives of the poets. Chapter 5, 'Johnson's Place in Literature,' evaluates his enduring legacy as a moral teacher and critic, whose profound understanding of humanity remains vital to the English literary canon. Chapter 6, 'Johnson's Contemporaries and Companions,' contextualizes the era as a critical transition in literary kingship, surveying the poets and historians who flourished under his pervasive influence.
Reissued by Bloomsbury Academic in 2013.
Werkmeister traces the transformation of the London daily press from a relatively independent informational medium into a vehicle for political corruption and social entertainment. The study emphasizes the founding of the Morning Post in 1772 as a pivotal moment that introduced "personalities" and "anecdotes" to attract fashionable West End readers. Werkmeister argues that the Pitt administration eventually mastered the press through subsidies, leases, and the systematic use of Treasury agents like George Rose to manage public opinion during critical events such as the 1784 and 1788 general elections. The text details the industry's descent into extortionary practices, including "suppression fees" and paid "puffs". Scholarly focus is directed toward the intense rivalries between proprietors and the government's use of libel laws to silence opposition printers. Notable literary and political figures, including Johnson, Boswell, and Piozzi, appear as subjects of journalistic gossip or as participants in the period's shifting cultural landscape. The narrative concludes with the government's consolidation of press control by 1792, effectively ending the era of the "Advertisers" in favor of highly partisan, state-influenced scandal sheets.
Willing-Denton’s letter discusses the authorship of satirical verses directed at Piozzi, often attributed to Boswell. The letter notes that the London Chronicle printed these rhymes in April 1786 alongside a letter to Piozzi that Boswell later used in the Tour to the Hebrides. Willing-Denton compares versions found in the London Chronicle and the St. James's Chronicle, noting a textual variation between "Italian gout so nice" and "Italian gusto nice." The letter suggests this discrepancy might indicate Boswell’s careful revision of his poetical work and seeks to identify the source of cuttings in the Lysons collection.
Cochrane entry 424.
Publishing in the Eighteenth Century, with Special Reference to the Firm of Edward and Charles Dilly
Cochrane entry 524.
The Literary Reputation of James Boswell to 1785
Cochrane entry 613. Summarizes the critical reception of Boswell's works published before the 'Life of Johnson', concluding that his contemporary reputation was generally positive.
Selected Correspondence of James Boswell, 1770–1773
Bruss examines the shifting criteria defining autobiography as a literary genre from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. Contrasting Boswell’s Life of Johnson with his London Journal, it argues that the former represents biography focused on external character, while the latter establishes autobiography's eighteenth-century concern with the subjective self. It details how Johnson's persona in the Life functions as a stable, awe-inspiring force, compelling the biographer, Boswell, to subordinate his own identity to the objective preservation of his subject.
Cochrane entry 438.
The Correspondence of James Boswell in 1769
Cochrane entry 439.
The Correspondence of James Boswell and His Sons, Alexander and James
Cochrane entry 433.
Letters Between James Boswell and Six Members of the Club
Foladare examines the cultural and political significance of James Boswell's Account of Corsica (1768), positioning it within the eighteenth-century discourse on liberty and heroic nationalism. The analysis details Boswell's rhetorical strategy in constructing the persona of General Pasquale Paoli as an ideal figure embodying patriotic virtue, appealing to both British and continental readers. The work explores how Boswell used the Corsican struggle to advance his own literary career and engage contemporary philosophical debates about freedom and political governance.
Cochrane entry 331. A comprehensive study of the writing, reception, and political influence of Boswell's 'Corsica', which also includes an annotated version of the text.
Early Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757–1766
Cochrane entry 444. Compiles 154 letters from Boswell's early career, focusing on his exchanges with key figures like Andrew Erskine, Dempster, and Wilkes.
Cochrane entry 529. A study describing Boswell's extensive knowledge of books, his personal reading habits, and his overall literary taste.
Macaulay as a Critic of Eighteenth Century English Literature
Cochrane entry 561. This is a dissertation abstract. Argues that Thomas Babington Macaulay was "too blinded by prejudice to appreciate" the literary achievements of Boswell and Johnson.
Cochrane entry 352.
The Literary Career of James Boswell to 1785
Cochrane entry 36.
In Search of the Landscape: English Travels in the British Isles from 1760–1810
Cochrane entry 291. Categorizes Boswell as a travel writer who is more interested in human society, manners, and economics than in the natural landscape.
Cochrane entry 346.
The Correspondence of James Boswell and Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes)
Cochrane entry 432.
The first in the Correspondence series of the Yale Research Edition of Boswell's private papers. It documents the friendship between Boswell and Johnston of Grange, whom Boswell often addresses as the distant provider of "romance." The correspondence reveals Boswell's interest in Scottish nostalgia, masculinity, and intimacy, providing a counterpoint to his pursuit of a public identity. Boswell frequently shared installments of his London Journal with Grange. The general verdict on this monograph is that it constitutes a masterful display of editorial scholarship despite the occasionally mundane nature of the primary text. Carroll and Ritcheson both laud Walker’s meticulous apparatus, noting that the exhaustive annotation and faithful reproduction transform the correspondence into a superlative research tool. But the content itself draws mixed reactions; while Carroll finds the letters frequently barren of interest compared to the journals, Hodgart dismisses the collection as further evidence of a lack of intellectual depth. But Mutter and the Times publication emphasize the work’s biographical value, highlighting the "consistently natural" portrayal of a lifelong, loyal friendship that serves as an essential record of the subject’s private character.
Boswell's First Criminal Case: John Reid, Sheep Stealer
Ramsay examines Boswell's initial foray into criminal law through his representation of John Reid, a sheep-stealer. Boswell secured an acquittal in 1766 despite overwhelming evidence, but failed to prevent Reid’s conviction and execution for a similar offense in 1774. The narrative highlights Boswell's emotional investment in his clients and his tendency toward professional risk-taking. Ramsay notes that Boswell avoided seeking Johnson’s counsel on the matter.
Cochrane entry 678.
See pp. 234-235 for comment on Boswell.
Richardson examines the character and literary achievement of Boswell, contrasting his youthful "inordinate love of enjoyment" and subsequent "misfortunes and disappointments" with the "retributive justice" of Johnson's late-life financial independence and "literary eminence." Johnson appears as the "undoubted autocrat" of the Literary Club, finding "solace and satisfaction" in his final years despite his "hypochondriacal temperament." Richardson emphasizes Johnson's excellence as a letter-writer and "supreme excellence as a talker," noting his debt to Piozzi for preserving over three hundred letters. Boswell's "rage for literature" enabled him to collect materials "graphically and dramatically." Richardson disputes Macaulay's depiction of Boswell as an "inspired idiot," arguing that Boswell possessed "exceptional powers of feeling, of observation, and of sympathy." Letters to Temple reveal a man "fully conscious" of his biographical method, aiming to provide a "view of his mind in his letters and conversations." Richardson identifies "ease, vigour, and lucidity" in Boswell's prose, suggesting Johnson's talk "gained in effectiveness by Boswell’s crisp and pointed rendering."
Cochrane entry 482.
Cochrane entry 50. Recounts the key events that led to the recovery of the two major caches of Boswell's papers at Malahide Castle and Fettercairn House.
Roth reconstructs the friendship between Boswell and Rousseau through a series of letters and contemporary accounts. In December 1764, Boswell introduced himself to Rousseau as a 'Man of singular merit' with a 'vivid and melancholy mind,' securing a private interview. Roth notes that Rousseau was the primary influence behind Boswell’s 1765 tour of Corsica, providing him with a letter of recommendation. The article includes a 'portrait' of Boswell by Deleyre, describing him as remarkable for 'uprightness' but plagued by 'English melancholy.' The relationship peaked when Boswell escorted Thérèse Le Vasseur to London in 1766 but soured rapidly following the Hume-Rousseau quarrel. Boswell later described Rousseau as a 'Misanthropic Philosopher' in his 'Account of Corsica,' a sharp reversal from his earlier adulation. Roth highlights Boswell’s 'vanity' and 'romantic plans' as key factors in both the formation and the collapse of the bond.
Cochrane entry 492. Prints correspondence between Boswell and Rousseau and speculates on the eventual cause of their estrangement.
Rule offers a supplement to an earlier note on Johnson's phrase, "An Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads," from Boswell's Life of Johnson. Referencing Malone's editorial explanation, Rule quotes Dryden's prologue complimenting Oxford: "Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage, / He chooses Athens in his riper age." Rule suggests these lines may have influenced the zealous Oxonian, Johnson, in coining the phrase. The editor of Notes and Queries provides Malone's annotation as supplementary to the original footnote in the Malone edition.
Russell explores the lack of cordiality between Johnson and Gibbon within the context of The Club. Boswell maintained a particular hatred for Gibbon, fueled by perceived physical repulsiveness and religious instability, though Russell posits that Boswell’s primary motivation was jealousy over Gibbon’s immediate literary success compared to his own protracted labors. The investigation highlights a 1780 letter from Phoebe Ford, Johnson's first cousin, who served as Gibbon's housekeeper. Ford complained of ill-treatment by Gibbon’s valet, Caplin, and expressed fear of poverty. Russell argues this domestic connection created a "feeling of awkwardness" that prevented easy intercourse between Johnson and Gibbon. Despite these complaints, Gibbon provided for Ford in his will. Russell concludes that Ford’s presence in the Gibbon household significantly influenced the social dynamics between the century's preeminent lexicographer, historian, and biographer.
CGV entry 5:186.
Cochrane entry 97.
Dr. Johnson's Letter on His Mother's Death
The writer disputes a previous claim by Will. Faulkner regarding a "discovered" letter by Samuel Johnson. B. B. S. asserts that the text is not an original letter to Dr. Taylor but a copy of an essay published in the forty-first number of the Idler in 1759. The author references Sir John Hawkins's assertion that Johnson wrote the piece upon the death of his mother. The article suggests that Faulkner was likely deceived by a depraved individual who added a false date and superscription to the existing essay to pass it off as a new discovery.
E.L.S. disputes the account in Chambers’s Encyclopedia that Boswell accompanied the murderer Hackman to Tyburn in a mourning coach. The inquiry questions the source of the anecdote, noting that Boswell’s presence alongside the ordinary of Newgate and a turnkey would exceed even the morbid reputation of Selwyn. E.L.S. characterizes Boswell as a "social, kindly-natured man" while noting his known interest in "periodical gaol-deliveries." The text seeks to verify if Boswell’s "excursion" to the gallows occurred as described, alongside a "living murderer."
This response defends James Boswell against a harsh critique concerning a Greek typographical error in his work. The author explains that the error was a simple press oversight and that the underlying misattribution of a Homeric line originated from a correspondent's communication rather than Boswell himself. G. S. argues that such minor lapses do not justify the "abusive expressions" used by the critic. The letter affirms the immense value of Boswell's biography as a comprehensive record of the wit, wisdom, and literary society of the eighteenth century.
J. S. responds to General Maxwell's preceding comments on the Greek inscription misprint in Boswell's Life of Johnson. He contends that Maxwell misunderstands the word's proper termination, suggesting Liddell and Scott err. Killigrew confirms that the misprint of the inscription (given in Malone's note) is only traceable to Mr. Birrell’s printer, not to many later editions of the work.
A Greek passage. See items 411, 412, 436, and 555.
Sandwell identifies Boswell’s London Diary as a "one-man Kinsey Report" due to its "completely frank, unabashed, objective attitude" toward sexual behavior. Sandwell challenges Macaulay’s "inspired idiocy" theory, arguing Boswell was "constantly performing the character of James Boswell" for his own admiration. The text asserts Boswell sought the society of "interesting people" in London and used his diary as a stage for "savage self-depreciation" or satisfaction, marking him as one of the most interesting figures of the 1760s.
Documents nouveaux sur Rousseau et Voltaire
Scrutator vindicates Boswell’s Life of Johnson against a "sulky pedant" who attacked a typographical error in the quarto’s "Additions." He notes Boswell corrected the Greek error in the octavo edition and shifts blame for the "innocent mistake" to the original correspondent or "Johnson himself in the rapidity of conversation." Scrutator argues the world’s "flattering approbation" establishes the value of the biography as a record of the "wit and wisdom" of a "wonderful man." He concludes by offering anecdotes of Gibbon and the learned Dr. Butler.
Senex suggests filling a blank in Boswell's journal with the phrase perspective glass. He argues Boswell likely forgot this technical term for a glass capable of creating optical illusions or aiding sight. Senex supports this by referencing Dover Wilson's glossary notes for Richard II.
Cochrane entry 353.
Rousseau's Second Discourse in England and Scotland from 1762 to 1772
Sewall identifies a significant liberal dissent from the conservative critiques of Johnson and Burke following the 1762 translation of Rousseau's second Discourse. Boswell’s journals and Account of Corsica reveal a persistent, sentimental attachment to Rousseau’s ideals of liberty and the state of nature despite Johnson's frequent, vigorous rebuttals. Scottish intellectuals Gregory and Beattie offer dispassionate assessments, attempting to reconcile Rousseau’s insights on primitive virtues with the necessary advancements of civilized, rational society.
Cochrane entry 533.
Seward challenges Boswell's "unfriendly" treatment of her contributions to his Johnsonian narratives. She maintains her conviction that the "Verses on receiving a Sprig of Myrtle" were addressed to Lucy Porter, disputing Johnson's own account as an "immaterial misrepresentation" fueled by his "desire of victory in argument." Seward contrasts Johnson's published esteem for Piozzi with his "recorded personal rudeness" and "frequently-expressed contempt" for her veracity. She identifies herself as the author of the Benvolio letters and accuses Johnson of "envious spleen" toward superior contemporary poets. Seward asserts her right to protest Johnson's "malignity" and critical "injustice" regarding Milton and Gray.
Seward objects to her "impolite" introduction in Boswell's pamphlet of corrections to the Life of Johnson. She defends her testimony that Johnson's "Verses on receiving a Sprig of Myrtle" were juvenile lines written for Lucy Porter. Seward disputes the account provided by Hector, suggesting Johnson suppressed the "amorous affection" of the poem's true origin to favor a version "more agreeable to his feelings." She characterizes Johnson's veracity as a "species which, straining at gnats, swallows camels," citing his famous "conscious falsehood" regarding Scottish genius as evidence of his frequent misrepresentations.
CGV entry 14:42. Prompted a reply by Boswell (November, pages 1009–1011) and a rejoinder by Anna Seward (December, pages 1098-1101).
On the origin of "Verses on Receiving a Sprig of Myrtle from a Lady."
This anonymous biography outlines the life, legal career, and literary output of Boswell from his birth in Edinburgh in 1740 to his death in 1795. The narrative traces his education under Adam Smith in Glasgow and Professor Trotz in Utrecht, his reluctant study of civil law at his father's request, and his admission as an advocate. It highlights his social introductions to figures such as Samuel Johnson, General Paoli, and Voltaire, alongside his travels through Europe and Corsica. The account details his publications, noting that his early letters with Andrew Erskine exercised the "playfulness of fancy sometimes a little too extravagantly," while his journal on Corsica was "well received by the public." His marriage to Peggie Montgomery is mentioned, including her observation that she "never before saw a man led by a bear" regarding Johnson's influence. The biography charts Boswell's relocation to the English bar, his appointment as recorder of Carlisle, and the rapid sale of his "magnum opus," the biography of Johnson. It concludes by characterising him as a "most pleasant companion, affectionate and friendly" whose convivial habits led him into unrespectable company late in life, and notes that his writings display a vanity he "could least conceal."
Short provides corrections for the forthcoming edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. He notes that a letter printed in January refers to Mrs. Foster, the granddaughter of Milton, rather than Mrs. Williams. Short further clarifies that a collection of old plays was given to Garrick by a college, not by Garrick to the college. These brief corrections aim to improve the factual accuracy of Boswell's biographical record before its next publication.
Sigma questions an assertion found in John Ramsay’s Scotland and Scotsmen regarding Boswell’s early social life in London. Ramsay claims the Earl of Eglintoun discovered Boswell and provided a 'Pisgah view of the gay world,' citing an 'extraordinary letter' from Boswell to the lord. Sigma reports finding no such letter in the cited source—the 1763 Erskine-Boswell correspondence—and asks for information on its original publication.
Simpson traces Boswell’s career from his legal education in Utrecht to his practice in Edinburgh. Despite Boswell’s personal distaste for law, Simpson reveals he earned respectable fees, peaking in 1770-71. The text details Johnson’s unceasing legal advice, including a monumental thesis on Vicious Intromission. Simpson describes Boswell’s appearances before his father and his satirical poem on the Scottish Bench. The narrative emphasizes that Boswell’s "curious taste for executions" remained his only genuine legal enthusiasm throughout an unsuccessful career.
Cochrane entry 674.
Tinker’s edition is the first major scholarly collection of Boswell's private writings outside the biographical framework of Johnson. The edition’s plan was ambitious, intending to offer the "largest amount of information regarding James Boswell which is to be found outside the Life of Johnson," aiding the effort to establish Boswell as a serious literary figure. Tinker collected 389 letters, with about 200 of them appearing in print for the first time. The texts are normalized and lightly annotated. Tinker excludes the Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq., dissmissing them as "foolish letters" written "with an eye single to the printing-press" rather than as genuine communications. The edition was widely acclaimed and established Tinker as the outstanding Boswell authority of the era. It was the only printed general collection of Boswell’s letters until the later Yale Research Edition correspondence volumes began appearing.
Cochrane entry 421. Contends that Boswell's greatness as a correspondent, especially in his letters to Temple, lies in his unflinching honesty about himself, revealing his complex, contradictory nature while always writing with an eye toward posterity.
Stephen relates the life of Boswell, characterizing him as a figure whose "unique character" is impressed upon Western literature through a combination of "absolute good-nature" and dramatic narrative power. The account follows Boswell from his Scottish education under Dun and Smith to his "violent affection" for London and subsequent European travels. Stephen highlights Boswell's 1763 introduction to Johnson at Russell Street as the ripening of a friendship that produced the "most popular biography in the language." The narrative examines Boswell’s "hypochondria," his "occasional drinking bouts," and his intricate history of "matrimonial speculations" prior to marrying Montgomerie in 1769. Stephen details Boswell's legal career, his role as "Corsica Boswell" following his 1765 visit to Paoli, and his eventual failed pursuit of English political patronage under Lonsdale. Focus is placed on the composition of the Life of Johnson, aided by Malone's revision, and the immediate success of the Tour to the Hebrides despite contemporary ridicule from Peter Pindar and Rowlandson. Stephen concludes by noting Boswell's "touching confidence in the sympathy of his fellows" and his "irresistible" good humor, which maintained the respect of Burke and Reynolds until his death in 1795.
Cochrane entry 664. Suggests that a letter of consolation Boswell wrote to his mother in 1754 shows the direct stylistic and sentimental influence of James Hervey's popular book, 'Meditations and Contemplations'.
Thayer traces the development of nineteenth-century life-writing, identifying Boswell as the catalyst for modern realism. The text asserts that Boswell’s "example" eventually dismantled the "traditional idea" of constructing biographies according to "proprieties." Thayer emphasizes that Boswell’s methodology transformed Johnson into the "most interesting... figure of his age," whereas subsequent writers like Moore and Lockhart failed to achieve similar "finality." He characterizes Boswell’s Johnson as the definitive "model" for balancing "intimate life" with professional "dignity." Thayer posits that Boswell’s focus on "individuals" rather than abstractions provides the structural foundation for the "golden age" of biography.
Magnum Opus: Boswell's Method in Biography
Tinker discusses Boswell's conscious artistry in writing the Life of Johnson, asserting that Boswell's goal was to "defy the very powers of oblivion" and preserve Johnson as vividly as he was in life. Boswell believed his method of presenting a chronological "history of Johnson's visible progress through the world" interspersed with letters and conversations was the most perfect plan of biography conceived, allowing the reader to "accompany Johnson in his progress." Tinker stresses that Boswell was only modestly proud of his "assiduity" in collecting material, not realizing his true genius lay in conceiving and executing this unprecedented "Magnum Opus."
CGV entry 4:96. On Boswell's 'Life'.
Cochrane entry 89.
The poet laments the posthumous treatment of Johnson, attacking recent publications as products of avarice and ignorance. The verses specifically urge Boswell to leave Scotland for London to assume his duty as the guardian of Johnson’s varied fame. While acknowledging the meridian sun of Johnson's London career, the text highlights his origins at Pembroke College. The poem calls for a biography of sacred gratitude to prevent Johnson's genius from being obscured by the dullness of inferior writers.
Captain Marryat and Boswell's Life of Johnson
Cochrane entry 131. Suggests that an anecdote in Frederick Marryat's novel 'Peter Simple' was likely borrowed directly from the 'Life'.
Cochrane entry 485. Groups Boswell with Steele and Goldsmith as brilliant writers unfairly reputed to be fools, arguing that the artistry of the 'Life' and Johnson's high esteem prove Boswell's own wisdom and understanding.
Cochrane entry 570. Describes Boswell's practice of interviewing famous men and notes the growing interest in collecting Boswelliana.
The author disputes contemporary assessments of Boswell that emphasize personal inferiority over professional achievement. While admitting Boswell lacks greatness in a traditional sense, the text asserts his unquestionable status as a "great biographer." It highlights "truthfulness and minuteness" as essential qualities often absent in more "pretentious chroniclers." The account rejects comparisons to the "great luminary" Johnson that diminish Boswell's independent merit. It advocates for the necessity of similar biographic precision for modern figures such as Dickens.
The author questions whether Boswell ever lived in Queen Anne Street, detailing his known residences at 41, Old Bond Street, Farrar's Buildings in the Temple, lodgings in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, and his death at 47, Great Portland Street in 1795. The author requests further information regarding the history of Boswell's letters to Temple, detailing their discovery in a shop at Boulogne-sur-Mer when one was used as a butter wrapper.
Warnock describes Boswell's friendship with Andrew Lumisden, the Old Pretender's secretary in Rome, based on Boswell's unpublished journal notes. Boswell's initial secrecy regarding this acquaintance stemmed from his reluctance to be identified with any political group, despite his liberal impartiality. Lumisden, a Jacobite veteran, offered Boswell guidance and was an intimate, highly esteemed companion. Warnock highlights their shared interests, Lumisden's anecdotes of the Jacobite cause, and their significant pilgrimage to Horace's Sabine farm.
Cochrane entry 538.
Warnock traces Boswell’s nine-month Italian Grand Tour in 1765, following his original four-month plan, using his journal notes now in the Isham Collection. Boswell's purposes included celebrity-hunting and acquiring gentleman's knowledge of the fine arts, as well as an unsuccessful early pursuit of "amorous intrigue" in Turin. His travels included significant conversations with John Wilkes in Naples, meetings with a circle of scholars in Parma including Condillac and Deleyre, and time spent with the Jacobite colony and British artists in Rome. The journal, a record of self-instruction, reveals Boswell's enduring blend of liberalism, naive enthusiasm, and profound melancholy.
Cochrane entry 356.
Cochrane entry 537. Recounts Boswell's meetings in Venice in 1765 with the Italian literary figures Melchior Cesarotti and Giuseppe Baretti.
Giornale storico della letteratura Italiana
Nuove Lettere Inedite di Giuseppe Baretti
Watts disputes the dismissal of Boswell’s Catholicism as a "boyish crush," arguing Boswell "speaks the Catholic language." The text tracks Boswell’s 1760 conversion in London and his "pathos and religious fervor" during his 1773 visit to Iona. Watts notes Boswell "hated taking the oath" against Transubstantiation and often defended Catholic communion against Wesley. Watts concludes that Boswell’s request in a codicil for prayers for his soul in a "middle state" justifies viewing him as a "Catholic, albeit one of the weaker brethren."
Cochrane entry 657.
Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, and Boswell: Three Letters
Wecter presents three previously missing letters to shed new light on Johnson's relationships with Thrale and Boswell. A 1768 letter to Thrale confirms Johnson's collaboration on Chambers's law lectures and reveals his annoyance at Chambers's lack of "heart." A 1780 letter to Thrale discusses travel and proof corrections. A 1776 letter from Boswell to his uncle, John Boswell, reveals the nephew's financial worries.
Cochrane entry 426.
Wecter traces the shifting religious opinions of Boswell, emphasizing his brief, youthful conversion to Roman Catholicism. This "spiritual wild oat" shaped his lifelong "amorous and pious" frame of mind. Boswell used religion as a "moral equivalent for brandy," struggling between the "Evil Principle" and his desire for Anglican conformity. Under the influence of Johnson, Boswell anchored himself in the Christian faith but remained obsessed with "patriarchal extensiveness" and the fear of annihilation. Wecter concludes that Boswell’s journals reveal an intense, almost impersonal curiosity about his own "pageantry of sinning and repentance."
Cochrane entry 658.
Wells examines Boswell as a troubled child of the Enlightenment whose tortured melancholy stems from a conflict between his intellect and his emotions regarding Christian faith. Boswell struggled to reconcile materialistic rationalism with a desire for religious stability. The narrative traces Boswell’s mercurial oscillations between skepticism and pious devotion, noting his interest in Roman Catholic ritual and his distaste for Scottish Presbyterianism. Wells highlights Boswell's dependence on Johnson as a never-failing source of comfort and a rational Christian model. He describes Boswell's terror of being convinced by the infidel arguments of David Hume and his recurring dread of annihilation or predestined fate. Wells concludes that Boswell intuitively sensed the fatal consequences of losing belief in a moral intelligence, leaving him a restless and unsettled soul.
Cochrane entry 556.
White challenges Hector’s assertion in Boswell’s biography that Johnson lacked acquaintance with the Porters until 1733. White provides evidence that Johnson had "familiar access" to the house of his master, Hunter, who married Lucy Porter in 1726. Consequently, Johnson knew the family years prior to the date Boswell records. White further identifies the "Verses on the Myrtle" as schoolboy addresses to Lucy Porter. B.B.S. argues that a letter published as Johnson’s lament for his wife is actually a transcript of Idler No. 41, written upon his mother's death.
Wilson argues that American university departments mistake an interest in Boswell’s "gossip" for a study of art or ideas. The text characterizes Johnson as a figure of "secondary interest" whose prejudices lack the force of a truly creative mind. Wilson asserts that Johnson’s writing and life are weighed down by "inescapable inertia" and a "dull note of the burden of life." The critique maintains that Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson presents a subject who fails to understand significant intellectual currents like those of Berkeley or Rousseau. Wilson suggests that the stodgy atmosphere of the Johnsonian circle attracts academics who prefer monotonous society to contemporary intellectual developments.
Cochrane entry 503.
Foote and a Friend of Boswell's: A Note on the Nabob
Wimsatt examines the prototypes for Sir Matthew Mite in Foote's play, correcting the scholarly misidentification of "Sir Matthew White" as a clerical error for Mite. He identifies allusions to several historical "nabobs," including Richard Smith, Thomas Rumbold, and Robert Clive, arguing Mite serves as a generic composite rather than a specific caricature. Drawing on Boswell’s journals, Wimsatt identifies "Nabob Gray"—Boswell’s Edinburgh schoolfellow George Gray, Jr.—as a probable personal acquaintance of Foote. He concludes that Foote’s conviviality with Boswell and Gray provided the nomenclature and East Indian jargon necessary for the play's general satire on Anglo-Indian corruption.
Cochrane entry 539.
Windle argues that Boswell made Johnson for posterity, asserting that without the biography, Johnson's reputation as a critic and poet would have faded. He highlights the contrast between Johnson’s social brutality and Boswell’s courtesy, noting that Boswell preserved the whole man with his weaknesses as well as his strength. Windle examines Johnson’s tenderness for the Catholic faith, describing him as a fervent, humble Christian whose obstinate rationality and fear of death prevented conversion. He concludes that Boswell’s genius lay in his eagerness to share the society of men distinguished by their talents.
Cochrane entry 509.
L.X. labels as twin slander Johnson’s recorded sentiment in the Life of West that West was one of the few poets to whom the grave needed not to be terrible. L.X. argues this remark branded a whole class of men whose morals did not dishonour their science. The text further mentions Boswell’s refusal to credit Johnson with uttering similar sentiments regarding Watts.
N.Y. expresses "manly resentment" toward Boswell for his "very unjust" treatment of Seward in the previous issue. While N.Y. supports Seward's character against Boswell's "unfair" attacks, the letter corrects her attribution of a quote about Johnson. N.Y. clarifies that the "warm and eloquent encomium" Seward challenged was not written by Warburton, although included in his works. The text underscores the escalating public tension between Boswell and Seward following the publication of the Life of Johnson.
Yoklavich establishes that Thomas Sheridan first detailed the theory of an irresolute, contemplative Hamlet in a 1763 conversation recorded in Boswell's London Journal. This delineation predates critical work by Goethe and Coleridge. The essay traces Sheridan’s successful, decades-long stage career playing Hamlet, noting that contemporary critics praised his judgment and "scientific talents" in the role. Sheridan's interpretation, which emphasized elocution and a "sentimental delivery," offered a less active Prince, diverging from the prevailing heroic tradition maintained by actors like David Garrick and Thomas Quin.
Z. calls for a comprehensive biography of Reynolds, suggesting a collection of his correspondence and journals to document the history of the fine arts and polite learning. Z. recommends the "chaste plan" of Mason’s memoirs as a formal model for such a work. Regarding Boswell, Z. cites the pleasure derived from the account of Corsica as grounds for requesting that Boswell "favour the publick" by publishing his travels in the Netherlands.
A.Z. critiques several orthographic and factual errors in Boswell's biography, including "vulgar orthography" and misidentified book titles. He challenges Johnson's claim that Celtic and Teutonic languages are radically related, suggesting Johnson "had not paid the attention to these barbarous idioms" required for such a judgment. A.Z. recounts a personal meeting with Johnson, introduced by Davies, describing the "fluent, animated, affable" nature of Johnson's conversation. The text records an anecdote where Johnson jokes that "Whigs are made at all ages" based on Boswell's childhood political shifts.
Postgate removes "dead wood" from Boswell’s biography to focus exclusively on Johnson’s talk. Johnson maintains that "the good I can do by my conversation bears the same proportion to the good I can do by my writings, that the practice of a physician, retired to a small town, does to his practice in a great city." He argues for fixed social hierarchies, suggesting "subordination tends greatly to human happiness." Johnson disputes the merit of Ossian and the utility of "savage life," preferring the "busy hum of men" in Fleet Street. Boswell records Johnson’s reconciliation with Wilkes and his defense of Garrick’s character against charges of avarice. Johnson characterizes his own temperament as "good humoured," despite his habit of "tossing and goring" opponents in debate. The text details Johnson’s religious convictions and his eventual resignation to death. Critics call this book a successful isolation of the subject's wit but a ruthless mutilation of the original biographical framework. Reviewers like Whale and those for the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer approve of the abridgment as an indispensable resource for readers seeking the subject's trenchant wit without the daunting length of the full text. They agree that the selection of conversational episodes caters to modern preferences. But the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement sharply critique the editor for murdering the source material and dismissing essential contextual narrative as dead wood. While Poulton’s illustrations receive praise from the New Statesman, the Spectator finds the editorial introduction lacking in modern scholarly awareness.
CGV entry 4:15. Extracted from the 'Life'. Reprinted by Lehmann in 1949 and by Allison and Busby in 1969.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Publisher's blurb: "This edition ... follows the text of the third edition published in 1786, and reproduces notes made by Hester Thrale Piozzi in the margins of her copy of the second edition. The illustrations have been reproduced from the original engravilngs made by Thomas Rowlandson for his two-volume portfolio entitled The picturesque beauties of Boswell, published in 1786. The typographic pattern follows the format devised by Oliver Simon for the Club's edition of The life of Samuel Johnson. Two thousand copies have been printed for members of the Limited Editions Club at the Sign of the Stone Book in Bloomfield, Connecticut."
The Works of James Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson
Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson for the Modern Reader
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order; a Series of His Epistolatory Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published: The Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain, for Near Half a Century During Which He Flourished
In the Advertisement, Malone recorded that "at the time of his death Boswell was revising for a new edition; that he had indicated where some of Addenda to the second edition were to be inserted, and had written out some notes in the margin of his copy." Malone therefore implied that his editorial judgment was exercised mainly in completing Boswell's intentions. Hester Piozzi later annotated her copy of the 1807 edition (as well as her copy of the 1816 edition), providing valuable marginal comments and markings. This annotated copy was later used as the basis for Edward G. Fletcher’s specialized edition of the Life in 1938.
A Selection from the Life of Samuel Johnson
Herzberg sets out to present a narrative that remains as consecutive as possible, despite necessary omissions, with the primary goal of making the work accessible for educational use, particularly for comparing it with Macaulay’s Life of Johnson. The editor strictly maintains Boswell's original wording while modernizing the spelling and occasionally adjusting the punctuation. The accompanying Introduction champions Boswell's genuine merit, arguing against critics who diminish his personal qualities, and insists that his achievement arose from "conscious art" and a profound respect for Johnson, ultimately aiming to present a "more lively" and complete portrait. To enhance its instructional value, the text features extensive Notes providing background on people, history, and literary context, alongside supplementary materials like Goldsmith’s poem "Retaliation," and various questions and exercises for students.
Boswell's Johnson Sampler: Selections from the Life of Samuel Johnson
Originally published as Everybody's Boswell.
This edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson is reprinted from that prepared by Mr. Mowbray Morris for the Messrs. Macmillan's "Globe" series in 1893
Morris traces the publication history of the biography from its 1791 inception through the various editorial interventions of Malone, Croker, Napier, and Hill. While Morris defends Croker against the severe 'chastisement' of Macaulay and Carlyle, he acknowledges Croker's lack of 'editorial instinct' and blunders, yet insists his industry preserved essential allusions. The introduction outlines the difficult preparation of the biography, noting that despite their twenty-one-year friendship, Johnson and Boswell spent only 276 days together. Morris justifies the preservation of Johnson’s 'minute particulars' and 'table talk' as essential to illustrating his character, citing the authority of Plutarch and Caesar. Annotations clarify eighteenth-century figures such as Samuel Clarke and specify the discovery of Thomas Campbell’s diary in Sydney.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell: A Reprint of the First Edition: To Which Are Added Mr. Boswell's Corrections and Additions, Issued in 1792; the Variations of the Second Edition, with Some of the Author's Notes Prepared for the Third: the Whole Edited, with New Notes
This scholarly edition, edited by Percy Fitzgerald and based on the 1791 first edition, presents the biography of Johnson alongside the journal of the 1773 tour to the Hebrides. Fitzgerald provides a preface detailing the editorial history and "the variations of the second edition," while H. R. Tedder contributes an extensive bibliography. The work preserves Boswell's original spelling and punctuation to capture the "naive character of the biographer" and his "talent for recording conversation." The narrative chronicles Johnson's literary career, from the development of his dictionary to his final illness, and preserves his opinions on diverse topics such as the "labefactation of all principles" in The Beggar's Opera and the "spirit of nationality" among the Scotch. Annotations clarify obscure allusions and identify figures originally suppressed by Boswell, such as the "fashionable Baronet" Sir Michael Le Fleming. Fitzgerald's editorial policy emphasizes preserving Boswell's unique perspective over creating a "Grangerised" accumulation of external anecdotes, though he includes "Mr. Boswell's corrections and additions" from 1792. The edition aims to present Johnson as he appeared to his contemporaries, including his "extraordinary motions" and his "roughness" that was "only external."
Abridged. Limited edition of 130 numbered copies.
Limited ed. of 130 numbered copies.
Gems from Boswell: Being a Selection of the Most Effective Scenes and Characters in the Life of Johnson and the Tour to the Hebrides
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order; a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published. The Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain, for Near Half a Century During Which He Flourished
This edition continued the three-volume octavo format established by the London Second Edition of 1793. Preceding editions, including the fifth (1807) and the sixth and seventh (both 1811), appeared under the supervision of Malone. The 1816 edition is notable because Piozzi, a rival biographer, owned a copy and wrote marginal annotations. Later, Fletcher reproduced these marginalia, along with her notes in an 1807 edition, in a 1938 volume.
The Life of Samuel Johnson: Together with a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides: A Reprint of the First Edition, to Which Are Added Mr. Boswell's Corrections and Additions, Issued in 1792; the Variations of the Second Edition, with Some of the Author's Notes Prepared for the Third
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works ... and Various Original Pieces ... Never Before Published ...
Malone noted in his Preface to this edition (dated June 20, 1804) that "near four thousand copies have been dispersed" of the Life across all editions up to that point. Malone continued his practice of adding notes, ensuring accuracy, and providing context. For instance, in an existing note concerning Johnson's involvement in the collection of English Poets, Malone added a paragraph addressing the extent of Johnson’s editorial role, noting that Johnson "saw many of the sheets; corrected some of them; was consulted on the works of every individual poet; and suggested many improvements." Boswell’s son, James Boswell the younger (1778–1822), contributed notes to both the third and fourth editions. Malone also encouraged Sir William Forbes to search Boswell's manuscripts for Johnson's letters, which had gone missing, to potentially include in this edition.
List of Fifteen Hundred and Fifty Illustrations for Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson: Croker's Edition, 5 Volumes, 1831
Printed by John D. Fry. His list of illustrations in his copy of Boswell: "I have at last printed my list of illustrations in my copy of Boswell ... I have a few copies for sale ..."--His letter to Mr. Smith in Brighton, offering him a copy (inserted into copy in Bodleian Library) Title page: "The life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell in fifteen volumes. I. Containing fifteen hundred and fifty illustrations. London MDCCC."
List of Fifteen Hundred and Fifty Illustrations for Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson
Fitz-Adam (Chesterfield) explores the potential conflict between Johnson’s "severity as a judge" and the "incontinency of female eloquence." He argues that language is the "immediate province of the fair sex," whose "vituperative" and "tender" expressions have enriched the English lexicon with new coinages. Chesterfield identifies specific terms for Johnson’s consideration, including "flirtation," which he distinguishes from coquetry, and the verb "to fuzz," used in card games. The text further notes the elastic application of the adjective "vast," used by the fashionable to describe both great and small objects. Regarding orthography, Chesterfield contrasts "pedantic" etymological rules with "polite" spelling by ear, ultimately advising the ladies and "fine gentlemen" of the realm to surrender their "privileges of misspelling" to Johnson’s authority to avoid social scandals born of "auricular orthography."
Johnson critiques the tragedies and translations of Hoole. He asserts that the works lack enduring merit, stating they possess a quality such "that no sensible man would ever wish to remember a line of them."
Animadversions on Dr. Johnson’s Observations in his Tour through Scotland
The writer disputes Johnson’s assertion that Scotland lacks hedges, noting that Johnson’s limited travel through uncultivated districts led to "rash and inconsiderate" conclusions. The author argues that while England is widely enclosed, its fences are often incomplete; conversely, Scottish hedging, though newer, is executed with superior care. Addressing St. Andrews, the text ridicules Johnson’s "witticism" regarding a college area converted into a "green-house" and rejects his "dictatorial" claim that Scotland denies its universities participation in national prosperity. The writer defends the Scottish system of low professor salaries and student fees, asserting it prevents the "indolent inactivity" seen in wealthier English colleges and has established Edinburgh as the "first university of Europe for medical studies." Finally, the author condemns Johnson’s "owlish solemnity" and laconic treatment of Dundee, suggesting his failure to note the "Steeple of St. Rule" proves him an unskilful observer.
This second installment continues Kenrick's comprehensive and aggressive critique of the edition. The review uses highly personal malice, reflecting Kenrick's envy of Johnson's reputation and pension. The critique precedes Kenrick's subsequent, full-length pamphlet attack that confines its strictures to the first three volumes. Although Kenrick is later denounced by the periodical's editor, leading to the termination of his contributions to the journal, his initial review significantly contributes to the perception of disappointment surrounding the edition's appearance.
The Second Canto continues the spectral deliberations in Westminster Abbey, culminating in the descent of Apollo to adjudicate the true station of various 18th-century literary figures, specifically targeting Samuel Johnson and James Macpherson. Apollo descends to hold a session of oyer and terminer, summoning writers for judgment. Samuel Johnson is satirized as a brutal Greenland bear escorted by printer William Strahan, growling long polysyllables in pure English-Latin. Apollo stations him on the ground as a herald-supporter to Shakespeare. James Macpherson is dismissed as a Scald of bombast and banished to the Abbey roof. Other targets include Arthur Murphy, accused of plagiarism, and John Langhorne, portrayed as a drunkard. The canto ends with Apollo adjourning to avoid a clamorous crowd of female novelists and poets.
Strictures on Dr. Johnson's Prefaces to the English Poets
Scrutator clarifies a passage in Johnson’s Preface to Roscommon. Johnson remarked on Roscommon’s intention to retire to Rome to "sit near the chimney when the chamber smoked," a sentiment Johnson found unclear. Scrutator argues the application is "sufficiently clear," interpreting the smoke as the political troubles of King James’s reign and suggesting that Roscommon believed these issues originated from the Court of Rome.
CGV entry 22:47. In two parts: volume 49 (December 1779), pages 593-595; and volume 50 (February 1780), pages 64-65.
The author concludes his lunar transport by recording the Man of the Moon’s dismissive assessment of various London literati. When the narrator recommends Johnson as a potential editor, the lunar sovereign rejects him, asserting that Johnson’s composition is "unnatural" and destined for obsolescence. The critique charges Johnson with concealing "vulgarity of ideas" behind "loftiness of expressions" and ridicules his poetry for lacking imagination and harmony. Furthermore, the sovereign rejects Gibbon for his unvaried dignity and Burke for his preoccupation with oratory. Macpherson is dismissed because his reputation for "spurious" works would invalidate the lunar history. The sovereign concludes that Scottish authors in general are "apes of men of genius" and "eunuchs" who offer melodious voices but lack the "full-toned virility" required for meaningful communication.
Compiles Johnson’s "sententious" remarks, including his dismissive view of Scottish writers as "farthing candles." Johnson expresses a preference for a "good dinner" over a wife who "talks Greek," yet praises Carter for her ability to "make a pudding" while translating Epictetus. The record highlights his high regard for Psalmanazar’s "purity and devotion" and his belief that the "happiest life" combines business with "literary pursuits." Johnson identifies *Cato* as the "best model of tragedy" and admits he "sometimes talked for victory" in conversation. He insists on the term "disarrange" over the "verb derange."
This article examines the distinctive characteristics of Johnson’s prose, specifically his pursuit of magnificence and harmony. The author argues that Johnson’s habit of using Latin derivatives and crowding sentences with substantives often replaces simplicity with a splendor that dazzles rather than enlightens. The article critiques Johnson’s practice of dethroning the person in favor of the instrument or quality, resulting in humanized abstractions like the ear of greatness. While acknowledging Johnson’s successful use of metaphorical expression, the author notes that his constructions sometimes become unnecessarily obscure through annual elongation and other licentious idiomatic uses. The author intends the essay as a warning to imitators to avoid Johnson’s blemishes while acknowledging his acknowledged perfections.
This biographical sketch concludes a series on Johnson, detailing his 1767 interview with George III and his subsequent political and literary labors. It examines his pamphlets, including The False Alarm and Taxation no Tyranny, arguing that Johnson lacked the qualities of a "statist" and possessed limited knowledge of "civil life." The article describes the production of the Lives of the Poets, praising the "vivacity of the narrative" while noting a "want of a natural perception for the higher beauties of poetry." Final sections recount Johnson’s physical decline, his paralytic stroke, and his deathbed religious experiences, specifically his "trust in the merits and propitiation of Jesus Christ." The author critiques Johnson’s "awkward stateliness" of style and "morbid" temperament, concluding with a list of his projected but unexecuted literary schemes.
Parr reflects on the conversational powers of the Johnsonian circle, stating he never feared Johnson in argument but felt inferior to Fox. He defends Thomas Sheridan against Johnson's perceived ill-treatment, claiming Sheridan once exposed the "futility" of Johnson's arguments by repeating them without the "bow-wow manner." Parr identifies Baretti as the only man he ever heard "blaspheme," recounting a sharp exchange where he invoked the "hangman" as a necessary restraint for Baretti’s secularism. The text concludes by contrasting Johnson’s Toryism and morbid melancholy with Parr’s Whig politics, educational devotion, and cheerful temperament.
Only the full effects of the Gospel fit a human soul for its eternal change. Moral excellence and philosophical wisdom fail to provide defense against the terrors of eternity without an interest in Christ's salvation. Johnson serves as a monumental example of a man who, despite living without reproach and possessing a high sense of religion, suffered under distressing apprehensions of death. His experience demonstrates that a well-founded expectation beyond the grave requires more than an admirable character; it demands a practical knowledge of the Redeemer's value to the soul.
Johnson lived inconsistently against his convictions for twenty-eight years, avoiding the healthy solitude necessary for true self-acquaintance. Boothby functioned as his last human guide, using her letters to allure him toward permanent happiness and the glorious Christian cause. Her doctrine challenged his construction of a system that satisfied worldly associates while leaving his conscience heavy with guilt. The published prayers and meditations reveal an affecting admixture of human merit with the perfect oblation of Christ. Johnson finally achieved spiritual relief through the eleven-hour blessing of faith, overcoming dark remembrances and small penances.
Confirms that he has acquired Dr. Johnson's favorite easy chair, along with the crimson velvet cushion upon which Mary Queen of Scots knelt at her execution, from Paternoster. He purchased the items to prevent them from passing into "unworthy hands." Shorthouse acknowledges the potential unworthiness of his own possession but confirms the artifacts' current location in his collection at Carshalton, Surrey.
Ward traces the final years of Johnson’s life through his residences at Johnson’s Court and No. 8 Bolt Court. In the former, Johnson established a household including Williams, Levett, and Barber, and commenced his long-standing intimacy with Thrale and Piozzi after an introduction by Murphy. Ward details notable events from this period, including the 1767 interview with the King and the composition of the prologue to Goldsmith’s The Good-natured Man. Transitioning to Bolt Court in 1776, Ward recounts Johnson’s refusal to "disgrace" Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph for Goldsmith and his production of Lives of the English Poets. Ward characterizes Johnson’s critical judgment as "defective," noting the omission of Chaucer, Spenser, and Herrick. The account concludes with Johnson’s physical eccentricities, his affinity for "driving briskly in a post-chaise," and the circumstances of his 1784 death and burial in Westminster Abbey. Ward highlights the paradox of a monument in St. Paul’s honoring a man who was "Fleet Street incarnate."
Parry documents Johnson’s post-student relationship with Oxford, beginning with his 1754 residence at Kettel Hall. Johnson visited Pembroke to find the servants still remembered him, though he was slighted by the Master, Radcliffe. In 1755, the University conferred the M.A. degree, enabling its inclusion on the Dictionary’s title-page. Parry details Johnson’s 1768 stay at New Inn Hall with Chambers and his controversial support for the expulsion of six Methodist students from St. Edmund Hall, whom he likened to cows in a garden. The narrative follows Johnson’s frequentation of Trinity College with Warton and his 1773 tea-drinking at University College, where he reportedly consumed fifteen cups. During a 1782 visit, Johnson acted as cicerone for Hannah More, showing her the "nest of singing birds" at Pembroke. Parry describes surviving mementoes, including his blue china teapot and the portrait by Reynolds. The account concludes with Johnson’s final 1784 visit to Adams at Pembroke, during which he made a last, physically difficult ascent to his old rooms just weeks before his death.
Loane critiques Hill’s editorial treatment of a note by Malone concerning Johnson’s purported 1748 visit to Tunbridge Wells. Loane questions Hill’s decision to label the visit apocryphal based solely on Loggan’s drawing without explicitly stating the lack of corroborating evidence.
Responds to a query about Johnson's monument, focusing on the Greek inscription on the scroll and the persistence of a printer's blunder across various editions of Boswell's Life, including the 1896 edition by Augustine Birrell. The text also includes a discussion on the phrase "to play gooseberry," providing various regional definitions and a related anecdote.
Bell examines Johnson's visit to Inch Kenneth and the subsequent departure for Iona during his 1773 tour of Scotland, arguing that Johnson’s genuine warmth and appreciation for traditional Highland life belie the common image of him as an ill-tempered bear. The author details Johnson’s reception by Sir Allan Maclean and his daughters, emphasizing the deep emotional response the encounter elicited in Johnson, particularly the shared experience of poverty and unrewarded merit. Johnson memorializes the visit, considered among the happiest days of his life, with the Latin poem Insula Sancti Kennethi, which Bell translates. The text connects Johnson's sympathy for his hosts to his own youthful struggles and later recognition by the crown.
Charnwood presents several primary documents related to Boswell, including a previously unpublished "Supposed Irish Song" titled "Lurgan Clanbrassil," allegedly written during his travels with Mrs. Rudd. A 1790 letter from Boswell to a schoolmaster reveals his paternal anxiety regarding his son’s "breast complaints" and "chin cough." The text primarily details the eccentric domestic life of Thomas Day at Stowe House circa 1770, where he conducted psychological experiments on his ward, Sabrina Sydney, to prepare her for marriage. Charnwood disputes the more sensational accounts of Day’s "stoicism" tests recorded by Anna Seward, though notes Day eventually rejected Sydney over a trivial wardrobe malfunction. The article features a 1780s letter from Day to a grieving young lady, written in his characteristic "rhetorical style," and provides a 1808 letter from Edgeworth to Sydney, which Charnwood identifies as evidence that Edgeworth secretly continued Day’s pension to her. The narrative concludes by linking the house’s 18th-century intellectual legacy to the 20th-century composition of a biography of Abraham Lincoln within the same walls.
Correspondence: Dr. Johnson and His Wife
Reade provides a corrective update to his January 1925 article concerning Mary Nicholas’s correspondence. Using a newly discovered fragment of the original manuscript, Reade restores a previously defective sentence describing Taylor’s (Pylades) account of Tetty Johnson. The completed passage asserts that Taylor characterized Tetty as the 'plague of Johnson’s life' and 'abominably drunken and despicable every way,' claiming Johnson frequently complained of his 'wretchedness.' Reade notes that despite these alleged complaints, Johnson composed a panegyric sermon upon her death, which he intended for Taylor to preach. This restoration clarifies Mundy’s transmission of Taylor’s recollections, offering a harsher perspective on the Johnson marriage than typically found in more sympathetic biographies.
Murray identifies several anonymous contributions to the Caledonian Mercury from 1773 as the work of Boswell. These notes, which track Johnson’s travels through Scotland and his residence in Edinburgh, contain specific details known only to Boswell or which mirror his established writings in the London Magazine and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The series clarifies chronological gaps in the published Tour, specifically dating Johnson’s visits to Lord Elibank, Principal Robertson, and Sir James Adolphus Oughton. Murray highlights a characteristically Boswellian report on the travelers' departure from Edinburgh, noting their visits to Roslin and Hawthornden. The presence of an epigram satirizing the relationship between Johnson and "Paoli" (Boswell) is also noted, though not attributed to Boswell himself.
Chapman provides a technical guide to Johnson’s handwriting to assist future editors in resolving disputed readings within his correspondence. He details Johnson’s inconsistent orthography, noting how specific lowercase vowels and consonants frequently degenerate into ambiguous forms. Chapman highlights problematic ligatures and letter similarities, such as the resemblance between "re" and "w" or "se" and "p," while observing that Johnson’s capital letters generally remain distinct despite his overall vigorous and variable script.
This continuation of the favorable review contributes to the widespread English approval. The critique confirms the author's status as a respected "moralist" and keen observer. It supports the general conclusion that the work offers an entertaining and able interpretation of human character. The periodical's use of extracts ensures the dissemination of the work to a broad audience.
This continuation outlines the primary themes of the public reception, including hospitality and education. It features discussions on the state of religion, the phenomenon of "second sight," and particularly the author’s famous denial of the authenticity of Ossian’s poems. These topics trigger significant public debate and subsequent "railing and ridicule in the newspapers." The magazine reiterates that the work provides a "faithful representation" of "men and manners."
Atkinson examines the evolution of eighteenth-century landscape and garden terminology, emphasizing definitions provided by Johnson. He analyzes how Johnson’s Dictionary illustrates contemporary meanings for terms like landscape, prospect, vista, and parterre. The study identifies verse quotations in the Dictionary as representative of contemporary poetic repute. Atkinson demonstrates how these lexical shifts reflect broader changes in aesthetic interest toward the picturesque.
Abbott details Johnson’s committee service at the Society of Arts between 1760 and 1762, documenting his involvement in evaluating mechanical saw mills and a gold medal competition for a treatise on the "Arts of Peace." Johnson served alongside Franklin and Hollis, evaluating submissions for historical accuracy and scientific merit. Archival records confirm Johnson proposed Bathurst, Bell, and Allen for membership. Abbott references Barry’s iconic painting in the Great Room, which depicts Johnson alongside the Duchesses of Rutland and Devonshire.
The biographical sketch questions the utility of the Rambler as a moral work, arguing that Johnson’s "gloomy representations of life" serve only to "repress the arm of industry" and "foster the most pernicious prejudices." Mott suggests that Johnson's personal history of poverty, complicated miseries, and physical disease rendered him as incapable of providing a "just delineation of life" as a blind man is of determining shades of color. The narrative characterizes Johnson's prose as an attempt to "crush the rising hope" and "allay the golden hours of gaiety with the hateful dross of grief." Mott illustrates this bias by citing Johnson's cynical view of authorship, specifically his claim that a writer "solicits the regard of a multitude" distracted by passion or business. While acknowledging Johnson’s "sublime and stupendous genius," Mott disputes his status as an "unerring guide" for moral advancement.
Mott's biographical sketch continues a critical examination of Johnson’s moral philosophy, questioning whether a youth captivated by "Johnsonian eloquence" would not inevitably become a misanthrope. Mott argues that Johnson consulted his own mind, "darkened by obstinate prepossessions," rather than the "book of nature," resulting in a depiction of society as a "band of robbers" and "malevolent wretches." The narrative suggests that a student misled by Johnson’s assertions might abandon studies in "painful inactivity," believing that any effort to promote virtue only excites "fury passions" in others. Mott specifically analyzes the history of Abouzaid, son of Morad, characterizing it as an "echo of Almamoulin" that portrays the "perfidy of friends" and "inefficacy of benevolence." Quoting extensively from the story, Mott disputes the "dolorous declamation" found therein, asserting that such descriptions are neither "just nor natural." The piece concludes that if Johnson's writings truly transcribed his mind, he must have been "wretched beyond all common wretchedness."
Mott's biographical sketch, continuing a series on the Rambler, criticizes Johnson for uniformly displaying "all the miseries of life" while ignoring its felicities. Mott characterizes Johnson's comparison between youth and age in No. 196 as "invidious and cynical," noting that "more ill nature than truth predominates." The narrative identifies Johnson as a "cynic" whose "sensations could seldom be enviable" and who viewed the world through a "hateful dross of grief." Mott highlights a "striking example of the vanity of all human knowledge" by quoting Johnson's own warning against departing from reality in No. 208, an error Mott insists Johnson himself committed. Despite these strictures on Johnson's "cynical" delineations of life, Mott offers high praise for his religious writings. The account identifies Rambler No. 7 as a "noble effusion" of "elevated piety," asserting that Johnson's "solemnity of language" and "sincerity of heart" provide an "awful dignity" that remains unsurpassed by other writers on religion.
The Everyman edition reissued with an introduction by Barnett and illustrations by Caffyn.
A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Tyers offers an immediate biographical reflection following the death of Johnson in December 1784. The narrative traces Johnson’s origins in Lichfield and his education at Pembroke College, Oxford, which he left without a degree due to financial constraints. It details his early struggles as a teacher and his move to London with Garrick to pursue a literary career. Tyers emphasizes Johnson’s immense industry in completing the Dictionary and his moral contributions through the Rambler and Idler. The account highlights Johnson’s late-life achievements, including the Lives of the Poets, and depicts his final days as characterized by deep piety and resignation. Tyers presents Johnson as the preeminent figure of English literature, whose benevolence and intellect remained unmatched despite physical infirmities.
CGV entry 3:10. Published in parts: volume 54 (December 1784), pages 899-911; (Supplement), page 982; and "Additions," volume 55 (February 1785), pages 85-87. It was later issued with revisions as a pamphlet in 1785, which was reprinted by the Augustan Reprint Society in 1952.
Berkeley’s philosophy is often associated with Johnson through the famous anecdote of Johnson kicking a stone, demonstrating the reality of matter. Johnson frequently engaged with complex philosophical and religious doctrines. The article details Berkeley’s influence and philosophical contributions of the 18th century.
Harlequin Rasselas: An Extract from a Lecture by Professor Mayer on 'Pantomime and Regency Taste'
Mayer’s lecture details how Johnson's philosophical allegory Rasselas was adapted into the pantomime Harlequin Rasselas; or, The Happy Valley in February 1815. The synopsis reveals that while the plot—featuring the sorceress Curiosity, a winged serpent, and the failure of wings—differed wildly from the source, the show preserved the original theme: the "vanity of human wishes." Prince Rasselas ultimately leaves the Happy Valley, is transformed into Harlequin, experiences the world's perils, and finally returns.
Winnett discusses Krutch's characterization of Johnson as "a pessimist with an enormous zest for living." Johnson's pessimism stemmed from inherited melancholy, his physical ailments, his Christian awareness of evil (leading him to attack Jenyns's theodicy), and his innate "divine discontent"—man's transcendental desire for the Infinite that finite things cannot satisfy, as explored in Rasselas. Conversely, his "enormous zest" was evident in his vast appetite for learning, literature, good food, and friendship with figures like Boswell and the Thrales.
The Johnson summerhouse, where he often wrote at Thrale Place, Streatham, was formally opened to the public at Kenwood, Hampstead, on September 24, 1968. Rescued from demolition by Wells, it was restored by the Greater London Council and relocated to the typical eighteenth-century setting of Kenwood House.
Grundy reviews the third volume of the annual, praising its "challenging yet accessible" essays. She highlights James Basker's work on Johnson's "unorthodox writings on the problems faced by women" and Donald Greene's "Mr Valiant-for-Truth" approach in debunking phoney Johnsonian anecdotes. Grundy disputes Greene's characterization of Catherine Macaulay and Quaker women preachers, arguing that his "healthy and scholarly scepticism" occasionally slides into error regarding female historical figures. She notes the "cut and thrust of debate" regarding literary theory and the "moral ambivalence" of female-authored texts.
Davis reviews the reissue of Boswell's journal, describing it as a "key document" for understanding the "genesis of the Life of Johnson." He praises Boswell's "gusto" and "enormous interest in all life," which prevents his "egotistical" name-dropping from becoming offensive. The review notes the "memorable" first meeting with Johnson and Boswell's early use of "actual dialogue" to render conversation. Davis commends Edinburgh University Press for the sturdy paperback reprint, noting it provides essential access to Boswell's "powers of composition" and "keen powers of observation."
Grundy reviews Reddick's "rare" book that "changes the face of Johnson studies." Using the "Gimbel-Sneyd" manuscript, Reddick reveals that Johnson abandoned an unworkable early draft of the Dictionary in 1749, necessitating a start from "square one." Grundy highlights the "plangent" irony that the Dictionary was a "ceaselessly continuing and ceaselessly disappointing project" for Johnson. She emphasizes Reddick's discovery of Johnson's "agenda for moralizing and politicising" the fourth edition. The review concludes that the Dictionary is revealed as a "quintessentially Johnsonian work, never concluded, as unfixable as the language itself."
This is a further notice of a volume of essays edited by Magdi Wahba, a graduate and lecturer at the University of Cairo and an Oxford graduate. The collection, focused entirely on Johnsonian Studies, is noted for its international cooperation among writers, emphasizing the brotherhood of men of letters during strained international relations. The review highlights two specific contributions: Miss Joyce Hemlow's paper, 'Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney,' which draws on the original, unabridged manuscript of Burney's Diary in New York, offering fresh insight into the manners of the time and Johnson's behavior, including Victorian deletions; and Arthur Sherbo's study of Johnson's possible contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine between 1750 and 1755.
Powell reviews J. D. Fleeman’s chronological list of Johnson’s non-epistolary manuscripts. The review notes the wide variety of documents, including school exercises, election addresses for Mr. Thrale, and petitions for the life of "Maccaroni Parson" Dr. Dodd. Powell offers several "discoveries" to supplement the handlist, including a marriage contract between James Boswell and Peggie Montgomerie witnessed by Johnson. He also cites a "covenant" signed by Queeney Thrale promising to study Italian with Giuseppe Baretti, witnessed by "Sam. Johnson LL.D." The review notes the disappearance of the Western Islands manuscript and emphasizes that all listed documents must be "taken into account" by scholars.
On the complex technical and ethical issues confronting a biographer. Clifford’s work details finding and using relevant evidence, determining form and content, and testing material authenticity. The book relates Clifford’s adventures tracking manuscripts for biographies of Piozzi and Johnson, emphasizing the dilemmas, problems, and subtlety of life-writing.
Chapman uses a list of Johnson's letters to Dr. Taylor, sourced from a collection inspected at A. T. Loyd's, to create a table showing the letters' chronological order, dates, and Taylor's serial numbering. This numbering system, established by Taylor himself, helps determine the dates of missing or untraced letters. Based on this initial survey, Chapman concluded that at least twenty letters were still missing from the collection, and many others, though dated, had not been located for Hill's edition. Johnson's friend Taylor, despite his efforts, was only allowed to publish a few letters, making subsequent compilation difficult for editors like Boswell.
Praises Roberts's introduction and suggests the core of Johnson and Piozzi's relationship was the former's ability to appeal to others during his periods of intense misery, a "strange power" distinct from romantic inclination. Piozzi's account, despite its "wiggle waggle" style, gives a vivid picture of Johnson's peculiarities.
Hurlbut reviews Tinker's Young Boswell, commending its use of new correspondence to illuminate Boswell’s early life and character. The review suggests that Tinker persuasively establishes Boswell's earnestness and literary aspiration, contradicting earlier shallow interpretations. However, the review critiques the biographer for failing to fully grasp the complex psychological duality in Boswell's self-revelation, arguing the new material reveals a personality more contradictory than Tinker allows.
Reade provides a definitive reference for Johnson’s early years, documenting the careers of Michael and Sarah Johnson and incidental figures like Simon Martin. The text traces Johnson’s childhood from his encounter with Queen Anne to his education under Tom Brown and Hunter at Lichfield Grammar School. Reade uses legal abstracts, such as the indenture between Lea and Ford, to clarify the family’s social standing. The review highlights Reade’s resolution of the "biographical puzzle" concerning Johnson’s Oxford expenses, attributing the funding to a legacy from Catherine Harriotts.
Sense and Sensibility: An Enquiry into the Foundations of Johnson's Criticism
Field praises Chapman's beautifully printed and bound volume of documents as doubly interesting, shedding fresh light on the Dodd incident. He is grateful for Chapman's usual scholarly work, and especially commends the editor's lucidity, noting that the exposition of the complicated story behind the papers is not dull.
Pottle reviews Scott’s editorial work on Boswell’s recovered manuscripts, focusing on the period between 1763 and 1766. He identifies the Zélide dossier as the primary highlight, noting its detailed documentation of Boswell's psychological complexities and his "masculine complacency." Pottle praises Scott’s detective work in reconstructng Boswell's unsuccessful amorous pursuits in Turin and Siena. He emphasizes that these volumes reveal Boswell’s characteristic candor and his tendency to adopt distinct personas—pedantic, princely, or amorous—depending on his geographical context.
Cochrane entry 422. A review of the published correspondence between James Boswell and Zélide (Belle de Zuylen).
This reviews volume six of the Boswell papers, which examines the making of the Life of Johnson. Scott's scholarship demonstrates that Boswell's Johnsonian record was primarily his private journal, recorded as abbreviated notes on scraps of paper and expanded later. Malone's involvement was earlier and more essential than previously supposed. He provided moral support for Boswell during his later melancholia and irresolution, allowing him to complete the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and the Life. The volume is a model of literary scholarship.
Hazlitt evaluates Morley’s abridged edition of Boswell’s biography, noting that despite Goethe’s greater historical stature, Boswell’s record of Johnson remains more enthralling than Eckermann's. While Eckermann produces a retouched photograph of Goethe, Boswell’s candor is almost unparalleled, presenting Johnson as a great comic figure complete with warts and wrinkles. Johnson excels as a spontaneous aphorist whose conversation possesses a compactness and pungency lacking in Goethe. Hazlitt finds the abridged volume successful in maintaining the dramatist quality of Boswell’s work, which captures Johnson’s prejudices, biles, perversities, and eccentricities.
Reviews Pottle’s edition of Boswell’s 1764 journal, tracing the twenty-four-year-old’s transition from the dispirited student in Holland to a confident "man of fashion" traversing German courts. The account emphasizes Boswell's successful cultivation of social charm and his interactions with princes and the Earl Marischal. Central focus is given to the climactic visits to Rousseau and Voltaire, which the reviewer describes as a feast of comedy characterized by Boswell’s aplomb. While praising the provided maps and Pottle’s helpful annotation, the reviewer criticizes the "trade edition" format for its normalized spelling and the interpolation of translated letters into the primary narrative.
Verifies Johnson’s familiarity with major novelists like Richardson, Fielding, and Burney, alongside a deep engagement with seventeenth-century masters such as Bacon, Burton, and Browne. The author details Johnson's reliance on historical and biographical collections—including those by Winstanley and Cibber—and his use of various translations of Don Quixote, illustrating the diverse scholarly foundation of Johnson’s own critical and lexicographical work.
This instalment continues the enumeration of Johnson's historical, legal, and geographical reading. His history sources included Raleigh's History of the World, Knolles's Generall History of the Turkes, and numerous works on Roman, English, Scottish, and Irish history by authors like Goldsmith, Milton, and Robertson. He possessed law dictionaries by Cowell, Blount, and Jacob, owned Acts of Parliament, and cited Hale and Coke. His library contained Blackstone's Commentaries and other treatises. In geography and travel, Johnson possessed an Archaeological Dictionary and quoted Heylyn and Abbot's Briefe Description of the whole worlde. He had a lifelong interest in travel writers, despite once remarking on the disappointment travel books and travel itself could bring.
Atkinson continues his survey of Johnson’s prose reading, focusing on travel literature, science, and theology. He demonstrates that Johnson maintained a vigorous interest in voyage accounts, ranging from Shelvocke and Cook to near-contemporary works by Phipps and Hawkesworth. The study provides a comprehensive catalogue of Johnson’s scientific reading across mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine, citing his reliance on authors like Boyle, Newton, and James. Atkinson also details Johnson’s theological breadth, noting his familiarity with Biblical scholarship, physico-theology, and an extensive corpus of sermons from Hooker to Blair. The findings reinforce Johnson’s intellectual voracity and his use of these diverse texts in the Dictionary.
Atkinson concludes his survey of Johnson’s prose reading by examining devotional literature, aesthetics, and periodicals. He catalogues Johnson’s familiarity with seventeenth-century divines, including Taylor, Baxter, and Law, noting Johnson’s editorial work on Browne’s Christian Morals. The study details Johnson’s surprisingly thorough engagement with art theory, evidenced by over 170 quotations from Dryden’s translation of du Fresnoy in the Dictionary. Atkinson further identifies Johnson’s reading of contemporary periodicals and miscellaneous technical manuals on cookery and military discipline, emphasizing that Johnson’s vast erudition served as the foundation for his own meditative judgment.
Dr. Johnson's Use of Authorities in Compiling His Dictionary of the English Language
Fleming examines Johnson’s lexicographical methodology by analyzing his personal, marked copy of Duppa’s Holy Rules and Helps to Devotion. Fleming compares conflicting contemporary accounts from Boswell, Percy, and Hawkins regarding Johnson's use of amanuenses and marginalia. He argues that specific pencil strokes—horizontal for inclusion and downward for rejection—reveal Johnson’s selective process. The study catalogs numerous theological extracts, noting where Johnson truncated or "mutilated" original sentiments to prioritize lexical illustration over piety. Fleming identifies how Johnson used marginal notations to signal spelling preferences and verb-particle combinations, ultimately tracing the transformation of Duppa’s devotional prose into dictionary authorities.
CGV entry 17:131. Published in three parts: June, pages 254–257; July, pages 294-297; and August, pages 343-347.
The Boswell papers, now at Yale University, were recovered from multiple caches at Malahide Castle by Isham and the Fettercairn Papers were found by Abbott. The Journal covers November 1762 to August 4, 1763, detailing Boswell's nine months in London soliciting a commission in the Foot Guards, leading to his despair, and finally his departure for Utrecht to study law. The journal shows his "high" and "low debauchery," his emotional instability, and his meetings with Johnson, who encouraged him to keep an "undisguised" journal. Pottle edited the volume.
Wilson presents a chronological arrangement of Johnson's writings, including complete texts of major works such as London, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Rasselas, alongside substantial selections from the Rambler, the Adventurer, and the Lives of the Poets. Wilson provides an introduction arguing for a holistic reading of Johnson's life and work, asserting "the man and his writings are one." Crow contributes a textual note detailing the reliance on early editions—notably the fourth edition of the Dictionary—and the silent correction of patent misprints. The volume includes a chronological table and an index of first lines for poems. Editorial interventions are minimized, though Crow uses italics for non-original side-heads and provides brief textual notes for individual pieces. A note to the second edition identifies a commentary on King Lear as the work of William Warburton rather than Johnson. The collection condenses Johnson's bulky collected works into a single volume for general readers and students.
CGV entry 2:33. A full selection of 961 pages. Textual editor was John Crow.
Greene identifies a previously unnoted caustic reference to Bolingbroke within Johnson’s Dictionary. Under the entry for "Irony," Johnson provides the illustrative example, "Bolingbroke was a holy man," to define speech where meaning contradicts words. This entry reflects Johnson’s known antipathy toward Bolingbroke, whom he labeled a scoundrel and a coward. Greene argues this subtle pillorying of the principal figure mirrors Johnson’s explicit treatment of Bolingbroke’s subordinate, Mallet, elsewhere in the work.
Greene argues that Keats’s use of "sooth" as "sweet" derives from literary authority in Johnson’s Dictionary rather than dialectal sources. Johnson’s Dictionary and his Shakespeare edition gloss "sooth" as "sweet," erroneously conflating it with "soote" through conjectural etymology. Greene rejects theories attributing Keats’s usage to Galloway dialect, asserting that Keats, a literary writer, followed Johnson’s standard but philologically suspect definitions. Johnson likely initiated this confusion independently of regional speech patterns.
Atkinson identifies several references to Johnson within the footnotes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Gibbon addresses Johnson's views on English etymology, his scrutiny of Pope's epitaphs, and his opinion of Knolles's Generall History of the Turks. While Gibbon praises the imagery in Johnson's tragedy Irene, he simultaneously criticizes its perceived rants and astronomical inaccuracies. Atkinson highlights Gibbon's characterization of Johnson’s mind as bigoted yet vigorous in its treatment of Shakespeare.
A response to Greene in the issue of 31 March 1951.
Atkinson catalogs scientific authors Johnson used while compiling the Dictionary, providing quotation counts for specific F-words. The list includes Arbuthnot, whom Johnson admired as a universal genius, and Bacon, whose Sylva Sylvarum provided numerous illustrations despite its inclusion of traditional conceits. Atkinson notes Johnson's reliance on Boyle for physical and chemical terminology and Burnet for geological theories. The survey also covers technical contributions from Cocker, Derham, Floyer, Glanvill, Grew, Harvey, Hill, and Miller.
Dr. Johnson and Science IV: A Footnote on Derham's 'Astro-theology'
Atkinson examines Johnson’s use of Derham’s Astro-Theology, a work defining divinity through celestial observation. He characterizes the text as a representative of early eighteenth-century physico-theology, intended to convert irreligious readers by demonstrating divine design in planetary magnitude, motion, and light. Atkinson highlights correspondences between Derham’s prose and the celestial imagery in Addison’s hymns and Milton’s poetry. He concludes that Derham provided Johnson with a circumscribed, divinely ordained cosmological framework that predated the complexities of modern physics.
Bailey approves of the meticulous text constructed from original manuscripts but finds the editorial notes less successful. She argues against the editors’ claim that Malone suppressed Boswell’s style, asserting instead that Malone merely applied contemporary standards of taste. Bailey criticizes the omission of Boswell’s sketches and disputes the jocular interpretation of the Tour as an autobiography rather than a book about Johnson. She concludes that while the edition is clear and devoted, it occasionally fails to do Boswell justice.
CGV entry 4:13. Review by Margery Bailey of the 1936 manuscript edition edited by F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett.
Josephson examines the restored edition of the Hebridean journal edited by Pottle and Bennett. He contrasts this "unexpurgated" manuscript with Malone's bowdlerized 1785 version, which suppressed Boswell's "private frailties," including drunkenness and amorousness. Josephson argues that Boswell’s "inverted egoism" and exhibitionism are organic to his mimetic genius. The restoration reveals a raw, intuitive style influenced by Sterne and Rousseau, signaling the transition from Enlightenment clarity to nineteenth-century romantic neurosis.
This reviews the first publication of the original manuscript of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides from the Malahide-Isham papers. The manuscript is a fourth to a third longer than the printed text, revealing passages Boswell or Malone suppressed. Most alterations were editorial changes made by Malone, largely in the interest of personal delicacy or perceived elegance, though a few are deemed detrimental. The original text offers uncensored content, restoring the "priceless whole" of the Tour journal. Pottle and Bennett's editorial work is highly commended.
Finberg responds to Bradbury’s description of a painting featuring Johnson and Reynolds. She questions the work's authenticity as a contemporary portrait, suggesting instead that it represents a Victorian reconstruction. Finberg proposes that the artist may be an historical painter such as Ward or Frith, whose nineteenth-century works frequently reimagined famous literary and artistic circles of the previous century. The inquiry seeks to clarify the provenance and chronological origin of the artwork described by Bradbury.
A response to F. Bradbury’s note of 1 July 1944.
Boswell may have had Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in mind regarding the use of "giant's strength."
A response to Pottle’s query, 20 Jan. 1940.
Cochrane entry 354.
On Signora Piozzi’s Publication of Dr. Johnson’s Letters: Stricture the Second
Continuing his critique, Baretti analyzes a letter from Johnson dated July 15, 1775, which mentions the "tyranny of Baretti." He accuses Piozzi of suppressing her own letters to Johnson to hide a "string of paltry lies" regarding Baretti's behavior. To demonstrate her "wrongheadedness" and "constant knack of telling the thing that is not," Baretti recounts anecdotes from Streatham, including a dispute over whether children can distinguish the taste of an onion from an apple. He argues Johnson’s "loving style" in letters resulted from his fondness for flattery, whereas "face to face" Johnson frequently treated Piozzi with "austere reprimands" and "earned scorn."
Baretti explores the "fascinated" Johnson’s "immoderate encomiums" of Piozzi, contrasting them with Baretti's own "frigid" view of her as a "common mortal." He alleges Piozzi "set about embittering" Johnson’s final hours and ridicules her marriage to Gabriel Piozzi. Baretti reports a "fiction" Piozzi allegedly created—claiming Gabriel Piozzi was her long-lost brother—to facilitate his presence in the Thrale household. He further details the financial arrangements Piozzi made for her second husband, asserting she spent "eight hundred and forty pounds beyond what she absolutely wanted" while claiming "pecuniary circumstances" forced her retirement to Bath. The narrative concludes with the dismissal of a servant named Mecci.
Anti-Empiricus continues a catalog of Johnson's grammatical failures, primarily targeting the preface to Shakespeare. Text identifies "gross absurdity" in subject-verb agreement, noting Johnson's use of plural verbs for singular subjects and vice versa. Specific examples include the improper coupling of "character" and "dialogue" with a plural construction and the "incongruity" of connecting "negligence and unskilfulness" to a singular verb. Anti-Empiricus further cites omissions of essential verbs in passages concerning Shakespeare's emendations, asserting that Johnson's syntax fails to adhere to the rules of grammar.
Anti-Empiricus identifies further linguistic lapses in Johnson's account of the Hebrides. Text highlights a failure in subject-verb agreement regarding the "oak and thorn," arguing the singular verb precludes a valid comparison. Anti-Empiricus ridicules Johnson's description of a church that is "now small," mocking his concurrent interest in the "second sight." Additionally, the argument challenges the semantic clarity of a private exchange between Johnson and Boswell, questioning whether Johnson "had any meaning" when describing a tree that "looked as if I thought so." A postscript corrects a previous technical definition regarding plural nouns.
Urban chronicles the origin and development of the first modern magazine, established by Cave at St. John's Gate. The account details the publication's struggle against rivals like the London Magazine and its eventual success through diverse content and innovative parliamentary reporting. Urban highlights Johnson’s significant contributions, specifically his role in crafting the "Debates in the Senate of Lilliput" to circumvent legal restrictions on reporting. The text describes Johnson's early poverty and his introduction to Cave, which led to a long-standing professional relationship. Boswell appears through discussions of his published letters and his role as Johnson's biographer. The narrative emphasizes the magazine's evolution into an antiquarian and historical review, maintaining the pseudonym Sylvanus Urban to represent a collective editorial identity.
Murphy recounts Johnson's career and personal struggles, beginning with the 1750 Lauder controversy. Johnson assisted Lauder in charging Milton with plagiarism but drafted a recantation upon discovery of the fraud. During the composition of the Dictionary, Johnson suffered morbid melancholy and poverty, yet contributed to the Adventurer. Murphy disputes Hawkins regarding the identity of Hawkesworth's collaborators and clarifies that Johnson's 1762 pension of £300 resulted from Murphy’s own mediation with Wedderburn and Bute. The narrative details Johnson’s domestic life at Streatham under the protection of Thrale and Piozzi, noting that Thrale and Murphy originally introduced Johnson to the household to meet Woodhouse. Murphy defends Johnson’s late-life social habits, specifically the Essex Street Club, against Hawkins’s disparagement. Regarding the 1773 tour of the Hebrides, Murphy praises the vivacity of the narrative provided by Boswell. The account concludes with Johnson’s final illness, his refusal of Thurlow’s bounty, and his death in 1784. Murphy emphasizes Johnson’s independence and piety while censuring Hawkins’s editorial failures.
Murphy critiques the editorial failures of Hawkins, specifically the exclusion of Johnson’s translation of Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia. Murphy provides an extensive summary of the Lobo text, emphasizing its descriptions of the Nile and its influence on the nomenclature of Rasselas. He assesses Irene, noting its lack of dramatic terror or pity despite its "nervous, rich, and elegant" diction. Murphy disputes Hawkins’s chronological inferences regarding The Vanity of Human Wishes, arguing it served as a precursor to Irene to stimulate public interest. He identifies several misattributions in the edition, such as the Apotheosis of Milton, and highlights the omission of the Debates in the Senate of Lilliput. Murphy corrects typographical errors in London and concludes that while the edition is flawed, the collected works remain a monument to Johnson’s erudition and "intellectual energy."
Murphy severely censures Hawkins for presenting a "daubing" and derogatory portrait of Johnson, characterized by "roughness that approached to ferocity" and motivated solely by money. Murphy disputes Hawkins’s competence, labeling him a "laborious drudge" and an "egotist" who fills the biography with irrelevant personal history and "common-place book" sweepings, such as the origins of taverns and the history of Blackfriars Bridge. Hawkins’s editorial integrity is challenged through the identification of factual errors, including a "brutal" and fabricated exchange between Johnson and Millar, and the inclusion of works not authored by Johnson, such as pieces by Guthrie and Murphy. Furthermore, Murphy attacks Hawkins’s "abject" political views, his "rank malevolence" toward contemporaries like Garrick and Fielding, and his "remiss" understanding of Johnson’s moral philosophy. Murphy thanks God for concluding the "drudgery" of reading a work where "blunders and malignity call for an answer in every page."
Sundry Whereof ridicules the 'refined' and 'turgid eloquence' of Hawkins's biography, mocking his 'excess of candour and charity.' The satirist observes that anyone buying the Life essentially gets the 'pith and marrow' of the ten-volume Works because Hawkins inserted so much of the substance into his own narrative. The piece questions the authenticity of a 'penitential letter' Hawkins allegedly wrote to Johnson and includes a mud-covered 'Fragment' satirizing Hawkins's attempt to take a watch from Johnson’s servant, Frank. It concludes by accusing Hawkins of following 'personal quarrel and private spleen' in his editorial choices.
Sundry Whereof [Porson] continues a satirical examination of the "critical talents" displayed in Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, using irony to mock the "Knight’s" tendency to replace Johnson's original text with his own "better" readings. The writer ironically applies "canons of criticism" to justify these textual alterations, such as preferring Hawkins’s "grammar and purity" over Johnson's "grammatical purity" and changing "lettered arrogance" to "lettered ignorance." The piece highlights Hawkins’s pervasive use of the first-person pronoun, ridiculing his frequent mentions of "MY own coach," "MY servants," and "MY country-house." It further mocks Hawkins’s boast that he missed only the "appellative OCEAN" in reviewing the Dictionary, whereas Johnson had confessed to missing the word "SEA." The correspondent suggests that Hawkins’s defense of his own character in the second edition only serves to ruin it, though he mockingly accepts a second-hand copy of Walton’s Angler from the "Knight" as a reward for his championship.
Thomas continues to challenge Richard Savage's story, arguing that the Countess of Macclesfield's reported tender behavior towards her first illegitimate child, evidenced in sworn depositions, makes the charges of "malignant cruelty" and "unnatural indifference" toward Richard Smith improbable. Savage's claim, first appearing in 1719, evolved to include being deprived of a 6,000-pound legacy and efforts to have him transported, which Thomas attributes to an attempt to manipulate public opinion. Thomas discusses Savage's volatile relationship with Mrs. Brett (the Countess), noting the patronage of her nephew, Lord Tyrconnel, as a circumstance in Savage's favor.
Thomas argues that Johnson relied entirely on Savage's self-generated accounts, which are demonstrably inaccurate regarding the Macclesfield divorce. Savage's claimed birth date, godmother's name (Loyd, not the documented Ousley), and the legacy are inconsistent with court records and the Ousley family's respectable position. Thomas details the inconsistencies of Savage's "mean nurse" story versus his subsequent claim that he found his godmother Mrs. Loyd's papers "many years after her decease," which contradicts the official narrative's timeline and the godmother's true identity, suggesting a deliberate fabrication to mask the impossibility of his claims.
Thomas concludes his argument that Richard Savage was an impostor by highlighting the impossibility of his narrative's chronology and claims. Savage's unknown grammar school and the concealment of Lord Rivers's inquiries about his son are improbable, especially given Lady Mason's and Newdigate Ousley's involvement. Rivers's will, dated before his death, contains no legacy or codicil mentioning Savage, refuting the mother's alleged death-bed falsehood. Thomas also dismisses the Mrs. Oldfield pension and the kidnapping attempts as subsequent inventions to mask earlier inconsistencies and secure public sympathy, noting Savage's failure to ever produce the "convincing original letters" he claimed to possess.
Corrects the information regarding the editor of Johnson's Works (Oxford, 1825), stating it was Francis Pearson Walesby, not Talboys. This is confirmed by a Walesby fellow collegian and a review of Walesby's manuscript notes, which clearly show preparation for the edition. Walesby was a scholar and barrister, a first-class classic, and the Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1829 until his death in 1858.
Confirms that Francis Walesby edited the 1825 Oxford edition of Johnson's Works by Pickering and Talboys, a fact supported by a memorandum from Pickering. Markland notes the editor's insertion of Johnson’s translation from Euripides' Medea in the poems for the first time. He also confirms that an edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson was published in 1826 by Pickering, Talboys, and Wheeler.
In this letter to the editor, the Earl of Ilchester challenges the claim that Johnson visited Holland House. He asserts that Henry Fox did not move in Johnson's circles and that the house was closed or let during the minority of the third Lord Holland. Ilchester notes that a dessert service of red anchor mark plates survived the destruction of the house by enemy action, but he disputes the authority for Princess Liechtenstein’s statement that the porcelain factory presented the service to Johnson.
CGV entry 3:174. On Johnson's working in a china factory. Published in parts: volume 186 (April 8, May 6), pages 183, 234; and volume 187 (August 26), page 108.
Identifies the source for the claim that Johnson experimented at the Chelsea China Manufactory. Citing Faulkner’s 1829 history of Chelsea, the text details Johnson’s unsuccessful attempts to improve china composition. Johnson frequented the Lawrence Street works with his housekeeper, though his materials consistently failed to withstand furnace heat. Reference to a dessert service at Holland House, documented by Liechtenstein, provides further evidence of the manufacturer’s gift to Johnson in recognition of his interest in the factory.
Walford cautions researchers against accepting conjectures as fact without bibliographical evidence. He notes that while satirists often targeted Johnson, many purported allusions lack verification. Walford emphasizes checking original sources to distinguish contemporary lampoons from later anecdotal fabrications, warning against reliance on unseen authorities.
On a satirical allusion to Samuel Johnson from 1772, suggesting the literary ancestor is the Crispinus of Horace, and the specific reference is to the Crispin of Padre Isla's Friar Gerund. The couplet, "Who speaks Spanish in Latin and Latin in Spanish," is provided as evidence. The note also identifies "S-e" as Shebbeare and "Be" as Beardmore in a Churchill quote, explaining Beardmore's leniency during Shebbeare's pillory sentence.
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
Abridged in JAMA, and reprinted in Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays (1979).
Cochrane entry 30. Provides a medical analysis of Boswell's health, cataloging nineteen separate bouts of venereal disease and attributing his death to its long-term complications. Suggests his risky sexual behavior was psychologically motivated by a desire to defy his father.
Fussell's severe review of William B. Ober's book challenges the histopathologist's attempt to diagnose deceased authors through "documentary attestations" and "other rhetorical phenomena". Fussell disputes Ober's "illiterate use of evidence" and "pointless" conjectures, specifically labeling him a "quack" in literary interpretation. Regarding Johnson, Fussell notes that a different medical practitioner previously missed the "comic irony" in a letter by Johnson, promoting a misapprehension into a "solemn essay" on psychoanalytic concepts. Fussell praises Ober’s "brilliant title" for the essay on Boswell, which tabulates nineteen separate attacks of gonorrhea and provides information on the "eighteenth-century condom". Fussell argues that poems are no way of ascertaining an author's medical condition.
Printed by Johnson's Head for the Johnson Society
Cochrane entry 560. A republication of item 553.
Is there a difference between Johnsonians and Boswellians?
This review praises the single-volume abridgement, Everybody's Boswell, which includes material from Boswell's Tour of the Hebrides. The reviewer commends the "Introductory Note" for recognizing Johnson's unique personality and the sensible inclusion of a "Principal Characters" list. The reviewer notes that E. H. Shepard's illustrations are "spirited" and happily capture Johnson in various scenes of gaiety and seriousness that Boswell candidly recorded.
Postgate abridges Boswell’s biography to facilitate accessibility for general readers, isolating Johnson’s verbal exchanges as the primary point of interest. The editorial method assumes that Johnson’s modern reputation rests exclusively upon his conversations. While this approach potentially expands the audience for the biography, it sacrifices the structural integrity of the original work. The reduction ignores the enduring relevance of Johnson’s written output, disputing the claim that his literary contributions have lapsed into obscurity. This selective curation caters to those seeking "homeopathic doses" of Boswell while alienating scholars who value the comprehensive biographical framework.
The reviewer recommends Everybody's Boswell for those who appreciate abridgments, though stating the original Life remains "everybody's Boswell." The abridgment is exceptionally skillful, serving as "somebody's Boswell" or "the hurried man's Boswell" by executing the necessary skipping. The book is lauded as a pleasure to hold, with delightful illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard. The text implicitly focuses on the biographical content derived from Boswell's work on Johnson, although the specifics of the abridged content are not detailed.
The reviewer examines Morley’s condensation of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, featuring illustrations by Shepard. While the review questions the tendency to strip serious bits from literature, it acknowledges the volume’s success in introducing the Great Cham to a wider audience. Morley’s edition is noted for being fuller than previous abridgments and for including the Tour to the Hebrides. The reviewer regrets the omission of Johnson’s minor writings but commends Shepard’s sympathetic, non-caricatured interpretations of the Johnsonian circle.
Brady's scholarly volume traces Boswell's lifelong, yet ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to attain political office, providing a detailed picture of eighteenth-century political mechanics. Brady argues that the great biographer misjudged his own nature and talent, demonstrating a "complete political incapacity" despite his literary powers. The text follows Boswell's trajectory from his early success with Corsica through numerous abortive attempts, including his temporary Recordership of Carlisle, constant shifts in conviction, and his jealousy of Dundas. Brady details the political Boswell as neither clear nor luminous in conviction—a Tory supporting Whig principles—and unintelligent in practice, concluding that he was plagued by long and constant disappointment in his pursuit of political success.
Fergusson reviews Frank Brady's account of Boswell's unsuccessful twenty-five-year attempt to secure a seat in Parliament. The review highlights Boswell's use of politics as a means to earn respect and spend time in London, though he lacked the necessary interest and patronage. Fergusson also examines the second edition of the Hill–Powell version of the Life of Johnson. He praises the miraculous preservation of Hill's original pagination despite the inclusion of fresh material from the Pottle collection and new identifications of anonymous persons.
Chatter About Dr. Samuel Johnson: Some Unpublished Letters
If anything could whet the appetite and increase the ardour of the Johnson collector (whose name has been legion for over a century) it would be the possibility of obtaining.so superb a volume as the edition de luxe of the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Footsteps of Dr. Johnson, originally published at seven guineas, for less tpiftn a quarter of that sum. The fortunate bookselleis who, like Mr. W. N. Pitcher of Manchester, have secured portions of the "remainders" may be fairly congratulated, for the original issue for sale was strictly limited ... I50 copies, and a speedy rise in value may confidently be predicted; indeed, since these lines were written the price has gone up to ...
Mayor Haynes appeals to the literary public for donations of books, prints, manuscripts, and other objects for a permanent exhibition at the Lichfield house where Johnson was born, which the Corporation recently acquired. The house will open to the public at Whitsuntide, following the model of other literary birthplaces. This effort aims to celebrate Johnson's life and personality, which remain intimately connected with the City of Lichfield.
Bayne supports Boswell's observation regarding the Scottish pronunciation of Johnson’s name as "Johnston." He reports contemporary instances of this phonetic variation occurring in Scottish pulpits. Bayne attributes the tendency to the prevalence of the surnames Johnston and Johnstone within Scottish literary and political history. He characterizes the substitution as a common linguistic lapse influenced by familiar national nomenclature rather than an exceptional error.
On the spelling and pronunciation of Johnson's surname, a continuation of a prior query. The author refers to Boswell’s Life under the year 1777, citing Johnson’s letter to Boswell where Johnson expresses the hope that Boswell's wife "does not call me Johnston." Boswell's accompanying note clarifies that "Johnson" is the English spelling while "Johnston" is the Scotch formation, adding that Johnson observed many North Britons pronounced his name in their native manner.
Identifies the latest-known survivor who saw Johnson in the flesh: Dr. Martin Routh (who died in 1854 at age 100) saw Johnson at University College, Oxford. An even later recollection is noted from a diary: a Mr. Carwardine (still living in 1864) recalled seeing "the great Dr. Johnson" in St. Paul's Churchyard as a four-year-old boy. The note highlights the longevity of personal connections to the late eighteenth century.
Prideaux argues that Boswell incorrectly equated the English name Johnson with the Scottish Johnston. Prideaux explains that Johnson is a patronymic meaning "son of John," while Johnston is a local name denoting a person from a "tún" (town) of John. The two names are distinct in origin, and while Johnston might be shortened to the English form, Johnson cannot become Johnston.
The play Dr. Johnson by Leo Trevor was produced five or six years prior to November 1902 at the Strand Theatre. It was recently revived at the Garrick Theatre by Arthur Bourchier. The King saw "Dr. Johnson," played by Arthur Bourchier, at Sandringham on a Friday. The King was introduced to the character studies of "Dr. Johnson" and "Corporal Brewster" (a Waterloo Veteran, aged eighty-six).
The correspondent, signing as "Johnsonian," compares a contemporary political "defiance" to Johnson's infamous letter of defiance to James Macpherson. The letter contains a characteristic sentence: "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian." The comparison is offered within a letter to the editor.
Marshall protests C.'s discourteous tone regarding his statement that Johnson was never in Paris, an error Marshall freely admits. Marshall reasserts that the original point remains unaffected: the reference by C. to "Madame Vestris" in connection with Johnson's alleged dancing lessons is inaccurate, regardless of whether C. meant the famous actress (born 1797) or the great tragic actress, Dugazon, Madame Vestris (born 1746). Marshall maintains that neither woman fits the description of the Madame Vestris whose father, M. Vestris, was a famous dancer in Johnson's time.
The author sharply disputes Julian Marshall's assertion that Johnson was "never in Paris," a claim made during a debate on the identity of Madame Vestris. The author, C., refers Marshall to Boswell's biography, specifically the section for the year 1775, which contains Johnson's letters from Calais and Paris, along with a diary detailing his daily life and proceedings in France, much of it describing his time in Paris. This evidence unequivocally contradicts Marshall's statement.
Hayes clarifies his previous inquiry regarding the manuscript verses found in Murphy’s Life of Garrick. He suggests that "Adieu" is the personified pseudonym of the lady who transcribed the poem for her correspondent, identified by the initials "M. W. D." Hayes proposes a paleographic alternative: if the initial "M" is read as "At," the notation might signify "at W. D.," referring to a specific house or location visited by Johnson. This interpretation accounts for contemporary orthographic habits where "A" and "M" were often visually similar.
Stevenson critiques M. R. Shore's philological theories regarding Kentish settlers in the upper Thames valley, deeming the explanation grammatically and chronologically impossible due to the late date of the Kentish change from u to y. Philological evidence, specifically the West-Saxon y in the Abingdon Chartulary, refutes Shore's claim of Kentish e. Stevenson also dismisses uncritical etymologies of Oxford, particularly the late adoption of Isis and its connection to the Irish uisce, asserting that Oxford means "the ford of oxen," a meaning supported by Hearne and confirmed by the Welsh Rhydychein being a translation of the Old English name.
Johnson lived "thereabouts" for nearly thirty-five years, famously declaring a tavern chair the "throne of human felicity." His Fleet Street residences, including 17 Gough Square and 8 Bolt Court, saw him produce his greatest works, such as the Dictionary and his letter to Chesterfield. Though not mentioned by Boswell, Johnson's seat in the Cheshire Cheese window remains a popular association. His residences also housed his contentious "Seraglio" of dependents, and he died at Bolt Court in 1784.
Esterline identifies Johnson as the author of the couplet beginning "Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth," tracing the lines to the poem "Vanity of Human Wishes." He notes that the poem, an imitation of Juvenal's tenth Satire, was highly ranked by Scott, Byron, and Macaulay. Esterline recounts an extensive search through the Library of Congress and literary queries before confirming the source via the Boston Transcript. The text emphasizes that the poem's themes—the destructive nature of human wishes regarding wealth, power, and beauty—remain a pinnacle of English verse.
This travelogue vignette chronicles a visit to the Westminster slum district, examining the socioeconomic conditions, street markets, housing initiatives, and local ecclesiastical leadership. The narrative details local housing costs at Smith's Square, describes the architectural features of St. John's Church, and summarizes sermons delivered by Canon Wilberforce regarding human brotherhood and divine punishment. The account opens by quoting Johnson from an unnamed text to establish the unique, inconceivable happiness available to residents of London.
Dr. Johnson said in one of his works: "Sir, the happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it."
Boswell recounts Johnson’s admission of pure ignorance concerning equine anatomy to establish the inherent difficulty of defining leisure terminology. Johnson serves as a rhetorical foundation for a critique of athletic excess and commercialization. Aflalo identifies a decline in the true spirit of sport driven by gambling, professionalism, and the passive culture of the looker-on. The text argues for moderation across various recreations, including cricket, angling, and cycling, to prevent physical and moral staleness. Aflalo contrasts the British Socrates with the modern record-breaking machine produced by competitive pressures. By situating the contemplative man’s recreation within a framework of disciplined self-denial, Aflalo challenges the encroaching commercialism of the late nineteenth century.
The essay defines the "spirit of place" as a modern, electric sentiment, contrasting Mrs. Meynell’s delicate perceptions with the more robust associations of the eighteenth century. Johnson’s celebrated love for Fleet Street lacked this contemporary "genius loci"; rather, his attachment remained rooted in the social life interpreted by his own spirit. Even while roaming the "farthest Hebrides," Johnson’s imagination prioritized a "nostalgia of pie" over the intrinsic atmosphere of the landscape. While Iona moved him, it served primarily as a mnemonic for the "Marathon of books" rather than a modern psychological experience of terrain. The text traces the development of this sentiment through Defoe, Byron, and Lamb, ultimately identifying its maturity in the "water-colour quality" of Henry James’s travel writing. Johnson is positioned as the antithesis of this modern "cult," representing a period where travel was characterized by "dread and discomfort" rather than subtle atmospheric influence.
W. reports on a collection of eight letters from Johnson to Chambers, noting their absence from Hill’s edition of Boswell. The correspondence documents Johnson’s 1773 Highland tour, including a forced stay on Coll and plans to visit Boswell’s father. A 1783 folio letter provides an extensive meditation on "deductions from human happiness," recounting the deaths of Thrale, Beauclerk, and Goldsmith, the latter of whom Johnson describes as "disgracefully in debt." Johnson reflects on his residency with the Thrales, providing him the "pleasure of riches without the solicitude." He further notes Boswell’s encumbered estate and the death of Anna Williams, his companion of thirty years. The letters detail Johnson's physical decline, specifically the "dreadful illness" affecting his mobility, while asserting his mental faculties remain unimpaired.
Mew explores the strategies of historical quacks, noting their use of elevated language, self-aggrandizing testimonials, and promises of "No Cure, No Pay." The author describes various figures, including Sir William Read, Grant, Moore, and the Chevalier Taylor, whom Johnson cited as an example of "how far impudence could carry ignorance." Mew also details the flamboyant advertisements of doctors like James Tilborgh, the proprietor of the Elixir Magnum Stomachicum, the "unborn doctor," and the feuding quacks Blagrove and Bateman. Mew emphasizes the quacks' understanding of the maxim Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Johnson famously restricts the definition of a critic to the evaluation of writing, excluding the fine arts from his lexicographical scope. Boswell provides no evidence of Johnson possessing enthusiasm for painting, sculpture, or architecture, noting his indifference toward music. Despite these personal limitations, Johnson recognized the influence of the arts on national taste through his friendship with Reynolds. Reynolds, while promoting the "Great Masters" in his academic discourses, frequently used the columns of the Idler to argue that genius exists beyond the reach of rules. This dichotomy reflects a broader shift in eighteenth-century aesthetics where the "charms of unsophisticated Nature" began to challenge artificial social conditions. The legacy of Johnson and Reynolds serves as a foundation for analyzing subsequent critical movements, including the sentimentalism of Ruskin and the scientific connoisseurship of Morelli. The transition from Johnson’s textual focus to modern visual analysis reveals the inherent instability of aesthetic standards across generations.
Nineteenth Century and After: A Monthly Review
Wood chronicles the history of the London street that became synonymous with hack writing and poverty. He highlights the contributions of Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith in redeeming the reputation of the professional author by introducing a spirit of independence and self-reliance. The narrative describes the extreme indigence Johnson faced upon his arrival in London, including nights spent wandering the streets with Richard Savage because they could not pay for lodging. Wood notes that Johnson used the term scoundrel to describe those who wrote in the pay of a political party and preferred the struggle of translating for booksellers to the loss of integrity. The article details how Johnson and Goldsmith emerged from the wretched conditions of the garret to become respected figures, effectively ending the era of venal patronage.
The Book of the Courtyer: A Possible Source of Benedick and Beatrice
Scott argues that the witty dialogue between Lord Gaspare Pallavicino and Lady Emilia Pia in Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtyer is the source for Shakespeare's Benedick and Beatrice. The verbal sparring and "merry war" between the male "tyrant to the sex" and the sharp-witted lady closely parallel the play. The English translation by Hoby (1561) was popular, making it a likely source. Scott points to specific lines of repartee and the phrase "much ado" in the text as strong evidence that Shakespeare adapted the personalities and dramatic dynamic of these real-life figures, independent of Bandello’s novella for the main plot.
James Boswell and the 'The Shrubs of Parnassus'
G. L. B. investigates the attribution of the 1760 verse collection to Boswell in Fairholt’s history of tobacco. Noting that the date precedes Boswell’s known poetic output, the author seeks corroboration for this claim. G. L. B. reports that standard biographies and bibliographies, including those by Fitzgerald and Rogers, offer no evidence linking Boswell to the work. The text suggests the volume is more likely the work of Woty.
'Dorando: a Spanish Tale,' by James Boswell
Brown reports the discovery of a copy of Boswell’s Dorando in the Sir William Hamilton Collection at the University Library, Glasgow. He provides bibliographic details of the 1767 second edition, noting its origin as a skit on the Douglas Cause. Brown corrects a recurring error in the Dictionary of National Biography which confuses Dorando with Dalrymple’s Rodondo. Challenging previous assertions by Fitzgerald and Leask that Boswell merely sought self-importance through the Douglas Cause, Brown uses Boswell’s "Consultation Book" to prove the biographer served as formal counsel in the case in 1769. Evidence confirms Boswell received a significant ten-guinea fee, contradicting his own later description of himself as a "generous volunteer."
Axon and C. D. dispute Brown’s assertion regarding the rarity of Boswell’s anonymous novelette. Axon identifies the locations of all three 1767 editions in public institutions: the first in the British Museum, the second in Glasgow University, and the third in the Manchester Reference Library. He notes that variations between the first and third issues remain "not at all important." C. D. provides provenance and market data, tracing a 12mo copy from the Maidment sale to a 1899 Sotheby’s sale. The correspondence establishes that Dorando had already been identified by Dobell and analyzed by Axon in The Scottish Review prior to Brown's report.
Doctor Samuel Johnson: Essayist, Lexicographer, Clubman
Warburton chronicles the paradoxical life and enduring character anomalies of Johnson, presenting him as an unsolved puzzle who combined severe physical and social liabilities with unmatched intellectual dominance. The biographical sketch contrasts Johnson's childhood poverty, slovenly appearance, and constitutional indolence with his monumental achievements, including his foundational dictionary and the financial success he secured for London publishers. Warburton traces Johnson's trajectory from his fractured undergraduate days at Oxford and three decades of indigence through the transformative 1762 state annuity that granted him financial freedom. The narrative highlights Johnson's supreme conversational power within his exclusive club, his Latin scholarship, and his shift toward a more patient, pious disposition before his burial in Westminster Abbey.
Very brief query: "We read much of Johnson's great size, massive frame, and so on. Is there any record of his height or weight?"
This article explores Johnson's lifelong devotion to Oxford, suggesting it stemmed from the "vivid and almost poignant interest" he felt as a non-public schoolman experiencing the world for the first time. The author notes that Johnson's early translation of Alexander Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse provided his first taste of fame. Quoting Thomas De Quincey, the author characterizes Johnson's Latinity as a "genial" organ of thinking rather than painful translation. The article describes the "Messiah" translation as possessing an "extraordinary impression of force," sounding like an original work where Johnson "beaten out the metal upon his anvil." The author contrasts Johnson’s freshman success with the "overwhelming attack of melancholy" that followed.
Pierpoint relays anecdotes regarding Johnson’s interactions with the Macdonald family during his tour of the Hebrides. He recounts Johnson’s blunt remark that Scotch broth was 'fit for pigs' and notes Boswell’s omission of the story. A second anecdote describes a bet won by Margaret Macalister, who sat on Johnson’s knee and kissed him after others claimed he was too ugly to be kissed.
Explores the antagonistic relationship between Johnson and Milton, arguing that Johnson was temperamentally and politically unsuited to biography the blind poet. Despite sharing traits like firm belief, love of freedom, and delight in classics, their core discord stemmed from their opposing views of liberty. Johnson, valuing law and order, constantly suspected Milton's sincerity and failed to appreciate his poetic works, famously claiming "none ever wished Paradise Lost longer than it is."
Encourages beginners to read Johnson's writings, arguing that his difficult style is a modern myth overshadowing the man's greatness and sincerity. It suggests starting with easier works like the elegy on his sheltered apothecary, Levet, or essays in The Idler. The example from Idler 8, a satire on the army's poor performance in the Seven Years' War, is cited as evidence of Johnson's delicious and humorous written style.
Very brief anecdote lifted from William Cole: "Soon after Garrick’s purchase at Hampton Court, he was showing Dr. Johnson the grounds, the house, Shakespeare's temple, &c.; and concluded by asking him, ‘Well, Doctor, how do you like all this?' ‘Why, it is pleasant enough,' growled the Doctor, 'for the present; but all these things, David, make death very terrible.'"
A query from Oxford asks if any information exists regarding a Mr. Repington as a friend or correspondent of Johnson. The querist notes that Repington's name does not appear in Boswell’s Life.
Italiano links a 1751 aviation experiment by Father Grimaldi to Johnson’s Rasselas, specifically the "Dissertation on the Art of Flying" in chapter VI. Writing in 1759 to fund his mother's funeral expenses, Johnson expressed the view that man might use wings for "swifter migration" rather than "tardy" ships and chariots. Italiano argues that the proximity of Grimaldi's experiments to Johnson's writing suggests the author's mind was impressed by contemporary attempts to solve the problem of aviation. The text mentions Boswell as the source for the circumstances of the book's composition.
Perhaps the following anecdote regarding Dr. Johnson's literary duel with the eccentric millionaire Charles Jennens, of Gopsall Hall, Leicestershire, may interest your readers.
Dr. Johnson and The New London Spy
Norman presents a pen portrait of Johnson discovered in The New London Spy (1772). The contemporary author describes Johnson as the Colossus of modern literature and a walking library who mistakenly walks in the kennel (gutter) instead of the footpath while absorbed in thought. Norman seeks to verify the authorship of the book and the identification of this extraordinary character.
CGV entry 9:81. On a character possibly representing Johnson in the 1772 work.
Simms provide biographical details for Dr. William Watts, a physician mentioned in correspondence between Dr. John Swan and Johnson. Watts was born circa 1725, served at the Northampton Hospital from 1757, and was instrumental in establishing a hospital in Leicester before his death in 1774. Simms also notes that Swan, a translator of Sydenham and friend of mid-18th-century literary figures, was buried in Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1768.
Simms provides biographical details for William Watts, a physician mentioned in John Swan’s correspondence with Johnson. The note outlines Watts’s career in Northampton and Leicester, including his role in hospital establishment. Simms also requests information regarding Swan, the translator of Sydenham, noting his religious character and the existence of his manuscript letter-books.
A Gilbertian, yet Serious, Presentment of Dr. Johnson
Shore’s brief notice characterizes Boswell as an inspired reporter but a despicable man. Shore attributes the success of the biography of Johnson to Boswell's lack of artistic selection and his willingness to record minute details with veracity regardless of personal shame. Drawing a parallel between Boswell and Samuel Pepys, Shore argues that both achieved immortality through their gifts for observation and their status as little men who pursued the great. Shore disputes the notion that Boswell possessed literary ability, claiming instead that Boswell functioned as a spy whose spirit was too mean to feel rebuffs or snubs. The account concludes that while Boswell’s vision of figures like Oliver Goldsmith remained warped, his proximity to Johnson provided the world with a living figure. Shore asserts that only those who have seen and heard a subject can truly capture their personality.
The publication of Archbishop Temple's Life revives the memory of Boswell. The Archbishop's grandfather, the Rev. W. J. Temple, of St. Gluvias, was Boswell's most intimate friend. One of the chief sources for the Life of Boswell is a mysterious volume published by Bentley in 1857 as the "Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple." They extend over the years 1758 to 1795, the year of Boswell's death. No clue is given as to the editor of the book, who has not done his work particularly well, but the genuineness of the letters is not questioned.
In Southwark Cathedral a stained glass window in honour of Dr. Samuel Johnson was on Tuesday afternoon unveiled by Dr. H. Montagu Butler, Master of Trinity, and dedicated by Dr. Thompson, rector and chancellor of the cathedral. The window is the gift of Mr. George Macaulay Booth, in memory of the Hon. Stephen Edmund Spring Rice, eldest son of Lord Monteagle, who died in 1900.
The following is a copy of a genuine autograph letter of Dr. Samuel Johnson. The original belongs to Lieut.-Col. Congreve, V.C., D.S.O., by whose kind permission I offer this transcript for publication. The letter is addressed to "Mr. Congreve of Ch: Church, Oxford, by London."
I have often pointed out the similarity between the late Dr. Samuel Johnson and myself. He was editor of The Idler, and so am I. He wrote all of his Idler, and I write only part of mine, but this does not show that he was a more industrious man than myself:
The Idler; an Illustrated Monthly Magazine
The very interesting document which follows belongs now to Lieut.-Col. Congreve, V.C., D.S.O., who kindly permits me to offer a copy for publication. It was written by Dr. Johnson to "Mr. Gilbert Repington" "in Peckwater Christ Church," "Oxford," "by London":
When Dr. Johnson expressed regret that John Wesley did not take more pains to collect evidence concerning the Wesley ghost, "What!" cried Miss Seward, with an incredulous smile, warranted by Boswell, "What, sir–about a ghost?
Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics
This article in the Boston Cooking School Magazine highlights Johnson’s reputation as a conversationalist, asserting he was at his "best after eating, and drinking tea." It cites Bishop Hendrix, who claims that Johnson’s table-talk, as reported by Boswell, exceeds his "heavy and sedate compositions" in fascination. The narrative uses Johnson as a primary example of how table-talk represents the "supreme flower of civilization" and a measure of enlightenment. While the article segues into a discussion of religious figures as teachers at the table, it establishes Johnson as the secular standard for "cheerful conversation at meals" and the exchange of ideas.
The Literary Lounger: Another Commemoration
Late again! Why did not somebody write to me a fortnight ago and tell me that Dr. Johnson was going to have a bicentenary? I never said I was good at dates, and I have always thought that the teaching of a mass of them to children was one of the many stupidities of our system of education. One should know roughly when great things happened and great people flourished, but to know precisely is a waste of memory.
This letter to the editor disputes the medical classification of alcoholism as a disease, instead labeling it "dipsophilia," a propensity or fondness akin to an addiction to golf or bridge-whist. Raymund Phillimore opens with an anecdote from Boswell where Johnson describes the poet Isaac Hawkins Browne drinking freely for thirty years while maintaining his genius. Phillimore argues that the legislature, rather than the individual, bears responsibility for drunkenness and suicides, as the State creates the conditions for addiction. He challenges the "inhumanity" of punishing inebriates with imprisonment and sarcastic public shaming, suggesting that social problems require remedies inconsistent with "the justice of the Middle Ages." Phillimore maintains that fierce harangues against drinkers lack merit and notes that "Christ himself drank grape juice in moderation." He advocates for sympathetic intervention and sequestered retreats instead of dungeons for those afflicted by an "insatiable appetite for alcoholic stimulation."
Marriott reviews Rowland Thirlmere’s Letters from Catalonia, using a well-known anecdote regarding Johnson to illustrate an artistic principle of definition through personal impression. The review opens by quoting Johnson’s remark about an acquaintance: "I wish to speak evil of no man, but I believe he's an attorney." Marriott argues that this subjective definition more clearly identifies the object than "pages of 'realistic' description" could. The article uses this Johnsonian precedent to praise Thirlmere’s ability to convey the essence of Spain through personal feeling rather than objective reporting. While primarily a travel review focusing on Catalonia and Spanish character, the piece frames its aesthetic argument around Johnson’s method of defining personality through the lens of individual prejudice and wit.
"If England," said Dr. Johnson, talking with Dr. Taylor in 1777, "were fairly polled, the present King" (George the Third) "would be sent away to-night, and his adherents hanged to-morrow. If, "he went on," a mere vote could do it, there would be twenty to one; at least, there would be a very great majority of voices for it. For, Sir, you are to consider that all those who think a King has a right to his crown as a man has to his estate, which is the just opinion, would be for restoring the King who certainly has the hereditary right, could he be trusted with it; in which there would be no danger now, when laws and everything else are so much advanced, and every King will govern by the laws.
Adcock provides a brief notice of J. Cuming Walters's John Buncle: A Literary Curiosity. He notes that Thomas Amory, the original author of John Buncle, is "no longer readable by mortal man" despite Hazlitt’s previous praise of the work as a masterpiece of humor. Adcock characterizes Amory as a "preposterous original" and draws a parallel to Johnson, arguing that both authors are significantly more interesting as personalities than as writers. He credits Walters with successfully distilling a long, laborious story into an amusing and interesting account of its author.
Adcock reviews S. C. Roberts's The Story of Doctor Johnson, describing it as a "deft, attractive" work that serves as an accessible entry point for those unfamiliar with Boswell's biography. He characterizes Johnson as a "great personality" whose books "languish in his shadow" because his individual character far outshines his literary output. Adcock asserts that Johnson, described by Boswell as a "John Bull," would have been out of tune with modern democratic spirits and likely would have revolted against the League of Nations. The review also quotes Johnson’s praise of British "epidemic bravery" to introduce a discussion of fallen soldiers in the Great War.
On the quotation on angling, "a worm at one end and a fool at the other," commonly attributed to Johnson. No such passage exists in Boswell or other traditional Johnsoniana, challenging the quote's credit to Johnson.
The Revival of 'The Arm of the Law' and 'Dr. Johnson' at His Majesty's Theatre
This brief theatrical capsule notice records the stage revival of the dramatic productions The Arm of the Law and Dr. Johnson at His Majesty's Theatre. The text accompanies a large cover feature photograph depicting two actors in costume, highlighting the physical representation of Johnson in a traditional eighteenth-century wig and heavy coat.
"I have an impression that the jibe about which inquiry is being made was due to the humour of Archdeacon Paley; but I cannot give chapter and verse of any record. The mot may have been for particular, not of general, application."
Dr. Johnson and Human Life Versus Property
This brief article highlights Johnson's humanitarian defense of William Dodd, an 18th-century clergyman executed for forgery. By reproducing Johnson's final letter to Dodd, the text underscores a distinction between property crimes and moral turpitude, advocating for a more "enlightened" judicial attitude toward the value of human life.
The Story of Doctor Johnson: Being an Introduction to Boswell's Life
The reviewer describes Roberts’s introduction to Boswell’s Life of Johnson as an excellent, 'full of plums' volume intended for those intimidated by the length of the original work. The text highlights Roberts’s skillful use of external memoirs to supplement Boswell’s narrative and approves of the specific chapter dedicated to the tour of the Hebrides. The review notes that the house in Gough Square now serves as a Johnson Museum.
In this letter to the editor Baumann expresses appreciation for a recent article on Johnson as a cynic. Baumann notes that both he and Johnson accept the wolfishness of man as a fact, though they ascribe it to different causes. Baumann does not dispute the conclusion that the essence of cynicism is disappointment with oneself. Baumann argues that if cynicism is defined by this disappointment, then ninety-nine men out of a hundred must belong to the company of cynics. The letter emphasizes a shared realistic view of human natural history.
Baumann characterizes Johnson as a realist and a disciple of the cynic school who demands proof for all human claims. Johnson views men and women as they are rather than as they wish to be seen, particularly regarding matrimony and the moral character of the sexes. Baumann identifies two unique notes in this cynicism: a deficiency in humor and a persistent belief in the supernatural. Johnson disputes innate virtue, comparing unrefined human nature to that of a wolf, and maintains a cynical respect for rank as a fact of social existence. The text explores Johnson's political silence, suggesting it stems from a contemptuous perception of public affairs as a scuffle for pensions. Baumann concludes that Johnson acts as an adjuster of values, using reason to challenge pretentiousness and "put the cork into the bottle of life."
Percy Fitzgerald on Dr. Johnson and Hannah More
The index entry is a mistake. Johnson did call Miss Monckton a dunce, but later retracted the insult politely. Evidence that he did not deem Hannah More "empty-headed" appears in his 1784 statement to the Essex-Head Club, where he lauded her, Carter, and Burney as three unmatched women.
Bensly disputes the attribution of an address to Mr. Urban in the 1748 Gentleman’s Magazine to Johnson. Comparing the verses to the stylistic sophistication of The Vanity of Human Wishes, Bensly argues that the poem’s weak couplets and derivative imagery from Pope suggest a different author. The study highlights a striking linguistic parallel between the poem's description of "Truth’s white radiance" and Shelley’s later imagery in Adonais, questioning a possible common source. Bensly notes Johnson’s known habit of correcting others’ verses while suggesting the address was likely a standard editorial contribution.
Isaacs explores the professional and social life of Charles Burney, positioning him as a central figure within the Streatham and London literary circles. The text highlights Johnson’s high regard for Burney’s character despite Johnson’s indifference to music. Isaacs contrasts Burney’s lack of a biographer with Johnson’s immortalization by Boswell, noting that Fanny Burney’s memoirs fail to achieve a similar impact. The narrative details the development of the History of Music and the influence of the Burney salon, where Johnson, Reynolds, and Garrick frequently interacted. Isaacs credits Burney with fostering a unique intersection of musical and literary culture in the late eighteenth century.
CGV entry 5:148.
J. T. F. queries whether eighteenth-century tea drinkers habitually inverted their cups in the saucer to signal they had finished. He cites Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, noting an 1773 incident where Johnson performed this action while muttering a Latin phrase. An editorial note references prior discussions and a Cumberland ballad that illustrates this specific social custom.
Fitzgerald's index incorrectly attributes Johnson's description of an "empty-headed" lady (p. 270) to Hannah More. Fitzgerald's own note (213) identifies the lady as Miss Monkton (later Lady Cork). The question mark after "empty-headed" in the index suggests Fitzgerald doubted the attribution he made.
On Johnson's alleged contempt for fishing. The author contends that the quote "a fool at one end" is a baseless sneer, noting Johnson's intention to write a biography of Walton, his written praise for The Compleat Angler as "A pretty book," and his observed delight in trout-fishing during his Highland tour.
CGV entry 11/7:2. Published in parts: January 1, page 18; January 29, page 98; and February 19, page 157.
Waugh opens by referencing Johnson’s belief that English prosody attained "highest possible perfection" in Pope. While noting Johnson’s "representative voice" for eighteenth-century technical care, Waugh argues his prophecy failed to foresee later poetic achieves. The text primarily examines the Imagist movement, challenging its "crude experimentalism" and "absolute negation of all form." Waugh finds the movement’s reliance on cadence over metre "sufficiently disconcerting" and disputes the success of Pound, Lowell, and H.D. in achieving their stated ambitions.
Rolleston analyzes the ailments of Samuel Johnson using Boswell's account and Wilson's 1784 necropsy report, titled "Asthma." The post-mortem examination revealed distended lungs with enlarged air-cells, consistent with emphysema, and an enlarged, strong heart with beginning aortic valve ossification, suggesting chronic hypertension and renal disease. The necropsy also documented a destroyed right kidney replaced by cysts, ascites, and an enlarged pancreas. Johnson experienced dyspepsia, deafness, impaired vision likely from tuberculous keratitis, and childhood scrofula. His convulsive movements were likely physical tics, correlated with a psychological compulsion to count steps. Johnson battled lifelong, severe melancholy and suffered an aphasic seizure in 1783, possibly uræmic in origin. His final illness involved asthma and dropsy, which Cruikshank treated by incising his legs to release fluid.
The text of an address before the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society of Glasgow, 21 March 1924.
Burrowes details Johnson’s persistent support for the oppressed Scottish Episcopal Church during his 1773 travels with Boswell. Johnson consistently refused to attend Presbyterian services, preferring private devotions or "English chapels" over "Presbyterian assemblies." He challenged the learning of the Presbyterian clergy, describing them as "not instructed themselves," and defended Anglican hierarchy against criticisms of "fat bishops and drowsy deans." Burrowes highlights Johnson’s emotional response to ruined ecclesiastical sites like St. Andrews and Iona, where Johnson famously noted that "piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." The study emphasizes that Johnson’s ecclesiastical loyalty rested on vital principles and a defense of truth rather than mere obduracy.
Jones's biographical narrative presents a detailed account of his academic career and personal relationships during his tenure as a Clark Scholar at the University of Glasgow. The article briefly mentions Johnson in the context of academic and historical comparisons, noting his stature as a well-known figure. Jones describes his interactions with influential teachers and peers, including Edward Caird and John Nichol, while chronicling his transition from divinity studies to a career in philosophy. The narrative emphasizes the intellectual atmosphere of the university and the personal developments that led to his eventual appointment as a lecturer at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Short query: "Could anyone tell me where I might obtain a copy of some verses written by Dr. Johnson on Sophia Streatfield, the beauty and classical scholar of Tunbridge Wells ('S.S.'), whom he met at Mrs. Thrale's at Streatham."
Bracey examines the extensive homiletic output of Johnson, emphasizing his role as a ghostwriter for "incapable or indolent divines" such as Taylor. Johnson claimed to have authored at least forty such discourses, viewing them as the absolute property of the purchasers. Bracey analyzes the Funeral Sermon for Johnson's wife, noting its "uncommon excellence" and "rational comfort," and identifies Johnson as the true author of the Convict’s Address attributed to the forger Dodd. The discussion focuses on the twenty-five sermons published posthumously by Hayes, which Bracey attributes to Johnson based on internal stylistic evidence and "sturdy common-sense." Bracey argues these works distinguish themselves from typical eighteenth-century "cold reasoning" through their "awful reality of beliefs" and "genuine emotion." The text concludes that Johnson used the pulpit vicariously to promote piety and "the old paths" of Christian dogma.
Markland investigates conflicting accounts of Johnson’s smoking habits, noting Boswell’s statement that Johnson never smoked despite holding the sedative influence of the pipe in high regard. The text contrasts this with a 1902 claim by W. A. Penn that Johnson 'smoked like a furnace.' Markland also identifies a misattribution in Fairholt’s Tobacco, which mistakenly credits poems by William Woty (writing as 'James Copywell') to Boswell.
CGV entry 11/10:9. See also replies in the same volume (June 5 and June 12), pages 279 and 302.
Whitley provides evidence concerning Johnson's smoking habits, citing a 1777 letter from the Rev. George Butt to David Garrick that mentions giving a letter to Johnson "to light his pipe by." Roe describes an early panel-portrait frame at the British Museum. Sparke clarifies the indexing of Tait's Edinburgh Magazine and provides historical context for tavern signs used by pilgrims. Other contributors discuss the history of white wine in the eighteenth century and the lineage of Scottish bishops.
St. Swithin disputes the suggestion that Johnson was a smoker, citing Boswell’s explicit statement that the sage 'never smoked.' St. Swithin references Croker’s edition of the Life, noting Johnson’s high regard for the habit's sedative influence despite his personal abstinence. The note records Johnson’s observation that smoking had 'gone out' of fashion and his curiosity as to why such a mind-preserving activity had declined.
Porter characterizes Johnson as a "High Church" traditionalist who asserted the necessity of apostolic succession and inherent ecclesiastical authority. Johnson’s religious practice included strict fasting on Good Friday, the observance of "fixed times and seasons for prayer," and a profound reverence for sacred places, often denouncing "the malignant influence of Calvinism" for ruining chapels. He defended Catholic practices such as auricular confession and prayer for the dead, famously stating he would be a "Papist" if not for his "obstinate rationality." Porter emphasizes Johnson’s charitable tolerance for varied denominations, yet notes he drew a "sharp line" against infidelity and Dissent, famously calling a girl who became a Quaker an "odious wench."
Questions the authenticity of a remark attributed to Johnson in Sala’s 1894 autobiography. Sala claims Johnson described St. Paul’s Cathedral as a "sundial in a grave" to signify its gloominess. The absence of this phrase in Hill’s index to Boswell suggests the quote is apocryphal. Note is made of Sala’s previous admission to inventing the famous Johnsonian motto regarding a walk down Fleet Street for the Temple Bar Magazine.
M.D. responds to Edward Clodd’s discussion of Johnson and "two sights," arguing that belief in a spiritual world transcends diseased mentality or credulity. M.D. contextualizes Johnson’s willingness to believe in Scottish Gaelic premonitions alongside classical precedents and modern theories of spiritual aphasia. While Johnson found evidence for such omens "not proven," M.D. highlights his remark to Boswell that frequent fulfillments led mankind to believe such events "not fortuitous." The text aligns Johnson’s intellectual curiosity with the supersensual visions of figures like Blake and Newman, suggesting that an openness to the spiritual world facilitates artistic and poetic existence.
On Johnson's perspective on the Scottish Highlands as presented in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, noting a contrast with his general antipathy toward Scotland. Maclean analyzes Johnson's observations on Highland hospitality, courtesy, customs (including whisky consumption and breakfast), and literature. The text then focuses on Johnson's analysis of the political and social issues, including his condemnation of the policies that lessened the chiefs' power, prohibited the national dress, suppressed the language, and led to emigration. Maclean concludes by highlighting the statesmanlike sagacity and humanity of Johnson's critique of the "systematic throttling" of the Highlands.
It would seem at first sight more politic, in addition to being more courteous, to extend the scope of this essay so as to embrace Dr. Johnson's attitude towards Scotland and the Scotch. But there is a real reason against doing so. There can be little pleasure for the Scot in dwelling on Johnson's attitude. The bearishness and boorishness of the attitude of the sage towards Scotland in general, and the rudeness of the manner in which he gave expression to his antipathy, are too well known to need recapitulation, and they are not made tolerable either by wit or by good sense.
Barnard identifies four medallic memorials of Johnson, noting a surprising scarcity of such items. The inventory includes the late 18th-century Birmingham halfpenny by Patrick, featuring a reverse with three lions rampant likely derived from the Ford family arms; the 1796 Lichfield halfpenny by Wyon; and a Birmingham farthing by Westwood. Barnard links these copper pieces to Boswell’s observation in the Life of Johnson regarding the "popularity of his character" evidenced by currency passing in the "neighbouring parts of the country." The list concludes with Durand’s 1824 universal series medal. Pinches suggests adding the 1864 Art Union of London medal, which depicts Bacon’s statue of Johnson.
Bensly clarifies the authorship of a description concerning a Roman hypocast visited by Johnson in 1774. He explains that the account appears in Duppa’s appendix to the Diary of a Journey into North Wales rather than within Johnson’s primary text. Bensly analyzes the inconsistent use of quotation marks in various editions, noting that while Croker originally attributed the note to Duppa in 1831, the passage was omitted from later nineteenth-century versions of the Life.
R. S. B. questions the omission of Johnson’s account of the Roman hypocaust in Chester from Hill’s edition of the Welsh diary. Noting that the description appears in Duppa’s 1816 edition, the author seeks clarification on why later editors excluded these observations. Additionally, R. S. B. inquires about the chronology of Johnson’s childhood illness, citing a reference in the Life regarding his father’s movements during Johnson’s bout with smallpox.
Markland clarifies the identity of the 'Rev. Mr. Butt' mentioned in Boswellian notes as George Butt, son of Carey Butt of Lichfield. Although Butt disagreed with Johnson’s literary estimates of Gray and Lyttelton, his Poems contain a dialogue dedicated to Reynolds where Garrick’s shade conversion of Chesterfield to an admirer of Johnson. Markland notes Butt attended Johnson’s funeral and composed this elegiac dialogue as a 'votive offering' after sitting up the preceding night.
CGV entry 9:83. A sonnet, appearing within the article "Dr. Johnson and the Rev. George Butt".
'Dr. Johnson' as Sam Weller's Genial Father
Scarsie identifies a potential misidentification in the third volume of Hill’s edition of Boswell’s biography. The frontispiece, labeled as a portrait of Johnson by Reynolds, bears a striking resemblance to Goldsmith rather than the intended subject. Scarsie queries whether a production error occurred in Hill’s edition, mistakenly substituting Goldsmith’s likeness for Johnson’s.
Bracey identifies an extensive circle of Catholic associates surrounding Johnson, challenging the assumption that the Penal Laws isolated the scholar from the Roman communion. Despite never meeting his neighbor Bishop Challoner, Johnson maintained intimate friendships with the clergy, notably Hussey of the Spanish Embassy and the Jesuit scientist Boscovich. Bracey details Johnson’s travels in France, where he frequented Benedictine and Austin nunneries, and his interactions with the Catholic laity, including Paoli, Nugent, and Piozzi. The text emphasizes Johnson’s "intense and burning conviction" and his practice of defending Catholic tenets against contemporary prejudice. Bracey highlights that Johnson’s first act in France was to pray at Notre Dame in Calais, arguing that through his "fugitive longings," Johnson belonged to the "soul of the Church."
Bracey recounts the collaborative effort between Johnson and his schoolmate Hector to produce the 1735 English version of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. Dictated by a bedridden Johnson to Hector, the work was an "Epitome" of Le Grand’s French translation of the Jesuit missionary’s manuscript. Johnson received five guineas for the task, which Bracey notes contains a preface displaying his "best manner" and "energetic expression." Bracey argues that this early engagement with Abyssinian history provided the nomenclature and setting for Rasselas and fostered Johnson's lifelong "appreciative and intelligent attitude towards Catholicism." The text tracks the book's bibliographic history from its anonymous Birmingham origins to its 1789 reissue by Gleig, which capitalized on the contemporary interest in the traveler James Bruce.
Rejects Johnson's critique that John Milton's Samson Agonistes is not a dramatic whole because its intermediate parts lack "cause nor consequence" for the catastrophe. Baum argues that once the action is understood as spiritual or psychological, the episodes—including visits from Manoa, Dalila, and Harapha—become relevant and advance the plot by intensifying Samson's remorse and strengthening his will. However, Baum concedes that the play is not a great tragedy, as its theme—a heroic recovery achieved despite moral weakness (Samson's "crime")—is hostile to the tragic spirit. The final reconciliation to God's just will, a Hebraic emphasis, ultimately blunts the sharp edge of Hellenic tragedy, which requires a failure in conflict with fate.
The Medical and Mental History of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Russell Brain analyzes Johnson’s clinical history and pervasive disorder of mind. Physical evidence suggests that Johnson’s lifelong infirmities, including childhood tuberculous glands and severe myopia, culminated in hyperpiesia and chronic heart failure rather than bronchial asthma. Brain interprets Johnson’s involuntary gesticulations, elaborate rituals, and periodical melancholy as symptoms of a severe obsessive-compulsive neurosis. Johnson used distraction of mind, specifically intricate mathematical calculations regarding the National Debt, to mitigate depression and a constant obsession with death. The analysis applies Freudian, Adlerian, and Jungian frameworks, labeling Johnson a thinking extrovert whose intellectual dogmatism masked deep-seated pessimism and a sense of guilt.
Carlton queries the origin of a passage attributed to Johnson by J. H. Lewis in 1816 regarding the universal utility of shorthand for men of erudition. The statement does not appear in Angell’s Stenography, despite the common attribution of that work's dedication to Johnson. Carlton seeks the specific location of these remarks within Johnson’s published works, noting their absence from standard editions.
Weale seeks the original manuscript or a specific date for an undated letter written by Johnson to Mrs. Christopher Smart circa 1758–1760.
Tillotson disputes Balderston’s claim that copyright law alone prevented Johnson from writing Goldsmith’s biography. He argues that after the 1774 Donaldson v. Beckett decision, the booksellers could have published Goldsmith’s poems legally by 1778. Tillotson suggests Griffin’s copyright or Johnson’s own "forgetfulness and laziness" in old age were the true causes. He concludes that Johnson could have published a separate life regardless of copyright.
CGV entry 10/2:10. On a work projected but not written.
Johnson and Queeny: Letters from Dr. Johnson to Queeny Thrale. From the Bowood Papers. Edited by the Marquis of Lansdowne
B. reviews Lansdowne's edition of thirty-three previously unpublished letters from Johnson to Queeny Thrale, discovered among the papers of the Viscountess Keith. The correspondence, which remained hidden for 150 years, reveals Johnson in a "new and very charming light" as a ward and counselor. B. notes that Keith, the last survivor of the Boswellian circle, jealously guarded these documents until her death in 1857. The letters contain "wise counsel" tailored to a highly educated young woman. B. commends Lansdowne’s helpful introduction and the volume's high production quality, which includes twelve engravings and a reproduction of the Reynolds portrait of Queeny Thrale. The find constitutes a significant addition to the Johnsonian corpus, filling a gap unrecognized by previous editors.
O’C. asserts that Chesterton possesses a superior sense of theater and diction compared to Shaw. O’C. highlights the portrayal of Johnson, claiming Chesterton provides the figure with "lots of things better than Boswell had the intelligence to report." Johnson’s physical and mental personality defines the work. O’C. promotes the drama for performance, citing its effective handling of Burke, Wilkes, and the American Revolution.
The Famous Dictionary of the Eighteenth Century
The 1755 Dictionary represents a monumental effort to deduce words from "Originals" and illustrate "significations" through literary examples. Johnson’s "sturdy independence" defines the work, exemplified by the transcription of his 1755 letter to Chesterfield, which labels the delayed patronage as something he "cannot enjoy" and "cannot impart." Definitions reflect Johnson’s idiosyncratic and scholarly method; "patron" is famously recorded as a "wretch who supports with indolence," while "goose" is noted for a proverbial "foolishness" of unknown origin. Technical terms like "business," "carriage," and "factory" receive elucidation through citations from Donne, Bacon, and Shakespeare. Johnson defines "history" with a focus on "dignity" and the "knowledge of facts." The volumes, characterized by "sonorous and dignified language," avoid a formal dedication, serving instead as a testament to Johnson's status as a formerly "struggling, eccentric hack writer" who achieved fame through solitary labor.
Leslie continues his analysis of the Malahide papers, detailing Boswell’s triumphant interviews with Voltaire and Rousseau. The text describes Boswell as pedantic in Holland, princely in Germany, philosophic in Switzerland and amorous in Italy. Leslie highlights Boswell’s animal spirits during his 1765 Italian tour, including his failed intrigues with various countesses and his juvenile character as a chameleon. The review identifies Lord Auchinleck’s surprise and anger at Boswell’s hypochondria and his study of Italian, which the father likened to Arabick.
Lloyd reviews Chesterfield's Letters, arguing that time and Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary have been unduly harsh on Chesterfield. Lloyd suggests Chesterfield's error was merely a tactical one in belatedly sponsoring the Dictionary, not a failure to appreciate Johnson's greatness, which Chesterfield saw only in its "roughnesses of demeanour." The text praises the Letters for their urbanity, candour, and "vast fundamental generosity," emphasizing Chesterfield's consistent belief that happiness and ease of mind are the primary goals. Lloyd discusses Chesterfield's thoroughness and his insistence that "The Graces, the Graces" must accompany all knowledge for social utility, a concept fundamentally opposed to Johnson's less polished character.
Samuel Johnson の Milton 及び Shakespeare 批評
First Editions of Samuel Johnson: An Important Exhibition and a Discovery
Hazen and McAdam document a Yale exhibition featuring over one hundred Johnsonian first editions and manuscripts, including Johnson's last prayer. They report the identification of an anonymous 1742 translation of Crousaz's Commentary as Johnson's work, resolving a confusion that misled Boswell. The discovery of a 1739 issue reveals that Cave reissued unused sheets after a three-year delay. The authors examine manuscripts showing Piozzi's editorial methods, including the blotting of proper names. Exhibited items include Johnson's annotated copy of Bacon's works and the first American edition of Rasselas. The exhibition illustrates the recovery of Johnson's reputation as a writer, which Boswell's biography had eclipsed for a century by focusing on his conversation. These findings shed light on Johnson's early years as a London hack writer.
CGV entry 1/4:32. A description of a Yale exhibition and discussion of the discovery of Johnson's translation of Crousaz.
With Silent Friends: Dr. Johnson and Mr. Boswell in the Hebrides
It is impossible to over-state the importance and the interest of Boswell's Journal of "a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson" "(Heinemann; 21s.), now published for the first time from the original Mss.
Cooper re-evaluates Johnson's celebrated dictionary entry for "oats," arguing it was a truthful statement of contemporary usage rather than a malicious insult to the Scottish nation. He identifies Johnson's sources, particularly Philip Miller's Gardeners Dictionary and Arbuthnot’s medical writings, showing the entry was scholarly and condensed rather than facetious. Cooper highlights Boswell’s role in perpetuating the entry’s status as a "taunt" by misquoting it and overlooking Johnson’s subsequent qualifiers. He suggests Johnson’s own memory of the intent behind the definition may have been influenced by later public controversy.
Dr. Johnson and the Religious Problem (Addendum)
Dr. Johnson on Schools and Schoolmasters
Boas explores Johnson’s complex and often "morbid antipathy" toward the teaching profession, despite his firm support for corporal punishment and classical education. The author recounts Johnson’s own failures as an usher at Market Bosworth and as a proprietor of the Edial academy, which he fled for London alongside Garrick. Boas argues that while Johnson respected the importance of the office, his "impetuous" genius and lack of fondness for children made him temperamentally unfit for the daily drudgery of instruction.
Panorama: 'A Man, Sir, Should Keep His Friendship in Constant Repair'
How well we know those friends who, offering one an uneatable meal or a fireless room, remark: "i knew you wouldn't mind, you are such an old friend.”
On Johnson’s biography.
Poetry and Marxism: Three English Poets Take Their Stand
It is about time that poets spoke up for themselves. And to-day the professional monopoly of critics is being seriously threatened by the invasion of poets into the jealously guarded field of criticism. They seem to be increasingly taking over the function usually assigned to the critic. Poets possess an intimate understanding of the difficulties of the creative process and the special requirements and limitations of their craft. Who has a better right, who is better qualified, to speculate on the arcana of aesthetics? In the past poets waged wordy wars in behalf of their convictions. Indeed, one could tentatively advance the thesis that creative writing is an indispensable preparation for the proper exercise of the critical function. Of the leading English critics—dryden, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Pater, Matthew Arnold—only two were not also poets. But the fusion of poetry and criticism that is taking place to-day is of an original, if not altogether unprecedented, kind. Poets who have turned critics are interested not so much in appreciation, or even technique, as in the problem of values. Their major task is to achieve a valid philosophical outlook, a coherent system of beliefs
In this letter to the editor Robertson analyzes Boswell from the psychopathic side, arguing he suffered from Cyclothymia. Robertson notes that Boswell’s periodic attacks of morbid depression were accompanied by converse emotional phases of manic elation. Symptoms of this elation include self-display, impairment of judgment, and loss of self-control regarding wine and women. Robertson observes that Boswell’s manic conduct does not represent the true Boswell, who possessed a fine intellect and clear vision. Robertson concludes that Boswell’s behaviors were periodic displays of an emotional disorder alternating with depression.
Pottle identifies the birth date of James Boswell the younger as 16 September 1778, citing the Scots Magazine. While Boswell’s correspondence with Johnson indicates the family visited Auchinleck during this period, Pottle argues the birth likely occurred at James’s Court, Edinburgh. He bases this conclusion on the documented animosity of Lord Auchinleck toward Boswell’s wife, which presumably precluded her residency at the family estate for her confinement.
"Where and when in 1778 was he born? The 'Dict. Nat. Biog." v. 438 does not answer this question."
Three New Legal Ballads by James Boswell
Pottle identifies and reproduces three previously uncredited legal ballads by Boswell. The verses lampoon prominent Scottish judges, particularly Kames, focusing on his alleged eagerness for convictions and his literary ambitions. Pottle argues these unpublished jovial works survived through oral tradition among advocates. The ballads provide insight into Boswell’s early career in Edinburgh and his satirical perspective on the Scottish judiciary during the Douglas Cause.
Cochrane entry 675.
Details a lecture by Robert Hutchison regarding Johnson’s "inexhaustible concern in all human affairs," specifically his medical knowledge and social circle. Johnson maintained close ties with distinguished physicians like Heberden, Brocklesby, and Lawrence, though he also supported "irregular" practitioners like Levet. He assisted James in compiling a medical dictionary and favored "surprisingly modern" views, such as teetotalism and condemnation of polypharmacy. Despite a "feline malevolence" noted by some, Johnson provided refuge for the "lame, the halt, and the blind." The account records Johnson’s Stoicism during his final illness, where he scarified his own legs to relieve dropsy, exhorting his surgeon to "cut deeper."
In a letter to the editor MacCallum challenges Gould’s depreciation of Johnson, arguing that Johnson’s unprecedented and unique gifts as a conversationalist acted as a magnet for Burke and Reynolds. MacCallum disputes the charge that Johnson was a snob or brutally and coarsely rude, citing Chesterton, Macaulay, and Carlyle to present Johnson as an overpowering genius and a Prophet to his people. The text maintains that Johnson’s conversation was far better than his books and that Boswell, guided by intensity of affection, produced the model biography.
Clark challenges the prevailing admiration for Johnson, characterizing him as a contradictory figure marked by intellectual brilliance and social brutality. He explores Johnson's physical infirmities, uncouth habits, and domestic arrangements with Piozzi. Clark highlights the symbiotic but volatile relationship between Johnson and Boswell, focusing on the latter's role in preserving the former's conversational legacy. Clark contrasts contemporary eyewitness accounts from Burney and Reynolds with the eulogies of Scott and Cowper. While acknowledging Johnson's vast information, Clark disputes his social dominance, labeling him an "educated hog" whose fame rests on "what has been written about him" by Boswell.
CGV entry 10/6:188.
Alexander challenges Boswell's enthusiastic appraisal of London, characterizing the work as a limited imitation that rarely reaches the artistic height of Juvenal's Third Satire. Comparing specific passages, Alexander identifies a lack of prosodic grace in the stiff heroic couplets of Johnson and notes a failure to replicate the "delicacy of touch" and "graphic picturing" found in the original Latin. The analysis highlights how Johnson substitutes Juvenal's realistic, concrete details—such as the poor furniture and "unlettered mice" of a Roman attic—with "colorless generalities." While acknowledging that Johnson occasionally improves upon the original through lyrical departures or sincerity of feeling in the "anti-Grecian tirade," Alexander concludes that the imitation suffers from "heavier touch" and "diffuseness." The preference of Boswell and Pope for the poem reflects shifting generational tastes rather than the work's inherent success as a translation.
Bracey welcomes Everyman's "charming edition" of Johnson’s last major work, noting that while many admirers of the "national character" find his earlier essays and pamphlets "alien" or "covered with the dust of decades," the Lives remains an exception. He characterizes the text as an "entertaining narrative" marked by "shrewd and profound remarks" and "vigorous and acute criticism." Bracey emphasizes that Johnson here employs a prose of "simplicity" and precision that has remained unsurpassed in the English language. Unlike the "sonorous and rhythmic" language of his other travel books and the "philosophical trifle" Rasselas, the Lives maintains an intrinsic charm independent of Johnson’s fame.
Watson queries the existence of a paper titled "R. Dodd and Dr. Johnson," possibly published around 1910–11.
On the only known copy of Dodd's "Occasional Papers," ghostwritten by Johnson.
CGV entry 25:25.
Bensly demonstrates Johnson’s familiarity with Walton through numerous citations in the Dictionary. He notes Johnson’s tendency to attribute quotations to Walton that originated from sources cited within the Angler, such as Dennys’s poetry. Bensly references a Piozzi manuscript note confirming Johnson recommended Walton to Peter Garrick. Additionally, he analyzes Johnson’s Latin translation of Walton’s verses, comparing the meter to Buchanan’s and suggesting an emendation to ensure correct scansion.
A very brief query: "In what English review, within the last twenty years or less (but I should say circa 1910-11) did a paper with the above title appear?"
Mathew recounts Johnson’s involvement in two major Old Bailey cases: the 1769 murder trial of Baretti and the 1777 forgery conviction of Dodd. The narrative describes Johnson appearing as a character witness for Baretti and later authoring numerous petitions, letters, and a final sermon to save Dodd from the gallows. Mathew notes that despite Johnson's benevolence, his Toryism led him to defend the "spectacle" of public executions at Tyburn against modern innovations.
CGV entry 5:192. On Johnson's efforts on behalf of Baretti and Dr. Dodd.
Correction: A New Portrait of Dr. Johnson
This brief correction identifies an error in the transcription of an inscription appearing in a previous article by Augustine Birrell concerning a portrait of Johnson. The note clarifies that the transcription, provided by an individual identified as F. A. H., incorrectly identified the relationship between the witnesses of the anecdote. It provides the corrected text of the inscription found on the back of the portrait, which records that the story of Johnson's sitting was told to a maid, Ann Hughes, by the mother of the current owner. This correction ensures the genealogical and historical accuracy of the provenance related to the 1784 Roberts sketch of Johnson.
Birrell introduces a previously unpublished pencil sketch of Johnson made by James Roberts in 1784. The portrait was executed during Johnson's final visit to Oxford while he stayed with William Adams, Master of Pembroke College. An inscription on the reverse of the sketch records an exchange between Johnson and the Master’s daughter, Sarah Adams, whom Johnson nicknamed "Slim." When asked to sit for the likeness, Johnson requested that she stand before him to make him "look pleasant," remarking that he was otherwise a "sour-looking old man." Birrell notes that the sketch captures an "excessive amiability" in Johnson's expression, which he attributes to the sitter’s affection for the University and the company of Sarah Adams. The article also includes a reproduction of a wax medallion of William Adams by Isaac Gosset the Elder.
CGV entry 8:47.
Wyndham Lewis commemorates the anniversary of Johnson’s death in 1784 and the subsequent publication of Boswell’s biography. He humorously identifies Margaret Boswell as the "real hero" of the book for enduring Johnson’s habits. The article describes Johnson’s "agreeable" tendency to hold candles upside down over carpets, his lack of passion for clean linen, and his physical mannerisms while eating. Lewis recounts Mrs. Boswell’s singular flash of temper when she observed that she had seen many a bear led by a man, but never a man led by a bear. The vignette portrays Johnson as an "ideal guest" only in his ability to bully, vociferate, and keep Boswell up late into the night.
Just off Leicester Square, in inconspicuous St. Martin Street, a hoarding may to-day be seen enclosing a desolate plot of land heaped up with rubbish. There, until a short while ago, stood an ancient house, with lofty recessed windows and broad oaken staircase, carved chimney-pieces and painted ceilings, panelled walls and old-fashioned powdering-closet. Thither in the eighteenth century came time and again Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and many another Immortal; there night after night the greatest singers and violinists of the age filled the modest music-room with melody; and there Samuel Johnson delighted to read and talk and drink tea, and to show a side of his character unsuspected by Boswell—for in St. Martin Street at least there was nothing left of the Bear but his skin, and to those who dwelt there the Sage was mild as summer, full of social good humour, gay as a boy, sweet-tempered, anxious to please. That old house was the home of the Burneys, the happy talented family of which the great Lexicographer was wont to say, ‘I love all that breed, and love them because they love each other' ; while the head and father of the household was Dr. Charles Burney, and of him Johnson wrote admiringly, ‘I much question if there is in the whole world such another man as Dr. Burney.' When in 1776 Charles Burney, Doctor of Music and Fellow of the Royal Society, received from his bookseller the first volume of his gigantic General History of Music, he was in the enjoyment of an almost European reputation.
Bertram disputes Johnson's "ridiculous aphorism" that painting "can illustrate but cannot inform." The text argues Johnson was "insensible to painting" and that "form, apart from literature, meant nothing to him." Bertram examines modern "re-embodiments of Johnson" who search for literary meaning in visual art. The review highlights Redon’s mystical forms, the Gordons' artistic comments, and Nash’s "exquisite drawing" as evidence that painting concerns itself "purely with expression, and not at all with ratiocination."
"Painting, sir," said Dr. Johnson, "can illustrate but cannot inform."
Huxley identifies "unreadability" as a failure of communication rather than a lack of authorial interest. He acknowledges that while Dr. Johnson and Addison once lauded the epic works of Sir Richard Blackmore, such texts have become impenetrable to the modern mind. Huxley defends Johnson against contemporary charges of being "unreadable," asserting that Johnson's strength lies in his "concrete particular" observations and his "adamantine" shield against cant. He suggests that the modern rejection of the classics—ranging from Milton to Austen—stems from a "fear of the labyrinthine flux" of reality, which drives readers toward simpler, more "consoling fictions" rather than the rigorous, complex truths found in Johnsonian thought.
Cairns examines the devotional life and theological convictions of Samuel Johnson, arguing that his faith was the dominant force shaping his moral and intellectual existence. The chapter investigates the specific nature of Johnson's "fear of death" and spiritual "scrupulosity," interpreting these anxieties as the result of a rigorous sense of Christian responsibility rather than psychological infirmity. Cairns emphasizes Johnson’s commitment to the High Church tradition, his meticulous observance of religious fasts, and the profound influence of William Law’s Serious Call on his early spiritual development. The analysis highlights Johnson's frequent resort to prayer and his belief in the necessity of rational struggle within the religious life. By contrasting Johnson’s private meditations with his public moral essays, Cairns demonstrates how a pervasive sense of divine presence informed Johnson's social ethics and his profound compassion for the marginalized.
Reports on Tinker’s investigation into the Wedgwood medallion of Johnson. Tinker concludes that Flaxman modeled the portrait from life rather than from existing engravings. The original model remains in the Wedgwood Etruria Museum, and jasperware copies were previously available through agents. The Johnson Society of London’s 1932 dinner volume features a print of the design.
Hanes provides a psychological and medical study of Johnson, diagnosing his gesticulations and eccentricities as symptoms of a nervous malady known as a tic. The article disputes Boswell’s suggestion of St. Vitus's dance, noting that Reynolds correctly observed Johnson could inhibit these motions through volitional control. Hanes identifies motor elements like facial grimaces and vocalizations alongside psychical tics, such as Johnson's obsessive need to touch posts or enter doors with a specific foot. The study links these behaviors to a retarded development of volition and a spoiled childhood under Michael Johnson. Hanes also classifies Johnson's voracious eating and tea drinking as dipsomania. Despite these defects, Hanes emphasizes that Johnson’s fine humanity and intellectual power led the greatest men of his age to regard him as their master.
Omai, First Polynesian Ambassador to England
Powell provides an approving review of Thomas Blake Clark’s account of Omai, a young Polynesian brought to England by Captain Cook in 1774. Omai became a "triumphant vindication" of Rousseauism for the English intelligentsia, exhibiting the "conduct of a gentleman" through innate self-confidence and adaptability. Despite his skepticism toward the "noble savage" doctrine, Johnson was "finally won over" by Omai’s social poise. Powell notes Omai was extensively "entertained by Mrs. Thrale" and painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds before his 1776 return to Tahiti. The review highlights Omai’s subsequent decline into a "wastrel and parasite" and his eventual death by 1788.
McEwen’s approving review of the London Journal characterizes Boswell as a tireless and often grubby man of pleasure. The review focuses on Boswell’s residence in London from 1762 to 1763 and disputes Pottle’s suggestion that Boswell converted to Roman Catholicism during an earlier 1760 visit. McEwen maintains that Boswell’s interest in Catholicism stemmed from a reaction against Presbyterianism rather than theological conviction, noting that Boswell felt merely romantic ideas when entering a Romish Chapel. The review praises Boswell’s uncanny ability to transcribe conversations with accuracy and highlights the first meeting between Boswell and Johnson. McEwen describes Johnson as a man of most dreadful appearance and notes that Johnson eventually offered Boswell his hand in friendship. While acknowledging Boswell’s vanity, selfishness, and promiscuity, McEwen argues that an innate innocency endeared him to contemporaries. The review concludes that Boswell’s keen eye and busy pen preserved vivifying details that other observers typically ignore.
A Letter from Lord Hailes to James Boswell in Holland
Carnie identifies an unprinted 1764 letter from Dalrymple to Boswell during the latter's studies in Utrecht. Writing primarily in French to improve Boswell's linguistic proficiency, Dalrymple provides a "recipe" for mental tranquility involving daily prayer and study. The correspondence details Dalrymple’s support for Boswell’s projected Scottish dictionary, offering etymological samples for terms like "jockteleg" and "lorimer." Carnie contextualizes the exchange within the extant Boswell-Hailes papers at Yale and Newhailes.
Cochrane entry 436.
Hovey explores the psychological depth of the astronomer episode in Johnson's Rasselas, suggesting the character represents Johnson as a "suffering neurotic" and a transcript of his own "dread fantasies." Hovey notes similarities between Johnson's melancholy and that of his astronomer, including feelings of guilt, anxiety, self-aggression, and sexual disturbances. The astronomer's cure, through distraction and company, mirrors Johnson's own self-applied methods. Hovey argues that Johnson's insights into neurosis are comparable to modern psychiatry, including the importance of anxiety and the power of a magnified conscience. He concludes that Johnson was pointing backward to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy rather than forecasting Freudian psychology.
CGV entry 18:68. A reading of 'Rasselas'.
Duffy reviews R. W. Chapman's monumental three-volume edition of Johnson's correspondence, which includes letters from Piozzi. He notes that Chapman devoted thirty years to the work, providing an extensive text supported by nine appendixes and seven indexes that clarify content for the reader. Duffy emphasizes that these letters show Johnson untinged by the temperament of intermediaries like Boswell. He observes that Johnson appropriately altered his style based on his correspondent, using a friendly, less formal manner for humble people and a unique flavor for Piozzi. Duffy characterizes Johnson's prose as close-knit, muscular, and graceful, devoid of affectations. The review highlights the profundity of Johnson's religiousness and his massive common sense, placing these volumes among the most distinguished works on Johnson's circle.
William Cumberland Cruikshank: A Link with Samuel Johnson
This biographical note details the career of William Cumberland Cruikshank and his professional relationship with Johnson. Cruikshank, an anatomist and assistant to William Hunter, attended Johnson during his final illness. Johnson referred to the surgeon as a sweet-blooded man and supported his unsuccessful application to the Royal Academy. The article quotes correspondence from Johnson to Joshua Reynolds and Cruikshank himself, illustrating Johnson's involvement in his own medical treatment. It specifically describes Johnson's resolute defiance of pain when he used a lancet to cut deeper into his own legs to relieve dropsical swelling, believing Cruikshank's incisions were too tender. The account notes that Johnson remembered Cruikshank in his will with the gift of a book.
Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Mabbott defines arrack as a spirit distilled from coconut juice, citing Bailey’s Dictionary (1766). He describes a traditional punch recipe involving lemons, sugar, water, and nutmeg. Mabbott asserts that Johnson possessed personal knowledge of the substance, rendering contemporary dictionary definitions or instructional books unnecessary for his understanding. He also provides the correct phonetic emphasis on the second syllable of the word.
Sarason identifies references to Johnson in the work of Croft, specifically regarding free discussion and legal advocacy. The text also catalogs Johnson’s extensive reading in prose fiction, including works by Bunyan, Richardson, Fielding, and Burney. Evidence from the Dictionary and Boswell's Life confirms Johnson's familiarity with diverse authors such as Raleigh, Bacon, and Swift. Sarason explores Johnson's engagement with seventeenth-century literature and contemporary biography.
Dr. Johnson on Macbeth: 1745 and 1765
Sherbo compares Johnson's anonymous 1745 pamphlet, Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with his notes in the 1765 edition of Shakespeare to investigate the evolution of his criticism. He finds that 27 of the 46 original notes show change, ranging from omission to the addition of a phrase, and that Johnson adds about 85 new notes; overall, roughly two-thirds of the 1765 Macbeth commentary was compiled from these two earlier sources. Sherbo discovers that Johnson’s work on the Dictionary accounts for the omission of early emendations and strengthens new readings by providing a superior understanding of Elizabethan usage. For instance, Johnson retracted several "unfortunate" emendations after realizing words like "owe" could mean "possess" in the sixteenth century. Johnson’s rejection of his own and Warburton’s emendations highlights a growing distrust of "conjectural emendation" and a shift toward caution in conjecture. Sherbo finds little evidence of heightened aesthetic insight, noting the lack of new critical analysis beyond the concluding "general observation" and a reliance on lexical authority.
Surprised by Joy: Dr. Johnson at Ranelagh
Davie's 12-line poem comments on the unexpected delight Johnson found at Ranelagh, which provided a grateful relief from his usual request for "sober pleasure or unvarnished grief." The poem highlights the apparent contradiction that, when Johnson sought to name that joy, he conceived The Vanity of Human Wishes. The poem's title references Wordsworth and alludes to a suggestion that Johnson's first visit to Ranelagh was the genesis of his famous poem.
Dr. Johnson Quotes One of His Amanuenses
Sherbo identifies a poetic quotation attributed to Macbean, one of Johnson's amanuenses, within the first edition of the Dictionary. Supporting the seventh definition of "Scale," the verse lacks a published source, suggesting Macbean may have inserted his own work or that Johnson included it out of personal affection. The lines' removal from the 1773 revised edition supports the theory of their irregular inclusion. Sherbo notes this discovery adds to the sparse record of contemporary citations in the Dictionary.
Swansea and Brecon examines Johnson’s "deep personal devotion" to the Anglican liturgy, noting his early memorization of collects and his High Church convictions. Johnson viewed the clerical office as sacred, emphasizing the "daily service" and pastoral duties over "lax jollity." The study explores Johnson’s private devotional habits, specifically his "awful reverence" for annual Communion and his composition of English prayers characterized by a "dignified and simple style." Johnson rejected extemporary prayer, asserting he knew of "no good prayers but those in the Book of Common Prayer." Despite his mastery of Latin, Johnson used his mother tongue for his own *Prayers and Meditations*, seeking a "healthful mind" and "a will resign'd" before the Creator.
Popular Lecture: Sir Russell Brain on Dr. Johnson
Brain examines Johnson’s neglected identity as a scientific enthusiast and patient. While Boswell overlooks Johnson's scientific literacy, Hawkins and Thrale document his chemical experiments and grasp of physics. Johnson maintained a "limitless curiosity" regarding natural history, monitoring biological growth and studying the anatomy of the kangaroo. Clinically, Johnson managed cardiovascular incompetence and dyspnoea with opium while acting as an "unqualified practitioner" for others. Brain disputes Boswell’s diagnosis of St. Vitus's dance, aligning with Reynolds’s view that Johnson’s extraordinary gestures were voluntary "bad habits" rather than involuntary neurological disorders. Despite a disordered mind characterized by a consciousness of sin and severe depression, Johnson’s "virile intelligence" enabled the verbal discrimination required for his dictionary.
Aus dem Tagebuch der 'Grossen Reise' (II)
Aus dem Tagebuch der 'Grossen Reise' (III)
Auf der Grossen Reise. Berlin und Potsdam (2. Teil)
Reflections on Samuel Johnson: Two Recent Books and Where They Lead [review of Johnsonian Gleanings, Part X, by Aleyn Lyell Reade, and Ursa Major, by C. E. Vulliamy]
Liebert contrasts two contemporary books on Johnson: Reade's monumental Johnsonian Gleanings, Part X, a synthesis of facts concerning Johnson's life through 1740; and Vulliamy's Ursa Major, a highly erroneous book of opinions. Liebert contends that the essential key to Johnson's aggression and complicated social adjustment lies in the deep conflict established in his early life between his superior intellect and his lifelong physical defects (infirmity, disfigurement, and poverty). This duality compelled him to seek intellectual triumph and led him to find peace and anodyne only in the "humble social circle" of the afflicted (Levett, Williams), where he was not challenged to compete. Liebert maintains Johnson was essentially a protestant or radical against the currents of his age, whose politics were ultimately those of a realist focused on practical social good.
A short query: "'Madam, you're a noun,' snapped Dr. Johnson at a woman of small education who had vexed him. 'Sir,' she rejoined, 'I've never in my life been so insulted.' This is only the gist of the thing. Can any one quote me the anecdote correctly and give me the origin? I'm almost sure that it's not in Boswell."
Schmitz corrects the Boswellian narrative regarding the publication of Blair’s sermons. While Boswell implies Johnson’s intervention was essential for the book’s acceptance, Schmitz presents a 1776 letter proving Blair had already secured a publishing agreement with Kincaid for £100 before Strahan or Johnson were consulted. He clarifies that Johnson’s praise did not initiate publication but instead encouraged Strahan and Cadell to join the venture, which eventually became a significant commercial success for all involved.
John Paradise: Friend of Doctor Johnson, American Citizen and Russian 'Agent'. An Episode in Anglo-Russian Relations
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
Watkins disputes Krutch's neo-classical, Hobbesian analysis of Johnson's imagination, arguing that Johnson’s definition of wit as "discordia concors" in the Life of Cowley provides a "striking adumbration" of Coleridgean theory and later Romantic theories rather than mere neo-classical orthodoxy. Watkins notes that while Johnson generally preferred "natural" wit and remained committed to Dryden and Pope, his "rigorously philosophical" consideration of the Metaphysical poets as yoking "heterogeneous" ideas by violence reveals a "heightened perception" similar to Coleridge’s theory of imagination. The text emphasizes Johnson's use of "combination" over "reconciliation" and highlights his "exasperated admiration" for writers like Browne and Donne, suggesting Johnson recognized a "sinew" and "charged thought" in their work. Watkins concludes that Johnson sought to "graft the metaphysical stem on the neo-classical root," and notes that the Dictionary contains a "surprising range" of quotations from Donne, proving a deeper engagement with the Metaphysicals than usually acknowledged.
Dr. Johnson and the Law Lectures of Sir Robert Chambers
Krishnamurti provides evidence supporting McAdam’s theory that Johnson collaborated on Chambers’s Vinerian law lectures. By comparing Chambers’s 1767 inaugural Oxford lecture with his 1798 presidential address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Krishnamurti identifies verbatim repetitions of distinctive passages. He argues that Chambers reused these effective sections because he recognized them as Johnson’s work, relying on their stylistic authority to mask his own professional timidity.
International Journal of Clinical Practice
H. A. H. praises McNair’s study of Johnson’s legal interests and his "bitter" regret for not pursuing a career at the bar. The review details Johnson’s relationships with Scott, Chambers, and Jones, while noting his lack of enthusiasm for Mansfield. H. A. H. explores how Johnson assisted Chambers with Vinerian lectures and discusses the legal problems Boswell referred to Johnson for advice.
Die Aufgabe des Schriftstellers besteht darin, Unbekanntes zu lehren oder bekannte Wahrheiten durch seine Dichtergabe zu fördern; den Geist mit neuem Lichte zu erhellen und dem Blicke neue Bilder Zu erschließen, oder Gewandung und Stellung vertrauter Dinge so zu ändern, daß er ihnen frische Anmut und stärkere Anziehungskraft verleiht; er soll die Gefilde, die der Geist bereits durchstreifte, so mit Blumen bestreuen, daß dieser versucht ist, umzukehren und eines zweiten Blickes zu würdigen, was er in der Eile nur flüchtig geschaut.
Quelques aspects de l'esprit de dévotion anglican au temps de Samuel Johnson
Brosseau explores Johnson's Anglican devotion, emphasizing his constant aspiration for virtue, characterized as patient, vigilant waiting for God. In Rasselas, the quest for happiness fails to yield the secret to a happy life, leading the characters to meditate on eternity and mortality in the catacombs. Johnson's faith is a recourse against the absurdity of life and fear of annihilation, grounded in Revelation and the belief in the soul's incorruptible nature. The analysis highlights the importance of active social duty over monastic retreat in Johnson's ethic, his deep sense of sinfulness, and his unshakeable faith in Christ's merits.
Johnson Spiritual Anxiety: Johnson, Samuel Moral Essays
Byrd examines the "lifelong spiritual anxiety" that destabilized Johnson’s piety and religious confidence. Using Paul Tillich’s analytic categories from The Courage to Be, the study identifies Johnson’s struggle with anxieties of guilt, fate, and meaninglessness. Byrd highlights Johnson’s review of Soame Jenyns’s Free Enquiry as a unique instance where his "stern decorum" breaks into a "vision of surrealistic cruelty" and shocking hostility toward the "irresistible injustice" of human suffering. The text argues that Johnson’s "daily terror" of damnation and his perception of the "vacuity of life" anticipate modern Christian existentialism, drawing parallels to Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. Johnson’s religious life is depicted as a heroic but tortured effort to reconcile a skeptical, empirical mind with the "ironhanded and inscrutable" demands of divine revelation, finding meaning only through a strenuous act of faith.
Aspects de l'idée du bonheur chez Samuel Johnson
Ducrocq analyzes Johnson's conception of happiness, rooted in personal suffering, melancholy, and the fear of insanity. Johnson first demystifies the idea of happiness, asserting that perfect contentment is unattainable, a theme explored in Rasselas's failed Happy Valley. He rejects both Stoicism and Epicureanism. The core of his practical morality is rational, virtuous action against the void of life and the paralysis of idleness, focusing on the pursuit rather than the end. The Christian faith, while providing a sense of purpose and the ultimate goal of eternity (as for Princess Nekayah), simultaneously intensifies the anxiety of uncertainty regarding salvation, making life fundamentally tragic.
CGV entry 11/9:80. On the treatment of happiness.
Lobo's seventeenth-century missionary manuscript underwent significant formal transformations before reaching Johnson. While Lobo wrote a "free-flowing narrative" journal, Le Grand's 1728 French translation converted it into a scholarly "relation historique" supplemented by sixteen dissertations and numerous letters. Johnson’s 1735 English version, or "epitome," took "great Liberties" with the text. He translated some parts exactly, contracted others, and omitted over 150 pages of supplementary materials to create a shorter octavo volume focused on adventure. Johnson’s preface emphasizes Lobo’s "Veracity" while attacking the "partial Regard" of Jesuit missionaries. These shifts reflect how political and religious climates, alongside publisher decisions, reshaped a single travel account for different national audiences.
The 'Penury of English Biography' Before Samuel Johnson, 'biography in the Eighteenth Century', Ed. J. D. Browning (New York: Garland, 1980), Pp. 112–127
A Study of the Paint Layers of a Portrait of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A
James Boswell, Compassionate Lawyer and Harsh Criminologist: A Divided Self
Cochrane entry 684. Contrasts the two sides of Boswell's legal persona: his compassion for the downtrodden in practice, and his harsh theoretical support for shocking public executions, which he morbidly attended to confront his own fear of death.
Dr. Johnson and Horace Kephart Among the Highlanders
Compares the experiences of Johnson and Kephart among the Highlanders of Scotland and Southern Appalachia, respectively. Kephart sought to find the eighteenth century in his Appalachia trip, believing the mountain folk lived as their Scottish ancestors did. Both travelers offered broad generalizations about the mountaineers' distinct dialect, customs, and isolation. They agreed that a difficult environment, not ancestry, shaped manners. However, they disagreed on Highland morality and poverty, with Johnson viewing Highlanders as thievish because of poverty, while Kephart found his subjects honest and not given to begging.
'Dear Charley': A. Edward Newton's Letters to Charles Grosvenor Osgood
Luria and Brewer conclude the Osgood-Newton correspondence, focusing on Newton's later literary output and his role in the 1920s-30s Johnsonian community. Newton describes the composition of his four-act play, Doctor Johnson, which dramatizes scenes from Gough Square to Bolt Court. The letters record Newton's firsthand observations of the 'fascinating drama' involving the Boswell manuscripts, including Isham's acquisition of the Malahide papers and Tinker's 'enigmatic' reactions to the find. Newton offers critical assessments of Boswell's journals, finding the London records 'distressing' and 'pathetic.' The text notes Newton's presidency of the Johnson Society of Lichfield and his final scholarly contributions, which position Johnson as an 'antidote' to academic 'emotional atrophy.'
McCracken reviews the first monograph on the critical commonplace connecting the two authors. The review faults the book for offering little new knowledge and presenting a simplistic view of Johnson as an orthodox moralist, largely recycling previously published material. While the book provides sensible observations on Austen's novels through Johnsonian themes like self-deception, McCracken argues the over-insistence on similarities prevents a more interesting analysis of how two fine minds use similar material in different ways.
First Impressions: Myths and Realities of Italy
Samuel Johnson Breakdown and Recovery in Middle-Age: a Life-Span Developmental-Approach to Mental-Illness and Its Cure
Johnson, Dryden, and the Wild Vicissitudes of Taste,' 'the Unknown Samuel Johnson', Ed. John J. Burke and Donald Kay (Madison: Wisconsin, 1983), Pp. 54-75
Samuel Johnson 1709-84: Manuscript Exhibit
Rogers's mixed review of the British Library bicentenary exhibition finds the "small, secluded placement," "too stuffy" setting, and "scholarly atmosphere" failing to evoke the "existential muddle" or "vital personality" of Johnson’s life. Presented as a "casebook" with an orderly display highlighting "academic achievements," the exhibition follows a "new critical orthodoxy" that banishes the "unrespectable self" known to contemporary readers in favor of the "dignity of a past master." Rogers notes the presence of few personal objects, such as the amulet from Queen Anne and Thrale's teapot, but observes a lack of "sense of talk," his "famous conversation," or his "last days." The review concludes the display fails to capture the "living and breathing Johnson" who continues to awaken laughter.
A Fragment of a Letter by Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson Usage of the Word Literary
Samuel Johnson and Dryden's Contempt for Otway
Word-Formation in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
Stein investigates Johnson's theory and practice of word-formation, drawing from his Plan of a Dictionary and the Dictionary itself. She argues that the systematic study of word-formation, which Johnson treats under "etymology," facilitates language understanding. Johnson, following Wallis, primarily focuses on suffixation in the Preface. In the Dictionary, however, he is more original in his treatment of compounding, where he is concerned with recording and analyzing compounds, particularly those whose meaning is not easily derivable from their components. Stein notes Johnson's inconsistent terminology for prefixes, reflecting a lack of clarity in distinguishing bound and free morphemes at the time.
Fanny Burney's Contribution to English Vocabulary
Waddell demonstrates Burney was a keen observer of language, praised by Johnson for her writing talents and discernment. Burney's writings contain the first recorded uses of compounds like living-room, school-girl, and dinner-party. She also coined verbs such as alphabetize and diarize. Burney viewed Johnson as her mentor, using his example as a precedent for her own word formations like agreeability and formations with the negative prefix un-.
Rochester and the Issue of Deathbed Repentance in Restoration and 18th-Century England: an Examination of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and His Lifes Parallels with Samuel Johnson
Walker links Rochester's 1680 conversion to the increasing tolerance of deathbed repentance in the eighteenth century. He highlights how Johnson and Wesley shared this "more tolerant position" compared to seventeenth-century Anglican hardliners. Walker cites Johnson’s 1777 sermon for William Dodd, where Johnson argues God sees "the fruit, in the blossom," as the era's definitive statement. He notes that the peaceful deaths of skeptics like Hume eventually devalued the polemical use of Rochester’s repentance.
Dr. Johnson, Joseph Warton, and the 'Theory of Particularity,' Dispositio, 4 (October 1979), 163–188
不朽的'苦力'——塞缪尔·约翰逊传略 [The Immortal 'Coolman': A Brief Biography of Samuel Johnson]
“Samuel Johnson's portrait”
英国十七、八世纪讽刺诗三家四章 [Three authors and four chapters of English satirical poetry from the 17th and 18th centuries]
Disputes Macaulay's claim that Johnson did not willingly discuss affairs of state by summarizing Johnson's political views, often using his own words. Brookes analyzes Johnson’s conservative English character, his animosity toward Whigs, and his speculative Jacobitism, noting that this loyalty yielded to the practical benefit of a royal pension. Brookes also examines Johnson’s contentious attitudes toward Scots and Presbyterians, contrasting them with his defense of the Irish and his high admiration for Burke. The discussion concludes by highlighting Johnson's belief in subordination and his critique of "cant."
鮑士威文稿及其他 [Bao Shiwei's Manuscripts and Others]
<正> 以“瓊孙傳”聞名於世的英國十八世紀作家鮑士威((James Boswell,1740—1795),直至1927年前,一般英國文学喜爱者多半只知道他是一个杰出的傳記家。文学史家自然也提到他的另一部著作——“遊海勃瑞地斯諸島日記”——並且把它看作“瓊孙傳”的一部分;研究十八世紀后叶欧洲民族独立运动的歷史家也着眼於他的“科西加島紀实”;版本家和註疏家也留意蒐集他的書柬和文稿,为“瓊孙傳”作脚註。不过总的講來,鮑士威始終只是“瓊孙傳”的作者:人以傳名,傳以人(瓊孙)聞,如此而已。 [James Boswell (1740-1795), the 18th-century British writer best known for his biography of Johnson, was, until 1927, largely known to British literature enthusiasts only as a distinguished biographer. Literary historians naturally mention his other work, "The Travels in the Highlands," and consider it part of "Johnson"; historians studying the European independence movements of the late 18th century also focus on his "Corsica Chronicle"; bibliographers and commentators have also collected his letters and manuscripts to provide footnotes for "Johnson." However, generally speaking, Boswell was always simply the author of "Johnson": he became famous through the biography, and the biography became famous because of him (Johnson), nothing more.]
Just two hundred years ago, on April 15th, 1755, there was published, in two large folio volumes, one of the greatest of English books, A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson, A.M., issued, after the manner of the time, by a group of shareholding book-sellers, or, as we should call them, publishers, the Knaptons, the Longmans, Hitch and Hawes, Millar, and the Dodsleys. Such a single-handed work can hardly ever have been seen. The French forty Immortals of the Academy had taken forty years over their dictionary of the French language; Johnson proposed to take three (he actually took about seven) over his, a comparison which provided him with material for a sportive equation of an Englishman to a Frenchman being as three is to forty multiplied by forty, i.e., 1,600.
Author's abstract: "Though Samuel Johnson considered Mrs. Hannah Pritchard, the tragedienne, 'a vulgar idiot' in private life, he admitted that on the stage she 'seemed to be inspired by gentility and understanding.' This 18th century paradox can be paralleled in our own time and in all fields of art."
Dr. Hitschmann and Dr. Ernest Jones are the oldest living exponents of Freud's work. Hitschmann very early became interested in the nature of creative processes viewed from the psychoanalytic frame of reference. He brought to this method a high quality of scholarship and artistry. This is clearly pointed out in an excellent preface by Dr. Sydney Margolin. The great men studied by Hitschmann through the psychoanalytic method include Schopenhauer, Samuel Johnson, Boswell, and several others. His writings concerning great men, dating from about 1911 through 1951, have been translated into English and collected in this volume. The individual essays make fascinating reading, and, although one may decry the lack of data on which conclusions were made and the strictly psychoanalytic point of view, nevertheless, the total volume makes for fascinating and constructive reading.
McRae examines various historical attempts to refute Bishop Berkeley's philosophical idealism, which asserts esse est percipi ("to be is to be perceived"). Boswell, impressed by the theory's ingenuity, told Johnson that refuting Berkeley was impossible. Johnson offered a refutation by performing a pragmatic action, striking his foot against a stone and declaring, "I refute it thus." McRae suggests Johnson’s refutation is a proof of the contrary thesis through action, but its meaning is subject to too much speculation. The essay categorizes Johnson's approach with Kant's, as neither attended to Berkeley's premises.
Variations on a Theme by Doctor Johnson [Poem]
Allen uses Johnson’s comparison of a woman preaching to a "dog’s walking on his hind legs" as a thematic foundation. The poem expands this imagery to elephants and seals, characterizing such efforts as an "innocent parody" of masters. Allen links this "ungainly harness" to Johnson’s own public penance as an "awkward bear" in Lichfield Square.
Dr. Johnson and Cookery: Some Aspects of Anglo-French Culinary Relations in the Eighteenth Century
Hatte Dr. Johnson Recht? Oder Kommentar Zum Verhaeltnis Zwischen Progressiven Theorien Und Der Wirklichkeit Des Fremdsprachenunterrichts
"Was Dr. Johnson Right? Or, a Commentary on the Relation Between Progressive Theories and the Reality of Foreign Language Teaching."
Bradbrook explores the extensive stylistic and moral influence of Johnson on Austen’s novels. Moving beyond superficial lexicographical references, Bradbrook argues that Austen’s prose embodies a "negative capability" derived from Johnson’s Idler and Rambler essays. The study traces thematic parallels in their treatments of fortitude, marriage, and feminine intelligence, noting how Mansfield Park directly aligns with Johnsonian moral discipline. While Austen occasionally satirizes Johnsonian pomposity through characters like Mary Bennet, she ultimately endorses his stoic ethics and emphasis on the regulation of the imagination by reason.
CGV entry 10/4:32. See also the same journal, July 1960, page 271.
Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society of the Northwest
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
Johnson possessed a sophisticated, intuitive numeracy characterized by a drive for quantification and the effective use of data. Examining Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Life, Craig identifies Johnson’s grasp of statistical principles, including data collection accuracy, sampling reliability, and the distinction between relative and absolute comparisons. Craig concludes that Johnson’s dictionary serves as a linguistic census, reflecting a mind naturally apt for quantitative thought.
Bulletin de l'association Guillaume Budé
Un Inspirateur Des Juvenilia de Napoléon: l'anglais James Boswell
Dupuy explores the influence of Boswell’s Account of Corsica on the young Napoléon Bonaparte. Dupuy notes Napoléon requested the Histoire de Corse in 1783 while at Brienne, indicating an early interest in the island's political history. Dupuy details Boswell’s 1764 meeting with Rousseau, who directed his attention to Corsica and Paoli, leading to his 1765 tour. Johnson's assessment of Boswell’s work is cited, valuing the personal Journal over the factual History. Dupuy argues that Boswell's enthusiastic, Plutarchian portrayal of Corsica as a nation of heroes directly inspired and shaped the themes and anecdotes in Napoléon’s Juvenilia.
Serving a Life Sentence: Eric Partridge 1894–1979
F. G. L. identifies an apparent contradiction between Johnson’s and Macaulay’s interpretations of Seneca. He notes that Macaulay, in his essay on Bacon, claims Seneca was reluctant to admit philosophers ever promoted the "well-being of mankind." Conversely, in a paper on letter writing, Johnson quotes Seneca as stating that ancient wisdom considered "what is most useful as most illustrious." F. G. L. queries which of the three—Seneca, Johnson, or Macaulay—is guilty of inconsistency or misstatement.
Greene's letter to the editor and subsequent comment on correspondence argue against the prefix "Dr." or "the Doctor," labeling such irrelevant handles for a writer of Johnson's eminence. Greene maintains the title is often misunderstood by the public as implying pomposity and notes that Boswell's use of the title may have stemmed from a provincial relish for status or an unconscious wish to "downgrade his father figure." The text points out that while contemporaries referred to Goldsmith as "Doctor" and figures like Swift held honorary doctorates, modern scholars do not retain these titles; "Johnson" is sufficient, following the precedent of Milton or Wordsworth. Greene denies that Johnson delayed the Dictionary's publication solely for the M.A. degree, citing a letter to Warton indicating no delay was necessary. Additionally, Greene challenges the uncritical use of "Augustan age," noting that Johnson, Walpole, and Goldsmith did not apply it to their own time and that its application to the whole eighteenth century is historically shaky. Greene suggests abandoning these expressions might help specialists attract wider enthusiasm.
Entre l'arcadie et l'utopie, James Boswell et la Corse
Gury examines the idealized portrayal of Corsica in Boswell’s Account of Corsica (1768). Gury notes Boswell’s famous appearance as a Corsican mountaineer at the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, leveraging the popularity of his book and Paoli’s cause. The text depicts Corsica as an Arcadian island with virtuous, Spartan-like patriots led by the Plutarchian hero Paoli. Gury argues Boswell’s narrative goes beyond classical allusions to present an Utopian vision, seeing Corsica transform from an Arcadian existence to a model, rational republic under Paoli’s enlightened leadership. This vision, Gury suggests, allowed Boswell to escape his own mediocrity and embrace the figure of the free, enlightened shepherd.
A very brief note: "The stylistic affinity (especially in conversation) of Dr. Johnson and Miss Austen was referred to by L. March Phillips in an article 'Modern Thought and the Renaissance.'"
Holroyd names Hugh Kingsmill's Samuel Johnson (1933) as his favorite biography of Johnson, praising its simple and succinct writing and shrewd orchestration of material. Kingsmill's originality was in demonstrating how much of Johnson lay outside Boswell’s view and in re-adjusting the balance in favor of Mrs. Thrale, from whose friendship Johnson derived his chief happiness in later years. Holroyd notes Kingsmill wrote with sympathy and severity but without sentimentality. Kingsmill's sources included Johnson's Prayers and Meditations, letters, and reminiscences of those who knew him, like Thrale and Hawkins.
Houston queries the source of a phrase used by Boswell in a 1768 letter to John Johnston. While discussing a potential romantic interest in Miss Gordon of Stair, Boswell claims to be "in love beyond the Salt Sea." Houston seeks to identify whether this expression originates from a contemporary song or a Jacobite ballad. The inquiry highlights Boswell's self-characterization as an "extraordinary man" amidst his search for a suitable marriage match.
Cochrane entry 443.
Lord Moran and James Boswell: The Two Diarists Compared and Contrasted
Hubble compares the diary-keeping techniques of Boswell and Lord Moran, noting their reliance on nightly memorandums and exceptional memories. The text explores the "Boswellian method" used to capture the ipsissima verba of Johnson and Churchill. Hubble emphasizes the shared trait of social courage, noting how Boswell willingly acted the fool to provoke Johnson's "conversation for victory." The analysis discusses the diarists' lack of shame and their drive to link daily records to great historical events. Hubble contrasts Boswell's hero-worship of Johnson with Moran's more critical professional gaze. The study concludes that both writers achieved immortality by revealing their own complex characters alongside those of their subjects.
Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, and Gingell's Dilemma
The Non-Aristotelian Nature of Samoan Ceremonial Oratory
Johnson examines the historiographical efforts of Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis to rehabilitate the reputation of Horace Walpole, comparing Walpole’s intellectual stature and posthumous legacy to those of Johnson and Boswell. The article notes that while Johnson dismissed Walpole as a collector of curious little things and Walpole viewed Johnson as a saucy Caliban, Walpole lacked a contemporary protector like Boswell to preserve his intellectual corpus against charges of triviality. Johnson argues that Walpole possessed a third-rate intellect compared to Johnson, primarily because Walpole remained supremely egotistical and shrank from the open ideological combat that characterized Johnson’s public defenses of his opinions. While Lewis attempts to present Walpole as a conscious historian of his time, Johnson maintains that Walpole’s mind delighted in conglomeration rather than synthesis, substituting catalogues for conceptualization. The article concludes that the Yale edition of Walpole's correspondence succeeds where Walpole failed, usefully creating the most informative record of the eighteenth century through Lewis's exhaustive annotations and editorial perspective.
Johnson's defense of Shakespeare's violation of the unities in his Preface refutes, rather than summarizes, the arguments of predecessors like Farquhar and Kames. Farquhar and Johnson share the view that drama is not an illusion of reality, but Farquhar's justification is that the audience's supposition makes the charge of improbability irrelevant. Kames, however, maintains that the audience experiences a "waking dream," and the goal of representation is to hide itself and impose the illusion of reality. Johnson's unique and central position is that dramatic representation is never mistaken for reality and the audience is "always in their senses," so violating the unities violates an illusion that never existed.
CGV entry 19:113. See also replies by John Hardy and Gunnar Sorelius in later issues.
King's approving review of Mary Hyde's work describes the editing of a previously unpublished journal by Piozzi. The book focuses on the twelve children Piozzi bore to her first husband, Henry Thrale, and uses other primary sources to create a "continuous fabric" of 18th-century middle-class life. King notes the book's particular interest to medical historians, as it details the illnesses, diagnoses, and treatments affecting the Thrale children, Piozzi's mother, and Johnson. The narrative reveals the emotional strains of the household and the constant "imprint of Samuel Johnson" on the social milieu, highlighting his "many great strengths and equally great weaknesses."
Koelb explores the transition of "tragedy" from a descriptive to an evaluative term, noting that critics often use it to signal literary excellence. He observes that Samuel Johnson denied Shakespeare’s plays were tragedies "in the rigorous and critical sense," viewing them instead as a distinct kind of composition that mingles "seriousness and merriment." For Johnson, the generic label was secondary to the author's ability to achieve his purpose. Koelb contrasts this with later critics like Bradley, who used "tragedy" as a term of praise to elevate Shakespeare’s mature works to the status of masterpieces.
Lustig requests information for the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell regarding two specific references. The first concerns the identity of Logie, an individual described by Desmoulins as an intimate associate of Johnson with knowledge of Johnson's amorous inclinations. The second inquiry seeks the origin of the song A bottle's the mistress I mean, which Inglefield reportedly sang following the 1782 wreck of the Centaur.
Mark Akenside, M.D., and a Note on Dr. Johnson's Asthma
Explores the medical career of the poet-physician Akenside and his influence on Johnson's self-treatment. Details Johnson's 1777 "great experiment" with ipecacuanha, a remedy Akenside advocated for "constrictions of the breath." Records Johnson's failure to find relief from doses up to twenty grains, later concluding that Akenside deserved "no credit." Attributes Johnson's symptoms to pulmonary emphysema and chronic bronchitis rather than the spasmodic asthma Akenside described. Notes Johnson later consulted Brocklesby regarding Akenside’s "vomit" therapy during congestive heart failure in 1784, though his physicians ultimately preferred squills. Mentions Akenside died in Milton's bed, which an admirer had given him.
McHenry analyzes the medical evidence depicted in a wax tavern scene by Samuel Percy to date the work to 1783 or later. This dating relies on the physical representation of Johnson's legs, which show significant swelling consistent with the heart failure and dependent edema first recorded in June 1783. McHenry chronicles Johnson's respiratory distress, bouts of angina pectoris, and the "remarkable event" of February 1784 when Johnson experienced a spontaneous diuresis of 20 pints. The narrative details Johnson's relentless battle with dropsy through the use of squills, purgatives, and his insistence on painful scarification. Despite the lack of mention of Percy in Boswell or other standard sources, McHenry identifies the wax portrait as a unique example of medical art that captures Johnson's "bloated carcase" during his final decline.
McSweeney discusses Johnson's view of biography as the most useful form of writing, focusing on domestic life and common humanity, a function largely taken over by the novel in later centuries. The essay reviews Bate's 1977 biography, Samuel Johnson, as a modern psychological work that emphasizes Johnson's inner life and mental struggles, a necessary corrective to Boswell's focus on table talk, which exaggerates Johnson's conservatism and neglects his humanitarianism and early poverty. Bate's psychoanalytic approach illuminates Johnson's fundamental health and sanity, making his victory over affliction inspiring. The essay also addresses the separation of "literary biography" and "literary criticism."
Computer-Assisted Study of Sight and Sound Image Pattern in Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes
Philologus explores a curious parallelism between a statement by Johnson in Boswell's Life and a review by Macaulay. Johnson claimed authorship of two speeches ascribed to Lord Chesterfield, noting that critics had compared one to Demosthenes and the other to Cicero. Macaulay later attributed a similar comparison regarding William Pitt to the historian Tindal. The author queries whether the simile originated with Tindal or was falsely fathered upon him.
Style in Biography: A Bibliographical Study
DOI 10.1093/oxfordjournals.alcalc.a043977
James Boswell (1740–1795): 'No Man Is More Easily Hurt with Wine than I Am'
Rix focuses on Boswell's journals and letters to detail his alcoholism. There was a strong family history of affective illness, with Boswell himself suffering lifelong bouts of depression, often seeking relief in wine to achieve a momentary "warmth of heart" or to escape uneasiness and guilt. This excessive drinking led to significant domestic violence, poor professional performance as a lawyer, and physical injuries, ultimately contributing to the failure of his career. Rix discusses psychological interpretations, suggesting Boswell's drinking was a compensation for feelings of inferiority and worthlessness, likely secondary to a diagnosed psychopathy and manic-depressive illness, and notes that he died at age 55 from a condition over-represented in alcoholics.
Fanny Burney's First Letter to Dr. Johnson
Sambrook presents the hitherto unpublished manuscript of Burney's first letter to Johnson, dated November 16, 1779, describing it as an illuminating episode in the "Streatham Farce." This social game involved "flattery on the one side and nicely calculated modesty on the other." Johnson, who called Burney his "pupil" while claiming to care little whether his pupils wrote to him, used teasing remarks and persistent efforts through Thrale to coax a response. The letter reveals Burney’s "modest agitation" and "self-important fear" that she would hear him exclaim, "A Silly little Baggage! who cares whether she writes or no?" Citing her "horror of writing to you when I knew I had nothing to say,," Burney apologized for her silence and playfully invoked his "irony gathering" in his eyes regarding "Letter Scriblers" and his famed contempt for "letter scribblers." Sambrook concludes the exchange illustrates the "arch and confident manner" Burney used to handle Johnson. Johnson, pleased with her compliance, replied with a "kind Word," telling Thrale to "tell Burney that now she is a good girl, I can love her again."
CGV entry 5:375.
CGV entry 10/6:375.
'Roving Among the Hebrides': The Odyssey of Samuel Johnson
Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands is constructed as a modern Odyssey, using the phrase "roving among the Hebrides" to evoke a sense of mythic voyage and misty distance. By framing the narrative with water crossings and drawing on Homeric allusions, Johnson transforms Scotland into a metaphor for isolated, uncultivated humanity. He contrasts the barrenness of the land with the few lights of civilization—individuals who, through culture, assert the dominance of mind over circumstance and hasten to "mingle with the general community."
Sorelius adds a brief update to a prior discussion concerning Johnson's critical sources. Sorelius notes having been anticipated by Sarup Singh, who previously identified Johnson’s specific intellectual debt to Dryden regarding the dramatic unities.
Copious Without Order, Energetick Without Rules'. Dr. Johnson and the Present State of Japanese: Reflections on the New Nihon Kokugo Dai-Jiten
Takayanagi evaluates the twenty-volume Nihon Kokugo Dai-Jiten by drawing extensive parallels to the lexicographical legacy of Johnson. Identifying the new Japanese dictionary as a milestone comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, Takayanagi uses Johnson's 1755 Preface to illustrate the "grinding travail" and social anonymity of the lexicographer. The discussion contrasts the stable linguistic environment of the Victorian OED with the "fluctuating and somewhat chaotic state" of post-war Japanese, a situation Takayanagi likens to the "wild exuberance" and "confusion to be regulated" that Johnson encountered in eighteenth-century English. While acknowledging that modern linguistics makes Johnsonian-style "authoritative" prescriptions difficult, Takayanagi argues that this new Japanese work successfully provides a "tolerably regulative frame of reference." The article concludes by quoting Johnson's reflections on the inherent imperfections of any "dictionary of a living tongue," emphasizing that despite inevitable omissions, the massive intellectual accumulation in the Nihon Kokugo Dai-Jiten represents a "tremendous" achievement in cultural history.
Four English Writers Look at the American Revolution
Author's abstract: "Explores the attitudes of Edmund Burke, Richard Price, Samuel Johnson, and James Boswell toward the American question."
Note: Is Chesterton in the House? or Dr. Johnson?
Samuel Johnson and the Concrete Universal
Williams reconciles Samuel Johnson's critical preference for the general in poetry with his extensive use of concrete imagery in his work, including The Vanity of Human Wishes and Lives of the Poets. He argues that particulars function as essential illustrations to make general truths vivid, thus uniting "pleasure with truth." Johnson's criticism consistently supports the principle that imagery must serve the dominant idea, making poetry, for him, a concrete universal.
The Emergence of the Self: James Boswell in His Journals
Woodward argues that the journals of Boswell signify a monumental shift in Western consciousness toward individualism and the "intangible individuality of the personal life." By comparing Boswell with contemporary figures like Rousseau, Woodward illustrates how these journals move beyond the "static and inward-looking" nature of Eastern civilizations and the "monolithic timelessness" of medieval Europe. The article traces the linguistic development of self-awareness through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, noting how Boswell’s "perceptive candour" and "shifting variety of individual feeling" anticipate modern psychological fragmentation. Woodward emphasizes that while Boswell fruitlessly craved consistency, his "mercurial intelligence" transformed his personal spiritual dilemmas into a "portent of that fragmentation of the Self" characteristic of the modern age.
Cochrane entry 400.
Wright commends Chapin’s succinct elucidation of Johnson’s religious beliefs, noting that it provides a just representation of his subject’s general nature and historical milieu. The book is most valuable as an appreciation of Johnson’s religious thought rather than as a systematic analysis of his distinct religious experience. Wright suggests that Chapin effectively uses hypothesis and comparison to revise some existing scholarly opinions, particularly regarding Johnson’s relationship with Booth and his attitude toward Hobbes. He concludes that the book offers a sensitive portrait of Johnson’s faith, freeing readers from Boswell’s characterization.
Two extracts from the Edinburgh Baptismal Register, one for David Hume and the other for James Boswell. The piece notes Hume’s change of his family name from Home and includes a passage from Hume's will concerning a playful dispute with John Home over Port and Claret. The Boswell extract records James's birth and baptism in 1740. It concludes with an anecdote regarding James Boswell's son, Sir James, who broke the entail of his property due to an erasure on the legal document.
Dr. Johnson and John Dryden as Satirists
Samuel Johnson on Swift: the 'Life of Swift' and Johnson's Predecessors in Swiftean Biography, Journal of British Studies 7, no. 2 (1968)
Dr. Johnsonにおけるロマン的要素 = Romantic Elements in Dr. Johnson
Akiyama identifies latent romantic elements within Johnson’s predominantly neoclassical framework, arguing that these traits provided the vital energy for his intellectual activities. Although often viewed as a sedentary Londoner, Johnson’s travels to the Hebrides and Wales after receiving his pension reveal a "romantick fancy" and a profound sensitivity to the sublime and "awe-inspiring" aspects of nature. In literary criticism, Johnson’s defense of Shakespeare’s violation of the unities of time and place demonstrates a belief in the "magical power" of the imagination to transcend reality. Akiyama notes that while Johnson cautioned against the "dangerous prevalence of imagination" for ethical reasons, he simultaneously valued "original invention" and the "poetical vigour" found in the works of Milton, Thomson, and the metaphysical poets. This analysis suggests that Johnson’s "restless search for novelty" and his subjective mental freedom align him with the precursors of the Romantic movement.
CGV entry 10/6:331. In Japanese, with a synopsis in English on pages 289–290.
コウルリッジの形而上詩批判: その覚え書 [Coleridge's Criticism of Metaphysical Poetry: A Note]
Dr. Johnson の形而上詩人論 = Dr. Johnson’s Critique of the Metaphysical Poets
Dr. Johnson on the Metaphysical Poets.
Correspondance entre James Boswell et Pascal Paoli (1780–1789)
In this letter to the editor, Mellers responds to Greene regarding Johnson and opera, stating he has known and used the definition of opera as "an Exotick and Irrational Entertainment" for over fifty years, supposing it was in the Dictionary. Mellers defends the quote, challenging the notion that such a description discredits Johnson; he asserts instead that it is brilliant and entirely accurate for eighteenth-century heroic opera. Resenting Greene's imputation of ignorance, Mellers notes his own extensive experience as a teacher and reader of Johnson's "voluminous writings" and maintains an admiration for the author equal to Greene's.
Daiches challenges the use of the term graduands in reference to Johnson. Daiches argues that Johnson actually obtained his honorary doctorate years ago. Daiches questions whether the use of the gerundive form, implying he is still about to graduate, stems from an ignorance of Latin grammar.
Scanlan reviews Nicholas Hudson’s examination of Johnson’s intellectual debt to minor writers and contemporary debates, in which Hudson details Johnson's indebtedness to a wide range of largely forgotten eighteenth-century writers, philosophers, and divines. The book presents Johnson as a courageous "consolidator" of thought rather than an original thinker, suggesting he frequently assented to authority and avoided a reliance on his own judgment. Hudson's method involves summarizing intellectual debates and aligning quotes from Johnson's writings and conversation with excerpts from contemporary sources to demonstrate this dependence on the book world. While Scanlan criticizes the inclusion of extensive unexciting prose and the safe scope of the research, he highlights Hudson’s analysis of Johnson’s defense of the Spanish Inquisition as a successful revelation of the subtle and honest thinking behind such blunt conclusions. Scanlan concludes that by showing Johnson's dependence on the wider intellectual landscape of his time, the book successfully "de-Johnsonizes" the Age of Johnson.
The Diverse Doctor Johnson: Among Other Things, a Lawyer's Lawyer
O'Connell and O'Connell examine Johnson’s lifelong expertise in law, characterizing him as an 'unofficial practitioner' and 'lawyer’s lawyer.' The authors detail Johnson's collaboration with Chambers on the Vinerian Lectures, noting how the project aided Johnson’s recovery from depression. The text traces the evolution of law from religious authority to secular administration, quoting Johnson on the 'clerical order' as the early custodians of justice. The authors highlight Johnson’s pragmatic legal briefs for Boswell, particularly regarding 'vicious intromission,' and his insistence on legal certainty. Johnson is presented as a subtle conservative who viewed subordination and hierarchy as protections for the weak against plutocratic scramble. The article also explores Johnson's economic acuity, his opposition to slavery, and his belief that 'decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.'
显贵荫庇与文学发展——试论中英文学史上一种类似的现象 [The patronage of the elite and the development of literature: A discussion of a similar phenomenon in the history of Chinese and English literature]
John Cannon on James Boswell whose great work is 200 years old this week.
Philip Gove's Formative Years: From Academe to the Editorship of Webster's Third
Morton examines the career of Philip Gove, editor of Webster's Third New International Dictionary (W3). Gove's lexicographical views were shaped by Trench's demand for a "dictionary of words only" and the history of Merriam dictionaries. Gove, who studied Johnson's illustrative quotations, removed nonlexical material like biographical and geographical appendixes from W2 to accommodate new entries, leading to public outcry. He established the highly descriptive and controversial single-statement defining style. Gove successfully delegated authority by curtailing the Editorial Board's participation.
John Wilkes, Esq., and Dr. Samuel Johnson
Johnson strongly disliked Wilkes, a rake and "patriot." Boswell, mischievously, arranged for them to dine together, against the bookseller Dilly's wishes. At dinner, Wilkes charmed Johnson with attentive manners and shared jabs at Scotland, a mutual scorn. Johnson, who initially reacted huffily, gradually warmed to Wilkes's conviviality, despite their deep political differences and Johnson's famous dismissal of "patriotism."
A Bulimic Ruminator? The Case of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Using a wide range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biographical sources, the eating pathology of Dr. Samuel Johnson is illustrated and examined. His presenting symptoms are considered in the light of modern criteria for eating disorders and current research on bulimia nervosa and rumination disorder.
Samuel Johnson: Victim of Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome
This brief note by Pearce contends that the well-known tics, mannerisms, and verbal repetitions displayed by Johnson suggest he was a "victim of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome." Drawing on contemporary accounts, Pearce cites Thomas Tyers, who described Johnson as a "convulsionary" exhibiting gestures resembling "St Vitus' Dance." Pearce further uses Boswell’s observations of Johnson’s "pious ejaculations," head-shaking, and idiosyncratic vocalizations, including "clucking like a hen" and the whispered repetition of "too, too, too."
Tomarken reviews Parke's Samuel Johnson and Biographical Thinking, which argues that "biographical thinking" is a habitual mode of Johnson's thought, going beyond his formal biographies to his other writings. Parke traces this principle through the Prefaces, Rambler, Rasselas, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and Lives of the Poets. The concept of Johnsonian history as a "conversation," where the reader engages with the text as a person, is central. Tomarken finds the thesis compelling, establishing a relationship between Johnson's discursive and literary works, but wishes for more elaboration on its innovative theoretical assumptions.
'The Fictions of Romantick Chivalry': Samuel Johnson and Romance (Review)
Kolb reviews Henson's exploration of Johnson's attitudes toward chivalric romance and its influence on his works. The volume, consisting of six chapters, surveys Johnson's reading, romance metaphors, connections to Don Quixote, literary criticism, and his Scottish tour. Kolb praises the work as a substantial contribution to Johnsonian scholarship, particularly chapters five and six. However, Kolb notes a consistent failure to distinguish anti-romance and non-mocking elements in Don Quixote and an excessive application of "quixotic" terms. The review also faults the book for factual errors, minor omissions, and inadequate proofreading.
Chesterton's Respect for Language Recalls Samuel Johnson
Thomas Gray's Contribution to the Study of Medieval Architecture
One of Thomas Gray's admired poetic gifts was the ability to convey striking visual images with a very few, aptly chosen words. As Samuel Johnson put it, Gray's Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard ‘abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind'. The visual imagery in Gray's poetry attests not only to his ability to use words, but also to his ability to use his eyes. Keen observation that underlies Gray's poetic images also emerges in prose in his letters, journals, and notebooks. He wrote memorable descriptions of landscape. His discerning criticism of paintings is well known, as is his recording of extensive observations in the field of natural history.
Presented is the first of three articles on the use of computers in lexicography. The lexicographer's citation bank is now available in a more powerful form, a computerized corpus with word samples in context. The process of sorting through thousands of citations as was done by Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, James Murray, Robert Burchfield, & other famous dictionary makers, is described. The computerized version of citation searches includes access to entire texts (books, magazines, spoken dialogues). The validity & usefulness of a corpus depends on its size, balance of sources, & ease of retrieval for analysis. Once the corpus is composed, it is easily accessed, but creating it is complex. Available corpora composed from surveys of speakers & the selection of a wide range of published texts are discussed. The computer-assisted analysis of texts is important, but the real work of lexicographers remains the interpretation of language evidence. M. Lemons
Eighteenth-Century English Literature: Johnson and Boswell, Selected Readings
An Irrecoverable Fame? Baretti and the Grammatica Della Lingua Inglese [1760]
The eighteenth-century English grammar written by G. Baretti is critically analyzed in the context of available contemporary works on the subject. A section-by-section commentary compares Baretti's explanations with excerpts from the writings of Samuel Johnson & Joseph Priestley. Baretti's different treatment of grammar & the prolixity of his personal commentary compare very poorly with the standard of contemporary grammatical studies; however, sporadic indications are found in Baretti's work that presage modern theoretical discoveries, particularly in the direction of rule-governed properties of language. In addition, Baretti's personalized treatment makes his grammar more accessible to the ordinary reader. J. Hitchcock
The Evolution of English Lexicography. By James A. H. Murray the Romanes Lecture, 1900
A new introduction to a lecture on the evolution of English lexicography given by the renowned historical lexicographer James A. H. Murray, in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 22 June 1990, & a reprint of the lecture itself. In the lecture, Murray described the way in which words were collected in fairly primitive glossaries from the Old English period until the end of the sixteenth century. He then gave an account of the first English dictionary (1604), The Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, by Robert Cawdrey, & of subsequent, more sophisticated dictionaries by Nathan Bailey, Dr. Johnson, & others. He claimed that "the evolution of English lexicography followed with no faltering steps the evolution of English history & the development of English literature." Emphasis is placed on the permanent value of Murray's lexicographical methods, & examples are given of ways in which Murray's original plan needed to be modified in A Supplement to the OED (4 vols., 1972-1986) to bring the dictionary into line with the changed circumstances of the later part of the twentieth century & the spread of English all over the world as a first or second language. AA
Competitors enjoyed the prospect of Boswell taking Dr. Johnson to the modern sporting scene, to car racing, to Wimbledon, to snooker: and in all this they avoided most of the pitfalls of parody. Here is Hazel Stanley showing them at Japanese wrestling: "Boswell: Is not a great deal of training required?"
Manners and Mustard: Ideas of Political Decline in Sixteenth-Century Scotland
Allan explores the relationship between perceptions of national dietary habits and theories of political decline in sixteenth-century Scotland. The study identifies a persistent moral pride in the meagreness of the traditional Scottish diet, characterized by oats and simple fare, as a hallmark of national integrity and martial strength. Allan contextualizes a notorious observation by Johnson from the Dictionary of the English Language (1755) regarding oats, which Johnson noted supports the people in Scotland while commonly given to horses in England. While posterity assumes eighteenth-century Scots took offense at this imputation of pauperism, Allan suggests such plainness functioned as a point of determined moral pride for generations. The article traces how scholars like John Bellenden and George Buchanan used the rhetoric of temperance and "ancient parsimony" to challenge modern luxury, which they linked to the terminal dysfunction of autonomous political culture. By examining these early modern traditions, Allan demonstrates how specific social attitudes toward food facilitated the construction of a recognisably modern idea of pluralistic political community.
Comparative Studies in Society and History
The 'Grand Cham' comes to Pocatello: ISU's 'Dr. Johnson and His Circle' collection
The full text of this electronic journal article can be found at [URL:http://www.idaholibraries.org/newidaholibrarian /johnsoncoll.htm]. The 'Dr. Johnson and His Circle' Collection is a group of materials in the Rare Books/Special Collections at Idaho State University's Oboler Library. Created over the past two years, it is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Dr. Roger Schmidt, professor of English at Idaho State University and Leonard Hitchcock, Associate University Librarian for Collection Development. The keystone of this collection is the massive, two-volume 5th edition of Samuel Johnson's most famous work, 'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1784) which the library already owned.
European Public Opinion and the Lisbon Earthquake
At the end of November 1755, news of the Lisbon earthquake spread rapidly to all capital cities of Europe. Horrific reports gave rise to a wealth of sensational journalism. As Samuel Johnson and others attest, this was particularly marked in Great Britain. The catastrophe remained a popular subject of flysheets, newspapers, and engravings for months on end. The event was magnified many times over in the eyes and minds by the popular press, which led to forms of public distress. For the first time in the western world, the press, on the occasion of the Lisbon earthquake, helped create the illusion of proximity and unity between the peoples of different nations in Europe. As Voltaire said, ‘L'Europe ressemblait à une grande famille réunie après ses différences'.
Johnson's Rasselass and the Search for Happiness: Reflections on the Optimism of the Enlightenment
Johnson's Rasselas critiques Enlightenment optimism, which sought perfect earthly happiness through natural laws. Johnson suspected this view, wondering about true happiness. Rasselas travels from Abyssinia to Egypt, meeting characters—a scientist, hermit, ruler—who are all unhappy. Johnson uses these ineffective symbolic figures to reflect his skeptical vision of the age's material theories. The narrative suggests happiness remains an unfulfilled need, leaving readers to determine if it is absolute or relative. The novel reflects Johnson's personal search for meaning.
Doctor Johnson Kicks the Stone, or Can the Immaterialisms of the 'Principles' and 'Three Dialogues' be Reconciled?
Atherton reconciles anomalies between Berkeley's Principles and Three Dialogues. Principles proposes an immaterialism of substance, focusing on the systematicity of nature and the Laws of Nature as the source of order, not on ordinary objects. Three Dialogues uses the immediate/mediate perception distinction to extend this view: sensible qualities are immediately perceived, acting as signs that allow us to mediately perceive ordinary things like stones. Johnson's kick, intended as a refutation, actually confirms Berkeley's argument, demonstrating his anticipation of tangible ideas based on visual signs, which is central to the concept of mediated perception and the regularity of ideas.
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association
The Truth about Beauty in Austen's Novels
The topic is an essential element of each of her novels because of their focus on young women and men immersed in the marriage market. [...]her narrator almost always provides a brief assessment of the attractiveness of central characters as they appear; Darcy, for example, is first described as being "tall," with "handsome features" (10). Besides giving readers a more specific image, what purpose does a character's looks serve for Austen? While the Regency period was "remarkable in its concern with masculine appearances" (Sturrock), my focus will be principally on females. [...]with the possible exception of Emma, her principal females are not raving beauties. While Austen's absorption of and use of Gilpin's landscape aesthetics in Mansfield Park is well known, her artistic response to culturally circulating ideas of personal beauty has not received such sustained analysis.2 In his 1755 Dictionary Samuel Johnson describes beauty as "[t] hat assemblage of graces, or proportion of parts, which pleases the eye." [...]Elinor Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny Price, Anne Elliot, and Catherine Morland are all "almost pretty" (NA 15), but don't at first compel men towards them, as a Marianne Dashwood or a Jane Fairfax does. [...]while Duquette principally focuses on these women's relationships with art and landscape in the progression of their "visual imagination[s]" (85), she posits that Austen rejects the "claimed objectivity of Enlightenment detachment" in contemplating aesthetics, for a "warm, subjective response” (74).
The formative principles of Samuel Johnson's legal thought, particularly his conception of natural law, and the ways in which it was influenced by the writings of William Blackstone are examined.
Admirable Wit: Deinofēs and the Rise and Fall of Lyric Wonder
When lyric poets in late Renaissance England responded to the demand for wonder in poetry and all courtly activity by astonishing audiences through style, they drew upon the Greek rhetorical tradition, which presents roughness and obscurity as coordinate methods of making style deinos, or admirable. In the Life of Cowley, Samuel Johnson also sees roughness and obscurity as coordinate qualities in the verse of the "metaphysical poets" he says erred in pursuit of wonder. Before admirable style went out of fashion, poet-critics praised its ability to provoke the audience's inferences and to transcend persuasión by "ravishing" the audience's will, precisely the effects that Demetrius attributes to the charaktēr deinos in On Style. Yet deinolēs is the term used to describe both the most powerful style and the clever style of sophistic epideixis, and this breadth of meaning helps explain both the rise and fall of wit.
The Boswell Papers Project at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Provides background information on the Beinecke Library at Yale University and describes the digitization of a portion of the James Boswell papers to make them more accessible. Discusses funding; the decision making process; the scanning process; and the decision to deliver images on CDs instead of over the World Wide Web. (LRW)
Histories, Exhibitions, and Collections: The Invention of National Heritage in Britain 1770–1820
In dem vorliegenden Artikel wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie im Großbritannien des späten 18. Jahrhunderts die Vorstellung eines gemeinsamen kulturellen Erbes entstand, wie ein bestimmter Kanon in Literatur sowie bildender und darstellender Kunst zunehmend als Eigentum der Nation begriffen wurde. Drei Kräfte, so wird argumentiert, wirkten vor allem in die Richtung solcher Traditionsbildung: die profitable Vermarktung von Kunst und Literatur; die Bestrebungen von Kritikern, den Künsten eine Vergangenheit zu geben und sie zu kategorisieren; und der vom zeitgenössischen Patriotismus ausgehende Impuls, die britische Kunst und Literatur mit der Kultur anderer Nationen zu vergleichen und ihren besonderen Charakter hervorzuheben. In dem Artikel wird u.a. diskutiert, wie öffentliche Kunstausstellungen und das davon inspirierte private Sammeln druckgraphischen Materials der Nation und ihrem kulturellen Erbe zu visueller Präsenz verhalfen. Ferner wird deutlich gemacht, wie es der historisch arbeitenden Kunst- und Literaturkritik im Kreis um Dr. Johnson gelang, die zeitgenössische künstlerische und literarische Produktion in einen historischen und damit nationalen Kontext zu stellen. Und schließlich wird darauf hingewiesen, daß im späten 18. Jahrhundert ein Kanon patriotischer, muttersprachlicher Literatur in Form von Sammelwerken durch geschäftstüchtige Unternehmer wie John Bell popularisiert wurden. Im Zentrum stand dabei der Kult um Shakespeare. Durch druckgraphische Massenware, historisch angelegte Literaturkritik und literarische Sammelwerke wurde es nicht nur möglich, das kulturelle Erbe im öffentlichen Raum zu identifizieren, vielmehr hatte man damit auch Objekte privater Devotion geschaffen. This essay examines how in late eighteenth-century Britain literature and the fine and performing arts came to be treated as a property not only of individuals but of the nation. It emphasises three forces behind the formation of this tradition: the commodification of art and literature for profit; the critics desire to give the arts a history and contemporary order; and the patriotic impulse to assert the value of British art and literature when compared with other nations. It discusses the role of art exhibitions and the collections of engravings that accompanied them in creating a visual sense of the nation and its heritage; the writing of critical histories of the arts and literature by members of the Dr. Johnson circle that gave current artistic and literary practice a national, historic context; and the development of a canonical patriotic vernacular literature, notably though not exclusively the works of Shakespeare, which was made widely available through anthologies and printed collections, disseminated by such entrepreneurial publishers as John Bell. Through series of engravings, critical histories and anthologies it was possible not only to identify a public national cultural heritage but privately to possess its simulacrum.
'Teetering on the Verge of Complete Sanity': Boswell's Life of Boswell
Beveridge analyzes Boswell's thirteen volumes of journals as a "comprehensive autobiography" that documents a "history of my mind." The study explores Boswell’s "wild swings" from suicidal despair to exuberant confidence, alongside his dialogues with Johnson on alleviating mental anguish. Beveridge notes that while Johnson advocated a "stiff-upper-lip approach," Boswell felt "it was good to talk." The text suggests Boswell’s habit of "rehearsing his woes" finds a receptive modern audience. Beveridge concludes that the journals provide one of the best accounts of mental disturbance ever composed, irrespective of whether one applies modern clinical labels like manic-depression.
King Lear: The Lost Leader; Group Disintegration, Transformation and Suspended Reconsolidation
King Lear (1605–6) is the primary enactment of psychic breakdown in English literary history. It constitutes, also, the most spectacular instance of a controlled explosion of the formal ‘container' in Western drama – such that it not only violated whatever Aristotle or Boileau might have to offer on the proper structure of tragedy but provoked, too, the very different sensibilities of Dr. Johnson and Count Tolstoy. Set in its raw pre-Christian world, the play remains the major Shakespearean rebuttal of Sophoclean fearful symmetry (Oedipus Rex) – corrosive in its existential negativity, yet paradoxically fructive in spawning such twentieth-century ‘countertransferential' progeny as George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House, Samuel Beckett's Endgame or Edward Bond's Lear. Keats, on rereading it wrote about the ‘bitter-sweet' of being ‘consumèd in the fire', with all the intensity of one closely associated with ‘Consumption'.
Class(ifying) Language: The War of the Word
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the study of English was accelerating rapidly. At this time linguistic theories identified which members of society warranted inclusion in the political process. Conservative men of letters, like Samuel Johnson, claimed the lower and middle classes lacked cultural capital. To counter this linguistic class-ification, William Cobbett published A Grammar of the English Language, an enormously popular text meant to teach laborers how to write. Mostly neglected as a "grammarian" or rhetorician today, Cobbett was in fact a forerunner to current linguistic trends that stress literacy's social and political formulations.
Baines praises Redford’s sensitive and well-illustrated work for successfully preserving the Life's dual function as a biographical resource and literary artifact. The review credits Redford with illustrating how Boswell turned raw material into a kinetic portrait of Johnson, giving the author credit for both "fidelity and finesse."
Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research
'If the Informing Spirit Be Mine': Frances Anne Kemble and Theory in Rehearsal
The psychological explanations behind Kemble's desire or need to displace the actress with the theorist even as the actress is the theorist's main source of authority are interesting and complex and merit more space than I have here.1 But for this brief essay, I want to underscore the fact that-at a very young age, even as Kemble was preparing to go on the stage-she produced documents that show her rehearsing the persona that she would use to write her mature theory. (Records of a Girlhood 246) Extending the analysis of Denis Diderot and James Boswell and anticipating the theory of Constant Coquelin in the 1880s and 1890s, Kemble observes that the skills that the "fine" actor must possess are at least three: "poetical imagination" (what Kemble will, 30 years later in her discussion of the same subject, pinpoint with the word "dramatic," and by which she means the ability to, like a child, enter into a world of "passion," "emotion," and "humour" ["On the Stage" 9]; "the power of assumption" (which she later calls "the theatrical"-that is the "consciousness" of those "effects" that will allow one to "imagine" or "conceive" a role [9-11]); and "a sort of vigilant presence of mind," which she describes in the lines below as the "double process" that makes acting "curious": The curious part of acting, to me, is the sort of double process which the mind carries on at once, the combined operation of one's faculties, so to speak, in diametrically opposite directions; for instance, in that very last scene of Mrs. Beverley, while I was half dead with crying in the midst of the real grief, created by an entirely unreal cause, I perceived that my tears were falling like rain all over my silk dress, and spoiling it; and I calculated and measured most accurately the space that my father would require to fall in, and moved my train and myself accordingly in the midst of the anguish I was to feign, and absolutely did endure. [...]while the whole person appears to be merely following the mind in producing the desired effect and illusion upon the spectator, both the intellect and the senses are constantly engrossed in guarding against the smallest accidents that might militate against it; and while representing things absolutely imaginary, they are taking accurate cognizance of every real surrounding object that can either assist or mar the result they seek to produce. An actor is at the best but the filler up of the outline designed by another,-the expounder, as it were, of things which another has set down; and a fine piece of acting is at best, in my opinion, a fine translation. [...]it is not alone to charm the senses that the nobler powers of mind were given to man; 'tis not alone to enchant the eye that the gorgeous pallet of the painter, and the fine chisel of the statuary, have become through heavenly inspiration, magical wands, summoning to life images of loveliness, of majesty, and grace; 'tis not alone to soothe the ear that music has possessed, as it were, certain men with the spirit of sweet sounds; 'tis not alone to delight the fancy that the poet's great and glorious power was given him, by which, as by spell, he peoples all space, and all time, with undying witnesses of his own existence; 'tis not alone to minister to our senses that these most beautiful capabilities were sown in the soil of our souls. ..
Literary Biography: The Cinderella of Literary Studies
This article begins by contrasting the popularity of biography in the general culture with the neglect of literary biography as a branch of literary studies. The argument follows from the hybrid character of a genre in which history is crossed with narrative. Using concepts drawn from narratology, it shows how biography's handling of life stories is both like and unlike that of fiction. Narrative is not neutral but imposes a shape on "real life histories" involving selection, continuity, coherence, and closure. These four elements are discussed with particular reference to the two classic literary biographies–Boswell's "Life of Dr. Johnson" and Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte." Two features unique to reading literary biography are identified: how readers must accommodate the image of the "implied author" constructed from the writer's works with that presented by the biography, and the asymmetrical time lines of the writer's "life narrative" and "literary narrative." Literary biography is then shown to occupy an uncomfortable position between factual and fictional truth. The article ends with the educational benefits of studying literary biography–as a source of values, as a context for literature, and as a genre study in its own right.
In the course of his argument that accurately understanding and conveying the meaning of a quotation is more important than knowing who said it or the exact words that were said-particulars that are sometimes difficult or impossible to pin down-David Isaacson misquotes Samuel Johnson: I am tempted to assert rather than argue, to kick a stone, as Samuel Johnson purportedly did when told that Hume didn't believe the real world existed, and reply to those who insist that all of these Hopkins quotations are in some sense correct, "I refute you [sic] thus."
From Sentiment to Sentimentality: A Nineteenth-Century Lexicographical Search
Banfield traces the semantic shift of the word sentiment and its derivatives in British dictionaries from the mid-eighteenth century through the late nineteenth century. The study opens with Johnson, whose influential 1755 dictionary definitions stressed the rational, intellectual, and linguistic components of sentiment, viewing it primarily as a thought, notion, or opinion derived from John Locke's philosophy. Banfield demonstrates how nineteenth-century lexicographers gradually modified Johnson's framework to incorporate feeling, emotion, and sensibility, reflecting a psychological transition from a mind-body dualism toward an integrated monism. The abstract tracks how derivatives like sentimental moved from maintaining an intellectual emphasis of being reflectful or thoughtful in 1812 to carrying pejorative connotations of affectation and false pity by 1827. Later lexicons, such as the 1864 Comprehensive English Dictionary and the end-of-the-century Century Dictionary, fully repositioned sentiment between thought and feeling, defining it as an emotional judgment and connecting it directly to taste, aesthetics, and literary expression.
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
The Ultimate Literary Portrait: Boswell's Painterly Masterpiece
The Life of Johnson is the gold standard for biography, showcasing Boswell’s virtuoso technique, psychological portraiture, and dramatic sense, chronicling Johnson's life from their first meeting. The biography surrounds Johnson's central figure with his literary and artistic circle, including Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke, and Gibbon. Boswell's method involves interweaving private conversation, sayings, and vivid details to render a full, realistic portrait, rejecting the hagiographic approach of earlier attempts by Hawkins and Piozzi.
James Boswell (1740–1795): The Scottish Perspective
International Review of Scottish Studies
«What a man has previously in his mind »: Samuel Johnson en voyage dans les Highlands et les Hébrides
Bernard analyzes Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), focusing on the ambiguity of his cultural observations on the Highlanders. Johnson employs rigorous scientific methods, using England as a comparative standard, yet his moralist perspective critiques Highland backwardness, promoting integration into the commercial English system as a path to civilization. Johnson's journey becomes an intellectual and existential confrontation with a 'savage' 'before' which challenged his Anglocentric rationalism and literary authority. The text reflects his struggle against the Highlands as a desolate landscape symbolizing imaginative errancy and the fears of aging and death.
'To Make Seclusion Pleasant': Censorship and Subordination in Rasselas
Brooks offers a politically focused, revisionist reading of Rasselas that examines the interplay of censorship, propaganda, and subordination. Moving beyond the traditional "eastern tale" generic label, Brooks argues that the Happy Valley functions as an autocratic governmental prison where sages substitute disinformation for truth. The article demonstrates that while Johnson generally valued social subordination, this political parable justifies the initial act of insubordination by Prince Rasselas and Pekuah. Through external experiences at the pyramids and on the Nile, the escapees move from blind, forced compliance to an informed, voluntary acceptance of their subordinate roles, demonstrating that individual experience rather than status quo propaganda serves as the best instructor.
Linguistic cleanliness is next to godliness: taboo and purism
Burridge explores linguistic prescription and purism as extensions of human tabooing behavior. Drawing on public commentary, radio feedback, and letters to editors, the article frames prescriptive practices as an effort to control "the boundless chaos of a living speech," a phrase attributed to Johnson. Burridge argues that linguistic purists act as self-appointed censors who view non-standard language as "dirty" or "polluted," paralleling Mary Douglas's theory of matter out of place. The study identifies a significant schism between the descriptive neutrality of linguists and the emotional, often fiery, demands of the public for a single correct "Superstandard." Burridge highlights widespread hostility toward Americanization in Australian English, even among younger generations, noting that linguistic standards are frequently conflated with moral standards. Psychological and neurological evidence, such as electrodermal monitoring, supports the finding that taboo or "incorrect" language triggers genuine emotional arousal in native speakers. Ultimately, Burridge maintains that the urge to "clean up" language is a universal human desire to impose order on a chaotic environment, rooted in the signaling of social and cultural identity.
'I Think About Death a Lot, and Always Have'
The author (1934-2010) is a celebrated novelist who died recently; she wrote this essay for radio, and it shows her lifelong preoccupation with mortality. She describes how death was presented to her as a child, and how she incorporated it into her novels, both those from her own life and those based on historical topics like the Scott expedition to the South Pole; she also describes the deaths of her parents and others - like Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Talking About Madness and Melancholy: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson
This article examines James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, his celebrated biography of his friend, the great 18th-century literary figure, Samuel Johnson. The book records their many conversations, much of which was concerned with madness and melancholy. This is not surprising as both men experienced recurrent bouts of low spirits. They also lived in an era which has been called ‘The Age of Nerves'. This article will consider how they conceived of ‘nervous disease' and how they tried to remedy it. It will also look at Johnson's role as a therapeutic mentor to Boswell.
Advances in Psychiatric Treatment: The Royal College of Psychiatrists' Journal of Continuing Professional Development
The Historiography of Scottish Drama and Public Performance
[...]the Scottish Reformation did not stamp out drama, but sought to shape it to its own ends. [...]the Admonition and Exhortation had no impact on either suppressing Home's play writing or preventing professional theatre's entrenchment in Edinburgh. According to Jackson, James Boswell wrote the prologue to the opening of the patented house, celebrating loyalty to the Hanoverian settlement, Enlightenment and drama's 'new' status: [...]sponsors included senior lawyers and members of the nobility, including Henry Dundas, William Pitt's colleague and effective manager of Scotland for the Westminster government, implying at these prices that the upper echelons of Edinburgh society, at least, did not suffer much from the 'poorness' Amot has cited.
Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature
Hybridity and Cultural Gravity: Crossing Boundaries in Scottish Cultures
[...]he created new borders for a partly translated, but largely transformed, Gaelic text to match classic European models, and so seemed to subvert original generic forms. [...]he appeared, with his, in Gardiner's words, 'will to keep typologies open' to confuse no less than Samuel Johnson. In other words, the nature of the Scottish identity was manifold and multicultural from the beginning, even if not by any means always harmoniously so. [...]it has remained, though often with bouts of internal dispute and conflict. [...]it can be seen to have allowed a more holistic approach to and interaction between popular and élite drama and theatre, a theme that will emerge as this book develops its arguments. [...]McGrath's own person and career suggest the permeability of boundaries and fluidity of identity we have been discussing as typical of Scottish theatre and literature in general.
Life as Form or as Energy in the Utopian Approach of the Enlightenment
Life as Form or as Energy in the Utopian Approach of the Enlightenment. For many distinguished intellectuals of the past and the present, Paradise equals with the nostalgia for a utopian existence. We usually say – and this is a strong stereotype of the scholarly literature dedicated to utopia and dystopia – that the longing for a perfect land is a sort or reenactment of Paradise, a wishful regression. The paper demonstrates that the stereotype of regression does not function in one of the most representative dystopian texts of the Enlightenment, Dr. Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, which advocates, on the contrary, an escape from Paradise, as a prerequisite of any authentic existence, conceived as struggle, dynamic experience and active search for knowledge.
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia
Auchinleck House: Holiday in James Boswell's home
Bell describes the restoration and holiday rental of Auchinleck House, the Ayrshire estate of Boswell. Built between 1755 and 1760 by Boswell’s father, the Palladian villa replaced a medieval castle and served as the family seat. The text outlines the property’s decline following the Second World War and its 1999 acquisition and subsequent restoration by the Landmark Trust. Bell details the house’s architectural idiosyncrasies, the recreation of its eighteenth-century interior using donated Boswellian artifacts, and the estate’s proximity to Dumfries House. The account emphasizes the site’s dual identity as a grand stately home and an intimate domestic space for studying Boswell’s legacy.
Richard Mead: Living in the Broad Sunshine of Life
The physician Richard Mead (1673-1754) may not be familiar to many readers of this journal; posterity has dealt more lasting fame to his patients and friends, who included Isaac Newton, Samuel Johnson, and Alexander Pope. However, the Foundling Museum's exhibition The Generous Georgian: Dr. Richard Mead seeks to restore the reputation of a man who was one of the most celebrated physicians of his day, and in many ways an embodiment of the Enlightenment principles which blossomed in Europe during his lifetime.
The Making and Marketing of the Georgian Apotheosis: Carter, Strange, Rebecca, Tresham, and De Loutherbourg
In the flowering of the apotheosis as an artistic genre in Georgian England, all images had a number of characteristics in common: they show the subject being lifted up to heaven by a cast of supporters, with a skyline below that encapsulates the subject's context. As an idea it seems straightforward, even if the product can appear cloying and over-imbued with allegorical references. Samuel Johnson, in defining it as 'the rite of adding any one to the number of gods', cites Garth's translation of 'The Deification of Aeneas' from Book XIV of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a passage in which Jove 'allots the prince of his celestial line, An apotheosis, and rites divine' at the end of a conclave of the Gods. In Ovid, it is the decision of the conclave of the gods, whether or not the subject is worthy of an apotheosis. And worthiness is key: Johnson's second citation, this one from the 17th-century divine Robert South, comes from a passage on idolatry. Goodness did not spring fully formed 'as if it could be graved and painted omnipotent, or the nails and the hammer could give it an apotheosis'.
Recovering William James (fl. 1785–1797), English Writer
Williams James's links to James Boswell and Edmund Burke strengthen his claim to some literary significance. James's correspondence with the Royal Literary Fund provides a way to examine his literary career as a whole.
Samuel Johnson began writing his dictionary in the 18th century against the background of opinion-formers worrying about the language degenerating, while some hankered for an English equivalent of the Academie francaise across the Channel. Johnson's dictionary was the first truly standard work, and the first to be evidence-based–Johnson analyzed the best writers in the English language by collecting quotations then writing definitions based on the material he had gathered.
The 'Seeds of Order and Taste': Wollstonecraft, the Analytical Review, and Critical Idiom
Mary Wollstonecraft's attacks on sentimental fiction in her Analytical Review writings (1788-97) are now widely known. Less familiar is her engagement with the journal's agenda of "encyclopedic" coverage for the arts and sciences-an agenda that, despite Joseph Johnson's revolutionary radicalism, was couched in neoclassical paradigms of the early eighteenth century. This essay relates Wollstonecraft's politics of style, especially as seen in her reviews of non-fiction, to the Analytical's particular bid for media reform. Understanding Wollstonecraft's cultural criticism requires that we appreciate, first, her concern with the delivery of authentic facts, and second, her urge to trace the critical precepts of Samuel Johnson (several of which she adopted) back to what was, for her, the politically questionable but aesthetically compelling worldview of the earlier Augustans, particularly Pope. Augustan tropes of decorum, coherence, interest, and universal harmony animate her reviews of bellestristic and factual texts alike, often lending a personal immediacy to her calls for the betterment of the reading public. With enriching implications for the discussion of her feminist educational theory, Wollstonecraft's cross-disciplinary reviews apply an Augustan ethics of knowledge to the issue of informed readership in the 1790s.
The translation by Inés Joyes y Blake (1798) is significant because it was translated directly from the English by one of the few Spaniards able to do so, demonstrating a commitment to the original while making concessions to the ideological context of the time. Johnson's Rasselas is characterized as a "roman pedagogique" that uses exotic locales to criticize contemporary society. Joyes's annexed Apology is described as a contemporary masterpiece that, with reasoned wisdom and self-confidence, argues for intellectual equality between the sexes and women's right to education, contrasting the work with the typical conservative mindset of the era. The inclusion of the Apology alongside the story of happiness in an egalitarian society reveals Joyes’s perspective on the status of women in a well-organized world.
The Enlightenment Encyclopedia and the Dream of Comprehensiveness: The Example of Samuel Johnson
Clingham identifies a "transgressive element" in Johnson’s handling of the limits of knowledge, tracing a dialogue between the positivistic impulse to control and the skeptical impulse to question. Drawing parallels between Johnson and Diderot, the text argues that Johnson uses "necessary limitation" to produce a practical critique of Enlightenment comprehensiveness. It explores the transformative role of dreams and the "unsettling of the self" in Johnson’s writing, particularly in the *Dictionary* and *Rasselas*. Clingham suggests that Johnson’s work establishes continuities between dream, reason, and reality, moving across nominal divisions of genre and consciousness. By engaging with Foucault and Kant, the text presents Johnson not as a Romantic, but as a thinker whose encounter with the "abyss" of knowledge defines his specific mode of enlightenment.
Noise and Sound Reconciled: How London Clubs Shaped Conversation into a Social Art
This essay aims to show how London clubs played a decisive role in the shaping of conversation into a social art. It first examines the evolution of conversation in England both as a cultural concept and as a social practice in the context of the emergence and success of club sociability over the course of the eighteenth century. Conversation was at the heart of urban sociability practices and especially flourished in the London coffee-houses of the end of the seventeenth century. At the same time, conversation was theorized, conceptualized, modeled and discussed in a prolific and varied normative literature. Was the conversation that animated the first coffee-houses of the same nature as the conversation which prevailed in the exclusive circles of the second half of the eighteenth century? This study then points at obvious dissonances between the theory and the practice of conversation within the world of London clubs. While club conversation was a rite of worldly sociability, whose refined principles clubmen were supposed to master, it often sounded far from the smooth and polite prescriptive model it was expected to conform to. To what extent was Samuel Johnson, the founder of The Club and one of the greatest conversationalists of his time, a significant agent in the transformation of conversation into a social art in itself? Finally, this analysis claims that gentlemen's clubs contributed to shape a new model of conversation in England, in which noise and sound could co-exist and the paradoxes inherent in club conversation could be reconciled. Cet article a pour objectif de montrer le rôle décisif joué par les clubs londoniens dans la transformation de la conversation en art social. Il étudie, d'une part, l'évolution de la conversation en Angleterre comme concept culturel et comme pratique sociale dans un contexte d'émergence et d'essor des clubs au dix-huitième siècle. Au cœur des pratiques de sociabilité urbaine, la conversation fleurit tout particulièrement dans les coffee-houses de Londres dès la fin du dix-septième siècle. Au même moment, la conversation est théorisée, conceptualisée, érigée en modèle et débattue dans une littérature normative prolifique et variée. Cependant, la conversation qui anime les premiers cafés est-elle de même nature que celle qui prévaut dans les cercles exclusifs de la seconde moitié du dix-huitième siècle ? Cette étude vise, d'autre part, à mettre en avant les dissonances entre théorie et pratique de la conversation dans l'univers des clubs londoniens. Tandis que la conversation est considérée comme un rite de la sociabilité mondaine, dont les principes de raffinement devraient être maîtrisés par les membres du club, elle se révèle souvent bien éloignée du modèle harmonieux et poli auquel elle est censée se conformer. Dans quelle mesure Samuel Johnson, fondateur du célèbre Literary Club, et l'un des plus grands conversationnistes de son temps, a-t-il permis à la conversation de devenir un ‘art social'? Enfin, cette analyse entend démontrer que les clubs ont contribué à modeler la conversation selon de nouvelles modalités, faisant co-exister les discordances et réconciliant les paradoxes propres à la conversation des clubs.
The Libraries of Twelve Early Members of The Club
The Club was formed by Sir Joshua Reynolds to allow Samuel Johnson an opportunity to indulge in the pleasures of conversation and mental intercourse, and to enable a small group of his friends an opportunity to share the stimulation of Johnson's conversation, and each others' company. Its first meeting was in the spring of 1764. They met on Monday evenings, initially at the Turks Head in Gerrard Street, just north of Reynolds's house in Leicester Fields, England. If The Club was founded on the art of conversation, it was grounded in books–in familiarity with a broad range of literary and bibliographical references, in minds and shelves stocked with reading. Some of the early members were more ardent bibliophiles that others.
From Practice to Theory: the Evolution of English Pre-corpus Monolingual Learner's Dictionaries
The paper traces the progress of a typically English lexicographic product: the monolingual learner's dictionary, during the pre-corpus period, by looking at the accretion of its defining features: treatment of phraseology, vocabulary control, presence of grammar information, ordering of headwords, contextual information, restricted defining vocabulary and defining style in the works of the precursors and those of the Vocabulary Control Movement. As such, it presents the defining features of the genre and offers an overview of the main contributions made by the early lexicographers from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Samuel Johnson, Harold Palmer, A.S. Hornby, and Michael West.
Wittgenstein and Johnson: Notes on a Neglected Appreciation
M. O'C. Drury and Norman Malcolm both report that Wittgenstein gave them copies of Samuel Johnson's Prayers and Meditations, a book that he said he valued highly. Given that Wittgenstein's commentators have mined the ideas of other religious thinkers he admired (Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and so on) in order to illuminate his ambiguous thinking about religion, it is perhaps strange that this voiced appreciation of Johnson's prayers has not been further investigated. The purpose of this paper is to correct that neglect. This is done by way of an exploration of the nature and content of Johnson's prayers, and an analysis of how these prayers reflect the tormented state of Johnson's mind and his concerns about indolence, death and judgment. Wittgenstein had noted that Malcolm would only like Johnson's prayers if he looked at them "from the angle from which I see them," something which in the context of his letter to Malcolm suggests the very "human" quality of these prayers, and their origin in Johnson's personal struggles. A description of Wittgenstein's own struggles (which mirror to some extent those of Johnson in their worries about indolence, judgment, and a guilt that requires confession) can then form the background to an understanding, not just of Wittgenstein's personal spiritual state of mind, but of his philosophical account of religious belief and the turbulent human passions from which religion arises. Significant points of contact are noted between the respective thinking of Wittgenstein and Johnson, suggestive of new avenues of research that might profitably be explored.
'I Hope You Will Forgive the Liberty I Have Taken in Speaking My Mind Thus Freely': Charles Burney, William Mason, and Polite Exchange
Clarke examines the correspondence between Charles Burney and William Mason, noting that the subject of Johnson created a "virtually unspoken gulf" between them. Burney's friendship with Johnson began in the 1750s; he belonged to the Streatham circle and was elected to The Club in 1784. Conversely, Mason's "contempt for Johnson was unbounded." Mason satirized Johnson's "Demogorgon jargon" and politics in anonymous political poems. In his memoirs of William Whitehead, Mason identifies Johnson's biographical manner with "the tittle-tattle of anecdote" and tilts at Johnson's "acid eructations of vituperative criticism." Burney anonymously and aggressively reviewed Mason's work in the Monthly Review, attacking his "general peevishness, somewhat tinctured with rancour, whenever Johnson can be lugged in." Burney displayed "fierce loyalty" to Johnson and permitted no writer to "censure Johnson with impunity."
Z Wizytą w Krainie Mikroświatów: Obraz Szkocji i Szkotów w The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides Samuela Johnsona
The paper focuses on analysis of a travelogue by Samuel Johnson, presenting his perspective on 18th-century Scotland and its inhabitants. The author shows selected aspects of everyday life of Scots at that time and emphasizes the consistency between Johnson's descriptions and the findings of modern researchers. She also highlights the significance of accounts in the vein of Johnson's travelogue in research on mental history of the epoch and on changes which occurred in northern Scotland in the 18th century – for example, gradual disappearance of the clan system and Celtic culture.
''The Most Fatal of All Faults': Samuel Johnson on Prior's Solomon and the 'Need for Variety''
'That Power of Giving Pleasure': Johnson on Novelty in the Rambler
The paper examines Dr. Johnson's concept of novelty as a means to aesthetic pleasure. Undertaking the close reading of Rambler 121, an early and decisive paper on literary imitation, I argue that the most important critical principle by which Johnson judges ancient and modern imitations is novelty. In this essay, the Virgilian and the Spenserian imitations illustrate the pressure and the dangers of following models. I also consider the critical vocabulary that provides the context of this concept and, drawing on Wimsatt's method, attempt to reveal the intimate connection between a Dictionary entry and a Rambler word reflecting upon the possible sources of Johnson's idea of novelty.
Dubois's mixed review outlines John Mullan's introduction to this selected edition of Johnson's biographical and critical work, originally commissioned by forty-two London booksellers. Dubois notes Mullan's focus on Johnson's critical severity, retrospective gaze, and tendency to highlight the doubts and failed ambitions of authors rather than panegyrics. While Dubois praises the explanatory notes and the quality of the introduction, he challenges the radical abridgment that limits the text to ten of the original fifty-two biographies. Dubois endorses the inclusion of Cowley, Milton, Dryden, Congreve, Gay, Gray, Swift, and Pope, but finds the omission of major figures like Addison, Akenside, Collins, Thomson, and Young inexplicable and distorting to the scope of Johnson's project.
A Lexical-Semantic Interpretation of Johnson's Dictionary Entries
L'ouvrage de référence, le Dictionnaire de Samuel Johnson souligne le rôle primordial que l'usage de la langue a pour la signification des mots. La synonymie, la paraphrase et la métaphore conventionnelle sont les plus forts moyens parmi lesquels le lexicographe donne de définitions réelles, correctes et judicieusement agencées.
A invenção do poeta: A biografia do escritor e a formação do cânone literário
Taking as as exemplary figure the great English critic Samuel Johnson, we present a summary of the emergence of the modern author since the Renaissance in the life-narratives and in the institution of the unified vernaculars in which print-capitalism played a decisive role.
“The Invention of the Poet: The Biography of the Writer and the Formation of the Literary Canon”
The Thistle and the Words: Scotland in Late Modern English Lexicography
On 21 October 1773 Robert Fergusson published a satirical poem in the Weekly Magazine with the title 'To Dr. Samuel Johnson: Food for a new Edition of his Dictionary' (Boulton 1974/1995: 231-233; Brown 2012: 214-216): in it Fergusson adopted a mock-Augustan style, rich in nonce formations like Scoticanian, Loch-lomondian and usquebalian, imitating what had immediately been perceived as a characteristic of Samuel Johnson's heavily Latinate prose. Nor was this the only reason for Johnson's bad publicity in Scotland, as is well-known; however, even there his work was to prove crucial in many respects. Adapted from the source document
The volume is a compilation of primary sources on sport, health, and exercise, using Johnson and Thrale as an organizing principle. The book presents vivid materials on topics like boxing, running, and swimming, illustrating the lives of eighteenth-century bodies. Thrale is highlighted as an enthusiastic swimmer and rider, while Johnson provides context. The book offers a rich, primary-source bibliography for scholars.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784): On the Unquestionable Certainty of One's Own Virtue: The Rambler, No. 76, Saturday, December 8, 1750
Donadio introduces an essay from the Rambler by presenting Johnson as the commanding presence of eighteenth-century English literature. This biographical sketch traces Johnson's life from his birth in Lichfield to his death at seventy-five, highlighting his physical struggles with scrofula, tics, and depression. Donadio emphasizes the breadth of Johnson's literary productions, including poems, translations, lexicography, and moral philosophy. The account details Johnson's brief attendance at Pembroke College, his unsuccessful attempts at teaching, and his subsequent move to London to write for the Gentleman's Magazine. Donadio characterizes the Dictionary of the English Language as one of the most remarkable scholarly achievements ever undertaken and notes that the Lives of the Poets remains a model of informed appreciation. The editorial note mentions the success of Boswell's biography and describes the Rambler as a periodical comprising 208 essays written over two years. Donadio maintains that critical assessments today still use Johnson's incisive and unsettling observations as a guide.
How to Do Things with Rights?: On Circulation of Ideas Between Great Britain and France
Based on Dan Edelstein's fascinating theses, Emmanuelle de Champs explores the status of eighteenth-century declarations as performative documents and the ways in which ideas of rights circulated between the French and the English-speaking worlds. She agrees that the impulses of the Declaration of 1789 were elaborated during the Revolution and even during the 19th century, but recalls that their normative status in their own age was questioned. Emmanuelle de Champs explores critiques which grew from the Tory heritage of England, where she includes Jeremy Bentham, Edmund Burke or Samuel Johnson. In the critical responses to the French Declaration, Bentham basically treated rights as fictious entities which should not be backed by any legal sanctions. These thinkers questioned what Dan Edelstein calls the ‘preservation regime of human rights'. Emmanuelle de Champs approvingly follows Edelstein's attempt to show how the idea was disseminated in France before 1789, but asks whether it would not be better to follow not only the Encyclopédie and Diderot but also the periodical press. She suggests that this was also the channel through which British republican ideas were disseminated in France.
In Search of Fragments of Recollection: Cultural Memory and Identity in the Select Travel Narratives of Tahir Shah
While travel writers like Thomas Coryate and John Taylor documented their travel experiences in the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century witnessed the attempt of writers like Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson to blur the boundary between travel writing and fiction. Cultural Memory and Identity Jan Assmann, in his essay "Collective Memory and Cultural Identity," has defined cultural memory as "that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose "cultivation" serves to stabilize and convey that society's self-image. According to Shah, "tradition is the bedrock of life" (Caliph's House 16) in Morocco. To Tahir Shah, it was "a place of escape, [...] a place with a soul" (Caliph's House 7) and he wished to pass on the cultural roots to his children as "a gift of cultural colour" (Caliph's House 7).
Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry
Of the many critics who have tried to understand Johnson's complex attitude to Swift, Rawson is surely the most insightful. This essay explores some Johnsonian responses to Swift in addition to those canvassed by Rawson and takes up anew the question of Swiftianism in Johnson's writings and conversation. Operating within the framework established by Rawson, this essay finds, in sum, that the harshest sort of irony is slightly less exceptional than Rawson judged and slightly less confined to his early years as a writer. Later in life Johnson could be more Swiftian in conversation and in ex tempore writing than in his more considered and more public utterances. This suggests that he controlled his harshest tendencies when he was speaking on the record or, more importantly, making pronouncements that might reach a broader audience of impressionable readers. But the tendencies ran deep, just as Rawson says.
Death in Life and Life in Death: Melancholy and the Enlightenment
This article, which deals with the 17th and 18th centuries, is concerned with the presence of death in the melancholiac's life as revealed in both the accounts written by sufferers themselves and medical works. It shows the exceptional place which melancholiacs consider themselves to occupy, compared to the rest of the living, as they inhabit the no-man's-land between life and death. The privileged status echoes the classical theme of the melancholic genius (Problem XXX). Although some, like George Cheyne or Samuel Johnson, denied the link, this cliché is nevertheless very present in the self-description of the melancholy. Suffering, which is always physical, is a sign of moral superiority.
John Newbery: Bookseller, Entrepreneur, and Advocate for Children's Literature
Contribution to a special issue of this journal celebrating the 7Fifth anniversary of the annual Newbery Award for American children's literature. Presents a biography of the bookseller and publisher John Newbery, born in Berkshire in 1713, covering his career first in Reading and then in London. His success and innovation in publishing books for children is examined in detail: figures of the period with whom he worked included Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson. A 'disciple' of John Locke, Newbery believed that reading had a great influence on children's development, which is demonstrated by his choice of subjects and the attractive style of the books he published.
Ennis calls Deutsch's book a well-researched, perceptive, and innovative contribution to Johnson Studies, noting its shameless emotionalism sets it apart from cynical hypertheorizing. He praises her deft use of anecdote, but finds her structural homology argument in Chapter Two, connecting Johnson's tics to his writing style, strains credulity and is the book's weakest point.
Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies
In his brief commentary on the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Dr. Johnson remarks that the "four stanzas beginning Yet even these bones, are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them" (4: 274; emphasis in original).
Psychogenic Pseudo-Tourette Syndrome: One of Dr. Johnson's Maladies?
Evans challenges the common attribution of Johnson’s tics to Tourette’s Disorder, citing testimony from Reynolds and Piozzi that Johnson could suppress these "strange gestures" in social or religious settings. Comparing Johnson to a modern patient, Evans suggests the movements functioned as a "habit" used to "escape from himself" and distract the mind from depressive rumination or "amorous propensities." Because the tics occurred when Johnson’s mind wandered and ceased when he was "engaged earnestly in conversation," Evans argues for the label "psychogenic pseudo-Tourette syndrome." This interpretation aligns with Johnson’s own description of his condition as a "bad habit" rather than an involuntary neurological affliction.
Girolama Piccolomini's Portrait of James Boswell
Eglin presents circumstantial evidence identifying a portrait auctioned in 2008 as the "long presumed lost" likeness of Boswell commissioned by Girolama Piccolomini. The article details Boswell’s 1765 sojourn in Siena, characterized by his affair with Piccolomini and his immersion in the "Mediterranean version of Scotland" represented by the Sienese nobility. Eglin compares the work to George Willison’s established 1765 portrait, noting striking physical resemblances and matching wardrobe details. Although previously associated with the circle of Pompeo Batoni, Eglin attributes the painting to Willison based on pose, size, and Boswell’s recorded dissatisfaction with other contemporary artists’ fees. The text explores the social function of such portraits within the context of Italian cicisbeismo.
In Rivum a Mola Stoana Lichfeldia diffluentem (from the Latin of Samuel Johnson)
A poetic translation from Johnson's Latin poem, beginning, "The rivers,mooth as glass, still slides through emerald fields / Where often, as a boy, I washed my scrawny limbs...."
A Few Notes on the Contemporary Common Reader
In my paper I attempt to establish a starting point for a critique of the idea of the "common reader" as it is used in contemporary literary criticism. The "common reader" was famously developed as a separate theoretical construct by Samuel Johnson and popularized by Virginia Woolf. Today, this idea is being further popularized and simplified – though largely unconsciously – by both literary critics and mainstream journalists as a means of erasing the possibility of a genuine political conflict/debate. The "common reader" is perceived as a reader without a class, identity or any social background. I argue that in order to undertake a credible and deliberate critique of the "common reader" one has to go beyond the Johnson-Woolf paradigm and into the territory of the so-called everyday life studies – a Situationist-influenced tradition combining culture studies, literary theory and political philosophy.
James Boswellin kohteliaisuusteorian tarkastelua
Joseph Browne: Literature and Politics in Early Eighteenth Century England
The system of propaganda employed by the competing political groups in early eight- eenth century England embraced the popular literary circles in order to gain their support, a process which was reflected in the prolific and politically inclined literary output of the period. One of the lesser known members of these circles was the writer and physi- cian Joseph Browne. Little information concerning Browne is available, something which perhaps can be attributed to the relatively scant attention paid to his person. One critic, Howard Weinbrot, in his study on Samuel Johnson, acknowledged Browne as the author of the poem "The Gothick Hero" (so far only accredited to Browne) and associated his political views with support for the Hanoverian dynasty that ascended the British throne in 1714. However, the works Browne actually authored, as well as those attributed to him, contradict such a statement. In fact, his literary output, journalism, literary and political circles as well as his posthumous opinion reflected in nineteenth century works and com- ments on his literary activity prove Browne's anti-Harleyite, anti-Whig and therefore anti- Hanoverian views. This article attempts to draw a sketch of Joseph Browne, confirming the constancy of his political views, and contributes to the discussion on the authorship of a number of key texts hitherto only attributed to him.
Convergence English Language & Literature Association
Samuel Johnson and Women in Rasselas
Friendship: A Never Ending Reacquaintance: To Grow Fully Is to Change Often
One of God's greatest gifts to us is the desire and ability to reach out and forge friendships. This is not always easy. "Hell is other people" wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. But as Christians we have been shown the example of sharing one another's burdens and of giving one's life for a friend. In Christ's friendship we learn one of life's toughest lessons - how to forgive. This month, as we write Christmas cards and select meaningful gifts, each of us will reflect on our friendships. Friends provide an excellent sounding board on how we are learning and growing. Through friendships we gauge our growth in faith. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the English poet, critic and lexicographer, wrote, "If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair." In the context of "keeping a friendship in constant repair," I believe that making "new acquaintance" means renewing acquaintance with one's friends. Change is a constant in everyone's life. People are constantly evolving, and thus they must re-connect with those they care about. The connection must be maintained. John Henry Newman stated it in these words, "To live is to grow. To grow is to change. To grow fully is to change often."
Alexander Chalmers and the Canon of Samuel Johnson
Ferrero assesses the influence of Alexander Chalmers on the Johnson canon, particularly through his editions of Johnson's Works (1806, 1823) and Boswell's Life of Johnson (1822). Chalmers made lasting contributions: he corrected oversights like Hawkins' omission of five Adventurer essays, definitively excised "The picture of human life" (translated by Spence) from the Works, and added new attributions like the Preface to Payne's New tables of interest and "Letter on fire-works." Chalmers also compiled hundreds of editorial notes, many of which were later adopted without acknowledgment in Walesby's 1825 edition. He used internal evidence of style to speculate on additional attributions, notably in The Literary magazine, and to suggest Johnson's "considerable" assistance to Davies' Memoirs of the life of David Garrick.
Fitter's scathing review challenges Mayhew's historiographic method, which follows Michael Oakeshott in rejecting the impact of socio-economic forces and class ideologies on cultural texts. The review disputes Mayhew's repudiation of scholars like Raymond Williams and John Barrell. Fitter argues that the core thesis of Mayhew—that Johnson instituted a separation between topographical emblematics in sermons and factual description in travel accounts due to High Church religious fears—risks banality and has been previously recognized by Barbara Stafford. While acknowledging the erudition of Mayhew in documenting Augustan landscape approaches, Fitter criticizes the intrusion of Christian piety into the scholarship and the rejection of materialist premises by Mayhew.
Locke, Hume, Johnson and the Continuing Relevance of Tax History
This paper examines the relevance of the tax theories of John Locke and David Hume in the context of a new country (say, an independent Scotland) being faced with a change of tax system. It shows that events of the past have a continuing resonance in a modem context in respect of establishing a sound theoretical underpinning for a tax system, which then provides a broad, over-arching framework for the development of taxes which align with it. This is then demonstrated by showing how Samuel Johnson used Locke's theory to defend keeping the American colonies as part of Great Britain.
«The Multiplicity of Agreeable Consciousness»
Samuel Johnson's life was troubled by diverse physical diseases and – one year before his death – he experienced a stroke. Moreover, he suffered from recurring fits of depression. But Johnson was also merry, loved witty conversations, good food and his nightly tours through London pubs. Johnson maintained that pleasure and pain were closely connected with each other. In both his dialogues with James Boswell and in his comprehensive literary works, Johnson reveals a philosophy of happiness characterized by a radical skepticism reminiscent of Michel de Montaigne's Pyrrhonism. Influenced by Richard Burton, Thomas Browne and Francis Bacon, Johnson developed his specific doctrine of eudaemonic idols: as an idiosyncratic representative of Enlightenment philosophy he examined and questioned traditional clichès of happiness such as Stoicism, natural philosophy, learning, and marriage. Though not completely denying the possibility of earthly happiness, which he defined as the «multiplicity of agreeable consciousness», he was convinced that all earthly pleasures were doomed to fade away. As «a gloomy gazer on a world» to which he had «little relation», Johnson gave up any hope of attaining happiness on earth and exclusively trusted in felicity beyond the grave.
The book's title is misleading, having little, and nothing new, to say about Dr. Johnson. It claims to be collective criticism, as well as biography, but has less to say on the written word than on the socio-historical conditions of authorship. Except in relation to Charlotte Lennox, Clarke is not good on the sexual politics of the period and fails to take account of recent work on this topic. The book also contains errors of detail.
William Collins's 'Ode to Simplicity' and the Tail-Rhyme Stanza
Apart from the six-line tail-rhyme stanza, there could also be a doubling of lines or, more rarely, a ten-line stanza using tail-rhyme.1 Samuel Johnson notes-in his customary neoclassical prescriptivist stance-that Collins in his poetry affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. It was a period of experimentation and revival of forms such as the Spenserian stanza and the sonnet, as well as other poetic forms that had not prominently been used since the Middle Ages and that, through emerging philological scholarship, were made accessible to poets.
Anxiety, Reason, and Religion in the Age of Johnson
A perusal of any biography of Samuel Johnson's life reveals a man so beset by anxiety and fear of mental breakdown that the fear of "the black dog," Johnson's own shorthand for his mental weakness, is what so darkly colors the moral fabric of a man committed to keeping to a religious life of obedience and faith but nearly continuously ravaged by disease, doubt, and failure of will. The aim of this paper will be to attempt to contextualize Johnson's anxiety within the anxiety of his age in which religion and reason are being negotiated as the search continues for an ethical philosophy that can celebrate the humanity of enlightened man in purely secular terms. Against the overriding optimism about human nature and the rational will of the bulk of Enlightenment thought, especially as manifested in the line of Shaftesbury and the moral sense philosophers of Britain such as Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, but also in continental philosophers such as Rousseau and Kant, Johnson was of those who saw more darkness than light in the human heart. This is why he adhered so strongly to the need for the authority of revealed truth and tradition as manifested in the established Church and in the ancient constitution of the land of his birth. The conservatism of the Tory Johnson must be first and foremost understood as a matter of religious and philosophical persuasion that passive obedience to the divine will more than an enlightened faith in human will was the only human hope for security, if not in the choice of life, then in the choice of eternity.
18세기영문학 = Eighteenth-Century English Literature
Three Cheers for Mute Ingloriousness!: Gray's Elegy in the Poetry of John Clare
Samuel Johnson considered that Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard ‘abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo'. Roger Lonsdale argues that it ‘produces fewer or more complicated echoes in the bosoms of modern readers than in those of earlier generations', but it is not just the Doppler effect of the passing centuries that complicates responses. The Elegy has always been a conduit for diverse needs and aspirations. When General Wolfe famously declared on the eve of the Battle of Quebec that he would rather have written the Elegy than capture the city, he was enlisting its patriotic potential, or perhaps using it in the manner of Roman generals at their victory parades, to whisper in his ear, ‘remember, you are mortal'. For the nineteenth-century pioneers of the trade union movement the Elegy was a radical text which made their struggles poetic, and their banners often quoted the lines about the Village-Hampden who ‘with dauntless breast / The little tyrant of his fields withstood'.
Delicate Allegories, Deceitful Mazes: Goldsmith's Landscapes
This essay situates Goldsmith's use of the traditional analogy of garden and woman in The Deserted Village in terms of a network of personal and intellectual friendships and influences, and proposes that Goldsmith's landscapes, political and poetical, ostensibly and variously Chinese or English, are in fact implicitly Irish. Those landscapes are, moreover, subtly and intriguingly allegorical. Like Samuel Johnson, who composed its final four lines, the poem is emotionally and aesthetically Jacobitical; and its central simile, where the land is personified as a woman, derives from the abiding metaphor of the aisling, the primary genre of Irish Jacobite verse. Goldsmith's modification of the metaphor derives from his involvement in English landscape debates of his time, particularly the debate over the merits of the Chinese garden, a pretty allegorical vehicle for Goldsmith and his friend William Chambers, a form of treason for Horace Walpole and William Mason.
Samson's Cords: Imposing Oaths in 'Samson Agonistes'
Whether careless or hostile, the work of Samuel Johnson or his compositor, the mispunctuation and misspelling of John Milton's title do the poem a disservice by encouraging a misunderstand- ing of its second term, either rendering it ungrammatically meaningless or restricting the titles meaning to something like Samson's Agon. [...]put Johnson's Life of Milton together with his quotation from Swift, and you have an almost atheist Milton, not that far from the king-killer many Tories considered him to be.1 Yet the Tory Johnsons ostensibly petty attention to oaths actually hits upon a crucial issue in the writings of the dissenting Milton, from the antiprelatical and regicide tracts to De doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost. [...]Prynne argued, "the Kings Army of Papists and Malignants, invading the Parliaments or Subjects persons, goods, Lawes, Liberties, Religion may even in Conscience bee justly resisted with force," as proved "by many expresse Authorities recorded, and approved in Scripture," including the Samson story in Judges. [...]the polemic over oaths continued hotly for the next few years, with Quakers playing an important role as refusers of all oaths.44 John Gauden, who was not unsympathetic to Presbyterians and had probably helped portray Charles I as a Samsonian martyr in Eikon Basilike, was, however, among the first to leap into the ring in 1660 and deny the Covenants binding force.45 In 1661, after gaining a bishopric for his various services, Gauden attacked the Covenant once again in two books that used the image of Samson breaking his cords/oaths.46 The writings of Robert Sanderson, the age's foremost authority on oaths and an opponent of the Covenant, were used after his death in 1663 to repudiate the Covenant yet once more. (1182-85) Referring to the Israelites' attempts in Judges 15 to hand Samson over to the Philistines, Harapha seems to assume that they or their leaders have signed or verbally pledged to some agreement to ally with and thus obey this greater power; Samson has violated that league presumably by killing them and burning their fields (SA 1185-88; Judg. 14:19; 15:8, 4-5). Since he has, as Harapha puts it, "broke[n] the league" individually, he alone is handed over to them for punishment: "The Philistines, when thou hadst broke the league, / Went up with armed powers thee only seeking, / To others did no violence or spoil" (SA 1189-91).
Scientific English: Ruminations on Dr. Johnson and Noah Webster
On the contrasting contributions of lexicographers Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster to the standardization of English. Johnson's 1755 Dictionary provided the first comprehensive attempt to order the chaotic English orthography. However, Johnson's classical bias led him to clutter the language with superfluous letters like 'ph' and 'u' to indicate Latin or Greek origins, a trend that still creates filing and efficiency issues today. Webster, in contrast, focused on an American future for the language, publishing The American Spelling Book (1783) and the Compendious Dictionary (1806). Webster's spellings are closer to modern vernacular English and promote efficiency. The essay argues that retaining some of these quirky differences may be valuable for cognitive health and for maintaining human flexibility against "ant-like" deskilling.
Does Johnson's Prescriptive Approach Still Have a Role to Play in Modern-Day Dictionaries?
Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755) confirmed both the status of dictionaries as authoritative sources of (linguistic) knowledge and the prescriptive approach in lexicography. This approach prevailed for a long time. During the last decades the descriptive approach came to the fore, aptly supported by the increased reliance on lexicographic corpora. Modern-day lexicography has also witnessed the introduction of a third approach, i.e. the proscriptive approach, which includes features of both the prescriptive and the descriptive approach. This article investigates the occurrence of the prescriptive, descriptive and proscriptive approaches in modern-day dictionaries. A distinction is made between dictionaries focusing on language for general purposes and dictionaries focusing on languages for special purposes. It is shown that users rely on dictionaries as prescriptive reference sources and expect lexicographers to provide them with an answer to the specific question that prompted the dictionary consultation process. It is argued that knowledgeable dictionary users must be able to achieve an unambiguous retrieval of information and must be able to rely on the dictionary to satisfy their specific cognitive or communicative needs. Here the proscriptive approach plays an important role. Het Johnson se preskriptiewe benadering nog 'n rol te speel in modern woordeboeke? Samuel Johnson se woordeboek (1755) het die status van woordeboeke as gesaghebbende houers van (taalkundige) kennis, maar eweneens die preskriptiewe benadering in leksikografie gevestig. Hierdie benadering het lank gegeld. Gedurende die onlangse dekades het die deskriptiewe benadering op die voorgrond getree, sterk ondersteun deur toenemende benutting van korpora. Moderne leksikografie het 'n derde benadering beleef, te wete die proskriptiewe benadering wat kenmerke van sowel die preskriptiewe as die deskriptiewe benadering bevat. Hierdie artikel ondersoek die voorkoms van die preskriptiewe, deskriptiewe en proskriptiewe benadering in moderne woordeboeke. 'n Onderskeid word gemaak tussen algemene en vakwoordeboeke. Daar word aangetoon dat gebruikers op woordeboeke staatmaak as preskriptiewe naslaanbronne en dit van leksikograwe verwag om aan hulle antwoorde te verskaf op die spesifieke vrae wat tot die woordeboekraadpleging aanleiding gegee het. Kundige woordeboekgebruikers moet daartoe in staat wees om 'n ondubbelsinnige ontsluiting van inligting te bereik en hulle woordeboek te kan vertrou vir die bevrediging van spesifieke kognitiewe en kommunikatiewe behoeftes. Hier speel die proskriptiewe benadering 'n wesenlike rol.
Pizza with Samuel Johnson: PW Talks with Marcel Theroux
Goldenberg interviews Marcel Theroux regarding the inclusion of Johnson in a novel exploring embodied consciousness. Theroux explains that Johnson’s prolific nature makes it possible to imagine hanging out with him or going for pizza. The dialogue explores the Soviet-era procedure used to recreate consciousness from the many extant words left by the historical figure, using Johnson as the ideal test case for literary resurrection.
The Fables of Pity: Rousseau, Mandeville and the Animal-Fable
Prompted by Derrida's work on the animal-fable in eighteenth-century debates about political power, this article examines the role played by the fiction of the animal in thinking of pity as either a natural virtue (in Rousseau's Second Discourse) or as a natural passion (in Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees). The war of fables between Rousseau and Mandeville–and their hostile reception by Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith – reinforce that the animal-fable illustrates not so much the proper of man as the possibilities and limitations of a moral philosophy that is unable to address the political realities of the state.
Laurence Sterne and Topham Beauclerk: Evidence of an Acquaintanceship
Editors of Sterne's letters have conjectured that Sterne was referring here to Topham Beauclerk (1739-80), the outspoken wit, intimate friend of Samuel Johnson, learned collector of books and antiquities, and frail, short-lived sybarite. However, only slight substantiation of a connection between Sterne and Topham Beauclerk has thus far been produced to add weight to the conjecture.
John Dryden, Restoration, and Neoclassicism: Samples of Prescriptive Criticism in English Literature
Edebi eleştiri, amacı belli çalışmaları analiz etmek olmakla beraber, edebi metni değerlendirme ve anlama entelektüel yetisi anlamına da gelir; fakat birçok eleştirmen 20. Yüzyıldan önce bunu başarmış olmasına ragmen, İngiliz geçmişinde eleştiri, eleştirel eylemin doğasına yabancı bazı nedenlerle başlamıştır. Örneğin, Sydney savunur, Dryden öngörür, Pope düşünür ve öngörür, Fielding yeni bir tür ve Wordworth yeni bir şiir çeşidi tanıtır vb. Neoklasik dönemde İngiliz eleştirisi karmaşık ve çok sesli bir olguydu ve normatif bir eleştirel söylem geliştiren yazar vey azar-eleştirmenler tarafından temsil ediliyordu. John Dryden ve "Of Dramatic Poesi" denemesi Restorasyon dönemi İngiliz eleştirisinin durumunu daha iyi gösterecekti. 18. Yüzyılın ilk yarısına Alexander Pope'un "An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man"inde ifade edilen neoklasik fikirler yön vermişti. Ikinci yarısı, Dr. Samuel Johnson'ın karakteri ve Influential Lives of the Poets and Dictionary of the English Language adlı ederi tarafından yönlendirilmişti. İngiliz Edebiyatında neoklasik döneme ait en öngörülü eleştirel ses, John Dryden'ınkiydi ve Alexander Pope da ona eşlik ediyordu. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Dryden ve Pope'un eleştirel söylemleri bağlamında, öngörü ve eleştirinin özünü, edebiyatı açıklayarak ona yön vermesi olarak ortaya çıkarmaktır. Literary criticism implies the intellectual capacity to evaluate and understand the literary text, the analysis of particular works being the main aim of literary criticism, but, though achieved by most of the critics prior to the twentieth century, in English background criticism has started with some purposes which are alien to the nature of critical act. For instance, Sydney defends, Dryden prescribes, Pope reflects and prescribes, Fielding introduces a new genre and Wordsworth a new type of poetry, etc. English criticism during the neoclassical period was a complex and multi-voiced phenomenon, represented by a large number of critics and writer-critics who developed a reflexive but above all normative and prescriptive critical discourse. John Dryden and his Of Dramatic Poesie, An Essay would better show the condition of English criticism in Restoration. The first half of the eighteenth century was dominated by the neoclassical ideas expressed by Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man; the second half of the century was governed by the personality of Dr. Samuel Johnson and his influential Lives of the Poets and Dictionary of the English Language. The most prescriptive critical voice in English literature belonging to the neoclassical period is that of John Dryden, as to be equalled perhaps only by Alexander Pope. To reveal the essence of prescriptive criticism as explaining and giving rules as well as showing the direction for literary production with regards to the critical discourse of Dryden and that of Pope represents the purpose of this study.
Discordia Concors and Bidirectionality: Embodied Cognition in John Donne's Songs and Sonnets
In the introduction to his 1912 edition of John Donne's poetry, Herbert J. C. Grierson writes of "the vein of sheer ugliness which runs through his work, presenting details that seem merely and wantonly repulsive." What is more, Donne displays what Samuel Johnson argues is "a kind of ; a combination of dissimilar images." Through both a cognitive-literary and an empirical study of the metaphors in Donne's poems "The Bait" and "The Flea," the authors discuss the grotesque nature of his poetic imagery as constituting "a clash of incompatibles, generated by the great distance between the two semantic fields." The authors argue that it is this clash that sustains bidirectionality in a metaphor, by preserving the tension between its two subjects, while allowing each to alternatively become the focus of one's attention while reading. Donne's use of grotesque imagery thereby juxtaposes semantic fields and their worlds with frightening consequences, and this impacts upon the bidirectionality inherent in the process of metaphor comprehension. Furthermore, this essay will show how the poetic texts enable both embodied simulation and bodily feeling, both of which manifest embodied cognition in the reader; the authors therefore argue that Donne is, in fact, an early advocate of embodied cognition.
'An Instructive Monitor': Experience and the Fabrication of the Federal Constitution
Defined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary as the deliberative power by which people deduced "one proposition from another" or proceeded "from premises to consequences" in the effort to achieve logical and coherent perceptions of situations and problems, reason was thought of as both consistent with common sense and incompatible with passion and prejudice. [...]with Alexander Hamilton, late eighteenth-century Americans often recommended their views as conformable "to the dictates of reason and good sense. "32 Very often in the literature surrounding the Constitution, the terms "history" and "experience" were employed interchangeably. [...]when Madison claimed in Convention that his observations on the tendency of majorities to violate the rights of minorities were "verified by the Histories of every Country antient & modem"33 and when Melancton Smith announced in the New York ratifying convention that he could illustrate his argument that a large number of representatives was unnecessary to retain the confidence of the public "by a variety of historical examples, both ancient and modem,"34 they were using "nistory" synonymously with "experience." "52 More specifically, experience had taught them that no government could obtain the confidence of the American public that was not "organized in the republican form,"33 that did not guarantee the sanctity of the existing states, that was too expensive, or that went beyond the minimal functions of securing respect abroad and maintaining "happiness & security" at home.54 "The industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the [private] pursuit of gain, and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce," Alexander Hamilton noted, were "incompatible" with a large Public realm or an expensive government.55 People could expect no more from government, averred Charles Pinckney, than to be "capable of extending to its citizens all the blessing of civil & religious liberty-capable of making them happy at home" in the private realm.56 But their "own experience" with independent republican government beginning in 1776 had not only underlined for American political leaders the popular limits of political action; it had also revealed a wide variety of perplexing problems.57 "Experience had evinced" a want of energy in the central government, an absence of "an effectual control in the whole over its parts," and "a constant tendency in the States to encroach on the federal authority; to violate national Treaties; [and] to infringe the rights & interests of each other. 7 See, especially, Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969); Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford, 1970); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Tradition (Princeton, N.J., 1975); Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York, 1984); Morton Whi:e, The Philosophy of;he American Revolution (New York, 1978); Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kans., 1985); Jack P. Greene, The Intellectual Heritage of the Constitutional Era: The Delegates' library (Philadelphia, 1986).
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
Jane Austen's Concerns with Health and Moral Thoughts: The Dashwood Sisters and the Successful Regulation of Sense and Sensibility
According to Cartesian principles, in the seventeenth century the body was thought to be subordinated to the mind. Later in the eighteenth-century male authors of medical treatises supported the idea that the interaction of body and mind produced passion and could dangerously turn into mental breakdown. In all her novels Jane Austen showed an enormous interest in all matters concerning medical treatment. In Sense and Sensibility(1811), Austen emphasized illness and suffering by mixing physical health and mental disease with moral and philosophical doctrines. My contention in this article is that moralists, philosophers and thinkers such as Dr. Johnson, William Blake, William Godwin, and Adam Smith collaborated with Austen to shape the idea that sensibility was no disease and sense no virtue; instead they propose that human beings, especially women, can obtain individual and collective profit and promote changes not only in the past but also in the present if they regulate their reason and feeling with a practical mindset. Key words: physical health, mental breakdown, medicine, moral thoughts, regulation of feelings.
The Gendering of Rhyme: Leigh Hunt's Effeminate Poetics in The Story of Rimini
Critics such as Samuel Johnson viewed heroic couplets as logical, rational, and masculine; others, however, imagined alternative structures in the rhyming couplet, including romance couplets and feminine rhyme, which were derided by their critics as feminine, luxurious, and perverse. Leigh Hunt's use of feminine rhyme in the early 1800s, as well as critics' responses to his feminine and open couplets through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, provides an exemplary location for considering how gendered expectations appear in poetic form. Responses to Hunt's The Story of Rimini reproduce and extend gendered discourse on the couplet form from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At each point, even reviewers sympathetic to Hunt describe luxuriousness, self-indulgence, and "looseness" in his poetics and his use of rhyme. This article explores both how Hunt constructs alternative gender poetics throughout his poetry, and the extent to which gender and gender expectations affected the construction and reading of rhymes over the last three hundred years.
Killing Time and Filling Space: Epistolary Experience in the James Boswell–William Johnson Temple Correspondence
This essay offers a new perspective on the correspondence of James Boswell (1740–95) and William Johnson Temple (1739–96). While twentieth-century critics deprecated Boswell's letters, placing his real literary accomplishment in the journals and published biographies, I argue that we can find value in the letters of both men not as finished individual artworks but as the fabric of a continuous lifelong network of communication, carried out through the technology of the mid-to-late-eighteenth-century British postal system. By paying close attention to the two men's experience of pen and ink, of waiting for the post to arrive, of misdirected mail and the uncertainty that inhered in the whole system, we can see how the mail made them who they were. Both Temple's passive-aggressive dependence and Boswell's self-dramatizing insecurity, playing out in all aspects of their lives, are inseparable from the conditions of postal communication. Letters, as we now see them, were a process, not a product, and in the letters of Temple and Boswell we can see the relationships of two lifetimes shaped by the medium in which they took place.
Yeong'eo yeongmunhag = English Language and Literature
Fingerprint or Photograph?: The Fiction of Biographical Facts
Nadel examines the tension between documentary fact and narrative interpretation in biography, using the metaphors of the fingerprint and the photograph. Fingerprints represent unique, indelible identification, while photographs represent creative, critical representation. Nadel analyzes the first encounter between Boswell and Johnson in 1763 as a lynchpin for understanding this biographical "double act". Comparing Boswell's London Journal with his Life of Samuel Johnson, Nadel demonstrates how Boswell suppresses "fingerprint" details—such as Johnson's "slovenly" dress, "uncouth voice," and "dreadful appearance"—in favor of a "photographic" narrative that emphasizes wit and dramatic necessity. The article argues that art inevitably overtakes fact as the biographer constructs a coherent narrative out of individualized moments. Nadel challenges the perceived iron-clad reliability of scientific identification, noting that even fingerprints were initially met with skepticism and can be questioned today. Ultimately, the biographer must replace the fingerprint with the photograph, privileging the "reading" over the document to capture the character of the subject.
Nichols explores the connection between walking, thinking, and literature, framed by a memory error concerning Johnson's famous tour. He corrects the memory that Johnson danced a jig on Dun Caan during their 1773 tour of Scotland; Boswell, the indefatigable companion, was the dancer. The essay describes how a personal hiking trip through the British Lake District and a visit to Johnson and Boswell's tour destinations linked poetry and place, inspiring a career change for the author. This experience connects with the tradition of Romanticist walkers and the Peripatetic origin of walking as an aid to thought.
Fugitive Pieces: Walpole, Byron, and Queer Time
In their earliest works, Horace Walpole (Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose, 1758) and Lord Byron (Fugitive Pieces, 1806) built a queer temporality of fugitive time out of the occasional pieces and sporadic readers that Samuel Johnson first theorized in The Harleian Miscellany. These juvenile poets aligned several forms of fugitive print—loose scraps, detached fragments, burned books, and encoded secrets—and fugitive figures—political exiles, queer aristocrats, runaway slaves, and amateur poets (often themselves). Walpole and Byron redeem both carefree and imperiled fugitive lives by engaging two antithetical discourses of disappearance: languid, idle ease, and sudden, active flight. This discontinuous eighteenth-century poetics becomes increasingly racially coded as it crosses the Atlantic in the nineteenth century. Fugitive pieces linked Old World flights of fancy and New World runaway slave advertisements, collected works and secure colonial property, and literary selections and sugar cane extracts. In their surprising affirmations of an intermittent, occasional time that allies irregular idlers, miscellaneous fugitives, asylums for poetic pieces, and abolitionist accounts of disabled bodies, juvenile poets moved beyond their era's straight narrative of imperial progress.
Samuel Johnson, James Boswell och biografiens svåra konst
The death of philosopher David Hume in 1776 sparked a controversy that would last for a decade and involved well-known literary luminaries of the era. The controversy revolved around the role of religion in fostering morality and political stability. Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke maintained that religion is a positive influence. Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon, however, did not put much significance on the value of religion. James Boswell, who was critical of Hume because of his attacks on Christianity, had lingering doubts that Hume may had been right after all.
An Allegory on the Banks of the Nile and Other Hazards of Intercultural Literary Comparison
Miner discusses comparative poetics in practice by referring to two accounts of journeys taken by paired travelers. He examines "naming properties" in accounts of voyages by Matsuo Basho and Iwanami Sora and Samuel Johnson and James Boswell.
To Dr. Johnson at Moy Castle Lochbuy, Isle of Mull Thursday, October 21, 1773
Landscape, Religion, and Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century England
Casts a new light on the discussion of landscape and nature in 18C England by showing how a hierarchy of religious and political values was applied to it. Focuses on the Anglican perspective, which is here described as 'the ancien regime view of landscape', using numerous examples from, in particular, the writings of Samuel Johnson.
English dictionaries of three periods, ie, (1) "yesterday's English" (until the 18th century), (2) "today's English" (early 19th century until circa 1940), & (3) "tomorrow's English" (circa 1945 & after) are reviewed, focusing on recent volumes & works currently under development. The Early Modern & Modern English dictionaries appearing in (1) were usually unidirectionally bilingual or "crypto-bilingual" (serving to explain foreignisms in English); during (2), standardized varieties of British & American English were represented in general dictionaries developed by Samuel Johnson & Noah Webster, respectively. Regarding stage (3) dictionary development, eight trends are identified: globalization (general unilingual works that can be used anywhere), localization (works customized for one country or area), bilingualization (bilingual dictionaries), semibilingualization (principally monolingual books with added bilingual information), nationalization (books focusing on national standard varieties), regionalization (books representing multinational regional varieties), thematization (thematically organized works), & electronization (dictionary development aided by new storage systems & corpus linguistics, & cyberdictionaries). All trends are related to the international growth of English since the collapse of the German Reich, the British Empire, & communism; international standardization processes & learner requirements are also addressed. S. Paul
Satire as 'That Art of Necessary Defence': A Study of Samuel Johnson`s Ideas of Madness
Irreconcilable Differences: The Education of Deaf Children in Canada
Samuel Johnson said it was the greatest human calamity, Helen Keller said she would rather be blind, and A. G. Bell feared that unless extraordinary measures were taken, a new and toxic variety of the human race would emerge. Deafness, the invisible disability, affects only one person in one thousand, but for as long as history has been recorded it is a topic that has been plagued with controversy. For the past 300 years, the question of the "right way" to educate deaf children has been at the center of a bitter educational dispute. Before that time, education was not an issue, as virtually every society took the term "deaf and dumb" quite literally. The idea that deaf children were capable of education constituted a dramatic breakthrough, but it came with a heavy price as it was based on two very divergent ideas: communication through sign language or teaching the deaf to speak. This article addresses some of these issues in the following sections: (1) Some History; (2) Speak or Sign: The Great Debate; (3) The Literacy Challenge; (4) Qualified Teachers in Short Supply; and (5)What Can Be Done?
Major describes the book as intellectually rigorous and emotionally engaged, centered on the continuing fascination with the contrast between Johnson's natural nobility and his unruly physical body. Deutsch illuminates Johnson by focusing on his body and the anecdotal form, and raises important questions about anecdote's influence on the literary canon and communities. Major finds the book less subtle on gender and form, with an awkward chapter on Thrale. Deutsch achieves her goal of reframing Johnson by including an engagingly honest championing of the role of the heart in scholarly endeavor.
Pharos of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society
The Perfect Gentleman: Boswell, the Spectator and Macheath
Erin Mackie explores how Mr Spectator became one persona through which James Boswell represents himself in his London Journal (1762-63), providing an antitype of the 'rake' persona which Boswell derives in part from Macheath in The Beggar's Opera. In this antithesis most attention falls on Macheath, but Mackie notes that in Tatler 27 Richard Steele creates a sentimental portrait of the rake as 'the most agreeable of all Bad Characters'. Thus Boswell finds in the Tatler's rake an image of himself which stands in relation to the disapproving Mr Spectator. With this in mind, Mackie notes that the Spectator papers which describe the Mohock riots of March-April 1712 also characterize such displays as innocuous theatrical expressions of youthful ebullience. Boswell, then, finds acceptable dress for his criminal masculinity by casting himself into a 'mock-heroic impersonation' whilst using the narrative position provided by Mr Spectator to give himself 'spectatorial immunity'.
Meyers responds to Allen's review of his Johnson biography, arguing she unjustly criticized his approach and conclusions. Meyers defends his comprehensive scholarly background, disputes the charge that he lacks deep knowledge of his subjects, and asserts the superiority of his work over Martin's, particularly on the "crucial issues" of Johnson's sexuality and his influence on modern writers. Allen's response clarifies that her review was positive but maintains that Martin's biography showed greater emotional empathy with the subject.
A Controversy Discarded and 'Ossian' Revealed: An Argument for a Renewed Consideration of 'The Poems of Ossian'
Moulton argues for a reevaluation of James Macpherson’s "The Poems of Ossian" by shifting focus from the 250-year authenticity debate to the work’s profound influence on European culture, music, and figures like Johannes Brahms and Walt Whitman. Samuel Johnson emerged as the foremost and most vehement critic of Macpherson’s claim that the book was a collection of remnants from a 3rd-century Celtic bard. Driven by empiricist skepticism and a belief that ancient Highlanders were illiterate barbarians, Johnson dismissed the bard as a "barbarian among barbarians" and demanded manuscript evidence. Although Boswell records that Highlanders affirmed the authenticity of the poems during their tour, the famed lexicographer remained entrenched in his accusations of fraudulence. While modern research partially exonerates Macpherson by showing the work is indeed based on ancient Gaelic poetry—suggesting Macpherson was guilty of exaggeration but not fraud—Johnson’s "revered pen" cast a long shadow that continues to dissuade interest in the work. Despite Johnson's dismissal, Moulton documents a vast musical legacy of nearly 300 pieces by composers such as Schubert and Mendelssohn, who used Ossianic themes or an "Ossianic manner" characterized by harp-like instrumentation and folk-like melodies.
Marx examines the concept of classicism as a critical fiction weaponized against literary history by Charles Maurras and T. S. Eliot between the 1890s and 1930s. Both writers sought to remodel post-symbolist literature, sharing an unexpected common ground with the avant-garde in their desire to alter the normal historical progression. Maurras championed a strict, anti-dialectical neoclassical rebirth, rooted in an idealized, universal vision of ancient Greece that functioned as an aesthetic and political escape from history. Eliot imported these French concepts through T. E. Hulme and Albert Thibaudet but reshaped classicism into an anti-neoclassical, spatial framework centered on the creator rather than the critic. Marx shows how Eliot used Thibaudet's triad of traditions to expand classicism into a holistic worldview, attempting to submerge the concept into broader political and religious structures.
Oliver Goldsmith: More Flamboyant Than Physician
[Oliver Goldsmith] was a taiented flautist and is thought to have used his musical proficiency to fund his travels around Europe. Also a founding member of critic and lexicographer Dr. [Samuel Johnson]'s Club in S oho, Goldsmith reputedly consumed a lot of alcohol and enjoyed playing card games for money. Johnson, it is said, assisted Goldsmith in publishing The Vicar of Wakefield but the book did not sell especially well during Goldsmith's lifetime.
William Cruikshank (1745–1800), Anatomist and Surgeon, and His Illustrious Patient, Samuel Johnson
Author's abstract: "William Cumberland Cruikshank (1745–1800) was a Scot who from 1771 until his death taught anatomy at the famous school of anatomy in Great Windmill Street, London, founded by William Hunter (1718–1783). Arguably, his most famous patient was Samuel Johnson, the celebrated 18th Century man of letters and author of the first English dictionary. This article, largely drawn from Johnson's correspondence, documents the medical condition that caused Johnson to consult Cruikshank and some of the social links between Johnson, Hunter, and Cruikshank."
Chronic Conditions: Beckett, Bergson and Samuel Johnson
This article analyses the work of the twentieth-century late modernist Samuel Beckett, in light of the turn-of-the-century anti-rationalist Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and the eighteenth-century neoclassicist Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). What unites these three very different thinkers is a concern over habitual, automatic and involuntary behavior, which in all three cases has a distinctly neurological dimension. Beckett's writing explores the Bergsonian notion, informed by medicine and experimental psychology, of the limitations of agency, of "the deep-seated recalcitrance of matter," and of the human as always already inflicted by the mechanical, a fact that is poignantly highlighted by the case of Samuel Johnson. Through his encounter with Johnson, Beckett registers a paradigm shift in the understanding of subjectivity. Whereas Bergson aims, throughout his career, to contest the mechanical, habitual and automatic that threaten to encrust themselves upon the living, in Beckett's often uncannily Johnsonian writing, the habitual and the automatic become progressively more central, until in the late works, habit and mechanical behavior constitute a tenuous, fraught and primitive ontology, the residues of an agential self.
Fixing the Language: Dr. Johnson's Dictionary
McDaid cites that few indeed are the great books of our civilization for which one can visit their birthing place and gaze upon the site of the travail, despair and joy of creation. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language is one of those books and 17 Gough Square, just off Fleet Street, at what used to be the heart of London's newspaper industry, is one of those places. Early Modern English lexicography embodies the transition from simple words lists and glossaries to the modern dictionary. This work would prove hugely influential on other early lexicographers for the next hundred or more years, as 'hard-word' dictionaries rose in popularity and became more readily available in print.
'Imperfect, Confused, Interrupted': Biography, Nationalism, and Generic Hybridity in William Godwin's Life of Chaucer
Though relatively unknown today, William Godwin's Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1803) was instrumental in the eventual popularization of Chaucer as a national poet in the Victorian period. Yet, the Life of Chaucer does not simply prefigure later nineteenth-century concerns with nationalism via canon formation; nor does it follow the template of literary biography established by Samuel Johnson. Indeed, the Life of Chaucer seems not to be about Chaucer at all but, as Robert Southey complained, is a "heterogeneous mixture" of cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts which failed to channel Chaucer's life into "one unbroken narrative" (472). Rather than see Godwin's "heterogeneous mixture" as a defect, this essay reads the Life of Chaucer as an experimental text engaged in an unsettling of disciplinary, cultural, and national boundaries. Godwin's Life reads Chaucer through a multiplicity of disciplines and genres, from Gothic architecture, to the invention of musical counterpoint, miracle plays, metallurgy, dreams, and religious iconography, among others. Godwin approaches biography not in terms of the hypostasis of the subject or nation as an isolatable system but as a "life" irreducible to a single genre or culture that would allow us to fix its meaning.
The Authorship of The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York
Merriam examines the authorship of The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York. In their introduction to the 3rd Arden Henry VI, Part Three, John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen conclude that 'the complex relationship between The True Tragedy [of Richard, Duke of York (1595)] and 3 Henry VI [1623] has challenged the ingenuity of readers, student and scholars.' Some scholars have entertained the view of Samuel Johnson in 1765 that the True Tragedy was a memorial reconstruction of a performance of the play known in the First Folio as Henry VI, Part Three. Others have entertained the early view of Edmond Malone that the Octavo was a Shakespeare draft of the Folio play. Yet others have combined the two hypotheses.
George Meredith on 'Killing One's Darlings'
A 2024 exhibition at Oxford' s Weston Library centered on an old saw of writing advice: 'Kill your darlings'. Gallery notes attributed the quip to Stephen King, but clarified that the phrase originated in a lecture by the British author Q, pseudonym of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Nevertheless, there are precedents before Quiller-Couch for this concept. Boswell records Samuel Johnson passing on sage advice that is similar in sentiment if not in phrasing, and in George Meredith's 1859 novel The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, the rejection of one's own writing is framed not as an act of editing—the ‘strike it out' of Johnson's admonition—but as an act of murder, the ‘killing' of ‘one's darling child'.
Robert Dodsley and the Genesis of Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar
On the basis of an analysis of the correspondence of the 18h-century London bookseller Robert Dodsley (1703–1764), a proposal is offered concerning the origin of Robert Lowth's (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762). The author presents arguments which suggest that Lowth's grammar was not his own idea but that of Dodsley, who also invoked the assistance of another author whose work he published, William Melmoth (1710–1799). If this thesis holds, Lowth's grammar is just as much the outcome of a ‘bookseller's project', as Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (1755), the idea for which, according to Johnson's biographer Boswell, also came from Dodsley.
From The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, by Samuel Johnson
Oyebode selects an extract from the 1759 prose narrative by Johnson to illustrate a psychological state. The passage depicts an astronomer who mistakenly believes he possesses "imaginary dominion" over the seasons and meteorology. Driven by a "sudden wish" to control the Nile, the character succumbs to the delusion that the clouds listen to his lips. Although the astronomer reasons against his own conviction and suspects himself of madness, he maintains his secret belief. The selection highlights the boundaries between the wonderful and the impossible within a frame of obstetric obstinacy and imagination.
Authors Who Inspired Samuel Johnson's Language Use in The Rambler: An Investigation of His Reading Sources Based on a Phraseological Unit 'of Our Present State'
Author's abstract: "The present study attempts to identify some of the reading sources by which Samuel Johnson was inspired when writing his periodical, The Rambler (1750–1752). To this end, 4-grams were extracted both from The Rambler corpus and the 1710–1780 subset of The Corpus of Late Modern English Text 3.0 (CLMET 3.0). This was conducted to detect the phrases that appeared only in The Rambler and not found in the texts, as far as the corpus is concerned, that were contemporary to his collection of essays. The study exclusively focuses on the cluster "of our present state" and traces its use in the era that preceded Johnson's time using the corpus of Early English Books Online (EEBO). It was found that "of our present state" was commonly used in sermon-style or theology-related works in the 17th century, which indicates, along with the fact that Johnson was religiously committed, that Johnson obtained some inspiration from these writings."
'The Observer' Essay Serial in The Bristol and Bath Magazine, 1782–1783
Provides sources, mainly from The Connoisseur, for the remaining six essays of the seven instalment serial in 'The Observer'. There were no ascriptions or hints that these essays were selections from the major essayists of the mid century, but some readers, including Samuel Johnson, George Colman, and Bonnel Thornton might have complained that the unoriginal 'observer' had worn out his welcome.
'Bring Me the Head of James Macpherson': The Execution of Ossian and the Wellsprings of Folkloristic Discourse
Porter reassesses James Macpherson’s contribution to folklore, arguing that his "importance has been masked" by Samuel Johnson’s diatribes, which focused on the "authenticity" of sources Johnson could not read. While controversy still surrounds the compilation of the poems because of Macpherson’s free use of source material, Porter emphasizes Macpherson’s complex role as a native Gaelic speaker attempting to rescue a tradition under assault. Boswell’s biography furthered this denigration, resulting in "knee-jerk reactions" to Ossian based on Johnson’s forceful judgments; however, in the present context of concern for the nature and study of folklore, this issue of "authenticity" seems less important than Macpherson’s own complex personality and motives. Porter shows that Macpherson’s "translations" were actually creative adaptations of genuine tradition, as documented by the 1805 Highland Society Report and Derick Thomson, and she explores how Macpherson’s "shifting identity" as a "Celtic Whig" and his identification with the blind bard Ossian reflected the psychological forces of his time. These poems had an enormous influence on the course of European Romanticism and the growth of folkloristics through key figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder, as Macpherson’s work foreshadows the methods of the Grimms and Lönnrot. Beyond the question of forgery, Macpherson’s attitude toward his sources and his English-language audience sheds light on the process of "recomposition" and on the difficulty of "translating" cultural meanings.
Potter provides a brief biographical sketch of Johnson to accompany a cover portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The article focuses on Johnson's monumental achievement in creating the 1755 Dictionary, which he produced "almost single handedly" over nine years definition of 40,000 words. Potter notes Johnson's initial struggle for patronage, receiving only "a token sum" from Lord Chesterfield. The text describes the "Johnson Arguing" portrait as an illustration of his deep mental concentration and "strange antic gesticulations." This brief notice emphasizes that while Johnson's financial situation remained weak for much of his career, his work was so comprehensive that it remained "without rival for almost 150 years" until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary. The article contextualizes Johnson as a "literary monarch" whose circle of friends included leading artists and thinkers of the eighteenth century.
Antiquarian and Rare Books in London at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century
"Booksellers are generous liberal-minded men." According to Boswell, Dr. Johnson made this remark in 1756, though anyone remotely acquainted with Johnson will also know that he was equally capable of thinking—and saying—something quite the opposite; it would be imprudent to overlook the possibility of irony here. The London book trade in the eighteenth century was a busy one, and its history is the subject of some of the best research being done on London's culture. There was also a prospering trade in second-hand or "previously owned" books, and a large number of books from previous centuries are often found in . . .
RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage
Words are the Daughters of Earth: Language as a Way of Knowing
The title of this article is taken from Samuel Johnson, who spoke as a critic, essayist and lexicographer. While the author of this article disagrees with Johnson's view that language serves simply as a signpost or an instrument for ideas and things, she likes the phrase 'words are the daughters of Earth'. They anchor us firmly to our values, our emotions, our ideas, to other people, and to ourselves. Our language is our lens to our reality. As the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein states, 'The limits of my language are the limits of my world'. The fact that understanding and speaking a second language is not a specific essential learning achievement in the Australian educational system is a sad reminder that this society has not really understood the importance of seeing through another lens. It is not enough to place the learning of language under the broad umbrella of cultural diversity, for this implies that language is merely a tool, or in the words of Johnson, an instrument to aid us in comprehending, tolerating, and communicating with another culture. The author asserts that language is how we think and how we know - it is a scaffold, not a marker. It speaks 'us'. [Author abstract, ed]
Romanticism, Revolution and Language: The Fate of the Word from Samuel Johnson to George Eliot
Reviewing John Beer's Romanticism, Revolution and Language: The Fate of the Word from Samuel Johnson to George Eliot, Paley outlines the book's central project: tracing the links, especially concerning language, across a wide range of authors from Johnson to Eliot. Beer argues for Wordsworth's singular importance, viewing The Prelude as a "poem of process" where the poet encounters "the crisis of the word." The book also juxtaposes Blake with Johnson, calling Blake, like Johnson, an urban man. Paley notes Beer's extensive attention to Hazlitt and his discussion of Austen's view of Sensibility compared with Coleridge's.
Canonical Approaches to Shakespeare: Dr. Johnson and Coleridge
A canonical critical approach to a canonical author was defined by Harold Bloom as a combination of two critical standpoints. One aspect concerns the critic's ability to solve formal and phenomenological issues which arise in a work of art. The other one refers to the critic's capacity of making value judgments on literary works on moral grounds. My preferred approach in this presentation is of ‘the compare and contrast' type, as critics from two different cultural paradigms (late Neoclassicism and early Romanticism) are weighed against each other. While Johnson is concerned with the issue of the three unities and with the moral dimension of Shakespeare's plays, Coleridge attempts a reconstruction of Shakespeare's original intention and builds on the hypothesis that as concerns poetry pleasure precedes truth. The main aim of this article is bringing together two critics having different personalities, united by a common interest: taking Shakespeare away from accessibly appreciatively-naïve criticism and promoting a truly critical approach to the author. Their views are also canonical as they understood and incorporated two of Shakespeare's registers that are the sage discourse and the passionate language of nature. Apart from this, the two critics managed, I think, successfully, to build the basis of a tradition in literary criticism. Since the conference's theme is labeled Genres and Historicity: Text, Cotext, Context, I thought it would be interesting to refer to the above mentioned aspects which mainly focus on criticism as an emerging genre.
University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series
Unfortunately, [Samuel Johnson] struggled with poor health all his life, with loss of vision in one eye, deafness in one ear and disfigured skin. People also remarked on Johnson's jerky movements and his strange ways. A literary notable if ever there was one! When compiling his famous dictionary (1755), he defined scrofula as: 'When matter in the milk disposes to coagulation, it produces a scrofula.'
Robert Lowth and the Critics: Literary Contexts for the 'Critical Notes' in his Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762)
This article provides a broad intellectual context for Robert Lowth's (1710–1787) Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), and in particular for the footnotes or "Critical Notes" in which he documented the grammatical errors of great dead writers. It is well known that Lowth's notes were innovative in the English grammatical tradition, and that they contrasted and qualified the "Examples from the best Writers" in the Dictionary of the English Language (1755) by Samuel Johnson (1709–1784). Here the author places Lowth in broader context and demonstrate that the ‘bad' grammar of vernacular classics had already been publicized in debates about translating the bible and editing Shakespeare. In the concluding discussion I draw on current studies of literary canons to argue that by crystallizing the difference between literary and standard language, Lowth's grammar increased the socio-cultural capital of both.
Taking his index to a new biography of Samuel Johnson as a case study, Christopher Phipps describes his personal approach to indexing the cast of characters in works of life writing, and argues that a detailed biographical index is a vital and value-adding part of the editorial apparatus of a text.
Monsiváis después de Monsiváis Testimonios: Conocí a Carlos Monsiváis
Vimos allí a Frida Kahlo, rodeada por Diego Rivera, Carlos Pellicer, Juan O'Gorman y algunos otros "grandes." Luego hablamos de un libro fabuloso, La vida del Dr. Johnson escrito por Boswell, donde el biógrafo y el biografiado aparecen alternativamente como los notables personajes que fueron, pero también anticipan ya rasgos del buen señor Pickwick, o, más hogareñamente, de don Reginito Burrón, lo que hacía aún más deleitosa la lectura. No se trataba de un caso personal, dice; por lo que vio, todos los autos y autobuses fueron registrados.
A partial register of hard-drinking celebrities in the literary field will include James Agee, Sherwood Anderson, W.H. Auden, Charles Baudelaire, Robert Benchley, John Berryman, Louise Bogan, James Boswell, Robert Burns, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Gould Cozzens, Hart Crane, Stephen Crane, ee cummings, Theodore Dreiser, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Eugen Ionescu, Samuel Johnson, James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, Charles Lamb, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, Robert Lowell, Malcolm Lowry, John Phillips Marquand, Carson McCullers, Edna Saint Vincent Millay, Alfred de Musset, John Henry O'Hara, Charles Olson, Eugene O'Neill, Dorothy Parker, Edgar Allan Poe, William Sydney Porter (O'Henry), Edwin Arlington Robinson, Theodore Roethke, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nichita Stanescu, John Steinbeck, Wallace Stevens, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Alfred Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Dylan Thomas, James Thurber, Mark Twain, Paul Verlaine, Evelyn Waugh, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe. pp. 3–4
Los «Rudimentos de la Gramática Inglesa» de Jovellanos: Introducción y Notas
Este artículo es una breve edición anotada de la obra de JovellanosRudimentos de la gramática inglesa, publicada en 1794 como parte de su Curso de Humanidades Castellanas, y que representa una de las primeras gramáticas inglesas escritas en español. En él se analizan sus características formales más importantes así como la posible influencia que las gramáticas inglesas de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, como la Joseph Priestley (1761), Robert Lowth (1762) o Samuel Johnson (1766), tuvieron en el texto del ilustrado español. En las notas que acompañan al documento original, además de hacer referencia a dichas fuentes inglesas, se hace hincapié en el fiel reflejo por parte de Jovellanos de los usos lingüísticos de la Inglaterra de finales del siglo XVIII, y en los rasgos deindudable modernidad que —desde un punto de vista estrictamente lingüístico— muestra su gramática inglesa.PALABRAS CLAVE: Jovellanos. Gramática inglesa. Gramáticas empíricas. Utilitarismo. Naturalismo lingüístico. Joseph Priestley. Robert Lowth. Samuel Johnson
When British essayist Samuel Johnson wrote in 1774 the famous words "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," the context was an aggressive British colonial expansionist push and associated wars with its European colonial competitors.
Великобританската представа за китайския език между 17 и 19 в [The British perception of the Chinese language between the 17th and 19th centuries]
During the period under discussion the idea of the Chinese language underwent a substantial change. While in the seventeenth century – when Britain was in the grip of a powerful sinophile sentiment – many intellectuals were inclined to view the language and the writing system of the Middle Kingdom favorably, seeing in the Chinese characters a remnant of the first human language, during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries the popular views changed and the Chinese language was examined with a more critical eye. The paper discusses these changes, focusing on a few authors whose views can be considered fairly representative of the prevalent societal trends at the time. Among the authors I discuss are John Bell, Samuel Johnson, Francis Bacon and John Webb.
Дипломатически, икономически и културни отношения между Китай и страните от Централна и Източна Европа [Diplomatic, economic and cultural relations between China and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe]
Samuel Johnson as a Christian Moralist: Exploring the Conflict between Divine Calling and Worldly Ambition
Convulsion of the Lung: An Historical-Analysis of the Cause of Dr. Johnson's Fatal Emphysema
Of Johnson's fatal emphysema, it appears probable, on available historical and anatomic evidence, that it resulted from bronchiectasis, a diagnosis favoured by the pattern of illness: a protracted and severe respiratory infection succeeded by annual episodes of severe winter bronchitis, remitting in summer, and culminating in respiratory insufficiency; and by the findings of pleural adhesion and cor pulmonale at necropsy. That is resulted from chronic bronchitis is a proposition both plausible and irrefutable without the specimen.
Thomas Daniel: An unknown philosopher of the mid-eighteenth century
Thomas Daniel was the author of a number of letters printed in 'The Gentleman's Magazine' from 1750 to 1752, and of a 1751 pamphlet entitled 'An Essay on the Existence of Matter'. Offers, for the first time, some factual details concerning Daniel's life and writings, before discussing his philosophical work and its interest for historians of 18C ideas. The immaterialist theory that Daniel developed in reaction against Berkeley's philosophy owed much to Malebranche; and in this it can be seen as distinct from the thought of other contemporary but even less well known immaterialists, including Arthur Collier, Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Johnson.
Ross traces the evolution of lexicography from the manual methods of Johnson in the 18th century to contemporary computer-aided practices. Ross cites Robert Burchfield, who noted in 1986 that the arrival of microcomputers marked a transition away from the manual editing of manageable databases common to a different age. The article highlights how the corpus revolution and the Internet provide vast amounts of linguistic evidence, yet Ross cautions against the blind use of search engine frequency counts. Using rare words like algesimetry and alegar, Ross demonstrates that common sense remains essential to determine what to include in a dictionary. Ross concludes that while technology is a superb aid, it cannot replace human skills and sensibilities.
Le Dictionnaire de la langue anglaise de Samuel Johnson (1755)
Reddick traces the development, methodology, and subsequent revisions of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. While British lexicography previously relied on simple lists of difficult words, Johnson introduced rigorous, multi-layered definitions and contextual literary illustrations from authors spanning Spenser to the early eighteenth century. Johnson initially planned a normative system to fix the language, influenced by John Locke, but a mid-project crisis forced the adoption of a descriptive approach because trying to freeze a living language resembles trying "to chain syllables, and to lash the wind." Reddick details how Johnson synthesized methods from previous bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, such as Abel Boyer, Nathan Bailey, and Robert Ainsworth. Reddick also analyzes the substantial text revisions for the 1773 fourth edition, demonstrating how Johnson and an assistant reallocated illustrative quotes to alter semantic boundaries, balance past authority against contemporary usage, and enforce stylistic "elegance" over linguistic barbarism.
Professor Gwin J. Kolb: 'Wise and happy' Johnson scholar
Redford summarizes the career of Kolb, a distinguished editor and bibliophile at the University of Chicago. The account focuses on Kolb's extensive contributions to Johnsonian scholarship, specifically his definitive editions of Rasselas and Johnson on the English Language for the Yale Edition. Redford highlights Kolb’s collaborative research with Sledd on the Dictionary and his meticulous editorial standards. The narrative emphasizes Kolb's dual legacy as a teacher and a leading authority on Johnson’s prose.
'Splitters and Lumpers': Samuel Johnson's Tics, Gesticulations and Reverie Revisited
Medical diagnosis, even in psychiatry, has been made principally by 'splitters' and 'lumpers': those who separate categories of explanation and those who combine them. This paper, the text of an annual lecture delivered to a national British medical society, charts the detailed psychiatric diagnosis of one of Western civilization's most illustrious men of letters, Samuel Johnson, and explains how it was constructed in the last century. The aim is to provide a case study documenting the divergent methodologies of 'splitters' and 'lumpers' in practice.
Rudd chronicles Johnson's extensive personal and intellectual connections with Ireland, noting his Dublin University doctorate and his "strong interest in Ireland's language and history." Although Johnson never visited Ireland, Rudd details his friendships with Irish figures like the painter "Ofellus," the printer George Abraham Grierson, and the clergyman William Maxwell. Johnson "severely reprobated" British government policies toward the Irish nation, particularly its treatment of Catholics, describing it as "the most detestable mode of persecution." The article highlights Johnson's defense of the Irish against Scottish "conspiracies" to cheat the world with "false representations." Rudd also records Piozzi's observations of Johnson's Irish acquaintances and Boswell's role in recording Johnson's "critical brand of patriotism" and his preference for Irish over Scottish scholars.
In this letter to the editor, Rogers contests Jackson's review of Martin's biography by documenting at least twenty-five passages that use words, phrases, and arguments from Rogers's Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia (1996) without acknowledgment. Rogers provides side-by-side comparative examples from Martin's text and the Encyclopedia—including entries on Hawkesworth, Levet, the Chambers–Johnson legal collaboration, and the relationship between Johnson's Journey and Boswell's Tour—to demonstrate verbatim replication. He notes that Martin's assessment of Journey closely follows the Encyclopedia's discussion of oral societies and Gaelic culture, and he offers to supply a full print-out of twenty-one additional instances of similar passages. Rogers challenges the "seamless integration" of modern scholarship in Martin's narrative, arguing it hides the joins where original sources were used and constitutes unacknowledged plagiarism.
Real provides a comprehensive review of Lonsdale’s four-volume authoritative edition of Johnson’s Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (2006). He characterizes the work as a magisterial "apex" of Lonsdale’s career, uniting the roles of biographer, textual critic, and historian. The edition features a newly constituted text based on the 1783 octavo (L83) as copy-text, accompanied by extensive collations and a spectacular commentary. Real highlights Lonsdale’s "unrivalled erudition" in identifying allusions and providing essay-like notes on neoclassical themes, such as pastoral poetry and the metaphysical. Despite criticizing the "infernal nuisance" of relegated endnotes and citing minor bibliographical omissions regarding Swift and neoclassical theory, Real concludes the edition is "unsurpassed and likely to be unsurpassable for decades."
Invented in England in the final decades of the seventeenth century, the sash window quickly replaced the casement window, becoming a defining feature of eighteenth-century English architecture. With its liberal use of expensive panes of glass, its vertical opening system, and its novel rope-and-pulley mechanism, the sash window attracted attention from those interested in scientific advancement, supporters of new English inventions, and those who longed for what was new and fashionable. While architectural historians have long noted the sash window's predominance in English architecture, literary historians and critics have overlooked how the sash window often features as one of the few descriptive details in early modern fiction. After a short history of the sash window, this essay examines the literary significance of the sash window in works ranging from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver Travels and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy to Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
Ross explores the ascription of a poem to Margaret More Roper in an early eighteenth-century manuscript. The ascription occurs in an early eighteenth-century miscellany of devotional papers in the hand of Elizabeth Bruce Boswell, the grandmother of Samuel Johnson's biographer James Boswell. While recent discussion of Roper has looked to deprioritize individual authorship, the attribution of a poem to her in Boswell's early eighteenth-century manuscript reopens the tantalizing search for her writing which is known to be missing. The poem in Boswell's manuscript may be one piece in the puzzle of Margaret More Roper's missing works.
The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia
Revauger's largely positive review praises Thomas Keymer's 2009 edition of Rasselas for its valuable critical apparatus, light annotations, and a clever glossary mapping terms to Johnson's 1755 Dictionary. Revauger commends the introduction for uncovering fresh reception history, noting that Laurence Sterne used the physical format of the volume as a model for Tristram Shandy and that emancipated slaves adopted the protagonist's name. The review challenges Keymer's omission of the Enlightenment concept and irony, arguing that an overemphasis on text trauma and pessimism obscures the empirical quest for happiness and ideological skepticism central to the era. Revauger concludes that the pocket edition serves as an indispensable reference for university students.
Richard reviews Wendy Laura Belcher's Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson, providing an approving assessment of the study’s argument that Johnson was "discursively possessed" by Abyssinia throughout his career, which radically reframed his thought. The review explains Belcher’s model of agency, where an African discourse of cultural exceptionalism shaped European texts, demonstrating the agency of a non-dominant culture. Richard praises Belcher's detailed analysis and theoretical sophistication regarding Johnson's sources, specifically her treatment of his first published work, A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo, where Johnson recasts Europeans as colonial aggressors and universalizes African experiences. Furthermore, Richard highlights Belcher's fresh interpretations of Irene and Rasselas as partially co-constituted by Habesha thought, noting how she identifies Habesha Christianity as a compelling solution to debates over Johnson's complex, crypto-Catholic Anglicanism. Richard concludes that Belcher definitively shows how non-Western thought co-constituted the work of the Western literary canon’s central figure.
Revauger's mixed review analyzes Wendy Laura Belcher's monograph on how African agency and "discursive possession" shaped Johnson's writings. The reviewer praises Belcher for precisely identifying the Ethiopian sources undergirding Irene, Rasselas, and essays in The Idler and The Rambler, linking these works to Johnson's 1733 translation of Jeronimo Lobo's Itinerario. Revauger welcomes insights regarding the historical practice of confining royal heirs and the interpretation of the mad astronomer. However, the reviewer questions the necessity of Belcher's spiritual possession metaphors and regrets that the study neglects the text's Enlightenment context, irony, and the pursuit of happiness. Revauger also notes the omission of Claire Gallien's relevant 2011 study on English orientalism.
Samuel Johnson, uno de los más importantes escritores de habla inglesa, expresó en alguna ocasión que "cualquier preponderancia de la fantasía sobre la razón es un grado de locura." Dentro de su afirmación estaba contenida una visión, en la cual querer imponer sobre la realidad ficciones inviables es un insulto a la evidencia. Utilizando las reflexiones de Johnson, vale la pena interpretar la carta que alias 'Iván Márquez' le envió, la semana pasada, al general en retiro Jaime Ruiz Barrera, presidente de la Asociación Nacional de Oficiales en Retiro (Acore). Tan grave y absurda como la carta, fue el haber utilizado al general Mora como portador de la comunicación, lo cual implica por parte del destacado exmilitar algún grado de respeto a su contenido. La primera gran perla de ficción consiste en que las Farc destacan su papel histórico como el pleno ejercicio del Derecho a la Rebelión, comparando su causa textualmente al ejército libertador o a la expresión popular de los comuneros. Conforme con esa definición, les asiste el derecho a la amnistía por ser delincuentes políticos y no terroristas.
Lumières of the English Criticism (Introductory Article): Samuel Johnson, Swift (From The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets)
This publication includes the introductory article and the translation of the source text, namely, "The Life of Swift" from The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1781) by Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), a great eighteenth-century English literary critic and biographer. The author points at the paradox-like case of Samuel Johnson's reception in Russia, with his magnum opus hasing been left untranslated into Russian. The article draws numerous examples of the unacknowledged borrowings from Johnson's Lives made by the nineteenth-and twentieth-century Russian critics and scholars. The article highlights various aspects of Johnson's versatile activities as a biographer and critic, an essay master and a compiler of the dictionary, a playwright and a poet, an editor and a publisher of commentaries and notes, a writer of pamphlet and letter writing, and last but not least, a good Christian who had left a collection of prayers and meditations. The article provides a detailed description of the source text in question, and defines its status among Johnson's works and in English letters at large. The author of the article claims Johnson to be the true founder of the literary-cum-biographical-cum-critical essay eighteenth-century in England. She mentions the forthcoming publication of the first full-text translation of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets into Russian in the book series "Literaturnye pamyatniki," and gives as a sample the translation of "The Life of Swift," accompanied by notes.
Muerte y mobiliario: retórica, política y teología de los argumentos últimos contra el relativismo
El artículo original "Muerte y Mobiliario" no tenía un resumen porque la revista en la que fue publicado, History of the Human Sciences, no lo requería. Por lo tanto, este resumen no es unatraducción del original, sino un original. "Muerte y Mobiliario" procura realizar una deconstrucción performativa y retórica de las estrategias retóricas de la argumentación realista. Su estilo, que es diverso, a veces serio, a veces "ingenioso," que argumenta con fuentes adecuadamente documentadas y también con abiertas fantasías, y que cita a Tom Paine, Samuel Johnson y Monty Python, es vital para el efecto deseado. El texto/nosotros sin duda pretendemos tener un efecto particular, al igual que también lo hacen los estrategas del realismo. Estos últimos desean forzar a sus opositores, losrelativistas, a retractarse de sus necedades confrontándolos con argumentos de "línea de fondo" —bottom-lines— como Mobiliario —la innegabilidad epistémica de los objetosmateriales sólidos— o Muerte —la innegabilidad moral de la pobreza y el dolor—. Los relativistas, como los defendemos aquí, pueden resistir mejor estos ataques mediante la realización de algunos movimientos retóricos equivalentes, tal como se muestra y se demuestra en el texto. Una fuerte motivación de los autores para hacer este trabajo, entonces, era una manera de venganza, dirigida contra todas esas lecciones de golpes sobre la mesa a las que habían sido sometidos, a manos de realistas complacientes que participan en las estrategias aquí examinadas: con este texto "Muerte y Mobiliario" a la mano, listo para ser arrojado sobre la mesa, las relativistas pueden estar mejor preparadas para actuaciones similares, y mejor armadas. Al mismo tiempo se defiende el relativismo y se rechazan suscaricaturas persistentes. Con la ayuda de aliados tales como Bruno Latour, Barbara Herrnstein Smith y Paul Feyerabend, el relativismo se configura como una no-posición, una forma demovilidad que se activa al momento del análisis. La relativista no tiene "áreas prohibidas" para el análisis —ella es propiamente reflexiva—. En lugar de la teología de la negación de los realistas —"hay que enfrentar los hechos [...] no se puede cambiar la realidad, la naturaleza humana, las fuerzas del mercado [...]"— la ética de la investigación sin restricciones —de la ciencia, por así decirlo— es la posición moral que respaldan nuestrasrelativistas.
Dr. Johnson in the History of Translation Reasoning
On Johnson's views on the 16th- and 18th-century translation in England. The aim is to draw a blueprint of his reasoning about the history and criticism of verse translation. His "Lives of the English Poets" (1781) serves as the central source of study. Johnson's idea about the translation of classical poetry as the test of the poets' achievement is under consideration. Special attention is paid to his analysis of the impact the classical verse translations made on the English language. Johnson's critical comments on the home versions of Homer, Pindar and Virgil are investigated. The original aspect of research is found in the applying to Johnson's work of a special type of analysis of its Russian version as a means of explicating the critic's approach. The result is the exposition of Johnson's innovative contribution to the methods of verse translation study and his advanced views on the criteria of evaluating translation. The latter include a translator's and the author's equal positions, the full understanding of the meaning and prosody of an original text, as well as recreating them via a special technique, and the link between the poetic worth of a translation and its significance for the development of the target language. В статье рассматриваются взгляды Сэмюэла Джонсона на развитие перевода в Англии в XVI-XVIII вв. Цель исследования – выстроить систему представлений Джонсона об истории и критике стихотворного перевода. Основным источником выступает его сочинение «Жизнеописания английских поэтов» (1781). Рассматривается идея Джонсона о том, что переводы классической поэзии стали оселком переводческого мастерства английских поэтов. Особое внимание уделено разбору Джонсоном влияния переводов классики на развитие английского языка. Подробно анализируются его критические комментарии о переложениях Гомера, Пиндара, Вергилия. Научная новизна исследования состоит в том, что впервые к литературному памятнику применена техника анализа его русской версии, направленная на экспликацию важных сторон подхода Джонсона. Полученные результаты показали, что Джонсон внес новаторский вклад в методологию изучения стихотворного перевода, а его критерии оценки перевода содержали ряд передовых положений: о равенстве переводчика с автором подлинника, о необходимости понимания переводчиком смысла и просодии оригинала, о технике их воссоздания в переводе и прямой связи ценности последнего с его значением для развития языка.
Filologičeskie nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki
Two Griffiths: At the origins of English biography
The article highlights the initial stage of the formation of English literary biography in the 1740s-1790s. It is associated with the names of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The author of the article suggests that literary biographies have come out from the pen of these writers, which differ significantly in their typological characteristics. The purpose of the study is to determine the types of English literary biography of the 18th century. The scientific novelty lies in the consideration of the stated problems on the basis of the recently introduced monument of world literature into the circulation of Russian literary criticism – "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets" (1781) by S. Johnson. As a result of the conducted research, the goal has been achieved, two different types of biography that developed by the end of the 18th century have been identified: literary-critical and diary. The features of each of the two types of biographical description are analyzed, determined, in particular, by the composition and image of the narrator. In conclusion, an observation is made about the prospects for further research related to the study of modifications of two types of biography of the 18th century in the literature of the 19th-21st centuries. В статье освещается начальный этап становления английской литературной биографии 1740-1790-х годов. Он связан с именами Сэмюэла Джонсона и Джеймса Босуэлла. Автор статьи предполагает, что из-под пера этих писателей вышли литературные биографии, существенно различающиеся по своим типологическим характеристикам. Цель исследования состоит в определении типов английской литературной биографии XVIII века. Научная новизна заключается в рассмотрении заявленной проблематики на основе недавно введенного в оборот отечественного литературоведения памятника мировой литературы – «Жизнеописаний прославленных английских поэтов и критических обозрений их сочинений» (1781) С. Джонсона (далее – «Жизнеописания…»). В результате проведенного исследования поставленная цель достигнута, выявлены два различных типа жизнеописания, сложившихся к концу XVIII века: литературно-критический и дневниковый. Проанализированы особенности каждого из двух типов биографического описания, определяемые, в частности, композицией и образом повествователя. В заключение высказано наблюдение о перспективах дальнейшего исследования, связанных с изучением модификаций двух типов биографии XVIII века в литературе XIX-XXI веков.
'David Simple' and the Fallacy of Friendship
This essay explores the relation between Sarah Fielding's novel The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and its sequel Volume the Last (1753). It argues that the later book should be seen as qualifying some of the ideas put forward in the earlier one, especially in connection with two related issues: the value of sentimentality as a way of apprehending the world, and the rewards and dangers of friendship. In the pessimistic views about friendship expressed in Volume the Last, Fielding shows herself to have been influenced by her brother Henry and other eighteenth-century moral commentators such as Samuel Johnson in their treatment of "Loss of Friends" as a topic of Christian consolation.
According to Hodgkins, Protestant ideology fueled British imperialism; at the same time, however, Protestant moral convictions-powerfully expressed by such outspoken commentators as Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, William Blake, and E. M. Forster-helped bring about the Empire's eventual collapse. Hodgkins writes with clarity and grace, and his New-Historical critical methodology, which moves back and forth with ease between literary and non-literary texts, fits the topic perfectly. [...]the author's command of more than 400 years of British literature and culture shows on every page, whether he is discussing the colonial implications of Milton's Paradise Lost or Kipling's ironic rewriting, in "The Man Who Would Be King," of Drake's celebrated refusal to be worshiped as a deity. [...]Christopher Hodgkins has written an important study of the intersection between religion and empire.
Midnight in the Anglo-American Metropolis: The Commonalities of Interpreting Urban Space, Envisioning Ruins and Visualizing Landscapes in the Tradition of Samuel Johnson and James Howard Kunstler
Tulley establishes a conceptual "thread of conviction" between the moral certitude of Johnson and the social criticism of Kunstler. Using *A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland* and Boswell’s *Life of Johnson*, the text examines how Johnson understood the city as a "marketplace for ideas" and cultural values. Tulley compares Johnson’s observations on London and the ruins of Iona with Kunstler’s critique of the "geography of nowhere" in modern American urban planning. The argument posits that both writers define culture through what is abandoned rather than what is built. The text emphasizes Johnson’s "moralist" perspective on urban space, suggesting that his eighteenth-century interpretations of ruins and social decay provide a precursor to contemporary environmental and architectural skepticism.
Mrs. Digby told me that when she lived in London with her sister, Mrs. Brooke, they were every now and then honoured by the visits of Dr. Johnson. He called on them one day soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Amongst other topics of praise they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. ‘What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?' said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being thus caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary. (H.D. Best, Personal and Literary Memorials, London, 1829, printed in Johnsonian Miscellanies Vol. 2, G. Birkbeck Hill (ed.) (London: Constable & Co.,1897))
Tankard reviews The Interpretation of Samuel Johnson, a collection edited by Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill that seeks to establish a historically grounded and theoretically contextualized view of Johnson as a serious political and religious thinker. The volume shifts focus from Boswell's "picturesque" Johnson to highly specific, recondite subjects, exploring issues such as Johnson's early political views, his admiration for English Nonjurors, and his involvement in the Ossian controversy as ends in themselves rather than mere footnotes. Specific essays examine Hawkins's biography as a source for Johnson's politics and read the Lives of the Poets as historical and political narratives. Tankard notes that while the historical detail is impressive, the contributors risk creating a straw man by labeling those who prefer a more "perennial" Johnson as "Johnson deniers." While admitting he finds the perennial Johnson more compelling, Tankard concedes that the volume offers a great deal to learn and deepens the understanding of Johnson as a serious intellectual.
Weinbrot edits an 18-essay collection offering new perspectives on Johnson's work and thought. Essays explore Johnson as a profound thinker, his awareness of prolepsis (Sherman), his mental agility and prose style (Fairer), and his paradoxical relationship with Swift (Weinbrot). Other topics include Johnson's poetic technique of ironical repetition (Keymer), his letters and friendship (Lynch), his views on the comic and singularity in the Lives of the Poets (Nunnery), and the Dictionary's front matter (Mugglestone, Fix). Further sections discuss his Shakespeare edition (Walsh), political tracts (Lock), Debates in Parliament (Kaminski), churchmanship (Gibson), and the philosophical shift in his essay series (Hudson). The volume concludes with discussions of Johnson's iconography (Folkenflik), his influence on Byron (Johnston), his shaping as a national figure by Boswell and Lockhart (Engell), and the history of his collected works (DeMaria).
Free Verse, Enjambment, Irony: A Case Study
Dr. Johnson suggested that "blank verse is often verse for the eye." If this were true, it would apply even more to free verse. The empty space that indicates line endings in printed verse is not available in vocal performance. I claim that just as white spaces break up the series of black marks on the paper into smaller perceptual units whose end may or may not coincide with the end of syntactic units, in aural perception, certain vocal devices may break up the text into versification units, and even indicate conflicts of versification and syntactic units. I discuss such a conflict in the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai's brief masterpiece "Rain in the Battlefield." In an instrumental analysis of a recorded reading, I demonstrate the vocal strategies by which the performer indicates the conflict between verse and clause boundaries in this poem. Readers perceive here subtler irony than in a version in which verse and clause boundaries coincide.
Vermeule examines Deutsch’s exploration of the "postmodern sublime" and the secular religion of "author-love" surrounding Johnson. She identifies recurring motifs such as Johnson’s autopsy and the function of the anecdote in defining his reception. Vermeule praises Deutsch for navigating between traditional poetics and the "new eighteenth century" methods of feminist and Marxist criticism. She argues that Deutsch successfully illuminates the aggressive, almost physical nature of biographical devotion. Vermeule describes the work as an original, Spectacle-level homage to the Johnsonian tradition and its quirky, passionate devotees.
The Image of Corsica in British Narratives during the Anglo-Corsican Reign of 1794–1796
The author of the article analyzes the letters and diaries of the British military relating to the period of the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom. The British failed to hold Toulon in 1793, so their fleet needed to gain a foothold in some other major port of the Mediterranean. Corsican leader Pascal Paoli has been asking for help from the British in gaining independence from France since the autumn of 1793. In January 1794, the English Admiral Samuel Hood took advantage of this offer to establish British control over Corsica. Previously, the British knew about this island only from the stories of writers in the middle of the 18th century, in particular James Boswell, who was fascinated by Corsica and believed in the freedom-loving nature of Corsicans. However, Boswell's praise, according to the British who arrived, turned out to be far from reality. The British expected to see paradise on earth, but in fact they were faced with undeveloped agriculture, specific Corsican mores, sometimes poverty of the population and a manner of fighting different from the European one. In addition, not all the laws introduced by the British were suitable for Corsican customs. The most striking example of this is the Corsican vendetta. The British quickly became convinced of the otherness of the Corsicans, besides, the Republican Party began to gain more and more power on the island. As a result, both the Corsicans and the British did not live up to mutual expectations and after the evacuation of the British from Corsica, both rejected in fact any possible alliance with each other from now on.
The Orbit of Pursuit in Johnson's Rasselas
Rasselas (1759), a story of the quest for a life of flawless happiness, could be read as a rejection of the facile assumptions and assurances of philosophical Optimism in the context of the Enlightenment. In this article an attempt is made to follow Rasselas along his quest and see, through his eyes, the emerging picture of the insatiability of man's desires. The aim is to throw into high relief the central humanist motif of the circular orbit of human desire as it revolves in harmony with all other particles of the material universe, and to trace the text as it recoils on itself in an allegorical manifestation of Rasselas' pursuit. Index Terms–Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, human desire, optimism, Enlightenment
Journal of Language Teaching and Research
Zaretsky discusses the journey of James Boswell. Retching yet again into the wine dark sea between Leghorn and Corsica on October 11, 1765, Boswell perhaps spared a thought for Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was, after all, his meeting with the wild philosopher the previous winter that spurred the series of events that had landed him on a frail bark lurching across a rough Mediterranean and sailing towards a mysterious island at the very edge of Europe, peopled by brigands and barbarians who had been the bane of every power that had sought to break them. Long after the French had crushed Paoli's campaign for independence, long after a stroke and its train of miseries had ended Johnson's life, and long after his professional defeats and personal weaknesses had sapped his own ambitions and vitality, Boswell recalled Corsica as the place where he discovered himself.
The Literary Tradition of Ruins of Rome and a New Consideration of Piranesi's Staffage Figures
Piranesi's Vedute di Roma (c.1747‐78) are generally interpreted as manifestations of his admiration for Roman architecture. The inconsistency of Piranesi's staffage figures has been problematic, however, especially when they are markedly distorted and off‐balance. This study takes an interdisciplinary approach, suggesting that these staffage figures may reflect a well‐recognised literary tradition that conceived of the ruins of Rome as a metaphor for human mortality and social decay. This literature included texts by canonical authors Spenser and Du Bellay and was cited by Dr. Johnson as well as a popular guidebook for travellers making the Grand Tour.
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare: 'A Poet of Nature'
Zhang analyzes the neoclassical criticism found in the Preface to Shakespeare, focusing on the assertion that Shakespeare is a poet of nature. The study explores the relationship between genius, general nature, and classical rules, arguing that Johnson views Shakespeare as a mirror of life who explores human sentiments through natural language. Zhang examines how Johnson defends the violation of the unities by comparing Shakespeare’s irregular structures to a forest, contrasting this with the regular gardens of French drama. The article highlights the importance of moral instruction and poetic justice, noting that Johnson interprets King Lear as a study in family ethics rather than kingship. By exploring the acquisition of human nature through practical observation, Zhang positions the 1765 Preface as the starting point for biographical criticism.
Biography as the Redemptive Text in Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets
This paper attempts to look into some of Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets (1925) and find out the common feature these biographical texts share. The close reading and detailed analysis demonstrate that Samuel Johnson manages to redeem and restore the biographical subjects＇ (the poets＇） life, honor, and status in their different but similar biographies; that is, each biography is a redemptive text in its own way. In specific, the credible life story is re-presented with selected biographical materials, the poets＇ lives together with their achievements are reevaluated under Johnson＇s corrective observation, and Johnson＇s empathy with the poets reestablishes the reader＇s understanding of the poets＇ literary careers.
揭示、解释与重释——评詹姆斯·克利福德的《青年约翰生》[Revealing, Explaining, and Reinterpreting: A Review of James Clifford's Young Johnson]
当代传记家詹姆斯·克利福德的\textless青年约翰生\textgreater适应新的传记形式发展,较成功地将精神分析的视野融入到传记文学传统之中,对被称为传记文学经典之作的鲍斯威尔的\textless约翰生传\textgreater所忽略、掩盖的关于约翰生生平和人格中的若干问题进行了深入而不不乏趣味的揭示、解释与重释.
犀利的锋芒 隽永的语言——试论塞缪尔·约翰逊及其《致切斯特菲尔德伯爵书》 [Sharp Insight and Timeless Language: A Discussion of Samuel Johnson and His Letter to the Earl of Chesterfield]
约翰逊之所以成为18世纪下半叶英国文坛的领袖人物，除了其过人的学识、口才、写作能力以外，与其卓尔不群的品格也是分不开的。著名的《致切斯特菲尔德伯爵书》在揭穿切斯特菲尔德伯爵沽名钓誉的过程中，不仅显露了约翰逊高度说理的才智，也展现了其卓越的语言才华。 [Johnson's rise to prominence in the British literary world during the latter half of the 18th century was not only because of his exceptional knowledge, eloquence, and writing ability, but also inseparable from his outstanding character. His famous letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, in exposing the Earl's self-serving ambitions, not only reveals Johnson's highly persuasive intelligence but also showcases his remarkable linguistic talent.]
我以Samuel Johnson的一句"眼不见，尽失落"开篇。Samuel Johnson那个时代，苏格兰乡村文盲遍地，对此，Samuel Johnson叹曰："眼不见，尽失落。"意思是：目不识丁者注定只会用现在时而活在当下。我在此稍微变更一下，把原句的句号变成了问号。引用此语旨在说明，虽然包括Samuel Johnson所确立的词典传统在内的诸多传统常是眼所不见的，但其影响深远，
作为职业作家，约翰逊的写作终其一生都或多或少牵及政治。约翰逊自称为托利分子，他的"托利主义"该如何定义？本文先介绍英国18世纪政治史研究中的两个对立流派，以它们为参照来界定约翰逊的"托利主义"，再追溯约翰逊的政治经历和观点，并对他的一些同政治相关的作品加以评判。
论弥尔顿《咏失明》及其早期中国因缘 [On Milton's "Blindness" and its Early Connections with China]
I106.2; 通过细读文本，反驳了约翰逊博士对弥尔顿十四行诗不公正的评价，指出《咏失明》中的有机统一足以使它成为十四行诗中的杰作，形式与内容之间丰富而微妙的互动表现出巧夺天工的精湛技艺。在诗中，言说者内心的两个侧面，自然人和基督徒，彼此对话。二者的矛盾在审美化的过程中，即以十四行诗的形式对这一经历的艺术升华中得以统一。文章还追溯了《咏失明》在中国的早期因缘，主要是传教士杂志《遐迩贯珍》中的译诗和吴宓的译写、教学。 [I106.2; Through close reading of the text, this paper refutes Dr. Johnson's unfair assessment of Milton's sonnets, pointing out that the organic unity in "Blindness" is enough to make it a masterpiece among sonnets, and the rich and subtle interaction between form and content demonstrates exquisite craftsmanship. In the poem, the two sides of the speaker's inner world, the natural person and the Christian, converse with each other. The contradictions between the two are unified in the process of aestheticization, that is, in the artistic sublimation of this experience in the form of a sonnet. The article also traces the early connections of "Blindness" in China, mainly through its translation in the missionary magazine "Xia Er Guan Zhen" and Wu Mi's translation and teaching.]
哈罗德·布鲁姆的撒缪尔·约翰逊批评 [Harold Bloom's Samuel Johnson Criticism]
在哈罗德·布鲁姆的批评生涯中,英国批评家撒缪尔·约翰逊一直扮演着重要的先驱角色。布鲁姆认为约翰逊是西方文学历史上最伟大的文学批评家,至今无出其右者。前者从后者那里继承了一系列的文学批评原则和标准：创造性、智慧性、文学性、个性等。无论是他的"影响的焦虑"理论,还是他的莎托斯比亚批评,都可以从中发现约翰逊的影响。但是,作为一位视创新为批评伦理的理论家,布鲁姆并没有囿于他的"约翰逊之爱,"而是以自己强大的创造力洞穿了它。带着从约翰逊那里继承来的遗产,布鲁姆构建起了属于自己的文学批评大厦。
Exploring the Sea of Words XXIV: Literati Scorn Each Other (词海探珠 二十四、文人相轻)
\textless正\textgreater 文人相轻不是中国的特产,语言大师的作品也会受到各种指责,许多指责出自名家之口。编了第一部英语大词典的约翰逊(Samuel Johnson)是这样评论密尔顿的《失乐园》的:Paradise Lost—No man wished it a minute longer.(谁也不希望《失乐园》再长一分钟了。)约翰逊对理查逊(Samuel Richardson)的小说也不无微词:That fellow Richardson could not be contented to sail quietlydown the stream of reputation without longing to taste the frothfrom every stroke of the oar.(理查逊那个家伙不满足于静心地享受荣誉的溪流,还想品味船桨激起的每一阵水花。)
Narrative of Personality in Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' (鲍斯威尔《约翰生传》中的人格叙说)
I561; 世界传记文学经典鲍斯威尔的\textless约翰生传\textgreater涵盖了传主的一生,其中包含大量的轶事、细节和人物对话,这些表面看来零碎杂乱的材料,由于冲突被联系在一起,使\textless约翰生传\textgreater得以成为内部统一的有机整体.鲍斯威尔通过对大学时代的约翰生与贫困的家庭处境、作为作家的约翰生与恩主庇护制度以及作为文坛领袖的约翰生与上流社会的价值观念之间冲突的描述,突显了约翰生狂放不羁的孤傲秉性、独立的人格以及率真的性情,同时也指出了他与环境妥协的一面.
鲍斯威尔的《约翰生传》研究述评 = A Review of Research on Boswell's 'Life of Johnson'
Author's abstract: "经过20多年的艰苦努力，1791年5月16日，鲍斯威尔终于实现了自己的愿望，他的《约翰生传》正式出版。起初评论界对此发出了两种截然不同的声音。一些评论家抱怨鲍斯威尔在传中不加选择地使用了太多的琐事，批评作者对传主的阿谀奉承和偶像崇拜，攻击约翰生性格乖张以及夸夸其谈。而另一些则钦佩鲍斯威尔记录和收集约翰生生平材料的那种孜孜不倦的勤奋精神，赞扬该书信息量广，生动有趣，风格轻快，认为通过这部传记可以更加充分地认识文坛领袖约翰生。" Generated translation: "After more than twenty years of arduous effort, on May 16, 1791, Boswell finally realized his ambition with the official publication of his Life of Johnson. Initially, the work elicited two polar opposite reactions from the critical community. Some critics complained that Boswell had indiscriminately included too many trivialities in the biography; they criticized the author's sycophancy and idolization of his subject, while attacking Johnson's eccentric character and his penchant for grandiloquence. Conversely, others admired the tireless diligence Boswell displayed in recording and collecting materials on Johnson’s life. They praised the book for its vast wealth of information, its vivid and engaging narrative, and its breezy style, believing that this biography allowed for a more profound understanding of Johnson as a titan of the literary world."
'Biography' and the Demon-Revealing Mirror: Reinterpreting Samuel Johnson's 'Life of Savage' (「傳記」與照妖鏡──重釋善謀姜生的《薩維吉傳》)
本文有三個目標：重新詮釋姜生的「薩維吉傳」；重新說明姜生和十八世紀腐化論間的邏輯和修辭關連；藉「薩維吉傳」解析姜生對「傳記」文類的界定，以及該界定隱含的政治立場。於文本解析上，本文採用符號化和符號變動的邏輯分析，並且企圖以相同的解析方式，說明歷史或物質變遷，如何牽動社會、政府、制度、自我等 The essay is a project of reinterpreting Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage. The project attempts to reread the biography in a historical context of social and cultural instability, in which changes in various aspects of life caused discursive wars between the stench defenders of long established values and institutions and the enthusiastic progressive champions of the newly innovated. The reading is to be conducted in light of concepts, such as semiosis, and the logic of supplementarity. It is expected that the reading will bring new light to the fundamental conflicts at issue in the discursive wars, and demonstrate how Johnson employed "biography" as a discursive strategy of exorcism for the benefit of his middling readers in a world in which values had become alarmingly fluid.
贫穷,当你把这样的一个词语与伦敦的天气联系到一起的时候,可以很容易地感受到那种湿漉漉充满霉味和潮气的生活。一七五九年,塞缪尔·约翰生(Samuel Johnson,1709-1784)已经五十岁了。之前,他在文坛以诗歌散文和《英文词典》享有盛名,可生活始终寡淡贫乏。这一年,他写出了最受欢迎的一本小说《拉赛拉斯》(Rasselas,中文翻译为《幸福谷——拉赛拉斯王子的故事》)。
很多道德学者都指出，骄傲是在人类所有恶习中影响力最为广泛的。它的表现形式繁杂多样，隐藏方式也多种多样。就如同天边月儿晶莹透明的面纱，伪装既有光彩之处又有隐晦之所，虽然遮盖但亦可一眼望穿。
A Study of Early English Dictionaries in the 17th–18th Centuries (17–18세기 초창기 영어사전의 연구)
The Journal of Studies in Language 25.1, 183-200. The progress of English dictionaries, defined strictly as those compiled to elucidate the English language to English-speaking people, is truly an evolution. A wide range of labels and encyclopedic information in every single entry in the modern English dictionary has been accumulated there by four centuries of English lexicographic legacy. The present article examines earlier English dictionaries from Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall(1604), as the first monolingual English dictionary, up to Benjamin Martin's Lingua Britannica Reformata(1749), prior to Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary of 1755. This study aims to clarify individual traits or values of earlier dictionaries and at the same time their shared common characteristics. (Chungnam National University)
Rereading Proposals for an 18th-Century English Academy (18세기 영어연구원 제안서 다시 읽기)
Some men of letters in the Augustan age were each in turn to call for an English Academy to concern itself with language－and in particular to constrain what they perceived as the irregularities of the English language. The academy movement reached its culmination in Jonathan Swift's Proposal, which appeared in the form of an open letter to the Earl of Oxford in 1712. The aim of the present paper is to look into the developmental process of the academy movement, notably Swift's proposal, and to examine the opposing views of Dr. Johnson whose Dictionary(1755) to a large extent performed the task of ascertaining or fixing (i.e., standardizing) the English language. KCI Citation Count: 0
Reading Samuel Johnson as a Prescriptivist (규범론자로서의 Samuel Johnson 읽기)
The goals of a dictionary as Samuel Johnson(1709-84) originally planned it in 1747 sounded much like those of a proposed English Academy: to ascertain, refine, and fix the English language. Johnson thought to maintain the purity of English and to ascertain the use of English words. By the time A Dictionary of the English Language(1755) was published eight years later in 1755, his purpose had become somewhat more modest. Johnson realized that not all words are correctable, since language is a reflection of imperfect human origin. The "Preface" to the dictionary stated that it was impossible for a lexicographer to "embalm" the language and keep it from "corruption" and "decay." Through a thorough textual analysis of Johnson's "The Plan" and his "Preface" to the Dictionary, the present study, contrary to the statement of Lynch(2009), shows that Johnson's attitudes towards language and a dictionary can still be construed as prescriptive, though he acknowledges the futility of trying to embalm the language by means of a dictionary. KCI Citation Count: 4
A Glimpse into British Pub Culture (英国Pub文化管窥)
英国大文豪塞缪尔·约翰逊(Samuel Johnson，1709—1784）曾经说过："There is nothing which has yetbeen contrived by man，bywhich so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern．"（人类没有哪一项发明能像酒馆那样带给人类如此多的欢乐。）事实也的确如此，在英国一个好的酒馆（Pub）对于一个社区的重要性丝毫不亚于邮局、超市和教堂。
An Overview and Analysis of Samuel Johnson's Literary and Artistic Thought: Based on the 'Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare' (塞缪尔·约翰逊(Samuel Johnson)的文艺理论思想概述及其评析——基于《莎士比亚戏剧集序言》)
塞缪尔·约翰逊是英国新古典主义文学理论的代表之一,他的文学理论思想主要体现在其为《莎士比亚戏剧集》撰写的序言之中,主要可以概括为:一是"类型"理论;二是反对"三一律"的教条;三是文学批评标准;四是文学批评的方法。这些文学理论思想对后世产生重要的借鉴意义,但同时由于时代的差别呈现一定的局限性,首先是"类型"理论颇有排斥个性的嫌疑;二是关于文学批评标准和方法未形成系统,闲得很松散,因此关于其文艺理论应予以批判式地接受。
東京医科歯科大学教養部研究紀要
How to Use Knowledge: Samuel Beckett and Samuel Johnson (知識の使用法-サミュエル・ベケットとサミュエル・ジョンソン)
The Ethical and Moral Orientation of Johnson's Literary Criticism (约翰逊文学批评的伦理道德取向)
塞缪尔·约翰逊对于伦理道德与文学创作关系的阐述是对18世纪英国文学创作活动的总结，彰显了其弥足珍贵的人文情怀和道德情怀。约翰逊认为文学的本质源于模仿，源于公正地模仿自然，并且强调作家应把描写事物的普遍性放在首位，只有这样文学作品才能发挥其蕴藏的道德教诲功能，而文学作品所具有的审美愉悦是发挥文学伦理道德价值的前提。
The Fictional Other: Interpreting 'The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia' from the Perspective of 'Orientalism' Theory (虚构的他者——从'东方学'理论视角解读《阿比西尼亚王子拉塞勒斯传》)
在《阿比西尼亚王子拉塞勒斯传》(The History of Rasselas:Prince of Abyssinia)中,作者塞缪尔·约翰森(Samuel Johnson)展示给读者一幅在西方意识形态影响下的东方世界的全景。作者看似中立的态度并没有掩盖他所坚信的西方优越、东方卑劣这一态度。本文将从"东方学"研究专家艾德华·塞义德(Edward Said)的东方学理论(Orientalism)视角分析证明小说作者约翰森为建立西方优越的自我概念虚构了东方卑劣的他者形象,为西方达到统治世界的野心提供有利的依据。
A Debate on the History of 18th-Century English Literary Forgeries (英国18世纪文学伪作历史之辩)
英国18世纪文学伪作绝非对文学的伦理背叛，亦非所谓道德沦丧的文学个案；在文学史中，萨曼纳扎、麦克弗森以及查特顿等炮制的伪作是英国浪漫主义文学的先声，为他们辩护的不仅有华兹华斯、柯尔律治、济慈，更有欧洲大陆的歌德和赫尔德。伪作固然一度饱受诟病，然而这些假托台湾土著、奥西恩以及三百前僧侣罗利的作品对浪漫主义创作方式影响巨大，其文学成就毋庸置疑。"托名"的技巧并非伪作家原创，而是植根于欧洲文学创作的集体无意识。古希腊认为诗人是占卜者或者神的代言人，代言人恰恰就是伪作的根源之一；同时圣经也存在大量冒名性的伪经和次经。因此重新认定伪作的创作根源，对其历史价值进行辩雪，这对后期英国浪漫主义作品成长和发展具有不可估量的积极意义。 18th-century British literary forgeries were by no means a betrayal of literary ethics, nor were they isolated cases of moral decline. In literary history, forgeries by Samanazza, Macpherson, and Chatterton foreshadowed British Romantic literature, championed not only by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, but also by Goethe and Herder from Continental Europe. While forgeries were once widely criticized, these works, attributed to Taiwanese aborigines, Ossian, and the monk Raleigh, three centuries earlier, had a profound influence on Romantic writing, and their literary achievements are undeniable. The technique of "pseudonymity" was not original to the forgers but rather rooted in the collective unconscious of European literary creation. Ancient Greece viewed poets as diviners or spokesmen for the gods, a conception of forgery itself. Similarly, the Bible contains numerous pseudo-canon and apocryphal books. Therefore, re-examining the creative roots of forgeries and defending their historical value has immeasurable positive implications for the growth and development of later British Romantic works.
J. Priestley's English Grammar Book (1768) and its Significance (J. Priestley 영문법서(1768)와 그 의의)
Author's abstract: "Joseph Priestley's Rudiments of English Grammar was originally composed for his own use in the grammar school he randuring his ministry at Nantwich, Cheshire in the late 1750s. Thus, from the start, Priestley"s grammar was intended as a practical school grammar textbook. Though in was not an immediate commercial success, it did exert significant influence. The American grammarian Lindley Murray borrowed extensively from Priestley in his grammar research which resulted in his writing of the most influential English grammar book of all time. The present study reveals the organization of Rudiments as a practical textbook on English grammar in 18th century English grammar schools, examines Priestley"s views on the writing of Rudiments through reading the preface of Rudiments, and elucidates specific grammarical sysyems and descriptions that the grammar provides, through reading the major parts of Rudiments. Moreover, it, based on these considerations, defines the status and role occupied by the grammar among 18th century presctiptive English granmmars."
The Linguistic and Specialised Nature of Johnson's 'English Dictionary': A Study Based on Plant Noun Entries (约翰逊《英语词典》的语文性与专科性——基于植物名词条目的研究)
《英语词典》(1755）是约翰逊博士独立编纂完成的,该词典承袭了西方语言文学研究传统,开启了现代英语词典编纂先河。本文抽样选取一定数量的常用植物名词,分析其词条结构、释义格式、引证选配,以期对《英语词典》及其语文性有一个更加全面和客观的认知。研究发现,《英语词典》在继承西方自苏格拉底传承下来的词语定义范式基础上,通过以"引证代释义"的隐性释义方式,将同时代菲利普·米勒《园艺词典》（1731）的科学研究成就"纳为己有,"实现了语文释义与专科释义的"有机"统一。这从一个侧面也反映出整部词典所表征的知识体系能够代表该时代的物质和文明成果。
On the Necessity of Using a Foreignization Strategy in Translating 'The Letters of Samuel Johnson' (论选用异化策略翻译《约翰逊书信集》的必要性)
翻译目的论认为,在翻译活动中翻译目的决定了翻译策略.本文在翻译目的论视角下,分析了18世纪英国大文豪塞缪尔·约翰逊的《约翰逊书信集》(The Letters of Samuel Johnson)采用异化翻译策略的必要性,以求最大程度保留源作的语言特色和异国文化情调,为研究塞缪尔·约翰逊的学者和学生提供有价值的参考资料.
Spacks analyzes the shifting understanding of conversation, contrasting the 18th-century view of it as a form of public display (exemplified by Johnson and Boswell) with the modern tendency to categorize it as a private, intimate exchange. The author examines literary representations in Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield and Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, arguing that conversation often serves as a means of self-preservation and self-disguise, especially concerning romantic love and the social mandate to "please." The study highlights the tension between the longing for openness and the necessity of self-protection in a public age.
'The Odious, Canting, Worthless Author of This Book': Edmond Malone's Annotations to Sir John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787)
Suarez analyzes Malone's hostile annotations in Hawkins' 1787 biography, portraying Malone as a fierce guardian of Johnson's memory. Malone provided essential editorial support to Boswell during the composition of the Life of Johnson, frequently revising the manuscript at his Queen Anne Street house. Infuriated by Hawkins' exposes of Johnson's defects, Malone labeled the rival biographer an odious, canting, worthless author. He specifically challenged Hawkins' claims regarding Johnson's interest in alchemy and his alleged role in the death of Samuel Dyer. Suarez notes that while Boswell decided on the term cast to describe Hawkins' work, Malone urged the use of malignancy. Malone's unalloyed constancy to Johnson and Boswell drove his efforts to discredit Hawkins' account as false and injurious. The annotations reveal Malone's detestation of Hawkins' ungentlemanly conduct at The Club.
Robert Nares and Fluctuating Stress in 18th-Century English
Robert Nares's Elements of Orthoepy (1784), intended as a monument of the pronunciation prevailing in late 18th-century England, contains numerous comments on the accentuation of words in which Nares differs from his predecessor, Samuel Johnson (1755), usually by preferring initial stress in words Johnson marked with final stress: artisan, memoir, & the nouns record & survey. Nares calls attention to fluctuating stress & the importance of chronology of borrowing in determining the accentuation of loanwords from French; he identifies the noun/verb stress contrast in English as an operation of analogy & regrets the numerous exceptions to it. 3 References. J. Hitchcock
The Appendix to Edmond Malone's 1790 Shakespeare, the 1821 Boswell-Malone Shakespeare, and Elizabethan Language
Sherbo compares the bibliographic notes from Edmond Malone's 1790 publication "Shakespeare" with the notes found in the 1821 version that also involved James Boswell. Sherbo notes specific differences between the versions of "The Tempest," "Henry IV," and "Antony and Cleopatra."
James Boswell's Editing of, and Contributions to, the 1821 Boswell–Malone Shakespeare
Sherbo demonstrates that the younger Boswell’s role in the 1821 Third Variorum exceeded that of a mere executor for Malone. Beyond completing the Life of Shakespeare and the "Essay on Phraseology and Metre," Boswell restructured the arrangement of the history plays and contributed over 650 independent notes. Drawing on his own library, Boswell added significant philological and source material, particularly from Italian and Spanish literature, and frequently corrected or dissented from Malone’s conclusions, asserting a distinct editorial authority throughout the twenty-one volumes.
Hudson uses a historicist approach, arguing that Johnson, a conservative, was a prescient thinker who defined the values of the emerging middle class and endorsed English imperial ambitions. Scherwatzky finds Hudson's argument for Johnson's support of empire unconvincing.
A Dictionary of Devotion: Samuel Johnson and George Herbert
Steen analyzes Johnson’s use of George Herbert’s poetry in the Dictionary of the English Language to illustrate moral and religious concepts. Although Johnson argued in the Life of Waller that "poetical devotion cannot often please" because the "Omnipotence cannot be exalted," he excepted Herbert’s work. Steen suggests Johnson favored Herbert because the poems enact "performative" piety and use scriptural language to bridge the gap between human wit and divine content. Johnson’s selections emphasize that words are pure only when used in God’s service, reflecting his desire to provide readers with a "useful" poetic. The inclusion of Herbert’s verse allows Johnson to navigate the "pitfalls of devotional verse" by focusing on the act of prayer rather than the description of the soul.
Sisman's letter to the editor corrects a "howler" in a review by Swaim regarding an encounter between Boswell and Adams, clarifying that Adams was the Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, not Cambridge. The letter notes that Boswell's disapproval, recounted in his Journal, stemmed from Adams's "easy familiarity" and "cordiality" with the "infidel" David Hume, not the physical binding of a book. Sisman explains that Boswell, who was collecting material for the Life of Johnson during this visit, was visiting Adams as a companion to Johnson and was "performing for his mentor," who also strongly disapproved of Hume. The letter details Boswell's "complicated relationship" with Hume, including his attempt to urge the "dying philosopher" to repent.
Johnson's Subjectivity in Life of Savage
Biographer's subjectivity is revealed firstly by the choice of biographee. Johnson is obviously infatuated with Savage, and affected by him deeply. Under the precondition of the intellectuals' same fate, Johnson and Savage become close friends. They have the same political viewpoints, and attitudes toward patrons. All these provide the possibility for Johnson to observe Savage's personality and psychology. Johnson shows his sympathetic understanding of Savage by means of sentimental scenic narration, review of the works, and interpretation. He thus identifies himself with Savage to a certain degree. The anger he shows toward Savage's misfortune is also the catharsis of his hatred for the his world. Choice and rejection of materials are also the exhibition of biographer's subjectivity. Faced with Savage's complicated materials, Johnson chooses those which can show Savage's personality best and his image vividly, and organizes them into Life of Savage. That, in fact, is also a kind of interpretation of the biog
The Culture of Newtonianism and Shakespeare's Editors: From Pope to Johnson
Santor argues that the Newtonian-inspired search for universal laws profoundly influenced eighteenth-century Shakespearean editors, including Pope, Theobald, and Johnson. These editors portrayed Shakespeare not as a linguistic or theatrical artist but as an investigator who discovered general, predictable truths about human nature. This emphasis on universal principles, derived from empirical observation and a rejection of ancient textual authority, recast the editor as a "scientist" correcting Shakespeare's "flawed corpus." The article examines how this Newtonian context unifies the seemingly disparate editorial approaches of Pope and Theobald.
'The True Culprit Is the Mind Which Can Never Run Away From Itself': Samuel Johnson and Depression
Soupel analyzes Johnson’s experience with "vile melancholy," arguing he was the first to use the word "depression" in a modern psychological context. Drawing on portraits by Boswell and Fanny Burney, the article describes Johnson’s "compulsive tics," "absent-mindedness," and "mental imprisonment." Soupel examines Johnson’s writings, such as his Life of Savage and Rambler essays, to show his "desire of abstraction from ourselves" and his need to "escape from himself as much as from his environment." The study highlights Johnson’s belief that "all power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity" and his proverbial attachment to London life to avoid the "bogus of one's imagination in solitude." Soupel concludes that Johnson viewed his superior intellect as a "pressing invitation to hard labor" while perpetually struggling against a "deranged intellect" that he often termed "madness."
Timon of Athens refers to 'those milk-paps/That through the window-bars bore at man's eyes'. Dr. Johnson's explanation, that is, 'The virgin that shows her bosom through the lattice of her chamber', has been tentatively accepted by the editors of the most recent edition of the play. The passage, of which the quoted words are a part, is still open to controversy, but it is James Boswell, the younger's, note which is of present interest. Here, Sherbo examines the term "window" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Wayne Booth, Perché la critica etica ha attraversato tempi difficili?
Booth, in an article reprinted and translated from the journal Ethics (1988), employs a fictional dialogue with Johnson to investigate the decline of ethical criticism. Johnson expresses indignation toward contemporary critics who offer decicive praise or blame without defending their underlying criteria. Booth attributes this theoretical reticence to four modern dogmas: the rigid separation of fact and value, the conviction that reason must proceed through critical doubt, awareness of the immense variability of judgment, and the triumph of abstract formalist theories. Challenging the notion that evaluative acts lack cognitive status, Booth argues that narrative power is discovered through an "act of surrender" rather than doubt. He identifies five complicating peculiarities of ethical criticism: universality, reflexivity, reciprocity, engagement with fundamental philosophical questions, and anti-utilitarianism. Booth disputes the idea that "mature" readers remain immune to a story's ethical effects, maintaining that critics must risk "corruption" by experiencing a work's values before judging them.
Iona in 1771: Gaelic Tradition and Visitors' Experience
This account of Iona has long been known only under the claim, made in 1883, that it was translated from Irish. It is here shown to have been printed in English in Edinburgh in 1774. The account provides important testimony to the experience of a Scottish visitor before the famous visits by Joseph Banks, Thomas Pennant, and Samuel Johnson opened up Iona and Staffa as popular destinations. Its valuable evidence on the state of the antiquities in 1771 is drawn out by comparison with the nearest available witnesses. This account is unusual in the richness of its Gaelic material, both sayings and stories associated with St Columba and also names of local features pointed out to visitors in Iona. One poem cited by the visitor is found in Irish manuscripts from the sixteenth century, raising the question whether his reportage was backed up by written texts. This account more than any other gives a glimpse of Catholic tradition with roots in Irish hagiography. The writer's circumstances are nowhere made explicit, but there are signs that his knowledge of Columban stories in Gaelic was not acquired in the context of a brief visit. In the local setting, however, what was told to visitors was also adapted to their expectations, so that, over the following twenty years we have an instructive example of an early transition from vernacular, and largely oral, transmission to a polite written circulation of selected stories retold by visitors. This in turn has its effect on the antiquities, which in some cases were actually replenished. Detectable changes in what was pointed out and said to visitors show that what visitors received as ancient tradition was already in the 1770s capable of new and creative responses to their expectations based on their awareness of what earlier visitors had seen. This account is the most important key to understanding Iona in the years before the regular stream of visitors began.
Samuel Johnson – A ‘Harmless Drudge' аnd His Dictionary
Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies
[...]she still seems to have shared much of her era's perspective on, for example, gentility and the problematic aspects of romance and marriage between partners of disparate backgrounds. Johnson wrote at the conclusion of his Rambler essays that his intention was to "giv[e] ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth" while allowing that some might embody "harmless merriment"; he considered his "principal design to inculcate wisdom or piety . . . exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity of the present age" (Johnson 208). According to Professor Gross, Austen absorbed her Johnsonian perspective not just through his writings—the philosophical tale Rasselas, his many periodical essays, and his masterpiece of literary biography, Lives of the Poets—but also the biographies by her "dear Mrs. Piozzi," Boswell, Fanny Burney, and Sir John Hawkins (Gross).
In Samuel Johnson, Richard Glover, and 'Hosier's Ghost', Lee asks why Johnson would cite a poet of modest talent, and a Whig no less, and begins his answer with Johnson's Marmor Norfolciense (1739) and Debates in Parliament (1741-1744). He claims both share a commitment to Opposition politics, particularly a resistance to Walpole's pacifist foreign policy. The Opposition was a loose coalition of Tories, Country Whigs, and self-professed Patriots, all of whom felt England should have been more forceful in the face of Spanish naval aggression. Glover's poem addresses the humiliation suffered by Admiral Hosier and the En- glish who were instructed not to take Porto Bello. Thousands, including Hosier, died of disease while awaiting further orders.
In Samuel Johnson and Milton's 'Mighty Bone', Lee identifies one small part that Johnson returned to repeatedly, namely the archangel Michael's prophecy to Adam of future military conflict: "Cities of men with lofty gates and towers,/Concourse in arms, fierce faces threatening war,/Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise." He identifies seven instances of Johnson alluding to Milton's "mighty bone": as a diary entry during his North Wales journey, referring to Hawkstone Park as fit for "Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise"; in his discussion of the Campaign in "Life of Addison"; in his edition of Shakespeare as a gloss on lines from As You Like It; and under four Dictionary definitions that include illustrative examples that recall Milton (s.v. "emprise," "giant," and "mighty," along with "quilt" from Dryden's translation of the Aeneid: "Entellus for the strife prepares,/Strip'd of his quilted coat, his body bares,/Compos'd of mighty bone").
This brief excerpt, originally printed on the back cover of the December 1992 centennial issue of the Journal of Political Economy, features a passage from Boswell's biography of Johnson. In the exchange, Boswell recounts a criticism by John Pringle, who argued that Smith could not write effectively on trade because he lacked practical experience in commerce. Johnson disputes this view, asserting that a man may write well on trade without being engaged in it. He maintains that trade requires illustration by philosophy and that a successful author must possess extensive views rather than mere practical experience. While Johnson notes that individuals or nations only increase their store of money by making others poorer, he argues that trade provides a more valuable benefit through the reciprocation of particular advantages between different countries.
Shakespeare Ancient and Modern: The 1750s Reception
Eighteenth-century writers on Shakespeare were very attached to the view, originating among Shakespeare's own contemporaries, that his work had a kind of universality, communicating 'for all time'. Yet they were also often preoccupied with how difficult many readers found it to even understand him. This essay examines statements of both kinds from the early and mid-century, to argue that in the 1750s, distinctively, commentators concluded both that Shakespeare was 'modern'—in the sense that he wrote in an everyday idiom, unbound by classical conventions—and that he was 'ancient', in the sense that Elizabethan culture and its language itself had become historically alien and obscure. Comparing representations of Shakespeare by Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, Edward Young, Charlotte Lennox, David Hume, and other writers of the 1750s, with their forebears in the earlier parts of the century, this essay makes the case for the originality of this position, and considers the implications of the paradoxical fact that Shakespeare seemed to become ' ancient' and ' modern' simultaneously at this time.
'As the Vulgar Call It': Henry Fielding and the Language of the Vulgar
Sorensen asserts that in the preface to his Dictionary of the English Language, in a passage tinged with pathos, Samuel Johnson reflects on the impossibility of his efforts to represent fully the sheer number of terms and their many meanings, envisioning his attempts to capture their exuberance of signification as like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chace [sic] the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them. Johnson's choice of the inhabitants of Arcadia to figure his lexicographic efforts is a suggestive one, for their significance extends beyond their endless pursuit and frustration. Despite acknowledging the complexity, and even impossibility, of making a nationwide range of strange terms and meanings familiar to his Dictionary readers, Johnson, of course, mounted a Hercleculean effort to do just that. With a coterminous rise of print and cultural nationalism, writers increasingly viewed "true English" as bespeaking the very character of the nation.
'Let Margaret Sleep': putting to bed the authorship controversy over Sister Peg
Nearly four decades after David Raynor attributed to David Hume an allegorical Scots militia pamphlet from the early 1760s popularly known as Sister Peg, there is still no scholarly consensus about whether the author was in fact Hume or his friend Adam Ferguson. Using new evidence that has emerged since the appearance of Raynor's edition in 1982 - including information about Sister Peg's publication history, Ferguson's handwritten corrections and revisions in the Abbotsford copy of the work, a 1767 newspaper article by James Boswell and a copy of a 1775 letter by Sir John Dalrymple that both named Ferguson as the author, two volumes of Ferguson's correspondence published in 1995, and a recently discovered letter by Ferguson from 1809 - this article seeks to resolve this controversy by establishing that Sister Peg was written by Ferguson, as his fellow militia agitator Alexander Carlyle asserted in his memoirs. In the process, the article refutes Raynor's arguments about Ferguson's supposed incapacity for writing a satirical pamphlet like Sister Peg and clarifies the nature of Hume's views and actions in regard to the Scots militia cause during the Seven Years' War. The article also throws light on several related issues affecting Hume and Ferguson's circle.
In this attempt to deal with the problem of free will Tallis identifies intentionality as a feature of our lives that cannot be explained by deterministic, natural, physical, causal laws. Our ability to think about the world, and not merely be objects subject to it, gives us room for manoeuvre for free thought and action. Science, far from being antagonistic to the possibility of free will as it is usually presented through its deterministic explanations, is a manifestation of our freedom and could not exist without it. However, doubts arise for the argument owing to a lack of explanation as to how freedom is possible no matter how persuasively we are shown that it appears to be. That is, what kind of world would it have to be for freedom to exist and be explicable. I conclude with my own view, alluded to by Tallis, but not followed up, that the problem with the scientific worldview is that it is wedded to objectivity as the only stance deemed veridical as to the nature of reality, one which therefore cannot by necessity allow subjects or freedom. As freedom is a property of subjects, the scientific worldview cannot allow for freedom. Once the condition is dropped that only the objectively knowable can be real, freedom also may be real, defined as a knowable property of our subjectivity. There is no need to deny physicalism if the definition of it is released from the epistemic bonds of objectivity and we hold that some physical properties may be known subjectively, namely those that characterize our subjective life.
Dr. Johnson on Idleness and Clubbability
Tools of the Trade and Sociopolitical Micro Maneuvers: A Case Study of Serbian Usage LabeLs
Dictionaries are commonly seen as dull lists of words, even by lexicographers themselves as in the famous definition by Samuel Johnson where lexicographer is defined as: "a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words." In contrast to this image of drudgery, I see dictionaries as rich depositories of social practices and I deem the lexicographer's work a constant dialog with the prevailing cultural, social, and ideological context. In that, I am following the ideas of socio-cognitive metalexicography, which strives "[...] to establish a triangular communicative model of lexicography and views the bilingual dictionary as a system of intercultural communication between the compiler and the user." I have proposed the following research construct for the study of Slavic dictionaries.
Método apac y la literatura: un acercamiento posible y necesario
Siqueira, Pozzoli, and Cachichi propose linking the APAC method of prisoner recovery to literature, arguing that great works provide a window into the "contradictions, paradoxes and complexities" of the human person. The authors cite Johnson to validate the universal capacity of human beings for the "apprehension and 'digestion'" of extreme experiences of misery and suffering. Literature serves as a medium of expression and thought, offering a "real presence" that demands an active response. By populating the damaged imagination with images of possible lives, the text asserts that literary study allows "recuperandos" to find exact words to recount their own histories. This process facilitates internal transformation and the assumption of responsibility, transitioning the individual from the "old man" to a "new man" through aesthetic and spiritual dimensions.
"El lenguaje es el vestido del pensamiento," sostuvo el poeta, ensayista y lexicógrafo inglés Samuel Johnson. Con esta máxima, el autor del Diccionario de la lengua inglesa ratificó la estrecha relación que siempre ha existido entre lenguaje y pensamiento. De ahí que el filósofo y escritor español Miguel de Unamuno haya afirmado que "la lengua no es la envoltura del pensamiento, sino el pensamiento mismo."
It is a well-known fact that Samuel Johnson's London is an imitation poem of Juvenal's third satire on Rome. Many critics' slight estimations of the poem originate in Johnson's own critical dismissal of it. However, once we take into account his definition of imitation as "a method of translating looser than paraphrase, in which modem examples and illustrations are used for ancient, or domestic for foreign," we are able to appreciate its originality and distinctiveness in a new perspective. On one side, Thales, the poetical friend in the poem, though not able to suggest any solution or alternative to the corrupted city life, underscores the artificialities and dangers to be found in London by employing major motifs of pastoral poetry. On the other, by contrasting the present humiliating life with the past glorious one, he passes scathing judgement upon the life lacking in historical consciousness and moral principles. In short, Thales' eloquent speech full of paradoxes and satiric comments is no more than Johnson's own trenchant and convincing critique of the corruption and confusion of his own times and society.
풍자가와 풍자대상 사이의 거리: 『런던』과 『인간 욕망의 헛됨』의 풍자시로서의 성취 [The Distance Between the Satirist and the Satired: The Achievements of "London" and "The Vanity of Human Desire" as Satire]
The purpose of this paper is to substantiate the importance of the distance between the satirist and his object of satire in guaranteeing the corrective function of satire. In criticizing Samuel Johnson's London, this paper argues that London has a twofold purpose: that is, to attack the corruption of London on the one hand and, on the other hand, to express covertly the desire to achieve worldly success in London, the very object of satire. Johnson achieves this complex purpose by creating the fictive persona Thales who is distinguishable from himself and then by manipulating the distance between himself and Thales which in turn ensures distance between himself and the primary object of his satire, London. In the interpretation of another satire of Johnson's, The Vanity of Human Wishes, this paper argues that, unlike London, this poem fails to achieve its goal, whether that goal is a qualified attack on the vanity of human wishes or the expression of compassion on the painful condition of human existence. This paper construes the reason of the failure as Johnson's inability to maintain the proper distance between himself and some objects of his consideration, as he occasionally collapses the distance between himself and the objects and then identifies himself with them. In so comparing the success of London with the failure of The Vanity of Human Wishes as satires, this paper emphasizes the crucial importance of the concept of the persona that secures the distance between the satirist and his victims of satire.
Ideology of Contradiction and Multiplicity in Samuel Johnson's Critical Performance: A Postmodern Epistemology
사무엘 존슨 문학이론의 현대적 문제틀 = Samuel Johnson's Modern Framework for Literary Theory
“Samuel Johnson's Modern Framework for Literary Theory”
『오셀로』(Othello)에 관한 근대 비평의 전모 = A Complete Overview of Modern Criticism on Othello
The focus of critical commentary on Othello during the past four hundred years has been on the characters of Iago and Othello. Critics have debated which of them bears greater responsibility for the tragic catastrophe in the pl ay . Until recently, Othello and Iago have received special critical attention. In this paper, the maj or critical commentaries on the character of Iago will be surveyed with special attention to the arguments of Thomas Rymer in the 17th century, and Samuel Johnson in the 17th century. The commentaries of such 19th century critics as Samuel T. Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Charles Swinburne, and Hermann Ulrici will be surveyed too.
“A Complete Overview of Modern Criticism on Othello”
사무엘 존슨과 여성: 존슨과 18세기 여류 문인들의 모임인 'The Bluestockings'와의 관계 연구 [Samuel Johnson and Women: A Study of Johnson's Relationship with the 18th-Century Women Writers' Society, "The Bluestockings"]
This article studies the relationship of Samuel Johnson with the group of literary women known as the Bluestockings, most of whom had achieved some works of literature and gathered to discuss and criticize various subjects, mostly in a literary vein. Johnson developed close relationships with many of these women. In chauvinistic English society their efforts were not only ignored by many, but severely criticized by those who felt that the Bluestockings were overstepping their bounds as women. Despite these obstacles, these women survived, and some important male allies joined their cause, one of whom is Samuel Johnson. The support of these men carried considerable weight. Among the two women selected, Lennox would not be included in the Bluestockings without Johnson's affection for her and admiration for her literary talents and her great courage in the face of hardships in her life. Through all his years, Johnson had been Charlotte's friend, support, and her adviser in almost all of her works. Johnson helped her in every way, including writing her several prefaces for her works. Burney's importance rests on her own accounts of her relationship with Johnson, which was closer and much more intimate than that with any other of the Bluestocking women. Her accounts are provides a most accurate picture of Johnson in the circle of women. Without Burney's accounts, a lot of information concerning not only her relationship with Johnson, but also his relationships with the other Bluestocking women would have been missed.
사무엘 존슨과 기독교적 인문주의 [Samuel Johnson and Christian Humanism]
Perhaps the most notable feature of Johnson's poetry as a whole is its combination of erudition and piety. Johnson's poems seem to be the fruit of a soil rich in learning. His knowledge of classical literature enables him to produce masterful Latin verse in a variety of forms, and his English poetry is everywhere characterized by his frequent allusions to earlier English literature. Although as a critic Johnson shows himself to be uneasy about explicitly religious verse, his religious sensibility strong marks his poems. Some of his finest Latin poetry deals explicitly with religious themes, and even his lighter English verse is frequently colored by the moral sensibility which he derived ultimately from his religion. This double quality of piety and learning is not merely the accidental reflection of Johnson's personalty; it constitutes rather a conscious effort to make explicit what might call Johnson's Christian humanism. What drew Johnson so strongly these humanists is doubtless their vast attainments in knowledge. Johnson acknowledges that learning has legitimate uses; second, he argues that knowledge is good only when used to promote virtue; and, third, he places greater emphasis on the practice than on the contemplation of virtue. Most importantly, however, he acknowledges that learning can lead to the sin which earlier in his sermon he defined as the most insidious of moral distempers, unless controlled by religion. KCI Citation Count: 0
'사랑의 제국'과 애러벨라의 광기: 샬롯 레넉스의 『여성 키호테』 ['The Empire of Love' and Arabella's Madness: Charlotte Lennox's 'The Female Quixote']
As Samuel Johnson in his "Dedication" describes the work as "this subtil[sic] Sophistry of Desire," Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote is a story of a woman who is completely immersed in romance and expresses her polymorphous desires through mimicking the romantic codes of manners she has acquired by her romance reading. Lennox's attempt to portray an individual woman who with her excessive imaginative power fanatically worships the "Empire of Love" is in itself a unique and daring one in the age of sexual restrictions, especially her creation of a female Quixote with her androgynous attitude and homoerotic attraction to women. The ultimate happy ending of the novel, however, which apparently ‘cures' Arabella from her madness and makes her marry Glanville, signifies the disappearance of this unique and singular woman, Arabella; she is in the end drastically reduced to a very ordinary human being silenced and ‘cured' by the Doctor. Arabella's silence also coincides with that of the original and creative writer Lennox, who could not but follow the dominant rules of writing under the aegis of the gigantic male writers. This paper concentrates on examining how Arabella expresses her repressed desires through imitating romantic codes of conduct, how her hysteric madness seems to be ‘cured' by the Doctor, and how she turns out in the end after the ‘cure.' KCI Citation Count: 0
Samuel Johnson's Criticism and Modern Hermeneutic Tradition: Literary Interpretation as Dialogical and Performative Reading
The aim of this paper is to examine and evaluate Dr. Johnson's view of text as performance in his hermeneutic critical perspective. Johnson does not believe in the purely ontological or autotelic aspects of literature, but rather understands literature in terms of hermeneutics: critical procedures are basically performances. Johnson steadily insists upon the truthfulness and veracity of all writing. He firmly believes that literature is valuable only if it communicates the truth about the nature of reality. He regularly reflects on the relationship of the author's life to his work psychologically or genetically, and more occasionally that of the work to its genre, even though he distrusts rigorous theories of genre. As Hermeneutic assumes the existence of true meaning of a text, so literary criticism tries to discover the specific meaning of any literary text produced by its author. Johnson was a long way from the Absolutist or dogmatist Neoclassical Rationalism. For example, it is very dangerous to forget the empirical bases for Johnson's criticism. The rejection of the Unities is the most famous instance of Johnson's empirical approach in action. Johnson's rejection of the Neoclassical rationalist rule of the Unities remains the prime example of his empirical approach and it was final. But with all his empirical bias Johnson never fell linto the anarchy of experience. He found out a new way of literary interpretation in the tradition of hermeneutics. As a practitioner of most forms of literary criticism, Johnson stands at just the right historical crossroads to be peculiarly valuable for us. Johnson no longer looks like a violent battleground between Classicism and Pre-Romanticism. Johnson is a kind of confluence between these two great currents of English criticism, undisturbed by his clear-sighted perception of the limitations of Neo-Classicism, and unfascinated by new experiments of a domination Pre-Romantics. This relative independence from literary movements has its advantages. And this is another reason for the greatness and authority of Johnson as a critic in term of modern hermeneutics.
사무엘 존슨과 18세기 계몽주의 공적 지식인의 초상: 21세기 융복합 시대의 새로운 통섭적 지식인을 향하여 [Samuel Johnson and the Portrait of an 18th-Century Enlightenment Public Intellectual: Toward a New Comprehensive Intellectual in the 21st Century Convergence Era]
The aim of this paper is to discuss Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) as a most representative public intellectual in the 18th-century England. It seems to me that we need badly a public intellectual like Johnson in this age of functional specialization. Many literary scholars and humanities intellectuals now stick to their ivory tower separated from the secular realities of the world. They tend to be secluded technical producer of academic papers for the very small number of professionals. They cannot reach the society and history to which they belong. This is the very beginning of the so-called "Crisis of the Humanities." We can discuss Dr. Johnson as public intellectual in three aspects. First of all, Johnson was a great scholar critic. As T. S. Eliot pointed out, Johnson was "one of the three greatest critics of poetry in English literature" (162) including John Dryden and S. T. Coleridge. The very essences of his criticism come from wide knowledge and acute understanding of language, close reading strategy, historical imagination and deep understanding of the humanities. Secondly, Johnson was a great prolific writer called "Great Cham of Literature" by Tobias Smollett. He read a wide range of books with various topics. Thirdly, Johnson was not a narrow specialist but an open-minded generalist who had a wide variety of intellectual curiosities and convergent or consilient methods. In other words, Johnson was really a public intellectual in the civil society of the 18th-century England with a vision of common reader, common culture and common humanities. How can we thresh Dr. Johnson as a critical intellectual for the 21st century? We can propose nine tentative memos as follows: (1) understanding importance of language in the humanities, and integration and interpenetration of language and literature; (2) the restoration of power of literature for the concrete life and society; (3) expanding the frontier of literary genres for the establishing the wisdom literature; (4) the return of dialogical imagination for the effective communication and comparison; (5) reestablishment of British literary tradition with balance, toleration and golden mean; (6) development of the convergent or consilient humanities; (7) reinvention of public intellectual with wise reading and critical consciousness; (8) avoidance of the philistinism and specialized professionalism; and (9) the pursuit of the whole man including spiritual problem in this age of rationalistic instrumentalism. In order to build a new convergent or consilient humanities in the public sphere for the 21st century we have to redraw and reproduce the portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson as public intellectual in the year of tricentenary anniversary of his birth.
Samuel Johnson and Voltaire: 'The Pursuit of Happiness?'
With their widely different backgrounds, attitudes and beliefs, no two eighteenth-century writers could be so wide apart as Voltaire and Johnson. Yet, the coincidence of Candide and Rasselas belonging to the same genre, of sharing many structural and thematic features, of their being published in the same year has often led the works to being compared for both similarities and dissimilarities. In this paper, I attempt to show that, though the values these two works endorse are very different, they come closer together than is often thought. I focus on how both Candide and Rasselas take up the theme of the "pursuit of happiness" and show that it is the pursuit, not the attainment, that is of importance in both writers' understanding of human happiness. Although both Voltaire and Johnson were skeptical of human happiness, they nevertheless concur in their acceptance of man's restless pursuit of happiness as an inescapable human condition. It is upon recognition of this that they try to find some answer to the question of human happiness, although the only tangible thing that remains at the end of each tale is a small community of friends. With their widely different backgrounds, attitudes and beliefs, no two eighteenth-century writers could be so wide apart as Voltaire and Johnson. Yet, the coincidence of Candide and Rasselas belonging to the same genre, of sharing many structural and thematic features, of their being published in the same year has often led the works to being compared for both similarities and dissimilarities. In this paper, I attempt to show that, though the values these two works endorse are very different, they come closer together than is often thought. I focus on how both Candide and Rasselas take up the theme of the "pursuit of happiness" and show that it is the pursuit, not the attainment, that is of importance in both writers' understanding of human happiness. Although both Voltaire and Johnson were skeptical of human happiness, they nevertheless concur in their acceptance of man's restless pursuit of happiness as an inescapable human condition. It is upon recognition of this that they try to find some answer to the question of human happiness, although the only tangible thing that remains at the end of each tale is a small community of friends.
نهوت أمين العروسي [Nahut Amin Al-Aroussi]
الاتجاهات الجديدة في التأليف المعجمي: حالة الفنون(باللغة الانجليزية) [New trends in lexicography: The State of the Arts (in English)]
This study focuses on lexicography as a practical professional activity, as well as a theoretical academic discipline, on the other hand, and the influence of information technology on lexicography on the other hand. In the introduction, the lexicographic scene is surveyed since the time when Samuel Johnson produced hi Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. the term ‘ lexicography' is defined, and some other important terms, such as metalexicography, dictionary history, dictionary typology, and so on. The introduction concludes with a reference to the objectives of the study. The second part of the study deals with lexicography as practice, which maps dictionary research as a whole. This part refers also involves the art of dictionary making, dictionary compilation and the different stages of the project, and finally dictionary structure which refers to the manner in which the component parts of a dictionary are related to each other and the whole. Part three of the study deals with lexicography as theory, which maps dictionary research as a whole. This part refers also to the main players of the lexicography scene, such as the compilers, the user/student, the teacher/ the researcher. It refers to the pedagogical aspects of lexicography, and concludes with the contrast between lexicography and other linguistic disciplines, with special reference to translation. The final part of this study refers to the influence of computer technology on lexicography both as practice and as research. It describes how computerization has facilitated the design, the development, and the analyses of corpora that are more complete and reliable. This part concludes with a reference to the different types of electronic dictionaries, and their pedagogical.
Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, and Empiricism
쟌슨 박사의 『셰익스피어 서문』과 셰익스피어 극에 붙인 노트는 가장 훌륭한 셰익스피어 연구논문중의 하나이다. 그는 셰익스피어 작품을 옹호하며셰익스피어작품을 비평 했는데, 평가할 때 기준이 당시 18세기 영국에 크게유행했던 경험주의이다. 경험주의는 쟌 록이 집대성한 지식학 이론으로, 우선 선험성, 일반성, 추상성으로 대변되는 대륙의 합리주의에 반발하면서 생긴 것으로 지식의 근원으로서 관찰과 경험을 중시하고 개별적이고 다양성에초점을 두는 철학의 한 분야이다. 18 세기 문예의 거장이었던 쟌슨은 이 경험주의를 받아들여 셰익스피어를 평가하는 데 이용한다. 즉 아이들이, 관찰과 경험을 통해 점진적으로 지식을 획득하듯이, 셰익스피어의 재능도 면밀한관찰을 통하여 점진적으로 발전한다는 경험주의의 요소를 포함하고 있다. 쟌슨의 미학적, 문학적 비평 체계에서 가장 중요한 요소가 다양성이다. 『맥베드』, 『코리올라누스』, 『햄릿』등이 훌륭한 작품으로 칭송받는 이유도 다양성에 있으며 『한 여름 밤의 꿈』도 다양한 모드가 잘 나타나 있으며, 『템페스트』도 다양한 인물들이 그려져 있으며 바로 이 다양성에서 미학적 즐거움이 나온다. 엄격한 도덕주의자가 아니고, 문예비평가로서 쟌슨은 이 미학적 즐거움에 큰 비중을 두었는데, 록의 이론처럼, 이 즐거움이란이 세상을 구성하고 있는 다양성에서 오는 것이다. 쟌슨의 또 다른 셰익스피어 연구에 끼친 공헌은 그 극작가가 희곡의 통일성을 무시했다는 비난으로부터, 그를 성공적으로 변호한 점에 있다. 고전부터 내려오는 극의 통일성 규칙은 셰익스피어에 와서 무너졌는데, 사실 한 작품에 가득 찬 희극과 비극의 합침은 극적 효과를 거두는데 매우 효과적임을주장한다. 그 이유는 우리 일상생활이 여러 요소들의 복합으로 이루어졌지, 어느 한 쪽 (비극적, 혹은 희극적)으로만 이루어지지 않으며, 바로 이 여러 요소의 모임은, 경험주의에서 주장하는 다양성의 중요성과도 일맥상통한다. 이통합에서 즐거움이 생기는 것이다. 또한 셰익스피어의 재능은 책에서 왔다기보다는 개인의 독창성에 기인하는 것이고 이 독창성 역시 미학적 즐거움의원천이다. 셰익스피어의 위대성을 확립하는 데 도움을 주었던 쟌슨의 연구는그 동시대의 지식학이었던 경험주의에 바탕을 두었고, 우리는 쟌슨의 셰익스피어 읽기를 통해 18세기에 셰익스피어가 어떻게 읽혔는지를 경험주의를 통해서도 알 수 있다. KCI Citation Count: 0
사무엘 존슨과 비평적 다원주의 -대화적 사유와 통섭적 상상력을 위한 하나의 시론(試論) [Samuel Johnson and Critical Pluralism: A Trial for Dialogic Thinking and Convergent Imagination]
Unfortunately enough, the haunting image of old conservative Dr. Johnson is still tenaciously with us. Johnson is still a prisoner in the remote area colonized by the continued tradition of Romanticism and Modernism. The dusty mirror of Samuel Johnson should be polished or shattered. We need to be able to demystify and problematize the conventional Dr. Johnson in order to discover the real Samuel Johnson in a wider literary and critical context. Since Johnson's lifetime, attention has not infrequently been called to the inconsistency and contradiction in his criticism. Even Johnsonians who value his works highly often enough find themselves embarrassed by apparent inconsistencies in his critical practice. But Johnson is not guilty of an outright self-contradiction. Elements in his criticism seem contradictory to those who ignore Johnson's intrinsic resistance to the imposition of a single perspective. We could understand Johnson's inconsistency and contradiction which positively permit multiple perspective in his critical performance. The aim of this paper is to discuss the multiplication of critical perspectives in Johnson's practical criticism with a working hypothesis and tentative methodological scheme for the multiple perspective's in Johnson's literary criticism. I deal with 8 critical perspectives: (1) mimetic-realist perspective, (2) affective-pragmatic perspective, (3) expressive-psychological perspective, (4)combinatory -hermeneutic perspective, (5) rhetorical-communicative perspective, (6) historical-biographical perspective, (7) sociological-political perspective and (8) moralist-religious perspective. The eight critical perspectives discussed do not exist in absolute isolation from each other. Each of these perspectives not only possesses isolated value: it is also modified, complicated, and enriched by its association with each of the others. This paper also explains the historical significance of Johnson the critic and argue that Johnson was both a traditionalist in the eighteenth-century neo-classicism and an innovator for the nineteenth romanticism and twentieth-century modernism. To conclude, Johnson's literary authority and critical modernity are very much alive and relevant to all of us in the 21st century with critical pluralism and convergent imagination.
새뮤얼 존슨과 '돈키호테' 의 후예들 [Samuel Johnson and the Descendants of Don Quixote]
It is no coincidence that early modern England witnessed a "surprising concentration of interest" in Quixote for it was a literary and cultural trope, by and through which contemporaries reinscribed their self-consciousness as modern readers. As diverse as they were, modern critics have read in Eighteenth-century Quixotes conflicting stories about contemporary readers' self-consciousness, while at the same time underscoring the way in which they reflected and mediated the period's prescriptive discourse of reading. And Samuel Johnson, a literary icon of the contemporary's anti-novel discourse, has served to highlight modern critics' overriding view of diverse voices in English Quixotes. Examining Johnson's notion of human desires and illusionary hopes in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, therefore, this study attempts to locates him, along with the writers such as Charlotte Lennox and Jane Austen, within a cultural history of English Quixotes who were then on their way to refashioning themselves. Johnson's idea of human desire and hope stems from his profound understanding of the paradoxical nature inherent within an individual reader's Quixotic projection of his/her desire, which is also found in the discursive battles that English Quixotes fought for their new identity as modern readers.
문학: 셰익스피어, 쟌슨 박사, 경험주의 [Literature: Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Empiricism]
『라셀라스』의 '결론 없는 결론'의 결론: 새뮤얼 존슨, 지젝 그리고 행복의 변증법 [The Conclusion of "Rasselas"'s "Inconclusive Conclusion": Samuel Johnson, Žižek, and the Dialectic of Happiness]
Rasselas is a great philosophical novel of Enlightenment that impressively dramatizes the ambitious quest for perfect happiness, and the process of attaining spiritual awakening when the happiness is not found in this world. The literary style of this work, which features diverse paradoxes and "the conclusion in which nothing is concluded," gracefully embodies the conceptual movement of negativity, which entails the seed of affirmation and actualizes it through the masterful execution of contradiction. It is Žižek's controversial but very creative reading of Hegel's dialectics and negativity that can provide a clue to accurately appreciate the essence of creativity inherent in the negativity of Rasselas, although the general aura of the work, especially the end appears to be skeptical and pessimistic. The theory of happiness in Rasselas, which we can formulate from Žižekian perspective, can be summarized as follows: 1) There exists no exceptional space in which there is no lack. 2) By traversing the fantasy of a utopia, we find that the pain and frustration in our lives, which seem to prevent us from enjoying happiness, in fact, a positive condition that can lead us to true happiness. 3) By focusing on this movement of Žižekian dialectics and negativity in Rasselas, we conclude that the ultimate teaching of Rasselas is no other than awakening us to realize that happiness can "always-already" happen to us as the mode of "not-yet." Rasselas is indeed a true classic on happiness in the sense that it provides us with an inventive narrative of happiness that triggers an epistemological and ontological transformation, by means of which we can live through the tide of inevitable obstacles and crises in our lives.
Canonical Reappropriation of Samuel Johnson's Literary Criticism: Toward the Critical Wisdom for the 21st century
In the history of modern English literary criticism, the Age of Theory has just faded away. As already well-known, the theory-ridden literary interpretations have been made abstrus e and ambiguous, overwhelmingly influenced by the so-called French School of the poststructuralist criticism. We are now in dire need of new critical orientations and methodologies which are more pragmatic and manageable to common readers. In other words, we should go back to the sound English tradition of literary criticism in order to bring back the critical wisdom for the 21st century. It seems to me that the most appropriate critical model to our literary profession is Samuel Johnson(1709-1784), the most canonical or representative critic in the British tradition. Johnson is still the most frequently quoted critic. He always tries to relate literature to our ordinary life. As an experiential critic, he avoided the metaphysical conceit of literary criticism for the general and universal human value in our interpretative activities. He preferred common human experience to esoteric reasoning in the wake of British tradition of empiricism. As far as Johnson is concerned, the common sense of human understanding in literary works leads to the way to the palace of wisdom in literary criticism. KCI Citation Count: 0
리언 이델의 『헨리 제임스의 생애』: '대가'(The Master) 만들기 프로젝트 [Leon Edel's The Life of Henry James: The Master Project]
This paper proposes that Leon Edel's biography, The Life of Henry James, follows James Boswell's model of Life of Johnson in its attitude, while adopting the "New Biography" theory which Edel expounded in his life-long study of literary biography. Edel's general attitude toward Henry James manifests similarities with the kind of conviction and admiration Boswell had toward Samuel Johnson and his work. Edel also explores James's life with a psychoanalytic method as a way of getting deeper into the interior of the secretive writer. The Life of Henry James has acquired its status as a masterpiece through the power of Edel's imagination with which the biographer portrays James as an agonized son and brother turning into the "Master." If the collaboration between Boswell and Johnson as biographer and subject has never been duplicated as some might point out, Edel's biography certainly emulates the fame of the former with the excitement and art which only the best fiction can offer.
Samuel Johnson vs David Hume: Confrontation of the «Culture of Spirit» and the «Culture of Reason»
Статья посвящена истории противостояния британских интеллектуалов XVIII века – Сэмюэла Джонсона и Дэвида Юма. Анализируются взгляды английского лексикографа и шотландского философа на ревностную религиозность и веру в чудеса, проблемы достижения счастья и историю. Акцентируется внимание на олицетворении Джонсоном и Юмом двух интеллектуальных традиций эпохи Просвещения. Джонсон являлся поборником «культуры духа», для которого свобода мысли вовсе не подразумевала посягательство на вопросы веры. Юм – ярким представителем «культуры разума», выступавшим за рациональное познание мира и человека. The article is devoted to the history of confrontation between two British intellectuals of the Eighteenth century – Samuel Johnson and David Hume. The author analyses views of English lexicographer and Scottish philosopher on zealous religiosity and belief in miracles, on happiness and history. Attention is focused on the personification by Johnson and Hume of two intellectual traditions of the Age of Enlightenment. Johnson was an adherent of a «culture of the spirit», for whom freedom of thought did not imply an encroachment on faith. Hume was a prominent representative of the «culture of reason» who advocated rational cognition of the world and man.
새뮤얼 존슨의 비평적 원칙과 내면세계 = Samuel Johnson's Critical Principles and Inner World
For Samuel Johnson, life and literature were inseparable. He believed literature should function as the cure and alleviation for the complexities of the human condition. Johnson's critical principles can be summarized as empirical realism, the pursuit for truth and the deep humanistic view of man. In Lives of the Poets, Johnson's final and greatest achievement, Johnson pursued his life-long interest in the close relationship between the life of a writer and his work by uniting biography and literary criticism. This paper aims to understand the basic principles of Johnson's criticism shown in "John Milton," "Jonathan Swift," and "John Grey." Firstly, Johnson's empirical realism is evident in his negative attitude towards the transcendental realm in Paradise Lost. And Johnson's persistent pursuit of truth is clarified in his criticism of pastoral poetry and mythological allusions in the poems of Milton and Grey. Finally, through Johnson's idea on the boundaries of satire we can clearly see his compassionate and humanistic view. And Johnson's particularly severe attitude towards Swift can be interpreted as the defense mechanism of avoiding losing his psychological and mental balance. (Dongshin University)
현대영미어문학 = Journal of Modern British & American Language & Literature
Dictionaries of 'Hard Words' and Semantic Drift in England XVII–XVIII Centuries
Изменения в семантическом наполнении средств языковой выразительности служат характерным маркером общественных трансформаций. Причиной могут быть социальные, культурно-религиозные, мировоззренческие и иные структурные изменения, происходящие в ареале бытования языка. Революционные события английской общественной жизни середины XVII в. позволяют предположить, что изменения произошли и в языковой семантике. «Усложнение» английского языка за счет переводов текстов латинских авторов, публикации путешественниками слов чужеземцев, распространение неологизмов и «лексических инноваций» за счет усложнения структуры научного познания – все это требовало кодификации и синтагматизации языка. В статье рассматриваются особенности первых английский словарей «трудных слов». На примере сопоставления словарей Г. Кокерэма и словаря С. Джонсона продемонстрированы изменения, произошедшие в семантическом наполнении слов в Англии XVII в. Делается вывод, что в середине XVIII в. стремление составителей толковых словарей зафиксировать окончательное значение слов наталкивается на изменчивость языка и культурных норм, вынуждая признать утопичность проектов по созданию унифицированных и не требующих дальнейших исправлений словарей. Changes in the semantics of words serve as a characteristic marker of mental transformations. The reason may be social, cultural, religious, ideological and other structural changes occurring in the area where the language exists. The revolutionary events of English social life in the mid-17th century suggest that characteristic transformations also occurred in the semantics of the language. The "complication" of the English language through translations of texts by Latin authors, the publication by travelers of the words of strangers, the spread of neologisms and "lexical innovations" because of the complication of the structure of scientific knowledge - all this required the codification and syntagmatization of the language. The article discusses the features of the first English dictionaries of "hard words." Using the example of a comparison of the dictionaries of H. Cockeram and the later dictionary of Samuel Johnson, the changes that occurred in the semantic content of words in England in the 17th century are demonstrated. It is concluded that in the middle of the 18th century, the desire of compilers of explanatory dictionaries to fix the final meaning of words ran into the variability of language and cultural norms. They have to admit the utopian nature of projects to create unified dictionaries that do not require further corrections.
Asks about the origin of lines Francis Cockayne Cust sent to Boswell, “That, to his Coffin from his Cradle, / ‘Tis all a Lie, and all a Ladle.”
The Religious Psychology of Samuel Johnson
Wilcox explores the depth and intensity of Johnson's Anglican faith, identifying his primary contribution to spiritual literature as a searching analysis of moral and religious psychology. The article details how Johnson challenged secular visions of happiness by demonstrating the bankruptcy of faithlessness and the "insufficiency of human enjoyments". Wilcox emphasizes Johnson's rejection of "cheap grace," noting his literal "fear and trembling" regarding salvation and his belief that faith requires a strenuous effort to conform the will to God's law. While Johnson used traditional "evidences" for Christian revelation, Wilcox argues his most distinctive apologetic tack anticipates existentialism by framing life outside the faith as emotionally unlivable. The study concludes that Johnson's heroic scale of accomplishment extended to his religious life, characterized by fervent prayer, diligent meditation, and an unremitting struggle to give his whole heart to God.
'Well Said Mr. Northcote': Hester Thrale Piozzi's Annotated Copy of James Northcote's Biography of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Wendorf analyzes Hester Thrale Piozzi's extensive annotations in her copy of James Northcote’s 1818 Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Thrale Piozzi's notes reveal her complex, ambivalent view of Reynolds: admiring him as a portraitist but considering him cool and out of depth as a history painter or a man. Her marginalia augment biographical and art-historical knowledge, correcting Northcote's facts about the Streatham Park portraits, their cost, and the sitters, often using a conversational and "rattlesnake" wit. Her annotations frequently target Boswell. The commentary also shows her working through her decades-long, complicated friendship with Johnson, whose character remains her central focus. Thrale Piozzi's engagement with the text indicates she was reliving her past life and seeking to establish her own truth in the narrative of her circle.
Wade analyzes the medical and philosophical aspects of Johnson’s perception, particularly his rejection of Berkeley’s idealism. The text scrutinizes accounts by Boswell and Piozzi to reconcile contradictory reports of Johnson’s eyesight. Wade notes Piozzi’s record of Johnson’s displeasure with a Reynolds portrait that depicted him as "blinking Sam," a label he found offensive. The essay explores Boswell’s observation of Johnson’s "scanning eye movements" and the possibility that Johnson used a head tilt to compensate for a "lazy eye" or palsy. Wade suggests Johnson remained functionally monocular but benefited from a myopic "near point" that allowed him to read without spectacles into old age.
Life, Learning and Leadership: Leadership
The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
A Game of Tag: A New Source for Samuel Johnson?
Walker searches for the source of Johnson's tribute to Bennet Langton, "Sit anima mea cum Langtono" ("May my soul be with Langton"). This modifies the Latin tag used by Averroes, "Sit anima mea cum philosophis" ("May my soul be with the philosophers"), which was originally an attack on the Christian doctrine of Transubstantiation. Walker notes that while Hill suggested South's Sermons as a source, a more likely candidate, given Johnson's known reading, is Burnet's Life of Bishop Bedel, which contains an anecdote featuring a Popish Priest who, on his deathbed, exclaims a similar modified phrase.
Samuel Johnson, the Ossian Fraud, and the Celtic Revival in Great Britain and Ireland
Wickman examines Curley’s defense of Johnson’s position against Macpherson’s Ossian "imposture." He highlights Curley’s rigorous survey of Gaelic sources, which categorizes Macpherson’s creations as primarily sheer inventions. Wickman notes Curley’s contribution to understanding Johnson’s role as a promoter of authentic Irish antiquarianism, challenging the "John Bull" caricature. While finding the argument illuminating, Wickman criticizes Curley’s polemical zeal and opacity toward Scottish cultural autonomy. He concludes that Curley successfully captures what truth meant to Johnson, even if the author’s countercultural refusal to engage modern historicism limits the book’s fertility.
Interpretation of Fielding's moral codes: Review of Ethical Narrative: A Study of Henry Fielding's Novels
Compared with other British novelists in the 18th century, Henry Fielding seems to be less appreciated. The critics such as Samuel Johnson and F. R. Leavis hold a negative attitude towards him, whose ethic values have not been fully understood. From the perspective of moral philosophy, Dr. Du Juan interprets the moral codes in Fielding' s three important novels The History of Tom Johns, The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and Amelia with Ethical Literary Criticism in her monograph Ethical Narrative: A Study of Henry Fielding' s Novels, which reappraises the ethical values of Fielding' s novels by revealing the co-construction relationship between Fielding and the eighteenth-century ethics in British society. That is, Fielding assumes the social responsibility of ethical construction with his ethical ideal and artistic form through novel writing. Dr. Du Juan doubts and questions some authoritative arguments, holding that Fielding attempts to convey his ethical ideals through romance narrative structure in his no
'Sorrow and Love, Love and Sorrow': The Poetics of Hymnody since the Reformation (with particular reference to American and Canadian hymnody)
Samuel Johnson (the eighteenth-century British writer, not the nineteenth-century Unitarian), in writing about Isaac Watts, thought that this led to the same ideas being presented over and over again: 'The paucity of his topicks enforces perpetual repetition'.7 What he did not anticipate, of course, was the individual experience that has gone into hymn-writing since the Reformation, which allows for endless variations on the central themes of repentance, regeneration, praise and prayer, peace and thanksgiving. [...]hymns are written to be sung in a performative context, in what S T Kimbrough Jr. has called 'the vocation of doxology and praise'.8 They are written to glorify God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, celebrating the Holy Trinity in a spirit of thankfulness, wonder, and holy joy. [...]Luther's great paraphrase of Psalm 130, 'Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir' ('Out of the depths I cry to Thee'), has in stanza 2 a reference to justification by faith which would have been as strange to Roman Catholic ears in the sixteenth century as "Twas in the moon of winter-time' is to ours. The vertical one (called by the pioneer of the study of linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure, the associative relation) refers to the choice of words in relation to other words that might have been chosen. [...]when Charles Wesley wrote 'Captain of Israel's host, and guide' he chose those words and not 'Leader of Israel's folk, and friend'. In Want my plentiful Supply, In Weakness my Almighty Power, In Bonds my perfect Liberty, My Light in Satan's darkest Hour, In Grief my Joy unspeakable, My Life in Death, my Heaven in Hell.17 This hymn is filled with metaphorical language, and has its roots in the Bible and in other sources.
The History of the Unfortunate Lady Grange: Gothic Exhumations of a Concealed Scottish Fate
Forgotten, concealed histories can return with a vengeance to haunt the imagination of a nation. This article explores the seldom-discussed history of the abduction, long-term imprisonment and falsified burial of Lady Grange, who was kidnapped from Edinburgh by allies of her estranged husband, and then slowly transported to St Kilda where she spent the following nine years. It is a tale upon which James Boswell commented when he toured Scotland with Samuel Johnson, and which, in the wake of Boswell's commentary, entered the Gothic imaginary, first through the romances of Ann Radcliffe. Although marital imprisonment was sadly all too widespread during the eighteenth century, with numerous sources to choose from, the history of Lady Grange, blocked for four decades after her death, returned to haunt the pages of romances and periodical articles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After examining what James Boswell wrote about Lady Grange, the article focuses on two romances of Ann Radcliffe, her 1789 The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne and her 1790 A Sicilian Romance. The article then looks at William Erskine's 1798 Epistle from Lady Grange and concludes by reflecting upon the unblocking of the story in the nineteenth-century periodical press.